Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 152

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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More facebookery

Special:DeletedContributions has gone all facebooky, with overlarge entry windows and buttons, and too much blank space between items. This is in MonoBook skin, maybe it was a change that was intended for Vector. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:49, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Copy of my reply at Wikipedia:Help desk#Deleted contributions:

Large interface boxes like this happen when MediaWiki features are converted to use mw:OOUI. I think MediaWiki's OOUI looks bad. Place the below in your CSS to hide it. You lose the namespace selector for deleted contributions. Once something is converted to OOUI, I don't think you can get the old look back without coding it yourself in JavaScript or something complicated like that. You could add the code to Special:MyPage/skin.css to only hide it in your current skin and still have the option to change skin to see it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:48, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

.mw-special-DeletedContributions .mw-htmlform-ooui-wrapper {display: none;}

I just opened up Facebook, and it looks nothing like the new Special:DeletedContributions. Legoktm (talk) 01:20, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm just gonna leave this here: Wikipedia:Facebookization —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:18, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

In this case, it's not even anything about actual Facebookization. It's just complaining about OOUI's very whitespace-heavy design by comparing it to Facebook, although I'm not seeing much similarity. Anomie⚔ 18:45, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

My point is that it's a forced change to the UI without consultation, without asking me if I wanted it, without providing an opt-out, and most importantly, without finding out if it would make things more difficult for me.

Facebook change their user interface frequently, they usually force it on you with no way of using the old version even if you knew where to find things but can do so no longer.

Periodically various interface pages in the MonoBook skin look less like MonoBook and more like something else (perhaps it's like Vector, which I don't use because of my poor eyesight), you're forced to use the New Look, and there's no way to switch it back even if your eyesight means that the new version is less accessible.

See the parallel? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:55, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

There's ongoing work to improve the density and other accessibility/usability issues in phab:T136790. I've noted (and agreed with) the substance of your concerns at phab:T134525#2862102 regarding that particular specialpage. Quiddity (talk) 21:52, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Making Facebook UI comparisons isn't helpful, but neither is dismissing concerns about changes solely because they are expressed in such a manner. I dislike the OOUI layout because it has excessive whitespace, takes up too much room, offers no benefit as far as I can see, and no reason for it has been given, nor could I find it, and is therefore an apparently unnecessary change. Apparently it is part of a UI standardisation project, but why couldn't it have standardised on something more like what we already had? From my viewpoint the changes seem as much like whitespace faddism as anything else, given that I could find no particular reasons. And while I appreciate Quiddity's comments in favour of reducing the excesses of OOUI forms, that doesn't change my underlying reasons or opinions. BethNaught (talk) 22:27, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

XKCD is timely ;)

OOUI reminds me of New Coke, when taste tests said the new one was better but everyone wanted the old one anyway. If you just showed me the old and new interfaces in isolation, I'd say sure, new one looks better - much cleaner and more modern. But actually using the "updated" interfaces tends to be a very quick lesson in the importance of information density to a heavily text-based project. (I can't tell you how tempted I was to write this post in huge font with way too many weirdly-spaced line breaks...) Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:03, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

That comic is pertinent to the topic, but isn't an argument in favour of change for change's sake, which as I wrote, is what this seems to me as far as I am concerned. I also disagree that OOUI is intrinsically better, as it takes up ridiculous amounts of space. For your "cleaner" I say bloated, and modernity ought to be irrelevant—the question ought to be, how well does it work? I agree with you that the OOUI design is out of step with an editing community which tends to like information density. That is something UI designers seem incapable of realising without being prodded six ways from Sunday. BethNaught (talk) 10:00, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Furthermore, when you have a 400% increase in the height of a form with two options under OOUI, how monstrous is the watchlist options panel going to look? BethNaught (talk) 10:13, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

On the two tasks I've already added some thoughts on the issue and any possibilities to address the concerns brought up here. We're taking the feedback serious, but I'd also like to take a moment to speak up on this number. 400% increase sounds really huge, no question. The challenge here is, that just because a certain old interface is well-known and works on my own computer, it doesn't mean to not be critically questioned or reluctant to changing needs for all times. Let's imagine a mobile user on his smartphone in portrait mode, where pinch-to-zoom is needed several times to accomplish the form. For this person the old state is perhaps 400% too small. Or imagine a user with motor control problems, where pointing on a form checkbox took forever. For this person the old state is perhaps 200% too small. Those are things that we're trying to take into account as well with our new forms. Glad to see your participation on Phabricator. Let's work together to make this a good experience for the majority of users and use cases. --Volker E. (WMF) (talk) 01:46, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I think your statement makes the assumption that operating administration features on a smartphone should be made standard, when I'm not sure this is the case. By nature of the technology, it is much more efficient to use a device made to handle having multiple windows open at once, faster typing rate (generally speaking), a more precise cursor (mouse instead of finger), etc. In addition, by trying to cover both modes of design with one layout, Wikimedia does a disservice to both. Killiondude (talk) 16:26, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Volker E. (WMF): So it's a change to benefit users of mobile devices. That's good, provided it's kept within the bounds of mobile. Wikipedia has had several skins for some years now; they are alternative appearances which are intentionally different. When Mobile view was introduced, it was given its own skin which was again intentionally different from any of the desktop skins - and rightly so, since the available space is so much more limited. So I don't see why a "mobile" appearance is being forced upon desktop users - if I want to see what a page looks like in the mobile skin, I click the "mobile view" link at the bottom - or insert a ".m" into the URL.

If the ultimate intention is to get rid of all skins except for the mobile one, please say so now. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Not my project, but:

I've not heard of plans to get rid of any skins, much less all skins except the mobile site (which, I gather, isn't actually a skin). I have heard devs shrug their shoulders and say that they don't really mind having four skins so long as it's understood that they're not responsible for supporting all of them. The long-term process appears to be merging Vector and mobile rather than replacing one with the other (only I suppose that desktop-only people like me would never notice when it goes the other way, would we? We would only notice when "ours" is changed).

And, finally, there probably is some good reason to reduce (but not necessarily eradicate) some of the cosmetic differences between the various options. From the POV of a reader, we probably don't want people to think that Wikipedia is two different sites – the dense gray blur that you get on a desktop and an incomplete thing that you get on a tablet. From the POV of the editor, we have a constant problem with people formatting pages on the mistaken belief that if it looks good on my computer (screen size/resolution/width/font size/whatever), then it should be good for everyone. (We see this belief in action when people hard-code the number of columns in a list, for example.) If we can reduce some of those problems by reducing some of the visual differences, then we'll probably have done some good for the world. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Who says they are being ignored ? Since we are getting anecdotal, that reminds me of when we once showed some total outsiders (who wondered if Wikipedia ever made visual changes at all) what Wikipedia looked like and worked 5 years ago (now 10 years). They couldn't phantom that they had ever used monobook or the OLD WikiEditor, even though they must have used it. But those people don't post on village pumps. No one is ignoring feedback (if it was actually communicated BEYOND this village pump), and the watchlist is not yet converterd. OOUI and the pages that use OOUI get follow up changes ALL THE TIME, based on user feedback just like this. Please consider the space outside of the echo chamber. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:01, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

You yourself have written that Design do not appear to have taken steps to address recurrent criticisms associated with OOUI conversion. I don't see why you're bringing up showing Monobook to outsiders: yes, I use Vector since that was the default when I joined, but Monobook must have something going for it as it still has a 10% user share among very active editors. I wouldn't have minded OOUI if you could opt out of it or skin it to have the older compact layout. Also, the wikitext editor is not a valid analogy to this situation because it added new, useful features.

As for your "echo chamber", I do in fact post at Phabricator and have made a good-faith suggestion about the problem. In any case, I never said they were being ignored, my comment about "dismissing" was about yours and Legoktm's initial comment in this thread. BethNaught (talk) 14:45, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I think I need to copy-paste what's in mw:MediaWiki UI#The controls are too big!: "One of the goals of this project is to make the site more accessible[1] and for mobile and desktop to have consistent designs. As a result, certain things may appear bigger than you are used to on desktop. Certain forms with lots of controls may take up much more space than they used to." I don't agree or disagree. I just quote it. :)Ladsgroup^overleg 14:35, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I really agree about another part "One of the goals of this project is to build a Living style guide that developers can use as a reference to build things quickly, in many cases without needing a designer. We want to encourage the same API use and same markup. In short we want people to care about consistency more. There is a Phabricator project where you can raise concerns about the UI and help make the software better. Using standard markup will make it easier for you to override the styling and propose improved versions. We see this as a moving target. Like software, the design is never done.". Let's have consistent UI everywhere, fixing OOUI is easy. :)Ladsgroup^overleg 14:44, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Does this mean that it is in principle possible to write user CSS or JS reducing OOUI forms to a more sensible size, or merely that form designers can override it if they wish? BethNaught (talk) 14:52, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure sizes used in OOUI can be overwritten by user common.css or mediawiki:common.css :)Ladsgroup^overleg 17:29, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Infobox in mobile: title malformed

{{Infobox}} has |title= (atop box) and |above= (inside box). All fine. But today in mobile view, the title text shows downgraded, eg compared to above-text, and is left-aligned. IOW: presented misformed. See earlier talks. A bug? -DePiep (talk) 23:17, 8 December 2016 (UTC) (and when in need, I ping Edokter -DePiep (talk) 00:49, 9 December 2016 (UTC))

Possibly related discussion about Infobox television. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:42, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

That television topic is not related. -DePiep (talk) 11:23, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

It's a bug. See the infobox title in gold, by mobile view: [1]. -DePiep (talk) 23:50, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Reopening discussion about aligning colors with Wikimedia color palette

I started the discussion in mediawiki talk:common.css but maybe it's not public enough. The new changes in colors just got deployed in English Wikipedia (as part of 1.29.0-wmf.5) 324549 324161 and 324534 changed:

• Search results colors
• "You've got new message" bar.
• TOC border and background.
• Border and background of thumbnails.
• Same for galleries.
• Catlinks (Categories box)
• Wikitables

Changes for Catlinks, galleries, thumbnails and TOC was changing from #f9f9f9 as background to #f8f9fa and #aaa as border to #a2a9b1. So to keep consistency in colors I think it's very important that all #f9f9f9 and #aaa in common.css should change too. (Mostly background of infoboxes) This change is almost unnoticeable (You too didn't notice it, did you?).

Beside that I have proposal to change some more stuff in Common.css to make it more aligned with Wikimedia color palette (phab:M82). This is a part of UI standardization to give users better experience. So these changes are a little bit noticeable:

• #1e90ff to #36c (The left border of ambox-notice and similar ones)
• #fbfbfb to #f8f9fa (background of mboxes)
• #b22222 to #d33 #b32424 (The left border of ambox-speedy and similar ones)
• #fee to #fee7e6 (Background of ambox-speedy and similar ones)
• #f28500 to #ac6600 (The left border of ambox-content and similar ones)
• #f4c430 to #fc3 (The left border of ambox-style and similar ones)
• #bba to #a2a9b1 (The left border of ambox-protection and similar ones)

The color palette colors are widely used everywhere. For example in OOjs-ui (so most buttons you see in the interface). Even color of the disambig icon is aligned. What do you think? :)Ladsgroup^overleg 22:29, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Ambox-content in the Wikimedia UI colors is too dark and doesn't seem to indicate (at all?) the gradation. And the red too bright--too in your face. The others seem fine. --Izno (talk) 22:53, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Regarding the red, We can go with #b32424 (another color from the color palette) instead of #d33. @Izno:: What do you think? :)Ladsgroup^overleg 23:16, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

That's much closer. --Izno (talk) 01:33, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Changed in the proposal. :)Ladsgroup^overleg 02:13, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Can someone tell me what the new color is for wikitable headers? Imzadi 1979 → 13:58, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

The header is #eaecf0 (changed from #f2f2f2) and other parts are #f8f9fa (changed from #f9f9f9) The border is #a2a9b1 (changed from #aaa) HTH. :)Ladsgroup^overleg 10:01, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

@Ladsgroup: There seem to be at least 5,000 pages using hardcoded values for these (only counting pages using the header colour). Are they fine as they are? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:19, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

We can make a bot to fix it. It's a piece of cake. :)Ladsgroup^overleg 11:27, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

@Ladsgroup: The old table colour #f9f9f9 is also hardcoded into infoboxes, route diagram templates, and a few hundred BSicons. I'm mostly concerned about the latter, because the first two could be fixed by modifying just a few templates/modules and CSS. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 01:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jc86035: We already started that inconsistency by changing TOC and ctalinks backgrounds, I can fix the svg files too. It's added in my to-do list now. Is it okay? :)Ladsgroup^overleg 08:39, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Ladsgroup: (pinging Useddenim, Sameboat) I suppose it would be if you also modified Module:Routemap and Template:BS-map at the same time across the various wikis where they're used (if this change is over all WMF sites). Not sure really. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 12:51, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

No objection, as I can't see any difference between #f9f9f9 and #f8f9fa. (Perhaps I need to recalibrate my monitors?). Useddenim (talk) 13:04, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Why do the SVG files used in RDTs need changing? They should all have a transparent background already; if any do not, please identify them so that they may be cleaned properly. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:50, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Masks and formations for overlaying (e.g.  (BRIDGElr) and  (MSTR3)), as well as elevated corners like  (hSTRc1) and  (ÜWt1), use the colour. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 06:51, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

If there is no objection until the next 48 hours. I will go on and request from an admin to change them (except ambox.content) :)Ladsgroup^overleg 10:01, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Looked at the list of Ambox#types. No change for the Move color #9932cc? In the M82 palette I could not find an applicable one (and no purple at all).

Given the descriptions in M82, I'd say ambox-speedy should be #d33 'destructive action', not 'button'. Note that this is for the lefthand vertical bar only, not an area background (which would look attacking indeed). -DePiep (talk) 11:11, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, User:Izno: What do you think? :)Ladsgroup^overleg 11:27, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

@Ladsgroup and DePiep: I think when the red that was chosen way back during the ambox design discussions, the bright-bright red was generally also disagreed to. I'm aware that semantically, destructive action is probably more appropriate, but the bright red really is going to have people cough a lung up here (even if I hadn't already opposed that specific change). --Izno (talk) 18:49, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

No objection from me. -DePiep (talk) 18:56, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Loss of Session Data

I've been getting this message when I try to edit on wikipedia:

Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try saving your changes again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in.

They first appeared on December third, and they continue to reappear whenever I try to make an edit. It's not just in English Wikipedia either. The edits I've been making are standard edits that I've been making for several years and in this particular instance it was at Croatia at the 2016 Summer Olympics. I have tried doing a test edit on my User page which worked and I have also logged out and logged back in again, which also didn't work. --MorrisIV (talk) 03:21, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I had a bunch of this a few days ago - deleted all cookies and it cleared up. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Wow! That was fast. Thank you for solving the problem. --MorrisIV (talk) 03:28, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Also see phab:T151770 --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:50, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Down border of a cell of a table

Hello. Is there a way to have the down border of a cell of a table with more "bold" line? Xaris333 (talk) 20:01, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

You can user 'border-bottom' css property of this cell. See also this. Ruslik_Zero 20:42, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! Xaris333 (talk) 15:27, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorting ordinal form of the number

I was reading Help:Sorting but I didn't find a solution. How to sort ordinal form of number with one digit and with two digits? I can not use 01, 02 etc.

Something1	Something2
1st	01st
2nd	02nd
10th	10th
11th	11th
3rd	03rd
14th	14th

I can sort correctly something 2 column but I can't sort correctly something 2 column

Xaris333 (talk) 20:30, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Like this:Tvx1 20:47, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Something1	Something2
1st	01st
2nd	02nd
10th	10th
11th	11th
3rd	03rd
14th	14th

Yes. But is there an easiest way? Xaris333 (talk) 21:24, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

{{ntsh}} -- GreenC 21:55, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

You should prefer the "less easy" way because it produces HTML without producing a whole bunch of gibberish for re-consumers. --Izno (talk) 22:14, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all! Xaris333 (talk) 19:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, it's even easier, you can use data-sort-type="number" on the table header cells. See Help:Sorting#Configuring the sorting. Matma Rex talk 21:33, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Something1	Something2
1st	01st
2nd	02nd
10th	10th
11th	11th
3rd	03rd
14th	14th

"Your notices"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153011

Is it just my setup, or does the "your notices" notification take like five seconds to come up on other people's machines? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 01:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Special:Notifications often takes a long time to open for me in Firefox but not Safari. I see gray and white stripes. What web browser are you using? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Firefox. But I just tried it on Safari, and it behaves just the same. Chrome too. (This is MacOS, btw.) --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 15:51, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Are you having problems loading this page today? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Seems noticeably faster on Safari. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇} 20:50, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Oh god yes. The process of reading notifications lately has been something like

1. See notification marker.
2. Click icon.
3. Whistle Dixie.
4. Make coffee.
5. Read the newspaper.
6. Water the plants.
7. Watch them grow for a little while.
8. Return to computer.
9. Twiddle thumbs a few times.
10. Read notification.

OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a little ;) But I'm pretty sure this wins the award for least responsive interface element of any website I regularly use. I am also using Firefox on a Mac; on Linux it's much faster. It is not faster to use Special:Notifications vs. using the dropdown, though. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:06, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I think you skipped the "get impatient and re-load several times in the hope that it will actually work" part.

The devs' current thinking is that this is probably due to a user script or gadget. Catrope's promised to look at log details for me, in the hope of figuring it out (assuming the script that they fixed yesterday wasn't the sole cause of my problems), but if anyone feels like blanking their scripts, re-loading everything, and reporting back, then that might be helpful. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Is it possible to disable the mobile editor while keeping the mobile skin?

Look for the gear-shaped settings icon to switch to the mobile wikitext editor.

The mobile skin is nice, however the editor come with it have a serious problem. Whenever I try to spend an hour or so to do some serious edit via mobile editor, those mobile browsers would remove the editing page from cache due to lack of memory. If I was editing with the regular editor, then those edit content are stored and will be automatically recovered once I went back to the editing interface. However, since the mobile editing interface utilized some dynamic element, whenever I went back to the page after some info searching, my previously typed text would all be lost. So how to disable the mobile editing interface? C933103 (talk) 10:23, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know if this will solve your actual problem, but you can switch to wikitext on the mobile site. Look for the gear-shaped settings icon next to the Save button.

The desktop wikitext editors (e.g., the 2010 mw:WikiEditor) do not save edits. Instead, your desktop web browser saves it (or doesn't). An actual auto-save system will become part of the visual editor soon. However, I don't know whether that will also work in the mobile site's visual system. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Whyatamidoing (WMF): sorry for not enough specificity, what I was talking about is always the wikitext editing on the mobile site.

Yes, it is the mobile/desktop browser that save edits instead of the site/editor. However, what I am talking about is that, with the desktop mode wikitext editor, the browser can save those edits, which is not the case if I am using the mobile skin, probably because the mobile site make the editor as if some form of section on the page instead of another page.C933103 (talk) 06:55, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Question about redirects/not automatically following them

Originally asked on 9 December at the Help Desk, where I got no response (except for a talk page message telling me I might have better luck here): Is there a way to set my preferences that I'm overlooking, or any other method, so that I do not automatically follow redirects to their target pages? Basically, I'd like wikipedia to treat every redirect I click as though the link has &redirect=no after it, if possible. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:33, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@AddWittyNameHere: Not that I know of, but it's pretty easy to write a user script to do that. In fact, I just wrote one: User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/noAutoRedir.js. Add importScript("User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/noAutoRedir.js"); in a new line to your common.js or vector.js page, if you wanna use it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:59, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Redirects are generated internally, unlike HTTP redirects which are handled by the browser. There is no preference to disable it. Conceivably you could write some personal JS to add redirect=no to every link on every page. --Unready (talk) 23:01, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

This appears to be exactly what Writ Keeper's script does. --Golbez (talk) 23:39, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153275

not *exactly*; my script identifies which links are redirects by virtue of the "mw-redirect" css class, and so it doesn't touch non-redirect links. Also, it reformulates the URL into an index.php call; for some reason, a straight /wiki/<pagename>?redirect=no fails when there's a special character (like ?) in the page name, even when that special character is appropriately URI-encoded. perhaps I should file a bug report...Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:43, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, I just tried it. /wiki/%3F?redirect=no is a perfectly-formed relative URL, but ?redirect=no is ignored. I tried it on a different MW installation, which probably has different http-rewrite rules, and got the same result. It's not definitive, but it's probably MW itself, not the web server, that's throwing the query string away. Bummer. --Unready (talk) 00:44, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Writ Keeper Thank you so much! Makes a lot of my work a fair bit easier. (It doesn't seem to work with the quicksearch, just so you know. Not an issue to me, that's not what I wanted it for anyway, but figured you might want to know). AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:25, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. :D Writing little scripts like this is one of my more favorite things to do on Wikipedia. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 08:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Login problems in Firefox

During a recent session in which someone reverted a large series of edits I had made after a discussion I wasn't made aware of during the two hours in which it occurred (but that's another story), I found my pages were hanging and shut down Firefox, which I prefer to use for editing.

When I restarted it, I was logged out and couldn't log back on. I keep getting this message above the login box saying "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Go back to the previous page, reload that page and then try again.

I did that and still got the same thing. I restarted the computer. Still happens. But only in Firefox; I'm typing this on Edge.

Can anyone help me with this? Daniel Case (talk) 03:43, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I've been unable to login using Firefox for months now - again, Edge works perfectly - for me it appears to be related to Norton 360 (Firefox works when Norton isn't installed).Nigel Ish (talk) 19:40, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I had no problems until yesterday (Chrome also works perfectly as well).

I should add that this applies to all Wikimedia sites, as I have SUL. Daniel Case (talk) 20:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

It appears that Firefox may have resolved this issue, which appears was caused by an update. Mine is suddenly working again this evening. Skinsmoke (talk) 17:42, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

I just applied the update, too. No dice. Daniel Case (talk) 19:31, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Login error using iPad

Hello, I am Hwy43. I'm trying to login to my account on my iPad but I get the following error message:

"There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Go back to the previous page, reload that page and then try again."

I've tried the suggestion on numerous occasions but the problem persists. This began approximately 24 hours ago when I logged myself out after somehow finding myself in annoying mobile mode so that I could log back on in desktop mode, but haven't been able to get back in using my iPad since then. The edits I have made in the past 24 hours were through my laptop where I am not experiencing the same issues.
Also, if an Admin such as Resolute or The Interior could conceal my IP address after posting this I would greatly appreciate it. Cheers, 07:58, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Did you try to explicitly bypass your browser cache? --Malyacko (talk) 12:08, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

No luck. Hwy43 (talk) 14:55, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

This still isn't working for me either. Since I have found I have no problems in other browsers, I suppose the problem is something related to Firefox. Are there any cookies I should check or whatever? Daniel Case (talk) 19:23, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I've been able to resolve my issue. In iPad's settings for Safari I selected "Clear History and Website Data" and that appears to have done the trick. Hwy43 (talk) 23:24, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

So what would be the Firefox equivalent? Daniel Case (talk) 01:46, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Clearing only cookies for Wiki(m|p)edia sites should help: menu Tools -> Options -> Privacy (or just paste in URL bar about:preferences#privacy), search in page for an option to delete cookies, select all the Wikipedia/Wikimedia related cookie(s) and remove them. Additionally you can clear cache in Tools -> Options -> Advanced (about:preferences#advanced). --XXN, 15:00, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, that did it. Thanks. Daniel Case (talk) 19:39, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Bot controller on Wiki-break

Am currently expanding an article on my one of my sandboxes. It is work in progress and needs a lot more work before going live. B-bot has informed that my uploads are orphaned and will be deleted after seven days. But this close to Christmas I will never achieve this deadline. It was only started on 2016-12-12. How do I say slow down?--Aspro (talk) 20:36, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

You cannot have a non-free image that is not in an article. If the bot didn't find it, then some user will. Just let them be deleted and request undelete when the page moves to article space. BTW File:Grandstand.png is way to big, WP:Image resolution guideline is 100,000 pixels Ronhjones  ^(Talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:36, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Can you reduce the size for me?--Aspro (talk) 22:04, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Like to point out: The time to clear OTRS images on Wikimedia Commons is currently several months. Just 7 days on WP though, is proving impractical short ! A bot may be able to work 24/7 , week-in-week-out and not break out in a sweat nor need to sleep but I and many other editors can't. A Seven days cut off, must be a figure pulled out of thin air. Am simply asking... how-to-slow-these-bots-down . Some WP bots are are like skynet coming true. Who is in control here User:Ronhjones, editors (who are sacrificing their free time to improve articles) or da bots? Do you recall the first episodes of Dr Who, where the intrepid heroes came across some lovable little cyborg mutants who's favorite phrase was Annihilate ... Annihilate... Annihilate. What is the difference between Daleks and some of the the modern day WP bots?--Aspro (talk) 15:43, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

It's nothing to do with the bot. The bot is just applying a speedy template - the same template that any editor can place on finding a non-free image which is not in use (I've done hundreds over the years). The seven days used to be NONE, after much discussion some years ago, certain types of speedy deletions were given a seven days grace (now so called dated speedy deletions). This is not a bot issue, but a speedy delete issue. The relevant item can be found at Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#F5._Orphaned_non-free_use_images. You could suggest a longer time there, I very much doubt if it will happen. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 22:57, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Have you set up a Wikipedia mirror?

I've never actually met anyone who has actually done it.

How did you go about it?

What problems did you run into?

How did you solve them? The Transhumanist 22:21, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

A mirror of what ? the website, the content, the images, the servers ? There are many parts that you can filter and probably no one other that Wikimedia itself does everything. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:29, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

New way to edit wikitext

Summary: There's a new opt-in Beta Feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. Please go try it out.

We in the Wikimedia Foundation's Editing department are responsible for making editing better for all our editors, new and experienced alike. We've been slowly improving the visual editor based on feedback, user tests, and feature requests. However, that doesn't work for all our user needs: whether you need to edit a wikitext talk page, create a template, or fix some broken reference syntax, sometimes you need to use wikitext, and many experienced editors prefer it.

Consequently, we've planned a "wikitext mode" for the visual editor for a long time. It provides as much of the visual editor's features as possible, for those times that you need or want wikitext. It has the same user interface as the visual editor, including the same toolbar across the top with the same buttons. It provides access to the citoid service for formatting citations, integrated search options for inserting images, and the ability to add new templates in a simple dialog. Like in the visual editor, if you paste in formatted text copied from another page, then formatting (such as bolding) will automatically be converted into wikitext.

All wikis now have access to this mode as a Beta Feature. When enabled, it replaces your existing wikitext editor everywhere. If you don't like it, you can reverse this at any time by turning off the Beta Feature in your preferences. We don't want to surprise anyone, so it's strictly an opt-in-only Beta Feature. It won't switch on automatically for anyone, even if you have previously checked the box to "Automatically enable most beta features".

The new wikitext edit mode is based on the visual editor, so it requires JavaScript (as does the current wikitext editor). It doesn't work with gadgets that have only been designed for the older one (and vice versa), so some users will miss gadgets they find important. We're happy to work with gadget authors to help them update their code to work with both editors. We're not planning to get rid of the current main wikitext editor on desktop in the foreseeable future. We're also not going to remove the existing ability to edit plain wikitext without JavaScript. Finally, though it should go without saying, if you prefer to continue using the current wikitext editor, then you may so do.

This is an early version, and we'd love to know what you think so we can make it better. Please leave feedback about the new mode on the feedback page. You may write comments in any language. Thank you.

James Forrester (Product Manager, Editing department, Wikimedia Foundation) --19:31, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Comments on New Wikitext Editor

Alsee left some interesting feedback on this a few days ago. Basically, NWE uses Parsoid to display previews, meaning that a preview in NWE can appear broken when it appears fine in the normal parser. I do not see how this is not a serious design flaw. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 19:55, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T104479. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 01:13, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

As far as I see, that doesn't answer the question (unless Kaldari's comment that WMF's plan is to switch to Parsoid for the primary rendering engine is true). 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 07:50, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

In the long term, yes I believe that is true. But are there really many serious discrepancies between Parsoid's output and the PHP parser's output for this to be an actual concern? — This, that and the other (talk) 11:24, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

As TheDJ pointed out at that Flow topic, only two of the issues Alsee observed are actual Parsoid flaws. And neither of them are particularly egregious; anyone who tries to use parser functions like {{#if:redflag|<span style="color:red;|<span style="}} font-weight: bold"> in an actual article or template doesn't really deserve a friendly response from the renderer! Another two issues (link color) are quite important and really will need to be provided in the new editor at some point. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:28, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. When I was maintaining templates on wiki's, I always rewrote structures like that. Any engineer can see that it is dangerous and should not be used. It falls into the "it's a wonder that it works to begin with"-category. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:36, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Mass revert in a specific spacename

At ro:wiki we have a problem we face for many years; one person filled thousands of article talk pages with low quality articles links to various newspapers (example here), many of them with defamatory content, continuing to do so after a policy change was enforced. That user was blocked indefenetely and got permanently banned from editing ever again [2], and all his contributions can be reverted thanks to ro:wiki policies.

We still have a problem in removing his contributions in the talk space page. Is there any possibility to mass remove all his contributions into the article talk page's space? Thanks in advance!Ionutzmovie (talk) 00:02, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Ionutzmovie can you point to a few of the "difficult" use cases? (e.g. Is it where this is a page creation, or where this user was not the last editor, etc?). — xaosflux ^Talk 00:15, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

If mass is the problem, you could create a bot that reverts the edits which can be reverted, lists the pages which can't be reverted and tags pages where he's the only editor for deletion. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 00:17, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

So there isn't any page like Special:Nuke which can do this task?Ionutzmovie (talk) 00:19, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

There is not a Special:Nuke for "reverts"; userscripts (e.g. User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback.js to click all the rollback links for a user could be used, and admins can use their (markbotedits) acess to hide these from recent changes. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:26, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to say this, but I think this is just a matter of personal revenge. Two years ago, an admin blocked me for "trolling" because I dared to answer his accusations, his decision was reverted and since then - war. Then I was blocked for three months because (along other things) answering to accusations is considered to be "personal attacks". Recently I was blocked for an article that I've made and last edited almost one year ago, minutes after answering to an irritated admin. And the most recent blow was to block me forever (ro:Discuție Utilizator:Ark25/2016#Blocat_2), for saving two articles from deletion and trying to save two more (even though I was invited to save articles by the same admin who started this thread), using the excuse that, by saving them, I broke my promise not to add references from newspapers in Wikipedia articles - I thought such an exception will be considered common sense and I even said I won't make such exceptions anymore if they don't like them. And they are probably not going to stop here - delete all the articles that I've created, revert all my edits, try to block me at Wikia also, I won't be surprised even if they will even sue me. Now, those links I've added into the talk pages are (media) resources, useful for further developing the articles (example) and lists (example), including the "Controversies" sections (those called defamatory). Those links are from the same newspapers cited (by others) in tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles (example). Also, I've stopped to add such links when they managed to get a consensus against my actions (it took them years to get there). So it's not really true that sentence: "continuing to do so after a policy change was enforced". But every time I'm asking them to support their accusations with evidence, they refuse to do so and in return, they launch even more attacks. And after that I get get blocked for "trolling", for "personal attacks", for "believing in conspiracy theories", and so on. I was even accused that, having my own opinion while respecting consensuns means "wikilawyering" - so, be careful what you think when editing Romanian Wikipedia.

Anyways, I offer to clean those talk pages myself, if they allow me to create an user just for that. After cleaning, block that user, no problem. I believe they won't answer to anything I have to say (I've asked them recently to allow me to make an user just for doing re-categorizations, disambiguation notes and correcting misspellings and to block it at the first edit that won't fit in those restrictions). So I'm just saying it. —  Ark25  (talk) 15:21, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

ScriptInstaller

Hi everyone! I was interested ScriptInstaller script, but it doesn't work on kkwiki (only shown Must be installed manually message every .js page), how to fix it? Please help me (script page loaded by common.js). Script author currently inactive --Arystanbek (talk) 08:35, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Try replacing with kkwiki namespace names and lengths here:

((path.toLowerCase().substring(0, 5) == "user:") || (path.toLowerCase().substring(0,10) == 'wikipedia:'))

Also replace "en-wiki" by "kk-wiki" in "If this is not a valid path to an en-wiki .js script". It's just a comment but it becomes misleading if the first change is made. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I was tried it this revision, but doesn't work, "en-wiki" is used only comment line. --Arystanbek (talk) 11:19, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Try also replacing the namespace lengths as I said. The kk name for "user:" is 9 characters so it becomes:

((path.toLowerCase().substring(0, 9) == "қатысушы:") || (path.toLowerCase().substring(0,10) == 'уикипедия:'))

PrimeHunter (talk) 11:26, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I'm so grateful for your help! . --Arystanbek (talk) 11:46, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I'm sorry, how to fix these three bugs:

1. here installer link doesn't work. Shown Must be installed manually message;

2. Show installed script list link not shown;

3. already installed scripts shown install link, not shown installed message. --Arystanbek (talk) 00:58, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I haven't used the script and am not a JavaScript programmer. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:51, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Watchlist star

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153403

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T45512

Whenever I click on the watchlist star, the page name does not display correctly. It just says

The page "'''<nowiki>$1</nowiki>'''" has been added to your [[{{ns:Special}}:Watchlist|watchlist]], which will list edits to this page and its associated {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE:$1}}|{{TALKSPACE:$1}}|content|talk}} page.

. GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 05:58, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The message is from MediaWiki:Addedwatchtext - which has not been changed in a long time, must be Thursday.. — xaosflux ^Talk 06:02, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Able to duplicate. Not duplicating on meta: or testwiki: — xaosflux ^Talk 06:04, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Duplicated on testwiki, get a failure on dewiki - seems to be related to using a parser function. — xaosflux ^Talk 06:09, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I've updated our local message to make this be usable, need to file a phab bug. — xaosflux ^Talk 06:20, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

phab:T153403 opened. — xaosflux ^Talk 06:25, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: looks like our localization markup is no longer supported, partial support may come back if phab:T45512 ever gets worked on. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:40, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

• Note: the phab ticket was "won't fix"'ed. The messages should be displaying in a usable format now, additional discussion can be had at: MediaWiki_talk:Addedwatchtext. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:06, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The top panel in the Chechen Wikipedia

In anonymous and some participants disappear top panel. Please tell me how to return?. the problem is browser mozile. --Дагиров Умар (talk) 12:45, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Error fixed in MediaWiki:Gadget-collapserefs.js. --Дагиров Умар (talk) 22:06, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Category members not shown when logged out

When I view a category such as Category:Wikipedia files requiring renaming while being logged out, members such as File:Blc from bn.jpg are not shown. Doing a null edit only temporarily fixes the problem and the problem appears again the next time I visit the category while being logged out. GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 02:06, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

The example has now been removed from the category but I added File:HAFIZ HAMZA SHAHBAZ.jpeg instead and got the same result for many minutes. It works now but there can apparently be a delay in updating the cached version of category pages for unregistered users. I tested a new page with categories at Special:Newpages and got the same result. Nightjet was displayed in Category:Night trains when logged in but not logged out. It works now and some other new pages didn't have the issue at all when tested within a minute of creation. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:41, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, logged-in editors are shown a non-cached version of the page, whereas cached versions are displayed to non-logged in readers; this is likely done for performance reasons. -FASTILY 01:19, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

API PERL question.. correct specification of HTTPS connections

Now, let me start off by saying, I'm jet lagged, and probably am missing something obvious.

I did check this--the bot doesn't appear blocked.

I've been running very simple PERL scripts as User:Joe's Null Bot for some years, these work off the PERL MediaWiki API (e.g., [3].)

Since early November (and I was literally on Antarctica away from internets in the meantime), it appears that these scripts have been failing, unable to connect to en.wikipedia.org port 443. Can't connect to that port, I hear it cry, error 500. My only environmental upgrade that likely to be relevant was an upgrade to OSX Sierra. The PERL APIs don't appear to have changed in the last year or more, so whatever is wrong is probably on my end, but as I said, I'm jet lagged and not seeing it. Ideas? --joe decker^talk 01:06, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm. Given what 443 is, I have one idea. Back in a few minutes. --joe decker^talk 01:09, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, what's the correct way to populate the hashref passed to API->new for an HTTPS connection? I take it that simply putting https in the URI is not sufficient. --joe decker^talk 01:13, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Just a guess, for something to try, I've run into problems before with SSL and expired CA certificates. Maybe in the OS upgrade it lost the certificate. Though there is a status code for that 435 .. 500 is a generic which is more a question than answer. -- GreenC 02:18, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm. ENWIKI's cert looks good, the only thing that upgraded was my own box, which is my back-room iMac where the scripts run. Weird. --joe decker^talk 02:37, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I seem to recall an issue with root CA's and macOS Sierra. Can you check if the cert looks good from your box using Safari? I don't know what browser you normally use, but IIRC Chrome was using its own list of root CA's. Rchard2scout (talk) 08:30, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Both Chrome and Safari report ENWIKI's certs as valid.

Slightly more caught up on sleep, I'll look into this more in the next few hours. I see that midyear I applied a hack to disable some sort of hostname checking to make SSL work, my guess is that that's breaking now. Have gotten similar results from two machines. (If someone has experience with, or better, an concise example of, all the correct incantations for a login connection to en.wikipedia.org over SSL, I'd appreciate it. --joe decker^talk 23:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_146#MediaWiki::API_and_SSL may provide some background. --joe decker^talk 23:26, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Normally all you need with the Perl API is the protocol card:

my $bot = MediWiki::Bot->new ({
        assert       => 'bot',
        host         => 'en.wikipedia.org',
        protocol     => 'https',
}) or die "new MediaWiki::Bot failed";

Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

{{ping}Hawkeye7}} Cool, I was using the lower level interface, but it's probably not that hard to cut over.

That having been said, it still doesn't work.

2: 500 Can't verify SSL peers without knowing which Certificate Authorities to trust : error occurred when accessing https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php after 6 attempt(s) at afcpend.pl line 86. --joe decker^talk 16:30, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Let me try putting the $ENV{PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME} = 0; fix back in. --joe decker^talk 16:32, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

And nope.

2: 500 Can't connect to en.wikipedia.org:443 : error occurred when accessing https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php after 6 attempt(s) at afcpend.pl line 86. --joe decker^talk 16:33, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Have dumped code to User:Joe_Decker/afcpend.pl so that you can laugh at the kludgery. --joe decker^talk 16:39, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

• What platform are you on? I had a similar problem on the laptop, involving the version of Perl Apple had installed. You can try this:

 sudo cpan
 install LWP::UserAgent Mozilla::CA

Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:26, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

OSX, I will give that a shot today when I'm back at the house. That could totally be the issue, thanks! The laptop I'm doing most of my testing on is OSX 10.11.6 --joe decker^talk 16:08, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, the good news is that it changed something :) Now I'm just consistently getting the "can't connect" error, which is sadly shy of good hints as to what's going on. Humph. --joe decker^talk 02:34, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Still, however, no progress. --joe decker^talk 22:36, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Couple ideas: MediaWiki::Bot->new() has a debug option. Maybe an errant .perlwikipedia-$botUserName-cookies file? -- GreenC 01:37, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Good ideas. Debug (set to 2, if I'm reading this right) more or less repeated the error message I'm getting ("500 Can't connect....").. I don't see a cookies file, but I'm not actually sure where (besides beside my application) I should be looking. (I did know to use -a on my ls commands, tho'.) Anywhere else I should be looking for those? I have another thread to pull on, the build test for ::Bot is generating errors, so I can follow up there, too. --joe decker^talk 03:33, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The cookie probably doesn't exist but could try a search from a root directory just in case: find . -print | grep perlwikipedia -- GreenC 15:32, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Yep, nothing. --joe decker^talk 16:32, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Bot with inactive owner

User:Theopolisme is fairly inactive (last edit May). He mde User:Theo's Little Bot. Of late the bot has not been behaving very well on one of it's tasks (Task 1 - reduction of non-free images in Category:Wikipedia non-free file size reduction requests. It typically starts at 06:00 and will drop out usually within a minute of two (although sometimes one is lucky and it runs for half an hour occasionally). Messages on talk pages and github failed to contact user. User:Diannaa and I both sent e-mails, and Diannaa did get a reply - He is very busy elsewhere, and hopes to maybe look over Xmas. In view of the important work it does, Dianna suggested I ask here if there was someone who could possibly take the bot over? Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 22:53, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

If nobody has volunteered, then it might be good to ask at Wikipedia:Bot requests as well. -FASTILY 01:24, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Some discussion of this topic has been going on concerning WikiWork factors at the Bot requests page already-- see Wikipedia:Bot requests#Update WikiWork factors. I would very much appreciate someone reclaiming this bot, I found WikiWork factors useful. Icebob99 (talk) 00:45, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Question: Looking for a script or automated tool (that may not exist)

Please forgive me if this is the wrong place to ask this question (and please direct me to the proper place to ask), but...

Does anybody know if there is a script or an automated tool that can help standardize citations? I'm working on an article in which some footnotes use citation templates and others are simply typed out (e.g., [https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/women-black-lives-matter-interview-marcia-chatelain "Women and Black Lives Matter: An Interview with Marcia Chatelain"]. ''Dissent Magazine''. Retrieved 2016-11-24.). As part of a drive toward bringing the article to good article status, I'd like all the footnotes to use the citation templates.

I've looked, but most of the citation tools appear to be aimed toward helping editors add new citations, not formatting the existing citations in an article. If you can think of anything that might help, please let me know. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:14, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

@Malik Shabazz:, Help:Citation tools. I don't know if there is one for this task though I agree it would be useful. -- GreenC 17:23, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

reFill works but you have to deconstruct the citation to a barelink first. James Foley (journalist) is a good example article. -- GreenC 17:38, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think such tool will exist. I believe, it would be nightmare to have a "formatter" for all possible cases (extracting right parts). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:09, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Agreed a nightmare/impossible when full-auto on all formats; it might work for some typical formats when run in semi-auto mode (like reFill). -- GreenC 01:08, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you both, Green Cardamom and Edgars2007. reFill is a new one for me. I'll give it a try. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:10, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

All right, enough with the damn fundraising header.

You've had it up for well over a month. You've blown past your goal. You have raised way the hell more than is needed for hosting or even salaries. **TAKE IT DOWN ALREADY**.

--Rpresser 19:49, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

This doesnt seem the right forum for this topic. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:48, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

See the response here. wbm1058 (talk) 05:10, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Rpresser: I don't see the fundraiser banner, and I don't think you have to, either. There's a gadget to prevent its display. Preferences/Gadget/Browsing → Check "Suppress display of fundraiser banners" — Maile (talk) 02:21, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Complex searching

My question is two fold. First the specific one... I am doing some complex searching with things like

intitle:/Infobox/ insource:/foo/ -insource:/bar/

Is there a way to add a condition that basically says "don't show me any sub pages"? What I want to avoid is any page that has a "/" in the title. So "Template:Foo" is fine... but I don't want to get "Template:Foo/<anything>".

Then the broader question. Is there a good place to read up on search syntax other than just Help:Searching? --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) —Preceding undated comment added 07:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

mw:Help:CirrusSearch --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:52, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

You can probably do something like -intitle:/\//, where the backslash escapes the slash, so that the slash is not evaluated by the machine as terminating the regex. --Izno (talk) 13:15, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@Izno: Unfortunately that doesnt work. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:47, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@John of Reading: I had a sneaking suspicion it would not. --Izno (talk) 13:48, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Maybe something from Help:Searching/Draft will be interesting. Template:Search link documentation seems to be a copy of draft page. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:49, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I actually wasn't even aware of that page until today. There is some more official documentation (as in, the Search Team actively updates it) at mw:Help:CirrusSearch. With regard to this specific question, I doubt what Zackmann08 is trying to do is possible at present with search. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:41, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Is it in your team's plans for the future? "Search the Wikipedia: namespace, but don't clutter up my results with a jillion AFD pages" would be very helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to speak for your team and give them work, but a search parameter to eliminate subpages from results shouldn't be too terribly hard to implement. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 23:08, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

-intitle: AfD? — Cpiral§Cpiral 06:54, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to type out -prefix:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion all the time. There's currently some 370,000 of them, so it's a lot of potential clutter. Plus, if we can exclude sub-pages, then I won't have to also add -prefix:Wikipedia:Requests for or any of the other things. (And just imagine being able to search templates but not their /doc pages by clicking a little tickbox...) WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:20, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

This is how I solve complex searching. -- GreenC 16:00, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Very cool. Bookmarked as desirable project. — Cpiral§Cpiral 07:03, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Subpages are always searched. Sorry. There may be a way, if you described more, but please

• try -intitle: doc -intitle: sandbox to refine.
• don't use insource:/regex/ unless you've read the docs mentioned and can provide a filter for it. You can probably use plain ol' insource.
• get involved with Search docs and Search talk pages before asking for a feature on phabricator. Someone will be happy to work up any possible query, and even discuss and explain. This helps the poor ol' docs too. — Cpiral§Cpiral 06:54, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Logging me out

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153571

A while ago I complained on this board that the software was logging me off for no reason. When I log in, I check the box to stay logged in for 365 days. When it used to be 30 days, it worked fine. After the change, it started logging me off. The last time I posted here it was happening regularly but no more than once a day and not always every day. No one proposed a solution.

It's now gotten much worse. It's logging me off multiple times on the same day, sometimes within minutes of the last one. It's very irritating because it seems to happen more frequently when I'm running a CheckUser, which means of course it tells me I don't have permission, so I log in and continue.

If I don't fare any better here than I did last time, I am hoping someone can tell me how to file a bug report with Phabricator (I've never done it). Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:19, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

phabricator. There's a welcome box up top that tells you how to do it. You should be able to log on to Phabricator with your Wikimedia unified account. — Maile (talk) 02:26, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I created a bug report. How do I know if any action was taken on it? Am I notified? On Wikipedia or only on Wikimedia? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 03:27, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Go back to Phab: and click on the wrench icon in the upper right corner of the screen. That's your settings. You'll find a section about e-mail notifications in there.

Have you done all the usual WP:BYPASS things to make sure that it's not being caused by a corrupted cookie or other local problem? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:42, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Emails are sent from no-reply [at] phabricator.wikimedia.org so check your spambox. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:32, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I started getting notifications later. They work fine. I've commented at the task to answer the questions asked me. As I mentioned at the outset, I brought this up here once before. See here. As you'll note, Whatamidoing (WMF), I followed the BYPASS procedure back then. I see no need to repeat it now as it didn't work then.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:10, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-51

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 9 January 2017.
• The writers of the technical newsletter are asking for your opinion. Did you get the information you wanted this year? Did we miss important technical news in 2016? What kind of information was too late? Please tell us! You can write in your language. Thank you!

Recent changes

• Administrators and translation administrators can now use Special:PageLanguage on wikis with the Translate extension. This means you can say what language a page is in. The Translate extension will use that language as the source language when you translate. Previously this was always the wiki's default language. This was usually English. [4]
• Wikis connected to Wikidata can now use the parser function {{#statements: }} to get formatted data. You can also use {{#property: }} to get raw data. You can see the difference between the two statements. There are also similar new functions in Lua. [5]

Problems

• Some abuse filters for uploaded files have not worked as they should. We don't know exactly which filters didn't work yet. This means some files that filters should have prevented from being uploaded were uploaded to the wikis. MediaWiki.org and Testwiki have been affected since 13 October. Commons and Meta have been affected since 17 October. Other wikis have been affected since 17 November. [6]

Changes this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week. There will be no new MediaWiki version next week either.

Meetings

• The next meeting with the VisualEditor team will be on 3 January at 20:00 (UTC). During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. See how to join.

Future changes

• The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey is done. It decides what the Community Tech team will work on during 2017. You can see the results.

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

20:33, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Watchlist styles gadget loading

For the WatchlistBase and WatchlistGreenIndicators gadgets I'm getting console warnings on every page load that look like "Gadget "WatchlistBase" styles loaded twice. Migrate to type=general. See <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T42284>." The documentation at mw:ResourceLoader/Migration guide (users)#Gadget type says that this warning is given for gadgets that load both styles and JavaScript. However, when I checked MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition it seems that these two gadgets load only styles. Does anyone know why the warning is appearing? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:40, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I can only suggest that this is related to the dependencies. Ruslik_Zero 20:42, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Watchlist change

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153438

Because of phab:T150045, you will soon get a confirmation dialog when you click the "mark all as visited" button on your watchlist. You can see how this works now on Meta. I find this annoying and disruptive to my workflow; lack of confirmation never caused me a problem. Can I bypass it with some script or will I have to wait for an opt-out to be provided like I asked for at the phab task? 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 08:08, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

I would guess that a script can be written in the same vein as the auto-"purge" script that got built when they rolled out the POST semantics rather than the GET semantics for purge. --Izno (talk) 13:01, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

A JS override has been provided by Sn1per at phab:T150045#2876153. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 17:15, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

• "Are you sure you want to reset unseen watchlist changes by marking all pages as visited?" AKA "Are you sure you want to take a shit and can't hold it any longer?" AKA "I love to annoy you by wasting more of your free time". Seriously??????????????? That's a real brain fart!--TMCk (talk) 00:26, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
• To be honest BethNaught, while that solution works ok, it looks pretty ugly considering that the popup appears, lingers a second and then disappears. I much prefer my fix, which replaces the watchlist reset button with one that does the same thing but without a confirmation dialog. As an added "feature", the page updates visited pages without reloading.

Source

var newButton = '<button id="tv-watchlist-resetbutton" class="mw-ui-button">Mark all pages as visited</button>'; var reloadButton = '<button id="tv-watchlist-reloadbutton" class="mw-ui-button" onClick="window.location.reload();">Reload the page</button>'; $("#mw-watchlist-resetbutton").replaceWith(newButton); $("#tv-watchlist-resetbutton").click( function() { $.ajax( { url: mw.util.wikiScript( 'api' ), type: 'POST', dataType: 'json', data: { format: 'json', action: 'setnotificationtimestamp', entirewatchlist: 1, token: mw.user.tokens.get( 'csrfToken' ), } } ).done( function() { $('.mw-changeslist-line-watched').removeClass('mw-changeslist-line-watched').addClass('mw-changeslist-line-not-watched'); $("#tv-watchlist-resetbutton").replaceWith(reloadButton); }); } );

Cheers -- The Voidwalker ^Whispers 01:10, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, this seems broken. After I click an affirmative confirmation, the magical javascript bar runs to 100%, and then disappears. As does the original "mark all as visited". There are other issues with the implementation; I've filed phab:T153389. --Izno (talk) 01:06, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The disappearing button was part of the design because the old form submission-based reset loads new watchlist items, since it reloads the page, but the JS reset does not (at least it has not been implemented yet). If you were to push the button more than once, new watchlist changes that would not be currently displayed on the watchlist would be marked as visited, but no visual change would occur. The button was designed to disappear so that you wouldn't do this by accident and end up marking new, unseen and undisplayed watchlist changes as visited. (see phab:T153389#2879181 and relevant comment on gerrit at [7]) Cheers, Sn1per (talk) 01:25, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I've updated my script to account for that. (It replaces the "Mark all pages as visited" button with one that reloads the page). -- The Voidwalker ^Whispers 02:02, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Can the popup at least not take so damn long to pop up? It seems like it has some animated grow-in effect, which takes time, rather than just appearing. I wouldn't mind the confirmation prompt if it were prompt. DMacks (talk) 03:50, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

How long is it taking to show up for you? It's less than a second on my computer, but if it's significantly slower that's something we need to fix. Legoktm (talk) 07:57, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Nearly a second from first clicking the button until the popup is fully done appearing. What is gained by any animation at all? That's also nonstandard compared to the other popup features in any other WM context. DMacks (talk) 14:47, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Worst Xmas present I ever got. Same behavior if you want to purge the copyvio or duplicate lists on Commons. Drives me nuts. Reminds me of Data Becker Commodore C64 software, they added are you sure and are you really sure. Was a running gag in the community for quite a while.... --Hedwig in Washington ^(TALK) 04:47, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, the main reason we added in a confirmation box was that pressing that button is a destructive action that is entirely impossible to undo. There are JavaScript hacks to work around it, but is pressing "enter" to confirm the dialog to inconveniencing? (serious question). I'm open to removing it and reverting back to the status quo, but I would have thought a confirmation step for actions that cannot be undone would be a reasonable thing. Legoktm (talk) 07:57, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, please revert. There's always the original user script for people who find it a problem. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 08:23, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes pretty please. It is disrupting workflow. Please for purging as well. People how purge need the purge, no need for a confirmation. Thanks! --Hedwig in Washington ^(TALK) 08:54, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

With many +++ from de:WP (e.g. de:Wikipedia:Fragen zur Wikipedia#Beobachtungslistenerliedigungssoftwareterror. It is annoying and takes additional time. Even if you press this button by accident your watchlist is still there and applicable.

And +1 for Hedwig in Washington's wish to change this for purging as well. Keep it simple, please. NNW (talk) 09:29, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The purge confirmation is a separate issue involving GET vs POST. You can by-pass the GET confirmation with JS, but the devs are disinclined to change it back. --Unready (talk) 09:46, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

No, unfortunately I cannot by-pass it because I am not able to handle JS. If you someone else is I would be pleased to get know what to do to get rid of these confirmations. NNW (talk) 10:37, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

The purge confirmation is a separate issue. It's been discussed before. You can bring it up again in a separate thread, but it's unlikely the outcome will be different. --Unready (talk) 21:42, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Opinions will be divided, but for me it is extremely annoying to be treated as an idiot and forced to make superfluous clicks every day. An opt-out is a must for this one. --Jossi (talk) 11:20, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Criticism has also been raised at Commons. 🎄BethNaught (talk)🎄 11:49, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

@Legoktm: I don't know whether to respond here or the ticket I filed (where I think Sn1pre unhelpfully struck out my comment on whether the disappearing button was a bug).

My personal opinion is that the general behavior is great, but the fact the button disappears is basically a shit design. Fomafix's comment on the commit "may be irritating" is not born out by my use of the button--it's irritating not to have that there, which would be more consistent with old behavior (even if it doesn't appear to do anything!). His comment re "This functional change can be done by a separate change to allow a specific documentation and discussion." is absolutely what I would expect. --Izno (talk) 12:59, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm one of those who benefit, since my workflow never needs the "Mark all as visited" button, and every few months I hit it by accident and cannot undo. Jim.henderson (talk) 14:53, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Watchlist button greyed out

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153389

So after this watchlist "Are you sure you want to do this" JavaScript tomfoolery was rolled out, I've now got a watchlist with some unread items in but the "Mark all pages as visited" button is greyed out - purging on it's own doesn't seem to fix it, but if I close and reopen the tab and then do a purge it seems to clear it. Anyone else getting this intermittent problem? [Windows 10, Firefox 51.0b7] --  samtar ^{talk or stalk} 09:03, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Tried to see if it is skin specific, or related to user scripts or gadgets that you have installed ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:41, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Looks like it's known: T153389 --  samtar ^{talk or stalk} 10:56, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

And a new problem

And the problems continue. The annoying popup is gone (thank goodness) but sure, now there is a major flaw: The button now marks ALL newly changed pages as visited w/o updating the current watchlist.--TMCk (talk) 19:49, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

You sure? The button should update the css on the page so that they are marked as read without reloading the page. That's what it does on my end anyway. -- The Voidwalker ^Whispers 20:18, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Check it out yourself by refreshing a few minutes after having marked the watchlist as visited and you'll find it marked all changed pages at the time you clicked as visited. So yes, I'm sure.--TMCk (talk) 20:22, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

To be more clear, all newly changed pages since you've last refreshed your watchlist are marked as visited.--TMCk (talk) 20:33, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

And yet another problem

There is some form of disconnect between watchlist-clearing (new method) and the email notifications. Since first using this button after a mini-holiday, I noticed that no more Watchlist-changes emails were being delivered. At first it was just a couple of articles then it completely dried up. The only ones being received where those that had actually been visited, most of mine being viewed via popups and not actually entered/changed. My dilemma went so far as to change emails to see if it was big-bad-email-corp that was having issues. I popped in the above script into common.js and immediately the emails returned.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(ring-ring) 01:31, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Unblock tag does not seem to display "reasons given" correctly

I've had difficulty getting the "reason given" section to work for this tag on my Wikicomons Discussion page here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ericmachmer (Edit: not my wikipedia talk page). Even copying and pasting the tag without modification does not seem to result in the "your reasons here" section appearing. Instead the tag always displays "no reasons given". (My reasons are still in the code for the tag on my page, but are not rendered...and they have been reproduced in plain text below the tag.) Thanks for your time. Ericmachmer (talk) 23:44, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

You have an = in your reason (several, actually). The reason should be an unnamed parameter. Typically, you would use {{=}} in place of = in parameter text. Alternatively, instead of reason= (which is incorrect in any case), you could change it to 1=. --Unready (talk) 00:26, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ericmachmer (talk • contribs) 02:46, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Emails not working properly

I've been having email issues for about a week now, I'd say, where I'm only sometimes getting emails for pages I'm watching instead of getting emails pretty much any time something is changed on a page I'm watching. Anyone else? Amaury (talk | contribs) 17:14, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Amaury: Is this the same as #And yet another problem above? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:32, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Possibly? I'm not sure. Were the watch list changes about a week ago? Amaury (talk | contribs) 17:42, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

API sandbox

I'm trying to construct an API query in the API sandbox. I start by choosing "query" in the "action" drop-down list, and format "json". At this point, I see in the video, "An introduction to the API by Roan Kattouw at the San Francisco Hackathon January 2012" the next step is to choose a query type in the "what to query" drop-down menu that appears below "query". However, it appears that Roan is demonstrating an old and deprecated version of the API sandbox, as I don't see any "what to query" drop-down menu in the current version. Unfortunately, this is a puzzle now because there is no video "An introduction to the new API sandbox at the San Francisco Hackathon January 2015". Can anyone help? wbm1058 (talk) 17:38, 20 December 2016 (UTC) The video is mw:File:The MediaWiki Web API and How to use it - San Francisco Wikipedia Hackathon 2012.ogv. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:47, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, that video looks pretty dated. After selecting query as your action, you should be able to click on the "action=query" in the left bar where you can now refine how you're querying. What you'll want to be setting are the props, which are best documented over here. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 19:42, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

When I saw the new sandbox, I was confused like that too. That needs to be made a bit more clear.—^cyberpower_{Merry Christmas:Unknown} 19:47, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Media Viewer sometimes appears when clicking on articles, even when the cursor/press is far from the image

So I was patrolling a page earlier, but when I clicked on the "mark page as patrolled" button, instead it loads up the Media Viewer, showing the article's infobox images. This is the first time I encountered this problem on the desktop version of Wikipedia, although occassionally I've had similar problems on the mobile version where when I open a section and an image is at the top of the section, if I press anywhere, the Media Viewer will load even if I wasn't pressing on the image. I'm not sure if it's a problem with me or my phone (as in maybe I accidentally clicked on the image and I didn't realize it; this commonly happens if I open the section and scroll down and the image doesn't load up immediately), or if it's an actual bug, though. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 05:01, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Search prefix:

I noticed that Template:Search deletion discussions doesn't work ("An error has occurred while searching: Search request is longer than the maximum allowed length. (485 > 300)") and from a look at Template talk:Search deletion discussions, hasn't worked since July or earlier. Researching this, I found that the creator had built several similar search boxes: User:Stmrlbs/search that search various message boards using a syntax that separates each page with a pipe (WP:Articles for deletion|WP:Categories for discussion) but it seems this pipe syntax isn't supported. It seems that this must have worked when it was first implemented. Was this broken by the switch to CirrusSearch perhaps? How should this be fixed? wbm1058 (talk) 04:56, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:Search prefixes is the template that assumes multiple pages to search can be piped together. wbm1058 (talk) 16:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I'll start looking at the templates, update you. — Cpiral§Cpiral 10:43, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Due to some extremely long searches that were causing performance issues and consistently returning no results, a maximum length for search queries was implemented around a year and a half ago. The query length is generous; it was chosen based on analysing search logs to only affect a minuscule number of searches. I suggest that the author try to alter his search boxes to fit his queries into the maximum length. :-) --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:06, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I see: phabricator T107947 – wbm1058 (talk) 02:09, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Dan, the maximum allowed length isn't the main issue, the question is why this doesn't work when pasted into the search box:

dog prefix:WP:Articles for deletion|WP:Categories for discussion

when these do produce results:

dog prefix:WP:Articles for deletion

dog prefix:WP:Categories for discussion

In other words, did Template:Search deletion discussions ever work, or was it broken from day 1 when it was created in 2009? Is there a way to search both Articles for deletion and Categories for discussion subpages at the same time, and get a combined results list? If not then we should probably put Template:Search deletion discussions up for deletion. The author hasn't been active since February 2012. wbm1058 (talk) 05:12, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Prefix never took pipes, so... (Prefix never took negation -prefix: either.) Prefix works the same in CirrusSearch as it did with MWSearch (2014 transition). (See mw:help:cirrusSearch#Notes and references, note 9). — Cpiral§Cpiral 05:02, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Technical suggestions

Hello.There are here technical suggestions designed to serve all the Wikimedia projects.please submit requests for apply them or express opinions on the talk page here.I do not want to wait until November 2017.Thank you --ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 14:07, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

No notification for Twinkle reversion

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153567

I happened to run across a reversion just now [8] for which I received no notification. I checked my Preferences, and I see it is set to notify me about reverts "using the undo or rollback tool". Now it is true, Twinkle is not one of those tools, but I want to see those edits treated the same way.

I mean, I already feel like Twinkle is like an Air Force fighter, honed to project the power of a single warrior against thousands of peasants on the ground. It is in keeping with that design not to let the rabble know when they're being targeted. But, well, that's not the way I want to see Wikipedia work. Someone with a fancy tool designed to do quick reverts ought to be leaving as much notice as J. Random User who sees the Undo button on the manual display.

How did this come to happen, and is there an easy fix? Wnt (talk) 00:21, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

This is a known problem. Opinion at WT:Echo#Twinkle reverts is that Twinkle doesn't revert - instead, it goes to the selected previous version, opens that in edit mode and saves. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:40, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I think the most satisfying solution here would be for submitted edits to be checked to see if they are identical with previous states (in theory, some file could hold checksums for all the edits to an article so that the software would only generate a new checksum for the newest edit and quickly go through the list; checksums could be generated based on non-whitespace characters only so a reversion with a space added would still trip it). Notifications would then be generated for everyone who submitted an edit since then. But it should also be possible to add the "&undo=xxxxxx" text in the Twinkle program - it must already know what edit it is undoing. Wnt (talk) 14:02, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

All revisions have a sha1 which can be used for that kind of things. Cenarium (talk) 20:46, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I have filed a bug report for this, phab:T153567. Cenarium (talk) 19:40, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

This will be fixed in the first week of January. Cenarium (talk) 14:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

CSS image crop template

Is it possible to add a "CSS image crop" template to an infobox? For example, at Mound Landing, Mississippi I added the 1862 map as an image crop. I'd like to add the same map (with different coordinates) to Norfolk, Mississippi, but if I add the map to the body of the article it will make the quotation look squished. I tried adding it as an "image_skyline" to the infobox, but it didn't work. Is there a work-around? Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 03:14, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I added the CSS crop from Mound Landing to the Norfolk page - and it seems to work OK...Jokulhlaup (talk) 09:17, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jokulhlaup: - Thanks for making the change to Norfolk, Mississippi, but it didn't work. I use Firefox and the text is running up the left side of the image. Magnolia677 (talk) 12:10, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Got it. I moved the text into the CSS and it works fine now. Thanks for your help! Magnolia677 (talk) 12:31, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Glad it worked, seems to be a tricky thing to get right for all browsers...Jokulhlaup (talk) 14:51, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Same image twice in an article

Is there any way to find which articles have the same image twice, like a category or tool? At my local wiki robots were used to add infoboxes into articles, but many remained with the same image twice, like here.Ionutzmovie (talk) 00:11, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

This would be easy with a regex of a database dump, but looking at the example page, the infobox just uses {{Infocaseta Biografie}} .. where does Infocaseta Biografie get information to use the image? Must be Wikidata (yes), which complicates things. In this case a bot would have to check every article using Infocaseta, check Wikidata for image name, see if it exists in the article. It would also have to check for double image names in the wikitext. I would suggest a bot request at rowiki. -- GreenC 22:16, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Database error when searching for edits needing review

I use the ORES beta feature. On Special:Contributions/Gulumeemee, I tried to search for edits needing review by checking "only show edits needing review", but it caused a database error. This doesn't happen with the other checkboxes. I tried it for contributions of a few other users, but the searches also caused database errors. I remember doing the search a few weeks ago, and it didn't cause any errors. Is this a bug? Gulumeemee (talk) 10:52, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

No more thanks?

I just went to the history of an article to thank someone for an edit and the "thank" feature isn't there. Is this a bug, or has it been disabled? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:41, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

 Works for me - which page is this, which revision? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Also works for me. Please always post an example when you report a perceived problem. I don't know your case but you cannot thank IP's or yourself. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:48, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

It's back now, thanks. I should have taken a screenshot, I suppose. I noticed it on Maree Smith and then checked a few more histories. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:54, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I've seen it temporarily not work sometimes. Might be a rendering issue somewhere. -- GreenC 16:19, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Tool for parsing content added

As a small side-project, I wanted to make a year-end tool that quantified an editor's content impact. I have a few ideas, but I was interested in parsing a user's edits from the last year to determine how many bytes were added in text (if possible, non-citation text). If further possible, it'd be nice to see whether those edits stuck (whether they were immediately reverted or modified, or to what extent they remain in the current article). I know there have been prior efforts on these fronts, so if someone could point me towards the right projects/tools, I'd appreciate it. czar 20:01, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I remembered that dashboard.wikiedu.org does most of this (tracks words added & page views on specific articles in a specific time period), but open to other ideas if you have them. Just ping me  czar 20:46, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Notifications time to display

Notifications takes from 30 seconds upwards to display. Is there a massive coding inefficiency? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:05, 21 December 2016 (UTC).

Is this just Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 152#"Your notices" again? --Unready (talk) 23:25, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to follow phab:T153011#2870224 and provide any relevant output in the console of your web browser's developer tools (see Firefox ≥24, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari for more info) in a comment in that Phabricator task. Thanks! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Rich, what browser are you using? Most of us with this problem are using Firefox, and the solutions seem to be fixing/turning off user scripts/gadgets. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Firefox, for sure. Chrome is still slower than I would expect, but only a couple of seconds. I have a total of around 870 notifications, I don't know if this is a lot or not many, but I did wonder if that was related. Also I am registered on almost every project, another possible cause of slowness. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:00, 22 December 2016 (UTC).

I have more accounts and more notifications in this account than in my volunteer account, but I use Safari for this account and it's much faster.

We're collecting information at phab:T153011; please feel free to add yours. Kaldari added some details about a script that he fixed, which cleared up some of the problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Vote counter tool not working

Snottywong's vote counter tool that's supposed to count how many people voted a certain way in an AFD is not working (at least for me, even though I was able to use it just a few days ago). I would post this on Snottywong's own talk page but he is retired. Everymorning (talk) 22:45, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

It seems to be working for me. [9] correctly shows 4 !votes for deletion. When you say it "is not working" -- what did you try? What happened? - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 23:59, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Never mind, it's working for me now. Everymorning (talk) 04:12, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

ENWikip api changes?

(This thread was reposted after being archived without an answer. --joe decker^talk 22:37, 15 December 2016 (UTC))

Were there signficant changes to the Wikimedia server configuration for ENWIKI that would affect login APIs deployed in November?

(This is related to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#API_PERL_question.._correct_specification_of_HTTPS_connections, but here I just need a yes/no.) --joe decker^talk 16:48, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Joe, has the bot been blocked during the last month or so? A change to how blocked accounts are handled is the only change I have found in recent Tech News announcements that seems to be potentially related. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Nope, but that's a good thought. Not seeing any items in the block log [10] and it still seems to have a bot flag. Thanks for the idea...--joe decker^talk 01:16, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Two-factor authentication was enabled for admins in November - maybe that has something to do with it? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:18, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Joe's Null Bot shouldn't be an admin :) Don't think it is, anyway.  :) I think I'm seeing the build test fail in a similar way, more soon. --joe decker^talk 03:26, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, whatever is going on appears to fail the build tests, so it's either on my side (totally possible, but a little weird since it went out of service while I was away), or the server side on *both* ENWIKI and test.wikipedia. --joe decker^talk 07:51, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Joe Decker: Could you post an example of the query you're trying to make, the HTTP response code, and the body of the HTTP response? -FASTILY 08:13, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

@Fastily: Sure thing. A full sample script (save for password redaction) is at User:Joe Decker/afcpend.pl, the relevant API call is below, the relevant output is 2: 500 Can't connect to en.wikipedia.org:443 : error occurred when accessing https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php after 6 attempt(s) at afcpend.pl line 82.

 my $mw = MediaWiki::Bot->new({
    assert => 'bot',
    host => 'en.wikipedia.org',
    protocol => 'https',
    operator => "Joe's Null Bot",
}) or die "new mwbot fail";

...

 while (1) { 
    if ($mw->login( { username => "Joe's Null Bot", password => 'REDACTED' } )) {
      last;
    }
    .... error handling ...
  }

The build test "make test" for MediaWiki-Bot-5.006003 fails with a similar error, failing attempting to connect to test.wikipedia.org. The test recommends a particular mailing list for reporting problems with the component or tests, email there has failed to produce a response. --joe decker^talk 16:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

My Perl scripts are working fine. I am running MediaWiki::Bot v5.006003. The code you posted is the same as mine. I rebuilt the bot module and did "make test". It "Failed test 'lock history'" and "Failed test 'The API error text was returned'", but it appears to have connected ok to Wikipedia.

Have you tried the debug setting? ie. debug => 2.

Have you tried logging in from the MediaWiki::API interface? Bgwhite (talk) 07:56, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

First, yeah, that does leave me to suspect that there's something systemic in my particular operating system or environment (I'm getting the same results on both machines, but both are MacOSX, and it's possible I hit an update. Glad to know that the build tests are working on the same version I'm using for someone.

Yes, I've tried debug => 2. It produces no output other than more or less reiterating the 500 "can't connect" information.

Yes, actually, I started this process with the ::API interface, which is what I traditionally ran on. Conditional access errors referred to in the other thread led me to try out the ::Bot interface instead while I've been debugging this, and the results are similar.

To summarize what I think I know so far, from what you're saying -- it isn't specific to a server (test.wikipedia and en.wikipedia), it isn't specific to the version of ::Bot or what have you, and it isn't precisely specific to a single machine of mine. Which means it's likely something about my code or my environment -- MacOSX or something in my internet connection being the only candidates that come to mind. This also is consistent with the fact that the code had been working, and seemed to fail while I was literally half a planet away from the it, without internet access.

(And yeah, I hear some of you thinking this: When I have a little free time, it would probably make sense to just redo this functionality on labs or what have you in, perhaps Python. I originally used Perl because I knew it and it had to only be a few lines of code, right? I'm not suggesting Python is better suited or not, but actually hosting this outside of my environment would be superior for several reasons which are likely obvious. I just need to have some time to get around to it.) --joe decker^talk 16:07, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest moving it to WMFLabs. Both MediaWiki::API and MediaWiki::Bot are installed on the system. One can install Perl modules in their home directory to use system wide. I've got my Perl programs causing havoc and mayhem at labs. Bgwhite (talk) 23:02, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I look into getting set up there. Thank you, that's a very sensible next step. --joe decker^talk 21:18, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Starting the process, but I'll admit that I'm a little lost as to the environment that I've found so far. --joe decker^talk 06:03, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Urgent: something awry with BLP PROD

Hi all. Please see this post at WP:AN. It appears that something has changed so that not only do expired BLP PRODs not appear in the requisite category, but they also don't appear in WP:PRODSUM, which is where admins generally patrol the queue of expired PRODs. Therefore, at the moment we have 85 unsourced BLPs which are tagged for deletion; some are still within the 7 days, but many are not and there is no way of differentiating; Category:BLP_articles_proposed_for_deletion_by_days_left is not working (for example Nicole Mandich has expired but is still showing as 4 days left). I'm unsure where the issue lies - the PROD BLP templates haven't been edited for a while, and this seems to be a recent issue. Black Kite (talk) 19:40, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

@Black Kite: This is a side-effect of Joe Decker (talk · contribs)'s problem with User:Joe's Null Bot - see the top VPT thread.

Does anyone else have a neat way to null-edit every member of a category? -- John of Reading (talk) 20:11, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I can do a one time run - which category? — xaosflux ^Talk 20:18, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

The only tool in my tool box is AWB, so I've just used that to null-edit everything in Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left. I hope I don't have to do that every day, though. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:20, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that. My question is why is it only affecting BLPPRODs and not normal PRODs which are still appearing in WP:PRODSUM as normal? Black Kite (talk) 20:43, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I"m guessing that the answer to your question has to do with how the code that produces PRODSUM gets information about what PRODs and BLPPRODs are out there in general. Probably gets a list of one from one category, one from another, and those categories are probably populated differently by the PROD and BLPPROD templates.

FYI, I'm trying to get stuff running over at WMF labs, but I still can't figure out enough of the environment to get anywhere useful. In time, I'm sure. --joe decker^talk 06:07, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Tabular and map data can now be stored on Commons

Original announcement by Yurik (WMF)

Commons Datasets (Tabular and map data) has been launched on Commons, available from all wikis.

TLDR: One data store. Use everywhere. Upload table data to Commons, with localization, and use it to create wiki tables, lists, or use directly in graphs. Works for GeoJSON maps too. Must be licensed as CC0. Try this per-state GDP map demo, and select multiple years {{Graph:US Map state highlight}}:

See or edit source data.

Data can now be stored as *.tab and *.map pages in the data namespace on Commons. That data may contain localization, so a table cell could be in multiple languages. And that data is accessible from any wikis, by Lua scripts, Graphs, and Maps.

Lua lets you generate wiki tables from the data by filtering, converting, mixing, and formatting the raw data. Lua also lets you generate lists. Or any wiki markup.

Graphs can use both .tab and .map directly to visualize the data and let users interact with it. The GDP demo above uses a map from Commons, and colors each segment with the data based on a data table.

Kartographer can use the .map data as an extra layer on top of the base map. This way we can show endangered species' habitat.

Demo

See or edit raw graph data.

• Raw data example c:Data:Ncei.noaa.gov/weather/New York City.tab
• Interactive Weather data {{Graph:Weather monthly history}}
• Same data in Weather template User:Yurik/WeatherDemo
• Interactive GDP map {{Graph:US Map state highlight}}
• Endangered Jemez Mountains salamander habitat
• Population history {{Graph:Population history}}
• Line chart {{Graph:Lines}}

Getting started

• Try creating a page at data:Sandbox/<user>.tab on Commons. Don't forget the .tab extension, or it won't work.
• Try using some data with the Line chart graph template

A thorough guide is needed, help is welcome!

Documentation links

• mw:Help:Tabular Data
• mw:Help:Map Data

If you find a bug, create Phabricator ticket with #tabular-data tag, or comment on the documentation talk pages.

FAQ

• Relation to Wikidata: Wikidata is about "facts" (small pieces of information). Commons datasets store "blobs" - large amounts of data like the historical weather or the outline of the state of New York.

TODOs

• Add a nice "table editor" - editing JSON by hand is cruel. phab:T134618
• "What links here" should track data usage across wikis. Will allow quicker auto-refresh of the pages too. phab:T153966
• Support data redirects. phab:T153598
• Mega epic: Support external data feeds.

— JJMC89 (T·C) 21:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

User:JJMC89 this is very cool and opens a lot of potential. Do you know if it's possible to import Wikipedia API data (such as JSON result) into a table without resorting to a bot? That could open the full API to Lua on Wikipedia. A first step in external data feeds? -- GreenC 17:36, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I just cross-posted the announcement. Yurik may be able to answer your question. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:24, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T154042

@Green Cardamom: Lua (sadly) still has no access to MW API. I thought there was a task, but I couldn't find it, so created phab:T154042. Datasets can only be populated by direct editing, until we come up with the "external data feed" system that allows community to subscribe to reputable data sources. Which means - only user and bot edits for now. There has been some talk about creating a bot that copies the results of SPARQL queries into datasets, and those queries can be configured via the corresponding talk pages. I think something similar can be done for MW API bot. P.S. @JJMC89: thanks for posting! --Yurik (talk) 19:41, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for opening the Phab I'm following it. Yeah it wouldn't be difficult to write a cron bot on Tools that dumps API data into space where Lua can access it but it would be brittle and custom work. -- GreenC 20:13, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Help with the appearance of my Contributions page

I think I know why my contributions page looks different but I want it back to its previous appearance please - can someone help? Please? I tried to translate a deletion discussion from the Swedish Wikipedia using the internal-tool and now I have these three icons at the top of my Contributions page - New Page / Upload media / Translation. I want my old (just my) Contributions page back. I find the icons to be distracting - please can someone tell me how to make them go away? If I want to do an upload, I go and do it. If I want to translate, I'll use an external tool next time. I don't need an icon for a long list of "New Pages" (Wanted Pages) that I'll never use. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 22:24, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

@Shearonink: This is probably the Content Translation tool, which you can turn off by going to the Beta tab, unchecking it, and clicking Save. Sam Walton (talk) 22:29, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Bless you kind stranger, I just found those three large icons to be so distracting. Heh, it would be nice if "Did you upload this gadget by accident? Would you like to turn this feature off?" instructions were included with the gadget for those of us who are techno-challenged. Shearonink (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

How to force search engines like google recognise page created from redirect?

A while ago I have created a few articles in pages which were redirect. After a few weeks, those articles are still not indexed by search engines like google. I have tried google's crawling request site https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url and that still does not work. Is there sone setting on wikipedia for former-redirect pages that prevented search engibe crawlers from crawling those oages and how to make those crawlers crawl those pages? C933103 (talk) 05:23, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

@C933103: There might be such a thing, but we can't tell as you need to link to the page in question. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:20, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

We should probably add this issue to Phabricator, if it isn't there already. Do you have any specific examples? I don't think it's an issue on our end, I know the WMF has contacts with Google. Cenarium (talk) 10:37, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Are the pages in question yet marked as reviewed? They're no indexed until a page patroller has reviewed them. --Izno (talk) 10:54, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus, Cenarium, and Izno: Xinjiang Time, Longest flights, Ultra long-haul C933103 (talk) 11:00, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Xinjiang Time was created as a redirect to Time in China#Xinjiang by C933103 on 9 December 2016 and changed to an article on 17 December. My Google search for "Xinjiang Time" finds Time in China as the second hit two and says it was cached on 26 December.[11] Thincat (talk) 11:15, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I can find the last two pages on Google just fine. The first does not display. Might have something to do with it being unpatrolled - didn't we recently change unpatrolled pages so that they don't index? Anyhow, patrolled it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:21, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus - Yes: NEWER pages that are NOT patrolled are NOINDEX'ed. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:19, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Failed to parse (MathML) for no apparent reason

For the past few months, the page Endogeneity (econometrics) has had an equation not displaying properly, citing the problem

 Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "/mathoid/local/v1/":): E(z_{i}u_{i})={\frac {\gamma _{2}}{1-\gamma _{1}\gamma _{2}}}E(u_{i}u_{i}) 

The syntax was not problematic, and the old versions of the article containing the exact same code displayed the equation properly. Emptying the cache apparently solves the problem, but it does not give us a satisfying explanation, or a way to solve it in the future. When I write this message, the problem seems to have been fixed permanently, but since we don't know how, starting a discussion seemed appropriate. The page chemical equilibrium apparently had similar issues earlier this week. I don't understand the way equations are translated in images enough to make any kind of progress alone. Luis Goslin (talk) 16:16, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

User:Physikerwelt is really good at figuring out these questions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I had a look at the linked pages, but I could not see anything suspicous. I have no idea what to do about a temporary problem, since I can not access the log files. For the future it would be good to capture a screenshot and record time and date so that someone with access to the WMF infrastrucutre (i.e. the services team) can have a look at the log files. I feel sorry that I can not provide better help at the moment.--Physikerwelt (talk) 08:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, User:Physikerwelt. I understand the difficulty of dealing with temporary problems. I mainly posted this because it was typed before I noticed the problem was somehow resolved. I did take a screenshot, though. How and to whom can I send it to help ? I uploaded it on my user page, if someone wants to take a look. Luis Goslin (talk) 17:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Services is User:GWicke's team. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

A similar error can be observed at the moment on the converse nonimplication article. If not, I uploaded another screenshot on my user page. Luis Goslin (talk) 01:42, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Media Viewer issue

On Android tablet, when zooming in to a picture displayed in Media Viewer, the effect is that the caption enlarges to take up more and more space, until only a sliver of the actual picture is left visible. What is required is for the picture only to zoom, if that is possible. 31.49.181.199 (talk) 04:14, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this note. User:Matma Rex probably knows whether this has been reported previously. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I've never actually worked on the media viewer. I suspect the pinch zoom behavior depends on the browser you're using. Tasks T77620 and T77423 look vaguely related. Matma Rex talk 10:51, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

List of stage names

Hi. I don't know exactly what happened but for some reason the columns setup has gone haywire. I tried to fix but I really am no good at tghis sort of thing and I can't manually retrofit the entire article, literally from A to Z. So would some kindly Yuletide/Chanukah/Kwanzaa spirit help. Thanks. P.S. -- Happy New Year to all. Quis separabit? 17:59, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I see nothing wrong in this article. Ruslik_Zero 19:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@Ruslik_Zero -- thanks but could you just take a look at letters "C" and "D", especially the columns. Thanks. Quis separabit? 21:28, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It looks like the columns autospace to the width of the screen versus the length of entries in each column. Mkdw^talk 21:29, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

@Ruslik_Zero -- Thanks. But the list has been there for years and I only just noticed it. Is there any way to fix it? Quis separabit? 21:51, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Primefac has made some changes to {{Multicol}} as part of a merge with {{Col-begin}}/{{Col-break}}/{{Col-end}}}. Might try asking them. Mkdw^talk 23:04, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Using such templates causes an accessibility problem, in that each time you use {{col-break}} or similar, you are terminating the list earlier than its true finish, and starting another one. It is better to use a columnar system that emits a single list, and moves the problem of where to break the columns from the editor to the browser, such as {{div col}}/{{div col end}}; you can see this in use at Wikipedia:Meetup/UK#Oxford. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

As Redrose64 has stated, it's not about the template but its usage. If you put four items in the first column and twelve items in the second, it's going to show it like that. As suggested, use {{div col}} if the list changes often and you want to keep the columns even. Primefac (talk) 00:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Add categories to the articles result of a query

Hello. I have found with a query a list of articles [12]. Is there a way to add to the article of these items a specific category? Not by hand. Xaris333 (talk) 00:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Looking for a technical solution to allow Visual Editor to be used on Wikiproject pages

Hi all

I'm looking for ideas for a technical solution to allow Visual Editor to be used on Wikiproject pages.

Having VE enabled would make editing pages easier much in the same way as it often makes articles easier to edit, especially for things like tables which are incredibly useful for organising work within a Wikiproject.

However I have not been able to find a solution to enabling VE for Wikiprojects as they share the Wikipedia: namespace with many other kinds of pages, some of which break when someone edits a page with VE. There seem to be two options, perhaps there are more?:

1. Implement VE in a non standard way for Wikipedia: pages e.g in the same way Wikidata does it, using a small pencil icon within Source Editor
2. Move all Wikiproject pages to their own namespace allowing VE and any other tools to implemented that would help Wikiprojects.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 17:38, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

No thanks, and no thanks. This has been discussed often. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The current version of VE isn't really suitable to edit WikiProject pages, because WikiProject pages usually contain a lot of code. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:28, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

e-mail gone mad

I have received THIS message over 20 times in the last several days. Though each time I have confirmed, in a day or so, it comes back. I don't believe the issue is on my end, as I have received WP mail recently. How do I make the notifications stop and get someone to actually fix the problem? Thanks! SusunW (talk) 16:19, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

THIS is not a message but a link which displays different things for different users. Special:EmailUser/SusunW says: "This user has not specified a valid email address", and I see no mail link at User:SusunW. Please clarify what the mails say, what you see at Special:ConfirmEmail, what you do and what happens when you do it. Is the problem that you get mails without doing anything, or that you cannot confirm your email address? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:30, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

The message says "Confirm email address You must validate your email address in order to use email features. Click the button below to send a confirmation email to your address. Then, follow the instructions in the email. To check whether you have already confirmed, please see your preferences. A confirmation code has already been emailed to you; if you recently created your account, you may wish to wait a few minutes for it to arrive before trying to request a new code."

Then I get something like this in my e-mail: "Hello SusunW, Welcome to Wikipedia! You've joined the English-language version of the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. To confirm your email address, please open this URL in your browser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ConfirmEmail/<long string of characters here> This link expires at 12:41, 30 December 2016 (UTC)."

Which when I press on the link, I get a message in WP that says "Your email address has now been confirmed."

In a few hours, I will get yet another message that says confirm your e-mail and the whole process repeats. My e-mail works fine. I've had the account since the late 1980s. This happens every single time someone e-mails me for the first time with WP, so it isn't my system, I am fairly sure it is a WP issue. SusunW (talk) 18:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I think your email address can get unconfirmed if BounceHandler detects that emails to you don't get delivered. This can an issue on the side of Wikipedia (if it's detecting this wrong for some reason), or on the side of your email provider (if they're in fact bouncing some emails but not other). Can you file a Phabricator task? Someone with access to server logs should be able to see what is happening. Matma Rex talk 01:10, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I have access to them myself, I nearly forgot. @SusunW: Your email provider is refusing to accept some automated email from Wikipedia (all of the bounced emails I see are Echo email notifications in HTML format). You might have run out of space in your inbox (try deleting some unneeded emails), or you might have enabled some weird overeager security/spam filters (if you changed any settings recently, try changing them back), or it might dislike HTML email (try switching "Email format" to "Plain text" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo), or it might be some general problem with your provider that affects all of its users. But this is really not my area of expertise. If nothing I suggested above helps, please file a task, so that someone who knows more about MediaWiki email stuff will investigate. Matma Rex talk 01:26, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Matma Rex Thanks! Totally weird but I have copies of identical e-mails in both my inbox and my spam folder. Go figure. At least now I know what to look for. Marked them all as not spam and edited the preferences. Hopefully that fixes the problem. Thanks again. SusunW (talk) 01:53, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

A report from OTRS

A user has contacted OTRS and reported this issue. I'm not familiar with such points, hence please address it here:

Ticket#: 2016081810005346

"I just tried to convert 'Naive Bayes classifier' wikipedia web to pdf form.

There is small problem that a formula of left column overlapped right column as follow. [Image available at the interface]

Thank you for providing nice service."

Thanks. --Mhhossein ^talk 08:36, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mhhossein: I remember reading somewhere that the Create PDF feature is very underdeveloped, with markup like tables just not rendering properly. Sam Walton (talk) 09:14, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

{{Bookcreatorstatus}} displays a warning in several pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:32, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mhhossein: the requester may find that the "printable view" (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Naive_Bayes_classifier&printable=yes) will meet their needs as a workaround. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:07, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you all. --Mhhossein ^talk 13:15, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

This project in Phabricator might already have an existing bug report. If not, please feel free to file one. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Replacement peer review bot - URGENT

Dear fellow Wikipedian village pumpers,

VeblenBot is a bot which supports the peer review process, used by thousand sof wikipedians and with generally 30-50 active reviews. The whole process relies on the bot to catalogue new reviews and remove old or closed ones. The bot is not supported and frequently fails for months at a time. We really need a replacement bot and I lack the skills to create or maintain one, but I hope an editor here may be able to help out. We need a committed editor as we have had (at PR) several unfulfilled promises in the past. I have also placed a request at "Bot requests" in the hope that someone can help. Further details are available from the "technical details" peer review page. Thank you for your help! --Tom (LT) (talk) 13:00, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Probably best to have one discussion at WP:BOTREQ, but, in short, Perl enthusiasts please enquire. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 22:02, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

User talk archiving

The bot that archives my user talk page is overdue for a visit. I set it up years ago and have not touched the settings since. I'd appreciate it someone familiar with bot archiving setups could look over my settings to see if it has somehow become obsolete or broken. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

On 27 December 2016 it archived 2 threads [13]. It seems to work fine. You probably need to change the settings from 60 days to something like 30 days. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:41, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@Dodger67: I've updated your settings to have the bot visit your page more frequently. Feel free to play around with the settings and/or ping me if you have any questions. -FASTILY 10:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Fastily and The Quixotic Potato The posting rate is significantly higher now than it was when I initially set the archiving. Having 80 or sometimes even more "open" topics on the page is excessive, so halving the archive "age" makes sense. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiBlame wizard needed

I just saw a very interesting article at [14] where the NSA had a secret Wiki based on Wikipedia content. They have an actual Wikipedia mirror, and then they have a page they add their own stuff to. Anyway, for the article Anna Politkovskaya, it contains text very like 2007-2010ish versions of ours, but it is not exactly the same as any of the revisions I have looked at. There is a sentence "She was the daughter of Soviet Ukrainian diplomats posted at the United Nations", for example. I've tried posted at the United Nations in Wikiblame and get nothing, but its output seems to suggest that it only tries a few random revisions rather than all of them. Is that true? Please, someone do us a favor and find exactly when this text was lifted from Wikipedia. I don't know that will shed any light on anything but my nose is twitching. Wnt (talk) 21:36, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

@Wnt: Weird. Unfortunately I am unable to understand the Russian language. UPDATE: you cannot use Special:Export to get all the revisions if there are more than 1000; it only shows the oldest 1000 revisions. You have to use the API or a dump to get them all.

I checked archive.org and this revision contains a very similar sentence:

Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958 to Soviet Ukrainian parents, both of whom served as diplomats to the United Nations.

Here is another revision:

Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, where her Soviet Ukrainian parents were diplomats at the United Nations.

But look what I found in an even earlier revision:

Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, where her Soviet Ukrainian parents were diplomats at the United Nations (according to various sources her father was a high-ranking KGB officer[citation needed]).

Here is a website where someone who copypasted the article dated 13.10.2006 08:15:11 (she was killed ~6 days before that).

Note that page 18 of this PDF gives the following information about her father:

Mr. Stepan F. Mazepa

UN Secretariat Building

Room 3580 A

UNITED NATIONS, New York

There is some ambiguity about her name and place of birth (it is an old tradecraft trick to take advantage of the fact that there are different ways to transliterate certain foreign names, and changing someones place of birth makes it more difficult to track that person):

Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, the daughter of Stepan F. Mazepa from Kostobobriv (Kostobobrov), Ukraine.

Some sources say that her birth name was actually Hanna Mazeppa.<ref>Halyna Mazepa: My fondest Ukrainian memories are of Katerynoslav, day.kiev.ua</ref>

Other sources state that she was born in Chernihiv (Chernigov) region of Ukraine.<ref>Biography, annapolitkovskayafund.com</ref>

Her parents, Soviet diplomats at the United Nations, were Ukrainian.<ref>Anna Politkovskaya, notablebiographies.com</ref> Politkovskaya spent most of her childhood in Moscow; she graduated from Moscow State University'...

Not sure what this means... It is possible that that part of the article was written by someone on that secret wiki. Happy new year and remember... Putin khuilo! (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:52, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

The article export feature sounds useful. If I understand correctly you have actually used it to go through all the history and not found that phrase. To me what is relevant about this is that I was thinking one of two things might be true: a) the NSA was using Wikitext with little revision, which would be very funny for all of us, or b) they have someone rewriting Wiki content (and the "posted to", for example, is indeed a very professional phrase. What the rewriting tells us is actually quite significant: the NSA, being willing to hire high-paid people with classified security clearances to rewrite any source text they could find in the world, went to Wikipedia to start their revisions! In other words, we are the best, not just in terms of free content, open content, public content, but in terms of any database the government can find to work with.

The article content seems like more of a distraction so far. I was only interested in it as an example and I don't see how any omission would indicate NSA editing. If we had an exact time of the download we could look to see if someone made an amateur-hour mistake of editing the content when they took it, but I'm not expecting that to be likely, and we don't have the time to work with. Wnt (talk) 12:18, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@Wnt: Yeah I was basically using the export feature as a poor man's WikiBlame. It creates a big textfile with all the revisions, and I searched through that. I have tried to date the screenshot by using Google reverse image search and Tineye reverse image search, but neither of them could find anything. They have clearly spend a lot of time and effort rewriting it, because every section contains a classification level. U = unclassified, noforn = no foreigners, et cetera, see Classified information in the United States and Sensitive Compartmented Information for information on how they mark how secret which information is. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 12:40, 31 December 2016 (UTC) p.s. Of course Wikipedia is the best, that shouldn't surprise anyone!

I don't know if this is relevant but the export facility says it is limited to 1000 revisions[15] but Anna Politkovskaya has 2047 revisions.[16]

Good point, it is. I am surprised that they would make a completely independent fork, which gets outdated quickly, instead of a layer on top of Wikipedia. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 13:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

So is there a way to get the export to "continue from" some point? It disturbs me that Wikipedia has basically allowed this feature to break, especially when so far I see no alternative -- for the average user. Yeah, if you own a supercomputer and can download all the dumps back to the beginning, or can program a web crawler to request every revision one by one, you can do this, but I don't think Wikipedia should be designed only for the Googles -- and NSAs -- of the world to use and not for anybody else. Wnt (talk) 20:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Yep, I figured it out, you cannot use Special:Export to get all the revisions if there are more than 1000; it only shows the oldest 1000 revisions. You have to use the API or a dump to get them all. I'll write a script for this task. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 20:29, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Ability to hide infoboxes in Special:Preferences

Hi! Some people dislike infoboxes. Would it be a good idea to add an option to hide them to Special:Preferences? Basically all it would need to do is add the CSS code .infobox {display:none;}. This may be helpful in reducing the amount of discussions about infoboxes (but maybe I am too hopeful). Not everyone is familiar with CSS, and checking a checkbox and clicking the Save button is more userfriendly than telling them to go to Special:MyPage/common.css and add that line there. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 23:46, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

If they really dislike them enough, they could add the style to their personal CSS themselves. --Unready (talk) 00:28, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

True, but those who are in favor of userinfoboxes are generally not nerdy enough to make that recommendation, and those who oppose them are generally not nerdy enough to know that this is even an option. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 00:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Please avoid extending the infobox wars which have nothing to do with what someone wants to see in their browser. To put it another way, adding a gadget is not going to happen without evidence that "some people" exist, and even then it won't be considered unless there are many people. Mentioning infoboxes and userboxes shows some confusion. Johnuniq (talk) 02:02, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, I was trying to reduce drama, not extend it. TBH IDGAF, I don't have a dog in this race, I have never added a infobox or deleted one. I have corrected the mistake, thank you for pointing it out. Seems like this is unlikely to happen. Oh well, I tried. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:33, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: I am kinda curious why you wrote: "the infobox wars which have nothing to do with what someone wants to see in their browser". What do you mean? I know very little about the infobox wars, but it seems to be a logical assumption that is is about what someone wants to see in their browser (or the opposite, what someone does not want to see). I wish there was a Wikipedia History book. If you mean that these conflicts are always more about interpersonal relations than the actual 'topic' of the dispute then I understand that. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:35, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Then they can either learn to do it through personal CSS, or their technical luddism is itself an indication of how ludicrously worthless this grudge against infoboxes is. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Hehe. ok. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:56, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

People using the Wikipedia mobile app see infoboxes in a collapsed state but they can be expanded. Also, cleanup templates and other unwelcome material are hidden. I rather like this arrangement. Thincat (talk) 13:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

On behalf of the Luddites, I should say that I don't generally approve of hiding and unhiding stuff on the page. If you have to download it, you might as well see it. If it is large and optional, we ought to have some other page. We have a whole category system, and there's no reason why we can't have other dedicated clickable navigation pages for excessive infobox material. There is also a category system, which badly needs to be upgraded to the early 2000s with things like non-fixed page structure and length. And I still get junk hits every now and then, even though it's not supposed to happen, on web searches where every possible wrong answer is indelibly linked to whatever it was you were trying to find because of an infobox. Wnt (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

If you have to download it, you might as well see it. Well, then the gadget idea is useless, because something hidden by CSS is still downloaded. Using the CSS suggested, there isn't even an option to display it later, if desired. --Unready (talk) 23:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I have no strong opinions one way or another, but I’ve read enough of the infobox discussions to have noticed quite a few arguing against them on behalf of the general reader, ostensibly at least. So nothing that only affects logged-in users is likely to answer all the objections.—Odysseus1479 07:17, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Do sock suspects get notifications when an SPI is opened?

Anyone know if sock suspects get notifications when an SPI is opened? A few weeks back I opened a report on someone and they showed up to respond, which I thought was very odd, because I hadn't notified them, and it's extraordinarily rare for sock suspects to respond spontaneously to SPIs unless they've watchlisted the SPI or something. So I was curious if anything like the {{checkuser}} template might be generating the notification the way {{u}} might. My hope is to get a confident, "Yes, template X generates a ping" or "No, they shouldn't have been pinged--I think they were lying to you" or something of that sort, if possible. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:08, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

User gets pinged, if you include in one edit your signature (with timestamp) and link to userpage of particular user (which can be done with {{checkuser}}, {{u}}, {{ping}}, plain link [[User:Edgars2007]] etc.). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:27, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think {{checkuser}} generates a ping, but let's find out: Cyphoidbomb (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki). If not, then more likely they're watching the page and were notified by some other means. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:29, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I think I got pinged there, Ivanvector. Thanks for helping me reason that through. Thanks also, Edgars. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:32, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

I see. Well, that's good to know then. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:33, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

{{checkuser}} includes a link to {{user}}, so that presumably generates the ping. --David Biddulph (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Templates don't generate "pings" (I don't like that word, in my line of work it has a very different and somewhat older meaning). What matters is that there is a link to a user page, it doesn't matter if that link is template-generated, nor if one template transcludes another. I have explained this many times, on this page and at WT:Echo, and I would put the explanation into Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical if I could make it suitably concise yet comprehensive and understandable. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:34, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Sure they do (def 3). --Izno (talk) 21:34, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

It's a management buzzword that originated when an engineer's boss overheard the engineer using that term, and misunderstood what they were talking about. Happens every day. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:05, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

You forgot to wikilink engineer. --Unready (talk) 00:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

You can modify the relevant templates to use {{noping}}. Legoktm (talk) 09:47, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Transclude specific revision of a template

Is there any way to transclude a specific revision of a template, rather than just defaulting to the current revision?

I am discussing the effect of some changes on navboxes, and it would be handy to be able to illustrate their effects by transcluding a series of specific revisions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:49, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl:, short answer: no; long answer: not currently (phab:T70399). — xaosflux ^Talk 17:24, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Xaosflux. I can't be the first person to need this, so I hope that the functionality gets added. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:28, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Anchor and Vanchor templates

The {{vanchor}} template states "This template should not be used within section headings. Doing so will result in broken links in edit summaries, as well as duplicate anchors" in a comment added in 2015 by an IP editor. On the other hand, {{anchor}} seems to assume that it will be used in section headings, though it does say that some may prefer using bare html. I don't see any reason why there should be any difference in the use of these templates. If so, it seems the documentation of the two templates should be aligned. Am I correct or am I missing something here? in replying, please {{ping}} me as I don't plan to watchlist this page. Thank you. YBG (talk) 05:54, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Without going over the doc, I would say that use of {{vanchor}} for section headings is redundant. MediaWiki inserts a visible anchor when text is marked as a section heading. On the other hand, there may be several reasons for using an editor-inserted non-visible anchor. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 15:05, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The comment about duplicate anchors is presumably referring to how if you have a heading like == {{vanchor|something}} ==, there will be two anchors for "#something" in the page. On the other hand, == {{vanchor|something}} something else == will have an anchor for the whole "something something else" and an anchor for just the "something", so no duplicate in that case.

The comment about broken links in edit summaries is referring to the fact that templates aren't expanded when generating the automatic edit summary for editing a section, so the automatic edit summary would wind up as something like /* Section name{{anchor|foo}} */

HTH. Anomie⚔ 15:08, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

I think I have found the answer to my question at WP:SPECIFICLINK, which suggests inserting {{anchor}} before the section heading, which avoids the need for either {{anchor}} or {{vanchor}} in section heading. YBG (talk) 23:05, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

en.a0.wiki

I was searching earlier for something on Wikipedia and couldn't find it so went to Google. Followed the link back to Wikipedia and found I was logged out (however I am still logged in on regular pages). I then noticed that the address was "en.a0.wiki" (as in https://en.a0.wiki/wiki/Main_Page) and not "en.wikipedia.org". What is the a0? Also it says I'm centrally logged in and to reload the page to apply my settings, which didn't do a thing. Best thing was I got the IPv6 address (http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/2400:f100:2:0:4c45:aeff:fef4:4a58) which says I'm in Hong Kong. As it's −32 °C (−26 °F) I wouldn't mind being there rather than here. I realise this is a really trivial question. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 08:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia is at wikipedia.org. en.a0.wiki is a live mirror not listed at meta:Live mirrors. .wiki is a top-level domain from 2014. https://www.whois.com/whois/a0.wiki says a0.wiki is registered to "Zhou Shi Peng" in China and not the Wikimedia Foundation like https://www.whois.com/whois/wikipedia.org. Do not enter your password at a0.wiki or other mirrors. They may claim to be the real Wikipedia but that is at wikipedia.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Please explain how you "followed the link back". It is quite conceivable that companies like Google could start working with China or another country and start providing links to a local censored server in place of Wikipedia links - I don't think this happened, but we should rule it in or out. Wnt (talk) 12:55, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I had no intention of logging in there especially as it was clear I was still logged in here. I was looking for some information on Wikipedia on logging into WP:AWB that I knew I had seen but couldn't find. I searched for "awb two factor authentication" and got this. I checked the 3rd and 4th result then realised that the 5th was the one I remembered. Clicked on it before I saw the a0. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 13:18, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

CambridgeBayWeather in case you never found your answer - see this page: Wikipedia:Using AWB with 2FA — xaosflux ^Talk 20:45, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Xaosflux. Thanks I did eventually find that but now I can't remember what I did to get it running. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 06:41, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

A major factor in this is that the site is using Wikipedia's trademarked logo (image located at https://en.a0.wiki/static/images/project-logos/enwiki.png - archive of image [17] and Wikipedia's trademarked name in identifying itself in browser history as "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" and at the top of the page (archived image). These are clear legal no-nos, giving rise to confusion about site identity, and certainly could give the impression that they are trying to mislead people logging in, possibly damaging Wikipedia's security either directly or if their server were to be compromised. Certainly they are vulnerable to action here, though I would hope this is merely an accident of someone copying an archive without much thought. See also WP:Wikipedia logos. Wnt (talk) 23:26, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

If it looks like a trademark violation, contacting WMF Legal is welcome. Thanks! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:04, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Remove th e "Signiture" checkbox at bottom of page and its side-effects

Recently, when editing some pages (talk pages, user pages, project pages), I've had this "Signing" checkbox show up under the edit window much of the time. When it does, it will also change my edits to some degree, e.g adding a sig where it thinks there should be one, adding newline characters at wrong places (this page is transcluded in a link URL on my main userpage), and showing me a dialog box asking if I want to save despite not having signed (which I do every time it asks). How can I disable this? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a "Signing" checkbox anywhere. I wonder if you're somehow pulling in a user script that's doing this, although I don't see anything that looks likely in User:Od Mishehu/common.js. Anomie⚔ 17:52, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Od Mishehu: - try turning off your global signing script in meta:User:Od_Mishehu/global.js. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:14, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:38, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Meaning of the id of a span tag

Section headings of Wikipedia:Citing sources contain numerous span tags such as <span>id="Adding the citation"</span> <span>id="Inline reference"</span> <span>id="Footnotes and references"</span>. What is the purpose of these tags? Is there a list of these codes somewhere? Why does the same id appear multiple times in the page? Is there some place where this is documented? I have looked everywhere I can think of. Thanks. Comfr (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

The syntax is <span id="Adding the citation">...</span>. It creates an anchor by the given name so you can make the link Wikipedia:Citing sources#Adding the citation. See WP:ANCHOR. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:53, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks PrimeHunter. Comfr (talk) 23:47, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

@Comfr: The same id must not appear multiple times in the page - ids must be unique within a given page. On a closely-related matter, I have started a thread at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Bad advice on anchors. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:55, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

File link missing

File:Reina restaurant Istanbul.JPG is currently on the Main Page's "In the News" section. However, go to File:Reina_restaurant_Istanbul.JPG#File_usage and you'll see nothing about it being used anywhere on this wiki except for 2017 Istanbul nightclub attack and Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 January 1. Why is the current Main Page missing? This state of things would be expected if the Main Page were linking to a redirect to the file, but neither Special:WhatLinksHere/File:Reina restaurant Istanbul.JPG nor c:Special:WhatLinksHere/File:Reina restaurant Istanbul.JPG mentions any files that redirect to this one. Nyttend (talk) 01:26, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Since [18] Main Page and {{In the news}} actually display File:Reina restaurant Istanbul (cropped).JPG. They use link= to link File:Reina restaurant Istanbul.JPG instead of the displayed version. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

About Wmflabs

"The Crash (Mad Men)", a page I created, was added on December 31st, but Tool Labs reports that it was receiving views before then. How is this possible? Thanks, AndrewOne (talk) 04:52, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Views of non-existing pages are counted and stored in a database, e.g. when somebody clicks a red link. But it appears the linked tool will only display data if the page currently exists. See User:West.andrew.g/Popular redlinks (last updated in July). By the way, please add the page to The Crash. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:26, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

People do sometimes search for topics that don't exist yet, or click on redlinks that exist in other articles (e.g. because they think maybe they're going to buckle down and start the article, but then change their mind.) So those redlink "views" would still count toward the pageview total. Bearcat (talk) 17:18, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Special:ContentTranslation doesn't work

It seems not functional since few days. Only the user bar is visible. I use Chromium with almost no addons. --Rezonansowy_akaRezy (talk | contribs) 21:28, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Loads for me. Try to disable it in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, clear your cookies and cache, log back in, reenable and try again. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:11, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Hmm, still doesn't work. It may be a conflict with some of scripts loaded from my common.js or global.js. --Rezonansowy_akaRezy (talk | contribs) 15:14, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

User scripts/gadgets are the most common problem, especially if they assume (without checking) that all pages contain a content area. You can differentiate between common.js problems (and enwiki gadgets) and global.js problems by seeing whether it loads for you at another Wikipedia. Go to, e.g., w:ht:Special:ContentTranslation and see what happens. (The Haitian Creole Wikipedia is particularly convenient for this kind of testing, because it has no local gadgets.) If it opens there, then the problem isn't your global scripts.

If the problem is only with local scripts, then I believe you could go to another Wikipedia to do the translation work. You can go to, say, the German Wikipedia to translate a Spanish Wikipedia into English. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

DuckDuckGo Zero-click box showing content of no-index pages

Background: from the Help Desk I found the page Simon Nwakacha which is currently tagged G11 (for good reason). I suspected the topic could be salvageable, hence set off for a web search.

Right now, a DuckDuckGo search for "Simon Nwakacha" does not turn up the Wikipedia article, which is the expected behaviour (pages are noindex-ed until a page patroller approves them). However, it does display a box with the current (or recent) contents of the page (see DuckDuckGo#Overview). This is probably not intended at least from Wikipedia's part.

If DDG just fetches the content of the WP page if the search string returns something else than a 404 error, there is probably not much to be done from our side (except maybe send them a polite request). However, I guess it could be due to a misconfiguration of Wikipedia leading to one of DDG's robots accessing supposedly no-indexed pages, so I am mentioning it there. I see no such behaviour from Google or Yahoo, FWIW. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 17:49, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Reported: [19]. MER-C 03:00, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Commons server problems - HTTP 404

Several times over the last two or three days, I've had problems when following links to commons:. The usual error message is:

Wikimedia Error

Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes.

See the error message at the bottom of this page for more information.

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.

Request from 213.120.234.154 via cp3037 frontend, Varnish XID 874052594
Upstream caches: cp3037 int
Error: 404, Requested domainname does not exist on this server at Wed, 04 Jan 2017 10:54:50 GMT

Is this a reported problem? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The HTTP 404 referred to in my first post here is intermittent, and today it happened for my third visit to Commons. My second visit was OK; for my first visit, see above. Firefox 50.1.0 --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Recent changes took a four minute pause when servers went down, this is the main recent changes feed on EN Wikipedia

@Redrose64: Not just Commons, if I'm not mistaken English Wikipedia was just down for about four minutes and I don't think it was just me based on the pause in the main recent changes list... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 23:22, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

It also affected meta: for several minutes, but it was not the same problem as before - the returned message was somewhat like this, which is very different from the 404 message. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:00, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

This was wikitech:Incident_documentation/20170104-MonologSpi. — This, that and the other (talk) 05:45, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Use CSS for lock icons on protected pages?

At my recent nomination of a variant of this idea at another venue, two commentators whose "home wikis" are in other languages stated their belief that the necessary CSS exists for displaying lock icons according to the protection status of a page. Can anyone here confirm that this is the case? Samsara 10:56, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

"already done with css" was said by a Dutch editor who may have misunderstood a Dutch Wikipedia feature. nl:MediaWiki:Gadget-ProtectionTemplates.js is a default Dutch gadget enabled for IP's. It checks for protection and automatically displays a protection template. Like all gadgets it requires JavaScript in the browser, changes the page after the rest has loaded, creates an overhead, and doesn't run in Mobile. A feature in MediaWiki itself would be better. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:57, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

(e/c) As far as I remember, not pure CSS, but JS. It is possible to retrieve the protection level using wgRestrictionEdit variable in javascript. Based on that, you could automatically add an indicator. And several wiki's indeed do this (and so does the mobile skin btw). The only problem is that it's not visible for people who don't use Javascript. We could also in the core of the software, add an option to automatically output a page indicator or something I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

That indeed would be (and was) my proposal, but it came in at no. 50 out of the 250+ proposals, and only the first 10 to 20 will actually get actively worked on (at least that's the current and official pronouncement and held true for last year's outcome), so it would need another public push to actually get implemented. Samsara 16:33, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

While I don't necessarily oppose this in principle, it would have to be per-page overridable and highly configurable, as there are cases in which protection templates are not used or desirable, such as user pages. Any discussion about enabling this also needs to consider the precise criteria for an automatic template, or mandate a follow-up discussion to do so. BethNaught (talk) 16:40, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I see per-namespace configurability as a given, since protection and PC are already configured on this basis. As for the other issue, I would like to see a case where a page was protected, a clerk (for lack of an official title) came along to place the template that was originally omitted, and the clerk's change was then reverted. Does it happen in actual practice? Samsara 17:00, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I've reverted such a "clerk's change" on several occasions. I don't have any recent examples to hand, but here is an example of where I reverted the addition of a prot icon that had been added by the protector of the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:20, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

...your edit summary mentioning that automatic display is already being used in template space. Samsara 18:53, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

It's not fully automatic. It relies on the presence of either {{collapsible option}} or {{documentation}}, both of which contain code to detect the current prot level and its expiry. These don't use either CSS or JS to obtain that data - they use some Lua code that queries the page information. So in the absence of both of those templates, another means of displaying a padlock should be used. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:30, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, but Lua code is server side. So, CSS or no CSS, there's apparently a very easy way to get there. Samsara 03:48, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Bot requests#Add protection templates to recently protected articles. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:30, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I was later wondering if maybe that the code used for protection templates in {{collapsible option}} and {{documentation}} could be used in a template used in articles, such as {{Reflist}}, but that template is used on some non-articles, and thus would cause pp templates to appear on non-articles, such as user pages, and some users might not want pp templates showing on pages in their userspace. —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 00:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Evaluation can be made conditional on namespace. Samsara 07:57, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Phantom articles

For the better part of the entire past year, the Untagged Uncategorized Articles tool on the WMFlabs Toolserver has been cluttered with a set of phantom articles, mostly deleted titles which don't even exist at all but also including a smaller number of pages which are properly categorized. However, nothing I can do to the pages in question makes them drop from the list: restoring and redeleting or vice versa doesn't work, creating a new temporary page with Category:Temporary maintenance holdings on it doesn't work, null-edits don't work, nothing works. I've asked on multiple occasions, both here and on the Toolserver side, for assistance in getting this fixed, but no matter where I ask the buck gets passed as a problem at the other end — if I ask here it just gets dismissed as a problem with Toolserver's database-replication copy, while if I ask over there they can't find a problem and it gets dismissed as corruption in the data that en is passing to Toolserver — so nothing ever actually gets done to fix it. The tool's official maintainer, User:JaGa, hasn't been able to fix it either — and he hasn't been on Wikipedia at all since September, so approaching him again isn't an option.

The titles in question are: Andreas Nödl, Axiom Landbase Pvt. Ltd., BatissForever, Bhaiyato The Hobbit, Bingham Road railway station, Byjus classes, Carrhotus malayanus, Changed people, Changed person, Cyclone Victor(1986), Dee Sterling, Divegrass, Divisor theory, Eddie Mao, Egger Island, Escalo Frio, Faithlessly, Fimbriata, Hyperbolic Geometry:Poincaré half plane model, James Steinkamp III, January 2 in India, January 3 in India, Kris Reeder, Levent Karahan, Marius Kižys, Maxipad Detention, Mercurialsoft inc, Oscar Möller, Peter Johnston (negotiator), Roadjammers, Roofing Hub, Taxation in Armenia, Thunder2D, Tirupati college of education, Tractors India Pvt. Ltd. (TIPL) and Đuli.

The last time a similar problem occurred, for the record, there appeared to be a number of ghost metadata files for the offending pages, which had them coded as articlespace pages even though they were actually in project or user or template space (see User talk:JaGa/Archive 17#New toolserver problem for a bit more background if needed.) I'm wondering if that may also be the problem here, but I have no idea how to figure that out. And, for the record, some (though not all) of them are still turning up on Wikipedia:Database reports/Untagged stubs as well, even though that page's most recent run was months after the pages were deleted, so I suspect the issue is indeed on this side or that wouldn't be happening either.

Accordingly, I wanted to ask if anybody is willing to actually look into this in depth, and do a thorough and holistic investigation on both en and Toolserver to figure out what's actually happening and how to actually fix it, instead of just passing the buck as "their problem, not ours, the end". This really needs to be fixed, because I can't just keep working around the problem into infinity — I really need somebody to actually solve this. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:08, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

All of those except for Đuli appear to be instances of phab:T138967: they either have a page table row in the Tool Labs database despite not existing here or they exist here but with a different page_id (you can check the page_id with the API). Đuli has page_id 45504597 in both places, although I see the Tool Labs database is missing some rows in the categorylinks table for that page. Anomie⚔ 01:58, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Bearcat, as you note, deleting and undeleting doesn't work, but what about deleting and not undeleting? I created a placeholder at egger island, used Special:MergeHistory to move the contents there, and deleted Egger Island; it's still deleted. Does the page still show up in the report? It did just now when I viewed it, but it also still shows up as blue in this discussion section, so I can't rule out a simple caching situation. Nyttend (talk) 05:02, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no, that didn't clear that title off the list. Bearcat (talk) 17:40, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Wide margin in Watchlist

click to view

I just noticed this, but don’t know how long it has been like this. The left margin within the watchlist, where the “m”, ”b”, etc. flags go, is far too wide for this purpose. It’s wide enough for the whole of January above it to fit in it, and seems gratuitously to be taking up space. It does not matter which flags are displayed (and I only ever see those for minor and bot edits). The screenshot at the right shows the problem. This is with Safari on OS X, with e.g. all settings (such as browser zoom) at defaults and the default vector skin. It looks nothing like the screenshot at Help:Watchlist which allocates no space for that column.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 15:21, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

JohnBlackburne Is this only occurring when you set Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist... on ? — xaosflux ^Talk 17:55, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that fixes it. Odd, I don’t remember ever setting that, not even sure what it does. Suddenly disabling it I can see Wikidata changes, which I turned on a while back but never saw. I did look on the Watchlist tab of preferences for anything that might make a difference, but did not think to look at any other tab. Thanks.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:10, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

It puts all changes for a page that appear on your watchlist in the same spot (pages sorted by most recent change) rather than sorting globally by most recent change. This can be combined with another preference ("enhanced recent changes) which collapses the set of diffs with Javascript. Indeed, Wikidata changes do not appear with this option turned on--this is phab:T46874. --Izno (talk) 18:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

So for it to work you probably need 'Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent' enabled on the Watchlist tab. Otherwise you won’t see anything, except a wide margin and no Wikidata changes. Seems rather poorly designed, with multiple interrelated options spread over two tabs, and a jarring design change for no obvious reason enabled by one of them.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Request change to "date" parameter of cite templates

I often refer to sources that publish less than once a month, like "Winter/Spring 1983". Unfortunately, the |date= parameter does not handle these sorts of formats. Yes, I know I can manually reformat it into a form that will work, but isn't that what computers are for? Is there any technical reason the template does not handle these? Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:45, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

See this help page for valid formats. In your case, something like this should work:

"Article about something". Title of Magazine. Winter–Spring 1983.

Will that work for you? If not, you can always hack it by putting the information into |issue=, but there are strict constructionists around here who will frown on that workaround. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:01, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

That will work, technically, but means a) that I am not using the original format, and b) have to figure out how to type that character. Is there any reason / can't be used if that dash can? Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:45, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The cite templates follow MOS:DATERANGE. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:08, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

In the case of issue months or numbers, it‘s not necessarily a range, often rather a combination or notionally double issue. Here, for example, it might indicate the magazine’s having previously changed its publishing schedule from quarterly to semiannual. Maybe a distinction without a difference, though.—Odysseus1479 06:59, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Slashes are also problematic because of the possible ambiguity. Does "Winter/Sprng" mean [during] "Winter or Spring" or "Winter & Spring"? A point also made @ MOS:SLASH. 64.134.64.162 (talk) 19:28, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: See Wikipedia:How to make dashes. Personally, I use the CharInsert edit tool, it's between the edit box and the edit summary box. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:14, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to be that guy, but this is clearly broken, why not just fix it? Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: You have made valid points but will need a wp:RfC to allow other real-world dates (unless date in parameter "issue="). Also common "2016-05" has been rejected as May. The problem seems to be people think wp:MOS format needs to be enforced by templates, but that elevates MOS wp:guideline as if a wp:policy and bullies people to comply as abandon real-world professional dates. Early January tends a poor time for RfC, when many educated people, busy post-holidays, have less time to debate issues. Try RfC later date. There are intelligent people here but...busy. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:54, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK, citation dates do not need verbatim formatting, so stating "Winter–Spring 1983" rather than "Winter/Spring 1983" is not material. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:48, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

So what? There is no reason not to support this commonly used format. The wikipedia should be supporting its editors, not straightjacketing them. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:51, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

The correct venue for requesting changes to the cs1|2 templates is at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Since cs1|2 obeys the date format requirements established by MOS:DATEFORMAT, if and when the MOS is changed to allow a new publication date format, then cs1|2 can be modified to support it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:15, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Unable to log in

Firefox

This is me, User:Pigsonthewing, using an alternative account. I've just been logged out while editing a Wikipedia in another language. After several failed attempts to log in, and here, ("there is no current login for your session" was among the errors I saw), I deleted all my cookies that included the string "wiki". This all happens from time to time, and the latter action usually fixes the problem.

Now, if I try to log in on my main account, which has TFA, I get "verification failed", every time.

It's gone midnight here, so I'm going to bed now. Can anyone advise, or fix this, please? PigsotWing (talk) 00:24, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean WP:2FA? Delete your cookies that inlcude 'wiki' and 'wmf', clear cache - log back in. Are you getting past the password screen and TO the 2FA screen? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:27, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I get this from time to time too - especially when visiting other sister sites for a while, once you get a session data error you are hosed up until all cookies get dumped. You could also try opening a "private browsing" type tab - that may have its own set of cookies. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:28, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, done all that. Get to the 2FA screen, enter six-digit code, get "verification failed" error. PigsOTWing (talk) 00:32, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

If you're using Firefox 50, mysterious loss of session could be Firefox bug 1319403. See also phab:T151770.

If sessions seem reliable but 2FA is failing, check that your device has the correct time, which includes it being set to the right timezone. TOTP requires your device and the server to have reasonably close to the same time, I believe within a minute or two. FYI, you can see the current time on the server (in UTC) via the action API if you need to. Anomie⚔ 03:20, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Anomie: Thank you. My mobile device, my laptop (used at the time and now) and that API are all within a single second of each other. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:09, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

P.S. [missed your first para, sorry] I'm using Firefox 50.1.0. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:48, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I've managed to log in, using one of my "scratch codes". Obvisouly this is not a sustainable method, and I'd be garetful for advice/ a fix. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:43, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: since you are relying on scratch codes, you should un-enroll from 2FA to avoid a permanent lockout; your authentication device must have a reliable clock, if it is off it can break your 2FA. You can attempt to reneroll and get new scratch codes if you want. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:16, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Firefox redux

I have just had another issue. I was already logged in, in Firefox, to en.Wikipedia. I clicked on an image, then clicked on its links to Commons, and was not logged in there. I tried to log in on Commons, and, as described above, verification failed. I was able to log in with a scratch code. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:52, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The first time that I tried to visit Commons today (see below), I also was not logged in; pressing F5 reloaded the page and showed that I was in fact logged in. I had assumed that this was because I had explicitly logged out overnight, and had formally logged in again to Wikipedia less than ten minutes earlier, and that the cookie creation hadn't been passed on from en.wp to commons. Firefox 50.1.0 --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I tried F5 to refresh (as that's sometimes works) but was still not logged in. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:26, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Commons is now saying I'm logged out, even though I was logged in ealrier today (I have since restarted my machine), and am still logged in here and in Wikidata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:48, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

AWB & Chrome

I had a login failure a few hours ago, with both AWB and Google Chrome. (Just checked the time from my logs: about 11:5O UTC) It locked me out after the 5 attempts, and about 15 minutes later I logged in again with no problem.
I know that it wasn't an error at my end, because after the first failure I wrote out my (lengthy) password in plaintext, and the next 4 failed attempts were all made by pasting that identical text. The successful logins 15 minutes later used exactly the same pasted text. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:10, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Checking the logs, I don't see any attempted logins for "BrownHairedGirl" around 11:50 UTC, although I do see something at around 9:50 UTC: 5 bad-password AWB logins over the course of 45 seconds followed by one attempted web UI login 83 seconds later that hit the throttle, then about 12.3 minutes later a successful web login followed by a successful AWB login. A few hours earlier I also see one bad-password AWB login that was followed by a successful AWB login 11 seconds later. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 13:45, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have misread my logs. But thanks for checking, BJorsch (WMF). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:04, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Unit conversion template problem..

Why using the unit conversion template to convert 370cm and 390 cm to inch result in same inch number? 370 cm (150 in) 390 cm (150 in) C933103 (talk) 11:19, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Rounding, a controllable feature explained in detail in the {{convert}} documentation. Converting your values to the first decimal place, 370 cm (145.7 in) and 390 cm (153.5 in), we can see that the conversion template is actually converting correctly. But your values only have two significant figures, so the results are likewise rounded to two sig-figs by default (145.7 or 153.5 to the nearest tens is 150). DMacks (talk) 12:00, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) See Template:Convert#Rounding: 100 ft is 30 m or 30.5 m or 30.48 m? 370 and 390 have two significant digits. 37 cm and 39 cm both round to 15 in. You can for example round to the nearest integer with |0: 370 cm (146 in), 390 cm (154 in). PrimeHunter (talk) 12:03, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter and DMacks: I see.but in this historical section, if you preview this, you can see 370cm for A320 cabin and 390cm for C919 cabin and Mercure fuselage get rounded, however 373cm for DC8 fuselage and 376cm for Boeing fuselages are not rounded. Why is that? Is that because the system incorrectly assumed the last zero being insignificant? Is there more intellectual approach to this?C933103 (talk) 05:09, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Please use the template talk page to ask about {{convert}}. However, since we started here, the converts you mention are:

• {{Convert|370|cm|in|abbr=on}} → 370 cm (150 in)
• {{Convert|390|cm|in|abbr=on}} → 390 cm (150 in)
• {{Convert|373|cm|in|abbr=on}} → 373 cm (147 in)
• {{Convert|376|cm|in|abbr=on}} → 376 cm (148 in)

The inputs with two significant figures (370 and 390) are giving two significant figures in the output, and the inputs with three significant figures (373 and 376) are giving three significant figures in the output. That is good. In the unlikely event that it is known that 370 means 370±0.5 the desired result could be obtained with either of these:

• {{Convert|370|cm|in|0|abbr=on}} → 370 cm (146 in)
• {{Convert|370|cm|in|sigfig=3|abbr=on}} → 370 cm (146 in)

Johnuniq (talk) 09:32, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

common.js vs vector.js

Is there any good reason to use one of common.js or vector.js, or a combination of both? If I understand right, common.js will load extensions in all environments while vector.js will only load them while using the vector skin, but if I only ever use vector anyway, is there any reason I might want to move some/all of my scripts (see User:Ivanvector/vector.js if it helps) over to common.js (which I don't currently have)? Like is there a performance impact or anything? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 11:44, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

If you ever did use a different skin, what scripts do you load that you would want in all skins? Put those in common. Put ones you want only in vector in vector. There's no performance difference. --Unready (talk) 15:10, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I thought. Thanks! Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:14, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Some scripts work in all four current skins, and these are suitable for common.js: but some will only work in one or two, so those should go in vector.js or whichever is appropriate. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:05, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Problem with upload.wikimedia.org

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T154780

Some images from upload.wikimedia.org do not load for me or take a while to load. This has never happened to me before. Conor2004 (talk) 17:08, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm experiencing the same thing Autumn Wind (talk) 17:25, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Might be related to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Commons server problems - HTTP 404. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:46, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Images not loading reliably or not at all

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T154780

I've been having problems with images appearing on pages, and sometimes they won't load at all. Is anyone else having this problem? —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 17:31, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I'm seeing the same problem. See the section right above too. Deli nk (talk) 17:35, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

The Platform operation IRC topic says "Status: Known issues serving images, things are recovering". Christian75 (talk) 17:39, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Seems like it's better now. —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 18:13, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Local file upload error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T154780

Hi. I am trying to upload a picture locally using the old guided form and I get the error: "Upload error An unknown error occurred in storage backend "local-swift-eqiad"". I have been uploading files with no problems until this. I have used both Chrome and Edge, but I still get the same error. Can anyone assist on this? Thanks. Dr. K. 18:08, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Same here. I've been trying to upload an image for the last half hour, completely unsuccessfully. I've tried both the upload Wizard and the plain upload file (switching to the latter has worked for me in the past when the Wizard isn't working), but no luck. Is anyone else having this problem? G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 18:09, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I was just able to upload it. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 18:13, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I guess it was a temporary server glitch. It worked for me as well. Dr. K. 18:31, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Country infoboxes often changing

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T150763

Hello, I was wondering if anyone was able to offer insight into why many edits seem to reorder fields in the country infobox. See [20] as an example. I've noticed this for awhile but never thought to ask about it until now. It is however annoying as the new order is a bit nonsensical, and can make future editing a bit more difficult. Thanks, CMD (talk) 09:51, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: VisualEditor reorders the parameters based on TemplateData in the template's documentation. It may be a good idea to change the order of the parameters in the TemplateData to match the documentation's blank example. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 09:58, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Perfect, thank you very much. CMD (talk) 10:11, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: No problem :) Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 13:23, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Cannot get page to appear in category

I cannot get Draft:Bishal Ruidas to appear in Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions. Purging, null editing, and the "forcelinkupdate" API parameter all did not work. GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 17:09, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: Isn't it only five months since you moved it in August? Pppery 17:15, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, which means that the category will appear on the page if one purges it. When doing a null edit, the category disappears because it thinks that {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} refers to the time of the null edit rather than the last saved revision in the page history. The API parameter only updates link tables, not category tables. GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 17:30, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I though you were talking about the category for actual G13-elligible submissions, not Category:AfC G13 eligible soon submissions, which I didn't know existed. Pppery 17:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Talk page message notification in mobile view?

I don't have a smartphone, so I've only occasionally seen Wikipedia on one. I've been thinking about the case of a new editor who was first blocked, then indeffed for repeating an action they'd been warned about on their talk page, and who has never edited anything except article space. They don't have e-mail enabled and the mini-orange bar is kind of small and the red numbers even smaller, and it occurs to me that all their edits are marked as mobile and using the mobile interface. What do such users see when they have a talk page message? Is it possible for them not to notice? And how easy is it for them to find their talk page if they do see the message and access the notification? (Since they don't have e-mail enabled, they won't be getting e-mail alerts, presumably, although I believe that's now a default setting for those who do enable e-mail.) Does anyone have a screenshot or any other clarification? Yngvadottir (talk) 06:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

An editor gets a nice red indicator at the top red, which is pretty hard to miss. See to the right side —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I didn't notice it until i vread the comment in which you mentioned it, so it's quite possible that a newcomer (having less of an idea than me about how Wikipedia works) would miss it, too. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:39, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I do have two iPhones and they also display a red tick like that one. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:40, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks to all. So they get the red numbers but not the little orange "new message" bar. If they then click on the red number, how easy is it for them to reach their talk page? Is it similar to what I experience on desktop view—the notifications screen loads slowly and then displays a list of who's left messages on the talk page, each of which is clickable? Since they are blocked, their talk page is the only place they can now edit, and they are actually required to copy the unblock template, but several of us have been hoping they will make any kind of response there, so the next issue is whether they can easily figure out how to. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:40, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The difficulty of figuring out how to deal with complex, template-based workflows is one of the reasons that WP:Flow was invented. Anyone who's watched unblock requests knows how many newbies get it right, even on desktop systems. It's a complicated workflow no matter what your device is. So imagine that the editor doesn't just get a message with technical instructions. Imagine that the message has a "Respond" button built into it, maybe with a few tickboxes (e.g., "I want to appeal this block" vs "I don't want to appeal this block right now"), and that this button adds the template, cats the page, and pings the admin – and all the newbie has to do, or even all the newbie can do, is provide the content for the message. Or imagine that it has a timer to remind the blocking admin to check back after a week (a day, a month, a year) to see whether an indef is still necessary (or whether a re-block has been earned).

But that's the idea for the future, and before we can do the fancy stuff with Flow, it has to be able to handle conversations. They're still working on some of that (e.g., making it possible to find comments made in Flow via Special:Search). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid that doesn't answer my question. Flow destroys our ability to use talk pages for article collaboration and as a result the community has decisively rejected it. Even if it hadn't, completely reconfiguring all talk pages is clearly not a viable solution right now. So I'm still asking—right now, what is this editor's path to their talk page? If they do whatever passes for clicking on the smartphone version of the red number they see, can they get there to read the messages, and can they then see an edit button of some sort? Because if not, we need to treat editors flagged as using mobile differently, perhaps by feeding them a big and obvious link in warning templates. I'm going to ping in Cullen328 at this point, because he's been exploring both editing interfaces on his smartphone and has experience explaining the results to technical incompetents like me. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:31, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I know that you have always held firmly to the belief that Flow cannot be used for collaboration. However, as a point of data, I have personally used Flow to collaborate on creating and improving multiple pages on multiple wikis. So it clearly can be done: I have done it, and so have many other people. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Yngvadottir, I use the desktop view by default on my smartphone the vast majority of the time, but occasionally check out the mobile view, and did so just now. In desktop view, I have a highly visible orange bar telling me I have messages, plus a less prominent little bell icon with the number 2 telling me that I have been pinged or thanked. In mobile view, as mentioned above, the orange bar is absent, but the bell icon is more prominent and has a visible red box with the number 2 overlaid. So, if a user understands that they should click that box, they will see a list of pings, notifications of talk page messages and so on. The problem is that some new users may ignore the red box on mobile, but then again, some ignore the orange bar on desktop Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:44, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

When one clicks on the red tick, one should have a list of notifications. These link to the pages they are on, i.e the talk pages. Also, plenty of projects work with Flow, not that transition here would be easy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus and Cullen328: Thanks for confirming. It does sound as though the editor has simply not clicked on the message icon, but it's possible they don't know how to respond. Is the path to the talk page as clear on mobile as it is on desktop (I have no idea how the click mechanism works on a phone, and as I say, for me at least, notifications load agonizingly slowly), and is there then an "edit" button? I dimly recall from the early days of the mobile interface hearing that mobile users don't see a tab for article talk pages. I'd like to be sure this editor has just failed to click through and respond, rather than needing instructions on how to do so. There are going to be increasing numbers of new editors using mobile only, so despite my own preferences and limitations, I'm concerned. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:58, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I found that talk page button at the bottom of each page a while ago. I think it's there under the theory that phones are better for reading than for editing, so a person who accesses Wikipedia on phone is less likely to need the talk page than one who accesses Wikipedia on desktop. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 23:07, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

The massive problem with that theory, Jo-Jo Eumerus, is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. It is 100% possible for people to edit productively using a smartphone, and I know that's true because I do so myself. I have written many articles including Good articles, participated in thousands of AfD debates, answered hundreds of questions at the Teahouse, all on my Android smartphone. There are literally billions of Android smartphones in use today, and failure to encourage worldwide smartphone editing is a gigantic mistake. Please read my essay called Smartphone editing for further information on this critical issue. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Loss of cite button etc

I've lost the cite button and there are a number of scripts (all in one place) that aren't working. The one script that works reliably is DYKcheck. Twinkle, enabled through preferences and not JavaScript, loads intermittently only. Bypassing my cache doesn't fix any of this. Dropping the URL for a page in edit mode into a private browsing session does two things: (a) it shows the cite button (yeah!) but (b) it logs me out. Logging back in within that private environment, the cite button is gone. The problems are the same whether I'm using my laptop or my iPhone. Bandwidth shouldn't be the issue (31 Mbps down and 9.4 up). Given I have the problem across two devices, I'm somewhat reluctant to clear my cache. Any suggestions? Schwede66 22:03, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

You have 'User:AlexTheWhovian/script-redlinks.js' enabled and this throws an error for me. Might be related, or not. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:18, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

		A beer on me!
		TheDJ deserves a beer; problem fixed! Schwede66 22:37, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia citation format (WCF) bibliographic database project

Note: was originally posted at the Wikipedia help desk

Correction: use of the term Wikipedia citation format (WCF) should be replaced by Wikipedia Citation Style 1 (CS1).

Hello all. This post explores the idea of a python project to develop a modest Wikipedia citation format (WCF) native bibliographic database application. The software would be user local and represents a stop-gap measure until the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) develops a proper wiki-wide solution to the problem of handling references on Wikipedia.

Background

Creating and tidying WCF templates, like {{cite journal}}, is hard work. Zotero offers WCF export but does a really lousy job of formatting, being limited to horizontal output and an illogical ordering of fields. Its output invariably requires considerable hand processing.

On some occasions, almost all fields are missing, but it should be noted that the Zotero team would like help to improve its web translator routines. There are number of other projects which develop tools for harvesting bibliographic information and producing WCF cite templates. Harvesting citations is an upstream issue and such tools are different from and complementary to the proposal being presented here.

Once a particular citation template is complete and clean, there is no reference management software (that I know of) that can handle WCF natively or even remotely well. The Wikicite application is limited to Windows (I use Linux) and development seems to have stalled a few years back. The pybliographer project shares some structural similarities with what I am considering. It is no longer based on BibTeX, but pybliographer does not support WCF. Moreover, the last update was two years ago and traffic on their mailing list tanked around 2008 (if my memory serves me correctly their lead developer stepped aside about then). Notwithstanding, the pybliographer documentation is also a good place to start. JabRef is clearly active, but does not offer WCF import or export. Even so, it might be an option to contribute code to the JabRef project. The downside is that JabRef is built around BibTeX and their underlying data model may not be very compatible with WCF.

In terms of data design, some of the WCF templates are rather poor, for instance: chapter handling in {{cite book}} and location and date handling in {{cite conference}}. Nevertheless, we have to live with what we have.

The Wikimedia WikiCite project is, of course, the best answer, but it will be a while (several years?) before it is running comfortably.

Proposal

UML class diagram of proposed database

So perhaps a new native WCF reference management system is in order:

• written in current python (v3.5 at present on Ubuntu) and developed, in the first instance, on Linux
• run locally (that has downsides as well)
• command-line (at least while the core functionality is sorted)
• good search features
• checking and tidying (linting) of markup (the ultimate integrity check is running the template thru Wikipedia)
• offers a range of export options including HTML, Markdown, wiki markup, and formatted text, as well as BibTeX and RIS

In terms of scope:

• not international (because citation templates are highly language specific)

The command-line interfaces would be:

• wcflint — reprocess and tidy a selected citation — interacting thru the system clipboard
• wcffind — search the database using nominated fields and regular expressions — via the command-line
• wcfedit — add (or remove) a citation from the database — interacting thru one of several supported text editors (nano, emacs, vim, gedit)

I have already drafted up some of the software design. Please see the UML diagram (above) showing the core structure.

I am very interested in feedback, supportive or otherwise.

with best wishes, RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 10:55, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

References

Is it not true that there is no 'Wikipedia citation format' (no in-house format)? The example templates that you listed are all part of Citation Style 1 which is a commonly used suite of templates but they are, by no means, 'official' in any sense.

I agree that {{cite conference}} has problems and could/should be improved. I cannot find anything that suggests that you have raised that topic at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Neither can I find anything that suggests that you have raised the topic of |chapter= in the same venue. Surely, if there is something wrong with these templates, those issues should be addressed at cs1, should they not?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:14, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello Trappist. First, I should have been more specific: I am referring solely to the Citation Style 1 template family and not to other citation frameworks supported by Wikipedia (the CS1 templates are the only ones I encounter in relation to the hard sciences). I note too that Zotero calls its Wikipedia export format "Wikipedia Citation Templates" and does not offer other Wikipedia export formats. That said, Wikipedia itself does not officially endorse one citation framework or house style over another. And second, you are quite correct that I have not flagged issues relating to two CS1 templates I obliquely criticized. Their widespread deployment means that any change to the syntax and/or semantics of their public interface will need careful consideration. But my mission is not to refine the CS1. My interest is to create linting and database tools to make the use of CS1 templates, as they stand, easier and more consistent. Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 15:23, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Surely, Zotero can call its own citation exporting scheme whatever it likes, but that does not make it correct or binding. The CS1 templates have had the most systematic development and are pretty visible. That and the fact that they are more consistently presented than others could account for their popularity with science-article editors. It is also conceivable that such editors are the least in need of a biblio system, since they are far more likely than other editors to already know the objectives, mechanics, and semantics of citing article claims. Having citations in hard science articles that are usable is a more important matter imo. If the output is illegible to anyone without specialized knowledge, then it is not useful. The average non-expert reader of this non-expert encyclopedia will be unable to verify the cited claims. However, I am not dead set against the idea. Whether it may lead into another little Wikipedia island with its own peculiarities and small circle of adherents, is something to be seen I guess. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:55, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I agree with everything you say. It is clearly up to editors to select appropriate references. Whether this project gains traction is an unknown – which depends, to some degree, on how useful and how visible it becomes. It may well end up being islanded. But I would like to get some early feedback in the hope that it could be made more widely useful. Thanks for your response. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 16:11, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Cites are enormous bureaucracy: The wp:CS1 {cite_web} template now processes over 200 cite parameters, and any new system would likely need 7+ years to fit into the cite mold. When I developed the first Lua script module to match CS1 cite format, I never imagined the minor parameters would continue debate over 5 years, while major issues would be overlooked. Over 10 years ago, cites needed parameter "subtitle=" for people to add subtitles, but only French Wikipedia did it; likewise a parameter "note=" was needed after titles to explain typical details, but just not a priority. The hideous parameter "accessdate=" should have been renamed "acdate=" many years ago, when someone even barked how the ten-letter parameter was horrific, and still to this day, "accessdate=" is the most-misused & misspelled parameter of all time ("access" in Spanish and French has one "s" as acceso or accès, while Portuguese has one "c" as acesso), plus the long name "accessdate" causes many people to omit lead pipe bar "|" (in "|accessdate="). So now almost half of all cite errors are accessdate, but instead, users have debated every month at wt:CS1 about proper use of cite data in obsessive, trivial minutia for the other 200 cite parameters. I just cannot do that. I avoid wastes of time, but one day will people wake-up to see they have wasted the best years of their adult lives bickering about minutia, rather than making cites easier. So beware the cites as an energy vampire. I prefer to go out and enjoy life. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:25, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I seem to have stumbled across a hornets nest here. My focus is on developing some modest command-line software to help users clean, store, and find their CS1 citations. There seems to be little support for this otherwise, with the exception of Zotero. The design of the CS1 citation family is of very little interest to me beyond being able to navigate around that subset of more common usage that I will need to support. Comments directed toward my software proposal will be very welcome. Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 12:40, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

No, not a hornet's nest, just Wikid77. Regarding clean CS1 citations, you should be interested in mw:Citoid and especially the fact it uses the Zotero translation service (review section "Installation"). --Izno (talk) 14:34, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello Izno. Thanks very much for the pointer. I remain a big fan of WikiCite and look forward to its launch and development. Regarding citoid/Citoid, this looks like a real-time citation harvester and CS1 translator. Great for visual editing, but not fundamentally a database. Instead, each DOI or other resource is interrogated on demand. Did I get this right? I need a database that I can load and search, based on my special interests and my recall, with the associated PDFs logged and available. That service need not be local, for instance, Zotero provides cloud storage and syncing. But I don't like their web interface and find it faster to edit citations in a text editor than to click around enumerable GUI edit boxes. In the same way that I like editing raw LaTeX, Markdown, and wiki-markup. Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 15:59, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Not a hornet's nest. Come on over to Help talk:Citation Style 1, where we focus on the topic at hand in a constructive manner instead of wasting our own time by writing 250 words about something that we denigrate as a waste of time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:32, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello Jonesey95. Thanks for the suggestion to help. What I really need is way of managing the stack of references I currently keep on a single sandbox page. Not having a suitable reference management system is quite limiting, so I will continue to work on the idea I posted. It should not take very long to code, perhaps two weeks. For the record, my proposal is somewhat modeled after BibTool by Gerd Neugebauer and hosted at GitHub and represents a similar utility for BibTeX files. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 18:13, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I can't find a definitive statement, but WikiCite may be WMDE rather than WMF. I recommend that you talk to people at d:Wikidata:WikiProject Source MetaData before committing to a particular approach. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello Whatamidoing (WMF). Just to note that https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/1608/ lists some activity. I can't see anything specific to Wikipedia Deutschland though. Thanks for the comment. Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 00:05, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Odd, old page display duplicates new page display but w. different hist

• So I have User:Lingzhi/sandbox and User:Lingzhi/sandbox2. For me at least, they display 100% identically, including changes I just made minutes ago. But I haven't edited sandbox2 since 25 July 2015‎, as the page history clearly shows. I can blank that sandbox2, I suppose, but I might wanna use it again for other topics. Besides, I thought I should report it 'cause it's strange.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 18:36, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
  • {You're transcluding the first sandbox in the second. Pppery 19:02, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
    • Hah! I had totally forgotten. Thanks!  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:54, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Slow editing

I'm experiencing this for many days already, on different Windows PCs, all with recent Firefox (monobook.js) - when I start editing a large article (>70 kB, roughly, not particularly large), that particular Firefox window slows down so that it takes up to about a second to type in a single character. Meanwhile all other functions (reading, erverting, etc., remain fast). The overload is on the CPU. Unchecking the FF option "Use hardware acceleration when available" doesn't help. Any hints? Materialscientist (talk) 07:48, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I've always had this problem. That's why I edit by sections. Of my recent edits to Liverpool Street station, all were to single sections except this one, which took so long that I went back to section by section editing, even though it means twice as many actual edits. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:09, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Materialscientist: Mozilla recently implemented per-tab processing for a lot of users, so this might explain some of it. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:12, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

It occasionally happens to me (Firefox on Windows Vista with Vector), but it stops when I close and reopen the browser. Try editing Heart logged in and out in MonoBook and Vector. In which cases does it happen? If it doesn't happen on Heart then try the far larger ‎List of named minor planets (numerical) (MonoBook, Vector). All the examples currently work fine for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:31, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Deleting 580 articles (and their talk pages)

• Relevant AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Algeria at the 2015 UCI Road World Championships.

This was an AfD for every article - 643 in total - in Category:Nations at the UCI Road World Championships except the ones not in a subcategory (i.e. the six listed at the bottom). The AfD was submitted via a Bot Request (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PrimeBOT 6). The result of the AfD was that articles which had a parent article to redirect to would be closed as such, whilst all the others would be deleted. I have manually closed all the former (there were 63) leaving all the others (580) to be deleted. So - is it possible to create an adminbot run to delete all the articles in those ten subcategories? Or could it be done via an automated tool? The deletion rationale would simply be the name of the AfD above. Black Kite (talk) 01:11, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

•  Doing... –xeno^talk 01:22, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
  •  Done. Twinkle has a batch-deletion module (d-batch), for future use. –xeno^talk 01:27, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
    • Thanks. I know the d-batch tool existed, but I don't trust myself with stuff that can delete lots of things at once. Black Kite (talk) 01:38, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup

I'm not sure if this I should be requesting this here, but now they've all gone, {{flagUCIRoad}} and {{flagUCIRoadathlete}} is used to link to them in articles 2006–2015. Can someone with some template knowledge please adjust it so it links to the nations overall article (i.e. Germany at the UCI Road World Championships). I think there'll need to be regular expression used in AWB to sort out the pages to remove the empty parameters used for {{flagUCIRoad}}. BaldBoris 02:43, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Can you help with the template? Thanks BaldBoris 15:57, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

User:BaldBoris, yes. I will contact you on your talk page. Frietjes (talk) 16:03, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

New version of wikilabels

Hello, Wikilabels is the system to label edits for ORES. Until now, users would have to visit a page in Wikipedia, for example WP:Labels and install a gadget and then label edits for ORES. With the new version (0.4.0) deployed today, you can directly go to Wikilabels home page, for example https://labels.wmflabs.org/ui/enwiki and label edits from there. If you installed the gadget, you can remove it now. We also provided some sort of minification and bundling to improve its performance.

Labeling edits would help ORES work more accurately and in case ORES review tool is not enabled in your wiki, you can provide these data for us using wikilabels so can enable it for your wiki as well.

Best MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:15, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ladsgroup: What is ORES? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:15, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: m:ORES and also you can enable mw:ORES review tool as a beta feature Ladsgroup^overleg 19:20, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I see. The thing is, the term wasn't linked either here or at m:Wiki labels, so as this was mass messaged, you might like to look at clarifying the term on all the other recipients. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:12, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Footnotes

Footnotes such as those produced by {{ref label}} (as well as those done that way without the template) don't seem to work in mobile view (produces endless loading), and the popup doesn't display on mouseover. Should this be fixed or left as it is, or should they be converted to use {{efn}} etc.? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 15:25, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Please report it in phabricator —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:20, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Okay, although I'm guessing it'll be a wontfix given it's been deprecated for almost eleven years for most cases. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 04:41, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I guess that's now phab:T154861. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Vexing parameter-passing problem

I have:

• Two templates, lets call them Chart and Bar
• A multi-line string of "variable" parameters, with each line containing one set of parameters to be passed to Bar
• A string of "constant" parameters, to be passed to Bar on each call

I call Chart, passing it both strings. For each line in the "variable" string, Chart makes a call to Bar, passing to it the parameters from that line, as well as the parameters from the "constant" string. Caveats:

• The number of values in the lines vary from line to line.
• The number of lines in the string is not known ahead of time.
• The "constant" parameters must be passed to Chart; they cannot be hard-coded.

I've been trying with module:string and {{item}}/{{component}} for a few days, without success. How do I make this work?

A million thanks, —swpb^T 21:05, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@Swpb: From your description, it sounds that the best way of implementing this would be to write a Lua module that calls Bar. With Lua it would be easy to determine the number of lines in the string and the number of values in each line, but this is very hard to do in template code. It sounds like it may be necessary to convert Chart to Lua as well, but it is hard to say for certain without knowing more of the specifics. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:40, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Do you know anyone who has loaded Wikipedia into MediaWiki?

@TheDJ: I've never met anyone who has loaded any of WP into a local installation of MediaWiki...

Have you done it? Do you know anyone who has?

How did you go about it?

What problems did you run into?

How did you solve them? The Transhumanist 07:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Current banner not displaying properly on at least some devices

screenshot

As you can see, the banner is cut off on my screen. I tried scrolling it to reveal the remainder of the text and it didn't work. I am using the desktop version of the site, but on a mobile device (iPad Air2, current version of Safari for same) I don't think I'm the target audience here, but presumably they want whoever is to actually be able to read it. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

The text also needs some copy-editing. I never remember where these banners live, and IIRC, when I found one once, I was unable to edit it (for obvious reasons). – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:28, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It's meta:Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/WomanYouNeverMeetInitiative_2017. meta:CentralNotice says you can suggest uncontroversial corrections and tweaks at meta:Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Template:Convert/old deleted so need copies

Yes, the vast wikitext-based measurement converter Template:Convert/old (and ~2,800 subtemplates) was deleted c.04:30, 5 January 2017 (per December 22 TfD), and typical editors can no longer see wikitext unit-conversion calculations. Meanwhile, still trying to fix Lua Module:Convert for precision errors converting some ranges, which {convert/old} had fixed in Dec 2013. Also Mach speed precision seems wrong, so can someone copy deleted Template:Convert/Mach to User:Wikid77/(same), and I'll try debug precision errors. Thanks. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:23, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Wikid77: This can only be actioned by an administrator--you should make your request at WP:REFUND if the deleting administrator is unwilling to un-delete and move the templates. --Izno (talk) 13:44, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Wikid77: Was just passing - done - User:Wikid77/Template:Convert/Mach - Drop me a note if you want any more. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 15:22, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Copy vio

What is the template that I can use to tag a page with copy violation material that needs to be deleted from the revision history? (See: Old Time Hockey). I already removed the material from the page, but I know there is a template I can use to tag the page as requiring attention from an admin to delete the revisions. (Please {{ping}} me). --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 17:50, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Zackmann08: {{Copyvio-revdel}} -- John of Reading (talk) 17:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: many thanks! --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 18:15, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-02

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

Recent changes

• You can now use datasets on Commons. You can see an example that is using this source. [21]
• There is a new opt-in beta feature of a wikitext mode for the visual editor. You can try it out.
• When you update a page with translations on wikis with the Translate extension the existing translations will be marked as outdated instead of removed. [22]
• The new version of MediaWiki was released to all wikis last week (calendar).
• MoodBar has been removed from the Wikimedia wikis. [23]
• The live option for the Tipsy notice tool has been removed. Gadgets and user scripts which use it need to be updated. [24]

Problems

• Editors who use Firefox 50 might get logged out or fail to save their edits. This is because of a browser bug. Until this is fixed you can enter about:config in the address bar and set network.cookie.maxPerHost to 5000. Firefox 50 is the current version of the Firefox. [25]

Changes this week

• There is no new version of MediaWiki this week because of the Wikimedia Developer Summit.

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

19:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Robots.txt and Google's treatment of trailing slashes

Hi. There's a discussion going on here regarding our robots.txt file: MediaWiki talk:Robots.txt#Google thinks it's cute, we need to blacklist Wikipedia.253AArticles_for_deletion.252F. I'm advocating for simplifying the ruleset by removing trailing slashes from current disallow directives, but with the consequence that we'd be discouraging search engines from indexing root pages. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:03, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Birth date template query

I've been tidying up birth dates where there's a hard-coded age which will become out of date, by applying various templates. In some cases such as this example I've used {{birth-date and age}}. I've paused, as I've just noticed that this changes the date format to dd Month yyyy even when I provide it in the American style as Month dd, yyyy. Even including the display parameter {{birth-date and age|September 20, 1980|September 20, 1980}} doesn't work. I've found a workaround: the display parameter is only reformatted if it's a valid date, so {{birth-date and age|September 20, 1980|<nowiki/>September 20, 1980}} displays the text I type in without altering it to dd Month yyyy. Is there a better way? I think the relevant processing is actually in {{birth-date}}, and I'm loathe to suggest a change to that as it's so widely used. Certes (talk) 12:49, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

To clarify: There are a few hundred cases to change, so I could set up JWB regexes to convert "September 20, 1980" to {{birth date and age|1980|9|20|mf=1}} (a different template: no hyphen in name) but I suspect this is a perennial problem with a standard solution that my searching has failed to find. Certes (talk) 13:26, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

It displays as entered for me. I guess you changed your date format preference at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. I have the default "No preference". Don't force a date format on users by circumventing the preference with special code. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:32, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter, I knew I'd missed something! So what I thought was a problem is actually a minor improvement, and I'll let the dates display according to user preference unless anyone comes along with a different opinion. Certes (talk) 13:38, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Certes: On the contrary, for articles with a definite date format (that is, most of them), the date format should be forced, in accordance with MOS:DATETIES. I don't use {{birth-date and age}} but {{birth date and age}} (this is the one with a hyphen); this respects the parameter |df=y meaning "day first" (n.b. |mf=y is ignored, the default for this template is month first). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:41, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Redrose64, I'm not sure you are discussing the same as us. It's fine to force a date format to IP's and users with no date preference but Certes was (without knowing it) trying to also force it on users who have specifically set a date preference for their account at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. I see no reason to override that. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:50, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I think the point Redrose64 is making (correctly, imo) is that this is an article-preference issue, not a user-preference issue. As far as article preferences go, there are several sections in MOS:NUM that provide guidance regarding dates. As article preferences (if any are established) face the readership in general, they should be the determining factor. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 16:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

I was trying to preserve the existing date formats, a mix of dmy and mdy, for everyone. Because I set a preference for dmy dates many years ago and forgot about it, I was seeing the dates change to dmy unexpectedly. This suited me, but I mistakenly assumed that everyone would see dmy dates and I was concerned for readers in other locales. PrimeHunter explained that I was worrying unnecessarily: my changes weren't forcing dmy on anyone, and I verified this by resetting my own preference. In this particular case, I think {{birth-date and age}} has all the advantages of {{birth date and age}} plus the bonus of allowing readers to force a format if they choose to change their display preferences. It was clear to me that forcing formats with the nowiki kludge wasn't a good solution, which is why I refrained from applying it and came here instead. Thanks again for your help. Certes (talk) 23:01, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

User categories

In discussion at Wikipedia talk:User categories over whether redlinked user categories should be depopulated or left on userpages as a legitimate use of one's own userpage regardless of their interference with mainspace maintenance, one idea that's been floated is the possibility of segregating user categories from mainspace article categories via the creation of a new "User category" namespace, so that user category rules could potentially be revisited or adjusted because redlinks and jokes wouldn't be interfering with mainspace category maintenance anymore. (Or, alternatively, a wider "Wikipedia category" namespace to segregate all internal project categories — user, maintenance, Wikiproject, etc. — from mainspace content categories?)

I know that such a solution would be possible, as several new namespaces have been introduced over the eons that I've been participating in Wikipedia (hell, even Category: didn't exist yet when I started) — but I'm not familiar enough with the programming side to know whether it's an easy fix that could be implemented quickly within a few days, or a complex project that would take months to code and test and implement. Could anybody advise on how feasible this idea might be? Bearcat (talk) 17:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Speaking as a MediaWiki developer, this idea would be extremely time-consuming to implement, to the extent that I would consider it unreasonable. The software assumes that all pages in namespace number 14 are category pages, so adding another namespace where this is true would cause all kinds of problems. — This, that and the other (talk) 02:34, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

However, if there are tracking categories (especially built in ones) we can put a switch to separate pages - example: Category:Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags and Category:User pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags are both driven from MediaWiki:Deprecated-self-close-category. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:15, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there anything else, then, that can be done to help get redlinked user categories off of Special:WantedCategories? As things currently stand, that project tool can't distinguish between redlinked user categories and redlinked article categories — which means that the people who are working on the important issue of cleaning up redlinked article categories are forced to work around permanent kludge that can never actually be cleared off the list. That's not sustainable or acceptable, however — the categorization project needs a way to get user categories off of that list entirely so that everything on that list is resolvable. For example, is there any way that Special:WantedCategories could be reprogrammed to exclude redlinked categories whose contents are in userspace instead of mainspace? Bearcat (talk) 23:28, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Special pages are generated by the MediaWiki software where it's hard to get features added. Your best chance may be to instead ask for a database report at Wikipedia talk:Database reports. Another problem is that Special:WantedCategories is limited to 5000 categories. The English Wikipedia hits the limit.[26] I don't know whether a database report can go beyond the limit without doing it's own database scan instead of filtering Special:WantedCategories. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:12, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Waiting for a password change.

I was unexpectedly logged out of Wikipedia yesterday (9th Jan 2017) and have been unable to get a replacement password having forgotten the current one. I requested a new password yesterday but nothing has arrived. Is it usual to have such a delay? Please leave a reply on my talk page, I'm reluctant to leave my email address in a public place. Many thanks, Richard Avery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.25.178.168 (talk) 14:45, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

That's from Richard Avery, and I guess a reply here would do. He is receiving notifications when his user talk page is updated, so there is a linked e-mail that works. :-) William Avery (talk) 15:52, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

You should not have to leave your address anywhere, since we can not reset your password for you. You can try to request a password again, be sure to check for spam/junk filtering by your email system. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:57, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Password changed, issue sorted. Thanks. Richard Avery (talk) 07:21, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Herodotus title

Head of the article Herodotus is "herodotus" for some reason. It is seems to have Template:Lowercase title inside, though I don't see it in code. PuchaczTrado (talk) 12:29, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

@PuchaczTrado: I've fixed it by purging the article. The article had not been fully updated to reflect the recent edits to Template:C. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:48, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Search prefix revisited – search with multiple prefixes?

This is a follow-up to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 152#Search prefix:

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 61 § is there a way to search several sections with one search? – June 10–17, 2009

And User talk:Rainman § modification to search several Wikipedian sections at one time – June 15–17, 2009

And User talk:Stmrlbs/Archive/001 § multiple prefixes – June 15–17, 2009

June 17, 2009 Help:Searching documentation update, alas documentation of this multiple-prefixes-separated-by-pipes feature was removed on October 11, 2009 when this was rewritten, to try to improve usability

"To search multiple sections of Wikipedia with different prefixes, enter the different prefixes with a pipe delimiter."

"This should be especially useful for archive searching in concert with inputbox or searchbox."

• MediaWiki search engine improved, 10 November 2008
  • en.wiki migrated to new search backend, June 2, 2009. Wikitech-l
• Initial import of rewritten Lucene-Search extension
  • History No commits between August 2007 and March 2010. So where is the June 2009 change to support this?

Clearly prefix did at least briefly take pipes. Unfortunately, the volunteer developer of that, Rainman, isn't active any more either, and I haven't been able to locate his code changes that implemented that feature.

Can anyone more familiar with how the source code archives work locate the changes that Rainman made to implement multiple search prefixes?

Would it be possible to make similar changes in our current search engine to do this? wbm1058 (talk) 02:44, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Tool for AfD closing stats?

Is there some kind of tool which can give me stats about a user's AfD closes? How many they closed, how many as keep, delete, etc, how many ended up being reviewed at WP:DRV, and of those how many were upheld or overturned? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:21, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

There is; it's used in (almost?) all WP:RFAs. Go to an RfA and search for the blue collapsible box "RfA/RfB toolbox"; expand that, and in there you will find a link "AfD votes". It's set for the admin candidate, but can be used for anyone just by altering the appropriate part of the query string - here's one for RoySmith (talk · contribs): https://tools.wmflabs.org/afdstats/afdstats.py?name=RoySmith --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:42, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, but that's not quite what I was asking. Those are stats for votes during an AfD discussion. I'm looking for closes. How many AfD's did I close as keep? How many did I close as delete? How many of my closes were reviewed at DRV? I also notice the tool seems to be confused about my participation. It says that of the last 200 AfDs, 165 pages had no discernible vote. I'm assuming that's mostly AfD's I closed (since my close counts as an edit). -- RoySmith (talk) 14:33, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

@RoySmith: There was an AfD-close-stats tool written by Scottywong available a few years ago, but Scottywong retired and it looks like it didn't make the transition over to Tool Labs from the Toolserver. The AfD stats tool that Redrose64 linked to above was also written by Scottywong, and is currently available thanks to APerson and Σ, but I'm not aware of any plans to convert his other tools at the moment. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:06, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I see there was an attempt to port the AfD-close-stats tool to Tool Labs by JackPotte at https://tools.wmflabs.org/jackbot/snottywong/cgi-bin/afdadminstats.cgi. At the moment that URL brings up a MySQL error though. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

I can take a look at the code for that and take a stab at resurrecting the tool, if nobody else is working on it at the moment. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:21, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

That was the link to the CGI, here's a link to the menu page: [27] Sir Joseph ^(talk) 02:27, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Yeah. I wanted to add that the tool is actually mostly functional right now; toollabs:jackbot/snottywong/afdadminstats.html is the form where you enter the username, and I didn't get errors on anyone I tried it with. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:56, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Gmail is putting all of my Wikipedia email into a folder called "Social" -- how to fix?

Gmail is now putting all of my Wikipedia email into a folder called "Social", where it puts notifications from Facebook and YouTube. It has apparently been doing this since about late November 2016. I want to know how to get it to accept Wikipedia emails as normal emails into my "Primary" inbox. Does anyone know how to make it do that? Softlavender (talk) 03:00, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Drag one to "inbox" then you should get a pop-up asking if you want to do this for all future email like that. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:08, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Excellent -- thanks, Xaosflux. I tried that and hopefully the whole matter is solved. Softlavender (talk) 05:01, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

If you are using the Inbox mode I recommend switching back to old Gmail. That thing is garbage. Better yet, use third-party IMAP software which will load your Gmail in the normal, sane way. I use K9 Mail on Android (free, open source, available on Play store and F-Droid) and Mozilla Thunderbird on Windows (also free and open source, integrates with Firefox). Just some ideas. Pariah24 ┃ ☏ 16:43, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Bot to help with FA/GA nomination process

The process is as follows: (Pasted from FA nomination page):

Before nominating an artic)le, ensure that it meets all of the FA criteria and that peer reviews are closed and archived. The featured article toolbox (at right) can help you check some of the criteria. Place at the top of the talk page of the nominated article and save the page. From the FAC template, click on the red "initiate the nomination" link or the blue "leave comments" link. You will see pre-loaded information; leave that text. If you are unsure how to complete a nomination, please post to the FAC talk page for assistance. Below the preloaded title, complete the nomination page, sign with 47.17.27.96 (talk) 16:48, 12 January 2017 (UTC), and save the page.

Copy this text: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/name of nominated article/archiveNumber (substituting Number), and edit this page (i.e., the page you are reading at the moment), pasting the template at the top of the list of candidates. Replace "name of ..." with the name of your nomination. This will transclude the nomination into this page. In the event that the title of the nomination page differs from this format, use the page's title instead.

May be a bot could automate that process? Thanks. 47.17.27.96 (talk) 16:48, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

This belongs at WP:BOTREQ, not VPT. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:32, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Local config for end users

Hello y'all, I am wondering if there is a way on Windows to have a local copy of LocalSettings.php and skins folders for use on Wikipedia and other wikis as opposed to using custom CSS or JS. Some skins I'd like to use don't seem to support CSS. Any insight would be appreciated. Pariah24 ┃ ☏ 16:35, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

Eh no, that's not how that works :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:37, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

some kind weird error

A bunch of random articles are displaying at their top several bulleted paragraphs begining "2017 International Conference on Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic...". It doesn't seem to be in the source, nor in any template (at least, not one at the top of the page). For instance, the articles Musicology, Turbeville (surname), Coronary, etc... no rhyme or reason that I can see. Herostratus (talk) 03:13, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Fixed. Someone should probably protect that redirect... :Jay8g [V•T•E] 03:34, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Ohhh... dur, missed that template. Thanks! Herostratus (talk) 04:06, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

{{official website}} bug

There seems to be a bug in {{official website}}. In two versions of Cochise Elementary School District:

• This buggy example has {{official website|http://www.cochiseschool.org/education/school/school.php?sectionid=3}}, which displays with a spurious error message in bold red letters: "No URL found. Please specify a URL here or add one to Wikidata."
• This non-buggy example has {{official website|http://www.cochiseschool.org/education/school/school.php}}, which displays normally.

—Anomalocaris (talk) 06:47, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris: Everything before an = becomes a named parameter, and there is an = in that url. Prefix with 1= to enforce numbered parameters or with url= to enforce the named parameter. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:10, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: I used url= in Klondyke School District and Solomon Elementary School District; all good, thanks! I see that the template documentation explains all this; Once again I should remember to RTFM. —Anomalocaris (talk) 07:23, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Content redacted shows on my watchlist

I continue to see content redacted on my watchlist from the following transactions:

• (Deletion log); 18:48 . . GorillaWarfare (talk | contribs) changed visibility of 2 revisions on page African Americans: edit summary hidden ‎(RD2: Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material)
• (Deletion log); 18:47 . . GorillaWarfare (talk | contribs) changed visibility of 2 revisions on page Talk:African Americans: edit summary hidden and content unhidden ‎(RD2: Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material)
• (Deletion log); 18:47 . . GorillaWarfare (talk | contribs) changed visibility of a revision on page Talk:African Americans: content hidden ‎(RD2: Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material)

Is this suppose to happen? Thanks. Mitchumch (talk) 13:49, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: Yes, you're supposed to see this. Revdel is logged and while you can see that revisions have been hidden, and which they are, you can't see the content of those revisions. Sam Walton (talk) 14:13, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Mitchumch (talk) 14:25, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Unregistered accounts being CU-blocked?

Hi! I'm more curious than anything, but I just noticed something funny.

I was just reading over Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Evidence-based (which is extremely old but still relevant because apparently after the sock-farm was discovered and blocked no one bothered to systematically clean up the damage it caused) and I saw something weird. Apparently both Lydia21 (talk · contribs) and Aphra Behn (talk · contribs) were confirmed as part of the sock-farm, but these accounts don't appear to be registered.

What's up with that?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:10, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

They're pre-SUL accounts, where someone on another project using the same name had more edits and was thus designated the primary. The accounts in question can now be found at Lydia21~enwiki (talk · contribs) and Aphra Behn~enwiki (talk · contribs), respectively. ‑ Iridescent 15:15, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

WP:Request a query

Pursuant to the discussion above at #GA reviews, I suggested and Edgars2007 followed up on the creation of a page to WP:Request a query based on the success of the similarly named page at Wikidata. Just wanted to let the kinds of persons who follow the page here know about it at the "heading" level, in case someone comes along for a read-only type request for information. --Izno (talk) 17:35, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Ability to close account temporarily

Maybe I'm wrong, but I read it is possible to close your Wikipedia account. It made me think for a while that it wouldn't be such a made idea. I would like to open my email and not have to read about something new that happened on Wikipedia. I know I can close my notifications, but still I think the ability to close my account would me a chance to give other things besides Wikipedia. And why not?

Facebook has this feature where you can close your account and activate it whenever you want, even though it's users can turn off notifications. Why can't we also have this option for Wikipedia users?--Taeyebar 15:48, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

What would be the benefit of closing an account? Since we can't delete accounts or make them hidden for legal reasons (the edit attribution needs to be publicly available), "closing" an account would make no difference to either the user in question, or any outside observer, to that user just logging off Wikipedia. If you're really finding it so hard to let go of Wikipedia that you need your account somehow locked to give you the chance to move on, I'm more than happy to block you, but be sure that's what you really want before you request it. ‑ Iridescent 15:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Taeyebar: @Iridescent not really. You can disable email, then ask for a Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing that will rename you to something like User:VanishedUser56465456456456465, then just walk away. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:58, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

As far as the and then you would want to come back again part, self requested block is likely the best option; you can also blank or requesting deletion of your userpage; and blank you talk page, you can not delete your edits or other peoples edits to your talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:02, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Xaosflux, OK I'll consider taking your advice. But why is it possible to do from facebook, but not here?--Taeyebar 16:14, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

There are a lot of things you can do other places but not here. One significant reason is that when you edit articles, etc, your edit is part of the revision history that you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL - which requires maintaining attribution. In sites like facebook you can deactivate your account and it disappears everything you have done - that would violate the copyright you agree to on each edit here. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

What if my editing history stays, just I go? My account is redlinked until I reactivate it.--Taeyebar 16:32, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

We can delete your userpage and you can request it to be undeleted later if you change your mind (or just recreate it later) if you want. Would you like this? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:36, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

@Taeyebar: Maybe take a look at WP:WIKIBREAK. There are methods, scripts, blocks etc to help you if you need. (I understand :) EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 02:03, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I've blocked Taeyebar with an explicit note that this is because of his request, not because of disruption, and a reminder that any unblock request should be granted. I've also given him instructions on how to request unblock once he wants to edit again. Nyttend (talk) 01:10, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Missing deletion log

Gehl has several deleted edits from 23 October 2004, but no deletion log. Did the deletion logs get cleared more recently than the deleted edits database, or is something wrong? Nyttend (talk) 01:11, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

The "oldest" link at Special:Log/delete goes to 23 December 2004. The date is also mentioned at Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages. Gehl is listed at Wikipedia:Deletion log archive/October 2004 (3). PrimeHunter (talk) 01:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Customized dashboard

Hello. How can I customize my dashboard at Wikipedia? I want to add another Sandbox to my dashboard. 4nn1l2 (talk) 04:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@4nn1l2: I'm not sure what you mean by "dashboard" but you can start another user sandbox by just pointing at a non existent page such as User:4nn1l2/sandbox2. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:56, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I mean the bar located at the right side of the top of the pages where there are links to the following pages:(userpage, user talk, Sandbox, Preferences, Beta, Watchlist, Contributions, Log out). I want to customize that link. I think it should be done by editting my own CSS and such. Thank you. 4nn1l2 (talk) 05:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

You would need to write custom javascript to load that in there - for a slightly different way you could make your main sandbox be an automatic index of numbered sandboxes like this: User:Xaosflux/sandbox. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Or use User:PrimeHunter/My subpages.js to add a "Subpages" link by placing the below in your common JavaScript. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:05, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

importScript('User:PrimeHunter/My_subpages.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/My subpages.js]]

Quote frame bug?

If I add the code I see no quote text.

Feynman • Leighton • Sands
— The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

Username160611000000 (talk) 12:44, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

{{Quote frame|...

W12{{=}}W13-W32

|Feynman • Leighton • Sands|The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I}}

produces

...

W12=W13-W32

— Feynman • Leighton • Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

If text passed as an unnamed parameter to a template contains =, the = has to be passed as {{=}} or as = or the entire parameter has to be named with its ordinal, e.g., 1=whatever=whatever. --Unready (talk) 14:10, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Hey, guys (and girls), why adding 1= isn't working in this case? It should... --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:26, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Looking at that template, I'd start with the error text that will never display and work backwards. Meanwhile, {{=}} works. --Unready (talk) 14:54, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Works for me but if you use 1= then you need to use 2= etc., or the first unnamed parameter will overwrite the one given with 1=.

{{Quote frame|1=...

W12=W13-W32

|2=Feynman • Leighton • Sands|3=The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I}}

produces

... W12=W13-W32
— Feynman • Leighton • Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

- Certes (talk) 15:25, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

... the first unnamed parameter will overwrite the one given with 1.... If true, this is a change from previous versions of MW. Unnamed ordinals used to skip named ordinals. --Unready (talk) 15:43, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Unready: It's certainly true now. Do you have evidence it has ever been different? Help:Duplicate parameters has the example {{Cite web|1=2014|title=Cars|2014}}. I know it was interpreted like {{Cite web|1=2014|title=Cars|1=2014}} when I wrote it in August 2016. Help:Template#Usage hints and workarounds says: "Another method is to replace the unnamed parameter (and any subsequent unnamed parameters) with named parameters". The quote is from 2011.[28] PrimeHunter (talk) 16:30, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

https://oeis.org/wiki/Special:Version says MediaWiki 1.15.1. That's from 2009 and has the same behaviour in my tests. The wiki requires an approved account. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I thought it was different not that long ago. I'll certainly agree named ordinals aren't skipped now. I've looked for older references, but haven't found any. Well, now is what counts, anyway. --Unready (talk) 16:56, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

This came as a surprise to me too. I also think that template parameters used to behave differently but have no evidence for this. I don't see what advantage the current behaviour has over the version we vaguely remember, except that it may be easier for the developers to implement. Certes (talk) 17:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

So somebody can "confirm", that in some older MW version simply adding 1= would work nicely? We then probably have some things broken. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:30, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, what we can confirm is that since at least mw1.15 it has worked (and works now) the way Certes posted above. It's probably not a bug. --Unready (talk) 19:54, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Only articles in a category

Hello. Is there a way a category to show only the articles? Not everything else. Xaris333 (talk) 13:04, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: Category:Articles? Sam Walton (talk) 13:08, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I mean I don't want to show pages like User, User talk, Wikipedia etc. Only article namespace. Xaris333 (talk) 13:10, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: You can do an advanced search restricted to the Article namespace using the search term incategory:"name of category". Don't put the "Category:" prefix in the name of the category, otherwise it won't work.Harryboyles 13:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, but is not what I want. Xaris333 (talk) 13:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

You probably want {{main other}} if I got the idea. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:24, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Xaris333 wants to visit a category page, such as Category:Pages with misplaced templates, and filter that by namespace. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Ohh, sorry Xaris, I misunderstood your request. Sam Walton (talk) 23:33, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: There is no namespace filter for categories. If there were, this link wouldn't list User: or Wikipedia: pages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

If you can use just a list of articles without the text and format of the category page, a search should work: [29] Certes (talk) 00:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: You cannot do this in the normal category view. The search solution mentioned above should work pretty well, although it doesn't preserve the category order. In addition, you can filter categories by namespace using the API, although the output is not so pretty. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=categorymembers&cmtitle=Category%3APages%20with%20misplaced%20templates&cmprop=title&cmlimit=500&cmnamespace=0&format=xml for example. If you want prettier output (and a nice user interface) you can try using PetScan. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:02, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok thank you all. Xaris333 (talk) 08:00, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Purge confirmation clicker?

Resolved

I can't seem to find this in the archive. There was a code snippet:

if ( mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'purge' ) {
        $( 'form.visualClear' ).submit();
}

That when added to user.js would press that "OK" button when attempting to purge the page - but this has recently stopped working for me - does anyone have an update? — xaosflux ^Talk 04:37, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Just based on the purge page's source code, changing the selector to $('form.mw-htmlform') should work. — Earwig ^talk 05:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Perfect, thank you, — xaosflux ^Talk 14:13, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

New code so it gets in to the VPT Archive:

/* Override annoying purge dialog */
if ( mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'purge' ) {
       $('form.mw-htmlform').submit();
}

— xaosflux ^Talk 14:15, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

GA reviews

I'm trying to make a list of all of the articles in category:Good articles that don't have a GA review (that is, a talk page with "/GA1" in the title). I haven't succeeded in persuading AWB to list all the review pages using a title search, it seems to be limited to one or two thousand results only (the real number is about 30,000) and is buggy with a lot of false results. Is there a better way to do this? SpinningSpark 19:47, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

If you want to do something hacky, you could add some code to {{Good article}} akin to {{#ifexist:{{TALKPAGENAME}}/GA1||[[Category:Good articles without a first GA review]]}} that automatically categorizes these things. Not sure whether that would need prior discussion. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:55, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

We may need a WP:Request a query page, similar to WP:Bot requests, for requests like this which should be simple for someone familiar with SQL and the WMF's Quarry service. --Izno (talk) 20:21, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, since I remember BOTREQ often getting requests to compile a certain list of pages. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:09, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

As I also believe this is a good idea and given the success of similar page at Wikidata I created one. I do suck in writing pretty text (intro in this case) even in my native language, so everybody is welcome to tidy it up and put link to page in revelant pages. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 12:32, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I've advertised a bit--let's see who pops up! :D --Izno (talk) 17:42, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Be aware that you'll find thousands of these. Having the GA review on a separate page is a relatively recent innovation; GA reviews were historically always done in a section on the talkpage (example). ‑ Iridescent 15:20, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I discovered that after succeeding in creating the list (see User:Spinningspark/Sandbox2). But even so that is a big improvement from ~25,000 articles to ~3,000. Any suggestions on how this can be further filtered down? A bot that finds the old review and moves it to a Talk:<foo>/GA1 page would be ideal, but that's probably too much to hope for. SpinningSpark 21:06, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

One other thing, some of the false positives are not because the article is old, but because the name of the review page does not exactly match the name of the review page. The first one on my list is an example; $pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling) does not match Talk:$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)/GA1 (note the capitalisation of "or"). Those might be a bit easier to filter, but I can't offhand think of a way. SpinningSpark 21:15, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

This can be fixed by moving the GA1 subpage to Talk:$pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)/GA1, which I have done now. GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 02:39, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I realise that, but it's not the only one. The whole list of 3000 pages would need to be gone through. I can find examples manually easily enough (another is 1950 USS Missouri grounding incident with review at Talk:USS Missouri grounding incident/GA1), but how to find and fix them automatically or semi-automatically? SpinningSpark 08:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Spinningspark: wouldn't a talk subpage with the ending /GA1 be automatically created from the talk page title, which is itself generated from the article title? If that holds true throughout all the GA review pages, then I don't think that capitalization errors should be a major issue. Icebob99 (talk) 03:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Icebob99:I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. Some GA reviews do not have a dedicated subpage. For instance 100,000-year problem has the review at Talk:100,000-year problem#GA review --Pass. So the question is can an automated process find and move these reviews to a /GA1 page? In the example I gave the location of the review is given in the article milestones template so at least some of them are potentially doable automatically. SpinningSpark 08:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@SpinningSpark: Finding pages called Talk:X/GA1 which have no corresponding article X should give a short list which could be matched to their articles manually. I'd like to copy Izno's idea but the only relevant template seems to be {{al}} which is widely used. Certes (talk) 10:14, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Certes: Right, good idea, but I can't use AWB to pick out the redlinks as I did to make the first list because most of them are going to have a redirect at the article name so will be blue. I think a bot request might be in order here. SpinningSpark 10:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

You probably shouldn't try to have a bot move the review; it's likely to end in tears, especially if the review spans more than one ==Section==. But you could see about a bot request to create a redirect from the /GA1 subpages to the relevant section (e.g., on the talk page or in an archive). That's a non-destructive action that, even if wrong in a few instances, would likely be harmless. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Notifications

When I notified several editors in an edit, I received a notification saying in part "8 not sent, 1 sent". In actuality 8 were sent (the other one was a misspelled username). Is this a known bug? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 15:13, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I haven't found mention of a problem. The message sounds like MediaWiki:Notification-header-mention-status-bundle, added in phab:T140224. We haven't customized the message and the default matches the documentation at translatewiki:MediaWiki:Notification-header-mention-status-bundle/qqq. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:51, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter, AIJKOUJBLVNNSCI, and AIUHVDNDOI FW QQQ: Testing it again to see if it persists. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 04:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Received "2 not sent, 1 sent" as expected. Should I report it as a bug anyway even though it might not be reproducible? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 04:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035, PrimeHunter2, PrimeHunter3, NoSuchUser, and NoSuchUser2: Please make a serious effort to reproduce before reporting a bug. If a reproduction attempt fails then try something closer to the original conditions. I guess it was [30]. I have two alternative accounts and can make tests without pinging uninvolved users. It indicated the error is not due to having multiple paragraphs or templates. My tests always gave the larger of the two numbers at "not sent", swapping the numbers if "sent" should have been larger. For example I got "2 not sent, 1 sent" in [31] which should have said "1 not sent, 2 sent". Below the false counts it correctly listed 1 which was not sent and 2 which were. Both the sent messages were also received. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:54, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035, PrimeHunter2, PrimeHunter3, NoSuchUser, and NoSuchUser2: You only get MediaWiki:Notification-header-mention-status-bundle if both "Failed mention" and "Successful mention" are enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. I'm repeating the above test. PrimeHunter2 (talk) 12:00, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

The false counts appear to be less predictable than the swapping I suggested. The above gave me:

4 notifications about mentions you made on the ‪Village pump (technical)‬ talk page: 3 not sent, 1 sent.

Username does not exist: NoSuchUser2

Username does not exist: NoSuchUser

You mentioned: PrimeHunter3

You mentioned: Jc86035

The link to the posting PrimeHunter2 account was ignored as it should be. The message should have said "2 not sent, 2 sent". PrimeHunter2 (talk) 12:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

There are not any related open bugs that I can see. Please do file this, and tag the #mention-notification project, (but note the PM is marked as away till March, so it might take some time before they can triage it). Thank you, PrimeHunter and Jc86035. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Ability to filter logs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T155442

In the log interface (for example, the Block log) there are very few options to filter, especially negatively. For example, there are zillions of bot entries in the block log and there is no way to get rid of them, like there is in my Watchlist. As far as I can see, there is also no ability to search in the accompanying note. Could these features be added? Jytdog (talk) 16:52, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

no responses to this. would folks who watch this page please let me know if there a better place to request this? thx Jytdog (talk) 21:07, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Those fields certainly do not like standard wildcards/exclusions. Tried doing "-ProcseeBot" (without quotes) and it eliminated everything, contrary to Help:Searching#Syntax.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(ring-ring) 00:36, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

The URL query strings provided for the various Special pages are not search strings, unless explicitly documented as such, for instance, the search= parameter of Special:Search. Virtually all other query parameters expect single non-list values, which might be numeric or string. In general, if there isn't a selection for what you want at the top of the relevant special page, there isn't a URL query parameter for what you want either.

Some special pages do have exclusions, but the syntax is not a search string, and is not general: for example, your watchlist restricted to non-bot edits in mainspace is

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWatchlist&hidebots=1&namespace=0

but if you use the "Invert selection" checkbox as well, which adds the query parameter invert=1 to give

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AWatchlist&hidebots=1&namespace=0&invert=1

you will find that this extra parameter affects only the namespace= query parameter - it does not list bot edits only - instead, it lists non-bot edits outside mainspace.

What you are asking for is a new feature for the Special:Log page, and there's nothing we can do about that here, so you would need to file a feature request at phab:. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:41, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for answering. I will have to go figure that system out. Actually, I will not bother. Jytdog (talk) 10:31, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

I filed a request for you. If there are errors/incompletenesses/etc. in the description at phab:T155442, then just ping me with the changes you want, and I can update it for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks User:Whatamidoing (WMF)! Jytdog (talk) 19:49, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

What kind of tasks that could be done by readers or casual contributors that would support editors at the same time?

Check out the suggestions here, the mockups are very detailed, but these are just ideas -- discussion and further ideas is required :). Thank you! --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Batch file changes

Would anyone be interested in porting commons:Help:VisualFileChange.js for enwp? We currently have no means for batch nominating either files from a single category or uploaded by a single user for discussion at FfD. (It would also help with batch category changes, etc.) Also see discussion at Wikipedia talk:Files for discussion#Batch tool czar 22:11, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Can't add link to zh.wp

Trying to add a link to another language Wikipedia from an article here, I get an error, shown at right. This is using the "Add links" item in the sidebar. The article here is Lanshou Xianggu. the article exists on the Chinese WP at zh:蓝瘦香菇. I could probably do it by visiting Wikidata and manually setting it up, but this is the first way many editors will do it, for many the only way they will do it (especially as at this stage the page has no links to Wikidata). Not the first time I’ve seen this "Invalid CSRF token" error, but the last time was weeks ago so it’s not a temporary glitch. I have a login at Wikidata, if that’s relevant. Browser is Safari on Mac OS.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:40, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

 Works for me - possibly a temporary issue on wikidata, if you keep getting it open a ticket on phabricator. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:51, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that you should enter "zhwiki" - simply "zh". Also, this is really a Wikidata problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:14, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I entered 'zh'; It autocompleted to 'zhwiki'. Maybe the solution is at Wikidata but this is both hosted here and implements a feature of WP. Again, there was no way on the page to reach Wikidata, and even if there were only experienced editors would realise they could add an IW link by visiting Wikidata.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:49, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

There seems to be an issue with your edit from Wikipedia being accepted on Wikidata. (That is what the token error is about.) I'll put it on my list of things to investigate. Thanks for the report. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 01:54, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Problem with Twinkle

I posted this on WT:TW a few days ago but I haven't received a response (and I'm a little too lazy to create a GitHub account) so I'm reposting my problem here. I'll just repost what I said on that page here:

I noticed something strange about Twinkle: if an article has a CSD tag and a user tries to tag the article for AFD, even if the user tries to cancel the nomination, Twinkle will only show a prompt asking if the user wants to remove the CSD tag; clicking on "Cancel" will result in the tagging pushing through without the CSD tag being removed. By contrast, Twinkle gives a warning when attempting to tag for speedy deletion an article with an AFD or PROD tag; clicking cancel will abort the operation. Can this be changed? There have been occassions where I try to nominate an article for deletion, but while I was tagging it, the article had already been tagged for speedy deletion.

Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:13, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-03

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

Recent changes

• You can now upload WebP files to Commons. [32]

Problems

• video2commons was down for two weeks. This was because of a problem with Commons video transcoders. It is now back up. [33]

Changes this week

• There is a new magic word called {{PAGELANGUAGE}}. It returns the language of the page you are at. This can be used on wikis with more than one language to make it easier for translators. [34]
• When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu. [35]
• You will be able to use <chem> to write chemical formulas. Before you could use <ce>. <ce> should be replaced by <chem>. [36]
• You now can add exceptions for categories which shouldn't be shown on Special:UncategorizedCategories. The list is at MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist. [37]
• The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS: #wpTextbox1 { height: 50em; } You can change the number 50 to make it look like you want to. [38]
• Sometimes edits in MediaWiki by mistake are shown coming from private IP addresses such as 127.0.0.1. Edits and other contributions logged to these IP addresses will be blocked and shown the reason from MediaWiki:Softblockrangesreason. This should not affect most users. Bots and other tools running on Wikimedia Labs, including Tool Labs will receive a "blocked" error if they try to edit without being logged in. [39]
• When you edit with the visual editor categories will be on the top of the page options menu. [40]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 January. It will be on all wikis from 19 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on January 17 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

23:24, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

What is the correct way to format stuff on MediaWiki:Uncategorized-categories-exceptionlist? Category:Contents would make an excellent candidate. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 23:58, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Looking at the commit, it's a newline-separated list of Category: titles without the namespace, optionally prefixed with *, probably for readability. --Unready (talk) 00:06, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

The help comment is "# Contains a list of catgeories, which shouldn't be mentioned on Special:UncategorizedCategories. One per line, starting with "*". Lines starting with another character (including whitespaces) are ignored. Use "#" for comments." --Unready (talk) 00:33, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Special:UncategorizedCategories is noted as Updates for this page are currently disabled. Data here will not presently be refreshed. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:33, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps it's just a matter of a b'crat running a one-time maintenance job after the message is updated. It would get rid of that "peopley" category, too. --Unready (talk) 13:49, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps a developer, us 'crats don't have any special maintenance job access. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:39, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

I tried to run the Dupe Detector as part of a WP:GA Review and...

So I am participating in the most recent GA Cup and just now tried to run the Dupe Detector which is https://tools.wmflabs.org/dupdet/ but it got hung up. It seems to me that some of the tools and stuff around here don't always play nicely with my Macbook when I am running Safari. Does anyone else have trouble with various tools or actions around here when using Safari (like my Watchlist always takes forever to come up...) Cheers, Shearonink (talk) 15:08, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Script Issue

I added a script that checks dashes yesterday. Now when I edit under the more tab I now have two dashes and "Move" showing but AutoEd has disappeared.

Here's the text on my script page:

mw.loader.load('//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ADr+pda%2Fprosesize.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); // [[User:Dr pda/prosesize.js]];
importScript('Wikipedia:AutoEd/complete.js');
importScript('User:Ucucha/duplinks.js'); // [[User:Ucucha/duplinks]]
importScript('User:GregU/dashes.js');

Can someone explain how I can fix this?

Thanks very much. Twofingered Typist (talk) 15:59, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Outdated server caches for redirected pages when logged out: is this a known issue?

Redirected pages often load outdated server caches. This is mostly evident on redirects to project pages which transclude evolving discussions, e.g. WP:FPC. The thing is, this seems to occur only when logged out. I've noticed this for as long as I can remember. It's a minor issue, but I wonder if it's ever been raised. --Paul_012 (talk) 08:08, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

It's been raised in another context. The cache for a page is not refreshed as often for logged out users. It's only an issue for page content that's generated (e.g., Category: pages) or transcluded, since editing a page updates the cached version. --Unready (talk) 09:03, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

@Unready I see. I wonder what the reason is for generating separate caches for logged-in and logged-out users? (Just asking. I don't know anything about the technical background.) --Paul_012 (talk) 15:34, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Not separate caches, just one cache that isn't updated if an anonymous user requests it, but is updated if a logged in user does. It's easier on the back-end servers, since most page hits are from anonymous users. --Unready (talk) 16:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. That doesn't explain the behaviour I've observed, which is that visiting WP:FPC while logged in loads the transclusions properly, but logging out and revisiting the page (also via the redirect) results in the latest comments disappearing. --Paul_012 (talk) 18:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

(Pinging Unready.) --Paul_012 (talk) 11:43, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't really have anything to add. It seems unusual (and maybe pointless) to have separate caches for logged in and logged out users, but I don't know one way or the other whether that's, in fact, the cache architecture. --Unready (talk) 13:47, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

A similar problem occurs with red and blue links in revision histories. The link color cache is not updated for logged out users when a page linked in an edit summary, the editor's user page, or the editor's user talk page is created (turning it from red to blue) or deleted (turning it from blue to red). GeoffreyT2000 (talk, contribs) 16:58, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Fixing a broken wikilink

Take a look at my edit fixing it, what was wrong with it in the first place? If so, should I report it to Twinkle? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:20, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I assume you saw a red link before. Twinkle edits so quickly that MediaWiki often hasn't registered the AfD page exists so links to the page become red. A purge would have fixed it. It's a known issue which has been reported many times. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:38, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Aah, my bad. The old revision shows it as blue now though, I vaguely recall trying to refresh the page to remove the red...In any case, how I did I even manage to make an edit changing nothing? What is the diff trying to show? some invisible character etc? That's what I thought at first. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 02:44, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

You somehow added a left-to-right mark. Graham87 07:57, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

This often happens if you copy the text from a location in the Wikipedia interface where we enforce directional independence, or by using certain keyboard combinations accidentally. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Figuring out what changed in an edit

In an edit like this one, is there any easier way to figure out what has changed other than by manually comparing all of the highlighted lines? I notice that the change increased the article size by 34 characters, but the change in the mayor field didn't increase by that much. And this seems to be happening because the editor reordered the fields during his edit? Is there a common reason why people do this? Thanks. Air.light (talk) 05:29, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

The "wikEdDiff" gadget in your Preferences can help. It shows that the name of the mayor was changed and that |unemployment_rate= was added.

As for the reordering of parameters, the editor did not do it intentionally. It's a Visual Editor bug. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:51, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the information and I've tried that gadget out and it will help on looking at edits like this one. Air.light (talk) 06:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Showing Wikidata descriptions underneath article title on mobile web

Hello everyone, so as noted earlier on this village pump, almost all Wikipedias now are showing Wikidata descriptions underneath the title on mobile. This has been running on beta on English Wikipedia for around 6 months now. Wikidata is in use and in display on different mobile functionalities and projects, and, if there are no concerns, the Reading team that developed on the feature, would like to enable showing Wikidata underneath the title on English Wikipedia on mobile, as well. Thanks!--Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 02:15, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I would like two features for editors who want to look out for bad Wikidata descriptions in articles of interest. An opt-in preference to also display the subtitle in the desktop version. And a watchlist setting to show changes to English Wikidata descriptions without showing other Wikidata edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: opt-in preference to also display the subtitle in the desktop version We can probably make a gadget for this. watchlist setting to show changes to English Wikidata descriptions without showing other Wikidata edits I believe phab:T90436 is give-or-take the task for this. --Izno (talk) 12:49, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I think there already was user-script for that (description at desktop version). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:31, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

We can definitely make it into a gadget proper, then. I do have a question, though: would this gadget replace, modify, or exist alongside the current "From Wikipedia […]" tagline element? Izno alerted me to this discussion via MediaWiki talk:Gadget-metadata.js § Some notes; I'm the current maintainer of that gadget and it modifies the tagline to help surface quality assessments while reading. While it also colours the header according to the quality rating found, I consider the tagline text to be the primary output since it's presumably accessible to colourblind or blind users. I'd like to make sure that these gadgets wouldn't conflict with one another. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 16:13, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Infobox image border: too light

I was directed here from WP:EIS, so I'll copy and paste my query. The current infobox border, whether invoked using border=yes or {{!}}border, is much too light now. On my LED display it's barely perceptible. This how I'm currently viewing Darkness in a Different Light, and other such use of borders. A year ago that border was a much darker grey, whereas it's barely even there now. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 15:35, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Mac Dreamstate (talk · contribs) was actually directed here from Wikipedia talk:Extended image syntax#Infobox images/borders, and there are some points there that really ought not to be thrown out. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:44, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

@Mac Dreamstate: you refer to infoboxes throughout both your posts, but you started this off on a page concerning images. So, do you mean the infobox border, or the image border? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

The image border within the infobox—the one directly surrounding the album art. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 16:31, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

So not the infobox border at all. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:44, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Just the image border. I realise now that the topic title should be changed to reflect that. Mac Dreamstate (talk) 16:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Regardless, there has been a lightening of the border for the <code>...</code> and <pre>...</pre> elements, and hence the <source>...</source> structure, as used here:

code {
  color: #000;
  background-color: #f8f9fa;
  border: 1px solid #eaecf0;
  border-radius: 2px;
  padding: 1px 4px;
}
pre,
.mw-code {
  color: #000;
  background-color: #f8f9fa;
  border: 1px solid #eaecf0;
  padding: 1em;
  white-space: pre-wrap;
}

That #eaecf0 border was definitely darker in the recent past. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Adminbot for catgeory history merges

It has been suggested that the cut-and-paste moves done by Cydebot over many years when category moves weren't supported, be fixed by history merge. See the discussion at WP:BOTREQ#Bot for category history merges. 103.6.159.84 (talk) 17:11, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Edit window is too big

Somebody has embiggened the editing window, and it doesn't fit on the screen of my laptop any more. This makes scrolling and manipulating large blocks of text difficult and slow. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 23:39, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Someone has? The edit window still conforms to whatever size I make my browser window, on my laptop. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Mine is actually a little larger than the browser window, and it was not in the recent past. I have an unsaved document open in a sandbox and there's a noticeable difference in the size of that window (18 lines) and the current edit window (25 lines). I thought there was a way to specify in Preferences the number of lines in the edit window, but I can't find it. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 23:51, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

From the TechNews above on this page: The "Columns" and "Rows" settings will be removed from the Editing tab in Preferences. If you wish to keep what the "Rows" setting did you can add this code to your personal CSS: #wpTextbox1 { height: 50em; } You can change the number 50 to make it look like you want to. --Unready (talk) 23:58, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks so much. That was exactly the facts I needed. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 00:08, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

DAB solver

This one seems to have given up on me today. Is it me, is it just temporary, or has it moved? Thanks for any help! Cheers, O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 20:48, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I am also having issues trying to use DAB solver, or any other tools on the site. Cheers - Kyle1278 (talk) 20:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Please contact User:Dispenser directly, those are his privately hosted tools —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:18, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Fixed The script for Let's encrypt reloaded lighttpd, it took 11 minutes to shutdown and didn't come back up. The script now checks if a reload is necessary. — Dispenser 03:33, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Dispenser, quick work! O Fortuna!^{...Imperatrix mundi.} 06:36, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Cheers! Cheers - Kyle1278 (talk) 08:05, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Recalling a string from elsewhere in a page

What is the easiest way to define a string in one place on a page, then recall that string for use elsewhere on the page? Thanks! —swpb^T 14:59, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

mw:Extension:Variables can do it, but it's not installed on Wikimedia sites. I believe Lua global variables could also do it, but global variables are generally discouraged, although I was unable to find any Wikimedia coding convention that even mentions them, much less prohibits them. Perhaps a better question is what are you really trying to do that you think you need such a capability? --Unready (talk) 15:29, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

On the article National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, there are a couple of numbers in the infobox that are computed from lists of states which change somewhat regularly. The lists and numbers are used in a few places, but I would like to make it possible to maintain each list in only one place, preferably directly on the article page, and have it referenced elsewhere in the article, to simplify maintenance and prevent contradictory information. —swpb^T 16:05, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

You could store the list as either a tabular Commons file (yes, those exist now) or as a Lua/local json module itself, from how I'm reading that use case. --Izno (talk) 16:45, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Our Lua is from mw:Extension:Scribunto which I don't think can do it in a wikitext page. mw:Extension:Lua has global variables and can do it but we don't use that extension. It's possible but ugly to do it with mw:Extension:Labeled Section Transclusion which we do have here, documented at Help:Labeled section transclusion. It can be done by transcluding a labelled section from the page itself. It's a hack, may confuse editors, use resources, and I don't know whether it has ever been done. I thought about it for this question. See source for how the below test was made. If the value is the result of a computation then it will be computed each time it's used. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:46, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

X is 123, referenced before the definition.

X is defined here: 123

Y is 42, referenced before the definition.

Y is defined here but in <includeonly>...</includeonly> so it doesn't display here.

X is still 123.

Y is still 42.

Perfect! Now, how can I make a labelled section containing an arbitrary number of parameters, and pass each of those parameters to another template? —swpb^T 17:49, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Using {{No spam}}, because it's simple.

{{No spam|{{#section:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|X}}|{{#section:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Y}}}}

produces 12342. There's a need to be wary, though. There's a limit to how many transclusions/expansions you can have on a page. --Unready (talk) 20:17, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

PrimeHunter's sample above uses mw:Extension:Labeled Section Transclusion. The source is

X is {{#section:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|X}}, referenced before the definition.

X is defined here: <section begin=X />123<section end=X />

Y is {{#section:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Y}}, referenced before the definition.

Y is defined here<includeonly><section begin=Y />42<section end=Y /></includeonly> but in {{tag|includeonly}} so it doesn't display here.

X is still {{#section:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|X}}.

Y is still {{#section:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Y}}.

--Unready (talk) 19:52, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I got that. I'm asking if I can extend this to allow the labelled sections to contain several separate parameters to be passed to a template. I have a list of states of dynamic length (like MD|NJ|IL|HI|WA|MA|DC|VT|CA|RI|NY), and I want to be able to pass each state to multiple templates ({{EVs}}, {{NPVIC_passed}}, {{NPVIC_pending}}) using something like {{for loop}}. I can put the states in an {{item}} and retrieve them with {{component}}, but that doesn't allow the number of parameters to vary, as far as I can tell. —swpb^T 20:20, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I got that. I included the source for the benefit of all readers, so they don't have to hit the edit link and read the wikitext it in a textbox. As for passing sections to templates as parameters, it's just wikitext. You can string them together like any other wikitext. Remember that wikitext is not a programming language, despite templates formulated to try to make it one. If you want to do something complicated, Lua is a better alternative. You're still going to have to beware the transclusion limit. --Unready (talk) 20:38, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Could you suggest what that Lua code might look like, for what I'm trying to do? —swpb^T 20:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

The question of whether a module can maintain state for a page has arisen somewhere before, and the firm answer was that any hack that allowed some kind of state (such as misusing references to provide state information) would be regarded as a bug and the ability removed. I gather that developers want to be able to take an arbitrary piece of wikitext from a page (for example, when someone edits a section) and process just that piece without having to process the whole page to get any state variables. Johnuniq (talk) 03:42, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

mw:Extension:Labeled Section Transclusion solves the problem of quasi-global values. Now swpb wants to be able to concatenate a variable number of them based on some other parameter and hand the concatenation to a template. That's the job for Lua. --Unready (talk) 15:54, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Today's odd question: some pages in categories are now... burgundy?

Sorry, I've tried to find this answer elsewhere, but I just noticed a new colour in the links I see, say in categories or new article lists. I know what various shades of blue are (clicked or unclicked existing links), we all know red... but now I have a new colour! A sort of... burgundy link. I wonder if it means that an article has been reviewed/approved or created by an auto-approved user? Anyone know what I'm talking about? Thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 21:13, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@Shawn in Montreal: can you provide a link or two to the pages you are seeing this on, and let us know which entries you are seeing different? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:43, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

You failed to give an example but I guess you have enabled "Threshold for stub link formatting" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:45, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, @PrimeHunter: I did, because I found myself suddenly unable to view stub categories rather than stub articles -- or so it seemed to me at the time? It was odd. But then these burgundy links didn't seem to me to be all stubs. If I could reply on your help a little longer, could you direct me to a WP page that explains the relationship between this threshold and that colour? thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 21:50, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

If a page is smaller than the chosen threshold at the setting then links to it become brown, whether in categories or elsewhere, and whether or not the page has a stub template. If you think there is something wrong then say what your threshold is and give an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:05, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh I see. Thank you. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:08, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

It's documented at Help:Preferences#Advanced options. Special:Preferences links to Help:Preferences if you have English as language. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:09, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Right. Yes, I wanted to be sure I continued to see all hidden categories, but I had no interest in stub thresholds. I've re-disabled that. thanks again! Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:16, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

It works! But now it shifts the viewport...

And I need to find a way to shift the viewport back.

I'm speaking about the script User:The Transhumanist/anno.js

The hot key is Shift-Alt-a.

This script works on bulleted lists.

Many list items have an annotation, that is, the list item is followed by a description. These descriptions are useful, but they may obscure the items in the list that they describe. Sometimes, it is useful to look at the bare list, without the annotations.

This script turns those descriptions on and off. It provides a tab menu command and a hotkey for doing so. So...

When you don't need to see the descriptions, turn them off. When you need more detail, hit the toggle again, and the descriptions return.

The script stores its status so it doesn't start over between pages. (When annotations are turned off, they are off for all pages).

The current problem I'm trying to solve is this:

Hiding or showing annotations affects the position of the viewport, so unfortunately, the reader is jolted away from what he was reading. This is very bad.

I'd like the material that was in the viewport to stay there, which means the viewport must be repositioned each time the toggle is activated.

But I'm stumped on how to do this. The Transhumanist 01:59, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Developer Wishlist Survey: propose your ideas

At the Wikimedia Developer Summit, we decided to organize a Developer Wishlist Survey, and here we go:

mw:Developer Wishlist

The Wikimedia technical community seeks input from developers for developers, to create a high-profile list of desired improvements. The scope of the survey includes the MediaWiki platform (core software, APIs, developer environment, enablers for extensions, gadgets, templates, bots, dumps), the Wikimedia server infrastructure, the contribution process, and documentation.

The best part: we want to have the results published by Wednesday, February 15. Yes, in a month, to have a higher chance to influence the Wikimedia Foundation annual plan FY 2017-18.

There's no time to lose. Propose your ideas before the end of January, either by pushing existing tasks in Phabricator or by creating new ones. You can find instructions on the wiki page. Questions and feedback are welcome especially on the related Talk page.

The voting phase is expected to start on February 6 (tentative). Watch this space (or even better, the wiki page) - SSethi (WMF) 03:08, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

User compare report broken?

Hi! Never used this before so I'm not entirely sure how it's supposed to work, but when I clicked on the "User compare report" link on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/ダルメーター I got a pink and purple erro message with text including <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> [...] Python 2.7.6: /usr/bin/python Sat Jan 21 03:14:34 2017 [...] A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred. and a whole bunch of code. Is this normal? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:21, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

New user contributions functionality broken

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T155780

If I click on the "contributions" link to see my contributions, and then from there, click on the "show contributions of new users only" radio button, followed by the "Search" button, I get a list of contributions made by "new users" (although I've never been quite sure what the "new user" criteria are). However, having generated that list, if I click on the "Search" button again to refresh this list, I get an error highlighting the User Name field stating that this is a required field. This functionality worked up until a few hours ago (the last time I tried it). WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 20:32, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Definitely a bug. Not sure if it is filed yet, still looking. It's accessible still through Special:Contributions/newbies. The criteria from WP:UCP says, "Users are considered new when they are among the last 1% of registrations, meaning about a few weeks old on Wikipedia, and do not have the 'bot' flag." Killiondude (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/newbies works the first time it is linked, but again, the refresh function is broken. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 20:42, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Today is Thursday... --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:02, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Point?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiDan61 (talk • contribs) 21:55, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

New MediaWiki versions are installed on the English Wikipedia on Thursdays: mw:MediaWiki 1.29/Roadmap. The fix is expected to be deployed here Thursday, 26 January. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:35, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

So they broke it today, only to fix it next Thursday? WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 23:15, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, if it didn't destroy Wikipedia or something like that (judgment left to developers) to qualify for the "Unless backported" remark at phab:T155780#2954481 then the deployment of fixes wait for the next regular MediaWiki update. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:08, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

Anyone is free to backport a patch to the relevant deployment branch and add it to the next SWAT deployment if they think it's a serious enough issue and they're willing to be on IRC to test the fix. Anomie⚔ 00:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

This bug appears to have been resolved as of this time. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 13:42, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

It did wind up being backported after all. Anomie⚔ 16:02, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Autocomplete in delete/block form

Today, Wikipedia has started autocompleting the standard deletion reasons in the delete/block forms. Is there a way to disable this functionality? I have always manually entered the deletion or block reasons, and my browser would autocomplete the strings that I have entered. If I wanted to use the standard reason, I'd select it from the menu. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 06:42, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

See § Tech News: 2017-03. When an admin blocks a user or deletes or protects a page they give a reason why. They can now get suggestions when they write. The suggestions will be based on the messages in the dropdown menu. AFAIK, there is no setting to disable it. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:46, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I tried to hack a Greasemonkey script to set autocomplete on in the edit box, but had no luck so far; either I didn't save the change, or something set it off again. But never mind, they are planning to revert the change. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 08:51, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Note the change has been reverted. Cenarium (talk) 20:51, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Bug in confirm deletion

The confirm deletion page has two reason inputs: "Reason" and "Other/additional reason". The "Reason" input is a pull-down list and is fine. "Other/additional reason" was, until recently, a simple text input field which was fine since my browser would supply me with a list of reasons that I have used in the past. This input has changed and now displays an ill-formatted copy of the list supplied for the "Reason" input and does not let my browser offer me anything. I believe this is the relevant HTML:

<div id="wpDeleteReasonRow"><label for="wpReason">Other/additional reason:</label> <input size="60" maxlength="255" tabindex="2" id="wpReason" class="mw-ui-input-inline" autofocus="" name="wpReason"/></div>

Do I have to take this to Bugzilla or can someone fix it on my say-so here? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 13:18, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

#Autocomplete in delete/block form. And, yes, it's infuriating, not least because - unlike the standard jquery UI autocomplete widget - it isn't practical to disable it after-the-fact. —Cryptic 13:43, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

What is even the point of this? I'm not seeing anything useful to anyone. SpinningSpark 14:31, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

The change has been reverted so this is now resolved. Cenarium (talk) 20:51, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Viewing Page History

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical) § Viewing Page History

 – Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:16, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

At the top of my screen is a link to "Contributions". If I click on this and then click on "Edit Count" and then click at the bottom of the screen, I get a list of pages that I have contributed to (See: https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=BronHiggs&project=en.wikipedia.org.) In the past, I was able to click on the "page history" of an article of interest, and get a neat summary of a page's edit history. For the past week or so, this function has been working erratically - sometimes on and sometimes off and at other times has directed me to a form (See, for example, https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-articleinfo/?lang=en&wiki=wikipedia&page=Advertising_management) which I have not seen before and which, if used, also returns the error message "no revisions found". Over the past four days, this application has not been working at all. After waiting an inordinately long period of time (several minutes), I see a message that says "no revisions to show". The net result is that I have not been able to get a positive result or view any page history. I have only been on Wikipedia for three months, but in that time, this application has worked seamlessly. It has only been in the past week that I have experienced difficulties. Nothing else has changed. I am not using a different browser or operating system and have not changed any of my settings. BronHiggs (talk) 22:08, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@BronHiggs: xtools-articleinfo is maintained externally, you can report trouble with it here. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:07, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Template:Sister project links

Cannot show the correct wikinews. e.g. {{Sister project links |wikt=no |commons=Category:Hurricane Isaac (2012) |b=no |n=Tropical Storm Isaac creates worries across US gulf states |q=no |s=no |v=no}}

For wikinews, it cannot show the target news even I put it in the infobox. Please help. --219.79.226.138 (talk) 04:40, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

|1= is the search parameter, not |n=, which is yes or no. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:05, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

• This appears to have been copied from Template talk:Sister project links#Template-protected edit request on 22 January 2017, contrary to WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:45, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Drop down citation templates on RefToolbar 2.0b

Please advise where I should take this issue. Preferably, a page where there is a chance of a fairly quick response. On the drop down citation templates, the one for "cite news" does not have a fill-in blank for "newspaper" I mean...come on...no newspapers? There is "agency" and "publisher". But no "newspaper", even though Template:Cite news specifically lists that option from the get-go. You don't actually see "agency" or "publisher" until farther down the page under "Full parameter set in horizontal format". So if you want your citations to say "newspaper", after you use the template, you then have to manually insert it after dropping the filled template on the page. Where this becomes a major pain is standardizing citations on an existing article when preparing it for a review - and, previous multiple editors not seeing any other options, are guessing and not consistent. "newspaper" should be one of the standard fill-in blanks on that drop-down template. Is there a place I can address this? — Maile (talk) 01:38, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

newspaper is an alias for work. See Template:Cite news#Periodical. Next to "Work" in the cite news form is a "?" with mouseover "Name of journal, magazine, newspaper, periodical or website". PrimeHunter (talk) 02:41, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

And so it is under that mouseover. Thanks for the info. — Maile (talk) 16:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Enhancing PDF output

Hello everyone, there are currently some changes being planned in order to enhance the output of rendered PDFs. Please check the page here in order to learn more, and feel free to add questions or help give headsup in other relevant portals/communities. Thank you.--Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Rejoice !!!! Thanks WMDE —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:16, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Melamrawy (WMF) and Jdforrester (WMF): I am curious--is there some reason why we wouldn't use one of our own projects, Parsoid, to do the rendering? --Izno (talk) 16:56, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Izno:, I assume this would imply implementing a whole new solution from scratch, instead of adopting a web based existing PDF service and I would ping @CAnanian (WMF): to further clarify :). Thanks --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-04

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

Recent changes

• You can see a list of the templates on a page you edit with the visual editor. [41]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 January. It will be on all wikis from 26 January (calendar).

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

20:14, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Article titles include a line break

Sometime in the past month or so, article titles started rendering a line break at the end. When I highlight an article title, it appears as if there is an extra space at the end. When I copy and paste the article title, I get the expected text with the addition of a line break as if I had pressed enter/return. I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and using Google Chrome Version 55.0.2883.87 (64-bit). The line break doesn't happen with Firefox. gobonobo ^{+ c} 20:53, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

If this varies between browsers, I suspect a browser bug/feature, over which we have no control. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:32, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

How to extract longitude degrees from a Coord template?

If you know how to extract the longitude degrees from a {{Coord}} template, please offer some assistance at this discussion. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:35, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Page Curation toolbar

I can't tell if I'm having a brain fart or not, but I cannot seem to mark pages as patrolled (whether accessed from the NPP or otherwise). Feel like I'm missing something simple... it used to be there, but is no longer. Any tips would be appreciated. EvergreenFir (talk) 17:34, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

You need the new page reviewer right for using that toolbar! 103.6.159.84 (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Was under the impression from the curation page that some users are grandfathered in. EvergreenFir (talk) 07:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: Certain users were, if they met certain activity criteria: Editors who have made 200 uncontested or unreverted patrols, maintenance, or deletion tags between 1 January 2016 and 06 October 2016 and who have a clean block log since 01 January 2016. If you would like to gain the user right, you can request it at WP:PERM. You probably have sufficient experience to patrol new pages, as your autopatrolled status shows you have experience creating articles. --AntiCompositeNumber (Leave a message) 01:04, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

It is also possible that you meet the requirements already, but just didn't get caught by the bot. It happened to me, just had to ask. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 01:40, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• OK thank you. I'll go request it. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:54, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Anchor links for section titles?

It's quite common to want to link to a section of a wikipedia article, instead of to the whole article. This is possible by adding the section header's anchor name to the link, but at the moment, it's not super easy. For top-level headers, you can copy the link from the TOC on most pages, but for sub sections, the only way to get the anchor name is to view the page source, and copy it manually. There is a way to add anchor links to section headers with User:Bility/copySectionLink, which provides behaviour similar to what is used in the python docs, but that's not useful for most people, because they won't be able to find it (I only was directed to it because I asked on IRC after searching for quite a while). It would be nice if this script could be added either as a default behaviour, or at least as an option in the preferences/gadgets section. -- naught101 (talk) 01:11, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

You can just add a #'ed redirect can you not? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 02:10, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

If a section heading doesn't have special characters or a duplicate then you can copy it directly from the heading. In March 2015 there was a controversial default feature to make section links. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 135#Link to this section snake and phab:T18691. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:16, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Naught101: You say "for top-level headers, you can copy the link from the TOC on most pages, but for sub sections ..." implying that subsections are not listed in the TOC. By default, they are listed, unless {{TOC limit}} is present - please give an example of a page where this is not the case. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:07, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Fatal exception errors on user and project pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156125

When trying to browse this project page, or any user page, I intermittently get a message such as [WIdFxApAMEkAALiAqo0AAAFD] 2017-01-24 12:17:09: Fatal exception of type "ConfigException". Seems to be okay for articles. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:18, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

AFAIK this should be fixed now, it was a temporary error. Sam Walton (talk) 12:25, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there a problem with a search engine or bot, or am I experiencing a PEBCAK error?

Hi! It used to be that I could go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Genetics go to the table "Genetics articles by quality and importance" and click on one of the entries in that table to get a list of the articles in that category. For 2 or 3 days now, when I click, the site just hangs up. I find this on other such tables too. Does the PEBCAK, or are you folks having a problem. please advise. Thanks, DennisPietras (talk) 17:08, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@BronHiggs: I wonder if this is another manifestation of the problem "Viewing Page History" When in doubt, blame the Russians. DennisPietras (talk) 17:18, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

after waiting long enough, I was finally directed to "502 Bad Gateway" "nginx/1.11.3" at https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Genetics&importance=NA-Class&quality=Start-Class DennisPietras (talk) 20:27, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

May want to ask the primary tool maintainer on that one, w:de:Benutzer_Diskussion:Hedonil. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:12, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

• This appears to have been copied from Wikipedia:Help desk#Is there a problem with a search engine or bot, or am I experiencing a PEBCAK error?. @DennisPietras: please see WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:39, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

  @Redrose64:Point taken. I'm a newbie. DennisPietras (talk) 16:09, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

• Looks like Hedonil has been gone for a while. Other maintainers listed are: w:fr:User:Kelson and @Theopolisme:. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

  Pings and other project talk messages left. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:35, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

  @Evolution and evolvability and Xaosflux: For contacting the correct people, Thank you DennisPietras (talk) 03:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

  @Xaosflux: I don't think that this edit will have notified Kelson, because it's an interwiki link. Just leave a local link (as I did here), since notifications are sent cross-wiki. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:19, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

  I left the message over at frwiki in case Kelson only has email notification on over there. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:29, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Reporting: tools.wmflabs.org, tools no longer working

Greetings, For several days now, these two tools are timing out.

• https://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Catholicism&importance=Unknown-Class&quality=Start-Class 504 Gateway Time-out nginx/1.11.3
• http://tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/update.fcgi 502 Bad Gateway nginx/1.11.3

Asking for help here since this is way beyond me. Thanks. — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:59, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

• Duplicate, see above Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Is_there_a_problem_with_a_search_engine_or_bot.2C_or_am_I_experiencing_a_PEBCAK_error.3F. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:30, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Local comments on Commons files

Wondering if my idea on Template_talk:Editnotices/Namespace/File_talk#Local_comments_on_Commons_files is feasible/worth implementing. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:58, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Problem with WP:EMAIL

The sender's [...] email address is disclosed with each email

I was emailed by a blocked user a little while ago, but the "From:" address was just "wiki@wikimedia.org". Last time this happened (54 days ago) the user's email address was disclosed to me, and now when I click on the "Email this user" link I still get a warning that your email address WILL be disclosed to the recipient.

Is something wrong? Did the system change but the wording hasn't been updated yet?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:24, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Yes something changed. The sender of the email is now only listed as the "Reply-To". That means that the sender still discloses his email address, but the emails no longer appear to be sent directly by the user (this used to triggered spam scores significantly causing some emails never to arrive). When you reply to the user the answer will however still be sent directly to the original user and you can still find out the email address of this user if you don't reply. (You just need to know how to reveal that information in your email client). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:30, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hijiri88 it still is, it is just less obvious. We had to change the "from" address to @wikipedia to prevent all the spam systems out there from blocking us. The send email is in the reply-to field, depending on your email client it may or may not display, but clicking REPLY in most clients should populate it to your to: line. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:31, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. I didn't want to state it directly per WP:BEANS but I was more than a little concerned the system had been hacked. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:36, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Not really "all the spam systems"; it seems to have mainly affected mail from users with Yahoo email addresses to sites that honored Yahoo's DMARC configuration. Anomie⚔ 01:45, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Selecting only digits in a text

Hey, I've been dealing with this issue like for hours now, so this is the point I'm begging for help. So let's say I have string like this: "12abc2789ss, 112", and I want the result to be this: "122789112". I tried millions of match and replace codes (using String module) and I found this code: {{#invoke:String|match|s=142hav112|^%d*|ignore_errors=true}}, but it just gives me "142" :/. Normally, I write this code with javascript so easily like this:

   var mynumber = "hello12561".match(/\d+$/)[0];
   document.write(mynumber);

So, anyone knows how to do it? ~ HastaLaVi2 (talk) 22:21, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

How about {{#invoke:String|replace|142hav112|[^%d]||plain=false}}? Pppery 23:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Omg, so thank you @Pppery:. I'm using it right now. 😊 ~ HastaLaVi2 (talk) 07:37, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Infobox3cols child full width

When adding a {{Infobox3cols}} to an infobox as a child, how does one make it so that the child is the full width and not padded inside? --Zackmann08 (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 19:38, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Question about using color

How should I handle a color? Example:

... In doing a problem involving a given mass of some substance, the condition of the substance at any moment can be described by telling what its temperature is and what its volume is. If we know the temperature and volume of a substance, and that the pressure is some function of the temperature and volume, then we know the internal energy. One could say, “I do not want to do it that way. Tell me the temperature and the pressure, and I will tell you the volume. I can think of the volume as a function of temperature and pressure, and the internal energy as a function of temperature and pressure, and so on.”
— Feynman • Leighton • Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, Ch. 44-5

Username160611000000 (talk) 12:56, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

For sure, you should absolutely not use <font>, because it's obsolete, not just deprecated, but all the way wrong. <span style="color:red;"> (or whatever color you want) should work. --Unready (talk) 16:41, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@Username160611000000: Also, please be careful that you observe both MOS:COLOR and MOS:CONTRAST. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:04, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

@Username160611000000: There is also the template {{color}} which can be used. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:08, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Note that using red and blue, in particular, is unhelpful if you don't say "words in red represent X, words in blue Y" because red and blue are our link colors: blue for links to extant pages, and red for non-extant. Someone seeing volume is going to assume that it's a piped link to a page that has been deleted or hasn't yet been created. If you specifically explain your use of colors, that issue won't be a problem, however. Nyttend (talk) 13:07, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

@Username160611000000: I strongly recommend that you avoid relying on colour. While helpful for some, it can cause content to be inaccessible for the blind and colourblind unless done carefully. I'm not saying "don't use colour", I'm saying "make sure the content is still useful for people who can't see it". For example, to emphasize a single word, consider using something like <em style="font-style: normal; color: red;"> instead of <span style="color:red;">, because the former carries the semantic idea of emphasis from the tag choice while looking superficially the same. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 18:16, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Also, if your goal is simply to identify a particular word or phrase as important, then you can use <mark>...</mark> to highlight it like this, <u>...</u> to underline it, or <em>...</em> to mark it as words that should be emphasized. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Simultaneous editing

Has Wikipedia instituted a system allowing for simultaneous editing of articles? Over the past half-hour I have made several edits to 2017 Women's March, e.g. 18:53, 23 January 2017‎, each one taking about 10 minutes, during which several other edits were made, and somehow there was no edit conflict and the other edits did not seem to be lost. Yet, my final round of edits did have an edit conflict, so I discarded my changes. Has Wikipedia instituted an editing system wherein, upon saving an edit, it detects which paragraphs the user edited, and if there is no conflict in those paragraphs, it merges the user's edited paragraphs into the latest version? Is there an explanation of this? —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:23, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

It detects which section you clicked on the edit for; if no one else used the edit for the whole page, the same section, a parent section or a child section, then there is no edit conflict. Od Mishehu 20:02, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Od Mishehu: My edits today were always page edits, not section edits. Wikipedia is doing something it couldn't do before! —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:11, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Od Mishehu was wrong. Help:Edit conflict#Prevention says: "New since v.1.3 is CVS-style edit-conflict merging, based on the diff3 utility. This feature will only trigger an edit conflict if users attempt to edit the same few lines". mw:Release notes/1.3#Version 1.3.0, 2004-08-11 says: "Automatic merging of edit conflicts that don't directly interfere". It's possible some details are tweaked sometimes but editing different paragraphs in the same section has usually avoided an edit conflict for as far as I can remember. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

PrimeHunter: Thanks; see my comments at Help talk:Edit conflict#"New since v.1.3" is getting old. —Anomalocaris (talk) 22:21, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I now understand that Wikipedia has had some automatic edit conflict technology for over 10 years, but it still seems to me that it has been improved recently. Is this my imagination, or has automatic edit conflict technology recently improved? —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:52, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

It's been talked about, but I don't think it's been done. I can ask around, though. It's possible that a couple of related projects (e.g., visual diffs) have made a few tweaks. Everyone would like to see improvements here. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Copyvios gadget

There may be such a gadget already, it would be a very simple thing. I am wondering if we have or can make a gadget that adds a button to the top bar that automatically takes you directly to a copyvios report of the currently open page using Earwig's Copyvio Detector. This would be amazing to have when new page patrolling and I imagine would be quite simple to implement.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  02:20, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

One of the functionalities of the WP:MOREMENU gadget adds one such button (and a whole bunch of others). -- The Voidwalker ^Whispers 02:37, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I also found a script that earwig wrote specifically for the purpose User:The Earwig/copyvios.js.  InsertCleverPhraseHere  02:46, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Ah neat, I was just drafting up a standalone version just in case there was no existing one. Ah well. Cheers -- The Voidwalker ^Whispers 02:48, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

We need a page 'compare infobox local input with Wikidata value'

Infoboxes are getting an editor's link [edit on Wikidata] (a bit like v-t-e links). For example {{Infobox medical condition}} in Gout. Until Wikidata is perfect to be imported blindly, we could use a page that does straight value-comparision for parameters, between local input and WD values. (Maybe a SpecialPage that is opened by link [compare Wikidata]; likely the template needs preparation by adding all Property-ids somehow).

That link would show, per parameter side-by-side, local input and its Wikidata value. This being within Enwiki, the editor could change the local value, or the Wikidata value. -DePiep (talk) 15:10, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I think a more realistic feature would be coding templates to display a warning on preview but not save. It doesn't require MediaWiki changes and some templates already do this for other purposes like unknown parameters. The issue isn't limited to infoboxes. For example, {{Official website}} can generate Category:Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia, and Category:Wikipedia categories tracking Wikidata differences has many others. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Could be a better option. But I'm not looking for 'warnings', scaring off. Basically I'd say just show both values. Up to the editor what to do next (edit enwiki, edit WD, cancel). Simple editors basics IMO. -DePiep (talk) 16:07, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I believe there is a gadget on RU.WP that provides this functionality. --Izno (talk) 16:25, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

You might want to ask this question at WT:WPWD. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

If the advocates for Wikidata want the information there more accurate, they need more eyes to review & verify the information there. This would be a good way to achieve just that. -- llywrch (talk) 21:08, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

re Whatamidoing (WMF): I think not WT:WPWD. That would be one half end of the bridge between enwiki and WD I ask for. Point and problem is: today, there is no 1:1 connection between enwiki and WD. There is no en:HELP: page that explains the WD data model for template programmers (like me). No page that says: "en:article = d:item; en:pagename=d:QID". At this moment there are dozens of infoboxes being developed into some WD usage, development & usefulness collapsing under this complexity. For each and every infobox improvement, WD-related, one must study the WD data model itself, then to be thrown back in the end. There is no leading project that guides this wiki into smart & pleasant use of WD in infoboxes. -DePiep (talk) 01:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

If you want to talk to English Wikipedia editors who understand Wikidata, who know what's being done with those infoboxes (because they're the ones creating most of those Wikidata-enabled templates), and who have not only some ideas about what might be useful in terms of documentation, but also the knowledge necessary to write it, then it remains my impression that you will be more likely to find those editors at their WikiProject, instead of on this page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:42, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Temporary editing outage at 07:00 UTC Thursday

Just a quick note: Ops has to fix a database problem for the English Wikipedia (only), which means that there will be a temporary outage in ~13.5 hours (07:00 UTC Thursday/23:00 PST Wednesday). For those of you who remember the elaborate process last April and May,[1] this is nothing like this. You might have trouble saving a page for two minutes. Just wait a bit, and all should be well again.

If you're interested in the operational details, then phab:T155999 has most of the information. Ops uses IRC a lot, so you can also watch along at #wikimedia-operations.

[1] Note that said elaborate process is probably going to be repeated in April 2017.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Unless things have changed (I've no direct knowledge either way), this is expected to happen in about 15 minutes. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:45, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Very minor issue with signature date and time stamps

As the title says, this is something really minor and is really more of a mild annoyance (to me) than a major issue, but I still wanted to bring it up here. If I'm writing a message and submit it at 10:54 AM, for example, it will sometimes show as 10:53 AM after submitting it even though the page history shows 10:54 AM. Using an example from about 23 minutes ago, I started writing this message at 11:59 AM, and then the time changed to 12:00 PM, and when I previewed the message, the time in my signature showed 12:00 PM, but then when I submitted it, the time in my signature showed 11:59 AM, which I fixed with another edit, despite the page history showing otherwise. It seems that if you want the time—and the date as well if you, for example, start writing something at 11:59 PM, but don't submit it until 12:00 AM the next day—to be correct, you have to wait until the seconds are between 20 and 30, such as 12:00:20 PM or 12:00:30 PM. Again, it's only a mild annoyance, but I still don't understand it. I thought about it possibly being because sometimes you may submit something precisely at 12:00:00 PM, for example, but your computer's clock isn't synchronized perfectly at that point; however, if that's the case, the page history would have also shown 11:59 AM, but it didn't. Amaury (talk | contribs) 20:23, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I've noticed this too. It's probably because the server clocks are slightly out of sync with each other. Graham87 09:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Or the sign timestamp (~~~~) is taken at a slightly different moment than the es-line (for edit history) is. That small moment interval could be crossing a minute-separation. -DePiep (talk) 09:42, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

This has come up before. I would expect the timestamp in the page text to be equal to or earlier than the timestamp in the page history, but never later. This is because the MediaWiki parser needs to expand those tildes in the course of preparing the text that is to be committed; and the page history timestamp shows the moment that the commit occurred. Nothing can be done after the commit without compromising the integrity of the data files. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Aha, Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 139#2 minutes difference between time in signature and history. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:07, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Might be phab:T84843? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:32, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Very annoying change in "Show changes" keyboard shortcut

I make very heavy use of both the "Show preview" and "Show changes" edit buttons, or, more usually, their keyboard shortcuts: alt-shift-p and alt-shift-v.

Unfortunately, the latter shortcut has recently changed so that it now produces a pop-up asking me whether I want to use Visual Editor. I have no desire to use VE whatsoever (shudder), so this is extremely annoying - it is time-consuming and tedious to have to scroll all the way down to the edit box every time I want to preview the diff of my edit.

So can someone either change the shortcut for VE, or, failing that, provide a new shortcut for the "Show changes" button? If the latter, please remember to change the tooltip as well. Thank you.

--NSH001 (talk) 14:02, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@NSH001: please report this in phabricator. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:23, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ, Thanks for the reply, but how the fuck do I do that? And I really don't want the hassle of setting up some new account just to get this little oversight fixed. --NSH001 (talk) 14:29, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

You don't have to, you just click the "Login or Register MediaWiki" button on the login page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:33, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ, No hassle? You must be joking! See T156141 (and that's an understatement, though I suppose it might prove helpful in the long run). --NSH001 (talk) 16:15, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ, Thanks for tidying up the Phabricator report. Phabricator is so badly fucked up that I can't even see that report from my NSH001 account here, although I can access it without problems from my NSH002 account. I probably wasted nearly an hour trying repeatedly to "connect" NSH001 to Phabricator. I'm giving up for now, tho' I might have another go tomorrow. But I find Phabricator to be bureaucratic, unintuitve, badly designed and I think its "Help" is atrocious. But I suppose it's possible to get used to it given enough time and effort (which I'm unwilling to spend on it). --NSH001 (talk) 17:30, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF):, can you check what went wrong for NSH001 ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:44, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

NSH001 shows as an "unverified" account in Phabricator (NSH002 is verified). Did you verify your email address for NSH001? If you have specific problems with Phabricator and would like to elaborate which steps you considered confusing or where exactly you got stuck, your feedback is welcome on mw:Talk:Phabricator/Help. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thanks for that. At home I edit wp from two different laptops, one signed in as NSH001 and the other as NSH002. All my emails are on the NSH002 machine. So when it comes to the e-mail verification, NSH002 works fine, but NSH001 just takes me back to the register/signon page, so I just keep going around in circles. --NSH001 (talk) 22:30, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

"NSH001 just takes me back to the register/signon page" - after doing what exactly? Clicking a link in the verification email? Or something else? It's hard to help if it's unclear at which step you are. :) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 02:22, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

AKlapper (WMF) Yes, I click the link in the verification email, and it simply takes me all the way back to the beginning again. So I just wind up going around in circles, repeating the whole f***ing process again and again. Anyway, this morning I thought I'd try logging in from the "002" machine, but this time logged in to Wikipedia as NSH001. Slight improvement to start with: I can actually see the T156141 report from the 002 machine (but logged in as 001 in Wikipedia), but not logged in at all on Phabricator. And I still can't see it from the 001 machine. So I click on the T156141 link above, and this produces a "Check Your Email" message: "You must verify your email address to login. You should have a new email message from Phabricator with verification instructions in your inbox (xxxx@xxxx)." So I click on the "Send another email" button, wait a little while, go to my email program (Thunderbird), and I click on the verification link in that email. This time I get a "Unable to Verify Email" message: "The verification code you provided is incorrect, or the email address has been removed, or the email address is owned by another user. Make sure you followed the link in the email correctly and are logged in with the user account associated with the email address." with a "Rats!" button; if I click that button, it takes me to Phabricator, but not logged in. Exactly the same thing happens if I click on the original signon link provided by TheDJ.

Perhaps it is possible for someone to simply delete my unverified NSH001 account from Phabricator? I should then, in theory, be able to register in Phabricator as 001, but from my 002 machine?

Did you by any chance enter the same email addresses for both NSH001 and NSH002 when registering in Phabricator? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:54, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

AKlapper (WMF) Of course not. But just to be sure, I've just checked the confirmation emails, and they are certainly different. --NSH002 (talk) 12:50, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, then I'm really puzzled and don't know what went wrong here. :( It is possible to delete a Phabricator account so it could be recreated. If that's wanted, please request on mw:Talk:Phabricator/Help. Thanks! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, I'll do that (in due course). Thanks for trying. --NSH001 (talk) 15:41, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

AKlapper (WMF): Thanks for deleting it. I tried again this morning, with the same result. So I'm giving up on trying to get NSH001 connected, for now. I've already spent far too much time on this problem. At least I can access Phabricator from NSH002. --NSH001 (talk) 08:22, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

By the way, the original problem seems to have been fixed, both in Firefox and Chrome (at least). So a big THANK YOU to whoever did that, well done! But I really, really, don't appreciate being made to go through all this hassle. --NSH001 (talk) 09:07, 25 January 2017 (UTC) Oh no! Oh dear, the dreaded VE popup in Chrome is back. But Firefox seems to be OK at the moment. --NSH001 (talk) 19:01, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I've tested this in Firefox, and Alt+⇧ Shift+V doesn't do anything for me; by comparison, Alt+⇧ Shift+P fires the "Show preview" button as expected. The HTML for those two buttons is

<input id="wpPreview" name="wpPreview" tabindex="6" title="Preview your changes. Please use this before saving. [p]" accesskey="p" type="submit" value="Show preview"/>
<input id="wpDiff" name="wpDiff" tabindex="7" title="Show the changes you made to the text [v]" accesskey="v" type="submit" value="Show changes"/>

There is nothing significantly different between these in terms of which attributes are present, or what their values contain; so as there is now no working key sequence for the "Show changes" button, I believe that its title= and accesskey= attributes violate WCAG. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:29, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Redrose, thanks for that. I normally use Chrome for editing, but I've just tried in Firefox, and the behaviour in FF is exactly as you describe. So the behaviour of the keyboard shortcut differs between the two browsers. --NSH001 (talk) 22:30, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Please go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing, scroll down to an item that's labeled "Temporarily disable the visual editor", and tell me what it says. There may be a dropdown menu immediately underneath that; if present, please tell me what that says, too. It's probably good to check both of your accounts, since they may have different settings. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:07, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), tickbox is checked for that on both accounts. Both are labelled "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta". There is no drop-down menu there. Please also note my comments above about the problem disappearing and then coming back. --NSH001 (talk) 20:45, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added that information to the bug report. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:56, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

• Just wanted to say thanks for raising this. It's a minor issue for me but I do make infrequent use of the "show changes" feature, and used to make infrequent use of the keyboard shortcut. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:07, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Tagged files are being treated as NA-Class

I created a category to hold files tagged as part of the Indianapolis Colts WikiProject. However, when I tried to apply the tag to File talk:Peyton Manning.jpg, the file was categorized in the NA class category. What did I do wrong? Lepricavark (talk) 15:04, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

@Lepricavark: You did nothing wrong--the tag automatically assesses most non-article spaces as N/A. Do you actually want to assess an file? --Izno (talk) 15:10, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes I do. What is the procedure for that? Even specifying that it is a file didn't work. Lepricavark (talk) 15:13, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Indianapolis Colts}} has no file class enabled. See Template:WPBannerMeta#Assessment. You could add |file=yes next to |category=yes and |template=yes to enable a file class but I suggest you first discuss it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indianapolis Colts. Many WikiProjects have few images hosted here at the English Wikipedia and may not want a file class. Your example File:Peyton Manning.jpg is at Commons. I don't know how common it is for a WikiProject to create a file talk page to tag a file which is actually at Commons with no file page here. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:05, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for all of the information. It took me several minutes to figure out what you were directing me to even though it was right in front of my nose. I guess I'll hold off on tagging files for the time being, although I don't think there is any harm in creating the ability to tag them if any appropriate files need to be tagged. Thanks again for your help! Lepricavark (talk) 17:31, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Most templates for reporting users will trigger a mention to them

See Wikipedia_talk:Notifications#Checkuser_and_admin_questions. ({{ping}} me if replying here) Ugog Nizdast (talk) 01:44, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

This is because they contain links to the user pages. As I have explained many times, here and elsewhere. Also, as described at WP:Echo. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:03, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Page history failed - perhaps due to diacritic?

As part of a response to an inquiry at OTRS I wanted to provide a link to the revision history page for Ika Hügel-Marshall. When I clicked on the link, I received the following response: No revisions found Page history

I changed ü to u, and it worked: Page history

Is this a known problem?--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:27, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

This isn't really an English Wikipedia problem - but a question about the external tool. Sphilbrick You can check for x-tools bugs or enter one here. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

The Xtools are known for often being very slow, timing out or responding poorly. The tool is currently working so poorly for me that it's hard to say which url's are valid. Both your url's seem to work for me sometimes and fail at other times. The second url has '+' instead of '_' for the space so there are two changes. I assume 'u' only works because Ika Hugel-Marshall redirects to Ika Hügel-Marshall and the tool can follow redirects. It may just be a coincidence that the tool was replying correctly when you tried u and not ü. It's possible the tool automatically redirects '_' to '+' when it's working and you copied the second url after being redirected by the tool. I get inconsistent results. MediaWiki:Histlegend uses {{FULLPAGENAMEE}} which makes underscores for spaces. If it used {{urlencode:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}} then it would make '+' instead. mw:Manual:PAGENAMEE encoding discusses some of the differences. It's hard to investigate whether MediaWiki:Histlegend should change when the tool is currently replying so poorly. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:44, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

I should have thought about the redirect possibility, good catch.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:26, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: I've never had any major problems when using this tool to analyse page histories. Graham87 10:35, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I've bookmarked that tool (and it did work on this article).--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:41, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Template edit request

Hi

I'm trying to add a field called Page numbers to the template Free-content_attribution so it appears as a suggested field in Visual Editor. I did a lot of work on the template last year but have completely forgotten how to do it, I'm sure I'm 99% of the way there, could a non muggle fix it for me pretty please? I'm just going round in circles.......

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 17:43, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

You forgot to replace "license statement URL" when you copied code from elsewhere in [42]. I fixed it and also added the new parameter in paramOrder.[43] PrimeHunter (talk) 18:50, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks so much PrimeHunter, I do these things so infrequently I have to learn the whole process again every time.... I'm also thinking about creating a field for chapters but no idea how to get a sentence of text to appear when something is added to a field (e.g taken from the chapter NAMEOFCHAPTER) but the sentence does not appear if the field is left blank, is this even possible? --John Cummings (talk) 12:55, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings: For your example text: {{#if:{{{chapter|}}}|taken from the chapter {{{chapter}}}}} PrimeHunter (talk) 13:17, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Template name please

Resolved

Please can someone direct me to the template that says something like "This article is a stub which could be improved by adding a translation of material from fr:Example"? I've tried all the obvious search terms but can't find it anywhere. Thanks, Certes (talk) 14:31, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

You probably want one of these: Category:Expand by language Wikipedia templates -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:40, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks zzuuzz, that's exactly what I was looking for. Certes (talk) 15:23, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Improved diff view

Some time between my edit made at 19:51 on 23 January 2017 and 00:31 on 24 January 2017 (see my Contributions), something changed in the view of diffs. When I go to an article and click on "Revision History", then click on "Compare selected revisions", everything looks as it always has looked, with the two columns for the previous and the new version. (Sometimes I have the "Improved diff view" enabled and sometimes I don't. When I have the "Improved diff view" enabled, it stays enabled until I disable or get rid of it, and I've had it enabled for a while now.) But sometime between those two edits, something changed. Now, there is the small green triangle, then the improved diff view in a box, and then, below that box, there is another green triangle that wasn't there before, with a narrow light-gray horizontal box below it, and after that the two usual before-and-after columns. When I click on the second green triangle, the improve diff view goes away, and then there are two green triangles, one above the other. Can you look to see if anything was done to my account or pages in that time period so that now there are two green triangles instead of one? Can you tell me how to get rid of the second one and the horizontal gray bar below it?  – Corinne (talk) 02:14, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I get two green triangles in Firefox with wikEd enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. If I enable wikEdDiff instead then I only get one. If I log out then I also get two with WikEd and one with WikEdDiff. MediaWiki:Gadget-wikEd.js imports User:Cacycle/wikEd.js which hasn't been edited since August. MediaWiki:Gadget-wikEdDiff.js imports User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff.js which was edited at 20:37 on 23 January 2017‎ by Addshore, but that's not the one producing two triangles. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:54, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

It looks like it was my change yesterday that caused this. I have fixed the issue in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff.js&diff=761704703&oldid=761597994. Let me know if the issue has gone away for you / if you spot anything else! ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 10:01, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. It's fixed for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:22, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

It's fixed for me, also. Thank you.  – Corinne (talk) 15:29, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Class template: eyeballs, please

I've done some work on an update to {{class}}, which renders the assessments in WikiProject templates. In particular, the update would a) implement the template in Lua (Module:Class), and b) move the class definitions (labels, colours, icons, etc.) to a JSON file (Template:Class/definition.json).

I'm currently waiting on a CfD to rename Category:Unassessed-Class articles to Category:Unassessed articles, at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2016 December 20. In the meantime, I'd appreciate some eyeballs on the proposed update: {{class}} is transcluded on over six million pages, after all. There's some discussion at Template talk:Class, in particular at § Idea: define classes in JSON, and I've set up some comparison tables at Template:Class/testcases.

In particular, WhatamIdoing commented on the CfD is that since we minimize changes to such highly-transcluded pages, it's worth bundling any changes into as few edits as possible. If you've got ideas for improving or tweaking {{class}}, now's the time to make them. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 22:56, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Location map

Can anyone explain me how to create a location map? Xaris333 (talk) 21:50, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean the map image (for example, File:Lancashire UK location map.svg) or the template (for example, {{Location map United Kingdom Lancashire}})? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:15, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I want only a part of File:Cyprus adm location map.svg. For example Limassol District. Xaris333 (talk) 20:59, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I see that you have created File:Limassol District.png, the file description page of which has at least three false claims: it states "this map is part of a series of location maps with unified standards: SVG as file format, standardised colours and name scheme" and also claims to be valid SVG. It is not SVG (valid or otherwise) at all: it is in fact a PNG file, something very different. It also does not fit in with the established name scheme. The colours I haven't checked. I suggest that you try WP:GL/MAP; or you could ask Nilfanion (talk · contribs), who has created hundreds of location maps, which are not just valid SVG, they also fit in with the other established conventions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:58, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

The easiest way of creating a map series for Cyprus would be to use Inkscape to clip File:Cyprus adm location map.svg to the area of interest - see this tutorial on clipping. With a bit of care you can ensure round-number boundary coordinates too (ie 33.00 not 33.014994). That isn't the best way as you'd have the code for the full map still, but its better than having to create a whole new map for yourself.--Nilfanion (talk) 15:39, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: To control the coordinates of the cropped map, you need to define the parameters of the clip mask precisely. First draw a rectangle in about the right area, then use the inbuilt XML editor (Ctrl+Shift+X). The final definition is the rectangle you drew and should be something like:

<rect id="rect2957" width="410.73428" height="246.44061" x="213.31215" y="319.45999" />

If you can't find this, try opening the SVG with a text editor, the final element just before the </svg> at end of file will be the new rectangle. Once you find it, adjust these 4 parameters to define the boundary. For instance, if you adjust them to:

width="467.037" height="271.7857" x="420.3333" y="434.8571"

The resulting map has boundaries of: North 35, West 33, East 34, South 34.5. A bit of calculation is needed to work out parameters for the circumstances. For arbitrary boundaries of N, W, E, S you need to set the parameters to the results of following equations:

• width = (E-W)*467.037
• height = (N-S)*543.571
• x = (W-32.1)*467.037
• y = (35.8-N)*543.571

A little bit of trial-and-error may be needed to find the right boundaries for the precise map you want. Of course for all of this you need to be working with the original SVG from Commons.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:21, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia has Extension:ImageMap for translating a graphic element in an image file into an active link to an article. See Wikipedia:Picture_tutorial#Image_maps. — Cpiral§Cpiral 05:41, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Depending upon what you what to do, you might want to look into <maplink>. I think this draft documentation is probably the most complete (there's a couple of pages there). I've used it at Wikivoyage: via the visual editor, and it's pretty cool. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

@Cpiral: Image maps are not location maps. See for example London King's Cross railway station: the image below the first photo is a location map. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:40, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Tag:2017 source edit

I can't seem to find a place specifically for discussing tags, so I guess here will ahve to do. Can someone tell me what this tag is supposed to mean? Is there any reason I should care when I see it in my watchlist? And so forth? thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:01, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Special:Tags includes "2017 source edit" is an "Edit made using the 2017 wikitext editor". It is claimed to be a modest proposal to replace the wikitext editor and is being discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal to submit blockers on replacing our wikitext editor. Johnuniq (talk) 04:41, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:25, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

It is not a propsal to replace any of the multiple wikitext editors currently in use. It is a wikitext mode within VisualEditor (e.g., faster switching back and forth for users of the visual editor, access to the mw:citoid service within the wikitext mode, etc.). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:16, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

• The tag is not informative, and causing confusion. 'wikitext editor' is not mentioned, '2017' is used as a version number not a time, 'source' is not explained (but does not seem to be WP:RS related). 'edit' is fine, but superfluous in an editsummary (about every tag can have 'edit' added). Could it be changed? -DePiep (talk) 13:06, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
  • If nothing else, MediaWiki:tag-visualeditor-wikitext. Anomie⚔ 14:57, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Page view stats on graph not scaling correctly for John Maynard Keynes

Page view stats on graph for these state is not scaling correctly for John Maynard Keynes when the graph is superimposed on another economist such as Marx. Keyes goes up to 2500 over the last month, while Marx goes much higher. However, when the two graphs are superimposed in the superimpose mode of the graph package, then the scale of Keynes only seems to register up to about 500 hits. The data being graphed for Keynes seems not to match the results you get when you plot Keynes alone. Is there a way to get accurate graphs in superimpose-graphs mode? (I am giving Keynes here as a single example and assume the scaling problem exists on other pages as well for the page count graphs in general). ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 18:12, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Please give a url with the problem or steps to reproduce it. I see no problem at https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&range=latest-20&pages=John_Maynard_Keynes%7CKarl_Marx but I don't even know whether this tool is what you refer to with "superimpose mode of the graph package". PrimeHunter (talk) 18:40, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that is the graph though when I run it on my desktop the results look very different and reflect the scaling issue I identified in my previous note [44]. Your graph looks like it preserves the data better though I get very different results when I appear to do the same superimposition of page count graphs that PrimeHunter has just provided above. ManKnowsInfinity (talk) 16:38, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I still see no problem. Your link counts page views for the redirect Marx and not its target Karl Marx. Neither graph shows Keynes around 500 for me. Maybe it depends on the browser. I use Firefox 51.0.1 on Windows Vista. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:16, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

@ManKnowsInfinity: What you're seeing at [45] (John Maynard Keynes and Marx) versus [46] (Keynes and Karl Marx) is the logarithmic scale. This automatically shown so you can better see fluctuations of pageviews for Marx, which is very low compared to Keynes, while Karl Marx receives more comparable pageviews. You can turn this off by unchecking the "Logarithmic scale" option above the chart (direct link), or turn it off permanently by unchecking Settings > "Automatically use logarithmic scale if applicable". Hope this helps — MusikAnimal ^talk 06:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I may have misread. You simply typed in Marx when you meant Karl Marx. Hope the info about the log scale is helpful, nonetheless :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 07:04, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

ListeriaBot is making destructive updates - why, and how to remedy this?

Resolved

For seven sequential "update" edits, on roughly a daily basis, there has been User talk:ListeriaBot#Destructive revision by ListeriaBot of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by nationality/Israel. There has been no evident response to my message there and also by the Bot boss whom I alerted on User talk:Magnus Manske#ListeriaBot is making destructive updates - why?. For these seven edits I've manually performed undo with an edit summary for each, as seen in the page's recent Revision history. What are the steps I can take to get this ongoing Bot action explained and remedied? -- Deborahjay (talk) 08:25, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@Deborahjay: Unfortunately, this is a known problem with no solution yet. See Talk:List of women linguists #Sorting, correcting, robot wars; set aside a good block of time for it. ... AAMOF, not just that section but the whole bloody talk page, all four sections.

The problem is that the page is bot-built from Wikidata, which is a whole other site to learn to edit, and manual changes to the page don't last past the next daily bot pass. The developer of that bot thought it was completely obvious from the note at the top of the page. He's dead wrong, and I'm afraid you're another victim. Maybe we (collective "we") will get it solved soon, but I sure can't do it by myself. --Thnidu (talk) 09:06, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

The page in question is Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by nationality/Israel and the messages at the top of the page include "This list is generated from data in Wikidata ... Edits made within the list area will be removed on the next update!". That should be sufficient to show that it would be a waste of time to edit the page. What is actually wanted? You can always make a user subpage and copy whatever you want to there. Johnuniq (talk) 09:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

"Edits made within the list area will be removed on the next update" means content saved between {{Wikidata list}} and {{Wikidata list end}}. You can save something outside that. The list was created by the bot in project space with a text saying what will happen so it seems fair to me that the bot claims ownership. You can ask the bot operator what the inclusion criteria are and whether they might be changed but edit warring with the bot to include items is pointless. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:33, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

OP clarifies: I'm working systematically ONLY in Wikidata to anglicize names (labels) and add information (description and DOB/DOD) to items appearing incomplete on this list (as I explained in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by nationality/Israel#Anglicizing this list via Wikidata labels and descriptions) I would then expect the Bot to update the list with content I added to Wikidata. I've visually inspected some of the (many) deletions in several post-Bot updates to the list - and can't figure out what they have to do with - what, a sudden drop in the subject's notability? Whom, besides the ListeriaBot operator (who's as yet incommunicative) might I consult further? -- Deborahjay (talk) 14:43, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

It was the creator of the page, Ipigott, who edited it so as to kick off the bot updating. I'm also pinging Fram for information. Thincat (talk) 15:05, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@Deborahjay: The bot was written by a volunteer who did a lot of off-wiki work to produce what they hope will be a useful program. It works as described in the documentation here. This list is maintained by the bot because the templates on that page request the bot to keep it up to date. The history of that page shows you have reverted the bot seven times—that's not going to work because it is a program doing what the templates on the page tell it to do. Regarding "who's as yet incommunicative", bear in mind that you have not yet responded at your talk (background). If you can give a couple of examples of what you think is a problem, people here might be able to say something useful. What did you edit at Wikidata and what did you expect the bot to do which it did not? Johnuniq (talk) 00:55, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

@Deborahjay: The report SPARQL code imposed a limit on the number of items returned from wikidata. I'm presuming that the subset returned was probably selected with some reference to the last edit date in wikidata, and that your edits in wikidata thus caused those items to be outside the subset returned by the report. I've removed the limit in the report, and, for instance, Aliza Rosen d:Q6980025, one of those you edited and which had disappeared, is now back in the report. Perhaps easier in future to bring this to the report owners at WT:WPWIR --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:35, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I've left explanations on the background on Deborahjay's talk page. While we have had discussions on potential conflicts between human editors and ListeriaBot in connection with lists on the mainspace, I do not think a WikiProject list of redlinks requires special attention here.--Ipigott (talk) 08:11, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Open Graph Protocol

Please can anyone point me to prior discussion (here, on Meta/MediaWiki, or Phabricator etc.) of using the Open Graph protocol on Wikipedia? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:03, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

There are a few tasks I could find:

• phab:T32113
• phab:T33338
• phab:T142243

I hope that helps. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:09, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Block length malfunction

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156453

I'm quite a fan of doing blocks for lengths of time which are not in the dropdown lists. When I try a block for 6 hours, such as at 192.0.2.16 (talk · contribs · block log) it results in a block for 4 decades, 7 years, 27 days, 17 hours, 40 minutes and 56 seconds. It seems to happen for any custom time. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:20, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

By the way, ProcseeBot (talk · contribs) is going nuts with this. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:29, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Confirmed and submitted bug. Max Semenik (talk) 21:31, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Confirmed when using any time not in the dropdown list. And I've blocked ProcseeBot. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 21:41, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Zzuuzz has since unblocked it. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:43, 28 January 2017 (UTC).

Based on the content of the block list, the actual block duration appears to be correct. The comment is the thing that's wrong. It's translating the epoch time of the expiry into the comment, instead of translating the duration of the block into the comment. It's still a bug, just not the one it seems to be at first. --Unready (talk) 21:49, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

4 decades, 7 years, 27 days (etc.) just happens to be 00:00, 1 January 1970 (UTC) subtracted from the current time. Why 00:00, 1 January 1970 (UTC)? That is the datum zero for Unix times. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:00, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

It's translating the epoch time of the expiry into the comment, instead of translating the duration of the block into the comment. --Unready (talk) 00:01, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

There's been a patch submitted. --Unready (talk) 00:01, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Just as a note (unsure if relevant) but it's also affecting blocks made before the relevant bug was introduced, e.g. the 20-minute block of user:Awkward42 in 2013 is displayed as "4 decades, 3 years, 205 days, 13 hours, 41 minutes and 30 seconds". Thryduulf (talk) 02:28, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Only the display of the block log is wrong - the actual block is still the same. Legoktm (talk) 09:46, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

This has now been fixed. Block lengths are back to normal. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 18:12, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-05

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

Recent changes

• The OAuth management interfaces now look slightly different. [47]

Changes this week

• ElectronPdfService will be enabled by default on Meta and German Wikipedia. This is a new way to get articles as PDF files you can download. It will come to more wikis later. [48]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from January 31. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from February 1. It will be on all wikis from February 2 (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Tech team will develop more tools to handle harassment of Wikimedia editors. The goal is to give the communities better tools to find, report and evaluate harassment. They will also work on more effective blocking tools. [49][50]
• The Wikimedia technical community is doing a Developer Wishlist survey. Developers can propose ideas before 31 January 23:59 UTC. This is soon.

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

18:45, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Some of my javascript tools stopped working

// this adds a prefixindex function to find subpages of the current page. written by Mr.Z-man at my request
addOnloadHook( function () {
  addPortletLink("p-tb", wgServer+wgArticlePath.replace("$1", "Special:PrefixIndex/"+wgPageName+"/"), "Subpages", "t-subpages", "See all subpages of this page");
});

Can anyone suss out why this isn't working anymore (doesn't show up in my sidebar)?

And perhaps, any idea why User:Js/urldecoder.js doesn't show up for me anymore either? –xeno^talk 20:53, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

• @TheDJ, AlexSm, and Anomie: dear friends, if you have time ^ –xeno^talk 20:56, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

In User:Xeno/monobook.js change

window.popupStructure = menus;

to

window.popupStructure = 'menus';

By the way, I also have a script doing this: User:PrimeHunter/Subpages.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:04, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter, that worked perfectly. Any ideas about User:Js/urldecoder.js ? –xeno^talk 21:49, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Help with Lua template

Hello. I don't have much experience with Lua, nor with debugging it. Could someone explain why File:Coonoor bazaar.jpg is showing for {{pam}} when that language is included in c:Module:Multilingual description/sort? If you could tell me how you found out, even better. Thanks! Magog the Ogre (t • c) 00:54, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what "File:Coonoor bazaar.jpg is showing for {{pam}}" means but c:Module:Multilingual description/sort mentions pam and not Pam. Template names are case insensitive on the first character but parameter names are not so I think you should have said |pam= in [51]. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:19, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Problem archived without being solved/fixed

Greetings, Today I noticed problem was archived at:

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_152#Is there a problem with a search engine or bot, or am I experiencing a PEBCAK error?

without being corrected. Is there any way to "bring this back" here? Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:41, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

reminder?/problem not solved

Hi! I'm a newbie, so I don't know if I am going to do this right. In Archive 152 numbers 149 and 149.1 2 of us noted problems that still do not appear to be resolved. The problem is way above my head, but at least I've learned that it isn't a pebcak error! Please help to get the tools working if you can. As best I can determine from the previous sections it has someting to do with tools.wmflabs.org/enwp10/cgi-bin/ @Xaosflux and JoeHebda: Thanks, DennisPietras (talk) 21:27, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi DennisPietras and JoeHebda, this looks like it is about the broken enwp10 tool on Tool Labs. This tool is maintained by volunteers, and we have not been able to contact them. That tool is not supported by the English Wikipedia community members. The links for it on the genetics project page could be removed (you may want to follow up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Genetics first). — xaosflux ^Talk 22:01, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux and JoeHebda:I don't know how it happened, but it is now working!!! (one wasn't enough!) Thank you DennisPietras (talk) 02:21, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Good news - it looks like when it is up, it references a page that may be watched Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index - leaving this here for someone searching VPT in the future. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:43, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Making certain warning templates visible on mobile

I raised this as a village pump proposal last September: changing some warning templates - like {{hoax}} and {{afd}} - so that they become visible on mobile. (At the moment, all problem templates are condensed to an ignorable grey-text "Page issues" on the mobile view, even for something as ominous as an AfD'd medical advice hoax.) The templates would have to be cut down for size, perhaps only displaying the "issue=" field of the amboxes.

The proposal received unanimous support for {{hoax}} and broad support for some other templates, but stalled with minimal responses when I took it to WikiProject Templates. How technically feasible would this change be? Is it something that can be implemented at the template level? --McGeddon (talk) 10:04, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Resurrect the discussion and ask for a formal close, perhaps? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:47, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

It is very much "technically feasible". The problem is more who is gonna do it, what will the exact chosen solution be and have you convinced the mobile team of WMF and have you convinced the rest of the community (even though it seems you have, most of the community will only evaluate AFTER the change has been made). Some mockups might be appreciated. I personally have done something inspired on this in my personal CSS, which I will demonstrate during the CREDIT showcase this Wednesday. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Protection tab

There appears to be a problem with the labelling of the protection tab when the article is protected. It should show "Change protection" but it is now giving some foreign script label. Keith D (talk) 22:25, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

It works for me, e.g. on Jesusian in all skins. Please give an example page. What is your skin? Does it happen in both Vector and MonoBook? It may be under a "More" tab in Vector. What is your language setting at Special:Preferences? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:18, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

It is wrong on this page, which is not where I first spotted it, and also on the Jesusian article you noted. I am using Monobook, with language set to en-GB - British English. It is OK in the vector link that you gave. Keith D (talk) 00:06, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I also see the wrong text "تحفظ جي سطح بدلايو" with MonoBook and en-gb in my admin account (only admins have the tab). Google Translate says it's Sindhi (sd) for "Security Level Change". In MonoBook and sd I see a different text "تحفظ بدلايو" Google translates as "Security Change". Maybe somebody tried to change the Sindhi text from the local version of "Security Change" to "Security Level Change", but edited the wrong message. I haven't found other skin and language combinations where it's wrong. uselang=qqx says "(monobook-action-unprotect)" at the message. Where is this defined? I would normally expect MediaWiki:monobook-action-unprotect, and MediaWiki:monobook-action-unprotect/en-gb for the wrong text, but those are undefined. Do MonoBook messages come from somewhere else? We could maybe fix it locally by creating MediaWiki:monobook-action-unprotect/en-gb with an English message but I suspect it affects all Wikimedia wikis. It can only be tested with an admin account so I'm unable to test it at other wikis. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:51, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Was able to replicate - think its something wrong from upstream on the translation wiki; I've localized the default and gb variants to the same message - try now? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:47, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

While uselang=qqx usually helps, it can be misleading in some cases. In this case monobook-action-unprotect was not defined so it falls back to unprotect. Anomie⚔ 03:30, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

• Verified, this is coming from upstream feed at translatewiki.net. I tried to create an account over there, its a bit of an annoying process. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:56, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

The same editor has changed a lot of en, en-gb, en-ca and simple messages from English to Sindhi. Most are no longer the current edit and all non-current I examined had been reverted. Four edits are still current: [52][53][54][55]. The fourth is live here for admins in [56]. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:37, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

They made those edits quite some time ago, why is it presenting now? –xeno^talk 02:49, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

To be fair, we don't actually know from above - @Keith D: do you know that last time that the tab had the expected label on it for you? — xaosflux ^Talk 02:51, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

It appears that translations weren't being imported for en-gb for some reason, see how the history for that file is lacking in "Translation updater bot" commits until recently, when it suddenly imported a lot of en-gb messages recently. I don't know why it wasn't importing before, or what exactly fixed it, or if it's really completely fixed now. The appropriate fix is to revert the bogus translations. Anomie⚔ 03:30, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I have no idea when it was last correct, but it appears to have been fixed now. Thanks. Keith D (talk) 11:57, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Spotted another one when editing a protected page the red box above the edit window that shows the entry from the protection log at the end of this in brackets it gives "(hist | ترميميو)" Keith D (talk) 12:38, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

That one is coming from MediaWiki:protect_change/en-gb, which I've already reverted on translatewiki. If I understand the whole process correctly, that reversion will probably make its way here by around 2017-02-01 03:00 UTC (assuming the import from translatewiki to MediaWiki's i18n files happens at some point today, it should then be picked up by the daily l10nupdate run that begins daily at 02:00 and usually takes around a half hour). Anomie⚔ 13:23, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Example. It's MediaWiki:Protect change/en-gb, the fourth in my 02:37 post but displayed in another place than my own example. Anomie fixed it at translatewiki.net [57] so we should eventually get the fix automatically. Note Help:Preferences#Internationalisation. By choosing en-gb you often get other interface messages than most users. That could cause confusion for an administrator communicating with others. Compare for example article creation in en and en-gb. en-gb displays the MediaWiki default while we have customized en. You may have encountered a new issue: Interface errors in MediaWiki itself may last longer in en-gb because fewer people use it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:28, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Adding links to statustop

Does anyone know how I can add a link to my statustop? I am planning to link all of the statuses (offline, around, busy etc) to a userpage explaining what each means, like that I use busy for working on-wiki, and around for "on computer but not on wiki". Is this possible? Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:40, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

The documentation at Template:Statustop shows a link parameter which will normally make the same link for each status. Is that OK? If you want different links then you have to do a little coding, e.g. use mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##switch on {{User:Iazyges/Status}}, or use |link=Page#{{User:Iazyges/Status}} to link different sections or anchors on the same page. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:15, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Section editing is broken in mobile interface

First off, I don't have a mobile device (my mother has an Apple iPad Air 2, but she's thirty miles away). I've got a desktop, running Windows XP and Firefox 51.0.1, so I'm actually using the "Mobile view" link found at the bottom of most pages.

If I visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries#Akwaibom stubs (which has .m. so is mobile view), and click the pencil icon to the right of that heading, the URL bar of the browser changes to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Discoveries#/editor/T-2 but nothing else happens - no editor is started.

I did this as follow up to Thnidu's experiences at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Akwaibom stubs?, where despite my instructions on how to edit Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries/Log/2017/January#Akwaibom stubs, they ended up editing the first section of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries page, and not the intended section of the transcluded page. So two of us have different experiences with mobile interface editing, and neither work as they should. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:46, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The same happens to me using mobile in a desktop browser. The section heading is transcluded from Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Discoveries/Log/2017/January. The pencil icon only works on the mobile version of the transcluded page where it produces the url https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Discoveries/Log/2017/January#/editor/2. The desktop version produces a correct edit link when the section is transcluded on another page but the mobile version fails. It's the samne on other pages with transcluded sections, e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2017 January 27. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:46, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Tested this with an iPhone. The pencil icon won't respond when tapped at the aforementioned section. Have to hold down and open a new tab to get to the edit interface. MM ('"HURRRR?) ^(Hmmmmm.) 13:35, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Was this reported in phabricator yet ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:31, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

None of the above people have posted anything in Phab recently, and I can't find the specific example anywhere on Phab. Do you want to file it? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

"Limn"

https://reportcard.wmflabs.org seems to have ceased data updates; any insight as to why? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 15:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

See https://analytics.wikimedia.org. I have to agree that this minefield of legacy systems is getting seriously confusing, with https://stats.wikimedia.org, https://reportcard.wmflabs.org and https://analytics.wikimedia.org, https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews and loads of related and often defunct pages on mediawiki.org. Maybe Millimetric and MusikAnimal can help insert some way pointer banners or something into the legacy sites to make it easier to find the newer systems ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:18, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Re-ping Milimetric —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: This also doesn't seem to be functioning properly (no graph is generated for pageviews). Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 16:27, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the reportcard and vital-signs tools are acting up, but for per-site data across all pages you can also use toollabs:siteviews — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:32, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Responding to each point:

* Erik Zachte, the maintainer of the reportcard and wikistats is transitioning to a researcher role, so these old pieces of infrastructure are seeing less frequent updates. We are hard at work on designing a new Wikistats and are going to start a community consultation on that very soon. Once this UI is implemented, it will consolidate metrics from all over the place (vital signs, reportcard, wikistats) in one place. The back-end data pipelines are mostly done and ready to support the new UI. So things will be uncomfortable and out-dated for just a while longer, and then will start getting better for good. Until then, we have m:Research:Data and m:Research:Data/Dashboards which try to help centralize the madness.

* The reason pageviews don't work on the vital-signs is that AdBlock software has a ridiculous global rule that blocks our pageview API. So if you disable your AdBlock for that page it should work fine.

Hope that helps, happy to expand on anything. Milimetric (talk) 19:12, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Wondering if new database reports can be generated to help identify improper use of nonfree files

We already have several very useful database reports that aid in the identification and removal of clear NFCC violations (eg, nonfree files outside mainspace, overused nonfree files). Would it be possible to generate similar tools to

• identify nonfree filesused in BLPs (articles in the the category "living persons")
• identify nonfree files in articles with "list" in the title?

Or are these requests overspecific, unfeasible, or just more trouble than the resulting benefits would justify? They target some of the most common NFCC violations, which aren't easy to identify systematically. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 23:03, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Note that false positives are possible with both those new queries, e.g. Weird Al Yankovic#New look and career to present (a BLP) contains an allowed non-free image and The A List (album) contains a non-free image of the album cover. Whatever process you use with these reports will need to accommodate these. Thryduulf (talk) 02:38, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Have you looked on Quarry? Also someone informed me that

• http://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/nfcc/NFCC_BLP.html
• http://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/nfcc/pages_with_excessive_nfcc.html

have existed for some time. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:56, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the links, especially the BLP-related link. Almost 6000 hits! Looks like more than half of them are clear-cut violations, so it will take me at least a few days to clean these up . . . The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by many administrators since 2006. (talk) 21:13, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Template misinterprets language code "se"

Resolved

In the infobox on Nordic countries I noticed that the term Davveriikkat is given as "Sami" and linked to Sami language, which redirects to Sami languages. The Sami languages are a language family, not a single language, and the word Davveriikkat is specifically North Sami. Sure enough, North Sami is the most widely spoken Sami language by far, but it cannot be equated with the whole family; it's not "Standard Sami" any more than, for example, South Sami or Skolt Sami, which have their own written standards. Analogies would be to gloss the language code "ru" as "Slavic language", "es" as "Romance language" or "en" as "Germanic language", which would obviously be offensive and ignorant nonsense, and just because the Sami languages are far more obscure and have few speakers isn't a reason to offend their speakers (intentionally or not) by incorrectly implying that there is only a single Sami language (properly known as North Sami). This appears to be a mistake in the template {{ISO 639 name}}, so I can't correct it myself. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:08, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I just realised I can request an edit to the template, and have done so. That should take care of the issue. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 05:15, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Now fixed. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 07:40, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Galápagos tortoise has very long list of synonyms in sidebar

Copied from the talk page for Galápagos tortoise:

Do we really need the entire long list of synonyms in the sidebar? It creates a large space between the lead and the rest of the article and it makes mobile users have to scroll through lots of text before they can even read the article.

Do any of y'all know this should be dealt with? IWillBuildTheRoads (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

In the normal web view it is collapsed. We would want the mobile view to also collapse stuff that is collapsed. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:33, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't even see an option to collapse the list in mobile. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:41, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

We have a general rule that content should not be collapsed. "Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading" Data can be collected in Wikidata and just because there is a field in the infobox, doesn't mean it has to be filled for every article to completeness. Remember that some people don't use Javascript. Others use mobile, kiwix and an assortment of other non-desktop browser technologies that do not support collapsing. The problem is not mobile not supporting collapsing here, mobile just makes it more noticeable that collapsing should not be expected to work for all readers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:50, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Script help

Can a javascript expert work out why User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD2.js doesn't work in the Modern skin. Mr.Z-man hasn't edited since last August so I can't ask him. If anyone wants to play around with the code there is a copy at User:Nthep/closeAFD.js that anyone is free to modify. Nthep (talk) 21:54, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Edit window scrambling Ping with RTL text followed by Wikilink starting with a number.

I just tried to reply to WP:Teahouse#(163693) Atira infobox, and had a problem with the source editor and the user's RTL (Hebrew) username. I tried to begin my reply with

Hello, {{U|אמא של גולן}}.

followed immediately by

[[163703 Atira]]

but as soon as I had both these elements in (even when I tried inserting the Wikilink first and then pasting in the template afterwards) it scrambled them in the edit window, to give me

Hello, {{U|אמא של גולן}}. [[163703 Atira]]

which displays as

Hello, אמא של גולן. 163703 Atira

I now see that that actually has the right links in it, but its appearance is wrong and confusing. --ColinFine (talk) 15:29, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

The scrambling is done in your browser and depends on the browser so it varies what people see above. The text is served to the browser in the order it is written. Browsers will often assume numbers after text in a right-to-left language are part of the language and should also be displayed right-to-left. It's odd that a link can be broken in two as Firefox does for me in your example for 163703 Atira (a red link). The solution is to specify directionality, for example with {{lrm}} when left-to-right text begins again. I did that here which displays as intended for me:

Hello, אמא של גולן. ‎163703 Atira

PrimeHunter (talk) 15:56, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, PrimeHunter --ColinFine (talk) 23:20, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I covered a similar issue a few weeks ago at User talk:Miniapolis/Archives/2016/December#Shaikh Abdallah Mazandarani. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:04, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia files with multilingual descriptions in the infobox

It may just be my misguided impression, but I thought there existed a means for infobox photos with multilingual descriptions to display only the correct-language description for the article in which the photo appears. See Spectacled bear, where a new infobox photo with a Spanish description has appeared. It's a nicer photo, so I added an English translation of the description, and hoped I could make only the English description appear when the photo was clicked, rather than both the Spanish and English descriptions. Short of writing out a caption for the infobox, which will always show on the article page and looks inelegant, is there some workaround I'm not aware of? Or are things stuck the way they are now? PS: If I should have asked elsewhere, let me know.--Quisqualis (talk) 00:33, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

It's a system at Commons. See commons:Template:Information. I have used the recommended language templates.[58]. All languages are displayed on the file page at the English Wikipedia File:Osoandino.jpg because we don't have the Commons JavaScript to hide some languages. In this case all (i.e. both) languages are also displayed on the Commons file page commons:File:Osoandino.jpg because language hiding only takes effect when there are at least four languages. See File:Piers Sellers spacewalk.jpg versus commons:File:Piers Sellers spacewalk.jpg for an example with at least four languages. See commons:Template:Multilingual description. That template would also have hidden when there are only two or three languages but this is not recommended for file page descriptions. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:04, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Commons does the language hiding with a default gadget "Language select" which can be disabled at commons:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:10, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Phabricator issues

Just a note, Phabricator appears to be having some issues. See T156905. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Say something · What I've done} 19:15, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Too bad you changed the heading. "Phabricator is down. See this Phabricator ticket." I love good irony. --Unready (talk) 19:18, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Hahahahaha, yeah. I realized that after I posted it, whoops. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Say something · What I've done} 02:32, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Issue viewing webpages through two separate PCs

Hi,

I apologise if it is in the wrong place. I have issues at the moment site wide using two different PCs and two different browsers (IE10 and Chrome) with pages not loading correctly causing the browser to trip up and freeze, all incidents were within two days. Is anyone else getting this issue? At the moment it is proving to be a bit problematic for me trying to view items when I need to. Any help appreciated. Thanks Nördic Nightfury 09:03, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Both when logged in and when logged out ? Did you try disabling your user scripts ? User scripts often break and can cause problems like this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:47, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

yes, same thing happens logged in and out. Scripts shouldnt be an issue in this case. Nördic Nightfury 11:06, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Which pages? You don't say whether these are in Wikipedia or elsewhere. There are some UK newspapers (Daily M____) whose websites have pages that take an inordinate time to load because of all the advertising - and when I turn on the ad blocker, they just lock up solid, presumably they have javascript to detect the adblocker. No-win situation. So, those newspapers are on my stay-away list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:06, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I forgot about this... The issue itself appears to have gone away for the moment so I will leave this here.... I will report if it happens again. Nördic Nightfury 09:48, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

is there an easy way to see the total number of characters/bytes I've added to Wikipedia

Hi all

Is there a simple way for me to see how many characters or bytes I've added to Wikipedia in total?

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 20:56, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't think that there's an easy way to do this, but you might look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Stats/Top English medical editors 2013b as an example of what could be calculated. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Changing autoconfirmed/extended confirmed to count only article edits

Before I propose this at WT:User access levels, I was curious to hear if there might be any reason this would not be trivial from a technical point of view. Samsara 14:54, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

user.user_editcount only counts total edits. --Unready (talk) 16:34, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I think if the promote was handled by the flaggedrevs system instead it can take care of those kinds of drill downs. I think it can also handle other possible good things like only counting "live edits". — xaosflux ^Talk 16:48, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

e.g. Search this page for things like "excludeDeleted". — xaosflux ^Talk 16:49, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

FlaggedRevs is an extension. That's not how Autopromote works. The "autopromote" within the extension is just for the extension. Applying a similar concept to any group which is not Editor would require either a rewrite of the FlaggedRevs extension or a separate extension (and then get it installed, if it's approved). While technically possible, I'd certainly call that "not trivial." --Unready (talk) 17:12, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

So we'd need a code change in Autopromote and also FlaggedRevs? Samsara 22:31, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Just one or the other, but using FlaggedRevs doesn't make sense to autopromote a group that has nothing to do with FlaggedRevs. So change core MediaWiki autopromote or write an extension that does it. --Unready (talk) 23:42, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Moving the FlaggedRevs autopromote conditions to core would make sense, see last comment in phab:T26948. The FlaggedRevs autopromote system needs a rewrite anyway. You may file a bug to request that if you want (but it will take time to be done). Cenarium (talk) 23:53, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I would interpret the OP's original question of a "trivial" way to change autopromote to be something in a settings file, so porting something to core and refactoring seems non-trivial to me. (I'd agree with that ticket, though. It's something that should happen, but eventually.) --Unready (talk) 00:48, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Unready, I understand that it's a trivial configuration change. A zero-day standard is already in use at some wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Are you asserting porting functionality from FlaggedRevs into core is a trivial configuration change? If not, please define "it" in your statement. --Unready (talk) 18:40, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Unwanted "large print" display

Moved from WP:AN

• My Wikipedia display has suddenly shifted into a "large print" mode intended for people with poor eyesight. How can I set it back to normal? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:10, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

@Anthony Appleyard: Have you tried checking your browser's current zoom setting? If you're not sure how let me know which browser you're using. Also this would be more suited to VPT than the admin noticeboard. Sam Walton (talk) 15:28, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Try hitting Ctrl-0 (that's "control zero") and see what happens. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:46, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

• @Samwalton9 and Beyond My Ken: Thanks. That got my Wikipedia display type size back to small. I use Firefox. But this enlargement only happened in Wikipedia, not in my email handler and not in a Biggles discussion forum that I am in, and both use Firefox. Please, where can I specify my Wikipedia username's display font size? I can find no relevant-looking links in Help:Contents or Special:Preferences or Help:Preferences or in exploring about in them. Please where is a list of those Ctrl- codes and their effects? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:52, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

That was a browser control, it really had nothing to do with Wikipedia - you can zoom or unzoom on most broswers for most sites, and most will remember your zoom settings when you come back. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:59, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

At least in Firefox, holding the Control key down while using the mouse wheel zooms in or out, depending on which way you scroll. It's one of those things that's kind of cool and kind of annoying all at once. --Unready (talk) 21:09, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

If you're using Firefox 51 or later, the zoom size will appear on the address bar IF it's not set at the standard 100%. Larry/Traveling_Man (talk) 22:15, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

The common zoom shortcuts in Firefox and many other browsers are Ctrl+- for smaller, Ctrl++ for larger and Ctrl+0 for normal. Firefox writes them in the zoom menu where you can also click to zoom. Various other Firefox features also have shortcuts displayed in menus. Many of them also apply to other programs. See Table of keyboard shortcuts. If you want to increase Wikipedia's text size in your account without using the browser's zoom then you can for example try this in your CSS:

.mediawiki {font-size: 125%;}

Or this to not enlarge the surroundings:

.mw-body-content {font-size: 125%;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 3 February 2017 (UTC)