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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 170

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Special:WantedCategories updates

Does anyone know how Special:WantedCategories is updated?

Updates seem to be at random intervals. The latest was on 22:48, 27 September 2018, i.e. over 6 days ago. Previous updates have appeared at intervals anywhere between 2 days and 12 days.

New redlinked categories appear at a rate of 50–150 per day, which mounts up fast. it would be much easier to keep it cleaned up if updates were at regular and shorter intervals, ideally every 24 hours or 48 hours.

Can someone set up a cron job? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:48, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

It is a cronjob. Its supposed to run once every 3 days, but it can take a long time to work down the list - https://github.com/wikimedia/puppet/blob/production/modules/mediawiki/manifests/maintenance/update_special_pages.pp (Not all special pages are that cron job, but Special:Wantedcategories is one of them that is that job). Bawolff (talk) 01:50, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, Bawolff. Sounds like these jobs need to be on a faster server. Do you have any idea where and how I coukd ask for that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:17, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: meta:2018_Community_Wishlist_Survey. — xaosflux Talk 16:52, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't think it's feasible to make these faster. Generating these special pages takes days because on a wiki like English Wikipedia, the queries have to scan billions of database rows to give you the results (e.g. all page links on all pages), and we generate ~30 reports across ~700 projects. I am not a DBA expert, but I expect that the limiting factor here is the speed of the disks from which we read the data. (Also, if we had such faster servers, we'd probably put them to work on things where it matters more to be fast, like page views and edits, rather than generating reports.) Matma Rex talk 18:07, 4 October 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Matma Rex, that mostly these reports aren't considered a super important optimization target and that there's probably not a whole lot that can be done which would be deemed worth the effort. Some potential approaches to improve things (These would probably require someone to come forward and work on these things):
Probably exploring running these independently for different slates would be the best approach in terms of easiness vs results. Bawolff (talk) 16:42, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

FWIW I have a Quarry query that crudely approximates to SWC, which takes 5-10 minutes. Is part of the problem that SWC currently runs off the live database? If so, there's probably no need for it to work that way, it could run off the mirror on the toolserver. In that case, perhaps it would be better off as a WP:DBR - in fact my Quarry query is an adaptation of a Quarry query to emulate Wikipedia:Database reports/Red-linked categories with incoming links which is a good test of how well Quarry is running - it's had long periods when it ran within about 10 minutes, but has had significant spells when it tripped the 30 minute timeout. Maybe @BernsteinBot could run it on a daily basis? At the moment SWC has been running quite well at 3-day intervals, except just in the last couple of weeks (because BHG is back?!) and with a 5000-record cut-off. I think the SWC would be happy to trade a 2000-record cut-off for a daily run, if that helps with server load - ~2000 has been the recent high, it takes a couple of weeks of nobody looking at it to get to that stage.Le Deluge (talk) 14:29, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

For reference, I pasted the precise query Special:WantedCategories uses at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/30262 . The Special page runs on the "vslow" replicas (Also used for dumps and some statistics). Which is pretty close to being the live DB but not the same DB as the one that actually serves web requests. The main problem is that basically all the special pages (with some exceptions) for all wikis just get done in alphabetical order. If there ends up being some slowness, it could take a long time to get through the full list. For reference, the last run of Special:WantedCategories took 15m 51.97s on english wikipedia (compared to 3m 13.12s pre-DC switch). I think commons here is a major part of the problem. It appears in the last run, updateSpecialPages.php took 52 hours to just do commons. I think this may be related to the data center switch over (Which among other things, switches which database server these queries run against). Based on logs, when eqiad was primary datacenter, the script only took 3 hours to do commons. I have filed phab:T206592 about this. Bawolff (talk) 03:44, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

A considerable number of special reports should just be ditched. They make no sense whatsoever, and seem to have been largely built either because people were bored or because someone just asked. Consider special:mimesearch vs special:newfiles, the former is 100% unnecessary. Most of its functionality can be accessed through special:newfiles, and all of its functionality can be accessed through the search engine. There is no point to having ancient pages, long pages, and short pages. The former is downright useless, and it can be easily retrieved with the search engine. The latter two could have been combined to a single Special:allpages with sort options. Uncategorized (templates|pages|et al.) could someday be easily obtainable by something like "Special:Search/-incategory:", and for simple pages can be detected using something like "-insource:/\[\[category/". Similarly, some Deadend pages can be detected using "insource".

"Wanted" reports tend to be the worst of the lot, considering that even "wanted categories" contain joke nonsense useless to readers. This is due to an architectural blunder of treating most pages equally, when in fact they aren't. As an example, a lot of sandboxes and discussions deliberately contain lots of broken markup that inevitably ends up in these reports.

It would be instead more sensible to add tools to limit the ability of new users adding new categories. Considering that in many cases people create new categories out of ignorance or laziness of not wanting to search for an adequate existing category. 197.235.166.54 (talk) 13:41, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Consider that MediaWiki is not built just for English Wikipedia, nor for Wikimedia properties in English, nor for Wikimedia properties, alone. On English Wikipedia these pages may have some utility of lower value. Not so elsewhere. --Izno (talk) 15:28, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

Talk page is G13 eligible

Could someone possibly determine why Talk:K. S. R. Krishna Raju is showing in Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions? Thanks. Home Lander (talk) 01:38, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

​  Fixed There were declines collapsed there. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Some kind of edit filter or notice warning editors on talk pages when not signing?

Would it be technically be feasible if some kind of feature, whether mandatory or optional (i.e. opt-in), could be done when an editor forgets to sign an edit of theirs on talk pages and other kinds of discussion page? It sounds like it could be a useful feature and could help prevent unnecessary excessive edits just to add a signature. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 10:38, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

We have such abuse filter on the Finnish Wikipedia (here). It gives a warning when you try to save edits without a signature on talk pages or in Wikipedia namespace. Stryn (talk) 11:31, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing to this filter. Do you know how well it handles copy edits to already signed text? isaacl (talk) 18:36, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Sounds like a great idea.--Tom (LT) (talk) 08:35, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: No editing for a short while today

A short reminder: to make sure we can handle an event where our primary data centre is unavailable – or destroyed – we're doing a server test. This means that at some point after 14:00 UTC (it's only for part of the process we need to lock the database for editing) it won't be possible to edit the wikis today, 10 October. It could last up to an hour, but will probably be much shorter than that. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 10:53, 10 October 2018 (UTC)

It's a new record: just four minutes and 41 seconds. The "switch back" is usually faster than the "switch to", but this is really close to the theoretical minimum.
Also, they found a few problems (worst one: the two sites did not have identical copies of Wikidata), so in addition to learning how to do this process even Faster, Higher, Stronger than before, they're going to be able to prevent some problems that might otherwise have occurred if there had been a real-world disaster.
Thank you all for your patience, and extra thanks to those of you who helped spread the word and answer other editors' questions about it.
I have read nothing about when (or even if) this will be done again in the future. However, they've done it approximately once a year for the last three years, so I'd expect it to happen next year, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Whatamidoing (WMF), Congrats. We like to throw brickbats when something goes wrong, so fairness dictates that we remember to be thankful when things go right. S Philbrick(Talk) 19:34, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
I'll pass along the compliment the people who earned it. :-D Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
I have to admit, it almost got the better of me. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:36, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Non-backlog category with template

CAT:CSD transcludes {{Adminbacklog}} with a 50-item threshold, i.e. it automatically detects the number of contents and displays as a backlog only if there are 50+ items. Can anyone imagine why it's displaying now? There are only twelve pages and sixteen files in the category; there's no way this should be showing up. I've purged it repeatedly (first time was over an hour ago; second was maybe half an hour or more ago) using the (recount) link in the template, so the item counts shouldn't be old information. Nyttend (talk) 04:22, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

@Nyttend: We've been seeing multiple reports of categories having problems recently. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 169#Category count wrong is the most recent thread. --Izno (talk) 04:37, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Image layout artifact

 

This is a screencap of bicycle brake. The thumb image has a vertical line of black and gray dots. It doesn't look this way on the actual commons:File:Bicycle brakes - animated.gif image page. Seems like it's at the boundary of the transparent background? I tried changing the |upright=1.35 parameter, and any other value does not have this artifact. I tried various purging of the file page and the enwiki article page, with no change. Another user says they do not see it. Any ideas what's happening? DMacks (talk) 12:30, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

It works for me. The viewed thumb depends on user settings. What is your "Thumbnail size" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering? I have 220px and see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Bicycle_brakes_-_animated.gif/450px-Bicycle_brakes_-_animated.gif on Bicycle brake. Can you right-click the image on the article and select something like "View image" to get a similar url? Do you see the problem there? What is your browser? It's an animated gif. Does it animate for you? It does for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:13, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
220px in that preference for me also. The direct link from right-click is [2], where I also see the dots and it does animate (in both cases). I'm using Firefox 62.0.3 on OS X. DMacks (talk) 13:20, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Okay, now I don't (neither direct-view of that URL nor in the aricle). Glad I kept a screenshot so neither y'all nor I think I'm crazy. DMacks (talk) 13:21, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
DMacks, You'll need more than that screenshot :) S Philbrick(Talk) 19:35, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
You're lucky {{glare}} is red or I'd template the hell out of ya:) DMacks (talk) 07:45, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Log deletion

Is it possible for an ordinary admin to delete a block log? L293D (☎ • ✎) 22:10, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Redact not delete. However it would be against policy to do so. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:22, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@L293D: see Wikipedia:Revision_deletion#Log_redaction. — xaosflux Talk 22:35, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Deleted log events will still appear in the logs, but parts of their content will be inaccessible to the public. Other administrators will still be able to access the hidden content and to undelete it, unless additional restrictions are set.
When changing the visibility of a log entry, there are three items that may be redacted individually or together: delete action and target; delete edit summary; delete performer's username/IP address. In theory, I could redact a block log entry on behalf of somebody else, this would then create a further entry in the deletion log, showing that I had changed the visibility of another log entry; I could then redact my own username on that new entry, which would then create a further entry ...
There's always a trail for those who need to know, and those who abuse the tools can be traced.
In summary: don't do anything that will get you blocked. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

PDF file cited as source downloading onto computer

I'm wondering why clicking on the url for the source cited in Business network#cite_note-:0-2 is downloading onto my computer instead of opening in a web browser. I've clicked on PDF files cited as sources before and they usually open up in the browser. If it's my computer then no biggie; if, however, it's the formatting of the citation or something about the website, then maybe the citation syntax can be tweaked to stop the automatic download. There's another PDF file cited in the same article as Business network#cite_note-SS_1995-6 which does open in the web browser, and doesn't download. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Marchjuly, this depends on what the server of that file tells the browser to do. Some browsers provide options in their settings to allow you to override this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:17, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
OK. It seemed a bit weird that it was doing it for one and not the other, but I'll sort it out since it's on my end. Thanks for taking a look. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:19, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
I followed the instructions in the link you provided, but my settings were set to not download PDFs. Kinda weird. Can a website set things up to override a user's individual settings? -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:24, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
@Marchjuly: a quick look at that site indicates it is not really serving "a file" but a data stream of the file - and browsers wouldn't normally be configured to deal with that type of data in-browser. — xaosflux Talk 20:23, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks for taking a look. Ah...that’s sounds a bit diabolical, but I expect it’s fairly common. The question then is whether such a thing is OK for Wikipedia’s purposes; it seems like it would be better to cite a site which actually hosts the desired content than downloads it to your computer when clicked. Is there a way to tweak the citation template syntax which tells whatever/whoever needs to know that clicking on the link will download it onto your computer? — Marchjuly (talk) 21:38, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
I would think that if you can point to one page "up" where a link to the PDF is obvious, generally in such cases where that page is describing what the user will see in the document, then that's an ideal solution. But the "stream" link is not bad if that's only way to provide the PDF. --Masem (t) 21:44, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
@Masem: It took going back a couple of pages to ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/5563/attachments/1/translations to find a link which wouldn't download or which wasn't listed as an error, but I'm not sure that helps anything since it still seems to require that the source be downloaded if you want to verify it. Is there a way to mark the citation, so that readers are alerted to the fact that clicking on the link may cause the file to be downloaded to their computers? -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:39, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
That's really annoying. I tried to find a better "landing" page (something aking to [3] where there's information about the report and a clear link to download). Best I can tell there's no way to stop the download without severe CSS/JS intervention on the client side. (you can force a PDF to download through simple HTML5, but not vice versa). And best as I can tell from the cite templates there's no way to throw an indicator to a user. I definitely don't want someone to insert a ref thta ends up downloading a 10 gig document without warning, for example. --Masem (t) 14:17, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@Marchjuly: "downloading" occurs including any such large file sizes @Masem: mentions regardless if the file is opened in a browser tab or with another application. — xaosflux Talk 14:47, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, as other examples consider these three pages of the same document: sheet 1 of 3; sheet 2 of 3; sheet 3 of 3. Those links take you to the file description pages, but if you click the image or the "Original file" link, it downloads instead of displaying. The smallest of these three is 1.28 MB. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:11, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@Masem, Xaosflux, and Redrose64: Appreciate all of the input and info. FWIW, the citation isn't formatted using a template (sorry for not noticing this before); so, I think a "warning" about the link can just be added manually. However, perhaps the best thing to do in a case such as this would be to reformat the citation in a way that deactivates the url; for example, {{Cite web}} requires an active url to work properly, but there are some citation templates which don't. So, maybe treat this as a type of WP:SAYWHERE source, providing as much information about it as possible. If a citation template is used, then using |via= to treat the landing page as WP:CONVENIENCE and |others= or |quote= to either (1) quote the specific information being referenced, (2) add a "warning" to the reader that the file will download on to their computer if clicked, or (3) some combination of those two things. Maybe the person who added the citation or someone else who has been contributing to the article would be willing to do that, so I'll add {{Please see}} for this discussion to the article's talk page. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:00, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Do make sure that |format=PDF is used. They know that clicking the link in that case will bring them a file - whether that is viewed in the browser or being downloaded to view outside the browser, its still being downloaded. --Masem (t) 23:11, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder. That's a good point since there'll be no PDF icon displayed after the url if it's deactivated. -- Marchjuly (talk) 23:28, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Except for the cases of a link to another point in the same page, and a "link" that actually fires some JavaScript, clicking any link - PDF or otherwise, external link or internal - will bring back at least one file. For example, clicking this link - User:Masem - will bring back the file https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Masem plus several others (stylesheets, images, JavaScript etc.)
I see two potential causes here. First, the size of the file - it's 1,082,824 bytes. Second, the file has the somewhat unusual name https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/5563/attachments/1/translations/en/renditions/pdf which shows the the file is named simply "pdf". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:09, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Line break leaves lone quotation mark at end of line

Can we do something to make edits like this one unnecessary? It seems likely that we would in general want to suppress a line break after an opening quotation mark; is there some reason that's not easy? Or is this more of a browser bug? Dicklyon (talk) 06:05, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Line breaks without nowrap are decided by the browser. My Opera and Chrome versions will break between "( but not Firefox, IE and Edge. In theory our software could be changed to automatically add nowrap in certain places where breaks are probably unwanted but some browsers are known to make them anyway. I don't support actually bloating our html with extra code like that. Example without nowrap if people want to test their browser by changing window width:
"(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)"
With the html produced by {{nowrap}}:
"(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)" "(musician)"
PrimeHunter (talk) 09:32, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
dont use nowraps around that. That’s insane. The world wide web is no typesetting software. It is supposed to look different for different people. It’s supposed to have browsers make decisions for you so that overtime it can improve doing so. By adding these nowraps you reduce the legibility of the wikicode, for a minor rendering issue that will confuse absolutey no-one. It also messes with the wordbreaking algorithm of browsers (for instance when i have a stylesheet to hyphenate words before linebreaking, then this nowrap would mess with that). If the parent element is narrower than the word, then it will either overflow or be forced down the page to where there is space (especially problematic on mobile. Nowrap is evil and should be avoided to where it is absolutely necessary. The templates description doesn't say ‘use sparingly’ for nothing. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:28, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Changing {{nowrap|"(musician)"}} to {{nowrap|"(}}musician)" would avoid interference with browser hyphenation of words but further reduce the legibility of the wikicode and still bloat the html so I don't support it either. If there are browsers breaking between )" then should we also write {{nowrap|"(}}musician{{nowrap|)"}}? No thanks. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:12, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Wanted Templates not updating

In Malayalam wikipedia, in the Special page Wanted Templates, what could be the reason for a certain range of templates to appear again and again even after purging happens a number of times?Adithyak1997 (talk) 05:27, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Please give a link and example when you report an issue. ml:Special:WantedTemplates is generated periodically and says in English: "The following data is cached, and was last updated 09:46, 10 October 2018." You didn't say what or when you purged, and some things require a null edit and not a purge to update link tables. Nothing done after 09:46, 10 October 2018 will affect the list until next time the list is generated by the software. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:43, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter, Sorry for not providing links. Please do check [|this] link for a detailed problem description.Adithyak1997 (talk) 09:59, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

I don't know Malayalam but there appears to be an issue with automatic conversion between two similar characters. The third link at ml:Special:WantedTemplates says ml:ഫലകം:തടയപ്പെട്ടവര്‍‏‎ where "ഫലകം" means "Template". The link is red in the list but works. However, it automatically changes the last character and goes to the page ml:ഫലകം:തടയപ്പെട്ടവർ from 2007. The last characters ര്‍‏‎ and ർ look different to me, and my browsers find function says they are different. They also produce url's with different ends but both url's automatically redirect to the same third url. Maybe the software generating ml:Special:WantedTemplates doesn't know about the automatic conversion and produces an entry if a non-canonical form of the name is used in a page. According to https://r12a.github.io/uniview/?charlist=%E0%B4%B0%E0%B5%8D%20%E0%B5%BC, ര് is ‎"0D30 MALAYALAM LETTER RA" followed by "0D4D MALAYALAM SIGN VIRAMA", while ർ is "0D7C MALAYALAM LETTER CHILLU RR" and not followed by something else. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter, If you think like that, then what about the next link starting with ഫലകം:User?Adithyak1997 (talk) 11:29, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
The link says ml:ഫലകം:User ഈമെയില്‍‏‎ but clicking it leads to ml:ഫലകം:User ഈമെയിൽ. These also have different last characters, this time ല്‍‏‎ and ൽ where https://r12a.github.io/uniview/?charlist=%E0%B4%B2%E0%B5%8D%20%E0%B5%BD says the first is a letter followed by "0D4D MALAYALAM SIGN VIRAMA". I don't know Malayalam or the code used to generate WantedTemplates so I'm only guessing this conversion is related to the WantedTemplates entry. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:04, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

“Math extension cannot connect to Restbase”

Hi, am I the only one getting the following error on G-test? 

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/":): {\textstyle \hat{\theta}}

--78.54.45.5 (talk) 08:54, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

I made a null edit to the page and the error has gone away for now. Jc86035's alternate account (talk) 10:50, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Unable to publish a very specific change (an AfD page) at any namespace as an unregistered contributor

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207065
Resolved

Please try to insert the wikitext of Special:Diff/863443818/863448552 to any page (preferably Wikipedia:Sandbox or an userpage sandbox). This should fail when all the following conditions are true:

  • The text of the page to be published only has the wikitext of Special:Diff/863443818/863448552.
  • The page doesn't have to be empty (blanked) first, but the previous point must still be true.
  • An attempt to publish changes must be done by a non-administrator (unregistered IP address contributor)?

If point #1 is false, the edit succeeds: Special:Diff/863621545.

My attempts to publish fail silently for me (as an unregistered user) at the following locations:

Despite all this, it works for @PrimeHunter (who's an administrator) at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Galicia involving soldiers of the Blue Army: Special:Diff/863619579?!

The most mysterious part about this is that it's not Special:AbuseFilter related, as it seems. There are no logged events at Special:AbuseLog. There are no special editnotices. Attempting to publish the changes repeatedly does nothing. I didn't get a CAPTCHA for the external link.

While trying to write this VP/T post, I got the red "Incorrect or missing CAPTCHA" box at top but CAPTCHA security check at bottom. The issue started around ~22:30 UTC; was there a MediaWiki update behind this? (I've never seen the CAPTCHA box be at the bottom before.)

Please, I'm very curious for someone else to attempt to reproduce this as an unregistered contributor. For the curious, this is on Firefox 62.0.2 on GNU/Linux. I feel like to have encountered the weirdest bug of my years here. 84.250.17.211 (talk) 23:58, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

  • I have so far reproduced the missing CAPTCHA issue by reducing the issue to these two lines: 
    <div class="infobox" style="width:33%">AfDs for this article:<ul class="listify">{{Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Galicia involving soldiers of the Blue Army}}</ul></div>
:({{Find sources AFD|Anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Galicia involving soldiers of the Blue Army}})
    In combination, the CAPTCHA goes missing. Perhaps I should blame the nominator here? But I'm still curious. (I got the incorrect or missing CAPTCHA while writing this, with CAPTCHA below the edit summary again and red box at top.) 84.250.17.211 (talk) 00:32, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
    • This is the smallest test case I could make for CAPTCHAs to go missing: 
      {{Special:Prefixindex}}
:{{Find sources AFD}}
      84.250.17.211 (talk) 00:39, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
      • Even smaller: 
        {{Special:Prefixindex}}
https://example.com/
        It must have an external link for CAPTCHA trigger. In example, {{Cite web}} alone won't do it but {{Cite web|url=<url>}} will (with a proper URL), but any bare link will also work. 84.250.17.211 (talk) 00:53, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
  • To be clear: This issue is experienced with Template:Afd2 (in example), with a caveat that one must be signed in to nominate an article for deletion. I must be one weird person to handle AfDs and cleanup while refusing to have/be signed into an account. 😏 84.250.17.211 (talk) 00:58, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
I can reproduce this. It happens if you try to save an edit when these three are all satisfied:
  1. You are unregistered or not autoconfirmed at the wiki. It also happens at other wikis.
  2. The edit transcludes a special page, either directly in the source or via a template like {{Afd2}}. It can both be an existing special page like {{Special:Prefixindex}} and a non-existing page like {{Special:NoSuchPage}}
  3. The edit adds an external link which would normally have caused a CAPTCHA.
The expected behaviour is getting an edit page with a CAPTCHA. The actual behaviour is getting an edit page with no CAPTCHA. There is no apparent way to complete the edit. If users want to experiment without logging out then try a wiki where you are not autoconfirmed. The default requirement in Wikimedia wikis is four days and zero edits but some wikis require edits with wgAutoConfirmCount in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php, e.g. 20 edits at no:. Special:CentralAuth can show where your account is already registered. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:05, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
  • It looks like you found a bug in the CAPTCHA code, please report the bug so it can get looked in to. This is not limited to the English Wikipedia, so it will need to be looked at by developers. — xaosflux Talk 22:44, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
    • I would appreciate if someone could do this on my behalf and add {{Tracked}}. 84.250.17.211 (talk) 21:55, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
      •   Done phab:T207065 is for you. You will, unfortunately, need to create an account if you want to add information to the ticket. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-42

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

Problems

  • Some pages, edits and users disappeared for a short while after the server switch. Missing content and users was fixed within a day. Some preferences and other things might take a few more days to fix. [4]
  • Wikis are updated with new and updated translations from translatewiki.net again. This will happen once a week. The developers are working on fixing the problem so we can have translation updates more often again. [5]

Changes later this week

  • When you create an abuse filter that prevents edits you can now write a specific error message for it. Before this all abuse filters that prevented edits had the same error message. [6]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 October. It will be on all wikis from 18 October (calendar).

Meetings

  • There will be no more meetings with the Editing team. This is because not enough Wikimedians were interested. To tell developers which bugs you think are the most important you can use Phabricator as normal. [7]
  •     You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 October at 15:00 (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.

22:40, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Scrotum infobox image not working

See Talk:Scrotum#Image_not_showing_in_article--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:25, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

I've added an exception to the image blacklist. -- zzuuzz (talk) 06:34, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, it helps if these images have {{Restricted use}} otherwise it may not be obvious why the problem is occurring.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:52, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
There used to be a bot which did this. I believe the task was inherited by Cyberbot I. It might be time for another look at it. -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:05, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
The previous bot got sacked? DMacks (talk) 07:33, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Sox'd -- zzuuzz (talk) 07:43, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
I wasn’t aware it had stopped.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 10:28, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Cyberpower678, looks like it's not removing the restricted tag from images either; File:An image of Klaus Heissler in a water bowl.png had the restricted tag even though it's not on the list (was about to start a new thread, then saw this related thread). Weird image to have ever been on the list in the first place. Home Lander (talk) 01:32, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

veaction=editsource

Hi. I'm wondering why do I keep getting "&veaction=editsource" in the URL address when I try to edit a page. I'm guessing this is something that has to do with Visual Editor/wysiwyg (which is something I'm not interested in using, at the moment) and I made sure to de-select the option "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" in my Editing Preference. Any help or guidance here will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. --Ciphers (talk) 04:04, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

@Ciphers: veaction=editsource is in an edit url giving mw:2017 wikitext editor when you have enabled "New wikitext mode" or "Automatically enable all new beta features" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. If you don't want it then disable both. "de-select" means to not select so I'm unsure what you want. If you don't want VisualEditor then select "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. 2017 wikitext editor and VisualEditor are not the same. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:41, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks a lot @PrimeHunter:. That seems to have solved the issue, for sure. Thanks again. --Ciphers (talk) 12:15, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
Pedantic detail: The 2017 wikitext editor (aka "new wikitext mode" or "VisualEditor's wikitext mode) is part of VisualEditor (the extension). It is not, however, the visual editor (aka "VisualEditor's visual mode"), which is the thing (currently, the only thing) you use for editing that looks like a word processor.
If anyone knows where I can get a refund for the hours of my life that were consumed by the meetings about naming this, please tell me. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
(said with love:) A refund, as in you want us to take back the money that the WMF paid you to attend those meetings? We volunteers will have to have a meeting about that. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:51, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Question about a block

I helped a reader create an account. They wanted to edit but they were unable to edit as an unregistered editor because of a range block. they now have an account, but even after logging him they get a message that they are not permitted to edit because of a block.

I must be missing something — I thought if one had a registered account, the good edit while logged in even if their IP happen to be part of a range block.

If anyone reading this happens to be an OTRS agent, they provided a screenshot of the message.

ticket:2018101510004415 --S Philbrick(Talk) 17:44, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

If the block is a hard one, it will prevent editing even by registered accounts. Ruslik_Zero 19:00, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Ruslik0, I can imagine applying a hard block to a static IP, but I wouldn't have expected such a block to be applicable to a range.
The range is 94.197.120.0/23 and the block message is (anon. only, account creation blocked, cannot edit own talk page). S Philbrick(Talk) 19:48, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
What is the exact text of the message? Ruslik_Zero 20:00, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
It appears to be anon-only, and while it is globally blocked as well, Just Chilling disabled the global block. Should be able to edit thru the block, I would think. SQLQuery me! 20:05, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
Just Chilling, That's what I would expect, but they shared a screenshot which look like they are logged in but blocked S Philbrick(Talk) 20:15, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
What I did (or at least think I did!) was to locally disable the global block and then install an anon-only en block. When this problem arose with schools, the advice that we gave that seemed to work, was to make a few edits on a clear IP, to establish the account, before going back to the blocked IP. I don't have the technical knowledge to speculate why this worked but it is worth a try. Just Chilling (talk) 00:43, 16 October 2018 (UTC)
I had a similar thing happen a few weeks ago. I was using a VPN (proXPN, Toronto server IIRC) and was logged in, but got a message that the IP address was blocked when I tried to edit a page. (I could try to find the IP address of that VPN server if needed, but it has been dropping my connection frequently in the time since then, so I haven't been using it.) Just Chilling, the advice to make a few edits from elsewhere doesn't seem like it would have been helpful for me—I've been editing with this account once in a while for many years. – PointyOintment ❬‽ · ✍❭ 20:37, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

border color of 1px wikitable borders

Hi! How can I get a 1px-border of red, if class="wikitable"? Doc Taxon (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:36, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

red border color missing
red borders of 2px are too thick
@Doc Taxon: there is a lot of oddity with precedence of 1px borders, a hack is to use style 'double', as a double border has higher precedence, but the same appearance like this:
hacked 1px red border color
— xaosflux Talk 14:21, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
thx a lot indeed Doc Taxon (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:27, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Template:NJT links

Hi there, I was doing some edits to Millington station, and came across Template:NJT links. The template doesn't seem to be working. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:36, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

I read the documentation at Template:NJT links and made the required updates [8][9] to match a 2016 move from Millington (NJT station) to Millington station. {{NJT links}} now produces two working links at Millington station#External links. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:17, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 16:10, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Ref Toolbar not showing up

For some reason, Wikipedia:RefToolbar isn't showing up at all in my edit windows. I've tried refreshing and clearing the cache; I've tried turning it off in preferences and back on again. Any idea what's going on? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 02:39, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

TenPoundHammer, any browser errors? See WP:JSERROR for reporting info. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:30, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: I don't understand a word of that. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 03:54, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
Which browser and operating system are you using, so that I can try and reproduce it? Enterprisey (talk!) 04:33, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
mw:Help:Locating broken scripts#Test if you have problems related to user scripts or gadgets might be helpful. But the easy step first: would you please click on this link and tell us if that produces the expected results? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: Windows 10 and Google Chrome. @Whatamidoing (WMF): No, nothing. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 00:03, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: I can't seem to pull up debug mode following the instructions. I am way over my head here. Just tell me the quickest way to unfuck this. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:40, 13 October 2018 (UTC)r
@Enterprisey: I get "Use of "mw.toolbar" is deprecated" and "title=User:Apoc2400/refToolbarPlus.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript:1 You installed the userscript User:Apoc2400/refToolbarPlus.js

It is no longer working and you should uninstall it." Any idea what's causing that? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:44, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

TenPoundHammer remove importScript('User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar.js'); from the bottom of User:TenPoundHammer/monobook.js Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:23, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
TenPoundHammer, is everything better now? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Repeatedly logged out

Hi, Over the past hour or 2 I've been repeatedly logged out and ticking the "keep me logged in for 365 days" doesn't seem to achieve anything, Never had the problem before and as far as I know everything my end is sound so didn't know if there was some sort of bug here,
I'm about to go to bed so if anyone replies I'll respond in the next 8-9 hours,
Many thanks, –Davey2010Talk 03:33, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

I was having this issue briefly. It's usually related to a corrupted cookie. My issues cleared up after 5-10 minutes. Let us know when you're back from the dream lands if it is still happening. --Izno (talk) 03:52, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
Hi Izno, Oh okay I had no idea corrupted cookies could cause it - Learn something new everyday! :), All seems fine now so maybe it was a corrupted cookie, Many thanks for your help, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 12:42, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
@Davey2010: If you experience problems with your login, one thing to try is to deliberately log out. This action might not destroy a corrupt login cookie, but it will invalidate all login cookies bearing your login ID, on all machines, no matter how old (or how recent). Then when you next log in, you get served a fresh clean cookie, and any corrupt cookies that you may still have will not be recognised should they be sent back to the Wikimedia servers. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:45, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
Hi Redrose64, Ah okay brilliant thank you I'll try that if it happens again, Thanks for the handy tip :), Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 23:38, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Reverse curve in pageviews graph

 

Has anybody come across a reverse curve and loop in a pageviews graph before? This is in the {{annual readership}} at Talk:Martin Hellinger, but please discuss at mw:Template talk:Graph:PageViews#Reverse curve. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:12, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Redrose64, no idea, but the actual numbers show a lot of 0 in the data. It seems that this graph uses quite a bit of easing and i suspect that those two combined are the cause of this. Not sure if that an error in the module or the graph lib.—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:20, 17 October 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, the problems might be from the fact that the article was created very recently (October 10) and the graph shows days before that. SemiHypercube ✎ 20:39, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Importing an image from one wikipedia to other

I would like to know the reason why I am not able to use the file Allauddinum Albhutha Vilakkum.jpg([link]) on Malayalam wikipedia.Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:57, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

File:Allauddinum Albhutha Vilakkum.jpg was uploaded to the English Wikipedia as a non-free image for use in a specific article with a fair use claim. Files can only be used if they are uploaded to the same wiki or to Wikimedia Commons. Commons does not accept non-free images so you would have to upload a copy to the Malayalam Wikipedia, assuming non-free images are allowed for the purpose by the wiki. Wikis have different rules and I don't know anything about Malayalam. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:08, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter By downloading that image(or copying)and reproducing it in Malayalam Wikipedia, do create any violation of rights in English Wikipedia?Adithyak1997 (talk) 11:17, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia has no rights which can be violated here. It is the rights of the copyright holders which must be respected. I don't know which procedures the Malayalam Wikipedia has for this but it may involve ml:Template:ScreenshotU. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:42, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Managing TemplateData: does not write my edits

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T206795

When I edit a template documentation page to add or change WP:TEMPLATEDATA, the edits do not materialise. I use the "Manage TemplateData" edit helper (button). After editing in theat screen, I press "Apply" then no edits are made to the /doc page edit box (and so saving would be a null-edit). Any ideas? -DePiep (talk) 16:38, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Which template did you try to edit? Ruslik_Zero 19:41, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
{{Currency}} (/doc that is), tried to add new TemplateData list; {{See also}}, tried to add parameters to TD. Tried more templates so in recent weeks/months. -DePiep (talk) 20:02, 7 October 2018 (UTC)
DePiep, does this happen if you edit in ?safemode=1? (See mw:Help:Locating broken scripts#Test if you have problems related to user scripts or gadgets.) What's your browser and OS? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:09, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
reproduce with/without safemode=1 (=success/fail)
I did this:
  1. Clear cache
  2. Open Template:See_also/doc (read)
  3. add ?safemode=1 to end of URL
  4. open for Edit (with me, traditional edit mode, not VE). The appendix ?safemode=1 did not return, so:
  5. add &safemode=1 to action=edit URL(needs &) and reload, opens:
  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:See_also/doc&action=edit&safemode=1 (edit screen, looks OK)
  7. Open Manage TemplateData (button)
  8. Add paramter, paramter "Test"; Apply;
  9. Done, parameter added [10] (success).
  10. Same for Template:Currency/doc (success when using &safemode=1).
  11. After both successes, tried again without safemode: failed in both pages.
re OS and browser: last July I switched from Linux to Windows 10, on 'new' hardware. Browser is Chrome v69 64-bit.
fyi, last April I lost my TE permission, did not ask it back yet. -DePiep (talk) 15:52, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Extra test: installed Firefox v62 on Windows10 desktop. Same process. Using safemode=1: success, without safemode=1: fail. -DePiep (talk) 16:01, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
ping @Whatamidoing (WMF): -DePiep (talk) 15:53, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
Running with debug=true, webconsole message in Chrome: "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'accessKey' jquery.js[...]" (in Firefox: "jQuery.Deferred exception: element is undefined [...]"). Need more? -DePiep (talk) 16:17, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
I can confirm this: the error message appears in the debug mode after {{Currency/doc}} is opened for editing. It only appears after Manage TemplateData button appears on the screen. Also tried to edit the template data but without success. Ruslik_Zero 09:29, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
I can't reproduce this (on my Mac). I'll file a bug report.
User:DePiep, does this happen always, or only on protected templates? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:40, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
Since ?safemode=1 seems to resolve the problem, the problem is probably in a user script or gadget. This could be anything from WikEd to something that only the two of you are running, but it's probably not something that I'm running (which is pretty much the defaults plus NAVPOPS, and whatever you can see in my common.js/global.js files). Do you have any guesses about what scripts you two might have in common? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Whatamidoing (WMF): Tried in unprotected {{Other antibacterials}}, both main template page and /doc page (I freshly added). Both failed.
I also tested this {{Other antibacterials/doc}} page when logged out: success (I did not save). -DePiep (talk) 19:53, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
My scripts afaik: 'User:Js/ajaxPreview.js'; 'MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js'; 'User:Cameltrader/Advisor.js'; WikEd, JS WikiBrowser = Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Script, also WP:AWB. Don't know if this is the complete list.
@DePiep: Can you get and copy-paste a backtrace from the browser console for this error (either browser)? There should be a little arrow/triangle next to the error message, clicking it will display the backtrace below. It's impossible to identify what is causing the error from just this message (I am guessing that the error is generated within the 'jquery.accessKeyLabel' module, but the real problem is probably in whatever code is using jquery.accessKeyLabel here). Matma Rex talk 18:34, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
re @Matma Rex:. ok, will make a screenprint etc. To be sure: does any of this exposes me? -DePiep (talk) 23:05, 12 October 2018 (UTC)
@DePiep: The stack trace could allow someone to deduce which browser extensions you are using or which gadgets you have enabled (in this case, the latter is kind of the point). It should not expose any other private information (although it technically could, it would take very weird code to do it). If you're concerned, you can email it to my WMF account bdziewonski@wikimedia.org instead of posting it publicly, or review it yourself (I'm looking for a function name or a file name that would reveal which script is causing your problem). Matma Rex talk 01:55, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
I've put the stack in phab. -DePiep (talk) 08:17, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

I looked into this: the issue is caused by the wikEd gadget. If anyone still maintains wikEd, I documented some details of the problem and ideas on how to fix it in a comment at phab:T206795#4668857. I guess for now you'll need to turn it off before using the TemplateData editor. Matma Rex talk 23:32, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Matma Rex. Any follow-up through WidEd maintainer [who], &or in phab. Close here I'd say.-DePiep (talk) 20:08, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Moved page issue on WL

I can confirm this bug. Steps to reproduce: Watch the redirect "Grievance Studies" affair but do not watch the target Grievance Studies affair. Enable "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. The watchlist then includes entries like this:
  • (diff | hist) . . "Grievance Studies" affair‎; 12:14 . . (+523)‎ . . ‎Al83tito (talk | contribs)
The diff and hist links say curid=58713610 and title=%22Grievance_Studies%22_affair. The links go to the diff and history at Grievance Studies affair. Page information says 58713610 is the page ID of Grievance Studies affair [11] while the redirect has page ID 58824385 [12]. curid overrides title on the hist link so it goes to the history of Grievance Studies affair and not the redirect. If curid is manually removed [13] then the title is used and it shows the history of the redirect. Like Wumbolo, I have verified that Grievance Studies affair is not in Special:EditWatchlist. Only the redirect is there. The error happens both with and without "Hide the improved version of the Watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. I tested other recent page moves and they don't have similar errors when you only watch the old title. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:23, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
United States presidential election, 1896 and Draft:Jean Morrison are examples of other recent moves where the page has recent edits which show up when you only watch the redirect. The watchlist only shows edits made before the move. If you swap the watchlist entries to only watch the new title and not the redirect then edits made before the move disappear from the watchlist when they should have been shown, while edits made after the move are shown as expected. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:44, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Template:TardisIndexFile

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207596

The TardisIndexFile template affixed in the "External links" section of every article on a Doctor Who episode is faulty and/or outdated. These links all lead to empty error pages. I would fix the template myself if I knew exactly which part of the code was the culprit.Bjones (talk) 22:31, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

@Bjones: looks like this just provides an external link to wikia, such as [14] - this should be able to be adjusted, but we would need to know where to point these links to on wikia. Do you know what an example wikia link for this would be? — xaosflux Talk 22:38, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: this is the link at the end of the "Oxygen" article, and this is what it should be.Bjones (talk) 05:07, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
This is a problem specific to mobile and specific to Wikia's redirection on their site. It's not our fault. There's a thread somewhere recently on this page or its archives of an IP having an issue. Please contact the people at Wikia support. --Izno (talk) 22:54, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
This is a variant of the problem at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 169#Links to Harry Potter wiki but Wikia's behaviour has changed since then. I guess http://www.wikia.com/C:tardis:Davros redirected to http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Davros or another working url in the past. Now it doesn't for me with Firefox on Windows 10 but http://www.wikia.com/tardis:Davros does redirect correctly for me. At the time of the old thread, the issue only affected some mobile devices, and the link without C: didn't fix it. Now it seems to affect more or all user agents, and dropping C: fixes it in some cases. It requires more testing considering the number of Wikia wikis and devices but maybe the Wikia entry at meta:Interwiki map should change from http://www.wikia.com/wiki/c:$1 to http://www.wikia.com/wiki/$1 to increase the number of working links without fixing all of them. Or maybe somebody should ask Wikia what they are doing. For the old example, http://www.wikia.com/C:harrypotter:Hermione_Granger and http://www.wikia.com/harrypotter:Hermione_Granger are both broken for me so removing C: doesn't work there. http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Hermione_Granger works but I haven't found a working url where harrypotter:Hermione_Granger is a substring as required for wikia:harrypotter:Hermione Granger to be fixable. I will post to meta:Talk:Interwiki map#Wikia. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • For anyone that wants to check or verify this change please see meta:Talk:Interwiki_map#Wikia and let us know if you see any trouble. — xaosflux Talk 01:01, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    I've updated the interwiki map at meta for 'wikia', this may take some time to propagate. Please ping me on meta if you need it further adjusted. — xaosflux Talk 14:53, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux: It appears all Wikia links are fixed by inserting w: before c:, e.g. http://www.wikia.com/w:c:tardis:Davros. Three other Wikia prefixes need similar changes as requested at meta:Talk:Interwiki map#Wikia. I have done this in {{Wikia}} for now [15] since it sometimes takes months before updates to the interwiki map are copied to the software. Template:TardisIndexFile and other templates and pages using {{Wikia}} should now produce working links. Pages using interwiki prefixes to Wikia without calling {{Wikia}} are still broken until the software is updated. {{Wikia}} will still work after that since the fix only inserts w: if it isn't already there. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:13, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: updates made on Meta, please follow phab:T207596 for sync updates. — xaosflux Talk 14:42, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
It's already synced now. That was fast! These all work now: wikia:tardis:Davros, wikiasite:tardis:Davros, wikicity:tardis:Davros, wikicities:c:tardis:Davros. wikicities also required c: in the wikilink before, and existing uses add that c: so it's correct that the interwiki prefix omits it. I have reverted my {{Wikia}} edit which is no longer needed. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:24, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Good to hear, we usually just let those go when they get around to them, but it can be requested to do-now, looks like a dev was available today. — xaosflux Talk 19:09, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Template formating

Need hepl with Template:Fourfold, to center it. -Inowen (nlfte) 22:47, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

If you mean the cell contents then I added text-align:center; to the table styling.[16]. See more at Help:Table. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:55, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
No I meant the whole thing. -Inowen (nlfte) 00:26, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
See Help:Table#Centering tables. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:44, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

On-going issue with WP 1.0 bot

Greetings, WP 1.0 bot is having on-going issue for several months. It starts daily processing, then stalls out at various WikiProjects, not processing the rest. Lately it does not get past "B" in the alphabet. The issue reports are at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index.

A second issue is bot not creating WP logs for many WP since October 8. For example here and here.

Hoping someone is able to "jump-start" or fix this bot. Contacts ( Kelson— Walkerma— Audiodude— Oleg Alexandrov)

Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 16:48, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207599
Filed a Phabricator bug report today. JoeHebda (talk) 15:39, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
The issue is now reported on the project's Github repo: Issue #7. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 23:48, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks AfroThundr - When I click on link above it gives a 404 error. Then I'm unable to signin, and it does not like my username or email address or pwd. :-( JoeHebda (talk) 02:00, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
AfroThundr - after much putzing I was finally able to make an account & see the posting for bot error. Thanks. JoeHebda (talk) 02:21, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Apparently Github is having database problems right now, so the issue I posted won't show up at the moment. Here's hoping they get this sorted out soon. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 03:39, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

3 questions about API usage and Pywikibot

I tried dusting off Muninnbot to fix an old bug and I see that it generates some deprecation warnings when querying revisions

snippet of command-line session from running Munninbot's source code
(...)
WARNING: API warning (revisions): Because "rvslots" was not specified, a legacy format has been used for the output. This format is deprecated, and in the future the new format will always be used.
WARNING:pywiki:API warning (revisions): Because "rvslots" was not specified, a legacy format has been used for the output. This format is deprecated, and in the future the new format will always be used.
WARNING: API warning (main): Subscribe to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list at <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api-announce> for notice of API deprecations and breaking changes. Use Special:ApiFeatureUsage to see usage of deprecated features by your application.
WARNING:pywiki:API warning (main): Subscribe to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list at <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api-announce> for notice of API deprecations and breaking changes. Use Special:ApiFeatureUsage to see usage of deprecated features by your application.
(...)

Hence three questions:

  1. My understanding of mw:API:Revisions and mw:Manual:Slot is that I just have to tack rvslots=main in the API query and everything goes as before, at least for now. Is that correct?
  2. How does Special:ApiFeatureUsage work? I just see an empty list if I fill in the bot's name (whether logged in or not from my account or my bot's account).
  3. Whether or not that is what needs filling for the above, how does one go about seeing the user agent that Pywikibot sets? I have read mw:Manual:Pywikibot/User-agent but there is no user_agent_format in my config file and the default includes a git revision number apparently. I searched a few places but did not find anything (for instance, I do not see a method or attribute in the pywikibot.data.api.Request class).

TigraanClick here to contact me 13:31, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Solely as an FYI, you might consider using one of the Pywikibot-specific communications methods. --Izno (talk) 14:48, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer, but I am not sure I should be spamming the main mailing list for help/support (none of the above is even remotely a bug report or feature request). Furthermore, here, most of the questions are not PWB-related. TigraanClick here to contact me 12:18, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
There's been one thread this entire month on the main mailing list. I doubt anyone would see it as spamming. Besides that, there is also the IRC channel. My feeling is that your question is too specialist for this forum, but someone did reply, so... --Izno (talk) 13:57, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
It looks like you are using an old version of Pywikibot. See T200955. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:50, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I only use PWB for login and user-agent, {{nobots}} and sleep time compliance. I format the API calls myself so I do not blame PWB for that one. The change to fix (1) is trivial to implement but I want to make sure I understood what is going on. (I am using Toolforge's installation, which I would expect to be up-to-date.) TigraanClick here to contact me 12:18, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Technical issue with characters on en.quote

I realize this isn't the right place, but I don't know where else to find a lot of people smart than I am. (See here). There appears to be some issue with adding certain characters on certain accounts that for some reason gets solved when the person registers an alt account. Suggestions? Is this a phab issue? GMGtalk 15:04, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Replied at that link, need more details. — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
  Resolved
 – Fixed at wikiquote, was a vandalized system message due to an account compromise. — xaosflux Talk 21:50, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist problem?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207472
 
Were the radio buttons used to be.

I've noticed today that my watchlist is no longer differentiating between changes I've seen and changes I haven't. Each entry now just starts with the same period/full stop. Using Firefox on Mac, and no relevant preference options that I can see. Tried Chrome on Mac too, and the differentiation between seen and unseen changes also does not show. Anyone else seen this, and any idea what the problem is? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:54, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Same here, using Firefox 62.0.3 under Windows 7, 32-bit. The bullet points are now much smaller (are the size of periods) and undifferentiated. Dhtwiki (talk) 13:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
I've got the same problem. Chrome Version 69.0.3497.81 (Official Build) (64-bit) on a Windows 7 terminal. Simonm223 (talk) 13:19, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • What options do have enabled under "Watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets ? — xaosflux Talk 13:31, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
    I have the following three enabled...
    Geonotice: display notices on your watchlist about events in your region
    Display watchlist notices
    (This loads the base style for the watchlist. Please do not disable this option.)
    The other three are disabled. If I enable the "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold" it marks the new changes in bold so I can at least see what's new, but it doesn't effect the bullet points - instead of solid and hollow? bullet points, they're still just periods. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Does the problem go away if you select "Hide the improved version of the Watchlist" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist? — xaosflux Talk 13:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
    It restores functionality but with a very different interface. Simonm223 (talk) 13:39, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
    Not for me, no. It shows solid bullet points instead of periods, but for everything and does not distinguish between seen and unseen changes. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:19, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Same problem.   YoPienso (talk) 13:43, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

It was bad enough to make it monochrome several weeks ago. This is worse. YoPienso (talk) 13:49, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • @Boing! said Zebedee: are you seeing bold vs unbold differences on the lines? — xaosflux Talk 14:26, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
    I'm seeing bold vs unbold only if I enable the "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold" pref. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:41, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm having this problem as well. Everything looks normal (bold and unbold) except that each line begins with a period. Natureium (talk) 14:31, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Gah this is horrible. Makes maintaining Wikipedia very difficult. "Hide the improved version of the Watchlist" under Preferences -> Watchlist returns two colors "green" for "not reviewed" and "blue" for "review" but than you loss some of the other improvements such as "filters". Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:41, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Can't you still tell what you have any haven't clicked based on what is bold? Natureium (talk) 16:45, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
As User:Xaosflux suggested I turned on under "Preferences -> Gadgets" "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold" and that forms a suitable work around. Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:23, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Hi all -- I'm Marshall Miller, product manager for the WMF Growth team. This is definitely an important issue, and we're looking into it now. We will keep everyone updated here and on the Phabricator task. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

I noticed this yesterday. I also have noticed that since yesterday morning US Eastern Time, no new changes have shown up. I presume this is because work is being done? If so it would be nice to have some sort of bannered notice about what's going on, what progress is being made and when we can expect normal service to resume. Daniel Case (talk) 17:52, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
I've put in some temporary CSS that should fix this issue on English Wikipedia for now. I will now work on a proper fix, because we can only fix one wiki at a time this way, and the issue affects all ~900 WMF wikis. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Roan Kattouw (WMF), I had just added a notice as Daniel Case requested, if people with the issue can confirm this is solved we can take the notice down. — xaosflux Talk 18:15, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
I think you can take the notice down anyway. The symptoms appear to be limited to editors who are running a volunteer-maintained gadget written some years ago by User:Edokter. It is not widely used except among long-time editors at this wiki, and it is solved by not using the gadget. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
What gadget? I wouldn't say I'm a long-time editor, but I'm having this problem. Natureium (talk) 18:29, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
It's a series of gadgets, grouped under the "Watchlist" heading at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. If you are still having problems, even after reloading your watchlist, then you should be able to resolve them by ticking the box in that section that says "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold".
I believe there had been some talk a while ago about resetting the gadgets system so that new accounts would just have normal MediaWiki behavior, rather than using this system. The original purpose of the gadget you need to enable was to disable the gadget that disables normal MediaWiki software functions, which is unnecessarily confusing. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
With all of the "Watchlist" options in the Gadgets prefs disabled, I still see the problem with both seen and unseen changes showing as periods with no distinction. Do you have a "non-gadget" set of prefs to make it work properly? Are you saying the bullet point changes version should not be used and we should rely on the bold/non-bold version permanently? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:42, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh, and the "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold" pref is in the gadgets section, so is that the gadget that you're suggesting we should not use or not? I'm really getting quite confused by what you are saying here. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:44, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I am having this problem on all my browsers, even mobile. L293D (☎ • ✎) 19:11, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • @L293D: are you having the problem with moved pages that Wumbolo is having, or the problem with the indicators? — xaosflux Talk 19:31, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Problems with indicators. L293D (☎ • ✎) 19:33, 19 October 2018 (UTC)


I put my workaround in the "watchlist base" gadget, assuming that nobody would have it disabled (because it's enabled by default, and its description tells you not to disable it), but aparently 482 users have disabled it anyway. I'll move my workaround to MediaWiki:Common.css so it actually applies to everyone. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

We have deployed a permanent fix for the issue (and therefore removed the temporary CSS fix). After refreshing your browser, the watchlist should be behaving as expected and back to normal now. Please let me know if any of you are still experiencing the original issue, and thank you for your patience as we worked on this. There is only one outstanding issue: when using highlighting, all highlighted rows have filled-in circles, whether they are seen or unseen. The fix for that is written and will be deployed on Monday. -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Thank you! All good now.   YoPienso (talk) 03:20, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Brilliant, thanks! All looks good for me too. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 05:51, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

One final update: that last fix I mentioned above is now deployed. When using highlighting, highlighted rows again have empty and filled-in circles that agree with whether they are seen or unseen. Thank you! -- MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks again. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 22:29, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-43

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

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 October. It will be on all wikis from 25 October (calendar).

Meetings

  •     You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Community Wishlist Survey begins on 29 October. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 29 October to 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.

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

23:11, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Refill infected?

Not sure who to tell about this, but there seems to be a problem:User_talk:Zhaofeng_Li/reFill#Infected?. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:37, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång can you please add a link to the article that you tried to use it on? I just used it on Snow Leopard award and it worked normally. Thanks for reporting this. MarnetteD|Talk 20:47, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
MarnetteD, no article, my AVG virusprogram won't let me use the links at User:Zhaofeng_Li/reFill#To_use_reFill_yourself, because "infected with HTML:ChaseBank-A [Phish]". I wanted to use it on Tardigrade, but didn't get that far. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:40, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the info Gråbergs Gråa Sång. I hope someone is able to figure out what is going on. MarnetteD|Talk 22:07, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
AVG can occasionally be over-sensitive. Wait a few days (or more) to see if AVG pushes an update before attempting to use it again. The Javascript on meta seems to be just fine, which is good. Have you tried pinging the creator? I'd start with that. --Izno (talk) 00:16, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
A good night's sleep seems to have done the trick. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:02, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Firefly Tools page "Outstanding linter errors on enwiki" not updated

The Firefly Tools page Outstanding linter errors on enwiki should be updated several times an hour, but it hasn't been updated since 2018-10-04 17:37:53. This is an important tool for helping to control and eradicate lint errors from Wikipedia. Please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:Linter#Firefly Tools page not updated and discuss it there. —Anomalocaris (talk) 09:44, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Missing edit links

I have transferred part of a page to my sandbox at User:Paine Ellsworth/sandbox. Will someone explain why only the first section has an edit link? All the other sections are listed in the TOC; however, none of them have edit links. This began just a few days ago on my workpage, and I don't know what is broken or how to fix it.  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  19:37, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

  Fixed with this edit. The unclosed template call was confusing the parser somehow. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:51, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
Wow, that's one to remember! Thanks, JR!  Paine Ellsworth  put'r there  22:15, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

How can I permanently hide the page curation rightside toolbar

When I open new pages from the Special:NewPagesFeed, I now get on those pages on the right side a (to me) annoying large page curation toolbar overlapping the text. With the uppermost button I can minimize it, and then with "X" I can hide it completely, but I have no interest in doing this on every page again and again. I have looked in preferences, and I can't find a way to get rid of this new thing I don't need or want (I have an unobtrusive Twinkle dropdown at the top of the page for the thngs I need, and I don't need things like "go to next page in the queue"). Fram (talk) 09:20, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

@Fram: once you close it it should stay closed unless you click on 'curate this article' on the side pane. If you want to hide it, you can put the following in Special:Mypage/common.css
/* Hide the page triage toolbar */
#mwe-pt-toolbar{display: none !important;}
— xaosflux Talk 12:02, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
It stays closed on that article, but it reopens on every new article I open from the new pages. Thanks for the css code but I don't use or want special css, these kind of changes shouldn't be made in general without an opt-out function as they are rather intrusive and not wanted by everyone. I can't find this change announced here at all, but it's not always easy to find these things. Fram (talk) 12:13, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Hello @Fram:, can you please check if ?showcurationtoolbar=1 is in the URL? If it's there, then the curation toolbar will always shows up maximized. If you minimize or close the toolbar and navigate to another page that's in the Special:NewPagesFeed queue and don't have ?showcurationtoolbar=1 in the URL, then you should see see the toolbar minimized (if you minimized before) or "Curate this article" in the tools section (if you closed it). KHarlan (WMF) (talk) 13:37, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Hi @Fram: I'm not seeing any change that should be causing this, the page curation bar has been around for a long time, and it should only activate if you load it on purpose with "curate" command, and should go away once you minimize it, then close with the x. If you have multiple tabs, close all but one, refresh the page, then try minimize/x closing it, then restart your browser and see if it stays away. — xaosflux Talk 12:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Looking at Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers#NPP Browser broken, there clearly were problems with this last week (when too many people didn't see the curation toolbar, so I guess someone from the devs made a change which now shows it too often... Fram (talk) 12:43, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Page_Curation#New_Issue?, some changes have been made this WP:THURSDAY as per phab:T206580 Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:44, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, hadn't seen that, I'll post my concern there. Fram (talk) 13:22, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
  • @Fram: OK so it looks like the dev team put in a url hack to include a force load via ?showcurationtoolbar=1 when following links from Special:NewPagesFeed. As this is the 'default' now, it would require some hacks to avoid it (such as the css snippet I placed above). I could make that css in to a simple 'gadget' that could be enabled? — xaosflux Talk 14:59, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    MediaWiki:Hide-curationtools.css contains the code above, so we could make an opt-in to "Disable page curation toolbar" for people that never want to use it? - Not sure how big this group will be. — xaosflux Talk 15:08, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Fram: any thoughts on that? It is still a css hack, but managed via an preferences 'option'. — xaosflux Talk 02:43, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
    That seems like an acceptable solution, thanks! Fram (talk) 07:21, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Fram: there is now a Gadget in the bottom of the gadgets list (in the Test section) called "Disable the page curation toolbar" - enabling this will remove your ability to use the curation toolbar via css. — xaosflux Talk 01:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux: Thank you, you're a hero! Works like a charm, just what I wanted. Fram (talk) 06:31, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Khan squash family#Family tree

I'm not sure where to really ask this, so I figured this might be a good place. Was wondering if someone who is familiar with the formatting of family trees could take a look at the one in the this article. It could just be my computer, but the tree is seems to be too wide to fit on the page. It's probably just in need of a tweak or something. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:59, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

Use your browser's horizontal scrollbar or zoom the page out until it fits. Jason Quinn (talk) 09:50, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Is my laptop just too obsolete for this now?

I've mostly been using a tablet for years, but once in a while for various reasons I end uo using my laptop. Lately when doing so I have noticed features seem to be disappearing, for example:

  • No field for edit summary
  • No toolbox in edit window
  • When creating this very thread, no field for section title, had to add manually
  • Various Twinkle functions not present or not fucntional

It's an older MacBookPro, the most recent OS it can run is 10.6.8. Is there anything I can do short of spending a thousand dollars on a new one to get that functionality back? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:51, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox: most of these are more of a function of your browser than your operating system. You may be using an old version of Safari - see if you can update, or try installing another browser such as Google Chrome. — xaosflux Talk 22:05, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Last time I tried any of that I wasn’t able to switch or update, al th browsers I tries only supply the newest version and none of them are compatible with that OS... Beeblebrox (talk) 22:07, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
I think that's snow leopard, which puts it at about 8 years old, which sounds about right for an OS not able to run the latest browsers. This is why the "real" geeks are all linux guys: we know how often we have to upgrade and we don't want to go broke doing it. And therein lies a possible solution: replace your OS with linux, which is generally much more forgiving of older hardware, and will allow you to run the latest Chrome or Firefox. It'll be slow, but it's cheap (free) and it'll work. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:27, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
Interesting. I may just do that, as another (non-wiki) issue I have is that my music is “stranded” on it in an obsolete version of iTunes and I can’t figure out how to get it out. I ripped several hundred of my old CDs into it, and that’s soemthing I really don’t feel like repeating. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:58, 22 October 2018 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox: Before you start, make sure you backup that music (and all your other files), because installing Linux will almost always involve reformatting your hard disk. Also, any music you downloaded from the iTunes store prior to 2009 is probably wrapped in DRM, so you should check to ensure that the iTunes store still has those songs, then delete them and re-download them (to get DRM-free versions). If that doesn't work, use iTunes to burn a music CD (which will sometimes erase your files; don't worry too much if it does, you have the music CDs), and then you can rip the music CD after you've done so. You may need to strip some sort of music CD DRM when you rip it, but that should be easy enough to figure out and do on Linux. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 15:49, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox: I'm using an early 2008 Mac Pro and that can run OS up to 10.11.6, so yours must be a really old one (though I still have an old G3 that runs the Classic OS, for when I really feel nostalgic - I used to do software dev on that). As for your iTunes rips, they should exist somewhere as .jpg or .m4a files or something - ones you ripped shouldn't have DRM protection. I have some in "/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media" (though that's on my current MacBook, so yours might be different, but they should be somewhere like that). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:24, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
@Beeblebrox: Have you tried TenFourFox (Firefox for PowerPC Macs)? Jc86035 (talk) 16:55, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

I just searched Amazon[17] and saw a used macbook pro running OS X 10.7 for $120 and one running OS X 10.13 for $270. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:55, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, which mw:Editor are you using on your laptop? Does the editing window work normally in mw:safemode? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Wow, thanks for all the feedback. Guy’s solution looks promising actually. This poor old laptop isn’t even really a laptop anymore, the display went bad years ago so it’s hooked up to a monitor and a trackball and effectively a desktop, which means I have to keep a desk that I use for literally nothing else. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:14, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I mean, I !voted in an RfA recently using Opera 10 on Windows 98 SE. The major things that I noticed was some fonts didn't work properly (I could install them), and the extended watchlist didn't collapse (Javascript support issue). Mostly, everything seemed fine. Then again, Opera 10 was released in 2009, so is relatively contemporaneous. While you won't be able to get the very latest Firefox [18], you probably can get a fairly new version. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 17:59, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
    @Beeblebrox: Version 47 will work - [19]. That dates to 2016, and should run all the MediaWiki stuff just fine. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 18:02, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Major changes to talk page archive assistant script

When using Archy McArchFace to archive talk page threads, selecting a level n header will now select all of the sub-headers that it contains. You no longer have to select those headers yourself. Happy archiving! →Σσς. (Sigma) 06:34, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

initial sort order

If there is a sortable table is there a way to have it initially display in a different sort order than the natural order? (There are sortable table that are stored in reverse chronological order but someone tagged it for change saying it should be in chronological order. Rather than change the order it's written in can it just be coded to initially show in ascending order by the year field?) RJFJR (talk) 20:59, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

This is not possible today on Wikipedia. Someone could ostensibly build some template or Lua for it. If the table is simple enough, you can copy and paste it into e.g. Excel, resort it with the corrected default sorting, and then paste it back into the VisualEditor. (VE is really good for table manipulation, even if it isn't very performant with long tables.) --Izno (talk) 21:53, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@RJFJR: Sorting is Javascript. Javascript only runs in smart browsers. There are many 'dumb' browsers. By using the solution you present, you would EXCLUDE some audiences from the presentation you want to give them. This is why it doesn't exist. We tend to only 'enhance' things with Javascript, not solely rely upon them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 05:26, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
There are requests at phab:T124265 and phab:T33332. An initial sort could be server-side but I guess there are complications with that. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:35, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Wikimedia images don't load for me, even when using a VPN/Proxy

I don't know what's wrong. I messed around with Sniproxy a bit, flushed the DNS (on Windows) and changed the IPv4 DNS to Google's DNS, but they were to no avail. I have asked many people and they've all said the images work for them so it's not my ISP or the Iranian FIrewall. What could be the issue? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.232.151.237 (talk) 06:22, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

What is your browser? Have you tried another? Do you see an image at commons:File:Example.png or https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Example.png? Do you see an image saying "Powered By MediaWiki" at the lower right of pages or at https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/poweredby_mediawiki_132x47.png? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:15, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't see any of those images, except for the Powered by MediaWiki one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.232.151.237 (talk)
Normal images are stored at https://upload.wikimedia.org but "Powered by MediaWiki" is at https://en.wikipedia.org so I guess https://upload.wikimedia.org is blocked for you. It could be in your browser but you didn't give answers about that. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Redirect Issue

In the page Portal:Contents/Overviews, the language link for Malayalam wikipedia is not redirecting correctly. When I click on the malayalam language link, it redirects to കവാടം:ഉള്ളടക്കം/അവലോകനങ്ങൾ/ആമുഖം. I actually needs to redirect it to കവാടം:ഉള്ളടക്കം/അവലോകനങ്ങൾ. I changed in wikidata and also tried purging all the three pages (malayalam and english wikipedia pages and wikidata page) but in vain.Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:28, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

You added an override to Portal:Contents/Overview/Intro.[20] I have reverted it since it's already at Wikidata. If you add an interlanguage link to a template or other page used for transclusion then place it inside <noinclude>...</noinclude>. Otherwise it will also be applied to pages transcluding it. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:57, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Editing notification list for “A link was made from…”

I get notifications occasionally that tell me of links being made from one page to any of the pages I have created. However, this includes many pages I don’t care about, like an AFC draft that i moved from user space, and excludes pages I want to monitor, like attempted deorphanings. Is there a way to edit this list, like with the main Watchlist? Could this feature be added? --Nessie (talk) 16:56, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

It's not possible to define on which pages you get that notification but you can disable it all together at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. Just scroll down and untick the "Page link" event. –Ammarpad (talk) 20:12, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Is there a way to enable this feature for other pages, then? This seems like it would be technically feasible. --Nessie (talk) 14:25, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Deleting pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207530
Resolved

It is taking an unusually long time. Wikipedia is otherwise normally responsive.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:36, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

I've been experiencing this as well (see my thread at WP:AN). Mass delete seems particularly slow.--Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 22:52, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Same. Noticed it ~10 hours ago when I did some bulk deletions with Twinkle. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:27, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I've opened T207530 so the devs know about this, please feel free to follow/leave a comment -FASTILY 04:55, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
When deleting a batch of pages, most of my deletions went normally (although a little slow), but one said something like "Deletion has been requested; please be patient". [I forgot to save the exact wording]. What MediaWiki page is this? I have activated the "message names" option for my toolbox, but when I clicked it, I merely got the normal "this page has already been deleted" warning, since my deletion action had gone through. Nyttend (talk) 19:14, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I've been getting that when deleting templates; I'm wondering whether whatever the WMF broke this Thursday has confused whatever searches for transclusions. ‑ Iridescent 19:20, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
That's probably phab:T198176. Which, I'd guess is what is causing the apparent slowness of deletions. --Izno (talk) 20:39, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
(The rationale for T198176 is so that we can delete pages with long histories. You can review the linked tasks and discussion. --Izno (talk) 20:40, 20 October 2018 (UTC))
  • In the last several days, deleting or undeleting or moving a page has taken much longer than formerly, even if the page has only a few edits. Is there a reason for this? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 07:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I experienced this yesterday: XfD closer timed out while trying to delete a page (and it wasn't my internet, which was streaming youtube just fine a little later). So this appears to still be an issue. Vanamonde (talk) 15:16, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I just came here to ask about this too. It's been happening on pages even with only a handful of revisions. I'm getting normal speed page loads otherwise, so it doesn't seem to be an issue with my connectivity or machine. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:29, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Yep, I did a CSD deletion on a page with just 4 revisions, and it took about 15 seconds. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:32, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I believe that they altered the software so that when deleting a page, it will update the link tables straightway, and not report back as a done task until all updates are complete. Previously, it was asynchronous: the deletion was carried out, a request to update the link tables was queued, and it would report back as a done task even if the link update job was still pending. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:13, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
  • If that is the reason, could it not be changed back? The current delay is seriously inconvenient in terms of wasted time. I am accustomed to spending a lot of time in CSD.----Anthony Bradbury"talk" 20:17, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Can anyone explain, and ideally correct, the current problem which appears to affect certainly several surveyed admins, if not all of them. Speedy deletion has, for the last three days, been painfully slow. When formerly the process took around 2 or 3 seconds it now takes 12 to 15; this seriously impedes my work here, which focusses on the WP:CSD page. Batch is also slowed, in what appears to be a similar ratio. I suspect a software bug, which I am wholly incompetent to root out; But it would be helpful if some could.----Anthony Bradbury"talk" 19:50, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Deleting pages section, above. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:52, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
OK, noted. But it would be nice if someone could fix it, rather than just agreeing with me.----Anthony Bradbury"talk" 20:12, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
I believe @BPirkle is investigating a fix right now. -FASTILY 00:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Should be fixed soon, see gerrit:469354. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 00:54, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Fixed as far as I'm concerned. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Just deleted one, super quick, thanks. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 06:57, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Working fine for me too. Many thanks to the devs for their quick work on it. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:45, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Template

Why majority of articles lands in NA-Class instead of Category-Class or Template-Class? How to fix it? Eurohunter (talk) 16:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Presumably you are asking about {{WikiProject Basshunter}}. The problem that you describe usually occurs for one of two reasons.
  1. when the WikiProject banner on a talk page is given an explicit |class=na. The |class= parameter should normally be omitted, except for the talk pages of articles and of disambiguation pages. Other than those two cases, it will autodetect the class; what it autodetects it as will depend upon the quality scale (see next point).
  2. when the WikiProject banner template is configured to use the standard quality scale - this is certainly the case here, since it has |QUALITY_SCALE=yes, so it will only autodetect whether the talk page is that of a page in mainspace or not - if not, it sets NA-class.
To allow for Category-class and Template-class to be allowed (and autodetected), you need to either use the extended quality scale, which will give you Category, Disambig, Draft, File, Portal, Project and Template; or use a custom scale - for the latter, you can turn on Category and Template individually, leaving the other five turned off. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:14, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: How to use extended quality scale? Eurohunter (talk) 21:01, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Alter |QUALITY_SCALE=yes to |QUALITY_SCALE=extended and save. Wait for the template's transclusions to work through the job queue, and you should see Category:Category-Class Basshunter articles, Category:Template-Class Basshunter articles and five others being populated. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:39, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I think it still not recognise redirects. Eurohunter (talk) 07:35, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

A WikiProject with one participant is a waste of time. You should have recruited at least half a dozen editors before attempting to create that project. Anyway the technical aspects have been well answered by Redrose above and the template is functioning correctly. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:48, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Further to the comments by MSGJ, did you read WP:COUNCIL, did you file a proposal at WP:WPPRO, and was that accepted? I know that you started threads at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Main page and on this page (archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 169#Wikiproject page), where PrimeHunter (talk · contribs) also advised against; but that is not the same as filing a formal proposal.
Anyway, to the matter of redirect-class: you didn't ask for that before today. Redirect class is not part of the extended quality scale, so if you want that as well, you need a custom scale. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:04, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Yes I read it but it's not mandatory. I could make request to "advertise project to people who might like to join, and to get suggestions from knowledgeable editors about improving". This project will work better than these with even over 20 members which are practically daed. Isn't it possible to add redirect class to extened version? I think it would be simplest way and would be helpful in the future as include all classes.Eurohunter (talk) 09:24, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
To get redirect-class added to the extended scale, you would go about it in the same way that Draft-class was added to that scale back in 2014: start a formal proposal at WP:VPR (example); once there is consensus, thrash out the details at Template talk:WPBannerMeta (various archived threads); then amend a whole bunch of templates such as Class mask; and deal with complaints for the next few weeks. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:57, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I have added proposal. Eurohunter (talk) 11:36, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
And a right mess you made of it too. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:48, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Should this project be scrapped and just sent to WP:MFD? Then maybe start over when a proper knowledge base of creating a WikiProject is obtained. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 17:36, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Page preview from browsing images

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207961

Two features I particularly love while browsing WP are (1) Page Previews visible by hovering over wikilinks and (2) flipping through an article's images by double-clicking on one.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to use these features together. Specifically, when I am flipping through an article's pics, and read a caption with a wikilink, I cannot hover over it to preview the linked article.

Enabling previews in this environment would benefit WP readers like me who enjoy browsing the encyclopedia for the joy of learning new things.

Does anyone else think this would be a worthwhile suggestion for the m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019? YBG (talk) 06:46, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

@YBG: While I think it's a good idea, it would probably be more trouble than it's worth to develop this (very small actual benefit to readers, no benefit to editors). Also, because only ten proposals are picked for Community Tech to work on, I think this probably won't get selected (I made three unsuccessful proposals last year but am planning to make three more this year anyway) and it would probably be better to propose something that would have a bigger impact for readers or for editors. Jc86035 (talk) 07:58, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: Yea, I recognize it is a small thing - but I was kind of hoping that it might not require much effort. Maybe rather than considering it a new feature, it could be characterized as a bug in the implementation of Page Previews. Thanks for your input! YBG (talk) 15:56, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@YBG: No problem. I've filed a Phabricator task for this. Jc86035 (talk) 16:03, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: Wonderful. This discussion can now be considered answered. YBG (talk) 19:46, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Transparent PNG images

  Resolved
 – Clearing your browser cache should resolve this issue. Thanks to everyone that commented! Mz7 (talk) 19:42, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
 This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

So, the image in this userbox should have the Wikipedia logo against a gray (i.e. transparent) background, but instead the PNG image is rendering the Wikipedia logo against a white background. This issue has been posted here before – see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 167#Transparent png files – but it looks like the phab ticket associated with the post has been closed as "Resolved": see phab:T198370. This obviously isn't a high priority issue, but it's a little bit of an eyesore. Ekips39 noticed that the issue only occurs at specific sizes:

Is there a status update on this issue? I notice that alternative versions of the Wikipedia logo with the mop exist: File:Admin mop.svg, File:Wikipedia Administrator.svg. Perhaps the best short-term solution for the userbox is to swap out the image in the userbox with one of these? Thanks, Mz7 (talk) 07:00, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

I'm not seeing it. For me, the image in the userbox has a grey background, and the images in the black div have a black background. If I click through to the image page, I'm seeing the checkerboard background that means it's transparent. Could it be an issue on your end? What browser/OS are you using? I'm on Chrome 70.0.3538.67 (and also tested on Firefox 59.0.2) on Ubuntu 18.04. rchard2scout (talk) 07:59, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Funny, now the image in the userbox has a transparent background and only the 40px, 50px and 100px versions in the black div have white backgrounds. Previously only the unsized and 10px had transparent backgrounds. Progress? ♫ekips39 (talk)❀ 08:26, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
I've got white background for the 10px one only, the others transparent. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:50, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
I have a white background for images 2–6 from left (10–50 px). Jc86035 (talk) 08:54, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm getting for 10 and 20px Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:00, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Same as Redrose64: 10px only is white-backgrounded. Chrome 69.0 on Win7. Zooming in and out or changing browser's window display size does not change anything (even if reloading the page). TigraanClick here to contact me 09:08, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm not seeing this bug either. Mop in the userbox has a grey background and the same goes with the mops in the black background. Even if I tried experimenting with a Wikipedia meme vector image here, which goes up to 200px, and with a different background color, I'm still not seeing it, even though they are just PNGs automatically generated from an SVG. Windows 10 user here using Firefox 63. theinstantmatrix (talk) 10:20, 25 October 2018 (UTC) edited 10:26, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
The second smallest one has a white background, the others display with a black background. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 10:49, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Ditto for me. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 11:15, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
From what I see the one in the userbox has a white background (I'd always assumed that was intentional). Of the ones in the black box, the 2nd and 4th smallest ones have white backgrounds, while the rest have black. I'm on Firefox. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 13:59, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Windows 10 with Google Chrome here; the userbox mop has a grey background, the line of different sizes all has black backgrounds. Home Lander (talk) 15:31, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Should have mentioned that if I load the image on WP, the background is white, but if I go to Commons, the background is white/grey checkerboard. Interesting. Home Lander (talk) 15:50, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@Home Lander: This has been the case for several years. It's because the site CSS at English Wikipedia and at Commons have different rules for file description pages (in particular, the background at English Wikipedia is plain until you hover over it, when it becomes chequered; at Commons it's always chequered using this pattern   repeated on both axes). These rules do not affect how an image is displayed elsewhere. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

BTW I'm currently using Firefox 62 on Ubuntu 16.04. Will report back shortly with results from my other browsers and computer. ♫ekips39 (talk)❀ 16:21, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Actually I flushed my cache and the transparent backgrounds are all there. The white doesn't display in any other browser or here on Windows 10. Cleared up for anyone else? ♫ekips39 (talk)❀ 16:31, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: Of course! I don't know why it did not occur to me sooner to try this. Clearing the cache does indeed resolve the issue.   Thanks! Mz7 (talk) 19:42, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Resolved for me too! Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:48, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
  • It took a while, but it now works. Jc86035 (talk) 17:55, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Template flag

In Template:President of Ethiopia the flag next to the Chairmen of the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia appears to eat half of the year range in brackets, overlapping with it (screenshot). Is this just my local issue? Brandmeistertalk 21:22, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

It also happens for me in all four tested browsers. Simplified example showing it happens for the longest group name "President of Ethiopia":
Group names in a navbox are right-aligned. I guess that works poorly when text is combined with a right-aligned floating image. An inline image (no |right) to the right of the text works for me:
PrimeHunter (talk) 22:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Think it looks better now. [21] Home Lander (talk) 00:15, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Overriding external link blacklist

I was editing Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Whaleto to remove lint errors, but when I attempted to save my changes, it came up with a box with red print saying

Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist. ...

  • The following link has triggered a protection filter: whale.to

...

This isn't even true; I haven't added any new external links to whale.to, and these whale.to links have sat around undisturbed since April 2006, or more than 12 years. It should be possible to save an article with existing blacklisted external links without removing the blacklisted external links. Is there a class of Wikipedian who has that power, and if so how do I submit edit requests? And if not, please consider this a request to create a way to edit articles with protection filter violations. —Anomalocaris (talk) 00:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris: first, try again - the SBL was hitting on something else, and displaying the hit wrong due to unusual syntax. — xaosflux Talk 01:55, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
This is more of a bug/false positive/false error then normal behavior so I don't think you should normally see it. — xaosflux Talk 01:58, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@Anomalocaris: to answer your other questions, in general Template editors can override the blacklist, and edit requests that are prevented in their normal venue may be placed at: WP:RFED. — xaosflux Talk 01:58, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux and Anomalocaris: Nope, they can only override the title and username blacklists, not the spam blacklists. Nobody can override the spam blacklists. Graham87 04:34, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@Graham87: oops, thanks for the note - looks like phab:T36928 to allow overrides has been stalled for years that could enable this one day. So Anomalocaris, the only current bypass is for an admin to remove the blacklist item or add a whitelist override. — xaosflux Talk 04:43, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
A case like this solved by putting nowiki tags around the offending URL. I had a very quick look at the page history ten minutes ago and it looked like you had done that. Johnuniq (talk) 04:59, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Error handling, parser functions and #iferror on Wikipedia

Is it technically possible, in case of error for parser functions on Wikipedia to write also incorrect input (or error message given at input [#iferror]), to instead

Expression error: Unexpected < operator

{{#expr:<span class="error">Error of the Template</span>}}

get something like

Expression error: Unexpected < operator: Error of the Template

{{#expr:<span class="error">Error of the Template</span>}}: <span class="error">Error of the Template</span>

In short, stack trace of errors. --89.25.210.104 (talk) 15:43, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. However, #iferror can be used to check whether an operation generates an error (see Help:Magic words), but that gives convoluted wikitext. I refactored the above to remove this page from Category:ParserFunction errors. Johnuniq (talk) 06:53, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
#iferror is good only for one parser function at a time. If the functions/templates are nested (ex. parse input from {{Inflation/sandbox}} in #expr in formatnum/price), then it's sometimes hard to pinpoint the exact reason for the error (it would be easier if there was bad input/error message printed). Maybe it could be done only for preview? --89.25.210.104 (talk) 14:18, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

File:1st CIMIC Battalion (Romania) insignia.png

Greetings,

it seems like while splitting File:1st CIMIC Battalion (Romania) insignia.png that the file history blew up: CIMIC Battalion (Romania) insignia.png&action=history The file history claims that nothing happened to the file while the file log thinks that I deleted the file and undeleted one version. In addition, it seems like the page move function there claims that any file move is "changing the file type". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:36, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

One particular article virtually impossible to edit on mobile?

So last night I tried to add a link to the hatnote on Rwandan genocide diff. I was using my cell phone, which is a virtually brand new Galaxy Note 8. I've never had a problem editing using it before (aside from the simple fact that WP's mobile interface sucks). However, editing that particular article caused it to be very, very slow - like I'd type one character and have to wait 30-40 seconds for it to appear. When I tried to take the underscores out and replace them with spaces the whole browser crashed. That happened 3-4 times until I gave up and left them in. This morning I'm on a desktop computer and I had no problem with it diff. Anyone have any idea what the problem could be? Again, it's just that article I had trouble with. I was able to make other edits fine. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 13:34, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

You don't have edits at the mobile version since 6 October so I guess you were using the desktop version on your phone. I don't know what caused the problem but maybe it would have helped to only edit the lead section and not the whole page. See Help:Section#Editing before the first section. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:11, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
PrimeHunter Thanks for the tip about adding an edit link to the lede, that should help. I do normally use the desktop version on my phone, because the mobile version sucks. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 15:19, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
One thing that slows the editor a lot (on large pages) is syntax highlighting. So you can disable it by tapping the highlighter/marker icon in the toolbar at the top of the editor window and that should make the editor a lot faster. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:15, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the tip Galobtter. I didn't have syntax highlighting enabled, didn't even know it existed. However, I can see how it'll make editing some pages easier. If it causes the editor to slow down I'll leave it off unless I need it. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 17:21, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
@ONUnicorn: I can't find it right now, but I also remember that there was a specific bug in Chrome/Android recently which had this behavior. It was fixed since, but if you happen to be on that specific version of the browser, than you could be encountering that as well of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:52, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Timeline chart bug?

  Resolved
 – Image re-rendered. Home Lander (talk) 22:25, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello I've got this issue with a Timeline on this page Nuclear Assault

 
Timeline chart

I've tried to edit the LineData since the problem seems to come from there, but I can't find any sense in it. It seems to work with 1-5 items, but not with 6.

Just wanted to report it, maybe it's a bug in the chart generation, maybe it's an error in the page source and I just don't see it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Diskad (talk • contribs) 18:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Diskad: This will usually be fixed by any change which forces a new version of the image. Just try to change one character somewhere. If it works in preview then save. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:54, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, that seems to do the trick. So this can be closed now. Should i remove this conversation and the screen dump? What is the proper etiquette? Diskad (talk) 21:50, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@Diskad: No, you should not remove a thread that any other person has replied to (see WP:TPO). Just add a {{resolved}} tag (with signature) at the top. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:17, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
This has happened on many articles; see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_167#Timeline_rendering_problem where I found one. It's apparently just a rendering error when the image is developed. Home Lander (talk) 22:25, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Wrapper consensus

Two discussions initiated at Template talk:Infobox comedian#Convert to wrapper and Template talk:Infobox musical artist#Convert to wrapper. You're invited to comment. Thanks Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 07:36, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Navboxes at Babe Ruth

I posted this at Talk:Babe Ruth but got no response so I thought I'd try here. When I click on "show" on the navboxes at the bottom of Babe Ruth, they don't open (Chrome, Windows 10). Is this happening to others? I tried cutting everything *except* the navboxes out of the page in preview mode, and they worked fine when I did that, so I'm not sure the navboxes themselves are to blame. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:21, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

They work for me (also Windows 10/Chrome), but boy, there are a lot of navboxes there. Your browser overloaded? Home Lander (talk) 03:16, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Works for me too (Mac/Chrome), probably your browser was not loading them properly. –Ammarpad (talk) 05:07, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't think it's that -- I do have a couple of dozen tabs open, but I just tried it on Safari on my iPhone and that also fails. Must be something in my gadgets; I'll try disabling things and see if that fixes it. Thanks for the replies. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:14, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Historic flag

I'm trying to get the former Greek flag as a flagicon, using the code {{flagicon|Greece|1906}}. This should display the Greek flag as of 1906 (i.e. the former flag), but it's instead showing the current Greek flag, which wasn't adopted until 1978. Can anyone please help? Joseph2302 (talk) 08:40, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

You should use {{flagicon|Greece|old}}; that's how it was named. 1906 is quite arbitrary not sure how you got it, since the flag was has been in use before and after that year. –Ammarpad (talk) 09:11, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, works now. Joseph2302 (talk) 09:28, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Pronunciation button next to the page title in mobile app

  Resolved
 – Polish {{IPA}} did the job. Karol Szapsza (talk) 13:42, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Hello Wikipedians! Recently, when using English version Wikipedia via mobile app, I noticed a really nice feature that displays little speaker button next to the page title in the app. The button allows the reader to hear the pronunciation of page name without leaving the article itself. Sorry for asking for help here, but I'm just really conscious how can I achieve such a simultaneous feature in Polish Wikipedia, which I mainly edit. I was looking for some CSS class that would force the app to detect proper .ogg file and display the button, but, unfortunately, nothing that I tried was successful. Thank you in advance, Karol Szapsza (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

WP:POPUPS omitting text

See File:BLP popups.jpg. Popups is omitting the words "information about living persons" from the preview of WP:BLP. Is this normal behavior? Home Lander (talk) 16:23, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Fixed. The words were within templates for emphasis but the tool was unable to discern that. Now changed to use plain HTML element, it's showing. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:42, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
The target of WP:BLP said: adding {{strong|information about living persons}} to {{em|any}} Wikipedia page. It's normal that popups skips templates. It skipped "any" for the same reason. Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups#Options has popupPreviewKillTemplates: "If true, templates referred to in an article are simply deleted from previews; otherwise, they're shown as raw wikitext." It defaults to true. Popups is a gadget disabled by default and not a part of MediaWiki. I'm not sure we should be writing wikitext with popups in mind. A few sections up at #Some technical questions on a thread at VPP is a link to a discussion where some people think we should write wikitext to control which image is chosen for an article by some features. There are also people who think we should write to try to control Google search results pages. I think we should focus on the how the actual page looks. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:51, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
There is a (inactive-ish) ongoing project to rewrite Popups to use an actual parser (Parsoid) instead of the current (mildly broken) one. When that project is done, this and other Popups parsing issues should be resolved. In the meantime, I agree with PrimeHunter that it may not be the best idea to rewrite wikitext for Popups usage. Enterprisey (talk!) 18:59, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the insight, everyone. I didn't know a template existed for emphasizing text when simply bolding it works just as well. Home Lander (talk) 21:03, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
@Home Lander: Bold using wikitext and the template {{strong}} are not the same under the hood; one applies the <b>...</b> element and one applies the <strong>...</strong> element. (I assume you can tell which is which.) These apply different meanings to the text in-question. Here is a brief discussion on their meaning. --Izno (talk) 23:10, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Huge Script errors in console log

I was recently testing my own JS and noticed that there are four or five huge red warning messages(which seemed unrelated to my script) at the console log which I had not seen until very recently.

Text of one of the warnings
load.php?debug=false…ipts&skin=vector:10 [Report Only] Refused to load the script 'https://tools-static.wmflabs.org/meta/scripts/pathoschild.templatescript.js' because it violates the following Content Security Policy directive: "script-src 'unsafe-eval' 'self' meta.wikimedia.org *.wikimedia.org *.wikipedia.org *.wikinews.org *.wiktionary.org *.wikibooks.org *.wikiversity.org *.wikisource.org wikisource.org *.wikiquote.org *.wikidata.org *.wikivoyage.org *.mediawiki.org 'unsafe-inline'".
Could someone with more technical knowledge confirm if everything is okay.

 — fr + 06:55, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Seems like a new mediawiki report that shows you and apparently others on this wiki and several others are loading javascript from a "third" party site. That is a massively bad and naive approach. The person who controls access to that script can easily modify it and change your settings or collect your data. An admin or global administrator who is dumb enough to do that that would immediately provide the ability to do stuff like block, remove rights and have a party. Their account could easily be hacked. Funny thing is that some admins have naively been loading this tool.

Worse thing is that there is at least one wiki that users were dumb enough to enable such a nasty hack has a javascript tool for all users.08:11, 26 October 2018 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.235.132.239 (talk)

Hi folks. Yes, we just enabled CSP in report only mode on the sites. You don't have to worry too much about this now, we'll definitely be giving people notice before enabling in strict (blocking) mode. Additionally this currently will warn both for external resource loads and external scripts (your example above is an external script load). We eventually plan to have some sort of preference opt-in to allow external (non-script) resource loads for people who want that while still protecting the vast majority who don't use that (details of that are yet to be worked out). With all that said, we strongly encourage you to only load scripts that are saved on wiki. Remember, any external script that you load has full control of your account and can do anything you could do. BWolff (WMF) (talk) 08:25, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Isn't the issue in this particular case (for meta:TemplateScript) that wmflabs.org is considered "external" unlike from meta (or wikidata or...)? Seems like *.wmflabs.org is missing from the 'self' list. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:22, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
wmflabs.org should absolutely not be treated as a trusted site. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 11:29, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
A question like that undeniably proves the point made above. It should also be worrying that someone who seems to lack basic knowledge of sofware / programming security practices not only has the interfaceadmin rights, and also very likely has the exact same script loaded. Generally, this proves that this measure will resolve very little as long as some sort js review , much like flagged revisions doesn't exist. Chances are that most (if not all) other interface administrators also load resources from javascript pages that they don't control, e.g. normal user's js pages. If it is this bad here, smaller wikis must be infinitely worse.197.235.132.239 (talk) 12:22, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Oh wow, I didn't notice their user rights flags. That is very worrying. Well spotted. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 13:04, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Hey, Amory meant no harm. There's a lot of good stuff on Toolforge. Indeed the barrier of entry to creating things there is relatively low, but not everyone knows that. As it stands now, on-wiki JS is not necessarily safe either, for the record. No need to go into details.

There are a hoard of scripts heavily relied upon that source Toolforge. It is a no-brainer that this will definitely be a problem. The preference opt-in to allow external resource loads will have to be a requirement. Some things you just can't do on-wiki. That being said, on the surface it would seem TemplateScript operates fully client-side and doesn't need to live on Toolforge at all?

My hope is we can selectively whitelist specific patterns, such as xtools.wmflabs.org/* (or tools.wmflabs.org/my-tool/*). The ArticleInfo gadget for instance is very popular. This functionality cannot feasibly be implemented on-wiki, and there will be a lot of unhappy people if this can no longer be sourced :( — MusikAnimal talk 17:36, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

@Musik , Let me put it bluntly, Amorymeltzer (an interface administrator) seems to be using (at the time of this writing) the script above in their account. That should immediately be something of great concern to all interface admins because it essentially means that anyone who has access to that repository is essentially a interface administrator (as implied by BWolff), and that's not a right that the presumed script author is currently allowed to have on this wiki. With just a bit of random searching, it was easy to identify that the same script is being used by some users with significant cross-wiki rights, so by the same token the user also has access to those rights, and that should be very concerning to Wikimedia system administrators.
Going by wikia's help pages, they seemed to have reacted in a somewhat more effective way to similar incidents, and even developed (some) sensible rules and extensions (similar to https://github.com/TK-999/mediawiki-extensions-ContentReview) governing the use of javascript.
About the scripts you mention, considering that most deployed scripts neither validate the input properly nor escape the output (nor is there even enforcement of such practices), even if they are loaded as text or json they will still pose a significant risk. The ArticleInfo can mostly be implemented locally using the mw:API:Revision, for pages without too many revisions. 197.235.144.129 (talk) 21:35, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm the script author for the TemplateScript mentioned in the error. Since I'm already an admin and global interface editor, repository access doesn't give me any new access. I agree that pages in the MediaWiki namespace are more secure than a third-party site, but keep in mind the historical context: way back when these scripts were written, scripts were routinely saved in the user namespace where anyone could edit them. Moving them to Tool Labs was a big step up for security at the time. For example, the user scripts that use TemplateScript in this case are still stored in an unprotected user page, so they're much less secure than the Tool Labs scripts. —Pathoschild 21:45, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm the IP who made the notes above. Thanks for the historical context, it was very enlightening. It was certainly a worse situation than what currently exists , and it explains the easy going manner of admins and even wikimedia system administrators here. Although a more sensible approach at the time would have been to place the script in a page, request that admins protect it, and maybe allow custom trusted groups access to it. Alternatively, it could have been stored in the mediawiki namespace which presumably has always been protected.
I stand corrected about the account not having interface admin rights, but it still doesn't eliminate the fact that you currently have access to steward, and global sysop rights which your account shouldn't have and isn't listed in Special:CentralAuth/Pathoschild. This access exists because some stewards, global sysops and even mediawiki developers load your script. It was trivial for me to find this. Hackers would find even simpler ways of escalating privilege, e.g. by hacking regular accounts (with lower account security) that have editing rights to scripts loaded by privileged accounts. Looking at the logs in central wikis like commons and meta, it seems that some admins and even stewards have been compromised, and it is very likely that javascript was the tool used to hack some of these accounts. 197.218.90.129 (talk) 11:33, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Much as I appreciate the brow-beating, the question asked was why this showed up in the console and whether everything was okay. After being insulted, Brian gave the correct, jargony answer ("enabled CSP") that it was "external" but did not explain why this particular error showed up. I attempted to be helpful and explain that, unlike other sites (i.e., everything) which could reasonably be understood to be external to enWiki but do not provide warnings, wmflabs is indeed missing from the list in the console message, thus it provides a warning where as those listed (meta, wikidata, etc.) do not. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:43, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
hi User:Amorymeltzer - my apologies for being jargony. Sometimes i slip into it without meaning to. For the purposes of this, we consider labs to be external. Basically because anyone can create a labs project. While of course many (most) labs project are done by trusted people, we ultimately want to limit script loads to places WMF truly controls, and has a publicly auditable view of previous versions of the script (i.e. on wiki page histories). Additionally we consider labs to be a seperate "security domain" and want to avoid mixing in executable code across security domains. Last, with all due respect to the wikipedia community, the people who use user scripts are of course not security experts, nor should they be (nobody can be an expert on everything). Part of the reason we want to eventually limit freedom here, is to prevent users not familar with the intracsises of web security from making insecure choices they might not understand the consequences of (or prevent the people who write the scripts other people rely on from making poor choices for people who use their user scripts). Re Musikanimal: indeed, we are not sure what the solution for loading (non-script) data from labs/external data looks like. I agree we will need to allow it for certain classes of users, we will be writing up a plan for that some point in the near future. BWolff (WMF) (talk) 21:48, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
@BWolff (WMF), Amorymeltzer, MusikAnimal, and Krenair: I tracked the TemplateScript's origin down to Ohconfucius's MOSNUM dates script. Do you recommend that I uninstall the script for security reasons? (Given that I don't use it frequently that much)  — fr + 14:33, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I cannot parse what is going on, what error my script is responsible for making, and thus the nature of problem being created for the wider Wikimedia project that is implied. If any expert can tell me what changes I can make to my script to address the issue, I would be most grateful. -- Ohc ¡digame! 20:06, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Ohconfucius, It is loading code from a domain that is considered to be not trusted: "tools.wmflabs.org". As JS attacks have been increasing, the WMF security team have added a new measure to the website, which tells the browser which domains and which technologies should be trusted (CSP) by your browser. This measure is currently in report-only mode, meaning that it will show a warning if you load code from those domains in your Javascript console, as well as reporting the domain violation in question back to WMF (so that WMF gains insight into what will break when they make this more than just reporting). Eventually this reporting will probably be turned into a blocking mode, at which time the script would actually stop working. I have created a ticket for Pathoschild, to move that scripting code back into meta.wikimedia.org. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:48, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
While it's easy to copy the scripts to Meta (presumably in the MediaWiki namespace), there are countless references to the scripts across all wikis that will need to be updated. —Pathoschild 21:45, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

All I want for Christmas

is my two front teeth; and maybe one other thing (depending on cost).

I use "ExpandTemplates" quite often, and badly wish the page had an intuitive set of extensions like search and replace, some "CharInsert"-ability (for parsers and magic words that are so painstakingly, otherwise, generated by hand) and maybe a table generator like what we already have on editing NavBars, except for the page where they, arguably, are needed most. For me, such functionality would be hugely beneficial, and immediate dividends (in salvaged lost time) could be reaped. Is this something that could reasonably happen? Thank you — and Merry Christmas.--John Cline (talk) 05:18, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

@John Cline: You might want to propose this at m:Community Wishlist Survey 2019, although maybe you should just copy/paste the code into another editing window (or into another program with that functionality) and then copy/paste it back when you've finished typing. Jc86035 (talk) 13:53, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

The # of watchers a page used to be clearly-delineated at the top of the editing window but it's sort of disappeared-ish...

The # of watchers on a particular page used to be clearly laid-out at the top of the editing window but it's been moved - duh on me, I suppose - and I had to dig through some of the editing tools to find it. Just in case anyone else around here had lost the watchers function FYI - go to "Pageviews" in the page history window, click on that and "Pageviews analysis" comes up and right there! Over on the right! Under Basic information you will see "Watchers". Am so happy I found it I just had to share. Shearonink (talk) 06:47, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

If you click "page information" under "tools" on the left navbar, it includes the number of watchers, and some other good stuff, for a click or two less. In case that is helpful as well. Cheers.--John Cline (talk) 07:08, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
@Shearonink: I don't recall ever seeing the number of watchers displayed at the top of the editing window. Perhaps you had some gadget or other user script that did that, which has been amended recently. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:41, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I believe Shearonink is referring to the "number of watchers" link formerly present on history pages. That was indeed removed after a lengthy conversation at MediaWiki_talk:Histlegend. Shearonink, it was removed because if you look in the left side toolbar on wiki, you'll see a link titled "Page information." That is the same link that was originally provided on every page's history legend, so there was no need to also have it in the history legend. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:00, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes thank you Amorymeltzer that's exactly it. Went to use it yesterday and *poof* it seemed to be gone. Thx to everyone for mentioning the "Page information" link - been here for years and still don't know where to find all the stuff... Shearonink (talk) 15:45, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Cannot edit the article Bodacious which is protected from IP and anon users, but I am registered user

Hi, I'm definitely getting run around from different places on this issue. The issue is I can't edit an article that had protection placed on it to prevent IP and anon users from editing. If it's not addressed soon, it will run out of the 2 days placed on it anyway. I am a registered user so I should be able to edit it. When I make an edit it just acts like it is accepting it, but then when I look at it, the edit is not there. There is no message or error message. See the message below, which leads to another message with all the details from the admin who set up the protection. They were unable to help. dawnleelynn(talk) 15:51, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

See [22]
Hi, ―Abelmoschus Esculentus over at the Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests told me this was the correct place to post my request. Details at this URL! [23]

Please see this conversation with the admin I just had who referred me to post at "ANI" for Bodacious (bull). When I came to the noticeboard area, I wasn't really sure which noticeboard to post it at. [24] The issue is explained clearly at the admin's talk page. But the theme is that I cannot edit an article that was protected to keep IP users from editing it temporarily. I have a login and should be able to edit it. Thank you! Going to bed but hope it be resolved w/o me. dawnleelynn(talk) 06:15, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

It is odd, the article is semi-protected and you are an extended confirmed user, so you should be able to edit it. I suggest posting at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) instead of here. 173.228.123.166
  • @Dawnleelynn: could you try to edit Bodacious (bull) again and see if you are still having an issue? I just successfully editing it with an autoconfirmed account (Special:Diff/866150976). — xaosflux Talk 16:26, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
    • @Xaosflux: Hey, it worked that time! It was the exact edit I tried several times yesterday. I can't explain that, but I swear it didn't work several times yesterday. Thank you for looking at it. Well, I still have a bit over a day left of protection. Who can explain things like this? Thanks a bunch. Maybe since I rebooted the computer? dawnleelynn(talk) 16:36, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Email Notice

If you click on "email this user" on my userpage, you'll see that there is no email notice, even though I have one set. Even though I have one, it's not showing up. Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 20:37, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

When you say that you have one set, where is this notice held? Links are always good when reporting problems. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:40, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Redrose64 here. Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 20:41, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Not something that I'm familiar with. Where did you learn of this feature? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:49, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Email notices are implemented in MediaWiki:Emailpagetext, which hasn't changed recently. My notice isn't working either. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:39, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
That page includes {{#titleparts:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|1|2}}. Should 1 be $1 (similar for 2)? Johnuniq (talk) 22:51, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I don't think any parameters are passed to that message. It looks like {{FULLPAGENAME}} needs to be changed to {{PAGENAME}}. It seems that the former doesn't work in the special namespace any more. "{{FULLPAGENAME:Special:EmailUser/Example}}" → "Special:EmailUser/Example"; "{{PAGENAME:Special:EmailUser/Example}}" → "EmailUser/Example" — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:15, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Replacing {{#titleparts:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|1|2}} by $1 seems to have fixed it.[25] But I don't know why the old version was broken. It worked when it was entered at Special:ExpandTemplates with Special:EmailUser/Thegooduser as context title. Maybe {{FULLPAGENAME}} is currently broken on special pages and doesn't actually return Special:EmailUser/Thegooduser on Special:EmailUser/Thegooduser even though Special:ExpandTemplates says it does. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
I stand corrected. PrimeHunter, would you fix the remaining usage of {{FULLPAGENAME}} at the beginning of the message too? — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:35, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
Done. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:47, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
It is fixed. Thanks so much! :) Happy Editing! Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 01:15, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Technical Advice IRC Meeting (changed time)

 

We'd like to invite you to the weekly Technical Advice IRC meeting. The Technical Advice IRC Meeting is a weekly support event for volunteer developers. Every Wednesday, two full-time developers are available to help you with all your questions about Mediawiki, gadgets, tools and more! This can be anything from "how to get started" over "who would be the best contact for X" to specific questions on your project.

The Technical Advice IRC meeting is every Wednesday 4-5 pm UTC as well as on every first Wednesday of the month 11-12 pm UTC. If you know already what you would like to discuss or ask, please add your topic to the page of the next meeting. Cheers, -- Michael Schönitzer (WMDE) (talk) 12:56, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Question about breaking links

Currently, whenever a threaded discussion is moved to an archive all of the incoming links in the form of 

[[Page name#Threaded discussion]]

are left broken. What could we do, similar to leaving a redirect, to prevent these links from breaking? In my opinion, it is a worthwhile consideration. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 13:41, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

If Page name#thread is on the same page as the wikilink, then just [[#Question about breaking links]]{test) or [[{{FULLPAGENAME}}#Question about breaking links]](test) should work (but I don't know what you mean by threaded, example would be nice). --89.25.210.104 (talk) 14:20, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
For example: this link on my talkpage says "The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)." where both here and there the once functional link is now broken. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 14:38, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
That's probably User:Legobot bot error (I searched archives and rfc_F132519 thread doesn't even exist). --89.25.210.104 (talk) 15:02, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
If you're curious, it was link to this: Rfc:_Change_default_%3Cmath%3E_to_be_inline ([26]).
You should notify bot caretaker of this problem. --89.25.210.104 (talk) 15:42, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@John Cline: It's not a problem with Legobot (talk · contribs) (for which the bot operator (not "caretaker") is Legoktm (talk · contribs)). Anchors like rfc_F132519 are set up by the {{rfc}} template, based upon the value of its |rfcid= parameter - in this case it would be |rfcid=F132519; hence, if that parameter is altered or removed, or if the {{rfc}} template itself is removed (as happened in this edit), the anchor no longer exists within the page. Remember that once thirty days has elapsed (or an ongoing RfC is moved to a talk page's archive), Legobot removes the {{rfc}} template; and once this is done, Legobot no longer sends out WP:FRS messages for that RfC. However, it does not remove old FRS messages, which remain on user talk pages indefinitely, so care must be exercised if the FRS message was sent out more than a month earlier. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:56, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
Then maybe it's worth adding the info about possibility of link expiration after 30 days (not to mention that thread title would also be helpful [don't know if it's possible])? --89.25.210.104 (talk) 14:11, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
The link does not expire. The RfC expires, thirty days after the timestamp that next follows the {{rfc}} template. RfC expiry is followed up by Legobot removing the {{rfc}} template, with the consequence that any anchors that are internal to that template are lost. If you want to get the behaviour of Legobot changed, I suggest that you look through the bot's talk page (and archives) to see just how often a change request is accepted by Legoktm. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:51, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
It doesn't really matter which one of them expires, link still stops working without indication as to why (and you can't even search archives without thread name). It's also not clearly stated in the message and on pages linked from it (unless Talk page and "archive page no. x" are counted as documentation).
If it's a common (not recently introduced) situation that links could be dead after a while (and the thread name isn't known), it should be stated on the message/bot page (or in pages linked from that message). --89.25.210.104 (talk) 15:06, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Links do not "expire". They cannot expire - either the anchor that they are directed at exists in the destination page, or it does not. Anchors cannot be given dates (expiry or otherwise) - they take the form of an id="identifier" attribute on a HTML element. There is no concept of an expiry date in HTML attributes, or the tags that they are within.
The anchor generated by the |rfcid= parameter has been a feature of the {{rfc}} template ever since this edit more than seven years ago. This anchor is normally only used by two things: the FRS messages mentioned above; and entries in the RfC listings, which are removed at the same time that the {{rfc}} template is removed from an expired RfC. Hence links to nonexistent anchors for expired RfCs should only exist within old FRS messages; it is not a priority to ensure that these are maintained in a working state indefinitely. If you really need people to still reach an RfC-that-isn't-any-more, add an {{anchor}} template, like this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
Links do not "expire". They cannot expire - either the anchor that they are directed at exists in the destination page, or it does not. If a link target disappears after 30 days, then that link expires to me.
It seems that informing users isn't a priority too. I'm curious, is it really impossible to give a thread name ({{rfc|topic}})? --89.25.210.104 (talk) 20:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
They do NOT expire. They are physically removed. There is a difference. Got that? Now, yes, you can link to an RfC by section heading, for example instead of Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#rfc_567F872 you can use Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#RfC: Amendment for BIO to address systemic bias in the base of sources. But Legobot does not do that. End of story. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:36, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
So be it, they do NOT expire (they JUST are removed after period of 30 days). Hurray. End of story.
And why Legobot doesn't do that? (Maybe this will clear things up for me). --89.25.210.104 (talk) 14:16, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
I just describe what the bot does, I don't know the whys. I suggest that you ask the bot operator, who is Legoktm (talk · contribs), not me. Also, it is absolutely nothing to do with a session, either. Honestly, I think that you're deliberately being difficult, refusing time and again to accept the explanations that are provided. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:54, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
I just describe what the bot does, I don't know the whys. If you mentioned that earlier, maybe this discussion wasn't so "difficult" (and was a bit shorter).
I think that you're deliberately being difficult, refusing time and again to accept the explanations that are provided.
And I think that we misunderstood each other - after first explanations of how bot works, all I really wanted to know is why it includes only anchor id (without thread name). --89.25.210.104 (talk) 17:39, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
This proves that you are deliberately ignoring my explanations. I stated in my post of 20:56, 24 October 2018 (UTC) that the bot operator is Legoktm (talk · contribs). That person is not me, and I did not write any of Legobot's code. If it was, and I did, I would have said so. Now, just WP:LETITGO and get out of here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:02, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
This proves that you are deliberately ignoring my explanations. No, I'm not ignoring your explanations, I'm even thankful for explanations of HOW the bot works. But it just isn't really the thing I want to know. I'm sorry if my questions aren't clear enough (and ignore the whole "expire" topic, it wasn't supposed to be a main thing).
I stated in my post of 20:56, 24 October 2018 (UTC) that the bot operator is Legoktm (talk · contribs). And if you added in that post the sentence from your post of 21:54, 27 October 2018, then this discussion would be shorter by 3 days. Misunderstandings happens.
Now, just WP:LETITGO and get out of here. Address edits not editors, Tone_it_down. --89.25.210.104 (talk) 14:21, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
In general - there isn't a technical fix for this challenge with wikitext. If linking to a discussion from another page that is meant to be kept for reference etc, instead of linking to the page you should link to the version#section such as this: WP:VPT original question on links. — xaosflux Talk 14:34, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
You could also craft link to archive by {{#ifexist}} (if archive number is permanent), but it's expensive. And if it's in archive it probably shouldn't be edited anyway, so permalink sounds better. --89.25.210.104 (talk) 15:10, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
ClueBot occasionally fixes these for the pages it is scheduled to archive, but it does so based on a database that is very large, so whether it actually gets around to a timely (or untimely) fix is usually some manner of luck... There isn't really a good technical fix besides that, and that requires some pain on the part of the bot maintainers. --Izno (talk) 16:57, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@Izno: ClueBot III (talk · contribs) fixes inward links to archived threads that were linked by the section heading. If they were linked by an anchor, as with rfc_F132519, ClueBot III offers no fix. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:56, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
This is because our technology for having discussions is fundamentally broken ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 05:31, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
What TheDJ said. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:54, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Sinebot

Are there any other bots to mark unsigned comments with {{unsigned}} except for Sinebot? I contacted the owner to add it to ckb but it appears that they're inactive. I was wondering if there were other bots with active owners who are willing to activate them in other wikis.--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 14:34, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

@Épine: you could try asking at WP:BOTN or WP:BOTREQ. — xaosflux Talk 14:46, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Some technical questions on a thread at VPP

Please see WP:VPP#Software issue is causing biased promotion of political candidates. There's a lot of confusion about a technical process there that could probably be helped by someone who knows how the process works. Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:55, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

Bias can only come from humans. A machine can't have any. It only has certain patterns of actions governed by certain rules. The other thread seems to have been deliberately written to incite emotional responses. It is easy to overwrite those cases and even make it useful. For example, create an optimal image as described by the extension page, and embed it in a page to make it always selected in such cases. The image could be designed to encourage contributors to come up with a better image instead.

Some third party wiki sites even have a placeholder syntax for the [[file: markup that encourages people to pick an image, although it is not even necessary here.197.235.144.129 (talk) 22:37, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

A machine can't have any [bias]. That's not really untrue, particularly when we start getting into machine learning. The bias may be intentional in the choices made to train the AI, or the AI might reflect unintentional bias learned from the humans who trained it, or it might be completely unintentional but still be present. As an example of the latter, there's the anecdote about someone wanting to train an AI to detect tanks by giving it a corpus of images of terrain with and without tanks present, but since it turned out the weather was also different in the "with" and "without" sets it learned to detect that instead. As another example, it's fairly easy to have a pseudorandom number generator that generates numbers that aren't perfectly random in some way.
But even that is not terribly relevant to the linked discussion, since whether or not there's actual political bias in the algorithm used to choose the page images there's still an appearance of bias in the fact that an image of just one candidate is selected to represent the article about the election. And the algorithm is such that it may not be clear if someone's edit that changes the selected image did that intentionally. The current algorithm is also such that the image selected must actually appear in the lead of the article, which might complicate matters if the "placeholder" doesn't make sense for the article itself. Anomie⚔ 17:11, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Unhelpful diffs

I refer to [| this diff] only as an example; please hover to see what I mean, clicking through produces a more helpful result.

The referenced diff is shown in my watchlist as '-55', i.e. the editor reduced the length of the article by 55 characters. But a cursory inspection of the diff shows a much larger block of characters removed, and then reinstated, apparently without change. Reading the diff, it's effectively impossible to work out what was actually changed.

I was a programmer; I don't recall ever seeing a code diff that made a minor change appear as a complete rewrite. And indeed that would have been unacceptable; forcing programmers to wade through inadequate diffs would have annoyed both the coders and their paymasters alike.

I don't think it was always so; I don't think Wikipedia always showed hover diffs that were so unhelpful. Perhaps I am wrong. Is the hover diff produced by the same software as the click-through diff? Does anyone else find the hover diffs problematic when reviewing edits from the watchlist? MrDemeanour (talk) 11:31, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

One was moved and its caption was changed. Three other images were removed and instead a gallery including them was added. It was rather substantial change. Ruslik_Zero 13:06, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
The hover diff you describe is not part of the MediaWiki software. It is made by Navigation popups which can be enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets by registered users. It is disabled by default. Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups#Options has an option popupPreviewDiffs to disable the hover diff. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:15, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Visual diffs

Speaking of diffs, there's a third option, which is the visual diff. You can enable it at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. Some diffs make more sense in wikitext mode, and others in visual mode.

It occurs to me that work on visual diffs is winding down. Are you all basically happy with it? Should I poke the product manager to get it out of Beta Features, and into some (which?) normal section of Special:Preferences? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-44

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 post proposals for the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals until 11 November. You can vote on proposals from 16 November to 30 November.
  •   The wikis now have a content security policy report. This means that you might get a warning in your javascript console when you load external resources in your user scripts. For security reasons it is recommended that you don't do this. It might not be possible to load external resources in your scripts in the future. [27]

Problems

  • Your watchlist can show which changes you have already seen. This did not work for a few days. It has been fixed. [28]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 October. It will be on all wikis from 1 November (calendar).
  • The 2006 wikitext editor is no longer available. It will be removed from Special:Preferences. It has not been the standard editor for a long time. It was replaced by the 2010 wikitext editor. [29][30]

Meetings

  •     You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 October at 15:00 (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.

20:08, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Annoying message on top

Can the following message be disabled? This is the current revision of this page, as edited by Nizil Shah (talk | contribs) at 09:57, 18 October 2018 (ce1). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this version. (diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

It's pretty annoying... Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 04:31, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

In common.css, add this: 
div.mw-revision { display: none; }

HTH Dax Bane 05:20, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
If you only want it removed for the current revision and not a similar message for older revisions then use: 
div#mw-revision-info-current { display: none; }
PrimeHunter (talk) 09:42, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks PrimeHunter. I added that to common.js but it only shortened the message. The it "url" still has a suffix "&oldid=865480201" and message still appears as "(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)" Further, if I click on edit, the edit screen doesn't work on smartphone. Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 07:32, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
I see you correctly added it to User:Capankajsmilyo/common.css and not common.js. I don't know a way to only hide "(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)" on the current revision. Are you sure your edit screen problem is related to the code? Is it a mobile edit or desktop edit? What is the url and what goes wrong? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:16, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
To hide the box beginning "This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ...", use the rule 
div#mw-revision-info { display: none; }
To hide the box beginning "This is the current revision of this page, as edited by ...", use the rule 
div#mw-revision-info-current { display: none; }
To hide the row that includes "(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)", use the rule 
div#mw-revision-nav { display: none; }
To hide all of the above, use the rule 
div.mw-revision { display: none; }
Whichever one you choose, it goes in Special:MyPage/common.css --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:46, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64, but the issue is more than the visible box. oldid in url disable the ability to edit. When I click edit from my smartphone on such a page, it doesn't save anymore. The incorrect url comes when I open an article by clicking name on any edit diff. Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 07:38, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

CSS cannot be used to amend the URL in the address bar of your browser; JavaScript can be used to do this, by a form of redirection. I do not think this is desirable. How many times have you visited a website, been redirected to another page immediately, then found that you cannot use the "back" button of your browser?
If the oldid is that of the current version, you should get a full set of edit links; if it is not the current version, you will only have the Edit tab at the top, no section edit links. This is intentional: we need to deter people from editing old versions unless they really need to. There was a stink a few years ago when a new MediaWiki release provided section edit links in old versions of pages - as a consequence, that MediaWiki release was rolled back within two or three days. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:33, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
Iv clicked a few screenshots to explain my issue.
 
When I clicked on Patan Devi in my watchlist (latest revision)
 
This diff screen appears, which is good, but when I click Patan Devi here
 
This appears instead of the article (Till one month ago it was ok)
 
This is the url (now, 1 month ago url did not have any oldid in such flow)
Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 09:47, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
Right, so you are using mobile (Primehunter did ask "is it a mobile edit or desktop edit?" at 11:16, 24 October 2018 (UTC), and I have been working on the assumption that you use desktop), in which case I cannot help any further. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:57, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

TemplateWizard beta feature is now live

 
TemplateWizard interface when editing

The TemplateWizard is now available as a new beta feature. This gives editors a convenient interface for looking-up and adding templates to articles within the Wikitext editor. It is similar to the feature that was previously only available in the VisualEditor (and the new Wikitext mode of the VisualEditor). The TemplateWizard was mainly built by SWilson (WMF) (aka Samwilson) of the Community Tech team. This feature was 5th most popular request on last year's Community Wishlist Survey. If you have any feedback or questions about it, feel free to ping Sam or leave a note at Help talk:Extension:TemplateWizard. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Template:BBC programme

It appears that {{BBC programme}} has an extra space before the external link icon and is missing a space after it. Would anyone know how to resolve it? 142.160.89.97 (talk) 05:49, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

  Fixed Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:47, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Page move

I wonder if someone there could help with a page move. I've only done this a few times, and each time it hasn't worked right. The article is List of killed hip hop musicians, and it should be renamed List of murdered hip hop musicians. A discussion about this can be found here. If someone is able to assist it would be a big help. Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 10:34, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: I've moved the page. You shouldn't have had any trouble with it (if you're moving a page over a redirect, it only works if the redirect hasn't been edited since its creation). Jc86035 (talk) 11:28, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: Thank you very much! Magnolia677 (talk) 12:16, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Questions

1. How can I change the alert number in my bell, and the color of my bell? 2. How can I change the "You have new messages" and the "You have new messages from another user (last change) colour? Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 00:53, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Thegooduser: You can do this by editing your common CSS to add the appropriate text below, replacing "colorname" with your chosen color.
Alert number in bell:
/* Number in bell */
#pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge.oo-ui-flaggedElement-unseen::after, #pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge.mw-echo-unseen-notifications::after {
    color: colorname;
    background-color: colorname;
}

/* Number in inbox */
#pt-notifications-notice .mw-echo-notifications-badge.oo-ui-flaggedElement-unseen::after, #pt-notifications-notice .mw-echo-notifications-badge.mw-echo-unseen-notifications::after {
    color: colorname;
    background-color: colorname;
}
Bell/inbox icon color
/* Bell icon */
#pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge::before {
    background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 width=%2220%22 height=%2220%22 viewBox=%220 0 20 20%22%3E %3Ctitle%3E bell %3C/title%3E %3Cpath d=%22M16 7a5.38 5.38 0 0 0-4.46-4.85C11.6 1.46 11.53 0 10 0S8.4 1.46 8.46 2.15A5.38 5.38 0 0 0 4 7v6l-2 2v1h16v-1l-2-2zm-6 11a3 3 0 0 0 3-3H7a3 3 0 0 0 3 3z%22 fill=%22colorname%22 /%3E %3C/svg%3E");
}


/* Inbox icon */
#pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge::before {
    #pt-notifications-notice .mw-echo-notifications-badge::before {
    background-image: url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 width=%2220%22 height=%2220%22 viewBox=%220 0 20 20%22%3E %3Ctitle%3E tray %3C/title%3E %3Cpath d=%22M17 1H3a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v14a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h14a2 2 0 0 0 2-2V3a2 2 0 0 0-2-2zm0 12h-4l-1 2H8l-1-2H3V3h14z%22 fill=%22colorname%22 /%3E %3C/svg%3E");
}
"You have new messages" alert:
/* New messages alert text */
.mw-echo-alert {
    color: colorname;
    background-color: colorname;
}
--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:52, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Audio player interface

How technically difficult would it be to update how the media player looks (for all users, not just me)? Would it just be a matter of submitting a pull request to update this picture? Jc86035 (talk) 16:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Jc86035: We've been working for years on replacing the entire media player with VideoJS, a much more modern and streamlined player (which has the advantage of working on mobile, which given that's more than half of all our readers…). A Beta Feature with this is planned as soon as we replace the subtitles system so that the new player can work with them. Top-level task is phab:T100106. If you want, you can test the Beta Feature out on the Beta Cluster right now (e.g. this file; note that you'll need a different account for the Beta Cluster system and shouldn't re-use a password, then enable the new video player). Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jdforrester (WMF): Oh, that's quite nice. I didn't know about it. Are the subtitles not working right now? They didn't show up for me (macOS 10.14, Firefox 63.0). Jc86035 (talk) 16:57, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035: Yup, the old Wikimedia bespoke system for doing subtitles isn't very good, which is why we're replacing it with something a lot closer to the way everyone else now does it. A decade of technical change on the Internet means things de facto standardise, which is helpful. :-) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Jdforrester (WMF): Sorry, I meant they didn't seem to be working on the page you linked – I pressed "français (fr) subtitles" and nothing happened. Jc86035 (talk) 17:57, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Yes, the code isn't written yet. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

trouble with article

Minor improvements to the article Pegasus (spyware) have been repeatedly undone, despite references and increase of ease-of-reading(methinks). Edit summary attempt was made to tag for education and expert-needed. Anyone mind fixing the article up to reflect the reality of malice?126.3.10.162 (talk) 21:35, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Take it to the relevant talk page. Oh, and I have amended the thread title. POV or what? Simon Adler (talk) 21:42, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Hiding text below redirect note

On redirect pages with the "redirect=no" at the URL's end, it previously would have ALL the text hidden below the redirect target page; a while ago, it shows all the text. Is there any way I can remove it for myself and put it back the way it was for me only? I'm using uBlock Origin for element hiding, and had the filter ##.ambox-move.ambox.metadata.plainlinks to remove templates. For example, go on a vandalized version of a redirect page and try hiding the text. It won't work with an element hider unless it's the template. Dolfinz1972 (talk) 06:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Dolfinz1972: When you say "it previously would have ALL the text hidden below the redirect target page" - this change happened several years ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Hiding "(view filter log)" link

Also, how can I remove "(view filter log)" from the history of a page to the right of "View logs for this page"? with element hiding or any way? Dolfinz1972 (talk) 06:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Dolfinz1972: The rule 
a[title="View filter log for this page"] { display:none; }
when added to Special:MyPage/common.css will suppress the "view filter log" link, but not the parentheses that surround it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:29, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Script to show number of new notifications in titlebar

Hello,

I am looking for a user script which can show the number of new unread recent changes and/or new unread notifications from Echo in the title bar of the tab, as '(3,5) The normal title goes here' for example. Gryllida (talk) 01:27, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

@Gryllida: Add the following to your common.js:
document.title="(" + document.getElementById("pt-notifications-alert").firstChild.getAttribute("data-counter-num") + "," + document.getElementById("pt-notifications-notice").firstChild.getAttribute("data-counter-num") + ") " + document.title; //Add number of notifications in titlebar
--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:51, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Thanks this picks up echo. Do you know how to make it update live without refreshing the tab in case there is a new notification? I think echo updates itself in a tab which is already open. Gryllida (talk) 18:45, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
@Gryllida: I've never seen notifications update without reloading (and a test with my alt account didn't update until a reload). There may be an API call that can be used to grab the number of notifications, but it would be significantly more complicated than just scraping the page as I've done above. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 01:14, 31 October 2018 (UTC) 20:43, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Global usage of a script?

Gryllida (talk) 00:22, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Resolved over there, by the way. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:21, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Mobile site summary

On mobile site under summary edit, can we just remove the watermark "Example: Fixed typo, added content"? Currently there are many vandalism with "Fixed typo" summary. Hddty. (talk) 16:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Probably not, because it's helpful to good-faith editors (who outnumber vandals).
There's been a proposal to automagically calculate edit summaries, at least for simpler cases. I don't know if it's a suitable size project for the m:Community Wishlist (which opens on Monday), but it might be. This would suggest an edit summary such as "Changed tyop → typo" for simple spelling changes, or "Added content: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit" for adding new text. If you're interested, remind me to find the Phab task number (or someone else can). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): Yes please! --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:49, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
It looks like phab:T54859 is the central task, but see also the description in phab:T65142.
These were written for the visual editor (specifically, VisualEditor's visual mode on desktop), so I think I'd recommend creating a new one for mobile editing, where it might be especially useful. "Mobile" could be interpreted as mobile-wikitext-editing and mobile-visual-editing, as well as the Android and iOS apps, but the apps are relatively low traffic, so I'd focus on the first two. Back on desktop, I don't know if it's feasible/performant enough for the 2010 WTE, but it is feasible for the visual editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Alternatively, maybe we can change the watermark to something like "Briefly describe your changes here", same as the desktop site. Hddty. (talk) 23:25, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

not only mobile and visual editor but also regular desktop users will need this right? --Gryllida (talk) 18:52, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I've lost the context. Which "this" will desktop users want? (Hddy's proposed change to the message, or automagical edit summary suggestions?) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:29, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Please leave the message alone! I always check canned edit summary changes because they are often junk and it's handy to have a "check this" flag. Johnuniq (talk) 00:41, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Citation template gadget in wikitext editor

The citation template dropdown menu in the wikitext editor doesn't seem to be working. I fill in all the fields and then click insert and it just goes away. Anyone know what's up with that? I use it a lot. It's a pain to do it manually (though I can). ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 22:40, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Have you tried this in mw:safemode? Just click here to test it out. (Feel free to save changes; I don't mind.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:27, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): When I click on the link to try it in safemode in your sandbox the citation template drop down isn't there. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 13:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Try previewing the page a few times? Not sure if it's related, but something that fixes the issue for me (non-safe mode though). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:39, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Previewing the page brought back the citation dropdown menu in safe mode. However, the behavior of the pop-up box to fill in the fields did not change. When I clicked insert it just went away. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 13:58, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
I think previewing it made the menu come back because previewing it took it out of safe mode. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 13:59, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

It – Chapter Two redirect issue

The upcoming sequel It – Chapter Two has an extremely unique issue, in that searching the title as traditionally stylized (It: Chapter Two) redirects you to the Italian Wikipedia page for "Chapter two" (click here to see it). The hatnote explaining the issue due to technical limitations is already in place, but with the film's release next year there will undoubtedly be people unfamiliar with Wikipedia's naming systems who can't figure out why they keep ending up on an Italian page. Is there any decent way to perhaps indicate on the Italian Wikipedia that the user might be looking for the film? Again, never had an issue even remotely similar to this so I figured I would consult here. Thank you! Sock (tock talk) 16:21, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

There's already a hatnote --and link-- on the Italian page explaining the issue. So when people land there, they'll see how to come back here. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
The desktop version has a clear note at top of it:Chapter Two. The Italian Wikipedia used a template which is omitted in the mobile version [31]. That is problematic. Without knowing Italian I added non-template text last month [32] and posted to it:Aiuto:Sportello informazioni/Archivio/2018 settembre#It: Chapter Two confusion. I did not discover they made a desktop-only modification. By the way, the situation is rare but far from unique. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Colons. Another film example is Species – The Awakening where Species:The Awakening goes to Wikispecies. The search hastemplate:"Correct title" insource:/reason=(namespace|:)/ finds more examples. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:22, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
@Ammarpad and PrimeHunter: Thank you for the correction, I failed to mention that I generally edit on mobile so the template does not pull up. My mistake. Sock (tock talk) 21:25, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Sticky top bar?

Not sure if this is already available somewhere, but I was trying to find something that would allow the top page buttons to "stick" to the top of the window while scrolled. Like the Talk, Edit, History, etc buttons/menus. I think most of it should be possible to accomplish with straight CSS, but I wanted to see if anyone had a solution before I started hacking away on it. zchrykng (talk) 19:43, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

You could stick these and float them over the page with:
#p-cactions {
    position: fixed;
    z-index: 100;
}
But I don't think that's what you really want is it? — xaosflux Talk 20:28, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Xaosflux, thanks, but definitely not what I'm looking for. It would definitely require more extensive css than that. Looking for something more like this in effect. zchrykng (talk) 20:33, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
@Zchrykng: you could also define the height of the "content" section of the page and have it scroll with css - think you will have to fix to a specific height though, example:
#content {
    height: 500px;
    overflow: scroll;
}
— xaosflux Talk 20:36, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
And yes, it could be done with more complicated coding - don't have a lot of time right this second so just giving you some ideas. — xaosflux Talk 20:37, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Xaosflux, No worries, I will tinker with it on my own later. I only asked here to make sure I wasn't duplicating work of other people. zchrykng (talk) 20:39, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
@Zchrykng: try adding this to your skin css (e.g. User:Zchrykng/vector.css) I dont recommend adding it to your common.css as it could impact your use on mobile. The vh directive may not work with older browsers. — xaosflux Talk 22:38, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
#content {
	height: 100vh;
	overflow: auto;
}
— xaosflux Talk 22:38, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Xaosflux, hmm, that is almost what I want, but messes up scrolling more than I care for. Will ping you when I have a chance to figure it out. zchrykng (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Ref maker

Hi, I used to heavily use http://reftag.appspot.com/ a google book ref making tool but for some reason it is no longer accesible. Does anybody know of a similar ref maker, I hate having to type it all out manually.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:46, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Huh, it does still work for me. I do use Citoid in VisualEditor and RefToolbar as well. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:33, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
@Dr. Blofeld: See Help:Referencing_for_beginners#Using_refToolbar. RefToolbarcan autogenerate a reference based on an ISBN. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks mate. Jo-Jo Eumerus I click the link and nothing happens LOL.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:15, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Maplink

Hey, I'm personally very impressed with {{Maplink}} and the Kartographer extension. I would like to know the views of Wikipedia community on usage of the same in Infobox templates like {{Infobox monument}}, {{Infobox country}}, {{Infobox settlement}}. Are there any policies, RFCs, etc I should be aware of? Also are the Infoboxes and Maplink compatible with each other and whats the easiest way to use one in other? Thanks in advance Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 08:19, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Maplink is a wonderful tool and it's only used in less than 3,000 articles so most people have probably never even seen it before despite being a few years old. The best way to get the word out is use it as widely as possible. Why not use it in infoboxes see Template:Maplink#Infoboxes. -- GreenC 16:29, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Editing News #2—2018

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter • Subscription list on the English Wikipedia

 

Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

 

Tap on the pencil icon to start editing. The page will probably open in the wikitext editor.

You will see another pencil icon in the toolbar. Tap on that pencil icon to the switch between visual editing and wikitext editing.

 

Remember to publish your changes when you're done.

You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has wrapped up most of their work on the 2017 wikitext editor and the visual diff tool. The team has begun investigating the needs of editors who use mobile devices. Their work board is available in Phabricator. Their current priorities are fixing bugs and improving mobile editing.

Recent changes

Let's work together

  • The Editing team wants to improve visual editing on the mobile website. Please read their ideas and tell the team what you think would help editors who use the mobile site.
  • The Community Wishlist Survey begins next week.
  • If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly. We will notify you when the next issue is ready for translation. Thank you!

— Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:11, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Whitespace in template parameters

Can anyone explain why this version renders differently from this version (specifically, in the link to "2018 Korea Open" in the first line of the infobox) when the only difference between the two is the arrangement of whitespace between the template parameters? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 16:11, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

The difference in rendering is the target of the wikilink. It was caused by the newline you removed at the end of the second unnamed parameter in [34]. Help:Template#Parameters says: "Whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, returns) are stripped from the beginnings and ends of named parameter names and values ... This does not apply to unnamed parameters, where all whitespace characters are preserved."
{{Infobox tennis tournament event}} says: [[{{#ifexist:{{{1}}} {{{2}}} (tennis)|{{{1}}} {{{2}}} (tennis)|... {{{1}}} {{{2}}}]]. The idea for 2018 Korea Open – Singles is to examine whether 2018 Korea Open (tennis) exists. If it exists then link it instead of linking 2018 Korea Open. But if the unnamed parameter {{{1}}} or {{{2}}} contains a newline then ifexist fails to get a match. It's OK if they contain spaces because ifexist automatically reduces consecutive spaces to a single space when the match is made, and the generated wikilink does the same. The general solution if you want newlines in the unnamed parameters to work is to add a bunch of {{trim}} or similar in {{Infobox tennis tournament event}} to strip the newlines. It has to be done both in ifexist and when the wikilink is generated. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:04, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Would changing the unnamed params to 1=2018 | 2=Korea Open also be a way of avoiding this? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 17:23, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes. Later editors might change it but that is a risk with any fix made in the call and not the template. I think the common practice for this template is to end the line with a pipe and place named parameters on new lines. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:50, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Have you had any trouble using XTools?

 
Have you seen this error?

Hi, I don't know of a better place to ask this question. I'm trying to find out if users of XTools have seen the "XTools is currently overloaded" error a lot recently? I see 1,000+ instances of it in the logs for the past 24 hours alone, but we have not received any complaints from users. Of course, many users don't report these things.

To be clear, I'm talking about the "XTools is currently overloaded" error, specifically, not any ole error that shows the bunny rabbit. If it is true that it's happening a lot, I can see to it that it gets fixed, but I need some confirmation first.

Thank you! — MusikAnimal talk 02:03, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

MusikAmimal I have no problem going on it. Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 02:06, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
MusikAnimal (Fixing Ping) Thegooduser Let's Chat 🍁 02:07, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't think I've seen it. Maybe it's being caused by crawlers? Jc86035 (talk) 11:45, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Well, the nature of this error would mean everyone else sees it at that point in time as well. I don't really know what's going on, but so long as y'all aren't seeing it, I guess it's fine... :) Thanks again — MusikAnimal talk 19:53, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Advisor not working

Hey, somehow "Advisor" is not working anymore for me since a few days/weeks. Nothing was changed in my preferences or scripts (I removed and added it back but no success). Any ideas? Kante4 (talk) 15:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

That script is very old and the account hosting it (Cameltrader) had not edited since 2008. The script in question was recently hijacked and was therefor deleted (by me) as a countermeasure. The security team is aware and has made sure that affected accounts have been notified and secured. There will be some public communication on this soon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:11, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Ahhh ok, so it can be removed from the script list? Or does it "come back"? Kante4 (talk) 15:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Kante4, I'm currently in the process of figuring out what will happen to the script and all of its transclusions by various users. Check back in a couple days please ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:22, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
TheDJ Yeah sure, no problem. Ping me when something comes out. Kante4 (talk) 15:32, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Ditto the ping me. I only rarely get to use the script any more since WTE2017 doesn't support it, so I'd only bump into it when I somehow got dropped into the 2010 editor. I mostly used it for regularizing headings, removing trailing whitespace, and [[A|a]] changes, since I didn't trust the "turn everything into Unicode" changes as desirable changes. --Izno (talk) 03:00, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Oh goddamnit. --Izno (talk) 02:54, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Special Newsfeed code

I added this code importScript('User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js'); // Linkback: User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js on my userpage to have specialnewpage feed is this safe for my account? TheRedBox (talk) 17:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Your userpage is User:TheRedBox. You correctly added the code to User:TheRedBox/common.js. Your js (JavaScript) pages display a standard warning no matter what you place on them. I wouldn't worry. The code runs User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js in your account. The current code is safe and can only be edited by Lourdes (an administrator) and Wikipedia:Interface administrators (currently 13). PrimeHunter (talk) 17:36, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • So i have to rename that into my username right? TheRedBox (talk) 17:42, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
No, I'm not sure what what you mean but you already did it correctly. I just pointed out that you used the term "my userpage" in a confusing way. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:55, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @TheRedBox: normally loading someone else's userscript to your account requires you trust they won't break the script in the future, however as this is a popular script it has had additional page protection applied that only allows it to be edited by interface administrators who are highly trusted in managing scripts. The current version (Special:PermaLink/844587740) of this page appears "safe" upon review. — xaosflux Talk 18:40, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Though you're not going to be able to do any reviewing using Page Curation because you're not a new page reviewer. Lourdes' script just adds a link to Special:NewPagesFeed, it will not enable you to use the reviewing features of the Page Curation software. — MusikAnimal talk 00:16, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Thankyou everyone for your help. TheRedBox (talk) 04:05, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

repairing external links by a bot

Hi!
Where may I ask for a medium large external link fixing issue? At Wikipedia:Link_rot I did not find any page for that. User:MerlLinkBot seems to be offline for years now.
I could use my bot (de:user:CamelBot), but it's trained for dewiki and their templates and so would need some adaptions.

Who in enwiki is able to do the mass replacement? IMHO that page/guy should be added at Wikipedia:Link_rot (if it isn't already there and I just missed it). -- seth (talk) 10:36, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

@Lustiger seth: Try WP:BOTREQ. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:03, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi!
thanks Redrose64!
I've moved the issue details there. And I added that link to Wikipedia:Link_rot. -- seth 14:34, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Question about Special:ExpandTemplates

Can someone tell me about the input box on Special:ExpandTemplates labeled:
Context title, for {{FULLPAGENAME}}, etc.: ?
I have no idea what it is intended for and the instructions for that page are a bit lacking; to say the least. In my opinion, a page like Help:ExpandTemplates would be a wonderful compliment to that special page.--John Cline (talk) 18:14, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

The entered code will behave like it was placed on the page given in the Context title field. Many templates and other features behave differently in different namespaces and sometimes on different page names in that namespace. The example {{FULLPAGENAME}} returns the name of the current page. Here it returns: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 170. See more at mw:Help:Magic words#Page names. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:38, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
In many interface pages, MediaWiki automatically inserts a "Help" link at the top right. Special:ExpandTemplates has a help link to mw:Special:MyLanguage/Help:ExpandTemplates which should probably mention context title but doesn't. The target of the help link can be changed at MediaWiki:Expandtemplates-helppage. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:47, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for that information PrimeHunter. It is valuable! I'd like to ask another question; now that I have new ways to "play" with that special page.
Because I have heard about "cost" in terms of all that is involved to render a template's output, and seen things about "truncated diffs for performance reasons" and "expensive" automation, I wonder if there is any such "cost factor" that I should be cautiously aware of before I engage in any, so called, "playing" on that page? I've been using the page as if "cost" is not a concern, but want to be more informed. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 19:49, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
If you mean whether you should be concerned that your tests place too much load on the servers then don't worry about manual use of Special:ExpandTemplates. If you mean whether code tests at Special:ExpandTemplates can actually be trusted to behave like the same code on other pages in situations where things like Wikipedia:Template limits are a factor then I don't know. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:46, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, it was the former which answered my question. I'll familiarize myself with Template limits nevertheless. Cheers.--John Cline (talk) 23:28, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Interlanguage link template not working

I was looking at Takotsubo cardiomyopathy after seeing an article about it on another site and wondered why, if I got there because Takotsubo is a redirect, someone put a link to the Japanese meaning of the word in the article. I clicked on it and got redirected to the same article I was reading. I didn't know what the best way to fix this was, but when I edited, I saw the redirect was supposed to be an interlanguage link. So why did it go right back to English article?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:17, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: sorry, think we need a little more details to help you here. Can you give step by step what page you started on, exactly what you clicked on, what you ended up with, and what you expected to end up with? — xaosflux Talk 20:27, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Takotsubo redirects to Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which in turn has the word "Takotsubo" in the text, which is colored so you click on it, but leads right back to Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, redirected from "Takotsubo". If I go to edit, then I see {{Interlanguage link|takotsubo|ja|蛸壺}}. Actually, it does not have a link right now because I "fixed" it temporarily. I need to reverse that.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:31, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee: this appears to be working correctly, if you want to go to the page on jawiki you need to click on the (ja) link. — xaosflux Talk 21:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. I didn't know that ja link was there when I first discovered this. But do you really want the English language link to redirect to this same article?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:39, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, since this is the English Wikipedia, if someone goes to that link here or searches for it here we want them on our article, not on another site - for the most part articles on one Wikipedia should not depend on articles on another. — xaosflux Talk 19:16, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
What I mean is that Takotsubo redirects to Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which is the article that has a link which, at this point, redirects to itself.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:22, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
At Template talk:Interlanguage link you could suggest to omit the link if it redirects back to the page you are on. The omission would probably be bad for redirects to sections or anchors but Module:Redirect doesn't currently seem able to check that. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:02, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Automatically capitalize first alphabetical character of article-title

Right now, the first character of an article title is capitalized. So "bromomethane" is automatically handled as "Bromomethane" and an editor can link to it either way. But if the first character is a number (common in science) or punctuation (common in various proper-noun titles), this does not happen, even though MOS for sentence capitalization says it should. As a result, we wind up having a ton of manually created redirects so that, for example, both 2-bromobutane and 2-Bromobutane can be linked.

This would also improve searchability because some automatically generated lists are sorted by ASCII-string order rather than lexigraphically. Unless we strictly and manually follow a standard of capitalizing or manually adding sort-keys, we get orders like "2-Bromobutane 2-Chlorobutane 2-bromopentane". I couldn't find a phab ticket or previous VPT item about this, but my search-fu is weak here:/ DMacks (talk) 08:31, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't know which MOS you refer to but we don't capitalize words after a year. See e.g. Special:PrefixIndex/2016 in or Special:PrefixIndex/2016 shooting. Special:PrefixIndex/- is mostly suffixes we don't capitalize. I tried some random digit-letter combinations like 5a/5A or 3e/3E, and it isn't even clear whether capitalization is more common than not. I think rules for automation would be too inflexible, complicated and confusing. The search box automatically matches any capitalization. Wikilinks can be handled with redirects as now. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:37, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Article titles#Article title format says article titles should be in sentence-case, which is consistent with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry)#Prefixes in titles (my title-genre of interest, where there are probably thousands of articles that begin with numbers and/or parenthesis). It relates more to discoverability rather than searching. If someone forgets to create a redir, it's a redlink. If someone is scanning by eye the contents of a category (for example, to see "what else do we know", not "do we know X specifically?"), one might not remember to look at other capitalizations because things are out-of-order (and we don't categorize redirects). On en.wp in chemistry, the redirs seem to usually exist. But on commons and other places where discovery is a key idea (and for commonscat linking from en.wp) but where editors are less disciplined, it makes a lot of redlinks and duplication of work. DMacks (talk) 10:20, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
But we don't automatically use sentence case. All the Apple products - iPad, iPhone, etc - are obvious exceptions. One from my own city - myki - is another. HiLo48 (talk) 10:25, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
We are a general encyclopedia, not a chemistry encyclopedia. A chemistry convention shouldn't be forced on all other articles by the software. You could make a request at phab: for a new MediaWiki configuration setting similar to mw:Manual:$wgCapitalLinks. But it should be disabled by default and I wouldn't support enabling it at the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:57, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
The MediaWiki software is working as designed: it capitalises the first character of the page title. Characters include letters, but they also include digits, punctuation, a number of other symbols, marks and spaces. Simply because capitalising a digit is a null action, this does not mean that the capitalisation should proceed to the next non-digit character. Having an article named 2-Bromobutane is not a crime, and you may also have a redirect to that page from 2-bromobutane without controversy. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:18, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Search on en.wikipedia brings results from the Italian Wikipedia

Well, this never happened to me before. Is this a new feature? In the en.wikipedia search box I typed the name "Paconio" (which, by the way, is from the Chumash people) There is no article on English Wikipedia for this name, which it does tell me. Below that, it give me the search results for the Italian Wikipedia. 1 I thought it was a new bonus feature for us, so I randomly tried Italian names, but there are either articles are dabs for the names I can think of. But I can still get it to do its Italian thing by searching for Paconio . As Arte Johnson would say, "Verrrry interesting...", — Maile (talk) 00:49, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

It's the Cross-wiki Search Result Improvements. Graham87 03:02, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Nicely done. Good work. — Maile (talk) 15:00, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

How does the U.S. time change affect your preference to see your own time?

I've noticed on the Help Desk and Teahouse that some people choose to see their local time on this site. I guess that means signatures and histories. What happens if someone contributes during that hour which gets repeated this time of year? I almost forgot to add "U.S." but a site where I go has British posters who have already had a time change.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:04, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

It just means histories and watchlist and similar other system-controlled times. Signatures do not change. As for local times, it requires user action to shift the time back to the correct hour; it is not automatic. (There probably should be a task to improve that to automatic, but I guess that would be quite low priority.) --Izno (talk) 16:20, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee: There are two distinct ways in which times are used in Wikipedia.
Page histories, contributions, watchlist, recent changes etc. read the times directly from the data tables on the servers, which are held in Unix time, relative to 00:00, 1 January 1970 (UTC). When a page is served, these times are converted from Unix time (which is a 32-bit integer) to a human-readable form based upon the "Date format" and "Time offset" settings at Preferences → Appearance.
The signatures in discussions such as this one are stored as plain text, with the times in UTC; the settings mentioned in the previous paragraph are ignored. There is a gadget ("(U) Change UTC-based times and dates, such as those used in signatures, to be relative to local time (documentation)") which can reformat these for display, but this does cause problems if somebody using this gadget copies a timestamp from outside an edit box and and pastes it into an edit box.
Neither Unix time nor UTC have any concept of summer time (daylight saving time), so this "repeated hour" simply does not exist. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:13, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
To add on to that, just think of summertime changes being the same as changing any other timezone, if you move several degrees east or west the time zone may change - but that is just what you call the time "locally". — xaosflux Talk 20:10, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
A lot of what was said above is incorrect. In Special:Preferences, you can set the timezone based on either offset from UTC (as I have) or a location. If you set it by offset from UTC, daylight saving will never apply and you will have to change the offset manually. If you set it by location, the times will display in page histories/watchlists/RecentChanges with daylight saving applied, if it was active during the time in question. For the purposes of this message, I changed the settings from the offset to my location of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, which normally has an offset of UTC+8 but had a three-year experiment with daylight saving from late-2006 to early-2009. During the time we had daylight saving, when the time offset was UTC+9, I created User:Graham87/sandbox10 to test what would happen when various numbers of tildes were entered. The edit times in the page history show for me as 15:50/15:51, 26 February 2009 with just an offset but 16:50/16:51 with the location set to Perth; the API shows that the edits were made at 07:50/51 (UTC). Also, MediaWiki doesn't store its timestamps in Unix time; the storage format for timestamps is described in the user guide on the MediaWiki wiki. Graham87 07:06, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Module error on Syrian Civil War map

I've noted what seems to be a strange bug on the module maps at Talk:Cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War#Some sort of module error causing extra marks. If someone who has more experience with module programming and such could take a look, that'd be great. Thanks, ansh666 21:22, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Internal Error - What Does It Mean ?

I sometimes get this message when doing a page move:

Internal error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigationJump to search [W957FwpAIDAAAG-f9a0AAAAV] 2018-11-04 04:52:40: Fatal exception of type "MWException"

Going back to the page that I was trying to move, I see that the page move did take place anyway, so that the error is after moving the page. What causes this error? Is there anything that I can do to prevent it (other than not moving pages)? Robert McClenon (talk) 04:57, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

The error means that for some reason, MediaWiki could not create a dummy entry for the page move in the history of the page. I have no idea why.
MWException from line 540 of /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/MovePage.php: Failed to create null revision while moving page ID 16153763 to Neil_Giraldo_(0)
#0 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/MovePage.php(271): MovePage->moveToInternal(User, Title, string, boolean, array)
#1 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/specials/SpecialMovepage.php(603): MovePage->move(User, string, boolean)
#2 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/specials/SpecialMovepage.php(128): MovePageForm->doSubmit()
#3 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/specialpage/SpecialPage.php(569): MovePageForm->execute(NULL)
#4 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/specialpage/SpecialPageFactory.php(568): SpecialPage->run(NULL)
#5 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/MediaWiki.php(288): MediaWiki\Special\SpecialPageFactory->executePath(Title, RequestContext)
#6 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/MediaWiki.php(860): MediaWiki->performRequest()
#7 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/includes/MediaWiki.php(517): MediaWiki->main()
#8 /srv/mediawiki/php-1.33.0-wmf.1/index.php(42): MediaWiki->run()
#9 /srv/mediawiki/w/index.php(3): include(string)
#10 {main}

BWolff (WMF) (talk) 01:36, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Bwolff - Thank you. It happens maybe less than one time out of ten, but often enough that I recognize it, so I would say it seems to be timing-dependent. It doesn't interfere with my moving a sandbox to draft space. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:04, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Non-indexed articles showing up in Google Knowledge Panels

 
Search results on 4 Nov 2018 for the word Aspidomancy

While doing NPP at Aspidomancy, an article that had not been reviewed or patrolled, I did a google search. Imagine my surprise when the page showed up in a knowledge panel. It does not appear to show up in the main search results only the knowledge panel. This does not seem to be something on our end, but still felt worth raising in the community. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:47, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Barkeep49, Google doesn't obey our command. They have often stated that no matter what you tell them (for instance: NOINDEX), their priority is on indexing information that people use. So as soon as a website has linked to a page of ours, they will ignore what they consider to be our 'advice' and index it anyways. We have no clear concept of how their knowledge panels work, so influencing it is very difficult. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Gap caused by templatestyles

Is there a phab issue for the gap between navboxes that use templatestyles? in particular, see the two navboxes at the foot of Fort Simpson. As far as I can tell, there is no way to remove the spacing between the two boxes without changing Module:Navbox Canada to not use templatestyles. thank you. Frietjes (talk) 15:25, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

You know, it would be good if we could implement my suggestion at WT:TemplateStyles#In the context of meta templates before jumping to navbox implementations.... That said, I'm not sure how we deal with that gap. There might not be a way to deal with it. Anomie? --Izno (talk) 15:53, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
There's a bodge in the sandbox that will fix it. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:07, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
WOSlinker, I thought about that, but at one point in time, I was told that the templatestyles must come before the first use of the class. I don't know if that is true. Frietjes (talk) 17:44, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
It's a must only in the sense of a FOUC, which is going to be rare with most navboxes. --Izno (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Izno, having {{navbox}} take a |templatestyles= arg would also fix the problem, since navbox could insert it in a place that doesn't cause a problem (e.g., inside the first div tag). Frietjes (talk) 17:45, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
@Izno and WOSlinker:, okay, I see, the 1px spacing between the navboxes comes from the '.navbox + .navbox' rule in MediaWiki:Common.css. so the templatestyles are causing the two navboxes to appear "non-consecutive". putting the templatestyles inside the outer navbox div, or in the title looks like the only simple solution. Frietjes (talk) 18:23, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
There is some discussion on this in: phab:T200206 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:06, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
thank you, very useful. for now, I have implemented WOSlinker's fix, which is probably nearly optimal given the comments about navboxes being removed from mobile view. better would probably be to pass the templatestyles in to Module:navbox and have navbox put them inside the outer div, but this pretty close. Frietjes (talk) 14:38, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Questions on Module:US House seniority box

I've been working off-and-on on a module that will automatically generate the "United States Representatives by seniority" navboxes found on US House members automatically. Right now, every time a member resigns, the ordinals in these tables need to all be updated (by AWB, normally). Using a module to generate these should allow only the data file to be changed when a member resigns.

I've come across a few issues:

  • LUA makes it very difficult to have indexed lists. In Python, it's normal to have x[2] or x[12], but expecting the members of a LUA table to be in a defined order seems to be working against the language (there's no way to even get the "length" of a table). Explicitly writing 1->Don Young, 2->Jim Sensenbrenner in the data file is something I'd like to avoid. Is there a different pattern that should be used?
  • Should the template rendering be in the Module (like I've recently added code for), or in an associated Template? It seems far easier to handle edge cases (like "no member with more seniority") in a programming language than trying to do conditional logic in WikiText.
  • Should the raw data be at Module:US House seniority box/data, or somewhere else? In my ideal world, we'd simply import a JSON file with this information (Wikipedia page name, display name, party, seniority order) but that doesn't seem to be an option. I don't see any namespace better than the Module namespace for this. Wikidata doesn't have this data (and is unlikely to have seniority order), so that's not an option even if it were possible.
  • Should this be more generalizable? A way to find a page's position in a list is not a terribly odd thing to want to generate automatically; most of the time these are done by hand (and updated by AWB) or are lists that don't change over time.

Anything else I'm missing? I'd like to get this working before the next change in membership. power~enwiki (π, ν) 02:37, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Questions about modules are normally at WT:LUA. Lua's tables are extremely convenient and I now find that going back to Python is a pain. It's true that Lua's tables have some irritating issues but there is always a way to organize the data to fit in with how Lua works—the result will be something that executes faster and with a smaller memory footprint than Python. x[2] works fine in Lua and with the current Module:US House seniority box/data that would give "Jim Sensenbrenner" (the second entry). Yes, all the code should be in the module with the template merely invoking the module, and the raw data should be in the data module. That should return a table with your current data as one of its members because it is inevitable that some future expansion will have another table of data in the data module. There probably will be JSON available at some time—I think experiments with that are occurring at Commons?—but a data module is good. Each entry should be a table with the data you mentioned (page title, name, party, seniority). I don't understand about the order/position issue but would have suggestions if an example were available. Johnuniq (talk) 04:29, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
The count of the integer keys in a Lua table is #table_name. If you're mixing integer and non-integer keys (which it does not presently look like you are doing), you're probably not storing all of your stuff sensibly. --Izno (talk) 13:11, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Which, on that point, a table ({}) is not an array ([]). --Izno (talk) 13:14, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't think Lua has bracket-based arrays? power~enwiki (π, ν) 15:38, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Indeed it does not seem to. Huh. The syntax [] is used in many places and I don't think I understand why. --Izno (talk) 15:57, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
I didn't realize there was a WT:LUA; I didn't see it on Wikipedia:Noticeboards. That should be enough help for now, I'll post there if I have more questions. power~enwiki (π, ν) 15:38, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-45

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

Changes later this week

  • You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. The interface for the two-column edit conflict will change. You can read more.
  • When you edit with the visual editor you can use the "Automatic" citation tab. This helps you generate citations. You will now be able to write plain text citations or the title of a journal article or a book in this tab. This will search the Crossref and WorldCat databases and add the top result. [36]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 November. It will be on all wikis from 8 November (calendar).

Meetings

  •     You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 November at 16:00 (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.

17:28, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Showing source code on a page

Is there a "sure-enough-way" to show "source code" on the surface of a page (like when presenting an edit request) where you can be absolutely confident that the code rendered for display is a true and faithful representation of the source code you meant to show? Until today, I had thought <nowiki>...</nowiki> was the "go-to" markup for this. I now know that this is not the case and I am thoroughly confused. So how would this best be done? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 02:41, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

<code></code>? --Masem (t) 02:46, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
No Masem, that doesn't appear correct. Consider the following edit request (which is the actual edit request I posted yesterday) where I am now using <code>...</code> instead:
Addendum - <code>...</code> was replaced with <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> for the example below as of this timestamp.--John Cline (talk) 08:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Please change the following code: 
{{#if: {{{concern|{{{reason|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}
 |<nowiki>&#32;</nowiki><!-- because of the following concern: -->
 |.
}}
<blockquote>{{{concern|{{{reason|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}</blockquote>
<p class="verbose">~~~~
To instead be: 
{{#if: {{{concern|{{{reason|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}
 |<nowiki>&#32;</nowiki><!-- because of the following concern: --><blockquote>{{{concern|{{{reason|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}</blockquote>
 |.
}}
<p class="verbose">~~~~
As you can see, or not, that is not what I had in mind. Unless it's my machine about to blink out?--John Cline (talk) 03:39, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Addendum - <code>...</code> was replaced with <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> for the example above as of this timestamp.--John Cline (talk) 08:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
<syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> or <pre>...</pre> can do the job; this one is <syntaxhighlight lang="moin">...</syntaxhighlight>: 
{{#if: {{{concern|{{{reason|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}
 |&#32;because of the following concern:<blockquote>{{{concern|{{{reason|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}</blockquote>
 |.
}}
<p class="verbose">
—Trappist the monk (talk) 03:48, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
<syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> is great, <pre>...</pre>, in and of itself, is not able to get the job done. I was using it in this example which can be seen to have failed,--John Cline (talk) 08:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

It appears from the following tests that only pre will give you a true and faithful representation of the source code you meant to show.

Four leading spaces:

   WP:1AM
   |                                             .--.
   |                               ______.-------|  |
   |         __                   (_____(        |  |\\\\|
   | __..--  ``--.._               __/ `-------|  |---,
   |         __       ``--..____.--'| \    ___   |  |  ||
   | __..--  ``--.._         |    |  |  |   |  |  |  ||
   |                  ``--..___|    |  |  |___|  |  |  ||
   The plug is pulled.          `--.|_/          |  |  ||
   Ignored is the disruptive one.  ____\ .-------|  |---`
   Feed him I will not.           (_____(        |  |\\\\|
   |                                     `-------|  |
   |                                             `--`
   [37]
   http://www.example.com
   ampersand is &

blockquote:

WP:1AM | .--. | ______.-------| | | __ (_____( | |\\\\| | __..-- ``--.._ __/ `-------| |---, | __ ``--..____.--'| \ ___ | | || | __..-- ``--.._ | | | | | | | || | ``--..___| | | |___| | | || The plug is pulled. `--.|_/ | | || Ignored is the disruptive one. ____\ .-------| |---` Feed him I will not. (_____( | |\\\\| | `-------| | | `--` [38] http://www.example.com ampersand is &

code:

WP:1AM | .--. | ______.-------| | | __ (_____( | |\\\\| | __..-- ``--.._ __/ `-------| |---, | __ ``--..____.--'| \ ___ | | || | __..-- ``--.._ | | | | | | | || | ``--..___| | | |___| | | || The plug is pulled. `--.|_/ | | || Ignored is the disruptive one. ____\ .-------| |---` Feed him I will not. (_____( | |\\\\| | `-------| | | `--` [39] http://www.example.com ampersand is &

kbd:

WP:1AM | .--. | ______.-------| | | __ (_____( | |\\\\| | __..-- ``--.._ __/ `-------| |---, | __ ``--..____.--'| \ ___ | | || | __..-- ``--.._ | | | | | | | || | ``--..___| | | |___| | | || The plug is pulled. `--.|_/ | | || Ignored is the disruptive one. ____\ .-------| |---` Feed him I will not. (_____( | |\\\\| | `-------| | | `--` [40] http://www.example.com ampersand is &

nowiki:

[[WP:1AM]] | .--. | ______.-------| | | __ (_____( | |\\\\| | __..--'' ``--.._ __/ `-------| |---, | __ ``--..____.--'| \ ___ | | || | __..--'' ``--.._ | | | | | | | || | ``--..___| | | |___| | | || The plug is pulled. `--.|_/ | | || Ignored is the disruptive one. ____\ .-------| |---` Feed him I will not. (_____( | |\\\\| | `-------| | | `--` [http://www.example.com] http://www.example.com ampersand is &

poem:

WP:1AM
| .--.
| ______.-------| |
| __ (_____( | |\\\\|
| __..-- ``--.._ __/ `-------| |---,
 | __ ``--..____.--'| \ ___ | | ||
| __..-- ``--.._ | | | | | | | ||
 | ``--..___| | | |___| | | ||
The plug is pulled. `--.|_/ | | ||
Ignored is the disruptive one. ____\ .-------| |---`
Feed him I will not. (_____( | |\\\\|
| `-------| |
| `--`
[1]
http://www.example.com
ampersand is &

pre: 

[[WP:1AM]]
|                                             .--.
|                               ______.-------|  |
|         __                   (_____(        |  |\\\\|
| __..--''  ``--.._               __/ `-------|  |---,
|         __       ``--..____.--'| \    ___   |  |  ||
| __..--''  ``--.._         |    |  |  |   |  |  |  ||
|                  ``--..___|    |  |  |___|  |  |  ||
The plug is pulled.          `--.|_/          |  |  ||
Ignored is the disruptive one.  ____\ .-------|  |---`
Feed him I will not.           (_____(        |  |\\\\|
|                                     `-------|  |
|                                             `--`
[http://www.example.com]
http://www.example.com
ampersand is &

samp:

WP:1AM | .--. | ______.-------| | | __ (_____( | |\\\\| | __..-- ``--.._ __/ `-------| |---, | __ ``--..____.--'| \ ___ | | || | __..-- ``--.._ | | | | | | | || | ``--..___| | | |___| | | || The plug is pulled. `--.|_/ | | || Ignored is the disruptive one. ____\ .-------| |---` Feed him I will not. (_____( | |\\\\| | `-------| | | `--` [41] http://www.example.com ampersand is &

tt:

WP:1AM | .--. | ______.-------| | | __ (_____( | |\\\\| | __..-- ``--.._ __/ `-------| |---, | __ ``--..____.--'| \ ___ | | || | __..-- ``--.._ | | | | | | | || | ``--..___| | | |___| | | || The plug is pulled. `--.|_/ | | || Ignored is the disruptive one. ____\ .-------| |---` Feed him I will not. (_____( | |\\\\| | `-------| | | `--` [42] http://www.example.com ampersand is &

--Guy Macon (talk) 04:13, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

I use pre a fair bit but bear in mind that it does not do anything magic to hide an html entity. For example, if "ampersand is &amp;" is inside pre, you would see "ampersand is &". That is, you need to replace any literal ampersands with &amp; if the ampersand and what follows could be interpreted as an entity. Johnuniq (talk) 04:35, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
I added that line to all of the examples above, and none of them display htlm entities as typed.
Let me try this: ​&​a​m​p​;​
OK, a Zero-width space between each character also works, but of course doesn't meet the "display what I typed" requirement. I also tried a bunch of things like combining pre and nowiki, but no luck. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 05:34, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
I appreciate the replies. It looks like <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> is clearly the best way to go with this. I also tested it with simulations that included ~~~~, <nowiki>...</nowiki>, and <!-- --> and they all rendered just as they exist in the source code. My confidence is restored. I also tested the element without any < class="" or style=";"> modifications and non-enhanced element rendered the syntax just as if <pre>...</pre> was being used which is the effect I was hoping to achieve. I replaced the <code>...</code> elements above, with <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight> and simulated using the other markup I mentioned moments ago; you can see the results, and that it worked very well. Therefore, my best to Trappist the monk for sharing that information, and also a big Thanks too.--John Cline (talk) 08:19, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
@John Cline: If your intent is to describe a proposed amendment to a template, the best thing to do is to use the template's sandbox. If the template has documentation, the sandbox is linked near the bottom of that documentation; otherwise, simply append /sandbox to the name of the real template. Copy all of the code from the live template to the sandbox, and save. Then amend the sandbox. In this way, people can see exactly what changes you want to make; and can also test those changes before putting them live. More at WP:TESTCASES. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:09, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Syntactic conundrum

Warm greetings to all of you.

Would by any chance one of your devoted experts be in position to solve a baffling mystery?

For more information, please kindly cast a glance at → diff #86737834347 compared to → #867379981.

Wow, this rather seems to be such a convoluted challenge to succeed in finding the key to this endless syntactic conundrum.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Sincerely, — euphonie breviary 19:30, 19:36, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

@Euphonie: You should not use {{ill}} in citation templates. That may be part of the problem. --Izno (talk) 21:02, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
I wouldn't use that either but it wasn't the cause here. A named reference which was displayed right before had ]] instead of }}.[43] The fix reveals another error: The English Wikipedia has no Template:Citation étrangère. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:14, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
@Izno and PrimeHunter. Thank you so much for your prompt replies. It therefore seems that the fundamental issue which, before your judicious adjustments, had previously induced this "syntactic chaos"—by catapulting most of the existing references towards the Bermuda Triangle—was specifically due to these two irrelevant and accidental brackets → ]], i.e. {{BNF|...]] instead of {{BNF|...}}. I feel so grateful for your your timely updates as well as for your clear and detailed explanations together with your friendly and benevolent help. With kind regards. Sincerely, — euphonie breviary 00:44, 00:48, 00:50, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata driven interwiki links: Question

This action was reverted with the justification 'Wikidata will provide interwiki links'. If that is so, shouldn't bots be doing this. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 17:48, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

@Ancheta Wis: What is it you think bots should be doing? Wikidata does not need bots to provide interwiki links. --Izno (talk) 21:01, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
@Izno The Noise (electronic) article used to have a French interwiki link to Bruit de fond. Now it has an interwiki link to Bruit, which does not appear to me to be the same or to have the same content. On en.wiki there are multiple articles on noise. So disambiguation is an issue. Right now there are editors making decisions on content, open-loop without discussion. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 12:14, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
@Ancheta Wis: You should request help on d:WD:PC; there is a French page there if you prefer French or you can speak in English at the English page. There are a number of French contributors at Wikidata who should be able to help you. --Izno (talk) 20:28, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Comment table and edit summaries

As of October 25 this year, we don't store edit summaries in the rev_comment column of the revision table anymore. Instead, we use the "comment" and "revision_comment_temp" tables. As a result, Sigma's edit summary search tool fails to display or detect edit summaries correctly for new edits made since October 25 this year, or old edits from April 2017 and earlier. Eventually, all edits will fail to display or detect edit summaries correctly. Is there any way we can update that tool to use the new tables? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 03:11, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Did you ask Sigma? --Izno (talk) 03:25, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
See User talk:Σ/Archive/2018/December#Tools wmflabs. Johnuniq (talk) 03:43, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
Note also backfilling of the new comment table is still a month or so from completion. So right now, to be fully comprehensive, you need to query revision and comment. — MusikAnimal talk 01:05, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Category has negative contents

 

This is a screenshot of Category:Wikipedia categories that should not contain articles. Note the contents of one of its subcategories, Category:Wikipedia soft redirected categories: 72,403 C, -6 P. How can a category have a negative number of contents? Isn't that like someone having a height of -5 feet? I'm pretty sure the number of contents is a scalar quantity, not a vector :-) I just checked another of this category's parents, Category:Wikipedia categories, and the soft redirected categories still have -6 pages. If you enter the soft redirected categories category and scroll all the way down, it looks just like a category with no pages. At first I thought this might be because of the number of subcategories (with 200+ subcategories that precede the first page alphabetically, would I have to navigate until I found a page in its proper alphabetical place), but Category:Wikipedia non-diffusing parent categories has two pages that appear on the first page of results, even though they come far after the 200th subcategory. Nyttend (talk) 03:32, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Category counts have always been screwed up in various ways. In Category:CS1 errors, you can see that Category:CS1 errors: dates‎ is listed as having two subcategories, which is wrong, and it has been that way for many months. I assume that there are multiple phab tickets about these problems. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:31, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
phab:T18036 appears to be the primary ticket. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:11, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

nbsp suppressed and ignored on mobile

At MV Hebridean Princess I replaced some fraction characters in the infobox (under "Installed power") with {{frac}} per MOS. Unfortunately {{frac|10|1|2}} (10+1⁄2) line-breaks after the "10". Looking at the page source I see no trace of the &nbsp; that the template explicitly adds, so the only thing preventing the break is the nowrap class - which, in order to alleviate excessive use making things look bad on narrow screens, is disabled on mobile. <span style="white-space:nowrap">...</span> doesn't help. What's going on? I don't understand why the nbsp is disappearing. Hairy Dude (talk) 15:03, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

The nbsp is hidden offscreen by design, but that also makes it useless, as the character is not adjacent to other characters that way. The nowrap class is indeed currently disabled in infoboxes, because of the reason you mentioned. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:17, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
Isn't the nbsp in there so that environments lacking CSS (including copy-paste from the browser) gets "10 1⁄2" rather than "101⁄2"? And in that case, at least Firefox does avoid breaking at the non-breaking space despite it being inside tags. Anomie⚔ 21:18, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
It's also there for screen readers, but used in a slightly different position in this case. Graham87 09:26, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Can this issue be fixed? This is yet another instance when mobile users feel like second class citizens because basic expectations like no-break spaces not breaking don't hold because a handful of people behave badly in a way that's easily fixed with a single edit. Hairy Dude (talk) 11:58, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Hairy Dude, I have no real solution here for you. You want me to remove the line that disables nowrap on Mobile infoboxes, so that the infoboxes break again ? I can do that, but then I need to deal with complaints about that again. No matter which way I jump, people seem to be/get upset, making it a not so appetising topic to engage on. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:41, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Fair enough, but just let me say that I think a technical "fix" breaking basic functionality to solve a problem that's fundamentally social in nature is a very poor compromise. Hairy Dude (talk) 13:01, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Remove the theme color meta tags!!

I noticed this change recently. A meta tag for theme-color was added which makes the Android Chrome browser change the toolbar color of the OS.

First off, a website changing UI colors is a serious violation of disability accessibility standards. Websites run in a container and should never modify UI objects outside the browser. People with visual disabilities are impacted by color changes like this.

Second, the color chosen (light gray) causes severe eye strain in people sensitive to it. I am one of those people. This renders Wikipedia unusable by people with this disability.

Google enabled this awful "feature" with no way to disable it, so it is encumbant on websites to not use it.

Please remove this meta tag from Wikipedia. A website should not be changing UI colors outside the browser, and the current implimentation on Wikipedia makes it literally painful to use. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.2.72.57 (talk) 21:57, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Heya IP, sorry you're frustrated. There was a recent change (and discussion) to account for the lack of clarity between the updated status bar on Android and the web content. The design and engineering folks put a change into effect that made the status bar consistent and distinguishable from the actual content. I've raised your concern of accessibility with the team to have them review in light of your considerations. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
I agree that the color used should be chosen so that it meet the WCAG contrast requirements, but in this case, #EAECF0 has a 17.75 contrast ratio against black. That far exceeds the WCAG requirement of 4.5 for AA or 7 for AAA. In addition, saying that websites run in a container and should never modify the UI is a bit rediculous when this is a docuemented feature explicitly built in to the android operating system and the chrome browser. If this is an accessibility issue, it should be brought up with the Chrome or Android development team. If you want to disable a documented browser feature, I'd recommend switching to a different browser if this is an issue for you (for example, I'm not sure if Firefox for Android supports this tag, but if it does and doesn't have an option to disable it, you could install a greasemonkey script to strip it off). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:05, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

New IAdmin request

Hi, all, I've requested IAdmin over at WP:BN. Thanks! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Request for permission

In which wikipedia page do I need to request for becoming a recent changes patroller?Adithyak1997 (talk) 09:47, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

There is no request. It's not a user group but just a term for editors who check recent changes. See Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:05, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia does not use mw:Help:Patrolled edits for individual edits. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:04, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Making links conditional on target status

Some category header templates now include automated links to portals, passing them to {{Portal}}. They only check whether the portals exist; they don't check whether the portals are ready for use, and some are not, e.g. Portal:1910s has been started but is tagged with {{Portal maintenance status|date=October 2018|incomplete=y|subpages=checked|broken=major}}.

Would it be feasible for {{Portal}} to check the status of the portal, and exclude broken ones? – Fayenatic London 13:38, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Modify Module:Portal to read the unparsed content of the portal page and look for {{Portal maintenance status}}. You can then have Module:portal take appropriate action whatever that might be.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:46, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Trappist the monk. I did not realise there was a module:Portal. Please could you, or someone else reading this, insert a condition there so that the module will skip linking to a portal with status broken=major ? – Fayenatic London 08:25, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
I could, but I'm not sure that I should. I almost never venture into portal space, but your Portal:1910s example doesn't look all that broken to me; readers going there will find something so I guess that I'm not seeing this as a problem. If, as part of whatever construction is undertaken, the portal page displays huge red error messages, has broken html, or whatever, and if that condition will exist for a while, perhaps the best solution is to do portal development in a sandbox and then publish the sandbox version when it is ready for public consumption. This is, after all, why we have sandboxen. No new code to write, no new code to maintain.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:38, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, if a portal is bad enough (for more a week or so while it is under construction) that it shouldn't be linked, then it shouldn't be in portal space at all but in draftspace. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:43, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
Sandboxing is nice in theory, but some editors have been mass-producing automated portals with zero curation or maintenance. See recent discussions at WT:WPPORT and WT:PORTG#Notability_Discussion:_Revived. Also, their construction techniques use {{PAGENAME}} which probably wouldn't work in sandboxes.
There are currently 70+ portals tagged as broken (which places them in Category:Portals with errors in need of immediate attention), but no sign of them being actively attended to.
I have asked at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Portals#Portal_linkage_problems whether there is consensus to add the code suggested above. – Fayenatic London 10:13, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Draftspace isn't set up for portals, and portals don't work in draftspace. That is, their code doesn't work in draftspace, and when moved to draftspace, they become broken.    — The Transhumanist   00:46, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
What would happen to the portal box when it has a single link, and that link is not displayed?    — The Transhumanist   00:46, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
You pinged me into this conversation and then removed the {{ping}} so perhaps you don't want my participation here. Regardless, the answer to the question that you asked me is: I don't know. What happens to the portal box is dependent upon what the community determines to be the appropriate action for Module:Portal to take when it encounters |broken=major.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:01, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Portals have features that may acquire regular readers who return to portals or regularly click on portal links for their news, DYKs, automatically updating content, and automatically added content. Having links disappear could be disruptive to those readers. If a portal becomes broken and its link disappears, regular readers may not know how to contact the right people to fix it. With a link to a broken portal in place, they would see the problem, and would have the opportunity to go to the portal's talk page to report it, or even collaborate with others to fix it. On the portal's talk page, they would see our link to the WikiProject, and could go there to report the problem as well. With no link, they lose those options. For veterans like us, that's no big deal. But for new Wikipedians, or readers who have limited editing experience, that could leave them almost helpless, scratching their heads. Having links disappear may also have other ramifications that we are not yet aware of. We don't want to hide the problems, we want to fix them, and we want anybody on the scene to be able to do it. A link to a broken portal should also be a route to the instructions on how to fix it, such as having a link to the portal instruction page on every portal's talk page. We need to enable people who use portals to be able to help maintain them, rather than remove the option to do so.    — The Transhumanist   01:06, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

A portal that becomes slightly broken, may still be helpful to readers, such as if its news feature is still working. Why remove access to that news if the image slideshow all of a sudden becomes empty because images were removed from the root article from where they were displayed? This creates a domino effect. We need to be careful not to fall into an all-or-nothing mindset. A partially functioning portal is still useful, especially to regular visitors of the portal system.    — The Transhumanist   01:15, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
I checked 3 portals at random listed at Category:Portals with errors in need of immediate attention, and they had no problems. That list is is making the problem look bigger than it really is, and introduces the problem of false positives.    — The Transhumanist   01:35, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

VisualFileChange

How difficult would it be to import VisualFileChange over from Commons to en.wiki, so that users who are patrolling images can perform batch actions and avoid spamming user pages with multiple automatically generated Twinkle notifications? GMGtalk 12:37, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Some of this is prompted by some comments at User_talk:Ritchie333#How_to_go_from_here - which I have restated below (in modifed form) ...ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:43, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Convenience link. The script is stored in commons:MediaWiki:VisualFileChange.js and subpages, so to get it here we'd need a Meta sysop to first import it to Meta wiki and then an enwiki sysop imports it here. The main problems I could see is that the JS would need to be rewritten to accomodate different namespaces, templates etc (for example, on Commons file deletion discussions occur on dedicated subpages). and that there may be dependencies outside of the main JS file. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:48, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Does that mean we go to phab land I presume? I mean it seems like it could be beneficial to many projects, since it seems like doing this here would facilitate transfers to any other project also (if I understand correctly), and User:ShakespeareFan00 has already started spitballing improvements for our purposes, which if eventually implemented, could also cross pollinate back over to Commons. GMGtalk 12:54, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
Prompted by some comments at User_talk:Ritchie333#How_to_go_from_here - which I will restate (in modifed form below) ...

"Would it be possible to have a multi-image/issue selector tool? That way a "wall" of notications could be be avoided, as the tool would let various issues be selected en-masse, and an image patroller could "batch" up requests, into ONE notifcation, perhaps for some uploaders containing ALL the media with issues that had been identified or flagged.

Alternatively (And possibly combined with the above), perhaps an upload "dashboard" (An extension of Special:ListFiles]] }} for users would be helpful, so that rather than seeing a wall of notifcations on the talk page, you get a 'bell' style notification in the UI, which links to the relevant concern in the image dashboard. This would also allow for the consideration that some people don't read their talk pages often, but do respond to the 'bell' or 'tray icons. (Not all CSD notifications or image tagging operations generate notifications, my custom notifcations)

Importing VisualFileChange from Commons, would be part of the soloution, as VFC can at least do multiple tags per image, or per batch as I understood it..

A more advanced tool than VFC would need to go further though, as VFC works on a 'batch' of images to apply the "same" set of issues. What would also be needed is a tool that can see a batch of images, and if needed apply 'differing' tags (by user selection on a per image basis if needed) in the batch. Some CSD are applied slightly differently if you have different license tags,to give an example. Some Tags need date= tag applied ( or on one of mine placed= tags, and so on. Once a set of images and associated tags are logged, the tool I am describing should generate ONE BIG notification covering all the affected media and issues, rather than a wall of notifcations like TWINKLE does when patrolling a lot of images.

Related Discussion on a "media" dashboard, vs talk page notifcations.

Alternatively (And possibly combined with the above), perhaps an upload "dashboard" (An extension of Special:ListFiles for users would be helpful, so that rather than seeing a wall of notifcations on the talk page, you get a 'bell' style notification in the UI, which links to the relevant concern in the image dashboard. This would also allow for the consideration that some people don't read their talk pages often, but do respond to the 'bell' or 'tray icons. (Not all CSD notifications or image tagging operations generate notifications, my custom notifcations)

Related consideration, When media you uploaded gets tagged for CSD , currently you get a Talk page notification in most instances.. Is there are mechanism for this instead to be a 'notification' instead?

Suggested format " <User X> has edited [[File:]] which you uploaded or restored... The edit is <link to diff> " or " <user X> has tagged [[File: ]] which you uploaded for <CSD criteria>, Please review your upload and take appropriate action.". Moving image issue notifcations from tak pages to a dedicated dshaboard or log, might also increase visibility and response to the notifcations. Other things which are image notifications that could be a 'bell' styule notifcation, might be listing at FFD, pending commons transfer (different from F2, F8 as such) and so on...

Such notifications should ideally be based on what a user has uploaded (without them needing to be explicitly placed in a Watchlist), (and potentially on File: pages contained in a Watchlist for that user.) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:57, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Umm...I'd say a good first step would be whether we can find a competent victim volunteer to just get the thing over here. GMGtalk 13:22, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't think that you don't need to get the script imported, it's possible to install JavaScript that is hosted on another Wikimedia project. For example, I find User:Anomie/previewtemplatelastmod very useful (thanks Anomie), but it's not set up on Wicipedia Cymraeg, so I import it cross-wiki, see cy:Defnyddiwr:Redrose64/common.js. In this case I think that the required code is 
mw.loader.load('//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:VisualFileChange.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
placed in Special:Mypage/common.js. JavaScript experts, please confirm. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:56, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Upside down text

I have fixed it but does anyone know how this was done? Aoziwe (talk) 10:26, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Most characters have an inverted glyph somewhere in Unicode... it's probably some utility that a vandal was playing with. I suspect that this reverses the order of characters in a string and then replaces each character with it's inverted equivalent:
Some (l, s) map to themselves; some (n/u) are easy mappings because the inverted character is a valid Latin letter. The first step is dead easy, we did it as one of the first programming assignments at school; the second step requires a lookup table. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:42, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64 - seems like a lot of trouble for a vandal. Aoziwe (talk) 10:59, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

It took seconds to find http://www.upsidedowntext.com with the first tested Google search online invert letters. It's also first for your heading Upside down text.PrimeHunter (talk) 12:50, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Aoziwe (talk) 12:58, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
˙op oʇ ʎsɐǝ ʎɹǝʌ ʇᴉ sǝʞɐɯ ʎllɐnʇɔɐ ǝʇᴉs ʇɐɥ┴ Home Lander (talk) 00:54, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
see User:Plastikspork/flipsummary.js :) Frietjes (talk) 18:42, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Upside down text is so last year. Iridescent 18:53, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
Jeebus. I almost ordered a new computer. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:56, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
What is that mess? I cannot read the diff, nor this edit window (which has slowed to a crawl); even my watchlist is screwed with little squares all over the edit summaries for about twelve lines. Please don't do it again. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:10, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
How about we edit-filter that shit? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:19, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure it would be possible to edit filter Zalgo text; because it's made of the standard ASCII character set plus combined diacritics as opposed to specialist and obscure unicode, the diacritics used differ each time, and there are many legitimate uses for diacritics, I can't see how you could write a script that wouldn't hit too many false positives. (This is precisely why vandals—on all user-generated sites, not just Wikipedia—like it so much.) On the plus side, because it screws up the formatting and page history so visibly, it's very easy to spot, so it rarely stays live for long. On upside-down text, it probably wouldn't be possible to filter at all, as all the symbols used have legitimate uses. ‑ Iridescent 19:32, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Edit conflicts: updated beta feature

Today on (8th November), a beta feature on your wiki has changed: The two-column edit conflict view got a new interface to allow you to solve edit conflicts more easily. The feature comes from the German community’s Technical Wishlist. Learn more on the project page. -- Michael Schönitzer (WMDE) (talk) 21:20, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Colors disappeared

Weird. I got used to seeing colors when I edited on Wikipedia. Now I don't see them.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:07, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

What colors you mean? Do you mean colors in the edit box when you are editing wiki pages? Stryn (talk) 20:15, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
And now the colors are back. I wonder what's going on. For example, the equals signs to the left and right of the heading (which is larger than the other text) are blue, and so are the Wikilinks and the colon and four tildes.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:16, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Colors disappeared again. I also find that if I try to insert text, the text that was there disappears rather than being pushed to the right.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:37, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee: Where are you seeing colors? In the edit box? What editor are you using if so? --Izno (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
This sounds like slow servers. Several times today I have failed to receive one or another of the CSS or JS pages that should be served to me when retrieving a Wikipedia page; I suspect that Vchimpanzee is experiencing the same problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:10, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Per their description Vchimpanzee is talking about mw:CodeMirror syntax highlighting. Galobtter (pingó mió) 21:17, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
Redrose64 that sounds like the problem. Galobtter I never knew what it was called.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:26, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
I haven't seen colors all day. At both libraries I have been using Google Chrome. I have Edge at home.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:02, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Updating a tool

Can a user like me update a wmf lab tool? I am talking about Firefly Tools which is helpful in showing the Linter category count.Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:20, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

@Adithyak1997: WMFLabs is just a hosting site for user-created tools. That particular tool is maintained by firefly. I would contact him if you would like to contribute. There is already a thread on his talk page about the tool not updating recently: User talk:Firefly#Firefly Linter page not updating?. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:19, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
The thread in his user page was the reason due to which I thought of contributing to it.Adithyak1997 (talk) 04:22, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Transclusion help needed

I have been trying to transclude the contents of Portal:Music/DateOfBirth/November 9 to a page in Portal:Record production. When I use {{Portal:Music/DateOfBirth/November 9}} the contents of {{Portal:Music/DateOfBirth}} transcludes, irrespective of the date used. Having tried to figure out why, I am thoroughly perplexed. Can someone help me understand why it doesn't work (or better, how to make it work)? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 10:40, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@John Cline: you don't state what "a page in Portal:Record production" actually is, and I can't tell from your recent edits which page this might be. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:52, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm sorry Redrose64. I haven't saved any changes because they never worked in preview. The page is Portal:Record production/DateOfBirth. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 11:01, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
@John Cline: Portal:Music/DateOfBirth/November 9 transcludes Portal:Music/DateOfBirth/November which transcludes {{Calendar}} which has pagename-dependent behaviour to make a calendar with dates and links corresponding to the page it is on. The transclusion should be in <noinclude>...</noinclude> like [44] so the calendar is only made on the page itself. Most other dates already do it.[45] This search looks for dates missing this <noinclude>...</noinclude>. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:30, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Thank you PrimeHunter, and Redrose64. The insource: search parameters will be quite useful going forward as well. I really appreciate the help.--John Cline (talk) 11:53, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

RM discussion for Template:La and others

A WP:RM discussion at Template_talk:Ln#Requested_move_28_October_2018 to move the various "namespace links" templates from short names (i.e. {{la}} or {{lh}}) to more descriptive names (i.e. {{Article links}} or {{Help links}}) is currently open for discussion. The short forms would remain redirects and still work. This naming discussion may be of interest to readers of this noticeboard. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:38, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Accessing parent template params from a subtemplate

  Resolved

Is a subtemplate able to access the parameters of its parent template without them being included in the subtemplate's call string? For example, suppose I call {{x1|a=1|b=2|c=3|d=4|e=5|...|z=26|aa=101|bb=252|...|zz=26926}} and the code of {{x1}} in turn calls {{x2|1=a|2=aa|3=zz}}. I'd like for {{x2}} to have access to all of the {{x1}}'s parameters, so that, for example, within {{x2}} I could invoke the following:

  1. {{{ {{{1}}}}}} → {{{a}}} → 1
  2. {{{ {{{2}}}}}} → {{{aa}}} → 101
  3. {{{ {{{3}}}}}} → {{{zz}}} → 26926
  4. {{{ {{{1}}}{{{1}}}}}} → {{{aa}}} → 101

The only solutions I can think of are:

  • Append all {{x1}} parameters when invoking {{x2}}: {{x2|1=a|2=aa|3=zz||a=1|b=2|c=3|d=4|e=5|...|z=26|aa=11|bb=22|...|zz=2626}}
  • Expand all of the parameters when invoking {{x2}}: {{x2|1={{{a}}}|2={{{aa}}}|3={{{zz}}}}}

However, for my particular application, neither of these is workable. The first is unworkable because my x1 has about 200 parameters and invokes x1 multiple times, which I'd like to have appear on consecutive lines. The second is unworkable because my x2 mangles its input parameter values something like example 4 above so that each x2 parameter is actually used to select up to five different x1 parameters, and if include them all, then my x2 invocations won't fit on a single line. Any ideas? YBG (talk) 21:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Lua modules can do this using frame:getParent(), but it is impossible to do in Wikitext, so this could be accomplished by luafying {{x2}} (or writing a wrapper in lua. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 21:38, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pppery: Thanks! YBG (talk) 21:57, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

"Edit your list of watched pages"

PHP fatal error: entire web request took longer than 60 seconds and timed out: Supposedly because of maintenance, but it's been doing this for hours. Any ideas? ——SerialNumber54129 14:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: do you have more than 5000 pages on your watchlist? Are you able to access Special:EditWatchlist/raw? — xaosflux Talk 15:20, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Err: yes, 26,057...I wanted to cut it down a bit you see. Great though, yes I can access the raw list. Is that a little odd? Thanks for your help Xf. ——SerialNumber54129 15:48, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@Serial Number 54129: sounds a lot like the mostly ignored phab:T41510. Prior discussions seem to be along the lines of "1>When my watchlist is huge it doesn't work. 2>Don't use a huge watchlist". — xaosflux Talk 16:51, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
I've been bothered by the obvious move of the raw link only to where you have to load the pretty edit-watchlist page, so unless you know the raw page is there, you're screwed with super-long watchlists. Tempted to file a phab about it. --Izno (talk) 15:58, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@Izno: where would you want it to appear? — xaosflux Talk 16:48, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
If anyone wonders what this is about: With the current default preferences, the top of Special:Watchlist has a single large button "Edit your list of watched pages", and no link to the raw list. If "Hide the improved version of the Watchlist" is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist then you instead get smaller "View and edit watchlist | Edit raw watchlist" next to eachother. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:30, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: when you end up at Special:EditWatchlist are you getting the 'raw' option at the top still? — xaosflux Talk 20:22, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes. I only meant the option is not directly in Special:Watchlist by default. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:27, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: OK, yeah sure why not? Going to require a fight with those OOUI devs though :( The messages on the orinal WL are:
(watchlistfor2: Username, (parentheses: (watchlisttools-view)(pipe-separator)(watchlisttools-edit)(pipe-separator)(watchlisttools-raw)(pipe-separator)(watchlisttools-clear)))
I turned off that horrid "improved" watchlist the second it came out! — xaosflux Talk 20:53, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Multiple Short Description

In many of the pages, I was able to see that there are multiple short descriptions occurring for a single article. Both of them are same. For example, consider the page Kondotty. I know there are two short descriptions, one from wikidata and other from wikipedia. But I guess the short description from wikidata was overridden with the one from wikipedia as requested by English wikipedia.Adithyak1997 (talk) 10:54, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Yes. Kondotty uses {{Infobox settlement}} which automatically creates a Wikipedia:Short description. It can be overridden with short_description, the last parameter at Template:Infobox settlement#Other information. "Page information" in the left pane shows both the local and Wikidata description.[46] See also {{Short description}}. 12:22, 11 November 2018 (UTC)PrimeHunter (talk)
@PrimeHunter:So in such a case, shouldn't there be a condition set to display only one of them? I mean, in cases where there are two short descriptions, shouldn't there be a criteria to display only one of them?Adithyak1997 (talk) 14:25, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Only if you display the descriptions by CSS are multiple descriptions shown. One description is actually used. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:30, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
None of them are actually displayed by default in the desktop version of Wikipedia. User:Adithyak1997/common.css and User:Adithyak1997/common.js both have code to display short descriptions. The bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets has "Show page description beneath the page title". It is disabled by default. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:09, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

& n d a s h ; rendering problem

Suddenly I'm seeing &ndash, (with a comma, followed by a blank space) where formerly I saw an actual en-dash. Is it just me or my laptop, or has this suddenly stopped working? There are probably over a million occurrences of this within Wikipedia. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:39, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Michael Hardy, See this discussion. Ping Trappist the monk because updating the live modules to fix the issue seems quite overdue. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:51, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Where are the Mapframe parameters?

Several pages that use a Template:Infobox building show a map; eg. Instituto Técnico Militar and Bacardi Building (Havana)...but where are the mapframe parameters for adjusting or changing the map? It is not embedded. If I copy the whole page to my sandbox, the map disappears. If I print the page, it shows: <mapframe zoom"10' frameless="1"...etc, etc </mapframe> under the image of the infobox...help! ovA_165443 (talk) 21:05, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

@Osvaldo valdes 165443: Template:Infobox building#Mapframe maps shows optional mapframe parameters to adjust the map in the infobox. The coordinates in your examples are taken from the Wikidata item for the article. Click "Wikidata item" under "Tools" in the left pane of the article. I don't think Template:Infobox building can replace the whole mapframe map. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:34, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

iarchive

iarchive:cupola-1983/page/n0

What is this and how does it work? I've never seen iarchive: before (the macro? not the site). Thanks -- GreenC 00:20, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Technically that magic is due to meta:Interwiki map and the entry for IArchive appears to have been added in November 2013 following a discussion here. Johnuniq (talk) 00:33, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks. I had no idea interwiki maps extended beyond the wikis. One more complication for bot writers :) -- GreenC 00:46, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
If you have a bot that's dealing with interwiki links, you should probably be getting the list from action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=interwikimap rather than having to know about meta:Interwiki map. Anomie⚔ 15:37, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
And Special:Interwiki shows in human-friendly form what MediaWiki currently uses. meta:Interwiki map is where the interwiki prefixes are created and edited but there can be a long delay before changes are imported into MediaWiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:41, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Blacklisted IP talk pages

I recall sometime back discussing on here about an IP talk page that could not be created because it was blacklisted. User talk:2600:1700:8680:E900:8C6F:CAC6:D0E0:A9EB just exhibited the same behavior; the message intended to be left there was left at the user page instead, and a sysop had to move the page to the correct location. I recall this issue having something to do with a rule on the title blacklist; can IP talk pages be exempted from whatever it is? Home Lander (talk) 21:42, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 167#IP talk page blacklisted? was about a blacklist entry for moves at MediaWiki:Titleblacklist:
.*\p{Lu}(\P{L}*\p{Lu}){9}.* <casesensitive | moveonly>  # Disallows moves with more than nine consecutive capital letters
I don't see anything preventing a normal creation of User talk:2600:1700:8680:E900:8C6F:CAC6:D0E0:A9EB. I guess User:2600:1700:8680:E900:8C6F:CAC6:D0E0:A9EB was created by mistake instead of the talk page and then non-admins couldn't make a page move to the talk page. Moves to any page in the userspace of an IPv6 address with more than nine letters will match the rule but moves to IP userspace should be rare. Requests can be posted to MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist. I see you already made a declined request about the old case at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist#IP talk pages blocked from moves. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:16, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-46

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

  • Some old mobile browsers can use the watchlist again. This has not worked for a while. These browsers are called grade C browsers. This helps for example Windows Phone 8.1 with Internet Explorer and Lumia 535 with Windows 10. [47]

Problems

  • You can choose to see edit conflicts in a two-column view. This is a beta feature. You can find it in your preferences. Users who use this view saw the edit conflict resolution page when they wanted to see a preview. This has been fixed. [48][49][50]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 November. It will be on all wikis from 15 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • You can use the content translation tool to translate articles. The developers are working on a new version. One of the changes will be a maintenance category. Articles where users add a lot of text from machine translation without changing it will be in that category. This is so the community can review it. The users will also have been warned before they publish the article that it has a lot of unchanged text from machine translations. [51]

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

19:21, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Populated category redirect

Category:Non-talk pages requesting an edit to a protected page now redirects to Category:Non-talk pages with an edit request template but is populated by Module:Protected edit request/active/sandbox and Module:Protected edit request/sandbox, both of which have some syntax problems that means edits can't be made to them until they're fixed. Can anyone with the tech knowledge sort them out? Timrollpickering 11:55, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Looks like you took care of it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:30, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

can't remove username from login page

When i press shift+del in chrome on windows after highlighting the username, chrome only removes the password, and the username is offered the next time one clicks on "log in". --Espoo (talk) 17:58, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

@Espoo: try clearing your cache, forms, and WMF cookies. — xaosflux Talk 22:43, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. It would be important to provide a button after logging out that automates that for users, most of whom don't know they have to do that or how to do that. --Espoo (talk) 07:17, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Those are controls about options in your browser which we don't control. One tip that might be good for your use case, use "private browsing" sessions, Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla browsers support these and won't remember anything from that session. — xaosflux Talk 17:06, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
...assuming that you don't mind logging in repeatedly. I accidentally had a wiki page in "private browsing" mode a few week ago, and it took me a while to figure out why it kept demanding that I log in over and over and over. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

WP:SPI "Date filed" showing an error for some investigations?

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/JoshuSasori was filed in July, not October 11; I checked a few others and most of them seemed to be accurate, but Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Boyhoodjams shows as having been filed on October 13 despite the multiple entries apparently having been filed between August 29 and September 4. I'm fairly certain I know why (both pages were subject to a particular kind of disruptive vandalism), but I was wondering if there was any way to remedy it? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:07, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Regarding your second example, the date was changed in this edit after a vandal moved the casepage. That means when a page is moved, the bots probably assumes it's a new filing. May be it should stop. So you can ask Amalthea the botop of the bot that updates Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Cases/Overview for that, though it looks he has not edited for a while. –Ammarpad (talk) 10:39, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
@Hijiri88: 'Date filed' is actually 'date the page was added to Category:Open SPI cases', because this is cheap and easy to figure out. There's currently no way to change that I'm afraid. Amalthea 08:54, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Main Page responsive design

A proposal to add responsive design to the main page was briefly implemented, then reverted after problems for certain browsers and gadgets showed up. Before trying to run it live again, it would be beneficial to do some testing with some different browsers and such. Anyone want to take a look at User:Yair rand/MPSandbox and report whether you see any issues? --Yair rand (talk) 21:38, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

 Y Looks good here, Windows 10 Home with Google Chrome. Home Lander (talk) 21:43, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 Y Also looks good on Debian Testing with Firefox Nightly. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 03:53, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Looks fine to me on several older iOS devices. I'd also highly advise to not rollback on every single bug that is being found when this only effects minute amounts of users. That leads to months long cycles that aren't very productive and actually hurt testing. Rollout and fix where issues are reported. The burden upon people working on this to have tested it against BB10s is unreasonable, there is no problem with such a small user groups NOT being able to use a single page for a couple of days, while others work to fix the problems. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:02, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Problem with Parsoid gadget

Are there any users who use the gadget Parsoid which is used for Linter purpose? If yes, please check [this] link for my problem statement.Adithyak1997 (talk) 15:55, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

revision deletion limitations?

Are there limitations on the number of versions that can be revision deleted in one action? I'm trying to respond to the RD one request at Mohamed Naguib, which involves more than 250 versions. I tried twice, and each time the browser tab crashed. I'm happy to do it in chunks, but thought I'd check here first in case there's something I need to know.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:58, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: you should not have issue with under 1000 (but also see phab:T207530 for slow enwiki deletions going on). — xaosflux Talk 16:05, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
I find attempting anything over 200 in one go and the operation usually fails, so I just go in chunks. Nthep (talk) 16:13, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Nthep, Thanks for the report. Needing to do more than 200 is rare enough that it is hardly worth investigating. I'll just remember to do chunks of <200. S Philbrick(Talk) 16:17, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Xaosflux, FTR, I tried a third time, it crashed.
Then I tried in chunks, one of about 100, one of 150, and one more for the rest, and that worked.
I'll treat this as a one-off, but if it happens again, I'll file a report. S Philbrick(Talk) 16:15, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Issue with my Special:Contributions page?

For some reason, my Special:Contributions page looked like this earlier: (Imgur link). It was the case whether I was logged in, logged out, using Chrome or using Edge. The problem appears to have since been resolved, but still. What happened here? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 20:46, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

It also happened to me for all tested contributions pages, logged in or out in two browsers. It was right after the English Wikipedia got mw:MediaWiki 1.33/wmf.3 today 20:28.[52] It lasted a few minutes. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:02, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
WP:ITSTHURSDAY. --Izno (talk) 21:13, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
@Narutolovehinata5: It did that for me just once; a WP:BYPASS fixed it immediately. BTW, please don't upload screenshots to imgur - the page takes a long time to load, my antivirus software complains, and my PC slows to a crawl necessitating a reboot. Better methods are available. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:39, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
This is apparently still happening when the page is transcluded (see my sandbox). I have a ticket open because it recently started breaking MathML rendering (see phab:T209446). — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:34, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Regular expression to add flag icons and country links to country list

Please see these table updates:

Can anyone give me the regular expressions to quickly link all the country names, and to add the same flag icon wikitext that currently exist on the article pages:

I have Notepad++ and NoteTab Light installed. Both text editors allow use of regular expressions, etc.. Their syntax is not the same though.

This is the wikitext I need to add:

{{flagcountry|Country name}}

It adds the flag icon and makes the country name into a link.

Basically I need the regular expression to wrap all the text in the first cell of each line with the flagcountry template.

I will add the instructions to here:

--Timeshifter (talk) 11:59, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

@Timeshifter: I don't know your text editor syntax but our default source editor has regular expressions on "Advanced" followed by the search and replace icon on the right. There it works to search for (\|-.*\n\|\s*)([^\|\n]*) and replace with $1{{flagcountry|$2}}. Select "Treat search string as a regular expression" before clicking "Replace all". PrimeHunter (talk) 17:04, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Wow, this is going to help a lot of people making tables, and especially in updating tables. Thanks!!! See an example, along with some how-to info:
User:Timeshifter/Sandbox81
--Timeshifter (talk) 02:05, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Earwig's Copyvio Detector

I am trying to use Earwig's Copyvio Detector to search a document in draft space for copyright violations, using the search engine. After it connects to wmflabs, it says that no sources were checked, and the probability of a copyright violation is 0%. Well, it should be 0% if there was no searching. What causes it not to search anything, and what do I do to correct this, to get it to search? Robert McClenon (talk) 07:09, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, I'm getting the same issue. IIRC, it happens because too many people have already ran it within the last day. Home Lander (talk) 21:45, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
This probably happened because there was discussion about copyright violations on drafts, and the reviewers were checking the drafts. The screen refers to a cache. Maybe the cache becomes full, and the tool doesn't handle that well. Does User:Earwig still maintain the tool? Robert McClenon (talk) 01:12, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
That user hasn't, butThe Earwig would be a better person to ask. :-) Graham87 07:25, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Robert McClenon, I looked, and there doesn't seem to be any systemic problem with the tool right now. In general, you'll see that if every phrase from the article the tool attempted to search for in Google returned no results, and it has nothing else to go off of. The tool picks phrases at random throughout the article, so it could have gotten unlucky, or maybe the draft is truly unique, or maybe Google had some kind of problem. In my experience, if we've reached the daily request quota, you'd see a different error, but that may have changed. There shouldn't be any issues related to caches becoming full. If you give me the name of the draft, I can look more closely, but I can't be much more specific without further details. — Earwig talk 03:05, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
User:The Earwig - Try Draft:How to be a strong personality. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:09, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Robert McClenon, indeed, every sentence in that article is unique (at least as far as Google is aware). No sources were checked because no potential sources were found. (If you look at the top right, where it says "generated in X seconds using 8 queries", that tells us eight separate searches were made, and none of them turned up any hits.) — Earwig talk 02:23, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

Searching my contributions with a filter on a previous namespace?

I'm trying to find, in my contributions list, an edit I made to a draft. I don't remember the title of the draft, or specifically what I put in the comment field, but I'll recognize it when I see it. The edit was made sometime in the past few days.

If I filter on Draft namespace, I don't see it. I think the problem is that the draft was accepted and now lives in mainspace, so the filter on draft space no longer works. Is there some way to filter on, "It was in draft space when I made the edit"? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:10, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

If you can't find it in your contributions, perhaps you would see it by reviewing the moving log; Ctrl+F "page draft:" and skim through those. It may be possible to find the edit you made using a database query at WP:Quarry. --Izno (talk) 20:52, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Does this list help? Drafts were introduced in 2013-ish, so your accepted draft must be one of the first 17 listed. — MusikAnimal talk 22:39, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
If you used WP:AFCH then you can make a browser search (Ctrl+F in many browsers) on "AFCH" in your mainspace contributions. C3orf67 is the only hit in the last five days. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:23, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, C3orf67 was it. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:37, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Two different people moved the same page???

I recently moved a page from a user sandbox to draft space. My User contributions shows the move: 

(change visibility) 19:10, 14 November 2018 diffhist  (0)‎  m Draft:Highschoolers to Run Under Four Minutes in the Mile ‎ (RoySmith moved page User:Herg-derg-editor/sandbox to Draft:Highschoolers to Run Under Four Minutes in the Mile: Preferred location for AfC submissions) (current) [rollback: 1 edit]

But, if I look at the draft history, it claims that User:Legacypac is the one who did the move, one minute earlier: 

(cur | prev)  19:09, 14 November 2018‎ Legacypac (talk | contribs | block)‎ m . . (2,895 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Legacypac moved page User:Herg-derg-editor/sandbox to Draft:Highschoolers to Run the Four Minute Mile: Preferred location for AfC submissions) (undo | thank)

Legacypac's contributions shows a confusing double-entry for this: 

(change visibility) 19:09, 14 November 2018 diffhist  (0)‎  m Draft:Highschoolers to Run the Four Minute Mile ‎ (Legacypac moved page User:Herg-derg-editor/sandbox to Draft:Highschoolers to Run the Four Minute Mile: Preferred location for AfC submissions)
(change visibility) 19:09, 14 November 2018 diffhist  (+78)‎  N Draft:Highschoolers to Run Under Four Minutes in the Mile ‎ (Legacypac moved page User:Herg-derg-editor/sandbox to Draft:Highschoolers to Run the Four Minute Mile: Preferred location for AfC submissions) (Tag: New redirect)


Huh? Some kind of race condition in the logging? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:43, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

You moved the redirect left behind by his move. See Draft:Highschoolers to Run Under Four Minutes in the Mile. Nihlus 00:50, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Doh! Of course, thanks for figuring that out. There was indeed a race condition, but it was between when I decided to move the page and when I actually clicked the button. I'll move the redirect back -- RoySmith (talk) 00:57, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Script issues

Following a query (on my talk page), I tried the usual troubleshooting actions, but cannot understand why my Engvar script doesn't work in isolation and in the context of another user's monobook script (meaning the button doesn't dislay in the side bar when supposedly installed). I did find however, that all my scripts become callable from within my monoboook files. My workaround is to advise importing my monobook.js file by pasting the instruction:

importScript("User:Ohconfucius/monobook.js"); while removing importScript("User:Ohconfucius/script/EngvarB.js");

The consequence, however, is that it creates a very busy the sidebar above all for the users who have no utility for my other scripts, but at least it seems like an acceptable work-around for me. What could be the problem? -- Ohc ¡digame! 09:35, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

This sounds like your Engvar script has some dependencies that are resolved by the presence of one or more of the other scripts in your monobook.js - try removing scripts one at a time from monobook.js until EngvarB.js fails. Then examine the last one removed, to see what it does that Engvar might depend upon. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:53, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, @Redrose64: I tried loading a few scripts on my vector page. It seems that there is no dependency on my formatgeneral script. However, it seems to need either my foreigndates script or my MOSNUM script for example. How can I now identify what element in these scripts that ENGVAR requires and then to make the appropriae addition? -- Ohc ¡digame! 16:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
These being User:Ohconfucius/test/MOSNUM dates code.js and User:Ohconfucius/script/foreigndates.js. You probably need to add one of these three lines 
mw.loader.load('//tools-static.wmflabs.org/meta/scripts/pathoschild.templatescript.js');
importScript("User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM_utils.js"); 
importScriptURI('//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Pathoschild/Scripts/Regex_menu_framework.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
to User:Ohconfucius/script/EngvarB.js. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:23, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for that. FYI, it was the third one. -- Ohc ¡digame! 08:49, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Template comparison tool

As discussed some time ago (HT User:Plastikspork), we could do with a tool to facilitate the comparison of related templates to decide whether or not to merge them.

The tool would do the following, for two (or more?) templates:

  • determine the list of parameters in each (perhaps from raw code; perhaps from TemplateData; perhaps from {{Parameter names example}})
  • sort them
  • remove those that are the same in both cases
  • produce a list of the differing parameters

Can someone make a tool to do this, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:49, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: This might be a good candidate for the meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2019, if you can get a proposal in in the next couple of days. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:21, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
You could use the TemplateData GUI editor to produce a list of (most) parameters from the code. From there, I think that a quick round of grep -xvf would produce the list of unmatched options, for manual review. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Here is a module hack that, for the purposes of proof-of-concept compares {{cite book/old}} against {{cite journal/old}} (these are the pre-Lua cs1 templates). The output is merely the raw mw.dumpObject() return value and can be prettified to suit:
{{#invoke:Sandbox/trappist the monk/template compare|compare|Template:Cite book/old|Template:Cite journal/old}}
table#1 { 
   ["Embargo"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["department"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["issue"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["journal"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["magazine"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["newspaper"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["number"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["periodical"] = "Cite journal/old",
   ["section"] = "Cite book/old",
   ["sectionurl"] = "Cite book/old",
   ["trans_chapter"] = "Cite book/old",
   ["work"] = "Cite journal/old",
}
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:15, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Pigsonthewing, I adapted some javascript that I wrote for "User:Frietjes/addcheckforunknownparameters.js" to create "User:Frietjes/templatecompare.js". once installed, you go to "Special:TemplateCompare" and put in the list of templates to compare. if you see a "Did not finish processing" alert, then let me know, and I will adjust the regular expressions to try to get complete processing for that particular template. I tested it on {{cite book/old}} against {{cite journal/old}} and it looks like it's working there. Frietjes (talk) 21:04, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
Frietjes, a first column for the parameters is missing which is offsetting the columns by one. --Gonnym (talk) 08:21, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
Gonnym, fixed, and I added an html preview for the wikitable. Frietjes (talk) 14:18, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
@Frietjes: Thank you. More often than not, I'm not seeing the list-of-parameters table. It does appear intermittently. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:31, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing:, it could be taking some time to process the templates. I put the pop-up alerts in there to show the progress through the script. if you have particular examples you want me to help debug, let me know. Frietjes (talk) 13:33, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
@Frietjes: I've just tried {{Infobox event}} vs. {{Infobox civilian attack}} and after five minutes nothing had rendered. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:10, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing:, you are correct. it was failing on the expandtemplates for some reason, which is only used to show a preview of the wikitext. I switched this to something else, it is working for me now. Frietjes (talk) 20:28, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
now documented at User:Frietjes/templatecompare. Frietjes (talk) 00:15, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@Frietjes: That's working well now, and is very useful. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:30, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Job opening for product manager

Whereas Deskana has decided to reclaim his volunteer status, there's a job opening that may interest some of you: https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1436077 The team is currently focusing on mw:Visual-based mobile editing, and is responsible for about a quarter of the known universe, including "All issues relating to the edit screen, edit conflicts, and saving edits". Please think about applying or encouraging good people to apply. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

One computer can't load Wikipedia while another can

Hello, I've got two Windows computers, and yet one's able to access Wikipedia while the other's not. One's in Windows 7 with IE 11.0.9600.19155 and the other's in Windows 10 with IE 11.345.17134.0. I'm logged into the latter, and using my normal Monobook, while the other isn't logged in at all. This computer (obviously) can access the site, while the other is consistently returning a 404 error for Wikipedia. At the same time, the problem appears to be restricted to en:wp — using Windows 7, I can access other random sites fine (I run a Google search, find a website I've never seen before, and it loads fine), and I'm able to navigate to de:wp, fr:wp, Commons, and every other WMF wiki that I've tried. Any ideas? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nyttend (talk • contribs) 17:54, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Have you tried using different browsers on the Win 7 machine?Nigel Ish (talk) 17:58, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Sometimes when the system clock is off by enough it prevents https from working correctly. And try clearing cookies and browser cache. -- GreenC 18:38, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
Can't load it in Firefox 60.2.2esr or Chrome 70.0.3538.102; I get results identical to IE. I virtually never use Chrome or Firefox (except for loading sites that don't work in IE), so I doubt that there's anything problematic in the cookies or the cache. I've cleared both in Firefox and gotten the same results; I'm not immediately clear how to clear them in Chrome, so I've not (yet) done that. The computer I'm using has a system time of 15:40 on 2018-11-15, and the other one has a time of 3:40 PM on 11/15/2018 — can't see how this would be a problem in my specific situation. Nyttend (talk) 20:39, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
And now, somehow, I'm able to access en:wp on Windows 7. Nothing's different, as far as I can tell, while before I wouldn't have even had the chance to log in. Nyttend backup (talk) 20:54, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
In Chrome (at least on Mac; I'm assuming the same on Windows), you can open the Developer Tools window (Command-Option-I), select the network tab, and then reload your page. It'll show you the details of every network access your browser makes. Sometimes you can discover interesting things, like javascript files failing to load. You can also look in the javascript console for error messages. Even if you don't know how to interpret these messages yourself, you can copy-paste them and other people may be able make use of them. My hunch is that some javascript file fetch is timing out, but that's just a hunch. The network trace would help verify or disprove that. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:57, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox album creating garbage

Is there a reason that the invocation of {{infobox album}} on Masterpiece (Thompson Square album) is spewing garbage all over the page? I have included a screenshot here. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:53, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

It's displaying the wikitext exactly as expected for me. You can try editing the page in safe mode [53] or whilst logged out to see if it's a malfunctioning script you have, or try a different browser to see if it's your browser. --Deskana (talk) 00:12, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
Ah, looks like I was along the right lines. An edit you made using ProveIt was what introduced all the weird stuff. I guess ProveIt is malfunctioning somehow. --Deskana (talk) 00:13, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Users contributions are showing up on the article history but not on Contributions

  Resolved

Hi Folks, I found myself a bit surprised as to why this edit and other few edits made by the same user that shows up on Adiyogi Shiva statue page history does not show up on Special:Contributions/Qualitist. This looks very strange to me. Can someone explain this or file a bug if needed on this. thanks. --DBigXrayᗙ 14:44, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Shows up for me. Ctrl+Shift+R? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:49, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
  Works for me @DBigXray: I see it as the bottom edit on this page — xaosflux Talk 14:49, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Hi Ivanvector, Xaosflux, yes, On checking the page again, I found it, I came here to self revert and got edit conflicted with you. thanks for your quick comments, neverthless. I have marked this as resolved --DBigXrayᗙ 14:52, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
For the record, "Show only likely problem edits (and hide probably good edits)" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc can hide edits on contributions. The option is on the "Recent changes" tab but the subheading says "Revision scoring on Recent changes, Related changes, and Contributions". PrimeHunter (talk) 14:56, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
Clearly the real problem here, was just my failure to notice the said edits which were there at the bottom and the next page of the contributions page. PrimeHunter I see, my preferences for these were unchecked. but this looks like a good feature, thank you for making this comment, since I learnt about this new feature today. --DBigXrayᗙ 16:42, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Revision scoring on Recent changes, Related changes, and Contributions

While testing this feature Mentioned by Primehunter I selected "Medium" threshold and checked "Highlight likely problem edits with colors and an "r" for "needs review"" . But I still dont see any kind of highlight on the Recent changes and contributions from accounts reported at WP:AIV.PrimeHunter, Is there something else needed to be done in order to make this work ? --DBigXrayᗙ 16:42, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

With those selections I see around 10 highlighted edits in the 500 most recent changes. It appears that user contributions are not highlighted. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:31, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
PrimeHunter, yes, now I was able to see some orange highlighting on "Recent changes". But on clicking the contributions of problem editors (whose edits were highlighted on RC page, the same edits from the editor were not highlighted on his contribution page. Same as you observed. Is it the case that this feature is still not enabled for user contributions or is it a bug ?--DBigXrayᗙ 19:44, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

DYKUpdateBOT malfunctioning

For some reason, the automated updates by the DYK bot have not been running for two days in a row. Requests for manual updates from admins have been posted at Main Page Errors. Any suggestions for a fix are appreciated. Flibirigit (talk) 05:16, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Community Wishlist Survey – Vote NOW

NPR NEEDS YOU! New Page Reviewers operate the only firewall against junk, attack, spam, and undeclared paid editing which has aways made up the majority of a day's intake of new pages masquerading as articles. Community Wishlist Voting is taking place now until 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools that are urgently needed. This is very important as the Foundation has been constantly asked for these upgrades for 4 years. The Page Curation suite of tools now stands a good chance of getting long awaited attention to the upgraded tools it needs, but it needs your help: whether you are an active patroller or just want a junk-free encyclopedia, the Community Wishlist Survey needs you: Vote NOW, and do also consider applying to become a New Page Reviewer. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:57, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Animated gif files

Is there a gadget or css snippet that stops animated gif files from animating? Nthep (talk) 12:37, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't know a gadget or css but your browser may have a setting or suitable extension. You can Google for the browser name and disable animated gif, or ask at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing with the browser name. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:31, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Temp password expired

Someone requested that an account be created. This was done and a temporary password assigned but they failed to login before the password expired. They've requested a new password but I don't know how to do that. Is it possible? if it matters, the username is Titanrich. ticket:2018111710004008 --S Philbrick(Talk) 13:28, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: that account appears to have been created 42 days ago by JJMC89. Assuming the email is correct they should be able to reset it with PasswordReset to generate a new email. (See a similar chain of events documented at phab:T103667). — xaosflux Talk 15:44, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
Xaosflux, Thank you. The sad thing is that I knew that but had a brain freeze and forgot that was possible. I've point to the user to this discussion so hopefully they will either follow the advice or get back to me and I'll help. S Philbrick(Talk) 16:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Place for asking doubt

I would like to know the place in wikipedia where I can ask related to code in python.Adithyak1997 (talk) 15:25, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Probably the Computing section of the Reference Desk is your best bet. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:43, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Open-source

I'm afraid I opened a can of worms when changed the target of redirects Open-source and Open source toward Open source (disambiguation) and I suspect a bot might help but I neither know how to request nor build one. I was not even aware of this problem until it was pointed out to me, User talk:JasonCarswell#Open-source (moved to Talk:Open source), where the conversation continues. I will watch this space for answers but I'd prefer that you continue the conversation on my talk page and include/ping the others please. A bot would save days worth of editing. Thank you in advance. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 13:22, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Ideally the bot would go through theses lists of thousands and find/add/replace disambiguation-pipe-links then no longer be needed, unless I'm mistaken about something I'm unaware of.

Thanks again. ~ JasonCarswell (talk) 13:48, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

@JasonCarswell:, the talk section where you asked people to reply has already been archived into User talk:JasonCarswell/Archive 03#Open-source. Consider retrieving that #Open-source section from your archive. EdJohnston (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@EdJohnston:, I apologize for forgetting to update this section. My discussion was archived and copied to the better place Talk:Open source.

Problems using the VE interface

 

Today I set some global preferences which apparently have me using the VE interface instead of the source editor I am accustomed to. I figured I would give it a try but am dismayed by the interaction. Firstly, I only see a link to publish my changes; no preview, show changes, or cancel buttons exist. Secondly, the down arrow key between the publish changes tab and the pencil symbol gives a drop down menu which includes a source editing link but clicking on it does not escape the visual editor. I am experiencing the same thing in preparing this posting as well. I have attempted to include a file showing a screenshot but can not preview its positioning or size so if it's snafu-ed, please fix it for me. I'll be heading over to mw to undo my global preferences and have a look when I return. Doesn't that beat all? When I pressed the publish changes button an interim screen opened which contained therein a preview button, another publish changes button, and a resume editing button. Whomever thought it would be intuitive to press publish changes to get to the preview button is sorely mistaken. I'm still fixing to turn it off.--John Cline (talk) 12:40, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

Clicking Publish takes you to a modal popup that allows you to Preview, Show changes, and Publish, as well as provide your edit summary. Old hands hate the workflow. :) Pressing your Esc key will cancel an edit. --Izno (talk) 18:25, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
As for "escaping" the VE, you're looking for the Beta feature called "New wikitext mode". Turn that off. You may also have "Automatically enable all new beta features" turned on. You may not want that either. --Izno (talk) 18:28, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Izno, I appreciate you. If this is a beta feature, where do you go to share feedback? There are aspects of this "new mode" that I could warm up to; assuming the bugs will be resolved.--John Cline (talk) 19:53, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
In the beta preferences, there is a link to "Discussion". I believe that takes you to Mediawiki wiki. --Izno (talk) 20:40, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
I have a whole series of bugs on that workflow. The workflow was designed for use in the visual editor, not in the wikitext mode, and it needs a second look. The reality is that nothing much is going to change there for a while – probably the middle of next year at the very earliest, unless it needs to be re-done in the mobile version, too.
If you otherwise like the "2017 wikitext editor" (main advantages: citoid, in-editor search for pages whose names you can't quite remember, and faster switching to the visual mode), then it's probably worth memorizing the Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts for preview and diffing (they're the same as you'd use in the other wikitext editors). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:16, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-47

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 vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can vote until 30 November.
  •   There is an A/B test for sameAs data. This is to make it easier to find the right information with a search engine. This changes the metadata for a wiki page. It doesn't change how the page looks. [54]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

Future changes

  • The Wikimedia wikis use templates to show readers there are problems with the content on some pages. For example if there are no sources or the page needs to be rewritten. The mobile website will soon show more information when you use these templates. Some templates may need to be updated. [55]
  • The Education Program extension was removed from all Wikimedia projects. The database tables used by the extension will be archived. This will happen in a month. If you want the information on your wiki you should move it to a normal wiki page. [56]

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

23:28, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot replacement or source

User:WP 1.0 bot is a bot that creates wikiproject assessment tables and changelogs, a job which it has done for years. At the end of September, however, it started breaking down on the 'changelogs' task, and was unable to ever complete a run until it was blocked on November 5. The bot does not have an 'owner', and the project's talk page has little communication from the volunteer runners about fixing the bot or about an ETA for their planned revision of the bot altogether. I maintain an offline script that parses the changelog (ex.) to generate a weekly "new articles" report for the video games project (ex.), so the death of this bot has taken down my script as well. My question, therefore is:

Does anyone know of any datasource I can use to generate reports on assessment changes for articles tagged by a wikiproject? My ideal it would be all changes, but I'd settle for just new additions and deletions; so far I've just found User:AlexNewArtBot/VideogamesSearchResult, which has new page creations that match some heuristic but doesn't do deletions, moves from draftspace, or un-redirections. Thanks! --PresN 21:39, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

It looks like that was written by User:Kelson, but I usually take questions about the WP:1.0 project to User:Walkerma. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Right now User:Audiodude is working with User:Kelson, writing and testing some code to try and fix the bot. Last I heard he was doing some testing but it was running too slowly. I'm afraid I don't know of alternatives, but hopefully in a few weeks the User:WP 1.0 bot will be working properly again. They are also looking to write some code for a new version of the bot; please leave your comments and ideas here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Walkerma (talk • contribs) 04:08, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
@Walkerma: Since you didn't sign your message, your pings wouldn't have worked. Let me redo them: @Audiodude and Kelson: Graham87 11:15, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Quarry help

How to write an SQL query at quarry: to get a list of pages tagged with {{Correct title|reason=bracket}} ? Note that there may be other template parameters before reason (usually an unnamed parameter). {{Correct title}} categorises pages into category:Restricted titles, if that helps. SD0001 (talk) 15:28, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

This (CirrusSearch) is another way to get there. I don't know about Quarry though. -- GreenC 16:48, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
You can't. The database Quarry queries from doesn't have page text, so there's no way to tell whether a given parameter is there or not. Search can (unreliably) find these, as above; or you could add a tracking category to the template if reason is present. —Cryptic 17:04, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you. SD0001 (talk) 17:32, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia links on Twitter - absence of twitter:card

Wikidata links on twitter result in a well-formatted link, arising out of the inclusion of <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> in the wikidata source. Example: https://twitter.com/vrandezo/status/967076003041259520

Wikipedia links on twitter are really crappy, as we do not have a twitter:card. Could we do something about this? Example: https://twitter.com/Tagishsimon/status/1064868689995071488

thx --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:53, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Tagishsimon, read the long history at phab:T157145 and phab:T142090 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:42, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
TheDJ Thanks; will do. Looks like a several cups of coffee sort of endeavour. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:47, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
So, as far as I can ascertain from phab:T157145, we're not implementing a 5-minute solution which would at least allow the full title of the article to be read on a tweet, because a much more complicated solution involving a new user-editable summary of the article can be imagined but not in any realistic timescale be implemented. phab:T157145 has been open for about 2 years whilst we contemplate this unicorn prospect. Meanwhile tweets show truncated URLs. Yay wikipedia! #smh.--Tagishsimon (talk) 18:53, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
We're not a social media site... whatever is a twitter card anyhow? There's no article at twitter card or even twitter:card, and no mention at Twitter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:13, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Did you trouble to look at and examine the two links I provided above, Redrose64? It's a question of how wikipedia chooses to represent itself on twitter; I grant, if that's not of interest to you, then it won't be of interest to you. But, you know, enough with the nihlism. "We're not a social media site". ffs. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:17, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
But hey, let's take this slowly. twitter:card is an attribute that can be placed in the header of an HTML page. You can see an example of twitter:card code on the first line of this thread, as well as an explanation of the difference it makes. It affects the way in which a URL on twitter linking to a wikipedia page is formatted on twitter. Right now, links on twitter to wikipedia pages are bare and truncated; users cannot, at least without moving their mouse over the link, get an idea of the title of the article linked to. HTML pages having a twitter:card attribute cause the link to be formatted in a digital analogy of a card - a skeuomorphic representation of a small piece of paper, if you like, Redrose ... think business card. You can see the difference on this short thread - https://twitter.com/Tagishsimon/status/1064925227711369216
Twitter had ~336 million monthly active users in Q1-2018 [57].
It seems to me reasonable to seek to improve the way in which wikipedia links on twitter are formatted, such that they're a little more like wikidata links on twitter. But right now we seem to be hung up on a 'problem' that wikipedia does not have a short summary to provide to the twitter:card (whereas wikidata can provide the english language description (if it exists)). I'm seeking to make the case that we should not hang ourselves up on this, and simply provide the article title to the twitter:card ... because that would be very much better than the current bare truncated link. The article title is already an attribute of the HTML header. It took wikidata about 5 minutes to implement their twitter:card. It has taken us 2 years not to do so. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:52, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
And, obvs, there's google should you genuinely want to find out what twitter:card is all about, Redrose. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:26, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Question about What links here

Hi,

if I read article Ranna and select "What links here", amongst others the article Western Chalukya literature in Kannada is displayed. Can anyone explain why?

Nine days ago, I moved the old Ranna article to Ranna (Kannada poet) and then changed Ranna into a disambig. I've changed all former links [[Ranna]] both in Western Chalukya literature in Kannada and in Template:Karnataka topics into [[Ranna (Kannada poet)|Ranna]], thus I don't understand this result of "What links here".

(I know that sometimes modifications in templates are visible only after some delay in the "What links here" functionality, but I've now waited for nine days...)

--Cyfal (talk) 23:06, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Looks like you took care of it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 23:19, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Hi, Tagishsimon, hi Amorymeltzer, about this: Actually, I've changed a large number of [[Ranna]] into [[Ranna (Kannada poet)|Ranna]] more or less automatically, I was to lazy to improve all these articles with MOS:REPEATLINK. I've done it now for Western Chalukya literature in Kannada, but if you check what links on Ranna (Kannada poet), there are other MOS:REPEATLINK cases as well. --Cyfal (talk) 23:31, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
The problem has now vanished. Maybe one should either wait 10 days instead of 9, or my recent edit on Western Chalukya literature in Kannada triggered a process that updated the "What links here". --Cyfal (talk) 16:47, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Transclude a section of a page

Is there a way to transclude just certian sections of a page onto another page?

For some context on what I'm trying to do: in my sandbox I'm trying to create something similar to Template:Admin dashboard or Wikipedia:Dashboard - basically a quick overview of what needs to be done in various areas where I either have the interest, the user rights, or both to help out. I've transcluded the admin dashboard, but not all of it is useful to me. Is there a way to only transclude parts of it? Or just the current requests from WP:RFPP? ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 17:17, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Help:Labeled section transclusion may be what you need. Certes (talk) 17:28, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Also, in that same vein; category counts. Is there some way to generate a table listing how many articles are in various maintenance categories? (I've heard this feature is broken, and the CSD categories vs. the number on the admin dashboard lead me to belive it.) ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 17:19, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
{{PAGESINCATEGORY:pagename}} may help; see Help:Magic words#Metadata. Certes (talk) 17:28, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
If I understand the OP's question about category counts, {{clc}} is also an option. You have to purge to update the counts, and the counts are not always correct for categories with counts above 200 (an old bug), but that's probably true of any method. See my list of categories to watch for an example. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Global block - or not?

I am trying to help user:Mduquenoy at OTRS. ticket:2018111810004417

They just attached a screenshot of an attempt to reset the password which states they are unable to reset a password because they are blocked globally.

I checked the Global block log which doesn't contain an entry.


I suppose I should be bringing this up at Meta but I'm betting that someone here can help.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:13, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

Sphilbrick, global blocks apply only to IPs; accounts get globally locked. I'm therefore guessing their IP is probably the culprit, and why nothing shows in the log for the account. Home Lander (talk) 23:31, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Home Lander, Fair enough, but then why does the linked page say "Global block log" and have a place to enter "User:username for user"? (I'm not disputing you are right, I'm just suggesting that the page is misleading.) S Philbrick(Talk) 23:55, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Sphilbrick, dunno, but that log seems quite useless, I tried entering a globally locked account, a globally blocked IP, and a globally blocked range. None of them generated anything from that log. Home Lander (talk) 00:03, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Global blocks are logged on meta and are only for IPs. The global block log here will only show admins disabling global blocks. I left two notes on the ticket for you, Sphilbrick. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:31, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
JJMC89, Thanks. S Philbrick(Talk) 01:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

What is this, and how do I disable it?

This [58] thing pops out on the side of my browswer on seemingly random pages. Possibly non-patrolled ones.

What is it, and how do I get rid of it? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:01, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

It's the Page Curation tool, which you must have accidentally enabled at some point. It should go away of its own accord if you avoid visiting Special:NewPages. ‑ Iridescent 23:07, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
I also saw it for the first time a week or two ago. I clicked the first button to close it and possibly another button to get rid of it altogether and haven't seen it since. I did not enable it to begin with. Killiondude (talk) 23:09, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
Gone now. Found where it was buried, although the wording makes it look like the tool is enabled by default. [59]. Maybe it's ticked on by default though. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:12, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
You can enable it by clicking "curate this page" in the toolbar on the side and disable it by clicking the little arrow pointing at the wall thing and then clicking the x. Natureium (talk) 23:15, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
@Headbomb: it will also force-reappear if you use Special:NewPagesFeed to "hide" it always you can enable the Disable the page curation toolbar gadget. — xaosflux Talk 04:38, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

So many stubs

All of my links on the site today are purple for some reason, except those that have a colour added (like redlinks or those coloured by linkclassifier). What up? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:31, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Hm, never mind. Seems actually that the colour correction on my monitor has suddenly gone awry. Fun! Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:04, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
@Ivanvector: It might be something as simple as a dodgy cable. I have a monitor where the wire carrying the blue signal develops a break as the monitor warms up - white becomes yellow, magenta becomes red, cyan becomes green and blue becomes black. If I turn it off and let it cool, then turn it back on again, the blue is restored together with full colour. In your case, the green wire might be faulty. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:17, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
I had an old CRT that used to do that. Good times. This one is HDMI though, I don't think the same thing is the culprit. The monitor has been on its way out for a while anyway. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 22:32, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Special:ProtectedPages - Hide redirects filter

Hello all,

I'm unsure as to whether the following is a bug or a deliberate decision:

Special:ProtectedPages has a filter to hide redirects. However, this filter does not exclude pages which are members of the category: Redirects to Wiktionary. For example, these five pages all show up in a search excluding redirects:[60]. In my opinion redirects to Wikitionary should be excluded, just like redirects within Wikipedia itself, but am happy to be convinced otherwise. Greg (talk) 22:57, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Wiktionary redirects aren't technically redirects. They're "soft redirects"—instead of redirecting you to the page directly, it presents you a link to the article that you have to click on. From a technical standpoint, the Wiktionary redirects are just like any other article, so filtering them out of Special:ProtectedPages would require nontrivial developer work to implement. It would probably also require an implementation specific to the English Wikipedia (not all projects have Wiktionary redirects), and my understanding is developers don't like writing enwiki-specific code (things should be as globally applicable as possible). Mz7 (talk) 00:08, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Greggydude: Pages like -gram are not true redirects. They are normal pages that contain the template {{wiktionary redirect}}, this is a form of soft redirect. The kind of redirects that are excluded by selecting "Hide redirects" are true redirects, that is, the page source begins with the sequence #REDIRECT (case-insensitive) at the start of the very first line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:09, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Sticky table headers

Header
Example
Cell
Cell
Cell

A problem with large tables is that the user, when scrolling, may lose track of what each column represents. This is occasionally solved by adding a duplicate of the table header at the bottom or even multiple in the middle of the table. A better solution would be for the table header to follow along when the user scrolls, so it would be fixed to the top of the screen when the user is scrolled partway down the table. This can be implemented by position: sticky;, which is now widely supported on th elements. However, this would only work when the header is only one row high.

Assuming this is considered a good idea, what would be a good way of implementing it? We can't just add some CSS to common.css to have it apply to all tables, as that would really mess up some tables, and it's only really useful on very large tables. Perhaps a new template, that could be used in particular situations? Any ideas? --Yair rand (talk) 00:04, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Are you suggesting something like Excel employs, freezing the header rows so the ones below scroll up and behind the header as the user scrolls? — Maile (talk) 00:09, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes, while the user is partly down the table. --Yair rand (talk) 00:11, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
I like that idea a lot. — Maile (talk) 00:13, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
See "Testing and development" in your Gadgets list. ;) --Izno (talk) 00:42, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) "Testing and development" at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets has "Make sure that headers of tables remain in view as long as the table is in view". It uses MediaWiki:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.js and MediaWiki:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css. MediaWiki talk:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css#Bug: rowspan in headers does not propagate into table discusses an issue which affects many of our current tables. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:45, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Huh. I was not aware of that gadget. However, it only works on Firefox and Safari, because it applies the styles to thead. If it were applied to th, it would also work for Chrome and Edge. --Yair rand (talk) 00:59, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
But then you have the problem you describe above where headers are only one row high. There are sufficient numbers of tables where there are two rows (the one I happened just to be testing on was list of Presidents of the United States, which I guess gets a few views...). There are also skin differences (THANKS TIMELESS <3). We could ostensibly make it so the Javascript applies a different class for IE and Chrome on the THs instead... --Izno (talk) 01:23, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
Honestly the whole sticky thing is terrible. Exactly the thing you'd want to use it for <thead>s are what they don't work for and they have little use outside of that. It's really annoying that after 5 years the browser vendors still haven't figured out that sticky is a broken thing. I've personally sort of given up on it. If you want this, you will need JS, but JS is less performant and harder because our website has lots of OTHER javascripts that interact with tables, which makes it pretty impossible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:30, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Are portals being made automatically with an automated system?

Just noticed there's seems to hundred(s)? of new portals on the most odd topics...like the new series below.

--Moxy (talk) 04:07, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure I follow you. The topics listed above appear to be pretty normal as far as encyclopedia subjects go. They are covered by articles, navigation templates, and categories. Portals are generally set up to help navigate subjects comprised of multiple articles, like these subjects.    — The Transhumanist   03:58, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
The portal-spammers seem to be working through this enormous list. Since none of these portals seem to have any particular value we should probably have a mass MFD of them and if necessary send the creators on an enforced wikibreak, as this is about a blatant a WP:POINT exercise as I can imagine. Any discussion is probably better off at WP:ANI regarding the disruption side of things. ‑ Iridescent 11:12, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
There was an attempt to mass delete all portals and the portal namespace itself, at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/RfC: Ending the system of portals. In that discussion, it was decided by an overwhelming majority, not only to keep portals, but to automate most of them to minimize the maintenance required. The lack of maintenance was making many portals stale and out-of-date. The new design elements that portals use now overcome the "stale" excerpt problem, and add new material over time by automatically harvesting links from the encyclopedia. Portals are modeled loosely after Wikipedia's Main page, a format many people find highly familiar and useful. Thus, each portal provides a similar layout and functionality to navigate a particular subject's coverage throughout Wikipedia, just like the Main page provides samplings from Wikipedia's coverage of knowledge as a whole. The Portals WikiProject is very careful to follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, and portals are covered by specific guidelines as well. You are welcome to come check out the latest design concepts we are working on at WT:WPPORTD.     — The Transhumanist   04:54, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
"Portal-spammers": Can there be anything more execrably Wikipedia than that? Peacock (talk) 14:05, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Seven or so months ago, some people found that there were a lot of unmaintained portals, and an RfC was held at VPR (see WP:ENDPORTALS). An immediate effect of this was to kick Wikipedia:WikiProject Portals back into life; those most active include: AfroThundr3007730 (talk · contribs); Certes (talk · contribs); Dreamy Jazz (talk · contribs); Northamerica1000 (talk · contribs); The Transhumanist (talk · contribs). Since then, a lot of new portals have been set up. It remains to be seen whether these become just as unmaintained as the ones that first triggered the RfC. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
By design, they auto-update. For example:
  1. Excerpts are all done through wp:selective transclusion. They used to be copied and pasted by hand to a subpage, and then the subpage transcluded. Transcluding excerpts directly onto the page ensures that they always match the source, avoiding content forking issues and growing out of date.
  2. Selected sections, for the most part, are populated from source pages in the encyclopedia. For Selected images (slideshow) sections, source pages are typically articles. For Selected articles (excerpt slideshows) sections, the source pages are usually navigation templates or lists.
  3. Did you know sections are powered by lua search of the did you know archive. The typical search period is the past 3 years. These sections only appear when there are results to display.
  4. In the news sections are powered by lua search of the current events news archive. The typical search period is the past 45 days. These sections only appear when there are results to display.
  5. The Subcategories sections are powered by CatTree.
  6. The Recognized content sections of portals are powered by JL-Bot.
  7. The Associated Wikimedia sections are powered by a template that includes searches based on magic words.
And so on.    — The Transhumanist   03:58, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Possibly "Portal-unspammers". But one lives in hope of Portal:Spam, of course. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:23, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Martinevans123 See Portal:Portals [[File:|30px|link=]]    — The Transhumanist   06:02, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
No, the portals are not being created automatically, there's a person on the other end.   They are generated using {{Basic portal start page}}, a template which does alll the heavy lifting and allows portals to be created in (nearly) a single edit. A lot of work has gone into automating different parts of a portal's structure, which significantly reduces the maintenance burden and manual upkeep costs. This means that you will see fewer old, outdated, or abandoned portals floating around. We are also overhauling the old portals as well, and cleaning up the namespace. You can check out what we've been up to at WP:WPPORT, and for an overview of what everything in the new generation portal does, you can see a demonstration at WP:WPPORT/D. BTW, for those who keep tabs on what happens in the Portal namespace, there is an ongoing discussion on updating the portal guidelines over at WT:PORTG, if you'd like to chime in. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 20:42, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Should we hAve these?.....look at the pictures at Portal:Prostitution in Canada. ... prime minister Harper and the father's of Confederation... is this a joke.....looks like someone is going out of the way to mock Canada?--Moxy (talk) 22:15, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Moxy: The Transhumanist created the portal while on a portal creation batch. I think they create portals based on topic boxes (which is what automated portals are now heavily reliant on), so presumably there is a topic box for prostitution in Canada. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:31, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
So to be clear.....he did not choose the images of Canadian prime minister's on purpose? ...just automated junk that by chance chose the fathers of the confederation?--Moxy (talk) 22:35, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Moxy yes. That is the case. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:38, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Moxy not quite. The pictures for that portal are automatically pulled directly out of the eponymous root article, Prostitution in Canada. Slideshow contents can be adjusted to match the portal's context more closely by removing the root article as the sourcepage, finding other more appropriate pictures for the slideshow, or by removing the slideshow altogether. Each portal is a work-in-progress, just like the rest of the pages on Wikipedia. The best places to report issues with a specific portal is the portal's talk page, or WT:WPPORT, from where any problems you have spotted can be most rapidly addressed and fixed.    — The Transhumanist   02:59, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Looking more closely, it doesn't appear that any of them are actually linked from anywhere other than from each other (e.g.). As long as this is just a walled garden and they're not trying to link to these things from articles, this is just low-level misuse of Wikipedia as a web host, which is still a violation of policy and a waste of the time both of the people creating these things and of everyone else when they inevitably get MFD'd, but not the kind of major issue that warrants immediate action. I repeat that WP:VPT is not the best place to be having this discussion, as the issue is one of inappropriate content rather than a technical matter. ‑ Iridescent 22:27, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
@Iridescent: Portals created through batch creation are not getting linked and this is something as a WikiProject we are trying to do. Apart from some AWB, adding links is not as automated as the creation is, so users such as The Transhumanist have not been adding links when they create portals in batches. Over time links will be added, but at the moment this is a slow process. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:36, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
Also these portals are not being generally deleted at Mfd. The current portal guidlinea allow these portals due to the large number of articles that they have, even when the topic is neiche. An automated portal now usually has 30 articles, which is way above the minimum. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me | my contributions 22:43, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
The portals are being created in good faith, though I think their creators could be more selective. The RfC highlighted that, whilst many portals are lovingly curated, others on broad subjects had fallen into disrepair. Tools have been produced to assist with replacing rotting portals by a low maintenance format. (For example, excerpts from articles now update automatically whenever the article is edited, rather than becoming outdated unless an editor interves.) These tools have also been quite properly used to fill in gaps where important topics lacked a portal. They are now being used to create portals on subjects which fall within the guidelines but are much narrower. There has been useful discussion but no consensus as to the merits of such portals. Certes (talk) 01:05, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Most of those should be absorbed by Portal:Food. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:42, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
That would result in lua timeout errors.    — The Transhumanist   10:41, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
It might not hurt to come up with some kind of criteria for a creating a portal (though for the love of [whatever you hold in awe] nothing like the terrible bureaucracy surrounding wikiprojects and stub tags/categories, or even barnstars for that matter – we need to be killing off bureaucracy, not generating more of it). We don't need a portal for every conceivable topic. Being navigable with navboxes is one baseline, but maybe not sufficient to keep everyone happy. I would think that nothing that doesn't have navboxes should be a portal, but it doesn't necessarily imply that everything with a navbox must have one (especially pop-culture topics with navboxes and categories that are never going to grow larger, e.g. bands that put out 3 albums and 10 singles and then broke up, or TV shows that got cancelled). Just being about, say, food doesn't make it automatically non-portal-worthy, however. Now that I know Portal:Sandwiches exists, I'm apt to use it, since it might give me some mealtime ideas (damn am I getting tired of turkey and mustard). People use our site for all sorts of personal reasons, and that's not just perfectly fine, it's part of Wikipedia's intent and design.

That said, with portals now being rather robustly automated (after a lot of impressive technical work by a lot of people), the "redirects are cheap" rationale starts to apply to portals. If they don't cost us much of anything in editorial attention and other maintenance, and someone somewhere, like a potato-specializing horticulturalist, is going to love Portal:Potatoes, and it may inspire them to write some articles on notable cultivars and improve some existing ones, what exactly is the burning issue here? Just to pick at the list presented above, how on earth is anyone going to object to a portal on hunger relief (a major global social issue), beef (a massive industry), herbs and spices (one of the driving factors of international commerce and even wars and worse since prehistory), liquor (a huge industry, a human preoccupation since prehistory, and a complicated regulatory regime and public health issue), vegetarianism (a "big encyclopedia topic", though I would merge the veganism one into it as a minor variation), water (one of the most important and broadest topics we have, from social material like drinking water crises to basic science), and so on? The topic-opener's objection simply isn't sound when presenting such a list.

I think we should start by considering how to work portals into Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates as another form of navigation, and rename that page (at long last) to something more memorable like WP:Content navigation. Help:Navigation also needs an update. We should probably integrate at least a summary of a few other quasi-navigational pages like WP:Timelines, WP:Indices, WP:Outlines, WP:Set-index articles, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:47, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Or rename it Wikipedia:Content navigation systems.    — The Transhumanist   06:27, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Translation issue

In the module Module:lang, in line number 1082, should the word language which is present inside single quotes be translated into local language while translating it into malayalam? I am getting around thousand errors as in the page [Hindi].Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:11, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

You should ask this question on Template talk:Lang. --Izno (talk) 18:42, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

SECR N class - inconsistency between watchlist and page history

The article SECR N class has been on my watchlist since forever. It's on the main page right now as WP:TFA. The only changes to this page that are showing on my watchlist for the last 24 hours are the last six log entries. Yet when I look at the page history, there have been approximately 30 edits today. Several have been WP:REVDELled; but such edits should appear in my watchlist and either show as struck through or greyed out, in the same manner as the page history. Why are these edits - both good and bad - absent from my watchlist yet present in the page history? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:09, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

OK, my watchlist now shows edits timed at 22:40, 24 November 2018 (UTC) or later, but it still does not show the earlier ones. Could this be something to do with the deletion of the page by Killiondude (talk · contribs) and its subsequent restoration by Black Kite (talk · contribs) - would those actions have nixed the watchlist? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:07, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
I have no helpful answer, but I'll note that when I first tried to restore the article, it crashed with a red message that I can't quite recall but was something along the lines of "too busy". I tried it again and it (seems to have) worked. Black Kite (talk) 13:50, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure that deleting a page permanently removes its entries from the recent changes table, so edits from before the deletion won't appear at Special:RecentChanges, Special:RelatedChanges, Special:Watchlist, Special:AbuseFilter/examine, and possibly other pages. For instance, something similar happened with MediaWiki:Bad image list, and I see nothing at Special:RecentChanges] from before the deletion. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:28, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Webcitation.org

WebCite has been hard-down since last Friday (current 5 days), and the week previous it was flaky.

If WebCite were simply going through growing pains it would be different. But of the 20 or so web archive providers on enwiki, WebCite has been the second-worst I have worked with while checking millions of links with WaybackMedic over the past years. I know User:Cyberpower678 (User:InternetArchiveBot aka IABot) thinks the same. All attempts at communication with them go unanswered. There are regular outages. Bugs in the software, API and data are never fixed. They have more archive link rot (dead archive pages) than any other web archive provider. No new features are added. The documentation and website have not changed in over 5 years. They have had funding problems in the past and almost closed down in 2013.

WebCite accounts for between 5% and 7% of all archives on enwiki. It is the second-largest archive provider on enwiki, behind Wayback. Recent metrics taken by the WMF show significant user click-through to archive links when reading an article, so this is important:

Wikipedia is outsourcing the core pillar of WP:V to a third-party company that is unreliable, unresponsive and out of our control.

IABot and WaybackMedic have the ability to find new archive providers and swap out WebCite links, should that be required. Replacements won't be found for all, but could be for a lot. This is not an RfC to do that, but an initial discussion for feedback and information about WebCite status. -- GreenC 16:34, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

GreenC, yes please. IABot has a difficult time working with WebCite, to the point I have to implement aggressive caching to make IABot run more independently of WebCite. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:37, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

  On the 7th day of WebCite not working, my true love gave to me..   half-a-million 404-errors (the apx number of dead webcite links on enwiki). -- GreenC 16:41, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Zoiks. I was wondering if this day would come. I assume there's some automatable way to replace it? Maybe a bot that checks multiple archivers (favoring Wayback Machine, I would think) and replaces calls to WebCite when a replacement is found, and another bot to keep testing a WebCite-only case until it works, then get Wayback (or whoever) to chain-archive THAT, and replace it, while it's presumably-temporarily accessible at WebCite?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:56, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

WaybackMedic already does this for years. When it finds an archive at one provider is no longer working, it searches for another and replaces it. Automatically. But not when there is a total site outage, as currently with WebCite, then it skips. WC came back online today, for the moment. -- GreenC 03:31, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
That was a pretty long outage, and potentially an indicator of things to come. Maybe we should start preparing for the worst, with a phase out. Half-a-million dead citation links is pretty serious.    — The Transhumanist   19:49, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

mw.util.jsMessage

Hi, the mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012, and will soon not be working. According to phab:P7840 there's at least one gadget using this function on your wiki, but it is likely it won't cause much of a problem anyway. We don't see this function being used much and this message is mainly to be on the safe side. There's a migration guide that explains how to use mw.notify instead. See phab:T193901 for more information. /Johan (WMF)

09:39, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Filter blocked my edit but then it mysteriously happened anyway

This is the mysterious diff. I got a pink message before I submitted and it said I was trying to add something not allowed. What I hadn't noticed was when I copied and pasted the title of the source, the URL and "Read more here" also were copied. I removed those but never submitted them. Yet they somehow ended up being submitted anyway with the edit summary from my previous edit.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:44, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

The log shows that you triggered Special:AbuseFilter/702, which is set to warn but allow updates. However, I would expect the message box to be grey rather than pink. Certes (talk) 19:03, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
But if you look, the edit happened anyway, and I didn't make it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:25, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
According to the logs you got the warning at 17:03, saved without "Read more" at 17:04, and then saved the original edit with "Read more" at 17:08. Did you save the edit at 17:04 in the same tab as the warning? If you kept the warning in an open tab while saving in another tab at 17:04 then I guess you accidentally saved in the warning tab at 17:08. Your browser may have remembered the 17:04 edit summary and suggested it in the warning tab. Wikipedia:Edit filter#Basics of usage says: "The next lowest setting is to warn. In this case, the user will see a customisable message (this one by default) that the edit may be problematic. The user then has the option to either proceed with the save or abandon the edit." Special:AbuseFilter/702 displays MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-clipboard-hijacking in a pink box. If you saved at 17:04 in the same tab as the warning then the 17:08 edit does look odd to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:02, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
I don't use multiple tabs when things happen, so I don't have an explanation.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:58, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Main Page article count

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T210401
Resolved

In the main page www.wikipedia.org, I am seeing the article count for different languages as 0+ which was previously 1,00,000+ or so.Adithyak1997 (talk) 13:12, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

You mean https://www.wikipedia.org. I have created phab:T210401. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:01, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Yes that same page. Thanks for creating it in phab.Adithyak1997 (talk) 14:06, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
This has been resolved, thank you for reporting @Adithyak1997:. — xaosflux Talk 20:18, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Responsible disclosure

I raised a moderately severe security bug on Phabricator on 5 November. Other than someone allocating a project and changing my title, there's been no response.

What's the process for escalation, and how long is it reasonable to wait, before making the details public, to encourage a fix? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:17, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing:: Hi Andy, if you think it is a serious issue and it is being ignored on phab, I suggest you try emailing trustandsafety@wikimedia.org first, especially if it is a bug in mediawiki core or a popular extension. — xaosflux Talk 23:54, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Also add Trust-and-Safety to your phab ticket if you haven't already. — xaosflux Talk 23:55, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
And also also, see mw:Reporting security bugs — xaosflux Talk 23:57, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T14896

Since I wrote the above, my ticket has been merged, as a duplicate with another, that was - remarkably - opened in 2008. Since that ticket is both long-lived and public, I'm now prepared to discuss the issue openly, here.

Anyone can bypass the spam blacklist, with any URL, in a number of ways, as described at [61]. As proof, here is a (benign) Bitly link: http://bit.ⓛy/uRmAhs.qr Further examples may be found at User:Pigsonthewing/URL-test. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:45, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

The spam blacklist system, and the abusefilter are heavily outdated. Likely over 10 years of neglect for the former, and a bit less for the latter. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:49, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
See the proposal made by Dirk Beetstra at the meta survey. Johnuniq (talk) 10:34, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-48

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

  • On wikis with translatable pages you could create a mess when you moved a page that had translatable subpages. A subpage is when you use / to create a new page: /wiki/Page/Subpage. The subpages would be moved but not the translations. The subpages are no longer automatically be moved. This is to make it safer to move pages. [62]

Changes later this week

  • The advanced search interface will be available by default on all Wikimedia wikis. It makes it easier to use some of the special search functions that most editors don't know exist. It's already active on German, Farsi, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedia. [63]
  • Special:UnusedCategories show empty categories with no files or other categories. You can soon choose to not show soft redirect categories or some maintenance categories there. You can do this with the magic word __EXPECTUNUSEDCATEGORY__. [64]
  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 November. It will be on all wikis from 29 November (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  •   The mw.util.jsMessage() function was deprecated in 2012. It will be removed next week. Look for the warning Use of "mw.util.jsMessage" is deprecated in the JavaScript console to know if you use an affected script or gadget. If you are a gadget maintainer you should check if your JavaScript code contains mw.util.jsMessage. There is a migration guide. It explains how to use mw.notify instead. [65]

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

22:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Next version is 1.33-wmf.6, we're currently on wmf.4, and neither wmf.4 or wmf.5 have release notes (neither does wmf.6, but the latest never does for a few days). Not a huge issue — I presume the US holiday? — just wanted to note it. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 22:59, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
wmf.5 was skipped due to the holidays last week. I don't know about wmf.4. Anomie⚔ 00:08, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Finding your way back from multi-referenced footnotes

When you click on a footnote which is referenced multiple times in an article, it can be hard to get back to your reading position in the text. Soon it will be easier to find your way back up:

  1. You can click on the ^ jump mark at the beginning of the footnote (in other wikis it's an arrow). This wasn’t clickable before. The tooltip now says "Jump back up".
  2. Or you can click on the superscript jump mark (e.g. a ) in the footnote. The one leading you back to your original position is highlighted bold.
    Please note that this part of the change won't be effective in enwiki, because jump marks here are bold by default. If your wiki wants to have highlights for secondary jump marks, the default style for them would need to be changed to regular.

The deployment of this software change on Wikipedias is planned for this Thursday, Nov 29 (see details). Originating from the German community’s Technical Wishlist, it was made by WMDE’s Technical Wishes team. More information can be found on the project page. If you have any feedback, please let us know on the project talk page. -- Best, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 09:48, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE): This puzzles me: English Wikipedia already has these features. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:05, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
No it doesn't. This is about Help:Footnotes#Footnotes: using a source more than once. See for example the three "[1]" in Give me liberty, or give me death!#Publication. Clicking any of them takes you to reference 1 with the same link Give me liberty, or give me death!#cite_note-Cohen_fn2-1. There is no indication of whether to click "a", "b" or "c" to get back. "^" is not clickable in that reference but only in references used a single time. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion: Citation bot removal of publisher and location in cite journal

I have begun an RFC at Help talk:CS1 regarding Citation bot's activity for cite journal publisher and location. Please provide input. --Izno (talk) 16:03, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Template:Cite web objects to lack of URL implied by doi

{{Cite Journal}} and most other Cite templates allow omission of the |url= parameter. {{cite web}}, {{cite podcast}}, and {{cite mailing list}} responds to the lack of a |url= with Missing or empty |url= (help). But |url= is not needed when there is a link caused by parameters such as |doi=, |ssrn=, |pmid= and possibly others. National Association for Gun Rights has such an error erroneously reported for footnote 33, which follows "NAGR was cited by the court prior to the victory for gun owners." —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:17, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

This is by design. If you're using {{cite web}}, {{cite podcast}} or {{cite mailing list}} correctly, then there must be url. If there's no url to link, then the templates should not be used. I fixed the one in National Association for Gun Rights just by supplying the url. Template {{Cite Journal}} allows neglecting the |url= because, the journal can well be offline/print only and that's valid scenario. There's no reasonable way to claim that a website or mailinglist is offline only –Ammarpad (talk) 19:48, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Ammarpad: I agree that {{cite web}} means something is online and a valid online locator must be supplied. But |doi=, |ssrn= and |pmid= are all valid online locators that resolve to URLs. There is no need to supply a URL when the user can click the DOI, SSRN or PMID link. —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:26, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
Help talk:Citation Style 1 is the appropriate venue for suggesting changes to the {{cite web}} template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:55, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
(Hint, this is not something that will change.) --Izno (talk) 00:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
@Anomalocaris: If you have one or more of those document identifiers such as DOI, PMID etc. the original source is almost certainly going to be an academic journal, so {{cite journal}} is the better choice. The {{cite web}} template is, to quote its own documentation, "for web sources that are not characterized by another CS1 template". In other words, it's a fallback for when none of the others is appropriate, and it should not be treated as a first choice. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:03, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64:: Which template would you use for footnote 33 in National Association for Gun Rights? —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
There are many things that have DOIs, that are not journal articles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
{{cite journal}} is the one to use. If you don't like the word journal, use {{cite paper}} which is the same template but with a different name. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:20, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Mobile main page title problem

 

The mobile main page has the featured article title awkwardly positioned so that the title is splitting apart. I'm guessing it's something to do with the image. Home Lander (talk) 20:05, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

@Home Lander: It just looks like line wrapping for the paragraph, we could shim in a {{nowrap}} like in User:Xaosflux/sandbox68 - but it is not usually advised. — xaosflux Talk 20:24, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Home Lander, well sort of. It's just the word 'experienced' not fitting between the end of the caption and the right side of the screen. It's because people are using height autoscaling, which that mainpage image template doesn't support. Specifying the width, makes it work as it is supposed to. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
The more complete way to fix this, is by moving forward with User:Yair_rand/MPSandbox so we can make incremental improvements on responsive behavior. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

What does 'span class="nickname"' actually do, technically?

I searched in the archives of this page, and I poked around all of en.WP and the MW site with various searches, but I came up empty-handed. I am trying to figure out what span class="nickname" does and why it is used to format some parameter values in infoboxes. I don't necessarily need a detailed explanation here if one is provided on another page.

The reason that I am curious is that when a set of <div>...</div> tags, or a template that incorporates them, is used in one of these infobox parameter values, we end up with a div wrapped inside a span, which results in a "div-span-flip" Linter error. Removing these span tags or changing them to div tags (or some other workaround/hack/solution) would fix errors on many thousands of pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:36, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: It's a microformat. --Izno (talk) 00:17, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: because he knows things about mformats. --Izno (talk) 00:18, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Templates using that class should include in their documentation {{UF-hcard-geo}} or similar; which answers your question. You can change a <div>...</div> to a <span>...</span> or vice versa, without affecting the microformat (other things may break, of course). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:27, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Super! That is pretty much what I was looking for. I have changed a few spans to divs, and typically, a straight swap works. I have found that in some places I need to use div style="display:inline" in order to prevent unwanted line breaks. (NB: div style="display:inline" seems like a contradiction in terms to me, but it certainly does the trick.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:00, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
That is because div's are block-level elements and span's are line-level elements. Semantically, div's contain sections "of the document" while spans contain sections "of content" (generally text). — xaosflux Talk 14:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Except when they don't, which is the point I was trying to make.... – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:18, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Xaosflux which begs the question... why are their divs and are we fixing the right problem ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:03, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Re: fixing the right problem: I'm just fixing the problems that the WMF, in their infinite wisdom, has created for me to fix. That's how this works, right? I donate money to the WMF, and they use it to make a nice list of problems for me to fix. In comparison to the size of my donation, I view the WMF as wildly generous with their contribution. Do I wish they would fix some of the multi-year-old really annoying bugs that I have filed on phab over the years? Sure I do, but that's not how this system works. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
I have actually resisted changing the span/div flip errors precisely because it's not obvious to me that we are using the parameters as documented correctly in many of the cases where span/div flip errors show up. --Izno (talk) 15:19, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Examples would be helpful, since I don't really know what you mean. Now that my immediate technical question has been answered, perhaps this discussion would be better continued at Wikipedia talk:Linter or at Template talk:Infobox. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
In a case like this one, I'm not clear where the inner div, inside what was the span, is coming from. I certainly wouldn't expect there to be one. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:43, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
WP editors are endlessly creative. Take a look at Hospital (TransMilenio), for example, to see a div tag that ends up inside the Infobox's span tag for |name=. 15 Temmuz Kızılay Milli İrade (Ankara Metro) is another beauty. People put all manner of div-containing templates inside of |native_name= (and many other parameters), causing the span that is in a typical infobox's native_name data parameter to wrap a div. Examples include {{plainlist}} and its siblings. It's good fun to track all of these down. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:01, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox video game is broken

For some reason, any optional fields in the video game infobox left empty are returning error messages regarding Lua, and even hiding the box art. igordebraga ≠ 18:56, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

@Igordebraga: On what page(s)? @Ferret and RexxS: --Izno (talk) 19:18, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
I saw it on Halo 4, Halo 5 and Altered Beast, but it's fixed now. Wonder what the hell happened. igordebraga ≠ 19:20, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
Another editor overwrote the en.wiki version of Module:I18n/complex date with a copy of same from commons. The commons version require()s a module that doesn't exist on en.wiki.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:36, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
This sounds like yet another reason to have global templates (see this page for some information). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Listing the entries in a category

I'd like to list the entries (article links) from a category onto a page, without copying/pasting, such as with a script.

How can this be done?

I can't even figure out search strings to google it. The results are all off-topic.

Help!    — The Transhumanist   23:05, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm, the <categorytree>...</categorytree> tags will list subcategories for a given category, but not other kinds of members. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:09, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@The Transhumanist and Redrose64: use: <categorytree mode="pages">Category name</categorytree> — xaosflux Talk 18:40, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Example:

Wikipedia village pump
Wikipedia village pump templates
Wikipedia:Village pump
Wikipedia:Village pump (all)
Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)
Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Before posting
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/FAQ
Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF)
Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive
Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive
Wikipedia:Village pump archive
Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)
Wikipedia:Village pump (news)
Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals)
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Persistent proposals
Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance)/Archive
Wikipedia:Village pump (news)/Archive
— xaosflux Talk 18:41, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Page notices

Hi. I noticed yesterday that every page I edit has a redlink for "page notice" in the top-right corner. I've tried to hide them following the instructions at WP:EDN, but this doesn't seem to work (I've done all the bypassing of the cache, etc). Any ideas? Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:07, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Looks like the HTML structure has changed; the CSS class "editnotice-area" isn't always present. Try just: 
.editnotice-redlink {
  display: none !important;
}
Also, I don't think the literal "skin.css" page does anything; it's supposed to redirect you to "<name of skin>.css", e.g. "monobook.css" if you're using Monobook. Try putting the above CSS snippet in your common.css page instead; then it should work in any skin. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:19, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
(Forgot to ping Lugnuts) Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:42, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
The link has classes sysop-show templateeditor-show extendedmover-show so you may need more to override usergroup-specific rules like MediaWiki:Group-extendedmover.css. The below works for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:49, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
.mw-editnotice-notext .editnotice-redlink {
  display: none !important;
}
Yes! That second code works for me. I'm using Firefox - sorry, I should have mentioned that first. Thanks to you both for looking at it and helping out. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:52, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@Lugnuts: Note, following an edit request I just added that class yesterday (see Wikipedia_talk:Editnotice) as Page Movers such as you were just granted the ability to modify edit notices. — xaosflux Talk 18:54, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Ahhh, that explains it - thanks. Usually little things like this are due to some behind the scenes update that didn't go to plan, so I waited 24hrs incase it was rolled back. Thanks again. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:55, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Can't log on to UTRS

I don't look at UTRS very often, but I'm currently getting this error message when I try to log on:-

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'UTRSDatabaseException' with message '<b>A database error occured when attempting to process your request: </b><br />array ( 0 => '23000', 1 => 1062, 2 => 'Duplicate entry \'<my email address redacted>\' for key \'email\'', )' in /usr/utrs/production/public_html/src/userObject.php:107 Stack trace: #0 /usr/utrs/production/public_html/src/userObject.php(78): UTRSUser->insert() #1 /usr/utrs/production/public_html/login.php(207): UTRSUser->__construct(Array, false, Array) #2 {main} thrown in /usr/utrs/production/public_html/src/userObject.php on line 107

Is it to do with my recent change in username, and if so, how can I fix this? O Still Small Voice of Clam (formerly Optimist on the run) 09:10, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

Voice of Clam the tool mentions: "Note: If your Wikipedia account is renamed, you must create a new UTRS account or contact a tool developer to have your Wikipedia username changed in the database" and it's footer links to an email address for the people who maintain the tool. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:43, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Sorry for being thick, but can you post a link to the page in question? I can't find what you're referring to, or instructions on how to create a new account. Thanks. 19:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
@Voice of Clam: It says this in the prefs of UTRS when you are logged in there. Their email is utrs-admins googlegroups.com. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:12, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Advanced Search

Advanced Search will become a default feature on your wiki on November 28. This new interface allows you to perform specialized searches on the search page, even if you don’t know any search syntax. Advanced Search originates from the German Community’s Technical Wishes project. It's already a default feature on German, Arabic, Farsi and Hungarian Wikipedia. Besides, more than 40.000 users across all wikis have tested the beta version. Feedback is welcome on the central feedback page.

Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:57, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

FYI, this is now live it seems. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:28, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Visual editor Publish changes button doesn't work

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T209542

Recently, when using the visual editor, the "Publish changes" button doesn't work. It's just greyed out and disabled even after I make changes. I'm using Chrome. Is this a known problem? Popcornduff (talk) 21:24, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't normally use VE but I enabled it to write this reply. And you can see it worked. Are you still seeing the problem? –Ammarpad (talk) 06:38, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
I've had the problem on and off for a few days. Right now it seems fine. I'll post again if the problem returns... Popcornduff (talk) 14:44, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Firefox only, English Wikipedia only, the second time you edit the same page. A temporary workaround might be opening a different page, and then going back to edit the first one again. The devs are working on it, but they didn't have it solved as of six hours ago. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Yep, confirmed... second time you edit a page. But definitely not Firefox only. I have the same problem in Chrome. Popcornduff (talk) 07:35, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, that may be useful information. I added it to the Phab task. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:13, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Skin variants and themes - user styles, css overrides, etc

Hi, y'all, I'm currently working on an RfC about adding functionality to support built-in skin variants across all skins (so things like dark Vector etc could potentially be chosen as options under the skin in special:preferences). To help with this, though, more information on what sort of things you already have floating around/want to have would be quite helpful, and especially what folks really liked/dislikes/whatever with them. Like I think there was a dark vector gadget at one point? What else is/was there? Is this documented anywhere? -— Isarra ༆ 18:32, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

mw:Skin:Vector-DarkCSS works great; only minor issues are that infoboxes remain with a white background and some tables colors make text hard to read. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:38, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
Clearly we need to convert them to templatestyles and use css classes and whatnot... -— Isarra ༆ 22:20, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
RfC draft here: mw:Requests for comment/Themes in core. -— Isarra ༆ 23:37, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Reminder: Technical RFCs are very much focused on the "comment" part, not the "voting" parts. They mostly focus on "how" to do something, not whether it would be popular. If you have some potentially useful technical or semi-technical information (no matter how small detail that might seem to you), then please post that information over there. Also, technical RFCs are also long by enwiki standards (some of them have stayed open for years), so if you can't think of anything today, but you think something in a month or two, you will likely still have an opportunity to contribute usefully. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Custom infobox cell color

Hoping someone can help me... I'm working on converting an old school infobox from table format to using {{Infobox}} and {{Infobox3cols}}. Is there a trick to making a data or label a specific color? I'm looking at Template:Infobox_actor_awards/testcases. Notice on the left how "awards", "wins" and "nominations" are a different color then the rest. There is an argument that all these color violates MOS:COLOR and that is a discussion I'm planning to have later, but for now just trying to figure out how to technically achieve this. I know there is |rowstyle#= & |rowcellstyle#= but can't seem to get either of those to work the way I need. Any help appreciated. (Please {{ping|zackmann08}} if possible). --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:05, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

@Zackmann08: You could try using TemplateStyles CSS, by e.g. putting a CSS class on the collapsible table and using a CSS selector which applies to the first/second/third td element in each tr. Jc86035 (talk) 13:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Contributions list has multiple lines for each contribution

At first I thought this was a bug but is this yet another preference I have to set?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:46, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

It was just a bug.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
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