Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/Archive 3

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 9

Check 69: ISBN syntax and MediaWiki:Booksources-summary

At MediaWiki:Booksources-summary, there is the summary displayed when users click on an ISBN number (1) or use Special:BookSources (2). Its previous text may account for some of the errors on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Check_Wikipedia#ISBN_wrong_syntax_(CodeFixer) or the other reports. Personally, I think it's less likely that people use (2) and we could probably word it even more for (1). -- User:Docu

Checkwiki Error 16

This error is a real problem. It's just mildly annoying to replace a direction control character with an XML named character when you have arabic or hebrew text and need to get punctuation in the right place, but it is a completely unacceptable when you are making tables that contain both LTR and RTL fields. Unknowing editors trying to fix this error make table code completely illegible and any content simply unmaintainable. This checkwiki criterion needs to be altered to keep critical direction controls in place. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 10:07, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

I think they way you handled the page with the table is the best. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:00, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

My compliment

as a writer and redesigner of articles: WPCleaner became a gentle and effective Putzerfisch („cleaner wrasse”). Thanks! --Erfundener (talk) 22:57, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Checkwiki Error 17

What is "Checkwiki Error 17"? It was performed on the page for Freddie Young‎ and I can't see why -- SteveCrook (talk) 13:37, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

It removed a duplicated category. The same category is there. 3 lines above the one that was removed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:49, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
SteveCrook for the full list of errors check User:Magioladitis/AWB and CHECKWIKI. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:03, 8 June 2013 (UTC)
It would help if it included that in the comment describing the change, maybe instead of just referring to AWB & CHECKWIKI separately or maybe describing what it changed -- SteveCrook (talk) 15:17, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Reference lists missing

I'm seeing a lot of "reference list missing" on WPCleaner even though a reflist definitely exists. Not really sure why. Is it the toolserver lists messing up, or WPC itself? I'm just tired of seeing it in the checkwiki box for dablink analysis. Thanks! — kikichugirl inquire 07:03, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Can you just give an example of a page where WPC detects this problem ? Is the reflist defined through a template ? In Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/Translation (error_003_references_templates_enwiki), the following templates are currently defined as creating a reflist: {{Reflist}}, {{Ref-list}}, {{Refs}}, {{Reference list}}, {{listaref}}, {{Footnotes}}. Maybe the list is not complete ? --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 07:20, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
I've modified Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/Translation, I think missing space before END could be an explanation for WPCleaner detections. Can you test ? I can't run WPC from office. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 07:26, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
User:Kikichugirl, that was my fault. I was updating the descriptions and didn't put a space in. Bgwhite (talk) 16:30, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
I think it's fixed now! Yay! — kikichugirl inquire 21:53, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/Participants

Why is Stefan Kühn (talk · contribs) listed as "Overall Project leader" and Magioladitis (talk · contribs) as "English Check Wikipedia leader" - that's not how WikiProjects/Wikipedia does or should work. GiantSnowman 16:50, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Snowman, if I remember it correctly it was user:Magioladitis - but that was long ago. For a while he was the only one which was active in the project. I don't know how WikiProjects usually work, as this is the only one I am a member. If you think it's wrong, change it. Stefan is the initiator of the project and he provides the data dumps. --Ben Ben (talk) 18:47, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
@GiantSnowman: @Ben Ben: I'm the one that wrote that, so blame me. Check Wikipedia is a project on ~30 different Wikipedias. If you change one thing on the main program, it can have consequences for different languages. Stefan Kühn is the one who wrote the main program and makes changes to the program. He is German and does his primary work on the German Wikipedia. Each language can decided what checks Check Wikipedia will run. English runs 68 of the possible 92 checks. Each language decides the wording ( ie translations) of each checks. Different languages have different "quirks" that are passed upto Stefan. As Ben Ben mentioned, Magioladitis has, at times, been the only active participant and has been the person making the decisions for enwiki.
With that said, things are changing with the move from toolserver to WMFlabs. The new location is at https://tools.wmflabs.org/checkwiki. The new location will go live as soon as WMFlabs fixes their hanging issues. Everything, including web server, hangs for several minutes upto seven times an hour. There are now more people at the top than just Stefan, but Magioladitis is still benevolent dictator on enwiki.
Ben Ben, NicoV has a beta version of WPCleaner ready to be tested. Besides changing the location of checkwiki, he has made several large changes under the hood. You can contact NicoV on frwiki to get the code. He is looking for testers. Bgwhite (talk) 21:06, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
All the hard work on the transit from toolserver to WMFlabs was done by Bgwhite (talk · contribs) so we can award him as co-dictator of the project. It's true that WikiProject Check Wikipedia uses non-conventional names for their members. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:17, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
Well then I say give everyone elaborate titles. If you let me be "Supreme Leader" then I'll join. GiantSnowman 08:17, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
As I basically refuse to work for a Leader (exception was Boy Scouts) I have Magioladitis dictatorship ended: Coup. Snowman, if you still wanna join I can offer you 'contributor'. Deal? --Ben Ben (talk) 11:16, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
Suppose so... GiantSnowman 11:21, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
I'll be back. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:24, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
WPCleaner test version described at fr:Discussion_Wikipédia:WPCleaner#tools.wmflabs.org. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 19:12, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

#104 hasn't been detected, but CheckWiki still reports it

Since today dewiki has a high number of #104 (e.g. Altena is listed with notice <ref name="Kalonymos 1/1999" />). WPCleaner didn't find most of them and shows the error message: The error n*104 hasn't been detected in page <pagename>, but CheckWiki still reports it.

It seems to be a problem with special characters in the ref name. It is shown for names with "/", "?", "'", "#". --GünniX (talk) 09:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

GünniX was updated yesterday to report pages with ref names that contain these characters. I do not know if this works correctly. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:33, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

GünniX Update to #104 makes sure the ref name is compliant with WP:REFNAME. Forbidden characters are # " ' / = > ? \ . WPCleaner is also being updated. A beta version does catch these, see Wikipedia:CHECKWIKI/WPC 104 dump for the enwiki errors caught by WPCleaner. Nico is working out of a hotel room in his spare time, so no word on when a new version of WPCleaner will be released. Bgwhite (talk) 09:40, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
  • By the way, checkwiki now checks for non-latin symbols in refs according to WP:REFNAME. Is it a local enwiki rule, created by enwiki community consensus, or a technical limitation? There are thousands of refs in ruwiki which are named in russian, and seems like all of them worked correctly. I can understand will to delete all russian-named refs (for example) in english Wikipedia - rare enwiki user is able to print russian characters - but I afraid such detections in russian Wikipedia are close to false positives. If this is not technical limitation, I also can't understand, why 104th error was updated instead of adding new one: unbalanced quotes is a syntax error, so it's a high priority error, while unwanted named refs (as I understand it) is just agreement violation, so it's middle or even low priority level. Am I wrong? Facenapalm (talk) 09:45, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, WP:REFNAME seems to be a local enwiki rule. It is not mentioned on the dewiki help page, too. Today dewiki shows 179 times #104. It seems thousands of pages have to be changed in dewiki (and much more in other wikis). I don't like to do it, I will stop fixing #104 on dewiki. --GünniX (talk) 10:20, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
So, Bgwhite, can you please at least don't check for illegal characters in all wiki-project except enwiki (checking for unbalanced quotes is really useful, I don't want to turn in off)? Another possible solutions is creating new error for this task to be able to turn it off directily or give an opportunity to discribe local array of allowed characters via regexp - it can be [a-zA-Z0-9!$%&()*,\-.:;<@\[\]^_`{|}~ ] for enwiki and just . for project where is no consensus about ref name limitations. Thanks! Facenapalm (talk) 10:52, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
@Facenapalm and GünniX: Checkwiki is not looking for non-latin symbols. I only said characters. The MediaWiki recommendation is for all wiki's to use ASCII only, but it is not a rule. Also, a MediaWiki rule is if punctuation or spaces are used, it must be in quotes. Illegal # " ' / = > ? \ . characters duplicate characters used by <ref> tags. For example, <ref name="foo"foo"> and <ref name="foo'foo"> are clearly bad. These are not enwiki only, but dealing with the Mediawiki software. I'll double check with the WMF if anything has changed in the last four years Bgwhite (talk) 10:57, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry then, I misunderstood this error. Tell me one more time, punctuation like "." and "?" will be reported only if it is not in quotes? Or can you just update your github repository so I'll able to find all answers without constantly troubling you? :) Facenapalm (talk) 11:07, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
@Facenapalm, GünniX, and NicoV: From WMF, the characters "is a problem because it interferes with regexps used to match tags." and " don't see any real reason to use " ' < > / \ in a ref name." Thoughts? Bgwhite (talk) 20:58, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
Seems to be a sensitive issue for some users, so I wouldn't report too many things. With the list I'm using (see below), I currently didn't have any complaints on frwiki for fixing things that are ok. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 00:46, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
@Bgwhite: I didn't understand that you were also reporting such characters like "/" inside a quoted ref name. Please don't... Reasons for using "/" in a ref name: for example, CW is reporting several articles with <ref name="95/2/CE">, where "95/2/CE" is the reference of a European Community standard, seems very logical to use this as the ref name, or things like <ref name="Le Point 30/06/2011"> for an article in a newspaper (newspaper + date). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 01:35, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
I agree with NicoV. In dewiki I see often <ref name="Magazine mm/yyyy" />, <ref name="DOI10.1056/xxx, <ref name="EG1523/2007"> (EG is German for European Union, same style is used for German government decisions), <ref name="Saison 2015/16" /> and even <ref name="O'Connor2000">. I think you should allow this characters in a quoted name. In my opinion, the only error should be a " in a name. --GünniX (talk) 07:42, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
@Bgwhite: Be aware of the group keyword. Yesterday CheckWiki reported even <ref name="a" group="A" />! --GünniX (talk) 08:16, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi guys. Not much time, so I didn't read everything... WPCleaner should be already up to date regarding #104, but I doubt that it's doing the same as CW. I tried a first version where I was accepting only characters in WP:REFNAME but after doing a dump analysis with that, I decided it was really too much, so the version that I released is accepting all letters and digits even if they are not ASCII characters. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 11:53, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

And accepting also all characters that are listed at line 101. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 11:57, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
  • @GünniX, NicoV, Facenapalm, and Magioladitis: Ok, it's turned on again. For the time being, I'm using the definition at mw:Help:Cite, The quotes are optional unless the name includes a space, punctuation or other mark. It's got a problem with one word names and "group" being set. Bgwhite (talk) 00:25, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
    • @Bgwhite: That sounds good. But this new definition results even in many errors. Most of them are names with a dash like <ref name=jpl-close/>. If you want to keep this definition (which is OK in my opinion), a bot should fix this error soon. And you should fix the known problems with one word names and "group" before the next run.
    Now I'm waiting for the new releases of WPCleaner and AWB. --GünniX (talk) 07:37, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

@GünniX, NicoV, and Bgwhite: Right now neither Yobot not Dexbot fix ref names with dashes. Should they? -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:00, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know, I think dashes are rather ok in ref names. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:24, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
@Magioladitis: I think underlines and dashes are OK when used within a word, but a dash with a number could become a negative number. My recommendation: Don't accept it as the first character of a name (or keep the definition simple and put it always in quotes).
But it is important, that bots fix all that errors which are found by CheckWiki, because we have seen that there are thousands of errors with ref names. After you have decided what syntax Check Wiki accepts a bot should fix them (and should even fix names like name=:1 and name='Article about "Harry Miller"'). --GünniX (talk) 18:24, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: Today I'm surprised by your long list for #104. The list contains many pages with simple names like <ref name=dt>. Have you decided to put all this names in quotes? Or is something wrong with your check? Be aware that other wikis have no bot to fix it. --GünniX (talk) 01:09, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

GünniX It was an Ooops. Magioladitis' bot was blocked. People weren't happy with a reference containing any punctuation being an error. I changed things so the only punctuation to find is # " ' / = > ? \ .. However, I ooopsed by saying a reference without those characters is an error and not with those characters. Bgwhite (talk) 08:56, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
Bgwhite checkarticle still reports them as being errors, for example Alan Turing returns + 104 10148 <ref name=CNRS>{{article|titre=L'héritag
NicoV See my message just above yours. Bgwhite (talk) 21:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I saw it, but I thought you had fixed it, that's why I expected checkarticle to stop reporting them as errors. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 10:23, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: I think it's now obvious that you have an evil plan to leave Yobot blocked for ever. GünniX revealed this plan. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:10, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

maniacal laugh Bgwhite (talk) 21:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
It's not funny any more, Bgwhite and NicoV: [1] IKhitron (talk) 11:02, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
IKhitron Magioladitis and his bot were blocked for reasons that are not CheckWiki related. However, if the blocking admin and the rest of the lynch mob have their way, Checkwiki is essentially dead on enwiki. Bgwhite (talk) 23:11, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

#69 false positives

Hello. Please see here. There are some very strange false positives there, kind a "ISBN <some text>". Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 21:45, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

IKhitron Been fiddling with the code for #69. It will find cases of ISBN 0123456789 and ISBNs inside external links. Did the same for ISSNs. I had an oops with ISBN, which is the false-positives you see. Bgwhite (talk) 22:31, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, Bgwhite. So, it will be fine next run? IKhitron (talk) 22:33, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
IKhitron The daily runs have been running fine and I haven't seen any problems. I haven't fiddled with the code for a bit. Today, the latest dump file CheckWiki uses has been produced and Checkwiki should be running, but the files haven't transferred to labs yet. Bgwhite (talk) 22:40, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
I can translate it to "You hope it will be OK, and you've got a reason for it". Very well, thank you. IKhitron (talk) 22:43, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

#4

Report Number 4 shouldn't show the case in below as error (have an exception for source tag)

<syntaxhighlight lang=html>
 <a href="http://example.com/">foo</a>
</syntaxhighlight>

Yamaha5 (talk) 06:23, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Yamaha5 Can you provide a page for this? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:04, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Magioladitis yes! fa:ابرپیوند Yamaha5 (talk) 08:07, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
At that page it is used as below
<syntaxhighlight lang=html>
 <a href="http://example.com/">مثال</a>
</syntaxhighlight>

Yamaha5 (talk) 08:08, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Yamaha5 I see <syntaxhighlight/>. Maybe it' my screen? -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:11, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

No. you should switch the text Ltr and you will see </syntaxhighlight>Yamaha5 (talk) 08:14, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Article names with escape character

Article names with a ' are shown with escape character as \' (e.g. St Mary\'s Christian Brothers\' Grammar School, Belfast in list #80). When using the list in AWB, the article is not found. Please remove the escape character. Best regards --GünniX (talk) 04:05, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

GünniX, I can see an empty list. IKhitron (talk) 14:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
Today you can see it in list #104 for St Andrew\'s Church, Aysgarth, if it is done you will find it in done Articles. --GünniX (talk) 08:27, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks' indeed. IKhitron (talk) 12:00, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
IKhitron, GünniX I haven't changed anything for awhile. I keep seeing the morph into something new... one time tables are totally messed up, then next time it is a \'. Not sure what to say. Bgwhite (talk) 00:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

#87

Report Number 87 shouldn't show the case in below as error (have an exception for image name)

| image = Dieter Frowein Lyasso&Sigmar Polke.jpeg
| caption=
The article:fa:سیگمار پولک

Yamaha5 (talk) 08:02, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Yamaha5. I think the problem is that there's not really a good way to know that it's an image name. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 10:47, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
NicoV It is not difficult. We can do it in two ways:
1-remove all words which are between file alias and .+image extention in a temprary text variable after that check the remain text for #87
2-make an exception list by regex and ask bot to check the rest of the text. Yamaha5 (talk) 12:54, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

this regexs can find image name you can test them at here

regex1="\[\[ *(?:([Ff]ile|"+fileLocalAlias+") *:([^\.]+)\.(?:tiff|tif|png|gif|jpg|jpeg|xcf|pdf|mid|ogg|ogv|svg|djvu|oga|flac|opus|wav|webm) *[\|\]]"
regex2="\|[^\=]+\= *([^\.]+)\.(?:tiff|tif|png|gif|jpg|jpeg|xcf|pdf|mid|ogg|ogv|svg|djvu|oga|flac|opus|wav|webm) *[\|\]]"

Yamaha5 (talk) 13:52, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Yamaha5 I already bypass images that are [[File:, but not in infoboxes where they are just a plain name. Will update. Bgwhite (talk) 00:30, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Some wikis not updated anymore

@Bgwhite: It seems that frwiki is not updated anymore : last update is 2017-01-02 while many other wikis have 2017-01-05. Some other wikis have even older dates : fawiki, fiwiki=2016-12-26, many for 2016-12-25 or 2016-12-05. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 12:16, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

We were updated at Dec 5, I thought the bots are celebrating Christmas. IKhitron (talk) 13:23, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
IKhitron There was a hung job on the queue for frwiki from the 2nd. I've killed it and things should run again at 0z. There are also issues with transferring the dumps over to labs again. 20161220 wasn't transferred until after the 20170101 dumps started. I've already sent an email, but haven't heard back yet. Bgwhite (talk) 18:19, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

New id suggestion

Unpleasantly, I suddenly found a lot of categorizations using {{category:...}} instead [[category:...]]. IKhitron (talk) 12:50, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

IKhitron In the "Search Wikipedia" box, I did a search on enwiki, frwiki and dewiki. Search on enwiki was insource:/\{\{Category\:/. On enwiki, there were 9 articles. French and German wikis didn't have any articles. I don't think this is a widespread problem. Do a search on your wiki and see what comes up. Bgwhite (talk) 22:26, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. I fixed 28 last week. IKhitron (talk) 11:18, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
I have a lot of sympathy for this, because I made similar mistakes when I was new. These diffs of the incorrect syntax being added seem to be representative: [2][3][4][5]. (This one may be less representative, but is interesting in its own way.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion: birth year and age

  Resolved

Well-meaning editors have added ages to birth years, e.g. replacing 1966 by "1966 (age 50-51)". Some of them may forget to come back and update all the articles every January. Would it be possible/sensible to check for a pattern such as \d{4}\s*\(age\s+\d+[-–]\d+\)? A kind editor can then replace it by {{birth year and age}} or similar. This occurs mainly within the birth_date parameter of {{infobox person}} and its descendants, so could be limited to that case if helpful. Thanks, Certes (talk) 09:08, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

You can use the search, eg. hastemplate:"Infobox person" insource:/[0-9]{4} *\(age +[0-9]+[-–][0-9]+\)/. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 10:45, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Matěj, I didn't know about hastemplate. All of the search engines I've found dumb my query down to finding pages about what Age means. Certes (talk) 12:20, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

Red Link Recovery Live

I hope this isn't too far off topic but I've already tried elsewhere with no reply. The helpful Red Link Recovery Live [6] has been broken for a few weeks now, returning a header but no data. (A little hacking suggests that it may no longer be authorised to log in to the database it queries.) Topbanana usually looks after these things but has been inactive for a month - I do hope they're OK. Is there anyone else who could take a look at the problem please? Certes (talk) 01:11, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Certes I poked around the tb-dev directory on labs. There are no logs being kept. There's nothing else around that gives any indication on how things are running. The only thing I can think of is to email wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org This is the main email list for everybody on Labs. The Wiki-Tech meetings are going on this week, so I don't know if that will slow down response time from the mailing list. Bgwhite (talk) 21:13, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Bgwhite! I'll give it another week if the techs are busy, then pester them by e-mail if I can't find a less disruptive way to get things mended. Certes (talk) 23:57, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Bug or not

  Resolved

Moin Moin @Bgwhite:, don't know the problem or if it is a bug. But for a few days I have the following behavior. Background is Opera 42, IE 11 on Windows 7, 10. I choose any ID, click to more and if I would like to click to "Done" and the article has a space then the complete entry disappears. On the ID-List I could click "Done" and its done. Either my browser nor my system changed? Can you tell me if something has changed in the code? mfg --Crazy1880 (talk) 18:25, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Crazy1880 Code changed. I was working on a cleanup of the code and it wasn't 100% ready. I pushed it out to fix some bugs that have been talked out above. Will fix. Bgwhite (talk) 19:56, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Crazy1880 Should be fixed. Bgwhite (talk) 21:01, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Moin Moin @Bgwhite:, it look good. Thanks. Regards --Crazy1880 (talk) 18:35, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

New errors: No Space after </ref>-Tag and Point before </ref>-end

Moin Moin @Bgwhite:, @all, for first of all, I like to wish you a happy new year. I Would like to have a question for new errors. Priority low. There are many errors where is no space after a refs-end.

Example (No Space after </ref>-Tag):

<ref>Here is the ref-text</ref>And hier is normal text.

But right is:

<ref>Here is the ref-text</ref> And hier is normal text.

Example (Point before </ref>-end):

Normal text<ref>Here is the ref-text</ref>. And hier is normal text.

But right is:

Normal text.<ref>Here is the ref-text</ref> And hier is normal text.

What do you think about? mfg --Crazy1880 (talk) 18:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Crazy1880 Probably not. CheckWiki is getting criticism on enwiki for doing "minor" things. I also don't think this is a syntax fix. One can still find these in the search box. Type insource:/\/ref\>[a-zA-Z]/ into the search box and it should return you articles with the problem. We've already asked and were denied output from the search box to be more list-friendly. Bgwhite (talk) 19:23, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

The second point is already implemented as #61. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 17:43, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Moin Moin @Bgwhite:, my intention was only to see all mistakes even better on the article and then fix them in one step. Thanks for the search-TAG.
Moin Moin @Matěj Suchánek:, thanks for the note, this ID was offline in German. For a test I activated this now, to watch how much there comes. Thank --Crazy1880 (talk) 14:54, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
Moin Moin @Bgwhite:, @Matěj Suchánek:, I checked it a while and found something. A comma, colon or semicolon following may be correct. So I meant it at least. But a point is not right. Thats for the ID #61. What do you think about? Regards --Crazy1880 (talk) 18:55, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

History column

Sometimes the errors are done by new users and it should be Revert. Please add history column Yamaha5 (talk) 11:34, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Backward Bug for RTL languages

AT CheckWiki web page, When the Notice column is started with Non-Arabic characters it is shown Backward . for example at #15 the notice for the first row should be <cod>همچنین می‌توان چندین ربات را هم now shows <cod>مه ار تابر نیدنچ ناوت‌یم نینچمه For example, if the notice is "foo" it shows "oof". It is CSS bug and not the text bug (copy the text to the other place is ok) if

<td class="table" style="background-color:#D0F5A9;"><span style="unicode-bidi: bidi-override;">

is

<td class="table" style="background-color:#D0F5A9;"><span style="unicode-bidi: embed;">

It will be ok (I tested for Farsi and English for both of them it will be ok)Yamaha5 (talk) 15:05, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Yamaha5, it's not a bug. I asked to do this in purpose about month ago, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/Archive 8#RTL bidi IKhitron (talk) 15:21, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Please revert it at least for rtl languages' web page Yamaha5 (talk) 15:24, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
But why? It exists for rtl pages, because it's the only possibility to use notice with rtl. IKhitron (talk) 15:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
the notice for the first row should be <cod>همچنین می‌توان چندین ربات را هم now shows <cod>مه ار تابر نیدنچ ناوت‌یم نینچمه check #15 Yamaha5 (talk) 15:27, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
What do you mean in should? You do not read notices, you use it with copy paste to browser search, for example. Who cares how does it looks, but you should have an ability to copy a part of the notice (without [[ for example), with no direction problems. If I knew there is a possibility to create bidi-override with auto direction (rtl when there are no english letters), I would ask it, of course. As much as I know, it isn't. Do you? IKhitron (talk) 15:31, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
The interface is importent some time reading the table shows false possetive errors for exmple see ##88 has false positive. what is the wrong with <span style="unicode-bidi: embed;">?Yamaha5 (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Because it will not work. For me, it was enough. For you, I searched in google now, and found such a command. What do you think about dir=auto? It's fine for me. IKhitron (talk) 15:43, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
dir=auto not supported at IE and edge but supported at chrome. I tested for this case at chrome doesn't work for me :( Yamaha5 (talk) 15:48, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Please try adding this code
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
  <script src="https://oss.maxcdn.com/libs/html5shiv/3.7.0/html5shiv.js"></script>
<![endif]-->
(with comments, as is) just before </head>. It should work, at least in internet explorer. IKhitron (talk) 15:54, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Yamaha5 IKhitron You two have me at a disadvantage as I don't understand RTL languages, so I have to go by what you two think is best. I also would like to avoid any browser specific code. What is the difference between "bidi-override" and "embed"? What is best for the average RTL user? Yamaha, I'm not understanding what you are saying... what way does the notice text show up correctly for RTL? In the address bar, change "checkwiki.cgi" with "checkwikin.cgi" and "embed" will be used. Bgwhite (talk) 18:44, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Bgwhite Thanks now "checkwikin.cgi" works for me \O/. IKhitron thank you for your time Yamaha5 (talk) 19:02, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Bgwhite would you please add a possibilty if there is fa.wiki it automaticaly switch to "checkwikin.cgi". We spread the older link in wikiYamaha5 (talk) 19:05, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Yamaha5 "checkwikin.cgi" is an update I've been working on to the regular cgi program. Nothing big, mostly code cleanup and darker text color. I put "embed" in there as an easy way to try it out. I'd still like to know what is best for the average RTL user. Bgwhite (talk) 19:32, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 
comparing checkwiki.cgi and checkwikin.cgi
please check the screenshot
I link two pages
Bgwhite For Farsi checkwiki.cgi is wrong and the interface is backward but checkwikin.cgi is Correct and if you copy the notice at browser search box you will see the original text is the same as you see at the page.(correct)
For Hebrew checkwiki.cgi shows wrong and if you copy the notice at browser search box you will see the original text is backward but checkwikin.cgi the copy text and interface are the same. I don't know why IKhitron says it is not ok.
Arabic and Farsi (Persian) are similar an they have the same characters (except 6 charters) so their condition is the same.

Yamaha5 (talk) 20:03, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Bgwhite. This is shortly the issue: I asked you to override bidi, because it's impossible to read otherwise any text that has ltr and rtl text together, and more than that, it can't be partially chosen by mouse to use in browser search box. Yamaha5 does not like this, because it makes the rtl only text to be viewed in opposite direction, from the end to beginning. I do not care because the advantafe is better for me. But of course, If we will not find a solution for Yamaha, I'll ask you to remove the override and suffer, because I don't want anybody else will because of me. I found a solution, but it turns out it did not work on IE 8 and below, because of HTML5 code. I try to think about something else.
Here is another idea, but I do not know if it's possible for you, Bgwhite. I'm almost sure that Yamaha5 will like it. So, can you make a code that will show the notice field in ltr direction for all ltr wikis and in rtl direction for all rtl wikis? The left vs right align can be a good bonus, but it's less important than the direction. Can you do this, Bgwhite? Please, please, please. IKhitron (talk) 21:48, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

@Meno25: If I just say I'm going with option A, then one of you will be happy and one not so happy. But that isn't the issue. I more interested in what is best for the average RTL user. There are atleast six wikis that CheckWiki handles that is RTL. I can see each of your points on why one way should be used. So...

  1. What should the default be? You three (Hi Meno), tell me what is best.
  2. How to get it so the other way is an option. Not working on IE8 and below is just fine. Those browsers are not supported by WikiMedia. I'd rather not do a Javascript method as some people hate that. you make a code that will show the notice field in ltr direction for all ltr wikis and in rtl direction for all rtl wikis I can do this. I can also make an alternative css stylesheet, but it requires javascript.

Bgwhite (talk) 06:49, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: Hi, Bgwhite. The problem is that the text in the "Notice" field is currently reversed (like an image in a mirror) which makes it unreadable for RTL (e.g. Arabic) users. For example, the word "مصر" (Arabic for "Egypt") would be shown as "رصم". (I didn't notice this earlier myself because I was inactive in the past few weeks.) This link shows the problem. Compare using "bidi-override" and "bidi:embed" and notice that the text when using "bidi-override" is reversed. I believe that the current situation cannot continue. So, I would vote to revert this change as Yamaha5 suggested. --Meno25 (talk) 08:07, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

part2

@Meno25, IKhitron, and Yamaha5: More questions to go along with the two above

  1. Should I set the direction for the entire page to ltr? checkwikin.cgi currently has that set.
  2. If not, should I set the "article" and "notice" columns to ltr?
  3. Anything else to help out?

Bgwhite (talk) 09:28, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the time you spend to this, Bgwhite! If you can do rtl for rtl wikis only it's much much better than the current position that I asked you. But I meant this and also override-bidi, otherwise it does not help at all. Could you please add the overriding to notice field, not including the column caption, and ask the two other friends for their oppinion? One thing more: if you could make rtl the table only, not all the page, it's much better, because the interface above and below is in English. Thank you very very much. IKhitron (talk) 09:56, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: for rtl langs by changing

<table class="table">

with

<table class="table" dir="rtl">

it will be ok. you can test it at here original checkwiki page Yamaha5 (talk) 10:27, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the example, Yamaha5, it's exactly what I was talking about. IKhitron (talk) 11:36, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Yes, thank you Yamaha5 from me as well. --Meno25 (talk) 12:23, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you both. So, Bgwhite, all of us agree. Could you change this, please? Thanks, IKhitron (talk) 07:00, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
IKhitron I changed it a few days ago. It should be live on the regular page. Bgwhite (talk) 08:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Not at all, Bgwhite, I checked today and now again, it's still on embed. IKhitron (talk) 10:40, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
IKhitron Didn't know I should do that. I've changed it to override. Bgwhite (talk) 19:46, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Bgwhite. And it should start working? IKhitron (talk) 00:20, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
IKhitron I'm confused again. I did change it to override and left it there for awhile. I noticed it reversed the LTR text, which was not wanted via above. I've changed it back to embed. The table does have "dir=rtl" listed in it.
Bgwhite, it's ok. We all agreed that the english text will be reversed. It's not there for reading, but for fixing mistakes, and this reversing helps to do this ten times quicker. Could you make this, please? Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 21:47, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
@Meno25, Yamaha5, and IKhitron: Just to make sure all is in agreement. Bgwhite (talk) 18:38, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
@Bgwhite: Current situation (Using "class="table" dir="rtl"" and "style="unicode-bidi:embed;"") is correct. Both Arabic and English texts are displayed correctly for me. I disagree if Ikhitron wants to change it. --Meno25 (talk) 18:52, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
So, Meno25 said "Yes, thank you Yamaha5 from me as well" without check the example of Yamaha5. Bgwhite, can you do this for one wiki only, please? IKhitron (talk) 18:55, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
I said yes and thank you on changing "table class="table"" to "table class="table" dir="rtl"" suggested by Yamaha5 above which is correct. If you feel you need custom formatting for hewiki, that's fine by me but, please, don't mess with the arwiki formatting. Thank you. --Meno25 (talk) 19:01, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
I never wanted. You said yes on Yamaha5's example, so I thought you are agree. If I knew that yes means no, I ever would not ask that, of course. I do not want majority, 2 from three. I just do not want to disturbe to anyone. IKhitron (talk) 19:05, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
Bgwhite? Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 12:34, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Error #43 has false positive

when an article has {{{}}} inside it, the error #43 will have false positive for example at here and fa:آزاده (شاهنامه) Yamaha5 (talk) 09:07, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

For example {{{foo|{{{Foo|}}}}}} has 2 {{ and 3 }} and because of that the report has false positiveYamaha5 (talk) 19:11, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
Not only, "{{{" is marked as an error too, to detect articles with unbalanced brackets, for example, {{{reflist}}. So... Why do you use "{{{foo|}}}" in articles? That's templates element, {{{foo|something}}} is always equalent to something since there are no parameters passed to article, including foo. Facenapalm (talk) 13:30, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I didn't use "{{{foo|}}}" :) it is new user's falt they use original template inside article. it should list in other error list not mix with this error list
I solved this bug at python by this code
import re
text2=text
while '{{{' in text2:
    text2 = re.sub(r'\{\{\{[^\}]\}\}\}','',text2)
# after this cleaning we can check the text for {{}}

Yamaha5 (talk) 12:47, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Lists still generated for deactivated errors

@Bgwhite: it seems that CW is generating lists for errors that have been deactivated since the 28th of December. See for example on frwiki, lists for #37 and #110. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 10:46, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

NicoV Should be fixed Bgwhite (talk) 00:30, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks ! --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 06:09, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
@Bgwhite: it's still happening, like for #37 with 4 pages reported between the 13th and the 16th of January. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 09:45, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
I can confirm this. Yesterday, I marked all #37 as done in cswiki while the error is off. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:02, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Headlines errors mixed

Error #105 (completely missing =) now includes cases of error #8 (different amount of =), so #8 is now (almost) empty. I believe this was caused by mistake. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:22, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Matěj Suchánek #8 has not changed. For #8, a heading needs one or zero ending = to cause an error. #105 has changed, besides the usual checking that there are one or zero beginning =, it will also check if there are less beginning = than ending... so "== heading ===" is an error. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bgwhite (talkcontribs) 00:26, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
I believe that previously one error was only for missing "=" (at all) and the second one for unbalanced headings (ie. on both sides but different amount)... Actually, I may be confused as well. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 14:04, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
Matěj Suchánek Join the crowd. My middle name is confused. Bgwhite (talk) 23:03, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
@Bgwhite: So shouldn't the titles be changed? #8 looks correct but #105 should be 'Heading with unbalanced "="'. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:13, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Error #46

  Resolved

There several false positives in cswiki. They have in common that the reported bad syntax is inside an image which is at the very beginning of an article and which has an internal link inside its caption. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 08:57, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Matěj Suchánek It's not a false positive. CheckWiki has identified the wrong spot. Search for [[ or ]] in the article to find the correct spot. Bgwhite (talk) 09:33, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
I can see them know. Thanks for making me take a second look. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:41, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Is there limit(number of items) with whitelist?

By plan(jawiki) it will be about 3000 items. Is it possible? Thanks.--Momijiro (talk) 02:47, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Momijiro There is no limit. Bgwhite (talk) 09:26, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Bgwhite I understood.Thanks.--Momijiro (talk) 09:59, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

False positives on links to userspace

#95 seems to have been updated, so that links to talk pages are included as well. Now there are false positives on links to pages starting with "Diskus" and similar. For instance,
Kyberšikana "[[Diskuzní fórum|diskuze]] provokují vkl". Matěj Suchánek (talk) 13:07, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Matěj Suchánek Problem was already fixed around the 13th. Bgwhite (talk) 00:15, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
Okay, I marked them as done, let's see. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Bgwhite: Now it looks like that talk pages links are only detected. Could you please check that both [[Wikipedista: and [[User: are also detected in cswiki? Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:03, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Matěj Suchánek The Wikipedia's API keeps reporting bad results. I've had to hardwire it in. With Magioladitis out of action, I'm swamped doing both of our daily routine. I'll get to it on (my) Monday. If you don't hear from me, ping me. Bgwhite (talk) 09:36, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
Matěj Suchánek I updated it just before today's processing ran. I don't see any new #95 for today. Previously, the API did not include [[Wikipedista: and [[User: as results. It still doesn't contain. [[User:. Here are the ones I've hardcoded in:
user:, diskuse s wikipedistou:, wikipedista:, redaktor:, uživatel:, wikipedistka:, diskuse s uživatelem:, diskuse s wikipedistkou:, diskusia s redaktorom:, komentár k redaktorovi:, uživatel diskuse:, uživatelka diskuse:, wikipedista diskuse:, wikipedistka diskuse:
Bgwhite (talk) 09:12, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Error 16

Just wondering: how do unicode control characters get into Wikipedia text? Copy/paste? Could this be an indication of copyvio? — Iadmctalk  13:04, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Iadmc The come from all over the place. For some reason, HotCat adds them. People write up the text elsewhere and then copy it over. Copy/Paste non-Latin words, such as Arabic names. Copyvio is also another case. Bgwhite (talk) 09:03, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll check for copy-vio if there are a lot on an article. Otherwise, I'll just correct them — Iadmctalk  20:03, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Replacing Tidy

I know that several of the regulars here are preparing for mw:Parsing/Replacing Tidy. I'm guessing that late January will be the next opportunity to discuss when the first changes will be made (NB "discuss", not "implement without warning"). So with that possible discussion in mind, I wanted to check in with you. How are things going? What's going well? What's being difficult? Do you need specific kinds of help or information? What can I do to make this less painful? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

As I can remember, not all cases of changed behavior can be tracked by categories. If the rest can be found by CW, it will help very much. IKhitron (talk) 20:52, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
If T106685 can be addressed, that will make our insource searches for regex patterns more reliable. I wonder if P3012 produces accurate output, given this insource bug.
It looks like there are some not-very-nice bugs on this phab list. For any that are not going to be worked around, we'll need a list or category of pages to work on.
Have the errors and requests discussed here, like </br>, been addressed via a workaround, maintenance category, or CheckWiki report? As of that discussion, CheckWiki was scanning only article space, which means that tens of thousands of pages will have errors that have not been looked at yet. Also see Wikipedia:CHECKWIKI/WPC 100 dump, which may be a barrier to replacing Tidy (NB that report also covers only article space). – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:01, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF) and Jonesey95: I was going to bug you about this after I pushed out the latest CheckWiki update. It's still a few days away, which I've been saying for two weeks.
  1. CheckWiki can search thru template space if need be. There's just an if statement saying if namespace=0, then check errors.
  2. For me, insource searches aren't that useful. I'm not aware of any way to get a listing to put in a tool, such as AWB. That would speed up fixing things. AWB's built-in insource search is also broken. Magioladitis did a phab ticket so a listing could be done, but it was denied.
  3. Majority of Wikipedia:CHECKWIKI/WPC 100 dump are not technically errors. These are permitted per mw:Help:Lists and Help:list.
  4. It would be nice to have a list of things to be checked. I can gather some things from mw:Parsing/Replacing Tidy, but not all. We then know exactly what to look for.
a) <br/> and other self-closing tags.
b) <small>...<small> and <big>...<big> Need to find way to not search in templates and tables to minimize the vast number.
c) Unclosed tables. Already in Checkwiki.
d) ????
Bgwhite (talk) 11:12, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, list of things, that will break would be nice. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:13, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

On a side note. Any timing on when the Magiclink's for ISBNs, PMIDs and RFCs are going away? Magioladitis was going to do a bot run on this, but now it looks like it's me. I mention the change in a discussion two weeks back. Sorry Jonesey, but you and I were specifically called "not real editors". Bgwhite (talk) 11:12, 7 January 2017 (UTC)

The sound you hear is me clutching my pearls at such a slight. I may need to lie down. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:03, 7 January 2017 (UTC)
I've got no recent word on the de-magicking of the magic links. The annual Dev Summit is underway as I type, so there's a chance that decisions have been made this week. I don't believe that it's blocking anything important, so I hope that it's a project that could be postponed until the larger wikis have settled on whether and how they want to update their pages (e.g., with direct interwiki-style links vs by using local templates). User:Legoktm is probably the best-informed person for that project.
On the main point, I would be very happy to have you bug me about this whenever it's convenient for you. I really appreciate the way you're keeping track of this large and mushy project. (Now let me see if I can find someone with a few more details for that list – any replies will likely be either today or delayed by a week, because schedules.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
Whatamidoing (WMF) What I know about the current situation. WPCleaner is able to detect obsolete magic links (if errors 528, 529 and 530 are activated), and to suggest replacements if replacement templates have been configured (for PMID, ISBN and RFC). On frwiki:
  • PMIDs: I have replaced all of them with the template PMID
  • RFCs: It's a bit more tricky, because the template RFC doesn't work in references (around 300 pages still need to be handled)
  • ISBNs: I have run a first bot to use the template ISBN in some cases, number of pages went down from around 46000 to 34000 but still a lot of work to go on.
--NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 10:22, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Can (should?) that RFC template be updated so that it works within ref tags? Could a different template be used?
The English Wikipedia has a different problem: {{RFC}} is for the internal RFC process. I don't know if we have a link-to-the-IETF kind of RFC template. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
The RFC template was designed on frwiki to move links to the IETF website inside references (outside of article text, as MOS says external links shouldn't be in the article texte), so I don't think it will be modified for that (but if templates were able to know that they are called inside a reference, it would be easy to do). I'm currently modifying WPC to also suggest replacements with interwiki links because rfc (rfc:1234), pmid (pmid:1234) and issn (issn:1234-5678) seem to be defined in all WMF wikis. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 22:12, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF): I just noticed that Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Garrysmith10/Archive appeared in Category:Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags in the past few days. I have checked that category a couple of times a week since we emptied it. Since that page just showed up, it means that the job queue has not finished running through all of the pages on en.WP, even though the update to MW that created the error category was implemented six months ago. That, in turn, means that there are pages on en.WP that still have errors that we do not know about. Ultimately, that means that T132467, or something like it, is blocking Tidy migration, since the job queue does not run through all pages in a timely fashion to populate maintenance categories. And since insource searches are also not reliable, we are stuck with no reliable way to determine if we have fixed all of the outstanding problems.

At least that's how I interpret the evidence. I could be wrong. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:49, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know, but I assume that your conclusion is correct. I'll ask around, and let you know if our thinking is wrong. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
Whatamidoing (WMF) I just had the same problem with fr:MediaWiki:Gadget-C_helper_util.js which just appeared in the maintenance category, but the problem was since March last year, and it only appeared in the category because the page was modified yesterday. So it seems to confirm that the category is not updated in a timely fashion for pages that are not updated and that there are probably still pages with the problem but not visible in the category. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 09:23, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
Whatamidoing (WMF) For example, fr:MediaWiki:Gadget-MonobookToolbarLang.js has the same problem since forever (page not modified since 2015), but is not yet visible in the maintenance category... --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 10:05, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
I have been cleaning out Category:User pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags in the last couple of days, and I found two or three more pages that had errors but had not been put in the category yet. A null edit put them into the category. This confirms that the bug linked above, or something like it, is still valid. Pages are not being null-edited in a timely fashion, rendering MediaWiki changes that create tracking categories less useful and not entirely reliable. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:18, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
Do we really need to be relying upon those cats? Is there anything in those cats that couldn't be found via CheckWiki or via a regex search instead? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Regex searches are unreliable, as I noted above. See T106685.
CheckWiki could probably find them, if it were modified to operate outside of article space; I don't know if we have a full list of what to check for yet (also see above, to which you responded).
I think tracking categories are better (as long as they are updated in a reasonable amount of time), since they are visible to anyone who has hidden categories turned on, not just the very very few of us who check CheckWiki pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:51, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), has the late January discussion mentioned at the top of this section happened yet? Was there a discussion of the above requests? Resolution of one or more of the above requests is likely to be necessary for the gnomes to fix all of the problems prior to Tidy being replaced. At a minimum, we need a well defined list of the problematic strings to search for. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:12, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I have suspission, that this will be no-no-no-you-are-crazy, but phab:T156581. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:34, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
I've not seen any proposed dates. I think you can safely assume that it will be several months away. The next step is getting a tool that will show individual articles, so that you can see any problems visually.
I'd like anyone who works on other wikis to take a look at https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikitext-deprecation/ to check for this set of problems. I've asked for this new tool to be put into Tech News soon. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposal in the Magiodilitis arbcom case

I've made a proposal on the ARBCOM workshop page concerning how to deal with the Magiodilitis situation. Input by WP:BAG, bot owners, and the community at large is welcomed. Even if the proposal doesn't pass, some other ideas can be of interest, especially to WP:AWB/WP:CHECKWIKI people. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:23, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Better notice for #43 ?

Hi, on frwiki, fr:Bimbogami ga! gets reported for #43 with the notice {{TomeBD | couleur_ligne = | langage_u, and checkarticle gives a location of "-1". I could find where the error is... Would it be possible to have at least the position ? --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 17:36, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

<mapframe> tag

  Done

@Bgwhite: Apparently, the <mapframe> tag has been activated, at least on frwiki. It seems to be containing JSON data, leading to false positives for errors related to curly braces (like #47 for fr:Le Malesherbois#Composition). Could we ignore contents inside <mapframe> tag ? --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 09:46, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

NicoV This was just a simpe copy/paste to add this. Bgwhite (talk) 20:01, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
Thanks ! Also done in WPC for #43 and #47. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 17:39, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

False positive for #102

At here CheckWikis reports PubMed Url links. I checked the links and they are ok like PMID 19184489 which Checkwiki mentions as problemYamaha5 (talk) 21:03, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

It reached the maximum, maybe? IKhitron (talk) 21:11, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Image description with full small

Please modify code so that it also detects small templates in addition to small tags. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:21, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Double prefix

Tnavbar-header and Navbar-header

these need to be fixed. either (1) someone has substituted a template which should not have been substituted, or (2) substituted a template but didn't clean up after substituting the template. in either case, the edit link is not pointing to where you edit the content. the solution is either (1) unsubstitute the template, or (2) replace style="..." | {{T?navbar-header|title text|...fontcolor=fcolor}} with style="...; text-align:center; color: fcolor;" | title text. for example, like this. not sure if this can be safely done by bot. Frietjes (talk) 21:14, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

#48 templates

Hi. Is there a possibility to ignore #48 in some imagemap templates? Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 15:17, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

update fawiki's local setting

Hi, please update fawiki's local setting. I changed the setting and whitelists some month ago, still checkwiki's reports doesn't change Yamaha5 (talk) 11:57, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Bad CSS

  Resolved

someone thought it would be a good idea to mangle the css with with hyphens instead of a standard ASCII minus sign. all of these are broken and should be fixed. Frietjes (talk) 16:46, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Frietjes I fixed all. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:52, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually, there are five more [12] IKhitron (talk) 17:54, 8 March 2017 (UTC)
Magioladitis, and same for font-size. Frietjes (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2017 (UTC)


Frietjes and IKhitron I think now I fixed everything even in user pages. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:06, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion: Find cases of [[Link target|<nowiki/>]]

Parsoid occasionally created "links" like "[[Link target|<nowiki/>]]", and possibly still does. This outputs nothing, and most likely has to be simply deleted. Occasionally, this must be fixed to [[Link target]] or something else, but [[Link target|<nowiki/>]] is in any case wrong. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:09, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

This is a good one. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:07, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Access-Control-Allow-Origin

Hello! I tried to write a script which will automatically download list of errors for current page, display them in edit form and offer to choose the ones that should be automatically marked as "Done". However I met a problem: http-request, which is worked correctly in empty tab, can't load anything while being launched on wikipedia domain. Chrome writes something like this:

XMLHttpRequest cannot load https://tools.wmflabs.org/checkwiki/cgi-bin/checkwiki.cgi?project=ruwiki&view=detail&title=.mil. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource. Origin 'https://ru.wikipedia.org' is therefore not allowed access.

Is it possible to configure server in such a way to make such requests working? (If it's important, requests must be done via https, because request via http on https domain doesn't work too). Facenapalm (talk) 14:53, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

You are trying to fetch it in table view, not the bot one? Why? IKhitron (talk) 14:55, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
Because I need to get the list of errors for current page, not the list of pages for current error. And I need to get "Notice" field as well: I want to show information for people, not to get information for bots. Anyway, requests for bot view doesn't work too if their origin is Wikipedia. Facenapalm (talk) 15:04, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
I see. But AWB can fetch them, somehow. IKhitron (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
AWB is launched on your PC and can fetch them just like browser do. My python bot also can download the list of errors and mark some of them as "done" without any problem. But that's not how cross-domain AJAX works. Facenapalm (talk) 15:08, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

#48 whitelist does not work in hewiki

  Resolved

Hi. Could you check what's the problem, please? Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 19:34, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Found the problem. IKhitron (talk) 15:36, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Detection on #1, 2 and 34

  Resolved

Why has the detection on these lists for de.wiki been stopped? Perhaps there are even some more numbers that have been suspended.--Hadibe (talk) 08:56, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Hadibe They shouldn't be stopped. None of those errors have been turned off in the translation file. I see #2 and #34 errors today. #1 does some iffy. I don't see it showing up in other wikis. I'll look into that. Bgwhite (talk) 06:36, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
It was strange to see #2 and #34 totally empty yesterday when every other day more than 50 articles would have been added. And there were articles containing these. #1 might be empty for nearly 2 weeks now. --Hadibe (talk) 07:02, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Hadibe The January 8, 0z CheckWiki daily update did not run for any wiki. The latest daily update contains 48 hours worth of errors (8th and 9th) minus however long the cron was down on Labs. If you think seeing errors empty was strange, then you obviously haven't seen me. :) Bgwhite (talk) 07:11, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Hadibe #1 should be fixed. Bgwhite (talk) 19:51, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. --Hadibe (talk) 21:04, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Could someone please check if the detection on de.wiki #16 has been stopped? There weren't any entries for some weeks, but every now and then I find some articles which should have been detected like this one --Hadibe (talk) 18:17, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

ID 16 (Unicode)

Moin Moin @Bgwhite: the second today. Since now some time in the ID 16 no new entries are added. But I had found in some articles which ones which should have been registered. Can it be that something isn't running? Regards --Crazy1880 (talk) 18:32, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Add Bengali wikipedia?

Hi, is it possible to add Bengali wikipedia to this tool? Thanks --Aftabuzzaman (talk) 18:07, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

WP:COSMETICBOT update RFC under way

See Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#WP:COSMETICBOT update. This will be relevant to many people here.

After (and if) this is passed, I would also proposed creating a new 'Cosmetic' priority in WP:CWERRORS to mark fixes that are deemed desirable in the long run, but which are not to be done on their own. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:52, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion: Find cases of [[Link target|Link tar]]get and [[Link target|Link tar]]<nowiki/>get

I'm talking about cases where the link display text with the link trail is identical to the link target text.

"[[Link target|Link tar]]get" is functionally identical to [[Link target]].

"[[Link target|Link tar]]<nowiki/>get" is not functionally identical, but it's likely that the intention was to write [[Link target]]. I fixed many such cases in the Hebrew Wikipedia, and I cannot recall even one case where something different was needed.

This should also check for "[[Link target|link tar]]get", i.e. the capitalization of the first letter doesn't matter. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:09, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

"[[Link target|Link tar]]get" is functionally identical to [[Link target]]. - only if "get" consists of lowercase symbols. See: tarGet, tar2et, tar-et. tarгет doesn't works here, but works in ruwiki ([а-яё] is a regexp for russian lowercase symbols if it will be implemented). Facenapalm (talk) 19:26, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
Right, but it doesn't change the suggestion. Most likely, the editor's intention was still to include the trail inside the link. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:27, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
By the way, this replacement is also possible: [[Link tar|Link target]] -> [[Link tar]]get. Again, only if symbols after the link in result are in lowercase. Both of those suggestions can be a nice addition to 64th error, especially considering the fact that many instruments (AWB, ruwiki's Wikificator) already can do this. Facenapalm (talk) 02:55, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
According to the comments in phab:T47126, you'd have to write different rules for each language. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

#114 - Defaultsort same as pagetitle

I just realized that quite often, Foobar will be defaultsorted as {{DEFAULTSORT:Foobar}}. There's no reason for this, and in the long run can create issues (if the page is moved to Barfoo later). This would be a cosmetic fix that shouldn't be done by bots, but I can't think why it can't be bundled alongside other fixes. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:27, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

You are right. It should be fixed. I fixed about hundred in our wiki, but we do not use magic word, we use a template and it's much easier. IKhitron (talk) 15:29, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
Don't get why templates are easier than magic words in this case. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 02:56, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
It's easier to find & fix them because of "What links here" template page I suppose. Facenapalm (talk) 19:06, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
It is possible that such apparently redundant markup is overriding an unwanted value that has been set in a template called higher on the page. I've not looked to see whether such use cases exist, but it might be wise before proceeding. I have a dim recollection of some editors using this possibility as a rationale for always setting the DEFAULTSORT, rather than allowing it to take its default value; so be prepared for that to be raised again. William Avery (talk) 12:06, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
If that's ana issue, should it perhaps be replaced with {{DEFAULTSORT:{{PAGENAME}}}}? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:50, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
The real solution is to fix the template / have a |defaultsort= in the offending template. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

HTML4 vs HTML5 with complex tables

I suspect that some of you will want to look into this bug, which affects a small number of templates, but a large number of articles, at a couple of wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

#115 Template instead of magicword

See Category:Pages_which_use_a_template_in_place_of_a_magic_word. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:30, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

ID 3 (references responsive)

Moin Moin @Bgwhite:, since yesterday we have the feature "<references responsive />" to make references more columns. The ID 3, however, means that there is no TAG for references. Can it be that this new syntax is not yet understood by the script? Regards --Crazy1880 (talk) 18:29, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Same problem on frwiki, where fr:Système d'écriture mésoaméricain is reported in #3, but it has a <references responsive="0"/>. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 08:50, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
Crazy1880, that feature was built at the request of the German Wikipedia. I think that we could mostly solve the checkwiki problem by getting a config change so that <references /> and <references responsive /> have the same behavior. (I assume that you'd still get the occasional <references responsive="0"/>.) Do you think that the German Wikipedia is ready for that change? (The request can be filed as a subtask of phab:T159895.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
Moin Moin, @Whatamidoing (WMF): I can't answer this question, because I'm not an initiator of this references-TAG. Theoretically, I'm a user and not an administrator, who can decide something like that. Regards --Crazy1880 (talk) 18:58, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
What exactly does <references responsive /> do anyway? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:39, 8 April 2017 (UTC)
mw:Editing/Projects/Columns_for_referencesJonesey95 (talk) 20:29, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Error 3, reflist missing

In CW Error #3, lots of false positive occur, mostly due to a lack of regognition for the <references responsive /> tag (see e.g. Cavalleria rusticana). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:37, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

see above #ID 3 (references responsive) --Crazy1880 (talk) 17:26, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

In Greek Wikipedia we changed references tags and reflist template to be responsive by default. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:28, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Magioladitis, how is that new feature working out for the Greek Wikipedia? (I don't see a request for a config change at phab:T159895; feel free to file it yourself or to ask me to do so.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:12, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Id 37 at fawiki

Id 37 was turned off some month ago but still fawiki report shows itYamaha5 (talk) 07:00, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

also others. e.g. eswiki,frwiki,itwiki,jawiki,ruwiki,zhwiki and so on. --Momijiro (talk) 20:24, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Valid breaks

Hi, thanks for running this tool. It's very helpful. I've noticed, however that in section 2, there are valid breaks pointed out. Typically those with attributes accepted in the wiki language like <br style="clear:both;" /> or <br clear="all" />. Hope this comment helps improving this tool.--Ascánder (talk) 17:14, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

They should be replaced by their template equivalents. - Magioladitis (talk) 17:23, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Why? More to the point, what if the local wiki doesn't have a template to do that, or doesn't prefer the template, or explicitly prefers HTML? Some communities have a deliberate policy of using the fewest possible templates. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
There's a recent (within the last 2-3 months) discussion somewhere on this 5-million-page WP site about whether the "clear" property (I think that's the right term) can legitimately be applied to the "br" tag. There was esoteric HTML specification language involved. I'll be darned if I can remember where it was or what the outcome was. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:43, 5 April 2017 (UTC) (edit: Here is the one I was remembering. Good luck figuring it out.)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): br is bad almost everywhere because it's primary goal is to insert a newline. Let's consider an example: there is a section with text and illustration which are followed with a multi-column list. On wide screen, text height is less than image's one, so the width of the list will be less than 100% - a significiant part of a width will be occupied by image and empty white space. Messy. So editor with wide screen inserts <br clear="right" /> to prevent this. An unexpected result will appear on small screens, where image height is less: there will be an empty line between text and list. Once again, it's small screen, so every line is very important. Facenapalm (talk) 16:52, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
My question was about always using a template to do X, not whether this HTML was the best approach. The idea that every piece of HTML should be "replaced by their template equivalents" is a popular view at the English Wikipedia, but it is not a popular view at all wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
True. And sometimes I wonder why. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:27, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
A couple of weeks ago, an editor at one of the Wikibooks told me that it was "easier" to remember that {{references}} did X and that {{reflist}} did Y, than to remember that <references /> existed (and did X) and that {{reflist}} did Y. I am skeptical (especially for people working across many wikis), but that was his belief. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I am OK either way. -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:29, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) I think AWB changes to the template only for English Wikipedia. Still I recall I created some templates for other Wikipedias in the past. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:04, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Template:Clear used div tags and not br tags if that matters. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:59, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), Magioladitis: I believe that the clear attribute has been deprecated in HTML5 for the br tag : it's not valid HTML anymore. The clear attribute is still valid for div tag, that's why the template is using the div tag. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 13:31, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Identifying cosmetic fixes

Looking at WP:CWERRORS, it seems to me that all current Top/Mid-priority fixes are non-cosmetic, but some of the Low-priority ones are.

Tentatively, a blind application of the "Does it change the rendering of anything, anywhere? / Does it prevent issues?" would mean the low-priority CW errors distribute themselves this way (feel free to edit the list)

Note that just that because an edit is cosmetic under this definition, doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be done. However, a bot task would have to demonstrate consensus that the error is consider egregious enough to fix on its own before getting approval.

What I'd like here, is a justification beyond "poor practice/against convention" for the "unsure" column. For instance, is CW Error #54 intended to fix WP:ACCESS/WP:LISTGAP concerns, or something else? I'd also like for better categorization / justification for some of those in WP:CWERRORS. Many of those are left completely blank. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:04, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Error 6 does cause cosmetic changes to corresponding categories, so cosmetic change by proxy. And #16 is egregious eonough for WP:accessibility reasons. I have gotten bot approval for those errors (#16, #6) (and a few others) and thereby demonstrated why they are egregious eonough for a bot to do them, despite the lack of visable change to articles for you and me. (tJosve05a (c) 17:58, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Cosmetic changes to category? It's currently classified as a "syntax error". Not sure what you mean here. If it is not a syntax error, then the description of CW Error #06 should be updated (and possibly moved to the cosmetic column). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:20, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Also, I'm not saying those discussion didn't already happen. Just that right now, there's a bunch of 'low-priority' fixes that could reasonably be considered cosmetic, and it's not immediately obvious on this page why they should be done. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:20, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

CW Error #06 affects how the page is placed within its categories. I think Frietjes has some good reason why we convert list elements i.e. about CW Error #12. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:46, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

CW Error #20 has given only 1 entry the last 12 months. You can turn it off. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:08, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

replacing HTML list elements may be entirely cosmetic if the HTML list syntax is valid. if the HTML list syntax is invalid, then replacing it with wiki-lists will make sure we aren't using HTML tidy to fix the output. whether or not that is cosmetic depends on if HTML tidy is turned on. Frietjes (talk) 14:59, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
CW Error #54 (LISTGAP) changes the visual appearance of the list in Vector (the first item in a list has extra vertical space before it), and therefore it is IMO not "cosmetic" according to the definition given. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
CW Error #88 looks like COSMETIC to me - the first listed article, 24 cm SK L/40, is sorted correctly. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:48, 31 March 2017 (UTC)
I looked at it, and it's definitely cosmetic. It can be a symptom of a larger issue (like vandalism), but _24 doesn't sort any differently than 24. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:16, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I've added the cosmetic column. I've categorized things per the above discussion, but feel free to make some tweaks. I've left the "off" priority fixes out, however. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:16, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Classified most "off" fixes. This will come in handy in the future if they are turned on again.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:37, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb Error 64 also fixes misplaced brackets etc. such as [[Foo (bar)|Foo(bar]]) and many others. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:10, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Then those should likely be separated in 64a and 64b. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb Error 85 asks editors to add content in empty section or tag the section with empty section. This is not "cosmetic" by any means. -- Magioladitis (talk)

CW Error #85 is about empty <ref></ref> tags and the like. Empty sections is CW Error #84. Or should be, according to their descriptions. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:27, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
Sorry my mistake on 85. Where is 84 on the list then? -- Magioladitis (talk) 09:58, 17 April 2017 (UTC)
CW Error #84 is turned off. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:20, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

I do not see CW Error #02 on any of the lists above. It is currently listed as "not cosmetic" on Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/List of errors, but changing </br> to <br /> is currently a cosmetic change, and may continue to be cosmetic even after Tidy goes away. Some of the errors listed as 02 are real errors that will result in non-cosmetic changes, but many are purely cosmetic. This may have been discussed elsewhere and I just missed it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:07, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Looking to the future

Is everyone in [the above] discussion aware of mw:Parsing/Replacing Tidy? This upcoming work may affect what's "cosmetic". For example, I'm not certain that #65 will continue to have no visible effect. I've not seen any specific plan to change that behavior, but this may be one of the small things that Tidy did, and which therefore will be "broken" when Tidy is removed. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:32, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

If the folks working at WMF haven't been able to give us a definitive list of what will break when Tidy is replaced, we have to make decisions with the information that we have. Actual definitive information from WMF, if it exists in written form, will be helpful. Please post here when you have it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:41, 1 April 2017 (UTC)
A change is cosmetic unless one of the following is correct:
  1. You have personally seen/heard a difference.
  2. You have seen statements on-wiki from users who claim that they have personally seen/heard a difference, and either there have been no claims otherwise in that environment or such claims appear to be false.
  3. The Foundation's technical team have released a statement that it will cease to be cosmetic.
עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:56, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Jonesey95, I'll cheerfully give you a complete list of changes, shortly after you give me a time machine, so I can go into the future and find out what decisions will be taken in the coming months.  
More seriously, the information is being provided as it becomes available. They are understandably a little nervous about asking you all to fix thousands of pages and then deciding the opposite later, so please bear with them during these months of uncertainty. They'd rather get it right the first time. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Looking forward to it. Let us know when you folks get it figured out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:16, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Here's a list of things that are guaranteed to need fixing: mw:Help:Extension:Linter. All of these errors appear in the lists for Special:LintErrors (which is not yet enabled for enwiki, but it is at most wikis), so you can get a clear list of pages that have problems. Each item has some decent documentation (as in, I was able to figure out how to fix a few pages myself, so it can't be that complicated. ;-)

There are a few things that I'm not sure how to fix, such as m:Template:Nospam. A few things get listed as "stripped" when they're actually "misnested". But overall I think this is a great place to start, and the problems it identifies can be fixed everywhere, even if you temporarily have to use other tools to identify pages with obsolete HTML (for example) at the larger wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:22, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that link. The explanation on that page says that not all of the errors will need to be fixed right away, but that some of them should really be fixed ASAP. I'm looking forward to seeing those lists come to en.WP.
I'm guessing that T157670 will continue to be a blocker for Tidy migration, so I hope that gets resolved sometime soon. It will help with many other maintenance-related queues as well. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:08, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
For information, WPC is now integrated with Linter at a basic level (able to retrieve the list of pages for a given category). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 10:05, 26 April 2017 (UTC)
I don't think that T157670 is being treated as a blocker for this, or any other, project. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Maybe I misunderstand that phab task, then. Until it is resolved, switching from Tidy to another system will entail deliberate breaking of pages that would have been fixed by editors if the errors had been reporting in tracking categories. Because the tracking categories are not up to date, nobody knows which pages still need fixes. Perhaps the new Linter error pages will somehow list every page that needs to be fixed, even if some pages have not been refreshed for years? – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:50, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Tracking categories are not the only way to find the affected pages. Perhaps there is no perfect solution that finds everything on the first try, but there appear to be alternatives (e.g., searching database dumps, using the linter tools, using Special:Search), and those alternatives appear to find at least most of the affected pages.
To be candid, I'm more worried about the lack of activity among this group. Having tools that identify problems is useless if there aren't enough people left to use them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
There has been a lot of pushback against editors making these "cosmetic" cleanup edits, since with Tidy in place, many of the edits do not change the appearance of the rendered page. The resistance has gotten so bad that some previously productive editors have moved on to other tasks that are less controversial, or have taken a break from gnome editing altogether.
And with the phab page-refresh bug (which doesn't seem that hard to fix, in my view) stalled, we don't have a comprehensive list of pages to edit that would justify the hassle of a BRFA and an ongoing bot task. It sure would be helpful to get that page-refresh bug fixed, but if WMF is unwilling to do that, turning off Tidy and breaking a bunch of pages would get the attention of the folks who have driven many of the gnomes underground. Those edits wouldn't be cosmetic anymore, and a lot of them would get fixed quickly, at the expense of displaying many broken pages to readers for a while. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:00, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Error #3 on it.wiki

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask for a configuration change. On it.wiki, we introduced a new template (it:Template:Note strette) to handle the Notes section; however, the articles with the template turns out in the report for error #3 (see [13]), since they do not directly contain <references/> nor it:Template:References (which has been deprecated). Would it be possible to add an exception for these articles? Thanks in advance--Dr Zimbu (talk) 17:48, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

  • @Dr Zimbu: open your configuration page, find error_003_templates_itwiki= line and add a new line with the template name between = and END. If there will be some redirects to this template, you should add all of them. Errors 78 and 111 are also configurable to work with references template. For 111th error, it should be the equal list (don't forget to change 003 number to 111 when you copy it!), but, as I can see, last errors (109-113) are just misrepresented in this page - you can copy them from english configuration page, replace "enwiki" with "itwiki", change priorities if that's needed, delete unneccessary _template_ sections and translate them. error_078_templates_itwiki= should be a valid regular expression, matching all references templates without "group" parameter - I can help you write it if you will tell me how "group" parameter will called in italian wikipedia (if it will - as I can see, there is no such parameter in template for now). You can see the example of regular expression at russian configuration page. Facenapalm (talk) 20:20, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks @Facenapalm:, I didn't know there was a configuration page (should've probably checked earlier...)--Dr Zimbu (talk) 07:35, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Some problems needing manual fixing

Hi, I have found ~130 cases of unclosed tags (mostly category and some broken images), see User:Rentier/Cleanup. Putting it out here (is this the right Wikiproject for this?) since I don't have the time to fix them myself. Rentier (talk) 02:53, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

About 700 articles to clean up

see this search for {{http:...}} (using misunderstanding of how to add external links). Frietjes (talk) 14:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Yobot 57. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:59, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Span

Hi. Is there any purpose for <span>some text</span>, without any tag parameters? IKhitron (talk) 11:41, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I think that's turned up as a VisualEditor/Parsoid bug in the past. I can't imagine any useful purpose for it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:07, 18 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. Maybe it's better the CW will recognize it. IKhitron (talk) 12:50, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Replace <ce> -> <chem>

I'm looking at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T155125 which deals about replacing all ce tags with chem tags. The implementation of ce and chem is identical, so nothing will be changed by replacing the name of the tag. What would be the best method to do that replacement? --Physikerwelt (talk) 07:33, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I did this with AWB regexp. IKhitron (talk) 12:52, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

BIG Blue Button

It appears that the next stage of the OOUI-ification of MediaWiki is going to change something about how the "Save" (aka "Publish") button is implemented in the API. There is a possibility that a small number of scripts or bots will break as a result. See phab:T162849 and mw:OOjs UI for more information.

If you think that this will be a problem for your work, then you might want to ask for help at WP:BOTN or WP:VPT.

This has been planned for years, announced in Tech News, etc., which probably means that nobody has paid attention to it. :-) I therefore ask for your help in sharing this information with technically minded editors at other projects. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:26, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Quick update:
  • There's actual information, including some examples of scripts that have already been fixed at mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons.
  • This has already happened at fawiki and plwiki, so you can go there to test your scripts, or follow the directions on mw.org to test it on any (WMF) wiki.
  • User:NicoV, this may reach the French Wikipedia (and a few others, but not dewiki or enwiki) next Wednesday, which is 28 June 2017. I'll leave a note at Le Bistro (in English, alas) once the schedule's settled, but I thought I'd give you an early warning. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
This next group has been postponed until Wednesday, 5 July 2017, because Matma Rex found some bugs in the Monobook skin, and because having a little extra time to check their scripts won't hurt anyone. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:38, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Update: This is done, everywhere. Commons was the last wiki, about 9 days ago. During the next month, if you see new breakage in scripts, it's more likely to be Krinkle's jQuery 3 update than this OOjs UI change. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Linter tool out on small wikis

Quick note: mw:Extension:Linter (which helps editors find wikitext errors) is available on some small wikis. Have a look at mw:Special:LintErrors to see what it does. (I don't know what all of the categories are, but I see that lots of translations of mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide appear in a couple of the lists.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I believe that this will be going out to medium-size wikis in the next week. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
Special:LintErrors has reached the bigger wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:38, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Where are the pages that tell how to fix them? Can those pages be linked from these faux category pages? When I go to Special:LintErrors/pwrap-bug-workaround, for example, the description of the problem is ... lacking, and there is no explanation of how to fix whatever the problem is. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:18, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi there, Jonesey95. Yes, there are pages that aim to collect instructions. We would like to see how effective/understandable they are before linking them everywhere. Would you please review the 3 linked at mw:Help:Extension:Linter#High-priority_lint_issues to see if they make sense or how they might be improved? These are the ones we'll soon ask the community to focus on. Once they are ready, I would like to transclude them in Parsing/Replacing_Tidy/FAQ#Action_item. Thank you! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:08, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Those look like a good start. I looked at the three high-priority pages and expanded the self-closed tag page to make it more helpful.
Questions about how these new pages work: Have you considered applying some kind of sorting to the Special pages? How do I add the list to my watchlist to see when something new appears on one of them? When I am trying to fix a page, how do I use Preview to find out if my edit will fix the problem? I am used to tracking categories, which have straightforward answers to all of those questions. Also, why does Dexter (season 7) show up in the Special page for self-closed tags but not in the self-closed tag category? Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:08, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Will respond two two of your questions which I can answer right away. (1) Reg using Preview, you need the ParserMigration tool enabled in your preferences. One thing we could do is perhaps to add an edit link with the parser-migration preview. But, till such time, you can replace action=edit with action=parsermigration-edit. (2) As for Dexter (season 7), there is broken markup in that section that trips up Parsoid causing it to flag the page for a self-closed tag linter output. See Dexter (season 7)#External_links for the broken output. That particular transclusion that linter identifies generates ''Dexter''<span class="nowrap" style="padding-left:0<wbr/>.1em;">&<wbr/>#39;<<wbr/>/span>s and Parsoid gets confused by that jumble and thinks that there is a span self-closing tag. This is an edge case. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the changes, Jonesey95. Let me tell you what I'm thinking: there will be several pages to fix in the next months. I don't know that people with a certain expertise like you can get all of that done. My goal is involving less tech-minded people like me as well - I do not need or care much about the details: I just want to know what I have to do to help. "Change X with Z", "Delete Y", is an example of straightforward instructions I can follow. Right now, such instructions look a bit buried in a sea of details. I would like them to be way more evident - and standardised. Currently, it is obvious that the 2 explanation pages can't be transcluded in the FAQ section - it'd be a mess. Maybe the FAQ page only needs a TL;DR for each of those. Appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:39, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I love simple "if this, then do that" instructions when they are possible. I found that when working on the self-closed tag category, simple instructions applied most of the time, but there were enough tricky ones that simple instructions were not possible. For example, sometimes <div /> should be changed to <div></div>, and other times it is a typo for </div>. Another tricky case is <b />, which should be replaced with <nowiki />, <br />, or </b>, depending on the context.
My experience with categories like this on en.WP is that you end up with a group of four or five gnomes who fix all of the errors. Those gnomes learn the tricky bits through experience. If you're lucky, some of the fixes have no edge cases and can be fixed by a bot, leaving the rest for the gnomes to fix in context. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:03, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
OK, but then, this kind of explanation needs to be offered, and if a person figures they aren't able to determine what the correct case is, then they move on to the next (hopefully easier) category? (My experience matches yours. We've also had amazing people who single-handedly went out to fix on other wikis; but it is not enough, and it doesn't scale. Hence why I'm encouraging the team to try and make things easier for a wider audience.) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:52, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Jonesey95, that amazing person that Subbu is added simplified instructions at mw:Parsing/Replacing_Tidy/FAQ#What_will_editors_need_to_do.3F. Let us know what you think of those. I think we're aiming at a first round of communications this week. TYVM! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:23, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I looked through them once, and I assume that some people will understand them. I didn't understand the reference to "Please see the detailed help page for this category." I thought that pages were being listed on a Special page, not on a category page, and there is no link to any detailed help page. I guess I am just still confused about some of the questions I listed above. Don't stop your deployment on my account. I am available to help, and I am sure that you will find others who are as well. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:25, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
I believe that "the detailed help page for this category" is mw:Help:Extension:Linter/self-closed-tag, and "this category" refers to a group or type of errors, rather than a page in the Category: namespace. Elitre, if that sounds right to you, then perhaps we could change the wording to avoid confusion with the namespace? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Absolutely, I don't own that page, go ahead with any changes that make sense - but also let SSastry (WMF) what outstanding doubts are there! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

For information, I've recently modified WPCleaner to integrate it with Linter. Currently, the following is available:

  • Access to list of pages detected for a given Linter category is provided from the main window (Linter categories button)
  • Access to the analysis by Linter of the page currently being edited, including the unsaved modifications (Linter button in the toolbar in the Full Analysis window and Check Wiki window)

Still some work to do for it to be easier for users. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 09:28, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

NicoV, I want you to know that if you think this tool may help, you are welcome to add related info in the simplified instructions section. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:12, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks Elitre (WMF), I will try to do it when I've done some improvements on WPCleaner. I'm currently adding code for dealing with the missing-end-tag reported by Linter: my development version currently detects problems with <center> tags, and suggests a fix when it's inside a gallery tag or an image description ; I have to make it automatic for some situations, add suggestions in other situations, and do the same for other tags. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 09:17, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Good! I guess you have an idea of how many communities are actually using it? Do you have a way to communicate with them all at once? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:31, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Elitre (WMF) Apart from the list of wikis for which WPC is configured, I don't know which one has active users or not. No channel to communicate with them   --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 14:33, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
@NicoV: You can use the "information box" at the bottom of WPCleaner to communicate to a large audience that uses your tool. Add some "eye-cathing color" to the text, and people will read it when logging in to the tool. (tJosve05a (c) 14:36, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Interesting, Josve05a. We have made a tentative space for a taskforce, but haven't promoted that much... Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:45, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Ok Josve05a. A suggestion for the message and what links should be in it? --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 06:22, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
m:Tech/News/2017/28 has a short announcement about Tidy, for example. Calling attention to the taskforce I linked above would also be cool :) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 06:40, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
Josve05a, Elitre (WMF). I have just released a version of WPCleaner with a message advertising the Linter extension. Suggestions are welcome. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 17:24, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
Elitre (WMF) I've started adding a Tools section for self-closed-tag with a small description of what WPCleaner can do to help fixing this error. Everyone: Feel free to fix my English, improve the section... --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 05:56, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
Could someone have a look at User:PerfektesChaos/js/lintHint? Perhaps it should be on the list of helpful tools. (See also mw:Topic:Tvyz5k6ki39kba6t, which lists another.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Add zh-classical.wikipedia

Hi. May you also check zh-classical.wikipedia? Thank you! --Kanashimi (talk) 03:30, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: What exactly do you want checking? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 10:57, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
Please check all issues, we will pick up what we need. Thank you. --Kanashimi (talk) 11:22, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

enwiki last update is 2017-08-31

According to Check Wikipedia enwiki has not been updated since 2017-08-31. Used to be daily updates with new items. --Bamyers99 (talk) 20:20, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Tidy replacement

Previously, on Tidy Replacement... The Parsing team wants to replace Tidy with a RemexHTML-based solution on the Wikimedia cluster by June 2018. This will require editors to fix pages and templates to address wikitext patterns that behave differently with RemexHTML. Please see the "What editors will need to do" section on the Tidy replacement FAQ. This is ongoing, although operations seem to go slowly at this wiki?

I now want to point your attention to the related update that Subbu provided on wikitech-l. Please do ping him (User:SSastry (WMF)) if you have any questions or concerns, ideas about how to get more people involved here or communications venues we haven't explored yet (I will contact technical village pumps later this month, FWIW), etc. Hope this helps! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Hey, I've started mw:Help:Extension:Linter#Tools as a place to collect scripts/tools/anything that's helpful. Please boldly add yours. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

#73 Mistaken on ISBNs from Cyprus

ISBN 978-9925-0-4481-8 on de:Willem de Haan and ISBN 978-9925-0-7752-6 on de:Gustav Heinrich Gottfried Siebeck from Cyprus are reported as wrong, although they are mathematically and logically correct. -- ThomasO. 17:33, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

The server is out

Hi. I can't open the server for about ten minutes. IKhitron (talk) 14:21, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

IKhitron, is it working now? I haven't heard of any big problems today. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
Hi, Whatamidoing (WMF), it's OK now, thank you. I just informed you there was a problem for ten minutes. IKhitron (talk) 18:49, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

ISSN error

I checked the check digital myself of the issn 1010-4143, which is correct‎ (unless my calculation wrong and library wrong), but it shown error in the page. Is that the wikipedia coding on checking issn had error instead? or UFT8 character table or 8 bit character table error? Matthew_hk tc 20:36, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

What is the affected page? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:50, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

TemplateData update

If you're interested in how templates get placed on a page, then please see mw:Help:TemplateData#Custom formats. It's now possible to tell Parsoid that {{unref}} and similar tags belong on separate lines. This change should make it easier to maintain wikitext whitespace conventions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

This project may close soon

This page has stopped being updated. It may shut down soon. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:08, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:03, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Monthly dumps did not update for two months and there is no plan for them to be updated in the future. E.g. Wikipedia:CHECKWIKI/001 dump. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:47, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Seems like contacting Bgwhite (talk · contribs), or whoever else runs the dump, would be the first step, rather than panicking. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:56, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
Bgwhite hasn't edited any wiki for over a month. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
What are you talking about? I have new run on new dump 4 days ago. IKhitron (talk) 14:45, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

IKhitron which files do you use? -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, Magioladitis, I do not understand the question. IKhitron (talk) 00:04, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

IKhitron You wrote that you run a new dump. Where did you post it? -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:05, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

I see the problem. I did not run anything. I opened the checkwiki interface, and found a new run, with a lot of errors that wasn't there a week before. IKhitron (talk) 00:35, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Magioladitis You still have a few lists that are generated by WPC: Wikipedia:CHECKWIKI/WPC all. They are based on the dump from 20 March. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 08:42, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Magioladitis I have the same question ("What are you talking about?"). Ruwiki's web interface got new dump yesterday, and it's basic checkwiki feature, isn't it? There are 4 maintainers for checkwiki tool at WMFlabs tool list, you're in the list, so, even if Bgwhite left the project (I hope he's not), tool isn't dead. Who is going to close project and why? Facenapalm (talk) 10:31, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Facenapalm I can't download and process the dump files (my laptop is rather old and my connection is not in a better shape) and in fact it's also not in my plans neither. You can ofcourse ask the other two persons if they want to keep working with it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:49, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

  • Download dump files for what? I thought dumps are scanned directly on WMFlabs, aren't they? If not, who scanned last ruwiki dump yesterday? Even if current maintainers have no plans about project, they can add a new maintainer(s), right? I can't believe that noone can and want to maintain the project. I probably can help with ruwiki dumps, if you'll explain what's needed. Facenapalm (talk) 14:16, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

As far as I understand, for international team there is no panic. Marios is talking about on-wiki pages, which are generated with WPC, which uses slightly different algorithms for error detecting. Web interface (the "real" CW) isn't going anywhere. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:47, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I am talking about the on-wiki pages generated every month based on the same algorithm with the daily scans. The lists are generated with 3 ways:

  1. Daily scans
  2. Monthly scans
  3. Monthly(?) scans by WPC which are done with a slightly different algorithm.

Item 2 will discontinue. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:01, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I get a new run twice a month. If it will be once a month from now, I can leave with it. The problem is all changes in the code, including those that Bgwhite already started to write. I have about 5 like these. IKhitron (talk) 12:41, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

FrescoBot also stopped since March. It's the fourth of fifth bot that was used in the project and stopped. Meanwhile, BAG still has not completed the process of reaffirming Yobot for the 100+ tasks it used to run. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:27, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb After some months passed, you now see it was not just a panic. It was info I had about it. In practise the project is stalled. -- Magioladitis (talk) 06:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't really see what you mean by "The project has stalled", I routinely perform CHECKWIKI cleanup tasks, and listings are certainly updated e.g. [14]. And if for some reason the project did stall, what do you want me to do about it? I have no idea how these listings are generated. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:11, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it's time to send this project for deletion? Certain people in the community worked systemtically against certain parts of this project (people, bots, tasks). There was even an Arbitration case that concluded recently. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:02, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

@Magioladitis: Now why in the world would we want to do that? The project obviously has support from the community. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:08, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb We have the following situation on bots:

  • Menobot: Last CHECKWIKI edit was more than 1 year ago
  • Xqbot: Last CHECKWIKI edit was more than 1 yyear ago
  • Yobot: It's doing much fewer tasks than 1 year ago
  • BG19bot: Stopped editing in February
  • Josvebot: Last edit was in August

Am I in panic? I don't know. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:10, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

You are in panic, yes. Some people may have lost interest in it, but it doesn't mean the project is bad, or is undesired by the community. Certainly feel free to contact the bot ops to resume their bots, or pick up some of the slack with Yobot. If you do, my advice is to focus on high/mid-priority tasks. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:14, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi. frwiki has not been updated since 2017-09-16 and I'm afflicted. Is the Check Wikipedia project definitively cancelled or replaced? Except for enwiki, it still seems to run from time to time in other languages... Thank you. Clumsy and stupid (talk) 07:04, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Last update on ENWiki - August 31, 2017

Hello, I am a dedicated member of this project and I commit my time to clearing the problems of the English Wikipedia. I noticed the last update was August 31, 2017.

Is there any reason for that? Are you trying to reduce the backlog first before updating. I am bringing this to your attention because it used to be daily.

AmericanAir88 (talk) 22:17, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

As i can see, the wikis with dump cycle - an update twice a month - work as usual. I can see the hewiki updates all the time. The wikis with special schedule - as enwiki every day, and so on, are not work, because they done by different script. Maybe, until this script will be fixed, the dump one should check all the wikis - twice a month is better than nothing. IKhitron (talk) 12:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Improvements to error 521?

I've made some additions and improvements to error 521 so it catches more date errors, especially those caught by Category:CS1 errors: dates. Would it be possible to update the error so it catches more issues? (e.g. years with more than 4 digits, months > 12, days > 31) Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 16:43, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

What's error 521? CW Error codes only go up to 113. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:32, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
It's the "Date format for templates" error for WPCleaner - see the error_521 section at the bottom of Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia/Translation. GoingBatty (talk) 17:38, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
Hi GoingBatty. As errors above 500 are only handled by WPC, not by CW, even if they are configured in the same page, I'm the one who needs to do the improvements on WPC to catch the errors. We can continue the discussion on WPCleaner's talk page if you want. I don't have much free time right now (and I try to do major improvements to deal with Linter reports), but we can discuss what should be added. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 11:37, 27 November 2017 (UTC)
@NicoV: Reposted question at Wikipedia talk:WPCleaner#Improvements to error 521? per your suggestion. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 14:21, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

pl.wikipedia.org last update was on 2017-12-13

Polish Wikipedia has not been updated since yesterday. Is there any reason for that? --The Polish (talk) 07:41, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@The Polish: There was a database issue. All of the daily updated projects have now been run. --Bamyers99 (talk) 17:12, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Slow ?

Hi everyone. Has someone else noticed the slowness problems as mentionned in Wikipedia talk:WPCleaner#WPCleaner is significantly slow? My analysis is that it comes from checkarticle.cgi or checkwiki_bots.cgi being slow on tools. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 17:14, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

I've noticed slowness quite a bit on Windows lately. However, I just bough my first Mac this week, and I'm noticing it is much more responsive in this OS. (tJosve05a (c) 00:14, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
The number of pages with errors has increased and this makes the process very slow even to check for errors. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:39, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Malplaced translation page to English Wiktionary at [15]

The link to the translation page for English Wiktionary has been incorrectly placed. It is supposed to be [16] but it is placed at [17] which isn't even a page. Can you please rename it. Pkbwcgs (talk) 17:41, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

@Pkbwcgs: The link has been fixed. It was pointing to the wikipedia.org website even for non-Wikipedias. --Bamyers99 (talk) 18:59, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Failed substitition

see this search. some of these are false positives (e.g., inside comments), but many are not. Frietjes (talk) 14:41, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Error #34 reports these. I have updated the description to reflect this. --Bamyers99 (talk) 16:00, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
thanks, I have started fixing some of them. looks like the citation mangling were through Ohconfucius's script by editors like Tony1 here [18], Iggy the Swan here here, Ohconfucius here ... I really don't think we should be changing article titles like that. if the article title uses a particular case convention, we should probably use the same case convention, and not change the article title. Frietjes (talk) 16:07, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
this one and this one were particularly pointless. Frietjes (talk) 16:44, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
Those are evidence of a malformed script, as far as I can tell. I reverted a few to send the operator a notification. I have also cleaned up a few of the pages in the search. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
great. it looks like we were able to fix almost all of them. Frietjes (talk) 18:09, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't know what the script does now, but in May 2015 I noticed it change 42.147 square miles to 42,147 square miles—that is, the script incorrectly assumed the dot was wrong and replaced it with a comma. It did the same with 0.325 which became 0,325 square miles. See permalink. Johnuniq (talk) 23:02, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Errors of unclear status

This project has a list of 15 errors where the community failed so far to identify as cosmetic or not. Any ideas of how to resolve this? -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:57, 13 February 2018 (UTC)