Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 192

• Village pump
  • Policy
  • Technical
  • Proposals (persistent)
  • Idea lab
  • WMF
  • Miscellaneous

Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

---

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212

cannot log in to Wikimedia

Hi,

I can log in to Wikipedia but when using the same credentials, trying to log in to Wikimedia, it shows that they are incorrect. I requested a password reset but no email has arrived in my inbox (I've checked the spam folder). What's even stranger is that recently sometimes I was able to log in to Wikimedia (it's like I successfully log in in 20% of cases and I fail in the remaining 80% of cases). Using the same creds, I also successfully logged in to Wikispecies. Regarding Wiktionary, Wikisource & Wikiversity, for each of them, I was logged out, accessing a given project, than I clicked the "Log in" link at the top right corner, I clicked the login input and I became automatically logged in without typing anything. I have no idea how these accounts work and why there's no one single account so after logging in to any of the Wikimedia projects, I would be automatically logged in into any other project as well (of course I mean only the projects run by Wikimedia Foundation, without any 3-rd party wikis like Uncyclopedia or Ballotpedia). Grillofrances (talk) 18:41, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Grillofrances: all of the WMF public projects do share an account, yours is meta:Special:CentralAuth/Grillofrances. If you are sure you know your password you could try to log out, clear all your cookies, restart your browser and try anew. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:01, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. The reason why I wanted to log in was to vote in the Wikimedia Foundation Election. After I reloaded this page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Candidates/CandidateQ%26A or this one https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021, it shows me that I'm logged in. This page https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1079 shows me a voting form. However, when I access https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1079 in an incognito window and I try to log in with the same creds, it shows me again that they are invalid. Grillofrances (talk) 19:07, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

You can't log into the secure poll directly. You have to authenticate on your home wiki first. I'm confused as to why you want to load the voting form incognito, though - you gain nothing for it. Jorm (talk) 19:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

(I am speaking based on my understanding of the Secure Poll system, which I helped write parts of some ten years ago. Things may have changed in the underlying system since then but I think it's extremely unlikely that has happened since I had to beg to work on SP in the first place.) Jorm (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Another problem is that I'm logged out fast from the voting page so I have to go to the voting server again (clicking some links) and order the candidates by my preferences again. Generally I see several ways to improve this process:

• Keeping me logged in much longer (at least 24 hours instead of something like 10~30 minutes which is currently).
• Ability to download/upload my preferences.
• Drag & drop instead of selects so I can easily move a given candidate up or down.

Grillofrances (talk) 22:01, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

You have to keep going back to the server because your credentials keep getting trashed. You can't leave and go back. That's not how voting works; it's for the security of the voting.

Those sound like wonderful improvements (though I'd probably hard-nix the credential timers) but sadly I don't think anyone is every going to implement anything beyond what exists. Jorm (talk) 22:15, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Grillofrances and Jorm: The Anti-Harassment Tools team actually put significant work into SecurePoll this year, see mw:Anti-Harassment Tools/SecurePoll Improvements. The timeline mentioned in the first sentence I believe is incorrect; they are still actively working on the extension. I'm sure they'd appreciate reading any feedback you have on the talk page. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:13, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I'll make it clear that I support having a team working on SecurePoll. But I have to admit it's kind of odd for the one named "Anti-Harassment" to be the one working on a tool that has absolutely nothing to do with harassment. I'll say here that I disagree with most of the concerns expressed by Grillofrances; I can't think of a system where keeping a ballot open for hours would be considered a net positive; it's a pretty obvious security risk, even to me. Read about your candidates, make your decisions, THEN vote. Risker (talk) 16:24, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Some time ago I asked about MFA and I learned that it's an experimental feature so I have to request it to work for my account. IMO being able to use MFA is much more important for security as somebody might hack my account and vote. If somebody performs vandalism, hacking my account, it can be easily reverted. However, if somebody hacks many user accounts, he/she might affect the election results (e.g. to Wikimedia Foundation or ArbCom). On the other hand, logging me out from the election form gives nothing for security, as I can log in again, without being authenticated another time. Grillofrances (talk) 17:26, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

You will have to trust me when I tell you that there are security walls in place to prevent your "Multi-hacked accounts voting" scenario. You don't need to worry about it. Jorm (talk) 17:36, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Filters disappear from Recent Changes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T290113

Hello! So as I'm going through recent changes, I noticed that some of the filters randomly disappear from the list of chooseable filters, namely the filters determining what faith the edit was in (Very Likely Bad Faith or something). Is this a known bug or what? There doesn't even appear to be a pattern as to when it disappears and when it doesn't. I'm using the (most likely) latest version of Google Chrome if that explains anything. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 19:58, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I would assume since no one has answered no one knows why this happens. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 15:31, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Blaze The Wolf, are you having trouble with loading pages in general? For example, do you get messages about Twinkle not loading? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): No. My issue isn't with loading pages. Some of the filters just seem to disappear from the recent changes edit filter list even though the page loads fully. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 16:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Is anyone else having this problem? mw:Developers/Maintainers indicates that this is overseen by MMiller (WMF) and the mw:Growth team, although I'm pretty sure that the last major work was done on this before Marshall was hired. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Blaze The Wolf -- thanks for bringing this up. I'm the product manager of the team that works on the Recent Changes feed, and maybe I can help. I'd like to understand some more what you're experiencing. Is it one of these things?

• You go to open the menu to select filters, but some of the filters you're used to seeing aren't there.
• You do select the filters you want, and they show up in the filter menu above the feed, but then they disappear while you are using the feed.
• You do select the filters you want, and they show up in the filter menu above the feed, but they're gone after you come back to the feed from some other page.
• Something else?

Let me know! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Also CCing @Trizek (WMF), who works on our team, too. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): It's sort of a mixture of 1 and 3. I select the filters I want to use and then occasionally after I come back from a page (usually from reverting), some of the filters don't show up in the selection menu at all. I even have a preset filter that uses the filters I want and sometimes when I come back, some of those are gone, even when I reselect the preset filter. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 18:33, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Hello everyone, the bug has been identified, we will work on it soon. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Thanks! DO you know what's causing the bug? Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 15:44, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Blaze The Wolf, not yet. Now that we have a way to reproduce it, the bug will be analyzed soon and the results will be documented in the Phabricator task I added at the top-right of this section. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Ah ok. I would tell you how many times I have to go back to the page to have the filters disappear but it seems to be random. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 17:42, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

tagging IP editor

Hi. I'd like to leave an edit (which would include questions) for an editor with only an IP address on their talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:99.175.72.167&action=edit&redlink=1.

In the edit (which is some questions addressed to the editor), I tagged the editor, but when I checked the preview the tag was in red print. Does this mean they won't get a notification of my edit on their talk page?

The message concerns an edit someone with that IP address made on the Wikipedia article, "Soul patch." Is it true that whoever made the edit might not now be at that IP address?

If this is not the correct place to leave this query, please advise Greg Dahlen (talk) 15:15, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

@Greg Dahlen: According to Help:Notifications, "Notifications are only sent to registered users; notifying anonymous users (IPs) by mentioning their IP address is not possible." And yes, IP addresses change. Sometimes often, sometimes infrequently, so there is a good chance the person will not see it anyway. I suggest discussing it on the article talk page instead. RudolfRed (talk) 16:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

@Greg Dahlen: That particular IP last edited in 2015 and made only four edits, so I'd say that they are long gone by now. I find that some IP editors have quite active Talk pages and can readily be contacted, since if they have such a page they are almost certainly going to have it on their Watchlist and they will probably have static IP addresses (or they would realize they were hopping around and would likely create an account). Otherwise, as advised, you're stuck with the Talk Page of the article. Mike Turnbull (talk) 20:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

RudolfRed and Michael D. Turnbull, thank you, knowing what to do makes editing fun Greg Dahlen (talk) 13:45, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Testing, and while we're here....check out an article I created this week Apple worker organizations... because Think different! ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:54, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Avoid interwiki links with Javascript regex?

Here's the example:

Example

'Rename:\n[[:File:Example.jpg]]\nExample.jpg\nFile:Example.jpg\n[[File:Example.jpg|thumb]]\nlogo=Example.jpg\nDo not rename:\nExample filename is Example.jpg\n[[:ru:Файл:Example.jpg]]\n[[b:en:File:Example.jpg]]\n[[:c:File:Example.jpg]]\nduplicate=c:File:Example.jpg'.replace( /(\n|=|\||:|\^)Example\.jpg/g, '$1Renamed.jpg'); The last four entries in the list shouldn't be replaced, but they are. I thought this would be the solution: 'Rename:\n[[:File:Example.jpg]]\nExample.jpg\nFile:Example.jpg\n[[File:Example.jpg|thumb]]\nlogo=Example.jpg\nDo not rename:\nExample filename is Example.jpg\n[[:ru:Файл:Example.jpg]]\n[[b:en:File:Example.jpg]]\n[[:c:File:Example.jpg]]\nduplicate=c:File:Example.jpg'.replace( /(\n|=|\||(?![A-Za-z]:[^:]*):|\^)Example\.jpg/g, '$1Renamed.jpg');

but it's not. So what is? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:22, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I guess this works: /([\n=\|\^]|([^a-z]:|[^:])\b[^:]+:)Example\.jpg/g.[1] Nardog (talk) 14:15, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Nardog, I think it's working. Thanks! — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:00, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Multilingual urls without going to mobile pages?

I am looking for a way to get a single URL that will redirect to the Wikipedia language page that matches the browser's language. Help:Interlanguage links#Multilingual links and QR codes says that this can be done with https://qrpedia.org/. "For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat, if changed to https://en.qrwp.org/Cat, will be redirected in a french browser to https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat."

This is exactly what I want…except that it only redirects to the mobile versions of the pages, even if you are on a desktop web browser. Is there any way to create a URL that will direct to a desktop version of the Wikipedia page that matches the desktop browser's language? (It's okay if it redirects to a mobile page when on a mobile browser, but I want it to go to a desktop version on a desktop browser). -Thunderforge (talk) 18:16, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Thunderforge, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:GoToLinkedPage?site=&itemid=Q146 is the closest I got, but you still have to enter "frwiki" to make it work. For wikis where {{int:lang}} works an on-wiki link would be: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:GoToLinkedPage?site=⧼lang⧽wiki&itemid=Q146 but it doesn't work here because {{int:lang}} just returns "<lang>". I can't remember where I18n translations are stored, pretty sure they are editable on-wiki so making {{int:lang}} work here should be possible. But that's no solution for anything off-wiki. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:56, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

<mapframe>: The JSON content is not valid GeoJSON+simplestyle. The first validation error is on the element "/0/query": "The property query is required".

Moved to User talk:TerraFrost § Help me!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Shushugah (talk • contribs) 11:18, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Glitch with the '[[File:…' picture template

The monopole antenna…

After text editing the previously visible illustraton is shown as the text of the relevant template - see here. Strange: this picture is still visible in the 'preview' mode but disappears as soon, as the text edit is published/ Cherurbino (talk) 10:41, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

At this time article Ingenuity (helicopter) shows only this text:

• [[File:Antenna for Ingenuity and Sky Camera on Perseverance.png|thumb|240 px|right|The monopole antenna of the base station is mounted on a bracket in the right rear part of the rover]]

instead of the picture which I place here resized to a thumbnail to confirm that the image exists at Commons Cherurbino (talk) 11:57, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

If code works in section preview but not on the saved page then it's usually due to unclosed code in an earlier section. It was fixed by adding a missing ]] in [2] I have added nowiki tags to your section heading to avoid issues here. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:48, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Installing userscript not working

Hello. I have recently put User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist on my common.js on the last line. This tool is one that assists in disambiguating links. However, despite me logging out and back in, as well as resetting Wikipedia's cache, the tool doesn't show up anywhere for me. I'm aware that the tool still works in general, so any help in getting this tool to work would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps I made a mistake in adding the code to the common.js? Lucky102 (talk) 00:32, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Lucky102, try putting it at the top. If that works, something else on the page halts the script. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 08:04, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Alexis Jazz it states that there are errors in the document, and asks me whether or not I would still like to publish. How can I go about figuring out what the error is and then fixing it? Lucky102 (talk) 08:09, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Your common.js seems to be mainly a copypaste of an old version of User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js. This means that if the original script gets modified, you won't see the benefit of the modifications, some of which may have been to do with MediaWiki features that are no longer supported. Try blanking the whole page, and replacing it with only the code shown at User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist, that is to say

{{subst:iusc|User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist.js}}

If this works, follow the instructions at User:Shubinator/DYKcheck#Using DYKcheck, that is to say

importScript('User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js'); //DYKcheck tool

and check that both are working as intended. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:31, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Redrose64 I have attempted that just now, removed the DYK from my common.js and added the DisamAssist to the script. I have cleared the cache on Wikipedia, however I still see my "DYK check" in my Tools, with the Disambiguate Links not appearing under "More" (the place it is meant to show up). I also tried logging out and in again. Have I done something wrong? I'm sure that the tool is working since I saw it in use today. Lucky102 (talk) 11:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Lucky102 You still have DYK-check enabled via User:Lucky102/vector.js. Better put all your scripts on a single page (common.js or vector.js -- preferably the former) so you can conveniently keep track of them. DisamAssist doesn't appear to be working for me as well, so maybe it's an issue in that. – SD0001 (talk) 13:06, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

SD0001 I've moved it now, but yeah, it's still not working for me either. Could be a problem with the DisamAssist itself. Are you aware of any tools similar to it that assist in disambiguation pages? Lucky102 (talk) 13:17, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Please always include an example when you report an issue. It only appears on disambiguation pages, e.g. Example where it works for me. Is it missing there? What is your skin and browser? I have Vector and Firefox. PrimeHunter (talk)

Indeed, I had tested on a non-disambig page. It works on Example – SD0001 (talk) 14:18, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

PrimeHunter it works on this page, thanks so much! Lucky102 (talk) 00:19, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

How we can manually change the "Page image" of an article?

Hi, articles like Android (operating system) now has "File:Pixel_4a_Android_11_Launcher.png" as its "Page image", i.e., in its "Page information" (that is, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Android_(operating_system)&action=info ) and in the "Basic information" section and "Page image" item, its value is now a screenshot.

I think this "Page image" item is added automatically (perhaps by a bot), and apparently this image is not suitable for "Page image" of such article, because for example, when we are in the disambiguation page Android, and we hover our mouse curser to the text "Android (operating system)" which is a hyperlink, then the opening window shows Android (operating system)'s page image and it is its screenshot and what is rendered to the user is a totally black image. Clearly this page image is not appropriate for this purpose. I think the "Page image" can be a more meaningful picture, for example it can be the Android's logo ("File:Android robot head.svg" or "File:Android new logo 2019.svg"), since these images obviously convey more meaningful information.

Are there any way to manually change "Page image" of an article? Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:19, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: this can be quite complicated - but in general it is the first image of sufficient size used on an article. In this case, it is the image at the top of the infobox in the "screenshot" section. What do you think should be used instead? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

mw:Extension:PageImages has much more technical details on this, but suffice it to say - it is not done by a bot. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: What is rendered from existing "Page image" to a user is totally a black image, this is clearly wrong. It can be the image File:Android_robot_head.svg, for example. I think the "PageImage choosing algorithm" should be modified to avoid such problems, or wiki writers gain "PageImage changing" privilege. Do you agree? Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:58, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: are you seeing a pure black image, or are you just seeing a portion of File:Pixel 4a Android 11 Launcher.png - which has a lot of dark sections on it? A request to empower editors to select the page image is open at phab:T91683, where it has been open for 6 years. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:10, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Yes, you are correct, the rendered picture is a portion of the screenshot that is like a "totaly black image". See it was open for 6 years without the correct action toward it, and it may be open for tens of years afterward. Would any administrators correct the algorithm, or do the "empowering editors"? I think such action is easy to implement, i.e., it requires changing/writing just a few lines of code. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 15:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: AFAIK, there is nowhere that Wikipedia admins can do anything about this, it requires developers to write said new code, then for the code to be accepted for use in the WMF production systems. You may certainly volunteer to start in that capacity by submitting patches for review, mw:New Developers and mw:How_to_contribute are good landing pages for how to start on that process if you are interested. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:37, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks, but it is not so hard to be treated as starting a project. This simple scenario should be implemented:

• For changing PageImage of an article:

1. Go the page Information,
2. Choose an image by a dropdown list
3. Click the submit bottom,

• then a "textual" change is applied by our code to the database of "Page Information" of that article.

It is very easy. I promise a computer bachelor student in term 3 of university can successfully do it without any problem, I mean there is no need for making a project for it. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 16:01, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: the editors and "administrators" here on the English Wikipedia can not make these types of software changes here. We are just one of over 750 sites that WMF hosts that use the mediawiki software and extensions to the software, not to mention non-WMF sites that use the software across the world. While the UX you mentioned above sounds reasonable - this is just not the right forum to get your vision realized. You can comment at the phab task I linked above, or volunteer to help work on developing and implementing that task if you are up for it. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

The default configuration of the extension prefers images which are displayed at least 120px wide. I have set the logo to 120px so it's selected now.[3] PrimeHunter (talk) 18:07, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, there are no simple scenarios. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:33, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

SUL

Hi, on my Wikipedia account, I am currently only logged in on Wikipedia, and for all the other Wikimedia Projects, I need to log in manually, also when I check "Keep Me Logged in" my session will still expire, how can I fix this? I am using Firefox browser --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:00, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Do you have Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection enabled? That will break SUL across Wikimedia sites. Legoktm (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, actually that is on. That probably explains it, thanks for the help! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 02:13, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Midi files added to scores

Some articles, such as Pastime with Good Company, contain music scores written in the markup. These were temporarily removed a while back due to a security issue. They are now back, but the former option to play the score does not seem to be (by default, to my recollection). This is an accessibility issue; it's especially useful for readers who can't read music, and since the scores are .png images, this includes people who can't see well (there are formats for blind people to read music by touch).

Adding sound="1" into the <score> tag (see Help:Media (MIDI)) seems to fix. Has the default sound= parameter just changed from "1" to "0"? Should it be changed back? Should sound="1" be added automatically across the wiki(s)? It seems unlikely that people will often want a midi score visually but not want a button to click to play the generated sound file; even if you have an actual recording, having both is maybe cluttered but harmless. An alternative would presumably be reviewing all the pages including <score> tags, ideally in a semi-automated way, as there are a lot of them. Other suggestions welcome. HLHJ (talk) 20:24, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ: While the score extension was broken some editors found that you could get the image of the score to display if you commented out the vorbis or sound parameter, in the article you link it was this edit from January [4]. To get the scores to play again you just need to uncomment the vorbis="1" parameters. Pinging @1234qwer1234qwer4: who did the AWB run to disable them all. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 21:04, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to run a mass-rollback at [5] for now; will fix ~70 of the 503 instances. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:16, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@192.76.8.74 and 1234qwer1234qwer4: thank you, and thanks also to everyone else who worked on keeping the content as available as possible. I don't have rollback rights, but I've manually uncommented-out the vorbis param to the scores to which I had previously added the sound param instead. HLHJ (talk) 02:14, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@1234qwer1234qwer4: It should be possible for someone with the technical know-how to do a reverse AWB run (looking for the "%T257066%" comment the surrounding bits). Then that will leave the few ones that were fixed manually. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

If anyone is doing this, might as well turn vorbis= into sound= btw.. then we're rid of the old syntax at the same time (clips are mp3 now, not vorbis) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:49, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Example edit here if anybody wants a clue what needs to be done and wants to make an AWB run. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @ProcrastinatingReader. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 11:52, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! There is still apparently at least one, without the quotes on the digit, that thus didn't get replaced: L'homme armé. There may be more. HLHJ (talk) 03:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Odd image

In the article on Wireless Set Number 10 there is an image of the original cavity magnetron about halfway down the page. It is oddly compressed vertically, can anyone figure out why? I believe I used the trim tool on this. Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:03, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks fine here - try purging the page on your end? --Masem (t) 16:06, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Article titles

There are 10 communities named "Zion" in Ontario, Canada.

Only one of those communities, Zion, Northumberland County, Ontario, has an article.

The rest of the Zions are redirects, or have no article:

• Zion, Ontario
• Zion, Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh, Huron County, Ontario
• Zion, Grey County, Ontario
• Zion, Kawartha Lakes, Ontario
• Zion, Peterborough County, Ontario
• Zion, South Huron, Huron County, Ontario

When a reader searches Wikipedia for "Zion, Ontario", the result is a link to a redirect, Otonabee–South Monaghan. (What is interesting is that a Google search for "Zion, Ontario" returns "Zion, Northumberland County, Ontario")

My question is, should the Zion which actually contains an article, Zion, Northumberland County, Ontario, be renamed "Zion, Ontario", and the redirect currently using that name be renamed? Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 09:54, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

This seems like a question for WT:AT or WP:VPPOL or its own move request. IznoPublic (talk) 12:06, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah. It certainly doesn't seem to be a VPT matter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:36, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I'll try there. Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 12:39, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

• Firstly, I would note that the only reason the Zion in Northumberland County has an article is because the OP created an article themselves barely a week ago — until August 28, it was also just a redirect exactly like the others, and even the new article relies entirely on primary sources, rather than any reliably sourced evidence that Zion would actually pass WP:GEOLAND as a separate topic from Port Hope. So no, the existence of that article isn't convincing evidence that it should be accorded primary topic rights over any of the others, because anybody else could write virtually the same poorly sourced article about any other Zion at literally any time.
  Article vs. redirect isn't the determining factor here: the relevant question is whether the Zion in Port Hope is of sufficiently greater notability than any of the others to claim primary topic rights over any of the others, and as an Ontario resident I can assure you that it's not. The plain title is simply incomplete disambiguation regardless of whether any of the individual Zions have standalone articles or redirects, and incomplete disambiguation has to be avoided at all costs.
  That said, it's also true that this isn't really a question for VPT per se, as it's not a technical matter — but since I can't find any evidence that OP has made any effort to repost their question anywhere else yet, I'm adding my $0.02 here for the time being (although I will add it again to any new discussion that turns up elsewhere in the future too.) Bearcat (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@Bearcat: If the article is so poorly sourced, just turn it back to a redirect so we can get input from the wider community. You make it seem like there was some nefarious intent asking this question, when all I wanted to do was make it easier for readers to navigate. I reached out to you for your opinion about this matter, not your churlish tone. Find a tool other than a hammer friend. Magnolia677 (talk) 16:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I offered my opinion, and nothing about my tone was churlish in any way. That I didn't simply agree with you, but instead raised points that hadn't been considered, is not a failure on my part to do my job. Bearcat (talk) 17:08, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd revert the article back into a re-direct & then delete all the redirects. Note: We have this article pointing to those places, in existence. GoodDay (talk) 17:29, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Finding the most important category?

Has anybody done any work with picking the most significant category for a page? For example, I'm looking at Viviparous eelpout. If you were looking for the most concise description, you'd come up with something like, "It's a kind of fish". And indeed, the short description is "Species of fish". But trying to discover that is not easy from the category tree.

You could find the path {Viviparous fish -> Live-bearing fish -> Fish by adaptation -> Fish -> Aquatic animals -> Aquatic organisms -> Organisms by adaptation -> Organisms -> Physical objects -> Objects -> Entities}. There's two big problems there. First is that I deliberately only followed the chain of is-a relationships, but I had to apply human intuition to know which those were. Following {Live-bearing fish -> Fish reproduction -> Reproduction in animals} would have quickly got me lost in the weeds. Second, I also have to apply my human intuition to know that "Fish" was the logical place to stop.

This is a distinctly non-trivial problem, so I'm not expecting miracles. Just some pointers to previous work so I can do some reading. Specifically about navigating the Wikipedia category graph, not graph theory in general.

@Diego (WMF) and Isaac (WMF): whose research interests look like they're in this area. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:28, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

This is why Wikidata exists. It basically can't be done using categories. Izno (talk) 21:45, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Conference 2021 by WMRU

Greetings, wikimedians! Very soon, on September 25-26, an online Wiki-Conference of Wikimedia RU will take place (by Zoom). We are looking for speakers on topics: 1) Abstract Wikipedia 2) Wikidata Query Service 3) Wikidata Timeline. 4) About image / picture candidates in Wikimedia Commons. 5) GLAM in... I appreciate your answer! Connect to our Telegram channel: @wikiconf, welcome! — Niklitov (talk) 18:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Changing redirects and/or pipelinks in article body, causing a mess up in the marriage section of bios' infobox.

This has happened to me a few times on bios. The latest being James II of England's intro. GoodDay (talk) 03:56, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

@GoodDay: This should be OK now, as a problem with the {{Marriage}} template has been fixed. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:37, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Okie Dokie, thanks. GoodDay (talk) 08:41, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Validating usernames?

If you had a list of strings which were ostensibly usernames, how would you use the API to discover which ones were valid in an efficient way? What I used to do is iterate over the list and get the contributions for each one, checking to see if I got a "baduser" error. That worked, but it meant 1 API call per name, which was horribly inefficient.

Per a suggestion on the cloud mailing list, I tried using API:Users to check batches of names (50 per API call with the default permissions). The problem is, API:Users is maddeningly bizarre. The results you get back are not in the same order as your input list, so you have to rely on matching keys. Except that the usernames you get back are NOT the same as the usernames you give it! They've been mapped into their canonical form, i.e. first letter forced to be uppercase, trailing (and leading?) whitespace stripped, internal "_" and "+" both mapped to spaces, hex encoding expanded, and maybe some other things I haven't discovered yet. So key matching is decidedly non-trivial.

I've been beating my head against this all day and keep discovering new unexpected behaviors. The latest discovery was the fact that order isn't preserved, which is camouflaged by the fact that python's mwclient presents the raw API output back to you as an OrderedDict. FSVO Ordered, I guess. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:47, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I guess you could send the usernames in titles= at the same time to get what got normalized to what, though cumbersome it may be. Nardog (talk) 04:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

The results you get back are not in the same order as your input list The order is preserved I believe, except that any usernames that are technically illegal (eg. #?$) would show up at the top with "invalid": true, breaking the order. No normalisation is applied for these invalid usernames, so you can remove these from both the input and output arrays. Then, the modified input and output arrays should have the same order.

What I used to do is iterate over the list and get the contributions for each one, checking to see if I got a "baduser" error. That worked With this, there are caveats such as that usercontribs API works for IPs but not for IP ranges – but you can't even rely on this as the latter would be added at some point (phab:T177150). – SD0001 (talk) 08:03, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I see all IPs are also technically invalid usernames. But it's easy to check if a IP is valid using regex (https://doc.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-core/master/js/source/util.html#mw-util-method-isIPAddress). – SD0001 (talk) 08:05, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I've got IPs covered. I try to create an IPv4Address or IPv6Address object and see if the constructor raises an exception.

I discovered yet another bizarre thing by reading the code. They match IPv4s using a brain-dead regex, which only counts digits, without actually looking at the values. So "30.1.1.1" and "300.1.1.1" are both invalid, but "3000.1.1.1" is acceptable. The web interface gives inconsistent results for these. Special:Contributions/3000.1.1.1 says "3000.1.1.1" is not registered on this wiki.", Special:Contributions/300.1.1.1 just says there's no contributions, and Special:Contributions/30.1.1.1 correctly adds the IP boilerplate. Sheesh.

The definition of "canonical" is supposed to be "The one true way". Yet, there seems to be four true ways, and you get to pick one depending on how rigorously canonical you want it :-)

-- RoySmith (talk) 14:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-36

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

Recent changes

• The wikis that have Growth features deployed have been part of A/B testing since deployment, in which some newcomers did not receive the new features. Now, all of the newcomers on 21 of the smallest of those wikis will be receiving the features. [6]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• In 2017, the provided jQuery library was upgraded from version 1 to 3, with a compatibility layer. The migration will soon finish, to make the site load faster for everyone. If you maintain a gadget or user script, check if you have any JQMIGRATE errors and fix them, or they will break. [7][8]
• Last year, the Portuguese Wikipedia community embarked on an experiment to make log-in compulsory for editing.  The impact report of this trial is ready. Moving forward, the Anti-Harassment Tools team is looking for projects that are willing to experiment with restricting IP editing on their wiki for a short-term experiment. Learn more.

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

15:18, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

When I look in my console at User:Trappist_the_monk/HarvErrors/testcases I see something sort of like this:

JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed with logging active, version 3.3.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery&skin=vector&version=8v0mf

Is that the error message mentioned above? If it is, it ain't helpful. Where is the log?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:50, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

That's just the message saying JQMIGRATE is active and that errors will be logged. The log is the console itself. If you don't see any other warnings containing "JQMIGRATE", then there's no issue. – SD0001 (talk) 15:54, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:58, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

My watchlist looks... weird

S o c i a l d i s t a n c i n g

Someone has implemented social distancing to the text of my watchlist. Is anyone else experiencing this? ✗plicit 13:39, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not seeing that myself, but I wonder if it's related to IP masking :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 03:28, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

IP masking? It suddenly occurred last night, I think after I marked all changes as seen on my watchlist (I had gone through a six-day backlog). I tested other skins out and this occurs with Vector, MonoBook, and Timeless, but not with MinervaNeue. 'Use Legacy Vector' being ticked or not makes no difference. Compared to what I was used to (File:Wikipedia watchlist.png), the (diff | hist) links switched places with timestamps. Based on the lack of responses, it seems that I'm the only one experiencing this, which is quite strange. ✗plicit 04:15, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Preferences → Recent changes → Advanced options → Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist. Nardog (talk) 04:20, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Wow, that was an easy fix. Thank you! Not sure how the box became ticked to begin with. ✗plicit 05:45, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Same thing happened to me, and I've never changed settings. Thank you. Yappy2bhere (talk) 17:46, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Mine's not affected, though that might be because I don't use Vector and am still on Monobook. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 18:30, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

What's public about sending thanks?

Recently, when sending a user thanks for an edit they had made, the system incorporated an extra step to advise me that the thanks was available to the public and give me that opportunity to abort its being sent. Can someone please elaborate on the public aspect of sending these thanks and furthermore, tell me how to review the thanks sent or received to or by a given user, if this is possible as public implies. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 08:30, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

You can see that log here. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 08:33, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Volteer1. Are mentions (Like the ping I just sent you) publicly logged as well and if so where? I didn't see them on the special page that you linked unless they're called something other than mentions or pings. Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 08:53, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline I don't think so. ― Qwerfjkltalk 09:04, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

technically, they are logged, because they are part of the wikitext which keep a history. As thanks are NOT part of wikitext, they are logged separately just as many other actions are (move, delete, change permissions, etc) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:44, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

But without access to private logs, it's impossible in general to determine whether an edit produced a notification, even if it's assumed that the software is working and the recipient hasn't disabled notifications. Only I and TheDJ can say that he wasn't notified of this edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:39, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books

Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books has long been an extremely useful and efficient tool for adding books to citations in WP. Recently it started generating this server error, and the user responsible appears to have disappeared. Is there anyone who can (a) fix this, (b) perhaps make it an internal tool? --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 19:27, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Here is an archived view, for reference. --Michael Goodyear ✐  ✉ 19:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Here is the Github archive. App Engine was running Python 2.7 when reftag was last updated (29 Oct 2016) but dropped support for 2.7 last year [9]. Probably some library used by the app was updated and now only works with Python 3. You need a Python programmer (or maybe Daddy Warbucks [10]). Yappy2bhere (talk) 21:04, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, the citation tool ([https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Citoid citoid?) built into VisualEditor does a good job with Google Books. Maybe you could use that instead? -- RoySmith (talk) 21:59, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorting issue

On Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts, the Subcategories are all under "B" or "K", which is not correct for any of those listed. In the Pages section, most of the entries under "B" and "Y" should not be sorted under B or Y, and some of the "B" items are not properly sorted within that grouping. Yes, they all have sort conflicts, but none of the ones I checked have any sort key which would account for this. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:47, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

The category is applied by MediaWiki:Duplicate-defaultsort, which attempts to group non-article pages by namespace under various Greek letters instead of using the usual sorting. Categories are grouped under kappa. But sometimes the code in that message winds up using variations on Special:Badtitle instead, resulting in the mix of stuff sorted under "B". Anomie⚔ 21:20, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

User:PrimeHunter/Sortkeys.js shows sort keys with an API call. It gives Sort keys which shows many "Badtitle/dummy title for API calls set in api.php", "Badtitle/Parser" and "\u039aUse [dialect] English". \u039a is Greek capital letter kappa, and so is the "Κ" in the category listing. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:31, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah, thank you both. (And I see that user pages get a \u03a5, Greek capital upsilon, which accounts for the "Υ".) MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:44, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Just now I WP:NULLEDITed Category:Use Ghanaian English and it moved from B to Κ. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:26, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

And null edits using VisualEditor change the sort key back to B. Strange, and probably worthy of a bug report. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Installing a (top) link

Is it possible, by preference or script, to cause a (top) link to appear next to the (edit) link at every section? Perhaps even a floating (top) link is possible, as long as it doesn't interfere with editing. In my opinion, scrolling becomes excessively cumbersome as the page increases in size and this could help considerably. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 12:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Site-wide shows two goToTop scripts. I haven't tried them. If you use a keyboard then there are probably Home and End keys to move to the top and bottom at any website in most or all browsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter, I'll visit that linked script directly. I am currently editing with a mobile device while using the desktop view. Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 12:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

On iOS, John, you can tap the system status bar (above Safari's address box) to jump-scroll to top. (This works in other apps like Notes, not just Safari.) But there's no equivalent for scroll-to-end. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to say whether Android has a similar feature. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 18:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Welcome COI acc

I've just used this ({{subst:Welcome-COI-acc}}) for (probably) the first time and noticed a double-text inclusion at the bottom:-
"If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or my talk page, or click here to ask a question on your talk page. Again, welcome!".

"...or my talk page..." is extraneous and inactive, the text either side has links. I manually deleted it at the User Talk, afterwards. Thank you.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 01:51, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Rocknrollmancer: Should be fixed now. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 04:40, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 19:52, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Will the savant of logic and technical ways please come to my aid?

The following link has ceased functioning and it would be greatly appreciated if the ones who can will help me see it revived:

http://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/cgi-bin/whatlinkshere

The URL is pasted on an essay at Wikipedia:Administrators without tools and when launched, a list would appear that showed every user talk page ever published with {{GetMop}} transcluded or substituted on it. Feel free (if it's a trivial matter) to improve the information delivered to include more than only the name, like the date published and whether they are an admin now or not. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 06:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

John Cline, I have replaced the link in the essay. It will list pages that has {{GetMop}} substed. If you want a list of transcluded pages, use this. Currently there are no userspace pages from where it is transcluded, all uses are substed. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 09:38, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you so very much. You guys and gals are a wonderful bunch and I really do appreciate your help. Sincerely.--John Cline (talk) 10:14, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

http://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/cgi-bin/whatlinkshere works for me if it's just supposed to give a plain text list. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:22, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter for your reply. It was a plain text list and I'm not sure why it works for you and not for me. I'm continuing with my efforts but it just isn't working for me.--John Cline (talk) 15:07, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The tools.wmflabs.org URL is an old URL that may cease to work at some point in the in-determinant future (TBH I'm surprised it works at all). Please ensure you are using the new URL, which is https://betacommand-dev.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/whatlinkshere Izno (talk) 16:07, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Interestingly the link https://tools.wmflabs.org/betacommand-dev/cgi-bin/whatlinkshere works fine in Firefox but not in Chrome. – BrandonXLF (talk) 20:11, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you Izno, you all have been great. I found that the URL didn't work when using Chrome but it did using Firefox. For now, the "in-string" search filter that ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ provided is being used and I think it will serve the local needs. In closing (on a personal note) it was extra special for me when looking in on this thread, to see the name of my yesteryear friend: betacommand, here and there, and there again. Not only did I get the technical help needed, I got also to recollect the fond memories of a friend that my soul needed more. It's almost surreal that in naming this section I playfully called for the savant of things technical to appear, and wollah. Sincerely--John Cline (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Date formatting and WikidataIB

All of a sudden templates that use Module:WikidataIB have a strange date formatting, with random apostrophes added. See for example the "first light" parameter on AMiBA or birth/death dates at John Lovejoy Abbot. There have not been any edits to the module here lately. Anyone have thoughts on how to fix this? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:31, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

This seems to be caused by c:User_talk:Verdy_p#Data:DateI18n.tab (in short, a Commons template editor making insufficiently tested changes and edit warring to reinstate them when they were reverted). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:25, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

How does a page on Commons influence a module on enwiki loading data from wikidata? ST47 (talk) 05:53, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

And can we override it by creating a local page at the same name? ST47 (talk) 06:03, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

This translation data is used across dozens of wikis. Please make sure to maintain compatibility with or update other versions of the module.

That translation data is used across dozens of other wikis, and none were updated to support it.

en.wikipedia Module:DateI18n: return dFormat end local T = {} local tab = mw.ext.data.get('DateI18n.tab', lang) for _, row in pairs(tab.data) do -- convert the output into

User talk:RexxS/Archive 57#Module:DateI18n: RexxS, few weeks ago I made a big rewrite of Module:DateI18n, simplified language specific cases and moved c:Module:I18n/Date to Data namespace where one version can be accessed by all wikis. Can you update code here?--Jarekt (talk) 04:53, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

That seems like it should be pointing us in the right direction. Problem is a single point of failure with insufficient supervision. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:46, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: All Lua code has multiple single points of failure, in the sense that any one module could be vandalized (or edited in good faith but with insufficient care) in order to cause all uses to produce an error. The problem isn't a software design problem, it's a user-level problem, in that Verdy p abused his commons template editor access by [u]sing the right to edit war on a protected template and [r]epeatedly breaking protected templates (quotes from c:Commons:Template editor). I'm sure a rogue local template editor could do the same thing, and see no reason to believe that Commons has a lower standard for choosing template editors than the English Wikipedia (which has had instances of template editors edit warring with admins before) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:59, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

fwiw I've revoked their template editor rights on Commons. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 20:47, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@ST47: See mw:Extension:JSONConfig/Tabular#Usage. This can't be directly overridden by the creation of a new page on the English Wikipedia, although Module:DateI18n (off-topic: which really shouldn't exist anyway since the English Wikipedia is monolingual) could be modified to get its data from a different source. That said, the problematic edit to Commons has been reverted, so local action may not be necessary. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:59, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Pppery: mw:Extension:JSON, but mw:Extension:JsonConfig/Tabular. Go figure. I created the redirect. Both pages are only "of historic interest (or in many respects outdated)." wbm1058 (talk) 17:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Oops. The proper base page is actually mw:Extension:JsonConfig, and I just screwed up the link (mw:Extension:JSON is, or more properly was, an unrelated extension that happens to have a similar name). Despite being tagged outdated, that page was the only documentation of the feature I could find, and is linked to at mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual#mw.ext.data.get where I first looked. Actually, it's also documented at mw:Help:Tabular Data#Usage, which isn't historical? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Dropping a ping to @RexxS:, who has worked on that module frequently. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Good luck with that. wbm1058 (talk) 11:46, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Exactly. Xaosflux, you may have forgotten, but RexxS was driven out by ProcrastinatingReader six months back. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:38, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Redrose64: That's basically a personal attack Redrose. Please remove or strike it. Izno (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The evidence is here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:35, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I thought you were going to stop with all this? This follows months of you making vague allegations, and the sockpuppetry accusations that remain unsubstantiated. Please stop mentioning or referring to me anywhere on Wikipedia. This is harassment. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I would have expected a link to the final case results, but RexxS's case statement is not sufficient for yours above. Remove your comment or I will. IznoPublic (talk) 23:40, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Weird Block Message for Unblocked User

Hello! I am posting on behalf of Danese Cooper, who is being told that she is blocked from editing enwiki when she logs in. However, I see no block logs for her, and certainly no behavior that would lead to this.

I've screenshots: showing the block message and this confusing message indicating multiple blocks however she has a clear block log. It's possible that someone on another wiki put "revenge" blocks on her (that's a popular thing to do against former and current WMF employees) but I again can't see anything.

Can anyone explain what's going on here? Jorm (talk) 22:42, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jorm: looks like they hit a hard IP or IP Range block. If they use a full client there will be more information available for the block message (or perhaps clicking that MORE button) - specifically an autoblock ID #. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:46, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Unrelated, it looks like they are trying to edit an article that they may have a COI with. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:47, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

She's not. She used that for the screenshot. She was trying to show a potential new editor the process. Jorm (talk) 22:50, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah OK, well unfortunately - much of the UI isn't friendly to mobile editors. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:16, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

More information:

1. She was able to log in with a friend's phone and make an edit from there
   • This makes me think it's a range thing
   • I suspect that the friend's phone was on a cellular network and not the home wifi
2. She is in Ireland, on Virgin Mobile Fiber. I don't know if that helps narrow it down. It's almost 1 am where she is. Jorm (talk) 23:56, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

It says it's a multiple block, which in my experience usually indicates a local IP block and a global IP block. A hard block for 2 years is only usually done for VPN networks and server colos. So my guess is that she was exiting from a non-Virgin range, like a proxy, cloud network, private server, or similar. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 00:27, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Reference organization

I’m looking for some help with a possible solution to what I think is an inelegant footnote situation. In the article ß, there are a lot of references to “code pages” describing different systems of character encoding. Descriptions of each encoding are uniquely named and found on a different webpage, and so each has a different reference in the article. There are sets of these from certain authors, though, and I would like to reorganize them so that they are listed under each author, but remain individual references with their own clickable links to each webpage.

Graphically, the references look like this:

1. Whistler, Ken (2015-12-02) [1999-07-27]. "ISO/IEC 8859-2:1999 to Unicode". Unicode Consortium.
2. Whistler, Ken (2015-12-02) [1999-07-27]. "ISO/IEC 8859-3:1999 to Unicode". Unicode Consortium.
3. Whistler, Ken (2015-12-02) [1999-07-27]. "ISO/IEC 8859-4:1998 to Unicode". Unicode Consortium.
4. Steele, Shawn (1998-04-15). "cp1250 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
5. Steele, Shawn (1998-04-15). "cp1252 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
6. Steele, Shawn (1998-04-15). "cp1254 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.

And I'd like them to look like this:

1. Whistler, Ken (2015-12-02). Unicode Consortium.

   a. "ISO/IEC 8859-2:1999 to Unicode".

   b. "ISO/IEC 8859-3:1999 to Unicode".

   c. "ISO/IEC 8859-4:1998 to Unicode".

2. Steele, Shawn (1998-04-15). Microsoft/Unicode Consortium.

   a. cp1250 to Unicode table.

   b. cp1252 to Unicode table.

   c. cp1254 to Unicode table.

Is this possible, and if so, can someone help me figure out how to do it? Lexicon (talk) 01:45, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The template {{multiref}} might suit your purpose:

<ref>{{multiref
|1=Whistler, Ken (2015-12-02). Unicode Consortium.
|2=a. "ISO/IEC 8859-2:1999 to Unicode".
|3=b. "ISO/IEC 8859-3:1999 to Unicode".
|4=c. "ISO/IEC 8859-4:1998 to Unicode".
}}</ref>
<ref>{{multiref
|1=Steele, Shawn (1998-04-15). Microsoft/Unicode Consortium.
|2=a. cp1250 to Unicode table.
|3=b. cp1252 to Unicode table.
|4=c. cp1254 to Unicode table.
}}</ref>

—  Jts1882 | talk  07:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

References

@Jts1882: Well, it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I'd like to keep the individual references in the article, otherwise I'd have to specify in the body which code page is being referenced for each reference. Although I suppose I could mark off each different use with a superscript letter (^[1]a) and hope that the reader remembers it when clicking on the links (not that I expect much clicking on reference links in this article). Thanks. Lexicon (talk) 22:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: I've just discovered that multiref only goes to 9, and I need 11 for one of my reference lists. Lexicon (talk) 00:54, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Lexicon: I see, you want each reference in the sublists to be addressable. I don't think that is possible without a Wikimedia software solution for the reference list. It is possible to group references and have separate lists (see {{Reflist#Grouped references}}), but I don't know if that would help with your need.

I've increased the number of references handled by {{multiref}} to 15. It can be set higher if needed. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:36, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Text browser renderings

Is anyone able to check rendering in text browsers? There is a discussion on this at Template talk:Morse. Better still, some help creating a Lua module to change the rendering would be appreciated. It has been suggested that de:w:Vorlage:Morse will render better in text browsers, but I have no idea if that is so. SpinningSpark 09:30, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

You should be able to download a browser like w3m yourself. Glancing through the discussion, it doesn't seem like you'll have much luck if you insist on supporting non-monospace fonts since Unicode doesn't provide a space character for use with the block-drawing characters. They intend them to be used with monospaced fonts. Lua won't help. You could try an en-space (▄ ▄) or em-space (▄ ▄) or figure space (▄ ▄), but none of those are guaranteed to be the same width as the block characters. If you insist on supporting non-monospaced fonts, your best bet may be to use a non-space block character for the spaces, something like ▅▁▅ or ▄▔▄. You could still hide the non-space block character using CSS for CSS-supporting browsers. Anomie⚔ 18:00, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I have the answer now thanks to User:Izno who pointed me to the CSS white-space property which I was not aware of when I first wrote the template. The template already specifies monospace font. Whether or not text browsers respect that is a separate question. SpinningSpark 14:59, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

• @Anomie: W3m does not appear to run on Windows. The downloaded file format is certainly not understood by Windows 10. SpinningSpark 15:08, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Our article at w3m claims it runs on Windows, although I now see "with Cygwin". Your FAQ entry mentions that too: "and since version 990303 also on MS-Windows with Cygwin32". I also see some Internet search results that suggest it comes with Windows Subsystem for Linux. Anomie⚔ 21:08, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the help, but that's too many hoops to jump through for me. I have to download w3m ,then cygwin32, then presumably find something that can unpack a .tar file (and our article talks about compiling so do I need a compiler too?). All that and results not guaranteed – I already tried downloading Browsh only to find it simply does not work on Windows despite having a Windows version. I need someone who is already using text browsers to help with the checking. SpinningSpark 14:05, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

      @Spinningspark: I've made two screenshots (Screenshot of Template:Morse, Screenshot of Kpfiwa's example on de.wp). I'm not a regular user of text browsers, but I can try to help out if you need something else checked. – Rummskartoffel 22:38, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

      @Rummskartoffel: Thankyou. I'll drop you a note when I have something in sandbox to test. SpinningSpark 07:27, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Template question

I have a question pertaining to a couple of templates that are causing problems, namely {{legislationlistuk}} and/or {{legislationuk}}, which both appear to exist solely as "shell" templates which further offload their actual content to modules so that any article which calls either of these templates is two-stepping the module via the shell template to actually produce the resulting infoboxes on the articles.

Leaving aside whether this is an appropriate use of modules or not — I really don't know one way or the other, not being involved in module programming — but the key problem is that the process is also somehow artificially generating categories, which are thus transcluded onto the pages through the template despite no category declarations being present on either the pages or the templates themselves. This is further having several likely unintended, but highly undesirable side effects:

1. Redlinked categories that don't actually exist, such as Category:Lists of Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and/or end up having to be created, such as Category:Lists of Acts of the National Assembly for Wales.
2. Duplicate categories for the same thing, such as Category:Lists of Acts of the National Assembly for Wales vs. Category:Lists of Acts of Senedd Cymru — just because the National Assembly for Wales changed its official name to Senedd Cymru last year doesn't mean we should need to categorize acts of the National Assembly for Wales and acts of Senedd Cymru as two different classes of thing when it's the same body. They should all be in one category at the present name of the institution, but this is impossible to implement so long as the category generation is being automatically offloaded to a module — even categoryredirects don't work, because the bot that cleans up non-empty category redirects can't change the coding of the module in order to move the articles from one category to the other.
3. Redundant categorization, such as every single thing in Category:Lists of Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly also being filed directly in Category:Lists of legislation, Category:Northern Ireland law-related lists, Category:Northern Ireland Assembly and Category:United Kingdom law-related lists all at the same time. The proper handling of this would be for each article to be only in Category:Lists of Acts of the Northern Ireland Assembly itself, with membership in each of the other categories handled solely by the parent-child relationships in the category tree — but this is again unfixable, because the category generation is being sourced out to a module in lieu of direct category declarations.

Per WP:TCAT, we should not in fact be using templates (or even worse, shell templates wrapping modules) to artificially transclude mainspace content categories onto articles — this function needs to be stripped from the module entirely, with each article having its intended categories directly declared on each page itself. But because of the modular outsourcing, fixing this is completely beyond my ken, so I wanted to ask for some assistance in resolving it. Bearcat (talk) 20:21, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I've edited Module:Legislationuk to no longer populate categories. Note that this has left several articles in no content categories at all, so you may want to go through Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Legislationuk and make sure each article is correctly categorized.

There's nothing wrong per se with "shell" templates that do nothing but call a module; in fact that's how {{cite web}} works. I don't personally like modules that "know too much" and try to produce an entire article by themselves like Module:Legislationuk, but there's no rule against it that I can find. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:44, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I don't have a problem if using "shell" templates to call modules is acceptable in principle, but obviously for reasons like this they shouldn't be autogenerating categories themselves. Thanks again, I just started an AWB run to repopulate the categories as appropriate. Bearcat (talk) 20:58, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

As the person who created the template, I would say that the module is a work in progress and that these kinds of issues are something that can be ironed out with some discussion. However, given that the template will be used in hundreds of pages (due to the annual lists), it provides an easy way to add pages to categories and - importantly - recategorise large numbers of pages without inconsistencies arising. I do not think that removing all categories based on a handful of small issues (that are relatively straightforward to solve) is the correct approach. Theknightwho (talk) 21:01, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

We explicitly have a rule forbidding the use of templates to artificially transclude categories onto articles. A page's categories must always be declared directly on the page itself, not smuggled into the page via templates, precisely because things like this happen too easily, and are not easily fixed, if the categories are artificially transcluded by templates. Bearcat (talk) 21:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Understood. I do want to ask whether there is a more appropriate way to handle large numbers of sub-pages like this in relation to categories. Is there a more efficient way to handle this going forward? I anticipate several hundred further pages being created as I work through this (though not imminently, by any stretch).Theknightwho (talk) 21:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I can't really say that I see what's so complicated about simply adding one category at the bottom of a page that it needs a "more efficient" solution than the existing one. Could you clarify where you see an actual issue? Bearcat (talk) 21:32, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

It's not complex for each page, per se, but there are currently 176 pages of legislation and once this project is finished there will be well over 1,000. If we want to recategorise them (for whatever reason), then there are two issues that arise: effort and consistency. It would not be reasonable to expect an average user to manually edit all of the pages, and it is also unsatisfactory for them to do so in a piece-meal fashion. While it's possible to use bots (as you're doing), it feels as though there should be a way of both ensuring that pages are not a huge pain to recategorise, and also to prevent them from becoming "unsynced". Theknightwho (talk) 21:54, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

You could try using Cat-a-lot. ― Qwerfjkltalk 08:27, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Is there a way to 'lock' groups of pages in sync with each other? Theknightwho (talk) 13:09, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Theknightwho I doubt it. You can try asking at c:Help talk:Cat-a-lot. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:38, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Oops, I meant c:MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Cat-a-lot.js. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:41, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks. Theknightwho (talk) 00:32, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Need a coder for an easy task

If you know what a Pull request is, please see Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment#Philosophy template. This should be easy (I think the patch will amount to "delete line #___ in the bot's code"), but I don't know how to do it. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 16:28, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for taking care of this so quickly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:17, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Infobox plurality, cont'd

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Detect singular § Override function. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:27, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Let's Encrypt certificates no longer to support some older clients

It seems that TLS certificates issued by Let's Encrypt are to cease being trusted at the end of this month for some users of older operating systems such as OS X El Capitan.[11][12] I understand that Mozilla Firefox has its own list of trusted root certificates and will continue to trust Let's Encrypt on these platforms. I further understand that Google Chrome is to use, from some point in the future, its own list of trusted root certificates that includes Let's Encrypt,[13][14][15] but, as far as I see, there is no timeline for this.

According to my Web browser, Wikipedia uses a Let's Encrypt certificate. Does Wikipedia (or rather Wikimedia) have plans to continue to support users on these older operating systems that will no longer trust Let's Encrypt?

—2d37 (talk) 22:56, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

This is phab:T283165. It is up to the developers how it gets handled, so any updates on this will be in that ticket.--Snævar (talk) 22:37, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks to me like the overarching phab:T283164 is the one out of that group of three tickets that seems from its (very general) name to include the issue I mean, although phab:T283061 is the one of the three that mentions the issue I mean, in its last line:

The downside regarding ISG Root X1 is older device compatibility, Android < 7.1.1, any iOS device not able to run iOS 10 among others would fail to establish a TLS connection if we were to use this certificate chain

—2d37 (talk) 08:13, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Create loadScript in site-wide common.js as a temporary fix

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

---

The mobile skin apparently has a warning about using the "deprecated importScript function". The replacement, mw.loader, looks awful. I recommend we define a function in MediaWiki:Common.js that takes a page name and calls mw.loader, so we can both have something that looks nice and avoid the deprecated function. I don't care what the function is named. Thoughts? I think we've already been over this, but I couldn't track that discussion down. It wasn't a proposal discussion, at any rate, which this one is. Enterprisey (talk!) 06:55, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

This discussion? ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:29, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I guess nothing has changed since then, so nothing needs to be done. Enterprisey (talk!) 08:21, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

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

Improving external link icons beyond PDFs

There's an RFC over at VPR on redesigning the PDF icon for external links. Looking into that, I found Help:External link icons, which reveals a whole library of icons for different link types. Most of these are likely unused, but for those that are used, is there anything we ought to improve? I also found commons:Template:External link icon, which has some related stuff.

One thing I've encountered before is that when I include an external link to a spreadsheet hosted at an .ashx address, it still displays the URL link icon, whereas the document icon () might be better. Would that be possible to fix? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:12, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

It can be done using CSS, the way it's currently done for PDFs. – SD0001 (talk) 06:21, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Possible to fix, but the related rules in core have already gotten the developer side eye as being generally expensive just for pretty icons on a negligible number of links (even though PDFs might be excluded from 'negligible' perhaps, that's still the general opinion). I'm also not really inclined to add further elements to Common.css. If someone wants to come up with an optional styles-only script/gadget that makes as many pretty URLs as they desire, I see no problem there. Izno (talk) 14:58, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Izno and SD0001, am I understanding right, then, that adding a rule to MediaWiki:Common.css would fractionally slow down the loading of all pages, even if they don't contain a spreadsheet? As an alternative, then, maybe we could get the CS1 templates to change the link type if |format=xls or xlsx? Or would that be just as bad? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:55, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

even if they don't contain a spreadsheet Correct. Common.css is not a smart CSS page, which is why TemplateStyles was developed: so we can load CSS only when we need it.

CS1 templates to change the link type They could, but given their breadth of use relative to the number of Excel files cited, just about as bad. Izno (talk) 03:28, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

TemplateStyles is more optimal than Common.css. I wouldn't say it's "just as bad". It does fractionally slow things down - but everything does. By posting the reply above, you've fractionally slowed down the whole wiki as it added a new row in the revision table, so have I by posting this one. In other words, while there may or may not be reasons to do it, performance isn't one of them. – SD0001 (talk) 07:09, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

If performance isn't a barrier, then I'd like to see it. Clicking on what seems like a link and ending up instead with a download would be rather surprising, otherwise. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:12, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb You can raise a discussion on Help talk:Citation Style 1. The page to be edited I believe is Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css which already applies an icon for wikisource links. – SD0001 (talk) 07:33, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

I concur with Izno, Adding link icons to all pages (which is what Common.css does) is wasteful. We removed many link icons in the past, because they were distracting where they were in use yet at the same time not really often used (relatively). PDF was kept as an exception, as PDFs were very common ( also in references for example) and since they often open special interfaces instead of downloading. I guess if need to, some other filetypes can be added via TemplateStyles, but i'm wondering if its worth the effort... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:14, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Updating TemplateData for visual editor

When I create a new Template:Infobox organization with the visual editor (entering {{), a visual UI is prompted. If I add the "native_name_lang" attribute, it saves a spanish parameter name, which is a mistake. I tried to fix it with this edit, but it's still not working for me. Would love advice, and would be happy to finish cleaning up this template. Here is my diff, regards ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:12, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Shushugah: The culprit seems to be this series of edits [16] by BoldLuis which replaced a load of the template doccumentation with spanish translations??? 192.76.8.74 (talk) 18:22, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Presumably my edit is correct and having removed all mentions of the word phrase "fr (French)", I still see that prompted when I use the visual editor. Is this a cache issue or? I want to make sure I didn't break anything, and if not...how/when will I see my changes? ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:26, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Probably caching of some sort. Anyway, [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_organization%2Fdoc&type=revision&diff=1043359829&oldid=1003242194 this diff from Voidxor's last edit (27 January 2021) looks ok. If you see others that should be amended, you probably can if you need. Izno (talk) 18:54, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

And now I see that there are still some things from then that need fixing toward the bottom of the TemplateData block. --Izno (talk) 19:17, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I believe it is completely fixed now. I removed the redundant/confusing aliases and confirmed the caching is invalidated/works now. Perhaps the original template itself needs to be updated to trigger a `/doc` refresh? The harm from messing a TemplateData is admittedly lower/mainly affects editing experience, but still it seems like a bug that it could go unnoticed for so long. Am now curious if I can find other TemplateData with invalid inputs...any idea how to look for that? ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 07:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately not today. Maybe in the future. Izno (talk) 13:13, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Images in popups obscuring text

Hi all, is there a reason why the images in some popups obscure the preview text and not others? For example, in the first sentence of LNWR 2-2-2 3020 Cornwall#1847 design by Trevithick, WLs to Francis Trevithick, Richard Trevithick, and Grand Junction Railway appear. The popup of the first link is almost always correctly displayed to the right, and the last always, with the pic above the text. In the second link, Richard Trevithick, the image almost always obscures the text. If I CTRL-Scroll to reduce the text size, it occasionally shows the pic correctly to the right, but if I move my mouse away and then hover over the link again, it appears misplaced and won't display correctly. If I CTRL-scroll to greatly enlarge the text, both the first two links are wrong, and Grand Junction Railway always displays properly. With the links as arranged below, there is no problem and all the popups display correctly, except Richard Trevithick with high text enlargement.

Francis Trevithick, Richard Trevithick, and Grand Junction Railway

I'm using ancient Firefox 47 on XP SP3, which may be a factor. Any ideas? Cheers, MinorProphet (talk) 20:59, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Probably a large factor. I don't see any issues. Is this new behavior? Izno (talk) 21:13, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Firefox has an release for Windows XP which is 91.1, it is an extended support release. One of the systems for link popups is made by the mediawiki developers and they do not support Firefox under release 91, per mw:Browser support.--Snævar (talk) 22:22, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Huh? 91.0esr is Win 7 and up. 91.0.1esr is the same. Izno (talk) 02:59, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I can't remember whether it's always been like this, but certainly for many months - it's really not important, just another minor niggle to add to the reasons why I should upgrade to a more up-to-date OS. Thanks for your replies anyway. Cheers, MinorProphet (talk) 08:40, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

@Snævar: I don't think that Firefox have released an update for XP since version 52.9.0esr/52.0.2 - assuming that Firefox release compatibility is correct. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:46, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Could someone make the archives show up on this article-talk page?

Could someone please make the archives show up (and searchable) on Talk:Evergreen State College? I've tried switching out the archiving parameters/codes a couple of times, and haven't succeeded. I'm not an expert on coding or implementing archives, so I'm throwing myself on the mercy of you lot. Thanks! Softlavender (talk) 22:48, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Softlavender: I can't find any archives. DuncanHill (talk) 22:57, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Softlavender: The issue here is that the bot can't create archive pages because it's hitting the spam blacklist when it tries to move the threads to an archive page. The issue is the breitbart link in the section "Recent events". 192.76.8.74 (talk) 23:01, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

OK Thanks, I've now removed the Breitbart link. I had previously removed every other link that seemed to be causing problems (google.com links etc.); I did not realize that was one of them. Thanks again. Hopefully the bot can archive now. Softlavender (talk) 23:06, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Link to Commons pdf page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T16788
Open

How can I use an interwiki link to a particular page of a pdf, held at Wikimedia Commons? It works fine for the entire pdf file (or image or ...) but not a part. page. TrangaBellam (talk) 20:38, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@TrangaBellam can you link to an example PDF you have in mind? ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Shushugah, I want to repair the red links at Sabarna_Roy_Choudhury. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:21, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@TrangaBellam: The PDF links in Sabarna Roy Choudhury are apparently used as references. You should make them real references, not try to make misleading easter egg links to the source. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:37, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, thanks. Never thought it that way. TrangaBellam (talk) 13:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

In the file link, use the "page" parameter, followed by the page number.--Snævar (talk) 21:53, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I will try and report back the results. TrangaBellam (talk) 09:46, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Does not work. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:21, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, so you want an link, not an image, it was not really clear. Well, then {{fullurl:c:File:Albert Einstein.pdf|page=2}} will work. If the external link is bothering you, then use plainlinks.--Snævar (talk) 11:45, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-37

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

Recent changes

• 45 new Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. [17]
• A majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features. The Growth team has published an FAQ page about the features. This translatable FAQ covers the description of the features, how to use them, how to change the configuration, and more.

Problems

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on 14 September. This is planned at 14:00 UTC. [18]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 September. It will be on all wikis from 16 September (calendar).
• Starting this week, Wikipedia in Italian will receive weekly software updates on Wednesdays. It used to receive the updates on Thursdays. Due to this change, bugs will be noticed and fixed sooner. [19]
• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [20]
• The syntax highlight tool marks up code with different colours. It now can highlight 23 new code languages. Additionally, golang can now be used as an alias for the Go programming language, and a special output mode has been added to show a program's output. [21][22]

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

15:31, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Odd indenting on History of American Airlines

There appears to be some odd indenting on History of American Airlines article, with the 1980s–1990s, 2000s and most of the 2010s section having the text indented from the left, and not wrapping round the photos on the left - what is going on, and what can be done to fix it? (My only guess is that there are too many photos in the article.)Nigel Ish (talk) 15:09, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks right to me with Vector, Firefox 91.0.2, Windows 10. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:42, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

The odd indenting appears on Edge Version 93.0.961.44, Win 10, Monobook, and on Chrome (93.0.4577.63) - both logged out and logged in, but not on Firefox.Nigel Ish (talk) 12:54, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I can see it in Edge, Monobook at default zoom and Vector at non-default zoom. Not at all in Firefox. I'd say it's due to the image count and layout (obviously the whitespace corresponds to the images that have been pushed down on the left as a result of 'too many' images on the right). I don't know whether Chromium or Firefox is the expected behavior. Maybe worth a Phab task about it. Izno (talk) 14:25, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Did you just stumble onto this page and find it or has this been occurring for some time for you? Izno (talk) 14:26, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I see it in Edge. You can try {{Stack}} around consecutive right-aligned images or other elements to prevent them from pushing down left-aligned images. If they aren't consecutive in the source then you may have to move some of them in the source. This is for eliminating or reducing the distance between left-aligned images, not for making text fill out the space. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:07, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Referencing multiple references in a single reference when some of the individual references are used elsewhere?

Specifically at The_Empire_Strikes_Back#Modern_reception, there are two or three segments which are heavily sourced and ideally I'd like to compact the 10 or so refs into a single reference, but if I put them IN another reference the article thinks they don't exist. Is there a way to reference those separate references within a single new reference? Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 20:06, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Darkwarriorblake, I think you may be looking for Help:Citation_merging Vexations (talk) 21:12, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks I'll take a read! Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 21:15, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

If you do it following the instructions on that page just be aware that you can't use named references inside the lists, because the software doesn't support ref tags inside ref tags. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 21:19, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Darkwarriorblake:, Hello, have a look at Wikipedia:Nesting footnotes. In this case what you need (if I've understood correctly) is wrap all the citations in an {{efn}} template to bundle them into a footnote, so the wikitext looks something like {{efn|<ref>ref 1</ref><ref>ref 2</ref><ref>ref 3</ref>}}. You'll also need to add a {{notelist}} and a "Notes" section to get the reference groups to display properly. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 21:16, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes this worked, thank you. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 21:29, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Darkwarriorblake: I see that several refs in that section are in the form of a {{sfn}} tag, you might like to read up on Shortened footnotes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Redrose64, is that in regards to my problem or a general comment? I'm reading the article but it doesn't seem to mention grouping references together. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 22:55, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

It's an alternative. Personally I don't like bundled refs, they give the impression that one ref is there to prop up another, which implies that both are unsound. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:55, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Ok I'll have an experiment with it Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 22:03, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Search not working?

I'm getting the following error this morning, logged out or in, when trying to search:

An error has occurred while searching: Search is currently too busy. Please try again later.

Is it just too busy or is this something more than it seems? Home Lander (talk) 17:13, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I got this several times a few minutes ago.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:37, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm experiencing the same thing. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:38, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Refreshing the browser 1,000 times ought to fix it 😜 same here! ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 18:24, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Home Lander, Vchimpanzee, and Shushugah: Apparently "turn it off and turn it back on again" can cause problems as well as fix them. Draft incident documentation is here. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 03:22, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

My bot ran into this too. The API error code was cirrussearch-too-busy-error if anyone is interested. – SD0001 (talk) 05:18, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

FAQ Template in Greek Wikipedia

Good afternoon everyone.

I am mostly active on the Greek Wikipedia and i would like to ask you a question if it possible. I am trying to find a way to incorporate into the talk page of an article an FAQ , like the one in the talkpage of the article on nazism . Could you help me? Thank you in advance. Ιπποκράτης2020 (talk) 16:12, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ιπποκράτης2020: Hello, welcome to the teahouse! Those boxes are generated using Template:FAQ, if you would like to use them on the Greek Wikipedia you will need to import and translate the template. Perhaps someone familiar with templates on the Greek Wiki could help? 192.76.8.74 (talk) 16:26, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you anonymous user. I will try to incorporate it and if it works i will notify you. Ιπποκράτης2020 (talk) 16:29, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ιπποκράτης2020 have a look at the English Template:FAQ and another language version, e.g. Danish source code da:Skabelon:FAQ to see what may need to change between them for copying to Greek namespace. The Greek FAQ template could be located at el:Πρότυπο:FAQ (or something different than FAQ) ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 17:11, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Shushugah: Thank you , i will look into it as well. Ιπποκράτης2020 (talk) 20:47, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Shushugah: Do you happen to know where can i find the source code for the english template? Ιπποκράτης2020 (talk) 07:09, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ιπποκράτης2020 If you click "edit source" you'll find it, or click here. I don't have time now, but later can try and see if I can create a Greek template for you otherwise (I don't speak Greek, but the code tends to be in latin characters). If you want to understand what the parser functions are doing you can read the documentation here Help:Magic words#Parser functions and open "source code" of a random Greek template to get an idea, for example this one is the greek source code of Interlanguage link template ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 09:55, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Shushugah: Thank you so much! I incorporated the FAQ in the article i wanted. Thanks everyone! Ιπποκράτης2020 (talk) 09:56, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Can you link to the edit/article in mind? If a Greek FAQ template now exists, it would be good to link it to the other language versions on Wikidata. If you can do it, it's at Template:FAQ (Q13420694). ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:02, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, of Course. I utilized a different template but it works for what i wanted it for [1] It starts from "Συχνές ερωτήσεις" (rom. Sichnes erotiseis) , Frequently Asked Questions. Ιπποκράτης2020 (talk) 11:15, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Odd redirect behaviour

When I click on this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hindu_synthesis&redirect=no

I briefly see the section in question, on Hindu synthesis. But after a split second, it jumps further down the page to a different section. Is anyone else getting this? Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:47, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

 Works for me - are you having the problem if using this safemode link? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

That link shouldn't redirect you at all when it has redirect=no. Do you mean the link on that page to History of Hinduism#Hindu synthesis? There are several collapsed parts earlier in the page. This has given problems in the past when some browsers collapse the parts after placing you a certain way down the page, and don't adjust the position afterwards. One case of this was fixed by phab:T67468. What is your browser? It works for me in Firefox where I can see on the vertical scroll bar indicator that the position is adjusted shortly after loading the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:46, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Safari from 11.6 (yesterday's patch). And yes, that second link. Safemode worked. Could this be because I have TOC turned off? If so, bug? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:25, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: when safemode fixes something, it is usually related to a gadget or one of your user scripts. You can try turning off your scripts in User:Maury Markowitz/common.js and User:Maury Markowitz/vector.js, then see if it works. If it does, turn them back on one at a time and see if you can find the one that is causing the trouble. It looks like you are mostly importing other people's personal scripts - so if you find the one causing the problem you should follow up with the author of that script directly for assistance. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:52, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

tt tags do not work in mobile

I noticed that <tt>...</tt> do not work in mobile website. It displays as plaintext. Compare this in mobile and desktop view. Examples 1 and 2 have same display in mobile.

I checked this in mobile and desktop view in my android phone, Opera browser. It displays correctly in desktop view. In windows 10 chrome and edge browsers with vector skin, it works in normal desktop view but doesn't work in mobile view. So the problem here doesn't seem to related to specific devices or browsers. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 14:32, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

• tt is deprecated, so I expect that it is not included in the mobilefrontend styling. The tt html tag itself is sent to the browser, so if client-side styling is happening it still should appear. You can use some other elements, see User:Xaosflux/sandbox110 for some examples. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:20, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  What's actually happening is that mobile uses one of the popular-years-ago CSS resets to make <tt> inherit the parent element's styling, which doesn't include fancy monospace font.

  You should simply never use the element, however, so this is a non-issue. It is obsolete HTML and there are more than a few alternatives. Izno (talk) 16:31, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  Thanks for the info. I was thinking about a bot task to replace this tag. Sitewide search gives 250k+ results with timeout error [23]. Most of this is because of substed templates and user signatures, which can be replaced by bots without worrying about WP:CONTEXTBOT issues. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 17:49, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  The trick with replacement of <tt>...</tt> is that you need to know what to replace it with. {{mono}}, <code>...</code>, or something else? As far as I know, it depends on the context. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:24, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  The <tt>...</tt> element was deprecated in HTML 4 (December 1997) and made obsolete in HTML 5 (October 2014). This means that browser vendors need not support it unless the web page is explicitly marked as being HTML 3.2 or earlier in its DOCTYPE and the browser vendor has stated that they support HTML 3.2. Most browsers designed for mobile devices were developed in the HTML 4.01 era, or later, so I wouldn't expect them to provide retro support.

  When semantics are important, the choice is between the <CODE> element (a fragment of computer code), the <SAMP> element (sample or quoted output from another program or computing system) or the <KBD> element (user input) - most browsers display all three of these in a monospaced font (notwithstanding any style sheets that may override this). Where it's used purely for presentation, and there is no semantic meaning, <span style="font-family:monospace;">...</span> is satisfactory. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  See also WP:MONO. Izno (talk) 19:56, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  In mainspace, we're down to some 600. An enterprising gnome could take care of that today.

  The vast majority of the others are not in important places, and so the fundamental issue is a low priority today. Izno (talk) 20:00, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Looking for help for a small wiki

Hey folks. I'm working with Sco.wiki, and I'm wondering if there's a tool / process / other way to pull together all articles which use a particular template (in this case, Template:Fix Scots) and then display or sort them according to their categories, so as to make choosing which one to work on easier - I was thinking something along the lines of Citation Hunt. PetScan tells me that there's currently 2764 articles using this template, also. Any help would be appreciated! Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 12:43, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sara Thomas (WMUK): so [WhatLinksHere] will shows you all the articles that transclude that, but then what do you want with categories? A page can be in tons of categories, for example the first article, w:sco:Auld Alliance has 21 categories. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:25, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks for replying :) Yeah, up to now we've been using WhatLinksHere, but I'm wondering if there's a way to visualise the list / split it up to make it easier for editors to pull out things about which they're interested / have knowledge. For example, on Citation Hunt you can search for a topic, but I'm not sure how that's been done (I don't code), I'd assumed that it was by category. I'm wondering if there's a way to display these FixScots articles in different ways, such that an editor could say "ah, ok, I like writing about Physics, I'll look at physics articles" - something like that. Hmmm. Because of the size of sco.wiki in comparison to en.wiki I'm not sure how much crossover there'd be with particular categories, so as I think more about it, perhaps there's a wikidata-based solution, looking to group a defined set of articles/Q numbers in terms of P31 "instance of"? But that would have the disadvantage of not being a dynamic list, as I'd need to run the search in PetScan, then load the list of Q numbers into a SPARQL query each time (at least, that's how I'd approach it). Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 13:54, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

You can search for hastemplate:"Fix Scots" with a keyword. Nardog (talk) 13:58, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Nardog: ah, interesting. Thanks :) Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 11:50, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Nothing like that exists today for arbitrary categories. There's a similar thing if you have WikiProjects set up like at WP:WikiProject Video games/Backlog (features Petscan) or Bambots. The Growth work might also be interesting. ORES might be able to be built off... but yeah, nothing that exists ad hoc that I know of.

Special:Search can also do rudimentary category intersection with incategory and deepcategory and apparently can find stuff based on articletopic (ORES-based maybe??). Izno (talk) 15:11, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Izno:This is helpful, thankyou, and yes, that growth work is very interesting! Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 11:58, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

The articletopic search keyword that Izno mentions above is likely what you want. On enwiki, we have {{filter category by topic}} that combines articletopic and incategory keywords. You can import it to your wiki and modify Template:Fix_Scots so that it applies a category -- and then place {{filter category by topic}} on the category page. – SD0001 (talk) 15:48, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@SD0001: aaaah, ok... I shall do some more investigating... thankyou! Much appreciated. Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 11:58, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sara Thomas (WMUK), more generally, have you looked at the m:Small wiki toolkits? That may be useful. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I'll check with the admins, I can see that they have some of the growth tools enabled, I'll let them know! thanks :) Sara Thomas (WMUK) (talk) 09:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Some scripts might break next Thursday

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T273072

Hi all,

I don't fully understand this potential problem, but the part that I grasped is that there's going to be a change that might affect some user scripts/gadgets that depend on something in the CSS. This will probably appear here at the English Wikipedia next WP:THURSDAY (i.e., eight days from now).

This change was made months ago at three Wikipedias, and they're still around, so I assume that the overall risk is fairly low. On the other hand, there are more gadgets here and at Commons than anywhere else, so perhaps the risk is higher here. My main goal in posting this is to let you know that if a gadget breaks next Thursday, that you'll consider these CSS changes as a possible source of the problem.

Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't see anything that should be an issue there. Izno (talk) 17:58, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I added some technical details to the linked task. These are the same changes that are currently applied when you enable the "Discussion tools" beta feature, so you can test today whether your scripts/gadgets work fine with that. We're not actually expecthing anything to break (but you never know…). Matma Rex talk 18:57, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-mobile URL?

What generates a URL like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1021928163?diffmode=source? The hostname doesn't have ".m" in it, so it looks like desktop, but it has Special:MobileDiff, so it looks like mobile. There's many examples of this at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mark Maglasang. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:53, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith: they were put there by an editor who was using the mobile app, which produces those type of links to make it display that way better on mobile devices. The "Special:MobileDiff" part is what is forcing that view. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:07, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

interestingly, Special:MobileDiff is not listed in Special:SpecialPages. any good reason? should it be? peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:21, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@קיפודנחש: not all special pages loaded from extensions are on that page, for example Special:MobileOptions isn't either. You can ask more about that at mw:Extension talk:MobileFrontend though. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:32, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

thanks. i did not know that. this sounds like a deficiency of the extension (and any other extension not listing its special pages). i can't imagine there's not being a easy hook for extensions to list their special pages. maybe mobile have some good reasons to hide theirs, but more likely, someone "forgot" to hook them. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:45, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Special pages are listed there by default, and have to be intentionally hidden (overriding isListed() to return false). In this case, I think it was hidden because it doesn't have a "landing page" – if you visit Special:MobileDiff, you only see an error message, instead of a nice form or something like you see on Special:Diff. Matma Rex talk 22:13, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

That's odd

I've never edited German WP, but it seems some of my en-WP edits are registered as Benutzerbeiträge there anyway. Anyone know why? They're not on the edit count page. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: It looks like one or more pages you edited were imported (e.g. here), which brought over the edit history. Sam Walton (talk) 11:24, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

That probably makes sense. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:37, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

new discussion tool: where is "subscribe"?

hi all.

activated "new discussion tools" from pref => beta, which promise "Receive notifications when new comments are added in sections you have subscribed to."

i do see the "reply" linkette after each respond, and i do get the new "add topic" interface.

however, i do not see the "subscribe" linkette i expect on the right-hand-side of each section.

IMO, the ability to "subscribe" to a specific topic in a large discussion page (such as this one), is the most appealing part of "new discussion tool". it is available on other wikis (to see it, go to the french interwiki of this page, for example. if "new discussion tools" is enabled in your preferences on frwiki, you'll see a "subscribe" linkette, on each section header, which practically adds this section to your watchlist).

is it just me? do everyone else see the "topic subscribe" on enwiki? if so, how can i fix it? if not, why doesn't this feature work on enwiki? it does work in other wikis - i regularly use it. i verified that Special:Version shows the same thing here and on frwiki - 1.37.0-wmf.21 (0878f27).

peace קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:54, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

It is not enabled here yet by default. It is accessible with some URL trickery. See #dtenable testing, still on this page. Izno (talk) 00:05, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

thanks! the linked section is pretty long, and i have to confess i did not read it all.

IMO, this is the one really useful part of "new discussion tools", and it seems strange to enable everything else, and leave the one thing you really want disabled. at least i know now it's not me, and once this will be enabled on enwiki, i'll have it too. i suggest changing the (local) description of the beta feature (Mediawiki:discussiontools-preference-description), to reflect reality . peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:12, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Until it's available, you can add the following to your common.js:

NSnum=mw.config.get('wgNamespaceNumber');
if (NSnum%2==1||NSnum==4)
	{mw.util.addPortletLink(
		'p-tb',
		mw.config.get('wgScript')+'?title='+mw.config.get('wgPageName')+'&dtenable=1',
		'Section subscribe'
		);}

Then, when on a page in any talk or WP space, a "Section subscribe" option will appear in your toolbox. Click on it, and the page will reload with the [subscribe] and [unsubscribe] links enabled. I think I will use this method even when section subscriptions are officially enabled, so it's available when I want it, but it's not cluttering up the pages when I don't. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 19:20, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

The feature was implemented later than the inline reply features, so my understanding is that it's still being tested and thus rolled out in phases. isaacl (talk) 20:05, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T287802

Hey all,

It should be possible to get this new feature added to the Beta Feature here. I'll ask the team if they can make it happen soon (hopefully next week, but it might take longer). I know Peter's been double-checking through the feedback from the #dtenable testing section; he's likely to post an update at Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project, if anyone wants to watch that page. Until we hear back from them, you can enable Discussion Tools at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, and then you can customize a few things at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion (e.g., turn off any bits you don't like).

Thanks, קיפודנחש, for asking about this. It's currently available everywhere except this Wikipedia and all of the sister projects. I hope that it will be available here soon. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Visual editor & MoS: upright vs px?

Help:Pictures and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images states that thumbnails should be left in default sizes and the preferred syntax for fine-tunning is |upright=factor. The visual editor gives users an option to override by px only. Why? -- Ochloese (talk) 22:39, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm working on a proposal on zh to bring their MoS inline with en. This inconsistency is quite puzzling. -- Ochloese (talk) 22:41, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

If you want to go down the rabbit hole on this one, see T64671, and discussions linked from there. The short version appears to be that upright was proposed for deprecation, but there is nothing to replace it. I could be summarizing incorrectly, though. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:13, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Another way of looking at it is that VE doesn't know about MoS. Many options exist in the full image syntax, but the MoS prefers that some forms shouldn't be used, and that's not VE's fault - to quote from WP:VE: VisualEditor still has many bugs and missing features. I expect that it intentionally doesn't know about MoS - VE was designed to be used on all wikis that use the MediaWiki software, and English Wikipedia (with its own quirky MoS that none of the other wikis use) is just one wiki in well over 1000. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:16, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Stopping on the redirect page

Is there a magic word or template that can be added to a category that would stop all redirect pages that are in the category from going to the target page when the link is launched from the category page? If not, would it be difficult to create such a template or magic word, and what would those of you who are technically proficient recommend? I ask because I often do gnomish work in the redirect categories (Rcats) and eliminating the extra step of going back to the redirect page would save me time, aggravation, and metered data. Thank you?--John Cline (talk) 09:31, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: not that I'm aware of, perhaps a userscript could work though. For example if you were looking at Category:Redirects to scientific names of fish - and click on a link, if a script just appended ?redirect=no to every link you would always bypass the redirects. Is this something you think would be mostly for you (or those that jump through some hoops to opt-in) - or something that is needed for a large number of readers? — xaosflux ^Talk 09:42, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Possible example to use/build from: User:BrandonXLF/NoRedirect. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:48, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply Xaosflux. I don't think the average reader would benefit necessarily, they are maintenance categories and shouldn't be on article pages (if they inadvertently were, they would be hidden as well). Now editors, especially those who support WikiProject Redirect, would likely appreciate and benefit from somesuch ability though I've no idea how large that group would be. Thank you again.--John Cline (talk) 10:12, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: a userscript like BrandonXLF's may be the best answer for those working with lots of redirect maintenance - as it gives you the option to bypass any redirect, anywhere. It is opt-in, depending on your trust level of BrandonXLF, you could import his script using the directions on that page - or you could add the contents of this version that I have reviewed as safe to your Special:MyPage/vector.js (or whatever skin you use usually) to enable it. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:41, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Xaosflux for suggesting this script, and BrandonXLF for providing it. I have tested it and find that it works well and satisfies my needs nicely. My best to you both.--John Cline (talk) 11:05, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: If you only want it on category pages then you can wrap the code in the below. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:09, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

if ( mw.config.get( 'wgNamespaceNumber' ) === 14 ) {
...
};

Thank you PrimeHunter. I'm going to save this code for possible future use. Currently, I am very happy with the script and enjoy it being active at all times. Thank you again, may you find the next Mersenne prime.--John Cline (talk) 08:38, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank feature

I appreciate the Thank feature that allows editors to thank fellow editors for good edits. I like to use it to thank editors who quickly revert vandalism, especially vandalism targeting other Wikipedia editors, or for a thoughtful comment that helps defuse a dispute among editors. However, it's not possible to thank IP editors. I find plenty of instances when an IP editor has taken this action and I can't thank them for their good edit.

Would it be possible to extend the Thank feature to all accounts? I know that we treat IP accounts as shared accounts but I don't think it would be an insurmountable hurdle to have a log of Thanks for an IP address. I can only think of positive effects of allowing us to thank IP editors for the good work they do and it might help IP editors feel less marginalized on the project. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:55, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

I find it best to thank IP editors in prose on their talk page. I know it takes longer but it does clarify things - especially considering that the next person who uses the IP might not be the same editor who is being thanked. MarnetteD|Talk 20:58, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

IP Editors do not have access to Echo, which is what thanks messages are sent through. There are significant technical challenges to doing so: granting a feature that is dynamic by definition to non-logged in users (who are served static, cached pages) is a heavy load to take on. Jorm (talk) 21:57, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

(Note that the modern operations team may have solved these problems, or even the skins, or Echo itself, but at the time when I designed it (some 10 years now) it was a major problem and the reason why I never investigated IP editors beyond "can it even be done") Jorm (talk) 21:58, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

I think it mostly needs developer love and attention to get done, T58828 has some more details and previous attempts. Legoktm (talk) 23:49, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all for taking the time to explain how the system works to me. I often have found that what seems simple to a non-technical person is actually much more complicated that it appears. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:52, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Why does it behave differently at different times?

Sometimes I click it and it goes to a new page asking me if I want to thank the editor. Other times it doesn't, just lets me thank. Doug Weller talk 07:58, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

This happens when the JavaScript setup for the thank feature was not completed. There are 2common causes for this. First it might just be that ur page is loading slow (slow internet, slow device, or u being too fast). The 2nd is that u have installed a user script which sometimes fails and then brings down the setup of other scripts (like thanks) with it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:05, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I get this sometimes when adding/removing an item on my Watchlist. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:10, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I can live with it although I have had problems with hitting the wrong link because of a slow change in position and instead of thanking reverting. Doug Weller talk 16:54, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Watchlist time period bug in edit mode?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291287

My watchlist time period selection is not always retained in edit mode. When editing a page, if I put it on my watchlist for 1 week (using the dropdown below the edit summary), then click "Show preview", it remembers my selection of 1 week; but when I click "Show changes", the 1 week reverts to permanent. —Bruce1ee^talk 09:50, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Looks like a bug, yes. I'd suggest enabling "Show previews without reloading the page" option from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing as this gets rid of that anomaly. – SD0001 (talk) 16:11, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Enabling that preference removes the anomaly/bug. —Bruce1ee^talk 16:20, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I filed phab:T291287 and submitted a patch, it should be a trivial fix. Legoktm (talk) 18:15, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Search box

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291272

Hi. Has anyone else noticed that the search box on the left-hand side of all pages removes the "search" button when you click in the box, leaving you with just the "Go" button? I find this unhelpful when it comes to creating redirects. For example, if there was an article for the sportsman Lugsy Van Nuts, I would also create the redirect Lugsy van Nuts. But if I type the latter into the search box, it automatically goes to the former, without going to the search result page, so I can't easily create the redirect (and probably kill a few redlinks). Is there a quick fix/code to get back both buttons? Thanks! Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:18, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

@Lugnuts: seems like a bug, are you getting this only in monobook? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:21, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

• It's Taco Tuesday, but on a Friday - phab:T291272. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:23, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one! I did notice it yesterday, but hoped it would be fixed. Thanks for the link to the Phabricator incident. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:25, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia desperately slow then down

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291311

Had a few minutes of desperate slowness, and then a white screen with "upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow". DuncanHill (talk) 00:50, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Crippling slowdown

The whole site is generally down, or nearly so/ I keep getting error message "upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow". The is it down? type websites agree; Wikipedia is down. Let's see if I can post this.... 2600:1702:2670:B530:45D:3246:2D5F:FEC0 (talk) 00:50, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Me Too

Same as above, and is pretty slow as I type this. It's only Wikmedia sites, as far as I can tell. Wikisource, Commons, etc. are also doing it, but no non-Wikimedia site. — Maile (talk) 00:56, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

how do i create log-link

unclutter provides link to log-link. i am trying to create inmy signature, but error: "Invalid raw signature. Check HTML tags." unable to find any clue on Help:How to fix your signature also. as soon as i add code [[Special:Log&page=User:Ashtamatrikas|log]] the above error occurs. is this known isue or am i overlooking simple solution? –Ashtamatrikas (Brāhmī) (talk • contrib • actions) 18:53, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Please provide the whole signature that you would like to use, and we can help you troubleshoot it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:07, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

is this what you want?

[[Special:Log/User:Ashtamatrikas|log]] → log

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:13, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

this is my

• existing good code: [[User:Ashtamatrikas|Ashtamatrikas (Brāhmī)]] ([[User talk:Ashtamatrikas|<span style="color:purple">talk</span>]] • [[Special:Contributions/Ashtamatrikas|contrib]] • [[Special:Log/Ashtamatrikas|actions]]).
• error code [[User:Ashtamatrikas|Ashtamatrikas (Brāhmī)]] ([[User talk:Ashtamatrikas|<span style="color:purple">talk</span>]] • [[Special:Contributions/Ashtamatrikas|contrib]] • [[Special:Log/Ashtamatrikas|actions]] • [[Special:Log&page=User:Ashtamatrikas|log]]), it shows error: "Invalid raw signature. Check HTML tags."
• in browser, if i manually replace example with Ashtamatrikas shows my account creation date. –Ashtamatrikas (Brāhmī) (talk • contrib • actions) 02:29, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikilinks cannot have query strings (the part after ? in a url). If you just want to link your account creation (why?) then you can do it with [[Special:Log/newusers/Ashtamatrikas|log]] which produces log. This will not show other log actions on your user page (there aren't any now). I don't know a wikilink to do that. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:31, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: i was just trying to recreate signature pattern identical to unclutter signature. if it is not possible in wikilink, then its ok. –Ashtamatrikas (Brāhmī) (talk • contrib • actions) 04:00, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

This is what Ashtamatrikas wants their signature to look like. ― Qwerfjkltalk 06:31, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

That is the effect of User:Kephir/gadgets/unclutter - it uses JavaScript to add extra links to normal signatures. It operates when the page is loaded by the browser, and acts upon most signatures on the page - it isn't specific to the sig of one individual user. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:26, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

GoogleBook cite

Any progress on fixing GoogleBook cite.?--Moxy- 13:51, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

That is an externally-hosted tool maintained by Apoc2400 who has not edited at en.wiki since 1 April 2021. Apparently there have been attempts to contact that editor through User talk:Apoc2400 without obvious response.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:43, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

"Limited Access" redirect error.

Resolved

Firstly, apologies if this is the wrong place to report this, I'm unfamiliar with the inner workings of Wikipedia. If you click on the likes of the free access symbol (), you are redirected to a page discussing the meaning of free access in regards to written material. However, if you click on the limited access symbol (. you are redirected to a page about limited access roads. I don't know how to correct this, and hoping somebody here will. Cheers! Xx78900 (talk) 13:38, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xx78900: the target for that comes from the link=Limited access part on Template:Limited access, change the part after "link=" to the title of the article you want this to go to instead. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:47, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks, I've changed it now! :) Xx78900 (talk) 13:54, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

And I've removed the link to Freemium because that is only one possible meaning of 'limited access' which can also mean a cap on daily views, a restriction to certain day or night times, or providing the contents only to certain IP ranges/locales on behalf of the provider of the source, etc.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:13, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-38

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

Recent changes

• Growth features are now deployed to almost all Wikipedias. For the majority of small Wikipedias, the features are only available for experienced users, to test the features and configure them. Features will be available for newcomers starting on 20 September 2021.
• MediaWiki had a feature that would highlight local links to short articles in a different style. Each user could pick the size at which "stubs" would be highlighted. This feature was very bad for performance, and following a consultation, has been removed. [24]
• A technical change was made to the MonoBook skin to allow for easier maintenance and upkeep. This has resulted in some minor changes to HTML that make MonoBook's HTML consistent with other skins. Efforts have been made to minimize the impact on editors, but please ping Jon (WMF) on wiki or in phabricator if any problems are reported.

Problems

• There was a problem with search last week. Many search requests did not work for 2 hours because of an accidental restart of the search servers. [25]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 September. It will be on all wikis from 23 September (calendar).
• The meta=proofreadpage API has changed. The piprop parameter has been renamed to prpiprop. API users should update their code to avoid unrecognized parameter warnings. Pywikibot users should upgrade to 6.6.0. [26]

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. [27]
• The previously announced change to how you obtain tokens from the API has been delayed to September 21 because of an incompatibility with Pywikibot. Bot operators using Pywikibot can follow T291202 for progress on a fix, and should plan to upgrade to 6.6.1 when it is released.

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

18:29, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Delete redirect

Can someone please delete Kongsberg Defence & Aerospaces redirect to Kongsberg Defence Systems?--Znuddel (talk) 19:43, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Znuddel This belongs at WP:RFD. (Unless it can be speedily deleted.) ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:50, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

You will have to give a good reason. It's a former name and the redirect is helpful. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:52, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

dtenable testing

Hello, all. I'd like some folks to test this upcoming feature for me. Here's how it works:

1. Click on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?dtenable=1
2. Scroll all the way down to this section and find the [subscribe] button for ==this section==.
3. Click that.
4. Post a comment here.
5. Wait for another editor to do the same.
6. Tell me what you think.

You should get a note via Special:Notifications (Echo) about the new comment. You shouldn't get notified if someone is just fixing a typo (same rules as trying to ping someone; notifications require a new comment/line).

I understand that on the technical side, you're actually subscribing to the timestamp of the first comment, not the section itself. Consequently, changing the section heading, moving this message to another page, etc., will not prevent you from getting notified about new comments. It doesn't matter what editing tools the other comments are posted with.

BTW, that link will give you the [reply] tool as well; if you like it, then turn it on in Beta Features. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

OK, leaving a comment to test. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:36, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for testing. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, that's pretty cool! Curious about how the timestamp thing works though - it's not uncommon for comments to share the same timestamp. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:42, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

There are some technical details in mw:Extension:DiscussionTools/How it works.

Maybe it includes the whole signature? But even then, someone could (with full-page editing) start several separate ==Sections== in the same edit, resulting in multiple identical signatures. Or we could copy it somewhere and have two copies of the same discussion. I'm not sure if it would track both, or neither, or pick one. @Matma Rex, do you have a prediction, or should we try to break it ourselves? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Subscribed and posting to test. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:39, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

No discernible alert - is there a delay? TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:41, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

No one had replied yet... now you should get a notification? Elli (talk | contribs) 21:42, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

and another persion replied —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:48, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Cool - I got the notifications. I thought it would alert me when any comments were added to the subscribed thread, mine or otherwise. The only thing I would have to think about is if it will overmessage people. Is there an easy way to unsubscribe if the discussion gets too busy? TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:50, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, the unsubscribe button is right there, too, from the same link. I'd assume if the feature was turned on generally, it would always be there. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Ah yes - you have to click the original link to see it - gotcha. Cool. This could be interesting, particularly when new users don't know to tag people. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:54, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

You can also unsubscribe directly from the notification, without having to view the subscribed-to page. Click on the "..." and then "Unsubscribe". MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:52, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I also saw that you can unsubscribe from the notifications drop-down. I think that's a really nice addition. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 15:54, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm assuming that people don't actually want to get a notification when they post in a discussion (because you just posted your comment, so you already know that you did it, right?). But if my assumptions are wrong, please let me know when that would be useful.. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Oooh, cool, you can subscribe to sections now? I did wonder what would happen or how they'd be distinguished if the same person posted multiple sections at once. And would you be auto-subscribed to any sections you create? Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:17, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Somebody please reply to this :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 14:07, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Never mind, I'll get one of my socks to do it. RoySmith-testing (talk) 14:13, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Response for Roy. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:22, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I am not a sock! It's that stupid testing guy. He's always stalking me and calling me a sock. He should be blocked. I'm only here to improve wikipedia. RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 14:24, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Wow, this is major-league cool. Being able to subscribe to a thread has long been at or near the top of my wiki-wishlist. Very nice.

Somewhat orthogonal to this, it would be nice if there were a published spec for how to add buttons to a section. The "Close" link in the attached screenshot is from User:DannyS712/DiscussionCloser.js (ping DannyS712). I assume with some CSS tweaks, the visual style of both links could be harmonized, and a published standard would make that happen. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:33, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Coolest aspect is that it lets me subscribe to a section without adding the page to my watchlist. Schazjmd (talk) 14:36, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Cool, it worked! Does this work on mobile too? Opabinia externa (talk) 17:33, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Hey, sock, back in the drawer! Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm a dummy, I forgot to click subscribe first. Opabinia externa (talk) 17:43, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Try this one more time, because socks aren't very smart. (The link in the OP goes to the desktop site, will this also be enabled on mobile?) Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:44, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Success! Opabinia externa (talk) 17:45, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Testing, attention please! - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:40, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith @DannyS712 You can add the CSS class mw-editsection-like to any element that should look like a section edit link, but not behave like one (e.g. not open the visual editor when clicked). It's what we used for the subscribe links too (I'm one of the developers). Matma Rex talk 12:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith Re: this, I think User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/autoCloser.js aligns properly (I use it because it works on mobile devices way better). ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@Elli @Whatamidoing (WMF) Sections you subscribe to are identified by the username and the timestamp of the oldest comment. If two sections have identical username and timestamp (even on different pages), and you subscribe to one of them, everything behaves as if you had subscribed to both – you'll get notifications for both of them. Unsubscribing from one also unsubscribes you from all others.

It is perhaps not the ideal behavior, but it allows for sections to be moved, renamed, or archived/unarchived, without losing the subscriptions. And it's more reliable and understandable than if we were trying to detect whether two sections in different pages/revisions are the same using some heuristics. Matma Rex talk 12:05, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any issue with this. The chance of there being two threads that have the same (username, timestamp) pair seems so small as to be safely ignored. And the fact that the subscription survives archiving is a big win.

In fact, it would be awesome if this technology could be extended to links. People often link to threads on noticeboards. Those links soon go stale when the thread gets archived. Having a way to create a link which survives archiving would be huge. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

We've been thinking about permanent links (phab:T273341), and it should be possible to extend it this way, but it would be a somewhat large project – because right now we don't actually "remember" where each topic appears, we just generate notifications when we see it anywhere. Matma Rex talk 13:39, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Volunteer-me says that this will come up when people start complex RFCs. The simplest solution might be a social one, however: just discourage people from posting multiple comments (at the top of a ==Section==) in the same edit. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi, Matma Rex, re. username and the timestamp of the oldest comment: does that mean the first comment after the heading, or the actual oldest? If someone top-posts will it break things? ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 17:24, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The actual oldest, not the first. Top-posting should not cause trouble (in particular, we were thinking of templates like {{resolved}} and {{discussion top}} when implementing this). Matma Rex talk 17:58, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks for the answer! ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 10:53, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

(←) Clicking subscribe works even without having to post in the section as instructed. This is a Good Thing™.

Unscription becomes something of an adventure if the subscribed timestamp is edited away. I made the mistake of subscribing to Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention#User-reported, on the theory I'd see an update relatively quickly; I had to go searching back through old revisions until I found one that still had the original comment before the [ subscribe ] link turned back into [ unsubscribe ]. (I didn't notice until afterwards that there are also unsubscription buttons in the notifications themselves.) I didn't get notifications for edits made after the timestamp was removed, which I guess is probably the right thing to do for the sort of people who make reports to those kinds of sections, but it makes this feature useless for the sorts of people who monitor them. —Cryptic 22:26, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Given that those aren't really talkpages, perhaps a special "subscribe to this particular section on this page" option would also work (maybe require an invisible keyword or template be placed on the page to prevent it from being used accidentally)? Elli (talk | contribs) 22:36, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think the distinction between talk and non-talk pages is useful. We have lots of pages in non-talk namespaces which support talk-like threaded conversations. Many (but not all) are in Wikipedia space. Tools like this should work equally well on those pages. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:40, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it should work equally well in all namespaces. But a board like UAA (or AIV, RMT, etc) is not structured like a talk page. Therefore, I think a different subscription method for those would be reasonable to implement, instead of trying to pretend they're talkpages. Elli (talk | contribs) 22:43, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Maybe a commented-out timestamp, or one in a display:none span. Though that'd probably confuse the poor bots. Not really the original usecase, anyway, just a missed chance for additional awesomeness. —Cryptic 22:41, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I think it works in all namespaces, as long as there is a signature in the section. There was a brief bug that displayed the [subscribe] button on all ==Sections== (e.g., including in articles), but if there isn't a signature, you'll never get a notification.

Also, remember that it doesn't produce notifications for changes in sections. It notifies you only for new comments. This means less noise (especially if the editors you're talking to revise edit comments many times), but it wouldn't work for watching a section in an article to see if anyone changes it. You'll still need your watchlist for that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

How does it handle unsigned comments that get fixed up by SineBot (who, at more than 2 million edits, is one of our most prolific contributors). -- RoySmith (talk) 16:17, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't send a notification (it checks that the username in the signature matches the user who saves the edit). It should notify in this case (and we support comments signed that way for the [reply] links), but if we simply removed that check, it'd result in notifications being sent when someone (or a bot) is copy-paste-archiving a discussion. Resolving this might need to wait until we can "remember" each comment that has existed (same thing we'd need for the permalinks that you mentioned earlier). Matma Rex talk 16:25, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Roy, there should many be fewer unsigned comments once the Reply tool is deployed default-on for everyone (including new editors). That won't happen here (for at least weeks, maybe months), but it will help a lot with that problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

This is a test. Please reply to me and I will let you know if I get a notif. BEEEP! Note: I'm not actually a robot Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 19:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Using the 'reply' link to leave a comment. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:09, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

This is possibly a comment. -- Asartea ^{Talk | Contribs} 04:59, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

I told you you should have blocked that sock! Now he's back, making a pest of himself again and stalking me all over. Imma not going to sign this because I don't want to even be associated with him.

I'm late to this party. Does someone need to reply to me with the reply tool for the ping to work, or does any update to the thread prompt a notification? CMD (talk) 12:39, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Any update (I'm using CD). ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:45, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what CD is, but I did get a notification, thanks. CMD (talk) 12:47, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

c:User:Jack who built the house/Convenient Discussions. ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:52, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

A comment here. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It'll notify you regardless of what editing-method someone is using, so long as whatever edit is made looks like it's a new comment. This pretty much means "adds a new list item that ends with a signature" -- so any tool that doesn't do that is already probably being complained about for violating discussion norms. :D

There's a description of how it's working, if you're interested in more details. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

A comment. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:32, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Holy heck. That's actually rather cool. Didn't appear under my bell icon like I thought but under notices. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 19:36, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

WOOHOO! This is massive! Hats off to everyone who's been working on this. I can personally verify that this is a supremely technically difficult area to make progress in, and it's very, very cool that they've been able to get this far. Congratulations! Enterprisey (talk!) 05:04, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary subsection

One disadvantage of working with signatures rather than headers appears to be that the notification does not take you to the talkpage section, although this is perhaps a minor inconvenience. CMD (talk) 13:34, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

If you visit the page with ?dtenable=1, it actually does (for example, try this). Assuming this feature is turned on generally, it'll work. Elli (talk | contribs) 13:36, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Subsection added. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:38, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

For some reason that particular link doesn't work, however I tested with other links and it goes right to the comment, which is great. CMD (talk) 13:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It's been working for me. I especially like the blue background highlighting. I got a notification earlier this morning for multiple comments in the thread; not only were the multiple notifications collapsed into one (nice), but each comment was individually highlighted. Very nice. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:46, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It will also work if you have the "Discussion tools" beta feature enabled in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures (even though it doesn't enable topic subscriptions yet). I think we didn't consider this when testing the dtenable parameter, sorry! (I'm one of the developers) Matma Rex talk 13:43, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Testing... --Yair rand (talk) 19:53, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

We're still subscribed, and still getting notifications.  ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Flow?

Just curious, what's the relationship of this to WP:Flow? They both seem to fill much the same use case. Is this a successor to Flow? Will they both continue to be developed? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:38, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Flow hasn't been actively developed since 2015. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:51, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Flow doesn't use normal wikitext talk pages, and this does.

If Flow had been built fully, it would be far more feature-fun. Imagine a world in which AFD didn't require scripts and bots, and the nomination pages would automatically file themselves in the proper list/category when they were ready to be closed. Or that ArbCom's clerks didn't have to manually count how many Arbs had voted which way, because the software did it for them. This work is a great improvement, but it's never going to be even close to what Flow could have been. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm of mixed-mind about Flow. I didn't particularly like the U/I, but I really don't understand why people hated on it so much. The idea of having structured data that you could reliably manipulate and navigate (as in the examples you gave) made so much sense. Tools like this are great, but trying to do automated things on any human-edited text is way more difficult and less reliable than if the structure of the conversation was rigidly enforced by software. No more conversations getting scrambled because somebody 600 lines up the page forgot a closing curly bracket. Or people using random combinations of ":" and "*" to indicate what's replying to what. But you knew that already. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

The interface that made it out was not what I had in mind. It's def. not what I designed, and the real Flow doesn't ... work like how the WMF made it work at all. Jorm (talk) 21:35, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I see a typo in my comment above: "feature-fun" when I meant "feature-ful". But I kind of like it, so I'm not going to fix it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Large number of notifications

I log in into Wikipedia today and I see 34 notifications, a number which I had never had the chance to see before in Wikipedia and which reminded me of the beginning times of Facebook notifications. Is that what we want from this function? (I'm not against per se.) Maybe we should do the same as Facebook and other social media did and start grouping some notifications together? Maybe you could have only 1 notification per specific subscription with the names of all the new commenters? Maybe you could have 1 for each commenter (not for each comment)? As I said, having a lot of notifications is not a problem for me really but I'm imagining things could get quickly out of hands in pretty dynamic discussions, especially if you haven't logged in for some hours, and there may be users complaining for this. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:04, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

They are already grouped for me. Do you mean having the entire group display as just one new notification? CMD (talk) 01:25, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis, yes I suppose. And maybe not have a specific notification for each reply? I'm talking about having a general notification of this sort:

"X, Y, B and Z replied to [Specific Section]." This would remove the ability to immediately link to a specific reply and just show the discussion in general, maybe the new part of it, but maybe it would be better for some people? Or maybe we could have a preference tab for choosing between these 2 (or more) modes. - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:20, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if you're using the no-JS interface of notifications? In the JS interface, they are grouped exactly like you're proposing – you only see one notification per section, and it says something like 34 new replies in "‪dtenable testing"., and it highlights all of the replies in the topic when clicked. But it looks like this feature (called "bundling") has never been implemented in the no-JS version. Matma Rex talk 14:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi, are you concerned about the number on the bell/inbox icons? Or about the number of lines shown when you click on them? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, @Whatamidoing (WMF), I didn't spend too much time to look at the details when I wrote this because, as I said, it didn't concern me much personally. But after your comments now, I was examining it more carefully. I got 5 notifications (the number on the inbox icon) and when clicked, they opened as 1 notification which could be expanded in individual notifications in regard to this post. I guess this is similar to what I proposed, as you mention. My idea was to get 1 notification icon and 1 notification in total per post but I guess this can be fine as well. - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I've been using this feature to subscribe to lots of sections and am loving it so far! I think it'd be best to have only one bell/inbox icon but to keep the behavior the same after you actually open up notifications. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:31, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I've only subscribed to a few, but can say that the notifications and their grouping is working well for me on both Timeless and mobile/Minerva. (The font for the [subscribe] link in Timeless is wrong; I've delayed logging a ticket, will hopefully do that soon.) I like the idea of having alerts separated from notices so that I can prioritise pings, etc. but, on the other hand, having them all together in Minerva doesn't seem unnatural.
⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 15:34, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Master list

I've been continuing to enjoy this feature. One thing I'd like to see is a way to access a list of all the discussions to which you've subscribed, similar to how it's possible to see a list of all the pages you've watchlisted. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:26, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb I'm glad you posted about the prospect of being able to see all of the topics you have subscribed to. In fact, we have a prototype ready for this very thing that I'm keen to hear what you, and others here, think about it.

Although, before sharing that with you, are you able to share what inspired you to request seeing, "...a way to access a list of all the discussions to which you've subscribed." ? What would you value a page like this helping you to do and/or see? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF) My own thought would be that being able to see what discussions one has subscribed too, and being able to unsubscribe, allows one to reduce the number of notifications one is liable to get. So quite a valuable tool, I'd have felt. Nick Moyes (talk) 19:39, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Backup, mainly; that's the only thing I ever access my list of watchlisted pages for, too (since I'm terrified I'll accidentally click the "clear watchlist" button one day). In this case, my thought process was "I'm already starting to rely on this a lot, so I hope they don't wipe the list of subscribed sections when they move this out of beta. If I had a way to access a list I'd make a backup. Oh, that's something everyone should probably be able to see, so I'll request it". {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:45, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

(wrong topic!)

• @Whatamidoing (WMF): did I read technews correctly that force enabling this feature for every user is imminent? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:40, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @Xaosflux: Tech News says that they're enabling the reply tool, the bit that adds a "reply" link under comments, not the topic subscription feature. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 18:56, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Oops, so many things going on - I should only read one of these updates at a time! — xaosflux ^Talk 19:04, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

    Aww, you'd take all the fun out of it.

    Also, "imminent" is not the right word, especially here at the English Wikipedia. I'm still talking to Peter about that. Tech/News will have the same announcement next week, and then it will go out to all the small-to-mid-sized Wikipedias and sister projects. I think that the Turkish Wikipedia will be the largest affected one next week. After that (hopefully soon after that), it'll be out for everyone at Wikidata and Commons (and a few similar multi-lingual projects), and the last batch is the remaining heavyweights: English, German, French, and Russian Wikipedias. I hope that will still qualify as "soon", but it's not quite "imminent", and there is no specific date set for that batch yet. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:27, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

The Image Sizes

The image length cannot be changed without affecting the image width, request the ability to change the image length without affecting the image width as well as the ability to change the image width without affecting the image length.Mohmad Abdul sahib 08:53, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

It sounds like you want to display only part of an image that already exists on Wikipedia. {{CSS image crop}} or {{Annotated image}} might work for you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:52, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Jonesey95

No, for example, I want to change the width of the image without forcibly changing the length of the image, leave notifications for me next time.Mohmad Abdul sahib — Preceding undated comment added 16:34, 13 September 2021

@Mohmad Abdul sahib: Nothing to do with your problem, but please read through WP:SIGNATURE. I've just made two fixes to your signatures in this little section. (Also, you can easily add the pages you edit to your watchlist: Help:Watchlist.) Thanks, — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 16:44, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mohmad Abdul sahib: And about your problem: aren't you worried about stretching or squishing the image? It will be distorted if you change only one dimension. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 16:45, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

JohnFromPinckney I know about this, this problem was in old versions of Adobe Photoshop and the problem of this distortion has been resolved in newer versions, so you can use the same technique.Mohmad Abdul sahib 19:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

That's not how the wiki software works and it will not work that way any time soon. Aspect ratio is important. If you think a free image would look better with a different aspect ratio, you may crop them and subsequently contribute them to Commons. (Don't modify non-free images.)

Please do not amend the timestamps of previous posts. Izno (talk) 06:23, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Izno The image dimensions are distorted if the display is changed excessively, but if the size is slightly changed, the image will not be distorted.Mohmad Abdul sahib 10:48, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

No, it still distorts the image.

I will not be responding further since you don't seem to be interested in listening. Izno (talk) 16:07, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Izno With the presence of this algorithm (Seam carving), doing this kind of resizing the image does not cause it to be distorted, so I ask to be able to resize the image with this algorithm.Mohmad Abdul sahib 13:22, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

As noted above, there are lots of ways to change the aspect ratio of an image, all of which distort it in some way. Using the example image in Seam carving, measure the angle between the top of the castle, the man, and the base of the castle. Do that in both the original and the seam carved version. Those angles will be different. Is that important? It might be, it might not. Only a human can determine that.

If you want to generate a seam carved variant, download the image (assuming it's appropriately licensed), perform whatever manipulations you want, and upload the new image. I often do this for images that could be improved. Cropping, perspective correction, rotation, and many other types of image manipulations are all fair game. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:04, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Toward a standard for editing tools vis-a-vis signatures.

We've got lots of tools that let you type stuff into a box and add it to a page. Some of them automatically add your signature, some don't. Some of them give you a live preview. Some offer the ability to generate a preview manually. Some have no way to preview. The bottom line is I often think a tool will add my signature, then discover it doesn't, and have to go back and add it later.

We should standardize how this works. I think the ideal case is what I'm using now (Reply Tool) does; give you a live preview, and add your sig automatically. But, at the very least, there should be some visual indication whether you signature is going to be added automatically or if you need to do the squiggle thing. That would at least give tool developers guidance on how they should be building their tools. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:07, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

(For those who don't know, I note that Reply Tool (and New Discussion Tool) gives some visual indication that one's signature will be added, namely that the signature is shown, translucent, at the end of the live preview.) —2d37 (talk) 20:59, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

The live preview is only in the source mode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

New tool to identify sockpuppets based on writing style

Checkusers on the English Wikipedia will soon have access to a new tool aimed at identifying misuse of multiple accounts based on a person's writing style. masz, developed by Ladsgroup, uses natural language processing to create an individual 'fingerprint' of a user based on the way they use language on talk pages. Checkusers can log into a web interface to compare the fingerprints of two accounts or list accounts with similar fingerprints. The tool is already live on several projects and is expected to start running on enwiki after phab:T290793 is resolved. – Joe (talk) 07:15, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: I'm not involved in the development of this tool, so I can't answer any questions about how it works beyond this. – Joe (talk) 07:18, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Sounds like a GDPR violation but okay. (article 22 on automated decision-making and profiling) Stifle (talk) 08:33, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

  I'm quite certain that it is not a violation. Art. 22 par. 1 GDPR provides: "The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her." In our use case, the decision to block is not "based solely on automated processing", because it is made by a human checkuser considering the fingerprint together with other evidence. Also, a block from editing Wikipedia is not a "legal effect" or something of similar significance. In any case, the GDPR does not apply in the US, where the Wikimedia Foundation is located. Sandstein 08:43, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

  Besides while not blocking accounts, we are already blocking and tagging edits based solely automated processing, including profiling so if the GDPR applies to actions we take against editors, we already have problems. Definitely some of those affected e.g. the editor complaining about being libelled recently on ANI because their edit was tagged as a possible vandalism or BLP violation and some of those trying to add nonsense to Adam's Bridge or complaining about the Ahmadiyya Caliphate seem to think they've been significantly affected by our automated processing. Nil Einne (talk) 11:54, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

  Uh, how could that possibly apply? "The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects' concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her." The tool does not automatically ban people; an administrator has to ultimately review and apply the ban based on all available evidence. Therefore it will never be the sole determinant. And in any case being banned from Wikipedia, while some people may not like it, is not a legal effect or anything of remotely comparable impact. --Aquillion (talk) 14:32, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

I have no doubt that this is legal (per Sandstein, although whether the WMF is bound by the GDPR is murky; many US-based newspapers stopped serving EU-geolocated IP addresses when it went into effect, I suppose because of a possible argument that the content and ads being read at a EU location creates EU jurisdiction).

We can certainly ask whether it is wise, though. False positives are bound to happen and I do not look forward to bans based on unclear behavioural evidence because computer says so. Also, it is well-known that such systems are subject to bias laundering; for instance, if the training set contains few examples of the Cheshire dialect, then two users using that dialect becomes irresistible evidence of socking. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 09:04, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

The highest EU court (CJEU) has argued that GDPR applies to non EU companies, when it involved EU subjects in Google v CNIL (C-507/17). The territoriality of that has deep implications, but I have no doubt that the WMF legal has examined these. ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 13:35, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

References

Given these fingerprints are based solely on public information(correct me if I am wrong), is there a good reason to limit it to checkusers? Other edit analysis tools are not limits. I would be interested in checking a few hunches.

Regarding concerns of people being blocked based on computer evidence, I am assuming this will be used as an investigation tool and not used as the sole evidence of a block. We already point out similar writing styles when making a sock case, this would only help us find them not decide what weight we give them. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 09:37, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• *Whistles and admires slippery slope* I might have less of an issue with the idea of something like this, if it didn't sound so much like giving CSI-style tools to untrained admins. The suggestion that this be expanded to all users (rather than just checkusers) makes me even more leery. I'm no expert, but my job means I deal with dozens of writing samples every day. It's hard for me - with two pieces of writing side-by-side - to tell the difference sometimes. It's also my experience that cultural factors play a huge part in determining why someone might write like someone else. Were they educated in the same school system? Did they have the same English teacher? Did they participate in the same ICU chat-groups as a teenager? Did they use the same app to learn English? Did they learn English from the same base language? I see those dozens of writing samples every day and I could find you similarities between any two selected at random, simply because of context. Alcohol, recreational and prescription drugs, stress, emotion, fatigue, and fluency of language are all factors in making a piece of writing similar to another, or different. You can't change your IP address based on how many drinks you've had. The same person can write two different things under different conditions and have them be very different. But two different people can write about similar things under similar conditions and the writing they produce will be very similar. St★lwart¹¹¹ 10:52, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Do not trust algorithms to pick up on the nuances of language usage and language evolution among disparate individuals. Random example: in the pre-2010s, I was using the word programme a lot (was doing a lot of UK'ish content work then), but in the post-2010s I pretty much exclusively use program. Is that something this computer programmmmme will not want? I'm Skynet'ing this. El_C 11:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• El_C, exactly. And what does it tell us if your use of the word programme is similar to someone else's use of the word programme? Is that confirmation they are the same person, or is it simply confirmation that they fall within the same demographic category. Does falling within several of the same demographic categories make the pair more or less likely to be the same person? Is that confirmation they are the same person, or simply confirmation they are in a similar demographic category and so similarities should be dismissed? St★lwart¹¹¹ 01:14, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

• Stylometry is difficult – people have spent decades trying to improve AI methods for authorship identification/attribution (with, albeit, some promising results), and professional forensic linguists have dedicated whole careers to end up producing what can sometimes be low confidence or ultimately inadmissible evidence in court regarding authorship analysis. The method Ladsgroup is using, looks to be extremely simple from the displayed graphs (counting the relative frequency of commonly used words) though his code is private so who knows. I would be extremely cautious in using this tool to infer two accounts are likely sockpuppets due to language similarities, and extremely cautious in using this tool to infer two accounts are unlikely to be sockpuppets due to a lack of similarity in their language. "Use this tool but do not generally trust its output" sounds like the perfect way to bolster your confirmation bias—"They're similar? That's proof they're sockpuppets! They're dissimilar? Well, this tool is imperfect..."—so I heavily question the worth this program has for SPIs. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 12:09, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Well said. The usage of the Editor interaction utility at SPI and beyond just confounds me. As I've said elsewhere recently (AN diff in response to its misuse, aside from being a novelty, the thing is pretty much useless. El_C 12:40, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
    • I think it does have uses, but only with caution. I find it useful as a starting point when I suspect two accounts are sockpuppets - a way to find places to look where they may have interacted in ways that support them being sockpuppets (eg. a user overtly restoring the exact edit of a banned user a year later, or one sock glaringly hyping up or defending another across multiple unrelated pages.) For example, in a recent case I noticed an account with very few edits defending another account; glancing at the interaction utility's results let me easily see that they had done this across multiple pages and helped me build a case. I could have done this without the tool, but it would have been more time-consuming. You said in your post that there's no shortcut to diff evidence, but the Editor Overlap Tool is in fact exactly such a shortcut, in that it makes it easier to find relevant diffs that can be used as actual evidence. When I suspect that two editors are sockpuppets of each other it's also useful as an at-a-glance way to help me figure out if it's worth the time to try and build a case. I'd never just point to it in a SPI case, since that's barely more useful than pointing at an editor's entire edit history - going over the interactions and finding relevant diffs (or if they even exist) is fairly time-consuming - but it is useful in the early stages of an investigation. I would expect the "list accounts with similar fingerprints" thing would be similar to eg. taking an account who is behaving in ways that make you suspect a sockpuppet, and checking what blocked users (who were blocked before they began editing) have edited pages they edit - useful as one possible starting point for an investigation, no more. Actual evidence would still be required to go from there. --Aquillion (talk) 14:48, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
      • Fair point. I suppose my point is that I see a ton of its misuse, often resulting in distortion that leads to conflict for naught. The example highlighted in that AN diff I cited above illustrates this pretty well, I think — I'd also point to the preceding comment by Softlavender (on the misuse of the interaction tool as suffered by GS) to which my note was in response to. Anyway, returning to Volteer1's point: inaccurate reading accompanied by confirmation bias is a paramount concern when it comes to analyses that are in part AI-derived. Would hammering these caveats be enough to make adoption of this tool worthwhile? I have my doubts, but I suppose time will tell. El_C 15:21, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
        • I guess useful as an at-a-glance way to help me figure out if it's worth the time to try and build a case. I'd never just point to it in a SPI case, since that's barely more useful than pointing at an editor's entire edit history... Actual evidence would still be required to go from there is a fairly benign use for such a tool that wouldn't exactly be what I was worrying about. I don't know enough about SPI to know if that is the extent of how it would be used, but if it's just a pointer to see if gathering actual evidence is more likely to be worth your time it's probably not that problematic (though you may want to empirically test its usefulness first). ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 16:00, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

          That's definitely how I use the Editor Interaction Analyzer. Sure, anyone can run it on two editors, wave their hand at the amount of overlap, and say "See‽", but that really only plays well among conspiracy theorists on Wikipediocracy. At SPI, it's little more than a starting point. In some cases where an overlap is particularly obvious (say, a dozen AfDs where two low-edit-count accounts commented a minute apart), it might "speak for itself", just as an editor's contribs might. But no one's getting indeffed because they happen to have some overlap with some other editor. In general, it's just a good way to find diffs to look at. For instance, I filed an SPI that had massive overlap among the accounts, but that wasn't in itself surprising because they all edited in the same topic area; you would have found lots of overlap comparing them to their opponents in the area too. Instead I had to go through each page and each diff to figure out whether the overlap looked innocent or whether there were signs of sock/meatpuppetry. Ultimately there will never be a substitute for that; just tools that help us aggregate suspicious diffs better. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 18:39, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• I may not use the tool myself but I don't see any concern, at least not any that doesn't also apply to the checkuser tool itself. Checkuser already reveals when one person is using multiple accounts, and then it's up to the human operator to determine if the use constitutes a violation of the multiple accounts policy, which is what blocks are based on. Neither checkuser nor this new tool actually create blocks. I am concerned though with making the results of this program available to the public, it would definitely be used for abuse, like to out editors with valid undisclosed privacy accounts. If access is limited to checkusers (who are selected for proficiency in handling sensitive information) then it's less of a concern, but I guess the fact that Ladsgroup created this means that anyone else could create their own if they really wanted to. Ivanvector's squirrel (^trees/_nuts) 13:45, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

  It is probable that such a tool could be easily created, or already has been. I believe Ladsbroke is absolutely entitled legally and morally to use it (assuming it does not break API query rate limits), and share the code to the world if they so wish (security by obscurity is not a solution). Whether "we" (the community? the WMF? the developers?) should approve its use for official CU-like purposes is another issue entirely.

You are supposed to only use CU when you have sufficient evidence already. In contrast, such a tool would be used to create such evidence (otherwise, one would go straight to CU), and therefore would need to be run against everyone (or everyone who edited such-and-such article, or meets certain criteria that would be insufficient for a CU).

Checkuser creates log which can, at least in theory, be audited; "fishing expeditions" initiated without behavioural evidence would bring unwanted attention to their author. In contrast, I fail to envision a use policy for that tool that would meaningfully restrict its use. (If such a policy is produced, I will gladly withdraw my objection to its use by checkusers or admins or potentially anyone.) Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 16:13, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

• I think it sounds useful, but it is important to train people properly in its use (and, more importantly, its limitations), the same way we do with existing SPI tools. It is just one flawed and limited indicator... but since all our indicators are, generally, flawed and limited in some way, it is useful to have if used properly and in concert with them. --Aquillion (talk) 14:35, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• When the tool is available for enwiki, someone should run it on, say, 100 closed sockpuppet cases (to see how many false negatives it produces), and on 100 definitely-not-sockpuppetcases (both sock cases which turned out to be false, and e.g. between 2 different CUs) to check how mony false positives you get. Only then can some decision be made whether it can be trusted somewhat or not at all. Fram (talk) 15:40, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

  I don't know if I will individually get up to 100 of each but a version of this is definitely my plan once it's available on enwiki. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:42, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you Joe for bringing this up. Regardless of its accuracy, I have several issues with this tool.
  Firstly, and perhaps the most disconcerting, this tool appears to build a digital fingerprint of every single enwiki editor with more than a minor number of edits. (I believe the threshold is 100, but obviously it could be raised or lowered depending on the number of edits required for the tool to build the fingerprint.) Currently, checkusers and other editors comparing writing styles can only compare suspect accounts—it is an impossibility to compare a suspect sock against every other Wikipedia editor. This keeps investigations focused.
  Secondly, this fingerprint is perpetual, which is in direct contrast to the checkuser tool, which only stores IP and user agent information for 90 days. I don't know how this interacts with GDPR, since I am neither a lawyer nor European.
  Thirdly, the information that can be gained from a digital fingerprint of your writing style is significantly more profiling than even most checkuser data. Checkuser data tells checkusers who view it your rough geographic location and the web browser that you use. In rare cases, it can also tell us what company you work for or school you go to, if your company or school owns their own subnet. Other than that case, checkuser data tells us nothing about your age, gender, and other personally identifiable information. A digital fingerprint of your writing style and articles edited can potentially be used to build a significantly more detailed profile of you. (See what Google and Facebook do as examples.) Your writing style alone gives a strong indication of your gender and age. It also tells what your native language likely is, where and how you learned English, and potentially more information about you as a person. A technique very similar to this is what advertising companies do to display ads relevant to you on websites. Obviously, this particular tool does not attempt to profile editors, and I am in no way attempting to claim that checkusers are building shadow profiles of every user. I am simply pointing out what information could be gleaned from a fingerprint.
  Sorry, but as I mentioned several months ago when this idea was first proposed on the checkuser mailing list, I don't think it's a good idea. I do not think that most users on here were aware of the potential power of machine learning when they made their first edits. Yes, I am aware that all edits are public. No, I don't think that we should do something just because we can. I am open to being convinced otherwise if the community does not mind the use of tool(s) like this. Reaper Eternal (talk) 16:46, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• Am I missing a link to a page with more information on how the tool works, or is that too limited to checkusers? meta:User:Ladsgroup/masz presents two sample graphs, which do not present a clear threshold for distinction (there are differences between the socks, and close similarities between the non-socks). That suggests a lot of interpretation would still be needed, going back to diff comparisons or similar. I do feel, similar to as has been noted above, that there is great potential use for such a tool in indicating possible other socks, similar to the way CU checks currently do. A tool which pointed out for example where a sock diff had been fully/partially reinstated for example would save a lot of time diff searching. However, if the use is just to point out areas that would be great for analysis, this is not too helpful if limited just to CUs, who don't seem to have the time to efficiently cover the existing SPI process where diffs are expected to be already found. Given what sounds like limited benefit, and the potential drawbacks covered above, I am wary of adding further to CU/admin burden. CMD (talk) 17:16, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• I support improved tooling for SPI and CheckUser. Although, given the potential of state-of-the-art NLP, I think this should be subject to usage auditing comparable to that of the rest of CheckUser technical evidence. MarioGom (talk) 18:46, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
• I know I had comments about this idea when it was first initially proposed, but I don't really want to trudge through (probably mailing list) archives to find it. While this tool may be useful, I'm concerned about two things: false positives and fishing. CheckUser is a technical tool requiring human interpretation to be useful. This tool is not. We've had problems in the past with people seeing large numbers in toolforge:copyvios and thinking that means something, without actually checking. This tool, as I understand it, allows for that same big number bias. I also don't want to see this tool being used as a pretext for CheckUser checks that would otherwise be called fishing. I don't think this tool should be used by any CUs until and unless it has been established that it is sensitive enough and does not introduce new bias and there is policy guidance for its use. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:25, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

  Those comments were in this wikitech-l thread. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 02:30, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

• There is definitely an ethical element to this debate. On the one hand, we have public information, which can be manipulated and analysed. It's fair to say that our users (checkusers, yes, but also other editors) do analyse edits, compare stylistic and linguistic differences - which is roughly what I understand this tool to do. What's more, it's also fair to say that AI has been a massive boon to Wikipedia over the years. I have considered writing a similar program myself, but never had the time or energy to put something like it together.
  On the other hand, there's the question of "should we do something just because we can?". This tool will mass profile our editors. Call it a digital fingerprint if you like, but it is an identifier available. I don't expect our Checkuser team to abuse such information, but I can think of many abuses of it - As a member of the Arbitration Committee, I've seen many disclosures of Legitimate Alternate Accounts, where individuals would be targeted in real life if their editing was known. I can certainly imagine situations where having that sort of information could be used by unscrupulous individuals for harassment. What's more, depending on the output of this fingerprint, it could be used beyond Wikipedia - to identify individuals who have written blog posts and twitter posts.
  What's more, Wikipedia has a unique setup - it's history cannot be deleted easily, every page is a culmination of every edit that happened in the history. As such, we don't offer a real ability to remove yourself from Wikipedia - we don't have the option to have all your edits deleted. Combined with the fact that edits made years ago would not have come close to expecting this digital fingerprint, we are saying that 1) we're going to profile you and 2) there's nothing you can do about it. But it's ok, because we won't use it to do anything besides check if you've been abusing our Sockpuppetry policies - and only be given to a select number of individuals.
  Perhaps the cat is out of the bag - AI is progressing at an exponential rate, and if it wasn't this tool, it would be someone else's. But let's be clear, there are things we should be considering here. I, for one, am extremely uncomfortable. Worm^TT(talk) 09:16, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
• I'm a bit concerned that there hasn't been any published information on the effectiveness of the tool or on a plan to validate its effectiveness. New tools for checkusers can be good, but we ought to ensure the tools are evaluated (with a feedback loop for improvements), and proper guidance given to checkusers on how to take best advantage of the tools. isaacl (talk) 00:46, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

• I remember attending a presentation at Wikimania a couple years ago on the subject of algorithm-assisted sockpuppetry detection. It left an impression on me more than most of the sessions I was in. It strikes me as extremely important to improve our sock puppet detection capabilities, as one of our most glaring weaknesses and, if I may be a little dramatic, one of the greatest threats to the integrity of the project amid declining good faith participation and shrinking admin pool. I had reservations at the Wikimania session largely due to the premise, which if I recall correctly was about automatic detection that would then be checked. Having such software always running and detecting matches would cause any problems with the algorithms to cause damage at a large scale, and errs on the side of outing legit socks. (Tangent: I still think we don't have clear enough processes documented about legit socks, rules for use, limits, and protections thereof. It's one of the only reasons I don't advocate for more liberal usage of checkuser in general.) That said, the way I'm reading this, it's just another tool in the checkuser toolbox, employed as needed when a suspicion arises. More information is good. Like others, I'm curious to see this in action, but love that it's happening. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:30, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
• I take what's being said about our need to identify socks. Is this tool reliable in doing so or will it find too many false positives? There are so many opportunities. Most obviously, editors with a (non-English) first language in common will often write English with similarly distinctive vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure carried over from their first language, as well as often having similar national concerns. Many of us switch registers to communicate and fit in; our Wikipedia "voice" may be only one of our voices and it may subtly conform with others. The tool should be tested on editors well-understood to be different but editing in the same areas, as well as on the more exciting cases of sockmasters who made a special effort to write differently (eg).
  If the tool works well, could it dox? Suppose an editor (not me) used to edit under their real name, took a long break and came back with an ordinary pseudonym. If the tool runs on all history, would it link those accounts? NebY (talk) 21:26, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  It would not be useful for fishing out random connections as the tool would not be that precise. It would not be able to distinguish 100,000s of different editors. So it could connect edits, but not very precisely say that this is the same person, as there could be hundreds that write the same way. If there is additional suspicion, eg edits to the same article then it would be much more likely that it was the same person if the editing was in the same style. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:12, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

  Currently all it does is give you a list of users with similar language patterns, and depending on what areas of the project they are active on it is of limited usefulness. There's still a substantial degree of human judgement involved, and I would never base a check or block solely on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:52, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

• I'll try to summarize my various thoughts on this from the list here: all of this information is public, and there were academics studying how to do this before Ladsgroup started it. A significant number of the edits we make are already put under analysis by a machine either automatically or at the discretion of anyone with an internet connection (see: ORES, ClueBot, Editor Interaction Utility, Interaction Timeline, and I'm sure there are others.)
  While I get there are different views on the ethics of using data, everything on Wikipedia is by it's very definition public, and we can assume that users who have been here long enough (for whom the privacy concerns mainly apply), are aware that everything they post is public. Every time they push the edit button, they agree to make their contributions public and be used in any way they want. I personally don't see an issue with that, especially when there's a human at the other end making the ultimate judgement call. Ultimately, there's really not all that much the community can do on this: while Ladsgroup would likely be willing to disable it on en.wiki if asked, eventually someone is going to create something like this and make it available for anti-abuse purposes, and they won't be willing to turn it off, nor would there be anyway to require them to, and efforts to restrict people from using it would be just as ethically dubious: telling people what they can or can't do on their home computers with data that is public and where the actions don't directly impact others really isn't something that as a community we should be trying to do, in my view.
  So, yes, I think letting people know this is a capability that someone's developed is fine. It's also been a capability others have been testing for a while. There's not really much new here except Ladsgroup has made it easy to do. There's also really not much that can be done about it from a policy angle, and I personally don't see any ethical issues with analyzing publicly available data by people who knew that their posts would be public. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:52, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

  I agree that checkusers (or any editor) can use any tool they want off-wiki, and there isn't a lot of scope to try to limit this. I think it would be helpful nonetheless for there to be guidance on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of popular tools, as well as guidance on best practices in using them. isaacl (talk) 03:22, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, I'd agree. I think that's something we could talk to Ladsgroup about/develop as it is used. Still relatively new globally, and hasn't been rolled out on en.wiki. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:29, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

My first thought is being reminded of some bits of that business in 2019 (1, 2, 3... I wasn't around then and maybe I shouldn't bring the matter up. I don't know...). I don't know what to think about this present tool, but I suppose I lean Worm-wards. —2d37 (talk) 09:19, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

• I personally don't see why this needs to be restricted to checkusers. CUs have access to private data; the data here isn't private, in the sense that anybody can download the raw data from the WMF data servers and do whatever analysis they want on it. Well, at least I'm assuming there's no non-private data involved; correct me if I'm wrong about that.

As far as blindly using the tool, it's just a tool. And like all tools, has to be used properly, which means applying human judgement. In my own work as an SPI clerk, I use most of the tools mentioned here (and have written some of my own). But it's all just guidance and assistance to sift through the morass of raw data. It would be a terrible mistake for anybody to use any tool and block somebody because the tool returned a value greater than 0.5, or whatever. At the same time, I fully understand that doing things in scale changes them in fundamental ways. I have no problem with the fact that when I walk down the street, people can see me. I do have a problem with there being cameras on every street corner recording every move I make. On the other hand, when my car was broken into a while ago, I really wished there were cameras on every street corner near my house so we could have caught the person who did it.

I am befuddled by this statement that "The code for it is licensed GPLv3 but it's not public". I don't understand how something that's GPLv3 can be "not public". And the fact that the code's not public bothers me a lot, because it precludes broad analysis of the algorithms. -- RoySmith (talk) 06:59, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith these were discussed on wikitech (see para 5 of OP for why code is private). – SD0001 (talk) 13:32, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Linking to special page, block log, etc.

Hi. I want to create an internal link to my block log for my bio page. How can I render this as a blue link? Piotr Jr. (talk) 21:03, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

• URL query strings are not supported in wikilinks directly. You can style the external link several ways, see Help:Link#Links_containing_URL_query_strings. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:14, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. Piotr Jr. (talk) 03:19, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Piotr Jr.: If etc means you want other links then many special pages can be wikilinked with a parameter. Special:Log can be wikilinked by type+performer but not by target as far as I know. Special:Log/block/Piotr Jr. is blocks performed by you (none since you aren't an admin). Some others like Special:Log/create/Piotr Jr. and Special:Log/move/Piotr Jr. have entries. Special:Log/Piotr Jr. is most logs by you. It says "All public logs" but that's inaccurate. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:16, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Is this documented anywhere? ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:41, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

It's in the MediaWiki documentation under Help:Log, at the bottom. William Avery (talk) 20:04, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

And partially at Help:Log#Viewing logs which is linked on "Help" at the top right of Special:Log. MediaWiki documentation is scattered and incomplete. Both pages are probably mainly written by volunteer editors with what they know. Some of the MediaWiki page was copied from the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:19, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Template question

Hello, folks,

I was deleting an expired draft and when I looked at the page creator's contributions, I found they also started a template for this wanna be artist that was blank (Template:Infobox artist Carla Pricop). I regularly look at database reports and reports compiled by bots that reported orphaned talk pages, expiring drafts, empty categories, broken redirects, etc. but I've never come across a report that would have reported a template page like this, blank & uncategorized, so that it could either be nominated at TFD or tagged for speedy deletion. Is anyone here aware of a bot that handles this or reports that are generated on things like blank template pages? Coming across this page just made me wonder if we might have a lot of unused, misplaced junk lying around in the Template space.

I've also found that some new editors who can't start a new article in the main space, start a template page instead and put content on it like they should be putting on a Draft or User page.

I looked at Template talk pages where I might post this query but the ones I came across don't get a lot of traffic so I'm posting this here. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:12, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates. {{Infobox artist Carla Pricop}} is only transcluded on Draft:Carla Pricop so it would have been reported if the draft was deleted first. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

This discussion about unused templates may be of interest. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:18, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Is viewing IP edit history on mobile removed now?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291233

I’ve tried clicking the edit history of IPs including mine but they only show the invalid user error and I’m wondering if the IP edit history has been removed on mobile. 2600:1003:B8DE:FBCA:B8C1:C57:CEF0:F1EC (talk) 00:40, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

• It's a bug, standby for a tracking number; WP:ITSTHURSDAY. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:06, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
• phab:T291233 opened on this bug. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:09, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
  • For temporary workaround, use the desktop view at the bottom of the page first. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:10, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
  • For those with access to the options panel, selecting "advanced mode" also is a work around. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:30, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
• FYI: Bug has been confirmed, pending patch acceptance and deployment. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:08, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Can't see IP contributions in mobile view

[[28]] leads to a bad username error message

[[29]] resolves without issue.

Bug? New Feature? Slywriter (talk) 17:01, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@Slywriter: see above. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:04, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Was about to strike my post as I noticed it was staring right at me. Slywriter (talk) 17:07, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Javascript error

Hello, I went on a script installation spree earlier then I started getting an error message on the right side of my screen. The error says "Failed to set referrer policy: The value 'origin-when-crossorigin' is not one of 'no-referrer', 'no-referrer-when-downgrade', 'same-origin', 'origin', 'strict-origin', 'origin-when-cross-origin', 'strict-origin-when-cross-origin' or 'unsafe-url'.

resolveStubbornly — load.php:8:543"

I have tried bypassing my browser cache.

I use a Safari browser Version 14.1 and macOS Big Sur Version 11.3

Many thanks for the help. Princess of Ara 22:49, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

@Princess of Ara: turn off all those scripts, then try them one at a time. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:09, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

You probably also shouldn't install foreign project user scripts if you don't review them first, and ensure you trust the editor (e.g. you are now loading w:ru:Участник:Vlsergey/wef.js). — xaosflux ^Talk 01:12, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

You can safely ignore that warning, MediaWiki emits two referrer policies in the HTML of each page. origin-when-crossorigin is non-standardized but used to support older browsers. T248526 and T180921 have some more details. Legoktm (talk) 08:01, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I'm not exactly technically inclined but I gather that the problem has to do with Safari itself. To save myself the headache, I've made chrome my default browser and not experiencing any issues so far! Im grateful. Princess of Ara 08:25, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Princess of Ara, no there's nothing wrong with your browser or Safari. In order to support older browsers we have to add the extra code, which causes a harmless warning on some newer ones - but you can just ignore it. Legoktm (talk) 19:11, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

New archive provider: ghostarchive.org

https://ghostarchive.org is a new web archive provider, similar to Conifer ie. Webrecorder.io without the login or usage cap requirements. It uses the Open Source Webrecorder technology (which is state of the art IMO). It would be suitable for YouTube and other video formats for example, although there are size caps on video file saves. It's great for advanced JavaScript pages, such as scrolling content, social media sites. Anything that has trouble saving at Wayback or archive.today might do better here. There are a couple usage steps to be aware of, documented at Help:Archiving_a_source#Ghostarchive.org. -- GreenC 19:49, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Math puzzle: figure out the equation for cropping image collages

Lately I've been working on a bunch of image collages that use {{Multiple image}}. However, one of the trickiest parts is cropping so that images align with each other, as at rows 2/3 of Beijing where the vertical line goes straight down. I've been using a trial and error approach where I make a crop file on Commons and then keep overwriting it until I find the right proportion to get the lines to align, but this takes a lot of time, clutters my edit history, uses up more server space, and doesn't always reach a perfectly aligned result. Would there be a system of equations where I could plug in the aspect ratios of all but one of the images I'd like to use and it'll give me the ratio for the final one? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:28, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: If I understand the problem correctly it should be as simple as summing the vertical and horizontal pixels and finding out what the effective size of the gap is to use as your aspect ratio. Taking an example where we have just 3 images in a 2x2 grid and we're trying to find the aspect ratio of the 4th:

5x4	3x9
2x10	?

• Sum horizontal pixels: 5+3 = 8. Then subtract the horizontal pixels from the row you're placing the image in (2): 8-2 = 6
• Sum vertical pixels: 4+10 = 14. Then subtract the vertical pixels from the row you're placing the image in (9): 14-9 = 5
• The aspect ratio of the final image should be 6:5.
• I guess in one equation this would be (sum of horizontal pixels from other rows - sum of horizontal pixels already used in this row):(sum of vertical pixels from other rows - sum of vertical pixels already used in this row)

Is that what you were after? Sam Walton (talk) 09:10, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

It gets a little trickier since the images are all scaled in relation to each other (and there's a—I think—4px buffer between them, which comes into play especially if there's 3 images on a row rather than two). But I think that basic approach ought to work; I'll continue working on it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:20, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Xena: Warrior Princess (comics)

Resolved

 – Error in template was fixed. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:52, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

A couple of formatting problems on Xena: Warrior Princess (comics) that I haven't been able to solve.

1. At the very top of the article, ahead of the introduction there's a stray "Xena: Warrior Princess (comics) ]]", but I can't find where it's coming from; it does not appear to be getting transcluded by the navbox template, and I can't find that string as a broken category declaration in the article text. So my best guess would be that it appears to be getting artificially generated by the infobox, but I can't see where or how.
2. At the very bottom of the article, there's a redlinked "Greco-Roman mythology in comics" category, pursuant to a recent renaming of that category to Category:Classical mythology in comics — but again, I can't find where that category is coming from in order to fix it either. Again, most likely being artificially generated by the infobox, but again I can't solve where.

Can somebody solve this, please? Bearcat (talk) 18:09, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The part at the top is from |Adaptation=TV. MB 18:47, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

All of this is certainly coming from the monster Template:Infobox comics meta series. Will have to come back to try to unravel all of that. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:48, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed both (editing Template:Comics infobox sec/genrecat) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:07, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Bearcat (talk) 20:16, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Includeonly with category

Hello! I'm in the process of deprecating parameters at Template:Infobox Playboy Playmate and have set up the following:

<includeonly>{{#if:{{{bust|}}}{{{waist|}}}{{{hips|}}}|[[Category:Pages using infobox Playboy Playmate with deprecated parameters]]}}</includeonly>

However, the template is still categorised into the tracking category. What's going on? Did I do something wrong, or is this a bug? Tol (talk | contribs) @ 00:33, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Removing the parameters from the template documentation removed the template and the documentation from the category. Also added {{Category handler}} to remove it from unwanted namespaces. Nardog (talk) 00:50, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Nardog: Ahh! Thank you so much for catching that. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 01:32, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

The usual way to do this is to wrap the if statement in {{main other}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:36, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Excessive whitespace

I keep seeing deep whitespace at the top of Talk pages where templates have been added to new user (example: User talk:Chrashley). Is this required and 'normal'? On one such I manually reduced it, so I want to clarify if I'm in the wrong here (example). Thank you.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 20:55, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@Rocknrollmancer: a quick tag search for NewPages by RedWarn suggests this is at least one of the culprits. I've reported this as a bug at Wikipedia talk:RedWarn. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:49, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Follow up at Wikipedia_talk:RedWarn#Whitespace_Bug as needed. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:52, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: - I've had a quick skim through and can see it's a Beta. It makes sense that - being a minimal click utility launching a pop-up window - the users would not be looking at the end result. I have a cat who likes to walk on the keyboard so if I leave an editing pane open and walk away I have to check what changes have been made! rgds,--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 08:43, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Rocknrollmancer: it looks like they fixed it, here is a page created before the fix: User talk:148.77.89.202, and one after: User talk:27.110.174.204. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:00, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Now, other scripts and tools could also be introducing similar issues - for example on User talk:Chrashley - the whitespace was introduced in this edit Special:PermaLink/1045846338 by User:ClueBot NG; when you see these being made by someone or some tool - following up with that maintainer is the next step (in that case: User talk:ClueBot Commons). — xaosflux ^Talk 11:04, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Xaosflux: - I've seen another but that was redwarn - I'll be more aware for any others.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 21:10, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Where's the Search Button?

Resolved

 – Fixed in T291272

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291272
Resolved

As soon as I type something into the search bar, the [Search] button vanishes and is replaced exclusively by the [Go] button. What a huge impediment. -- Veggies (talk) 23:09, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Veggies: this is currently broken, see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_192#Search_box and phab:T291272. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:16, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

You can start a search with tilde ~ or click "Search for pages containing" below the dropdown search suggestions. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:39, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Veggies: it should be fixed now, please let me know if you're still running into issues. Legoktm (talk) 01:24, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Is <math> broken?

Getting broken rendering at Equivalent air depth#Derivation of the formulas. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 13:23, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks OK to me. Please be more specific. What is your Math setting at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:46, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools) · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 14:15, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Works fine on tablet with Chrome. Problem is on desktop with Firefox. Problem is probably Firefox, as it also gives problems with upload wizard on Commons. Says browser is incompatible. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 14:35, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

You still haven't said what "broken rendering" means but it looks fine to me in Firefox 92.0 with the same Math setting. Which Firefox version do you have? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:49, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Looks fine to me, unless I'm missing something subtle. Firefox 91 desktop for Mac OS, "MathML with SVG or PNG fallback" selected. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:35, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Template's collapsed state is not working

I'm using {{Structural geology}} on Fissure. The documentation says you can use the |state= parameter set to |state=collapsed and the page will open with the navbox collapsed but it is not working. Can someone help me figure out what's wrong? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 13:29, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed in Special:Diff/1046401831. —⁠andrybak (talk) 13:38, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes Andrybak, it's working now and I certainly appreciate you for helping with that. I am curious about one thing though. The structural geology template has {{Collapsible option}} embedded within, ostensibly (I presume) to accept the parameter and perform the function. I'm wondering why it failed?--John Cline (talk) 14:11, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

John Cline, Template:Collapsible option is only there to document |state=. If you look at the code of the Template:Structural geology, you'll see that wikitext {{collapsible option}} is inside tags <noinclude>...</noinclude> (and also wrapped in {{Documentation}}), and therefore isn't part of output of {{Structural geology}}. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:15, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I understand, thank you again.--John Cline (talk) 14:20, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

List of most frequently used URLs in sources?

I recall at one point seeing a list of the most frequently used URLs in citations on Wikipedia. I'd like to reference it, but I can't find it now. Does anyone here know where to find (or how to create) a list of the most frequently used websites in external links within reference tags? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:04, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Most cited domains has a top-15 from 2015 and links phab:P587 with a long list. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:37, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

142429 references to IMDb? Yikes... Elli (talk | contribs) 23:40, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

I think it includes external links sections. {{IMDb title}} is currently transcluded in 173,406 articles, and {{IMDb name}} in 139,593. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:51, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that works! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:46, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

That list pre-dates IABot. Thus web.archive.org should be #1 by now as every URL dies eventually. I think it should exclude archive URLs and use the underlying source URL, though it depends on use case. -- GreenC 19:24, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Site down completely for several minutes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291765
Resolved

Resolved

 – All sites are back online, and SREs are investigating. Seems to have been a DoS attack. ItsPugle (talk) 03:52, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

The entirety of Wikipedia was down for about ten minutes just now. Abductive (reasoning) 03:18, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

And all? other Wikimedia wikis. It's phab:T291765. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:22, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Looking at Recent Changes, it was out between 03:08 and 03:15, and still is slow. Abductive (reasoning) 03:24, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I see the ticket is marked "resolved". Does that mean we know what happened, and how to ensure it doesn't happen again?--John Cline (talk) 04:01, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

It "just" means that the reported issue (all the sites are down) has been resolved This comment has a bit more information. ~TNT (she/they • talk) 04:04, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @John Cline: It seems to have been a DOS attack, just like the outage that happened a couple of weeks ago. They won't release the exact cause until they've fixed the bug that allowed it to happen, for obvious reasons. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 04:07, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

The error message displayed was "overflow" and buffer overflow is the most common type of DOS it can take many forms from brute flood to sophisticated targeting specific router mfgs on certain levels of the network stack. Most sites are well protected these days but DOS will never go away for the same reason malware generally is a fact of life. Hopefully they can learn what caused it and patch that particular vulnerability. -- GreenC 04:35, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

The overflow error message is actually misleading and not the real issue, just a symptom, see phab:T287983 for fixing that. Legoktm (talk) 16:27, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Question about the Wikipedia app for iOS

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T96546

Moved from WP:TH

 – Interstellarity (talk) 18:37, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

On the Wikipedia app for iOS, I would like to stop the app from saving my searches and the articles I read. To be clear, I am NOT asking how to clear my search and reading history. I know how how to do that. In other words, what I am asking is that I would like to do searches and read articles on Wikipedia without having the app to save my history. I hope to get an answer soon and as always, please ping me. Interstellarity (talk) 17:52, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Interstellarity. Generally Teashouse hosts know about editing Wikipedia, not about the ins and outs of the software. I suggest asking at WP:VPT. --ColinFine (talk) 18:00, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I have moved the discussion. Interstellarity (talk) 18:37, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

• I think this is phab:T96546, you may subscribe or comment on that task. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:25, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Collapsible subtables

On ages of consent by country (which I encountered when cleaning up uses of {{flaglist+link}}, which is being deleted), there are various expandable sections in a table, allowing you to see the ages of consent for each state in countries where it varies by state. The way this is currently implemented is a bit of a mess, as the collapsible sections are separate tables that don't always line up properly. Is there some better way to do this? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:43, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that's possible. Collapsible content can be specified by assigning the class mw-collapsible-content, only if it's inside the element with mw-collapsible (mw:Manual:Collapsible elements). It would be possible if we could manually group certain rows with <tbody>...</tbody>, but MediaWiki strips it out of the table. Plus, the article violates MOS:ACCESS on multiple accounts, particularly MOS:DTAB and MOS:DONTHIDE. Reminds me of List of highest-grossing films#Highest-grossing franchises and film series, which has similar problems and is even a featured list. Nardog (talk) 23:03, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that part of the problem is that {{flaglist+link}} does not appear to allow for specification of the column width. Since you are replacing it with something else, you should be able to specify the width of the first column throughout the table. I played with it a bit, and I ran up against that apparent fundamental limitation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:20, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

You can remove |table=y from {{Flaglist+link}} and then align the flag yourself if you want to specify the width. But that doesn't resolve Nardog's concern that the article should be structured in a different way and shouldn't use these tables at all. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:41, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery to Wikipedia:Tech news no longer produces timestamped section ids

Template:Latest tech news has been producing empty output for a while. The template uses Labeled section transclusion, which relies on timestamped section IDs on the page Wikipedia:Tech news. However, the page no longer has timestamped section IDs.

The format of posts by User:MediaWiki message delivery to Wikipedia:Tech news has changed between weeks 12 and 13 of 2021. Wikipedia:Tech news/Archive 8#Tech News: 2021-12 has the timestamped technews-2021-W12 but Wikipedia:Tech news/Archive 8#Tech News: 2021-13 has tech-newsletter-content. However, the corresponding pages on Meta don't seem to correspond to that. Both meta:Tech/News/2021/12 and meta:Tech/News/2021/13 have the non-timestamped section ID tech-newsletter-content Even in meta:Tech/News/2020/01 from January of 2020 the section ID is not timestamped. So I assume that something changed with the delivery of these posts to Wikipedia:Tech news.

Pinging User:Johan (WMF) and User:Quiddity (WMF) – editors of recent Tech News on Meta, User:Guillom and User:wbm1058 who implemented the Template:Latest tech news, User:Quiddity and User:Evad37 who edited the preamble of Wikipedia:Tech news. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:40, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

⁠andrybak: Ah, yes, the MassMessage delivery system was changed earlier this year, mainly to allow the use of translated fallback languages. This should be the culprit. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 11:44, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Technews send mass message

@Johan (WMF): Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Latest is a page that doesn't exist on English Wikipedia. Only on meta: m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Latest. Can't transclude a page from another wiki: {{m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Latest}} Is it possible for a delivered mass message to overwrite an existing page rather than append to the bottom of it? I assume the labeled sections, which are redundant to the normal sections, were added because {{#section-h:page name|heading}} is difficult or impossible to use when section headings embed wikilinks: == [[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2020/29|Tech News: 2020-29]] == hence rather than {{#section-h: to that monster of a section heading we had <section begin="technews-2020-W29"/> enabling {{#section:page name|label}}: {{#section:Wikipedia:Tech news|technews-2020-W29}}

Whoever changed this to <section begin="tech-newsletter-content"/> didn't understand the purpose of labeled sections because now we have several identically labeled sections forcing the template to say "link to the last section that was identically labeled. There are no language-translation issues here; all that's required to make the section labels unique is to plug in numbers – the year "2020" and the week "29". This works by looking up the current week {{#time: W | now - 12 hours }} and then "show me the section that's labeled with the current week number". – wbm1058 (talk) 14:42, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: It looks like you fixed it, thank you! E.g. The latest edition is now showing up properly (after a purge-action) at WP:Community Portal#Technical news.

Nope, it is not possible for MassMessage to overwrite content. (Perhaps file a feature-request in phabricator?)

One small clarification: the <section begin="tech-newsletter-content"/> code is entirely a by-product of using MassMessage with partial-page-content (i.e. excluding headers/navtemplates/etc - cf. Step.5 in mw:Help:Extension:MassMessage#Sending a message). IIRC, the previously varying custom-id each week was just an aspect of the old semi-manual (and more error-prone) method of collating each of the translations via the #invoke magic. I.e. We editors didn't change anything ourselves, we just happily started using a system that has less chance of manual-error and now enables delivering in/to fallback-languages. HTH! Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:11, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

User:Johan (WMF) and User:Quiddity (WMF) – My fix was just a stopgap manual edit that will need to be redone every time a new issue of tech news is released. So the "section of the page" drop-down menu needs to have an option that says "technews-2021-W38" rather than "tech-newsletter-content". This section specification comes from m:Tech/News/init. When you use that to initialize Tech/News/2021/39 m:Tech/News/init should pull the "2021" and the "39" from the page title of the page being initialized. That should be easier than fixing it from my end which would involve running a bot similarly as this task. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:03, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: Ah, ok. I've started a thread at m:Talk:Tech/News/init to determine how to fix this properly. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 03:02, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Extremely long timestamps in Special:NewPagesFeed

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291675
Resolved

In Special:NewPagesFeed, I get now extremely, irritatingly long and repetitive timestamps (I don't remember seeing this before). On the left side, I get "Created by Kailash29792 (talk | contribs) · 179016 edits since Fri Apr 22 2011 09:51:21 GMT+0200 (Midden-Europese zomertijd)" or "Created by Djflem (talk | contribs) · 92486 edits since Fri Dec 08 2006 10:22:01 GMT+0100 (Midden-Europese standaardtijd)", while at the right side I get "Fri Sep 24 2021 10:55:36 GMT+0200 (Midden-Europese zomertijd)" and "Fri Sep 24 2021 10:54:10 GMT+0200 (Midden-Europese zomertijd)". I use Legacy Vector, time formatting "10:46, 24 September 2021", and no timezone, and language "en - English" (my Google account as well has English as language). Is this some new unwanted feature in the feed, or is this somehow Chrome interfering with how these are displayed? I don't have this issue on e.g. the watchlist or a page history. Fram (talk) 10:52, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox and I get Created by Paruart (talk | contribs) · 10 edits since Thu Sep 09 2021 20:12:15 GMT+0100 (British Summer Time). I'm using the legacy vector skin too. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 10:59, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Disabling legacy vector does not change the behavior for me. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 11:01, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

This change does not seem to be because of a skin change. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 11:02, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

It's not also caused by any of my userscripts. I tested this by enabling safemode. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 11:04, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. So probably some Thursday WMF magic? Fram (talk) 11:06, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• WP:ITSTHURSDAY - I've opened phab:T291685. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:09, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
  • Which is now phab:T291675. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:23, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
    • Thanks. Fram (talk) 11:57, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. Legoktm (talk) 19:25, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh yes, much better, thank you all! Fram (talk) 14:56, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Return of the deformed pie chart

Template:Pie chart displays incorrectly in the Android mobile app when using dark mode. See the screenshot to the right. It looks fine in light mode. This seems pretty similar to the bug discussed in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 166#Deformed pie chart back in 2018. -Apocheir (talk) 23:02, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

It never went away. The 2018 bug was never fixed, pie charts are still deformed to users of the green-on-black gadget. DuncanHill (talk) 23:09, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

Last time I checked, {{Pie chart}} still isn't using the modern graph extension. Rather than continuing to make patchwork repairs to the old system, we need to just convert it to use the modern one. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:42, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Where to report suggestion for audio player improvement?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291894

I noticed that playing one audio file from {{Listen}} doesn't automatically pause other files that are already playing, as might be expected. Is there a specific page where I should report things like this to whatever WMF team might eventually get around to redesigning the audio player, or should I just stick it on Phabricator? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:45, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests has some links, but yes phab would be the way. I'm not seeing a reason this would require a "WMF team". However your request is quite broad, and an enhancement request should be a bit more specific. For example - when would you expect this to happen - nothing stops me for example from playing 2 different youtube streams at the same time in 2 tabs. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:53, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Johann_Sebastian_Bach The Cantatas section is presumably an example, where each sound file loads and plays independently. (Side note: they sound surprisingly nice when all played together) Slywriter (talk) 20:59, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I went ahead and created a phab ticket and gave an example there. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:09, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-39

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

Recent changes

• iOS 15 has a new function called Private Relay (Apple website). This can hide the user's IP when they use Safari browser. This is like using a VPN in that we see another IP address instead. It is opt-in and only for those who pay extra for iCloud. It will come to Safari users on OSX later. There is a technical discussion about what this means for the Wikimedia wikis.

Problems

• Some gadgets and user-scripts add items to the portlets (article tools) part of the skin. A recent change to the HTML may have made those links a different font-size. This can be fixed by adding the CSS class .vector-menu-dropdown-noicon. [30]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 September. It will be on all wikis from 30 September (calendar).
• The GettingStarted extension was built in 2013, and provides an onboarding process for new account holders in a few versions of Wikipedia. However, the recently developed Growth features provide a better onboarding experience. Since the vast majority of Wikipedias now have access to the Growth features, GettingStarted will be deactivated starting on 4 October. [31]
• A small number of users will not be able to connect to the Wikimedia wikis after 30 September. This is because an old root certificate will no longer work. They will also have problems with many other websites. Users who have updated their software in the last five years are unlikely to have problems. Users in Europe, Africa and Asia are less likely to have immediate problems even if their software is too old. You can read more.
• You can receive notifications when someone leaves a comment on user talk page or mentions you in a talk page comment. Clicking the notification link will now bring you to the comment and highlight it. Previously, doing so brought you to the top of the section that contained the comment. You can find more information in T282029.

Future changes

• The Reply tool will be deployed to the remaining wikis in the coming weeks. It is currently part of "Discussion tools" in Beta features at most wikis. You will be able to turn it off in Editing Preferences. See the list of wikis. [32]

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

22:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

No way to back from disambugated page

If I get to disambuagated page such as George Russell (racing driver) there is no way to get to disambugation page George Russell without copying name and search it in search box. Why is so basic feature missing? Eurohunter (talk) 14:36, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: I don't think this is really a technical issue - as article to article navigation is more of a content matter. If an article is a popular destination for searches, but a better landing page for readers could be the disambiguation page you can add a hatnote such as: {{For|other people with the same name|George Russell (disambiguation){{!}}George Russell}} to the page to provide an easy link. I don't think this is something that would necessarily apply to every page that could be linked this way though, thus why a technical solution is not likely the best way forward. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If your goal is to get to George Russell, what are you doing that's taking you to George Russell (racing driver) instead? There's been a consensus historically that we usually don't need hatnotes in such cases because people won't wind up at parenthetically-disambiguated pages by accident, unless multiple pages have similar disambiguators. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 14:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

As an editor I do frequently want to see what is at the base name. I just remove the parenthetical part from the url but it could be a user script: If you are on a wiki page ending with something in parentheses then make a "Base name" link under "Tools" or near the title. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:20, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

I often use the sub-pages feature to find other articles with the same base title. (One of my user scripts adds a menu option.) In this case Articles starting "George Russell" — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:41, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

There are many subpage scripts and I'm not sure which you refer to. A typical subpage script would give Special:PrefixIndex/George Russell (racing driver)/ on George Russell (racing driver). It would give Special:PrefixIndex/George Russell/ on George Russell, which gives no results due to the ending slash for subpages. The script may do nothing in mainspace since subpages are disabled there. Here is a script like my suggestion: User:PrimeHunter/Base title.js. Install with the below in your common JavaScript. It gives Base title on George Russell (racing driver).

importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Base title.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Base title.js]]

PrimeHunter (talk) 04:10, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Problem with mapframe with 7 lines from OSM via Wikidata

Resolved

 – Copied OSM relations to Commons as a work-around for T288400, and waited a day for caching be to up-to-date

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T288400

In the page Draft:High-voltage transmission line Kassø-Tjele I have tried to make a mapframe fetching 7 lines from OSM via Wikidata.

It is 5 OSM ways which should be displayed as orange lines:

• d:Q63184980: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/220924125
• d:Q63208922: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/287543094
• d:Q63209004: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/287543100
• d:Q63208969: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/287543103
• d:Q63208445: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/319088854

and 2 OSM relations of type route which should be displayed as black lines:

• d:Q62924256: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5207262
• d:Q62922138: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6698731

The 5 OSM ways are displayed in the mapframe in preview mode and when you maximize the mapframe, but not when the mapframe isn't maximized. The 2 OSM route relations are not displayed at all in the mapframe.

I have tried both defining the mapframe tag code directly in revision https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:High-voltage_transmission_line_Kass%C3%B8-Tjele&oldid=1046272983 and by using the {{maplink}} template in revision https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:High-voltage_transmission_line_Kass%C3%B8-Tjele&oldid=1046279152 with no difference in the result. I am not sure if this is a bug in the Kartographer extension or if I am doing something wrong. Any insight into this will be appreciated. Thank you. --Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 21:49, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Dipsacus fullonum I am seeing the orange lines just fine when the map is not maximized, maybe try clearing your cache. As for the two OSM relations, there's an ongoing issue that is preventing relations from displaying properly, see phab:T288400. – BrandonXLF (talk) 21:41, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

@BrandonXLF: Thank you. I exported the geodata from the OSM relations to a GeoJSON file and placed it at commons:Data:High-voltage transmission line Kassø-Tjele.map to bypass the issue preventing relations from being displayed. Now in revision https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:High-voltage_transmission_line_Kass%C3%B8-Tjele&oldid=1046776535 it look as intended (now with red and yellow line segments) in preview mode and with a maximized map frame on the page.

It seems however to be OS or browser dependent if it works in normal page view when the mapframe isn't maximized:

• Using Firefox 92.0 and Chromium 93.0.4577.82 on Linux I see no line segments at all on the map.
• Using Firefox 92.1.1 and Chrome 80.0.3987.149 on Android I see two red and two yellow lines segments, but not the third yellow line (way 220924125, d:Q63184980).

Is this difference also a known issue? --Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 12:29, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Today it looks good to me in all devices. I guess it was some kind of caching issue nevertheless. --Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 06:09, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Strange search results (gold (III) cloride)

When I search for "gold (III) cloride" I get very odd results. It fails to find Gold(III) chloride (which would correct my single-letter typo), suggests the much more hamming-distant "Did you mean: gould iii clotilde", and says "There were no results matching the query." On the other hand, it gives me "Results from sister projects" which include wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Photography. Searching for "gold(III) cloride" (i.e. without the space after "gold"), gives equally perplexing results. Can anybody explain what's going on here. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:48, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, when I type "gold (III" or "gold (III) cloride" in the search box, I am shown helpful suggestions, including the desired result. It is only after clicking the search button that things go wrong. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:43, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

The unspaced gold(III) is a rare construction outside chemistry. It doesn't surprise me if search isn't coded to discover it when you both have spaced gold (III) and another mismatch. Autocompletion and search use different algorithms so different results should sometimes be expected. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:33, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Suggests to me that we should have redirects for these various chemical names for the "incorrected" spaced names to simply help searching. This may even be a bot-able task, based on categories and titles. (list of metals followed immediately by an oxidation state). --Masem (t) 16:48, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

@EBernhardson (WMF), does your team know about this? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) This is expected behaviour, although certainly not the best from the user perspective. The query completion has fuzziness and will correct typos of up to 2 characters (can seem like more when correcting to a redirect). Full text search has no fuzziness and requires all of the words to exist somewhere in each result. As a misspelling cloride isn't found in the expected document. I would hope that the did-you-mean functionality could find the rewrite to chloride and provide results, but it hasn't managed to in this case. The current did-you-mean implementation is known to be weak, we've tested much better implementations on the same software stack but they are difficult to deploy with our data sizes. EBernhardson (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Paalika Keka

Resolved

 – Fixed upstream, workaround removed. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:09, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T291717

When looking at the View history tab, the words for "newest" and "oldest" have been replaced by "Paalika" and "Keka". I think this is very recent. Any idea what the cause might be? CMD (talk) 13:16, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

In you preferences is you language set to EN-GB? There have been some issues with the wrong date being uploaded to the translation tables and what you are seeing looks like it may an example of this. Try changing language to just EN. Nthep (talk) 13:31, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Yup, MediaWiki:Histfirst and MediaWiki:Histlast are wrong for en-gb. Really, no one should use en-gb, it is a monstrosity. Looks like these were screwed up at translatewiki - they were recently reverted but you will have to wait for the next translation sync. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:37, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I see, thanks. What an odd mistake, and google translate won't give me anything for Keka. I have no recollection of setting a language, although if no-one should use it I don't understand why it's there. CMD (talk) 14:19, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that the language concerned may be Frafra (Gurenɛ), something we don't have either as a selectable language at Preferences or as a Frafra-language Wikipedia - it would be gur:. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:22, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• I put temporary local overrides in for these for now. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:00, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

translatewiki:Special:Contributions/Akobire Amiyine shows many other en-gb errors from 14 September, e.g. "Binŋɛ" on the preferences save button.[33] PrimeHunter (talk) 20:15, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: yup - one of the reason users using English variants in the interface here is a bad idea and we warn about it on the pref page! — xaosflux ^Talk 20:18, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

It's a tame warning in MediaWiki:Preferences-summary/en-gb:

Your language setting of "British English" means that you may miss some local customisations.

I originally made a stronger "not recommended" warning but it was opposed. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:29, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Discourage_en-xx_UI_variants proposed. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:43, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
• I filed phab:T291717, deploying changes to i18n messages is a little more involved so it'll probably need to wait until Monday. Legoktm (talk) 01:35, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

  Should be fixed properly now. Legoktm (talk) 22:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

  @Legoktm: thank you for the update! — xaosflux ^Talk 23:09, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Nested footnotes within a list-defined reference...are they possible?

There is a list-defined reference that I have discovered has 2 sics or typos, where the book being quoted misquotes the original source. I would like to ref the original source to back up the "sics". But, according to Wikipedia:Nesting footnotes#5. List-defined references] & phabricator, it looks impossible to nest references within a list-defined reference. It doesn't seem that using the magic word #tag would work either, but I am not sure about that since I am definitely not a coder/programmer/Major Understander of html.
I have come up with a temporary work-around but am aware that it is not ideal, seen here at Project Veritas. So...all you WikiWizards of Tech & Programming... HELP! Please, if you can explain what could be a possible fix here but leave the actual doing to me, that will help me learn to do it myself for the next time. Thanks in advance for any help/advice - Shearonink (talk) 15:41, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Why do you need to use list defined references? Ruslik_Zero 19:57, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

That's not my question...My question is - Are nested footnotes possible within a list-defined reference? Either they are possible or they are not. If possible what I need to know is how to accomplish that. If not, then I'll move on and get things done another way. Shearonink (talk) 22:14, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

Shearonink, nested footnotes are not possible within a list-defined reference. {{refn}} is a wrapper for #tag:ref, so using #tag doesn't work either. StarryGrandma (talk) 02:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

sigh...I was afraid that might be the answer, was hoping I was somehow wrong. They should be possible, they could be possible, but, sadly, they are not presently possible? (though - according to phabricator - at one time one could actually nest references within a list-defined reference...) I wish someone would/could fix it. Oh well. Back to the drawing board I guess... Thanks StarryGrandma. Shearonink (talk) 03:22, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Collapsible/uncollapsible material

Resolved

The [hide] and [show] "icons" at the right side of headers of collapsible/uncollapsible boxes (for instance, the box at the bottom of my user page) have stopped working for me. They just appear as boldface text rather than clickable icons. A sitewide problem, or just me? Deor (talk) 18:30, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Everything is fine for me. Ruslik_Zero 20:15, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@Deor: It works for me. We got a new MediaWiki version today. Maybe it has compatibility issues. What is your browser, operating system and skin? Does it work if you log out? Does it work at the bottom of simple:Wikipedia? They say Expand/Collapse. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:20, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

OK, I logged out and back in, and now it's fine for me again. Thanks. Deor (talk) 20:22, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Gadget stopped working

Resolved

MediaWiki:Gadget-addsection-plus.js has stop working today. I don't think I've changed any setting that would interfere with the gadget. I did check to make sure this was still selected in my pref's. - FlightTime (open channel) 00:27, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Just saw the section above, I'll still leave this section here, just in case it's a different issue. - FlightTime (open channel) 00:28, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed The breakage only effected Vector users. The text within the top navigation links are now all wrapped with <span>...</span>. Other gadgets/scripts that interact with such links might need fixing as well. — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:39, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Musik You're awesome! Thanx, - FlightTime (open channel) 04:00, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Help with templates/modules

Hello everyone! :) I'm currently working on the Latin Wikipedia which is a small wiki and it lacks much of the well-known templates and modules we use here. I've already imported a lot but there are still many missing. I'm trying to make the documentation page here be the same as the documentation page here but the outlines of the boxes are somehow missing. Does anyone have any idea what is exactly that I'm missing?

Also, on the same subject, the infobox on this article seems to suffer from the same problem + wrong side rendering. Connected? - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:34, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: much of our reuse "n-box" (ombox, mbox, etc) styling is loaded from our MediaWiki:Common.css, lawiki doesn't have that styling in place. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:15, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux, ah... I was hoping for the problem not to be that as that would require help from "the higher ups" but apparently... Thanks for the quick response! - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:22, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: you could convert your box templates to use templatestyles I suppose. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:48, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux I'm a bit against that given that I usually strive for standardization. I'll try convincing the magistratus to upgrade their Common.css page according to EnWiki. - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:54, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Klein Muçi There is an implementation of our mboxes on mediawiki.org which uses TemplateStyles. We will be moving to TemplateStyles here at a later date as well. IznoPublic (talk) 15:16, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Izno, I guess in that aspect, it would seem like a wise thing to do but it's still hard for me given that I've only worked once with CSS before (and even then, I needed help LOL) so... - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:47, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi, having a new guy import a bunch of templates is ...not always wanted. But if you are absolutely certain that this is a very welcome activity and you have full agreement for the specific things you're importing (citation templates usually are wanted; maintenance templates usually aren't), then let me suggest that you not copy enwiki's infoboxes. Small communities are much more satisfied with Wikidata-oriented infoboxes, because they don't have the people to manually update even the population parameter for every country and every city in the world. Look at what the Spanish and Russian Wikipedias are doing with their infoboxes. w:es:Jimmy Wales and w:ru:Jimmy Wales should give you an idea of what's possible. The infoboxes are long when you read the page, but the manual effort for local editors is small, because just a few lines are handled locally. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, I know exactly what you mean. I would grow weary myself for similar situations given that I'm also an admin at a small wiki. So far, what I've imported are infoboxes, metatemplates and "technical" templates like templates that collapse text and, of course, their corresponding modules and the modules on which those modules rely on. Considering these technical chains, the number of imported items grows pretty quickly but I do believe it is overall for the best as it lays down the infrastructure for more complex operations of the sort in the future. They already do use Wikidata-oriented infoboxes which unfortunately aren't as "enriched in information" as the examples you brought. Unfortunately I'm not at all handy with that technique (having learnt of its existence only some days ago) so personally I can't do much there.

I'd really like to have some opinions on what I just wrote above though because it is a dilemma I've been having these days that I started importing the templates. Do you think a process of importation of the one I described can be expected to have extra benefits in the future because of what I said above? Of course, I'm not thinking about templates/modules which are very dynamic in nature.

My homewiki is SqWiki which has around 85k articles in total. LaWiki has more than 100k in total and still lacked a large number of templates we take for granted in our community. I was made aware of that when I saw that I was having difficulties using Content Translation Tool because of the lack of infoboxes. This surprised me a lot and when I saw that they also lacked a module for citations (LaWiki uses independent cite templates) I wrote in their village pump to ask if that was intentional, and if not, asked if I could start importing some modules and templates to help with that. Some users said it wasn't and so I started. - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:27, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

IMO we need global templates. I've heard that doing this properly would require a full dev team for a couple of years, but it would help a lot. You'd still have to keep some templates locally (because everyone wants their unique thing), but imagine being able to get "the basics" or "the building blocks" automatically. As you note, it would really simplify translation efforts. Translators should get to think about words, not about compatible parameters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like phab:T121470. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:23, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, @Xaosflux, that's the Holy Grail. This does look like pretty close to that objective though. I only learned of this some days ago too and it was baffling. I don't know why it isn't already a massive movement towards this. Maybe the excitement is getting the better of me but as far as I understood, it was a massive improvement in tech-globalization. - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:44, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that was something @Yurik started in his "free time" (an exceedingly scarce resource). I don't know what the status is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Change in block log appearance, nearly invisible text (with Blackskin.css)

Resolved

 – Gadget updated. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:54, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

There has been a change in how blocks appear when you look at a contributions page. See Special:Contributions/148.252.128.137. I use the green on black gadget, so see here for what it looks like for me, the white text on a pale peach background is almost invisible. This seems to have happened today. DuncanHill (talk) 13:58, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Only for partial blocks, I think. Fram (talk) 14:02, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Without the gadget, I see the normal black text on pale peach, which is very readable. I suspect the green on black gadget has changed the text to white without changing the background to a dark hue which would make white text easily visible. Certes (talk) 14:04, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: going on the assumption that this is only a problem when you have MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css enabled correct? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:08, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

We had an RfC to add styling for p-block backgrounds Special:PermaLink/1028105567#pblock-style; it could be de-colored with !important in blackskin, proposed adjustments are welcome in an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Blackskin.css. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:13, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Possibly targeting .mw-contributions-blocked-notice-partial (which you could pre-test in your Special:MyPage/common.css. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:15, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

(ECs) @Xaosflux: Yes, but I'm buggered if I'm going to turn the gadget of and on again whenever I look at someone who's been blocked. I don't know enough about how these colours or gadgets work to know how to ask for the gadget to be edited. Perhaps someone here does understand them and could help. DuncanHill (talk) 14:20, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: oh certainly not expecting you to do that, just ruling out that there was any sort of WP:ITSTHURSDAY things at play we'd have to track down! — xaosflux ^Talk 14:43, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: could you try to add this to User:DuncanHill/common.css and let me know if it fixes this for you? If so we can promote it to the gadget:

/* Decolor pblock log*/
.mw-contributions-blocked-notice-partial .mw-warning-with-logexcerpt {
	border-color : #008000!important;
	background-color: #000000!important;
}

— xaosflux ^Talk 14:50, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: That gives white on black, see here, which is legible. DuncanHill (talk) 15:29, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: OK, I've added that snippet to the gadget, please take it out of your personal common.css file, and let us know if you have any other issues with the gadget now. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:12, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks, yes that seems to work fine. DuncanHill (talk) 16:18, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

"Return to the top" button

A "jump back to the top of the page" button would be quite useful on very long pages such as notice boards, help forums, drama boards, etc, which can be a lot longer than even our biggest articles. Ideally such a button would float as one scrolls down the page. I imagine it might even be possible to create such a feature with custom script/code - a topic about which I am an almost complete ignoramus. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:35, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

If you have a Home key then it probably goes to the top. Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Site-wide has several to top scripts. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:12, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

On a Mac laptop (and some other laptops without home key) Home is Fn + left arrow. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:03, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

No "Home" key on Android phones and tablets. I do almost all my editing on my phone, in desktop mode (mobile mode is practically malware). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:01, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

There's {{Skip to top and bottom}} which adds floating buttons to go to the top and bottom of the page. It's used on a few long pages, probably the most prominent being Wikipedia:Teahouse and Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. the wub "?!" 15:12, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

the wub It's not used nearly enough. Ideally it would automagically appear on any page over a threshold size. Could something like that be done in a script? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:01, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

@Dodger67, User:Danski454/goToTop.js? ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:18, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

One of my user scripts adds "Go to top" and "Go to end" options to one of the side bar menus. I can make that generally available if there is demand for it — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:50, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Heads up for possible tool breakage today

If you had a tool that used to work but stopped working today, you should read this cloud mailing list message. The problem might be expiring root certificates. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:44, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Could this be why https://copyvios.toolforge.org/ is giving an internal server error today? This is The Earwig's copyvio search tool. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:36, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this is why, though it should be back up now. — The Earwig (talk) 00:44, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Also read m:HTTPS/2021 Let's Encrypt root expiry. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:07, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Can't fully see UTCLiveClock gadget

I'm using a 13-inch macBook with latest version of macOS Big Sur. While using the newer look of the site, I see the live clock gadget pushed out by a tiny margin in the upper-right collapsible menu. To put this another way, I can see the hour hand and barely the minute hand but not the seconds hand. I'll provide an image if necessary. --George Ho (talk) 02:56, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@George Ho: The hour, minute and second hands are three revolving pointers on an analog clock face. I guess you don't mean hands but the numbers on a digital clock. I guess "the newer look of the site" means you have disabled "Use Legacy Vector" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. I see the problem with numbers there. It's caused by width: 6em in MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.css which is copied from mw:MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:40, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Pinging Mr. Stradivarius who made the CSS in 2017. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:46, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

The below in your CSS is a temporary fix. It looks bad if "Use Legacy Vector" is enabled. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:57, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

.skin-vector #utcdate {
	width: 10em !important;
	margin-left: 0em !important;
}

I'll await Mr. S's response. Meanwhile, I found out that the same issue occurs on an iPad mini while using Desktop view. George Ho (talk) 05:29, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem is not so much the CSS that I wrote, but rather that the UTC clock gadget never supported the newer Vector skin in the first place. It needs to be updated to support the new Vector (and also Minerva and Timeless, for that matter). There are some suggestions for how this might be done on the talk page. Also, it might be worth looking into the CSS solution that they are using on the Russian Wikipedia, which looks like it will alleviate some of the problems with calculating widths. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Template:skip to top and bottom

When I noticed a bug elsewhere, Xaosflux suggested I take notice if I see others and approach the developer directly; I can't see any such (one) developer for this Template. The problem is it doesn't go all the way to the top. As someone mentioned recently, it's used on The Teahouse and the Template wiki-page itself. It misses the top two lines of visible text (on 16:9 display at 100%). Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 00:34, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

That seems impossible without making it skin/interface-dependent. I just compared all elements that are at the top and have IDs in Legacy Vector and mobile view, and there was no overlap. Nardog (talk) 02:07, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I guess I gotta wonder why anyone would use that template. Each time I click to go to the other end of a page that uses that template it adds an entry into the browser's history so if I click the up or down several times and then use the browser's back button to get back to where I started, I get the entire sequence played in reverse. Doesn't seem like the best or most friendly user interface to me...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

List of external URLs on a page

Does there exist a relatively easy way, such as a tool, to list all the external URLs on a page? ie. outbound http(s) links that are not Wikipedia. -- GreenC 06:38, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

You could use the API. A list of urls is obtained with this code which gets the eternal links on the lion page. It includes all the links in citations, so I'm not sure if this gets what you wanted. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:11, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: thank you very much. -- GreenC 16:40, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Authority control not showing up

Does anyone know why authority control isn't showing up at the bottom of Godric of Finchale's article? Best – Aza24 (talk) 21:55, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Because the article's Wikidata item doesn't have any IDs that {{authority control}} knows about. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:04, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I just added the VIAF and GND to the associated Wikidata item, so the template appears now. Vahurzpu (talk) 20:24, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Spellcheck issue

I have a new laptop running Windows 10. My issue, is the spellcheck doesn't recognize a pipe ( | ) or a colon ( : ) in Wikilinks, as seen in this screenshot. I have no idea why it's like that, I don't think I changed any of those settings and hope there's a way to fix it. - FlightTime (open channel) 23:37, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no spell checker. It's done by your browser. Do you use Microsoft Edge? I see it there and haven't found a way to tell it that pipe and colon should be treated as word separators. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:49, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I'm using Chrome. I just found a spellcheck, grammar check...ect app Microsoft Editor: Spelling & Grammar Checker I'll disable the browser check and use the app and see how that goes. Thank you very much for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FlightTime (talk • contribs) 03:02, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Draft notice for redirects and other existing pages

If I attempt to create an article at a title like Cotesworth P. Smith, I get a notice above the edit box indicating that "There is a draft for this article at Draft:Cotesworth P. Smith". However, if I go to a title like Paint mixing (currently a redirect to Primary color) or Climate change in Pennsylvania (currently a redirect to Renewable energy law in Pennsylvania), I get no such notice about the existence of Draft:Paint mixing or Draft:Climate change in Pennsylvania. Similarly, if I go to edit a disambiguation page like Dramatization or War zone, I get no notice that Draft:Dramatization or Draft:War zone exist as possible WP:DABCONCEPT pages.

I am concerned that an editor who has the idea to write an article at a title currently serving as a redirect or holding a disambiguation page or the like may miss the existence of a working draft for this purpose. Can notices be added to the edit windows for existing pages where a draft exists? BD2412 T 03:27, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@BD2412: Edit request filed at Template talk:Editnotices/Namespace/Main#Protected edit request on 1 October 2021, for making the message appear when the article is a redirect or disambiguation page. – SD0001 (talk) 06:29, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. BD2412 T 03:09, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Maintenance template mobile view

Maintenace templates are shown below infobox and they shouldn't why shouldn't user know more citation are needed bi (talk) 05:49, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: is this a technical issue? What makes you think the display order is technically incorrect? If this feedback on layout style you could follow up Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:34, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Watching if a bot is live with in-wp notifications?

TL;DR: I want to get a notification (ideally, a ping or talk page notice, but an email would be ok) whenever Special:Contributions/Muninnbot has no recent edits in the last day (or maybe the last 30h). Is there an easy way to make this happen?

I am the maintainer of Muninnbot. That bot is set up to check some unit tests before firing notifications, so that (hopefully) changes in the MediaWiki API or PyWikiBot stop the bot from sending any notifications rather than sending malformed notifications.

The bot broke back in March (due to a breaking change in PyWikiBot, but the stability of PyWikiBot is a topic for another place). I did not notice it until GoingBatty found out about it last week, so the bot has been broken for about half a year (hopefully it's back up now, I will check after the next cron run). This has been the second breakage in (slightly more) than three years of operation of the bot, so while it is not exactly frequent, I still would like a better mechanism to detect this than having a human check Special:Contributions/Muninnbot or the talk pages of newbies.

I can imagine two ways of doing this, but either of them requires some work:

1. make Muninnbot send me a notification (how?) when the tests fail (right now, when tests fail, a message goes into the logs, but I am not reading the logs on Toolforge unless I already know something is wrong)
2. have a second bot read the page Special:Contributions/Muninnbot and post me a talk page message whenever there has not been any new contributions in a while (I could code this, but it is a bit of work)

Has something similar already been done? I can easily imagine similar requests, for instance anti-vandal fighters could want to watchlist a user's contributions, so that an account that vandalizes, gets a level-4 warning, then sleeps for two months is detected as soon as it wakes up. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 14:54, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Tigraan Try Wikipedia:Bot activity monitor. – SD0001 (talk) 14:55, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Resolved

I must say, of all the questions I have asked during my time on Wikipedia, none has been asked with as little hope, answered with as much haste, or resolved so fully. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 15:06, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Hatnote modules

I have always been too scared to ask this, but I can't stop wondering. Why do {{main}} and {{further}} use two different modules? Are they really that different in implementation that we needed two different modules for them?

Follow-up question which I suspect I have answers to but don't really, why do hatnotes even have modules? You would think a bit of text and some special formatting wouldn't require much work that couldn't be accomplished through conventional wikicode, but maybe these templates do something more that I just don't fully understand? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 03:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

There does need to be a module somewhere along the track, to support the fact that templates can take an arbitrary number of parameters. As for why each hatnote template uses its own module, there's no good reason for it, and I tried to TfD the specific-template ones in 2018 and 2019 as part of a broader crusade against overuse of Lua, but ran in to a lack of consensus. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:35, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@MJL: Hi, I'm a major author of a lot of hatnote module code. {{Main}} needs a bit of special code to handle the case where it's used on category pages, where it has different output. If we could establish consensus to force category pages to use {{cat main}} or similar, and thereby removed the special case, then I'd happily transition {{main}} to use Module:Labelled list hatnote, which I wrote to standardize the behaviour of many simple hatnote templates. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 21:46, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Nihiltres: If I understand it right, currently {{Main}} needs to act like {{cat main}} in category-space (which makes me wonder why we even have {{cat main}}..). If we switch {{main}} to Module:Labelled list hatnote, that needs to get changed. That seems reasonable, so I guess the question is where should we do that RFC? This is assuming that Module:Labelled list hatnote can't be changed to efficiently make {{main}} output something different in category-space without effecting {{further}}. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 22:25, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

It was previously attempted by TfD, which … wasn't quite the right venue, but appears to be Pppery's favourite. I would start with a discussion on the talk pages of both (probably primarily on Template talk:Main with a message pointing people there from Template talk:Cat main) and solicit primarily objections. My expectation is that we'll get some grumbling about the status quo or leaving functionality in place, but that most people would agree that they should be separate templates and the current overlap removed by simplifying {{main}}. From there, getting rid of the "main" module in favour of the generic "labelled list hatnote" one becomes practically a G6 speedy, because a result for narrowing the template scope is nearly as good as a TfD for the module in practice. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 06:39, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@MJL: I've started a discussion at Template talk:Main as suggested in my previous comment. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:04, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Geohack Google maps display

This is a small issue, but I don't find it in the archives. Why, when I look at Google maps from the coordinates given in an article, via the Geohack page, do I see a double location marker thingie as of (IIRC) a month or so ago? My most recent experience of this is Bodega Bay, California; I checked that there is only one coordinates template on the page. I don't see this behavior either when I type in a different small settlement directly in Google maps or when I select a different mapping service or three at Geohack. (I'm using Firefox, but it doesn't seem to matter; I get the same thing in Chrome.) Yngvadottir (talk) 23:05, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Failure of section collapse mechanism in mobile view provoked by excessive templates/images

On mobile view (using en.m.wikipedia.org) long pages typically have section collapse arrows (^ pointing up for an expanded section, v pointing down for collapsed). This appears to be broken on some pages, such as List of professional sports families. Narrowing down the issue, this version is broken while the next edit, just removing a {{JAP}} template, fixes it. The difference is in 1009 vs 1008 total templates.
For a more artificial test case, 1001 copies of {{BEL}} causes the issue, while 1000 (next revision) is fine. It looks like a template issue, though something must account for the difference of 8 templates between the page when it was full of things (1008 templates ok), vs my artificial test case (1000 templates ok).

Another, even simpler test case: 1001x {{aye}} is broken, while the next revision (1000x) is ok.

I think it's really just an images issue. 1001 of the green ticks (directly substituted from {{aye}}) is broken, while again, the next version, with 1000 of them, works. – Anon423 (talk) 15:44, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

mediawikiwiki:Recommendations for mobile friendly articles on Wikimedia wikis#Limit number of images in a page has some background for what's going on. It is indeed related to the number of images. I am surprised it is breaking at 1k rather than the specified 10k. Jon (WMF) might know/care more. Izno (talk) 16:01, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Could then the page be fixed by altering/replacing the flag templates to use unicode emoji flags instead? Your mediawikiwiki link suggests so, and MOS:FLAGS does not explicitly proscribe unicode flag emoji as an alternative. – Anon423 (talk) 22:06, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I think that is a question for those pages' talk pages. Izno (talk) 22:17, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

It's indeed limited to 1000 images by this in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php:

'wgMFMobileFormatterOptions' => [
	'default' => [
		'excludeNamespaces' => [ 10, -1 ],
		'maxImages' => 1000,
		'maxHeadings' => 4000,
		'headings' => [ 'h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6' ]
	],
	'wikivoyage' => [
		'excludeNamespaces' => [ 10, -1 ],
		'maxImages' => 1000,
		'maxHeadings' => 4000,
		'headings' => [ 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6' ] //T110436, T110837
	],
],

It was done after phab:T232690. phab:T248796 requests feedback to editors about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:16, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to find out how many pages this affects? Izno's mediawikiwiki link suggests a JavaScript command that counts the images, but that's hardly a global view. – Anon423 (talk) 03:00, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That would be the phab:T248796 link that PrimeHunter provided. Izno (talk) 04:02, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

The typical way would be an automatic tracking category at Special:TrackingCategories. I don't know whether the problem is discovered at a time and place where a tracking category could be added. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:35, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

In the meantime, I have listed pages in mainspace which have this issue in quarry:query/4320. The first field is the page title, the second is the number of image links.--Snævar (talk) 09:30, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Maybe it's a real use for presently TFDd {{too many images}}. Izno (talk) 14:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. However, is there a particular reason why the query doesn't find List of professional sports families, which is known to have the issue? It seems to be finding pages with 1000 or more distinct images. – Anon423 (talk) 14:43, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Excuse my lack of comprehension, but I don't quite see a way to find affected pages mentioned in that Phabricator thread. It seems the currently-unpublished suggested patch by BrandonXLF would only embed an HTML comment (or with Jdlrobson's comment, a hidden HTML span). I don't think that would be searchable, or would it? – Anon423 (talk) 15:23, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps you should give feedback on the discussion such that a tracking category is added in the vein of those already in Special:TrackingCategories, as mentioned above. ;) Izno (talk) 16:13, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-40

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

Recent changes

• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
• Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [34]
• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

• You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [35]
• The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [36]
• The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [37]

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

16:28, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

doi citation tool down

I've being using http://reftag.appspot.com/doiweb.py to generate {{cite journal}} citations from a doi for several years. The tool is down for the last couple of weeks and giving the following error message: "Error: Server Error. The server encountered an error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds." Does anyone know if this tool has been replaced, moved or what to do to get it working again? —  Jts1882 | talk  06:54, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

No idea about the status of that specific tool, but see WP:REFTOOLBAR or WP:UCB/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-08-01/Tips and tricks for alternatives. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:28, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I have both Reftools and citation expander activated, but haven't used them much. Now I see how the two together do what I want, reftools to create a minimal citation with just the doi and citation expander to complete the job. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:41, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

DOI is also accepted as an input in citer.toolforge.org. Links to this tool should be changed to something else, this issue has been reported several times allready.--Snævar (talk) 09:22, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

You will need to contact the creator, who I believe is Apoc2400. Izno (talk) 14:18, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Apoc2400 has only one edit in the last year so seems to be inactive now. It was a very useful tool that I've used a lot. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:41, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

As you can see from the talk page, this was reported some time ago. I do not think further discussion here will be useful. Izno (talk) 16:02, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests § restore the Wikipedia Citation Tool for Google Books. – Rummskartoffel 21:15, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I see that Wikipedia DOI and Google Books Citation Maker has just been added to Help:Citation Style 1 by Medgirl131. That does the doi bit like the old tool. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:17, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That's a big help; can someone with javascript skills please create a bit of code that will add a link to citation-maker to the left sidebar, under section 'Tools', the way User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js does? Second choice, add a link just above the Edit summary field in Preview mode, the way User:Anomie/unsignedhelper.js does. If you can do this, I love you. Or, you get a barnstar; your choice . (please  mention me on reply; thanks!) Mathglot (talk) 17:04, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

(Hopefully)  Done @Mathglot - see User:Qwerfjkl/scripts/generatedoi. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:55, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: thanks! Further comments at User talk:Qwerfjkl/scripts/generatedoi#Install methods. Mathglot (talk) 18:20, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

File:Focus of Bedford Park Garden Suburb.svg

Resolved

 – The specific issue with this SVG file was made by adjusting the file, the root cause upstream will continue to be tracked in phab. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:59, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292439

There seems to be an issue displaying this image in the media viewer. The error message said "Error: could not load image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Focus_of_Bedford_Park_Garden_Suburb.svg". The image looks fine when reading the article, and it works fine both when editing in Inkscape and when viewing it locally using Firefox (i.e. not via Wikipedia), so it seems to be specific to the media viewer. I've tried adjusting the image without success. Could start again and redraw it but presumably there's something in the .SVG file that the viewer doesn't like? Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:34, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• Note, this is not a media-viewer specific issue, having a problem viewing at all resolutions (e.g. 313px example). — xaosflux ^Talk 10:49, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Possibly phab:T200866 - while not ideal, @Chiswick Chap: you may want to upload an additional non-SVG version of the image for now if this is holding you up from improving an article here. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:53, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
    • Many thanks. I'll see if I can rustle something up temporarily. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:56, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
      • I've put a .PNG file there temporarily. Feel free to ping me if the issue is fixed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:26, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: You distorted the pattern too much: patternTransform="matrix(-.00444 6.6367 -2620.7 22.904 44653 549.3)".  — Johannes Kalliauer - contrib. 18:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: It occurs immediately, therefore it crashes, no time-out.  — Johannes Kalliauer - contrib. 18:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: the new version JoKalliauer uploaded seems to be working. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:06, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks guys, both quick and precise, great help! Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:48, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

ai making disambiguation pages

disambiguation pages are the main navigation tool so why are n't they automatically genereted by software bi (talk) 15:51, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Edit causing ref errors

Here, the edit by my bot has apparently caused empty ref errors. Any idea why? ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:25, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: can you provide a diff? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:39, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Diff. I have posted a query at Template talk:efn. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:00, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem was caused by the = sign inside the span tag within the {{efn}} template. The workaround/fix is to put |1= in front of the unnamed parameter of {{efn}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:34, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Talk Page/User Page

Hello,

It was brought up on my talk page that the format isn't very mobile user friendly. I'm trying to correct this as I really don't want it to be such a pain for a user to be able to view my pages. I'm not even sure if this is the right location for this but it was suggested to ring it up here. I don't want to lose as much of my formatting as possible but I don't mind sacrificing a little if it means a more user friendly page. Any assistance would be most grateful. I'm not great at formatting so I am sure I made a ton of mistakes but since I don't use a mobile device other than my tablet I cant see what they see. Tank you for not throwing me out right away. --ARoseWolf 17:35, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@ARoseWolf: look at them like this: Your Mobile Userpage and Your Mobile Talkpage - and try making your window narrow to see what it will look like for others. Your talk page will also appear mostly blank to mobile users because of phab:T241402 - so you might want to design around that. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:40, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I fixed a bunch of syntax errors on the page, but I don't know enough about mobile view to know what it is supposed to look like. When I click "Read as wiki page", I can see the page just fine. I do notice that the normal mobile TOC (under "Active discussions") is not listed in mobile view, at least for me, possibly because it is placed in a custom location on the page. Maybe there's a phab task about this? I hear that a lot of people use mobile, but I don't see how it is really functional for active editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:47, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you both. I sincerely want to get it right. No one should have to scroll around when looking at the page and I don't want that. --ARoseWolf 18:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Just now, I made your talk page a bit more boring in order to make it work in mobile view. You are welcome to revert my change if you do not like it, but the mobile problems will persist. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:14, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Reference desk introduction on mobile devices

When viewing a section of the Wikipedia Reference desk using a mobile device with a narrow screen, such as the page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language, the introductory parts (How can I get my question answered? / Select a section:) do not fit and can only be viewed and accessed by awkward horizontal scrolling. Is there a way to make this less awkward? (I suppose there is a way to make the page display adapt to the viewing device, but this is not my cup of tea.)  --Lambiam 08:21, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I've created a sandbox version to work on improving this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

How about this version ? Its not too pretty, but it's a start. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:38, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not getting any horizontal scrolling on my phone with that version, but there is a bit of horizontal overflow when using Firefox's responsive design mode with the iPad preset, which isn't present in the live version. I don't have a real iPad or anything with a similar screen size to test this, though. – Rummskartoffel 21:15, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

found it, was the input fields trying to be wider than possible. Thx for the report. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:06, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Thanks. I can't test it on an iPad but it is fine on my phone. Can you install it? I could try but fear I'll muck up things in the process.  --Lambiam 22:37, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

i'll install it somewhere next week. I'm gonna need a bit of assistance in deploying it, because some parts are protected pages but i'll find someone for that. In the mean time, I also worked on Wikipedia:Reference desk, Wikipedia:Questions, Wikipedia:Village pump and Wikipedia:Community portal (in progress). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:08, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Basic pywikibot question

Back in 2010-2011 I used to run pywikibot a lot on various projects (perhaps never en.wikipedia). After I stopped doing this, the source code moved from SVN to Git and things started to changes names in a way that I didn't care to catch up with. Now I'm trying again, and I find various instructions that conflict each other. The instruction I followed was to download the software with the "pip install pywikibot" command. This got me some source code and the files say they are from 2021, so this should be up to date. But it doesn't run, since the file logging.py says "from logging import CRITICAL, ..." and this is a circular reference. This appears seriously broken. Is that the state of pywikibot source code nowadays? Is anybody fixing it? On this page, I'm informed that there's a mailing list, but it has seen only one message in August and two in September, which is very little. Is the project dead? Where should I look? Which other bot software should I use instead? --LA2 (talk) 12:31, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Ticket management and activity of pywikibot is tracked in Phabricator. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/87/ —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:56, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but the kind of error I experienced was beyond the level where a ticket can fix it, like beating a horse that is apparently already dead. Now I tried instead to download the tar archive. It works. What the "pip install pywikibot" did was download the pywikibot/ subdirectory of the whole project, which is called "core-stable". I have no idea why there is a command for downloading just that subdirectory. It's not useful. Maybe I should write a ticket that the instructions are wrong. If I knew what the right instructions were, I would just update that wiki page. --LA2 (talk) 13:22, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Installing pywikibot requires more than python nowadays. See phab:diffusion/PWBC/browse/requirements.txt for an list of required software packages. Sure the docs could be better.--Snævar (talk) 15:07, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Do not use SVN or Git. Installing Python 3 (not 2) and running 'pip install pywikibot' is all that is required. Try 'pip list --outdated' and fix any problems shown. To update a package called xxx use 'pip install --upgrade xxx' (for example, xxx = pywikibot). Johnuniq (talk) 22:16, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Where did my "reply link" go?

A while ago I installed a script that adds a "reply" link to the end of signatures that very conveniently opens an edit window with the appropriate indent and a ping already set. It suddenly stopped working a few days ago. See line 30 of my common.js . If this script is no longer functional, is there an alternative that works similarly? I've become rather used to it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:29, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dodger67: It's deprecated. The alternatives are DiscussionTools (enable from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures) or Convenient Discussions. – SD0001 (talk) 06:35, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Updated Commons image displays strangely in en-wiki, correctly in most other Wikipedias

I'm seeing a strange problem with an image recently updated in Commons and showing up strangely at English Wikipedia, but fine in most others. It appears like this in the article Philippe_Pétain.

After a request at the Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Photography workshop, a new version of File:Foch Pershing Petain and Haig.jpg was uploaded. It has better contrast and brightness, and an aspect ratio closer to landscape, where the original one was a darker version in portrait mode.

The new image is showing up correctly in articles in Norwegian, Italian, Basque, and Czech Wikipedias. And to my surprise, correctly above right.

But the old image is still showing up, but stretched out of shape to match the aspect ratio of the new image in the article Philippe_Pétain in en-wiki, and also in articles at Esperanto and Serbian Wikipedias, and in the top image in Commons. I tried purging pages, no help. What's going on here? Mathglot (talk) 08:43, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I checked with another browser, and the en-wiki image shifted to the new one, but Serbia didn't, and then switched later. Could this be some strange browser cache issue? Tried a third browser, and everything displayed the new image. Switched back to the first browser, which originally had the problems, but now everything is working. Some combination of delayed updates, and cache issues? Anyway, whatever it was, it's gone now. Mathglot (talk) 08:50, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Damn, it came back again! At Philippe_Pétain#End of war, and at the en-wiki file page, at File:Foch Pershing Petain and Haig.jpg. I give up. Mathglot (talk) 08:54, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot Try WP:BYPASS, it worked for me with a similar problem. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:55, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try that. Mathglot (talk) 08:57, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Hiding the "Languages" sidebar section

Resolved

span.editHelp { display:none; } #editpage-copywarn { display:none; } div.mw-tos-summary { display:none; } #editpage-copywarn2 { display:none; } span#minoredit_helplink { display:none; } span.mw-newpages-length { display:none; } #pt-betafeatures, #p-navigation, #footer-info, #footer-places, #footer-icons {display: none;}

I have this set on my common.css page. What I would like to do is add the sidebar section "Languages" also. Thanx in advance :) - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 03:51, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@FlightTime Phone: seems to be:

#p-lang {
    display: none;
}

— xaosflux ^Talk 09:32, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thank you, seems to work just fine. Again thank you, - FlightTime (open channel) 17:31, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@FlightTime, why do you want to do that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): There are a number of userscripts posted below that sidebar section, I would have to scroll past the "Language" section to get to the links of the scripts, I would collapse it (cause I'm using Vector), but the section would not stay collapsed, so I thought if I could hide it using .css, I wouldn't have to keep re-setting it. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:07, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It sounds like you want the sidebar to contain links to some scripts, and for those to be convenient to reach. I believe there is a way to insert your links into a specific section. Then your links would be higher up, with no scrolling required. Gadgets such as Wikipedia:Prosesize do this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Article is both draft and start class

Hello! So I recently created the article Splatoon 3 which was copy and paste moved from Draft space by Panini and then properly moved by GeneralNotability. It's currently rated as start class, however XTool's page history of Splatoon 3 says it's Draft class. I looked at the article and I couldn't see any draft related category. Anyone know why XTools still doesn't say it's Start class? ― Blaze The Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:57, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

•  Works for me https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Splatoon_3 says "start class" when I look at it. Keep in mind, xtools works off of a replica, so may be delayed - and class ratings aren't actually part of the article at all - they are just notes on the talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

• XTools gets assessment data from Special:PageAssessments, which indeed still had it listed as "Draft". I made a null edit and that fixed it [38]. I'm not entirely sure what happened here; it seems Draft talk:Splatoon 3 and Talk:Splatoon 3 both coexisted at the same time. Perhaps because the talk pages weren't moved, no update to the templates on those pages was triggered. At any rate, if you see this happen again, a null edit (or actual edit) should fix it. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:28, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
  • So maybe ignore the part I said about the replicas, if this is live-loading, but it could still hit caching/job log backlogs. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:31, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
    • mw:Extension:PageAssessments just to note for future reading if this is found in the archives. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:32, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

      No, it's true XTools can suffer from replication lag (in addition to job queue lag), but you would see a warning at the top of the XTools page if that were the case. You can also check toolforge:replag. You just happened to check XTools after I made the null edit. At any rate, Special:PageAssessments is the authoritative source. If XTools says something different, it's lying. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:35, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

      Ah ok. I'll see if I can move the Draft's talk page to the Article space talk page since a copy and paste move was performed and see if that fixes it, or if it's already fixed. ― Blaze The Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 17:12, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Why is there a Lilypond error on this page?

Resolved

 – zhwiki fixed their module. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:00, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi, just wondering why this page on Chinese Wikipedia has a Lilypond error when I can't see any Lilypond scores in the source. Is it being included from somewhere and where can I check it? (Error: "line 5 - column 1: bad grob property path (Staff.Clef stencil), line 6 - column 1: bad grob property path (Staff.TimeSignature stencil)") thanks. A1415 (talk) 16:15, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Haven't solved it yet, but comparing w:en:User:Xaosflux/sandbox112 and w:zh:User:Xaosflux/沙盒 suggests that it is something in w:zh:模組:Listen. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:55, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Confirmed it is in the module and not some other project-local setting.... — xaosflux ^Talk 10:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
    • @A1415: Perhaps User:Great Brightstar who introduced a custom midi handler to the zhwiki version of the module can help on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:01, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
      • When I loaded the zhwiki module to our sandbox, I get the same problem- but only on midi files, see User:Xaosflux/sandbox112. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:05, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

The source code used in Chinese Wikipedia was ported by myself, just with minor changes for translation, when English Wikipedia used the same code base for rendering MIDI audio. As the server is now able to converting MIDI directly without any workarounds, I think it's resonable to update source code in there. --Great Brightstar (talk)

@Great Brightstar: thank you for the update, @A1415: seems like this is something you can fix at w:zh:模組:Listen, and you can use Module:Listen as a reference. zhwiki has applied protection such that only their administrators can update that module. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:39, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It's fixed now. @A1415: Thanks for your digging up. --Great Brightstar (talk) 15:47, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I also introduced a TemplateStyle in that module, which used to improve the display of this template for mobile phone screen, which affects the grey line. Anyone who have rights to edit the mudule could port it to here. --Great Brightstar (talk) 16:28, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

That should not be ported here. As you have been told before, making piece-part changes here and there is not the solution, and especially if it's tweaking CSS display. Izno (talk) 16:46, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

As a general debugging tip for the future, you can use Special:ExpandTemplates to find the underlying <score> tag and the markup that's being passed to it. Legoktm (talk) 17:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

expired SSL certificate

On linux, I'm getting an expired certificate error when accessing enwiki using multiple CLI tools (wget, w3m). It doesn't happen with firefox. It only occurs on one machine (IP?) on a different machine/IP no problem. Typically this points to system date being wrong, but the date is accurate. Other SSL sites work OK only *.wikipedia.org - Any ideas what it might be? Example: wget -q -O- 'https://en.wikipedia.org' returns empty response. Cert check can be bypassed with --no-check-certificate but is insecure and weird security errors are disconcerting. -- GreenC 17:37, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC see HTTPS/2021 Let's Encrypt root expiry. Legoktm (talk) 17:45, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Thank you, that must be it as my OpenSSL is old. I've spent hours trying to get it work, upgrading SSL and adding the new root certificate and removing old, but nothing works.

/etc/ssl/certs/ISRG_Root_X1.pem -> /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/ISRG_Root_X1.crt

Updated /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

For now, will disable certificate checking on each tool, I'm sure this will haunt me later. -- GreenC 21:26, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what system you are using, but for old debian variants: In /etc/ca-certificates.conf, for the entry mozilla/DST_Root_CA_X3.crt prefix it with ! (so !mozilla/DST_Root_CA_X3.crt) to disable it and then run update-ca-certificates. This removes this expired root from the evaluation path. update everything that uses ssl. And then update the OS, because... it's clearly not up to date ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:56, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheDJ: .. OMG it worked. I had removed DST_Root_CA_X3.crt and rebuilt ca-certificates.conf using dpkg-reconfigure ca-certificates then updated with update-ca-certificates - but guess it still requires DST_Root_CA_X3.crt to be around and marked off with ! in the .conf .. whew not obvious. Thank you! -- GreenC 22:17, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I personally found this explanation to be very readable. And that this worked basically means that you are using outdated openssl/gnutls/libressl etc... Maybe your OS version has a version-backports apt repo you can add that has a backport of the openssl version you need. But hard to say. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Wow this is really convoluted. It's a 2016 VM of Mint. I was able to upgrade OpenSSL to 1.1.1 and libraries. It also broke another machine, installed in 2005. There must be old machines breaking everywhere this past week. -- GreenC 04:38, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Is there a way to do a mass upload of files to enwiki?

I am thinking specifically of these deleted at en:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Mapas Provinciales Atlas Centenario2; since enWikipedia mainly cares about US copyright, some of these files could get a home here. Yes, I know I should have thought of this earlier; with apologies to FitindiaJo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:14, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: nothing that is ready to go, there are discussions at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Import_from_Commons and phab:T214280 related to such a process. Looks like there are only 23 files right now, so not even worth writing a bot for it. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:47, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Pseudo-telephone numbers

Hi techies. There's something out there that turns perfectly-valid number ranges - such as page numbers in references - into things that are apparently intended to be interpreted as telephone numbers. This is the search that I'm using, and here is an example which I've since fixed, but I know that CycoMa (talk · contribs) is not the only person who makes that error. The tags to that edit are "Mobile edit Mobile web edit Visual edit Advanced mobile edit", so is it a bug in one of these features, or a misbehaving browser add-on? If the latter, is it worth putting an edit filter together for that? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:04, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

You participated in the discussion we had about it. Izno (talk) 14:19, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

The ticket for the remaining problems of this is phab:T116525. Apparently in some conditions iOS still auto formats those links and we don't fully understand how (I suspect it's somewhere in a out of document context where we handle some VE actions or something vague like that). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:25, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I forgot about that. But it seems to concern numbers formatted like 999-9999 and in my example the format is different - the page range is "184/185 – 253/254". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:31, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Redrose64: the flags recorded in Special:AbuseFilter/examine/1427973382 mobile app (user_app):false; mobile interface (user_mobile):true suggest this was made using the mobile web site, not the mobile app - so I suspect this was introduced client-side, somewhat related to phab:T116525. If CycoMa would like to share their browser version with us we may have a bit more to go on. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:23, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

This edit suggests that if it is local, it's VE, not Mobile. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:47, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

VE desktop can still be done from a mobile device though. I guess it could be that other systems also do this auto formatting, but so far, I only know about iOS and the Skype extension doing this like this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:58, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

When I started this thread, there were 32 affected pages, all of which I fixed over the next few hours. Only three or four were due to edits made more than a month earlier. Whilst carrying out this task, a further four or five happened, which I sometimes picked up within minutes (example). Repeating the search just now, there are 14 affected articles, so the problem is ongoing and may be on the increase. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:02, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure this has been proposed before, but would it be practical to just have an edit filter that disallows adding tel: URIs? – Rummskartoffel 16:09, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I've also found a few of these and have been discussing the causes with the editors who add them. It may be due to a Safari extension. See also WP:Edit filter/Requested/Archive 18#Tag addition of tel: links. Certes (talk) 17:17, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to rescue that frmo the EFR archive back to the main page. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:39, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Now unarchived to Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested/Archive_18#Tag addition of tel: links, and I've added a table of examples. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:27, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Login page seems to be broken.

I'm trying to log into my account on my PC. I'm logged in on my phone, but I forgot my old password. Trying to log in with a temporary password, but that won't work. Probably something to do with the captcha (always a bad idea), but otherwise no idea. I can't get in to ask this question on my PC, because my IP has been blocked (no reason given, blame "NinjaRobotPirate"). Any advice? Could someone from the technical team just get me into my account? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry Kingdon (talk • contribs) 21:01, October 7, 2021

@Henry Kingdon: Hi, sorry to hear you're having issues logging in - I can see you successfully requested a password reset today at 21:42, then failed to log in a few times. What error message are you getting? The IP block you mention shouldn't prevent you from logging in ~TNT (she/her • talk) 21:19, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

It's not related to this problem is it? DuncanHill (talk) 21:24, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Logout & Outage

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292779

I'm going to assume the strange outage an hour or so ago plus the unexpected logout is a Thursday thing? -- Veggies (talk) 19:39, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I got that also, but it was page specific. When I clicked on William Barr, it logged me out and made a fund raising plea (for Wikimedia, I think). I ran two different malware/virus scans on my computer, and it doesn't seem to be my end problem. — Maile (talk) 19:43, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

See Phabricator. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 19:45, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Rolling back changes, should see improvement shortly ~TNT (she/her • talk) 19:55, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for resolving it so quick! Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:56, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: Definitely should have said they're rolling back changes - I am but a simple bystander! 😅 ~TNT (she/her • talk) 20:01, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the rolling back of changes solved the issue for me, thanks. — Maile (talk) 22:40, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

On two occasions, I was informed that I was logged out; I quickly found that all I needed to do was back up and try again. I assumed that I had a flaky connection and the login cookie didn't make it through. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:05, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Coordinates error

Salar Ignorado's coordinate link does not work properly and I have no idea why. Hitherto this format usually worked. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:26, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

 Fixed I fixed it. Abductive (reasoning) 09:51, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Symbols rather than "Show" or "Hide"

In regard to an idea by editor Hooman Mallahzadeh to use the single-character symbols "˅" and "˄" rather than the words "show" and "hide" in sidebar and navbar templates, I wonder how feasible and accepted such an idea would be? Reference the following previous discussions:

• Template talk:Sidebar with collapsible lists#Remove redundant words "show" and "hide"
• Phabricator: T292328

I think this is an idea whose time has come, so I thought I'd bring it here since Phab. appears to be the wrong place to raise this issue. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 11:06, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Nope, that is completely unintuitive for screen reader users like me. The "~^" symbol sounds like "carrot" and the ˅ symbol is not pronounced at all by default in the latest beta version of JAWS, my screen reader, for example. Graphics showing those symbols with sufficient alt text would be accessible, but I don't think that's ever gonna happen either. Graham87 11:52, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

And don't even think about using abbr for this purpose; expansions of abbreviations are not read out by default and screen reader users generally have to know about the abbr tag's presence on a webpage to be able to use it. Graham87 12:05, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Graham87 You see Javascript-generated "Show/Hide" in a screen reader? :) Izno (talk) 13:57, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Note: that phab ticket was rejected - no software change is expected to be needed even if this was to be done. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:24, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

  Wwell... I doubt that.. I think andre is mistaken here. Because we wouldn't use symbols here. We'd use image buttons with labels, because like Graham87 said, otherwise it wouldn't be accessible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:54, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

  Okay, "image buttons with labels" sounds like we're on the right track. So do you mean that this is an issue that would have to be handled by the devs at Phab? P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 15:13, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• I've found [show] handy as something to search for when trying to find content buried in dozens of hidden sections nested at multiple levels. (I now use a bookmarklet.) Certes (talk) 13:46, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
  • I also use my browser's Find feature to search for "show" when I can't find content on a page and need to expand all of the (grumble) hidden sections to use Find to find it (sorry for so many "find"s!). It would be nice to have a "show all hidden sections" gadget; is there one I don't know about? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:04, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
    • @Izno: Yes, I do see the show/hide buttons in my screen reader. Maybe the advice re CSS/JavaScript and screen readers in the accessibility guidelines is a little conservative these days, but there are still unusual screen readers out there to which it might apply. I use my screen reader's feature to navigate between buttons to find show/hide boxes to click ... I agree a show all gadget would be nice in certain situations. Graham87 15:32, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

      Good to know! Izno (talk) 15:40, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

    I think someone has a scriptlet for that somewhere in the VPT archives. Izno (talk) 15:40, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

    I use javascript:void($('.mw-collapsed').each(function () { $(this).data('mwCollapsible').expand() })); (not my work). Certes (talk) 15:45, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

    Yup, that should do it. Izno (talk) 15:54, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Please stick to understandable text! What expected benefit would come from replacing "show" with a squiggle? If someone does not understand what "show" means, they should be at another website. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
  • How could a down-arrow be misunderstood as the same as "open" or "show"? How could an up-arrow be mistaken for anything but "close" or "hide"? I do like the idea of showing the symbols alongside the words for a short time. That would work as a transition to the symbols alone. Those up and down arrows are used widely and would reduce the size of the indicators. Lots of benefit there even for mobile viewing. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 09:15, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the idea and it would probably be a good one in another design context. As we are on Wikipedia, the interface must be made as easy to use as possible, and that means text instead of symbols whenever we can. No objection to including the symbols alongside text, as that might look more pretty. Enterprisey (talk!) 23:19, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

including the symbols alongside text might "look pretty" but it adds clutter and no value - it makes the interface slightly harder to use if the brain has to filter out the unnecessary symbols. Mitch Ames (talk) 23:21, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Please keep text. I've never been a fan of the "Find the most annoying and user-unfriendly features of other websites and add them to Wikipedia" tendency. DuncanHill (talk) 10:33, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  How about ⮓ (pronounced Tafkas, or The Arrow Formerly Known As Show)? Certes (talk) 10:50, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Autofill for citations not working

Discussion about topic already talked about here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T292267. Said to come here for it.

--Apollo468 (talk) 15:29, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Since I can not reproduce, on win10, edge 94, could you open up the tree dots in the top right corner, then more tools - developer tools - network (opens to the right), then try to add an autofilled citation, write down what messages you get in the network and console tabs and post it here, thanks. It would tell what the tool is doing and whether the browser understands it.--Snævar (talk) 07:46, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

--@Snævar

Sorry for not replying sooner, you didn't ping me so I didn't get a message. So, as of now, it has been resolved. It works currently for me, but I've had numerous instances of when it hasn't. I can contact you - if I remember - if this happens again if you wish. I was able to get to the developer tools though by using shift, control, and I. -- • Apollo468•  02:02, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

--@Snævar (talk)

God, nevermind. Here is the error messages.

[Intervention] 1. Images loaded lazily and replaced with placeholders. Load events are deferred. See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2048113

load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:8

    2.  Skipped unresolvable module ext.cx.entrypoints.languagesearcher.init

resolveStubbornly @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:8 VM66:573

    3.  This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.throttle-debounce".

Please use OO.ui.throttle/debounce instead. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213426 (anonymous) @ VM66:573 load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.CodeMirror%2CTemplateWizard%2Ccharinsert|ext.CodeMirror.data|ext.TwoColConflict.JSCheck|jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.highlightText%2Csuggestions%2Cui|mediawiki.action.edit|mediawiki.action.edit.collapsibleFooter%2CeditWarning|mediawiki.icon|mediawiki.language.specialCharacters|mediawiki.widgets.DateInputWidget.styles|oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation%2Cicons-editing-list&skin=vector&version=1edjk:466

    4.  This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.ui".

Please use OOUI instead. mw.loader.implement.css @ load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.CodeMirror%2CTemplateWizard%2Ccharinsert|ext.CodeMirror.data|ext.TwoColConflict.JSCheck|jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.highlightText%2Csuggestions%2Cui|mediawiki.action.edit|mediawiki.action.edit.collapsibleFooter%2CeditWarning|mediawiki.icon|mediawiki.language.specialCharacters|mediawiki.widgets.DateInputWidget.styles|oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation%2Cicons-editing-list&skin=vector&version=1edjk:466

DevTools failed to load source map: Could not load content for https://localhost:49506/8ee4ea609a6346c4cf34c2b621ac79ba.js.map: HTTP error: status code 404, net::ERR_HTTP_RESPONSE_CODE_FAILURE

-- • Apollo468•  13:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Less interwikis in other Wikipedias

How's that possible that, for example, Russian Wikipedia shows less interwiki links to the same English article? For example, in Карельский язык I see only 9 interwikis, while the English-language equivalent Karelian language shows them all. I thought Wikidata handles all of them simultaneously and instantly syncs with other languages. Brandmeister^talk 16:44, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Brandmeister: On those wikis that show fewer languages than expected, go to Preferences → Appearance → Languages and check that "Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you." is turned off. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:49, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I see a button underneath the 9 listed languages that says "Ещё 74" (74 more). If I click on that, I get a pop-up window with a full list. If I disable scripts in the browser, I see the full list directly in the portlet on the left. Vexations (talk) 17:50, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

If you get a 74 more button, that tells me that "Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you." is turned on. Try turning it off. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I've missed that being used to the default full list in English WP. Brandmeister^talk 18:14, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Technical problems

Hello! I am suddenly having some technical problems:

• I can't see/find my edit tools on the edit screen (no ref tags, pipes, etc.)
• I can't get my notifications (when I click on the bell, my screen creates a light grey pattern of diagonal lines moving).
• My search box doesn't work correctly -- it doesn't go directly to the article searched, but instead gives me a result as if I had searched approximately for an article name.

I have a Windows 10 desktop and am using Microsoft edge. Can anyone help? -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ssilvers: Do you have an option setting or a privacy or ad-blocking tool that prevents JavaScript from running? Certes (talk) 18:05, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Certes: Not that I can find in my settings, but I am hopeless with computers. Can you suggest where in Windows 10 to look? It's not in my extensions. It's gotta be something with Edge, because I can use WP ok in Firefox, but I prefer to use Edge if possible, as I use it for everything else.... -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:43, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I believe that edge://settings/content/javascript allows you to turn JavaScript on and off globally, but if that were set wrongly then you'd also see many other websites breaking in Edge. The problem seems more likely to be caused by an add-on. If not then other editors may be able to point you at more relevant settings. (I'm one of the few editors who use neither Windows nor a Chromium-based browser such as Edge.) Certes (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

It says that Javascriipt is "allowed", not blocked. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:33, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ssilvers: What happens at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Notifications?safemode=1 (which should show your notifications as at Special:Notifications but without your personal scripts. Johnuniq (talk) 22:39, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Under the heading "Notifications", I get a stripe across the top of my screen of light gray, diagonal stripes, and that's pretty much all I get on the screen, other than the Wikipedia globe and stuff on the left side of the screen, like Main Page, Contents, etc. -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Echo Notifications not loaded yet 2021-10-08

I think those light gray, diagonal stripes indicate that the content is still loading. @Ssilvers, does it look like this? This is what I see just before the page loads. (The stripes go across the full width of the screen.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but it never loads. It just keeps going and going (and I have very fast internet). I also can't use the search box, and my edit tools are missing from the edit screen. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:34, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

From above, I think you are saying that it works in Firefox—that is, when logged in and using Firefox, Special:Notifications works. I have no idea but perhaps some caching by Edge on your computer has got corrupted? An easy but probably ineffective test might be to use Edge to log out of Wikipedia (top right of window), close Edge, start Edge again, log in to Wikipedia. If that doesn't work, try clearing cookies and data for Wikimedia and Wikipedia in Edge. It appears that the technique, in Edge, would be to click the three ... at top right, Settings, Cookies and site permissions, Manage and delete cookies and site data, See all cookies and site data. Scroll down to the bottom (press End key), click the downwards pointing > next to wikimedia.org and click the trash bin for what it shows. Repeat for wikipedia.org. That will clear Edge's cache which will log you out. Log in and see what happens. Or, wait another 24 hours in the hope that someone who understands what's going on replies here. Johnuniq (talk) 01:38, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Johnuniq you are a genius. That seems to have done the trick! Rascally cookies!! -- Ssilvers (talk) 08:04, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Removing "Publish changes" and the rest

Hi. Is there a way to remove all of those buttons by using js/css? Hộp cát (talk) 05:17, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Hộp cát: To hide the buttons only (not the adjacent text or links), use

#wpSaveWidget,
#wpPreviewWidget,
#wpDiffWidget {
  display: none;
}

in Special:MyPage/common.css. You can still activate the buttons by using Alt+⇧ Shift+S, Alt+⇧ Shift+P or Alt+⇧ Shift+V respectively. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:23, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Nice, thanks. Hộp cát (talk) 10:37, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Hộp cát, why do you want to do that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

This username literally means "sandbox". You get the idea. Hộp cát (talk) 17:44, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Bot to automatically handle some CSD U1 requests

Hello! I'm wondering if someone could build a bot to automatically handle CSD U1 requests with some limitations:

• Page has never been moved
• Page has only been edited by the user whose user space it is in (this should handle revdelled usernames as a different user)

Would this be feasible? I'd write it myself, but I'm not an admin. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:59, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Technically, it should be possible. Practically, Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user is almost never backlogged, so there's not really a need. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:55, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

We once had Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/7SeriesBOT 2 back in 2010-2012 (and its operator was desysopped in 2014 for unrelated reasons). Agreed that there isn't really a need for a bot now. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:52, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

No need, and these are deletions that admins get thanked for and not yelled at, which can make CAT:CSD patrol a bit more pleasant :) —Kusma (talk) 22:03, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Alright! If there isn't a backlog, then there's no issue. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 23:44, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

AWB network error

For the last few days, every time I try to run WP:AWB it tells me:

Network access error
The operation has timed out

I'm running AWB v6.2.1.0 on Windows 7, and nothing has changed on my system, as far as I know. Checking my contributions I can see that the last time I used AWB successfully was 2021-09-30. Is there a problem at the Wikipedia end? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like the lets encrypt problem. Your client cannot connect, because the root certificate has expired and it doesn't know about the new root certificate most likely. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:52, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That seems likely. I'll add the Windows certificate and try again. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I wanted to test the process before changing anything on my real PC, so I started up a virtual machine with a clean installation of Windows 7 SP-2 (from the DVD) with no additional updates or software, to see if I could reproduce the problem. I installed .NET 4.5.2, copied ABW and ran it - and it works fine, allowing me to login. The certificate manager says that DST Root CA X3 (which expired 2021-09-30) is not present at all on the clean VM. It is present on my real PC (where AWB does not work). I presume that DST Root CA X3 was installed by some piece of software that I installed in the past. (I have fairly detailed notes on changes I've made to the system, including MicRooCerAut2011_2011_03_22, per [39], so I'm confident I'd know if I'd manually installed DST Root CA X3.) So I installed DST Root CA X3 onto the VM - and AWB still works.

I could just remove DST Root CA X3 from the real PC to see if that fixes the problem, but I'd rather understand what's going on first.

Does anybody have any other ideas, or shall I just raise a Phabricator ticket? Mitch Ames (talk) 13:14, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Deleting %LOCALAPPDATA%\AutoWikiBrowser, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\AWB and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AutoWikiBrowser does not fix the problem. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:47, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#AWB_stopped_working_on_one_PC. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

It's fixed now. For the record it was not the Let's Encrypt problem - it was caused by a change to the router settings a week before. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:20, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Script budging

I have an admin-only script that I use to add websites to handle requests at WT:SBL at User:Beetstra/Gadget-Spam-blacklist-Handler.js, including automatically adding and appropriate logging. Since yesterday (or earlier?) the script suddenly gives an error message where it shows that it was not able to save the MediaWiki page (and I have the feeling the same things happened to User:Ohnoitsjamie). I have been stepping through my code in the console, but it seems to fail somewhere deeper in the MediaWiki code (not in my script itself). I have the impression that it has something to do with our tokens, but I fail to read the gibberish code that is displaying at the breaking point. Does anyone know what has changed in the MediaWiki code that makes this error happen, and what we need to do to get the script working again. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:21, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

(For those admins who want to test: add importScript('User:Beetstra/Gadget-Spam-blacklist-Handler.js'); in Special:MyPage/vector.js, after which you can test it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/Local/jobtody.com (needs to be added anyway and the script fails on me). Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:44, 10 October 2021 (UTC))

@Beetstra The old method of retrieving edit tokens that your script is using was removed from MW recently. See mw:MediaWiki_1.37/Deprecation_of_legacy_API_token_parameters. – SD0001 (talk) 06:55, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@SD0001: Thanks, I did try some things, but I don't seem to get this fixed (I'm not a JS specialist though I do know my programming; I have adapted the script from meta to make these so I am not aware of what the original way was).
Is there s.o. who can help me further? -- Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:36, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

meta=tokens is part of action=query, not action=edit.

Anyways, I would recommend you avoid getting the tokens from the API and just use mw.user.tokens.get('csrfToken') wherever you need an edit token. Ideally you'd use mw.Api.postWithToken, but that's probably a more involved change. Legoktm (talk) 08:43, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Thanks, that seems to work like a charm (still need to test the other locations where the script is operating, but I don't expect problems on that end). Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:35, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Can you search only redirects?

Similarly to how you can exclude or include name spaces when refining your search criteria, is it possible to perform a search which only delivers results that are redirect pages?--John Cline (talk) 04:05, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Looks like the answer is no or, at least, not currently: phab:T204089. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:06, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm glad to see that it may be in the works.--John Cline (talk) 06:53, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline, You can try de:Benutzer:Schnark/js/search++. ― Qwerfjkltalk 09:03, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

PetScan has an option to limit its output to redirects. However, Other sources → Search still invokes Cirrus search, searching within the target page rather than the redirect itself, so you'd need to search on other criteria (in category, has template, linked from page, etc.). Certes (talk) 11:01, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Thank you for that useful link which also implements several other missing filters such as titles linked from a given page. Certes (talk) 14:09, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Export to Wikimedia Commons process/ tool not working

I got this error message, "Can't import file because at least one of its file revisions is hidden" when I tried to export a Wikipedia file to Wikimedia Commons using a process or tool already on the file's page. Please, see [40] from this page here [41] Can it be fixed?

Thanks --Ooligan (talk) 19:28, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ooligan: I've restored the first version uploaded. —Cryptic 19:34, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Mapframe bug with references

I'm trying to use {{Mapframe}} here. However, when I click on the map, the text along the bottom turns into Map of Pomona College's campus[130][131] .mw-parser-output .div-col{margin-top:0.3em;column-width:30em}.mw-parser-output...

Additionally, when I try to add a reference to the |description= field for any of the markers, it spits out things like '"`UNIQ--ref-000000C1-QINU`"' (click on one of the teal icons in the northwest corner to see the issue).

Is whatever is causing these bugs a known issue? Is there any way around it? I was able to find a workaround for {{abbr}} by using <abbr title="Information Technology">IT</abbr> instead of {{abbr|IT|Information Technology}}, but I'm not sure if anything like that can be done for references, especially when they're SFNs. Help?

(I also have an additional mapframe question here if anyone here knows it well.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:33, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I recall there being a bug for the first one but I can't find it. I would recommend filing a new one under the Maps and TemplateStyles projects on Phab. It's not TemplateStyles fault, it's whatever lightbox implementation Maps are using not dealing gracefully with <style> elements and their contents, but tagging it for other just makes it obvious.

I'm not really surprised the second exists. In general, when you see a UNIQQINU pattern, it's a strip marker. Sometimes there's a limitation in the MW software can handle some input and sometimes we didn't code things properly on our side. That should start with a talk page message for the template/module to see if local template editors can see why that would be.

I don't really understand what issue you thought you had with the third that you "worked around". Izno (talk) 22:43, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

(Now that I look, I see one directly pertinent to the strip marker issue and <ref> specifically.) Izno (talk) 22:44, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I created phab:T292598 for the first one. For the second, ɱ appears to be active at the module talk; would you perhaps be able to help? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:31, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: - it seems that mapframe doesn't support inline references (except in captions, but you have the minor display issue at the bottom, like you mentioned). If I were you, I would move the map to its own page, like {{Ohio Statehouse map}} or {{George Floyd protests map}}, and there you can list out what is sourced for what, without dealing with display issues. Like how an image's file description page has attribution, same deal. ɱ (talk) 16:05, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ɱ, do you know what would need to be done to get mapframe to support inline references? I'll consider moving to a subpage, but that comes with some significant drawbacks, such as losing the ability to repeat references and requiring readers to click through. I'm planning to take the article to FAC and some reviewers may be hesitant to allow that. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

File's old versions

Hello. DeltaQuadBot has stopped hiding old versions of my files. I reached out to its owner (User talk:AmandaNP/Archives/2023#DeltaQuadBot) and she found out that the problem is not in the bot, but in the category. Category is empty. But my files (for example: File:Paseo (film).jpg, File:Prince's Tale.jpg, File:Souls of Totality.jpg) must be in this category. What could be the problem? — Vladlen Manilov ✉ / 04:19, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I find it even more concerning that there might be almost 2,000 files sitting because it's not coming up in the category. I proposed here might be a better place to try and resolve this as it's not a bot issue. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 04:23, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem seems to be that Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old isn't added to the pages in an edit, but by {{Orphaned non-free revisions}} based on date, so if the template is placed before the revisions are a week old, the category isn't updated. Null-editing the file propagates the change, but manual null-edits aren't exactly the fix for an automatic task. Maybe DeltaQuadBot could instead operate on Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions and check the dates itself? – Rummskartoffel 10:40, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

That would require a large write in the code, which i'm not going to lie, is not what I want to do. I'm sure though that my bot wouldn't be the only one affected by this. So i'm not sure a small fix is really the optimal solution here. It used to work perfectly, so I'm assuming that this was a change, and if so, some back porting should have been done to allow them to change categories. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 18:39, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

There is an bug for this issue at phab:T51803, when it gets fixed it would populate the category based on the #time parser function in the template, so 7 days after the last edit. Currently the files will end up in the category 1 month after the last edit, so 3 weeks later than they should.--Snævar (talk) 23:28, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that's it. The date does get calculated correctly and the category shows up on the file page, but the file doesn't show up on the category page. For instance, at the time of writing this comment, this is the case for File:Vanessa Carlton - Be Not Nobody.jpg, which was supposed to be revdelled on October 3. You can quite easily find more affected files by just looking through transclusions of {{Orphaned non-free revisions}}. – Rummskartoffel 10:12, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

My comment is not about calculating the date correctly, it is about invalidating server side cache. So, once the bug gets fixed once the resulting time of #time is up the cache server side would get purged. The rest of the comment is also only about server side cache.--Snævar (talk) 11:33, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I phrased my comment badly. The problem is not that the template isn't putting [[:Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old]] on the file page after 7 days – it does that, at least in some cases (such as the example I linked to), as evidenced by the category showing up in the box at the bottom of the page. The problem is that the cache invalidation doesn't seem to propagate to the category, so the file "thinks" it's in the category when it really isn't. Does that make sense, or am I misunderstanding something? – Rummskartoffel 14:44, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

It does make sense, and it's been a problem ever since a MediaWiki update in (IIRC) mid-2014. When you get a situation like this (page has a category at the bottom but doesn't show on the category itself, or (less often) vice versa) the thing to do is WP:NULLEDIT the affected page, and then WP:PURGE the category. Joe's Null Bot (talk · contribs) used to carry out the first part frequently, so that files sitting out the grace period of a CSD criterion would move to the appropriate "ready for deletion" category within 24 hours of the grace period expiring. The bot hasn't run for about three years now. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:15, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

And ProcBot has partially taken up the task (see User:ProcBot/PurgeList). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:23, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Pppery: So would I put that in the category I want them to show up in, or a category where they already are? Because I'd like to get this set back up. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 19:23, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

The category where the pages are presently being listed. This is not necessarily the category shown at the bottom of the page concerned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:55, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Which is Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions in this case. I believe adding {{/purge-cat|Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions|1|day}} to User:ProcBot/PurgeList2 would work, but I have no relevant experience here other than having read the documentation. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:18, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I also note that DeltaQuadBot seems to have already processed ~1000 files in the last few hours, so someone must have done something. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:24, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Weird. Definitely wasn't me, but i'll likely still put that up sometime soon just to make sure files are being processed. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 03:02, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Though I wonder, if this issue has existed for so long, why hasn't it previously affected DQBot? – Rummskartoffel 15:26, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

It seems that the bot is working fine now. At least with my files. — Vladlen Manilov ✉ / 06:38, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Picking random users?

Do any tools exist for picking a random sampling of users who meet some criteria, for statistical studies. For example, I might want 1000 users who have more than 500 edits, are not blocked, and have made at least 10 edits in the past 90 days. I can write something like that, but why reinvent the wheel? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT N? (I'm assuming you can get the sample space with an SQL query). – SD0001 (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Interface protection message bug

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:No article text § Incorrect advise given to IPs who try to create template pages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:36, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Scan for malicious external links

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292971

I just today corrected the official website of Atrium Health Navicent Peach. The lapsed domain had been captured by malicious actors. How come there isn't a bot that scans for this? Is there but did it not scan a link that had previously been ok? 1Veertje (talk) 10:39, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@1Veertje: do you mean to check whether we have a bot/code in place that checks whether a domain that is used has changed owner while sitting on a Wikipedia page? And then do that for every single external link throughout Wikipedia on a regular basis. I do not think we have that, and that would be rather server intensive for a rather low hitrate (domain ownership changes do not happen that often). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

No, check if a domain is a known vector for virusses/malware. Services like StopBadware help with that and should be responsible thing any big website does. 1Veertje (talk) 10:50, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

No, that is not something that is done systematically (not even at time of addition). I could probably make m:user:LiWa3 scan webpages at addition time against this website (or Google's blacklist) and provide alerting for it, but that does not help a lot (as it more often happens that websites get hacked or repurposed later while they are already available on Wikipedia).
It would therefore likely make more sense to have a database scan that checks whether sites on such lists appear on Wikipedia and make reports on that on a regular basis. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:03, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The externallinks table already indexes all external links on WP, so can't you use that? – SD0001 (talk) 13:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@SD0001: m:User:LiWa3 is working of the current feed of edits as, next to plain documenting, it also tries to catch ongoing spamming and is feeding user:XLinkBot. It does some scans for typical spam checks at addition time of the link (stopforumspam is one, trying to catch some typical spammer tags is another), I could add checks against google's blacklist and other websites like StopBadware there as well (IF those website allow the hammering by a bot, which not all allow). It might catch some malicious websites at addition time and would then throw an alert on IRC for that.
What 1Veertje wants indeed should run from the externallinks table, probably by making a database of all domains with certain data (that should not be too hard by running a proper query on the table) and go through selected data and scans for listing of already existing links on the database. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:31, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Would indeed be nice. I created a ticket for this, even though I don't expect this to be picked up any time soon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If you come across a hijacked domain (spammers, hackers etc) report it to WP:URLREQ where it can be usurpified by bot ie. |url-status=usurped and some other things. -- GreenC 14:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

InputBoxes position

Hello! Is it possible to choose the position of input boxes? So they don't appear like this but in a structured manner, say for example, 2 aligned on one side, 2 aligned on the other side and 1 in the middle?

I read the documentation many times but couldn't find any helpful information in regard to that. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:47, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

You will need to make a template and use TemplateStyles for that, probably using display: flex or display: grid (floating the boxes might work but it won't be as easy I suspect). Most MediaWiki-supported browsers work with display flex; display grid is a little patchier but still most browsers that MW supports. Izno (talk) 02:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Izno, yeah thought that that would be the only way. I was hoping to find a wrapper template already here and only deal with the customization but {{Inputbox}} doesn't seem to offer that kind of functionality yet, does it? (Although it does offer some quite... nice... documentation...) - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:14, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

CSS Flexible Box Layout Module Level 1 is at the Candidate Recommendation stage, and CSS Grid Layout Module Level 1 is at the Candidate Recommendation Draft stage. This means that they are still not finalised, and shouldn't be relied upon. They are at least out of the Working Draft stage, which means that they're being taken seriously and the chances of being abandoned (as a Working Group Note) are fairly low. See the W3C Recommendation Track: if they make it through to Proposed Recommendation there should then be a good chance that they'll eventually reach W3C Recommendation, at which point virtually all browsers current at the time will support these features. But it can take years. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:20, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Defacto, flexbox is supported 99.9% by browsers we deliver content to and grid is supported 94%. I've used flexbox in dozens of templates over the last year. And we even use grid somewhere as an experiment (with some basic fallbacks) and no one seems to have noticed yet. The status of the documents doesn't matter. These are all living standards now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:27, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

^. Flexbox and grid aren't going anywhere. Izno (talk) 12:05, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

slow pages saves waiting for intake-analytics.wikimedia.org

Anyone else having intermittent problems saving pages today, with timeouts "waiting for intake-analytics.wikimedia.org"? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:16, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If you are using adblock or blocking third party cookies that could happen. There is a bug for an third party cookies issue, although it is not an save issue, at bug T262996. There is also another issue I can think of that could impact it, it is entirely an adblock issue, I am going to save that one for later.--Snævar (talk) 18:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Language variables

We have received a question in the Incubator about how to translate language names for #language. I have tried to search for such messages on translatewiki.net to no avail, but they are probably there somewhere.

Here is the original message:

{{#language:ary|zgh}} gives Moroccan Arabic instead of ⵜⴰⵄⵕⴰⴱⵜ ⵜⴰⵎⵖⵔⵉⴱⵉⵜ, and {{#language:he|zgh}} gives Hebrew instead of ⵜⴰⵄⵉⴱⵔⵉⵜ, same thing for some other language names are untranslated or translated incorrectly. How can this be fixed? And where?--Brahim-essaidi (talk) 18:30, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Could someone point us in the right direction? - Xbspiro (talk) 00:25, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xbspiro: may want to try at mw:Extension talk:CLDR - from what I can tell we only copy the CLDR data from further upstream (likely from [42]) so you may need to make sure the data is good there first. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:05, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. (It seems that the data we were looking for is here.) - Xbspiro (talk) 01:54, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xbspiro: see the instructions at translatewiki:CLDR#Localised_language_names. Legoktm (talk) 06:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Upside-down history

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292791
Resolved

When I go to see the earliest history it's upside-down, with the earliest at the top. DuncanHill (talk) 18:34, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

• That's the intended behaviour of &dir=prev, I believe. Black Kite (talk) 18:37, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  So how do I stop it doing that as it's never done it before and I never asked it to? DuncanHill (talk) 18:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Then it's changed. That query option would normally display oldest at bottom, and if there was a &offset= option, that would be the bottom of the list and the 50 (or whatever is set by &limit=) edits newer than that would be displayed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:42, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  And look at the first edit, −1,771 bytes. How is that possible? DuncanHill (talk) 19:05, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) It's subtracting the size for one line from the size for the line above, as normal, But because they're now in reverse order, this means that the newer file size is subtracted from the older, instead of the other way around: the reported change should be +1,771 bytes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:09, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  Clicking on "older 50" on the history page gives me 4 edits! DuncanHill (talk) 19:07, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  I think it's comparing the size to the last edit displayed on that page, the same if you click the "prev" diff link. Definitely not the desired behaviour, being tracked at phab:T292791. the wub "?!" 19:09, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's definitely broken. Black Kite (talk) 16:54, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, just noticed, this is quite broken. Going to the oldest history, the history is upside down, which would be fine, but the initial edit has a functioning "prev" link and byte diff, which compares it to the last item on the previous page of newer history. Or something. Very confusing.  Nixinova   T   C   01:11, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
• Came here to report the same thing. For me, if I go to a history page, the first page is fine (newest revisions at top). If I click on "older 50", the next page still has the results in the same order. If I click on "oldest", the oldest 50 revisions are shown, still with the newest of those 50 at the top. Any time I click on "newer 50", the results are reversed, with the oldest at the top, and the diff links and bytes changed are incorrect (they're not referring to the previous or next edit but seemingly to a random edit - I haven't figured out the pattern yet). Clicking "older 50" or "newest" will then bring up a page with results in the correct order. Hoping it gets fixed soon. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 23:01, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

  Size change is 0 for the middle row (call this row n). Size change for row n+k is its page size minus that of row n-k. For example, if the version six rows above the middle is 9123 bytes and that six rows below the middle only 9000 bytes, we get (+123) on the former and (-123) on the latter. Uses for this novel statistic are not immediately obvious. Certes (talk) 00:26, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, incorrect size changes doesn't matter that much, what matter is that the "prev." version difference became useless - compare what is shown for changes in edits "added category" (when only category is added) in normal and reversed order.

This makes the reversed list entirely useless. MarMi wiki (talk) 13:33, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now.  Nixinova   T   C   04:59, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

This got fixed yesterday. the wub "?!" 08:19, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Contributions/edits without a tag?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T119072

Hi. On the contributions page you can type in tags and just see edits with those tags. Is there a way to do the opposite and see my contributions that don't have certain tags? DemonDays64 (talk) 01:36, 13 October 2021 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

not yet ;) - that is feature request phab:T119072 if you would like to follow it. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:52, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Until that bug gets fixed, Demon can ask for an query to be run to get the results he wanted, at Wikipedia:Request a query.--Snævar (talk) 12:03, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

wikimedia projects link

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris new mediawiki computer browser interface update has new language bar so maybe it should point to wikiquote and wikinews etc as well their are the only one that is left in the left menu they could be in subject bar/authority control/unified template but top has better visibility bi (talk) 14:09, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: the "in other projects" relationship is already active on the frwiki page. Are you having some problems here on enwiki? If your technical issue is only on frwiki, you may want to ask at w:fr:Wikipédia:Questions_techniques. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:42, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF), I think this feedback is for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

It is. Thanks, we'll look into it. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Lowercase sigmabot III down, usage of a deprecated feature

This bot has not run since October 7, per User talk:Σ/Archive/2021/November#Lowercase sigmabot III seems down. All the noticeboards appear to use the same bot. User:Legoktm believes the failure may be due to mw:MediaWiki 1.37/Deprecation of legacy API token parameters which was implemented on October 7. It appears that User:ClueBot III went down briefly for the same reason but was quickly repaired. Other data can be seen at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#General query. There is a table that shows which bots are up or down at Wikipedia:Bot activity monitor#Current status report. I hope that a solution can be found soon for archiving the noticeboards. I am archiving WP:AN3 by hand for the moment. EdJohnston (talk) 15:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Edit filter links at UAA

Good day. I noticed something yesterday at WP:UAA. There used to be a list of commonly-used edit filter links between the page header and the bot-reported names section, but now they're gone. I found those very handy, so I am just curious as to what happened to them. Thanks. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 06:40, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Looks like they were removed by Taking Out The Trash. --rchard2scout (talk) 06:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I've reverted, but have reworded it to put the two public filters first, per TOTT's reasonable concern. I don't believe we have EFH/EFM equivalents of sysop-show. If we were to make those, we could make it even smoother by just wrapping the private ones in those three classes. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 07:39, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I've created the EFH/EFM user group classes and wrapped the private filters with the appropriate classes. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:23, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot assessment tool down

It looks like the WP 1.0 bot responsible for updating assessment data is down due to a mediawiki deprecation. The tool has been central to WikiProject work for awhile now. I am not sure how/who to raise the alarm.

• see: Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index#BOT: Possible breakdown?
• wp 1.0 web interface —¿philoserf? (talk) 02:01, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

it looks like the number or broken bots/tools will grow significantly

• see: Wikipedia:Bot activity monitor —¿philoserf? (talk) 02:09, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• @Philoserf: I think you are referring to User:WP 1.0 bot? The place to "raise the alarm" would be first where requested at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index, but secondly with its operators: Audiodude and Kelson - as they are really the only people that can do anything about it. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:46, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Technical question.

Hi. Where do you find the name of the user who created an article before the article was merged or split? I don't see it anywhere on the page statistics. If a page is merged, do both users get credit? If a page is split, does the original page creator still get credit on subsequent split pages? LearnMore (talk) 13:36, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@LearnMore: in general mergers are either done with- or without- technical history merges. If with, the oldest contributor would be listed as just that - the oldest contributor. If without, attribution is generally provided by a link in the edit summary or the talk page. In general splits do not split the revision history - a new page is just started which should reference the prior page for attribution. Of special note, every contributor to any page are equally considered authors, being the "original page creator" doesn't have any special privilege. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:43, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Follow-on, as far as citing a Wikipedia page elsewhere, here is an example of how to cite a random page (citing Sara Cwynar) - notice the use of Wikipedia contributors as the author line. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:45, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux:Thank you very much for your quick response. The reason I asked is that the statistics page does cite the name of the user who created the page which I think is a nice gesture. Since it is there anyway, I think it should be accurate and truly give credit to the person, or persons, who deserve it. Thank you for your time. Have a nice day. LearnMore (talk) 14:15, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@LearnMore: currently that is derived from the history, there has been some low-priority tasks to think about this more, and you are welcome to contribute at tasks such as phab:T44135. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:34, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux:Thank you. And thanks for all you do for Wikipedia! LearnMore (talk) 16:45, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Search index

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T293394

Hello, is there a problem with the generation of the search index. I am getting articles that were changed at 11:34 this morning still appearing in search results. An example is List of current National Football League head coaches where the date error was fixed this morning but is still showing in the search results. Regards. Keith D (talk) 21:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Keith D: can you tell us more? What are the steps you are following, what is the result, what is the expected result? Please note, if your step is to leave wikipedia and use someone else's search engine they may simply be behind in their own updates. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: just using the normal wikipedia search

"CS1 errors: dates" insource:/[a-z]*[\-]*date *\= *[A-Z][a-z]* [0-9]*[\.\,\ ][0-9]/

This still finds the date error which was corrected by the last edit to the article this morning.

Keith D (talk) 23:45, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Keith D: think it may have just been a bit slow, is this working as you expect now? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: that particular one has now cleared but it is not working as expected. Edward M. Kopko was modified at 20:53 yesterday but still is reported in the search

"CS1 errors: dates" insource:/[a-z]*[\-]*date *\= *0[0-9] /

though the edit should have removed it from the search results. It must be a general problem as Commons searches are similarly not clearing when categories are changed. Keith D (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

• @Keith D: I've opened phab:T293394 for you, please add any more details that may help. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:02, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: thanks. I have added a Commons example to the ticket. Keith D (talk) 17:17, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

WD link

WD link doesn't works anymore? I can't find it also in preferences. Eurohunter (talk) 18:55, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: You mean inline links to Wikidata, like wikidata:Q42 or d:Q42? Or something else? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 20:05, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Tamzin: No WD link enables links to WD item at every Wikipedia page under the name. Eurohunter (talk) 21:03, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Like d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js? That's what I use. I don't see anything like that in User:Eurohunter/common.js. There's also a built-in "Wikidata item" link under "Tools" in the sidebar. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:24, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js is loaded in meta:User:Eurohunter/global.js. I don't know why it fails for you. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:47, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I don't know neither I didn't changed anything. Eurohunter (talk) 10:33, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Does it work at other wikis, e.g. simple:Example? If it does then try blanking User:Eurohunter/common.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:31, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I did but it still doesn't works in ENWP and SimpleWP and it works elsewhere. Eurohunter (talk) 20:56, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Can't add delsort categories to AfD nomination

I've done many of these before, but for some reason, I've been unable to add the relevant delsort catgories to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/A Little Longer (they should be "Albums and songs" and "Music"). I've tried using the automatic adder, I've tried adding them manually, and nothing seems to work. And of course without the delsort listings, the AfD doesn't show up anywhere for discussion. Have I missed something? Richard3120 (talk) 20:59, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Richard3120: it looks like you did in: Special:PermaLink/1049916455. Can you be more specific about what you expected to happen, but didn't? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:08, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

It looks like the actual "categories" are coming from Template:REMOVE THIS TEMPLATE WHEN CLOSING THIS AfD. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:08, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Well, underneath the nomination it should say "Note: This discussion has been included in the list of XXXX-related deletion discussions", and the nomination should then show up in the specific AfD deletion sorting pages: Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Albums and songs and Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Music. Neither of those things happened. Richard3120 (talk) 21:13, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Richard3120: in the permalink I posted above, it exactly says Note: This discussion has been included in... twice. As far those sort pages, those are not categories - they are just listings and are updated by a bot, AnomieBOT. Perhaps it is just a bit backlogged? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:17, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I did wait for exactly that reason... the pages have since updated, and my nomination hasn't appeared. And I still couldn't see the discussion notices, which is why I reverted them because they didn't appear on my screen, either on my laptop or on my mobile phone, so I had no way of knowing whether they had been added or not. It still doesn't explain why, if I had indeed added them, they hadn't appeared on the deletion discussion pages. Richard3120 (talk) 21:30, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Richard3120: it appears you are using a personal userscript, User:Fox Wilson/delsort.js - notably the author has been away for 4 years, perhaps it isn't working. Try disabling it. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:20, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that's the reason I reverted and then tried to re-add them manually using {{subst:delsort|<topic>|<signature>}}, but that didn't work either. Richard3120 (talk) 21:30, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

You have to manually transclude entries to pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Albums and songs. All AnomieBOT does is remove discussions that are closed. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:40, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, I've never had to do that before. Possibly that automatic script no longer works. But the manual addition as stated above didn't show up for me either. I'll try again. Thanks anyway, both of you. Richard3120 (talk) 21:50, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

@Richard3120: it appears that some other editors are using User:Enterprisey/delsort which appears to be more recently maintained, perhaps you could try using that one instead of the one you are using now. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:39, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I would be surprised if Fox Wilson's script is still functional. Enterprisey's definitely is. Izno (talk) 23:24, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Script for standardizing reference code?

Is there any user script that standardizes the spacing and date formats within citations? (I know it's a cosmetic edit, but for a few articles I'm trying to perfect it'd be nice.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:51, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:ProveIt has a "normalize everything" option. Not sure if that fixes the date formats though. – SD0001 (talk) 08:10, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Combining that and WP:MOSNUMscript for the dates, I was able to get things standardized. I'm not sure if some of the decisions ProveIt makes, like capitalizing "Cite web", are actually the norm, but at least they're consistent now. At some point, we should probably decide what we want our reference-adding tools to do so that we don't end up with so much variation in the code just from people using different tools. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Mapframe format

(crossposted from WP:HD) How does one localize the red sign in a mapframe? I've added one at Cumbre Vieja tsunami hazard but the coordinates are waaaay off. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:27, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Try reordering the values to "coordinates": [-17.50,28.34]. Does that help? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 08:42, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Apparently, the coordinates entity expects longitude, latitude, although the examples for <mapframe> at mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer#<mapframe>_usage seem to all use the latitude=37.8013 longitude=-122.3988 order. I think you need to swap your values. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 08:50, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that worked. Thanks. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Just a question

Is it possible to run a "what links here" search for two, or more, pages simultaneously so that with one click you can see results for both? If so, will you please publish the code in example so I can use it? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 01:27, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: You can use WP:PETSCAN (direct link to PetScan).

• Leave the "Categories" tab alone
• At the "Page properties" tab select the namespaces that you want to be searched within
• At the "Templates&links" tab locate the "Links to" row, and the "All of these pages" box. In that, add your page names one per line
• Click Do it!. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

  Thank you Redrose64, I'm headed that way. Best regards.--John Cline (talk) 09:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

If you want pages linking to both (intersection) rather than to either (union), a Cirrus search linksto:Page linksto:"Other page" on the desired namespaces may do the job. Certes (talk) 12:20, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Bullseye grant proposal

Good afternoon all, I have submitted a Rapid Grant proposal for bullseye, a tool I have been working on to consolidate detailed information about IP addresses into a single view. It is primarily targeted at checkusers and stewards, but is usable by all editors. At the suggestion of one of the grant coordinators, I am informing potentially interested communities about this proposal. I welcome any and all feedback on the proposal. Best, GeneralNotability (talk) 17:06, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

WikidataCon 2021

Hi all. I'm posting here as a co-curator of the 'Sister projects' track for WikidataCon 2021, which will take place online on 29-31 October 2021. The conference website is at [43].

Integration with Wikidata is a controversial topic here, and we would like to talk about both the pros and cons of Wikidata integration with the other Wikimedia projects during this conference. Whether you like Wikidata or not, please consider submitting a session proposal to explore the issues that you are most interested in.

You can find information about how to submit a session proposal at [44], and you can access the submission form at [45]. Please submit a session proposal through the Pretalx process so that we can review and schedule it appropriately - and make sure to mark it as a 'Sister projects' track proposal. Please note that we cannot accept a session outside of the Pretalx process. We also encourage you to submit talks to other tracks if you are interested!

Note that the deadline for submitting proposals is the 20th October - sorry for the short notice! Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 19:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

How can I get rid of this "Start a discussion about [page name]" prompt?

For the last few days, each time I go to a red talk page I am greeted with this annoying prompt. I mean, it friendly for the new editors, ok, but for an old hand like me who visits dozens of new pages a day to stick assessment tags on them, it's an annoying extra click. I don't see any 'don't show it again' option or such. I'll repeat that I don't like to complain about new QoL improvements for newbies and in general, this looks nice but please give us a way to disable this for those of us whose QoL is lowered, not raised, but this. I am not sure how to file a bug report or such about this, so VT colleagues, help :) _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:13, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

You can't without opting out altogether of discussion tools in your preferences. I've already made the same point but no solution offered except "live with it". Nthep (talk) 09:44, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

The prompt seems to only appear when the URL includes &redlink=1, so a stupid way to circumvent it would be to just remove that parameter from talk page redlinks:

$('[href*="talk:" i][href*="redlink=1"]').each(function() {
  this.href = this.href.replace("&redlink=1", "");
});

Add to your common.js and enjoy. – Rummskartoffel 10:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

• I opened a question over at mw:Talk:Talk_pages_project (warning: page uses Flow, good luck finding this after a bit). — xaosflux ^Talk 11:06, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Direct link to ugly flow page: mw:Topic:Wiggfwdwlg1hu8be. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:07, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes you can. Preferences -> Editing -> Discussion pages -> "Enable quick topic adding". Unchecking this will also get rid of the redlink prompt. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:59, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheDJ: thank you, is that "Enable quick topic adding" option only related to that banner on redlink pages or is that also going to turn off something else? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:21, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

It will turn off the "New discussion" tool, of which banner is a part. – SD0001 (talk) 13:49, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

@SD0001: ah OK, it doesn't just "show you an inline form for adding new topics" - it also hijacks the newsection and newpage editors. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:54, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Hint left at MediaWiki:Discussiontools-preference-newtopictool-help. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:56, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Or do what I did. Go to Preferences → Beta features and make sure that "Discussion tools" is turned off. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:19, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Section numbers gone

I use the default Vector skin. I used to get section numbers in the section headers as shown in the Table of Contents. For the last couple of days, they are gone. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:17, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes. See phab:T284921. If you really want it back, you can do so with some CSS+JS: mw:Snippets/Auto-number_headings. – SD0001 (talk) 15:20, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Also #Tech News: 2021-41 above, second bullet. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:33, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-41

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).

• The "auto-number headings" preference is being removed. You can read phab:T284921 for the reasons and discussion. This change was previously announced. A JavaScript snippet is available which can be used to create a Gadget on wikis that still want to support auto-numbering.

Meetings

• You can join a meeting about the Desktop Improvements. A demonstration version of the newest feature will be shown. The event will take place on Tuesday, 12 October at 16:00 UTC. See how to join.

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

15:28, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the "auto-number headings" preference, see also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 190#Tech News: 2021-26. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:53, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:List of screw drives § Images in Section Headings

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:List of screw drives § Images in Section Headings. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:32, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Requesting help abridged display/ rendering a table in the article

Greetings,

I am in process of expanding section Directors-General of the article ISI, Pakistan. Currently section contains a complete table of all 25 DGs, while actually there is a special separate article exists for complete list besides now section Directors-General is updated with encyclopedic paragraph hence only an abridged extract of the table or a scroll showing some thing like last 3 DGs would suffice and I am looking for help in the abridged display/ rendering of present table.

For updated section copy edit requests have been made so you can join brief copy edit besides take care to save your update from any chance of technical edit conflict

Thanks,

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 06:02, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Glitch on Neisner's

Why is the logo for Zayre displaying on the page for Neisner's? I can't find the text "Zayre" anywhere on the Neisner's page, and no amount of tweaking or dummy-editing is getting rid of it. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 15:18, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

The logo was added to the article by an IP in September 2016 and then removed three months later as inappropriate. At that point, the logo was not being displayed in the article. In between those two events, in October 2016, the logo image was blindly imported from en.WP to Wikidata. Then, in November 2019, importing of the logo from Wikidata was added to {{Infobox company}}, possibly in violation of our 2018 Wikidata RFC that says any Wikidata elements brought into infoboxes need to be sourced to an RS (and not to Wikipedia, per WP:CIRCULAR). It appears that there are 437 articles in Category:Pages using infobox company with a logo from wikidata, some of which may be in a similar situation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:38, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

One possible resolution would be to help {{Infobox company}} comply with the RFC by changing |onlysourced=no to |onlysourced=yes in its infobox image WikidataIB call. That would probably make logos disappear from 400+ articles, so it should probably be discussed at Template talk:Infobox company first. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:41, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Italics in a tooltip

Is there any way to italicize text inside a tooltip? The doc at {{Tooltip}} suggests no, but it seems like something that ought to be possible, and it'd be very nice for the NYT tooltip in the 800,000-transclusion {{find sources}} template (configured here). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:02, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: No. Tooltips are generated by the browser based upon the content of one of the attributes (usually the title= attribute) of a HTML element. For example, <span title="Can you see this?">Hover over this text.</span> → Hover over this text. Attributes are pure values, they may not contain markup of any kind. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Audio within collapsed infobox sections

I'm thinking about proposing that the national march be collapsed at the United States infobox (it's not really WP:DUE for the lead), but I can't figure out how to get an audio player to work within collapsed infobox content. I'd like it to look similar to the "Other traditional mottos:" right above it. Would this be possible? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:13, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

MOS:DONTHIDE. Gonnym (talk) 00:34, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Gonnym, per that MOS page, A few infoboxes also use pre-collapsed sections for infrequently accessed details; this would fall into that category. The editorial question of collapsing is something to be discussed and decided at the article; for here, I'm only asking about the technical aspect. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:38, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

The old audio player is known not to work in that context. It's layouting to present the interface relies on measuring the available space, and that's not possible when something is hidden initially. There's not easy way around this, as the old player is very old Javascript that is difficult to rework. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:54, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Script no longer functioning :-(

I'm wondering what changes have been made to the MW software... the sidebar button to my ENGVAR script seems to have disappeared, and I'd like to get it back. -- Ohc ^{revolution of our times} 06:32, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ohconfucius Works for me (new Vector). There's a section at the bottom of the left-hand sidebar titled EngVarB. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:30, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a list of release notes for changes to MediaWiki software for each week release. Here is last weeks Changelog: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.37/wmf.23/Changelog —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:58, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Global Compact Language List OFF not working in French Wiki

Hi!

I have switched off Compact Language List globally so that all the languages for each wiki page still show down the left column - I find this very useful for several reasons - but the French wiki, which seems determined to be the most unnecessarily "innovative" in all manner of things (the "new" GPS/Wikimedia Maps thing on many pages is awful and is definitely more inaccurate than the old GeoHack links, for example) is now showing a new language list plonked up where everyone else's Search box is. Why is this bypassing my global settings and how do I switch it off?

Also, how do I switch off the stupid "Search" click requirement - please, less clicks in life! There is nothing wrong with a nice space to cut and paste and write into!!! Jesus, French wiki, get over yourselves! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nobbo69 (talk • contribs) 15:48, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

The Compact Language List for me goes against the very spirit of what Wikipedia should be. I like to quickly see the other language wikis, I like to easily go to them and read them all the time, I use them as a quick way of seeing if foreign subject written in English have something in their native or other tongues as a quick sense-check (there is a lot more made-up nonsense and rubbish on the English wikipedia than in foreign languages), I generally trust the information more from native wikis, and if nothing else it proudly displays the international community that wikipedia is. Putting it in a Compact List is like shoving everyone else's work into the cupboard under the stairs, which is maybe why the French feel happiest at doing this...?

I read the French wikis a lot - they have excellent write-ups on the vast majority of their cities, towns, villages and heritage sites, arguably the best out there, especially compared with England's poor show - and I have noted with sadness its determination to "lead the way" in where wikipedia might be going. Keep it simple, keep it accessible, keep it editable, keep it proudly linked to all the other languages of the world because change for change's sake is very often a mask for getting people used to change for more nefarious purposes just around the corner...

Thanks

Nobbo69 (talk) 15:22, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Nobbo69: while there is nothing we here on the English Wikipedia can do about that - If you are using the Vector skin you could try to enable "use Legacy Vector" on frwiki in: w:fr:Spécial:Préférences#mw-prefsection-rendering. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:49, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

If that fixes your concern, you can leave feedback about it at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:51, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-42

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

Recent changes

• Toolhub is a catalogue to make it easier to find software tools that can be used for working on the Wikimedia projects. You can read more.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 October. It will be on all wikis from 21 October (calendar).

Future changes

• The developers of the Wikipedia Android app are working on communication in the app. You can now answer questions in survey to help the development.
• 3–5% of editors may be blocked in the next few months. This is because of a new service in Safari, which is similar to a proxy or a VPN. It is called iCloud Private Relay. There is a discussion about this on Meta. The goal is to learn what iCloud Private Relay could mean for the communities.
• Wikimedia Enterprise is a new API for those who use a lot of information from the Wikimedia projects on other sites. It is a way to get big commercial users to pay for the data. There will soon be a copy of the Wikimedia Enterprise dataset. You can read more. You can also ask the team questions on Zoom on 22 October 15:00 UTC.

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

20:52, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Coolest Tool Award 2021: Call for nominations

The third edition of the m:Coolest Tool Award is looking for nominations!

Tools play an essential role for the Wikimedia projects, and so do the many volunteer developers who experiment with new ideas and develop and maintain local and global solutions to support the Wikimedia communities. The Coolest Tool Award aims to recognize and celebrate the coolest tools in a variety of categories.

The awarded projects will be announced and showcased in a virtual ceremony in December. Deadline to submit nominations is October 27. More information: m:Coolest Tool Award. Thanks for your recommendations! -- SSethi (WMF) for the 2021 Coolest Tool Academy team 05:56, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

How did User:Djjasonwu get created?

There's no entry in the user creation log for Djjasonwu. Their home wiki is commons, and there is a log entry there. According to CA, the account attached to enwiki 3 days after it was created on commons, so I would expect to see an autocreate entry on enwiki, but it's not there. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:59, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes events occur but log entries don't get created for them ... it just happens sometimes. I think it used to be more common than it is now. Graham87 04:53, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

There was a bug in the earlier days of SUL that occurred sometimes - if you had a SUL account, but you had cookies disabled - you didn't autocreate on a new project, if you manually logged in you got created but the log didn't generate because it was confused was the creation manner was (c.f. phab:T44434) not saying that this was necessarily that - but bugs happened. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:30, 19 October 2021 (UTC)