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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 196

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Why does my mapframe map in an infobox work in my userspace but is blank on an actual Wikipedia article?

{{Speciesbox
| image = Asparagus stipularis (detail).jpg
| genus = Asparagus
| species = stipularis
| authority = L.
| synonyms = Asparagus horridus
| range_map_caption = <center>'''Distribution'''<br>{{legend0|#6bbc46|Native range}}</center>
| range_map = 
<mapframe text="" width=300 height=300>
[{
  "type": "ExternalData",
  "service": "geoshape",
  "ids": "Q262, Q5765, Q5813, Q229, Q667536, Q79, Q41, Q398, Q817, Q846, Q851, Q878, Q38, Q34374, Q822, Q858, Q1016, Q1028, Q219060, Q1462, Q851, Q1460, Q36755, Q29, Q948", 
  "properties": {t3
      "title": "native",
      "fill": "#6bbc46",
      "stroke-width": 0,
      "description": ""
         }
}
]
</mapframe>
<ref>{{Cite web |title=Asparagus horridus L. {{!}} Plants of the World Online {{!}} Kew Science |url=http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:531139-1 |access-date=2022-02-28 |website=Plants of the World Online |language=en}}</ref>
}}

Hi all

For the past few weeks I've been working on a way to more easily make distribution maps for species articles (where they live). I've found quite a good solution using Kartographer which allows you to use both OpenStreetMap shapes and geoshapes from commons. It can also have different colours for native range, introduced, extinct etc. Here's an example for Asparagus horridus.

User:John_Cummings/Experiments/Species_distribution_map

Something weird is happening that I don't understand, in my userspace and on this page the map works fine (although there is an issue with the software currently that makes it slow to load T302853). However if I copy this map into the same infobox on the actual Wikipedia article all the areas highlighted disappear and its just a blank map.

Does anyone know why this might be happening and how can it be fixed?

Thanks

. John Cummings (talk) 17:59, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

When I copy-paste the mapframe code from your user page into the article, it works fine for me in Preview. Paste it in and post again here if it still doesn't work. I recommend putting the ref with the caption instead of with the map, BTW. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:05, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
Jonesey95 thanks very much, unfortunatley when I added it to Asparagus_horridus it just shows a blank map. Do you see the same? Any idea what could be causing it? John Cummings (talk) 10:57, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
For me, when I just go to Asparagus horridus, I too get a blank map. If I open the article for editing and use "Preview" I see the green areas, but they disappear when a dummy change is saved. At least on a Mac, the behaviour is independent of any browser that I use. Is it something to do with the way that the WikiMedia software caches pages? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:36, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
I wondered if it might be some kind of interaction with the automated taxobox system, but when I added the map outside the taxobox, I got the same behaviour: green visible in preview, not when saved. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:41, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
There are certainly a few caching issues with mapframe. Another complication is that preview is handled differently than the saved page version (something along the lines of dynamic view vs static view with cached tiles).
A while ago there was a change in Wikimedia software that cause a lot of errors in the geojson. The solution was to remove the prettifying formatting (i.e line feeds etc). I did this at Asparagus horridus with this edit, which didn't immediately fix the problem. It is now working for me, but this could be due to caching or this edit by Peter coxhead or just the mapframe gremlins mocking me. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:45, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
It didn't work for me when I looked at it immediately after Jts1882's edit, nor after I'd finished my tests, but it does now! It does look like some kind of cache issue, which is slow to resolve itself. Whether there's any way of forcing the resolution isn't clear; the usual 'tricks' of purging and null edits didn't help. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:44, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
Ok, the following seems to work. I changed the size of the map to a more reasonable 220. On saving the article, the map had disappeared. I used the "show in full screen" icon, and noticed that the page still showed as loading after it first opened with what appeared to be a correct view. I waited until the loading had completed, and then used the "X" button to return to the article. The map was then there.
I think the problem is that the displayed part of the underlying map appears simple, but it's just a reduced view of a very complicated map – go to Asparagus_horridus#/map/0 and zoom in – it goes right down to the street level all over the world. The Wikimedia software is simply taking a long time to render and then cache this map.
What this suggests to me is that this is a very resource-intensive way of displaying a distribution map. If such maps were routinely added to taxoboxes, the server load would surely be considerable. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:01, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
Agree with slimming it down. The data used here is on pages like commons:Data:Algeria.map and also some directly from OpenStreetMap. The OP (Original poster) did also bring this up at phab:T302853, which reached the same conclusion. There they calculated the total number of coordinates in this map is 300 kilobytes, which is bonkers. So, for Algeria as an example, any precision below 0.05 degrees needs to go, as that does travel less than a pixel at 400px size, with only the Algeria map being used - that is after all an usecase it can also be used for. The coordinates stored directly on OpenStreetmap need to be moved to Commons so they can be slimmed down there.--Snævar (talk) 17:03, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
@Snævar: Yes, to load and render 300 kilobytes of coordinates to show a distribution map is quite bonkers. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:16, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Peter coxhead, Snævar and Jts1882 thanks very much for the help and explanation, please could share your thoughts on phab:T302853 so they don't get lost. For information there are over 1 million OSM shapes which can be used on these maps so adding them to Commons and simplifying them does not seem like a realistic option. However it appears to be possible to set the level of simplification when rendering the shapes so it doesn't matter how detailed the original shape is on OSM. I understand this to be similar to Commons providing full size images and then Wikipedia creates lower res thumbnails. Thanks again John Cummings (talk) 12:46, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@John Cummings: I don't understand the underlying software well enough to comment there. By the way, when I looked at Asparagus horridus just now, the map was blank again. Waiting a few seconds caused it to appear. You should definitely not be adding such maps to articles until there is a real solution to this issue. I'm not sure what you mean by it appears to be possible to set the level of simplification when rendering the shapes. Surely the issue is whether the Wikimedia software needs to render the distribution map from the OSM original more than once; it doesn't matter how simplified the rendered image is, what matters is the complexity of the source the rendering has to start from. I think what Snævar wrote is correct, namely that the coordinates stored directly on OpenStreetmap need to be .. slimmed down, whether at Commons or elsewhere. But I repeat, I don't understand the underlying software well enough. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi Peter coxhead
Could you report on the phab task phab:T302853 that the map is showing blank for you? That would be really helpful, we assumed that issue was fixed. It looks like they're working on a fix for simplifying the map (I don't understand it well either).
Thanks
. John Cummings (talk) 14:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Disappearing toolbar

You know that toolbar beneath the editing window for inserting special characters (with dropdowns for "Insert", "Wiki markup", "Symbols", etc.)? I see it as usual when editing a page, but for some reason it no longer appears beneath the editing widow on the preview page when I preview my edits. This is irksome if I need to make further changes that involve adding characters such as em or en dashes. I'm fairly sure that this is a recent development; does anyone know what's going on? (I use the MonoBook skin, if that matters.) Deor (talk) 19:34, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Deor, is it any different when using another skin like Vector or Timeless? Which editor do you use, VE/Source 2017, VE, Source 2010, something else? Screenshot? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 20:46, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: The toolbar does appear in Vector and Timeless, so the problem would appear to be a Monobook thing. I'm not sure which editor I use—probably Source 2010, since I've been around here for some time and I'm resistant to change. Was there a software update yesterday that might be causing the problem? Deor (talk) 22:57, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
Deor, I switched to monobook, loaded the edit window (in the mw:2010 wikitext editor ), preview, still see the bar. I can't reproduce it. Have you tried doing this while logged out? If that solves your problem it could be a gadget or userscript you have enabled/installed. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:57, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
WP:THURSDAY? SN54129 11:53, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: I'm now seeing the toolbar again, so the problem seems to have resolved itself (or to have been resolved by kindly elves). Deor (talk) 15:38, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
That toolbar is called mw:CharInsert.
If it disappears again, try editing in mw:Safemode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Most recent edits on subpages?

I want to get a list of the most recent edit to every page which is a subpage of a given page, limited to the N more recent entries. More concretely, all the subpages of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations. Basically, I want to pretend that every subpage of WP:SPI is on my watchlist. In python-ish pseudocode: 

edits = []
for page in all_subpages_of('Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations'):
  edits.append(most_recent_edit(page))
edits.sort_by_date()
print(edits[0:N])

Is there any way to do that with the normal web interface tools, or do I need to dive into Quarry? Extra credit if I can just get the immediate subpages, i.e. WP:SPI/Foo, but not WP:SPI/Foo/Archive. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:52, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@RoySmith first, for your example, there are a lot of subpages for that page (c.f. Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations); there is no watchlist regex feature, nor is this ever expected ([[c.f. phab:T27372) - so as far as using the webui, I'm not thinking so. — xaosflux Talk 16:30, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
See also: meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Watchlists/Pattern matching article titles — xaosflux Talk 16:35, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Thought about this a bit more, would perhaps this get you the results you want: Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Open_SPI_cases? — xaosflux Talk 16:52, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
A similar question from January, with a query attached. It should be trivial to limit it to immediate subpages; less trivial but still straightforward to show at most one edit per subpage. —Cryptic 18:25, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Ah, cool, thanks (both). I never really use Related Changes. Don't know why; it seems like a powerful tool but I just never integrated it into my toolbelt. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:15, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Wiki production problems

Just a heads up that there appears to be something serious going on with the Wikipedia servers. A while ago, I was getting 503's consistently. Downdecector is showing a lot of uglyness. I've been watching the IRC operations channel; it's obvious the ops folks know about this and are working on it. If you're reading this message, you're probably not affected :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 19:11, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Its not just wikipedia. AWS, Discord, Twitter and others seem to be having issues. Could be coincidence or the issue is further upstream.Slywriter (talk) 19:19, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
I have been noticing both Wikipedia and archive.today as of recent have been experiencing consistent downtime (at least for me). Maybe its related to the Russian Ukraine war and a possible DDOS attack on two of the most important sites on the internet, in order to disrupt the free flow of information?
Regardless, I know WMF has skilled engineers that will fix the problem. Hopefully it can be fixed soon. Rlink2 (talk) 19:20, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
No actual outages, but it's been slow for me all day. Other websites seem normal. Happily, I'm nowhere near Ukraine; my sympathies to those facing more serious problems. Certes (talk) 19:27, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
I have been experiencing these problems for several days. Is there a Phabricator ticket open? Nurg (talk) 02:57, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
It looks like there was a database problem shortly before you posted that comment: wikitech:Incident documentation/2022-03-10 MediaWiki availability Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:47, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, but no, I wasn't active at that time. Must have been a separate issue. Nurg (talk) 21:44, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Upstream error on Friday

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T301505

Hey! I just started getting the error message upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow . Last time this happened it was because of WP:THURSDAY, however it's not Thursday so I'm confused as to what's going on. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 01:25, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

It keeps happening. phab:T301505 is tracking it. It says: "this is a symptom of a number of different problems that can appear lower in our tech stack". PrimeHunter (talk) 02:14, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Ah alright. I was a bit confused because the past few times it's happened to me it was on a Thursday so it caught me offguard when it happened today. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 02:19, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

[Reply] now appearing after posts

Ok, where was the discussion to add this new thing, to talkpages. GoodDay (talk) 20:44, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Not sure where the discussion was, but I believe this is related to the reply tool automatic opt-in that I've seen advertised above my watchlist for awhile. I'm sure there's a way to turn it off if you don't like it. Hog Farm Talk 20:45, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
The opt-out options are at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.
THANK YOU for posting ^^^this. All those [reply]s, at the End of Every. Single. Post. Shearonink (talk) 06:19, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I thought that searching for that unusual prefs section name would produce a list of all the discussions about how to turn it off (several of them on this page, such as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 195#Reply tool might get here soon, and all the regulars will doubtless remember that week when we disrupted this page all the fun we had testing the forthcoming [subscribe] button), but my search got 694 hits, because the instructions for turning it off also appear in Tech News and other newsletters. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
@GoodDay: WP:VPR. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:46, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
...and yes, Hog Farm is correct. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:46, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
You have been notified in your watchlist notifications at least twice in the past two weeks, there has been at least one Tech News note on the point, as well as a WP:VPPRO discussion. Izno (talk) 20:47, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
I missed any notification and I don't get Tech News and I don't follow VPPRO discussions, I just edit. Shearonink (talk) 06:19, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Offering_the_Reply_Tool_as_an_opt-out_feature. Schazjmd (talk) 20:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

You can add my GraphicReplyLink user script to replace the [Reply] text with a better-looking Speech balloon emoji (💬). You can also simply add the two lines of code to your common.js file. See WP:Talk pages project § Changing the reply label — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:22, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

change to editing talk pages, that [reply] at the end of posts...

I know I don't pay attention to such things when they are planned or I seem to miss news/warnings about such updates but when did the little itty-bitty [reply] pop up on talk page posts? I know there's a reason for this or something... Shearonink (talk) 06:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

I thought it was just me, but after I posted my query I found some others have posted about the new [reply] appearing at the end of every post. In case there are others who want to opt-out, here's the fix: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion. You're welcome. Shearonink (talk) 06:22, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
You seem to have found the relevant section above. Izno (talk) 06:26, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes I did, thanks Izno. I just edit, seriously...I find articles about people or subjects and decide to fix them up. I admit, I just don't have the time to pay a lot of attention to updates-news, I barely have time to edit as much as I want. Shearonink (talk) 07:38, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
The story behind the reply link started in 2019 where the community, not only english wikipedia but all of its sister projects, talked with the developers on how the talk pages should be improved. That community agreed on multiple changes to the talk pages, reply is one, the ability to watch talk page sections is another, setting requirements for signatures (which this wiki allready has), improve the software for new discussions and improve notifications. Reply is only the first change of those. See mw:Talk pages consultation 2019 and mw:Talk pages project.--Snævar (talk) 06:33, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Yay. Improvements and community agreeing. Shearonink (talk) 07:38, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

API for abuse filters

How can I query the content of an abuse filter via API? There are ?action=query&list=abusefilters, ?action=query&list=abuselog, ?action=abusefiltercheckmatch, ?action=abusefilterchecksyntax, ?action=abusefilterevalexpression, ?action=abusefilterunblockautopromote, ?action=abuselogprivatedetails, but none of them return abuse filters' content. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 22:43, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

You needed to set abfprop: To retrieve the filter pattern and notes for 384 (hist · log), try https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=abusefilters&abfstartid=384&abflimit=1&abfprop=pattern%7Ccomments. Other options for abfprop are at [1]. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response! NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:20, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Editing and relevant informations

Now that I know how to get abuse filters' content, how do I edit it and/or get relevant informations (global or not, throttle action/time/groups, warning/disallow messages, block expiries, tag name etc.)? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 16:24, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

How to subst a parameter in a template

Hi there! How do I subst a parameter in a template? Thanks, 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 05:29, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Can you give an example? ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:36, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Morse code imaage

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T303678

The svg image in the lead of Morse code has suddenly stopped rendering properly (both in the article and on the Commons page). Some of the numerals are not displaying, although they still exist in the file and it has not been edited recently. I can't work out what has changed to cause this. I've tried three differenct browsers and two different skins so I don't think this is just local to me. SpinningSpark 08:46, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

If I look at the original file ([2]), it looks good to me. So I guess this has something to do with the rendering to PNG by the server. @TheDJ:, could you take a look at File:International Morse Code.svg? Is this the same problem as earlier with the tic-tac-toe (#SVG_not_well_rendered)? --rchard2scout (talk) 10:17, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes it is the same issue. I suggest opening a ticket, maybe there was an update to librsvg recently ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:09, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm not that familiar with SVG, you could probably describe the bug better than I. I just noticed that this seemed like a similar issue (simple shapes used multiple times within a picture, and some of them suddenly disappeared), so I thought I'd ping you. And I happened to remember that SVG rendering has been broken in all kinds of interesting ways for a while now. --rchard2scout (talk) 15:05, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

MeToo. Here are examples of what it looks like in my browser (Google Chrome in Win 10):

  •  
    A view of the Morse Code as a plain SVG file
  •  
    A view of the Morse Code SVG in a Commons' web page

Additionally, the texts are rendered in different fonts in both views of the same file. IDK if this has something to do with invisible Morse codes, or it is a separate bug/feature... --CiaPan (talk) 11:30, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

When you view the SVG file itself, your browser renders it with the fonts you have installed. When you view the Commons page, Wikimedia servers render it to a PNG using the fonts installed on the servers. You might see Wikipedia:SVG help#font-family issues for more info. Anomie⚔ 12:34, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
@Anomie: Oh, I completely missed the option I might see the PNG rendered by WM servers. Thank you for the explanation. :) CiaPan (talk) 16:15, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

A page is populating a hidden maintenance category, but the category is empty!

Cameron Thompson if you look at the hidden categories at the bottom of the page, says it is populating Category:Unsynchronized disambiguation talk pages, but that category is empty? Why?

It's populated via its transclusion of Template:hndis.

If there is a Phabricator for this, can someone post a link to it here? Thanks. –wbm1058 (talk) 14:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I see: "This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more)." – wbm1058 (talk) 15:18, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
The issue here is the confusing situation that if something has caused a change to the categories of a page after the page was last edited then the list of categories displayed on the page may be updated before the category pages. A null edit of the page synchronizes it. A purge of the page does not update the category pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
See T132467 and especially T157670 for proposed workarounds that, if implemented, would mitigate this problem. As far as I know, the only thing required for them to be implemented is that someone needs to set up a cron job. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:43, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi Jonesey95, I saw that. cron is the UNIX/LINUX equivalent of Windows Task Scheduler. The manual is at mw:Manual:RefreshLinks.php but it isn't clear to me whether I could set that up to run as a bot on my machine or it has to run on a MediaWiki server. It might be easier for me to just run a null-edit bot, but I presume that's a cruder, less-efficient tool for the purpose. If you could tell me about a template change that's still populating categories at snail-speed, I might be able to speed it up with a null-edit bot run. FYI, HERE is the report that prompted my post here. A null-edit bot doesn't seem practical for ongoing re-population when the populating template hasn't recently changed, but probably is practical for initial population after something is newly implemented. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Interesting: mw:Manual:Maintenance scripts – I haven't seen this before. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:15, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
I wonder why RefreshLinks.php is not listed on mw:Manual:Maintenance scripts/List of scripts? wbm1058 (talk) 17:36, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
The Running the scripts page was just created within the past month. I see that I don't run these as a bot from my own machine, rather I need to establish a connection through SSH. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
@Wbm1058 By "someone", Jonesey95 was referring to Wikimedia System Administrators, not editors or even admins. That manual you're looking at is intended for people on that list, or for people hosting their own wiki using the mediawiki software. If you are looking for something you can run on your end to null edit all pages that are using a particular template, see User:Ahecht/Scripts/refresh. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:19, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Thank you Ahecht that's a nifty tool. Now I have a more convenient way to do something I've occasionally done by "secretly" running a PHP bot on my own machine. Though that's not a real solution for problems like the one reported on my bot's talk. I presume Jonesey95 is aware of your tool? MusikAnimal, since you're on the System Administrators list, can you explain why it's so hard to get someone to do this seemingly easy task? I mean, if I had the privileges, I could probably be able to follow the instructions and figure out how to do it myself. wbm1058 (talk) 23:11, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
The comments at phab:T157670 go into detail. Even on the smaller wikis (small by our standards, that is), the maintenance script was causing problems. The guides on mediawiki.org are often aimed at smaller third party wikis, not wikis with millions of pages that have to worry about performance. We need a more efficient solution that scales, and it seems like phab:T159512 is the most promising path forward from my reading. I don't know why it has had no progress, but it seemingly wouldn't be terribly difficult to code… maybe I'll take a stab at it. Pining Legoktm who would know more. — MusikAnimal talk 23:54, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
When MediaWikicode changes and adds a new cat to Special:TrackingCategories, it can take many months (see comment dated Feb 9 2017) for pages to trickle in to the category via edits. No amount of null editing by editors can get to the tens of millions of pages on en.WP. In the comments at phab:T157670, it looks to me like catching up ten years of outdated pages would add about 10% to the total server load over the course of a month, and then if we stayed at that pace of refreshing, we could get caught up in another couple of months. We could then have a low-impact job that would refresh any page that got older than a month or so. Unless I'm misunderstanding something. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:11, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
Seems to me like the longer the delay to even start catching up, the longer it will take to catch up. Is there a page property that specifies the date of the last purge? (any edit, null or not, would update this property). I'm expecting to maybe find it in mw:API:Info (basic information about the given page) but not seeing anything there. Add option to refreshLinks.php to only update pages that haven't been updated since a timestamp says "We can use the page_links_updated field to find pages that haven't been updated in a while." How do I obtain a page's page_links_updated field with an API query? – wbm1058 (talk) 14:58, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I see, mw:Manual:page table: page_links_updated – wbm1058 (talk) 15:13, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
...and mw:API:Database field and API property associations. Is page_links_updated inaccessible via API? If not, I'd like to know how to access it. Maybe a Quarry query? Perhaps I could feed the results of a Quarry to my null-edit bot. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:13, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Way back in 2017 there were 12 million pages in the "NULL" group on en.WP. Null-editing them at one page per second would have taken 139 days. That never happened... How do you query to get the list of pages in the "NULL" group? Set to the default value of NULL when the page is created – why is the value NULL rather than the page-creation timestamp? I suppose we could start null-editing with these to at least give them a valid timestamp. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:16, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't have answers to these questions. All I know is how it affects categorization timeliness when template changes, and especially MediaWiki code changes, are supposed to cause categorization changes. No change to code should take more than eight months to fully take effect. Some of the people commenting on phab:T157670 presumably know the answers to your questions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:34, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Actually when Legoktm ran this query on Feb 09 2017, it reported 11,925,959 in the "NULL" group. I guess that is ~12 million! Good news though, I just ran a new query that reported 2,657,121 in the "NULL" group. Down from 11.9 million to 2.7 million. It's time to mop up the stragglers! I'm making good progress on getting started with that! wbm1058 (talk) 17:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
My null-edit the "NULL" group bot has been coded to work one namespace at a time. I'm starting out by doing the lesser spaces, so far I've done File and Mediawiki talk. These have been supervised, as I ramp up to the bigger spaces which I expect to run 24×7 as needed until done. Let me know if there's a preferred order for the bigger namespaces, to achieve maximum impact on cache-flushing. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:44, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
In my gnoming experience, the article and template spaces are the most useful to have refreshed frequently, since most tracking categories are concerned with articles or templates that are used in articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:55, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Box that won't go away

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T303687
Resolved

How do I get rid of the box on the sidebar under "Languages" that says "On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Go to top."? —GMX(on the go!) 14:33, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@PorkchopGMX (on the go): you can put this code snippet:
.mw-sidebar-action {
    display: none;
}
In Special:MyPage/vector.css. This may also hide some other things (or things in the future) as the 'language' box there doesn't seem to have a good purposefully named class to hook on to right now, but it does seem to be the only element using it today. — xaosflux Talk 14:41, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
It worked. Thanks for the help! —GMX(on the go!) 14:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
You are welcome, I've also opened phab:T303611 to request a more specific class name for this element. — xaosflux Talk 14:52, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
I missed a better option, @PorkchopGMX (on the go): use this instead:
.mw-message-box-notice.vector-language-sidebar-alert.mw-message-box {
    display: none;
}
— xaosflux Talk 14:57, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Xaosflux! Is there any way to remove the "Languages" heading at the side as well? 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 05:28, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
@EpicPupper not reliably, you could use the ".mw-sidebar-action" from higher up, but it could end up hiding other things in the future that you could miss. (The container for "Languages" label there doesn't have a unique class). — xaosflux Talk 11:41, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Hmm. I've filed phab:T303687 for now. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 17:24, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Using the .mw-sidebar-action class for this purpose is fine. This class is used for temporary boxes that appear during the Desktop improvements project that help people get used to the new design. At this point it's highly unlikely they will be used for anything else.
Hiding this will hide the "Switch to old look" and the languages tip in the sidebar, which are not important parts of the design. If you just want to hide the languages use 
.mw-sidebar-action:last-child { display: none !important; }
I should note the language box is only temporary, as it has been requested by projects where people have been struggling to find the new location. It's likely to be replaced by a Guided Tour soon (see phab:T297367). Jdlrobson (talk) 19:55, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Perfect, that's actually wonderful for my needs (I want to hide the "switch to old look" as well). Closed the Phab ticket. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 22:09, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Asterisk at AIV not being interpreted as a bullet point

Hello! At WP:AIV there was a report made by Pri2000 which wasn't formatted correctly. I have attempted to fix it, however the asterisk isn't being interpreted as a bullet point like it usually is and instead is just displaying as an asterisk. I'm confused as to why it's doing this. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:26, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

I removed a character from before the asterisk (Unicode 200C, "ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER"). Certes (talk) 15:43, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Those dang invisible unicode characters! Thanks for fixing it! ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 15:49, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit button

Hi. Maybe it's just me, but has the edit button at the top of each page reduced in size? Maybe by just a few pixels? I'm using Firefox and the MonoBook skin. Thanks! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 12:30, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Lugnuts When looking at it for this, I almost thought so too - but I think it is just an optical illusion. I tried with FF and Monobook, took the screen to maximum zoom level, then took a line drawing tool and overlaid the window, it seems to still be exactly in line with "talk", "history" etc. Would you try something like that and check? — xaosflux Talk 14:04, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look. Could be that they've all moved ever so slightly. No big deal, and thanks again for checking. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 14:25, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
It could be just where it lines up with the "shadow" on the skin watermark, try looking at it in qqx which will make those tabs much wider for comparison. — xaosflux Talk 14:32, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal (WMF), could this be related to the change you were talking about above? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I believe phab:T290280 changed the HTML of the tabs in Vector as well. It wasn't supposed to have any visual difference, but very minor differences are certainly possible (say browser default styles for <h3> elements that are no longer being applied). MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Firefox update 98.0.1 (32 bit), Modern Skin

This issue is limited to English Wikipedia. It does not affect Commons or Wikisource, Google search or anything else. Firefox just updated itself on my device. I've cleared my cache, shut down the Firefox browser and re-opened it. Nothing works as it should right now.

When entering a term in the search box, it used to show suggestions as you type. Not anymore. You gotta know what you want and typed the entire thing.

There is absolutely nothing in the edit window but a blank white background.

  • Edit window tool bar - completely disappeared.
  • Colors in Edit window - completely gone
  • Sidebar tools - gone
  • Sidebar languages - gone

— Maile (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

@Maile66 you have custom scripts that are unique to the English Wikipedia, try disabling scripts in User:Maile66/modern.css, User:Maile66/common.css, and User:Maile66/common.js; then see if your problem goes away here. — xaosflux Talk 16:26, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
This is so strange. I'm on Chome right now, because I can't get to my user subpages, nothing. — Maile (talk) 16:35, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Want me to disable your scripts for you? — xaosflux Talk 16:36, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Right now, there is no such thing as Modern Skin on any of the wikis, so maybe it's not just me. — Maile (talk) 16:48, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Maile66 done, revert whenever you'd like. — xaosflux Talk 16:54, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, but that made no difference at all. — Maile (talk) 16:56, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
FWIW, I'm able to access the edit box using FF 98.0.1 (64bit), with the Modern skin. Try switching to a different skin by using this link. — xaosflux Talk 16:57, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Modern skin has not been on my Preference option - not on Chrome, The Edge or Firefox - since this happened. I'm using Monobook already. — Maile (talk) 17:02, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Maile66 I disabled your User:Maile66/monobook.css as well, was looking in to "Modern" because of your section header above. — xaosflux Talk 17:05, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm replying via Chrome right now. The edit window toolbox is still missing in Firefox, but no other browser.— Maile (talk) 17:12, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Try logging out in Firefox, clearing all your temporary internet files, then log back in? — xaosflux Talk 17:20, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, I just did all that, and it made no difference. This is a Firefox snafu. They are going to have to correct it somewhere down the line. But getting through to anyone there, who has a clue about anything, is an exercise in futilely. In the meantime, my editing is going to be very sparse. Too difficult to find a browser with an edit window that is readable. — Maile (talk) 17:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: could you please re-enable the scripts you disabled, since it's too difficult for me right now to find where they are. Thanks.— Maile (talk) 17:36, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Maile66 I'm on FF98.0.1 (64bit) using the modern skin and I'm not experiencing any of the issues you're having.
PS If you want to get Modern back until the WMF remove it from the build altogether this will do it for you - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences?useskin=modern#mw-prefsection-rendering Nthep (talk) 17:46, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Of course, done. — xaosflux Talk 17:54, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I still don't have Modern skin as an option. Is it gone forever? — Maile (talk) 19:00, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Maile66If you use this link it should be the 5th option. — xaosflux Talk 19:02, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks for trying. The time/clock also no longer appears at the top - but only on Firefox in Wikipedia. All the other wikis look perfectly normal. Technology is sometimes a puzzle. — Maile (talk) 19:12, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Maile66: What happens when you restart Firefox in "Troubleshoot mode" (under the Help menu)? It sounds like you might have an adblocker or some other extension that thinks all the scripts on Wikipedia are evil. If that doesn't work, try WP:SAFEMODE. Does the search box give you suggestions at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?safemode=1 ? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:47, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
  Fixed And that was it. I guess when I uploaded the new Firefox, NoScript blocked Wikipedia. Thanks to everybody for helping resolve this!! — Maile (talk) 19:58, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-11

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

  • In the Wikipedia Android app it is now possible to change the toolbar at the bottom so the tools you use more often are easier to click on. The app now also has a focused reading mode. [3][4]

Problems

  • There was a problem with the collection of some page-view data from June 2021 to January 2022 on all wikis. This means the statistics are incomplete. To help calculate which projects and regions were most affected, relevant datasets are being retained for 30 extra days. You can read more on Meta-wiki.
  • There was a problem with the databases on March 10. All wikis were unreachable for logged-in users for 12 minutes. Logged-out users could read pages but could not edit or access uncached content then. [5]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
  • When using uselang=qqx to find localisation messages, it will now show all possible message keys for navigation tabs such as "View history". [6]
  •   Access to Special:RevisionDelete has been expanded to include users who have deletelogentry and deletedhistory rights through their group memberships. Before, only those with the deleterevision right could access this special page. [7]
  • On the Special:Undelete pages for diffs and revisions, there will be a link back to the main Undelete page with the list of revisions. [8]

Future changes

Events

  • The Wikimedia Hackathon 2022 will take place as a hybrid event on 20-22 May 2022. The Hackathon will be held online and there are grants available to support local in-person meetups around the world. Grants can be requested until 20 March.

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

22:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Change to Special:Contributions

I am seeing a small (but annoying) change to the User contributions listing ( Special:Contributions ). It probably arrived in the recent Thursday update (3 March). The contributions list was a simple single list of edits, but now is now a series of lists with extra hidden date headings. Does anybody have any idea why extra text was added but then hidden? Did I miss some announcement or was this deemed too small for an announcement? Can this "feature" be disabled? etc. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:31, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Same for article history listings — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:33, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
phab:T298638. They made accessibility worse to make some mobile users happy, and seem to not want to undo this. —Kusma (talk) 18:05, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
This is making me wonder...what is the general ratio of use, for all actual editors, of desktop vs. mobile? And digging deeper into that pile of data, what is the ratio of use for, say the top 5000 editors, desktop vs. mobile? Maybe I'm wrong but sometimes it seems that Wikipedia, when planning or instituting editing changes, is chasing the numbers of accessors/readers instead of taking into account the workload of and accessibility for its top editing cadre. Shearonink (talk) 17:59, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
@Shearonink, what I call mw:Neil's spreadsheet (because I can never remember the official name, but I know who started it) has some information. For enwiki, last year, during each month, we had 135,506 registered non-bot accounts make at least one edit. ("Registered accounts" isn't quite the same as "editors", because I'm two of them, and some people use separate accounts for editing from home vs elsewhere, etc. This number is basically {{NUMBEROFACTIVEUSERS}}, which is currently 123,717 [i.e., during the last month; there are seasonal variations].)
Of those 135K each month, 26.1% used the mobile site exclusively or primarily. These mobile editors account for 14.4% of non-bot edits, which means that the number of edits-per-account is lower than for desktop editors.
Of those 135K editors who made any edit in the course of an average month, 32,805 made five or more edits in that month. For the 103K who made fewer than five edits in a month, most of them will have made exactly one edit.
We see almost 5K brand-new editors each month; the other 130K are not brand-new. About 400 of the brand-new folks come back the next month to edit again. An unknown proportion of the other 4600 brand-new editors edit again in the future, but not in the following month. Many of them never edit a second time (some of which will be due to lost passwords, etc.).
You might also be interested Template:Registered editors by edit count or in the data table I posted at Help talk:Editing#Editing tool use. (NB: there are some important caveats there.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:22, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikidata

Hello!

Lately my home-community (SqWiki) has started showing interest in Wikidata, asking questions about it and wanting to have workshops in regard to it. I have some very naive questions. We all know that it helps with interwiki/language links and lately we've learned that Wikidata can also be utilized for infoboxes (can someone show me some help pages about wikidata-related parameters/templates/modules?). I've also been personally involved in some discussions, here and on Wikidata, in regard to Wikidata and taxonomy issues which ultimately, unfortunately, failed to produce any concrete results, again. But... What is Wikidata used for other than that? Everywhere I read on Wikidata I see pages that say more or less the same thing "Wikidata is very powerful and has the potential to be utilized in many different ways to provide solutions to a lot of problems". I remember quite some years ago when Wikidata was just introduced to me as a concept in a workshop and it was done so in a similar way: We run some queries from the default examples and after we saw a list of all the well-known cats in the world and it was said to us that there is a great potential with this tool for querying and presenting information in tabular ways, we all said "oooh" and that was it. That "to-be" tone is on-going on everything related to Wikidata and has been so for quite a while so the questions I have are:

  • What are some concrete uses, apart from what I mentioned above, if any, of Wikidata currently speaking?
  • Why is that the Wikidata project appears overall way more "static", at least in my eyes, than the other projects?
  • What are some concrete changes/updates that have happened throughout the years, if any, at Wikidata?
  • What are some concrete projects people are working for in the near future, if any, at Wikidata?
  • What is EnWiki's overall interaction/relationship with Wikidata other than for inter-wiki/language links?
  • What is some other insight you can provide beside what I asked above?

Thank you in advance! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:58, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Probably it would be better to ask on a wiki that has embraced Wikidata. I think ca.wp or hy.wp may be more to taste. Alternatively, d:WD:PC for the more general questions. Izno (talk) 17:25, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi
What are some concrete uses, apart from what I mentioned above, if any, of Wikidata currently speaking Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Wikidata is an enclyopedia of structered data. Basicaially it takes infomation and puts in a way both humans an machines can understand. Instead of articles, they have properties. Each property has a standard set of attributes that can be used in whichever way you feel best.
One example of Wikidata I know if is using it for social media links. For example, the Wikidata entry for Arianda Grande wikidata:Q151892 has her twitter username in it. So if you wanted to link to her twitter profile, instead of linking to the twitter URL directly, you can link to the twitter URL in the Wikidata profile. That way, if her Twitter username changes, and it is updated in Wikidata, it will automatically be updated for the article in question. It can also be used to get information to place in infoboxes.
I am sure there are more examples so people can chime in. Rlink2 (talk) 17:33, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
One way to find answers to the above questions is to find templates that use Module:WikidataIB, and go back through that module's talk pages. A good discussion to read about the pros and cons of Wikidata usage, at least in infoboxes, is this 2018 RFC. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi @Klein Muçi! I'm certainly not extremely experienced with Wikidata, but I can answer some of your questions. Wikidata is also useful for search purposes; you can search for images that "depict" a certain thing in order to find images for an article. You can also find articles to translate, for example, with toolforge:not-in-the-other-language. Wikidata is more "static" because it's just facts; usually they don't change that much, compared to literary works of prose like on the Wikipedias. Finally, Wikidata can also be used to get a rough idea of what an article should be like, because it's simple with just the "facts". Happy Wikidata-ing! 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 17:56, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
@Izno, @Rlink2, @Jonesey95, @EpicPupper, thank you all for your insight.
So far, what I've understood is this:
Wikidata started as a way to collect data through different wiki projects in a schematic/machine readable manner, mostly as a way to put order on the interlanguage links. Soon enough it started being used as a key part in infoboxes (because of their schematic nature) and this started discussions in EnWiki about the reliability of the said data which ultimately halted its further inclusion on a majority of infoboxes. Ever since, its main use has been on different helping tools like the one mentioned above.
If anyone else can add more information on this or maybe correct what I may have misunderstood, please feel free to do so. - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:51, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
That sounds accurate to me. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 03:55, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi
Yes, basically this. Regarding the RFC (which i only took a cursory look at), Wikidata isn't perfect, but there is no Wikimedia project that is. For a project like enwiki that has enough volunteers to keep info up to date, then maybe Wikidata isn't needed, but for a smaller project with less volunteers, it may be prefereable to use Wikidata to keep things in sync. Rlink2 (talk) 04:10, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
You may want to look at m:Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018/Programme/Submission/A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Complete Beginners and similar presentations (there are video recordings).
I suggest looking at the Spanish Wikipedia's infobox templates. Look at how much is shown in the infobox for w:es:Jimmy Wales and then look at how little wikitext code needs to be in the article for that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF), thanks a lot! Saw the slides and the video. Pretty informative! - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:06, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

[Update] Make working with templates easier: Several improvements coming to your wiki on March 16

Hello! I'm updating my message from February 28 because we had to change our plans a little bit: Because of a few issues in the deployment on other wikis, the improved search won't be part of tomorrow's deployment. Instead, we plan to deploy it a few weeks later along with the other remaining changes. Here's the updated plan:

Improvements coming to English Wikipedia tomorrow:

  • Inserting templates will become easier with a back button & added warnings (in the template dialog of VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode). (1)
  • In VisualEditor, you’ll be able to remove a template from a page via the context menu, just like removing a table or an image. (2)
  • Also in VisualEditor, the template dialog will become bigger and descriptions will be more visible. (3)
  • Matching brackets will be highlighted (when you use syntax highlighting). (4)
  • The color scheme in syntax highlighting will be updated for better readability. (5)

These improvements have been tested on a few wikis for some months now, and have been deployed to all wikis except English Wikipedia on March 9. We’d love to hear what you think of these changes on the talk pages of the project pages linked above ([1] - [5]).

A few weeks later, we’re also going to deploy the last round of improvements from our Templates focus area:

  • Finding templates will become easier with an improved search (in the TemplateWizard & in the template dialog of VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode). (6)
  • A colorblind-friendly color scheme will be added in syntax highlighting (CodeMirror extension). You’ll be able to activate it via a user setting. (7)
  • A range of fundamental changes to the VisualEditor template dialog will be deployed. They will make it easier to understand what is expected from a template, to navigate the template dialog, and to add parameters to a template. (8)

– We're looking forward to tomorrow's deployment. Once again, greetings from the Technical Wishes project, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 10:47, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

New page filter not working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T303087

No matter what dates I set under Set filters under New Pages on Microsoft Edge, it resets itself to 3/15/2022 to 3/15/2022. My Chrome browser won't load the new pages feed and says "Please wait..." I'm using a Windows 11 computer. SL93 (talk) 02:36, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

My Chrome browser on a Windows 10 computer is doing the same thing as my Microsoft Edge browser on Windows 11. SL93 (talk) 02:51, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Should Template:Load user script support absolute URLs?

Should {{Load user script}} support absolute URLs? I added an edit request to {{Load user script}}, but was informed that my change needed consensus. The sandbox allows you to specify an absolute URL (/w/etc instead of //en.wikipedia.org/etc) with an interwiki prefix, e.g. "fr" for frwiki and "c" for Commons. It also works with "en" as a prefix to use an absolute URL, in case that's useful (e.g. localized user scripts across wikis). The change also makes the substed code portable, so that users can swap the code over to their global.js or JavaScript for another wiki.

Implementation note: This change does not allow for foreign code (same with the status quo), only crosswiki scripts on wikis like Commons, Meta, etc. (such as meta:User:Zhaofeng_Li/Reflinks.js or meta:User:ESanders (WMF)/commentlinks.js)🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 19:08, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Support, as the sandbox author. To clarify, this version would generate an absolute URL when given a wikipedia page name or a name with an interwiki prefix, it does not allow arbitrary off-wiki URLs to be used. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:52, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
Template talk:Load user script has been notified of this discussion. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 00:27, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht: Is it possible to stop this from working with non-WMF sites? {{subst:Load user script/sandbox|WikilivresRU:foo.js}} gives me mw.loader.load( 'http://wikilivres.ru/foo.js?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' ); // Backlink: [[WikilivresRU:foo.js]]. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow That's true of {{subst:Load user script|WikilivresRU:foo.js}} as well, that's not unique to the sandbox version. What's changing in the sandbox version is that it adds the ability to use absolute URLs for scripts on enWiki. That said, yes, it is possible (if we hardcode some assumptions as to what domains are used by WMF sites), but the code would be fairly complex since Lua regexes don't support the alternation (|) operator. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:38, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Internal error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257002

This request [redacted] cause

MediaWiki internal error.

Original exception: [3f3e390e-d985-49d3-82ec-754b62a02a67] 2022-03-15 20:03:39: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError"

Exception caught inside exception handler.

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information. --Sergei Frolov (talk) 13:07, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Sergei Frolov: It's timing out. Continuing to re-try won't help. Sorry. Try a smaller range such as 176.59.43.96/24, or you could try using external tools such as xtools:globalcontribs. External tools may give results because unlike production, they're allowed to have longer-running queries. I've also redacted the link from your post, simply because both humans and web crawlers will continue to click on it, unnecessarily consuming resources for a query that will never finish. — MusikAnimal talk 17:29, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: I'm not sure that's right. If you increase the number of displayed results from 50 to 100, this request is handled correctly. So it's not related to timeout. --Sergei Frolov (talk) 17:45, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
I confirmed it was a timeout by looking it up in Logstash (link for those who have access). When there's a lot of data, MariaDB can get confused and choose an inefficient query plan, which is apparently what happens here once an offset clause and/or timestamp constraint is added to this particular query. Even adding a LIMIT as you say (100 instead of 50) can be enough to correct it.
As an aside, I'm not sure why the error page is missing formatting. I know there have been various issues with displaying errors to users lately, so it's probably related to that. — MusikAnimal talk 18:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
I've added a Phabricator ticket about this type of error, even though most users won't be able to see it (I only can because I started a related bug report that was marked as a duplicate). Graham87 04:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Hiding buttons

I am on a mobile device. I prefer the desktop view, as it has more helpful buttons and links, and lays out the buttons in a way that none overlap. However, how would I setup a css or js file to hide certain buttons and links I will rarely use? Like the "contributions" and "beta" links. Thanks! -- L10nM4st3r (talk) 11:48, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

You can hide elements in Special:MyPage/minerva.css (that is the skin used in mobile desktop view normally). — xaosflux Talk 13:21, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
I changed to MonoBook, but I'm smart enough here to know to use the monobook.css file. How would I hide them? "display:none" I guess, but what am I hiding. Does each button have a special identifier, or do I need to hide everything that says "beta"? Well, links anyway. Thanks though so far, I'm one step closer. -- L10nM4st3r (talk) 13:37, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Inspect the html to look for id= or class=. If I right-click "beta" in my browser then there is an inspect option which shows id="pt-betafeatures". Hide it with this in your CSS:
#pt-betafeatures {display:none !important;}
If it had said class="pt-betafeatures" then the code would say .pt-betafeatures instead of #pt-betafeatures. Some id and class names may be used in other places you don't want to hide. There are more complicated ways to influence that with selectors and including or excluding !important. Some people suggest to try to avoid !important so other features get more control of the id or class. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:39, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. And no, I did not reload the page 800 times waiting for a reply. This was a coincidence that I was fast to respond. Thanks again! -- L10nM4st3r (talk) 14:44, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
@User:PrimeHunter: Oh yes! I was scared my browser wouldn't accept a custom "css" file I make, but now the beta button is gone! I was shocked at first, looking for a button that isn't there (but only in wikibooks, I'll add it to my Wikipedia script later maybe). What is the id for my contributions button? Thanks! -- L10nM4st3r (talk) 14:51, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
#pt-mycontris — xaosflux Talk 15:33, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Notably, your browser isn't accepting this as a custom css file, we are parsing it and including it with your load; some browsers will allow you to load a local, private css file - but you would have to check with your browser specs for that. — xaosflux Talk 15:34, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
If this is the "User menu" dropdown to the right of the red alerts bell/counter, it doesn't seem to use ids except for the menu as a whole. In minerva skin, for me, the six entries in the list have their own individual classes, as follows:
  • .menu__item--user - for the user page entry
  • .menu__item--mytalk - for the Talk entry
  • .menu__item--sandbox - for the Sandbox entry
  • .menu__item--watchlist - for the Watchlist entry
  • .menu__item--mycontris - for the Contributions entry
  • .menu__item--logout - for the Log out entry
To hide two or more, you would comma-separate them thus: 
.menu__item--sandbox,
.menu__item--mycontris {
  display: none;
}
I'm one of those who avoids !important wherever possible, it's a cop-out with effects that are not entirely predictable. If those selectors don't work alone, the thing to do is increase the specificity of the selectors. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:03, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Wow, thanks guys! That is quite a list! Thanks! -- L10nM4st3r (talk) 16:14, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
Now that I have hidden most of the buttons, how do I add them back to the "tools" section of the sidebar (or anywhere in the sidebar)? To be more specific, "moving", "page history" and the "watchlist" button (I assume I need a Java script file for this, that's fine). -- L10nM4st3r (talk) 09:21, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
In CSS you can't. You would need to use JavaScript, and that is outside my field of knowledge. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:37, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
The history link could probably be done fairly easily with a WP:PORTLET link. ― Qwerfjkltalk 07:18, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Signpost sign-up page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T299896

Hello, all. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Subscribe doesn't seem to be readable for me in Chrome, and I'm getting reports that it's not readable while logged out in Firefox (but maybe it is while logged in?). Is this a known problem? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

This seems to be a general issue with MassMessage. I have a smaller list and can't see it unless I go to page history or start editing. —GMX(on the go!) 19:50, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
I can't see that page either in Chrome, even in mw:safemode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:16, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
Try now, I reset the page. Can't promise it won't break again! — xaosflux Talk 21:33, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
I can see the Signpost page now, but not GMX's page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
I cant see it on mobile safari, but on a Miraheze page, I was able to see the add targets but not see my targets. IAmChaos(alt acct - please ping my main) 20:48, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
  • Seems like a bit more of what was going on in phab:T63926, if anyone knows how to get the massmessage extension maintainers to be more interested in that, please help! — xaosflux Talk 21:34, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
    mw:Developers/Maintainers says that this extension is not maintained by any WMF team. I'm not sure who does maintain it, beyond individuals trying to do their best. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Wctaiwan and X-Savitar: is MMS something you are still working on? — xaosflux Talk 15:35, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
    I haven't worked on this in a long time, but at first glance I don't think this is the same issue as what was reported in the Phabricator task. I'm unable to reproduce the issue either logged in or logged out in Firefox and Safari, but if I can get a repro I can probably take a look. wctaiwan (talk) 15:53, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
    Legoktm pointed out that this might be phab:T299896. I can try to take a look in the next few days. wctaiwan (talk) 15:58, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikispecies - vernacular names in title - template issues

Hello, over on wikispecies, Felis catus (this version) is using indicators to display to the right of the page name/title, a/the vernacular name, based on the user's language, chosen via the language selector, using:

Hello, following on from the item above re the proposed display as the wikispecies page title, in addition to the taxon's scientific/Latin name (the page name), a/the vernacular name according to the user's language, chosen via the language selector (a $wgRestrictDisplayTitle-related patch is currently at the review stage per Phabricator:T303665), I am encountering a couple of issues in preliminary testing (to be combined later with DISPLAYTITLE:):

As can be seen in the sandbox here, which is drawing on wikispecies:Felis catus, the following 

{{align|left|{{PAGENAME}}}}{{align|right|[ {{{style|<span style="border-bottom:1px dotted">}}}{{#invoke:Transcluder|main|Felis catus|only=parameters|parameters={{Uselang}}}}</span> ]}}

results (ignoring here the dotted underline) in:

Scientific name
[ Vernacular name ]


 

<indicator name="vernacular pagename">[ {{{style|<span style="border-bottom:1px dotted">}}}{{#invoke:Transcluder|main|{{BASEPAGENAME}}|only=parameters|parameters={{Uselang}}}}</span> ]</indicator>

(1) However, if one chooses French (fr) as one's language from the language selector, the Vernacular name is displaying the entries both for fr=Chat domestique and frr=Kaat; how do you ensure only (fr=) Chat domestique is displayed? [Raised also on Module talk:Transcluder, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 10:28, 15 March 2022 (UTC)]

(2) If no vernacular name is entered for a particular language, how do you display nothing on the right-hand side, rather than [ ]? [struck, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 10:28, 15 March 2022 (UTC)]

As a third issue, and of lower priority, but for future-proofing,

(3) In case a parameter=en or equivalent is entered in another part of the taxon page, as can be seen from the sandbox here, the lower on the page of the two en= entries is returned as standard; I can return the en= value from a named section higher on the page, but not if the section name has {{int:}} before it, how does one do that? Also, following another item above, how do you (in relation to Module:Transcluder) combine only=parameters|parameters= with only=templates|templates= , so that, ideally, we could ensure only the value for the parameter "en=" within the template "VN" within the section "Vernacular names" is returned? Thank you, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 14:46, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

You probably will have better luck asking an wikipedia on the list at phab:source/mediawiki-config/browse/master/wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php$14778#L14778. English wikipedia does not use this feature. Testing this on species before the setting is live is not going to work, try previewing a page on one of the wikis in the list, make sure any saves you do are in a sandbox, those wikis are not test wikis.--Snævar (talk) 07:10, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Adding optional parameter to userbox

Hello! I'm attempting to add an option parameter to {{User prog-0}} which I'm testing in a subpage of my userpage to see if what I'm adding is actually working. However, what I was told to add by SkyeWolf369 (who is much more experienced in CSS or whatever templates and userboxes are written in than I am) doesn't appear to be working. What exactly am I doing wrong? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 00:55, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Does it have to be in Template space for it to work properly instead of userspace? If so then I don't know how I would test it to make sure it works properly since I"d like to make sure it would be alright to add that optional parameter to the template before doing so. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 02:20, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
I took the liberty of fixing it for you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:32, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Thank you! Looks like it was a pretty simple fix and it was just missing a few things that prevented it from working. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 02:42, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Can I be provided with a link to the diff of the edit that made it work? SkyeWolf369 (talk) 12:53, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Here —  Jts1882 | talk  14:12, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Special:PendingChanges

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T304159

Is there any way to see the total number of entries in lists like that special page or Special:UnreviewedPages and the such without having to press "show the next 100" ad nausea? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:10, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

For the most part, those would need to be built in the software, and some of them could be "expensive". You can see some examples of where this is done at Special:NewPagesFeed (bottom of the page) and Special:AutoblockList (header of the page). They can be built in to the page parsers such as the getTotalAutoblocks() function for the later. Feature requests such as phab:T163172 can be entered to discuss these. — xaosflux Talk 13:47, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, thank you for the information! The expensiveness factor was mostly what I wanted to know and how viable would a phab task really be for those lists. If you have anymore information towards that, I'd be happy to know. Even if the counting can be too exhaustive on the server side, maybe we still can implement it with a kind of limit and once that limit is reached it would read something like "more than X pages". Not having any kind of information whatsoever about the backlog on these situations is a bit frustrating and demoralizing, especially when you're doing cleanup campaigns.
Pinging @MusikAnimal since he was the creator of the aforementioned task, maybe some more insight can be provided. - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:11, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
You could mitigate the performance issue by using the toolserver. I think quarry:query/4320 is what you are looking for, there are several lists in FlaggedRevs. I won't be updating that query, you can fork it if you want that.--Snævar (talk) 07:00, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
@Snævar, thank you for that! Judging by the results, I think you have found the correct lists. But I wanted the numbers shown on the pages there because a lot of users are supposed to be looking at them. I could add them as links but special pages don't allow manual editing so... I'll go on with the phab-request and if they fail, at least I have your query for personal use. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:57, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
The query seems to run very fast, both here and on wikis with a much larger backlog, such as ruwiki. I see no issue with adding this directly to the Special:PendingChanges UI, aside from the fact that mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs is essentially an extension that no one wants to maintain, thus adding new features might be questionable. Special:UnreviewedPages does not exist here on enwiki but I assume you're referring to the special page that does exists for some FlaggedRevs installations, again such as ruwiki. If you happened to mean Special:NewPages, that should probably be a separate Phabricator task since it is part of MediaWiki Core and not FlaggedRevs.
Note also there's Special:ValidationStatistics which gives unreviewed counts, but probably because of the additional info like "most active reviewers", the results are cached and only periodically updated. I would guess that still suffices for any cleanup campaign, however.
I could add them as links but special pages don't allow manual editing so – some Special pages have interface messages that administrators can edit, such is the case for both special pages here (i.e. MediaWiki:Pendingchanges-list). However linking to a Quarry result isn't ideal because it doesn't auto-update. — MusikAnimal talk 14:55, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal, thanks a lot for the information! It was really insightful. Especially about the interface messages because I didn't know you could meddle with their content manually. And you're right about your assumption on Special:UnreviewedPages. Unfortunately, I'm not really accustomed with that extension and I don't know how it differs on different wikis. Only now I'm learning that it does. So far we've only used it (SqWiki) in a pretty basic manner: Accept what will appear on Google (that's how many users refer it). - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:52, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Hiding disambiguation notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T302848
Resolved

This message is to inform the community that if you do not like the disambiguation notifications feature, you can now hide it by adding the following to your common.css (or global.css to apply to all wikis): 

.mw-disambiguator-notification { display: none; }

Pinging @Vchimpanzee who requested this in a discussion from March 1. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 16:31, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

List of protection levels on a wiki

Hi, I recently got appointed as an administrator on an another project. I only find three protection levels: allow all users, allow autoconfirmed users, allow administrators. English WP has many. Not sure if this because Administrators there have fewer powers or these are all protection levels. Can anyone help me know the list of all protection levels? Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 20:02, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: - Wikipedia:Protection_policy#Types_of_protection should have the information you are looking for. Hog Farm Talk 20:08, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
English Wikipedia has requested additional protection levels. The ones you are finding on that wiki are the default. You probably don't need the levels we have here. Izno (talk) 20:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
You can find the full lists here. Do a search for 'wgRestrictionLevels'. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:14, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much, y'all. :) ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 20:30, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom you can query them directly from the api, for example here they are for piwiki. — xaosflux Talk 20:57, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Questions on how cite box formats the auto filled date

I've had a question about how the a 'cite box' formats the access date, but cannot get an answer. I figure I'm not being clear in my question, but I cannot think of any other way to ask the question. Here's what I have done in the past. Click where I need to to place the cite. Choose correct cite type. Enter info in the box. When it comes to the access date space I always just click on the calendar icon and it automatically populates with the date in this format: 1 May 2022. I've had occasions where I've added a cite - sometimes multiple in the same article - due to there being a 'needs cite' indication in the article. Two days later another editor has reformatted all the cite dates even though I do them the way I describe. When I've asked about this so I can learn more about the why I usually get a link from the editor out to a style article. The question I am asking is 'why isn't the way the cite box formats the date acceptable?'. I get that it may be a consistency issue within the article. I also get that it might be the difference between European and American date formatting. The articles where this has happened are dealing with primarily subjects originating in the US. They have also been articles where I have done the majority of cites, although I was not the first to add cites in some cases. I get the precedence rule - first one to cite establishes the format, so to speak. Just writing this out I think I am beginning to understand some of the why, but I will ask again, Why isn't the way the cite box auto fills the date correct in all cases? Thanks to anyone who patiently responds.THX1136 (talk) 00:12, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

"the calender icon" is in RefTools, it looks like this File:Cite Journal October 2018.png. That particular format is configured on MediaWiki:RefToolbarConfig.js. I can see your point, if the format is not in line with policy, then the tool should not output it. If the image I linked does not match what you where using please do say so. I recon the previous thread was User talk:Walter Görlitz/Archived Talk to 2020-12#Quick question on the date thing. I am going to allow others to answer the policy part - whether that date format is allowed. --Snævar (talk) 01:54, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
That date format is OK in articles that use dmy dates (i.e. with European date format) but not otherwise. See the relevant part of the Manual of Style. This is a long-standing issue. Graham87 15:08, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
@Snævar I was going to say, I run into this in ProveIt, although way less than the old top toolbar. Star Mississippi 01:42, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
ProveIt uses "general date preference from Special:Preferences".--Snævar (talk) 04:04, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, that is indeed the item I referred to as the 'cite box'. I will also check the link mentioned by Graham87. Thanks to you both.THX1136 (talk) 00:47, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
I think I've finally comprehended the guidelines and the answer to my question. I have some random cognitive issues at times and this was one of those times. Thanks again for your patience and responses.THX1136 (talk) 23:38, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit tab says siesie

Using Monobook, Edge, Win11. The Edit tab at the top of the page now says "siesie", which does not appear to mean anything in any language. DuncanHill (talk) 20:43, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@DuncanHill; Is your language set to en-gb at Special:Preferences? ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:50, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl: Yes, and it's never said siesie before. DuncanHill (talk) 20:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: Try changing it to en. Somebody at translatewiki.net has changed the translation, and it's better to use en, which is much better maintained. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:55, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl: If I could find where to fix it on translatewiki I would do that. I appreciate that there is a concerted campaign against the use of BrEng, but hadn't expected it to go so far as actual vandalism of the translations. DuncanHill (talk) 21:00, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
From memory, en-gb doesn't offer any benefits over en - there are no British English words used in the interface messages. That is why it is strongly recommended to use en. @Xaosflux may be able to better explain it. ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:08, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
I think there are a few cases where spelling differs in interface messages, such as "Uncategorized"/"Uncategorised" and "License"/"Licence". --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:30, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
I once made a full comparison and only found some -ize/-ise cases and a handful of other spelling differences. There were no different words like lift/elevator. I don't think anyone has ever deliberately harmed en-gb but there has been several cases where somebody accidentally saved translations to other languages as en-gb. "siesie" appears to be in the Twi language. The English Wikipedia generally only makes customized messages in the default en, not the other around 450 language settings. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:39, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
  • See Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal where it warns you that: Language (Warning: Selecting a language other than 'en - English' will prevent you from seeing localized parts of the interface on the English Wikipedia, and you may see inaccurate external translations.):. You will need to track down the bad translation on translatewiki, get it reverted, then wait for the next time that mediawiki core updates from translatewiki to get that variant corrected. Using English variant interface languages is discouraged. — xaosflux Talk 21:27, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
    Looks like it's been fixed already. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:30, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
    Update: Looks like a translatewiki admin already deleted that bad translation, so now you just have to wait. — xaosflux Talk 21:32, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
    Already fixed in mediawiki core, too. So next Thursday, I guess. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:40, 10 March 2022 (UTC)
    I wouldn't call it a translation. It is the transliteration in English for "thank you" in Mandarin. 71.105.141.131 (talk) 14:11, 12 March 2022 (UTC)
    I expect it also means "Edit" in Twi, as the translation was mistakenly created by a translator to that language. Matma Rex talk 21:37, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
    I see no such warning on Special:Preferences. Modest Genius talk 20:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Modest Genius, perhaps you're not using 'en' as your language? The message is MediaWiki:Yourlanguage and it's only visible if your interface language is English already as the warning is added locally here, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences?uselang=en. The variant languages use the stock message: en-ca, en-gb which does not contain the warning. (And funnily enough, it's situations like this that the warning is meant to prevent.)– Ammarpad (talk) 11:19, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
  • I came here to report the same issue. Glad to hear it's in the process of being fixed, though I'm surprised it takes so long. Modest Genius talk 20:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
  • It's still saying siesie today. Has someone reverted the correction? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:48, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Edit = Siesie?

I just came on today and the word "edit" on the editing tab at the top of a page has been replaced with the word "siesie". Is this a glitch or some sort of hack? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:11, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

@The C of E: This was also asked above; see #Edit tab says siesie. DanCherek (talk) 08:18, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Kenkan

As an aside, the "Read" tab displays as "Kenkan", which appears in the mediawiki link above alongside "siesie". I would be interested to know if this is a common problem in translate wiki, or if it's only the en-gb ones that get noticed here. CMD (talk) 05:53, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Cursory web search: Kenkan in Japanese apparently means "dislike/hatred of Korea". 69.203.140.37 (talk) 13:06, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
I expect it also means "Read" in Twi, as the translation was mistakenly created by a translator to that language. Matma Rex talk 21:36, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis It is an occasional problem for other languages as well, see e.g. this bug report from a few years ago about incorrect translations appearing in Catalan. It seems to be somewhat more common for British English, I suspect there are two reasons for it: a) apparently zero people review translations to British English b) relatively many people set British English as one of the languages they speak on Translatewiki, which makes it easier to accidentally start translating to the wrong language. Matma Rex talk 21:41, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
I would be willing to review translations to British English since 1. It's simply just English with alternate spellings and 2. it needs someone to review the translations. Unfortunately I have a feeling I would have to be an admin or something to do so. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:15, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
@Blaze Wolf I don't think you need to be an admin, although you might have to request translator rights (I'm not sure how the process works these days). Just sign up on translatewiki: (note that it's a separate site not maintained by WMF, so the account is not shared with Wikipedia), and then watch for the translations on recent changes or in the proofreading interface. Matma Rex talk 17:52, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
As an aside from the thread: British English is more than just alternate spellings. There is different vocabulary (for example, "torch" vs. "flashlight") and idioms (for example, "in hospital" vs. "in the hospital"). That being said, I'm not sure if the differences will come up a lot in Wikipedia interface messages. isaacl (talk) 03:04, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
@Issacl: Yes you are right. I honestly forget that sometimes, British English has different words for things than in American English (like "trousers" vs. "pants" or "chips" vs. "fries", or "petrol" vs."gas"/"gasoline") ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 12:58, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
@Isaacl: Repinging since I messed up the username. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:02, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
The number of interface messages using a different word (as opposed to a different spelling of the same word) is very small. I know of no messages where the actual word used might cause confusion. I do know, however, that the word "moot" is used often in talkpage discussions where the user of that word is unaware that it has different meanings in British and American English - and that those meanings are opposite. So I avoid its use altogether, choosing some non-ambiguous wording instead. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:35, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Honestly when you said that I thought you were saying the meaning of moot in both languages was opposite, not that the meanings were opposites of each other. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 22:43, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
You're right. In my first time on translatewiki, I tried translating Twinkle messages to Hindi language until I realised minutes later, that I was in fact translating it to British English, and that all my translations went to the wrong place. Plus, I wasn't able to find an Undo button. I expect more people to have suffered this way. ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 18:10, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

…still "siesie" today. Any idea how to get this fixed? CX Zoom: can you share a link to where you were editing? —Sladen (talk) 09:39, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Sladen (and everyone else). So yes: Set your language to English and this problem should go away for you. For any other translated message errors, you just have to wait for the update cycles. We're not going to create English Wikipedia overrides for these unless something outright vulgar is in there. — xaosflux Talk 11:02, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Timezone in wikitext?

{{#time:e}} returns UTC absolutely everywhere. Is it even possible to get for example "Europe/Berlin" from dewiki? I know 

api = new mw.Api; api.get( { format: 'json', action: 'query', meta: 'siteinfo', siprop: 'general'} ).then( function ( data ) {window.alert(data.query.general.timezone)} );

gives me that, but is it possible to obtain this value in wikitext? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:42, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Never mind. It's {{#timel: e}} — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:10, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Substitution fail

Hi, I created a Template:MLAWIN to substitute the templates for transclusion. Supposed to be used as {{subst:MLAWIN|2008}} . This was supposed to output this . As you can see here, my attempts [10] to get the year added failed and the template was added instead. Can someone update the template to rectify so that it provides an output like this. Venkat TL (talk) 08:57, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

<section> tags are not allowed in wikitext. Ruslik_Zero 14:31, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
I see. Thank you. Venkat TL (talk) 14:39, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Venkat TL: <section> alone is not allowed but your example tried to use <section begin=.../> and <section end=.../> from Help:Labeled section transclusion#Section marking. The problem was that the section name must be a constant string and not a wikitext expression. The section tags are evaluated before the wikitext to determine which wikitext to evaluate. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:25, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
ok. @PrimeHunter Thank you for looking into it and responding. I will now tag it for deletion as it is unviable. Venkat TL (talk) 15:30, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
  Resolved

Pattern not matching when subst:ed

{{SAFESUBST:#invoke:String|match|s= [[Foo|bar]] |pattern=%[%[([^%{{!}}%]]+)%]%]}} → Foo|bar
{{SAFESUBST:#invoke:String|match|s= [[Foo|bar]] |pattern=%[%[([^%{{!}}%]]+)%{{!}}[^%]]+%]%]}} → Category:Errors reported by Module StringString Module Error: Match not found
but without SAFESUBST
{{#invoke:String|match|s= [[Foo|bar]] |pattern=%[%[([^%{{!}}%]]+)%]%]}} → String Module Error: Match not found
{{#invoke:String|match|s= [[Foo|bar]] |pattern=%[%[([^%{{!}}%]]+)%{{!}}[^%]]+%]%]}} → Foo
I know this is because of the pipe in the link, but is there any way around this (that can be substituted as well)? ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:34, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

The problem isn't the pipe in the link, it's that {{!}} is not expanded when substing so your pattern winds up trying to match [^%{{!}}%]] rather than [^%|%]] as you intend. If you change it to {{SAFESUBST:!}} it should work. Anomie⚔ 18:03, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Strange signature bug

Hello. On User talk:Elle(Sri Lanka), MalnadachBot tried to fix Lint errors in this edit. Due to an unclosed nowiki tag and broken template, it caused the bots' signature to appear after many comments which has unescaped ~~~~ after the nowiki. I tried to fix that and take the page back to how it looked before in this edit, but it somehow opened an unblock request. Jpgordon restored the page to before the bot edit, which caused their signatures to appear after others' comments (diff). I assume that due to some software change after 2014, anyone who edits a page with unescaped ~~~~ will have their signature inserted in its place. I noticed this happen to MalnadachBot in 5 pages by doing insource search. Seeking advice on what is the best way to prevent this from happening. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ, after User talk:Elle(Sri Lanka) (diff ~599759546) the crap just kept piling up. I manually added {{unsigned}} everywhere by going through the history for the usernames and times, should be ok now. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:05, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Alexis Jazz: thanks for your effort, but the page has been deleted now. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 04:55, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
It has always worked like this as far as I know. It's not a MediaWiki bug but an unfortunate result of errors in the wikitext. It looks difficult to make a MediaWiki change which handles it automatically in a reliable way. Maybe a user script which examines the page history could be made but the user would probably have to check the diff before saving. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Jpgordon, I disagree with this deletion. I had fixed the technical issues, there was no vandalism on that page IIRC and talk pages with block messages/unblock requests should be public whenever possible for optimal transparency. We don't delete talk pages from blocked people because they're blocked. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:04, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Shrug. I can restore it if anyone cares, but really, this was one of my extremely rare WP:IAR moments. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 18:07, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Jpgordon, could you please restore it? There was no reason for the deletion (not after I fixed it anyway) and the deletion could confuse sock puppet investigators if one would ever investigate if the account can be linked to another sockmaster. (it's uncommon on something this old but it happens) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:04, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
As one of the prime sock puppet investigators, I think the likelihood of this account ever being useful for anything is about as low as possible, and any sock puppet investigator is likely to be an admin entirely capable of looking at the deleted page, but sure, done. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 00:05, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Page moves by non-admins

If a page has a typo in its title and you want to fix it, you move it. However, if you're not an admin, there is no way for you to NOT leave a redirect from the old page or delete the old page altogether. (My information here may be wrong because it has been a lot of time since I saw the interface as a non-admin.) I understand that giving delete permission to non-admins might present a big potential for abuse but is there a way to move a page while simultaneously not leaving a redirect and tagging the old page for deletion? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:17, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi, yes, There exists a special right called WP:PAGEMOVER. That does exactly what you want. Today I asked the service of one from WP:RMT Venkat TL (talk) 14:28, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Venkat TL, thank you! That's exactly what I wanted as you stated. Do you know of any way I can check which wikis have this privilege group activated globally? - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:46, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi No. That is beyond my understanding or knowledge, which is limited to the page I linked. May be admins such as @Ruslik0 or @PrimeHunter can guide you. Venkat TL (talk) 17:55, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Klein Muçi and Venkat TL: Our "Page Mover" is a custom group we have here on enwiki, the group is not the secret here - it is having the underlying (suppressredirect) permission. On WMF wiki's this permission is only in 'sysop' and 'bot' on all projects. If a project wants to extend this permission to users, they could just ask to have it added to something like autoconfirmed, or add to an existing group such as autoreviewer or reviewer - they do not necessarily need to create a bespoke group unless they want to manage membership differently. Most projects, especially very small projects don't have any need for bespoke user groups. — xaosflux Talk 18:33, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, am I to understand EnWiki is the only one with that permission extended outside admin/bot user groups? - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:42, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Klein Muçi no there are many, but not necessarily also needing a new "group" just to assign it. For example, bnwiki added it to their 'reviewer' group, bnwikivoyage addedit to their 'patroller' group, and elwiki added it to their 'rollbacker' group. Some projects made a group just for that purpose, for example ckbwiki. Much of what it right for a project is how they want to control who has access to what functions. — xaosflux Talk 20:18, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Changes to user groups and user rights for Wikimedia wikis are made in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. Settings for a wiki can be seen at Special:ListGroupRights but it cannot be edited at the wiki. Requests can be made at phab: with a link to a consensus at the wiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:41, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
See also m:Requesting wiki configuration changes. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 22:20, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Klein Muçi, as said page movers can suppress redirects. In case of files (which you can't move at all because you're not a Wikipedia:File mover), LuckyRename automatically tags unwanted redirects for deletion if you can't suppress them. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:40, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone for the information provided! That's all I wanted to know and more. :D - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:35, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Cross-wiki linking not working for... some reason?

I was trying to link the English wiki article for Arnold McCuller in the Portuguese Wikipedia like this: [[en:Arnold McCuller|Arnold McCuller]], but it resulted in it not showing. A similar test I made in the English Wikipedia's sandbox produced the same result, but it works just fine on metawiki when I tried it out. Is it just my browser or is it some weird glitch? wizzito | say hello! 04:42, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

If you are trying to link it inline, then you must place a colon in front: [[:en:Arnold McCuller|Arnold McCuller]]. The way you linked it is a pre-Wikidata interwiki link. Izno (talk) 04:54, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
See more at Help:Interlanguage links. It behaves differently at meta because there isn't meta wikis in different languages. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:02, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Wizzito, use w:pt:Música de Chiquititas (2013). The w specifies the project. See also m:Help:Interwiki linking. Or give Bawl a shot (enable full page editing in the settings) which rewrites external links automatically so you can just copy/paste them from your address bar. This project is still early access so the occasional bug could arise, but see my edit history. I hardly use anything else now. Most bugs are fairly minor at this point and those that are still around generally don't affect full page editing. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 05:27, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Weird, because I swear I've linked that way a lot and it just seems like it stopped working recently? wizzito | say hello! 05:37, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
The [[lang:Page]] format was never for making inline links, it was for updating the "in other languages" section (and it still used that way for non-content pages); for articles this is now usually done with wikidata links. — xaosflux Talk 10:27, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
What linking without a colon at the start does is namespace-dependent, in a way that is probably confusing. —Kusma (talk) 10:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Looking for reviewers for Google Summer of Code

The "Edit Request Wizard" project is going well. We're getting a lot of students who are interested in working on the project this summer. If you want to help out by taking a look at their "microtask" submissions, that would be great. The first microtask is to try making an edit request and write down how that went; it should take just a few minutes to review. You can review as much or as little as you want, and I'm sure the students will really appreciate it. To get involved, just sign up on https://wikimedia.zulipchat.com and send me (@Enterprisey) a private message. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:29, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

@Enterprisey: I read the Phab and I am confused. Are these microtask edit request going to show up in the edit request backlog? There is already a large backlog of edit requests, how does adding a large number of test edit requests help? Is there a way for edit request reviewers to quickly identify which edit requests are part of this microtask so we can distinguish them from real edit requests? RudolfRed (talk) 16:26, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Good catch. I've updated the instructions to require users to identify themselves as working on this project. I originally intended to have a requirement like that but must have forgot. I don't see a problem with clogging up the backlog, because in practice there has been only one edit request resulting from this (2022-02-15, by @Tsuirot). It was declined, but I disagree with the decline (because it's non-obvious that the statement is sourced to the scorecard (no visual connection), but whatever). I would be surprised if there were more than a single-digit number of edit requests made in total. The process isn't very easy for people with zero experience. We can revisit the question if we notice any low-quality edit requests. Enterprisey (talk!) 18:27, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. RudolfRed (talk) 20:17, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
I wonder whether it'd be possible to add Special:Tags to each edit. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Mobile editing

Hello! I've almost never used the mobile editing interface myself resorting to getting the desktop view even when from mobile. Lately though I've had a user come for help at SqWiki about many mobile editing aspects. He's continuously asking for translation of certain strings and this made me understand that for us the whole mobile interface is almost untranslated. The system messages are, apparently, different for mobile and for desktop. Is that true for every/most system message? What has been the reasoning behind this? Asking because I want to learn more because, as I said, I know almost nothing for mobile editing.

Also, the said user is continuously struggling with talk messages not knowing how to ping, indent or sign. I'm teaching him/her in the manual way but it's surprising to me because he/she is most likely a new user. Shouldn't the reply tools be automatically activated for him/her? How do the said tools work for mobile? What is the right way to approach new users about activating them, especially on mobile scenarios?

Finally, he/she asked about help about adding WikiData links for an article in regard to its homologues in other languages. I was thinking that it would be somehow similar and switched to mobile view from my laptop but I couldn't locate the place where you can do that.

Any kind of help would be appreciated because I'm a total newbie in this aspect. - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:05, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

With regards to the reply tool on mobile, I understand it is planned to be released there eventually. ( @Whatamidoing (WMF)? ) ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:57, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
mw:Talk pages project/Mobile is available at htwiki right now (the team needed a public wiki to check something, and the lone regular mobile user there agreed to it) and should start deploying in the next couple of weeks, but sqwiki isn't on the initial list. @PPelberg (WMF), would you have any objections to adding the Albanian Wikipedia to that first batch? Otherwise, it'll be months before this new user gets it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
And regarding WikiData, you can access the page's Wikidata item through the horizontal 3 dots on the right. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:01, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: mobile interface messages have their own blocks in translatewiki. So they would have to be translated separately even though many of the strings would be same as in desktop. Looking at the progress for sq, Mobile frontend, User interface, Minerva Neue, Mobile apps and Commons app all have less than 10% translated. More translation of these would improve Mobile users' experience. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl, is that the only way? Do I have to do the edit in WikiData so that it connects with the other languages? So "strange"...
@ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ, naive question if you have the information: Can't some of them be joined if they have similar outputs? Why is it important that they stay on different blocks? - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:54, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: they are separate because they are part of different Mediawiki extensions. Messages cannot be joined, but if a message with same or similar text has already been translated, it will show up in the suggestion window so that it can be quickly copied in a click. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 18:36, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ, ah, I see. So that's a phenomenon that goes outside the mobile/desktop case. Okay then. That covers everything about translations I believe. Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:43, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
As far as I can tell, yes. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:50, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-12

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

New code release schedule for this week

  • There will be four MediaWiki releases this week, instead of just one. This is an experiment which should lead to fewer problems and to faster feature updates. The releases will be on all wikis, at different times, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. You can read more about this project.

Recent changes

Future changes

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

15:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

People on this page will want to note that line about the schedule change. WP:THURSDAY isn't on Thursday this week. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

G12 category populated by ghosts

In the last two weeks Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations has gone from acting normally, to having PAGESINCATEGORY list 1 article (even though there are none), and at current tally it's giving 0, despite there being no actual pages in that category. I've looked for everything I could think of as far as hidden text goes, and while I know that the dbase sometimes lags and you'll see a single page when there isn't, now that there are 4 ghost pages in there I'm starting to think this is a bug and not just a glitch. (please ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 10:13, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Given that phab:T85696 says we can now get recounts by purging the page, I tried to purge both the category and Template:CSD-categories but nothing happened. So yeah, maybe another bug? —Kusma (talk) 10:24, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
This has been going on for a while, I know I've started discussions here about category counts being off. Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned drafts or AfC submissions has 1 page listed for many days even though the category is almost always empty. Originally it was the CSD spam category that was off, by as many as 7 pages off the actual number of pages but that was fixed a few weeks ago. Liz Read! Talk! 00:33, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

XFDcloser

I don't want to forum shop but we have a problem with XFDcloser that I posted about at Wikipedia talk:XFDcloser/Archive 5#XFDcloser not deleting pages at RFD and it hasn't had any response. Maybe someone here will know how to fix this problem. Thanks for any help you can offer. Liz Read! Talk! 00:38, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Liz it looks like the builds for this are done at github, you could try opening a bug there to get the attention of more developers. — xaosflux Talk 09:48, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Special:Recent changes - accepting changes

Sorry in the advance for the chaotic description!

In SqWiki, when viewing the recent changes, having activated the popup gadgets, I can quickly see a change by hovering over it and if it is a vandalism, I can click the "Revert" button next to it to revert that change. However if the change is good, no "Accept" button exists next to it to quickly approve it. Can someone explain to me why? And if something similar to my description can be implemented somehow? Maybe by a user script?

The question comes in a desperate time for us where reviewing changes is starting to get out of hands having less than 20 active reviewers in total. Edit filters, ORES and quick-reverting in the method I described above have helped keep vandalisms in check and have halved the list but accepting changes is still pretty time consuming for our small group of human resources. If accepting them, maybe only small ones, would be as quickly as reverting them, maybe, the list could be further halved again. - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:44, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi "revert" as part of most popup scripts is just a general function. "Accept" sounds like part of Special:PendingChanges or a similar extension, which the popup script maintainer likely didn't write a function for. enwiki uses server-side pending changes very rarely, those patrolling them either just use the special page or their watchlists. — xaosflux Talk 20:22, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: Can you clarify why the changes need to be accepted? on SqWiki, are all pages under "Pending Changes" protection? Can you turn that off and just worry about rejecting bad edits? RudolfRed (talk) 20:28, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, the "revert" I'm talking about is not part of the popup script/gadget. [riktheje] (Albanian) is a function of our Wikipedia per se, most likely coming from the FlaggedRevs extension as I learned here some days ago. You're right about the Accept part though. It is part of the special page you mention (Special:PendingChanges). If you choose to review any of the pages in there, you'll get 2 main buttons: Accept changes or Revert changes. The later is the same as the one we already have in Special:RecentChanges but the first one is missing there and can only be accessed through the special page you mention, when choosing a specific edit to review. I'd want to have those 2 buttons in Special:RecentChanges but instead I only have 1 (the revert one). The Navigation popups gadget has nothing to do with all this beside the fact that I use that to hover over the edits in Special:RecentChanges and to quickly see what has happened.
@RudolfRed, I'm not really sure because I haven't dealt much with antivandalism myself. It has always been like that for us I believe. At least it has been ever since I can remember. Allowing every edit to be added immediately to every page would leave too much place for abuse I believe. :/ - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:04, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Update: I say "Revert" but apparently the name in English for what I'm describing is rollback. Beside this button in Special:RecentChanges I'd want to also have an "Accept" button. Any way to achieve that? (The aforementioned gadget and extension are of a secondary importance in this matter.) - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:09, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
You would either need to extension devs to write a hook in to recentchanges (quite unlikely) or get a script author to add this to a script, there isn't just an option or setting to make that appear. — xaosflux Talk 09:24, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
  1. What extension would need to be changed?
  2. How can I write the request in a clear and understandable manner so I can ask it as a script request here? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:58, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Klein Muçi Note that the English Wikipedia uses "Pending Changes" (i.e. Flagged Revisions in protection only mode) - which is different than what sqwiki uses. Pending changes can quickly get severely backlogged if it is enabled without a sufficient volunteer reviewer community (e.g. it seems that sqwiki currently has a 604 day backlog).
    • The extension is mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs, general questions about it can be raised at mw:Extension talk:FlaggedRevs
      • I doubt you are are going to get its devs to extend it as phab:T185664 shows that extension is already critically unmaintained.
    • You could try asking over at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests to see if anyone here is interested it working on a new script (that won't really get used here much) - maybe you will get lucky. Just ask in plain language as a user story: Describe your current workflow, and what you think could be improved with some scripting.
    • You started by asking about what I'm assuming is the sqwiki gadget, Flluska shfletimi, which seems to be a fork of ours, so if you want this to somehow be integrated to that script you could try asking our volunteers at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-popups.js.
    Hope that helps some! — xaosflux Talk 13:25, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux that helps a lot and you've described the situation perfectly. Can you also explain the difference between the ways we use FlaggedRevs? - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:10, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Klein Muçi in protection only mode like we use here on enwiki, administrators must activate pending changes on a per-page basis as needed, similar to how we would apply page protection (see some examples in our log). FlaggedRevs on sqwiki is in full mode, applying to to entire namespaces (see phab:T27822) (c.f. phab:T44782 about autopromote thresholds). — xaosflux Talk 14:22, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux, hmm... So you basically apply that as a form of a lesser protection. What happens to all the other articles? They really get updated in real time, as soon as someone does an edit to them, no matter who that person may be? - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, as the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit that may be considered a feature! (It does require a huge anti-vandalism effort, but we have huge anti-vandalism resources). — xaosflux Talk 19:12, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    @Klein Muçi, I believe that dewiki atnd sqwiki have similar tools for that. If you haven't sorted it out already, try asking for help at w:de:WP:FZW or at w:de:Wikipedia:Technik/Werkstatt. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
    Thank you for the information! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:51, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Tagging content for display on mobile XOR desktop

Is there markup which can be put around source content that will only display it on desktop or only display it on mobile? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:45, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

{{If mobile}}?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:50, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
Trappist the monk, perfect, thanks. I have been looking for it for hours. The name is obvious after the fact. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 17:12, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

JS wikitext parser

Is there a Javascript tool which I could use to parse templates from wikitext? It should handle comments, nowiki, etc.

I have one already written for PHP but it is quite a task to convert to Javascript.

Presumably this would be used in the browser, although server-side would be a nice addition. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 01:05, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@Magog the Ogre
Yes, there are many. One example seems to be https://www.npmjs.com/package/simple-wikitext-parser , which looks good enough. If that doesn't meet your standards, there are many more out there.
I don't know what you mean by "handle comments" (the parser should ignore them). At the very least, I think they can see inside nowiki too. Rlink2 (talk) 01:20, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
I think mw:API:Parsing wikitext is what you're looking for. For example: {{Lorem ipsum}}<!-- Foobar --> will be parsed to [14]. If yes, writing a short script should be no big deal. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 02:51, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
@Magog the Ogre, why do you want to do this? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Module political party not working for RMPI

Revolutionary Marxist Party of India (RMPI) would not show up correctly on Bhoa Assembly Constituency Can someone help to fix this. so that party abbreviation and its colours are shown. I cant see any obvious error in Module political party but it is still not showing up correctly. Venkat TL (talk) 08:46, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Venkat TL: The problem is in the article; someone used {{Election box candidate}} instead of {{Election box candidate with party link}}. Cheers, Number 57 08:50, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
@Number 57, oh. Thanks for fixing it for me. Venkat TL (talk) 08:58, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
  Resolved

Category redirect Foo playing up again

The category redirect Category:Foo (to Category:X1_ is filling up again with a lot of .js pages that the redirect bot can't fix. Can somebody with the skills and permissions please identify the source and amend it to clear the category? Thanks in advance. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:53, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering: Please always include an example. You said "filling up again" but none of the current pages have been edited since 2011 so I don't know whether you refer to those or something has changed since your post. It can only be changed by the user or an interface editor, but I don't know whether they edit user js to clean up non-article categories. The issue is that js pages are evaluated as wikitext when link tables are made so [[Category:Foo]] in a JavaScript comment (which has different syntax from a wikitext comment) causes categorization. Some scripts add wikitext comment syntax <!-- ... --> inside JavaScript comments to avoid this. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
It's mostly simpler to wrap the whole page in nowiki tags i.e.
// <nowiki>
. . .
// </nowiki>
 ― Qwerfjkltalk 16:56, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

The problem seems to be caused by something in the script on pages like User:Abu badali/popups.js that somehow causes them to populate the categories years later for no obvious reason. This has repeatedly caused problems with that redirect and the pages are locked against editing to fix them. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 181#General was a previous round of this. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:33, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

If I had to guess, this is related to Wbm1058's bot that is null-editing old pages. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:35, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
It is filling up now as Tim said. These were added at the end of the category page since my first post:
Recent null edits would cause that if the content wouldn't have added the category the last time link tables were made for the pages. There is around 240 kB of JavaScript before the category code. Some change in the wikitext parser might have deactivated the category code earlier but not now when the parser tries to interpret all that JavaScript as wikitext. Garbage in, garbage out. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:18, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
As I write this, there are 24 pages in Category:Foo and I just checked out 6 of them (25%) - every single one has the line 
// eg [[category:foo]] and [[Category:Foo]] are equivalent
That is the offending line; the fix is as per Qwerfjkl's post of 16:56, 20 March 2022 (UTC) but only an WP:INTADMIN can do this (I'm not one). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:58, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
Indeed per THIS I've been null-editing pages in user space and have noticed several js pages being purged. Is there a Phabricator for .js pages being processed as wikitext? wbm1058 (talk) 23:02, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
phab:T280448 is about an example of pages with non-wikitext content model being processed as wikitext to make link tables. I assume it's deliberate and we rely on it in some cases. CSD templates work on js and css pages by adding a CSD category without displaying a CSD message. Many scripts like User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js have installation instructions with // Linkback: [[User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js]] to appear at Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js without actually displaying a link. I don't want this feature removed but maybe there could be an option to disable it on a page without resorting to tricks like <nowiki>...</nowiki>. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:57, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
I have fixed this. Mostly by clearing out ancient unused copies or ancient copies by users who have not had recent activity. A couple of category link removals. Izno (talk) 00:25, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
The JS entries in Category:X1 should probably also be de-linked (seeing as how these categories are supposed to be "transient"). Gonnym (talk) 11:01, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Blurry images

Can anyone fix the image scaling? The downscaled images are way too blurry, and it has been like that for years. Does it not bother anyone?--88.100.176.55 (talk) 16:10, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Where? Examples always help. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:44, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
Example https://ibb.co/DtbQdwv 88.100.176.55 (talk) 17:41, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
It seems it happens to all images in mobile view. As if their resolution was halved compared to the actual resolution. 88.100.176.55 (talk) 17:32, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm not going to follow cryptic links to untrusted sites. Is that a screenshot? If so, then per the notice displayed to you when you posted here, please follow the directions at Wikipedia:Screenshots of Wikipedia. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:25, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
JPEG was made for photos (P stands for "Photographic"). JPEG#Typical usage: "JPEG is not well suited for line drawings and other textual or iconic graphics, where the sharp contrasts between adjacent pixels can cause noticeable artifacts". It's already poor quality when I view the original file Media:CERN accelerator complex (cropped).jpeg at full 10,470 × 7,292 resolution. When my desktop Firefox browser scales it to the same size as https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/CERN_accelerator_complex_(cropped).jpeg/380px-CERN_accelerator_complex_(cropped).jpeg, the result is about equally bad. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:00, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
Yeah in this particular case, there is little you can technically do. Someone should extract an SVG out of it, but even then, these lines and text are not MEANT to be thumbnailed, their original intent is to view them at A4 / powerpoint deck size. No matter how much effort you put into the thumbnailing, the design just isn't that suited for small sizes. This is an editorial problem, not a technical problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:08, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
True, mobile images began being blurry due to phab:T119797 in 2016, but it might get changed due to phab:T293303. See also phab:T127015, which should make the images smaller on mobile.--Snævar (talk) 04:45, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

CSS solution for manual anchors in/near headings

{{anchor}} is a useful template that is used in many articles. However, for alternate IDs for headings, it should ideally be placed directly below the heading, but this has UX implications for readers, so the guideline is to either put it before the heading or subst it inside the heading, which both have UX implications for authors. I'm wondering if there's possibly a CSS solution by now in Template talk:Anchor#CSS solution. Since I've never used anything from the CSS Scroll Snap module, I'm not sure it actually provides a viable and good solution. Therefore, I would like some input from people who have experience in this regard. — Christoph Päper 11:23, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Detect whether a full date was entered

In templates, the text {{#time:j F Y|{{{start-date|}}}}} standardizes the formatting of dates, but only if a full date is entered. If only a year is entered, it returns that year with today's day and month. Is there a way to detect whether the user only entered a year? I want it to display something like "c. 1867" in those cases. Thanks! —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:52, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Arctic.gnome: Simply remove the j F part. {{#time:Y|1867-09-25}} outputs 1867. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 22:12, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
See also: How to use the #time parser function. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 22:13, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
If I do that, it will always show the year only, even if the user entered a full date. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:28, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
Not correct answer

@Arctic.gnome: Okay, here's a dirty workaround that may not work in all cases/all the time: {{#ifeq:{{#iferror:{{#time:d-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|e1|{{#time:d-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}}}|{{#time:d-H-i-s}}|{{#ifeq:{{#iferror:{{#time:m-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|e1|{{#time:m-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}}}|{{#time:m-H-i-s}}|{{#ifeq:{{#iferror:{{#time:Y-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|e1|{{#time:Y-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}}}|{{#time:Y-H-i-s}}||{{#iferror:{{#time:d-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:d-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#iferror:{{#time:m-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:m-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#iferror:{{#time:Y-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-H-i-s|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}}}}} Theoretically speaking, this won't work if the input date is 100% identical to the time we view it (by "identical" I mean at the very second), but that's definitely not the case, unless you're messing with the future. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:11, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

I messed up somewhere. Need to rethink a bit. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:21, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Some complex thing

{{#switch:{{#iferror:{{#time:r|{{{1|}}}}}|1}}{{#iferror:{{#ifexpr:{{#time:U|{{{1|}}}}}>{{#switch:{{#iferror:{{#time:r|{{{1|}}}}}|1}}{{#iferror:{{#ifexpr:{{#time:U|{{{1|}}}}}>{{#time:U}}|2}}|2}}|1={{#time:r|{{{1|}}}}}|2=|#default={{#ifeq:{{#time:d|{{{1|}}}}}|01|{{#ifeq:{{#time:m|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:m|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:d|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:d|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:String|len|{{padleft:{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1|}}}}}|4}}}}|4|{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:m|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:m|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:d|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:d|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:m|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:m|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:String|len|{{padleft:{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1|}}}}}|4}}}}|4|{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|}}|{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{#time:Y-m|{{{1|}}}}}|}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:String|len|{{padleft:{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1|}}}}}|4}}}}|4|{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:d|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|01|{{#time:Y-m|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:m|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:m|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y|{{#time:Y-m-d}}}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#ifeq:{{#invoke:String|len|{{padleft:{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{1|}}}}}|4}}}}|4|{{#time:Y|{{{1|}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}|{{#time:Y-m-d|{{{1|}}}}}}}}}}}}}

Here it is. There are some false positives but in general it does work. I'm not sure if there is a more precise wikitext way for this problem. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 02:24, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Woah, fancy! Thanks! I didn't know about the string|len command you used, and I have to ask: could I use that command to simply say that if the input is four characters long, display it as a year, otherwise display it as a date? That might be less precise, but it would be a lot shorter. Alternatively, could your code be used to make a new template that takes ambiguous inputs and returns correct dates? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:09, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
@Arctic.gnome: If you assume it's either a year or valid date then the simplest may be to use {{Ifnumber}}: {{Ifnumber|{{{start-date|}}}|c.&thinsp;{{{start-date}}}|{{#time:j F Y|{{{start-date|}}}}}}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
That's also a useful template to put in my back pocket. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:15, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@Arctic.gnome: The input date is not always written in Y-m-d form. They can also be in Unix timestamp form (1714055231), full date (25 April 2024), ISO 8601 (2024-04-25T14:27:11+00:00), RFC 5322 (Thu, 25 Apr 2024 14:27:11 +0000), or even some abnormal format like 3.14159265359 seconds (2029-05-12 – it means "3:14 AM today, plus 159265359 seconds") (For archives: 2027-04-10) / a potato (2024-04-25 – outputs this very second, minus one hour, with no errors!?).

Weird, but that's how {{#time}} works. Note that I wrapped all {{{1|}}} in it, and while I used {{#invoke:string|len}}, it is not a wise, and pure wikitext, way to detect parameter value with year only. As a counter-example, 00:00:00 April 25 1990 can also be written as 641001600; the "template" above outputs 1990 with 1990 as input, but will give 1990-03-24 with 641001600. Wikitext, as far as I know, can't do such a thing like detecting how precise an input date is with just the date itself. It needs at least a second parameter that tells it how precise that date is. Here's something you might want to try at to Special:ExpandTemplates (see hidden comment, remember to remove {{void|1=): NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 19:20, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

  Resolved

Use of $ when doing regex intitle searches

Not sure what's going on here: I'm trying to use intitle:/a$/ to look for articles with titles that end with "a", but instead, the search returns all titles that contain the string "a$". I'm a bit familiar with regex, so the "$" symbol should look for the end rather than a literal "$" key (which would traditionally be found with "\$" instead to escape the regex functionality. See Special:Search/intitle:/a$/ for the results; I even tried Special:Search/intitle:/a\$/ (with the "$" escaped), but it provided the same results as the previous search. Is this a known issue, and/or is there a workaround for this? Steel1943 (talk) 22:21, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

This is not a thing in Special:Search. Neither can you search for ^. Nor [\r\n]. But .* does find newlines. Izno (talk) 22:26, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Regular expression searches says that The ^ and $ are not needed. In fact they are badly needed, but not implemented. I've resorted to something like intitle:/a/ -intitle:/a./, but of course that incorrectly fails to match Banana. Certes (talk) 22:28, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
Seems to work at grep.toolforge.org, albeit very slowly. Ruбlov (talk) 22:59, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Pushpin map of the world's FAs

If I wanted to create a {{Maplink}} map with a pin for each featured article with coordinates listed, how would I go about doing that? I think it'd be a neat addition to the WP:FA page. (See also, somewhat related query) {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:19, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

How do you pushpin a comedy/news show's monologue? Or elements? Or a mathematical conundrum? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v a little blue Bori 01:43, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
This would only be for items that have {{coord}} or coordinate location (P625) on Wikidata. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:14, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
As a basic starting point, you can make a mapframe map based on the Wikidata coordinates of two points using: 
{{maplink
 |type=point|id={{get QID|<article name>}}
 |type2=point|id2={{get QID|<article name 2>}}
}}
I'll look into automatically including all featured articles when I have time in a few hours. * Pppery * it has begun... 13:27, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
I don't know how to make it a {{maplink}}, but here's a Wikidata query which gives a map if that's helpful: https://w.wiki/4yrh the wub "?!" 15:36, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
Topic map? Donald Albury 01:36, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Pppery and The wub! That query is excellent! Maplink's documentation here says it should be possible to create a map from the query using this approach, but I think I'm doing something wrong, since when I try I get this error:

<mapframe>: Couldn't parse JSON: Syntax error

Any idea of the issue? It seems like we're close. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:17, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: You forgot to escape quotes. Simply put a backslash in front of each, except for the outermost ones, and voilà! NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 21:41, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
 
The world's FAs

@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: Hmm, that resolves the error, but still no points showing up (see right). I feel like "geoshape" might have to be changed, since we're looking for points, not shapes, but I'm not sure what to change it to. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:45, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I tried a random value and it gaves me some nice thing about what should be our input. Try geomask. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 21:49, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
Okay, that doesn't work either. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 22:15, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
You cannot have comments in map link, because for several reasons, line endings get stripped, which causes all content after the comment to disappear from the query. We should check if we can fix that again, because I think the escaping issue that was the reason for stripping the line endings. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:01, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Other issues, there was no id column, and the ids contained duplicates. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:43, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Apparently the id's still contain duplicates.. I don't know enough about sparql to dedupe ids. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:37, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
This doesn't work. You cannot retrieve coordinates from wikidata and use them in Kartographer, only OSM shapes and lines of wikidata IDs (You could say that the wikidata integration is more an OSM integration, being selected based on wikidata IDs retrieved from a wikidata query). See also mediawikiwiki:Help:Extension:Kartographer#External_data. See also phab:T188291. The good news is that this is one of the things that the German tech team is looking at and determining if it is one of the things in their GeoFocus area that they might look at. They have a survey (it was posted in this page recently, which you should definitely fill in if you want this feature. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:01, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
I also tried ignoring map's external data feature and manually computing all of the coordinates in Lua, which ran into a "too many Wikidata entities accessed" error. And ignoring Wikidata and manually scanning the article's wikitext for {{coord}} calls, while theoretically possible, is a mess and likely to hit the Lua time limit. So, conclusion is that I don't see any way of doing this without a bot (and I say this despite strongly preferring automatic generation of things to bots updating reports). * Pppery * it has begun... 15:43, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Until you get that to work you could use a link to https://osm4wiki.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/wiki/wiki-osm.pl?project=en&article=Category:Featured%20articles Agathoclea (talk) 10:25, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@Johanna Strodt (WMDE), I think you might be interested in this use case. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:46, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Admin action response time

Hi! I was wondering if there is some page on wiki that keeps track of the average time it takes us to respond to an issue that needs administrative action. For example, if I wanted to see how much faster/slower it takes us to address a report at WP:UAA now compared to last year, is there some place on wiki I can see that? Is this even something that can be tracked? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:41, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@A. C. Santacruz, I don't know about UAA, but for WP:AIV, Enterprisey had done such an analysis of reports from three months in 2020 and 2021. Hemantha (talk) 12:37, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

useCSS

I have an idea that the query parameter "useCSS" worked before (for example https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Table&useCSS=MediaWiki:Gadget-DisambiguationLinks.css). Did it, does it, and if so, how do I get it to work now? Utfor (talk) 05:20, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

@Utfor: You mean withCSS? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 06:17, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes. Thank you! Utfor (talk) 06:20, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
As a note, this is deprecated now with the release of a similar technology that is supported in the core software. Izno (talk) 06:21, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
User:Izno How can this new method be used? Utfor (talk) 07:24, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
@Utfor: Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?withgadget=dark-mode with a gadget name in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition. For security reasons it only works if the gadget allows it with supportsUrlLoad. We currently only have that in two gadgets – not because the other gadgets are insecure but because it's a new feature and nobody has gone through the gadgets. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:39, 20 March 2022 (UTC)
  • We do still have Load_JS_and_CSS_by_URL support in common.js; and anyone could put it in to their own user/common.js if they want to; the ?withgadget method is preferred for anything/everything that is "community supported" for a number of reasons - we may eventually remove the load_js* from common.js, but the idea is still useful for certain user-level tests. — xaosflux Talk 14:33, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Missing section edit links in documentation page

I'm trying to figure out why the documentation part of Template:Citation needed does not show section edit links, while they do appear on Template:Citation needed/doc. I'm assuming it has something to do with the page protection, but if that is the case, why does it affect the documentation which isn't protected? Gonnym (talk) 14:06, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Because protection doesn't know or care about transclusions. There's a reason there's a manual edit link in the protection documentation boilerplate itself. Izno (talk) 16:37, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Watchlist

Hi. Template:OS/doc is on my watchlist but this edit did not appear on it. I think something like this happened to me a few months ago, although I can't 100% confirm that. I currently have 1,066 pages on my watchlist. I have ticked hide bot edits; the only change from the default settings in preferences. --DB1729 (talk) 15:54, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Are you using the js watchlist, and showing all edits - or just the most recent edit (as there was a more recent one, which does appear on my WL). — xaosflux Talk 15:59, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Just the most recent. The subsequent, more recent one, is my revert --DB1729 (talk) 16:07, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
If you're wondering how I spotted it at all, I often check recent changes with the template namespace only filter (it's funny how many vandals manage to find document subpages of some of the most obscure templates to mess with). So what happened is I had checked my watchlist, and then I checked template recent changes and was immediately drawn to the edit in question. It was bolded because the page is on my WL, which I found odd because I had just checked it. I went back to my WL and indeed the edit was still not there. I went back to the page and reverted it, issued a warning msg, made a revert on another page and then read through Help:Watchlist to see if there was anything there explaining it. I then posted here because this is the suggested forum for such matters.DB1729 (talk) 16:55, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
If you exclude your own edits and view only the most recent edit, and that last edit is yours, do you see the previous edit or nothing? Certes (talk) 18:55, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
@Certes: My own edits were excluded at the time. I see nothing from that page, which is expected, right? because it is set up to only show the most recent edit (and nothing if the last is my own)? However, after reading your post, I got the idea to change it to allow my own edits to be visible, just as a test, and so now I see my revert on that page. Again, that is as expected, but it doesn't explain why I never saw the IP's edit. At least I now know that I'm getting some edits from that page. Thanks for sparking that idea.
There is another issue with my watchlist I failed to mention. Don't know if it's related. It will not load more than a handful of edits unless I force it to show more by selecting the maximum '500 changes, 30 days' in the dropdown. Even then it will only display edits from the last four to six days (today it was displaying edits from the last six days so it should've picked it up). It was far worse for a while last year when it would only show two or three individual edits. I trimmed my WL from about 1500 to 900 something, and it helped, but it took several days for it to populate to a more normal amount. I've been keeping my WL around a 1000 pages ever since, but I noticed on Help talk:Watchlist a user mentioned they have 55,000 pages on their watchlist, so I gather that 1,000-1,500 WL pages, in and of itself, should not be causing any problems. DB1729 (talk) 19:52, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Certes, I read your post more closely and realized exactly what you wanted me to do. I set my preferences to 'Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent' and 'Hide my edits from the watchlist', and I now see the IP's edit in my watchlist. Maybe it was just a one-time glitch. Thank you. DB1729 (talk) 20:40, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
My WL is about 1700 pages and works fine. However, if a busy page such as AIV gets onto it, I often don't see the full time range because that page has enough edits to fill my quota. Certes (talk) 20:49, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Understood. 99% of the pages on mine are very low traffic. And none of them are anywhere near as busy as AIV or ANI. The busiest I have is probably WT:F1. They are 'most recent' type edits for each page, as that it is the setting I always run. I typically have only 20 to 40 edits displaying over the past few days. That's the absolute maximum I can get it to display and why I have to set it for 30 days. That's only way I can get the damn thing to display more than a handful of edits, even though I really only need it to display the last two or three days. DB1729 (talk) 21:14, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Edit Request Wizard/Protected does not work for non-article main space.

If one type in Template:XXX or Wikipedia:XXX into the wizard, to request edit of a protected page, the wizard will try to take you to talk:Template:XXX or talk:Wikipedia:XXX which, for obvious reason such link doesn't work. Can someone help fix the wizard? C933103 (talk) 23:23, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

C933103, this cannot be fixed without introducing a dependency on the user inserting the correct specific talk page namespace, which I would guess would fail its most prevalent use (that being main space). Possibly, you could add another input box for "if you don't want to change an article"... regardless, I would guess this page doesn't see all that much traffic for requesting edits. Izno (talk) 23:39, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Indeed, even the parent page only have ~200 view per month. And that it appears like even fixing the link wouldn't lead to loading the correct request edit template either, since there are several for different namespaces. C933103 (talk) 23:53, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Column templates

It there a way to have multiple columns float within a page rather than using the entire width? See South Williamsport Area School District for an example of whitespace caused by the current column layout. I have a list of a half dozen or so articles with this problem. I have tried various column templates and couldn't find a solution. A query at the Help Desk got no response. MB 14:43, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I suspect that you need a different template, or possibly a table. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Try adding |width=auto to the {{col-begin}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:51, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
That helped, but the columns weren't aligned between the two different sets. So I tried |width=50% and I think that looks best. Thanks for the assist. MB 00:29, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

OAuth applications still work when one is blocked

Hello.

Just earlier, I was autoblocked because of a username policy violating account on the same IP as me.

However, when I tried to revert vandalism using SWViewer, an OAuth application, it apparently still registers edits on my user contributions page.

Is there an error or a technical restriction which allows OAuth applications to still perform edits even when blocked? Thanks. — 3PPYB6 — TALK — CONTRIBS — 15:38, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Probably not a bug; the OAuth edits came from a different IP address which isn't autoblocked. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:43, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
@Pppery—I also tested from a VPN network; that also worked. I suppose it's the same: it comes from a different IP that is not blocked, and when a user is blocked, OAuth applications will know that you are blocked. — 3PPYB6 — TALK — CONTRIBS — 18:23, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

18(!?) failed attempts to login

Don't known if this is the right place to report it but I've received an alert of 18 (!???) illegitimate attempts to login on my username from English Wikipedia. Are the security settings from Wikimedia correctly set to allow this huge amount? The attempts amount where shown only when browsing on Wikimedia Commons and before I set the notification as read BTW. Lugusto 17:59, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Please do report these to an checkuser. In 2007, bug phab:T11836, Brion (an top developer) said "Captcha already present. Lockout is a DoS vector, unacceptable." It was considered to report it automatically to admins/checkusers, but it was not done. WMF Captcha is known to be really weak. phab:T188184 is about adding an link to the message to checkusers to act on the failed logins.--Snævar (talk) 20:07, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
@555: Basically, somebody knows your username (so do I, it's 555) but they don't know your password (and nor do I). They're trying to log in as you, perhaps by guessing your password, but are not succeeding. This failure shows that security is good. The time to worry is if you find edits in your contributions that you are 100% certain that you didn't make yourself. But whatever is occurring:
  • change your password at intervals
  • use a strong password
  • don't disclose it to anybody
  • if logging in outside your own home, check for security cameras that might be aimed at the keyboard
  • if you log in on somebody else's device, make sure that you explicitly log out when done and then use the browser's "clear history" (or similar) feature, ensuring that logins and passwords are cleared too
HTH. But don't get paranoid. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:46, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Don't worry about those. Turn your WP:2FA on and feel free to laugh in their face. If you can't turn it on, request for 2FA Tester global flag after reading the guideline. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 21:59, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

When I press a grave accent a line of code is generated

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T304804

Dear all, I am an editor at the Catalan Wikipedia. We have been talking about a problem in the visual editor, but we haven't found any solution for the moment. The case is that when I press the grave accent key ( ` ) in a Spanish keyboard, a <code> is generated, which implies that the text I write next happens to be a line of code. This usually happens when the key is pressed twice, but a few users have it when they press only once, which becomes a problem while writing since Catalan has many words with a grave accent. This is how it looks like:

Això és un missatge per mostrar el problema, gracies.

Thank you very much for your time.Sjoel (talk) 18:23, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, this happening makes a little sense because this is the markup for "code" things in markdown. I would recommend filing a task about whether the key can/should be internationalized in some way. Maybe Whatamidoing (WMF) can help. Izno (talk) 19:02, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
@Sjoel: I've opened phab:T304804 for more on this. — xaosflux Talk 23:07, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Server problems over past 3 weeks

I continue to have intermittent problems, as previously raised at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 196#Wiki production problems. The problems occur when previewing and saving. I get at least 4 different manifestations - I am using Chrome.

  • ERR_HTTP2_PROTOCOL_ERROR
  • ERR_CACHE_MISS
  • unformatted page (presumably a CSS file failed to load)
  • false edit conflict i.e. when there have been no other edits

From about 17th to 25th March the problems seemed to go away but have been occurring again over the last 4 days. The original post in the older thread said that the ops folks were working on problems, but maybe that was a different problem. Anyone else affected? Nurg (talk) 04:18, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, there where three mediawiki updates a week - instead of only once normally - Trainsperiment week, upgrade of the servers to the next version of the operating system - phab:T303171 (links to an en.wikpedia task), and slimming of flaggedrevisions data - phab:T297189. As far as notifications go, they are not going to happen as often, see phab:T303605.--Snævar (talk) 18:41, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Where can I report the bug where Visual Editor sometimes adds huge walls of nonsense code instead of templates?

I made a thread about this on some noticeboard a few months ago, which didn't go anywhere, and I mostly forgot about the issue. However, when clearing up a bunch of malformatted {{cn}} templates today, I found another batch of them -- things like this, where someone attempting to add a {{citation needed}} template somehow managed to pepper the entire paragraph with randomly placed nowiki tags and substed versions of the citation needed template. I had to slog through hundreds of these when I was clearing out the couple thousand bad {{cn}}s earlier -- is there some better place to get the attention of developers responsible for this? jp×g 20:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

@JPxG: At WP:VE there is a link to report problems. You can also check it is listed at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Known_problems RudolfRed (talk) 00:37, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
This one is a known issue that the devs have punted on (not even trying to mitigate it). I think Jonesey probably has the task on speed dial at this point. Izno (talk) 04:09, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
One flavor at closed phab:T267747, another flavor closed at phab:T209493, another flavor closed at phab:T166425, one currently open for CX2 at phab:T218420, and I'm not seeing others (I just perused the ones that Jonesey is subscribed to). I believe the core issue is phab:T54091 (from memory of related tasks), which may come soon after Parsoid is the one parser. Izno (talk) 04:26, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
I've just fixed about 25 inappropriate nowiki tags, mostly inserted with VE. I suspect most may be user error rather than VE adding them unbidden. Perhaps it's too easy to highlight a random bit of text and enclose it in the tag; it's rarely needed. Certes (talk) 12:57, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Warning: Cynical rant. My understanding of this and similar VE bugs is that when editors use copy and paste in certain ways, VE can insert all sorts of undesirable garbage. The devs appear to have given up on fixing these bugs with VE, so it is currently up to gnomes to clean up after editors who fail to check the useful Preferences box marked "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta". This throwing up of virtual hands by the devs is the reason that nearly all diffs of CheckWiki's ISBN error list show the page growing over the past year. I used to go through and clean up the garbage in the hopes that the bugs would be addressed, but I gave up tilting and that particular windmill. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:00, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-13

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

  • There is a simple new Wikimedia Commons upload tool available for macOS users, Sunflower.

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of regular database maintenance. It will be performed on 29 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 31 March at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis). [15][16]

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

19:53, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Discovering blocked IPs within a range

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T146628

Special:BlockList tells us of all active blocks affecting an IP address, including range blocks which affect that IP. Is there a way to do the opposite, to take a range and find out whether any individual IP or sub-range is blocked? Better still, is there a way to find out if any have been blocked in the past? Knowing, for example, that a previous administrator placed a smaller range block to target the same individual could be extremely useful in combatting abuse and vandalism. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:38, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

phab:T146628 is open, requesting support for range searches of the logs. — xaosflux Talk 15:20, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
@HJ Mitchell: For "blocks" specifically, meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Admins and patrollers/Show recent block history for IPs and ranges has this in third place, so it is heavily requested. — xaosflux Talk 15:23, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
I believe Community Tech is going to work on it this year (it's a bit too soon to say for sure). The main reason it hasn't been worked on over the past few years is that we weren't sure about the future of IPs in MediaWiki. With that now clarified, we can finally move forward with this project. Stay tuned! — MusikAnimal talk 16:49, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Thank you both. That's interesting. So I guess there's no way to see if an IP is in a range that has been previously blocked (short of manually searching the logs) ... yet? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:05, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
@HJ Mitchell: You could run a SQL query like quarry:query/63446, changing 123. to the prefix of interest. To limit it to ranges which include a specific address, you could add something like AND "7B1234AB" BETWEEN ipb_range_start AND ipb_range_end, where 7B1234AB represents the IP address of interest, which you'll unfortunately have to convert to hexadecimal. Certes (talk) 19:14, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
@Certes: Thank you, that looks like a good stopgap. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:28, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Think you can also do some api queries, but not super easy. — xaosflux Talk 19:54, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Android related question for developers

Copy-pasted from VPPRO. --Izno (talk) 23:30, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi there,

I've tried to report the issue via Google Playmarket, but since noone reads users' feedbacks there I've decided to use this channel to reach out to developers of the Wikipedia Android app. Please take my apologies if I've misused the channel as I am still new to the Wikipedia community and trying to report such issue for the first time.

Here is a screenshot taken on my Android tablet from the Wikipedia app: https://fastpic.org/view/116/2022/0328/_c78f776bd761029b52ed3631d17bb599.jpg.html

As can be seen from the screenshot, there are some articles that can be viewed from Android app, but can't be saved by some reason. In particular, I refer to the following article in Russian language, which covers the IT companies in Russia as a "category list": https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F%3A%D0%98%D0%A2-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B8_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8?wprov=sfla1

So the question I have to ask here is if there is any way to enable saving such articles from the Android app?

Thanks in advance and best regards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.255.2.247 (talk) 15:51, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I believe the "save" feature only works on mainspace pages. In fact what you're seeing is just a rendering of the page using WebView, which is basically an in-app web browser. In other words, the mobile app isn't rendering and styling the wikitext like it does for articles (i.e. if you use dark mode, you'll notice category pages don't use the dark theme), thus the other features you're used to having for articles are not available. — MusikAnimal talk 23:45, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Help with Lua module

  • What were you expecting and what was the actual result of your action?: I was expecting to get a Base64 encoding of inputted text Test using {{#INVOKE:Base64|base64.encode(input)|Test}}, but got error Script error: The module returned a nil value. It is supposed to return an export table.
  • Where did you encounter the problem?: In sandbox preview
  • Would a screenshot help you to describe the problem?: No.
  • If you are "on mobile" please specify if you are using the Mobile App or the mobile website: I am using the desktop website.
  • What browser and what version of your browser are you using?: Firefox 98.0.2 (64-bit) on Windows 10 version 20H2
  • No connection problems.

How do I fix this??? QuickQuokka [⁠talk • contribs] 19:26, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I fixed that but ...
{{#INVOKE:Base64|encode|Test}} → {{#INVOKE:Base64|encode|Test}}
{{#INVOKE:Base64|decode|VGVzdA}} → {{#INVOKE:Base64|decode|VGVzdA}}
Don't know if it works 'properly'; don't know where the stray == come from.
Read WP:LUA
—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:03, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
The == will be from Module:Base64#L-143, where two PAD characters are appended if the number of bytes (4 for "Test") mod 3 is 1. Certes (talk) 20:38, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of removing the line breaks between the list items from the original message; they created problems with viewing HTML lists which are particularly problematic for screen reader users like myself. Graham87 07:49, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

More than 3 years for page to appear in category?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T304841

User:Bearian/Deletions just showed up in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion over 3 years after being tagged with {{db-user}}. Anyone has an idea why? —Kusma (talk) 10:20, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Was it categorised directly or via a template or other transcluded page which may have changed recently? Certes (talk) 12:03, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
The text {{db-user}} was added on 9 July 2018 at 15:32. Template:db-user has been a redirect to Template:db-u1 for more than a decade and has not been edited in forever. I can't see anything in the history of Template:db-u1 that could have caused this to break for three+ years. —Kusma (talk) 12:24, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Based on some digging, Something Ain't Right™ and I've logged a task ~TNT (talk • she/her) 13:28, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
The root cause is the same as #Category redirect Foo playing up again. Izno (talk) 18:54, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Indeed per THIS I've been null-editing pages in user space and my bot null-edited user pages with page_links_updated in July 2018 within the past ~24 hours. It's a mystery why the page did not quickly populate Category:Candidates for speedy deletion soon after the page was saved. 99+% of the time the category is populated not long after the page transcluding the template is saved. But in rare cases (caused by sunspot activity?) the category was not populated, and when that happens, it can be a looooonnnnng time before it is. Probably a jobqueue update at the time was lost. My bot's null edit finally populated the category. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:26, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
The above-referenced discussion is now at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 196#Category redirect Foo playing up again. Graham87 07:55, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

What happened to these logs?

Hi, does anyone know why these logs make no sense? Just curious, thanks https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&offset=20140302000000&limit=100&type=&user=User%3ABabbaQ&page=&wpdate=2014-03-01&tagfilter=&wpfilters%5B0%5D=newusers Mike989 (talk) 09:12, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

They're leftovers from the discontinued article feedback tool. Graham87 09:18, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Desktop Improvements: project update and invitation to our office hours

Hello. I want to give you an update about the Desktop Improvements project. The Wikimedia Foundation Web team has been working on it for the past few years now, and it's almost finished! Learn about our recent activities, give us feedback on our latest prototype, and join us in our upcoming office hours!

The goals of the project are to make the interface more welcoming and comfortable for readers while keeping the utility for advanced editors. The project consists of a series of feature improvements. The changed interface makes it easier to read and learn, navigate within the page, search, switch between languages, use page tabs and the user menu, and more.

The changes apply to the Vector skin only. Monobook or Timeless users are not affected. Those who prefer to keep Vector without our changes are (and will be!) able to do so.

The newest features

  • Page tools - We have been exploring ways to make different menus more intuitive by visually separating the actions and tools for individual pages (like Related changes) from those of site-wide nature (like Recent changes). Try out the prototype we have built and give us feedback on what you like and what could be improved.
  • Table of contents (ToC) - Our new ToC is easier for readers and editors to reach, gain context of the page, and navigate throughout the page without needing to scroll all the way to the top. We are finishing the development on the ToC and plan to deploy it to folks who have already been using the Desktop Improvements by the end of March. Check out the latest prototype of the feature.

How to enable/disable the improvements

  • Opt-in individually in the appearance tab within the preferences by selecting "Vector (2022)". It is also possible to opt-in on all wikis using the global preferences.
  • On wikis where the changes are visible by default for all, logged-in users can always opt-out to Vector legacy 2010. There is an easily accessible link in the sidebar of Vector 2022.

Deployment on English Wikipedia

The improvements are already available by default for readers and editors on almost 30 wikis, including Wikipedias in French, Portuguese, and Persian. We would love to see these improvements become the default for readers and editors across all wikis. We plan on beginning conversations on potential configurations here on English Wikipedia in the coming months, once we complete building all the major changes.

Learn more and join our events

We would like to invite you to our upcoming office hours on 29 March, 19:00 18:00 UTC. We will talk through our latest prototypes as well as the project as a whole. Please come with any questions you may have!

If you would like to follow the progress of our project on your own time, you can subscribe to our newsletter. You can read the pages of the project, check our FAQ, and write on the project talk page.

Thank you! On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

The meeting begins in less than an hour. Everyone is invited, particularly those interested in the desktop interface! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Hotcat restored a link???

Any idea what happened with Special:Diff/1079976243? In the previous edit, I unlinked "Hebrew Infant Asylum". Then I used HotCat to update a category, and the link came back. I remember HotCat unexpectedly dropping me into an edit dialog asking me to enter an edit summary, but I cancelled out of that, went back to the article link, and re-did the category change. I didn't notice until just now that the links came back. Any clue what might have been going on? Some kind of caching problem, maybe? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:18, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

You effectively edit conflicted with yourself by making an edit, going back to a previous tab where that edit hadn't been made, and then making another edit. The software (by design) ignores self-edit-conflicts and just overwrites the first edit. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:26, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Redirect category shell image discussion

I've initiated a discussion on Redirect category shell's talk page about the utility of the blue arrow image that starts the template. More input there from you fine folks would be appreciated. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:26, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

All pages header

Hi, I'm looking for another help. I see an interface page pi:मीडियाविकि:Talkpageheader, which transcludes it's text on all talk pages in this project. Is there a interface page that transcludes the same text as header/footer on all pages, subject space and talk space? Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 23:04, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom: I know of one, though not really a "header": pi:MediaWiki:Tagline. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:10, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Addendum: You can also configure it to make it display different messages on different namespaces using wikitext conditional parser functions, just like in templates. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:16, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Struck. That doesn't work. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 06:20, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom if you really mean "all pages" you can use the MediaWiki:Sitenotice / MediaWiki:Anonnotice to put something on the top of every page. — xaosflux Talk 23:43, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
Basically, I wanted to put up pi:Template:Edit protection on there, which would automatically sense the edit protection level to show the appropriate protection-level topicon, without having to manually do all of that work. ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 00:04, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom: In which case, have you looked at our Module:Effective protection level? If you don't want the Lua route, you can use {{PROTECTIONLEVEL:type}} where type is one of: create, edit, move, upload (see my post at User talk:RMCD bot#Indication of move protection settings for two examples). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:49, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I took my inspiration from there, and the template I mentioned (pi:Template:Edit protection) uses the same to produce the topicons. I also tested it on pi:मीडियाविकि:Talkpageheader by temporarily protecting a talk page, and it works! But I couldn't find a sitewide equivalent of that MW page. pi:मीडियाविकि:Sitenotice doesn't help at all. ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 20:55, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom, if you want to find all of the potential "messages" on a page, use the mw:qqx trick. Remember that there are some differences per skin. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
Sadly, couldn't find one. Probably such a page doesn't exist yet. If so, where can I request one? Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 17:23, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom, I vaguely remember I've asked about something similar years ago but couldn't find an enjoyable solution. I'd also like it if topicons or something similarly small could show automatically on all protected pages, showing their status, similarly to good and featured articles and their topicons added "manually". But "the closest" I've been able to get to that is by editing 1-2 system messages that are specific for full and semi-protection which appear when you're trying to edit articles in the said protection levels (not before), which I believe you may be already aware of. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:58, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF), weren't you telling me something (months ago) about moving the FA stars to a different place? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Yes, such icons, and more precisely, their templates, should use the indicator tag. Then they are displayed below the page heading (so below the gray line), next to the tagline. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 14:11, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
Frankly, enWP is a fairly large project with many editors and bots who can maintain it on a daily basis, but most other projects aren't. Personally, I believe that the protection templates & article quality indicators should be applied by default on all pages, with the help of system messages rather than having to do that manually. The svgs for them can be stored in a MW page. ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 17:35, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Fully support that opinion. Maybe that feature can be harder to implement in good and featured articles but I believe with protection levels would be easier to get the specific metadata and correlate them to the needed top icons/indicators. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:42, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Protection indicators are the subject of phab:T12347, for which it makes sense for core to have some control.
Article quality indicators are not a domain idea known about in core and may have different levels depending on the wiki, so they do not seem to be a good candidate. Izno (talk) 18:05, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
Eh, that was my train of thought as well. Even though I kinda think it should be an extension, not in the core because different wikis might have different protection levels beside the so-called semi and full? I may be totally wrong. (Didn't study the task.) - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:39, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
This (specifically a header shown on all pages) is requested in phab:T151682. A similar task for footer, phab:T138652, was declined for performance reasons so don't keep your hopes high. – SD0001 (talk) 09:23, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Adminstats bar chart

Hello. I attempted to fork {{Adminstats/bars}} and {{Adminstats/bars/percent}} into User:Sdrqaz/statsstyles and User:Sdrqaz/statsstylesstyles respectively. However, there are issues with the bars that I have been unable to resolve (the resulting product is on my base userpage). If there are any solutions (apart from "don't use adminstats"), that would be appreciated. Sdrqaz (talk) 04:23, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Does adminstats even work? The bot hasn't updated Template:Adminstats/Hog Farm in 14 months ... Hog Farm Talk 04:32, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
The bot does update Template:Adminstats/Kusma regularly. Maybe it doesn't notice you are active? —Kusma (talk) 12:25, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
I made over 14,000 edits in 2021 and a bit over 2,000 this year, so I would hope it considers me active. I suspect it may not know I'm an administrator - my RFA closed on 21 January 2021, and the bot last updated the adminstats on 25 January 2021. Hog Farm Talk 13:29, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Cyberbot I seems to update Template:Adminstats/HJ Mitchell daily. Maybe Cyberpower678 knows why yours isn't updating? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:44, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
It's not transcluded anywhere. It only updates if it's transcluded somewhere. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 13:47, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
@Cyberpower678: - I had it transcluded at User:Hog Farm/admin stats until the middle of May 2021, so I don't think it was that. I remember finally U1'ing it after it had gone about three months without working. Hog Farm Talk 13:56, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
I can't debug until at least the activation requirements are met. You'll need to transcluyde it somewhere.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 13:57, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Should be re-created now at the same title; maybe the next update run will catch it. Hog Farm Talk 14:06, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
Does not appear to be functioning; hasn't yet updated despite being transcluded. Hog Farm Talk 18:05, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
@Sdrqaz: The error is caused by the <span> element that {{Percentage}} returns. (You can go to Special:ExpandTemplates and try something like {{Percentage|50|100|2}} to see it for yourself.) That results in a wacky output when you try to use the output as a CSS parameter, as you're doing at User:Sdrqaz/statsstylesstyles. There's a little bit of background from someone who experienced a similar problem at Template talk:Percentage#Negative percentages... minus sign vs. ndash. Someone created a replacement template, {{Percentage CSS}}, but it was recently deleted at TfD as unused. It sounds like that was just a wrapper for {{#expr:}} anyway, so you may have to fall back on the syntax used at Template:Adminstats/bars. DanCherek (talk) 17:26, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
@DanCherek: I finally got it to work, after six tries. Thanks for your help! Sdrqaz (talk) 22:46, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Is there a multi-argument echo/identity template?

Is there a template that echoes back all of its arguments separated by escaped pipes?

So, {{echoallargs|foo|bar|baz}} would produce 'foo|bar|baz'

This would be useful for seeing how all the arguments for an invocation are being parsed when debugging, and for formatting in template test cases. The closest existing implementations I could find are {{1x}}, which echoes just the first argument; and getInvocation() from Module:Template test case, which is used only within the module to reconstruct the invocation wikitext for the existing test case templates.

 — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 16:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Aha, there's:
  • {{Separated entries|foo|bar|baz|separator=&vert;}} → foo|bar|baz
  • and the related:
  • {{Concat|foo|bar|baz}} → foobarbaz
  • {{Enum|foo|bar|baz}} → foo, bar and baz
 — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 16:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
However, I don't think these cover all use cases. In my current case, I'm able to insert |separator=&vert; cleanly, but sometimes that isn't the case.  — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 16:17, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Edit: Corrected Wikicode for posterity — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 17:51, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
{{pipe escape}} * Pppery * it has begun... 16:23, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. Though it seems like there's no way of discovering many of these templates other than combing through categories or trying to guess at what name the creators gave them. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 16:58, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Hmm, turns out {{Pipe escape}} isn't suitable because the actual reason I need such a template is to convert pipes into &vert; so they don't interfere with a surrounding table. {{Pipe escape}} only escapes once and outputs the pipes as real pipes. XY problem strikes again.
Markup Renders as 
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| a{{Pipe escape|b|c|d}}e
|}
c|de
 — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 19:34, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Special:Users contributions probably header mistake in mobile interface

Due to the change of user's contribution style in the mobile interfaces, I am thankful that the date header has been returned again. But there’s a bit of a problem that I don’t know if it needs attention. Date headers seem to be too long, as a result, the user's contribution page can slides right and left, and the very header of the page where the Wikipedia search icon is located is truncated. I'll ping User:Celestina007 who's probably noticed the changes too that he can probably explain what I am talking about.—Ctrlwìkí (talk) 09:07, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the report.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T301798
Jdlrobson (talk) 17:31, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
@Jdlrobson: I noticed that this problem is not only in the Mobile version, but also in the Advanced mobile version. Only mobile users can experience this. The date header is too long, in the former style it fits perfectly on the screen of a normal mobile. —Ctrlwìkí (talk) 00:43, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Template errors

Sometimes while trying to update and fix errors with refs, especially when there is a "Script warning" at the top of the edit window in preview mode, I'll come across an error notice for the {{cite journal}} template, but it's not clear just what the error is. A current example can be found at Drug Enforcement Administration. Any assistance with this would be appreciated. Cheers - wolf 02:12, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@Izno: I see you just edited the DEA page, and now the error notice is now gone, but it's not clear why. The notice had stated the error was in a "cite journal" template. There was, and still is, three of those, in a different section of the page. Your edit changed a sole "cite document" template to a more specific "cite ssrn", while removing the |publisher= parameter. Your summary was quite brief, so could you perhaps elucidate this result? Thanks - wolf 07:11, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
{{cite document}} is a redirect to {{cite journal}} so Module:Citation/CS1 sees it as {{cite journal}} – the module cannot know about redirect names. {{cite journal}} requires |journal= but the community have decided that {{cite journal}} must not show that error message. The only way to see the message is to follow the instructions at Help:CS1 errors § Error and maintenance messages (linked from the preview message).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:27, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Articles and images

User X comes and uploads a certain image in Commons. The said user comes and changes some articles to stop using a certain photo and instead use the photo it just uploaded in Commons. 2 days later that photo gets deleted in Commons and the associated bot removes that photo from the articles that were using it. The result: Articles that already had photos in them remain now without any image at all.

Any way this process can be mitigated? I've had it happen quite a couple of times now in my homewiki (SqWiki). - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:29, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

1. Create an phabricator ticket, asking for Commons deletion notification bot to be enabled on the wiki (example ticket phab:T256527). 2. (optional) Mention to foreign users that it is upto the community what images are used on the wiki. 3. Once a file is up for deletion revert the photo swap. Note: Some articles are more likely to have their photos deleted, like company and entertainment articles. Or you could just outright block image swaps from foreign users using abusefilter, thats fine too.--Snævar (talk) 08:18, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I've noticed this happening on enwp too. It's annoying. I wonder if the bot could restore any image which used to be shown in place of the one being deleted. Certes (talk) 10:42, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
@Snævar, oh, so the notification bot is another one. I thought it was the same as the bot which removes the broken links globally which are left after files get deleted. That's a good plan but unfortunately it wouldn't help much in our case because we're always lacking human resources. We need something automatic. What @Certes suggests below is what would be helpful. Can the bot that removes broken links also restore the old photos/versions of the page? That would help deal with 90% of the cases. There would be a very small percentage of false positives, when you would restore an image that shouldn't be restored but it's better to fix those cases manually than to do the manual restores. At least for SqWiki, that percentage would go close to 99.99% as we rarely would have problems with "old photos" given that we don't allow local upload and users never bear going through all the Commons procedures AND article changes just for vandalism causes. So that would leave only the cases I described above which would be fixed automatically by such a system, if the bot could accomplish that. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Chula Vista, California

Not really a technical question, but hopefully someone can help me fix the reference section at Chula Vista, California. I think the "further reading" section should have actually been included in the reference section...but maybe not all of the sources listed there, because some have "ref=none" in their template, so they may really just be for further reading. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 10:52, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@Magnolia677 "further reading" is normally its own section on articles, so that it is in the table of contents as its own link. From a "technical" level, you could delete the section header or change it from "== ... ==" to "=== ... ===" to make it a sub section, but that's probably not the best idea in the article. — xaosflux Talk 11:11, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Rename §Further reading → §Bibliography and use, move, or delete the one template with |ref=none.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:17, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux and Trappist the monk: Of the several books list, only two appear to be used as a reference (both have a "ref=" that links to a source cited in the article). Should these two be moved, and the non-active books left in "further reading"? Thank you again. Magnolia677 (talk) 11:30, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
All are used except Schoenherr 2020 (with |ref=none). For example, this short-form reference links to a long-form reference that does not use |ref=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:38, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: Would this be a place to use the style marked as "Using both footnote-style and bibliography-style references"? Magnolia677 (talk) 13:19, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I am not at all sure what it is that you are asking so I have no answer.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:36, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

"Allow emails from brand-new users"

In the preference settings, there is an option to uncheck "Allow emails from brand-new users". What is the technical definition of brand new user? Will it be enough to prevent a sock master from abusing my email feature? (Cc @Girth Summit) Venkat TL (talk) 12:57, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

See WP:ENABLEEMAIL. It means non-autoconfirmed users. – SD0001 (talk) 13:04, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks SD0001. Venkat TL it's a bit like the semi protection I just applied to your talk page - it means they will have to invest a bit more time and effort than just creating a new account to continue doing this. Girth Summit (blether) 13:10, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
@SD0001, @Girth Summit Thank you. I guess this should work for me. No harm in trying it out. The word brand new user in the preference should be wikilinked to "WP:AUTOCONFIRM" for clarification. Venkat TL (talk) 13:13, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
  Administrator note link added. — xaosflux Talk 13:59, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Citoid issue

Citoid seems to have an issue with formatting a citation from this URL. Using the DOI itself doesn't solve the issue. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:27, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

This one has the same problem. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Nevermind, now it works. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:33, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Namespace filter of what-links-here via redirects

Special:WhatLinksHere includes both direct links and links to redirects (grouped by redirect). And there is a filter to limit the disply to only certain namespaces and a separate filter to exclude redirects. However, that namespace filter appears to filter the redirects themselves rather than the links to the redirects. It seems like the more reasonable intent would be to filter the links to the redirects ("what winds up linking here from a reader's perspective"). Or at least that's the feature I want.

Given:

  • "A" is a redirect to "B" (both namespace=main)
  • "Wikipedia:C" has a link to "A"

then

  • "Special:WhatLinksHere/B" lists Wikipedia:C in the "A"-redirect group.

but

  • "Special:WhatLinksHere/B namespace=Wikipedia" does not list "Wikipedia:C".

My current use-case is to find old AFD and SPI including prior to page-moves of the target article. DMacks (talk) 19:53, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@DMacks hi DMacks, this doesn't seem like something we can fix here on the English Wikipedia, but you can put in a feature request for that special page. If this is only needed occasionally, a query may be able to find the result. — xaosflux Talk 21:04, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Help needed at Module talk:ISO 3166

Please see Module talk:ISO 3166#Guinea-Bissau error and Template:ISO 3166 code-3/testcases. It appears that a hyphen in a country name is not being processed properly by this module. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:42, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

The issue is that the names with hyphens are being split on the hyphen and treated as separate country name + subdivision name. This handles cases like United Kingdom-England, but causes ones like Guinea-Bissau (which is one country name) to fail because there's no Bissau subdivision of the country Guinea.
The invalid cases that produce output are because the code ignores all non-alphanumeric characters for both country and subdivision name, so GuineaBissau, which doesn't get split, matches as GUINEABISSAU.
I've changed the sandbox version to fall back on not splitting with the hyphen. That fixes this, but not sure if it breaks something else. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 16:49, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Looks like Module talk:ISO 3166/testcases was broken by previous changes and never updated. I got it to work but can't figure out why the Code column isn't showing the codetype parameter (note: Wiki'code' vs ISO 3166 'code').
  • {{#invoke:ISO 3166|name|Guinea-Bissau}} is still broken.
 — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 17:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
What do Module talk:ISO 3166/testcases/test and Module talk:ISO 3166/testcases/core do? — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 18:59, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Fixed by pushing down the new implementation so p.luaname() uses it. Testcase page timing out again. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 20:06, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
And I feel like UNITEDSTATESUNIQREF0000001FQINU is not the desired output for that test case. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 17:46, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Because this: 
{'United States<ref name=A>{{cite web|url=http://www.example.com}}</ref>'},
The module is buggering up the reference's stripmarker so the stripmarker doesn't get replaced with the reference after the module is done with its rendering.
Testcases running out of time suggests that there are bigger issues in that module that need fixing.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:55, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Could the use of string.find etc. rather than ustring in functions p.luacode and p.luaname be causing problems by chopping at byte offsets rather than character counts? I don't see any multi-byte characters in these examples, but they may be lurking. Certes (talk) 18:09, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Doubtful that the ISO 3166 codes are anything but ascii; country names can and do use multibyte characters (AX → Åland Islands for example). At lines 103 and 191 the code is looking for a hyphen-minus character (ascii) so string.find is appropriate; at line 195 the code is apparently looking for a two-uppercase-character string which is presumably supposed to be the ISO 3166 country code which should be ascii characters so string.find is appropriate; at line 245, the code is looking for a specific string of ascii characters so mw.ustring.find is not necessary there.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:36, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Ya, I pretty much doubled runtime by always checking both hyphenations. I optimized at the cost of not being able to properly handle the (AFAIK currently impossible) case of both paths giving a result. If that happens, there's now no way to get the country instead of the country-subdivision. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 18:26, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Profiling shows 86% of the runtime is in the 4 gsub() calls in strip(). — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 18:34, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Some of it could be made non-regex. But isn't there some Unicode normalization form for almost-ASCII that does this already? — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 18:38, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
The approach is to decompose into combining characters and remove them. But Lua can't do this natively. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 18:47, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Before line 73, perhaps test text 
	local capture = string.match (text, '[%w%p ]*');								-- test for values that are simple ASCII text and bypass if true
	if capture ~= text then															-- if same there are no Unicode characters
		text = mw.ustring.gsub(text,"[À-Ý]",accents)								-- Deaccent
	end
At line 76, it looks to me like the patterns in patterns don't really need mw.ustring.gsub; I could be wrong about that
At line 80, all of the strings in remove are ascii, mw.ustring.gsub is not appropriate
But, I gotta wonder, is all of this necessary? If the template calls the module functions with parameter values that don't make sense, why attempt to fix every possible error; emit an error message and abandon. Attempting to code around en.wiki human editors' endlessly creative ways to break stuff is an exercise in frustration. Set some rules about what is and what is not acceptable as input and code to those rules.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:10, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Ugh, this sort of text handling is already hard enough when using proper libraries. Skipping deaccenting when all-ASCII seems to help a little, but I don't get why the module is this slow in the first place: we're spending 10 seconds of CPU time on just these short strings?
  • It's hard to gauge what's slow or not because each removed pattern is also a broken testcase, which causes all the linear searches to switch to worst-case runtime. Curiously, gsub is still on top in profiling data even when all calls are removed from the code; no idea what's calling it internally.
  • Lua for some reason has no non-pattern-matching replace function. I guess that means gsub is considered acceptably performant when there isn't any pattern syntax.
  • I think we can get away with using single-byte functions like we already are; individual UTF-8 multi-byte code units can never be confused with ASCII bytes because of the high bit.
  • Most of the line 76 patterns could be replaced with finds and substrings, very tediously though.
  • Refactoring luacode() to call p.strip() less got the testcase page down from 9 s to 7 s.
I noticed that p.strip() gets called a bunch on the stored name data. Is there an official way to cache this kind of output? I tried a hacky sort of caching by using Module:Sandbox/Wqnvlz to 'bake' the results of p.strip() to the sandbox pages of the data (e.g. Module:ISO 3166/data/National/sandbox, Module:ISO 3166/data/CA/sandbox; I only baked the countries currently used by the testcases). This gets the testcases down to 5.5 s, but also allows another optimization, which is to index into the baked tables directly instead of looping through individual entries.
 — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 01:32, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Mm, invalid input, which causes the module to loop through every country, dominates the runtime. Taking out the four broken testcases nearly halves it. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 01:40, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I did a small amount of cleaning at Module:ISO 3166/sandbox (where mw.ustring was not needed) and introduced a gigantic kludge that works well and is much faster. That's all I have time for at the moment but if p.strip is still a bottleneck there is more I could do. Re caching, Memoization is quite simple and I can add that if you are saying that strip is called with the same input during the same invoke. Johnuniq (talk) 02:40, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Hmm, I guarantee that the kludge I used is much faster than mw.ustring and my initial test showed a couple of seconds improvement. However, now Module talk:ISO 3166/testcases is showing 5.7 seconds of Lua time which is disappointing. I can look more later but I don't know what the module is doing so it is very unclear to me where the bottlenecks are, although the profile is showing most of the time in gsub. Johnuniq (talk) 02:56, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Ah, I previewed the testcases with an edit to Module:ISO 3166/testcases that replaced the invokes of the main module with invokes of the sandbox module. The result was 1.7 seconds of Lua time despite the sandbox module being called twice as often. Johnuniq (talk) 03:03, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

That's clever—and no more kludgy than the hardcoded table; I've been wondering, where did that table come from?

I was asking if there's a way to cache data between different  invocations of a module. When Module:ISO 3166 searches for a name stored in its data subpages, each stored name is visited only once per invocation (ideally), but must be processed using strip() (which is more like normalize()) before being compared with. Every invocation does this, so performance could be gained by storing the strip() results in lookup tables (one per data subpage). But in order to be clean, these tables must update automatically when the originals change.

If I'm not missing anything, the best way to do this is with a module that preprocesses data pages by applying strip() to all the strings. What stumps me is how the resulting output could be simultaneously cached and accessible from the main module. It seems like either using mw.loadData() to load a non-module page or transcluding a template onto a module page is required, but neither is possible. I guess a bot could be used to update a static module page, but that feels inelegant.

Note/beware that the proof of concept I implemented is still live in the sandbox.

The last sentence I wrote above (which is kind of incomprehensible in retrospect) refers to the fact that the isonames and altnames subtables are currently being linear searched when looking up names (because they map in the wrong direction); this can be eliminated by also making inverted versions of them when preprocessing. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 06:14, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

MediaWiki (and therefore Scribunto) is designed so that caching variables between invocations is not possible. The idea is that a preview of editing a section should be completely independent of what is on the rest of the page. It is possible for mw.loadData to load a fixed table where that table is generated at run time—an example is at Module:NUMBEROF/data. Lua can quickly do an astounding amount of work, for example to invert a table, but I don't know if that would help here. I don't want to take the time to investigate what Module:ISO_3166 does and how it is used, but if you would like to give a brief overview of that I could offer an opinion about what caching might be possible. Is there an example of a page where there is currently a problem? Would it have that problem if the sandbox module were used? Seeing an actual problem would help. We should continue this discussion in a new section at Module talk:ISO 3166 which I will watch for a month. Ping me if it appears I've not responded. Johnuniq (talk) 06:59, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Finishing up the original request at Module talk:ISO 3166#Guinea-Bissau error. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 01:23, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

(Un)delete associated talk page coming soon

Hello! If all goes according to plan, come Thursday, April 14, there will be a "Delete associated talk page" checkbox available when deleting pages, and the same for undeletion. You can read the project page for more information. This was the #11 wish in the Community Wishlist Survey 2021.

To keep the UI simple, there will not be a second text field to enter a separate deletion summary for the talk page. Instead, it will use the same summary used for the subject page. To me, this makes sense; we are essentially trying to head in a direction where subject pages and talk pages are treated as a single unit, similar to how it works when watching pages. Thus, it makes sense for them to share the same deletion rationale (when you intend to delete both subject/talk, that is). However, I know some folks like to do analysis on CSD deletion types, i.e. by querying the database, and with the new "delete associated talk page" option, we no longer will have the G8 prefix in the the deletion summary. Also, the talk pages will have the CSD code for the subject page, since it shares the same deletion rationalte. Does anyone foresee this as a problem? Would it be helpful to add an interface message that the community can customize that gets prefixed to all talk page deletions via the new checkbox? This way we could retain the WP:G8 prefix, though we won't be able to remove the criterion used for the subject page from the deletion summary.

Next, allow me to explain how the corresponding option at Special:Undelete works. As many of you know, you can selectively un-delete specific revisions. Until the introduction of revision deletion (a.k.a. RevDel), this is how admins used to remove specific revisions from a history (by deleting the whole history and selectively restoring). Anyway, the checkbox at Special:Undelete will read "Undelete all revisions of the associated talk page" and do just that. There is no intuitive way to tell it which revisions you want to restore on a different page, so we only give you the option to restore all revisions. If the talk page already exists but has some archived revisions, these are also restored. Note this does not effect revdel status of any of those deleted revisions (yes, you can RevDel deleted revisions!). So at least today, most admins will use revdel or suppression to hide problematic revisions, and those will stay hidden.

That's all for now. I have left at note at WP:AN as well because I suspect we'll want to update some admin documentation, etc. If there are any concerns, please let us know! You can comment here or on the project talk page. Warm regards and thank you for your input, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. G8 is just a generic catch-all for orphaned talk pages. Reaper Eternal (talk) 21:04, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Seems reasonable to me as well. Jeepday (talk) 10:48, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Mysterious blank area

Does anybody else see a large blank area at 2022 Grand National between the {{Grand National}} navbox and the category box? I see it logged in and out, in MonoBook and Vector. That space should contain two stub templates; these are present in the HTML source, but will only display if you remove the navbox. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I see it too. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Me too (legacy Vector, Firefox, Ubuntu). By editing {{Grand National}} and previewing the article with with various bits of template hacked out, I can see both stub templates, neither, or just the UK one. Timings and other counts are way below the limit. Certes (talk) 23:03, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Fixed by removing style = float:left; from the navbox.[17] PrimeHunter (talk) 23:04, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
  Thank you --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:53, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Shortcut quirk

When clicking the shortcut: WP:RM#TR, you end up at Wikipedia:Requested moves § Requesting technical moves (the intended location). However, when you are there, clicking the same link from the shortcut box takes you to Wikipedia:RM instead. What is preventing the shortcut from returning to the anchored section as intended? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 14:15, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@John Cline: The shortcut box adds ?redirect=no to the title, so it doesn't redirect, and tried to go to a TR section of WP:RM, instead of Wikipedia:Requested moves#Requesting technical moves. ― Qwerfjkltalk 14:38, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
The links in shortcut boxes arre intended to go to the redirect page, and not back to themselves. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:46, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

SVG image showing as transparent

Company logo File:ScotRail logo.svg for article ScotRail infobox is showing as transparent. Not sure what to do about that... --10mmsocket (talk) 10:54, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

The background is transparent, the fill color is white. That's why you can't see it on a white background! - Erik Baas (talk) 14:50, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
Of course. Thanks. I'll delete and download a different version. 10mmsocket (talk) 14:57, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
@10mmsocket I modified the uploaded SVG file to have the same background color as it does on the ScotRail website. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:08, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
That has sorted it, thank you. Case closed! 10mmsocket (talk) 16:49, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Article history filtering

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T18619

I was wondering, are there ways to filter article history, for example, to show only bot contributions/hide them, show only minor contributions/hide them, show only the contributions of a specific user and other similar concepts? - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:46, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

You can use external tools such as userseach or xtools topedits to filter edits by a specific user on a page. These tools are linked from the history pages, but they do not allow filtering all bot edits or minor edits at the same time. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:37, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ammarpad, thank you! I wonder if any work has ever been done or considered in bringing such functions in-wiki. In pages with a long history it would be very appreciated I think. - Klein Muçi (talk) 07:48, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
There's an old phab task for this, see phab:T18619. – Ammarpad (talk) 08:01, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ammarpad, ah, yes. That's exactly what I was looking for. Well, good to know that at least it is a known problem. - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:06, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Disabling a global script locally

Hi everyone, I wish to install User:Enterprisey/script-installer on my global.js but disable it on English Wikipedia as it's already enabled via Prefs. What code helps me to do that? Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 09:40, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

I (now*) use something like: 
if (mw.config.get('wgServerName') !== 'en.wikipedia.org') {
	// Do things. 
}
The documentation for MediaWiki settings is at mw:Manual:Configuration settings.
I thought I remembered some official page (Special: ?) listing all settings for each site, but can't find it now. You can easily check the actual values by alert()ing them, though: 
alert(mw.config.get('wgServerName'))
* Edit: I've actually been doing it wrong this whole time! Just realized that $wgSiteName (what I wrote at first) is the same for all languages of a Wikimedia project (which is not what you or I wanted). Looking at the list of settings now, it looks like $wgServerName is more appropriate, since it's just the server's base URL without protocol, such as en.wikipedia.org or mediawiki.org. — wqnvlz (talk · contribs) 10:42, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
@Wqnvlz: Simply type mw.config.values into your browser console. Alternatively, see mw:Manual:Interface/JavaScript. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:56, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Ah, there's the client-side—see, I stopped looking when I found the PHP docs! —wqnvlz (talk · contribs);  11:14, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom: Lazy version:
if (mw.config.get('wgDBname') !== 'enwiki') {
    mw.loader.load('//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-script-installer.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');
}
The code Wqnvlz wrote above also works. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:50, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: Where exactly do we write these codes in? Global.js or enwp's common.js? Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 11:12, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom: Since you asked how to install User:Enterprisey/script-installer on [your] global.js but disable it on English Wikipedia, its place obviously is your global.js. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 11:14, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks a lot to both you! ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 11:16, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Cascade protected editnotice text

When I go to this URL I see an edit notice saying (paraphrased) "This page has been protected so that only administrators can edit it because it is transcluded in the following page ... Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items/content". I think that Template:Protected page text/cascade is confusing a page being cascade protected with a page being transcluded in a cascade protected page, is there a way to make the edit notice say "This page has been protected so that only administrators can edit it"? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:54, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: Yes, but generally this is not a technical problem. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:46, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
True, but this is the place to get help with technical issues and that imo includes seeing if someone is interested in writing a solution. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:36, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus that page does already say that, that page has the MediaWiki:protectedpagewarning notice on it already; it just also has the MediaWiki:cascadeprotectedwarning. Regarding the later, right now that message seems to be "correct" as far as the template goes, as if you look at the page transclusions log at the bottom it does report that it is transcluded to itself:
Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help):
Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items/content (edit) (protected)
This part may be in error and could be looked in to next. — xaosflux Talk 13:22, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Yeah, that text and the cascadeprotectedwarning is what this query here is about. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:30, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with Template:Protected page text/cascade, which is only displayed to non-admins. If I as a non-admin follow that link I get the standard "This page is currently protected so that only administrators can edit it." message with no mention of cascading protection. In fact, I fixed the exact bug you are currently experiencing for non-admins as part of a rewrite of the protection message infrastructure in 2019. * Pppery * it has begun... 16:00, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Jo-Jo Eumerus: ok, so it looks like it is working correctly in so far as that message goes - it looks like something in Module:lockbox is actually transcluding the same page to itself (can be duplicated with as little as this snippet:
{{#invoke:lockbox|lock
| z
}}
So some troubleshooting in that module could possibly resolve the symptom you are seeing. — xaosflux Talk 16:01, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
line 47 and see mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual#Title_objects → getContent(): "The page will be recorded as a transclusion."
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:11, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Search for titles containing "©", "®", "™"

A current WP:RfD discussion involves a redirect that is basically identical to the target article title, except that it contains an "®". I'm curious as to whether this is prevalent in redirects, but the search function does not seem to return such titles (even the ones I know exist). Is there a way to generate a list of titles containing these symbols? BD2412 T 18:55, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412: See Special:Search/intitle:/©|®|™/. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 19:02, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks. BD2412 T 19:10, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
That is an incorrect search. The intent is actually this search. 1 false positive, 14 redirects, and a timeout, but you can probably dodge the timeout with the prefix keyword. Izno (talk) 23:22, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Mobile Redirect short descriptions

Hi! I'm not sure this is the right place, but an editor has brought to my attention a mobile bug regarding mobile. See my talkpage section link(permalink) for a description of the issue, also described at his talkpage. I resigned to forget about this particular user(who seems rather nice), and just fix his legitimate accidents, which are rare. Then a realized I have now come across three such issues from another user( here for those who want to see the diffs). Again I'm not fully familiar with all the discussion boards, so feel free to move thisto an appropriate venue. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 11:13, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I will try to capture and upload a video of this bug in action later today. Thrakkx (talk) 11:40, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Just say what the problem is rather than make people follow links whenever soliciting help. From your talk page:

Hi, I want to point out that I never intend to add short descriptions to redirects. What happens is a bug on mobile. When clicking on a redirect, the mobile device displays the content of the destination page, but the source code of the redirect. This means that when I edit the short description using the mobile app, it will add the description to the redirect. I cannot know when this happens without checking my edit history, or when you leave me what seems to be an automated message. Thrakkx (talk) 21:56, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Based on Thrakkx's contributions, it looks like they're referring to the iOS app, not Android. Nardog (talk) 11:49, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for the tq, I should have included that youre right. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 12:04, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
This seems to be a known bug: phab:T287922. Certes (talk) 12:32, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Discussion tools - edit summaries

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T305393

Is it possible to use the tagging functionality of the discussion tools in page edit summaries somehow? - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:51, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Pinging @Whatamidoing (WMF) who maybe can provide some more insight on this. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:59, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi If you want to ping users in edit summaries, this is already possible. Just put something like [[User:Klein Muçi|Klein Muçi]] in the edit summary (I did it here) Rlink2 (talk) 13:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Rlink2, yes, I know that, thank you! I just wanted to be able to put @ and then get a list of users of which to choose from as we add more letters from their name so I wouldn't need to write all that down manually. Maybe the said list could also start by suggesting users the edits of which have been part of the page history, like we currently get suggested names of users who have been part of a discussion with discussion tools. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:08, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi when using these there is a "mention this user" button, which will populate the names in to the "content", would you want this button to just also be in the summary input box? For a temporary workaround, you can @ the users in to the content input box, then just cut/paste them to the summary box. — xaosflux Talk 13:11, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, that would be a good workaround but I wasn't referring to talk pages in my cases. I was referring to edits or reverts in the main or in other namespaces. We usually want to communicate something to a user in the edit summary when reverting its edits or when working together with some other users to build help pages we may like to communicate something to them in the said summaries. Is the scenario more clear now? - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:22, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi oh OK, so not really about "Discussion tools" - you just want an auto-complete feature for usernames for the normal edit summary box? — xaosflux Talk 14:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, yes, preferably one that behaves the same as the one in Discussion tools in regard to suggestions. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:15, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Ah ok, suggest you put in a feature request for this! — xaosflux Talk 15:44, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, I would but I'm not sure if it should be connected with Discussion tools or be a feature on its own. (Or maybe I should just ask for a user script.) That was what I was mostly trying to find out with this discussion. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:58, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
When creating such a feature request, think of it primarily from a "user story" - what is it you want to be able to do - don't focus so much on "how" it will happen. Then, you can add comments about some possible ways it could happen or things like DT that are like it - but it won't necessarily be part of DT. — xaosflux Talk 16:10, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Created task T305393 - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:05, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-14

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

Problems

  • For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [18]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (calendar).
  • Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

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

20:59, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Deprecated script?

From what I understand from the documentation and the script itself, User:Equazcion/NoEditSandbox.js which was last significantly edited a decade ago, no longer serves it's purpose, as the Sandbox link structure has changed. I don't know what happens to the old scripts, I think someone can note that it no longer does anything, and remove it from WP:USL? ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 17:10, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

@CX Zoom they just sit there, feel free to boldly remove it from USL. — xaosflux Talk 17:44, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
  Done. Nardog (talk) 22:29, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

False unknown template parameter preview warning

Says Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox programming language with unknown parameter "paradigms". Yet the parameter works and is listed in the documentation too. --Palosirkka (talk) 06:17, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

In which article are you seeing this preview warning?--John Cline (talk) 06:49, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
The preview warning is stating "paradigms" as the unknown parameter in use. The correct name is "paradigm", without an "s".--John Cline (talk) 06:56, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
Both are correct actually. I added {{{paradigms}}}. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 08:00, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
  Done. Thank you. --Palosirkka (talk) 07:25, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Autocorrection

Sorry for the open-ended question but does any part of Wikipedia provide any kind of autocorrection somehow? I am aware browsers (or is it PCs?) provide autocorrection while typing (mobiles too), for example, an article but beside that, does Wikipedia itself provide any kind of autocorrection feature in any possible way? For example, in Gmail I've had cases where my text has been autocorrected not only on typos but also semantically. Maybe, if not autodetection or autosuggestion or autocorrection, we have automatic ways of fixing typos after they have been saved? I have a somewhat vague understanding of a kind of autocorrection feature that AWB provides. Whatever information that may be provided in this aspect would be appreciated. I'm talking about text not linter errors.

The reason I'm asking is because in my homewiki every edit that is made needs to be reviewed first by our reviewers (Extension:FlaggedRevs) but being a small wiki we are always lacking in human resources so we try to get as much work done by automatic means. We noticed that a lot of edits that needed to be reviewed were actually vandalisms and edit filters turned out to be a tremendous help. Now we're noticing that a lot of edits that need to be reviewed are actually new users or unregistered ones (IPs) which are fixing simple typos. We unfortunately have to accept each of those edits one by one so we were hoping to either find a way to make people more attentive to their typos/semantics beside the default autocorrection browsers/PCs/mobiles provide when editing pages (autodetection, autosuggestion or autocorrection) or finding post-saved autocorrection features which don't need to be reviewed. It doesn't help that our language also includes two special characters [Ëë and Çç] which often get written as [Ee and Cc] even by Albanian speakers. These qualify as typos and there are times we will have to rewrite (or accept rewrites of) entire articles just because the original user didn't utilize those letters. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:15, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

The only supported way to change text "after it has been saved" is to publish a new revision, this is never done on the back end. If flagged revisions are overwhelming your editors, your project could turn it off (and apparently someone has been asking about this for 5 years at phab:T166017). There is not a spelling or grammar extension on any WMF wiki. — xaosflux Talk 13:49, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, publishing a new corrected revision is not a problem on its own if the new revision is published by a bot or a confirmed user whose edits we don't need to review. That's what I meant above when I wrote that part. As for turning it off, to be honest I'd like that personally but I don't have the courage to overtake that step. The degree of vandalism would be far more unmaintanable than the review process. If you remember I've asked some time ago about a vandalism fighting bot but it turned out that the one you use here can't be user anywhere else because of the way it operates so... - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:23, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Buggy filters

I'm a WP:RCP, and I use the filter which sorts out possibly problematic edits and only shows them. However, sometimes, when I load recent changes, I see lots of edits that clearly AREN'T problematic (which is why I hate seeing "Dm" before an edit so much). When I check the filter menu to try and reactivate it, the filter's just gone. Literally. Gone. Not even if I search for it will it show. And the strangest thing is that it only happens to this filter and the bad faith filter. Why is this? (I'm asking again because i never got an answer to my first question on the help desk and I got redirected here. interstatefive  (talk) - just another roadgeek 21:37, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I think no one currently knows why, but there is a bug report about this: phab:T290113. Matma Rex talk 22:27, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Links/Buttons for common js and css user pages

Is there a short way to access my common JS and CSS user pages without having to search for them first?

Speaking of that, is there a short way to access every sub-userpage I have without manually going through special pages to search for them?

And lastly, is there a way to add a new link at the top beside Preferences for a specific subpage of choice? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:52, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, there are links to them in your preferences just below the skin selection. For subpages, see Special:PrefixIndex/User:Klein Muçi. For adding portlet links, you can do this with Javascript, see :mediawikiwiki:ResourceLoader/Core_modules#addPortletLink. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:59, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@TheDJ, thank you! I didn't know about them being in the preferences. Any user script which makes them appear as links or icons in the top/sidebar? Asking more out of curiosity at this point. Not sure I'll use them that much as to further occupy that space. Maybe the same question can be asked for the portlet link now that I think of it.
As for the subpages, that was precisely what I didn't want to do. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi See my userpage, where I've transcluded {{Special:PrefixIndex/{{FULLPAGENAME}}/}} so I can have a list of subpages without having to manually search for them. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:20, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht, hah! Somehow it never crossed my mind that I could do that. Thank you! - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:09, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht, what am I doing wrong here? I tried all the available magic words related to the title. Or is it that it just doesn't work like that? - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:18, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi You need to either use {{NAMESPACE}}:{{ROOTPAGENAME}} or hard code Përdoruesi:Klein_Muçi. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:46, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht, thank you! Any way I can remove some pages from showing? Not really eh? - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:53, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi Other than deleting them, no. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:31, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
Another trick, if you want to control which of the subpages show, is Template:Page tabs. - Donald Albury 18:25, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
@Donald Albury, thank you! I had seen people having those kind of user pages but I didn't know such a template existed. - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:21, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Customised api call in script

Hi all, I recently tried forking User:Evad37/ToDoLister.js so that it creates a single global to-do list with interwiki backlinks, before I try working cross-wiki. (See User:CX Zoom/Testjs1.js) It calls the api of the destination page's server in order to achieve this. I had hoped that I'd launch it as a customisable script that would allow the user to choose the destination site, say, for example "commons.wikimedia.org" instead of default "meta.wikimedia.org". But I failed to enable that even after trying many combinations along the lines of api: mw.ForeignApi('https://' + config.site +'/w/api.php'. Any help that'd allow me enable such customisation would be appreciated. Thanks! ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 19:54, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if .postWithToken('edit', { should be .postWithToken('csrf', { or .postWithEditToken({. There might be other problems but that stuck out to me. Nardog (talk) 20:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)
Nardog's right. According to Special:ApiSandbox, there is no "edit" token. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:45, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
Changed it to csrf but the same issue persists, everything works great until I try to replace the site name with a custom variable. ---CX Zoom(he/him) (let's talk|contribs) 13:30, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom: If I'm getting you correctly, just let the users declare the site themselves using JS (window.ToDoListerSite = 'commons.wikimedia.org'; etc.) or give them a special syntax (say, #ToDoListerSite = 'commons.wikimedia.org') that puts an hidden element with id into the todo page (<span id="ToDoListerSite" style="display: none;">commons.wikimedia.org</span>) to type in when prompted for comment. The script can then retrieve it before initializing the rest. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:26, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Ottoman Empire flag

I can't figure out why the flags of the Ottoman Empire in the infobox at Crimean War no longer display, instead displaying a redlink of File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg. I cannot see anything in the Commonns log or local log that would have suddenly caused the problem, and Template:Country data Ottoman Empire hasn't been modified recently. The correct image appears to be at File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire (1844–1922).svg, although the hundredss of incoming links to File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg make me wonder if that's true or not. FDW777 (talk) 14:51, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

It was moved in September, 2020. File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg is a redirect on Commons to the current filename of File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire (1844–1922).svg. I have no idea why the redirect is just now broken, however. It worked fine for 2 years AFAICT. --Jayron32 14:57, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
An IP editor broke the redirect at Commons, with an edit that's just been reverted. Certes (talk) 14:59, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
(ec) It looks like the redirect was removed by an IP user a few hours ago, and restored a few minutes ago. Looks like some caches may have lagged for a bit, but I'm seeing the flag in the infobox now. Maybe certain high-use redirects on Commons should be protected? --rchard2scout (talk) 15:03, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

utm_* tags should be removed by bot from citations

....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 06:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
You may request someone make a bot task for this at WP:BOTREQ — xaosflux Talk 15:23, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
There was a bot or semi-automated task doing this, IDK where it went. Izno (talk) 17:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
PrimeBOT should be able to do this. Certes (talk) 17:31, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

ProQuest Archiver is HTTP 404

  • cited on 882 articles (e.g.: Mayor of Hollywood, formerly on Catherine Reitman)
  • https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/99662212.html?dids=99662212:99662212&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Apr+04%2C+1991&author=Pearl+Sheffy+Gefen&pub=Jerusalem+Post&desc=HOLLYWOODBUSTER&pqatl=google
  • Hanau, Shira (February 15, 2022). "Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters director, Auschwitz survivor son, dies at 75". The Jerusalem Post. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Archived from the original on February 14, 2022. Retrieved 6 April 2022.
....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 06:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
I would be very surprised if anything on PQA could not be found in one of Proquest's end-user (subscriber)-facing, and available, database products. 50.74.1.34 (talk) 20:09, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
Meaning, anything in PQA pertaining to citations in Wikipedia. There should likely be Proquest ids for all such info. 50.74.1.34 (talk) 20:12, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Let users easily filter tables?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T12013

Would it be possible to allow users to filter tables? I've seen some large tables and wished I could narrow what I'm seeing down. It looks like it's supported by the underlying software, assuming "BlueSpiceFoundation" is available.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FilterableTables

EternalStudent07 (talk) 02:53, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

See phab:T12013 for this request (it has been lingering around for almost 15 years though!). — xaosflux Talk 11:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I understand that there are some ways to fake this, but it's really difficult. If it's truly worth the pain, then @Astinson (WMF) knows more about this than I do. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

ParserFunction errors

The following templates recently started throwing up ParserFunction errors:

None of the templates has been recently edited, so I assume that this is being caused by something that's been done to an underlying template in their code. I am, however, terrible at tracking down such matters; can anyone see where the problem lies? Deor (talk) 17:05, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

@Deor: Found it: Some of the Ctime templates were recently deleted per this TfD. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 17:27, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
Pinging @Explicit: who deleted them. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 17:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
Further explanation: Since the templates are wrapped in conditional expressions, WhatLinksHere cannot track their transclusions. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 17:35, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
Now the ones I listed above are no longer throwing up error messages, but I can't see that the TfD'd templates have been restored, so I don't know what's going on. As far as I'm concerned, these could have been deleted as well, since there's only a single editor's user page that seems to use them. Deor (talk) 18:00, 7 April 2022 (UTC)
Well, time doesn't stop, I guess? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 18:12, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Syntaxhighlight inline with wikimarkup

I'm trying to use <syntaxhighlight> on some text, but also have wikimarkup parsed, and have it inline. So, I tried {{#tag:syntaxhighlight|text|inline|lang=js}} which produced 

text


The 'inline' attribute is ignored, however. Is there a way around this? ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:08, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Try {{#tag:syntaxhighlight|text|lang=js|inline=1}} which gives text. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 20:13, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Onlyinclude template being considered for deletion

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Steel1943 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Changed font

Around seven hours ago the font on the editing pane has changed; also it's too small, needing zooming to 140+%. I am long-sighted and cannot use this easily. Is this something I've done? This is in Firefox, but I've seen similar some time ago using Chrome. Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 02:06, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

@Rocknrollmancer - Yes, I've got the same issue. I'm 99& sure it's due to the latest Firefox update (did you have the screen telling you about Firefox pockets?). I can't see anything obvious to change it in settings on WP. Maybe someone at FF will spot it as a bug and fix for their next release... :( Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 07:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
@Rocknrollmancer Firefox 99 changed the default monospaced font from Courier to Consolas. You can change it in your settings under the advanced tab in fonts. Nthep (talk) 08:35, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
@Nthep I love you and I want to have your babies. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 12:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
Lugnuts, Nthep - yes I did the upgrade and saw the 'pockets' reminder. I had checked the font which was Times New Roman 18 point, but I'll have another play around. I also noticed a few weeks back that both FF and Chrome were no longer showing a pop-up warning for closure of multiple tabs. That I re-enabled (the tick box was blank) when checking the font, as yet haven't looked at Chrome. The cat likes to run across the room and bounce off the keyboard, sometimes closing whatever I was working on. ThanQ.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 14:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
Right - found it under advanced - was Consolas 13 point. Again, muchas.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 14:24, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
Yep, some of these options in FF can be buried away in the depths of their sub-menus! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 14:26, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. This worked for me too. Daniel Case (talk) 02:24, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Size of non-free image (album cover)

What is the max size of non-free image (album cover)? 300x300, 315x315 or more? Eurohunter (talk) 08:26, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

Per WP:IMAGERES, 316x316. Nardog (talk) 15:42, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
@Nardog: Thanks. Eurohunter (talk) 06:10, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Make talk page [ reply ] links disappear

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T249293

I don't find talk page [ reply ] links helpful. If I need to reply, I edit the section. Clicking on the reply link generates an unfamiliar interface I don't want to learn. I need to make them go away for another reason. If I am editing a talk page to remove lint errors, I want to make sure that, except when necessary, I don't change the page appearance. So I use two browser tabs, one with the talk page and one with the preview of the edited talk page. I scroll through the tabs in parallel, and switch between the tabs to make sure that the appearance is the same. The [ reply ] tags hurt in two ways. First, they appear at the end of lines in the talk page tab but not the edit preview tab, so as I toggle between tabs, I see differences I need to ignore. Second, if the line was already full, they create a new line in the edit preview tab, and everything below the [ reply ] link is misaligned with the edit preview tab. Please provide a way to not have [ reply ] links on talk pages.

Also, just as section [ edit ] links do not appear on talk page archives, [ reply ] links should also not appear on talk page archives, for the same reason: we do not want users editing talk page archives, except of course for technical reasons such as fixing lint errors. —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:39, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

@Anomalocaris Preference -> Editing -> Discussion pages and uncheck Enable quick replying. That will disable Discussion Tools. Nthep (talk) 20:42, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
As far as your second part, this is being worked on in phab:T249293. — xaosflux Talk 21:01, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Nthep, Xaosflux: Thanks! —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:53, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Also for protected pages - we don't want to have reply button in a page where we cannot edit. Thingofme (talk) 15:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)
@Anomalocaris, @Nthep, @Thingofme, @Xaosflux: I can see your use case, but I think the Reply button is fantastic. You basically get an edit window. But when looking for lint errors, yeah, that's different. 73.127.147.187 (talk) 10:35, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Declare H: as an alias for Help namespace

I think this one is long overdue. Instead of having some 675 redirects and zero articles in the mainspace which all start with H: (see PrefixIndex), I believe, it would be much better if H were an alias of Help, the way WP if for Wikipedia. This will allow to create Help shortcuts within the Help namespace, rather than the mainspace. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 12:42, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

See WP:PEREN#Create shortcut namespace aliases for various namespaces. Anomie⚔ 13:12, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Ah, should've seen that before. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 13:19, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-15

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

  • There is a new public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
  • On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [20][21]

Changes later this week

  •   The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).

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

19:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

April 10

Hello! Wikipedia says that it is April 10, but my computer says it is April 9. What time zone is Wikipedia on? Thanks! Helloheart (talk) 03:43, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

It's on UTC. Graham87 06:08, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
@Helloheart See the "Time Offset" section at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:02, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

London Wall

London Wall :

what is this? .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 20:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

It's from the Wikidata:SPARQL query service, probably via the bottom icon in the left sidebar at Wikidata Query Service. Certes (talk) 20:54, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
@0mtwb9gd5wx that external ask you to report bugs to: meta:User_talk:Lustiger_seth, it is not part of the English Wikipedia. — xaosflux Talk 22:00, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
I don't know the tool at https://url-converter.toolforge.org but it says: "supported redirect types: google, achive.today" (achive.today must be a typo for archive.today). Do you have evidence it's supposed to support https://w.wiki? It doesn't appear to be a general tool for redirects. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:27, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Convert a special page name to a language-specific page name

Hi, is there a Mediawiki function to convert a special page name to a language-specific page name in javascript? For instance, I want to get 'Special:用户贡献' from 'Special:Contributions' on zhwiki. Any help would be appreciated.--153.144.223.221 (talk) 17:54, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Why do you want to do that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): Because I want to collect all <a> tags with those specific texts on the DOM and change their CSS using jQuery.—153.144.223.221 (talk) 18:25, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
I mean, that would help the coding of global.js.—153.144.223.221 (talk) 18:27, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
You can make an API call with action=query, titles=Special:Contributions, and formatversion=2, and the language-specific name will be returned in query.normalized[0].from and query.pages[0].title. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:15, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Here is an example:
var canonical_title = 'Special:Contributions'
var result = JSON.parse($.ajax({
	url: mw.util.wikiScript('api'),
	async:false,
	data: { action: 'query', format: 'json', titles: canonical_title, formatversion: '2' }
}).responseText)
var normalized_title = result.query.pages[0].title
--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:21, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht: Thank you! It can just be achieved by an API query eh. I was actually aware that page titles in the URL are automatically translated into the local language so I was wondering what part of the API was doing this, but this seems like it! For a faster code, it might be a good idea for WMF developers to add a mw.config function or something for this, though.—153.144.223.221 (talk) 03:17, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
mw.config functions are generally static, so the amount of information they can provide about pages other than the one you are currently on is very limited. They do work the other direction -- when you're on Special:用户贡献 you can call mw.config.get('wgCanonicalSpecialPageName') and it will return 'Contributions'. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 04:31, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Create a new <nodarkmode> tag?

Is it possible to create and store a new <nodarkmode> tag in sitewide css page, such that anything within this tag should get ignored by the dark mode gadget when used. Basically, I created User:CX Zoom/Pale Blue Dot and Dark mode gadget blackens the white text, and the text becomes unreadable. I'd be glad if I had a tag that asks the gadget to ignore the text. I don't know the technical details of it, but a module-based template that can achieve the same task would also work for me. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 08:05, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

Apply mw-no-invert class on the div element. – SD0001 (talk) 09:14, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, it did exactly what I wanted. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 13:09, 9 April 2022 (UTC)
Out of curiousity, why doesn't this page fall under WP:U5? @CX Zoom casualdejekyll 19:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
It's probably of sufficient length to qualify for WP:G12.... CX Zoom, you should probably remove it. Izno (talk) 19:19, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
I wished to replace the top of my current contents of userpage with it, as it happens to be one of my favorites. I'm not sure about G12 tho, it's copied right from the article Pale Blue Dot and is one of the good articles. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 19:28, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
CX Zoom, just because an article is a GA doesn't mean that everything in it is policy compliant. In particular, the article passed GA looking like this, which is a significantly smaller quotation. Please remove the text from your user space. Izno (talk) 00:30, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
Sure. Thanks for notifying me. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 05:53, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

External links and https

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T14810

By default, Special:LinkSearch searches only http:. Checking https: requires a second search. Although that's clear after reading the documentation, the casual user might go away without finding an https: link. Now that https: is the norm, would it make sense to ask for it to be included by default, along with http:? Certes (talk) 10:06, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@Certes: see phab:T14810 from at least 2008. This would need to be worked on upstream. — xaosflux Talk 10:19, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Vector 2022

I actually like this new style, but I'm just wondering there's a way to give it a fluid width. It seems to have a fixed width, so when viewing episode tables, for example, everything is more squished compared to the legacy Vector style. Amaury • 22:49, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

@Amaury: here is a quick-and-dirty hack you could try, it is safe, but it may cause odd display issues (don't come blaming me if it does). You can put this in your Special:MyPage/vector-2022.css file. :
/*Override max-widths */
.mw-page-container {
	max-width: unset !important;
}

.mw-workspace-container {
	max-width: inherit !important;
}

.mw-content-container, .mw-article-toolbar-container {
	max-width: inherit !important;
	padding-left: 11em !important;
}
Someone who has spent more time with that annoyance may come by here and give a better set of rules. — xaosflux Talk 00:47, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
I've got some slighly different CSS rules, mainly to make it fill out the width:
.mw-workspace-container {
	max-width: 100%;
}
.mw-article-toolbar-container,.mw-content-container {
	max-width: calc(100% - 11em); /* 11em is the width of #mw-panel */
	margin-right: 0;
}
.mw-footer-container {
	padding-top: 0;
	padding-bottom: 0;
}
I put those in back in October, when I first turned on New Vector. They still work fine for me, but no guarantees of course. --rchard2scout (talk) 09:22, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Rchard2scout noticed you didn't touch .mw-page-container , are you keeping that one narrower? — xaosflux Talk 10:05, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
I was keeping it narrower (but I don't remember if I did that on purpose). I just added .mw-page-container,.vector-sticky-header to the .mw-workspace-container line. I'm a bit worried about line lengths now on my 24" monitor, but I'll try it out for a few days. rchard2scout (talk) 11:26, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
I'm surprised no one turned this into a gadget yet... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:52, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@TheDJ we probably will, if we can get anyone to agree on which widths are best :) — xaosflux Talk 10:04, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

the transfer of images from the Persian wiki to Wikipedia: Wikimedia Commons

There are several articles with a link to an original version with the image on wiki-farsi that are missing the image in the English version. These images are often easy to recognize for Iranians and they are published so often that most people take it for granted to reuse them. In other words, for many these are images that are allowed to be used in a wiki article by common sense. Yet in practice, not many people master the details of the order. When I asked for help from some veterans of the Persian wiki, it turned out that there are more than me who are struggling with the same problem. Is it possible to find a simpler solution to this; and possibly transfer multiple images in one run using someone who already masters the rules and practicality of the mechanism? Thank you for your attention Arbabi second (talk) 15:02, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@اربابی دوم: I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. You are saying that fawiki have some articles with images that their English versions don't; those images are considered to be freely licensed by most Iranians and you want to transfer them to Commons en masse? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 15:53, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh:Yes, that is what I mean and I think many Iranians agree with me. These images are sometimes used under the fair use rule, for example Mahmoud Etemadzadeh (File: Behazin.jpg) can not be transferred directly. There are many such cases. If you upload the image on English-wlki, you get notice and some instructions that so far it has not been possible for me to fully understand, to the extent that I can make use of it.That English is not a language I master does not make things easier! Arbabi second (talk) 16:21, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@اربابی دوم: Here's a short answer: If the images are fair used, then they cannot be imported to Commons. See c:COM:FU. The fact that many people agree with you is simply not enough to override copyright rules. Wikipedia, and Wikimedia in a whole, is meant to be sharing free knowledge and resources, not piracy. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 16:40, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: I received your response, and I agree with you and the wiki strategy. It does not help much but thanks for that anyway. Arbabi second (talk) 16:54, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

How to implement a unanimously approved proposal on naming convention of Indian constituency

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indian politics/Archive 4#Proposal : Wikipedia:Naming conventions Indian constituencies was proposed 3 weeks ago after discussion over a few months. The proposal was duly notified on WP:INDIA and state WP pages along with WP:Naming conventions and other relevant wikiprojects. There is a unanimous support for the proposal. The implementation involves rename of a few hundred pages (Some of them would need to be moved over a redirect). How to get it done? Venkat TL (talk) 11:36, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

@Venkat TL: *If* there is unanimous consensus, you can use WP:RMTR, with appropriate reasoning. Someone with proper rights, willing to move the pages would do it. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 13:59, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Venkat TLFor the pages you can move yourself, move them. Some moves over redirects can be done by any user (depending on the edit history of the redirect), but for the ones that can't, submit them to WP:RM/TR. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:00, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht @CX Zoom Thank you. I was looking for some batch script or tool. Just found that Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User_manual#Start has option to move, but needs admin rights. Looks like WP:RM/TR would be the right place to find such an admin, willing to do it. --Venkat TL (talk) 14:47, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@Venkat TL: I use User:Ahecht/Scripts/massmove, by Ahecht themself, when in need. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 14:58, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
Although that would still need a request at WP:RM/TR since the script is limited to admins and page movers. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:43, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

Turkmen Wikipedia

Hello, I did uploaded the template Infobox person to Turkmen Wikipedia (tk:Şablon:Şahsyýet, tk:Şablon:Şahsyýet/Wikidata). But there is a problem and I can not understand it, can someone help me to fix it? --TayfunEt. (talk) 09:44, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

@TayfunEt.: Well, we can't really help you if you don't specify what problem it is. From what I can see, you removed the function name for some reason; may be that's the cause? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:58, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: I removed because there saying The function does not exist, but I put back now. The template tk:Şablon:Şahsyýet, when I try to use it, there is saying the Module:ListOfProfessions not found, but I did put the tk:Module:ListOfProfessions to the Turkmen Wikipedia. TayfunEt. (talk) 12:39, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

@TayfunEt.: The ucfirst is supposed to be defined in tk:Module:String2. Please see its counterpart here on English Wikipedia and update the module accordingly. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:09, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Importing templates is complicated, but if you're going to do it, I suggest that all smaller Wikipedias consider looking at the Spanish and Russian-language infoboxes. They are more integrated with Wikidata, and very few smaller Wikipedias have enough people to do frequent updates on city populations or other basic information. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Look at w:es:Jimmy Wales and w:ru:Jimmy Wales for an idea of how Wikidata can reduce the amount of work needed in each individual article. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
For Şablon:Şahsyýet/Wikidata there are a few more templates missing: if then show, infobox person/height, infobox person/weight, editonwikidata. Snævar (talk) 20:24, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Possible Thursday weirdness

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T305333

On a number of different browsers I'm experiencing difficulty aiming the mouse cursor when editing pages. It seems to be made worse by the length of the page being edited, and/or by increasing the zoom level in the browsers. Anybody else having this issue? Abductive (reasoning) 21:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Yup, I'm having this issue too. It seems like when I click, the cursor is placed several lines higher. As soon as I type something (I've started to just do space, backspace), it's not a problem anymore for that editing session. rchard2scout (talk) 13:48, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I've been seeing this for quite a while using MonoBook on a Chromebook. In particularly long edit windows the visible cursor may be several lines above the actual edit point. - Donald Albury 15:46, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Maybe what I am seeing is different. The horizontal cursor position is always correct. The further down I am in long chunks of text, the higher the cursor sits relative to the edit point. If I am editing far down in a block of text, the cursor may be three or four lines above the actual edit point, but as long as I allow for that, editing proceeds normally. - Donald Albury 16:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
It just started a day or two ago for me. The edit window doesn't seem to interpret the location of the mouse-click properly. I have to use arrow keys to get the cursor positioned properly. It's also occurring when I try to click-drag to select text; on the first click (like at the start of a ref), it immediately highlights several lines of text above the click. It's happening frequently, but not consistently. Schazjmd (talk) 15:57, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
I've been experiencing this, too. (Courtesy ping @ElijahPepe) {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:47, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
Just had it—scrolling the edit window to the bottom with the mouse wheel was what made it go away this time—but I've encountered it sporadically for around a year now on Commons. —wqnvlz (talk · contribs);  11:05, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
Do you have the colorful syntax highlighter turned on? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
This has been reported by a number of editors at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Chrome_editing_problems. The suggestion was to report it here.--Gronk Oz (talk) 14:11, 8 April 2022 (UTC)
I just started experiencing this too, a few days ago. It is very annoying. --Srleffler (talk) 18:04, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
@Srleffler, is your editing window showing wikitext in plain black-and-white text, or is it giving you colors to show the syntax? This appears to be caused by syntax highlighting, which you can turn off if you need to (look for a 'highlighter marker' near the bold/italic/ref/etc. items in the toolbar.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
Am also experiencing this problem, can confirm that I have syntax highlighting on. — Mcguy15 (talk, contribs) 01:14, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
I've also been having this problem and have syntax turned on. Curbon7 (talk) 01:21, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
With highlighting on in Safari, just jumping in because I see people said specifically Chrome. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 01:03, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Question about user scripts

So, I am going to install AutoEd, but I need to know first since I usually edit on Safari mobile: do user scripts work on the mobile web version of Wikipedia, or at least AutoEd? And another question, how do you bypass your cache on mobile? Ididntknowausername(talk • contribs) 23:12, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

@Ididntknowausername:, how to bypass your cache depends on your browser. I have used a few different mobile browsers over time, and currently ise safari, for which there is no easy way t do it quickly. As for only loading on desktop, you can set scripts to run in certain skins using Special:MyPage/skin.js. To load a scrip on all Skins, you use Special:MyPage/common.js. Happy Editing--IAmChaos 01:09, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Random numbers in Module

Hello there, I am trying to create Module to generate random text when a page loads. I ran into a problem, the random numbers that generate the text don't change, so the text is the same each time. Is there any way to generate random numbers when the page loads? Your admirer AngryBiceps 09:19, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

@AngryBiceps: See a working example here (on viwiki). Declare another table using the shuffle function, then assign shuffled[n] to outputn. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:04, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh it worked!!! Much thanks :) AngryBiceps (talk) 10:13, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Can you echo yourself using JS/API?

mw:Notifications/Developer guide doesn't mention it. Is it even possible? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php tells about "echomarkread", "echomarkseen" and "echomute" but nothing about how to echo yourself. I'm starting to think it can't be done, am I right? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 17:01, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

The only workaround I can think of is the thank function, but you'd need to do it from an alt account. Certes (talk) 17:54, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
Certes, yeah, that's not going to work. Welp. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 19:01, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
Not to my knowledge. Would be convenient. See also T58362, which I believe may be blocked on the Echo refactor (merge into core), but don't quote me on that. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:37, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Janie Fricke

Can someone help me with the {{infobox person}} on Janie Fricke? For some reason, the {{infobox musical artist}} content isn't displaying inside of it and I can't figure out for the life of me what's going on. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:32, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

  Fixed The problem was that the {{ubl}} listing her marriages was never properly closed and swallowed the rest of the infobox. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:35, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion category counts

Hey, Village Pump Technical folks,

I wish I knew of a better place to request this. But the CSD category counts are off again, at least on 7 or 8 of the categories that indicate that they contain pages but that are actually empty. I'm not sure what to do when this happens, is there a "clear" or "reset" code you can run that would make them accurate again? This has been going on for weeks but now it's happening to more than one category so that has prompted this request for help. Thanks for any tech help you can supply! Liz Read! Talk! 05:10, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

As of mid-February, purging them is supposed to force a recount. That hasn't fixed any of Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as blatant NOTWEBHOST violations, Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations, or Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as vandalism (as displayed on {{CSD-categories}}) for me. —Cryptic 06:19, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
All three of those had rows in categorylinks without corresponding rows in page (quarry:query/63804). I was able to figure out which page was the problem for CAT:U5 from cl_sortkey_prefix, and restoring and redeleting User:Dronar (Composer)/sandbox fixed it. For the others, well, the only way I know how to get a page title of a deleted page from its old page_id is slow. Working on it. —Cryptic 06:46, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
It worked for the first three pages I tried. No luck with Draft:The economic state of the PIGS after the financial crisis, previously known as page_id 70437379 - unlike the other three, restoring it gave it a new id. No idea why. I'm not going to try for the seven in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as spam, lest I break things further. —Cryptic 07:10, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Keeping maintainance categories up to date is possible, but the issue is that the developers have thought the issue is about every single category on the wiki. You would have to be an Wikipedian to read between the lines to see that is not the expectation. There is (obviously) more effort to keep every single category updated with an small delay compared to only the maintainance ones. I clarified this in phab:T221795.--Snævar (talk) 07:41, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Category:Pages which use score

This seems to be an automated maintenance category about the score extension, which should be bluelinked and turned into a hidden category? Or the software should be changed to give it a better name? Posting here because I lack the technical background knowledge to write a proper category description page. —Kusma (talk) 15:47, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Created a basic desc page. – SD0001 (talk) 16:32, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Preventing wrapping with references

From the short discussion here. It seems references can wrap in a somewhat unsightly way at line breaks. (Try resizing the window on User:Ovinus/sandbox, and I can provide screenshots if that would be helpful.) I'm on macOS and it occurs in Firefox, but not in Chrome. Is there any way to prevent this without {{nowrap}} and the like? Ovinus (talk) 01:43, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

@Ovinus: No, and see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Footnotes and line wrapping issue. {{nowrap}} should not be used for this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:22, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Can we control images shown by Wikipedia app when searching?

I found an iOS Wikipedia app to test a report at Talk:Anal sex#Safe search options. Sure enough, a good way to find Anaesthesia is to type "ana" in the Search Wikipedia box. Doing that shows a list of matches and the second item is Anal sex, helpfully illustrated with the lead image. That is, typing "ana" causes the app to show File:Wiki-analsex.png. Is there a way to mark an image as not suitable for display during a search? Has this been discussed before? I found August 2015. Johnuniq (talk) 01:45, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

It boggles the mind that MediaWiki:Bad image list isn't supported here. —Cryptic 02:05, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Johnuniq, this only work on Minerva I think? The majority of thumbnails seems to be useless anyway due to high compression. Another example WMF developers implementing stuff without giving it second thought. (sadly I've seen this way too often) Do you think "Search ignores MediaWiki:Bad image list, showing NSFW to children looking for Anaheim, California" is a catchy name for a Phabricator task? I thought it was. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 11:45, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! The original report concerned the Wikipedia App but seeing it on a desktop with the Minerva skin is even more impressive. Johnuniq (talk) 23:17, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Load variable in global.js

Hi, I've come across a strange behavioral difference between common.js on the local wiki and global.js on meta. Let's say I have in my common.js on enwp the following code: 

mw.loader.load('http://127.0.0.1:5500/wikipediatest.js'); // Web server 
var testConfig = 'a';

Then, if the script on the web server has the following code 

console.log(typeof testConfig === 'undefined');

it returns false. This means the variable is loaded from common.js.

But, if the code is in global.js on meta, it returns true. Any idea why this happens and how to successfully load variables from global.js, just like from the local common.js? Any help would be appreciated.--Dragoniez (talk) 19:34, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

@Dragoniez: You had the variable declared in both your common and global.js at the same time, not? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 20:13, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
It appears it's because global.js is run in its own scope while common.js is run in the global scope. Try window.testConfig instead. Nardog (talk) 22:40, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your comments, both of you two. @Nardog: that was it! I was completely stuck, so you saved me a lot of my time. Much obliged. @NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: I also appreciate your help. Now my script works, and I know you're a global rollbacker, so you might want to check out my new script for rollback (m:User:Dragoniez/Selective Rollback). --Dragoniez (talk) 03:07, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
@Dragoniez: I haven't try it yet, but I'm pretty sure that isInGlobalGroup('Global_rollback') will always return false since the group, among others, was renamed in 2014. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 03:16, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Also, why isInArray()? The built-in method Array.prototype.includes exists for that purpose. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 03:21, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: I actually didn't (and in fact couldn't) test that because I don't have the flag but "Global_rollback" seems to be working in m:User:Hoo man/smart rollback.js. I'd have to wait for a feedback from someone. As for Array.prototype.includes, it's just for the sake of browser compatibility (because the method is a ES7 feature). I could also just use $.inArray, but I don't think this is something that must be criticized. --Dragoniez (talk) 03:30, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

@Dragoniez: That script was mostly written in 2010–2013 and has become outdated. It is still useful, but I'd suggest a complete rewrite. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 04:05, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Issues with efn template and external links

Hello,

I am having an issue with the efn template. The following code renders text:

{{efn|Also on the [https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/sanomalehti/binding/573741 30 April 1892 program] were, among others, compositions by [[Armas Järnefelt]] (''Lyrical Overture'', 1892), [[Robert Kajanus]] (''Finnish Rhapsody No. 1'', 1881), [[Fredrick Pacius]] (''[[Maamme|Vårt land]]'', 1848), and [[Martin Wegelius]] (''Daniel Hjort Overture'', 1872).}}

The following code, which is preferred because it would take the reader to the proper page of the PDF, does not render text (difference is highlighted):

{{efn|Also on the [https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/sanomalehti/binding/573741?term=Sibelius&term=Kullervo&page=2 30 April 1892 program] were, among others, compositions by [[Armas Järnefelt]] (''Lyrical Overture'', 1892), [[Robert Kajanus]] (''Finnish Rhapsody No. 1'', 1881), [[Fredrick Pacius]] (''[[Maamme|Vårt land]]'', 1848), and [[Martin Wegelius]] (''Daniel Hjort Overture'', 1872).}}

Any ideas on what I am doing incorrectly? Thanks, ~ Silence of Järvenpää (talk) 18:56, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

The one that doesn't render has an = sign which makes everything ahead of it a parameter name. Try
{{efn|1=Also on the [https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/sanomalehti/binding/573741?term=Sibelius&term=Kullervo&page=2 30 April 1892 program] were, among others, compositions by [[Armas Järnefelt]] (''Lyrical Overture'', 1892), [[Robert Kajanus]] (''Finnish Rhapsody No. 1'', 1881), [[Fredrick Pacius]] (''[[Maamme|Vårt land]]'', 1848), and [[Martin Wegelius]] (''Daniel Hjort Overture'', 1872).}}
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:05, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
@Silence of Järvenpää: Since the url contains =, you need to give the first parameter a name, like this: {{efn|1=etc.}}. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 19:10, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Trappist the monk, NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh ... that solution works. Thanks! ~ Silence of Järvenpää (talk) 19:16, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Recent software upgrade

  Resolved

In regard to this recent software upgrade, I've opened an inquiry at mw:Talk:MediaWiki 1.39/wmf.7#Template stopped working on enwiki, because at least one template has stopped working: {{If mobile}} no longer renders text in mobile view. This should be fixed and I have no idea how. Makes me wonder what else has been broken? P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 02:46, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

This week's deployment made a change to how we remove some things from content HTML on mobile. Specifically, as it affected this template, we now only outright-remove things with the nomobile class in content namespaces. If_mobile/styles.css used a selector to control the visibility of the mobile-only text that relied on that complete-removal (it basically said "if I'm the second element here, hide me"). I went in and edited the template's CSS so that it does something less fragile, though because of TemplateStyles' restrictions it's not going to be 100% equivalent as there's no perfect proxy available for "the MobileFrontend transforms ran". DLynch (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
The {{If mobile}} template has begun to work again, so I will mark this "resolved". P.I. Ellsworth - ed. put'r there 06:27, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

A toolforge tool doesn't open for me

Hi all, I have some serious issues trying to open [wikinav.toolforge.org]. It simply shows me a blank white screen with nothing to look at. It's been happening ever since I first came across this site about 3–4 weeks ago. So far, this is the only toolforge site that acts as such. As several editors have pointed out to clickstream data from this site during the course of RMs, I think it'll be very helpful to me to have access to it. Any help to get it opened would be appreciated. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 11:16, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

I get the screen but "An error occurred while fetching data for the current title. Try another one.". Trying another one doesn't help. Shame, it's been a very useful tool for me too. Certes (talk) 12:06, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Just turn off your adblocker for toolforge.org domain. – SD0001 (talk) 16:11, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks but that didn't seem to help, and nor does using wget to avoid browsers completely. Certes (talk) 16:40, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
I never keep ad blocker on. Also, other toolforge tools seem to be working for me. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 17:05, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
It works on most pages for me. I'm having problems with https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Nazir_Ali but this may because the page was moved during the month currently reported (March 2022). https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Nazir_Afzal and https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Mercury work correctly for me, so I'm representing the space properly and it's not a problem specific to dabs. (Turning on my adblocker can break either of those, depending how I configure it.) Certes (talk) 17:17, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
My issues are with the whole tool. All of the above-mentioned links (and each one I come across in RM discussions) are just a white sheet of paper for me. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 17:20, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Open your browser console (see Wikipedia:JSERROR #6) and share a screenshot (on imgbb.com or somewhere else). This would help identify if there's any extension that's blocking HTTP requests, or if there is any JS code your browser is unable to parse. – SD0001 (talk) 05:58, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
Why not share the screenshot here? See third bullet on this page's editnotice, and WP:WPSHOT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:53, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
What is your browser and operating system? Izno (talk) 21:31, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks all. Apparently this was an Android-only issue (bulk of my activity is on Android). It works just as described by Certes above on dad's Windows PC that I had access to on weekends. Still, this one tool remains the only toolforge tool that doesn't work out on Android. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 08:37, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
@CX Zoom it took a little browsing to find, but it looks like you can report issues with that tool here. — xaosflux Talk 10:17, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
Thank you very much Xaosflux. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 19:48, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Match Infobox parameter

I want to do something like 

{{#invoke:string|match|s={{:David Brearley}}|pattern={{!}} *successor *= *([^%n]*)}}

but that gives String Module Error: Match not found ({{#invoke:string|match}} seems to substitute all templates recursively). ― Qwerfjkltalk 21:08, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

When a module meets some transcluded content inside itself, that content is expanded first and then the module finishes running. I would suspect your error is looking for {{!}} instead of its character representation. Izno (talk) 21:33, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
{{#invoke:string|match|s={{:David Brearley}}|pattern=successor *= *([^%n]*)}} also throws an error. Qwerfjkl's right: All templates are expanded recursively before matching. See ExpandTemplates result for {{#invoke:string|match|s={{:David Brearley}}|pattern=<table class="[%w ]+"}}. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 21:40, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: substituting it, however, works, which is fine for my purposes. Qwerfjkltalk 21:52, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl: Not really. It gives [[Robert Morris (judge)|Robert Morris]]\n| pro. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 21:57, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
I suspect that's due to a flaw in my Lua pattern, rather than the principle. Qwerfjkltalk 22:02, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, %n isn't a special sequence in Lua (yet) and just matches the letter n in "pronunciation". \n would match a newline. Certes (talk) 22:18, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
Also, %n in Lua means the nth match, and you have no previous matches isn't special and just matches "n", but (for the reasons Izno just stated) it doesn't work with \n either. An alternative way to do this is with {{Template parameter value|David Brearley|Infobox officeholder|1|successor}} = Robert Morris. Certes (talk) 21:41, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia enhanced

Hello!

Yesterday we had a meeting with high school students in Albania discussing about Wikipedia in general, its usage by them, and its pros and cons. There were different interesting remarks that were made by the students which gave their opinions on SqWiki and EnWiki but there were 2 proposals which interested me personally from a technical point of view.

A lot of students said that they struggled a lot identifying the needed information on Wikipedia. The overall idea is that they had different questions and they wanted answers and their sources fast, not to learn about the topic as a whole. Quite some times Encyclopaedia Britannica was brought as an example for text formatting with their 2-min summaries and the top questions some articles had. They referenced WW1 as a historical article often (they generally said that they used Wikipedia mostly for its history articles) so I believe what they had in mind was this: WW1 - Britannica. In it you can notice all the aforementioned elements, the fast questions/fast answers part, the possibility for short summaries and even articles only loading the next section once you've scrolled down enough. If you compare it with our WW1 article here you'll start to see what they're talking about when you see the length of its sections (or the total number of its sections). Some of them did say that the way Wikipedia was organized wasn't disorienting because the table of contents and its sections were enough to not get lost in text but many said that they basically wanted sublimed information according to their needs.

As mentioned, there were 2 proposed solutions for this by the students themselves:

  1. Create a technical way that can highlight text according to what you search for. Technically speaking we're talking about an enhanced version of the find tool most browsers have. Its function would be to find where the part of information you're looking for is located in the text by what keyword you provided on it and autofocus on that paragraph or couple of paragraphs highlighted in yellow.
  2. Create different versions of Wikipedia according to the users needs/preferences, the same as we do with different languages. In this scenario we would have different versions for the cat article. One would be, let's say, for children in primary schools, one for students in high school and one for students studying zoology. Even more versions can be implemented.

What are everyone's thoughts on these 2 proposals? How feasible would be to implement any of those or variations of them in practice? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:33, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

1. In the code editor you can highlight a word and it highlights all other times that word shows up.
2. An kid version has been rejected several times on meta, for example meta:Wikipedia Kids. There is an non-WMF kids article website at vikidia.org. An NSFW (Not safe for work) filter would be more feasible, and there is some filtering in place on this wiki for that purpose.--Snævar (talk) 13:03, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
@Snævar, thank you for your insight! In regard to the first proposal, the idea was for the tool to be intelligent enough as to understand the meaning of the provided word and autofocus on the part of the text that gives the best answer in aspect to that, a part which should be well outlined where it starts and where it ends. This mechanism is already being applied by Google in its queries, mostly with Wikipedia and YouTube. If you search for something, you don't only get a link where the key word you provided is located. You also get a passage from Wikipedia highlighted in bold which Google thinks is the most suitable part of information of what you're looking for according to the keyword provided. The same happens with videos where Google offers a timed YouTube video with a well-defined start and end period in which it thinks what you're looking for is located. They would just like to have these tools inside Wikipedia to query information from within it, without having to utilize Google or other search platforms for those. Google also offers the ability to "answer" directly asked questions to it, something Britannica also provided in a sort of way. Again, something they would like to be implemented here. So, better said, they would like to make querying information from within Wikipedia better with ways such as those mentioned above.
As for the "kid version", thank you for the link as I hadn't seen it before. Also I didn't know about the NSFW filtering so I'd be happy to know more about it if you can provide more information. How does it work exactly? What are you referring to? The main idea in this aspect can be thought in 2 ways I believe:
  1. Judging by the arguments provided in your meta link, if we are to roll only with 2 versions, language and simple language (English and simple English), then, if we want to scale that globally we would need to also make way for simple Albanian, simple Greek, simple Chinese, etc.
  2. More elegant but way harder to implement: Create a tool that can pre-format existing articles in different modes according to one's needs. No new wiki needs to be created, you just choose what version want to have your article provided to you. With my limited technical knowledge I believe such a system could be created by setting up a lot of hooks/anchors/tags in articles according to the different versions we want to implement similar as to how multi-language projects such as Mediawiki and Commons apply translation tags to their pages. There, of course, may be more elegant ways to approach this. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:13, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    Writing for different levels of experience/language comprehension is more than a language pass over individual sentences; completely different article structures may be appropriate, and different breakdowns of topics into different sets of articles. For this and scalability reasons, I think separating the source for each version is a better approach, including giving each version its own edit history. Thus at present I think separate wikis would be preferable. isaacl (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    I was actually picturing my scenario with hooks/anchors/tags to be what you actually describe as completely different article structures may be appropriate, and different breakdowns of topics into different sets of articles. It would be hard to acquire 3 or more different "working staffs" for 1 language (or get 3 different wikis out of the incubator) while on the other hand, it seems easier in my eyes to have 1 staff write the same thing in 3 or more different way.
    But maybe my hooks/anchors/tags scenario can't actually provide what I say it can so maybe the multiple-wikis approach is better. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:36, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    For example, if article A-grade 3 has one set of headings, and article A-grade 8 has a completely different set of headings, then I think the two articles would essentially have to be in separate parts within the same source file. (There might be some re-use of citations.) Topic X might have a more rich breakdown into articles X1, X2, and X3 at a grade 8 level, but be rolled up as a section of article W at a grade 3 level. Putting everything into one source file imposes a tax on everyone to maintain all language versions, whether or not they are interested in contributing towards this goal. The combined edits across variants would make diffs harder to read, and would make it harder to remove and re-apply changes for a specific variant. I can't envision how to make this work in practice in a scalable manner. isaacl (talk) 20:23, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    Okay but practically speaking how much luck would someone have in persuading the global community in creating a dozens of versions of Wikipedia in each language all of a sudden? So far we haven't had even a simple-another-language beside simple-en, let alone have multiple versions of each language. If we are to make this idea be just "create new wikis from scratch" I don't believe it will go far ahead, especially after considering how many times the wikikids ideas have been rejected. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:49, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Klein Muçi: Actually, Basque Wikipedia do have a special namespace where articles are simplified for kids to read: eu:Txikipedia:Azala. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 02:52, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    It's similar to when someone says "I want to start a WikiProject to do X": the first question is "do you have a community of editors who want to do X?" So first we should look for editors interested in creating a Wikipedia variant for a specific audience. Once a community is identified, ways to facilitate the work can be planned (which might not necessarily be hosted by Wikimedia; if there is a community of interested Wikipedians, though, it should be easier to get a Wikimedia project approved). But I don't think it would be effective to have articles that are a union of all variants for different reading levels and different audiences (of which there are infinite combinations: zoology students, sociology students, historians, artists, legislative staff who are trying to write laws and so need broad understanding of many areas, etc.) into one source file. Separate files with separate edit histories for each is more manageable. isaacl (talk) 04:15, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Isaacl, you're right on that. This was discussed together with concepts such as m:Education so maybe it would be better if I further discussed it in its corresponding talk page. This would also help with the "find a community part". - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:39, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    @NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh, interesting concept. I hadn't thought of utilizing namespaces up until this point. But if you want to have different namespaces for different kinds of publics, not only for kids, the more you create, the more it starts looking like you're building either portals or wikiprojects. - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:48, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
  • Not sure if this is "technical" (yet) - but perhaps some sort of "reference desk" integration would help with part of this? — xaosflux Talk 14:48, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux, the reference desk was what I was thinking about as well when they were entertaining the questions and answers idea. That of course would help, the more subtle it was, the better. Something similar to how the mentorship system works: You press the ? symbol on a page and get a writing square where you can write your question and then hopefully you get the answer soon without having time to realize that you're asking real humans. Maybe you can also get pre-written answers automatically if the said question was already asked and answered before. Eventually a lot of answers would be provided automatically and that space could also have a an auto-updating FAQ section in regard to that.
    I emphasize the subtleness part because people usually want to be discreet when asking questions.
    Unfortunately, all I described above wouldn't work at all in small wikis like SqWiki which can't sustain a reference desk considering their very limited human resources but having such a system implemented on EnWiki could be a good starting point. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:25, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
  • The first proposal sounds like Google's featured snippets feature (which I see you mentioned in a followup reply). Are you suggesting that Wikipedia's in-house search capability be enhanced to be able to understand posed questions and figure out snippets to highlight? Given that this is a tricky problem that big companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have invested considerable resources on solving, it might not be the most effective area for Wikipedia to focus on. The second proposal needs interested communities to support each separate version, just like the different language versions. isaacl (talk) 15:37, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Isaacl, apparently, yes. Thank you for the link! I didn't remember its name and I didn't know about the yellow highlight it provided on-page once you followed that snippet. I usually get all my information from the snippet provided on Google and I have rarely followed through. That's where the students I mentioned must have gotten the idea also. Having such a function would basically cut down the work for the reference desk in here and make it possible for use even on small wikis.
    As for the second part, is that all it is needed though? Would I be able to just go to the incubator right now and start a new project (following its guidelines) that could potentially grow to be "Wikipedia high school"? (Of course not with that name. :P ) Do you think it could be more feasible if we had an extension written for that that utilizes tags to auto-format article to the user-chosen version? - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    Unless Wikipedia can do in-house semantic search better than what external search engines do, I don't see a strong motivation to do it, and I don't even think it can get close with the disparity in resources invested.
    As I responded to another one of your comments, I think separate wikis are best. isaacl (talk) 16:02, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Isaacl, there are again 2 implementation plans here I can think of:
    1. Make Wikipedia behave the same as Google. Ideally speaking, you search in the search box, you get shown the snippet of information you want to read about or better yet you are sent directly to it, with the snippet part autofocused and highlighted. (Same thought can be extended for multimedia smart querying because there can be miracles when you believe... ♪♫♪♫)
    2. A minor version of the one above. The snippet function only works after you have already chosen an article. You have a built-in search function within its article which works the same as above, autofocusing and highlighting text according to your query.
    This of course depends on if Wikipedia can actually provide that functionality, as you said. Any idea who can provide further insight from a tech-viewpoint of the current search function?
    Sorry for that. I hadn't seen that comment. Will reply there. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    The key question is why not just use external search engines, which have already done (and continue to do) extensive research and AI model training for turning your query into target pages and snippets within them? This is not a trivial problem, and the search engines collect much more data that they can use to refine their models. (No apologies necessary; I was just cross-referencing my response to avoid duplication.) isaacl (talk) 20:11, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Isaacl, I guess it depends on the specific workflow. From what it was said to me I believe they searched for WW1 on Google, came here, saw an enormous article, got scared by it and said "if only there was a way to quickly find the answer to my question about WW1 without having to skim through all this text". Some thought "if only Wikipedia could have summaries or FAQs about articles like Britannica" and some others said "if only we could have an enhanced way to search and find the right text snippets we want".
    Of course they can get similar results with their wishes by better utilizing search engines. Or by being better at choosing key words and just CTRL-F-ing the article. And I'm sure many people already do precisely those things. But apparently, there are other people who intuitively chose this other workflow and asked if it could be given assistance in their way. If that's impossible I guess we'll have to live with the current version. Klein Muçi (talk) 01:24, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    I'm pretty sure the vast majority of users ask their questions on external search engines (whether directly through a web/app interface, or through a voice interface), rather than Wikipedia's. There's no way for Wikipedia to build a similar semantic search system on its own, without getting all that search query data to improve its algorithm. It would be more effective to integrate external search providers into Wikipedia. isaacl (talk) 03:58, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    @Isaacl, any ideas how such an integration would look like in practice? It has worked very well with Content Translation Tool so maybe it would be a great idea if it can be achieved even on this aspect. - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    I'm not thinking of anything at all like Content Translation Tool so we may be talking about different things. I'm thinking of a feature (perhaps a gadget) that would let you configure a supported external search provider and then provide an easy way to access it. It could completely replace existing search boxes or add an option to let you switch between the internal engines and external ones. isaacl (talk) 15:09, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    No, I believe we are on the same waters. I mentioned CTT because it provides its function by standing on the shoulders of Google Translate and Yandex. At the same way we could provide a better search provider by utilizing the help of major search engines like Google, etc. What you describe looks like a very nice idea. Ideally speaking, I believe such a feature/gadget would have a nice interface that feels organic with Wikipedia (not clunky) and, maybe, the results that it brings are also brought back here again and are filtered to only be related to Wikipedia. Does that seem like an accomplishable deed to you? - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:52, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
    In terms of user interface, everything is possible given enough effort. However all projects also have opportunity cost. So I don't personally have a feel of the relative tradeoffs. isaacl (talk) 16:02, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Main ideas after the discussion

  1. Reference desk integration with articles;
  2. External search provider on-wiki;

If anyone can help by providing the first steps on how such ideas can be implemented practically it'd be welcome. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:48, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Password reset

Hi! I have no plans to password reset, I'm just confused how can we change the password of our Wikipedia account if we don't specify our email address. In Special:PasswordReset, you must provide either a Username or Email address to reset your password, what happens if you only provide a username, where you can recieved the emails? —Princess Faye (my talk) 01:27, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

You can change your password at anytime if you know your password at Special:ChangePassword. If you forgot your password, the only supported method for reset is email. — xaosflux Talk 01:40, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
To directly answer the question, you specify the email address at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal-email or when you create your account. When you go to Special:PasswordReset and specify a username, it looks up the e-mail address listed there and sends an email to it. If you specify an e-mail address, it looks up the username that matches email address and sends a password reset email for it (I'm not sure what happens if there is more than one such username). * Pppery * it has begun... 01:45, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux and Pppery: If your Wikipedia account does not have an email address, and you forget the password, and you go to Special:PasswordReset to change the password, and since you don't have an email address on your account, you just entered the username… you won't receive an email and you still can't change the password, right? All I know is that if you enter either of the two in Special:PasswordReset, username or email address, you will still receive an email. —Princess Faye (my talk) 02:19, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Because I'm wondering if your Wikipedia account doesn't have an email address, anyone can change its password because there is no email address. —Princess Faye (my talk) 02:31, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Or if you forget your Wikipedia account password, and there is no email address attached to that account, and you can't provide an email address in Special:PasswordReset, the results, you can no longer change your password, correct? —Princess Faye (my talk) 02:31, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Well, yes, but actually no. Sysadmins can change it for you if you ask. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 03:05, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Only if they have definite, absolute proof that the person asking for password change is really who they claim to be. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:19, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Like a committed identity, I assume, although Help:Logging in#What if I forget my password? says "(Rare) If you have a long-established account and have previously set up a 'committed identity', ... it may be possible to recover the account" (emphasis added). Nardog (talk) 06:35, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
@Nardog and Redrose64: If you are logged out of all Wikipedia projects and literally have no email address on your Wikipedia account, and you also don't have an email address to enter in case you go to Special:PasswordReset, but you just put your username on Special:PasswordReset. My question is, if Wikipedia will send an email for the Password reset, where it will be received if what you provided is just your username? —Princess Faye (my talk) 07:49, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
If there is no email address set, then it doesn't send any email. The user will still see the same confirmation message as if an email had been sent, this is deliberate to prevent bad faith actors being able to get information about an account. See phabricator:T238961 and the code. the wub "?!" 09:29, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
@The wub: Is an account safe if it doesn't have an email address?? and what else is the disadvantage of not having an email address on the Wikipedia account other than not being able to reset the account password? —Princess Faye (my talk) 09:45, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Without an email address, there is no way to reset a lost password (other than sysadmin intervention already mentioned, and that shouldn't be relied upon). Without providing an email address you also won't be able to send or receive emails through the Email this user function. the wub "?!" 12:49, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
As long as you don't forget your password, your account is relatively safe (2FA is recommended however) even without email. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 13:08, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
2FA is not recommended for standard users (nor is it even available) - as there is no supported 2FA reset process for broken authenticators and lost scratch codes. — xaosflux Talk 13:40, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
┌───────────────────────────┘
It should be. The risk of losing scratch codes and the authenticator is trivial comparing to that of being compromised by third parties. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:53, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, a sysadmin has the technical capability to reset (which they usually would do by (re)setting your email address and then having you do a reset), but that is not supported in our production environment. That doesn't mean it won't or has never happened - but no one should ever rely on it. — xaosflux Talk 09:50, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps this summary will help:
  • If you know your password,
    • and you have e-mail set up, you can use or change your password whenever you want.
    • and you don't have e-mail set up, you can still use or change your password whenever you want.
  • If you lost your password,
    • and you have e-mail set up, you can get a new password.
    • and you don't have e-mail set up, you cannot get a new password, unless some very rare circumstances apply.
      • As an example of those rare circumstances, if a WMF employee lost account access, they could get the WMF office to reset their password. If this happened to me, it would probably require a video call with someone in the office who already knows me plus a note from my manager.
      • For most people, this generally requires being personal friends for years with someone who has the necessary user rights. It is not at all something you should be relying on. If you don't already have an established way to contact one of those people off wiki (e.g., via that e-mail address you haven't set up...), then it won't work.
For the most part, unless you have a valid, working e-mail address set up, if you lose your password, then you should assume that you have lost that account and go to Special:CreateAccount. Your first edit can be setting up a userpage that explains that you lost your password, just like all these editors did. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T109909

Edit summary

At the bottom of the edit window in the text editor, there are some edit summary choices that can be selected instead of typing a custom summary. These pre-defined choices are namespace dependent. For article, there are things like "add/improve refs" or "removing unsourced content". For Talk pages, it's "Comment", "Reply", "Suggestion". For Drafts, it's the same choices as on Talk pages. I think editing a Draft is more like editing an article and the article choices should be available. Can this be changed? MB 02:25, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, by tweaking the DefaultSummaries gadget. Feel free to request on its talk page. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 03:01, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
MediaWiki talk:Gadget-defaultsummaries.js#Interface-protected edit request on 18 April 2022 --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:18, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

strange issue at WP:UAA/Bot

See my comments at Wikipedia talk:Username policy#weird bug Beeblebrox (talk) 18:40, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Transcluding <noinclude>

On my creative-venture wiki (and its Referata forebears), I've long had trouble with the <noinclude></noinclude> wraparound on a preloaded template of mine. What I call "Template starter" sets up the bare bones for creating a template, adding a doc-page section that is always hidden from view outside a template's page à la Wikimedia.

With my latest attempt yesterday, I followed the instructions provided at mw:Manual:Creating pages with preloaded text#Loading the preload file (<no<includeonly></includeonly>include></noinclude>), but instead of the expected: 

<!-- Please replace this with template content --><noinclude>{{doc tag|categories=<includeonly>Templates</includeonly>}}</noinclude>

all I'm getting is just the comment after loading: 

<!-- Please replace this with template content -->

I've tried getting this to work time and again, to the point where spaces before the tag name (< noinclude></ noinclude>) must do as a compromise in our current setup. Of course, that's not really what I even wanted to deal with; I simply want to get the proper <noinclude>s on the page without any hassle. How else to go about it?

(MW 1.37.2; code loaded via Extension:Preloader)

(Crossposted from mw:Topic:Wtumv01tz8qmndq8 [Support desk thread], which has seen no replies/further activity at press time)

--Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 19:12, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

@Slgrandson, this works: 
<!-- Please replace this with template content --><<noinclude />noinclude>{{doc tag|categories=<<noinclude />includeonly>Templates<<noinclude />/includeonly>}}<<noinclude />/noinclude>
There are <noinclude /> tags (equivalent to <noinclude></noinclude>) inside each tag to prevent the other tags from being used, until transclusion (or preload). Qwerfjkltalk 20:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
@Qwerfjkl: Even with that improvement, it still doesn't take effect via Preloader--all of the raw code makes it onto the target page, spaces or not. Upstream bug on Preloader's part? (Keep in mind it's marked as "unmaintained", the last update having occurred in June 2018. Original co-developer Robchurch (talk · contribs) hasn't been seen on Wikimedia since 2019 [his last edit coming after a decade-long hiatus (!)], so to partner @Troyengel: Can you please look into this issue/investigate once you're available?) --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 23:44, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
As it turns out, my suspicions were justified: it is an upstream problem dating back to at least April 2021. Per word from @Troyengel:
I have no way to test this (this project is looking for a new maintainer, I haven't used it in years) and this change is significant enough in design/technique that it needs someone to test it before we merge. If you're aware of someone else who could help validate, send them this way!
Maybe Phabricator can take up the case from here as well?
--Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 23:55, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
Or better yet, someone from GitLab who can finish this merge/fix sooner rather than later. --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 00:14, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Lots of tools down

If you see any tools broken over the next hour or so, it's probably due to some database maintenance that's going on right now. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:16, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Links in templates

Why does the first link work correctly (outside of ref tags) but not the second one? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:13, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian: I'm really not sure about the why but I've made an edit to User:RandomCanadian/sandbox6 that demonstrates the workaround. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:32, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
For those curious, the problem is that the ref was emitting the HTML 
<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.twse.com.tw/pdf/en/{{{1}}}_en.pdf">Consolidated Information of Listed Company {{{1}}}</a>, Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation</span>
instead of the intended 
<span class="reference-text"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.twse.com.tw/pdf/en/2603_en.pdf">Consolidated Information of Listed Company 2603</a>, Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation</span>
notice how the two {{{1}}} are left literally instead of being replaced by the parameter value.
This is phab:T4700, some of which is covered by Help:Footnotes#Formatting ref tags and mw:Help:Cite#Substitution and embedded parser functions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:47, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-16

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 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (calendar).
  •   Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
  • Administrators will now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option is also available. This concludes the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
  • On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [22]
  •   Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes: successbox, errorbox, warningbox. The styles for those classes and messagebox will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.

Future changes

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

23:10, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents for all skins? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 09:29, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
That means 50% of will see the new style, and 50% will see the old style. However, I suspect that it only affects people using New Vector. SGrabarczuk (WMF) would know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @GhostInTheMachine. This only applies to selected wikis and those who use Vector 2022. Desktop Improvements are Vector 2022 and nothing else. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Template R to diacritic

Can someone experienced with redirect templates take a look at this discussion here? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:51, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Bad UX at Special:Upload: it allows you to upload badly-licensed files and tags them for speedy, instead of blocking the upload

(I don’t know if that’s the right place to ask, tell me if you have a better idea.)

One uses Special:Upload to upload image and other media files to en-wp without putting them on Commons. This is used mostly for non-free files that comply with WP:NFCC, which have no free license compatible with Commons.

In that interface, there is a long dropdown list of licensing information. Some of the options are "I do not know the license", "The copyright holder gave me permission to use this work only on Wikipedia articles", etc. Those options have the effect of adding a big red template and (I suppose) listing the file for speedy deletion. Here’s an example upload. We had a question recently at the Teahouse of a new user who uploaded a file under one of those bad licensing options, then their file got speedy-deleted (no surprise here).

To me, that seems like bad user experience for the newbies, and more workload for the deleting admins. A license valid "only for Wikipedia articles" is a non-fixable problem so there is little point in posting the image, the probability of deletion after that is 100%. ("I do not know the license" is different, those might be salvageable.) Why not reject the upload with a an information page / popup / whatever telling that the file cannot be uploaded? (The warning template does get previewed in the upload page, but no newbie reads templates anyway.) TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 09:54, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that the audience just doesn't understand copyright and we can't explain it to them any further then we already do on that page. But ppl are 'completionists'. They have a goal (I want to use this image) and want to fulfil that goal, irrespective of rules (esp rules that most other platforms do not have). So by giving them an honest answer to fill in, we avoid them lying and simply choosing something that is going to lead to license washing. This makes it easier on admins, as they don't get a ton more images which are incorrectly licensed but harder to filter out from the properly licensed material. The interface for Special:Upload is currently 'dumb', so while preventing the upload is possible, someone would have to write JS to intercept the form submission and explain it to the user (after which the user is still likely to try again and lie btw). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:24, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
Even "The copyright holder gave me permission to use this work only on Wikipedia articles" might be salvageable. An owner might release a work with a WP-compatible free licence, an editor might ask the owner (through either politeness or ignorance) "is it OK if I use that on Wikipedia?" and select that option, when wider permission already existed. Certes (talk) 11:03, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
That may be salvageable in theory, but in the real world, my test upload was deleted within 12 hours of me posting it. Note that it was named File:Test-image--testing-the-license-selection-process.png, was a text-only image saying "obviously not a copyvio, don’t delete per F3, leave this alive for some time", and had similar text posted on the talk page. If that gets deleted, nothing has any chance to survive long enough to be corrected.
OK, new question: if we are letting files go straight into F3 (for sad but valid reasons given by TheDJ above), why do we need admins to patrol those? Surely the deletion could be handled by a bot. (I do not mean to bot-delete all F3-tagged files, only those tagged by the upload form.) TigraanClick here for my talk page ("private" contact) 13:43, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Petscan

Why this link stopped working and other categories still works? Eurohunter (talk) 20:46, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

The link seems to work for me. I get 57 results starting with Madagascar–Mauritius relations. Database maintenance affected tools earlier; perhaps PetScan broke temporarily. Certes (talk) 22:49, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
@Certes: It stuck on white sceen while other categories with less new articles works without problems. Eurohunter (talk) 15:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
It still works for me.
Results
# Title Page ID Namespace Size (bytes) Last change
1 France–Taiwan relations 69529316 (Article) 10378 20220320083713
2 Kiribati-Taiwan relations 69535641 (Article) 6280 20211218102927
3 Australia–Marshall Islands relations 69536847 (Article) 4120 20220323123401
4 Tajikistan–United Kingdom relations 69572531 (Article) 199 20220105080256
5 Suriname–Venezuela relations 69604695 (Article) 5718 20211231095020
6 France–Suriname relations 69611945 (Article) 16207 20220413082845
7 Cuba–Suriname relations 69616997 (Article) 6604 20211231093548
8 Albania–Australia relations 69689386 (Article) 3114 20220106205233
9 Saudi Arabia–South Africa relations 69726305 (Article) 4308 20220419072618
10 Barbados–Cuba relations 69726751 (Article) 5879 20220225175128
11 Cuba–Germany relations 69727251 (Article) 4510 20220410190824
12 Federal Republic of Central America–United States relations 69762511 (Article) 5416 20220312172641
13 Congo Free State–United States relations 69762743 (Article) 6565 20220211173217
14 Orange Free State–United States relations 69763127 (Article) 3533 20220313160940
15 Greater Republic of Central America–United States relations 69765330 (Article) 5981 20220315052134
16 Ryukyu Kingdom–United States relations 69765694 (Article) 3335 20220313163109
17 Chile–Portugal relations 69807606 (Article) 5703 20220209152428
18 Jordan-Portugal relations 69812751 (Article) 6386 20220314002351
19 Palestine–Thailand relations 69821671 (Article) 1406 20220209073933
20 Palestine–Peru relations 69822312 (Article) 1283 20220402143917
21 Palestine–Sweden relations 69822563 (Article) 1668 20220209073925
22 Palestine–Ukraine relations 69829251 (Article) 4370 20220316161601
23 Hungary–Palestine relations 69837282 (Article) 1241 20220209062941
24 Libya–Palestine relations 69838065 (Article) 1463 20220315083555
25 China-El Salvador relations 70030965 (Article) 7143 20220327002544
26 Iran–Portugal relations 70105740 (Article) 7423 20220324020814
27 Belarus–Palestine relations 70105961 (Article) 1853 20220218185410
28 Palestine–Slovakia relations 70107207 (Article) 1772 20220419040918
29 Soviet Union–Yugoslavia relations 70124695 (Article) 22081 20220405014416
30 Donetsk People's Republic–Russia relations 70133915 (Article) 10824 20220329141847
31 Luhansk People's Republic–Russia relations 70143633 (Article) 4286 20220328144329
32 Antigua and Barbuda–United Kingdom relations 70162606 (Article) 3802 20220420073003
33 Eritrea–Russia relations 70246524 (Article) 2200 20220418141857
34 Portugal–Yugoslavia relations 70249631 (Article) 4060 20220307203807
35 North Korea–Yugoslavia relations 70249704 (Article) 3704 20220316181137
36 Switzerland–Yugoslavia relations 70250149 (Article) 2781 20220312101555
37 Venezuela–Yugoslavia relations 70250298 (Article) 1793 20220308071304
38 Nigeria–Yugoslavia relations 70253248 (Article) 6189 20220415065439
39 Iraq–Yugoslavia relations 70253973 (Article) 5144 20220330031154
40 Sri Lanka–Yugoslavia relations 70253995 (Article) 4272 20220307230053
41 China–Lebanon relations 70275925 (Article) 14081 20220323082328
42 Dominica–France relations 70280121 (Article) 6345 20220417005115
43 Cape Verde–Yugoslavia relations 70296434 (Article) 3538 20220313092246
44 East Germany–People's Republic of the Congo relations 70313949 (Article) 2323 20220318140732
45 Seychelles–Yugoslavia relations 70365516 (Article) 3039 20220323175403
46 Colombia-Philippines relations 70390511 (Article) 2510 20220413002303
47 Norway–Turkey relations 70453310 (Article) 5126 20220404150523
48 Australia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement 70456465 (Article) 1670 20220403070531
49 Central African Republic–Turkey relations 70457706 (Article) 5386 20220403113647
50 Iceland–Turkey relations 70468323 (Article) 9110 20220408082307
51 China–Turkmenistan relations 70484438 (Article) 1582 20220409222423
52 Germany–Somaliland relations 70526917 (Article) 2307 20220416074357
53 Armenia–Artsakh relations 70560131 (Article) 14450 20220417182243
54 Ukraine–Venezuela relations 70564712 (Article) 9535 20220420070303
55 Cuba–Guatemala relations 70571816 (Article) 2510 20220420004926
56 Cuba–Jamaica relations 70571992 (Article) 2773 20220420003001
That left nowhere for a signature, so I'd better put one here. Certes (talk) 18:43, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
@Certes: It finally loaded after very long time like 1-2 or even more minutes. Eurohunter (talk) 19:24, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it took a minute for me too, that's normal. Certes (talk) 19:28, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Chattahoochee Plantation, Georgia

Hi there. I'm having a problem at Chattahoochee Plantation, Georgia. I added an infobox which included a coordinates template, but the template is displaying an image of the country Georgia, rather than the US state of Georgia. I'm not sure how to fix this. Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 08:12, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: Fixed that for you. The state should be referred to as Georgia (U.S. state) or USA Georgia. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 08:28, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: How did I miss that? Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 09:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Adding external font-face in template css

Feel free to move my question if it isn`t the right place.

How can I add an external font-face in template css, for example for Google fonts like this: <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans" />. If I add this link, the page won`t let me save. רונאלדיניו המלך (talk) 21:48, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

You can't, it's not allowed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:17, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Not sure what file you're trying to modify—CSS files don't have elements denoted by tags (and thus no <link> element). If you are trying to modify a CSS file being used by a template, note as per mw:Manual:CSS#Using the url() function, you can't load fonts from non-Wikimedia servers. For fonts available from Google Fonts, though I suspect it won't work, you can try using the Toolforge font server proxy to load the desired font file. (I haven't tried it other than within my personal CSS file, where it can be used.) isaacl (talk) 22:21, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Using a <link /> element in this manner is valid in HTML (it doesn't go in a stylesheet), it loads an external font that may then be referred to by a declaration for a font: or font-family: property that is present in a stylesheet that is itself loaded from the same HTML document. But the tag is not whitelisted, and so the MediaWiki software does not permit such use. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:38, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I know it's valid HTML and that it's not listed as something the MediaWiki software supports. I didn't think the software would block a wikitext-based page save with a <link /> element, though, so I wasn't sure if the original poster was referring to a CSS file that they were trying to modify. isaacl (talk) 22:46, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
@Isaacl: The whitelist for font contexts is empty, so that won't work. Anomie⚔ 22:42, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Hmm, so does that mean the described method in mw:Manual:CSS#Using the url() function to use font families provided through the Universal Language Selector extension won't work either? (I realize those instructions aren't specifically for TemplateStyles and so more restrictions can apply.) isaacl (talk) 22:50, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
Indeed more restrictions apply to TemplateStyles than to site CSS. That's one of them. But you could try requesting a configuration change to add ULS font URLs to the whitelist I mentioned if you want. Although better in that case might be to get ULS to detect the need to supply the font itself rather than bypassing it. Anomie⚔ 11:39, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
If I understand the documentation for the CSS manual and the Universal Language Selector extension correctly, the sample CSS is a way to use a font whether or not the user has configured their language of choice to one using that font. I could imagine this being useful in a language template. isaacl (talk) 15:30, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Please don't use Google Fonts directly. As I understand it, that tells Google which readers are reading which pages, which is a privacy problem. Instead, you might want to look at https://fontcdn.toolforge.org/ if you need a font. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:23, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Font size too big in geonotices

There is a huge geonotice at the top of my watchlist. Anybody willing to look into reducing the font size of geonotices? There is a <style> tag somewhere that has the CSS #watchlist-message .geonotice span {font-size: 144.5%;} that I suspect is the cause. Screenshot of CSS. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:07, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

This has been discussed before. Basically, when set to normal font size, people were simply not noticing the notices. Also, please don't send me off to imgur (my PC slows to a crawl, my virus scanner complains, and I need to reboot), we have a perfectly satisfactory system ourselves. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:21, 19 April 2022 (UTC)
@Redrose64 sorry, but our screen shot system onwiki sucks for this sort of purpose. It is very understandable why, but that doesn't make it not suck. This is not an endorsement for imgur, just that for tech troubleshooting, dealing with our necessarily complex file hosting rules are a pain for many contributors. The way it works on phab is immensely better. — xaosflux Talk 10:17, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
I agree. I don't think we should be discouraging people from using external hosting services just to share a screenshot here. Many newbies in particular (not referring to Novem Linguae) don't understand licensing, and in the worst cases they find themselves in trouble over at Commons when all they were trying to do is report a bug.
Would it be helpful to have a Toolforge tool to upload temporary/throwaway images? I see value in keeping screenshots long-term for the archives here, but thinking about scalability, a Toolforge/VPS tool would have to have an expiry on everything uploaded.
Another idea is for a gadget to make uploading screenshots easier (specifically here at this and other help venues, not the mainspace, etc.), where it fills in the licensing details for you, and you just need to check the box for whether there's a WP logo or other copyrighted image. — MusikAnimal talk 15:40, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal I think we are sort-of getting better, VE and utilities like replytool do support "paste" from clipboards - but it only support "own works" and in to commonswiki. Any idea if that system could be extended? — xaosflux Talk 15:53, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
I'd recommend using Phabricator for "throwaway" images, no one will mind it as long as you're not uploading copyvios or gigabytes of stuff. You can upload at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/file/upload/ (use the form, or just press Ctrl+V if you have it copied; name is optional). It's not Wikipedia, but it's still within our "ecosystem", and it's quite convenient. Matma Rex talk 17:39, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Short description loads late

Hi, sorry if this isn't the right place to be asking this (I didn't want to ask at WPSD in case this isn't a problem with the SD per se), but I'm mildly yet constantly annoyed by the SD loading relatively late; meaning, when I load a page, everything else seems to appear, and then the SD loads, and all other content jumps down by a line. Which isn't a huge problem in the bigger scheme of things, but irritating nevertheless.

I first thought it might be a browser issue (Vivaldi), but I've tried Chrome and Safari, and the same issue occurs there as well.

I do have the shortdesc helper activated, and I realise I could resolve this problem by switching it off, but I would like to keep it. Apart from that, is there any other way around this? Thanks, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:39, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

@DoubleGrazing the only reason you are seeing shortdesc at all, is because you loaded that gadget, which is a client-side javascript. The normal behavior is to not show a short description at all. That gadget is always going to be slower than the page, and hacks such as slowing down the rest of the page to wait for it would be worse. You can follow up at Wikipedia talk:Shortdesc helper, where some of the maintainers may have better feedback for you. — xaosflux Talk 10:00, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Xaosflux, I guessed as much. I'm trying to do my bit to help on the SD front, and not seeing it by default would make this more difficult, so I guess I'll just live with the slight delay. Cheers, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:11, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@DoubleGrazing I don't see any such issue. Shortdesc helper has a css component to prevent precisely this issue. What skin do you use? (The css currently works for legacy vector only). – SD0001 (talk) 10:26, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@SD0001 I see it pretty much everytime in monobook, page loads, half second later sd squeezes in. — xaosflux Talk 10:30, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
In vector/vector-2022, it doesn't have to squeeze the page down, but it does take the same delay to "appear". in modern it has the same squeeze and shift issue. — xaosflux Talk 10:32, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Delay is expected, the real issue is the "squeeze" which doesn't take place in vector because of MediaWiki:Gadget-Shortdesc-helper-pagestyles-vector.css. – SD0001 (talk) 10:49, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Hi @SD0001 — I'm (apparently) using the Vector legacy 2010; happy to change this, if that's all it takes. What should I use instead? Thanks, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:32, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@DoubleGrazing Actually it should work on both versions of vector. Do you use any other script which impacts this area of the page? Try putting this rule in User:DoubleGrazing/common.css: 
.skin-vector.ns-0 .noarticletext {
	margin-top: -1.1em;
}
and keep increasing the margin-top until the issue goes away. – SD0001 (talk) 10:49, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @SD0001; I've tried, and already thought this resolved the issue, but it doesn't seem to work consistently on every page, not sure why. I'll continue playing with it.
I have the following installed — do you see anything there that could be causing this?
User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js
User:Evad37/rater.js
User:SD0001/DYK-helper.js
User:BrandonXLF/HotDefaultSort.js
User:Fox Wilson/delsort.js
User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js
User:Headbomb/unreliable.js
User:SD0001/StubSorter.js
Thanks, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:18, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
I display the SD instantly without JavaScript by adding to my common.css
.shortdescription { display:block !important; color: #8B4513; background-color: #FFF0A0; }
This would probably conflict with any JS or other tool that does a similar job, and your colour preference may vary, but it might suggest a solution. Certes (talk) 11:39, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks @Certes — adding that to my CSS (and deactivating the shotdesc helper) does seem to do the trick. But it only works when the SD is created using the template, not when it's taken from Wikidata etc. I don't suppose there's a way to get it to show the SD regardless of how and where it's coming from? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:56, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Short descriptions shown by default to Wikipedia readers come only via Wikipedia, not directly from Wikidata. If some other tool is accessing Wikidata to get a description from there, it may be intrinsically slow and unable to display the result of that query instantly. It is theoretically possible for some template to retrieve a value from Wikidata and wrap it in {{short description}}, but I don't think that happens and the page would only start to render after that process was complete. I don't see that problem myself. Certes (talk) 12:02, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@Certes that must be a feature of the shortdesc helper that I'm talking about. It says (from memory) "Wikidata: import / edit and import [+ whatever the suggested SD is]". I've never thought about it, but that presumably happens when there is no SD in the article, yet there is in WD, and it's offering to bring it in. Which means, among other things, that if the aim to ensure that every article has a SD, then I should go back to using the helper and start importing those SDs (or... not?). -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:34, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with the tool but it might be possible to modify it to avoid the page jumping. Perhaps it could display a blank SD immediately, reserving the space for the real SD, then update the text when Wikidata responds without altering the page layout further. On the other hand, if it might not find an SD to insert and thus does not know immediately whether to reserve space, that might not be possible. Certes (talk) 13:15, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
It might depend on what the script shows. Volunteer-me uses User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js to see what Wikidata says, and the results are variable in length (could be one line, could be five). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:20, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Unless you use a very big font (as I realise some partially sighted readers do) then a five-line "short" description needs pruning. Certes (talk) 22:58, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
That script pulls more than just the short description. Izno (talk) 23:19, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

WMFLabs Dup detector in DYK toolbox no longer is accessible

The link is

https://dupdet.toolforge.org/

And it kicks up a message "503 Service Not Available". It's been that way for a while now. Don't remember if there's been any discussion about this, but am wondering if we should remove the link from Template:DYK tools. — Maile (talk) 23:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@Maile66 see also Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Lots_of_tools_down; this tool does not appear to have any active maintainers. I've removed the link on Template:DYK tools for now. — xaosflux Talk 00:38, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. — Maile (talk) 00:41, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
admin.toolforge.org says it's maintained by Gryllida (who is active on enwiki), and Jamesofur (who has only made one edit this year). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:52, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@Ahecht is Svetlana Tkachenko supposed to be Gryllida, because that is what that page says. If Gryllida is the maintainer, they should update their tool documentation and add it to <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Toolforge_tools>, fix their tool - and let us know when it is fixed - will be happy to re-add to that template. — xaosflux Talk 22:58, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux Yes, sorry, I should've specified. Their Wikitech username was changed from Gryllida to Svetlana Tkachenko at Wikitech:Special:Diff/976324.
As to https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Toolforge_tools, I never understood why we have five different places we list tools: that page, https://hay.toolforge.org/directory/, https://toolhub.wikimedia.org/, https://admin.toolforge.org/tools, and https://toolsadmin.wikimedia.org/tools/. Of those 5, only the last two are updated automatically as new tools are created. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:13, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Well https://toolforge.org goes to https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Portal:Toolforge, which has a link, "List of tools", which goes to that cat! — xaosflux Talk 23:37, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@Maile66 See User talk:Gryllida#Duplication Detector. It's a known issue. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 23:20, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Equation scroll iOS

  Moved from WT:TEA

It seems current version of wiki does not allow scrolling of equations on iOS that are too wide for the screen. Is it possible to add a zoom or scroll feature? 2603:8000:B401:C176:1C90:A18:B116:2619 (talk) 17:10, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Are you seeing this problem in the Wikipedia App, or in a browser? If a browser, please provide a sample URL and the browser version. — xaosflux Talk 17:36, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
See also some closed reports, is it the same problem as phab:T160946 or phab:T74165? — xaosflux Talk 17:40, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Delete + protect (salt) option

I recently read that we're finally getting the option to delete a page together with its talk page soon. (Has that started yet? Does it also works for subpages?)

However, is there an option to delete and protect (salt) a page "simultaneously" in cases when there have been multiple recreations of the said page? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:30, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I doubt this is really necessary often enough to build it into the software itself when tools like Twinkle could easily do this (Twinkle already has an option to request SALTing when tagging for deletion, so it should not be hard to add an option to protect when deleting). Regards SoWhy 12:07, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@SoWhy, unfortunately, as far as I know, we can't use Twinkle in my homewiki (SqWiki). I was the one that started its adoption months ago but was forced to stop it in the midway because I wasn't skillful enough to complete it. (Any help on that would be appreciated even now.) And I do believe this problem may be a recurring problem for many wikis outside of EnWiki which don't rely on any external tools beside the native features. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:15, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I see but this is a discussion board for en-wiki specifically. If you wish to discuss changes for all wikis, you will have to take it to meta-wiki. Regards SoWhy 14:34, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@SoWhy, so far I've been able to discuss global technical changes here before going the Phab-way, given the fact that unfortunately Meta discussion boards are not as active as they should be (considering they deal with global matters). That's not to say I'm not active in there. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
The "Delete associated talk page" option at action=delete is now live on all wikis. It does not handle subpages; that is tracked at phab:T15491. In addition, be advised you aren't currently warned that the talk page has subpages (phab:T305268), but that should be fixed soon.
Adding a delete + salt option shouldn't be terribly difficult to add to Core, but it would complicate the UI for what is seemingly a relatively narrow use-case (admins maybe on average salt 1% of the pages they delete, by contrast the talk page is almost always deleted).
Significant work was put into making Twinkle more easily installable outside enwiki. Have you tried using the twinkle-starter template? — MusikAnimal talk 14:41, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal, thank you for the provided information! Yes, I have. That's what I referenced above. I had to stop in the middle because I had never worked in GitHub before so I needed personal guidance, which unfortunately I wasn't able to get. If you or someone else may help me resume my work I'd be happy to continue. It's been a while so MAYBE I don't need help anymore as my overall knowledge in coding has progressed. I'll take a look at it again soon.
Would it really be a big complication? :/ I think, but may be wrong, that that feature would be the last one missing from all the current possible features related to deletion. If that's really true than maybe accepting just +1 more complication to the existing UI can be considered. If there are many possible features that I'm not thinking of now than maybe we need to be selective on what we add and what not. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:19, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Also... Assuming we are to take the Twinkle-way, can someone actually add that kind of function (delete+salt) in it so that if I'm able to actually make it work for SqWiki I can start utilizing it? So far I haven't studied Twinkle thoroughly though so maybe my words won't make much sense. In that case, please do ignore this comment. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:30, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
It would need to add more fields, to also protect you would have the following parameters to also specify: protection level, protection duration, protection log reason — xaosflux Talk 16:18, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, yes I thought about that but I also thought that the UI could be made in such a way that it actually only adds 1 tick-box. Those extra fields become shown if you tick such a box. Klein Muçi (talk) 01:15, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Is anyone willing to post to Phabricator on my behalf?

I was instructed on another project to submit something to Phabricator, but do not have email enabled. This is now the second time this has been an issue. Is anyone willing to post there on my behalf?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 19:10, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Did you use OAUTH to add yourself on Phabricator? I am pretty sure you do not need an email in that scenario. Izno (talk) 20:20, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
It says Welcome to the Phabricator Upstream. NOTE: You can not register a new account here. You must be invited to join the upstream. and my wiki password and username doesn't log me in. Are you able to invite me?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 22:08, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
You are in the wrong place entirely. The correct instance of Phabricator to use is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org. Click "Log in or Register (MediaWiki)" on the log in screen there. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
@Epiphyllumlover that is the wrong link, use <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/> — xaosflux Talk 22:33, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
On the link, it says, "Hi Epiphyllumlover, In order to complete your request, phabricator-production needs permission..." and on the next page, it says, "Check Your Email: You must verify your email address to log in. You should have a new email message from Phabricator with verification instructions in your inbox..." So I am left out for now. Could you submit something on my behalf on phabricator?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 22:40, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
If you are asking about secure.phabricator.com - that has nothing to do with Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects, so we can't help you there. Did you try https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ ? — xaosflux Talk 22:53, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
In the meantime, what do you want put up - do you have a ticket number to put it to? — xaosflux Talk 22:54, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I tried the link you gave me. I have two requests, but no ticket numbers that I know of.
  • The first is an old one; several years ago I asked for MediaViewer to display basic wikicoding for images in Template:Photomontage. Currently, if you put a { { ! } } after the file name, it will display text following Template:! as a tooltip text, and also in MediaViewer. The issue is that in MediaViewer the text is displayed without coding for italics or Article. This is something that I especially desire for scientific names, where the name is generally rendered in italics. Also, it would be nice for wikilinks to show up in the MediaBiewer captions, especially since the tooltip caption is over the caption or description carried over from Commons. There was some discussion of this on this Village Pump link #1 and link #2
  • The second is recent. It is to allow (that is, to whitelist) the direct upload from url function for a particular domain. Direct uploads are done with the Wikimedia Commons old form, and the domain to be whitelisted is https://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu . This website carries an extensive archive of Apollo era .tif files which are not webhosted by NASA, but came from NASA and are in the public domain. The .tif files tend to be large, around a gigabyte, so a direct upload to url would be nice. There is some discussion of it on the Commons Village Pump.
Thank you for your care and efforts on my behalf.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 02:54, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure an email is needed for Phabricator per mw:Phabricator/Help#Troubleshooting. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:47, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@Epiphyllumlover your second one sounds something like phab:T251882. Since this is something that will impact commonswiki, you will be best to follow up at the already running discussion there, just ask someone to open a new phab, they can model it on T251882. — xaosflux Talk 09:57, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
@Epiphyllumlover I really don't see why we need 1GB tiff files in the first place. It doesn't really add anything over a much more efficient PNG version of the same size, other than wasting many bytes. Maybe if ur generous, it adds some options for future color grading. But as they are, raw images tend to result in bad thumbnails often, specifically because of the lack of color grading. Therefore I advise to download the tiff files, color profile them and turn them into PNG before uploading them to Commons. If this sounds laborious, I'm guessing that is why they are claiming copyright on their work :)
But, that website is painstakingly slow... Downloading 100MB took over 10 minutes, which is pretty insanely slow for 2022 standards (probably an artificial brake by them on automated bot downloads in an attempt to keep the costs somewhat under control). I'm not sure if that is even quick enough for the url upload logic, I'm sure it has a timeout value, just not sure what it is. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:06, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for the advice about phab:T251882, which I was not aware of. I downloaded the .tif file, cropped off the black film part and after converting it to .png it was only 380 MB instead of the 1.2 GB. That gave me hope that it would upload, and sure enough File:North America on April 16, 1972, cropped from AS16-118-18879.png came through. If anyone is interested in comparisons, the improvement in resolution over the .jpg is noticeable, yet it is darker than the .jpg. I agree that many unmodified .tifs would make bad thumbnails; yet if croptool worked on the monster .tifs it would definitely be convenient. As of right now, this is one of only two Apollo photos that I have plans for, so now I understand that I don't really need a direct upload, it is just another "want".--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 23:25, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Created phab:T306671 for the second issue. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:33, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Epiphyllumlover There's definitely some color correction that can be done on those images. They appear to have been balanced so that the sprocket holes are pure white, which leaves the actual whites in the image quite dark. Stretching it and adjusting the gamma can produce a much more usable image. I took a shot at downloading that .tif image and loading it into photoshop, and uploaded a new version with a histogram stretch applied. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:04, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

list=random limit

When querying for list=random, rnlimit can be set as max to get as many pages as possible. Is there a way to get that limit at a wiki via API? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 23:31, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=paraminfo&modules=query%2Brandom See the "max" and "highmax" values for limit param. highmax is applicable if you have apihighlimits user right (generally available to bots/admins). – SD0001 (talk) 03:00, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 03:05, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Project page move with potential functional repercussions

Per consensus in the move request for the page, I have moved Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect whitelist to Wikipedia:New pages patrol/Redirect autopatrol list. I anticipate that it is possible that there may be bots or other tools that rely on the contents at the former title, and encourage anyone maintaining such properties to update them accordingly. BD2412 T 06:07, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@BD2412 that sounds like a pretty reckless move to make without first making sure the known bots were ready, as was brought up in the discussion that said any change should be done would need to be done in parallel with the bot updates -- was this done? — xaosflux Talk 09:29, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
"Reckless" may be a bit of a strong word, given that the sole effect of the bot not recognizing the page is that redirects created by listed editors will presumably not be autopatrolled until the fix is made, which is the reason for the notice here. I would hazard that the number on that list is a small fraction of the number of redirects Wikipedia sees on a daily basis. BD2412 T 16:01, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
@DannyS712: Whatever you need to do, have at it. BD2412 T 16:03, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
...this explains why I got an email about the bot job failing. Will update the code DannyS712 (talk) 22:01, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Inline hlists no longer work?

It looks like inline hlists don't work anymore. Example:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3

with the code {{hlist|1|2|3|class=inline}}, which should have produced an inline list. I can't figure out why this is. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 20:00, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:19, 23 April 2022 (UTC) My brain somehow completely failed to parse that it was supposed to be inline. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:57, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Nah, also rocking not-inline over here. That's puzzling. The relevant elements all have display: inline.
  • This
  • works
  • for
  • me
  • in
  • this
  • dd
  • element.
Something has changed about paragraph styles maybe? Or possibly specific to talk pages? Firefox 99.0.1 on Win 10 over here. I know that you can't put either a div or a list element in a p element, but inline should still cause it to at least be level with either the former or latter paragraphs. --Izno (talk) 20:28, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Additionally, the main page is fine with its multiple uses of inline hlist. --Izno (talk) 20:30, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Hmm; in a dd looks fine:
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
. But when it's not in a dd, it doesn't work. Weird. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 22:01, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
The {{hlist}} template emits a <div>...</div> as its outermost element; that is permitted within a <dd>...</dd> but will always terminate an otherwise-unclosed <p>. This has been documented behaviour of the p element since HTML 4, but had been normal (if not explicitly documented) behaviour since before that - in more general terms, an unclosed p element has been terminated by the next block elemenr since always. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:53, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
That may be demonstrated with 
<p>Paragraph start - {{hlist|1|2|3|class=inline}} - and paragraph end</p>
which yields

Paragraph start -

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
- and paragraph end

Hey presto, one unwanted newline. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:59, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
I'm guessing it's related to how bare numbers may get interpreted as naming positional parameters (not sure of the exact circumstances though, if there isn't an equals sign). Trying {{hlist|1=1|2=2|3=3|class=inline}}:
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
— that seems to work. isaacl (talk) 20:37, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
No, that's not it at all. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I've seen your detailed response; thanks. isaacl (talk) 00:14, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

A discussion at a MediaWiki talk page

5 days ago, I left a suggestion at MediaWiki talk:Histlegend#Separation from surrounding, which no one responded to. Leaving a message here to invite those who might be interested. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 13:05, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

What does "batchcomplete" mean in an API response?

The API docs say about batchcomplete, The API returns a batchcomplete element to indicate that all data for the current batch of items has been returned. I don't understand what that means. If there's more data returned by the query than the xxxlimit allows in a batch, you get a "continue" item which tells you how to get the next batch. But either way, you get a "batchcomplete" item. If the query returns N items, and limit > N, you get N entries in the API result, but there's still a "batchcomplete". So I'm mystified what it is telling you. What would be a scenario where you don't have "batchcomplete" in the response? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:41, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

It's mostly for when you're using generators, so you can know when you've gotten all the results for the current set of generated pages (so you can safely process them) before moving on to the next set. See this query, for example, it doesn't return batchcomplete because there are still more categories to be fetched for that first set of pages (it returned just 25 out of 56). Continuing still doesn't give batchcomplete, because there are still 6 to go. Continuing again gives the last 6 and batchcomplete. Continuing after that starts on the next 10 pages from the generator. But it also works for "prop" modules in general, like in this query. Anomie⚔ 15:08, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
Got it, thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:13, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

XFDcloser, again

Whatever affected XFDCloser on the RFD pages has now affected an AFD page. I'd post on the XFDCloser talk page but when I did that before, there wasn't a solution proposed. On the RFD pages, XFDcloser would close the discussions but not delete the page under discussion or remove deletion tags if the page was kept.

I can tell you that the problem is not on the entire log page, it is right after Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2022 April 21#Women in the Montana government is listed. On the log page, the AFDs listed above this discussion are fine but at this discussion, and the ones below, you can see "XFDcloser loading..." indicating that XFDcloser isn't working when trying to close these discussions. Could there be a coding problem on the log page that is tripping up XFDcloser? Your help would be appreciated. Email to Evad37 hasn't produced any results thus far so I'm coming to the Village Pump (technical) to cast a wider net for help. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 04:28, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what happened (?) but something got fixed on this log page. Although it is still a problem on RfD pages like Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 April 25. I can't see anything in the page history that shows what happened, it's a bit of a mystery. Liz Read! Talk! 05:36, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
I don't know if it's related or not, but there was an unclosed small tag in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gonzalo Lira (2nd nomination), which was the nomination above the one where the issue started. I noticed that and fixed the error between your two posts, but that may not have been what fixed it. Hog Farm Talk 05:47, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Progress bar on mobile media player is practically unusable

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T306779

Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/YLukQaw.png

I assume it's already known, but I can't find anything on phab:. Is there any plan to improve it? --fireattack (talk) 04:19, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll make a ticket out of this. This is now phab:T306779. Please remember that until recently, you couldn't use video at all on iOS with the mobile site. ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:22, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Caching issue at DYK

This may, or may not, be a technical problem that just popped up for me yesterday. I'm providing a link here, to my DYK post. This has (so far) not happened for me anywhere else except DYK preps and queues. — Maile (talk) 18:06, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

DYYK#Anybody else having this issue? - preps and queues visuals

  • Now that others have responded on DYK (click on thread above), there's some sort of caching issue going on with our Preps and Queues. With this happening to multiple editors, it is not simply a lone user issue. Individuals should not have to clear the cache just to see a page. And the fact that multiple editors at DYK are having this issue, indicates the problem lies elsewhere. — Maile (talk) 10:49, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
Do we have job queue/caching issues data somewhere for the period in question? The unhelpful page Help:Job queue does not contain any information where even the current length of the job queue can be found (it used to be visible in various Special: pages but apparently no longer is??). —Kusma (talk) 12:15, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Yes, there has been an issue with the JobQueue for quite a while, see phab:T300914.--Snævar (talk) 12:42, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Mass update of incoming links after conversion to a disambiguation page

Is there an easy way to update all the links leading to a title after someone moved the article that had been at that title, and then created a disambiguation page under the original title? I'm looking at Puto, which used to be the article that has just been moved to Puto (food). There are 453 incoming links to what is now a disambiguation page. Largoplazo (talk) 11:09, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: Try DisamAssist, or the much faster yet less specific one AWB. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 11:27, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
Editors are considering reverting that move, though it seems likely to stick. There are often far fewer linmks than shown, because many are generated by a few templates such as navboxes; fixing each of those removes many articles from the list. DisamAssist covers templates but misses a few article links, notably in image captions and in parameters of templates such as {{sortname}}. Certes (talk) 13:41, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Printing an article

Hello: I've been trying to print the page entitled ANZAC Day but absolutely no luck. No problems printing other pages though. Please advise. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dianahooper (talk • contribs) 14:34, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Printing layout is normally handled by the browser, the preview worked for me - outputting 37 pages. This article is somewhat large, are you using a desktop to create the print view? — xaosflux Talk 15:48, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Question

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T17439

Anyone know why the interlangage links disappear from the left side when you are editing a page? This is a pain; any way to avoid this behavior, or is there a PHAB for this already? Thanks in advance, UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

@UnitedStatesian: see phab:T17439 looks like this is by design (as the links could be changed based on what is edited); they do appear in preview mode - you can force preview mode to appear when you start editing by setting Show preview on first edit in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. — xaosflux Talk 14:48, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
I think now that all the IL links come from Wikidata, they can no longer be changed based on what is edited here in enwiki, and in fact much more likely to want, as I do, to use the links to jump over to wikidata from the editing screen to make necessary changes over there. Best, UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
@UnitedStatesian adding iw's in wikitext is absolutely still supported, and for many namespaces it is the only supported option. — xaosflux Talk 16:14, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
The mw:2017 wikitext editor displays the interwiki links for me. If you're using the 2010 WikiEditor in 2010 Vector, then you can still find "Wikidata item" in the "Tools" section (right above the big empty space where the interlanguage links used to be). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

How do I make the cell on the left yellow?

Hi all

I'm working on some reasearch into volunteers needs in working with partner organisations and I'm writing up the results in a series of colour coded tables. Does anyone know how I could turn the cell on the left yellow as well? Also any way to set the cell borders to 0 so there is no white spaces between the cells?

Thanks very much

 

Funding and staff

Needs of interviewees

Support requested

  1. Funding
  2. Office and staff
  3. Infrastructure
  1. Fundraising support
  2. Recruitment

There is a desire to grow in the work with content partnerships. The main request here is how to increase the financial possibilities. Marketing material can be developed from best practices and case studies. A common portfolio that can be shared is desirable.

Quotes

Quotes

  • "The main need is more resources through funding. There is a desire to grow and expand in the field of content partnership."
  • "Tech resources are needed to be able to do more uploads. More developers and setting a good workflow. Not planning for training institutions to do uploads themselves, but keeping the option in mind."
  • "More funding. Would like to offer resources to small partners who cannot fund that themselves. Both meeting rooms, food and drinks. Would also like to be able to offer (paying for) web space, servers and tech support."
  • "a. Office space b. Staff c. Operational cost."
  • "Need to have long term planning in order to work with government institutions as they have a yearly budget that needs to be set the year before. Hard to plan that long ahead when only volunteers are working for the UG."
  • "We also lack the internet. That’s our largest handicap, internet access. It’s expensive – and of poor quality."
  • "Financial support in the form of rapid grants or annual grants. Both from WMF or from gov organizations. Could also be in-kind support in form of broadband connections or help with transportation or a place to be."
  • "Construction of a whole program which aims to result in a project collaboration. For example, an employment as a Wikimedian in Residence for six or twelve months."

John Cummings (talk) 16:27, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Is the above what your wanted (with a lighter yellow)? —  Jts1882 | talk  16:46, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
See Special:Permalink/1084627870 to see what the table looked like when Jts first edited it. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 16:53, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @John Cummings: To change color of a cell, use style="background-color: color;"; to make cell borders effectively collapsed, use style="border-collapse: collapse;". Also, don't use <big>...</big> and <center>...</center>; they are deprecated and browsers may drop support for them anytime. TLDR: Just copy-and-paste, your table works as intended now. Here's the diff. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 16:51, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Hi NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh thanks so much for this, works perfectly. John Cummings (talk) 17:51, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Note not showing up when replying to COI edit request

Hello! I recently responded to a COI edit request on Talk:Omaha Steaks using the "Note" option and not closing it. However, for whatever reason, my response isn't showing up. I can't see anything that would be causing it to not show up. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:15, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf I see your response, it is inside the collapsed section titled "New draft for review". — xaosflux Talk 18:10, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Oh. Why did it get put there? Going into the source editor doesn't show it located there. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:10, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
The section editor and likely the "COI Request Tool" you are using are geting confused because someone wrapped div's (those collapsed sections) around l2 headings. Maybe take those out. — xaosflux Talk 18:14, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Could you possibly do that for me? I'd rather not attempt to do that and mess something up. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:15, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Suggest moving all of the suggested rewrite to a sandbox or draft page to streamline that. — xaosflux Talk 18:16, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
@Blaze Wolf ^-- I can't from where I am right now, but may revisit when I'm at another computer. — xaosflux Talk 18:17, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Alright sounds good. I'll let the requester know that it would be better to do that. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:19, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Why isn't the formatting of my user page displaying correctly on en.wiki (from meta)?

Hi all

I have a unified user page across all Wikimedia wikis (not sure of the correct name for this). Unfortunately I'm getting a lot of issues with the formatting (missing fonts, wrong size text etc) which I've put quite a lot of effort into, since I work a lot with the UN and other professional organisations who read my page I'd really like to fix this.

Any suggestions? If this is a simple formatting error on my part please just change the meta page to whatever works. Or is it a bug?

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 19:29, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Where exactly do the fonts have wrong size? Ruslik_Zero 19:58, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
You appear to have several unclosed HTML tags. Give me a few minutes to remind meta that I am actually logged in. Izno (talk) 20:12, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Should be fixed now. Izno (talk) 20:40, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Status of Cologne Blue skin

After going through MW:Skin:Cologne Blue, I checked if or not it is installed on en-wiki at Special:Version. To my surprise, it is indeed installed here. The thing is that it doesn't appear at all at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering where all other skins are mentioned. How does a user set it, should they want to? And if it's "deprecated", do the cologneblue.js and .css no longer work at all? (I was working at Template:User toolbox, when I encountered links to cologneblue .js/.css which perhaps are no longer required.) Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 10:47, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Its deprecated, in that you can no longer select it indeed, but it is already your skin, it is still available to you. This has been the case for a while now. See meta:Tech/News/2019/33 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:21, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
So the only way to access it if you don't have it in your prefs already is to add ?useskin=cologneblue to the URL? —Kusma (talk) 13:18, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Not exactly. When you add ?useskin=cologneblue between Special:Preferences & #mw-prefsection-rendering, it unhides the option to set cologneblue as the default, but this arrangement effectively hides it from most of us and future new editors. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • C • L) 13:38, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Wow, that's a neat trick! Also works for Modern, a skin that I am more tempted to play with again than CologneBlue. —Kusma (talk) 15:58, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
See also mw:Wikimedia Product/Component responsibility#Skins, which describes both of those skins as "actively deprecated". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 191#modern skin on Commons and Wikipedia talk:Skin#'Modern' not selectable any longer. Basically:
In short: don't rely on it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:05, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Manual revert notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T154637

Is there a reason why users are not notified of manual reverts? The revert is tagged with Manual revert and the reverted edit is tagged with Reverted so surely there's enough information here to send a notification? FozzieHey (talk) 19:31, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I think it is because of historical reasons, because you used to be able to add/remove to the edit, manually revert and still have that tag. Anyway, there is a bug for this issue at phab:T154637.--Snævar (talk) 07:32, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
In many of our administrative processes, it is normal for edits to be reverted because the page returns to the same state regularly. For example, check the history of Template:Did you know/Queue/3 or Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. I wouldn't want to be notified for such "reverts". (More generally, I am not sure the notification for reverts is a healthy thing anyway). —Kusma (talk) 10:34, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
We probably want to notify good-faith editors but not serial vandals. Distinguishing the two is left as an exercise for the reader. Certes (talk) 13:30, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Contrariwise, notifying serious vandals (soon to be blocked) is fairly harmless, while giving good-faith editors constant and quick red alert messages may cause more annoyed revert warring than seeing the same edit half an hour later on your watchlist. —Kusma (talk) 21:58, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
Yup, I am aware that bots do manual reverts in some areas, it is touched on in the phab task by disabling the tag or notification for edits with the bot flag. Although, there are still a few other edge cases mentioned in the task as well. Thanks for your comments everyone. FozzieHey (talk) 15:34, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

How to stop web scraper sites?

I brought this up a few times last year, though nothing really materialized, but am hoping to raise this issue once again. I was just wondering if there is anything other than the spam blacklist or XLinkerBot to prevent citations to scraper sites from being used here? It seems that the area of recent deaths is where these are most prevalent, as there is just so much crap out there now that seems to scrape certain terms from Twitter (and probably Wikipedia) into cartoonishly amateur bot-generated "news articles" to generate clicks. Here are some previous discussions: 1 2; any further thoughts are greatly appreciated. Connormah (talk) 05:22, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Lookup the dns names, find their owners, blast owners on twitter ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:40, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Technically, not much can be done. The normal countermeasures such as captcha or passwords etc. obviously are not feasible. Refusing access based on IPs or other reverse DNS information is complex, resource-intensive and temporary. Non-technical solutions such as TheDJ suggested are probably the only readily available defense. 172.254.222.178 (talk) 11:56, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
@Connormah "... being used here? ..." can you clarify what you are asking? Do you want us to somehow refuse to allow certain people to read Wikipedia or do you want to prevent our editors from using references to these disreputable sources on Wikipedia? The former is quite at odds with our core mission. — xaosflux Talk 13:07, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Xaosflux, sorry for being unclear, I meant the latter. I would say there there seems to be more and more of these types of sites popping up over the last few years, and while it is usually easy to find a RS suitable for use on Wikipedia, the sheer volume of these types of websites makes it very easy to fall for one. Connormah (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
@Connormah see the notes at MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist. Besides SBL or XLBot, an abusefilter could possibly be used. All of these methods require someone or something to identify these sites though, I can't think of anything that will interrupt an edit, perform a machine-analysis of the contents of the link and make a reliable real-time determination if the remote page is disreputable. Possibly something like this could be integrated in to a near-time service such as mw:ORES. — xaosflux Talk 15:11, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Xaosflux, perhaps a working solution might just be to compile a list and add them into the blacklist as identified by users here? Here is another recent one, in addition to the ones listed on the Deaths in 2021 page. Worst case, I've seen some premature obituaries based off Tweets and pages generated from Wikipedia vandalism from these types of sites in the past (thus creating a WP:CIRCULAR "source"), so I think it is a good idea to somehow create some way to prevent them from being linked. Connormah (talk) 23:03, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
At the minimum, we should get a listing of these sites and add them to the citations blacklists to ensure that editors can not use them as sources, thus creating WP:CIRCULAR references. Ktin (talk) 23:19, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
Is there an external blacklist anywhere we could use, like with proxy IPs etc.? Scraping data has legitimate uses – I've legitimately downloaded stuff that way for Wikipedia and elsewhere – but we need to stop citing sites which consist of unfiltered or invented drivel. Certes (talk) 23:35, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
With regard to the spam blacklist however, I suppose that these cites would technically not be spam, though one could maybe make an argument that they are as they presumably exist to exploit ad revenue by using certain clickbait-y terms that one might use in Google searches. Perhaps an edit filter would likely be best way, then? Connormah (talk) 22:19, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
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