I know that there are limitations with Visual Editor and templates but I've started to notice it acting weird on a few specifically. If you edit certain templates with Visual Editor, it will most of time, mess up the parameter spacing and hidden comments that may also be in the template. Below are the templates which are effected by this (there may be more but these are the one I've used the most).
Other: If imputing bullet points manually, user can create multiple different bullet "charts" which don't merge into a single "chart" (Example).
To my best knowledge, these issues don't hurt the contents of the template if in "Read" mode (expect for the bullet point issue), but it does mess up the template layout which could be a problem for other users. I'm concerned that, due to the nature of the issue and amount of bytes it add/removes, Wikipedia might incorrectly ping newer users edits as vandalism and led to edit reverts or bans (which is unfair since many don't know). I've tried to minimize using VE with templates now but I've seen many others who use VE and unintentionally mess up the template(s). All in all, not an immediate concern, but it might be good to investigate the issue in the future. Thank you for your time; have a good day. DiscoA340 (talk) 23:15, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
VisualEditor is disabled in template space as mentioned at Wikipedia:VisualEditor#Limitations. All your examples were made in userspace which is more used for other things so VisualEditor shouldn't be disabled there. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:36, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter I recreated said issues there so I wouldn't bother editors but I can give examples on regular articles if that's necessary. DiscoA340 (talk) 23:44, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Editing a template means to edit the template page. I thought your post was about that but it's apparently just about editing template calls in other pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:12, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Infobox settlement is due to this recentish edit, and only changes the whitespace. Similarly for an even earlier edit on US census (harder to see, but it does make clear that it is a block-formatted template, which is what causes the whitespace adjustment).
Infobox US county does not have any TemplateData. Do you have an actual diff?
I do not see what you mean about Jct. Additionally, it also does not have TemplateData, so it will mostly default to whatever parameters you put in. Izno (talk) 23:57, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
@Izno My apologies, Template:Infobox U.S. county is fine with spacing but doesn't create a new line for each new parameter added (Example). U.S. State seems to be fine on second thought; Jct is also fine (must've been something with my edits, oh well). DiscoA340 (talk) 00:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Ok, so infobox US county will do that because there is no TemplateData, which means it defaults to inline formatting. Izno (talk) 00:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Turned off notifications for topics archived
I turned of notifications for topics being archived by accident. How do I turn them back on? I know it's a toggle button in Preferences, but don't know where exactly. Qwerty284651 (talk) 05:38, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Note there is a search box on the preferences page. You may be able to find the appropriate setting that way. isaacl (talk) 06:00, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
It's the option "Talk page archiving" in the Notifications section of Preferences. the wub"?!" 09:20, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
File:Helen martins.jpg was deleted due to being unused. However, that is only because a bot mistakenly removed the only use of the image in [1] after a page name swap that didn't update the links. Is there a way to restore the image? Aaron Liu (talk) 19:56, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
You can ask the administrator that deleted the image to undelete it. Ruslik_Zero 20:20, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Or any other administrator with half a brain. WP:REFUND for future reference, if you don't feel like gambling. —Cryptic 20:25, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Can't edit Draft Talk from mobile
I asked at HelpDesk and was told "You can try the MediaWiki Support Desk or make a bug report at MediaWiki", but before venturing into that alien territory (which presumably would lead me to Phab) I thought I would ask here.
I often edit from my Android Samsung mobile phone, as well as from my PC. I find that on my phone I cannot edit various talk pages other than article talk or user talk. This has been the case for some months; I raised it as a problem, I think in a zoom chat, and was asked for screenshots. Today I have at last discovered how to get a screenshot on this phone, so can read the error messages at leisure. So ...
I want to edit Draft talk:Honest History (magazine). If I use the "reply" link, I get a red box above my input saying "invalid response from server". If I click "read as wiki page" and do an ordinary edit (not VE), I get a red box saying "Error, something unexpected happened upon loading the preview. Please close and try again."
What is happening here? Can I fix it? Or are mobile editors considered to be an underclass who don't need access to backstage areas like Draft Talk?
To be honest I don't really know whether I'm using Chrome or the app: I start off by clicking a Chrome icon saved onto my home screen which gets to my watchlist, but then keep swapping between different configurations, in and out of "read as wiki page" and "View article in browser / on desktop" in an attempt to do whatever I'm trying to do: all a bit of a nightmare. I have another icon which might be the app but gets me to similar pages. In most cases I can find a workround, but contributing to Draft Talk pages, and various other Wikipedia Talk (non-article, non-user) pages, seems to be beyond the possible. PamD 09:54, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
@PamD assuming you are using a browser, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click the "Desktop" link to get a more full set of controls. If you prefer to use mobile web exclusively just uninstall the app from your mobile device. The edit you made to this page right now appears to be NOT in the app, and NOT in the mobile ui. — xaosfluxTalk 14:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
@Xaosflux I was editing on the desktop by the time I got here, and am now. This earlier edit was from my phone. Going in and out of the desktop version doesn't help on talk pages: clicking "desktop" at the bottom produces the same page, clicking "Read as wiki page" gets the banners displayed but makes no other difference. If I click on the "reply" option I get an input box, when I type and hit the blue "Reply" I get a red error box saying "Invalid response from server". Consistently on the Draft Talk page mentioned above, but I've encountered it elsewhere too. PamD 15:08, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
This sounds a bit like an ad blocker thatis accidentally triggering on the javascript request made on the talk page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:02, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
I am experiencing difficulties with the coordinates for Barton Broad. If they are placed at the bottom of the article, the "Infobox park" at the top of the article shows a map with a red area indicating the outline of the Barton Broad nature reserve. If I place the coordinates in the infobox, however, the red area disappears. I have tried playing around with the parameters to coord, but with no success. I am aware that placing the coords in the infobox works for some articles (eg Hainault Depot), although that uses an "Infobox Railway Depot" rather than the park variety. Can anyone explain what is going on, please, and is there a way to fix it? For the moment, I have commented out the coords in the infobox. Bob1960evens (talk) 13:26, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Adding |mapframe-wikidata=yes and fixing the coordinates seems to have done the trick. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:34, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the assistance. I don't think I would have guessed the solution myself. Bob1960evens (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
FYI: Edit to MediaWiki:Userjsdangerous
Just a small note to let you know that I've made a minor edit to MediaWiki:Userjsdangerous. We've been standardizing interface message boxes across MediaWiki for better accessibility and consistency so this change makes the message box you see when you edit JavaScript/CSS consistent with other message boxes across the site.
This results in a slight color change and padding change but no change to the text. Please let me know if there's any problem relating to this change. Jon (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
This change removed the same styling in MediaWiki:Clearyourcache which has a transclusion of the page that is conditional on page load (so it would not have been noticed). Fixed. Izno (talk) 19:30, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
They are included if there is an article, except the proposed HTTP 451. Would readers expect lesser known codes like 505 to be found on "505" alone? A lot of things have names with a number at the end and we don't want to flood disambiguation pages with partial matches. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Random picture from Wikimedia Commons
I would like someone to create Template:Random picture which basically retrieves a random picture from Commons (for userpages). I can't figure out how to do this myself so I'm asking for advice here.
Commons already has commons:Special:Random/Image, so I'm thinking it shouldn't be too hard.
Please ping me using {{ping|CityUrbanism}} in your reply. – CityUrbanism🗩🖉 17:05, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
@CityUrbanism, Commons already has commons:Special:Random/Image, so I'm thinking it shouldn't be too hard. ... is not how that works. You cannot do what you are asking onwiki. Izno (talk) 18:07, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
It would require a script to automatically be loaded by all users but there is no justification for that. Somebody might write a userscript users could choose to load for themselves but I think very few users would do it. I don't see anything relevant by searching for "random" at Wikipedia:User scripts/List. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:40, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
You could use the "randomly select from a list" approach. Just create a list of randomly selected images and change that list every week/month/whenever you get bored. —Kusma (talk) 20:49, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure that RexxS (talk· contribs) wrote a random picture selector using Lua (so there will be a Module: somewhere). It didn't select from the whole of Commons, but from a preset list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:47, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
I would add to the above that you definitely would want to use a predefined list. Commons has many, many images you probably do not want on your userpage. At best you would get poor-quality images, but you inevitably will get some seriously disturbing pictures.HouseBlastertalk 22:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
@HouseBlaster Yes, I've realised that would be a serious issue with this proposal. – CityUrbanism🗩🖉 22:34, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Reconstructing magic TOC
Would anyone be interested in reconstructing magic _ _TOC__ so that level2 headings create new columns?
The output would look like this, done manually just as an example, excuse the greek). I would like to do it, but I don't know programming. Perhaps, not so useful for encylopaediae, but for dictionaries -with repetitive standard headings-, extremely suitable. Thank you!! from el.wiktionary Sarri.greek (talk) 04:26, 6 April 2023 (UTC)\
YES! I came here to ask for a way to get a fully expanded clickable TOC, ideally next to the "Contents [hide]" link, e.g. "Contents [hide] [expand]" in the new skin. I really miss being able to skim all the subheadings which almost always appeared just after the intro in the old skin. Sandizer (talk) 12:33, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
To see a fully expanded TOC by default, this code in your common.css file should work (it works for me):
/* Auto-expand sections, and hide the H2-arrows */.client-js.vector-toc.vector-toc-level-1.vector-toc-list-item{display:block;}.vector-toc-toggle{visibility:hidden;}.vector-toc{padding-left:5px!important;}
Thank you so much, Jonesey95. Very useful. In addition, I was thinking of a module to create TOCs regardless of skins and csses. Directly. Thank you Sandizer, I like expanded ToCs too, but I also hope that editors can make different designs of ToCs for different kinds of pages with parameters. I believe that the table of contents, is the reponsibility of the editor and bodytext, not of outside areas, which, may repeat it, or not. Sarri.greek (talk) 05:18, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't care about this enough to actually report it in the appropriate place, or even to figure out where that is, but based on the above 2nd item I went and looked at my Preferences/Notifications tab. I don't (yet) have "Edits to my user page" option (with plural "Edits"), but I do have an "Edit to my user talk page" and an "Edit to my user page". I thought they were duplicates until I caught the "talk" in the first one. My point: shouldn't these be right next to each other instead of 8 lines apart?
I don't know what's coming on Thursday, exactly, so maybe my whining is moot, but I also don't know why I already have something in my Preferences. Or is EN-WP a "test wiki? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 01:26, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Notifications of user page edits are listed under "Recent changes" which means it already happened. I have tested the feature is working now. The new version of MediaWiki is listed under "Changes later this week".
uselang=qqx for Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo says "(echo-category-title-edit-user-page: 1)". That means MediaWiki:Echo-category-title-edit-user-page is used with $1=1. The message source says {{PLURAL:$1|Edit|Edits}} to my user page so it appears it may both say "Edit" and "Edits". With $1=1 it says "Edit". Maybe the plural form is used in other languages where singular would be considered wrong or weird, but I'm just guessing here. The source text of the above tech news says {{int:Echo-category-title-edit-user-page}} with no parameter. {{PLURAL:$1|Edit|Edits}} displays "Edits" if $1 is empty. I guess the tech news writer didn't know or care about these details. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, much, PrimeHunter, including the part where you read to me the "Recent changes" sub-head and politely explain that it means "recent changes". <Facepalm> what a doofus I am. I should either sleep more or write less. The rest was a bit over my head (even when I'm not too tired to read) but the qqx trick was fascinating; I'd never seen that before. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 05:24, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, both of you. I believe I was thinking of the situation (which I am positive I have seen) where some feature is being rolled out to certain wikis first. LIke English and Albanian Wikipedias and Esperanto Wiktionary would all get Fixed-Width Pending IP Flow two weeks before all the other Wikimedia sites. Again, the tip (for me) is to read for comprehension, not scan for speed. And thanks for Special:SiteMatrix; I hadn't known about that. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 14:39, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Home for Podcast RSS Feed of Spoken Articles
I recently wrote a python script that parses Wikipedia:Spoken articles into a podcast RSS feed, currently published at https://wcast.me/sw (paste that into your podcast app and check it out! ) with MIT-licensed source code at https://github.com/xenotropic/spoken-wikipedia-rss (Open an issue if it doesn't work with your app). I created it to use personally, but it also just to fill an apparent hole. Wikipedia has 1600+ recordings of articles in English, and podcast RSS is the main way people look for audio in the world these days, for good reasons (used by apps designed for the purpose, download management, keeping track of what one listened to, etc.).
My question is: does it make sense for that RSS file to be hosted on Wikipedia somewhere? I don't mind hosting the RSS file, but neither do I really want to. There is an apparent logic that Wikipedia would host an index of its own content; there are various other RSS feeds that Wikipedia publishes. It also would be nice if the RSS feed could not be buried in "external links" at the bottom of whatever pages where it is referred to.
If so, how would I go about this? Is this a sensible thing to make a bot out of? So something that runs on my server but writes a file to wikipedia or commons? (Are there examples of bots that write RSS to Wikipedia? Or even of RSS being hosted/updated like that on Wikipedia? Might be MIME-type issues). Or is there some method by which I could propose that Wikipedia itself "adopt" the code and just run it internally? It's a single python file with 200 lines of code, so not a huge thing to review. The main dependency is on the structure of the Spoken Articles page itself, but that seems fairly stable. morrisjm (talk) 01:03, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
@Morrisjm: very cool! Have you checked out Toolforge before? You can host it there, for free.
Wikipedia has limited feed generation support, we have FeaturedFeeds, but that's designed for date-based content, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't support the podcast stuff. I suppose you could publish the feed to a wiki page and tell people to access it with ?action=raw, but that feels a bit sketchy. I think Toolforge would probably be a better fit. Legoktm (talk) 06:33, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I was previously unaware of Toolforge, and it does look like the thing. Thanks! morrisjm (talk) 20:00, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Quiddity (WMF) or other WMF staff: are there release notes coming for the new version of MediaWiki? They are a bit overdue. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:56, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Hmm, it should be automated. I'll check/ask what's broken. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
This branch cut initially failed because of some of the deploy services on toolforge being down. I'm assuming that has something to do with it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:17, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
I had seen that, but then the deployment proceeded, and according to https://versions.toolforge.org/ it is complete, but still no release notes. Strange. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:01, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, I've pushed out __ARCHIVEDTALK__ to some of the major talk archive temples, will take a while for transcluded pages to get updated. — xaosfluxTalk 13:58, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
And I've now done mw-archivedtalk for most of them. {{collapse top}} and {{collapse}} are currently used in mainspace and shouldn't be, so while it wouldn't hurt to add it to those, those do also need to be fixed.... Izno (talk) 21:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah this explains why my recent changes page no longer has colored highlighting and doesn't have the thing I can press to refresh the page anymore. Dang... Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 00:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
My browsers are old! I didn't think Wikipedia would no longer work for me! Eventually I'll be moving to a new computer but for now I don't get the highlighting or javascript based refresh. Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 00:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
You should be able to run a recent version of Firefox. The latest version (111) is listed as compatible with Windows 7, which was released in 2009, and on Mac OS Sierra (10.12), which can run on any Mac made in 2010 or later. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:56, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Watchlist.
Starting today my watch list is acting screwy. Normally it has dots next to edits I haven't looked at.....but that is (now) there regardless if I have looked at the edit or not.....it doesn't differentiate between edits you have/haven't looked at. And also normally a option is there saying something like "Mark all changes as seen". But that isn't there anymore. Anyone know what is going on? Thanks.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I figured it was something like that.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:37, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Modern Firefox (current version 111) still supports Windows 7, though it needs Microsoft security update KB4474419. Chrome 109, released a few months ago, also supports it, but is the last version to do so. I'd recommend upgrading; I can't see a reason to use an old version of Chrome of all browsers. (Firefox has some cliffs here and there that would make natural cutoffs like Firefox 56.) Izno (talk) 01:47, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I should probably upgrade. I still use a older version of windows based on a (work) program I use....but that shouldn't stop me from getting a newer browser.Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:02, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
JavaScript
Is there any way to allow JavaScript to work on iOS 10.3.3? Ever since the phab:T178356 update, I've no longer been able to run JavaScript on that software, which is the latest version that my iPad 4 supports. I would imagine a userscript to circumvent this would be impossible, though could adjusting my personal CSS make a difference? Thanks all, ‑‑Neveselbert (talk· contribs · email) 10:55, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
No, this is not possible. The iPad 4 is 11 years old and unfortunately Apple's model doesn't allow you to switch to alternative browsers either... On the bright side, overall browsing Wikipedia this way should be faster, without the JS overhead. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
@TheDJ: is there absolutely nothing I can do though? Could jailbreaking help? I'm also confused as to why ES6 doesn't work on my iPad since according to caniuse.com/es6 it's supposed to be supported on iOS 10. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk· contribs · email) 12:52, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Not as far as I know. I'm not aware of any jailbeak that also installs 3rd party browsers or that allows you to install a newer version of iOS. .. "according to caniuse.com/es6 it's supposed to be supported on iOS 10". The lexical part of ES6 is supported on Safari 10, but some small critical ES6 parts are apparently missing/incomplete (specifically on the Promise front) (edit: I'm mistaken, we actually require some ES2018 it seems). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:06, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
@TheDJ: that's a shame. Is it known why this change hasn't been made backwards compatible? ‑‑Neveselbert (talk· contribs · email) 09:07, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
How to get edit toolbars back?
I did some edits to my preferences and since then the top and bottom toolbars for edit no longer appear.
As a side note, is there a way to export wiki preferences to a file to use as supporting documentation in problem reports? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:30, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
What operating system and browser version are you using? Izno (talk) 16:13, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
@Chatul, the reason you no longer have the toolbar is because your browser does not support sufficient functionality in ES6. See #Tech News: 2023-14. Upgrading your browser or your OS and browser are your only recourses. Izno (talk) 17:35, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
To export your preferences you can copy or save the content at the following link:
the legacy (2006) toolbar@Chatul: Which toolbars are you talking about? If it's the legacy toolbar (as shown in the image to the right), then you will need to *disable* the "Enable the editing toolbar" option in the "Editing" tab, and make sure the "Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar" option in the Gadgets tab is enabled. As its description mentions, the former will override the latter. Writ Keeper⚇♔ 13:19, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Do I have to log off and log back on for that to take effect? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chatul (talk • contribs) 17:04, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Vector2022 links broken?
This morning I am suddenly finding myself unable to click on any links in articles or in article toolbars when viewing articles using the Vector2022 style. I had to change my preference back to monobook to get anything to work again. It is not a browser issue; I tried restarting my browser, without any change, and pages outside Wikipedia work fine, as does Wikipedia under monobook. Anyone know what is going on and how to fix it? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:40, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Try safemode first to see if it is a gadget or user script. (WP:ITSTHURSDAY, so you may not be crazy.) Izno (talk) 18:47, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Also try to log out. What browser and what version of your browser are you using? Please give an example link which doesn't work. Are Example and The Example broken? Does Vector legacy work? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:28, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Alice Cooper, among others, exhibits this bug on Chrome Version 111.0.5563.148 on Windows 10. Vector legacy and MonoBook work. This is not consistent across articles, and on SOME articles (Republic of Ireland) refreshing or hard refreshing solves the problem at least until the next time the page is navigated to. It appears to happen sporadically - opening a new window (still signed in) might make links clickable, and might not. The top bar is functional at all times, though. PriusGod (talk) 21:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Something similar has been happening to me off and on all day. I'll load a page, and for about a minute, won't be able to click anything below the title/languages bar at the top. Refreshing doesn't fix it at first; eventually a refresh does make the problem go away, and switching to Vector Legacy also makes the problem go away. It happened on this very page just now (also over at Giétro Glacier, which I was reading when I noticed the problem again and decided to report here). It's happened in both Firefox and Edge. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 21:22, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm seeing this problem with the Fritos article in Chrome, also in incognito mode. From inspecting the page it seems that the article text is covered by a giant checkbox? See screenshot at right. —Bkell (talk) 21:23, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
This is being tracked at phab:T334699 but we are having trouble getting replication steps. If someone is still seeing this please could you share the raw HTML (obtained via view sourcd) on the ticket to help us replicate this. Thanks in advance! Jdlrobson (talk) 22:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
CS1 maint: url-status
Greetings, keepers of the eternal flame! I have sort of asked this question before, but can't remember if it was here or elsewhere. I have one of those very useful JS scripts installed (specifically for {{sfn}} errors) which also alerts me to CSI maint messages, which I often attempt to fix when I randomly come across them. But what is the point of the url-status messages, especially when they result in |url-status=live? Apparently a bot inserts them, but why? If a link is dead, that would make sense, but since a huge number of links are live, why go around letting everyone know all is fine? And why only some links on a given page rather than all of them? If the link is dead, I'm more than happy to see if it's on Wayback and amend as appropriate. And then what to do with the param? Or is it just statistics for the sake of statistics? :) MinorProphet (talk) 19:02, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Without |url-status=live the title of the webpage links to the archive version. Nardog (talk) 19:06, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
The maintenance message you speak of pertains to CS1/2 citations which have a status of live but which do not have an archive URL. Izno (talk) 19:10, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies. I came across this most recently in Telluric iron:
<ref name=MinDat-2063>
{{cite web
|title=Hatrurim formation, Middle East
|website=MinDat
|place=Keswick, VA
|publisher=Hudson Institute of Mineralogy
|url=http://www.mindat.org/loc-2063.html
|url-status=live
|access-date=2021-12-31
}}
</ref>
I don't think of myself as any sort of gnome, but should I run IABot in these cases? MinorProphet (talk) 11:11, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm fairly gnomish, and I don't much enjoy the needless addition of archive links to perfectly good references. This one is live, and the IA Wayback Machine tells us that the source was "Saved 74 times between November 13, 2003 and April 8, 2023." So no need to add more wikitext to the page.
What I might do, if I were making other changes on that page, is eliminate the unnecessary spaces in the ref citation. I see while in edit mode that the cite template is in expanded, one-line-per-parameter format, including a separate, ridiculous line for " }}" (space included), but as a minimum I would sneak the closing "}}" to come immediately after the access-date, and maybe even move the </ref> to come right after the ""}}"". Also I would determine a date format for that page and apply it everywhere (using a script). Also, I would delete the |place= parameter as meaningless for a website. And I would delete the |url-status= param completely, eliminating the error. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 14:46, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
You have two options: One is to fill in the archive URL (and date), either manually or with IABot, and the other is to remove the parameter and value (assuming the webpage at the URL is alive). Izno (talk) 18:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Is there an easy way to suppress the display of CS1 maint:url-status messages (which for me are just a distraction) while keeping the rest of the citation related messages? —Kusma (talk) 12:10, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
No. This could potentially be added, and it has been brought up at least once on WT:CS1. Further discussion should occur there. Izno (talk) 18:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks all for your helpful suggestions. Cheers, MinorProphet (talk) 22:25, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
How to wrap signature markup as sample mediawiki text
I expected {{code}} to wrap its parameter in <nowiki>...</nowiki>, and attempted to do {{code|-- ~~~~}} to display -- ~~~~ as example (grey background) text; the signature markup was expanded; I had to wrap the markup in an explicit <nowiki>...</nowiki> to suppress rendering as a signature. Is there a cleaner way to do this? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:48, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
It's impressive how long something is caching the rendering of these pages for the Android app (and maybe iOS app as well). There were two other pages that were actively serving vandalized short description as of April 8 until I published new versions of the pages: Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1185#Issue with short descriptions. So it's possible they were still serving the old content and someone purged/did a null edit that finally forced cache invalidation (this is just a guess). Skynxnex (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
A-class article assessment
How to start article assessment for A-class? Eurohunter (talk) 14:00, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
A-class isn't really used anymore. If you have a good article that you think can pass an even stricter evaluation, the next step is featured article candidacy. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:30, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien: If A-cass is not used anymore, what about remove it and keep in archive? Eurohunter (talk) 20:14, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I think the only project that really uses A-class still is WP:MILHIST. Galobtter (talk) 20:24, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
@Eurohunter: See WP:ACLASS, but check that the WikiProject concerned not only recognises A-Class but has a formal assessment procedure. If you look at Category:A-Class articles, you will see that of the hundreds of WikiProjects where A-Class is valid, most of the subcategories are empty - very few actually have any A-Class article. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:55, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I've had cause twice today to use the Undo tool to revert a non-constructive edit, and in each case when attempting to publish, I'm served a page reading The editor will now load. If you still see this message after a few seconds, please reload the page. Reloading gives me a "URI too long" error. Entering desktop mode allowed me to publish the revert. I saw another mobile editor at the Teahouse experience this issue (courtesy ping @Wikiexplorationandhelping:), and since I've just duplicated the behaviour moments ago and don't know how to file a bug report in phab I thought I'd come here. I'm on Firefox 111.1.1 on Android 11. I don't know what skin my mobile view uses or if that could even be relevant. Folly Mox (talk) 09:25, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Hello there, Folly Mox. I appreciate the ping :D. Yeah, I have the same problem as well. The undo button has not been working properly; as such, I will troubleshoot this on the desktop version. If you want to, you can also go to the desktop version of Wikipedia on a shortcut I have put in my talk page. Conversely, there's also a link there to go back to mobile version for convenience. I personally like to use mobile version more though. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 16:26, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Update: The undo tool does work in desktop version. Regardless of that, this issue should still be fixed. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 16:29, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Do you have a link to the page where this occurred? Nardog (talk) 17:02, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
The pages in my case were King Wu of Zhou and Talk:Laozi. The edit I reverted on the second page has since been suppressed. Folly Mox (talk) 18:41, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I missed that you had to click "Publish changes" (or "Show preview" or "Show changes" for that matter) to reproduce it. Phab task filed. Nardog (talk) 19:20, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Deceptive diff
Considering this diff, why does it reflect the removal as if I'd removed the preceding span's closing tag and then the removed span less its closing tag when in fact I had removed the entire relevant span beginning with its opening tag and culminating with its closing tag? --John Cline (talk) 23:34, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Diffing is hard. That's the only real answer.
(I use WikEdDiff available in your gadgets for a smoother experience.) Izno (talk) 23:36, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
It doesn't track what you actually do in the text area before saving. It just compares the before and after and shows one of multiple ways to get there. I don't think MediaWiki's diff engine is particularly good at giving a plausible way but I have never seen it give a wrong diff, meaning a way that wouldn't actually get you from the before to after. I recommend enabling wikEdDiff but I don't display it by default. If the MediaWiki diff looks poor then I examine the wikEd diff and often prefer that. But it also has weaknesses and is sometimes worse. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:00, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree that the diff isn't, in and of itself, wrong; I suppose it's literally impossible, in computational terms, for the machine to err. In practical terms, however, it is deceptive and could leave one with the wrong impression regarding another one's technical competence. As it is, I was compelled to hurriedly verify that I hadn't made such a mistake which would have resulted in a cut and paste move that published inoperable HTML. And if such a diff can engender doubt within myself, it's certainly fair that it could engender doubt within others. Perhaps, in the end, skepticism is more empowering than misplaced confidence; to that end, I may be indebted to software that might have caused many to look deeper at me, longer than they otherwise would, to ultimately develope confidence with less concern that it could be misplaced. One thing that is sure, it all works well in the end. I was, nevertheless, curious and thank you for your reply. --John Cline (talk) 01:05, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
"Show changes" produces the same diff as after saving. I sometimes tweak an edit before saving to give it a better looking diff. A good edit summary also helps. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:58, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Good advice, I appreciate that. I definitely endeavor to leave a good edit summary; especially after they increased the allowable size for it. I almost always preview changes I've made before publishing but never really made use of the feature to show changes; I intend to begin using it as you described and anticipate that it will be helpful to me. Thanks again for your replies and be well. --John Cline (talk) 20:16, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Click the green triangle here to see the wikEd diff without having to enable anything. The link also works for IP's. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:12, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Strange appearance in watchlist
Hello! About an hour ago, the cosmetic design of my recent changes and watchlist changed to something that looks a bit odd. If an editor more technically minded than me could explain what's going on I would be appreciative. Images are https://filebin.net/l9g4636rgl3exqq8, note the bullet points missing and odd looking log entries. It is like this for all platforms and browsers. I have checked, and it is fine on Commons. It seems to only be EnWiki.
As the quality of the images on the filebin are very low, here's an explanation of what to look for. Hist and Diff links are moved to after page title. Bullet points are gone, apparently replaced with the UCT time of edit, and entries are indented weirdly. Public logs are looking very odd: they only state the editor doing the action. Schminnte (talk • contribs) 20:44, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Schminnte, apologies if I misunderstood what is unexpected for you but I believe you may have enabled grouping. You can turn it on or off by clicking the gear button near the top-right of the watchlist or going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc and looking for "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist". I find it somewhat useful since it can show more articles on a screen at a time, even if there were many edits to some. Skynxnex (talk) 01:15, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
I also had my watchlist change and found that the group changes by page setting had been enabled. I did not enable it through either of those methods though. Do you happen to know if there is a keyboard shortcut that might be applicable? isaacl (talk) 04:48, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
@Skynxnex, you're right! That fixed it. I'm not sure how that happened, so thank you for recognising that. Schminnte (talk • contribs) 08:11, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Glad I could help! Skynxnex (talk) 14:53, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Sorry @Isaacl, I don't know if there's a keyboard shortcut. I looked briefly and couldn't find anything. Skynxnex (talk) 14:52, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Why did my watchlist change format?
Example of what my watchlist used to look like.Example of what my watchlist looks like now.
I signed up to the mentor list today and my watchlist seems to have subsequently changed format. In the past the (diff | hist) options appeared to the left, but now they're appearing in the center. Can anything be done to bring the old format back? — Nythar (💬-🍀) 00:45, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
See the Strange appearance in watchlist section above, it's the grouping watchlist option. So apparently it was turned on for some set of users recently? Huh. Skynxnex (talk) 01:13, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
I had the same experience as User:Nythar – the grouping option seems to have been turned on when I joined the mentor list. @Skynxnex: Thanks for linking the section above and for explaining how to switch formats. —Mx. Granger (talk· contribs) 01:16, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
That solved it. Thank you Skynxnex. — Nythar (💬-🍀) 01:20, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Archiving sources
Is there a way to get a list of all pages at "https://dnd.wizards.com/" that are currently being used as sources on Wikipedia? I have been advised that they plan on getting rid of that domain entirely and putting all of their new content on a new site, and that they have a track record of just deleting webpages instead of porting them over to whatever the new platform is, so I was hoping to make sure articles using those sources have archive links. BOZ (talk) 16:16, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Hey, [18]. Indagate (talk) 16:21, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Sweet, and thank you. :) I like the simple solutions. BOZ (talk) 15:00, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Also need [19] .. http and https are separate searches. -- GreenC 15:02, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, good catch! BOZ (talk) 15:35, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Just use Special:Search: [20]Izno (talk) 22:40, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
OK cool, I will look into that! Thanks. BOZ (talk) 15:01, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Uh...what?
So if you look at image 1 here, [21] you'll see the text for the article Flea. However, when I went to Wikipedia:Songs about Wikipedia, the preview for it said what is shown on image 2. I don't know if this is a custom thing, because I thought it was a vandalism, but it's not. I'm using Google Chrome Version 106.0.5249.112 (Official Build) (64-bit). AugustusAudax (talk) 21:21, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
It's a caching - one that is known about, I think but I can't find the phab ticket - Flea was vandalised and the page preview is still picking up the text of the lead paragraph of the vandalised version. Nthep (talk) 21:42, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
When I've encountered this problem in the past, I've found that purging or null edits solve the problem. —Mx. Granger (talk· contribs) 23:05, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Images not displaying in the Android app
Is anyone looking into this? Except for the first imsge in an article, captions only are displayed. Images do work in a mobile browser which iscreally annoying because like I don't already habe enough browser tabs open. 2601:1C0:CC00:45D0:A8FB:FF04:A450:D26D (talk) 07:52, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
I have the same problem but on iOS. I’m currently on the app right now, and I can only see the top image, but the rest are only captions. Hummerrocket (talk) 03:29, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
I've seen more reports and i also noticed it myself in an article now. Filed a ticket. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:01, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I can confirm this for different Android Versions, Custom Roms and last App Versions installed from Play Store and F-Droid. I excluded Problems with AdBlocker DNS Filters etc. 2A01:C22:90B7:2500:78C7:C126:ACED:7045 (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
We reverted a patch that landed last week that combined with caching caused the issue. I added some details for the root cause at the ticket. For new requests things should be working fine. In case JS assets are cached on the client side images are going to be eventually fixed when client side cache expires. JGiannelos (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
pageviews.wmcloud.org
There is no older views statistics than 2015? Eurohunter (talk) 11:22, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
The FAQ points to stats.grok.se, which is down, which points to WikiShark, which appears to be working and provide stats back to 2008. Nardog (talk) 15:04, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
@Nardog: Do you know why there are differences for year 2020 for Basshunter article between pageviews.wmcloud.org and WikiShark? Eurohunter (talk) 21:12, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
@Eurohunter Since July 2015, I assume it's exactly the same data. Before then, it used a very different metric called pagecounts. It should not be used in side-by-side comparisons with pageviews as they are fundamentally different metrics. — MusikAnimaltalk 16:55, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Maybe they're using different criteria or timezone? WikiShark appears to be roughly equivalent to pageviews.wmcloud.org when you set the platform to "Desktop" and the agent to "User". Nardog (talk) 18:51, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Adding a new barnstar to the default wikilove options
Hi! I'd like to add a barnstar to the default list wikilove uses (in my personal installation of wikilove through User:Ocaasi/WikiLoveinstallscript), how may I do so? Note, I'm not seeking to change the defaults for every user just for myself. — Ixtal( T / C ) ⁂ Non nobis solum. 15:54, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Due to the recent creation of new {{MilAward Desc}} and {{MilAward Ribbon}} templates to format military decorations in articles, there's a cluster of redlinked "Recipients of [military award]" categories that keeps turning up at Special:WantedCategories because the creator of the templates used complex module coding (see Module:MilAward) that's automatically generating them. They're typically populated by just one person, and thus can't necessarily be justified for creation yet — and while I have been able to make them go away by manually wrapping the implicated template in {{suppress categories}}, it isn't a viable long-term solution if this continues.
As of now, they've all been cleaned out with the suppress categories wrapper, but the problem is likely to recur in the future. So I wanted to ask if somebody with more experience in JavaScript coding than I've got can (a) ensure that the module only generates categories that exist, while not generating redlinks, and (b) ensure that the module suppresses all categories if the template is used on draft or userspace pages?
Gracias. Bearcat (talk) 14:52, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
No. Noone has spoke to me about this. BoonDock (talk) 15:47, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Ok, so this is my suggested solution.
1. Only generate categories in mainspace
2. Check that the categories exist before adding them. Like this:
localcategoryTitle=mw.title.new('Category:'..mw.text.trim('Recipients of Order of Mendi'))ifcategoryTitle.existsandnotcategoryTitle.isRedirectthen-- category exists and is not a redirectelse-- category does not exist or is a redirectend
localnamespace=mw.title.getCurrentTitle().nsTextifstring.len(namespace)<2thenlocalrecipcat=data[code].RecipCator""-- If there is a recipient category specified, then add it to the outputoutput=output.." [[Category:MilAward Ribbon Description]]"-- Add tracking Categoryifstring.len(recipcat)>0thenlocalcategoryTitle=mw.title.new('Category:'..mw.text.trim(recipcat))ifcategoryTitle.existsandnotcategoryTitle.isRedirectthen-- category exists and is not a redirectoutput=output.." [[Category:"..recipcat.."]]"else-- category does not exist or is a redirectendendend
Please see if that fixes the problem for you. BoonDock (talk) 16:12, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
As I indicated at Template talk:MilAward Desc, I believe that this template was, and still is, failing to comply with WP:TEMPLATECAT. Further discussion should probably happen there (and this thread should have started there). – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:09, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Ok. It's clear now. It's a recommendation which is why I didn't focus on it too much. How much weight should I give the recommendation? BoonDock (talk) 20:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
As you say it's a recommendation rather than a bright line rule, some people do have very strong feelings about automatic categorisation, but there isn't an overall community consensus to ban it. If you're going to add automatic categorisation the most important thing is to make sure that it isn't disruptive, there are a lot of editors who work on categorisation, and having special:WantedCategories flooded with nonsensical categories or a bunch of non-articles showing up in content categories due to a malfunctioning module will upset people (as you've just seen). A few ideas you might want to consider include making sure only pages in the right namespace are categorised, making sure the template doesn't add non-existent categories and having some built in way in the template to disable automatic generation of categories for cases where someone wants to categorise an article manually. Bear in mind that regardless of how well written your template documentation is at some point someone is going to put something wrong into the parameters, your template needs to be able to cope with that. It might also be worth considering using a hidden maintenance category to track pages where the module couldn't add content categories automatically - in those cases it might be that either a new category is required or one of the input parameters is wrong.
Other editors may want to weigh in here? 192.76.8.66 (talk) 20:37, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Ok, that's fair. I have been addressing the issues as they've surfaced, but let me just enumerate them here.
Checks for namespace and any namespace other than main, nothing is added
Checks for non-existent category. Does not add
Checks for redirect category. Does not add
There is only one "recipient" category possible per entry in the data table. This can only be added by adding to the correct field in the data table. There is NO way to do this from the template, whether on purpose or by accident by misconfiguring. If a category is added to the data table, it goes through the checks above, so that should prevent 99.999% of those cases you refer to. If it's a "malicious" edit to the data table, that's the same as a vandalism/disruptive edit and will get reverted asap just like any article edit.
A flag on the template to prevent addition of the category is definitely a good idea. I'll write that in and report back when done.
Two things about the maintenance cat.
I've been beaten up enough about adding maint cats to want to avoid doing it at all.
I cannot see the utility anyway because the module is written as I've outlined above to make checks any way. It's difficult (impossible) to prove a negative. It would be simple to create a maint category for all pages where a recipient category HAS been created, and I'll happily do that if there is consensus that that's required.
I think that covers everything.
One further thought. This isn't about an arbitrary adding of categories. The thought is that if you add in the article a display of an award then you are saying that person is a recipient of the award and thus the category. What I have not catered for is the case where the template is used on a page about the award, which would add that page to the recipient's list. That is specifically where the toggle option in point 5. above would be perfect.
I'll be interested to read other opinions/suggestions on the issue. BoonDock (talk) 20:54, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
There is now a parameter option "nocat". Calling the template {{MilAward Desc|PP|nocat=AnyGarbageYouLike}} will stop it adding the categories.
ifstring.len(nocat)>1then-- If ANYTHING has been specified as a value for nocat, then it's true-- Do nothing or add to tracking category?else-- Need to exclude adding the recipient category if it is not in mainspace.-- for now, that means checking it's not in "Template:" or "User:" spacelocalnamespace=mw.title.getCurrentTitle().nsTextifstring.len(namespace)<2thenlocalrecipcat=data[code].RecipCator""-- If there is a recipient category specified, then add it to the output--output = output .. " [[Category:MilAward Ribbon Description]]" -- Add tracking Category -- Note commented outifstring.len(recipcat)>0thenlocalcategoryTitle=mw.title.new('Category:'..mw.text.trim(recipcat))ifcategoryTitle.existsandnotcategoryTitle.isRedirectthen-- category exists and is not a redirectoutput=output.." [[Category:"..recipcat.."]]"else-- category does not exist or is a redirect-- Add to a tracking Category ???endendendend
One further (belated) observation is that I might have predisposed people against what I'm doing during the development of the templates/modules. In my defence, I learnt to program in Lua three days ago ;-) Mea Culpa, mea maxima culpa. BoonDock (talk) 20:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I received a (formerly known as Echo) notification of an email. From what I recall in the past, the notification shown when you click on the alert icon used to just say that you got an email from another user, as seen in the image at Help:Notifications § Email received. However this time there was a brief excerpt of the start of the message. I didn't think any of the message was stored. Has the message or an brief excerpt always been stored? isaacl (talk) 01:40, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
It hasn't been stored always, but it has been apparently since February 2016: T121831#2023926. The screenshot on the help page you linked is, funnily enough, from January 2016! Matma Rextalk 01:49, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the info! I see from the Phabricator ticket that the subject line is stored, unless it's the default, in which case the first line of the email is stored. That's good to know for privacy purposes... isaacl (talk) 02:02, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Given that {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Candidates for speedy deletion as having been created by blocked or banned users}}}} is returning 2 (1), I'm guessing this is an issue along the lines of T224360, T85696 and/or T221795. recountCategories.php is run monthly which should prevent most drift, but it may need running again for enwiki — this recounts all categories though, so I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable running it without getting the OK from someone "in the know" — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I use VisualEditor for almost everything I do on Wikipedia, and I'm curious to see how many people share my editing workflow, because it seems that on most edit histories that I view, the article edit history consists mostly of regular edits, not VE edits. Where can I obtain statistics on the usage share of VisualEditor? Thanks! Félix An (talk) 12:23, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
There's probably some way to get more exact statistics, but I just checked Special:RecentChanges, with the filters "Human (not bot)" and "Page edits". Filtered for the tag "#Visual edit", the last 500 edits go back ca. 35 minutes, while with the filter "not #Visual edit", the last 500 changes only go back 5 minutes. So I'd guess that means approximately 1 in 8 human edits is done with VisualEditor. I'm not sure whether it's possible to get actual statistics "per editor" instead of "per edit", but I can imagine that it'd be a bit more than 1 in 8, because I think editors who make a lot of edits are more likely to use the source editor, but that's just my hunch. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:39, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
To improve on this method slightly, I think it's better to compare "#Visual edit" to "#wikieditor (hidden tag)" (to exclude edits made with various gadgets), and to limit the results to the main namespace (as usage in other namespaces is very different, e.g. templates and talk pages have ~0 VE edits for obvious reasons). With this method, the last 500 changes were made in ~40 minutes in visual mode [29] and ~10 minutes in wikitext mode [30]. Matma Rextalk 18:53, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
You've got me interested enough to write a proper SQL query and try to actually count the users. Here's the best I got: https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/73006
In March 2023, excluding bots and counting only edits in the main namespace, ~18% of users used only visual mode, ~49% used only wikitext mode, and ~3% used them both for different edits. 30% of users used neither of the main two editors; I haven't tried to dig into this, but I think this mostly accounts for alternative wikitext editing experiences (e.g. the mobile site editor, AutoWikiBrowser, 2017 wikitext editor) and gadgets.
No promises that I didn't make some mistake in the query… I'm particularly surprised by the 3% figure. Perhaps someone is willing to review it, or explore different angles. Matma Rextalk 20:24, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Are you surprised by the 3% because it seems low or high? If it seems high, it is possible that your query captured editors who made just one or two edits with VE, either unintentionally or because they were testing something. In the first three months of 2023, for example, I made 11,700 edits, including one lonely edit with VE. So I would be part of the "both editors" histogram column in a three-month sample. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:38, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
It seems low. I read comments all the time from people who use wikitext except for tables, or who use visual except for templates, etc., so I expected to see more of them here. I use both editors myself as well, so maybe I'm biased (although looking at my edits in March, I guess I would be counted as a wikitext-only editor in this query). Matma Rextalk 20:52, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Did your query account for "visual edit: switched" tags? I would expect people who use an editor for only one purpose are likely to switch mid edit. small jarstc 10:23, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
It didn't, but they should have been counted with the wikitext group (as that tag is only applied when switching to wikitext). I added it to the updated query below to be sure. Matma Rextalk 17:26, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
The 2017 Wikitext Editor is pretty much the source editor and should be included in that group. Snowmanonahoe (talk) 17:00, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
You're right, although it is used by very few people, so it barely has an effect on the results. Updated query: https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/73050. Looks like about 0.5% of editors have used 2017 WTE, either exclusively or together with VE. Matma Rextalk 17:25, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
IMO it just makes the already-easy stuff easier and makes the other things that a newish editor needs to learn harder to learn. North8000 (talk) 14:16, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I use both visual and source, frequently even using both in the same edit. I think markup and templating is far easier with source, while wikilinking and referencing (with the exception of {{sfn}}) is far easier with visual. I used to prefer visual for writing prose, but now I prefer source. Curbon7 (talk) 14:27, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I use a mix of both. I say that because the 2017 Wikitext Editor (see Meta:2017 wikitext editor although it is out of date) is the Wikitext editor with tools from the visual editor (my favorite is the automatic citation tool which fills out all the needed params for {{cite web}} and various other citation templates automatically). I quite enjoy using it because it makes a lot of things easier while not limiting what I'm able to do (such as editing the Wikitext directly). ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 14:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
User:Salix alba/Citoid is a pretty good way to get the VE citation tool in wikitext 2010. DFlhb (talk) 12:43, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Die-hard source editor here. Totally agree with North8000. I suspect that visual might help me with complex tables once in a blue moon, but that's about it. In bygone days I suppose I would have been one of those who complained about the invention of the wheel, but something in me totally rejects the idea of clicking on an icon when I know just how to do it by hand - a bit like constructing a long bash command line. I'm obviously somewhere on the scale... (I'm only happy when it rains, I only like it when it's complicated) MinorProphet (talk) 18:27, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
North8000, Curbon7, Blaze Wolf, MinorProphet: I do not think Félix An expects to derive statistics from people remarking (forum-style) on their preferences here. Félix seems to be hoping for a clearer, more immediate approximation of editor usage. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 23:44, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
This handy spreadsheet says in Column R that 9.2% of non-bot edits on English Wikipedia used visual editor (from the start of Feb 2022 to the end of Jan 2023). Other wikis are generally quite a bit higher. How it breaks down by editor tenure is an interesting question though. the wub"?!" 19:11, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I use toolbars frequently rather than typing in, e.g., <ref>...</ref>, -- ~~~~, and VE seems to lack those. Add in its very sluggish performance and I generally strive to avoid it. What I'd really like is a snappy visual editor with all of the tools available in the regular editor. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:33, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Visual editor: I typically use visual editor for everything I can. I resisted this for quite a while, but visual editor evolved quite rapidly and in the right direction. One of the things that would be useful is a drive to add content to templates to make them fully compatible with the visual editor. I find it unfortunate that I cannot use visual editor for talk pages, actually. There are, of course, things that are much easier in wikitext or even impossible in visual editor, so I am a switcher on an as needed basis. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:34, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Your response doesn't seem to help answer the question Where can I obtain statistics on the usage share of VisualEditor?, nor are we collecting !votes here. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 03:42, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Implementing the consensus to set Vector 2022 to full width by default
Given the WMF has refused to do so, and given that they have ignored my comment that if they don't we will, although we would prefer they do as the solution will be cleaner, I think our only option is for us to do this ourselves.
A demonstration of this code can be seen here; note that the flash of unstyled content only appears for the demo, and putting the code in your own vector-2022.css style sheet or in MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css does not result in it.
I'm putting the code here for review by the broader community; if no one sees any issue with it then in line with the consensus at the Vector 2022 rollback RfC I will make an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Vector-2022.css. BilledMammal (talk) 20:21, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
phab:T332505 and phab:T332426 haven't been "refused" at this point, interested technical editors are welcome to contribute a patch for the first. — xaosfluxTalk 21:09, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Given this, and given their failure to reply to this comment, I don't see any reason to believe that this will change, regardless of whether the phab tickets remain technically open, and as such we need to do this ourselves. BilledMammal (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
The test would be if there was refusal to promote the patch, doing this server side would be much preferable then client-side hacks, especially for logged out users. As far as DIY, if you have a patch ready submit it and see. — xaosfluxTalk 21:16, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I don't have a patch, but I think a comment from the Chief Product and Technical Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation saying that they are continuing to make the right choice in the decision to keep it as the default is sufficient test; I doubt they'll suddenly reverse their opinion because a patch permitting such an option was provided.
I'm also not particularly eager to spend time learning the WikiMedia code base so that I could create such a patch, as I see no reason to believe it would be accepted - I also note Izno's comment about whether a solution for this would be better done in style sheets. BilledMammal (talk) 21:25, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, I tested that code snippet on test2wiki, and it is not ready as-is, many pages got forced in to an even-narrower viewport that could not be recovered from. Anything like this would need very very extensive testing (think of how much went in to the client-side darkmode hack, and there are still errors reported constantly). — xaosfluxTalk 00:40, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Can you give an idea what sort of pages those appear in? I've also found an issue with preference/contribution/etc pages; I'm working on that one. BilledMammal (talk) 01:48, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Figured out part of the reason there are issues on contribution/category/etc pages; it's disabled by default there. This does mean that there is a bug in that the toggle shows up even on those pages; I've submitted a bug report. BilledMammal (talk) 02:46, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Mostly on every Special: page. Note, it isn't just the icon being there or not, that CSS made the entire page much worse. As I noted, this would need extensive testing across all pages and actions before we would ever consider it for production. — xaosfluxTalk 09:51, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I wasn't clear; the bug with the toggle was unrelated except for the fact that I discovered it while looking into this. The reason it fails there is because by default the width toggle is disabled on pages in namespaces 12 and -1 (with the exception of user preferences); because this wasn't accounted for it resulted in some unexpected behavior.
Alexis Jazz has produced an updated script that fixes most of those issues, although I believe there are a couple still to resolve - I'll look into it further when I have time, and in the meantime hopefully it will become unnecessary because the WMF will agree to implement it on their end. BilledMammal (talk) 22:41, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
It also seems to break the full/limited width toggle for logged out users.. is the idea to prevent unregistered users from selecting a preference? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 01:50, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
My tests suggest that it does work for logged out users, although there is still some work to be done per xaosflux - see the demonstration linked above. It could be that the version I'm currently working on broke something there? I've updated the link in the original post to a static container. BilledMammal (talk) 02:31, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I looked into creating a patch, and believe I have something that would allow TNT's patch to work; see the bottom of phab:T332505. BilledMammal (talk) 07:42, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
@BilledMammal: I just wanted to note this somewhere; my interactions with Vector 2022 and the resultant RfC/discussions/etc. have been entirely in my capacity as a volunteer (and I include the above-mentioned patch in that). I'm always more than happy to help where I can though, up to and including writing patches and trying to "prod" the right people to take a look — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 08:19, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, it is appreciated. BilledMammal (talk) 09:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
You might have to translate for us mere non-coding mortals. Would that make it the default for English Wikipedia? North8000 (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Hi everyone, thank you for bringing this up. I just wanted to mention that the discussion on next steps is still ongoing on this page and we’re still working on the best way to proceed. We have presented a few different options for how all users can clearly choose which width they prefer, and which the community is currently discussing and weighing the pros and cons of. There is also discussion of how we can respect current existing user preferences on the width. We hope to allow a few more days for discussion and provide a summary and concrete next steps by Tuesday, April 4. @SDeckelmann-WMF is out this week, but will be back next week to continue the conversation. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
@OVasileva (WMF): To clarify, are you saying that things have changed since 25 March and you will now be respecting the consensus to set the default for logged-out users as full width? BilledMammal (talk) 01:05, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Alexis Jazz has produced an updated version of the CSS file, which may have fixed the issues you saw Xaosflux; so far, I'm not noticing any. It can be found here. BilledMammal (talk) 09:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
All this is so sad, and I bet most people are tired of it. So there was a well hidden RFC, where someone snuck in a second question somewhere near the bottom of the page. And some people answered what they liked better, and there were some good arguments like why any publication ever published had limited line length. Expectedly, no agreement was reached. But hey, there's consensus, and we'll make the English Wikipedia different from any other Wikipedia in the World, and we're gonna push it just so we can show who's the boss. That RFC was like me standing in the long return line at Costco the other day; guess what, everyone had to say something against Costco, 100% consensus! 300 people is by no means a majority of users. It's not even a majority of this Wikipedia's administrators. But okay, keep pushing your agenda, enjoy your 1.5 foot line lengths. 2604:CA00:16B:990E:0:0:662:4239 (talk) 18:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
You are implying that the majority of arguments either way where WP:ILIKEIT, which is not the case. They presented considerations that involve the implications of the changes on the experience of all users, not just the preferences of the RfC's participants. It is also strange that you are calling one of the most participated-in RfCs of all time "well hidden," and the second question was there almost from the start. small jarstc 09:18, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
well hidden the RfC was listed at WP:CENT, notified at every applicable noticeboard and talk page, even including Donald Trump’s talk page for some reason, and reached WP:300 levels for support, WP:200 for oppose, and over 150 participants in the second question alone. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
English Wikipedia was already different from the rest of the world long before a Vector 2022 was ever considered. Every wiki is unique. Not sure what you were heading at there. Tvx1 21:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I personally would wait to see what WMF does before diving into CSS. It is WP:NOTAVOTE, it is a consensus process. Whatever we do we should take into account practical considerations, like different screen sizes and devices. Maybe set the "limited width" to only take effect as soon as the screen is extended beyond a specific screen resolution (like 1080px)? This is a good compromise between those that want some fixed width and those that want unlimited width. Then we do not have to worry about window resizing or any of that nonsense. It could be an in-between toggle. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 14:30, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
Then the contention would be that the width that you need to go to before fixed width takes effect is wider than the scientific optimum. small jarstc 15:41, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
We already have a consensus on the matter. A “compromise” here is unacceptable. Default width needs to be default. ToaNidhiki05 22:03, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
Please also note that a hacky workaround like this can easily break if the skin gets redesigned. Vector 2022 is still a new skin, and there will certainly be changes to make the skin stable. We should certainly give it time to evolve to meet the needs of the community and its readers. I know of many of my tools that have broken because of redesigns. Let's not make this hack be one of them. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 22:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
It’s almost like the skin isn’t ready for prime time. But regardless, WMF can resolve this but implementing unlimited width. I hope they do so. ToaNidhiki05 01:27, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
V22 has been in the works for years and always based on v10, a sudden redesign to the width is very unlikely. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Maybe not right now, but when they fully deploy? This will certainly be something that will need to be considered given the skin is still a WIP. I have a feeling the Vector 2022 that you see in seven or eight months will be a different skin than the Vector 2022 you see right now. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 17:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I don’t think they would make such a major change to limited width, a very small (code-wise) feature, after working on this skin for so long Aaron Liu (talk) 11:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
While technically any workaround would be our problem, in practice the WMF will need to be careful not to break it as they have a strong interest in not breaking enwiki. BilledMammal (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Patch rejection and further consideration of the proposed CSS change
It appears that the WMF is not willing to consider the patch I proposed, and do not appear willing to produce a patch of their own. As such, our only option appears to be the CSS. I will review the code provided by Alexis Jazz further, to identify any remaining issues, and similar efforts by other editors would be appreciated. BilledMammal (talk) 02:36, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
If you're referring to T332505, it may be worth seeing what the outcome of the meeting tomorrow is? I'm not sure the only option is changing the sitewide CSS. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:46, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
They don't consider your patch because a logged-out invert would require changing a variable in the source code instead of a dollar-sign preference. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:42, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu: Are you referring to where we replace the class name to switch? If you are I do it that way because the WMF's existing code does it that way and I wanted to minimize changes. BilledMammal (talk) 19:26, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Nevermind, it was something else but I got confused. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:37, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Nevermind again, I was right the first time. Wouldn't the logged-out users snippet change the behavior for every wiki instead of delegating the preference to a variable? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:38, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu: No; implementing my change wouldn't change the behavior for any wiki. TNT's patch would then change the behavior for enwiki. BilledMammal (talk) 13:38, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Software Stable Release Infobox
The Stable Release field on the SponsorBlock infobox is broken, displaying every version number instead of just the latest. I've compared the wikitext for the infobox to other software articles and it looks to be the same so I've no idea what is actually causing this. It could be Wikidata itself causing the issue but I'm afraid I just don't know enough about this to tell. Any help would be appreciated as it's been like this for a number of months now. – Mesidast (talk) 10:21, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
d:Q103887994#P348 is missing a 'preferred rank' which has been removed by a bot: d:Special:Diff/1877574242. hgzh 12:05, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I created a section about this problem at the talk page of the template in November 2022. --Kallichore (talk) 16:16, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
As User:Jonesey95 pointed out the number of sites with this problem can be found using the search function here: currently 22 articles with this problem are found. --Kallichore (talk) 16:38, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
What's the best way to set my preferences for editing, particularly adding citations?
Besides the usual, eg a toolbar with strike, etc., I want to be able to add citations easily - ie for journals, news, books, etc by adding either details or using an url. I must have messed something up. Using the Vector 2022. Thanks. Doug Wellertalk 16:14, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: Have you tried using the 2017 Wikitext Editor? While that does make use of the feature through a toolbar that sounds like what you might be looking for. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 16:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Sounds like you accidentally disabled refToolbar. Nardog (talk) 16:51, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Nardog I'm sure I have, can't figure out how to get it back. I must have something ticked that I shouldn't. So many options! Doug Wellertalk 17:00, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
It's in the Gadgets tab. You can also use the new search box at the top. Nardog (talk) 17:11, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Nardog @Blaze WolfEnabled but I don’t get it. Can’t find the 2017 Wikitext Editor even through the nifty search box. Thanks, sorry to be a pain. Doug Wellertalk 17:33, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: That's because the 2017 Wikitext Editor is currently in beta. It's under the "Beta features" tab as "New Wikitext editor". ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 17:36, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Blaze Wolf That’s part of the Visual editor isn’t it? Which I don’t like. I feel pretty useless right now! :) But as I need to add a lot of sources… Doug Wellertalk 17:50, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: Technically yes. However it behaves just like the source editor except it has the visual editor's toolbar. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:07, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: Yes I realize that now, I misinterpreted what you were asking. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:29, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
AFAIK refToolbar isn't compatible with the 2017 editor. Do you at least see the toolbar buttons as in this screenshot? Nardog (talk) 17:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@NardogNo, that's what I'm trying to get back. Wish I could have that with wiked but I don't think I can. I've tried to unclick most things. Did I always get a "Preview of references" and not notice it? I may have to give up tonight and comeback tomorrow with screenshots. Thanks. You've been great. Doug Wellertalk 18:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Is "Enable the editing toolbar" on? Nardog (talk) 18:14, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Blaze Wolf@Nardog AGH! I've been checking it on Safari on my iPad, that's the problem. Well, I had lost it, but with help here I've got it back. I never add sources using Safari on my iPad and it just slipped my mind that I'm a Chrome user on my PC which is what I normally use to edit. iPad's just to clumsy. So I've got wikEd and Reftoolbar 2 now, life is good. Doug Wellertalk 18:36, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Sounds like the same problem as the one discussed in #JavaScript above in relation to the third item in #Tech News: 2023-14. That is, MediaWiki's JavaScript support for your iPad has recently been dropped. Nardog (talk) 19:38, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Reports that I use that are issued daily by HaleBot and SDZeroBot didn't get published today. Is there some system-wide problem? I scanned this page and don't see any pertinent announcement. But I find every time I post on this noticeboard, there is usually someone who knows what's up. Thanks for any clue you can bring to this situation. LizRead!Talk! 01:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Looks like there's a problem with the database. Page statistics like pageviews, date created etc. are not loading. JeeputerTalk 02:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
The problems with HaleBot have been remedied but I assume other bots are still having issues. I noticed my own editing stats were not up-to-date earlier in the day. It's just usually when this thing happens or a ticket is filed, some technologically-minded editor posts about it here. But thanks for your observation, Jeeputer. LizRead!Talk! 03:28, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Over the past few months, I've observed database reports that I maintain randomly missing days and/or data. I redeploy the service each time I see this, and it works again for several weeks until it doesn't. Would not be surprised if this has something to do with wikitech:News/Toolforge Grid Engine deprecation. -FASTILY 07:37, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
And, yes, I should have kept a log of what I added, when, so that it would have been easier to back off changes :-( -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Chatul: Izno mentioned in that thread that the reason you no longer have the toolbar is because your browser does not support sufficient functionality in ES6. See #Tech News: 2023-14. Upgrading your browser or your OS and browser are your only recourses. Izno is very knowledgeable about such things, so I'd expect them to be right. Are you able to upgrade your browser? Writ Keeper⚇♔ 14:46, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread the date on that and thought that it was the version I was already using. There is a version of Dooble curently in beta test for my system; I'll try that. I was somewhat surprised to see that it supports gopher but not mailto.
No problem, I hope that works for you. (Also, to answer your question from that thread, no, you shouldn't have to log out and back in for preference changes to take effect; you'll just need to navigate away from Special:Preferences, which is always displayed in Safe Mode for security reasons.) Writ Keeper⚇♔ 15:16, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Special:CiteThisPage
Where do I go to raise an issue with the MLA output formatting generated by Special:CiteThisPage ? Nthep (talk) 16:23, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
I beg your pardon. I after creating User:UBX/Marina Diamandis and adding it in my own username page, I can see her category: Marina Diamandis below my username page. also my username has been added into category: Marina Diamandis - Are you able to fix it please? I don't know how and I am not! Regarding. NameGame (talk) 16:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Odd. The userbox template isn't adding the category to your userpage anymore, but it's appearing in the category. Purging the cache for either page doesn't help. Not sure! it might just go away after some time. SWinxy (talk) 17:04, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
By now, there is not "category:Marina Diamandis" in my username page anymore. But unfortunately I see my username NameGame has not been removed from category:Marina Diamandis. @SWinxy Thank you for your attention, I wish it'll be disappeared soon. NameGame (talk) 17:23, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
I made a null edit of User:NameGame. This removed the user page from the category page. A purge only affects the purged page but a purge of a category page doesn't update the listed pages, only the output of the wikitext in the category page. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:29, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Good to know. If that's the case, the advice that is linked to by "This list may not reflect recent changes." should be altered: (It may help if you purge the page.)SWinxy (talk) 00:51, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I was unclear. I meant a purge of a category page doesn't affect which pages are listed. There is no way to get an updated list without already knowing which pages need adding/removing and making a null edit on each of them. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:28, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
My username has been removed from category:Marina Diamandis & I no longer see it in there. I appreciate your help everyone. I wish happiness to you all. NameGame (talk) 08:37, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Copy options for indicator/tooltip in the Vector 2022 full/limited width toggle
Today, I got pinged from a discussion in the Irish Wikipedia, something to do with User:Ritchie333/Irish Monopoly. Unfortunately I can't speak any Irish, so I cleared the notification with the idea I'd come back and run it through a translation utility to get the jist. However, the notification's now disappeared from my list, which only shows ones on the English Wikipedia. How can I get it back? Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 14:32, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
You need to go to the Notifications page on the Irish Wikipedia: https://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speisialta:Notifications (same as ga:Special:Notifications). Cross-wiki notifications have several annoying bugs: another one is if you use the "small screen" version of Monobook or Vector2010, you get the red number, but you can't access the notification. (I then need to rotate my phone to be able to see what the notification is). —Kusma (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
rather than the lead, not sure why, the page has two interactive map templates at the start however. The error occurs on Chrome, Edge and Firefox for me. DankJae 22:35, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Fixed in this edit. The software was picking up the = in games=5.179 and treating all the text before that as a parameter name, meaning there was no parameter 1, which is why it complained about no content. Aidan9382(talk) 16:33, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Not sure what happened here but I've restarted it now. — JamesR (talk) 13:43, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Why not reactivate the other HBC AIV helperbots so that this does not happen again? Lightoil (talk) 13:58, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Javascript errors continously pop up
This always seems to show up every time I click on my alerts or notifications...
Hi! Whenever I click on the alert or notification buttons, there's always this "Javascript error" that pops up, and this distracts me from clearing my notifications. Does anyone know how to fix this? I thought it was the latest script I had added to my common.js page but apparently it continued after I removed it and even prior to the addition. TailsWx 17:49, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Not sure if this is what you're asking, but you can turn off those error popups by unchecking the relevant gadget — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 17:55, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Since when were those turned on? Anyway, thanks! Now I won't have to contend with the errors no more! TailsWx 17:57, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm getting these new errors as well. I've had Javascript errors turned on for a while, and those red error messages pop up very occasionally, but they are more regular now when I click on the red notification bell. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:24, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
I've also been getting these errors recently. — Qwerfjkltalk 06:15, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
This seems to trigger for me when I attempt to open the notifications menu. Looks like incorrect usage of classList.... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:02, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Will be fixed in next weeks update. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:06, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Converting links to Internet Archive links
Is it "standard practice" to convert all links in an article, all of which are working properly, to Internet Archive links, on the reasoning that doing so "prevents link rot"? Isn't it the case that by converting all the links to IA links, if IA ever goes belly-up, we lose all of the links that have been unnecessarily converted, whereas if they were left as they were, each separate source would have to go bad in order the same the same effect? Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:39, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
No, I am pretty sure it's not "standard practice" Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:43, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Adding archive-url as a parameter is fine, done by bot like IABot, replacing the original url with an archive is not fine. Indagate (talk) 12:48, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
No links have been replaced. For context, check this diff. – Rhain☔ (he/him) 12:55, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
As Rhain noted, no links have been replaced. They've actually made the article better by adding backup IA links. Gonnym (talk) 12:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The links are no longer the actual links, they are copies of the linked material, which means that we are trusting the Internet Archive to be accurately reproducing the New York Times article, instead of just trusting the New York Times website to be accurately showing its own article. Trusting IA is fine when the original material is no longer online, since we have no choice in the matter, but why are we allowing the use of what are essentially secondary links when the primary links are still available? This makes little sense to me in terms of guaranteeing accuracy. If this is policy, I think it's a mistake (and Rhain's citations of supporting policy do not seem to be to be relevant.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:03, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The title is linked to the original URL as long as |url-status=live is set. Nardog (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The original link hasn't been changed and is still there. They've added a second link. Please actually look at the citation text before reverting. Gonnym (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
If it helps, compare this ref to this one—the only difference is the extra "Archived from the original...". The rest of the ref remains intact. – Rhain☔ (he/him) 13:09, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
OK, I stand corrected. Thanks to all for the education. Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:13, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
@BMK: I see this is resolved but the point of adding the archive links now is that it is very likely that a link which works now will not work in a couple of years because websites change all the time with no thought for maintaining old information. Once a page has gone, it becomes very difficult (or impossible) to find and harder to be sure that what is found is actually what the original editor had in mind. Therefore, it is best if external links are archived now, while they are working. Johnuniq (talk) 23:03, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, I appreciate the information. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
I find archiving live links to be perfectly acceptable IF there's a possibility or a suspicion of the link to go dead. Pages for a live sports competition (e.g. rio2016.com)? Sure. books.google.com? Less so. DatGuyTalkContribs 01:25, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi there! I'm looking for a tool that would do the following:
Allow you to enter a page (from any namespace) and a category
If the page is included in a subcategory, then return a result showing the entire category path from the category entered to the category on the page (i.e. category, sub-category, sub-sub-category,...)
I'm asking because I've created a recursive list of talk pages within Category:Wikipedia infobox backlog, and many of the pages in the result don't seem to have a parameter such as |needs-infobox=yes. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:55, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Help if possible
Greetings everyone,
I'm in need of assistance with the "New articles" section on Portal:Algeria, as it is currently not functioning properly. To be honest, I have no clue how to address the issue.
Thank you in advance for any help that can be provided. Riad Salih (talk) 12:38, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
I believe Wikimedia templates allow one to invoke a template once but pass it multiple sets of parameters but I have been unable to find the relevant template documentation. I found it several months ago so I'm fairly certain it is supported. So, instead of the above, I can do:
{{A|
red|255|0|0 ;
green|0|255|0 ;
blue|0|0|255
}}
The template syntax is probably not quite correct (i.e. semi-colon set separator) to distinguish the multiple sets of data. RedWolf (talk) 20:40, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
The template would need to support unnamed parameters |5=, |6=, etc., at which point you could write:
{{A|red|255|0|0|green|0|255|0|blue|0|0|255}} and the template would work just fine. A few templates have been set up to work like this. Off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is {{Video game release}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:21, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
If you're asking if there is an inherent feature of template syntax so that one invocation of a template will automatically be turned into multiple invocations, no, that doesn't exist. The template in question would have to be coded to support processing multiple sets of parameters, as you describe it. To do it in a way that supports unlimited sets of parameters (within underlying resource constraints) would require the template to be implemented with a Lua module. isaacl (talk) 01:29, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
{{For loop}} with explicit values (option 2) can do something like this without having to code the wanted template for it. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:52, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm certain that within the last few months there was a thread, not necessarily at VPT, about passing a table (or possibly an array) as a parameter into a template or module. It was explained that this was not possible, but the OP persisted in asking the same question with variations. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:10, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
@SD0001 and Xaosflux: It looks like the workaround is no longer needed. Can you see if this patch works? Nardog (talk) 03:01, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I add several links in my personal JavaScript and they all got the dark mode icon before in Vector 2022. Now they get no icon. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:32, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh, it looks like we've been using portletId where it should have been portletLinkId all this time. My bad. Nardog (talk) 03:45, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Sorry I was away, not sure if something is pending me? If it is a page that needs to be synced/updated that doesn't have an open edit request, please drop one of those in the meantime. — xaosfluxTalk 16:47, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: No worries. Can you sync the JS on testwiki with the patch? Nardog (talk) 13:04, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
I have experienced this multiple times before, mostly on pc, but never got around to reporting this. Thank you. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 19:40, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
New font: many important buttons are missing on mobile
I dislike Wikipedia's new look with a burning passion for many reasons, but one of the most annoying is how so many the buttons, including such important ones as the search bar, don't even work on mobile unless you switch to the mobile view (and kill categories). Please don't just say "just use the mobile view" because it should be obvious by now that it's not nearly as functional as the desktop view. Thanks. w.i.k.i.w.a.r.r.i.o.r9919 05:28, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
WikiWarrior9919, here is my suggestion: Use the fully functional desktop view on your mobile device, and switch back to the good old fashioned Vector 2010 skin. Get the details at Wikipedia:Vector 2022#How to turn off the new skin. That will allow you to avoid two different types of shenanigans imposed on mobile users by the Wikimedia Foundation. Cullen328 (talk) 05:41, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, I find Timeless much better on mobile, because it's the only skin that properly scales to fit the screen. Sojourner in the earth (talk) 05:47, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Well, what about users who are too lazy to log in? (Which is admittedly me sometimes.) w.i.k.i.w.a.r.r.i.o.r9919 06:14, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Tough shit? --Jayron32 15:51, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
1. What if you genuinely like Vector 2022, consider it an improvement over Vector 2010, and don't want to switch back? And you think everything is fine except for the mobile search bug?
2. What about people who can't create accounts because they use Wikipedia at school, on VPNs, using mobile data, etc.? "Just create an account at home!" Well, what if you only want to browse Wikipedia and not edit? w.i.k.i.w.a.r.r.i.o.r9919 16:38, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
All my buttons work. Can you give a more accurate description ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:05, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm also confused. The recent changes to Vector didn't change any font AFAIK. The desktop search bar and other buttons work fine for me in a mobile browser. Although it shouldn't be a huge surprise that if you opt to use an interface specifically designed for large screens on a small screen, instead of the one specifically designed for small screens, it's a bit more fiddly. – Joe (talk) 07:11, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Joe Roe, the misnamed "desktop" site is fully functional on contemporary smartphones using Vector 2010. My edit history for the last 12 years demonstrates that. "Fiddly" is an almost incomprehensible term to Americans. To me, a Californian, it comes across as "resembling a violin used for dance music or bluegrass music" although I am sure you meant something else. Cullen328 (talk) 07:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm also an American, and I find "fiddly" to be a perfectly cromulent word. Anomie⚔ 12:02, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
"Fiddly" is perfectly understandable to this American. And I have never had a problem with other Americans not understanding my use of it. Did you perhaps mean to limit your comment to those Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line or west of Texas? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:09, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Canadian here and I understand it. It just means something that needs to be fiddled with. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 12:40, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Ex-Californian here and although I've never heard the word "fiddly" before, I assume it means something that needs to be fiddled with to work properly. LizRead!Talk! 16:58, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah yes, everyone's favorite Wikipedia game "My dialect is different than yours!" --Jayron32 15:53, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
When I press the magnifying glass, nothing happens. I literally can't access the search function, forcing me to either temporarily switch to the more zoomed-in mobile mode and then have to switch back, or directly edit the URL.
I apologize if this conversation has been had hundreds of times on Wikipedia already, but... what's the use of forcibly switching the entire wiki to a new interface when said interface is janky and half-baked? w.i.k.i.w.a.r.r.i.o.r9919 16:34, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
You haven't said what version of which browser you are using or anything. You are the only person with this problem so far, so likely it is something specific to your setup. Either the browser, the extensions, ad blockers, userscripts or gadgets. Which of those, is impossible to say from the outside without more information. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:11, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
also.... why is this even on the proposals page ????? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:12, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes this should be moved to WP:VPTGalobtter (talk) 08:24, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Wasted space at the top and bottom of <gallery> element
There is a lot of wasted space at the top and bottom of <gallery> element. Seen here using Pesticide browser extension.
Why is there a huge white wasted space at the top and bottom of <gallery> element? This pushes the gallery much lower than it should be. In this picture of 118th United States Congress, the html for Senate gallery is coded above the composition table, in order for them to hang from the same line, but a reader sees it some three lines down. It being down, further pushes the House diagram to the down, which both further push the images lower than where it should be. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 14:32, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
mw-gallery-slideshow gets margin: 4em 0; somewhere outside Wikipedia. 4em is the top and bottom margin. I don't know why it's so large. You can change it with for example <gallery style="margin: 1em 0;" .... PrimeHunter (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks I reduced the margin to 0em, and it works, but is there some way it could be fixed backend? —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 19:44, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
That's quite unusual use of <gallery>...</gallery> to begin with. Why would anyone put it inside a floating table?? Should be {{multiple image}} or something like that. Ponor (talk) 12:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
For now, {{multiple image}} may work. But, in 117th Congress page, there are 33 images for the House composition, so this slideshow version is the one that works best for every Congress article. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 12:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Templates being wrapped in nowiki tags when using the reply function
Has something changed with the reply function? I was posting a message including a template, and it was wrapped in nowiki tags. I've just tried to do something similar here, and instead a mass choose Template popup opened. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:22, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Ignore me, I see a Visual editor option has been added (and made default). Using the Source option restores the expected behaviour. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:51, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
@ActivelyDisinterested: You've got me curious. According to WP:VE the Visual Editor is disabled on Talk and Discussion pages. What page were you replying on that it let use use visual editor? RudolfRed (talk) 19:48, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
The original issue was with this edit to Talk:Patricia Wald. But as I write this I have the option to switch between Visual and Source, in the top left corner of my reply. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:09, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Top righ hand corner for me on this page. Doug Wellertalk 20:41, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks for the replies. RudolfRed (talk) 22:29, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
This is about the Reply tool at mw:Help:DiscussionTools. It has a visual mode with similarities to VisualEditor. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:38, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, that clears up my confusion. RudolfRed (talk) 18:40, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Click "Wikidata item" under "Tools" to see where the image comes from. You can override the Wikidata image with |image=. There doesn't appear to be a documented way to omit an image. |image=<nowiki /> currently works by producing an empty cell. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:34, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
I have moved the map (which is not an image of the creek) into locator map image (P242) and it no longer displays in the infobox — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 04:42, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Interactive cropping tool?
I find the int cropping tool (template) to be invaluable, but difficult to use. Is there an interactive version that I'm not finding? Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:35, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
If your target is to create a cropped file and overwrite the existing one with it or create a new file, then you may use https://croptool.toolforge.org/—CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 13:08, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
How to name /doc subpage?
I want to create a subpage for a /doc page, say for a supporting (documentation) table. What is a good naming convention?
A. Always end with /doc: {{Infobox foobar/option-table/doc}}
B. Below /doc: {{Infobox foobar/doc/option-table}}
Only consideration I know of, IIRC: in module space, a doc page is recognised & handled by (B) name ending /doc. (A) has easier page listing. DePiep (talk) 13:23, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
{{documentation}} by default calls the documentation by appending /doc to the current title. Although, the called page can be changed using appropriate parameters, I'd still think that the best practice would be to have /doc at the very end, just like /sandbox and /testcases work. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 13:29, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Makes sense, can do. Though, a supporting doc page (say, a table) would be called (transcluded) in an other docpages section; rarely by automated naming. DePiep (talk) 13:48, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
I'd think that option A would be for the documentation of {{Infobox foobar/option-table}} (which would be a subtemplate used in the implementation of {{Infobox foobar}}). Option B would be if you have a table that's transcluded onto {{Infobox foobar/doc}}. --rchard2scout (talk) 14:04, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Of course, how obvious this way. Very simple & smart. Also encompasses what CXZ wrote. Thx. DePiep (talk) 17:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Inconsistent display of annotated images
{{Annotated image}} seems to sometimes not show the image. At Nore, using Chrome I see a white frame with the words "The Nore" in red. In Safari on MacOS, I see the map. Other users on Discord reported seeing the image on Chrome, or not seeing the image in Safari on iOS. Is this a known bug? —Kusma (talk) 16:36, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
The Annotated image template say |image-width= should be the width of the original image, it's currently set to 3800 but the original image width is 11234. Setting image-width correctly in preview gets the image to display for me, but I'm guessing it not displaying the correct area as |image-top= and |image-left= will need to be corrected. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:03, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah later it says image-width doesn't have to match, but the image won't display correctly for me unless it is (chrome/android/desktop site/vector 2010 for reference). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:06, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
After some work figures of image-width=11234, image-top=-6890 and image-top=-230 puts the image in the correct place for me. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:20, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Template / module to test if a page is redirect?
i'm trying to build a template that does the following.
if pagename = stringA then
nothing
else
[category:...]
here, i encounter a problem. stringA should be a pagename, but sometimes the page has been moved, so stringA is the pagename of the redirect to the actual pagename. i can think of two solutions to this problem, either " pagename = stringA || target of stringA ", or test whether stringA is a redirect, if yes ignore.
is there template or module that deals with redirects? either resolving them or testing them? RZuo (talk) 07:54, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
You can certainly do that in a module using the title object. It looks like Module:Redirect might serve your purpose. — Jts1882 | talk 08:12, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Clearing script warnings for source templates
See Eucalyptol as an example, edit, then preview which shows 3 script template errors: a maintenance message for a book template, an error message for a journal, and a maintenance message for a journal. Help provides this information. When previewing, I see no color notifications to enable a revision for repairs. Because these messages are "hidden", I added scripts to my common.css page, then cleared cache as suggested, but with no success.
I am still seeing such error messages on other articles, so apparently have not completed the scripts correctly. Would appreciate explanation/help to correctly load the scripts. Use my common.css page if needed. Thanks. Zefr (talk) 17:24, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I have fixed your CSS page. Refresh, and you should see the issues of interest.
Did you copy-paste those directly? If so, from where? Izno (talk) 17:28, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, Izno. Quite sure I got the scripts from here, but can't explain why the "span" was omitted. On Eucalyptol preview, the template errors are now visible. Great fast response and solution - many thanks! Zefr (talk) 17:38, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Biographical article categorized as missing living, listas parameters even though it isn't
I'm not sure if this is a technical issue or if I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure it out. Recently (over the last week), I've noticed that when I add (or sometimes when someone else adds) a living or listas parameter to a {{WikiProject Biography}} template on an article's talk page, it occasionally just doesn't work. The BLP warning isn't included and the pages stay in the respective maintenance categories. Sometimes I can get it to work by rearranging the order of parameters (I have no idea why that would work) or by deleting them and readding them. A current example of this is Talk:Dorian Rhea Debussy. If anyone knows why this happens, please let me know! Clearfrienda💬 00:48, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ probably relevant to banner shell things. Izno (talk) 01:22, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Alright, that was the problem. Thanks! Clearfrienda💬 01:31, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
After clicking Show Preview button, Vector 2022 skin doesn't show catalog of contents any more
The legacy Vector skin allow to preview the table of contents after clicking Show Preview button, which also display the level of each subtitle. Also, it looks have benifit for editing multiple sections together, or even edit the who article. However, I can't see such preview any more after upgrading to Vector 2022 skin. What's wrong with it? -- Great Brightstar (talk) 15:50, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
I've left a note on phab:T294950. This was working at some point. Izno (talk) 15:55, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Page Creation
Hello, do anyone know how do I check for list of page created in certain month in any Wikipedia specifically Malay Wikipedia? I'd like to check the list of past 3-4 month but I couldn't figure out how. Special pages only show limited to 1-2 month only. [Special page for new pages]. I need the list of this newly created pages to be enlisted in a WikiProject. Is there any tools or any ways I can do so? I tried changing the limit and days in the link, but I didn't work out. Would be glad if anyone could assist me. Thank you. CyberTroopers (talk) 19:51, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
@CyberTroopers: Special:Log/create. I don't think it can be filtered by namespace or omit deleted pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:56, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter I did check on that but only few days or a month only can be viewed. There was no option to select certain date or range more than 2 months. Any other solution? Thank you CyberTroopers (talk) 17:10, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter Sorry, my bad. I didn't notice the difference of both. This is indeed really helpful! Thank you so much, I really appreciate your help. CyberTroopers (talk) 20:09, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Annotating watchlist?
Is there any way to annotate my watchlist?
Most of the time I add articles to my list simply because I'm interested in the subject, but sometimes I add an article because a particular vandal or LTA likes to edit it, or because the article is generally subject to sub-standard edits. It would be helpful if I could note on the watchlist (presumably in the raw list) any specific reason for my addition, so I could refer to it when articles pop up after a long hiatus, and I wonder why the heck it's on my list.
Special:EditWatchlist and Special:EditWatchlist/raw are both alphabetical and allow red links. You could store a note as a watched page name with a start placing it next to the real page. You can both add red links in Special:EditWatchlist/raw and by navigating to a red link and watching it as normal. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:11, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Those are good ideas. I'm attracted to PrimeHunter's mostly because I know how to do it, <g> and because I already have red links in my watchlist. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:17, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Ick! PrimeHunter's solution works, and it isn't costly in small doses, but it definitely won't scale. If we all did this we'd have a big problem, given the watchlist has long had performance problems as it is. "Dummy" rows used solely for annotation make this worse. I wish there was a solution in MediaWiki, but in the meantime there's my really, really crappy User:MusikAnimal/customWatchlists script, if you wish to try it. That allows organizing the watchlist items, so you might have a list called "vandalized pages" or something. I don't really recommend my script to be honest, as it's as cheap as they come, and also means your custom watchlisted pages are publicly viewable. But I thought I'd mention it as an alternative solution should it work for your use case. If I ever make another attempt at this functionality, it will be in MediaWiki proper (phab:T3492)! — MusikAnimaltalk 17:30, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Custom watchlists are kinda already possible using external feed readers. I use feeder which has a Chrome/Firefox extension to avoid actually having to use a dedicated feed reader app. It allows creating "folders" which basically act as custom watchlists. Clicking on the "Atom" link in page history sidebar opens it in feeder. – SD0001 (talk) 12:02, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
It's not quite what you asked for, but you may be interested in User:SD0001/W-Ping. Certes (talk) 22:11, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Would someone who has technical know-how please help me? What I'm trying to do is fix the wiki-code formatting over at Template:Navbox so that the link in the "show/hide" button is white. Here's what's going on (via Frietjes' user talk page):
This is the title
This is the body
This is the title
This is the body
in order to color the link, one would need to get the "color:white" from the style inside of the link for "show/hide".
Could someone other than Frietjes please help me? Charlesaaronthompson (talk) 03:12, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
This is because the HTML structure changed of the show/hide toggles, so the fix we have for this in MediaWiki:Common.js is no longer working. I'll make a fix soon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:13, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Extra line break and missing line break at the top of articles
For me, across several browsers (Gecko, WebKit, Blink), there's a problem with the spacing at the very top of articles, and I believe this is recent. On Minnesota Senate, the geographic coordinates overlap with the infobox (yet shouldn't). On Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I see the opposite: there's an extra line break before the first line of the lead. And if I click Steve jobs, for example, I end up at Steve Jobs, and I see a line break before the note: "Redirected from Steve jobs" at the top. The extra line break seems to be caused by the semi-protection topicon. DFlhb (talk) 00:30, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
When viewing logged out (in Vector 2022), the blue line above the Minnesota Senate text in the infobox actually is in front of the coordinates text for me. Home Lander (talk) 00:56, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Additionally, the text "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" has disappeared for me, on top of experiencing the same line break issues. Youngwii (talk) 13:24, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't see a bug report yet, but some change in this week's deployment appears to have had unintended consequences. I can't imagine why the "From Wikipedia" line has been hidden. I restored it by adding this line to my common.css file:
I've fixed this in MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css, but it should not have needed that fix; .vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled shouldn't be necessary for #siteSub I do not think? Izno (talk) 16:02, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Many thanks for the fix, cleanly done + major QOL improvement. When you figure out just what caused sitesub to disappear, please share a recap ffr. – SJ + 02:54, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yeah, even though the new zebra design hasn't been rolled out yet, someone added that new .vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled class to a bunch of the CSS styles in the page layout, screwing up a bunch of my custom CSS that fixes a wide (no pun intended) variety of excessive whitespace problems with Vector 2022. It's a bit of a Mogura Tataki situation trying to keep up with weekly changes to the Vector 2022 CSS. I feel that I should keep using the skin so that I can participate in reporting errors and problems affecting everyone using the default skin (including all IP readers and editors), but because it still has so many little quirks that need working around and the CSS changes every week, it does feel like a slightly abusive relationship (hint: I am not the abuser). – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:01, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Coordinates and the crappy new skin
Problem with the coords
I have the new skin installed despite it being largely awful, but there is an issue with the position of the coordinates in an article that I have not seen before. The image is a creenshot of the Malindi cult article, where the title of the IB is overlapping the coordinate text. - SchroCat (talk) 09:41, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
See my section above. DFlhb (talk) 09:51, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I might just "fix" this at some point and see who comes to yell at me for what the WMF forced on us. I'm about done with the continuing reports and just want to have it all out in the open at once. Izno (talk) 15:55, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
The fix to #siteSub (aka "From Wikipedia...") above appears to have fixed the coordinate positioning issue for the time being. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:09, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
GAN/FAC notice at the top of articles not visible in Vector
I have the gadget or script (I forget which) installed that shows e.g. "A featured article" or "Currently a good article nominee" at the top of articles, as appropriate. It's stopped working in Vector, but works when I switch to Monobook. Has something happened to stop it working in Vector? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:32, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi Mike, I've just checked it on the Vector legacy (2010) skin and it appears there, but not on the new skin, so it's a script that doesn't work with the new skin (I have it installed and had noticed it missing already). Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:36, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I've been on the new skin for months, and it only just stopped working (yesterday I think), so I guess something must have changed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:41, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
The site sub has gone missing as in the original of these sections. The WMF is adjusting some things about the skin and this may have been an unintended casualty. Izno (talk) 15:54, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I frequently cite IBM publications that are organized into bookshelves or other collections. I would like to include a link to the web page for the collection, but |website=[url collection][1] and |work=[url collection] get CS1 error messages. Should there be |website-url= and |work-url= parameters? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:43, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
There's an unclosed div further up the page in one of the Merry Christmas sections which has the class "plainlinks", which hides the arrow normally on the end of an external link for all the sections below it. Aidan9382(talk) 12:09, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
It seems that every year, somebody sends out several dozen Christmas and/or new year messages where the closing </div> or </table>/|} is missing. Usually the cause is copypasting the code of a template, omitting the whole of a line that ends with <noinclude>. Usually, WP:SUBSTing the template would have avoided this problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:58, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
However:
- the "scrubbed" labels are lost in the excerpt
- The "internal links" from the original page (column "Name") do not work.
Any ideas of how to fix those issues? Thanks {{u|Gtoffoletto}}talk 17:57, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@Gtoffoletto: I fixed the "internal links" with [38]. By "scrubbed" do you mean the text "Scrapped" in the Status column? It's not carried over by {{excerpt}}. The text is made with {{unreleased|Scrapped}} which uses <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> and calls {{n/a}} which also uses <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>. It appears to not work with {{excerpt}}. The text "Destroyed" is made with {{lost|Destroyed}} which uses <noinclude>...</noinclude> instead and doesn't appear to have problems. onlyinclude can be problematic to work with and I try to avoid it. Can others comment? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
onlyinclude is handled at Module:Transcluder#L-170 and looks much the same way as when first added in 2019. However, SpaceX Starship development# seems to use includeonly instead. Transcluder doesn't handler includeonly but probably should. It's as simple as removing the opening and closing tags, leaving the text between them intact, i.e. adding something like :gsub("</?includeonly>", ""). The omission is probably my fault – I should have added it with the other two keyword in 2019 – and fixing it now requires a template editor. Certes (talk) 21:27, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@Certes: It was me who added includeonly code to SpaceX Starship development to fix the "internal links" issue. That works fine in both pages. The problem is when SpaceX Starship development#Second stage prototypes says {{unreleased|Scrapped}}, e.g. in the Mk2 row. {{unreleased}} uses onlyinclude and says "Scrapped" as intended in SpaceX Starship development#Second stage prototypes itself, but it says nothing when {{Excerpt|SpaceX Starship development|Second stage prototypes}} was used here in another page. The problem existed both before and after my unrelated addition of includeonly code in other cells. Note that onlyinclude is not in the source of the page excerpt works on but in a template used there. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:58, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Something very weird is going on. The article has changed now but I've revived the {{excerpt}} call in my sandbox and tried editing Template:Unreleased and previewing my sandbox with it. Nothing makes anything appear at all in the table cell, even removing the onlyinclude tags and replacing the entire content of Template:Unreleased by a simple "Hello from unreleased" message. I don't think this is an include issue. Certain templates are blacklisted from excerpts, and I wonder if a slack regexp is hitting "unreleased": perhaps the '[Uu][Nn][Rr][Ee]?[Ff]?' designed to catch {{unreferenced}} at Module:Excerpt/config#L-50. Certes (talk) 09:22, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
You're right. [Uu] means U or u. Question mark means 0 or 1 occurrence so it matches everything starting with "unr" in some capitalization. I guess it was meant to catch {{UNR}} which redirects to {{Unreferenced}} but it also hits the rest of Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Unr. For example, the last line of Mid central vowel#Features is transcluded from {{Unrounded vowel}} and currently missing in {{excerpt|Mid central vowel|Features}}:
Yes, I hadn't found where those regexp fragments are actually used nowadays, but they seem to be inserted in something like {{\s*fragment.-}} which require the template name to begin with the fragment (good plan) but allow more letters afterwards (potential for false positives). In that case, there won't be a syntax for excluding unr without also excluding unreleased, unless we terminate the fragment with %f[%W] or similar (which is the nearest I can get in Lua to PCRE's \b). Certes (talk) 12:19, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
I've just made an edit to the main config here that will continue to match UNRE?F? without over-matching other unrelated terms, which should fix the issue with {{Unreleased}} and {{Unrounded vowel}} described above. Aidan9382(talk) 12:24, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. The article excerpt in my sandbox now looks correct. Beware that adding $ excludes {{Unref BLP}}, which we probably want to include, but otherwise that looks like the right solution. Certes (talk) 12:39, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks guys! I will try re adding the excerpt to the article ASAP to see if it works correctly now. {{u|Gtoffoletto}}talk 13:00, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
For the record, I think the decision about not bothering to remove includeonly tags was deliberate and correct (though I should have documented it). The tag has no effect on transclusions – its only effect is to remove text within the tag when viewing the transcluded page directly – and transclusion of {{excerpt}} will remove the tag markup in the usual way. Certes (talk) 18:25, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Numerical changes without edit summary should be flagged "r" in watchlist
This is an extremely common form of vandalism and should be automatically flagged for review. Particularly without an edit summary, but more complex pattern matching could work as well to catch more.
I'm not sure if that is a change that needs to be made at Wikipedia or the underlying software (Phabricator) —DIYeditor (talk) 19:21, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
They're certainly a major cause of vandalism. Some, such as dates of birth, are already caught, but most aren't. There are legitimate uses – Smith made one more appearance for United and scored another goal today – but it's far too easy a way to introduce subtle vandalism (and good-faith mistakes) that no one will notice. Certes (talk) 20:57, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
The "r" flag comes from WP:ORES, which is some kind of crude (by today's standards!) machine learning model. I don't think there are any hard-coded rules. But perhaps with a larger or more sophisticated model, it could learn to flag this sort of thing on its own.
What you probably want instead is an tagging edit filter. Normally I'd say "Go to WP:EFR" but it was already requested last year and kind of forgotten about. ProcrastinatingReader went to through the trouble of patching mw:Extension:AbuseFilter last year to make this sort of thing possible, so let's at least try. See filter 1248 (hist · log). This filter is going to match about 2% of all non-autoconfirmed edits. That much clutter might bother people who review Special:AbuseLog. We'll see. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:38, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look at it. I'm not sure Wikipedia can afford not to do this. Between good faith mistakes and intentional vandalism (I can't imagine what kind of person would think it is funny to deceive others like that) there is no telling how many errors in previously cited numbers have been introduced. The world relies on accuracy in Wikipedia, rightly or wrongly. —DIYeditor (talk) 22:21, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
An edit filter and/or an edit tag may be worth investigating for this. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:45, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
This might be a bit of feature creep, but a similar and very common type of vandalism is changing dates. If a filter is created to tag numerical changes, it would be nice if it also tagged date changes; that is, it noticed changes to a spelled-out month name as well as to a (numerical) year or day of month. Also, perhaps this is already considered, but I want to mention that tagging numerical changes should handle numbers containing commas and decimal points. CodeTalker (talk) 02:44, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Can someone take a look at the List of Intel Core processors article, specifically the "Penryn", "Penryn-3M" (medium-voltage, 45 nm) section of it, and investigate why every single template from that point is malfunctioning, or not working as intended? Is it because there are too many templates on the article and there's a technical limit?
If I open the source editor on the first malfunctioning section, and click preview, the templates display normally, as if there's nothing wrong.
Please note the article is a work-in-progress, I just performed a major merge today, and there are quite a lot of duplicate info that need to be combined, so I hope you don't mind the few rough spots here and there on the article. I placed an {{under construction}} template at the top to let readers and other editors be aware of what's going on. Though, I did not expect this major template malfunction to occur throughout.
Woah, thanks for the quick response! I kinda had a feeling this was what was going on, as when I went to the article history and browsed previous revisions with less code, but still a considerable amount of code in them, in them a larger percentage of templates were displaying properly like they should.
Looks like I'll need to go back to the merge discussion and discuss a potential splitting up of pages again (page 1 covers 1st to 10th gen or something like that), because of this issue.
Theoretical question: if I were to replace all those templates with wikitables, with the article size being the same or higher afterwards, will those wikitables all display fine? Or are tables also affected by this limitation?
Another question: regarding the post-expand include size thing, if I create a blank page, write down a template (the code of the template itself is 31 bytes big) and it takes up 10 bytes of source code, when that code is executed and the template is "rendered" / transcluded, the actual size of the rendered page is a bit more than 10 bytes, i.e. 31 bytes right? I'm guessing that is what's being meant by "post-expand include size" here.
Theoretical question: if I were to replace all those templates with wikitables, with the article size being the same or higher afterwards, will those wikitables all display fine -> yes, barring some other problem. The actual definition of post-expand include size is complicated. A crude estimate is that every time the parser evaluates something wrapped in double curly braces it adds the length of the evaluation to the used-up size. The same rendered content can count multiple times if it's wrapped in multiple sets of double curly braces. So {{1x|abcdef}} uses 6 bytes of PEIS, but {{1x|{{1x|abcdef}}}} uses 12. * Pppery *it has begun... 14:25, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
That makes a lot of sense.
"yes, barring some other problem." What would that other problem be? — AP 499D25(talk) 14:45, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
I had no specific problem in mind, just that the only way to be sure that something works is to try it out. * Pppery *it has begun... 15:33, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Please help test code to get article plain text with numbered refs and URLs
Please help me test this Python function which, given an article or redirect title, returns the target article as plain text, with numbered references inline and on seperate lines at the end, including any external link URLs in the references. I've tested it on a bunch of articles but am looking for more where it screws up somehow. If you can find some, please reply with the titles and a short description of what went wrong. I am aware of problems with extraneous spaces around quotes and other punctuation, external links being silently dropped (a small price to pay for discarding everything after them...), tables coming out in chunks, and similar issues with CSS-based tree diagrams, but I'd love to read reports of any other problems.
Python code to produce article plain text with numbered references including URLs
fromrequestsimportgetfrombs4importBeautifulSoupasbsfromreimportsubasresubdeftextarticlewithrefs(title):# get English Wikipedia article in plain text but with numbered references including link URLsresp=get('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=parse&format=json&page='+title).json()if'error'inresp:raiseFileNotFoundError(f"'{title}': {resp['error']['info']}")html=resp['parse']['text']['*']# get parsed HTMLif'<div class="redirectMsg"><p>Redirect to:</p>'inhtml:# recurse redirectsreturntextarticlewithrefs(resub(r'.*<ul class="redirectText"><li><a'+' href="/wiki/([^"]+)"[^\0]*$','\\1',html))cleantitle=resp['parse']['title']# fixes urlencoding and unicode escapestry:[body,refs]=html.split('<ol class="references">')#body += refs[refs.find('\n</ol></div>')+12:] # move external links etc. upexcept:body=html;refs=''b=resub(r'\n<style.*?<table [^\0]*?</table>','\n',body)# rm boxesb=resub(r'<p>','\n<p>',b)# newlinees between paragraphsb=resub(r'(</table>)\n','\\1 \n',b)# space after amboxesb=resub(r'(<span class="mw-headline" id="[^"]*">.+?)(</span>)','\n\n\\1:\\2',b)# put colons after section headingsb=resub(r'([^>])\n([^<])','\\1 \\2',b)# merge non-paragraph breakb=resub(r'<li>','<li>* ',b)# list item bullets for beautifulsoupb=resub(r'(</[ou]l>)','\\1\n\n<br/>',b)# blank line after listsb=resub(r'<img (.*\n)','<br/>--Image: <img \\1\n<br/>\n',b)# captionsb=resub(r'(\n.*<br/>--Image: .*\n\n<br/>\n)(\n<p>.*\n)','\\2\n<br/>\n\\1',b)# put images after following paragraphb=resub(r'(role="note" class="hatnote.*\n)','\\1.\n<br/>\n',b)# see/mainb=resub(r'<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="(http[^"]+)">(.+?)</a>','\\2 [ \\1 ]',b)# extract external links as bracketed urlsb=bs(b[b.find('\n<p>'):]).get_text(' ')# to text; lead starts with 1st <p>b=resub(r'\s*([?.!,):;])','\\1',b)# various space cleanupsb=resub(r' *',' ',resub(r'\( *','(',b))# rm double spaces and after (b=resub(r' *\n *','\n',b)# rm spaces around newlinesb=resub(r'[ \n](\[\d+])','\\1',b)# rm spaces before inline refsb=resub(r' \[ edit \]\n','\n',b).strip()# drop edit linksb=resub(r'\n\n\n+','\n\n',b)# rm vertical whitespacer=refs[:refs.find('\n</ol></div>')+1]# optimistic(?) end of reflistr=resub(r'<li id="cite_note.*?-(\d+)">[^\0]*?<span class='# enumerate...+'"reference-text"[^>]*>\n*?([^\0]*?)</span>\n?</li>\n','[\\1] \\2\n',r)# ...the references as numbered seperate linesr=resub(r'<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="(http[^"]+)">(.+?)</a>','\\2 [ \\1 ]',r)# extract external links as bracketed urlsr=bs(r).get_text(' ')# unHTMLifyr=resub(r'\s([?.!,):;])','\\1',r)# space cleanups againr=resub(r' *',' ','\n'+r)# rm double spaces, add leading newliner=resub(r'\n\n+','\n',r)# rm vertical whitespacer=resub(r'(\n\[\d+]) [*\n] ','\\1 ',r)# multiple source ref tagsr=resub(r'\n ','\n ',r)# indent multiple source ref tagsreturncleantitle+'\n\n'+b+r
Here's some example output from a random article: print(textarticlewithrefs('Thorvald Stauning'))
Thorvald Stauning
Thorvald August Marinus Stauning (Danish: [ˈtsʰɒːˌvælˀ ˈstɑwne̝ŋ]; 26 October 1873 in Copenhagen – 3 May 1942) was the first social democratic Prime Minister of Denmark. He served as Prime Minister from 1924 to 1926 and again from 1929 until his death in 1942.
Under Stauning's leadership, Denmark, like some other Western European countries, developed a social welfare state,[1] and though many of his ambitions for Social Democracy were ultimately thwarted in his lifetime by events beyond his control, his leadership through grave times places Stauning among the most admired of twentieth-century Danish statesmen.
The Stauning Alps, a large mountain range in Greenland, were named after him.[2]
Political career:
Member of the Folketing:
Stauning was trained as a cigar sorter and soon became involved with trade union activity. From 1896 to 1908 he was leader of the Cigar Sorters' Union (part of the Danish Tobacco Workers' Union, in 1898 – 1904 also editor of the magazine Samarbejdet (Co-operation) of the Federation of Trade Unions, and elected Member of Parliament (Folketinget) in 1906. In 1910 he was elected chairman of the Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiet), a position he retained for almost thirty years, until 1939. He participated as Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet of Zahle II from 1916 to 1920. [ citation needed ]
Prime Minister of Denmark:
He was elected to government as prime minister in 1924 for the minority cabinet Cabinet of Thorvald Stauning I which would survive until 1926. His cabinet was considered ground-breaking not only as it was the first purely Social Democratic cabinet, but also because a woman, Nina Bang, was appointed Minister of Education, which attracted some international attention, as she was one of the first female ministers in the world.[3]
From 1929 he led the successful coalition cabinet Cabinet of Thorvald Stauning II with the social liberal Det Radikale Venstre party that would steer Denmark out of the Great Depression, shaping a major political compromise that greatly improved the Danish economy, and also transformed the Social Democratic Party from a class party to a popular party. Under Stauning's leadership Denmark, like the other Western European countries, developed a social welfare state. It is often proposed that the long-lived coalition cabinet actively averted the communist and fascist movements that were sweeping much of Europe from developing a strong following in Denmark. [ citation needed ]
In January 1933, Stauning's government entered into what was then the most extensive settlement yet in Danish politics—the Kanslergade settlement (Danish: Kanslergadeforliget)—with the liberal party Venstre.[4] The settlement, which was named after Stauning's apartment in Kanslergade in Copenhagen, included extensive agricultural subsidies and reforms of the legislation and administration in the social sector.[5]
Stauning holds a record in Danish politics, in having successfully sought re-election no less than three times (1932, 1935 (With the famous slogan " Stauning or Chaos "), 1939). However, an attempt to amend the Constitution failed in 1939, as the turnout in the referendum was insufficient to validate the result. This came as a tremendous blow to Stauning, who seemed to lose his previously sure touch for politics thereafter. He reportedly considered resigning in the wake of the referendum failure, but was persuaded to stay on.[6]
--Image: Stauning addresses the Rigsdagen in Christiansborg Palace on 9 April 1940
Occupation Cabinet:
Stauning's second cabinet lasted until Operation Weserübung, the Nazi occupation of Denmark began on 9 April 1940, when the cabinet was widened to include all political parties, called the Stauning III Cabinet. Contrary to most other governments of the Nazi-invaded countries, King Christian X of Denmark and his government ordered the army and navy to stop fighting, and chose to remain in their country also under the occupation, which is believed to have contributed to the Nazi leaders being more lenient in Denmark than in other countries under Hitler's control. Stauning died in 1942, deeply depressed about the future of social democracy in a Nazi-dominated Europe. [ citation needed ]
Legacy:
Like many other workers' leaders of his generation, such as Hjalmar Branting in Sweden, Stauning was a charismatic leader who played an important role in integrating Danish society after the social changes following the Industrial Revolution and common suffrage. His campaign slogan, "Stauning or Chaos," (Danish: Stauning eller Kaos) resonated in a nation undergoing a period of massive unemployment caused by the economic, social and political turmoil of its neighbors and trading partners, notably Denmark's chief trading partner Germany. The following Great Depression brought Danish unemployment to unprecedented heights. This period of widespread social malaise was fertile ground for leaders who could communicate a confident and coherent vision to the masses. Stauning was such a man for Denmark, and his popularity won the Social Democratic Party 46% of the total votes in the 1935 Folketing election, a figure never again reached by any Danish party. [ citation needed ]
He was given a state funeral in 1942, an honour normally not bestowed on Danish prime ministers. He is buried in Copenhagen's Vestre Cemetery. Although Denmark's relationship with Germany during World War II has been controversial, Stauning's legacy in Denmark remains positive. His popularity in the 1930s acted as a force limiting the growth of other populist parties—most importantly, the Nazi party, which remained politically insignificant. Stauning also played a major role in containing the constitutional Easter Crisis of 1920 where he brokered a deal with the king in which the monarch accepted a reduction of his own role to a merely symbolical one, avoiding any future interference in the functioning of parliamentary democracy. In return, Stauning kept the pro-republican elements of the Social Democratic Party in line, and ensured his party's political support to the continuation of the Danish monarchy. His government was also responsible for laying the foundations to the future Danish welfare state. [ citation needed ]
His grandson Søren Goldmann Stauning is a local politician in Them.[7]
I apologize that it's mostly regular expressions, but parsing it formally would be many times more work, and I doubt that could perform much better. The purpose of this is to try to do automated verification with LLMs (see very preliminary proof of concept code here.) Again, please let me know in replies here if you find issues other than those I mentioned above. Thank you! Sandizer (talk) 00:42, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@Izno: yes but I've never used it. Can it do this more easily? Sandizer (talk) 01:47, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
It fails on Battle of the Brazos by deleting everything but the final paragraph, and I don't know why yet. Sandizer (talk) 04:42, 29 April 2023 (UTC) Fixed. Sandizer (talk) 21:25, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@Sandizer, pywikibot has a bunch of builtin functions. It can make the parse API call with:
It also has the textlib library which you may find helpful, although it's more for parsing wikitext. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:39, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@Sandizer, the references selection won't work on pages with a notelist, such as Russia, because it also has <ol class="references"> for notes. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:53, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Tried it on a few dozen Computing articles, no issues except those you mention. DFlhb (talk) 02:58, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Can administrators edit through spam blacklist?
Or does the blacklist even prevent administrators from saving pages with offending links? —Locke Cole • t • c 19:46, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Administrators cannot override the blacklist except by adding the URL and page to the whitelist, which applies for everyone at that point. The relevant permission is sboverride, which no group on English Wikipedia possesses. The relevant task is phab:T313106; there is a tangentially related task at phab:T313107 for bots. Izno (talk) 19:52, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Odd, looks like it's just waiting on community consensus? Would I be too hasty to just start an RFC at WP:VPR if that's really the only roadblock? Alternatively, make this a right that can be granted by 'crats to admins who enable 2FA (though with all the recent admin inactivity changes, I'm significantly less worried about an admin account becoming compromised than I would have been a decade ago; it's still a greater than zero risk, but not as bad as it was)? Also something for an RFC? —Locke Cole • t • c 20:01, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
I think the meta RFC listed in the comments about doing it for all admin accounts on WMF wikis has some points that are also relevant here. Our admins are unlikely to abuse the permission, but I think the point regarding whether a normal editor can edit a page is pretty salient, and I would guess this permission does not provide any sort of popup or preview message telling an admin that they are about to add a blacklisted link, so they would inadvertently make it much more difficult for the normal editor to change the page. Izno (talk) 20:06, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
I guess I kind of understand that: I think if anything it would make conversations around whitelisted URLs happen quicker. What prompted this was trying to update the source for an image (you'll see I finally realized I can, I just had to use nowiki to disable the links; not ideal but better than waiting), only to find I couldn't actually insert the necessary link. I found the whitelist page, but it appears there is a bit of a backlog there, and simply updating a source should be easier than this. —Locke Cole • t • c 20:17, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
I filed a task that would make whitelisting much less high-stakes (right now whitelisting is whole-wiki) at phab:T203157 some time ago. The speed at which it has been worked is nil. Izno (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
provide any sort of popup or preview message telling [them] they are about to add a blacklisted link – this is precisely what I'm going to be working on next week :) There's a chance it won't get merged due to conflicts with the larger mw:Edit check project but I'm thinking it will be okay as an interim solution. — MusikAnimaltalk 15:38, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
Strange behaviour at PAFC
Sorry, probably not the place to report this, and in any case someone may be on the case already, but at WP:PAFC there suddenly appeared a large number of items under the 'in userspace', 'less than 450 bytes long' and 'without a section' subcategories. They are user pages, which is odd, and when you go and check them most haven't been recently edited at all. And they all have a rather offensive short description. Can I leave this here for someone in the know to deal with? Ta, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 06:50, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Someone redirected WP:AIV to an offensive draft. Diff. Looks like a decent # of people transclude AIV. So that might be the cause. Try WP:PURGEing some of the user pages that are still in the category and see if that helps. The vandalism may be lingering in caches even though it's been reverted. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:30, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks @Novem Linguae, that seems to have cleared the PAFC subcats. Cheers, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:34, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
I am no longer seeing the incorrect listings. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:52, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
@Novem Linguae: For future ref, a purge won't fix a miscategorised page, it neeeds to be a WP:NULLEDIT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:36, 3 May 2023 (UTC)
Random div tags
Seemingly at random, div tags are suddenly appearing in a few of my edits (example, at the bottom). I'm typing manually rather than copying and pasting, and haven't changed anything about my settings - any idea what might be causing this? Using wikitext editor on Firefox. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:15, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
@SSastry (WMF) @Jon (WMF) would be the intersection of people I'd say would be interested. Izno (talk) 01:40, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
It's hard to tell, as it doesn't happen on every edit, nor have I been able to figure out a pattern of what causes it. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:49, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
The other thing to check would be whether you have a browser extension in Firefox like Grammarly or similar; you could try editing in another browser without any extensions for a few days and see if it happens there, or check your current extensions to see if they have anything to do with the inputbox.
Lastly, if you don't want to try and reproduce it in safe mode, removing the scripts you are probably loading in your subpage js pages would be another step to see if you can get it to happen in stock MediaWiki. Izno (talk) 03:01, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
What is your skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering? If it's Modern (still possible [45]) then you load a lot of scripts in User:Nikkimaria/modern.js. I haven't examined them. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:33, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
It is Modern. I'm not using Grammarly or any other extension that should impact the inputbox. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:10, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Suggest change for user page editnotices
I want to suggest that it might be a better idea to have user page editnotices moved here:
This is something that I have had for a while. The reason I want to suggest that is currently users can only make editnotices for their own user and talk page, not subpages. Under the current system, subpage editnotices can only be added by template editors and administrators, with users only able to edit their own user and talk page editnotices. Also, I don't see any protections against editing other user's editnotices, in the form of an abuse filter or otherwise.
Here is what my suggested change would employ:
Adding Template:Editnotices\/(Page|Group)/User( talk)?:.* or something like that to the title whitelist
Creating a filter to detect when a user is editing an editnotice of a different user, something like
In this case, attempting to edit would disallow the edit with a notice letting the user know that they are editing someone else's editnotice, which can only be edited by the associated user, page movers, template editors, and administrators
Warning users about the new location of user page editnotices
I think this is important because of our information page on Project:Editnotices specifies that users can edit their own user editnotices, but I don't think it specifies that they can edit anyone else's. Having this is a good idea because users that maintain their own scripts can now start editnotices for their own talk pages. It will also free up the title "Editnotice" for users doing whatever they need to do, rather than having this specific subpage mess up user pages. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 19:23, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
This is yet another complicated technical solution in search of a problem. And we already have Special:AbuseFilter/989 * Pppery *it has begun... 19:25, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
The specific problem is there is no way to have editnotices for user and user talk subpages. This change would also fix that.
Also I notice admins generally create editnotices for their own user pages in the Template:Editnotices/ pseudo-namespace anyway. The proposed filter and whatnot would allow for users to create their own editnotices in this particular space. Like I said also, it would free up the "Editnotice" subpage name in user space for something else. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 20:49, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Issues with enabling syntax highlighting gadget
I'm trying to install the syntax highlighter gadget, but for some reason I couldn't make it work on my browser. I've tried enabling the "syntax highlighter" gadget from Special:Preferences, and also tried adding it manually through User:WikiLinuz/common.js (see this, this, and this), but nothing seems to work. This is how my editor currently looks (you can notice there is no syntax highlighting).
I'm using Brave browser Version 1.51.110 Chromium: 113.0.5672.77 (Official Build) (arm64). I have also tried this on Firefox browser Version 112.0.2 (64-bit) and it still does not work either.
I'd appreciate if someone could help me out with this. Thanks! --WikiLinuz {talk} 20:52, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Ahh, thank you so much! :-) --WikiLinuz {talk} 22:18, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Infobox film
Some {{infobox film}} headings have gone haywire, displaying <div style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.2em; padding: .1em 0;width: 100%; Aaron Liu (talk) 21:39, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu, I suspect one of these edits caused it. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:55, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Aaron Liu, as it says in the edit notice for this page, "Where did you encounter the problem? Please add links when possible." – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:45, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
It was probably fixed by [46] and pages just have to be purged if they still show the problem, but it's hard to tell without an example. Always post an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:51, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
It was present on pretty much every use of it. Like PrimeHunter says, it's now resolved. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:07, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
I've recently been spending a lot of time trying to polish up Module:External links within its sandbox (although I haven't had the confidence to make any direct changes to the base module yet, even for slight bugfixes — in part because there are no testcases, so I have no reliable way to test my changes), and I just noticed that the function findSiteLinksOnWikidata has an issue: it attempts to read the property langcode from the first layer of the object that getSitelinksFromWikidata returns, but the property doesn't exist — getSitelinksFromWikidata never provides a langcode anywhere. I'm not certain how to fix this; my best guess is that maybe langcode should be requested_sitelink, but I can't verify this because a) I don't have a complete understanding of the module, b) there are no testcases (as mentioned before), and c) I can't even find a page that uses findSiteLinksOnWikidata in the first place.
Does anybody know how to solve this? {{Lemondoge|Talk|Contributions}} 17:45, 5 May 2023 (UTC) (note: if I'm asking this in the wrong place, sorry! I couldn't tell if this should go here, in WT:LUA, in WP:VPM, or somewhere else.)
I don't know but you could try asking Zyxw who wrote the module. The doc says it is based on no:Module:External links and any update of the code should start by examining the differences between the enwiki and nowiki (yes, that's what it is called!) versions. Also, there is probably somewhere at d:Wikidata:Community portal where people who love Wikidata answer questions. Johnuniq (talk) 00:47, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
The reason you can't find a page that uses findSiteLinksOnWikidata is because there is no page that appears to be using it at all. fSLOW is triggered only when the code is given a sitelink prop (SLaaaa) to work with. the getLinks function (which is the only place fSLOW gets fired from) is used by just one template, which has no sitelink target set in its config. You'll probably need to make your own testing config if you want a testcase to work with. no:Modul:External links/conf/Arter#L-30 would probably be some good testing material, since it triggers fSLOW if tested using an article like Wildebeest. Aidan9382(talk) 06:55, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
An A/B test coming soon. Visual separation (Zebra #9) between regions
Hi everyone,
In a few weeks, we'll be performing a test. Half of logged-in desktop users will see a version that shows the regions of the page separated more clearly. This version will include more borders and gray backgrounds (preview it here). After two weeks, everyone will see the current white interface again. We will analyze the usage data for both and make a decision on next steps in July.
Feedback about the white space
Currently, Vector 2022 uses whitespace to separate the various regions of the interface. It also has a white page background (outside of the content area). We have received a lot of feedback about this. There are two areas of concern:
Comments about adding more visual separation between regions of the interface. For example, a boundary around both the content area and the side menus. Volunteers have been wondering if this would improve the reading experience. Mainly by:
Drawing more focus/attention to the content when landing on the page (rather than taking in the interface as a whole first, then focusing on the content).
Making it easier to stay focused on the content while reading, because the content area would be more well defined.
Comments about adding a gray background outside of the content area. Volunteers have been wondering if this would reduce eye strain some people are experiencing from the large white area (i.e. “glare”) on larger screens.
Many of you have reported that the white space is too high in contrast and that adding a darker hue such as a gray decreases this strain.
This may also add further focus to the content area and the table of contents.
About the test itself
To verify these hypotheses, we have set up user testing with readers. Here you can read more about the test as well as learn about the outcomes.
We also want to ensure that the new layout does not negatively affect any high-level metrics for the project. This is why the A/B test will take place. We will be looking for no statistically significant decreases in the following: pageviews, opt-out rates, edit rate, Table of Contents usage, scrolling, and page tools usage. Due to privacy and technical restrictions, we are only able to run this test with logged-in users. We will filter the results by the number of edits a given user has. Then, we will proxy logged-out users via logged-in users with 0 edits.
This test will start within two weeks and will take two full weeks. It will be performed on Wikipedias in: English, Farsi, French, Hebrew, Korean, Portuguese, Serbian, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
After two weeks, everyone will see the basic (white) version again. Next, we will check if the new layout has negative effects on those metrics. If it doesn't, then we will enable it across all users and all wikis. It won't happen before July, though.
Is this Vector2022 only or does it affect people using other skins? —Kusma (talk) 09:58, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Hey, @Kusma. This is strictly part of the Desktop Improvements project (and its product, Vector 2022). We're actively working on one skin. This is to say, it's Vector 2022 only. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 10:02, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
After two weeks, everyone will see the current white interface again.: No, please. I would be more than happy to have this improvement, even if it requires me pulling some levers in my prefs after 2 weeks. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 11:17, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
SGrabarczuk (WMF): Thanks for the detailed notice. I think that there will be many requests like the one above, i.e. "please tell us how to keep this new skin update!" You might think about how to answer those requests. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:08, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
@CX Zoom: If it's only background colour changes in certain areas, I suspect that this will be done via CSS, so it should be fairly easy to copy the relevant rules to your CSS. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:21, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
Two grayed-out designs were proposed. What made you choose this rather boxy one that (to me) looks like a noob design attempt? Four white boxes on a gray background, plus white floating toolbar look too distracting (to me). 65.211.97.242 (talk) 16:15, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF) is there a ?= parameter that can be passed to force this display for any troubleshooting? — xaosfluxTalk 18:53, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
It is a somewhat odd choice. Adam Cuerden(talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 11:40, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
Custom portlets
Is there any way to create a new portlet that doesn't involve just building the raw html? I've forked a script that does that, and it's a major PITA to ensure it works on every skin. It would be nice if there was a skin-agnostic way to add a custom portlet to a page (preferably using the MediaWiki api). Does anyone know of such a way? – MaterialWorks 11:59, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
[47], Here while searching for Yadav article, i got this website in search result. For few minutes, i confused it to be real Wikipedia. Even in search results for Yadav, it appears first in search results. What to do with such websites, which are almost identical and people here are editing with their own Pov, hence providing wrong information to the users.Admantine123 (talk) 08:07, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
Ok, then i need to fix many caste related articles there, which are written with lack of WP:NPOV. Admantine123 (talk) 08:50, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
@Admantine123: Spend your time as you want. The Simple English Wikipedia has the same status as foreign language Wikipedias. It's not part of the English Wikipedia and some of their policies may be different – in particular about the used English. They do have an NPOV policy at simple:Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Which search did you make where to get simple:Yadav as the first result? Our own search box only searches the English Wikipedia. I don't recall ever seeing the Simple English Wikipedia at top of a Google search. google:Yadav starts with our own Yadav and doesn't show simple:Yadav. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:58, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
On searching "Yadav caste", we get simple Wikipedia at the top. And below that, our Wikipedia. Admantine123 (talk) 17:38, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
OK, for that search Google chooses a featured snippet from simple:Yadav, maybe because it sounds more like an explanation of the seach term than something in Yadav. If the words are swapped then "caste Yadav" has Yadav at top without giving a featured snippet. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:21, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
simple: is not a mirror. Some of their pages (primarily modules and templates) are transwikid from English Wikipedia, but the articles, and the site in general, mostly are not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:16, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
TOC Disappearance
Hi! Sorry if this is the wrong place to come—I did my best. (I don't think this is a bug.) Whenever I log in, the Table of Contents disappear. I'm not exactly sure when this started happening—I did enable Wikipedia:Twinkle at some point in the last couple days ... but now I've disabled it. I have no other beta or non-defaults enabled. For a minute there, the menu was showing up in the sidebar, but I hid that, thinking it might bring the TOCs back, so it's no longer there (though no such luck on the TOCs returning). Does anyone have any idea what I might've done to hide the TOCs?--Jerome Frank Disciple 16:36, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Can you provide a screenshot? NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 16:55, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
(If you meant provide a screenshot of my settings, I can do that too.) Sorry for all the trouble ... I'm actually surprised at how much extra convenience it is when you don't have a TOC ... --Jerome Frank Disciple 16:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
The table of contents is right next to "Badge Man." Does it appear when you click it? Nythar (💬-🍀) 17:03, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
(Annoyed grunt). And here I was almost having made it through the day without embarrassing myself. Sorry for all the trouble, last time I used Wikipedia consistently, the TOC was still featured in the body of the article—turns out, I'm old and I guess new buttons scare me? Found the "move to sidebar" button with in the TOC.--Jerome Frank Disciple 17:08, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
@Jerome Frank Disciple: The new TOC placement is one of the changes in a new skin Vector 2022. Logged in users can select the old skin Vector legacy at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:12, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! I had seen that—I just must have ... Jesus I swear I'm not as old as this makes me sound ... accidentally clicked the "hide" button and then ... not seen the resulting pop-up notification? Listen, I'll be waiting at home for anyone who wants to go ahead and do the humane thing.--Jerome Frank Disciple 17:16, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
The same has just happened to me and this section has solved the problem for me. But I'll be far, far older than you – I remember watching Queen Elizabeth's coronation on Granny's TV. Thincat (talk) 10:41, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
Problem with visual editor in Vector 2022 on some articles
When I edit Daisy Bacon in VE using Vector 2022 I get this at the top of the screen instead of the toolbar -- it appears to be stuck halfway through the display sequence for a VE session. When I edit Pachysentis it works fine and I get the toolbar at the top. The problem doesn't occur in legacy Vector. In fact the VE session appears to be fully initialized because I can use the keyboard shortcuts ctrl-shift-K and ctrl-shift-S to add citations and save the article, so it's only a problem when I want to do something that I haven't memorized the keystroke for. Any idea why this might be happening? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:15, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
... and it's now happening only intermittently. This has been happening for a while, though, so if anyone has an idea what might cause this that would be good to know. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:44, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
AFD log?
Hi there. I have a log of all my recent PRODs at User:Magnolia677/PROD log. Is there a way to see my AFD log too? Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 15:33, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
Found it! Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 15:37, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
I've done this in the past, when the content on the right is too much, adding |left to the image aligns it to the left and displays it where the image is invoked. But Special:Diff/1153659695 did not do that, the image continues to be displayed at the end of the page. Commenting out the sidebars fixes it, but I fail to understand what difference in alignment does the infobox and sidebar have, that the infobox won't displace the image to the end, but even a single sidebar would. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 15:42, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
The 'thumb' right aligns the image. Alternative: replace thumb by x150px. Uwappa (talk) 15:55, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
That does not appear to be true, and that option removes the caption and disregards editors' thumb size preferences, which is probably not desirable. I see it on the left, but after all of the infobox and sidebar content. See the above section re {{stack}}, which worked in this case as well. There is a bit of a sandwich effect for me, since I have my thumb size set high, but it looks fine to me when I am logged out. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:03, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
@Uwappa: See WP:EIS, |thumb and |left may be used together. The former puts a caption below the image and a frame around both, it defaults to floating right but this last may be overridden with |left. The problem here is nothing to do with left or right alignment though, it is that floated box-type objects (whether they be images (framed or otherwise), sidebars, infoboxes, portal boxes or anything else that isn't headings or inline text) are always displayed in the same vertical order that they occur in the page source. When the page source has a long sequence of right-floated objects (in this case there are five: {{Infobox country|...}}{{Contains special characters|Tibetan}}{{Contains special characters|Uncommon Unicode}}{{Princely states topics}}{{History of South Asia}}) that are followed by a left-floated object (the image in question here), the upper edge of that image cannot be drawn any higher than the upper edge of the last sidebar preceding it, i.e. {{History of South Asia}}. There are three fixes: (i) use {{stack}}; (ii) cut down the number of sidebars; (iii) (best) add plenty of content, particularly to the Nepalese-Bhutanese domination section (because it preceded the image concerned), perhaps to the lead section as well. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
How to put link in parameter
I'm making a template (Template:User friends) and I want to be able to put a link in the text in the "name of friend" parameter, but I can't figure out how. Any ideas?
By looking through the remaining redirects and finding out where the category comes from? Spot checking a few, I see several that are directly categorized, and I also see that other redirect protection level templates like {{R semi-protected}} can apply the category if the article is fully move-protected. You might start with those. Anomie⚔ 11:42, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
This search finds three templates. When you think the template cases are done, remove "NO BOTS" from WP:CFDWM#Other and see if the bot does the rest. It has admin rights. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:05, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you, those templates seem to cover all cases. I had thought the categories were being populated by some hidden cascade system.
The bot won't work where it can't find a category to replace. It is either a matter of waiting or doing dummy edits to force the template updates to propagate. – FayenaticLondon 15:12, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
Left-image after multiple right-images in preceding section
This is a generlization of a weird layout noted in Teahouse. When there are multiple right-hand images or floated items (infobox/navbox), they stack on the right side. If this is followed by a left-hand image, it vertically aligns with the last of the left-hand stack.
That seems like a reasonable effect: if I wanted the left-hand image to be higher, such as aligned with an earlier image in the right-hand stack, I would have placed it earlier in the wiki-source.
The problem is when the right-hand image-stack dangles down from an earlier section of an article. In that case, the left-hand image in the later section is pushed down by the right-hand stack. That is contrary to the purpose of using left/right to avoid images from getting pushed too far down due to stacking. It gives weird effects and is difficult to diagnose, let alone resolve easily:
foo
bar
bar bar bar bar bar
Before you say "well, stop stacking in the previous section", I'll point out that this is the standard situation in any article with more than one infobox/navbox in the lede. Is there any way to have I guess the opposite of {{clear}}? Or a template to put multiple infoboxes in a single container? DMacks (talk) 09:34, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
Is this a software "feature" (perhaps in the underlying CSS) to reduce sandwiching? The issue is reported here at the Teahouse. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:42, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
{{Stack}} handles this. I have used it in the article reported at the Teahouse.[48]PrimeHunter (talk) 12:22, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
It is not a feature, just a reality of dealing with floating items that must clear themselves. Izno (talk) 16:18, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
This might be the only time in the history of ever that tk can do something better than other gui toolkits. DMacks (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
Why do I feel like this is something that is the result of any recent MW update, because this probably did not happen before. I clearly remember using |left in images to fix pushed images, and use {{clear}} when I need a content to begin after both left and right-aligned items are shown, instead of the current behavior which I independently discovered just now, see #Left-aligning image with lots of content on right section below. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:31, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
Also, this behaviour is different from {{clear}} in the sense that the content after "clear" begins when all above content is finshed. In the case above, and the one I noted below, the top-alignment of left image and that of the last right image is at the same level, as if {{clear}} is being automatically applied just after the second-last right-aligned element, except that it affects only aligned items and not text content. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:37, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
@CX Zoom I don't know why you feel that way, but floating images have behaved this way almost since web browsers were invented. You can find one of many explanations at WP:MFOP.
If you're curious, this behavior is prescribed by the CSS1 spec (and unchanged in later specs):
A floating element's top may not be higher than the top of any earlier floating or block-level element.
I think the rule exists to allow text to be laid out on the page in a single pass. Otherwise, a left-floated image could push down the right-floated images that are placed before it, which in turn could push down the left-floated images further, which could push down the right-floated ones again, and so on. Matma Rextalk 19:46, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
Ahh, that makes sense. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 19:37, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
Adding preview images to articles?
Does there exist an established way to add a preview image to an article? By preview image, I mean an image that shows up in search results/suggestions on mobile Wikipedia, or when you link to a Wikipedia article from a social platform (i.e. Twitter, Discord, etc).
Usually, the first image of the article is used automatically, but sometimes this is a bad default. For example, when you link to Carolina–Duke rivalry, the preview image is the Duke logo, which is not ideal. We have File:Duke v Carolina logos.svg which would make for a much better preview image; however, I don't know the best way to make it become the preview image. I suppose I could put something like <div style="display:none">[[:File:Duke v Carolina logos.svg]]</div> at the top of the article, but that seems a bit janky and I was wondering if there's a template or something. Cheers, IagoQnsi (talk) 23:05, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
@IagoQnsi: The image in search results/suggestions must be displayed in the lead and selected by mw:Extension:PageImages#Image choice. I don't know whether Twitter and Discord use the page image. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:52, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
@IagoQnsi You can exclude images from being the page image by adding the "notpageimage" class, e.g. [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 21:55, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
Linking a subsection without underscores
As copy-pasting an article's subsection for wikilinking transforms spaces into redundant underscores, is there a way to wikilink without manually removing underscores in every instance (particularly to simplify syntax and to limit character count)? E.g. [[Wikipedia#Policies and laws|Wikipedia's policies and laws]] instead of [[Wikipedia#Policies_and_laws|Wikipedia's policies and laws]]. Brandmeistertalk 21:05, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
{{slink}} exists. Izno (talk) 21:18, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
Hello Technical supporters
I used to use this excel to wiki converter up to 20 days ago when it stopped working, who can repair it? or guide me to an easy similar converter? [50]. Abu aamir (talk) 15:53, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
See Help:Table#Tables and the visual editor (VE). The sections that follow provide much help. There are a couple converters linked too. Copying and pasting to and from tables to the Visual Editor, LibreOffice Calc, web pages, etc. is covered too. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:46, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
@Abu aamir I maintain that tool and was not aware that it wasn't working. I am trying to debug it now. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 22:06, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
@Abu aamir I restarted the webserver and it is now working. Not sure what caused it to fail before. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE) 22:10, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
@Ahecht thanks for your effort, it is very good tool.--Abu aamir (talk) 06:55, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
I recently came across a WP:PEIS in ATP 1000, that I was able to resolve by replacing flag with flagg|cxxlo. ATP 1000 and WTA 1000 have each 30+ transcluded sections with a list of singles and doubles tennis winners per season (1990–present). At what point will the page size limit be exceeded and how does one prevent it?
I experimented in my sandbox and replaced #if:1 with P1|1=, and flag(icon) with flagg|cxxlo, but that didn't resolve the issue. By replacing flag(icon) with flagg in the source sections pages before transclusion ([51], [52], [53]) I was able to reduce the page size limit after transclusion but only to a degree.
Is there a way to further reduce the page size template expansion being exceeded and where can I calculate how much template data in kB has been expanded? Qwerty284651 (talk) 15:54, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
You can avoid the whitespace by removing the newlines before and after the section transclusion. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:41, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
I realized what's the problem. It's the 54 (6 players x 9 events) flagicons that are section transcluded. Replacing them with flagg|cxxlo reduces the PEIS by 28kB (from 44.000 bytes [54] --> 16.000 bytes [55] (that is 520 bytes per flagicon) in all 35 articles (1990-present) will drastically reduce the current PEIS of ATP 1000, which sits just below the page size limit [56]. Removing whitespace is barely noticeable. Removal of the {{P1|1= wrapper significantly reduces PEIS at the cost of excess whitespace. Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:44, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Given both sister articles ATP– and WTA 1000 expand yearly, that PEIS will be reached eventually. I will defer from removing P1 until PEIS limit is reached again (in 10+ years). After P1 removed the articles are still over PEIS, then we are left with 2 choices: split article (usually because of rebranding) or substitute 2–5 transcluded sections as a last ditch effort at the cost of longer page loading time (server workload)... Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:59, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Final result: with all 35 articles flagicons replaced with flagg|cxxlo (size reduced by a 1/3) [57]. Qwerty284651 (talk) 00:42, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
And I went and removed the flag icons representing countries, since it is against wikipedia MOS and Tennis Project consensus to use them for locations anyway. Only for player sports nationality. Fyunck(click) (talk) 03:50, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
@Fyunck(click), thank you for that. Duly noted for next time: Flag icons only sport athletes nationality. Qwerty284651 (talk) 07:15, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Hey all. It's been a while.
This is an FYI as I'm aware that when things break, this is among the first places that many Wikimedians would check, hoping to find relevant information.
We have recently learned that we're currently unable to access the WorldCat API, which provided the ability to add citations using ISBN numbers.
This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts, such as the autofill button on refToolbar.
The Editing team is investigating options.
I would like to gather a bit more information before sending out a Mass Message to other wikis; in the meantime, interested folks can keep tabs on the situation via Phabricator, or by reading the next issues of Tech News. If you know of any users or groups who rely heavily on this feature (for instance, someone who has an upcoming editathon), I'd appreciate it if you shared this update with them.
On behalf of the Editing team, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:24, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes. I know. I did it on purpose. It's not a mistake that I need to be educated about.
Is there a way to turn this popup off? Or are people who prefer full-width doomed to be nagged about it every time we use the encyclopedia until we admit that we're wrong?
The nag popup seems to reappear every. single. time I open a new browser window. Closing it only hides it for the duration of a single session. At best. To be clear, I'm not changing the setting it back and forth, or doing anything weird. I set that setting months ago, and I left it that way.
Is there a "hide forever" button or setting that I've missed? Is this a glitch that I should be reporting to someone? I'm assuming it's not supposed to be this way, because it seems like very bad ux design mistake to have a popup tooltip that won't ever go away.
It's already unchecked. ApLundell (talk) 23:44, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I have it on limited width and I keep getting popups too randomly, so I don't think it is a full width thing. If you have some privacy/anti-tracking extensions or settings enabled, that might be causing issues since it looks a cookie is set to see if you have the acknowledged the setting (but for logged-in users it should definitely store that with your account too). There's definitely some bugginess there. Galobtter (talk) 23:57, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I've noticed that this is a fairly persistent popup that I have had to close multiple times also. @Jon (WMF)? Izno (talk) 23:59, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Ah, ok. I guess it's not just me then. (Not sure if that's good news or bad!)
I am blocking "Cross-site cookies". Maybe that's at fault? I thought that was a pretty standard thing to block these days.
I'm also running an ad-blocker, but checking the logs, the only thing it blocks on Wikipedia is something from "intake-analytics.wikimedia.org", which doesn't seem like a likely culprit. ApLundell (talk) 00:14, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that's definitely pretty standard now. This definitely is super annoying; I left a comment at phab:T335307; there's no reason why the same user should get this popup more than once. Galobtter (talk) 02:56, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm curious what browser you are using - I'm wondering if this is because I use Firefox. Galobtter (talk) 03:04, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
In the meantime people can add
.vector-settings{display:none;}
to their common.css which gets rid of the popup and the toggle. Galobtter (talk) 05:21, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, up-to-date Firefox over here. Also rocking uBlock origin, but it is only catching intake-analytics, as above. Izno (talk) 05:58, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Looking at the code, it seems the popup should not appear as long as the cookie enwikilimited-width-aware is set. It may be somehow blocked or expiring too soon. Nardog (talk) 05:25, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks a lot! :) Iniquity (talk) 06:23, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
No objections to initiating a tag for this, the description should call out that it is a 'userscript' like most of our other similar ones do. — xaosfluxTalk 22:04, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
Certain pages forced in V22
Hello! So just recently, on the community Discord, User:Skarmory discovered that some pages are forced to use vector 2022 regardless of the preferences. One of them is the SPI page for an LTA, the other was User:JPxG/sandbox, however that one appears to be normal again. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 12:18, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Can't reproduce it. Could it possibly be the same problem as #Losing login above rather than just the skin preference being lost? Are you still logged in when it's Vector 2022? Nardog (talk) 12:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Oh, that one is in Vector 2022 for me too. Nardog (talk) 12:30, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
That's also in V22 for me, and I'm still logged in. Adding ?useskin=vector fixes it. I didn't try purge or null edit, as I don't want to "fix" a useful example of the bug. Certes (talk) 15:43, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
For clarification: JPxG's sandbox was originally found by User:JPxG, I went to it and it was in vector 2022, closed out of it, went back and it was in vector 2010. Skarmory(talk •contribs) 12:27, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Purging changes JPxG's sandbox to V22 for me. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 12:55, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I wonder what the two pages have in common. They both have __NOINDEX__ and are loading the style module mediawiki.special but I don't know if these are relevant. Nardog (talk) 13:15, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I have had a few pages load in Vector2022 instead of Monobook today. Usually aggressive reloading fixes this, but it is quite annoying. —Kusma (talk) 13:03, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Things have been narrowed down there to "Using Special:Prefixindex can force the default skin". The train is currently rolled back to group1 wikis and we'll hold it there until a fix lands. BBearnes (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Sounds good! Glad we could get it figured out. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 18:13, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
The issue at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T336504 should be fixed. I am going to update all wikis to the new MediaWiki version. If you still notice the issue after the wikis got updated, please reopen the task and I should notice :) Hashar (talk) 09:02, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Glad my sandbox could be a part of history :) jp×g 18:30, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Just chiming in that this glitch happened to me too - not sure which pages it happened to me on. I went and looked at my Preferences and yes I did have Vector 2010 - the Legacy, the Original - checked. And then when I went back to the page the glitch had appeared on the glitch had disappeared.
Not sure but I think(?) it might have been my main User Page, which does have that NOINDEX code on it... Shearonink (talk) 21:09, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Banner link error
When attempting to access link from the reference desk, regarding a "community survey", the following error occurred:
Erreur interne du serveur
CDbConnection failed to open the DB connection.
Une erreur interne est apparue lorsque le serveur web traitait votre requete. Veuillez contacter the webmaster pour signaler ce problème.
Internal Server Error / The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. / Please contact the server administrator at postmaster@questionnaires.marsouin.org to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error. / More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Volunteer me happened to see this VPT discussion on his watchlist so that is how I became aware of it. But generally the quickest way to get CentralNotice admin attention is as described at m:CentralNotice/Report an issue. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 11:17, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
The survey links are working again. The banner is planned to go back up on English Wikipedia (at a reduced traffic level) at 12 UTC i.e. in approximately 40 minutes. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 11:22, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
The banner is back, and from the questionnaire server's side, everything is working fine this time. Sorry for the inconveniences! Jullienn (talk) 12:29, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes we've had a problem of capacity in our servers (we also thought that less people would be interested in answering...)
Anyhow, the capacities are upgraded and the questionnaire is back, but the banner will be delayed a bit for the English Wikipedia's survey (probably begining of June).
Of course you can answer and feedback any question before!
Thank you all for your understanding! Jullienn (talk) 09:26, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Odd page thing happened just now - all articles, all browsers, no difference
Don't know what you call this, but when you bring up any page, at the top there is usually identifying information as to how many users have linked the page, who created it, when, etc. That just totally disappeared, leaving behind a teeny little dot that keeps moving from left to right. Browsers Firefox, Chrome, MS Edge, etc. — Maile (talk) 14:52, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Never mind. Whatever it was, just corrected itself. — Maile (talk) 14:56, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Twinkle
Hello good time;
I request you to make Twinkle applicable on the phone as well, because users do not always have access to computers and laptops. Anyone you edit on Wikipedia has access to a mobile phone and can use Twinkle's features. With respect mojtabaDiscuss 13:55, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Hello, yes, I am aware of this issue and its capabilities, but if we go on a direct road, it is better than an indirect route. mojtabaDiscuss 15:20, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
The appropriate place to request this is WT:TW, where I would guess the maintainers would say "it's in the plans, and here's the alternative for now". Izno (talk) 15:42, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Newspapers.com
It seems like there were recent changes at Newspapers.com which makes it a bit more annoying to cite. It used to be that when you pasted a URL from a clipping into the News citation RefToolbar and clicked the magnifying glass to autofill the rest of the template, it would autofill into the "work" field the name of the newspaper from which the clipping was taken. Now, however, it's autofilling "Newspapers.com" into the "work" field. It creates an extra step when citing articles from Newspapers.com. Is there anything Wikipedia can do on its end to remedy that or would that have to be done on Newspapers.com's end? Or is there a third alternative that I'm not seeing. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:02, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
We've had a couple threads about this at the talk page of WP:Women in Red, most recently here. Apparently, according to a Phab thread, the issue is currently being dealt with by the Library team. Curbon7 (talk) 18:05, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. I would not have thought to look there. Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:07, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Twitter may delete 30-days-inactive accounts: archiving needed
Twitter just changed its rules to say that accounts that aren't logged into for 30 days are liable to be deleted. I've seen claims that some accounts have already been deleted.
We have a tremendous number of Twitter links in references - 57,959 articles have twitter.com links as I write this. Could someone please point an Internet Archive bot at them?
(It's possible that Twitter will backtrack on this rule. But we should archive this stuff anyway - Twitter is already a much more fragile and unreliable platform than it was in October 2022.) - David Gerard (talk) 08:40, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
I quickly put together a bot request to add archive-url/archive-date to instances of {{cite tweet}} where the URL has been archived but not added to the template. That'll at least address some of these issues.. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:47, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
WP:URLREQ would have been the right spot to stop around. Anyway, your search does not account for cite tweet, as it happens. Izno (talk) 15:39, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
ah thank you! I'll note it there too. Yeah, there's those as well - David Gerard (talk) 19:13, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
It seems like Musk also tweeted that the accounts would be "archived" though I have no idea what that will actually mean for the URLs that are in use currently. --Dennis C. Abrams (talk) 18:04, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
I would not trust that any particular thing is going to happen at Twitter other than stuff continuing to break down, sometimes horrifyingly - David Gerard (talk) 19:11, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
On WP:ITN/C, the [ reply ] tool has run into a bit of a kerfuffle (for me at least). Whenever I enter ITN/C, I immediately get moved down to a specific comment where it attempts to load an unfinished reply (I know this because before this occurred, it was loading replies that I had already made) to a comment I've already had replied to. The big issue is that the reply never loads, which is an issue considering that for whatever reason, you can't write multiple replies at once. I'm using Google Chrome. This has occurred before and it seemed to be solved via clearing the cache, but that's not working now. Interestingly enough, on Chrome, it attempts to do the same thing when logged out, but then subsequently dismisses the reply. Meanwhile, on Microsoft Edge, it doesn't load the reply at all logged-in or logged-out, meaning that it's likely a browser issue of some sort. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk· Contribs) 12:52, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the bug report, this seems to be the same issue as this task: T332235 and I hope we'll find the time to investigate it soon. Matma Rextalk 19:40, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
The tipsy removal looks to impact these 35ish scripts. Izno (talk) 01:04, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
For scripts that use jQuery UI (which is most of the above), it's more sensible and easier to migrate to jquery.ui.toolip – which is what Twinkle did 3 years ago. Tipsy is a jQuery plugin after all. – SD0001 (talk) 06:09, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Pedantic correction: Half of logged-in desktop users who are using Vector 2022 will see an interface... I haven't yet found anything to explain why (if it's indeed the case, as implied) logged-out desktop users will see no change. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 07:39, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
The note above from WMF staff says Due to privacy and technical restrictions, we are only able to run this test with logged-in users. I looked through half a dozen phab tickets and found mention of the "logged in only" restriction, but no explanation about why it was put in place. This A/B test appears to be the reason for the new ".vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled" CSS class that has been stuck to all sorts of other classes like gum to the bottom of a shoe, interfering with custom CSS. If you are one of the lucky 50% to see the Zebra design during the A/B test, or if you figure out how to script your way into the test, you will get a ".vector-feature-zebra-design-enable" CSS class instead, AFAICT. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:57, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
Probably caution around that even a cookie that just assigns the user to the A or B bucket might be seen as a "tracking" cookie under various laws, and lack of any other good way to do the bucketing. Anomie⚔ 12:07, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
I've heard (in the context of a different A/B test) that getting IP editors assigned correctly and durably is difficult. The legal considerations are apparently not insurmountable. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:53, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Could we not surmount them by showing A to editors with odd IP addresses and B to even IPs, without storing any information on either server or browser? (Checking a more significant bit would provide more resilience against IP hoppers, e.g. check the 7 in 123.45.67.89 or 2003:45:67:89:A:B:C:D.) Certes (talk) 10:52, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Well, heck. I didn't actually look on this same page; I just followed the links provided in the News item. (And it's probably there on the mw pages, too, and I just didn't see it.) Thanks for the tip, Jonesey. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 13:21, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
Strange behaviour right-clicking wikilink with #section while previewing
If I create a wikilink containing a #section (that actually already exists), of course it works fine in read mode. However, if I go into the source editor, click on preview, and right-click to open the link in a new browser tab (to check the link syntax is right), it brings up full page source edit mode (URL: ...title=Wikipedia:Page&action=submit#section). Other links do not. Maybe there's a conflict with edit submission?
Is this a feature or an issue (which may require no action)?
This is just how browsers work. Izno (talk) 17:19, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. It's strange, though, that it doesn't bring the page up in read mode and jump to the anchor, but instead submits a page request and brings it up in the source code editor. But then little surprises me these days. (I'm using Vector Legacy 2010, btw). Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 17:29, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Part of it sems to be a WP feature. Preview has differential behaviors among a link to a section of the page being edited (regardless if written as #section or page#section):
This difference appears at the level of the HTML source of the preview, so it's not just browser. DMacks (talk) 18:40, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, I'm glad it's not just me questioning my own sanity. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 18:49, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
I was wondering if a variable had been set when I entered edit mode, in PHP and/or JS, that had been carried over into preview (?) Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:16, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
A [[#...]] link without page name is designed to go to the section (if it exists) on left-click while staying on the page without reloading. The generated HTML also just says <a href="#... with no page name. If you open the link in a new tab then your browser prefixes the url of the page you are on. Preview pages have action=submit in the url so that part is kept. MediaWiki opens an edit window for such url's. It also applies to links in the table of contents. Just live with it. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:20, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, that explains a lot. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:28, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
I think there was a time where MediaWiki included the page name in links to the page itself, at least if the wikitext had the page name. Left-clicking in preview opened a new page instead of going to the section in the preview. That was annoying. The current system is much better. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:48, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Media player is wrongly displayed in gallery view
In Railways in Melbourne article I found a gallery box become a straight line, and the media player is placed out of box, is there any way to fix? -- Great Brightstar (talk) 07:32, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
The technical reason is that this gallery has specified widths here. That means the gallery allows the content to autosize the height. But audio doesnt have 'intrinsic' height that is resizable and thus ends ups with size 0.. If you don't specify sizing the gallery works (just looks poorly because all squares are uneven). I'me sure that some improvements can be made if time was invested into it, but yes, primarily audio files are just not designed to be put into galleries. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:29, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
I've nominated the file for speedy deletion as an obvious copyright violation so it might not be a problem for much longer ... in fact I've pre-emptively deleted it from the article. Graham87 15:41, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
adding a geojson map to an article without an infobox
If I was going to add a map to an article with an infobox I'd do something like this:
But what if I wanted to add a map to an article without an infobox? I mean, sure, I suppose I could add one, but just as images don't require infobox idk that maps ought to either TerraFrost (talk) 04:32, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
@TerraFrost: I don't get what your problem is? This is possible, you can just do it. Elli (talk | contribs) 04:53, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Add a caption
Just add the following to the page where you want it to appear.
{{maplink|from=Rosedale Neighborhood (Austin, Texas).map |frame=yes |text=Add a caption}}
I used {{maplink}} rather than {{maplink-road}} as the latter doesn't seem to accept frame. — Jts1882 | talk 09:09, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
You can use {{maplink-road}} as long as you override the plain value instead of the frame:
{{maplink-road|from=Rosedale Neighborhood (Austin, Texas).map|plain=no|text=Add a caption}}Terasail[✉️] 10:23, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Toolforge maintenance or problems?
Everything worked fine an hour or so ago. But I've noticed my afd stats from toolforge just hangs forever and won't pull up the page. Also, I try to pull up my User edit count ... same kind of hang up. Anything I try to see that is on toolforge, just hangs in a loop. Also not browser specific - happens on Edge, Chrome and Firefox. — Maile (talk) 15:47, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
There's network switch maintenance underway today, which has caused some unintended consequences for toolforge. These issues are currently being fixed so things should be back to normal in an hour or so. I strongly encourage you to subscribe to https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/cloud-announce.lists.wikimedia.org/ so that you're aware of future maintenance windows in advance. Andrewbogott (talk) 16:09, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Updating contents of template and reflection on article
I recently created the template Template:N-benzylphenethylamine-series-toxicology for toxicology for 25-NB series of compounds that will be substituted in individual NBOMe derivative articles (because there are a lot of duplications and every notable derivative of 25-NB pretty much exhibits same toxicology profile). After creating the template, I first added the template to the 25-NB article. After that, I made an edit to the template, but surprisingly the article does not display the recent version of the template.
So I tried making an "empty" edit by clicking on "edit" and "save" (it does not show in page history because there was no change), and interestingly the article displays the latest version of the template to my tab locally. I tried opening the article in a private tab, and it still shows the old version of the template. I tried to WP:BYPASS, but it doesn't work either. I thought editing a template instantly gets reflected in pages that use the template. Does it take time to get updated? or is there something I'm misunderstanding? --WikiLinuz {talk} 20:17, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Ahh, apparently it takes some time for the article to reflect updated content of template. I think this topic can be closed. Apologies. --WikiLinuz {talk} 20:38, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
There are 44 places that mention jquery.cookie. Several places are in talk archives (including VPT). Some are in documentation of scripts. The majority, though, are in user scripts, most of which seem to be forks of MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js, which was changed to use mediawiki.cookie in Special:Diff/881441476. —andrybak (talk) 07:31, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Template-generated categories vs. bot process
There's a recurring problem I've noted when JJMC89 bot moves a category that needs to be renamed per CFR process, but the category was populated principally or entirely by a template instead of by direct declaration of the category on pages. The current flare-up pertains to a recent project of renaming "Victoria (Australia)" categories to "Victoria (state)", but there have been other examples of this in the past.
It follows several steps:
JJMC89 bot renames the category.
Because it's a template-transcluded category, JJMC89 bot fails to make the template edits necessary to actually move the contents.
This leaves the newly-renamed category empty, following which an editor (usually User:Liz) finds it on the empty categories list and tags it in good faith for deletion.
It simultaneously leaves the old category as a non-empty redlink, so the next time Special:WantedCategories updates, an editor (usually me) finds it there and has to manually make the necessary template edits to actually move the contents over to the new category and depopulate the old one, and then detag the no-longer-empty category.
Because WantedCategories doesn't update as often as it should (it really should be daily), there's often a gap of one to three full days between steps three and four.
Ideally, the bot should obviously make the necessary template edits to move the contents itself, so that the whole hassle is avoided entirely — but if that's not possible, such as if the bot can't even determine out what template the category is coming from in the first place, then the bot just shouldn't move the category at all, and should leave it to be dealt with by a human editor who can sort it out seamlessly instead of causing a multistage train crash that bounces around to multiple category cleanup queues over several days.
So I wanted to ask: is either of those things possible at all? Bearcat (talk) 19:01, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working#Bot work says: If the category ... requires template editing ... list it at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/Manual rather than here.. It sounds like somebody didn't discover it required template editing or didn't know it should be handled manually. It's well-known that maintenance categories are template-generated but I wouldn't expect a name with "Victoria (Australia)" to be template-generated so it's an easy mistake to make. It doesn't seem practical for a bot to make automatic template edits to update category names. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:38, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
"Non-maintenance categories set via templates" is discouraged generally. While I don't universally support that guideline, this is an example of one reason having them can be a problem for editors. DMacks (talk) 19:51, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Most of them were maintenance categories, such as WikiProject and wikiuser categories. Bearcat (talk) 20:30, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
The renamed categories I examined were not maintenance categories but I didn't test whether they were template-generated. Always post an example when you report something. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:52, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Category:Victoria (state) stubs and its subcategories (see adjacent box) are not maint cats, but all are all template-generated, by {{VictoriaAU-stub}} and similar. Soon after the move of the category page, a manual edit to the stub template should have been performed, and the job queue would have processed the pages to update the link tables in due course. But I found that Timrollpickering (talk· contribs) was making the stub template edits in advance of the category page moves, for example the amendment to Template:VictoriaAU-stub occurred at 21:10, 6 May 2023 (UTC) and the actual move of Category:Victoria (state) stubs occurred at 10:42, 7 May 2023 (UTC) - so for more than thirteen hours a category was empty and a bunch of pages had a redlink category at the bottom. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:25, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
The admins working on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working (currently primarily Fayenatic london and myself) always check afterwards backlinks and inclusions and fix them, and this is what I have done with all Victoria categories. I am afraid though we do not have the bandwidth to check backlinks and whether categories are template generaeled in advance, except for obvious cases. Template-generated categories always give us a lot of headache, on one occasion (in eight or so years) I was not even able to figure out how a category is generated and had to ask for help. Ymblanter (talk) 12:52, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
I try to keep up to date with tricky cases of category moves listed at WP:CFDW, but lately the large volume of Speedy renamings has made this difficult.
I think Liz would now generally check the page history or "what links here" in cases such as this, and would not delete an empty category page that is listed as a target for renaming at WP:CFDW.
Thank you Bearcat for your hard work. In cases that are populated by a widely-used template that is not specific to the topic, I prefer to insert {{resolve category redirect}} into that template, so that the pages will be placed into the new category simply by leaving a category redirect at the old name. {{coord missing}} already has this feature; I will document this on its doc page. I see that that {{Photo requested}} was updated to work this way [73] but this coding is not yet in {{Image requested}} or {{Map requested}}.– FayenaticLondon 13:35, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
This script adds "Source-added" and "Template-added" links under "Tools" in the sidebar on category pages.
"Source-added" searches category members which were added with category code in the source.
"Template-added" shows all category members not found by "Source-added".
To use the script, add the following line to Special:MyPage/common.js:
importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Category source.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Category source.js]]
Thanks a lot, I will give it a try. Ymblanter (talk) 18:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
Nice idea, thank you. It will help in tracking down what's populating a mixed category of that kind. Are the results as you would expect for e.g. Category:2020s wildfires in the United States, where the category name is source-added rather than transcluded, but using templates to build the category name? – FayenaticLondon 20:38, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
"Source-added" only finds cases where the full category code is directly in the source like [[Category:2020s wildfires in the United States|sortkey]]. Category:2021 wildfires in the United States is added to the category with [[Category:{{DECADE|{{Title year}}}} wildfires in the United States]]. That is listed under "Template-added". I don't know how JJMC89 bot is coded but I guess the cases it can handle are similar to those called "Source-added" in my script. It sounds very hard to make a script or bot which can distinguish between cases where you have to update a used template and cases where you have to update an expression involving templates (or parser functions) in the page itself. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:52, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
Sure. It's not really a problem.
I came back thinking I would ask for something similar to analyse "What links here" rather than category members. E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Category:Ursa_Major_(constellation) shows masses of links to the old category name, but most are via {{constellation navbox}} which auto-detects whether the "(constellation)" disambiguator is used in the category name, by trying the long version first – that's clever, but inconvenient for checking backlinks. Anyway, I tried your gadget, by going to the old empty Category:Ursa Major (constellation) and clicking "Source-added", and realised that all I have to do is delete the first "incategory" half of the generated search code; then the remaining "insource" half finds any pages that link directly to the old category page. Handy! – FayenaticLondon 15:28, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Oops, no, it was a lucky strike to get a result from that example. Please could you add a new option "Source-added links" which would find links with or without a colon inside the brackets? Ideally it might also look for links using {{c}} or {{cat}}... am I asking too much now? – FayenaticLondon 19:44, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
I have an old script User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js which looks for wikilinks in the source, both with and without leading colon, but the page has to actually link there and be listed at WhatLinksHere. It doesn't detect links made with templates like {{c}} and {{cat}}. It's not category-specific but works on pages in all namespaces. On Category:Ursa Major it produces Source links. It doesn't usually find category members since they are not listed at WhatLinksHere unless they also have a link to the category in the body (including navboxes). Category:Ursa Major is a special case here because many of the category members have a navbox which does link to the category page. It's a confusing example for this script. For example, it makes a search which detects that Messier 82 links to Category:Ursa Major in some way (via a navbox but the script doesn't know that). Then it looks at the source of Messier 82 to see if the link is there. In the source it finds [[Category:Ursa Major]] and then it incorrectly thinks that was the link and includes Messier 82 in the results. That may sound dumb but the script was made with articles in mind and not categories. [[Example]] and [[:Example]] are both valid ways to link the mainspace page Example. We use the former way far more but the script is designed to find both. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:39, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! That script does find the desired links when used at the old category page.[74] The only one it misses is User:C messier/NGC 3516 where the link to the category is disabled by nowiki tags. But I do need to find {{c}} links as well, because that template is quite often used on category pages, e.g. [75]. – FayenaticLondon 07:30, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
At Category:Lists of counties of the United States by state, I can see Wikipedia:Featured content/Lists as one of the pages in category. When I opened this page, the category was not shown, because the page has random components and selects a random featured article, I saw something related to Navy, and the page had categories of this article shown. I believe this is not ideal, is there a long-term solution to fix this miscategorisation? Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 21:16, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I dug a little deeper. Many of the lists are missing onlyinclude but I don't think they should actually have it. Wikipedia:Featured content/Lists was transcluded in Wikipedia:Featured content until 2013 [76] after discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured content/Archive 3#Dire need of cleanup. Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Featured content/Lists shows nothing indicating the page is used for anything now. There is no point struggling to add and maintain onlyinclude code in 143 lists if the system isn't used. I suggest to deactivate the transclusion of the lists in Wikipedia:Featured content/Lists unless somebody can give a good reason to keep it. Maybe the whole page should just be deleted. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:38, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
I have deactivated the transclusion.[77]PrimeHunter (talk) 01:51, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
how is Bull Creek District Park getting it's map data?
When I add maps to infobox's I'll upload the GeoJSON to wikimedia commons and then I'll add it to the infobox thusly:
| image_map = {{maplink-road|from=Walnut Creek Preserve.map}}
That said, Bull Creek District Park shows what appears to be a GeoJSON map and idk how. Like even if I remove everything from the infobox in that article, just leaving an infobox skeleton, as it were, I still see it:
@TerraFrost: Some infoboxes automatically pull data from the Wikidata item for the page. Click "Wikidata item" under "Tools" in the desktop site to see it. Wikidata is also mentioned in the documentation at Template:Infobox park. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:40, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Where on that page is it? There's "coordinate location" but that's not a map - that's just a single latitude / longitude coordinate. "inception" is set to 1971. That's not a map either - that's a year. There's the "Google Knowledge Graph ID", as well. idk what that is but it doesn't look to be a map either TerraFrost (talk) 01:57, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
It comes from OpenStreetMap, which is linked to the Wikidata item ("wikidata Q29470856"), which is in turn linked to the article. * Pppery *it has begun... 02:19, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Mystery solved! Thanks! TerraFrost (talk) 02:42, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Special:ExpandTemplates shows that an empty {{Infobox park}} on Bull Creek District Park produces this code:
<templatestylessrc="Module:Infobox/styles.css"></templatestyles><tableclass="infobox vcard"><tr><thcolspan="2"class="infobox-above fn org"style="background-color: #abdb75; line-height: 140%;">Bull Creek District Park</th></tr><tr><tdcolspan="2"class="infobox-image"><mapframezoom="10"align="center"frameless="1"height="200"width="250">[
{"properties":{"title":"Bull Creek District Park","fill-opacity":0.5,"stroke":"#FF0000","stroke-width":3,"fill":"#606060"},"type":"ExternalData","service":"geoshape","ids":"Q29470856"},
{"properties":{"stroke-width":5,"stroke":"#FF0000","title":"Bull Creek District Park"},"type":"ExternalData","service":"geoline","ids":"Q29470856"},
{"type":"Feature","geometry":{"coordinates":[-97.7846,30.3686],"type":"Point"},"properties":{"marker-color":"#5E74F3","title":"Bull Creek District Park","marker-symbol":"park"}}
]</mapframe>[[Category:Infobox mapframe without OSM relation ID on Wikidata]]</td></tr>[[Category:Articles using infobox templates with no data rows]]</table>
The coordinates are pulled from the Wikidata item Bull Creek District Park (Q29470856). Special:Version shows we have mw:Extension:Kartographer. <mapframe>...</mapframe> causes the extension to automatically display a map using OpenStreetMap. I guess "ids":"Q29470856" in the full code is looked up in OpenStreetMap (don't know how) to find https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/582969651 so the park area can be displayed in red in the article. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:53, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
New navbox not working
My new navbox, Template:Bloomsbury_Group, isn't behaving as I expected it would. What did I do wrong? Would someone with template knowledge take a look at it? Thanks in advance. Angry Candy (talk) 17:54, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
I don't know if it's known in the Phab ticket sense, but along with the other responses that you got in the last thread, I have that issue from time to time as well. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:44, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm not getting what you're getting, but related: in 2023 I've been strangely getting logged out a lot from my devices. Unlikely to be actually related though. SWinxy (talk) 07:01, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
This might be phab:T326281 or one of the related issues. Browsers have lately become more strict about accessing cookies for privacy and security reasons, which breaks logins, especially crosswiki. Check if you have any tracking protection/privacy extensions enabled; they might be breaking the logins. Galobtter (talk) 08:41, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
@Galobtter: I use the latest version of Firefox and no such extensions; indeed, I have only two, which I've had for a long time, AdBlock Plus, which I have disabled for Wikipedia, and a machine translator called TWP.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:42, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I also use Firefox. I would just make sure tracking protection isn't turned on. If it isn't, then I think it has to fixed in the ticket and I'm not sure if there's more that you can do to fix it. Galobtter (talk) 23:08, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
AFAICT, you can't turn tracking protection off. It can be set to Standard, Strict, or Custom. Unlike the first two, within the last you can set different options. What do you recommend, and do you recommend it only to "fix" the Wikipedia problem or because you think it's a good idea otherwise?--Bbb23 (talk) 23:35, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
You can turn off "enhanced tracking protection" for one particular website - see here. I have it set to standard and disabled it on Wikipedia and the only login issues I have is not being automatically logged into e.g. wikidata or wikinews since they are on different domains. Galobtter (talk) 23:44, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I added the exception but left my setting for everywhere else at Custom. I used https://en.wikipedia.org as the website. I'll let you know if I have the problem again. Thanks for your help.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:50, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
@Galobtter: Happened again a few minutes ago.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:57, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Not sure what's going on. All I can say is that I have tracking protection set to "Standard" at about:preferences#privacy and use the the button to the left of the address bar to turn it off for Wikipedia, and I haven't experience issues. Galobtter (talk) 18:23, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
WikiProject United States - column overlap
At Wikipedia:WikiProject United States there is an issue with the right column Project categories overlapping left column Project statistics. Before writing here, I tested on skins Vectorlegacy, Timeless, and for these two overlap is consistant nomatter what font size. With both Vector (new) and Monobook - no overlap at "normal" fontsize & Overlap begins with Huge font sizes. Looking at History, the problem was introduced here.
I'm asking for help to solve after I made several attempts to do an "easy fix" without success. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 19:52, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Fixed, in a way. The problem was that both "columns" in this div layout had widths specified, but the width of the table cells was being inflexible when the zoom level was high or the font level was large. This new layout causes stacking instead of overlapping at high zoom or large font levels. Another workaround might be to add horizontal scrolling to the table at Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Statistics/Assessment categories, but many people don't like horizontal scrolling. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:12, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: - When I look at another WP such as WikiProject Canada, it has a nice clean page layout with that assessment table in right column, and left column wikilinks. Only how to do all that is beyond me. JoeNMLC (talk) 20:24, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
It uses a somewhat similar layout to the current WikiProject United States page; if you zoom in enough, the list of Wikiprojects will get bumped below the assessment table. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:08, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
While fixing duplicate ref names, I noticed that some articles are included in this maintainance category, despite neither tracked error nor category itself appearing on them.
All of them are very short stubs, all have a few refs, which are mostly unnamed. None of affected articles have any error message in refs. I tried purging both articles and category, but they are still here. USS Cola!rado🇺🇸 (C⭐T) 13:30, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
@Arado Ar 196: WP:Purging isn't enough when it comes to category caching issues like that, those need null edits, and indeed a null edit on Krugloozyornoye seems to have worked to get it out of the category. No clue what specifically caused them to appear in the category to start with, but when the article histories themselves don't show any clues, it's almost always something to do with one template or another in my experience. AddWittyNameHere 13:47, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
I suspect what happened here is that this edit to {{Kz-census2009}} caused a reference error in all pages using both that and {{Kz-census1999}} at once (which all the pages you link do). these 2 edits done a bit later have fixed the issue since, but not before a couple articles fell into the category due to the reference conflict. Aidan9382(talk) 13:54, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, I null-edited them all (except Krugloozyornoye), and they are gone from category. And thanks to @Aidan9382 for finding possible cause. USS Cola!rado🇺🇸 (C⭐T) 13:56, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
An A/B test coming soon. An update
Hey! As announced, we will perform an A/B test in which half of logged-in desktop users will see a version that shows the regions of the page separated more clearly. (The new look is called Zebra.) The plan is to start with Hebrew Wikipedia todaytomorrow, and tomorrowon Thursday, if everything is correct and there are no technical errors, we will proceed with the remainder of wikis as listed in the original announcement, including English Wikipedia.
The URL parameter forcing Zebra is ?VectorZebraDesign=1, and to force the old look, just replace 1 with 0 (@Xaosflux, thanks for asking about that). While it's technically possible to use this to, say, create a browser plugin allowing us to only use Zebra or preventing us from seeing Zebra, we discourage from using it and getting used to it because this code and the A/B test itself will only be temporary. Decisions regarding the future of Zebra will be made in July.
Coordinates are shoved all the way to the right with no margin, rather than being aligned with the tools menu/language switcher/infobox right side as they are currently in New Vector.
There is a horizontal scroll bar in the table of contents, even though there is nothing to scroll over to other than white space.
Both of these are significant/noticeable enough that I would suggest fixing them before deployment. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 21:03, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Sdkb. I'll share both issues with my team. I can't reproduce the second one – what's your OS and browser? Regarding the coordinates, though, I'm not sure if this is a bug of our design or the local code. Is it possible that this is because the coordinates here on English WP are set with the local CSS and the value "position absolute" instead of being converted into indicators? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:47, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF) coordinates are prob tied in with the hot mess related to phab:T281974, and the continuing conflict between skin designers and the community about what is "content", and where content should go... — xaosfluxTalk 13:51, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
The horizontal scrollbar on today's FA
@SGrabarczuk (WMF), my OS is Windows 11 Home OS build 22621.1702, and my browser is Chrome Version 113.0.5672.93 (Official Build) (64-bit). My display is 1920x1080 if that's relevant. I tested in an Incognito window logged out of my account, and the issue persists there, so it's not any gadget or setting I'm using. The issue appears to be happening for every article I visit, including those with only very short section titles, e.g. here. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 15:16, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Hi, I have an update, due to some problems with the settings, we'll need to disable the test today from Hebrew Wikipedia, try to fix the problem, and hopefully, re-enable the test next week. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Identifying conflicts between templates
There are sometimes pairs of templates where only one, but not both, should be used in an article, e.g. {{use mdy dates}} and {{use dmy dates}}. Is there any way to test, within a template's code, whether or not the page contains a different template, so that a preview warning can be omitted if so? {{u|Sdkb}}talk 22:56, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration has a function, "local function get_date_format", that locates these templates in article text. It has to scan the entire article wikitext. I don't know if that helps you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm looking for something more generalizable/less costly, but good to know that that exists. {{u|Sdkb}}talk 00:37, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Not what you asked for but hastemplate:"use mdy dates" hastemplate:"use dmy dates" currently gives 132 mainspace hits, e.g. Maria Sharapova which has {{Use mdy dates|date=June 2016}} and {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2023}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:39, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
I've just fixed the conflict at United States Bicentennial. Template {{Use dmy dates}} was introduced in Special:Diff/1088590875. The edit is tagged with "Tag: Visual edit". I doubt that it was intentional, so it might be caused by some quirk/bug of the Visual Editor – it didn't detect existing {{Use mdy dates}}, which was placed in the middle of the article. —andrybak (talk) 20:28, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
VE is not that smart. Given where you removed it from, I expect the only thing that might have caught the old variant being in the middle of the page would have been AWB or the OHC date script. Izno (talk) 20:32, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Why wouldn't it be intentional? Matma Rextalk 10:37, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
Once the patch for phab:T50175 is merged, it will be possible to use lua to get categories to which the page belongs. This can used to detect template conflicts, as either template can be tweaked to check for existence of categories emitted by the other. This is more performant and reliable than scanning the wikitext. – SD0001 (talk) 10:00, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
That's what I'm looking for. Thanks, and I guess I now have another Phab ticket to wait on... {{u|Sdkb}}talk 20:51, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
From experience though, I think it's going to be an indefinite wait. One objection on phab is enough to derail a volunteer patch, as the ones who do support a feature don't add comments. This is why we can't have all the good stuff. – SD0001 (talk) 04:40, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
Making the "you are editing an old revision" warning more visible in the 2017 editor
First, try this:
Enable the 2017 wikitext editor ("new wikitext mode" in beta features)
Visit Special:Diff/1155561061. (Or any diff to an old revision on a page with a big edit notice)
Click "edit source"
There's a peach box at the top saying that you're viewing an old revision, yes. And experienced editor will probably know what that implies. But what about the fact that you're about to stomp all over other comments? Poor little MediaWiki:Editingold is buried way below all the shouty stuff in the editnotice, in plain black-on-white text. And it disappears if you click anywhere on the page.
Is there anything we can do to make this more visible? It's a bad look when you remove someone else's comment at ANI. It's a really bad look if the comment was critical of you.
I'd file a phab ticket, but I'm not sure what to ask for. We could change the color of MediaWiki:Editingold ourselves, I suppose, but it's still hidden "below the fold" so I'm not sure if that will help much. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:40, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow it's got a yellow background for me in it's box - what skin are you using? — xaosfluxTalk 20:48, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Monobook, Vector, Vector-2022, Vector-2022 + safemode: all black on white. There's another notice (Mediawiki:Revision-info) that says "This is an old revision" and that one is inside a yellowish box, but it doesn't say that you're about to overwrite anything. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:07, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
That edit notice used to be pink, before that edit. @Xaosflux, maybe you can revert it back to pink version? USS Cola!rado🇺🇸 (C⭐T) 04:24, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
@Arado Ar 196 the coloring for that begun coming from the wrapper around it's class - looks like that may be missing when it is hidden in with the edit notices and could be addressed there. This notice is still colored under the other editors that keeps it across the page instead of hiding it in a drop down. — xaosfluxTalk 09:25, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
What if we put it above any editnotices on the page? QuicoleJR (talk) 20:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
The problem is particularly big on pages that already have edit notices. These are shown above the warning. Unless you scroll all the way to the bottom no warning will ever be seen. I fell into this trap on ANI. I would suggest making the warning show up when you click publish as well. AncientWalrus (talk) 20:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
That idea could also work. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:50, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Scrap that, it should be a modal dismissed explicitly. Since editing an outdated version is not the norm, it's ok to have to click "I know what I'm doing" every time. AncientWalrus (talk) 21:02, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
I don't think editing an outdated version is as unusual as you think. Any time you need to revert vandalism or unconstructive edits without using rollback or twinkle or some such you revert by editing an outdated version of the page. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 21:10, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Sure, but in those cases how bad is it to click "OK"? Some data on the frequency of inadvertent deletions with that editor would be great.
I guess we'd need some date AncientWalrus (talk) 21:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: OK, was able to duplicate what you are seeing. Seems like that layout has all sorts of problems, including that. Appears this is only happening when you have that experimental beta feature on, feedback for that is requested at: mw:2017_wikitext_editor/Feedback. — xaosfluxTalk 22:26, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Hmmm. Realized this is happening in regular VisualEditor too, which is not surprising since the 2017 editor is just some Rube Goldberg layer on top of VE. Only in "pure" VE it's worse: there's no MediaWiki:Revision-info; the only indication is the back-on-white text in the edit notice area. Now I'm wondering how many "unexplained reverts" are even intentional. (Also, ugh, fl*w). Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:48, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Hopefully this is less an issue with the deployment of the reply tool, but yes, still something where there's a lot of room for improvement. I support the reprioritization Suffusion proposes (while also noting that, in the example of ANI, bloat from other banners is a significant part of the problem). {{u|Sdkb}}talk 04:53, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
Toggling fixed width does nothing on 3:2 screens
Toggling fixed width on/off does nothing to change the appearance of the content in Microsoft Edge on Windows 11. I have a Surface Laptop 2 with a 3:2 aspect ratio. It appears to be stuck in full width, I think? I don't experience this issue in Chrome. Schierbecker (talk) 23:55, 16 May 2023 (UTC)
Wiki has templates like {{cite IETF|rfc=}} and {{Cite ISO standard|csnumber=}}, but the user has to manualy populate them with, e.g., |author=, |title=. I'm pretty sure that organizations like the IETF maintain tracking databases containing such details. Is it technically feasible to have bots, templates or widgets that given an identifier pull all of the relevant data and populate the citation, similar to what is done for {{cite arXiv}}? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:24, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
hastemplate:"Cite ISO standard" gives 34 results. That seems very little to bother with a bot. hastemplate:"Cite IETF" gives 516 results. hastemplate:"Cite arXiv" gives 4183. {{cite IETF |rfc=1738}} produces RFC 1738. doi:10.17487/RFC1738. The second link includes "Cite this RFC: TXT | XML | BibTeX". A bot could work with that. Wikipedia:Bot requests is the place to request it, or maybe contact Smith609 who operates Citation bot. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:45, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
I wonder if Zotero can 'read' any of those. If so, then auto-filling shouldn't be too difficult. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:52, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Graph extension disabled per immediate effect
Because of a security problem, the Graph extension has been disabled with immediate effect. More information will follow as it becomes available. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:03, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Okay, that obviates my coming here to report that {{page views}} is broken everywhere. I'll subscribe here, but if you report elsewhere, please add a link here, and a {{tracked}} template, as appropriate so I can monitor. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:47, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
It's in phabricator as Phab:T334895, but the task is restricted. 192.76.8.66 (talk) 10:42, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Notes from T334940 — An update will go out later today, and in the meantime purging the pages cache should clear the raw wikitext — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:49, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
FYI An update will go out later today appears to mean "an announcement about the problem" and not a fix — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:13, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Can I suggest changing the error to include a link to this page? Simply stating "Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues." leaves the user wondering whether the issue is on their side or Wikipedia's side Jesse Flynn (pseudonym) (talk) 10:28, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Or, perhaps, something like "Graphs are unavailable due to a known technical issue", which sounds much less like it's auto-generated Jesse Flynn (pseudonym) (talk) 10:37, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
Problem with { { Graph:Chart } } ?
Article/section Ittoqqortoormiit#Population contains a { { Graph:Chart } } construct that does not display in the Chrome or Firefox browsers.
Notes: I don't know how to suppress WP formatting inside editing panes. A Web search and a reading of the WP manual of style did not reveal how to do this. I don't know how to submit WP bug reports, nor do I wish to know. David Spector (talk) 12:37, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@David spector: The Graph extension has been temporarily disabled, see above. —Kusma (talk) 12:39, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Graphs disabled message
I have created {{Graphs disabled}} for use on significant documentation pages. It can just be blanked when graphs are working again but I suggest to not add it to numerous low profile pages when the problem is expected to be so brief. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:06, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Sounds good: a temporary problem that is being fixed; thank you. I hope all the uses are on "low profile pages". David Spector (talk) 13:16, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I misread the intent of the template, but what I just did still feels like it works. See WT:WPAFC I'm not sure if this is a good solution as for those who are just browsing Wikipedia might not know what a template documentation page is and might be confused as to why the graph isn't showing. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:27, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
It was intended for documentation pages about graphs. I have added an option |missing for places where a graph should have been displayed. That's a lot of places and I'm not sure how many temporary notices it's worth adding. It would be more practical if any use of <graph>...</graph> automatically displayed an interface message like MediaWiki:Graphs disabled. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:56, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
That would definitely help. And I realized that its intended for documentation pages after i Had already added it because I read it too quickly. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 13:58, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I for one oppose any need for a "Graphs disabled" message in mainspace; those in the know should just comment out graphs for the time being until this boondoggle gets fixed. (Hopefully this doesn't impugn on progress of inline SVG support.) – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 15:09, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
There is often associated content referring to the non-displayed graph. Commenting out the relevant parts may be non-trivial and it may not be uncommented quickly or at all when graphs return. The template can immediately be changed to display nothing when they return. If graphs were expected to be missing for a long time then a prettier but more work-demanding solution would be better but for a probably short term problem, I think it's good to have a simple option. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:24, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Graphs are a very important part for illustration on Wikipedia. From "Demographics" section of geographical locations to "Polling" & "Results" section of elections to articles on geological periods to articles on a specific genus. I'd suggest that MediaWiki:Sitenotice be called with the text "Due to some technical issues, most Graphs on Wikipedia are not visible. Inconvenience caused is regretted." I said, "most graphs" because some graphs also exist as svg/png on commons with should be visible, and readers should not have to face technical jargon like "extensions", etc. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 16:15, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
If consensus exists for a notice, something simple and non-obtrusive, to the effect of "Graphs are currently unavailable due to technical issues", no template boxes or red error text, or anything too flashy, would probably be best while this is sorted. It's already embarrassing enough that stuff like this happens in the current year, we shouldn't bring too much flash or attention to it while the devs work to fix it. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:20, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Ahead of a proper communication that WMF is coming up with, I will say that it is now possible to display a custom message in place of the graphs, it is done by replacing MediaWiki:Graph-disabled content, empty by default, with a custom notice (such as an Ambox). There is also now a tracking category "Category:Pages with disabled graphs" showing the pages that used to contain graphs. The tracking category's name and description can be changed by editing MediaWiki:Graph-disabled-category and MediaWiki:Graph-disabled-category-desc interface messages. --Base (talk) 19:50, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
How about this? —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 20:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
As source of inspiration, in Ukrainian Wikipedia we currently went with a standard Ambox icon and "There was supposed to be a graph or a diagram here, but its rendering is currently disabled for technical reasons. Please do not remove the code that is causing this message. Developers are already working on restoring the normal rendering of the graph or diagram." --Base (talk) 20:13, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I find this one more precise and appropriate to be shown. Thanks for sharing. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 20:15, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
The missing graphs are probably confusing a lot of users so I have created MediaWiki:Graph-disabled with the suggested text. The text is still open for discussion but I wanted something out quickly. I guess there is no job queue to update affected pages so they have to be purged or edited to display it. See 4 Vesta#Physical characteristics for an example I purged. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
The ! in the red stop sign is quite alarming, while no action by reading user is required, not even by wikipedia editors.
Suggestion: use a 'information' sign, a white 'i' in a blue circle with the text:
"Sorry, we experience technical issues with this graph. It will reappear as soon as the developers have solved the problem." Uwappa (talk) 21:16, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
It looks a bit wonky for me because the notice has margins that squish it. It appears the notice has been propagated to all graphs on enwiki. SWinxy (talk) 21:21, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I have toned it down to the default icon and no bold.[78]PrimeHunter (talk) 21:43, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. Suggested text finetuning:
"Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues."
The temporarily will indicate that a solution is on its way. Uwappa (talk) 21:55, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I may not be editing for a couple of hours but other admins are free to make changes. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I think this one would be better as "i" is for information pages. I actually like the unbolded text. And Uwappa's suggestion is good too. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 22:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't think that image can be used since the file isn't protected. Galobtter (talk) 22:08, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Done seems reasonable. Galobtter (talk) 22:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
“The temporarily will indicate that a solution is on its way” lemme just do some expectation management here…. this extension is thoroughly unmaintained for over 6 years. I do not expect this to be quickly fixed. It should be noted that there were already discussions about potentially having to remove the entire extension even before the latest problem. I’m sure some ppl are looking into what is possible, but I’d be really surprised if this is fixed within a month. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:40, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
TheDJ, thanks for that. Expectation management is always helpful. If you have any insight into how fixing a problem like this is prioritized, that might help us at VPT understand whether we should work on implementing any workarounds in the meantime. As far as I can tell, this outage has affected at least 60,000 pages here at en.WP. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:22, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree that the notice feels squished. I had tried to apply the style parameter to width:100% so that empty space on either side can be eliminated but that overflowed the notice box on the right side which is not good. I guess someone has a better idea for it. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 22:05, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Okay, this one unsquishes it: {{notice|style=width:100%;margin:0;|text=Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues.}}—CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 22:07, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
I was trying just margin:0 but that didn't work. Thanks! DoneGalobtter (talk) 22:09, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
It looks good in the image frame and outside one. {{annual readership}} has been replaced with a custom notice by RedRose. SWinxy (talk) 22:18, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
The red icon is too disruptive and flashy. Text alone will do the job of explaining technical problems without calling undue attention to behind-the-scenes work. The current {{Annual readership}} notice is perfect. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:10, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
The category has now been created with an explanation. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:54, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Clarification
What is this "security problem", what does security have to do with little graphs and charts and things in Wikimedia articles? I wish we heard at least a little bit more of an explanation. ɱ(talk) 00:11, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
@Ɱ Code with vulnerabilities can ostensibly be "hacked" to use to run malicious code in places it otherwise couldn't. For WP:BEANS reasons, its best to not elaborate :) CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 01:19, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
What malicious code could be put in a graph box? 'Click here for a spam site'? Is it worth pulling it rather than fixing it quietly, if there's nobody actively misusing this code? ɱ(talk) 02:26, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't know the security problem but mw:Extension:Graph uses JavaScript which means it intentionally runs code in the user's browser. See JavaScript#Security for some general problems. Some people disable JavaScript completely in their browsers for security reasons. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:46, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Do graphs really need javascript? Can't graphs be just server side generated images? Is javascript only required just for mouseover effect? Will we avoid all javascript by deleting the mouseover effect? Uwappa (talk) 06:34, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Graphs used to be server-side generated images, but that was removed because that was also showing its age, and in worse ways. I like the rollovers myself, as it happens, which were not possible before; the loss of course is that graph content isn't served to users who turn their JavaScript off. Izno (talk) 06:54, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
You were told over two years ago that making graphs reliant upon client side Javascript was a bad idea (and that it violated WP:ACCESS). You didn't listen. Now look what's happened. You've painted yourselves into a corner and created a giant mess for yourself. If you'd just paid attention to security-conscious users who warned you two years ago about this, you wouldn't be in this fix now. Now roll it all back to working the way it did back then, running the scripts on the server side and serving baked images (maybe SVG though, to be resolution-independent). 70.51.248.40 (talk) 02:51, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
Short term suggestion: Generate PNG images, skip rollover effects.
Long term suggestion: Generate SVG graphs on server side. Use CSS for rollover effects.
This would be a good temporary solution, the only thing is would the graph spot be able to serve/display the image? Or would it have to potentially be recoded to switch to an image display. Jake01756 (talk)(contribs) 02:41, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Who is building this very complex solution ? Were talking an entire new backend service that’s months of work for a website like wikipedia. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:56, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
This is a false dichotomy. The alternative was to remove it completely back then. So that was simply delayed by 2 years. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:56, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
Moving away from graphs
TheDJ said it: this extension is thoroughly unmaintained for over 6 years. I do not expect this to be quickly fixed. Moving away from graphs is going to be tough, but not impossible. Some graphs are fully automated (e.g. {{annual readership}}) while others are partially automated (e.g. {{Television ratings graph}}). Would this be desired by the community? SWinxy (talk) 01:18, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
@SWinxy If by "this", you mean removing graphs altogether, no. Graphs are a fundamental aspect of conveying data, and this is an encyclopedia. Getting rid of coded in graphs would be a major headache, because they would need to be replaced by photos of graphs (photo-graphs :P), or other work arounds. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 01:46, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, coded graphs! Ditching graphs altogether would be a bit of a challenge... SWinxy (talk) 01:51, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Graphs are used on Wikisource to identify those works that are being read / accessed the most. The information helps drive our choices as to what publications we will put our efforts into next. We'd need a viable alternative before the extension is discontinued. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:20, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
I think it's a bit premature to be worrying about removal/replacement. One of the suggestions on the public task is just to upgrade to a maintained version of the software package used and then do the remove/replaces necessary to fix the onwiki versions to the required standard. Izno (talk) 06:56, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
This. Don't jump the gun. This needs thorough analysis and then likely work. That can be between 3 days and 90 days or no further work at all. There really is no telling at this stage. Remember, everyone was working on their thing they are supposed to work on and now several people have been thrown into a big tumbling washing machines with work that is unscheduled and needs to happen next to other work they cannot let rest and delaying the rest, completely upending planning and scheduling. The only thing that might change anything at all, is expressing how much you appreciate and/or need graphs and how you use them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
@TheDJ: well said, thank you — you should be a technical spokesperson or something..! — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 08:43, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Understood. I wanted to float the idea. SWinxy (talk) 16:55, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Hell no, we should be doing more inline code, with inline SVG support and whatnot, not less. In any event, I don't think anything will come of this in the long-term except hopefully more proactive maintenance. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Any plans by the WMF or volunteers to check all other official extensions for use of outdated libraries? Any plans to implement new processes to make sure libraries don't get out-of-date in the future? DFlhb (talk) 12:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
They (un-maintained extensions) are documented and supposed to be handled at phab:project/profile/3144/. WMF's CTO (Chief Technical Officer), miss Deckelmann, is supposed to handle that, but she has not done so yet. There is also a list over who handles which extension and service at mw:Developers/Maintainers. Any further questions should be answered by WMF.--Snævar (talk) 16:04, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Probably not in any systematic way. There doesn't appear to be enough software engineer time available to assign maintainers to all unmaintained software. Software gets created, then the software engineers / WMF teams move on to other projects. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:37, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
There are some existing efforts here. libraryupgrader2.wmcloud.org is fairly prolific in updating outdated or vulnerable dependencies via gerrit change sets, see: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/q/owner:tools.libraryupgrader%2540tools.wmflabs.org. But it has its limits and some changes must be manually reviewed. The Security Team also checks for outdated and vulnerable dependencies as part of any manual application security review request. And we are building out some SCA tooling for repos hosted at gitlab.wikimedia.org. These efforts could, of course, be expanded and accelerated. Though I would note that the way the Vega dependencies were "built" within the Graph extension was problematic, as they were not referenced within package.json and were therefore difficult to analyze, especially for an extension with no actual active maintainers. We're hoping to address this and several other issues in our current efforts to get the Graph extension reenabled on the projects. SBassett (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Community Wishlist item for 5 years
FWIW, I'd like to remind that the Graph extension we are were using is very outdated and the community has been asking for 5 years to upgrade it to the latest build. In 2023, it was the #49 request in CWS: m:Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Multimedia and Commons/Update Vega to the latest build. I suspect that the security issue could've been resolved if it were upgraded. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X}) 17:40, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Excellent link. This is yet another reason that I have given up on the CWS process. Regular editors, including myself, are not great at identifying which proposed improvements and projects are actually important for the continued operation of MediaWiki sites. Requests for shiny new features typically get a lot more support than boring stuff like "update the back-end software that drives a process that tens of thousands of pages depend on and for which there is no easy alternative". – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:48, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
It's outrageous how incompetent the WMF is. Everybody has known for years that the Graph extension was using outdated software and needed to be updated. This is critical software that is used in millions of pages. Nothing has been done for over 5 years! What were all the hundreds of paid developers doing in the meanwhile? Ita140188 (talk) 07:29, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
By that logic. Considering it is open source.... YOU also didn't do anything and thus you also are incompetent. There is too much code for the amount of developers, this is nothing new. Also it's not used by millions of pages. It's about 60 000 for en.wp, or just 16k articles. It's tiny compared to most extensions in use. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:30, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Sorry for the million hyperbole written out of frustration, it is still a lot of pages that get a lot of views every day. This problem has been known for years and reported several times, it was just waiting to happen. If doing basic maintenance of the underlying Mediawiki software also should be the editor's responsibility, it makes me wonder why are we paying millions of dollars every year to WMF developers? What exactly are they doing? Ita140188 (talk) 09:52, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
There are literally feeds of the 30000 tickets opened and closed each year and all the change sets in gerrit where you can find that out. Running a top 10 website for a couple hundred wikis each with their own configuration requires a lot of work. Also, not everyone codes, there is testing, releasing, datacenter operations, the couple thousand of software projects made by users/editors, fundraising infrastructure for dozens of countries in the world, etc etc etc. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:50, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Are they doing everything I want? Definitely not. Do they have the resources to do everything I want? Of course not. They have to set priorities, and disagreeing with your priorities is not evidence of incompetence.
Now, if you're in a position to fund the development you want, I'm sure that they would pay attention. Even then they would have the final say on what to do when. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:06, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Graph extension disabled
Yesterday the Wikimedia Foundation noted that in the interests of the security of our users, the Graph extension was disabled. This means that pages that were formerly displaying graphs will now display a small blank area. To help readers understand this situation, communities can now define a brief message that can be displayed to readers in place of each graph until this is resolved. That message can be defined on each wiki at MediaWiki:Graph-disabled. Wikimedia Foundation staff are looking at options available and expected timelines. For updates, follow the public Phabricator task for this issue: T334940
Over the last few days engineers have been exploring an approach that will add Vega 5 support for the Graph Extension. The goal is restore as much graph rendering as possible in the shortest timeframe. This aim to address the vulnerabilities found but most importantly to restore as much of the extensions previous state. We will also be updating the D3.js library from version 3.5.17 -> 7.8.4. The Vega 1 and Vega 2 libraries will be removed from the graph extension.
In terms of expectations:
Initially the graph extension with Vega5 may only be supported on modern browsers (approximately 2017 or newer). This is due to some issues with ES5 builds and MediaWiki in the most recent versions of Vega. It’s hoped this can be resolved with a build step to restore functionality to MediaWiki's full supported browser stack.
A compatibility layer that maps Vega 2 community graphs to Vega aims to allow current Vega 2 syntax to work with Vega 5, but our expectation is that some <graph> syntax might need to be updated in some places.
We are building in some more sustainable error handling code. They will load and display an error thumbnail if the graph cannot be displayed. The purpose of this is to allow us to turn some graphs on and get a better sense of which graphs need to be prioritized. When graphs fail to render they will also send an error to our client logs so we can track them and later fix them.
Security will be reviewing the updated Vega 5 and D3.js libraries and the threat model associated with this approach, and release of the update is gated on a successful security review. We want to be as confident as possible that the approach is secure and correct.
We are assembling a small group of engineers from across a number of teams to see how much additional progress we can make on Graph between now and May 5, and will be working iteratively on our approach. We will continue to share updates along the way here on Phabricator. If we hit major blockers (e.g., security or library complexities we can't quickly resolve in the order of days or a couple weeks), we will be sure to share this information whilst we establish next steps. Our hope is that we can avoid difficult tradeoffs where we would need to keep Graph disabled for a long time, but we also need to acknowledge that this is a distinct possibility.
@Seddon (WMF), maybe you missed it, but ES6 is now the minimum required version of JavaScript, plus one or two functions from ES2017ish timeframe that @TheDJ has mentioned elsewhere (Promise.finally I think was one). So not sure why ES5 is mentioned above as the source of an issue? Izno (talk) 16:19, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
@Izno The short answer is that Vega provides either a full or what they term an ES5 build. They don't do intermediate builds. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
The team has laid a bunch of groundwork to add vega5 support to the graph extension and improve the extensions security overall.
Vega5 has been enabled on the beta.cluster for testing.
We hope the start testing on production next Tuesday on test.wikipedia.org
Vega5 breaks a lot of graphs. The team is trying to mitigate this, but communities will need to begin migrating from vega2 to vega5.
The long version
Over the last week we have:
added Vega5 support
dropped support for Vega1 and Vega2
improved the error handling messaging within the graph extension
add logging for graph errors
ongoing work to improve url sanitisation
added foreign-resources infrastructure for extensions
started work on attempting to build a rudimentary vega2->vega5 translation layer to mitigate the disruption a move to vega5 may cause
added some support for this migration for use to update raw graph definitions (not built via lua) via the GraphSandbox
fixed an issue with graph overflow on mobile
The graph extension has been re-enabled on the beta cluster to aid engineers in being able to test in a more production like environment rather than relying on local development environment's. We had hoped that we would be able to re-enable the graph extension with vega5 at least on test.wikipedia.org however over the past week there have been a number of challenges. Recent builds of Vega meant it did not cleanly support ES6 browsers. This was also causing problems for our infrastructure. A recent patch to vega fixed this but also saw a big update to d3.js dependencies that vega relies on.
Whilst we could have used the last deployment window to backport a bunch of work to production wiki's, the scale of what needed backporting was beyond what is reasonable for the nature of backport windows. In addition to that, we were increasingly getting close to the golden rule of don't deploy on a friday. As such the team working on this took the decision that the majority of this week's work would go out on the deployment train next week and we will look to begin further testing on test.wikipedia.org next Tuesday.
In terms of expectation management:
The graph extension is being upgraded from vega2->vega5 which means that the graph definitions that had been previously used on wiki either in a raw form or constructed via lua modules are not compatible. This means that none of the existing graph definitions would be in any way interoperable.
Our engineers are attempting to build a rudimentary translation layer that may provide some small degree of backward compatibility but this cannot be relied upon and it is vital that communities look to migrate graph and templates from vega2->vega5.
The english beta wikipedia serves as a good testing location and has the most recent version of vega5 and Module:Graph from enwiki/dewiki
This guide] provides the most comprehensive detail on migration from Vega 2.
It's getting kind of annoying that graphs have been disabled for this long. Is there an approximate time frame for when they will be working again? A day, a week, a month, a year, ever? Thiscouldbeauser (talk) 13:44, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
My hope is we can maybe restore some functionality in the next week or so. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
mediawiki.org is now running Graphs again. I think they are still working on some of the remote source usage and improvements to the automatic v2 to v5 transforms. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:35, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
@Tomastvivlaren Per Phab:T334940#8848174 it's been realised that the extension would need to completely re-written because vega is not designed to handle untrusted user input. 192.76.8.84 (talk) 18:38, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
Any idea when it will be working again? Thiscouldbeauser (talk) 10:16, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
No —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
The hyperlink of Page view in Page information corrupts
Hi, about one month ago, there was a hyperlink for the value of "Page views in the past 30 days" in the "Page information" of each article that, after clicking on it, a diagram appeared for "Page view per day". But this hyperlink does not exist now.
For example, for the article "Telegram (software)", the associated Page information is Information for "Telegram (software)". In this page and in the section named "Basic information", the last item in the table is "Page views in the past 30 days", and its value is "271,603" today. This item, about one month ago, had a hyperlink that after clicking shows a "Page view per day" diagram for 1 month ago, but now this hyperlink does not exist.
So please do something to bring back this helpful hyperlink. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 10:51, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Still, the hyperlink could still be there. Explain the unavailability of the graph on the linked page. As soon as the graph problem is solved, the graph will reappear. Uwappa (talk) 12:11, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
So far as I can tell, the link was not removed by English Wikipedia, but at a much more fundamental level - the MediaWiki software itself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:35, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Yes, the link was made and removed outside the English Wikipedia. It was also removed in other wikis. It's at https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Example?action=info, but they have the Graph extension enabled at https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:Version#mw-version-ext-parserhook-Graph. Considering graphs were disabled for security reasons, view them there at your own risk. If you have the default language "en - English" at Special:Preferences then you can click "Pageviews" in the page history or "Page view statistics" at the bottom of page information. It links another feature https://pageviews.wmcloud.org. You can also install User:PrimeHunter/Pageviews.js to get the link directly on pages regardless of your interface language. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:00, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Short term solution for those private wikis affected please ?
Could you please tell us in simple to-do list what we can do to restore graph capabilities on our private wikis? (I assume it is not just on wikipedia as I have rendering problem on standard graph code on my private wiki. Shall we go back to a version earlier of Media Wiki as a short term solution for non-sensitive wikis?).
In my case (perhaps a large group of people), security is not an immediate issue as it is not a much developed private wiki and does not interest hackers, and I would appreciate solutions such as enabling previous functionality for some weeks, if there's the option, until the long term solution is ready.
To make it simpler, how can the following code be run in short term on private wikis? (it is showing as blank white now, when you try to edit in visual editor it shows a "rendering error" message)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.14.151.6 (talk) 10:39, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Nothing has changed about the extension, other than it having been disabled. Well.. unless you are running the unreleased master branch. In that case, the solution seems pretty obvious to me... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:05, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
The solution is not obvious to me, could you elaborate? How can we enable the graph extension? Any code? Shall we install an old version of Media Wiki (a month or two old)? 31.14.151.6 (talk) 11:16, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
The issue is not that a new version of MediaWiki broke Graph. The issue is that Graph has (and has had) major security flaws. Snowmanonahoe (talk) 11:22, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
I know the Graph has issues, I mean how has it been disabled on my private wiki and how can I enable it for myself? 31.14.151.6 (talk) 11:27, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
I am using Media Wiki 1.38.4, which means it is a version before the announced issue of Graph around mid April, so how can Graph be disabled on my private wiki? Does Media Wiki read some privileges and rights from a centralized server when it is run? 31.14.151.6 (talk) 11:26, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
It doesn't. Your issue has nothing to do with this security problem. From what I can see from above, you are using Vega 5, but Graph only used to support Vega 1 and Vega 2 up to last week. More importantly; this is not a support forum for 3rd party MediaWiki installation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:18, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
(The appropriate forum would be mw:Support.) Izno (talk) 17:09, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Conflict with templates Motto of the day/Media of the day
Hi. I've posted on here and also over at Commons with no response at either in almost two weeks. Huggums537 (talk) 01:36, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
I've extended Module:Build bracket to allow for half-integer scores and asterisk footnotes on scores; the new code is currently at Module:Module sandbox. (I need these features to automatically bold the winner in chess tournaments.)
I tested the extension and it seems to be working – you can see an example at user:joriki/sandbox. I introduced a new parameter fractional, and the result when that parameter isn't set should be the same as before, so existing pages shouldn't be affected. But I want to make sure this the case because a lot of pages use that module.
Is there an efficient way to test this automatically, for all or at least for several existing pages that use the module?
Is there, instead, a way to extend the module in a new module so I don't have to affect existing pages at all? I tried importing the existing module into a new module using require, but I couldn't get that to work.
(I hope this is the right place to ask about this – the module documentation says to consider discussing such changes at Wikipedia talk:High-risk templates, but the last post there is from a year ago and went unanswered.)
Module:Build bracket is only extended-confimed protected so in this case your account can also preview it directly and use the "Preview page with this template" field. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:05, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
@Joriki: The answers above are good but you should put your changes in Module:Build bracket/sandbox which is linked in the header at Module:Build bracket, and you should add a new section on Module talk:Build bracket with an outline of what you are doing. That allows anyone with an interest in the module to discuss the changes. Even if there is no response, the fact that you posted there helps to avoid problems if people complain after your change is implemented (because there was a notification). The reason you should use the specific sandbox for that module is that it allows the history of changes to be more easily tracked. Please ask at WT:Lua for help because Module:Module sandbox currently has several unintended global variables (c fargs headerindex i maxc maxtpm minc pargs r result) and they should be fixed. Johnuniq (talk) 04:01, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure if this is a bug, glitch, or just a stray {{clear}} that I'm not seeing somewhere, but I was alerted to a weird issue at Piri where one of the images ends up on a line by itself with no word wrapping - see Special:PermaLink/1155998232#2023–present:_"Feel_It",_"updown",_and_"fumble". I "fixed" the issue by moving it down below the first paragraph, but I feel like that's a bit hacky and doesn't really explain why it was happening in the first place. Any ideas? (please ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 20:17, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac FWIW, that oddity only appears for me with both vector-2022 and vector narrow mode set. — xaosfluxTalk 20:22, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
I see it in wide mode with sidebars. Izno (talk) 20:23, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
@Primefac and Izno: I think this fixed it, bunch of garbage on the next line. — xaosfluxTalk 20:31, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
.... yes, a whole bunch of non-breaking spaces would cause that issue. Izno (talk) 20:36, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Indeed, in the first sentence after the image, there were no true spaces at all - just non-breaking spaces, 27 in all. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:14, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the help on this. Usually the source editor shows unicode and weird spaces, but I guess this is an exception. Will try to remember this in the future. Primefac (talk) 06:50, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
I should probably explain myself; the space key one of my laptops doesn't work, so I've been copying and pasting spaces. I'd love to know where I got the first non-breaking space from.--Launchballer 07:49, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
Is there's a way to find low res images in an article list?
I've asked this question on the help desk but it seems that nobody really know the answer there. I have a list of articles (WP:Vital articles) that I want to scan for low res images (i.e. has image width <400px, height <300px). I want the tool to return the images and the article that the images are contained in. Is it even possible to do so? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:50, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Is it a thing that could be made to be done? Yes. Is there something that could do that today? Pretty sure no. Izno (talk) 17:03, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
If you're familiar with Quarry, image.img_width and image.img_height should have what you need, joined via imagelinks and pagelinks to WP:Vital articles. Certes (talk) 19:05, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
I don't even know what Quarry is until now... I will try to learn about it. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 19:07, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Not that anything in that query fits the bill necessarily, but probably going to want to filter out non-free images. Izno (talk) 22:01, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks a lot @Certes. Yes, I will use it to filter non-free images, but also to replace low quality ones as well. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 05:50, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
I've filtered out the ubiquitous Blank.png. I've also marked non-free images, but left them in as you may still wish to seek free alternatives. Certes (talk) 11:00, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
Anyone else having problems with the newest version of Chrome?
Keeps stopping and crashing, a memory hog which it wasn't before the update. Newest version Windows 11. Doug Wellertalk 12:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
@Doug Weller, this isn't a general tech support forum. Are you experiencing that issue only on Wikipedia? Izno (talk) 14:13, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
It seems to be Wikipedia related, yes. Dropped all other tabs. Doug Wellertalk 15:28, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
An unknowable time ago, the bog-standard editing window received some nice window-dressing: various formatting became colored in different ways, and reactive formatting was applied for certain things like italicization, bolding, and commenting. Apparently I've come to rely on the helpfulness of those, because when I resumed editing after a few-hour break, they were all gone! I miss my blankie, everybody. What happened to it‽ — Fourthords | =Λ= | 23:46, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, but somehow also no? It seems to do the same thing, by and large, but all the colors are different, now? Also, it's not giving curly-braced template contents their background shading (that increases with nesting) that was there before. Never mind. That's a definitive "yes" from me, as well as a sincere thank you! (The not-quite-rightness came from the colorblind-toggle in the prefs, which I'd wantonly turned on in the hopes it was what I was looking for.) I wonder if I hit that highlighter button accidentally in the long-beforetimes and just thought it was a UI update? Thanks again!! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 00:07, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
I tried a search with strings likeprefix:NOT and prefix:NOT -intitle:Notability, but I didn't get the expected results. (For example, setting prefix:NOT to search only in the project and help namespaces gave me article titles.) I never saw the shortcuts in the results, but another part of the problem was getting lowercase answers (which won't realistically be what I'm looking for). Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas/search strings for me? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:44, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Cirrus search lacks vital features such as case-sensitive prefix and an equivalent of regexp's ^ to match start of string. This search is still imperfect but may be more helpful. Certes (talk) 22:57, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
This would be something to check on Quarry, since CirrusSearch's worst downfall is how it doesn't serve you the actual redirects. Izno (talk) 22:59, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Search doesn't work well for this; Quarry produces the following results. I've tried to exclude redirects that point towards pages on notability, and I've created a separate section for redirects that are titled "Not ..."
Editing a section doesn't populate edit summary with section name when there's a comment
If I directly edit a section, the edit summary isn't auto-populated with the section name if there's a comment immediately after the section name. A good example is here; note the empty edit summary. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 02:55, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! I fixed the aforementioned page, and wonder if there could be a bot dispatched to fix this globally. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 04:12, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Top bar question
I'm really trying to adapt to the new vector skin, but is there anyway to move the watchlist and contributions tabs to outside the silhouette you have to click in to normally see them? Apologies if this has been asked before. Aza24 (talk) 17:56, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Is there a way to search redirects? insource: and intitle: seem to exclude redirects. I don't see anything in the docs about this. Dicklyon (talk) 04:12, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
H:INTITLE says that intitle does search redirects. What are you searching for? An explanation of what you're trying to find will get you better help here. - X201 (talk) 09:22, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
intitle: lists the target page and only once so you get at most one redirect to it. If the search matches the target directly then you may not get a matching redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:28, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Right, that's one thing. I was actually trying things like intitle:/Third Round/ as a search in JWB. The trouble is that there it returns only the target of the redirect (which doesn't match, in most cases), so I don't get a list of redirects to edit (I wanted to check and maybe fix some tags like "R from ..."). Dicklyon (talk) 16:13, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Issues with galleries in mobile
Looks like there's an issue with galleries when browsing from the mobile site. Images as well their captions get stacked together. TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 06:29, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Look at the galleries at Auto rickshaw. Multiple images get superimposed at mobile; captions also gets garbled. Issue is on mobile, iOS, on Chrome. TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 09:00, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm reading from mobile (and cannot upload screenshots), and something similar is going on also in one gallery at Manila. Would appreciate if anyone browsing from mobile can provide something similar.-TagaSanPedroAko (talk) 22:03, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
Other than switching to the desktop side ? Nope. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:17, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I signed in, and went to the bottom of the page for the desktop link. I wish it were on the top of the page, or in some floating sidebar that follows you down. Because if one opens up some sections for viewing it can take a long time to scroll down to the bottom of the page. And grabbing the vertical scroll bar is not easy.
I am on legacy Vector. The table of contents text is so tiny on my cell phone. Compared to the article text. Even after increasing the overall article text size.
I wish the sidebar was collapsible. One is pinching and expanding alternately depending on whether I am viewing the article, the TOC, the sidebar.
The new Vector was visible before signing in. Same tiny text in TOC and sidebar.
An overall miserable experience on a cell phone. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:32, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
I use Monobook on my phone. The "responsive" version is actually quite nice (specially adapted to narrow screens), and I run a script that always gives me this instead of the "mobile" version, which I find unusable. —Kusma (talk) 20:14, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Kusma. How are you doing this? How does one set up a separate skin (Monobook) on a cell phone? My preferences seem to only let me choose one skin at a time: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
@Timeshifter: You can't set up a separate skin on a cellphone, unfortunately. But the "responsive" version of Monobook basically acts like two different skins depending on screen width (on small screens it has icons and menus instead of the many tabs of the wide screen version). If you don't like the standard mobile version, you can turn it off using User:Þjarkur/NeverUseMobileVersion.js which defaults to desktop. —Kusma (talk) 21:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
Kusma, TheDJ. I tested all the skins in landscape view on my cell. Viewing Help:Table. It's all about the table of contents.
The skins all look almost the same in mobile view on my cell. Same problem of no TOC below the first level.
I could not get rid of the sidebar on Monobook and Vector 2010 in desktop on cell in landscape view.
In desktop view on my cell all except Minerva have a full TOC. Minerva had no TOC that I could find. Vector 2022 had a compressed TOC in which there was no way to expand it fully all at once.
The TOC text was tiny on all except on Timeless. So desktop on Timeless is my favorite cell skin. But only after I got rid of the sidebar. I did so by accident. I have no idea how I did it. Also, I could not find a vertical scrollbar in desktop on cell in landscape view on Timeless. So no easy way to get to the bottom of the page fast. Where the desktop/mobile link is.
The desktop/mobile link needs to be on both the top and bottom.
The show/hide TOC button needs to be bigger. Hard to press it due to the tiny size of the show/hide text.
The popup TOC on Vector 2022 needs options for bigger text, and full expansion to see all the deeper TOC levels at once. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:55, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Hmmm. I wondered if there might have been a change which resulted in twoconfused new users showing up to ask about failed article creations. I'm not familiar with the new user landing page at all, though. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 21:22, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Works for me. I was able to create Draft:Foobarbaz testing just now. Maybe someone fixed it in the last 13 minutes. [ETA: my mistake, probably. My user rights do not meet the necessary conditions.] – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:40, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
It only doesn't work when you're logged in but not autoconfirmed :( I'll file a bug in a moment and try to resolve it tomorrow. In the meantime, to unbreak the wizard, someone could edit Wikipedia:Article wizard/CreateDraft and replace prefix=Draft: with default=Draft:. This will look a little funny, but it should work. Matma Rextalk 21:46, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
'tis template-protected, for the information of anyone inclined to so edit. Maybe I'll put in a request on the talk page. Nope, that is semi-protected! 199.208.172.35 (talk) 22:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I've made that suggested change — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 22:14, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
We greatly thank the Foxen One, yea verily. (And verily I know it's time for me to go do something less silly...) 199.208.172.35 (talk) 22:27, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
And now I know that a non-autoconfirmed user sees something very different than I do when they click on a redlink! 199.208.172.35 (talk) 21:41, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I filed T337436 and proposed a patch. I'll try to have the fix reviewed and deployed tomorrow. Thank you for noticing the connection, 199.208.172.35! Matma Rextalk 22:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for leaving a note here, @Matma Rex. I'd been checking VPT sporadically throughout the day to see if anything related might pop up. Lo and behold. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 22:08, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
This is fixed now. @TheresNoTime Thanks for adding the workaround, you can undo it now. Matma Rextalk 13:30, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Done, thanks for the quick fix — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:43, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
"Template:Election summary net total" is a misnomer
The template {{Election summary net total}} is a misnomer. It purports to be for the Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Election summary net set of templates, but is actually designed for the original/basic version, the Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Election summary group.
For context, {{Election summary}} is a set of table row templates, designed like LEGO, to create a table that summarizes the results of each political party in a given election. You may have heard of its more popular counterpart, {{Election box}}, which is centered on candidates and not parties.
{{Election summary begin}}, and the Election summary * group (let's call this "ES*" has ten columns, going from party color to vote percentage plus-minus. A subvariant, {{Election summary net begin}}, (say, "ESN*"), has eight, removing the columns for the number of seats gained and seats lost, relying solely on the "net gain/loss" column to compare with previous election performance.
But there is no {{Election summary total}} for ten-column ES tables, only {{Election summary net total}} (which is supposed to be designed for ESN*, but actually has 10 rather than 8 columns accomodating those that don't actually exist). And those using the ES* set of templates are misusing ESNT, taking advantage of it not actually being written for ESN*.
That makes zero sense. (It should either be begin, party, party, total, or net begin, net party, net party, net total.) What I think should be done is...
Whatever you do, do not break old revisions by renaming templates. Especially, do not reuse old names for a different purpose. —Kusma (talk) 14:38, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
It's Thursday?
I keep getting errors when trying to connect to Wikipedia - upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow and HTTP 503. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 14:21, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
This one can occur any day of the week, not just Thursday. – SD0001 (talk) 14:31, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
DDOS? It seems to have cleared up (as soon as I report it, natch). 199.208.172.35 (talk) 14:37, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
There was a partial outage of some sort (probably unrelated to the regular Thursday deployments), but it is apparently resolved now. Status page: https://www.wikimediastatus.net/incidents/lx0vwl2p01xd (it should be updated with more details once those are available). Matma Rextalk 14:38, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the reports, I am centralizing the information at the bug above. Issue should be mitigated now. Sorry for the lack of updates, our engineers focus first on fixing the issue and once it is solved, we share what happened and why with the community. The Wikimedia Status page is the canonical place to check for known ongoing wiki issues. Once the research finishes, as usual, an Incident report will be published on WikiTech at: wikitech:Incident_status.
Apologies for the disruption caused to readers and editors. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Understood, @JCrespo (WMF). Thanks for the update. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 16:43, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
The issue still happens in the mobile version, except that the 300px image has correct proportions. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:20, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
MongolUnicode is disjointed on iOS 15+ Safari
As seen in the screenshot on the right, {{MongolUnicode}} doesn’t work on iOS 15+. Could this be fixed? Is there a reason to use this over {{lang-mn}}? Aaron Liu (talk) 18:37, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Disjointed how? It looks like it is working in the screen shot. I added line breaks before each example, and some {{clear}} templates between the examples to prevent overlapping; did that help? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:58, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 It’s nothing about overlapping, which is completely fine. Mongolian script is supposed to be connected like cursive, not separated. You can see File:Ogedei qaghan.svg for an example of how it’s supposed to look. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:02, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
I see, and I can replicate the problem. This problem has been reported at the template's talk page. My guess is that this may be an iOS problem rather than a Wikipedia problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:25, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
This is Safari bug 240279. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:25, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
There is apparently a work around by using <code>text-orientation: sideways</code>, but i'm not sure how that affects other browsers/operating systems (will they get rotated twice???) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:33, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
I've implemented this change in the sandbox (testcases) and it doesn't seem to break anything in Chrome or Firefox for me. If someone can check how things look on Windows, that'd be appreciated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:30, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Tested on Waterfox on Windows and Safari on iOS, looks normal to me. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:55, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
The sandbox tests look good on Firefox for MacOS and on iOS 16. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:14, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
This is now Fixed with [81], thank you TheDJ. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:23, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
WikiLove bugged
Hello! So just recently I noticed that whenever I go to a user's userpage or talk page with the WikiLove extension it automatically pulls up the menu to give a user WIkiLove even if I didn't click on it. I've tried safemode and that seems to fix it but the WikiLove extension is still enabled, so it doesn't seem to be an issue with the extension itself, but I don't know where to start with my userscripts. Anyone else experiencing this bug? ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#6545 21:39, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Is there a way of turning it off? It's often very annoying; for example on a talkpage "dmy"—the date format—gets turned into "day" behind your back. Tony(talk) 07:52, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
spellchecker is a feature of your browser and/or operating system. Consult their documentation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:18, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Reliably preserving the scroll position in mobile browsers
One thing that has annoyed me for a long time when browsing Wikipedia on my phone (Android) is that the collapsible section headings (which double as a table of contents in the mobile layout) also prevent the browser from properly restoring my previous scroll position if the page (or the whole browser) got unloaded for any reason (which on a phone is an all too common occurrence), because when the page reloads, they all revert to being collapsed again [1], so the scroll position my browser remembered no longer makes sense (because it is based on the previous collapsed/expanded state of the page).
Now a few weeks ago, an older Firefox version I occasionally and stubbornly keep on using has stopped being able to process all the latest JavaScript used by the mobile layout, which has produced a very interesting side effect: The default mobile Wikipedia layout apparently has been coded with a proper fallback (for which I want to say a very big thank you, by the way), so it remains quite usable even in that state: References still work through the magic of anchor links, lazy-loading of images is disabled and all section headings are permanently expanded.
While therefore no longer having a TOC available is a bit annoying, on the other hand my browser is now finally able to 100 % reliably restore my previous scroll position, which makes for a much, much nicer reading experience and makes me actually prefer the Wikipedia experience I get that way.
Is this scroll position problem known (it's been that way since years – surely I can't have been the first one to be annoyed by this?) and have there been any attempts at improving the situation?
[1] It seems that the page does make some attempts at restoring the previous collapsed/expanded state of the respective section headings, but a) it apparently doesn't work if the whole browser has been unloaded from memory (something I cannot really prevent on a mobile OS) and in any case b) even if it does work, it happens too late – by the time the Wikipedia code gets around to restoring the previous collapsed/expanded state, my browser has long since detected that the page has "finished" loading and therefore attempted (and consequently failed) to restore my previous scroll position. I've tested this both with Android Firefox and Chrome, and both browsers behave the same here. JanTH (talk) 16:13, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
Checkuser mess
Some recent modification to Special:Checkuser has messed up the report page. The results should be sorted by time, but some of the logged items seem to have a different time zone conversion or something like that. I don't know if the timestamps are wrong or if the sorting is wrong. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 15:03, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
This is probably T337639 as the logged action was probably the day before. Therefore, the logged action seemed to be out of order but instead the date separator was wrong. Dreamy Jazztalk to me | my contributions 09:34, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
Unrelated replag
replag is also at 10 hours, which will cause other problems with bots and scripts that update reports periodically. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:15, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm afraid that is unrelated to the wiki outage reported above, that is a known temporary hardware failure causing stale data being served for some Wikimedia Cloud users and tools. You can get updates on the progress (it may take a few hours) towards its fixing at: T337446. But please let's keep the issues separate to avoid confusing the readers of this topic. --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
I was wondering why the bot reports weren't being issued. Is this also affecting queries on Quarry? I won't bother the bot operators then. Replag is now at about 13 hours. LizRead!Talk! 18:40, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
This seems to come up about once a month on VPT. It would be helpful if someone who knows the details of what causes replag and what effects it has could provide some text at Wikipedia:Replication lag or a similar page (maybe one already exists?). There is a former redirect at Wikipedia:REPLAG that will be a useful pointer to this new page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:54, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Well, I think at the least, the replag link should be mentioned in the FAQs on this page or on Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical. I have to go look for the link everytime this happens. LizRead!Talk! 21:26, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
I gave it a go. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:09, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. Replag is at 19/20 hours now and I don't see any update on when this problem will be resolved. Frustrating. LizRead!Talk! 01:19, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Wikireplicas live in the non-wiki production network of the Wikimedia infrastructure (tools and cloud users), so it has a different Service Level Objective than the wiki software. Also they are not a Wikipedia-specific service, it applies to all wikis, not only English Wikipedia, so its documentation is centralized on Wikitech, the place for Wikimedia Cloud Services documentation. I recommend linking there from the local page. There is a big disclaimer at the beginning of wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Database#Identifying_lag indicating that wikireplica lag is not only possible but expected from time to time due to the exposure of wiki internal dbs:
Extended replication lag (on the order of multiple days) can be an expected and unavoidable side effect of some types of production database maintenance (e.g. schema changes). When this cause is confirmed, expect wiki replicas to catch up automatically once the maintenance finishes.
This is in contrast with querying data through the MediaWiki API in which (approximately, don't quote me on this, as I have not checked the exact figure) we promise a 99.9% of times we will answer with lag under 1 second.
Regarding updates, I see at least 13 status updates on the above task, including an answer to your question.
I am sure we can do better, so feel free to message me with any reasonable improvement on how to communicate this better.
Things we have done in the past to improve this is exposing a query-able replication status lag, which led to more visibility of this issue, so we are getting now more questions than when it was hidden (but still happened). :-) --JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 11:57, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for all of the information, JCrespo (WMF). I must be looking in the wrong place for status updates. Unforturnately, the replag is now at 37 hours but I know that once things are fixed, it doesn't take that many hours to update the system (thank god). LizRead!Talk! 19:28, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
I've split this replag issue into a separate section, as it looks like it will be considerably more pervasive than the unrelated outage it was under before. It seems like the usual recovery methods used by system administrators for the replicas have failed, so this one might take a while as they figure out what is happening to cause this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:29, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
XTools wmcloud.org glitch?
As long as I can remember XTools (https://xtools.wmcloud.org/) has generated info at the top of each page. I'm not sure if it's a script or something that just automatically happens. Here's a sample: "387 revisions since 2010-03-07 (+51 days), 12 editors, 153 watchers, 495 pageviews (30 days), created by: Maile66 (134,858) · See full page statistics" The older messages are still there. But after the last day or so, newly created pages have this message: "Unable to fetch revision data. 0 pageviews (30 days) · See full page statistics " — Maile (talk) 18:46, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
It might have something to do with this. Just a guess. LizRead!Talk! 19:32, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Yep, replag means that the replica database xtools uses hasn't heard of newly-created pages. * Pppery *it has begun... 19:38, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Ah, then I guess that's also why the individual editor AFDStats haven't updated since yesterday. — Maile (talk) 20:00, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
Yep. I was expecting the AfD stats tool to be implemented in a different way that isn't subject to that, but after reviewing its code it is talking to the same lagged databases. * Pppery *it has begun... 20:03, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
It seems that most (or all) pages starting with "XTools" are still out of reach; e.g. the one that admin Maile66 mentioned above. -- Hamid Hassani (talk) 08:24, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
And it gets even more tangled up by the day. The AfD toolforge Statistics grid froze on May 24 stats, so I've been keeping a manual update in my user space. Makes me wonder if this will ever clear up. — Maile (talk) 12:09, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
See #Unrelated replag above. It will clear up at some point, but not for several days at least. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:01, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
@Maile66: It's certainly not automatic, it's a script. In your case, I suspect that at Preferences → Gadgets, you have enabled "XTools: dynamically show statistics about a page's history under the page heading". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:43, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
@Redrose64: You nailed it. I have that checked under "Appearance". At least I now it's not up to me to get it back up and functioning correctly. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 13:47, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
Redlinked project category
The latest run at Special:WantedCategories features one template-generated redlinked category, Category:NA-Class Hersheypark articles, that I don't know how to fix. It's being generated by {{WikiProject Amusement Parks}}, which has a "hersheypark=yes" flag in it, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Amusement Parks/Task Forces/Hersheypark is tagged as inactive — and while there is still a base category for Category:Hersheypark task force articles, there isn't any scheme of other class or quality rating Hersheypark subcategories for this NA-Class category to be part of. So I can't justify creating a one-page class-rating category for an inactive task force that doesn't have class-rating categories, but if I just wrap the amusement parks template in {{Suppress categories}} I'd also be wiping out all of the more legitimate categories that the template is also generating, so that's not the solution to the redlink.
I know there's a way to make the template stop generating the category in the first place, but I don't know what it is. So could somebody with more knowledge of WikiProject template coding than I've got edit the Hersheypark code in {{WikiProject Amusement Parks}} to kill the NA-Class category? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 15:27, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
I have had this activity counter on my user page for years, with it updating daily automatically.
This user has been on Wikipedia for 19 years and 8 days.
After a minor page edit in April, it stopped updating. It's a minor issue, but I'm curious about what happened and what the fix is. At WP:PURGE - where daily auto-purging may be a fix (I have not had to purge anytime previously) - it recommends a null edit, which of course can be done, and works, but is a manual method. PURGE also offers a script, but I am uncertain what is the active code or if it is intended to autopurge. No special script or purging was needed for this counter to work over the past many years. Zefr (talk) 17:18, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Nothing has changed that I am aware of, your userpage isn't generated every time you visit it, so it will only be refreshed by the server every few days or so. A null edit / purging will force the page to refresh. This refresh will make the template recalculate the time entered in the userbox. If you just wait for the server it should only be a few days out at worst so you probably just didn't notice it before. The userscript will not purge the page, it will only "click" the "yes" button found at User:Zefr?action=purge. Terasail[✉️] 18:11, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
This is a pretty, uh, vanity-based concern I could surely work around. If you compare the list of colorful icons at the top of meta:User:ToBeFree and User:ToBeFree, you may notice – especially in a small browser window – a difference. The distance between the icons has increased, and they do not longer break into the next line, on enwiki. Is this related to phab:T281974 perhaps? Does {{topicon}} or our CSS need to be fixed? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:32, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Ah, this only happens with Vector 2022. It doesn't on meta though, and I use the same skin on both wikis. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:34, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Just to be able to point to a different page that has the same issue *and* to a user who hoards even more of these than me, User:Oshwah is affected too. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:38, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, it's caused by the change to the Vector22 CSS as you've identified the right task. I've added flex-wrap: wrap which should sort it? Izno (talk) 21:49, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! While it doesn't look exactly as it did before, it's not broken anymore. The amount of padding/margin around these icons is a (site-wide) design question I have no strong opinion about, so I'm happy. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:04, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
– CityUrbanism 🗩 🖉 18:26, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
— TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
. Disable it if you want to try another syntax highlighter. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:12, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
Resolved
– Fayenatic London 20:38, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
Fixed * Pppery * it has begun... 17:57, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
I think this one would be better as "i" is for information pages. I actually like the unbolded text. And Uwappa's suggestion is good too. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 22:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Done seems reasonable. Galobtter (talk) 22:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Fixed with [81], thank you TheDJ. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:23, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § Galleries. Input is particularly sought on the best technical approach for the change. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:41, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:38, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:04, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
