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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Tech News: 2018-28

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

Recent changes

  • WebM video files have smaller file size but still be of the same quality. Creating WebM files will take longer time. [1]
  • The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. This was supposed to already have happened but was delayed. For most wikis this will happen on 9 July. For the rest it will happen on 16 July. [2]
  • Advanced item All wikis now use the Remex parsing library instead of Tidy. This could cause errors. You can help fix the errors. [3]

Problems

  • When you rolled back an edit it could get both the Rollback and Undo tags. This has been fixed. [4]
  • Rollbacks from autopatrolled users were not marked as patrolled. This has been fixed. [5]

Changes later this week

  • When you edit a link in the visual editor there will be two separate buttons to change which page the link goes to (target) or its text (label). [6][7]
  • On the mobile version you can find a link to an editor's contributions from their user page. Now this will work even if they haven't created a user page. [8]
  • When you edit a discussion on the mobile version you sometimes get your signature automatically added. This will now not happen if you have already added a signature manually. This is to avoid double signatures. [9]
  • Structured discussions toolbars will have more style options. [10]
  • Advanced item When you look at Wikimedia code in Gerrit there will be a new interface. It is on by default for new users. This is also true for developers. This is to make it easier to understand what is happening. [11]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 July. It will be on all wikis from 12 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Today all administrators can edit CSS and JavaScript for the entire wiki. There will be a new user group for editing CSS and JavaScript. Administrators will no longer automatically be able to do this. This is because it is a security risk when all administrator accounts can edit JavaScript even if they never plan to or do not know how it works. You can read more. [12]
  • Page previews will be on by default for new accounts. [13]

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

23:09, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Bug in Special:BlockList?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199174

Special:BlockList appears to be synthesizing various bits together from the block log and getting incorrect reads. According to this, Ian.thomson made a checkuser block on July 2 but from the block log, it may be seen that the active block is my CU block made on July 8. Is Special:BlockList borked?
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 19:48, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Seeing as I'm not a CU, I'd say so. Maybe it's because I'm the original blocking admin and everything since has been changing the reason for the block (rather than starting a new block)? Ian.thomson (talk) 19:56, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Think you're onto something. Not too familiar with this, but if one of you can find another "changed block settings" instance, where one admin blocked and another changed the settings, it may be the same. Home Lander (talk) 20:00, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes. This block is another incorrect one that has Zzuuzz revoking talk page access but clearly it was Kuru's block. Zzuuzz did the former active block.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 20:10, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
It looks like this has been broken since 2014 when someone made reblocks update the existing block and no one thought to update the blocker when doing so. Someone should file a task in Phabricator. Anomie⚔ 22:32, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 Done It is T199174. Cheers,
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 01:22, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Inverting CSD log

Hello all, A bit ago I posted at the help desk regarding the possibilty of inverting my CSD log. Nothing came of it, so I did some search on my own and came up dry. What I wish to do is make it so my CSD log displays backwards, e.g.-->: August 2018 then July 2018 then june 2018 etc and also have backwards integers; 70-69-68-67-66 etc. I did some search for mediawiki code, and couldn't find anything, on wiki searches netted useless stuff like this rotation template, but I want the text to be displayed normally. Most logs like the daily AFD and DelReview load this way, and the TeaHouse also did it for a while back. Also, can this be done in such a way as to make Twinkle compliant, rather have TW try to make a new month at the bottom every time I tag something? Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 20:52, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Need it to display like that for everyone, or just for you? —Cryptic 21:17, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
For me would work, as I am probably the only person who looks at it often, unless politeness or ease of execution would dictate otherwise. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 21:26, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
The real answer is to make Twinkle support this natively. But since that's unlikely to happen, and at the risk of making real web developers who actually know what they're doing cringe, here's a first approximation: put 
body.page-User_L3X1_CSD_log #mw-content-text ol { display: flex; flex-direction: column-reverse; }
in User:L3X1/common.css to reverse the per-month lists (and break the numbering). Put 
$(function(){ if (mw.config.get('wgPageName') == 'User:L3X1/CSD_log') $('#mw-content-text > .mw-parser-output').append($('#mw-content-text > .mw-parser-output > div, #mw-content-text > .mw-parser-output > h3, #mw-content-text > .mw-parser-output > table, #mw-content-text > .mw-parser-output > ol').get().reverse()); });
in User:L3X1/common.js to reverse the order of collapse boxes (both kinds), headers, and lists on the page (and make the headers appear at the ends of their sections instead of the start).
Fixing the numbering and headers isn't impossible, but is a good deal more complex. —Cryptic 22:11, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks! It worked. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 22:19, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
@L3X1: More functional (but even more cringe-inducing) version at User:Cryptic/reverse-csd.js. You should remove the above css if you use this. —Cryptic 00:06, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
I swapped to that version because it put the section headings on top which is more helpful. Thanks again for making this code, I appreciate it. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 01:40, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Sec Warning coming up on Chrome

I am having the sec warning: https://www.wikipedia.org/sec-warning coming up when using Chrome. I have cleared all my data to see if it is being triggered by a cookie. Also have the newest update of Chrome. It is only from this one machine/user profile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.70.18 (talk) 13:59, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Company firewall or other type of proxy service installed somewhere perhaps ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:21, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Other users are able to access it from the same network segment so does not appear to be firewall or proxy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.70.18 (talk) 14:45, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Running Chrome here without issues on Windows 10 Home. IP, what version of Windows is that machine running? Home Lander (talk) 14:46, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Chrome version 67 (32bit) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.70.18 (talk) 14:47, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

That's my Chrome version too, but I'm on the 64-bit. Which version of Windows are you running? Home Lander (talk) 14:51, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

For this particular group of users, Windows 7 32-bit. From the same group, other users are not getting the warning, only one user. Which leads me to believe it is something in her profile, however, i have cleared all her IE/Chrome settings/cookies. Short of resetting her entire user profile (not optimal), not sure what could be causing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.70.18 (talk) 14:55, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

It did end up being a firewall issue for that particular user. They were getting the wrong certificate. Thanks for all the help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.70.18 (talk) 15:03, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Global preferences came to the Wikipedias today

See the "Set your global preferences" link on your Preferences page.

Announcement?

This was announced in the Tech News of 29 May to arrive to the Wikipedias later that week, but didn't happen until today. --Pipetricker (talk) 23:50, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, it was delayed – there'll be a notice in next Tech News about this. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
There's also a plan for a separate announcement tomorrow. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Indeed, announcements are going out now. After the delays in getting this released to all wikis, the Community Wishlist team wanted to make sure global preferences would not have to be reverted again before announcing. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Visual Editor (beta "New wikitext mode") forced on?

Resolved

Some time between last night and this morning VE came on as the default editor (talk and non-talk pages) for me, for no apparent reason. I have not logged out or back in again, nor did I change any preferences. Not sure how to turn it off again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:19, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing has options. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:17, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
The only applicable one seems to be "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta", which I have checked. Having no effect. I did a logoff-login routine. Still getting VE everywhere. I wouldn't mind it except for the gross inefficiency of having to to top-right to click on "Publish changes" to do anything.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:55, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
You don't actually have the VisualEditor but the 2017 wikitext editor. Disable "New wikitext mode" and "Automatically enable all new beta features" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:26, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Ah. I had to go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, turn on "Set a local exception for this global preference" at page top, then turn off "New wikitext mode". Something seems to have changed in how the global prefs are managed. I haven't made any changes to mine in over a week.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:35, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
I guess you have to change Special:GlobalPreferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures if you don't want "New wikitext mode" at any wiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:52, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Hmmm if true, that is not likely to be intentional. Someone should file a ticket about that asap. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:25, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
SMcCandlish, is it possible that you may have set the global "New wikitext mode" from another wiki such as Wiktionary or Test Wiki at an earlier time? --Pipetricker (talk) 07:53, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I may have monkeyed around with global user prefs stuff, over at Meta, but it shouldn't have an unexpected effect a week or two later.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:09, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Oh, that would explain it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:11, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I only meant that SMcCandlish had probably changed Special:GlobalPreferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and if he doesn't want to make a local exception at each wiki he edits then he should change it back. I didn't mean that the local exceptions don't work. They do work. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:26, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

I've got consensus to merge two pages - now what do I do?

Back in December 2017 I put in a merge request using Copy and Paste easy merge templates. Consensus to merge was established 2 June 2018 see: Requests answered in June 2018 and discussion but I don't know how to do mergers (please don't point me to the instructions). Is there a place I can go to request a "volunteer merger editor" to actually carry it out, or do I simply wait? I thought there would just be a "done" or "not done" reply, I hadn't bargained on a "working - you may now proceed" answer! --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 17:19, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

@The Vintage Feminist: there is nothing magic or automatic about the merge process, see Wikipedia:Merging#How_to_merge - I know you asked not to see the instructions but they are there for a reason. The major next step is editorial, not technical: what actual content from the FROM article to you want to show in the TO article? You need to put that content in to the article by editing. — xaosflux Talk 17:26, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict)You can request so at Requests for merge assistance and feedback, although that place is perpetually backlogged due to cumbersome nature of merging. Moreover, after you list it, it will be helpful for you to be bold and learn how to merge pages yourself. There's a chance, you'll learn the merger process and even merge the pages before the volunteer from heaven attended to your request. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:40, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
The Vintage Feminist, It really is not difficult. Just follow the instructions step by step and the actual merge will be done after very few steps, none difficult. It looks more complicated than it is, and you can't break anything irreversibly. As an extra suggestion. put an {{in use}} template into each before you start to reduce the chance that someone or a bot will edit while you are busy. Give it a go and ping me if you have any trouble. (I am in UTC+2 time zone, and often not available between 10pm and 7am, due to a habit of sleeping at night). The cleanup after the merge usually takes longer. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 18:59, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
The thing about merging, is that the proposer often has the best idea of where the merged text should go, and how to clean up the merged article after pasting in the added content. · · · Peter (Southwood) (talk): 06:11, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Okay done, thanks everybody. --The Vintage Feminist (talk) 16:14, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Bug in citation toolbar feature

Animated GIF demonstrating the bug

I'm using Monobook on Firefox. There's a bug in the citation widget, the one that's in the toolbar that appears above the editing area, the one that's triggered by clicking a button that looks like {{CITE}}. When doing a book citation and you change the date format, the value of the access date increments by one day, as shown in the animated GIF here. Not only that, but if you're at the end of the month, it will create invalid date values (e.g., July 32). I would fix it myself except I don't know where this code lives. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 17:29, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Your file shows a feature of RefToolbar 1.0 at Wikipedia:RefToolbar, so you must have disabled "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. It's enabled by default. I tried to disable it but I cannot reproduce your problem. The date format changes without changing the date for me. I also use Firefox and tried in MonoBook. Can you try with a blank User:Howcheng/monobook.js? Logged out users have another toolbar so you cannot test it by logging out. Do you have any time-manipulating browser add-ons in Firefox? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:07, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. This is what I found in MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js in the function formatDate:
  else if (/^\d\d? \w+ \d\d\d\d$/.test(datein) || /^\w+ \d\d?, \d\d\d\d$/.test(datein)) {
    var DT = new Date(datein);
    year = DT.getUTCFullYear();
    month = DT.getUTCMonth()+1;
    date = DT.getUTCDate()+1;
  }
It looks to me like when the date format is dmy or mdy, the script is adding one to the date value, which corresponds with the behavior I'm seeing. —howcheng {chat} 06:53, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
It's a time zone issue. DT.getUTCDate() apparently assumes DT is local time for the browser (not the Wikipedia preference) at midnight and converts it to UTC. I'm at UTC+2. 28 September 2000 in your example is assumed to be 28 September 2000 00:00:00 local time. For me that means 27 September 2000 22:00:00 UTC, so DT.getUTCDate()+1 returns 27+1 = 28 which is correct. Your user page says California so your browser time is probably UTC−9. 28 September 2000 00:00:00 local time converted to UTC is 28 September 2000 09:00:00. DT.getUTCDate()+1 returns 28+1 = 29 which is wrong. The script was made by Kaldari who is also in California so I'm not sure why it says +1. Using getFullYear, getMonth and getDate instead of the UTC functions and dropping +1 for date should fix the bug. getUTCMonth and getMonth always return 0 to 11 so +1 is still needed for month. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:21, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
I suspected time zone. Yeah it's weird because the if block for ymd format (right above this one) just uses regex to parse the numeric values as-is without any time zone conversion. I've also never understood why the month value is zero-based. Just creates headaches for developers IMHO. Is there a sandbox version of this file I can apply the fix to? I also may not have access to edit the actual file given the new permissions limitations (as per a post below). —howcheng {chat} 15:44, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
The planned edit limitation on sitewide CSS/JS is probably around four weeks away. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:15, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@Howcheng and PrimeHunter: I think it should be fixed on https://test.wikipedia.org/. Can you try it there and make sure everything's working correctly? If so, ping me, and I'll copy it over to English Wikipedia. Kaldari (talk) 21:19, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@Kaldari: I can't figure out how to disable reftoolbar 2.0. —howcheng {chat} 03:58, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:RefToolbar#Versions and change testwiki:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. You can also disable both toolbars at "Show edit toolbar" and try to load your own JavaScript instead. I haven't tried this for a toolbar. testwiki:MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js can only be edited by local administrators. See testwiki:Wikipedia:Administrators#Becoming an administrator. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:38, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thanks for that. I had been looking in the Gadgets section and couldn't find it. @Kaldari: Confirmed to be working now. Thanks! —howcheng {chat} 15:54, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@Howcheng: Should be fixed now. Thanks for the report! And thanks PrimeHunter for the help debugging! Kaldari (talk) 16:59, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Context not appearing on archive talk despite code being present

Resolved

Can someone please look at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive 30 particularly the difference between special:diff/836484104 and special:diff/836825128. My edit special:diff/849573836 might also be worth looking at. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:56, 9 July 2018 (UTC) (please Reply to icon mention me on reply; thanks!)

@Emir of Wikipedia: <nowiki>...</nowiki> was missing around open ref tags. Fixed in [14]. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:11, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
The code worked in the original context, because there was no closing </ref> tag on that page, but broke in the archive when much later a </ref> tag appeared in another comment. So I guess this wasn't a Tidy/Remex thing. --Pipetricker (talk) 10:38, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
Well thanks for your help anyway. I used that archive as a reference for some regex code. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:40, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Connection issues

Is anyone else having connectivity issues, particularly when trying to submit an edit? Windows 10 Home, Chrome. Amaury (talk | contribs) 20:39, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Same setup here, no issues as of now. Home Lander (talk) 20:47, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
@Home Lander: Meant to follow up on Monday. Oops. The problems soon went away. Just to note that any other website was fine while Wikipedia was giving me these issues. Amaury (talk | contribs) 19:27, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

It's come to my attention that self-links aren't displayed in bold in some viewing configurations. For me, if I go to Saurophaganax in mobile mode (using Firefox on a desktop computer), in the taxobox line for genus, Saurophaganax is in non-bold black text, and when I hover the cursor over it, it gets underlined, but is not clickable. I've tested this a little and have seen similar behavior with other self-links in mobile mode. I know self-links aren't very common, but they are generated when {{Speciesbox}} or {{Automatic taxobox}} is used with a monotypic taxon. Another editor brought this to my attention, but they experienced it in non-mobile mode with Firefox, but not with Chrome.Plantdrew (talk) 19:12, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

What skin are you using? Besides that, the task for this is phab:T192033. --Izno (talk) 19:25, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
I've got Vector in my preferences. I don't typically view Wikipedia in mobile mode, but I guess I'm using Vector there as well (or whatever the default is). Plantdrew (talk) 19:39, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: If you're viewing the mobile website, you're probably using mw:Skin:Minerva Neue. The mobile website ignores your non-mobile skin preferences. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:23, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

User:Filpro's Indian English script

Why doesn't this script work anymore? This is the one in question: importScript( 'User:Filpro/script/IE.js' ); // Backlink: User:Filpro/script/IE.js --Kailash29792 (talk) 11:16, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

The user was recently renamed, that is probably what broke the script. –Ammarpad (talk) 11:35, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
So is there a way to fix this? --Kailash29792 (talk) 04:59, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
The actual script is now at User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js, so 
importScript( 'User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js]]
should work. The other titles form a weird chain of redirect-like pages: User:Filpro/script/IE.js points to User:फ़िलप्रो/script/IE.js, which points to User:Filpro/script/EN-IN.js, which finally points to User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js. This makes the first two double redirects of sorts (not sure if there's such a thing when it comes to JS pages), which might be why the script you've changed it to fails. SiBr4 (talk) 08:59, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
After trying to install the various aliases, it appears even the "single redirect" User:Filpro/script/EN-IN.js fails, so the problem may not be the redirect chaining, but some of the redirects themselves. The raw JS files for User:Filpro/script/EN-IN.js and User:Filpro/script/IE.js give a "Forbidden" error, saying "For security reasons JavaScript, CSS and JSON user subpages cannot be loaded for unregistered users". User:फ़िलप्रो/script/IE.js successfully imports User:Filpro/script/EN-IN.js, which then fails as above. The actual script User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js seems to work, though. SiBr4 (talk) 09:15, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@Kailash29792, Ammarpad, and SiBr4: The #REDIRECT [[...]] directive is a MediaWiki thing, for use on pages containing Wiki markup. .js pages are not intended to be written in Wiki markup (although certain templates and links are processed, silently). This directive is not valid JavaScript, so when your browser is served such a page, it will not be processed. One of several things could happen, depending upon your browser and its configuration: it might ignore the page entirely; it might throw a clear and helpful error message; it might throw a cryptic and unhelpful error message; it might crash the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:11, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
So, what is the resolution? What should I do? I've amended the script on my common.js to User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js. Kailash29792 (talk) 04:00, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64:: the #REDIRECT is within a /* */ comment on each page, so it shouldn't break the JS (that MediaWiki actually correctly processes that as a redirect without a link in square brackets, at least for User:फ़िलप्रो/script/IE.js, was new to me, though). I'd tried copying the contents of User:Filpro/script/EN-IN.js into my JS and it worked, it's just that importing the script doesn't.
@Kailash29792: If User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js works, nothing. The "redirects" might need to be edited to work (both Filpro aliases are still used by a few users), but I'm not yet sure how, and JS pages can only be edited by admins and the owner of the userspace. SiBr4 (talk) 09:38, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
फ़िलप्रो, your attention is needed here. Kailash29792 (talk) 09:53, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
The users of the script have been notified. I think it's best to delete all those redirects and so they've been nominated for deletion. फ़िलप्रो (talk) 17:06, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
फ़िलप्रो, nothing has changed. Can you please enter my common.js page and see if I put it correctly? Kailash29792 (talk) 04:37, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Kailash29792, your common.js seems to be correct. Try pressing Ctrl + F5 or clearing your cache. If that doesn't work try replacing "User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js" with "User:%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%BC%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8B/script/EN-IN.js". Let me know if the problem still persists. Thanks. फ़िलप्रो (talk) 05:03, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Still nothing. It briefly worked in a draft article, but never again. On User:फ़िलप्रो/script/EN-IN.js, I find one instance of User:Filpro/EN-IN. Maybe that's the code? Or Chrome and Firefox (my primary browsers) no longer support your script? Kailash29792 (talk) 05:21, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Help me Bypass my cache

I added some userscripts recently in my common.js but I saw no effect on my experience. There I saw one notification stating: 

Note: After saving, you may have to bypass your browser's cache to see the changes.

Firefox / Safari: Hold Shift while clicking Reload, or press either Ctrl-F5 or Ctrl-R (⌘-R on a Mac)
Google Chrome: Press Ctrl-Shift-R (⌘-Shift-R on a Mac)
Internet Explorer: Hold Ctrl while clicking Refresh, or press Ctrl-F5
Opera: Go to Menu → Settings (Opera → Preferences on a Mac) and then to Privacy & security → Clear browsing data → Cached images and files.

I use Google chrome for the purpose but I'm on a mobile ! So these notifications proved useless to me.

One of my wiki friends mentioned me to put my query here. So I'm here to ask for your help. Please see!

ARKA (talk) 06:33, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

See this for iOS and this for android. Ruslik_Zero 06:36, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks but I did it earlier and now as well! No change!

ARKA (talk) 07:08, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dr. Sroy: Many interface features are only in the desktop version of the site. Click "Desktop" at the bottom of a page to switch. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:48, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter:Ok trying!

ARKA (talk) 10:51, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Oh man great! It works! Thanks PrimeHunter! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr. Sroy (talk • contribs) 10:53, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Installation of Twinkle

Hi there again!

Another problem I seem to have is that I can't install Twinkle to my preference. I had checked the box for Twinkle in my User Preferences(in the Gadget tab, under the Browsing section the checkbox for Twinkle) long ago! But I see no change.

Help me with please!

ARKA (talk) 06:33, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dr. Sroy: Is Javascipt enabled for your browser? If not, see instructions here. Abecedare (talk) 06:59, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
@Abecedare:Yes!ARKA (talk) 07:02, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
@Abecedare:Problem solved! Twinkle enabled!

It only works in the desktop site! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr. Sroy (talk • contribs) 11:32, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

PNGs don't scale? Or am I doing something wrong?

If I write [[File:Westminstpalace.jpg|300px]]/[[File:Zeta_bootis_short_exposure.png|300px]], I get


Everything is peachy. But if I write [[File:Westminstpalace.jpg|300px|thumb]]/[[File:Zeta_bootis_short_exposure.png|300px|thumb]] I get

What gives? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:26, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Thumbnails cannot be scaled above the original size. File:Zeta bootis short exposure.png is 98 × 92 pixels. [[File:Zeta_bootis_short_exposure.png|300px]] is not a thumbnail so it works there but thumb features cannot be used. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:54, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Well that's dumb. Frame doesn't work either. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:34, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Issues uploading audio files to Wikipedia

I'm trying to upload samples of audio recordings to add to an article I'm working on and am having technical issues.

I've encountered this problem using both the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:File_Upload_Wizard and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload

I'm using Chrome version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit), which it tells me is up to date, and Windows 10.

The problem is, whenever I try to upload an .mp3 file or .ogg file, wikipedia does not recognise them as those extension types. When I try to upload a .mp3 file, it says "".mpga" is not a permitted file type. Permitted file types are tiff, tif, png, gif, jpg, jpeg, webp, xcf, pdf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, oga, flac, opus, wav, webm, mp3." When I attempt to upload a .ogg file, it says "".ogx" is not a permitted file type. Permitted file types are tiff, tif, png, gif, jpg, jpeg, webp, xcf, pdf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, oga, flac, opus, wav, webm, mp3."

Now, I've triple checked my files and windows lists them on my screen as .mp3 and .ogg, even when you right click and look at the properties, they say .mp3 and .ogg, NOT .mpga and .ogx

So my computer is telling me they are the right type of file, but when I attempt to upload them to Wikipedia, Wikipedia believes they are a different type of file. If anyone has any advice for me on how to upload these file, it would be very much appreciated and I'm beginning to go crazy. NicklausAU (talk) 04:18, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

I transferred the exact same files from my laptop to my android phone (still using chrome) and the upload worked without any issues. I guess it's no longer as important, but would still be helpful to know about in the future. NicklausAU (talk) 04:33, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Error deleting file: inconsistent state within the internal storage backends

I'm getting the following error when trying to delete File:Mariko Silver Portrait 2014 1.jpg under F8. Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks, FASTILY 19:18, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Central login

Why is central login not working for Wikidata too? And could someone connect Translatewiki in central login projects (it should be[come] part of Wikimedia, currently is only designated as MediaWiki project)? --Obsuser (talk) 00:14, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by Central login not working for Wikidata since Special:CentralAuth/Obsuser shows Wikidata connected and in fact you edited there few hours ago. Translatewiki is also running on MediaWiki software but it is not part of Wikimedia Foundation projects hence not part of SUL wikis. –Ammarpad (talk) 04:14, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Sometimes the system don't log in you to all of its projects for some reason. And in some projects it logs you out automatically. Stryn (talk) 06:52, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Try to delete cookies for wikidata.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Can't delete page

I've been having some trouble with the bar (don't know the name of it) across the near top of a page, the one to the left of the Search Wikipedia box. Certain items don't show up at all, or the drop-downs don't have certain items. In this instance, the Page drop-down doesn't have Delete or delete page or whatever it normally says. I've tried refreshing. I've tried logging out and back in. While I'm here, is there another way to delete the page besides that drop-down? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:31, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Copy the url for the history page and replace "action=history" with "action=delete". —Cryptic 01:34, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
If you have a Page drop-down then I guess you enabled MoreMenu at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. What is your skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, and what is your browser? Did you check whether Delete is under a "More" tab? Do you get Delete under a "More" tab if you disable MoreMenu? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:05, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you Cryptic; that worked. @PrimeHunter: Vector and Chrome. Delete is not under More. I disabled MoreMenu and delete is now under More. I'm still puzzled why the Page item disappeared.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:21, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
MoreMenu is JavaScript and scripts often have problems, sometimes causing other scripts to fail. It works for me. Does MoreMenu work if you preview a blank version of User:Bbb23/vector.js? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:40, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Sorry for the late response, PrimeHunter, but I had to get off-wiki last night and couldn't continue this dialog. I'm not sure what you want me to try. I remove all the material from vector.js, click on Show preview, and then see if the Page drop-down has a delete item? Maybe I'm misunderstanding.--Bbb23 (talk) 12:01, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Exactly. I'm wondering whether one of your user scripts is interfering. This way you can test it without having to actually save another version of your vector.js. If you preview a user js or css page then the previewed version runs instead of the saved version. You can also save an empty js page if you want but the test doesn't require it. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:13, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
No delete item in Page drop-down after Show preview. I know Chrome updates frequently. Could an update have caused the problem? I can tell you the latest version if that helps.--Bbb23 (talk) 12:44, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

This sounds like Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 164#Lost the delete button. I'm baffled how this can happen. Bbb23 I know this is a lot to ask, but could you please do the following:

  • In Chrome, go to View > Developer > JavaScript console
  • Run the code localStorage.mmUserRights.contains("delete"). This should return true
  • Also run localStorage.mmCacheDate and let me know what it says.

Doing this will help me figure out what's going wrong, and hopefully fix this bug once and for all. Many many thanks — MusikAnimal talk 18:19, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: There is no View in my Chrome.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:27, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
@Bbb23: Oh sorry. To get to the JavaScript console, try step #6 at WP:JSERROR. The keystroke for you is probably Ctrl+⇧ Shift+J — MusikAnimal talk 18:29, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
  • @MusikAnimal: When I do that, I get: ... (removed) ... I couldn't format it nicely, so I did the best I could, which ain't great. I didn't do anything after that because all of those incomprehensible error messages made me very nervous. I have no clue what we're doing.--Bbb23 (talk) 18:40, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
    @Bbb23: Hehe no worries, sorry to make you do this! I actually need you to run this code, individually:
  • localStorage.mmUserRights.contains("delete")
  • localStorage.mmCacheDate
And let me know what those say. Thank you so much! — MusikAnimal talk 18:55, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
  • @MusikAnimal: Don't think this is what you were expecting:
    localStorage.mmUserRights.contains("delete")
    VM136:1 Uncaught TypeError: localStorage.mmUserRights.contains is not a function at <anonymous>:1:27 (anonymous) @ VM136:1
    localStorage.mmCacheDate
    "1531427563594"
    --Bbb23 (talk) 19:00, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
    @Bbb23: Okay one more thing, run: localStorage.mmUserRights.indexOf("delete") !== -1. It should return true. Also, what version of Chrome are you using? — MusikAnimal talk 19:04, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
    @MusikAnimal:. Do the returns on these commands or whatever they are really help you in this instance? Doesn't seem to work at all. But:
    localStorage.mmUserRights.indexOf("delete") !== -1
    VM126:1 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'indexOf' of undefined at <anonymous>:1:27
    Chrome Version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit). I am now off to eat at a Chinese restaurant. May not be what NYC has to offer, but it's what we've got here in the hinterlands, and it's surprisingly good. Bon appetit to me.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:12, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
    They are sort of helpful, but indeed they are not returning what is expected. Do you still have MoreMenu turned on? If not, please turn it on, and run localStorage.mmUserRights.indexOf("delete") !== -1 once more. The result from the last command you ran doesn't make sense. In short, clearing your cache should resolve your issue, but I was trying to figure out what was stored in the cache before you cleared it. Oh well. I'll do some more investigation on my own and let you know if I figure anything out. Enjoy your dinner! :) — MusikAnimal talk 19:31, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
    I had MoreMenu enabled. Lunch. Thank you for trying to help. I'm hoping it does what inexplicable software problems often do: go away on its own.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:44, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
    So let it be written, so let it be done.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:06, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
    @Bbb23: So it is working for you now? :) If not, WP:BYPASS should fix it. Cheers — MusikAnimal talk 16:56, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
    @MusikAnimal: I didn't do a thing. It just started working again yesterday evening and continues to work now.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:04, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
    Well as you reported above, the cache expiry (mmCacheDate) was 1531427563594 in Unix time, which equates to 8:32, 12 July 2018 (UTC) -- around the time you said it magically started working again. That tells me the issue must be cache-related. This is very helpful. I now have some theories as to what might have happened. I'll get to work! Thank you again — MusikAnimal talk 17:30, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Infoboxes erroneously wrapped in bold tags

While investigating some error logs for the mobile web site, I noticed that 170 pages have incorrect formatting which wraps the infobox in a bold or italic tag. e.g. 

'''{{Infobox venue... }}
'''Subject title'' is defined in this line.

I'm not sure what's causing this problem (maybe a result of new pages being copy and pasted or edit conflicts?). I've made a few fixes myself (see Special:Contributions/Jdlrobson but obviously me manually fixing these isn't the most sustainable of ideas!

Can we get this fixed via a bot?

You can use this query] to find pages with the problem.

Jdlrobson (talk) 15:18, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: Wallace Wade Stadium was the first page that showed up in the search, and I cleaned it up. My guess is the infobox on some articles may have been inserted after the bulk of the articles may have already been written and it was accidentally inserted after the bold string for the title. Not all of the articles listed seem to visually have issues - Brisbane, California looks normal, for example. Home Lander (talk) 15:54, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
I don't think it's quite straightforward to fix these with a bot, as many have other underlying formatting issues as well that didn't show up until the switch from html4-tidy to RemexHtml earlier this month. A lot of them do seem like they were articles started by copying and pasting another (especially the ones on ethnic groups and on rugby and football teams), and the errors are just showing up now due to Remex. I've started going through them with AWB, but each one needs a bit of manual processing. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:17, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
 Fixed. These are all fixed now, if the insource search is working. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:01, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Script problem

I was recently developing a script at User:FR30799386/Actiontog.js based on MediaWiki:Gadget-MobileCategories.js (I have some experience very limited experience with coding). I tried the whole script out on my browser console and the script worked perfectly, but when I try to run it on-wiki the script does not produce any result. Can anybody help out ?12:49, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

User:FR30799386/common.js says:
//importScript('User:FR30799386/MOSDDT.js'); //Linkback: [[User:FR30799386/Actiontog.js]] Added by Script installer
Everything on a line after // is a JavaScript comment. The line should say:
importScript('User:FR30799386/Actiontog.js'); //Linkback: [[User:FR30799386/Actiontog.js]] Added by Script installer
The imported page is determined by importScript. The linkback comment is just a way to affect Special:WhatLinksHere/User:FR30799386/Actiontog.js. To avoid confusion, importScript and a linkback comment should always refer to the same page. The different page names were made by you [15] and not Script installer. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:03, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
PrimeHunter, I loaded the script into my User:FR30799386/minerva.js, anticipating that the mobile skin would override my common.js (Which I believe it does) — FR + 13:08, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
P.S. I am aware about that anomaly in my common.js, but I don't think that is causing the issue right now. — FR + 13:13, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Template transcluding articlespace categories onto userpages, Vol. 458

User:Just granpa/Atomic volume and User:Just granpa/Atomic volume (Alternate) are both showing up in Category:Properties of chemical elements by virtue of an artificial transclusion — but I can't find what template is pushing the category in order to get them out, because none of the obvious candidates seem to have that category declaration on them either. Can somebody look into this so the category can be properly cleaned up under WP:USERNOCAT rules? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:26, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Fixed. The categories were coming from documentation subpages. The subpages were actually holding template code not transluding them. Hence the categories coming from here and here; which are subpages of the categorised subpages. –Ammarpad (talk) 14:59, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
You can enter wikitext at Special:ExpandTemplates and search the result for the category to see where in the page it occurs. Some things are namespace or page name sensitive so you sometimes have to fill out "Context title". PrimeHunter (talk) 16:04, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Least edited pages

Is there a database report, or some other place, where one can locate articles (or any pages, for that matter) that have gone the longest time without being edited? Home Lander (talk) 18:07, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

@Home Lander: Special:AncientPages might help, although it mostly lists disambiguation pages. Jc86035 (talk) 18:16, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Disambiguation pages dominate the list because there's less reason to edit them than articles proper. –Ammarpad (talk) 19:38, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Abandoned Articles has deliberately edited all the oldest articles at Special:AncientPages. Wikipedia:Database reports/Forgotten articles ignores disambiguation pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:46, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Can't get pages to show in my template

I just created a new citation template, Template:BLKO, but I can't seem to get the page or pages parameters to work, and I can't figure out why, so I need some additional eyes on it. Thanks in advance. —howcheng {chat} 23:36, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that it's your template but rather is a problem with {{cite wikisource}}. This example from the documentation page has |pages=100–110 but that isn't displayed:
{{cite wikisource |last=Bloggs | first=Fred |editor-first=John| editor-last=Doe |plaintitle=Big Book With Many Chapters and distinct chapter authors|publisher=Book Publishers |date=2001-01-01 |pages=100–110 |chapter=Chapter 2: The History Of The Bloggs Family |isbn=123456789X}}
Bloggs, Fred (2001-01-01). "Chapter 2: The History Of The Bloggs Family" . In Doe, John (ed.). Big Book With Many Chapters and distinct chapter authors. Book Publishers. pp. 100–110. ISBN 123456789X – via Wikisource.
{{cite wikisource}} uses {{citation/core}} and feeds that template's |At= parameter with a complicated mess of code that includes |page= and |pages= among a whole bunch of other parameters. You might raise the issue at Template talk:cite wikisource; perhaps there is someone there who knows what that mess of code is supposed to do and can see where is is loosing |page= and |pages=.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:08, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Just fixed the isbn error at the Template:cite wikisource/doc and did some playing around with the other examples. In the above example, changing |plaintitle= to |title= makes the template render with the pages:
Bloggs, Fred (2001-01-01). "Chapter 2: The History Of The Bloggs Family" . In Doe, John (ed.). Big Book With Many Chapters and distinct chapter authors . Book Publishers. pp. 100–110. ISBN 123456789X – via Wikisource.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I went back and checked my previous usages of {{cite wikisource}} (e.g., Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor § Notes) and you are correct: the page numbers aren't included, so I'll have to take it up at the template talk page. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 03:39, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

\w and \d equivalents in Mediawiki regex?

I've been trying to wrap my head around how to deal with the lack of \w or \d support in our regex functions. \d is fairly easy to deal around [0-9], but \w is nearly impossible to get around. If you use [A-Za-z], you miss out all the diacritics, as well as all non-Latin characters. What's an equivalent way of replacing \w. Better yet, why don't we support \w or \d? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:07, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Nevermind, found this. It was buried 230 layers deep in documentation, but it was there. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:10, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
it's not mediawiki regex, it's Lua patterns :) I think I'm not the only one, who was confused by what you asked till I got to reading link title --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:13, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Tool idea

I was just thinking about using Template:Copyvios to build a tool that you can click on each article to see if the article has been copied from other sources, but I don’t have the technical knowledge to do it myself. I was wondering if a tool like that already exists and if not, someone will take it upon themselves to develop one?--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 13:27, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

@Épine: See User:Ahecht/Scripts/CVD. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:14, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht: thanks but it has issues that I described on the talk page, can you please take a look?--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 18:39, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I fixed the script so that it defaults to "wikipedia" if the site name is something other than mediawiki, wikibooks, wikidata, wikimedia, wikinews, wikipedia, wikiquote, wikisource, wikiversity, wikivoyage, or wiktionary. See the script's talk page. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:52, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Edits are lost when changing from VisualEditor to regular editor

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199655

It seems like when I start editing an article in VisualEditor (e.g to add citations) and then change in source editor mode, the changes don't carry over between the edit windows. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:11, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

It works fine for me, in both directions.. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:11, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
What browser, operating system, skin? --Izno (talk) 19:56, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Firefox latest, Windows 10 and Vector. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:51, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Jo-Jo Eumerus, does this happen every time? If you make multiple changes (e.g., to different parts of the article), do you lose all of your work, or just some of it? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
It seems like the issue happens when I try to change through the header buttons (these next to the "view history" button). Formerly then the page changed over with a you have changed the editing mode flag and kept previous edits. Now instead I get the "some changes may not be saved if you leave this page" popup and the edits done in the previous editing mode don't stay. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:24, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I've filed a bug. Since your first edits are from 2012, I'm going to assume that you are using the 2010 wikitext editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:26, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Templates do not show up in mobile view Suggestion

Hi! I've recently noticed that templates that are at the bottom of articles like this one Template:Woman's club movement, don't show up in mobile view. Is there any way that we can correct that? I find the templates useful for navigation and would like to use it on my phone. (I have an Android.) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:18, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Navigational templates have class="navbox" and are deliberately omitted from the mobile version. You can click "Desktop" at the bottom of mobile pages to see the desktop version. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:53, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Time we put this in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/FAQ. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:57, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Hi! PrimeHunter! I know I can switch to Desktop to see the template, but I think that the mobile view should encompass a view for templates, too. What can we do about that? Redrose64 do you think there is a way to make a proposal to fix this? I think it's important to do since more and more people access Wikipedia in mobile version nowadays. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:42, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
It's done on purpose to reduce bandwidth usage and page size for mobile users. Many articles have a lot of losely connected navigation templates. They wouldn't be collapsible in mobile, and their width is not designed for narrow screens. Maybe there should be an option to display them without switching to desktop but they are currently not transmitted at all in mobile so it would require a change in the software for the mobile version. This is outside control of the English Wikipedia. phab:T124168 ("Show Navbox templates in mobile skins") has a proposal. I don't know whether it's the primary discussion. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:06, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the answer, PrimeHunter! That makes sense and I understand better why templates wouldn't show up. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 22:37, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

InternetArchiveBot is malfunctioning

InternetArchiveBot (v2.0beta2) is malfunctioning and making edits like this. I've reported but the edits continue. --Auric talk 12:22, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-29

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Your watchlist will show changes from the last seven days instead of three. If you have already set a length preference it will not change. [19]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from July 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from July 18. It will be on all wikis from July 19 (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on July 17 at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on July 18 at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Some articles have messages to readers about problems with the article. For example that it does not cite sources or might not be neutral. Readers do not see these messages on the mobile version. The developers now want to show them. You can read more and leave feedback.
  • You can use <inputbox> to create search boxes for specific pages. For example to search the archives of a community discussion page. Instead of prefix:Page name you will see a text that explains which pages are being searched. You can read more and leave feedback.

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

16:00, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Template:Search

(Section heading changed to remove template call, see the comment in the wikitext. --Pipetricker (talk) 17:39, 16 July 2018 (UTC))

Hey all, something seems amiss with {{Search}}. If I employ it here all of the different search options are mashed together.

(
)

According to the template documentation, we should be seeing

(wp gwp g bwp b | eb co gct sw arc ht)

I appreciate if anybody can look into this. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:51, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: Looks like more fallout from the change from Tidy to Remex. I've modified the module to add spaces back. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:47, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht: I have no idea what most of that means, but I'm grateful that you were there to figure it out. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:21, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Why are some language userboxes italicized and others not?

I just noticed an inconsistency on my user page, where Template:User en and Template:User ga-1 are not in italics but Template:User fr-2 is. I don't speak German but I checked Template:User de-2 anyway, and that's italicized like French.

I can understand not wanting to italicize Chinese, Japanese, etc., but is this just because the foreign-language text from en.wiki's perspective is always meant to be italicized and the Irish one is just obscure enough that no one noticed that it is in error, or what?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:31, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: Some of them use {{Lang}}, which always italicizes Latn-script text, and the Irish one doesn't. All the templates were created manually by different people. Jc86035 (talk) 07:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Hijiri88: I answered a pretty similar question at Template talk:Babel#Italicization. Instead of using the userboxes directly, use {{#babel:en|ja-4|fr-2|zh-1|ga-1}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:36, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jc86035 and Redrose64: Cool. Thanks!
... umm ... is one or the other userbox style (not using the userboxes directly vs. using babel, but using Lang so it italicizes vs. not) "wrong" and needing to be updated/fixed?
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:58, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Hijiri88: It is correct to use {{Lang}}, but there is a parameter to turn the italicization off. I think the templates should match the Babel userboxes' styling (i.e. language formatting but no italics). Jc86035 (talk) 08:02, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

"Some parts of the edit form did not reach the server; double-check that your edits are intact and try again."

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199554

We've just had this question posted by TheTechnician27 at the Teahouse. Can't find anything in recent VPT talk or the archives, so could someone offer a suggestion, please? The text of the question is "Whenever I switch from visual to source editing mode, I get this error message at the top of the page. Additionally, there is no chart showing the difference between the current version and my edit. This had never happened to me, but recently it's happened every time. I get this on two separate computers, and I can't seem to find any information about it. I'd like to find a way to stop this error message from showing up and to get the side-by-side comparison to show up again." Many thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 20:28, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: The same message generates when using WP:REFILL. I verified this just now on War bride. Load the article, click on Refill, then click "Preview/Save on Wiki" and the message will appear. I left the bare URLs alone on that article so this will continue to work. Home Lander (talk) 20:38, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
I see this message as well when I switch from visual to source editing mode and I also miss the side-by-side comparison. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:40, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm sincerely not inclined to make any more major edits without the 'diff' feature. It's just such a necessity, and I really hope this is an error and not a change in how editing works. TheTechnician27 (talk) 03:27, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
This is definitely a bug, not a feature. It looks like Anomie's got an idea of which change might have triggered this. I have some hope that this will be fixed on the next train. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I reported this 2 days ago in phab:T199554. Stryn (talk) 20:03, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Stryn, or someone, can you add in Phabricator that Refill triggers this also? Home Lander (talk) 20:28, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I did. Also, the message is MediaWiki:Edit form incomplete, which appears to belong to preview (in the older wikitext editors). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Adopting unmaintained user script

I've been maintaining a version of Technical 13's CVD script at User:Ahecht/Scripts/CVD, and have fixed a few bugs related to performance, depreciated API calls, and use on non-english Wikipedias. Per the note at User:Technical_13/Scripts/Nav, Other users are encouraged to take on the task of developing and maintaining it. EdJohnston recommended that I ask here if there is any objection to redirecting the unmaintained script to my version (as requested at User talk:Technical 13/Scripts/CVD.js#Requested edit 16 July 2018)? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

I'd much prefer to have the users update to the new location, is there any idea the number of pages that would need updating? — xaosflux Talk 18:19, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
With a quick search I count about 13. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:53, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I count 13 user js pages as well from this search(excluding Technical 13's own vector.js page): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13. I couldn't find any mentions in global.js files at meta, and I didn't search any other languages or projects. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:44, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht: with it being soo little people I'd rather see: (a)Ask the users to update their own pages to point to the new script [or] (a1) have an admin force the updates for them {I don't like that either} - then (b) blank out the old script since its not being used anymore. Users should be making an affirmative choice of "I trust editor X to change javascript that could impact me". — xaosflux Talk 20:08, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
You could even change the old script so it prints a message advising people to use the new one. EdJohnston (talk) 00:33, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
100% OK with that. — xaosflux Talk 00:46, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. I'll craft a talk page message and send it out later this week, and figure out the best way to have the old script leave a message if there are any stragglers. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:37, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I just migrated to my own cut-down version of your script since I don't need all the options, so you can take me off the list.
I also thought, given that copyvio detection is an important part of NPP workflow, that this tool might be useful, and gain a bigger audience, as a Gadget. Do people think that would be worth doing? BethNaught (talk) 14:50, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I think making it into a gadget would be handy. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 19:33, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Template coding

An issue has been raised at WP:CANTALK which I need to ask for a template coding expert to assist with. {{Infobox Canada electoral district}} is supposed to include a box which clarifies whether the electoral district in question is a federal one represented in the Canadian House of Commons or a provincial one represented in a provincial or territorial legislative assembly — however, while this box appears to display correctly on active electoral districts such as Argenteuil (note where the infobox says "provincial electoral district") or Nickel Belt (note that this one says "federal electoral district" in the same spot), on defunct districts like Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel it seems to disappear, leaving the reader to guess at which level of government the electoral district pertained to.

At the same time, the defunct districts also seem to disappear the "legislature" field which links to what legislative body the representative sat in, which they also shouldn't be doing.

Both of these fields should still be displaying in an electoral district's infobox regardless of whether it's active or defunct, because they're both important pieces of information whose contextual relevance is not dependent on whether the district is currently active or not. So can somebody who knows template coding look into this, and recode the template so that the "federal vs. provincial clarifier" and "legislature" boxes don't disappear on defunct districts? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:05, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi Bearcat. In order for it to display the status has to be set to something. The parameter "fed-status" was empty; I set it to "fed-status=defunct" to fix the problem in Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel. For active districts it has to be set to active. See Template:Infobox Canada electoral district#Mandatory parameters These complex infoboxes are very tricky. This one at least is documented; many aren't. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:05, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Ah, okay, thanks. Bearcat (talk) 20:09, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Actually someone else added it first. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:11, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Module:Template parameter value

Some weeks back, I made {{Template parameter value}}, which uses Module:Template parameter value. It extracts the value of a specific parameter from a specific template from a specific page. However, when the template is used on the same page that its pulling the value from, it doesn't seem to work, and I can't figure out why. For example, if I use {{tmpv|List of The 100 episodes|Series overview||start1}} on List of The 100 episodes (i.e. pulling the value of the |start1= parameter from the series overview template) (and only in edit preview), I get a blank result; use it on any other page or sandbox, I get March 19, 2014 (2014-03-19). Thoughts? -- AlexTW 14:38, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

It's a bad idea for templates to have this kind of subtle dependency on other templates. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 15:23, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Same opinion here. This is not what templates and even modules are designed for. You shouldnt rely on it and you should expect it to break in various ways, now and even more so in the future. We have wikidata and Lua data modules, you should make due with those. When you built houses with match sticks, a collapse is inevitable. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:28, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for your opinions, but I was more looking for a fix for the template. Turns out, there is no issue with it, so no match sticks. -- AlexTW 00:31, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
A collapse is in fact inevitable, not because the matchsticks catch fire, but because you've been noticed by the fire inspectors -- I've nominated Template:Template parameter value for deletion. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:06, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
It works for me on List of The 100 episodes and produces "March 19, 2014". Are you previewing a text which actually has the template you search for? It searches the previewed version of the page and not the saved version. But I share the concern of the others. Help:Labeled section transclusion seems a better way but it requires the page to be prepared for the purpose. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:49, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
It seems I was previewing it when editing only the header, but your explanation (It searches the previewed version of the page and not the saved version.) makes sense, and I understand why now. Thank you! (As a side note, the template was created so that pages didn't need to be "prepared".) -- AlexTW 00:31, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: No editing 06:00–06:30 AM (UTC), 18 July

As previously stated here in June, English Wikipedia will be read-only for up to 30 minutes (06:00 AM to 06:30 AM UTC) on 18 July because of maintenance work. Everyone will be able to read it, but you can’t edit. If everything goes well, this should just take a few minutes, but prepare for 30 minutes to be on the safe side. I'd suggest some kind of banner to warn all editors, but I think it's up to the English Wikipedia community to decide.

You can read more in the tasks linked to from phab:T197134. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 07:46, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Alternatively (or in addition) to a banner for logged in users, in the past, some wikis decided to put a warning/reminder on the recentchanges page. Up to you. JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 08:25, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Maybe list this at CENT for a day? I have no idea how hard it is to cook up a banner, but personally I think something official doesn't need community rubber stamping for a helpful notice. Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 01:40, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
I just reread CENT, it seems they don't want this put there, and recommend P:WP, however that looks fairly dead, so if no one else has been bold, I will put up a {{centralized discussion}} tomorrow morning.Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 01:43, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
I didn't even know P:WP existed. Natureium (talk) 19:19, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
That's the trouble with Portal space - not enough awareness. That is, other than the little boxes that get added to certain places, such as the "See also" sections of articles; the top of category pages; and inside WikiProject banner templates. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:12, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
P:WP is a redirect to Wikipedia:Community portal which is not a Wikipedia:Portal. It's linked in the left pane and had 346,486 views in the past 30 days. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:26, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Not all portals are the content-related types found in Portal: space. There are also a handful of project-related portals in both the Portal: and the Wikipedia: namespaces. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 19:07, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Per the Cent instructions, this discussion being listed on Centralized discussion looks like it is perhaps a (misplaced) notification of this discussion, and not a notification of the upcoming read-only event.

But any way, I think the proper way to announce the read-only time to everyone who is editing this wiki (including those not logged in), and not just to those who read Cent or the Community portal, would be a MediaWiki:Sitenotice. (Examples: one of the more recent uses on this wiki, use on testwiki.)

I think it would make sense to put up a final warning maybe 15 minutes before going read-only, and an earlier warning a couple of hours before that. --Pipetricker (talk) 01:09, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Sitenotice should work
Hmm, looks like CentralNotice inhibits the use of MediaWiki:Sitenotice:
mw:Manual:Interface/Sitenotice says:
1. If the CentralNotice extension is enabled, it is displayed (even if not defined); see below.
and
The CentralNotice extension supersedes all other notices.
Do I understand that correctly? And if so, can CentralNotice be used? --Pipetricker (talk) 07:45, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I asked at the phabricator task whether there will be a $wgReadOnly message displayed during the read-only time. --Pipetricker (talk) 09:22, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
At Phabricator, Marostegui wrote that the $wgReadOnly message will show:
Scheduled maintenance on enwiki from 06:00-06:30 UTC. Database in read-only mode.
--Pipetricker (talk) 09:48, 16 July 2018 (UTC) (soon going mostly off-line for a couple of weeks)
I just noticed that the above message will be preceded by the message in MediaWiki:Readonlywarning. --Pipetricker (talk) 18:01, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
You can still run Sitenotices; CentralNotice doesn't disable that. Sitenotices have the advantage of not 'leaking' to other wikis. (CentralNotice shows its English-language messages if you set your user interface language to English, no matter what wiki you're on, which means that it is less than ideal for something affecting only the English Wikipedia.)
IMO there are two major purposes in telling regulars here about this kind of event in advance, in addition to a banner during the event itself. The first is that you know exactly who's going to get most of the questions about it afterwards: you. The second is that a 30-minute outage during a 60-minute edit-a-thon would be a pretty bad experience, so ideally people who are planning events will be able to find out what's happening, and schedule around it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

This is starting in around 37 minutes from now. Cheers. JCrespo (WMF) (talk) 05:23, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

While you've all got your calendars out

Please make a note that there will probably be another round of server switch testing in a few months, with the attendant read-only time. Current best guess is "switch to" in mid-to-late September and "switch back" three weeks later, in October. There will naturally be about a hundred reminders between now and then. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Suggesting this Sitenotice

I don't really have time for this now, but I will post an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice in one hour from now, for the following notice, unless there's already a notice up by then:

The English Wikipedia will be read-only for up to 30 minutes beginning 06:00, 18 July UTC (check current UTC time), because of maintenance work. Everyone will be able to read the wiki, but you won't be able to edit.

Feel free to suggest improvements, of course. --Pipetricker (talk) 01:33, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Note: No Sitenotice was posted. --Pipetricker (talk) 09:00, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

ERIC

Would anyone have any advice on how to add an optional access parameter to {{ERIC}} that would match the doi-access parameter of the CS1 templates by replacing the standard arrow icon used by external links with a green lock (i.e., Freely accessible)? 142.160.89.97 (talk) 20:41, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

@142.160.89.97: Try {{ERIC/sandbox}}, which will display the lock when you set |lock=yes. If that works for you, I will enable it in the main template--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:17, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
That's perfect. Thank you very much, Ahecht! 142.160.89.97 (talk) 21:22, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I would be better to modify {{Catalog lookup link}} template. Ruslik_Zero 21:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I certainly wouldn't object to that, Ruslik0. 142.160.89.97 (talk) 21:36, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ruslik0 and 142.160.89.97: {{Catalog lookup link}} is an incomprehensible mess, with wikitext if statements nested 10 deep. I don't want to even try to attempt to modify it. It would be a perfect candidate for a Lua rewrite, and the lock icon could be incorporated into that, but I don't have time for a rewrite at the moment. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:09, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
As someone who is no template expert and who has no experience with Lua, why is Lua preferable? 142.160.89.97 (talk) 04:56, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Because Lua is a real language? I agree that {{catalog lookup link}} is an incomprehensible mess. Code that resembles a wall of text is never good. Adding access icon support to that template as it exists now would only make things worse.
The green access icon originated at cs1|2. Most source identifiers supported there link to sources that lie behind a registration-/pay-wall. Some source identifiers occasionally link to free-to-read sources, (doi, jstor, etc), those identifiers may be marked with the green access icon using |<id>-access=free; some identifiers are never free-to-read. At cs1|2, isbn, ismn, issn, oclc, etc do not get the access icon because they do not link to a source but rather, link to information about the source. {{catalog lookup link}} is transcluded by the stand-alone identifier templates {{ISBN}}, {{ISMN}}, {{ISSN}}, {{OCLC}} for which an access icon is not appropriate; some identifiers are never free-to-read so the access icon is not appropriate for them. Further, as currently written, {{catalog lookup link}} can render links to multiple identifiers so the access icon support would require some sort of mechanism to identify which of the links in the list get the lock and which do not. {{ERIC}} uses {{catalog lookup link}}:
{{ERIC|24680|12345|9876|lock=yes}}
ERIC 24680, 12345, 9876 – these numbers are made up, but what if 12345 is not free-to-read? or what if it is the only one that is free-to-read?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:47, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
In the case of ERIC, about 25% of the items are free to read. Obviously, the lock icon would not be used if all the items listed aren't free to read. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:00, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I applaud your optimism, but I think that nothing is obvious. Editors will apply the access icon parameter when only some of the sources are free-to-read.
Because it amused me to do it, I have hacked a first version of Module:Catalog lookup link. Examples at Template talk:Catalog lookup link.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:20, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I've copied the changes over to {{ERIC}}. If there is consensus to add the option to {{Catalog lookup link}}, it can easily be shifted to there. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:35, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ruslik0, 142.160.89.97, and Trappist the monk: I updated the template so that it uses the |url-access= parameter in the same way that the CS1 templates do instead of using |lock=yes. To display the green lock, you now have to use |url-access=free. This provides the ability to use free, registration, limited, or subscription. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:00, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I was going to suggest that the better parameter name might be |<id>-access=free where <id> is the identifier, so for ERIC, |eric-access=free; alternately, a generic |id-access=free might be better. cs1|2 does not allow |url-access=free because urls that link |title= and/or |chapter-title= are presumed to be free-to-read so a free-to-read icon for those parameters is redundant. Identifiers, on the other hand, are commonly not free-to-read so a free-to-read icon has value. I note this simply for consistency among the various templates.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:20, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Forgot this: I don't think that use of these icons should deviate from the standard set by cs1|2 for the same icons. It should be presumed that identifiers are not free-to-read so the limited and subscription options are redundant to that presumption.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:26, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: In CS1/2, it's different depending on the parameter. Links inserted with|url= are expected to be free to read by default, links inserted with other identifiers are either free or not free depending on ths source (so |doi= is presumed non-free, but |arxiv= is presumed free). In any case, this template is set up to default to the standard external link icon. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:05, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I know all that. The general rule is: Don't highlight the norm. Links applied to |title= with |url=, are presumed to be free-to-read (the norm) so it is not possible in cs1|2 to highlight those links with a green access icon. In general, identifier links are presumed to be not-free-to-read (the norm) so it is not possible in cs1|2 to apply the subscription/limited/registration icons to identifier links. Some identifiers are always free-to-read (arxiv, biorxiv, citeseerx, pmc, rfc, ssrn) so cs1|2 automatically applies the green icon to these links. Your edit to {{ERIC}}, inappropriately I think, allows any of the lock icons to be applied to ERIC identifiers.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 09:44, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Template:Catalog lookup link does not need to be implemented in lua -- it merely needs to use one of the deduplication templates like Template:For nowiki. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 15:27, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Ahecht and Trappist the monk: I've written something in Template:Catalog lookup link/sandbox1 that uses a constant level of nesting via {{separated entries}}, as a less insane pure-wikitext version. The testcasea are yellow, but everything looks visually the same. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:03, 17 July 2018 (UTC){{3x|p}}ery (talk) 15:50, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Pppery: I know you are on a crusade against Lua, but this is precisely the sort of template that should be written in Lua. Not only does your version still spin up a Lua module (meaning there's no performance advantage), but it artificially limits the number of inputs to 9. Templates with arbitrary numbers of parameters should not be forced into wikitext for no reason. I tweaked Trappist the monk's module to get the output to match the existing template and implemented it at Template:Catalog_lookup_link/sandbox. I had been working on a shorter module at Module:Sandbox/Ahecht/Catalog_lookup_link, but Trappist's, although longer, is a bit cleaner. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:17, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Problems with the edit window when there is WikiMarkup color-shading

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199739

Referring to this thread, I still have a problem when I copy and paste text and delete it at the same time. The text doesn't get deleted, I get sent to the start of the edit window, and somehow this happened. Actually, that was my attempt to correct the mistake, and I did it wrong too.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:06, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Did you notice this error on Chrome or in Firefox or in both? -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

It still happens with Edge at home. I have had the problems with Edge at a library as well. I can't remember now if it happened with Chrome. I'll post when i use Chrome again. No, I won't be using it at home.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Can you tell me exactly how you're cutting and pasting? I found phab:T174635, which is about middle-click on a mouse. It's on Linux, but if you're using middle-click, then it might be relevant. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I hold down the left mouse button, move the mouse over what I want to copy, let go of the mouse button, and press CTRL and C at the same time.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:39, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. It's probably not the same thing, then. I've started a new bug report at phab:T199739 for this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
The problem is not happening with Chrome at this library.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:42, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Back at home, I moved some content but when I copies and pressed delete, the content did not disappear. Instead, I had to correct a mistake which was caused by the suspected bug. I had to try again deleting the information I was deleting and copying elsewhere.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:48, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia pages don't finish loading (waiting for wmflabs)

Page loads, and all seems well. But the page often never actually finishes loading, and Firefox says it's waiting for tools.wmflabs.org. It's not my connexion, as it doesn't happen on other sites. Anyone else having this issue? Adam9007 (talk) 00:28, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

xtools is gathering edit history on the newer pages. If a history exists, the load of the data for xtools is much faster. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 00:59, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Not just you. I seriously thought I was being hacked. It was on Firefox and Chrome, any page on English Wikipedia. Not on Wikisource, didn't happen on Commons. Then I had the idea to remove the last script I had added to my common.js, which was the Zhaofeng_Li/Reflinks.js. Removal of that script cleared everything for me. — Maile (talk) 01:10, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
I don't know why but running Zhaofeng_Li/Reflinks eventually brings a "502 Bad Gateway" message. This started happening a few hours ago. Probably due to maintenance and hopefully it will clear up soon. MarnetteD|Talk 01:21, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. I've just commented out Reflinks in my common.js and everything seems to be fine again. Hopefully, I can uncomment it soon. Adam9007 (talk) 01:37, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
No issues here. Amaury (talk | contribs) 01:45, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Commonscat template + alternatives for Pywikibot

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57212

Hello, Pywikibot team needs help! There is quite old Commonscat template list in the framework and there is 5 years old request (phab:T57212) to update it. But none of us is enwiki user. Could anyone please update the task with current Commonscat templates, redirects and alternatives? We can then update the framework, but now we are just stuck waiting for response from any enwiki tech savvy. --Dvorapa (talk) 09:53, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@Dvorapa: Are you looking for Category:Wikimedia Commons templates, or do you want all the redirects as well? (Shouldn't most categories be linked through Wikidata now?) Jc86035 (talk) 14:02, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
I don't know. On cswiki we have got one Commonscat template, no redirects, so I'm pretty confused by enwiki. The Pywikibot script adds main Commonscat template to the articles and skips articles already containing the template, any of the alternatives, or any of the redirects. So I would like to know, what is the main Commonscat template and what are the alternatives and redirects currently. --Dvorapa (talk) 20:54, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
@Dvorapa: I think it's most of the templates listed under "C" in the category excluding sandboxes (I'm not sure whether you want the ones which only link to galleries). I have no idea why there are so many, but it's probably because of a combination of pre-Lua template inflexibility and individual preference (I have no evidence for this). Jc86035 (talk) 05:36, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
In the Phabricator task there are also some others mentioned:
\* Commonscatmore
\* Airports by country category description
\* BC year in topic ‎
\* C11 year in topic ‎
\* C12 year in topic ‎
\* C13 year in topic ‎
\* C14 year in topic ‎
\* C15 year in topic ‎
\* C16 year in topic ‎
\* C17 year in topic ‎
\* C18 year in topic ‎
\* C19 year in topic ‎
\* C20 year in topic ‎
\* C21 year in topic ‎
\* Cathead Conservatism in
\* Cathead passenger ships of the
\* Howtoreqphoto
\* M1 year in topic
\* Motorsport decade category
...
They probably also do have some form of Commonscat link inside. Can some current list be found somewhere? --Dvorapa (talk) 06:26, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Template:Disambiguation needed display error?

(Section heading changed to remove template call, see the comment in the wikitext. --Pipetricker (talk) 10:09, 19 July 2018 (UTC))

Is it just me or is the {{dn|date=March 2018}} at Public interest § Government (permanent link) linking to here and superscripting into the text above? —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 08:46, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but what is the problem? Ruslik_Zero 09:15, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Los Angeles area task force

I need some help in cleaning up a move to Wikipedia:WikiProject California/Los Angeles area task force. Thanks. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 15:06, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

@BeenAroundAWhile: What is the problem here? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:23, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Template expanding a range

Can someone please suggest a way to expand a template to cover a range? It would be a template that would have two parameters, {{{1}}} and {{{2}}}, both of which are whole numbers with {{{2}}} greater than {{{1}}}. The template would then return a list with {{{1}}} and {{{2}}} and all the numbers in between.

For example, I'm considering creating a template, {{USCongressOrdinalRange}},

that would be run like: {{USCongressOrdinalRange | 109 | 112 }},
and would return: 109th, 110th, 111th, 112th.
It would effectively expand out to:
{{USCongressOrdinal|109}}, {{USCongressOrdinal|110}}, {{USCongressOrdinal|111}}, {{USCongressOrdinal|112}}.

I would appreciate any suggestions from template experts. Thanks.—GoldRingChip 16:38, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Implemented at {{x1}}. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:50, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, I'll have a look! —GoldRingChip 17:05, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Update: That worked great. Thanks. —GoldRingChip 17:15, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

How to find articles that lack citations but have no tag placed on them?

Heading basically says it all, I have come across (by chance) articles that have been unreferenced for years but do not have any citation-related tag on the page, (for example this one) is there a way to automatically generate a list of such articles? - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 05:56, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Snarky answer: That article had a citation-related tag on it. There are almost 200,000 articles in Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2014 and its companion categories.
Helpful answer: look through any year in songs to get started, like Category:1990 songs. There are thousands of unreferenced song articles. Good look getting them deleted however; I poked the Wikipedia talk:Notability (music) bear a year or two ago and got tons of pushback.
Before you tag a bunch of articles for deletion, please read WP:BEFORE. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:44, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Haha, missed that, but I'm sure I've seen such articles before (unsourced but no tag) and I added the tag to them (see for example this one, and yes, I am aware of WP:BEFORE and have had a success rate in nominating music articles for deletion. (check my AfD stats) However, I still want my original question answered, which is finding articles that lack citations but have no tag placed on them, like the diff that i just linked. Regards. - CHAMPION (talk) (contributions) (logs) 07:04, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
It depends how perfect a list you want; there are many edge cases. For example, the {{unreferenced}} tag should not have been applied to the example you gave, Hey, Do You Know Me, because that article has an external link that, according to the template documentation, serves as a reference. A better example of an unreferenced article would be Tuzapán. --Worldbruce (talk) 02:15, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Perhaps a more technical way to find likely candidates for this description would be for someone with the appropriate Wiki-fu to generate a list of articles that contain 1) no citation-related tags, 2) no <ref></ref> tags, 3) no external links, and 4) no "References" header. bd2412 T 02:46, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
I think that the ArticleWizard auto-inserts a ==References== heading. For item 3), you want "no URLs", not just no ==External links==. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Web form for automating tasks

So the idea lab submission button opens a modal dialog with a form ... I'm assuming it'll eventually generate some MW content. Is that fully rolled out? Things as mundane an AFD and ITN require a lot of copy/paste of complicated templates in different places, it's screaming for a modal dialog and a wizard. --LaserLegs (talk) 15:56, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

@LaserLegs: Twinkle can handle AfD nominations, though I don't know if it handles ITN. Jc86035 (talk) 16:05, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
Yep, Afds are easy with Twinkle, though I've never heard of ITN built into it. Home Lander (talk) 23:37, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox road

Can someone help to get the previous_dab and next_dab parameters to work for UK roads in Template:Infobox road, please? The article I've been looking at is M53 motorway. The syntax in the previous_route and previous_dab parameters was broken but fixing it results in the previous route link at the bottom of the infobox always pointing to a dab page, M50 motorway. This happens whatever is in the previous_dab parameter. That parameter works for other countries. For example, the previous route link in Alabama State Route 46 points to Alabama State Route 45 (pre-1957) when previous_dab is =pre-1957 and changing that to =xyz changes the link to Alabama State Route 45 (xyz). I'm guessing there is some code associated with country=GBR that disables the previous_dab parameter.--Cavrdg (talk) 12:19, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

It looks like |previous_dab= is passed to Module:Infobox road's "browse" function, which then calls Module:Road_data/browse. It looks like the link is eventually produced by Module:Road data/strings/GBR, to which I have attempted to add a dab variable (copying from Module:Road data/strings/USA/AL). It didn't work, unless there is some purging or null-editing required to cause the modules to be re-parsed. That's as far as I got. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:47, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
I have fixed the issue. I believe the problem was related to Lua's greedy regex rules, which were trying to treat all three of the conditionals (bracketed parts) as one. I split up the format string into a switch table on the state, which seems to work.
For future reference, posting directly to Template talk:Infobox road will generally get a faster response. As the template/module maintainer, I have that page on my watchlist. -happy5214 20:33, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
Nice work. I figured that Template talk:Infobox road would be a better place to get results, which is why I notified that page about this discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:18, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks both!--Cavrdg (talk) 07:45, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

DRAFTNOCAT fix

Category:AfC submissions with categories serves to collect pages which have both an AFC submission template and one or more category declarations — however, a couple of months ago, a user created the new {{Draft categories}} template, which wraps the category declarations in a "This page will be placed in the following categories if it is moved to the Article namespace." box and suppresses the page actually being filed in the categories. This is a good template, which eliminates the problem with having the category declarations present on the page — if it's not filing the page in the category, then the presence of a category declaration isn't causing a problem and doesn't need to be "fixed" — but while the maintenance category already knows to skip category declarations that are disabled in other ways (leading colon, being nested inside a hidden comment, etc.), it does not yet recognize that category declarations wrapped inside this new template are disabled and thus don't need attention from the maintenance queue.

I'm not sure how the category actually generates its list of contents, however, so I can't fix it myself. Can somebody make it so that the category excludes pages that have their category declarations wrapped inside the {{Draft categories}} template? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:14, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I already made a request at Module talk:AFC submission catcheck#Template:Draft categories removes categories. There is a working sandbox version by WOSlinker so maybe it just has to be copied to the live module. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:59, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

TemplateStyles enabled on English Wikipedia

Hello, TemplateStyles have been enabled on this wiki. This follows an RfC on the feature from last month.

TemplateStyles is a feature to allow non-administrators to write and manage CSS styles for templates. It allows contributors who edit templates to separate content and presentation. A good web practice that makes it easier to manage the layout of templates. If you don't edit templates, this will not have any impact on your contributions.

TemplateStyles is useful for a few reasons.

  • It makes it possible for templates to work better on mobile.
  • It cuts out confusion on where to apply CSS rules.
  • Editing CSS is currently limited to administrators, which is a major barrier to participation.
  • All stylesheets must be loaded on all pages (whether they actually are used the page or not), which wastes bandwidth and makes debugging style rules more difficult.

You can learn more about TemplateStyles on MediaWiki.org. Technical documentation is also available.

Thank you. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 11:33, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

There are also basic guidelines for TemplateStyles available. See: WP:TSTYLE. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 12:09, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

W00t !!!!!! Please rewrite templates to make use of this great new feature, allowing you to write cleaner templates, without inline style statements and with mobile responsiveness etc. At the same time (as always) be careful to not needlessly disrupt the wiki. (For instance, don't move the infobox styling into Module:infobox and accidently break the hundreds of templates that use infobox styling without making use of that Lua module). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:18, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Yep, WikiProject Portals was mainly waiting on this so we could overhaul how portals look in mobile (among other things). We'll see how far we can take things now that we have stylesheets in our toolbox. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 22:28, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
How many wikis support TemplateStyles? Has TemplateStyles been universally enabled or only at a limited number of wikis? The cs1|2 templates and modules have been copied from en.wiki to a bunch of other wikis. At cs1|2 we have begun experimenting with TemplateStyles but I think that we will be wasting our time if TemplateStyles is only enabled on a select handful of wikis. For templates and modules that are used on multiple wikis, adapting these templates and modules so that they will work regardless of whether TemplateStyles has been enabled seems counterproductive. Will TemplateStyles become universal? If so, when?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:02, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
According to phab:T199909, TemplateStyles will be enabled everywhere on 9 August. BethNaught (talk) 11:11, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Yep, the TemplateStyles deployment was just waiting on the global switch from Tidy to RemexHtml, which completed on 5 July. Now we will soon have global TemplateStyles enabled. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 21:20, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Undesired italics in title

Hi, please explain to me my idiocy: at Bratzillaz (House of Witchez) I see Bratzillaz italicized in the article title, but there shouldn't be italics. What formatting is controlling this? I don't see anything. I've tried purging the page cache. I'm sure it's something stupid that I'm missing. I know that I can manipulate it with {{DISPLAYTITLE}}, but I'm just confused why just the Bratzillaz is being italicized. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:14, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Many infoboxes automatically add {{italic title}}. This will nearly always be correct when the infobox is used in the lead but often wrong when it's used later. Fixed with italic_title = no in {{Infobox television}} which was used later.[20] PrimeHunter (talk) 01:24, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thank you, my friend. I guess the television infobox expects the parentheses to contain content like (season 1) or (2008 series), and the content outside to be the show title. Much obliged! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:34, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Basically yes. Wihthout italic_title = no, the infobox calls the general {{italic title}} which is used for many things (transcluded in 840,000 pages) and always expects something in parentheses to be a disambiguation which should be excluded from the italics. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:02, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Transparent png files

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T198370

Is there a limit to the dimensions of a png file above which transparent pixels are rendered as white? I've created a lot of png 'cut-outs' over the years, normally small logos and such for use in infoboxes, but recently I've had a couple of fairly large png files that don't render as transparent. The most recent one is File:Trump baby balloon.png (975 × 1,000 pixels, file size: 775 KB). I can't remember the other, but it was fairly large IIRC. nagualdesign 04:44, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

@Nagualdesign: There is a bug that was recently introduced into the mediawiki software that breaks PNG transparency in thumbnails. It's been reported at T198370, but no developers have responded to even triage it, and fixing it seems to not be a priority. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:11, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht: Okay, thanks for the reply. I was going to reduce the dimensions of the image but I'll just leave it be. Cheers. nagualdesign 14:36, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Transparent png has white background in the article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T198370

Hi, why is it that despite File:Tracks game logo.png and File:Rock, Paper, Shotgun 2018 logo.png being transparent PNGs, their respective articles (Tracks (video game) and Rock, Paper, Shotgun) have white backgrounds? Anarchyte (work | talk) 10:29, 19 July 2018 (UTC) edited: 10:45, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

That is currently being investigated, see the linked phab task. BethNaught (talk) 12:58, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Wordbreaking

This is a discussion fork of Template talk:Nowrap#Wordbreak template. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:19, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

This is minor issue, but at the same time, I don't think it is unimportant enough to ignore.

When reading Wikipedia articles on my mobile phone, I have a habbit of viewing them on the Desktop view, instead of the default Mobile view. Usually, this doesn't cause problems. However, the other day, I came upon the article MDMA and saw this.

What happened here is that the full name of the substance, Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, is too long to fit between the article's border on the left and the infobox on the right, so the browser moves the entire lead down, creating a large empty space. I use a Samsung Galaxy S7.

I initially fixed this issue by adding span tags around the word with word-wrap:break-word. I later replaced this with the superior word-break:break-all. I liked the result: before, after.

I started a thread at Template talk:Nowrap#Wordbreak template, asking if we could have a template that did the opposite of {{nowrap}}. Redrose64 correctly pointed out to me that using a <wbr /> tag would also help. However, a dedicated template would have the browser figure out for itself how to break a very long word, relative to the situation.

Looking for other situations similar to the one at the MDMA article, I browsed through all entries of Category:Stimulants on my Galaxy S7. I found the following articles with very long words in the lead that caused problems on my phone. 'Before' shows a screenshot of how it originally looked like. 'After' shows the result of applying word-break:break-all. 'Diff' shows the edit.

Again, I know this is a minor issue, because in practice, words this long are very rare. Arguably, such long words may not even belong in the intro at all, since they clutter it needlessly. Still, I think it's worth considering the creation of a {{word-break}} template. Aside from fixing the above problems, it could also be used in small table columns, infoboxes, quote-boxes etc. which are not to exceed a certain width. Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 10:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

@Manifestation: is Special:PermaLink/851312757 displaying better for you now? I used non breaking word separators in that example, and a nonwrapping template on this one: Special:PermaLink/851313087. — xaosflux Talk 13:00, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Eh... I have no idea what you were trying to do there. You seem to have done the exact opposite of what I had proposed. - Manifestation (talk) 13:12, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Now the article looks like this on my phone. - Manifestation (talk) 13:14, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Manifestation: I reverted back to your version, which also creates less then desirable line breaks as seen here. — xaosflux Talk 15:15, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Whaaat??! It doesn't work in FireFox?! Great... :-(. Manifestation (talk) 15:34, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I've tried it on MS Edge. Doesn't work either. Well, lack of support by FF and Edge surely decreases the meaningfulness of my proposed template. While I do believe that FF and Edge will one day disappear and be replaced by Google Chrome (which I use on my laptop), both browsers are still frequently used. As of May 2018, 10.9% uses FireFox, and 3.9% uses Edge (source: W3Schools). - Manifestation (talk) 15:42, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Also MSIE11 has same issue. — xaosflux Talk 15:43, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I wish I had an iPhone so I could try it on that. Do you happen to know a good iPhone emulator for trying out websites? Cheers, Manifestation (talk) 15:48, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Ok, forget about this. The wbr tag is better after all. I've added a note on the documentation of {{Nowrap}} to prevent future confusion. - Manifestation (talk) 16:33, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Consultation on the creation of a separate user group for editing sitewide CSS/JS

Hi all,

I'm preparing a change in who can edit sitewide CSS/JS pages. (These are pages like MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Vector.js which are executed in the browser of all readers and editors.) Currently all administrators are able to edit these pages, which poses a serious and unnecessary security risk. Soon, a dedicated, smaller user group will take over this task. Your community will be able to decide who belongs in this group, so this should mean very little change for you. You can find out more and provide feedback at the consultation page on Meta. If you are involved in maintaining CSS/JS code, or policymaking around adminship requests, please give it a look!

Thanks!
Tgr (talk) 10:50, 9 July 2018 (UTC) (via global message delivery)

On the contrary, I think this is a fairly huge change that more administrators and the enwiki community at large should take an interest in. Killiondude (talk) 19:57, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Eh, I don't know about that. I read the page (and the talk page), and the gist seems to be that the local bureaucrats will be able to assign the "delete the Main Page" button separately from the "install malware" button. We might choose to have an "WP:RFJS" to go alongside WP:RFA, but we're still the ones deciding who gets which rights. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Not everyone is proposing this be limited to admins. It's a technical thing, and could be available to those competent to do the work and vetted with a trust level WP:Template editor and WP:Page mover.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:26, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

This needs so much more trust than TE and PM: if you can serve someone Javascript then you can do anything they can do on the API, including admin functions like deletion and blocking. BethNaught (talk) 22:43, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
Exactly, as stated by Tgr in the consultation, it is advised to give this to users who at LEAST have as much community trust as sysops. That doesn't mean you have to BE a sysop, but that at trust level, they are equal to sysops, just with ALSO skills in a particular area. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:17, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Note that you don't actually have to be an admin to be a bureaucrat either, even though a bureaucrat could make themself an admin if they wanted to. You don't have to be an admin to be a checkuser either. In both cases, though, most if not all are also admins just because that's the way trust tends to work, and it could turn out to be the same for this new group. Anomie⚔ 15:45, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
No, that's not really correct. WMF policy requires all editors who have access to particular, sensitive information to have gone through a community vetting procedure at least as stringent as that for RfA. On emwp, the only procedures that would likely count presently are RfA, RfB and the ArbCom elections. Since no successful candidate at ArbCom and RfB has been other than an admin, it follows that currently, only admins, de facto, can take on the advanced permissions you mention. --RexxS (talk) 12:43, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
"No one has" is not at all the same thing as "no one can".

Also, BTW, Wikipedia:CheckUser#cite_note-1 says that the current CU appointment process also satisfies the WMF requirement (with reference to this diff). Anomie⚔ 15:10, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

  • So, a few potential options, (if it turns out to be relevant!) bearing in mind trust level and that EnWiki is so massive that if even 10% (or 5%) of admins along that's a comparatively hefty number in an initial wave
  • a) Self-nomination - seems very risky and somewhat counterproductive in eliminating potential risks, though certainly the easiest
  • b) External Admin nomination - in a similar vein to most WP:PERM rights, perhaps with multiple admins required. Most admins are on good terms with multiple other admins and I'm concerned that any reasonable number wouldn't act as a particularly tough filter. That said, it might be a good intermediate level to handle the initial large group
  • c) Pseudo-RfA or election - this would be chaotically large for the numbers enwiki would face
  • d) ArbCom Decides - perhaps a good method for adding future individiuals but they're busy individuals and would lose a lot of time to handle a large initial group
  • e) Bureaucrats - this might be a better method, if there are sufficient active (7+?), they have some of the highest trust rates in the community and make judgement calls on admin rights. Whether we required 1 bureaucrat, or a certain number would obviously be up for consideration if this was thought best
Nosebagbear (talk) 00:03, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear: in the last 30 days, we've had about 6 or 7 admins that actually would have needed this, I don't think we're going to have a "flood" of people that can't be handled. — xaosflux Talk 01:16, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
To ease the transition, would it make sense to automatically grant this userright to all currently active administrators in good standing who have previously made edits to sitewide CSS/JS pages? They've alredy shown that they can be trusted eith editing those pages.--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:15, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
If we want to go this way Ahecht, perhaps "in the last (year?)" would be a good caveat. — xaosflux Talk 15:19, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht: I'd hesitate to do it automatically, but giving those admins a fast-track "on request at WP:BN, subject to 'crat veto" (offer valid until some reasonable date) seems reasonable to me. Anomie⚔ 15:49, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
@Tgr: I wonder if this will affect the new "TemplateStyles" which probably will be used on millions of pages when people start using it. Christian75 (talk) 23:17, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Christian75: it won't (as noted in the FAQ). --Tgr (talk) 13:52, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Should tool results be indexed?

I just found https://tools.wmflabs.org/apersonbot/pending-subs/ in the results page of a google search. Is the intent that the output of tools get indexed? Are we missing a robots.txt entry somewhere? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:37, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@RoySmith: I think it wouldn't be possible or ideal to force people to prevent their tools from being indexed; and in any case some tools like Pageviews Analytics are useful for non-editors and you would expect them to show up in a search, and some others aren't hosted by the WMF. Jc86035 (talk) 03:27, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Stoopid question from a long-time user

How do I get "[restore this version]" turned on? And on what pages would I expect to see it, "Revision history"? Ping me when you respond, if you'd be so kind. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: Are you referring to the Twinkle button? I think it only displays on the links labelled "diff" in the revision history; the revision slider might be causing it not to display sometimes so I'm not perfectly sure. Jc86035 (talk) 03:15, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
OK I turned on Twinkle, and turned off the revision slider and it seems to be working mow. Thanks. Beyond My Ken (talk) 08:12, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
@Beyond My Ken: I have the revision slider enabled; it's just hidden by default, and Twinkle displays fine. Note that Popups is even quicker than Twinkle when you don't need an edit summary while reverting to an older version (vandalism from multiple users, for example). Home Lander (talk) 14:29, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

MassMessage didn't send to everyone on the list

Hi! I recently sent out a MassMessage invite (here). While I and some others on the list received it, not everyone did. So I am wondering:

  1. What went wrong?
  2. Should I resend?

Thanks for any help and please ping me! :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:15, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Megalibrarygirl: the log only shows 2 misses for bad users, can you give examples of some non-deliveries? — xaosflux Talk 18:45, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
A source comment at your link says: "Message sent by User:Megalibrarygirl@enwiki using the list at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red/Outreach/List/Art%2BFeminism/2018&oldid=848063351". I guess you thought you were using another list. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:18, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you both, Xaosflux and PrimeHunter. I must have used the wrong list. What a mess. We've sorted it out. I appreciate both of you looking into this for me. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:30, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Help with making proportional, accessible table to visualize units of time

I've been working hard the last few months on cleaning up the article Traditional Chinese timekeeping. I've gotten it to where the written information is clear, but I want to make a visual aid to replace the current, very confusing one. I'm trying to stay away from plain images, since they aren't the best for accessibility, and instead use a table to better display the relationships between the units of time.

I've attempted to create a table in my sandbox, but I'm running into a few problems.

  • The four columns of information won't display properly without a blank fifth column in each row. This would be fine, but I can't figure out a way to hide the blank column across browsers.
    • style="visibility:hidden;" seems to work to hide the cell in Chrome, but has no effect in Firefox.
    • I've also tried using CSS to hide the whole column, but that breaks the table formatting.
    • Making the table horizontal would fix needing a blank column (or row, in this case), but the table is so long horizontally it'd break most people's browsers to see it all.
  • The height of each row is important to visualize the time data properly, but this seems to vary from browser to browser. For some reason, the rows with "00:24:00" and "01:36:00" are showing up as tiny in Chrome, while they're the same height as all the rest of the rows in the first column in Firefox. I can find nothing in my code to explain why these two particular rows are affected and none of the rest are.
  • I'm not sure if this table makes any sense to people with screenreaders. Can someone with a screen reader tell me if they can make sense of the relationships between the items in the columns?

Any suggestions for fixing or changing this table would be welcome. I'd like something like the Buddhist traditions timeline, where the chronological data is roughly proportional to how it's displayed on the screen. A different type of table or graph could work just as well, as long as it's proportional and accessible.

-- A garbage person (talk) 15:38, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for considering screen reader users like me. My knowledge of how to construct tables is fairly basic. As far as I can tell the main problem with your table accessibility-wise (and I'm not sure what you can do about them) are the fact thatg each row has a different number of columns, and the left-most column (which occurs every 24 minutes). However keeping these things in mind, I can for example trace the Kè column down and get the idea that a kè lasts 14 minutes and 24 seconds (or a hundredth of a day), which is far more than I can do with the graphic. If you haven't seen them, you might want to check out the data tables tutorial under the accessibility guidelines page and ask about the table at the accessibility guideline's talk page. Graham87 03:46, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for taking the time to test it, Graham! I just found a section in the Help article for tables on scrolling, which might solve my page-breaking problem. I've re-made the table as a horizontal one in a scrolling box. Would you mind going to my sandbox again and see if the new first table makes sense? -- A garbage person (talk) 19:08, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
@A garbage person: Thanks; that's a lot better now! Graham87 01:17, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist "improvements" - no they're not

Who just turned off "Hide the improved version of the Watchlist" at Preferences → Watchlist, and could they please stop fooling around with my settings? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:34, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

My watchlist is all 'bleeped' up. Wish the big wigs would stop messing around with such things, without a consensus. GoodDay (talk) 18:39, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

+1 for please turn this of NOW. I've had it turned on as beta, I found it detrimental to my Wikipedia editing, and turned it back off. WMF, you again behind this? --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:42, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi, My watchlist has changed and not for the better, How do I change it back ?, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 18:38, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

See above discussion. GoodDay (talk) 18:40, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Ah thanks, Header removed, I really do wish they'd stop with the bullshittery, Everything should be OPT-IN - If you want new things opt-in. –Davey2010Talk 18:44, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Did it not ask? Went I last went to the watchlist, it showed a little popup, and then asked me if I wanted to opt out. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:54, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, if it was, User:Amorymeltzer, it was pretty hidden. Anyway, where do you turn it off when you missed it (or did not get it)? --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:56, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
And is it right next to the standard-edit-window "improvements" - which they are also not. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:58, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Hi Amorymeltzer, Nope a little box came up saying it's a new watchlist then that was it, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 18:59, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
The setting is in the watchlist tab of your preferences (Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist) with the name "Hide the improved version of the Watchlist" under the heading Opt out of improvements. Not sure why I got it and you didn't Davey, especially if you got the first one. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:00, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I have no idea why, Ah well many thanks for your help :) –Davey2010Talk 19:04, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

This might be related to a global prefs problem. I'll ping the project manager to make sure that she knows about it. She told me earlier today that extensions that set "hidden" preferences (like the RecentChanges filters and "remember my last editor" for VisualEditor's single edit tab mode – all things that you can't just edit by going to Special:Preferences) are having problems right now, and perhaps this is related. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Okay, now I can give you a correct answer: This is related to the watchlist filters graduating out of Beta Features. The pref technically didn't exist until the 11:00 PDT SWAT slot. And, as happens occasionally, there was a small problem with prefs, which is already being worked on. In the meantime, you can opt out manually at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. The setting should be near the end of the watchlist page, located between the ==Token== and ==Revisions scoring== sections. If you don't see it (I didn't the first two or three times), try forcing the page to reload. (And if you still don't see it after reloading the page a couple of times, then please post.)
The problem with the pop-up is that the opt-out button is on the second screen of the tour, so if you immediately cancel the tour, you won't see it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I quite like the changes, especially the ability to highlight various namespaces in different colours. Nthep (talk) 20:10, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
For the ones who apparently didn't get the pop-up to opt-out, here is a screenshot of it.
That graduation has been announced multiple times over the last month, on watchlist notice, on Tech News and of course on the VPT (last announce). Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:16, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
The communication on this was always a bit "clumsy" - that a feature was leaving beta to be under normal support isn't the same as forcing it to be opt-out. I'm so glad global prefs went live so I can opt-out ni one palce, because having to go through those popups at every single project would be a real pain. — xaosflux Talk 11:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
It's broken the script that highlights usernames of Administrators. This puzzles me as I have related changes watchlists where the script works fine. Doug Weller talk 18:39, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I have tolerated this for so long- as I am editting intermittently this week. Why so complicated to turn the wretched things off? They may be cool but they just get in the way. Have I tested them? No I am here to edit WP and handle a long watchlist- not ignor parts of it. Could we establish a few guideline principles. The Watchlist is a list of changes- anything that reduces the screen area is a retrograde step. The default is what new users see- it must be simple to use and simple on the eye. If advanced users want extra- a simple button-like 'extra fields' in the edit Templates works when you need them. The verbage at the to of page is only necessary once- that can go too. These buttons everywhere shows 'we could have that too' design rather than a thought out structure- bad lack of design and bad HTML and use of the style-tag.

ClemRutter (talk) 12:09, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

New watchlist page layout

What happened here?

This new layout appeared this morning, The litter of controls takes up half the viewing area and is a dog's breakfast of different styles. Is this a prototype being tested to see if there is a reaction, or does everyone get it? Aymatth2 (talk) 13:07, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I quite agree. Mine appeared last night. I'd suggest the whole new panel needs a show/hide option. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:12, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Got it last night as well. Takes up about as much space as the notifications, explanations, panels, and so forth that I had before, though maybe that was somehow my fault. It's actually cleaned things up for me. I'm happy with it, but maybe if there was the option to put it all on one line it'd look nicer on some people's monitors? Ian.thomson (talk) 13:23, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I use Timeless regularly, but I tried looking at this in Monobook and it does look a little broken compared to what I usually see (the buttons in the filters list don't display correctly). As in the picture there's a "hide" button at the right side of the box which says "Active filters"; I hadn't noticed this until five minutes ago. (It's possible to turn the new things off; see this section.) Jc86035 (talk) 13:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Quick link to turn it off if you wish: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist and scroll down to "Opt out of improvements". —DoRD (talk)​ 14:57, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Any objections to putting a ...wait for it..... watchlist notice up about the watchlist and where to change it in preferences in case you missed the popup? — xaosflux Talk 13:25, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I strongly support this idea. Natureium (talk) 14:12, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I see six buttons scattered around here, four of which are preferences (active/saved filters, live updates, changes/days). Surely they could all fit on one line, something like:
Mark all changes as seen
This would be cleaner and take up much less space. How do we get it done? Aymatth2 (talk) 15:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
  • This good faith change should actually, in my opinion, be reverted. On Monobook there was a 4 or 5 second lag every time I looked at the Watchlist, and even though users can now opt out this will affect new users who may be uncomfortable with it if not fixed (at least on Monobook, and I'm now putting it back to see how it looks on other skins). Randy Kryn (talk) 16:28, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
    There is an opt out, you should use it if u dont like it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:30, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
    Which is great and all to us users who were here before this new watchlist, who know this isn't the only form the watchlist can take, who know a lot of Wikipedia features have opt out options and who will thus opt out if they don't like it. The issue Randy Kryn describes is that new editors who dislike the watchlist may very well not even realize this is something they can opt out of, especially if they registered after the roll-out. AddWittyNameHere 18:39, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
New users also dont know they can switch to monobook, but tend to be mostly fine. While arguably it might not be perfect, perfection is the enemy of good enough. Further improvements will follow naturally as more feedback comes in. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:06, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
"Dump it in, then fix it if they squawk too loud?" Surely there could have been no consensus on cluttering up the top of the watchlist with all these buttons that will hardy ever be used, when a simple "Change preferences" button (as above) is all that is needed. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@TheDJ: If the watchlist was functioning entirely as-should, then I'd mostly agree with you. The problem is that beyond matters of opinion/preference (such as the many new options and filters), there are still some actual, objective flaws in there, especially the increased load-time in at least some set-ups. (Folks may have a preference for or against the new options, for example, but I'd be quite surprised indeed if anyone had a preference for lag. There may be folks who don't particularly care, as well as plenty folks who don't seem to be affected, but that's not the same thing). That should probably have been fixed before making it the default. (I also believe the lay-out/UI could certainly have been tightened up a bit beforehand. No, it might not be the most important thing ever to its functioning, but it plays a really big role in people's first impression and if one wants the largest possible amount of editors to give something a honest try, first impression matters a lot. It doesn't matter if it's good enough below the surface if people can't stand to look at it long enough to determine that fact.) AddWittyNameHere 23:52, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I've already restored mine to its previous incarnation, as I too was seeing something like the above. A few confusing buttons and a large void of white space. As software it’s not even beta quality and certainly not ready for ready for deployment, I am someone familiar enough with this noticeboard that I knew to look here for the answer, but I fear many if not most editors won’t know or work out how to disable it and so will just put up with it. It should be rolled back, or at least have a prominent notice on it telling editors how to revert the previous version.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 20:29, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

"Further improvements will follow naturally"...I am not sure if I should laugh out loud, given that we are clearly saying that this is not experienced as an improvement, or be in terror of what might be still coming. Oh, no, I get it... this is a promise that this change will be reverted, right?OK it is technically a big improvement once one figures out the interface. See my comment below about improving organization of the buttons, though. Clean Copytalk 20:41, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
He, if you all want to throw another fit, go right ahead. But it's my personal opinion as a volunteer that you guys had 6 months to give your feedback. 6 months where thousands of people tested. 6 months where improvements were made. And now you want to change the design for something you all are stating to not going to be using ? I really don't see the logic. Please explain. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:52, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm curious: where are the discussions by the beta testers? I'd like to see their reactions. Clean Copytalk 03:20, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
I think you'll find comments at the project's talk page: mw:Edit Review Improvements/New filters for edit review. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:12, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
This is another case of You don't like it? Opt out and stop complaining like a 3 year old that didn't have a glass of water with ice, rather than a glass of ice filled with water. There's a big notice explaining you how to opt out if you don't like it, and if you somehow didn't catch it for whatever reason (banner blindness, banner glitch that didn't show up), you now know how to opt out, so just do it and don't hold back improvements for the 99%. I don't like the new watchlist because it interferes with some advanced scripts I'm using, but as far as the default experience, this is a much better watchlist than the old one. The UI could use a bit of tightening, but that will happen over time as more people give it eyeballs, but not so much this should hold back the entire thing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:57, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
(ec) I'm sure a lot of work will have gone into this (most of which will probably go wholly unrecognised). But sorry, the six month countdown clock was not ticking for me. Perhaps I missed an announcement. On the basis of the above comments, the community doesn't seem to be desperately engaged in, or enthusiastic about, this development. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:01, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Eh, in such cases you tend to get the people who don't like it speaking up more than those who do. The question is if they have good arguments. I would like the new design were it not that it takes a long time to load the filter panel for me. BethNaught (talk) 21:13, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, and I suspect, just like with the late-lamented "OBOD", the vast majority of editors will just say "when did I ask for this?", or "but it was OK before", or "how do I get rid of this, as it has no obvious benefit for me?", etc., etc. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:21, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm curious how many power editors have reenabled the OBOD through scripts. And I'm also curious to see whether the volume of complaints dies down as soon as a script is posted that reverts changes that cannot be opted out of. I find that I stop really thinking about a change that I personally find needless the moment I disable it in my preferences: if this is true for more people, we may reach a problematic situation when existing power editors are using a significantly different interface from new editors. Double sharp (talk) 02:53, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
Jorm's Minor Adjustment to Watchlist Interface

Here's my thoughts about what should change. Lots of vertical real-estate could be picked up here. Even more buttons could probably be squished into the top row and with decent CSS can overflow to multiple rows if the screen size required it. --Jorm (talk) 22:24, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Also, add this to your common.css:

.mw-rcfilters-collapsed .mw-rcfilters-ui-filterTagMultiselectWidget.mw-rcfilters-ui-filterTagMultiselectWidget.oo-ui-widget-enabled .oo-ui-tagMultiselectWidget-handle { margin-bottom: 0; } .oo-ui-tagMultiselectWidget.oo-ui-widget-enabled.oo-ui-tagMultiselectWidget-outlined .oo-ui-tagMultiselectWidget-handle { margin-bottom: 0; } --Jorm (talk) 22:31, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

  • If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The Watchlist feature has been around forever and works well. I just want to see the list of changed pages. I will rarely if ever use the jumble of new buttons. A simple fix would be to make the new style a preference in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. Change
Hide the improved version of the Watchlist (Rolls back the 2017 interface redesign and all tools added then and since)
to
Use a button-based interface to change your options when you view your watchlist
That is, make it opt-in rather than opt-out. Aymatth2 (talk) 00:00, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
  • Same opinion as Aymatth2. The new watchlist is very slow and takes ages to load. I don't think it's ready for full-scale deployment. Daß Wölf 00:04, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
    I've changed my opinion, the old watchlist seems to load pretty slow too (maybe it's due to the number of pages), and I find the live update feature pretty neat. Daß Wölf 01:21, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Possible bug: when I right-clicked/'open new tab' on the earliest of my green-dotted unseen changes, and then went back to the 'Watchlist' tab, every other previously green-dotted edit was turned blue, without me clicking on any of those edits. I liked the changes, but have had to revert until this issue has been fixed. Homeostasis07 (talk) 01:27, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

  • I find it fast, but unusuable for me as it breaks not just the script I use that highlights Admins (Admin highlighter) but also the one that highlights possible vandalism in yellow (not sure where I got that one). Doug Weller talk 07:35, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
The new watchlist filters support highlighting edits flagged by ORES, so you can still get the vandal highlighting. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 12:20, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
  • "the one that highlights possible vandalism in yellow" that is the highlight option under "Revision scoring on Watchlist" in the Watchlist sections of the preferences. The new watchlist ui does listen to this preference. However, if you have played with the new watchlist setttings, before disabling it in your preferences, then reloaded, instead of going freshly to that page, the old UI will apply the settings as you last had them in the new UI (as below with "Watchlist option "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" not working for me").
    Simply select "Watchlist" from your personal tools and it should be fine (unless you actually disabled the option in your preferences of course).
    "breaks .. the script I use that highlights Admins" That is very weird. You have been reporting script problems on this forum for a while though and I've several times added all your scripts to my own script stack and have not been able to reproduce your problems when you were reporting them. I'm sure there potentially is a problem, but I'm just not hitting that exact sweetspot that you seem to hit. Unfortunately I'm not sure where to look for a fix for that right now :( —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:29, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

My watchlist stopped loading

I was just using it a moment ago. Now I get a blank page. It's like my watchlist is deleted or something. What's going on?—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 19:33, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Does it start working again if you disable the new watchlist filters in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
It actually randomly started working again with this new interface.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 20:07, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
You may have an issue with a broken script. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:18, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

New watchlist UI and history page

What I find disconcerting about the new watchlist user interface is that how it highlights unseen changes differs from how it is done on the history pages. Typically I will find an unseen change on my watchlist and select the history link for that page to see all of the unseen changes, so it's helpful to me if the unseen changes are flagged in the same way. Are there any plans to align the highlighting done on the history page with how it appears on the watchlist? isaacl (talk) 02:00, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Shhh don't give the devs any ideas :D — xaosflux Talk 02:59, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
That's the idea: give them ideas! More ideas: I would like more choices of colour hues, in particular, less saturated ones. I find the background highlighting (and with the colourful diff viewer as well) a bit dark for legibility. isaacl (talk) 03:14, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
I find it disconcerting, too; but I want the watchlist adjusted to be in line with history-page, and previous watchlist, usage. Even if you want to keep the outline bullet points, let them stand for unvisited pages, as un-colored-in circles intuitively, to me, stand for something unaccomplished, as on a machine-readable test answer form or a voter's ballot. It shouldn't be too hard to switch, or have in preferences. Dhtwiki (talk) 00:19, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, I should have clarified that I just mean the two should align. I find the current colour scheme for highlighting the background a bit intrusive, and so right now would prefer that the watchlist highlighting match its previous incarnation, which matches the history page appearance. However with the ability to choose a less saturated colour, it's possible I might gain more appreciation for a different highlighting scheme. isaacl (talk) 02:50, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist option "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" not working for me

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199920

My watchlist is showing me only the most recent change to each page. I have "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" selected, and I have disabled the recent watchlist enhancements. I tried to uncheck and re-check both of the options, and it appears that the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" option has no effect: with the "improved" watchlist enabled, I see all changes even if the "expand" setting is disabled, and with the improvements disabled, I see only the most recent change, no matter what the "expand" checkbox setting is.

Can anyone else replicate this issue? I use the vector skin. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:16, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: You are probably refreshing the watchlist page instead of navigating to it from your personal tools or Special:Watchlist. In the new setup, the new watchlist will reflect your settings in the url, and while it starts with your defaults, it will not realise automatically that you changed your preferences (this is a bit confusing I agree). Then when you disable the new filters, and refresh your watchlist, those settings as preserved in the URL are STILL being reflected into your watchlist results (aka the old watchlist, will listen to the url parameters of the new watchlist). By navigating to your watchlist from the personal toolbar, it will start fresh and take your new preference defaults into account.
P.S. In the new watchlist, this specific preference corresponds to the filter setting "latest revision" (or the lack thereof). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:32, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
I've filed phab:T199920 about this, especially since I think it is a problem that we will see more often in the future in other areas of the UI. Fixing it might not be simple however especially as I don't think it is really high priority. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:17, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for that explanation. You could be right. I have disabled the new watchlist again until the UI display bugs can be worked out, and I will try clicking on the Watchlist link or using my bookmark to refresh it.
While I'm here, does anyone know if there is a phab task to get rid of the (to my mind, arbitrary and unhelpful) calendar day boundaries within the watchlist? It's frustrating and unnecessary when I have "Expand watchlist to show all changes" turned on, and then go away for multiple days, to have to click on three separate links to catch up on a busy page like VPT. (I'm sure someone will suggest that I never go away for multiple days, and I can see where you're coming from, but sometimes it can't be helped.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:36, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Jonesey95, phab:T10681. --Izno (talk) 05:04, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Izno. I wasn't sure if this phab task applied only to Special:RecentChanges or to the Watchlist as well. I wonder why it has stagnated so long, when it seems to be not that hard. They sure did a lot of work to "improve" the watchlist for this latest revision. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:11, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist "live update" misleading icon

When it's not active, it displays as a filled right-caret and normal text. When it's active, it becomes a filled box and inverse text. A right-caret is reasonable for something that could be activated I guess, but it's more usually associated with an expandable tree. A solid box is does not have any typical association with "active". In fact, because it's part of the inverse-text field, it appears as a background-colored box with a foreground outline. That means it looks exactly like an unchecked checkbox. Why are we re-inventing the UI wheel for a simple boolean option? DMacks (talk) 15:45, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

The UI of the whole new interface needs a total revision. Clean Copytalk 17:28, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
@DMacks: are you referring to the near universal symbols for play and stop applied here ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:14, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
It's mixing multiple mode indicators. If you want to use normal/reverse (one of several standard ways of boolean toggle), or change of icons (if we are accepting a new paradigm of watchlists as a data stream), that would make more sense. It's the mixing, and the appearance of a contradictory meaning, that are my concern. Principle of least astonishment and all that. DMacks (talk) 04:31, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Remex: My page is recently broken and I can't figure out why

A new parsing tool called Remex is now cleaning up the HTML output for a webpage. It may cause some pages to display in undesirable ways. Be patient while we work out the kinks, and feel free to report problems in a new subsection here:

Visible bullets in infobox

FYI
 – Pointer to discussion elsewhere

See Template talk:Infobox musical artist#Visible bullets at Limp Bizkit. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:58, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Post-Tidy fix may be needed at Template:Infobox NFL team

This link currently shows me different rendering of the bullets under "Playoff appearances (10)" and "Home fields" in {{Infobox NFL team}}. The Tidy version on the left renders normally, with bullets inside the infobox and aligned with the bulleted lists above these bottom sections. The post-Tidy version, which is currently live, shows the bullets for these two sections sitting just outside the box that outlines the infobox. I don't see an obvious cause of this problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:04, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I hacked the {{Infobox NFL team/sandbox}} with div tags wrapping the problematic list items. Is that terrible? It seems to work. If I put /sandbox into the edit above and preview it, everything looks fine. I wonder if a similar fix would work for Infobox musical artist, or if there is a more general fix that is needed. It seems like it would be a challenge to do something like this to every infobox field that might have bullets in it.
And it doesn't explain why the "Team nicknames" section renders just fine. Is it because the header and data use different numbers in the broken sections? I don't know enough about how infoboxen work to know what effect that numbering has. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:18, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Jonesey95: See my response at Template_talk:Infobox_musical_artist#Visible_bullets_at_Limp_Bizkit. The same reasoning applies to this infobox. Presumably, fixing that module would fix this too. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 09:13, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Peculiar html rendering issue

As of just the last little while, most of the html-defined fields I am currently using on my user page are suddenly rendering a vertical bar (|) that is not in the supplied text; this occurs only in fields which possess some degree of text however. I'm not even sure what the namespace is to which the "{|" syntax points, so I can't investigate further, but I assume that the problem is not isolated to my user page (if I made some kind of error which cause this rendering, it would have had to have been a while back and I can't imagine I went that long without noticing). I've been off project for a few days, so the alteration may have occurred at any point during as far as I know. Anyone have some thoughts? I'm not too concerned about the user page, but I do wonder if there are content or policy pages affected. Thanks in advance for any insight. Snow let's rap 01:23, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

@Snow Rise: You have 4 dozen lint errors and Remex was just enabled. (I have consequently moved your section.) --Izno (talk) 02:30, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
I believe the cause is <span style="border: 1px solid">, which is unclosed. Is it your intent to have that span? I think I got them all (and it was indeed that). There might be still remaining lint errors. --Izno (talk) 02:46, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
I have cleaned the rest of the page a good bit. There are still some remaining lint errors that I don't want to fight with right now. I think they are due to some unclosed span tags bumping into block elements like the horizontal rules. Let me know if I didn't quite get some set of stylings right on the page. --Izno (talk) 04:26, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
It all looks good to me, Izno. I had no idea about the Tidy->Remex shake-up and didn't realize the number of lint errors I had that would no longer get the benefit of Tidy. Thank you for clarifying the matter and for taking the time to clean up so many of the errors--it was a very generous use of your time! Snow let's rap 06:14, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Unclosed tag in a user message template

I just realized the user message template {{Pending changes reviewer granted}} (formerly {{Reviewer-notice}} and {{Reviewer granted}}) had contained the code <tt>reviewer<tt> with an unclosed <tt> for good 4 years and have affected over four thousand User talk pages. It looks like the code had no effect on appearance but with the recent installment of the Remex parser it has broken all the pages the template was substed onto. Can someone fix them with a bot? (Or is someone already?) And I wonder if there is any other similar case where a subst template has plagued pages with unclosed tags... Nardog (talk) 15:47, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I'll request a bot task here for High/Medium Linter cleanups for Fluxbot - our review and approval process can be somewhat lengthy. — xaosflux Talk 15:51, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Fluxbot 7. — xaosflux Talk 16:00, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
As an FYI, in this use, we should probably use {{subst:tt|reviewer}} rather than fixing the unclosed tag.
As for bot tasks, I think you should probably use separate tasks for this rather than a Fluxbot 7, regardless of bureaucracy. Not all changes can be automated and even those that can will have different approaches (especially e.g. obsolete elements). --Izno (talk) 16:39, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
@Izno: these will mostly not be automated, just explicit batches if approved. As for the error and fix described above, fixing the bad tt close is the "obvious" fix for this error, and the one most normal editors would make, why would you not want to see it fixed that way? — xaosflux Talk 21:57, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
Because it is not just unclosed, it is obsolete. Kill a second bird with the stone. --Izno (talk) 22:32, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
But why subst {{tt}}? That adds extraneous code in the source. If you're suggesting substitution so as not to increase the transclusion count, then I'd rather see the <tt> tag removed entirely. Nardog (talk) 22:44, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
The writer wanted special markup for this text, making there be no markup is a big step. I'll probably withdraw my BRFA on this, I expect this type of argument over every cause of each error to take place and I'm not going to deal with tracking a consensus build for each use case. — xaosflux Talk 23:00, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
I guess you can just throw your hands up. :) I'd welcome these bot tasks--I just think it would be better to take them one at a time--otherwise people will argue that a certain change isn't in the scope of the task, or if it is they'll argue that the scope of the task was too broad, and then you're stuck pausing an entire task. --Izno (talk) 23:11, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
The text was in quotes in addition to <tt> anyway... I'm fine with any option (closing, removing, or {{tt}}) except subst. Nardog (talk) 23:24, 8 July 2018 (UTC)
@Izno: some of these pages are a mess, with variances of CODE, TT, SAMP, etc causing the entire page formatting to break - but there is no way I'm going to track a complicated series of fixes, if I come across these in normal editing the only thing I'm probably ever going to do is add/repair the closing tag - I'm well aware of the bureaucracy around here and that editors are passionate about different methods of markup. If there is consensus that making the pages "better" was fine this would be a non-issue, but trying to get a strong consensus for what the "best" is and changing pages from bad to "the best" in one step is way beyond my patience to manage. Feedback is still welcome of course! — xaosflux Talk 00:41, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Xaos about making the jump from "tt was used only for convenient styling" to "we should remove the styling entirely" as well. And yes, mostly just to not deal with the transclusion count. Our current template should probably subst/use the markup directly for that as well (or decide whether one of the tt replacements is better; maybe samp?). --Izno (talk) 23:11, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Horrible colour and font on article talk page

On Talk:King George V-class battleship (1939) most of the text is in a horrible colour and font. I can't see what is causing this. Can anyone fix it please? DuncanHill (talk) 15:11, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

 Done. An old signature from Ed had a couple unclosed <font>...</font> tags. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:23, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Undoubtedly related to MediaWiki's new HTML parser attempting to fix broken HTML differently than Tidy did. I've fixed them. SiBr4 (talk) 15:31, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
How odd, I swear I made the exact same changes you did at the same time (in 2 separate edits even), and it didn't even tell me that there was a conflict. Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to take credit or something. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:33, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Location Map Template Issues

class=notpageimage|
Locations of the 2018–19 Midlands 1 West teams

Hi - hopefully someone can help me with this issue. I regularly edit English rugby union league pages on Wikipedia and use location map templates to show the teams in each league. I have not had any real issues until recently when I noticed that using position=top or position=bottom started to create an unusually large space between the location marking and the team in question (see examples below - Whitchurch, Longton, Dudley K). This has caused many of the pages to become very cluttered and make it difficult to work out where teams are. Would appreciate any feedback. Thanks. Jgjsmith006 (talk) 09:37, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jgjsmith006:This is due to an incorrect usage of {{location map~}} made visible by the recent changeover from Tidy to remexHTML. You shouldn't be wrapping the labels in divs to change their size. There is a dedicated parameter named "label_size" which should be used. I've corrected the Whitchurch label in your example, so that you may compare. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:59, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jgjsmith006: Also, 70% is way too small, it is very much against MOS:ACCESS#Font size. I can't read it, so I doubt that one or two other people I could name (RexxS for instance) can read it either. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:13, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Redrose. I will try and make it bigger but the problem is that there is often not enough space for all the times. Perhaps if the maps had more options when to place text (e.g. top left, bottom right etc) it might be easier. I wouldn't mind someone doing a proper West Midlands map (not just the county) so I could fit more of these teams in with bigger text. I had a go at creating maps but couldn't make head or tails of them. Do you know anyone who might be able to help me with this? Cheers. Jgjsmith006 (talk) 19:56, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Have you considered a dynamic map do achieve that goal? See mw:Help:VisualEditor/Maps for the easy way to do it (in the visual editor). A basic one is easy enough that even I can do it.  ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Nilfanion (talk · contribs) has created lots of SVG maps like this one. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:04, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks guys will try your advice. The maps look better with the new labels and are much clearer at size 75. Nilfanion has done a map before for me but I had forgotten their details - I will get in touch - thank you all once more. Jgjsmith006 (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

My page is recently broken and I can't figure out why

The column of userboxes on my userpage is messed up. This happened very recently. It seems to be something to do with the table border wrapping User:UserboxMania/DayName on the subpage User:Spinningspark/Üserboxen but that's as far as I can get. SpinningSpark 16:23, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. I added a float option to User:UserboxMania/DayName, so you can use it with float=none. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:26, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for that Mr. Slinker. SpinningSpark 17:05, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Why does an extended confirmed user require pending changes review?

Josve05a made edits to the article Emraan Hashmi which then appeared in Special:PendingChanges, and which I then approved. The thing is, this user is extendedconfirmed, which – as I understand it – should subsume the autoconfirmed flag. In any event, XTools lists him as having the autoconfirmed flag anyway. So, I don't get why I was asked to review his contribution on the page.--Newbiepedian (talk · C · X! · L) 02:58, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Likely because the article had been previously edited by an IP, whose changes do not appear to have been (previously) approved. -- The Voidwalker Whispers 03:02, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, as above. The page had pending cahnges unrevised already when I edited the page. You did not specifically review my edit, but the current revision which included a non-reviews edit. (t) Josve05a (c) 05:34, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-30

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

Recent changes

  • When you log in to your account you can choose to keep being logged in. This checkbox now works better than before on the mobile version for users without JavaScript. [21]
  • Wikis that use Citoid can automatically generate citations for Swedish news sites. This only works in the visual editor. This now works for Swedish public service radio. More will come. Others could use this to add news sites in other languages in the future. [22]
  • Editors can do max 90 edits per minute. This is new since last month. This does not affect bots or administrators. [23]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 July. It will be on all wikis from 26 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 25 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

09:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

User:Equazcion/CustomSummaryPresets.js

Equazcion's CustomSummaryPresets user script appears to have stopped working. Does anyone know why, and how to get it working again? Any help would be much appreciated. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:41, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Black Falcon,  Done at User:Enterprisey/CustomSummaryPresets. Enterprisey (talk!) 05:17, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you very much! I just installed it, and it works perfectly! -- Black Falcon (talk) 16:20, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Timeline rendering problem

I came across the timeline at Eagles_(band)#Band_members, and there are some funky crooked lines starting in the bottom left corner and intruding into the timeline. Can someone figure out how to remove them? Home Lander (talk) 00:51, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Never mind. It appears to have been a "." in one of the band member's names. Home Lander (talk) 00:59, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
You just needed to use use underscores to represent spaces, see mw:Extension:EasyTimeline/syntax#Special characters. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:47, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Spaces should work within double quotes, and they work without problems elsewhere (and neither should the "." be a problem), so I suspect that if 73c1d8f7870b7b368a1d4d5d9b2738d1.png was deleted (can an admin do that?) and the article then was reverted to that version, the re-generated timeline would look ok. --Pipetricker (talk) 11:40, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I figured it was a weird coding bug like that; thanks folks. Home Lander (talk) 14:25, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

@Pipetricker: I believe you are correct that it would re-render correctly with the original code; see Special:Diff/851650814 where I rendered the original code with a test name and it did generate properly. Home Lander (talk) 18:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I again had a look at the revision with the previously broken timeline. It now shows a different image file which looks fine. Seems like the broken timeline image had an expiry date. --Pipetricker (talk) 16:41, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, perfect, Pipetricker. So this was just a rendering glitch when the image was generated? Home Lander (talk) 18:45, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, as there was nothing wrong with the timeline code. --Pipetricker (talk) 19:45, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Infoboxes on Chrome browser

Is anyone else having issues with infoboxes showing really weird on Chrome? Checked on IE and looks fine, but on Chrome browser the infoboxes for me are showing as just text on the LHS of the page. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:12, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

@Joseph2302: Looking normal to me in Chrome 67.0.3396.99, with Windows 10 Home 64. Home Lander (talk) 18:43, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, must be my laptop then. As I'm also using Chrome 67.0.3396.99, with Windows 10 Home 64. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:58, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
It sometimes happens on Opera. The cause is that not all of the stylesheets have made it through from server to client. The usual fix is to reload the page, F5 is normally sufficient. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:57, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Timeless Newsletter • Issue 1

Newsletter • July 2018

Welcome to the first issue of the Timeless newsletter! This issue is being sent or forwarded to everyone who has at some point expressed an interest in the project, give or take, as well as a couple of other potentially relevant pages, so if you would like to continue (or start) receiving this newsletter directly, please sign up for further updates on the meta page.


The news:

The Timeless grant has been selected for funding, and the project is now underway!

While I've had a somewhat slow start working on the project for health reasons, I'm pleased to announce that everything described in the proposal is now either happening, or on its way to happening.

Current progress:

  • The project now has a hub on Meta to serve as a directory for the various related pages, workboards, and local discussions and help pages. It's probably incomplete, especially with regards to specific language projects that might have local pages for Timeless, so if you know of others, please add them!
  • Outreach: I've been talking to various people and groups directly about skinning, desktop/mobile interfaces, project management, specific component support, and other things, and have begun to compile a very shoddy list of skinning problems and random issues on mw.org based on this. Some of this may inform the direction of this project, or possibly this project will result in building a more proper list that can then be used for other things. We shall see.
  • Some development - task triage, code review, bug fixing, and various rabbit holes involving ...overflows.

General plan for the future:

  • Triage the rest of the workboard.
  • Catch up with all the talkpages and other bug reports that have been left various other places that are not the project workboard
  • Do all the bug fixes/features/other things!
  • Some proposals aimed at Commons and Wikisource in particular (maybe, we'll see)

Essentially, the grant as written shall be carried out. This was the plan, and remains the plan. Timelines remain fuzzy, but while there have been some initial delays, I don't particularly expect the timeline for project as a whole to change a whole lot.

Also, for anyone at Wikimania right now: I am also at Wikimania. Come talk to me in person!

Thank you all for your interest and support thus far!

-— Isarra ༆ 12:23, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

This issue has been sent regardless of signup status. To receive future issues please add yourself on the massmessage list.

Note: "Timeless" is a new MediaWiki skin (see your Preferences) available on Wikimedia wikis. --Pipetricker (talk) 09:19, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Google use of Wikipedia data

When I type "Liz Truss" into Google ([24]) I see a Google "infobox". In the box are some images, a title "Elizabeth Truss" and a subtitle "Lord Chancellor", her website address, and then data derived from Wikipedia. So far so good, except she hasn't been Lord Chancellor for a year (she is Chief Secretary to the Treasury). Does this data derive from Wikipedia? I can't see from the article Elizabeth Truss why/from where the incorrect data has been grabbed. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 16:49, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Only the description which explicitly links to Wikipedia is certainly derived from Wikipedia. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:53, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@Shhhnotsoloud: Maybe it's because her Wikidata item doesn't have this information yet, so Google has taken the most recent position listed (although there is an "end date" qualifier on the Lord Chancellor statement). Jc86035 (talk) 17:21, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
See also Template:HD/GKG. Apart from a text paragraph ending with a linked "Wikipedia", Google does not reveal where they get the information. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@Shhhnotsoloud, Jc86035, and PrimeHunter: I've updated Truss's Wikidata item to add her being CST; it's now reflected in the "Office" section but not the sub-title. Possibly Google's box code thinks that LC, as the more senior job, is likely the "best" thing to list for people in such circumstances, even if it's not the most recent? 🤷🏽‍♂️ James F. (talk) 17:26, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Weird bug with community portal protection

See here and here. In the first link, the automatic protection summary shows up as simply "[User] protect," rather than "[User] protected Wikipedia:Community portal (Edit=Allow only autoconfirmed users)...," etc. For the second link, when I try to edit the page, the text "No matching items in log" shows instead of the normal system message when editing semi-protected pages. I can confirm that the page is semi-protected, as I can't edit it when logged out. Anybody know what and why this is?--SkyGazer 512 Oh no, what did I do this time? 22:30, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

The log entries on your first link are not from the protection log but from Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool which left behind incomplete log entries when it was removed. The semi-protection of Wikipedia:Community portal was transferred from the former title Wikipedia:Community Portal in a 2008 move.[25] At the time protection log entries were not registered under the new name when a protected page was moved. Your second link tries to look up the protection log because the page is protected but it cannot find anything because the log entry is under the former name. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
Limiting your first link to the protection log [26] demonstrates it was not that log. Contributions of the editors at the time show the article feedback tool, e.g. [27]. The log probably said something meaningful at the time and it somehow became "protect" when the article feedback tool was removed. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:49, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
Let me explain the difference a little further. An edit produces a permanent pure text edit summary in the page history. Software at the time may be used to build the edit summary but it never changes later. The page log works differently. The text is built by software at the time the log is viewed, using data fields from the time of the action. This means software changes can cause the text of the page log to change. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:03, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

New watchlist and notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T34284

How technically difficult would it be to make the new watchlist "view newest changes" function also refresh notifications? I like the feature, and I don't want to turn it off, but it would be handy, especially if you're busy, and especially for inter-project notifications, if you didn't have to try to remember the last time you did a complete refresh on at least one of your watchlists. GMGtalk 21:52, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

This sounds like a question for User:Trizek (WMF). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:31, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Refreshing notifications should ideally be independent from any process. This is documented, please say there that you want that feature. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 09:45, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Aspirated consonants in {{IPAc-en}}

I'm not sure whether it's this only a technical thing, or also a merit one. I tried to put the IPA pronunciation to the article on IPA. I failed with using {{IPAc-en}} so I temporarily used {{IPA-en}}, which doesn't require any input separation. The English IPA pronunciation for IPA is aɪ pʰiː eɪ. The problem is that the aspirated consonant pʰ is not found in {{IPAc-en}} and gives an error. Here is the comparison:

Markup Renders as 
{{IPA-en|aɪpʰiːeɪ}}

/aɪpʰiːeɪ/ 

{{IPAc-en|aɪ|pʰ|iː|eɪ}}

/aɪ[invalid input: 'pʰ']iːeɪ/

Best, --Rezy (talk | contribs) 21:44, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

@Rezonansowy: See International Phonetic Alphabet § Types of transcription, the very article you edited, for why aspiration need not be indicated in a transcription of English enclosed in slashes. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation (especially MOS:RHOTIC) and Help:IPA/English (especially § Dialect variation) for details about what kind of transcription English pronunciation notations on Wikipedia (at least ones in {{IPAc-en}}) are in, and why that's the case. Nardog (talk) 22:07, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Pages not listed in CAT:R2 despite edit to add Template:Db-r2

As reported on User talk:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js/Archives/ 1#Db_vs._db, the following pages were edited (by script, using the API) to add {{Db-r2}}, but do not appear in CAT:R2 (or did not until edited or null edited).

This basically seems like a job queue issue – except usually that problem is from the categorisation within template being changed, and pages that transclude it aren't updated (in a timely fashion, or at all) without a null edit. But these were just edits adding a template, which I thought should have just worked. Is this just some odd glitch, or is it to be expected? (i.e. should I be setting my script to do an additional null edit on a page after adding a {{Db-r2}} template?) - Evad37 [talk] 09:15, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

viewuseroptions access

Hi, I'm looking for some technical feedback about a proposal I'm looking to start : create an access permission and interface update to allow one user to view the non-private user preferences of another user. (e.g. not "watchlist token", any watchlist data, "email" - and maybe mutelist) and perhaps restricting to admins by default. Primary use would be in assisting editors that are having various issues, just look through this pages archive for back and forth "what skin to you use", "what gadgets do you have on", "what beta features do you have on", etc, etc... questions that are always going on. Any thoughts from the tech side? — xaosflux Talk 15:50, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

I would expect the WMF to veto this idea. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:02, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
On "privacy" factors or for some other reason? What do you anticipate the concern being? — xaosflux Talk 16:24, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, that. I have no actual evidence for this, but that was just my first reaction. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:29, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure how this would have privacy implications. Anyone can view someone's common.js, for example; here's mine. Home Lander (talk) 21:55, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Users who edit their js and css files probably know the files are public but they expect most of their settings at Special:Preferences to be private, e.g. time zone and language which can give hints of who they are or at least where they are. They may for example not want their government to know this in countries with censorship. And any change of a new setting would reveal you were recently logged in. The suggested feature would be useful but for privacy reasons I think it would have to be opt-in for each user and maybe require entering your password if you enable it so it's not easily done by accident or by somebody getting access to a logged in session. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Hmm maybe an "export preferences" function that they could use when wanted? — xaosflux Talk 14:23, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: All of a user's options are stored in mw.user.options, which is accessible via their browser console. One could presumably write a tidy little gadget to allow for easy copying of the preferences, removing the ones with potential privacy concerns, but a quick and easy way would be to just provide a link to the API sandbox and ask them for certain preferences. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:42, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the link @Amorymeltzer: this is getting somewhere more useful, is there any easy way to filter out watchlisttoken from that query using that form - looking at making this as easy as possible for non-technical editors? — xaosflux Talk 18:43, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
No, I don't believe so, or at least none that I know of short of asking them not to copy the penultimate line. You'd need to at least load some stuff in the console. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:04, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
I created User:BethNaught/exportUserOptions.js. It adds a special page Special:ExportUserOptions (case tolerant) where you can export your preferences. The default is "restricted" where only specified properties are allowed—as I understand it, extensions or user scripts can create arbitrary prefs, which may contain private data. My thinking was to make something like this a default gadget? Won't be offended if you don't use this, it was fun to make. BethNaught (talk) 20:50, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@BethNaught: looks like a good start other than watchlisttoken does anyone see any other "secret" information in here (e.g. it should never be exported - BethNaught, can you have this eclude only certain fields?)? Some "restricted" other info might be timezone, language setting? — xaosflux Talk 21:01, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Nice work BethNaught! I agree that a blacklist for the "restricted" items would be easier than a whitelist. In addition to watchlisttoken and the timezone and language settings, I'll add pagetriage-lastuse. I believe that's a timestamp showing the last time you loaded Special:NewPagesFeed, which could theoretically be undesirable. Only other thing might be rcfilters-saved-queries and rcfilters-wl-saved-queries — I don't think it's likely since the available options are bland enough, but I suppose it's possible someone might have named a filter with something they wouldn't want exposed. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:07, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I'd say these should be in 3 categories: "normal", "restricted", "secret" - unless you want one for personal use only, just blacklist anything secret - and really only the watchlisttoken is looking for be secret so far, lang, tz, etc could be useful for helping people, many times their "messages are wrong" is because they picked a missing or broken language (I'm looking at you en-au!). — xaosflux Talk 01:26, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I switched it to a blacklist system to demonstrate. Whether to use a whitelist or a blacklist (or both, under different options) is a design decision I think would need wider input; I'm still wary of exposing potentially arbitrary userjs- and extension-generated prefs in an allegedly safe mode. BethNaught (talk) 10:58, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I'd be wary too, a whitelist is the safer default option. BTW, this could also be done as a tool on Toolforge using OAuth to request API action=query&meta=userinfo&uiprop=options (sandbox) rather than a gadget that fakes up a special page. Anomie⚔ 11:41, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Wildcarded whitelist perhaps - would hate to have to have it changed every time a gadget is added/removed/renamed for example. — xaosflux Talk 11:46, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Not just gadgets, but other options appear and disappear, often before Tech News has informed us of the change. If blacklist, we need to check the list for every added option. For a whitelist, we need only check if it is felt that the new option setting should be visible to others. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:55, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Simple wildcards shouldn't be hard; for example, it seems to me that "gadget-*" i.e. which gadgets one has enabled should be safe? Although what if someone has a (hypothetical) accessibility gadget enabled, and so unintentionally discloses their disability? BethNaught (talk) 10:44, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Simply enabling a gadget doesn't mean you have a disability - and the reason you could be having problem X is that you inadvertently enabled gadget Y (the original problem I was looking to solve) - maybe a disclaimer on the top of the output page - since this only displays settings to the user and they have to choose to copy it out. A list of enabled gadgets is certainly something that is useful for troubleshooting though. — xaosflux Talk 11:32, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Point taken, and I certainly appreciate how having a list of all enabled gadgets would be useful. BethNaught (talk) 12:01, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
While it does not, it probably correlates fairly well. The degree of risk is mitigated if the information will have to be manually exported each time by the user and copied to the recipient, which I think is what is being proposed? isaacl (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
@Isaacl: currently yes, I'd love there to be a better "technical problem generation tool" like a button to push on a page that will screen shot it, let you annotate it, gather all your logs, etc - but that would be a long way off! 17:35, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree with a white list being a safer option. I don't really like the idea of general wildcards, as inadvertent matching is all too easy. Even prefix matching could be a problem, such as cases where "foo-" and "foo-variant-" are both in use. isaacl (talk) 17:30, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
If we go for a whitelist we would need to build one. mw:Manual:$wgDefaultUserOptions lists preferences but is out-of-date and doesn't account for some extensions. A shell user could use mw:Manual:userOptions.php to get an up-to-date list of preferences? Also we would need to decide whether to wildcard "gadget-*": knowing which gadgets someone uses is a big point of this. BethNaught (talk) 20:54, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Keeping this thread active - I asked for input from meta: as well. — xaosflux Talk 20:28, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Has something gone off with Visual Editor?

See this Teahouse posting.

I opened Wikipedia on Internet Explorer and Chrome (didn't bother logging out to check Firefox), and I couldn't find an option to use Visual Editor. I'm not logged in on IE or Chrome, and I have not set any preferences on those browsers to disable VE (unlike when logged in on Firefox).

Since the only time I "use" Visual Editor is to try to troubleshoot an issue for someone who actually does use it, I'm not really sure what's going on. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:13, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

The Teahouse reports that it's resolved now.
Having looked it over, I think that the "bug" may have been that {{div col}} templates were present, and have since been removed. That produces a really ugly experience. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Help me fix this broken markup, please.

Can anybody spot what's wrong at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 July 20? There's two discussions that day. I closed the second one earlier today, and everything looked fine. I just closed the first one, and something got confused and turned === into {{subst:drt|1, which makes the second one not visible. I tried to fix that manually, but no joy. There's obviously something broken in the markup somewhere, but I can't spot it. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:17, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

PS, I close these things with User:Lifebaka/closedrv.js -- RoySmith (talk) 00:20, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
I fixed the markup. I couldn't tell you why it needed fixing though. --Izno (talk) 00:47, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
You edited the whole date section instead of the section for the DRV. See User:Lifebaka/closedrv. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:50, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks. Insert random cynical comment about trying to parse HTML using regexes :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 01:26, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox software tells incorrectly that the screenshot file is considered for deletion

(Section heading changed to remove template call, see the comment in the wikitext. --Pipetricker (talk) 17:45, 27 July 2018 (UTC))
Resolved

In my last edits I added File:Inkscape.png file to {{Infobox software}} in the article Inkscape. After it the infobox displays the following message: The file above's purpose is being discussed and/or is being considered for deletion. Consult image description page for details.

The given file not is being discussed and/or is being considered for deletion, so the template is giving false positives. The file was nominated for deletion on Commons on 23 April 2017 but was kept and there's no such process right now.

I'm not sure what causes this behavior and is this specific only for {{Infobox software}} or all the infobox templates.

--Rezy (talk | contribs) 12:38, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

@Rezonansowy: Fixed with this edit - the message had been added to the caption. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:41, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@Rezonansowy: Looks like the message was added by an IP editor here. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:43, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
@John of Reading and Ahecht: Many thanks guys for your help. Seems the caption wasn't present without the screenshot. --Rezy (talk | contribs) 08:19, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

"Action throttled"

I keep getting an "action throttled" error, since I often do a lot of quick WP:GNOMEy copyedits. Is there some way to stop this? It's intensely annoying, and sometimes costs me work (hitting the "back" button does not always work right – sometimes the cached edit is lost). Surely there's something akin to autoconfirmed that exempts people from this anti-vandal measure. If not there needs to be one. How are people supposed to effectively use AWB/JWB with this over-broad filter running?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:12, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

I remember seeing a recent change that I think limited normal users to 100 edits per minute (not sure where, now). Are you trying to edit that fast? Chris857 (talk) 05:33, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
It's at #Tech News: 2018-30 above (90 edits per minute). Johnuniq (talk) 05:52, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
WP:Extendedconfirmed users may need higher limits. Ruslik_Zero 08:53, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
The OP is annoyed but the ability to make more than 90 edits per minute seems more than sensible to me. It is conceivable that an approved bot with a well-defined and tested procedure could usefully edit that fast but a human is supposed to check what they are doing and making 1.5 edits per second for a sustained period makes that unlikely. Johnuniq (talk) 10:48, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
So many changes per minute has an impact on the entire encyclopedia. Even bots don't have to modify pages so quickly and should all respect the waiting time returned by Mediawiki. We usually talk about a 10 seconds wait. One edit every 0.66 seconds is monstrous. Lofhi (talk) 12:58, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
90 edits per minute is easy to hit using certain tools such as the above-mentioned AWB/JWB, or with other tools that don't require permissions such as Cat-a-lot or Unlink. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:10, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: you don't appear to be hitting any of our custom abuse filters, do you have the timestamp of the most recent time this happened? In general, if you have a lot of edits that need to be made that don't require manual review a bot task is a good idea. — xaosflux Talk 11:46, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
It was within about a minute of my OP here. Interestingly, I wasn't doing anywhere near 90 edits per minute, more like 10–20 at most. And this is not the first time it happened. It even happened once, a few weeks back before the 90/min. change. About the only way (without AWB) I'm even capable of more than 20 or so per minute would be to have more than that many tabs already opened, already with content added and edit summaries written, and then do "Publish changes" on them one after another. The only times I ever do this are a) dropping of RfC notices to project talk pages on something of unusually broad scope (maybe 1–2 times per year), and (fairly regularly) updating double-redirects to the correct new target after a page move, but I decreasingly do that either since there's a bot that usually fixes them faster than I can. This trottle notice has come up just in the course of regular though fairly quick editing, probably in the dozen-per-minute range, like fixing the same typo or code error in a series of pages.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:41, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't see you anywhere near the throttle limit - seems like a bug, suggest you open a phabricator ticket to explore further. — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Continuing a comment after a nested list

How can I include a nested list in a comment, and then continue at the same level of indentation without ending the list element? For example, I can do:

Markup Renders as 
* x
** y
: z
  • x
    • y
z

But the HTML markup is wrong, since I want the "z" to be part of the same list item as "x" and "y". Enterprisey (talk!) 03:22, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Note that you can use plain HTML (<ul><li>a<ul><li>b</li></ul>c</li></ul>), but I'm looking for a solution with MediaWiki markup. Enterprisey (talk!) 03:30, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
@Enterprisey: I suspect this is a limitation on simple list markup. Any line break is expected to result in a new list item or a new list, no easy continuations. As best I can tell from Help:List#Continuing a list item after a sub-item, the closest you can come with the simple list markup is:
Markup Renders as 
<nowiki />
* First main list item
** First sublist item
** Second sublist item
*: continuation of first main list item
* Second main list item

  • First main list item
    • First sublist item
    • Second sublist item
    continuation of first main list item
  • Second main list item

But this indents the continuation more than you might like. They suggest that, for cases like this, the template {{unordered list}} be used, but that may defeat your purpose in wanting to use simple markup.

Markup Renders as 
{{unordered list|First main list item
{{unordered list|First sublist item|
Second sublist item}} continuation of first main list item|
Second main list item}}
  • First main list item
    • First sublist item
    • Second sublist item
    continuation of first main list item
  • Second main list item

In addition, it looks like more extraneous markup (div tags) gets added in this latter version, another possibly unwanted result. But it does look the way you wanted and it does generate correct HTML in terms of not starting a new list. — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 07:05, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

wrt. the extra div, please note: Module_talk:List#Redundant_div?. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:22, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Enterprisey, have you considered this approach?

Markup Renders as 
* x
** y{{pb}}z
  • x
    • y
      z

Or is your goal to get "z" on the same level as "x"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, my goal is for "z" to be on the same level as "x". Enterprisey (talk!) 19:58, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Collapse inside an indented table

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T8776

On Jimbo's talk page there is an examples where a collaspe block inside a table. 

::<table><tr><td>{{sources-talk}}</table>

This uses {{sources-talk}} which basically calls {{collapse}}. The problem is text after the block becomes indented. A minimal falling example is 

Foo
::<table><tr><td>{{collapse|title=dummy title|dummy text}}</td></tr></table>
Bar

--Salix alba (talk): 08:43, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Indentation can be fixed by manually adding </dl>. --Salix alba (talk): 09:00, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Salix alba, if you would move this section for me, I believe this is a result of Remex (see the first thread on this page). I'm not sure what the best solution is for this. --Izno (talk) 16:33, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
@Salix alba and Izno: I don't think so. The old and the new parser behave the same. This seems to be known issue: phab:T8776 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:19, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
T8776: indented embedded table leaves an unclosed DL, causing unwanted indentation. --Pipetricker (talk) 08:28, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Bizarre parser results

When you transclude Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/AfC reject notability/sandbox0 (permalink) and write some text after it on the same line, the text appears in a <pre> block for some reason. (It doesn't work if the text is on the next line.) I went through the code and can't see why it would be doing that. Any thoughts? Enterprisey (talk!) 03:39, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

This change seems to fix it (thanks, Jmcgnh!) but we still don't have any idea why this would happen. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:42, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
You failed to show or link an example with a pre box. I guess your added text starts with a space like:

{{Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/AfC reject notability/sandbox}} Some text

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/AfC reject notability/sandbox currently ends with a newline when it's transcluded. A line starting with a space causes pre formatting:
Some text
Most templates should avoid having a transcluded newline at the end. A common error is to place a noinclude tag on a new line instead of the end of the last transcluded line. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:56, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Edit filter for empty edit requests

Is it technically feasible to have an edit filter prevent the creation of empty edit requests (i.e. filtering new section edits like this one, with only content being section header, {{edit semi-protected}} or similar, signature and assorted whitespace)? There has been about one every other day at File talk:Snapchat logo.svg and I'm not sure why they keep being posted. The edits are generated using {{Submit an edit request/preload}}. Jc86035 (talk) 10:21, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Requests belong at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested. It's just readers trying what links do. If you cannot edit a page then the "Edit" tab says "View source" instead and has a button to submit an edit request. Saving an empty request is only three clicks away from viewing a protected page: "View source", "Submit an edit request", "Publish changes". File:Snapchat logo.svg had 44,495 page views in the past 30 days, maybe from users who click the icon at Snapchat or a Google search because they are trying to use Snapchat. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:57, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
I've made a request. Jc86035 (talk) 11:13, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
I have previously been successful at RFPP for this sort of thing. A general edit filter does seem quite reasonable to stop/warn on the empty ones. --Izno (talk) 13:03, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Could someone import c:Template:Copyright notes for use on enwiki? (to be used in combination with {{PD-USonly}}) I may be able to do it myself, but I'll probably just make a mess. Alexis Jazz (talk) 22:13, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Z number templates

{{Z number doc}} states:

When templates are substituted there is no longer any direct connection with the template page the text was called from other than, often, a commented out note placed by the template indicating its origin, in the form: <!-- Template:Name -->. Such commented out text is not searchable. For this reason it is impossible in most cases to track in any consistent and easy way the use of a template that is normally substituted.

This isn't true, since searching for user talk: insource:"<!-- Template:uw-vandalism1 -->" returns 4,310,040 results. Is there any other reason the Z templates are needed (other than their current usage on a few million pages)? Jc86035 (talk) 13:02, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

CirrusSearch, which I think brought insource, didn't exist when the templates were first-implemented. --Izno (talk) 21:54, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
TfD them! {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 23:56, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

CSS / HTML / TemplateStyles experts at Help talk:Citation Style 1#CSS for citation templates please?

We need help figuring out a couple of details here. Any help would be appreciated. In particular, we're trying to a apply a class to them that lets access locks be treated as external links icons, which can be displayed/hidden independently of other external link icons. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:24, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Is it possible to use One Click Archiver on Commons?

Is it possible to use Tech 13's archiver script for a user TP on Commons without making any changes to the script? Atsme📞📧 20:25, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Last I checked it requires the presence of the hidden MiszaBot archiving template. I am fairly sure User:Σ/Testing facility/Archiver can be used, however, which works mostly the same. --Izno (talk) 20:50, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
I think it has something to do with the command used to find the script since it's located on en.WP and not on commons. Atsme📞📧 21:03, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
FIXED Atsme📞📧 14:44, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Where? How? --Pipetricker (talk) 10:01, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Pipetricker, see this discussion. Atsme📞📧 13:37, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-31

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

Recent changes

  • The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems. [28]

Problems

  • Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.13 has been partially delayed. All deployments have been resumed and successfully done after bug fixes. [29][30]
  • Deployment of 1.32.0-wmf.14 has been partially delayed. [31][32]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 August. It will be on all wikis from 2 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 July at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 1 August at 15:00 (UTC) as well as at 23:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

14:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Technical Advice IRC Meeting

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

The Technical Advice IRC meeting is every Wednesday 3-4 pm UTC as well as on every first Wednesday of the month 11-12 pm UTC.

If you already know what you would like to discuss or ask, please add your topic to the next meeting: Technical Advice IRC meeting

Cheers, -- Michael Schönitzer (WMDE) (talk) 14:27, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Interface administrators

I have started a discussion about the new interface administrator user group at WP:VPM#RFC: Interface administrators and transition. Please take a moment to review and/or comment. --Izno (talk) 14:54, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist period resets to 1 hour in "unimproved" watchlist

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199566

When I bring up my watchlist, it shows articles changed in the past 3 days by default. But the "Period of time to display" drop-down is populated with "1 hour" by default, so that if I click the "Show" button on my watchlist page to refresh it, I only get 1 hour's worth of changes unless I specifically change the drop down. It always resets to 1 hour, even though my preferences are set to 3 days. (IE 11 (sorry -- required by work!), MonoBook skin) WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 15:13, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

WikiDan61, instead of clicking 'Show', try clicking the 'Watchlist' link at the top of the page to refresh it. That works with Firefox/MonoBook. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 12:36, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@BlackcurrantTea: Yes it does, but it's still annoying that, when my preference is to have a 3 day watchlist, the watchlist then populates with 1 hour in the dropdown. This appears to be a new feature rather than a bug, but I can't say that I'm a fan. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 12:51, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
WikiDan61, if you see "Period of time to display" then I guess you have selected "Hide the improved version of the Watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. For me it remembers some settings at "Days to show in watchlist", e.g. 2.9 or 3.1 days but not 3 days which changes to 1 hour like you say. It appears to mainly have problems remembering options which are included in the drop-down box on the watchlist itself. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:33, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Well, I noticed the problem before the "Improved" watchlist was rolled out, but yes, I have chosen to hide the improvements, because I liked my old tried-and-true Watchlist and found the improved version confusing. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 14:03, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
User:WikiDan61, would you mind checking your Special:GlobalPreferences to see if they're the same as your local Special:Preferences? I think this is a bug in GlobalPrefs (well, a mismatch between what new GlobalPrefs feature offers, and what the suddenly-slightly-outdated watchlist is trying to do). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): My Special:GlobalPreferences show the proper 3 day watchlist, and none of the options are checked to be made global. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 18:39, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm having the same problem. My preferences are set to 1 day, hide the new list. But it keeps going back to an hour. As it did when I tried the new watchlist. User:Whatamidoing is this being worked on? Doug Weller talk 18:47, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): - didn't copy your whole username. Doug Weller talk 11:13, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Reported in Phabricator: T199566: Period of time resets to 1 hour in the watchlist.
(pings: @WikiDan61, Keith D, Doug Weller.) --Pipetricker (talk) 09:09, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
Notice the workaround of setting "Days to show in watchlist" on the Watchlist tab in your Preferences to a value that works, such as 5 or a fraction close to the value you want, such as 3.1 (three point one) as PrimeHunter suggested. --Pipetricker (talk) 15:13, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
Should be  Fixed with the new MediaWiki version on Thursday. --Pipetricker (talk) 14:12, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Old Watchlist Problem

There appears to be a problem with the old watchlist that resets the "Period of time to display: " back to 1 hour when the page loads rather than leaving it at what it was previously or the value selected in the preferences. Keith D (talk) 21:20, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Keith D: I moved your post to an existing section. It works for me to change the value in preferences to a non-integer or some other integers. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:37, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: The field is validated but using a decimal it does not appear to work. (Incidentally the ping did not work either) Keith D (talk) 23:40, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
It resets to 1 hour for me too. I have it set at 3 days/250 changes in prefs. When I navigate to my watchlist I get it according to prefs (tho' the box shews 1 hour), but if I then apply filters (eg hide categorisation) then unless I manually change the setting in the box I get only 1 hour's worth of changes, which is pretty much useless. DuncanHill (talk) 17:02, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
DuncanHill, as mentioned at the end of the superordinate section right above this, this problem will hopefully be  Fixed on Thursday. Until then, you can try setting "Days to show in watchlist" on the Watchlist tab in your Preferences to 3.1 (three point one). --Pipetricker (talk) 17:55, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Undo function no longer working in edit mode

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T200280

Seems a change went into effect within the last few days where now text in the edit window is color-coded to show wikilinks and markup. Unfortunately the undo function (via ctrl+Z or right clicking) no longer seems to be working. I'm using Google Chrome. Is this a known issue? Jweiss11 (talk) 01:51, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jweiss11: I'm assuming you are referring to your browsers "undo" feature not the Wikipedia Undo command correct? — xaosflux Talk 01:56, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I'm referring to the brower's "undo" feature. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:57, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: Check your gadgets and see if you have Syntax highlighter enabled, if so try disabling and let me know if it fixes your issue. — xaosflux Talk 01:59, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Also are you using the visual editor? If so, do you have the issue when using the text editor? — xaosflux Talk 02:01, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm not using visual editor and I do not have syntax highlighter checked off in my gadgets, yet it appears to be enabled anyway. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:03, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: does your problem present in safemode? — xaosflux Talk 02:06, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Also, do you have any beta features enabled? — xaosflux Talk 02:07, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I don't have any beta features enabled. The problem does indeed present in safemode. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: I can't make it fail, try to open an incognito browsing window and don't even log on, just try to edit and see it clears up? — xaosflux Talk 02:41, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Logging out and using the incognito browsing window both disabled the highlighted syntax and restored the undo function.  But when I log back in, the problem is back. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:50, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: try this: go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, ensure you do not have Automatically enable all new beta features enabled. Then enable the New wikitext mode feature, save, turn it back off, save and try again. — xaosflux Talk 03:01, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Just did all of that. Didn't work. :( Jweiss11 (talk) 03:04, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
You can try Special:Preferences/reset - but it will put you in all defaults, so you may want to take note of what you have first. — xaosflux Talk 03:12, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Are we sure this is problem local to me? Are you able to undo text edits with syntax highlighter turn on? Jweiss11 (talk) 05:31, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
There are several syntax highlighter features. Check the first bullet at WP:HILITE about a button to the left of "Advanced" in some toolbars. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:02, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Which skin are you using? Jc86035 (talk) 11:23, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Do you have the problem if you use a different browser? I haven't been able to get it to fail as you describe on fifefox or chrome, with or without highlighter / new wikitext mode. — xaosflux Talk 12:49, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I just tried FireFox and I have the same problem there. The "undo" function in the browser is grayed-out in the edit box with the highlighter on. And I don't seem to be able to turn the syntax highlighter off in Firefox either. Are you able to get the undo function to work with the syntax highlighter on? Jweiss11 (talk) 00:14, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: yes, which skin are you using? — xaosflux Talk 00:57, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm using the "Vector" skin. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:42, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
@Jweiss11: I deactivated your User:Jweiss11/vector.css (you can revert by editing at anytime). See if it changed anything. — xaosflux Talk 01:45, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
That doesn't seem to have changed anything. Jweiss11 (talk) 01:49, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Anyone have any ideas here? This new syntax highlighter seems to have some bugs. Check out what happened to the spacing on this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1927_Texas_A%26M_Aggies_football_team&diff=prev&oldid=851561727. All I did was fix the spelling of September there, but something happened with the spacing causing the table field to blow up. I fixed it in a subsequent edit by retyping the spacing. This has happened a number of times in the last few days since the syntax highlighter went live for me. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Jweiss11 (talk) 04:07, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

My first thought is that the next time non-technical person tells me that "users don't need to know the name of their editing environment; it's all just 'the way you edit Wikipedia'", I might scream.
Jweiss11, I'm sorry you're having to go through this huge de-bugging thing, but here's the next step: Please click https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Xaosflux/Sandbox2016037a&action=submit&safemode=1 and tell me if that looks like the editing system that's causing this problem. If so, and if all of the following are true, then you're using the mw:2010 wikitext editor, aka WikiEditor (not to be confused with WP:WikEd):
  1. "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)" is turned ON in your editing preferences.
  2. "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" is turned ON in your editing preferences.
  3. "wikEd: a full-featured integrated text editor for Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome" is turned OFF in your gadget preferences. (No need to check this; &safemode=1 would have disabled it.)
  4. Javascript is enabled in your web browser. (No need to check this; you wouldn't see syntax highlighting without it.)
If that's not your editing environment, then please see mw:Editor and see if you can figure out which screenshot looks most like yours. (Note for anyone who's interested: &action=submit always calls one of the older wikitext editors, so it's the fastest way to bypass Extension:VisualEditor.)
Second, do you want to have the syntax highlighting turned on? Because if you don't, then you can turn it off, and that will stop the symptom for you, although it won't fix the actual bug. (Directions in the 2010 wikitext editor: open any page and look in the blue toolbar for a "highlighter marker" button. It is in between the black-and-white book and the word "Advanced". Click that button until the colors go away. Close the window, and open a new page to make sure that the change 'stuck' properly.)
I haven't been able to reproduce this behavior myself, but based on your replies so far, here's a description of your system:
  • Web browser: Google Chrome (version number ???), but it happens in Firefox, too.
  • Operating system:  ???
  • Skin: Vector
  • Syntax highlighter: CodeMirror (beause it's the only one that isn't disabled by &safemode=1)
  • Site: Desktop (not Mobile Web)
  • Editing environment: Definitely one of the older wikitext editors; probably the 2010 wikitext editor
Is there anything else that you think might be useful for a bug report? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): You may be interested in the ad-hoc work we have started doing based on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#viewuseroptions_access below. — xaosflux Talk 17:39, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Ideally, a "I have a tech problem on this page" could gather all that setting info, take a screenshot, ask them to draw on it with a highlighter and post the whole thing to a ticket! :D — xaosflux Talk 17:41, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF): thanks for chiming in. I'm not sure I follow all of your questions, but I will try to answer them. When I go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Xaosflux/Sandbox2016037a&action=submit&safemode=1, the undo button is disabled. "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)" and "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" are indeed turned on in my preferences and "wikEd: a full-featured integrated text editor for Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome" is indeed turned off in my gadget preferences. My Google Chrome version is Version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit). My operating system is Windows 10 Home. This is indeed all on desktop. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:19, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Okay, I just followed your instructions about the "highlighter marker" and was able to turn off the syntax highlighting. And now the undo function is restored! I actually like the syntax highlighting. I find it useful, but it's not worth the loss of the undo function because I often accidentally delete big blocks of text and the undo function remedies that in an instant without losing any of the previous editing. Jweiss11 (talk) 23:24, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Perfect! I filed phab:T200280 to describe this problem. I also figured out that the problem is in Chrome and Firefox, but not Safari (which is why I couldn't reproduce it on my first quick attempt). Thanks for sticking with this and providing such clear information. I really appreciate it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
Jweiss11 Can you try using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z on Mac) instead of the menu item? That should work with syntax highlighting. I'm not sure why the browser menu item is not working. It seems like a weird bug. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
NKohli (WMF) Ctrl+Z does indeed work. I thought I had tried that before and had it not work. But it does work now. Jweiss11 (talk) 19:50, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Template:Chart appearance problem

When I used Template:Chart, some of the functions of it go seriously wrong.

There are some different codes dedicated to show different styles of lines in a family tree, but in mobile view, the effect of

  • "(" and "'" are the same, so does that of
  • "C" and "J"
  • "G" and "Z"
  • "c" and "ic" and etc.

Template:Family tree is having a same problem (though being deprecated), and I can't do anything, because it's protected and it's like a problem from the source, not like if I can fix it by editing some codes of the template. Seeing that this error has effected all family tree exist in all wikis, how is this bug supposed to be fixed? - George6VI (talk) 19:47, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Fixed, the template made assumptions about tables, that were not guaranteed in the mobile skin. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:49, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Two almost identical math lines using different font sizes?

On lines 5-6 of the article join (topology) there are two displayed math formulas which contain almost the same text, yet the first one is significantly shorter than the second. It appears to me as if the first one uses a slightly smaller font. Here are the two lines:


In the visual editor, the two lines are the same size and everything looks perfect. Does anyone have an idea what could be going on here? AxelBoldt (talk) 12:24, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@AxelBoldt: in most views these are being rendered and served as image files (likely .svg) - and the display of these may differ among browsers and depending on the page layout at time they are displayed. Looks to be the known issue phab:T74553, as the default viewing of math items is MathML with SVG or PNG fallback mode. — xaosflux Talk 13:58, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks, it does indeed appear to be a browser issue: if I download and view the two served SVG's separately, they are the same size. In the article, Chromium/Linux renders them in the same size, Chrome/Windows and Firefox/Linux don't. In the meantime I found a workaround: insert an empty line between the two formulas. AxelBoldt (talk) 14:23, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@AxelBoldt: note, in many cases your "empty line" trick will suffer from the same issue - it will help on some browsers but not others. This is also going to be driven somewhat by the math setting in a user's preferences Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering (though normal readers should be seeing the default above). — xaosflux Talk 14:33, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I believe this particular issue is due to a particular wikitext hack: indentation of several lines with ':' which the formulas above use is rendered with an HTML <dl> definition list followed by <dd> entries without accompanying <dt>'s. From an HTML perspective, that usage doesn't make sense, and I can't blame browsers if they show strange behavior for such a list. By inserting an empty line, each formula gets its own <dl><dd>, so the behavior is still strange, but strange in the same way for both formulas. AxelBoldt (talk) 15:06, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
I think this might be a cache problem. The maths render engine stores equations its rendered before and there have been sight changes in the renderer. So one is done using an old render. I think there are ways to force the equations to be re-rendered. Possibly doing a null-edit or perhaps changing the expressions by adding \, at the end. --Salix alba (talk): 23:14, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Query on behalf of NASA

Because of my involvement with User:Bibcode Bot, I have received an email asking me the following

Hi <name>,

I have your contact from a prior email exchange regarding running the Bibcode Bot for Wikipedia. I have a Wikipedia-related question that I hope you can help answer: I periodically check wikipedia to find out how many links it has to ADS pages via the "External Links" search page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=500&target=http%3A%2F%2F%2A.adsabs.harvard.edu%2F

Even though the page does not say how many results come from the URL search, I would then modify the URL to paginate till the end of the list. However, this has (recently?) stopped working, and I can now only paginate to the 60,000th row of results:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=500&offset=59500&target=http%3A%2F%2F%2A.adsabs.harvard.edu%2F

Once you get there, no more links to the next set of results are available. I don't really need to retrieve these additional pages, just want to know how long the list is. Is there a way that you know of to get that information out of wikipedia?

Thanks,

-- <name>

Since I don't know the answer, I thought I'd ask here. I'll send the link to the person asking the question, so they'll be able to do follow ups if they want. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:15, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I also don't know the answer, but I noticed that you can use "limit=5000" instead of "limit=500"; you still won't get beyond entry 60,000 however. But, since the adsabs URLs are fairly regular, you could start with abstracts from a given year, say 1998, like so: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=5000&offset=0&target=https%3A%2F%2Frp.liu233w.com%3A443%2Fhttp%2Fadsabs.harvard.edu%2Fabs%2F1998 and hobble through the entire list like that... AxelBoldt (talk) 14:09, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Out of curiously, would the external link search pick up entries made from templates like Bibcode:2000A&A...355L..27H too? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:26, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
It will pick it up if you use subst to substitute the template; if you transclude like you did above I doubt very much that LinkSearch can find it. AxelBoldt (talk) 15:15, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
No, LinkSearch looks at the page after the templates are expanded. Try this search. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:29, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Well then I guess

Will catch them all (without most of the invalid crap you get at the start of [33]). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:07, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I worked on a project for Sadads a few years ago where the aim was to have regular counts of external links to certain sites related to WP:LIBRARY. My procedure was to count links in a dump of the external links table downloaded monthly. That was superseded by a system named Linkypedia which worked online and had a website with the results. I don't know of its current status. Johnuniq (talk) 22:50, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Does <name> just want a total count? That is, he doesn't care about the other info at Special:Linksearch like what page it's to (on adsabs.harvard.edu) or from (on Wikipedia)? Then quarry:query/28650 is a whole lot less steps to get to (what should be) the same answer. —Cryptic 23:34, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Don't know what I'm looking at, but quarry:query/28650 seems to be looked at http://edu.harvard.adsabs / https://edu.harvard.adsabs links. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:38, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
That's intentional. The el_index column stores URLs in reverse order with an extra period appended for efficiency, while el_to is human-readable; see mw:Manual:Externallinks table. Illustrative example. —Cryptic 23:53, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Cryptic: Ah I see. Still, you could simplify the https links from the query quarry:query/28654, as those are invalid links (and I've cleaned them all up to the proper http links). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:23, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Finding singular-vs-plural that are not in sync

We often have articles at a singular title with a plural form of that title as a redirect to it (as usual for {{R from plural}} and friends). We often have singular and plural forms of a title that are both redirects. As a result of pagemoves and/or other edits, we sometimes get the plural pointing to somewhere other than the singular (or vice versa). That is, if [Foo] and [Foos] were each [REDIRECT:Bar1] but then either of these happens:

  • [Foo] or [Foos] becomes a real article without the other one being retargeted to that real article
  • [Foo] or [Foos] is retargetted as [REDIRECT:Bar2] without the other one being retargeted to match

we have the singular and the plural out of sync with one another. It's partly an effect of disallowing double redirects, but it's also pretty easy to do manually by accident. Is there a way to scan for these cases? DMacks (talk) 14:06, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Same could happen for different spelling errors, but would be harder to track. DMacks (talk) 14:08, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

{{str left}} can be used if there's a way for a template to call a redirect's target, but I'm not sure how to do the latter. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 02:08, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Chart briefly appears, then disappears

See Special:Diff/852579849#NPR Newsletter No.12 30 July 2018, WT:NPP/R, or the talk page of any new page reviewer. The chart that should be showing is not displaying correctly for me. It briefly flashes on the screen upon a refresh (or purge), then disappears into the white background. I'm using the default skin or whatever, nothing fancy, Chrome 67.0.3396.99 with Windows 10 home 64. Anyone else noticing this? Home Lander (talk) 00:25, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my cell phone displays the chart correctly. And whaddaya know, if I log out, it shows correctly too, so obviously something with my account. Home Lander (talk) 00:29, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Home Lander: things to try: Have you turned Chrome off and on, or bypassed or cleared your cache, or tried adding ?safemode=1 to the URL like this, or blanked your common.js, or tried another browser, or logged out of and back into your Windows account, or restarted your computer (by selecting "Restart", not by turning it off and on, which doesn't really restart Windows), or tried another computer? --Pipetricker (talk) 11:47, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Home Lander:. Logging out fixing it gave me the clue that it must be your common.js. I replaced mine with yours, and got the error you were describing, then started cutting suspect scripts until the error disappeared. It is this script: importScript('User:Mr.Z-man/badimages.js'); that is causing the error. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 22:10, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
I already replied at ICPH's talk page, but User:Mr.Z-man/badimages.js no longer does what it was intended to do, and apparently now causes this side effect. Considering the creator no longer appears to be here, perhaps the script should be tagged or erased since it apparently only has negative effects. Home Lander (talk) 02:13, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Wayback Machine not returning search results today

Resolved
 – Wayback search function has now been restored. Softlavender (talk) 04:24, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere. At Help talk:Using the Wayback Machine#Wayback Machine not returning search results today ....

Currently, any URL I place in the Wayback search field [34] does not return any results. There's no list of years, nothing. There's just a blank page like this [35] at present. I've tried a half dozen random URLs to check, but nothing comes up (not even the message "Hmm, Wayback doesn't seem to have that page archived"). I don't know what's wrong or what to do about it. It was working fine less than 24 hours ago. Any help or advice of what to do or where/how to report it? (I'm going to post this message at WP:VPT as well.) Softlavender (talk) 06:55, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

The above was first posted at Help talk:Using the Wayback Machine, so I suggest this is discussed there. --Pipetricker (talk) 08:18, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Strange. I found the same results with Safari and Firefox. From a quick look at the page source, it seems it's not loading completely. It does, however, load pages when one has a link, e.g. this will work. You might try posting to their 'FAQ forum' listed at the bottom of this page; you could also email info@archive.org . BlackcurrantTea (talk) 08:32, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, as I stated, it's not returning search results for any URL. There is no place to raise the issue at their forums (I checked). I emailed info@archive.org two hours ago (that's the only email they provide); it would help if more people emailed them as well so they take the issue seriously. Thanks! Softlavender (talk) 10:07, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
  • UPDATE: The search function is working now. They seem to have altered the interface so that the year sections are very small. Possibly they were in the middle of making that change when the search wasn't working. Anyway, I'm going to close this discussion as resolved. Softlavender (talk) 04:24, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Can't move a page

I realized something was wrong at the top of Francis of Assisi. I looked at another page and saw it had "move" and "wikilove" (that second page was a user page). If it's not possible to move a page, shouldn't it have a lock at the top?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:15, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

It's not a requirement, merely a courtesy. I've tried to add one anyway, but it's not showing up for me. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:36, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee and SarekOfVulcan: I can't figure out why it's move protected in the first place. It was protected back in 2009, supposedly for page move vandalism, but the move logs don't show any moves. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:41, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@SarekOfVulcan: The {{pp-move-indef}} you added is documented as "This template will add a category only and has no visible effect" (emphasis in original). @Ahecht: upgraded it to {{pp-move-vandalism}}, which includes the padlock icon. Seems like a bug that there is no single template that both identifies the move-prot as indef and places in Category:Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages. DMacks (talk) 20:48, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for clarifying that. I was working with TW, so didn't see the actual documentation. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:49, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
FYI, this protection should no longer be needed for this reason and has been removed. — xaosflux Talk 20:54, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht: the logs themselves were also redacted as it was part of the vandalism, that is why you can't see them. — xaosflux Talk 20:55, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Figured it was something like that. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) —Preceding undated comment added 21:14, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@DMacks: {{pp-move-vandalism}} is built around Module:Protection banner and so it auto-detects the protection expiry (via the sub-module Module:Effective protection expiry) I think that this module is now used by all of the prot icon templates, so there is no longer any need for the {{pp-xx-indef}} forms as a set that is distinct from the {{pp-xx|expiry=date}} forms - and the |expiry= parameter is similarly redundant. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:24, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Need help with the codes of template.

Hi, I post this here because I need some help with these code values.

I need to replace the text on the header with another one using the same three parameters, but another one in the second header.

I will try to explain: For example using the parameters {{{Image|}}}, {{{image-size|}}} and {{{Caption|}}} will show the header "IMAGE" but using the parameters {{{Image|}}}, {{{Image2|}}}, {{{image-size|}}} and {{{Caption|}}} will show the header "IMAGES". I do not know if I explain myself very well, but in another words I'm trying to "prioritize" another header adding un parameter, I was trying to use the code {{#ifeq:Image|Images|{{{Image}}}{{{image-size}}}{{{caption}}}|{{{Image}}}{{{image-size}}}{{{caption}}}{{{Image2}}}}} (it's a example). But that did not work, if you ask me for more explanations I can tell you about my problem. But I want to know first if the thing I'm trying is possible, prioritize another header with another parameter when the two options have another equal parameters. Thanks. ShaGuarF1 (talk) 23:33, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@ShaGuarF1: Your example is saying If "Image" equals "Images" then display {{{Image}}}{{{image-size}}}{{{caption}}}, otherwise display {{{Image}}}{{{image-size}}}{{{caption}}}{{{Image2}}}. I think what you need is something like {{#if:{{{Image2|}}}|IMAGES|IMAGE}} (which will show "IMAGES" if the {{{Image2}}} parameter exists, otherwise if will show "IMAGE") or {{#if:{{{Image|}}}|{{#if:{{{Image2|}}}|IMAGES|IMAGE}}|}} (which will show nothing if {{{Image|}}} is blank, show "IMAGE" if {{{Image|}}} exists but {{{Image|}}} doesn't, and will show "IMAGES" if both exist). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 01:58, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht: thx for the answer. I forgot something, that header does not have to be permanent, if I do that, the header will show always. I will explain better, I'm from the spanish wiki, I edit F1 and similar arts. There they use a single template for competitions, the problem is that F1 arts need to show the header "Podium" but it shows another thing, and I don't want to replace everything, I'm looking for replacing only the code of the header, the real code is {{#if:{{{first|}}}{{{second|}}}{{{third|}}}|Palmarés}} and I want to find the way to add something like {{{sport}}} = auto racing, and add the header Podium. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ShaGuarF1 (talk • contribs) 02:39, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
The {{#if:{{{Image|}}}|{{#if:{{{Image2|}}}|IMAGES|IMAGE}}|}} code worked. Ty so much, now I have a little problem. How I show that second header using the parameter {{{sport}}}? Example, using sport = auto racing shows a different color in the template, how can I to take advantage of that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ShaGuarF1 (talk • contribs) 02:47, 31 July 2018 (edit) (UTC)
@ShaGuarF1: I'd have to see the actual template to tell you exactly, but it's going to be something like {{#ifeq:{{sport|}}|auto racing|"Code for second header"}}. If this is inside an infobox template, it would be something like header2 = {{#ifeq:{{sport|}}|auto racing|{{#if:{{{first|}}}{{{second|}}}{{{third|}}}|Podium}}|}} (Which says If {{{sport}}} = "auto racing", then if {{{first}}} or {{{second}}} or {{{third}}} exist, create a header called "Podium". Otherwise, set that header to blank, which causes the infobox template to omit the header.)--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:27, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
This is the template, I'm trying to use it in a sandbox. es:Usuario:ShaGuarF1/Taller3, the exactly section is the "sección46", forget my first message I didn't see your second code, and it worked. So I have tried to put {{#if{{{sport|auto racing}}}}} where {{{sport}}} is deporte, and auto racing is automovilismo and works exactly in the same way when I change the second parameter, for example, basquet, football, etc. I repeat, I need that when the parameter sport has "auto racing" it shows podium, but when it's not auto racing, don't show podium when that parameter sport has another content, and show the default header, "palmares". Thanks for help. ShaGuarF1 (talk) 20:54, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
@ShaGuarF1: try |seccion46 = {{#if:{{{posición|}}}{{{primero|}}}{{{campeón|}}}{{{segundo|}}}{{{subcampeon|}}}{{{tercero|}}}{{{cuarto|}}}{{{oro|}}}{{{plata|}}}{{{bronce|}}}{{{mayor_anotador|}}}{{{nom_podio1|}}}{{{nom_podio2|}}}{{{nom_podio3|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{{deporte}}}|automovilism|Podio|Palmarés}}|}}. {{#if:{{{1|}}}|TRUE|FALSE}} returns TRUE if {{{1}}} isn't blank and FALSE if it is blank. {{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|VALUE|TRUE|FALSE}} returns TRUE if {{{1}}} == VALUE, otherwise it returns FALSE. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:14, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
@Ahecht:, that worked. Thank you so much, you were so helpful. Respects to you, thanks. ShaGuarF1 (talk) 22:51, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Hey there. Not sure about the best place to bring this up. MediaWiki:Linkshere provides an external tool for counting backlinks of pages, see Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:A ("Transclusion count" link) for example, but for a while I've created a tiny tool here, that counts backlinks in a much easier, faster and more integrated fashion. See this and click on "(count)". The tool is already integrated on Wikidata and Persian Wikipedia and I wonder if English Wikipedia also interested on using that instead the current tool? Thanks −ebrahimtalk 19:38, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

WhatLinksHere provides two external links: A "Show redirects only" link and a "Transclusion count" link. I don't understand why we have the "Show redirects only" link, since that functionality can be recreated by just clicking "Hide Transclusions" and "Hide links", and since it is a disguised link to an external sever (which is problematic from both from a legal/privacy policy standpoint as well as a practical one -- I've come across a few pieces of web filtering software that block info.tm). The other link is to a "Transclusion count", which is hosted on the same http://tools.wmflabs.org server as the backend for your script. What additional functionality does your script provide? I tried getting it to work on Wikidata by enabling it in my preferences and going to Wikidata:Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Constraint, but I didn't see any effect. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:34, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Something that solved the https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=840483645#“What_links_here” problem (phab:T14396) would be very much appreciated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
See User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js. There is a template version {{Source links}} we could consider using in MediaWiki:Linkshere. Example for Picket Lake, Minnesota: Source links. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:59, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
Ahecht, I think it is hard to argue whether any A is better than B in this world. It is however integrated and saves you some time, you just click on "(count)" link and it considers the input added on the box nearby, no need for page refresh even. It was useful for me personally to have a quick tool for that in Wikidata (counting property usage, not provided by that tool) and I guessed it can be useful for others. "which is hosted on the same http://tools.wmflabs.org server as the backend for your script", obviously. It provides more information and is not limited to templates, like global and local file usage, counting regular links to a page and not just transclusions. −ebrahimtalk 15:18, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Page move spawned edit at Wikidata

Could someone explain why, in making this page move, I somehow made this edit at Wikidata? Freaked the crap out of me when I got a notice from an external wiki saying I had made my first edit! Home Lander (talk) 14:54, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

A number of actions make corresponding edits on WD. Moving. Deleting. Probably others I'm not aware of. GMGtalk 15:02, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
...and I see I failed to move the talk page, done now... Home Lander (talk) 15:25, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Seems that many wikilinks noted on the {{Life timeline}} (as well as {{Human timeline}} and {{Nature timeline}}) are no longer available - perhaps due to recent template code changes? - previously, all noted wikilinks on these templates (over 30 wikilinks on each of these templates) were easily indicated and available - Comments Welcome - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 13:24, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Please be more specific. I see over 30 wikilinks in {{Life timeline}} and they all work. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:55, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thank you for your comments - and for trying the links - for my part (using all three of my computers, two desktop and one laptop, but all Dell XPS with Windows 10 - and latest updates) - my current experience (all noted items seemed *entirely* ok earlier) is as follows: on the {{Life timeline}}, as examples, the "Earliest Earth" and "Earliest water" no longer displays popup article titles, file paths or clickable links, when hovering over the noted items with the mouse cursor - OTOH - the "Earliest life" and "Earliest oxygen" noted items are ok and display (and click) correctly - there are even other noted items, however, that seem affected including "Earliest sexual reproduction", "Earliest plants", "Ediacara biota", "Cambian explosion", "Tetrapoda" - but there are some noted items that seem *entirely" ok including "Atmospheric oxygen", "Oxygen crisis" and "Earliest apes" - hope this helps - in any regards - Thanks again for your comments and interest - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 19:47, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
@Drbogdan: "Earliest Earth" and "Earliest water" work for me in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Edge. Windows 10, Vector skin, default browser zoom. What is your browser, your skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, and your browser zoom? Does it work if you log out? By the way, pinging in both edit and edit summary causes two separate notifications. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:05, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: The {{Life timeline}} problem may now be solved - I was using the Google Chrome browser [Version 67.0.3396.99 (Official Build) (64-bit) - on my Dell Laptop] - all seems completely ok with the {{Life timeline}} using my Firefox browser [61.0.1 (64-bit)] - seems my originally noted problem above may be *entirely* caused by my Chrome browser in some way - Thanks for all your comments - and helping me understand this (as well as the pinging on edits) - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:37, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
I can confirm this in Chrome and Safari (the most recent versions on macOS, as well as several years old browser versions, with Vector and MonoBook skins).
This isn't due to any recent change of these three templates; the dead wikilinks occur in old revisions of the templates.
Removing the <div> enclosing a dead link (or changing it to a <span>) fixes the link. But some of the links that are enclosed in divs do work. (I have checked only Template:Life timeline.) Maybe some known browser bug? Or / and Remex? (@Drbogdan) --Pipetricker (talk) 08:44, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Drbogdan, do you recall clicking on those links, using Chrome, prior to 5 July, in particular closely before that date? Or closely after that date, again using Chrome? --Pipetricker (talk) 09:34, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
@Pipetricker, Beetstra, and PrimeHunter: the {{Life timeline}} template was mostly developed in 2016/2017 - using an old WinXPpro/v2002/SP3-Pent4/3.00ghz/1.00gbRam PC with Chrome browser [v49.0.2623.112(32-bit) desktop] - at that time, as I recall, *all* 30+ links in {{Life timeline}} were working - I still have this old WinTelXP PC - more recent tests (a few minutes ago) with this old WinTelXP PC+Chrome browser now displays, different from earlier tests in 2016/2017, the same dead wikilinks for {{Life timeline}} as noted above with my newer Dell/Win10/Chrome PCs [note: Firefox browser (old v43.0.1 & new v52.9.0/32-bit) on the old WinTelXP is *completely ok* with *all* the {{Life timeline}} wikilinks] - ALSO - just now checked another (still available) old WinTelXP PC [HP-LapTop/WinXPmediacenter/v2002/SP3-T2400/1.83ghz/1.00gbRam with Chrome browser-v49.0.2623.112m(32-bit)] used in the {{Life timeline}} template development with identical dead wikilink results as the aforementioned old WinTelXP/Chrome desktop results above - hope this helps - please let me know if any more information may be needed - iac - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 13:44, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you, Drbogdan. Had I thought of the obvious to compare the before and after 5 July, I wouldn't have needed to ask you. --Pipetricker (talk) 17:10, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
@Pipetricker: - No problem whatsoever - happy to help - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:22, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
I have noticed the same recently in Chrome (on iPad ánd Windows 10 desktop; I haven't tried other browsers), and have been frustrated by it. Sometimes re-loading the page helps, sometimes it doesn't. The timing you suggest (removal of Tidy) may be correct. Some odd error in html tags that is now not solved? --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:00, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, I was unclear. I had this random throughout Wikipedia, not specifically with this template. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:49, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Those templates are horribly complex.... making it hard to figure out what exactly broke (and an accessibility problem to boot). But its definitely because of Tidy to Remex. Now to figure out what the exact difference is. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:49, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, I should have checked the parser migration tool.
These three templates depend on {{Graphical timeline}}, which indeed looks complex. Pinging User:Smith609. --Pipetricker (talk) 16:19, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, Smith609: considering it's been 10 years since you edited that template, I wouldn't blame you if you don't remember anything about it. --Pipetricker (talk) 18:35, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
FWIW - Seems the Opera browser (latest version: 54.0.2952.64/64-bit;Win10home/1803-17134.191;DellXPS8930/i7-8700/3.20ghz/16gbRam) also displays the dead wikilinks problem - iac - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 12:39, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
It appears related to how close the links are to other text. In Chrome I can click all of "Clickable", the bottom part of "Clickable bottom", and none of "Not clickable". PrimeHunter (talk) 01:06, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
However, (in Chrome) a link not close to other text (ie, "Earliest sexual reproduction", with or without the word "reproduction", in {{Life timeline}}) still seems to be unresponsive and unclickable? Drbogdan (talk) 12:26, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
@Drbogdan, PrimeHunter, and Pipetricker: OK, I think I understand. The problem is that {{Life timeline}} defines the content of notes to be div's, but the notes are spans and thus cannot contain div's. Tidy used to correct for this by swapping their order (automatically nesting the span inside the div), but Parsoid does not. This change combined with issues with incorrect DOM order, relative and absolute positioning problems etc.. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Life_timeline&diff=852793680&oldid=851923307&diffmode=source If you do away with some of that, the links are clickable again). I tried to do some more cleanup but gave up in despair. Can people please not write HTML soup like this monstrosity ? You are better off creating an SVG image than having this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:58, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks TheDJ for doing that work. I wonder if the spans can be removed from Template:Graphical timeline (but I'm not looking into that). If they can't, I guess Template:Graphical timeline and its dependent templates should carry a warning not to use divs in the dependent templates. --Pipetricker (talk) 14:06, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Thank you very much for your comments - and efforts with this concern - yes - the affected "notes" in the {{Life timeline}} template now seem much better - and clickable - I removed similar divs coding from the related {{Human timeline}} and {{Nature timeline}} templates - "notes" are much better with these templates as well - Thanks for all your efforts with the problem - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 14:13, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

QUESTION - re the {{Life timeline}} template (see image above) (esp w/ Chrome/Win10) => is there a way of making the word "reproduction" one space below (rather than the current two spaces below) in the phrase "Earliest sexual reproduction" note? - Comments Welcome - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 14:44, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

BRIEF Followup - re the {{Life timeline}} - trimmed text (ie, "Earliest sexual reproduction" => < small>"Sexual reproduction"< /small>) - in order to fit the phrase on one line (instead of two lines - tried a few coding ideas, but wasn't able to do this) - iac - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 22:01, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T69068

Section link (the little arrow in edit summary), eg. →‎{{visible anchor| etc.

When following the little arrow in an edit summary, the page does not go to the section, but seems to give up and displays the top of the article, instead of the section that was edited. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:15, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

@Ancheta Wis: This is T69068. Jc86035 (talk) 14:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
To elaborate, this is because the template code is treated as part of the section header, and so the link goes to the section #{{anchor|...}}section title. Fixing this is technically possible for anchor templates specifically but would require a different template to be created which includes the actual section header as the first parameter (since that template would have to try to match the link generated in the edit summary as an anchor, so the template has to know what the actual displayed section header is), and would probably be at least an hour of Lua coding with not very much benefit and a fair amount of problems. Jc86035 (talk) 14:57, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Ancheta Wis, the article you link to uses {{Visible anchor}}, not {{Anchor}} (but they both have the same problem). At the top of Template:Visible anchor#Limitations, it says:
This template should not be used within section headings. Doing so will result in broken links in edit summaries, ...
This is in fact the case with any use of an unsubstituted template in a section heading.
But {{Anchor}} can be used with subst:ing, see #3 at Template:Anchor#Examples.
This will result in code like this (which you can also type by hand):
== <span id="My_anchor"></span>My heading ==
which doesn't have this problem. I have added an example anchor to the heading of this section.
Another simple solution is to put the anchor template immediately below the section heading, instead of within it. But that results in the heading being out of view when arriving at the section. --Pipetricker (talk) 15:47, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Thank you all. I added a "You can't do that." to the article history. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 16:52, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

User logs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T200446
Resolved

There has been a not-helpful change in how we view our own user logs, and it's a step backward in accessibility. Prior to yesterday, I could go to Special:Contributions/Maile66, and and click on "logs":

"For Maile66 (talk | block | block log | uploads | logs | deleted user contributions | user rights management | mass delete | filter log)"

It would then bring me to my specific logs. That part still works.

What has changed, is if I want to see only my specific logs - let's say "Protection log" - from down list, it shows me all the pages protected by all admins on Wikipedia. What it wants me to do is enter my name to narrow it to my protection logs. If I'm already on a page specifically for my logs, why do I have to manually enter my name to narrow the field? Previously, it just went directly to my own logs in a given category.

I don't know why the change, but it seems an unnecessary step backwards to me. — Maile (talk) 11:30, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Answering my own question, perhaps. I see on Tech News: 2018-31 "The design on Special:Log has changed. It will change again soon. Developers are working on fixing problems.", so a solution is probably already in the works. — Maile (talk) 11:38, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
@Maile66: I think this was phab:T200446 specifically. It's fixed in the current version, as deployed to group0/1 wikis (i.e. you can test at Mediawiki.org), and that version will be arriving at Wikipedias later today. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:27, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Superfluous nowiki tags – Visual editor bug?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T167637
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T162291
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T108009
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T106641
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T109558
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T120826
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T117554

I have recently run across several edits like this. The nowiki tags don’t seem to be deliberate; they look as if they show up as a sort of “side effect” of a different edit. Is this a known bug, or should it be one? (Side note: I only today noticed the VE tag. I don’t know if all the edits I’ve been seeing are tagged that way.) — Gorthian (talk) 08:56, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

It's an old known issue that VisualEditor adds a lot of nowiki tags. It usually happens when the user tries to write wikitext directly in a visual edit. VisualEditor does not allow this and adds nowiki to deactivate the wikitext. The corresponding VisualEditor feature (if one exists for the purpose) should be used instead. I don't know the precise sequence of what the IP did but the infobox was broken by removing ]] in the previous source edit [36]. I guess the IP tried to fix it but didn't know how and switched to VisualEditor in a failed attempt. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:10, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
VE has done this right from the word go and is one of the reasons that I refuse to use it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:50, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
VE loves to insert <nowiki>...</nowiki> tags. I have added links to just a few of the VE nowiki bugs, some of which have been tracked for multiple years. I look forward to VE coming out of beta; there will be a lot more interesting gnome work for me to do, and pages edited with VE will be more functional for readers. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:27, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Wow. I guess I’m just tuning in to an old issue. Jonesey95, I hope your optimism is warranted. — Gorthian (talk) 21:42, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
PrimeHunter is correct. The infobox was broken in a previous wikitext edit (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?oldid=851713451, and the visual editor (and Parsoid) tried to carefully preserve the mess that was on the page when the editor saved the next set of changes. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Time traveling bug

It seems that there is a time traveling bug when I set my time zone to UK under preferences. As you can see from https://snag.gy/RmYoui.jpg, the editor's contributor time is somehow AHEAD of the server time. That or User:KnightLago is a time traveler.--Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 21:02, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

When you set the time zone to UK (+1), the timestamps are given in that time, and thus are an hour ahead. Galobtter (pingó mió) 21:12, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
But my signature and everything else are set in the server time. It seems like a confusing bug/feature. So KnightLago's contributions are converted from his time zone to London time zone? --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 21:14, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes. The clock you see in the top right is a gadget that specifically shows UTC time. The point of setting the timezone is to change displayed times into local time. You can make signatures into local time using another gadget under "Appearance" ("Change UTC-based times and dates, such as those used in signatures, to be relative to local time") Galobtter (pingó mió) 21:23, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Any way to change the time of the top right gadget? --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 21:33, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
@Tyw7: You can turn off the gadget and use the version at User:Ahecht/Scripts/UTCLiveClock instead. Just add the following to Special:MyPage/common.js (for just English Wikipedia) or meta:Special:MyPage/global.js (for all wikimedia websites):
liveClockTZ = -4;
mw.loader.load( "//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ahecht/Scripts/UTCLiveClock.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript" ); // Linkback: [[User:Ahecht/Scripts/UTCLiveClock.js]]
Replace -4 with your time zone, or remove the liveClockTZ line altogether to use UTC. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. That worked. Pitty that this isn't baked into the gadget version. --Tyw7 (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 22:05, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata notifications

I am getting notifications when somebody links a category I created with Wikidata - despite it being unticked in my 'Preferences'. Any help please? GiantSnowman 08:31, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Just to make sure you are not thinking of the watchlist preference, are you saying "Connection with Wikidata" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo is unticked under "Web" but you still get notifications like "The page ‪Category:... was connected to the Wikidata item ..." at Special:Notifications? I have it ticked but when I unticked it now, the existing notifications were no later displayed. However, I haven't tried that it was unticked at the time a new connection at Wikidata was made. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:17, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
That's what was unticked - I've ticked it and unticked it and the existing notifications have vanished...many thanks! GiantSnowman 09:24, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

BUG: Language templates can't support multi-paragraph usage...

See: Template_talk:Lang#BUG:_Current_template/Module_does_not_support_multi-paragraph_usage....

This is somewhat dissapointing. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:51, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Slightly problematic issue for Twinkle

Hello everybody, I am Dr. Sroy have a slight problem regarding the use of Twinkle.

The problem is , whenever I copy a text and if gets merged , giving repeated first word upon spaced.

I copy and paste "Foo", copy "Bar" and paste it after "Foo" so it says "FooBar", place the cursor between "Foo" and "Bar" (without marking any text), and type a space, which changes "FooBar" to "FooFoo".[its genuine since it just happened here only ].

More examples:

Original Mistake Result
John Doe JohnDoe JohnJohn
Twinkle edit Twinkleedit Twinkle edit (not happened in this case)
Roosmarijn van der Hoek RoosmarijnvanderHoek RoosmarijnRoosmarijn ("van der Hoek" vanished)

Its weird! ARKA (talk) 14:09, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

@Pipetricker: what do you think?ARKA (talk) 14:16, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't know anything about Twinkle since I don't use it. Does it have text replacement that could misfire? Maybe it's not Twinkle, but your web browser that is causing it? (Which browser do you use?)
For someone to figure it out, you may need to clarify exactly what you copy, paste, or type, and in what order. Write something like this (just an example):
I copy and paste "Foo", copy "Bar" and paste it after "Foo" so it says "FooBar", place the cursor between "Foo" and "Bar" (without marking any text), and type a space, which changes "FooBar" to "FooFoo".
--Pipetricker (talk) 16:40, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Dr. Sroy updated the description by copying my example description exactly – So you are saying I understood your original description exactly right? --Pipetricker (talk) 18:36, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Where are you entering the text? In a Twinkle dialogue box? In the source editor? In the visual editor? What device are you using, and what browser? This sounds like the sort of doubledouble error that can frequently occur with keyboard software on mobile devices that is trying to do autocorrect. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:27, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Has this been reported at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle? RJFJR (talk) 18:47, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

@Pipetricker:Yes that's what I tried to mean...(sorry I was in hurry so I couldn't make a good description)
@Ahecht:To answer to your question, I edit the source code, although I don't know what it's called. It's like the one which one would get on clicking the "edit source" link on the desktop version upon enabling Twinkle. I'm currently using Android 7.0 running on amigo os 4.0(S6s release) and Chrome version 66.0.3359.158.
To say of autocorrect , it runs fairly well but as you stated "doubledouble" edit is frequent. However in this case, it is more weird. Suppose I'm willing to type "thankful" but typed "thankg" and my autocorrect bar upon the keyboard shows "thankful" and on clicking it returns "thankgth".ARKA (talk) 05:29, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't fully understand what the issue is, but I'm fairly confident it isn't Twinkle — MusikAnimal talk 05:38, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Is it then the problem with me only?
As I stated that this isn't a big problem, easily correctable (irritating although) , thus no one yet have reported it!Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 05:50, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@Dr. Sroy: If it is affecting text you edit in the edit window, it has nothing to do with Twinkle. The problem lies with whatever keyboard software you are using. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:33, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

This is my new signature:Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk)
Sorry for earlier confusion , I changed it according to the Wikipedia policies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr. Sroy (talk • contribs) 05:36, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Remex: Pages that used to look fine are now broken

A new parsing tool called Remex is now cleaning up the HTML output for a webpage. It may cause some pages to display in undesirable ways. Be patient while we work out the kinks, and feel free to report problems in a new subsection here:

HTML formatting issues in archived talk pages

I don't know if this has anything to do with Linter, Tidy, or Remex, but I have only begun noticing this since these changes were implemented. Specifically, I have recently been encountering what appears to be HTML errors in talk page archives, usually having to do with unclosed tags that cause the rest of the page to be formatted with that HTML markup. For example, I just came across this: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive962#Edit-warring at AIV (permanent link). Unless this is a problem on my end, the rest of the page from that point on is stricken due to <s>added<s> lacking a slash in the closing tag. It appears that the unclosed tag HTML error was added and never fixed (even though a bolding issue was noticed and fixed in the very next edit) before being archived, but the fact that nobody fixed it despite being live for days before archival suggests to me that the endless strikethrough formatting was not rendering at that time. Now it is, though.

This is not the only incident. I have seen similar formatting issues in other archived talk pages, but only recently, such as signature formatting being applied to the rest of the page due to the absence of closing HTML tags. I do not have links to those other particular incidents, since they are rare and I initially did not think much of them. I am beginning to wonder if there might be a connection here, though, since I have been perusing archived talk pages for years and do not recall once ever encountering such issues until the past month.

Might this have anything to do with the new parsing changes? Maybe this is related to mw:Help:Extension:Linter/multiple-unclosed-formatting-tags? Or is this old news and I have only just recently been encountering it?

Lastly, I recently fixed missing closing tags at Wikipedia talk:Courtesy vanishing. I don't know if this is at all related, either. Given how it was clearly causing rendering issues for the entire page after those closing tags were removed in August 2012 during improper signature refactoring by the user subsequent to their post being autosigned in previous edit, I find it difficult to believe that it has gone unnoticed for nearly six years by 38 users over 76 edits. But who knows, maybe it was and this is just all coincidence. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 05:53, 15 July 2018 (UTC); revised 08:18, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

@Nøkkenbuer: Yes, this is because of Remex. I've run into these formatting problems at least once. I don't know if there's any plan to fix them right now (you could ask at WT:Linter or WP:BOTREQ), but errors in articles have been given higher priority than old signatures. Jc86035 (talk) 06:54, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for the information and confirmation, Jc86035. Should I, or any other editor, manually fix these formatting errors in talk page archives whenever we encounter them? Or should they remain untouched? I understand that talk page archives are almost never edited outside of occasional bot edits, categorization, and manual archival, so I assume a hard no. That is why I have not attempted to fix any of these errors. Assuming we should not, is it worthwhile to report instances here or somewhere? Or would that not be useful information? Any further instruction on this matter is appreciated. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 07:10, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
@Nøkkenbuer: I don't know and I can't tell you what to do, but I think that if it's fixable by a bot (i.e. stuff like <s>…<s> → <s>…</s>), it's probably not worth your time. There are thousands upon thousands of them in any case. Jc86035 (talk) 07:16, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I suppose so, especially since this may just become routine cleanup work for some near-future bots, anyway. If anyone reading this has any input, please give it. Until further notice, I'll just ignore these errors. Actually, what is stated at Wikipedia:Linter § How you can help (permanent link) basically answers my questions. I may not actively seek them out, but I might as well manually fix them whenever they are encountered. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 07:35, 15 July 2018 (UTC); revised 07:48, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I would advise against changing archives unless you feel like a glutton for punishment and time wasting, unless you're trying to read something and the styles are causing the text to be difficult to read or are unintelligible. Active talk pages, it might be valuable to clean up. Maybe someone can put together a query for talk pages (any talk pages or those with new section edit link magic word outside mainspace) with errors which do not have "archive" and a / in the page name. --Izno (talk) 23:41, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
I have fixed the WP:VPT archives numbered higher than 145 insofar as fixing the few unclosed <code> tags and similar that were most strikingly affecting readability. The pages still have plenty of other lint errors. --Pipetricker (talk) 10:25, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Scroll down to the bottom of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive831 [revision 647943457]. Impressive, is it not?
Now take a look at these edits I just made by opening the before and after versions and scrolling to the bottom of each.
[37][38][39][40][41][42][43]
It appears that things like font colors and underlines that used to stop at the end of the comment now get applied to the entire page. It is also clear that there are far too many of these for me to fix them all by hand.
Suggestions? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:08, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
As with here, unless you believe that fixing them is actually necessary to understand what is said, I wouldn't. --Izno (talk) 03:39, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I just did a search of archived ANI pages, and found them to be nearly unusable.
How about this: Turn off the tool that is breaking pages and create a tool to revert the damage it has caused already. Much better than breaking pages and telling people to live with it. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
OK, maybe that was a bit harsh, but there is an attitude around Wikipedia of putting up with minor annoyances and glitches rather than making the software excellent.
As of Monday, 30 December 2024, 19:36 (UTC), The English Wikipedia has 48,480,334 registered users, 116,969 active editors, and 847 administrators. Together we have made 1,261,490,642 edits, created 62,163,209 pages of all kinds and created 6,932,376 articles.
If we made a tiny improvement to our software that reduced the time to create a page (the total time, including every edit ever made to that page, every talk page comment, and all the time spent by multiple users checking the page for errors over its lifetime) by a single second, that would be the equivalent of a single person working 40 hours a week for six and a half years.
As of the 2016-2017 fiscal year we had $91.3 million USD in revenue, $69.1 million USD in expenses, and $113.30 million USD in assets.[44] So we could easily afford to hire a few top-notch software developers to make obvious improvements to our software.
Given the above numbers, in my considered opinion we should not put up with minor annoyances in our software. We should hire someone to fix them. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:14, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
@Guy Macon: Turn off the tool that is breaking pages and create a tool to revert the damage it has caused already - you have it backwards. There was a tool that was unbreaking pages, it was called HTML Tidy, and it has been turned off. We were warned that this would happen, well over a year ago. We have had plenty of time to fix things up, but there were hundreds of thousands of pages with problems, and people have naturally been looking at our most visible pages - the articles, and templates used in articles. Discussion pages are lower priority, and archives of discussion pages are at the bottom of the list.
It is also clear that there are far too many of these for me to fix them all by hand. You could send in a bot for the easiest cases. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:14, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Dit HTLM tidy fix every page as it was displayed? Because I am 99% sure that the ANI archives were readable before and that they have not been edited since I last successfully searched them. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:37, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Pretty much, yeah. Most of it is down to sloppy editing: people using HTML tags to start some effect (such as <tt> or <code> for a monospaced font) without then using the appropriate closing tag (in this case, </tt> or </code>) to stop it again. HTML Tidy swept those problems under the carpet - now it's been turned off, the carpet has been rolled up and suddenly we see what a heap of junk we've been ignoring for years. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:17, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
HTML Tidy was based on HTML4 standards (from 10+ years ago), trying to guess what major web browsers would do with invalid markup, and was making some additional changes that broke valid markup when combined with some newer CSS features. It was replaced by a tool called RemexHtml which unbreaks markup as specified in the newer HTML5 standard, following the rules in that standard for handling invalid markup. The new unbreaking differs from the old unbreaking in some ways, notably here in the treatment of unclosed inline tags inside block-level markup. Anomie⚔ 11:28, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Section break for continuing bot-centered linting discussion

If I understand correctly this happens after the Wikimarkup is turned into HTML. So (and please correct me if I am wrong) it appears that the answer would be to put in a request for a bot to fix or at least identify these unclosed tags, right? --Guy Macon (talk) 12:31, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: we have a few bots that work on these types of errors, but getting a blanket Linter cleanup approval is going to be challenging (I gave up) - but if someone wants to start something more targeted like the high priority Special:LintErrors/multiple-unclosed-formatting-tags - go ahead and start a WP:BRFA. — xaosflux Talk 13:30, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
It wasn't possible to fix them by BOT before the changes were made due to WP:COSMETICBOT, so the updates to the talk pages all have to be done post remex deployment. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:05, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Excuse me, but that's a warped interpretation of COSMETICBOT which should have been overridden by WP:IAR. If any bot requests for approval were denied for this reason, we should go back to the bot operator and plead with them to deploy their bot now, ASAP. wbm1058 (talk) 23:22, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Which particularly flies in the fact that WP:COSMETICBOT states black on white "Changes that are typically considered substantive [...] such as [...] egregiously invalid HTML such as unclosed tags, even if it does not affect browsers' display or is fixed before output by RemexHtml (e.g. changing <sup>...</sub> to <sup>...</sup>)" (note: 'RemexHtml' was 'HTML Tidy' before the update). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:07, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I became aware of this issue when it was pointed out to me at Template talk:Requested move on 29 October 2017. These were a lot harder to fix before because you couldn't actually see the problem on the displayed page. Now, the problem is blatantly obvious and easy to fix. I'd put a high priority on fixing strikethroughs in talk and talk archives because this change actually changes what the editors intended. We now have hundreds (thousands) of comments that have been struck through, when the editor intended to do no such thing. Anomalocaris has been quietly and steadily working on fixing these for months now. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:57, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

wbm1058: Thank you for drawing me into this discussion. I am not the only one working on lint errors. I intentionally stopped fixing Self-closed tags, at least most of the time, and I noticed other editors fixing those, including L293D, Xaosflux, and Tholme. I know about these three because I was tracking self-closed tags for a few days to see who my comrades are, and I'm sure there are others. I agree that it would be a good idea to automate de-linting as much as possible. Some lint errors are more amenable to automation than others. Tidy bug affecting font tags wrapping links, Bogus file options, and Multi colon escape are usually trivial, except when they are the result of some weird interaction of templates or scripts. Obsolete <font> can be automated, but there are numerous subtleties, including hexadecimal colors of lengths other than 3 or 6 digits, hexadecimal colors lacking pound sign, named colors not listed at Web colors, missing quotation marks, and font sizes other than integers 1 to 6. Multiline table in list requires case-by-case judgment, because sometimes it's best to fix *{{commonscat|Foo}} by removing the asterisk and sometimes by using the inline version of the template. Table tag that should be deleted and Fostered content are sometimes trivial and sometimes inscrutable, and I doubt either can be automated in the general case. WP:COSMETICBOT should never have been a reason not to deploy bots that fix unclosed tags; long before Tidy was replaced with Remex it said right there that it is OK for bots to make substantive changes including
  • egregiously invalid HTML such as unclosed tags, even if it doesn't affect browsers' display or is fixed before output by HTML Tidy (e.g. changing <sup>...</sub> to <sup>...</sup>)
Now that Remex has been deployed, lint errors such as self-closed tags are sometimes dramatically affecting display, and I believe they should be expunged from every page in every namespace throughout Wikipedia. In those cases where a lint error needs to remain because, for example, a user asks, "Why is the display messed up when I do ___?", if the lint error leaks out of an individual discussion, it should still be closed off by the end of the discussion.
Of course, any automated lint error fixing should be done with great care, testing, and oversight. I don't use watchlist, so I am annoyed by people who are annoyed by "watchlists that light up", but this is a community and we're all volunteers, so we have to do our best to avoid annoying watchlist watchers, and if there are special bot accounts that are, or can be, ignored by watchlists, let's deploy the bots on those. —Anomalocaris (talk) 01:29, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Yup, if you look at ten-year old RfAs, you'll see that many are screwed up by incorrect <font>...</font> tags and from that error on, the whole text is messed up. I would definitely support a bot for this. L293D (☎ • ✎) 03:16, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
@L293D: Given the issues with getting a blanket fixer bot approved, I have been trying to set up a bot to make targeted fixes to some widespread signatures. I have a BRFA in progress for a first batch of pages at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Ahechtbot, and I have been collecting a list for a second BRFA at User:Ahechtbot#Task 2. However, nothing moves fast with BRFA's, and the trial process has been a bit arduous so far (since each specific RegEx needs to be demonstrated). The BRFA is on hold until the end of the week, and since I won't have internet access next week it will probably be mid-August before Task 1 gets run and I can start getting approval for Task 2. The advantage of a bot is that it can make bot-flagged edits that can easily be filtered from watchlists. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:18, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Great. It would be nice if you could fix lint errors in RfAs too as many are hardly readable. L293D (☎ • ✎) 21:06, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
The bot will look at RfA pages. If you have a specific signature that is affecting multiple RfAs, feel free to drop a message on my talk page and I'll add it to Task 2. I already have tellyaddict and KoshVorlon on the list to fix in the first round (they showed up in several RfAs). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:24, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Ahecht, how are you building your lists for AWB? I think I can do some with semi-automated mode at a fairly decent clip (I find applying for permission to do them in automated mode to be too much bother) but getting them imported from the Special Page is a bother. I can cutpaste from that list to a text file on my computer and then import that text file into AWB, but was wondering whether there was a way to do it faster. wbm1058 (talk) 20:46, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: Since I've been targeting specific signatures, I've been trolling through Special:LintErrors to find easy targets, using the API to do an insource search to find all instances of those signatures, doing some regex work on the xml output of the API to slim it down to just a list of page names, and pasting that into AWB. I'm sure there's a more elegant way of doing it. I did about 1,500 semi-automated edits in July on this task before I reached the point where I felt it was inappropriate to continue without a BRFA due to the volume of pages and the large number of user talk pages that are included. Due to user talk edits generating notifications and emails if done without the bot flag, I would recommend not doing those semi-automated. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:38, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
My focus at the moment is strike thru text in Wikipedia talk. That you need to do regex work on the xml output and then cutpaste just shows how much of an Edsel they gave us with that Special Page. The switch-over shouldn't have been done without giving us better tools for repairing the damage. The Special Page is totally oriented to supporting manual repairs, in the expectation that hundreds of gnomes would do the work. We don't have that many gnomes! wbm1058 (talk) 21:55, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Long ago (January 2017), when this Remex change process was just getting started, I suggested that hidden error categories would be the best way to give gnomes and bots the ability to fix problems easily and comprehensively. CheckWiki does not operate on all namespaces, and insource searches are not reliable enough to find complex regular expressions (see T106685). That suggestion to use error categories was not heeded at that time, and we ended up with the very clunky Special:Linter pages (and hundreds of thousands of errors at the time of the Remex switchover). Perhaps error categories can still be implemented. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:47, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I think the real solution is to modify AWB so that it returns more than 1000 results when you do a text search (with no way to get the next 1000). Of course, it will still be limited by CirrusSearch's 10,000 result limit, but it would make my job a lot easier. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:16, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I didn't see it mentioned in this discussion, but Linter provides an API to get all lint errors with. My understanding is that tools like WP:WPCleaner already support this. The underlying MySQL database table is also available on Toolforge/Quarry if you want to query it directly. The special pages really aren't intended for this kind of bot/mass cleanup work, they're for humans. Please let me know if there's anything else we can do to help on the Linter side of things to make it easier to use. HTH, Legoktm (talk) 17:23, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I see: Wikipedia:WPCleaner/Linter and mw:Help:Extension:Linter. A bit of a learning curve here. This would be something right up the alley of the "check wiki" folks. Too bad some of the most active of them have been run off the project over "cosmetic bot" issues, so they're not here when we need them. wbm1058 (talk) 17:58, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I recall trying to use WPCleaner before, and finding it to be something of a tease. It looks like this powerful, sophisticated tool that you can do lots of stuff with, but after futzing with it for a while, I can never quite figure out how to do anything useful with it. I figured out how to make a list of the 724 pages that have multiple unclosed formatting tags in Wikipedia talk namespace, but how to "analyze" the pages for that problem or "automatically" fix them remains a puzzle for me. I haven't figured out how to make that list of 724 pages using AWB, where I have a simple regex that fixes most of them – the ones with unclosed strikethrough, that is – (and the ones that my regex doesn't do right I can fix manually). So maybe I can download my WPCleaner list, since it wouldn't copy-paste, and then upload that to AWB. But no, the WPCleaner list I downloaded isn't a simple list but one that's formatted as a linked-wikitext bullet list. So I need to strip that list down to a simple list using a find and replace. Sigh. It would be nice if the Lint errors: Multiple unclosed formatting tags list could be further broken down to separate the ones that are strikethru, the ones that are font, the ones that are small, etc. so I could focus on fixing one type at a time. wbm1058 (talk) 18:59, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Hey, AWB is smart enough to read the list that WPCleaner downloaded! Pleasant surprise, I didn't need to edit it to strip the wikitext. I'll see how well I can run with it in AWB; it should just skip past the ones that don't have unclosed strike-through. wbm1058 (talk) 19:20, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
It would be nice if the Lint errors: Multiple unclosed formatting tags list could be further broken down to separate the ones that are strikethru, the ones that are font, the ones that are small, etc. so I could focus on fixing one type at a time. Yes, since now I have to filter through false-positives that would have been filtered for me if the types were broken into separate categories... or make my regex smarter so it doesn't make false positive matches on nested strike-though... not sure how you double-strike through, but sometimes I think a word or two is first struck, then later the whole statement including that is struck... but greedy regex matching or whatever. It's a pain because this regex can get complicated to catch all the exceptions. wbm1058 (talk) 19:34, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
The API gives the type of the error. Noting I have a bot at BRFA to fix multiple unclosed formatting tags, that shouldn't have false positives, because it uses the API output from Linter of the location of the error to not run the replacement on the whole page.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:44, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I see (after clicking the "make request" button), thanks. That request to return just ten items took over eight seconds, so this seems pretty resource-intensive. So this isn't really something AWB, nor WPCleaner probably, are optimal for. You really need something that's using the API. Leaving it in your capable hands, and getting back to my regularly scheduled tasks... wbm1058 (talk) 20:23, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't think it is that resource-intensive; getting 500 items takes just a second for me (try this). But yeah, it is quite easy if you have something using the API and all its output Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:32, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Keeping the migration tool

A month ago, SSastry (WMF) recommended keeping the parser migration extension and preview functional for a month or so. Looks like it will be useful for a longer time than that. Is there any reason or plan not to keep it much longer? --Pipetricker (talk) 13:48, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

No worries, we have no immediate plans of removing it. But, yes we don't want to leave Tidy behind indefinitely. In any case, we'll provide clear notice when we plan to disable this. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 16:34, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Template:Columns-start, Template:Column, and Template:Columns-end are not working

I just went to an article using these templates (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (season 4)#Cast and the cast list is not in columns as intended. I check the history of {{Columns-start}}, {{Column}} and {{Columns-end}}, and no editor has changed anything on any of them recently. I'm not sure what else could have changed, so I wanted to see if anyone else knew what could be wrong? - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:15, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

fixed, see MediaWiki_talk:Common.css#Template:Columns_to_template_styles, apparently this template was not known to use that css and thus was missed when moving that piece of css out of common.css (courtesy ping xaosflux who did the move) Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:30, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@Galobtter: Awesome, thanks! - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:41, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Galobtter, I noted the dependency on the additional templates. — xaosflux Talk 16:44, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@Galobtter and Xaosflux: I think I've noticed the same issue with {{Col-float}}. I tried fixing it as Galobtter did with my original templates in question, but I don't know if I put the code in the correct place. Could either of you double check for me? Thanks. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 01:10, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Actually, the issue I saw was on this version of List of Black Panther box office achievements#Worldwide, but then I seemed to fix what I saw as an issue with this edit, so maybe the common.css was not an issue at the template? Regardless, a double check would be great. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 01:12, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
It actually doesn't matter where you put that code :) because it applies styling to the whole page. But anyhow, it is not necessary; that template doesn't need that css. It works after I've removed it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 05:03, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Okay great! Thanks for checking it. In the end, it was just a size issue on the article, not the whole template misbehaving :) - Favre1fan93 (talk) 15:13, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Multicolumn TOCs?

I've just been struck by how certain pages have absolutely massive TOCs (e.g. over 400 entries in Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4). Is there a way to have a multicolumn TOC, similar to how we have multicolumn reflists? I'm thinking of a simple {{Multicol TOC|20em|collapsed}} giving something like

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

I created Template:Multicolumn TOC, added it to vital articles level 4. Uses template styles, so it styles the already collapsed TOC. Currently supports widths of 20em, 25em, and 30em, as one needs a separate css page for each width.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:28, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Also now supports changing the font-size Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:45, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Please don't support fixed columns or font size changes. One is quite deprecated everywhere on Wikipedia and the other isn't necessary or preferred (accessibility). --Izno (talk) 11:55, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
The columns aren't fixed: |columns= just sets the max number of columns as column-width is set at the same time too. Font-size I may removed, just initially added it since that was in headbomb's example.. Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:59, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
@Galobtter: Vital/4 is still very much a single column TOC. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:12, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Interesting. No idea why that would be, shows four columns for me (screen 1368x768). Try going to this see if it has multiple columns Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:18, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I see three columns on my 10 inch tablet. I like it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:49, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I however, still don't see columns. :) It shouldn't matter that I'm using Timeless, I don't think... --Izno (talk) 15:05, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Works for me with Timeless, though only two columns show up for me, as Timeless does seem to rather reduce the horizontal space available for the page...may not be enough space for two columns on your screen Galobtter (pingó mió) 17:56, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm using monobook on desktop FWIW. Using the "safe" link still shows 1 column. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:51, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Oh, it probably has to do with your browser - are you using Firefox? I think it should work if you're using the latest firefox though (see phab:T162379) Galobtter (pingó mió) 19:20, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I am using the latest version of Firefox. No dice. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:59, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Latest Firefox 61.0.1. Only one column and appears to be a box within a box, with two "Contents" headings and two show/hide links. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:44, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
That box within a box is from {{TOC hidden}}. Probably has to do with not having the vendor prefixes as in that phab; mainly this is above my limited css knowledge :) Galobtter (pingó mió) 03:19, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

This still doesn't work, btw. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:27, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

A page listing newly expired blocks

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T201281

Is it possible to create a Special:RecentBlockExpiration page listing all the blocks that have recently expired? It would be useful to check back on problematic users, IPs and IP ranges, to see if their editing behavior is still disruptive. It would help to alert us when a long-term block expires. It would not be necessary to show blocks that were removed by administrator action. Each entry should include a link to the contributions of the user, IP or range. Binksternet (talk) 04:34, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

It is possible though not sure how useful it can be. Whether recently unblocked automatically (read: expired block) or not, if you do something worthy of block you'll surely be noticed. You can make request for a new Special Page in Phabricator. –Ammarpad (talk) 19:18, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
I would find this useful when it comes to renewing {{webhostblock}}s and similar. MER-C 19:55, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Utilis Coquinario not being indexed by Google?

Utilis Coquinario (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article, moved to mainspace ~5 days back isn't found on a Google (or Bing) search even with the search-space restricted to en.wikipedia.org. Looking at the article history, it is possible that it was moved from Draft space to Mainspace without following the proper process, and that is the cause for it not getting indexed by search-engines. Can someone, who knows for the particular noindex category/parameter to look for, check if that is the case or if there is another explanation? Abecedare (talk) 03:36, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Unreviewed new articles are not indexed. This is the case here. — JJMC89 (T·C) 04:15, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. That explains it. Abecedare (talk) 04:46, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

How do I mark an edit as minor on mobile?

I can't find the button/checkbox to mark an edit as minor when using the editor on the mobile website. Where is it? – numbermaniac 04:09, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

@Numbermaniac: I too had the same problem , but I switched to the desktop site and enabled Twinkle earlier this July. I think this is a better way out. Thanks,ARKA (talk) 05:06, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@Numbermaniac and Dr. Sroy: I noticed that, too. I think that whoever made that user interface assumed that no one would make a major edit on a cell phone and, since mobile edits get marked as such, there was no need to differentiate the major/minor nature of the edit. I would be curious to see if my theory is true or not. —Geekdiva (talk) 02:22, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
This is phab:T123694. --Izno (talk) 13:22, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-32

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • The MediaWiki version that was released two weeks ago was late to some Wikimedia wikis. This was because of bugs. It was on all wikis 30 July. [46][47]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 August. It will be on all wikis from 9 August.

Meetings

  • Recurrent item You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 7 August at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

19:39, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist bug - bot edits filter

The new watchlist filter for "human (not bot)" edits does not filter out bot edits, and/or bot edits are not flagged as bot edits (i.e. with a b in the classic watchlist). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:07, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm. This sounds awfully familiar. I recommend looking at the thread a few sections above. -- Scjessey (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Heh, you're right, I was on Recent Changes, not watchlist. I'll check that thread. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:27, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Behavior of more button

Hello, I suspected that when we click on more button (in top bar near edit source) and click anything in there (i.e. any installed script like AFCH) it doesn't automatically collapse back (like Twinkie do). To collapse it I have to click again on more button and then click anywhere on page.

Is this a bug or the thing works in that way, if it works that way then can we make it auto collapse? ‐‐1997kB (talk) 15:09, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

I believe this is by design, so that you aren't required to hover over the button if your client doesn't support hovering (for example, a mobile browser). Enterprisey (talk!) 14:47, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
Well I am thinking that more button should auto collapse like Twinkle and I think Twinkle doesn't open by just hovering, we have to click on TW to open it. ‐‐1997kB (talk) 13:45, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
They all open by mouseover for me (More, Page, and TW). Natureium (talk) 14:58, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Bot edits not hidden in RecentChanges

I have noticed that quite a lot of bot edits are showing up on Special:RecentChanges when the results are set to hide such edits. I have no idea how long this problem has manifested. Did something change that broke the "hide bots" functionality? -- Scjessey (talk) 21:00, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

@Scjessey: can you please provide some recent Diff's of these edits? — xaosflux Talk 22:38, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
I notice RonBot (talk · contribs) in the logs a lot. Ronhjones (talk · contribs), any reason why RonBot isn't using the botflag? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:55, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@Headbomb: can you point out a specific Diff? — xaosflux Talk 23:19, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
Special:Diff/853457833 this for example? — xaosflux Talk 23:21, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
I've no idea. Have I missed something in the code? Could it be that I've enabled 2FA for this account (as it's an admin), and I use a bot password of the form
  • username='RonBot'
  • password='Me@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Ronhjones  (Talk) 23:43, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
User:RonBot does have the bot flag. Ronhjones  (Talk) 23:49, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
@Ronhjones: the account is a member of the "bot group" that grants it the "bot permission", with this permission you can declare the bot flag on your edits, if you do not it will not flag the edits as "bot" when editing via the API. — xaosflux Talk 00:28, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
It was the 2FA that did it - I just used any old prefix (Me) - it needs RonBot as the password prefix.
  • username='RonBot'
  • password='RonBot@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
and run tasks 4 and 1 little early (16 edits) - nothing in the log. Looks like that was the problem. Ronhjones  (Talk) 00:33, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

It certainly seems like that did the trick. This morning, I am not seeing any bots in Special:RecentChanges. I'll check again a bit later. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:09, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

@Scjessey: Next run is Task 3 at 17:00 UTC - I will check the log when it runs - it normally edits about 150 pages. Ronhjones  (Talk) 15:35, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
@Ronhjones: Thank you. I should just clarify that when I raised this issue yesterday, RonBot was not the only offender. AnomieBOT and others were also present when bots were meant to be hidden. -- Scjessey (talk) 16:54, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
@Scjessey: can you provide a specific recent diff? — xaosflux Talk 17:04, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Well right now in the RC logs, I see CommunityTech bot [48], SQL bot [49], ClueBot NG [50], DatBot [51], and AnomieBot [52]/[53]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:09, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Going to ping their maintainers @Anomie, SQL, Cobi, Crispy1989, Rich Smith, and DatGuy:. Keep in mind that some of those edits might be unflagged on purpose. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:13, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Also @NKohli (WMF), MusikAnimal (WMF), MaxSem (WMF), and MaxSem: for CommunityTech bot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:15, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
It seems to come and go. Maybe something more major has changed. Not surprised DatBot is there, similar calls to writing pages using Python "wikitools" page.page(). Ronhjones  (Talk) 17:23, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
@Headbomb: I suspect that the blank line removal in this edit will have caused the notifications to fail. Please check your alerts to see if they went through. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:34, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Your ping went through. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:36, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
I know... but did yours? The thing is, for a notification to work, the user name links must be in a newly added line, but the diff that I linked reads as if they were added within an existing post. Botifications don't trigger in such cases. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:46, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
It indeed did not ping me. Dat GuyTalkContribs 21:29, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: You keep asking me that, but I honestly have no idea how to create diffs of the RecentChanges log, which is where I noticed the issue. And like I said, I'm not currently seeing any bots anyway. -- Scjessey (talk) 17:50, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

Presumably you are at Special:RecentChanges. Each row begins with two links in parenthesis: "(diff | hist)". Right-click on the first of these, and you should get a pop-up menu (which will vary between browsers). One of the options should be something like "Copy link address" or "Copy link location". Select that: the diff link is now in your clipboard and may be pasted into an edit window. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:10, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
I think I have found a solution (for me - some test edits did not come up after I changed a line in the python code - I had to read through the wikitools source to see where and how to add the bot bit.). I'll add my solution here in case others are using the same type of code call - I know DatGuy does it this way (well he did write RonBot1 in the first place!)
(Where pagepage = page.Page(site, pagetitle))
  • Old line - pagepage.edit(text=pagetext, summary="(Task 7)"
  • New line - pagepage.edit(text=pagetext, bot=True, summary="(Task 7)"
Hope that helps someone else. I'll now change all 7 bot codes. Ronhjones  (Talk) 18:17, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of adding some guidance to WP:RC so future issues can be dealt with more easily. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:51, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
@Headbomb: - I don't know why I didn't get your ping. SQLBot operates unflagged on purpose. SQLQuery me! 18:57, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
  • In general in mainspace: anti-vandalism bots don't use the "bot flag"; other bots that make reports/send warnings/etc normally don't use the "bot flag" as well so that people watching for new reports will easily know the reports are ready, basically if the edit is something that people may be waiting for. For bots doing minor repetitive maintenance like categorizing articles, processing xfd's, and the like do use the bot flag as most editors would not need to check after those edits. Some of the bots mentioned above shouldn't be using the flag, some (like RonBot's task already resolved above) should be. — xaosflux Talk 19:22, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Oh, I see what you mean. I thought I was being asked for a diff of the page, not the individual offending bot edits. I had wrongly assumed it was a problem with Special:RecentChanges, rather than with the bots themselves. My bad. -- Scjessey (talk) 19:56, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

@Headbomb: - Maybe we need to add something at WP:CREATEBOT or similar page. This need to set the bot flag in the Api call is very lacking - I cannot find it anywhere. I see RonBot 7 is currently running, and not showing on the recent changes, with the altered code. Ronhjones  (Talk) 20:45, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Hi Headbomb, thanks for the ping! I'll update the popular pages bot function to use the bot flag for edits. The commons deletion notification posts don't use the bot flag intentionally, as was requested. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you

The Teamwork Barnstar
I just want to take a moment to thank everyone for maintaining professionalism in this conversation - this is a topic that has previously become contentious but this time everyone is working well together to identify and remediate actual problems, look for improvements, and explain intricacies that occur. — xaosflux Talk 20:00, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Feel free to take your copy home! — xaosflux Talk 20:00, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

"Sensitve templates" with Lint Errors...

Recently in response to an IRC discussion, I was asked to compile a partial list of templates that had Lint Errors which might be considered sensitive, as they deal with certian policy aspects of Wikipedia.

The (partial) list is here: User_talk:Alex_Shih#Sensitive_Templates_which_need_fixing/repairs_for_the_new_parser...,

It would be much appreciated if the admins and template editors that read this page could examine this list and repair the templates concerned.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:06, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

IP talk page blacklisted?

I came across promotional content at User talk:2600:1002:B00A:E4EB:F021:E054:2B2F:4C37/WikiProjectCards/WikiProject Medicine, and warned the user against advertising. I then tried to move the page to User talk:2600:1002:B00A:E4EB:F021:E054:2B2F:4C37, the correct location for their talk page, but received an error that User talk:2600:1002:B00A:E4EB:F021:E054:2B2F:4C37 is on the title blacklist. Considering this user had not edited until just now, something seems amiss here. Home Lander (talk) 21:12, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

The rule being triggered is 
.*\p{Lu}(\P{L}*\p{Lu}){9}.* <casesensitive | moveonly>  # Disallows moves with more than nine consecutive capital letters
You might want to bring it up at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist. Anomie⚔ 01:04, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Page has been moved. ~ GB fan 01:12, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Anomie and GB fan, will bring it up there. Home Lander (talk) 02:06, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Resending deletion page

Hi, earlier today I deleted Astroworld (album) to make way for a move, and to allow for a histmerge to take place. I then moved what was then known as Astroworld (Travis Scott album) to that title, and refreshed the tab I had used previous to delete the "(album)" page, only to realise that it had also deleted the newly-named main article. I believe this has to do with this pop-up as I clicked "resend", though I can't help but think that this shouldn't be possible by just refreshing the &action=delete page. Obviously I won't make the same mistake again (and it was only gone for about 15-30 seconds (10 of which were me realising I had deleted the article for one of the biggest hip-hop albums coming out this year)), but I'd like to hear some clarification on why this happens/happened. Cheers, Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:03, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

You explained why it happened. I don't think it's worth trying to build safeguards against this into MediaWiki. It's probably a rare incident (I haven't heard of it before) that will usually be fixed quickly like you did. If it could allow non-admins to delete pages then it would be serious but that isn't the case. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:14, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I thought actions like that required a nonce to be sent, like editing does. If that were the case, it shouldn't have been possible to replay the request like that. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 12:35, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Editing, deleting, and other actions require a token, but it can be used multiple times (unlike a nonce). The purpose of the token is to prevent CSRF attacks. To prevent accidental multiple submissions, MediaWiki should probably redirect the user back to the view page after performing the action (Post/Redirect/Get pattern). Note that this is already done in some cases – e.g. if you were to submit this form: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Matma_Rex/sandbox&action=protect you will be redirected to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matma_Rex/sandbox – but if you were to submit https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Matma_Rex/sandbox&action=delete, you will stay on the same URL (and so you can accidentally refresh it and delete it again). It would be helpful if you filed a Phabricator bug :) Matma Rex talk 20:16, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Article's first and second paragraph appear in reverse order in mobile view

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T201131

There is an issue with how the article Lord Byron displays in mobile view. For further information please see Talk:Lord Byron#Technical issue. Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 15:46, 5 August 2018 (UTC)

I fixed the symptom, but not the bug causing it. --Pipetricker (talk) 18:16, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
@Pipetricker: Kind of unrelated but why in mobile view the infobox is placed between the first and second paragraph? Hddty. (talk) 08:49, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
@Hddty.: Because WMF research showed that people need an introduction before the infobox. If you think about it, on desktop we also first have the lead paragraph and then the infobox. It's just that axis' sort of flip when we are on mobile. This effect is a bit hard to accomplish with purely styling however, so the mobile website does some serverside reordering. Its not ideal and I think eventually we should get rid of it, but how to do that might require the web to take a few more steps forward. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:09, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
@TheDJ: I agree with this. Also do you know that the infobox also placed like this in tablet computer, although in tablet the infobox placement similar to desktop? (if you are on desktop try switch to mobile view on desktop). Hddty. (talk) 04:14, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
I've found two more pages that show the bug: Bere Regis (tickled by an unmatched parenthesis) and Gordon Brown (tickled somehow by {{postnom}}). Hairy Dude (talk) 12:18, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Modern skin funky view on coordinates

On my system, this only applies to Modern skin, and just showed up. I tested the other skins, and they look like they normally do. Windows 10, happens on Firefox 61.0.2 and Chrome, but not The Edge browser. Firefox updated a couple of hours ago, but Chrome updates happen in the background, so I have no way of knowing when they last updated. Page coordinates that appear at the top margin of the page, now drop down a few notches to where they're either overlayed behind/in front of the article text, or they're too crowded on top of the infobox where one exists. This just now happened on my system. Is it possibly related to the Firefox update? — Maile (talk) 22:45, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Maile66 I'm fairly certain this is related to phab:T200148. I noticed the change earlier — basically, they fixed the issue of the notification menu (and autofill, if you have that gadget turned on) getting overlapped by the advanced toolbar or visual editor — but I've opened phab:T201663 as a more urgent fix. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:44, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. As of right now, it seems to be fixed. — Maile (talk) 10:57, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I put in a quick stopgap locally last night. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 12:20, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Enabling Twinkle on other-language Wikipedia

Hello everybody!

I'm Dr. Sroy , here asking for a help...

I'm interested in developing "small wikis" and currently working on the Tsonga wiki just technically (since I don't know the language).

To my knowledge, Twinkle works on a mediawiki code ... 

mw.loader.load(['ext.gadget.Twinkle'])

This is what I have written in my monobook.js there!

But I'm not getting any sign of Twinkle while editing. What to do? How to enable it?

Thanks in advance... ARKA (talk) 06:04, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

No one to help? ARKA (talk) 07:49, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
@Dr. Sroy: Twinkle doesn't appear to be installed on the Tsonga wiki. See Wikipedia:Twinkle/Localisation. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:10, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
Hello, Dr. Sroy. I believe that User:Sj did something similar for a small wiki, and I have tried to help out at the Haitian Creole Wikipedia, despite not speaking that language (or French, which would be very helpful there).
Are you sure that you want to do this? Between one thing and another, I've edited dozens of wikis, but I have never missed Twinkle at small wikis. It requires a lot of infrastructure and hassle to copy, translate, and maintain dozens of message templates. Small wikis usually do better with personal messages, limited bureaucratic processes, and few tools. They don't have – or want, or benefit from – three separate processes for deleting articles and further pages for deleting, merging, renaming, or redirecting other types of pages. The number of changes is so small, and the proportion of spammers and vandals is so low, that there really are few uses for Twinkle. Speaking for myself, the only template that I regularly want at a small template is Template:Thank you.
Since you seem technically minded, I'd like to suggest an alternative project that I think would ultimately be more productive. I think that your time would be better spent importing (use Special:Import; it's nearly impossible to do manually) the WP:CS1 citation templates and getting the mw:citoid service set up at that wiki. Ping me if you're interested in trying that out. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Thanks for your comments. Yes , like you , I also think importing pages seems to be best alternative! But since importing is limited to the admins and importers, its practically impossible for me to perform importing. The only admin User:Thuvack is very inactive and not responsive as well (I emailed him regarding my willingness last week; getting no response yet ). An inactive admin(and the only admin) might lead to the poor growth of any small wiki.
As you stated,
 ...and I have tried to help out at the Haitian Creole Wikipedia, despite not speaking that language (or French, which would be very helpful there).
I think we should maintain the language of a particular wiki . As in Tsonga wiki , English would work more than enough. But this hampers Wikipedia moto of "creating an encyclopedia of all human knowledge" gets deprived in that language.
As a possible solution, I requested there for admin rights. Here is the so-called RfA:
Extended content
Candidates for Admin Rights
Dr. Sroy
  • Hello everybody, I am Dr. Sroy, here nominating myself as a candidate for being granted the Adminship in this wiki.
  • ISSUES
    • I am not a native speaker of Xitsonga nor does understand the language. I have a native understanding of English and a native speaker of Bengali.
    • My joining to this wiki is not older than a month!
    • I am experienced on the English wiki and willing to develop this wiki technically. I am very much worried for the fact that this wiki being about 10 years old but have very little development!
    • Perhaps the reason is lack of proper interface and gadgets available. Only 15 active editors hang out in this wiki where the only native editor seems to be Thuvack. But he being the only administrator , might be overburdened with responsibility.
    • If I become another administrator or sysop , the first work that I want to do is importing MediaWiki files and modules from the English Wikipedia.
    • Being a technical helping hand, this might ease the work of Thuvack editing the mainspace articles. Importing the said files might unlock awesome tools like WP:Stiki and Twinkle.
    • Knowing that Thuvack can do the above purposes but if I am allowed to do so ,the work would be quite faster!
    • At last, I wish a great future of this wiki with a rapid growth in the near future!

Hopefully, Dr. Sroy (talk) 15:56, 2 Mhawuri 2018 (UTC)

... I can just hope ARKA (talk) 13:24, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
I think that you can ask for help with importing the citation templates at m:Steward requests/Miscellaneous. The instructions about how to make a request are at the top of the page. (I thought I'd read once that you need to be an admin at *both* wikis to be able to use Special:Import.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Ok checking it! Although being an admin there has lot more advantages. Thus I am still longing for it. Do you have any advice? Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 20:12, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
You may want both: someone (experienced) to import those templates, and local admin status to do other things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Hello all -- this is a nice thing to do. You can also ask for temporary adminship rather than permanent. Agreed that you should have someone w/ small-wiki import experience to do the templating. I never used Twinkle on small wikis; just did editing work by hand... there are other Small wiki monitoring tools you may find helpful.h – SJ + 20:42, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks all, for your kind support. I'm still missing Twinkle there especially when handling with long Lua modules. I have created a more/less edit friendly technical background with several templates and modules. I have also started article expansion but still require some native support as such there is no way to learn the language . Thuvack: Perhaps The only "active" native speaker has "not been active" since days! Thanks again!

Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 05:28, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

 Done I'm admin now! Following procedures, advised to me. Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 13:59, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Template parameter

I have a question regarding template parameters. If you wanted to assign two names for a parameter, for example if you wanted to call parameter “no” by “non” as well in a template, you’d go with {{{no|{{{non}}}}}} But what if parameter “no” had a value like this: {{{no|1}}} What should you do in this case? I tried {{{no|{{{non|1}}}}}} but it did not work.--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 13:06, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

@Épine: You didn't show or link your real test including the call and you have no recent edits. I guess you did something wrong or have a wrong expectation. Regarding {{{no|{{{non|1}}}}}}: If no is set then it produces the value of no, including to produce the empty string for an empty assignment |no=. If no is not set but non is set then it produces the value of non, including to produce empty for an empty |non=. If neither no nor non is set then it produces "1". I'm guessing your unspecified example had an emtpy assignment in the call and you expected to get "1" but got empty. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:12, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Possibility of editable-on-wiki status maps?

We have a lot of "status" maps, where different colored regions indicate transitory status information (example 1, example 2). Currently, when these maps need to be updated, a new image must be generated with off-wiki software and uploaded, greatly limiting the set of users that can maintain the maps.

I created a workaround on National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that allows that map to be updated on-wiki, but it relies on a large number of overlay images – one for each state in each color used. This method does not scale to maps with a large number of colors. Ideally, we could have only one overlay image for each state or region in a map, and change its color when it is called.

The CSS "filter" property seems to allow this, but I'm not able to get it to work in my sandbox. Is it possible, or could it be made possible, to use the filter property on images in Wikipedia? Any remaining browsers that don't support the feature could be presented with a single map image as is done now; that image would simply be less up-to-date, typically, than the overlay version.

I uncovered some related Phabricator tickets, but it's not clear to me what the status of the propert(y/ies) is:

Thanks! —swpbT go beyond 18:04, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

@Swpb: You are probably looking for things like this: mw:Extension:Graph/Demo#Vega_2.0_interactive_examples. It's not super easy, but definitely doable if you want to invest the time into it. Vega can be pretty powerful. You make a topojson map of the USA, store the data in commons shared tabular data or wikidata and then need to mash it up. Unfortunately this stuff seems like it is a bit 'too' powerful for people and not so many people seem to have taken the effort to really bust out a few graphs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:51, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, I will look into that. —swpbT go beyond 18:57, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Problems with the syntax highlighter (Codemirror)

See also: § Undo function no longer working in edit mode

Pasting text problem

I've had the same problem appear twice in recent days when copying and pasting text into an edit window. The last time (today) was at WP:ANI, but I can't remember where the first was. What happens is that I get an edit conflict, so I go back a page in my browser and copy the text I was trying to add from the edit window. I then visit the page afresh, navigate to and edit the relevant section, and try to paste in the text... but all it pastes is a single red bullet point. I've no idea whether the copy from the original edit window or the paste into the new edit window is the problem - I forgot to try pasting it elsewhere before going back and doing the whole thing again (successfully that time). Has anyone else had this problem? (Mac OSX 10.11.6, Firefox 61.0.1). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:49, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

Which mw:editor are you using? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
The plain default text editor. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:33, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
The plain one is not the default. ;-)
When you created your accout, the default was a gray-ish row of buttons, about a centimeter high and usually extending half or more of the way across the editing window (depending upon screen size, obviously). It is old and creaky and going to be removed, but it is preferred by WPMATH folks because it includes a sup and sub buttons at the main level. This is the 2006 wikitext editor. The current default is the 2010 wikitext editor, which is light blue and has nested menus (e.g., "Advanced"). The plain one is the 2003 editor, and it's the only option if you have Javascript disabled. It has no toolbar.
But none of those three should be causing problems with pasting. Do you have syntax highlighting turned on? (Otherwise, there shouldn't be anything red in a wikitext editor, right?) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Ah, I didn't know the word "plain" had a special meaning ;-) The editor I'm using appears to be the 2010 wikitext editor, and has a pale blue toolbar with "Advanced" etc. It does show syntax highlighting in colour, but the "Syntax highlighter: color wiki syntax in the edit box for clarity (works best in Firefox and works almost all of the time in Chrome and Opera)" option in Gadgets Preferences is disabled. I can't see any other preferences that might be relevant. I'm remembering enabling it at one time, maybe in Beta Preferences, but I can't see anything there now. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 18:47, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
BsZ, in the edit box toolbar, is there a little marker button, just next to the "Advanced" menu? Try toggling that. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:15, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Indeed there is, and yes, that toggles the syntax highlighting, thanks. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:26, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

There's a second copy and paste problem, which I've seen a few times though not recently, but it just happened this morning. It's when copying and pasting within the same editor window, and it happens with syntax highlighting switched on (I don't know if it happens with it switched off). I copy a piece of text, for example part of someone else's comment, and then I paste it into my new comment so I can reply to it. I then start typing - and my new words appear in two places, the original place I copied from and the new place I pasted to. There are two cursors and two text insertion positions. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:42, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

How do I turn off the new editing screen? / Is anyone else having insert point problems with chrome on Android? [WP only, other apps ok].

Since the new 'intelligent' editing screen came online, I'm experiencing really annoying system behaviour - but only with Chrome on Android tablet, it seems to work fine with Firefox on Windows: for example each time I want to change the insert point [e.g., to go back and revise something i wrote a few sentences ago] I have to dismiss the keyboard, select new insert point, reinvoke keyboard, make the change, rinse, repeat . Sometimes my editing appears ok but then preview shows it as not done or partially done (see Myanmar/Samoa at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Acre&diff=prev&oldid=852955780 for an example). Selecting a block of text with a view to cut/paste is at best hit-and-misd but usually miss. This experience is unique to Wikipedia, i don't see it with using chrome on any other site.
Has anyone else seen this and more importantly in the meantime how do I turn off this new "enhanced" editing screen. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:41, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: To turn it off, in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures, remove the checkmark next to "New wikitext mode", and then press the save button at the bottom of the page. You may also want to remove the checkmark next to "Automatically enable all new beta features" before saving.
I have issues editing in it with Firefox on Android mobile right now (though it doesn't look like I am having your issue), but I also get a message saying that platform isn't supported, so who knows. --Izno (talk) 20:53, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, @Izno:. Unfortunately that check-box was (and still is) clear - but my current editing screen looks exactly like the sample shown for "new wikitext mode", exactly as though it is active. I have checked it anyway and saved, no change; cleared it again and saved, still no change. ("Automatically enable" was and still is off). wibble wibble wibble. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:37, 2 August 2018 (UTC)
@John Maynard Friedman: Did you try WP:BYC? --Izno (talk) 01:19, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes, but no effect. Thank you anyway. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
John Maynard Friedman, do you have this symbol in the editing toolbar? If so, click it. --Pipetricker (talk) 08:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes! That has solved the problem!
So it seems there must be a Chrome/Android-specific bug with that syntax highlighting function. [Philosophically, it seems to me, previous selection of that function ought to be visible somewhere in user preferences, since it is persistent between sessions and across platforms]. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:11, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
@John Maynard Friedman: Can you, on your Android, with that same browser go to http://www.whatsmyua.info and report back the User agent string? That will help narrow down the range of broken browsers, and then maybe the syntax highlighting mode can be automatically disabled for those devices. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:59, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/67.0.3396.87 Safari/537.36

--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Jared Kushner is a 1RR page without notice on the Talk page

Does someone know why Jared Kushner does not provide notice on the Talk page that it is a 1RR page. Should the notice be posted there or was this an oversight? JohnWickTwo (talk) 01:45, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

@JohnWickTwo: It is mentioned on Template:2016 US Election AE which is displayed on the talk page. Home Lander (talk) 02:02, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for that, although the imbedded message seems to note an exception to 1RR in the "Further Information" tab at the bottom of that same notice box. Can the 1RR notice be put into a more prominent display announcement. JohnWickTwo (talk) 02:06, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
I moved Template:2016 US Election AE to the top; that's how it is on Talk:Donald Trump, probably good enough. The irony would be if someone reverts me. Home Lander (talk) 02:30, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Much better now. Nice of you to visit the page. JohnWickTwo (talk) 02:35, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Can't load pages on mobile

Today I repeatedly experienced a surprising inability to load pages on mobile, using a Samsung M400 feature phone with Netfront 4.2. Normal behavior: I run a Google search and click the Wikipedia article link in the results, and it loads within 30 seconds and allows me to read the page. [It's always worked like this, ever since I got the phone in 2012, and as recently as six days ago, the last time I tried to load an en:wp page.] Today, however, I couldn't load anything: I move the pointer over the link, it changes into the pointer that indicates a clickable link, I click the link, it momentarily gives its analogue to the hourglass cursor [so far, this is normal], and then it reverts to the clickable link pointer and does nothing. I've tried this several times today on pages ranging from Stralsund to Tucker Carriage House, and also simple:Stralsund (always clicking links from Google search results), and the result is always the same. It's not a bad connection: I got this result when standing next to the carriage house, which sits at the center of a metropolitan area of 2.2 million people. And I've been able to load non-WMF pages, e.g. this carriage house page and this page from the Stralsund city website: they're both a good deal more complicated than any of the wiki pages I tried to load. Nyttend (talk) 02:31, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

If I were to guess, it might have something to do with the work on the backside to use better encryption (namely, only forward-secret ciphers, as documented on Phabricator. --Izno (talk) 05:08, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Yup, a little way down the blog post links you to some research done about some user agents still using AES128. Netfront 4.2 is one of them. --Izno (talk) 05:13, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

GeoGroup broken again

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T199652
Map all coordinates using OpenStreetMap

Download coordinates as:

{{GeoGroup}} is partly broken once again. As in the past, this affects the Google portion, and the OpenStreetMap functionality is unimpaired. For example, given these coords (37°47′21″N 122°24′12″W / 37.78917°N 122.40333°W / 37.78917; -122.40333, WMF headquarters, and 37°47′21″N 122°27′12″W / 37.78917°N 122.45333°W / 37.78917; -122.45333, another site in the same city), click both options: you'll get a normal map in OSM, and immediately Google will give you a 404 error. Back when I first noticed this a couple of weeks ago, I tried Special:RecentChangesLinked for the template, and I found no recent edits; unless I've missed something, this seemingly means that Google's changed something and we need to comply. Nyttend (talk) 00:52, 11 August 2018 (UTC)

@Nyttend: looks like the wp-world tool is just simply down. Pings to maintainer: @Kolossos:. — xaosflux Talk 01:12, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Possibly phab:T199652. — xaosflux Talk 01:14, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
I've disabled the broken wp-world link in the template for now. — xaosflux Talk 01:19, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
It should also be noted that Google is actively restricting the 'free' part of maps tools lately. Even if the tool didn't have a security problem and if it's database hadn't accidentally gone missing, and it was fixed to not accidentally leak your ip address to google without giving you a warning about it (which is now required for wmflabs tools) it still might not work all the time because google would block all of wmflabs after spending the daily quotum (this is why we prefer tools like OSM over google). If people are interested in tools like this, I highly advise you to start learning some programming and understanding these tools. Many of them could use so many more maintainers. Please just learn and dare to ask to be added as a maintainer. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:37, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

CirrusSearch – How to stop searching for regex matches at the end of a line?

Per mw:Help:CirrusSearch, there are some notable differences from standard regex metacharacters: The dot . metacharacter stands for any character including a newline, so .* matches across lines.

What if I want to not include a newline, and stop matching at the end of a line? Is there a syntax for that? I tried [^\n]* but that doesn't seem to work either. wbm1058 (talk) 12:34, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Would it be [^\n]*[^\n] ie. match everything but the newline up to a newline not including it. -- GreenC 13:43, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
I would love for there to be an answer to this, but I'm fairly certain \n just doesn't work as a metacharacter. --Izno (talk) 14:04, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
That's the conclusion I'm coming to too. wbm1058 (talk) 14:17, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Does .*? work either? If the search is not greedy, it won't keep scanning more lines on the page; it should stop at the first match, which is on the same line. Though I don't see mention of "greedy" in the documentation; I'm not sure the "not greedy" syntax works in the CirrusSearch variant of regex either. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes, the ? works the way you would expect in general. I'm not sure how it interacts with line ends but I'm fairly certain it does capture the line end, which is sadness. --Izno (talk) 14:40, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

List of active bots

Is there a list somewhere that shows all currently active bots? Special:ListUsers/bot shows all bots, even inactive, and Wikipedia:Bots/Status is not maintained. Home Lander (talk) 00:26, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Special:ListUsers/bot could add 5th checkbox "Sort in descending order by most recent edit date" so the end-user can determine what counts as active or inactive. -- GreenC 00:38, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
If an "active bot" is determined by checking when the most recent edit occurred, Joe's Null Bot (talk · contribs) would fail. But unless Joe Decker (talk · contribs) has decided to stop using the bot, it's very much active. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:33, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Joe's Null Bot would be an exception for a lot of tools. User:Xaosflux's tool seems to answer the question though. -- GreenC 13:46, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
@Home Lander: quarry:query/28907 has a dump. — xaosflux Talk 00:52, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Have you asked at WP:BON if they have lists or tools? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:33, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
@Redrose64: we don't. We generally do a semi-annual cleanup of bots outside the bot activity policy, but the policy considers "operator" activity sufficient as well. @Home Lander: the last bulk cleanup was in May 2018. — xaosflux Talk 19:02, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Unexplained italics in atop transclusion

Foo bar

Foo second bar

Foo third verse, same as the first

Foo bar

Foo second bar

Foo third verse, same as the first

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I.

See the {{atop}} close box here. Note that all of the text after the first paragraph is italicized. You can edit the section and see that there is no obvious explanation for that.

Experimentation shows that the italics are caused by the <p>, but not in open text, as shown by the following <p>.

This behavior is new since 16 July, which is when I created a different {{atop}} here. I'm positive the italics were not present in that box at that time. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:02, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Pinging TheDJ, who recently created Template:Quote box/styles.css and switched {{Quote box}} to use those styles on 7 August. – Jonesey95 (talk) 08:40, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Here's a simplified version of the problem. In the first box (the live template), I see straight text in the first line, then italics in the next two. In the sandbox version (the version from before templatestyles were applied), I see three lines of straight text:
I hope that helps. – Jonesey95 (talk) 08:47, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Fixed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:03, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Teamwork! Nice. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:49, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks! ―Mandruss ☎ 19:43, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Need a Lua script

Hello,

I need a Lua script that returns "local data" as the wiki markup enclosed within the template {{infobox country|...}} On the page "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"arg_name_country""

Any help? Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 09:23, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

You’ll need to take another swing at explaining this, i’m having trouble interpreting what you want to achieve. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:23, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

How is the addition of meta noindex for not yet patrolled pages implemented?

We want to emit meta tags with noindex for articles with no flagged revisions in German Wikipedia but are ignorant as to how this is implemented for not yet patrolled pages in enWP. Can you point me to the relevant sourcecode? --Count Count (talk) 16:15, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Just FYI so noone goes searching: Found it here. --Count Count (talk) 18:02, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Count Count: note that it can take a LONG time for the indexers to pick articles back up. That makes it unuseable in my opinion for features like flagged revisions where it could flip flop between states relatively quickly/often. Its a bad idea ro try to hide stuff from search engines in general honestly. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:18, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment! Unflagging (unreviewing) actually happens very, very rarely in German WP. The usual workflow is that an article is created unflagged (unreviewed), eventually a revision is reviewed and then the flagged revision is updated every now and then when someone with the review rights reviews the current revision. Most regular editors are reviewers and their newly created articles and all their edits based on reviewed revisions are automatically also reviewed. So I doubt this will be a problem. --Count Count (talk) 19:12, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I wanted to refer in an article to the reading room of the British Museum, with a link to British Museum Reading Room. However, writing [[reading room of the British Museum|British Museum Reading Room]] gives this result: British Museum Reading Room. If I remove the first three words, I get British Museum Reading Room, but if I add any more I get a red link. Why? How can I link "reading room of the British Museum" to the required page? RolandR (talk) 01:26, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

@RolandR: [[British Museum Reading Room|reading room of the British Museum]] gives: reading room of the British Museum. — xaosflux Talk 01:28, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
D'oh! Blame the pub and a late night after a long day! RolandR (talk) 01:32, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Collapsible section with non-suppressed parameters in {{Infobox lunar eclipse}}

I've recently refurbished an unused infobox template, {{Infobox lunar eclipse}} for use on an array of articles, but have run into a problem concerning parameters in a collapsed section of the infobox I've implemented. Basically, I stole an idea from {{Infobox spaceflight}}, where their {{Infobox spaceflight/Instruments}} section uses an {[tl|Infobox}} with a collapsible collapsed bodyclass and active subbox parameter. The collapsed section copied over into {{Infobox lunar eclipse}} works, but the parameters can't be deactivated for some reason. I've had four failed attempts at fixing this problem using the {{#if:}} parser function ([54], [55], [56], [57]). Tomruen even had a crack at it as well. Tomruen's attempt can be seen on {{Infobox lunar eclipse/sandbox}}, isolated from the live template. Is there a better way of getting this collapsed list to work with parameters that can be supressed when no input is made? – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 02:26, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

My preference is to remove the collapsible status, but that's not trivially done since User:PhilipTerryGraham repeated indexes 1,2,3 on the labels in the subobject. Tom Ruen (talk) 02:43, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@PhilipTerryGraham and Tomruen: I think the change I made to the sandbox [58] should do what you want. - Evad37 [talk] 02:50, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@Evad37: This has resolved the issue as far as I'm concerned! Thanks for your help! :D – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 05:42, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Template not working for one user but working for others

User Pelmeen10 brought up in a discussion about the {{Olympic events sidebar}} series that they're having problems getting the template to work. They are using the MonoBook skin for Wikipedia, and have stated that they are using Google Chrome, but not which operating system they are using. This is how {{Swimming at the Olympics}} looks when used on the Swimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics on Pelmeen10's end, and on my end, using the MonoBook at 100% zoom on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox (left to right). On their end, the sidebar overlays and merges with the wikitable in the "Schedule" section, while on my end it simply pushed is to the side without merging at all. I'm not sure how I or Pelmeen can go about fixing it, so we're gonna need a little help here. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 01:59, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

I was unable to replicate the problem with Chrome on Windows. However, I made some changes to the schedule table (removed a bunch of unnecessary styling) that maybe will help. --Izno (talk) 12:21, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Pelmeen10: Does the template work fine now on your end, or is it still broken? – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 05:40, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes works fine and aligning the schedule to left is better. --Pelmeen10 (talk) 09:27, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@Pelmeen10: Cool. Thanks for letting us know, and thanks Izno for the help, too! – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 09:43, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Other "Swimming at the x Olympics" articles need the same edits though. --Pelmeen10 (talk) 09:52, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@Pelmeen10: The edits are not difficult. Either let me know on my talk page which pages and I can take care of them, or you can follow along with the edit I made on the schedule template page. (Which probably should not be a template page--we do not segregate tables, whether complex or not, into their own articles unless we expect reuse.) --Izno (talk) 12:21, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Btw I have Windows8. The page list is not that long: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. --Pelmeen10 (talk) 12:42, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
FYI, this is a known side effect of centering tables next to floating content (browsers only take into account the width of the table when trying to avoid content collision, but not per se the alignment of this table on the page. Especially the older IE browsers used to have this problem if I remember correctly). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:57, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, I was pretty sure it was the margin declaration. I'm a bit surprised Chrome had the issue though. --Izno (talk) 12:21, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Switching between visual and source editing makes data appear to be unsaved

I can reproduce this in both Safari and Chrome:

  1. Edit a page using the source editor
  2. Before making any changes, switch to visual
  3. Make a change
  4. Publish the change

You'll now get a warning: "Changes you made may not be saved" in Chrome, "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" in Safari.

It looks like Visual Editor is leaving the page in a state that makes the browser think there's unsaved data. Anybody else noticing this? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:06, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Might be , I'm checking it! Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 15:10, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Yes I noticed that now...Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 15:13, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Please wait for a while, I'm checking for a possible reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr. Sroy (talk • contribs) 15:13, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@RoySmith:Here I got a possible explanation: When you edit, the "index.php" program runs with the "action" parameter set to "edit". Again you must have experienced that until you run the "action=submit" parameter the edits you have done are not saved (This can be best explained by opening the page you are editing in another window). Thus as a result, when you switch to "VisualEdit" while editing the source, your revision is not submitted and the "index.php" also switches its parameter: "action=edit → veaction=edit". So your edits are not going to exist and you will have to get it again edited.
This is a good issue. Although as expected the browser should think that the switching is the part of the same revision.
Regards,Dr. Sroy(aka.ARKA) (talk) 17:47, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
which source editor (we have half a dozen or so) and was the syntaxhighlighting mode enabled ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:21, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
It's whatever I get when I click the "Edit" tab: "Version f529762 2018-08-02T19:41:02Z", apparently. Oh, I just noticed something interesting. I kind of mis-reported the repeat-by sequence above. If I switch to visual by using the "pencil" drop-down menu in the upper-right corner, everything works fine. If I switch by clicking the "Edit" tab at the top, then I get the described behavior. Syntax highlighting is turned off in both cases. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:13, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@RoySmith: In the Preferences, under Editing->Editor->Editing mode, what setting do you have there ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:21, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
"Show me both editor tabs". -- RoySmith (talk) 16:07, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

History button moving around on user talk pages

Sometimes it's in the dropdown menu under "More", other times it's under "Page". And I expect it to be there at the top by itself, which it still is sometimes. Using Vector. I've had all 3 positions in the last hour. Doug Weller talk 15:04, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: "other times it's under "Page"" this indicates you are using a community (un)maintained Gadget, which is likely to blame for this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:13, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Sounds possible, you know I use several. It's never been a problem before. Thanks again. Doug Weller talk 15:23, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: Part of what you're talking about indeed is meta:MoreMenu (which is maintained :). The other aspect apparently is your small viewport. Are you on a mobile device, perhaps? What happens is Vector sees if there's enough room for the "View history" tab, and if there isn't it moves it under "More". MoreMenu (the gadget, pardon the confusing nomenclature) tries to be smart and moves the link under Page and remove it from "More". I suspect what's going in a race condition, because MoreMenu uses the "hook" to move the link whenever Vector does. So in theory you should not have your problem, and I'm not sure if I have a solution :( Note that Vector in general does not play that nicely on mobile. You can expect some unwanted behaviour regardless if MoreMenu is turned on. — MusikAnimal talk 21:06, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
I've seen this too, and it's really annoying. I get that if your screen isn't wide enough, all the tabs won't fit and something has to give. But, at least it should be consistent about where things get hidden. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:20, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
Well, to be honest, I don't even remember why MoreMenu was coded to move the "View history" link. I think it was meant to do that then remove the "More" menu entirely if it becomes empty, but I don't see code that does this.
@Doug Weller and RoySmith: What if we always put a "View history" link under "Page"? That way you can reliably find the link. The other link may still switch between the tab and the "More" menu, though. — MusikAnimal talk 05:42, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
I think you're suggesting that, if the "View history" tab is visible, there will *also* be a history item in the Page tab? No, duplicating things seems wrong. In any case, the Page drop-down is already too long. It's so deep and skinny, I often have to make several attempts to select the bottom item because my cursor slides off the side of the menu and it goes away. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:26, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: I suspect my problem is something else considering how large my desktop monitor is. I can live with it. Doug Weller talk 10:41, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm using a couple of your scripts[59] do they look allright? I'm asking as I keep having various script related problems. I've deleted a few scripts now. Doug Weller talk 12:29, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
I don't see anything in your common.js that would cause this. I'm truly baffled. If your browser window is on the larger-side, there's no reason the "View history" link should be moving around. I will have to blame Vector, because as I said MoreMenu listens to an event that is only fired if Vector decides to move the link.

@RoySmith: Good point, that menu list is pretty long as it is. What do you think about grouping together some links into a "Actions" submenu? So "Change model", "Delete page", "Edit intro", "Merge page", "Move page", "Protect page" and "Purge cache" could all go under Page > Actions. Would that be helpful, or just make it harder to get to those links?

I was almost thinking about adding a timeout to the hover event, such that if your mouse pointer does leave the menu it won't immediately disappear. Maybe a 1 second delay or something. The issue here is MoreMenu is using the native Vector menu functionality. If we change it for MoreMenu we might want to change it for all Vector menus (so "More" and "TW" for Twinkle, etc.). Thoughts? — MusikAnimal talk 16:21, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of submenus, because it makes it hard to find stuff. Scrubbing all the one-deep menus to find what you're looking for is already sub-optimum. Hunting through two-deep menus is even worse. Yeah, I know we do that already for some things (Page/Tools..., etc) but I'd rather not see more of that. Is there some problem with just always putting tabs that don't fit under More? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:33, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
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