Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical)

Click "[show]" next to each point to see more details.

If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.

No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an `accesskey` property on it (default to `accesskey="f"` in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.

No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.

If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature.

If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.

If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.

For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Wikipedia services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

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Gadget/User Script to disable MediaWiki:Bad image list

Wikipedia is not censored

and never will be. All articles fall under this disclaimer. By clicking this checkbox you'll only hideing these images from yourself (in all wikiprojects) while still open for other's.

Recently I find out this help page & became really confused. If we are giving advice because they are the half of the userbase, why can't we also provide it as a choiceable option (as a 'Gadget' or an 1 click 'User Script'). We still providing some gadget & most of the user script only because of the user demands. Well, If all of these are against 'POLICY' then a simple info template must be possible, Right ?

--Masum The Great (talk) 14:14, 11 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Wikipedians, I'm eagerly waiting for a replay . Isn't it rude to not getting a replay from any active Wikipedian after 127 hours when all the other query got replied. Thanks in advance . --Masum The Great (talk) 14:54, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, after another 55 hours i'm still keeping (AGF) & just mentioning some of the users only to provide suggestions about this issue. @John of Reading:,@Xaosflux:,@TonyBallioni:,@AEzell (WMF):,@IFried (WMF):,@MSchottlender-WMF:,@MusikAnimal (WMF):,@SWilson (WMF):,@HMonroy (WMF):,@DWalden (WMF):. I have no idea who to mention so please excuse me if it bothers you. if my point is not clear enough, please ask. Thanks.--Masum The Great (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ahm masum: Hi. I'm sorry that it has taken so long for your question to get answered, but you must understand that we're all volunteers here. People like Xaosflux and TonyBallioni are here entirely by their choice, and no editor is required to do or answer anything they don't want to. Even people who are employed by the WMF have no obligation to answer your question; the village pump is a community-run place, and gadgets are community-created and developed, so no WMF employee is obliged to answer questions about them any more than any other volunteer. So, no, it's not rude for nobody to answer your question. It happens, you just have to be patient, and if necessary, ask it again.

Your question is not particularly precise; it's not clear what you're asking for. Are you asking for one of the scripts mentioned in that help page to become a gadget? If so, which script? Most of them are not amenable to becoming a gadget, since they require too much personalization in the code. Are you asking for page notices reflecting NOTCENSORED? If so, what pages? How do you decide what needs it and what doesn't? in all of the above cases (particularly the pagenotice, which could be extremely disruptive to the appearance of pages to the reader), you would need community consensus for that; have you started an RfC about it to gather that consensus? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:44, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This would be a very expensive "gadget" , as the image code is not presented to the readers today, only an anchor tag to the image. Such a script (that you are welcome to build for yourself and then try to propose that it gets adopted) would need to look for every anchor, try to see if it is on the BIL, then re-render it. A click-to-load option is being discussed at phab:T198550, so you may want to follow up on that. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:49, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming the goal is you want to auto-hide any and all offensive imagery. If so, going solely off of the bad image list isn't that effective, since it is usually retroactively updated following an act of vandalism. There will always be more "offensive" imagery that isn't blacklisted. There is a NSFW image classifier running on Cloud Services, so it is possible to make a script. However it would be very slow and resource-intensive, since you'd need to fetch the scores in real-time. phab:T198550 as Xaosflux mentions is probably the best way forward if we want the "click to load" functionality, since it might allow us to pre-store the image scores. I will comment there with what I know. In short -- the algorithm exists, and it works very well, it just isn't in production. Don't get your hopes up :(

If you simply want one of these user scripts to be a gadget, you'll need to achieve consensus for this. I don't really see the point since it would only be but so effective. As for the "info template", I do not think showing this atop relevant articles will be met with praise. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:51, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t follow this page, and don’t know why I was pinged. I have no thoughts to contribute. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:27, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
And then sometimes you'll get a late reply, like this one from me. I'll leave it as an exercise for somebody else to calculate the time difference in hours. @Ahm masum: Did you find the responses helpful? Thanks after the fact are better than "thanks in advance". And clarifications are sometimes warranted. Whom do you refer to when you say "they are half of the user base"? Pelagic (talk) 10:21, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Special:ContentTranslation

Hi. I, on portuguese Wikipedia domain, realized there's an error within the current JS code content in the mentioned page. I found it through the Chrome console mode (where I believe it is manifesting itself as the only findable error), but I understand just a little about the language, and, soon, really cannot restore it. Could someone fix it?
What is happening involves the page fonts and the identification of the existent and unexistent links, which, respectively, aren't the same previous one (that is the only thing I can confirm; they, now, are presenting itself as the standard for them) and don't differ between the usual colors, blue and red, illustrating what I said. Some detailed images: 1, 2 and 3. Creditor Editor (talk) 19:43, 12 February 2020 (UTC).[reply]

@Creditor Editor: to report a software bug with the ContentTranslation extension you will need to open a task at phabricator, directions to do that are available here: mw:How_to_report_a_bug. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:23, 13 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Creditor Editor, what are the JS errors themselves? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:06, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tailoring edit notices to different types of editors

Regarding this discussion at the ideas tab, is it possible to tailor an edit notice so that, for instance, it would show a different message to someone creating a new page if they have never created a new page before? Sdkb (talk) 20:39, 13 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I know that the first time someone tries to edit, a notice pops up prompting them to consider switching to the visual editor; does anyone know how that came about? Sdkb (talk) 20:39, 13 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't have an editor declared when you try to call the editor it can ask which editor you want to use, but that wouldn't work for this use case. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:18, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The edit notice (a module and template) isn't able to tell if the current user has ever authored a page before, that would be a very "expensive" query as it would require going through all of their past contributions. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:18, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: Ah, that makes sense. Do you have any ideas about how to better achieve what we're looking to do? Is this something we'd need to get the WMF to help us code? Sdkb (talk) 07:33, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What if we add something like:

.nonextendedconfirmed-show {
   display: none !important;
}

to Mediawiki:Group-extendedconfirmed.css. Then a different version of the message could be shown to extendedconfirmed and non-extendedconfirmed users. Sdkb, that's not exactly what you're looking for, but is it close enough? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:32, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Suffusion of Yellow: Something like that sounds like it would be very useful! Sdkb (talk) 06:18, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdkb: Sorry, meant to get back to this sooner. @Xaosflux: I realized that most admins aren't in the group extendedconfirmed. What do you see here between the parentheses: (FNORD)? If there's nothing there, then to avoid showing sysops the "newbie" version of the message, we'd also to make some adjustments to MediaWiki:group-sysop.css. Does this seem like a bad idea? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Suffusion of Yellow: an element can have multiple classes, such as in here: (FNANDD). That being said, I don't think there are a lot of edit notices that would only pertain to extended-confirmed people, are there some examples? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:41, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: But if we want to hide something from admins too, we'd still need a nonsysop-show class in Mediawiki:group-sysop.css, yes? Sdkb was wondering if we could a show different version of an edit notice to users who have never created a page before. We could approximate that with

<div class="nonsysop-show nonextendedconfirmed-show"> 
[newbie editnotice here]
</div><div class="sysop-show extendedconfirmed-show">
[regular editnotice here]
</div>

but no, I don't know of any other use cases besides the one suggested here. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We could do a bunch of things like that, but I don't think it is really a "good" idea, and "extendedconfirmed" doesn't really have anything to do with creating an "article". — xaosflux ^Talk 22:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Citation Expander button

The (missing) button

I am asking this question here based on a suggestion from Headbomb after inquiring about their use of citation expander. I am able to use this tool via the Tools on the left nav bar, though never am able to see or access the Citations button anyplace. Can somebody help me determine what the problem is, as that may make things a bit easier. Thank you. --- FULBERT (talk) 17:41, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@FULBERT: What is your browser, and your skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering? Does the Citations button appear if you preview a blank version of User:FULBERT/common.js? You don't have to save changes there, just look for the button on the preview. Does the button appear if you log out and click here? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:26, 15 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That looks like MonoBook to me. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 20 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The image posted here is the illustration at Wikipedia:Citation expander. FULBERT is missing the "Citations" button. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:24, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PrimeHunter, Thanks for helping me troubleshoot this, and sorry for the delay in my reply. I am using the default Vector Skin and am using Firefox (the most current version). I now seem to see the button when I click "Edit Source" (the only place I now seem to see it, as I have reset some of my previous Preferences) and if I press it I cannot see if anything is found or not. Is that the right place where I should see it, and if so, how do I know if it finds anything that should be accepted / reviewed? Many thanks. FULBERT (talk) 22:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See User:Citation bot/use#via the citation expander gadget. See User:Citation bot/use#Examples for some examples you can try copying to an edit window and press the button. The gadget should then automatically change the text, for example from <ref>{{cite journal |jstor=650874}}</ref> to

<ref>{{cite journal |jstor=650874|title=Bastard Feudalism Revised: Reply|last1=Coss|first1=P. R.|journal=Past & Present|issue=131|pages=190–203|year=1991|doi=10.1093/past/131.1.190}}</ref>

. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging FULBERT. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:48, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PrimeHunter, Thanks for this; it now (oddly?) seems to be working. I am scratching my head as I think part of the problem has been how I have understood the directions. I have been reading the instructions for "Edit" which really should be speaking about "Edit source," and thus the instructions are assuming the default editor is the source editor, though I did not actually see that mentioned explicitly. Many thanks for your help in the pointing out the clearer directions and examples than I had located on my own! FULBERT (talk) 16:35, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Too many links marked by "Strike out blocked usernames"

I'm using this feature, which I have turned on in the preferences, but there is an error (with the version history of MatthewOF's talk page as an example):

https://i.imgur.com/DyFRDA6.png

(Click the link to view the image. I don't host it on Wikipedia because it would be quickly deleted).

The links to the differences are also marked like that.

Also, there is another issue: one of the edits is marked as Replaced, but it actually blanks the page. Someone must fix that. Also, why is editing revision tags not available to normal users? Keyacom (💬 | 🖊) 07:51, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Keyacom: all things being equal, probably better you avoid edit-warring with an administrator. Promising Wikipedia careers have come to a halt over less. ——SN 54129 08:01, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For the question of tags, see Wikipedia:Tags with a list at Special:Tags. One example is MediaWiki:Tag-mobile web edit. These are added mostly by software, filters, bots and other automated methods, so it would be pretty disruptive and a huge mess if anyone could add or change them. Already I would say there is a mess, for example with many hardly used tags for wikiEdu. Replaced means "Edits that remove more than 90% of the content of a page", so blanking falls into that category. Blanking should also apply, and these tags are generated by software, so it's difficult to change it! When I use the edit tags interface there are only about 16 different tag names I could add, and replaced or blanking were not options. The only ones are the tags labelled "Applied manually by users and bots". Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:45, 19 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Graeme Bartlett: But, when MatthewOF did this edit, the user actually blanked the page. Keyacom (💬 | 🖊) 15:38, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Huggle and bad words (score words)

Hello, How score words in wp:Huggle/Config.yaml work? For example: If i write "fu**" on an article, can Huggle's users find my edit soon and revert it? Can we add Arabic words in Huggle/Config.yaml (on our project)? Thanks! ⇒ Aram Talk 21:00, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No one! ⇒ Aram Talk 19:52, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Aram, sorry that nobody has answered yet. I'm not familiar with Huggle, so I can't help you on the usage aspect. I expect it would most likely be Unicode-compatible and able to deal with Arabic script. Is Huggle config already deployed on your project (I assume ckb-wikipedia from your global contribs), or are you evaluating whether it's worth setting up? If you haven't already, it might be worthwhile asking at Meta or ar-wp in addition to here (and if you do find an answer elsewhere, please let us know). Cheers! (Please ping me in replies, I don't often visit VPT.) Pelagic (talk) 11:16, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: you might be able to experiment with a user-level config before attacking your wiki's site-wide Huggle config. Pelagic (talk) 12:06, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Pelagic: Thank you for your replying! yes, we already added our project to Huggle. ⇒ Aram Talk 11:53, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Internet speed - Processing request

Greetings, From time-to-time I see "Processing request" delay while waiting for another article to load. I've been working on backlog at "Category Unassessed biography articles". Currently my ISP linespeed is at 5MB/sec. Wondering if upgrade to 10MB/sec will actually reduce or eliminate delay? JoeHebda (talk) 15:41, 20 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@JoeHebda: No. It is the server computer needing to do some work (such as processing a database querry) before it can send results to you over the network, not an issue with the network connection speed. RudolfRed (talk) 02:08, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RudolfRed, I don't know how technical you are, but if you want to dig a bit under the covers, and you're running Chrome, there's a ton of information available in the console. Under View / Developer, select "Developer Tools" go to the Performance tab, click record, and reload the page. That'll tell you more than you could possibly want to know about how much data is being transferred, and how fast.

Just to give you an idea, I timed reloading this page. It moved a total of 923 Kbytes of data in 1.8s, which works out to about 0.5 MB/sec. The bottom line is that for anything text based, almost any internet connection is going to be way faster than you need. Anything more than a couple MB/sec will really only make a difference for streaming video.

As a practical suggestion, what you might want to do is install a browser extension like Open Selected Links. That will let you go to Category:Unassessed biography articles, select a bunch of articles, and in a single click, open them all in individual tabs. Then you can work through the preloaded tabs one at a time, doing whatever you need to do to each one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 02:38, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith: Thanks for the "Open Selected Links" suggestion. I used it once so far & it's helpful. Yesterday, I changed DNS servers for my internet connection & that gave a bit more speed. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 17:05, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Random slideshow is broken

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T245553

{{Random slideshow}} seems to be broken. First noticed it not working on my userpage, and decided to check some others, like Portal:Italy. Indeed, it's broken there, too. I've confirmed via IRC that others are seeing it, so posting here. Pinging the creator, Evad37 (but nobody has edited it in about a year). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:42, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is not from the template or the module it relies on but probably the gallery tag. See phab:T245553. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:07, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Following now. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:32, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We need to update maintenance reports at least weekly

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T246063

The maintenance reports in Special:SpecialPages are very useful. I for one use Special:WantedTemplates to find things that need cleaning up.

It would be useful to have a bot update this list once a week.

The bot doesn't have to run against the live database, it can run against a copy as long as the reports reflect the database as it was less than a week ago. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 15:58, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Special pages aren't updated by a bot. It's listed at Help:Special page#Inactive, which makes me wonder if it's meant to be happening at all. User:😂 might have a guess. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Help:Special page was last updated in August, Special:WantedTemplates was updated in November, which means it became "active" at some point. Either that, or someone updated the Wanted Templates page it on a one-off basis. It's valuable and it should be updated much more regularly, at least weekly if possible. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 22:21, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Different special pages work on different schedules. Special:Wantedtemplates is supposed to be updated on the 20th of every month [1]. In theory anyways. However looking at the page, it looks like that hasn't happened for several months. Bawolff (talk) 03:15, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So what can be done about it? Is there someone or some group on the English Wikipedia or on Meta or elsewhere that needs to be alerted? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 03:28, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It will be handled by devs. I've filed a ticket. This isn't the first time the system has broke. Bawolff (talk) 03:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

Urbanecm fixed this. He re-ran Special:Wantedfiles today so it should be up to date on enwiki, and going forward it should be updated on the 20th of every month. I also updated Help:Special page#Inactive to include the update schedule. Bawolff (talk) 13:06, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Template to convert from HTML

I am doing some year calculations with {{NEXTYEAR}} for example {{NEXTYEAR|3}} shows the year 3 years from now (2027). However for this task the number "3" will be in HTML format. But this does not work: {{NEXTYEAR|& #51;}} (I added a space between "& #" so the browser doesn't interpret the HTML). When passed HTML {{NEXTYEAR}} throws an error as it probably should. Is there a wikitemplate that takes as input HTML and outputs ASCII? Something like {{NEXTYEAR|{{html2ascii|& #51;}}}} -- GreenC 17:26, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Does

{{#switch:{{{1|&#48;}}}|&#48;=0|&#49;=1|&#50;=2|&#51;=3|&#52;=4|&#53;=5|&#54;=6|&#55;=7|&#56;=8|&#57;=9}}

work?

In lua, there is mw.text.decode ('3') which will take more than one html entity and returns whatever text is in the string so if you give it the digit 4 (mw.text.decode ('4')) it will return '4'.

I think that I recall that someone has written a module that will call a single lua function but can I find it? Nope. If it's out there, surely someone here knows where it is. Of course, if that doesn't exist, a simple module:

p={};
function p.html_entity_decode (frame)
	return mw.text.decode (frame.args[1]);
end

return p;

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:13, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Are you talking about Module:LuaCall? ({{#invoke:LuaCall|call|mw.text.decode|3}} -> 3) * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:20, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:46, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It does work, thank you! Behold: {{NEXTYEAR|{{#invoke:LuaCall|call|mw.text.decode|3}}}} = 2027 -- GreenC 01:31, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

More interface changes

In MonoBook skin, the page history has recently been subject to a styling change: the buttons like "Compare selected revisions" no longer look like buttons, but flat white text boxes. I am finding it harder to pick out these objects, and that makes it an accessibility issue. How do I get the buttons to look as they did before, i.e. like the "Mark all pages as visited" button at Special:Watchlist. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:53, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The buttons now look the same as the "Mark all changes as seen" button on the watchlist. A welcome change too, the default buttons were small and barely legible. --qedk (t 桜 c) 21:06, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I, too, use MonoBook and prefer them the way they were before. I thought about asking here for css help to change them back, but hadn't taken the time to write the request. I'd certainly appreciate it if someone could tell me how. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 22:53, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I note the color of Wikieditor toolbar has also changed to a very poor color. It'd be good to get back the old color there too. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:22, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Put $(".mw-ui-button").removeClass("mw-ui-button") in your common JavaScript, like so. You'll get a flash of unstyled content by doing it in javascript instead of css, but previous oo-ui fugliness went so deliberately far out of its way to make a pure css solution impractical that I didn't even look for one this time. —Cryptic 07:07, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, that works. It also fixes the "Contest this speedy deletion" button in Template:Db-g2. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:43, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I edit with JavaScript turned off because the interface annoys me in various ways, and would still very much appreciate a css solution if that's possible. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 15:29, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports)/Archive 18

Resolved

– COMPLETED

Done with

Thank you to John of Reading for the assist. Rogermx, if you encounter similar technical snafus like this in the future, please don't hesitate to use {{help me}} on the applicable article's talk page or ask at this this technical village pump. Doug Mehus T·C 22:19, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

– This was procedurally moved from a closed MfD discussion. See below for the copied message from editor Rogermx

This is appearing as its own article in the Fix Wikilinks list. I don't want it deleted really - I just want someone take notice and move it to its right place. Rogermx (talk) 21:07, 21 February 2020 (UTC) --Originally posted here Doug Mehus T·C 21:43, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Question Does anyone know Rogermx means by the page "appearing as its own article in the Fix Wikilinks list," and can they offer insight into any fix that may be required? Doug Mehus T·C 21:45, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a colon to remove this archived talk page from Category:All articles with too few wikilinks. I wonder if that was the issue? -- John of Reading (talk) 21:54, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

John of Reading,

Thank you, and I should've known that, too. I'm almost positive that's what Rogermx meant, particularly looking at the the prior edit diff that showed that category, and I see it's removed from Category:All articles with too few wikilinks. I'm going to go ahead and mark this as done and close it in a few days if we don't hear back from Rogermx. Doug Mehus T·C 22:01, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Possilikely (a mix between possible and likely)

Resolved by John of Reading. Doug Mehus T·C 22:03, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everyone for their quick attention on this. Rogermx (talk) 22:13, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Doug Mehus T·C 22:15, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

MetadataPanel date fix

I am posting here to serve notice that I've requested a patch to the common.js file. Request is here: MediaWiki talk:Common.js#MetadataPanel date fix. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 17:29, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pending changes didn't expire

See[2] Black Kite set pending changes to expire January 19th. JzG and I reverted pending edits this week, as have a number of other editors since pc should have expired. Which seems to have just happened with the same problems that led to the article being protected multiple times. Doug Weller talk 19:45, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, Black Kite set semiprotection to expire January 19th. Pending changes were last set (before today) at 14:35, 21 February 2019, and didn't expire until 14:35, 21 February 2020. The logs are clearer than the history here. —Cryptic 20:24, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Crytpic: I'm confused. Yes, I was wrong about what Black Kite set, sorry. That mistake of mine didn't help. But look at the history/[3] where it's obvious pc was working on the 18th.

EG 16:34, 18 February 2020‎ Valenciano talk contribs block‎ [+] 64,386 bytes +11‎ Undid revision 941443355 by 107.77.195.231 (talk) rv POV/dishonest edit summary undothank Tag: Undo [automatically accepted]

But Where do you get pending changes set on the 21st for a year? I see "19:47, 22 February 2020 JzG talk contribs block configured pending changes settings for Gavin McInnes [Auto-accept: require "autoconfirmed" permission] (Persistent vandalism) (hist)" - ie {{u|JzG]] set them right after my post, but no mention of your 21st date. In fact, this view shows nothing since the expiry of semi-protection on the 19th. Something's wrong. Doug Weller talk 17:14, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Pending changes changes, unhelpfully, only show up in their own log, not in the protection log, as you'd expect. Also in all logs, where the relevant entry is currently fifth from the top. —Cryptic 17:41, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Damn, I guess I should have known that. But, Cryptic, spelling it correctly this time, how about the acceptance on the 18th? And why no end date for those set by JzG? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doug Weller (talk • contribs) 17:50, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On February 18, the pc set by JzG on February 21 2019 were still in effect. The pc change on February 22 2020 is indefinite, as you can see when reprotecting it. I agree it's inconsistent that the pc log doesn't say '(indefinite)' in such cases (sample protection log entry, for comparison). —Cryptic 18:04, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Cryptic: thanks. I see my confusion now. I was looking at the fact that semi-protection was being set covering much of the same period that article also had pc but not noticing that they overlapped. I didn't occur to me an article would have both. Doug Weller talk 18:48, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Xtools is down

Resolved

@MusikAnimal: My traceroute is intermittent and the site does not open at all on the browser. Anyone else facing the same issue? I'm not sure what information this is giving me. --qedk (t 桜 c) 20:48, 22 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@QEDK: You scared me! All looks good on my end https://stats.uptimerobot.com/BN16RUOP5/779220479. Are any other VPS/Toolforge tools not loading for you? — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:33, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@MusikAnimal: Seems sorted now! Other Toolforge tools were ok so I'm guessing something went wrong on Xtools' instance. Quite unsure what happened. --qedk (t 桜 c) 05:03, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist help

Resolved

Hi all, I am experiencing a technical issue. I regularly participate at WikiProject Peer Review. For some reason, I can't get recent changes relating to the discussion page to display on my watchlist. They used to display, but at some period in the last few months even though it's still on my watchlist, I just can't see the messages. Details are:

Page I am trying to watch: Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review. The watchlist star is filled when I view this page.
I can confirm Wikipedia:Peer review is on my watchlist (although the talk page is not)
This process works for other pages - for example Molecular Biology, I can see a recent talk page edit and just the WP is watchlisted. However, an edit on the 18th February on the peer review talk page doesn't show up on my watchlist.

Can anyone help shed some light on this? --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:33, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tom (LT), do you have your watchlist preferences to set to hide your own edits, bot edits, and/or minor edits? Are your prefs set to see every single edit separately, or only the most recent? (That item is "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent".) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks WMF. I can't really explain it. I checked a number of times when it wasn't working and someone else had edited the page last; checked those settings; checked those prefs. At any rate it started working against two days after this post... weird. Anyhow please consider this request for help resolved. --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:31, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What is the difference between MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning and MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning

MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning and MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. They both use purposefully the same text, but why does MediaWiki display two separate system messages for them? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:56, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: wikimedia-copyrightwarning = override provided by mw:Extension:WikimediaMessages, copyrightwarning = mediawiki core message. They say the same thing because the latter transcludes the former: {{MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning}} DannyS712 (talk) 11:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I know this part, the thing I am wondering is why MediaWiki has 2 system messages for this. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:04, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: The WikimediaMessages extension is for all of the WMF changes that aren't in wikimedia core. The core message will always exist, but it can be deleted here, because it should never be shown. See WikimediaMessagesHooks::onSkinCopyrightFooter and mw:Manual:Hooks/SkinCopyrightFooter DannyS712 (talk) 11:10, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Yes, this question was basically a question of whether one of them can be deleted. Given that they are a) interface messages and b) copyright sensitive, I wanted to know exactly what they do before a MFD (nevermind plain deletion). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:13, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would keep MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. It's linked from 62 pages, and people who know MediaWiki may look it up directly to find our license. If something in MediaWiki fails or is changed, it might be displayed again instead of MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning (I wouldn't be shocked if it's already displayed unintentionally somewhere). Reusers who copy our pages to a MediaWiki installation but don't have the extension may also display it. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:52, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As with any other system message, if you delete it, then the default text (which is not stored on wiki) will appear whenever it's invoked. You won't just see an empty message or a redlink. I believe the default text is:

Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are considered to be released under the $2 (see $1 for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

at the moment. (The $1 and $2 variables get filled in based on other strings.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Whatamidoing (WMF): You don't need to say "I believe", since the default text is displayed here. You just added a couple of extra newlines. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:10, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The default English message is also displayed at subpages which don't correspond to a language code, e.g. MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning/qqx. Whatamidoing copied it exactly with a <br /> which was rendered as a newline while AllMessages displays the code. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I copied it from MediaWiki.org, and the line break came with it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:27, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't referring to the <br /> tag, but to the two newlines: one after "for details)." and the other after "free resource." --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:04, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Whatamidoing also copied those exactly. They are in the source of MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning/qqx and mw:MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning. They don't render in html because newlines don't do that but they are also in the html source of your here link. Maybe Special:Allmessages should be coded to render newlines but it doesn't now. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:22, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Outdated notice in MediaWiki:Edittools?

There is a comment in MediaWiki:Edittools that any changes there need to be coordinated with MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert.js but the latter page gives no indication of what would need to be updated. Does it mean that it's now on a different page, or that it is outdated? Pinging Krinkle as the last editor of that js page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:56, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: now at MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js DannyS712 (talk) 11:12, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. I see. I've updated the edittools message although one wonders if it's possible to use a template for both. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:15, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates

Came across this page when strolling through the system messages. I am a little unclear what its purpose is; 😂? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: it boosts the search results of pages with the templates listed DannyS712 (talk) 11:08, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, that's a cool feature which I didn't know about either. Found the syntax documentation at MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates/qqx. the wub "?!" 11:57, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In general, you can usually find documentation for MediaWiki messages by clicking the edit or view source tab, and then "translatewiki.net" in a message at the top. It's unusual that the /qqx page displays documentation. It merely shows the default uncustomized MediaWiki message which happens to contain documentation here. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:32, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

So, for example, putting Template:BLP unsourced|0% would cause any page transcluding {{BLP unsourced}} to disappear from Cirrus Search? I am just asking to understand how that works (I don't think hiding it from the internal search would be a good move). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:55, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

0% does not remove a page but just places it after everything else. For example, Sukhi Turner has {{BLP unsourced}} so the article is last on page 2 of currently 33 results on "Sukhi Turner" boost-templates:"Template:BLP unsourced|0%". It's also last with 33% but moves to second-last with 34%. It's first on a normal search "Sukhi Turner". See more at mw:Help:CirrusSearch#Boost-templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:29, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This only applies to actual searches. I assume the "Go" feature of the search box would still go directly to the article if the exact title is entered. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:36, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You can see an example of it working at commons:MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost-templates. I think the original idea was also to make porn be de-ranked in the search results list, but as you could imagine, that's unlikely to happen. Bawolff (talk) 03:03, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

2FA problem

I urgently need 2FA disabled because my mobile device has failed and been replaced and the scratch codes I have written down, don't work. I'm assuming they are from a previous iteration.

Can anyone tell me how to get this done please? Guy (help!) 20:58, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@JzG: phab:T245956 please send an email to ca@wikimedia.org from your registered email address to confirm ownership. DannyS712 (talk) 21:11, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

JzG, quoting WP:2FA: If you are totally locked out, regaining access to your account will be very difficult and usually involve proving your identity beyond the shadow of a doubt to one of the developers via the Phabricator system who may or may not decide to manually disable 2FA in the database directly. If you cannot satisfy these requirements or the developers deny your request, it is impossible to turn 2FA off and you'll have to create a new account. Since you're still in control of your account and presumably the email associated with your account it probably won't be too much trouble proving you are you. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 21:11, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Trialpears, Hence the message while I wasn't. All fixed now. Guy (help!) 22:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bizarre text on external tools article stats pages

Have a look, e.g., at Weegee's stats page. Right at the bottom—literally the last thing before your taskbar—is some text in tiny font. It is completely irrelevant to the page itself and reads as if people are having a conversation on it. Oh, and it's randomized too. ——SN 54129 15:10, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Serial Number 54129, it looks like it's pulling from some kind of a "funny quotes" list. Also, it looks like it appears everywhere that xtools theme is used - even on the main xtools page. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 15:25, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's quite funny I guess. Bizarre is the word; I wonder how long it's been doing it ;) cheers for the info Creffett ——SN 54129 15:28, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Serial Number 54129, https://github.com/x-tools/xtools/blob/master/config/quote.yml has the full list. It looks like some history got lost, but the relevant files have been in the repo since at least 2019. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 15:30, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You can PM me if you want, and I can ignore you if I want...might make that my wikimotto :) ——SN 54129 15:35, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, all fun and games. The quotes originate from meta:IRC/Quotes and the old Bugzilla bug tracker (hence the technical jargon). There was once a dedicated tool, which technically still works, it just isn't discoverable. We decided it wasn't worthy of having it's own tab in XTools, so instead of throwing it away we went with this subtle way of showing the quotes. It has been at the bottom of every page since the "new" version was deployed in 2017. — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:49, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Can not find duplication error

On the German Shepherd page there is a duplication {{short description}} error. I searched the article for a possible second posting of the template, found none. Hopefully someone here can figure this out. - FlightTime (open channel) 17:06, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The infobox template ({{Infobox dog breed}}) sets the short description. — Jts1882 | talk 17:20, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and it's done it for over a year now. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:27, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As a general question, is it a good idea for infoboxes and taxoboxes to determine the short description? — Jts1882 | talk 21:04, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say no, on grounds of the principle of least surprise - I think the average editor would only expect the short desc to be modified by an explicit {{short description}} template, not by an infobox. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 21:20, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a big fan or short descriptions through templates since it's the best way to automatically generate large quantities of short descriptions easily. There is also possible generate descriptions using a bot like is done with PearBOT 5 but that has several disadvantages, mainly that only one editor can modify the code and that doesn't apply retroactively. I can also say that the bot route is also a lot more time consuming since the accuracy has to be so extremely high while templated uses can be fixed later. There are problems and this situation can be potentially confusing, but the solution is not to remove the hundreds of thousands of descriptions from templates, it is to improve how tools like shortdesc helper handle multiple short descriptions and template generated short descriptions to avoid confusion. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 22:56, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One that came up on my watchlist recently was {{Infobox UK place}}, which has been modified to provide an automatic shortdesc, discussion is at Template talk:Infobox UK place#Short description. @UnitedStatesian, Jonesey95, and Hike395: it did occur to me to enquire what would happen about those articles using {{Infobox UK place}} that already had a shortdesc. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:57, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Answering the questions in reverse order: As I attempted to explain at Template talk:Infobox UK place#Short description, when the "noreplace" option is present in a template's {{short description}} transclusion, it means let a short description template in the article override the infobox's description. That means that if you put a short description in an article that already has one set by the infobox, the one in the article will be shown to readers. The short description in the infobox is applied by default if a better one is not present locally in the article.

As for German Shepherd, I don't see a duplicate short description, and I don't see a recent change to the article or to {{Infobox dog breed}} that would explain the error that FlightTime reports. Maybe another editor can puzzle out that one. FlightTime, perhaps try a purge or a null edit? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:10, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95: Cleared my cache, made a null edit, then took this sreenshot - FlightTime (open channel) 03:40, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just guessing here: That looks like the desktop view, so I suspect that you have some script or gadget turned on that shows short descriptions, and that maybe you have two such scripts or the one you have doesn't work quite right. Did you follow these instructions to get the short description to show? If not, try that, and disable any other script you are using. All of that said, I remember seeing duplicate (and identical) short descriptions, without an error message, for a short period a while ago. It was not a problem in articles or in my configuration, and it went away by itself. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:53, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That is from this line .shortdescription { display:block !important; } in your common.css file. Since simple css can't determine which short description is actually being used it just displays both. Mobile readers only see one. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 06:01, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Trialpears: You're correct, I deactivated that line and it fixed the issue (it also removed the description altogether, which is Ok I really don't need those anyway. I only added that line cuz I thought I'd help with adding them to articles). I want to thank everyone for their time and help, I kinda feel like someone who "cried wolf", but I guess that's what "community" is all about. Cheer to all and thanx again, - FlightTime (open channel) 15:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That is right. I have the same code in my css. Sometimes it is useful to see what all the other short descriptions are that may be lurking unseen. One from an infobox and one from a local template is fine as long as it is overridden. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tools broken

The tools bar in the left hand pane of my browser usually displays 12-15 options - this afternoon most of those have disappeared, and now it only diaplsys 6. Any idea what has happened? Is it a wider issue or a problem with the script? Giant Snowman 18:10, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's that script. Ohconfucius edited it today [4] and accidentally removed the ending apostrophe at the last change. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:52, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. Found and fixed the glitch. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 20:02, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter and Ohconfucius: now working again, many thanks. Giant Snowman 20:05, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2020-09

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

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 February. It will be on all wikis from 27 February (calendar).

Future changes

There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.

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

20:59, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Rate limit

I'm trying to develop a tool similar to Twinkle's unlink but for replacing links and I seem to be encountering a rate limit and I'm getting the message As an anti-abuse measure, you are limited from performing this action too many times in a short space of time, and you have exceeded this limit. Please try again in a few minutes. What exactly is the rate limit (practically for extended confirmed users and rollbackers)?– BrandonXLF (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Your quote is MediaWiki:Actionthrottledtext. mw:Manual:$wgRateLimits says the MediaWiki default rate limit for edits is 90 edits in 60 seconds for autoconfirmed users. https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php sets the same default for Wikimedia wikis and doesn't change it for enwiki. Special:ListGroupRights does not give noratelimit to extended confirmed users or rollbackers, so I think 90 edits in 60 seconds should apply to you unless you are hitting an edit filter throttle. Are you getting the message here at enwiki? I didn't find many rapid edits in your recent contributions. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:52, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also you can see the limits that apply to you using the API's meta=userinfo module, like this. Anomie ⚔ 01:55, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: Yeah I'm doing it here on the enwiki. I'm doing blank edits as a test for now because I don't want it to stop editing halfway through. I tried editing at 90 edits/minute and I'm still getting the error. It seems to allow me to do 30 edits than it shows the error 30 times than it resets, when editing at a rate of 1 edit/second. Which would make it seem like the rate limit is 30 edits/minute, but I don't see how that would apply to edits looking through InitialiseSettings.php and now [5]– BrandonXLF (talk) 02:00, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Just realized my empty edits were linkpurges, which have the 30/60 limit :/. 90/60 seems to be working. – BrandonXLF (talk) 02:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Appearance files

Hello!

Can you adjust your settings so that files at file pages and at Special:ListFiles/USER has a transparent background instead of white? With transparent I mean the dark gray/light gray checkerboard which are seen when looking at files in WP:Media Viewer.Jonteemil (talk) 10:05, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonteemil: "Transparent background" means the image itself is defined as transparent so the background is determined by something else and not by the image. The checkerboard is a way to indicate that an image is transparent. If transparent images are displayed with a white background then it's hard to tell whether it's the image itself which has a white background. The checkerboard is only seen for transparent images, e.g. File:Adidas Logo.svg#/media/File:Adidas Logo.svg. If I hover over the image on the file page File:Adidas Logo.svg then I also get the checkerboard there. I get it permanently on commons:File:Adidas Logo.svg. commons:MediaWiki:Common.css has this:

/* Put a checker background at the image description page only visible if the image has transparent background */
/* You may want to clear the gallery background for the main namespace on other projects as galleries are used in articles */
#file img,
.filehistory a img,
.gallerybox .thumb img,
.com-checker img{
 background: url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Checker-16x16.png") repeat;
}

It includes places you didn't request. You can add Special:Listfiles by including .mw-special-Listfiles img, in the list:

.mw-special-Listfiles img,
#file img,
.filehistory a img,
.gallerybox .thumb img,
.com-checker img{
 background: url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Checker-16x16.png") repeat;
}

Place the code in your CSS. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:35, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: Thanks!Jonteemil (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: Can you do it globally on all language versions of Wikipedias btw? Like adding something to m:User:Jonteemil/global.css? Jonteemil (talk) 20:09, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonteemil: That should work fine. Your global css applies to all Wikimedia wikis, not just Wikipedia languages. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:19, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I know. I think Wikipedia is the only Wiki I use that have file pages so it shouldn't be a problem elsewhere. Thanks.Jonteemil (talk) 21:21, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Commons has a few... They already have the CSS for file pages but not for commons:Special:ListFiles/Jonteemil. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:48, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As of

Can anyone tell me why we need {{As of}}? It's highly used, and adds articles to Category:Articles containing potentially dated statements, but does anyone ever refer to that? It currently has 59,682 members, some (like this one) being, contrary to its usage instructions, in the future, and others, (example), also against those instructions, historic. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:25, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly have used it for statements that refer to a specific time period and need periodic updating. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't monitor the category pages but I have "Show hidden categories" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering and sometimes make an update after noticing an old as of category on an article of interest. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:49, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Has there been an uptick in hacking attempts on accounts?

I just got a notice that someone try and failed to login my account multiple times. Just wondering if I'm alone in this, or if it's more widespread. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Headbomb: I haven't noticed anything on my end for the time being. Amaury • 19:38, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

https://grafana.wikimedia.org/d/000000385/loginnotify?orgId=1&refresh=10s&from=now-30d&to=now suggests no (The green line is the number of notices for failed logins). Bawolff (talk) 19:52, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Guess someone had it for me. Good thing it didn't work! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, still getting targeted. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:19, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

5 in 3 days here. Leaky caldron (talk) 21:23, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) @Headbomb: What bridge did you burn?

Amaury • 21:24, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No idea, if I had to guess either someone in the Kudpung arbcom case, or someone who's edits I reverted for citing predatory journals. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, doesn't look like anything above the normal background noise of the usual suspects trying to cause havoc. Not much that can be done about it other than making sure you have a strong password, WP:2FA, and have an email set. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 21:28, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I do have a strong password, but I suppose it's time to have 2FA. Hopefully it's not too annoying if you use 2-3 devices. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One suspect is the blocked sock who made an appearance at AC Kudpung. Leaky caldron (talk) 10:58, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Problems using the wikipedia dump bz2 file

Hi, I just downloaded enwiki-20200201-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2 .

I tried to open it with wikidumpparser. It crashed on the first line, saying "System.Xml.XmlException: 'Unexpected end of file has occurred. The following elements are not closed: mediawiki. Line 45, position 1.'" I extracted the xml file. Too big for notepad++. I tried using firstobject xml editor, which I have used to open xml files larger than a few Gigabites before. Firstobject xml editor just closed without any error message when I tried to open the xml.

I would prefer to open it in .net, but any language will do. I just want a program to be able to look up many articles, and I thought a local file would be better than many calls to the online wikipedia. Perhaps I was wrong. Do you have any suggestions? Is there something wrong with the dump? Is it a newer format? Do you have any suggestions on how to access it at all or alternatively for accessing the online wikipedia often in the best way?

I have used a few .net libraries some years ago, but as I read the documentation, nowadays I need permission, and probably special permission if I want to make many calls. So I thought the dump might be an alternative, not to disturb anyone too much.

I recently realized that wictonary may be more appropriate for my needs . I had similar problems with the dumps. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 22:15, 25 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Star Lord - 星爵, how many is "many articles"? A thousand a day? A thousand an hour? A thousand a minute? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:26, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At this point in time, I cannot tell how many it will be eventually, Whatamidoing (WMF). It may be years before it needs any amounts at all. I am investigating possibilities for the future. I shall ask again when I can give you reliable numbers. However, I have now had a look at "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?" and it looks like this will serve me well initially. Initially, there will only be a few lookups for basic definitions. I read somewhere that there seems to be a limit for these calls. 500 calls a day standard and 5000 for bots. Are these reliable numbers? Would I need to register a bot somewhere when ( and if ) the numbers approach 500 a day, do you know? Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 07:10, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is not (yet) a limit on number of API calls per day. However, mw:API:Etiquette encourages making requests serially rather than in parallel and using a user agent that identifies your code and indicates a way to contact you in case you wind up doing something that negatively impacts the sites. Anomie ⚔ 13:09, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 17:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Did you decompress the dump properly? That type of error message suggests to me the dump file was maybe truncated or not decompressed properly (just a guess though. I dont really know much about this). Bawolff (talk) 09:37, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidumpparser, where that error occured, decompresses via GZipStream internally. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 17:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

well given you are using a bzip2 dump not a gzip dump, maybe that's part of the problem. Bawolff (talk) 23:16, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Assistance needed to make Help:Introduction more mobile-friendly

As part of an effort to make it ready for use as the main introduction page for new users (see proposal here), we are looking to improve the way Help:Introduction displays on mobile devices. Is anyone here skilled enough in mobile design to take on that task? Or is there anywhere else on WP we should go to ask? Your work would have a huge potential impact, assisting nearly every new editor to the project from here forward. Sdkb (talk) 04:30, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can see, Help:Introduction looks pretty good on mobile devices until I shrink my device screen and the two fixed columns of buttons start to overlap each other. Fixed columns in general are less compatible with mobile viewing than responsive columns. Ideally, the two columns should be responsive so that they show as one stacked column on screens of smaller width. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:07, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sdkb, i've moved it into templatestyles, which will make it easier to apply styling and to adapt the styling at different viewport sizes. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:07, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@TheDJ and Jonesey95: thank you both! Are similar edits needed at {{Intro to}} (the template used in the tutorial modules), or is it in better shape than {{Intro to single}} (used for the main intro page) was? Sdkb (talk) 21:05, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

{{intro to single}} should at least display reasonably well on mobile devices now with the two columns re-flowing to fit the screen size. {{{intro to}} mainly needs to reflow the left-hand panel to appear above the text on narrow screens, and possibly on mobiles compress the vertical height of that panel (maybe the nomobile class within MediaWiki:Mobile.css would work?). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 00:44, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Sdkb: The Template:Intro_to/sandbox now works pretty well on mobiles (as well as making the window on a desktop narrow). Just watining for the sandbox version to be copied over to the main template. Thanks particularly to TheDJ for tips. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 07:18, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Evolution and evolvability and TheDJ: Yes, I'm so glad to see it; thank you both for taking this on! I may make some tweaks in the next few days to try to improve the navigation, but the main thing left to do at this point seems to be convincing the community to implement the tutorial more widely. Sdkb (talk) 08:26, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Weird markup brokenness in AfD close

Something is amiss markup-wise in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aridhu Aridhu. The blue background div that's supposed to cover the entire AfD text only extends down as far as the reference list, and the next few paragraphs are outside the box. I'm guessing some interaction with the {{reflist}} template, but I can't see what. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:13, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Never put a reflist inside a list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:16, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Additional interface for edit conflicts on talk pages

Sorry, for writing this text in English. If you could help to translate it, it would be appreciated.

You might know the new interface for edit conflicts (currently a beta feature). Now, Wikimedia Germany is designing an additional interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This interface is shown to you when you write on a discussion page and another person writes a discussion post in the same line and saves it before you do. With this additional editing conflict interface you can adjust the order of the comments and edit your comment. We are inviting everyone to have a look at the planned feature. Let us know what you think on our central feedback page! -- For the Technical Wishes Team: Max Klemm (WMDE) 14:14, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Effects of nofollow

Does anyone know whether the complaint in this edit summary has any basis in fact? I thought that nofollow attributes had no effect on search engine optimization, but he thinks that it has a negative effect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Nofollow is an instruction to search engines to ignore, or not follow, the links that are tagged with it. How search engines interpret tat information can differ, is not usually made public, and wholly out of our control. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:00, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In theory search engines are supposed to make the link not count in ranking pages or only count weakly. I have never heard of nofollow being interpreted negatively. Bawolff (talk) 23:19, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:REFILL is down

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T246378

Both versions. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:34, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Citation bot is down too! AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:31, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the entire tool server is down. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 18:33, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång: It's been like that for days. I read somewhere earlier this month that there is a hardware issue that is supposed to be solved on the 26th (today). I don't remember where I read it though. I wouldn't be surprised if the estimated fix date was optimistic. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:34, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

davidwr, thanks for the info. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

it's still not working. Sheila1988 (talk) 20:10, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Worked just now, thanks to all involved, appreciate it. Caro7200 (talk) 16:26, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Any collapsible box isn't functional when logged in.

What is going on? If I sign out I can use collapsible elements but when I'm signed in to my account, they do nothing when clicked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daemonspudguy (talk • contribs) 18:22, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is it still happening? The green collapsible areas at the top of this page are working fine for me. There may be a bug in you Skin or other settings in your preferences or one of the gadgets or .js or other configuration files may have a bug or be triggering a bug. If your web browser or operating system recently updated, that could also play a role, but I would look at other things first. Do you have the same issue on other projects, such as the Commons? Standard IT advice which is almost certainty overkill if the problem is with your computer but probably useless if it's not: Reboot the computer and try again. If that doesn't work, try again using a different web browser or different computer, or at least clear all caches, "cookies," and other data from your web browser. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:31, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Daemonspudguy: If it works with safemode=1 then try removing importScript("User:Thespaceface/MetricFirstAmericanSpelling.js"); in User:Daemonspudguy/common.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:12, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Mobile version of main page on nds-nl.wikipedia

Hi there. Can anyone tell me if it's possible to make the section "Wikipedia" (in the right-hand column) appear before the section "Wat is neadersassisk?" (in the left-hand column) on the mobile version of the nds-nl.wiki, without changing the order of the content on the desktop version? Servien (talk) 19:36, 26 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Servien, no, because you have two columns in two separate divs. If you want this, the content of both columns needs to be in a single parent div, so that you can use the CSS order property to change the order of the siblings. The meta main page uses something like this (though it keeps strict row divs, but theoretically those can be removed with a little bit more flex box magic). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response, TheDJ. I'm managed to localise the current design for the Dutch Low Saxon main page, but I'm not that familiar with CSS programming. If it doesn't take much time of your time, are you by chance willing/able to look into this? (If not that's fine too, we've got the basics covered, it would just be a nice detail). Servien (talk) 15:30, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a tool, that can search a path through categories, to find a way how an article falls into some category?

I mean, if there is this category hierarchy:

Category A
- Category B
  - Category C
    - Category D
      - Category E
        Category F
        Article

is there a tool that accepts input "Category A" and "Article" and can find this path? MBH (talk) 05:58, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like "get list of categories for a given target page" is the fundamental feature:

en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=categories&titles=Article

Run recursively, one can build a full geneological tree from the original target all the way up to Category:Contents (or stopping when a certain category of interest is detected). One detail of concern is that there could be several paths (articles in a non-diffused cat, when asked for any cat at that or a higher level; articles described by several different pools of "topic X by Y" diffused cats), and also intentional or unintentional cycles. Depending on how many steps there are in the chain, what you're hoping is a directed tree may be some other sort of directed graph. DMacks (talk) 06:15, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The fact is that several years ago I created a tool for this task, https://tools.wmflabs.org/mbh/cpf.cgi (yes, it works recursively through API, as you described). I am thinking about i18-ise it and announce in enwiki, but first decided to find out, whether such a tool already exists (maybe I reinvent the wheel?). It already can work on enwiki, I mean interface i18n. MBH (talk) 06:43, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Neat! Now all you have to do is compare the full trees (back to Category:Contents) of two articles to find their category-geneological relationship. It's like a generalized alternative to Wikipedia:Wikington Crescent. DMacks (talk) 09:38, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is {{Category tree}} any use? see example below.

Click on "►" below to display subcategories:
Films

- X201 (talk) 10:09, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

{{category tree all|Category|mode=parents}} looks like a nice expandable upward tree, but this (as with the other {{category tree}} variants only operate on cats not articles as the starting point. DMacks (talk) 10:28, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, this is an uglier problem than it seems. It's not the mechanics of traversing the category graph, it's that the graph itself is a mess. As mentioned above, there's cycles. There's also just plain old bogus data, i.e. people who have added incorrect categories to articles or incorrect sub-category links. I once tried to attack this from the other direction: I wanted to find all articles that were recursively a member of Category:Music. I beat my head against the wall for days. Or was it weeks? Seems simple, right? Perform either a depth or breadth first traversal of a tree, and keep going until you've reached all the terminal nodes. Except that there's cycles. So, you add in cycle detection. And ignore hidden categories. As I remember, it was reasonably well behaved for about the first 12 or 13 plies, with fewer and fewer new nodes being discovered in each iteration. Then it started to diverge again, discovering gazillions of pages that weren't remotely related to music. I'm not saying don't do this, just be aware that you may run into similar problems. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:37, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- RoySmith My tool is searching up from article, not down from category, because splitting at each step is many times less. Moreover, looks like ruwiki's category tree is much, much, much better structurised and cleaned from cycles, than enwiki's. In ruwiki, when an extraneous article falls into "New articles in Category:XYZ" botlist, my tool usually finds category path, composed of 10-15 categories. In enwiki, I tried to find a pretty strange path, for example between "Harry Potter" and "Category:Classical antiquity". and... found it composed of 236 categories, including such categories as "Computational neuroscience", "International Commission on Stratigraphy geologic time scale of Earth" and "Mammals"! See https://tools.wmflabs.org/mbh/cpf.cgi?lang=en.wikipedia&uppercat=Classical+antiquity&page=Harry+Potter . I have never seen anything like this in ruwiki. If enwiki's category tree is such a mess, I think, any category navigation tools will be not useful here. MBH (talk) 17:44, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - That. Is. Awesome. But I don’t see Kevin Bacon in there anywhere. 04:00, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

A bit of Python and regex experience

Resolved

--qedk (t 桜 c) 16:59, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the regex: ({{\s*(csd|speedy|cat|dab|(dis)?ambig|db|pec|possibly empty category|empty\s?cat)|with no backlinks\s*]]) (used in conjunction with re.IGNORECASE)

Here's the culprit:Special:Diff/942899385

Here's a demo: Demo

Any clue what went amiss? --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:14, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

QEDK, Remind us what you're trying to do? --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:27, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AntiCompositeNumber: Match templates my bot should skip, such as {{Pec}}, deletion templates, and so on (the false positive here being the {{empty cat}} template). See the tagging sub-point at the BRFA: WP:Bots/Requests for approval/QEDKbot. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:29, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

QEDK, are you using re.match(), re.search(), or something else? --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:36, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

First, re.compile with the IGNORECASE flag, then calling the compiled regex with re.match(). --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:39, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

QEDK, There's your problem. re.match() only matches when the regex matches the start of the string. The category page starts with {{Tracking category}}, which doesn't match the regex. Use re.search() instead. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:47, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@AntiCompositeNumber: Thank you, yet again you've made me feel absolutely stupid for not reading the documentation properly but honestly, thanks a ton!

--qedk (t 桜 c) 16:59, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I only know why it didn't work because I've made the same mistake before. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:01, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)

Why the terminal ]]? Isn't your regex supposed to be looking for a whole template so should begin with \{\{ and end with \}\}? Because you are using a real language (python) simplify the regex into multiple regexes and and use python to test each one separately. I have found that to be much more understandable and reliable than complex regex alone.

What is with no backlinks? It isn't a template so what is is?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:32, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Trappist the monk: That's the second capture group for the category this bot adds: Category:Empty categories with no backlinks. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:35, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to answer your question by not answering it. Regexes are cool. I love them. I'm a regex jedi. But, they're the wrong tool for this. If you're using Python, you should be using MWParserFromHell to parse wikitext. There's just no excuse not to. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:20, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- A shoutout to [6] seems to be in order, if only by analogy. —Cryptic 15:57, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'd never seen that before. Cute, but I don't think the author quite makes the point emphatically enough. BTW, for anybody who thinks they can parse wikitext with regexes, consider adding <nowiki> and </nowiki> tags randomly to a page and see how any regex-based tool survives. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:10, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Closing tag issue at an AFD

At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shahra Razavi the green box does appear to stop at a {{reflist}} template rather than the actual footer. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 17:30, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed An editor put a colon in front of {{reflist}} which can cause issues. Also, the editor should have used {{reflist talk}}. Fix. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:36, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is exactly the same issue as #Weird markup brokenness in AfD close above. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:24, 27 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Table formatting anomaly

Issue appears at List of Warped Tour lineups by year, and displays in multiple browsers.

On a line by itself, at the left margin and directly beneath the horizontal Compact ToC, is a stray parameter:

align="center"| Y

I cannot determine where this is coming from in the code. It is quite distracting. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks! NedFausa (talk) 06:45, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@NedFausa: There was some misplace CSS styling in the "36 Crazyfists" row. I've commented it out temporarily, but you should check that the appropriate columns are ticked and if so delete the commented code. — Jts1882 | talk 08:24, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jts1882: thank you! The page looks much better now, and the checkmarks appear to be properly placed. What a relief. Not knowing CSS, I was utterly baffled and ready to swear off drugs completely. NedFausa (talk) 15:57, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Earwig's copyvio detector

I know there have been problems with Earwig's copyvio detector (https://tools.wmflabs.org/copyvios) for some time, but I am now experiencing one which, for me at least, is totally new. Every time I make a search, I get a list of totally irrelevant sites, with nothing whatever in common with the Wikipedia page I used in the search. This applies even to exact duplication of searches I did within the last half hour or so and which then found web pages with significant overlap with the Wikipedia page I am searching for. Certain web sites keep coming up, no matter what I am searching for, such as https://www.thebalancecareers.com/ https://www.careeronestop.org and https://apastyle.apa.org Anyone know anything about this? JBW (talk) 10:57, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly related to T245426, but it's hard to see how the problem described there would account for these symptoms. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:12, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Any tool that can create a log of mergers I proposed?

I recently started using Twinkle and I am quite fond of its CSD and prod log features. But I came to a realization that Twinkle's lack of proposed merge log may be unduly reinforcing my favor of prodding/AfDing stuff. A merge discussion is a good alternative in some cases, but as there is no log of proposed mergers, I think myself and many others may even subconciously prefer prod/AfD to mergers since the latter are hard to keep track of. Any suggestion of how to remedy this with a tool (or a Twinkle option I missed?) would be appreciated. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:53, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If there isn't a Twinkle-specific way, you can probably search your contibs by edit summary. WP:Village pump (technical)/Archive 177#Searching Contribution history shows how to, two different ways. —Cryptic 14:29, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Right, I know how to use edit summary search but it can often fail due to server lag, and if you forgot to use standardize edit summaries, it is another point of failure. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 15:22, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Green titles?

I noticed the title of Media coverage of Bernie Sanders is in green. Digging through the generated HTML, it looks like this is due to <h1 ... style="assess-b-text">, which leads me to believe it's tied to the article being B-rated. But, how does this little bit of magic work? I don't see anything in Wikipedia:Content assessment which talks about it. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:09, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At Preferences → Gadgets, it's "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header (documentation)". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:41, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RoySmith, it is a community gadget called Metadata_gadget —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:41, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Roman Numerals in the Volume Parameter of the Citation of Cite Book Templates

Dear Village pumpers. I hope this is the right forum. I often use the Citation or the Cite Book template to describe sources cited in Wkipedia articles. Some of these sources are works comprising more than one volume. For example:
{{citation|last|Lloyd |first=E. M. |editor-last=Matthew |editor-first=Colin |editor-link=Colin Matthew |editor2-last=Harrison |editor2-first=Brian |editor2-link=Brian Harrison (historian) |date=2004 |title=Vane, Charles William, third marquess of Londonderry (1778–1854) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |volume=56 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |publication-place=New York |pages=95–98 |isbn=0-19-861406-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_0198614063/page/95/ |url-access=registration}}
I believe this is correct and the only doubt here is whether I should have said: |volume=Volume 56, since "Volume 56" is printed at the beginning of the book.

However, older works typically number their volumes in Roman. At first, I modernised these using Arabic numbers, for example:
{{citation|last=Pollard |first=Albert Frederick |author-link=Albert Pollard |editor-last=Lee |editor-first=Sidney |editor-link=Sidney Lee |date=1900 |title=WILMOT, SIR CHARLES, first Viscount of Athlone (d. 1633) |encyclopedia=Dictionary of National Biography |volume=62 |publisher=The Macmillan Company |publication-place=New York |pages=59–61 |url=https://archive.org/details/dictionarynatio13stepgoog/page/n70/}}
A bit of browsing in Wikipedia shows that this approach is not rare. Then I discovered that the documentation for the Citation template, just like that for the Cite Book template, explicitly mentions Roman version numbers. I deduced that the original form should be respected, as given in the book. Now, in the given example, the book is inscribed "VOL. LXII. Williamson–Worden" at its beginning. I simplified this as "|volume=LXII Williamson–Worden" in the template, which might be acceptable. So I started to make appropriate changes in the concerned edits to correct my error.

However, recently I had the occasion to discuss the topic with an experienced Wikipedian at an introductory workshop for new editors and that person recommended to transliterate to Arabic numbers as many readers have trouble deciphering Roman numbers. I read MOS:NUM. It instructs us to avoid Roman numbers for dates and centuries but does not mention volumes. What is correct usage? With many thanks Johannes Schade (talk) 17:22, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My philosophy is to use whatever format the original source used. I make the analogy to page numbers. It's common for books to have front matter pages numbered in roman, then to pick up again in arabic page numbers for the main body of the book. Citing page iv as 4 would be just plain wrong. I figure the same logic applies to volume numbers. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:00, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As a bot writer, preference is Arabic numbers. This is how Google Books does it for example and so does Internet Archive when possible. It makes computerized interactions with metadata more error prone when using Roman, given the choice. Also recommend in the above example to have |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_0198614063 and |pages=95-98 ie. |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_0198614063/page/95/ 95-98]-- GreenC 14:49, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would change to Arabic numerals, unless there is a publication that numbered older volumes with Roman numberals but then started over again with Arabic numerals, starting at "1". This is different than book page numbers; it is not unusual to have both a page i and a page 1. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:23, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikisophia links?

I somehow just got sent to wikisophia.org. It was through an Interwiki link (in Ecclesiology) that started "s:" so, yes, it should have gone to Wikisource, and it does now, but before I made the edit I am positive it linked me to wikisophia (which appears to be both abandoned and unaffiliated with Wikimedia). It was to a database error page. I don't know how to reproduce it now, because the links are pointing to Wikisource now, even in the old revisions. Any clues? Elizium23 (talk) 18:03, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

wikisophia:Main page generates a 403-forbidden message. Either the expansion listed at meta:Special:Interwiki is incorrect or the wikisophia site has a bug. But http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Main_Page works fine. In any case, the site seems stale and parts seem broken. In any case, the page still a link to wikisource (spelled out, not :s:...) I fixed it to point to wikisource, which is where it should logically point to anyway in this instance. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:59, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, thanks. Is it a Visual Editor bug? Apparently I introduced the links unwittingly in this revision. Is Wikisophia affiliated with Wikimedia? Elizium23 (talk) 19:07, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is it a Visual Editor bug? No clue. Is Wikisophia affiliated with Wikimedia? Doubtful, Wikimedia/Wikipedia inter-links work with many projects that are not affiliated with Wikimedia. As a general rule of thumb, if the "forward" column in meta:Special:Interwiki says "yes" its very likely it is affiliated, if it it says "no" it's likely unaffiliated. I'm sure there are exceptions, such as the luxo interwiki (which translates to https://tools.wmflabs.org/guc/?user=$1). davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:16, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have a high level of confidence that this is indeed a Visual Editor bug. I have triggered it twice in my sandbox, once with a copy of the Ecclesiology article, and the second time with a de minimis snippet of an image and a caption.

It can be reproduced by taking a passage of text including a ":s:" Interwiki link to Wikisource, copy and paste that text into the caption of an image, then save. Upon saving (and not earlier) it becomes a hardcoded "wikisophia:" link.

So, who from WMF do I ping that a phab can be created? I don't have an account there... yet... Elizium23 (talk) 19:20, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:VisualEditor has a prominent link near the top to report problems. As far as who to ping at the foundation or on phab, I don't know. You can log into phab with your Wikipedia account. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 19:34, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm unable to reproduce the issue. Your edit summary in [7] says "Tags: 2017 wikitext editor". That indicates you were not using VisualEditor in that edit but have enabled "New wikitext mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. I'm still unable to reproduce. Does it happen when you start the edit with safemode=1? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:16, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PrimeHunter, I was using Visual Editor in the bug edits, for sure, because I used it to copy-paste rich text. It doesn't trigger if I put it in the immediate caption box, only if I "edit" the photo and put it in the richtext caption parameter box in the edit window. I triggered it again with safemode=1 (I had to switch to Visual Editor because your link started me in 2017 Wikitext editor). Maybe the tagging is part of the bug, but the last edit is correctly tagged as VE. Elizium23 (talk) 00:53, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I was copying directly to the caption without editing the image. I can reproduce the bug now and made a larger test at User:PrimeHunter/Shortcut bug. It tests all shortcuts in the first table at Help:Interwiki linking#Project titles and shortcuts. When I edited this version as described it made this diff showing that five shortcuts get wrong expansions: wikt:, q:, s:, v:, voy:. VisualEditor converts

to

 [[wikiwikiweb:Test|wiktionary]] [[wikipediawikipedia:Test|wikiquote]] [[wikisophia:Test|wikisource]] [[wikiti:Test|wikiversity]] [[wikiversity:Test|wikivoyage]]

PrimeHunter (talk) 02:26, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I created a personal template but need help on parameters.

Sorry if I'm asking in the wrong section of the Village Pump, but this is a question asking for help about how to have my template do what I want it to do.

I've created a template, {{Tenryuu/GOCE talk}}, which pings the user that I've placed as an argument for {{{1}}}. Reading the documentation for notifications I've learned that I also need to have my comment signed for it to work. I originally wanted to just add ~~~~ to the end before I realised it would just be substituted for an actual signature at that time. Currently I'm using this piece of code ({{{|safesubst:}}}#if:{{{sign|}}}|{{{sign}}}}}) to add my own signature at the cost of having to create another parameter, {{{sign}}}.

What should I do to tweak my template so that I can sign my template when I post it without the need for a {{{sign}}} parameter? --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 03:09, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Tenryuu: You can cheat by mixing and matching <includeonly>. Try out the change I've made (it might need to be using <onlyinclude> instead). --Izno (talk) 04:09, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno: Tried both the new change and the suggestion. Both don't seem to work. Reverted back to 2-parameter template. Thanks for the edit

. --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 04:44, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, of course it didn't work. You saved over that page instead of using a sandbox... --Izno (talk) 05:09, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I copied the code over to my sandbox and previewed it several times to no avail. --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 05:36, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

One way to put a signature in a template that will be substed is like this: ~~<noinclude />~~. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:01, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95: I must be doing something wrong. Right now my code looks like this:

<onlyinclude>{{tmbox
|image = [[Image:Icon apps query.svg|70 px]]
|text = Hello {{U|{{{1}}}}}, Tenryuu here. After completing my preliminary copyedit I always ask questions about the
article to ensure that my edit reflects the intended meaning and is clear in doing so. Please reply to each point by 
indenting below it like you would a conversation; items will be struck out once they have been answered. 
--{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#if:~~<noinclude />~~}}
}}
</onlyinclude>

What am I doing wrong? --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 21:34, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have fixed it for you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:42, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what code you used. Could you put it in <pre></pre> tags? --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 23:15, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Tenryuu: Is it your intention to allow the template to be used by other users? If so, it should be moved to a more descriptive name. If not, it should be moved to "User:Tenryuu/...". Nardog (talk) 23:27, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Nardog: I'm moving it over as per another user's suggestion. Just wanted to get all of it fixed first. --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 23:31, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Tenryuu: You should probably file the remaining redirects for G7 speedy deletion then. Nardog (talk) 23:42, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved. Learned it was a tricky thing to do with substitution. Thanks for the help. --Tenryuu (🐲 • 💬 • 🌟) 23:38, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Creating an Abuse filter

Hello everyone! Can someone create an abuse filter for me? The process of creating is complex to me and i can't understand it. Goal: Matches strings (bad words in pages) Here are some of rules; It:

matches only whole words.
matches words that contains this string.
matches only whole words on non-talk pages.

I'll explain more after someone replied. Thanks! ⇒ Aram Talk 14:36, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Aram: Why? --Izno (talk) 16:16, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Izno: I want to catch bad words used by bad users easily and revert them quickly, but for our project (ckbwiki). It is useful for us. ⇒ Aram Talk 17:12, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Aram: you can ask a filter designer for help at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:22, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Be sure to note that you are just asking for help building a filter for ckbwiki. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:23, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Xaosflux: Thank you very much! ⇒ Aram Talk 11:24, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Troubleshooting the calendar template

Can someone help me troubleshoot the {{calendar}} template? It shows up correctly under desktop view, but in mobile view the month and day-of-the-week labels do not appear, making pages like this one look very confusing. 28bytes (talk) 14:44, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The subtemplates have class="navbox-title" in the header cells. This class is not displayed in mobile where navboxes are omitted. The styling for navbox-title is in MediaWiki:Common.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:40, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Subtemplates with names like {{Calendar/Sun1stMonthStartWed}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:56, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks PrimeHunter, Redrose64 for the replies. I'm still a little confused about how best to fix this, though. Thoughts? 28bytes (talk) 02:04, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Line break issue

Hi, I've had to resort to adding a <p> tag here to get the editor to respect a line break: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universal_Kinship#Arguments Throughthemind (talk) 14:58, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Throughthemind, fixed by starting <blockquote>...</blockquote> and paragraphs on a new line. —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:19, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Throughthemind (talk) 15:24, 29 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a...

...a gadget or template that can automatically convert an amount of past dollars into present dollars, like say $75,000 in 1927 to [what would that be worth today]? Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 05:23, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

{{inflation}} * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:25, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

importScript no longer a part of the mobile version

I know importScript has been "deprecated" for a few years now and mw.loader.load is recommended instead, but I notice importScript has suddenly been removed from the mobile version of Wikipedia but not the desktop version. (Had not seen this mentioned, so if anyone else is wondering why their scripts don't seem to work on mobile that would be the reason). Everybody is of course still using importScript in their common.js, is that reason enough for the English Wikipedia to add importScript support again on our end? – Thjarkur (talk) 22:27, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for a tiny default gadget displaying a "Submit this draft" button on untagged drafts for new users

I've mentioned this at WikiProject Articles for Creation ([8] [9]), we have too many confused and frustrated new users unable to submit their drafts for review because they accidentally removed the {{AFC draft}} template from their draft.

With WP:VPT's blessing, I would like to add this script as a default hidden gadget. On untagged drafts, it shows this banner:

This draft is not currently submitted for review.

Submit your draft for review!

The script would only be loaded in draftspace and only displayed to non-extendedconfirmed users.

We have 10,000 draft articles that don't include the instructions "Click here to submit your draft for review".

– Thjarkur (talk) 22:58, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. Long overdue.

Regarding the code, note that array includes and findIndex are not supported on IE 11, and so should not be used. Use indexOf instead. You could maybe define hasDraftTemplate as mw.config.get('wgCategories').map(cat => RGX.test(cat)).indexOf(true) !== -1 SD0001 (talk) 15:29, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm always a bit wary of adding scripts that run always for everyone. @Þjarkur: What is the mechanism you are going to use to prevent this from executing on every page load? And I do specifically mean 'executing', not just completing every action on the script. Could you results be accomplished by adding something to the draftspace edit notice (Template:Editnotices/Namespace/Draft) instead? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:40, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tech note, I would think that namespace parameters for gadgets is currently pending phab:T63007. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:42, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I thought this was possible to do with a cheap single-line namespace-check before loading the rest of the script but then again I'm not quite sure how gadgets are packaged together. Does there exist something like "Wiewnotice"? Since Editnotices are only displayed when editing, having this button in the editnotice would erase any changes the user has made, not give them any indication of whether their draft has been submitted when viewing, and nobody notices editnotices when using the VisualEditor. – Thjarkur (talk) 16:02, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T6469

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T61245

@Þjarkur: phab:T6469 seems like the "best" answer for this, solving it via mw:Extension:PageNotice which can put a notice on just certain namespaces - and has been stalled in development limbo for over 10 years. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:31, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]