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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Pending changes

I would like to use this script when reviewing pending changes. However, when I see the pending changes, it only shows the diff, not the article with the changes implemented. Can an editor edit the my script so that it shows both the diff and article with the changes implemented? I don't know how to do it myself so I am asking for help. Interstellarity T 🌟 10:08, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

Not me, but DannyS712 can. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:42, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
QEDK, Can you find someone else that can do it if DannyS712 can't do it? Interstellarity T 🌟 20:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Interstellarity, Hi there i have fixed that issue. ___CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 13:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Posting issues

I have just recently been having an issue: When I hit the preview button to check my edits then hit the publish button I get an edit conflict. When this first happened I treated it as such and it posted twice. After that I have reloaded and see it is already posted by only hitting the preview button. I have never had this issue, that was not a legitimate edit conflict, so am at a lose. Otr500 (talk) 16:09, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Note: This has happened 4 times but when I previewed this edit then hit "publish changes" it worked fine. Otr500 (talk) 16:12, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
Apparently this is an issue only I am having but it is still ongoing. Otr500 (talk) 18:09, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Incorrect_Edit_Conflicts related? Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:24, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Very possible. Also whatever the issue is (I will have to look) it might be related to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Block conflict that may just be another area where the edit conflict is occurring. Otr500 (talk) 12:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm getting inexplicable edit conflicts today. Doug Weller talk 19:55, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
And again when I tried to post the above. Doug Weller talk 19:56, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Again! Is it groundhog day? When this happens again I own't bother to mention it here. Doug Weller talk 19:57, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Searching for old vandalization in a file

I'd like to know if there is any bot or tool that can help me finding old vandalizing editions in a WP file history. Thanks. --Jotamar (talk) 23:56, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

When I said WP files, I meant WP pages. Can someone at least tell me, where should I ask my question? --Jotamar (talk) 19:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Yes, Jotamar, probably WP:BOTREQ, how many edits are you looking for? There will be many millions. Fist step might be to look for edits preceding those with an edit summary of "rvv". Another good place to look is the edits prior to User:ClueBot's edits.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 10:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC).
If you already know specific vandalized text in an article and want the edit which added it then click "Find addition/removal" at the top of the page history. It used WikiBlame until recently but the tool has problems and another is currently used. It's discussed at MediaWiki talk:Histlegend#Wikiblame replacement. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:09, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
What I have in mind is some sort of heuristic tool, capable of finding a short list of possible vandalazing editions that have not been reverted, in a group of pages, for instance, the pages under one category. In less popular, poorly maintained pages, it's not uncommon that such an edition can be easily reverted even after months or years, but first you have to find them, and that takes up a lot of time. --Jotamar (talk) 13:48, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

RefList falling in the wrong place

I need help getting a reflist to fall at the bottom of the article. It is falling between 2 tables. [[1]]

I would like to understand why this happening so I can fix it myself in the future.

Thank you. Lore E. Mariano (talk) 14:02, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Fixed by [2]. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:10, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you so much! Lore E. Mariano (talk) 14:40, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Cite error created by bot.

Apparently there is a new bot creating cite errors. Article: WZ-551 Tag: Rescuing 14 sources and tagging 0 as dead. #IABot (v2.0beta15)

Is there a review process for new bots/tools? I have encountered many repeated errors that I assume are created by them. e.g. "coauthors=", "DUPLICATE_date". User-duck (talk) 17:39, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Communication failure between the bot owner and the community at WT:CS1. I fixed the WZ-551 page that Gog the Mild edited and will leave it to that editor to similarly repair any other error caused by the tool.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:56, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
This is IABot via Oauth request by Gog the Mild. It was due to some miscommunications, my fault, iabot has been patched/rebooted and will look into fixing the errors added onwiki. -- GreenC 19:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Edit conflict. I had just written:
Thank you Trappist the monk. That would have been from me clicking "Fix dead links" on the "Revision history" page and not checking the result thoroughly enough. I shall recheck my other recent clicks of that button.
GreenC, do I need to do anything, other than recheck previous uses of "Fix dead links", and/or cease using it? Thanks Gog the Mild (talk) 19:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
You are good, it's ok now. Looks like the bug lasted 3hrs and somewhere between 100-200 articles. I might script a quick fix or request something at AWB request wouldn't worry about manually repairing. -- GreenC 19:48, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-27

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

Recent changes

  • The development of Wikidata Bridge has started. The goal is to allow Wikidata edits from Wikipedia. [3]

Problems

  • Sometimes pages load slowly for users routed to the Amsterdam data center. Investigation is in progress. [4]
  • Wikidata query service was overloaded between 11:50 UTC until 13:15 UTC on June 24. It has been fixed. [5]

Changes later this week

  • You will be able to read but not to edit all wikis for a short amount of time, on 3 July at 06:00 (UTC). This is to move a database. [6]
  • There is no deployment of a new version of MediaWiki on the wikis this week (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 3 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:22, 1 July 2019 (UTC)


Question re: new translations of articles linked out to other languages

Progression of events was:

  1. Editor created a link to de:Otto Kirn (in article Pandeism, correcting from wrong link to Otto Kern).
  2. Translated Otto Kirn added here.
  3. Wikidata updated for articles now in two languages.
  4. Tagged as an orphan here.

Question: Why doesn’t English addition to Wikidata automatically prompt changing of links previously made to point other languages? Hyperbolick (talk) 19:49, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

The edit said [[:de:Otto Kirn]]. This explicitly tells to link the German Wikipedia. {{Interlanguage link|Otto Kirn|de}}} could have been used instead to test for an English article called Otto Kirn. It would only have examined whether the page name exists and not whether it's in a Wikidata item. As far as I know we have no template for the latter. It is possible to pull information from Wikidata so maybe it could be added as a feature in {{Interlanguage link}}. I don't think it's possible for an English template to look up the Wikidata item for a German article so Q24529752 would probably have to be a parameter. A bot could be coded to automaticlly add the parameter when it's not supplied. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:12, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Could a bot check whenever a Wikidata item is connected from here? Got a notification here when it was, so somebody’s telling this Wiki. Hyperbolick (talk) 21:41, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Database issue

Could someone knowledgable comment here, centrally, on whether there are database issues beyond the apparently temporary ones outlined in the above Tech News, and if so, what are their extent and when do we think they will be resolved? It appears multiple bots have for some time not been running DB intensive tasks (such as certain Wikipedia:Database reports), and it is very difficult to parse through all the bot/report talkpage chatter to get a true picture of what is actually going on. Thanks in advance! UnitedStatesian (talk) 02:46, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

The database replicas are undergoing maintenance (see T222978). This involves taking one replica host out of service at a time. The other two hosts then have increased load, which leads to replication lag and increased query time (previously long queries could fail to complete). Maintenance is usually ongoing during the week and paused over the weekends. I would expect this to be an ongoing issue for a while. I don't know how long the maintenance will take, but the DBAs are reaching the end of the maintenance one the first replica. The database items in the Tech News are unrelated. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:29, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Question, watchlist listing error & problem

Dear All,

initially I turned to administrator regarding the issue, but unfortunetly he could not give an idea for solution. The details may be read there...Shortly, if I set it to list the changes back to 7 or 30 days, it is not working, just listing the last 250 changes, not more and I have as well no (previous/next) buttons...I need a solution, Thank You(KIENGIR (talk) 20:21, 1 July 2019 (UTC))

@KIENGIR: This is Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 174#did something break watchlist and make it too short again?. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64:,
Thank you it helped, I applied similar tweaks descibred there (in the detailed settings changing to 30 days and enabling 1000 entries as maximum). though, still I don't have 30 days, I assume mainly because of the 1000 entry limitation (I don't know where would be the url to tweak it higher). Thus practically I could go back two weeks, so my initial problem has been solved (going back between 4-7 days)...maybe as an important note for the others or the developers, even this worked only by unchecking the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" in the Advanced Options...(initially at the first tweak attempt, I automatically checked this box assuming it is essential, but anything written above did not work until it was unchecked, ironically it had a contraproductive effect despite it's name...(KIENGIR (talk) 10:39, 2 July 2019 (UTC))

Issues with alerts, June 2019

Missing notification icons in MonoBook

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T226503

I just spent ten minutes trying to figure out what was wrong on my end. If you're doing the same, it's not just you. See phab:T226503. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm getting it in MonoBook too. The appropriate CSS rules are present in the stylesheets: 
.oo-ui-icon-bell, .mw-ui-icon-bell:before {
    background-image: url(/w/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-alerts&image=bell&format=rasterized&lang=en&skin=monobook);
    background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 width=%2220%22 height=%2220%22 viewBox=%220 0 20 20%22%3E%3Ctitle%3Ebell%3C/title%3E%3Cpath d=%22M16 7a5.38 5.38 0 0 0-4.46-4.85C11.6 1.46 11.53 0 10 0S8.4 1.46 8.46 2.15A5.38 5.38 0 0 0 4 7v6l-2 2v1h16v-1l-2-2zm-6 13a3 3 0 0 0 3-3H7a3 3 0 0 0 3 3z%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E");
}
.oo-ui-icon-tray, .mw-ui-icon-tray:before {
    background-image: url(/w/load.php?modules=oojs-ui.styles.icons-alerts&image=tray&format=rasterized&lang=en&skin=monobook);
    background-image: linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 width=%2220%22 height=%2220%22 viewBox=%220 0 20 20%22%3E%3Ctitle%3Etray%3C/title%3E%3Cpath d=%22M3 1a2 2 0 0 0-2 2v14a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h14a2 2 0 0 0 2-2V3a2 2 0 0 0-2-2zm14 12h-4l-1 2H8l-1-2H3V3h14z%22/%3E%3C/svg%3E");
}
Switching to Vector displays them properly, even though the CSS rules are virtually identical - the only differences are that the word "monobook" becomes "vector" in the first and third url(...) value. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:21, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Um, did the fix also give a ton of scroll-space to the right of anyone else's window? I can now scroll for a very long time to the right, despite there being no content. Killiondude (talk) 23:42, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
@Killiondude: Yes, I see the same thing. (Firefox 67, Linux) Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:45, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
Ditto here, IE 11 in Windows. They were missing for a while, but now they've reappeared. I think they're blurrier than before, however. Could someone ping me and thank me for this edit, so I can see whether the number notifications look any different. Nyttend (talk) 23:53, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
@Nyttend: (ping) Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. Things are somewhat different; the numbers looked normal, but when I clicked each one, it was momentarily surrounded by a little dark box. The same is true if I want to review past notifications and click either of the icons when I have nothing new. Nyttend (talk) 10:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Nyttend: You might be right about the extra blurriness, I'm not sure (I took some screenshots a few years ago: c:File:Vpt redrose64 alerts.PNG, c:File:Vpt redrose64 alerts2.PNG, c:File:Vpt redrose64 alerts3.PNG back when the car door was still in place, now replaced by the TV set icon). You're certainly right about the little dark box, it's blue and there are two for each icon, one enclosing the number and the other enclosing the icon.
@Killiondude: The super-wide scroll space was present for me on all pages until about an hour ago, it's now stopped appearing. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:06, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
You guys aren't getting the icons? I'm getting only the icons — not the actual pings. On the upside, I get all thanks twice. See below. (Using Monobook.) Bishonen | talk 21:38, 27 June 2019 (UTC).
@Bishonen: That's because this problem was fixed and the "fix" caused another problem. Try putting my "fix"-to-the-fix from the other thread in your monobook.css, and see if the links work as expected. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:48, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry, Suffusion of Yellow, I don't see a fix-to-the fix in the other thread (you mean "Someone has broken Thanks", right?), and altogether, you're speaking a foreign language. Could you tell me what to do as if explaining to your mother? Bishonen | talk 21:59, 27 June 2019 (UTC).
@Bishonen: Sorry, there are too many threads about this right now. Try adding:
#pt-notifications-notice .mw-echo-notifications-badge, #pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge {
	text-align: left;
}
to your monobook.css. Works for me, at least. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:07, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
And it worked for me. Thank you very much, Suffusion of Yellow.
Re-pinging Suffusion of Yellow. Bishonen | talk 08:10, 28 June 2019 (UTC).
Suffusion of Yellow, I've just realized that my problem persists on Meta. Somebody pinged me, to test, and all I got was a three-year-old thanks. Can I put your magic code somewhere to fix that? (And hopefully Commons, Swedish Wikipedia, etc etc — I assume it's everywhere.) Bishonen | talk 19:30, 29 June 2019 (UTC).
@Bishonen: the problem on meta-wiki, (and most all other projects) should get cleaned up with the next release train. If it doesn't I'll put the hack on meta-wiki. If you need it urgently, you can hack your own monobook.css there (or just click a bit further to the left). — xaosflux Talk 19:38, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@Bishonen: You can also put the same code in your meta:Special:MyPage/global.css. In theory this could cause display problems if you view some wikis in non-monobook skins, but I just tried in Vector and Timeless and I didn't see any problems. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:42, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@Bishonen: Wait, just realized that it's possible to have the fix only apply to monobook. Give me a few minutes to work it out. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:45, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

@Bishonen: Ok, try putting:

.skin-monobook #pt-notifications-notice .mw-echo-notifications-badge, .skin-monobook #pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge {
	text-align: left;
}

in your meta:Special:MyPage/global.css. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:54, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Suffusion of Yellow, now you're talking my language. It seems to work. Thank you. Bishonen | talk 20:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC).

Excessive width on monobook

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T226594

So if you are using monobook, you may now constantly think there is something off the page to the right. See phab:T226597 for the report. Apparently this is a hack that the dev's put in to work around the notifications mess above. — xaosflux Talk 03:14, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Merged to phab:T226594. — xaosflux Talk 03:41, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. Just noticed this, and thought it was a broken ref spilling across the page I was on! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Jeez. Hadn't noticed. Can't unsee now. Here's a temporary fix. —RainFall 07:13, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
#pt-notifications-notice .mw-echo-notifications-badge, #pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge {
	text-indent: 0px !important;
}
Yesterday, when I responded to the thread above ("please ping and thank me"), I looked for this and it wasn't the case, but now it is. Nyttend (talk) 10:53, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
Does the temporary fix actually work? I've still got the excessive width. DuncanHill (talk) 12:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: it took a min to update the central css, try force refreshing a page. — xaosflux Talk 12:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Now working, thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 12:05, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Now, when I click on the "talk" link to the right of the notifications, I get the Special:Notifications popup instead. It looks like the screen-reader text, hidden by color:transparent, is overlapping with the talk link. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:24, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow, DuncanHill, Nyttend, Lugnuts, and RainFall: OK, I reverted the .css in monobook.css, give it a few and see if it fixes that problem (resulting in the original problem) - seems like I'm having to argue with the dev team to get them to understand that the change they made is making the final page worse than before :( — xaosflux Talk 21:37, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
OK Talk is back, but so is super-wide-mode :( — xaosflux Talk 21:38, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Argue with the The Knights Who Say "OOUI!"? Good luck! Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:52, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
I'd like to laugh, but it's so annoying that breaking changes are just rolled out. If WMF want's to deprecate monobook they need to just say it - else stop breaking it.... — xaosflux Talk 22:31, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
"Quick - we need a distraction from Framgate, BREAK THINGS!" DuncanHill (talk) 22:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
please please please, don't feed to conspiracy theorists ... — xaosflux Talk 22:41, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
deprecate monobook: WP:BEANS! Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
"Deprecate" would be too strong a word, but the end of official support for MonoBook was announced about half a dozen years ago.[7] Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I suppose I can put that code in my own css file, but I'd prefer that talk page link not to work over the wide screen space. I use trackpad shortcuts to move backward and forward through browser tab history a lot on Wikipedia. Having all the space to the right pretty much disallows moving forward in the history via that shortcut. Killiondude (talk) 22:35, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If someone can come up with another hack for it that doesn't break things I'll happily force it back out there. — xaosflux Talk 22:42, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
If somehow this breaks the fundraising banner Seddon (WMF) is working on I bet it will get immediate attention...ijs... — xaosflux Talk 22:43, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
For any of my over-the-top complaining on this, some of it is frustration - but I really would like to thank Catrope for their continuing efforts to resolve this. Last update, the width problem is fixed, but now there is an alignment issue with the areas to click (you have to click a little further to the left then you used to right now) - this is already reported to phab. — xaosflux Talk 03:46, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Ah, I was wondering about that. I was trying to get to my userpage from the link at the top, and kept getting info about notifications... Risker (talk) 04:16, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Related xkcd. The initial "fix" that caused this seems to be very problematic. Can we not revert back and make a proper, tested patch instead of applying these small hacks repeatedly? —RainFall 05:15, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Hi all. I don't know if this is related, but I can't click on the link to my talkpage from the very top bar, it always goes to my notifications. This is in Firefox. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:29, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Lugnuts: the 'talk link' problem should be fixed now (at least in monobook). If you are still seeing it in monobook can you gather some more details: hover over "log out" and look at what the link would be, then slowly move your mouse to the left (over contribus/wl/pref/ etc..) and see if you get sandbox, then your talk link. If it is out of alignment let us know? The link to the "user page" is somewhat overlapping with notifications (See above) but should work if you approach it from its left edge. — xaosflux Talk 14:27, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Xaosflux, that seems to be OK now. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 14:29, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I've just noticed that "Notices" now fills up most of the space between "DuncanHill" and "Talk", and "Alerts" partially overlaps "DuncanHill". I don't generally notice them unless I actually have an alert or a notice, as I use the blackscreen gadget and the words "Notices" and "Alerts" helpfully display in black text on a black background. Since these recent changes they have started shewing up in orange (like the other links at the top) but only when I point my mouse at them. DuncanHill (talk) 15:08, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: This fixes all the overlap issues for me, in FF67/Linux: 
#pt-notifications-notice .mw-echo-notifications-badge, #pt-notifications-alert .mw-echo-notifications-badge {
	text-align: left;
}
I don't know why; I was just trying things at random. Might be worth trying in some other browsers. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
This code fixes all the things for me. :) Before inserting this, I couldn't access "alerts" (the bell) only "notifications" (the inbox icon). Killiondude (talk) 22:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I noted it at phab:T226594 to see if there will be an upstream fix before we start band-aiding again. — xaosflux Talk 22:18, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: That stops the overlap, but the text stays black when I point at it. Could someone thank and/or/ping me so I can see what it looks like then? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
User:DuncanHill, you annoy.---Sluzzelin talk 22:26, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks both, thanks and pings seem to shew up well and be clickable. Someday I'll get around to mentioning the incompatibility with the blackscreen gadget. I have to highlight the notification to read who it's from. But that's been like that for ever. DuncanHill (talk) 22:28, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: Ideally, that should go in Special:MyPage/monobook.css instead of Special:MyPage/common.css, not I think it will make a big difference. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks again, have moved it over. Seems to be much the same effect. DuncanHill (talk) 22:40, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Message & notification icons in Modern skin

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T226684

The message & notification icons in the modern skin seem to have been changed to something less than ideal. Any recent changes to the stylesheet that would have made this happen? FWIW browser is latest version of Firefox (67.0.4). Nthep (talk) 14:52, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

@Nthep: - so in summary - there is a bunch going on and this is coming from upstream not local styles. See phab:T226684 (and some of the discussion at phab:T226594) to catch up on the goings-on. — xaosflux Talk 14:57, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Nthep (talk) 15:10, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Nthep: Same as the monobook issues, should be fully fixed at the end of the week/next week depending on how they're doing deployments. Unless you don't like how we fixed it once it does change, in which case do please tell me. -— Isarra ༆ 15:55, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Someone has broken Thanks

Now when I thank someone, instead of it happening all in the history page, it takes me to another page to ask me if I want to thank them, then to yet another page saying I have thanked them, and leaves me there and not where I was to start with and with no apparent way back. I expect it's an "improvement", but it makes life harder. DuncanHill (talk) 20:53, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: Works normally for me. What you are describing is the expected behavior if you have JavaScript disabled. It is possible that the JS for the "thanks" feature didn't load properly. Try WP:BYPASS, and see if it works again. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:58, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 Works for me - but the servers were just also having some hiccups, can you try again? — xaosflux Talk 20:59, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
I've been having intermittent weirdness of another type. On "Show preview", I've been getting a message that the servers are busy. If I refresh, it works fine. But the error has repeated numerous times today. I've been wondering if it's the new version of MediaWiki that Tech News mentioned would be on all wikis as of today. — Maile (talk) 21:00, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
(ec)I went back and in the page history it did not shew me as having thanked the person I had thanked. I tried again, nothing happened, then tried again and it behaved normally. I think there's a log somewhere where I can see if it went through, but can't remember where. DuncanHill (talk) 21:03, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Hah! I found the thanks log, it's shewing me as having made the first thanks before I posted here, but not the second when I tried again. DuncanHill (talk) 21:06, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
This is not about thanks (I think), but I got first one, then two notifications today for apparently nothing. I mean, there's a little red "2" in the usual place, but when I look there's nothing new there. I think the second one may have been for AGK's mention of me here, since it turned up right as I was reading his motion, but I've no idea what the first one is. Anybody know what's going on? If an arb offers a motion to examine my conduct, and has as far as he knows pinged me about it, it would be nice to get that ping. Can I go somewhere to find it? Bishonen | talk 21:20, 27 June 2019 (UTC).
There's a Thanks log at this link. I don't think there's a ping log. People shouldn't rely on pings as 1) they don't always work at the best of times, 2) it's very rarely the best of times, and 3) I think you can turn notifications off. DuncanHill (talk) 21:26, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
There was a recent problem with notification (at least in Monobook) see here (look above), but I don't know whether there's a connection. I will henceforth thank and revert and ping users profusely and see how they react. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:27, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Duncan, you better stop thanking me, or I will report you to ... ---Sluzzelin talk 21:31, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) (edit conflict) (edit conflict) I use Monobook, Sluzzelin, I'm old school. You know what? I just realized that the little notifications digit — the red one — shows the thanks I've got, just like the blue digit does. So, I get thanks twice, and notifications never. Bishonen | talk 21:32, 27 June 2019 (UTC).
You can get a complete list of current and past notifications at Special:Notifications (which, frustratingly, works much better with javascript disabled). Doesn't help you realize there's new ones there if the main notice is broken, though. —Cryptic 21:57, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
@Sluzzelin: Wilco! DuncanHill (talk) 21:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
Bishonen, this happened to me (also a Monobook user) when someone replied to me in a topic which was archived in the time between their reply and when I saw the notification. Ever since then, whenever I go to a wiki project for the first time, there's a red number for notifications, even when there are none (because the default preference is to show cross-wiki notifications). On the bright side, I can always tell if it's my first visit to a project. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@BlackcurrantTea:, my problem was solved by a kindly techy type in a thread above. I don't know if the same magic would help you, but it's probably worth trying. Bishonen | talk 08:06, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Bishonen, thanks for the tip. That doesn't make a difference in my case, but it's not really a problem. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 08:36, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Stuck alert/notification

At the top of every Wikipedia page I open are my control tabs: Username, Alerts, Notifications, Talk, Sandbox, Preferences, Beta, Watchlist, Contributions, Log out.

There is a red number over my Alerts tab, and the tab isn't working. When I click on it, it shows all the Notifications, as does the Notifications tab.

I can't get rid of that red number. It has worked fine until today. Help! -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:19, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

@BullRangifer: do you use Monobook for your skin? If so, see #Excessive width on monobook and specifically the last bit of code given that you can put into your css file to fix what the devs broke in the skin. Killiondude (talk) 03:23, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Still a problem. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:53, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@BullRangifer: The problem is that although the bell and TV set icons are still links, their hotspots have shifted to the left by about their own width plus a bit more. So the TV set's hotspot is now where the bell is displayed. Therefore, to activate the bell, you click a little to its left - just over the letters "fer" should do it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:05, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
Several patches for this were worked on and hopefully it will be fixed very soon! — xaosflux Talk 11:07, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64:, you're right! That's exactly what's happened. When will this be fixed? -- BullRangifer (talk) 14:18, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@BullRangifer: My "fix" (developed using the tried-and-true XKCD method) should work, but you need to put it in your monobook.css, not your monobook.js. Isarra has submitted a patch which should fix this on all wikis, but it hasn't been reviewed yet and I don't know how long it will take to be merged. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 17:45, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I don't have that subpage, but I'll create it and give it a try there. Thanks. -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:11, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
That worked instantly! -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:14, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I've worked out why the hotspots are overwide and overlapping. Whilst looking at DuncanHill's (unrelated) Blackskin problem with that gadget enabled, I happened to hover over the alerts icons - and behold! the text links "Alerts (1)" or "Notices (1)" become visible. It is those textual items that are invisibly appearing in front of the desired links. So to get the bell's link, you need to be to the left of the "N" of "Notices (1)". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:12, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
It'll be actually fixed here by the end of the week, or next week. Probably. Patch is merged; this is just the last place to get fixes when people aren't wildly swatting everything like lemurs. Mmm, lemurs. -— Isarra ༆ 15:50, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm being over-notified.

Somebody rid me of those dang notifications, which won't go away. GoodDay (talk) 20:49, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Are you using the MonoBook skin? If so, please visit the test wiki, WP:BYPASS your cache, and see if everything works as expected over there. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:08, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
I went to my All notifications & 'unread' them. It seems to have worked. GoodDay (talk) 22:05, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Hack added to monobook.css

I'm adding Suffusion of Yellow's hack to MediaWiki:monobook.css for now - revert if it causes trouble. — xaosflux Talk 22:33, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Working for me, at least. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:46, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Deployment update

Thanks to User:Isarra's efforts on Friday, we now have full fixes for the notification badge issues in the Monobook and Modern skins. About 15 minutes ago (at 23:36 UTC) I deployed the fixes for Monobook, these are now live on all wikis. I didn't deploy the fixes for Modern because those are a little more complicated and that skin isn't used as much as Monobook is. If I get a chance, I may be able to deploy those 24 hours from now, and otherwise they'll come with next week's regular weekly deployment train on Thursday July 11 (there is no train this week due to the July 4th holiday). Thanks to User:Isarra for writing proper fixes for these bugs, and to User:Xaosflux for putting interim fixes in MediaWiki:Monobook.css in the meantime. And, again, my apologies for this disruption; I was the reviewer on the change that broke this, and I should have caught the fact that it changed the badge structure and the main badge CSS but did not update the Monobook CSS to match. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 00:02, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

"Show preview" toolbar needs to be above the edit summary in the wikitext editing window

Or there needs to be a setting in preferences to allow this. Scrolling is a pain. Half the page has to be scrolled to click the "show preview" button.

Weird thing is that the edit window here does not have the "Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)" toolbar. It only has the "common edit summaries" toolbar.

So look at an article edit window, or an article talk page edit window. -- Timeshifter (talk) 08:34, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

If you begin editing by using the "new section" tab, then no, you don't get an edit summary window. Instead, a standard edit summary is constructed for you, consisting of the name of the new section wrapped in /* ... */ markers plus the words "new section". The edit summary window only appears when editing an existing section, or the whole page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:25, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Redrose64. I see now. -- Timeshifter (talk) 08:42, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit window length is not remembered

A related problem is that the wikitext edit window length is not remembered. I can drag it up or down in length. But when I open another article or talk page, and then open an edit window, it is back to being a very lengthy edit window.

This exacerbates the previous problem of the "Publish changes" toolbar being separated by almost half a page of edit summary and terms of use stuff.

Lots of scrolling to do multiple previews. I am using Firefox on a 21-inch LCD monitor. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:24, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

This in your CSS sets the edit box height:
textarea {height:15em}
User:Js/ajaxPreview#Installation adds a small preview button above the edit box. It makes other changes. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:59, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Or you can use alt+shift+p to preview. Galobtter (pingó mió) 10:14, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, PrimeHunter. I installed both, and they both work great. They both should be preferences. -- Timeshifter (talk) 08:38, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Timeshifter: It has previously been suggested (see e.g. this thread)) that a setting such as the above rule textarea {height:15em} should be made a user pref. Unfortunately, this is not feasible since a value of 15em is not suitable for every user - we do not know how high anybody else's screen is. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:30, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Thanks. I see from that old thread that it was possible in the past to choose the size of the textarea. I vaguely remember that this existed at one time. You wrote in that old thread: "Each pref removed marginally improves page load time for logged-in users." Is it only prefs that are changed from default settings that effect page load time? If so, then the more preferences the better.
There should be a way to open up and activate a whole new set of preferences. That way newbs could start with a manageable set of preferences. Then over time, if desired, then people could look at other preferences. Without having to paste stuff into CSS and JS pages. People could make their own decision as to whether the marginal loss of page load speed was made up for by the improvements provided by the additional preferences. -- Timeshifter (talk) 02:53, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Problem with CSD category counts, again

I wrote a query regarding CSD category counts being incorrect and SoWhy helpfully pointed me to archived threads on this board, like Category count wrong and several others with the same complaint going back to spring 2018. Editors responded by listing Phab tickets, like T200402, T195397, T221795 or T18036 (and there are probably more). I've checked all the different tickets that were mentioned in these threads on this common problem and they are either marked as a) closed, resolved, b) closed, duplicate or c) low priority. I don't see how this issue can be considered resolved when it continues to be a problem and it is disappointing to think that there is little to no chance that anyone will work on actually solving this problem. It's clear that a lot of work on this started last year, but then the ticket was mistakenly closed as resolved.

Is there any way to restart the process of review so that there is some investigation of this problem? Because as a "resolved, low priority" task, that means to me that it will never be examined again. Liz Read! Talk! 23:35, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

In Phabricator parlance "low priority" does not necessarily means the task is not important; quite the opposite at times. Phab:T195397 was closed as resolved because it was indeed resolved at the time, and when the problem resurfaces, it was not reopened since there are many other open tasks. Some were closed as duplicate, because they were what the label says; even here, I believe we don't like 'duplicate.' The main task now is at phab:T221795.
However, (for me to not be too evasive) I admit the problem is not given any sense of urgency from the technical side, but that's easily explainable. To be frank, there's nothing broken if category count is not correct. The problem has been noticed since 2008 or possibly earlier, and with adhoc fixes, everyone moves on until it returns and annoys another person. It's something obscure and which almost entire Wikipedia readers probably don't use nor care about. The editors who care for it (the count) are few, and even fewer know the problem exists. I don't know any way to speed up this, except (may be) to lobby the team working on it in the task, but keeping in mind, even if you think it needs immediate solution, others may not see it that way. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:37, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi all,

I happened to notice that hundreds of links in hundreds of articles include fbclid=longstringofrandomlookingletters parameters. According to what I read, Facebook adds these to track users' browsing behavior. It works like this:

  • Let's assume I discover something on www.example.com/cooltopic.html and share this URL with a friend on Facebook: "HEY CHEK THIS OUT!!!!!!!11"
  • Facebook automatically adds a unique FaceBook CLick ID (fbclid) to every link that is passed through them by adding &fbclid=... or ?fbclid=... to it. This doesn't change the destination of the link i.e. the URL still works the same.
  • The friend decides to add my URL as a reference/link to Wikipedia. Except, now the URL will read www.example.com/cooltopic.html?fbclid=xyz123.
  • Thanks to their Click ID Facebook can now track the URL: If the link is emailed to a 3rd person, who sends it to a 4th via Whatsapp, Facebook recognizes the (modified) link as the one I originally shared with my friend, thus gathering data about which persons are communicating with whom.
  • If the destination site of the link (example.com) has added a like-button to their page then Facebook even gets notified whenever anyone follows the link, i.e. they will know exactly which visits to www.example.com are a consequence of my original communication with my friend. (They use this to find out who is a valuable influencer.)

Long story short, IMHO all fbclid=... should be deleted from all (current and future) references and links on Wikipedia, because

  • Facebook has no business tracking Wikipedia contributors or readers.
  • The huge fbclid=... strings make references harder to read and edit.
  • The fact that an Wikipedia article's reference's URL was passed through Facebook's infrastructure earlier is not relevant to the topic the article covers, so this information need not be preserved.
  • The links work just the same after deleting the fbclid parameter.

So it would be great if some Wikipedia wizard could program and unleash a bot for this? Please?? Supposedly there are also Google Click IDs and others, however I haven't found their 'additions' in links. Maybe there is already a bot in place filtering them out? Then this bot would just need a little expanding.

I hope this is the right place to ask. Someone at the Teahouse was kind enough to point me here.

Thanks and regards, Jens (84.173.225.148 (talk) 20:27, 30 June 2019 (UTC))

I believe there's a bot that's removing them already, though in a gradual way as there's no immediate harm while they're here. I think the bot is also removing them not only from Facebook's URLs but similar ones from Amazon.com and the like. – Ammarpad (talk) 20:35, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Yup, Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/KolbertBot 4 was approved for this, but may be stalled/paused right now. User:Jon Kolbert is the operator, who may have more information. — xaosflux Talk 20:39, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Template:Cite web#URL says "Remove tracking parameters from URLs". insource:fbclid currently gives me 1720 results in articles. The normal place for a request would be Wikipedia:Bot requests. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:42, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Hi Jens, looks like User:KolbertBot per Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/KolbertBot 4 should be removing it, but the bot isn't running; ping Jon Kolbert. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:44, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I'll talk to him. Many thanks to all of you. --Jens (84.173.225.148 (talk) 21:14, 30 June 2019 (UTC))

Jens, thank you for bringing this to our attention! While we wait for him, I have begun (slowly) manually removing a lot of these trackers, if anyone wants to help, please do! TheAwesomeHwyh 22:59, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
There are 1700 pages, many of which will have several affected links (the article where this issue came to my attention has 8 of them). While I admire your diligence, I do think it's best to let the bot handle this. Please consider that doing such tedious work manually is very error-prone, if you accidentally remove a bit too little or too much the link won't work any more. Best regards, Jens (84.173.225.148 (talk) 23:54, 30 June 2019 (UTC))
Ah- I'm not planning on doing them all, just however many I can get to today (also, I check all the links before I upload), but yeah this is definitely something that's best suited for a bot once that gets running again. TheAwesomeHwyh 00:07, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I have been very occupied with a lot of other things - but I will make sure this task runs :-). Thanks for the note Jon Kolbert (talk) 18:14, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Many thanks for your work. --Jens (84.173.228.245 (talk) 21:11, 3 July 2019 (UTC))

It is easy to see that | is a permissible character to the right of the active | in a piped link. For example, [[red|green|blue]] produces the anchor text "green|blue" linking to the page red: green|blue.

In the lead sentence of the page Xiquets Copenhagen, however, the wikitext ([[Castell|{{lang|ca|castells}}]]) is obviously intended to produce the anchor text "castells" linking to the page Castell; but actually it does not produce a link at all, and most of the wikitext shows up as ordinary text in the article. If this is supposed to work as intended, perhaps someone can fix the bug. If it's intended not to work, perhaps someone can edit the article to do what is necessary to achieve the desired effect.

(If you have something to say, please say it here. I only came across the article via Special:Random, and don't expect to look at it again.) --76.69.117.113 (talk) 04:06, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

 Fixed The problem is that {{lang}} not only marks the text as non-English, it also adds [[Category:Articles containing ...-language text]] - and wikilinks may not contain wikilinks. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:23, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah, so it's intended not to work. Perhaps it would be helpful if there was some kind of error message, because the original construction looks legitimate until you know why not. --76.69.117.113 (talk) 02:57, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Why can't I enable the 2010 editing toolbar along with the 2006 editing toolbar?

I would like to have both toolbars. Please make this possible. See: Wikipedia:Legacy toolbar.

See: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. There one can enable this:

  • Enable the editing toolbar. This is sometimes called the '2010 wikitext editor'.

I can't enable it because I have the 2006 editing toolbar (plus extensions) enabled:

I have the following 3 gadgets enabled in the editing section of gadget preferences:

  • Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar. This will be overridden by the "Enable the editing toolbar" option in the Editing tab.
  • refToolbar: add a "cite" button to the editing toolbar for quick addition of commonly used citation templates
  • Add extra buttons to the old (non-enhanced) editing toolbar

They just add more buttons to the 2006 editing toolbar. -- Timeshifter (talk) 09:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Anybody? Is this technically feasible? -- Timeshifter (talk) 02:56, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
No, it is not possible to have both the 2010 and 2006 toolbar. You could however ask for an script that adds the missing buttons to the 2010 toolbar, which would be the hidden comment, quote and horizontal line.--Snaevar (talk) 16:53, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
That's a good idea. I only want the 2 buttons for instant link brackets (no intermediary popup). One button for an internal link. And one button for an external link. -- Timeshifter (talk) 05:20, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Two questions about the WMF's Android app

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Two questions about the WMF's Android app . Airbornemihir (talk) 04:32, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

VVVV I've posted the question asked by Airbornemihir in its own section directly below this section. VVV Orvilletalk 05:28, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Two questions about the WMF's Android app

The following questions have been copied from the Teahouse. The editor below has technical questions we are unable to answer there, and I'm hoping editors here can provide Airbornemihir with assistance. Orvilletalk 05:21, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm aware that it's a good practice to leave edit summaries, but I'm nonetheless curious about the official Android app apparently preventing an edit from going through if the edit summary is left blank. Is this an intended limitation of the app, or is there something I'm missing?

Tangentially related question: the list of Wikipedia mobile applications states that the Android app cannot open talk pages, but this doesn't seem to be true of the current version of the app which can open any page when looked up with the correct namespace. Is that something that should be updated? (Please ping when replying.) Airbornemihir (talk) 03:22, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

The above questions have been copied from the Teahouse. The editor above has technical questions we are unable to answer there, and I'm hoping knowledgeable editors here can provide Airbornemihir with assistance. Thank you Orvilletalk 05:21, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Airbornemihir: Uhm, are you sure you are using the latest version? I just published this edit without an edit summary using the official Wikipedia app for Android. Also, the app is technically able to show talk pages, but it treats them as "normal" articles. I think the article (List of Wikipedia mobile applications) is referring to the "View talk page" option placed at the bottom of every page—including talk pages... yep—which the app doesn't yet "handle." —RainFall 07:27, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
@RainFall: Thanks, I've noticed too that talk page links open by default in a different app, which is probably the intended meaning as you said. Regarding blank edit summaries, do you not get stuck during the edit at the place where it asks "How did you improve the article?" I can't seem to move on from there without either picking one of the canned edit summaries or writing one myself. Airbornemihir (talk) 07:46, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
@Airbornemihir: Yes, I did see the "How did you improve the article?" page; I tapped "Publish" leaving everything else untouched and it worked... again. —RainFall 07:52, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
@RainFall: OK, it looks like it worked for me too. I'm not sure what was going on before. I edited the smartphone apps page to better reflect what the app can do, as well. Thanks everyone for your help. Airbornemihir (talk) 08:08, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Has syntax highlighting CSS just changed?

Resolved
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 62 § Has syntax highlighting CSS just changed?
 – ―Mandruss ☎ 21:58, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I just noticed that the gap between lines in "Syntax highlighting" mode in the wikitext editor suddenly became wider. Was it a glitch of my browser not loading CSS properly, or did it actually change? —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:37, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

@Andrebak: can you be a bit more specific, Wikipedia:Syntax highlighting doesn't usually get used in .css pages, which use the code editor (not the source editor). Is this still occurring? Can you share the edit link you are using? — xaosflux Talk 22:28, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
I guess andrybak was not editing a CSS page but just speculating that styling from some CSS file was not working properly when editing a normal wikitext page. If you refer to the highlighter marker button to the left of "Advanced" in a toolbar then it doesn't change spacing for me in Google Chrome 75.0.3770.100. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:43, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Yes, but for me it has changed in the same mode ( turned on), but between different pages. It changed between two different gap sizes since then, so I think that it was just some networking issue when loading CSS. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:12, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Strange google capitalization for Life

A user (Console.frog) noted that when searching for "life on earth" on Google, the Life article appears in the middle of page 1 under the title life on Earth. This expression appears several times in the article but I can't figure out why the correct title is not brought up, and more importantly why "life" is not capitalized properly. Do you think there is something on our side causing this? -- Luk talk 11:27, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

A datapoint: "life on Earth" appears four times in the preamble, "Life on Earth" appears once in the preamble. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:59, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
linksto:Life insource:"life|life on earth" finds many articles saying [[life|life on Earth]]. Maybe Google prefers to display this link text when it matches the search. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:01, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Situation confirmed; here's what I see with a US IP:
life on Earth - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
Evidence suggests that life on Earth has existed for at least 3.5 billion years, with the oldest physical traces of life dating back 3.7 billion years; however, some theories, such as the Late Heavy Bombardment theory, suggest that life on Earth may have started even earlier, as early as 4.1–4.4 billion years ago, and ...
Evolutionary history of life · ‎Timeline of the evolutionary ... · ‎Earliest known life forms
I'm using Internet Explorer, if that matters at all (or even if it doesn't). Nyttend backup (talk) 13:02, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Switching phrases in masse

Is there a bot or tool that can replace the phrase Kingdom of Hawaii to Hawaiian Kingdom across Wikipedia without having to edit each page and switch it over? This is just a logistical inquiry before a request for consensus for such a change. KAVEBEAR (talk) 21:01, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

AWB can do this. It shows up 54 pages, so it should be quite feasible, with about 10 seconds per page to allow manual check it could take 10 minutes. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:07, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
This is not so much a VPT matter as a question for WP:BOTREQ - and I see that an identical thread has been posted at WT:BOTREQ, contrary to WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:09, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
To answer the technical question KAVEBEAR, no - assuming this phrase appears in the source text it would require creating another version of the source text for each page (which yes a bot could do, but that is how it would do it). The only way around that would have been if the name was actually a template that could be changed once. — xaosflux Talk 13:19, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Stuck tooltips

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T226983

Not sure if this is the correct venue but the tooltip (hovertext) that logged-out readers see for Antananarivo stampede is stuck on an old incorrect version with the wrong date. This has been repeatedly pointed out at main-page errors but no one there knows how to fix it. The article was corrected on 28 June [8]. Any help appreciated as this is currently on the main page in the In the News section. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:34, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: It's not just that one page. In fact, I'm not sure that the preview has updated for any page since June 28. See phab:T227033. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:48, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. At least someone is hopefully looking into the issue. Espresso Addict (talk) 23:52, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Google Maps template not displaying accessdates

Resolved

Why isn't {{Google maps}} displaying the access date in, for example, the first ref at Bussell Highway? The use of accessdate in the article seems fine ... and I'm not that good with templates. Thanks for any help! Graham87 14:02, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Fixed the parameter as told in the documentation of the template. Stryn (talk) 14:18, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Ta muchly ... oops, didn't notice the underline there! One of the perils of not paying attention to punctuation with my screen reader ... but seemingly an easy mistake to make, whether you're sighted or not! Graham87 14:47, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Should be able to set DESKTOP to be DEFAULT on a laptop computer, right?

I hope this is an appropriate place to describe this concern. If not, please advise me where to express it. On my laptop I'd like to be able to set desktop to be my wikipedia preference, so it would be my permanent default view, and mobile view never come up on it. I am using Firefox 67.0.4 (64-bit) browser on Windows 8.1. The problem I encounter is that when using my laptop computer and searching for something via google, sometimes when I click on a wiki search-find I get a presentation of a wiki article which I have discovered to be a MOBILE wiki presentation, which I don't want. I now finally understand that I can go to the bottom of such an article and click on 'desktop', and I'll get a desktop view, and that setting will also obtain for other wiki articles until I turn my laptop off. But the next time I turn my laptop on, mobile views can again present from google searches, and I have no use for mobile style views. I would think desktop view should be able to be set in Preferences. If that can't be made available in Preferences, is there some other way that I could set DESKTOP to be my wikipedia permanent default view? UnderEducatedGeezer (talk) 23:22, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

As far as I know, Wikipedia can't automatically switch you from the mobile view to the desktop view. If you're on a phone, and go to the desktop version (en.wikipedia.org), you can be switched to the mobile version (en.m.wikipedia.org), but the other way around doesn't work. Therefore, if you click on a link from somewhere else on the internet to the mobile version (en.m.wikipedia.org), you stay on the mobile version. The easiest way to change this is to remove the .m from the URL. rchard2scout (talk) 10:13, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
That does not work. Trying to remove ".m" without using the appropriate option will redirect you back to the mobile view. The opposite is not true and from the desktop view (without the ".m") accessing the mobile view by simply adding .m is possible. Now, the easiest way to flip the views is to go to the footer of the page and click "Desktop view" or "Mobile view" as you want it. It's cookied, so it sticks for a while, but once the cookie expires, it will reset back to mobile view (if on mobile) and desktop view (if on desktop). Note that these options are incompatible with browser-provided "Enable desktop view" options and will not work on Wikipedia. --qedk (t 桜 c) 12:25, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
"It's cookied, so it sticks for a while" is a key bug for me. I made that explicit "Desktop view" setting because I wanted it that way, and it might be a pretty long page I have to scroll through to get to the bottom to (re)change it. My request is that either the cookie have a much longer expiration or that it can be handled by a site (rather than browser) pref. DMacks (talk) 16:47, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
You can make a JS script and add it to your MySkin.js, all you need to do is detect the current URL and if it contains, ".m" and go to the URL + "&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop", essentially forcing the desktop view. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:20, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
That doesn't quite match my experience: for me, just removing the m. is all it takes. On a desktop, that is. But if someone drops a link from the mobile site (like in a diff) and you click on it, then you get the mobile version. I like the script idea. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:27, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
Yep, if the default view is desktop (as in, how the page first loads), that is how it will work, but instead if your default view is mobile, it will not work. --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:36, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
I have a bookmark on my mobile phone that does not have the m. It sometimes takes me to the mobile site, and then I can click the Desktop-site link at the bottom of the page to switch to desktop mode. From then on, for a while, the bookmark takes me to Desktop. But then sometimes it (that same bookmark, with no m) reverts to mobile mode, and I have to click Desktop-site switch it, and then it will again stay that way but only for a while. DMacks (talk) 18:53, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
That's how it works for me too. Not a bookmark, but any wikipedia URL I try to load will initially (if I haven't clicked the Desktop link in some time) automatically redirect to the mobile page. Then clicking on the Desktop link will keep me in desktop mode for ... some time, two weeks or a month or so, unless I click on another mobile URL. This is the case whether I check the "always request desktop version" setting in my mobile browser. Above, I was referring only to desktop behaviour, and I have no idea about setting "default view", I didn't know that was a thing. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:58, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
@DMacks: Try bookmarking "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop" and using that. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:07, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I often edit from my phone, but dislike the mobile view because it does not show all items on the page (specifically templates) and the incompatiblity with user scripts (none work). Therefore, I wish for pages to always display in desktop view. Senator2029 “Talk” 10:55, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I often edit on my tablet, and occasionally for no apparent reason it will go to mobile view. This can happen even if I am currently looking at a page in desktop view and click a link on the page. It's very annoying. As DMacks said, sometimes it's a long page and not that easy to scroll to the bottom of the page. I'd love to have a preference (or even a js hack) that would disable mobile view while I'm logged in regardless of what device or browser I'm using. older ≠ wiser 19:04, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @DMacks, Ivanvector, Bkonrad, and Senator2029: Hey guys, so I hacked together a script since a lot of you said it was an issue, which should work, {{subst:lusc|User:QEDK/forcedesktop.js}}. Just paste this into your Special:MyPage/common.js and it should work. I've tried it on my mobile (Android 8.1, Chrome 75) and Desktop (Windows 10, Firefox 67) and it works alright. If you run into any issues, I can try to fix it, but my focus is on AI/ML which is kinda far from web development, but I will surely try to fix it. Hope I could help. Also please note, if the script works ideally, you will not be able to access the mobile site at all, until you remove the script (and purge your cache). --qedk (t 桜 c) 08:57, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Updates and stuff

There is some interesting chatter on a related topic at phab:T214998. --Izno (talk) 15:42, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Page preview discrepancy for an ITN item

Resolved
 – Thanks for pointing out the post above; closing this due to derpiness –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 21:29, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

The page preview for final item (as I'm writing this) on the "In the News" list on the main page (the Antananarivo stampede) mentions it occurred on 26 July, despite the article (correctly) saying it was 26 June. Looking at mw:Page Previews, it just says it uses a portion of the opening paragraph, so I have no idea what's causing the discrepancy. Does anyone know why this is happening and/or how to fix this? Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 20:50, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

User:Deacon Vorbis, see #Stuck tooltips above. Over at Phabricator, it has an "Unbreak Now!" status, which means "drop everything you're doing and fix this". Nyttend (talk) 21:21, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Alteration of Account Creation Limits/Account Creator Rights

Currently, one of the most backlogged processes is Request an Account (ACC) , which exists mainly (though not entirely) for helping with 3 purposes: Those having trouble completing CAPTCHA; enabling the choosing of a username that is too similar to an existing username under certain circumstances & creating an account for those hindered by a rangeblock.

The current backlog on pending requests is 4 months.

In the last couple of months multiple editors have signed up to be ACC tool users, Tool users are signed up to the confidentiality agreement and meet various other criteria.

Currently here are limits, however, on both their ability to create accounts. Two options could ease their work.

  1. Raise the local account creation rate limit from 4 to 10. The new limit only to extended-confirmed users to prevent any abusive behaviour from IPs.
  2. Automatically grant account creator permission, on request, to new ACC tool users. This would allow them both to bypass the limit entirely, but would also let them ignore the antispoof and title blacklist when making accounts.

Pinging all participants in the local chat discussion: @Ajraddatz, FlightTime, Xaosflux, TheSandDoctor, AfroThundr, QEDK, and Oshwah: Nosebagbear (talk) 13:11, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

  • NOTE: Option 2 is broader than Option 1, however they do not completely overlap. Option 1 would allow any EC-confirmed editor to create up to 10 accounts per IP address, option 2 is specifically targeted at ACC-users. Thus participants can !vote for either/both/none of the options.

Survey: Account creator rights

  • Support for option 1 only. Speaking as an ACC administrator, I believe that automatically granting all new ACC tool users the account creator user right (option 2) would open the door for new tool users to potentially handle requests incorrectly and without limitations before it's caught and identified - which would not be a good thing at all. We need to have a limit for how many accounts that new tool users can create per day by default. When a tool user shows proficiency with handling requests correctly, they can apply for and (after approval by an ACC admin via a comment made to the request) be granted the account creator flag in order to remove those limits. Option 2 would remove the need for an ACC tool administrator to give their approval before an admin can grant the user rights to the requesting user. This approval is still necessary and absolutely needed. Raising the current limit of 4 creations per day to 10 creations per day would loosen the restrictions so that users can help take care of the current backlog of requests at ACC, while still being on a set limit during the time that they're learning and demonstrating their knowledge and proficiency with ACC tool user interface. This option is the best way to resolve the concerns expressed. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 13:25, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support for option 1; encourage ACC admins to quickly work with new ACC volunteers to get them trained and empowered with additional flags as soon as feasible. — xaosflux Talk 13:43, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support option 1 Per above. Also, as all rights on Wikipedia are, it is granted on the basis of need for the right, inherent oppose for point 2. --qedk (t 桜 c) 13:59, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support option 1 as per my comment in the previous discussion. I also agree with Oshwah on automatically granting new users the ACC bit. The current method of granting the right after a couple weeks of activity allows the team to gauge the user's performance and whether or not they have learned the policies and procedures properly. Lowering the barrier further could lead to a problematic user potentially causing a lot more damage (no rate-limit, anti-spoof override, username title blacklist override) than they otherwise could if we had to manually grant those rights. On the other hand, when all is in order, granting them the right is usually quick and painless anyway. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 14:04, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support alternate option where an group named Account creation helper is formed, which would contain only the noratelimit right.--Snaevar (talk) 14:38, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
I appreciate the idea, but I just don't see how this implementation would be useful here, or how it would resolve any issues that the account creator flag wouldn't already resolve. If an ACC admin user can trust an ACC tool user enough to have no account creation limit, that admin user should also trust the tool user enough to be able to correctly and properly handle requests that tripped the antispoof extension and require a flagged user to override (and vice versa). ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 14:45, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support 1. After thinking about this a bit more, I'm not sure if tying the rate limit to extendedconfirmed would be possible. If not, I still think we should raise the limit, but maybe to 6 like it was before instead. The limit was lowered mainly for projects without 300 active local sysops who couldn't instantly respond to mass account creation. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 15:16, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Rights like PMR have increased limits for certain flags (in that case, page moves), this would just mean adding a flag like that to EC right holders. --qedk (t 桜 c) 15:23, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Yes, most ratelimits are determined on a per-account basis (or per IP for anonymous users). But I seem to remember account creations being different, and being specifically tied to the IP. I assume/hope that a defined higher ratelimit for extendedconfirmed would override that. And no need to tie it to a specific permission; it can be done for the group itself. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 22:58, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Yep, but that's a non-issue as far as devs are concerned. Delving into the issue of newer technical changes, from my experience talking to people on SRE/Deployment (and Anomie, TheDJ), technically unfeasible things are pretty rare and I have not seen requests getting turned down (rarely, if ever) with "MediaWiki does not support this", if it's a feature change, or some irreproducible bug, it's a different thing but for example, during the RfC for Template editor rights, a lot of people were worried about the tecnical changes but eventually it was done, with no big deal at all. That's how it is for most new things (and TE rights had a new protection level as well), so I would say a change would be technically feasible until a dev says exactly otherwise. --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:50, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
    With dev time almost anything is possible; my concern would be if the current software doesn't support the change, then we should be looking at easier options like raising the max number to 6 / IP as it used to be. Adding a new protection level is easy to do through the software. Fundamentally changing the account creation throttle might be more difficult. But agreed that we should ask rather than muse about things we know little about :-) -- Ajraddatz (talk) 01:03, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
  • (ACC admin comment) I'm pretty sure option 1 isn't possible without development, i.e. it is not a simple configuration change. AFAICT, IP account creation limits can only be set as a count per interval with the noratelimit right being the only way for a user to bypass that limit. (mw:Manual:$wgAccountCreationThrottle) Oppose option 2 for the reasons outlined by Oshwah. Support returning the daily IP limit to 6 unless the Security Team​​ provides a good reason that it needs to remain at 4. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:50, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
    The Security Team doesn't have a problem with bumping the IP limit from 4 to 6 or even 10, as originally proposed. SBassett (WMF) (talk) 21:32, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
    @SBassett (WMF): thanks for the note, is this really something we need to worry about at a per-project level then? — xaosflux Talk 21:52, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Xaosflux: - see my response to JJMC89 starting here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T212667#5274787. SBassett (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
    @JJMC89:, @Xaosflux: - just following up here, the account creation throttle revert was deployed today. SBassett (WMF) (talk) 21:47, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment. My preference would be to at least be granted access to the tool. I've waited for a week or so now. :/ –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 16:04, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose I think 6 is the highest we should go with general limits on account creation per IP. Given that changing IP is rather trivial, the higher we go the greater the risk of abuse. If we raised the limit from 4 to 10, and a bad actor switches from their laptop to their cellular data network when they hit a limit, that is an additional 12 accounts they would be able to create. I think 4 was fine, 6 is okay, but anything higher I am not in favor of. I am not in support of option 2 for the reasons above. Wugapodes [thɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 19:05, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Support option 1 I'm not sure what option 2 is, so I can't support it. Option 1 seems fine, though. I think we should prioritize clearing up the backlog, though. InvalidOS (talk) 23:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion: Account creator rights

  • @Nosebagbear: regarding your proposed options, and since this is VPT, can you explain the specific technical changes you are proposing - or is this more of a "let some developer figure it out" type of request? Is the "automatic" granting you are asking some sort of technical change you are proposing, or is it a procedural/policy change? — xaosflux Talk 13:24, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Xaosflux - If option 1 were to reach consensus, it would be corrected by filing a phab ticket to have this done. See phab:T212667. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 13:27, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Thanks. — xaosflux Talk 13:29, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) @Xaosflux: - changing the rate limit is obviously possible. Whether it can be changed "in bands" to different protection levels is, I'm afraid, I query for those more technically savvy than me. If they say that's impossible (or akin), then this would need to be rethought. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:29, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • For the problem that is trying to be solved - is overriding anti-spoof the normal resolution, or is getting them to pick a new username? — xaosflux Talk 13:25, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Xaosflux - For instances where similar usernames exist and are caught by anti-spoof, it depends. See this section of the ACC guide for the policy on when ACC tool users with the account creator flag can override the antispoof flag and proceed with creation. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 13:30, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Oshwah: thanks, option 1 above won't fix the antispoof ones, is that a significant part of the backlog? Just asking so we don't spend time getting something done that won't help. — xaosflux Talk 13:33, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Xaosflux - No. Requests that have tripped the anti-spoof extension make approximately 3.5% of all total requests at this time. Of those, users without the account creator flag can still see if the similar accounts are active, and decline the request if any of them are. The only time that a request requires a user with the account creator flag is when a request trips the antispoof extension and the similar accounts are all inactive. This means that the antispoof needs to be overridden, the request approved, and the account created. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 13:37, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Why not grant Wikipedia:Event coordinator to new members of ACC? EVC will give them ability to bypass 4 account limit and it also doesn't allow overriding antispoof/title ban restrictions. ‐‐1997kB (talk) 16:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    1997kB - Not a bad thought, but event coordinators can set new accounts as 'confirmed' using Special:UserRights, which is an ability that they don't need. Essentially, we'd be trading apples and oranges here if the concern is over access to some user rights they shouldn't have. As I said above, I believe that if an ACC admin can trust an ACC user to create accounts with no limit, they should also trust them to properly handle requests that tripped the antispoof extension and require a user with the account creator permissions to override and create (and vice versa). :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 16:42, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Oshwah: - I realise I agree with you, but to run with the Event-Coordinator compromise theory a bit further, it would be clearer cut - the damage possible is pretty tiny. Even if they made every account they created confirmed, it wouldn't cause a great uptick in carnage. Nosebagbear (talk) 22:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Fair point. ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 02:31, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
    @Oshwah: what is the expected amount of accounts to be created by "new" ACC volunteers per period? (i.e. would 6 or 8 be enough?) since the "rights they don't need" here to ECC users is expected to be way more than is needed by the relatively minuscule ACC team. — xaosflux Talk 16:59, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
    Xaosflux - Honestly, any increase from 4 would be beneficial. Even if the increase is just by a few... :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 17:41, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

New bot

I think we should have a bot or some kind of tool check for accounts which are hitting the account creation limit but do not hold the rights event coordinator, account creator and are also not ACC tool users. The account creation limit was lowered for a reason and increasing it without keeping a check in place would be a gross violation of WP:BEANS imo. Thoughts, @Nosebagbear, JJMC89, Xaosflux, and Oshwah:? --qedk (t 桜 c) 14:19, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

A recurring database report may be able to solve this for you. — xaosflux Talk 14:27, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
If this is a major issue, the report would have to be run quite frequently, and viewed frequently by patrolling users. Otherwise, this method might not be effective enough at stopping abuse and quickly enough... ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 14:30, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) QEDK - Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. How would this new bot alert others that an account is hitting a limit and isn't within one of those groups? Who would this bot alert? Where? This is something that we should figure out if we're going to consider an idea like this... :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 14:29, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
It can function the same way AnomieBot handles WP:TPERTABLE, there's no annoying notifications involved and interested people can simply watch the page and report when they find anyone suspect. --qedk (t 桜 c) 14:33, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
QEDK - Nice... I like it. :-) ~Oshwah~(talk) (contribs) 14:36, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Functionally, a bot wouldn't be able to work "that way". Also, bot's wont be able to see "that you got denied by the limit" , but a bot could periodically generate a report of "accounts created per user over some time period" and could either filter out members of certain groups or just report the groups as well. — xaosflux Talk 14:38, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Why not? The logic is pretty simple, you would need to check creation logs iterating a certain period (maybe an hour) and track accounts which create another account for 24 hours at minimum and more if they somehow meet the limit each day (hence, suspect). Wikipedia accounts which do not have a similarly authorized account in ACC (or the other account creation rights as well) have demonstrably no reason to carry out actions like this, hence red-flagging them almost immediately. --qedk (t 桜 c) 14:49, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
A bot could create a report, technically it won't be able to tell if you actually got stopped by the limit, just that you hit it or approached it. It wouldn't work "the way" of the protected edit requests in that those don't mine logs, they make use of what links here/category memberships. But the output could still be made. Have a bot periodically (say hourly) ingest the user account creation log and make a report. I think it may even be helpful to have it report on everyone, or everyone with say 3+ creations - and also to identify accounts made by coordinators, etc - so they can be coached as needed. — xaosflux Talk 14:54, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I mean, technically not. But I'm saying it like the logic is clear that an account cannot make more than 10, so an account which makes 10 accounts can be construed to have hit the limit, what's important is identifying if anyone is trying to make a large number of accounts in a short period of time, hitting the actual limit is more of a formality. --qedk (t 桜 c) 15:06, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Something like quarry:query/36938? It can't tell if they're an ACC tool user, obviously. If this query is correct, there's not a whole lot of ACC activity going on. — MusikAnimal talk 19:46, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: thanks for the query, even including everyone with 3+ creations over the last whole 10 days (quarry:query/36941). I haven't checked their groups, but the impact here seems to be very small. — xaosflux Talk 20:07, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
Almost all ACC users in that 10+ range, minus the one event coordinator. Unfortunately I won't be appearing in that query anytime soon due to a certain rangeblock with "account creation disabled" set. Really puts a damper on ACC work... — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 01:51, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
@AfroThundr3007730: - I thought individual accounts could be exempted from rangeblocks? If so then ACC tool users would be a priority Nosebagbear (talk) 14:32, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
@AfroThundr3007730: this is a known issue, even effects admins: phab:T189362. — xaosflux Talk 15:16, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
@Nosebagbear: Besides IPBE, I'm not aware of any (current) facility to exempt an individual user from the effects of a rangeblock, at least not the account creation part.
@Xaosflux: - thanks, suspect it was one of those merging of facts I got while swinging around the policy pages. Clearly, I'd made a terrible nerd Nosebagbear (talk)
@Xaosflux: Yep, definitely tracking that one, and if they do get around to implementing it, I would be first in line to request IPBE so I can get back to helping in ACC. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 18:37, 15 June 2019 (UTC)
Could use an abusefilter for this - something along the lines of Special:AbuseFilter/527. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:33, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Event Coordinator Rights

The idea of granting (permanent) Event Co-ordinator rights to any ACC tool user who didn't possess Account Creator rights was mooted as a compromise. The right waives the account creation limit, and also allows accounts to be made confirmed. Obviously the latter isn't needed, but as I noted above, even if a tool-user went rogue, the maximum potential damage is significantly smaller (than the additional rights of Account Creator). It makes a good halfway house between nothing and Account Creator, and if Option 1 turns out to be inviable, then it might be the only way to significantly help with their task. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:46, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

  • Oppose The event co-ordinator right will allow the ACC team to grant confirmed right to new users. And the new users will start to create articles in the mainspace, which will cause more damage. Masum Reza📞 10:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose We (ACC tool admins) want new ACCers to be rate limited, so that we can easily monitor adherence to the ACC Guide. — JJMC89 (T·C) 17:29, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Back to 6 per day

So, the prior "temporary" reduction has been lifted and the setting is back to 6 accounts per day for all projects; that being said is anything really needed now? I think that it is reasonable for volunteers working with the ACC team to get account creator access after a short warm-up/training period - and having the team communicate the plan to new members and getting those swiftly processed (say within a fortnight of actively working with ACC) is a good thing. — xaosflux Talk 13:16, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I haven't personally noticed any issues with ACC members requesting and getting the bit granted — after they have demonstrated continuous good judgment for a few weeks, that is. I still think it might make sense to raise the limit to 10 for enwiki, being the largest userbase, and with that query and edit filter from above, we can continue to monitor non-ACC users with high creation rates. — AfroThundr (u · t · c) 15:49, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
  • Comments: I am new to this, support account creation, and was appalled at the backlog. A note that 2-3 days may be needed, may take weeks or even months, and a backlog of 4 months seems to point to a possible loss of good editors at worse, those legitimately seeking an account to lose interest or maybe just not actively seeking an account. Maybe I am looking at this wrong but a backlog of 4 months seems to indicate "is anything really needed now?" a strange question. I understand the need to limit account creation abuse and possible vandalism, but if what is in place seems to be a horrible failure then why not an increase to maybe the 10 suggested instead of back to the statue-quo? I haven't looked at this, just read over some of the above, but has there been a problem with "trusted user" abuse to cause the decrease in the first place? Otr500 (talk) 08:55, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
    The backlog doesn't have anything to do with the rate limit. Almost everyone working at ACC has noratelimit (from accountcreator or sysop), so the limit doesn't apply to them. The backlog is from a shortage of volunteers willing to devote time to working at ACC. — JJMC89 (T·C) 17:28, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
  • If it's back up to 6, then I don't think further changes are needed. New volunteers can get the accountcreator bit once they have a bit of experience. The biggest issue is number of volunteers. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 01:11, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

WP:ANI#Unknown attack on me contains some {{IPvandal}} links to individual IPv4s, individual IPv6s, and IPv6 ranges. Here are three of them, plus a totally unrelated IPv4 range:

You'll see that the template doesn't do well with some of the range code. Is there a way we could fix this, either by instructing the template to drop the "http" link if it's not a simple IP, or by otherwise rearranging something? Nyttend (talk) 20:13, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

This will prevent the "http" link from appearing if the input is neither a IPv4 nor IPv6, although it might be a bit kludgey. Nardog (talk) 20:39, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. Would you advise that I seek to gain consensus before copying your new code into the module, or should I just go ahead and make the change immediately? Nyttend (talk) 21:26, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure either. Let's ask Mr. Stradivarius and Anomie, who are responsible for the module. Also there might be a better way to prevent it than return ''. Nardog (talk) 21:38, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Seems sensible to me. Anomie⚔ 01:07, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Global count tool now limited?

Seems that "Global User Contributions" (at => https://tools.wmflabs.org/guc/?by=date&user=Drbogdan , for instance) once gave truly "total contribution results", but now seems limited to "20 results per wiki"? - QUESTION: is there a way to again obtain truly "total contribution results" with this wiki tool (or some other related one) - and *Not* be so limited (to some number of results per wiki)? - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 00:52, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Drbogdan, Hey, at least it's working now (it was down for a while). There is an alternate tool at https://xtools.wmflabs.org/globalcontribs which may work better for you. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:21, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
AntiCompositeNumber - Thank you for your reply - and suggestion - the newly suggested counter seems limited to english and english-related wikis - and not wikis from other countries as the https://tools.wmflabs.org/guc/?by=date&user=Drbogdan counter seemed to be - at least at one time - hopefully, the old counter will be back up - and work like it seemed to at one time - in any case - Thanks again for your reply - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 01:39, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
@Drbogdan: It's not limited to English wikis, rather it's just listing global edits chronologically. If you paginate through you'll find edits you made elsewhere, e.g. here are your edits from before July: https://xtools.wmflabs.org/globalcontribs/Drbogdan/all//2019-07-01.
FYI there is still some database maintenance going on, so both GUC and XTools may experience occasional slowness. — MusikAnimal talk 02:26, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
This tool will also give you your total edit count by wiki. bd2412 T 01:40, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello. @Drbogdan: the GUC tool was down at the beginning of June, then it has been repaired with Phabricator:T224930, with the limitation that you have seen. But in the Phabricator task, Krinkle said "I'm gonna land the patch now, although it only works for recent changes right now. Not for "All contributions". [...] I'll fix that in a separate change, but closing this for now." so I am convinced that, after the next fix, GUC will show again the "total contributions count" (for all projects) and the "project contributions count" (for each project). Regards --NicoScribe (talk) 21:59, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
@Drbogdan: The GUC tool has always limited the number of results from a single wiki to 20. This has been the case since the tool's creation by Luxo for Toolserver in 2014. However, there are two things that did change since 2014:
  1. In May 2018 (last year), I added the text "20 results per wiki" so as to reduce confusion for users not aware of this previously (phab:T167524).
  2. In June 2019 (last month), I switched the default grouping logic from "per wiki" to "per day" (chronological globally, instead of per-wiki). This has not made any change to which results are shown, merely in which way they are grouped. Both grouping options are still available as before, and can be selected in the form, or by url. This was requested by several users (phab:T193896).
As always, if you are interested in seeing more results from a specific wiki, use the "contribs" link next to the user name to continue for more results (which links to Special:Contributions on the relevant wiki).
Regarding the "global edit count" (as a number, not the list of actual edits), this can be better retrieved from Special:CentralAuth.
--Krinkle (talk) 17:57, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
@Krinkle: Thank you for your reply - and comments - yes - using "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Drbogdan", my total counts is currently 69,212 - however - for some reason - seems, until somewhat recently, my total counts with "https://tools.wmflabs.org/guc/?user=Drbogdan" were almost always about 1000 counts more (should be, with the earlier program-tool, about 70,200+/?) - an example => based on an old copy (June 2018) of my User:Drbogdan Wiki-Page - at => "https://web.archive.org/web/20180622155402/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drbogdan" - in the right-hand userboxes (down the middle of the page) - the total counts at that time were noted as 59,000 (using "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Drbogdan") and 60,000 (using "https://tools.wmflabs.org/guc/?user=Drbogdan") - perhaps I was misreading/misunderstanding something in some way? - or perhaps - something changed in the meanwhile? - in any case - Thanks again for your reply - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 18:51, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
@Krinkle:
  • When writing my message above, I knew about "20 results shown per wiki". That's why I focused my message on something else: the "total contributions count" (for all projects) and the "project contributions count" (for each project). These 2 types of count are necessary (for me) to follow several long-term cross-wiki abusers. When you wrote "I'm gonna land the patch now, although it only works for recent changes right now. Not for "All contributions". [...] I'll fix that in a separate change, but closing this for now." in the Phabricator task, you were not talking about these 2 types of count?
  • CentralAuth is great for many uses but is unable to show the "project contributions count" and the list of recent edits side to side (for each project). GUC was able to do that, before. Moreover CentralAuth does not work for IP users.
@Drbogdan: CentralAuth considers the deleted edits and ignores the imported edits, whereas GUC ignores the deleted edits and considers the imported edits. For instance:
37 + 956 = almost 1000: it explains the difference between your old GUC "total contributions count" and your CentralAuth total count. --NicoScribe (talk) 17:39, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Small tags and mobile view

In the mobile view, <small>..</small> has no effect on the size of the displayed font. This appears to be implemented in the different style sheets used in mobile view. I assume this was a deliberate design decision – perhaps it was thought that making already potentially small font on a mobile device even smaller wasn't a good idea.

Up until February 2018, {{small}} was a wrapper for <small>..</small>. It was then changed to be a wrapper for <span style="font-size:85%;">..</span>. This is obeyed in mobile view, so does generate smaller text.

If it was a deliberate decision not to display smaller text in mobile view, then the change to {{small}} should be undone. Comments, please. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:50, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Finding distinct pages edited by a user?

When I'm looking to see what a user has been up to, looking at their contributions page is usually way to verbose, because it shows every edit. What I usually want is to just see the distinct pages. In pseudo-sql, I want something like, "select distinct page_name from contributions". Is such a thing possible, short of using Quarry?

Even better, a way to do this for both contributions and deleted contributions and fold the results together into a single list of distinct pages. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:29, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like the same idea as the "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" option in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc, but that does not seem to affect Special:Contributions lists. DMacks (talk) 14:38, 5 July 2019 (UTC)
@RoySmith: It is not sorted chronologically, but maybe XTools' Top Edits would help? For example [9]. This intentionally does not reveal deleted contributions. — MusikAnimal talk 17:21, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-28

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

Recent changes

  • For event organizers, if you request a temporary lift of the IP cap for mass account creation, this will now also raise the edit rate limit for those new accounts at the event, which will prevent another bottleneck. [10]
  • Administrators at all Wiktionary, Wikivoyage, and Wikisource wikis are now able to use the new partial blocks feature. [11]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 July. It will be on all wikis from 11 July (calendar).
  • The design of MediaWiki's software windows will change for desktop users. Layout will be simpler, buttons will be bolder and clearer, and close buttons will be just icons. This is like the mobile design. This will affect ContentTranslation, VisualEditor, TemplateWizard, and other tools. [12]

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 10 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [13]
  • Advanced item There will be a change in the name format of new Wikidata RDF dumps starting on 15 July. [14]

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

20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Wanted - someone to adopt a discontinued bot

Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red is looking for someone who'd be prepared to run a bot, the owner of which has recently retired. The bot is described at d:Wikidata:Requests for permissions/Bot/Emijrpbot 6, which points to code here. The function of the bot is to add new wikidata items for new en.wiki biographies and/or to add human and/or gender statements to existing wikidata items, based on articles found on Special:UnconnectedPages. WiR bases all of its metrics (& these) on wikidata records for en.wiki articles, and since end April the project's stats have become increasingly hard to compile. We'd be more than grateful if someone would consider picking up this thankless task; thx. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:33, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

@Tagishsimon: if you haven't already, try WP:BOTREQ Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:16, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/members

Resolved

--qedk (t 桜 c) 07:05, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the best venue is to ask this question, but I was at Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/members and in these edits, I purged a bunch of sock operators, some unregistered users, a bunch of redlinked users who hadn't edited in forever, and without looking at the rest of the list, I can only wonder how many people there are actually active. Is there any technical way to purge the list of duds? I also noticed there were tons of green-linked names, which typically represents users who have changed their handles.

Side question: I remember tweaking a setting that turned redirect links green (see above) but I can't remember where it was. I looked through my prefs and common.js file and can't find it. Help? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 02:35, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: Try this: User:Anomie/linkclassifier. To use only the redirect green color, copy User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css to your .css and comment out the ones you don't need. --qedk (t 桜 c) 04:35, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb and QEDK: Better yet, install User:BrandonXLF/GreenRedirects. 10/10 user script for that. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 05:41, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@QEDK and MJL: I'll gladly install whatever anybody strongly recommends. Since the redirects already show up as green for me, I was trying to figure out what I already clicked in my prefs/gadgets/whatever, so if anybody has any idea, please let me know. Also, I'm still curious about purging the Welcoming committee members page, although it's a low priority on account of it being an indiscriminate user list. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 06:46, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
[Thank you for the ping] Cyphoidbomb, you're a real treat. lol –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 06:51, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@MJL: You are awesome. I can't keep track of the various common files and most of my changes have been to common.js, so I am much appreciative for your sleuthing. I come to the tech board so I don't have to walk in circles aimlessly like an asshole. Thanks, mate. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 06:57, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
...so I don't have to walk in circles aimlessly like an asshole. But that's all I do on Wikipedia! Glad to hear you resolved it. --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:05, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
@Cyphoidbomb: It was nothing! It was just a quick check of your subpages. As for the pruning, I'm afraid I don't know much that could be of service. Maybe a bot to clerk the list would be of service, but I am not the one to program such machinations. Cheers! (edit conflict) –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 07:05, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
User:Cyphoidbomb and User:MJL, you might consider using the Wikipedia:WikiProject X tools, which come with a bot to archive inactive members. User:Harej can probably point you in the right direction if you get stuck. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

logout slow and failed due to http

I was trying to log out one day but the step was slow. It said, "You are being logged out, please wait". Then it said, "Cannot log out now: http". Eventually I was logged out. Why so long? Does it mean that I must have been using a slow network? If I close my browser while waiting, is that good enough? Nick Levinson (talk) 20:26, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

You say 'one day' and you were eventually logged out, that means the issue may no longer be there. Have you tried logging out again to see if the issue persists up to now?. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:12, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Preventing a logout is a security concern, thus I asked, even if it doesn't repeat for me. I agree the issue may be gone but it may not be, which is why I said "one day" and then posted. It did not recur on another day but that doesn't mean it was resolved. I think I had another well-known site open under my login during the same session; if so, I had no problem logging out from there. I assume the two strings I quoted (minus "http") can be searched for in MediaWiki software or the Wikipedia implementation to find what causes them to display, but I can't do those searches and I don't know how to test for recurrence of the problem, because if the cause was network slowness I don't know how to slow a network that I don't control and most networks I use are likely fairly robust.
Does the problem come from network slowness or something else? If anything was done to resolve it, that's different and please tell us.
Nick Levinson (talk) 23:39, 8 July 2019 (UTC) (Corrections: 23:46, 8 July 2019 (UTC))
@Nick Levinson: I've filed a task at phab:T227621 for it to be looked at. Thanks for reporting. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Null edit needed

Can someone with the right permissions null edit the fully locked page User:NQ/nqup.css (the user hasn't edited for 2 & 1/2 years) so as to clear the redirect Category:Potentially illegible userboxes? This one is causing strange errors for the redirect bot. Timrollpickering (Talk) 14:24, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Wow that page is a mess, looking at it. — xaosflux Talk 14:53, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
 Done @Timrollpickering: should be good now, is using the 'fake css' permission hack to make a protected user page. — xaosflux Talk 14:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
It's cleared - thanks. Timrollpickering (Talk) 15:03, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Rather than null edit it, it should be nullified - there isn't a single valid CSS rule in the whole thing. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:44, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64: it is a self-protection hack used by non-admins (c.f. Wikipedia:User_pages#Protection_of_user_pages). — xaosflux Talk 22:16, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Why do we encourage this? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:34, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Template conditional syntax quesiton

What is the correct syntax to set the inline parameter conditionally in this template? It is embedded in the London Overground article thus: {{Overground RDT|inline=yes}}, which should be able to set the inline to 1 or true. The aim is to hide the top bar of the template when embedded in an infobox but not elsewhere.

I attempted this but it didn't work, so clearly I'm not getting the conditional syntax right: 

|<includeonly>|inline={{#if: {{{inline|}}}|1|0}}</includeonly>

What's the correct way of doing it? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cnbrb (talk • contribs) 20:38, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

@Cnbrb: You're overcomplicating it. Just do this that way you can use {{Overground RDT|inline=1}}. BTW the documentation for {{Routemap}} shows |inline=1 but |inline=yes might work, I'm no Lua expert. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:32, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah! Someone has stepped in and fixed it. The answer was (of course) obvious:
|inline={{{inline|}}}
Thank you! Cnbrb (talk) 00:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Headerbar doing v-t-e and hide

{{Navbar-collapsible}} is a good utility (showing both V-T-E links and the Hide/Show button). Now IIRC, there was a similar template for (wiki)table headers. Cannot find it any more, did anything bad happen? If someone could give me a hint/link, +appreciated. -DePiep (talk) 20:37, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

You recall incorrectly. No such template exist, or can exist. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:10, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
You can make a collapsible table, but the v/t/e won't be able to reliably target just the table for editing (see User:Xaosflux/sandbox76). — xaosflux Talk 00:35, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Indeed, Xaosflux, but I will apply it in a templated table.
Discovered how to make this work:
{| class="wikitable collapsible" (adds the Hide/Show button, right)
! colspan=4 | {{navbar-collapsible|1=Title text|2=Template:Foo}} (adds the v-t-e links, left)
-DePiep (talk) 09:48, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@DePiep: do you have this sandboxed? I'm assuming the edit link still goes to a "page" not somehow only edits "the table" right? — xaosflux Talk 13:00, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: I only use this in a table that is in a template page (see {{Decay modes}} edit), that is what I meant to say with "in a templated table". I do not aim to use this in an in-article coded table; as you pointed out that won't work. -DePiep (talk) 13:06, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Preloading edit summary?

Hey! is it possible to preload an edit summary like we can do with page content? and if yes whats the code? thanks in advance.--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 21:50, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

@Épine: &summary= ! ;-) Example link. Quiddity (talk) 21:56, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
URL is [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit&summary=foo%20bar Example] -DePiep (talk) 11:47, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Épine, also see the documentation mw:Manual:Creating pages with preloaded text. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:36, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorting broken?

Take a look at List of Governors of Alabama - errors of "Script error: No such module "Date table sorting"." all over the place. --Golbez (talk) 14:25, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

It's fixed now. --Golbez (talk) 14:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Android app login generic error

Screenshot: https://pasteboard.co/ImS2y8j.jpg

hello,

I can successfully log into the web browser version of Wikipedia, but I cannot log into the Android app using the same credentials. I received a generic error that only states that an error has occurred.

I have also tried using the same automatic input of credentials from the same source and mechanism on the same device to control for my user error. Again, browser version login works, app no :(

Any ideas gratefully received!

Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rrubix44 (talk • contribs) 12:17, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the app? There may be an issue with the app itself. -- Luk talk 19:55, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Luk: The same issue bugs me to no end. I'm not even using an Unicode username, which has been an issue in the past. All that I could think of was that either my password - 32 character sequence of random ASCII characters - somehow triggered the bug, or that the Pie autofill API weren't accepted. I wasn't using VPN either. There is only a very slim chance I could log into the Android App without problem. Is there an phabricator on this? Tsu*miki*⧸ 🌉 16:31, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

WHOIS broken

Whois returns either a blank page, or a 500 internal server error. Been going on for a few hours already. DuncanHill (talk) 21:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

  • I just posted this in a section above, but moving it here. The last couple of days, I've been getting 500 - Internal Server Error Here is one from WP:AIV I've tried multiple times just now 1. Here is one from a different IP 2. — Maile (talk) 21:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Note: This might not be isolated to Wikimedia or Tools. I just got the identical error message at Find A Grave. On second try, Find a Grave loaded. — Maile (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

XTools

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T207959
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T182182

I use two XTools - edit counter and article counter, both of which have stopped working for me as I have over 350,000 edits. Any idea how this can be resolved? GiantSnowman 15:27, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman: The limit is there to prevent long-running queries that likely wouldn't finish, and would unnecessarily slow down XTools for everyone else. I can try increasing it a little bit, but we have to have some sort of sane limit. phab:T182182 is about analyzing the most recent 350,000 edits, but I suspect this wouldn't really help because in theory we'd still have to scan all of your contributions to get the most recent 350,000. The issue with Pages Created, specifically, is tracked at phab:T207959. One idea is to use the page creation log (phab:T221730), which is fast, but it would only produce pages you created going back to June 2018.

It's a tough problem to solve. We have to balance satisfying the needs of our users, such as yourself, while protecting stability and preventing unrealistic queries from being ran. This is compounded by more general issues with the replica databases, such as the inability to estimate how slow queries will be (phab:T188677) and more recently, general slowness following recent schema changes (phab:T226050). In the meantime, you could try using tools that don't have any limits (or the scalability problems that XTools has), such as Sigma's Pages created tool. Sorry for the inconvenience! — MusikAnimal talk 16:19, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I have increased the edit count limit to 400,000. It seems right now, the replicas are going fairly fast. Both Pages Created and Edit Counter didn't time out for your account. I can't promise it will stay that way, though. As an FYI, you can make the Edit Counter go faster by asking only for the data you need, using the checkboxes at https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec. Best, — MusikAnimal talk 16:27, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! GiantSnowman 16:36, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@MusikAnimal: can you do an 'simple counter' for article creations, which just shows the number rather than a full list? GiantSnowman 08:23, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Good idea. I'll look into it! — MusikAnimal talk 17:50, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Request bot for auto archiving

Resolved

For talk page. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nicotine_marketing QuackGuru (talk) 03:00, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Alerts and alarms

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T88781

Is there some facility within Wikipedia for me to receive a reminder when, for example, a block that I have made or a page protection that I have added has expired, or a deletion discussion that I have initiated has run its full time? Moreover, is there some facility within Wikipedia to create reminders generally? If not, can such a thing be created? bd2412 T 22:52, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

While this would be a godsend, e.g. for checking back on a talk page in 7 days or so, or allowing a 24-hour 3RR to expire, I am not sure it is MediaWiki's job to be tracking our reminders. That seems to present unnecessary load to the servers for something that individual editors would best be equipped to track locally. I have used Google Calendar and assorted alarm-clock apps to do this, so far. Elizium23 (talk) 23:06, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@BD2412: this may be incorporated in the existing feature request: phab:T88781. — xaosflux Talk 23:12, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Note though, this is related to phab:T2582 - which has been pending for 10 years. — xaosflux Talk 23:13, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
@Elizium23:, I don't know how big a server load this would necessarily represent. I already get all sorts of notices for things like being mentioned in a discussion or a link being made to a page I created. Obviously some system event is occurring when a block or a page protection expires, because the system knows to lift the block or unprotect the page. I suspect that implementing such a thing is much more a matter of prioritizing it than any effect on the servers. bd2412 T 23:16, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • A JS tool can be made to log certain temporary actions (and/or any kind of reminder you want) to an userspace subpage and serve you reminders based on that. Noting that, the JS datetime implementation is... almost nonsensical, at best. So, kudos to anyone who does. Alternatively, and this is easier, you can use Siri/Assistant, does seem like a better choice, but it'll mix your onwiki/offwiki life. --qedk (t 桜 c) 05:49, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

JSON error on Template:Infobox book series

Not sure what's going on, but I can't even make a dummy edit to Template:Infobox book series since it has a JSON error somewhere. I want to make an improvement to the template, but can't due to the error. Can anyone help? Steel1943 (talk) 21:48, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

I think I fixed it. --Gonnym (talk) 22:28, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
@Gonnym: Yep, I can at least do dummy edits now, so it's probably good. Thanks! Steel1943 (talk) 01:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure there was some backend change sometimes not long ago, as I had a lot of templates I could edit without that error that one day started blocking me. --Gonnym (talk) 06:47, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
If you aren't used to JSON, you can use this site to check for errors. Also useful in cases where you know JSON syntax but cannot find the error (lots of parameters, etc.) --qedk (t 桜 c) 08:03, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Extracting the ToC list

Is there a way (via template or lua) to extract the ToC headers so they can be presented in a different style? What I mean by that is using a ToC style such as {{Horizontal ToC}} but without the ridiculously awful need to manually write each header, and later update it if it's changed. --Gonnym (talk) 14:19, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@Gonnym: {{Horizontal ToC}} is a recent template. We already have {{Horizontal TOC}}, mentioned at Help:Section#Horizontal TOC. The names are confusingly similar. I have added a see also link [15] but more should probably be done. __TOC__ places the table of contents. It can be wrapped in styling like {{Horizontal TOC}} does. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:01, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I just found it by accident. There really is no reason to have the newer template. If a manual list of entries is somehow needed (and I really can't even see one valid reason why it would), that could added to the better template. --Gonnym (talk) 09:04, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Minor edits

It's annoying that everytime one needs to check the "This is a minor edit" box. I would recommend making it the other way round and checking after making large edits instead. THE NEW ImmortalWizard(chat) 16:40, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@ImmortalWizard: There was a user preference "Mark all edits minor by default". This was removed eight years ago following a discussion in which it was determined that the option was often misused. See Help talk:Minor edit/Archive 1#Should we remove the Preference setting to "Mark all edits minor by default" ? and phab:T26313. On that matter, this edit, which was the last one that you made before posting here, should not have been marked minor. Further information at WP:MINOR. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:33, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Redrose64. I have now read the information page. THE NEW ImmortalWizard(chat) 16:50, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi, the interwiki link on article Aún soltera takes me to the Spanish article on Ian Fleming which does not seem correct...GrahamHardy (talk) 17:11, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

@GrahamHardy: it takes you to the main page of eswiki, and their TFA is Ian Fleming --DannyS712 (talk) 17:21, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
@GrahamHardy: Fixed it by removing the incorrect {{SPATRAcite}}. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:24, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Some users think that youtube-dl is not notable enough for having its own article !

Can any user help to stop the speedy deletion request ? Thanks (https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl) -- Voldemort (talk) 11:49, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

This isn't the right forum for such a request; next time(it has already been deleted) try the Help Desk. 331dot (talk) 11:51, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Voldemort, this is not the place to ask these questions, please ask this question on Teahouse. ___CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 11:52, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
There is a page at User:widefox/Youtube-dl if you want to help improve it to show WP:GNG. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Youtube-dl was the last formal debate. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:10, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Fake edit conflicts when I edit talk pages

Pretty much most of the time for several days. On my iPad and my Windows laptop. they aren't real as my edits still appear. Doug Weller talk 16:57, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: didn’t you return back to edit form (in the browser) after saving an edit? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:02, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Icnis Mrsi: I'm not sure what you mean by edit form, but it's the nature of an edit conflict that you can't save. I can't save but my edit appears. Note that I just had a normal edit conflict with you and had to repost it in the upper text field as usual and save. Doug Weller talk 17:41, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
I should fix my ping. @Incnis Mrsi: thanks. It keeps happening, sometimes even on non-talk pages. Doug Weller talk 16:23, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Are you double-clicking or double-tapping when you save? Sometimes the system can be confused into thinking that the save button has been hit twice. bd2412 T 17:42, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
This has been happening to me too on Windows with Chrome browser. It is new behavior, but I also remember seeing it in the past. I can't see any pattern for when it will happen and when it won't. Last time I saw these behaviors, it quietly stopped happening on it's own. ~Kvng (talk) 15:44, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
I had this for a few weeks, thinking it was maybe some server issue that would solve itself. It didn't. Before destroying my computer I reset my settings in the preferences and it solved itself. It must be a conflict with one of those, but I have no idea which one. --Gonnym (talk) 15:57, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
I haven't changed my preferences since before this started. Maybe there's a dodgy setting in there but not one that I've made recently. ~Kvng (talk) 16:01, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I didn't either, but resetting it worked. You just have to bite the bullet if it annoys you as much as it did me. --Gonnym (talk) 16:17, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Old revisions of image missing, but not deleted

At File:Dave_Carlascio_and_Family_Force_5.jpg, some old revisions of the image give a 404 error message. Thumbnails of those revisions are still included by the HTML page, and it links to where the old revisions would have been. From the revision notes, it looks like they were non-free, so probably should be deleted, but, well, they weren't deleted.

By comparison, here is what old deleted revisions of a file look like: File:City_of_Spokane_Seal.svg — "No thumbnail" note, and no broken links or images. So, the problem with Dave_Carlascio_and_Family_Force_5.jpg appears to be a software bug, disk corruption, or similar.

Could someone properly delete the old versions in this case, and investigate the cause of this to ensure other files (that shouldn't have been deleted) aren't corrupted, restoring the revisions from backup as needed? Thanks! —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/their)｜Talk｜Contributions 22:12, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

watchlist inaccuracies again

My watchlist is again showing pages and diffs I have already seen, even though I have it set to show only unseen changes. Bolding of these pages in the list is also inconsistent. Anyone know why this exceptionally fun behaviour has returned? —Joeyconnick (talk) 22:50, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Citation generator in Visual Editor not working for PMID or PMC numbers

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T227415

It works, most of the time, when you insert the doi number or the article title, but not at all for PMID or PMC numbers. Not sure where I should report this. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:05, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

It's a known issue involving the tool labs DNS being blocked or something, see T226088. @AManWithNoPlan: could probably explain in more details what the issue is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:13, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Headbomb. Seems from this Phabricator discussion that no one knows what the problem is. It's been 3 weeks now, and I can't see that anyone has taken this on as their task - but perhaps I just don't understand how WMF technical people work. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 05:35, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Anthonyhcole, there are literally 2 people discussing and analysing network traffic in that ticket... What more are you looking for ? A fix before understanding the cause of the problem is not possible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:26, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
As I say, I don't know how that Phabricator process works. If this is normal, fine. Seems a bit sluggish, though. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:23, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Citation bot noticed it a month ago. It was mistakenly thought to be a DNS firewall problem in the Phab ticket. I determined that it was an issue with data sizes exceeding 4K within DNS messages, then someone else determined it was only a problem with secure dns. In summary, there are all sorts of standards and extensions to DNS and pubmed sends something that we don’t handle. Side note: from what I read, handling split messages over 4K makes some attacks easier. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:57, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, man. I'm in awe of and grateful for what you tech guys can do, but impatient. It's a comfort knowing that this issue is firmly on your radar. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
This issue is now fixed. Thanks for reporting. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:30, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, TheDJ. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:15, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Template:Documentation

There is a problem with tables which occurs while using template {{Documentation}} with parameter |content= (also known as inline documentation). Documentation breaks when it reaches {|. Could this be fixed with a change of Module:Documentation? Thank you! --  Gzhegozh talk 11:00, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

This is normal behaviour for templates: you cannot pass a Wikimarkup table through a parameter. I suggest that you make the documentation into a subpage, as is done with the majority of templates. If you state which template, I can carry out the appropriate edits. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:10, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, is it possible then to make a subtemplate for inline documentation? Because I have got a following problem in the Ukrainian Wiki: few months ago I discovered that many templates there still contained old, Russian-style inline documentation translusions (Russians use their own documentation style, and there is a special template for inline documentation). So I replaced all those inline documentation transclusions with {{Documentation}} and the parameter |content=, but there were some cases with tables. Despite solving this problem by creating subpages, I think that it would still be helpful if a special inline documentation template is created. For example, in that link from a user's sandbox you can see a situation where it can be very useful to have such an option, as you don't need to create an extra docpage. That Russian template enables this option. --  Gzhegozh talk 15:03, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
So, this is not a technical issue with the English Wikipedia at all then. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
No, the same problem exists also in the English Wikipedia. --  Gzhegozh talk 17:03, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Template parameters can contain pipes if they are written as {{!}} per mw:Help:Magic words#Other. The source will look ugly if it's done for all pipes in a whole table, but it works as shown below. See also the second bullet at Help:Template#Usage hints and workarounds. The Russian Wikipedia does not appear to have {{Wikitable}}. {{!}} is not a template but part of MediaWiki and works in all wikis. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:32, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Hmm, this looks like a solution. Thank you! --  Gzhegozh talk 19:10, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Page titles in italics

Hi. I've just noticed that all article page titles are suddenly showing in italics. Must have happened in the last ~5 minutes or so. Do a null edit on a page to see, if it's not rendering in italics already. I take it this is some temp. glitch? Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 12:51, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

It seems to be connected to {{Infobox}}, as the italics disappear when the infobox in an article removed. —Nizolan (talk · c.) 13:00, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
The culprit appears to be this edit by Gonnym, which is causing italic titles to show up all over the place. —Nizolan (talk · c.) 13:03, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know. I didn't see anything while testing but I'll revert myself while I figure it out. --Gonnym (talk) 13:05, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Lugnuts: could you let me know what page you were looking at? --Gonnym (talk) 13:07, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Hi. I noticed it at Hodan Nalayeh, but that seems to be fixed now. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 13:09, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Gonnym: I saw this on many pages - in fact every article I looked at, for example, 1337x. In many cases it also displayed this error in red at the top of the page: "Warning: Display title "<i>1337x</i>" overrides earlier display title "1337x" (help)." -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:21, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
@Zzuuzz: Could you give me a page where you had the conflicting displaytitle issue? --Gonnym (talk) 13:29, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
As above, 1337x (which is still in italics). Another was definitely xHamster (still displaying the error). -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:31, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! (the just refresh the page as the code was reverted ~30 mins ago). --Gonnym (talk) 13:34, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Testing the reported pages Hodan Nalayeh, 1337x and xHamster in preview with the infobox set to /sandbox produces no italics or errors (Just to be clear, I've made changes to the code, hopefully fixing the issue). --Gonnym (talk) 13:37, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Also reported, Northern Paiute people[16] (but now fixed). I get no errors for 1337x and xHamster in preview without changing anything, but they still display as reported. -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:45, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
OK, a purge got rid of those errors. -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:54, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Lugnuts and Zzuuzz, please see File:Holy Cow That's Weird.png and the WP:VPT archive where it appears. This report really strongly reminds me of that incident :-) Nyttend (talk) 23:09, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Hehe, nice! Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 06:47, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Special:SuffixIndex

There is a page Special:PrefixIndex which is showing all pages starting with a certain name, but can someone create a similar page which would show all pages ending with certain characters? It would be a very useful tool. --  Gzhegozh talk 09:49, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

There is an old request at phab:T12808: "Introduce Special:Suffixindex". PrimeHunter (talk) 10:07, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

PHP7 details

See my latest ten contributions: some of the edits are tagged with PHP7, and others aren't, although I used the same browser on the same computer to make those edits, and all of them were done with my home wireless network. Any idea why three are tagged as PHP7 and seven aren't, instead of all ten being tagged or all ten not being tagged? The PHP7 page says Replacing the Beta Feature, since March 2019 a percentage of all production traffic has been randomly assigned to use PHP instead of HHVM. I would assume that this means that some of my sessions would use PHP7 and some wouldn't, but you can see that seven of those edits came in one session, yet exactly two of the seven edits used PHP7. Is every single edit randomly assigned or randomly not-assigned to use PHP7? Nyttend (talk) 21:10, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Nyttend, a percentage of your requests, not of your sessions indeed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
What's a request? Is it an edit, or a page request (i.e. my computer asks the server to send a page), or something else? Nyttend (talk) 10:44, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Nyttend, any communication your browser makes with the servers. For a page, that is usually dozens of requests (each image is a separate request for example). For an edit, it is a single request. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:15, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Whist marker - such a popular article!

See Talk:Whist marker, for the views this trifling monograph has attracted over time - i.e. very few until suddenly 100,000 in one day! Do we have any ideas why this might happen? (I have seen previous hadwavey "bot" explanations, of similar phenomena, do we have anything concrete?)

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:34, 14 July 2019 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: the additional view stats report this is from "mobile web" user clients. It certainly could be some sort of "bot" (not a wikipedia bot, a web bot) that is not presenting as a bot. For a few reasons (primarily privacy) detailed reader information is not available except to developers. — xaosflux Talk 21:59, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
It's not merely mobile web. Mobile app and desktop had similar jumps, although smaller:
Date Mobile web Mobile app Desktop Total
1 July 1 0 0 1
2 July 0 0 4 4
3 July 2 0 1 3
4 July 2 0 3 5
5 July 5 0 4 9
6 July 94,411 529 13,246 108,186
7 July 36,762 371 5,309 42,442
8 July 1,799 52 512 2,363
So whatever's going on is presenting itself with all sorts of platforms. Nyttend (talk) 22:39, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Just Reddit helping people figure out what their random junk is: [17]. Top comment links the Wikipedia article. Modulus12 (talk) 22:51, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah, this is the modern equivalent of being slashdotted! Thanks! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:49, 15 July 2019 (UTC).

How is the "Number of page watchers who visited recent edits" calculated?

Just curious. Neither Help:Page information nor Help:Watchlist say. Nardog (talk) 15:44, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@Nardog: not sure, but the API docs describe it further as the number of watchers of each page who have visited recent edits to that page. — xaosflux Talk 15:54, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Looking at the code, it seems that it skips watchers where the "updated since your last visit" indicator on the history page would show for revisions more than 180 days older that the most recent revision of the page. For example, if the most recent revision of a page is 1 April 2018, it'll skip any watchers who would see the marker on revisions from 3 October 2017 or earlier. Anomie⚔ 13:48, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
@Anomie: Thanks. Could you point to where that code is ? I don't know jack about PHP but it seems to me InfoAction.php and the variable "RCMaxAge" have something to do with it, but I could be far off. Nardog (talk) 16:37, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nardog: You're in one of the right files. The actual database query happens at WatchedItemStore.php lines 366–382, called from InfoAction.php line 775 and ApiQueryInfo.php line 927 with a cutoff time based on $wgWatchersMaxAge. $wgRCMaxAge is involved in counting the number of "recent" edits, for a different threshold of "recent". Anomie⚔ 11:31, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, edited Help:Page information. Nardog (talk) 15:41, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist

Is there an easy way to remove all pages which I did not create from my watchlist? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 10:21, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: - no. You could use Special:EditWatchlist/raw to get a dump of your watchlist, then get a query of pages you created and use an offwiki utility to subtract them, then replace the list with your new list. — xaosflux Talk 19:52, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Seems like the data from this would be useful, but downloading a CSV seems to only give me a partial list. Eman235/talk 19:53, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Editing News #1—July 2019

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can use the visual editor on a mobile device?

Every article has a pencil icon at the top. Tap on the pencil icon to start editing.

Edit Cards

Toolbar with menu opened

This is what the new Edit Cards for editing links in the mobile visual editor look like. You can try the prototype here: 📲 Try Edit Cards.

Welcome back to the Editing newsletter.

Since the last newsletter, the team has released two new features for the mobile visual editor and has started developing three more. All of this work is part of the team's goal to make editing on mobile web simpler.

Before talking about the team's recent releases, we have a question for you:

Are you willing to try a new way to add and change links?

If you are interested, we would value your input! You can try this new link tool in the mobile visual editor on a separate wiki.

Follow these instructions and share your experience:

📲 Try Edit Cards.

Recent releases

The mobile visual editor is a simpler editing tool, for smartphones and tablets using the mobile site. The Editing team has recently launched two new features to improve the mobile visual editor:

  1. Section editing
    • The purpose is to help contributors focus on their edits.
    • The team studied this with an A/B test. This test showed that contributors who could use section editing were 1% more likely to publish the edits they started than people with only full-page editing.
  2. Loading overlay
    • The purpose is to smooth the transition between reading and editing.

Section editing and the new loading overlay are now available to everyone using the mobile visual editor.

New and active projects

This is a list of our most active projects. Watch these pages to learn about project updates and to share your input on new designs, prototypes and research findings.

  • Edit cards: This is a clearer way to add and edit links, citations, images, templates, etc. in articles. You can try this feature now. Go here to see how: 📲Try Edit Cards.
  • Mobile toolbar refresh: This project will learn if contributors are more successful when the editing tools are easier to recognize.
  • Mobile visual editor availability: This A/B test asks: Are newer contributors more successful if they use the mobile visual editor? We are collaborating with 20 Wikipedias to answer this question.
  • Usability improvements: This project will make the mobile visual editor easier to use.  The goal is to let contributors stay focused on editing and to feel more confident in the editing tools.

Looking ahead

  • Wikimania: Several members of the Editing Team will be attending Wikimania in August 2019. They will lead a session about mobile editing in the Community Growth space. Talk to them about how editing can be improved.
  • Talk Pages: In the coming months, the Editing Team will begin improving talk pages and communication on the wikis.

Learning more

The VisualEditor on mobile is a good place to learn more about the projects we are working on. The team wants to talk with you about anything related to editing. If you have something to say or ask, please leave a message at Talk:VisualEditor on mobile.

PPelberg (WMF) (talk) and Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-29

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

Recent changes

  • The mobile web will get more advanced editing tools. Seven more Wikipedias can use them now. This works for Arabic, Indonesian, Italian, Persian, Japanese, Spanish and Thai Wikipedia. You can try the tools on the mobile web and give feedback. [18]

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item The abuse filter system user will soon do maintenance edits on broken abuse filters. This user is called Edit filter and has administrator rights. This is meant to fix technical problems. It will not do any other changes. You can read more.
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 July. It will be on all wikis from 18 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 17 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Wikipedia app for Android will invite users to add image captions to images on Commons. It will only invite users who have added a number of edits in the app without being reverted. This is to avoid spam and bad edits. You can read more and leave feedback. [19]

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

15:29, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Don't waste your time trying to give feedback on the Android item; the "leave feedback" page doesn't let you add a new section and doesn't even have an edit button. Nyttend (talk) 21:43, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

WP:Dashboard on sidebar

I had an idea that the Dashboard should be on the sidebar below the Community Portal. I don't know how to add it locally, and I feel it should be sitewide anyway. Thoughts? Remagoxer (talk) 09:19, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

An administrator can add it to MediaWiki:Sidebar but I see no good reason. The first link in Wikipedia:Community portal is Wikipedia:Dashboard and it's linked twice more. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:04, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
You can add a Dashboard link below "Community Portal" for your own account with the below in your common JavaScript. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:13, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
mw.loader.using(['mediawiki.util'], function () {
  mw.util.addPortletLink(
    'p-interaction',
    mw.util.getUrl( 'Wikipedia:Dashboard' ),
    'Dashboard',
    'pt-dashboard',
    'Wikipedia Dashboard – Discussions and requests',
    null,
    '#n-recentchanges'
  );
});

Reward for a task!

There's a bounty of 50$ for anyone who manages to solve T27471 which concerns with adding a "delete associated talk page" checkbox to the delete form. The commit must be shepherded through code-review and merged to the master-branch; customized java-script based fixes are disallowed. ~ Winged BladesGodric 05:58, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

If anyone is interested, but no idea how to proceed, take a look at mw:How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker. Some knowledge of LAMP is necessary. --qedk (t 桜 c) 06:37, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
I have made a related suggestion at MediaWiki talk:Confirmdeletetext#Add link to delete an associated talk page. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:08, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

"Publish changes"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T228116

Some time ago, the save button was replaced with a "publish changes" button. I work with an awful lot of new editors both on-wiki and off-wiki, and it is perhaps the most frequent source of confusion (after maybe why VE doesn't work on talk pages -- but that's a whole other deal with technical constraints). The awkward language choice of part of the interface shouldn't be something I have to bring up in every introduction to editing session I run (and shouldn't be something that confuses so many people even after bringing it up). Specifically, it comes up when new users are starting to edit in their userspace, in a sandbox, in a draft, etc. -- people see "publish changes" and hesitate because of the implications of "publish".

I'm sure there have been threads about this in the past, but I'm not sure the best way to search for this. Has this change been well-received otherwise? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 17:44, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

IIRC this change was made by WMF legal and is non-negotiable; they wanted to make it clear to editors that the moment one clicks that button, whatever is in your edit window becomes publicly available for anyone to view and not saved to a private userspace inaccessable to others, whatever the namespace being edited. It was a global change, so the discussions will I assume be on Meta. The announcement was here, so the discussions if there were any will be shortly before that. ‑ Iridescent 17:49, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I recall seeing some discussion on Phabricator; I'll see if I can find links. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 18:44, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Actually the save button was changed to "publish changes" because of newbies. In UX testing newbies did expect the save button to work more like drafts. There was a need to change the text of the button to be more decisive. The bug behind this change is T131132, which explains this further.--Snaevar (talk) 19:32, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks all. From the sound of it, it seems like it makes most sense to use "publish changes" in most namespaces, but switch back to "save changes" for draft and userspace? Might be too much of a hassle to change, though (other than on a per-user basis with a script, of course, but that sort of defeats the point). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:32, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Rhododendrites, I've been asking around about this since the change was made a few years back. So far, with one exception, the editathon folks tell me that the problem is that new users actually do understand this, and are intimidated by making their creations available to the general public. They want to clean it up and try to make it "perfect" before anyone else can see it. (That is, they're looking for a save button that doesn't publish their edits, which is not how our big blue button works.) I'd be very interested in hearing whether your users express similar sentiments.
Draft space and userspace are just as published as the mainspace. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:27, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
@HJ Mitchell, Pigsonthewing, and RexxS: You often teach new users, but I don't know if you watch this page; please can you supply some feedback for Whatamidoing? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:44, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
OK, if there was such a hoo-hah about calling it "Save" then why does the ephemeral popup dialog still read "Your edit was saved." Should it not be changed to "Your edit was published!" for consistency? Won't someone be confused about whether the edit was saved or published, when she pressed "Publish" but it was "Saved" instead? Also, the ephemeral dialog is annoying to me: it covers screen real-estate, can't be dismissed early, and goes away without being acknowledged, as if we had time to spot and read it. Not a good experience at all. (EDIT: It apparently can be dismissed early, if your reaction time is FPS-trained enough to hit the tiny "X" before it fades and disappears (~5 seconds.) Elizium23 (talk) 14:03, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Good point, Elizium23. I filed a bug report about that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:23, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64 and Whatamidoing (WMF): I've not found it an issue for new editors at editathons and workshops. I almost always guide new editors through their first edit, which is normally to their user page to say what topics they are interested in. I make a point of explaining that publishing it makes it visible to the whole world and caution against writing anything that they wouldn't want everyone to see. After that I use "publish" and "save" interchangeably and I don't believe I've ever found anyone confused by that. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 15:08, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
I concur with the OP; it's a point of confusion, as happened with the last event i ran, earlier this month. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:28, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Request to fix uw-paid1 and uw-paid2

Is there an easy way, perhaps a module or template, to add a "unregistered"/"registered" differentiation to {{uw-paid1}} and {{uw-paid2}}?

These important templates currently give wrong advice to IP editors; see Template talk:Uw-paid1#"User page" disclosure for IP addresses. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:00, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

I do not think those templates should be used to warn "IP addresses" as they're not meant for that. Paid editing is done with accounts that's why the disclosure is needed on userpages. If an IP address is persistently making promotional or suspicious editing, they should be reported to the appropriate noticeboard not be asked to disclose their client on their "IP userpage" which does not make sense. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:36, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Can't edit caption

Timeline and map of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, including the Village pump (technical)/Archive 175

Hi. In our Colossus of Rhodes article is a timeline/map of the 7 wonders, which inadvertently implies that there were 8 of them (by referring to the Colossus "and the other 7" wonders).

I cannot find this caption in the text of the page, nor at File:Ancient seven wonders timeline.svg. Where is it? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:33, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

The image is called as a template Template:Ancient seven wonders timeline.svg. The wording is generated from the title of the page using it, and that in the template. DuncanHill (talk) 11:38, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Ahhhh! Thanks. Fixed it. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:47, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Glad to have helped. The curly brackets were the clew. {{This is a template, not a file}} DuncanHill (talk) 11:56, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
I missed that, because I'm a newbie technical buffoon. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 12:50, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
In your defense, it's a little confusing to include ".svg" in the template name. A search finds around 50 such templates. All the examined were created by Cmglee. A few of them have been moved to avoid confusion, e.g. [20]. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:49, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Hi PrimeHunter, Apologies for confusing editors with the extension. I think having it is useful as it informs editors that, unlike other templates, it's purely an image thumbnail. Furthermore, it gives the image type (extension). Finally, the exact filename of the image is there, should anyone want to go directly to the image page. Thanks for helping out Dweller, regardless. cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 17:07, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
My ego thanks you for giving it a nice excuse. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:20, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
--> the caption on the image on the right here is hilarious. --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:26, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm so bad with tech, I feel like a wonder of the ancient world myself --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 13:44, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Put the template on your userpage then! DuncanHill (talk) 13:48, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 Done --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 14:25, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Edit filter to address Visual Editor bug (or common user error)

When a user drafts content with references in a sandbox, if using the Visual Editor it is necessary to enter edit mode before copying in order to retain the references. If the user doesn't copy from edit mode, the superscript links will be retained, but they will be links back to the original page (where the footnote anchor would be) without the reference itself. You can see an example of this in my sandbox:

This sandbox shows the first paragraph from the body of Wikipedia copied from edit mode.

This sandbox shows the same paragraph copied without entering edit mode.

It would be useful to have an edit filter or some other way to indicate when this happens. This is something I always tell new users, but which people very regularly forget about, just to introduce improperly formatted content into an article when trying to copy out of a sandbox. It seems like this could be easily detected by looking for superscript tags around a link to a different page. (Another common sign this happened is that "[edit]" appears inside a heading). Ideally, this would notify the user when they try to save, but an edit filter could be useful, too. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:25, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: I suggest you move this to Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested - where the volunteers that write filters can better asses it. It is possible to just make a "warn" filter as well. — xaosflux Talk 17:19, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Template transclusion check down

Is it only for me or it is down? Here I get errors, and when trying to change language too. Please ping me, I don't want this page in watchlist because there are many changes... --Obsuser (talk) 21:58, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Replacement of character references with actual characters

Beland (talk · contribs) has been replacing HTML character references with the actual characters they represent, using JWB. Is there a consensus or justification for this?

The replacements are concerning to me especially given they include characters in Private Use Areas, which IMHO are best left as references (frankly I don't think they should ever be used in articles in the first place, but still). And even if it was justified, wouldn't it fall under WP:COSMETICBOT? Nardog (talk) 21:50, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Greetings! I was actually wondering whether I should be keeping Private Use Area HTML entities as they are. In my browser, I can see the Unicode point number of characters I don't have fonts for, but I'm not sure about other editors. This began as part of a spell checking and Manual of Style compliance project. I'm trying to bundle HTML entity cleanup with any punctuation cleanup on the same articles, so there aren't a bunch of minor commits. Right now I'm working on a list of only about 5,000 articles; in some cases, the HTML entities represent breakage so there's reader-visible cleanup to do, but you're right it's often only editor-visible. I've been getting occasional thanks for the entity cleanup, though; where done right it makes the wikitext a lot more readable, especially to editors who don't know HTML. (For example, café is a lot easier to read and edit than caf&#xC9;.) I had a conversation with some MOS editors before starting this, and there was a strong consensus in favor of converting numeric HTML entities where possible, unless the result would be confusing, and I made a list of confusing situations to exclude. Unfortunately, Unicode is a huge place and no one thought about potential problems with combining characters (I'm leaving those alone after editors on some Arabic-langugage-related pages rightfully complained) or the private use area or a handful of other things where I'm trying to building bottom-up consensus. I'm leaning toward PUA characters being too confusing to convert, so I'll add them to my exclusion list unless someone here would much rather see real characters than numeric entities? Ah, I see Template:PUA actually says not to convert them; that's also a page that will probably give a comprehensive list of articles they are used in, if anyone wants to go around pruning any unnecessary ones. -- Beland (talk) 23:14, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Phantom edit: notifications and watchlist not updating

Greetings, I just discovered that an edit to a page I have watchlisted (Special:Diff/906832193) is apparently a phantom, as it did not appear on my watchlist and the ping did not trigger a notification. I already checked that the ping was done correctly, my preferences enable me to be notified by said ping, and that the page is indeed on my watchlist. Also, my watchlist has updates later than this edit, and I got notifications as recently as yesterday and have not knowingly changed any settings since. None of this explains the conspicuous absence of this edit from both my watchlist and notifications.

I therefore ask: has anyone else experienced such a problem, and is there a solution that either I have overlooked or can be implemented by a "reset" of preferences? Thanks, ComplexRational (talk) 18:58, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Addendum: The edit in question is also not listed in the project's recent changes feed, probably suggesting that the problem is not on my end. ComplexRational (talk) 19:43, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
For the watchlist, I believe it is the same issue that was resolved earlier in January at phab:T211849, but I believe it still occur sporadically. I've experienced that some weeks ago but didn't have time to report the issue. You can report it again. For the ping, I am not sure why it didn't work. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:05, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
What you're describing sounds like phab:T225199. I'm looking into it. Legoktm (talk) 07:23, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

If you wonder how the servers work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0FTcG7PxzI has some information about how code gets deployed, if anyone's interested in learning more about Wikipedia's back end. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:11, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm honestly just a little disappointed the video actually had information on how code gets deployed, rather than footage of hamsters running over a keyboard. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:20, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
Nice! SD0001 (talk) 18:42, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

File Upload Wizard bug

In the File Upload Wizard, the radio boxes in Step 3 are invisible on my system. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 00:30, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

What is your system? Ruslik_Zero 08:27, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Official website gives a 500 error

This isn't necessarily Wikipedia-related, but look at the Official website under "External links". After you click on the official website, the URL at the top of the screen is correct but there is a 500 error. When I go to the site and click on the correct link there, everything is fine. So I have changed the official website so it will work. — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:59, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: from some testing, it looks like their website is just having an intermittent outage right now (got it on the 'new link' as well) - in any case I updated the offical website property on wikidata and set the template to use the WD value. — xaosflux Talk 17:16, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I've had the problem for several days. Sometimes the link works and sometimes it doesn't.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:49, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Xaosflux this is at least the third straight day with a 500 error from the link in the article. If there is going to be a link, it should work. From the site itself, a link to Dear Abby does work.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:24, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee: you are not seeing a Wikipedia issue, you are seeing an issue with their web pages. To test I typed the URL in to a broswer, then opened and closed it 5 times, it failed three times. This is occuring for both the 'dearabby.com' link, and the 'uxpress.com' link. There is nothing we can do to fix their broken website. — xaosflux Talk 18:30, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't have the problem when I go to Dear Abby from the uexpress site. I did contact them to tell them what is going on with me.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:50, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
Just got there, and refreshed my page 10 times, half of them failed. They could have some broken load balancer. — xaosflux Talk 19:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
I didn't try that many times but it worked for me both clicking on the link in the article and typing "dearabby.com".— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:05, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Just got this. Even though I used my real name in the request, I just happened to have used this name in my email address.

Hello Vchimpanzee,
We're aware of this issue, and the developers will correct as soon as they are able.
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Thank you,
Andrews McMeel Universal Support
GoComics.com
PuzzleSociety.com
Uexpress.com

— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm still sometimes getting that 500 error but I have to wonder what would be wrong with just switching to the URL which that other site sends us to.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:49, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: I don't think you understand the technical problem - it isn't a problem with one of those domain names vs the other, it is a problem with the connection between the second domain name and the actual web server - as confirmed by the server owners in your response above. We've demonstrated that this happens with both URL's. This is not a problem with the English Wikipedia or with the mediawiki software in general. There is literally nothing else for us to do here. — xaosflux Talk 17:52, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
I was watching to see if I got any kind of response from the people fixing the software. My suggestion was that if the other URL does nothing but what is called "redirect" on Wikipedia, why not just bypass that?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:55, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
Sometimes website are broken and there is nothing to do but wait and hope. We could try to change all URLs to the redirect and/or adding archive links for non-working links. But since they said they are working on it, we should wait. -- GreenC 18:07, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
If the only problem were with the websites first 'redirect' page, then yet it would be fine to just bypass this - but please see above - the problem is not with the first link, it is with where they redirect it to. — xaosflux Talk 17:37, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Template linking and transclusion check tool

Hello, does anybody know how/who can fix the Template linking and transclusion check tool JMHamo (talk) 11:51, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe author? (If he's active). MarMi wiki (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-30

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • The release of the last version of MediaWiki (1.34.0-wmf.14) has been blocked for groups 1 and 2. [22]

Changes later this week

  • Phabricator database will be moved to a different server. Writes will be blocked on Thursday 25 July, between 05:30 and 06:00 AM UTC. Reads will remain unaffected. [23]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 July. It will be on all wikis from 25 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

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

13:07, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Transclusions with hashes at the beginning

I have recently become confused by some transclusions on sports seasons articles such as 2019–20 UEFA Europa League, which under the "third qualifying round" header just has the following code to produce the fixtures table, with no edit button as is usual on templates:

{{#lst:2019–20 UEFA Europa League qualifying phase and play-off round|Q3}}

I cannot find the corresponding template or module for this anywhere, can anyone give me a hand?

Thanks – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 14:42, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

It is not a template, but a page - 2019–20 UEFA Europa League qualifying phase and play-off round. --Gonnym (talk) 14:46, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) #lst, or more readably #section isn't actually a template but instead a magic word. The text it produces is stored at 2019–20 UEFA Europa League qualifying phase and play-off round, delimited by <section begin=Q3 />...<section end=Q3 />. * Pppery * it has begun... 14:47, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Filelakeshoe: that is the abomination of mw:Extension:Labeled Section Transclusion - I really hate that extension, but some people like it! — xaosflux Talk 14:48, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks everyone! Yeah it's not very user friendly - an "edit source" link would be useful, but I guess not practical for all cases. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 14:55, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Is there a better way? I've used it to transclude chunks of appropriate help text from Help:CS1 errors into the various error category pages in Category:CS1 errors. It's worked well for that. One source page so only one page to maintain. But if there's a better way, ...
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:01, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: reusable text/markup is what birthed templates :D — xaosflux Talk 15:02, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
The real solution for tables will always be 1 data source, that you call from whatever page you are on and get the results placed into the table. That was supposed to be Wikidata but it seems that won't happen. Anything else is just a backwards way of trying to handle tabular data. See any TV award, which is written and independently sourced in the TV article, season article, actor article, the TV award itself and if the character that actor played has an article, that article as well. /off-topic rant --Gonnym (talk) 15:15, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)
Oh, aye? But don't we, at en.wiki, proscribe article text in template space? Not my creation but the documentation for the cs1|2 templates is primarily handled by Template:Citation Style documentation and a plethora of sub-templates. It is a pain to maintain and that, in my mind, disqualifies it as a 'better way' than labeled section transclusion. So no 'better way' than templates?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:20, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Well "template documentation" isn't really "article text" is it? :D — xaosflux Talk 15:32, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
It's not, but the OP provided an example where labeled-section-transclusion is used in article text which avoids the no-article-text-in-template-space proscription. My csdoc example is intended to show that were article text allowed in template space, such use of templates can be unwieldy. So am I to understand that while you consider labeled-section-transclusion to be an abomination, you don't have a better solution?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:11, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Convert button in visual editor: is this new?

I noticed today that when you click on a reference which is a bare URL in Visual Editor, the edit box has a bottom section that says, This reference consists of just an external link. You can use the "Convert" button below to generate a properly formatted reference. Is this new, or have I just never noticed it before? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:54, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

No, this convert button message is not new. It was added at November 1, 2015. It is part of the citoid extension, which is bundled with VisualEditor.--Snaevar (talk) 09:16, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Interesting, but weird that I've never noticed it before. Has something changed to make it more obvious? My usual process has been to copy the URL, create a new Automatic citation, then delete the old reference. It's just odd that I've never noticed the Convert button before, which does all that with so much less effort. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:45, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Template help

Requesting help updating some wiki templates (non-Lua). I don't know how to do it. Can you help? Template_talk:Vcite_book#Support_for_archive-url_vs._archiveurl. Cross posted to Wikipedia:Requested_templates#Vcite_template_updates. -- GreenC 16:12, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

This is done, though {{vcite book}} could still use support for |archiveurl= and |archivedate= in case anyone wants to add it, examples in other vcite templates. -- GreenC 17:45, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

English Fundraising Tests

Dear all,

As I noted at the end of June, through the summer we will be running systems tests in preparation for the end of year fundraiser on the English Wikipedia.

This weeks test is scheduled for 1500 UTC Wednesday 17 July.

  • If you need to report a bug or technical issue, please create a phabricator ticket.
  • If you see a donor on a talk page, OTRS or social media having difficulties in donating, please refer them to donate@wikimedia.org.
  • If you have specific ideas to share, please feel invited to add them to our fundraising ideas page.

You can also send feedback regarding the fundraising campaign directly on my talk page.

Thank you in advance for your support. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Just to bump this thread that we will be testing again 1500 UTC Wednesday 24 July. Many Thanks. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Help with color overlap problem

Hello. On my talk page Mnnlaxer asked about a situation with the collapsed tables at the Israel men's national lacrosse team article. Because they are blue readers can't see the "show/hide" command. I think I've seen tables where they are highlighted in white but I have no idea how to make the change. Any help that can be provided will be appreciated. MarnetteD|Talk 18:41, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

MarnetteD, would it be okay if someone changed the background of the title from blue to green? You can do that by replacing all "#274da9" with "Green"--SharabSalam (talk) 19:01, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't know SharabSalam. I have posted this this message Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lacrosse#Input help to see if that wikiproject has any guidelines about the color of the tables in their articles. Thanks for the suggestion. MarnetteD|Talk 19:57, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
So many issues with that page... MOS:DONTHIDE, MOS:SMALLFONT, MOS:LINKCOLOR, MOS:HEADINGS - just from one section. --Gonnym (talk) 20:16, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
The color is blue because of the Israeli national flag color. It can change, but white "show/hide" would be better. If anyone can do some clean up on the MOS issues, please jump right in! Thanks, MarnetteD. --- Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 04:27, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
{{hidden begin}} can replace | bodystyle = background:#FFFFE6; with | style = color:white; | bodystyle = background:#FFFFE6; color:black; as the below example. The style parameter also applies to the collapsed text so it's returned to black with bodystyle. I don't know whether this can cause issues for some users trying to replace normal black text with another color for themselves. The gadget "Use a black background with green text" appears to work as normal. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Current code

Body text.

Suggested code

Body text.

Thanks PrimeHunter for figuring out the code and Gonnym for fixing MOS issues, including removing the hidden tables. Onward and upward with the arts! --- Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 17:44, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Request bot for auto archiving

For two talk pages. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Juul and see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pax_Labs QuackGuru (talk) 18:51, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

@QuackGuru: see Help:Archiving_a_talk_page#Automated_archiving for some code snippet you can put on a page to request bot archiving functionality. — xaosflux Talk 19:02, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Local en.wp gadget "Allow navigation menus to be collapsed" causes sidebar items to be indented

Hi, i am Monniasza, and I have found bug in "Allow navigation menus to be collapsed" gadget. It causes sidebar to get malformed by icorrectly indenting its contents.

Steps to Reproduce

Go to preferences

Open "Gadgets" tab

Scroll to "Appearance"

Enable "Allow navigation menus to be collapsed"

Save changes

Open a new browser tab with Wikipedia and view it

Actual Results

Sidebar gets malformed on non-special pages

Expected Results

Navigation menus can be collapsed

Monniasza talk edits 08:54, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

What is your browser? What is your skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering? It's indented but collapsing works for me in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. I guess the indentation is intentional and wouldn't call it malformed. Are you saying that it doesn't work for you, or that you just don't like the indentation? The code is in MediaWiki:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.js and MediaWiki:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.css. Example without enabling the gadget in preferences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?withJS=MediaWiki:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.js&withCSS=MediaWiki:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.css. Example with the JavaScript but not the CSS (don't enable the gadget): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?withJS=MediaWiki:Gadget-CollapsibleNav.js. Does that work better for you? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:44, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
I used Google Chrome browser, Vector skin. Monniasza talk edits 17:41, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Undo script

mobileUndo script is an userscript created for mobile. It basically adds a button to revert the latest revision of an article while previewing a diff on the mobile website. Currently there isn't any undo feature in mobile version of the mediawiki software (as far as I know). It meets the general criteria for gadgets and I have the original creator's permission. Therefore I am proposing this script to be approved as a gadget. Should we approve of this script as a gadget? Masum Reza📞 12:01, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Source code – Here (maintainer's copy, probably outdated)
Author – meta:User:FR30799386
Features – mobileUndo#Features
Note – The original creator of this script is blocked on en-wiki for sockpuppeting. But it is possible to reach him on meta-wiki.
Maintainer on en-wiki – User:DannyS712
My statement – I am a regular user of this script and have been using it since January, 2019. I can assure you that it possesses no threat to sensitive data of it's user. This is a very useful script for both editing and counter-vandalism. Making it a gadget will benefit many users editing on on mobile devices.

Questions

A list of questions and answers I believe would be useful.

1 Does it work if just included with no further configuration?
Yes. It works with no further configuration.
2 Is it configurable via personal common.js?
No. The current maintainer and the original script creator can provide more information.
3 Is it compatible with all major browsers in other words, cross-browser compatibility?
Yes. It is compatible with most major browsers on mobile except Opera mini. So far I've tested it's compatibility myself with Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Chromium and Microsoft Edge.
4 Does it have any duplicates?
No, not on en-wiki except the current maintainer's copy. I've copied the script to my userspace on test wiki and meta wiki for performing tests. I am willing to delete those copies if necessary.
5 Does it require any special permission?
No. It even works with very new accounts. But I think we should not give its access to non-autoconfirmed editors to prevent misuse.
6 Which skins are compatible with this script?
Minerva Neue obviously as this is the only skin available on the mobile website.
7 Does it have cross-wiki compatibility?
Yes it has. I've tested this script myself on meta, Japanese Wikipedia, Wikidata and test wiki. It even generates edit summary in other languages on other wikis.

Discussion

I am willing to answer any questions you may have about this script (please ping me when you reply). Thanks. Masum Reza📞 12:01, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

@Masumrezarock100: Noting that I have synced my version with FR's on meta - I plan to make some optimization tweaks, but otherwise it should be good to go --DannyS712 (talk) 15:44, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712: Thanks Danny. What do you think the suggestion in my answer to the 5th question. Masum Reza📞 20:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Masumrezarock100: That can be set very easily if the script is a gadget (see mw:Extension:Gadgets) - but as just a user script, its harder to implement. I think its fine to leave it as it is, with the understanding that if it is enabled as a gadget it should, like twinkle, require autoconfirmed. --DannyS712 (talk) 20:50, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712: I see. Since it has cross-wiki compatibility, I highly suggest we make this a global gadget, what do you think? Masum Reza📞 20:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Masumrezarock100: well, I don't think those exist yet. --DannyS712 (talk) 21:06, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
@Masumrezarock100: Please observe how this RfC is currently listed at WP:RFC/TECH, and include a brief, neutral statement of or question about the issue immediately below the {{rfc}} tag, in accordance with WP:RFCST and WP:RFCBRIEF. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:08, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Done. I am very new in this RfC stuff. Thanks for pointing out my mistakes.Masum Reza📞 12:59, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
It's now worse, in that nothing is now displayed other than the link. You need a timestamp (if not a full signature) after the statement so that Legobot knows where to stop parsing: WP:RFCST does state "Failing to provide a time and date will cause Legobot to remove your discussion from the pages that notify interested editors of RfCs." and that is precisely what has happened here. At the moment, the first timestamp that it encounters is the one at the start of this "Discussion" subthread, by which time the statement is no longer neutral and certainly not brief. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:33, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
To @Alsee, Izno, North8000, DannyS712, Killiondude, and RainFall:, who participated in this discussion, How about importing this script to Mediawiki:Minerva.js or Mediawiki:mobile.js as only JavaScript that gets executed on mobile is at Mediawiki:Minerva.js and Mediawiki:mobile.js. Both of them are almost empty, so I don't see a problem here. Masum Reza📞 08:45, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
Fixing ping Rutilant Masum Reza📞 08:49, 13 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't have the knowledge of those things/terms to respond. North8000 (talk) 21:13, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

User survey

Please state your vote using '''Support'' or '''Oppose'''. Explain why if you choose the latter option. Masum Reza📞 05:07, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm a bit baffled by your second sentence. By nature of this being an addition, the onus is on the supporters to explain why it should be added. However, in discussions like these, explanations from both sides would be useful to all. Killiondude (talk) 19:53, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I meant that one must add a reason if they oppose it. Explanation from Support side is helpful as well but I am not explicitly asking them to state their reason. Masum Reza📞 22:15, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
To support: say "aye"; to oppose: rehash the Bible. —RainFall 08:07, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Support - This would be really helpful, whenever I want to undo on my mobile I have to go to desktop view which is just a pain. SSSB (talk) 09:51, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Instead we should ask the Foundation to Undo their removal of Undo from mobile. Creating a gadget to put Undo back is pretty absurd, unless it is the only way to get this fixed. I don't use mobile, and while I know the Foundation has badly crippled basic functionality on mobile I had no idea that they removed the undo link. That's pretty bad. If/when there's a clear majority here to ask the Foundation to fix this, give me a ping and I'll be happy to open a phabricator task and push for action. Alsee (talk) 13:27, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
    There's never been an undo button in mobile, basically, so I do not know why you think they removed it. See phab:T87609. --Izno (talk) 13:52, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Weak support (invited by the bot) I favor simplicity vs. trimming seconds off of the "revert" time, but it looks like its inclusion is optional, and that lots of good work has been done. North8000 (talk) 13:04, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Support as a non-default gadget. SD0001 (talk) 16:59, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Well, it would be nice if jQuery or something was used instead of constructing long HTML strings directly. See also Musik's comments on his talk page, which I think should probably be addressed. Gadgets do run on the mobile skin, right? Enterprisey (talk!) 08:54, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

6 million articles already?

According to the Wikimedia Statistics page, we already have over 6 million articles. However, the main page says we're over 100,000 short. It seems to me these two values should be the same. Discuss? Samsara 09:25, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Counter on the main page should be updated after every refresh. Why it isn't (in 2019)? Eurohunter (talk) 09:43, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
The main page counter uses {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} which says 6,914,387 when this is rendered. It is updated several times daily. Samsara's link does not claim over 6 million. The vertical axis has no number at the top. It shows a small horizontal line when the axis ends but this is not at 6 million. It is around 5.9 million. Hovering over the right side of the graph says 2019-06-01 Content 5.884.993 for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:13, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
It has a tick mark on the left. If the tick mark does not indicate 6 million, it should not be there at all. Samsara 10:58, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
I agree but it's not something we can change here. The horizontal axis has the same issue. There is a mark at the end but it's not at 2020. In that case it's currently easier to see that the last interval is shorter than between the other marks. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:21, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

FWIW - perhaps to keep track of the number of Articles (and more) - is the following template => {{User:Dbogdan/WikipediaOverview}} - hope this helps in some way - if otherwise - *entirely* ok with me to rv/rm/mv/ce the template of course - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 12:41, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

This template contains clickable links

WIKIPEDIA – The Free Encyclopedia
(Overview by Dr. Dennis Bogdan)
Wikipedia Facts
Topics of 1000 randomly sampled articles (2016).
Size of a printed version of Wikipedia (2010).

WIKIPEDIA – The 5th most popular site on the Internet, was launched on January 15, 2001 (1st edit by co-founder Jimmy Wales), is currently published in over 300 languages, has been freely available worldwide for 23 years, 10 months and 7 days – Wikipedia has 63,987,105 total articles (6,914,387 in English (stats); 260,245 in Simple English) – *VITAL ARTICLES*: 10–100–1000; *BEST ARTICLES*: 51,698; *POPULAR ARTICLES*: Last 24 hours; Last Week: Top25; Top5000 – and has (for the English version) 851 administrators and 122,731 active editors (includes over 1,400 stated PhDs and over 130 MDs) – as of 10:49, November 22, 2024 (UTC).

Code to access templates between Wikis?

QUESTION: Is there some code that can access a template residing on the English Wikipedia - from another Wikipedia like, for example, the Simple Wikipedia? More specifically, the template {{ScienceNews}} resides on the English Wikipedia - Question: Can this {{ScienceNews}} template be accessed from the Simple Wikipedia (without recreating/duplicating the template on the Simple Wikipedia)? If so, what code may be used? - tia - Enjoy!  :) Drbogdan (talk) 16:01, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Drbogdan, Interwiki templates are not currently supported on WMF wikis, mostly for performance and usability reasons. There's been some interest in developing the software to do this well for a long time (including in the 2015 Community Wishlist Survey where it was a top-10 wish), but nothing has developed out of it. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:18, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
@AntiCompositeNumber: Thank you *very much* for your comments - they're *greatly* appreciated - at least I'm now better informed about this - has my vote in developing this software if helpful - in any case - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:00, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Unable to edit my watchlist?

Problem: For some reason, I'm unable to edit my watchlist (via "View and edit watchlist" or "Edit raw watchlist" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditWatchlist ) - even after restoring all default settings in my "Preferences" - and regardless of the browser used (latest versions of "Brave"; "Chrome"; "Firefox" used; Windows10/1903; Dell-XPS 8900) - seems earlier, all was *completely* ok with editing the watchlist - but now the listing in my watchlist (in edit mode) seems to appear very, very briefly - and then disappears? - any help with this would be appreciated - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 15:16, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

@Drbogdan: do you have a large (many thousand+) number of entries on your WL? Can you see if you can edit it using this safemode link? — xaosflux Talk 15:37, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thank you for your reply - and suggestions - seems I have => "You have 8,108 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages)." - is there a maximum limit for all to be ok? - also - the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditWatchlist/raw?safemode=1 - seems to work ok at the moment - anything I should/could do to be ok again in "normalmode" (not "safemode") - in any case - Thanks again for your reply - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 16:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
I've got 18,314 pages. I was over 25,000 a couple of weeks ago, and was able to edit it. DuncanHill (talk) 16:09, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Drbogdan: while there isn't a limit (well there probably is some super giant limit but you're not at it) WL's tend to get wonky over 5000 entries, so I really suggest you trim it if possible. Perhaps you have a bunch of old User:IPADDRESS ones from old feedback/warnings that you can remove. Also the safemode link disables scripts, such as the ones you have enabled in User:Drbogdan/common.js and User:Drbogdan/vector.js - you could try turning these user scripts off to see if there are any conflicts being caused. — xaosflux Talk 16:43, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks for your reply - it's appreciated - yes - trimmed some entries in "safemode" - but this did not work - remmed script in User:Drbogdan/common.js - as follows => <!---mw.loader.load('//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Hedonil/XTools/XTools.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); importScript('User:SD0001/oldSearchHistory.js');---> - not clear if this script is important for anything I'd miss at the moment - but yes - this worked *very well* and the WatchList edit seems to be *entirely* ok (in regular "normalmode") at the moment - Thanks again for your help with this - and - Enjoy! :) 17:17, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Drbogdan: .js pages use a slightly different comment code (I edited YOUR page with the right comment type - feel free to revert or do anything you want with it now) You can try turning those lines on back one at a time if you want them, then contact whomever's script you are loading if you would like them to work on it. — xaosflux Talk 17:21, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks for updating the js code with the right comment code(s) - it's appreciated - all now seems ok - Thanks again for all your help with this - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: - BRIEF Followup - after several tests - seems the particular problem script line in the "User:Drbogdan/common.js" file is => /*importScript('User:SD0001/oldSearchHistory.js');*/ - the other script line seems ok - and somewhat useful at the moment - hope this helps in some way - in any regards - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:51, 27 July 2019 (UTC) [NOTE: corrected code - Drbogdan (talk) 21:12, 27 July 2019 (UTC)]
@SD0001: - want to take a look? — xaosflux Talk 18:00, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux and SD0001: FWIW - rm related CSS line from the "User:Drbogdan/common.css" file as well - /*@import url("//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:SD0001/oldSearchHistory.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css");*/ - see => "Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_173#Hideous_history_page" section for more if interested - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 18:13, 27 July 2019 (UTC) [NOTE: corrected code - Drbogdan (talk) 21:12, 27 July 2019 (UTC)]
@Xaosflux: In this edit you used the wrong format, it's either 
/* ... */
or it's 
// ...
the latter extending to the end of the line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:38, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
@Redrose64: thanks, fixed though syntactically it worked (would interpret the same since it was on each line) :D — xaosflux Talk 20:01, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
Drbogdan, problem script fixed. SD0001 (talk) 16:27, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
@SD0001: Thank you *very much* for your comment - and help with this - may try the fixed script at my next opportunity - iac - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:07, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
@SD0001: Checked the new fixed script - and the "WatchList Edit" now seems to work *very well* - Thank you for your help and efforts with this - they're *greatly* appreciated - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:53, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Popups - little white box above the link

When I point my cursor at a link, as well as the usual popup preview thingy, I also get a little white box appearing above the link. I think it started in the last hour or so. Is this a new feature? It doesn't appear to do anything useful, or indeed at all. DuncanHill (talk) 23:01, 28 July 2019 (UTC) Sorry should have said, monobook, Edge, Win10. DuncanHill (talk) 23:01, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Template's FULLPAGENAME in documentation

Resolved

I'm looking for a template to produce the pagename of a template on both template's main page and template's doc subpage? That is, a template equivalent to following code: 

{{#ifeq:{{SUBPAGENAME}}|doc|{{NAMESPACE}}:{{BASEPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}

I could not find it in Category:Pagename manipulation templates, Category:Namespace manipulation templates. Template:Subpage other could be used, but only for root page templates — it won't work for userspace userboxes. And it will still require writing out the branches of the if. Is there such a template? —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:58, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you can use {{TEMPLATENAME}}. It also removes other things. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:11, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for. Added the template to Category:Pagename manipulation templates. —⁠andrybak (talk) 01:51, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
@Andrybak: You may have been looking in the wrong place, since these are not templates - they are variables. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:13, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
{{TEMPLATENAME}} is a template. Its name is just chosen with all uppercase like magic word variables. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:07, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Biography - authority control

On the biography for Paul Ricœur, the authority control box has the following text in red font: The RERO id 02-A000137666 is not valid. Can someone fix it? Thanks! 2607:FEA8:1DE0:7B4:F81D:4C1A:755A:7B9F (talk) 03:20, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

The ID itself is valid but actually all RERO IDs were categorized as invalid and I could not find what's causing this in Module:Authority control. Pinging Tom.Reding who added them today. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:25, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
@IP & @Ammarpad:  fixed.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  10:51, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Google Maps can't find some decimal coordinates

Not a Wikipedia problem, as it occurs even when Wikipedia is not involved, but affects a lot of articles so it's worth raising here. Maybe somebody knows something about this, and in any case editors need awareness of the problem.

Google Maps says it "can't find" some, but not all, geo coordinates in decimal format. Example 53.111,-2.245, a location near Manchester UK. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:00, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Hmm, while "53.111, -2.245" isn't working, "53.11100, -2.24500" is. — xaosflux Talk 20:07, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
Hmm, indeed. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:10, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
That's interesting. I also played around with the precision and 53.11100, -2.24500 doesn't work for me. Killiondude (talk) 20:11, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
For an example of an actual affected article, see 2014 Isla Vista killings. Google Maps takes you to Isla Vista but displays the error and fails to place a marker. Appending one zero to the end of either lat or long fixes it.
At this link is a place to report errors in Google Maps, but it requires a Google sign in. I don't have a Google account and I don't care to create one for this purpose. Perhaps someone else could report this error and return any feedback here.
If we can't get this error fixed soon, we should start thinking about a change to the software we control to work around it. Accepting this for the indefinite term is out of the question in my opinion. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:20, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

{{collapsible option}} works incorrectly

I used this template correctly, but it doesn't work. Look at my signature, it contains afromentioned template. Monniasza talk This template's initial visibility currently defaults to autocollapse, meaning that if there is another collapsible item on the page (a navbox, sidebar, or table with the collapsible attribute), it is hidden apart from its title bar; if not, it is fully visible.

To change this template's initial visibility, the |state= parameter may be used:

  • {{Village pump (technical)|state=collapsed}} will show the template collapsed, i.e. hidden apart from its title bar.
  • {{Village pump (technical)|state=expanded}} will show the template expanded, i.e. fully visible.

10:25, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

@Monniasza: usage of templates in signatures is forbidden. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:29, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Template still works incorrectly .Monniasza talk 10:37, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
{{Collapsible option}} is designed to be used on template documentation pages. It outputs text that describes how the state parameter works in those other templates. It doesn't do any collapsing itself. And, as Andrybak said, you may not use any template in your signature. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:43, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, this is like wrapping your beer in a refrigerator manual and complaining it doesn't get cold. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:10, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-31

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

Problems

  • Wikidata will be in read-only mode on 30 July from 05:00 to 05:30 UTC because of a server switch. [28]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 30 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 31 July. It will be on all wikis from 1 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 July at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

21:42, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Colors of class=wikitable?

Quick question, but I can't find the answer. What are the color codes for the default wikitable? For the grey background and the darker grey header? Thanks, Renata (talk) 02:33, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

#eaecf0
#f8f9fa

border:1px solid #a2a9b1; -- Begoon 02:40, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Title italics magazines

So, see how the title Poetry (magazine) is italicized on the article page only in the magazine title, Poetry, how do I get the title for British Vogue to read British Vogue in the article title (again only italicizing the magazine's actual name)? Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:16, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

See this edit. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:22, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:38, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Signature with unclosed font colours

I need help working out how to fix the signature of Oddbodz (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (inactive since May). There is a black font at the end which renders following text black, and therefor invisibly to users of the green-on-black gadget. There are other font colors in the signature which, if the black is removed, then bleed over into following text. I tried to fix it here, but somehow buggered it up in another way. Help! Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 15:43, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

done. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:47, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks - I'll point Oddbodz to that. Is it generally considered acceptable to apply the fix on pages where I see it causing problems? I don't like to edit another chap's signature, but I like not being able to read all the following comments even less. DuncanHill (talk) 15:49, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
@DuncanHill and Pppery: if that is coming from a signature, that isn't a good fix, since you wont be able to insert that closing font tag after the timestamp in a signature. That last font tag needs to be completely removed, and the others should be closed as a quick fix, see User:Xaosflux/sandbox75 - really font is deprecated and there are much better fixes if this person is still editing. — xaosflux Talk 15:52, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
DuncanHill, there are some bots that can fix this if it is on a lot of pages, you can ask at WP:BOTREQ. In general if you see one fix it, unless it is on a user_talk page you are other wise editing (as it will cause "new message" flag for the page owner). — xaosflux Talk 15:53, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
A search [29] finds around 740 cases. This is a job for a bot or AWB. It's always OK to close open tags in signatures. I would also merge the nested font tags to get Oddbodz - (Talk) (Contribs). If deprecated font tags stop working later then it's no big loss if old signatures are rendered as normal text. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:12, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks all - I don't know how to explain things in bot request terms. I mean, I could tell them what I told you here, but I wouldn't understand what I was on about if I tried to explain how your fix works or how it would be applied. DuncanHill (talk) 16:15, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: plain speak is fine there, something like "can one of the Linter signature fixing bots clean up Oddbodz's bad font tags?" with an example or 2. — xaosflux Talk 17:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
@DuncanHill: Based on Xaosflux's sandbox, I'm filing a BRFA now --DannyS712 (talk) 18:35, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, much appreciated. DuncanHill (talk) 19:35, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Connecting between pages

Hello everyone, how to connect between a template and a CSS page? Thanks! ⇒ AramTalk 12:04, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

@Aram: see Wikipedia:TemplateStyles. — xaosflux Talk 13:15, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
Also Category:Templates using TemplateStyles has lots of reusable examples. — xaosflux Talk 13:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

"Discovered" at Wikipedia talk:Principle of Some Astonishment#Random thing I noticed when somebody accidentally "nested" italic marks. The "nesting" obviously doesn't work, and is an error, because the italics are effectively 'closed' before the link text and 'opened' again after it, so you don't get italic text, but check out the funky "extra" link mark which gets added on the left of the link text...

  • ''[https://www.google.com ''normal text'']'' = normal text

These "variants" also produce similar "results":

  • '''[https://www.google.com '''''italic text''''']''' = italic text
  • ''[https://www.google.com '''''bold text''''']'' = bold text

-- Begoon 23:21, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

''[https://www.google.com ''normal text'']'' produces the html <i><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com"></a></i><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com">normal text<i></i></a>. The link is split in two links to the same target. The first arrow belongs to the first link which has no link text. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:48, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd looked at the html source and seen that. It's an oddity that this "error" produces a double-link like that, as I said at the talk page it's something I've never seen happen before in 10 years, but an odd "bug" nonetheless... Looks as though the wikitext 'parser' is somehow seeing both <i>...</i> 'portions' as separate 'entities' that each need linking, yet using the single href target address... -- Begoon 22:22, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

The wikitext parser produces misnested HTML: <i><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.google.com"></i>normal text<i></a>. HTML5 specifies that that "tag soup" be corrected in a manner that produces the empty link, and thus that's what RemexHtml does. Firefox 68 does the same if given that misnested HTML, BTW, and other modern browsers should as well.

Parsoid, on the other hand, seems to interpret that wikitext to produce <i><a rel="mw:ExtLink" href="https://www.google.com" class="external text"><i>normal text</i></a></i>, i.e. it doesn't recognize "misnested" apostrophe markup and link markup in the first place. Anomie⚔ 13:31, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Switch transclusion on/off depending on how recently a template/subpage has been edited?

Do we have a template/magic word combination that can achieve the following? I would like Portal:Germany to display Portal:Germany/Germany news whenever that page has been recently edited, and not display it when it is too embarrassing (say, when the last edit is more than a month ago). Is there some easy way to achieve this? —Kusma (t·c) 10:01, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

{{#ifexpr:{{#time:U|{{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:Portal:Germany/Germany news}}}} > {{#time:U|-30 days}} | {{Portal:Germany/Germany news}}}} PrimeHunter (talk) 10:42, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
PrimeHunter, that's brilliant, thanks! —Kusma (t·c) 11:12, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
@Kusma: keep in mind, that dynamic page content is not guaranteed, especially for non-logged in users; rendered pages are cached and simply viewing the page as a reader does not force re-evaluation of templates. — xaosflux Talk 13:28, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
That's okay, the worst things that can happen here are that the portal wrongly doesn't display a refreshed "news" section or displays an outdated one that I would rather hide. Neither causes any serious problems. But it is a good point that we shouldn't rely on re-evaluation of templates/magic words for anything critical. —Kusma (t·c) 14:08, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Connecting to wikidata?

What's the fastest way to see if there's an existing wikidata entry for an article? What I do now is open another window, navigate to wikidata.org, and copy-paste the article title into the search box. Surely there's a more streamlined (one-click?) way to do this? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:43, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

You can add a "Wikidata search" link for the page name under Tools with the below in your common JavaScript. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:18, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
mw.loader.using(['mediawiki.util'], function () {
  mw.util.addPortletLink(
    'p-tb',
    '//www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=' + encodeURIComponent( wgPageName ),
    'Wikidata search',
    't-wikidatasearch',
    'Search the page name in Wikidata',
    null,
    '#t-wikibase'
  );
});
You can also have a small box single line display under an article's title linking to the Wikidata entry (if one exists) by adding this script to your common.js. StarryGrandma (talk) 15:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
 // d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js
 mw.loader.load( '//www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=User:Yair_rand/WikidataInfo.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );
There should be a built-in "Wikidata item" link under Tools in the left sidebar, shown only if an item exists. @PrimeHunter: Do you not see this link? — MusikAnimal talk 19:13, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
I know the link. I may have misunderstood the question. I thought it was about an easy way to search for a possible Wikidata entry to add the article to if it doesn't already have one. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:45, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
MA, yes, I think the question is whether an (other) item exist covering the same topic as an article, not whether the article is connected to a Wikidata item. --Izno (talk) 22:02, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, and sorry for the noise. I read "existing wikidata entry for an article" as being a connected one. Furthermore many people don't even know about the links under Tools, so I wanted to make sure that didn't go unnoticed. — MusikAnimal talk 15:08, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
The link is getting moved, but that's just an aside. --Izno (talk) 16:26, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Broken template messing up page formatting

User:Paine Ellsworth, can you or someone please revert this edit at Template:Sidebar with collapsible lists? It is badly breaking *some* pages that transclude it. See Catholic Church and homosexuality. Mathglot (talk) 08:58, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Wait, that's a hidden text-only change, so how could that possibly be the cause? But what else has changed, that would break dozens of older versions of the article, that were definitely not broken this morning? Here's version 861002525 from 500 edits ago; just as broken. I can't understand what's happened, here. Mathglot (talk) 09:03, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The problem is (was) in {{Catholic Church sidebar}}, not {{Sidebar with collapsible lists}}. It was this edit by Royalistandlegitimist that broke the template. I advise Royalistandlegitimist to take advantage of the sandbox and testcases before making changes to the template. Nardog (talk) 09:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Nardog, for the fix! (Apologies to Paine; not only weren't they the cause of the problem, but that edit was (nearly exactly!) a year ago. I was too tired and in too much of a hurry to see clearly.) Mathglot (talk) 17:41, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

The notification button

Resolved
 – Fixed in the last update of MediaWiki. Nardog (talk) 05:45, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T228744

Hi, so I am using my mobile.

  1. Just 1 hour ago, an editor posted a comment in my talk page.
  2. I got a notification.
  3. I didn't click on the notification,
  4. I went to the watchlist and see what triggered the notification. (I didn't click on the notification button.)
  5. I saw the comment diff.
  6. I went to another site, returned to Wikipedia again and saw that the notification button is still red,
  7. I clicked on it, surprisingly, I didn't see the comment that was posted to my talk page, I saw old notifications.
  8. I refreshed the page and the notification button returned red. I clicked on it and the red button disappeared and I refreshed it appeared again.
  9. Cleared the cache it didn't help still red.

So can someone help me to fix this? Thanks.--SharabSalam (talk) 21:52, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

What does clicking on the blue circle on the new notification do? Nardog (talk) 21:59, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
As I said I am using the mobile version of Wikipedia. I tried that too. I changed to desktop version clicked on the red button and the blue button. The blue button shows me old notifications like "user thank you" or something like that. Both the blue and the red button shows old notifications.--SharabSalam (talk) 22:04, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
No, I'm talking about the blue circle at the upper right of each notification. It toggles the read/unread status of the notification. If there's no blue circle and only empty circles then click on them a few times. Nardog (talk) 22:10, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
I had no idea about the blue circle. I had never clicked on it since I joined Wikipedia. I have lots of notifications that I didn't click on their blue circle but I haven't got an issue like this before. It's gonna take a while to make all the circles empty? Is that what I should do? Make the circles empty or blue? Thank you for this information about the blue circle. I had no idea about it.--SharabSalam (talk) 22:17, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Nardog, the problem was fixed. I made all the circles empty. I always wondered why I get the number "+99" all the time on the notification button when I get one notification LOL today I learned.--SharabSalam (talk) 22:28, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
In the future, you can use "Mark all as read" (on mobile, the button with a check mark at the top). Nardog (talk) 22:30, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
I did that in past I was hoping it will remove the "+99" number from the notification button but when I did that, only 20 notifications become read and I just didnt see them getting removed or changed hence I wasn't aware of the blue and empty circle thing. So I didn't repeat the process. --SharabSalam (talk) 22:44, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nardog and Xaosflux: SharabSalam is correct, the behaviour has changed. As you know, if you got an alert notification (or thanks notification), the counter appears on a red (or blue) background. If you click that number, it changes to grey and the list of notifications appears. Let's assume that you don't do anything with those, but click away; the list disappears. Now follow a link (any link). At this point, the change in behaviour becomes apparent: the old behaviour was that the counter remained grey until the next notification came in; the new behaviour is that the counter becomes red (or blue) implying that you have new unseen notifications. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:54, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Ah, I could reproduce the problem based on your explanation (and ping). This certainly seems like a bug. Has this been reported on Phab? Nardog (talk) 23:02, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Is this happening in the mobile application, or the mobile web? — xaosflux Talk 23:05, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
I confirmed it on the desktop site. Nardog (talk) 23:33, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nardog: on desktop - not using .m. right? What skin are you using? — xaosflux Talk 23:51, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Vector. Nardog (talk) 23:54, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Also reproducible on the mobile web. The notification icon changes from red to gray when I click on it but not mark the new notification as read and close the panel, but it becomes red again if I refresh the page. Nardog (talk) 23:57, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
I am seeing my blue "Notices" light on my desktop (Safari, iMac, OS 10.11) stay lit for a "Thank You" given 3 hours ago. My red "Alerts" light is off (i.e. gray); I received the last of those 5 days ago. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:49, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
Now I'm getting the red light on when I refresh the page. It turns off when I click on it to see the alert, but then turns on again when I reload the page. I'm using standard, "vector" skin, IIRC; nothing fancy. Dhtwiki (talk) 23:53, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
That is exactly what I'm experiencing, and I believe what Redrose64 was explaining as well. Nardog (talk) 23:54, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
That is also what I was explaining. I also noticed that now when I ping a random user who doesnt exist I don't get a notification saying something like "the ping was not sent because the user doesn't exist"--SharabSalam (talk) 01:01, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: Is "Failed mention" checked at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo-echosubscriptions? Nardog (talk) 01:08, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
It is checked. I just looked at it. I haven't changed anything there and above I have mentioned agsbshsisbsidsb and it worked but now it's not notifying me.--SharabSalam (talk) 01:14, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Okay it's working! it's working!. The whole notification when I ping anyone was not working with me and now it's working for unknown reason.--SharabSalam (talk) 01:16, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Just so people know, AFAIK SharabSalam here is saying that the notification for a failed mention is working for him now. The problem with the notifications as a whole (the grayed number turning red/blue again) still persists. Nardog (talk) 11:39, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
@Nardog: please open a phab ticket with the details. — xaosflux Talk 11:42, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Done, though I'm not totally sure if I did an adequate enough job explaining. Nardog (talk) 12:40, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Seems good enough to get it started, check in if there are questions. — xaosflux Talk 12:58, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Could you recheck the photos that you added to explain the problem. The "expected" after clicking on the notification button and refreshing is that the number disappear and the gray bell icon appears but what happens right now is that the notification appears again as if I haven't clicked on the notification button.--SharabSalam (talk) 15:02, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: I'm certain at least on the desktop site opening and closing the alerts panel without marking all alerts as read would have made the background of the unread count gray but didn't make the count disappear entirely. I don't know about the mobile site, though. Nardog (talk) 12:07, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Nardog, It is the same in desktop. When you click on the notification button with the number it changes to gray which is as usual and the normal behaviour the problem appears when you refresh the page, what is expected is that the bell icon appears like if there was no notification but what happens is that the notification appears again. The photos that you added suggest a different problem. The expected photos should not contain the number of notifications in gray but the bell icon.--SharabSalam (talk) 12:31, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: Then I may be misremembering. Add that as a comment on Phabricator. Nardog (talk) 12:41, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
By the way, I am unable to enter or see that site ([30]) through my IP address I get this message all the time

Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator at webmaster@wikimedia.org to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Yesterday I was in another place where there is a WiFi network and I was able to see what was in the site. In my home I am unable to enter it.--SharabSalam (talk) 12:49, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
@SharabSalam: Ok, I have quoted your comments on Phabricator. Nardog (talk) 12:58, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
To clarify, I was using desktop, Opera, MonoBook. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:05, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
The notifications/buttons are remaining red and blue for me as well. They go away for a moment when clicked on and then come back. Marking all as "read" doesn't solve the issue. I'm using a laptop. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:31, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Flyer22 Reborn, from my experience, I clicked on "mark all as read" and then I closed the notification window and clicked on it again and marked all as read again.. I repeated this until the number in the notification button became zero then the notification disappeared.--SharabSalam (talk) 18:38, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
I shouldn't have to do all that. This needs to be fixed. Maybe Johnuniq can help. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:17, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
@Flyer22 Reborn: Sorry, that's not my area. I usually work with a desktop browser with scripting disabled—I much prefer Wikipedia that way (except when I need to run some JavaScript). I find notifications to be a PITA with scripting enabled but have no idea whether more experience with that would help. Johnuniq (talk) 00:55, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Me too - Having same issue of red notification alert not going away. Desktop. Chrome. Vector. Thanks to all for their hard work! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:53, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Me three - Same problem here. The alerts and notices buttons stay "active" constantly. Clicking on them clears the "active" status but it comes back next time I go to any other page. JIP | Talk 10:16, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Strikethrough blocked editors and SPI

Hi all Bbb23, Vanjagenije and myself are somewhat frustrated because the strikethrough blocked editors gadget/script is apparently not working with external links to user pages. At SPI this isn't great because {{checkuser}} uses external links to avoid pinging the users in question. Is there a solution to his? TonyBallioni (talk) 20:05, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

For additional background, please see Wikipedia talk:Sockpuppet investigations/Archives/Archive22#Markblocked. Also, it should be noted that the links to the master and to the list of suspected puppets do not correctly show as red if no userpage exists.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:08, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: use {{noping}} instead? If the only reason is to avoid "pinging", if you also want to avoid "what links here" that won't work though. — xaosflux Talk 20:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Uhh, never mind - that also uses external links... — xaosflux Talk 20:10, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Yeah, the problem is that anything using external links is borked now, and {{checkuser}} also has all the quick links that we need during the SPI process. TonyBallioni (talk) 20:14, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
@TonyBallioni: Perhaps you could link to something else like TonyBallioni - and then update the script to also operate on that? — xaosflux Talk 20:23, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Navigation popups are able to operate on that for example. — xaosflux Talk 20:24, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • What is the precise bug? As far as I see, iff the user-pages are red-links, they are displayed in blue and not stricken but the t/p-and-contribution links are stricken, as usual. (Bravanello over this SPI.) Otherwise, (i.e. if the user-page exists), all the three links are indeed stricken. (MDPMHG over this SPI.) Am I correct? ∯WBGconverse 20:51, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
    I don't really agree about MDPMHG - it is not stricken in the first instance, which uses the noping like the usual CU templates, but it is later stricken when a different template is used. Try AIV, which basically uses the same noping mechanism. this is a blue userpage which isn't stricken. This is a non-existent user page which is blue and also not stricken. The striking does work for IPs at AIV (eg) which have red userpages, but not IP contributions listed at WP:OPD which are now not stricken. Previously, I think I'm right in saying, all these links were stricken. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:31, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Just, FYI: I've replied with a (hopefully) fixed script at the thread on WT:SPI. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 05:11, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

technical request

Anachronist suggested me to try asking for this request here

The ip range 151.48.0.0/17 was globally blocked by a steward because a user from this ip range used it to create several fake accounts and spam messages accross wikipedia

Anachronist unblocked locally in en.wikipedia.org the possibility to create accounts from this ip range but there must be a glitch or a bug because if i try creating an account from the blocked ip range appears the same error message

'Editing from your IP address range (151.48.0.0/17) has been blocked (disabled) on all Wikimedia wikis until 19:38, 13 December 2019 by Masti (meta.wikimedia.org) for the following reason:

Cross-wiki spam: spambot

This block began on 19:38, 13 June 2019'

I would like a sysop or someone else to fix this error please

Anyway if the cause of the block was an abuser who created too many accounts to spam messages i wonder why it was not chosen to keep the creation of accounts blocked and let edits from normal ip addresses unblocked but exactly the opposite

Semplicemente Agghiacciante — Preceding unsigned comment added by Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk • contribs) 18:00, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

I said that he possibility to create accounts was unblocked locally

Do you suggest me to ask for it via 'Special:GlobalBlockWhitelist' ?

Semplicemente Agghiacciante — Preceding unsigned comment added by Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk • contribs) 18:01, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

  • This isn't a technical issue. The range was blocked here, then it was additionally blocked globally with a wider scope - everything is working properly. You can ask over at WP:AN if you think we should put in an override to the global block for some reason. — xaosflux Talk 18:12, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Actually it was blocked globally first (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:151.48.0.0/17) and then its local block settings were changed by Anachronist

But it is true that for some reason it was reblocked globally with the same settings by another steward after its local unblocking and perhaps this is the cause of the glitch

I will try asking where you said anyway

Semplicemente Agghiacciante — Preceding unsigned comment added by Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk • contribs) 08:59, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

@Semplicemente Agghiacciante: Yes sorry, had my dates backwards! So basically the additional local block did nothing except for ensure that range is blocked here even if the global block were to be removed. The "local settings" were not changed, an overlapping additional block was added. You could ask Anachronist to override the global block if they want to. — xaosflux Talk 15:03, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
Hi, Semplicemente Agghiacciante, I have left you this message on your talk page about how to sign your posts. Or see WP:4TILDES. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:27, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Anachronist tried overriding the global block by restoring his local settings but creating an account from this ip range is still impossible

Who can have a look at this sort of bug in order to fix it ?

In it.wikipedia.org when an italian ip range is globaly blocked it is often locally unblocked and there are no such problems

This thing is weird !

Semplicmente Agghiacciante — Preceding unsigned comment added by Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk • contribs) 18:09, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

As I replied above, You can ask over at WP:AN if you think we should put in an override to the global block for some reason. — xaosflux Talk 18:11, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

So i have to ask for a special treatment for this globl block locally

I thought that a sysop was normally able to override a global block to allow users to edit or creating accounts locally but i was wrong

It is strange though because there are global blocks for italian ip ranges which are normally overridden in it.wikipedia.org

I do not understand what difference there might be if i ask an english sysop to try overriding the block as i have already done and if i ask for the same thing in the noticeboard but i will do as you told me

This should be a technical issue not something about permissions or groups

Semplicmente Agghiacciante Semplicemente Agghiacciante (talk) 12:12, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Degua Tembien

Clicking on this link causes my processor to jump into overload and the page completely freezes. This happens in Linux Chrome 75 (not FF) private or standard mode. Is anyone else experiencing this issue? In IRC, User:AntiCompositeNumber mentioned it took longer than average but it did load for him. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 15:32, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

The page loads normally for me in Google Chrome 75 on Linux until it gets to File:ImbaKernale1936.tiff, which is displayed as a png thumbnail in the page. The thumbnail takes approximately 30 seconds to load, during which time part of the page does not render, links do not work, and Chrome task manager show the tab as using ~100% CPU. Loading the thumbnail directly produces the same issue: 30s load time and 100% CPU. On Firefox, the thumbnail loads in 2000ms with maybe 10% cpu. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:02, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
The file is a 21 MB tiff which is unnecessarily large IMO. Maybe a reduced sized JPG version could be created (as a new file on Commons) for use in Wiki pages. -- GreenC 16:34, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
A conversion to JPG might also reveal any errors in the tiff that are causing rendering problems in browsers. When I try to view the tiff in Firefox and then "+" to expand to full size it doesn't work but prompts for file download. -- GreenC 16:40, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
The TIFF seems to be a valid TIFF. But it contains a large block of data (about 20M of the 21M file) that's some sort of "Adobe Photoshop Document Data Block". That gets copied into the PNG thumbnail, and apparently the excessively large PNG chunk is making Chrome do a lot of work to process it. I have no idea whether the data in this huge block is legitimate Photoshop data or something else embedded. Anomie⚔ 23:33, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
TIFF and article are loading normally for me (maximally in 2 seconds). Eurohunter (talk) 15:48, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests

How it's done that Hong Kong English banner is showing on the top of the page while editing? Eurohunter (talk) 15:50, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Template:Editnotices/Page/2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:52, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Re-request for auto archiving

For two talk pages. See Talk:Juul and see Talk:Pax_Labs QuackGuru (talk) 17:33, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

When you say "re-request", where are the previous requests? We would like to see why they were not actioned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:36, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Authority Control: "The NLR id XXXXXXXXX is not valid"

I'm seeing this large notice in red on all kinds of Authority Control templates now. Also "The BNC id XXXXXXXXXX is not valid". Sample: [31]. Could someone please fix this? Softlavender (talk) 08:36, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

It was broken by this edit which added the identifiers here for the first time. NLP with 2K+ pages is broken too. For instance; its regex requires every id to be prefixed with 9810- but the 2500+ broken pages seem to be using IDs in the form of A12345678; i.e 'A' prefix followed by 8 numbers. If the regex by Tom.Reding is correct, then all those ids have to be corrected from Wikidata otherwise the regex needs to be corrected. – Ammarpad (talk) 09:20, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
Can someone please simply remove the non-working identifiers added by Tom.Reding? This is an absolute mess. -- Softlavender (talk) 10:32, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
  • For some examples, there are currently nearly 5,000 NLP-invalid messages on Authority Control templates: [32]; nearly 700 NLR-invalid messages on Authority Control templates: [33], and at least 170 BNC-invalid messages: [34]. -- Softlavender (talk) 10:15, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
  • At template talk I investigated two of the errors and found that the template is correct, namely that the values in Wikidata are invalid. Can anyone find an id that causes an error to display yet which works when its link is clicked at the article's Wikidata item? Johnuniq (talk) 11:07, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
    • If values of an identifier are incorrect on Wikidata, they should never have been added to Authority Control. Could someone please revert all of those non-working additions until such time as the information for them on Wikidata is correct? Softlavender (talk) 11:25, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

This discussion should probably move to Template talk:Authority control. --Izno (talk) 17:22, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

I commented-out the IDs in the module to avoid the problem, see template talk. Johnuniq (talk) 02:22, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Request for Comments: WikiLoop Battlefield

Hi Techy Wikipedians, I'd like to invite you to try out an open source tool we are actively developing: WikiLoop Battlefield. It's goal is to make monitoring Wikipedia incoming edits, in particular, potential vandalism, easier.

See it here


It's still in early stage of development, any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Feel free to file a bug or feature request at our git repo

Here is a brief demo GIF.

Extended content

Xinbenlv(t) please notify me with {{ping}} 04:57, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

@Xinbenlv: For the "what links here" page to function, it's better to link to the page using wiki-markup: Wikipedia:WikiLoop Battlefield. I had an incredibly frustrating experience earlier this afternoon because a user made an incomplete revert with this tool, which shouldn't even be possible in the first place, at Federation of Australia, an article on my watchlist. It was difficult to figure out where to report the issue; I've added the GitHub link to the project page and reported it there. I also wrote a message on Meta; I don't feel like reporting the second issue there to GitHub because it's so minor, but it's about where the link in the edit summary should go. I consider the first issue so major that I don't think the program should make any more edits until it is fixed. Graham87 07:00, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Barnstar pictures not showing

Hi, Yesterday night I'd reinstated my userpage however I've noticed a few barnstar pictures not showing on my userpage or at User:Davey2010/Barnstars,
I've tried CTRL & F5 as well as WP:PURGE but nothing's working?, The pictures show on other editors userpages so I would assume it's either related to my barnstars page or my laptop?,
Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 14:31, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Your icons shows up for me, but I've seen the same happen randomly on various userboxes and WikiProject templates recently. For example {{User WikiProject Uganda}} shows up for me as "Flag of Uganda.svg" on Chrome but shows up correctly on Safari. – Thjarkur (talk) 14:43, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Ah okay, Tried Firefox and it does work there so reading your reply I would obviously say it's something wrong with Chrome,
Downloaded IE but it wants me to restart the laptop in order to install it ... something I can't be bothered to do given the length of time it takes for this machine to boot up ... so we'll assume it works on there too :),
Anyway many thanks for your help! :), –Davey2010Talk 18:06, 4 August 2019 (UTC)


Preferences

Is there a way to make our preferences global, or at least the default across the different wiki sites? — Ched :  ?  — 20:13, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Try Special:GlobalPreferences. --Izno (talk) 20:23, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you — Ched :  ?  — 21:02, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
@Ched: At Preferences, on the first page under "Basic information", you should find "Global preferences: Set your global preferences
Preferences set via the global preferences page will apply to all wikis." --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:07, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you Redrose64. I noticed that now I have the option to override individual settings now, and that the gadgets aren't available globally. It's still enough to make any efforts outside en-wp a bit more similar. Appreciate the help folks. — Ched :  ?  — 21:17, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
No, gadgets are local to each wiki. But if you know how to use @import in CSS and mw.loader.load in JavaScript, it's possible to use a gadget from one wiki on another wiki. For example, there are no gadgets at Wicipedia Cymraeg - yet I use one there, by means of cy:Defnyddiwr:Redrose64/common.js. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:39, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Which actually can be extended by addition to your global CSS and JS pages at e.g. meta:User:Izno/global.css and meta:User:Izno/global.js. You can probably load certain gadgets optionally on certain wikis with a little more know how. --Izno (talk) 21:55, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Issue with Color templates, right side overflow

Greetings, While viewing article Blue, it has a template link for {{Shades of blue}} which I noticed is overflowing outside the box on the right side. Next, I clicked on {{Shades of cyan}} with the same issue. So I successfully added <br> to keep the lines within the cyan template box.

Then I found Category:Shades of color templates and see more templates; most having the same overflow on right side. I see that {{Shades of color}} has a width value of 100-percent, but I don't know if reducing that number is the answer. Asking for help from a "Template Expert" since it's way beyond anything I would know how to do correctly. Thanks, JoeHebda (talk) 16:32, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

The problem comes from the fact that {{navbox}} (in Module:Navbox) applies the class "nowraplinks" to the table, preventing all the links from wrapping. Rather than adding <br> all over the place, there should probably be a way for {{Shades of color}} to somehow avoid the use of that class in the first place. Anomie⚔ 19:11, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Have a look at this sandbox change and compare the test cases and see if it's any better. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:10, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
 Done - Thanks Anomie and WOSlinker for your help! Best solution ever. I changed the {{Shades of color}}, added the "nowraplinks"; checked "Shades of" for Red, Blue, Yellow all of which are now good-no overflow. Lastly, I updated Cyan with undo of my prior "br" changes. Cheers! JoeHebda (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Visual editor garbling markup

For some reason, in this edit part of the markup was replaced by ... snowmen? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:07, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Seems VE producing snowmen is quite a regular issue per phab search. Galobtter (pingó mió) 20:36, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
IIRC VE uses the snowman as some sort of error marker. If you can give instructions for reproducing it, you should file a task about it. Anomie⚔ 20:51, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
indeed. search found 2 articles with snowman on enwiki: Becky Baeling and Jaipur Rugs (excluding couple of articles where it assumed to be intentional). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:58, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
The snowman issue happened after I copied text from one section to the other, it didn't move and was instead replaced by snowmen. Before that, both the template and image adding functions hanged at least once, forcing me to close-and-reopen the browser tab to un-hang it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:43, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
guess: this has nothing to do with VE specifically. it's Aug 1, and the code version was updated today (see Special:Version). during and shortly after update, strange non-reproducible bugs tend to pop up, usually as a result of browser running mix of sources from old and new versions. putting it a bit differently, the browser sometimes uses cached source file from yesterday's version in conjunction with other, fresh files from today's. complete refresh (usually Ctrl-refresh, but may depend on browser) will update all the sources to the new version and solve the issue. unfortunately, closing and opening the browser, or doing a simple refresh, isn't always enough. it used to be very common issue around the time of software update. i was under the impression that it was solved, but recently i saw several new cases of "Inexplicit bugs on the day of SW update". peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:02, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus, Galobtter, Anomie, and קיפודנחש, please see Wikipedia:☃. For most of its history it's been a redirect to WP:SNOW, but from 2014 until 2016 and from a few minutes ago until the present, it's been a redirect to a VE feedback page. Nyttend (talk) 20:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)


More VisualEditor problems

Well, it's been three days since the update and when I was trying to add a list of sources to use for Black Rock Desert volcanic field through VE and it kept 404'ing. It also didn't allow for any or any other edit, when I force-loaded the whole page it just lost the whole edit. What is up with this? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:15, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Jo-Jo Eumerus, even I had the same issue, hours back but after a forced-new-edit (which lost the prev. data), it started to work fine. ∯WBGconverse 14:23, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
For the past several days, I have been unable to convert bare url references using the Visual Editor. Normally, while in Visual Editor mode, I can click on a numbered bare url reference and a "convert box" appears on screen. Well, the "convert box" still pops up on screen, but there is no longer a "convert" button inside the box. Does not matter if I am using Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or Mozilla Firefox browsers; Visual Editor will no longer convert bare url's. Woodlot (talk) 17:22, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Yup, I'm seeing the same thing. For example, reference 1 of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Rabbit_of_Paris_M%C3%A9tro&oldid=909332927 -- RoySmith (talk) 22:45, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-32

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 August. It will be on all wikis from 8 August (calendar).

Problems

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • Today everyone can see IP addresses if someone edits without an account. In the future this could be more hidden. This is to protect unregistered editors so fewer can see their IP address. This would only happen after we make sure the tools for vandal fighting can still be effective. You can read more and comment.

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

13:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

SineBot on strike?

The SineBot (talk · contribs) has not made any edits since 2019 Jul 25. What has happened.? — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 17:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

The operator, User:Slakr, hasn't edited since 22 July. Maybe something crashed with the bot and Slakr hasn't noticed the problem yet? Or maybe a MediaWiki software change affected something on which the bot depended, making it unable to function? I doubt there's any way to identify the precise problem until Slakr returns to activity — since the source code has not been published, only the operator knows how the bot works, and only the operator can figure out what critical processes may have been broken. And of course, only the operator can check to see if the operator's personal computer has stopped working properly at home. Nyttend (talk) 21:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
Can't find any sinebot stuff on Toolforge; I could be looking in the wrong place, of course, but that doesn't bode well for someone else being able to take over. While I was poking around, I found a project called mh-signbot, maintained by Zppix and a couple of other people, that seems to have some promising-looking Python code. I will read it more closely and look into running it (and someone else isn't already set up to run it, of course). Enterprisey (talk!) 09:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Oh, that's the Commons signbot, operated by Zhuyifei1999. So we might be able to get some help while this outage continues. (Also, we now definitely know that the code works.) I've pinged 'em over on Commons. Enterprisey (talk!) 09:31, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
mh-signbot was a fork by them to operate on Miraheze, which didn't work out at the time due to them lacking eventstreams, no idea about its current state. There are also quite a few other forks, the one I know best is dewiki fork (de:Special:Contribs/CountCountBot), which I haven't had the time to look into closely and upstream any changes, and is worsened by the fact that I did a restructure of the code right after they forked it, but before I noticed the fork... Unfortunately, the code is doomed to deadlock at some point and needs manual restarting.
As for running it here, I would very much prefer a local bot op to operate it. There are a few site-local customizations that needs changing. The latest code of upstream Commons one is on gist. I'm happy to help if you run into technical issues. --Zhuyifei1999 (talk) 15:26, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

In the following example table:

Foo Bar
a x
b y

"Foo", a regular link, is perfectly clickable, and takes me to that article; but Bar (which is {{colored link|green|Bar}}) just sorts the table, as if I'd clicked the up-down button. List of minor planets: 541001–542000 and friends are examples of this in the wild. I'm using Firefox. Eman235/talk 20:52, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

@Eman235: wrap a div around it for a quick fix:
Foo
a x
b y
— xaosflux Talk 21:06, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Still doesn't work for me ): Eman235/talk 21:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
I got tricked in preview mode, looking for an "easy" way for you to do this, there are tricky ways. — xaosflux Talk 21:12, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
If nothing else, a tricky solution might be fine for Template:List of minor planets/header2 (it being a template and all). Eman235/talk 21:37, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Non-technically, this isn't a great idea, is there an overwhelming editorial reason that this table should have colored headers? — xaosflux Talk 22:29, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
Not sure—pinging Rfassbind, who added the colored headers early last month. Eman235/talk 23:29, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
While this precise situation probably isn't a great idea, something's still broken, since the whole point of {{colored link}} is to produce a link, and we need to figure out how to repair it. Nyttend (talk) 21:05, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
@Nyttend and Eman235: yea - someone should open a phab ticket, it isn't the template per se, but if a span is used on a table headerer with wikitable sortable, the label is turned in to the control when it isn't expected to be... — xaosflux Talk 22:14, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
More specifically, the problem is that the JS tablesorter code tries to avoid triggering when a link is clicked, but it only special-cases clicks on the <a> element itself. With {{colored link}}, it sees the <span> used for applying the coloring as the thing clicked and doesn't bother to check whether that <span> is inside of an <a>. This would also happen with things like italic or bold markup inside a link in a table header, basically anything where there's a tag inside the <a>. Anomie⚔ 12:01, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

For the list of minor planets: 541001–542000 and friends, the standard, light-grey color for wikitable headers is undesirable, because it is too similar to the existing color palette used for the table rows. Is there a WP:POLICY that forbids changing the table-header color despite good reasons? While the link and sort features are currently in conflict with each other, the middle mouse button still works. I'm currently testing a work-around for said conflict. If no simple solution can be found, the table's sortability feature will have to go. Rfassbind – talk 21:42, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

The problem with using multiple colors for meaning is that it's sometimes not as accessible for colorblind people like me, and it's meaningless to the blind. But it sounds like you're doing this just for variation, in a situation where variation has a practical benefit. That should be fine as far as accessibility is concerned, but if you use multiple colors, users will expect meaning to be associated with the different colors, and "random" use of colors will be confusing. If your exclusive purpose is distinguishing the text from something else, why not just pick one color and use it consistently? Either users won't notice, or they'll notice and not be confused. Also, the middle mouse button doesn't always work: when I do a middle-click with my mouse, it brings up something that's intended to let me choose an open window to use (browser, calculator, Notepad, etc.) and doesn't open a new browser tab with the link target, as it did on my previous computers. I'm using Windows 10 with Internet Explorer; I don't know if other browsers or other operating systems will behave the same way. However, if I'm using the touchpad on the same computer, I don't have a middle mouse button, and I have no idea if there's an analogous feature for people who edit on smartphones. Nyttend (talk) 22:04, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
The links work with Help:Sorting#Sorting buttons in a separate row like below. But it looks bad and may sound like an empty row in a screen reader. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:54, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Designation Discovery Properties Ref
Permanent Provisional Citation Date Site Discoverer(s) Category Diam.

541001 2017 XF58 — January 17, 2015 Kitt Peak Spacewatch  · 820 m MPC · JPL
541002 2017 XU58 — October 7, 2004 Kitt Peak Spacewatch  · 490 m MPC · JPL
541003 2017 XV58 — November 30, 2005 Kitt Peak Spacewatch  · 1.4 km MPC · JPL
Graham87, could you check this table and tell us how your screen reader handles it? This table has six lines: "Designation and Discovery" appear on the first line (a header), "Permanent" and "Provisional" and "Citation" and "Date" and "Site" and "Discoverer(s)" and "Category" and "Diam." appear on the second (also a header), the third is spots where one can click to re-sort, and data appear on the fourth through the sixth. Also, there's a "Ref" header that appears in a merged first and second line. Nyttend backup (talk) 16:34, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Not use a screen reader, but as a generic reader this makes me think something is missing by having the controls on their own row with no labels. — xaosflux Talk 16:37, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

New user script: Superjump

Hi everyone! Just wrote a new user script. I don't usually announce new ones here, but I think this one is pretty useful. With this script, you can add custom keyboard shortcuts that will take you to any page. You can also have sub-menus, which allow for key sequences. Documentation is at User:Enterprisey/superjump, code is at User:Enterprisey/superjump.js, and I wrote a config tool so you don't have to write JSON if you don't want to. Feedback is welcome! Enterprisey (talk!) 07:19, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Enterprisey, it's a good script. but why can't I get my to work User:CAPTAIN MEDUSA/superjump-config.json ___CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 19:24, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

HotCat with Timeless skin

HotCat does not appear to work with the timeless skin activated. Is there any way to fix this? --PuzzledvegetableIs it teatime already? 19:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Puzzledvegetable, see phab:T181344 Galobtter (pingó mió) 02:34, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Mobile version infobox country and the lede

Hi, so I noticed today in the mobile version that infobox country appears before the lede paragraph. This was not the case before. It was firstly the lede paragraph then the infobox of the country. e.g Yemen, Algeria.--SharabSalam (talk) 02:57, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Edit counter and "Top Edits" currently non-functional

I can't get the xtools.wmflabs.org "Edit count" tool to work, either on overall edits by an editor or an editor's edits per page. It just keeps loading and then times out, with the message "Sorry, the requested information took too long to process (timeout 600 seconds). In order to save resources, the query was automatically killed." Help! Softlavender (talk) 02:31, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

@Softlavender: Everything is in working order on my end. Could you give examples? I'm assuming you were looking up a user with a very high edit count, or a page with a very high revision count. In these cases it is expected to go slow and unfortunately sometimes timeout. That said, the database servers have been performing very well as of late, so you shouldn't see this error very often.
Remember you can make the Edit Counter go faster by asking for only the data you want, using the checkboxes at https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec. — MusikAnimal talk 02:42, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Update: It's the "Top Edits" that's timing out, although a user's overall edits is loading very very very slow as well. For an example of the Top Edits timing out, try to search my edits to WP:ANI: [37]. -- Softlavender (talk) 02:54, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
    @Softlavender: Thanks. AN/I is one of those pages that is less likely to be successful :( There are over a million edits to scan. I can try to make it only search the past N revisions or something, so that you can at least get some data.
    I'm not sure about the Edit Counter being slow; it took about 25 seconds for your account. This is reasonably fast considering your 82,000+ edit count. — MusikAnimal talk 03:13, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
    I have never had the Edit Counter to time out when searching prolific users' edits to ANI, and I have done that search often with many prolific ANI posters (i.e., posting many hundreds of times to ANI). Can someone please fix it? Thanks. Softlavender (talk) 03:27, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
    It took nearly 20 minutes, but I did get results using Sigma's tool, so feel free to use that as an alternative, since it doesn't seem to have a time limit. You have made a lot of edits to AN/I, so perhaps this combined with the long history of AN/I is what's making it so slow. There are many other factors; it's hard to say why your account times out and not others.
    I'm not certain I can come up with a quick fix for XTools. We simply can't allow queries to run for that long. I shall try, though! — MusikAnimal talk 04:34, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm guessing that this new format and version [38], which looks nothing like the old format and version, is the problem, but no one wants to admit it doesn't work. Could we therefore revert to the previous, working version? Softlavender (talk) 03:46, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
    Hmm the last change to Top Edits was on May 29, and that was supposed to make it go faster, not slower. I just replied to you above; it seems there's something especially slow about your account + AN/I, and it's not unique to XTools. Use Sigma's tool for now since it doesn't have a time limit. I've changed MediaWiki:Histlegend to link to this tool, too (it was changed to XTools because at the time Sigma's tools were down). — MusikAnimal talk 04:38, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
    Whatever the case, Top Edits is clearly not working, so it needs to either be fixed or reverted to a version that worked, or it needs to be replaced with Sigma's tool on all WP:PAGEHISTORY pages. Softlavender (talk) 04:52, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
    I don't think there were any code changes that caused this. Database queries can be very complex with many factors that could cause them to be slow. It may have been not-slow before, but AN/I has since grown, or perhaps the problem is that a lot of people are using the database servers right now. It's not easy to debug, but queries timing out for a pages like AN/I is really of no surprise. Sigma's tool is struggling too in this case, but as I stated above, MediaWiki:Histlegend has been updated to link to it. — MusikAnimal talk 05:24, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

French editor asking why Dendera zodiac isn't supported by the machine translation software

See [39] and Talk:Dendera zodiac#no traduction possible !? (sorry for my english). --Doug Weller talk 12:25, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Gender questions

OK, what's with the 'Gender' questionaire, popping up? GoodDay (talk) 18:18, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 62#Notification of upcoming editor survey has some info. Eman235/talk 18:26, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Add option to allow messagebox of full width

currently it is set to 80%(?) of the page width, though it could be helpful in many cases if it were allowed to be set to be 100% the page width.viz ✦ 05:48, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Which message box? The parameter |style = width:100%; margin:0; should do it when the base templates are called directly. Other templates may not pass on style. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:09, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
The responsive content gadget does this for all amboxes when the page is narrower than 800px. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:39, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Bots Newsletter, August 2019

Greetings!

Here is the 7th issue of the Bots Newsletter, a lot happened since last year's newsletter! You can subscribe/unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding/removing your name from this list.

Highlights for this newsletter include:

ARBCOM
  • Nothing of note happened. Just like we like it.
BAG

BAG members are expected to be active on Wikipedia to have their finger on the pulse of the community. After two years without any bot-related activity (such as posting on bot-related pages, posting on a bot's talk page, or operating a bot), BAG members will be retired from BAG following a one-week notice. Retired members can re-apply for BAG membership as normal if they wish to rejoin the BAG.

We thank former members for their service and wish Madman a happy retirement. We note that Madman and BU Rob13 were not inactive and could resume their BAG positions if they so wished, should their retirements happens to be temporary.

BOTDICT

Two new entries feature in the bots dictionary

BOTPOL
  • Activity requirements: BAG members now have an activity requirement. The requirements are very light, one only needs to be involved in a bot-related area at some point within the last two years. For purpose of meeting these requirements, discussing a bot-related matter anywhere on Wikipedia counts, as does operating a bot (RFC).
  • Copyvio flag: Bot accounts may be additionally marked by a bureaucrat upon BAG request as being in the "copyviobot" user group on Wikipedia. This flag allows using the API to add metadata to edits for use in the New pages feed (discussion). There is currently 1 bot using this functionality.
  • Mass creation: The restriction on mass-creation (semi-automated or automated) was extended from articles, to all content-pages. There are subtleties, but content here broadly means whatever a reader could land on when browsing the mainspace in normal circumstances (e.g. Mainspace, Books, most Categories, Portals, ...). There is also a warning that WP:MEATBOT still applies in other areas (e.g. Redirects, Wikipedia namespace, Help, maintenance categories, ...) not explicitely covered by WP:MASSCREATION.
BOTREQs and BRFAs

As of writing, we have...

  • 20 active BOTREQs, please help if you can!
  • 14 open BRFAs and 1 BRFA in need of BAG attention (see live status).
  • In 2018, 96 bot task were approved. An AWB search shows approximately 29 were withdrawn/expired, and 6 were denied.
  • Since the start of 2019, 97 bot task were approved. Logs show 15 were withdrawn/expired, and 15 were denied.
  • 10 inactive bots have been deflagged (see discussion). 5 other bots have been deflagged per operator requests or similar (see discussion).
New things
Other discussions

These are some of the discussions that happened / are still happening since the last Bots Newsletter. Many are stale, but some are still active.

See also the latest discussions at the bot noticeboard.

Thank you! edited by: Headbomb 17:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

(You can subscribe or unsubscribe from future newsletters by adding or removing your name from this list.)

Searching for deleted edits

Hi,

I'm looking for the external tool which allows (even to non-admins) to display the list of a user's "deleted edits" (actually, I think it was the list of deleted pages they created or edited). IIRC it looked like [40] (which provides a "deleted edit" links that redirects to Special:DeletedContributions, which can be used only by admins).

Thanks. Apokrif (talk) 00:56, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

@Apokrif: Perhaps you're referring to the Pages Created tool? E.g. see your deleted mainspace pages — MusikAnimal talk 02:12, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello all,

Currently and since Wikipedia articles and Wikidata items have been connected, the link “Wikidata item” appears on the menu column, in the section “Tools”.

However, many editors from various projects told us that it would make more sense to have the link in the “In other projects” section, since Wikidata is one of the Wikimedia projects and the Wikidata item link doesn’t really belong to the list of special pages.

This is why we are going to change the position of the link, on August 22nd for all Wikipedias and August 21st for all the other projects. After this date, you will find the “Wikidata item” link in the “In other projects” section.

In some cases, for example on help and meta pages, the section may contain two links to Wikidata, for example on Help:Contents where there will be the “Wikidata” link (linking to d:Help:Contents) and the “Wikidata item” link (linking to d:Q914807).

If you want to know more about the previous discussions or mention a bug or an issue, please add a comment to the related Phabricator task. If you want to reply to me onwiki, please ping me so I don’t miss your message.

Thanks for your understanding, Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 09:48, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

What happened to stub search?

In an archived Teahouse question, this was asked. I didn't tell the person to come here because of problematic editing. But it might be useful to answer the question if someone is wondering.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:02, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

It is probably User:Danski454/stubsearch.--Snaevar (talk) 17:09, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Dark mode feature

Hello everyone, I'm from ckbwiki. Why Wikipedia (the mostest vistors and editors site) hasn't Dark mode feature yet?! Please try to add that feature. Some of editors edit Wikipedia at night. Our eyes are tired from white screen at night and changed to red soon. Please try to add it! Thanks! ⇒ AramTalk 18:28, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

There's ongoing work on that: phab:project/profile/4006. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:15, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
BrandonXLF's Inverter script is a useful tool in the interim. Yunshui 雲水 19:18, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Ammarpad, That is good news! I'm waiting... and Yunshui, thank you for putting that tool! ⇒ AramTalk 21:07, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Tool to rollback an edit that sinebot signed?

Basically the header. Very very often I revert vandalism or otherwise unconstructive edits to talk pages, but I can't use the rollback or undo buttons because sinebot already signed it, so now I have to revert two edits by two different users. Is there any tool or javascript or something that would let me revert such a pair of edits as easily as using rollback? Someguy1221 (talk) 07:48, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

@Someguy1221: Twinkle's rollback knows about sinebot. If you ask it to rollback the sinebot edit, it will ask you whether you want to rollback the previous edit as well. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:57, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Add printworthy {{R slang}} rcat template

{{R slang}} will tag redirects from slangs. Monniasza talk 09:00, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

We have {{R from alternative name}}. I'm not sure slang is well-defined enough when there are many varieties of English. Anyway, this is not a technical issue. It could be suggested at Wikipedia talk:Template messages/Redirect pages or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:25, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
@Monniasza: I redirected it to {{r from synonym}}. You can start tagging pages with it, and if we ever want to distinguish slang from other kinds of synonyms, the pages won't have to be resorted. Wug·a·po·des​ 08:19, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

User talk:GregU/dashes.js

I just noticed that User:GregU/dashes.js (User talk:GregU/dashes.js) is changing the blue linked time zone UTC−08:00 (see Lumby, British Columbia) to the red linked UTC– 08:00 (see here). It seems that GregU hasen't edited since 2012. It needs to get fixed. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 11:32, 9 August 2019 (UTC) Oh, GregU CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 11:34, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Someone should fork that or convert it to a gadget, relying on other people's personal scripts leads to exactly this situation when they stop being maintained. That being said, if someone has a very minor fix to suggest, drop an edit request at User talk:GregU/dashes.js and an interface admin will consider it. — xaosflux Talk 11:40, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
I noticed some problematical edits (or, rather, inaccurate edit summaries) by this script earlier, but the Lumby, British Columbia edit is equivalent to vandalism. If the diff was not forged, then the script should to be disabled as soon as possible. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:04, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
It's been doing it for a while. I am tempted to just delete it. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:08, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
@CambridgeBayWeather: yes, castrate this being, please. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:14, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Or wait, was it really User:GregU/dashes.js at fault? The edit summary has two script links, the second is one WP:MOSNUMscript. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:08, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
The second of my links to the 2015 edit only has the one script. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 12:32, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Every rcat template should add Category:Redirects with target different from correct name

Hi, rcats don't provide afromentioned maitenance category. Please make rcats use category if target is different than correct form. Monniasza talk 07:01, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

That category doesn't exist. Nor does the name actually match the use you propose for it (not all redirects are "target different from correct name"). Also, what use would there be to a category containing every redirect? You could as well use Special:ListRedirects. Anomie⚔ 14:25, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi, can somene link https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_penguara and A Girl in Exile, I think there's a page in German also... Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 23:04, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done – Thjarkur (talk) 23:11, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, also https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lulet_e_ftohta_t%C3%AB_marsit needs linking to Spring Flowers, Spring Frost and Swedish article, Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 04:59, 9 August 2019 (UTC) above now done, but https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosja_H needs linking to The File on H. Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 00:00, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@GrahamHardy: you can do these yourself, on the left side panel there is a section called "languages", click the little pencil icon in there and you can add interwiki links. — xaosflux Talk 00:36, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Glitch on Lorrie Morgan

For some reason, the picture of Keith Whitley is not displaying under the "personal life"section of Lorrie Morgan. Purging the cache hasn't helped. Any idea what's causing this? All other pictures are showing up, just not that one. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:45, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

 Works for me @TenPoundHammer: are you still having this issue? — xaosflux Talk 00:37, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Yes, and a purge isn't doing anything. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 00:44, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
@TenPoundHammer: how about now? — xaosflux Talk 01:29, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
And if not, can you try looking with a different browser - in case you somehow are applying something like an ad-block to it? — xaosflux Talk 01:30, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
It seems to be working now. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 02:00, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Unified Login broken (at least for Commons)?

Quick check: Is unified login broken - at least for Commons - for anyone else? I'm logged in here but not logged into Commons; I didn't even know that this was possible anymore. ElKevbo (talk) 02:46, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

 Works for me @ElKevbo: try logging out, deleting all your wmf cookies, and logging in again. — xaosflux Talk 04:49, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

request assistance

I'm trying to upload image to WikiCommons and getting message that I am not a confirmed user. I never got this message before. How can I get confirmed? Adienes (talk) 15:54, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

@Adienes: try to follow this link directly: commons:Special:UploadWizard. — xaosflux Talk 17:41, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
You will get confirmed automatically when 4 days have passed (according to an config file). Just wait.--Snaevar (talk) 19:01, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
@Snaevar: commons doesn't require autoconfirmation to upload files, and here on enwiki its 4 days and 10 edits. — xaosflux Talk 19:03, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
User:Xaosflux: For enwiki, yes, there is an 10 edit limit. For commons, see line 5233 in InitialiseSettings.php, which says no.

As for upload rights, I am not really here to argue. The user which started this discussion will find the correct answer anyway.--Snaevar (talk) 20:23, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

You can check that at commons:Special:ListGroupRights, look for (upload). — xaosflux Talk 04:51, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist no longer highlighted to show possible vandalism

What's changed?Doug Weller talk 12:33, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Working normally for me? Roxy, the dog. wooF 16:05, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
The "refresh changes" indicator used with advanced watchlist is not displaying for me. I suspect WP:THURSDAY happened and now Javascript is not loading on the page, or something. --Izno (talk) 17:18, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
That said, colors are still loading for me, as with Roxy. --Izno (talk) 17:21, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
Oh, I see what happened. The refresh changes indicator got wrapped up into the Active Filters 'show/hide' box. I might have to request that one be reverted (did so--see phab:T230220)... So, it looks like I'm all good. --Izno (talk) 17:22, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: Thanks. I had to go to mediawiki to figure it all out but it's fixed now. Doug Weller talk 09:45, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Page jump in edit box

EN page jump 1
EN page jump 2

Hi, Every time I paste an image in between walls of text the page jumps down or if I paste text and press enter the page will then jump down,

So for instance If I want to paste an image > the page will jump down > I have to scroll back up to the image > and then add thumb+left etc

It's been happening for the past month or 2 but it never used to, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 12:26, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

What skin/browser/operating system do you use? I have seen a similar problem on mobile Firefox for Android, but not on desktop Firefox or Chrome. --Izno (talk) 14:20, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi Izno, I'm on Windows 7 and am using Vector, Ah okay, I've used Mobile to edit but never pasted with it, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 16:44, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Possible STATS problem?

Seems that {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|total|N}} gives different results for the "Total Number of Articles" in different, but related, Wikipedias? - Example is the "Total Number of Articles" [at 14:04, August 10, 2019 (UTC)] is "50,810,571" (in the English Wikipedia => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drbogdan/STATS) and "48,645,009" (in the Simple English Wikipedia => https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drbogdan/STATS) - seems the two should match up, but don't for some reason? - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 14:28, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@Drbogdan: the "English Wikipedia" is just as different from the "Simple English Wikipedia" as it is from the "French Wikipedia" - their statistics are project-specific. — xaosflux Talk 14:34, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
The parameter |total is supposed to give the sum for all languages but the number is not updated automatically. {{NUMBEROF}} is not a magic word but a template and the count is taken from a template subpage which must be updated at the local wiki. Our Template:NUMBEROF/data is updated frequently by a bot. simple:Template:NUMBEROF/data has not been updated since it was manually copied from us in September 2018. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Ah ha, well that's a messy to maintain template, fine for one project but would never scale to full-mesh - perhaps pulling something from wikidata would be better. — xaosflux Talk 15:25, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
User:Acebot is updating our data and some of the other languages but not all, and less frequently. I don't know whether it's supposed to update simple or can be requested. Pinging the operator Ace111. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:07, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
I was never asked before to update the NUMBEROF template in simple Wikipedia. Now I ran the bot once to update it, and can run it regularly, e.g. daily, in the future. Are there any objections? — Ace111 (talk) 17:02, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I don't work at simple but simple:Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:NUMBEROF/data shows mainspace uses so I assume they will appreciate it. Template:NUMBEROF/data (Q10452819) shows a version at many wikis but I don't know where the bot is wanted (apart from Estonian). Some are already updated by the bot, some have no mainspace uses, and some may have hard bot policies. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:21, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ace111: and others - FWIW - Thank you *very much* for your comments - and efforts/updates and all - they're all *greatly* appreciated - I have no objection whatsoever re regular daily updates of the Simple English Wikipedia (or related) in the future - Thanks again - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:27, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

SVG preview rendering Greek letter incorrectly

I was about to remove the ε in parentheses in the caption of the axial tilt illustration at Arctic Circle (direct MediaViewer link) before I opened the full SVG image directly. It appears that "ε" in text on the illustration is lost completely and "90 - ε" renders as "90?". Is this happening for anyone else? Daß Wölf 07:11, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

@Daß Wölf: all ways of accessing the image show the ε correctly for me. The difference is likely to be caused by how the glyph is specified in the SVG; if it's by giving font details, you may not have the font on your system (I'm using MacOS). Depending on how the SVG file is created, there are different ways of specifying how characters should be saved. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:45, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Oddly enough, I just rechecked the picture and it renders fine for me too now. I wish I had screenshotted the error. I suppose this was a temporary bug. Daß Wölf 07:48, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
@Daß Wölf: is the problem gone after commons:File:Axial_tilt_vs_tropical_and_polar_circles.svg #filehistory? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:40, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, it seems so, but it was actually gone before that revision. I refreshed the page when I got Peter coxhead's ping at ~7:45 and it rendered correctly all on its own. Daß Wölf 00:02, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Live updates button and active filters navigation

I used to be able to hide the active filters navigation since I have no need for it. The problem now is that it's also hiding the live updates button when I click "hide." Amaury • 14:25, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I've been experiencing the same problem in my watchlist since roughly 8 August. I'm using the Vector skin in Firefox 68.0.1 on a Windows 10 (1903) desktop. I've tried running the watchlist in safemode, but it makes no difference. —Bruce1eetalk 15:10, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
I mentioned this in the thread just above since I wasn't sure if the problem above and mine were related. Go subscribe to the task on Phabricator if desired. --Izno (talk) 16:25, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, that's it. Thanks. Sorry, I should have seen that the above discussion was about the same problem. —Bruce1eetalk 17:07, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

My userpage is currently linked to Wikipédia:Userbox/Reunificação da Irlandas on the Portuguese Wikipedia although that is not a userpage and I did not link it myself. I cannot find the link to edit interlanguage links on my userpage so I was wondering if anyone here knows how to remove the link or if they could direct me to the right process? I have not created a userpage in any other language as I do not have the expertise to do so without a professional translator. My only other userpages across Wikimedia are on Commons and Wiktionary and they are both in English. I have tried asking User:Cuchullain, who is an admin, but they cannot work it out and they advised me to try leaving a note here. Tk420 (talk) 19:25, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Fixed, was outside of the <noinclude> in {{User Northern Ireland (self determination)}} – Thjarkur (talk) 19:30, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Why do my searches come up empty?



If I search for say 'Airport' in the above, I'm taking to an empty result page. I'd expect it to find Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports/Article alerts, giving it's in Category:All Wikipedia article alert reports. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:30, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

For category search to work correctly, the category has to actually be in the source text. Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports/Article alerts is only in Category:All Wikipedia article alert reports via a template transclusion. So for the search extension, the page does not have that category since it's not in its wikitext. – Ammarpad (talk) 14:00, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
That is... rather silly. I'll find another way then. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:36, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Actually now it shows up. Probably a caching issue then. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:37, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
True. I see that. I believe it must have been enhanced at sometime, it previously didn't work with transclusion. – Ammarpad (talk) 08:27, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-33

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

Recent changes

  • Editors using the mobile website on Wikipedia can opt-in to new advanced features via your settings page. This will give access to more interface links, special pages, and tools. Feedback on the discussion page is appreciated. [41]
  • Due to the absence of volunteer maintenance of Cologne Blue skin, the link to activate it will be hidden. The skin will still work, but editors using it are encouraged to switch to another skin. [42]

Changes later this week

  • Due to Wikimania, there is no deployment this week. [43]

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 13 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The "Wikidata item" link will be moved from "Tools" to "In other projects" section on all Wikimedia projects, starting on August 21. Full announcement, Phabricator task.

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

18:19, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Adjusting edit window size

When editing in wikitext mode, is there a way to set the height of the edit window? Default seems to be 26 lines, and I almost always want about double that, especially when editing long articles or tables. I suppose there is a JS or CSS variable that can be adjusted somewhere? Also, this setting should be added to Special:Preferences, under the Editing tab, Editor section, to help non-technical users. — JFG talk 07:57, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

This will double the viewport:
.mw-editform #wpTextbox1 { max-height: none; }
#wpTextbox1 { height: 200em; } – Ammarpad (talk) 08:25, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
More like quadrupled it… Thanks for the tip! Any idea where to suggest an easy setting for non-techies? — JFG talk 09:48, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
AFAIR, a little while back you could change this in your Preferences. I don't know why it was removed. —Bruce1eetalk 10:17, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
@JFG:, that's true, I forgot that the size I doubled was for the default 'maximum height' of the viewport. Also note that the text area is already resizable on the fly by clicking and dragging the two diagonal lines at the bottom right corner. Actually that way is more flexible than using fixed size from your personal CSS. On your second question, that'd be making a gadget to allow one-click from Preferences page, but this is not something a lot of people are looking for, so it's not good candidate for that. Also as Bruce1ee said, it used to be somewhere on that page but I believe it must have been removed during the effort to get rid of seldom-used preferences. – Ammarpad (talk) 11:59, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
See phab:T26430 and phab:T155153 for the removal. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:20, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Right: I was always losing time to drag that edit window bigger before I could work. Thanks for the pointers to relevant phab tickets. — JFG talk 12:32, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
This has been covered several times here at VPT, see for example Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 153#Edit box size, Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 169#Hard to scroll down in lower right corner of edit window, and it's also buried in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 171#Separate buttons for single and double bracket links in the editing toolbar (my reply of 23:48, 15 November 2018). There are other related threads in the archives. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:51, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Mmmhh… If that's a perennial question here at VPT, perhaps the idea of re-instating a visible user setting might be answering some latent demand. First phab ticket was about columns, and that's probably not necessary given adaptive width, but in the second ticket the setting for rows was apparently discarded in one lump with the columns. Shall ww re-instate the rows setting? — JFG talk 21:30, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Many or most of the blocks I perform are for spam-only accounts, especially those whose only edits are placing spam on their userpage. Just in case someone wants to apologise and become productive, I leave the talk page open when I do a {{uw-spamblock}}, unless the talk page itself has been used for spamming. On one hand, I don't want to shut down access without evidence of abuse, but on the other hand, it's possible that the talk page would be used abusively. My interest, therefore, is finding an automated way (i.e. without human edits or bot edits) to detect a post-block addition of an external link, the results of which could be evaluated as spam or not-spam by a human. I'm envisioning the following criteria:

  • User has been indefinitely blocked for spamming — detect because user is indefinitely blocked, and either rationale or talk page has {{uw-spamblock}} or some other "you have been blocked for spamming" template
  • After block is performed, user edits talk page and adds an external link
  • If user has added {{unblock}}, the external link is not inside the unblock template

Obviously this kind of thing happens sometimes, but I have no clue how often; in case it's a rare event, I don't want to request an edit filter and tie up system resources. Is there any other way to detect this (either conclusively or "this is likely"), perhaps a database report of users that are indefinitely blocked and that have external links on their talk pages? Nyttend (talk) 04:48, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Here's a Quarry query that might serve as a database report: quarry:query/38333. Anomie⚔ 12:59, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi, Anomie, and thank you. One question — can you embed links in the report, and if you can, would you link the talk pages in question? It would be a lot faster to look at these pages if I could just click a link. Nyttend (talk) 02:12, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
There does not appear to be a way to directly embed links in the quarry output. Anomie⚔ 11:57, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Why new articles if not reviewed don't appear in Google search at all (as if non-indexed) and appear in Wiki search only when full name written? I guess there are some users who have reviewer user rights but it seems they miss to review some articles. I created several articles with my extended confirmed account and they stayed on Wikipedia but don't appear in searches for months. Do I need to request somewhere special for it* to be done or ask some user who already did it* once only for one of 'my' articles (*review for each article)? Thanks. --5.43.96.116 (talk) 05:40, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Controlling_search_engine_indexing#Indexing_of_articles_("mainspace"). — xaosflux Talk 11:08, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you. --5.43.96.116 (talk) 13:26, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Conflict between Template:Shortcut, lists and Microsoft

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Template talk:Shortcut#When in a list item, Edge and IE have a sad day. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:39, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Thumbnail image doesn't show in List of tallest structures in Tokyo

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T188831

The thumbnail of No. 28 (Shin-Marunouchi Building) in list 1 doesn't show up here. it has been like this for days. I tried to purge the page, didn't help.

Any clue? Thanks.--fireattack (talk) 22:49, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

It works for me. Try to bypass your own cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:13, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
I think the reason is that particular thumbnail returns the header says "content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" instead of common "image/jpeg".
Can you try to open http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Shin-marunouchi.Building-2007-01.jpg/100px-Shin-marunouchi.Building-2007-01.jpg directly and see what happens? Here, it will try to download itself instead of just display. I can see this weird behavior in both Firefox and Chrome and it doesn't happen to other images.
But in Firefox, it can still display the image this way in <img> tag (but not in Chrome). --fireattack (talk) 10:17, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Not just this list, some other thumbnail images don't load well at List of Cheers characters, List of Friends characters, and List of The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon characters. Check other list pages. George Ho (talk) 00:13, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Update: The root cause is Phab:T188831. And about why it starts to cause more apparent issue, see https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=990853 .--fireattack (talk) 20:42, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Saw the issue at List of highest-grossing films as well with the first image. Hopefully it will be resolved before long. Master of Time (talk) 05:43, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

How to prevent VisualEditor from automatically loading when clicking red links?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T211379
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T226267

Title says it all. VE often loads automatically when I open a red link which is annoying because most of the time, I do so to see the deleted edits. I can't seem to find a preference for it though. Regards SoWhy 07:31, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

This is the default behaviour for clicking all redlinks in both VE and Source editor (except Userpage redlink on mobile). There's a phab:T211379 asking to change this and there are comments that this is by design. – Ammarpad (talk) 08:21, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
@Ammarpad: Thanks for the phab-link! I dug up a snippet at T195914 that prevents it (thanks to Classicwiki). Regards SoWhy 09:13, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
@SoWhy: have you tried setting "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing? I have that set and never get the visual editor unless I specifically switch to it. — xaosflux Talk 11:39, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
No, because I actually use it quite extensively and that setting disables the links to the VE and the visual edit tabs that I use. But with the user script Classicwiki provided at phab, the problem is solved. Regards SoWhy 11:58, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Tools for history

Resolved

— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:55, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I didn't get a response here about why Help:Page history didn't have directions for entering a specific date such as November 8, 2019. I thought there was such a feature..— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:49, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Once you click on the input field a placeholder text YYYY-MM-DD and calendar widget will appear (assuming Javascript is on). That's enough visual cue to tell you what you should do next. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:01, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Converting from one citation template to another (visual editor)?

Is there an easy way to convert one citation template to the correct type, in VE? People commonly just use the default {{Cite}} instead of, for example, {{Cite news}}. I haven't found a good way to fix that up other than to create a whole new citation and delete the old one. Which is especially annoying when it's used more than once, as in this example. It seems like it would be straight-forward to have a tool which took the existing citation and did a first pass at converting it into a different subtype, copying over whatever fields exist in both. Does such a tool exist? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:57, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure this is phab:T97936, and a harder problem over here phab:T87271. --Izno (talk) 03:34, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, T87271 is exactly what I'm talking about. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:48, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Account creations appear to be getting throttled to 2/day for editors

Hello all, if you are running in to this, it appears to be a temporary issue. Discussion and linked phab tickets are available at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_permissions#T230304_and_account_creation_being_blocked if you want to follow for more information as it becomes available. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 04:21, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

RefToolbar

Hi - I find the RefToolbar very useful, but I would like to request an additional feature. In the Web Citation popover, can we please have a checkbox (or a select menu) to specify deadurl=yes/no? I can fill in Archive URL and Archive Date in the form, but after I have inserted the reference into the article, I have to go in and type the "deadurl" bit manually, which is a bit fiddly. Does anyone know how to get someone to add this? Thanks. Cnbrb (talk) 10:07, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Unexpectedly different behavior depending on location of userscript's source code

After extensive testing, I have documented a weird behavior that in rare circumstances will disable Template:Show button. There appears to be three conditions required for this to happen, and one of these conditions is just having the snippet of code in my common.cs file, as opposed to being in one of my subpages and imported to my common.js. Intuitively, I would expect identical behavior, but this is not the case. Details, and the discussion, can be found at the javascript project talk page in thread Importscript vs just putting code in common.js NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:59, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Javascript is loaded and executed in different order in this two cases. What is imported with importScript is executed probably in the end. Ruslik_Zero 09:09, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
thanks for the debugging lead. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 10:42, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
@NewsAndEventsGuy: This might not be the answer you were looking for but we had a thread a few months back where an editor was asking about how to make scripts load in order and the general sentiment was that you can't guarantee behaviour in that manner. So, the only way would be to add manual sleeps and hope (!) that did the trick. Don't know why it could exactly apply here but I just thought I'd mention. --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:24, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
I like thinkers who cast wide nets when these mysteries pop up, thanks. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:10, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Template:OS coord

As some of you may be aware, {{OS coord}} (and related templates) has been out to lunch since about April. It's maintained by RHaworth (talk · contribs), who has posted an appeal at Template talk:OS coord#Getting back up 2019. All suggestions welcome there. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:56, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Flag of Greece

Have you noticed that Greece's flag is not appearing? See for example 2019–20 UEFA Champions League. Also see Template:Country data Greece. 213.133.84.227 (talk) 18:29, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

 Works for me is it only in a certain browser you see this problem? — xaosflux Talk 18:39, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Only with Google chrome I have the problem. I have just checked it with Firefox and is ok. 213.133.84.227 (talk) 18:45, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

My Chrome's fine; try clearing cache? --Golbez (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
If it's bad cache some on this page will work and others not. -- GreenC 19:00, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Enable chess PGN viewer for chess articles

Editors are generally in support of an interactive PGN viewer. Discussion on the specific implementation can be found at Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard#Chess viewer Wug·a·po·des​ 22:44, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

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

Should the interactive portable game notation viewer in use on the Hebrew, Russian, and Ukrainian Wikipedias be enabled on the English Wikipedia? 05:28, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Background

Chess games can be described in a standard machine-readable format, portable game notation, so that these games can be displayed on computers. On a number of websites the user interface allows for PGN to be rendered as an interactive board so that readers can browse through games. Around 2013, User:קיפודנחש developed a JavaScript application that brings this functionality to Wikipedia articles about chess which has been in use on the Hebrew Wikipedia. You can see examples of this at the Hebrew Wikipedia articles for The Immortal Game (en) and The Evergreen Game (en). A number of discussions have occured at VPT on interactive chessboards (you can find them by searching "PGN viewer" in the archives) with the most recent being Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 132#Interactive chess boards in 2016. That discussion was closed by User:Cunard as having "a clear consensus to support the general proposal of enabling interactive chess boards on the English Wikipedia." While people were generally in favor of the functionality, the technical implementation was never fully discussed.

Implementation
The code at he:Mediawiki:Gadget-pgnviewer.js and he:Mediawiki:Gadget-pgnviewer.css will be copied to MediaWiki:Gadget-pgnviewer.js and MediaWiki:Gadget-pgnviewer.css. A template (perhaps {{PGN viewer}} or {{Chess game}}) will be created that takes the PGN and other parameters and outputs a <div> with the class '.pgn-source-wrapper'. MediaWiki:common.js will be modified to add the following code which only loads the PGN viewer gadget when viewing a page that has the template: 
$( function() {
    if ( $('.pgn-source-wrapper').length > 0) {
        mw.loader.load( 'ext.gadget.pgnviewer' ); //"manually" load the hidden gadget
    }
} );
(For more details and alternative implementation possibilities, see Kipod's description in #"on demand" loading of scripts and gadgets)

PGN viewer discussion

So this is in use now in hewiki, ruwiki, and ukwiki (the latter has the script and template, but it's used only in few articles). All 3 are using "on demand" loading. The script itsslf weighs 27k (20 minimized), and loading it unconditionally is undesired, as only small fraction of sll articles are chess related. The mechanism on hewiki is to create a "hidden", non-default gadget, and have common.js look for a "marker" class in page, triggering loading the gadget. (i will try to add some information WRT "on-demand", or "template-controlled" loading of scripts on ruwiki and hewiki later). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 13:29, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

@Wugapodes: i read this thread on mobile, and missed an important detail: the script on hewiki _is not_ w:he:מדיה_ויקי:Common.js/pgn.js. this one is an outdated version that should not be used. the script is in he:Mediawiki:Gadget-pgnviewer.js and its CSS, he:Mediawiki:Gadget-pgnviewer.css. this is important: User:Krinkels made some instructive comments in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Interactive chess boards, and the correct version addresses many (most?) of the points he raised. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 14:50, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

  • yes. Please implement it. I want to study it so that I can convert it into a shogi version (although i'll probably need help for getting the dropped pieces part). – ishwar  (speak) 17:33, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
    @Ish ishwar: you really don't need it "implemented" on enwiki in order to study it. the script is available in the link above - please read the "license" notice at the top: it is more permissive than cc-by-sa. basically, it says "you can do whatever you want with this". however, the main piece there is the "pgn analyzer". i am not aware of PGN standard for shogi. i saw "PSN" mentioned, but could not find good reference explaining it. if it's similar enough to PGN, it might not be that difficult. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:25, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
    i see. Thank you. There is a PSN format. However, no one really uses it. (It was created by Europoean folks after all.) Probably the best is the CSA format. It looks like this:
Shogi notation example
P1-KY-KE-GI-KI-OU-KI-GI-KE-KY
P2 * -HI *  *  *  *  * -KA * 
P3-FU-FU-FU-FU-FU-FU-FU-FU-FU
P4 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 
P5 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 
P6 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * 
P7+FU+FU+FU+FU+FU+FU+FU+FU+FU
P8 * +KA *  *  *  *  * +HI * 
P9+KY+KE+GI+KI+OU+KI+GI+KE+KY
P+
P-
+
+7776FU
-3334FU
+2726FU
-8384FU
+2625FU
-8485FU
+6978KI
-4132KI

"on demand" loading of scripts and gadgets

I'd like to describe the "on demand loading" mechanism used on ruwiki, hewiki, and others (e.g., runews, ukwiki and more).

So, most of our site-specific code has to do with utilities meant mainly for editors, but there are some scripts which affect the content, for reading. An example on enwiki is the part in mediawiki:common.js that deals with collapsing, and the part that executes special code when reading the main page.

In many cases, this special code is only relevant on minority of the content pages: for instance, most pages on enwiki do not need the special code that deals with "collapse" css classes. In this case, the code itself is short, so loading it whether it's needed or not makes little difference. However, some other projects want to load longer scripts affecting the content for reading. The pgn viewer discussed above is one such example. The wikipedians on ruwiki created a simple mechanism to support this, and i'd like to describe it here.

  • In this context, "on demand" means "template-controlled": so a template can "instruct" the system to load a script which is not normally loaded, when the template contains some element that needs this extra juice.
  • The system can't load "any arbitrary script". It can trigger loading one of well-defined set of scripts, and this set is vetted with the same level of caution used for vetting whatever goes into common.js
  • The system uses a small code snippet in common.js, and a special template for triggering the "on-demand" switch. The code on ruwiki is the 11 lines, beginning at line #325 in ru:Mediawiki:Common.js, and the template is in ru:Template:Выполнить скрипт. i will call it {{Load script}}.
  • The machinery is super simple: the "Load script" template creates a hidden element, with a specific class ("ExecuteJS"), and a data attribute that contains the name of the requested script. The common.js code scans the page for elements with this class, and if found, it extracts the script name from the data attribute, and then loads Mediawiki:Script/<scriptname>.js. The sysops make sure only sanctioned scripts will get to be in "Mediawiki/Script/", with the same level of scrutiny they use for Common.js
  • A template that desire to load a script which, e.g., adds some special behavior to "imagemap", will include something like {{ Load script | imagemap-enhancer }}. When a page transcludes this template, the script Mediawiki:Script/imagemap-enhancer.js will be loaded. This way, ruwiki can "enhance" imagemaps, without adding bloat to any page that _does not_ transclude this template (i.e., all but a handful of pages).
  • In hewiki, we tweaked this system a little bit (line #261-275 in he:Mediawiki:Common.js) , to allow loading of gadgets, as well as scripts (the gadget name must begin with "ondemand", so this can't be used to sneakily load any "normal" gadget that the reader did not enable - only one of very few sanctioned "ondemand" gadgets)

I hope this description is good enough for User:Izno to overcome their opposition. I wanted to present this mechanism to the technical community on enwiki, but it's not absolutely essential: it's possible to avoid the bloat by taking the following steps:

one-off alternative to generic "on-demand" loading
  • Create a "hidden" gadget with the script (hidden gadgets can't be selected by users, and unless you mark them "default", they never load)
  • Have a small snippet in common.js that looks approximately like so: 
    $( function() {
    if ( $('.pgn-source-wrapper').length > 0) {
        mw.loader.load( 'ext.gadget.pgnviewer' ); //"manually" load the hidden gadget
    }
} );

This will achieve the same objective: The script will load if and only if it should load, so if enwiki will have, say, 578 articles which want to show interactive chess game, the script will load for readers only when they view one of those pages, and the other 4M+ articles will not have to pay the bloat. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:41, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I've updated the implementation section with your one-off suggestion since it seems simplest. Wug·a·po·des​ 03:14, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
One-off alternative looks good, but on enwiki rather than having that sort of small snippet in common.js, it is done in the form of a default gadget (e.g MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice.js) that loads that "core" hidden gadget (e.g. MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-core.js), which also allows people to disable the gadget if they don't like it. I would agree with Izno that it would be nice if things like these were implemented as an extension rather than as a gadget, but making something to an extension would certainly delay this considerably and possibly make it so no solution is ever implemented. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:43, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia Beta 'Jump To' tool not functioning in Mobile View

So, I have Wikipedia Beta enabled in Mobile View on my iPad iPhone 5S, with a nice 'Tick' suggesting the 'Jump To Top' function is also enabled. But I'm not seeing any form of floating button to help me move back to the top. Nor can I easily find any url to this documented function to assist me in report the issue - hence my post here. By way of example, navigating through WP:ANI in mobile view is a real struggle, and would be helped by this tool, whereas I've already added to the {{skip to top and bottom}} template to The Teahouse which makes life so much easier when navigating up and down, whether in desktop or mobile view. I'd love to get that similar functionality working on all article pages when in Mobile View. Many thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:30, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: Weird. I am using the beta version and this floating jump to top button is fully working on my Chrome Dev 77. What browser you are using? Masum Reza📞 05:33, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi Masumrezarock100, I'm using the iPhone's default Safari browser. Nick Moyes (talk) 06:51, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
@Nick Moyes: Try changing your browser. It's most likely because of lack of browser support. Does this kind of thing happened to you before or is it new? You can report about this at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions. Though it's the talk page of AMC mode not Wikipedia beta. Masum Reza📞 07:06, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
@Masumrezarock100: I don't know when the jump-to-top button was implemented, but I've only just switched from working on my phone in desktop view to experimenting with it in mobile view (in order to try out the Advanced Contributions Mode). I'll check your helpful link and report the Safari browser issue. Thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 12:06, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Is it intended that VTE links for nav templatrs only activate tooltip with link name unlinked? I think they should normally lead to each link target (view for template page, talk for its talk page and edit for edit window for template in question). --5.43.96.116 (talk) 05:44, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Nav templates usually aren't displayed in mobile but when they are, like on the template page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Seasons, the links work for me. Please link an example and name your mobile device or browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:55, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Please identify a problem (and fix it if it's not hard for you) for sr:Румунски језик#Спољашње везе. Probably navbox template should be updated there or some MediaWiki. Those English in your example are working for me; I use latest Samsung Internet browser, and view the article in desktop view on a mobile device. --5.43.96.116 (talk) 13:23, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't have an Android device but can reproduce the issue on an iPad. sr:User:PrimeHunter/sandbox has the code [[X|<abbr title="tooltip">V</abbr>]]. On an iPad I see underlining with dots and see "tooltip" when I click it but don't go anywhere. The same code here: V. On an iPad I cannot see "tooltip" but I go to X when I click it. I don't know what makes the difference. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
You mean you don't know why one doesn't go anywhere but sees only tooltip? I think something is wrong with sr:Модул:Navbar or some .css/.js MediaWiki page is not updated on sr.wikipedia. Maybe p.addItem function in sr:Модул:Navbar is not working properly but after comparing Navbox and Navbar templates and modules to that on English Wikipedia I cannot notice content difference except translations. Maybe Cyrillic translation makes problem? I don't known why it works here in your example with Template:Seasons but not with sr.wikipedia navbox template links... If someone else can help, please help. --Obsuser (talk) 17:32, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't use a template, module or non-Latin characters at sr:User:PrimeHunter/sandbox. The page only contains the mentioned code: [[X|<abbr title="tooltip">V</abbr>]]. This simplified example gives a different result at srwiki and enwiki on an iPad. The navbox makes code of this form with abbr inside a wikilink. I simplified the navbox output as much as possible while still producing the issue. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:01, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but why it gives a different result at srwiki and enwiki? --Obsuser (talk) 19:13, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
That's the question. [[X|<abbr title="tooltip">V</abbr>]] produces a working link on iPad in three other tested languages zh, de, da. It works with https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrimeHunter/sandbox?safemode=1. Without safemode it fails both logged in and out at srwiki. It also fails at wikt:sr: while it works at wikt:en:. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:13, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
It's caused by the default gadget sr:MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js. enwiki had the same issue at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js#Interference with links on touchscreen, fixed by [44]. The Serbian gadget can only be edited by a Serbian interface administrator. The latest edits were made by User:Ранко Николић. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:17, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thank you very much for that info. But if you check sr:Special:Diff/21299776/22084018 you will see that that update has already been done here (you can check diffs, only textual translations are made and code is same); however, the problem is still present as we see... Is it something else problem with this? [Please ping me...] ‡ --Obsuser (talk) 00:01, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: They are working actually now for me, same behaviour as English Wikipedia when logged out and on Samsung Internet latest. Only that on both sites tooltip is displayed first with "View this template" etc. messages, this could be probably prevented somehow because no use after one clicks it on mobile, because one goes to the link destination anyhow... Btw, Template:Outdent displays one level or so less on mobile (I used 9 right above and upper vertical part is significantly left of the last paragraph's bottom left). --5.43.96.116 (talk) 07:41, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

And I'm sorry for a such comment (the one prior to the previous one) because I didn't see/notice that the update on sr.wiki gadgets's page was done on 15 August, day or two before i.e. after this thread began (13 August morning/dawn). Ranko Nikolić probably got pinged after 08:17, 15 August 2019 (UTC) comment and then reacted to solve the problem. --5.43.96.116 (talk) 07:51, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, he implemented the fix 21 minutes after my ping. It works for me now on iPad. Are you Obsuser or is he a different user who may still see the problem? PrimeHunter (talk) 08:13, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Placing important links on top will be more helpful.

Privacy policy and disclaimers are important and should be placed on top. Monniasza talk 14:19, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

People do not come here to read policy and disclaimers. --Izno (talk) 14:34, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Bumping thread for 30 days. JoeHebda (talk) 02:46, 19 July 2019 (UTC) Greetings, Community tech bot appears to be down (not running) since April, 2019. Instructions are To report bugs, please write on the Community tech bot talk page on Meta. I did report in June, and with no response. Wondering if an expert here could fix? For example, Wikipedia:WikiProject Saints/Popular pages Updated: 6:32 pm, 26 April 2019, Friday (2 months, 13 days ago). Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 13:06, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

  • @MusikAnimal (WMF): any insight in to this? — xaosflux Talk 18:59, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
    The cron job for this month didn't start for some reason. I have manually triggered it. "Saints" is pretty far down the list so it may be a while before the bot gets to it. I don't have an answer as to why no report was created for May and June, but I will investigate. Also, don't forget about toolforge:massviews which can give you the same information in real-time: [45]. That tool seems to be having problems of its own (lots of errors querying the pageviews API, tracked at phab:T219857), which I'm starting to believe might be the same reason Popular Pages bot isn't finishing some reports. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
    Thanks @MusikAnimal (WMF): - I really like viewing Popular Pages on my fav. WPs; very helpful! Wondering if bot stalls out if it's not done running current month jobs & at calendar new month (day 1) starts a second bot? Just curious... JoeHebda (talk) 12:26, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    I suspect all the reports will be done within the next two weeks. If not, the reports for July will start populating on the 3rd. This is because it takes up to two full days for the previous month's data to be available. Best, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
    Hello @MusikAnimal (WMF): - Since starting at 15:41, 8 July 2019, the bot as of this morning has processed 60 WPs out of over 1,600 so it has a long ways to go to complete. At 30 perday, thats 53 days of runtime. JoeHebda (talk) 14:01, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
    The bot only goes through WPs configured at User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages config.json, which is about 800 or so. Most of these are quite small and will be processed quickly. That said I certainly can't guarantee they will all be finished before the month is over. We are monitoring and are discussing ways to improve performance. Thanks for your patience, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  1. Should the Lists table be updated? So it matches the Config table.
  2. Should the Config page include instructions to (manually) maintain the Lists table?
  3. Any way to have Techbot update that Lists table?
  4. Should Lists page be abandoned/redirected to config page? Pageviews on List page are about 25 per day.

Discussion

These questions are beyond any decision that I can make on my own. Asking for more people to chime in with discussion. JoeHebda (talk) 20:22, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I had no idea about WP:POPT. I don't think it worth the trouble to update that table. The list appears to be manually categorized. The only other information it has over User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages is the shortcuts, which aren't that important in my opinion. So yes, simply redirecting the list page seems sensible. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Pageviews

Greetings User:MusikAnimal (WMF) - Wonder if adding Pageviews to Popular pages would better show each WPs "Popular pages" activity? As an example, I added at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Popular pages. Just spot-checking I've not found any WP with much activity. Maybe because of the bot not running since end of April? JoeHebda (talk) 03:34, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

If you mean no one is checking these reports, you're mostly right. A few months ago I did some spring cleaning and removed a bunch of apparently inactive WikiProjects from the config. There are probably more that we could remove. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Bot posting to WP talk pages

Hi User:MusikAnimal (WMF) - When the bot updates User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages, could it also post a notice at the WikiProject's talk page? This would increase awareness of Popular pages & perhaps encourage usage. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 03:40, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

We certainly can, though I'd like to hear input from more people. Many WP talk pages get a lot of spam, and some already have the popular pages report transcluded on the main WP page. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 23:58, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Discussion:

Question: Post a time-stamped completion message from Community Tech bot, onto each Wikiproject's Talk page? JoeHebda (talk) 02:57, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Bot issue with WP Paintball

Is the bot running - July 14th

  • Hi User:MusikAnimal (WMF) - checking the bot, it has not posted any updates for "Popular pages" WPs since 12:08, 13 July 2019. Has it been paused, or just stopped on it's own because of an error? Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 10:19, 14 July 2019 (UTC)
    It went down over the weekend, apparently. It's back up and running now. Rest assured I'm monitoring and we'll have all reports finished in the next week or so. There's a new, much faster version of the bot that I'm almost done with, so hopefully next month we won't see any problems. Best, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
    Thanks User:MusikAnimal (WMF) for the update. Wondering if the number of popular pages for an individual wikiproject makes much of a difference? For example, would the bot process any faster if the WP asked for only top 100 vs. to 1,000? JoeHebda (talk) 17:41, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
    Unfortunately no. It's the size of the WikiProject itself that matters; the bot must go through every mainspace page, along with all of their redirects. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Bot completion errors?

  • Hi User:MusikAnimal (WMF) - Community Tech bot "Update report" posted over 10 times without updating any WPs in the table. From 18:01, 18 July 2019 to 21:31, 18 July 2019.
  • There are several WikiProjects that were missed (according to the table)
    • WikiProject Eastern Orthodox Church/Popular pages - 2019-03-15
    • WikiProject Software/Free Software/Popular pages - 2019-03-15
    • WikiProject Las Vegas/Popular pages - 2019-04-08
    • WikiProject Water supply and sanitation by country/Popular pages - 2019-04-26

Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 03:12, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting us! Eastern Orthodox Church was broken because of a recent rename. I've inquired about this on the talk page. Free Software has been updated. The other two WikiProjects are now inactive, so I've removed them from the config. Best, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:08, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Template with right side overflow, a temp fix?

Greetings, for Template {{Patriarchs of Constantinople}} the wikilinks on right side were spilling beyond the right margin. If I changed my browser to 80-percent (very small text) the problem would go away. To get 100-percent size text, I added a blank image (|image= [[image:Pix.gif|right|10px]]). This appears to have solved the issue. Wondering if this a temporary solution or is there a better way for this navbox? JoeHebda (talk) 17:44, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

{{Navbox}} adds the nowraplinks class to the table. That can cause overflow problems if the title includes a long link text, even when it looks like there should be room for it. I see the issue you describe at some zoom levels both before and after your solution although it does work at more zoom levels after. I think the override |titleclass = wraplinks is a better solution. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:27, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
 Done - Thanks PrimeHunter for the titleclass solution. Removing the right side image adds more Navbox space for the links. I've changed above template and a few large templates. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 13:18, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Module that can handle MW timestamps

Hi all. I am curious if there exists a module that can take a MW timestamp (such as 20190818143148) as an input and return a formatted string (such as "18 Aug 2019, 14:31") as the output. Please {{ping}} me when responding huji—TALK 15:17, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

@Huji: Does os.time work for you? --Izno (talk) 15:28, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
@Izno: it probably would; but instead of writing a new module (which woudl obviously use os.time), I was wondering if I could use an existing one. Lua is not my strong suit after all. huji—TALK 18:53, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Turns out the #time parser function accepts timestamps as an input. I will use that. huji—TALK 19:34, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Getting IP-specific or different-range block logs for an IP

When an account is blocked for a second (or more) time, the pink box that lists the current block in Special:Contributions has a "View full log" link to see the previous block activity. If the account is an anon IP and the block is a rangeblock, then that link is for that same range (see Special:Contributions/2601:586:400:833A:FD78:71BE:47B5:5110, who is covered by a /64 block, and its "View ful log"). Using the "block log" link near the top of the page, I can see there is also historical block activity related to that specific IP ([46]). However, there is no way to find the historical rangeblock info once it expires unless one knows to look for the /64 itself (i.e., that it was a /64 rather than some other range, and that there might have also been other size ranges). Is there a way to look up all previous blocks that apply to a certain IP or small range, including all larger sizes? DMacks (talk) 12:10, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

toolforge:rangeblockfinder works for finding range blocks for an IPv4. — JJMC89 (T·C) 22:10, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
This is phab:T146628 — MusikAnimal talk 02:45, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! That seems to be going in the opposite direction (subranges of given range) than I want (superset-ranges of given), but I added a note about this variation there. DMacks (talk) 03:09, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-34

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

Tech News

  • There will be no Tech News issue next week. The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 2 September 2019.

Problems

  • Advanced item Some abuse filters stopped working because of a code change. Only variables for the current action will work. Variables defined inside a branch may not work outside of that branch. You can read more to see how to fix the filters.
  • Only six accounts can be created from one IP address per day. Between 12 August and August 15 this was two accounts per day. This was because of a security issue. It is now six accounts per day again. [47]

Changes later this week

  • Only a limited number of accounts can be created from one IP address. An IP address can be whitelisted so that it can create as many accounts as needed. This is useful at events where many new persons learn to edit. IP addresses that are whitelisted for this reason will also not show CAPTCHAs when you create accounts. This will happen on Wednesday. [48]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 August. It will be on all wikis from 22 August (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 August at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • There is an RFC about creating a new global user group with the right to edit abuse filters. This will be used to fix broken filters and make sure all filters will still work when software changes happen. You can read more and comment.
  • Special:Contributions/newbies will no longer be working. This is because of performance reasons. It showed edits by new accounts. You can see this in the recent changes feed instead. [49]

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

15:20, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Format output of Template:To USD

Hi there, please can you assist me with formatting the output of Template:To USD to insert commas between thousands, in addition to accept input which has commas. I believe {{formatnum:}} will be of assistance. Thanks for your help in advance, {{u|waddie96}} {talk} 18:39, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

[A note for myself that the template help doc must be updated to match these changes, i.e. r/v recent additions]

"Move subpages of talk page (up to 100)" checkbox unticked by default

Resolved
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T222953
Resolved

I'm pretty confident I've seen a thread on this topic, and we made sure the default was to then keep it checked, for reasons of not making stupid mistakes. Was the change reversed or am I seeing things? --qedk (t 桜 c) 05:24, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

QEDK, the change hasn't been merged - see phab:T222953. You can put this snippet (written by someone else) in your Special:MyPage/common.js:
:/* Automatically tick the "Move subpages" option when moving pages.*/
:var moveSubpagesBox = document.getElementsByName("wpMovesubpages")[0];
:if (moveSubpagesBox !== undefined) {
:  moveSubpagesBox.checked = true;
:}
:
to automatically tick it though. Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:13, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, @Galobtter:, not quite sure how or where I saw the change, I do appreciate the hack! :) --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:25, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, @DannyS712 and Legoktm:! --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Picking a draft to review: RandomInCategory isn't very random

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T200703

I've noticed that when I use Special:RandomInCategory/Pending AfC submissions, I see the same pages over and over. I found some threads (here and here) that explain about how RandomInCategory works (i.e. indexing pre-generated page_random values). I get that it's fast, but boy, does it produce poor results. I just pulled up 25 "random" drafts, and got:

  1. Draft:Declan Meagher
  2. Draft:Gary Soulz
  3. Draft:Ananth Narayanan
  4. Draft:Frank Verboven
  5. Draft:Maths Time Joy
  6. Draft:Gary Soulz
  7. Draft:Ananth Narayanan
  8. Draft:Eni Vasili
  9. Draft:Shorts México - Mexico International Short Film Festival
  10. Category:Pending AfC submissions in userspace
  11. Draft:John Haze
  12. Draft:Alisha Rai (author)
  13. Draft:Leonardo3 Museum
  14. Draft:Wake. (2018 film)
  15. Category:Pending AfC submissions in article space
  16. Draft:Anastasiya Makarevich
  17. Draft:Alisha Rai (author)
  18. User:ItsYaBoiAustin/sandbox/Odyssey: Extraction
  19. Draft:Scott Stambach
  20. Draft:Christian Lillinger
  21. Draft:Gudula Naiga Basaza
  22. Draft:Scott Stambach
  23. Draft:Katherine Boyer
  24. Draft:Walter Ferguson
  25. Draft:Faryal Mehmood

Not only are there four duplicates:

  • Draft:Scott Stambach
  • Draft:Gary Soulz
  • Draft:Ananth Narayanan
  • Draft:Alisha Rai (author)

but two pairs of duplicates in the same order:

  • Draft:Gary Soulz
  • Draft:Ananth Narayanan

There's "approximately 4,581" entries in Category:Pending AfC submissions. You don't have to do any math (yes, I know about the birthday paradox) to decide that's abysmally bad randomness. I suspect the feature was originally intended to service the needs of somebody randomly browsing the encyclopedia. It's probably fine for that. For servicing a work queue, not so much.

Not only is this not very random, but the process tends towards increasingly less random results over time. The most likely draft to be selected by somebody trolling for work is the one with the largest gap in page_random values. So, that's the one that's most likely to either be deleted, or promoted to mainspace. Either of which results in an even larger page_random gap! Of course, the other side of that is when a new draft is created, it's most likely to fall into the largest existing gap.

My statistics-fu isn't strong enough to figure out if those two effects cancel each other out, but I did write a little python program to simulate adding and deleting drafts using a similar algorithm. Starting with an initial pool of 4000 drafts, I did 100,000 iterations of deleting a draft and adding another one. I found all the gaps, and printed the stdev of the gaps every 10,000 iterations: 

0.000249
0.000489
0.000508
0.000544
0.000573
0.000536
0.000559
0.000568
0.000563
0.000599

That's pretty typical across many runs. That says to me (the self-professed statistical idiot) that the longer you manage the draft work queue with this process, the less uniform the gap distribution will become, and thus lead to the behavior I'm seeing.

Assuming the above makes any sense at all, I think we need a better way to manage the draft work queue.

-- RoySmith (talk) 17:57, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Good catch! Would this be a good candidate for a Phabricator ticket? --Guy Macon (talk) 18:43, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Huh! I am virtually never active on enwiki. I happened to open the thread right above this one and see this as a result. I also happen to be the person who wrote RandomInCategory!
I think it is best to move this to Phab. Essentially (if I understand it well) the problem is that page_random is (hopefully) uniformly distributed across all pages; but when thinking about a small category, its values will certainly not be uniformly distributed. There exist ways through which we could circumvent this, but I'm not sure if these ways are efficient enough to be adopted into MW source code. It is best to have that discussion in Phab, where more technical users can discuss its efficiency (or propose more efficient implementations of it). Please add me (Huji) on Phab once you create the task. huji—TALK 18:58, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm happy to open a Phab ticket, but I'm not sure what the ticket should say. The problem isn't (I don't think) that RandomInCategory is broken. I think the current implementation actually a pretty good solution for its intended purpose, which I assume is driving the "Random article" link on the main page. It's just that how we use it for managing the draft work queue is not a good fit. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:11, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict)My philosophy is to describe the problem without making any assumptions as to what form the solution should take. I remember a toy I worked on a a while back (think very limited amount of RAM and processing power) where the complain was that a particular "random choice" didn't feel random enough. Upon talking to the play testers, the real complaint was the toy serving up the same random selection two or three times in a row. So instead of rewriting the RNG, I just had it remember the last eight results and "roll again" if the latest selection was on the list of recent results. My point is that the people reporting the problem didn't know that this was the solution, and instead asked me to "make the selection more random" I actually made it slighly less random, but I solved the real problem.
So just report the test results without any assumption about what the answer should be, and let the developers pick a solution. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:36, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Created T230700 -- RoySmith (talk) 19:20, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

So just to clarify - RandomInCategory does not use page_random like Special:Random does. Instead it looks at the date the first and last page was added to the category, and then picks a random time somewhere between those two, in order to find a page. Since date added to a category is distributed non-uniformly, this is generally not random. At the time, it was felt that this method, although severely flawed was better than nothing. Bawolff (talk) 02:02, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh, so that really explains what's going on. That's worse than using page_random. With page_random, the biggest gaps tend to get split into smaller ones as new pages get added to the category, as noted above. In fact, once I realized that, I no longer had much confidence that my analysis made sense, but the behavioral observation was still valid. If you're using date added, that's monotonically increasing. Existing gaps never get split, they just keep getting bigger as entries are removed from the category. The one nice thing is this tends to favor processing older entries first. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:43, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

CSS for tables sabotaged?

Time in Russia
  KALT Kaliningrad Time UTC+2 (MSK−1)
  MSK Moscow Time UTC+3 (MSK±0)
  SAMT Samara Time UTC+4 (MSK+1)
  YEKT Yekaterinburg Time UTC+5 (MSK+2)
  OMST Omsk Time UTC+6 (MSK+3)
  KRAT Krasnoyarsk Time UTC+7 (MSK+4)
  IRKT Irkutsk Time UTC+8 (MSK+5)
  YAKT Yakutsk Time UTC+9 (MSK+6)
  VLAT Vladivostok Time UTC+10 (MSK+7)
  MAGT Magadan Time UTC+11 (MSK+8)
  PETT Kamchatka Time UTC+12 (MSK+9)

The content of {{time zones of Russia}} is nastily clipped in Vector. In Monobook I see it differently depending on desktop. I suspect that some quick hands without feedback scrabbled in style sheets, but am unwilling to investigate. There are scores of people with privileges here, while I have none. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:51, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm actually shocked the template works at all; I've never seen anyone put a table inside of a file caption. I don't see any issue though, any of Monobook, Vector, or Timeless. --Izno (talk) 11:48, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Caption with a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong word
It also looks fine to me in Vector. Captions don't make horizontal scrollbars for wide content so I can imagine the right side being cut off for some users who don't have room for all the table columns. If this is what you mean by ""nastily clipped" then it's not specific to tables. It happens for me in the example image with "Caption with a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong word". I see three caption lines with the middle cut off at "looooooooooooooooooooooooo". PrimeHunter (talk) 12:03, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
The image in {{time zones of Russia}} is 300px. The smallest size where I see the full caption in Vector is 272px. We could increase the image to 350px to reduce the risk of problems. There may still be users with too large fonts but probably few. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, I missed that the template was foolishly redesigned during last years. Should the table be extracted from the caption? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 13:45, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
I think that would be a good idea. More guaranteed not to break that way. --Izno (talk) 13:56, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
With 300px image
Time in Russia
  KALT Kaliningrad Time UTC+2 (MSK−1)
  MSK Moscow Time UTC+3 (MSK±0)
  SAMT Samara Time UTC+4 (MSK+1)
  YEKT Yekaterinburg Time UTC+5 (MSK+2)
  OMST Omsk Time UTC+6 (MSK+3)
  KRAT Krasnoyarsk Time UTC+7 (MSK+4)
  IRKT Irkutsk Time UTC+8 (MSK+5)
  YAKT Yakutsk Time UTC+9 (MSK+6)
  VLAT Vladivostok Time UTC+10 (MSK+7)
  MAGT Magadan Time UTC+11 (MSK+8)
  PETT Kamchatka Time UTC+12 (MSK+9)
With 190px image
Time in Russia
  KALT Kaliningrad Time UTC+2 (MSK−1)
  MSK Moscow Time UTC+3 (MSK±0)
  SAMT Samara Time UTC+4 (MSK+1)
  YEKT Yekaterinburg Time UTC+5 (MSK+2)
  OMST Omsk Time UTC+6 (MSK+3)
  KRAT Krasnoyarsk Time UTC+7 (MSK+4)
  IRKT Irkutsk Time UTC+8 (MSK+5)
  YAKT Yakutsk Time UTC+9 (MSK+6)
  VLAT Vladivostok Time UTC+10 (MSK+7)
  MAGT Magadan Time UTC+11 (MSK+8)
  PETT Kamchatka Time UTC+12 (MSK+9)
Tables in captions work fine as long as they aren't forced to be too wide for the image. I added a 300px and 190px version where a &nbsp; is removed to allow wrapping in "Yekaterinburg Time", and UTC/MSK is in the same cell to allow wrapping there. I see the whole caption at 190px and think almost everybody does at 300px. It's less pretty when cells wrap but I think it would be worse if there was no table but just whole unaligned lines which wrap at the end of the line. And most readers probably don't get wrapping at 300px but do get good formatting with aligned columns. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:41, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
You could also put the image in the (new) top row of the table, and thus not have to worry about how |thumb= behaves at all. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Preferences edit request

Don't know where else to put this. At preferences, under "Gadgets", there is a checkbox related to the Watchlist. EDIT REQUEST, please add text under the watchlist tab so folks configuring watchlists can more easily find the watchlist bold toggle under the gadgets tab. (I spent 90 minutes today trying to figure out why bold wasn't working but never thought to look under gadgets... Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:52, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

You mean: "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold (see customizing watchlists for more options)"? Ruslik_Zero 14:20, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes... that quote is under the gadgets tab, so we're coverted going GADGETS >>>to>>> WATCHLIST. But if one starts configuring their watchlist under "watchlist" - as most preferences noobs probably do - there is no text pointing at the gadget. If such text were added, we would help people know that there is more watchlist tweaking if they go the other way, WATCHLIST >>>to>>> GADGET. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:31, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't think that's possible. Gadgets are local, user-written scripts. The rest of Special:Preferences is from MediaWiki itself. User:TheDJ probably remembers what this script does – maybe turns off MediaWiki's default bold, and then turns it back on, or something like that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:27, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Disabling HTML comments for drafts?

I've seen several instances of draft authors inserting HTML comments with their replies to reviews. I assume what's going on is that instead of using the AFCH Comment button, they've accidentally discovered the "Insert comment" feature of Visual Editor. If you're new at all this, it's a perfectly understandable mistake, and leads to all sorts of confusion. Is there some way we can disable the "Insert comment" menu item in VE when editing a draft? -- RoySmith (talk) 12:54, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

@RoySmith: disabling HTML comments in Draft space all together would be a bad idea (for example they are often used to comment out categories being drafted). Can you provide a few diffs where you think this problem is being introduced though? — xaosflux Talk 13:02, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Most recently, here, immediately followed by an attempt to fix the problem; I assume the nowiki tags got added automatically as part of some copy-paste operation. This isn't the first time I've seen stuff like this, but I'd have to do a lot of digging to find other examples. Maybe the "Insert comment" menu item should be disabled in VE for all new editors, with a preferences checkbox to enable it? It really is an advanced feature, that's not likely to be needed by new editors. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:21, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't think there is project-level control of those settings (just like with the "index/noindex" control in there that is virtually useless. — xaosflux Talk 13:37, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
If possible, I would prefer that the name be changed to "insert invisible comment" with a help page created at WP:HTML Comment explaining when and why one might use the AFCH Comment button and when and why one might use the invisible comment button. We could even add a "are you sure?" extra step befor an HTML comment is placed.
In general, I don't like disabling features when a warning or explanation can do the job. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:47, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Having the editor work differently in draft space and main space does not strike me as a desirable feature. Explaining the buttons better seems superior to removing them. —Kusma (t·c) 13:58, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
@Kusma and Guy Macon: we could change the label from "Comment" to something else in these messages. It doesn't look like it supports wikilinks or much help text there though. — xaosflux Talk 14:03, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Changing "comment" to "invisible comment" seems like an uncontroversial change that we can make right now. Does anyone object?
Next, is it possible to put up a warning/explanation that the user only sees when they click on that button? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:28, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Submitters of drafts don't have an AFCH Comment button unless they've turned on "Yet Another AFC Helper Script" in their gadget preferences, which they are extremely unlikely to have done. To keep them from thinking that the right way to respond to a reviewer comment is with <!-- Hidden text -->, it would be better to change VE's insert menu item from "Comment" to "Hidden text". "Comment" (or "Invisible comment") makes sense to computer programmers, but most users of VE aren't computer programmers. The text
  • Comment: Error: There was no comment detected! Please follow the instructions at Template:AfC comment., inserted by template {{AFC comment}}, could also be changed to something else. If AFCH were modified to place the comments on the talk page, reviewer comments might not need any introductory symbol and word. The argument against using the talk page has always been that newbies are too clueless to find the talk page, but perhaps it's worth investing the effort to train them to do so. --Worldbruce (talk) 14:33, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
  • Thanks everybody for your comments. I agree that (despite it being my initial recommendation), having VE work differently in drafts than in other namespaces would be confusing. I like the idea of changing the system messages to say "invisible comment" instead of just "comment". Even if naive newbies may not understand what that means, it should certainly be a clue that this is probably not what they want. It may not be the perfect, or final, fix, but it's easy to do and gets us most of the way there. Low hanging fruit, as they say. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:46, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I've changed the system messages to say "Invisible comment" - if there are any issues please let me know. — xaosflux Talk 20:40, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

"Persistent" login using Python mwclient

Hello, I am one of the maintainers of User:WP 1.0 bot. We've recently changed the server architecture of the bot drastically. Instead of a single threaded cron job that runs once a day, we now have worker processes running as daemons that pick up any work that is added to the work queue. This is coupled with, of course, a cron job that runs once a day but simply adds work to the queue and exits.

I'm running into a problem with long running login sessions expiring (which is to be expected) and how to resolve the issue. The script is written in Python and uses mwclient to log in to English Wikipedia and perform edits as the bot. I've logged an issue on github about the problem.

Basically, I was wondering if anyone has encountered this before and knows how to resolve it. You can see my (convoluted) attempt in our source code. Note that site is a global variable so that login can be performed easily "pre-fork", by the worker startup script before the worker jobs themselves are forked.

Additionally, if anyone has any information about a better place to ask this question, like an "mwclient-users@" mailing list somewhere, that would be very helpful. Thanks! audiodude (talk) 03:28, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Is anyone up to the job of helping me update our page on downtime?

Wikipedia:Downtime is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. I think it would be worthwhile to revive it. Does anyone know where I can find the information I would need to do that? My impression is that in recent years we have only had brief planned downtime while various upgrades are made, but I would like to see a page documenting the great job the server wranglers are doing. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:32, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: wikitech:Incident documentation. This includes a lot of services that don't effect readers here on enwiki, though. See also the "Production excellence" reports on Release Engineering Team blog. — MusikAnimal talk 14:57, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks! I think I can separate out the actual outages and update the page with that. Might take a week or so because of that pesky real life... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 15:02, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Indirect, but probably one way of doing this would be to look at when sudden spurts of activity happen in logs of the #wikimedia-operations irc channel. Downtime usually corresponds with a lot of people asking what is going on, and a lot of spam from monitoring bots. You can also look at the pretty charts at grafana, like this one of edit rate [50] (As if the site is down, the editing stops). Bawolff (talk) 20:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Bad autocomplete on edit summaries

So I've got this workflow problem where I'll click on the edit summary box, move the mouse cursor down to the "save" button, then type or paste an edit summary, and this annoying menu of unrelated edit summaries will pop up behind the mouse cursor. And because my mouse happens to be over this menu (even without clicking) (usually trying to move away from it and make it go away) whatever edit summarily I've entered will be replaced by whatever random thing is under the mouse cursor. Looks like this.

I had assumed this was some kind of browser feature for which I can't find the setting to turn it off, but then I considered that its degree of responsiveness is laggy to actually be a mediawiki javascript feature instead. Whatever it is, I just want to make it go away. I'm using Chromium "Version 76.0.3809.100 (Official Build) Built on Ubuntu, running on Ubuntu 18.04 (64-bit)" and the monobook skin, if any of that matters. ―cobaltcigs 00:05, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

@Cobaltcigs: Mediawiki doesn't have autocomplete for edit summaries, this is from your browser. To verify, you can try to use a different browser. Your browser should have a clear option for autofill. — xaosflux Talk 00:39, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
The VisualEditor does autocomplete for edit summaries in a way custom to VE based on your most-recent N (200?) edit summaries. Other editors don't. --Izno (talk) 00:54, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
Heh. I reported this problem 14 years ago. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:10, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
Ohhhh this is some possible VE issue? @Cobaltcigs: are you using the Visual Editor? — xaosflux Talk 01:24, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
Strike that, your imgur.com SS shows this is in the wikitext editor, so back to it's your browser. You can verify with another browser. — xaosflux Talk 01:26, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
@Cobaltcigs: You can make the edit summary autocomplete menu go away completely by adding the following code to your common.js page:
$('#wpSummary').attr('autocomplete', 'off');
SD0001 (talk) 12:37, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
nice tip. i was not aware of this attribute. two minor comments:
  1. according to [51], support for this attribute is relatively new on FF, and does not exist for IE browsers. if you use IE, too bad, and if you use FF, you need version 67 or higher (current is 68).
  2. the snippet posted by SD0001 may not always work: if your common.js happen to finish loading before the page is fully formed, it can be a miss. you probably want something like 
    $(function() { $('#wpSummary').attr('autocomplete', 'off'); });
peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:05, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Is this code safe?

importScript('User:Primefac/revdel.js'); // Linkback: User:Primefac/revdel.js Thanks!

Sincerely, Humorous. (talk) 04:57, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

@Humorous1234: that code just imports User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js - Enterprisey is a great script writer, and their code can be trusted. It is safe DannyS712 (talk) 05:02, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
VPT is for technical issues. While the question is certainly valid, the instructions on the top of your .js page already state that you should trust the code you're putting into your script page, code which is accessible already, at the linkback link above and you can check it yourself before adding it to your script page. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:09, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
@QEDK: that warning message does specifically refer anyone with questions to this page. — xaosflux Talk 17:24, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
To the OP, the User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel script is currently "safe", and the current owner is trusted to keep scripts safe. As DannyS712 mentioned, you should just use the direct loaded version following the directions at User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel. When importing someone else's script keep in mind that it could break, change, be removed, or be abandoned at any time. — xaosflux Talk 17:28, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
Thank you! Sincerely, Humorous. (talk) 03:16, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Two-Factor Authentication

Hey guys! Where can I see the rescue codes for my TFA? I lost access to the device that generated the codes for me, now I don’t know how to access it on my new device. •_•--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 13:44, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Épine: Scratch Codes would be wherever you securely stored them. You only see these codes while setting up 2FA (and never again), so copy them from your browser and save them offline in a safe place (e.g. on a memory stick or paper printout). If you don't keep these codes and encounter a problem with your 2FA device, you will be locked out of your account. — xaosflux Talk 13:47, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Oh no. I’m screwed.--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 13:50, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
@Épine: You can attempt to create a phabricator request to remove your 2FA settings, assign it to WMF T&S. It will be up to them if they are willing to work on this. — xaosflux Talk 13:52, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
I just found out that I backed up three of those rescue codes to my cloud! Thanks though! Appreciate the help. I won’t be gone for good I guess ^_^--▸ ‎épine talk♬ 13:56, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
@Épine: good deal! Just unenroll and reenroll, it will make you 10 new scratch codes. Be sure to reenroll so you don't loose your int-admin access on ckbwiki. — xaosflux Talk 14:01, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons stadium template

Hello! I am writing here for the first time, so I apologize if I write in the wrong section. I would like to draw the attention of Wikipedia administrators one inaccuracy in the template for Belarusian stadiums on the Wikimedia Commons. In the LOCATION field, instead of the current 2019 administrative-territorial structure of the country outdated information from the year of construction of the sports facility is indicated.

It turns out such nonsense: Dynama Stadium, Minsk built in 1934, but instead of a location in the country BELARUS, the card in the description indicates the states that existed in the 1930s on the territory of modern BELARUS — Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Same thing with Central Stadium, Gomel. The stadium was built in the 1920s, but Gomel Povet and Mogilyov Viceroyalty no longer exists. By administrative-territorial structure of the Republic of BELARUS for 2019 all cities is part of the district, then the region, then the country. The capital city of Minsk is a separate administrative unit within BELARUS.

In this regard, I ask administrators to make the necessary changes to the card on the Wikimedia Commons for Belarusian stadiums so that outdated information does not mislead readers. If you want to make sure the veracity of my arguments, I can connect administrators from the Belarusian Wikipedia to the discussion. We will provide links to the official administrative-territorial structure of the Republic of BELARUS for the current time of 2019.

Thanks for attention! --Football Beetle (talk) 16:48, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Football Beetle: can you copy and paste the link to the page where you are seeing this below? — xaosflux Talk 17:31, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Of course. Here are three different stadiums for example: Dinamo Stadium (Minsk), Traktor Stadium, Central Stadium (Gomel). And at this stadium Borisov Arena on the Wikimedia Commons LOCATION is indicated correctly. --Football Beetle (talk) 17:43, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I still don't know what you refer to with "the card on the Wikimedia Commons for Belarusian stadiums". Please give precise steps to reproduce an example of the issue, e.g. "Click on Dinamo Stadium (Minsk), click on the coordinates in the infobox or do something else, click on X, now there is a map/box/whatever which says Y but should have said Z." PrimeHunter (talk) 18:17, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Football Beetle: OK, I think I've unraveled this. To summarize: You are not seeing a problem with the encyclopedia articles here on the English Wikipedia. You do think there is a problem with the data on certain pages at Wikimedia Commons, for example: commons:Category:Dynama Stadium, Minsk. For pages such as that on Wikimedia Commons, that data is usually generated via a template there, commons:Template:Wikidata Infobox, which in turn gets values from another project, WikiData. There should be a blue pencil icon at the bottom of those Infoboxes on commons that you can use to go to WikiData then make appropriate edits. For example, wikidata:Q4439085 has location properties (e.g. located in the administrative territorial entity) that you can update. Assuming this is correct, there is nothing that the English Wikipedia editors would directly do about this, but you can edit them directly. Does that help? — xaosflux Talk 18:21, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

I will now explain in detail the essence of the problem. You correctly said that you first need to enter information about location of the stadium on WikiData. If the stadium was built in 2014, then on the Wikimedia Commons page of this stadium in the table in the upper right (Wikidata Infobox), the location is correct — Borisov, Borisov district, Minsk region, Belarus. And if the stadium was built in 1934, then information on the countries that existed on the territory of modern Belarus is indicated on the Wikimedia Commons. These countries and their parts were in the 1930s, but now they are no longer there. And on the page of the stadium on the Wikimedia Commons they are indicated, which misleads the reader. At the moment, all Belarusian stadiums are located on the territory of the Republic of Belarus and its administrative parts.

If this issue cannot be resolved with the administrators of the English Wikipedia, should I write the same thing to the administrators of the Wikimedia Commons? Just administrators from Belarus are not there, so I decided to write here first. --Football Beetle (talk) 18:52, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't look like you need an administrator at all, just go to the wikidata entry and make the improvement by editing it. Even if these were pages and values here on the English Wikipedia, "administrators" don't have any special authority over "content", anyone is welcome to make productive content updates at any time. — xaosflux Talk 18:58, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

A simple example. I recently edited an article Traktor Stadium, made the necessary changes about the location here wikidata:Q2464927, but in Wikidata Infobox here commons:Category:Traktar Stadium it is not written LOCATION - MINSK, BELARUS, but it is written Minsk, Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Why? --Football Beetle (talk) 19:11, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Now is the year 2019, not the 1950s. The indicated information is outdated and does not correspond to reality. This is the same if you write about the stadiums in Germany built in the 1930s on the Wikimedia Commons: LOCATION - BERLIN, THIRD REICH, instead of Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany. --Football Beetle (talk) 19:18, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Football Beetle: well that's quite a complicated set of templates they have going on over there. Your issue has nothing at all to do with the English Wikipedia, for technical assistance at Commons you can follow up at: Commons:Village pump/Technical. — xaosflux Talk 19:27, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for finding the right link commons:Category:Dynama Stadium, Minsk instead of the false links posted by the OP. It's not that easy to make the wanted change. Dinamo Stadium (Q1130487) says inception 1934 (when the stadium was built in Minsk). Minsk (Q2280) specifies "located in the administrative territorial entity" for Minsk at different times, e.g. "Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic" from 1930 to 1938. commons:Template:Wikidata Infobox apparently combines the construction year and correct location data for that year to say that the stadium is in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. For a currently used facility like a stadium, it would be best to ignore the construction year and give the current location, but this choice may be hard to figure out for a template. I don't know how a user can fix it for this page without deleting the information in Minsk (Q2280) about where Minsk was located in the past. Don't do that. Such information has many other uses. This is really an issue for commons:Template talk:Wikidata Infobox and not the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:27, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Was just trying to unravel commons:Template:Wikidata Infobox/core - they could possibly add some more parameters to accept a "use date" to feed in to that beast of a template! — xaosflux Talk 19:30, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for answers! I'll start all over again in the discussion of the template commons:Template talk:Wikidata Infobox. --Football Beetle (talk) 19:45, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Is there an IsOnPage magicword/function/whatever thing?

What I'm wondering about is if we have something that parses the current page, and returns and output based on it. For example, we can have

  • {{#ifeq:{{strfind short|{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Article alerts}}|has been submitted for AfC}}|0|NOT FOUND|FOUND}}

which gives you

  • FOUND

Which lets you know if there's "has been submitted for AfC" on Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Article alerts. But putting that same code on Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Article alerts gives you

Warning: This page calls Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Article alerts which causes a template loop (an infinite recursive call).
  • FOUND

So I'm trying to find a way to do that without angering the server gods. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:35, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Headbomb: this can be done using Lua. Create a mw.title object with the current page name, then the getContent() function on it would return the page content. SD0001 (talk) 08:44, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Put a <noinclude> tag pair around it. —Cryptic 08:47, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
ahhh, that's definitely the simpler option! SD0001 (talk) 09:00, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
@Cryptic: brilliant! Now to remember how to transclude noinclude tags... I have an example somewhere. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:47, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Cryptic and SD0001:, just created {{String on page}} and {{Count on page}}. Feel free to optimize if you know how. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:15, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Or implement these nesting noinclude tags correctly. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:38, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

If anyone has an idea on how to circumvent Template:String on page#Limitations/Template:Count on page#Limitations, please feel free to implement that! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:09, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

  • Not entirely sure, but I think Trappist the monk may have implemented something similar to the request for the auto-dates in CS1. --Izno (talk) 19:24, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
    If the desire is to find or count strings on a rendered page, then the limitations make sense. If the desire is to find or count strings in the source, then I think that a module is required. Not tested but something like this:
    local page_title_object;

if frame.args[2] then
	page_title_object = mw.title.new(frame.args[2]);						-- title object for the page specified in the template call
else
	page_title_object = mw.title.getCurrentTitle();							-- title object for the current page
end

local text = page_title_object:getContent();								-- the unparsed content of the selected page
local _;
local count;
_, count = mw.ustring.gsub (text, frame.args[1], '%1');						-- count number of occurrences of frame.args[1] in frame.args[2]
return count;
    not tested. Probably requires that Lua pattern sequences in frame.args[1] (the string to be found or counted) are escaped. Likely other stuff needs doing.
    —Trappist the monk (talk) 21:10, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Weird redirect error

See discussion at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2019 August 22#Fernando Zor????; there's something weird going on with this redirect and it seems a bit beyond the scope of RfD. Any ideas? PC78 (talk) 01:27, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

Difficulties with SUL on Ipad

Before I go to Phabricator, may be someone experienced a similar problem or at least known on which side the problem is. I usually work on laptop, and there I am logged in all the time (I choose the option to log in for 180 days). On my Ipad, I used to be logged on all the time as well. Sometimes it behaved strangely: For example, a year ago I found myself in a situation when I was logged in the English Wikipedia but was not logged in for example on Commons; then I logged in to Commons as well and all was fine. A week ago, my Ipad installed an automatic update which presumably included a new version of Safari. I found myself logged out. I tried to log in and found that I can log in just into one project, but if I then open a new window with any Wikimedia project, I am not logged in. I can login there as well, but then the next window is not logged in and so on. Moreover, if I am logged in say to the English Wikipedia I can work all right (well, making sure I never backtrack to the login screen). However, after two days, I find myself not logged in. Every time I log in I tick the "180 days" option. I would appreciate any comments. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:17, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Ymblanter: what version of your browser are you using? It sounds like you are having a cookie handling problem with your browser. Try clearing all cookies from your browser and trying again. — xaosflux Talk 13:29, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Ymblanter, do you have private browsing mode on ? That setting is bottom left of your tab selector. See here —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:33, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you. In my case, Safari is indeed black. I will get back home and try switching off the private browsing.--Ymblanter (talk) 14:44, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
It was indeed private browsing mode which caused issues, thanks again.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:35, 23 August 2019 (UTC)
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