Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 182

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Hiding problematic edit buttons at the Teahouse

At the Teahouse, we have a big blue edit button that starts a section at the bottom of the page with some nice preloaded text. However, editors who use the standard "new section" button at the top of the page don't get the preload, and worse, editors who just click the plain edit button are tempted to add their post at the top of the page, rather than the bottom where it belongs. Would there be any way to (a) hide the "edit" and "new section" buttons at the top of the page or (b) hide the "edit" button and get the "new section" button to use the preload? The section edit buttons would still be there for any experienced editors wanting to make modifications to the Teahouse structure. Alternatively, RudolfRed asked about the possibility of an edit notice that changes based on the link one clicks/section being edited, which would also help with the problem. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:00, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: You can use the magic word __NONEWSECTIONLINK__ to hide the new section link on a talk page, but you can't hide the standard edit button as far as I'm aware - and as the Teahouse is a non-talk page, the "New section" link is actually explicitly enabled in the wikitext by the magic word __NEWSECTIONLINK__ (at the end of line 4 of the wikitext). I suppose one way of orchestrating it might be to have the main WP:TH page perm-protected, then transclude another page onto it, and have the blue button link to the other page. You could then have an editnotice on the protected page saying "don't try and edit this, click here to create a new section instead". Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 08:23, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, Hmm, interesting. I'm not sure the sub-page idea would work, since that'd make it hard for people to reply to posts once conversation gets going. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:29, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense for sure. I suppose the other thing you could technically do would be to literally just add a random div tag into the content, use TemplateStyles to position that div over where the "Edit" button is, and have done with it that way... that has a massive array of associated problems, though; wouldn't work with additions to the menu like Twinkle, wouldn't work across different skins; would probably be an absolute arse to maintain. I certainly wouldn't recommend doing it that way, even if it's the only option. Someone else may be able to come up with much better ideas though! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 08:48, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

I wonder whether it really matters whether a new editor top-posts at the Teahouse. I keep up with changes to my favorite pages by reading the diffs, which means that the location of changes relative to the rest of the page is usually unimportant to me (and I believe that's a common practice). Archiving is automatic, and the bot doesn't care whether the section started at the top or bottom or middle of the page. The practical cost assocated with the occasional top-post seems pretty minor to me, especially compared to the cost of discouraging inexperienced people from posting there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Templates generate invalid category

With this edit I added {{Better source|date=June 2020}} to Masisi. This had the unexpected effect of adding the article to the non-existent category Category:Articles lacking reliable references from June 2,020.

This edit may have also triggered my log-in session screwing-up, and preventing me from logging out. I suspect this is the Wiki-wide authentication problem discussed above, and may be unconnected. I can give more details if this would help, but I eventually managed to log out and log in again. However the category problem remains. I have now changed the tag to {{Unreliable source?|date=June 2020}}, but this sets the same invalid category. Have I overlooked something, or is this a bug? Verbcatcher (talk) 19:39, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Verbcatcher: When using {{Infobox settlement}} the references and tags for the population figures have to be placed in the population_footnotes parameter, otherwise any numbers will get reformatted with commas. For the log-in problems, see the earlier section here; that's nothing to do with the infobox coding. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:12, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@John of Reading:, thank you, and thanks for fixing the article. Verbcatcher (talk) 20:19, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Wiki-wide authentication problems

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T255179

There seems to be something wrong with authentication, not just on enwiki, but across multiple projects. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T255179. I can't post logged in, so trying this incognito. This is User:RoySmith.

And, um, let's see.... It's Thursday!

I'm getting "unable to save due to loss of session data" errors, even when I do a nearly instant edit and save. This edit probably won't save either. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:02, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

• I am getting this message "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please resubmit the form. You may receive this message if you are blocking cookies." Never had this before, how to fix it? This is a real nuisance, I am not blocking cookies and have done everything as usual.--92.20.121.175 (talk) 19:00, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Merging to thread. --qedk (t 愛 c) 19:02, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

• Mee to. tried clearing all cookies, re-booting computer, different browser, everything and same every time. Can't post this under my username 'cos I can't log-in 2A00:23C7:301:1401:7577:D846:2873:A56B (talk) 19:04, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  I was logged in when it started happening; I've been able to squeeze a couple edits in, but every other attempt I'm still getting that error. /Tpdwkouaa (talk) 19:05, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Having on/off issues too. Invalid CSRF and rollback tokens. Ed6767 talk! 19:06, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Was resolved, but having issues creating new accounts for ACC... --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 19:08, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Apparently this was resolved 10 years ago. The problem is I have no idea how that is done (BTW I have the same problem with my main account). Tbsock (Tbhotch away) (talk) 19:11, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Now it's 50/50. Every Wikimedia Wiki seems to be having auth issues. Ed6767 talk! 19:12, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  I got it too with trying to revert an invalid pending edit on a protected page (I have Pending changes reviewer status), and then I got the "Invalid CSRF token" message when trying to log out. Glad it isn't just me. Zinnober9 (talk) 19:17, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  When trying the logoff I get "Invalid CSRF token". Keith D (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Nice to see it is not just me. From one moment to another that happened. ;) Kante4 (talk) 19:32, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  It happened to me at exactly 18:35 (UTC). Same thing - it was saying loss of session data. I tried on English Wikipedia, Commons and WikiSource. All gave off the same message. If this saves, it's back to working for me. — Maile (talk) 19:48, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Session

When logging in, I received information about preventing session hijacking and could not log in at this time. Is it possible that I was already logged in to other project which resulted in conflict, cookie error or was just loading login error? Eurohunter (talk) 09:44, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Running up against technical limits with Template:COVID-19 pandemic data/Per capita

Timbaaa and I have been trying to get Template:COVID-19 pandemic data/Per capita/sandbox2 to work importing data from Wikidata, since there's no one currently updating it manually. We ran up first against a memory error, though, and now against a "The time allocated for running scripts has expired." error after only about a third of the countries. Could anyone help us with it?

It relies on this subtemplate I wrote, which is now this, and a similar one for deaths. Prior discussion is here. Thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:48, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Also see Wikipedia:Lua error messages#Lua timeout error and Help:Lua debugging#Occasional timeout errors. --Malyacko (talk) 08:10, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Using Wikidata templates for this is pretty well always going to hit up against this problem, unfortunately. These sorts of calls are expensive in terms of database calls, and will take time to do. It'd be better to use a bot to do it, which can auto-update the data from Wikidata as necessary, without hitting parser limits. I'm happy to work with you on that if you like. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 09:28, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, thanks, that sounds good to me! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:44, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: You might also be able to use {{Template cache}} in place of a custom bot request. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:05, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Pppery, that looks interesting, but I can't quite tell from the documentation how it works. Could you show us at Template:COVID-19 pandemic data/Per capita/sandbox2? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I tried, and I wasn't able to actually get the template to work as I wanted it to, so that suggestion doesn't work. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:39, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Okay, I've got something working! User:Yapperbot/COVIDdata is the finished product. If you want to change it, there's two important bits of configuration: firstly, User:Yapperbot/COVIDdata/template, which sets up how you want the table to look and be generated (parser functions work with my bot, so have at it!). Secondly, there's User:Yapperbot/COVIDdata/countries.json, which lists off the countries, along with each of their Wikidata properties and corresponding entities (configured for cases and deaths in this JSON file). The ones that say "Unknown" say that because they're not listed in that file, so if you let me know the properties you want to add, I can get them put in (only because it's a JSON file, so it's restricted to only intadmins to edit apart from me - the template is free to edit as normal!)

I'm currently running the bot manually, but once it's working all correctly, I'm happy to just stick it on Toolforge and run it every day or twelve hours or whatever is deemed to be best. It's only editing its own userspace, so there's no need for the full BRFA process. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:56, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, looks great; thanks so much!

For cells without data, could we change it to read "no data" in gray, the same way as Template:COVID-19 pandemic data? I think that's a little better than "unknown", since it might be known but we just don't have it yet.

For the countries to list, we should tread carefully since there's a lot of potential thorny geopolitics. Following the criteria used at the non-per capita table is probably best, since those were established by an RfC listed in the template's current consensuses. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:34, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Sure thing! Both of those things should be editable over at User:Yapperbot/COVIDdata/template - all the post-processing is done in parser functions there (number formatting, "unknown" display, etc), and the page isn't protected, so feel free to edit around as you please. Countries can also be added or removed there, but you'll need to let me know the names you change, and for any new countries or areas, the relevant Wikidata entities and properties you want to link. Each needs a population, an infections and a deaths - all of which can come from different entities. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:37, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm a bit late to the party but for what it's worth I have got it to work in Lua (see User:Jts1882/sandbox/covid). The biggest drain on script time was getting the populations from Wikidata (it took three runs to get all the countries), so I put the populations in a module subpage along with the country and covid QIDs. The cases and deaths can be retrieved within the lua time limits (just). I think the bot updates is probably the best approach, but I did notice a few issues about using Wikidata.

1. Sometimes people enter the numbers in continental format, e.g. 48.000 for 48,000. I noticed this for Spain in Naypta's bot table yesterday and edited Wikidata (the current table reflects the update).
2. Sometimes the Wikidata identifiers are not in date order. For instance, the last population identifier for [[|wd:Q804|Panama]] is 1950. I think this is why the Panama deaths per million is 463 in the Bot table (I got 97 using the 2017 population). The current version of my table doesn't get the latest cases and deaths in all cases, e.g. Philippines even though the last identifier is the latest. The getBestStatements() function seems to have a different order (I've idea why).
3. A number of countries haven't been updated on Wikidata since March or April. So I think the date of the last data should be included in the table in some way.
4. I also noticed that in some cases the Wikidata and English Wikipedia numbers don't match, even though Wikidata says imported from English Wikipedia.

Anyway, I just thought I'd mention this in case it helps. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:29, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Jts1882, sorry, I just saw this now. For anyone catching up, the Wikidata-derived table is live at Template:COVID-19_pandemic_data/Per_capita. The way the information gets there is still a little complex, though. It comes from User:Yapperbot/COVIDdata, based on the Wikidata items specified at User:Yapperbot/COVIDdata/countries.json and the design at User:Yapperbot/COVIDdata/template. After the discussion here, Naypta and I moved to here and worked out some of the kinks in implementation.

Regarding the issues with Wikidata, it's definitely an imperfect source, but I hope that its use here helps encourage people to update it better. The main benefit is that it'll be hugely helpful for non-English Wikipedias, which don't have as many editors to make updates as we do (we've already seen interest in that from Albertoleoncio and Олександр Кравчук). On a less altruistic level, Wikidata can also get automated imports from JHU and other reliable sources, which will hopefully be set up soon. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:27, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the Panama issue, the 2017 value is ranked as "preferred" since it's the most recent value (see how it has the up arrow darkened rather than the central circle). If the function is grabbing the preferred value, it should be working properly. The "number of cases" and "number of deaths" values aren't having the most recent values set to preferred yet, although the folks at Wikidata are hopefully working on fixing that. Pinging Naypta, since this seems to be something to fix. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:18, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Thanks for the ping, and cheers to Jts1882 for pointing out the issue! I've made some quite significant internal changes to the way that the bot was working (it was hacked together with JSON exports before, now it's using proper SPARQL queries), and it should be a hell of a lot better at sorting this stuff out now. It's running that update at the moment, so hopefully by the time you get around to looking at the page, it should all have updated correctly. All the best :) Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 10:40, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Double Wikidata Item

Resolved

 – Workaround was removed. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:47, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Just spotted that all articles seem to have two links to Wikidata in the Tools box. Each link goes to the same data item on Wikidata, but the top one has "Special:EntityPage" in the URL. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:03, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I assume you have the MonoBook skin. See MediaWiki talk:Common.js#MonoBook currently has two "Wikidata item" links. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:33, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I should of stated that. Thanks for the link. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:40, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Looks like it's now fixed. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:18, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Revision control

It looks like some Module pages are kept in sync across language sites like Module:Language and ckb:Module:Language (see history tab). I'd like to learn how to set this up for other pages, if possible. -- GreenC 13:53, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

That particular ckb Module was imported with the enwiki edit history (via Special:Import, see [1]), but I do think there is some sync of modules going on elsewhere, this is just not an example of that.--Snaevar (talk) 14:48, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) ckb:Module:Language was imported with page history 30 December 2019.[2] There is no automatic synchronization after a page has been imported. I don't know whether any wikis use bots to import or copy a page regularly. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Ahh ok. thanks. -- GreenC 15:04, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

New Google Books create cite tool on Chrome inserts non-breaking spaces

The "new" Google Books has an expanded "Create Citation" function that generates APA, MLA, and Chicago-style plain-text cites, which will find (and have found) their way into articles when editors don't want/know to use the citation tool and templates. The problem is that, when created from Chrome, the cites have literal non-breaking space characters in places they shouldn't.

Just a heads up in case people start running into these and wonder where they are coming from. There are thousands more of them in articles (outside of cites), too, most of which look like mistakes. Apparently, at least one user script or tool replaces them with the   entity, which seems better than the invisible character, though they should mostly be removed instead.

I've reported the Google Books cite tool issue to them (I hope) and wrote about it here. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 17:11, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@AlanM1: If you happen to have an example of this in the wild I could see what might be done programmatically. -- GreenC 14:02, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@GreenC: Thanks. I'm not sure how much of the thousands of "invisible" nbsps are caused by this particular source/bug, but one example was added at Special:Diff/960037718, adding the cite for/from this book. There were about a dozen more eventually added to that article, then changed to HTML entities by someone else's script, and then removed by me. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 15:44, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Problems with File Upload Wizard

I've been trying to upload a file but the Upload button at the bottom of the Steps 1 to 3 page stays greyed out and inactive. (I'm in the "This is some other kind of non-free work that I believe is legitimate Fair Use" non-FUR option.) No boxes appear either beside the red dots for "Please explain why this purpose could not be served with an alternative, free illustration ..." and "Please explain why you are confident that our use of the file will not harm any commercial opportunities ..." – meaning that text can't be entered in these mandatory fields. (Which, naturally, leads to the inactive Upload button.) Has anyone else experienced this? Any ideas ...? Thanks, JG66 (talk) 16:52, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Coordinates links from articles seem to be failing as it can't find https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php --David Biddulph (talk) 13:27, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

This is almost certainly due to the migration from subdirectories of wmflabs.org to subdomains of toolforge.org, and ensuing misconfiguration of the tool. Pinging its maintainers, Dispenser, Kolossos and Magnus Manske, who may be able to help resolve this. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:37, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be working now, and it's now pointing at https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php. --David Biddulph (talk) 19:43, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

@David Biddulph: That's positive as a temporary fix for sure, but the access via the subdirectory has been deprecated for a long time; the soft deadline has already passed, and in a couple of weeks it'll just redirect to the subdomain version. It does need a maintainer fix. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:54, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

Also reported at Template talk:Coord#The template seems broken. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:19, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

The tool geohack seems to work toolforge if it's requested in a subdir: https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack/geohack.php?params=45_36_0_N_45_0_0_E

But this will not help after a switch as the forwarding from old templates will not work correctly in many languages. As the geohack is an simple, old php-script directly in the public_html directory, the reason I see is in the rewrite rules from .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.+?)/(.+)$ https://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?params=$2&language=$1 [L,QSA]

Any ideas to it? I'm really no expert for this rules. --Kolossos (talk) 20:21, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Cyrillic letter el

When using the editing aid (under the edit area) to insert Cyrillic letters, why is the alternative Cyrillic el (ʌ) not available to insert? I came across this problem when writing the SS Volochaevsk article. Normally Volochaevsk would be Волочаевск, but contemporary photographs show it was rendered as Воʌочаевск. Mjroots (talk) 15:53, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Stylistic choice made by the painter in the bosun's chair?

The character ʌ is not Cyrillic el but rather is U+028C LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED V (https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf). The Unicode chart lists these characters with similar appearance; none of which are Cyrillic:

• U+039B Greek capital letter lamda (Greek and Coptic)
• U+2038 Caret (punctuation)
• U+2227 logical and (mathematical operators)

I trolled through the various Cyrillic Unicode charts listed at Cyrillic script in Unicode and found nothing that looks like the turned v except U+1D27 GREEK LETTER SMALL CAPITAL LAMDA (ᴧ) but that's Greek not Cyrillic. This suggests to me that the Cyrillic character set is likely quite complete.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:28, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

The El (Cyrillic) article itself states An alternative form of El (Ʌ ʌ) is more common in Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian. Thus it looks like it is a valid Cyrillic letter. Less common in Russian, but not unknown. Mjroots (talk) 18:50, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

In El (Cyrillic), the larger character is U+0245 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED V, which Unicode grouped under Latin Extended-B#Miscellaneous additions. U+028C LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED V is grouped under IPA Extensions. I did, however, see it in a number of images of Bulgarian alphabet as the 12th letter. @Mjroots: The small letter (U+028C) does appear below the edit window in the IPA group but apparently, you can add custom entries fairly easily; add the following one-liner to to your common.js:

window.charinsertCustom = { "Cyrillic": 'Ʌ ʌ' };

—[AlanM1 (talk)]— 14:12, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, you could do that, but I don't think that you should. If you must do that, use the Greek Ʌ U+039B GREEK CAPITAL LETTER LAMBDA and ʌ U+1D27 GREEK LETTER SMALL CAPITAL LAMDA; these, at least are characters intended to be part of readable words.

I do not think that this should be done merely to mimic the style of the name as it is painted on the ship. In the article is this:

{{langx|ru|Воʌочаевск}} → Russian: Воʌочаевск

A major reason for using {{lang-ru}} is so that non-English text renders correctly for sighted readers and for readers who consume en.wiki articles using assistive technologies (screen-readers). Dropping a non-Russian, non-Cyrillic character into a string of Russian Cyrillic characters will likely confuse screen readers. According to Turned v:

Its lowercase is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent an open-mid back unrounded vowel, the vowel in plus in many dialects of English.

That is not the sound of Cyrillic el.

I think it best to use Cyrillic el л until Unicode creates a Bulgarian variant of Cyrillic el:

{{langx|ru|Волочаевск}} → Russian: Волочаевск

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

AlanM1 thanks for your reply, which confirms that the letter is a valid alternative, which needs adding to the character set so that it can be used where needed and also so that it is correctly rendered by screen readers. In essence, its omission is an accessibility issue and it needs to be corrected. Trappist the monk, There are at least four photographs of the ship I found, all of them show the name rendered as described. There is no good reason to change the display of the name in the article. Mjroots (talk) 15:55, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Accessibility. That is precisely why I wrote all of that about {{lang}} and the various character sets. All of the characters in the Cyrillic char-insert panel are Unicode Cyrillic characters except the last one which is U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT. Inserting a Greek character or worse, an IPA character, into a Russian-language word written using Unicode Cyrillic characters is, I think, detrimental to accessibility.

You and I have likely seen the same photographs of the ship. Yes, the ship's name, as painted on the hull, appears to use something that looks like the Greek lambda Ʌ. But, accessibility is a very good reason why the article should not use characters from other scripts (Greek or IPA) in a name that is otherwise entirely Cyrillic.

Here's an experiment: if you give Google translate the Cyrillic ship name with the IPA turned v character in place of Cyrillic el you get Voʌochaevsk; mostly translated but it choked on the turned v. Do the same, replacing the turned v with small Greek capital lambda (ᴧ), you get Vojochaevsk. Both translations are wrong. If google translate, with all of the server horsepower that it has, cannot correctly translate these 'words', it seems unlikely to me that a screen reader on a pc or a mac will get it right. For completeness, using the Cyrillic el, you get Volochaevsk.

Perhaps a note, either in the wikitext or as part of the photo caption to explain what 'we think' the capital Greek lambda-like character is?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:00, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I've tweaked the lede of SS Volochaevsk to accommodate the alternative Cyrillic el. I would still like the alternative form added to the dataset as it is not just Russian that uses Cyrillic letters and it is a valid alternative. Mjroots (talk) 18:23, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mjroots: I'll note that the El (Cyrillic) mention of the alternate characters is not cited, so we don't know what the editor's choice was based on. I spent some time searching for reliable sources and can only conclude that it needs more research. I imagine it may have been discussed by the Unicode folks at some point. Some input from Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, and language editors/projects would be useful. I can understand the concern that it's not only about which are the "correct" characters, but perhaps even more importantly, what "common usage" is out there. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 04:56, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I didn't think of this as an accessibility issue until now, even though it won't affect that many blind users. Most English-speaking speech synthesisers don't read Cyrillic (but see below). I downloaded the Vocalizer synths, which are generally very high-quality, from this link in Russian and Bulgarian, and both read out the first Cyrillic character correctly but neither read out the second one. I had to download the latest versions of the English voices as well because I'm on a new computer, and I was surprised to find that they also read out Cyrillic ... again, they read the first "l" form correctly but not the second one. These voices are widely used on iPhones using VoiceOver. Graham87 04:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I've notified WPs Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Serbia of this discussion. Graham87 does your programme read it correctly in Bulgarian - Bulgarian: Воʌочаевск or not? Mjroots (talk) 06:36, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mjroots: As I said above, it doesn't. Graham87 06:43, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

The Bulgarian language alphabet

Thanks, that's useful. The illustration of the Bulgarian language alphabet - file:Bulgarska Azbuka.png certainly shows the alternative version. Mjroots (talk) 06:50, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Mjroots: Right, but note that the source of the first two images (the infobox image and this one, under History) is "own work" of Vaskots7, who last edited six years ago. The third one is "own work" of infrequent editor Добромир Костадинов. They only show what the 12th/13th character looks like (instead of "Л"), as opposed to exactly what standard code point should be used on computers to represent it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlanM1 (talk • contribs) 08:43, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Mjroots and AlanM1: As a native user of Cyrillic script, I think I can help here. In my opinion, this discussion is baseless. Those different forms of Cyrrilic El are a matter of style (i.e. font) and are not "alternate forms". Many letters (including English letters) have different forms in different fonts, and preferred styles change over time. Wikipedia uses certain font, and we write all letters using that font. We do not try to use different font just to mimic the original version of a name. Many products, movies, bands etc. use different font in their official name, but we do not try to mimic that in Wikipedia titles. So, it's "Волочаевск" in the font used by Wikipedia. Vanjagenije (talk) 17:09, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

U+041B (capital el), U+039B (capital lambda), U+0245 (capital turned v), U+028C (small turned v) characters rendered in several fonts

@Vanjagenije: That's an interesting take. Can you point to a font where the Cyrillic capital el "Л" (U+041B) is displayed with the shape of a turned V? —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 21:09, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• I can answer my own question, at least partially. In Microsoft Word 2016 on Win10, I looked at the rendering of "Л" (U+041B) in all the stock fonts. The following fonts had the turned V appearance: Bookman Old Style, Buxton Sketch, Century Gothic, Franklin Gothic Book (and the rest of the Franklin Gothic fonts), Gabriola, Garamond, Monotype Corsiva, Palatino Linotype, Segoe Print, Segoe Script. Some of these are quite well-used I think, including Bookman, Franklin, Century, and Palatino. I'll note that in all but Palatino Linotype and Segoe Script, the glyph for U+041B has the same appearance as U+039B (Greek capital lambda) (image to follow later at right).
  It seems that the right answer is to use the standard Cyrillic el characters "Л" (U+041B) and "л" (U+043b). (Pinging Mjroots) —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 22:01, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• I design fonts and agree with Vanjagenije. This situation is like arguing that we need different characters for the five principal categories of Q tail. The regular л should be used. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 22:37, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Are automatic citations to Youtube videos broken?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T254700

Hi

I know I've used the automatic citations tool to link to Youtube videos from news organisations before but I can't get it to work today, the videos I was trying to link to are below for Black Lives Matter Plaza, they are all from reliable sources

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3prAYfIL28
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTMjxBkNkPY
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCmsEva8H6Q
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncf38hZciRs

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 13:30, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@John Cummings: are you using the Wikipedia:RefToolbar gadget or something else? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:12, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: thanks for the reply, no, I haven't enabled any gadgets but I do have beta features enabled. Does it work for you? Could you try adding those references to the article. John Cummings (talk) 16:17, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@John Cummings: RefToolbar is a default gadget, I just put an extra label on it to let people know which tool they are using, can you try now and see if it says "RefToolbar" on the input screen now? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:19, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks @Xaosflux: where should I be looking for RefToolbar? I don't understand what you mean by input screen. John Cummings (talk) 16:23, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@John Cummings: when you are using whatever tool you are using to do this, does it have a popup box to type/paste into? If so, look at the title of that box, does it say RefToolbar on it, something else? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:25, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Looks like this is a problem with RefToolbar at the least, in the external lookup component that is maintained by User:Kaldari and User:Mr.Z-man, they would need to look in to that. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:37, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks very much @Xaosflux:, so I do:

1. Click edit on the article
2. Click 'Cite
3. Paste the URL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3prAYfIL28) in the 'Automatic' field
4. It says 'We couldn't make a citation for you. You can create one manually using the "Manual" tab above.'

At no point do I see any additional notifications about RefToolbar

John Cummings (talk) 16:55, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

John Cummings is using Visual editor, not the WikiEditor. VisualEditor in turn uses Citoid for its references.--Snaevar (talk) 22:22, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

phab:T254700 opened. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:49, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Update from the phab ticket, looks like Youtube/Google is blocking us, at least intermittently. Maggie Dennis - are there any official WMF:Google channels a whitelisting request can be submitted to? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:51, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

User:Whatamidoing (WMF) maybe can identify a resource? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:53, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

It looks like Mvolz is already on it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Access to WP and Wikivoyage very slow

Access has been very slow for the last little while. Is that happening for everyone or just in my part of the world? Nurg (talk) 06:11, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Phabricator extremely slow as well - unusable. Nurg (talk) 06:30, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Seems to have come right. Nurg (talk) 08:55, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Loophole in user rights?

Why are category and template creations possible for registered-but-not-confirmed/autoconfirmed editors? (edit to add: contributions link only included as example, that editor is already under investigation for sock-puppetry.) Schazjmd (talk) 14:36, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Schazjmd: At Wikipedia:User access levels#Table there are two separate rights listed, "createpagemainns", the right to create a page in the main namespace, and "createpage", the right to create pages in other namespaces. I think newly-registered accounts need the "createpage" right to create pages in the Draft namespace, so it would be disruptive to take it away from them. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:16, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

John of Reading, thanks, I didn't realize that and the reasoning does make sense. Schazjmd (talk) 15:29, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

All reflinks tools down

I've noticed the Reflinks and expand citations bot both appear to be down. Is this something that can be fixed please as it really hinders content creation without them? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 16:44, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Erroneous (but deliberate) redirects showing in search in preference to correct redirect?

Cathymichaud13 raised an issue at Talk:Wild boar. The primary search term should be sus scrofa, but on typing "sus sc", the incorrect sus scofa (tagged as {{r from misspelling}}) only is shown. Similarly "sus scr" shows only "Sus Scrofa" (tagged as {{r from miscapitalisation}}). The correct search term is never shown. This is a misfeature, if not a bug. Is there a fix for this behaviour (potentially inserting some magic categorisation into the rcat templates to reduce search precedence?) Thanks, ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 04:19, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

The only option I know is to delete Sus Scrofa to probably make Sus scrofa appear instead. Special:WhatLinksHere/Sus Scrofa only shows one link. It sounds risky to let editors influence searches. Some users would probably try to abuse it. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:06, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Reflinnks down

I've noticed the Reflinks and expand citations bot both appear to be down. Is this something that can be fixed please as it really hinders content creation without them? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 15:24, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Sidebar changes from page to page

File:Sidebar no.1.png

File:Sidebar no.2.png

File:Sidebar no.3.png

When I switch between pages such as the main page and WP:Contents and the screen we use to log in while logged out, the sidebar changes. Is this meant to be intentional? If not, can someone fix it? Interstellarity (talk) 22:20, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: Which changes? You import a lot of scripts in User:Interstellarity/common.js. Some of them add sidebar links so logged in and out is different for you. Sidebar links can also depend on the page, for example whether it is in mainspace or has a Wikidata item. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:31, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: The changes happen while I'm logged out. I am not logged in when it happens. Interstellarity (talk) 09:51, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: As mentioned, you have scripts which add links to the sidebar. They aren't supposed to show for logged out users so there is nothing to "fix" unless you refer to something else, or you want some of the links to be default for logged out users. You add way too many links for all users. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:23, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Hello again. I have uploaded some files that demonstrate how the sidebar is different. Although I don't normally edit Wikipedia with my phone, I was able to repeat the issue with my phone. I tried disabling all my scripts and I wasn't able to repeat the issue while logged in. It's only an issue when logged out. Please compare the sidebar in the files that I uploaded. Were you able to repeat the issue? Let me know. Interstellarity (talk) 15:22, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: Your screenshot of Wikipedia:Contents shows the old version of MediaWiki:Sidebar from before [3] on 4 June. I see the current version. Try to bypass your cache, or purge pages where you still see the old sidebar. All pages should eventually display the current sidebar to everybody. The "Wikipedia store" and "Upload file" links were hidden in [4] 4 June. They still show at Special:UserLogin where local JavaScript and CSS is ignored, probably for safety reasons to prevent a local script from intercepting your password. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:34, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thank you for your help. Purging the cache didn't help. However, the problem is only when I'm logged out. I think I just need to wait a little bit before the new sidebar displays to everybody. Interstellarity (talk) 16:46, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Global preferences?

Are the global preferences active on en wiki yet? --Hanyangprofessor2 (talk) 01:15, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Hanyangprofessor2, they should be enabled for all Wikimedia projects, you can access them at Special:GlobalPreferences. – BrandonXLF (talk) 07:06, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

They've been live for nearly two years, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 167#Global preferences came to the Wikipedias today or Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 167#Tech News: 2018-29, both from July 2018. The second one is also available at meta:Tech/News/2018/29. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:08, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Category rename problem

Category:Disambiguation page with short description is to be renamed to Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions following a CFD discussion but it is not at all clear what needs changing to move the thousands of pages over. Can anyone work out what's generating this category and need amending? Timrollpickering (talk) 16:02, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering: This would need to be changed at Template:Short description - but that template currently uses the "X with short description" format for everything, not just disambiguation pages. Personally, I don't see anyone objecting to them all being switched over to "descriptions" plural, but it will have a wider impact. I'm not a template editor, and don't personally have experience with that template, so pinging RexxS for any insight he may have as the creator of the shortdesc template. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:12, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering and Naypta: the text is actually generated at Template:Disambiguation page short description and Trialpears has already changed it to plural. You may need to purge the pages to see the update, but please ping me if the issue persists. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:41, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Actually I had to change both {{Short description}} and {{Disambiguation page short description}}. {{Short description}} to add the s in short descriptions and Template:Disambiguation page short description for the s in Disambiguation pages. ‑‑Trialpears (talk) 18:50, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but that's only because the TfD perversely changed the format which is in use by all the other tracking categories, which are of the form "SomethingPages with short description". Singular "short description" because pages can only have one short description each. So now we have an inconsistency between the category for dab pages and all the others. --RexxS (talk) 22:05, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@RexxS: You did play an unintentional part in the confusion. Before [5], {{Short description}} was called with pagetype = Disambiguation page. Before your edit [6] it always added s to pagetype so the added category was Category:Disambiguation pages with short description which still exists and hasn't been moved but is slowly being emptied when template edits take effect. After your edit the added category became Category:Disambiguation page with short description which was red at the time. A user noticed this and created the category but did not add Category:Pages with short description. This probably caused the systematic naming to be overlooked in the CfD. The original Category:Disambiguation pages with short description was not notified of the CfD about moving Category:Disambiguation page with short description to Category:Disambiguation pages with short descriptions, so we could say the CfD is not valid and the templates should return to adding Category:Disambiguation pages with short description. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I see. I added the plural parameter to {{pagetype}} to solve the problem that adding the 's' created "Category:Categorys with short description", so I removed the 's' once the plurals were coming directly from {{pagetype}}. The consequent problem, of course is that dab pages are articles, so that's what {{pagetype}} returns:

• {{#invoke:pagetype|main|page=0s (disambiguation)}} → page
• {{#invoke:pagetype|main|page=0s (disambiguation)|plural=y}} → pages

That means we can't create the "Category:Disambiguation page with short description" in the same way we do with the others. I had missed that the category is created via a different route (the dab template calling {{Disambiguation page short description}}). It looks like that's been trapped now. At least the current naming schemes are grammatically correct. No doubt somebody who looks for these sort of things will spot the inconsistency and propose more CfDs. But not me. --RexxS (talk) 00:14, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Why Mobile View Greying Out Images

After years reading and editing articles on my iPad Mini4, just in last several days article images became grey boxes the size of the article images with instructions at the bottom, and inside, of each box to tap to see the image. Tiresome and takes away from reading to continually tap to see images. Have cleared browser just in case and checked all my settings but, as I wrote, have never had this problem before in years. Have always used Safari w/ Google as search engine in Private mode (which I have used for years, also.) My iPad Mini 4 has Safari version 13 (iPadOS 13.5.1) while the iPad’s Safari entry just gives a selection of Search Engines: Google, Yahoo, etc. and you select one. Have selected Google, then Yahoo, then Bing, and then DuckDuckGo - all with same results as above. 128GB iPad w/cellular w/3.9GB stored in iCloud. Noticed that images return if I disable Javascript, but don’t want to continue this for the usual reasons and, as with my other settings, have had it enabled for years. ????? Thanks Quaerens-veritatem (talk) 05:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

In some browsers it is possible to block images, to reduce data usage through 4G (although there is also an option to also block when you are on WiFi). Firefox has that option, for example. That is probably what you are experiencing. You can change that in your browser settings.--Snaevar (talk) 09:36, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Do you have the same problem in Google Chrome? Is it possible to upgrade your version of Safari/iOS? This happens when you have an outdated browser. Jdlrobson (talk) 19:34, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

I’m also experiencing this on my iPad on WiFi with mobile Safari. New in the past few days. Clearly something changed. Jkatzen (talk) 21:36, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

This has happened to me in mobile safari in the last few days too Rasd (talk) 04:00, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello Snaevar, Jkatzen, Rasd, Jdlrobson. @Jdlrobson: seems to be on right track, but it may not be the Safari browser, but the problem may involve the automatic selection of Google as the search engine on iPad w/o Apple providing a way to update it to Google Chrome - as @Jdlrobson: suggested, the images DO work if you use the Google Chrome app. It may be Wikipedia updated software so Google Chrome works, but it is not fully compatible w/ the Google search engine that Apple has selected automatically for iPad (including images not appearing on Apple search engine selections of Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo). It could be a Wikipedia problem w/Safari, but Apple does not have a way to change browser settings for the images that I can find, my Safari is updated to version 13 (the latest version), and I’m not technically educated enough to see how that browser is the problem versus the search engine. If anyone in charge of programming is reading this perhaps Wikipedia and Apple could get together to resolve this problem. I’m not certain if this is a bug problem, but iPad readers may consider reporting this new problem @ https://m.mediawiki.org/wiki/BUGREPORT (WP:VPT) If so, please let us know. Thanks Quaerens-veritatem (talk) 02:29, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

It seems the browser is no longer supported. The best solution here would be a user script in User:<name>/mobile.js

Something like this should do it:

mw.mobileFrontend.require('mobile.startup').lazyImages.lazyImageLoader.loadImages(Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.lazy-image-placeholder')))`

Jdlrobson (talk) 04:06, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Seeking help with peer review closing script error - doesn't work when title includes non letter characters

Hi all, could I request some help with a wonderful and supremely useful script by Writ Keeper? (I am asking here as their activity is sporadic). The script is: User:Writ_Keeper/Scripts/peerReviewCloser.js and acts to auto-close peer reviews, which saves a lot of time.

I have noticed an error where the script doesn't close articles where the title includes characters other than letters and spaces, for example:

• Wikipedia:Peer review/Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor/archive1 - contains a comma
• Wikipedia:Peer review/5th Regiment New York Volunteer Cavalry/archive1 - contains a number
• Wikipedia:Peer review/The Offies (The Off West End Theatre Awards)/archive1 - contains parentheses
• Wikipedia:Peer review/Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga/archive1 - contains a colon
• Wikipedia:Peer review/Self-managed social center/archive1 - contains a hyphen

Thanks for your help! --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:46, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Tom (LT), the issue actually seems to be that those pages are missing {{Peer review}} from their talk pages, either because it's just not there or because their talk pages are redirects. – BrandonXLF (talk) 10:21, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Tom (LT) that’s strange, have you tried messaging an admin? DerianGuy40 (talk) 09:11, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• Good thought, but that's not necessarily going to be that useful. This is a technical issue and not one related to user rights, and not all admins are skilled at coding - that's why I've posted here. --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:14, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• True, well you have to wait for someone as I’m not a coding expert. DerianGuy40 (talk) 09:24, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Tom (LT), my activity might be sporadic, but I'm definitely still around. ;) Can you elaborate on the behavior you're seeing? What error do you see, and at what part of the process does it happen? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:08, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

To elaborate, I've looked at the code, and I don't see any reason to suspect that non-alphabetic characters would cause a problem. I'm thinking that BrandonXLF is correct, and the issue is that none of those articles have the peer review template on there, which is what the script keys off of. I'm not sure what the expectation for behavior is in that case; adding an "old peer review template" at the top isn't difficult, but it's outside the bounds of the closing instructions that I used as specificiations. There are non-trivial decisions to make: should the script create a nonexistent talk page for the purposes of adding the template? Should it break a redirect? should it still tell the user that something weird happened? etc. Erroring out and letting a human handle it is the safest option. I'm more than hapy to add handling for cases like this, but as someone who doesn't do peer-closes myself (someone else requested me to do it), I don't really want to make those decisions myself. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:30, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello! Pure speculation on my part - I guess I won't win my next game of Mao then! Your descriptions remind me of the Tolstoy quote "All happily happy families closed peer reviews are alike; each unhappy family unhappily opened peer review is unhappy in its own way" as, above, there is quite a lot of variation in why the reviews are marked as in error - eg moved, or already closed, or PR not on talk page. Some potential solutions (I don't know how easy these would be to code so please treat them as suggestions only)

For every instance the script is run, mark the actual peer review page as closed, regardless of the talk page circumstance... will still be very useful

If the talk page has the "closed" peer review template on it, then report the script as completed (even if the talk page hasn't need to be edited)

For all other cases, mark the peer review page as closed and display to the editor a message, something like "the review has been marked as closed on this page. However for an unknown reason, the talk page review notice is unable to be closed and will require manual closure." so that it's very clear to editors what to do next.

Thoughts--Tom (LT) (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I was also wondering if a link to the script could be added to the edit summaries made by it, like for most other scripts like twinkle, rater and so on (see the edit summaries 1 and 2 for what I mean). The name of the script is "PR closer". I think it's useful to track which edits were made by script in case there were problems, lets other editors know about the script, and is consistent with the summaries provided by other scripts around here. --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Writ Keeper also - this :). --Tom (LT) (talk) 15:48, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Tom (LT): Try that. I switched around the order of operations, so that it should edit and close the peer review page regardless of the state of the article talk page. It should have a more informative error message in the notification popup, as well. I didn't add the closed peer review template detection, though; I think that that would cause a false positive in the case of an article that has undergone multiple peer reviews, due to the closed review template for prior reviews. That would cause the script to fail silently, and I think it's better design to tell the user anyway, and let them figure it out. I also added the link in the edit summary that you requested. I'll leave my sandbox in testing configuration for a while, if you wanna test it out there; feel free to mess with it as much as you like to hit different scenarios. Cheers! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:32, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

That's great! Thanks Writ Keeper... I used it on a few more articles at peer review and it worked much better. I would like to request one other order change. When there is an error, the error message displays and the page doesn't refresh. I think it would be better if the peer review page refreshed (so that I can see the new "Closed peer review template" on it) and then the error message displayed. Other than that it works great and has saved a loooooottt of time. --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:24, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I thought of that, but that's not easily doable, as a page refresh also resets the state of the script. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:38, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Did it anyway! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:58, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! --Tom (LT) (talk) 07:08, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Relink tool

Hi, I know that Twinkle/XFDCloser has a function that allows for backlinks to be automatically removed (e.g. removing links from a page to be deleted). Is there an analogous tool for automated relinking of pages (i.e. change links from page A to page B so [[A|link text]] becomes [[B|link text]]? This is desirable when a page is moved to make way for a different page (or a DAB page). Cheers, Eumat114 formerly TLOM (Message) 13:13, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Recent changes / Watchlist format change - (diff | hist) move

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T202916

Hi,

This week the format of Recent changes and Watchlist changed so that the (diff | hist) no longer show in a vertically aligned list. I used this a lot on Recent changes to quickly review dubious changes, but even on the Watchlist I feel this just makes opening up the diff much slower. See this image for what I mean (and I still see the old format when not logged in).

Is this a new feature/permanent change or a bug, and is their a way to go back to the old format (I've looked at the preferences and cant see anything).

It certainly makes catching vandals via "Recent changes" slower and annoying, and I cant see why this was done (if on purpose) as if you want to view the change quick access to the diff or hist is the key actions people need?

Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 12:46, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

For me the recent changes and watchlist page looks similar than the photo on the left side in your screenshot. Do you have "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" enabled on your preferences here? Stryn (talk) 15:33, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks Stryn yes it was that! I had tried turning that off but had the watchlist open in another tab and refreshed to see if that fixed it, unfortunately that appears to reset the setting so you see no change. Changing the setting, closing the tabs, and then looking worked! Thanks again KylieTastic (talk) 16:13, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
  • KylieTastic, I copied an ugly workaround for this problem to phab:T202916. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks Whatamidoing (WMF) pity a known problem like this still not fixed in almost 2 years :/ Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 16:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Visual Glitch

On pages with a lot of code, why when you put it to visual mode it glitches heavily. Any response would be kind. How to fix it? DerianGuy40 (talk) 07:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

DerianGuy40, do you have an example of a page where this is happening? – BrandonXLF (talk) 08:14, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

BrandonXLF this is one. 2019-20 FC Barcelona season also there is another glitch when you copy something onto source code it won’t let me type and auto deletes. DerianGuy40 (talk) 08:34, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• Pasting problems in the “edit source” screen? I’ve seen them too, but mine are a bit different: pasting anything with formatting makes it go haywire (can’t edit what was pasted, have trouble editing what’s around it, edits don’t show up at all when previewing/saving), even on small pages. In some cases, even cutting something from the “edit source” screen and pasting it somewhere else on the same screen creates these issues. Brianjd (talk) 14:25, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I’ve had that multiple times and it’s really screwey DerianGuy40 (talk) 18:12, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

DerianGuy40, you've used several different editing environments, so it's a bit hard to tell which one's causing the problem. Would you please look at mw:Editor and tell us which screenshot looks closest to the one that's producing this problem? (It looks like your last edit to that article was in the mobile wikitext editor.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:18, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) there is two problems I wish to report, one is the buggy visual when there is a lot of code and the second one is a paste/copy problem in source mode which makes it go haywire DerianGuy40 (talk) 08:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

DerianGuy40, I'd be happy to help get your problems reported to the devs, but I need more information. To start, I need to know:

• what kind of computer/device you're using (e.g., "Android" or "Windows 10")
• what web browser you're using (e.g., "Chrome")
• whether you're on the mobile site or the desktop site
• which editing environment you're using (e.g., the mobile wikitext editor).

If you don't want to post all of this, you can send it to me in Special:EmailUser/Whatamidoing_(WMF). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) ok so

• IPad iOS 13.something
• Safari
• Both
• I use wiki.ed, mobile visuel and also source mode.

both problems need looking at. DerianGuy40 (talk) 07:03, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, User:DerianGuy40, but I have more questions: Did you mean that you use WP:WikEd (the local gadget, which has lots of bells and whistles) or mw:WikiEditor (the most common old wikitext editor)?

Also, in that wikitext editor, do you have syntax highlighting turned on (colorful text vs plain black)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

• Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

• There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [7]
• Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [8]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 June. It will be on all wikis from 18 June (calendar).

Future changes

• Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [9]
• The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [10]

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21:36, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Forcing substitution all the way down

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T4777

I wrote some code that generates a year:

{{#ifexpr:{{CURRENTMONTHNUMBER}}<5|{{LASTYEAR}}|{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}

I'd like to set it up to substitute, but when I just make all the elements {{safesubst:<noinclude/>...}}, it only goes down one level, so I end up for instance with {{#expr:{{#time:Y}}-1}} in place of {{LASTYEAR}}. Is there some template I can wrap around the whole thing so that it'll keep substituting everything within until it just gets to the plain year? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:15, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Each of the used templates must be designed for substitution. {{LASTYEAR}} isn't so you either have to edit it or avoid it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

There is a request from 2005 at phab:T4777. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:32, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, thanks for the phab link; it's interesting that it's been around for that long. I set up {{LASTYEAR/sandbox}} to work alright, but it seems {{CURRENTMONTHNUMBER}} also isn't set up for substitution, nor {{MONTHNUMBER}} beneath it, so this might be more trouble than it seems. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:57, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

mw:Help:Magic words#Date and time has {{CURRENTMONTH1}} so I'm not sure why {{CURRENTMONTHNUMBER}} was made. The easiest way to compute your function is using mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions##time to get the year 4 months ago: {{#time:Y|-4 months}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:40, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

That worked; thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:53, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Creating and saving a preloaded page with one click

I'd like for editors who click on the "Test what you've learned in the sandbox" button at Help:Introduction_to_editing_with_Wiki_Markup/6 to go to a subpage of their userpage automatically preloaded and saved with something like User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage. Is there any way to add an action onto the URL for the button so that a single click will create and save the page and take them to it? I've reviewed mw:Manual:Parameters_to_index.php#Edit_and_submit but I haven't been able to find anything promising. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:29, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that would require adding some sitewide JavaScript. I would oppose anything that enables somebody to make a link which saves something without user confirmation or a clear user act like installing a script or clicking a rollback link. For privacy and other reasons, users should be able to control whether they save something others can see. Some users sometimes want to keep it private that they are logged in. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:46, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, you mean like.... I could write a JS page that would be automatically saved as a user’s subpage and then loaded in his browser and post his credentials to my phishing server? (aka, no that is not possible) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:36, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@TheDJ and PrimeHunter: the privacy concerns definitely occurred to me, and I'd be alright with having a confirmation step similar to the one at the start of WP:Adventure. Is there any other solution for giving people a private prefilled sandbox, so that they don't have to worry about encountering others' edits or having theirs instantly reset? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 14:58, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Is it good enough to just open an edit window to create a new section on the designated page with preloaded text? See the "Add a new nomination now!" link on Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention/Editor of the Week/Nominations for an example. isaacl (talk) 16:45, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Isaacl, that wouldn't be ideal, since new users can get confused very easily, and adding an extra step to the process where they have to click save to get to the page adds to the complexity. I know we do something like that for submitting drafts, and that causes plenty of confusion itself. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:28, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

If I'm going to test what I learned about editing, though, then going to an edit box where I can start testing seems reasonable. isaacl (talk) 22:12, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

I really do not like this idea. There should be more consistency between the learning experience and the horrible truth, not less (one reason I was against Teahouse's principle of top-posting - it was encouraging people to top-post elsewhere). If users get the idea that certain links will create a page without the means to check and amend before saving, they may expect that to occur in other places besides. Also, if they do not consciously use a Publish changes button (or equivalent), they may not realise that they have saved something new. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:10, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Redrose64, that's a fair point. But I would appreciate some brainstorming as to what a viable alternative might be. The current sandbox system is really bad—we're sending users to a communal page where they're encountering junk (including potentially offensive content) from others, and their edits often conflict. The personal sandboxes for logged in users are obviously much better, but they still don't start with any preloaded content that could make them a more useful place to experiment; they're in effect an empty playground. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:49, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Have you looked into using users' personal sandboxes with mw:Manual:Creating pages with preloaded text? Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:53, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, I've used preloading before (for instance while renovating the Teahouse), but the page you linked to doesn't seem to have a one-click option. I gather from this thread that there are concerns about that, so I'll probably end up using preloading as the best available option. But as I mentioned above to Isaac, I don't think it's ideal; part of what we want to teach people is how to open editing mode, and having a button that takes you directly into editing mode rather than to a page violates the principle Redrose64 is advocating for not creating too different an experience. I think the best solution might be somewhere in between: have a pop-up confirmation message (similar to what's used at WP:Adventure) rather than an editing box.

Longer-term, we might want to discuss whether there ought to be preloaded content in your personal sandbox the first time you click on it. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:07, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: Here's a completely crazy idea - although sometimes crazy ideas are the best: Send people to a Tool Labs page to start the introduction bit. They click a button there, that calls a bot to create their sandbox page (or a sandbox page in the bot's own userspace, perhaps) with some predefined content, and then redirects them to that page. That way, there's the best of both worlds - nobody's security is compromised, you can teach the user how to click the edit button, etc etc. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:09, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, ooh, I like that! Having a bot make the edit takes care of the security concerns very nicely. Is everyone who's logged in on Wikipedia also logged in at Tool Labs? For users who click the button while logged in, I think it'd be best to put the page in their userspace, and for users who click while logged out it could be made in the bot's space. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: OAuth can be used with Wikimedia SUL to make sure that everyone with an account on any Wikimedia site can log in the same way on Tool Labs. They would have to go through an authorisation process, but not enter their login again - just click a button to "allow" access to their account. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:34, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I think at that level of detail, a tutorial with screen shots and a screen capture video would be more helpful as a step-by-step guide that new users could follow along. isaacl (talk) 20:26, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Just plopping it here for my own and others' reference: the sandbox preload is at Template:User sandbox/preload and MediaWiki:Sandboxlink-preload-pagename. There appears to be no preload when one creates one's talk page or user page, which is a shame especially in the case of one's userpage. Anyone feel like designing something? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:16, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Bypassing the display of the copyright notice and affirmative "publish changes" push is a bad idea, especially for new users. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:52, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Firefox's find in page finds phantoms in edit window

Win10, Firefox 77, source editor. If I edit Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#reFill appears to be down again, and press Ctrl-F to find the word "pinch" (which appears once in that section), it first finds the occurence in the rendered preview, highlighting it in light green. F3 finds the word in the edit window, highlighting it in a somewhat darker green. F3 again finds a third occurrence in the same place, highlighting it in light green (i.e., the same word is highlighted – the color lightens). The status line confirms that it finds 3 matches. The general case (I think) is that it finds doubles of everything in the edit window. Other case with more hits don't always find them in the same place – I get brief flashes of text in different places.

The problem goes away with the Syntax Highlighter gadget disabled. I'll note too, that the (new?) blue pencil on the toolbar to the left of the advanced menu with the tooltip "Syntax highlighting" appears to be depressed all the time; clicking on it makes no difference in syntax coloring or the bug. I have wikEd loaded, but disabled. The issue has been going on for maybe a week or so (like maybe since Thursday). Nothing unusual in the browser console. Was there a recent change in the gadget, maybe that added that pencil button that doesn't work? —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 13:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Try this one weird link

Please click this: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?dtvisual=1#Try_this_one_weird_link

and "Reply" here to tell me what you think. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): It did nothing. --qedk (t 愛 c) 20:41, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

It "should" be giving you a little "Reply" link at the end of each datestamp. Is it not there? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

No. —Cryptic 20:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Well... I suppose that's the definitive feedback: "Not working for anyone else". Thanks to all of you for testing it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Afraid I can't tell the difference - what am I meant to be looking at? Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:40, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), I'm not seeing anything different when I click the link. I don't know if it's conflicting with reply-link.js though. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:49, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I was briefly getting a "Visual" tab when using dtenable.js earlier today, but it seems to have gone away. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:10, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

When I clicked it, it jumped to this section (in reading mode). Same as a normal section link. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:42, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I examined your subpages. I get a "Reply" link after each signature when I run the code in User:Whatamidoing (WMF)/common.js:

:if ( $( '#ca-addsection' ).length ) mw.loader.using( 'ext.discussionTools.init' );
:

The link produces a new box I used to write this post. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:51, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

The reply feature automatically added colons to the above code inside <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight>. I guess it tries to make indentation and doesn't know where colons should be omitted. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:58, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

I still get the "Visual" tab (with the link above, with the Javascript to load it; also, note that this tab is visible only after clicking the Reply button), and I don't know why it's not working for everyone else. https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?dtenable=1#Try_this_one_weird_link should bring you to this section and add the "version 1.0" (plain text box) "Reply" links (which I believe are going to become "[Reply]" links soon). The ?dtvisual=1 version either shouldn't work for anyone (including me), or it should work for everyone (as it does for me). Hmm...

PrimeHunter, the Reply tool adds colons, and in the short term, it will mangle multiline syntax. So, for example, you can add a gallery of one image, if you type it in a single line, but not a gallery that requires multiple lines. In the medium-term, they're planning a technical RFC to add another bit of wikitext, which will prevent that (and which, as a happy side effect, will be useful for corralling the kind of invalid wikitext that mangles the rest of the page). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:37, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): dtenable=1 works for me without mw.loader.using( 'ext.discussionTools.init' ). dtvisual=1 only works for me with it. Does it work for you without it if you log out or blank User:Whatamidoing (WMF)/common.js? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:18, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Did nothing noticeable for me, just went to the section in reading mode. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:00, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I think it's only working for me because I've got the "version 1.0" tool enabled in my .js already. They're supposed to be changing the config "real soon now", at which point it's possible that this will start working for people without a user script enabling it. Perhaps we'll try again on WP:THURSDAY.

Thank you all for trying this out. I'm sorry you couldn't see the tool after all. (Also, if you copy the line from my common.js file – I love it – please remember that you'll need to remove it at some point in the future, when the tool is available for more general use.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Adding a default year to a date

In a template, I am passed a date that may consist of simply "June 12", which needs to be sorted in a table as June 12, 2020. Anything else that isn't of the form Mmm Dd should be sorted as-is. Is there a better way than the following? Have I understood correctly that there's no "%l{2,8}"?

| data-sort-value="{{{4|}}}{{#if:{{#invoke:String|match|s={{{4|}}}|pattern=^%u%l%l%l?%l?%l?%l?%l?%l? %d%d?$|nomatch=}}|, 2020}}" | {{{4|}}}

—[AlanM1 (talk)]— 18:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

My preference would be to emit some sort of error message and not process the date. The old saying is "garbage in, garbage out". Jc3s5h (talk) 18:29, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

That, or shove it through {{#time:}} which in the absence of certain components, uses the corresponding component of today's date. So, {{#time: j F Y|June 12}} → 12 June 2024 and of course {{#time: F j, Y|June 12}} → June 12, 2024. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:25, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

To be fair, the solution to most time problems is "shove it through {{#time:}}" Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:31, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The problem with #time is that it provides the current year as the default. Next year, the dates would all change to 2021 (incorrectly). In this case, I'm trying to allow a yearless date to mean 2020. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 20:47, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

You can put the call to #time in a template and subst the results, I think? isaacl (talk) 20:58, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Sure: {{subst:#time: j F Y|June 12}} → 12 June 2020. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:37, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Even better; I wasn't sure that subst: would work on the function call directly. isaacl (talk) 22:57, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Where's that script?

I remember reading about a user script that hides usernames. The idea was that if you were patrolling RecentChanges (or maybe evaluating an RFC) and wanted to reduce the risk of being biased by the user's reputation, then you could switch this script on, and the usernames were all hidden. However, I can't find anything about it now. Does anyone else remember this and perhaps know where the script is? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Yair rand wrote the script, and it's over here. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:12, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): The primary purpose is to avoid bias at places like ANI. I gave some explanation here, and there's also some discussion at ArbCom's ongoing RFC. Note that the script does not yet work while editing. It's mostly supposed to be a proof-of-concept, tbh. --Yair rand (talk) 19:26, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! That is exactly the post that I remember reading last year.

I'm not sure how you'd make it work inside an edit window, but the mw:New requirements for user signatures should (eventually) make detecting signatures in read-mode more reliable. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Firefox can't display infobox images in the preview of pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T255484

Hello, here on Debian 11, Firefox 68.7 ESR can display images in the "Page previews" feature only if those images are hosted by Commons, but the images whether free or non-free, which are hosted on Wikipedia (en and other languages) are not shown in the pages preview. I don't know about Google Chrome or Chromium, it can be tested for example on Patrick_Swayze#Film and Category:1990s crime thriller films. To editor Ahunt: Hello, if you have latest version of Google Chrome or Chromium installed on a Linux system, please check them for this problem and report their status, thanks.--Editor-1 (talk) 05:27, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry don't have either, but I can tell you that the page previews, including the images, work for images on both Commons and Wikipedia on Firefox 76.0.1 on Lubuntu, so I suspect it must be an issue with either the ESR version of Firefox or something in Debian. - Ahunt (talk) 16:17, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Works fine on Debian 10 with Firefox 68.7.0esr on WSL. There is never a popup for categories when using Page previews and the page image at Patrick_Swayze#Film is hosted on the commons. Try Cadillac, the page image is hosted on the enwiki. – BrandonXLF (talk) 03:55, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@BrandonXLF: "There is never a popup for categories when using Page previews" It is wrong, the feature I am talking about is located at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering under Reading preferences:
"Page previews (get quick previews of a topic while reading a page)"
and it works also in categories, my problem is that non-free infobox images, e.g. films articles, are not shown in the pop-up/balloon when using Firefox on this system.
"Page previews and the page image at Patrick_Swayze#Film is hosted on the commons."
just its infobox image is hosted on the commons, not the listed films.--Editor-1 (talk) 09:02, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Editor-1, I see what you mean, I thought you meant the links to Patrick_Swayze#Film and Category:1990s crime thriller films weren't working, not the links on those pages. Do you have any specific links that don't work for you? – BrandonXLF (talk) 19:52, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

@BrandonXLF: Sir, as I said "non-free infobox images, e.g. films articles, are not shown in the pop-up/balloon when using Firefox on this system" and it applies to all the articles that have a non-free image in their infobox.

Not someone else have this problem?!--Editor-1 (talk) 03:34, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Do you have any scripts or extensions installed in Firefox? Those can sometimes cause unpredictable effects. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:42, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): No, I don't have any extension, it is vanilla Firefox.--Editor-1 (talk) 16:00, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Editor-1, can you try it in mw:safemode? If it works correctly in safemode but not normally, then the problem is in a user script or gadget. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:39, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): When I report this problem I ran Firefox in private mode several times in different days, and also cleared its cache and logged-out from WP to make sure the problem is not from my side, this is not a new problem, it exist for many months. By the way, if rapid versions of Firefox don't have this problem as User:Ahunt said it, I really don't care to this problem because I no longer use Firefox even as a second/backup browser, because its problems are not limited to this, there are better options to use. I actually reported this for other people, Thanks.--Editor-1 (talk) 03:49, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Firefox's private browsing mode is not the same as MediaWiki's mw:safemode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF):Allright! I followed mw:safemode and again there was no success, this problem is older than "many months", it actually exist for several years! I always thought it is a standard behavior because those images are non-free and there is no link or explanation about this feature at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, when I could recognized that this is a problem/bug that I used a Chromium-based web browser and noticed that it shows all the films posters which are non-free.--Editor-1 (talk) 05:09, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, User:Editor-1. I've reported the problem at phab:T255484. I can see from your contributions that you're not using any version of the mobile editor or the visual editor, but that leaves a lot of territory open. Could you take a look at mw:Editor and tell me which editing environment you're using? (The most likely options are WP:WikEd or the 2010 mw:WikiEditor.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I use "2010 wikitext editor" because it is very fast and provides enough and easy-to-use features, I only use visual editor when I want to edit a table, by switching to it from this editor. Thank you too.--Editor-1 (talk) 03:39, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

mw:Naming things is hard, and the way some software got named seems to be confusing here. I thought you were talking about "previewing pages" – like, click the [Edit source] button, make a change, click the Preview button – but the Phab task sounds like you're talking about Page Previews, which used to be called WP:Hovercards. In that case, it doesn't matter which editing environment you're in. Sorry for the extra questions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:12, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

My status changer spontaneously broke

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T254797

User:Cyberpower678/statusChanger.js which was working up until this morning, is now broken, and plastering the dropdown across the screen rendering Wikipedia unusable. Anyone have an idea what's going on?—CYBERPOWER (Around) 13:53, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: It's gonna be related to phab:T254797 - specifically, see MusikAnimal's comment there about this week's train. Easy fix, though; just add vector-menu-dropdown as a class to your p-stress and p-status elements, then add vector-menu-content-list to the <ul class="menu"> you've currently got, and all should be right as rain again. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 14:13, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Naypta, awesome, thanks. Works again. —CYBERPOWER (Around) 14:26, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Auditing mainspace creations?

User:FloridaArmy has been banned from creating new articles in mainspace. Is there any good way to audit compliance? A search for new page creations in mainspace isn't useful, because a page created in draft space and ultimately accepted, shows up in the search results. I'm looking for pages that were originally created in mainspace. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:18, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, perhaps something like this? And Ctrl-f for "Draft:", any non-highlighted lines would be what you're after, perhaps? There might be a better way. Never mind, this suffers from the same issue. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:52, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Creation log, if you don't need anything created earlier than 23:10, 27 June 2018. There's no on-wiki interface to filter by namespace, but querying for it is straightforward (just be sure to use logging_userindex instead of logging). —Cryptic 17:56, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Cryptic, Yeah, that worked, thanks. It took me a few iterations to get the query right, but that's about par for the course with this schema :-) https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/45926. Continued at WP:ANI#Possible Violation ?. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:22, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

You're probably better off looking for the 'new redirect' tag, or at least page.page_is_redirect=0, than for 'redirect' somewhere in the comment. Even better would be to inspect the redirects manually, so you can find hypothetical cases where the user created a page as a redirect and then converted it to a normal article, but of course that can't be done programmatically. —Cryptic 19:34, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Cryptic, That's a good idea; I wasn't previously aware of the is_redirect field. Unfortunately, that's page.is_redirect, so it gives me the current status of the page. I'm looking for what happened at the original time of creation. I'll chase down the new redirect tag idea; that sounds like it might be more what I need. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:53, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Does the ban include creating redirects in mainspace? Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 18:26, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Want a list of all categories, and a list of all articles

 Done resolved thanks to the help received here, esp from @Cryptic. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:40, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

What's the simplest way to get machine-readable lists of:

1. all pages in the category namespaces
2. all pages in the article namespace

In each case I just need a bare list of titles, with no extra fields, and no exclusions. (If extra fields are unavoidable, I can strip them out, so that's not barrier; it's just a not a want).

In each case, it would be nice to exclude redirects, but that's not essential.

I guess this could probably done using Quarry, but I don't speak SQL.

Can anyone suggest an alternative method? Or maybe draft a Quarry query for me?

Thanks! --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:15, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Is Special:Allpages suitable? Quarry isn't going to work well for this; it starts to choke when there's more than a few thousand results, and there's more than fifteen million pages in the main namespace and almost two million in the category namespace (neither excluding redirects). —Cryptic 17:41, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, if I understand what you're after correctly, which is a list of categories and a list of articles (such as at Special:AllPages, but without limit) here's a Quarry query:

SELECT page_title FROM page WHERE page_namespace = 14 AND page_is_redirect = 0;

This might take a while to run (not even sure if it'll complete, due to size), so if you want a demo of how it'll look, just add " LIMIT 10" to the end, before the semi-colon. This is fast to run so it'll give you a preview.

For pages in the article namespace, replace page_namespace = 14 with page_namespace = 0. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:42, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader and BrownHairedGirl: A list of all pages in the article namespace is already available in the database dumps. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 17:47, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

The dump includes redirects.

The query does complete - I'm currently cleaning up results from essentially the same thing. The problem with doing it on Quarry is that, although the query finishes in 30ish seconds (for namespace 14) or 70ish (for namespace 0), it takes a very long time to move the data to Quarry, and a ridiculously long time to display the results page. —Cryptic 18:00, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Nuh, sorry, missed that we were looking to exclude redirects. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 18:04, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for the prompt help @Naypta, ProcrastinatingReader & Cryptic. I am trying the Quarry query now, at https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/45923.

For article space, it would be lovely to also exclude disambiguation pages, i.e. all pages in Category:All article disambiguation pages. Can anyone help me with how to use Quarry to do that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:17, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

quarry:query/45924. But again, it's not going to scale - increase the "LIMIT 100" at the end, or remove it entirely, and you'll see things grind to a halt.

I've got lists of category/main-namespace non-redirect titles; they're about 80 megabytes total gzipped. How do you want them delivered? —Cryptic 18:27, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, @Cryptic, that sounds brilliant. I think if we try email, we will probably hit a size limit at some point in the process. Is there anywhere you can upload it to so that I can download it? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:56, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I'll mail you shortly. —Cryptic 19:05, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

BTW, this is for BHGbot task 6. My work so far has shown me that only a small proportion of eponymous categories are categorised as such, so in practice I have been generating my edit lists by: 1/ using Petscan to generate lists of categories under a particular heading 2/ converting the category titles to article space 3/ using AWB in pre-parse mode to exclude article titles which are either redirects or non-existent.

This is all massively inefficient, because Petscan won't give me more than about 800,000 titles at a time, and the category trees are massively polluted, so each Petscan dump gives me massive duplication. And then the AWB trawl is very inefficient.

So I reckon that it will all be massively easier if I start with a complete list of category titles (minus redir & dab) and a complete list of article titles (minus redir & dab), and then just use a few Unix utilities to compare the two lists (sort, comm). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:50, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

If it's going to run more than once, getting me to send you the output isn't going to work. I'd say the easiest way is to request a toolforge account (instructions) and run the queries there. Example: echo "SELECT page_title FROM page WHERE page_namespace=0 AND page_is_redirect=0 AND NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM categorylinks WHERE cl_from=page_id AND cl_to='All_article_disambiguation_pages');" | sql enwiki_p | tail -n+2 > main-ns-no-redirs-no-dabs —Cryptic 19:05, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

@—Cryptic, my intention is that this will be a one-off run. So if you do find a way of implementing your v kind offer to let me download your files, that will do me fine.
I'll try toolforge if that doesn't work out. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:24, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

{{YGM}}. Let me know when I can remove them. —Cryptic 19:35, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks, @Cryptic. Mail received, and all three files downloaded, so you can remove them. This has been very very helpful. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:16, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Bot to watch a category and notify of new additions

Hi. Is there a bot which can monitor a category, such as the category that {{helpme}} requests are added to, and leave notifications of each new addition on-wiki at a specified target page, such as my personal talk page? Just checking as I am looking for something similar for AfC WikiProject, and I suspect that it might be already implemented. Thank you. Regards, --Gryllida (talk) 01:48, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't know much about the bots (all I know is that you can ask at WP:Bot requests if no-one replies here). However, if you just want to get notified when a new page gets added to a category, you can do that via your watchlist: as long as you're watching the category in question and you've unticked "page categorization" from the controls at the top of your watchlist (it's ticked by default). – Uanfala (talk) 00:40, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Citation Bot’s Zotero instance down

Anyone have any idea why after the DNS change it would not work? https://translation-server.toolforge.org does not work since change described at https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/News/Toolforge.org Discussed problem at https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/User_talk:Citation_bot#URL_expander_down_-_anyone_have_any_idea_why?? and https://github.com/ms609/citation-bot/issues/3141 AManWithNoPlan (talk) 11:38, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Absence of Infobox in Bengali Wikipedia

In Bengali Wikipedia, in the pages of country/ district/ city, while editing, the Infobox is missing. Please help... ANUPAM DUTTA 10:50, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Anupamdutta73 (talk • contribs) 10:47, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Anupamdutta73: Hi there, can you provide links to some of the articles to help explain the problem? Darren-M talk 11:12, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, is this only in mobile? — xaosflux ^Talk 11:16, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Darren-M: Hi Darren, Thanks for replying to me... I got my answer.. I was referring to "Visual editing"..... But now I have another question. What is "area_magnitude" and how is it calculated ? Some cities/states/countries have it , but not others... Thanks in advance.

ANUPAM DUTTA 11:52, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Anupamdutta73: bn:Template:Infobox settlement is based on Template:Infobox settlement (this isn't always the case for templates in different languages), so see the latter for documentation of area_magnitude: "Setting this to any non-empty value will create a link to the appropriate order of magnitude of area page (e.g. 1 E+6 m²)." Maybe the Bengali Wikipedia doesn't have any relevant link. In fact, it appears that neither do we. A lot of small articles were redirected [11] to Orders of magnitude (area). PrimeHunter (talk) 12:18, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Treating search string

Hi, in the advanced search I know you add a $ and click the treating box to add something on the end of a line. Does anybody know what I have to enter to add something at the beginning of a line on a long list. Also if there are lots of sub sections, here for instance (now here) how would I go about adding es: ''' ''' | fr: ''' ''' |de: ''' ''' |it: ''' '''| pt: ''' ''' | nl: ''' ''' between the lines? I'm working on developing something which will be moved to the mainspace eventually. Ping me if anybody has the answer, cheers.† Encyclopædius 13:09, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I guess you refer to the search and replace icon at the far right when "Advanced" is clicked in the standard toolbar above the edit area. It uses regular expressions. I use Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Regular expression for the syntax. ^ matches start of line and $ is end of line. I haven't found out how to enter a newline in the replace box so I capture one with (\n) in the search box and insert it where wanted with $1. It's complicated in some contexts but simple in your case. Search for (\n) and replace with $1es: ''' ''' | fr: ''' ''' |de: ''' ''' |it: ''' '''| pt: ''' ''' | nl: ''' '''$1. The first $1 replaces the original newline and the second adds another newline after your string. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:00, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Special:DisambiguationPageLinks - erroneous entries, & update frequency

Special:DisambiguationPageLinks has the potential to be a useful page to support link cleanup, but the way it's currently constructed seems like it has two major flaws:

1. This page will contain hat notes, even when they are legitimate. The first entry on the list today is Anarchism → Anarchists (disambiguation). Investigating the article in question reveals that this is a perfectly legitimate use that shouldn't be in scope: "Anarchist" and "Anarchists" redirect here. For other uses, see Anarchists (disambiguation). This means a huge amount of trawling of the list is required in order to find a legitimate issue. It would be helpful if the page could exclude any links contained in a redirect2.

2. This page only updates every 2 weeks, which seems far too slow in order for it to be a useful cleanup tool. At the very least, there needs to be a way for users to mark an issue as resolved.

Thoughts? Darren-M talk 08:02, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

It's also probably worth noting that similar issues have been reported a handful of times on the Wikipedia_talk:Special:DisambiguationPageLinks page, albeit none for several years. Darren-M talk 08:04, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Links to a title such as Mercury (disambiguation) are usually deliberate and correct, because someone has decided to make an intentional link to the disambiguation page. We normally need worry only about Disambiguation pages with links where the target is a dab whose title does not end in (disambiguation), such as Mercury. Certes (talk) 16:47, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Certes, I agree, but that still requires manually hunting through the Special: for pages that are actually errors. I think amending it so it only captures links that don't end in disambig would make sense and is a good shout. Thanks, Darren-M talk 17:23, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Changes to custom signatures

Please put mw:New requirements for user signatures on your watchlist. The first technical bit might arrive here on WP:THURSDAY, July 2nd. The first step is just to stop letting people accidentally save new broken signatures in their prefs (e.g., without appropriate links, with unclosed formatting tags that will screw up the rest of every page, etc.). This isn't too dramatic, but I wanted to make sure that you all knew about it, since there's a chance that you'll get a question. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

We will probably get questions about this change on VPT, especially after editor notifications begin to happen. The basic idea behind the most significant of the changes is that editors attempting to create or modify signatures with almost any Linter error will no longer be permitted to save their signatures. This may be frustrating for some editors. Existing invalid signatures will continue to be usable, but not changeable. There are additional, less onerous requirements that will have a more limited impact here on en.WP, namely technical enforcement of existing requirements that signatures link to a user, user talk, or contributions page.

Examples of signatures that cause problems, and their fixes, can be seen in this edit and this edit, which might be tricky to parse. (These links are included here for educational purposes only, not to "syntax shame" any individual editors. Wikicode can be hard to get right every time; I know I fail a lot.)

Obsolete tags, namely <font>...</font> and <tt>...</tt>, will continue to be supported after this change, although WMF developers are building a switch that will allow en.WP to request that they be disallowed in signatures if we get consensus to do so. They are already not recommended here at en.WP. We can have that discussion at VPP, Wikipedia talk:Signatures, or another appropriate venue. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:03, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Forbidding redirects wasn't in the proposal, and seems well out of scope. There are plenty of users who link only their redirected user page in their sig - even just among admins, I can think of four just off the top of my head. Making us choose between being redlinks or not seeing pings from new users who just cut-and-paste the now-mandated user talk: link can't be the intended effect here. —Cryptic 02:41, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I see what you mean; the "Outcome" has a result that does not appear to have been proposed or discussed on the MW talk page or in the related task for signature links, T237700: For clarity, there must be at least one local link that is not a redirect. The developers did make some minor errors in their statements in the phab tasks, that they later revised when asked for clarification, so maybe this is one of them. You might want to ask at mw:Talk:New requirements for user signatures. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:30, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Cryptic, AIUI your sig will be fine, as are the sigs of the other three editors you link. You are providing a direct link to your actual userpage. The fact that your actual userpage redirects elsewhere is not important. The "redirect" thing is about people whose usernames have changed, but whose sigs point only to their old usernames. I should figure out a better way to explain that on the page.

Anyone who's curious about a specific sig (yours or someone else's) can check a tool set up by AntiCompositeNumber. Compare, e.g., what it says at https://signatures.toolforge.org/check/en.wiki.x.io/Cryptic against what it says about this outdated signature at nlwiki. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I can't imagine how it could made to not work - would it validate my sig every time I signed? If not, what's to stop me from unredirecting my userpage, setting my sig, and then redirecting it again?

My real concern is that a mismatch between documented and actual behavior is a bug, and there might be nobody around who remembers the context n years from now when someone helpfully fixes it. —Cryptic 19:16, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I updated the page to "there must be at least one local direct link (not via a redirect, e.g. from old username) to one of those pages", I hope that makes it clear. (As a side note, it would indeed validate the signature every time you sign, because you can use substituted transclusions in the signature, and we can't really "validate" pages you transclude in your signature when you edit them.) Matma Rex talk 20:03, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Did 'languages' and 'In other projects' swap order in the sidebar?

Am I mistaken, or have the 'languages' and 'in other projects' links in the sidebar changed their order? I'm sure I used to look above languages to find the link to Commons, but now I have to scroll down the page to find it. I've seen Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2020 left sidebar update (but only after the fact), but that doesn't seem to cover this change. Does anyone know what happened, or am I misremembering? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:29, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Mike, I remember hearing about someone moving this higher as a result of reader research, but now I can't remember who told me about it. Perhaps it's part of the mw:Desktop improvements project? Or it might have been the mw:Language team. If you have mw:Compact Language Links enabled (I do at most wikis, but not here), then the amount of scrolling is reduced. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

This is phab:T254546. --Izno (talk) 21:03, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Relisted proposal: Allow wikilinks and other wikimarkup from Template:! tooltip text in photomotages to be displayed on Media Viewer

I am looking for continued discussion on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 180#Proposal: Allow wikilinks and other wikimarkup from tooltip text to be displayed on WP image pages so that the proposal will be either accepted or rejected. The proposal is for Media Viewer captions autogenerated from the Template:! text in a photomotage to support wikitext, especially bolding, italics, and wikilinks. It seems that allowing this requires minimal software changes. :@RexxS:--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 19:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm in favour of auto-creating useful captions for images displayed by the Media viewer, however that may come about. I'll ping @Naypta and Sdkb: as they also expressed interest in the original proposal. --RexxS (talk) 19:29, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I would also be in favour of this.StormcrowMithrandir 22:03, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Help needed with project page of the Wikipedia:ILAE Wikipedia Project

Hi

I am the editor-in-chief of the ILAE Wikipedia Project, project trying to bridge the gap between academicians and Wikipedia. We are trying to set up the project page and need help with the use of templates and would be glad to get inputs from interested volunteers. Furthermore, any inputs on how to go ahead with the project are welcome. Diptanshu 💬 07:17, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Deferred Changes

Deferred changes (WP:DEFER) is the idea that edits can be put into Special:PendingChanges for review, by edit filters, ORES (active/passive), and bots (passive). Active defer is where the edit is not shown until approval, while passive defer simply puts the edit into a queue for review, but does not stop people from seeing it.

The purpose is to reduce the visibility of damaging edits to the public, both on low traffic articles where few people see it but where it can persist for a long time, and on high traffic articles where those are reverted faster but are viewed by more people. Such damaging edits are particularly problematic on BLPs. There is a general aversion to moving edit filters to block, for fear of causing false positives, but this would alleviate those concerns by providing an option for a middle ground between blocking and logging. It is better explained on the page: WP:DEFER

Deferred changes was unanimously approved by the community in a 2016 RfC. It is listed on phab T150594 as blocked on development. The proposer, Cenarium, began coding the technical aspects to implement this RfC, but disappeared before finishing & merging it in. The work he did is public and he was near completion. I pulled it and modified it to make it work with the latest version of the extension, and would like to work on finishing it and getting it deployed onto en.

So I have two questions:

1. Do you think deferred changes would still be useful on en?
2. If so, how do I get this reviewed and merged in (after development is complete)? DC is part of the FlaggedRevs extension (used for pending changes), which is not very popular amongst WMF developers.

Thanks, ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 19:27, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

How does this differ from WP:PC2, a feature that we rejected a few years back? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:46, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Redrose64, PC2 (WP:PC2016) is about keeping an article subject to pending changes indefinitely, to a greater level than PC1. The amended PC2 was to include autoconfirmed users for review as well, but not extended-confirmed users, hence making PC2 a lesser alternative to extended-confirmed protection. (the original PC2 was to make all non-reviewers subject to review)

Deferred changes is about using abuse filters, ORES and bots to put edits into the queue (technically speaking, achieved by putting the article into pending changes right before the edit is submitted, and removing the pending changes once the edit is approved). Articles are not kept in pending changes with DC. And AbuseFilters can control, with precision, which edits should be sent into review. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:27, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

• I can see possible uses for this, certainly. There might be issues that since the edit filter team categorise most filter actions purely internally, and this would be a good compromise option in many cases, there might be a major spike in edits in the queue. @Redrose64: how does it handle non-problematic edits (by non-reviewers) that come in behind it? Do they stack like would be the case for a normal PC page in those circumstances? PC is denied on pages that may be too active (stacked edits being very hard to handle in PC review) - edit filters work on types of edits, across all articles. I can see issues with an edit being queued and every other edit on a busy page stacking up Nosebagbear (talk) 21:32, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
• (1) I would definitely support bringing the feature to enwiki, at least for edit filters. We can develop a guidelines about when to use it later. For the reasons Nosebagbear suggests, it might be a bad idea to enable this on a "busy" anti-vandalism filter. But it would be immensely useful when dealing with some kinds of LTAs; the LTA might not bother, knowing that most readers won't see anything, and the occasional false positives won't overwhelm the pending changes queue. (2) @ProcrastinatingReader: For edit filter integration, at least, you'd want to talk to Daimona Eaytoy about this. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:58, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

  @Suffusion of Yellow: Thank you for notifying me. There's already a task for edit filter integration, T51770. Personally, I would be very happy with that change, as I see a huge potential for various situations (especially involving LTAs, as you mentioned). OTOH, I do not plan to work on that, because it seems that the integration wouldn't be easy (and also because I have 0 experience with FlaggedRevs). --Daimona Eaytoy (Talk) 09:29, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

  Daimona Eaytoy, I saw that task (and the others Cenarium made). I spoke with a couple of WMF developers on IRC who effectively stated any changes to FlaggedRevs were practically dead, since nobody wants to review any code for it due to fear of breaking it. T185664. Most of the code is already done, and was reviewed/looked at back in 2016, and this particular change is not so difficult or complex because it hooks in rather nicely into FlaggedRevs, hence I'd hoped it would be easier to get it approved and merged now, but despite some attempts I can't find a reviewer who would be willing to help me move this forward. Hence I'm not too sure where to go from here. From my understanding of the review process, I need a reviewer (or multiple, in this case, I suppose) to take a look and one to give a +2 to get it merged? Though, seems nobody is willing to review code for FlaggedRevs and consider giving that +2. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:37, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

  Suffusion of Yellow, Nosebagbear: appreciate your comments. I have some thoughts I can add?

  • Queue size: Queue size can be controlled due to the power and precision of edit filters. For initial testing in production, EFMs can limit usage to a subset of pages defined by a category (eg a selection of highly vandalised BLPs), or certain forms of LTA, to gauge reaction and impact on queues.
    • there might be a major spike in edits in the queue. The ability for reviewers to deal with queues has been raised. I think the issues in scale come down to a misunderstanding of the reviewer role. The review process is (formally speaking) only intended to remove vandalism or patent nonsense, obvious copyvios and BLP violations. In practice, it has turned into content curation where reviewers feel they cannot approve a review unless the content is properly vetted, like edit requests, resulting in larger queues. We have almost 7,500 reviewers (more than we have rollbackers). To assist with quick approvals of deferred edits, the following may help:
      • Huggle / SWViewer integration, to allow patrollers to quickly determine if an edit is good. Huggle already has good edit functionality. Ideally some highlighting to make it clear that this is a deferred change, so users realise they need to mark it as "good" for it to be reviewed, rather than just skip it. Patrollers can see edits within minutes, so this would ensure low queue times for deferred content. I propose only working on this if it turns out queue management is problematic, and wouldn't recommend this for an initial release.
      • Highlighting deferred changes within Special:PendingChanges (eg red background), to make clear that reviewers should only review for edits not being vandalism or BLP violations, rather than aiming to entirely vet the content. This could result in a greater chance of error, but I think any vandalism prevented is a net positive, and since the current default is that edits go into live anyway, a reviewer accidentally approving a possibly problematic change is not much of a problem compared to the status quo imo - it'll just get picked up by a patroller or an editor more familiar with the page. To throw an extra idea in the air, perhaps the standard for approval can vary with each edit filter (LTA filters going into defer queue may have different 'not good' criteria to BLP filters, so each filter being able to leave a couple of guidelines for the reviewer on what constitutes a 'pass' may be helpful). Sometimes reviewers aren't sure whether to accept a revision, so they leave it for someone else. This extra clarity, which is variable on the reason the edit was flagged, could help reviewers feel more confident in approving/rejecting.
    • how does it handle non-problematic edits (by non-reviewers) that come in behind it? Do they stack like would be the case for a normal PC page in those circumstances? That's correct. Although, the PC queue will only show the flagged edit (even though the others are technically also 'pending', they should be auto-approved if the problematic one is). The difference in behaviour also comes from whether the defer is active or passive (explained above):
      • Active: The visible page is the stable (pre-edit) version, but when users go to edit they see the latest version (just like current PC). No content splits, simply a delay on when the change goes live (until problematic edit is reviewed). With the measures mentioned above, this time should ideally be low
      • Passive: The visible version and the edit version are both the latest (unstable). The edit is sent to the pending changes queue, but it goes live as well, so the queue only serves for checking after the fact, to ensure no problematic edits are missed. In this form, it causes no visible "disruption" to the wiki.
  • Regarding guidelines on when to use: the RfC approved usage but didn't define guidelines, as you've noted. Hence, I presume discretion would fall onto EFMs and the BAG for edit filters and bot usage respectively. My personal opinion is that further guidelines are not required; EFMs already have discretion in when to move from log -> block, and I think they're also right to use discretion on when to use filters. The BAG should also be competent to decide, ideally with consultation of the EFMs, in which cases it would be appropriate for a bot to take on the passive flagging role. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:27, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Redirects tool URL misdirected?

When I go to "what links here" and then "Show redirects only", I'm taken to https://dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?page=[where I'm linking from], which gives me a security warning. Then when I bravely continue I get one of various ad pages, like Norton or EasyFileConvert. Am I misconfigured, or did the URL get misdirected? David Brooks (talk) 19:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I tried it again, and now it's just a blank page; hopefully that means it's getting mended? David Brooks (talk) 19:43, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@DavidBrooks: The domain has lapsed, and you're being sent to a parking page. The tool maintainer probably hasn't renewed the domain. Pinging Dispenser, although they've not been around for a number of months. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Dispenser formerly had a number of tools hosted on WMF servers and all was well with the world. Around 2013-14, the WMF decided that any tool which they hosted would need to be open source; but Dispenser was not happy with this, and moved their tools to private servers. This means that if problems occur with those tools, we at Wikipedia can do nothing about it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:43, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

What you can do about it is remove the link from Special:WhatLinksHere, if only to protect the innocent from potential harm. David Brooks (talk) 21:08, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

DavidBrooks, give me a sec. I'll get rid of it. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 21:10, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

DavidBrooks, aaaaand gone. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 21:18, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I would imagine a replacement would be pretty easy to cook up (not volunteering!) David Brooks (talk) 21:19, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

DavidBrooks, not from me. I've got a full plate already. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 21:26, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Back in August-September 2014 when all this kicked off, volunteers were invited to write replacement tools that would satisfy the T&Cs of the WMF. I don't recall much in the way of positive response. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64, Cyberpower678, and DavidBrooks: It's a trivial task to do; the relevant data is already available through the MediaWiki Action API, it just takes throwing a user interface of some sort on it. I'll try and cook something up when I get the time - no promises, but should be doable. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:54, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

In fact... why is this even necessary? MediaWiki already exposes this information to the user nicely on WhatLinksHere! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 10:56, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Necessary, probably not, handy, yep. Not too long ago I needed lists of all redirects for a whole series of templates. While the list from the tool needed massaging to get it into the form that I needed, using the tool's list saved me the initial step of trimming the extraneous text from each redirect:

Wikipedia:VP(T) (redirect page) ‎ (links | edit) → Wikipedia:VP(T)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:10, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Dispenser has a few other links as well which we might consider removing or revisiting. --Izno (talk) 22:30, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I seem to recall (sooo long ago) there was a "show transclusions only" link that User:Cyberpower678 also deleted. Was that also from Dispenser? David Brooks (talk) 22:39, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

DavidBrooks, there was only one link there when I deleted it. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 22:40, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Cyberpower678, you also removed the link to https://tools.wmflabs.org/templatecount from MediaWiki:Linkshere, but the tool is working perfectly fine. – BrandonXLF (talk) 23:23, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

BrandonXLF, should be fixed —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 00:59, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Cyberpower678, I only see the label "External tools: with nothing after it. Of course, I can see transclusions by selecting "Hide links" and "Hide redirects"; maybe with appropriate messaging they can be the only UI we need. Or a set of three complementary "Show only..." links. David Brooks (talk) 03:36, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

It's looks like it's because the comment "ends" with —-> instead of --> in MediaWiki:Linkshere. – BrandonXLF (talk) 05:20, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

A few more, inaccessible to us mere mortals. --Izno (talk) 11:06, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

And actually, there's a lot of uses that may be less-centralized... --Izno (talk) 12:32, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Are the changes mentioned here related to the fact that I cannot find the "transclusion count" tool (I think that's what it was called) in "pages that link to"? For example, Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Convert shows "external tools" with no external tools. I don't think this tool had anything to do with Dispenser. Johnuniq (talk) 05:32, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I found the problem and fixed it (at MediaWiki:Linkshere). Johnuniq (talk) 07:15, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Can someone look at Template:Automated tools/core and decide what to do with the dispenser links in that template? Thanks. -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:11, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I removed that whole mass of unnecessary complexity. --Izno (talk) 12:32, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

The "transclusion count" tool was from Jarry1250 (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:45, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

From a security point of view, encouraging editors to visit an external website (dispenser.info.tm) was always dubious. Template:Automated tools/core has now been fixed by replacing dispenser.info.tm with what is presumably its IP address (69.142.160.183). That has to be a temporary measure because it is really unsatisfactory to encourage people to assume that a random IP is not spreading malware or tracking the IP address and other identifying features of editors. Training editors to accept a broken https certificate is super bad. Somehow, the Dispenser tools have to be brought into WMF toolforge, even if with reduced functionality. Johnuniq (talk) 00:55, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Some of the source code is available at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/sources/. – BrandonXLF (talk) 05:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

There is source code, yes, but it is All Rights Reserved (as I see nothing stating otherwise). Any replacement tools would have to be re-written from scratch to be freely-licensable and able to be hosted on WMCS servers. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:01, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Let's just use the 69.142.160.183 address if it works? This tool is sorely missed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:54, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

It does not work, as it generates an unfixable SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN error. It is an incredibly bad idea to link to a page with an HTTPS error, as it will train people to click through HTTPS errors in the future. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:03, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

That's what I'm doing, using http: rather than https: and taking the risk that eavesdroppers may get a few seconds' advance notice of my Wikipedia edits. (I had the IP address squirrelled away from previous outages.) However, if the domain name has expired, there's a risk that the hosting service may soon expire too leaving us with no tools. I find dabfix and dablinks particularly useful, but editors who work in other areas may have other opinions. Certes (talk) 23:15, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Template Request

Hey, I was wondering if some enterprising editor (familiar with code, unlike me,) would be willing to make a template out of my sandbox, to be used by WP:CVUA trainers upon students completion of a course. The way I see it, such a template would require three parameters - grade, link, and sign. If this isn't feasible, or would take a lot of time, that's fine, this all is for conveniences sake alone. I was thinking it would look something like this: {{CVUA-completion|grade=...|link=...|sign=...}}. If more details are required, please just ask! (But do try to ping me, thanks.) Thanks! -- puddleglum^2.0 00:32, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Puddleglum2.0 OK so I merged the grade parameter with the score parameter so grade= and score= will do the same. I have moved it to {{CVUA-completion}}, so there you go with your template! {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 05:05, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Okay so I just realized there is Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Academy/Graduate. DId I just waste a lot of time just on this? Is this template even needed though? Okay well if it gets TfDed, ... {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 05:22, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Can I Log In, Thanks a ton! I don't think you wasted your time - that template is from an older version of CVUA (The entire program underwent a complete overhaul a couple years ago) thanks again, your work is appreciated! Cheers -- puddleglum^2.0 05:33, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

CVU Academy Graduate

Congratulations from both myself and all of the instructors at the Counter Vandalism Unit Academy on your successful completion of the Counter Vandalism Unit Academy. You completed your final exam with a score of 0%. Well done! Further information on your achievement can be found on this page. It has been a pleasure working with you these past few weeks, and thank you for offering to help out in removing vandalism from the project's articles. If you ever need any advice or assistance in the future, you're always welcome on my talk page. Hope to see you around! ~~~~

Yeah I think the wording after the score may need some work, but there is zero chance that a CVUA student will fail. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 05:42, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Is there a tool that...

Hey all, I'm looking at WikiProject India's membership list and I'm curious how many of those people even edit anymore.

Is there a tool in existence that I can load in my common.js that can look at that list and tell me how long the person has been inactive? These lists are rather pointless if you never know who's current. Alternatively, is there a tool that can periodically cull out the name of any user who lapses in activity for a set time. Kind of like how we have talk page archivers remove content? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:48, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: I made a one-off script to do something very similar to this this as part of my software for the Feedback Request Service. You can read my Golang code for doing the pruning here, but if there's appeal for something similar, I'm happy to get something configured to work with that more broadly. It's slightly complicated by the fact that it really needs a direct database connection, as standard MediaWiki outputs don't really cut it for that type of high-volume usage, but that's doable through the Toolforge DB replicas (and indeed is how I did it before). Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 17:05, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: I probably should have mentioned in my request that I am not technically minded, so my eyes will gloss over if I read code. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:21, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, there are probably tons of these sorts of lists spread across the project. Here's another: Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Subtle Vandalism Taskforce. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:25, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: Ack, sorry - I have a tendency to techbabble a lot of the time that I ought to kick! Perhaps it would be an idea to create a web interface for de-cluttering these sorts of lists, is that the sort of thing you were looking for? i.e. put in a list title, tell it the format people's names are in on the page, and it will check the names and get back to you with updated wikitext and the removed names. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 20:02, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

If there was an easy way to do this, then yes. Take this script for instance: User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/cuStaleness.js. When I'm looking at a sockpuppet investigation report with multiple users reported, the script automatically tells me how long ago a user edited, and calculates whether or not any CheckUser data likely exists, since data goes stale after 90 days. It reports this information to the right of the user's name. I guess it identifies user names by looking at templates like {{checkuser}}, {{checkip}} and {{SPI archive notice}}. So even something that would overlay this data on a preview page would enable someone to manually delete any inactive account. Although the more awesome tool would be something that you leave on the page, like a talk page archiver, that checks once a month or every three months, and deletes anybody who hasn't edited in a year, let's say. I dunno, maybe that's not worth the effort.

One thing I notice, is that most of the names at Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Members are formatted like {{Mailing list member|user=Aaqib Anjum Aafi}}. So if we removed non-active members, it would potentially help reduce needless mailing list traffic. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:09, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: Either of a web interface or a bot to do it are possible; I'll wait for a few days and see if anyone else here points anything out that already exists. Failing that, I can add this to the list of things for me to do My only concern with a bot doing it is the potential for abuse - for someone to maliciously use the bot to remove people automatically who oughtn't be removed. Any ideas as to how to avoid that would be thoroughly welcome! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:53, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: I've asked at WT:IN to see if anyone even wants me to pare down their list at all. I suppose I'll wait for some feedback before inadvertently wasting your time. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:00, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey Cyphoidbomb, it looks like the only expressed opinion was positive, and looking for use on another WikiProject too. Have you found a tool already to do it? If not, I might design a template that lets people configure a bot to automatically remove users who've not edited in a long time from lists, and sends those users a message informing them of that (+removes indeffed users automatically). Would need to get it through BRFA, but I think it's probably worth it - it'd be useful for me in managing the FRS, and it seems like it might get used elsewhere too Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 11:57, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: If you don't mind creating, it I wouldn't mind using it! Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:49, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cyphoidbomb: BRFA filed! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 22:26, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Cyphoidbomb, the WikiProject I participate in most simply redirected their manual participants list to the one created automatically by bot. In this case, the equivalent page is WP:WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject India. --Izno (talk) 19:14, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

(The question of why the bit hasn't run for that project in 3 months would be a good one for the operator. --Izno (talk) 19:27, 14 June 2020 (UTC))

@Izno: Interesting, but then I wonder what value is in having a massive list of participants if you can't tell who's actually interested in the subject area (as opposed to being a casual passer-by), who's a vandal, who's since hopped to another IP, etc. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:29, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

I think that page is just representative of how WikiProjects aren't really worked on actively. Mine is one of the active WikiProjects, with some 80 people who regularly contribute to the WikiProject pages directly and are accordingly in the interesting list. --Izno (talk) 19:39, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Izno: Worth noting that, as that page points out, it's a list of active editors who happen to be editing articles within the purview of that WikiProject, and "distinct from a membership list that the WikiProject may maintain". Definitely useful though! Nuh - I'd not refreshed the page since Cyphoidbomb's comment above. Sorry for the needless ping! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 19:43, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Google search

Why Gaurav Taneja article is not showing on Google search Princepratap1234 (talk) 12:51, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Because it's only four days old. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:44, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

See more at Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing#Indexing of articles ("mainspace"). PrimeHunter (talk) 10:43, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Whitespace in signatures?

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of examples of signatures set off in monotype, like Ctvaughn555 did here. This is due to leading whitespace. Has something changed recently in some tool (Twinkle, maybe?) which is causing this? Or some global CSS update? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:28, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: they may have just entered a space, examples here aren't showing the problem. Note, that user is not using a custom sig either. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:15, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I haven't noticed more of this lately than the usual new users who don't know to avoid leading spaces. The double signature and formatting in your example indicates Ctvaughn555 signed with a leading space. Reports there aren't supposed to be manually signed. A signature without leading space is automatically added to the post by {{SPI report}}. In this case it became the second signature. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:21, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, OK, I might have just noticed a false pattern. Regarding Reports there aren't supposed to be manually signed, there's a generic problem around that. Many of our tools and templates automatically add a signature (like the reply tool I'm using now), but many don't. Unless you're familiar with the particular tool, there's no way of knowing. This particular tool has a preview function, so I can see that it's adding my signature. Most don't. There should be (a lot) more standardization around this. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:09, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Editing around Jewish & Arabic names

Why is it so technically difficult to edit around names written in Jewish and Arabic print? GoodDay (talk) 13:36, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Arabic and Hebrew are written right-to-left, while English is written left-to-right. In other words, in "ABCD" the leftmost letter ("A") comes first and the rightmost ("D") last, while in "אבגד" the rightmost letter ("א") is first and the leftmost ("ד") is last. Modern browsers try to take this into account in mixed text, meaning that in "ABCD אבגד EFGH" even though "א" is adjacent to "D" in the character stream and "ד" is adjacent to "E", when displayed correctly it appears the other way around. What's worse, numbers and most punctuation aren't inherently left-to-right or right-to-left, instead they pick up the directionality of adjacent text, which can result in things like date ranges that are intended to be left-to-right being interpreted as right-to-left instead. Wikitext sometimes doesn't help matters, as the directionality handling can have different results when applied to the plain-text markup (which includes a lot of punctuation) versus the resulting HTML.

Fortunately, the fix is usually pretty easy if you can manage to do it: Adding ‎ or {{lrm}} after the right-to-left text will generally make things render sensibly both in the editor (because of the Latin alphabet letters "lrm") and in the rendered HTML (because the resulting invisible character is also considered strongly left-to-right). Anomie⚔ 14:11, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Ok, because countless times, I've had to give up on making gnome edits, like fixing dashes. GoodDay (talk) 14:29, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

There are templates such as {{Rtl-lang}}, {{Lang-he}} and {{Lang-he-n}} that you can wrap around, e.g, Hebrew, text. They won't solve all problems, but they should help. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 17:32, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

The advice I got once (from a dev) was that when all else failed, to type the article in an e-mail message, and then copy that and paste it into the editing window. The visual editor is usually pretty good at handling bidirectional text, but fixing a problem (rather than typing new content) can be difficult. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:02, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, for anyone who's interested in this subject, I love and recommend Mooeypoo's talk for Strange Loop. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26

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

• There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [12]
• Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [13]

Changes later this week

• The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [14]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

• A temporary fix helped wikis make their main pages more mobile friendly. This was in 2012. It has not been recommended since 2017. It will not work after 13 July. Wikis should use TemplateStyles instead. 91 wikis still need to fix this. You can read more and see if your wiki is affected. [15]

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

18:48, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Please note that "The developers" in the third item means the people at Wikimedia Deutschland working on their own community wishlist, so if you have questions about this, you want to find Robyn and Max. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:12, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Removing spaces from external links in template parameters

Here is how an external link works. If you type [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ not a not funny link], it will return not a not funny link. This means that inside single brackets, everything after the first space is the name of the external link.

So when you have a template that contains [https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:BlockList&wpTarget={{{User|<includeonly>{{REVISIONUSER}}</includeonly>}}}], and the User parameter is any spaced username, like Can I Log In, you expect it to go here, but instead it returns I Log In. Spaces in URLs like that would be replaced with + or %20. If you google "Never Gonna Give You Up", in the URL, it will show "Never+Gonna+Give+You+Up" or "Never%20Gonna%20Give%20You%20Up".

I'm no Lua programmer, so I'm wondering if someone more technical than me knows Lua and know a solution to this (e.g. replacing " " with "+" or "%20"). {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 18:49, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

@Can I Log In: You may want something like unspacedString = mw.ustring.gsub("Spaced string", " ", "%%20"). The double % is needed because "%2" would otherwise denote the second captured substring. Further details: mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual. (I'm not sure whether your signature asks me to reply to your talk page rather than here, so I kept the reply with the question.) Certes (talk) 19:24, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

You want an existing MediaWiki feature: {{urlencode:}} at mw:Help:Magic words#URL data. Many special characters in usernames also require encoding. If you also use {{fullurl:}} then it becomes more portable when other wikis copy our templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:34, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

You may also want plainlinks to avoid the external link icon: <span class=plainlinks>[{{fullurl:Special:BlockList|wpTarget={{urlencode:{{{User|<includeonly>{{REVISIONUSER}}</includeonly>}}}}}}}]</span>. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:40, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I've already tested the URL magic words; it brings similar results. Not a solution. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 20:23, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

mw.uri.encode( string, "PATH" ) might give you the best of both worlds. Certes (talk) 20:30, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Not a solution to what? It works fine in your example: <span class=plainlinks>[{{fullurl:Special:BlockList|wpTarget={{urlencode:Can I Log In}}}}]</span> produces [16]. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Hmm {{urlencode:}}. Didn't get that the first time. WIll do. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 21:43, June 19 2020 (UTC)

@Can I Log In: You can just use the normal wikilink to Special:BlockList/Can I Log In in this case. Nardog (talk) 00:59, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

This is already resolved; you have misunderstood my intentions.

I am trying to rework {{Edit partially-blocked}}, discussed at VPP, now at TfD. Like other types of edit request, particularly pending changes, which quotes Furthermore, reviewers should take special consideration of the reason given for protection and attempt to uphold it. I wanted something similar to that, in this case, attempting to uphold the reason for the partial-block. Due to things I didn't know and how external links work, I came here for help just for that. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 01:47, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Did the site CSS just change?

Out of nowhere, unvisited links are blue and underlined and visited ones are black and underlined. What in the world happened? I just saw this spontaneously change in my browser when I loaded a new tab. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:28, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

What on Earth?! This even happened at WikiIndex... At en.voy, links aren't underlined and are black. Wow. Something very odd is going on in my browser. This is outside the scope of en.wp but if anyone wants to be nice enough to help me diagnose it, that would be great. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:33, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Okay, it was the Firefox Relay extension: it got updated today and went haywire. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:58, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Templates for Railway companies disestablished in XXXX

The template Template:Railway companies disestablished in year cat generates different categories for some years eg see Category:Railway companies disestablished in 1876 and Category:Railway companies disestablished in 1875. For 1876 they are “Transport companies disestablished in 1876” and “1876 in rail transport” while for 1875 they are “1875 disestablishments” and “1875 in rail transport”. I think they should all be as for 1876 and I would create all the extra “Transport companies disestablished in XXXX” categories needed (template available), but cannot do so while “Railway companies disestablished in 1875” etc does not generate the “Transport companies disestablished in 1875” category etc needed. Hugo999 (talk) 13:42, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

It's good when templates are coded to not add red links to categories. Are you saying that after 655,000 edits you don't know how to create a page? Just enter the wanted page name in the search box including namespace and click the red link on the resulting page. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:31, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

The most recent article I created (about a notable Himalayan expedition) was 1960–61 Silver Hut expedition, but here I wish to create categories not articles (and will create the missing categories if the template option is changed). Hugo999 (talk) 21:31, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Categories are created the same way as articles. If there is no existing red link then make a search on the page name Category:Transport companies disestablished in 1875, and click the red link after "You may create the page". Or make a red link in any other way, or modify a url, or do whatever you do with articles. The template checks whether the category exists and only adds it in that case. I think that's good, not bad. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Having created Category:Transport companies disestablished in 1874 and Category:Transport companies disestablished in 1875; the 1875 category is empty and the 1874 category only contains a canal company article I added, i.e. neither has as subcategories Category:Railway companies disestablished in 1874 or Category:Railway companies disestablished in 1875. And though there are earlier-created Transport company categories for 1871, 1872, 1874 and 1876 they are not accessible from the new 1874 and 1875 categories, which show only their own year. Anyway this method of searching by year is laborious compared with clicking on a redlink in the “Railway companies disestablished in XXXX” category; for 19th century disestablishments there are c70 “Railway” categories compared with c15 Transport categories, leaving c55 Transport categories to create. Hugo999 (talk) 01:58, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Another method to create a new category or other page is to manually modify the url of a similar page to get for example https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Category:Transport_companies_disestablished_in_1877, and then click the "Create" tab if the page doesn't already exist. A null edit on Category:Railway companies disestablished in 1875 listed it in Category:Transport companies disestablished in 1875. A purge updates a page itself but a null edit is needed to update link tables. The missing links to other years in the decade in the box at Category:Transport companies disestablished in 1875 is an unrelated issue caused by [17] by BrownHairedGirl. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:34, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be three issues here:

1. The navigation templates don't create red links. This has been a common feature of catnav templates since I created and deployed Template:LinkCatIfExists2 in Feb 2018. The greying out of redlinks was soon adopted by {{Navseasoncats}}, so greying out is now used on over 300,000 categories. If @Hugo999 really wants to go back to having navboxes which spew out redlinks, then they can propose that at WT:CATP ... though I doubt there will be much support.
   I am very surprised that after over 650k in nearly 4 years, Hugo seems unsure how to create a page without a redlink. Like others above, if I don't want to type it out, I just edit the URL of a similar category.
2. To create a long of run of categories in a series, I use a text editor to create a list, and do a quick AWB run to create the categories. Creating these series manually seems to me to be a form of masochism: about 20- times as much work, with less accuracy. If Hugo wants to post on my talk explaining which series they think is needed I will be happy to do the work (unless I think creation would be a bad idea).
3. The {{Transport_companies_disestablished_in_year_cat}} and {{Transport_companies_established_in_year_cat}} populate "Category:Transport companies (dis)established in YYYY]] only if it exists. As PrimeHunter noted, a null edit is needed to make that happen ... or alternatively, if a lot of such purges are needed, i just tweak the cat header template, which makes it purge all transclusions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:06, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@BrownHairedGirl: There was also the unrelated issue of [18] making greyed out years for categories which do exist. It can be fixed by adding a pipe near the end of {{Navseasoncats with decades below year|Transport companies disestablished in |{{Title year}}|}} to indicate an empty third parameter, or by changing {{{3}}} to {{{3|}}} in {{Navseasoncats with decades below year}} to allow not having a third parameter. I usually prefer the latter approach. Editors will often assume they can just omit a parameter and don't have to explicitly pass it as empty. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:35, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Ooops. Thanks for pointing out my error. Now fixed.

{{Navseasoncats with decades below year}} needs to be luafied. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Well using my sandbox I could create the missing categories “Transport companies disestablished in XXXX” quickly. Mainly 19c but there were some (c11) missing in the 20th century. Then an edit/save of each “Railway companies disestablished in XXXX” category populated each Transport category. There were c12 “Airline disestablishments in XXXX” to transfer to the “Transport companies dis… “ category. And none of the “Transport companies dis… “ categories showed the “greylink” problem. Thanks for advice.Hugo999 (talk) 04:59, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Problem with an educational template

I reported it at the template page and EDU noticeboard few months back but I guess those are low visibility places. Could a friendly gnome fix this? Shouldn't be that hard, just need to add a paramater/functionality to display external link in a template. See Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard#Edu_assignment_template_still_can't_link_to_dashboard for my recent repost of the problem. TIA. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:53, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Automatic software version/date update in comparison table

Hi, I would like to update table here [1], but the stable versions/dates are hardcoded. There exist templates such as [2] but I can't find a way to output only one parameter (eg only release date). Furthermore, those templates include a ref, that I dont need. Is there a way to kind of automate the table update using software main page (via existing templates or wikidata)? [1] https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Comparison_of_web_server_software#Overview [2] https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Template:Latest_stable_software_release/Nginx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:1811:371B:2300:1D6F:CE56:75AD:C7D2 (talk) 07:37, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Citation tool won't insert citations while in source mode

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T255834

Device: iPad (2017)

Browser: Safari

OS: iPadOS 13.5.1

Issue: While in source mode, the citation tool prepares a citation but doesn't add it to the article regardless of whether the citation was made automatically or manually. The issue is absent in Visual editing mode. This issue came after I updated to iPadOS 13.5.1.

Can someone file a bug report? It requires my email ID but I have chosen not to give it till I turn 18. RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 15:38, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, User:RedBulbBlueBlood9911. I'll file the bug report and tell the team. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for filing the report, Whatamidoing (WMF). However, I noticed another bug (Again, in the source editor) in which I can’t copy-paste Wikipedia URLs (the inbuilt linking tool still works, thankfully). Other URLs from news sites work, however… RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 05:22, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Looks like even the template addition tool is messed up now (it worked earlier today). RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 11:21, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, this is a pretty serious bug. It all seems to be the same bug. The unifying factor seems to be that it can't do things that use the medium-size dialog box to insert wikitext (refs, templates, images, galleries, etc.). You can still make links, do character formatting, and insert tables. Unfortunately, I don't know how soon it will be fixed.

Tell me more about the URL problem, please? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

The issue is this: when I copy-paste a URL for anything within Wikipedia (copied from Safari's address bar), the editor usually converts it to a wikilink. But for some reason, it does nothing now. RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 04:41, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Adding on to that, copy-pasting part of the URL (like kipedia.org/…) works, and the inbuilt wikilink tool also works, Whatamidoing (WMF) (pinging in case the mention in my last edit summary didn’t work). RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 04:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

In the 2017 wikitext editor, in Safari 13.1 on macOS 10.15.5, when I paste a URL to a Wikipedia article into an article, it pastes in the whole thing (i.e., https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Example). If I paste the URL into the link box, it turns it into a plain link (i.e., [[Example]]).

Are you getting nothing when you paste the URL straight into the article? And do you also get nothing if you use Safari's Edit > Paste and match style? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, nothing comes when I paste a URL (on iPadOS, it usually converts a URL into a wikilink automatically). And there is no "paste and match style" feature in Safari on iPadOS, Whatamidoing (WMF). RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 10:07, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) I don't know about RedBulbBlueBlood9911 but I can now add citation again. I've just added my first couple of references, after 3 days of being unable to. Danstarr69 (talk) 18:44, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) RedBulbBlueBlood9911 Actually, no I can't. I can add references in visual mode, but I still can't add references in source mode. Danstarr69 (talk) 18:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

This should be fixed by now.

RedBulbBlueBlood9911, I don't know what supposed to happen when you paste a URL into an article on iOS. The "expected" behavior varies a bit by platform. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

RedBulbBlueBlood9911, could you check the pasting behavior again, to make sure that it wasn't fixed along with the other problems? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

2020 United Nations Security Council election

Yep, citations, templates and automated wikilinks are all working as demonstrated here, Whatamidoing (WMF). Thanks for your assistance! RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 06:59, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad it's working again. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

reFill error reports?

Is this the proper place to file WP:Refill error reports, like this and this? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 00:19, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

GoingBatty, well it sort of depends on what the api request returns. I don't have time to test now, but citoid and refill are basically a wrapper around zotero, so check if it works there. If Zotero has the same problem, you need to fix it in Zotero. The API results can be retrieved using this, if you understand a bit of programming. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:26, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

i mean quick check with https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jul/01/riddle-of-the-sands-the-truth-behind-stolen-beaches-and-dredged-islands.. That's not the guardian, It's the guardian's magazine The Observer, republished via the guardian website. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:27, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

The Observer is the Sunday edition of the Guardian, not its magazine. There is also an Observer Magazine that comes as a supplement. Like most of the British papers the Sunday papers started off as separate enterprises, with separate editorial staff, journalists and ownership. Since the Guardian acquired the Observer in 1993 the amount of separation has decreased, although the Observer still has a separate editor. The website makes little distinction. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:54, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

reFill appears to be down again

And Reflinks is still down - there's no way to fill in bare URLs right now, unless there's a tool I'm missing. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:06, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Ser there is Citer. It is laborious since you can only do one ref at a time and, as with the other two, there are some it won't format - PDFs chief among them. Even more laborious is doing them manually but that option does work. Refill has been down for a few hours but reflinks has been down since last week. Trying to get someone to tell us what is happening is difficult to say the least. I wish there was a Wikipedia:Refill noticeboard or maybe a Wikipedia:fixing bare url tools noticeboard where the boffins and us plebes could keep each other up to date. It would seem to make sense on a collaborative project. MarnetteD|Talk 05:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: Yeah...that's the thing. I feel like reFill is down often enough that we ought to have someplace to discuss issues. Any idea who oversees the workings of either tool these days

Thanks for the Citer tip - it may do in a pinch. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 05:46, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Ser I've asked a few times in the last several months. I think Cyberpower678 was working on it but that might have changed. Other than that I can't get any definitive answer. MarnetteD|Talk 05:53, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@MarnetteD: That's unfortunate, not to have a point of contact to work with. Ah, well - I'll continue to raise issues here as they happen. You have no idea how much I loathe preparing references... --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 08:06, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

MarnetteD, what about about it appears to be down. Loads fine for me. Though I would welcome anyone with more Python experience than me to help maintain this tool until I can get around to merging it with IABot. —CYBERPOWER (Around) 12:26, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The Toolsforge Expand citations tool is also down. It's saying error authenticating. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:08, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The C of E, that tool hasn't properly migrated to the new domain yet. Go to the old domain. https://tools.wmflabs.org/citations —CYBERPOWER (Around) 12:27, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: Both tools remain unavailable for me this morning - I've checked both. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:08, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your posts Cyberpower678. Starting last Wed or Thur I would click to access Reflinks and it would try and load for a minute or so and then go blank. Today I get the big yellow warning box and the message "Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead" which has never happened before. As to Refill yesterday afternoon it would go to the "Pending - waiting for available worker" screen and just stop there. When it is working normally you can hit Ctrl+F5 to get it going but that does not work now. So as with Ser neither tool is working for me. I do appreciate how busy you are C (all one has to do look at how how many requests to fix things on your talk page) so just understand that for those of us who work on fixing bare urls this is very frustrating. MarnetteD|Talk 15:42, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

@BStorm (WMF): Would you be able to work your magic again? Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 21:40, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for coming to get me on IRC! I hadn't logged in here in a bit. This tool would restart itself when it is down if it had a sane liveness probe added to it. It won't do that on its own because it is a multi-container pod in a hand-coded deployment. We should probably get a ticket up to talk about that if nobody is able to fix the resource issues that cause it to collapse periodically. BStorm (WMF) (talk) 18:28, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Is ReFill something that can be kicked to Wikimedia (or whatever), in the same way that the XTools were? Refill seems like a "critical tool" that is very important to be kept operating for this project, and it's maybe too important to just let single editors tinker with now that its author is no longer with the project. Heck, I just saw another WP:BLP get slapped with a {{Bare URL}} tag today, and I can't easily fix it because ReFill is down. Not sure if/when Wikimedia is do another one of their "critical projects" survey, but when they do I suggest ReFill be added to that list. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:43, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Refill and Reflinks are both critical (not hyperbole) to formatting urls. There is some overlap in what they do but there is much that isn't. The two together can get, at a guess informed by 3 or 4 years of working with them, about 90% of the bare urls - citer and manual work gets the rest. The current situation of fixing them one at a time grows more tedious by the hour. It sure would be nice to get any info about what is going on and I reiterate that a notice board about these tools would be a benefit to the whole project now and in the future. MarnetteD|Talk 05:51, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Totally support that. ReFill is so incredibly helpful, particularly when you're doing a new article and might have 10 or more links that need fixing. I've just done Leeswood Hall manually, and it's a pain of the first order! KJP1 (talk) 05:58, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Guys, We still have a problem with Reflinks @Ser Amantio di Nicolao: . While the tool is back up now, when you try to run it, it gives you a security warning and if you bypass it then you end up getting redirected to some random website. Here is where I got redirected (I don't know if it's dodgy so don't click it unless you know please). The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:21, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

@The C of E: Yeah - I ran into that yesterday, too. And still didn't get Reflinks at the other end of it. ReFill also seems to still be down. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 14:12, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Worked for me just now, thanks to everyone. Caro7200 (talk) 15:55, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

While reflinks no longer goes to the security warning it when I click on it I get a blank screen labeled "info.tm" so it isn't back yet. Maybe we are a step closer though. MarnetteD|Talk

Yes - reFill works again, but Reflinks still doesn't. Still, thanks to those who worked on the issue. I do agree, though, that a longer-term solution needs to be considered, because this isn't the first time reFill has been down when I've wanted it. Although I think it might be the longest. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 16:05, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

This time (and the last few times) the problem with reFill has been resolved by the Wikimedia Cloud Services team who I alerted via the #wikimedia-cloud IRC channel. Brooke has been superb. This time, the problem went away (for now) after she restarted the pod. The underlying issue remains unclear. It needs better tooling, to automatically flag to the team when there's a problem (and restart it automatically?), rather than it relying on someone pointing it out to them. It may also need a fundamental code review. Curb Safe Charmer (talk) 16:42, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Having refill back is such a help. I agree that this is the longest time down for reflinks. As Ser says thanks to those who are working on these. MarnetteD|Talk 16:45, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the update Curb Safe Charmer. MarnetteD|Talk 16:45, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

It looks like translation-server (a zotero instance that citation bot uses) is also down, which the operator cannot figure out why the hostname change did that. citations is down too, but thats the account being temporarily blocked and the lack of updated OAuth credetials for user authentification (operator is too busy right now). AManWithNoPlan (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

@AManWithNoPlan: @Curb Safe Charmer: I don't want to put a damper on anything but Reflinks is still not working. I tried to run it on a userpage draft of mine and it came up blank. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 14:52, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

To follow up on C of E's post if anyone knows what is being done to reflinks can you please update us. Having refill back is a big help but there are several refs that it wont fix - especially those using YouTube. Reflinks also tags most (but not all) dead links with the proper template and that saves a lot of time. MarnetteD|Talk 15:35, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Updating to say that reflinks is still down, and it's becoming extremely aggravating. ReFill does a lot, but it doesn't do everything - reflinks helps close most of the rest of the gap. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:59, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed @Ser Amantio di Nicolao:. I'm now getting "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN" error messages whenever I try to run it on a page. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:43, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Redirects tool URL misdirected?. In the short term, since the tool is running on a private server, only Dispenser can resolve any issues. In the longer term, someone would have to replicate the functionality on the WMF toolforge server (whether via reFill or some other tool). isaacl (talk) 08:52, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. With reflibnks gone fixing these is like having one hand tied behind our back - but its better than when both hands were tied last week:-) MarnetteD|Talk 19:07, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

ReFill 2 and redirected URLs

I've noticed Refill 2 replacing URLs of dead sites by the current URL to which they redirect. This is sometimes unhelpful. For example, some dead sites redirect to the top level of ee.co.uk, when a deep link to an archive site would be more useful. Examples: Malagasy ariary and Broken Dog. Is this the expected behaviour? Please ping me if you reply, as this is a busy page. Certes (talk) 16:42, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

History merge of talk pages?

A long time ago, The John B. Sails got moved to Sloop John B, but the talk pages didn't get handled properly. Now we've got Talk:Sloop John B and Talk:The John B. Sails which forked. What's the best way to merge them at this point? -- RoySmith (talk) 17:57, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

For talk pages it is acceptable to do a text merge, in my opinion. If all the posts are signed (and unless some posts got removed or changed due to a war) then you don't have to consult the history to know who said what. EdJohnston (talk) 18:29, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

It's probably just me, and I don't expect anybody else to do this, but I like to have article history lined up with its corresponding talk page history, where possible. However in this case it already is, and no page history was ever moved ... as far as I can tell all that happened was a text merge, and both articles and their talk pages were started and grew independently of each other. Graham87 06:42, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Rounded corners on the Main Page

What if the English Wikipedia finally put a boxes with rounded corners on the Main Page? It's not 2008 anymore, I think every browser supports boxes with rounded edges. It could make the page nicer. There are already a number of other Wikipedias that do this two. My suggestion would just change the template boxes on the main page -- nothing else would change. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contributions) 16:10, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

The world moved on from rounded corners c. 2010. Even if it hadn't, the main page has a long history of requiring significant numbers of people to agree, and corners aren't where that's at. --Izno (talk) 16:34, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Izno, lol, watch the WWDC presentation and tell Apple that ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:53, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Can't do much about that eccentric pile of designers. --Izno (talk) 11:35, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @P,TO 19104: This is the wrong venue. See Izno's comment of 05:43, 16 June 2020 (UTC) at Talk:Main Page#Color scheme. It's even a FAQ for the main page itself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:36, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

I see. Thank you. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contributions) 16:49, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Limit category-display by namespace

Special:Watchlist and Special:Contributions have pulldowns to select a namespace, for example to see my contributions to Talk: pages rather than to all pages. Is there a way to filter the list of pages in a Category? DMacks (talk) 04:28, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Not on the category page but you can make a search with incategory: and limit search results to a namespace. A link to such a search can be added to a category page when it's especially relevant like [19] in Category:Pages with syntax highlighting errors. We should probably have a template for that with mainspace as default. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:14, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I have made User:PrimeHunter/Articles in category.js. It adds a "Search articles" link under "Tools" in the sidebar on category pages. There is also a "Not articles" link which shows everything except articles. Install with this in your common JavaScript:

importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Articles_in_category.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Articles in category.js]]

PrimeHunter (talk) 08:07, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

The "Not articles" link includes Commons files in a Commons category by the same name. That was unexpected. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:17, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Very cool thanks! DMacks (talk) 13:17, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

fontcdn.toolforge.org

I just learned of the existence of https://fontcdn.toolforge.org/ . I can't find any documentation on the site itself; the supposed GitHub repository for the site, https://github.com/toolforge/fontcdn/, seems to indicate that the site is a caching proxy for Google Fonts (and links to a Phabricator ticket). Does anyone know more about the site? Can I use it to avoid accessing Google Fonts directly and feel assured in relying on it for privacy? isaacl (talk) 04:23, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it is basically just an anonymizing proxy for Google Fonts. It's briefly mentioned in wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Web#External_assets. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 07:05, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks; knowing that its role is documented is helpful! isaacl (talk) 18:52, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Tool for removing content while preserving references?

I have found myself in a dispute with an editor who disagrees with the content of a section in an article, and appears intent on deleting the section. I don't particularly care whether the section is kept or deleted, but each time they delete the section, they break about a dozen reference templates, leaving about a dozen "Cite error" alerts in the references section. This has led me to wonder if there is perhaps a tool that can be used to remove a section while automatically preserving the citations by moving the deleted citation template to the next available call for that citation. BD2412 T 01:17, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Some articles (don't remember which ones) have the wikicode for all named references in the reference section. That would be enough to fix any reference issues from an removed section, as the software will not throw an error over citations that are only in the removed section.--Snaevar (talk) 01:55, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

That is WP:LDR but it can be controversial, so WP:CITEVAR applies. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:59, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

For books you could move the book references to the "References" section at the end and have the page references in the sections as just "" or . But it wouldn't work for magazine or website references (?) Hugo999 (talk) 13:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Of course {{sfn}} works for magazine and website references. Check out Reading Southern railway station#Notes particularly the refs authored by Beeching, Cooke and Tyler. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:36, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

@BD2412: AnomieBOT should eventually rescue missing citations from older revisions automatically. Not sure if there's a way to run it on demand. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:35, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

There isn't, the bot just comes by on its own after the article hasn't been edited for an appropriate period of time. It posts to User:AnomieBOT/OrphanReferenceFixer log every 6 hours or so to log what it looked at and what it did, which is also a good way for any interested humans to find things the bot can't fix. Anomie⚔ 20:34, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

References

Unusable rollback links

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T244655
Declined

If you have rollback and you look at someone's contributions, you always get a [rollback: $ edits] link next to an edit that's the most recent edit to a page. There's also a rollback bit on the latest edit in a page history, e.g. on my Monobook it's (rollback: $ edits | undo | thank) instead of (undo | thank). There's an exception: if the latest editor is the only editor to have edited a page, there's no rollback link on the history page; see https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=USNS%20Albert%20J.%20Meyer&action=history for example. So why does Special:Contributions/Nyttend backup have a rollback link next to the entry for the second edit to Albert J. Meyer? If our software knows to omit it at one page, it shouldn't be too hard for the software to know to omit it on another page. Nyttend backup (talk) 23:20, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Nyttend backup, one is the core software, the one in square brackets is provided by Twinkle or another gadget/script. As you don't have access to full page history from a contributions page, the script needs to make an educated guess and it does so by only checking if the entry is the current version of the page, the only information available to it on a contributions special page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:54, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe I've ever activated any scripting on this account (I've never used Twinkle, in particular), and the only rollback-related gadget I've activated is "Require confirmation before performing rollback on mobile devices", which doesn't apply because I use a laptop, not a mobile device. Both of those are core-software, as far as I know. Nyttend backup (talk) 19:38, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

This shows a quirk in MediaWiki that is not related to Twinkle or any other script. USNS Albert J. Meyer is a new redirect with a total of two edits, each by Nyttend backup. Its history shows the two edits with no rollback option. However, Special:Contributions/Nyttend backup includes "23:13, 22 June 2020 ... Albert J. Meyer ... (current) [rollback: 2 edits]". As TheDJ says (although I'm only guessing) is that the page history knows that you cannot really rollback a page creation, whereas Special:Contributions is not coded for the special case of rolling back page creation. You can see the same thing at any page that only one user has edited. For example, this history shows a user subpage with three edits, each by me, with no rollback. Yet my contribs from that time offers rollback. Johnuniq (talk) 23:21, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

This is a known bug in core, but unfortunately, it will not be fixed. I wrote patch to fix it 575764 but later closed the task phab:T244655 as declined to reflect the reality of the comments in code review which I did disagree with. After all, what the patch did is exactly what makes it to work correctly on history pages, and the database has not exploded. But you know, this minor bug is not worth it, so you just have to live with it and pretend it is normal. – Ammarpad (talk) 05:46, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

@Ammarpad: The best choice is to write a patch removing the function in the other place then. ;) --Izno (talk) 11:33, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

@Izno:. Hmm, I believe you can guess that will probably not be approved either. I won't hold someone if they want give it a try though. The 'verify' option found here in HistoryPager is what makes the rollback link on history pages to not be the same with the one on Special:Contrib. – Ammarpad (talk) 13:57, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

"Draft:Sample page" creations

Over the past few days I've been noticing a lot of new users creating drafts under the title "Draft:Sample page/XXXXXXX", for example, Draft:Sample page/7878784. Some of these pages seem to be vandalism or test edits whereas others have usable content. What is causing this page creation pattern? If users are following a link from some tutorial page, we should fix it so that they instead create pages under proper titles. Thank you, Passengerpigeon (talk) 01:31, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Passengerpigeon [20] There you go. Haven't checked who added them yet though. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 01:58, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb may know more about those pages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:00, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I just had a look in Help:Introduction to Wikipedia, and will assume for the others; apparently it's visible for IPs. Now I'm assuming it's this way because IP editors normally don't have a personal sandbox though you could do User talk:IP address/sandbox. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 02:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Special:Diff/962845141 is interesting. Sdkb, would you like to comment? {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 02:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I see now. Why are we encouraging new users to create individual pages to test out editing, rather than directing them to the sandbox? Draftspace is for work-in-progress articles, not editing tests or other nonsense creations that the editor has no intention of submitting. Passengerpigeon (talk) 02:16, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hi all — yep, the pages with that structure are being created by IP editors. This comes about from the discussion at Help talk:Introduction#Adding interactive components, where we decided it would be good to send people going through the tutorial to sandboxes filled with preloaded content, rather than blank ones or ones they'd have to share with other editors. Logged in users are sent to create a subpage of their userspace (similar to what TWA already does), and IP editors are sent to create a page in draftspace. The template for the main sandbox is here, and there are a few others (e.g. an image-filled sandbox for the end of the image tutorial). If this is creating any issues, please feel free to let us know and we can hopefully find a way to adjust the functioning. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:22, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb Change the linking to maybe a subpage of Wikipedia:Sandbox or User talk:IP address/sandbox, or someplace else where we can track these pages.. Draft space doesn't seem appropriate. Also consider maybe a G6 template 6 months after the last edit. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 02:43, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Can I Log In, which do you think would be better? There's also Draft:Sandbox vs. Wikipedia:Sandbox. And I'd be fine with having the sandboxes self-destruct after six months; I thought that that's what tends to happen in draftspace, which is why I directed IPs there. Is there a way to trigger it automatically? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:48, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

G13 eligible draft deletions are logged at Wikipedia:Database reports/Stale drafts, but still don't do draftspace. The sandbox is okay. You could also make it a subpage of Help:Introduction. What ever works provided it's not disruptive, broad constured. I'll work on figuring out how to auto-tag G6. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 02:54, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Actually, keep how things are, but rework how the title works. Make it so you are prompted to enter a title. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 03:04, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

OK I've lost my mind. Do not come to be for further advice on the fundamentals of what ever this is. {{reply to|Can I Log In}}'s talk page! 03:18, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, we should direct users to the sandbox if they want to make test edits rather than draft a new article. Passengerpigeon (talk) 03:13, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If we decide to keep this IP sandbox system, I think these would be better off as sandbox subpages, but we would need to rewrite criterion G2 for speedy deletion, because it says that subpages of the Wikipedia sandbox created as tests are eligible for deletion. As for deleting them, there's probably a way to add a G6 template to the preloaded text that is timed to appear after six months have passed, but that runs the risk of users removing it - if we were to do this, setting an admin-bot to delete the pages after six months is up would probably be a better idea. Passengerpigeon (talk) 02:55, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Let's not use G6, it's misused far too often as it is, usually as a kind of catch-all "none of the others fit" criterion. This is not its purpose. If it is desired to delete one of these IP-created pseudo-test pages, and none of the existing CSD criteria fit, and the community is unwilling to wait the six months that G13 requires, send the page to WP:MFD. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:52, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

So now that we've figured out the technical issue - we've got a different problem - why are we encouraging creating pages with random number titles? (c.f. Special:PrefixIndex/Draft:Sample_page/). This should get a wider discussion at a better venue, looks like it is just going to make admin backlogs to clean up messes that could be avoided. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:27, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: was there a somewhat well attended discussion to change this page to start creating pages with random page names? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, the discussion was at Help talk:Introduction#Adding interactive components; it was widely attended by Help Project standards (i.e. four people is a crowd in a ghost town) but won't come off that way if you're looking for more general consensus. I'm happy to have additional discussion, although I think it may be useful to brainstorm more about how best to achieve the desired goal (giving IP editors a prefilled sandbox where they won't run into conflicts with others) without putting burden on admins before holding a yes/no !vote. I like Passengerpigeon's suggestion above of creating an adminbot to auto-delete the pages—are there any feasibility issues with that? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: using random means these could collide, but these appear to be getting used to actually make draft articles - not to just sandbox editing tests. Is user_talk:x.x.x.x/sandbox not sufficient (possible because of the same collision concern?). Would using User_talk:x.x.x.x/sandbox with a link that auto clears it and then loads in the prefill work? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:43, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, a link to User_talk:x.x.x.x/sample_page that auto clears first would be perfect, although I'm not sure how to do the auto-clearing — is that a function that exists?

Regarding how people are using them, since the sandbox is linked from the editing tutorial, the intended purpose is for it to be used to learn how to edit, not to draft an article. There are a lot of people who want to create autobiographies, though, and since we (intentionally, to avoid giving people ideas) don't make Help:Your first article or the Wizard all that easy to find, some of them seem to be making their way there. Keep in mind that the population we're talking about here is somewhat bottom-of-the-barrel, since IP editors are instructed to create an account at Help:Introduction to Wikipedia (go there in an incognito window to see), so the people who are making the pages showing up here are the ones who ignored that suggestion and jumped right to the sandbox. The rest are just creating a page in their userspace. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:17, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: so it may be able to get built - using javascript, a button can call a server-stored javascript 'on click' so possibly an on-click that just clears the entire edit box and replaces it with your subst'ing template. Any scripters that follow this page want to take a try at that? If this could happen, could the number of pages be much smaller (perhaps just a few fixed sandboxes)? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:53, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

So it was discussed at Help talk:Introduction#Adding interactive components, which Sdkb admits is not a high-traffic page (although it has 240 watchers). That seems to have been a good place to start and for agreeing on the major features; but after that discussion concluded, I think that instead of going direct to implementation, it should have been taken to WP:VPR to get sitewide consensus. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:05, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Logo not updating

I tried to replace the Pokémon Unite logo image with the one originating from here containing transparency. The moment I upload it, it takes me back to the file page, but it's still showing the previous, non-transparent version originally uploaded by a sysop. I tried following WP:PURGE - purging the cache, both on my browser and the server, and trying to visit the file page from my mobile phone, to no avail. Tried following the Commons help page for purging; still nothing, other than the fact that I can actually make enwiki show the new transparent version by using this link - https://en.wiki.x.io/w/thumb.php?f=Pokemon_Unite_logo.png&w=425. Help? theinstantmatrix (talk) 07:36, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

For me, Pokémon Unite shows the transparent version (the background is not white but the grey of the infobox). Also, at File:Pokemon Unite logo.png, the main image is the transparent version - this may not be obvious, since the chequered background isn't used unless you hover your mouse over it. That's normal for transparent images on en.wp, and commons behaves differently in this respect. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:55, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

It gets even weirder - I can fix this problem as well... if I switch out of my home network IP address and use something else like my mobile data on my phone, now it's properly showing the transparent version. But if I switch back to my home network, the problem reappears agian. theinstantmatrix (talk) 08:13, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

After a while of waiting I can finally see the transparent version properly on my home network end. theinstantmatrix (talk) 20:06, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like phab:T256313. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 20:10, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Spore link prefix

I just noticed that Spore: Galactic Adventures and Spore: Creepy & Cute are inaccessible, due to "spore:" being an interwiki prefix like "commons:". I know that there are ways to find out the page IDs for these, e.g. via the XML dump, and then use index.php?curid= to rename the pages. But perhaps there is an easier way? And what to rename them to? Or maybe it's better to de-activate the spore:-prefix? --bdijkstra (talk) 22:17, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Bdijkstra, Spore: Creepy & Cute is a redirect to Spore (2008 video game) and Spore: Galactic Adventures is a normal article. You can use something like quarry:query/46183 to get the page_id of a page even when it's inaccessible. – BrandonXLF (talk) 23:55, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Ah yes Quarry of course. Here is a more complete overview of inaccessible pages. These need to be renamed, or the prefix needs to be renamed. --bdijkstra (talk) 07:59, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Is there a bug that prevents section editing?

This has been around for some time now. It seems that section editing of COVID-19 pandemic in Peru is not possible. The only way to edit the page is to use the edit button that appears on top of the page. In addition, indefinite semi-protection was implemented in late March. Is there a bug? LSGH (talk) (contributions) 11:26, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Fixed by removing __NOEDITSECTION__.[21] PrimeHunter (talk) 11:35, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Here are currently 12 others: insource:NOEDITSECTION. Some users probably make the same search and clean it up regularly. Only Main Page should have it in mainspace. Maybe MediaWiki should have a configuration option to disable it in some namespaces. There could be a MediaWiki message with a list of pages or regex page name patterns where it's allowed. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:50, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Someone else may have placed it there by mistake. There could be legitimate uses, since most of the search results point to BLP articles. If there are content disputes, page protection is more efficient in preventing certain user groups from editing articles. Maybe a good practice right now could be that its use discouraged in mainspace, talk pages, and elsewhere? LSGH (talk) (contributions) 12:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

There's phab:T122884 already. I actually forgot about it. – Ammarpad (talk) 13:05, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

PS, I just understand they're not really the same but related. The phab task is about __NEWSECTIONLINK__. But the problem is the same, and maybe there should be a way simple of turning them off in a particular namespace. – Ammarpad (talk) 13:51, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I could suggest that, especially in mainspace. How about a change in behavior that affects only particular sections and not an entire page? For example, when a notice about general sanctions is pinned as the first section of a talk page (not as a template before the TOC) and is intended not to be archived? LSGH (talk) (contributions) 08:28, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

It's not a bug, it's a "feature" (hint, hint) in VE. Go to an article, edit it with VE. To the left of the pencil icon (Switch editor) there is a three bars icon (Page options); click it and select "Page settings". Then select "Disable the edit links next to each heading on this page", Apply changes and Publish changes. In this case, the relevant edit was several weeks ago, so I'm surprised nobody spotted it before. Certainly it was moved by a bot later on. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:53, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I haven't seen that before. The help info beside that option suggests that it may be used "in the unusual case where that is appropriate". The page (in its previous title) was already protected before those edits were made, and the option may have been clicked or tapped with respect to the context at the time. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 08:28, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Manually Have To Tap On Image Before It Displays

Thanks to @PrimeHunter, I’ve fixed the issue of deleted articles showing in blue. They are now back to red.

A far more annoying situation is the one where mobile editing now shows you a grey blank space with a “Tap to show image” as opposed to automatically opening. This has gone on for a month plus now & i thought I’d get used to it but no! It’s ruining my editing experience. Is there a fix for this? I use safari & have had the same settings since 2016. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Celestina007 (talk • contribs) 21:44, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Your edit will not have notified PrimeHunter (talk · contribs), because you didn't WP:SIGN it. This edit, however, will have done. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:49, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Redrose64, ahh! Thanks! A mistake on my part. The stress from all these technical challenges got to me. Celestina007 (talk) 22:01, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

LintHint error in template

On this page...

...LintHint gives me this error...

 Missing end tag  blockquote
 Stripped tags    blockquote
 Missing end tag  blockquote
 Stripped tags    blockquote
 Missing end tag  blockquote
 Stripped tags    blockquote

...which is caused by this Wikimarkup...

Blockquote and templates that call it, and are indented with colon (:), bulleted with asterisk (*), or numbered with number (#), will generate errors and incorrectly display anything after a newline character.
<!--Please do not "fix" these deliberate errors. -->
 
{{markup</nowiki>
|<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
:<blockquote>Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2</blockquote>
</syntaxhighlight>
|
:<blockquote>Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2</blockquote>
}}
 
{{markup
|<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
*<blockquote>Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2</blockquote>
</syntaxhighlight>
|
*<blockquote>Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2</blockquote>
}}
 
{{markup
|<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
#<blockquote>Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2</blockquote>
</syntaxhighlight>
|
#<blockquote>Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2</blockquote>
}}

This LintHint error then shows up at Template:Quote.

Is there any way to keep the display of the deliberate error without it showing up in LintHint?

If I can't do that, is there a way to stop the error from showing up on other templates? I had to go through a long "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" list to find the actual error.

--Guy Macon (talk) 01:34, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

The random article button does not show up on tablet.

I miss that button; would appreciate it if it was on tablet. Oops I put it on the wrong page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.124.195 (talk) 12:18, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

The menu icon with three horizontal lines at the top left of mobile pages has a "Random" link. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:56, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

IPv6 /64 talk

We have several pages of the form User talk:aaaa:bbbb:cccc:dddd:0:0:0:0/64. Would a message there be highlighted to someone editing from aaaa:bbbb:cccc:dddd:123:45:67:89? I'm wondering whether these pages are errors, or if we have finally found a way to communicate with users who hop IP but remain within a /64. Certes (talk) 09:59, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

We have not found such a way; that's phab:T112325. --Izno (talk) 13:59, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

Problems

• Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [22]
• Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [23]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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

16:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

logged out automatically

I use three different devices. A few hours ago from now, I realised I required to login again on one device, I took it casually at that time. But later I had to login on second device. Just a few minutes ago, I had login on the third device too (the one I am currently using). I am aware if you log out from one device, you get logged out from all the sessions; but I hadnt logged out from any. And my pasword was changed a few weeks ago, and I had to login to all the devices with new password, that was less than 365 days. Is it just me, or has this happened to someone else too? Just as a precaution, i will change my password after posting this. —usernamekiran (talk) 06:29, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: It wasn't just you; I had to log in 30 minutes ago. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:49, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-June/093543.html. TL;DR is that there was some issue which caused some sessions to be cached and sent to other users. It affected only very few people but as a precaution the WMF decided to log everyone out after they fixed the issue which caused this in the first place. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 07:26, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Likewise. It also happened to me on a non-SUL WMF wiki. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 07:22, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Me too, but remember, WP:ITSTHURSDAY a few hours ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:09, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: For the records, this incident had nothing to do with the regular Thursday software version deployments but was brought up and investigated on a day that turned out to be a Thursday. :) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:46, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Me too. Logged me out on all wikis I use, including En Wikipedia, Commons, Wikiserve. — Maile (talk) 11:19, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Maile66, Same here. S Philbrick(Talk) 13:04, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I was also logged out of three different devices mid-editing. Definitely something hinky with logons last night. It happened around 1900 Pacific. The experience made me very glad I'm using WP:2FA. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:07, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Holy cow, Users reportedly had full access to the accounts of other users. [24] (Tim Starling, WMF). ☆ Bri (talk) 16:14, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@Bri: While I was reading the conversation, idk how it happened, but I read Tim's first response Sean Spicer's voice. It was weird. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:33, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

New talk pages not getting watched

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T256654

I've noticed this several times in the last week or two: I create a new user's talk page, with the checkbox saying 'Watch this page' checked, but after clicking 'Publish changes', I find that the page link to watch/unwatch it says 'watch', as if the checkbox hadn't been checked. Since I've set my prefs to 'Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist' and 'Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist', the box is pre-checked; this isn't a matter of my forgetting to check it. It happened again just now when I welcomed an IP user. I use Monobook with JavaScript turned off, Firefox on a Mac. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 14:34, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@BlackcurrantTea: I've seen that behavior before, but it is just a race against that tab display - if you reload the page, or check the actual entries on your watchlist, is it as expected? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:42, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

It is indeed. Maybe I never noticed the lag before. I'm glad to see it working; far preferable to checking my contributions against my watchlist. Thanks. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 15:04, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@BlackcurrantTea: I've opened phab:T256654 on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:48, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

It sounds like it's readily reproducible, always good in a bug report. Thank you for doing that, Xaosflux. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 16:05, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

It's been happening to me for six months or more. Reloading the page is sufficient, but I sometimes verify by clicking the history tab. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:12, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Red links are shown as blue in mobile version

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T256503

93.136.89.70 (talk) 20:58, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I too noticed this but thought it's just a quirk in one article. Test: this article does not exist. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:00, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Yep. It's showing as blue despite it actually being a red link. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:02, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I noticed this happening yesterday evening (26th June). The problem is across multiple wikis (en, ga, fr, de), browsers (Chrome, Firefox) and OSs (Android, Windows 10) that I have tried, so it must be due to a recent change to 'm.wikipedia' itself. Marcas.oduinn (talk) 06:49, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's a problem when editing with mobile equipment since slight spelling/capitalization errors in published wiki links aren't red. ETA on the repair, by chance?Pasdecomplot (talk)

You can make your own fix with .new {color: #BA0000;} in Special:MyPage/minerva.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:29, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Links in blue

Please the Wikipedia administrators should find something to do about this issue of links in blue that are supposed to be in red. It's affecting editing, if not for others but for me.

Thanks Josedimaria237 (talk) 21:24, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Red Links

Recently there appeared an issue in mobile version of Wikipedia website: links to absent articles, which should be red, are displayed blue. Therefore, it has become hard to edit for mobile users. Could you please fix that? — M. Humeniuk (talk) 08:07, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Red_links_are_shown_as_blue_in_mobile_version above. MarnetteD|Talk 08:27, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you! I didn't notice it. Mine should be closed. — M. Humeniuk (talk) 08:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

other mobile issues

@TryKid, M. Humeniuk, and Josedimaria237: Hi. Are you guys having any other issues? Currently i can think of only one: when i open any talkpage, I have to go to the bottom of the talkpage, and click on "read as a wiki page". —usernamekiran (talk) 20:41, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Yeah that mobile talk page is very annoying and it was probably intended as a "feature". I can't think of any other issues; I did experience the logout issue but that was on all platforms I think. You should consider enabling the "advanced mode" from settings on mobile, it makes the website so much better! The edit history becomes just like the desktop version and watchlist is useable on this mode too. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:03, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

thanks a lot kid. I always wanted to try it, but i was like: i will try it next week. Also i dont like the interface, or any other stuff for that matter, to be changed. I still use monobook theme for wikipedia on desktop. Are you getting the issue of "touch to display the image"? —usernamekiran (talk) 21:09, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

usernamekiran, no I'm not aware of any issues with images. TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 21:58, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Original IP poster here, I'm also annoyed by the new talk page style, it's confusing and unintuitive. Another thing, interwiki links show up in lighter blue on the normal version, but local and interwiki links have the same shade of blue on mobile. 93.136.119.67 (talk) 22:58, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the original IP poster. —usernamekiran (talk) 03:36, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Why is the page preview broken?

The page preview for List of Philippine legal terms is broken. Anyone know why? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 06:57, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I guess the used algorithm skips everything in that page so there is nothing to display. Adding a lead sentence (not a hatnote) would probably fix it. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:24, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

In particular, there is no text at the beginning of the article; it goes right into a chart. Charts aren't included in page previews; only a sentence or two from the opening paragraph, and an image if used, are included. If you follow the soft redirect in the link you used, you can find more information about what is and is not included in the design of the page preview feature. Risker (talk) 07:30, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

The message "There was an issue displaying this preview" for an empty preview was deliberately chosen at phab:T183151. I think it would have been better to indicate the issue. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:44, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Special:Nuke only finding a few pages

Per GSS's request, I'm working on deleting all the G5-able page creations of of MagieRouge. Their contributions list shows a large number of these. But, when I go to Special:Nuke and enter MagieRouge (with "Limit to namespace" set to "all"), I only get these listed:

Category:2020s Tunisian television series (view history)
Category:2020s in Tunisian television (view history)
Category:2020s establishments in Tunisia (view history)
Category:2020s Tunisian television series debuts (view history)
Category:2020 establishments in Tunisia (view history)
Category:2020 in Tunisian television (view history)
Category:2020 Tunisian television series debuts (view history)

-- RoySmith (talk) 13:53, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Oh, never mind. Apparently we have $wgRCMaxAge set to 30. Sigh. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:58, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It only goes back 30 days since that's how far back our recent changes go. See mw:Extension:Nuke. mw:Manual:$wgRCMaxAge is set to 30 days in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=CommonSettings.php. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:00, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, If we wanted to update the "The following pages were recently created by ..." message to include the current value of $wgRCMaxAge, is that something we can do ourselves via editing the interface? Or does that need to be a software change? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:05, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:Nuke?uselang=qqx says "(nuke-summary)" and "(nuke-tools)" so it displays MediaWiki:Nuke-summary and MediaWiki:Nuke-tools. They can be edited by local administrators. I don't think the value of MediaWiki variables like $wgRCMaxAge are available in wikitext but we could just write "30 days" and assume it stays like that. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:12, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

I think you probably want MediaWiki:Nuke-list. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:17, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Ah yes, that's the message RoySmith actually quoted. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

• Along the same topic, is there any way I can do this short of manually clicking a zillion times? It looks like AutoWikiBrowser has this capability, but I'm on a Mac, where it doesn't run. I tried the javascript version, but I can't figure out how to make that do deletions. There's a "Delete" button on the "Other" tab, but it doesn't seem to do anything. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:32, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

  RoySmith JWB should be able to do it. Not 100% sure as a non-admin though. --Trialpears (talk) 15:02, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

  AWB could do it, but without the bot flag you would have to confirm each delete. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:16, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

  If you put a link to each page on a sandbox (User:RoySmith/batch delete or something), Twinkle batch-delete (d-batch) module should be able to take care of it. It can be a tad annoying to get the list of pages formatted as links without other crap, but a find-replace in a text editor should suffice. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 09:39, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

• You eliminate at least one click per page with something like this. —Cryptic 03:21, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Changing password & Visual editor

Hi, I'm here for discussing two problems. First is, I'm not able to change my password. I've tried twice or thrice, but it doesn't change and remains the old one. Is it due to that I don't use email address? Second is, I uses visual editor to edit Wikipedia, but it loads very slow. Nearly a month ago, it was finely working. Using visual editor has become time consuming. What has happened to it? Thank you. Empire AS (talk) 09:17, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

@Empire AS: an email address is not required, though it is strongly recommended - as if you have a broken password it is the only way for you to recover it. As far as the password change, perhaps you are getting an error during the change? Are you using the web client, mobile web, or a mobile client? Try using a standard browser on a desktop and go to Special:ChangePassword. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:26, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@Xoasflu, I use mobile web and edit Wikipedia by using mobile phone, not any laptop or computer. But I've a question that if I selected an email address, would I be able to add new email address and remove the old one when I wanted to add a new one. Thank you. Empire AS (talk) 16:16, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

English small village pages being obsolete

Hello fellow Wikipedians, First of all, I'd like to apologise for the unconventional nature of my response. This page (Talk:Catsfield) contains my statement to a better degree, but I'll try and summaries it here. When using the "random page tool" to locate random Wikipedia pages, I came across a small English town called Catsfield. Scrolling down to the "Governance" section, I noticed a section on the article about the town's representation in the European Union. As many of us know, the United Kingdom left the EU in 2016. I quickly updated the article's contents and didn't think much of it. Before I left the page, I decided to click on another village that was linked near the top of the page. I found that this page contained the same obsolete information. I clicked through a number of related pages, and it appears at least dozens, maybe more, have this issue. I'm really not sure what to do here. I don't have the time to edit dozens of pages to fix the issue, I'm not sure if it's also present other places. I'm not even sure how many pages have the issue. Is there a committee or bot that could address the issue and maybe provide a solution? I'm sorry if this isn't the right place to bring this up. Thanks so much, Heyoostorm (talk) 16:27, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@Heyoostorm: Hi, I've slightly changed your edit to Catsfield, as the UK lost its representation in the EU in 2020, not 2016. That said, looks like there's a fair few of these sorts of issues - that search is a brief look. I'm trying to identify any common formats of the information I can to see if it's suitable for an AWB run, but I'm not sure it would be - it might just need to be a manual jobby. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 16:39, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Done 130-odd of them that I could do with an AWB run, but there's a fair few potential mentions remaining that'd need manual checking. WP:POLUK or WP:WPENG may be interested in following the others up. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 17:50, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Did you mean you've already done 130 of them? Either way, thank you for checking out the issue. I'll check the links and try and work on any remaining ones. I'd be interested to know if the same issue is present in pages about areas that left other things, for example the islands near Mayotte that left France. Heyoostorm (talk) 22:07, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Update: I found the user that made the edit, (https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/MortimerCat&dir=prev&target=MortimerCat) and their contribution page. It seems to me I or someone else could go through the list and manually fix the pages. Heyoostorm (talk) 22:18, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Heyoostorm, before doing so it's worth discussing whether the text should just be removed altogether. Listing EU representation of villages is a mess imo and should not have been there in the first place. EU Parl seats were per region (eg South-East, North, etc). The villages have not much special to do with it. The region is already listed. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:55, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Edit counter

The edit counter has a 400,000 edit limit, which is no good for prolific editors. Does anybody know how we can increase that? GiantSnowman 09:40, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman: See the "Feedback" and "Report an issue" links at the bottom of https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec --Malyacko (talk) 14:29, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

I do not have a MediaWiki account AFAIK? GiantSnowman 16:14, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Your normal account works there. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:46, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@GiantSnowman: You have. :) --Malyacko (talk) 18:13, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Apologies for the inconvenience. The problem is that if there was no limit (or a very high one), all of those long-running queries would hog up resources for everyone else and take down XTools entirely. The queries-gone-wild also ultimately effect the health of the replica databases used by hundreds of other tools, too.

That said, I've recently come up with a more robust solution to keep the bots from scraping XTools, which has up until now been a major problem. With them out of the picture, that frees up more resources for humans. I hope we can increase the limit soon, but we may have to require login when looking up very prolific accounts like GiantSnowman.

Also you may wish to update your links, GiantSnowman. The one you gave goes to toolforge:supercount which has been retired for a few years now. The correct link is https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec. Kind regards, — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:04, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: many thanks! GiantSnowman 08:41, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

MusikAnimal, I've often thought what WikiMedia needed was an aggregated edit count per day stored in the database. Or maybe even edit count per day per namespace. Most editors only touch about 6 namespaces per day (main, project, user, and their talks), and have been around for under 5000 days. It would speed up edit count queries by an order of magnitude for most people, and provide a hard upper limit of O(60,000) rows for even the most prolific editor. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:26, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

PS, I recognize that it's logic like this which makes DBAs hate programmers. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:27, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits/1–1000. 400,000 will almost see you in the top fifty. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:44, 27 June 2020 (UTC) --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:44, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Total count can be gotten from Special:Preferences, amusingly. --Izno (talk) 22:17, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Lots of gadgets for that too, my favourite being User:Anomie/useridentifier.js. I consider it approximate, though, because the method as to what constitutes an edit has changed over time (it didn't use to count page moves, for instance). But regardless I think what they're asking for the year/month/namespace counts, and live edits vs. deleted, etc. XTools will eventually show the system edit count for extremely prolific accounts, say https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/en.wikipedia/ClueBot_NG — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:25, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: The Analytics team did offer various per-user edit counts as you suggest, but that got axed over privacy concerns. XTools gets away with it because of the opt-in requirement (which per consensus doesn't apply to English Wikipedia, specifically). It is a shame because the Analytics edit counts were all pre-stored, so what could take XTools 10 minutes would take the REST API under a second. I do hope it'll get revisited one day. Feature parity with XTools will probably never happen, but it'd be nice to show users like GiantSnowman at least some data other than just an overall edit count. — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:19, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

My article counter is also now broken and won't display anything (at least the edit counter shows total!) GiantSnowman 11:57, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Black border around edit

When I type, as I am doing now, a black border appears around what I am typing. Recently, Microsoft Edge was updated without my permission and this may be the cause. Or is this happening for another reason?

I'm getting used to it but it was startling to begin with.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:49, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Is this only on wikipedia, and only on the English Wikipedia? Is it a problem in other browsers? — xaosflux ^Talk 17:03, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

The reason I suspect it's not Edge is I think it happened with Chrome at the library.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:13, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, not happening with Internet Explorer, which my computer has. Though this is a weird font.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:15, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

As an FYI, Edge and Chrome now share a renderer, so it is possible that this caused similar symptoms on a different computer. --Izno (talk) 17:47, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Citation from Wikidata is not a web

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T256530

Why VisualEditor parse citation via WDQ as a web by the means using web cite template? I thing it should use the template regarding instance of. Juandev (talk) 15:05, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Please do not cite Wikidata, per WP:CIRCULAR. Cite the original reliable source instead. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:46, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Jonesey95, I think he means citing a book, journal or paper, by linking to its wikidata entry. Juandev The reason is; nobody added that functionality to Zotero yet. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:28, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

actually, we might be able to fix this in citoid.... Please file a ticket in phabricator for Citoid. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:34, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

OK, thx. Juandev (talk) 10:08, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Visual Editor allows to create citation out from the QID. I thought it has a same function as ISBN. Juandev (talk) 08:26, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I've mentioned the problem in phab:T256530. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Global watchlist - Update 7

Updates associated with DannyS712's Global watchlist script and the Global watchlist extension:

Future development

I have received a grant from the WMF to develop this script into an extension. As a result, I do not plan on any further developments being made to the user script. Please see the grant page for more information. Those interested in reviewing and providing feedback for the extension should follow the new phabricator board, phabricator:tag/mediawiki-extensions-globalwatchlist.

Translations

Many thanks to those that have contributed translations for the script's messages. Now that I am working on an extension, translation has migrated to translatewiki. Please see:

• translatewiki:Special:Translate/ext-globalwatchlist
• translatewiki:Special:Translate/ext-globalwatchlist-api
• translatewiki:Special:Translate/ext-globalwatchlist-script

To subscribe or unsubscribe from future updates, see the distribution list.

Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 04:41, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

---

Global watchlist user script: About • Updates • Code
Global watchlist extension: documentation

Congratulations, DannyS712. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Custom signatures changing on Monday

The mw:New requirements for user signatures process will start this coming Monday. Watch wikitech:Deployments#Monday, July 06 if you need to know the exact time.

When this happens, well, nothing should happen. This is meant to affect only people who (a) try to create or change a custom signature in Special:Preferences after the change is made (which isn't something that most of us do every day) and (b) screw up the sig (which is even less common). If, for example, you try on Tuesday to set your sig to something with zero links to your account, or if you accidentally forget the closing </font> tag, then it'll refuse to save it and give you a message saying that the sig is invalid. This will affect all WMF wikis.

In the coming months, I'll start contacting active editors whose signatures are invalid. (Most of them just need to untick the "fancy sig" box.) But for right now, existing sigs will not be affected unless and until you try to change it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

AdBlock

I recently installed AdBlock and it has actually shown a number, like when it counts the number of ads it has blocked (I assume this is what it's doing). But Wikipedia doesn't have ads, so what is it doing? Also, one time I got a message saying something with cookies wasn't happening and I wish I had written it down. That only happened once.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:52, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: this could be from lots of things, for example you could have another extension that loads an 'ad' on every page you visit - you would need to read the logs of your new extension. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:02, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Where are these logs? I don't see anything.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:04, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: no idea, I'd start with reading its documentation. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:06, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I click on it but that's not one of the options.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:08, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

And I don't see anything here though I'm sure I didn't see everything there was to see.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:12, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I took a look at mine since I've also been seeing a number pop up for Ublock origin. It indicates that it is blocking a URL with the format https://en.wiki.x.io/beacon/event... particularly the beacon part. I assume this pertains to a web beacon. The particular URL was obscured and I clicked out of the GUI before being able to investigate where it is originating. --Izno (talk) 18:00, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I changed the red to green. I'm not sure that serves a purpose.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:31, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh, good. In an actual newspaper article I can't link to (although I could possibly do a search) it turns out "whitelist" and "blacklist" are racist.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:46, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I once saw an article with a section heading called ==Advertisements== (or something very similar), and some ad-blocking software blanks that section heading (nothing else, just a blank space where the section heading should be). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I just saw a red dot and moved my cursor over it and saw "This page was prevented from setting cookies". Then that disappeared.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:30, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

articles with curly quotes in title

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical) § articles with curly quotes in title

 – Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:24, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm sure this has been answered a dozen times, and there's probably a bot-maintained list somewhere, but I'm not finding it. How do I find articles with curly quotes etc. in their titles? (A search with 'intitle' doesn't work.) My first concern is to find articles that use an apostrophe for Hawaiian ʻokina or an ejective consonant, since I expect the list may be too long to clean it up entirely. — kwami (talk) 05:47, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I found ʻOumuamua in November 2017. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:25, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

With ʻ* intitle:/ʻ/ I got over 600 results. Note that you need to have an indexed search term to prevent a timeout on this wiki. --bdijkstra (talk) 11:28, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, I didn't understand the search syntax. But I tried that with one of the characters I'm looking for, a single quotation mark (you had used the ʻokina, I tried /\‘/* intitle:/\‘/ and /\‘* intitle:\‘/), and got the response There were no results matching the query. If I leave off the first part, and just search for intitle:/\‘/, then of course it times out.

But a bigger problem is that all of the hits were redirects. So I guess my question is more complicated than I thought. How do I narrow down the search so it doesn't time out, and at the same time restrict it to actual articles? — kwami (talk) 21:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Kwamikagami List without redirects --Trialpears (talk) 21:28, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, but that's a list of article titles with ʻokina, which is generally correct. I'm looking for spurious curly quotes ‘...’ and the substitutes `...´ (individually, often only one is used). — kwami (talk) 21:57, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

quarry:query/43773. —Cryptic 22:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! That will take me a while to go through, but not too bad. — kwami (talk) 22:44, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Sfn template not working

In the article John Currin, if you hover your cursor over reference number 5 it highlights reference #6 instead of the corresponding book in the "Works cited" section. That's an error, I've double checked the wikiformatting and it seems correct. Not sure why that is happening. I've never seen that before.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 17:10, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Esprit15d: Cite templates (such as the cite magazine used in ref #6) were updated a while ago to enable by default an anchor based on the name of the author and year (previously you had to force them to do so by setting |ref=harv). Thus #6 now has an anchor Tomkins2008, which is the same as the one in the desired citation in the Works cited section. The link is made to #6 because it appears earlier in the wikitext. You can fix this by setting the cite magazine in ref #6 to |ref=none. The changed behavior has fixed more errors than it has created, such as the one here. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 18:15, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 02:24, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

The Forward, June 23/I put the edit on hold/ followup, at VPT, per HelpDesk

Last week I was told to visit VPT (( Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2020 June 23#Modern times at The Forward, back to the past )), so here I am.

Same simple edit (adding a citation)... Most recent attempts:

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.

• Request from x.x.x.x via cp1081 frontend, Varnish XID 524276208

Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 29 Jun 2020 01:42:53 GMT

• Request from x.x.x.x via cp1081 frontend, Varnish XID 551628669

Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 29 Jun 2020 01:59:23 GMT

• Request from x.x.x.x via cp1081 frontend, Varnish XID 564336590

Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 29 Jun 2020 02:06:37 GMT

The WikiMediaFoundationError (message) says

Quote Please try again in a few minutes EndQuote.

Are the above intervals enough minutes between tries? What about June 23 (( https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2020_June_23#Modern_times_at_The_Forward,_back_to_the_past )) Pi314m (talk) 15:34, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

There is a page named Wikipedia:Wikimedia_Foundation_error; what should I do to make things go "faster" Pi314m (talk) 11:58, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

This FoundationError is an issue for the developers of the software we are running, see WP:PERF. There is nothing slow about that page, the server for some reason was under a lot of stress. If this annoys you, you could file an bug at phabricator: and put "Operations" in the tag field. Your en.wikipedia account will work there.--Snaevar (talk) 07:58, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Page appears to have categorised itself

Rich Smith is doing some work with Category:Non-userspace pages using User sandbox, which he asked me a question about, and then I fell into a rabbit hole...

JockeyColours (talk · contribs)' talk page is included in the category. Their talk page does not transclude {{User sandbox}}, and to the best of my searching, never has transcluded it. A quick SQL query finds that the categorylink was added on 2015-06-01T22:41:23, which is all well and good... but for the fact that there were no modifications to the talk page around then!

Now, I know this could probably be "fixed" in this specific case by forcing a LinksUpdate on the page - indeed, I did something very similar to another page that was "stuck" in the category for no apparent reason, Draft:Pulmonary agenesis. But to be honest, I've passed the point of just wanting to fix the specific problem now, and have gone well into the "what on earth is going on here?!" stage of things... Any suggestions as to how on earth this has happened would be greatly appreciated, because I'm stuck! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:15, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

It's the {{User:JockeyColours/KautoStar}} in User talk:JockeyColours#Horse Profiles. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:34, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: ...Trust me to miss the giant red text on the page saying so. Thanks! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:41, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Naypta: There is a method to find where text like unwanted categories and magic words are coming from: Copy the whole wikitext to Special:ExpandTemplates. Sometimes you also have to copy the page name to the "Context title" field. Click OK and use a browser search (often Ctrl+F) to search for the text in the "Result" box. This reveals where in the final page it occurs. It doesn't say which page it was transcluded from but it's usually easy to figure out by comparing the location to the original wikitext. By the way, the talk page did transclude {{user sandbox}} at the time (not directly in the source and not now). There is a simple method to see a list of all transcluded pages: Edit the whole page and see "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" at the bottom of the window. It doesn't say where the transclusion is coming from. If you preview a page then the list shows which pagesare transcluded in the preview. The first page on the list is User:JockeyColours/KautoStar so that might also have helped you work out the category problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:51, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks, that's really useful! I knew about ExpandTemplates but had never considered using it in that way - now that you say it, it's really obvious Will give it a go next time! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:53, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Redirect target changed, but talk page didn't

Quoting from Talk:Cancel culture: "The contents of the Cancel culture page were merged into call-out culture on May 2, 2019 and it now redirects there. For the contribution history and old versions of the merged article please see its history." Except Call-out culture was itself redirected, and this can't be edited. — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:32, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Merging an article with another and merging their respective talk pages are two separate actions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:40, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

This isn't about merging a talk page but about changing the text that appears there. "it now redirects there" is no longer true.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: This better? --Mdaniels5757 (talk) 23:28, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Looks good. So I guess a feature I came here to request did exist. Either that or it was added as a result, which seems less likely.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:07, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Couldn't remove a category from a page

Consider the article Haleh Afshar, Baroness Afshar. It has an image but it has a hidden category 'No local image but image on Wikidata'. Once an image is added to the page, this category needs to be removed. But it's not happening. I have purged the page and refreshed it too, but no change. My doubt is whether it is due to some bug in the template or not. Adithyak1997 (talk) 19:18, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Adithyak1997, it comes from {{Infobox religious biography}} being embedded in the main infobox. Elizium23 (talk) 19:24, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

But the image is being locally added. Then how can that category been shown? If in case the image is loaded directly from Wikidata, this category can be shown but in the other case, I think the category shouldn't be shown. Adithyak1997 (talk) 19:27, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Adithyak1997, because there is no image set in the {{Infobox religious biography}}. Elizium23 (talk) 19:29, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

There is no parameter to omit the category in cases like this where an image is added by another infobox. If it really annoys you then you can wrap the call of {{Infobox religious biography}} in {{suppress categories}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:06, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Need help with a regex

Hey all, I'm working with AWB and I'm no good with regular expressions. I was hoping someone could write me a regular expression that will look for the strings:

| country = [[Tamil Nadu]]

| location = [[Tamil Nadu]]

At which point, I would opt to delete these. (Tamil Nadu is an Indian state, not a country, and the location thing is a misused {{Infobox television}} parameter.) There could be any number of spaces before or after the =, and Tamil Nadu might not be linked. It might also be spelled "Tamilnadu". Thank you in advance for your brain power! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:08, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

If AWB uses the same flavor of regexes as JavaScript, \|\s*(country|location)\s*=\s*(\[\[\s*)?[tT]amil\s*[nN]adu\s*(\]\])? —Cryptic 20:24, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

@Cryptic: That seems to have done what I wanted it to do. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:19, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

That can be simplified if you use ignor cae (an i after the closing /). Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 04:16, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

The parameter names are case sensitive, though I imagine for this particular case it wouldn't matter in practice. Using the /i option does affect performance to some extent. isaacl (talk) 04:23, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

The use of brackets instead of blanket case insensitivity was deliberate. Tamil nadu, Tamilnadu, and TamilNadu all redirect to Tamil Nadu, and the variants with lowercase t don't even need to redirect on enwiki; other random capitalizations like TaMiLnAdU are rightly redlinks. —Cryptic 06:24, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

In this case, since the original request was to find misuses of the country and location parameters, I don't think matching on random case variants matters, since they should also get deleted. isaacl (talk) 08:54, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Using redirections

How do you use redirections? I made a page for a Norwegian swimmer Marianne Fredbo and she won a medal under her maiden named Marianne Mæland which is displayed on the 2009 IPC Swimming World Championships Wikipage. How can I redirect Marianne Maeland to Marianne Fredbo? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SarahTHunter (talk • contribs) 05:06, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

@SarahTHunter: See Help:Redirect for more information about making redirects. In this case you would use #REDIRECT [[Marianne Fredbo]].– BrandonXLF (talk) 09:11, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Need help finding links that are escaping me

Hey all, I'm looking at Pages that link to "Tamil television soap opera" because I'm cleaning up after a disruptive sock operator who created Tamil television soap opera and propagated links to this page across 300+ articles. (I've pared it down to about 80. Whew!) According to the What Links Here page, a bunch of articles still link to Tamil television soap opera, but I'm having trouble finding the links. Here are some of them:

• Miniseries
• Japanese television drama
• Thai television soap opera
• Chinese television drama
• Téléroman
• List of television programmes broadcast by TVB
• List of Japanese television dramas

I deleted the links from Template:Television drama series, which some of these pages are using. I also purged the cache at Template:Television drama series, but the What Links Here result page seems to think these pages are still linking to Tamil television soap opera. What am I missing? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:27, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

The links are already gone. They were removed by the template edits. It can take a long time for MediaWiki to automatically update all link tables after that. An individual article can have its link tables updated right away by a null edit of the article but there is no need for that here. Just wait. Maybe try WhatLinksHere again tomorrow. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:47, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: So you're verifying that I'm not crazy? OK, OK, I won't put that on you. Thanks for the input. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:54, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

I purged all of those pages, so you should have an easier time finding any remaining undesirable links now. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:25, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Problems with Lilypond

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257066

On pages such as Lydian mode, the musical notation currently shows up with an error: "Could not execute LilyPond: /dev/null is not an executable file. Make sure $wgScoreLilyPond is set correctly." Could an administrator look into this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mount2010 (talk • contribs) 20:56, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

@Mount2010: Looks like it's rendering fine to me - the only issue I can see is that the sound files are broken, linking to File:undefined. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:17, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

This is what I see on the page instead of any musical notation. Mount2010 (talk) 21:25, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I also have noticed this problem. Lovin' You#Composition has

<score>{ \new Staff \with { \remove "Time_signature_engraver" } cis' fis''' }</score>

Not so long ago, this would display a stave with ledger lines above, a treble clef at left and two crotchets (quarter notes if you're American) on different lines, all in black on white. Now it shows a pink box thus:

Could not execute LilyPond: /dev/null is not an executable file. Make sure $wgScoreLilyPond is set correctly.

The article has been edited in the meantime, but not that block. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:26, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

If it helps, I am on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04) with Firefox 78.0.1. This appears to be a server-side issue, though. Mount2010 (talk) 21:45, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

It was disabled out of precaution due to a potential security problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:27, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

This is T257066. It appears that this issue affects all pages using <score>...</score> tags, and it is expected to be broken for three days or more. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:36, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

This is now working, but the phab ticket is still open. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:22, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I believe they added a workaround to keep previously created score tags working. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 12:57, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

English Fundraising Tests

Dear all,

Through the summer the WMF fundraising team will be running system and content tests in preparation for the end of year fundraiser on the English Wikipedia.

The first test is scheduled for 1500 UTC Wednesday 8 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 or reporting any issues, please refer them to donate@wikimedia.org.
• Here is also the ever present fundraising IRC channel to raise urgent technical issues: #wikimedia-fundraising ( http://webchat.freenode.net?channels=%23wikimedia-fundraising&uio=d4 )

If you have specific ideas to share, please feel invited to add them to our fundraising ideas page.

Thank you in advance for your help, support and feedback. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Will it be possible to see the banners? You might recall the negative reaction when previous banners implied that Wikipedia might become advertising-supported if donations are too low. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:51, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Map that reaches beyond the phone display

I have created a map (List of airports in Suriname#Map) with all the airports in Suriname. It shows well on my PC (Firefox) and my iPad, but it is far to broad on my iPhone. Is there a solution for that? Because when I make the map smaller, the letters won't be smaller: so in that case all the airports won't fit into the map. Thank you for your help! Ymnes (talk) 19:33, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I hope someone knows how to do it. That would be great! Ymnes (talk) 18:51, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Ymnes, someone at WP:Graphics Lab/Map workshop might be able to help. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 09:48, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@BlackcurrantTea: thank you for mentioning, I appreciate it. Ymnes (talk) 16:00, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

talk transferred/closed hereYmnes (talk) 16:00, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Citoid generating blacklisted URLs

I've been trying to generate citations using the Citoid service, but the reference generated fails the Blacklist test. The link I was trying to link to was [25] and the link generated was bit.ly/1Z9RX13. This happend using my own front end User:Salix alba/Citoid.js and also when adding the reference using the VisualEditor. --Salix alba (talk): 21:39, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Salix alba, thanks for this note. There is more information in phab:T242089. @Mvolz (WMF), I think this is phab:T243131, which was closed as a duplicate of a much more specific problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

ReFill is consistently inserting false information

See this thread. ReFill inserts false names for authors regularly and could do with inserting publications instead of domain names. Is anyone here here motivated to help fix these issues? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:00, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

It also fails to pick up stuff like AllMusic and Publishers Weekly, where it once used to (especially AllMusic, which only became problematic earlier this summer). I know the last time reFill went down, a couple of weeks ago, there was also a discussion of making it more of a Wikipedia priority. Thank you very much. Caro7200 (talk) 22:31, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

Most such problems are with the HTML source or with the Zotero "translator". For the URL Koavf mentions (https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1990-02-23-9002223238-story.html ), I can't get the article to load, so I don't know how it could get anything. The URL just redirects me to the site's main page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Zhaofeng_Li/reFill&diff=prev&oldid=966314054 ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:47, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-28

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

Problems

• The Score extension has been disabled for now. This is because of a security issue. It will work again as soon as the security issue has been fixed. [26]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 July. It will be on all wikis from 9 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Abstract Wikipedia is a new Wikimedia project. It will collect language-independent information that can be easily read in different languages. It builds on Wikidata. The name is preliminary. You can read more. [27]
• The iOS Wikipedia app developers are thinking about new experimental tools. If you use an iPhone you can help them by answering the survey.
• Some rules for user signatures will soon be enforced. Lint errors and invalid HTML will no longer be allowed in user signatures. Nested substitution will not be allowed. A link to your user page, user talk page or user contributions will be required. You can check if your signature works with the new rules. This is because the signatures can cause problems for tools or other text on the page.

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

20:17, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

The message about signatures above is not 100% accurate. Font tags and other obsolete HTML tags will still be allowed in editor signatures unless we form a local consensus here to remove support for them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:57, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Jonesey is right. Things generating "low-priority" Special:LintErrors/obsolete-tag errors will not be rejected at this time. It's still a good idea not to have those in your sig. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:15, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Finding all admins' tenures

I want to find everybody who has ever been an admin, when they (possibly more than once) got the bit. And, for some, when they lost it. My first thought was some kind of database query. This, for example, is my RfA, but there's not enough information in the log to determine that. I found that record by looking up my RfA, and using that to narrow down the log_timestamp range. Is that just because in the old days, logging didn't happen the way it does now? Do I need to resort to finding all the subpages of WP:RfA and parsing them? -- RoySmith (talk) 20:06, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, parsing RfA subpages is a probably necessary when "log_params" is empty as there is no data (as you say) which helps identify the user group change. I have some ideas which would help but not account for all cases where the sysop flag was granted or removed:

• Perhaps a query could take into account the log comment of the user group change. For example when you had your sysop flag given the log comment was "+sysop". This can be done in a query via inner join (like this) on the comment table. Filtering for user group changes with -sysop or +sysop (or variants) would give you presumably a large proportion of pre-"log_params" user group changes where the sysop flag was removed or granted. It wouldn't catch user group changes which were not descriptively marked, but sysop user group changes seem like the kind of thing which would be properly marked.
• Possibly a script could filter user group changes based on first administrative action. My thinking here is that an administrator could not make a action which required the sysop flag without first being an administrator. This would mean that you could safely say the granting of their administrator flag was before their first administrative action. This would probably only easily work for logged actions. I can't think of any way to filter for removal of the sysop flag using this method.

These two ideas would likely filter down your pool of RfA subpages to parse and/or user group changes to investigate. Removal of sysop rights without using the first idea seems a bit more difficult, as I am unsure of anywhere which logged -sysop right changes (like RfA does for +sysop). Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 21:32, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

• Try something like this: https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/46364 ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:52, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Perhaps you might do something with WP:LA's revision history if the database queries don't work out? Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:09, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

• One of the truisms about any big data project is that the data is always messy. This seems to be no exception :-). I tried ProcrastinatingReader's query, which looks good (thanks!), but the earliest it comes up with is Duk in December 2004. Poking around a bit, I found Wikipedia:Successful requests for adminship and even better, User:NoSeptember's User:NoSeptember/RfA chronological, which looks like the definitive record of the early days (horray for historians!). So, I'm thinking some combination of log queries for anything from about 2005 on, and fill in the early history with page parsing and/or manual augmentation. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about desysopings, but for my purposes, finding the first and last logged admin action for each user is probably good enough. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:22, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
• I'm assuming you're looking to compile a single database inclusive of all that information. However, Former administrators contains a ton of information, and otherwise List of administrators contains much of the info, but in separate lists. — Maile (talk) 13:36, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
• The older logs of removing admin bits are on meta, not en.wp, as the stewards used to remove the bit, before beurocrats did. See for example [28].--Snaevar (talk) 17:05, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

  Crats were granted the ability to desysop as a result of this RfC which concluded in August 2011. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:47, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

• For most of 2004 there's the old bureaucrat log. Graham87 11:18, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

"Mark all changes as seen" cache problem

This is not a bug report but an improvement request. When I click "Mark all changes as seen" in my watchlist, the resultant page is not reflected to my Chrome's cache. So if I navigate a different page and click "Go back", the watchlist page shows the content before I clicked "Mark all changes as seen". So it is my routine to click "Reload" after clicking "Mark all changes as seen". Is it possible to reflect the resultant page to my Chrome's cache automatically?―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 00:42, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Commons file pages on Wikipedia are missing download button

When I go to a Wikipedia page for a Commons file, say File:Akha couple.JPG, it is missing the download button that appears in the box just below the title when the same image is viewed at Commons. For images, it's not overly hard to download them by clicking on the image and then right clicking it, although I could see some more technology-averse readers getting tripped up by it. But for audio files, readers are very likely to get tripped up, since File:Black.ogg provides nowhere to download, and most readers won't know to click the "View on Commons" button. Could we get the box from Commons with the download button/other options appearing here, too? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:17, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: I don't think anything is "missing", in that that is not supposed to actually be there. I think you are referring to a gadget that commons has, commons:Help:Gadget-Stockphoto? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:09, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that's the box. There are a ton of usability issues with how files are presented, but I won't wade into that since I know there's a whole history with MediaViewer and all. For my application, I just used an interwiki link to Commons as a workaround. But I just wish that the design of those pages took into better consideration the basic uses readers are likely to desire from file pages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:15, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Image caption showing up as link?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T216003

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257581

In these two edits, I added an image to COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. The image caption is showing as link=File:NYC_Bus_with_%22masks_required%22_sign.jpg. If I look at it in the Visual Editor, it seems fine. Any idea what's going on? See screenshots at right. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:26, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

There are a lot of little bugs in image syntax. Someone needs to review the spec and the implementation with an detail-oriented eye. I have added this apparent bug report to the existing T216003, and I added this issue to mw:Help:Images. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:44, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

There is a second bug here which triggered the other bug. In [29] (link fixed) VisualEditor automatically added link=File:NYC_Bus_with_%22masks_required%22_sign.jpg for File:NYC Bus with "masks required" sign.jpg when only the caption was edited. The wikilink [[:File:NYC_Bus_with_%22masks_required%22_sign.jpg]] produces File:NYC_Bus_with_"masks_required"_sign.jpg which works in wikitext but goes to the same file, so it would merely be redundant junk code if MediaWiki actually recognized it as a link parameter. I can reproduce it in this:

[[File:NYC Bus with "masks required" sign.jpg|thumb|Bus 1]]
[[File:Bus in Alexandria.jpg|thumb|Bus 2]]

If the spaces in the captions are removed with VisualEditor then a link parameter is added for the file name with quotation marks:

[[File:NYC Bus with "masks required" sign.jpg|thumb|Bus1|link=File:NYC_Bus_with_%22masks_required%22_sign.jpg]]
[[File:Bus in Alexandria.jpg|thumb|Bus2]]

PrimeHunter (talk) 06:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

It is rarely necessary - or even desirable - to use the |link= parameter. In the absence of that param, the MediaWiki software automatically creates a link to the file description page, and this is often required for file attribution purposes. The |link= parameter exists so that this behaviour may be overridden, either by unlinking the file description page or by linking to an entirely different page, either of which would, in the case of File:NYC Bus with "masks required" sign.jpg, effectively violate the terms of its CC BY-SA 4.0 license. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:06, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

New York City transit bus. 177th Street near Devoe Ave, Bronx, NY. Route sign reads, "Masks Required"

The link parameter with %22 is not recognized so the default link is used on the image in this case and the bug doesn't break the license. The error is that the link text is shown as caption. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:58, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, thanks for this detailed explanation. I have submitted this apparent VE bug separately, as T257581. If I got anything wrong in there, please add a correction. I have been told by WMF staff that they expect to work on the lengthy backlog of minor (but quite annoying to gnomes who clean up after them) VE bugs in the second half of 2020. We shall see. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:47, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Heads up for random tool breakage

The WMF developers rolled out a configuration change this morning (or was it last night?) which changed how user tools get called. Apparently, this broke a few tools (ReFill 2 looks like one of them, based on the above section). I can't blame this on WMF; they gave people advance notice, but change is change, and things break. See wikitech for more background. So, if some tool you've been using has suddenly broken today (not Thursday!), that's a good first guess why. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:54, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

For those cases where an interwiki prefix is used, see also meta:Talk:Interwiki_map#Update_target_URL_for_'toolforge'_and_'toollabs'_IW_prefixes.--Snaevar (talk) 20:57, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

This may be why GeoHack is currently broken (for me, at least). Clicking on the geographic coordinates in any WP article that contains a {{coord}} template leads to a "308 Permanent Redirect" error page. Seems pretty significant when it's not just a editing tool like ReFill 2 but an integral part of our public-facing functionality. Deor (talk) 22:45, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Another reason why GeoHack should not be an integral part of our public-facing functionality. We should replace it with Kartographer, which is maintained by the WMF. Kaldari (talk) 13:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

This answers a question I came here to ask. As of this morning, the bookmarked URL I use to get my own AFD stats from Toolforge didn't work. It returns the message "404 - Not Found". I can get the stats by manually inserting the URL for afdstats.toolforge.org, and then fill out the template that pops up. Every time. The URL that pulls up as a result, is the exact URL I had book marked. And today, I have to manually input it every time during the day I want to check my AFD stats. — Maile (talk) 23:38, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, there's another thing that hasn't been working today. Assume this is related. The "autofill" feature in the drop-down RefToolbar in the edit screen. — Maile (talk) 00:26, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Maile66: Someone with editinterface permissions needs to change "var url = '//tools.wmflabs.org/reftoolbar/lookup.php?';" to "var url = '//reftoolbar.toolforge.org/lookup.php?';" at MediaWiki:RefToolbar.js. Kaldari (talk) 13:33, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I bet xaosflux can help! Kaldari (talk) 15:08, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

RefToolbar.js has been updated to the new URL, if anyone runs across others of these in need of fixing, please drop an edit request on the associated talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:04, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Maile66: What link are you using? Something like toolforge:afdstats/afdstats.py?name=ahecht&max=500&startdate=20150101&altname= works fine for me. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:55, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ahecht: Well, yeah. As of this exact posting here, it works just fine for me - same bookmark link as I had before. A couple of minutes ago, it didn't. Hmmmph. Maybe it got fixed now. — Maile (talk) 16:04, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Email preferences

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257514

Is there a way to stop all blocked users from emailing me? If a user is blocked, it's unlikely they have a need to contact me- just received one which was just a rant from blocked user that they shouldn't be blocked. Whilst I can just delete them, it'd be better if I can just policy block these emails. Joseph2302 (talk) 21:07, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Removing your e-mail adress from your Wikipedia account, I guess.Tvx1 21:10, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

The above reminds me of a bot that I am working on that deletes 100% of all Wikipedia vandalism and spam and never misses any. It is almost finished; I just have to fix one small bug (it deletes everything else along with the spam and vandalism) but I should be able to fix that last minor bug in the next couple of days and we will be good to go. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:53, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

As part of the block, administrators can remove email access. I'm not sure where the best place is to request that addition to those blocks. --Izno (talk) 23:32, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Joseph2302, If it's just annoying, I'd say report it to the admin who blocked the user, or if you can't get in touch with them, any admin should be fine. They can adjust the user's block to not allow them to send mail. You could post a request at WP:ANI, or if you prefer not to make your request in public, email any admin by clicking the "Email this user" link in the nav bar on their user page.

Please don't feel like you're imposing on an admin by requesting they deal with this. That's what admins are there for.

If the problem has gone past annoying, take a look at Wikipedia:Harassment#Dealing_with_harassment for additional things you might do. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:24, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

@Joseph2302: I've opened a feature request for you at: phab:T257514. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:01, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if there is a better way to solve this than by giving everyone a new preference option that is hard to discover, in the already very bloated preferences tab. Should blocked users be allowed to not email anyone except admins (to appeal blocks)? Is there a need for blocked users to contact other users? -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 03:33, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Everything is complex when thousands of users are involved. I have seen a couple of cases where it was desirable for a blocked user to email a non-admin editor (me, when I was a non-admin). In one case, I was asked to look at the background to the block and I called for a review at WP:AN where it was agreed the admin was wrong and the block was overturned (the admin ended up desysoped after another incident, as I recall). Then there was a self-requested block where the person wanted to discuss something...I forget what, but I replied. The request here is very short on details but it looks like there was a single incident from one blocked user and that doesn't seem to justify anything more than removing email from the blocked account. Johnuniq (talk) 04:44, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

NKohli (WMF), there are many wikis with no local admins, which might be a consideration.

Another thing to consider: most blocks are local, so if an experienced editor were blocked here and thereby prevented from e-mailing me (I have no advanced rights anywhere), they'd probably just go to another SUL wiki and send the e-mail message from there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

CPU usage

Hi folks,

VRTS ticket # 2020070710009213 has raised that Normal distribution seems to cause a significant CPU spike in Chromium. Testing in -tech on IRC has suggested the issue can be replicated with other chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge), but not in Firefox. The issue may be caused by the high volume of math markup on that page. I've logged a Chrome bug ticket on their suggestion, but wondering if we are able to further root cause the issue? Best, Darren-M talk 19:26, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

@Darren-M: Is there a link to that "Chrome bug ticket", please? --Malyacko (talk) 10:17, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I can replicate this on my machine with Chrome 83.0.4103.116 and 64-bit Windows 10. Least squares has a similar effect; my CPU usage jumps from less than 10% to 20-40% as soon as I load either of those pages. As soon as I leave the pages and load any other article (or other web page), it returns to normal. Home Lander (talk) 21:11, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Weird garbage in authors/titles...

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T245092

Searching for insource:/last3=Ist\|/ finds roughly 1630 articles/pages with weird garbage in authors and titles. Mostly on India-related pages. For example

• 2008 Kandhamal violence had this sort of garbage in the authors/title

Asking help to track

• 1) The cause of this (VE, Citoid, RefToolBar, Citation bot?)
• 2) The fix to whatever caused this
• 3) Help cleaning up the garbage (probably bot-assisted). Even just removing all the crap in the authors/title without adding the correct authors/date would be a huge improvement.
• 4) Does this affect more than just India-related articles?

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

After digging, it seems related to the VisualEditor [30]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:15, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The source in [31] is [32] which says "M T Saju | TNN | Updated: Feb 16, 2017, 08:50 IST". The citation was copied from [33] in another article, made with mw:Citoid in VisualEditor trying to automatically find author names. IST means Indian Standard Time so a search on "IST" will give many India-related articles with this particular wrong author. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:58, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

The way that Citoid makes references from web resources is that it first checks to see if a Zotero translator exists for a website. If not, it will guess based on the semantics in the HTML of the page source who/what is the right way to translate a webpage into a reference. The 'easiest' way to 'correct' this is to write a Zotero translator. --Izno (talk) 17:35, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Izno, I suspect you're right about this being a Zotero-ism, but I want to mention another possible way weird stuff gets into citations and/or quotes. Some web sites add "watermarks" when you copy-paste text from their site. I've seen this on lyrics sites, and some newspapers. If you're not actually paying attention to what you're doing, these watermarks get into your wiki text. So, if you ever see something like "from my totally awesome lyrics site" in the middle of some text, that's probably why. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:52, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Or ditch obviously non-functioning tools like Citoid.

Or block all editors who do not care for their editing and repeatedly save such a crap. At least a minimum of competence is required.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Headbomb, are you seeing recent edits (April 2020 or later) with this garbage in them? The phabricator task linked above indicates that at least some of this should have been patched in March 2020. If we have newer examples of garbage edits via Citoid, examples should be added to that task. If there are no recent edits, we just need to fix a couple thousand articles. (edited to add: Never mind, I found two examples and added them to the ticket.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:59, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Matthiaspaul, I think you're hating on Citoid excessively. I think it's awesome. Could it be better? Certainly. But it's a heck of a lot better than formatting references by hand. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:01, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I suspect that writing (or updating) Zotero translators for commonly used reliable sources would be eligible for grant funding under m:Grants:Project/Rapid. I don't know how "rapid" the rapid grants are right now, but maybe someone here will know someone who is available and might be interested. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:12, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

How did Shtardusty create CALiENS?

Shtardusty's one and only edit was to create CALiENS [34]. How did they do this? Since they were not autoconfirmed, they shouldn't have been able to create anything in mainspace. Normally the answer is that they created it in draft space and it was moved, but I can't find any evidence in the logs of such a page move. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:02, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

They created it on 6 April 2016. When was the ability for non-autoconfirmed users to create pages removed? Johnuniq (talk) 02:21, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

On or after 18 April 2018 for WP:ACPERM, and earlier during WP:ACTRIAL. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 02:41, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Audio player doesn't work inside collapsed templates

Andrybak and I discovered earlier that the audio player does not work inside the collapse box:

Tests for media player

Collapsed	Not collapsed
Audio player inside
Video player inside

Whatever is happening doesn't affect video. It also doesn't affect audio if the box is autoexpanded:

Audio player inside

I don't know of any applications with an audio file inside a collapsed box (other than the testcases page where we found this), but just wanted to throw it out here in case there's an easy fix available. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:16, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Fetching duration/size from Commons audio files

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257650

Is there any way to automatically fetch the duration and file size of an audio file hosted at Commons? I'm redesigning {{Spoken Wikipedia}}, and I'd like a way to display that information automatically. For instance, for duration I'd like a template that'd take "File:Black.ogg" as input and return "10:10". I tried {{Template parameter value|File:Black.ogg|English spoken article||time}} as an extreme Hail Mary, but it didn't work. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:38, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: We can't even fetch the dimension of an image file, so I don't see this becoming a possibility anytime soon. Durations are rather stable (provided c:COM:OVERWRITE is followed), so manual insertion of static values shouldn't pose much of a problem, I suspect. Nardog (talk) 09:50, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

File size is gotten in the (Lua) Module namespace with "mw.title.new("Black.ogg", "File").file.size". It was added in phab:T54522. File duration of audio files however was overlooked, so please file a bug for that on phabricator, with "MediaWiki-extensions-Scribunto" in the tag field.--Snaevar (talk) 12:50, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog and Snaevar: Interesting, I didn't know about that. I tried it in Module:Sandbox/Johnuniq/temp (permalink) with the results displayed here. The code is showing the original width and height of this image. Johnuniq (talk) 02:16, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all! Snaevar, I've created the task at T257650. I'm not skilled enough at Lua to know how to use it once implemented, but I'll ask if it gets to that point (the end goal is being able to include the duration/size on {{Spoken Wikipedia}} without the adding editor having to enter it manually). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:31, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Further expertise to getting bare urls tool working

Refill2 is working if you use this link which is nice. OTOH when you use the link in the {{Cleanup bare URLs}} to get the tool running it still goes to a 404 message. With my limited (very) knowledge of things I made this edit to try and connect the template to the new refill2 link but it did not work. If anyone knows what to do to make this update work it will save some copy pasting for those of us who work on formatting bare urls. Thanks. MarnetteD|Talk 20:55, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

MarnetteD, I think it should be fixed now. – BrandonXLF (talk) 21:04, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks so much BrandonXLF. That is such a help. It is gonna take a few days to clear the backlog on these but your fix is going to make that task much easer!! Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 21:08, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, thanks so much, the provided link above works for me. I really appreciate the wonderful help. Thank you. Caro7200 (talk) 21:10, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

• The link at the top of User:Zhaofeng Li/reFill ... toollabs:refill, which goes to https://refill.toolforge.org/ ... still gives 404 errors after attempting to run reFill on a page. Steel1943 (talk) 21:24, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
  • ...Eh, looks like that (an edit by me) worked and took care of it. Steel1943 (talk) 21:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
    • expand bare references is not working for me. Just tried again and still get a 404 page. Grrrr. I am not a techy person, I just like to edit....Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 05:59, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Placing tables side-by-side

The {{help me}} staff advised me to pose the following how-to question on the Village pump: In Toronto Railway Company#Roster summaries, there is a list of 4 small narrow tables. I would like to put the tables side by side in pairs rather than having them all stacked with a lot of white space to the right. Is there a way to do this? Thanks. TheTrolleyPole (talk) 15:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Put the small tables inside a larger table having 2 columns (see the rather excessive examples at Help:Table) or this may be simpler: {{col-begin}}{{col-break}} Two tables {{col-break}} Two tables {{col-end}}. See Help:Columns and Example 4 at Template:Col-begin — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:02, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Tables are for tabular data, not page layout. Your sugegstion is an accessibility barrier. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:32, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing, Let me just expand on that a bit. The gist is that you need to separate semantics from presentation. Semantics is what the text means. Presentation is what it looks like. Consider that what you write will be consumed in many different ways:

1. Reading it in a web browser on a computer
2. Using any of a number of different CSS skins
3. Reading it on a mobile device.
4. Reading a machine-generated translation to another language
5. A non-sighted person listening to it via text-to-speech technology
6. A minimally-sighted person using text zoom-and-pan technology
7. A computer program doing data-mining or search engine ingestion

By conflating semanic and layout, you make it more difficult for one or more of these consumers. For example, I just looked at Toronto Railway Company on my phone. The main body type was easy to read, but those four tables were too small. I quickly zoomed in so each table was the width of my phone's screen, and they were immediately easy to read. If these were laid out in a 2 x 2 grid of sub-tables, that would have been a mess. Navigating it using text-to-speech would have been neigh on impossible, I would guess.

The right answer is to mark the text up so the semantics are clear, and then rely on presentation tools to handle things properly for the particular device-user combination. See Responsive web design. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:54, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Since these are (more or less) the same things at different points in time, it might be possible to combine all of the information into a single medium-size table, with properly declared scope for columns and rows. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

You can also use Help:Table#Side by side tables to display as many tables as the browser has room for, all four for many desktop users. I did that in [35]. The tables move down when there isn't room. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:23, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

When was I last here?

Is there any way for a user script to find out when the user previously viewed the current page? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 13:42, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if such a script exists, but if it did, it would raise serious questions about the purpose of it. Who are we, if we can track any user by what pages they happen to click on, and how many times? — Maile (talk) 14:40, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I think GhostInTheMachine may mean tracking himself, i.e. seeing (on their next visit) when they last viewed the page. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:11, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, As I'm sure you're aware, if you're using Chrome, Google is tracking what you do. You can see what they've got on you at https://myactivity.google.com/. You might be shocked to discover just how much they know about you, but they might also have the data you seek. Your local browser history might have something as well. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:16, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, I understood perfectly that he was talking about his own clicking history. I'm just saying that if Wikipedia has such a tool, it could also be used to check the browsing history of other viewers. — Maile (talk) 15:20, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be part of MediaWiki. Since he's talking about a script, it could just be something that logs each page you visit and saves it into a database with a timestamp. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:40, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I see that now by the above mention of browser history. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 15:42, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Watchlists aren't visible to others, surely then it should be possible to create something for "my last visits" that is also private? DuncanHill (talk) 20:09, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

I am writing a user script — which loads from Wikipedia for me and runs in my browser. The script currently does have all sorts of interesting data available to it — about my account: my username, how many edits I have done etc. — about the page: the pagename, the version id of the page, which categories it belongs to etc. However, I have not been able to find if/what data is available about me vs the page: Have I edited this page? Is this page in my watchlist? When did I previously visit this page? Since the script has no access to the browser history and I could be on a different device, can anybody think of how I could get hold of when was my previous visit? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:55, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Old page rev has mixture of two pages

I just got thanked for a three-year-old edit by Subzerosmokerain. Looking at that old edit, here, shows a page that is a mixture of my talk page at that time, and Tintor2's user page. The change happens at the point on the page where that edit was -- the end of the page at the time, most likely. Anyone have any idea what's happened to this rev? The next rev seems fine. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:25, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

All pages can be transcluded, not just templates. {{User:Tintor2|Tintor2}} has curly brackets so it transcludes User:Tintor2 (with an unnamed parameter Tintor2 which does nothing). You fixed it in the other edit you link. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:41, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Damn; I knew that and had even seen it happen before. Thanks for the reminder. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:29, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

How do you retrieve old drafts?

Can someone help me get back the draft article for Gaza Sky Geeks? It was submitted to the article creation board in 2018 and looked like this when it was denied: [36]. But then it was deleted or something so now the draft looks like this: Draft:Gaza Sky Geeks So a lot of draft content has been lost. ImTheIP (talk) 17:57, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

ImTheIP, The right way is to make a request at WP:REFUND, but making you do that would be a waste of perfectly good bureaucracy. I've restored the old versions. Check the draft's history. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:04, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! ImTheIP (talk) 18:05, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Logged out automatically II

As with Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 182#logged out automatically two weeks ago, I was forcibly logged tout at approximately 21:47 (UTC) today. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:52, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Ditto. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:54, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Me too, sounds like it might be everyone. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:55, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Graeme Bartlett, SarahSV, and Redrose64: This was everyone, yes; see this wikitech-ambassadors post. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:57, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Same. Wikipedia might want to fix this. Amaury • 21:57, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Me too. And not just Wikipedia, but everything connected - Wikiserve, Commons, etc — Maile (talk) 22:00, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

This was part of further measures to respond to that incident. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2020-July/002326.html --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 22:01, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

If a security issue is so significant that it merits this level of disruption, we should be told about it. It may have to come afterward if time is of the essence but it should still be communicated. ElKevbo (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Second that. I had put the log-out a couple of weeks ago down to "Oh well, I suppose it could be a year since I last logged in" and had no idea there had been such a major screw-up. DuncanHill (talk) 22:18, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely. This is ridiculous. It's not hard to put up a message everyone can see. Doug Weller talk 09:07, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I have a small suggestion. Since all (I think) have been logged out, I think a banner needs to be displayed in all wikis stating the link of Wikitech-Ambassador mailing list message and must ask registered users to login again. This might be unknown to normal users as they keeps editing without knowing that they are currently editing as an IP. I have seen some edits from recent changes which belongs to that category. So I think a banner needs to be made wiki-wide. Adithyak1997 (talk) 11:33, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Well you do get MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning on every page if you try to edit w/o being logged in. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:49, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

I too found myself logged out yesterday, for the 2nd time in five days. Previous to these last two, I had not been logged out in a year or more. It's mysterious. And the one yesterday was worse because I was in the middle of trying to do an edit. Johnsmith2116 (talk) 18:59, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

How do I change the color of a disambiguation page?

I recently found out how to make a disambiguation page appear in orange (so I don't link to one by mistake) but the shade of orange is really light. I've seen darker shades of orange that are easier to read. I thought I had changed the link to my talk page in my signature to one of those, but maybe not.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:35, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: I assume you are using the "Display links to disambiguation pages in orange" gadget in preferences? If you want to use a different color, uncheck it in your preferences, go to your Special:MyPage/common.css and add the line a.mw-disambig { color: #ff8921; }, and replace "#ff8921" with the color of your choice (e.g. #aa4400). You could also use a background color to highlight it by doing a.mw-disambig { background-color: #ffbb88; } to produce #ffbb88. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:04, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

"#aa4400" is definitely easier to read. Thanks.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:59, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Someone else made another suggestion and I made a request here. I like this new orange better because the other color was making me think I was seeing a red link.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:26, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: Here's a way of choosing colours. Go to Colorizer, wait a second or two for it to load - you should see about twenty coloured bars, mostly in groups of three, each bar with a slider. At the left there is a sample area, below which is a four-item menu headed "Change color of:", in that, click "Button".

In the main part, the first group of three bars is titled "RGB(A)"; at the bottom of that group there is a row without a slider titled "Hex". At the right of that there is a value, possibly #a96836 - replace that with the word white. Remember this location, we'll use it again - we can call it the "Hex value".

In the "Change color of:" menu, click "Text" - notice that all the slider bars change. Go again to the Hex value, and alter it to the word orange.

Now use your mouse to drag the sliders around, using most of the 20 sliders - but leave the very last one (titled "Alpha/Opacity") hard over to the right, showing a value of 100. Observe how moving one slider causes several of the others to move; as this happens, the values to the right of the sliders change to suit; notice that the sample area also changes.

When you are happy with the text colour, you can use your mouse to copy the Hex value to your clipboard, this may then be used instead of #ff8921 in the rule a.mw-disambig { color: #ff8921; } mentioned above. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:56, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

New style watchlist formatting

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T202916

Not long ago (a couple of weeks?), a change was rolled out to how your watchlist is formatted, putting some items in a left-hand column in a monspaced font. What bothers me about it is that the diff and history links come after the page title. Since those links are constant for each entry, it seems they would be better in the mono-spaced side of the page. They would certainly be a lot easier to find. So, two questions. 1) Am I the only one who feels this way, and 2) Is this something that can get changed in per-user CSS, or even in per-project interface definition? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:51, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

RoySmith, is that skin-specific? I use the default (Vector) and my watchlist view hasn't changed. (From left to right, I see: diff-hist-title-time-bits-editor-edit summary) Schazjmd (talk) 16:17, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

screenshot

Schazjmd, Hmmm. I also use vector. I'm not exactly sure what changed, but it certainly has a different appearance than it used to. I assumed some global change was rolled out. Maybe it's just a typography change that caught my eye? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:28, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

screenshot

RoySmith, ack, that looks nothing like mine! I really hope it's a glitch and not a change that is going to hit all of us. Schazjmd (talk) 16:42, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T202916

RoySmith, it's just that horrible bug that I keep whingeing to Catrope about. If you click somebody else's link to RecentChanges or watchlist, and that person uses the ugly settings, then your prefs get changed to the ugly system. Go to phab:T202916 for a description and for a bit of Javascript code that will stop this by re-setting your account prefs to non-ugly on every page load. (You can fix it manually in Special:Preferences, but if it keeps happening, then the automated system saves you the trouble of repeatedly fixing it.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), That's kind of mind-bogglingly frightening. Basically a code injection bug in a URL, if I understand it correctly. But, I'm not seeing which preference it is that got changed. T202916 talks about Recent Changes, this is Watchlist. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:10, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

It's "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc. The Watchlist is, roughly put, implemented as a part of RecentChanges and they share some features. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:23, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, Yeah, that fixed it. As for hiding a Watchlist preference under Recent Changes, well, that's just sub-optimal. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:19, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

#ifexist and Commons

#ifexist doesn't seem to work for files on Commons? Is there an alternative? I wanted to make {{emoji}} able to detect if its default, Emojione, doesn't have a certain emoji.

E.g.

 | [[File:{{#switch: {{{theme|{{{2}}}}}}
 | twitter      = Twemoji12 {{lc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | noto         = Emoji u{{lc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | noto 4.4     = Noto Emoji KitKat {{lc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | noto 5.0     = Noto Emoji Lollipop {{lc:{{{1|}}}}} <!-- Note: Includes only the updated 5.0 emojis. The other emojis on that version are identical to 4.4 versions and the 5.0 files are red-linked. Please update this if you can find a way. -->
 | noto 8.0     = Noto Emoji Oreo {{lc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | noto 9.0     = Noto Emoji Pie {{lc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | android      = Android Emoji {{lc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | one          = Emojione {{uc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | one bw       = Emojione BW {{uc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | one v1       = Emojione1 {{uc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | fx           = Fxemoji u{{uc:{{{1|}}}}}
 | #default     = {{#ifexist:File:Emojione {{uc:{{{1|}}}}}.svg|Emojione {{uc:{{{1|}}}}}|Twemoji12 {{lc:{{{1|}}}}}}}

Emojione is missing many emoji, because it became proprietary at some point... but wasn't when the template was made. I don't want to just WP:BOLDly change it to use e.g. Twitter emoji, which are complete, because it will change many, many pages without discussion. So...what can we do? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 01:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

#ifexist for files on Commons works if you use Media: instead of File:. Nardog (talk) 02:03, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

"South Pole Wall" problem?

Possible problem at South Pole Wall => "Unable to fetch revision data" (re upper-most page summary, right below the article title)? - Drbogdan (talk) 23:35, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

SOLVED: Problem now seems ok - Thanks to anyone who might have helped with this - Stay Safe and Healthy !! Drbogdan (talk) 03:45, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

How do I link to a section when a section won't link?

It would probably be rude to change the name of a section on a talk page just so a link to the section can be provided.

Here is the problem. Now there may be a way to change the link, but I don't know what that is. — Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 18:48, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

You need to URL encode the offending characters. In this case that's the left and right square brackets. --Izno (talk) 18:53, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@Vchimpanzee: Encode it, like this. Square brackets become %5B and %5D if before the hash, .5B and .5D if after the hash. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:56, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Also, you can use the {{anchor}} template to add an invisible named anchor you can link to. --Masem (t) 19:01, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:04, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Redrose64 I had to copy what you did on another talk page because somehow I couldn't make it work. Wait, I see what I did wrong. I thought I added the space and I didn't.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:12, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, the spaces need to be left alone. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:20, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee and Redrose64: Numeric character references ([, ]) work better in this case, preserving the look. Nardog (talk) 08:05, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

ReFill 2

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257481

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257471

I have a script which added ReFill and ReFill 2 to my toolbar for easy access. ReFill 2 is pulling back a 404 error... GiantSnowman 11:27, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

• I'm thinking this might be related to the fact that ReFill has now migrated from Wmflabs to Toolforge. Even ReFill's interface looks slightly different than it did 24–48 hours ago. Steel1943 (talk) 17:42, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Is there a fix for this? GiantSnowman 14:15, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

GiantSnowman: Per the conversation at T257471, I just had success via https://refill.toolforge.org/. = paul2520 (talk) 02:55, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Paul2520: the tool script has also been fixed, huzzah! GiantSnowman 09:42, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I'm still getting a 404-Not Found message...although reFill appears to be working for some users? Thanks. Caro7200 (talk) 16:39, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Yep, getting a 404 error here too. Steel1943 (talk) 17:16, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Steel1943 and Caro7200 please see this thread below Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Further expertise to getting bare urls tool working. Things are working again for me and I hope the same applies to you. MarnetteD|Talk 21:11, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

ReFill has not been working all day (Saturday July 11). All I get is a 404 . ThatMontrealIP (talk) 04:07, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I see, from the link in the section below (perhaps the two sections should be merged?) the variant link does work. Thanks. ThatMontrealIP (talk) 04:10, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Error linking/jumping to a section of an article

Using www......wikiarticlename#sectionname fails in some cases: the wrong destination section is jumped to/displayed.

Example: https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/SD_card#SDXC jumps to SD_Card section "2009–present: SDXC" (section 6) instead of the later section "SDXC" (section 10).

Reason: Wikicode is generating a spurious HTML <span>...</span> element containing only the incorrect target id in the earlier section. This 'hijacks' the jump/link.

In more detail: The HTML in section 6 is

<h3>
 <span id="2009.E2.80.93present:_SDXC"></span>
 <span class="mw-headline" id="2009–present:_SDXC"> <span id="SDXC"></span> 2009–present: SDXC 
 <span class="mw-editsection">
  <span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span>
  <a href="/w/index.php?title=SD_card&action=edit&section=6" title="Edit section: 2009–present: SDXC">edit</a>
  <span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span>
 </span>
</h3>

The HTML in section 10 is

<h3>
 <span class="mw-headline" id="SDXC">SDXC</span>
 <span class="mw-editsection">
  <span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span>
  <a href="/w/index.php?title=SD_card&action=edit&section=10" title="Edit section: SDXC">edit</a>
  <span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span>
 </span>
</h3>

if the HTML code <span id="SDXC"></span> is removed 'by hand' from the generated HTML then jumping/linking to both the sections works correctly with,

https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/SD_card#2009–present:_SDXC

and

https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/SD_card#SDXC

respectively.

Error reproduced in Firefox 76.0 and Slimjet 26.0.3.0 (based on Chromium 80.0.3987.87) under Ubuntu 18.04

Somewhat bizarrely, with Navigation popups installed, mousing over the above links shows the correct section in both cases! But clicking on them jumps to section 6 in both cases. Hedles (talk) 12:56, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

The section-header for section 6 of SD card is

==={{Anchor|SDXC}} 2009–present: SDXC ===

Someone has explicity added a {{anchor}} for #SDXC there. Each of the product-names links to the entry in §History, which conflicts with their use as actual section-titles later. This problem is noted in the second entry of Template:Anchor#Limitations. DMacks (talk) 13:16, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Navigation popups gives a different result because it doesn't look for an anchor in the html but for a section name in the wikitext. This works for https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/SD_card#SDXC where it finds ===SDXC===. But it fails for https://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/SD_card#2009–present:_SDXC where it doesn't find ==={{Anchor|SDXC}} 2009–present: SDXC ===. It just shows the lead in that case. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:21, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Restore

It appears that Wikimedia has recently turned off the ability to edit or even view the source of an old version on Commons.

I don't like this feature at all. How do I disable it? Magog the Ogre (t • c) 12:19, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Magog the Ogre, leaving aside that this is en.wiki and not commons, I just tested four different types of pages there and they are fine. Could you give an example or screenshot? Elizium23 (talk) 12:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sheetz_footprint.png&action=edit&oldid=170858190 <-- this page always redirects to mcrrestore. It's a pain when trying to manually merge changes. Also VPT is a global board so I'm not sure why you care which wiki it is. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 12:39, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Magog the Ogre, commons:Help Desk#How to view old source text when there is mediainfo might be instructive. Elizium23 (talk) 12:43, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 12:51, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@Magog the Ogre: The top of this page actually says: "The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia." The issue doesn't exist at Wikipedia although it affects some files used here. The edit notice here says: "Where did you encounter the problem? Please add links when possible." Always link the page you post about no matter which wiki it's at. If you think it's a general issue then always link a page where you saw the issue so helpers like Elizium23 don't waste time trying to guess that you are posting about. This issue only affects some of the Commons file pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:21, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@Magog the Ogre: As shown in the left sidebar, under "In other projects", Commons has its own equivalent of this page - the link goes to c:Commons:Village pump/Technical. Shortcuts for that include: COM:VPT; COM:VP/T; and COM:TECH. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:48, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I signed into a device I haven't used, but I didn't, because I have used it

I just got a notification that I signed into Wikipedia from a device I haven't used lately. I have used this device every single day since we were told to stay home, except when I took a brief vacation after we were told, perhaps wrongly, that it was safe to do so.

I use an alternate identity to thank people (and make it clear on the user page who I am) because it's annoying to constantly see the word "thank" in every single edit in histories, and I have done what is necessary to not see the "thank" message.

But I have signed in as that person from this device several times in recent weeks.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:48, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

The message was probably MediaWiki:Notification-loginnotify-login-success-email-subject and MediaWiki:Notification-header-login-success. I don't know the rules but it may involve a user agent which can change for different reasons like updating the operating system or changing browser. The code in User:Vchimpanzee/common.css still gives you a thank link in diffs so there is no need to change account to thank users. You can also add ?safemode=1 or &safemode=1 (if the url already has a ?) to a url to omit local scripts and CSS. This will display thank links in a page history while you view that url. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:38, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I actually don't have thank links unless I sign in with the other name. My operating system was updated without my permission. I'd rather thank people the hard way.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:38, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Are you saying you don't have "(thank)" to the right of the time stamp for my edit in this diff? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

No. After I asked how not to, I see (-⊗-).— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:39, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Ah, you have two features to remove thank links. .action-history .mw-thanks-thank-link {display:none !important} in User:Vchimpanzee/common.css only removes them on history pages. importScript('User:Technical 13/Scripts/NoThanks.js'); in User:Vchimpanzee/common.js removes them on diff pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:52, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Need admin assistance on a page I deleted

Not sure what happened here, but please see User talk:Maile66 2020–21 Crystal Palace F.C. season message from Sakiv. Apparently I responded to a Speedy Delete request and deleted the page in question. We now have 2020–21 Crystal Palace F.C. season as an article and 2020–2021 Crystal Palace F.C. season as a redirect. The original editor is now requesting (I think) that the redirect be restored. I cannot see the difference between the two, but I don't want to mess it up. Can an admin here handle this correctly, please? — Maile (talk) 10:15, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

• I think the train of events is as follows; the article was originally created as 2020–21 Crystal Palace F.C. season (the standard naming terminology). Sakiv then moved it to 2020–21 Crystal Palace season so that he could G6 the original (now a redirect), which you then deleted. Sakiv then moved his own page, 2020–2021 Crystal Palace F.C. season to 2020–21 Crystal Palace F.C. season. Sakiv did not do this properly – he used you (unwittingly) to delete the existing version to put his over the top. His version, incidentally, is not an improvement (he then edit-warred over it when another editor removed the pointless additional tables). As far as I can see, probably the best way to ensure that this particular silliness is removed is to delete 2020–21 Crystal Palace F.C. season and then restore only the revisions up to 11 July, before Sakiv started messing with it. Black Kite (talk) 10:49, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Maile66: We could also delete the redirect 2020–2021 Crystal Palace F.C. season. Black Kite (talk) 10:54, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

as the other editor involved, this is my interpretation of what happened too (namely that Sakiv tried wiping the original article by the move / delete / recreation ). There has now been a histmerge so I will try to find a reasonable merger of the 2 versions later, as some of the content added is useful. Spike 'em (talk) 11:02, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

I have taken the 11 July version as a base and added in the additional sections added by Sakiv in their new version (but without the transfer tables containing dummy information).Spike 'em (talk) 14:57, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Maile66: There is no problem whatsoever. The one who is creating all this noise is clear. I did not try to wipe out any revisions. I apparently only want to have the history of the article's creation day only. The previous editor plagiarized my content on other season articles without attribution.--Sakiv (talk) 13:11, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Spike 'em: The tables you are calling dummy is very useful for the editors who will come and fill them in the future without needing to go and copy from elsewhere.--Sakiv (talk) 15:00, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-29

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

• Users can thank others for their edits. Checkusers can now see user data related to that action. This can help identify sock puppets who harass others using thanks. [37]

Problems

• Everyone was logged out a couple of weeks ago to fix a security problem. The problem was not entirely fixed. Because of this everyone was logged out once again last week. [38][39]

Changes later this week

• Wikis that are not for one specific language can translate pages. Sometimes parts of translations are outdated or missing. Outdated translations are marked with a pink background. Missing translations will also be marked in the future. This markup can sometimes break things. It can soon be disabled by using <translate nowrap></translate> on the source page. [40]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 July. It will be on all wikis from 16 July (calendar).

Future changes

• Wikimedia code review plans to use GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. [41][42][43][44]

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

16:29, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC: should the "Authority control" template continue to include MusicBrainz identifiers?

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 {{Authority control}} continue to include MusicBrainz identifiers? 08:34, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Basics and technicalities

The {{Authority control}} template, usually found as last of the navigation templates at the bottom of Wikipedia articles, lists a series of internally linked authority control systems, each followed by an external link to the identifier for the topic of the Wikipedia article in that system. These are international systems of one-of-a-kind unique identifiers which as well distinguish topics with a similar name, as that they identify the preferential name for a topic within a system. Example (using Bibliothèque nationale de France identifiers): Engelbert Humperdinck (composer) → BnF 13895404h Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) → BnF 13970123h Engelbert Humperdinck (album) → BnF 378510480 MusicBrainz is a WP:USERGENERATED website, which has separate pages on various music-related topics. The URL of each page ends on a multi-digit code, which works similarly as an identifier in an authority control system, e.g.: Engelbert Humperdinck (composer) → 30060b66-4ed3-47a5-89d7-cb4f13437441 discography at MusicBrainz Engelbert Humperdinck (singer) → 62c28bc0-f696-4c50-8e54-5f8e9120bdb8 discography at MusicBrainz Engelbert Humperdinck (album) → 8d4abd6-580d-45f1-8ba6-1d2bb1ad245f at MusicBrainz (list of releases) Wikidata is the international authority control system of Wikimedia projects (including Wikipedias in all available languages, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource, ...). It is recognised by other international authority control systems, e.g.: VIAF 71578307 links to Engelbert Humperdinck (Q55010). Likewise, MusicBrainz's page on the composer (see link above) links to that same Wikidata item. The Wikidata item on the composer is not accessed directly from the {{Authority control}} box at the bottom of the composer's article: the Wikidata item on the composer is accessed via the Wikidata item link in the left margin of the article (which is always present, whether or not the {{Authority control}} box is placed). By default, an {{Authority control}} box placed in an article retrieves its content from the corresponding Wikidata item, that is: the box lists and links the authority control records of the systems accepted by the template (see list of tracking categories), when the corresponding Wikipedia item contains a value, a.k.a. property, of such an external authority control system. Values for external links in the box can be overridden locally, but once a value for the property has been defined in the Wikidata item, the listing and linking of the external authority control system can not be omitted from an {{Authority control}} box once it is placed in an article. For clarity: the RfC question is not about omitting authority control identifiers from Wikidata, but on whether or not MusicBrainz identifiers should be kept as tracking categories in Wikipedia's {{Authority control}} box.

Previous (much broader) RfC: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 148#RfC: authority control (Dec. 2018 to Feb. 2019: came to no conclusion about the MusicBrainz identifier which at that time was already included in the {{Authority control}} box).

Previous related discussions: Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard/Archive 21#MusicBrainz (May-June 2018; "external link" aspect, discussion without formal closure: did not result in a change w.r.t. acceptability of linking to MusicBrainz pages as part of an "External links" list). Around the same time proposals regarding a selective display of some authority control identifiers, while omitting others, was extensively discussed at Template talk:Authority control/Archive 7#Suppressing local display via null parameters – without resulting in anything.

Last discussion on the topic (leading to this RfC): Template talk:Authority control#MusicBrainz

Survey

• No – my main reason for this stance is the over-all low quality of too many MusicBrainz pages linked from Wikipedia (examples can be given if needed – in the preparation to this RfC I asked if *anyone* could give me an example of a good, or at least decent, MusicBrainz page, which remained an "unanswered question"); Note that that previous argument is about the *actual* low quality of these pages, not merely about their WP:USERGENERATED status, which is of course a further argument; Further the BBC website does not seem to link to Wikipedia via MusicBrainz very often any more (only one example where they currently do could be given in the preliminary talks, after I had already given a counterexample); Further, the argument that Wikipedia should link to MusicBrainz mainly for its "authority control" characteristics does not outdo Wikipedia's policy against organising linkfarms (WP:NOTLINKFARM – keep links such as MusicBrainz in the Wikidata system where they can be accessed after one click from the Wikipedia article); The actual MusicBrainz identifiers are *longer* than what is displayed in the authority control box, respectively "artist/30060b66-4ed3-47a5-89d7-cb4f13437441", "artist/62c28bc0-f696-4c50-8e54-5f8e9120bdb8" and "release-group/18d4abd6-580d-45f1-8ba6-1d2bb1ad245f" for the examples given in the "Basics and technicalities" summary above: in other words the MusicBrainz system is not *actually* an Authority control system unless these longer names are used, and currently the MusicBrainz identifiers are already considerably longer than those of other identifiers in the authority control box; I would be open to any system that defaults to "no MusicBrainz" in the {{Authority control}} template and allows local override for those who checked the corresponding MusicBrainz page as being decent enough to link from Wikipedia. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:43, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • The claim that "the BBC website does not seem to link to Wikipedia via MusicBrainz very often any more " seems to based on a basic misunderstanding of how the BBC use Musicbrainz, and as such is a straw man argument. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

    Illustrating by an example, Pini di Roma (a composition with a Wikipedia article):

    • Has a MusicBrainz page: "Pini di Roma, P 141 – Symphonic poem" at MusicBrainz (information and list of recordings)
    • Has a BBC page – which does link to the Wikipedia article on the composition, but does not link to the aformentioned MusicBrainz page.

    ... which illustrates that BBC does not link to MusicBrainz very often. In fact, I couldn't find a single BBC page on a composition that links to MusicBrainz (although such pages usually link to Wikipedia). Note that it is also not possible to get from the MusicBrainz page on the Pini di Roma composition to the BBC page on the same topic. BBC pages on a composer seem to link to MusicBrainz more often... but such pages usually link to Wikipedia way higher on the page than where they link to MusicBrainz. The whole rationale of MusicBrainz pages being some sort of authority control system which brings Wikipedia and BBC nearer to each other seems, to say the least, a bit exaggerated. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:18, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

    • Like I said: a basic misunderstanding of how the BBC use Musicbrainz; and a straw man. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:17, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
• No. The template should link to a small group of reliable, high quality, relevant, non-commercial, non-wiki databases. Even without things liks musicbrainz, it has way too many useless links (for enwiki readers) already, links from national libraries which are not in English and not in a language or country relevant for the subject, but which happen to be an authority control. Links which are added by default should be very, very limited. Wikidata is the perfect location to function as linkfarm for all these, from the truly authoritative to the near-junk ones (Quora?); enwiki should restrict this to much less than we have now, and excluding things like the wiki Musicbrainz is a good start. See for example Odilon Redon, French 19th century artist, not a musician by any stretch: there are 28 links already in the authority control template there, including musicbrainz. Such linkfarms don't help our readers one bit (e.g. [45]), changing this to a select, limited group of truly useful links would be a serious improvement. Fram (talk) 08:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
• No, although referred to as an open encyclopedia, Musicbrainz has lots of user generated content and I don't think it is actually a reliable source. Also we're not a link farm → Lil-℧niquԐ1 - (Talk) - 10:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
• No – A lot is user-generated and therefore not a reliable source. —Ojorojo (talk) 13:41, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
• No, per all the rationale given above.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 14:07, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
• No Low quality, user-generated "data" and completely circular (copies the Wikipedia article for the subject). It has no business being in an authority control any more than IMDb does, in fact less. Voceditenore (talk) 15:58, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
  • "no business being in an authority control any more than IMDb does" Indeed. We should add IMDb to {{Authority control}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
• Yes. Firstly, I'm very disappointed in the amount of misinformation that has been used in this discussion and the preceding preliminary discussion, so I'll start with a point-by-point rebuttal of all the arguments presented in the previous comments.
  • Francis doesn't give any examples of low quality pages; "quality" seems to be subjective and undefined in his comment. The two most sensible ways to measure quality in this context would probably be completeness and correctness; most similar databases cannot achieve the former to begin with, and MusicBrainz does not frequently contain errors (contrary to Francis's implication). For example, if you go to the page for an artist like The Carpenters, data exists for multiple releases of all their studio albums, as well as a large number of their compilation albums, with information for each track on each release and tracks on multiple releases being deduplicated where necessary (that is, they all have unique identifiers). The data is incomplete (since it does not contain all of their singles and does not contain the information about every release or the full credits of every single recording and composition), but it isn't wrong, and the latter is a more useful measure since it would be unreasonable to expect a music database to be complete.
    • I would also note that all the examples that Francis was actually able to give at Template talk:Authority control#MusicBrainz were invalid because they were apparently dependent on misunderstandings of the user interface. In my second reply to him there I responded to those examples.
  • Why is it relevant that the BBC doesn't link to Wikipedia via MusicBrainz? It's largely a red herring because it confers no reliability either way.
  • The length of the identifiers is completely irrelevant to their reliability and I'm surprised that it was even mentioned. {{Authority control}} usually takes up less area on the page than the infobox (even with dozens of identifiers) and is much less noticeable. If someone actually wanted to complain about the format of the links they had years to do it before this RfC.
  • The identifiers are unique both with and without the prefixes, because MusicBrainz assigns 128-bit UUIDs randomly and they are expected to be unique over any vaguely reasonable timeframe (collisions are not expected until about 10¹⁵ IDs have been generated). I don't know if the software actually handles collisions, but it should be unnecessary for some millions of years. Removing the prefixes in no way makes MusicBrainz less of an authority control (although there are certainly better reasons to argue that it isn't).
  • Manual checking for MusicBrainz links is not necessary, because the site has not been demonstrated to be uniquely unreliable among the websites linked to in {{Authority control}}.
  • MusicBrainz is one of many databases in the AC template and does not by itself usually make a significant difference to the number of identifiers, unless there are no or only a few other identifiers (in which case it's obviously not clutter). If {{Authority control}} needs to be downsized then that can be achieved with a much broader RfC; removing MusicBrainz – or any other individual database – would do basically nothing to address the issue. The links to national libraries are irrelevant to this discussion. (This appears to be Fram's only argument?)
  • The fact that MusicBrainz is not a reliable source is irrelevant to its inclusion in the template, even though some AC databases can be treated as reliable secondary or tertiary sources, because the template hosts external links and not sources. The template does not have any policy- or guideline-defined inclusion criteria that do not apply to any other templates; even if the links to MusicBrainz are removed from {{Authority control}}, the MusicBrainz-specific external link templates will still exist and will continue to be used.
  • The fact that MusicBrainz quotes Wikipedia articles (automatically, through a caching system based on MusicBrainz's links to Wikidata and Wikipedia) has no bearing on whether or not it should be used in the template. It is primarily for the convenience of MusicBrainz users, and it does not affect the site in a way meaningful to its inclusion in {{Authority control}}. Jc86035 (talk) 07:09, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
• (continued) Now that that's out of the way, this is why I would actually support the continued inclusion of MusicBrainz.
  • Firstly, there are no policies or guidelines which apply only to {{Authority control}}, which in terms of the applicable policies and guidelines can be treated primarily as an external link template. As such, since MusicBrainz external links will continue to be allowed regardless of the outcome of this RfC, there are no policy- or guideline-based reasons to disallow MusicBrainz links specifically.
  • MusicBrainz is sort of an oddball in the AC template, being the only website with user-generated content. However, this is not in and of itself a reason to remove it, because its inclusion can otherwise be justified, and the template does not have any guideline-defined inclusion criteria (other than those which were set by the previous RfC, which left the inclusion of MusicBrainz as an open question).
  • The purpose of {{Authority control}}, and AC in general, is to assign unique identifiers to entities. MusicBrainz generally accomplishes this, although this is obviously not unique to MusicBrainz. MusicBrainz identifiers, especially those for artists and works, are generally stable. In cases where there are duplicate entities, the older entity is usually the one retained. Additionally, artist identifiers are automatically removed after a week if they do not have any relationships to other entities, which means that they are always minimally identifiable; and MusicBrainz has a version control system which requires multiple users to agree for certain changes (including all destructive changes, such as merges and deletions).
    • The quality of MusicBrainz data may not be directly comparable to that of another database's data, because most similar databases do not make public and/or do not calculate statistics on their own reliability. However, from the available data, it can at least be shown that errors in MusicBrainz are routinely corrected. For example, it is public information that several MusicBrainz artists are merged each day (after the usual one-week waiting period), and that the process is scrutinized by experienced users such that there is sometimes consensus not to merge. (More information about edits can be seen by registered users.)
  • There are several online databases which assign identifiers to musical works and associated entities, MusicBrainz being one of them. However, MusicBrainz is somewhat unique in seeking to create unique identifiers (whereas e.g. AllMusic does not clean up its duplicate track identifiers) and actually attempting to relate/link them in a structured manner. MusicBrainz is also by far the most comprehensive one to have a copyleft license, and likely as a result has many reusers of its data, the BBC being one of them. (The reason that the BBC gets mentioned in these discussions is that it directly uses MusicBrainz's identifiers and relationships as part of its content and URLs on a prominent part of its website.)
    • MusicBrainz's status of being the primary copyleft database in its field is somewhat similar to OpenStreetMap's status of being the primary copyleft map database. Although OpenStreetMap is also decidedly not a reliable source, it has nevertheless been used significantly throughout the Wikimedia projects, most notably in WikiMiniAtlas, GeoHack, and Kartographer and Kartotherian. The data of both projects has also been used by numerous third parties outside the Wikimedia projects.
  • There are several ISO identifiers for musical works: ISRC, ISMN and ISWC; these respectively correspond to MusicBrainz's recordings (one-to-one), works (not one-to-one) and works (one-to-one). (The AC template already links to an ISO identifier, ISIN.) However, using any of them in {{Authority control}} would likely be worse than using MusicBrainz, because their data is largely limited to products that were still being sold after the early 1990s, because ISRC and ISMN identifiers would rarely correspond one-to-one with Wikipedia articles, and because the primary ISWC website does not allow for direct links to identifiers. Furthermore, Wikidata's coverage of MusicBrainz is much broader than its coverage of these identifiers, so switching to another database would almost certainly result in a reduction in coverage. There are also no direct ISO analogues for the other six MusicBrainz types which the AC template currently uses.
  • While it's arguable that the AC template doesn't need any coverage of music-specific databases, it also doesn't necessarily need to link to any of the other databases that it links to. Additionally, it's often the case that MusicBrainz is the only existing identifier shown in {{Authority control}} for many pages (particularly albums) as a direct result of being the only domain-specific music database in the template.
  • In conclusion, MusicBrainz has a number of unique attributes due to its position as the primary copyleft music database, and its inclusion in {{Authority control}} can be justified due to those factors as well as the difficulty in being able to use a comparable amount of data from other music databases of comparable quality in the template. Jc86035 (talk) 07:59, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
• Yes. Per Jc86035 - Premeditated (talk) 15:49, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
• Yes - Jc86035 makes a lot of sense here. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:26, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
• No per Fram and Voceditenore. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:28, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
• Yes - per Jc86035. ‐‐1997kB (talk) 02:37, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
• No - in the ones I’ve seen, the link to MB has not generally offered worthwhile content. Sergecross73 msg me 03:34, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Sergecross73: Do you have any examples in mind? (I'd also note that this is, strictly speaking, supposed to be more about the identifiers than the content.) Jc86035 (talk) 12:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

• Yes per Jc86035 who makes a good case for its inclusion and refutes the arguments presented against it. Thryduulf (talk) 15:48, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
• Yes Per Jc86035 and more. There are two significant misapprehensions in this and prior discussions; which through previously refuted reappear here as misrepresentations. Firstly, the point of including an identifier in {{Authority control}} is not to cite anything - so that the link might fail WP:RS is immaterial. Secondly, the point of inclusion is not to provide "worthwhile content" - the links after all, are not in the "External links" section, so WP:EL does not apply. The point of inclusion is to assert authority, in the sense used at Authority control; in other words to verify identity and aid disambiguation. And for that purpose MusicBrainz is perfectly good. more than good, in fact; it is so well-suited to the role that - among many others - the BBC - an august and well-scrutinised public body - use it for that purpose. Furthermore, for many musicians and ensembles, it is the only external identifier that we have. As such, its removal would be disruptive. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:57, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  Maybe have a bit more trust in the sister project that handles authority control across Wikimedia projects? Wikidata's authority control files are trusted by VIAF, Library of Congress and whatnot. Every Wikipedia page is linked to its authority file, so that should be enough for the authority control aspect, no? Maybe add a few that have authority control files on a broad range of topics in the {{authority control}} box, but I don't see a problem with authority control being handled at Wikidata exclusively for those topics that pass GNG, but are not listed by any of the other broad authority control handlers. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:54, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  Where did I say anything about not having trust in Wikidata? You attempt to put words into my mouth: don't. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:20, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• Yes As an aggregate. And per Jc86035's extensive and careful analysis. Many of the arguments presented are red herrings since they apply to RS; this isn't meant to be a RS for content inclusion. Littleolive oil (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
• Yes, it’s an aggregate where people may well be searching, and has the unique identifiers that lead users to the right person, and so on. I concur that this isn’t a RS issue, it’s merely a locator. Montanabw^(talk) 19:05, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
• Yes for appropriate subjects, No for inappropriate ones. I just came across a MusicBrainz entry for Grafton, New South Wales, something called a "MusicBrainz area ID" (d:Property:P982 – just look at the examples there!). The material for Grafton found at MB is unsurprisingly poor; it's simply a poor mirror of Wikimedia data. The music-related material at MB is often poor, but it's also often the easiest available such link in many articles, so there is some value. To me, the most annoying thing about it is the huge number. Reducing that to something like "MusicBrainz: ...4059a" would lessen its visual pollution. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:46, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Michael Bednarek: The reason that places are in the database is to link them to artists and creative works, so most of the interesting data is actually in the other tabs and not the landing page; e.g. Grafton is linked to five artists who have lived or performed there. Jc86035 (talk) 16:21, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

  ... four of whom are thoroughly non-notable, and two of the three most famous singers from Grafton are not listed there. I think that's an indication of the generally poor quality of MB material. I've stricken my Yes above. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:10, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

• Yes: MusicBrainz is very much in the spirit of Wiki(p|m)edia, and providing pointers to find more free/libre non-commercial content is a good thing. The external link policy should really be clarified to emphasize that. The situation's the opposite when it comes to non-free/non-libre/commercial services: Template:IMDb, Template:Google books, Template:Infobox_YouTube_personality, and similar are all grossly inappropriate corporate native-advertising spam, even if their creators are acting in good faith: those need swift and thorough eradication from the encyclopedia. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/them)｜Talk｜Contributions 22:51, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

• May I ask why VPT was chosen for this RFC? It's definitely not a technical issue. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 16:17, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

  Templates, and {{authority control}} is a template, are usually associated with the technical VP. The template is also programmed in Lua (Module:Authority control), which can only be changed if one has "technical competence" type of access permissions. Also, during preparation of this RfC the venue for the RfC was discussed, in which I defended VPT: see explanation there. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:29, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

  I don't accept any of that. You seem to have been the only person in favour of VPT as the venue. In short: what the heck is this doing here, why is it not at Template talk:Authority control? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:40, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

  Oh, and while we're about it, it's not showing properly at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies (or any of the others), so you could make a case for VPT being the venue to request an explanation as to just why the RfC isn't showing in the listings, but people usually post questions like that to User talk:Legobot, User talk:Legoktm or Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment, where I explain the problem yet again. Hint: the RfC statement is not brief enough - that {{collapse top}}/{{collapse bottom}} won't help either. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:51, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

  That's a different matter, and would be glad with some assistance (that is, without changing the layout too much). --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:08, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

• Would someone please delete this whole RfC so it can be posted at WP:VPR or somewhere else. VPT is not the place for a 30-day RfC, particularly when it's not a VPT issue. Johnuniq (talk) 23:23, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

  This is not the first RfC here, e.g. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 175#RfC: Alteration of Account Creation Limits/Account Creator Rights, and as said, Lua templates are a technical topic. If you don't want RfCs here, see to it that it is documented somewhere clear, and that you have a consensus on it before implementing. As for this RfC, it would imho be disruptive to move it now. I could agree with an early closure (2 weeks or so), that is: if the !votes continue to be more or less unanimous as they do now. --Francis Schonken (talk) 06:08, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

  The issue is not with RfCs here in general. The issue is that RfCs should, as far as is practical, always be at the venue most applicable to the question being asked. This RfC question is about the content of a template, and so would be most appropriate at the template talk page or a project (talk) page relevant to that content. It would be appropriate here only if it was asking about technical aspects, e.g. of implementation but that the content in question is hosted on a lua template is completely irrelevant to the question being asked. Thryduulf (talk) 09:43, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

  See preliminary discussion: the previous RfC, which led to indecisiveness on the topic brought here, was "village pump" level, and holding an RfC on a topic that tries to outdo what was resulting from a previous RfC can hardly be held at a less visible place, in order not to be perceived as a more WP:LOCALCONSENSUS. And again, during the preparation process the venue was discussed. There were enough technical people following the discussion that could have brought any argument to initiate it elsewhere (the only suggestion to hold it elsewhere was given without rationale). So, I am sorry, and apologise for the inconvenience (although I see no explanation *why* it would be inconvenient), but oppose moving a well-prepared RfC elsewhere. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:08, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

  The inconvenience is that those watching this page for actually germane discussions will be distracted by an irrelevant one. --Bsherr (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

• Notifying the participants in the preliminary discussion who haven't commented yet: Nikkimaria, Tacsipacsi, Pigsonthewing. Jc86035 (talk) 08:14, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
• I've moved the thread below out of the Survey section since it's tangential to the RfC. Jc86035 (talk) 14:11, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  Re. The Carpenters: if you'd think https://musicbrainz.org/artist/4580d83b-093e-4241-91fb-2dd71f5f1f3f a good external link, I'd prefer it to be displayed thus:

  The Carpenters discography at MusicBrainz.

  in an "External links" section, than as a mere linked code number (MusicBrainz: 4580d83b-093e-4241-91fb-2dd71f5f1f3f) in the authority control box. Further,

  The Carpenters at Muziekweb website.

  may be a better alternative in an external links section, for several reasons: e.g., data compiled by librarians (better than WP:USERGENERATED); record sleeves shown (without potential copyright violation issues, while a public library website); etc. Note that this website also has unique identification numbers, authority control style (what else would one expect from librarians?) More importantly, it is free-access, so in that sense certainly not less than MusicBrainz. This website is also publicity-free, at least more so than MusicBrainz which links to quite a few commercial websites. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:46, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Francis Schonken: Muziekweb only has one Wikidata property at the moment, Muziekweb performer ID (P5882), which is only used on 14,000 items (whereas MusicBrainz artist ID (P434) is used on 203,000). It also doesn't seem to have any data analogous to MusicBrainz's release groups, recordings, instruments or areas, and only has work/composition data for classical compositions. In terms of the breadth of data, it seems to have only about 300,000 albums/releases based on the highest used album IDs (an order of magnitude less than MusicBrainz's 2.5 million). While it certainly would be useful in its own right, its data isn't as well-interlinked as MusicBrainz's is because there isn't as much structural support for it. Jc86035 (talk) 12:44, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

  None of which is relevant for The Carpenters, i.e. the example you gave. I say that, on average, MusicBrainz has low to very low quality. The numbers you give only seem to illustrate that: it has "quantity" written all over, not "quality". Fine-tuning an external links section starts, on almost any Wikipedia article, with weeding out cruft. In too many cases, the MusicBrainz link would be part of the cruft that can be thrown out on sight, and if not, like in The Carpenters' case, it can likely be replaced with something better (which I illustrated – Muziekweb of course not being the only free-access music-related online database which offers good quality). All of this illustrates that we should *not* have a MusicBrainz link willy-nilly when the article has a standard authority control feature. --Francis Schonken (talk) 02:34, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Francis Schonken: Could you explain clearly how you think the Carpenters' page on Muziekweb is higher quality than the MusicBrainz page?

  In response to the reasons you gave in the previous comment:

  • Why would MusicBrainz be more prone to copyright issues? Neither site owns the copyright to the albums that they describe. Furthermore, because the Internet Archive hosts MusicBrainz's cover art, MusicBrainz is arguably less likely to be directly affected by copyright issues.
  • In MusicBrainz, the cover art is shown on the pages for the releases (but not the release groups, since the cover art for different releases can be different). I believe there is a user script which also shows them on artist pages.
  • It does probably help that their site is maintained by librarians, but that doesn't by itself make the site better for authority control. As aforementioned, their data is inherently less suitable for the AC template due to issues such as not having unique identifiers analogous to works and release groups.
  • Linking to commercial sites doesn't invalidate a database, and Muziekweb also links to YouTube and Spotify in any case.

  I also don't see how that was irrelevant to the example. Muziekweb doesn't have unique identifiers for any of the Carpenters' works or albums that would be directly analogous to the Wikipedia articles or Wikidata items, so the AC template can't link to the albums/releases unless counterpart Wikidata items are created and support is created within the AC module for using the data on the Wikidata items for editions of publications. Jc86035 (talk) 08:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  The Carpenters @ Muziekweb page has images; Carpenters @ MusicBrainz page has no images. → advantage Muziekweb

  • WP:USERGENERATED websites, such as MusicBrainz, are more easily liable to have copyright issues than websites by public bodies such as public libraries. → advantage Muziekweb
    • FYI, Internet Archive *has* copyright issues, so "Internet Archive hosts MusicBrainz's cover art" shoots in its own foot.
  • I was speaking about "sleeves" (i.e. front & back of the sleeve), which Muziekweb has systematically for all recordings; that is not the same as "cover art" (i.e. front side of the sleeve), which is what MusicBrainz seems to have exclusively for the pages I saw. → advantage Muziekweb
  • What are you going on about Muziekweb in the {{authority control}} template? I said MusicBrainz should be OUT of the AC template, while it may be acceptable as an external link in some cases, e.g. with the {{MusicBrainz artist}} template; I proposed Muziekweb as external link, i.e. outside the {{authority control}} box, as a viable replacement for such MusicBrainz link placed outside the {{authority control}} box. So I'm not going to reply to things I didn't suggest.
  • Re. "Linking to commercial sites doesn't invalidate a database" – another strawman: if given the choice between a website that carries publicity (e.g. MusicBrainz), and one that doesn't (e.g. Muziekweb), we'd normally prefer the latter (per, e.g., WP:LINKSTOAVOID, which has nothing to do with the "validity of a database"). → advantage Muziekweb

  --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:29, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

  If you aren't proposing that Muziekweb should be used in {{Authority control}}, it's not relevant to this discussion. Both sites are currently already allowed as external links (by default) and are not going to be disallowed by this discussion, because that's not how you defined the RfC. I'm not going to respond further in this part of the thread since it's clearly off-topic and the arguments that you've presented have no relevance to the AC template. Jc86035 (talk) 14:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

• To respond to an argument put forward by Jc86035 and others: as an external links template AC is subject to WP:EL. The bar for inclusion/exclusion is not "this link is never ever appropriate"; it's rather "in the majority of cases where this identifier exists, would its inclusion meet WP:EL"? The fact that it meets EL in some specific cases is a minimum standard but not sufficient for default inclusion in 125k articles and counting. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:33, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nikkimaria: Yes, but then the burden of proof (per WP:NOCON) falls on those in favour of the change to demonstrate that a majority of the links are not appropriate. I imagine this could be shown if it were the case, e.g. by random sampling of the links, but "inappropriate" would have to be well-defined in this context before this could be done. For example, if a page is out of date because an artist is known to have died and they are unintentionally stated to be living (which I imagine happens occasionally), would that be considered inappropriate under WP:ELNO's second criterion?

  A careful reading of WP:ELNO would suggest that the vast majority of MusicBrainz's artist pages would be acceptable. MusicBrainz provides unique, interlinked identifiers and other data/links, which means criterion 1 doesn't apply for most pages; even if the data is incorrect, criterion 2 doesn't necessarily apply because it's not intentionally misleading; criterion 12 doesn't apply to MusicBrainz because it's well-established; and so on. Jc86035 (talk) 15:56, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  Jc86035, NOCON states "In disputes over external links, disputed links are removed unless and until there is a consensus to include them". ELNO would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis; I don't agree with making blanket statements given the variety in page contents. For example, in the case of Jan van Eyck, the major content provided by the MusicBrainz link is a mirror of Wikipedia, which fails ELNO12. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:05, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nikkimaria: (I previously updated my comment to remove the mention of NOCON. Since you reverted it, it stays.) I would disagree with that assessment of the Jan van Eyck page – the reason that his entity exists in MusicBrainz is for the completeness of the release Deinós Nekrómantis, which the relationships tab on his item links to. (A slightly modified version of part of his work Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych is used on the album cover, it seems.) That album doesn't have a Wikipedia article, so Wikipedia doesn't contain that information.

  This also doesn't make sense as a test to apply to authority control databases, because the reason we're linking to them (particularly the non-domain-specific ones) is for the identifiers, not the content. Even an individual VIAF entry could rarely be said to contain factual information not in a Wikipedia article aside from self-referential data. Jc86035 (talk) 16:16, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  To your first point, that's a reason for the van Eyck page to exist on MusicBrainz; that is not a reason it meets EL on Jan van Eyck. We're not here to decide what should happen on the MusicBrainz site, but whether we should include that site in this external links template. We're also not here to discuss more broadly the value of the AC template in general, but whether this specific link warrants inclusion per our guidelines. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:24, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nikkimaria: ELNO12 can't apply to any individual MusicBrainz page; it only applies to the whole site (per "open wikis"), and for all intents and purposes MusicBrainz is established enough (although it's not really a wiki). Could you explain why you think ELNO1 applies to the page?

  • Is the relationship to the album insufficient?
  • Is the unique identifier insufficient?
  • Is it an issue with the cached Wikipedia content? What if it were not present? (The content is shown automatically, and removing it would necessitate the removal of both the Wikipedia and Wikidata links.)

  Jc86035 (talk) 16:31, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  Specifically the second part of ELNO12: "Mirrors or forks of Wikipedia should not be linked". The van Eyck entry at MusicBrainz is primarily a mirror of the Wikipedia article. If the Wikipedia content were removed then ELNO12 would not apply, but the link still wouldn't warrant inclusion at Jan van Eyck per EL. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:35, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nikkimaria: Are you seriously suggesting that the entirety of MusicBrainz is primarily a Wikipedia mirror or that the item primarily exists for the purpose of being a Wikipedia mirror? It's not even a deliberate editorial choice, and it doesn't even show the entire article.

  Anyway, the reasons that authority control sites are linked to (which matter in this context and can't be dismissed just because the RfC is specific to MusicBrainz) would generally fulfill at least one of ELYES3, ELMAYBE3 and ELMAYBE4. (Additionally, the reasons listed in WP:EL seem to be written with the intent of being applied to pages with prose or media, and not databases, which might hinder their applicability.) Jc86035 (talk) 16:47, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  No, I'm seriously suggesting that this particular entry is primarily a Wikipedia mirror. It doesn't particularly matter whether that's by editorial choice or automatic. If you'd like to go propose changes to EL that are tailored to databases go ahead, but as written MusicBrainz does not blanket-meet the criteria you outline. It might on particular articles, but what we're currently discussing is whether we should automatically include it on a wide range. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:56, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nikkimaria: ELNO12 only refers to sites as a whole, not individual pages. (In the interest of completeness: A mirror of Wikipedia is a site which has deliberately copied every article, which MusicBrainz hasn't done. MusicBrainz editors don't change the Wikipedia content after it's cached, so MusicBrainz isn't a fork of Wikipedia either.) Jc86035 (talk) 17:13, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  Nikkimaria (talk) 17:14, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  Referring to what? Jc86035 (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  The claim that ELNO12 only refers to sites as a whole. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:25, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nikkimaria: ELNO states: "[…] one should generally avoid providing external links to: […] Open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors. Mirrors or forks of Wikipedia should not be linked." I'm not particularly familiar with the guideline, but my understanding of it is that the quoted text as written refers only to entire websites (since a single page would not be considered a mirror or a fork of Wikipedia). Only 4, 5, 8, 9, 11 and 16, I think, could be considered to refer to individual pages on third-party websites. Jc86035 (talk) 17:34, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

  The text you quote does not specify entire websites. It's quite possible to mirror a Wikipedia article on a single page of a site, and for that single page on the site to not be an appropriate external link on that article. Nikkimaria (talk) 19:10, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Pigsonthewing: In the interest of clarity: I'm not entirely sure if it's appropriate to claim that WP:EL doesn't apply to {{Authority control}} at all, since it would mean that that one template would be in a class of its own separate from references and general external links. WP:EL is silent on the matter, and I don't know if there has been consensus on whether or not the guideline applies in this case. (Although, technically, linking to the Wikidata statements instead would resolve the issue entirely, since the template would link to Wikidata regardless through the pencil.) Jc86035 (talk) 17:34, 9 May 2020 (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.

Mass move revert tool

Per the mess documented here, is there a way to rig up a mass move revert tool? Mass rollback is enormously helpful when cleaning up from LTAs and other generally disruptive editors, but as far as I know there's no way to undo page moves in a similar manner. Years ago I remember it taking me 4 days of ~2 hours a day to undo 1,500+ page moves from one sockpuppet alone, which is monstrously inefficient on its own and even more so given how simple it was to undo all his edits, and as you can see at the linked AN thread we're staring down the barrel of having to do that again. Any ideas? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:13, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@The Blade of the Northern Lights fairly doable, but given the potential for abuse I'm not willing to put such a script on-wiki. Should I develop one and test it out by reverting all of the moves made by 30ChuaPhaiLaTet? DannyS712 (talk) 08:13, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

 Doing... SD0001 (talk) 08:14, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

oops, edit conflict. Have you begun any coding DannyS712? SD0001 (talk) 08:15, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

yes - it won't be the prettiest, but its mostly done DannyS712 (talk) 08:16, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@The Blade of the Northern Lights script should be done, please see my comment at AN regarding whether I should use it or not DannyS712 (talk) 08:35, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks both of you. I do not know whether we need to do a specific mass-revert now but it is good to know that the tool exists.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:08, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

sigfig parameter in infobox template

Would someone with template expertise mind assisting with an issue I've noticed at {{Infobox roller coaster}}? Various conversions sometimes fail to take enough significant figures into account. For example, if the speed is listed as 180 for the |speed_km/h parameter, the resulting conversion in the chart will list 110 mph. However, the actual conversion is 111.8 mph, which could be more accurately displayed as 112 mph.

I'm not sure what the best approach is to fix that within the template, but I imagine we might see issues in other parameters as well (height, length, drop, etc). An article where this happening: Red Force (roller coaster). An optimal solution would be to somehow enforce |sigfig=3 in the conversion when needed. Thanks in advance! --GoneIn60 (talk) 23:51, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

The number 180 has two significant digits, so a converted value of 110, which also has two significant digits, is correct. Are there any articles where the sigfigs are not being calculated correctly? If you want to display a different number of sigfigs, the parameter |sigfig_speed= is available to you. I don't see it in the documentation for the template; you might ask at the template's talk page for someone to improve the documentation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:26, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me that the template already has a |sigfig_speed= parameter among others as shown in this edit. I thought I remembered requesting that a while back, but forgot where I had that discussion. I'll update the documentation. --GoneIn60 (talk) 04:51, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:ANI not showing up at the watchlist as unread

I have WP:ANI on my watchlist (though may be I should take it off), and since the early morning today it is always shown as read, even when new edits appear. All other pages, as far as I can say (I did not check all 10K of them), are still shown as unread if unread. This is really bizarre. Do others have the same effect? I am on a desctop version and use the PaleMoon browser (a kind of FireFox). What could this be?--Ymblanter (talk) 18:53, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

At the top of my list, unread, at the momen, in firefox. -Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 19:00, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Unread on Safari on an ipad too. -Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 19:02, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Do you have it open in another tab or your phone? Watchlist behavior for me will say the page has been seen even if I haven't seen it recently if there's another tab out there somewhere (and sometimes even when that tab doesn't contain the unseen revisions e.g. some specific diff). --Izno (talk) 19:08, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, this is probably it, I guess it is open somewhere on my ipad. Will check it now.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:11, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

No, actually, it is not open on my ipad, and there the page also shows as read. But it must be somewhere on my side, though I have no idea where. Thanks both of you for the responses.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:13, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Got back to unread without me having done anything. Still puzzled, but at least the problem is solved.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:36, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Ymblanter, this sounds like it's part of the same problem tracked in T218511. Pages show up as read or unread on the watchlist, with no apparent relation to whether they have been read or not. It was discussed in Seen changes not marked as such in the watchlist, watchlist articles not being marked as read, and Articles in watchlist continue to show as unread. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 01:42, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

No, I am a subscriber to that one, and I had it earlier as well, it was pretty bad last year and earlier this year, but then it disappeared. That bug showed all pages I read or even edited during a certain [eriod as unread,and would not change them to read. The bug above, in contrast, is just about one particular page. This effect would be indeed if the page were constantly open elsewhere.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:34, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Dead URLs on Template:Dablinks

​{{Dablinks}} has a bunch of nonfunctional links as can be seen at Lake Estancia. Does someone know of a replacement tool? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:46, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

They are privately hosted tools by Dispenser who hasn't edited since March. His domain dispenser.info.tm is not working. See User talk:Dispenser#info.tm. It mentions an IP address which may work but I'm not sure we want to link directly to an IP address in common templates, and I get browser security warnings there. With the IP address, https://dispenser.info.tm/~cgi-bin/dablinks.py?page=Lake_Estancia becomes https://69.142.160.183/~cgi-bin/dablinks.py?page=Lake_Estancia, and https://dispenser.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py?page=Lake_Estancia becomes https://69.142.160.183/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py?page=Lake_Estancia. I didn't make them links. Examine at your own risk. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:11, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Dispenser (either live manually, or maybe just an automatic process) edit on commons each month. I left a note on usertalk there. Hopefully they will respond so we can continue/return to using these tools. DMacks (talk) 16:28, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Please comment on the feature request at User talk:DPL bot#Feature request: dump dablink list into the template. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:58, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

DPL bot

Hi, Given Dispensers tools now all seem to be history shouldn't the DPL bot be updated to remove the Dabsolver links ?. The bots operator isn't very active so wasn't sure if this could be done for them or whether there's nothing that can be done other than recreate the bot without the links? (which would be silly tbh), Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 09:43, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

See #Dead URLs on Template:Dablinks below, especially the User talk link.--Snaevar (talk) 13:05, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

RedWarn

If anyone is interested in helping out, I'm looking for volunteers for the RedWarn project. You can read more at Wikipedia:RedWarn/Volunteer - Ed6767 talk! 15:14, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Am I the only one struggling with unaccepting pending changes?

At Gavin McInnes I tried to unaccept two edits. I was told I had. But I hadn't. Tried again and only had the option to accept. Doug Weller talk 14:42, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Just me? I've given up and am using "Restore". Doug Weller talk 13:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller, the Advanced review log says that you deprecated/unaccepted two changes to Gavin McInnes recently. Are these the ones you were wondering about?

09:36, 10 July 2020 Doug Weller talk contribs deprecated a version of Gavin McInnes (no real discussion, editor back from a block for disruptive editing) (changes deprecated) (revision: 08:40, 10 July 2020)

14:38, 9 July 2020 Doug Weller talk contribs deprecated a version of Gavin McInnes (per sources) (changes deprecated) (revision: 14:13, 9 July 2020) (from this search)

Yesterday I had to revert an edit to Columbia University rape controversy after having unaccepted it, which seemed a bit odd. I've scarcely used unaccept, and I rather expected the software to combine unaccept and revert; apparently it doesn't. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 15:18, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@BlackcurrantTea: no, it's this one.[46]. The same problem you had. I unaccepted, it told me I had, I looked at the history, nothing had happened. Doug Weller talk 16:04, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

But I was successful just now at Second American Civil War. Doug Weller talk 18:17, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the problem I had was due to my reverting a later change before I unaccepted an earlier one. Might this have been the case for you? The sequence of events (as I remember/understand it):

1. The article before all this started
2. New editor makes edit
3. First reviewer approves it
4. New editor makes second edit
5. I revert the second edit, which puts the article back to the same state it was in at 3.
6. I read the article and see that the first edit had problems, so I unaccept it, which puts the article back to 2.
7. To get back to 1, I have to revert the first edit.

It makes sense as I think about it now, but it was puzzling at the time. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 15:25, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Sidebar language order changed?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257625

Until now the links to articles in other languages had been organized (at least in my settings) according to their wiki code (en, fr, ru, etc). But just looking now, and it seems to have randomized to have no discernible order. Did something change with it that I missed, and/or is there a way to set it back? I really prefer having it alphabetized, it's easier to find interwiki links that way. Kaiser matias (talk) 20:40, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

The sort order for this is, I believe, given at meta:MediaWiki:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:28, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

For some reason, the sorting depends on an article. In Battle of the Bagradas River (255 BC), for example, it's new, but in Apple, for instance, it's old where Russian, for example, is placed below Portuguese. In Battle of the Bagradas River Russian is above Portuguese, among top three. Very strange. And I support restoring the previous familiar sorting. Brandmeister^talk 21:41, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

The non-alphabetical sitelink/interwiki language order is actually bug phab:T257625. It is indeed supposed to be alphabetical.--Snaevar (talk) 00:27, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Brandmeister^talk 07:29, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for figuring it out. Kaiser matias (talk) 20:11, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

• While we're here, let's go to first principles — what should the order ideally be? The main thing I'm normally doing when looking at a page in a foreign language is trying to find a version more comprehensive than the English one, so I'd argue the best sorting order might be by wikitext length. If we really wanted to keep the ordering the same between all pages, we might order the language editions by number of active editors (since doing it by number of articles would get warped by bot use). I'm not sure of the technical feasibility of any of that, but we should be thinking about what we want before moving to the technical conversation. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:12, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
  • Alphabetical by displayed name in English, just as it is supposed to be. See meta:MediaWiki talk:Interwiki config-sorting order-native-languagename. If a reader is looking for an article in another language, that's the easiest way for them to find it. As for your other suggestions, that way, I fear, lies madness. A small shift in the number of active editors (and who would define 'active'?) could quickly change the relative positions of two small wikipedias. Dueling sockpuppet teams can vie for higher placement. Longer articles? By all means, fill them with junk, because then they'll get higher placement. They may be very low-quality indeed, but they're longer, and that's what counts? No. Really, no. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 04:20, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

A terrible bug - the languages are not in the alphabetic order anymore

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T257625

Screenshot. Is this a bug or some incredible new feature? The languages are no longer in the alphabetic order, but instead placed randomly from page to page. What gives?--Adûnâi (talk) 16:36, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

A bug which has a fix in code review. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 16:38, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Interwiki links are disordered

Interwiki links used to be ordered by alphabet or by what they would transliterate to in the Latin alphabet (e.g. Deutsch, English, Español, 日本語, Română, Русский, Svenska...). Now they're ordered apparently randomly. This started on English Wikipedia several days ago. Now I'm noticing it on many other Wikipedias too. It's making it hard to find the language I want. 93.136.16.89 (talk) 02:39, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Jonesey95 for moving this here. Glad that this is not being considered a "feature", hehe (with the way tech is these days, you never know...) 93.136.16.89 (talk) 03:40, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Little Bobby Tables is alive and well and living on enwiki!

See User:User; DROP TABLE 'users'; -- -- RoySmith (talk) 22:07, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

For those who have not met Bobby: https://xkcd.com/327/ – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:30, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Bobby got lazy and forgot to close his quotes and parentheses... 93.136.16.89 (talk) 03:57, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Help converting Module:Historical populations to proper semantics

Module:Historical populations has a title field that should be converted from a tr HTML row that spans x columns to a caption that will automatically span columns anyway and that would meet the basic accessibility guidelines of MOS:TABLECAPTION. I keep on getting errors when I do this re: null values on line 175, etc. Can someone convert this for me and then I'll try to reverse engineer that diff? Thanks. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:51, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Done, with an request here.--Snaevar (talk) 23:01, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Snaevar, Thanks~ ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:09, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

List of descriptive plant epithets

I got a request for an upcoming WP:FLC to combine what was going to be 12 lists into one list. I don't mind doing it, but it raises the question of whether I'll break something by using too many templates. (Have a quick look, and then multiply by 6 ... that's where we're headed.) I usually use {{sfn}} ... should I convert all these to <ref>? - Dank (push to talk) 13:05, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I put the article, with six copies of the table, in my sandbox, and I got this (you can see it in an HTML comment near the bottom of the source if you View Source on the rendered page):

Preprocessor visited node count: 67357/1000000
Post‐expand include size: 298170/2097152 bytes
Template argument size: 52885/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 10/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
Unstrip recursion depth: 1/20
Unstrip post‐expand size: 894238/5000000 bytes
Lua time usage: 6.987/10.000 seconds

So it's on the big side, but it does not appear to exceed any limits. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:20, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks kindly. - Dank (push to talk) 14:40, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Way to disable link to base page and/or root page on a subpage?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41395

Just curious ... is there a magic word or template that disables the link(s) to a subpage's root page and base page? Long story short, I'm trying to disable the base page link to Talk:Fate when I'm looking at Talk:Fate/stay night. Steel1943 (talk) 16:05, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Not from memory, no. --Izno (talk) 16:24, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

If there is, it's not documented where it should be at mw:Help:Subpages. The hack described there to get around it is pretty abhorrent, so it's worth it to make a feature request for a proper fix. —Cryptic 16:29, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Cryptic: I think that's a great idea, but I'm not sure how to word such a request. I can already think of one situation that may be an issue ... let's say such a word existed and was placed on Talk:Fate/stay night/Archive 1: In this case, Talk:Fate should not be clickable, but Talk:Fate/stay night should be. (I wonder how this functionality is disabled in the "article" namespace. Or, maybe there's a way for a certain string to not appear as a page to click ... aka, not recognize it as a base page if such functionality were implemented ... Example: "Talk:Fate | stay night" vs. "Talk:Fate/stay night" being displayed at the top of Talk:Fate/stay night/Archive 1.) Steel1943 (talk) 17:23, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I wonder how this functionality is disabled in the "article" namespace Subpages are intentionally disabled in the mainspace. I believe this is the exact reason. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 17:25, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Majavah: Yes (I know that), but I'm more along the lines wondering what part of the Wikipedia's code is set up to do that and how, and if such a thing can be replicated in some fashion. Steel1943 (talk) 19:09, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Steel1943: It uses mw:Manual:$wgNamespacesWithSubpages which basically tells MediaWiki that "do not allow any subpages on the mainspace ever" which isn't really what we want here given that it would break archives (etc). – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 19:14, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Majavah: Oh yeah, we wouldn't want to do that site-wide as yep, it would break tons of stuff, which was why I was hoping for a magic word or template that could be placed on the page that needed the base pages unlinked since almost any other solution has potential for false positives, or regular maintenance to the main CSS if a page's name changes (referenced by PrimeHunter below ... and I agree with their opposition of that option.) Steel1943 (talk) 19:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

phab:T41395 from 8 years ago seems to be about this, it has gone nowhere. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:36, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) phab:T41395 is a request from 2012: "behavior switch needed to disable links to parent pages from subpages". We could remove the link on Talk:Fate/stay night by placing .page-Talk_Fate_stay_night #contentSub {display:none;} in MediaWiki:Common.css. But I strongly oppose that solution. It would spend server and user resources on loading extra site-wide CSS for each small link we want to hide on pages few people will ever see. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:44, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Can't you apply the CSS to that page using WP:TemplateStyles? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:18, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ahecht: template styles can replace inline styles, but they can't attach to elements without id (such as the .page element). — xaosflux ^Talk 19:37, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Might be some hacks for this - none coming to mind though. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:40, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I created {{No subpages link}} with associated CSS: .subpages { display: none; }, but adding {{No subpages link}} to a sub-page does not do the required magic. Any ideas?. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:57, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Per mw:Help:TemplateStyles#Is it safe?, CSS selectors are rewritten so that they cannot refer to elements outside article content, so TemplateStyles can't be used here (the parent page link is not considered article content). {{No subpages link}} should probably be deleted, since it can't work with anything resembling the current design. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:01, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Dang! Thanks. I will do some clean-up. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 07:30, 15 July 2020 (UTC) Y 17:38, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Hit by captchas?

Has there been some kind of major template change? I keep getting hit by external link captchas on every edit I make here (including this edit), and also on WP:RDC. I have just edited a mainspace page without captchas however. 93.136.16.89 (talk) 03:59, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I can reproduce this (here) with a non-autoconfirmed account. Possibly this somehow relates to phab:T223195. You haven't edited WP:RDC with this IP, and your only edit to WP:RDM added an external link. Which edit to WP:RDC triggered the captcha? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:53, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't adding an external link trip a filter? This IP has no entries in the filter log. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 21:56, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: No, only adding certain links (dailymail.com, deprecated sources, et.), or rapidly adding links, or some other WP:BEANS special cases that hint at spam. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:05, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

See Special:Diff/968045535. It was the string tel:// a few sections above. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Import userscript and let the user change a variable to configure it?

Hi! I am trying to edit a userscript of mine (User:DemonDays64/Scripts/Dumb quotes.js) so that users can set a boolean on their common.js page to enable a feature.

I tried setting it at the beginning of the script like this:

 // Make sure the utilities module is loaded (will only load if not already)
 mw.loader.using('mediawiki.util', function () {
 	$(document).ready(function () {
 	let VARIABLE_THAT_USER_SETS = false;
 …

and also like this

 let VARIABLE_THAT_USER_SETS = false;
 // Make sure the utilities module is loaded (will only load if not already)
 mw.loader.using('mediawiki.util', function () {
 	$(document).ready(function () {
 …

and importing on common.js like

 importScript( 'User:DemonDays64/Scripts/Dumb quotes.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:DemonDays64/Dumb quotes.js]]
 VARIABLE_THAT_USER_SETS = true;
 …

so the script would load and the variable would then be changed, but it does not work; looking at the console, the variable is still false.

How could I set this variable so it is in a scope that lets common.js modify it? Sorry, I'm pretty bad at scope in JS…

Thanks, DemonDays64 (talk) 17:16, 15 July 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

@DemonDays64: You should define the variables before loading the script in common.js, then in the script checking if they are defined, and if not setting them to default values, i.e.

In common.js

var VARIABLE_THAT_USER_SETS = "xyz"; // if you're not changing this in code, you may prefer to use const
importScript( 'User:DemonDays64/Scripts/Dumb quotes.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:DemonDays64/Dumb quotes.js]]

In your script

if (VARIABLE_THAT_USER_SETS == null) var VARIABLE_THAT_USER_SETS = "abc"; // add your default value here - null == undefined

You should remember that when wrapped in a function, everything above that wouldn't be able to access it unless it was defined earlier as the variable will only be available in the scope of that function. Hope this helps. Ed6767 talk! 17:27, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

@Ed6767: hi again! I implemented this, but something is wrong. In my common.js page I import like:

var editOtherQuotes = true;
importScript( 'User:DemonDays64/Scripts/Dumb quotes.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:DemonDays64/Dumb quotes.js]]

and use your code, like

if (editOtherQuotes == null) {
	var editOtherQuotes = false;
}

When I go to edit a page, the console will confirm it is set to true. However, the if statement that depends on it does not happen. What is wrong? Thanks, DemonDays64 (talk) 19:32, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

DemonDays64, the if statement checks if the varible == null (i.e. undefined) - if it is defined (here via the var editOtherQuotes = true; in your common.js) the if statement won't run. This is so you can place a default value within the if statement in case a user doesn't configure (define) this option. Ed6767 talk! 19:37, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Random tool breakage of July 7 (etc.), 2020

Resolved

Please see RefToolbar issues. I thought this issue with the drop down Ref Toolbar was fixed shortly after the "Heads up for random tool breakage". The problem was that after the breakage, the auto fill feature stopped working. As of right now, it's still not working. It's a pain. Please advise. — Maile (talk) 23:38, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Never mind, for the moment. It seems that my latest version of Firefox had somehow decided to block the Ref Toolbar javascript. I've fixed that now. — Maile (talk) 12:44, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Unviewable Presidental election results

On Eaton County, Michigan#Government, the Presidental election results are unable to be viewed because the link to view them is hidden behind the historical population template. Can someone possibly determine how to stop them from overlapping? Home Lander (talk) 19:59, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

@Home Lander:  Done moved the image to the left DannyS712 (talk) 10:19, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

It actually wasn't hidden per se; the [show] link was moved down so that it lined up with the architectural drawing. The link still worked, and could pop up the election results, but of course it was just visually separated from the blue heading. kennethaw88 • talk 18:43, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Script for moving things to article history template

Hi all, I was wondering if there's a script that can automatically role templates like DYK, GA and PR archives into a {{ArticleHistory}} format? Being on the lazy side it would be a boon to me as, when the talk page is littered with those sorts of templates, I could use the script and roll them into a neat format. It seems like something that probably already exists, so I thought I'd ask here and see :). Thanks --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:28, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Ping. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:47, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Template wrapper help

I'm changing Template:Blockchain notification to be a wrapper around Template:Gs/alert. But when I try to pass the sig param, it kinda messes up (see Template:Blockchain notification/sandbox). That's the same subst trick you used I think, but for some reason when I do {{subst:Blockchain notification/sandbox|sig=yes}} it just turns into a mess. I've tried removing the very first safesubst to see what it's outputting, and it does output the correct syntax ({{Gs/alert|cry|sig=yes}}), so if I were to subst this again manually it'd work fine, but somehow turns into a complete mess when doing recursive substitution. What am I missing here? (also see history of what we've tried at the sandbox, and this section at Trialpears's talk.) Thank you! ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:10, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader and Trialpears: done. Y'all were making it too complicated, so it didn't work. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:55, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

I think one issue with this approach might be that the sig param is included in all usages, even if it is blank. But since the template is always recursively substituted, I guess perhaps that doesn't matter? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:58, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

There's no functional difference here between calling the template with no parameters and with an empty |sig=. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 00:39, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah that's so much simpler and no functional difference in this case. I'm still wondering what parser quirk was going on though. --Trialpears (talk) 09:05, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Trialpears, as am I. Thanks ACN for that change :) -- tested that further and it looks good. I've been able to migrate all the old GS templates now thanks to that.

Though, had this been a template that isn't always substituted, this approach wouldn't have been possible (at least not in an ideal way), so I am still curious why what Trialpears and I tried to do didn't work (if any interested reader is feeling up for an academic exercise :P) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:10, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Revision ID (oldid) to page name?

Is there any way from within template/Lua code to turn Special:PermaLink/968417825 into Wikipedia:Signatures? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) ^{please always ping!} 08:27, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

There is a standard magic word that a template can use for pagename⇒revid ( {{REVISIONID:Wikipedia:Signatures}}⇒1263775559 ), but not the other way round. You would need the Lua to make an Ajax call to the API, such as: https://en.wiki.x.io/w/api.php?action=query&revids=968417825&format=json and extract the page title. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:02, 19 July 2020 (UTC)