Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

« Archives, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213

API query to determine page protections

I need to determine the edit/move protections on a page via the API (e.g., office, full, semi, pending-changes, etc).

It is not easy to do via category memberships. For example, although there is a top-level "Category:Wikipedia semi-protected pages", beneath that there is also a "Category:Wikipedia_indefinitely_semi-protected_pages" and many other variations. When recursing through to find sub-categories, you quickly encounter sub-categories that contain pages that aren't under protection, and a greater depth, almost listing every category on the encyclopedia.

I haven't been able to find an efficient way to do this on a per-page basis. Could I download the entire list of protected pages from the "Special:" function? Probably, but that seems like overkill for a quick task. West.andrew.g (talk) 02:21, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

mw:API:Info#inprop=protection. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the API is probably the best route. Membership of categories like Category:Wikipedia semi-protected pages does not necessarily mean that all the pages in that category are semi-protected, nor that all semi-protected pages are in that category. The category is merely a reflection of the templates on the page such as {{pp-semi}}. For example, User:Redrose64/Sandbox12 is semi-protected until 09:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC), but is not in any "protected pages" cats. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:30, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Chronological order of archive entries

Why aren't archive entries sorted chronologically? Shouldn't that be improved?--Hubon (talk) 20:59, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Please clarify with an example what you refer to. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:07, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

TO the best of my knowledge, they are sorted chronologically based on archive time. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:20, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

@Hubon: Assuming that you refer to archives created by bots such as ClueBot III (talk · contribs) and lowercase sigmabot III (talk · contribs), the bot goes through all of the threads that are on the original talk page, selects those which meet the criteria for archiving (such as time elapsed since last post), copies those threads to the bottom of the archive page in the same order, and then deletes them from the original.

Let's assume that a talk page has an archive with three threads (A B D) and the original talk page still has seven threads (C E F G H I J). Of those, three of them (C E H) are eligible for archiving, so after the bot has visited, the archive will end up with six threads (A B D C E H in that order), and the original page will have four (F G I J). Later on, thread K is created on the original talk page and thread F becomes eligible for archiving; so after the bot has again visited, we now have the the archive with seven threads (A B D C E H F), and the original page with four (G I J K). It might be that thread C was created before thread D, and that that thread F was created before thread H, but archiving bots always add at the bottom, they don't insert into chronological order. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:31, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

עוד מישהו, User:Redrose64: Excuse me, I was [very] imprecise: Of course, I only meant the order of search results when using the seach box!!! Sorry once again for this confusion! Greetings--Hubon (talk) 19:45, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

PS: @עוד מישהו, User:Redrose64: Thus, I would still like to repeat my question with reference to this clarification. Best--Hubon (talk) 00:25, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Given archives are (approximately:) in chronological order and their pagenames tell the order, a more general feature (and more widely useful) that would solve it is "have search results be sortable by name". DMacks (talk) 01:29, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

There was a discussion about the modified question which could probably be found by searching the archives for "prefer-recent". An example of searching the ANI archives for "Jimbo" with most-recent first is:

Jimbo prefer-recent:1,1 prefix:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive

That does not work in an ideal manner as no data is stored regarding when a particular mention of Jimbo occurred. The "when" might be inferred from a signature timestamp, but there is no indexed database entry with the information. However, it worked pretty well the once or twice I've tried it. Johnuniq (talk) 10:33, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@DMacks & Johnuniq: Hm, I still do not quite get why it is not possible to create a feature that makes the search function arrange search results by the page name of the respective archive page. I guess, that would be basically more reasonable and feasible than having them sorted by timestamps etc.--Hubon (talk) 14:04, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Inconsistent line spacing between list levels

I've noticed that spacing between lines in multi-level lists is inconsistent across browsers/devices. For example, let's take the following list:

Markup	Renders as
* coffee * tea ** oolong ** matcha * eau de vie	coffee tea oolong matcha eau de vie

When I view this on Windows PCs using either Chrome or Edge as the browser, the line spacing between 'tea' and 'oolong' is noticeably greater than the spacing between any other lines. When I view this on Android mobile devices using either Chrome or Silk as the browser, the line spacing between 'tea' and 'oolong' is noticeably less than the spacing between other lines. I tested this issue using raw HTML markup in place of the * wiki markup, and there was no change. Is this something that could be fixed on Wikipedia's end, or would this need to be solved by OS and/or browser developers? —jameslucas (" " / +) 03:12, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Is this strictly about sublists, or is it about the start of any list vs the preceding content? For example, how does this look:

Markup	Renders as
Drinks: * coffee * tea	Drinks: coffee tea

for spacing between "Drinks:" and the first list item vs spacing between the two list items? DMacks (talk) 03:37, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

In the case of a list item following a non-list item, the line spacing is greater both on PC and on Android mobile (although not by the same ratios). I'd say that's roughly as it should be. —jameslucas (" " / +) 03:50, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The relevant CSS rule seems to be

.mw-content-ltr ul,
.mw-content-rtl .mw-content-ltr ul {
  margin: 0.3em 0 0 1.6em;
  padding: 0;
}

with the gap in question being that 0.3em. I don't know where it's set: it's not in our local MediaWiki:Common.css. We can't simply remove that declaration, since the rule above supersedes this rule:

ul {
  list-style-type: square;
  margin: 0.3em 0 0 1.6em;
  padding: 0;
}

which is set at an earlier stage - again, origin unknown. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:32, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm not knowledgable enough to speculate on where that CSS is coming from, but I was able override it, and that improved things greatly when viewed on PC. For anyone wishing to do the same, vist your CSS and paste the following code [updated to reflect Redrose64's suggestions below —16:39, 24 April 2017 (UTC)]:

.mw-content-ltr ul,
.mw-content-rtl .mw-content-ltr ul {
  margin-top: 0;
}

Thanks, Red! —jameslucas (" " / +) 13:05, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

You don't need to re-specify any declaration where the value is unchanged, so you can omit padding: 0; - and you can also replace the declaration margin: 0 0 0 1.6em; with margin-top: 0; --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:52, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Good call. (I didn't know about the margin-top property.) Is it technically possible to apply this universally to the standard CSS for Wikipedia? And would that be a good idea? I'm having trouble imagining why the 1.6 0.3 em margin would be good in any instance. It strikes me as an accident, a bad choice, or a really dirty hack to address some ancient browser. —jameslucas (" " / +) 16:39, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

margin-top is one of the original CSS 1 properties; and so was automatically carried over into CSS 2 and the working draft for CSS 3 (which hasn't seen any progress in almost ten years). All modern browsers support CSS 2 in its entirety; many also support one or more of the CSS 3 modules as well. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:25, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I guess that shows how shaky my CSS knowledge is. But my question was more about Wikipedia than the specific formatting of the code: Is there a reason not to change this attribute for the entire site (as opposed to me fixing it only for myself)? Is there any justification (technical or otherwise) not to eradicate that 1.6 0.3 em margin for everyone? —jameslucas (" " / +) 18:54, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

The 1.6em margin is the left one, we'll want to keep that. ;) The 0.3em top margin seems to date back to the beginning of the Monobook skin if not earlier, I have no idea why it's there. Anomie⚔ 12:08, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Right you are: the 0.3 margin is the one I meant (amended above). Is there any process we/I can initiate to have it removed (or considered for removal)? —jameslucas (" " / +) 13:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Consensus here is a good start. Then MediaWiki talk:Common.css to override it locally and/or file a task in Phabricator to request it be changed in MediaWiki. Anomie⚔ 18:45, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

It looks like there's a decade of archived conversations at MediaWiki talk:Common.css; I'll do a little skimming to see how this topic has been discussed in the past. In the meantime, I appreciate the guidance and welcome further ideas, comments, and suggestions. I realize that none of this addresses the appearance in mobile browsers, but it'd be great to at least solve this for desktops. —jameslucas (" " / +) 22:04, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

suppressredirect being used without suppressredirect permissions

Hello all, trying to find where we may have a write up for this: for certain moves users without the suppressredirect are still able (in some cases are FORCED) to suppress the creation of a redirect when moving pages. I found a related, non-resovled, phab ticket phab:T71162 - but not documentation of which namespace->namespaces are having this behavior forced now. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:04, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

A I know redirects are automatically suppressed for moves of js and css pages - as it makes no sense. Ruslik_Zero 20:35, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

@Ruslik0: Here is an example. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:46, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

example 2. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

The second example shows a module being moved to a new name. I think that has always not left a redirect because #REDIRECT cannot work on a module page where only valid Lua can be used (example from March 2013 is here). Johnuniq (talk) 00:44, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

At one time, moving .css and .js pages certainly left a "bad" #REDIRECT [[]] directive; it's relatively recently (two years ago maybe?) that redir suppression became the default for .css and .js pages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:54, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

• After thinking, these anomalies are all likely due to special situations: one was an non-wikitext content type page; and the module: namespace is somewhat special as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:02, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
• FYI, suppressredirect was disabled some time ago for user's JS/CSS subpages. Requested re-enabling: phab:T115947. XXN, 20:34, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
  • That summary seems to be inaccurate. The suppressredirect right works fine on user JS and CSS subpages. Your complaint there seems to be that you want to be able to suppress redirects *without* having the right. Anomie⚔ 15:23, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

extra fixes coming in to manual edits

Anyone noticed that nbsps are being added to edits? Is this some new bug or a feature of Firefox under Ubuntu? ϢereSpielChequers 08:49, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Are you using wikEd? It automatically converts nbsp characters to their character entities. – Train2104 (t • c) 12:13, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if we could get Special:Tags added to WP:WikEd edits, so that we didn't have to ask.

This has come up several times, and so far, every person who's seen this behavior has been using wikEd. I believe that it does this on the grounds that the MOS prefers (or used to prefer?) visible HTML codes instead of actual non-breaking spaces (which some editors don't know how to create, and most editors don't know how to identify). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I've made the suggestion to Cacycle. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:08, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes I'd opted into wikEd. Is this an acceptable feature of WikEd? It reminds me of the arguments about the minor fixes that AWB editors can opt into. I use AWB without said fixes and I'm not really comfortable with changes I didn't know I was making and am not sure I want responsibility for. ϢereSpielChequers 09:53, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

MOS:NBSP says: "Always insert hard/thin spaces symbolically ({{nbsp}}, {{thinsp}},  ,  ), never by entering them as literal Unicode characters entered directly from the keyboard." PrimeHunter (talk) 09:47, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

E-Mail Rate Limit

Hello! I'm a volunteer account coordinator for The Wikipedia Library and often when I'm processing accounts I run into the issue of the e-mail rate limit. Which usually means I have to go over to Meta and sometimes Commons to send the remainder of the e-mails. Is there a local technical solution I'm perhaps missing? Thanks for the advice. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 17:53, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Cameron11598: Why are you sending emails instead of using the mass message feature? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:14, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I'm emailing links to a google form, the link allows anyone to enter their information for us to pass on to the partner. We only want to share the link with users who's account's are approved for access. --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 19:27, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Cameron11598: the local solution would be account creators as it allows access to what you are looking for: (noratelimit) - apply at WP:PERM. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:27, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks! --Cameron₁₁₅₉₈ ^(Talk) 00:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Editing tools for GNU/Linux

Are there any maintained editing tools for GNU/Linux? AutoWikiBrowser was the only cross-platformed editor I could found but its dead. --David Hedlund ^SWE (Talk) 15:10, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

@David Hedlund: I think the Windows version of AWB can be used on Linux through Wine, but I'm not sure how well it works on different distros. You could also try the in-browser version, but it also has some problems like not supporting regex find/replace. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 14:41, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

This is what I do. The demon scripts at the bottom of method 2 need to be updated, if you use them let me know, they give a general idea what is being done. The Cygwin method is good unless you're doing complex scripting, suggest start there if you're not sure. Keep in mind AWB when it writes out the I/O file keeps a file handle open so deleting it causes unusual behavior. The solution is the unix script either overwrites or zero-length it. -- GreenC 15:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks but I don't want to run GNU/Linux from another OS. Are there no such solution? --David Hedlund ^SWE (Talk) 16:01, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Method 2 links them via a shared directory, which can be done over a network directory share or however. Last time I tried to run via Wine it worked but I didn't do much testing. -- GreenC 16:38, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Here we are perilously close to undermining one of Wikipedia first principles- an encyclopedia that anyone can edit if they are rich enough. I always view any code that is generated using proprietory software as potentially un-free- which violates our strict observance of copyright. We insist on ogg, we use .odt not .doc so saying we advise users to Microsoft or upload a filter to throttle back their computer is not just a technical issue but a moral issue as well. Picture the scenario where you have a class of Raspberry Pi user, running Raspian or Ubuntu to bring computers to a poor community working on solar- you are saying they can enjoy the fruits of Wikipedia but are not allowed to contribute.

We wonder why the age-profile of editors is changing, we acknowledge that youngster are more likely to access the WP through a phone app and are beginning to make the connection. We don't ask the question 'Are there any maintained editing tools for Android?

So instead of patronising, or evading the questions lets put it another way 'Which edit tools need to be rewritten to make them cross platform?'. 'What is the time scale for rewriting them?' and 'When notified what resources does the foundation need to deploy to expedite the process?'. ClemRutter (talk) 17:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@ClemRutter: Please participate in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T163935 if you want. You may want to copy your text to that issue, I liked it. --David Hedlund ^SWE (Talk) 19:33, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Please cross-post for me. I haven't a phabricator account and I suspect I am spreading myself too thinly as it is- I will have a look later, I am mystified by how intellectual resources are being used, and how the absolute basics are ignored. Actually I am not, working with volunteers is like herding cats, and that is used by staffers to prioritise their passions rather than tackle the fundamentals where they could be really effective. ClemRutter (talk) 23:41, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

There is JavaScript Wiki Browser, which is similar to AWB but runs in your browser. It worked well for me the couple of times I used it, but I haven't used it for anything complicated. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:35, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

URL going to wrong article

This should link to British Israelism, but links to th Oxford Universoty Conservarive Association. Doug Weller talk 04:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

I think you meant this. You were missing a final "6" from the oldid. The revision ID you linked to was the same as this. It looks like the title is ignored if the oldid is valid. That could be used for mischief, I suppose, but let's just stay away from the WP:BEANS instead. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:42, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

title= is always ignored if oldid= (or certain other parameters) is present. Your oldid was an edit to Oxford University Conservative Association (you mistyped the title above). PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Nav box and mobile... Is someone in here really good at editing Wikipedia?

Look at my sandbox. I'm trying to make the nav box on the right either look minimally decent on mobile (i.e. not all messed up), or not appear at all on mobile. Either one would be fine with me. Is it really impossible? Karlpoppery (talk) 05:23, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

If someone answers, please email me, otherwise I won't see it. Thanks. Karlpoppery (talk) 05:04, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Karlpoppery: You can hide something in mobile by wrapping it in <div class="nomobile">...</div>. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:43, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks so much, I looked for this everywhere!Karlpoppery (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

SVG rendering problem?

This image File:Areas of insect wing.svg as used in this Good Article Insect_wing has a black artifact in the middle of it. The Original image does not, which suggests it may be a problem with the rendering software. Is this something that is known and if known is there a solution or does this require a "ahem" bug report?--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:17, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Looks like phab:T43424, rsvg doesn't support <flowroot> and related tags, so it winds up rendering the unstyled path that's supposed to contain the text as a black object instead. But that image doesn't actually put any text in the <flowroot>, so it's useless and can be removed. Along with at least 90% of the other markup in the file. Anomie⚔ 19:19, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: This is c:Help:SVG#flowed text. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 05:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you @Anomie: and @Redrose64:, I'll see if someone at the Graphics lab can help.--S Philbrick(Talk) 11:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Country wikilinks in sports articles

I would like to change the inappropriate wikilinks (for example in this article) from France to  France. Is here any easy template for doing it?
Maiō T. (talk) 16:41, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Maiō T.: Sport in France has no mention of table tennis so I don't think it's a better link than France for the national table tennis team of France. We never link "Sport in X" for national sports teams of country X. If there are national team articles for a specific sport then we may link them like {{fb|France}} producing France, linking France national football team. A quick search only found two countries, China and Portugal, with an article about their national table tennis team. If you want to change the practice then you could try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Table tennis (low activity) or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports. Many editors can make the required template edits if there is consensus. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:42, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Next to last editors button

The next to last editors button on the diff page used to be broken in that it was always visible, but only showed the most recent editor no matter what page it was clicked on. Now it always show no difference, even though when you show the changes manually, it is obvious that changes were made. Natureium (talk) 18:37, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Natureium: I don't know which feature you refer to. Please describe it more carefully with an example link, say whether you see the feature if you log out, and whether it works in that case. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:44, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

When you are on your watchlist page and click "diff" or a View History page and click "compare elected revisions", one of the options underneath "previous edit" is "next-to-last editor". This button used to only work on the most recent edit even though it's visible on any page where an editor has edited more than once in a row. Now, clicking on it just takes you to a page that says "(No difference)". Natureium (talk) 21:17, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Natureium: I don't see that feature and you didn't do any of the three things I asked for but a search found User:DerHexer/revisionjumper#Function: ← next-to-last editor, a script by User:DerHexer. I assume you have enabled revisionjumper at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js shows it loads code from de:MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js. Another time, please answer clarifying questions and realize that users see different things depending on various circumstances. Sorry for being grumpy but it's important information to helpers that you don't see the reported feature if you log out. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:12, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I came here for the same reason. It looks like you've identified the source code, but I'm not sure what the next step is for fixing this problem. Is there anyone here who can help with that? -- Irn (talk) 13:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I notified the script author DerHexer above by wikilinking the username. He is active and edited the German Wikipedia today. de:MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js can only be edited by German administrators but others could post to the talk page. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Mobile: browser previous page then previous page does not work after clicking edit section

Let me know if you cannot reproduce this bug.,111.241.208.22 (talk) 19:08, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

which mobile browser. which operating system. which versions of those ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:20, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

This happens on Android chrome latest version and windows chrome latest version under developer tools mobile mode.118.160.128.174 (talk) 02:13, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Let us know here when you can provide a list of steps to reproduce, step by step, and exact version information ("latest" can mean many things). Thanks! --Malyacko (talk) 11:09, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I made an image description and post it on Phabricator here.Golopotw (talk) 19:05, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

LoginNotify coming soon to a wiki near you!

Failed login attempt notification on Echo

Login attempt notification as seen on a different wiki

Here’s what you would see in Special:Notifications, or in the panel, after you mark the bundle as Read. Since the above notification is a bundle of 6 individual notifications, they disperse after you mark the bundle as "Read" and you see a generic message for each of them.

Hi all. The Community Tech team has almost wrapped up work on wish #7 on the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey -- Warning on unsuccessful login attempts. We want to give you a preview of how the new feature will work, and get your feedback.

The project aims to improve security on Wikimedia sites by notifying users when there are unsuccessful attempts to login with their username from both known and unknown IPs and devices. This project builds on the LoginNotify extension which was created by Brian Wolff in 2016.

How does it work? The extension keeps track of known devices (browsers really) by placing a cookie in the browser. This cookie automatically expires in 180 days. If a failed login attempt happens from a new browser, it generates an Echo notification alerting the user about the login attempt. The other way that we identify known devices is by checking the current IP address subnet against the IP addresses that have been used recently (as stored in a temporary server cache). None of the information is stored in a database and at no point is any private information revealed publicly, including the attacker’s IP address/location. The WMF Legal and Security teams have reviewed the implementation for both compliance with our Privacy Policy and security considerations.

For known devices/IPs, we allow up to 5 login attempts before alerting the user about the login attempt, since it's fairly common to mistype or forget a password. If there are 5 or more failed attempts, the notification will say: "There have been 5 failed attempts to log in to your account since the last time you logged in. If this wasn't you, please make sure your account has a strong password." There would be another notification at 10 attempts, 15 attempts and so on.

For unknown devices/IPs, we alert on every failed attempt. The extension bundles these notifications to avoid spamming users with too many notifications. For example, if there are 3 failed attempts from an unknown device, there will be a single notification, which says: "There have been 3 failed attempts to log in to your account from a new device since the last time you logged in. If this wasn't you, please make sure your account has a strong password." On further attempts, that notification would update to say "4 failed attempts," "5 failed attempts", and so on.

How does it look? The first picture on the right is what the notification looks like if the attack happened on the wiki that you're currently on; the second picture is what it would look like if you view it on a different wiki. The notification is issued from the wiki where the attack happened.

There are two ways for the user to get these notifications - either by web Echo notifications or by email. By default, the web notifications are on for everyone and email ones are turned off. This is configurable in the notification preferences.

The text for the notifications as well as the threshold for when you get the notifications is subject to changes, based on your feedback.

This extension does not give you notifications when somebody successfully logs into your account from an unknown device or IP. It is technically possible to generate those, but if somebody else has logged in, they could just as easily see those notifications and do a password reset (which the notification encourages you to do). The ideal way to handle this is to issue email notifications for this case, but since most Wikipedia accounts do not have emails associated with them, this wouldn't be useful to majority of the users. So for the time being, we have settled for not issuing these notifications.

We'd love to hear what you think of this so far, and what you think we should change, if anything. We expect to deploy this within the coming weeks. Thanks for your time! -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 19:52, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• For accounts with 2FA - will this fire from bad passwords alone, or will they also have to enter a bad token value? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:57, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

It'll fire from bad passwords alone. There's a ticket at T158379 to discuss the possibility of generating notifications when somebody is attempting to guess the token value repeatedly (given they know the password to the account). -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

• I like this idea, but would there be an opt-out or a way to disable these? Not to get too beans-y, but constantly pinging or thanking people is a common form of mild harassment, and triggering password-reset emails is less common but tends to be more worrying to the recipients, especially if they're not very technically inclined. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Yep, you can opt in/out from your Notification preferences. Email alerts are off by default and Echo alerts are on by default to minimize spamming. The notifications will be bundled into one, so hopefully it won't be too spammy. :) -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! (Heh, I clicked "thank" before realizing the irony... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:34, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, this looks good. But can "bundle" be spelled out? If the relevant server is under a light load, and an attacker enters one bad password per 20 seconds for one hour (180 failures—very possible with some harassers), what would happen? Re notification preferences, are you saying that there will be a new entry under "Notify me about these events", and that one entry could be set to off to stop LoginNotify while allowing any other wanted events? Johnuniq (talk) 00:54, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

If those 180 attempts happened from an unknown device/IP, you'd get one notification saying there were "180 failed login attempts". If it was a known device/IP, you'd see multiple notifications, for every 5 tries (so at 5, 10, 15... attempts). But I'd like to point out that such a scenario is quite difficult to achieve, because Wikipedia requires you to enter a captcha for every attempt after 3 failed attempts and after 6, you're blocked from login attempts for 5 minutes. Regarding preferences, yes, you will have an option for "Notify me about failed login attempts" followed by two checkboxes, one for Web notifications and one for email. You can turn them on/off as you like without affecting any other notifications. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:44, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

• The way I understand it, if I try to log in from an unknown device and fail the first time but succeed the second time on the same device, I'll see a notification once I make it in. Is this correct, or will that notification be removed automatically? As someone who clears their cookies on a nightly basis, every morning will be an unknown device. – Train2104 (t • c) 02:30, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

That's right. You will see the notification on login. If you login everyday, chances are pretty high that you don't mess up your password often, so you won't likely see many unwanted notifications. -- NKohli (WMF) (talk) 04:44, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Javascript and Module editors

When it came to the editors for Javascript scripts and Lua modules, I used to have some form of code editor for the inputs that would allow me to insert tabs, highlight brackets, etc. Now I'm getting the standard input that is used for templates and regular articles. Was the code-editor-input deprecated/removed, or is a preference or something similar? -- Alex^TW 22:46, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

Upper left corner of the editing window for a lua page has <> icon? Click that. For me, that toggles between normal wikitext editor and code editor.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:17, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Bingo. Thanks! -- Alex^TW 10:51, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Reporting: my Login is no longer working

Greetings, When I attempt my usual English WP login (user name is JoeHebda), it loads page at

login.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralLogin/start?token=

with this message

Central user log in

The provided authentication token is either expired or invalid.

So far, I have closed out my browser & started over, attemped Login at WikiMedia. Don't know what to try next. Please help. Regards, JoeHebda

I get the same problem. DuncanHill (talk) 13:00, 27 April 2017 (UTC) I kept getting the "loss of session data" message, so followed the instructions to log out and in again, then got the "Central user log in" message referred to above. I closed browser, switched my internet connexion off and on again, and seem to be logged back in. Very worrying to me as I couldn't edit from IP - I use mobile internet (3 Mobile in the UK) and someone has put a school block on the IP address. Using Edge on Win 10, with mobile hotspot via 3 Mobile to connect to internet. DuncanHill (talk) 13:03, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Me too. I can't log in from any Wikimedia site or from another browser. My user name is Epicgenius. 198.179.73.106 (talk) 13:04, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Had the same problem - I was sent to login.wikipedia.org, I logged in there and was able to login and then go to en.wikipedia.org. See my post below for another problem I just noticed today  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  13:05, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Same problem here, but it is working now. Odd. Patient Zero^talk 13:08, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Working too once I tried KoshVorlon's method. epicgenius (talk) 13:09, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I just carried on trying to log in and it eventually worked! Patient Zero^talk 13:09, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Working now the normal way. When the problem occurred I was actually force logged out. – Train2104 (t • c) 13:10, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

My JoeHebda login is now working. I did a complete power-Off of my laptop & re-boot. Now all is OK. Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 13:10, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist not updating

I just tried to add a page to my watchlist (currently I have 4 in right now ), rather than getting the prompt that says the page was added into my watchlist, I'm going aroiund in a loop. When I try to edit the raw watchlist, pretty much the same thing happens. Anyone else having this issue ?  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  13:05, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Quick update -- it just started working again!  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  13:08, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist not loading

I've been having a weird watchlist issue since yesterday (April 26). When I try to load it, I just get an empty document. Same result in Firefox and Chrome (I'm on a Mac). I just created a test account to see if it was my browsers, but that account's watchlist worked fine, so I guess it's something specific to my account.

Any ideas as to what would be causing this? Thanks! Trivialist (talk) 18:31, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Does this link work? Max Semenik (talk) 19:48, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Disregard, it's working now. @MaxSem: Wasn't able to try your link when my watchlist was broken, but trying it now produces the same effect I was getting before (empty document). What does "safemode=true" do? Trivialist (talk) 20:46, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

"safemode=1" (the value suggested at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 154#Tech News: 2017-16) prevents personal CSS, JavaScript and gadgets from running. It shouldn't make an empty document, and doesn't for me. Maybe you still have the problem but only at random times. How many pages do you have on your watchlist? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:01, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Hmm. Was broken again (safemode didn't work either). Checking the number of pages on my watchlist (1,930), I removed them all, added only the Main Page, and now it works fine. What's the maximum number of pages you can watch without breaking things? Trivialist (talk) 21:15, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Adding and removing pages from Special:EditWatchlist breaks somewhere around 3-5k watched pages; otherwise, watchlists have no programmatic limit. --Izno (talk) 21:17, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I watch 8,347 pages and have no problems viewing Special:Watchlist or removing pages from Special:EditWatchlist. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:46, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

21,192 pages (probably about 21,191 too many for sanity) - at this level, the watchlist editors are very slow, but still usable. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:00, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

I re-added everything, and it's working fine now. *shrug* Thanks to all for your assistance. Trivialist (talk) 22:06, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@MaxSem: To note that I was having a similar issue at English Wikisource console said The character encoding of the HTML document was not declared. ... (full detail at enWS) and it occurred following the code rollout for us on Tuesday (I made no changes to Watchlist for that to be the issue). In the end I identified as one specific category that was problematicin association with setting to "not hide categories". [Process. I remove everything (it worked), added back groups of links until it broke; removed group then added individual links, until it broke again. Refreshed whole list minus the one category, worked. Hid category watch, put the full list back in and it worked; unhide categories, full list, it breaks. ] Someone else added the same category, and was unable to replicate it, though I can add and remove category repeatedly reproduce the killer. Also to note that safemode had no effect, it wasn't a js/css issue. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:13, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: what browser are you using ? I assume a very old Safari or Chrome or other WebKit based browser ? These freeze on some webkit-isolate CSS statements, and I suspect that the particular content you had on that page uses this CSS statement. Hmm, though googling indicates that this might be a Firefox warning.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:07, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Latest Firefox for that. Noting that the problem was confirmed in latest Chrome, though I didn't grab that error message. The FF console gave no error message beyond that, all that there is to see. The broken category page is a maintenance category, and is/was empty. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:48, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ:When I fire it into Chrome, it initially throws the std wiki error mesage Error
Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes.
See the error message at the bottom of this page for more information. When reloaded it gives a blank page, and non-expert me doesn't see anything via the console, it just looks like a blank page, and what looks like elements of a nascent style sheet. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: I had the same issue on fr.wikt, see phab:T164059. Darkdadaah (talk) 15:35, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Edit Count

When I click edit count on my user page it leads to this broken link instead of the working link. CTF83! 19:29, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@CTF83!: your userpage is a bit busy, can you be more specific where this link is located? It may be a template, or a system message that needs updating. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:41, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Neither the string "edit count" nor the posted link occur on your user page for me. If you see it there then you must have some script or other feature adding it. Anyway, the xTools are notoriously unstable. Both url's currently give the same mostly but not completely broken result for me. I guess they are both supposed to work and you just hit one of them at a lucky time where the tool responded. The one you call broken is linked on "Edit count" at the bottom of Special:Contributions/CTF83! for users with the default en language in preferences. The link is made by MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:32, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

That link in the footer doesn't work for either the user in question or myself, it loads but there are no edits. The template to be edited for repair is {{Sp-contributions-footer}}. – Train2104 (t • c) 23:59, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Both links currently work for me. xTools are unstable as mentioned. We could discuss whether the link should be removed, or replaced with another tool at Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters, but I see no reason to change the url to the other xTools form unless we have data indicating that form is more likely to work. My guess: It makes no difference. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:36, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Oh, ok, I thought it was a default Wikipedia feature. Thanks, CTF83! 05:32, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: It's at the bottom of the "user contributions" link, not the user page. CTF83! 05:34, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Articles with broken section links.

Is there a list somewhere of articles containing broken links to sections of other articles, or broken links to section redirects? If not, can such a list be created? Cheers! bd2412 T 02:11, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports shows Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken section anchors by Bamyers99. It's only for redirects. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:26, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

This is definitely a task to dive into, but I was actually thinking of broken anchors from links being used in other articles; for example, where a disambiguation page lists an incorrect link to a page section. bd2412 T 19:21, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Twinkle not working

I opened up my watchlist this morning and was surprised to discover that the Twinkle tab did not load. I have it enabled as a gadget. Wikipedia:Twinkle/Preferences shows nothing. My other tools stopped working last night. Is anyone else having this problem?--Auric talk 11:35, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Auric: Likely it's one of the user scripts that you have installed. which skin are you using ? I get errors when i load your monobook.js file, so if you are using monobook, then that is likely your problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:01, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

It's not just Auric. It loads very erratically today for me. Yesterday it was fine. I'm also finding that some diffs don't load at all. And that there seems to be a slowdown in most pages loading. 12:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

My scripts load fine. As for watchlist, what reason do you have to believe it should load on the watchlist page? --Izno (talk) 12:16, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

No, something has changed. I suspect mediawiki.util module is not loaded extremely early anymore as it was before, and that now several user scripts etc are breaking because they refer to mediawiki.util, but are not wrapping there code in a mw.loader.using to enforce that dependency. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:22, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Twinkle is not working for me as well, neither the userscript nor the gadget version. Regards SoWhy 16:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: which skin are you using ? You are likely being affected by the below mentioned script-pocalypse 2017 edition, where we have dumped some old crap that people didn't clean up yet. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:46, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Monobook. I thought the problem only affects scripts in my monobook.js? Regards SoWhy 16:49, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I had to clear the scripts in my vector.js as well, before anything would work.--Auric talk 20:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Once you find the script that causes the problem (see below), all others should work again. TW works for me again for sure. Regards SoWhy 20:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

In my case, removing LiveClock from my common.js appears to have re-enabled Twinkle. --David Biddulph (talk) 07:03, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Those types of Twinkle-powered links are missing for me now as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:34, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks TheDJ for the mw.loader.using fix for my personal scripts page. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:31, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Old script-pocalypse

Hi, if you are having problems, where elements are not appearing on the page all of a sudden, then this is probably because your userscripts are broken. The tech team has dropped some things that have been deprecated for about 6 years. However since most people don't know anything about JS, other than to copy paste into their common.js or vector.js page, some of you might have missed the 6 years of warnings :) If you have a problem. just report here, volunteers will help you along. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:16, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: is there a list of functions that have been removed? From what I've seen so far, the only one erroring out is addPortletLink. What else? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:07, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. I was like "what the..." and poked around awhile, thinking the scripts I use were broken, until I realized my common.js was what was broken. I was able to patch common.js by using the replacements shown here. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:11, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The wikibits Javascript module is no longer load by default. Code using wikibits should be refactored to use modern replacements.

wikibits identifiers

clientPC is_gecko is_safari is_safari_win is_chrome is_chrome_mac is_ff2 is_ff2_win is_ff2_x11 webkit_match ff2_bugs ie6_bugs doneOnloadHook onloadFuncts addOnloadHook runOnloadHook killEvt loadedScripts importScript importStylesheet importScriptURI importStylesheetURI appendCSS addHandler addClickHandler removeHandler hookEvent mwEditButtons mwCustomEditButtons tooltipAccessKeyPrefix tooltipAccessKeyRegexp updateTooltipAccessKeys ta akeytt checkboxes lastCheckbox setupCheckboxShiftClick addCheckboxClickHandlers checkboxClickHandler showTocToggle toggleToc ts_image_path ts_image_up ts_image_down ts_image_none ts_europeandate ts_alternate_row_colors ts_number_transform_table ts_number_regex sortables_init ts_makeSortable ts_getInnerText ts_resortTable ts_initTransformTable ts_toLowerCase ts_dateToSortKey ts_parseFloat ts_currencyToSortKey ts_sort_generic ts_alternate changeText getInnerText escapeQuotes escapeQuotesHTML addPortletLink jsMsg injectSpinner removeSpinner getElementsByClassName redirectToFragment

— JJMC89 (T·C) 14:21, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

That is what I linked to. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 14:24, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

That can't be a 100% accurate list of functions that have been removed, because importScript still works. Those are all deprecated, yes, but not all of them were removed today. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The list of actually removed function can be seen here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:40, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:50, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Another problem you might encounter is that you use mw.util.something, and that this is failing. This is because a script is not ensuring that mediawiki.util is loaded (before the above mentioned legacy script loaded this for you). This can be fixed by wrapping such a call: For this problem, you will need to change something like this:

mw.util.addPortletLink( args );

$.when( mw.loader.using( [ 'mediawiki.util' ] ), $.ready ).then( function() {
    mw.util.addPortletLink( args );
} );

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

• @TheDJ: Thanks for the heads-up. I was wondering why most of my scripts are no longer working. Apart from Twinkle (see section above), the following scripts I have been using have stopped working (although I cannot swear that all worked until now):
  • User:Mr.Z-man/rollbackSummary.js
  • User:Animum/easyblock.js
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/qSig
  • Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Six tabs (sometimes)
  • User:Ais523/highlightmyname2.js
  • User:Anomie/util.js
  • User:Anomie/useridentifier.js
  • User:Fran Rogers/CH2 en.js
  • User:Ale_jrb/Scripts/csdhelper.js
  • User:Ale_jrb/Scripts/unblock.js
  • UTC Clock gadget

Can you or someone else skilled in JS fix them please? Regards SoWhy 16:48, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: Hmm, I don't feel comfortable modifying other people's scripts, but I can make copies of them in my own userspace and fix them there, if the original script author is inactive. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I doubt anyone minds if you just fix the script without making any changes but if you feel uncomfortable, maybe you can tell me which of those are actually broken and which are just not working because others are broken, then I can ask the authors to fix them. Regards SoWhy 16:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

NVM, I figured it out myself. By disabling those scipts that displayed errors in the JS Debugger of Firefox the rest started working again. Struck out those above. Regards SoWhy 17:08, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: *I'd* mind it. But it's not a big deal, really. I take it the scripts that still have errors are those that haven't been struck through in your list? The rollbackSummary script definitely would've caused a problem. I've created a new, working version of it here: User:Writ_Keeper/rollbackSummary.js. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:12, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Great, thanks. I posted what I did below, hopefully someone will find it useful. Regards SoWhy 17:18, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Sysop highlighter script

I'm running a script , it was called adminrights.js which got changed over to Amalthea's userhighlighter.js. that highlights sysops names in a blue background. Amalthea's version depends on her bot which collects sysops's names. That page show all names minus 1, the format appears to be exactly the same in both diffs and the js code hasn't been changed in a long time (meaning at least a month !) It stopped working as of today. Anyone else having the same issue with this script?  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  12:48, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@KoshVorlon: Moved your section to the current "help everyone make it through another Friday morning post-deployment". --Izno (talk) 13:02, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@KoshVorlon: Your vector.js had an deletion request on it, so i deleted it. I note however that it seems that it was working (how, I have no idea....), because it seemed to be the only place where you had that script included. If you want me to recover some of those scripts, give me a ping... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:40, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ Actually, I use monobook.js for my daily needs. I did read up and saw that we were supposed to stop asking for scripts via ImportScript (at least that was my understanding of it ) so I changed the request over (as you'll see in my monobook). It looked like it was working but has reverted back. I double check my monobook to make sure I have the call correct.  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  13:45, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Script's working now, Amalthea saw my note on her talk page and made the change on her script.  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  13:56, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

And I've cleaned up some more things in your monobook.js file. While importScript is deprecated, you don't have to worry that much about it right now. importScript is so prevalent throughout all the pages, that we will likely take special considerations at some point to clean that up. That's better than you using mw.loader incorrectly. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ I saw your edits, thank you. It's curious that you're saying this mw loader is incorrect. I got that syntax directly from this page . It seems to match up with that page, specifically the section labeled ImportScriptURI. I'm not arguing, because you know Javascript better than I do, more like, I'm just curious, since I matched the call and made only a change to what was being called, what was incorrect ?  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  15:41, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

You started it with the username, but that's not a valid start. It either needs to be a full url, or server relative url (so start with /wiki/ or /w/index.php) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you ! I understand exactly what you're saying!  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  18:34, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Guide: How to find which scripts are actually broken

For those less able to understand JavaScript, here is a handy guide to find out which scripts are broken and prevent others from loading:

Firefox

1. Open any Wikipedia page
2. Open the Developer Tools by pressing F12 or under Tools => Web Developer => Toggle Tools
3. Select "Debugger"
4. In the lower pane, select "JS"
5. Now it should display some lines with orange bullets. Open those by clicking on them, then click on the entry on the right ("load.php")
6. The userscript generating the error will appear above
7. Disable all scripts that appear above in your <skin>.js file until no more errors are displayed.
8. The rest should work again

Video of the steps

Chrome

1. Open any Wikipedia page
2. Open the Developer Tools by pressing F12 or under Menu => More tools => Developer tools
3. Select "Console"
4. Now the failing scripts should be displayed with a red background and a small red X symbol
5. Click any of the lines to find out the script which is causing the problems
6. Disable all scripts that appear above in your <skin>.js file until no more errors are displayed.
7. The rest should work again

Video of the steps

Hope that helps at least some people. Regards SoWhy 17:16, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@SoWhy: I'm struggling with finding the lower pane and JS. What browser are you using? I've tried FF and Chrome. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 17:57, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: Sorry, forgot that the split view is not enabled by default. Hit "Esc" while on the Debugger tab to open the lower pane. Regards SoWhy 18:14, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Here is a quick video I made (sorry, VirtualBox does not record mouse pointers but it should be clear from the highlighting): [1] Regards SoWhy 18:28, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm using Chrome, so my steps were a bit different, but I was able to find what you were pointing at. Thank you ! (You need to sticky that, if it's possible , I'm sure more questions will pop up about scripts )  Ҝ Ø Ƽ Ħ  18:45, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The video is great. Only one thing in red, "JavaScript parse error: Parse error: Illegal token in file 'User:Doug_Weller/common.js' on line 28 (anonymous)" which looks like it's in a rollback script. Also a load of "this is deprecated messages" which I don't understand. Doug Weller talk 14:10, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Help? Doug Weller talk 11:22, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

My main problem is User:Apoc2400/refToolbarPlus.js, which has stopped working. The developer pane shows the main problem as "Uncaught ReferenceError: mwCustomEditButtons is not defined at HTMLDocument.refbuttons". --Auric talk 20:17, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Auric: Why do you need that script ? It seems like another version of reftoolbar, which is already enabled by default. This will clash with that default, and has also not been kept up to date apparently. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:40, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I have informed the original author of that script. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. It help(ed) in citing references and looking for errors in references.--Auric talk 20:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Still not getting it

I've tried working through the steps for Firefox and I'm just not getting it. Enough of of the steps and what the video shows are different enough that I'm just not getting it. Is there any other way for me to fix this? - SummerPhD^v2.0 04:17, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@SummerPhDv2.0: I've removed some old stuff from you script file, that was really broken. Hope it's better for you now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:29, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Awesome! Looks like my beloved Twinkle is back. Thanks! - SummerPhD^v2.0 14:47, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm stuck as well

I'm afraid I'm not managing to follow it either. :-( I have tried following the instructions and watching the video a few times but my screen is not showing the same as the video. I have the most up to date version of Firefox on an iMac and have encountered loading problems for a while. I did remove some scripts the other day but it didn't fix it. Help, please? SagaciousPhil - Chat 08:38, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Fixed some things for you too. If you have any remaining issues, can you see if you can get a more accurate description of what sometimes fails on which page ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:15, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

CharInsert not working for me

I rely on CharInsert for editing, and use the standard-issue source editor. For the last day or so, CharInsert has operated only very intermittently; most of the time I have the copy-paste toolbar with tiny symbols, which is nearly unusable. I'm using the latest version of Firefox (53.0), and tried to debug my vector.js page according to the instructions above but couldn't figure out which scripts were problematic (I ground to a halt on step 6, since I couldn't reconcile "the userscript above" with what was on my .js page). Any help much appreciated. All the best, Miniapolis 14:27, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Miniapolis: I have disabled the following of your scripts for you, which were not up to date with coding standards.

• User:Ohconfucius/script/Sources.js by User:Ohconfucius
• User:Dr pda/articlehistory.js by User:Dr pda
• User:Rjd0060/OTRS-Text.js by User:Rjd0060
• User:Timotheus Canens/massedit.js by User:Timotheus Canens
• ru:MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js

Hope it is better now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:57, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes it is, TheDJ, and I really appreciate the de-cruft; I don't install scripts willy-nilly, but over time they can accumulate :-). I noticed that the mark-blocked gadget is now a checkbox in preferences. Many thanks and all the best, Miniapolis 19:42, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Help please

Can someone help me fix whatever I need to fix. Twinkle works only after re-loading/clearing my cache multiple times, as above charinsert is also not working, markedblocked, linkclassifier and so on. Thanx in advance, - Mlpearc (open channel) 14:42, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Mlpearc: This should fix the remaining problems. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:22, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: The symptoms have not changed. - Mlpearc (open channel) 00:17, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mlpearc: I totally missed that you also have a gigantic global.js file. I don't have time to help until later today in the european evening. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:29, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: :P I also forgot about that page, I have cleared it as it's not really needed, however the page you adjusted for me User:Mlpearc/common.js has many script calls at the top, which are all edited out, I am used to using these. I edited them out the other day in an attempt to fix the issue, can you check that these are correct considering the new format. Thank you very much for your help, I have built and maintained my own wiki farm but .js is just beyond me. Thanx again, - Mlpearc (open channel) 13:31, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Reminder about the next thing to break some scripts

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T162849

The BIG blue button is coming soon to editing tools near you – well, maybe not in the next few weeks, but probably this calendar year. Buttons under the edit summary will get converted to OOUI. This should affect relatively few scripts and tools, but if you're looking at your scripts now, then please consider whether yours will be affected by this, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:09, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry but I don't get it

Twinkle is definitely not working unless I reload on every page but I'm blowed if I can follow the instructions above. I've no idea whether any other installed scripts are affected - time will tell but, alas, what a mess this is. - Sitush (talk) 17:06, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorted. Thanks, TheDJ. - Sitush (talk) 17:50, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Sitush: this was your biggest problem. I also disable a link in your vector.js for an AfC script that no longer is in use. Instead, you can enable the AfC script as a gadget in your preferences. I do note however, that it seems that this particular gadget itself is affected by the above noted problems. I'll try and poke someone about that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:52, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I think I fixed AfC helper as well now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:04, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't get it either?

This stuff is way past my understanding. If someone would mind checking User:Huntster/monobook.js for obvious nonsense, and perhaps User:Huntster/monobook.js/formatcitations.js and User:Huntster/monobook.js/highlightmyname.js (some customised copypasta), It would be appreciated. I think I got most of the basic stuff with this edit, but I don't really know. — Huntster (t @ c) 23:43, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Huntster: Is it better now ? I'm not sure if I found all the problems, but definitely most of them —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:00, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Article Creation through bots

Hello! I got bot status on Ta wiki. And I created this Bot account to create some articles, on a specific topic. See here, like this I want to do. I explored on mediawiki manuals on how to create articles using bot. But I didn't find anything. I have tested through paws. But I don't know how to create many articles through Paws or any other else. As like this article creation me too like to do this. Can you plaese tell me how to do this step by step.--ShriheeranBOT (talk) 11:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Have you considered using mw:Extension:ArticlePlaceholder instead? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

This was also posted to two user talk pages, contrary to WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:57, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm copying my previous reply here, to avoid fragmentation (this is where it is best and will be archived):

@ShriheeranBOT: I have never written a Wikimedia bot yet, although it is among the things I may eventually do someday. However, of interest may be: [2] and [3], [4] (the server-side part which can be useful if client-side parts are not completely documented), [5] (the code for the edit part of the server-side of the API), [6] (the documentation for the traditional index.php API, which is older and simpler than api.php, and was originally primarily for browsers). There also are various open source bots which can serve as example, as well as some libraries they use which exist for various scripting languages (i.e. those at [7]). Here are a few other links which I have accumulated on the topic when I started looking around a few weeks ago: [8], [9], [10], [11] (PHP, includes wikibot framework), [12], [13] (semi-bots), [14] (shell bot). As for creating pages, my impression is that it is the same operation as editing. The edit request obtains a form and/or token, which can be used to HTTP POST the content (providing the necessary cookies and token form var). If the page did not exist, it is created at the first edit, if I understand. The proposal you received at the Village Pump to use a Mediawiki extension ([15]) as an alternative may be a great idea if the goal is to provide default stubs with minimal autogenerated content for many unexisting articles at real time (rather than needing them to be pre-created, these import data from Wikidata to a readable format). Hopefully this helps a bit, —░]PaleoNeonate█ ⏎ ?ERROR░ 01:00, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

PaleoNeonate So, how to install the ArticlePlaceHolder--ShriheeranBOT (talk) 05:50, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@ShriheeranBOT: I think that someone who has the necessary sysadmin access to [16] would have to add an entry for tawiki. It's possible that Project:WikiProject SysAdmins or Project:Support_desk be the proper places to request this, but I'm not familiar yet with those areas myself. Hopefully someone can correct me or also assist. —░]PaleoNeonate█ ⏎ ?ERROR░ 07:13, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Problem with "User contributions" page

On my user contributions page, one of the checkable options is written in what appears to be Finnish! It reads as follows:

• Only show edits that are latest revisions
• Only show edits that are page creations
• Hide minor edits
• Piilota mahdollisesti hyvät muutokset

Is this a known issue? --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:31, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Robsinden: Very strange. Could you add ?uselang=qqx to the end of the URL on that page, and paste what shows up in place of that text here please? For example, I see (ores-hide-nondamaging-filter) (which means the text comes from MediaWiki:Ores-hide-nondamaging-filter). I assume there's some issue with detecting your language, so that might show the same thing. Sam Walton (talk) 14:34, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9: You get this Finnish text if you select "en-GB" in your preferences. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Samwalton9:, reading across as follows: (sp-contributions-toponly) (sp-contributions-newonly) (sp-contributions-hideminor) (ores-hide-nondamaging-filter) --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:44, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I've created the British English element on translate wiki, please review it. But why is Finished used as a translation backup for British English? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:23, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The log [17] says a version in the wrong language was deleted two hours before your creation. So you didn't have to create an English message, we just had to wait for the en fallback to be propagated. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:49, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

translatewiki:Special:Log/Amire80 shows seven other ORES-related en-gb messages in the wrong language have been deleted. The author has been informed and all their non-deleted edits are to fi messages so the cleanup should be complete next time messages are imported from Translatewiki. Until then en-gb users may see several of the current Finnish messages at [18]. There was a similar problem at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 152#Protection tab where a Translatewiki editor wrote a bunch of messages in Sindhi instead of English. It would be nice if messages using the wrong alphabet were detected automatically. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:47, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Project of a TeaHouse-specific archival bot

We are currently discussing here a special archival bot for the Teahouse (a place for new editors) that posts to the user talk pages of those who asked a question when the thread gets archived. Any input from people familiar with archival bots or the bot policy in general is welcome (but please post at WT:TH to keep it in one place). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Vibiana/Cathedral of Saint Vibiana mix-up

I have a client who's name is Vibiana. It's a venue located in downtown LA. It used to be a catholic cathedral but hasn't been for years. It now houses weddings, runway shows, tv shows, etc.

Starting Monday, no one has been able to geo tag Vibiana anywhere. When it's googled, the Cathedral of Saint Vibiana shows up. Vibiana doesn't at all. I was told this may be because of a connection to the Wikipedia page that geo locates the Cathedral.

Cathedral_of_Saint_Vibiana

Is there a way to fix this?

71.93.209.113 (talk) 17:36, 28 April 2017 (UTC)Vanessa

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.93.209.113 (talk) 17:34, 28 April 2017 (UTC) 

I'm not sure what the problem is supposed to be here. When I do a Google search for Vibiana, the whole first page of results points to the commercial web site or to reviews of the venue, with the exception of the Wikipedia page, which mentions that the site is an event venue. When I search for "Vibiana" on my phone's mapping app, the first hit is the venue. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:11, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

When Googled via desktop, the page that comes up to the right is Cathedral at Saint Vibiana - yet the links to the left are all of the venue. The Cathedral at Saint Vibiana Wikipedia page may mention it's now a venue but the problem is the geo tag that I'm assuming comes from Wikipedia. The name doesn't match the business brand which is a problem for the client - suggesting the venue is a church. If you attempt to geo tag a social media post, all that comes up is the cathedral, not the venue. People have always been able to geo tag simply "Vibiana" but now it's "Cathedral of Saint Vibiana."

71.93.209.113 (talk) 19:05, 28 April 2017 (UTC)Vanessa

Hi Vanessa,

Do you know when this started? There was a change to how geo coordinates were handled in this article in January 2017. JJMC89 might know what the effects could be.

When I go to maps.google.com and search for "Vibiana", the map marker says (only) "Vibiana". I don't have a Facebook account or anything like that, but I'm sure that lots of people here do; could you give exact directions for how to see the problem? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

The edit should have had no impact on the coordinates. |display= still includes title, so the coordinates are still primary. Also, the coordinates and the rest of the provided GeoData information are the same. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:19, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

It started on Monday (maybe late last week). If you have Instagram or Facebook and attempt to post a picture (or edit a current picture to include a location) and attempt to geo tag "Vibiana," the tag will only come up as "Cathedral of Saint Vibiana." I was told the problem originated in but it's looking more like a Google problem.

It's a branding problem for the client as they're no longer the church, just the venue. I google the venue and it does come up but the geo tag for social media is the issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.93.209.113 (talk) 20:27, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I can understand why that would be confusing for potential customers or event attendees.

For anyone else who's looking into this, Wikidata has had the same coordinates since 2013, so that looks like an unlikely source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:37, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

To me this just looks like something/someone at google has merged the two entities on the Google side. Nothing we can do about that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:49, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, nothing we want to do. Google likes Wikipedia and it's possible Google used our article Cathedral of Saint Vibiana to associate that name with "Vibiana" alone or with the coordinates in the article. But we shouldn't remove correct information just because external websites may use it in an unfortunate way for somebody. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, everyone, for being so accommodating. I don't know why my colleague directed me here or why I followed the trail but here I was. Off to find out the real source. Again, thank you. 71.93.209.113 (talk) 20:59, 28 April 2017 (UTC)Vanessa

I think this is a Google or Facebook issue. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

One of the categories added to the article relatively recently is "Catholic cathedrals in California". Since this is not technically a cathedral anymore, that would be incorrect, no? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:09, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Categories usually don't distinguish between current and former entities, except categories exclusively for former entities like Category:Former cathedrals in the United States. There is no Category:Former catholic cathedrals in California so I see no reason to remove it from Category:Cathedrals in California and lose the category connection to cathedrals in the state. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:26, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

What about "Former Roman Catholic church buildings in California"? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

That's not a subcategory of Category:Cathedrals in California. We want the most specific categories on articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:46, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Other than the specific wording, I'm not seeing a difference between the extant "Former Roman Catholic church buildings in California" and the hypothetical "Former catholic cathedrals in California". How are they different? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 23:48, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I gather from Cathedral that all cathedrals are church buildings, but not all church buildings are cathedrals. So we should presumably have both the "Cathedrals in California" and "Former church buildings" cats on this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Template help please

Will someone knowledgeable of template coding please help me with Template:Redirect category? The documentation shows |same line= as a parameter for use but does not describe its action. Furthermore, when I look at the template coding itself, I do not see anything parsed by such a parameter. What is its purpose please? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 04:50, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@John Cline: |same_line= was removed on 31 October 2014 by Paine Ellsworth. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:31, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

To editors John Cline and JJMC89: I should be whipped, kicked and fish-slapped for missing that documentation update! (Sincerely hope there aren't any more like that out there!) Best to you!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  07:27, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: Here, have a traditional whack: —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:04, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know you did something silly.

That din't hurt! <cringe> That's a whole lot better'n being smashed 'n squished by a whale.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  09:14, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Remove page from watchlist confirmation

Why am I asked to confirm removal of pages from watchlist nowadays? It is annoying having to do this every time. It is doubly annoying that you are not taken back to the original page after confirming and then have to back up through two pages to get there. Is there any way of turning this off and going back to the old way that didn't require these extra clicks? SpinningSpark 09:24, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

If JavaScript is enabled (and is finished loading on the page), the removal should be done by a script without requiring a confirmation. If you have JS disabled or blocked somehow, then no, there's no way of turning it off. Otherwise you might check that you don't have any scripts installed that are affected by the issue discussed above in #Old script-pocalypse. Anomie⚔ 15:30, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks like my problem. JS is enabled but it takes forever to load, I get the raw page for several seconds before the JS kicks in. Twinkle frequently gets missed and I have to reload the page to get the Twinkle links. Is there a way to identify the problem scripts or is it just going to be trial and error? SpinningSpark 17:41, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

And why has the button changed? How do I get a proper button back? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:05, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Not getting email notifications when an article on watchlist is changed

This has been happening sporadically (off/on) for the last year. It's been happening with more frequency this year, even though I pruned my watchlist in case having too many articles on it was the problem. Most recent example: one article on my watchlist (that I have been very actively involved in editing) was edited 3 times by one editor on "21 April", and by GreenC bot on 25 April -- but I did not receive emails about it. I only discovered the edits because I visited the article today (29 April 2017) and looked at its history. I double-checked my watchlist and, yes, the article is included in it.

I checked the Watchlist settings. It says:

You have 51 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages).

Email notification is enabled.

In Preferences > Advanced options only the following are checked:

• Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent
• Hide my edits from the watchlist
• Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist
• Add new files I upload to my watchlist
• Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist

There's nothing in the options preventing my receiving email notifications. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:56, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Did you check to see whether the notification was placed in a "spam" folder or the like? Anomie⚔ 15:32, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes. I use gmail and when something is in the Spam folder, the folder name appears in bold. After reading your reply I checked it, and it's empty. My experience in the last six months with a watchlist email notification has been either (1) I receive it two or three days after an article has been changed, or (2) I don't receive an email at all. I still haven't received an email regarding the 3 edits to the article I referred, nor the bot edit. There's a bug somewhere. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:25, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Do you make sure you visit each article after getting the email about a change to it? If you don't, you won't get any further emails about that article until you visit it. Graham87 12:26, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Alerts for watchlist

• What you want is something that alerts you when you are not on WP to when something on, say, your watchlist changes. — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 10:08, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Actually, I intended this as a standalone request to the board  :) but I can see how it looked like a comment on Pyxis' problem. Incidentally, do you kow of such a thing? — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 13:13, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Apologies, moved it back out, feel free to reformat anyway you want! — xaosflux ^Talk 15:03, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Pyxis Solitary, Is the Atom RSS feed (linked in the left hand column on the Watchlist) more reliable? Many email programs also work as RSS readers. Cabayi (talk) 13:43, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

To use the Atom RSS feed I would need to subscribe to it. I don't subscribe to any RSS feeds. I really shouldn't have to take any extra measure to receive the watchlist notifications I'm supposed to receive via email. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:36, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I think the RSS feed may be better if you want to get updates all the time, but I'm also a big fan of RSS in general. Some email clients let you load an RSS feed or you could use something like Feedly. My watchlist is way to busy for RSS on enwiki, but I've used it on meta: and other sites with good results. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:03, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

The only thing that appears in my Atom RSS feed is changes made on April 29. Based on this, I don't think the feed is useful at all. (I prefer my activities on Wikipedia to be as easy as possible to navigate.) Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:36, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Alert on-wiki

I had a theoretically similar idea. I for example am at work or doing some non-wiki stuff and have Wikipedia open in one of tabs (that's not "active"). I would like to have a "notification" at tab title (so it would require to put it in <title> tag, I assume), that I have a new notification. It could be Echo notification, new entry in my watchlist, something special in recent changes etc. that triggers such notification. Thoughts on how easy/hard it would be? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:54, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes Edgars2007, that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking! — O Fortuna ^{semper crescis, aut decrescis} 07:40, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

template:FIAV

Hello, Some state flags have a text or motto, like the flag of Brazil. In such flags, the reverse side is congruent to the obverse side and according to Glossary of vexillology this symbol () must be shown for these flags. The problem is that despite the symbol (), there is no tooltip for the "IFIS equal" symbol. This symbol is not in Template:FIAV. Could you please add this symbol to the FIAV template. Shfarshid (talk) 10:25, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Shfarshid: {{IFIS|Equal}} gives . Do you have a source saying it's also a FIAV symbol? Do you want {{IFIS}} to behave as {{FIAV}} and display the description as a tooltip instead of alt text? To compare a parameter supported by both templates, {{IFIS|Normal}} gives , while {{FIAV|normal}} gives . PrimeHunter (talk) 14:31, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

No I don't have any source. Thank you for introduce me the template IFIS. I just need a template which shows the description. IFIS templates are appropriate ones. Shfarshid (talk) 15:03, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I have changed {{IFIS}} to use the description as mouseover instead of alt text.[19] PrimeHunter (talk) 21:02, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Somebody with database access willing to make few queries?

So somebody is out there? I would need to run some queries for all Wikipedias, so there would be need for a script that loops trough them. If it's Python, I could write the script myself (the most parts of it). Theoretically the maximum number of needed queries is somewhere 50,000 (approx. 200 queries for each language), I assume, that's not very much. Queries for small languages would be fast and some of them probably won't return any result. But those 50,000 may be lowered down. And to person who is willing to help - no, there are no time-limits and yes, it is a one-time request (with possible rerun in a lot, lot smaller portions). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:08, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Its technically possible with a Stored Procedure in Quarry. Something simple in bash:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
WIKIS=$(mysql -h meta.labsdb -BN -e '
SELECT dbname FROM meta_p.wiki
WHERE family="wikipedia" AND is_closed = 0
')

QUERY="
SELECT CONCAT('This is datebase: ', DATABASE()) AS Tell_me_something;
"
for DBNAME in $WIKIS; do
  mysql -h "$DBNAME.labsdb" "${DBNAME}_p" -B -e "$QUERY";
  # mysql switches
  # -N No column headers
  # -B Bare formatted / -t Table formatted / -H HTML output / -X XML output
done

If you need me to help you, contact me on IRC. — Dispenser 17:52, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

OK, this is  Resolved. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:50, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Other existing resources from the Toolserver days: tswiki:Database access and tswiki:Iterating over wikis. — Dispenser 16:26, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Line up boxes

How can I line up the two boxes in Michelin_Guide#References on the same line? Debresser (talk) 21:11, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

You could place the second in <div style="float:right;">...</div>. I don't know how stable it is but it works for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

That worked.[20] Thanks. Debresser (talk) 21:53, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Gallery problem

There appears to be a problem when using the <gallery></gallery> tags as it appears to cut the {{cite news}} template short used against one of the captions. An example of this can be seen in Shamakhi. Keith D (talk) 21:42, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Fixed by removing linebreaks from the gallery caption.[21] Help:Gallery tag#Usage notes says: "Every line specifies an image file". PrimeHunter (talk) 22:54, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response, I thought it may be something to do with the linefeeds but it did not appear to work for me in preview, probably missed one of the linefeeds. Keith D (talk) 23:00, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Secure connection failed

I'm hoping I'll be able to post this. Trying to edit (windows 10 / Firefox 53.0) and I keep getting an error message.

Secure Connection Failed

The connection to en.wikipedia.org was interrupted while the page was loading.

• The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
• Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

Any ideas why? Was working OK earlier. Can view pages without problem. Mjroots (talk) 10:52, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm, so why can't I edit the List of shipwrecks in 1837 then? Mjroots (talk) 10:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I did a purge, then a section edit (rather than a whole page edit), and it's worked. Still mystified as to why it wouldn't load with a whole page edit. Mjroots (talk) 10:56, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Edit screen instability

Here's one that keeps driving me up a wall:

Many times when I edit a page, and sometimes when I just read a page, things get really squirrelly. For example, I've set prefs to have the purge clock at the top of the page. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it isn't. When I edit a page, sometimes the symbols below the edit screen are "clickable", and sometimes not. If I click Show preview, then the clickables appear, yet sometimes I have to preview two or three times before the "unclickables" are replaced by clickables. Getting my purge clock back sometimes means reloading the page several times.

I thought this might have something to do with the common.js scripts described in an above discussion, but even after emptying my common.js, I continue to have this problem. I use IE11 on W10 64-bit, and please no IE bashing, as I also use FF and Chrome (this problem exists in all three browsers), and I find IE far superior to either. I would be thankful for any and all helpful suggestions to remedy this problem.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  11:03, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth: The only immediate problem I could find was in MusikAnimal's script. But I think the real problem, is in User:Pathoschild's TemplateScript, which you have installed in your global.js. I have created an issue in his bugtracker. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:09, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you TheDJ! I wondered about that because another symptom is that all my scripts on the list in the left margin disappear along with the purge clock and the clickable symbols.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  12:30, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

The problem is in a part that is not editable for you, since it runs on tool labs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:57, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah, I see. So even though I can edit my global.js, I can't touch the //tools-static.wmflabs.org/meta/scripts/pathoschild.templatescript.js. That's cool.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  16:41, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. If you want to get rid of the problems, then you can just blank your global.js of course and then watch the github issue for an update and reinstate afterwards. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:59, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth and TheDJ: I updated all my scripts to declare their RL dependencies. Let me know if any of them still have issues. :) —Pathoschild 04:49, 01 May 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ, I don't know enough about the script, so I wonder if I add the same code you added to MusikAnimal's script, if that would fix the global.js, or should it be added differently since it's at meta?  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  14:02, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

• I'm having the same problem—sometimes the javascript add-ons work, sometimes they don't, and not just in the edit window. This has started in the last few days and I haven't made any changes to my .js pages recently, and I don't use either of the scripts mentioned above. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:50, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
  • I waded through this discussion, which made me suspicious.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  15:54, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
    • @HJ Mitchell: Better now ? I made some changes to a few scripts, disable a few etc.
      1. User:HelloAnnyong/sockblock.js by User:HelloAnnyong (fixed)‎
      2. User:Amalthea/MakeAutopatroller.js by User:Amalthea (blanked for everyone for now)
      3. User:Mr.Z-man/moverevert2.js by User:Mr.Z-man (blanked for everyone)
      4. User:Haza-w/cactions.js by User:Haza-w (disabled for you)
    • If anyone knows newer versions of these scripts that should be preferred btw, then I can redirect some of that stuff perhaps. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:57, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia datacentre switchover to Eqiad

Hello, as you may or may not already know there will be a datacentre switch back to Eqiad, WMF's main data centre, on May 3rd at approximately 14:00 UTC. For approximately 20-30 minutes you will NOT be able to save edits to any WMF project. If you have any questions feel free to reply back to me here, or ask on IRC #wikimedia-tech ^connect. If there any major issues that occur during this time please report them to #wikimedia-tech on freenode! Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 18:29, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I want to change my page tabs colors

Hello, I came to drop by because I'd like Module:Page tabs to allow alternate colors. However, I do not know Lua. Can you please make that edit so I can change the page tabs to white? Thanks, --UpsandDowns1234 (🗨) (My Contribs) 02:34, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Maybe you would prefer Template:Start_tab? —░]PaleoNeonate█ ⏎ ?ERROR░ 22:34, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Note that {{Page tabs}} has a parameter | This = to make a white background for the tab you are on. You don't currently use the parameter and that makes it a little harder to navigate your pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:44, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Map won't render at a specific resolution

Extended content
Default size; no pixel setting specified Map at 250px Map at 260px Map at 270px Map at 300px Error generating thumbnail/There have been too many recent failed attempts (4 or more) to render this thumbnail. Please try again later.

Why won't this image render at 260px? It's not just me; when I added it to another Wikipedia, my addition got reverted with a message that seems to say "I can't see this map", and when I put it back a moment later (not realising that I'd been reverted), the size was modified with a reference to the 260px resolution causing problems. Nyttend (talk) 00:43, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

See T159242 and T151202 and this unsatisfying discussion from two months ago. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:13, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

While the the renderer does have its problems, in this case the main issue is with the file itself, it causes segfault when attempts are made to open the original in something like gimp (although some other applications do load it), it also has a lot of issues according to a validator:

• https://validator.nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Ff%2Ff0%2FMap_of_Virginia_highlighting_Richmond_City.svg

It is a good idea to always validate files (especially SVG) ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.91.97 (talk) 06:29, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

That's not the problem here. I've never encountered this problem with other files in this series of maps, but the validator is raising the same errors with other files, e.g. File:Map of Virginia highlighting Richmond County.svg. Nyttend (talk) 12:08, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is faulty logic. It is like saying that someone isn't infected with AIDS or smoking doesn't cause cancer because people haven't started exhibiting the symptoms. It is clear that those files have problems, for example, the original file doesn't even display properly on an android (chrome) device, or firefox 47. It also causes a segfault (on gimp) and makes the default file manager software in fedora core to die because of the same segfault when it tries to thumbnail the file, this also happens with the newer file. The fact that files uploaded a long time with problems were tolerated by older versions of software doesn't mean that they will indefinitely work. This is likely the case here. Something was probably changed or updated in the software stack and it exposed the broken files, or maybe attempting to render at that resolution exposes the issue.197.218.81.51 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:01, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Purge confirmation clicker redux

The helpful script snippet provided in the archive is no longer working for me after the latest code update. I get stuck on the page with the new blue "Yes" button that does not match my operating system's standard UI. Sigh.

Does someone have an updated version of that snippet? Save me a click, somebody! – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:39, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Jonesey95: You can replace

$('form.mw-htmlform').submit();

with

$( '#ooui-3' ).find( 'button' ).click();

Nirmos (talk) 12:41, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't seem right. A fragment like that should just work. Most likely User:Jonesey95 has other scripts installed which are failing. I'll take a look. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:20, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Right, made the following changes:

• Disabled User:Zhaofeng Li/Reflinks.js by User:Zhaofeng Li for now (can probably soon be re-enable, he usually maintains his scripts.
• Disabled your autoed scripts, which are likely all broken
• Disabled User:Frietjes/masspurge.js by User:Frietjes for now. It's rather old, not sure if Frietjes plans on updating it
• Fixed User:Frietjes/addcheckforunknownparameters.js 
• Fixed User:Frietjes/findargdups.js
• Cleaned up the logic for your purge action, and for adding the portal link. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:46, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

"restore this version" is gone from diffs?

In the diffs ("Difference between revisions"), the left (older) version used to have a "restore this version" clickable label toward the top. It disappeared about a week or so ago... at least for me. (actually it seems to come up on random rare occassions). I miss it. I didn't change any preferences, and I can't find anything about in preferences. Any ideas? Herostratus (talk) 06:30, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

It's made by Twinkle at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. See #Twinkle not working and #Old script-pocalypse for recent discussions with tips on how to get scripts working. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:31, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Herostratus: I fixed for you: User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js by User:Lourdes

• Removed a copy of Twinkle, which you should enable as a gadget in your preferences
• Disabled broken User:Dycedarg/easyprod.js by User:Dycedarg
• Disabled Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Easy db
• Disabled Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/AutoAFD.js
• Disabled Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/CloseAFD.js
• Disabled User:Digitalme/aiv.js by User:Digitalme

This should stabilise things for you. If anyone has alternatives for these scripts, wants to fix them, please do. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:50, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Woo! Thank you! All fixed. I'm so used to Twinkle that I forget its not part of the default interface. Thanks again, lots! Herostratus (talk) 15:10, 1 May 2017 (UTC)