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. If you want to report a JavaScript error, please, follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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Archive-date parameter

Moved to Help talk:Citation Style 1 § Archive-date parameter

21 Jan- Redlinks to working pages!?

From Zanygenius

The left photo displays a Redlink to a page I have created (this has happened a few times before), which can be seen on the right.

@Admin:(s), I find (2 times) that I'll create something, say on my userspace, {if--the link was there to start with, then I create it} and find it's redlinked for 5-10 minutes. I find that a little weird. I mean, I can live with it, but it is something of interest that this can even happen. (Yes I've tried purging the page). Any thoughts? Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 05:07, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

This is expected behaviour. Pages are cached for performance reasons so they don't have to be rebuilt each time they are viewed. User:Zanygenius/Statistics/Mainspace Edits did not exist when the link was added to User:Zanygenius/Statistics so the link was red at the time. A purge of User:Zanygenius/Statistics will immediately update the cached version. Otherwise it waits for the job queue to invalidate the cached version. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I almost figured that would be the case, and yet I didn't know. Well, it's a grateful thing that you let me know. So, I'll keep that in mind, though yeah, I wasn't to bothered anyways. Thanks again!

Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 16:37, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

You should purge the page.  Anchorvale ^T@lk  10:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Globe link to the left of title coordinates gives 502 Bad Gateway error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T185797
Resolved

Resolved

 – The instance has been restored

The globe link to the left of title coordinates on any article (AFAIK) with coordinates gives a 502 Bad Gateway error. How to reproduce: Go to New York City, for example, and in the upper right, to the left of the coordinates, click the little globe icon with the black downward arrow on it. I see "502 Bad Gateway (hr) nginx/1.13.6" in a pop-up window. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

I see that too @Jonesey95: Good evening by the way. I'll take this to the phabricator, but for now, click on the actual coordinates, then on one of the provided services (eg. Google Maps), and It'll take you to the position.

Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 04:38, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, geohack is up on wmflabs... — xaosflux ^Talk 04:39, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Coord not working correctly. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:41, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Looks like the meta:WikiMiniAtlas is failing. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:43, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Dschwen: is listed as maintainer, but appears to be gone. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:47, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
• @Zanygenius: https://wma.wmflabs.org is down, seems to be the source. — xaosflux ^Talk 04:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

  phab:T185797 opened for wma.wmflabs.org being down. — xaosflux ^Talk 05:00, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Well, that's a good thing! Hopefully now they'll get it back up and running soon. I'll look over it quickly, then just wait and see what happens.

Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 16:46, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• @Jonesey95: - looks like the server that runs this is crashed, and noone is yet working on it. I've disabled WikiMiniAtlas site wide in (via MediaWiki:Common.js) so that our readers don't end seeing that failure screen. Once it is fixed it could be reenabled. According to some quick irc chats, an issue is that there is no SLA for repairs to wmflabs.org instances - it is depending on volunteers to be available. Should it be fixed, any admin can re-enable it. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• Additionally, it has been suggested we migrate to the Kartographer extension - updating of templates/etc would be needed if someone wants to start testing. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:24, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• Service has been restored to the failed instance. Support groups recommend migrating to mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:43, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, this seems like a particularly awful way of embedding content:

1. Proper netiquette dictates that at the very least when loading external data, the user is informed, especially before leaving the site.
2. It is downright irresponsible to load data from a third party external source whose maintainer is inactive, regardless of whether it works.
3. It is quite trivial for the maintainer of the service to redirect it to somewhere else, to start randomly showing up illegal content such as child pornography or anything else
4. It also seems to needlessly load extra javascript regardless of whether the user will ever click on it.
5. This seems to go against the privacy policy (similar to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107085#1486238, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136768#2347326), as wmflabs seems to be at best be an experimental site that random volunteers can create or change their stuff at will. The service will also likely be able to pull in ip information and maybe other private data without user consent.

08:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.89.69 (talk)

Unknown parameters to infobox itself

I have seen a lot of Wikipedia pages using Infoboxes with unknown parameters. A module is being used now in some of the Infoboxes to add such pages to a tracking category and such tracking is highly useful. Would it be possible to add such code to {{Infobox}} or Module:Infobox itself, so as to get rid of adding each parameter to every template manually? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 03:27, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

That is not possible. {{Infobox}} and Module:Infobox don't know which parameters are known in infobox templates using them, and they don't even have access to the parameter names used in articles with infoboxes. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

It is not impossible. It is just somewhat hard. One way would be to redesign the templates so that they to use lua internally rather than a hybrid inefficient mix of templates + lua + templates + parser functions. That way lua modules invoke the main infobox as a library, rather than as a pseudo-template / parser function. That would give module:infobox full access to all parameters. Of course this would make those templates harder to customize for the average user. Although that is mostly a function of bad design and a lack of separation of input / processing and output. 197.218.89.69 (talk) 11:30, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Can this thing be initiated? Would that improve rendering too? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 05:25, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-05

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Foundation is working on how to get less unmaintained code on Wikimedia wikis. This could be by finding maintainers or removing unmaintained features. They are now looking for feedback on what do do with AbuseFilter, the IRC RecentChanges feed, the RelatedSites extension and TimedMediaHandler. You can leave feedback on the linked talk pages. [1]

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

17:06, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Bogus notifications from fr.wp – Flow?

Why am I getting repeated notifications from a user talk page on fr.wp when I have not contributed to it, or been mentioned on it, in years? Does this have something to do with Flow? If so, who knows where the tap is, and how to turn it to the "closed" position? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:32, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Go to fr:Spécial:Préférences#mw-prefsection-echo and uncheck Structured Discussion or Discussion structurée depending on your language settings there. Nihlus 19:38, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to what you were notified about ? That will make it easier to analyse the problem. Otherwise we might as well blame any and all of the other features of mediawiki while we are at it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 05:11, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Error when trying to access Wikipedia pages

When I try to access certain Wikipedia pages, I get "Request from 63.145.101.232 via cp1068 cp1068, Varnish XID 549421111 Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:41:51 GMT". --Jax 0677 (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

About a minute ago I got this error: pasted as found

Request from (my ip) via cp1066 cp1066, Varnish XID 902889495

Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:41:06 GMT

Bardic Wizard (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

+1 - Probably went down for everyone and probably related to servers. –Davey2010^Talk 19:46, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Merged this section with the one above. –Davey2010^Talk 19:47, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I was on biodiversity. Bardic Wizard (talk) 19:50, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

It seemed to last for less than a minute (for me, anyway), and I think it affected all pages/all wikis. I wonder if this was the same error that User:Vchimpanzee reported at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 161#Wikimedia error on 15 January.

The main text of today's error said, next to a logo similar to File:Wikimedia-logo black.svg:

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.

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

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Yeah. Only about a minute. I have a screenshot, but I’m not currently able to provide it (different device). Bardic Wizard (talk) 20:03, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

fixing ping. Bardic Wizard (talk) 20:05, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I saw the Wikipedia:Wikimedia Foundation error. There's no screenshot on that page, but the error is formatted there to look recognizable (and to be searchable, which is how I found that page). It could perhaps be replaced by a WP:WPSHOT with good WP:ALTTEXT, if you wanted. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

There is now a post-mortem on this incident at wikitech:Incident documentation/20180129-MediaWiki for anyone who's interested. TL;DR - Some configuration files were updated in the wrong order, causing server errors for about 8 minutes. the wub "?!" 00:19, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

ß

I just needed to type a "ß" and was surprised not to find that character in the "special character" dropdown (the one above the editing window in source view). Is there any way to add it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:12, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Isn't it the one seventh-from-last in the "Latin" section of that menu? Like this: "ß"? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, thank you - I was looking for it with the "s" characters (though I also checked "B", just in case!) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

If not drop a note at MediaWiki talk:Edittools, we can update MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js and/or MediaWiki:Edittools as needed. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:36, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

There should be no need; it's already there (twice): ß is in the Latin list, as Justlettersandnumbers notes, but it's ninth from last, not seventh; ß is also the last character in the S group, between ṣ and T. They are identical, yielding U+00DF. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

You are talking about the menu made by MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js below the edit box. Andy asked about the "Special characters" menu above the edit box in File:RefToolbar 2.0b.png. It's seventh from last there under "Latin" as Justlettersandnumbers said. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I turned that thing off just a few days after it was foisted on us. The javascript takes far too long to load, and having it reloaded for every edit was way too much hassle. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:02, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Adding "Portal:Current events" to your Watchlist

Hello, all! I've never used the watchlist feature before, but I recently wanted to try it out to get a basic stream of content from the Current Events page and eventually set the watchlist up in an RSS reader. However, after adding Portal:Current Events to my watchlist, it appears to only be showing Portal talk: Current events and its changes, as opposed to the page itself. I can watch the individual days with no issue, but watching the entire page seems to not work. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance. Kilroy94 (talk) 02:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

@Kilroy94: As you can see if you view source on this page, it has very little actual content of its own but it transcludes other pages which themselves have content. The events are listed on pages like Portal:Current events/2018 January 23, Portal:Current events/2018 January 24, etc. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:22, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

So basically - due to format, it won't be able to do what you want. You could watchlist Template:In the news to get the front page updates. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

The page history [2] shows Portal:Current events hasn't been edited since October. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:57, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. Unfortunate, but it's whatever. Thank you so much for the replies! Kilroy94 (talk) 03:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

This would be awkward, but you could watchlist each day in the future out to a set time. It would be tedious though. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 03:54, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

"å" can go directly to search match with "a"

It was reported at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Searching Sevåg that entering "Sevåg" with å in the normal search box (corresponds to the "Go" button in some other skins) goes directly to Sevag without displaying search results. A redirect at Sevåg has since been created so that example is now invalid. My tests show "å" only goes to "a" in some cases. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Emmy+Awård goes to Emmy Award, but https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Awård does not go to Award. Is this intended behaviour and is there a system to it? Emmy Awård and Awård are red links and should remain so. https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Emmy+Awård goes to simple:Emmy Award and https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Awård goes to simple:Award, unlike enwiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:13, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

This is called "character folding" or just "folding". There are different behaviors depending on the specific character and language. (For example, å is a native Swedish character and so it is not folded on Swedish wikis. It is not a native English character and so it is folded.) It is not obvious to me why those two results would differ (might be length of search string). @Deskana (WMF): --Izno (talk) 15:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I have seen it in other contexts but was surprised by the Go behaviour and apparent lack of system. Sårg goes to Sarg but Sårk does not go to Sark. If there is a system it seems complicated but I'm not a linguist. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Unlike most European languages, diacritics in English are few, and so many of use are not fully appreciative of what their purpose is (we generally know that they affect the pronounciation of the word, even if we are not sure in what way it is changed). Where they do occur (such as in words like naïve, and names like Brontë, Chloë and Zoë) they are considered to be modifiers of the letter that lacks the diacritic, much like the accented letters of French words like café and depôt: like written English, written French has 26 letters. In some other languages, the use of a diacritic forms a letter that is distinct from the letter that is similar in appearance apart from the diacritic. This is the case with the main Scandinavian languages - the Swedish alphabet has 29 letters: the first 26 are the same as in English, and Z/z is followed by Å/å, Ä/ä, Ö/ö in that order. In Danish and Norwegian, Å/å is the twenty-ninth letter, not the twenty-seventh. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

To make it really difficult, "aa" folds to "å" in Norwegian. Jeblad (talk) 13:52, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I can explain the difference between Emmy Awård and Awård—it should make sense, but it is entirely opaque if you don't know what's going on. Emmy Awård (or Ȇṁṃƴ Ẵẅɑṟȡ) gets folded on English projects—as Deskana mentioned—to emmy award. Since no other title or redirect gets folded to emmy award, that's where the "go" search takes you. Awård on the other hand is ambiguous because it isn't an exact match to anything, and there are at least two titles/redirects that get folded to award, namely Award and AWARD (a redirect to Award Software). Since there's no way to choose between them, the "go" search rolls over to the full text search. I don't know an easy way to find these cases; I just had to guess that AWARD existed. The title case version (Award) counts as an exact match for weird case versions without diacritics (like aWard, awaRd). With diacritics, it becomes a toss up between the two options. Hope that helps. TJones (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for solving the mystery. That also explains the other example where Sark and SARK are different pages so Sårk doesn't go to an article. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Total Pages Count - Something is wrong

Hello Tech Exp.

Look at this table. It says here that the "total" amount of pages reflects baisically every page that is not an article (and probably doesn't include former revisions of articles. But A simple exapmle show this count is wrong. "Cebuano" Wiki has about 5M articles and less then 9M pages. Even if it has 0 ammount of WikiSpace articles, each article on the main space should have a talk pages. This alone should bring the total amount of pages to nearly 11M.

If this count is being done by technical funcation, there is a Tech issue here. If only the definitions are wrong, pls transfer this input to the correct talk page. I will make the change according to your assistance.

BTW I have a feeling this table can be found in other wikiprojects. So if something IS wrong let's fix it accross the board.

Peace be with you all, 15:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mateo (talk • contribs)

@Mateo: “each article on the main space should have a talk pages” eh nope... just because there is article does NOT mean that this article will have a talkpage. Their mutual existence is not a requirement by any part of the system. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Indeed. An interface link to a page does not imply the page exists. The link will be red like Nosuchpage if the page does not exist. It returns a HTTP 404 Not Found error message to browsers and Internet robots. A MediaWiki 404 has more content than the average 404 message on the Internet (compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosuchpage and https://en.wikipedia.org/Nosuchpage), but it's still a 404. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:49, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Filter deletion log to only include mainspace titles

Is there a way to filter the deletion log so that it only includes pages deleted from mainspace? I've tried adding &namespace=0 to this link like in contributions but it has no effect. Please ping if you reply. SmartSE (talk) 01:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Smartse: not natively, phab:T120764 shows some progress is being made (check in on it from time to time for updates), the general request is over 10 years going back to at least phab:T16711! — xaosflux ^Talk 04:47, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks for the links. That's annoying but we'll get there eventually! I'll figure a workaround for what I want to do in the meantime. SmartSE (talk) 13:29, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I think there is a new error within Module:Wikidata

What should be true is (Module:Wikidata/doc}

• getValue: Returns wiki-linked values, if applicable. All other values will be output similar to {{#property:}}, except that if values with preferred rank exist, then only they are returned. Unlike formatStatements from ru:Модуль:Wikidata, getValue does not yet pick up any references (see Module talk:Wikidata/Archive 1#Why the references from Wikidata get dropped?).

I.e. only preferred rank should show. But now it takes everything, not just preferred rank but also normal rank and even deprecated rank. See Pilar, Cebu – bottom of infobox.
Uses {{PH wikidata|climate_type}} =
| climate_type = {{safesubst:ucfirst:{{safesubst:#invoke:Wikidata|getValue|P2564|FETCH_WIKIDATA}}}}

Kangaroo caught (talk) 02:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Kangaroo caught: The better place to ask this is on the talk page of the module, where @RexxS and others can see it. But what you describe has always been true in my experience - getValue returns all values. If you use Module:WikidataIB instead, then you can use 'getPreferredValue' that does what you want. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:32, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Mike Peel: the main trouble with most (?all) "difficult" templates is that most of them have no proper documentation. Module:Wikidata doesn't give any starting values, but starts at the middle. Module:WikidataIB is even worse. The change works, but I don't know what I was doing. Also, now there is a "pencil" after the text (see San Francisco, Cebu). It leads to "Edit this on Wikidata" – wouldn't it make editing too easy? Kangaroo caught (talk) 00:23, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Gadget for highlighting images in CAT:COMMONS?

This... may be somehow difficult to implement and not useful enough to justify the trouble, but is it possible for us to cobble together a gadget that would make a nice little highlight around images that are part of CAT:COMMONS? I'm thinking similar to the gadget that highlights links to disambiguation pages. I realize I could just slog through the category directly, but that doesn't really solve anything as far as what I'm doing.

For context, as fortune has it, I'm picking through a lot of articles on US Civil War generals, and most of the images (unsurprisingly) are from the 1860s, meaning that they're pretty much automatically eligible for transfer to Commons. But what I'm ending up doing is opening a new tab for every single image in the article, to see if it pops up with a Commons icon or a Wikipedia one (I have it set to take me directly to Commons if it's already there and skip the enwiki page). That just seems like a lot of extra clicking for something that intuitively seems it should be fairly easy to streamline. GMG^talk 13:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: if you enable Navigation popups in your preferences, then when you hover an image, it will tell you if it's an image from Commons or not. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:49, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing it. I've had it enabled for a while now, but it's not doing anything for me re: images. Works fine on wikilinks, diffs, contribs, and usernames. But doesn't give me anything at all on images. GMG^talk 13:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, no I think that it clashes with "I have it set to take me directly to Commons if it's already there and skip the enwiki page".. those modifications might be incompatible with Navigation popups. Never really tested that honestly. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

GreenMeansGo I've got a nifty piece of CSS for ya

:link[class*="image"][href*="commons"]
{ 
    border:5px solid black !important;
}

This basically puts a black border - actually comes out as a black bar on the left, on any image that links directly to a url with "commons" in it. I can customize the effect, but yeah it works. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

(Forgive me, I edit Wikipedia despite a pronounced technical handicap.) That would go in GreenMeansGo/common.js or GreenMeansGo/monobook.js? GMG^talk 14:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

It would go in either User:GreenMeansGo/common.css or User:GreenMeansGo/monobook.css. It doesn't work for me, though, and I can't see how it would - images link to their file page on enwiki, without "commons" appearing anywhere in the href. (Maybe because I have the mediaviewer abomination disabled?) What does work for me is

img[src*="/upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/"] { border:5px solid black !important; }

—Cryptic 14:19, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Cryptic you need to enable the gadget that greenmeansgo has (and I enabled), that makes images go directly to commons if they are on commons. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:23, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Works for me. Strange that it should be just a little half inch black box on the side of the image rather than a border around it. At any rate, it's something that can be easily checked. Thank you very much! GMG^talk 15:51, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Good that it works! There's some conflicting going around with the box around the image + it's actually not around the image but a thin rectangle, dunno about that, but indeed strange. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:01, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I think that the size/extent/separation of the box will depend on your browser, specifically, what it considers to be the "hot" part of the image and its surroundings, within which a mouse click will cause the link to be followed. In Opera 36, images with |thumb get the black bar on the left, non-thumb images (such as those in an infobox) get it both sides. Very small images - such as those in a {{portal bar}} - get the black border all round. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:25, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

My Account Has been Hacked

I received a notification that an edit I made had been reverted. The problem is that I didn't make that edit. When I looked at my contributions, I found that someone has been using my account to create an article and edit two others. I changed my password and then reverted all the edits that were made. I could not revert the edit that created the article, We Leak Info, so I deleted the content and posted a note asking someone to delete the article. If anyone reading this can do so, I would appreciate it. I don't know whether there is anyplace I should make a formal report of the hacking. So if someone could point me in the right direction, that would be great. At the very least, I wanted to document here that the edits made on my account on 30 and 31 January 2018 are not mine. Taxman1913 (talk) 18:38, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Account blocked per WP:COMPROMISED. Will discuss with you on your talk page - TNT^❤ 18:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Article text to store a parameter for a template used multiple times in that article

I would like some general thoughts on that. The specific situation behind the question is a template ({{interlinear}}) that formats long-ish strings of linguistically annotated text. One parameter of this template gives a list of the meanings of the glossing abbreviations used. This list is likely to be the same for all invocations of the template on a given page. There can be dozens such invocations in a given article, so it's undesirable to have to specify the same long parameter each time (as pointed out on the template's talk page).

One solution I can think of is to specify this list once: in an invisible (style="display:none;") section at the end of the article and then to set the template to automatically look for this section and transclude it (via labeled section transclusion) as the needed parameter. Does anyone see any issues with that? I'm aware of the performance cost (adding about 50% to overall processing time), but at the scale that this is going to be used, it's unlikely to make a noticeable difference. Are there more elegant alternative ways of achieving the same result? – Uanfala (talk) 22:41, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

If you really insist on doing this, use <includeonly>...</includeonly> tags instead of markup that remains invisibly in the HTML. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 23:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

collapse/expand problem for many templates

Wikipedia has a problem with top right side templates expanding and then collapsing when the page is loaded. For example, in calculus article the Template:Calculus loads expanded then immediately collapses. This is a widespread problem on many wikipedia articles and templates. If nobody can figure out how to fix this issue, I propose eliminating the "[show]" and "[hide]" parameters of the templates so the templates always load fully expanded. Brian Everlasting (talk) 01:25, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Collapsing depends on a CSS display:none command, primarily from MediaWiki:Common.css. This is working on this page for me, but it may be a client-side delay. What browser are you using? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:42, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm using the latest version of Chrome. This problem persists on both Windows 10 and Mac. The template loads completely expanded then immediately collapses. Am I the only one having this problem? Brian Everlasting (talk) 01:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I can get it to do it as well, even with it being the "only" thing on a page (User:Xaosflux/sandbox51 for example) - it has a huge output for 1 template (see User:Xaosflux/sandbox51/expanded). I'm getting the jumping on it with Firefox as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:24, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

This is normal, and there's not a lot that can be done about it without eliminating a clearly, and broadly, beneficial functionality. The term (or at least closely related) is FOUC. --Izno (talk) 04:46, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this FOUC can be completely eliminated by just deleting the "[hide]" parameter. I'm proposing changing the templates to be show all only. Another reason to avoid using the "[hide]" parameter is that the reader must make 1 extra click on the "[show]" button to see the information. 1 extra click may not sound like much but it is a huge requirement and most people don't click on anything when they come to a page, they simply want to read that page rather than having to interact with the page. On second thought, maybe this is a bad idea. I tried my idea of expand all for calculus template on calculus article and it was a bit overwhelming. Brian Everlasting (talk) 05:13, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Header of table uncollapsed by default
Content of table uncollapsed by default

Header of table collapsed by default
Content of table collapsed by default

Some observations here. It's not pure CSS, Javascript is an essential component; there is no "[hide]" parameter: the "[hide]" and "[show]" are links, created by Javascript. When there are collapsible boxes, they always load in an expanded state, and it is only when your browser executes the Javascript that any collapsing occurs and the "[hide]" or "[show]" link is presented. We cannot control at what point your browser executes the Javascript. What can be done, usually for each collapsible box individually, is alter the box so that the default state is uncollapsed instead of collapsed. Consider the two tables here: the only non-textual difference is the absence or presence of the mw-collapsed class.

So essentially, this is a matter for Template talk:Calculus, specifically, whether to alter the default state from collapsed to uncollapsed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:04, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

This is always a hard problem to solve, but in this case it can actually be improved a little bit. This sidebar navigation box uses the outdated NavFrame logic. I had already made an optimisation for certain other types of collapsible content, but not for this older form of collapsible content. But this change should definitely help. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:17, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

To clarify a bit more. This problem is hard to solve when we need to interpret something. Autocollapse, or "read/unread" status for watchist notifications, are impossible to really fix. But if the content is expliticely marked collapsed, like in this case, then we can use that knowledge to hide it before the Javascript runs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks User:TheDJ the calculus article looks so much better now. If you or someone is interested the bottom collapsable templates need the same fix. See for example my sandbox of calculus templates. You can see the templates load fully expanded then immediately collapse. Brian Everlasting (talk) 02:48, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Like I said, that's a different case, that cannot be fixed, without removing the 'autocollapse' behaviour from those templates. Which might be controversial. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:33, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Lots of blank space at end Seto-Ōhashi Line article

Below and to the right ! Can it be fixed ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 07:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

The image map was badly broken. I’ve stopped it overflowing all over the page but it still needs some work.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 08:25, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 16:52, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Workaround for dropped ")" in titles?

FWIW - seems that sharing certain Wikipedia article titles in email messages and related may be a problem for some - the ending ")" in a title like " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability) " may be dropped/omitted - resulting in an url like => " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability " instead - one workaround seems to be creating a "WP:Redirect" for "Spectre (security vulnerability" directed to the correct main title (ie, "Spectre (security vulnerability)" - is there some other (even better) workarounds? - perhaps underneath-the-hood coding (or even policy adj?) of some sort may be needed for such titles? - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Drbogdan: this sounds like a bug in an email handler, could you paste the raw email text on to a sandbox (redact your address/etc) so we can see a better example? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:15, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: not sure how to paste "raw" email text to the sandbox - but copy-pasted several instances of "received" email messages to => User:Drbogdan/sandbox/EMail - seems the links drop the ending ")" in my POP Peeper (v4.5) email program for some reason - and - in the copy received in the Yahoo and Comcast Email programs - but - the Wikipedia links seem corrected (ie, the ending ")" is NOT dropped) when copy-pasted to the Wikipedia sandbox - hope this helps in some way - iac - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 19:19, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

BRIEF Followup: adding < > to the url => <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)> url seems to work OK in the POP Peeper mail program and when Yahoo and Comcast receives email messages (the ")" is NOT dropped) - but the url may NOT work well when copy-pasted to the Wikipedia sandbox - or in this discussion forum (NO link is formed?) [NOTE: the url in the sandbox and forum seem ok after all - corrects itself? - when the edit is "published"?) => see User:Drbogdan/sandbox/EMail - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 03:02, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

@Drbogdan: how are these emails being created? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:28, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Originally, the email messages were created in "POP Peeper (v4.5)/Compose new messages..." email message creator, although sometimes I'd first use W10/notepad, and afterwards copy-paste to the usual POP Peeper composer - with identical results to those initially created in the usual POP Peeper composer - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

It's a known issue but not really a bug. Many programs, both for emails and other purposes, try to turn a raw url like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(song) into a clickable link but they have to guess where the url ends. They often guess some characters like a period, comma or right parenthesis is not part of the url. Mediawiki can also guess wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Davis_Jr. drops the period and only works because Sammy Davis Jr redirects to Sammy Davis Jr. It's much more common to write a period after a url than for the period to be part of the url so MediaWiki makes a sensible guess. We already help all users coming from a link which dropped a right parenthesis at the end. Non-existing pages display MediaWiki:Noarticletext. We use it to transclude {{No article text}} which checks whether you get an existing page name by adding a right parenthesis. Then we suggest that link like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(song which says "Did you mean: Spectre (song)?" I don't think we should make automatic redirects. If you mail a raw url to somebody and don't know whether their mail software has the issue then you can percent-encode ) as %29: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(song%29. This url should work in more programs which turn url's into links. It may work in even more if you also encode ( as %28: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_%28song%29. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:47, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thank you for your comments - and suggestion re the percent-encode ( ie, [ [Curiosity_%28rover%29]] ) - didn't think of that - but perhaps should have - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: probably not a 'bug' in the 'defect' stance - I was asking mostly to see if these were mediawiki generated emails (e.g. watchlist updates, etc) where we coudl have a 'bug' in the 'feature request' stance to better encode things. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:09, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Fair point. I tested the email watchlist feature and got a mail with this in plain text:

The Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) has been changed
on 1 February 2018 by Xaris333, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) for the
current revision. 

To view this change, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=next&oldid=823531010

For all changes since your last visit, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=0&oldid=823531010

My mail provider produced correct links including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical). Mail software may produce a correct link, an incorrect link, or no link at all. MediaWiki could increase the number of correct links by encoding to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29, but it's less readable for humans. It's requested in phab:T40265 and others. See also phab:T23615. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:03, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Subpages

Hello. How can I found all my subpages? Xaris333 (talk) 21:36, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Try Special:PrefixIndex/User:Xaris333/ Mduvekot (talk) 21:41, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

It's linked on "Subpages" at the bottom of your contributions. I use User:PrimeHunter/Subpages.js to link it in the navigation on every page. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:50, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

You can make an index of all your pages by transcluding that too, for example that hardcoded "sandbox" link at the top of each page, I made that an index of my sandboxes, look at the source on User:Xaosflux/sandbox. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:05, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Third method: go to your user page; in the left margin there will be a "Page information" link, click that; in there you should find an entry "Number of subpages of this page" which is a link, when clicked this produces the list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:39, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Yasu Xaris333. Fourth idea: since you work on several Wikimedia projects, why not drop over to Meta and install MoreMenu in your global.js; Subpages is only one of many useful features. Sam Sailor 23:48, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Yay :) It's also available as a gadget here on the English Wikipedia. Look for "MoreMenu: add Page and User dropdown menus..." under "Appearance". — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Way to validate Wikidata entities/QIDs in Lua?

Re Phab:T143970 (created in 2016), is there a work-around for validating a Wikidata entity/QID in Lua?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:33, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

A hacky workaround is simply to use frame:preprocess, e.g. create a module, put something like:

--Module:HackValidEntity
function p.entityid(frame)
   foo =mw.wikibase.getEntity(frame.args[1])
end

 
local id = "Qxx"
if frame:preprocess("{{#iferror:{{#invoke:HackValidEntity|entityid|".. id .. "}}|fail}}") == "fail" then
   return "invalid entity"
end

Essentially for whatever reason the wikidata tool isn't catching those errors properly, so instead let a parser function catch and show them. An awful hack to be sure, but it'll work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.92.196 (talk) 09:59, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: I think that RexxS (talk · contribs) and Pigsonthewing (talk · contribs) are the ones to ask here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Ok, pinging Ahect too, since they originally brought this to my attention while working on a module.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

I created Module:resolveEntityId which functions like resolvePropertyId but for properties. However, it's still uncomfortably hackish. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:57, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

There seems to be a non-hacky approach to get this (might need more thorough testing):

 
 local id = "P00000000000000000" -- or "Q00000000000000000"
 if  mw.wikibase.getEntityUrl( id ) then
    return true
 end

This is presumably better because it probably doesn't need to load the whole entity which can consume a lot of memory and potentially hit the parser limit. Still, this is something that should be implemented in scribunto & wikibase itself. Catching errors like this should be trivial. The hacky approach is probably still the only valid way to catch strange unexpected errors like the "nil error of doom" (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T170039). As long as xpcall, and pcall can't be trusted it is probably a good idea to either wrap all critical modules with that, or use a string check for "class = error" before rendering the final output. 15:05, 6 February 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.244 (talk)

Watchlist layout

I wasn't sure whether to post this here or at Proposals. Feel free to copy/paste it there if necessary.

I think the Watchlist could make better use of space. To the left there's a column that's almost entirely empty where edits are marked with m for minor and b for bot edits, etc. The placeholders are left blank if they don't apply, the upshot of which is an inch wide space with the rest of the content squashed into the remaining space. I think it would be better if that column had a dynamic width so it could be kept to a minimum while still displaying relevant information. Does anybody else agree? nagualdesign 09:46, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not a separate column by default. I guess you have enabled "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc. I agree it seems wide. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried unticking the box but then the Watchlist becomes inordinately long. I'd like to retain the groupings, so each page shown has a little arrow to expand the content, but I do like the ungrouped style where the m or whatever is just prepended to the article link. At the moment there's no happy medium. nagualdesign 10:32, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

And reworking it is a hellish job, because there will be more people wanting to keep the old layout than any new layout and before you know it we have to support 3 (or actually 4) layouts making everything even more delicate than it already is... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:41, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Is it possible to add a few lines of script to my common.js page to modify my own Watchlist? nagualdesign 13:04, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

In theory, yes. That column that mostly seems to be blank and overwide is intended to show none or more of various single-character codes. When one of these codes doesn't apply, a   is used instead; there may be up to seven nbsps. So you would need the script to eliminate those nbsps from the table cell that matches the selector td.mw-enhanced-rc but that in itself might not reduce the width of the column by much. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:56, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

You've given me something to aim for at least. I might have a crack at it over the weekend. Cheers. nagualdesign 15:59, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

View source script is not working

FYI

User talk:Misza13#View source script is not working. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:01, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Input requested

This thread Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Introduction of a malware link into a citation may need the assistance of the regulars at this village pump. MarnetteD|Talk 05:50, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

MediaWiki bug - undoing a protection

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T186428

I think that there is a bug in MediaWiki. I undid a recent edit, the cumulative effects of which should have been nil, other than two entries in the page history, and one on each user contribs list. In fact, the full protection that had been added by Amortias (talk · contribs) was silently lifted, as if I had also undone this prot. Worse, the fact was not logged in either the page history or logs, so my manual replacement of the prot may seem odd when somebody reads through the page history at a later date. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:56, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

It wasn't your undo that removed the protection; it was Malcolmxl5's deletion and subsequent restoration of the page nine hours earlier. —Cryptic 11:05, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

When I made my undo at 10:38, 3 February 2018 (UTC), the edit box was pink, which is a sure sign for a page that is either template-protected or fully-protected at the time of the edit. If protection had been removed (deliberately or inadvertently) by Malcolmxl5 earlier on, the edit box would have been white at the time of my edit. When I made my second edit, the one of 10:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC), I noticed immediately that the edit box was now white when one minute earlier it had been pink. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:57, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Also, if the prot level had changed nine hours earlier - presumably coincident with the actions of Malcolmxl5 at 01:58 - why would MarnetteD (talk · contribs) have been unable to edit the page half an hour later, as reported here? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:13, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Hrm. Testing on User:Cryptic/sandbox, it was still protected after I deleted and restored, and after I made a null edit, but not after I blanked it. —Cryptic 12:23, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Protection is not supposed to survive a deletion and undeletion as far as I know and can tell from searches. If there is a bug then it is that the pages indicated they were protected right after undeletion. There was no sign of protection after undeletion in my test at User:PrimeHunter/sandbox3. If you make another test then try whether you can edit the page while logged out during the alleged protection. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:59, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

"This page is currently protected so that only administrators can edit it." User:Cryptic/sandbox (log) again - it's still in that state, and I suspect it will remain so until it gets a (non-null) edit. action=protect also consistent with the page being protected. The most obvious difference between INews TV+my tests and yours is that the former all had a timed protection while yours was indef. —Cryptic 14:31, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

This time I semi-protected User:PrimeHunter/sandbox3 for 3 days and got the same result as you. The page says it's protected and it cannot be edited logged out. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:56, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Hmm. Knowing the redirect had been protected, I checked the edit box after I’d finished, saw that it was pink and assumed it was still protected. Maybe not. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I replicated the issue in my user space, deleting and undeleting a test page with the edit box being pink after I undeleted. I tried to edit the page as an IP and the page was protected. After I edited in admin mode, the protection was lost. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:09, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Malcolmxl5: can you give an exact step-by-step description of how to reproduce the problem so we can get a bug open? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:27, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I managed to reproduce it and filed phab:T186428 with reproduction instructions and an explanation. Short version: cached protection information isn't being cleared in this situation. Anomie⚔ 22:06, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Looks like you've captured it all, Anomie. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:35, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

How to use this tool

Trying to use this family tree tool User:GregU/familytree.js. Added these codes to User:Makeandtoss/monobook.js and User:Makeandtoss/vector.js, but nothing happened. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:27, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

It uses addOnloadHook, which AFAIK has been obsolete fro over a year. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:59, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Turning off auto-insertion of period after a sentence?

When I type two spaces, I get a period automatically inserted in the edit box. Well, at least in Chrome using the web editor (I don't know about other platforms). Most of the time, that's fine. But, when I type a citation at the end of a sentence, i.e. <ref name="foo"/>, that goes after the period I've already typed, so it's wrong (and annoying). Is there any way to turn this auto-insertion feature off? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:55, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@RoySmith: I'm 95% sure that isn't coming from us. Are you using an apple product to edit by chance? If so this article may help you. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:58, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Wow, yeah, that was it! Thanks for the help! -- RoySmith (talk) 20:10, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Unsuccessful logins

Since the last week, somebody is attempting to login to my account, about 6-8 times a day. Though I'm not much concerned about them being successful at it, what's bugging me is the loads of messages that are filling the alerts and my e-mail. Is there something that can be done to get rid of this? Thanks, MT Train^Discuss 03:35, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mark the train: you can turn this notification off in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo (make sure you have a strong password you don't share with other sites as well). — xaosflux ^Talk 03:42, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Is there a place on Wikimedia projects somewhere to make Javascript requests

Hi

I want to make a request similar to a bot request or a Lua request but for Javascript, does anyone know of anywhere I could make this request? What I want I think should be quite simple, its a form that fills in sections of a table and then saves to a new section of a talk page.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 19:24, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

You can try at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:10, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks very much @JJMC89:. John Cummings (talk) 22:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Strange behaviour of an archive.org link

A user trying to find an archived version of a dead link pointed me at this, which leads to the appropriate archived article -- and then after a couple of seconds blanks the page. I'm going to say this is OK (though obviously not ideal) as an archive.org link, since one can see the text (and it is visible in the source), but does anyone have any idea what causes this and how to prevent it? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: I wonder if this behavior is due to the fact that the article seems to be behind a paywall when I try to search for it - wonder if the site is trying to block the archiving of it? Home Lander (talk) 22:24, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Ask for help: Broken GeoGroup links on cswiki

Hello, on Czech Wikipedia we have an issue with our GeoGroup template. The template is correct, urls are correct, but sometimes (only sometimes) both the osm4wiki tool (OSM link) and the wp-world tool (Google Maps link) give broken output, as you can see here or here. If you find a GeoGroup template on these pages and click on OSM link, you get broken encoding, but map shows correctly. If you click on Google Maps link, there is no map shown. If you click on Export... link (kmlexport tool), the link is also correct, but the resulting KML is blank. Do you know, what could be the problem? Is there some bug in kmlexport tool (used by all three links)? It happens only for some Czech Wikipedia pages, not for all pages using our GeoGroup template. --Dvorapa (talk) 01:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Notice of a non-existent action - where in the h do I report this?!?

I just now signed on and had a Notification that is odd for many reasons:

• It said I was mentioned on a specific user's talk page & I was not.
• The message that was referenced at that bell symbol (next to my user name up in the right-hand corner) was this

[User] mentioned you on their talk page in "February 2018"

Hi The world is watching See the world in green and blue See C...

And that's it. Anyone have any idea what is going on? I have had no interactions with this particular editor, they didn't mention me on their talk page any where at all, so ??? Shearonink (talk) 01:36, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

If you go to Special:Notifications is it still there for today? Where does the "view changes" link take you? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

"View changes" takes me to the User's talk page where I have not posted and where they have not mentioned me.

Special:Notifications takes me to my notifications & a little more of the supposed message is shown (everything else looks fine):

Hi The world is watching See the world in green and blue See China right in front of you See the canyons broken by the cloud See the tuna fleets cl...

and when I click on the Notification box for February 4, 2018 I am taken (just like the shortened bell-notice at the to of the page) directly to the User's talk page where the user has never mentioned me... Shearonink (talk) 02:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Considering that text you quote, I'd guess someone accidentally transcluded the page User:GeneralizationsAreBad (which includes a barnstar signed by you) onto that talk page, and then it was reverted or fixed. Anomie⚔ 02:33, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else I could think of, just seems so odd, that an action is being attested to by the system and it never happened... and there doesn't seem to be a record of the attesting around here anywhere. I would guess, then, that everyone who gave GAB a barnstar would also get a notice about a non-existent action?...lol, happiness loves company. Thanks for the explanation. Shearonink (talk) 02:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

There almost certainly was an action and Anomie is probably right. I guess somebody tried to ping GeneralizationsAreBad but wrote {{User:GeneralizationsAreBad}} instead of [[User:GeneralizationsAreBad]]. The former transcludes the user page which has a link to your user page in an old signature by you. Notifications of mentions are caused by a signed edit with a wikilink to your user page in the rendered page. The software doesn't know whether the link is intentional or accidental. We could quickly confirm this or give another or more precise explanation if you just posted the link on "View changes", or at the very least the username so we could look for the diff in the their talk page history. I have no idea why you continue to keep it secret and force us to guess. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:37, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The exact same thing happened to me yesterday. The username was Havarb, and Generalizations are bad was being pinged. The link took me here, and View Changes took me here. I hope this helps :-) Scr★pIron^IV 15:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. As I guessed, a user made a ping error by writing Hi {{User:GeneralizationsAreBad}} instead of Hi [[User:GeneralizationsAreBad]]. They quickly fixed it so it was difficult to find the edit later without knowing the page. We could have saved a lot of time if Shearonink had justed posted the page from the start or at least when xaosflux asked for it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

PH: I responded to xaosflux as I understood their request, saying what I saw on the page - wasn't aware that they might have wanted the actual linkage as provided by ScrapIronIV above. The situation was puzzling and the issue was the content only appeared in my notifications - I didn't know what to do so I asked here, hoping to get some help & clarity on understanding what had happened. I was thinking there might be something wrong internally with WP and was concerned about the encyclopedia. Thanks for your help. Shearonink (talk) 16:25, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:BusyEmail vertical justification

Could someone take a look at Template:BusyEmail to see why the text isn't vertically justified? It'll have something to do with how either Template:Busy or Template:tmbox are set up, but it must be fixable – I've seen plenty of tmbox templates where the text sits nicely in the vertical centre without any issues.--Newbiepedian (talk · contribs · X! · logs) 05:58, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Even if you write {{tmbox|text=Some text}} it's actually not vertically centered; it's just not as noticeable. There's a small amount of space you can see if you use the "inspect element" tool (in Firefox, Chrome, and I'm sure other browsers as well). Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 07:25, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Writing a javascript to edit the edit box

I am interested in writing a (java)script that will apply some conversion functions to a highlighted piece of text in the edit box and change it to replace the highlighted piece. A simple example would be to swap lower and uppercase, when the caps lock was left on. Another example would be to do the function of this sed command "sed -e 's/, P/|/g' -e 's/P//g' -e 's/, and /|/'" which converts a comma separated list of precaution codes into the template format. I have quite a few more conversions I would like to do. Are there any scripts around that I could copy and use to adapt? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:55, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

You'll want m:TemplateScript, I believe. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 15:17, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks to be very powerful, it has removed every P from my test page, I will have to learn to tame it! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect (or ... confusing) background coloring of areas (on map)

Please [feel free to] "see" the oldest (and, at this time, the "only") version of the "Talk:" page File talk:Boko Haram insurgency map.png. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 19:01, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-06

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

Recent changes

• Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to. [3]
• The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language. [4]
• Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded. [5]

Problems

• Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this. [6]

Changes later this week

• When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users. [7]
• When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like gallery widths="150px". You could use em or % instead of px but it would make no difference. You can now only use 150px or nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it like px, it will not work. [8]
• The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of Yes or No it will say Thank and Cancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public. [9]
• Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it. [10]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard. [11][12]

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20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Why do tags come after "current"?

Hey, I normally use my contribs page to see if others have edited pages since I did, and having "current" at the end of the line is useful for this purpose, whereas I imagine tags (like the "new redirect" one) are mainly meant to be searchable via Ctrl+F or equivalent, and do not need to be at the end. Obviously it's not worth fighting over either way, but I'm curious if anyone knows the reason or where I can find it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:44, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know whether there is a design reason or tags were just placed at the end because the feature was implemented last. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 162#In contributions, "current" should go after "tag" has a suggestion and code you can place in your CSS. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

API page save and self edit conflicts

From some inadvertent issues, and subsequent testing on a sandbox page, it seems that the Mediawiki API does not report an edit conflict when the conflicting edits are made by the same user? Testing: I opened the same version of the same sandbox page in two separate AWB sessions, made and saved an edit in one session, then made a conflicting edit in the second AWB session and saved (AWB save uses API to update page). At the time of second save the second session must have had an out of date revision of the page, yet the API saved the page without error (overwriting page content with that of second save, effectively reverting changes from first save). Does anybody know if this is expected behaviour? Thanks Rjwilmsi 15:05, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

See phabricator:T30720. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.244 (talk) 15:29, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikivoyage notice: volatile cookie

There's a banner that first popped up several days ago containing the text "Wikivoyage is celebrating its 5th anniversary! Help us grow by sharing travel information about destinations that interest you". When I first received it, I used the "X" link to dismiss it, that would (I presume) have set a cookie to prevent the notice reappearing. But it has reappeared several times, each time I have dismissed it again but it comes back a while later - sometimes a day or two, sometimes much less - like ten minutes just now. Do they keep changing the cookie ID or something? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:20, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: it is a CentralNotice, and may be set up a bit agressively. There are multiple campaigns using this banner. This was recently activated by @Seddon (WMF):. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:50, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Anchoring table headers

The option "Make sure that headers of tables remain in view as long as the table is in view" under Testing and Development no longer keeps the headers anchored for me. This used to work. Did something change? I am still using Chrome. Terrorist96 (talk) 01:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

For the record, the option is at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. It's by TheDJ and uses MediaWiki:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.js and MediaWiki:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css. I haven't tried it before but it currently has no effect for me in Chrome, tested at List of highest-grossing films. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I believe Chrome rolled back part of the functionality, because it was breaking Netflix.. It's marked as 'testing' for a reason :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:52, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Images

Resolved

 – Issue has been resolved tWc 19:41, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Anyone here proficient in the handling of images, both here and at commons? Or the delinker bots that update images? An editor deleted an image in favor of a different image. The image is of a military award ribbon. This affects the BLPs of numerous military officers and other articles. I brought this to his attention, and he said that we need to wait for the delinker to start. At one point it did, and it changed 73 articles. But there is still over a 100 pages in need of updating, that are currently showing a blank spot on the officer's ribbon boards.

• file deletion log of original file
• discussion at commons editor's talk page ("JuTa")
• the delinkers contribs
• (Delinker is replacing "File:Silver Star ribbon.svg" with "File:Silver_Star_BAR.svg" which actually links to: "File:Silver Star Medal ribbon.svg")
• this is supposed to be the new file at WP
• this is supposed to be the new file at commons
• redirect created by me (on WP), this shows a redirect created by "JuTa" and a list of article's still in need of updating by the delinker. (There are still yet other articles that are also in need of updating for this image file, that aren't listed on this page, FYI.)

The delinker has stopped. "JuTa" has stopped replying. Can someone here take a look at this problem and see if there is fix to be had? Thank you - ^theWOLFchild 04:38, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

JuTa has responded to you. Remember that we are all volunteers and that nobody is obligated to respond to you, let alone provide instantaneous replies. 73.222.64.139 (talk) 10:41, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

"We"...? You edit history shows all of one contribution to this project... that being your snotty little comment here. Now go away, the grown-ups are trying to build something here. - ^theWOLFchild 19:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Thewolfchild: See dynamic IP and WP:CIVIL/WP:BITE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Yup, seen'em. Well aware people like to hide behind dynamic ip's, but thanks anyway. - ^theWOLFchild 03:59, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Underscore as part of a username

A new editor asked if they could use an underscore as part of their username. They were successful creating a username with an underscore but it renders as a space. Is it possible to do something so that it renders as an underscore ? I think the answer is no, but I thought I'd check here.S Philbrick(Talk) 17:04, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

They could simply pipe the links in their signature. from [[A Username With Underscores]] to [[A Username With Underscores|A_Username_With_Underscores]]. The title of pages can be replaced, as well, using the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} template.ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Or just [[A_Username_With_Underscores]]. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 17:10, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

In the database behind Wikipedia, spaces in usernames are replaced by underscores. So there is not really a difference between a name with spaces and the same name with underscores. The same applies to the title of an article. It is possible to hide the space in some situations, for example by using a custom signature. But many pieces of code make the assumption that an underscore is meant to represent a space, so it will probably be impossible to avoid that assumption completely. To some extent, it would be a losing battle. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:13, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt feedback. I pointed the editor to this discussion so they can decide whether to use the pipe option or not.S Philbrick(Talk) 17:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

As Pppery said, no pipe is needed. User:Sphilbrick_alt and User:Sphilbrick alt is the same link, and {{DISPLAYTITLE:User:Sphilbrick_alt}} would display "Sphilbrick_alt" at top of the page. I guess you can also type underscores at login, but page histories, logs, search results and many other places cannot display underscores instead of spaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: At one time, underscores in usernames were permitted and were distinct from spaces, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Articles created by IPs above. We won't be restoring this behaviour: too much would be broken. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:36, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Is this Wikipedia?

Wikimedia received an email from someone asking a question about a page. The URL they provided started with:

en.bywiki.com

It looks a lot like Wikipedia but is it?S Philbrick(Talk) 17:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Looks like a Wikipedia mirror to me. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 17:28, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Domain names run from right to left in descending hierarchical order. So en.bywiki.com is a different site than en.wikipedia.org on two levels; the top level domain and the second level domain. See https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=en.bywiki.com for more info. They've registered it to one of those privacy fronts, which is not a good sign. It's distinctly possible for them to have changed data between grabbing it off WP and displaying it on their site. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:35, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

It's a live mirror which adds advertisements to Wikipedia pages. It's not controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation and it violates several rules but the advertising part is allowed. I haven't seen the email but it's possible it applies equally to the corresponding real Wikipedia page. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:15, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Font/margin problem

At this version of Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/Article alerts there is a box at the top containing centred text. Using Opera 36, I see all the text squeezed sideways (and stretched vertically) so that it's one word per line (even words like "a" are the sole occupants of their lines). This is (correctly) centred across the box width. Do other people experience the one-word-per-line problem?

I made these amendments with no visible effect. My alteration of the declaration font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif to font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif was in accordance with CSS Fonts Module Level 3 and also Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1. But I have narrowed it down: whichever version of Wikipedia:WikiProject Doctor Who/Article alerts that I start from, if I remove the first font family name so that the declaration is changed from either font-family: trebuchet ms, sans-serif or font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif to font-family: sans-serif, the problem disappears. I'm pretty sure that I have Trebuchet MS installed, but the browser's "inspect element" feature shows that Arial is being used, that being the default for sans-serif. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:07, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Redrose64, I added the underscored font-family: sans-serif above, which seemed to be missing. Is that what you intended? --Pipetricker (talk) 12:13, 8 February 2018 (UTC)