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).

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Suppress rendering of Template:Wikipedia books

As many are aware Wikipedia books has not worked in a few years and there's no light down the tunnel of any fixes coming...Reading/Web/PDF Functionality (no update on WikiBooks in a year). I am proposing suppressing the rendering capability of Template:Wikipedia books ( related =Template:Book bar & Template:Books-inline) and removal of the Book Creator in the sidebar. This is for our readers so they don't keep going to books that don't work and haven't worked in a few years..plus these types of lists exist in outlines already. I'm thinking suppression of the template(s) is better than outright deletion in case the WMF finally does come up with something...then poof...they can all appear when transclusion is implemented again. Currently PDF rendering per page has been implemented so the link seen at Wikipedia:Books about an external program is no longer needed as our in-house PDF system is running.--Moxy 🍁 22:57, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Discussion (Wikipedia books)

• Good idea and a future-proof solution. Support per nom. Wug·a·po·des​ 01:20, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• I think this is a good idea. Headbomb did some work with this stuff years ago and he might also have some comments about it. Killiondude (talk) 06:08, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Ruslik_Zero 08:42, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support, I didn't even know it's not working. Stryn (talk) 10:37, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Seems like phab:T224922 may be relevant here, as mw:Extension:Collection is the extension behind "books". Anomie⚔ 12:10, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Masum Reza^📞 14:22, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Book namespace entirely is dead. There'd be no harm in scrapping it completely. – Ammarpad (talk) 16:24, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Comment if outlines are more up to date and maintained and are basically redundant, get rid of books. But wait.... these things are for readers, right? Are readers more likely to look for "books" or "outlines"? Maybe we should migrate the excellent and maintained content from outline to "books" and then get rid of outlines. We still reduce fluff but combine maintenence with readership. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 17:58, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• If it's dead, it's dead. Can be suppressed until and if things come back online. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:04, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Hrodvarsson (talk) 04:52, 9 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support per nom. SD0001 (talk) 20:11, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support No point offering something to users that can't be used.Nick Moyes (talk) 12:10, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
• Restored from archive......should we close this and move on to the technical part of the RfC.--Moxy 🍁 03:29, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Note: Votes below have been cast since the initial close was reverted — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose: The Book Creator is still in use as a vital tool in preparing books for rendering by external services. See discussion below. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 05:43, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Seems the original premise above is incorrect, so oppose this strongly per Steelpillow. P. I. Ellsworth, ed. ^put'r there 00:50, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
• The external tool doesn't really seem particularly usable, so I think it's reasonable to suppress the links and templates. Support. --Yair rand (talk) 04:56, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

’’’Support’’’ The book program is not working and there is really no point in lead us to a pay site for info that is free. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:8d80:540:6525:d552:87b7:e57c:c4d8 (talk • contribs) 21:41, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Discussion after reverted closure

Reverted close: WP:SNOW close with consensus for proposal. I am fully aware that RfC's usually should run for 30 days and willing to re-open if there are any concerns. (non-admin closure) --Trialpears (talk) 23:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)}}

I have reverted my close due to concerns raised on my talk page about insufficient notifications to the book making community and insufficient discussion about working external tools. I have posted notifications to WT:BOOKS and Help talk:Books. --Trialpears (talk) 20:24, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

• Need help in removing the book creator from the side bar--Moxy 🍁 15:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

  That can only be done by requesting a site change on Phabricator. I am not sure the above demonstrates the necessary consensus for that change. --Izno (talk) 16:44, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

  @Moxy: That would require an interface admin to add #coll-create_a_book { display: none; } to Mediawiki:Common.css. --Yair rand (talk) 18:11, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Note: the following two-part post was made before the initial close was reverted — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

YIKES! STOP EVERYBODY! The Book Creator tool remains an essential feature in order to create and edit Wikipedia books for external services such as PediaPress print-on-demand and the MediaWiki2LaTex independent PDF rendering service. It is only our in-house rendering that has gone (and may yet come back, as PediaPress have undertaken to provide a replacement). Please roll back all these stakes through its heart! — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:08, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Specifically, the OP's rationale that "Currently PDF rendering per page has been implemented so the link seen at Wikipedia:Books about an external program is no longer needed as our in-house PDF system is running," is wholly wrong-headed. Yes we have a new article renderer, but it is a totally unrelated function from book rendering. That needs entirely different software in two parts - the book creator/designer which lists articles for inclusion and the book renderer which pulls all the articles together. We have only lost the book rendering, the old book creator/editor is still functional and still in use. The linked external book rendering service is still also operational. It has absolutely not been withdrawn or overtaken by the new article renderer. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:16, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Removed {{warning}} from your comment. Hope that's okay. --Yair rand (talk) 03:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Yep, it's done its job. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:03, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

• Close reverted I have reverted my close due to concerns raised on my talk page about insufficient notifications to the book making community and insufficient discussion about working external tools. I have posted notifications to WT:BOOKS and Help talk:Books. --Trialpears (talk) 20:24, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Good call ....best wait till the concerns raised on your talk are brought here for discussion.--Moxy 🍁 23:59, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

What else needs to be brought here besides what I already said just above? The Book Creator is still in use. End of. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 02:39, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

So leave the link in the side bar and leave all the books so we can lead our readers to a third party? Is the main purpose going to be fixed? --Moxy 🍁 18:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Depends what you regard as the "main purpose". The PediaPress PoD pay-for service has always been an integral part of Wikipedia Book delivery. The WMF have accepted an offer from PediaPress to write a new Mediawiki PDF book renderer for us too and they have made an alpha build available at https://pediapress.com/collector , however there is no timeframe for completion/rollout. You can find out a little more at mw:Reading/Web/PDF Functionality and the associated talk page and archives. As far as I know their software is not tracked on phabricator. Meanwhile Dirk Hünniger has made his own MediaWiki2LaTeX open-source PDF book renderer pull service available to fill the gap. In that sense the "main purpose" of having both PDF and PoD WikiBooks available is currently fulfilled. As long as the Book Creator (aka the Collection Extension) delivers its part of that functionality, as required by the WMF, it will stay in the MediaWiki build and we need to support it with UI widgets to the best of our ability. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Pppery, should the change to Module:Subject bar be reverted in light of the change to this RFC outcome? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:19, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I personally consider the reversion of the closure to itself be improper, so I won't revert the change to Module:Subject bar myself, but another template editor could of course do so. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:23, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

It was perfectly proper. The closer did not wait the required 30 days, noting in their closing statement that if anybody objected the discussion could be reopened. I objected both here and on their talk page so they reopened. Nothing whatsoever improper about that. What was improper was the OP's failure to place any notification on the affected template's talk page or the Book project's talk page, until after the closure. Paine Ellsworth and I were actually discussing and updating the template while this discussion was going on, but without ever being informed of its existence. That is a gross breach of procedure on the part of the OP. I don't know anything about Module:Subject bar but any change to it has arisen as a result of this failure to consult properly. I would be most grateful if somebody could see their way to reverting it. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, thought it best to remove the commenting, at least until we sort all this out. P. I. Ellsworth, ed. ^put'r there 15:09, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

• I'm confused. Is there a working system for converting books to PDF or not, on-wiki or off-? It looks like MediaWiki2LaTeX is for converting individual pages, just like the built-in converter? --Yair rand (talk) 03:05, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, it is working. To convert a book, you give its page location to MediaWiki2LaTex. The service then pulls all the articles linked in its contents and builds the entire book. Or, you can give it a single article and it will render that alone. I see that various options for conversion mode and output format have been added since I last used it. So it provides either book or single-page conversion, depending on what you give it. Either way, you need only give it a single page location, tell it what you want and it figures out the rest, that may be what is puzzling you. (By contrast, if you use the built-in converter on a Book page, it will just convert the page to PDF, which is seldom very helpful) — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi,

I am the maintainer of mediawiki2latex. Maybe it is a bit off topic, but I got two views on this point. Firstly mediawiki2latex currently provides a way to get PDFs from books hosted on Wikipedia and keeping this possibility might be an advantage for some users of the content, particularly those with small financial resources, which is a good thing as such. The resources on the web interface to mediawiki2atex (which is hosted by wmf) are quite limited so that book may a most contain a few dozens of articles. mediawiki2latex is also provided as a binary package for Debian Linux without any limits on the number of articles per books.

Removing the books from Wikipedia would not cause any financial consequences to me since I am only doing this as an unpayed hobby project in me spare time. Still pediapress financially relies on the book feature on wikipedia. So closing the book feature might cause pediapress to stop all business activities in this field, which causes me to have a monopoly, which is the greatest thing you can get in capitalism. So the choice is yours. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 14:37, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Do you have any stats in how often it's used? We know that people don't order Wiki books as most are 9,000 pageso plus and hus simply not feasible. The question real is do we keep books to simply link them to a third party site?--Moxy 🍁 03:36, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

The web interface is roughly used once an hour, so about 20 times a day. It cannot be used much more since there is a time limit of one hour and at most one process may run at a time due to the limited resources. The statistics of the Debian package are given here . Still it is quite hard to infer anything from the Debian statistics since only very few Debian users take part in the statistics survey at all. Dirk Hünniger (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

You need to understand that this is a dynamic situation. When the original in-house service became progressively more and more unmaintainable - both hardware and software stacks - the quality of output got left behind as the rest of MediaWiki and user templates got more sophisticated. Usage consequently also fell away until that low usage began to be used as a "reason" why fixing the system was an equally low priority. Here we see the same fallacy again. MediaWiki2LaTeX is under active development. Compared to its launch state its hardware and software have both improved substantially, allowing the maximum book size to be increased. This is still only a small, low-resource system by Wikipedia standards but usage has picked up accordingly, as Dirk says it is near maximum for the WMF hosted instance, and this upward trend will continue. The priority for this facility is not reflected in where it is now but where usage will/would be when further developed and deployed. "Do we keep books so we can link to 3rd party sites?" is the wrong question, not the real one as you suggest. The real question is, "Do we want Wikipedia Books in any form?" Once we answer that, we can make decisions about in-house vs. third-party. As already pointed out, the involvement of PediaPress in the Wikipedia Books project and its UI upload link to PediaPress goes back a decade or more to day one. The Books project has always linked to a third party because this is inherent in the pay-for model of print-on-demand and the WMF does not do pay-for services. Any decision to pull the plug on the PediaPress upload would have to be agreed in consultation with the highest levels within the WMF; our local village pump is quite the wrong venue to bandy about such far-reaching consequences. I would suggest that, since PediaPress have volunteered out of the goodness of their hearts to try and develop a replacement in-house renderer for us, then stuffing them where it hurts would not be either wise or ethical. We have two competing pdf renderers and a third, commercial PoD service here, all supported in different ways by the WMF due to the current dynamics of the situation - and you suggest we kill the whole deal. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:38, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Redirects created upon pagemove

Resolved

 – Discussion will continue once reopened at the MediaWiki talk page linked below UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

The code that creates the redirect at the old page location whan a page is moved (unless the mover has suffcient permissions and chooses to suppress such creation) adds the {{R from move}} template to the newly created redirect. Could this be modified to include the {{rcat shell}} "wrapper" around the {{R from move}} template, so that the resulting code would be:

{{rcat shell |

{{R from move}}

}}

This would save editor steps if the redirect page subsequently needed additional rcats added to it. Let me know, and thanks, UnitedStatesian (talk) 03:45, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• I'd class this as a 'nice to have' feature (COULD in MoSCoW speak), and one that would under many circumstances not lead to benefit. I think most movers don't even know about rcat shell nor are they concerned about templates on redirects; just an extension of observation :-) . What might be more useful to the subset of people who are benefited from this would be a script which supported a one-click-addition of the rcat shell template around an existing template. Do I know how to write such a script; sorry, no I don't. Regards --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:56, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
• {{R from move}} is added by MediaWiki:Move-redirect-text. It was changed to {{redr|from move}} for a month in 2015 but reverted on request.[1] {{redr}} and {{rcat shell}} both redirect to {{Redirect category shell}} today. There was no consensus at MediaWiki talk:Move-redirect-text#Redr to use {{This is a redirect}} which was similar to {{Redirect category shell}} (created later) and currently redirects to it. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing to the prior discussion; I believe the functionality of the Rcat shell has changed significantly in the intervening 3 1/2 years, but in either event will consider opening a full revisiting discussion over there (pinging editors who commented here, of course). UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:51, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

So I've just read the documentation of this template, but can't understand why the hell it exists. Or why "help newer contributors learn the redirect category system" would be a priority for anyone anywhere. ―cobaltcigs 14:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

The documentation explains that inexperienced redirect categorizers can either tag a redirect with the plain template or add an rcat or two and leave an empty first parameter. Either way, the redirect is sorted to Category:Miscellaneous redirects. So the inexperienced user can learn how a more experienced user categorizes that redirect. Why wouldn't that be a priority? In addition, the Rcat shell applies protection rcats and sorts to protection categories automatically, and that's something admins like because it means that they don't have to categorize manually, nor do they have to change anything manually when protection is changed or lifted. So it's a shell template – like other shell templates – with benefits! P. I. Ellsworth, ed. ^put'r there 02:02, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Some tool inserts useless ref names

Lately I've noticed identical ref markup like <ref name=":0">, originating from users who don't appear to be related or bots. This is actually less useful than the default numbering (e.g. cite_note-1, which at least matches the visible footnote number, even when moved around) when no name is given. Any idea what tool might do this and where to provide the above feedback? ―cobaltcigs 20:18, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

It's the Visual editor that does it when an editor reuses a reference. Nthep (talk) 20:28, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

In addition, naming these references was one of the top 10 for the community survey this year. Who knows where that work is though.... --Izno (talk) 20:43, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

The Community Tech team keeps a list of what they work on here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Could this also be the source of excess newline patterns like [[Category:Foo]]\n\n\n{{foo-stub}}? ―cobaltcigs 07:07, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Cobaltcigs: Three newlines produces two blank lines before the stub tags, which for many years (10+) has been accepted practice, and this is what is shown on some advice pages such as WP:TAGSTUB and WP:WSS#General rules. At one time, certain bots and scripts required these two blank lines; but AFAIK they're now more tolerant and won't choke if there is just one blank line before the stub tags. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:08, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Wow, that seems really misguided. One should adjust the .stub { margin-top:NNpx; } CSS for Template:Asbox if (for some reason) extra space is wanted. Rendering an empty paragraph (namely <p><br /></p>) above it on each page is just sloppy HTML. ―cobaltcigs 09:34, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Stub template CSS has been suggested before, it's fine when there is just one stub template but many articles have two or more and that would produce undesirable extra gaps. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Infobox layout

Unrelated: what about infobox parameters all on the same line? Is that a visual editor shibboleth as well? I suppose I should try using it someday to find these things out (and just be careful not to save anything, lol). ―cobaltcigs 09:34, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

To the infobox matter: that's usually due to incorrect or incomplete templatedata. In this case, Template:Infobox river/doc#Template Data does not have a "format":"block" name-value pair. WhatamIdoing (talk · contribs) can explain this better than me. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

User:Cobaltcigs, Redrose64 is correct, and you should totally try out the visual mode. Try inserting a column in a long wikitext table. If you're not going to save it, then there are plenty of tables in WP:FL. If you like to add images, then try out Insert > Media, which lets you search Commons without leaving the editing window. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Notifications freezing up on mobile Firefox (Android)

When I try to use notifications on mobile Firefox (Firefox 68.0.2 mobile version running on Android 9). I use the "desktop version" of the Wikimedia sites as I can't stand the mobile ones. When I click the notification button, the page locks up and I have to back out or refresh to continue, and I can't click to view the changes or anything like that. They work fine on desktop Firefox. Has anyone else encountered this issue? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

I've created phab:T223609 3 months ago without any attention. Stryn (talk) 11:14, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

How does one edit this certain problem?

Hey, eveyone.😊 I'm gonna copy this question verbatim from where I originally posted it. I've ran into something wrong in Wikipedia, but I have no idea how to edit it.

If you are interested in helping, please visit these three links:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes?useskin=vector#External_links
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes?useskin=minerva#External_links
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes?useskin=timeless#External_links

In the pages that open, you should be able to spot a grey box titled "Sherlock Holmes at Wikipedia's sister projects". The box looks okay on the first link, but not on the other two.

I understand the HTML side of this problem: The text labels are given an arbitrary width of 182 pixels, but the Minerva and Timeless skins add a padding of 1em to the box. Because of insufficient space, the label are placed on the next line. But I don't know where I must fix this problem. So far, I know how to edit articles. I know about templates too. But do I edit a skin? Or, do I need to edit a skin in the first place? If not, where must I edit? flowing dreams (talk page) 10:02, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Flowing dreams: alignment and overflow are hard :( The "182" value is coming from the template code directly: Template:Sister project links. Using 180 seems to fix it - what do you think? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:25, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

See also here. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:28, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

May need more tweaking for minerva, in any case feel free to test at Template:Sister project links/sandbox and check at Template:Sister project links/testcases - when you have something you like drop an edit request at Template talk:Sister project links. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:30, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux:. Hi. Why reduce to 180? Why not remove the width altogether? flowing dreams (talk page) 10:37, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

NVM. I see why now. We're going to have to problem if the width gets larger than 180px, whether dynamically or otherwise. Maybe we should switch to table or flex grid. flowing dreams (talk page) 11:01, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@Flowing dreams: feel free to try new designs in that sandbox. Another possible option would be to increase the width of the div around it (mbox-small class) however this appears to be heavily used elsewhere so I'm hesitant to touch it. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:00, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for everything, Xaosflux. I'll think of something. If I felt I need consultation or help, I'll ping you in the template talk page. Cheers. flowing dreams (talk page) 07:06, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Complex citations

The citations at Ancestry.com can get very complex. For example:

Webpage name: "Joe Blow in the 1930 United States Federal Census".

Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Buffalo, Erie, New York; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0242; FHL microfilm: 2341165

Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.

Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

I can't figure out how to fit all this information into a standard citation template, can anybody assist? Thanks, Gatoclass (talk) 12:46, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. You got it from Ancestry.com, so you cite Ancestry.com. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Sort of...the problem is that Ancestry.Com is considered a user-edited source so when an original reliable source - US Census or whatnot - is cited by an Ancestry.Com user then that original source should somehow be clearly delineated within the cite.

I like the example posted within SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT:

John Smith (2009). Name of Book I Haven't Seen, Cambridge University Press, p. 99, cited in Paul Jones (2010). Name of Encyclopedia I Have Seen, Oxford University Press, p. 29.

but confess I don't know how that particular cite style is supposed to fit within one of the existing/pre-loaded templates (cite web/cite news/cite book/cite journal)... Shearonink (talk) 17:40, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

You still should should cite it as Ancestry.com because that's where you got your information, and you didn't check the sources Ancestry.com based itself on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:10, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

... Unless you really did check that book, obviously. And yeah, Ancestry.com is user-submitted and generally considered unreliable, and that extends to material it cites as a reference (i.e. users also fill in citations, there are no guarantees they actually checked those sources). AFAIK U.S. census data is easy to find online, you should just verify and cite it directly. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:15, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1930 -- RoySmith (talk) 15:47, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Ivanvector, the user-submitted pages at Ancestry.com are unreliable, obviously, but the site incorporates scans of the original census pages and other government documents and there is nothing unreliable about those. RoySmith, thank you for the link, I will take a closer look at that, though I doubt it provides the ease of access to a host of government records that Ancestry does (though it would be preferable to use the government site where possible as the latter requires a subscription). Gatoclass (talk) 16:50, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh absolutely, I don't doubt the reliability of the census. I do doubt the reliability of some transcriptions, and some conclusions that are drawn on census data from different years, but that's besides the point. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 16:54, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

My personal take on this (i.e. may not even be correct) is that if all ancestry.com is doing is hosting a mechanical reproduction of the census data (i.e. a scan of the microfilm), then what you want to do is cite the census data directly, with some sort of "archived at" or "via" entry which points to the ancestory.com repository. In much the same way I would cite something I found in newspapers.com, or JSTOR. It's like if I went to my local library and looked at their collection of New York Times on microfilm. If I found something I wanted to use, I would cite the NY Times, I wouldn't cite the library. I would only cite ancestory.com if they provided some editorial input. I stand willing to be corrected by people who actually know what they're talking about, however. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Well I guess if one thing can be gleaned from this discussion it's that there is no obvious solution, so it looks as if I will have to find one of my own. Thank you RoySmith and everybody else for your input. Gatoclass (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: I'd like to help with this one but I'm a bit busy. Maybe you can work out how it would be cited in CS1/2. --Izno (talk) 18:40, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I can answer this without details about what is really being cited. I get the sense that ancestry.com is not a reliable source so shouldn't be cited unless it can be shown that whatever it is that OP wants to cite is clearly a faithful copy of a source that meets WP:RS. Without knowing what that is and the necessary details, it is difficult to suggest how cs1|2 should be used.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:53, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

As I stated above Trappist the monk, Ancestry.com is definitely a reliable source, as it provides scans of the original documents - much like hathitrust or archive.org. However, it also allows the public to create family trees, individual life histories and so on, on its website, using those documents. The documents themselves are obviously reliable, the user-created content is not. Gatoclass (talk) 15:17, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Bot get a ref by its number

How would a bot retrieve a reference by its number, for example ref #7. The ref number is not in the wikitext. The number is in the HTML, but the source is HTML, not wikitext, so difficult to retrieve the original cite. Checking if there is something I am missing. -- GreenC 03:13, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Fetch the revision, preview it, parse the resulting HTML? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:47, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

The parsoid html output (example) carries information from the both the page's html as well as its wikitext. Should be useful as far as refs use the citation templates I guess. SD0001 (talk) 05:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@GreenC: Assuming that yours was not a hypothetical question, one thing that is missing is context. Is this to do with Wikipedia:Bot requests#Fix or tag references that were incorrectly copied along due to a VisualEditor bug? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:28, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Need to retrieve the (wikitext) for a given citation number in a reliable way. Everything else for that bot is basically done/solved. -- GreenC 12:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Looks like a solution is REST API which lists the references by number with an HTML version of the ref. Then Parsoid to convert the reference to Wikitext. -- GreenC 13:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Eh this doesn't work, the REST API for references doesn't have Parsoid markup so it doesn't convert correctly from HTML to Wikitext. -- GreenC 14:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

They are numbered in order of first usage, which is not necessarily the order of definition. If you're sure you can avoid or exclude cases where footnote instance(s) from a template's wikitext are emitted to the article's reflist (which requires unusual syntax and is probably rare) you wouldn't actually have to run the parser. ―cobaltcigs 14:24, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Can't be sure. It will be thousands of articles. There are also refs transcluded from infoboxes for example, that are basically non-existent in the wikisource but show up in the final render. -- GreenC 14:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Working on a solution involving w3m, conversion to plain text and approximate grep. Fun times. -- GreenC 14:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

False edit conflict problem when saving

Most of the time when I save I get an edit conflict message although the edit has been saved - of course I have to check each time in case there really is an edit conflict. It happens with Firefox (where my wikEd) has died, and Chrome. Doug Weller talk 07:04, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: In the above, "has died" is hard to parse. I do not know what the problem might be but for troubleshooting I would try the following. I assume you click Publish to save an edit which then gives an edit conflict. Try an alternative: click in the edit summary box to position the cursor there, then press Enter. That should publish the edit. Does that make a difference? A second thing you might investigate is whether you can disable wikEd for a while and see if normal editing makes a difference. Johnuniq (talk) 01:42, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

The conflict is a problem of wikEd, which may need some update. Ruslik_Zero 06:10, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Johnuniq and Ruslik0: using the edit summary box and enter seems to work. By "died" I mean no longer showing at all, and nothing seems to work, even disabling and reenabling it. And cacycle hasn't been around for over two months. Doug Weller talk 15:44, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I have the same problems - all my edits results in a reported edit conflict with my own edit. Thue (talk) 23:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Script to highlight certain text in Watchlist?

Is there a script that allows users to highlight certain phrases in their Watchlist? I already have a script that highlights admin names and my name but I also want to highlight certain kinds of pages that I might otherwise forget, such as GA nominations and FAC reviews I watchlisted. I know I can use the custom watchlist script but I don't really want to have a separate watchlist, just have certain phrases highlighted. Regards SoWhy 07:21, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@SoWhy: Depending on your requirements, you might be able to do this with just some custom css rules (as kinda described here). For example, the following rule will highlight in yellow all watchlist entries for pages in the Wikipedia talk namespace:

.mw-changeslist-line-inner a.mw-changeslist-title[href*="/Wikipedia_talk:"] {
  background-color: yellow;
}

That rule matches links to pages where the URL contains /Wikipedia_talk: somewhere (you could also change href to title to match against the article title). If you wanted to match subpages for good article reviews, you could just change "/Wikipedia_talk:" to "/GA". (Well, technically you might get a false positive if you have GABAA receptor on your watchlist. Though there are clever things you could do to avoid that if you really care.) Colin M (talk) 02:44, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@Colin M: That looks indeed like a great solution, I hadn't seen that. Thanks for pointing it out! Regards SoWhy 07:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

It works but now User:Ais523/highlightmyname2.js does not seem to work on my Watchlist anymore Regards SoWhy 07:11, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Nvm, works again. Weird... Regards SoWhy 07:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Graph with margins of error

Greetings,

is there a way to make a graph (similar to the one produced by Template:Line chart) which shows error margins? It's intended for the Coropuna#Recent area and retreat section which currently has a long bulleted list with various data points (not all of which should go into the final graph), plus error margins. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:07, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Would an bar graph work? If so, check out https://vega.github.io/vega/examples/error-bars/ and https://vega.github.io/vega/examples/box-plot/ . Both of those should work here.--Snaevar (talk) 10:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@Snaevar:Maybe, but I don't know how to turn that into a Wikipedia graph. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Watchlist missing from new "advanced" mobile view?

I opted into the new experimental mobile page. It seems to be missing a link to my watchlist: the old/standard mobile view had one. Thanks! Grover cleveland (talk) 15:52, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@Grover cleveland: please send your feedback on "advanced mode" to mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:55, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

It's under your account options (top right icon) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:09, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! It took me forever to realize that option even existed -- on my browser (Chrome / IOS) I have to slide the entire page to the left to make it appear. Grover cleveland (talk) 18:04, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Editor font

How can i change the editor font? i previously have tried putting these into common.css

#wpTextbox1 {
  font-family: 'Consolas Regular';
}

.mw-editfont-monospace {
  font-family:'Consolas Regular';
}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Erentar2002 (talk • contribs) 11:28, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Try increasing the specificity of the selectors by including the name of the element, textarea. You can also save some space by having both selectors share a declaration-list:

textarea#wpTextbox1,
textarea.mw-editfont-monospace {
  font-family:'Consolas Regular';
}

Also ensure that the font concerned is installed on your device. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:17, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Version history just starts magically at a midpoint in 2001

Are we missing some early version histories? The oldest version of global warming I can find is from October 2001 but that's obviously not when the article was created. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:41, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:46, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:34, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Joined 12 months ago on my user page on mobile version of the site

Directly under my user page, a subtitle reads: Joined 12 months ago. This isn't technically correct, as I registered an account on September 16, 2018 (and it's still August). Clovermoss (talk) 21:45, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: while the text of that message (in MediaWiki:mobile-frontend-joined-years) is controlled here, the value appears to be from mobile.common.js.map.json which uses rounding - I suspect it is rounding "up". If you would like to request a mediawiki developer change that you can submit a bug report at phabricator. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:18, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

The rounding appears a little odd. I currently see "11 months ago" for Bmlarred created 20 September 2018, and "12 months ago" for Pirerre1875 created 19 September 2018. If 11 months ago is 30 September 2018 then they are 11 months and respectively 10 and 11 days ago. Maybe it first computes days ago and then assumes every month is 30 days. With this assumption, 20 September 2018 is 11.47 months ago, and 19 September 2018 is 11.50 months ago. With normal rounding rules that becomes 11 months and 12 months like it says. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:07, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

The website should probably always round down. --Izno (talk) 18:44, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Better layout for wide material?

In List of countries by prevalence of genital cutting, there's two layout problems. One is the 2 x 2 table of maps, and the other is the large table of data below that. Both of these display poorly, especially on a mobile device. If anybody's a layout guru, could you take a look and see if you can do something better? Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Better layout for NARROW material, lol

I've noticed when I open the right-hand "developer tools" sidebar in Chromium (web browser) and drag the panel separator too far to the left, the MediaWiki interface layout changes from normal to total shit when given fewer than 551px horizontal space (compare red-circled areas in screenshots). Naturally this is annoying when I'm trying to inspect portlet elements (in the course of debugging CSS/JS). Any ideas on how to disable whatever triggers this behavior? Yes, I'm on a small-screen laptop. Yes, the skin is monobook. ―cobaltcigs 10:19, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

This is a deliberate feature in MonoBook called responsive web design. When your skin is MonoBook, "Enable responsive MonoBook design" is an option at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. You can disable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done Hard refresh needed, but I had no idea it would be that simple. Thanks. ―cobaltcigs 10:51, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Need css help

I created a customized version of a script recently and added it my User:MB/common.js and everything was working fine. Yesterday, I edited the script and immediately after that I saw some unexpected behavior - in the edit window I seem to have an unexpected very colorful syntax highligter and some other scripts I use frequently no longer work.

I tried to start over by reverting back to the prior version of my common.js, but that did not help. Have also tried switching to a different browser. Not sure what to try next. MB 14:11, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

There are several syntax highlighters. Does WP:HILITE help? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:57, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Lake Huron map

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T231691

See [2] It appears to turn all of Lake Huron into land. Where and how to get this fixed? Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: This was surely vandalism on OpenStreetMap. I see all is back to normal over there. If I remember correctly the Wikimedia tile server is cached for 24 hours, so it may be a bit before it fixes itself. I'll try to poke someone on IRC to see if they can invalidate it manually. — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:47, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:54, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't know how the map is implemented but if you zoom in enough then Lake Huron changes to blue. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:59, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, probably those tiles for the higher zoom level have since been invalidated, or weren't replicated at the time the vandalism was still live. Anyway the Operations team is aware. Task at phab:T231691 — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:08, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Help needed to track parameter usage

I want to add a tracking category to {{Grading scheme}} to track any uses where A-Class has been disabled.

The template displays A-Class by default or with |A=yes (case sensitive); if any other value is used, or if |A= is defined but left blank, A-Class is removed from the table.

I tried using the following code:

{{#ifeq:{{{A|}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}

How do I get it to ignore the default usage (i.e. where |A= is not used at all)? PC78 (talk) 12:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Just to add, I did come up with a solution in the sandbox but that alters the behaviour of the template somewhat (for the better I think, but still); if possible I'm keen not to break any transclusions where a blank |A= might be used intentionally to disable A-Class. PC78 (talk) 12:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

{{{A|}}} evaluates to empty both if A is set to empty and not set at all so you cannot use that alone. You need {{{A}}} which evaluates to the value of A if it's set (empty if A is set to empty), but evaluates to the same seven characters {{{A}}} if A is not set. You could nest if and ifeq, or combine the cases in a switch: {{#switch:{{{A}}}||yes=|#default=[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}. This code only uses that {{{A}}} evaluates to something non-empty when A is not set. It says: If A is set to empty or yes then return empty, otherwise the category. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I tried your switch but it doesn't work as intended: the category is added by default if |A= is not set at all (it shouldn't be) but is not added if |A= is set to empty (it should be). See test example at User:PC78/grading scheme. Tried a few other things but still can't nail it. PC78 (talk) 14:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread the goal and coded what I described: "If A is set to empty or yes then return empty, otherwise the category." This should do what you actually requested: {{#ifeq:{{{A}}}|{{{A|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{{A}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}}}. "If A is set but A is not set to yes then return the category." PrimeHunter (talk) 15:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks for the help! PC78 (talk) 15:37, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@PC78: It works but I made it more complicated than necessary. We don't have to test whether A is set, only whether it's set to something other than yes, so your original code can just use yes as default in the comparison: {{#ifeq:{{{A|yes}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Toolbox above/below "Publish changes"

Hi, I would like to add this to the da:wiktionary similar to the one on en:wiktionary but I have no idea how to do it. Any hints would be welcome.--So9q (talk) 15:18, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

So9q Are you refering to the box containing additional characters? --Trialpears (talk) 23:41, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Its mw:Extension:CharInsert. Though I have little idea on how to add it to another wiki. SD0001 (talk) 16:17, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I found out that they roll their own on wiktionary. It's here.--So9q (talk) 17:19, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Help - I've broken my javascript (again)

I have a link in my menu to the long-gone grok page hit counter. I just tried to update my js page at User:Spinningspark/monobook.js to use the wmflabs version. My efforts have completely broken the js and I can't work out what the problem is. Anyone willing to take sympathy on me and help? This is the last version of the page that was working. SpinningSpark 09:22, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

You could import User:PrimeHunter/Pageviews.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:27, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Are you missing a '+' after '&end=' ? Someguy1221 (talk) 09:34, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Perfect. That was it. SpinningSpark 13:40, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Problem with Template:Graph:Population history

I think the specific template does not work right during the last weeks. Graphs do not show up and look like broken images. But when previewing in editing mode they do appear working actually. Examples can be found on the template itself or here. Any suggestions? --Αρκάς (talk) 20:21, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Αρκάς, changes are being made to the version in the German wikipedia and imported here. Pinging @Yurik, Yair rand, and IagoQnsi: who have been working on the graph template and Module:Graph, though the problem seems to have started before the most recent changes here. It is very strange that the graphs appear in preview just beautifully, but vanish when reading the articles. StarryGrandma (talk) 03:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Then i guess we will have to wait for them.--Αρκάς (talk) 06:38, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I ended up reverting all my changes right after I made them, so it wasn't something I did. When you are previewing the articles, the images are rendered on your machine with JavaScript, but when you save the article, the images are rendered by MediaWiki's servers. So the issue must be with the server-side renderer if it's only broken on the saved pages and not the previews. --IagoQnsi (talk) 22:49, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

IagoQnsi, Αρκάς recorded the problem at the template talk page Aug 8, before your changes. I was hoping one of you would know where we could go from here. Someone reported this at mw:Template talk:Graph:Population history two months ago on July 4 (where it is also not working) and got no response. Is there anything about this in Phabricator? StarryGrandma (talk) 23:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, actually it is definitely been going on for some months now. When i mentioned "weeks" i was not precise, but since we are trying to timestamp it...--Αρκάς (talk) 00:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

It is a known problem, T226250 at Phabricator, "Graph not displayed if linked to a wikidata query". The uses of the template you gave, both in the template documention and at the Bogotá article in question, are going to wikidata for their information. StarryGrandma (talk) 00:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Ok thanks. Also pinging @Geraki:, as i'm guessing he would be interested as well. --Αρκάς (talk) 00:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Glitch at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user?

There are 40+ userpages listed in this category. Most of them are not actually tagged with U1 or G7 and never have been. What gives? -- MelanieN (talk) 23:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, The category is empty now. How weird. Adam9007 (talk) 23:56, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it is. I didn't make this up, honest! But it may have solved itself, or some invisible helper here fixed it. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, I know: I saw that the category had loads of pages, but they disappeared after I bypassed the page cache (though I don't think that did anything to fix it). Adam9007 (talk) 00:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you were the invisible helper? 0;-D There was no reason why they should have been in the cache either, since none of them had been U1'ed. Anyhow, case closed, I hope! -- MelanieN (talk) 00:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, I highly doubt it: reloading bypassing cache is one of the first things that occurs to me to do whenever something queer happens, as it makes sure the problem isn't at my end if that doesn't fix it. Adam9007 (talk) 00:09, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

It was probably a transcluded page like a userbox which had been tagged for deletion without using <noinclude>...</noinclude>, but it's hard to tell now when no example was given. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, I thought it's something like that, but the problem fixed itself before I could dig much further. Adam9007 (talk) 00:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I examined the deletion log between 23:50 and 23:56. User:Doodoobutter/UBX/User Animaniacs was deleted after being tagged with {{db-user}}. Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Doodoobutter/UBX/User Animaniacs shows it was transcluded in around 40 user pages. Please always give an example when a problem is reported. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:26, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

So MelanieN, it seems that you fixed it . Adam9007 (talk) 00:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Sorry about that, PrimeHunter! I'll remember that next time. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Clicking on undo leads to the help page for reverts

At least it does for [3] - trying to undo the edit of a sock. Doug Weller talk 08:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I guess you clicked at "(Tag: Undo)". The edit was tagged because it was itself an undo. Links in tags at Special:Tags are meant to help understand the tag. Click "Undo" at the time stamp to revert the edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Of course. Doh! I don't know why I did that. Doug Weller talk 15:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Template/Transclusion Check

Does anyone know what needs to happen for https://tools.wmflabs.org/templatetransclusioncheck/index.php?lang=en&name=North-American+Interfraternity+Conference to work again?Naraht (talk) 18:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Naraht, seems to be working fine if you add the namespace. --Trialpears (talk) 18:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Trialpears Thank you for the correct assessment of my idiocy. I have it working now.Naraht (talk) 18:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Validating facts from emails

hi

I have forgotten the process for using emails to validate refs.

Can someone please remind me where to go to find the info to start the process of getting an email sent in to Wiki?

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 19:03, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Should this be @ help desk instead of here? Chaosdruid (talk) 19:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Possibly. For starters, I am unsure of what you're asking. Could you more clearly give us an example scenario? Killiondude (talk) 03:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@Chaosdruid: Is it possible that you're thinking of OTRS? I'm not sure if they handle exactly the type of request you're talking about, but OTRS is the main place that emails to Wikipedia are handled. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:20, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: & @Killiondude: It was a process where something to be used in an article/as a ref had to be proven to be from the person in question, rather than Joe Bloggs with a made up email address ... In this case I need to get the names of band members out of an email from their management team, but need to be able to say "this is where it came from" Chaosdruid (talk) 17:34, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Emails are private communications, and so will not satisfy WP:V because other people can't check what the source is claimed to state. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

There is a process for verifying them, that is the whole point of my query. I used it years ago to get email validation on a source, and I believe it DID involve OTRS. Chaosdruid (talk) 17:00, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

No. OTRS can be used to verify the identity of someone. That might be used, for example, to demonstrate that the author of a blog was in fact a recognized expert on the subject, and that might make the blog a reliable source. There is no other kind of email verification of an assertion. What is certain is that an unpublished email is not a reliable source, and nothing can make it reliable. Johnuniq (talk) 00:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Draft to article

Hello! How to move a draft to article? I am asking that for Draft:Terran Shield. --Țuțulișcă Vodă (talk) 19:28, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Checking if a page is watched using API

Is there a simple way to check if a given page is watched, using the API, short of pulling the entire list of watched pages and checking if the given page in that list? SD0001 (talk) 21:36, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@SD0001: I believe you'd want to use API:Info. Sam Walton (talk) 21:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, that works! SD0001 (talk) 21:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

reflist error: using a named group with multiple nested refn −results in error msg. using [refs=] or a multiple backlink error if [refs=] is omitted.

See: Old revision of Wikipedia:Sandbox —this shows the result of omitting refs= for named group reflist. whereas using the refs= results in an error msg.

Decomposing the templates to: {{#tag:references||group=}} and {{#tag:ref||group=|name=}} —produces the same error msg. as "using the refs=", as noted above. --2db (talk) 00:09, 3 September 2019 (UTC) && 13:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

2db, the parser doesn't seem to be able to deal with list-defined references that are nested. When you leave out "refs=" it tries but is generating an extra backlink, maybe because it has to go through everything twice. This may have once worked. A few years ago a change to the MediaWiki software broke nested footnotes completely - the parsing order of the page had changed significantly. This was repaired but still does not operate in quite the same way. StarryGrandma (talk) 15:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

However moving the nested refn out of the named reflist to the article space works perfectly (see: Old revision of Wikipedia:Sandbox). --2db (talk) 18:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1 at line 802: Argument map not defined for this variable.

Resolved

This may be related to the above somehow. At David_M._Bennett and Dennis_Relojo-Howell I am seeing this error in place of every reference. Clicking on it gives: Backtrace:

1. [C]: in function "eror"
2. Module:Citation/CS1:802: ?
3. Module:Citation/CS1:2276: in function "citation0"
4. Module:Citation/CS1:3765: in function "chunk"
5. mw.lua:511: ?
6. [C]: ?

Replacing {{reflist}} with <references /> fixes it. SmartSE (talk) 13:16, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

This has been fixed: this was due to an unfortunate edit (discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Is_there_a_semi-automated_tool_that_could_fix_these_annoying_"Cite_Web"_errors?). It has been reverted now, but in case Lua errors are still visible anywhere, you can just make a null edit to the article to force reparsing. – Uanfala (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@Uanfala: Thanks. Just came across that myself. SmartSE (talk) 13:26, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

link rot issue

(disclaimer: yeah, I'm a super experienced Wikipedian, but I have never taken the time to learn how to cite webpages the "new" way and still do it the way it was done over a decade ago, which is probably why this is happening) The page in question is Swan Lake fire. I recently added a reference to an article on TIME's website. It got tagged as a dead link only a day later, and sure enough when I click on it it goes to a 404. So, I searched the article title "About 2.5 Million Acres in Alaska Have Burned. The State's Wildfire Seasons Are Getting Worse, Experts Say" and found the article again. When I copied the URL it was...the same as the one that led to the 404 error. I don't get it. Lil help? Beeblebrox (talk) 18:51, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The URL you want is https://time.com/5657188/alaska-fires-long-climate-change/ -- GreenC 19:05, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There should be a space where the url ends and the title begins, otherwise the link is malformed. SD0001 (talk) 19:07, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Now that, I actually did know but for some reason just didn't see it as the problem. How silly of me. Thanks. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Cite web deprecated params causing CS1 redlinks everywhere

Although I don't see a change in the history of {{cite web}}, every article I checked that uses the template, is getting red CS1 errors. See for example, World War II#Citations, as well as the documentation in the Examples section of Template:Cite web itself. This applies to params |website= (now required, apparently), and |deadurl= (now deprecated, apparently). What's going on? Mathglot (talk) 19:36, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Being discussed at WP:AN. They are separate issues but performed in the same update of the CS1 template base. Discussion is now based how to resolve it, but its affecting the bulk of en.wiki. --Masem (t) 19:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I just saw that "cite news" requires newspaper. I use TV stations, radio stations and magazines all the time, but this just looks sloppy until someone fixes it. Is this related?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:40, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

:(edit conflict)(edit conflict) Oh, must be this change to the module. Mathglot (talk) 19:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Here is a link to the AN discussion about this mess Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Is there a semi-automated tool that could fix these annoying "Cite Web" errors?. MarnetteD|Talk 19:43, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, which is part of this discussion at AN. Mathglot (talk) 19:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

This stinks. Possibly every one of the almost 500 articles I've ever created or contributed to in the last decade or so, now have these ugly red tags all over the References section. Probably the same thing with tens of thousands edits of mine. Not cool, and it makes Wikipedia unsightly. — Maile (talk) 20:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

It's a well known fact that Trappist the monk (talk · contribs) WP:OWNs the modules underlying the {{cite web}} etc. templates. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Proposing we close this discussion, and/or add a {{Discussion moved to}} template, targeting WP:AN. Mathglot (talk) 20:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Block edits that contain a VisualEditor bug

RFC notice: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RFC: Block edits that contain a VisualEditor bug -- GreenC 00:01, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Search and replace altered?

Hi, I gnome a lot of foreign translated articles. The French leave a space before their colon : like that, often on every line in long lists. It's been so easy to fix until now, using the search–replace function at the top of the edit box: search for space+colon, replace with colon (spelled out here for clarity). But today I find the search function will not pick up space+colon. Any ideas? Tony (talk) 00:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

It works for me. There are different editors. Are you referring to the default editor where the search and replace icon is to the far right but only displayed when "Advanced" is selected? If "Match whole word" is checked then uncheck it. Please link a page where it fails and specify a location in the page. Maybe it has special characters. What is your browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:27, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

PH, thanks. Yes, it does work now (in my sandbox). That's odd. Safari for the Mac. Tony (talk) 08:57, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Template:Boxboxtop causing weird visual errors in Safari?

Hello all, I have been dealing with this visual error for a while now and find it quite annoying. Whenever I hover over the "show" boxes in my infobox on my userpage, it continually "drifts" downwards the more you hover over the "show" buttons. I have also experienced this problem on Chrome using my desktop, however, Chrome on my Mac appears to like it now. Does anyone have any ideas? (Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 60#Template:Boxboxtop not working correctly in Firefox or Chrome might be related?) --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 02:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

TheSandDoctor, iv seen this before. The caption of the table wrapping your user boxes gets pushed below the table for some reason. I suspect this is a CSS or html validity error or something, but I've never been able to figure out a cause completely. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:42, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Mobile editor

Has something changed of late, as to editing from mobile skin? Whenever I intend to edit from my mobile, a top-bar (which used to be not there) displays 'Loading Editor' for an extraordinarily long time .... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Winged Blades of Godric (talk • contribs) 04:59, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-36

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

• You can use the new termbox interface if you edit Wikidata on a mobile device. This is to edit labels, descriptions and aliases easier on the mobile pages. [4]
• The new version of MediaWiki has been deployed during the last week.
• The previously announced change of positions of the "Wikidata item" link on all wikis has been rollbacked due to unexpected cache issues. [5]
• The limit for rollbacks has been increased from 10 to 100 rollbacks per minute. [6]
• The advanced version of the edit review pages (Recent Changes, Watchlist, and Related Changes) now include two new filters. These filters are for "All contents" and "All discussions". They will filter the view to just those namespaces. However the "All discussions" filter does not include pseudo talk pages, like discussions that are in the Project: or Wikipedia: namespaces. But it will include changes happening on Project talk: or the Wikipedia talk:. [7]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 September. It will be on all wikis from 5 September (calendar).
• When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if your password is one of the most common passwords in the world. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [8]

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on September 10 at 05:00 (UTC). [9]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 17 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [10]
• You will be able to read but not to edit some mid-sized wikis for up to 30 minutes September 24 at 05:00 (UTC). You can see which wikis. [11]
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for up to 30 minutes on September 26 at 05:00 (UTC). [12]

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

09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Languagetool wikicheck

Is somebody running this? This is how it looks like, seems useful to me. Apparently the author ran out of resources. He did try hosting it on Wikimedia Tool Labs but had some issues. The source is available at https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool-wikicheck (GNU LGPL) 2001:14BA:984A:F200:0:0:0:8EA (talk) 12:41, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Admin highlighter script

seems to have stopped. Or perhaps all the admins have gone undergound. Anyone else got the same issue? ——SerialNumber54129 16:12, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: just checked, it works for me. What specific page are you looking at, and what admin isn't highlighted? DannyS712 (talk) 04:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

All pages incl watchlist, none of them. But it's back now. ——SerialNumber54129 06:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm on mobile right now, and it occurs to me that ^^^was on desktop. Will check that soonish. ——SerialNumber54129 06:05, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

New editor's contributions page not working

For some reason, when I click on "New editors' contribs" at Special:RecentChanges, I get a page with no contributions. Did something change on WP's end or am I out of the loop on something? shoy (reactions) 14:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

That is in MediaWiki:Recentchangestext - and was referenced in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_174#A_"special"_page_is_taking_a_very_long_time_to_load - I think I saw this was recently deprecated? (If so we can remove it from that box). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:03, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

See also phab:T220447. I can't look in to this right now, but that may be enough for someone else to start. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

You can now filter on RC by newcomers, learners and experienced. This should make things easier and, imo, removes the need for the new editor's contribs page. Agent00x (talk) 16:51, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Agent00x: @Xaosflux: Thanks, I must have missed that new feature. shoy (reactions) 18:14, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Shoy: I've removed that link from that header, as it was deprecated. If you have some other link you'd like to see up there, you can drop an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Recentchangestext. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:24, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The radio button for selecting new editor contribution mode is still present beside the User field. Can this be removed as well? --Trialpears (talk) 19:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Template overflow on right side - Basque conflict

Greetings, Recently User:PrimeHunter helped me with titleclass = wraplinks to solve a template spilling beyond the right margins. A more complicated template is {{Basque conflict}} where it looks like the two right-most columns should be stacked underneath the first "Participants in the Basque сonflict" column. The template is linked from article Marian Beitialarrangoitia. I tried several templates updates, and this is way beyond my ability. So I'm asking for expert help here. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 15:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Five columns with long nowraplinks is a lot. A simple solution would be changing listclass = plainlist to listclass = plainlist wraplinks. A narrow window would get many wrapped links which doesn't look good so a more complicated redesign with fewer columns is also an option. I'm not doing that. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:55, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

You could also consider a complete rewrite to rotate it 90 degrees, as is often done with complex topics that have many articles. See Template:Mammals and Template:Queen for examples. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

 Done - @Jonesey95 and PrimeHunter: - Thanks for your suggestions. Being a "cloner" I copied {{Pre-Roman peoples in Spain}} into my sandbox to rewrite. Hoping not to repeat, but at least I have some experience. Cheers! JoeHebda (talk) 19:37, 5 September 2019 (UTC)