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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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Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical)

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If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.

No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an `accesskey` property on it (default to `accesskey="f"` in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.

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Possible Thursday weirdness

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T305333

On a number of different browsers I'm experiencing difficulty aiming the mouse cursor when editing pages. It seems to be made worse by the length of the page being edited, and/or by increasing the zoom level in the browsers. Anybody else having this issue? Abductive (reasoning) 21:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, I'm having this issue too. It seems like when I click, the cursor is placed several lines higher. As soon as I type something (I've started to just do space, backspace), it's not a problem anymore for that editing session. rchard2scout (talk) 13:48, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've been seeing this for quite a while using MonoBook on a Chromebook. In particularly long edit windows the visible cursor may be several lines above the actual edit point. - Donald Albury 15:46, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe what I am seeing is different. The horizontal cursor position is always correct. The further down I am in long chunks of text, the higher the cursor sits relative to the edit point. If I am editing far down in a block of text, the cursor may be three or four lines above the actual edit point, but as long as I allow for that, editing proceeds normally. - Donald Albury 16:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It just started a day or two ago for me. The edit window doesn't seem to interpret the location of the mouse-click properly. I have to use arrow keys to get the cursor positioned properly. It's also occurring when I try to click-drag to select text; on the first click (like at the start of a ref), it immediately highlights several lines of text above the click. It's happening frequently, but not consistently. Schazjmd (talk) 15:57, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've been experiencing this, too. (Courtesy ping @ElijahPepe) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:47, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Just had it—scrolling the edit window to the bottom with the mouse wheel was what made it go away this time—but I've encountered it sporadically for around a year now on Commons. —wqnvlz (talk · contribs);  11:05, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have the colorful syntax highlighter turned on? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This has been reported by a number of editors at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Chrome_editing_problems. The suggestion was to report it here.--Gronk Oz (talk) 14:11, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I just started experiencing this too, a few days ago. It is very annoying. --Srleffler (talk) 18:04, 10 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Srleffler, is your editing window showing wikitext in plain black-and-white text, or is it giving you colors to show the syntax? This appears to be caused by syntax highlighting, which you can turn off if you need to (look for a 'highlighter marker' near the bold/italic/ref/etc. items in the toolbar.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Let users easily filter tables?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T12013

Would it be possible to allow users to filter tables? I've seen some large tables and wished I could narrow what I'm seeing down. It looks like it's supported by the underlying software, assuming "BlueSpiceFoundation" is available.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FilterableTables

EternalStudent07 (talk) 02:53, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See phab:T12013 for this request (it has been lingering around for almost 15 years though!). — xaosflux ^Talk 11:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that there are some ways to fake this, but it's really difficult. If it's truly worth the pain, then @Astinson (WMF) knows more about this than I do. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Make talk page [ reply ] links disappear

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T249293

I don't find talk page [ reply ] links helpful. If I need to reply, I edit the section. Clicking on the reply link generates an unfamiliar interface I don't want to learn. I need to make them go away for another reason. If I am editing a talk page to remove lint errors, I want to make sure that, except when necessary, I don't change the page appearance. So I use two browser tabs, one with the talk page and one with the preview of the edited talk page. I scroll through the tabs in parallel, and switch between the tabs to make sure that the appearance is the same. The [ reply ] tags hurt in two ways. First, they appear at the end of lines in the talk page tab but not the edit preview tab, so as I toggle between tabs, I see differences I need to ignore. Second, if the line was already full, they create a new line in the edit preview tab, and everything below the [ reply ] link is misaligned with the edit preview tab. Please provide a way to not have [ reply ] links on talk pages.

Also, just as section [ edit ] links do not appear on talk page archives, [ reply ] links should also not appear on talk page archives, for the same reason: we do not want users editing talk page archives, except of course for technical reasons such as fixing lint errors. —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:39, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Anomalocaris Preference -> Editing -> Discussion pages and uncheck Enable quick replying. That will disable Discussion Tools. Nthep (talk) 20:42, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As far as your second part, this is being worked on in phab:T249293. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:01, 1 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nthep, Xaosflux: Thanks! —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:53, 3 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also for protected pages - we don't want to have reply button in a page where we cannot edit. Thingofme (talk) 15:03, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Anomalocaris, @Nthep, @Thingofme, @Xaosflux: I can see your use case, but I think the Reply button is fantastic. You basically get an edit window. But when looking for lint errors, yeah, that's different. 73.127.147.187 (talk) 10:35, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Customised api call in script

Hi all, I recently tried forking User:Evad37/ToDoLister.js so that it creates a single global to-do list with interwiki backlinks, before I try working cross-wiki. (See User:CX Zoom/Testjs1.js) It calls the api of the destination page's server in order to achieve this. I had hoped that I'd launch it as a customisable script that would allow the user to choose the destination site, say, for example "commons.wikimedia.org" instead of default "meta.wikimedia.org". But I failed to enable that even after trying many combinations along the lines of api: mw.ForeignApi('https://' + config.site +'/w/api.php'. Any help that'd allow me enable such customisation would be appreciated. Thanks! ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 19:54, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if .postWithToken('edit', { should be .postWithToken('csrf', { or .postWithEditToken({. There might be other problems but that stuck out to me. Nardog (talk) 20:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Nardog's right. According to Special:ApiSandbox, there is no "edit" token. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:45, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Changed it to csrf but the same issue persists, everything works great until I try to replace the site name with a custom variable. ---CX Zoom(^he/_him) (^{let's talk}|_contribs) 13:30, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@CX Zoom: If I'm getting you correctly, just let the users declare the site themselves using JS (window.ToDoListerSite = 'commons.wikimedia.org'; etc.) or give them a special syntax (say, #ToDoListerSite = 'commons.wikimedia.org') that puts an hidden element with id into the todo page (<span id="ToDoListerSite" style="display: none;">commons.wikimedia.org</span>) to type in when prompted for comment. The script can then retrieve it before initializing the rest. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 14:26, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ProQuest Archiver is HTTP 404

cited on 882 articles (e.g.: Mayor of Hollywood, formerly on Catherine Reitman)
https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/jpost/access/99662212.html?dids=99662212:99662212&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Apr+04%2C+1991&author=Pearl+Sheffy+Gefen&pub=Jerusalem+Post&desc=HOLLYWOODBUSTER&pqatl=google
Hanau, Shira (February 15, 2022). "Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters director, Auschwitz survivor son, dies at 75". The Jerusalem Post. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Archived from the original on February 14, 2022. Retrieved 6 April 2022.

....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 06:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would be very surprised if anything on PQA could not be found in one of Proquest's end-user (subscriber)-facing, and available, database products. 50.74.1.34 (talk) 20:09, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning, anything in PQA pertaining to citations in Wikipedia. There should likely be Proquest ids for all such info. 50.74.1.34 (talk) 20:12, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

utm_* tags should be removed by bot from citations

at ProQuest:
utm_* tags should be removed by bot from citations
https://clarivate.com/news/clarivate-successfully-completes-acquisition-of-proquest/
- utm_campaign=EM_Global_CA_ThumbBt_Customer_Announcement_XBU_Global_2021_EN
- utm_medium=email
- utm_source=Eloqua
- elqTrackId=82fd75ad29514e7c96e010fd966d16a7
- elq=bdb0e760e6eb4cbab51eb032b11f104d
- elqaid=18764
- elqat=1
- elqCampaignId=8085

....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 06:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You may request someone make a bot task for this at WP:BOTREQ — xaosflux ^Talk 15:23, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

There was a bot or semi-automated task doing this, IDK where it went. Izno (talk) 17:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

PrimeBOT should be able to do this. Certes (talk) 17:31, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ottoman Empire flag

I can't figure out why the flags of the Ottoman Empire in the infobox at Crimean War no longer display, instead displaying a redlink of File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg. I cannot see anything in the Commonns log or local log that would have suddenly caused the problem, and Template:Country data Ottoman Empire hasn't been modified recently. The correct image appears to be at File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire (1844–1922).svg, although the hundredss of incoming links to File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg make me wonder if that's true or not. FDW777 (talk) 14:51, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It was moved in September, 2020. File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire.svg is a redirect on Commons to the current filename of File:Flag of the Ottoman Empire (1844–1922).svg. I have no idea why the redirect is just now broken, however. It worked fine for 2 years AFAICT. --Jayron 32 14:57, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

An IP editor broke the redirect at Commons, with an edit that's just been reverted. Certes (talk) 14:59, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) It looks like the redirect was removed by an IP user a few hours ago, and restored a few minutes ago. Looks like some caches may have lagged for a bit, but I'm seeing the flag in the infobox now. Maybe certain high-use redirects on Commons should be protected? --rchard2scout (talk) 15:03, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ParserFunction errors

The following templates recently started throwing up ParserFunction errors:

None of the templates has been recently edited, so I assume that this is being caused by something that's been done to an underlying template in their code. I am, however, terrible at tracking down such matters; can anyone see where the problem lies? Deor (talk) 17:05, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Deor: Found it: Some of the Ctime templates were recently deleted per this TfD. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 17:27, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Explicit: who deleted them. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 17:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Further explanation: Since the templates are wrapped in conditional expressions, WhatLinksHere cannot track their transclusions. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 17:35, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Now the ones I listed above are no longer throwing up error messages, but I can't see that the TfD'd templates have been restored, so I don't know what's going on. As far as I'm concerned, these could have been deleted as well, since there's only a single editor's user page that seems to use them. Deor (talk) 18:00, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, time doesn't stop, I guess? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 18:12, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Syntaxhighlight inline with wikimarkup

I'm trying to use <syntaxhighlight> on some text, but also have wikimarkup parsed, and have it inline. So, I tried {{#tag:syntaxhighlight|text|inline|lang=js}} which produced

text

The 'inline' attribute is ignored, however. Is there a way around this? ― Qwerfjkl talk 20:08, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Qwerfjkl: Try {{#tag:syntaxhighlight|text|lang=js|inline=1}} which gives text. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 20:13, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Changed font

Around seven hours ago the font on the editing pane has changed; also it's too small, needing zooming to 140+%. I am long-sighted and cannot use this easily. Is this something I've done? This is in Firefox, but I've seen similar some time ago using Chrome. Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 02:06, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Rocknrollmancer - Yes, I've got the same issue. I'm 99& sure it's due to the latest Firefox update (did you have the screen telling you about Firefox pockets?). I can't see anything obvious to change it in settings on WP. Maybe someone at FF will spot it as a bug and fix for their next release... :( Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Rocknrollmancer Firefox 99 changed the default monospaced font from Courier to Consolas. You can change it in your settings under the advanced tab in fonts. Nthep (talk) 08:35, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Nthep I love you and I want to have your babies. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:53, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Lugnuts, Nthep - yes I did the upgrade and saw the 'pockets' reminder. I had checked the font which was Times New Roman 18 point, but I'll have another play around. I also noticed a few weeks back that both FF and Chrome were no longer showing a pop-up warning for closure of multiple tabs. That I re-enabled (the tick box was blank) when checking the font, as yet haven't looked at Chrome. The cat likes to run across the room and bounce off the keyboard, sometimes closing whatever I was working on. ThanQ.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 14:10, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Right - found it under advanced - was Consolas 13 point. Again, muchas.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 14:24, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, some of these options in FF can be buried away in the depths of their sub-menus! Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 14:26, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. This worked for me too. Daniel Case (talk) 02:24, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Size of non-free image (album cover)

What is the max size of non-free image (album cover)? 300x300, 315x315 or more? Eurohunter (talk) 08:26, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:IMAGERES, 316x316. Nardog (talk) 15:42, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Nardog: Thanks. Eurohunter (talk) 06:10, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Onlyinclude template being considered for deletion

Moved to Template talk:Mfd § Onlyinclude MFD template on nominated page

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Steel1943 (talk • contribs) 17:23, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Create a new <nodarkmode> tag?

Is it possible to create and store a new <nodarkmode> tag in sitewide css page, such that anything within this tag should get ignored by the dark mode gadget when used. Basically, I created User:CX Zoom/Pale Blue Dot and Dark mode gadget blackens the white text, and the text becomes unreadable. I'd be glad if I had a tag that asks the gadget to ignore the text. I don't know the technical details of it, but a module-based template that can achieve the same task would also work for me. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • C • L)} 08:05, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apply mw-no-invert class on the div element. – SD0001 (talk) 09:14, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot, it did exactly what I wanted. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • C • L)} 13:09, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiousity, why doesn't this page fall under WP:U5? @CX Zoom casualdejekyll 19:08, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's probably of sufficient length to qualify for WP:G12.... CX Zoom, you should probably remove it. Izno (talk) 19:19, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I wished to replace the top of my current contents of userpage with it, as it happens to be one of my favorites. I'm not sure about G12 tho, it's copied right from the article Pale Blue Dot and is one of the good articles. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • C • L)} 19:28, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Declare H: as an alias for Help namespace

I think this one is long overdue. Instead of having some 675 redirects and zero articles in the mainspace which all start with H: (see PrefixIndex), I believe, it would be much better if H were an alias of Help, the way WP if for Wikipedia. This will allow to create Help shortcuts within the Help namespace, rather than the mainspace. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • C • L)} 12:42, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:PEREN#Create shortcut namespace aliases for various namespaces. Anomie ⚔ 13:12, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, should've seen that before. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • C • L)} 13:19, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

April 10

Hello! Wikipedia says that it is April 10, but my computer says it is April 9. What time zone is Wikipedia on? Thanks! Helloheart (talk) 03:43, 10 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's on UTC. Graham87 06:08, 10 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Helloheart See the "Time Offset" section at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:02, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Convert a special page name to a language-specific page name

Hi, is there a Mediawiki function to convert a special page name to a language-specific page name in javascript? For instance, I want to get 'Special:用户贡献' from 'Special:Contributions' on zhwiki. Any help would be appreciated.--153.144.223.221 (talk) 17:54, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you want to do that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Because I want to collect all <a> tags with those specific texts on the DOM and change their CSS using jQuery.—153.144.223.221 (talk) 18:25, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I mean, that would help the coding of global.js.—153.144.223.221 (talk) 18:27, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You can make an API call with action=query, titles=Special:Contributions, and formatversion=2, and the language-specific name will be returned in query.normalized[0].from and query.pages[0].title. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:15, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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19:43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

London Wall

London Wall :

has short URL: "https://w.wiki/32vG"
fails: "https://url-converter.toolforge.org/index.pl?url=https://w.wiki/32vG"

what is this? .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 20:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 202: / Line 202: @@
 :43, 11 April 2022 (UTC)
 <!-- Message sent by User:Quiddity (WMF)@metawiki using the list at https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors&oldid=23124108 -->
+== London Wall ==
+[[London Wall]] :
+* has short URL: "https://w.wiki/32vG"
+* fails: "https://url-converter.toolforge.org/index.pl?url=https://w.wiki/32vG"
+what is this? .... [[User:0mtwb9gd5wx|0mtwb9gd5wx]] ([[User talk:0mtwb9gd5wx|talk]]) 20:17, 11 April 2022 (UTC)