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Diff/watchlist difficulties

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T39225

I'm a little puzzled about some recent edits to the Nicole Kidman article. For example this edit is one of several blank edits, which I thought were usually disregarded and shouldn't normally appear in the edit history. Also, when the blank edits showed up in my watchlist, it appeared that the edit added ~72,000 bytes of data (+72,000) although there was no change. --Bongwarrior (talk) 10:19, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Odd. One thing that I, as an admin, can check is for deleted revisions (some times an admin may have deleted the page, and selectively restored some versions while leaving out all between 2 identical ones) - and in this case, there aren't any. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:53, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Same issue with this edit (and also the preceding one) at Admiralty Arch today. There's nothing in the history or watchlist entries indicating that the edits have been hidden. — Richardguk (talk) 11:57, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure your watchlist didn't say (+73,930)‎ on Nicole Kidman? That's the page size shown in the page history and it says (+73,930)‎ for the blank edits on my watchlist when I enable "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. Here is another example from Sonia Sotomayor. If the software cannot retrieve the size of the preceding revision then I think it gives the page size as difference like if it had been 0 before. I don't know how MediaWiki identifies null edits so they can be omitted in logs but if it thinks the page size has changed then maybe it will never identify it as a null edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:23, 30 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, 73,930 sounds right. I couldn't remember the exact number, and I didn't know of an easy way to go back and double check the exact number after I had already reverted the edits. --Bongwarrior (talk) 01:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

grand Theft Auto IV is another one. On the page history, the edits are 0, but on a watchlist they are +125,384 (as if created from zero). ☮Soap☮ 02:18, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was just going to ask about this. I've seen something similar at several articles, most recently Mario Chalmers. If you look at these recent changes, an IP is shown making three consecutive 18,826-byte additions, though the visible changes only account for 45 bytes. Zagalejo^^^ 02:35, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

~~Is it always three null edits? It seems so.~~ And http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Blitz&action=history shows it with an edit summary also repeated three times. It's unlikely he would have made four consecutive edits with the same edit summary. Im guessing that all of these cases are really just one edit apiece under the hood, which for some reason is "echoed" three or so times. ☮Soap☮ 02:37, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed something similar that brought me here to the Pump: This edit, which shows no change in the diff and which didn't change the byte count in the page history, was shown as "+24,991" on my watchlist. The watchlist and history figures agree for the edit immediately preceding it. (I saved a screenshot, if any developer wants hard evidence in all its gory detail.) Rivertorch (talk) 04:38, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I saw this earlier today (over 14 hours ago or so): this edit showed to have a change of +23,000k or so to the article (via the indicator on my watchlist) but the actual diff shows nothing. It was perplexing. Killiondude (talk) 06:44, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is what just happened to me about 3 minutes ago. My watchlist showed a (+27,138) change, but that was the size of the article at the time and the history showed 0 change - which is what it seemed to be, I can see no change here. Dougweller (talk) 16:41, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are developers aware of this? That is, has anyone here created a bugzilla report? I don't really care for the search function there. Killiondude (talk) 07:02, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bangalore and Mysore are two articles on my watchlist that have this problem currently -- the + value is the actual size of the article. —SpacemanSpiff 09:13, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a variation of the problem in this June 1 diff. It's a null edit so it shouldn't have been recorded but unlike other reports, the edit and the predecing edit were by different users: Two bots making the same interlanguage change. Both edits say (+5) on a watchlist. This is correct for the first but the second should have said (0). The watchlist does not claim the page size 174,825 as the size of the change. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:02, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I saw similar anomalies on recent changes and article history at Wikiquote yesterday: null edits that should have shown (0) showed up as (+article size). ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:42, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bug logged on 30 May 2012 as Bugzilla:37225. — Richardguk (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another instance: this edit showed as (+2,864) in the watchlist, the same as the page size according to its history. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:33, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeing this type of thing on my watchlist a lot now. It's a bit disconcerting. Rivertorch (talk) 04:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've just noticed it now with this edit on the 2011 Christchurch earthquake with (+139,895) Simply south...... always punctual, no matter how late for just 6 years 21:36, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A fix has been included in MediaWiki 1.20wmf5 (not listed in the change notes), which is set to be rolled out to enwiki between 18:00 and 20:00 UTC on 18 June 2012.

— Richardguk (talk) 01:05, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Still occurring, despite the 1.20wmf5 rollout 3 hours ago.

For example, 4 identical edits to Croatia national football team by 86.182.161.144, at 2012-06-18T20:45:02‎, 20:45:48‎, 20:46:38 and 20:47:14‎ (UTC) (example diff).

There are corresponding anomalies in the byte-change entries at Special:RecentChanges, Special:RecentChangesLinked and Special:Watchlist (but the article history tab correctly lists each of the last three edits as having a change size of zero bytes).

— Richardguk (talk) 21:36, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Even worse: a non-null edit conflict was saved 6 hours ago (coincidentally, to this very page – Hoo man conflicting with MiszaBot II archiving). Unlike a manual edit conflict (where an editor accidentally overrides an edit conflict and the change in byte-size of the article is correctly recorded on watchlists), the edit shows an incorrect change size of the entire article size (+209,033) in recentchanges (though the history tab correctly records it as +10,462).

— Richardguk (talk) 13:12, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are definitely still watchlist anomalies occurring after the "fix". One thing I noticed about 12 hours ago was an apparent null edit (at least I couldn't find any difference either by using popups or by examining the diff page) registering on the watchlist as having doubled the page size. I can't remember what the article was, but this sort of thing has become so common that I'm barely noticing it anymore. Rivertorch (talk) 21:32, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One more data point in case it's useful: Spratly Islands reports two edits on 22 June 2012 at 19:00 by CommonsDelinker. The first edit is correctly reported as -54, the bot's accurate summary reads 'Removing "Vietnam_Spratly_island.jpg"...'. The second edit saves the same text, but is reported as +34,288. The edit summary also reads 'Removing "Vietnam_Spratly_island.jpg"...' which is inaccurate: it's a null edit. Perhaps the bot repeated its edit on the previous version and suffered an edit conflict with itself. Certes (talk) 10:29, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I came here to report a similar problem. Looking at my watchlist a moment ago, I saw this:

Futurama‎; 23:18 . . (+102,623)‎ . . ‎70.15.32.125 (talk)‎ (→‎Humor: )

In actuality, 102,623 is the total number of characters for the whole article, and the actual change was the addition of only 6 characters. ---RepublicanJacobite_TheFortyFive 02:37, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki 1.20wmf5 deployment complete

Hi everyone! Yet another deployment in our bi-weekly deployment cycle was just completed (at 18:15 UTC). See mw:MediaWiki 1.20/wmf5 for a full list of changes. Let us know if you encounter problems caused by this deployment. Thanks! -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 18:19, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Might have nothing to do with this, but I've noticed some inter-wiki links are shown in lower-case (eg dansk instead of Dansk). See this article for an example. Lugnuts (talk) 19:20, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See, er, WP:VPT for another. Seems to be widespread, but not universal: Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates has català; dansk; Deutsch; Esperanto; eesti. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it's bugzilla:36819 "Make language names first letter lowercase where usual". — AlexSm 20:23, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, my understanding from that bug and the conversation around it is that the change was intentional. Siebrand can probably answer any questions you have about this change. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 22:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I complained about this change here: Help talk:Interlanguage links#Capitalization of language names. Intentional or not, I think the change is not an improvement. --Lambiam 20:20, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The lowercase language names should remain like that in general, but it can be capitalized for the interwiki sidebar specifically, see bug 37705 for that. SPQRobin (talk) 23:27, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That was a terrible decision to use lowercase. Or if use it then for all the interwiki links. Now "English", "Esperanto" are with capital letters others are in lowercase. Just look at "беларуская" and "Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‬". That's a total mess. I propose that old order with capital letters should be returned. Hugo.arg (talk) 07:26, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I notice the change has been propagated to other wikis. The move has recieved criticisms on fr.wiki too. Bouchecl (talk) 17:25, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As per a suggestion on the fr.wiki Bistro, add this line to your common.css, to get rid of this erratic behavior (and to bring the initial caps back). Bouchecl (talk) 22:48, 21 June 2012 (UTC)\[reply]

Tut-tut. We Russians are less than happy with being relegated to lowercase. Does this mean that our wikipedia is less important than the others? --Ghirla^-трёп- 05:35, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

#p-lang li a {text-transform: capitalize !important;}

It's been fixed in this change and will be deployed with wmf6 at the latest.--Eloquence * 17:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blocked Whitelist

Would it be technically possible to create some sort of whitelist of pages that can be edited by a specific blocked user? There is currently a proposal in the idea lab about a reform program for sockpuppeteers. I'm not sure if it will go anywhere, but the concept made me think, could you make pages in Wikipedia:Sock Puppet Reform/ open to editors who were approved for the program if one got created? On another note, would it be possible to create a page other than his talk page, where I can run my adoption program with User:Dannyboy1209? Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:38, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Block users cannot edit anything other than their own User talk: pages (and some are even blocked from doing that). Other pages cannot be made editable by blocked users other than by unblocking. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:07, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My question is, would it be technically possible to modify the current block settings in the software in order to make this possible. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:09, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Technically possible, yes. Feasible? You'd have to ask a sysadmin, or someone experienced in MediaWiki hacking.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 19:11, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With the current set up, the only way to do that would be to unblock the users and then create a special edit filter which disallows them to edit all pages except the white listed ones. - Hoo man (talk) 19:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That seems to be much more work than the value. It was worth an asking. I do wish there was some way to work in a more structured way with blocked users who have potential but shouldn't be unblocked. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:13, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Something I do when I want to avoid edit collisions while making multiple changes to an article is to work on a copy (or a sub-component) of the article in user space. Perhaps a blocked editor could be allowed to do something similar, then present it as a proposed change. But if the editor was undisciplined enough to get blocked, [s]he may not have the patience for this approach. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:33, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have you ever seen {{2nd chance}}? That is very similar to your comment. I wonder when the last time an admin has used that has been. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:40, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Education Program extension applied to English Wikipedia

Today, the Education Program extension for MediaWiki was added to the English Wikipedia. This extension will be used primarily by volunteers, staff, instructors, and students in the Wikipedia Education Program (WEP), as well as individuals who choose to help review student work. It will aid in streamlining WEP overhead, organization, information handling, and data collection.

The extension adds the following namespaces:

Course
Institution
Course talk
Institution talk

The Course and Institution namespaces will contain information for a relational database structure on Wikipedia to assist in managing the WEP data.

The extension also adds the following user access:

ep-staff - Education Program staff
ep-admin - Education Program admin
ep-campus-ambassador - Education Program campus ambassador
ep-online-ambassador - Education Program online ambassador
ep-instructor - Education Program instructor

These user access levels grant permission to do various things related directly to the WEP and do not grant any other permissions.

Additionally, a new tab "Education" will appear in Special:Preferences.

We will be monitoring this in the near future to see whether the extension is an improvement. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:59, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Help! We can no longer access pages that begin with "Course:" such as the episode Course: Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager) (see What links here for that page). – Fayenatic London 19:15, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is always going to happen when people use stuff that looks like a namespace to MediaWiki, and subsequently becomes one. Often happens when adding NS' to other projects. People think just using it like a namespace, makes it one. Which it doesn't. The problematic articles for "Course" are:

mysql> select * from page where page_id IN ( 25401566, 2536861, 4299296, 8626602, 8626602, 25401567, 6850747 );
+----------+----------------+-------------------------------+-------------------+--------------+------------------+-------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+----------+
| page_id  | page_namespace | page_title                    | page_restrictions | page_counter | page_is_redirect | page_is_new | page_random    | page_touched   | page_latest | page_len |
+----------+----------------+-------------------------------+-------------------+--------------+------------------+-------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+----------+
|  2536861 |            442 | Oblivion_(Star_Trek:_Voyager) |                   |            0 |                0 |           0 | 0.344189657393 | 20120622173807 |   496538068 |     4112 |
|  4299296 |            442 | Oblivion_(VOY_episode)        |                   |            0 |                1 |           0 | 0.813639596905 | 20120608024140 |   331609884 |       51 |
|  6850747 |            443 | Oblivion_(Star_Trek:_Voyager) |                   |            0 |                0 |           0 | 0.447606566677 | 20120619170908 |   422542944 |     1884 |
|  8626602 |            442 | Oblivion_(Voyager_episode)    |                   |            0 |                1 |           0 | 0.395165121676 | 20120608024140 |   331609990 |       51 |
| 25401566 |            442 | Oblivion                      |                   |            0 |                1 |           1 | 0.039634633516 | 20120608024140 |   331182450 |       51 |
| 25401567 |            443 | Oblivion                      |                   |            0 |                1 |           1 | 0.927857661538 | 20110405171623 |   331182453 |       56 |
+----------+----------------+-------------------------------+-------------------+--------------+------------------+-------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+----------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

namespaceDupes.php has moved them properly into that namespace, but with the way EP overrides them, they're not viewable. Tell me where to move them to, and I will. Reedy (talk) 19:41, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could as well say "This is always going to happen when people appropriate a common English word for a namespace name. People don't think about the fact that books, movies, television shows, songs, albums, or the like might have a title that begins with a word followed by a colon, and that editors might punctuate the article's title in the same way. Which they sometimes do." Anomie ⚔ 20:09, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At least no other articles are affected; it looks like just this one plus its talk page and some redirects. I suggest that the best option for moving it is to omit the colon. Would you be prepared to set up a cross-namespace redirect? – Fayenatic London 20:48, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think a cross namespace redirect will do anything, due to the way EducationPage overrides the handling of "pages" in the Course namespace. Reedy (talk) 21:09, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it make sense to move the page to another name (this will probably have to be done in the database...). Course Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager) will probably be best. That way, we won't need a CNRD or anything, it'll just exist as a different name. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Talk to me} 04:33, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes – please do it. I meant the suggestion of the cross-namespace redirect as an additional step; there is no need to wait for agreement on that. After moving the page, please update the link in Template:Star Trek VOY S5 (which, oddly, does not show up in the "what links here" given above). – Fayenatic London 06:18, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like even with the ep-staff user access level that has full access to course pages, there's no page to be moved. I'm notifying a tech on this. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:09, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Like Reedy noted, you cannot keep it in the Course NS in any way - it has to be moved out. We could of course add support for redirects and stuff, but if it's just this one page, that might not be worth it. --Jeroen De Dauw (talk) 15:15, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just an update, we are taking this issue very seriously and have temporarily disabled the extension until we can repair these pages and rename them. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:12, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, I've asked our developers to temporarily disable the extension, so we have enough time to come to a consensus on this issue. My understanding is that there are two options: (a) Move the Startrek page to a name without the colon, and (b) use a different name for the "Course:" namespace of the Education extension. Now, with that said – how likely is it going to be that we're going to have pages in the article namespace that start with "Course:"? And would someone be opposed to solution (a)? To me, this seems to be the easiest way of fixing it. What do you think? --Frank Schulenburg (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 17:14, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We can't use something like "EP Course" or some such? Aaron Schulz 17:41, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, that's basically (b). Without using an abbreviation it would be something like "Education Program Course:" etc. I'm just wondering how likely it is that articles start with "Course:" – I guess having a "Course"-namespace would be much more elegant and easier to use. --Frank Schulenburg (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 17:49, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How about "Class:"? It's not in use on any pages yet. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:49, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This extension is perpetually reserving names in article space on en.wikipedia.org. The "course" name clash seems less troublesome to me than the "institution" name clash, because that means we'll have:

The casual reader of Wikipedia will have no indication from the name of the page that the second URL is automatically generated tool information specifically geared around the Education Program, where the first is a general purpose article about Clemson University. I think at least an "EP" prefix (if not "Wikimedia EP Course" and "Wikimedia EP Institution") seems better to me. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 22:54, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A name which is very specific should be used due to the problems noted by RobLa. Maybe Wikiinstitution (camel case?) and Wikicourse? I would personally change the namespace to only use one namespace, but that's just me. --Izno (talk) 23:46, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Easy enough to solve this problem: this all belongs on its own wiki, not on this project. I cannot understand how anyone can justify using 2 of our 12 namespaces to administer a single program that involves a minuscule percentage of our edits. Regardless of where these namespaces are hosted, there will need to be navigation pages from this project for people to find things; so the links go to a separate WMF wiki that operates within the SUL envelope. That also resolves the issue of having a mass of extremely fine-grained user rights when English Wikipedia has absolutely nothing to do with selecting the individuals who are in those roles. At the same time, there is good reason to limit access to those pages. So the best solution is to host them on another wiki (the Outreach wiki would do fine for now), with the recognition that it can be used by all of the education projects from around the globe, not just the ones that involve English Wikipedia. Risker (talk) 02:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think the point that education programs like these being of an international tune is an excellent one to make to indicate that another wiki be used for this purpose. Wikiversity might also be a good candidate as another wiki to handle what are most often university students. --Izno (talk) 02:15, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Wikiversity sounds like a really good idea Izno. And anything which adds activity to our sister projects would be, I presume, a very good thing? - jc37 21:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for restoring the Star Trek article. I'm assuming the space after the colon was lost for technical reasons, and had to be restored by moving the page back to Course: Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager) afterwards. What happened to Talk:Course:Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager)? There was probably not much there but it might be worth checking. I have since created Talk:Course: Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager) (with a space after the colon) but feel free to move that somewhere else so that I can do a manual history merge. – Fayenatic London 15:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've flagged the techs again, thanks for mentioning that. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It had ended up at Course talk:Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager), and now Reedy moved it to Talk:Course:Oblivion (Star Trek: Voyager). You may also want to move Course:Oblivion (VOY: Voyager), Course:Oblivion (Voyager episode), and Course:Oblivion back to the space-after-colon names. Anomie ⚔ 16:58, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that makes sense. Glad we got that one figured out! Thanks all for helping identify and solve this quickly. We'll be revising the extension and make sure to avoid another namespace conflict when we enable it again. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:22, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks; I merged the talk pages, and moved the redirects to Course: Oblivion (VOY episode), Course: Oblivion (Voyager episode) and Course: Oblivion. The table above indicates that there was originally a Talk:Course: Oblivion (which probably went to Course talk:Oblivion), but it has no incoming links and was probably just a talk page redirect after a page move, so I don't see any need to restore it. – Fayenatic London 12:44, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see that this is apparently being solved already, but I was wondering (and maybe it's been said and I missed it) but why couldn't a similar fix that's done for initial lower case letters in article names be used to add a virtual colon to the article names for these? Or is it due to possible search engine confusion? - jc37 21:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That only works when the "replacement" title would link to the same article when placed into a wikilink. So iPhone can be used for IPhone, but Course: Oblivion cannot be used for Course Oblivion because they're different titles. Anomie ⚔ 23:50, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I interepreted Jc37's suggestion as using {{DISPLAYTITLE}}. That would work, except we'd need a a redirect, and the course namespace (in its current state) doesn't allow for redirects. Rob SchnautZ (WMF) ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:40, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Archive list alpha not working properly

The transclusion of {{Archive list alpha|root=Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)}} gives this:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO.

However, there are many more alpha-named archive pages:

AG, AH, AI, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AR, AT, AV, AX, AY, AZ.

I guess this is related to the gap at AF, but I couldn't figure out from the code why the enumeration would break off then; in any case, it shouldn't. --Lambiam 16:32, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Boldly created Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive AF as a redirect to .../Archive AG, which seems more efficient than rewriting the template to check the existence of every possible non-consecutive alpha archive subpage, so AG to AI are now also listed above, but the missing AJ still blocks the listing of subsequent subpages. If you agree that creating redirects is a sound approach, you could similarly create redirects for AJ, AQ, AS, AU and AW to complete the sequence. — Richardguk (talk) 22:20, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's a good idea. I tried moving the pages so they would have consecutive lettering (kmoving AG to AF, AH to AG and so on) and then realised that there are huge gaps in the timestamps in the missing archive. For example, the last discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive AI finished on the 12th of April while the first one at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive AK finished on the 26th of April. I'll ping Jarry1250 (talk · contribs), the owner of the bot that created the archives. Graham87 12:51, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I think these'll be archives blocked by the spam filter... annoying. I might get round to recreating them with the lost data - but it's not high on my priority list at the moment I'm afraid, sorry. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 22:19, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rollback link

I have a problem with Rollback links. There have been multiple times that when I was on my tablet that I accidentally hit the Rollback link on the watchlist. I don't use it normally is there any way to remove it from my watchlist? GB fan 04:07, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Customizing watchlists#Remove or modify the .5Brollback.5D link. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:22, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks that fixed it. GB fan 14:46, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summary tool

Is there a tool or gadget, or some other method, of saving a few custom edit summaries for easy selection from a drop-down list? AutoWikiBrowser, for example, allows users to specify and save custom edit summaries (see Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual#Options). I also know that the wikEd tool has something similar – I don't know if it can be customized – but I'm not quite comfortable with its other aspects or with Mozilla Firefox. Thank you, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 22:13, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I just whipped this up by tweaking the current gadget that offers some preset edit summaries. It still has those presets left over, but it wouldn't be a big deal to create another copy of this that omits them, if anyone wants something that only lists the custom summaries. Add this to your skin's .js page or your common.js page:

importScript('User:Equazcion/CustomSummaries.js'); //User:Equazcion/CustomSummaries.js
var customsum1 = "My first custom edit summary";
var customsum2 = "My second custom edit summary";
...

It supports up to 10 custom summaries right now. A drop-down menu will appear below the edit summary line, and the custom summaries will appear below the "leftover" presets in the list. Tested in Vector but I think it works in all skins. Equazcion ^(talk) 22:51, 22 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Wow, thank you! Would you please create the copy without the preset summaries? I don't mind typing short summaries such as "clean up" and I prefer to use more specific summaries than "Adding/improving reference(s)", but there are some long summaries that I use quite often and this tool will surely prove to be quite helpful. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 23:40, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No problem :) I created the copy. Use the same instructions, just change User:Equazcion/CustomSummaries.js to User:Equazcion/CustomSummariesOnly.js. Equazcion ^(talk) 00:40, 23 Jun 2012 (UTC)

See User:Equazcion/CustomSummaryPresets for the "official" documentation :) "CustomSummariesOnly.js" will still work, as it redirects to the new script name. Equazcion ^(talk) 02:41, 23 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Perfect! Thank you so much for your quick and effective assistance. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 19:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sneaky vandalism on a TFA

While it was Today's Featured Article (yesterday), there was a hijack code in place for a short time that took anyone who clicked on anything in Petrified Forest National Parkto a Shutterfly page. The highjack code was in one of the transcluded templates - see diff (and thanks to Little Mountain 5 for finding and fixing the problem). Anything we can do to prevent such occurrences in the future? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:21, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is an LTA issue. I think we have a filter for this. It probably needs to be updated. Elockid ^(Talk) 03:27, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - how is this a WP:LTA issue? Is there an idea who is behind this? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 13:52, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is supposedly Meepsheep and he's been vandalizing a number of projects for awhile. You can also find some more info here. Elockid ^(Talk) 01:34, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - is there anything else I need to do / anywhere else I should post this? Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 03:13, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not at the moment. But for future reference, it's a good idea to revdelete the diff(s) that contains the vandalism. Some admins also protect the template which has been vandalized. You can also report the account(s) to me so I can block whatever proxies they were editing from. Elockid ^(Talk) 17:20, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cite book ISBN retrieval

The cite tool for books has a field where you can plug in the ISBN and retrieve the book info (I assume). Is that working for anyone? My browser just sits there after I click the retrieve button. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:31, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please discuss at Wikipedia:RefToolbar. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:30, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Template:R from merge

Wonky business with this template? It's purpose, ostensibly, is to keep people from inadvertently deleting redirects where content has been moved elsewhere, since attribution issues require that we keep them. But the text cautioning of this seems to be visible only when reviewing the "diff" where it was placed.

Compare: [1]; [2].

Didn't that text used to be visible on the redirect itself? Is there something that it could do to make itself a bit more obtrusive so that editors don't inadvertently flag these redirects for deletion and, more importantly, admins who aren't paying attention don't delete them? Otherwise, is there really a lot of value to the template?

I'm listing this here in the presumption that something about the code is at issue. If not, please let me know, and I'll move it. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:43, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's normal behavior for any text beneath the #redirect [[Link]] and has been for so long as I've been using MediaWiki for my editing. --Izno (talk) 14:05, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

So, if it hasn't changed, is there any way to fix that or to make it obvious to editors to aid its function? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:07, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe so (through editing of the template), though you might want to ask the developers of the various scripts which aid in deletion tagging to add a note about it in their software. --Izno (talk) 14:13, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why we can't have the text appear when you navigate to the redirect page outside of diffs. That seems like a MediaWiki bug if it appears on a diff but not on the direct page, but if that's by design it should be changed; the info from all these redirect templates is useful to have right on the redirect page itself. --MASEM (t) 14:22, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I found mention of why this happens in {{This is a redirect}}'s doc that points to this bugzilla report [3] that appears to state that to avoid extra parsing, redirect pages like this only show the redirect and categories, but nothing's been done to fix up the bug for a couple years now. --MASEM (t) 14:30, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't avoid extra parsing since January 2006. Anomie ⚔ 15:57, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Creating a new user-right group

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37 (talk)

New proposal. - jc37 17:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Thanks Jc37 for a very well-written proposal. It is obvious that you have studied these issues for a long time. A moderator-admin (mod) without the ability to block or protect separates moderation from the hammer. Anything that puts the focus more on neutral content moderation earlier on, rather than user behavior is a good thing. See related discussion: Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-18/Investigative report‎. Mods will be able to close content-related discussions such as RM; DRV; AfD/CfD/FfD/TfD/MfD/etc.. Mods will be a separate group away from trigger-happy admins who oftentimes block without warning when implementing WP:Edit warring. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:08, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note that I am copying the above comment to the talk page for the proposal. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:13, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Longer edit summaries, please

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T6714

I just went to revert a change made by a IPv6 editor and the default text (179 characters) left me very little room to indicate the rationale for my revert. Typically, I just remove some of the extra stuff and just leave the editor's "name" if my comments run too long, but by default, this is far too much text. -- Avanu (talk) 17:15, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Are you talking about when you use the "undo" command? One solution is to just blank that long boilerplate message. I don't think that we are required to leave it in and IAR could apply if there is such a guideline. "Undo" is really no different then any other revert (except for rollback of course) but if you want to make a distinction you could do something along the lines of "Undo last edit because XXXXXX" and that might leave enough room. Having said that a longer edit summary field would be nice when trying to leave a detailed explanation. This is just one suggestion and I'm sure others may have a better one for you. MarnetteD | Talk 17:24, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There can't be a requirement to retain that message, because if you undo two or more consecutive edits as a single operation (using the (undo) link, not WP:ROLLBACK), you are presented with a blank edit summary to fill in. Anyway, the present limit of 250 characters has been the default for all users since about February or March 2011; prior to then the default was 200 but a gadget was available which pushed it ip to 250. 250-179=71 so the present limit is not too restrictive; there are two things you could do.

As Marnette suggests, you can remove part of the default summary; typically you get both a contributions link and a talk page link. The talk page link is probably the less-useful of the two, so remove that. You can also gain space by de-piping the contribs link - that is, change e.g. [[Special:Contributions/2001:470:890A:1:216:D4FF:FEEB:DF4B|2001:470:890A:1:216:D4FF:FEEB:DF4B]] into [[Special:Contributions/2001:470:890A:1:216:D4FF:FEEB:DF4B]] - the resultant display will be longer by 22 characters, but the actual stored text is shorter by the length of the IPv6 plus 1.

Another method is to use abbreviations, see Wikipedia:Edit summary legend. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:57, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Typically, if your edit summary is that long (and I do say "typically") then you should raise the issue instead on the talk page, i.e. because the undo requires the understanding of some nuance or point of balance that can't be explained in the style of Twitter. Anyway, yes, definitely shorten the default if necessary. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 12:20, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that longer edit summary space would be advantageous. Bus stop (talk) 12:33, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

While many of the above posters have been thoughtful in their suggestions about how to reduce the default text, I have to tell you guys, I already do this. I think it is helpful to have some indication left as to who you're reverting, and then of course why you're reverting them. I've removed spaces between punctuation, used clipped language, and occasionally abbreviated, I've re-written stuff to be shorter, etc etc, but sometimes it just takes a bit of text to explain the 'why' in a concise way for an edit summary. It is nice to be able to click a link for a reverted user's contribution history or Talk, or a section link to find the conversation faster. It feels a bit like the old DOS 8.3 limits with it being so constrained, although I understand we don't want novels in the edit summaries. It would be nice if it could have the actual user-generated section be an independent limit from the Wiki-generated stuff, although I know that right now that is just one open field. -- Avanu (talk) 14:08, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We're not going to get any increase over the present maximum of 250 bytes for an edit summary. Unlike the 200→250 increase last year, for which the space already existed, there is no space for a further increase so it would require a redefinition of parts of the database. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO the summarization and focus required to shorten something represents an INCREASE in communication. North8000 (talk) 14:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

One reason that I set up User:Wavelength/Note was so that I could link to long edit summaries, but I have not yet done so.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well you could get a 250→255 character increase, beyond that things get difficult. [Hey 5 characters is like 2 whole emoticons!]. Bawolff (talk) 17:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK- thinking out of the box- what actually is the History log for? Ten years ago- its function was simple, but now it really could be improved. If I go back to an article that I had heavily savaged (edited) two years previously- I can't remember what I did- (rm redlink, +2 ref) were fine at the time, but now I want to know why it is still only a C class. I want to see longer comments evaluating the text, and no I don't want to trawl the talk page. If the history page is asking for something I can easily do- then I will talk- and go on to do it. So I am saying there are now occasions when value is added by a longer comment.

I will go further and say that editing is more than swiping at an IP, in a percentages of cases making a full constructive comment will persuading to him come on board. I would also suggest that inadequate commenting is inhibiting the the conversion of Bs to FAs.

So heres an idea to explore. An extended History Comment is really like the opening sentence of Talk page Section. And we have five bytes to play with! So User:Verbose shoots through the 250 byte comment limit- javascript unhides a full edit box. He taps away a 780 byte comment. The first 250 bytes go to the History log and the next five form a reference to a section on the Talk page. Automagically a a new section is created on the talk page- titled Extended Comment by User:Verbose- and the entire section is saved there. Looking at the History log entry we see the first 250 char (or 500 perhaps) of the comment: if we do a 'cursor rollover' the whole comment displays in a pop-up. If there were follow up comments on the talk page, a blue link to the talkpage section is displayed.

--ClemRutter (talk) 23:41, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thats an interesting idea. And also at first glance sounds like it could be feasible. Bawolff (talk) 13:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:REVTALK has a some good ideas and some bad ideas. Some of the "good ideas" are part of such polices as WP:TPYES, WP:NPA, and WP:CIVIL. But it also has what I think are bad ideas. I think it is a bit simplistic of WP:REVTALK to say "Avoid using edit summaries to carry on debates…" Edit summaries are always going to be used in support of one's personal stance on whatever issue is at stake. I think that a more lengthy area for explaining one's reasoning for a given edit can serve a similar function to Talk page space. But very importantly we should not be misusing edit summary space and this should be enforced more strictly than it is at present. Using an edit summary to tell someone that they are a jerk should have repercussions. Along with longer edit summary space should be an emphasis in enhanced policy language encouraging the proper use of edit summary space. Though I am arguing for an increase in the space allotted for edit summaries I agree wholeheartedly with the comment above by North8000. We should always be aiming for succinctness and clarity. Bus stop (talk) 13:24, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Old deletion logs

Hi. I'm not sure if this is the right place to discuss this so please point me to somewhere more appropriate, if appropriate. Just now, I came across Wikipedia:Deletion_log_archive/November_2004_(3) -- a bunch of deletion logs were removed in September 2006 because of concerns about libellous content in the summaries. The admin who removed them said that they'd be restored "soon", without the summaries but that never happened. Will they ever be restored? (The admin in question is no longer an admin and is now largely inactive, with only four edits so far in 2012.) Dricherby (talk) 21:30, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is this needed for anything at this point? - jc37 21:41, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Probably not, to be honest. I came across it because it includes an article that was deleted at AfD and recreated several years later, before being AfDed again. Dricherby (talk) 21:55, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, as an old deletion log it probably shouldn't be restored for various reasons. (copy-vio/privacy/etc.)

However, I don't think it will be a problem showing you this individual line in this case.

06:14, 30 Nov 2004 Wile E. Heresiarch deleted Chet Anekwe (per vfd; see: [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Chet Anekwe]])

Hope this helps. - jc37 22:09, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, pretty much what could be inferred from the first AfD. :-) Thanks for taking the time to deal with my curiosity. Dricherby (talk) 22:52, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IMO they should be restored intact with noindex applied to all the deletion log pages, so they can be searchable onwiki. They're useful for people tracking old page histories on Wikipedia to find out what happened to old edits. For now they can be accessed through the Wayback Machine. Graham87 06:30, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Crat can't see code properly

Please see Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Renaming. Can anyone help me to see the code properly? Thanks --Dweller (talk) 22:22, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Dweller's been asking about this for awhile, It would be nice if he could get some serious help : ) - jc37 22:29, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It has been resolved by Dweller changing language from en-GB to en in preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:53, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with MatJaX

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T38059

Why i don't see correctly these formula?

a<b>c

f(x)={\begin{cases}x^{2}&{\mbox{if }}x\in A\\x^{3}&{\mbox{if }}x\in B\end{cases}}

--Dega180 (talk) 11:26, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

They look fine to me. You need to give more detail: what browser etc are you using and what do the formulae look like on your screen? Dricherby (talk) 11:56, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I use Firefox (Iceweasel) 13.0.1 and Chrome 19.0.1084.56. And I use the MathJaX extension in My preferences -> Appearance, not the nageh's scrpit. Instead the first formula I see

a<b>c (see the wiki code!)

and, in the second formula, I see

amp;

where there are & --Dega180 (talk) 12:19, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
PS:with the nageh's scrpit I see those formulas correctly but whit the official script of wikipedia in My preferences -> Appearance no, why?--Dega180 (talk) 12:34, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I also observe these problems. Ruslik_Zero 15:53, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Raised on 18 April 2012 as Bugzilla:36059 (which, despite being marked as "RESOLVED FIXED", is awaiting code review of the patches gerrit:9739/gerrit:10708). — Richardguk (talk) 17:31, 24 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Code reviewed and merged. Should be live in a couple weeks. Kaldari (talk) 04:57, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Add an edit link for the lead section" isn't working for me

I have long had the useful option "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" ticked in my preferences (under "Gadgets"), but suddenly it doesn't seem to be working any more. What happen? Bishonen | talk 11:56, 25 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]

It works for me. Try to clear your entire cache. If it still doesn't work: Do other gadgets work? Is it missing on all pages? What is your browser and skin? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:02, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Confirm working in Firefox 13.0.1 under Monobook and Vector. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:17, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strange. Yeah, I've cleared my cache; anyway, I've had this enabled for a long time without problems. It happens on all pages now. I use Mac OSX 10.6.8, SeaMonkey 2.10, and Monobook. I don't have any problems, that I've noticed, with any other gadgets. Bishonen | talk 12:25, 25 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]

It works for me in both Vector and MonoBook with Firefox on Windows Vista. I don't have a Mac. Is the [edit] link missing or is it visible but doesn't work? Does Vector work, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen?useskin=vector? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:33, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The link is missing for me in Monobook. Yes, Vector does work. Do you think I should change to Vector? I'll hardly do that just because of this issue, but is it better (as being the default skin) in some other ways? The reason I'm not using Vector now is that I actively dislike the placement of the Read, Edit, and View history links, top right, and especially the placement of the Search box. I've tried to get used to these features, but they're just… not friendly. ;/ To put it another way, it's undoubtedly because of rampant old fogeyism. I wonder if I'm the only wikipedian in the world using mac, mozilla, and monobook? :-( Bishonen | talk 15:00, 25 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]

I'm not suggesting a permanent switch to Vector. I'm just narrowing down the cause of the problem. Maybe it's something in User:Bishonen/monobook.js. Can you try another browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bishonen, there's a couple of things you could check for. Go to any page with more than one section; then use your browser's "View page source" (or equivalent) function. I'm afraid I don't know how to get that in SeaMonkey, but in Firefox it's Ctrl+U. Having obtained the page source, search for

"gadget-edittop":"1"

then search for

<script src="/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-edittop.js

If either of these are absent, try going to Preferences → Gadgets and turn off the "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" gadget, save, then turn it back on and save. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Experimentation shows it's caused by this from User:Bishonen/monobook.js:

document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Zocky/LinkComplete.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');

User:Zocky/LinkComplete.js hasn't been edited since 2007. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've had Zocky's LinkComplete in my monobook.js for donkey's years, and now it starts to cause trouble? Well, I don't profess to understand these things. I'll remove it. Thanks very much for checking it out, PrimeHunter, and you too, Redrose. You say I could try turning off the edittop gadget, then turning it back on? Sounds manageable, I'll try that first, before I throw out Zocky's script. Very kind of you both to look into the problem. Bishonen | talk 18:55, 25 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]

P.S. Report: removing the script had the desired effect. Holmes, this is amazing, how did you know? Thank you both again. Bishonen | talk 19:03, 25 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]

Elementary: the mud on your shoes is of a colour and texture found only in that part of the world, and there are slight scuff marks on the left of your hat brim where you raised it to scratch your head. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:09, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hehe. I'm still scratching it. Bishonen | talk 20:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]
P.S. The scratching helped: I eventually figured it out. :-) I must be very technically smart, I probably ought to be a developer. (This helped.) Bishonen | talk 23:41, 25 June 2012 (UTC).[reply]

I did say "Experimentation shows ...". PrimeHunter (talk) 01:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Adding a new feature to Wikipedia

Who do I talk to about potentially adding a new feature to Wikipedia?

It would be such a dramatic new way of viewing Wikipedia that I would like to start a dialog about it.

I have a demonstration website, but I do not want to reveal it here, as we are still testing and debugging it.

But there is enough there (on the demo website) that the right people will get the idea very quickly.

In other words, I don't want to give the URL out, here (publicly), and have it go viral before everything is sorted out.

Jroehl (talk) 15:07, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You are in the right place. How about a hint? :) --Timeshifter (talk) 18:12, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Timelines, done right. Automatically derived from Wikipedia articles. All configurable. With pictures.

Anybody who sends me and email to jroehl [at] yahoo.com I will send you a link to the demonstration website.

Jroehl (talk) 18:47, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why not just post the link here? If you are happy to give people the address via email then I don't see how the reasons that you give above apply. Or are you trying to harvest email addresses? Phil Bridger (talk) 13:57, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An AFD button on my Talk Page Watchlist page

Now, the AFD pages are something I like to hop to and visit fairly often, and to do it manually is rather tedious (type afd into wikipedia, click on link to Wikipedia:AFD, lcick on "today"). Yes, I know that this is a major first world problem, but if it;s possible for you guys to put an AFD button on my ~~talk page~~ watchlist page that links me to the current AFD page every day (i.e. it automatically updates), that would be awesome, and might also be of use to others. :D--Coin945 (talk) 22:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I put the link on your talk page. Copy the code to wherever you want, it'll always link to "today's" discussions. Equazcion ^(talk) 22:36, 25 Jun 2012 (UTC)

PS. It's [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/{{#time:Y F j}}]] Equazcion ^(talk) 22:37, 25 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Cheers :) I actually meant my watchlist page (oops)... a blatant typo. That's why I said "button". While I appreciate what you did for me, is it possible to do what I had intended my proposal to be: a button on the watchlist page that links to the current afd page?--Coin945 (talk) 23:27, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could bookmark Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/Today in your browser? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:44, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Or type WP:AFD/TODAY into the search box. Graham87 11:35, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thankyou very much. :D I went with your idea, John of Reading, but I'll def keep that in mind 87 - very handy.. :) (although now there's a new problem - although the page is on my watchlist, it doesn't really help unless its regularly updated - otherwise it falls through the cracks until it's off my watchlist... I;m guessing this is because it merely compiles info from other wiki pages, much like the XFD page.--Coin945 (talk) 16:34, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New editor feedback

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T39947

Newer editors are asked how Wikipedia makes them feel (happy, sad, etc.) It is a prompt at the top of the page. I have disabled this feature multiple times, but whenever I log in to a new IP, it prompts me for my feedback again. Can someone please ask the right someone to please fix this? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 00:00, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This should indeed be fixed. Right now the disabling is done via cookie (with an expiry to 365 days, so it should only come back after that time period, or if you're using a different browser, or not permitting cookies to be set, or clearing your cookies). But it should be done as a user preference, which is now pretty straightforward to integrate into the UI thanks to the recently deployed preferences API.--Eloquence * 03:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Taking away a particular user right. Or deleting the auoconfirmed status.

Shouldn't administrators be able to takeout a specific right of a user? Some users have very good intentions. But due to some flaws of them, their edits become destructive and finally gets blocked. Here is an example of such a user, User:Alvaro Filbert. The only problem with him is that he creates large number of articles with less content which are circular, not notable and unsourced. But the edits that he has done are all intended to be constructive. Many users warned him but he didn't respond to it. The reply he made against block was very polite as he apologize but this doesn't no change was found in his nature of article creation. Due to the disruptive nature of articles created by them (though they are intended to be constructive) got him blocked (initially a 24 hour one and then, when he continued the same without any change, got permanently blocked). (You can see the discussions here on 1, 2 and his talk page). Suppose that we have a possibility to take his right of creating articles, then he would have been a completely constructive editor.

The same applies to those good users who edits constructively but uploads copyrighted or badquality images (ignoring warnings) and gets blocked. So if we were able to take away such user rights (for a specific period of time), then these users will start editing constructively. ~~It appears strange to me to know that we can take away user packages such as autoreviewer, rollbacker, etc. and even adminshp but not the simplest autoconfirmed status!~~ Also note that it is very hard to convert a vandal to a good faith editor. At the same time a real good faith editor seldom becomes a vandal even if he is extremely disappointed, rather he may stop editing. So instead of trying a block, why not let him edit without causing trouble to 'pedia? When he gains experience, he becomes a responsible editor and at that time if he get the rights back, he will do it without any disruptive nature. Vanischenu m^Talk 14:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Autoconfirmed isn't a "right" that can be set or removed: it's checked automatically whenever a non-confiremed user retrieves a page. If they have 10 edits and 4 days, they're autoconfirmed, otherwise not.

Admins have the right to grant and remove the "confirmed user" right, but this is ineffective if the user concerned is already autoconfirmed.

Admins can grant or remove any of the following: reviewer; autochecked user; account creator; IP block exempt; rollbacker; confirmed user; autopatrolled; file mover; edit filter manager. The following rights may be altered, but not by admins: bot; administrator; bureaucrat; steward; importer; transwiki importer; oversight; founder; researcher; checkuser; afttest; afttest-hide.

Please note that users don't need to be autoconfirmed in order to create pages: they merely need to be registered. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Redrose64. It's a mistake from me to think that new users can't create a page. Sorry for thinking like that. But if we were able to take out autoconfirmed status, then, it would have provided a solution for those users who with contributes with good intentions but uploads copyrighted images even after many warnings. What about making these rights to the user blockable so that. instead of completely blocking them, we can block specific problamatic rights of good users.Vanischenu m^Talk 16:35, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Single transclusion templates still deleted?

Some times ago I experienced that, when a Template was used only once (transcluded only once), it could be deleted by TfD for that single reason (no sound reasoning pro/con needed). Does this still apply? And if yes: where to kill it? -DePiep (talk) 23:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's not an automatic reason for deletion. If the template is unlikely to get more uses then it can be an argument in a discussion at WP:TFD, but there may not be consensus for deletion. I don't know which past discussion you refer to but it may simply have been one where the participants saw no reason to keep that particular template. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:38, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I won't do past examples for now. The problem is, these purists can still pop up in the future. Feels like I am supposed to prove beforehand, to someone unknown, that it will be Great and multi-use. For this reason, I am withholding otherwise OK new template now: fear that I must go to TfD 2nd step.

Why must I prepare for another 3/4 page of standard arguments (yes I can make a T for that -- would not be deleted) when I start a template?

Why is it even an argument in itself? It better be banned like the "we should mind server load" thing. -DePiep (talk) 00:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I second this. I've been watching a slew of templates being deleted as "unused". Why? Is there suddenly some server space storage limitation that we didn't hear about? - jc37 01:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Over 120 single-use templates survived TfD in April this year. No names, but there are some on a mission to delete as many templates as possible, regardless of the inconvenience caused. A stock reason for deletion is "redundant". Infoboxes are a prime target; if all these TfDs closed "delete" we'd have just three left - {{Infobox person}}, {{Infobox settlement}}, and, er, {{Infobox}} for everything else.

It should be remembered that because we retain all history, the TfD page itself will probably occupy more database space than the template under discussion. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:09, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Script kiddies wanted

I have a task that I want to carry out but I need the expertise of some sort of script or bot. Template:ASIN links directly to an article fro sale at Amazon.com. I DONT LIKE THIS. I have asked for the templates to be deleted. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_June_25#Template:ASIN. If I do manage to get the template deleted we need to get the references changed to another source. When the tempate parameter bigins with a numeral the parameter is actually an ISBN. It should be easy to turn these cases into the {{cite book}} references. Not sure what to do with other uses. Anyone up for sorting this out? Cheers. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:25, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, there's no reason why a citation to a book should be using {{ASIN}} in lieu of {{cite book}} if the ASIN value equals the ISBN. Are you sure that's what you're dealing with? Sometimes it has been used to cite Amazon's webpage about a book, video, or other. If indeed it is a citation to the book itself, there should be no cause for objection to providing the proper link. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:50, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at George Harrison. Two amazon links that go to books. And that was about the first one I looked at! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Static IP users and IPv6

Another discussion prompted me to think about this. We have some great IP editors who work from static IPs. However, the shift towards IPv6 means they will likely be switched to the new identifier once that happens.

Which means their userpage (if any) and contributions will reside on the "old" IPv4 listing, divorced from the new IPv6 "account." IP editors in general will get a clean slate whenever their ISP switches to IPv6.

I'm guessing IP editors in good standing could request their user pages moved to the new IPv6 "account," but contributions would be a problem. And even making sure it's the same person could be an issue.

I don't know what we could do to fix this, but I think it needs some community discussion, to see if we have reasonable options. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 13:48, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We actually have a system in place to handle changing IPs. It's called registering an account :) But seriously, yes, that's the answer. Any IP that wishes to not have their contribs and "userspace" at the mercy of their ISP's IP deployment whims should register an account; if they choose not to for whatever reason, I don't think it's "on us" to spend time and effort accommodating them. The tools are there already, should they care to use them. Equazcion ^(talk) 13:52, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Comment "Which means their userpage (if any) and contributions will reside on the "old" IPv4 listing, divorced from the new IPv6 "account." "

Well, it's not their userpage, nor their contributions, since anyone who is assigned that IP may make contributions under that IP. On the other hand CC-BY-SA 3.0 also applies to IP contributions. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 14:35, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bots adding incorrect interwiki

The article Hantavirus has an interwiki link to mg:Hanta, which is about a Malagasy musician. A few years ago I tried removing the link, but various bots helpfully restore them. As long as the link is made on some language's Wikipedia, it will be propagated by bots to all of them. On one occasion, I even tried to remove it from the article in each language, but it doesn't seem to have been enough. Perhaps an editor on one of those Wikipedias added it back in. How can I prevent bots from equating hemorrhagic fever with a practitioner of traditional music from Madagascar? Shouldn't they be smart enough to avoid re-adding something that's been repeatedly removed by a human editor? --Amble (talk) 14:20, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be reasonable to add {{bots|deny=HRoestBot}} to the various pages as you remove mg:Hanta from each one? Then removing the tag once that has occurred? It would be a decent amount of work, but should solve the problem. Did you remember to remove all of the interwiki's form mg:Hanta the first time you did it? On second thought, bots like AvicBot also do interwiki links. It might be necessary to add {{nobots}} while you are in the process. Ryan Vesey Review me! 14:32, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I successfully removed them all several years ago. I base this conclusion on the fact that the incorrect interlanguage links didn't reappear for about a year. Yes, I certainly removed all the interlanguage links from mg:Hanta. However, it somehow crept back in after a year. The point of my question is that removing all the inappropriate interlanguage links, across all Wikipedias, did not permanently solve the problem. --Amble (talk) 14:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than remove them, comment them out. That is, when you see

[[mg:Hanta]]

alter this to

That will fool the bots into thinking that the link is present (when in fact it isn't), so they won't attempt to re-add it. It's best to go around all the foreign-language pages doing the same thing: this will stop the bots from even coming here to check. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:51, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly enough, I just finished doing that to the English wiki page as you wrote it and came to comment. It would be great if somebody could come up with a more intelligent bot, rather than making it necessary to fool the bots though. Ryan Vesey Review me! 14:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with naming specific bots, as in {{bots|deny=HRoestBot,AvicBot}}, is that there are simply dozens of bots which maintain the interlanguage links, and if one or two are prevented, one or another of the others will surely do the same bad edit.

{{nobots}} is rather drastic because it'll stop the nice helpful bots too. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:59, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Redrose, that solves the problem for our article on Hantavirus. Looking through the history on the various languages, I find that the spurious interlanguage links started to reappear on September 10, 2009, and all of them claim to have been added by various bots! I haven't been able to tell which one came first, but one of these bot edits re-made an interwiki link that didn't currently exist on any language's Wikipedia. That seems to be a bit of misbehavior.

More generally, when I look at the talk pages for the interwiki bots, I see various people asking about the same thing, and being given bad advice. They are often told to go through the articles in each language and remove the offending links. That doesn't work, and we shouldn't send people on a fool's errand. (Not to mention that it's quite a daunting task to go through articles in a list of unfamiliar languages, determine whether the topic is the same, and make an edit in each.) Wouldn't it be reasonable to ask that bots adding interwiki links should have (1) an edit summary including a link to advice for cleaning up spurious additions; and (2) similar information on the bot user page? --Amble (talk) 15:25, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't actually handle any bots; I merely hand out some advice that I found somewhere a year or so back, and have found to be effective. Thus, I can't change bot behaviour: you could post at WP:BON, but bear in mind that many interlanguage link maintenance bots are based on the Wikipedia of another language, so they might not visit our WP:BON. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:52, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, understood. I have posted at WP:BON as well. --Amble (talk) 16:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that a while back the dab page at Hanta was erroneously replaced by a redirect to Hantavirus. I've restored it to passify the bots, but it would help if the trio described at mg:Hanta had a rather cleaner article, with a major-language translation.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:29, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In the future, all interwiki links will be stored on Wikidata, which sounds much more sane than the current setup. Graham87 06:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can someone please explain why we need a long list of different poorly-documented interwiki bots, and with global permissions? Having them wheelwar as they did in this case is just daft. At minimum, they should all be exclusion compliant, but that doesn't seem to be the case. They should also be checking to see if they are repeating a previously-reverted edit, but that too seems not to be the case. They should all have links to their approval pages, but no, that isn't the case either. Who's running this farce? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:30, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could ask at WP:BON - but looking at the discussion going on there as a result of the last time that I suggested it (yesterday, 15:52, 27 June 2012), any replies to a new thread could be interesting. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:04, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done. How about we close off this discussion here and just continue there at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard. It's getting very confusing.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Last updated" feature

I have the pref enabled to display an edit tab at the top-right for editing the lead section of an article. On pages where the "Last updated" thing appears, it overlaps with that extra edit tab, meaning whenever I try to edit the lead I end up viewing the page history instead. Is there any way to either disable or move the "last updated", or otherwise fix this issue? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:55, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think if you check "Exclude me from feature experiments" in Preferences -> Appearance -> Advanced, "last updated" should disappear. Equazcion ^(talk) 14:59, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, which pages are you getting this on? I thought that the seven-day test was over. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There was a bug in the initial code, so we had to disable it and reboot a few days later, but this should be taken down in the next day or so. I'll check in with Ori.livneh about that ASAP.

Also, Nikkimaria, does it really overlap? I have that lead edit feature enabled as well, and the timestamp shows up okay for me – it gets awful close but doesn't touch. Which browser are you using? Maryana (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like Nikkimaria is using Monobook, FYI. S/he also seems to be referring to a tab rather than an edit link, not sure if that's what happens in Monobook when you check the gadget, or how that would get placed. Equazcion ^(talk) 16:00, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Monoboooook! (in the Wrath of Khan voice, naturally.)

Kidding, kidding :) I just tried it out on Monobook and it looked fine to me, so I guess that wasn't the pref I was thinking of – any idea what that edit tab thingy is called and where in preferences it lives (appearance? editing?)? Sorry it's being buggy for you, but thank you for your help with debugging! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not Monobook, Modern with Firefox. Here's a screenshot, if it helps (from United States) - if I click on the line under "Edit" I can edit the lead, click anywhere else on the edit button and I get the page history. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:55, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Yes, that's very helpful. These days, it's virtually impossible to account for all permutations of user preferences/gadgets/scripts when adding a new feature. Luckily, doing short tests like this surfaces the problems and lets us know what to look out for in the future. Will add this to the list of things that might conflict with the top right above-the-bar element placement. Thanks again, and sorry to hassle you – I hope you won't opt out of all our experiments permanently, though, because it would be extremely useful to have your user experience on hand for this very reason! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At Preferences → Appearance, I've tried most combinations of Monobook/Vector; Exclude me from feature experiments; Don't show the Article feedback widget on pages, but I can't get this Last Updated thing to show on United States at all. Is it on any other pages? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's an A/B test, so you probably ended up in the control bucket. We've been using Goldberg Variations as our test page (so we don't pollute our data too much) – if you clear your cache and try again, you might have better luck seeing LastModified in action there. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Update – double-checked with my team, and it looks like the test will end ~~tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon SF time. Thanks again for your bug reports and your patience :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 27 June 2012 (UTC)~~ ... actually, should be turned off nowish (had an open deployment window and figured we'd go for it). Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Content encoding error?

I got this when trying to load my watchlist, and now it won't load at all. Other pages are loading fine. I'm sure this is just a temporary glitch of some kind, but wanted to post anyway -- especially because of this "Content encoding error" that I've never (literally never, from any site) seen before. Though it could just be the latest Firefox's new way to report an old problem... Equazcion ^(talk) 15:53, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)

And now my watchlist started loading again. It was down for about 10 minutes, give or take. Equazcion ^(talk) 15:56, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)

I got this error also but it only lasted a second. Elockid ^(Talk) 16:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unbundling delete and undelete

Here is a question for the developers:

Over Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37 the question came up of giving a user the delete user right without the undelete user right (undelete requires viewing deleted pages, and the WMF wants to minimize the number of users who can do that). This, of course would make deletion "one-way" - the user could not undo a mistaken deletion.

My question is whether the above assumption is necessarily true. Would it be possible to allow a user see his own just-deleted page without letting him see all the other pages that were deleted by other users? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:37, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Without weighing in on the merits of unbundling, if we were to carve out a delete role, I would support allowing a user who deleted a file to be able to see that file. I'd go further and allow undeletion of that file, in order to help ensure that an accidental deletion could be fixed without needing to track down an admin. I would only allow this if the user in question were the most recent one to delete the file. --SPhilbrick (Talk) 18:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I oppose such unbundling (for reasons that I've conveyed in the past and probably needn't repeat here and now), but if it were to occur, it's my opinion that users' ability to view and restore files that they deleted (assuming that no one else did in the interim, as Sphilbrick noted) is an absolute must. —David Levy 18:18, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I realize, of course, that you're inquiring as to whether such a setup is technically feasible (and I have no idea). —David Levy 18:18, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"...the WMF wants to minimize the number of users who can do that)" - To clarify (and I asked for clarification on this), that is not what was said at all. They said that the standard for giving out the ability to see undeleted material to moderators must be the same standard as giving the ability to see deleted material to administrators. That the standards must be the same. - jc37 19:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for my poor paraphrasing. Sorry about that, and thanks for the clarification. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

With enough programming man power and more importantly enough people asking for something, anything is possible! However this sounds like something that would be quite tricky to do and end up being hacky and lots of work. Which user deleted what currently is only stored in the logging table, in the current schema which revision got deleted by which user is not stored. Keep in mind that multiple people can delete a page, pages can be partially undeleted, etc. (You can go by timestamp of when user deleted the page, but that's not accurate as things can get partially undeleted. I suppose you could say let person who deleted view only the top revision that was deleted if they were the last person to delete that page, which kind of works, but undeletion would still be an issue). To do what is suggested in any sort of sane way would need a schema change (imho), which would probably be problamatic, especially for such a minor feature. So I would answer the original question with a No. (This is of course just my personal opinion). Bawolff (talk) 19:47, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I really dislike things that are "quite tricky to do and end up being hacky and lots of work". The times I have seen that sort of thing pushed through have not ended well. I was hoping for an answer like "No problem! Just flip the DoWhatGuyAskedAbout bit" (smile). --Guy Macon (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not grasping the technical problem. I'm assuming that if we create the new right, there would be admins, with the general ability to delete and undelete, and moderators with the general ability to delete, and a limited ability to undelete and see deleted material. If someone comes along and attempts to view or undelete "Deleted_Article" the software would follow the rule: If admin allow. If moderator, allow only if the most recent deletion was performed by that user. I believe all deleted files carry with them the name of the user who deleted the file. What information is missing in order to implement this rule?

I'll also point out what may be obvious, but is relevant -- such a right, even if given to thousands, does not materially affect the WMF goal of keeping access to deleted material to a minimum. By definition, if a moderator deletes a file, they saw it assuming they would never delete without looking at it). So allowing this moderator (along with admins), the right to see the file, doesn't increase by a single person the number of people who can view the file. At the very extreme, if you argue that being able to see the file you saw before, but now see it later is an extension of the number of people who can see it, that still means the number who could see it before this right existed is 1468, and would be, with this new right 1469, even if we grant the right to 1000 moderators. We expand the right by this much every time we promote an admin.--SPhilbrick (Talk) 23:46, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The technical problem is that the ability to give some group the right to view only deleted material that they themselves deleted does not currently exist, and in fact the ability to effectively track just who it was that deleted a particular revision does not currently exist either. Someone would need to write the code, debug it, plan the necessary changes to the database, and get it reviewed and merged. Anomie ⚔ 01:50, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Re Sphilbrick: Multiple people can delete a page. (Someone could create a page, then delete it, then recreate it, etc). So in your suggested scheme, a moderator could gain access to any page's deleted content by simply creating a page with the same name as the deleted one, then deleting what they just created, which would give them access to all the previous deleted revisions. (I suppose one could look at the ar_page_id field to try to determine if someone is doing that, but that seems really really hacky). Bawolff (talk) 12:46, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Conditional expressions in wikilinks now

I recently noticed that conditional expressions are allowed now inside wikilinks. For years, I had tried similar use of #ifexpr inside "[[ ]]" but it never worked. I wonder when this was first allowed:

Try: [[temperature|{{#ifexpr: {{{1|97}}} > 85|hot|else mild}}]] → hot

Try:

[[{{#ifeq:FREEZE|T|temperature|freezer}}|{{
  #switch: {{{1|-4}}}
  | 86|87|88|89|90|91|92|93|94|95|96|97|98|99|100|101 = hot
  | 10|9|8|7|6|5|4|3|2|1|0 = cold
  | -1|-2|-3|-4|-5|-6|-7|-8|-9|-10|-11 = very cold
  | #default = mild
  }}]]

→ very cold

Does anyone know when expressions (#ifeq & #switch) inside wikilinks were first allowed, or has it been possible for a long time now? -Wikid77 (talk) 19:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No idea. What I'd like to know is, what possible use model does this have? I hope people will keep it out of mainspace. It sounds like a great way to confuse readers, with really no upside that I can think of. --Trovatore (talk) 19:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are numerous possible uses, with calculated values, such as if result=1 then link "thing" else link "things" (plural). The efficiency is best in cases where the contents of the link are being generated from multiple parameters, so that one link is formatted for all cases, rather than having a list of links depending on each set of parameter values. Formerly, we repeated the entire link for each combination of possible values. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In what context would you do that in mainspace? When you're writing an article, hopefully you always know exactly what you want to link to. --Trovatore (talk) 21:07, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note that if you want plural handling, there is both the {{plural}} parser function and the {{plural}} template. I don't see much use for this in mainspace, but in templates it can be very useful. Anomie ⚔ 01:56, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's actually been around for quite some time – a year at the very least. One handy thing it allowed for was A/B testing user warning templates and deletion notices :) but I'm not sure what the original use-case was. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why is the table forced to the end of the article?

In the Bajan's list, the table is displayed below references, even through it is above template reflist. Any idea why? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 19:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like the table wasn't closed correctly. I have fixed it. Chris857 (talk) 20:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IPv6 is now enabled but broken

Wikipedia has started to be terribly slow (30 seconds for each request - IPv6 timeout of my Squid). This is because en.wikipedia.org has AAAA record now but its connectivity does not work:

$ tcptraceroute6 -q1 en.wikipedia.org

traceroute to wikipedia-lb.esams.wikimedia.org (2620:0:862:ed1a::1) from 2a02:2b88:2:1::270:2, port 80, from port 42569, 30 hops max, 60 bytes packets

1  vps.jankratochvil.net (2a02:2b88:2:1::270:0)  68.706 ms

2  rv2-gw-ipv6.wedos.net (2a02:2b88:2:1::1)  74.828 ms

3  r4-b.wedos.net (2a02:2b88:0:2::10)  90.764 ms

4  gw-wedos.kaora.cz (2a00:1790:0:f034::1)  77.829 ms

5  10gigabitethernet1-3.core1.prg1.he.net (2001:7f8:14::6e:1)  115.619 ms

6  10gigabitethernet5-2.core1.fra1.he.net (2001:470:0:213::1)  83.468 ms

7  10gigabitethernet1-4.core1.ams1.he.net (2001:470:0:47::1)  68.247 ms

8  xe-1-1-0.cr2-knams.wikimedia.org (2001:7f8:1::a504:3821:1)  115.254 ms

9  *

Normal traceroute6 (UDP6) behaves the same (it is also broken). Other IPv6 connectivity incl. http://ipv6.google.com works for me great. IPv4 for Wikipedia works for me. OS is updated Fedora 16 x86_64. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jankratochvil (talk • contribs) 21:07, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably your ISP, because it works perfectly fine for me. You seem to be suffering IPv6 brokenness.--Jasper Deng (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As you can see the connectivity is OK till the wikimedia.org domain. Sure the packets may be dropped only while returning through my ISP but I doubt that; going to bugreport it to my local ISP anyway.--Jankratochvil (talk) 21:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, though. It may be an issue with that particular cluster, the one serving Europe; I use one of the US clusters.--Jasper Deng (talk) 21:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I've spoken with some folks familiar with this and it's not the WMF's problem, it's probably a problem on your side.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:14, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Whose side? I'm not following. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:17, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Basically the problem is with your ISP or your home network configuration.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Jankratochvil's ISP. But thanks ... I mistook you for the OP. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Could you suggest more the reason? I cannot debug it when the packets get lost in WMF. I understand IPv6, I am providing IPv6 via openvpn tunnel from my own server (=vps). Through more than a year I have successfully bugreported various servers behaving this way which got fixed.--Jankratochvil (talk) 22:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Something's wrong with routing or something, that's what it appears. It may be possible that your packets got discarded by the Wikimedia routers for some reason.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:03, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

FYI it has started to work today, I do not know why.--Jankratochvil (talk) 13:01, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Odd userspace markup

I found this widget on the internet and thought I'd add it to User:Ryan Vesey/Flag to transclude onto my user page. For some reason it appears on my userpage as markup language. Why is this? Is it possible for this to work? Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:25, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can't transclude content from other websites on Wikipedia. That would be a huge security risk, especially for JavaScript. Additionally <a> tags are not permitted in wikitext, see Help:HTML in wikitext for the selection of tags which are allowed. the wub "?!" 21:39, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

For the record: anchor tags will be allowed once a fix for bug 33886 gets reviewed. Helder 21:22, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No WP images displaying

Hi. I've woken this morning (in Australia) to find no images displaying in any WP article. I've tried various articles via Chrome (logged-in) and IE (not logged-in)—but no images show in either configuration. I therefore don't believe the problem is related to browser or account settings. I'm seeing images displayed in non-WP pages. I also notice that toolserver.org is not resolving. I thought that I'd flag this in case anyone is noticing similar issues. Cheers. GFHandel ♬ 22:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It works for me. Images are hosted at wikimedia.org, for example http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Example.jpg. Does that resolve for you? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:35, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I can see that example image, but I still can't see any image on any WP page (including the WP logo on the main page). GFHandel ♬ 22:42, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a setting at your end although it's odd that two browsers are affected. Can you see an image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Example.jpg which should display http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Example.jpg? How about http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Example.jpg which should display http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Example.jpg? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:58, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not resolving any of those images any more. Oh well, if no one else reports problems, then I'll wait to see what develops at my end. Thanks for helping. GFHandel ♬ 23:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

An update: without changing a single thing at my end, all pictures suddenly started displaying normally (about ten minutes ago). GFHandel ♬ 23:56, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Has WP's default font changed?

I have not changed my browser or it's settings, but wikipedia's font is appearing very small, thin, and jagged – as opposed to the strong Arial font that I'm used to. Can anyone explain this? – Confession0791 ^talk 03:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

File:RC font.PNG

Wikipedia's font is controlled by your own computer. Are you having this problem on any other sites? I had a similar problem years ago, and it turned out that a number of fonts had simply disappeared off my computer's hard drive, and I had to reinstall them. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:40, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Problem solved. It was my browser's settings. – Confession0791 ^talk 04:54, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Odd template glitch

Why isn't the word "Agency" showing before the word "executive" in the infobox in this article? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 09:19, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Because |type= is present, but blank. That parameter should either be filled in or removed. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:46, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:06, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image software

There is an image (here) about African religions which omits mention of the irreligious community in Africa. Does anyone know of software or a website where i can modify the map to add an "irreligious" section? Pass a Method talk 09:31, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You could use Paint.Net. However the current image came from sources listed here: File:Religion distribution.png#Summary. If you make changes you'll probably need to source them too. Equazcion ^(talk) 09:55, 28 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist with no collapsed entries

I often like to post welcome messages on new users' talk pages. I do that as part of working through recent changes on my watchlist. This would be easier if there was some way that I could simultaneously expand all collapsed entries on the list. Is there some way I can achieve this? __meco (talk) 13:22, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What collapsed entries? there's nothing on my watchlist with show/hide links, or equivalent, other than the [dismiss] thing for the notices at the top. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:53, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's because you evidently have not checked the box for "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" on Special:Preferences, while meco apparently has. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I have: it was one of the first prefs that I altered, over three years ago. There are, at present, 26 rows linking to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) dated 28 June 2012, and not the single one that I would expect if I didn't have that preference set. There is no facility for collapsing these down to a single one, other than unsetting that preference. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

R'n'B's explanation was incomplete. After enabling "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent", also enabling Preferences → Recent changes → Enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript) gives the grouping-and-collapsing. Anomie ⚔ 19:45, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've always ignored that setting because I never use the Recent changes feature. Checking, I see that "Enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript)" is turned off: and I'm certain that I've never switched it on. Having now turned it on, I see that it does add a number of blue expand/collapse triangles to the watchlist (note to devs: pls update documentation). It also causes Firefox to complain about high memory usage... --Redrose64 (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@meco, if you add the following lines to the end of your Special:MyPage/skin.js, it will add an "Expand all changes" link to the "Toolbox" section on your Watchlist:

if ( mw.config.get('wgPageName') === "Special:Watchlist" ) {
   mw.util.addPortletLink( 'p-tb', '#', 'Expand all changes', 'wl-expand-all' );
   $('#wl-expand-all').click( function (e) {
       e.preventDefault();
       $('.mw-collapsible-toggle').click();
   });
}

(More correctly, it should say "Toggle all changes", since it will expand them if they are collapsed, and collapse them if they are expanded.) Good luck! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:35, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I did as you've suggested but no changes. __meco (talk) 21:56, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Did you follow the instructions when you saved the .js page to refresh your cache? If so, what's your browser? I've tested this successfully on Chrome, Firefox, and IE 8 (the latter was quite slow but did work). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:37, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I use Firefox 13.0 and I've done as instructed. I use the Monobook skin if that makes a difference. __meco (talk) 08:02, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The skin shouldn't make a difference. When you go to your watchlist, what happens? (a) There is no "Expand all changes" link in the toolbox area on the left. (b) there is an "Expand all changes" link but nothing happens when you click on it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:07, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I found it now! I was looking in the wrong place. And it works. Much appreciated! __meco (talk) 12:23, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Email from IPs

How much tech would be involved to add an option in preferences that would allow users to accept email from IPs? I was toying with the idea as a proposal if it hasn't been shot down before. Another option would be email from blocked IPs as well, but that may get shot down fast.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:39, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like that too. I'd be open to accepting email from IPs as long as there was a way for me to immediately shut it down. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:13, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, most may wish it off most of the time. The scenario I was thinking is 1) IP leaves message on talk page. 2) User turns email on from IPs and gets email. 3) User turns off again in preferences. This way IPs could contact users about sensitive subjects and remain anon.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:26, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would be a mess logistically. Where would the reply-to email address come from? Anons can't set an email address in preferences, and letting them isn't feasible. Unless they were allowed to input one just for a single email, which would have to be verified... It doesn't seem worth it. Anyone who wants to email can register an account and have that ability pretty quickly anyway, and as it's been pointed out before, people actually end up being far more anonymous when they do register an account. Doesn't seem worth the effort, even if it were feasible. Equazcion ^(talk) 10:12, 29 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Okay. I will mark this section resolved then.

Resolved

--Canoe1967 (talk) 13:59, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Stylesheets just broke?

All of wikipedia seems to have just lost its stylesheets for me. (Hohum ^@) 18:34, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And they're back. (Hohum ^@) 18:35, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Happens occasionally, but it's nice to know what it was. Thanks. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:37, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am seeing no styling when using https, normal when using http. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:38, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is working now. I tried http and https twice each on Firefox, IE and Opera, clearing cache between attempts. http always had styling, https never did. tried again 15 minutes later, everything normal. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To me something seems seriously wrong with the article Guru Har Krishan, there is no style applied whatsoever. I get it that ... humpf ... now it's working again. OK, I take it that "happens occasionally" happened to me too. Some glitch in the serving of Javascript combined with caching on my computer. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 18:45, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Notice: Bug 38040 (Rollbacker)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40040

I just posted bug 38040 to bugzilla, which said the following:

Bug 38040

Hi.

Recently several additional user-rights were added to the Rollbacker user-group. (See Special:ListGroupRights.)

This was done in relation to the poll at Wikipedia_talk:Article_Feedback_Tool/Version_5/Archive2#Request_for_Comment. (There were apparently 15 total commenters.)

I believe that this was of course well-meant.

However, the poll in question is by it's nature a "local consensus".

To quote: Wikipedia:Consensus#Level_of_consensus:

"Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope.

Wikipedia has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community. As a result, editors often propose substantive changes on the talk page first to permit discussion before implementing the change. Changes may be made without prior discussion, but they are subject to a high level of scrutiny. The community is more likely to accept edits to policy if they are made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others."

What was the wider community consensus in this case?

Wikipedia:Non-administrator rollback - The over-all poll is located at Wikipedia:Non-administrator rollback/Poll with the very lengthy discussion on several sub-pages and talk pages, including Wikipedia talk:Non-administrator rollback

This was (as you can read) a very contentious discussion. And gained consensus specifically because the user-right group only contained one user-right. (Something similar could be said concerning several other single-user-right user groups given out by administrators.)

While I firmly believe that consensus can change, I believe that a recent poll of 15 editors should probably not undo one of over 450 editors.

In addition, even in this recent poll, it was suggested that the reviewer user group (a package of several user-rights which also "mark edits") be used for this, rather than rollbacker.

And it could be suggested that the poll itself was not clear about this (even the nominator appeared to not be sure about this.)

I understand being enthusiastic about the upcoming roll-out, but as you can see here Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Granted_local_rights_to_WMF_staff (another well-intended, enthusiastic project - which appears to be taking community concerns very seriously, and is working on resolving the related issues), the community would appear to jealously protect their right to approve such things.

And subsequent to this, Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Reviewer has been re-activated, and people are already requesting the reviewer user-right in preparation for this. So there is also no "need" for rollbacker to have these extra rights, (except the understandable want to have a broader editor base of those who have these rights).

So anyway, I'm requesting that these "extra-user-rights" be removed from rollbacker until a clearer (and broader) community discussion may be had.

As an aside to this issue, autoconfirmed and rollbacker were given:

Feature/Resolve feedback (aftv5-feature-feedback)

However, reviewer was not. This appears to be an oversight, rather than intentional. So I would also ask that this be fixed and assigned to reviewer.

Thank you for your time,

jc37

- jc37 20:32, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

HTML5 is comming (again)

Does anyone know of any [t]echnical hurdles for enabling $wgHtml5 on Wikimedia sites?

The change is going to be scheduled soon. Helder 21:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Bug, if they're not going to disable $wgExperimentalHtmlIds (or did someone fix that already?). Anomie ⚔ 23:48, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. $wgExperimentalHtmlIds appears to be off in DefaultSettings.php, and doesn't seem to appear in our site config, but I don't think that's been considered. Thanks for bringing it up! Would someone here be willing to test if the problem in Template:Bug is a problem on https://test2.wikipedia.org , and report a separate bug in Bugzilla if this is still a problem? -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 17:23, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Script list location

I'd like to move Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts → Wikipedia:User scripts (replacing the redirect). I think this very useful and constantly growing resource deserves its own top-level page in Wikipedia space, rather than being a subpage of a WikiProject. This is also the primary page where script installation instructions resides. I hope this might help newer users (and even established ones) find these instructions and notice scripts that will help make their lives easier.

Taking Wikipedia:Userboxes as an example, the instructions for use and list of available boxes is available at its own top-level page, with the WikiProject for userboxes (Wikipedia:WikiProject Userboxes) appearing separately.

PS. I'm posting this here as opposed to some proposed-moves page because it seemed like a more prominent move that should get a centralized discussion. Equazcion ^(talk) 14:43, 29 Jun 2012 (UTC)

@@ Line 212: / Line 212: @@
 *:I see that this is apparently being solved already, but I was wondering (and maybe it's been said and I missed it) but why couldn't a similar fix that's done for initial lower case letters in article names be used to add a virtual colon to the article names for these? Or is it due to possible search engine confusion? - <b>[[User:Jc37|jc37]]</b> 21:57, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
 *:: That only works when the "replacement" title would link to the same article when placed into a wikilink. So [[iPhone]] can be used for [[IPhone]], but [[Course: Oblivion]] cannot be used for [[Course Oblivion]] because they're different titles. [[User:Anomie|Anomie]][[User talk:Anomie|⚔]] 23:50, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
+*:::I interepreted Jc37's suggestion as using {{tl|DISPLAYTITLE}}. That would work, except we'd need a a redirect, and the course namespace (in its current state) doesn't allow for redirects. [[User:Rob Schnautz (WMF)|<span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Rob SchnautZ (WMF)</span>]] <sup>([[User talk:Rob Schnautz (WMF)#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Rob Schnautz (WMF)|contribs]]) </sup> 17:40, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
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