User talk:Mr. Stradivarius

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Tech News: 2014-48

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

Recent changes

• The move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator. [1]

Problems

• There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the colspan or rowspan option. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17. [2]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf9) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
• You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options. [3]
• VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved. [4]
• You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window. [5]
• VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages. [6] [7]

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

19:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Change at Template:Barlabel/doc

I'm not sure why you and the previous editor thought that it was necessary to change the examples; at least your change leaves them working. However the text explaining how to use the template and the wikicode are now inconsistent. Please fix this! Peter coxhead (talk) 10:15, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: The reason why Jonesey95 and I made the edits is that the page was showing up in Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls. The problem is that the first "style" parameter in each of the template invocations that I changed was being ignored and overwritten by the second one. These kinds of errors were silently ignored until recently, when the above tracking category was introduced. Looking back at my edits to Template:Barlabel/doc, I can see that they are wrong: the expanded wikitext they produce looks like style="line-height:100%;margin-left:0em;margin-right:0em;"text-align:right;font-size:85%"". The extra quotation marks are a syntax error, and MediaWiki tidies that up by leaving out the style attribute altogether. So, ironically, my edit didn't break the template's display because it added more broken syntax to the already-broken syntax. Fixing this properly will require actually understanding the template's purpose and working out the proper CSS, which might require a bit of effort. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:15, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

The example and the wikicode were inconsistent before I made my edit, at least in the "align=center" example. I made them consistent, but it looks like I changed the way that the examples were rendered. My apologies. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:41, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I understand. The documentation and wikicode were consistent, as far as I can see, in this version. The next edit replaced |align= with CSS styling. I've reverted to this version; if this produces the duplicate argument error then it can be fixed from there. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:33, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

That fixed the duplicated parameter error, as far as I can see. It looks like the editor who changed |align= in the template's documentation did not examine the template to see that |align= is converted into CSS by the template (AFAICT). I have seen rumblings on various Talk pages about replacing outdated HTML; it is possible that someone searched for the pattern |align=center and replaced it with CSS without checking to ensure that doing so was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, I expect that the same thing will happen to this template's documentation again, or to instances of the template that exist in articles. Inserting a comment into the documentation may help, but it won't help prevent edits to instances of the template in articles. I don't know what to suggest.

Further discussion of this issue should probably take place at the template's talk page rather than here on Mr. S's talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:54, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

We should probably alert WOSlinker to this problem, though, as they are making the same kind of changes to a lot of different templates. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:23, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

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Thank you

Thanks for picking up on, reviewing and closing the archived ANI on Spotter 1. It's greatly appreciated! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:29, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

No problems, you're welcome. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:57, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Template:La, etc

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:La&oldid=636018358&diff=prev

( ... this should use the same separator as the other lx templates)

Fair enough. Given this, do you think there'd be consensus to switch to the dot/interpunct separator<aside>and/or, given the other the point made there, to use the default rather than monospaced font</aside>?
Regards, Sardanaphalus (talk) 12:22, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

@Sardanaphalus: I'd prefer to keep the pipe separator, but whichever we choose it should be consistent with the other link templates. To make a switch you'd need to have a discussion and find a consensus first, I think. Leaving a note at WP:VPT would probably be a good idea if you decide to do that. Also, note that the pipe separator is used in the MediaWiki in a lot of places, e.g. the talk/contribs links on history pages (although they switched from a pipe to U+007C VERTICAL LINE a while back, if I remember rightly). — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:36, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

• It sounds, then, that a consensus would be unlikely, so I'll move on. I'm intrigued, though, that<aside>as a visual separator rather than programming syntax</aside> the pipe/vertical-line isn't considered more potentially ambiguous or intrusive than the dot/interpunct (or something else). Thanks for your feedback/information, Sardanaphalus (talk) 19:29, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Hidden section top/doc

Template:Hidden section top/doc has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:11, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Module:Testcase table

might as well delete it as well to erase any trace of my work? Frietjes (talk) 13:59, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

@Frietjes: It sounds pretty cold when you put it like that... Your idea to write it was an inspired one and I probably wouldn't have thought to write Module:Testcase rows or Module:Template test case if you hadn't. But I suppose now that the functionality has been integrated into the template test case module it's not actually doing anything. We could just as easily put a note at the top saying that it's deprecated rather than deleting it if you would prefer. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:54, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

why not merge the history? Frietjes (talk) 15:57, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

I think that might look a little strange. If people weren't aware that it was a history merge it would look like I deleted the whole module just to make a comment about a possible new design. But looking at the history I can see that I failed to give you proper attribution for your work on Module:Testcase table. I'll have to fix that when I get back to my computer. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:07, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) A history merge in this case would indeed be a bad idea. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:40, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

not a surprising response. life is so much easier when you don't have to worry about attribution, isn't it. Frietjes (talk) 16:22, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I agree that attribution should be provided, just that a histmerge isn't the right way to do it. There are many other ways to provide it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:47, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

@Frietjes: I've added a header to the module to provide the attribution. Sorry for neglecting to do that originally. We can put a note in the docs or on the talk page as well if you want. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:49, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Gap between testcases..?

Is it possible to set the width of the gap between the testcases – or is that meant to be handled by _style, _format..? Regards, Sardanaphalus (talk) 08:30, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

@Sardanaphalus: Not at the moment. Assuming you mean Template:Testcase table, right now the templates are put in table cells, each with a width of 100 % divided by the number of templates. So if there were two templates, each would be in a cell with a width of 50%, if there were three, each would be in a cell with a width of 33%, and so on. There's no width set on the table tag, though, so setting a width with |_style= might help if things are looking bunched up. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:09, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

• Trying |_style hadn't occurred to me: thank you. (Yes, it was while using {{Testcase table}}.) I've also noticed that setting |_caption= (i.e. as nothing) no longer seems to remove {{Testcase table}}'s default "Side by side comparison" header. Have I been missing something or do you know if this is as intended..? Sardanaphalus (talk) 12:15, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

@Sardanaphalus: That was sort of intended. I decided to trim whitespace and remove blank arguments for all the options, so as to make the whitespace behaviour uniform across all the templates. But if many people were using blank _caption arguments to purposefully suppress the caption, then breaking those templates is not ideal. How about using |_caption=no to achieve the same effect? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 13:44, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

• If it's no great trouble to implement, |_caption=(any of these) would be fine. (Perhaps an array somewhere could store these values for shared access?) Sardanaphalus (talk) 16:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

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Untitled thread

Stop this shit — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.231.19.51 (talk) 05:07, 7 December 2014‎ (UTC)

Hi there. What seems to be the problem? I'm afraid I don't have any idea what you want me to stop. Maybe you could send me an email if you would like to keep it private? Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:02, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

They may be referring to changes you have made to Template:Random portal component. whatever they are, they seem to have made the links at portals to the archives of randomly selected portal items not work any more. See Portal:San Francisco Bay Area: all the "full set of selected foofaws" comments at the bottom of each portal component are not links any more, and they were before. I have no idea what your edits may have done, as i am a complete imbecile with such code, but since you have been editing it, you might want to revert it to what it was before you started, then work forward with any changes you feel are needed. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:37, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

@Mercurywoodrose: Somehow I doubt that's what the IP was getting at. But thank you for letting me know about the bug - I've fixed it. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:08, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, and your probably right about the IP editor. You should check out this tiny violin: File:Silver violin - Miniature.JPG, may be used when people complain too much :) Mercurywoodrose (talk) 15:44, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-50

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

Recent software changes

• All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster. [8]
• You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues. [9]

Problems

• There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue. [10]

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf11) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar). [11]
• You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key. [12]
• It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better. [13] [14]
• The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs. [15] [16] [17]
• (Lua) You can no longer use mw.text.unstrip to get the HTML from special page transclusion. You can see a list of scripts to fix. [18] [19]

Future changes

• Starting next week JavaScript tools won't work if they use jQuery Migrate. [20]

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

17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Code review request

Hi, Mr. S. Can you make a quick check of Module:Requested move/sandbox? Thanks.

On another note, I've been concerned that anyone attempting to email me can't get through. I'm on Yahoo! mail, and I suspect mail attempts may be rejected per Error "554 5.7.9: Message not accepted for policy reasons". Can you try sending me an email to see whether that's the case, and if so, suggest a solution? Do I need to set up with a different email provider? Wbm1058 (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: I've just sent you an email through Special:EmailUser with the subject "Testing Wikipedia email". I'll have a look at the module now. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:18, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: And I've now looked over your code and tested it, and it looks fine. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:26, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Templates for discussion

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Please comment on Template talk:Primary sources

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NAMESPACEID

Couldn't help but ask.... what was the downside with using magic-word {{NAMESPACENUMBER}} instead for the Edit notice core thing. -- George Orwell III (talk) 05:11, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

3

@George Orwell III: Hmm, I didn't know about that one. Probably there is no downside. I wonder if that parser function existed when Template:NAMESPACEID was first written? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:46, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I found out - it was first added in MediaWiki 1.20, so the answer to my previous question is a "no". It also wasn't listed on Help:Magic words (I just added it). NAMESPACEID is a little different, though, in that it returns an error message rather than the blank string when passed an invalid title. A simple parser function implementation might be slightly faster than the Lua implementation because of the overhead in switching to Lua from PHP, although I don't think that's very important considering the template is only used in edit notices. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:57, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

• (talk page stalker) Added to 08:33, April 9, 2012. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(e • t • c)} 06:04, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

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thank you for your welcome message

thanks - that sort of thing is helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChemicalG (talk • contribs) 00:49, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-51

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

Recent software changes

• You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata. [21]
• You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects. [22]
• You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.

Software changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki (1.25wmf12) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar). [23]
• You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F. [24]
• VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold. [25]
• The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change. [26]

Future changes

• The star image of the watchlist may change soon. [27] [28]
• You won't be able to use Phabricator on December 18, 2014. It will be down between 00:00 and 08:00 (UTC). [29] [30]

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

16:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

ResellerRatings

Discussion moved to Talk:ResellerRatings#Protected edit request on 18 December 2014. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:31, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

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NotTechimo / ResellerRatings

Hi @Mr. Stradivarius: It looks like the guy (or one of his friends, as 166.171.187.18) is back and edited my comments on the ResellerRatings talk page. Can you please revert his edit there and is there a way to semi protect the talk page so IP's can't edit? He seems not to like being identified as an online merchant. Thanks. Techimo (talk) 18:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Enjoy!

		Happy Holiday Cheer
		Season's Greetings! This message celebrates the holiday season, promotes WikiLove, and hopefully makes your day a little better. Spread the seasonal good cheer by wishing another user an Awesome Holiday and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone with whom you had disagreements in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Share the good feelings! Joys! Paine

Thank you Paine! — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:31, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

Pleasure! – Paine 

Template:Section link

Hi.

I've been meaning to simplify the Template:Section link myself but always overwhelmingly higher priorities (external mostly) distracted me; and now, you've converted it to a Lua module and it is out of my reach. I've recently written my first Lua script AND put into production after extensive testing but I'm still too new for this. That's why I thought perhaps you might be willing to help in your free time, if you have any.

Currently, the syntax to create a sole section link within the same page is {{section link| |Section title |np=y}}. But I think it can be safely made to do same when {{section link|Section title}} is supplied. There are 21293 transclusions of this template but I bet none of them is using this syntax to refer to Notes section. Still, there are ways to ascertain and mitigate the issue before the deployment of the change, right?

What do you think?

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

@Codename Lisa: Sounds like a good idea to me. Could you propose it on the template talk page, in case anyone else wants to comment? Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:14, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Harrasment from a user

Hi, I hope you could help me as I really need to sort it out ASAP; I created my account today and I've done a few edits to Jagged Edge (group), various Rihanna articles etc etc and the user Binksternet has accused not only me but another user called Stanlyfe of being a sock puppet of a user called MariaJaydHicky; they have not only reverted all my edits he has accused me of being that user and when I wrote back why are they doing that they reverted my edits and have got the pages I've edited protected under sock puppetry can you please get them blocked as I find their behaviour harrasing and downright out of order and I am afraid no matter what I'll edit they'll revert it can you please help me? Muicfantasy (talk) 21:22, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

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Page protection on Battle of Chawinda

Who had requested it? OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 02:20, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

@OccultZone: Smsarmad. (talk page stalker) Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:25, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

But there was only one offending user who was removing the maintenance templates only for making the statement look real. I am contacting you because even if I am going to make a edit request on the page, you or someone else will tell me to "find consensus" and this user is clearly trying to bludgeoning the process, he believes that removing {{failed verification}} is justified if URL exists in the given citation. Can you restore the pre-edit war version or simply unprotect because it is only one user, in last 48 hours who is edit warring. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 02:29, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

@OccultZone: I think this is a case of WP:WRONGVERSION. Whichever the right version is, it is probably better found through discussion among the editors involved than through any unilateral decision by me. I would wait for the RfC to conclude before changing anything there - if you want your edits there to stick around, you will need a consensus for them. That said, if you think any other users are bludgeoning the process, I would be happy to look at evidence in the form of diffs and links. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:05, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

So I can open a edit request and inform other editors about it? Before reporting about the bludgeoning, I would probably give another chance. OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 03:17, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

@OccultZone: You can start a discussion about it, but an edit request would need to have consensus first - see WP:Edit requests. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:23, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Unversidad Empresarial de Costa Rica on Wiki

For your information, Justlettersandnumber user mentioned you have been decive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Universidad_Empresarial_de_Costa_Rica because he mentioned similar IP address, as for Montevideo Uruguay. Montevideo have 1,5 million citizens!! Also there is a local office for UNEM and a national website www.unem.edu.uy Over 300 students got their education at UNEM branch in Uruguay, so its unfair to mention IP address, since ALL citizens in Uruguay, over 3million people in all 19 states called DEPARTAMENTOS in spanish use the same IP address. Also Justlettersandnumbers user mention an old newspaper publication dated 2008 and for his information we are heading year 2015. I must underline, there are national branches in several countries, so as a student mentioned earlier, www.unem.cr is national based, mentime, www.unem.international is intended for worldwide users, and www.unem.edu.pl is where the first educational website was published and it reflects UNESCO whed listing. PolandMEC (talk) 03:43, 22 December 2014 (UTC)