Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

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Content missing in mobile view

The "Electoral history" section of Harold Stassen is missing in mobile view. I expect it is a problem with the electoral history template being hidden; could someone comfortable with template coding take a look? 28bytes (talk) 21:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Confirm this problem, and not just Harold Stassen. Trump'16 also fails in mobile-view,[1] using Template:Endorsements_box for collapsed-by-default-bluebox. I believe all the "Fname Lname presidential campaign, 2016" articles use this very same bluebox trick. Trump'16 works properly in non-mobile-view.[2] Even in mobile-view, you can see the wikitext when you click edit, so the information is not gone, just the bluebox is invisible in mobile-view. Tested in firefox 38. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 00:55, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Same goes for the WP namespace here; closed/archived discussions on WP:DRV, as well as similarly closed discussions on AN/I do not appear on mobile enwiki. lavender|^{(formerly HMSSolent)}|lambast 04:29, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Any templates that use the following classes are hidden by MobileFrontend: ambox, navbox, vertical-navbox, topicon, metadata, nomobile. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 138#Navboxes in mobile, phab:T55437 and phab:T68747. 185.108.128.19 (talk) 04:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I would say that this is more of an editorial problem. Any time you need to collapse content in order to keep a page readable, sounds like a authoring problem to me. Navboxes is one thing, but to use collapsible inside the actual content is just... bad form —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:14, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

MOS:COLLAPSE actually says you need a really really good reason to use collapsible content in articles. --Izno (talk) 15:38, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you need a really good reason, because you are opening yourself up to problems as the one described here. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:47, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

@TheDJ: What change(s) would you recommend that would fix the problem? 28bytes (talk) 18:22, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I suggest to rewrite the section to actual discuss the electoral history and remove the list per WP:INDISCRIMINATE and possibly move that into wikidata. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:58, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Outside the Stassen case, what do you think? (As an aside I disagree with you about Stassen -- detailed election results for perennial candidates ARE what makes them perennial -- the detailed info shows they have less and less of a shot as time goes by, and yet also shows that despite it all they kept running, again and again, in Stassen's specific case something like a dozen times over the decades.) But since I don't actually work on that Stassen article, I'm less concerned about the outcome there. What is your suggestion for endorsements in the 2016 election? The campaign-articles have details that the comparative-across-candidates "main" article doesn't, and furthermore, the candidate-specific articles have the endorsements organized in a distinct layout, too. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

There are templates such as {{Hidden}} (links) and {{Collapsible list}} (links) that will display in mobile view, although they display fully expanded without the show/hide link (which is preferable to not at all). Both of these templates can be found in articles, though at a quick glance they mostly seem to be used inside an infobox. -- Zyxw (talk) 07:12, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

{{Endorsements box}} has been fixed so the content is now visible in mobile view, pending the articles containing it being updated as suggested above. -- Zyxw (talk) 08:40, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Okay, so now the non-mobile-version of the Trump article has a collapsed bluebox,[3] and the mobile-version has an uncollapsed one.[4] Considering how small the mobile screen-sizes are, this seems like only a partial fix.  :-)     Ping User:Zyxw, is there an ongoing effort to make the mobile-version of the bluebox aka {{Endorsements box}} be tap-to-show-tap-again-to-hide, in much the same way that the non-mobile-bluebox is click-to-show-click-again-to-hide? If such work is not ongoing, can I request such work, please? Think of the children! Err... I mean to say, think of the 4" smartphone users! 75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Good question, but I'm just a user/contributor and don't know what the developers have planned for mobile view. If they make changes, it would likely involve "class=collapsible" (see Help:Collapsing and Wikipedia:NavFrame) rather than specific templates. Hopefully others reading this could answer or better direct you. -- Zyxw (talk) 15:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Direct editing of templates

Can we find a means to directly get to a template's edit menu? Example: List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women) is made up mostly of templates. As we have a new year's worth of data to add, getting into each one of those templates to add the new data requires a multi step process. As much as we had tremendous help in posting information during the event last week, only a few of these were updated because of the difficulty for average editors to get to each template. I obviously know how, but it requires sacrificing your copy cache to copy each complicated title, thus you can't hold the information you could have transported there to post again complicating the process beyond what most editors will go through. Trackinfo (talk) 17:55, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

You could add a {{Navbar}} to each table. Alakzi (talk) 17:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

It sounds like you don't know some of the ways to get to the template page. If you click the "Edit" tab then the bottom of the edit window has a list with links to templates used on the page. If you click a section edit link and then preview then the bottom has a list of templates used in the section. If you click "Page information" in the left pane then you get a list of templates used on the page, but it may be cut off after 50 templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:20, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I obviously don't. Please tell me more because from your directions I do not see it. What I am requesting is one or two keystrokes to be able to edit content of the template as viewed from a page using the template. The suggestion above yours is a great deal of legwork for one topical page and clutters the page up. Trackinfo (talk) 03:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Option 1: Click the "Edit" tab at top of List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women). Then look for "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" at the bottom of the whole browser window. You may have to click the quoted text it to see the list of templates like Template:World Championships in Athletics medalists in women's 100 metres, but it should then remember your click so you don't have to click it next time. Option 2: Click the section edit link at List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women)#100 m. Then click the "Show preview" button. This time there should be a shorter list at "Templates used in this preview" at the bottom of the window. If you don't see it then what is your browser, skin and interface language? Option 3: At List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women), click "Page information" under "Tools" in the left menu to get [5]. The last table "Page properties" says "Transcluded templates" in the first column and has a list in the second column, but it only lists 50 of the used templates.

We could also add an edit notice to List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women) explaining where to edit the templates and maybe linking to Category:World Championships in Athletics templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:14, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Not criticizing your prose, but it took 8 lines of text to explain those. Yes, I eventually found it. Do you expect the average user to know this? How about an inexperienced IP? We are supposed to encourage input. Anybody can edit. But the absence of a convenient edit tool will prevent the majority of the population from attempting to edit. Now, putting information into such a difficult to edit process might be good to make it difficult for vandals to figure out. IP editing does have its drawbacks. Someone like me, who watches a lot of pages that should have stable content (like this, which requires updating usually only every two years--except when a drug cheat is disqualified) would also be discouraged from watching this content. For one simple page like this, it takes locating and watching 21 templates. There should be a way to wholesale group watch all the content resolved onto one page. This is the technical pump, repeating the two as proposals:

• idea#1. There should be an easy, one step method, from a regular article page, to edit content resolved from templates.
• idea#2. There should be a way to wholesale watch the content resolved onto a single page (regardless of it being embedded in a template). Trackinfo (talk) 01:50, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello, User:Trackinfo, I believe it is *possible* to implement what you are asking about. Not sure it will be easy (or feasible-given-mediawiki-codebase-and-such). Let us take a very simple example, the {{done}} template. This particular template is not used on articles, of course, but the editing of articles and the editing of talkpages is pretty similar, under the hood. and the template is a simple one, good for hypothetical examples. So in scenario#1, we have a wikipedia page which has the following information:

• This is a sentence.  Done Another sentence.

And when you click the 'edit' button on that page, what you see is this wiki-markup stuff:

• This is a sentence. {{done}} Another sentence.

In order to implement idea#1, there would have to be some changes made to the way the textarea works when you click that 'edit' button. These changes could be made by implementing a special text-area, or by using some kind of AJAX magic, but would not be something 'easy' to do methinks. Fundamentally, what you are wanting to have happen, is that after clicking the 'edit' button on the page, what you would see is something like this:

• This is a sentence. {{done}}^doc/editMe! Another sentence.

This way, there is no need to visit the page in question, click '[edit]' on a section, click 'preview', click "Templates used in this preview", ctrl+f, manually type the name of the one you want, and finally click the '(edit)' thing. Right? Obviously the software already knows *how* to generate the correct bluelinks... the problem is, getting those bluelinks to appear inside the edit-screen-textarea.

In your specific athletic-championship example, here are the steps at present:

visit List_of_World_Championships_in_Athletics_medalists_(women)#100_m , pageload#1 click edit[6] , pageload#2 which looks like this.... {{World Championships in Athletics medalists in women's 100 metres}} click preview , pageload#3 click Templates used in this preview type ctrl+f , type "World Champio" click (edit)[7] , pageload#4 do some work click save , pageload#5 What is desired is something simpler: visit List_of_World_Championships_in_Athletics_medalists_(women)#100_m , pageload#1 click edit[8] , pageload#2 which once upgraded looks like this.... {{World Championships in Athletics medalists in women's 100 metres}}docs/editMe! click preview , pageload#3 click Templates used in this preview type ctrl+f , type "World Champio" click (edit)[9] , pageload#3 do some work click save , pageload#4

Saves one pageload, and three user-steps. Anybody have an opinion on how hard it would be, to implement idea#1, so that a little clickable-edit-button appears in the edit-textarea, next to the curlycurly of a template? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:49, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Make a list of templates?

Is it reasonably easy to make a list of templates that contain one or more of these classes?

• ambox,
• navbox,
• vertical-navbox,
• topicon,
• metadata, or
• nomobile

Each of these classes cause the template and its contents to be invisible on Wikipedia's mobile website. If we could make a list, then we could spam the /doc pages for each template with a warning that the contents will not be visible to about 30% of our readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Something like this query seems to get at what you're looking for. You could play with the \=\" to try different syntax various people have used. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 04:32, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I can't "play with" regex. ;-)

That search only finds five templates with "ambox", but there are 1.1 million pages that transclude {{ambox}} itself—and Template:Ambox doesn't appear in that short list (probably because its contents are in Module:Message box instead. Maybe this will have to be done by hand (ugh). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: maybe John of Reading can help with database scan. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:49, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

A database scan is roughly equivalent to an "insource" search. I'm not sure how I could use one to construct the list reliably. There are over 100,000 template pages that mention the word "navbox", so the proposal involves a lot of edits. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:38, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

That's more than I'm prepared to do. Can we identify a few meta-templates that use these? Anything using {{navbox}} and {{ambox}} will be affected, so we could tag those two, and at least people using them to create new templates would be informed. But I don't know how many such templates exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Anyone else having problems entering in edit summaries ? I can type anything else (this message for example), however, when I attempt to enter an edit summary I get no text in the Edit Summary window (I do see a flashing cursor). I'm running Chrome Version 45.0.2454.85 m on Win 7, using monobook skin, everything else seems to be working fine, except edit summaries KoshVorlon We are all Kosh 17:35, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Have exactly the same issue since today and also use C45.0.2454.85 m with W7. It has made me switch to VisualEditor for the day which is actually pretty good although it takes some getting used to.--Wolbo (talk) 22:33, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Since Chrome 45 was released only 2 days ago, might it be a browser bug specific to Windows 7 ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:53, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

It might also be Chrome itself. I booted into Win 10 (at work) using Chrome 44 and edit summaries were no problem. I'll try the same with IE , FireFox and Opera as well and see what happens. KoshVorlon We are all Kosh 16:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Just did some test, and it looks like it's a Chrome issue. Using Windows 7 , I was able to use edit summaries with Firefox and IE, just not Chrome. KoshVorlon We are all Kosh 18:01, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I have this too. Supremely irritating. Chrome version and set-up same as Kosh's. --Dweller (talk) 09:51, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@KoshVorlon, Dweller, and Wolbo: By any chance does this happen only when you use the WikiEd interface? - 185.108.128.3 (talk) 10:40, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Speaking only for myself, I didn't know what that means. And having followed your wikilink, I still don't know what that means. --Dweller (talk) 10:48, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean does my edit screen look like this, the answer is yes. --Dweller (talk) 10:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried testing on Chrome 45/Windows 7 and could not reproduce the issue except when using the WikiEd interface. @Dweller: Disable "wikEd, a full-featured integrated text editor" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and see if you are able to add edit summaries. - 185.108.128.10 (talk) 10:58, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

That worked a treat. Thank you. --Dweller (talk) 11:09, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

BRIEF Followup - Seems Disabling "WikEd" in "Preferences/Gadget" works for me at the moment - entering text in the "Edit Summary" window now seems OK - Thank you for the suggestion - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:18, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) 185.108.128.10 I actually don't use WikiEd at all. (Just checked again to make sure it wasn't turned on), it's off. Seems to be a Chrome issue. KoshVorlon We are all Kosh 11:10, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@KoshVorlon: Could you try removing importScript('User:Δ/monobook.js'); from your monobook.js and check again? If that does not work, could you clear your entire monobook.js and see if the issue persists? - 185.108.128.10 (talk) 11:21, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

:::::::: Actually, I can tell you it's not Delta's monobook.js, I logged in with Firefox and was able to enter edit summaries. | per this edit summary just done in Firefox, with me logged in  :) KoshVorlon We are all Kosh 13:45, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Struck out. I just tried Chrome logged out and it works just fine. Our I.P user seems to have it right, however, the delta monobook.js grants me a sidebar that I've really grown accustomed to using. I'll live with it I guess. It seems to not work well with my current version of Chrome. KoshVorlon We are all Kosh 13:49, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

• ping Cacycle. Seems to be a WikiEd styling issue with Chrome 45. No input on forms like edit summaries and new section titles. Happens to me on OSX as well. - 185.108.128.10 (talk) 12:57, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, working on it. Cacycle (talk) 14:56, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

FWIW - YES - Same/similar problem - Sent Feedback to Google (see copy below) - hope this helps in some way - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 14:41, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Extended content

NEW: Also, If Interested, See "Google Help Forum" Here => https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/eXYKzUTK9yw;context-place=forum/chrome PROBLEM - GOOGLE CHROME - SEPTEMBER 4, 2015 SENT GOOGLE CHROME FEEDBACK (see copy below): Subject: Google Chrome: unable to enter "edit summary" in Wikipedia? --- https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/186850?rd=1 --- FEEDBACK TO GOOGLE: PLEASE HELP - PROBLEM: Google Chrome Version 45.0.2454.85 m (on two different WinXP computers) => Unable to enter text in the "edit summary" box in Wikipedia? - Earlier Google Chrome browser versions seemed all OK - Other browsers, including Firefox, are also OK - Thank you for your help with this - Enjoy! :) Dennis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drbogdan Computer systems: Windows XP; Google Chrome (Dell desktop; HP Pavilion laptop) Files attached: GoogleChrome-Wikipedia-UnableToEnterTextInEditSummaryBox-1.jpg Related webpage: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Google_Chrome&action=edit Dr Dennis Bogdan * Computer DataPro Consulting drbogdan at comcast.net * drbogdan at yahoo.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drbogdan http://www.facebook.com/drbogdan http://home.comcast.net/~drbogdan/publications.html

Google will try this with a basic setup. If the problem is a conflict between Chrome and User:Δ/monobook.js, they won't have that script in their user setup, so won't see anything wrong. If you mention User:Δ/monobook.js to them, they'll say that it's a problem in that script, nothing to do with them. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@KoshVorlon: User:Δ/monobook.js is a collection of various deprecated scripts and the reason I asked you to remove it is because it contained an instance of an older version of WikiEd that is causing this issue on Chrome. - 185.108.128.8 (talk) 16:46, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

New problem

I now can't see edit summaries in page history, watchlist and my contribs. What a bleeding pain. --Dweller (talk) 11:11, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@Dweller: As a first step, could you try clearing your browser cache? - 185.108.128.10 (talk) 11:39, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Just restarted. That seemed to fix the bugger, thanks. --Dweller (talk) 11:44, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

wikEd disabled under Chrome 45.0

wikEd had to be disabled for the most recent Chrome version 45.0.2454.85 because of a browser bug. It was not not possible to type into empty wikEd input fields such as the edit summary or the find and replace fields. Cacycle (talk) 17:24, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

See the Google bug report: Chrome 528382 (Typing into empty <input> fields is not possible). Cacycle (talk) 18:25, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

WikEd no longer works

I just had my computer updated to Windows 10. When I got the computer back, it was set to Internet Explorer as the browser, so I changed it to Google Chrome, which is what I had before. Now, even though I have selected WikEd in the Gadgets section of "Preferences", WikEd is not displayed at all. Do you have any suggestions? Corinne (talk) 15:10, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

wikEd disabled under Chrome 45.0 2 is a current thread on this issue.— Maile (talk) 15:18, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Does API expose CategoryCollation value?

Does the API expose the value of $wgCategoryCollation in a query, I can't find it in the siteinfo data. Detail: in AWB I want to be able to determine using the API which language wikipedia wikis are using one of the uca- options i.e. use diacritics & accents in sortkeys. (From what I can see it seems like this value could be category-level, I am interested in the site value only.) Thanks Rjwilmsi 08:16, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't know an API call but the actual setting for Wikimedia wikis is done in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:15, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Use the raw text link at top for parsing. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:40, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that does the trick. Rjwilmsi 18:02, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

A curious email...

Just recently, I received this curious email in my inbox (the one that I use for Wikipedia). This has happened once before. It was written in Arabic, said something about "MediaWiki message delivery", and was from wiki@wikimedia.org. The email address seems to have been responsible for an email confirmation scam in the past. I didn't open the email (I just deleted it), but I'm wondering if anyone else has received an email like this. --Biblioworm 15:32, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Just a wild guess... Someone may have clicked on 'reset password' on the Arabic Wikipedia, while trying to (unsuccessfully of course) log in with your user name. Happens all the time. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 15:45, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

But you must know the recipient's email address to reset the password; only I and a few other users know my email address, and none of them edit on the Arabic Wikipedia (that I know of, anyway). The email also didn't appear to be about password resets, but rather said something about "MediaWiki message delivery", as I mentioned above. --Biblioworm 15:51, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Check your talk page on Arabic Wikipedia and other Arabic wikis. You may have received a talk page message and had an email notification as is default on many wikis. BethNaught (talk) 15:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I have received many mails from wikis where I'm not active, usually welcome mails or notifications that somebody edited my talk page. And anynone can enter your username at Special:PasswordReset without knowing your email address, and request a new password sent to whatever address is stored for the account. The old password continues to work and the new expires if it isn't used. If you have deleted the mail and don't know what it actually said then I don't think there is much point in trying to guess what it was about. Don't worry about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:52, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

A lot of people got these messages. The e-mail message says that you have a message on your talk page at https://fa.wikivoyage.org/wiki/بحث_کاربر:Biblioworm (Farsi, not Arabic). The message on your talk page (and 2,500+ other people who have ever visited the Farsi Wikivoyage while logged in) congratulates the community upon their successes and encourages you to improve articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:29, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Special:CentralAuth/Biblioworm shows that during 13 minutes on 20 October 2014 the account was created at 665 Wikimedia wikis. I guess some tool was used to visit all the wikis and cause automatic account creation. The numerous accounts are likely to produce some mails. Just ignore them. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:07, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I find these messages worth checking. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:31, 5 September 2015 (UTC).

Pages in categories

Could somebody point me to Phabricator ticket (I just don't believe, that this hasn't been reported) about those situations in categories, when the first entry of some letter is in new column, but the letter itself is in the previous (tha last one). Like currently it is with E and Eslamabad-e Kahur Khoshk in this one. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:50, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this! Current version of Chrome, XP. Eslamabad-e Kahur Khoshk is the last link in the column. When I click on it, the link bounces to the top of the next next column. Because the click release must normally occur on the link, the target page does not load and I must scroll up to click again. Seen this a lot in a variety of category pages.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:25, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Category listing has changed twice this year, once in March, and again in (I think) April. In between those two changes was this thread. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk · contribs) should know if there are related Phab tickets. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:47, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

phab:T46304 is pretty close. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:58, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Andre's phab:fu is stronger than mine. I believe that User:Bawolff and User:Matma Rex also know a thing or three about categories, and they might be interested in this issue, or at least know who else should be. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm more involved with the backend stuff of categories. This sounds like an issue with the css, which I'm less familiar with. Just to verify, this happens to you when you're logged out as well? (Just to rule out any custom css or gadgets) Bawolff (talk) 03:59, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Bawolff: yes - both logged in and out. Both Vector and Monobook (yes, also in logged out - with &useskin=monobook), currenlty tested only (some of the latest) Firefox at WinXP (tested also as logged-in at Win7). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:44, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Database dump question

Is there a way to get a list of editors who have edited any of the articles tagged with a certain WikiProject banner? If so, how would I go about getting said list? –Fredddie™ 00:01, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I responded at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject X#Database dump question. Harej (talk) 02:56, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Can be done with a SQL query. It wasn't very useful since articles tend to have lots of minor edits and vandalism, so you'll scoop up RC patrollers. Never got the system to work. You can try hitting me up again to take another stab if I ever get database access again. — Dispenser 05:04, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@Dispenser: if it came with a number of edits, I would have trimmed down the list to remove people with, say, fewer than 10 edits. –Fredddie™ 11:43, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Freddie, do you really need something beyond what's listed at the bottom of Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject U.S. Roads? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, since USRD turns 10 this year, in our newsletter, we were thinking about listing everyone who had been significant contributors over the years as a way to say thanks. I started compiling a list on my own, but I know that I've certainly missed a few. I figured it would be worth a shot to ask here. –Fredddie™ 04:23, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Turn off

Hello. How can I turn off MediaWiki:somejs.js for themselves ? — Green Zero обг 14:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Please try to clarify the question. Give an example of what you are trying to achieve. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@Green Zero: Also, what do you mean by MediaWiki:somejs.js? It doesn't exist. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I think that somejs is placeholder text, not a real js script. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

In the https://lt.wikipedia.org I want turn off for themselves MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js . I asked the question out there, but did not get response. I decided to ask here, since the decision must surely be universal in all wiki projects... — Green Zero обг 12:17, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Your question at lt:Vikipedija:Forumas#MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js only said the same as here. I'm still unsure what you want. Do you want the code in lt:MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js to not be run for your own account? Autoconfirmation requires four days and zero edits at the Latvian Wikipedia (that's the Wikimedia default) so the code is currently run for you even though you only have five edits there. I don't know a way to prevent it from running but in this case I can give code to remove the purge tab it adds. Add the below to lt:Special:MyPage/common.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

#ca-purge {display: none;}

Small geography lesson, PrimeHunter. Latvia (lv) isn't the same country as Lithuania (lt) :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:37, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I have global purge-button (m). lt:MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js on the lt-wiki add to my interface the second purge-button. Code #ca-purge {display: none;} turn off both buttons.. — Green Zero обг 17:30, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Green Zero: Ok, since lt-wiki forces the local script to run for every auto-confirmed user, you could choose to exclude the global purge script from running on the Lithuanian Wikipedia by wrapping the script in your global.js with the following condition : if ( mw.config.get("wgDBname") !== "ltwiki" ) { mw.loader.load('//uk.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&title=MediaWiki:Gadget-purgetab.js'); } You will end up with only one purge button that says "Išvalyti podėlį", the lt-wiki default. - 185.108.128.15 (talk) 18:03, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Translation tool

Does not make it clear when a page you are creating has already been deleted. This should happen in big red letters as soon as you fire up the tool.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:20, 4 September 2015 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: Hi, I don't see this request among the existing ContentTranslation tasks so feel encouraged to create a feature request in Phabricator (see mw:Phabricator/Help for more information). Thanks! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Interface delay

For at least the last week, I'm having trouble with the user interface. It is almost always delayed in rendering the page, adding some pieces right away but other pieces later. I believe that during this delay the Firefox status at the bottom left says "read en.wikipedia" - can't remember if it says wikipedia.org. I have the latest version of Firefox for Windows. It's very annoying because the page jumps around and if I do something before it's stopped jumping, I can click on the wrong thing - not a particularly good idea if I'm blocking someone and the drop-down box moves.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:30, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Same here, several days now. It's due to some javascript that only kicks in once page loading is complete. The most annoying aspect is that I might be undoing a bad edit, and about to click on the edit summary box - and it suddenly moves down by half an inch so I click on {{{}}} or similar, squirting that into the edit window. So I then need to "undo". --Redrose64 (talk) 21:40, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

But it must be something new or changed, right? Wasn't that way before. For me at least my body actual learns and remembers methodology/timing, so I click on something and hit Enter at a pace that is almost automated. Now my mouse hand clicks before it's finished because it didn't take as long before, and I screw up.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:39, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Do you have any pull here? No one else has responded, let alone addressed the issue, and sometimes (e.g., today) it's pretty bad. I don't mind if it turns out to be something in my technical configuration. I just want it fixed. Oh, btw, on I assume a completely unrelated topic, I had the weirdest thing happen today. I tried to delete a page (QQF (Qu'est-ce Que Fück?)) that had been tagged for speedy delete, and instead of deleting it, it just redisplayed the page. I tried over and over. I tried blanking the page and then trying again - no go. I was able to delete other pages but not that one. Never happened to me before. And another admin later deleted it. Maybe someone up there doesn't like me.--Bbb23 (talk) 04:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Although I have met quite a few Wikipedians, I don't have any "pull". --Redrose64 (talk) 09:51, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I have also noticed similar behaviour, though I can't say it has been only for the past week. I am with Redrose64 that this is likely just some scripts that modify the interface taking longer than they should to load. Perhaps something's up with ResourceLoader. I will try to ping a few people on IRC and see if they know anything about it.

@Bbb23: Your issue with QQF (Qu'est-ce Que Fück?) is 100% my doing with WP:MOREMENU. Or rather, lack of doing by the WMF. We ran into this issue before, if you recall... where we couldn't delete pages with a question mark at the end. That's because I use the MediaWiki-provided JavaScript API, which uses the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?action=delete kind of URL, as opposed to en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Example&action=delete which is what the normal native Delete link uses. Here is a similar issue because it thinks the ? is where the query params are, when that character should be properly escaped. Anyway it's really WMF's fault, but I can still fix this once and for all with a little workaround so no worries :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:46, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: You have a better memory than I, but I do remember this now. Hopefully, you'll get somewhere with the delay issue, and "past week" was a minimum.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Tried asking about the delay issue on IRC and didn't get a response. As for QQF (Qu'est-ce Que Fück?), I think I've successfully worked around the MediaWiki bug. Let me know if you have any issues with that. Best — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:48, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Replacing WP logo in my skin

Is there some Javascript or CSS trick for replacing the Wikipedia logo in the upper-left corner with some other file or text? I edit several WP-language sites, all of whose logos are the same large image and differ by a small and non-visually-separated word or two in the native language. I would like a more obvious reminder about what site I'm using (given I know I'm on *.wp), so just a giant "EN.WP" or "DE.WP" text or something would be ideal. DMacks (talk) 22:01, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

There may be better code but try this in your CSS:

#p-logo a { background-image:url(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg/150px-Flag_of_the_United_Kingdom.svg.png) !important;}

To get the url I started at File:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg, clicked one of the sizes below the main image and manually changed the size in the url to 150. Maybe something with text can be done for all wikis at once in meta:Special:MyPage/global.js or meta:Special:MyPage/global.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

There's also this CSS script. By default, it replaces the current WP logo with the original Nupedia logo, but it can be modified to use other versions, and also allows for the addition of a custom logo/image (not sure about text additions, however). lavender|^{(formerly HMSSolent)}|lambast 06:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Userfy deleted history of an article without destroying the current version?

A user made what seems like a perfectly reasonable request on my talk page to userfy for him an article which had been deleted. If it was still deleted, I would just restore all the versions and move it to his userspace. Easy. The problem is that the title has been recreated (if only as a redirect). What's the right process here to comply with the request while still keeping the exisitng redirect and avoiding trashing any of the past history? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible to undelete an article under a different title/namespace from the previous one? Otherwise, I'd delete the redirect, undelete the article, move it to userspace without leaving a redirect and then undelete the redirect. Does this work? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:32, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@RoySmith and Jo-Jo Eumerus: No, it is not, and the proposed process is relatively error-prone (because it's possible to undelete the redirect revisions by accident). A better way would be to move the redirect to a /Temp page, undelete the article, userfy it , then move the temp page back . All the steps involving page moves should be done without leaving a redirect behind. Graham87 10:27, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Cool, thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:04, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Blue links that should be red

The page 2147483659 (number) has been deleted, but still shows as a blue link on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2147483659 (number). Purging might help. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:35, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, purging fixes this. It happens when a page with a blue link has not been rendered since the linked page was deleted. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:08, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: Anyone can WP:PURGE a page, it doesn't need any rights, even for protected pages. Logged-out users merely get an extra confirmation step. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:19, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I need help

Few months before, I could open an article page and shows like this.

I'm using someone else's gadgets or user scripts by editing User:Jarodalien/vector.js, but about couple months ago most of them just not working anymore, or least not working properly.

Those three are completely gone:

• importScript('User:Liangent/User:Pyrospirit/metadata.js');
• importScript('User:Liangent/User:Pyrospirit/metadata/assesslinks.js');
• importScript('User:Pyrospirit/metadata/projectbanners.js');

And this one is not working properly, when there's a page like: Wikipedia:FAC, is fine, but if I open an article page, they're not working, I needs to refresh (maybe again and again)to make it work, but even when they work, is like can not translate most of the categories, even some link could show properly:

• importScript('User:PortalandPortal2Rocks/translatelinks.js')

This tool could using wikidata, to show me which wikilinks already had article at Chinese wikipedia.

My English is not well, hope I express my problem properly.--Jarodalien (talk) 01:48, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Jarodalien: Remove all of the lines mentioning "User:Pyrospirit/metadata", go to Preferences → Gadgets, where under the heading "Appearance" you should find "Display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header (documentation)". Enable that, and save. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:23, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64:: Thank you Redrose64, but this one I already know and enabled, but the scripts I mention above had different functions, after open an article (actually almost any page in English wikipedia), when I click "Tools>Assess links" on navigation bar of the left (under "wikidata item", thoses scripts will add this "Assess links" to navigation bar), current page will show every wikilinked article's quality level by different color, just like the photo.--Jarodalien (talk) 09:32, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Jarodalien and Redrose64: I've created an updated version of the assesslinks.js script at User:Nihiltres/assesslinks.js. Replacing importScript('User:Liangent/User:Pyrospirit/metadata/assesslinks.js'); or importScript('User:Pyrospirit/metadata/assesslinks.js'); with importScript("User:Nihiltres/assesslinks.js"), and removing any call to older versions of the metadata gadget (it'll automatically load the gadget for you if it's not already loaded), should fix it. If it doesn't work, let me know how it's malfunctioning and I'll take a look. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 01:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Book Creation

When creating a book, is it possible to isolate a single section of a page for book creation? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.99.20.102 (talk) 03:08, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

(This was originally asked at WP:HELPDESK.) Hello, I don't understand your question. Are you creating a paperback book? Are you trying to put a single section of a wikipedia article into your paperback book? Please give us more details. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

174.99.20.102 is asking about Wikipedia:Books. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia editor missing toolbar images

Would need some help, found today that Wikipedia editing toolbar is missing all images, Im using newest firefox, I see only Advanced Special characters Help, Cite and heading dropdown menu in toolbar, links are there but all images are missing. Already tried uninstalling FF , disabling FF addons and so on. Tested that it work ok with Internet explorer. Any help? Im using WIN10,FF 40.0.3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Typ932 (talk • contribs) 06:49, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Typ932: Works fine for me with that configuration. Could you clear your monobook.js and then your browser cache and see if the issue persists? - 185.108.128.20 (talk) 09:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Tried, that doesnt help >Typ932 ^T·C 09:35, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Got it work somehow, dont know how but its now working, weird -->Typ932 ^T·C 12:11, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Missing stats dates

I just left the following message at User talk:Henrik: Currently February 5 and September 3 are missing at http://stats.grok.se/. September 4 has run and February 5 had been present at the end of February although it seems to have disappeared.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:58, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Open call for Individual Engagement Grants

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals from August 31st to September 29th to fund new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental ideas that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), Individual Engagement Grants can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

• Submit a grant request
• Get help with your proposal in IdeaLabor an upcoming Hangout session
• Learn from examples of completed Individual Engagement Grants

I JethroBT (WMF), 09:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Bugzilla vs Phabricator

Why are the Phabricator T numbers 2000 more than the Bugzilla id numbers? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: That would be phab:T857. or bugzilla id [-1143?]. The T2000 in your username makes sense now. - 185.108.128.12 (talk) 14:43, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: In short, phabricator.wikimedia.org was already used for some tasks before tasks in Bugzilla were transferred and before ending up with a random number, implementing +2000 for redirects looked like an acceptable solution. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Problem with media viewer in "mobile view" on mobile devices

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T111609

See example in my sandbox: User:Mare44/sandbox ---Mare44 (talk) 15:27, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

You don't need to use a mobile device. I just tried it with Safari on Mac OS. Switch to 'mobile view' using the link at the bottom of the page and only the first two images work. In 'desktop view' they all work. Looking in the error console there’s the following error:

[Error] URIError: URI error
	decodeURIComponent (undefined, line 111)
	(anonymous function)
	fire (load.php, line 45)
	add (load.php, line 45)
	loadImageOverlay
	_matchRoute
	(anonymous function)
	each (load.php, line 5)
	_checkRoute
	proxy (load.php, line 6)
	emit
	(anonymous function)
	dispatch (load.php, line 65)
	handle (load.php, line 60)

--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 15:43, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I've put in a bug report.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 19:45, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

CharInsert question

Good day, I have a quick question, regardless of the fact it makes me look like a moron. I must have inadvertently clicked on something yesterday, and now when I pull up my editing screen, the handy-dandy characters menu below the edit screen (where you can click on {{ or [[, etc.) is no longer there. And there's no drop down menu any longer. Any idea what I did, and how I can correct it? Feel pretty stupid that I can't figure it out myself. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I checked at the CharInsert was checked on my gadgets page, so I unchecked it, cleared the cache, then checked it again and cleared the cache. Still missing. Haven't made any changes to my .js page in over a month. Any suggestions? Onel5969 ^{TT me} 18:36, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Onel5969: Could you tell me the OS, browser version and skin you're using? Do you have the same issue while logged out? - 185.108.128.17 (talk) 18:51, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@Onel5969: Alright, figured it out. You need to revert this edit. - 185.108.128.17 (talk) 19:08, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@SilkTork: Since you had the same issue earlier, could you check if replacing "w.loader.load" with "mw.loader.load" in the last line of your vector.js and monobook.js will fix the issue? - 185.108.128.17 (talk) 19:11, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks 185.108.128.17 - That did the trick. Wonder why it took almost a month to cause a problem. Anyway, really appreciate the help and the time you took to figure it out. Perhaps someday I can return the favor. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 21:32, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Glad to hear that. Syntax errors in skin.js sometimes messes with the loading of certain gadgets. - 185.108.128.13 (talk) 22:44, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Image cycler and randomizer idea

It could reduce some periodic strife at articles like Human, and be a generally useful feature when we have many high-quality images, if we had an image randomizer. It could also be used to replace galleries where space is a concern. (If we already have something like this, perhaps the ideas in here could be used to improve it, but I find no mention of such a thing at WP:IMAGE, WP:PIC, Help:Images, etc.)

This would consist of template or other markup (e.g. a MediaWiki tag) that presented a randomized selection from a pre-defined set of image specifications, given in essentially the same format as within <gallery>...</gallery>, and they could be optionally cycled through on-the-fly, at a specified interval or manually. It would adjust image size to fit within the size specified for the entire container.

Three obvious use cases:

• Load a different image and caption (and alt text) at Human, rotating randomly between various ethnicities, to avoid any seeming bias that one particular group is more "exemplary" of humanity. This could cycle (in series, or pseudo-randomly without repetition, not randomly) through additional images slowly while the user is reading, or only load a new image upon new page visits.
• Replace a gallery with a fairly quickly cycling, non-random, set of images and descriptions, while using much less space than a gallery. The first image displayed (i.e., start point of the cycle) could be randomized or fixed, depending on need.
• Simple and accessible, slow animation with very few frames which are of individual value as separate files, e.g. of a sequence of maps showing the expansion of an empire. [Presently, we only do this with GIF animation as far as I know, built from pre-existing stand-alone images.] This would have non-random start, non-random order. This would be superior to using video (requiring support that may not be built into the browser) and to animated GIFs, in a specific sort of case, in that each image would remain separate, be independently examinable and downloadable, often have a separate caption (though a sequence of visually similar images might share a single caption, but have separate descriptions on their file page). In other cases, video or animated GIFs would be superior (e.g., for realtime playback, for long sequences, and when retention of the sequence as a replayable unit is expected, with individual frames not being independently informative (e.g. growth of a crystal over time, or the stroke of an engine).

In any of these cases, it would be possible to a) manually cycle through the images (forward and back, and jump to start or end for fixed sequences), and b) show the entire gallery. The latter should probably be done in a pop-up or new browser tab, since it would do undesirable violence to an infobox or the like, if done directly within it. Such features should be disableable, where their use was superfluous (e.g. to randomize the icon in a wikiproject banner or whatever).

I reason that Commons could make good use of this feature, as could various other WMF projects (and other sites using MediaWiki), so I would suggest doing it as a MW extension, though for the short term if something like this worked as a template on WP that would be useful.

PS: The images and descriptions to include would be given in the code in the page in which they appeared, so that watchlisters of the page would be alerted to any potentially vandalous alterations. This would also discourage the use of the feature for long sequences better done as GIF animations. A sequence used by multiple articles could easily be transcluded as a template, however.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Pretty sure this has been suggested and rejected before, and not just for accessibility reasons. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:53, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm in favor, but usually people at en.wp hate randomness and it's also very difficult to write something like this in a way that makes it work in all types of media and on browsers without javascript. Easy to write, hard to write for en.wp. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

On a similar note, you might be interested in knowing about the image cycler at c:User:Hellerhoff#Hello. It does not auto-play, but it takes still images and makes a sort of video out of them. (Use your mousewheel or scroll very slowly through the images to see the "animation".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Template:Russian ruble displays huge in wikitables

(Pasted from Template talk:Russian ruble § Displays huge in wikitables.)

I just tried to use Template:Russian ruble in List of circulating currencies#List of circulating currencies by state or territory. Unlike in text (), it is displaying about 8x size, not character size, everywhere it appears. This seems to be an interaction with the wikitable code:

Header text	Header text
Example

BIG PROBLEM HERE! Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 15:15, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@Thnidu: This is a known issue (see for example this archived thread; I can't find it on phab: though). If image markup with two consecutive pipe characters (e.g. [[File:Example.png||50px]]) is used inside a table, it will display in its nominal size regardless of the specified display size. I'll try fixing the template. SiBr₄ (talk) 16:06, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Moving the alt parameter appears to fix it but Editor SiBr₄ may have better knowledge so I'll bow out.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:14, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

This should fix it. I moved one pipe into the #if statement used for setting the link (using {{!}}), so the pipe is only added if |link= is set. SiBr₄ (talk) 16:20, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Could we update the tz database?

Articles like CST6CDT are totally broken. I have no idea how to update the database, having tried before. ~ NottNott let's talk! contrib 15:32, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I've fixed Template:Tz/coord by adding the timezones which disappeared at the last tz refresh nearly 18 months ago - see User talk:Hytar#Broken TZ pages - but at least another 5 templates will need fixing for them to do a job they were never intended to do. They were intended for specific locations like Europe/Lisbon not whole zones (or variations of them).

Excluding the articles which were dabs or redlinks, the timezones which had disappeared were :

• CST6CDT is a variation on Central Time Zone
• EST5EDT is a variation on Eastern Standard Time
• MST7MDT is a variation on Mountain Standard Time
• PST8PDT is a variation on Pacific Time Zone

which do little more than transclude the tz templates (which haven't worked for them in over 18 months) and refer the reader to their parent timezones.

Rather than fixing at least another 5 templates (Template:Tz/coordinates, Template:Tz/country code, Template:Tz/comments, Template:Tz/utc offset, & Template:Tz/utc dst offset), and having to re-fix them every time the tz database is refreshed, I'd recommend redirecting those 4 articles to the timezones to which they belong and will do so shortly if there are no objections. Bazj (talk) 16:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

HTTPS for selected external links, but how?

As many of you know, Wikimedia has adopted HTTPS-by-default in all of its projects in June 2015 (I don't want to explain why this was a smart decision; those who don't know may be referred to this Federal CIO info website). Since we don't want our readers' privacy to be harmed when they exit Wikipedia, it is only reasonable to also have external links from within Wikipedia point to an HTTPS address rather than HTTP. Unfortunately, of course, not all websites offer HTTPS support yet, but some who do are actually among the most linked-to websites on Wikipedia. This includes most importantly:

• all Google services, such as Google Books, Google News, and also YouTube.
• the Internet Archive, including its much used service Wayback Machine (see also WP:WBM).

Those websites do not only offer HTTPS, they want people to use it. The Internet Archive, for instance, encourages people to update their inbound links to HTTPS. Giving the number of links on Wikipedia to those services—literally millions—I consider it of utmost importance to convert those outbound links from HTTP to HTTPS. As a matter of fact, I have been converting a large number of those links over the past months semi-automatically (using AutoWikiBrowser). However, bureaucracy prevents me to further do this, because while these edits are deemed useful, they are not considered significant enough (by AWB rules) to be done on their own. A bot request of mine to have this done, from a couple of months ago, was dead-end.

Therefore I want to know how we can further improve readers' privacy on Wikipedia. We know what it is that we have to do, but how shall we do it? --bender235 (talk) 19:55, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@Bender235: In addition to submitting an AWB feature request, you may also want to update the Wikipedia documentation (e.g. WP:WBM, Template:Cite web, Template:Citation) to encourage people to use HTTPS for the Wayback Machine. GoingBatty (talk) 20:23, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: AWB feature request  Done --bender235 (talk) 14:40, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

@GoingBatty: unsurprisingly, this request was halted, too, after Billinghurst turned it into a "style issue" and asked for even broader consensus. --bender235 (talk) 12:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Bitey! How about you accurately report what I said. I challenged that the English Wikipedia is able to dictate that the AWB tool should be setting https as genfixes within AWB, when the AWB tool is more than English Wikipedia. I said that you should go and get a broader consensus involving those wikis. My argument was never about blinking style. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Please note that there are already several AWB general fixes that are specific to the English Wikipedia. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 15:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: I understand your concern about the English Wikipedia imposing something on other language versions. But at the same time, I fail to see why the German, Italian, or Arab Wikipedia would be damaged by having these links fixed. For the same reason Wikimedia's move to HTTPS-by-default applies to all language versions, I don't see why privacy protection in this regard would disturb anyone. --bender235 (talk) 16:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

@Bender235: You might also want to submit feature requests to User:Ohconfucius/script/Sources, WP:REFLINKS, and User talk:Zhaofeng Li/reFill. GoingBatty (talk) 21:54, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@Bender235: I have added a couple of Wayback Machine items recently. There is scope for improving the cite system here: one has to add two long fields:

archiveurl=https://blah.internet.archive/stuff/2012021230456/<the original url> and

archivdate=12 February 2012

It would be simple to have instead:

wayback=2012021230456

to generate both the url (https, or protocol relative) and the date.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:08, 6 September 2015 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: How would |wayback= know which date format to use to be in sync with the rest of the article? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 22:16, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Might I suggest that this side topic of |wayback= is best raised and discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1 so that Editor Bender235's topic isn't completely derailed?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:49, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

This is not a technical issue, this is a manual of style issue, and should be dealt with through that process. Prior to enforcing a means of linking to https, this should be put to the whole community as an RFC. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with “style,” because the appearance of the link itself doesn't change at all. It is a technicality. --bender235 (talk) 12:48, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

This is also about how we get users to add links, so clearly that includes aspects of style, and is more than technical. You are wanting our users to do something without telling them what or why, or you are wanting to change something that our users are doing without any explanation, other than words of "technical fix", and you want to do it without broadly consulting them. If you want to change greater than ten of thousands of links on this wiki alone, go out and get a broad consensus. If you want to turn it into a proper fix, and truly make a difference and truly protect our users from a privacy breach then I would suggest that you do it properly, and put a proper Request for Comment at Meta and address this to the whole Wikimedia community as collectively there will be hundreds of thousands links to google, and archive.org. If you are truly concerned, you will do the job properly, you will do it respectfully involving the community. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. If any user adds a WBM link for archive purposes these days, it will automatically be HTTPS, because the Internet Archive switched to HTTPS by default in October 2013. (Try for yourself and browse to http://archive.org/.) So unless someone manipulates the URL he has copied & pasted, it will always be HTTPS. The same goes for Google Books. If you enter http://books.google.com/ today, you will automatically be redirected to https://books.google.com/. So what ever (new) link a user copies, it will be HTTPS already.

What this discussion is concerned with is old existing external links. Those need to be fixed, and its a mere technicality. Nothing will look or feel different. --bender235 (talk) 15:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Please ignore billinghurst's trolling. The suggestion is perfectly valid, and there is no reason why you should not raise it here. An RFC or similar might help shed light on potential unforeseen consequences.--Anders Feder (talk) 16:10, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I do not consider his comments "trolling." In fact, over the past years that I have been fixing these links on my own, I had dozens of similar complaints by people who do not understand the issue completely. People who complain it would break existing links (which it does not), people who complain the HTTPS version might be different from the HTTP version (which they are not), people who oppose HTTPS in general (for Wikipedia itself, too) because they don't value readers' privacy as much as others or simply because they don't understand that there is no such thing as non-sensitive web traffic. I take those comments and concerns seriously, and I am willing to address them. --bender235 (talk) 16:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Then you should go ahead and create the RfC. It should give you plenty of complaints to deal with.--Anders Feder (talk) 16:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

@Anders Feder:  Done. --bender235 (talk) 17:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Commented. You should probably sign the first part.--Anders Feder (talk) 17:16, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

RfC moved to WP:VPR upon request.

Global user pages

The well known user User:Place holder has a user page on meta (which I created for them).

It didn't seem to propagate, elsewhere perhaps because User:Place holder wasn't registered there. Once they visited Meta, and became registered it then propagated to de: when they visited that site, and became registered there too.

I checked sw: and there was no propagation.

However per this page it has propagated to Login, Commons, Species and Incubator, which User:Place holder has never visited.

What's happening?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:15, 6 September 2015 (UTC).

meta:Global user pages says: "The global pages will only be inherited on wikis where you have a local account that's not detached (see a list of accounts attached to your global account). That primarily means your global user page won't appear on wikis you've never visited." Special:CentralAuth/Place holder shows the account was attached the same minute at several wikis. I don't know why but this seems to happen for many accounts. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:26, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I guess you could log in to it and visit those other wikis? Eman235/talk 04:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Have fun clicking through Special:SiteMatrix. I think there is a tool somewhere to create an account at all Wikimedia wikis with unified login. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Tagged for deletion

Yesterday while going through the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion I found this which was in some other categories. I removed several and it fixed the categories. Now User talk:Strawkipedia is in the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. I tried removing everything from the sandbox but that didn't seem to help. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 14:56, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. —Kusma (t·c) 15:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I completely missed that. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 15:12, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-37

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

Recent changes

• You can now mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users. [10]
• A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support. [11]
• You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version. [12]

Problems

• There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed. [13]
• The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed. [14][15]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
• The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters. [16]
• The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page. [17][18]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours. [19]
• Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places. [20][21]

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

17:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Mobile talkpage editing when blocked

Please see the "Talk page editing when blocked" section at WP:AN as of right now. In short, User talk:Gothaparduskerialldrapolatkh is absolutely full of new sections, because the user has discovered that he can create new sections while blocked, but he can't edit existing sections while blocked. Someone noticed that this user's edits were all through a mobile device, and Samwalton9 discovered that when you're using a mobile device to edit as a blocked user, you get a "you've been blocked and can't edit..." message when you try to edit your own talk page, except if you're creating a new section. People not using the mobile version of the site don't have this problem: unless talk page access is totally disabled, you can create new sections and edit existing sections on your talk page when you're blocked. Could someone request a bug fix? Nyttend (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

@Samwalton9 and Nyttend: Hmm, are you sure? That's not good, but I'm not sure how that would happen. The code definitely checks if you're blocked, but even if it doesn't blocks are managed in the back-end of MediaWiki, which doesn't care about whether you're editing from mobile, VE or elsewise. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Here is a more direct link to the thread at AN that began this Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive274#Talk page editing when blocked. MarnetteD|Talk 22:07, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

What I see when clicking either of the pencils.

@Jdforrester (WMF): Yep. Testing again, I blocked Samwalton9Testing (without autoblock to avoid issues) without talk page revoked. I can definitely edit the whole page fine in the web view but in mobile view I get the error shown in the image to the right. I can click Add Discussion with no problem. Sam Walton (talk) 22:12, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

@Samwalton9, Nyttend, and MarnetteD: OK, interesting. Two distinct bugs, which I've filed as phab:T111739 and phab:T111741. Thanks for finding them! Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 23:10, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Redirect pages appearing as red links in the pages directed to

Is there any way of facilitating this?

Sometimes you go to list of pages and there are loads of blue links yet some (sometimes many) of them connect to redirect pages of either deleted articles or pages that were created as redirects. The result I think may be confusing for readers. Is there anything that can be done on this? GregKaye 06:46, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

It's probably a cached copy - WP:PURGE it. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Problem with icons and wiki editor

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T112110

I can't see the icons in the wiki editor toolbar as well as the wikipedia logo in the up and left of the page. I use firefox. What happened? -Odythal (talk) 16:35, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

It works for me in Firefox 40.0.3. Files in file pages are stored at https://upload.wikimedia.org while the logo and edit icons are stored locally at https://en.wikipedia.org. Maybe you have accidentally disabled images from https://en.wikipedia.org in your browser. Can you see https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/project-logos/enwiki.png which is used in the upper left corner? Can you see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Wikipedia-logo-v2-en.svg which is displayed on File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-en.svg? Are you accessing Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Lua

Does anybody know how to use various symbols and scripts as self.args. i.e. args. in Lua? For example, if I want to use self.args.ћирилица (cyrillic script) I get redirected to Debug console and don't know what to do... I guess there're some extra signs before and after the text self.args.он отхер сцрипт ор витх вариоус сумболс. --Obsuser (talk) 00:57, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Obsuser: Use self.args['ћирилица']. You can only use the dot syntax with names that only consist of a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and _, and that don't start with a number. If you try to use it with any other string, it's a syntax error. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: Thank you! --Obsuser (talk) 02:28, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: Actually, it's not working. I get Script error: Lua mistake at line --: unexpected symbol near '['. I have also problem with self:renderPerЋИРИЛИЦА(builder, 'Ћирилица', 'ћирилица'). Any way to solve these? --Obsuser (talk) 02:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Obsuser: self:renderPerЋИРИЛИЦА(builder, 'Ћирилица', 'ћирилица') is another syntax error. You need to write self['renderPerЋИРИЛИЦА'](self, builder, 'Ћирилица', 'ћирилица') (see here for an explanation of how the colon operator works). As for the other error, I think I will need to see your script. Can I have a link? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:04, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: Here. You can compare English version and the one from link to see what I've changed (you can check differences here). I need cyrillic script for all of those words (Strana, strane, datum, lokacija, akcija etc.) so they can be used as parameters in the template. You can change module on .sr project to see if it is working (if you want) because with self.args['ћирилица'] style I get error. Thank you! --Obsuser (talk) 03:53, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Obsuser: Hmm, it looks like the best way of doing that would be to use the argument translation feature in Module:Arguments. @Jackmcbarn: I see that argument translation isn't documented at Module:Arguments/doc - is there a particular reason for this, or is it ok to encourage people to use it? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:30, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: So what should I do now to make my module working with cyrillic script? --Obsuser (talk) 23:10, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: It works differently than the getArgs in Gerrit will, so I don't want to encourage use of the old way. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:17, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

How can I use cyrillic now? There must be some detour...Obsuser (talk) 20:23, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Images not displaying (moved from Help desk to VP)

Does anybody know why is Wikipedia on my PC (when I use Chrome or Firefox) looking like this and this and this? When I use Internet Explorer everything is just fine... Problem emerged after 1st or 2nd of September, 2015 and is also present on Facebook (many images are missing there too). I updated everything; still, nothing works. Maybe (probably not) the problem is about NPAPI removal, but why is then Firefox experiencing same issues? --Obsuser (talk) 14:19, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• @Obsuser: I can only speak for Chrome but on the address bar all the way to the right next to the favorite star, does anything else show up when you try to load the page? Error messages in Chrome are displayed with little symbols next to the star. --Stabila711 (talk) 14:42, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• @Obsuser: Do you have an extension common to both Chrome and Firefox? An adblocker perhaps? Browser versions and OS details please. - 185.108.128.19 (talk) 15:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• @Stabila711: Nothing shows up...
• @185.108.128.19: Only extension that is common to both Chrome and Firefox is Avast Online Security (which is NOT enabled). I used to have the Adblocker in Chrome for about a year, but have uninstalled it before two or three days to make sure it won’t make any problems. Browser versions are all up-to-date (Chrome: 45.0.2454.85 m; Firefox: updated to latest version). [I also used to have crashes of Flash player in Chrome, and crashes of screen/display/monitor (after five or ten minutes of using of Chrome, Windows theme would have changed (from blue to lighter blue) and I would have get message The exception breakpoint. A breakpoint has been reached. /with Chrome.exe, not Robocraft.exe/; screen would have disappeared and get black; it would have crashed like this few times and then stopped crashing with message Shockwave player has crashed. in Chrome and changing of resolution of my monitor to lowest possible; however, this is NOT case right now after I updated all drivers so I just mentioned this in case and actually don’t need help with it but only with missing images).] OS: Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit --Obsuser (talk) 15:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@Obsuser: Just to make sure, have you tried clearing your browser caches and checking again? Next step would be to use Safe Mode in FF. 185.108.128.19 (talk) 15:55, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

• @185.108.128.19: Yes, nothing works. I assume problems are caused by some software conflicting with each other or recent updates of Mediawiki and/or Chrome/Firefox/system... Weird thing is that other pages display properly but only Wikipedia encounter errors (Facebook is now OK). Can anybody help? --Obsuser (talk) 03:01, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The problem is Avast antivirus itself. See this: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 and this (the comment by Stryn at the bottom of the page): https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112110 I had same problem but adding scanning exception to avast settings solved it. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 19:03, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Obsuser: I recommend posting this problem at the village pump. They are more familiar with technical issues regarding Wikipedia and may be able to help you better (and quicker). Also, they can file a bug report if necessary. --Stabila711 (talk) 20:26, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

---

Appeal for coders

Do we have any Javascript coders who would be willing to make some improvements to Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:53, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Texas Historical Commission atlas has changed information links

This has also been posted at the WP Project Texas. The home for the Texas Historical Commission atlas URL remains the same: http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/

However, once you access information, those links have changed. Whatever you have linked to THC as sources in articles are now dead links. I just made a recent change to an article. You can see by the diff how it's been changed.

These atlas links have been used for NRHP citations, as well as other historical marker citations. I have no clue how many thousands of links in articles this affects, but I imagine it's considerable. — Maile (talk) 21:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

If there is a trivial way to correct the link from A to B, I might suggest you file a bot request. --Izno (talk) 22:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Special:LinkSearch finds 718 links to http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us. The count includes all namespaces and cases with multiple links on the same page. There are around 370 different articles. http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us currently says: "Welcome to the new Atlas! The original Atlas, now located at http://atlas1.thc.state.tx.us, will eventually be phased out in the coming weeks. Please begin transitioning your use to the new Atlas." The links I examined work if atlas is replaced by atlas1 but it sounds like this is temporary. It would be good to find and update to new atlas url's while the old content can be seen at atlas1 (not all url changes are of the same form). If you want bot help then you can post to Wikipedia:Bot requests which is what Izno tried to link. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:25, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for suggesting. I just input a request. — Maile (talk) 22:27, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

CAPTCHA Broken

I edit as an IP address, and as of a few days ago the CAPTCHA doesn't display any more when I try to add URLs, no matter how often I refresh the CAPTCHA or which browser I use (Chrome and Firefox) the image never shows up. I can't add any urls to wikipedia as references, I just get the little broken image box. If I look at the source, I can see that the image url changes every time I refresh. I haven't made significant changes to my browser installs since 'before' and 'after' it stopped working. I have experimented with turning off my ad blocking plugins and with different browsers. --110.20.234.69 (talk) 01:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Can you post the image url and try another computer? I see CAPTCHA's when I log out in both Firefox 40.0.3 and Google Chrome 45.0.2454.85 on Windows Vista. My tests gave the images at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=1233632646 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=1231865122. Do you see images there? I still see them in all tested browsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, but I can't post any urls on wikipedia, not even to a service such as imageshack, etc. The portion of the url that I can see is src="/w/index.php?title=Spec...ge&wpCaptchaId=29266332" in the page source viewer. (as an example, I could provide more...) I am using Windows 8.1, Firefox 40.0.3, Chrome Version 45.0.2454.85 m. I can't see any images at the URLs you provided. I don't have access to another computer. Thanks for trying to help me. --110.20.234.69 (talk) 02:36, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

You could post the url in <nowiki>...</nowiki> or without https but it's not needed now. I assume it's https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=29266332. I see a CAPTCHA image there. It's a png image but without .png in the url. Can you see https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/wikimedia-button.png? Can you see a CAPTCHA at another domain like https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=560643765? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:00, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, 110.20 cannot post URLs, about the busted captcha-imagefiles, because the busted captcha-filter prevents them from doing so.  :-)     It's not a case of needing nowiki, it's a case of not being able to fill in the captcha-bot's demands due to busted imagefile-viewing, methinks. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

nowiki prevents the url from producing a clickable link and then you don't need a captcha. In addition, you don't need a captcha to post an "external" link with a url to this site itself so it should also have been possible without nowiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah, okay. So I was wrong then, thanks for fixing me up. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I can't see any image at the first url (the 29266332 one), can't see the wikimedia-button, but can see the meta.wikimedia.org captcha. Odd. 110.20.234.69 (talk) 03:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Files in articles and other wikitext are from https://upload.wikimedia.org. If you can't see the wikimedia-button then maybe it isn't CAPTCHA specific but about interface images with url's at en.wikipedia.org like the reports at #Problem with icons and wiki editor and #Images not displaying (moved from Help desk to VP). Can you see two small images at the bottom right of this page? They should say "a WIKIMEDIA project" and "Powered by MediaWiki". Can you see the Wikipedia logo at https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/project-logos/enwiki.png and the top left of this page? I uploaded your missing CAPTCHA to my own site at http://primerecords.dk/Wikipedia/CaptchaId29266332.png. Do you see it there? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:29, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I can see all of the images in your last example, but am still having problems viewing captchas. This gets weirder and weirder. 110.20.234.69 (talk) 03:44, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello 110.20 -- are you still unable to properly see https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/wikimedia-button.png ("can't see the wikimedia-button")? I would work on solving that issue first, and then see if the captcha-problem is also solved. Do you have image-viewing turned off, presumably on a subdomain-by-subdomain basis using some plugin, for speeding up your browser? Or maybe one of your ad-blocking plugins has determined that en.wikipedia.org is a spam-site.  ;-)   Any proxy stuff, or upstream-ISP-related caching/blacklisting/pornfirewalling/etc? I also edit anon, and I can see the captcha-info from firefox 38, when I post URLs. Can you see images in wikipedia-articles, that are from commons.wikipedia.org , but not see images in articles that are from en.wikipedia.org? Elvis and United Parcel Service, here is the one from commons , https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Elvis_Presley_promoting_Jailhouse_Rock.jpg , and here is one from enWiki , https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9f/United_Parcel_Service_logo.svg -- are all four of those visible? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your assistance! Can now see the wikimedia-button, but still can't post links. Don't have image viewing turned off, and have disabled my ad-blocking software for en.wikipedia.org. I don't know about proxying, or ISP related stuff - it's only happened in the last week or so. I was able to add links to Granny Weatherwax. I can see Elvis promoting Jailhouse Rock, and the UPS logo. Does this help at all? 110.20.234.69 (talk) 11:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, if you can see the button, and the Elvis, you should be able to see the CAPTCHA. You are obviously able to post here, on this talkpage. If you try to post a barelink, http://facebook.com , here on this page, you should get a CAPTCHA warning. Do you know how to use the browser's developer-console-tools? In firefox you hit F12, and a little window pops up, which shows the HTTP 200 traffic going on under the hood. When I try to submit with the barelink to faceebook, with the F12 window logging all network events to the dev-console, I see POST followed by seven GET requests, all of them giving me back "HTTP 200 OK" including the fourth one, which is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=890835297 that loads the CAPTCH image dynamically (and which I can see in a separate tab when I paste the URL there as well as in the save-button-tab). Actually, the 2nd http get request was 304 Not Modified, aka cached locally. Are you seeing similar type of HTTP traffic, when you attempt to post http://facebook.com to this conversation-thread as a barelink? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

So in my post immediately above, I saw the first captcha-image 890whatever, and saw it in another tab. I made some more edits to my comment, clicked preview again, and got a second captch-image, which I responded to so as to click save. *After* clicking save above, I am still able to see the first 890whatever imagefile,[22] but the second 132whatever imagefile,[23] which I actually responded to by typing the visible text, no longer works now that I've clicked save on my comment up above. When visiting 890whatever at this point, I can see it, but when visiting 132whatever at this point, I get "HTTP 400 Bad Request" in the F12 dev-console, and printed "Request Error: Requested bogus captcha image" in the body-area. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Once a captcha image is successfully responded to, it is no longer valid. This is to prevent someone from somehow reusing a solved captcha to bypass the protection. Anomie⚔ 14:39, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Has anybody tweaked that code recently? What kind of timeouts are we talking about? Maybe the reason that I can see the captcha-images, and 110.20 cannot, is because my pingtimes are better, being physically nearer to the enWiki servers? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:23, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It looks like, this isn't only en.wiki problem. One IP user reported this also in Latvian Wikipedia. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

So is it related to physical location? I'm in the lower 48, whereas 110.20 is trying to post to enWiki from Australia. Where was the editor on the Latvian wikipedia geolocated? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

http://facebook.com Test#3. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Uh, that time I didn't have to go through captcha, at all. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

The IP editor is in Latvia. BTW, he has Win 7 and Firefox, if it's interesting to anybody. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

So, I'm not alone, then? :D http://facebook.com 110.20.234.69 (talk) 20:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Ok, that was bizarre, no captcha at all - it just let me post a url onto this page without any bar. Trying again with a news link formatted in — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.20.234.69 (talk) 20:59, 9 September 2015

References

I think I know why we can post the facebook link - as IP editors, we're allowed to move around existing links within an article. Because it was 'already there' when we tried to post it, we were allowed to reproduce it. A novel link would trigger a captcha. 110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

• Same problem, the captcha image won't load. Is anyone working on this issue? --89.0.239.42 (talk) 22:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Just to inform: I have same problem with captcha at swedish wiki (haven't tried here) and then I can't see e.g. wikipedia logo either, neither here nor at any other wiki. Going to ask about this at my local fi.wiki as well.87.93.114.115 (talk) 13:55, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi again. After a long discussion at fi.wiki we found out that the problem is Avast antivirus. See this: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 and this (the comment by Stryn at the bottom of the page): https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112110. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 19:08, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for this! It's fixed now! --110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Navigational Popups

The navigational popups have changed from the standard yellow-ish background to a white background and they now take up more space on the screen. I don't see an opt-out on the Preferences section. Is there an opt-out or some code to get it back to the smaller yellow-ish background? Thanks. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 02:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups#Report your Issues with the new style. There is currently no easy way to get the old style back. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Well that stinks. :( Thanks for the info. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 03:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

GIF showing link instead of image

Has anyone having issues with GIFs showing link instead of image? For example, I was at ALM Antillean Airlines and the airline logo is showing the link rather than the image. I'm on Firefox and it's only the only browser with this problem (I tried in IE and Chrome, both are fine). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

This has come up before, it usually means that the image was moved at some point and the page with the error still points to the old name of the image - a redirect. In this case, the article links to File:ALM logo.gif which is a redir to File:ALM Antillean Airlines (logo).gif, it was moved at 18:55, 8 March 2014 so I would have expected any problem to have shown up before now. Redirected images should work transparently, and often they do, but sometimes they don't. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

On that page just now, using Firefox 38.2.0 , ALM Antillean Airlines has a properly-visible-logo for me being displayed in the infobox. That properly-visible-logo can be clicked, and is hyperlinked to here.[24] If that's not what you see, what version of firefox (instructions here[25]) is giving you problems, User:OhanaUnited, and what operating system version are you running? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:09, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox 40.0.3. In the box, it's showing the redirected path link but not the image. When I click on it to go to the file page, the file page is still showing the file name and not the image itself. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:17, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

If you have Avast antivirus then see this: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 and this (the comment by Stryn at the bottom of the page): https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112110. I had varoius problems seeing images and adding scanning exception to avast solved them all. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 19:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

{{TfD}} placing all template pages it's transcluded on into Category:Templates for deletion

All welcome templates that are being used by the ACC Wikilove template, for example, are in that category due to {{ACC WikiLove Welcomer}} having that template in it. Note: was originally posted at User talk:Anomie/linkclassifier. Eman235/talk 03:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Have you informed the person who made those edits, and asked them to check over their work? --Redrose64 (talk) 08:59, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I suppose this wasn't very good action, but at least pages, that don't need to be categorized, don't get into categories. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:01, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, there has to be a better way to do this...will link this discussion from Template talk:Template for discussion. Eman235/talk 03:37, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Something like this should work to have only the template page itself be categorized. I've tested it by changing {{ACC WikiLove Welcomer}} to use the sandbox of the /dated template (without saving) and previewing it on different pages. SiBr₄ (talk) 09:59, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Or this, which uses an #ifeq check to set {{category handler}}'s |nocat= parameter instead. SiBr₄ (talk) 10:06, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

nested footnotes wiki-syntax help, or maybe, feature-request

Hello, I'm working on several articles where it will help to be able to make *multiple* fair use quotes from a *single* cited source, as a means to WP:PROVEIT for several sentences in the body-prose. It is possible to do this now, using normal <ref name=s>{{cite web |url=http://you.tu.be |title=sTitle |year=2015 |quote=LongThingHere }}</ref> for the first sentence, and then repeatedly using <ref name=s /> for the additional sentences.

  However, the |quote= parameter of {{cite web}} can only be used *once* that I am aware of, so if you want to have quoted-snippets that back up five different factoids in five different body-prose sentences of the article, you end up having a VERY LONG ascii string in the |quote= portion of the cite_web template. So long, in fact, that Other Editors ... not naming any names :-)   ... might complain. Or, uh, not saying this happened or anything, just delete the entire |quote= param with an edit-summary like "this is way too long are you out of yer dern mind???" ... ahem.

  An *alternative* existing solution, see WP:Nesting_footnotes#Reference_within_note, which is reasonably workable, is to stop using |quote= with a huge glommed-together set of five fair-use-snippets, and instead put individual {{efn}} templates containing each quoted-snippet. This works out pretty well, but requires adding a new section to the article, and makes the readership hop twice. (It also requires the addition of template:efn syntax.) The difference in how the alternative-layout works compared to the long-ellipsis-layout is best illustrated by example, see greenbox. I've also proposed (inside the greenbox) a hypothetical third way, which I don't believe is supported in wiki-syntax.

examples of these three wiki-syntax options in action

Barely-Okay Style#1 == one big {{cite_web}} Prose-sentence#1. Prose-sentence#2. Prose-sentence#3. Prose-sentence#4. Prose-sentence#5. (Comment: here, I'm using a huge |quote= which contains snippets to back up five distinct factoids, ellipsis-separation. Downside: not easy to tell which prose-sentence is WP:PROVEIT'd by which backing-snippet. Downside#2: |quote= field of the cite_web template gets very long very quickly.) References Kinda-Okay Style#2 == new 'Notes' with {{efn}}. Prose-sentence#1. Prose-sentence#2. Prose-sentence#3. Prose-sentence#4. Prose-sentence#5. (Comment: here, I'm using five {{efn}} 'Notes' which contain individualized-snippets to back up five distinct factoids, curlycurly-separation. Downside: requires adding a new subsection to article, which might be seen as WP:UNDUE emphasis on the quoted snippets. Downside#2: because the quoted-snippets are physically split from the cite-web-metadata, requires two hops for the readership to make the connection.) Notes References Desired Style#3 == hypothetical quote-attrib for <ref>-tags. Prose-sentence#1. Prose-sentence#2. Prose-sentence#3. Prose-sentence#4. Prose-sentence#5. (Comment: here, I'm using the hypothetical quote-attrib. Downside: upgrade required. Downside#2: even after upgrade, still needs repetitive info, e.g. exact same URL is getting repeated six times, albeit with a variable fragment-identifier-slash-querystring.) References Approximated rendering-output of what Desired Style#3 might look like, once supported. Other-sentence#0.[1] Prose-sentence#1.[2:q1] Prose-sentence#2.[2:q2] Prose-sentence#3.[2:q3] Prose-sentence#4.[2:q4] Prose-sentence#5.[2:q5] Other-sentence#5.[3] References ^ http://realclearpolitics.com ^ a b c d e "Obama v McCain". 2008. 2:q1 == backing-snippet#1 [26] 2:q2 == backing-snippet#2 [27] 2:q3 == backing-snippet#3 [28] 2:q4 == backing-snippet#4 [29] 2:q5 == backing-snippet#5 [30] ^ http://politico.com And the key feature here, is that when the readership hovers their mouse over Prose-sentence#2.[2:q2] they will see Obama v McCain[31], 2008, 'backing-snippet#2'[32] in a little jscript-popup-thing, and will NOT see all five of the quoted-snippets (which is what happens with the barely-okay-style#1 currently), nor will they ONLY see the backing-snippet without metadata like title/year/etc (which is what happens with kinda-okay-style#2 currently). Make sense?

In the third example, I've used the 90-minute presidential debate of 2008 as an example. It makes sense that we'd like to have a hardcoded ascii quoted-snippets, so the readership need not load up the 90-minute-long streaming video, launch a video-codec, or indeed, leave wikipedia at all. It also makes sense that we'd like to link the suspicious readership, who might not trust the wikipedia-quoted-snippet is accurate, directly to that point in the video, where the quoted-snippet is verbalized, so they can easily WP:V. Finally, it also makes sense that we'd like to repeat ourselves as little as possible, and keep all the pieces together in one place, and not add an extraneous 'Notes' section. Anyways, my first question is:

• can what I'm trying to achieve already be accomplished, and if so, what is the exact wiki-syntax please?

My second contingent question, assuming that what I want cannot be done without upgrading mediawiki and/or adding some kind of Template:footquote or whatever, is:

• how hard will such an upgrade be, to implement?

FYI, two other fairly-recent threads about nesting footnotes:

• WP:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_138#Nesting_footnotes
• WP:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_65#Nested_footnotes_aren.27t_workning_when_list-defined
• see also, nested-footnotes helpdocs for what doesn't work (wish it did).

Thanks, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:02, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

You might consider using {{sfn}}. Here is your example reworked:

Prose-sentence#1. Prose-sentence#2. Prose-sentence#3. Prose-sentence#4. Prose-sentence#5.

• "Obama v McCain". YouTube. 2008.

References

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello User:Trappist the monk, thanks, and I had that avenue recommended to me on IRC, but my problem with {{sfn}} is the repetition:

• Prose-sentence#1.{{sfn|Obama v McCain|2008|loc=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvdfO0lq4rQ#t=111s Snippet #1]}}
• Prose-sentence#2.{{sfn|Obama v McCain|2008|loc=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvdfO0lq4rQ#t=222s Snippet #2]}}

and so on. I could just as well use multiple <ref>...</ref> instantiations:

• Prose-sentence#1.<ref name=ref2quote1>{{cite web |title=Obama v McCain |year=2008 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvdfO0lq4rQ#t=111s |quote=backing-snippet #1}}</ref>
• Prose-sentence#2.<ref name=ref2quote2>{{cite web |title=Obama v McCain |year=2008 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvdfO0lq4rQ#t=222s |quote=backing-snippet #2}}</ref>

The trouble is, what if there's a bug in my metadata, and the video in question was actually filmed in December 2007, or something? Then I have to go through and find *all* the places I mentioned the video. I already have to do that when the references are spread across multiple articles, of course... and thus maybe, the 'correct' answer here is, every ref *should* be complete unto itself, repetition be damned.

  I don't think so, though: it puffs up the refs-section, and makes it look like there are five sources (#1 to #5) when really there are just multiple quotation-snippets from a single actual source. To solve that puffed-up-refcount-issue, and reduce repetition, I like to use <ref name=foo /> instead, but when I'm using multiple-snippets inside the |quote= that doesn't work out too well (the quote-field gets huge). I tried to figure out if there was a way to use {{refn}} to accomplish what I am after, since that permits nesting and doesn't mandate a new section, but I don't think it can do what I want it to do. Maybe I'm missing something? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:04, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

You know, there isn't a 'space' problem. Nor is there a problem if the article has one more section. There are no physical limitations. I think that a section of quotes is perfectly legitimate and, from this reader's point of view, much better than burying the quotes in cs1|2 templates in amongst the citations.

Where is a real world example of the problem you are trying to solve? Examples can only go so far.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:20, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016 is a place where I think the 'Notes' section, which so far I'm the only one to use, is probably putting WP:UNDUE emphasis on the contents of the notes. I would much rather them be in the {{reflist}} with all the other footnotes. At the same time, it is not possible to do that, without nesting reftags, and the article is already using the normal <ref>...</ref> style, plus I would not WANT to change over to one of the nesting-supported-styles since most people don't know the weird template-syntax those nesting-supported-styles support. But this is definitely a case where I felt like I was causing a problem with WP:NPOV when I added the 'Notes' section (but there was a bigger NPOV problem I was *solving* by adding the notes-section so I did it anyways).

    The other article where I specifically needed a multiquote recently, and got my original attempt at a multiquote deleted since it was glomming too many things together, was on Republican Party presidential debates, 2016 where I was trying to list the decline-and-non-invitation-reasons for the C-SPAN forum. See my usertalk attempt to solve that syntax-problem outside the article, which is at multiQuote fiddling. I've had similar comments ("those cites are too damn big!" :-)   but not yet any |quote= deletions, about a BLP-article I'm working on, Draft:Ron_Schnell#cite_note-22 for instance. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:43, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Did you try this:

{{#tag:ref|{{cite book |title=Title |quote=Someone said: 'Those cites are too damn big!'<ref>{{cite web |url=//example.com |title=Reference supporting the too damn big assertion}}</ref>}}... but another said: 'No they're not!'<ref>{{cite web |url=//example.com |title=Refutation of the too damn big assertion}}</ref>}}}}

Some blah blah article text with a reference that has |quote=.}}

References

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I believe that the underlying bug (where bug is generally pronounced "feature") is phab:T3310. Tags cannot be nested (directly). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:30, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo seems to be missing

Am I the only one? NorthernThunder (talk) 19:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

No, you are not. Ive had the same problem for days and there's some talk about it a little higher on this page and some irc-discussions too. I don't know the solution but Internet Explorer shows the logo for me, firefox and chrome don't. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 16:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

My chrome hasn't had any problems at all. Try purging the cache.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 17:22, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi NorthernThunder. If you have avast antivirus then the problem is solved. We had a long discussion about this at fi.wiki and one of our admins summarized the findings thus:

"We found out that the problem seems to be Avast! antivirus program. At https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 had instructions to //disable HTTPS scanning (avastUI > Settings > Active Protection > Web Shield > Customize - disable HTTPS scanning)// or alternatively add an exception for not scanning https://*.wikipedia.org/* and such sites. It was [[ https://fi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Kahvihuone_%28tekniikka%29&curid=139606&diff=15202943&oldid=15202925 | reported ]] on fiwiki that those instructions did help to solve the problem."

I had tried everything, clearing cache etc... but it was only the adding of the aforementioned scanning exception to avast that solved the problem. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 18:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Hidden sections on this page

There are several discussions on this page that aren't visible except when editing. It seems to be this edit that did it? Eman235/talk 21:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Fixed, they were missing a closing ref tag. Sam Walton (talk) 21:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry everyone! 110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Default edit summary for G6 moves

Currently when making a move and deletion of articles found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion you get edit summaries like this and this. These were both tagged as G6, Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G6. Technical deletions, uncontroversial moves/deletions of redirects holding up a page move (point 3 in the list). It turns out the second was not uncontroversial and makes it look as if I was suddenly making strange page moves. Obviously the work around is to put in the summary that it was a G6 move. However, in the long run it would be much better to have the link to G6 as part of the edit summary by default, the same as a regular deletion. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 22:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

The logs for the deleted target pages [33][34] do say "G6: Deleted to make way for move". G6 is not a reason for the move so I'm not sure why you want it in the move summary. Do you want others to know you were just responding to a request and didn't move it on your own initiative? Administrators are responsible for their actions and should evaluate the request before making the move. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:57, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm not disputing that I screwed up the second (Baahubali) move. Yes it would be useful for others to see that it was done as a request rather than just my own idea. Not everybody thinks to go to the log and it seems that one editor thought I had just decided to do the move. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 23:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

The prefilled move summary is made by {{db-move}}. If the move request didn't state a reason in the second parameter then it defaults to [[WP:CSD#G6|Housekeeping page move]]. If a reason is stated then that reason is used. You can suggest on talk that something with G6 is also placed in front of a stated reason. It would mean a long reason is cut off earlier. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 23:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I meant Template talk:db-move (which redirects to Template talk:db-meta) but I see you have posted to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:08, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Missing creation option when searching for all uppercase under certain circumstances?

I don't know if this is something that's always been the case and I just never noticed, or something new. For me, sometimes a search triggers the option to create a page and sometimes it does not. Let's be concrete. I noticed this this morning upon attempting to create a redirect for OREDA in answer to a Teahouse question. When I placed that in the search bar (I use Monobook), it did not give me any option for creation (regardless of whether the search or Go button was used). That is, no:

"You may create the page "RedLink", but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered."

I then created the redirect but only by the mechanism of previewing a red link. That redirect subsequently became an article, which was then deleted, so I can report that right now the same results obtain: any search for OREDA provides me no page creation option. (Does it for you?) But most – but not all – other things I type do result in the option, and I see no rhyme or reason to what triggers the option and what does not, other than that the common denominator seems to be that it only happen when the word is in all uppercase. However, it's inconsistent. I just tried some other combinations of random all uppercase searches and the creation option was present. Is this a bug or feature? And if a feature, what are the ground rules for what does and does not invoke it? I note that Help:Searching#Search results page says in mealy-mouth fashion that "It can report that You may create the page..." (emphasis mine).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:43, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I have an idea why it happens. MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new is usually called on searches but not on OREDA. There was once reports that people created pages with silly titles like prefix:Talk:Main Page, because they clicked the red link after making an archive search. To prevent such creations, some searches no longer give the create option. Upper case OR is part of Help:Searching#Syntax so maybe a primitive string analyzer thinks it was using OR as search syntax and not as part of a word. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. I think you're onto something. I just tried some searches with AND at the start of some random all uppercase words like ANDLDKF, and the same thing happens; no search option. Remove the N and creation option is back. Aha, NOT also triggers this.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:14, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

phab:T23102 is "Don't propose to create a page under a title with prefix:, intitle:, incategory: or other search operators". The last post says "We actually did this with Cirrus." PrimeHunter (talk) 03:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Summary ad

Ckatz uses an empty summary ad for Twinkle, but User:Ckatz/twinkleoptions.js does not exist and has never been created or deleted. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 03:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

This user sets the summary ad using the legacy TwinkleConfig object in User:Ckatz/vector.js. This method of setting Twinkle preferences is discouraged and incompatible with the WP:TWPREFS setting page, but we still support it, because a number of long-term users still have their settings stored in this way. — This, that and the other (talk) 03:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Cookies problem?

After writing this post to the Administrators' noticeboard on Wikidata, I had this problem. I tried deleting my cookies after seeing this advice on Pale Moon forums, but now I'm getting a different error when directly clicking on the d:Wikidata:Administrators' noticeboard link from my Wikidata contributions:

"XML Parsing Error: unexpected parser state" ...

Could anyone offer any insight perhaps? Pale Moon 25.7 (latest version) on Windows 7. Jared Preston (talk) 12:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Have you tried the usual steps, like clearing the Pale Moon cache, using a different browser and restarting your computer? Do you have the same problem in Firefox? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 13:12, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Ähm, yes. I can't tell you about Firefox, but with (an old version I have of) Internet Explorer I don't have the problem. It also doesn't matter if I'm logged in or not, the page just refuses to load with the same error message "This page isn't redirecting properly". Clearance of cache and cookies makes no difference, nor does safe mode. However, no problems whatsoever in "privacy mode" which is why I'm slightly confused as to what else to do... That really would suggest that it is the cookies. Jared Preston (talk) 13:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I have the same problem in Firefox with certain Commons pages like Administrators' noticeboard/User problems. Says "The page isn't redirecting properly ... Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. ... This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies." I am doing nothing different than I have been for years. -- Veggies (talk) 13:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I've noticed that the problem has something to do with apostrophes in the article or page title. For example: Commons:Category:People's Heroes of Yugoslavia also fails to load properly—just like the "Administrators' noticeboard" that Jared Preston is having issues with. -- Veggies (talk) 14:06, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

It's related to this ticket. Hopefully someone will deploy the latest fix soon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

The fix has been deployed. Matma Rex talk 16:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Veggies, TheDJ, and Matma Rex: Thanks guys, I can confirm that the links to Wikidata's Administrators' noticeboard as well as those on Commons all work now. I appreciate your work and quick fix-deployment. Thank you very much! Jared Preston (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Ping from talk page not working

Recently, I had Windows 10 installed. Then I found WikEd wasn't working in Chrome (I saw the recent discussion). I changed to Firefox, and now WikEd works, but the ping from my talk page doesn't. Is there anything I can do to fix that? Corinne (talk) 14:37, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

MathJax

Can someone tell me when and why MathJax was removed? I liked it. (please  mention me on reply) —Keφr 15:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Kephir: See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T99369 and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07-22/Technology report for the removal. If you're using Chrome, there is a third-party app https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikipedia-with-mathjax/fhomhkjcommffnlajeemenejemmegcmi?hl=en-GB that can re-enable mathjax, although in my experience it has some trouble with font sizing in display math. As for why, I don't think it's clearly discussed anywhere, but possible explanations include (1) previous developers implemented mathjax badly and the result was so difficult to maintain that they had to rip it out again, (2) the developers want to pressure the browser makers to support mathml by making math rendering bad for anyone whose browser doesn't support mathml, (3) the developers don't particularly care about mathematics at all and have given over that part of the software to volunteers who are more interested in helping mathml beat mathjax than they are in providing a good user experience to editors and readers. For more evidence of #3, see Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#Indentation for mathematical equations where it turns out that the VisualEditor is incapable of editing displayed mathematics formulas in the style used in Wikipedia and the developers have instead added a parameter to the math markup that produces formulas in a different incompatible style not used here. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:26, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

See also the usertalk discussion here, which further delves into the 'why'. Basically, the WMF doesn't feel qualified to be involved, and wants volunteer devs to make the decisions. (Cf, WP:FLOW, and recent schedule slippage thereof.) Complex userland front-end software projects are not the remit of the WMF; that said, they are pretty good at doing complex server-hardware-and-backend-database-stuff, I will note. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Ping fail. See why. —Keφr 21:27, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Notifications indicators have changed

---

Please also provide your opinions of the change at the signpost poll here as well 02:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

---

There are now two, each has a little symbol in black, which is very difficult to see against the red background. This change was in the last 25 minutes. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:15, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

It became live on Wikidata yesterday already I think. Whatever, IDONTLIKEIT! Jared Preston (talk) 19:19, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict): I'll probably be in the minority on this one, but I actually like this change. It was kind of a pain having the 2-in-1 alert/message indicator. Having one for each works better. :) - Neutralhomer • Talk • 19:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

+1. C'mon people, let's try and embrace a smidgeon of change perhaps? -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

My first reaction is that I don't like it. My stronger reaction is that such things shoud not be changed without a prominent announcement. The first might change with time, the second won't. DES ^(talk) 19:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

+1. Also, for me it's changing size midway through page load, and the end result is absolutely huge (with the two indicators taking up more space than my username and talk combined). Is there a way to restore the old version, even if only on an individual level? Nikkimaria (talk) 19:27, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

There's a red background? On both IE and Firefox, I get the symbols in white against a rather wide faded grayed out background. That's with Modern skin, my normal one. Cologne and Vector skin have the white against faded gray, but the background is more concise, not so much spread out. With Mono, it's the black symbols against the grayed out background, which is easier to see than the one on Modern skin. Maybe it's just my vision, but I find white against grayed out harder to see than the old style. — Maile (talk) 19:29, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

It's red if the count is non-zero. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:38, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

They seem to be bored again. So why not keep playing around some more and fill up my huge and still empty looking widescreen monitor? And when you're done I'll buy an even bigger one for you to keep messing around further.--TMCk (talk) 19:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I actually love it as it is less confusing and I will not be as likely to accidentally miss an alert but I agree with DES in the fact that there should have been a notice. Tortle (talk) 19:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

For the advance notice you are complaining that wasn't made because you have failed to read it, see #Tech News: 2015-37 above.--Anders Feder (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't call that prominent. DES ^(talk) 23:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what issue you're having. Is it that the two icons take up more space now? Legoktm (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

+1 - The notifications now look bloody tiny on my laptop!, Sorry to moan but I don't see what was wrong with the previous one, As the saying goes - Don't fix what isn't broken. –Davey2010^Talk 19:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@Davey2010: I mean, they're clearly larger now. Look at the image below. As for the rest of your statement ... if we held to that principle, Wikipedia would still look like this. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 20:41, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Ah so my eyes are playing tricks on me! , That is true to a point but at the end of the day IMHO there was no need to change it, The previous worked fine (well for me anyway). –Davey2010^Talk 20:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

They're very distracting. How do I change it back? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 19:48, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

There's a bug about them slightly flashing that is being worked on, but are there other things you find distracting? Legoktm (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Comparing the old and new indicators

This change looks awful if you're running a font with text figures like Georgia (pictured). When you have no notifications, the zero is squished to the bottom of the grey field. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

There is little point in having both a talk page link and a notification button for messages. These should be merged somehow. DrKiernan (talk) 19:50, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes – the 'messages' one should link to your Talk page directly, not to "Notifications". As for the change, I reserve judgement until I see how they fully work (if somebody's bored, feel free to 'ping' me or leave a message on my Talk page, so I can see how the new system works when "activated"...). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 20:05, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

OK, I do like that the new messages notification icon now shows up in "blue" rather than "red". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:12, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Didn't we recently have a consensus for keeping notification colours red? I thought it should be a different colour personally, but I thought the consensus was quite clear in favour of red notifications. Sam Walton (talk) 21:13, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

My interpretation of that discussion was less that "there was a consensus for keeping red" than that "there was no consensus for a change away from red". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:52, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I like having the new drop-down list of talk page messages — with the old system, whenever anyone added to an old conversation, it was always annoyingly complicated to find where their change was. However, with my rendering preferences (monobook etc) there's a big UI glitch: at the bottom of the drop-down window, I see in huge text "< All Notifications * Prefere". That is, the links at the bottom are in such a big font that they overflow the window and I can only see half of the preferences link. Why is there a preferences link there at all, anyway, when I can get to it more directly from the preferences link in the top menu bar? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:23, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

We fixed the preferences link already, but it didn't get deployed ([35]). I'll do that asap. There has always been a Preferences link there though (it might have gotten a little bit bigger?). Legoktm (talk) 20:48, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Like - I've been using the dual notifications/message buttons on Wikidata and like it. Boy, if only all the effort used to whine about this UI feature were spent on more useful endeavors... -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:09, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't really care that it changed, but I do care that it made my "hot cat" option and my linking ability to languages on other pages go away. Not sure if I need to make this another topic, as it all happened simultaneous to this change as far as I can tell. SusunW (talk) 20:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if it's related, but around the same time this happened I started having an issue with popups. I'm forced to reload the page to get it to work - it won't load the first time. Also, the collapsible notice boxes on editing pages, like the one for the admin templates we use to respond to RFPP requests, aren't collapsing anymore unless I do that reload. Very annoying. KrakatoaKatie 20:37, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@KrakatoaKatie: That's more likely because of the fact that you don't have valid JS in your KrakatoaKatie/common.js. And what's in your vector.js, also looks like an ancient mess. Try blanking all of that and building it from scratch... And you should make use of Gadgets if they are available. Especially for Twinkle and popups for instance. If all that wasn't hindering you before, than it was a bit of a miracle —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

@TheDJ: I use Monobook, but I've been meaning to clean up the JS for a while. Thanks for the help! :-) KrakatoaKatie 21:10, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I have no strong feelings one way or the other. Sam Walton (talk) 20:50, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Not really a complaint (they're still better than the old WP:OBOD), but (a) I can't think I'm alone in believing that the standard "Beware of the Leopard" notifications for this sort of thing could be improved - considering the excessive obtrusiveness of the fundraising/committee elections/meetups notices, there must be potential for finding a middle ground, and (b) is it possible to at least keep the size of the boxes constant? At the moment, they start off about as wide as the "sandbox" link, then shrink to the size of the "talk" link when the bell and callout images are loaded. Tevildo (talk) 21:22, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

• I haven't got a problem with the new format, but both times tonight when I've clicked on the alerts to zero them, a minute or so later I'm being told I have 1 alert, when I haven't actually got anything new. It's just told me I have 1 alert, but when I clicked on it the last entry was 1 day old. This is presumably a bug. Black Kite (talk) 00:04, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
• Help? Currently I have one alert displaying, but nothing happens when I click on it. Perhaps it is a problem with my browser? I am able to access the alert from my mobile phone. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 02:27, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Command-clicking (Ctrl-clicking) on a link in notifications is not working right

This may be just me, but with the previous notifications menu, I could Command-click (I have a Mac; Ctrl-click does the same thing on Windows, I believe) on a link in the menu to open a new tab in the background (Firefox 40.0.3 for Mac), as I do with any other link on a web page; the existing tab remains unchanged. Since this new style of notifications rolled out, Command-clicking on a link in the notifications menu opens a new tab in the background and also opens the same link in the current tab. This is undesirable.

Is this happening for anyone else? If not, I'll debug my own setup. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

It happens for me also on Windows (firefox 40.0.3). I always prefer to open notifications in a separate tab, loss of this functionality overshadows any possible positive with this change, and i find that i prefer a single list, not two lists to check. Please provide an opt out. DES ^(talk) 02:08, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

It is happening to me too. Cannot open a separate window but I have lots of functionality issues. Since the change. SusunW (talk) 02:24, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

There is currently a Signpost poll for this change here. Please provide your input there as well. Thanks! 02:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Images won't load

my problem

I tried working through this problem on IRC with ShakespeareFan00, but I could come to a fix with him. To the right you can see a screen cap of my problem. I can't get most images to load, they either show up as white blocks with a gray border or as a blue link to their file page, and won't even show there. What's going on? TrueCRaysball | ^#RaysUp 20:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

What browser? What do you see in its developer tools about network requests? Max Semenik (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

How to combine categories?

How do I combine categories? such as:

Category:American male film actors
Category:American film actors

Category:American female film actors
Category:American film actresses

Category:Gay actors
Category:LGBT actors
Checkingfax (talk) 21:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Links to the mentioned categories:

Category:American male film actors – a subcategory of:

Category:American film actors

Category:American female film actors – a {{category redirect}} to:

Category:American film actresses

Category:Gay actors – a subsubcategory of:

Category:LGBT actors

What do you mean by "combine"? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Merge them for redundancy. Checkingfax (talk) 22:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

File a request at WP:CFM. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:32, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

What's happened to the row of editing buttons above the editing area?

The row of editing buttons above the editing area (above were I enter these letters) has changed. Both the wikilink button and the italics button is gone. Why? In what way is this an improvement?

Now I have to go all the way down to Wiki markup to find the relevant button, which frustrates me. Manxruler (talk) 23:35, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

And now I find that Wiki markup doesn't even have an italics button. And the buttons are back here while I edit this entry, but not over where I originally wanted to edit. What is this? Manxruler (talk) 23:38, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

All the buttons are there for me but this page currently has many reports from users who don't see various interface images which have url's at en.wikipedia.org and not at upload.wikimedia.org where uploaded files are stored. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:44, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Do you have Avast Antivirus? That appears to be the cause of many other reports. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I have Avast. Right now the buttons are back, but on the left of the "Bold text" button the words "Mat formula (LaTeX)" have appeared. Strange, very strange indeed. Manxruler (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

The buttons seem to come and go now, without any regularity. I guess I'll see if the problem's resolved itself tomorrow. Manxruler (talk) 01:16, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

bell?

Hi. By now I receive messages both with a bell and with a talkballoon. I do not know what this means. Now don't explain it here, just improve doc I suggest. -DePiep (talk) 00:37, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Looks like a new feature? Eman235/talk 00:46, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

#Notifications indicators have changed. --Izno (talk) 01:11, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Only platform I have is Wikipedia?

I mentioned it up above, but ever since the change was made where I now have separate "alerts" and "messages" buttons, I can no longer access "hot cat" or link to other wiki language pages. I cannot go to commons, nor any other wiki formats, i.e. no MediaWiki, Wikidata, Meta-Wiki, etc. I signed out and back in to no avail. At one point, it popped up and told me I needed to sign in to Meta-Wiki, which I did and then the site crashed. Surely I am not the only person this is happening to. And please don't give me a technical answer, I will not understand it. I need a step by step of what to do to fix it. Thanks! SusunW (talk) 01:28, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Here is a clue: Meta-wiki en español only has the bell icon. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 01:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

As I said, I am not technically inclined. I went to my file on es.wikipedia and I still cannot link it to the English or Portuguese version. I still cannot access any other wiki platform. And when I am on it, it has both icons. SusunW (talk) 01:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I can't go on Commons either. This is all kinds of messed up. Manxruler (talk) 02:32, 11 September 2015 (UTC)