Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

 Policy Technical Proposals Idea lab WMF Miscellaneous 

• Table of contents
• First discussion
• End of page
• New post

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).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

« Archives, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214

RfC: Enabling TemplateStyles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a clear consensus to Y enable the extension at en.wiki.Thankfully,∯WBG^converse 13:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

---

Should Extension:TemplateStyles (help) be enabled on the English Wikipedia as soon as technically possible? Jc86035 (talk) 12:28, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Background

The TemplateStyles extension will, in brief, allow custom CSS pages to be used to style content without an administrator having to edit sitewide CSS. This will make it more convenient for editors to style templates; for example, those templates for which the sitewide CSS for the mobile skin or another skin (e.g. Timeless) currently negatively affects the display of the template. The extension is already in use on some other Wikipedias, and should not open any avenues for vandalism which are not already possible with existing templates and inline styling. However, it cannot be implemented until HTML Tidy is replaced with RemexHtml, which is scheduled to happen for the English Wikipedia after June 2018.

Currently, TemplateStyles is being enabled for Wikipedias on a case-by-case basis, and if this RfC is successful then a Phabricator task will be made requesting the extension's deployment at the same time as RemexHtml.

Examples

• mw:Template:Stylish (css)
• mw:Template:ResponsiveAmboxExample (css)

Survey

• Support. Jc86035 (talk) 12:28, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
• Yesss Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:00, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
• Yes please. I have lots of templates that i could fix if only I had these capabilities. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:37, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support - I can think of excellent use cases for this - making templates responsive with media queries is the first one that comes to mind. Richard⁰⁶¹² 17:48, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support, because it will be much easier for any template editor (not that particular user right, but an editor of template) to request a custom styling for certain templates. I, too, can think of places where custom CSS will be very handy. epicgenius (talk) 21:19, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
• Maybe? I'd like to use an actual use / example before deciding. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:34, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
  • @Headbomb: A small example can be seen at mw:Template:ResponsiveAmboxExample, the image gets hidden if your browser window is narrow enough. Think of doing something similar with navboxes so the mobile site can stop hiding them. Anomie⚔ 07:46, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
    • So basically, this can't (at least straightforwardly) change say an existing string to a different string, but would rather apply things like font changes, width changes, and other CSS type of changes on a per-template basis? I think we still ought to have some restrictions on that (Evad37's restrictions/best practices below seem very reasonable) especially for accessibility reasons, but I don't why what that couldn't be rolled out now (i.e. support), with the understanding that people using this are careful/use WP:COMMONSENSE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:43, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
• Conditional support, if we get some sort of guidelines and/or best-practices in place first. Stuff like "only style the template's output", "avoid using !important", "use selectors and class names that are highly likely to be unique to that template (i.e. myTemplate-row rather than row)", "only images which don't require attribution can be used as background images". - Evad37 [talk] 02:01, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support I've been waiting a long time for this. This will allow us to fix a lot of templates for mobile, and also to reduce the size of the HTML we produce by getting rid of duplicated inline CSS. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 07:38, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
• Sure, seems useful. I'd worry about abuse and keeping track of it all — it seems like the potential for pages could be huge — and would definitely support some level of baseline protection status (probably AC default, elevate to TE if heavily used). Basically, if TheDJ and Stradivarius think it'd be good, it's probably good. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:58, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support This sounds great. I was concerned about mal-use but the measures in place look well thought-out. Cesdeva ^(talk) 07:23, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support It looks like it would be useful. Guidance will be developed in the usual way. There may be occasional misuses but they will be reversible. I assume changes will show up on watchlists in the usual way? · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:29, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support Not having any useful way to code responsively (or even use CSS correctly) is a real pain, it's like trying to build a car with no wheels and the wrong chassis, and it makes everything on wikipedia look like it's from the early 2000's. Because it is. This would be so helpful. JLJ001 (talk) 17:19, 24 May 2018 (UTC) SOCKSTRIKE. Primefac (talk) 18:37, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support As long as we have guidelines in place to control how this is used. We don't want editors going wild with this. — AfroThundr ^(t•c) 07:48, 27 May 2018 (UTC)
• Conditional support, per Evad37. I was going to saying something like this myself (and I think I did in a previous round), but Evad37's got the gist of that minor issue. I fully support going forward with this feature implementation, it just can't be dumped on the community without pre-addressing the potential problem points.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:24, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support, it's high time! – Uanfala (talk) 10:42, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion (TemplateStyles)

Sounds scary - if I understand correctly, a template in one part of an article would be able to completely or partially mangle the display/styling of a different template in a completely different section of the page. And not just from vandalism, but also good-faith edits if they just happen to result in templates with conflicting rules, which might not be obvious at the time of editing. - Evad37 [talk] 15:41, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, people who make use of it should I hope make sure their styling does not affect the rest of the page/other templates but only the target template. People who vandalize can perfectly well cover screen-fuls of page with image vandalism so not going to dramatically up the possibilities of vandalism Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:00, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Correct, but if that becomes unmanageable, we could elevate edit permissions to templateeditor or something. the benefits will outweigh the negatives. Besides. postion:absolute bothers me on half the user pages and that seems perfectly acceptable to the community. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:37, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

+1 for banning position:absolute and other crimes against design. :P Richard⁰⁶¹² 17:50, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

@Richard0612: I think a blanket ban on position:absolute wouldn't be very practical, since there are e.g. 26 Lua modules which use it for largely legitimate purposes such as overlaying images. Jc86035 (talk) 17:57, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

@Jc86035: I was being entirely flippant with my comment - of course it does have sensible uses (image overlays, charts, etc.) and shouldn't be banned. I've just seen a lot of user-space z-order abominations (not that I like CSS much as a technology anyway, but it's the best we have). Richard⁰⁶¹² 18:05, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

It seems I left my irony–sarcasm meter off. Jc86035 (talk) 18:07, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Easily done, no harm! :) Richard⁰⁶¹² 18:10, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

So for this custom CSS, which namespace would it be hosted in? Would users be restricted from editing these CSS pages (e.g. limiting these pages to administrators/template-editors only)? epicgenius (talk) 21:19, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

It would be in the Template: namespace, and protection could be applied as needed. High-exposure pages will inevitably be TE-protected. Richard⁰⁶¹² 21:30, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. epicgenius (talk) 22:30, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

I started a draft guideline page at Wikipedia:TemplateStyles; it could do with some expansion and/or discussion - Evad37 [talk] 02:48, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

• A usage guideline I'm thinking we should have if going forward is that styles should be easily able to be identified and edited by being associated with a specific template or group of templates. In general, this means it should be a subpage related to the such as: Template:xxxx/styleyyyy.css. Explicitly, for articles styles should never be configured to pull from the User: namespace. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:51, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

  TemplateStyles CSS pages must have the sanitized-css (Sanitized CSS) content model, which is the default for subpages in the template namespace that end with .css (Template:Foo/bar.css). Only users with changecontentmodel (admins only here) can create them elsewhere. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:02, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

  @JJMC89: perhaps that is a side affect of having that extension installed...currently template subpages ending in .css are in model wikitext (e.g. Template:X1/style.css). — xaosflux ^Talk 23:37, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

  Yes. You should be able to test on testwiki. — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

  Saw it there, sample for anyone watching at testwiki:Template:-/test.css. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

If allowed - default protection?

To touch on some points above, by default any confirmed user would be able to create/edit these type of pages. If we want the default to be something else we can implement controls in a few ways. The title blacklist could be used limit creations to templateeditors similar to the way we do editnotices. We could also do various things with the edit filter. As mentioned in the above section, individual pages could always be dealt with via page protections. If moving forward, do we want to establish any technical controls here? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:47, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to restrict these like editnotices? I'm not sure what a usecase would be where it would be necessary to make these visible and frequently edited. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:02, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Why should the styles of a template be harder to edit that the template itself. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 01:04, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

They should really have the same protection level as their parent template. Otherwise you just encourage styles to remain inline, or get inline styles added on top of the TemplateStyles CSS since the template was editable but not the css. Perhaps an adminbot could do the protections automatically? - Evad37 [talk] 03:32, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Or just create a category akin to Category:Templates using under-protected Lua modules. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 03:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

If a template is unprotected, presumably its css page would also be unprotected. What would there be to prevent a rule being maliciously added to that css page? For example, one having a selector that is not specific to the template's code, but perhaps matches some other part of a page - maybe as broad as

body { /* ... */ }

- this could potentially compromise all pages using that template. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:51, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

The styles are scoped to prevent that kind of thing - basically you can't mess with anything that isn't contained in an element with the class .mw-parser-output. There's still potential for abuse, don't get me wrong, but it's not that bad. Richard⁰⁶¹² 10:33, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

It says "Styles included by a template can currently affect content on the page outside of the content generated by that template" which is what I am worried about. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:06, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Oh that's true, absolutely. If there's (e.g.) a div on the page that the CSS selects, it'll be affected. But the styles couldn't affect the body or any other elements of the interface. Then again, if a vandal could edit the CSS to cause chaos, they could edit the template itself to cause chaos. Hence the logic that the CSS should have the same level of protection as its parent template. Richard⁰⁶¹² 20:20, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:TemplateStyles#RFC: Adopt as a guideline

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:TemplateStyles#RFC: Adopt as a guideline. - Evad37 [talk] 08:26, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Deployment of TemplateStyles

Hey! I'm the current product owner for TemplateStyles. I'm really glad that you're all excited about having TemplateStyles here on the English Wikipedia. The goal is to get TemplateStyles rolled out everywhere, and so far it's been rolled out to the German, Swedish, and Russian Wikipedias as a result of community requests, as well as some other sister projects, and it's working well on those wikis. As others have noted, TemplateStyles is dependent RemexHtml, which isn't being used on this wiki right now, so it can't be turned on here yet. I'll let you all know when RemexHtml is enabled here, so that TemplateStyles can be turned on. In the mean time, I suggest you all keep working on the guidelines, so that TemplateStyles can be turned on as soon after RemexHtml as possible. Thanks! --Deskana (WMF) (talk) 23:12, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Why can't the time in the footer identify the time zone?

I'm not sure what controls the standard footer text at the bottom of articles and pages such as this one. At the moment it reads:

This page was last edited on 12 June 2018, at 20:58.

A reader wrote to Wikimedia to ask which time zone is associated with the time. While veteran editors, especially those who have customized their preferences to select a time zone will know the answer (UTC, unless you specify a different one) why couldn't we include the time zone in the standard message. It doesn't seem to be a space issue, and most of our readers are unlikely to know that UTC is the default.

What's the harm in changing it to read:

This page was last edited on 12 June 2018, at 20:58 UTC.

or

This page was last edited on 12 June 2018, at 20:58 (UTC). --S Philbrick(Talk) 21:46, 12 June 2018 (UTC

I think that's a very good idea. DuncanHill (talk) 21:59, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

The text is made by MediaWiki:Lastmodifiedat. There is an old suggestion by Jason Quinn at MediaWiki talk:Lastmodifiedat#add " (UTC)" string? The message is called with a time in the default time zone of the wiki (UTC) for unregistered users, and in the time zone at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering for registered users. But the message is not told which time zone it is called with, or whether the user is unregistered. I guess we could use <span class="anonymous-show"> UTC</span> to only show " UTC" to unregistered users. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Putting UTC in parenthesis would be preferable to not doing so, in order to be consistent with the format used in discussion timestamps. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:48, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

I've just found that for a few weeks in 2009, we did indeed emit a hardcoded " (UTC)" that was appended to the passed-in time. Admins might like to look at this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:52, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

As I suspected, it is moderately complicated. But following up on Primehunter's suggestion, oen can argue that if you affirmatively chose a time zone, you know which one you chose, and if you didn't, you can, so showing (UTC) to unregistered users would always be accurate, and would clarify the time zone for the readers most likely not to know the answer.--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:05, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

This seems useful enough if there are no technical issues with implementation. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 06:24, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

The suggested solution would send <span class="anonymous-show"> UTC</span> to everybody and rely on the browser to hide "UTC" for registered users. If CSS for anonymous-show fails to load from MediaWiki:Group-user.css then registered users will also see "UTC". Pages are occasionally displayed with no or broken CSS but I guess this willl be rare and it's not a serious problem if a few users see "UTC" on a non-UTC time on a page which may look broken. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:55, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Here is the active code if people want to try viewing it in different circumstances: " UTC". PrimeHunter (talk) 09:59, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Please can we use <span class="anonymous-show"> (UTC)</span> for consistency with other timestamps? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:11, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I support that. 12:00<span class="anonymous-show"> (UTC)</span>. produces "12:00 (UTC)." which renders as "12:00 ." with a space for me in Firefox (not caused by the added parentheses). We could say 12:00<span class="anonymous-show">&nbsp;(UTC)</span>. instead. This produces "12:00 (UTC)." which renders as "12:00." for me with no space. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:47, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I have created MediaWiki:Lastmodifiedat with the suggestion. It works for me. I only see " (UTC)" when I'm logged out. Hopefully the CSS to hide it works for all registered users. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting will no longer turn off / Forced into 2017 Editor

I just hit the edit button and my editor has gone nuts. There is syntax highlighting; Headers now have increased font size etc. Essentially my 2010 editor has been forced to the 2017 editor even though I have not enabled it. This screws up my entire work flow and prevents me from using my browser based snippet program. I have looked through Preferences to find a way to turn it off but have found nothing. Is there a way to get the old, simple wikitext editor back? The new features are neat but neat is only good if it does not break stuff. Jbh ^Talk 23:57, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

@Jbhunley: There should be a pencil icon in your editing toolbar, last button before the "Advanced" menu. This will toggle syntax highlighting. Does that work for you? — MusikAnimal ^talk 00:01, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, you said you were forced into the 2017 editor, too. That should be in your beta preferences. Uncheck "New wikitext mode". No idea how you got forced into this, though — MusikAnimal ^talk 00:06, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)}Yes! I do not know whether to feel relieved or stupid. Thank you! I was fearing I would have to go back to writing WikiText by hand…

I assumed it was the 2017 editor since the highlighting scheme looked like the one I saw in the 2017 editor rather than what I remembered the 2010 highlighting to look like ie actually changing the font size and face rather than just different colors. The 2017 version was not toggled in Beta so I thought a new default setting had been pushed out. I was, in fact, still in the 2010 editor. Jbh ^Talk 00:12, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Not just you — that pencil thing is new, when did that get added? Nice feature, but wish it wasn't on by default. Was editing a .js page so couldn't turn it off. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:13, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

It is has been available as a beta feature for a while, and today it was graduated out of beta. However it definitely shouldn't have turned itself on. I logged into a few alternate test accounts, where I had never used syntax highlighting, and it was not turned on. So not everyone is affected, it seems. At any rate, you can turn it off, and if you do so it should stay that way. Note the JavaScript/CSS syntax highlighting is a different feature that has been around for quite some time. You can also turn that off, though -- click on the "<>" button at the far left of the editing toolbar. — MusikAnimal ^talk 03:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Can somebody please update meta:Community Tech/Wikitext editor syntax highlighting. It claims it is still a beta feature and may be released in July or August. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:45, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

The pencil has been there all along? Didn't notice it. And perhaps it was a "if you've ever turned it on" thing? At any rate, it colors nowiki on js pages, that's how I saw it. As a public service announcement, if anyone uses User:ערן/autocomplete.js, it breaks on this. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 10:31, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Regarding autocomplete, I may try to adapt it to syntax highlight once phab:T170001 is fixed - but I prefer to not invest time on fixing it as the infrastructure may rewritten (with or without CodeMirror) to properly support all languages. Eran (talk) 17:53, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

And of course the pencil icon isn't there at all if the toolbar is turned off in Preferences, Editing.

If I was inclined to give the syntax highlighting a try, is there a documented way of configuring it?

Mitch Ames (talk) 13:33, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

No, the pencil icon hasn't been there all along. It has been if you had "syntax highlighting" turned on in your beta preferences. Now it is out of beta so everyone gets the pencil. @Amorymeltzer: When you edit a JS page, like User:Amorymeltzer/dashes.js, you see the new syntax highlighting? It has occurred to me that to have the (preexisting) JS/CSS editor, you need "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" turned on in your preferences. I'm guessing you do not. Indeed JS pages don't seem to work well with the new syntax highlighting, because it's not wikitext. I think we can disable this feature on JS/CSS/JSON pages, if you think that's a good idea? (by the way, I definitely recommend the "enhanced editing toolbar" when editing JS!!).

@Mitch Ames: Indeed there is no pencil icon if the toolbar is turned off (because there's nowhere to put it). We could use a link in the sidebar, maybe, but the old toolbar-less editor is going to be phased out anyway, as I understand. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:55, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

"That pencil icon" has been in the corner of the toolbar for several years, and it switches you to the visual editor. "That highlighter pen icon" just arrived, and it toggles syntax highlighting. It appears that the complaints that the highlighter marker looks too much like the editing pencil are being collected at phab:T174145. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

You are right, thanks for clarifying. I didn't even notice the pencil on the right! I assume we were all talking about the highlighter, though, which indeed looks an awful lot like a pencil. — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:21, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal and Whatamidoing (WMF): Yes, indeed, the highlighter. I use the old toolbar, as I only really use it for citation stuff anyway (hence, I only see one "pencil" since visual editor isn't an option) and the highlighter button shows up there. It's not a huge deal, but regardless of toolbar used, this new highlighter button doesn't show up in user js pages. That's good, but when using the old toolbar, js pages mirror the last used highlighting state, and you can't turn it off there since there's no button (or toolbar); you have to go to another page, click edit, turn it off, then reload your js page. With the enhanced toolbar, this isn't an issue. I can file a phab, since that's almost certainly not expected behavior. MediaWiki js pages also show the highlighting, but they also show the old toolbar, so it's reparable. Also, holy shit, thank you, enhanced toolbar for js is amazing! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 17:41, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

• Tracked in Phabricator
  Task T184857
  
  I personally feel it shouldn't have been graduated from beta just yet. There are still some serious performance issues that I am noticing, especially when I'm on my phone. The syntax highlighter, especially on larger bodies of wikitext, take up to 2 seconds to process sometimes and in doing so blocks key inputs to the text area. If you type regularly, the key inputs queue up and so you sit there waiting for the syntax highlighter to re-process every key stroke. This is even more noticeable on my phone, and as a result auto-correct really messes up my text in those instances. I would like to see the syntax highlighter implement a waiting period before processing. Say like 1.5 seconds after the last keystroke, it should process what's in the textarea, and go to sleep while the user is actively typing. Development IDEs do this already.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 12:40, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  Tracked in Phabricator
  Task T197263
  

  Concur. I regularly use charinsert for wiki markup, most often to create <code><nowiki></nowiki></code>, two clicks which should leave the cursor inside the <nowiki></nowiki>. But, with the highlighter enabled, the cursor is always moved to the start of the line. The new functionality should not break the old tried and true.

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:50, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  I think that is what breaks ProKeys as well. It can not find the current cursor position when the macro proscessing is invoked so it can not tell if the preceding text has a snippet associated with it or where to insert the text if there is one. A brief delay before processing might fix that. It would be nice to be able to use syntax highlighting. The new version is quite nice. Jbh ^Talk 15:20, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  @Cyberpower678: I'm not sure what IDE you're referring to, but I assume one that is not within the browser? The syntax highlighting uses a JavaScript library called CodeMirror. This is the same library that GitHub's editor uses, for instance, and also the web inspector that comes with Chrome. The nature of the implementation means very large bodies of content, or a slower devices (like some smartphones), will have a noticeable performance impact. Despite these issues, the time had come that we at least let people decide if they want to use it, and switch it on/off as desired.

  @Trappist the monk and Jbhunley: Your issues with Charinsert and ProKeys sound fixable. I managed to get User:MusikAnimal/responseHelper (which also does cursor placements) to work with the syntax highlighting, maybe I can make the same fix to those scripts. I will look into it! — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:20, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  If it would be possible that would be great. Thank you for looking into it! Jbh ^Talk 16:53, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  @MusikAnimal: When I referred to an IDE, I meant any IDE in general such as PyCharm or PhpStorm. When you make modifications to large chunks of code there, it will generally wait until you have finished typing before processing the text and update the highlighting. What I'm asking for is that this JS do the same. As it stands right now it updates after every keystroke and that produces a major slowdown as the text gets larger, even on a computer. It should be possible to insert a sleep timer that gets reset on every key stroke, and when the timer elapses it updates the highlighting. That would add a major performance improvement, not to mention reduce CPU usage as I am currently observing mine spike to 20% as I type in this window.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 17:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  I don't know, all of that logic is part of the CodeMirror library. In general we haven't had to many complaints about performance, except on large pages. Your IDE is compiled to assembly and runs directly on your operating system. It will always be faster than your browser (certainly your phone!), which has to interpret the JavaScript. I've actually never used an IDE that doesn't highlight on every keystroke, but I digress. Hopefully we're still looking at a net positive of the syntax highlighting feature being available. All I can recommend is to turn it off if you're experiencing problems. Sorry! — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:21, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  @MusikAnimal: Then what about giving users the option to have the highlighter not kick in if it takes to long per run, or if the page size exceeds a certain limit?—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 17:31, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

  Interesting idea! Yes I think that is certainly possible. My suggestion would be to make a documented way of configuring this in your Special:MyPage/common.js, such as CodeMirror.maxPageSize = 100000; or something. I don't think we'd want to expose this in the interface, or add more preferences. An initial timeout (takes too long to load) is probably something it should do automatically, and perhaps could be disabled in your user JS (e.g. CodeMirror.timeout = false). Would you mind creating a Phabricator task? — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:36, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: you mentioned above that the WikiText editor is now using CodeMirror. Is that just for syntax highlighting or the editor in general? Is it possible to load CodeMirror alternate keymap files i.e keymap/vim.js? Jbh ^Talk 20:33, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Just for syntax highlighting, but that effectively takes over the editor itself. I am not aware of how to load alternate keymaps in CodeMirror, but sounds like it's worth exploring! By the way, the bug with cursor placement is filed at phab:T197263 and we are looking into it. — MusikAnimal ^talk 20:39, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep... Being able to hack the WikiText editor via exposed CodeMirror configuration would be great but that capability seems to go in the opposite direction of what the push to Visual Editor indicates (more technical rather than less). It is a nice wish though.

Thank you for looking into the cirsor issue. Jbh ^Talk 20:09, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Potentially related problem

Is this change in syntax highlighting the reason that I am experiencing a strange editing problem? For the last week (or perhaps less), I have found that on occasion an edit window is extremely slow. It does not happen on all pages; it does not happen in every section of an affected page. For example, at Wikipedia:Bot requests, every section that I have tried to edit works just fine - with one exception. If I try to edit the section Wikipedia:Bot requests#Indexing talk page, the edit screen takes noticeably longer than normal to load - and once it has loaded, typing a single character takes ten seconds, so a few words take several minutes to type in. The same happens with the edit summary window. It is replicable: exiting the page and trying the "[edit]" link again produces the same result, as does using Ctrl+F5 to reload the page "clean". It's also persistent: closing the browser and restarting it yields exactly the same issue. In case you are wondering how I made this edit: having found that it was a slow edit screen. I composed my reply in a plain text editor, and copypasted it in. The paste took ten seconds to achieve, so that demonstrates that it is keystrokes and not characters that are the limiting factor. So: is it possible to prevent the syntax highlighting script from loading? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

If you want the syntax highlighter off, then I believe that you just need to toggle the button off in the toolbar, and it will remember that state (in a hidden pref or equivalent) until you toggle it back on someday. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

It's off. It's always been off, unless it's somehow there and I can't see it. I have no button - I don't even have a toolbar, because that consumes noticeable page load time (as does VE), so at Preferences → Editing I have the following:

• ⧼tog-showtoolbar⧽ - no
• Enable the editing toolbar - no
• ⧼visualeditor-preference-betatempdisable⧽ - yes

The slow edit window problem doesn't happen all the time, or even in all sections of one page; it happens with particular sections of particular pages. Rebooting the machine has no effect. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:58, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I've left a note for the team, but I don't expect to have an answer before Monday. In the meantime, if you enable one of those toolbars, you should be able to determine whether it's turned on (and then turn it off, if it's on). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks notifications vanished

At the top, between the links to my user and user talk pages, there are the "bell" and "TV set" icons. The latter has the figure "2" superimposed, implying that I have two unread thanks notifications, but when I click it, I get "There are no notifications." Not even a list of old thanks, which is what I got before today. Clicking the bell icon lists all the old mentions, reverts etc. Is something broken in the thanks system? Oh, it's Thursday - of course it's broken. How silly of me. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:12, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Mine seem to be working normally. Have you checked your settings at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo? DuncanHill (talk) 20:15, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Something is broken: I click on mine and get the "Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem." page "PHP fatal error: Class undefined: PageTriageMarkAsReviewedPresentationModel" --Masem (t) 20:16, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Mine is not working either, the bubble shows up with the number of notifications but when I click on it it says there are none. Home Lander (talk) 20:22, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Oh dear. Not sure about notifications issue, but the "PageTriage" bug should be fixed within an hour or two. Sorry! — MusikAnimal ^talk 20:41, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: I thanked you for the above post; it might duplicate the issue on your end. Home Lander (talk) 20:53, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm having the same issue. Bringing down the dropdown shows "You have no notifications", but if I click the "All Notifications" button I can see the thanks message at Special:Notifications. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:54, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64 and Masem: and everyone else... Is it working for you now? — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:45, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, seems fixed. --Masem (t) 21:50, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Thank you --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:23, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Ditto, working here as well. Home Lander (talk) 00:33, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

For the record, MaxSem is the one to thank for fixing it. I get credit for breaking it =p — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:34, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

And I get credit for explaining, for the benefit of those who have never seen a typewriter or a rotary telephone, that it's not a TV set but rather an inbox. BTW if someone can explain why some things ring the bell and some go in the inbox, it would take one small load off my tiny, tiny brain. EEng 13:54, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I have been told (when I have complained that the things were in the wrong list) that the difference is urgent vs non-urgent. I have never found out why good news (e.g., Thanks) is not considered an urgent matter. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. That's some weird complication introduced by someone operating in a vacuum. EEng 15:12, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Pageview data missing for June 14

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T197542
Resolved

I've just been looking at the Pageviews analysis for yesterday and it appears that the bot went down and failed to capture the pageviews for articles. (example here). Are we able to look into this and retrieve the views for yesterday? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:08, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

In my experience the most recent data in that tool is often two days old. If you have no other indicator of missing data then data for yesterday will probably come tomorrow or later today. If you request the latest 10 days [1] then you currently get June 4 to June 13. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:20, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes PrimeHunter is correct. My guess is if you check back tomorrow, the data will be there. I have no idea how this works (it happens in the Analytics cluster), but some articles may have data for today/yesterday, others not. I've briefly documented this at [2] — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:32, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

It still hasn't updated for the 14th but has for yesterday, I think there is a problem here. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 06:56, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

There is, or at least there was a problem. No data for 14 June. Lofhi (talk) 13:35, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Is there likely to be a backfill process so that the 14th will show up relatively soon, or is it likely to be missing forever (or an extended time)? I have some automation that is blocked waiting for the data for the 14th at the moment, and want to know if I should just tell it the 14th is never coming and to skip it, or to just hang on a bit longer expecting it will show up within a few days at the latest... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abulsme (talk • contribs) 16:46, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

(The C of E here). It's still not showing the stats for the day and I don't have much trust in the alternative view counters. Do we have an explanation for this and can the stats be retrieved? The Royal C (talk) 13:07, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

I've filed a task for this at phab:T197542. My assumption is the "job" failed to run, and they can simply re-run it to populate the data, but don't quote me. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:04, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Looks like the backfill happened. At least my application is happy now and got caught up to the present. :-) Abulsme (talk) 18:13, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Yup, everything should be there now. Rigorous caching on the pageviews API may mean the data is still missing for some, but it will show up eventually. In the meantime you should be able to change the date range, etc., and the data will show. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Visual Editor for Talk pages, Discussion pages, etc

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T151854

How long do we have to wait for this? Who are the people who are reposible for the API of Wikipedia? :) Shevonsilva (talk) 17:17, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

This is somewhere in the realm of "nope" and "never" because of how talk pages work. Might be something to add to WP:PERENNIAL at this point. --Izno (talk) 18:17, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Oh dear dear, that might not be too complex. Developers/Software engineers have only to add some special icons for additional functions, and, in mobile version there is already a kind of GUI interface with a textbox. May I know who are the developers of wikipedia and how it works and how can I contact them for this? :) Thanks. Shevonsilva (talk) 20:44, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

No, it is definitely too complex. If you are sincerely interested in submitting a task, which is 100% likely to be declined, contact information can be found at Help:Bug reports. --Izno (talk) 21:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Why do you think it is complex? :) We have to allocate new functions to new toolbar bottons and can directly use the existing API through inheritance and polymorphism. This cannot be a big task as I believe. Shevonsilva (talk) 06:35, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

The phab linked here helpfully quotes/links mw:Help:VisualEditor/FAQ, which, near the bottom, answers your questions. In short, The visual editor is designed to edit content, plain pages of text and Talk pages aren't content. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:42, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, as we have similar text content (in talk pages and discussions) with additional functionalites, we can simply extend the interface for other text contents as simply we can re-use the API and add new functionalities for this. :) Shevonsilva (talk) 06:35, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

If you think that it's simple, then you try to do it; and on no account may you break existing functionality (broadly construed). It will also be your responsibility to explain why you have done this against consensus. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:01, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, yes. I have to properly analyse the set of new sub-features. Will see how it goes. :) Shevonsilva (talk) 17:25, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@Shevonsilva: I'm definitely of the opinion that the current setup of talk pages is not very good, and I think it's great that you want to help with that! The problem is, talk and discussion pages have a large array of disparate functions, and designing a solution for all of them simultaneously is very hard. The visual editor is designed to edit content pages, and modifying it so that it serves the two totally different needs will end up meaning it serves neither of the functions well. To be totally honest, I think your efforts would be better focused in a different space; if you're interested in MediaWiki development, then more help is always welcome, and I can absolutely point you to places where you could help out. --Deskana (WMF) (talk) 23:00, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

@Deskana (WMF):That is great. What is the best way to contact you? Shevonsilva (talk) 00:28, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Shevonsilva, I recommend leaving a message for him at mw:User talk:Deskana (WMF).

Also, anyone who is interested in contributing to the movement in a technical capacity may want to read mw:How to become a MediaWiki hacker. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Little blue arrows in diffs

I this diff I notice a little blue arrow next to Charlie Waite. Is this new? DuncanHill (talk) 19:24, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, see m:Tech/News/2018/22#Changes later this week Nthep (talk) 19:36, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, looks helpful. DuncanHill (talk) 19:39, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Looks backward to me. Arrow pointing away from the text should mean removal, pointing toward the text should indicate insertion. After a couple of weeks of trying to comprehend the rationale, it still seems counter-intuitive. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Minor bug in text message for pending changes

When looking at an article with unreviewed pending changes (for example: List of video game developers), the message on top says:

The latest accepted revision was accepted on 9 June 2018. There are template/file revisions awaiting review.

The "template/file revisions" part doesn't fit for an article. Not really a big issue, but the message text should be fixed/tweaked. I am a pending changes reviewer using Vector skin, and have clicked a "Pending changes" tab on top of the article to see the above message. If i remember correctly, the message was different a few days ago and probably has changed recently. GermanJoe (talk) 21:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

It has been reviewed now but I saw your quote before the review. Mediawiki used MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic-i instead of MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic. I don't know why. The edit pending review was [3] which added a link in a table cell. All eight pages currently at Special:PendingChanges use MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic without -i, e.g. Jordan Belfort. translatewiki:MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic-i/qqq says about the -i message: 'Shown when viewing the latest version of a "checked" page with only template or file changes pending review'. translatewiki:MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic/qqq without -i says: 'Shown when viewing a the latest version of a "checked" page with pending changes.' PrimeHunter (talk) 21:29, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

I examined the 20 pages currently at Special:PendingChanges. 19 of them used MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic. The last correctly used MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic-i for this edit which only makes changes to a template call. Maybe the software mistook the originally reported edit [4] for a template change due to the similar pipe syntax in templates and tables. Another thing is that the default MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic-i/qqx says "Template/file changes" while our customized MediaWiki:Revreview-newest-basic-i says "template/file revisions". The latter sounds like edits to a template page and not like changes to a template call in an article. I suggest we say "template/file changes" like the default. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:46, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Agree. "Changes" would be slightly clearer in this context, when the message is supposed to refer to template and file changes within an article. Thank you for looking into this. GermanJoe (talk) 10:17, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I made the change.[5] PrimeHunter (talk) 19:20, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Cross Lang Conflicts

Moved to User:Xinbenlv/Cross Lang Conflict Examples § Comments

 – As per suggested by @Mathglot. Xinbenlv (talk) 23:17, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Dear techy Wikipedians,

I am I am experimenting with using programming way to find cross-language fact conflicts in large scale. Here is a small sample of data I was able to produce for now. I like to ask for some early feedback. Do you think these data would be useful, if yes, can you think of any usecase? If not, what other information can I include to make it more useful?

Please leave comments here.

For now I plan to produce EN v FR, EN v DE. I post related data to the related Wikipedias too.

• fr:Utilisateur:Xinbenlv/Exemples_de_conflits_croisés
• de:Benutzer:Xinbenlv/Beispiele_für_Langanguage-Konflikte

Xinbenlv (talk) 22:43, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

The sample data.

EN v FR: birthdays FirstSource FirstLang FirstValue SecondValue SecondLang SecondSource http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nenad_Vu%C4%8Dkovi%C4%87_(handballer) en 1980-08-23 1980-08-22 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nenad_Vu%C4%8Dkovi%C4%87 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Haim en 1966-05-20 1966-11-14 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Ha%C3%AFm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Spence en 1967-08-07 1967-08-09 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Spence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Be%C5%88u%C5%A1kov%C3%A1 en 1980-10-31 1982-02-07 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra_Benuskova http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Harrington_(tennis) en 1962-02-05 1962-03-24 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Harrington http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Baylon en 1942-11-09 1942-12-06 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Baylon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Struve en 1988-02-19 1988-02-18 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Struve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mayes en 1880-02-14 1880-02-17 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mayes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Leo en 1962-08-10 1962-04-10 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Leo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raz_Reid en 1950-08-27 1951-08-27 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Reid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Prouvensier en 1994-03-12 1994-02-09 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Prouvensier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_Kyung-ah en 1968-09-20 1969-09-20 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_Kyung-ah http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hubinger en 1993-07-31 1993-01-31 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hubinger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcos_G%C3%B3rriz en 1964-03-03 1964-03-04 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcos_G%C3%B3rriz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymen_Hammed en 1983-07-26 1983-07-20 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymen_Hammed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brink en 1925-06-18 1925-06-08 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Green_(tennis) en 1897-03-31 1887-03-31 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Green http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipe_Toledo en 1996-04-16 1995-04-16 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipe_Toledo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hamilton_(sportscaster) en 1954-08-19 1956-08-19 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hamilton_(animateur) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Quillian_(tennis) en 1934-04-13 1933-04-13 fr http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Quillian EN v DE birthdays URL1 code1 birthday1(geburtstag 1) birthday(geburtstag2) code2 URL2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanette_Prediger en 1979-08-23 1979-08-29 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanette_Prediger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Zifan en 1992-09-17 1995-09-17 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Zifan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_LoPresti en 1917-01-30 1917-06-30 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_LoPresti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilian_Keller en 1993-03-15 1993-05-13 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilian_Keller_(Eishockeyspieler) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kane_(American_football) en 1983-12-18 1983-02-16 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Kane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trina_Hosmer en 1945-03-28 1948-03-28 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trina_Hosmer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammy_Mahon en 1984-04-11 1980-11-04 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammy_Mahon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvaro_Na%C4%8Dinovi%C4%87 en 1966-03-22 1966-03-02 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvaro_Na%C4%8Dinovi%C4%87 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romain_Bogaerts en 1995-02-09 1993-12-23 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romain_Bogaerts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_Noack_(swimmer) en 1943-01-17 1943-01-27 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_Noack_(Schwimmerin) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hainsworth en 1893-06-26 1895-06-26 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hainsworth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna-Lisa_Eriksson en 1928-06-21 1928-01-21 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna-Lisa_Eriksson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_Drea en 1947-03-02 1947-03-03 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_Drea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A9goire_Burquier en 1984-08-07 1984-07-08 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A9goire_Burquier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_McKinney en 1983-08-23 1983-08-02 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_McKinney http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryn_Meredith en 1930-10-21 1930-11-21 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryn_Meredith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalibor_%C4%8Cutura en 1975-06-11 1975-06-14 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalibor_%C4%8Cutura http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Dietz en 1985-02-23 1985-02-25 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Ernst_Klaus_Dietz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Fitzpatrick en 1963-06-04 1963-01-04 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Fitzpatrick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Drury en 1896-03-02 1895-03-02 de http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Drury

This looks like it can be really useful for fixing Wikidata errors. How do you extract the information? Can you show us the code? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:11, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Dodger67, Thanks for your encouragement. On a high-level, the steps are: (1) extract facts from a Wikipedia Article. (2) compare the information that should have a unique value (e.g. a personal can only be born once) across languages. (3)turn this comparison into a Map-Reduce-like large scale pipeline. (4) filter the conflicting data with constraints. Not all technologies I used are open-sourced yet, so I still need sometime to get the code to a status of release-able. Other comments, thoughts? I wonder if people will also think it helpful to fix facts on Wikipedia, too? Xinbenlv (talk) 23:31, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Seeking more comments Xinbenlv (talk) 01:58, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Xinbenlv, have you asked over at d:Wikidata:Project chat? I think this would be very useful to Wikidata editors (probably much more than Wikipedia editors), as information is routinely imported from smaller projects like the Russian Wikipedia, which might not have data as good as the English Wikipedia's. There are also probably more editors who are used to querying databases, and there are some tools (with a GUI) which I think can import entire infoboxes from groups of articles. Jc86035 (talk) 09:05, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

@Jc86035, sounds good, I haven't but will do! thanks! ! Xinbenlv (talk) 15:48, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Continue to seek comments Xinbenlv (talk) 02:31, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

@Xinbenlv: Great idea. The first thing to do imho, is to find a stable home for this. VPT is a fast-moving page and this discussion will either get archived and lost, or get too big to live here. In any case, may I suggest finding a new home for it, and moving this discussion there? Ideally for starters, your data, examples and technical material could live on a new Project page, with this discussion moved to the Talk page associated with it. I can offer some suggestions if you like. Mathglot (talk) 03:21, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Editor not redirecting to a display URL after completing

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T197615

[I'm guessing that this has already been reported, but I don't see it in the contents list, and I can't think what to search for]. I'm frequently finding when I edit a section (generally on WP:HD or WP:TH) after I complete and save, the URL still has "?action=edit" in it - i.e. it is not following normal practice and redirecting to a GET URL after completing.

I started noticing this a couple of weeks ago, when refreshing a page (F5) kept putting me into the editor unexpectedly; but I only remembered to look at the URL a few days ago. I have an example in another tab right now: I have just replied to a question at the Teahouse, and the edit has saved, but the URL in my browser address bar is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse?action=edit#Disputed_text

I'm using Firefox, but I'm pretty sure I saw this in Opera recently as well. --ColinFine (talk) 10:35, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

What editor are you using? 2017 Wikitext editor? Visual Editor? Another? --Izno (talk) 13:31, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Dunno, Izno. Looking at my preferences, I have "Always give me the source editor" checked, and "New WikiText Mode" checked on the Beta Features tab. --ColinFine (talk) 23:14, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Okay, you're using the 2017 wikitext editor. I see this behavior also in Firefox (have for a while) and it probably deserves a task in Phabricator. I don't see one there. I think we need figure out the exacts of when it happens still. --Izno (talk) 13:04, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

@Izno: I think what happens is the page "reloads" with JavaScript and then doesn't change the URL in the address bar. I haven't tested this with VisualEditor. Jc86035 (talk) 11:21, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I'll just confirm that I also have this issue in Firefox with the 2017 editor. Haven't noticed it in Edge (at work) though. — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 12:04, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I take that back, Edge is doing the same thing. What's more, sometimes the post-edit URL isn't even the same page I was on; it changes the page URL to 'undefined' like so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/undefined?action=edit. This would cause me to edit the page for Undefined if I refresh the page after editing. I've gotten used to clicking on the article or talk tab again to put the correct URL back in the bar. Has anyone opened a phabricator ticket for this yet? — AfroThundr ^{(u · t · c)} 12:08, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I've just opened one. Jc86035 (talk) 16:37, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Indenting ":" doesn't work to right of image: should it?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T13782

Please see this edit.

The reason I changed the indenting ":" to a bulleting "*" is that the indent didn't work for me. My paragraph appeared directly below the original question (to the right of the image, because I'm using a wide window) without indentation. I tried multiple colons up to ":::::" and there was still no indentation. After making the change I also tried adding another paragraph with "**" and this was formatted just like the "*" paragaph.

However, if I narrow the window so that the original text occupies more lines and comes down below the picture, then indentation in the later text works correctly. So clearly what's going on is that ":" doesn't indent (and "*" doesn't add indenting) in text that's to the right of an image.

Is this a bug or a documented feature?

(Please reply here, not to my current IP address's talk page.)

--76.69.118.94 (talk) 22:12, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Left-floating images are often problematic. Indentation is measured from the left margin and not from the edge of the image. If there is enough indentation then it eventually leaves the image. Below are examples but don't try that. The result will vary between users. You can just make the image right-floating. That is default for |thumb so you don't have to write anything. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:41, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

20 colons (before image)

Image with |thumb|left

No indentation in this line

• 1 asterisk
  • • • • • 5 asterisks

1 colon

5 colons

20 colons

@76.69.118.94 and PrimeHunter: You can fix this by surrounding the text with <div class="flowlist">...</div>. See Special:Diff/846413082 for an example. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:32, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Image upright went wrong

Pls see fluorine & talk. My "upright" (image) went wrong, but i am mobile now so cannot revert myself. -DePiep (talk) 22:41, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

I have reverted your edit.[6] Wikipedia:Extended image syntax#Using "upright" says: "The upright option works in combination with the thumbnail or thumb option". PrimeHunter (talk) 22:49, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

ok. -DePiep (talk) 23:21, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

It also works with |frameless. I gave a fuller answer at the original thread. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:03, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Left hand column with menu (Main page, contents, languages etc) showing while in edit field stopping me from saving

And they're clickable and across the publish changes button. Luckily hitting return in the edit summary field works as I can't use the publish button. This is even worse than the occasional file image overlaying the corner of the edit window. This seems to be Firefox problem as I don't have it in Chrome. On the other hand when I start a new section I can't save at all, so I had to switch to Chrome in he miffle of writing this. I'm using Vector. Doug Weller talk 11:17, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I have Firefox and Vector with no problems. Your Firefox cache of interface files may be corrupted. Try to bypass your cache with Ctrl+F5, or clear your entire cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:39, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks, but that had no effect. I rebooted FF as well. Doug Weller talk 12:42, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Does it happen with safemode=1 or if you log out? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:33, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: It doesn't seem FF related after all, it's WikEd related - it only happens when WikEd is turned on, and Chrome doesn't have it turned on. Turning it off in FF fixes the problem. Doug Weller talk 14:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

But only sometimes. And in any case, I don't get the templates box when I use wikEd, I should get it with both. On another page just now I couldn't even change between them. Doug Weller talk 18:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Alt+⇧ Shift+s should save in Firefox. More at Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts. I see you posted to User talk:Cacycle/wikEd where bug reports belong, but you didn't follow User talk:Cacycle/wikEd#wikEd Bug reports. Cacycle hasn't edited since February so I don't know whether you will get a reply. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:15, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: thanks for your help. I just hope the problem goes away by itself at some point. Ouch, I just tried preview and it didn't work Doug Weller talk 10:23, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Alt+⇧ Shift+p should preview. If you are desperate you could try hiding the whole left panel in edit and preview with the below in your CSS but body.action-submit may hit other things than preview. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:09, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

body.action-edit #mw-panel, body.action-submit #mw-panel {display: none;}

Vocea României Junior (season 2)

Hello, can someone edit this page? I tried my best, but it isn't complete. --Monsterofain (talk) 14:10, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I do not see any technical problems with this page. It has at least two links to disambiguation pages; those should be fixed. I added a References section with a {{reflist}} template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:19, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Small spacing issue with new watchlist filters UI

With the New Filters for Edit Review feature enabled, there's now not enough space above announcements on the watchlist page when using the Vector skin. Here's a screenshot of the old (top) and new (bottom) designs – since the view/edit/clear links got moved in the new design, the annoucement is too close to the page title. (I'm using Chrome 68, in case that's relevant.)

Hopefully this is the right place to report things like this? I mentioned it on the feature's talk page on MW, and got asked to report it on enwiki. An Owl Called Josh 🦉 (talk) 14:22, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I've offered a possible fix here: add .mw-rcfilters-enabled .mw-specialpage-summary {margin: 1em 0;} to Mediawiki:Commons.css. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Done with Special:Diff/846412391. I used padding instead of margin, because it would otherwise overlap with the margin of .firstHeading. Merely a minor nitpick =p I assume all wikis have the same issue, so maybe this CSS change should be added to core or wherever the code for the new review filters lives? — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:34, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Only wikis using the watchlist header to display messages have that, MusikAnimal. Maybe that related ticket would be a good opportunity to express that. :) Trizek (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-25

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

• Syntax highlighting has been a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. It is now a normal feature. It is based on CodeMirror. [7]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some old web browsers will not be able to read the Wikimedia wikis. This is because they use an insecure way to connect to them. This means that we get less security for everyone else too. This affects about 0.08% of all traffic to the Wikimedia wikis. This affects for example those who read Wikipedia on a PlayStation 3. [8][9]
• The new filters for edit review tools and interface for watchlists will leave beta. Because there is no new MediaWiki version this week it will happen on 25 June for most wikis. For the rest it will happen in early July. [10][11]
• All wikis that have not already done so will switch to use the Remex parsing library on 5 July. This is to replace Tidy. You can help fix remaining errors. [12]

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

21:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Thing to help add incoming links to an article

I seem to remember using some kind of tool that helped to add incoming links to an article. You fed in the article name, it pulled up articles with corresponding text, and added the links very quickly. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called, can anyone point me in the right direction please? DuncanHill (talk) 21:48, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

User:Lourdes/Backlinks searches articles but doesn't help add the link. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:39, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: Find link is the tool provided on {{orphan}}. Is that what you were thinking of? NotARabbit (talk) 04:19, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: Just using Advanced search in the Article namespace alone does a pretty nifty job, especially if you use Boolean OR to capture possible aliases. Mathglot (talk) 08:24, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I have a Google search box which I use. The tool I remember was a bit like Find Link, but Find Link doesn't actually open up the edit box and insert the link ready for you to click Publish, which the tool I remember did. DuncanHill (talk) 11:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

You can use the search and replace option of AutoWikiBrowser. You can ask someone to do it at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks if you don't have access.--Racklever (talk) 13:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Template magic question

Is there a way to make a uw template automatically show different text for anonymous vs registered users, or based on a user's permissions? Specifically, the text at {{uw-incompleteAFD}} has a section about unregistered users, but I most commonly use it for registered users. ansh666 06:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Wrap it in spans with class .anonymous-show or .user-show. For example, this sentence is only shown to registered users.For example, this sentence is only shown to unregistered users. There's similar classes for most user groups; look for .sysop-show in MediaWiki:Common.css. —Cryptic 07:17, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

In this case, wouldn't it be easier to check if the user whose talk page the template is being placed on is an IP or not and subst accordingly? {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:05, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but I'm lazy (and it's probably better to just have one template for everyone anyways). Thanks, I'll look into it. ansh666 20:19, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

@Ansh666: Note that if you're substing the template (which you really should for anything going on a user talk page), the CSS "hidden" text will still show up in the wikitext editor. A better way would be {{{{{|safesubst:}}}#if:{{IsIPAddress|{{ROOTPAGENAME}}}}|Text for unregistered|Text for registered}} --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:38, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, Pppery fixed it up. Thanks, ansh666 22:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Apart from the user interface and omitting some things in the mobile version, we should very rarely show different text to different users. It causes confusion when they edit or discuss the same page, and registered users should be able to see what an IP was told in a warning. Testing the type of user page to display specific content to all readers of the page is fine. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:51, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Problem with Cyberbot I

There is an issue with the Cyberbot I (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) task which creates and populates Template:Adminstats subpages for administrators and account creators. It's creating and re-creating adminstats subpages for users who are neither administrators nor account creators and which have been deleted multiple times after discussions at TfD, and also seems to be creating and re-creating adminstats subpages for certain users who have not requested the bot to run. I've already posted on Cyberpower678's talk page, but if anyone more active in bot coding would like to take a look or weigh in, please see the discussion. Thanks. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 12:32, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Template to fetch data from Wikidata

Hello. I am most active in Greek Wikipedia and in Wikidata. Recently, I have added all population history for municipalities and communities for Limassol District in Wikidata. Through a template w:el:Πρότυπο:Πληθυσμός απογραφών Κύπρου, all the data of a place is showing in Greek Wikipedia article of the place, with all the sources. For example, w:el:Πελένδρι#Πληθυσμός. Noticed, that most of the sources are in English and if some of them are in Greek, in Wikidata I have added also the translated titles etc. The problem is that I want to add these informations to English Wikipedia article with the same way, with the template. It's more easier and effective, than try to write them by hand. The problem is that Module:Wikidata and Template:Wikidata are different in each Wikipedia and I need help to create the template W:el:Πρότυπο:Πληθυσμός απογραφών Κύπρου to English Wikipedia. Xaris333 (talk) 13:07, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia has plenty of Wikidata templates (Template:Wikidata, Module:Wikidata, Module:WikidataIB). It does not need more. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 16:06, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

No, I am not telling that. I need help to create my template to English Wikipedia according to Wikidata templates of English Wikipedia. Xaris333 (talk) 16:07, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I just want to make Template:Population history Cyprus working. Xaris333 (talk) 19:04, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

If you have a technical question about how to make the template work, then you might consider contacting one of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidata#Participants directly. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:25, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Help at WT:CS1

Since the main coder for WP:CS1 templates (Trappist the monk (talk)) is unresponsive, it would be great to have Lua coders to help with long-standing requests

• Help talk:Citation Style 1#Dispute over Template:Citation Style documentation/journal – handling of complex |issue= information
• Help talk:Citation Style 1#Cross check year/date with the arxiv/bibcode

Any help would be greatly appreciated here. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:35, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Looking for a gadget crafter

One thing which could help to improve article readability is a gadget that would highlight an article's longest sentence and the one with the most punctuation marks. By this simple expedient we could draw editors' attention to where it is most needed. Would anyone be interested in crafting such a tool? Pretty please? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:12, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

That looks like it would be a useful tool. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:44, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

MiniveraNeue error messages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T167078

Just some time ago I experienced difficulties saving an edit to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vandana Singh (actress) on the Minivera skin... At first the screen just redirected me back to the save form...after scrolling downwards a poorly rendered (It overlapped with my signature) black error message stating something in the effect of "Error:Your edit could not be saved." appeared. After further investigation (in the process of which I lost the source of the edit) I discovered that I had accidentally included a Accelerated_Mobile_Pages link instead of a link to the actual site. This had caused the mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist to blocked it. Can the aforementioned extension's error messages be made compatible with MiniverNeue?— Preceding unsigned comment added by FR30799386 (talk • contribs) 10:26, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

I think this is a known issue. Linked —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:17, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Load different editor toolbars via user js?

I'm trying to figure out how to override my preferences and load different editing toolbars (enhanced in main, old elsewhere, and code editor if page ends in .js or .css). I thought mw.user.options.set would work, but I seem to be calling it too late to make a difference. The options API directly changes the preferences (so requires an API call on every page and a page reload) so what I'd really like to do is directly load the enhanced or old toolbar directly in userjs, but how? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:43, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

If "old" means the 2006 wikitext editor (see mw:Editor to figure it out), then it's probably going to be removed from the servers later this year (a long-stalled project that supposedly is back on track now).

That said, I believe that the French Wikipedia has an 2006-like toolbar that is entirely handled in user Javascript (a gadget), so perhaps what you need is enhanced in main, and "nothing" (2003) elsewhere, except to then replace nothing with a user script that happens to duplicate the 2006 toolbar. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Thanks, that's it in a nutshell I suppose. I'll be sad to see my old friend go, but being the change-averse community we know it is, I expect I'll find it in a gadget soon after. If I opt for "nothing" in my preferences, is there a way to load the enhanced editor via javascript? I suppose the alternative is to actually opt for the enhanced toolbar in the preferences and do $('#wikiEditor-ui-toolbar').hide() everywhere but main and js pages, but that'd be more inefficient and adds a noticeable lag to loading the edit screen. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:31, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I understand that the teams affected would have no objection to the 2006 toolbar being re-created as a gadget (whether now or later). I understand their problem is strictly about whether the dozen-year-old code remains officially supported as part of MediaWiki. If volunteers choose to keep it alive as a gadget for another dozen years, that's no skin off the devs' backs. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them chose to use such a gadget themselves.

I'll leave your questions about how to do that to someone who is more likely to give you useful answers. ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Didn't mean to suggest they shouldn't! Just some poking fun at myself and our editor colleagues. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:10, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Creating taskforces of WikiProject, getting assessment stats etc

Hi all, I'd previously asked this question over at the Teahouse and was pointed in this direction, hopefully someone here will be able to help!

I've started setting up taskforces for WikiProject Computational Biology, for regulatory and systems genomics and computational biology education so far: I've added a single article to each taskforce just to check that my modifications to the WCB template were successful, more articles will be added in due course.

The WP:USMIL task force cited in the taskforce examples suggests that it should be possible to get separate assessment statistics for each taskforce, I assume as a subset of the assessment statistics for the parent WikiProject - is this correct? And if so, what do I need to do in order to create the assessment statistics tables? I've attempted to update the project data for RegSys as a test, but the assessment tool says that RegSys is not in the database. I get the feeling I'm missing something quite basic, any help appreciated. Thanks! Amkilpatrick (talk) 18:26, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

@Amkilpatrick: This should be covered by Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:55, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: not sure how I missed this, will check it out. Thanks! Amkilpatrick (talk) 19:26, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

@Redrose64: looks like everything is beginning to work now, thanks a lot for your help! Amkilpatrick (talk) 12:16, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Uploading problem

I'm having trouble getting an image to upload to en.wiki - I keep getting a 400 Bad Request error. Anybody know if there's a server problem or something? Parsecboy (talk) 10:17, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Nevermind, I got it to go through - must have been a temporary hiccup. Parsecboy (talk) 11:36, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist options

The Watchlist option (period to display, hide various types of user, minor edits, etc) have disappeared from my watchlist on my desktop. They are still there on my phone. Monobook on both, Edge on Win10 on the desktop, Chrome on Android and desktop view on the phone. DuncanHill (talk) 11:20, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: check m:Edit_Review_Improvements/New_filters_for_edit_review#Project_updates it could be something to do with that. Nthep (talk) 12:10, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

That page has been deleted as vandalism. DuncanHill (talk) 12:15, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, missed a character out, I meant this page at mediawiki mw:Edit_Review_Improvements/New_filters_for_edit_review#Project_updates. Nthep (talk) 12:18, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Bizarrely they have now reappeared on my desktop without me changing anything. DuncanHill (talk) 12:23, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

No deployment has happen for now concerning the watchlists, Nthep. :)

DuncanHill, are you using the Beta feature "New filters for edit review"? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

No, I do not use any Beta features. DuncanHill (talk) 14:28, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Do you still have your problem when you use safemode? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:30, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

No, as I said they have reappeared. DuncanHill (talk) 14:35, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If you don't have the issue using the safemode link, the problem may be related to your account settings. Can you please follow the steps for a bug report? Thanks! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:12, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Polluted categories

I've been working on Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories maintenance, and have come across an issue that I wanted to ask if anything can be done to fix. The thing is that while the original database report detects and lists both User: and User talk: pages in content categories, actually using the "User [search]" link next to each category only generates a list of User: pages while not picking up or displaying User talk: titles — which means that to actually ensure that a category is fully clean, I have to manually perform a second followup search for user talk pages.

For example, I just had a category where the search link found one user page, but it turned out that the page had been created after the most recent list generation and thus could not have been the cause of the category getting detected on the current report in the first place — so I researched, and found that there was also a user talk page in the category. But that page had not appeared at all in the original searchlink list, so had I not done that followup research I would have missed that page and the category would have remained polluted. It's also not a feasible alternative to simply go directly to the category instead of using the search link — some of the polluted categories have hundreds or even thousands of pages in them, so having to manually eyeball everything in the category is not a viable way to actually find the one or two userspace pages in the haystack.

So is there any way to recode that report so that the search link picks up user talk: pages as well as user: pages? Or alternatively (and even better, if possible) is there any way that instead of generating a list of the polluted categories from which each category has to be individually searched for the polluting content, the report instead generates a list of the individual pages that are causing the pollution so that an editor working on maintenance tasks can copy them into AWB and get through a batch much faster? Bearcat (talk) 18:29, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, for the search link, I think all that needs doing is adding &ns3=1 to Template:Dbr link; I've gone and done that. For changing the report, you'd want to ask MZMcBride, although I imagine that'd be difficult — I don't think it's immediately obvious to a database which pages are correct and which are wrong. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:57, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough. In the vast majority of cases, the categories involved are mainspace categories which should never contain any user or user talk pages at all, which is pretty straightforward, but there are a smaller number of categories in the list where the actual problem flips because the category was meant for non-mainspace stuff like userpages but somebody has erroneously added one or more articles to it. I suppose it would be hard for an automated database report to figure out which is which — though I do wonder if it would be possible to give each category a code for "what type of content is supposed to be filed here and what type of content is not", so that a "pollution" report run could just check for any categories which include content types the category is coded as not meant to be including (e.g. user pages filed in categories coded as not to include user pages, draft pages filed in categories coded as not to include draft pages, etc.) But that's just me spitballing, it might not be technically feasible.

Thanks for the quick change on the search link coding, though — I've already caught at least one user talk page in a category that had previously reported as already cleaned up, so it definitely worked. Bearcat (talk) 19:09, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Identifying whether a category is for articles or for user pages is pretty straightforward. A quick look at the category members usually gives it away. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:32, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

To human eyes, absolutely. A machine-generated datadump might have a harder time telling what type of content a category is meant to contain, however. Bearcat (talk) 21:01, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Now that I think about it a bit, I think I agree with MZM. It might be a lot of overhead, but unless they're very polluted a script could look at the members and find the odd-namespace(s)-out. Might not be perfect, but would be a good approximation, no? ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:08, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Or rather than guessing, we could just provide the per-namespace membership counts or percentages across a specified category. For example, for Category:2001 births:

MariaDB [enwiki_p]> select page_namespace, count(*) from page join categorylinks on cl_from = page_id where cl_to = '2001_births' group by page_namespace;
+----------------+----------+
| page_namespace | count(*) |
+----------------+----------+
|              0 |      595 |
|              2 |        1 |
+----------------+----------+
2 rows in set (0.01 sec)

Alternately we could say "99.83% of pages are in the article namespace and 0.17% of pages are the user namespace for this category." I kind of thought we already did this. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:40, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

On a related but distinct note, I've caught another bug in the polluted categories list. The new batch ran overnight, but there are still a few categories on it which hadn't actually dropped from last week's run even though last week's run looked completely "cleared" as of yesterday afternoon and still technically looked "cleared" now. But I found it incredibly unlikely that Category:21st-century American politicians, for example, was clean yesterday afternoon, then suddenly had a userspace page filed in it just in time to get redetected again by the new batch run, and then immediately had that page pulled back out by somebody else before I looked at the category again just a few hours later — so I deep-scanned the category in AWB, and found that it actually has had an undetected userspace page in it all along: a page in which articlespace categories were sitting behind a redirect to a draftspace page. And the same thing happened in Category:Dirt track racing and Category:Baja California: userspace pages that had articlespace categories lurking behind redirects to mainspace, so they were getting detected by the initial batch run but not actually shown when I clicked the search link to find them.
So it appears that the batch programming is properly detecting these categories as polluted with userspace content, but the search link is failing to display them because they're functionally redirects to other namespaces rather than standalone pages, so the category looks clean even when it's actually not. So is there another code that can be added to the search link (e.g. "don't follow redirects") to ensure that it displays pages like this as well? Bearcat (talk) 16:13, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Can't capture javascript errors

I get a lot of these, some of which may relate to my problems with wikEd I mention above. They show up in a box and quickly disappear. When I do manage to copy and past them, I actually get a link to a page with a huge amount of text like thisat line 802: Error: Widget not found which looking at the raw url seems to be something about not finding a Widget. This oneat line 526: TypeError: element is undefined ends in "element not define". Thisat line 385: TypeError: /oldid=(.+)/.exec(...) is null says something is null but specifically mentions Wiked. Thisat line 83: SyntaxError: unterminated string literal seems to be about Echo. I've got more but don't want to bore people with them. Doug Weller talk 10:33, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T196512

I've been getting one inconsistently when opening the edit window as well, for the past week or two. Mine says

Javascript Error https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.3d%2CCodeMirror%2Ccharinsert%2CeventLogging%2CnavigationTiming%2CwikimediaEvents%7Cext.CodeMirror.data%2Clib%7Cext.CodeMirror.mode.mediawiki%7Cext.centralNotice.geoIP%7Cext.centralauth.ForeignApi%7Cext.centralauth.centralautologin.clearcookie%7Cext.echo.api%2Cinit%7Cext.eventLogging.subscriber%7Cext.uls.common%2Ceventlogger%2Cinit%2Cinterface%2Cpreferences%2Cwebfonts%7Cext.visualEditor.desktopArticleTarget.init%7Cext.visualEditor.supportCheck%2CtargetLoader%2CtempWikitextEditorWidget%2Ctrack%2Cve%7Cext.wikimediaEvents.loggedin%7Cjquery.accessKeyLabel%2CcheckboxShiftClick%2Cclient%2Ccookie%2CgetAttrs%2ChighlightText%2ClengthLimit%2CmakeCollapsible%2Cspinner%2Csuggestions%2CtabIndex%2CtextSelection%2Cthrottle-debounce%7Cjquery.makeCollapsible.styles%7Cjquery.uls.data%7Cmediawiki.ForeignApi%2CRegExp%2CString%2CTitle%2CUri%2Capi%2Ccldr%2CconfirmCloseWindow%2Ccookie%2Cexperiments%2Cicon%2CjqueryMsg%2Clanguage%2Cnotify%2CsearchSuggest%2Cstorage%2Ctemplate%2Cuser%2Cutil%7Cmediawiki.ForeignApi.core%7Cmediawiki.action.edit%7Cmediawiki.action.edit.collapsibleFooter%2CeditWarning%7Cmediawiki.api.options%7Cmediawiki.language.data%2Cinit%7Cmediawiki.libs.pluralruleparser%7Cmediawiki.page.ready%2Cstartup%7Cmediawiki.page.watch.ajax%7Cmediawiki.template.regexp%7Cmediawiki.widgets.visibleLengthLimit%7Coojs%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets%2Csite%7Coojs-ui-widgets.styles%7Coojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-advanced%2Cicons-editing-styling%2Cicons-moderation%2Cicons-movement%7Cschema.UniversalLanguageSelector%7Cskins.vector.js%7Cuser.defaults%7Cwikibase.client.action.edit.collapsibleFooter&skin=vector&version=1u4c16z at line 6: TypeError: $button.toggleClass(...).data(...) is not a function

The Firefox console shows:

TypeError: $button.toggleClass(...).data(...) is not a function[Learn More] load.php:6:700
updateToolbarButton https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php:6:700
addToolbarButton/</< https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php:8:489
mightThrow https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php:49:590
resolve/</process< https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php:50:269

I don't know if they are related to the same cause as Doug Weller's errors above, but maybe someone here has a clue about them. I'm guessing it's something in my vector.js that has degraded in its interactions with the MW code base, but I haven't changed anything. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:13, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: This is a known problem, for which the fix will be deployed in next weeks cycle. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:22, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: When you encounter these problems (which are btw reported by the Gadget you enabled in your preferences, normally they are hidden for users) please also record on which page you encountered them and what browser and skin you were using. That makes it a lot easier to find the problem, as javascript errors are very context dependent. It can also be important to check if the issue occurs if you load that same page with the "safemode=1" parameter in in the url. That parameter disables all userscripts and gadgets (where most of these problems are). If it disappears, then likely it is a gadget or userscript, and you should try and narrow down, by disabling and reanabling them until you figure out which combination introduces the problem. Specifically however:

• "TypeError: /oldid=(.+)/.exec(...)" seems to be an error by Twinkle. Likely on a diff page. As no one else has reported this problem, it makes me suspect that another gadget or something has changed the diff page, causing twinkle to not be able to find the html that it is normally looking for. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

{{re|TheDJ]] this problem happens on Windows 10 with Firefox and on my iPad with Safari. I use Vector. It probably is a gadget or a userscript. Doug Weller talk 14:46, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Odd listing of subcategories

I recently created Category:2018 photographs, and included it in Category:2010s photographs. When I look at the parent category, it lists the five pre-existing cats (2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016) in a section at the top, then a section head 0-9, then my 2018 cat. What did I do wrong/different to make 2018 get split out into a separate section? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:45, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

A space as category sort key was added in [13] after your post. Without a sort key it sorted under "0-9" because "2018 photographs" starts with a digit. You could have examined the source of one of the other categories like Category:2016 photographs to see what they do different. They also add {{navseasoncats}} which I have now done. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:06, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

And the others have sort keys for all parent categories.[14] When I create a category I always look for a similar category and adapt its source. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:11, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Help w/ TFL template

Resolved

Should Talk:Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance, Female be updated so the text does not say this article will be featured on the Main page? Posting here per suggestion on my user talk page. Thanks for any help in advance. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:15, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

All it needed was a WP:PURGE. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:45, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Oh, of course! Thank you. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:09, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

any way to retrieve wikitext/external links from template parameters?

Using Quarry I'm trying to grab some external links from wiki pages, but apparently links made by template aren't stored in externallinks; and the content of template calls is not stored in templatelinks. Is there any way using Quarry to get the "bar" portion of {{Foo|bar}}? Outriggr (talk) 04:33, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

How can I see how the largest articles on Wikipedia?

I was asking about the following over at Wikipedia talk:Article size and this VP was recommended as a place to maybe get an answer...

• ...Wikipedia:Article size#Technical issues states that "there are ~1,000 articles larger than 200 kB, the largest being ~1.1 MB (as of December 2016)."

So, how can I access this information? Is there a tool I can run or a page around here somewhere that has a list? I want to see which articles are the largest and which types of articles - biographies or histories or whatever - are the largest. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 11:11, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Special:LongPages. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:18, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Shearonink (talk) 00:55, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

visual editor table bug

In tables when you add yes or no template an extra | will be added

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients&oldid=847354920 — Preceding unsigned comment added by M-G (talk • contribs) 19:12, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

The extra pipe was already there, apparently. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:19, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

If memory serves, those templates were officially declared "unsupported" in the visual editor about four years ago. I'm actually surprised that it didn't create any problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:08, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

visual editor another bug

bug:https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_instant_messaging_clients&oldid=847360381#Messengers_with_client-to-client_encryption — Preceding unsigned comment added by M-G (talk • contribs) 19:49, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

just added 'no' template to new empty column and whole column format ruined — Preceding unsigned comment added by M-G (talk • contribs) 20:04, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

I don't know how VisualEditor deals with adding table columns and cell attributes but {{yes}} and {{no}} include cell attributes so they have a vertical bar inside their output to separate cell attributes and cell content. Maybe this confuses VisualEditor. The lead of Wikipedia:VisualEditor says: "VisualEditor still has many bugs and missing features. If you encounter an issue, please report it on the Feedback page." PrimeHunter (talk) 21:27, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

See the diff linked in the section above; adding the "no" template was not the cause of the error. M-G, please provide a link to a diff that shows the error you are reporting in this section. I see this edit, in which you added an extra pipe without a new line, which caused problems. If Visual Editor showed you that you were adding a column, but it actually produced the output in this diff, that may be a bug to report at the Visual Editor Feedback page with a diff link. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:36, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Now this is more like what I expected. ;-) I added a column and inserted these templates, and it looked like a nightmare of exposed HTML. There is no way that someone would have added that and thought that anything was working. However, when I saved it, it looked perfect. (Feel free to mess around in my sandbox.) I don't know what's going on. Maybe this requires starting with a structural problem in the original table layout? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:17, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

I was able to reproduce the originally reported bug: [15]. Diff for original report. The problem happens when VisualEditor inserts a column before a cell which already has {{no}}. VisualEditor doesn't have to add {{no}} for the bug to occur. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:11, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Hidden categories with mwclient?

I'm using mwclient in python to explore the category space. Is it possible to suppress listing hidden categories via mwclient? -- RoySmith (talk) 01:02, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

"Missing" archive-pages for an article's talk page because of a series of moves...

Talk:List of professional cyclists who died during a race was moved to Talk:List of cyclists with a cycling related death which in turn was moved to Talk:List of cyclists with a cycling-related death However, I have found an Archive page for the article's talk pages that was left behind after one of the various moves:

• Talk:List of cyclists with a cycling related death/Archive 1, see Talk:List of cyclists with a cycling-related death edit history.

I don't know how to fix it, could someone please fix it and clean things up? Thanks in advance. Shearonink (talk) 01:25, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

You just WP:Move it. --Izno (talk) 02:57, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Didn't want to possibly leave a mess of redirects or whatnot behind... Shearonink (talk) 04:59, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

You already moved it? I would have done that once I knew (or was reminded) what was supposed to be done according to policy/guidelines but thanks. I'll know for next time. Cheers, Shearonink (talk) 05:05, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

@Shearonink: We typically leave redirects behind in most cases. Sometimes the problem with moving is that there is a page at the target that needs to be moved around, but that wasn't the case here. What I usually do is try and see if it works or not first and then I complain to a page mover or admin about it. :) --Izno (talk) 13:13, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Is there a tool for gauging WP participation traffic?

I've been wondering for months if participation in Wikipedia is losing steam. And what makes me wonder is that, from my experience, the basic admin stuff I deal with on a daily basis, WP:AIV, WP:RFPP and overall listings on the Admin dashboard seem far less than last year at this time. But ... maybe I'm having selective memory on it being more active in previous years. — Maile (talk) 20:49, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

WP:ACTRIAL and WP:ACREQ? Not an answer, but a (partial) explanation, perhaps. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:02, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Anyway, here are some stats pages. Nothing jumps out at me. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 21:09, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. Nothing jumps out at me, either, so I guess it's more or less status quo. — Maile (talk) 21:32, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-26

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

• PAWS, our JupyterHub system, got an upgrade and a logo. Several bugs should be fixed.

Problems

• When a link text was in italics or had other formatting you could sometimes not edit it in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [16][17]

Changes later this week

• Content translation users who translate between any two of Arabic, English, French, Japanese and Russian will be asked to be part of a research project. This is to create better tools for translating articles. [18]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 June. It will be on all wikis from 28 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 June at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

23:10, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Cookie blocks

I assume cookie blocks for IPs are now implemented because Phabricator says they have been. Am I correct in that assumption? I've not seen any notification and there is nothing obviously different on the blocking page. Do admins have any control over whether or not cookie blocks will be applied or is it an entirely automated process? SpinningSpark 00:13, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

@Spinningspark: Implemented yes, active not yet I think, since phab:T192017 is still open. I think only italian and test wikipedia currently have this active, see phab:T196121. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:14, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Tech News not received

I am sure that I added my name to the list of users in the correct format and have received issues every week for some time. However I seem to have been omitted from the list this week. — FR ⁺ 17:31, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

This usually means that there is a problem part-way through the mailing list, and recipients listed after that point will have been skipped. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:59, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

This time I think there was a different kind of problem. I've told the Tech News folks, and they'll sort it out. Thank you for posting this note! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, This edit by Igna (talk · contribs) is suspicious. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:07, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Sorry for the problems, try to remove me from the list and edit on a diff. Sorry again --Ignacio (talk) 18:10, 26 June 2018 (UTC)