Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

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, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213

Administrators

How to find administrators which recently did any action? Eurohunter (talk) 14:48, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

toollabs:apersonbot/recently-active –xeno^talk 14:53, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Special:Log/block is effective (or Special:Log/delete or Special:Log/protect). Johnuniq (talk) 00:50, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@Xeno: @Johnuniq: Thanks Eurohunter (talk) 10:21, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Nonsense dates

Nonsense dates appear on the screen tables for running the app for "Page statistics" from the edit history page of many if not most articles, in the fields for "First date" and "Last date". The two that I have just run are Herman Melville here [1], and the film article for The Favourite. Could someone look at this? CodexJustin (talk) 14:54, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

@CodexJustin: I see what you mean. For those who haven't found them, they are in the Top editors section, in both the "First edit" and "Latest edit" columns, where dates like "2013-55-29 18:" and "2018-11-9 17:" are displayed. These are linked to diffs, from which I see that these two dates should have been displayed as "2013-11-29 18:55" and "2018-03-09 17:11" respectively. Something is dropping the true month value, and moving the minutes value to the position intended for the month; it might be a simple matter of "MM"/"mm" confusion in a date formatting string. It's definitely one for the tool maintainer, you should file a Phabricator ticket. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:09, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Probably introduced here. I'll create a pull request tonight (as in, somewhere between 17:00 and 21:00 UTC) if MusikAnimal doesn't fix it first. rchard2scout (talk) 10:54, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, and the offer to create a PR! :) I went ahead and deployed a fix. — MusikAnimal ^talk 14:04, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Dark mode / prefers-color-scheme

With Media Queries Level 5 (and in particular, prefers-color-scheme) getting moved into Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (67) (Safari has supported this since "dark mode" was added to MacOS Mojave), I'm wondering if it's not time to start including support for this within the various skins available here? Windows also has a "dark mode" toggle, and it appears this system value is used by both Chrome and Firefox to set the value within the browser (so websites can adapt to the mode selected by the user). IIRC, Microsoft is going to switch to using Chrome for Edge at some point, so that would cover all the major browsers for support. —Locke Cole • t • c 06:33, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Locke Cole https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/mediawiki/skins/Vector/ ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:01, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@Locke Cole: As far as I know the WMF Community Tech team has plans to start investigating meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Reading/Night mode soon in phab:tag/night-mode (hence that project planning workboard in Phabricator is still quite empty). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:03, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you both for the guidance, I will keep my eyes peeled on the progress on that wishlist item. =) —Locke Cole • t • c 06:51, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

No tools

Why I have no tools while editing? I remember I changed something. Eurohunter (talk) 08:30, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: There are different tools depending on settings. Maybe you disabled "Enable the editing toolbar" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. If this doesn't help then say whether you have the wanted tool when you are logged out, and briefly describe the tool. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:49, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Yes I had it disabled. This is new toolbar. How I can enable old one? Eurohunter (talk) 08:54, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets has "Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar". PrimeHunter (talk) 08:58, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks. Eurohunter (talk) 10:20, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Double notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T203893

Per User talk:Iridescent#Double notification, is there any way we can disable the double-notification when a username is linked in both the text and the edit summary? I was aware this was an issue when "ping from edit summary" was first introduced (example), but thought it had been fixed months ago. Given the habit many editors have of copying the first line of their comment (which is also where the @whoever ping is most likely to be) to use as the edit summary, this is a bug that's going to keep on annoying people. ‑ Iridescent 09:04, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

This is phab:T203893 with no apparent work. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:28, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

MediaWiki internal error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T221347

Anyone else getting this error white trying to edit? I've had it happen intermittently three times around the past half hour while either trying to view changes or submit changes. Here's a sample of the output, where it's throwing a ConfigException. Opencooper (talk) 10:42, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

I have also seen something like this. It may be to do with the PHP7 beta feature. Has anybody not using PHP7 seen this error? BethNaught (talk) 10:56, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Filed phab:T221358. — regards, Revi 11:54, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Looks like phab:T221347 already exists for this problem. Anomie⚔ 11:58, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Definitely something to do with PHP7, I'm getting this every few minutes too. Gangster8192 12:17, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

FYI, it seems to have been resolved as of 12:20:39 UTC, although the root cause has not yet been determined. Watch the Phabricator task for further details. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Required property "paramOrder[4]" not found.

Having incorrectly edited {{Colorbull}} with the intention of adding a description option, I am unable correct this edit (in which I mistakenly included <span title=n> inside <span style=n>) without being greeted by this error message: I have tried reverting my edit but to no avail. Please help, thanks. Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 10:57, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

I also got the error message on all attempts to save an edit, including a null edit. It's from MediaWiki:Templatedata-invalid-missing. I noticed you had edited Template:Colorbull/doc afterwards [2] so I reverted those edits. Then I could edit {{Colorbull}} without problems. I don't work with TemplateData so I don't know what was wrong with it. I'm surprised it could prevent the template from being edited. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:37, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Krinkle has worked on the code. Is it intentional that a saved /doc page can prevent saving of the associated template? Maybe we should create a custom MediaWiki:Templatedata-invalid-missing with a help link to an explanation. Special:AllMessages with prefix Templatedata-invalid- shows 10 messages. One of them MediaWiki:Templatedata-invalid-parse has a help link but there it could still be hard to guess the save may be blocked by the /doc page. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:24, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Special:Nuke inconsistently working

For the past few months I've noticed Special:Nuke is very inconsistent. Maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the time it loads for 20/30 seconds, then sends it to a WMF error screen. When it does work it's still extremely slow to load the list of pages, even (I tested) when it's 2, 1, or 0 pages, but once I'm there and press delete it very quickly deletes everybody without trouble. Anyone else notice this, and is this a concern? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:45, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

I would guess this is phab:T197940. --Izno (talk) 17:00, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Ah. At least someone said something about it, then. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 17:11, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

AutoEd doesn't work for me

Wikipedia:AutoEd doesn't works? I tried it on few articles but it never did anything. Eurohunter (talk) 20:41, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

I went to [3] and then ran importScript('Wikipedia:AutoEd/complete.js'); which yielded . Looking at Wikipedia:AutoEd/complete.js, it's easy to see why. It's yet another case of someone trying to "structure" their code by splitting it up across different pages and then loading those pages with importScript or mw.loader.load. Needless to say, that has never worked and never will. importScript and mw.loader.load are both async and neither allow for a callback to be ran when they have finished fetching a script. This means that they cannot be used to fetch something that is needed for other code to work. They are only fine to use when loading completely unrelated and contained scripts. Nirmos (talk) 01:33, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Nirmos and Eurohunter: from the April script newsletter (User:DannyS712/SPP 04):

• mw.loader.getScript has been added to mw.loader, closing a feature request from 2010. It allows users to load a script via URL (like mw.loader.load()) and specify a callback function (like mw.loader.using()). See mw:ResourceLoader/Core modules#mw.loader.getScript for more.

Maybe use getScript instead, since it allows a callback? (Or use .using() ) --DannyS712 (talk) 01:53, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Nirmos: @DannyS712: If I understood correctly you mean AutoEd can't work in current version but I'm pretty sure sometimes I see edits with AutoEd. Eurohunter (talk) 06:52, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: I was just trying to solve the problem that Nirmos mentioned - I don't know enough about autoed to troubleshoot it myself --DannyS712 (talk) 06:55, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

It works fine for me—for example, I just made this edit using it. Eman235/talk 07:02, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Automatic additions to my watchlist

How do I prevent every page I edit from being added to my watchlist? I can't find an appropriate setting to change in preference menu.--Megaman en m (talk) 09:06, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

It ought to be under Preferences → Watchlist → Watched pages → "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist". Eman235/talk 09:10, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

None of those boxes are ticked, newly edited pages are still being added to my watchlist.--Megaman en m (talk) 09:13, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I see you use Twinkle. Wikipedia:Twinkle/Preferences has options for when to add pages to your watchlist in Twinkle edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:29, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, it was Twinkle that caused it.--Megaman en m (talk) 09:41, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Undo and Redo Buttons

Hello, I'm from ckbwiki. I want to add undo and redo buttons to ours Wikipedia. Who can help me to do that? What should i do? Thank you, ئارام بکر (talk) 11:48, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@ئارام بکر: ,WP:UNDO is built in functionality, you can see there is a link at this random ckdbwiki page I just loaded here. Can you describe this a bit more? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:00, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: No, I mean... add them such as button in Source edit, not history page. Just i want the source code. ئارام بکر (talk) 13:47, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

You can already do that with CTRL + Z and CTRL + Y. Amaury (talk | contribs) 14:18, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

"New wikitext mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures has such buttons (and other changes). It's also an option at ckb:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:00, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: and @Amaury: thank you both, but i am a mobile user (not computer user) and i am use source editor (not visual editor). Mmm... i see the tool (on enwiki) in my preferences and active it. I think so it is an Mediawiki gadget. And i want to add that tool to ours Wikipedia. ئارام بکر (talk) 16:25, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Gadgets are local user scripts.

User:PPelberg (WMF), I think that you might want to consider this for the toolbar improvements project. Without this available as an in-editor tool, then I don't know how else an editor on a smartphone would undo/redo a change inside the editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

References

What character should I use in titles or to separate two titles instead of hyphen-minus ("-")? Eurohunter (talk) 12:45, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: see MOS:DASH for guidance on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:56, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks. Eurohunter (talk) 22:10, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Label on the new collapsed box on history pages

The title of the collapsed box is defined by MediaWiki:History-fieldset-title, which since previously is customized to "Show revision history" on this wiki.

The new default content of the message is "Filter revisions", which now would be better.
--Pipetricker (talk) 19:37, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Agreed, but I think the correct thing to do here is to file an edit request on that talk page. ;) --Izno (talk) 19:40, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I've deleted the local override, restoring the default message. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:20, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Blacklisted URL prevents edit from saving

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36928

I noticed all the links were red for Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2019 April 13‎. I went to the Help Desk history and found where Scsbot had supposedly archived. All the bot did was remove the text; it did not create the archive. So I went to the last edit before the archiving took place, clicked on "edit", and copied the text that should have been removed in the next edit. When I tried to create the archive with that text, I got a big pink box telling me a URL was blacklisted. I removed one use of the URL and saved the edit. I restored the URL and the edit still got saved.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:56, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: phab:T36928 has been open for 5 years asking for a way to allow certain accounts to override this. Perhaps scs can check the operations of their bot, to see if it can more gracefully recover from this type of error. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:06, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

The url said http://www.anupmandalcom.wordpress.com when the bot tried to archive [4]. You didn't restore the full url but changed it to anupmandalcom.wordpress.com in the archive.[5] This doesn't create a link so the blacklist doesn't care. It was blacklisted at meta in [6] between the original addition to the help desk and the attempted archiving. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:23, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

• This is trivial to check for when making a save it will return an error if it did not save. The bot should check for errors and abort/log these cases. -- GreenC 23:38, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Scs: -- GreenC 23:40, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

For future reference (on smaller pages, not WP:HD), the blacklist can be worked around a couple of ways. If it's merely a link getting removed, rollback will work to put it back. If it's really important, a history merge can resolve the situation (if a page already contains a link, saving a new revision with the same link will not be rejected), but it would require moving a revision from one page to another, which would be rather silly if it weren't important. Nyttend (talk) 14:45, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Admins shouldn't use such methods to circumvent the url blacklist. We have MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist for that. If a page contains a blacklisted url then editing will easily fail in the future, as already happened here. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:47, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

DYK count tool down

I've just noticed that the tool that counts how many DYK's a person has been awarded is down with a 500 server error. Can anyone shed light on the issue please? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:08, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

The C of E, it's up. ∯WBG^converse 09:56, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: For me, it only seems to be loading partially then when I refresh, it goes back to the 500 error. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 10:04, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

It's up, but for some reason it doesn't like your user name. Works for WBG and me (tried with space, _ and +), and for TheCofE (empty table). Shows error 500 for The_C_of_E, even if _ is replaced with other characters (space, +, %20). --MarMi wiki (talk) 20:41, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

It may be connected (or not) with this error (use of '). --MarMi wiki (talk) 20:52, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Is there anything we can do about it @MarMi wiki:? 05:33, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

It seems that it's the problem with Betacommand's tools (NOT DYKUpdateBot). Try asking him. --MarMi wiki (talk) 23:08, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

@MarMi wiki: if DYKUpdateBot is malfunctioning, the person to follow up with is its operator: Shubinator. If it isn't running that is also up to the operator to review, if they want to. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:21, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Already asked Shubinator, my above statement was unfortunate - implied that operator of DYKUpdateBot is Betacommand, while bot name was only used as a link to discussion with Shubinator about this topic. --MarMi wiki (talk) 23:41, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Odd protection entry

Some time ago, I unprotected Elephant as a test (it had been protected for years, so I wanted to see if continued protection were warranted), but vandalism quickly recurred and I re-protected it a few days later. No problems. But if you look at the page log, you see a bizarre pair of entries:

05:21, 20 September 2013 Nyttend (talk | contribs | block) protect (It's been seven years since Tripling Elephants, and a year and a half since we last attempted any reduction in protection)
05:21, 20 September 2013 Nyttend (talk | contribs | block) changed protection level for Elephant ‎‎[move=sysop] (indefinite) (It's been seven years since Tripling Elephants, and a year and a half since we last attempted any reduction in protection)

Any idea what happened here? Only the latter item appears in the protection log. There's no indication whatsoever of what I did in the former one; it should tell you what kind of protection I imposed, at least. Nyttend (talk) 13:10, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

When Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool was removed in March 2014, it left behind some log entries which no longer displayed properly. The page history [7] shows you changed settings for the tool the minute of the incomplete log entry. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:45, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Huh. There must have been some tick box to protect both article and AFT, or protection must have been necessarily bound up together; I remember doing the protection and was definitely interested only in the article. I had no idea that it was even possible to protect the AFT. Nyttend (talk) 14:40, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

My page history link says: Changed visibility of the article feedback tool on "Elephant": It's been seven years since Tripling Elephants, and a year and a half since we last attempted any reduction in protection ([Visibility=Enable for all users] (indefinite)). I said the log entries no longer displayed properly. Don't assume it was a protection just because the bad log entry currently starts with "protect". PrimeHunter (talk) 14:52, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Editing Lua module

I wanted to fix the flawed first reference in College of Charleston Cougars women's basketball, but I 'm stymied. I see that it comes from a Lua module, but I'm not Lua conversant. I think it is footnote 146 in Module:College_color/doc.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:18, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

 Fixed here. Nardog (talk) 14:21, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Nardog, Thanks. Now I see where I should have looked. S Philbrick(Talk) 14:27, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Issue with Citations, Possibly Corrupted Code?

Hello Everyone, I noticed something very strange when I was creating an article this morning. When I tried to input a citation, whether it be automatic or manual, an error message appeared, and has still not disappeared. The message reads: "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 458: attempt to index local 'content' (a nil value)." I'm not sure why. Does anybody know what is going on? BluePankow ✉ 14:37, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I just noticed the messages above this. Is it possible that something could have been messed up when @Nardog: did something with it? Not to point fingers, sorry, just trying to figure this out. BluePankow ✉ 14:41, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Please link the page with the error message. I don't see it in your recent creations. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:44, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Where? Always say where you are encountering such errors. There was an update to the cs1|2 module suite this morning. Because all of the modules in that suite cannot be updated simultaneously, there will be a period of time (usually less than 30-second) when the actual live modules will be a mix of the old and the new. The usual fix for this is to remain calm, don't panic, pause for a moment (go get a coffee), and then try a null edit. If the problem is temporary, the glaring red error message will be gone, you'll have a fresh coffee, and life begins again renewed.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:48, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, I must have created the page during the mix of modules. Thank you for clearing that up. Sorry for the trouble. Alos, it was at the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colletotrichum_coffeanum BluePankow ✉ 14:54, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

You created Colletotrichum coffeanum after your first post here. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:59, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm aware. It was while I was editing it, that the sources were not displaying correctly. BluePankow ✉ 15:14, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

[Personal attack redacted] --Guy Macon (talk) 00:04, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

I"m seeing the same "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 458: attempt to index local 'content' (a nil value)" today, whenever I try to use a cite template in visual editor. I can use the manual form, but none of the other options, when citing a source in visual. Penny Richards (talk) 01:21, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

CS1 tracking category error

There are hundreds of pages in Category:CS1 maint: others, which doesn't exist. Pinging Trappist the monk who may be able to shine a light on the issue. --DannyS712 (talk) 19:18, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Oversight on my part. In future, Help talk:Citation Style 1 is a better venue – because a missing category isn't really a 'technical' problem ...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:42, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

I've created the category. The text may need improvement. — JJMC89 (T·C) 19:35, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I've tweaked the text.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:42, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Template include size exceeded

Was there a recent change that caused this to start happening in one of my sandboxes, and also on my work page? Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  03:18, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think there's any change from the software. Looking at the stuff in that page it just means you've now crossed the limit. That limit has been in force for a long time. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:05, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Are you sure? I ask because the work page looked normal when I made this edit, which did not involve a template at all, late on the 19th. Something does seem to have changed since then. It's as if the limit was lowered since the 19th. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  07:58, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Just moved a lot of the template material to a different page, but the work page still does not render correctly, so there must be something we're missing. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  08:18, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

It's caused by {{EP/doc|bare=yes}} after this edit to {{EP/doc}} by Jc86035. Other pages transcluding it are also affected by template loops or template include size. If {{PAGENAMETDOC}} is used in a template documentation then the documentation is not suited for transclusion outside the template. We should maybe do something about that. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:21, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: That... looks like a problem. I don't think it's possible to fix that without updating all of the transclusions to include the template name as a parameter value. Jc86035 (talk) 09:25, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

That's only 21 template calls currently in this search. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:34, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Here is another example of how this may be uncool. Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  11:29, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

@Paine Ellsworth and PrimeHunter: I've tried to fix this on Template:EP/doc (after Paine Pppery's revert of my earlier edit) by using a custom #ifeq: instead. Jc86035 (talk) 12:15, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

It wasn't Paine that reverted, it was me. * Pppery * _{has returned} 12:18, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much, PrimeHunter and Jc86035! That fixed my work page. On the other hand, as for my sandbox, I think Ammarpad is spot on correct about that, so I've self-reverted those templates. Best to ya'll! Paine Ellsworth, ed.  ^put'r there  13:49, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

"Popular pages" report not working

I tried to set-up a Wikipedia:WikiProject Civil Rights Movement/Popular pages, but it hasn't worked or the bot is not running. I left a message on User talk:Community Tech bot in the "Did I set this up correctly?" section on 1 April 2019, but I haven't received a response. Is there anything I can do to get this report running? Mitchumch (talk) 05:22, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

According to m:Community Tech/Popular pages bot#How it works, the bot runs once per month, starting of the 2nd of the month, and it can take up to 2 weeks to run. After it's done, it updates User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages. It looks like the last few months, it has updated that page around the 14th-16th of the month, and it's already the 21st, so there might be a problem. Pinging NKohli (WMF) and MusikAnimal (WMF). Can you look into this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rchard2scout (talk • contribs) 10:08, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

@Rchard2scout: You forgot to sign your message, so the pings wouldn't have worked. I'm therefore redoing your pings of NKohli (WMF) and MusikAnimal (WMF). Graham87 04:05, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I'm looking into this. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Problem with navigation template

The "navseasons" template when used with decades seems to display the 1960s decade twice; eg see Category:2010s murders in Japan or Category:2010s crimes in Japan. Not a problem in practice but a bit odd! !!!! Hugo999 (talk) 13:43, 21 April 2019 (UTC) Thanks Hugo999 (talk) 23:39, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

The template was recently converted to use Lua module. Tom.Reding implemented that. – Ammarpad (talk) 14:13, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done - Thank you for the ping. I actually just fixed that bug! The 'original' code had an overabundance of loops, which overlapped slightly in that edge case; now simplified.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:21, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Navigation popups

I'm trying to install Navigation popups on another wiki; which .js file do I need? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:48, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

I guess Special:Gadgets page will help. — Mike Novikoff 20:14, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups#Installation_on_remote_MediaWiki_installations,_or_via_your_global.js. Ruslik_Zero 20:20, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. That's guidance for individual users; I'm looking to install it as gadget for all users. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:35, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Maybe this? — Mike Novikoff 20:39, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. That's confusing; it refers to exporting an XML file, then using "Special:Import on destination wiki" to import it there, but the latter has no option to import XML. It's done now, anyway, via an ordinary cut & paste. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:03, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

I found the script, at MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:03, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

And there's also the accompanying MediaWiki:Gadget-navpop.css, you'll need both. — Mike Novikoff 21:10, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Interesting technical issue with duplicate references

At the article List_of_Pokémon_episodes_(seasons_14–current) you can see a citation error here. This error is due to the fact that the overall article is made by linking other list articles like List of Pokémon: XY episodes into the article, but these articles use the same ref tag to give an explanation about how the episodes are ordered. Now I first considered going to the individual list articles and changing their ref names so that the error message for duplicate messages would not appear. However, this would have the unfortunate consequence of cluttering up the Notes section of the main article with duplicate refs. Is there a workaround? 文法楽しい (talk) 21:27, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

If they were all exactly the same it wouldn't be a problem. But Black & White and XY are all like this (referring to Cartoon Network), while Sun & Moon has one version for the first season and another for the two "Ultra" seasons (both referring to Disney XD, with slightly different wording). Anomie⚔ 22:14, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

The error message can be avoided by placing <noinclude>...</noinclude> around the reference in all articles except one. But it will remove the footnote markers in those places in List of Pokémon episodes (seasons 14–current). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:54, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

Oof, I didn't realize that the notes were actually different. That means I can just change the ref names then and not have to worry about duplicate notes. 文法楽しい (talk) 21:44, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Curly quotes in <ref name = >

I suppose this topic has been covered before, but haven't ever noticed such. My issue: I have just discovered that "curly quotes" can break the <ref name = "xxx" /> format if the name (xxx) is surrounded by curly quotes instead of straight. Am I correct, and is there a chance the wikimedia software can be modified to silently handle this circumstance and produce the expected results? Error seen in IE 11; Firefox 66; Chrome 73 here. DonFB (talk) 10:37, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

DonFB, they break the reference in that the software sees them as different characters to non-curly quotes. It's as if someone named a reference 1Rpt1 and then typed lRptl – it won't be recognised as the same reference name. They look almost the same on my screen in the edit window, but in preview (and with saved changes) the different font makes it clear that the first Rpt has the digit one to either side, and the second one has a lowercase L. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 11:30, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Right, I was just wondering if it's feasible for the software to be updated so it can recognize either curly or straight quotes for the purpose of correctly producing the result intended by the ref name routine. In pseudo code, something like: "If routine is ref name and value of surrounding punctuation marks equals straight quotes or equals curly quotes, then recognize 'name' as originally specified." DonFB (talk) 16:17, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

This will probably not be done because it would be inconsistent with everything else that uses a mark (that's anything that has a tag-gy markup). Why should we not change the parser for every case? That would be inconsistent with the rest of the Internet.

What might be more interesting is for the parser to flag (in all cases, not just the ref tag) where a curly quotation mark has been used. I don't know how feasible that is. --Izno (talk) 16:33, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

At least within <ref...>, there is some validation performed. If you try to do <ref name=2> or <ref name=foo bar> or even <ref name="hello"world>, it reports an error. See Help:Cite for details of what is valid and what is checked. Sounds like a reasonable phab ticket to file, and a simple bit of validation if someone wants to get hacking into MW code. DMacks (talk) 18:32, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I fixed up dozens of these a couple of years back (examples). Please don't encourage their re-addition. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:51, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @DonFB: Curly quotes break all attribute values, they must not be used to enclose such values. This is not merely a MediaWiki restriction, it also applies to HTML, XHTML, XML, etc., etc. We must not introduce an inconsistency when everybody uses straight quotes universally. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:36, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, ok. I wonder then if MediaWiki could provide a specific error message, rather than the generic "invoked but never defined". Something like: "Use straight quotes, not curly quotes when defining 'name'". It took me long minutes to ascertain the problem in the article, though from now, I'll be able to more quickly diagnose, but I wonder how many other editors, now or later, may spend too much time searching for the error when the text appears to be correct (or fixing "dozens of these" if they keep getting added). Just out of curiosity, where the heck do curly quotes come from if one is using a standard keyboard? DonFB (talk) 19:15, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

For someone with awb, there are about 1100 articles with <ref name=[“”]... (I have my awb currently occupied or I would fix these)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:32, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Curly quotes are an allowed character in reference names so <ref name=“Rpt” /> works if the definition also says “Rpt”, at least if the name has no spaces or other characters which require straight quotes around the ref name. All curly quotes should still be changed to straight quotes to avoid confusion and future errors. The error message Cite error: The named reference “Rpt” was invoked but never defined (see the help page) is made by MediaWiki:Cite error references no text. We could check the parameter name for wrong quote characters and produce a special error message but I'm not sure it's worth it. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:14, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Even if it's "allowed", it's going to be weird and confusing. Also, I suspect that it'll get normalized to name="“Rpt”" the next time VisualEditor touches it, because theoretically all ref names are supposed to have straight double quotes around them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

"theoretically all ref names are supposed to have straight double quotes around them" - Why is that? I've always tried to avoid using names that would require quotes. Help:Footnotes says that quotes are optional if you're only using printable ascii (with a few exceptions), and most examples on that page don't use quotes either. rchard2scout (talk) 10:30, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree with rchard2scout's Help:Footnotes observation; in my experience quotes are not needed for a named reference. Also when I use a reference name it seems to be required that there be no blank spaces within that name. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 10:53, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Because you do not think quotes are necessary, when I use a reference name it seems to be required that there be no blank spaces within that name is true. If you used quotes, you can name the <ref> anything you please, including spaces. --Izno (talk) 14:19, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Since spaces delimit attributes, it is a universal requirement that whenever spaces occur within an attribute's value, there must be a pair of delimiters for that value. The character used for that purpose may be double straight quotes, or single straight apostrophes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:04, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

AIUI Cite.php expects double-quotes, and when they're not present in the wikitext page, then the parser inserts them before processing the page. So one way or another, there will be quotes in the end. Omitting them from the wikitext page is basically a harmless personal aesthetic preference (well, you could argue that it's not quite harmless because it adds a very tiny fraction of a second to the parsing time, but if that ever turns into a problem, Ops will tell us). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

There is a practical benefit to this exercise. There are 13 refs here and no error messages. Then comes this edit by Tom.Reding (talk · contribs) which straightened up the quotes and which now shows an error, which in turn was fixed by this bot edit - and the article now shows 14 refs and no error. So curly quotes were causing a silent problem: basically, <ref name=“eng time” /> was being treated as if it were <ref name=“eng /> with an extra unrecognised attribute, time”. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:19, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

This demo amplifies that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:42, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

PrimeHunter said above that We could check the parameter name for wrong quote characters and produce a special error message but I'm not sure it's worth it. I'm not sure it's worth it either and don't have the software expertise to find out, but that's my request: modify the software so that it produces an Error message in Preview that says something like: "Curly quote marks not allowed; use Straight quote marks." DonFB (talk) 21:11, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Phantom page

If I look at ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Actors, it reports the subcategory ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Actresses as having 19 C and 1 P of content — but if I look directly at ‹The template Category link is being considered for merging.› Category:Actresses itself, there are 20 categories and zero pages. Is there any way to check what, if any, content is getting miscounted? Bearcat (talk) 00:50, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Category counts are often off. See phab:T195397. It's probably two independent errors and not a page being counted as a subcategory. The most common problem is that the count isn't decreased when a page is deleted while it's in the category. According to category watch (disable "Hide categorization of pages" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist on an account with a small watchlist), the only changes in the last 30 days are removal of two pages: [8][9] PrimeHunter (talk) 08:59, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Unordered lists, indents, and stray bullets

This is from Abortion Law#See also:

• Abortion debate
• Category:Abortion by country
  • Philosophical aspects of the abortion debate

This is from Help:Wikitext#Unordered

• Item1
• Item2
• Item3
• Item4
  • Sub-item 4 a)

With both Chrome and Firefox, I see a stray bullet on the indented item in the first list, but not in the second. That stray bullet seems to sometimes manifest in rendered wikitext and sometimes not. I've noticed this for years and have worked around it by using a colon instead of an asterisk for all but the final indent in unordered lists, but I've not asked about it.

What's with this? Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 10:05, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

The problem is that a sublist needs to be part of an item of its parent list. Compare the following different wikitexts:

*[[Abortion debate]]
*[[Category:Abortion by country]]
**[[Philosophical aspects of the abortion debate]]

*[[Abortion debate]]
*[[:Category:Abortion by country]]
**[[Philosophical aspects of the abortion debate]]

The first one is as it is in the article, the second as you used it here. In the first one, the category link doesn't render in the article (it categorizes the article instead), which means the sublist is inserted in an empty item in the parent list, which renders as a stray bullet.

Either do link to the category (if that's what you want), or remove the category from the list. rchard2scout (talk) 10:21, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Note Wtmitchell didn't use that colon in his post here. The colon was added by a bot fixing the accidental category link on this discussion page. That said, the proposed solution is also what I'd recommend: either add the colon so it produces a link in the list or remove the category from the list, depending on what's intended. Anomie⚔ 11:41, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Or put the cat on the same line as the preceding visible text. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:50, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I've added the colon in the article where I saw this. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 17:03, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Potential bug with Template:ITN_talk

I've noticed a number of ITN notice templates on discussion pages showing a date in the future when the correct date was in the past. Is this wrong use of the template or an error in the template code?

Following template code was used {{ITN talk|21|May|2018|oldid=842358283}}

Result: Date appears as 21 May 2019.

The template seems to be coded so that the current year is shown when the date is formatted as above. The year used (in this case 2018) seems to be ignored. The same isn't true about day and month. The template asks for the date to be spelled without and | in between, but some editors seem to misuse and at first, there's no issue because the current year is still the correct one. But after new year, the wrong date is suddenly shown.

I suggest the code is either changed to display an immediate warning when the template is misused (so as not to suggest all is fine), or adjust it so that the above way of inputting the date doesn't cause any trouble. The current situation is unsatisfactory. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about templates to fix it myself.

See my bug report on the template for further information: Template_talk:ITN_talk#Bug:_21_May_2019_shown_instead_of_2018 Micronor (talk) 15:07, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Replied there. In summary: template is being used contrary to its doc (and design). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:48, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-17

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

Recent changes

• The advanced search function URL now shows which namespaces you search in. The namespace field is collapsed by default on the search page. You can also add new fields to the search interface through a hook. [10][11][12]
• The wikis now look slightly different in the mobile web version. [13]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 23 April at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Wikipedia articles will have the sameAs meta property. It adds structured data. This makes it easier for search engines to find Wikipedia articles. It also makes it easier to reuse content. There will an A/B test. [14][15]

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

19:07, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Tool

Is there tool which can mark all articles in category which are not on my watchlist yet? Eurohunter (talk) 22:07, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Legislative Assembly of Alberta

help. I somehow created a weird box around the second party and I need assistance fixing it. 2607:FEA8:1DE0:7B4:45D:CF59:E0D6:3C7A (talk) 01:25, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

 Done in this edit --DannyS712 (talk) 01:30, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

No archive template

I thought there was a template you could add to a talk page section that would stop a bot from archiving it. I can not find it. - FlightTime (open channel) 06:12, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

FlightTime, {{DNAU}} Galobtter (pingó mió) 06:16, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

"View" button replaced all the action buttons at the top of pages

Something has happened to the buttons at the top of article pages - and I mean it happened just within the past few minutes. Instead of buttons for “edit”, “history”, and “watch”, I now have a single button, “Views”, with a dropdown menu with those options. There isn’t even a star at the top of the page to tell me whether I have watched that page or not. What happened? and is there a way to reverse it? -- MelanieN (talk) 23:09, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: I see everything fine - what skin are you using? --DannyS712 (talk) 23:13, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I use Vector. And I haven't changed a thing since I started editing this morning, at which point everything was normal. The above happened to all pages - article, article talk, user, user talk - within the last hour or two. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:34, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: adding ?safemode=1 to the URL - it should disable userscripts and css, as well as gadgets and some other features. Does the problem go away? --DannyS712 (talk) 23:37, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, that brought back the regular action buttons for this page; not for any other pages. The Twinkle button disappeared. -- MelanieN (talk) 23:45, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: The twinkle button should go away when you do that. So, if the problem went away, the issue is a user-side issue (not the server/software). Did you make any recent changes to your gadgets/beta features/preferences? --DannyS712 (talk) 23:47, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

No, I haven't even opened my preferences today as far as I can remember. Would this be under Appearance or where? -- MelanieN (talk) 23:55, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Appearance, gadgets, beta, I'm just guessing. As far as I can tell, you haven't changed your personal JS in a while, nor have the JS files that you automatically load been changed. --DannyS712 (talk) 23:56, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, under Appearance: next to Vector which is checked, Preview is blue, Custom CSS is red, and Custom Javascript is blue. (Sorry to be so literal, I am not a techy person.) Are you able to look at my preferences, or is that something only I can do? -- MelanieN (talk) 00:03, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: Its something only you can do, but those don't seem to be the cause. Having imported your vector.js as well as the js and css for all user groups, I can still see "edit" buttons. However, based on your description in appears that the p-views object, which controls the list of "edit", "history", "watch", etc, changed its class from vectorTabs to vectorMenu. To debug this, can you

• Open the "inspect element" view (ctrl-shift-I in chrome)
• Navigate the element structure to

  body -> div (mw-navigation) -> div (mw-head) -> div (right-navigation)

• Right click, view the source html, and copy it

That is the only way I can think of that would confirm if it was a style change. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 00:13, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I just noticed another change: the Wikilove button is missing. I noticed that just now because the "Enable showing appreciation for other users with the WikiLove tab", in the Editing section of Preferences, is still checked. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:11, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I have to go out for a few hours. If someone else solves, great. If not, I'll try to help when I'm back. --DannyS712 (talk) 00:16, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Do I do the above while looking at my Preferences page? Or here? Thanks for your help. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Just tried it both places. Nothing happened. I use a Mac; maybe that control-shift-1 option operation is specific for Windows? (I wondered because you mentioned right-click which is a Windows thing, not a Mac thing.) Nothing urgent here, this can be explored at your or anyone else's convenience. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:23, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

BTW I have been wondering if I accidentally changed something in my preferences, but I can't have, because I would have been alerted to click a "save" or "publish changes" or some such button before leaving the page, so I would have been aware of it. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:27, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: What is your user agent (First line here)? Was your browser automatically updated recently, perhaps? Does the same problem appear in any other browser? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:34, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Is this what you want?

Your user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.103 Safari/537.36

I'll check using Safari. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:43, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Things were normal using Safari, but that was my alternate account. I'll log off from Chrome and log on using Safari and see what happens. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:46, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I am now using Safari with my main account, and the buttons at the top of the page are normal. It must be a Chrome-specific thing. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:49, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Log out on chrome, clear all your caches and cookies, restart, and try again. You could also try blanking out User:MelanieN/vector.js (if you are having a problem getting to it use this link. That will disable your imported skin scripts. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:50, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I can't do all that right now but I will check back in here after I have done it. -- MelanieN (talk) 00:53, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Wow, looks like that fixed it! (Didn't need to mess with the vector.js.) Thank you very much, xaosflux and all of you! -- MelanieN (talk) 01:05, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: This is probably unrelated but these lines

/* User:MusikAnimal/responseHelper.js */
importScript( 'User:MusikAnimal/responseHelper.js' ); // Backlink: [[User:MusikAnimal/responseHelper.js]]

don't belong in your common.css. If you want to use responseHelper, they should be in your common.js or vector.js (take your pick) instead. In any case they're likely causing your browser to barf on your CSS page so should at least be removed from there. I still have no idea what caused the original problem. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:17, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

OK, I removed them. Does the page look right now? I don't use ResponseHelper anyhow so no loss. Thanks! -- MelanieN (talk) 01:30, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Yep, looks good! Depending on how your browser was interpreting the bad CSS before, your rollback links may have all just disappeared. (That's what should have been happening all along, but the offending lines above may have prevented that). If you didn't want that to happen, remove the last three lines as well. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:36, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I did have rollback links disabled. I hate rollback, but as an admin I can't refuse it. So I made it invisible. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:40, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

@MelanieN: has the problem been solved? --DannyS712 (talk) 04:19, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, Danny, the problem has been solved! Turned out it was related to Chrome somehow, and what worked was cleaning out all caches and cookies and restarting. A slightly more elaborate version of what I call the Microsoft Solution (aka "did you try turning it off and on again?"). Nobody has any idea what caused the problem in the first place but at least it is solved. Thanks for your help! -- MelanieN (talk) 04:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

HTML tag issue on Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives/Archive 18

Somewhere in the middle of this page (Wikipedia:Edit filter/False positives/Archive 18), there's a coding issue, most likely HTML, that is causing green text to appear in about half of the page. I attempted to put </font> tags in a few places, but to no avail. Any assistance in the matter to resolve this is appreciated. Steel1943 (talk) 01:21, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

 Fixed. I think you were confused by the fact that there were multiple signatures with unclosed markup. * Pppery * _{has returned} 01:30, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Getting uselang= to persist in links

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T221881

Adding ?uselang=... (or &uselang=...) to URLs is a neat trick for transiently seeing how things look in another language (rather than making a more permanent change in Special:Preferences). It's also the only way to see the Mediawiki: names of user interface messages (uselang=qxx). However, this URL submission parameter does not get propagated into links in the resulting page: any subsequent click returns to the Special:Preferences language. Is there a way to make uselang more sticky? That would be useful as an editor when previewing edits that behave differently for different languages. And it's the only way (that I can think of) to find the Mediawiki names of strings that are part of the preview and other toolbox link responses. For example, I would like to be able to click on [Preview] and learn that the "This is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved!" message is apparently supplied by MediaWiki:Previewnote. DMacks (talk) 07:54, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't know such a feature. See WP:QQX for other tips. Last month I added a link to an API page with all messages at the same time. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:41, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

useskin also does not persist. I would be interested in a Javascript gadget that persisted the temporary option(s) until removed from the URL and resubmitted to the browser. There is a similar task on Phabricator. --Izno (talk) 13:32, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I often found myself irked by this. Filed phab:T221881. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:46, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I believe that ?setlang=... and ?setskin=... are the things to use when you want it to persist. Then switch it back when you're done. NB that I don't know how this would interact with GlobalPreferences or various user scripts. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

DMacks, PrimeHunter, Izno, Ammarpad: I believe I have now accomplished this. If you want to try, you can add

mw.loader.load( 'https://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anv%C3%A4ndare:Nirmos/PersistentQueryParameters.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );

to Special:MyPage/common.js. Nirmos (talk) 05:53, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

New multilingual template system

Kindly have a look at Multilingual Templates and Modules and share your views. Capankajsmilyo^{(Talk | Infobox assistance)} 08:29, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't have time to read that in detail at the moment but it seems to be an attempt to address a very worthwhile issue, namely how can templates and modules be shared between Wikipedia projects. It appears to involve a bot that, if certain conditions are met, will overwrite a local copy of a template/module with a central copy maintained at mediawiki.org. That might work for some small Wikipedias but there would be a bunch of problems. For example, see the deletion notice at Module:Cycling race (which is updated from d:Module:Cycling race). Or, see Module:Date and the different c:Module:Date. Or, Module:Convert/text and bn:Module:Convert/text. Johnuniq (talk) 11:09, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think those are problems. First, the system is completely opt-in, the bot will only do work if you link the local template/module to the mediawiki.org origin via Wikidata sitelinks. Also, the bot will only update local pages if they're exactly identical to a former version of the origin page. This means local changes won't ever be overwritten. All in all, this certainly looks like it could work. rchard2scout (talk) 15:03, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Module:Location Map/data to commons

I guess Module:Location map/data should be moved to commons data. Why keep it on enwiki at all? Capankajsmilyo^{(Talk | Infobox assistance)} 10:58, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

tq2 template bug

The second of the two tq2 templates added in this edit of mine contains a numbered list. Despite my having followed the guidance on the template's usage page (AFAICT), the numbered list is not rendered as though part of the quote.

This seems to be a bug. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thank you! Zazpot (talk) 11:25, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Visual editor is bugged with Template:Infobox television

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T220930

Whenever somebody makes an edit to the infobox using the visual editor, it not only adds a bunch of unnecessary spacing, it also adds a bunch of unnecessary/unused fields, and it did not used to do this, which is why I've had the visual editor turned off for a long time. I only turned it on to report this since I've started seeing issues appear a little more often from other editors using it.

Using the visual editor here, all I am changing is the audio format parameter from [[Stereo]] to Test, but you can see that once the edit is published, that is not the only thing that was changed. Here in the source editor, I make the exact same edit, changing the exact same thing, and it only changes exactly what I wanted changed: [[Stereo]] -> Test. Amaury (talk | contribs) 17:21, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

See phab:T220930, looks similar. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:57, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

@Ammarpad: Thank you. So it appears to be with any infobox, not just the one used for television series or films. Amaury (talk | contribs) 19:02, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Please read the comments on Phabricator. It maybe related to something in TemplateData of the infobox template or the VE itself. I don't use VE at all and neither familiar with its TemplateData stuff. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:08, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Amaury, this is happening because this edit (and several others that day) told Parsoid to add all that extra white space and to insert those ("suggested") fields. If you don't like it, then you can change the TemplateData to make all of them use the formatting style that you prefer. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Many articles appear to transclude themselves, but why?

If I look at the action=info pages for Science fiction film, Bubble gum, Conglomerate (set theory), Ordered exponential field, and SCUD Production Company, they all appear to list themselves at the top of the "transcluded templates" list. Why do many articles appear to transclude themselves? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:02, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Because Module:Citation/CS1 was recently modified by Trappist the monk to auto-format dates in citations based on {{Use dmy/mdy dates}} templates at the top of the article and in order to look for that template, the page has to transclude itself. * Pppery * _{has returned} 22:06, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I raised a thread at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Self transclusion. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:04, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Clicking on URL sends me to wrong place

In User:Vchimpanzee/Gloria Victis (Confederate memorial) there is a zero width character error message. I tried multiple times to copy the URL and if I click on the link i get sent to some entirely different article.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:36, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

 Fixed. * Pppery * _{has returned} 22:42, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:45, 25 April 2019 (UTC)