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

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"Under construction" tag?

 – Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I don't know if this is the right place, but could someone tell me if there is a "under construction" tag for articles or something similar? I'm not talking about the "expand article" or "expand section" tags. I wanted something for articles that are currently being worked on. Thank you very much, --Lecen (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

{{Under construction}}? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:54, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I looked everywhere in the list of templates but I couldn't find it. Thank you very much, PrimeHunter. You helped me a lot now. Regards, --Lecen (talk) 11:07, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@Lecen: - There is also {{In use}}, which asks that other editors refrain from editing the page. GoingBatty (talk) 02:20, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Twinkle problem for at least one admin

 – Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've just done it again - deleting an article with Twinkle instead of tagging it. I don't use Twinkle for deleting, only for tagging - and keep forgetting to tick the 'tag only' box. Is there any way I could (without great complication) set a default of 'ticked' for this box? I find restoring something to tag it a bit embarrassing... Peridon (talk) 20:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Enable "Default to speedy tagging instead of outright deletion" at Wikipedia:Twinkle/Preferences. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - I didn't know you could do all that stuff.... Peridon (talk) 11:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent - I'd just done the same thing, have now checked that box. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:11, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When does TemplateData get processed?

As it stands now, to properly document a template and its parameters, documentation in two, incompatible forms is required. First there is the documentation that you should be able to read at the template's page in template space, and second, there is the JSON formatted documentation used by Visual Editor. Maintaining two versions of documentation is a pain and ultimately counter productive.

In a discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 an editor raised the idea that some generic standard for template parameter documentation might be implemented in such a format that it could be rendered in a human usable form and could also be scanned by an automated tool to create documentation usable by VE and other tools.

It occurred to me that a couple of templates and some module code might make that idea possible. The result of my experiment is {{template parameter doc}}, {{template parameter doc item}}, and Module:template parameter doc. It did not work. Apparently, <TemplateData>...</TemplateData> processing occurs before templates and modules are processed. Is this true? If so, could that be changed?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:14, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think your module needs to wrap the template data content with an invocation to frame:extenstionTag rather than using <TemplateData> directly. I'm not entirely sure that will work either, but it seems more likely to. Dragons flight (talk) 00:11, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, Scribunto is run after tags have been converted to strip markers, so if you just output the tag text it won't do anything. You need to preprocess the tags somehow, and frame:extensionTag is the best way. (frame:preprocess would also work, but it's slower.) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 00:59, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ding! Ding! Ding! Both work. For now, I'm using frame:preprocess because it take the entires output in one function call and is producing what I want. Thank you both.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:42, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Trappist the monk: You should also be aware that at some point in the future, TemplateData will move to its own namespace with a JSON content type. This would mean that #invoke statements would just be normal text, rather than being processed with Scribunto, so you shouldn't plan on this code working long-term. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it actually works now so maybe it's a non-issue. I'm guessing that Visual editor and the template data editor both read the raw source file to extract template data, not the rendered page. Right? So unless the module can subst a portion of its output (the <templatedata>...</templatedata>) I think this idea may have come to its end. And, even if it could subst, that subst'd stuff would have to be deleted before any edits to the documentation could be saved. That sort of requirement is no better than the currently unacceptable requirement to maintain two separate disparate sets of documentation.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There was a similar discussion at Wikipedia talk:TemplateData#Extending use; removing redundancy. There are problems with trying to share documentation between template data and normal wikitext. The biggest is the markup supported by TD, basically none, no bold, italics or links. Krinkle explained why it needs to be this way.--Salix alba (talk): 08:11, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, that's why I concocted this scheme. Editors should only have to maintain documentation in one place and in one format. This solution, though an apparent failure, was an attempt to get us at least a step closer to that target.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:40, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't find that explanation at all compelling; the two uses need to be merged. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:52, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not come across this before...

... and I hope not again.

There was an error showing yesterday in MLDonkey. If you look at it you will see lines in infobox like "Latest stable release". So where is that in the code? Has to be a template, right? But which? {{infobox software}} is horrendous. I eventually found subpage /MLDonkey hanging off it, which someone had carefully scribbled in.

But what we have is page-specific code attached to a general-purpose template (transcluded in 1200+ pages). Undocumented. Doesn't sound right to me. Presumably there are a lot of subpages, one per invocation I imagine.

A propos, it would save a lot of time if the list of templates used in a page also included date of last change, although it probably wouldn't have helped in this case. Easier than having to trog down each likely item in turn looking for one changed in last few minutes. Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Sun 07:37, wikitime= 23:37, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • That is caused by the |frequently updated= parameter that was suppose to be fully deprecated. See Template_talk:Infobox_software/Archive_5#Edit_request_on_2_October_2013:_.22frequently_updated.22 and the two sections following for a lot of discussion about these things... Pinging some of the other editors involved... Codename Lisa — MSGJ — Patrick87 — Tothwolf — Topbanana:. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 23:49, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Here be dragons. Be extremely careful with any major changes to the way {{Infobox software}}/{{LSR}}/{{LPR}} function and display on pages. Speaking from experience, as widely used as they are, major changes can have all sorts of unforeseen consequences (which then tend to lead to lengthy and often heated discussions).

      I don't see |frequently updated= present in the current version of {{Infobox software}}? I tried to document what I could remember of |frequently updated= in that discussion but I think the parameter had already been removed by that point anyway. None of those discussions were ever about depreciating the use of {{LSR}}/{{LPR}} subtemplates themselves though. Keep in mind that those subtemplates are not only transcluded by {{Infobox software}}, but are also widely transcluded in wikitables in software comparison articles. It might also be worth noting this in Template:Infobox software/doc#Moving release data outside the article.

      One possible {{Infobox software}} improvement that comes to mind immediately, is it should be possible to display a note on a preview version of a page which transcludes {{Infobox software}} which includes links to an article's Template:Latest stable software release/ArticleName and Template:Latest preview software release/ArticleName subtemplates. In cases where they already exist, an edit link could be provided, and in cases where they don't, a note and preload links so someone could create new subtemplates could be shown.

      Years ago when I was more active here, I discovered another language Wikipedia which had a much nicer and better documented {{Infobox software}}/{{LSR}}/{{LPR}} system, but I can't remember now which it was. --Tothwolf (talk) 15:07, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

      • Here be no dragons; just people who don't read documentations and complain that such documentations don't exist although they do.
        Oh, and one minor bit of correction: |frequently updated= was never supposed to deprecated; it was removed straight away. People frequently set it to "yes" indiscriminately, or just to mean "the developer issues updates quite often". They never used it to mean "facilitate recurrently updating this number on Wikipedia". Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 01:39, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sure. But I wouldn't bother about his comment on Template:Latest stable software release if I were you. He seems more furious about his own lack of experience here than making a genuine comment based on actual facts. For all I know, it is a maintainable system that works; a single slash is no reason to change it. But Tothwolf, on the other hand, might actually be on to something. I hope he remembers which wiki it was. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 17:56, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've looked through the other language wikis I have an account on via SUL and I simply can't find it now. I did notice the Italian and Russian wikipedias have both begun to use Wikidata for their implementations of {{Infobox software}}. I don't really see that it would be worth spending much more time trying to find that better {{LSR}}/{{LPR}} implementation if much of the data that is currently stored under Template:Latest stable software release/ArticleName will eventually be moving to Wikidata anyway. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • You may feel the system in place is a "pile of pooh", but the simple fact remains that it has worked extremely well for 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of editors, both anonymous drive-by editors and veterans alike, for making quick updates to software version numbers and release dates. Not only does it make it much easier for less experienced editors to update a version number and release date, it also cuts down on a considerable amount of clutter in Recent changes.

    For a system that has its roots back in 2005, I think it has actually aged quite well. You might consider it strange that data has been stored as a "subpage" in the Template: namespace, but given the limitations of Mediawiki's templates and markup language, I think as a whole it has actually worked out pretty well.

    When I was more active, I used to routinely monitor Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Latest stable software release templates and Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Latest preview software release templates. Surprisingly enough, I saw little in the way of intentional vandalism, but I did see the occasional test edit, much like the one you reverted. Even more common though, were careless reverts made with Huggle to valid edits from anonymous users/ip addresses and red-linked usernames.

    Btw, you don't have to make a "dummy edit" with an actual change to the page to "refresh" the transcluded data. The job queue will handle it automatically, but if you really want to force an immediate update, you can either make a null edit or append ?action=purge to the end of the url (example). --Tothwolf (talk) 23:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Envoi
Take a look at this Chef (software) --Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Sat 17:05, wikitime= 09:05, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CiteGen

CiteGen working on Google Chrome

Hello, folks! I've just made User:Zhaofeng Li/CiteGen which is a replacement of Cite4Wiki. It's an extension for both Firefox and Chrome which generates a {{cite web}} citation from the current page. It's different from Cite4Wiki because it uses Reflinks as the backend, whereas Cite4Wiki parses metadata in the browser. As a result, it supports more metadata fields and its functionality can be extended without the user updating the extension. The source code is available here (Patches are welcome!)

To install this on Firefox, simply click this link. For Chrome/Chromium, right click this link and select "Save link as..." to download it. Next, open Settings in Chrome and select the Extensions menu, then drag the .crx file from your file browser to Chrome.

Any thoughts on this? Thank you. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 01:21, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have installed this add-on for Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0 and will be testing it shortly. Thanks for developing it! — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 00:21, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Zhaofeng Li, I've used it a bit today to try it out, and I have a couple things I might request. First, since I tab flip a lot (and sometimes forget to wait for it to load to copy the material), it would be great if it could cache the results locally so when I flip back it I don't have to wait for it to start over and try again. Also, it would be great if the pages it fails to work on could either offer some kind of report to help figure out why it didn't work on those pages (I've hit quite a few free pages not behind a paywall it fails on). It would be nice to have it have a checkbox that will wrap the citation in <ref>...</ref> tags (named refs are preferred of course, so they can easily be reused :D). It would also be appropriate to introduce a user option for whether it should be {{cite web or {{Cite web and it should allow the user to select the date format (MDY vs. DMY vs. YMD) if not set it should pull the browser default for the date format. Another thing that would be a great addition would be a button that an editor using the tool to work on a GA or FA could press to prevent linkrot by caching a version of the page on the way back machine or some other similar site and add the archive info to the citation template. I'm sure some of those ideas are much easier than others, and I'll throw more ideas at you as I have them. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 01:03, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Technical 13: Many thanks for your testing. Caching will certainly help, and more options will be available soon. As for pages it fails to work on, it will currently outputs an error message at the bottom ("HTTP Error: 403", etc). Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 07:58, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Expired security certificate

I'm using IE9 to view the site (not my choice -- mandated by the company) and as of this morning, I'm getting errors indicating that the site's security certificates are expired. Anyone else seeing this? I can navigate around it, but it's quite annoying. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 14:35, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@WikiDan61: See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 131#SSL 3.0 discontinued. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:41, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@WikiDan61: You won't be able to browse at all if it's related to SSLv3. It's more likely that your company intercepts your HTTPS traffic with a rouge certificate which is expired. In this case, contact your IT department. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 04:46, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Zhaofeng Li: I'm pretty sure you mean a rogue certificate, not a rouge certificate! A lot of native English users make this error, too. --Thnidu (talk) 04:53, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PHP API for #ifexist function?

The "getpage" function I'm using (see here), gets the content of a page, and returns FALSE on error. The problem is that it returns FALSE even when the error is simply that the page does not exist, making it impossible for the application to know when the error is really that the server is down, or the bits got lost in the ether, or who-knows-what-problem beyond the application's control. Indeed the page merely not existing is not a problem, as the application in that circumstance just wants to create a new page rather than append content to an existing page. What I really want is a return code that confirms that the page actually doesn't exist and needs to be created. This is what I believe is needed to address this reported problem. Help from PHP programmers knowledgeable about the MediaWiki API would be appreciated. – Wbm1058 (talk) 14:49, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm having trouble making this work in actual php code. My attempt to check the 'missing' attribute with this code change didn't work for me. Jackmcbarn can you help? Wbm1058 (talk) 19:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply] 
  •  if(isset($x['missing'])) return "<missing>";
    would have to be some variation of 
     if(isset($x['query']['pages']['-1']['missing']) || $x['query']['pages']['-1']['missing'] == "") return "<missing>";
    to use that to determine if missing was there. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 19:58, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That specific code returned "<missing>" for every item passed to it, including everything that wasn't. Can you explain what you're doing there? It seems kind of convoluted to me. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:35, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've no way to test my ideas, so play with it, you might need to replace the OR ( || ) with an AND ( && ) or you may only need the second half of the condition (== ""). I'm not sure that isset() will catch that it exists if its value is null or empty, so you need to be careful with that. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 20:43, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If multiple parameters are supplied then isset() will return TRUE only if all of the parameters are set. So it is not sufficient to check only whether 'missing' is set? Wbm1058 (talk) 22:46, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
isset() determines if a variable is set and is not NULL. Returns TRUE if var exists and has value other than NULL, FALSE otherwise. So if indeed "missing": "" is that NULL or not, and if it is, what's the point? I don't get it. Shouldn't "missing": "TRUE" be returned by the function for "FooBarBaz"? Wbm1058 (talk) 23:05, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) If I understand your question, think of it like a tree. ['missing'] is a leaf that is attached to a branch labeled ['-1'], which is in turn attached to the trunk of the tree, ['pages'], and finally to the root, $x['query']. If you are a worm, and you want to get to the leaf, you need to start at the root, climb up the trunk, and across the branch to get to the leaf. :) isset() is suppose to return if that value is defined, but I don't remember how it does with things that are defined as null or empty, so checking http://php.net/manual/en/function.isset.php I find that Determine if a variable is set and is not null. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 23:11, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever. You found the link that I got the information from which I shared in my last two edits. I appreciate that you're trying to help, but I think it's better at this point to wait for someone who knows this stuff to respond. @Cyberpower678: I hate to pull you away from your expensive studies, but if you can quickly give an answer, I'd appreciate it. Wbm1058 (talk) 23:25, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Wbm1058: See how Reflinks deals with this in an unclean way. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 23:33, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Zhaofeng Li: Thanks, that seems helpful. I notice it uses format=json rather than the format=php that the "library function" I have uses. I'm not familiar with JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). Is there an advantage in using that? Wbm1058 (talk) 02:21, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Wbm1058: I think they are the same. However, unserialize() is always available,[1] while json_decode() is available by default from 5.2.[2] But anyway, considering most distros have at least PHP 5.3, compatibility isn't an issue. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 03:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Never use unserialize() on foreign data, it's a security risk. Legoktm (talk) 04:44, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, didn't know that before. That's quite true since unserialize() can be used to execute foreign code when initialising the classes. @Wbm1058: You really should look into JSON, then. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 06:14, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Technical 13: By the way, to correct your mistake, isset() can only be used with variables. Passing anything else to it (for instance an expression in your example) will fail (It would output "Can't use function return value in write context" which was unhelpful, but now it gives an error message with a correct example).[3][4] As an an unrelated note, empty() was a similar function which only accepts variables, leading to widespread confusions and steeper learning curve. This was changed in PHP 5.5.[5] Sadly, the learning curve is still there, since PHP 5.3/5.4 are still popular. [Insert rants about PHP design here] Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 12:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Zhaofeng Li, look again, my example doesn't put the expression in the isset(), it puts the isset() in an expression. It says IF isset($x['query']['pages']['-1']['missing']) OR if $x['query']['pages']['-1']['missing'] == "" THEN return "<missing>";. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 12:57, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I was having some eye problems. Sorry about that. :( Take it as a rant against PHP's design, then. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 13:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There is another item on my problems list: see User talk:RMCD bot § Unicode, diacritics problems. Will using json_decode() rather than unserialize() address this issue, or is there something else going on? Wbm1058 (talk) 17:35, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Legoktm: The "Bot classes for interacting with mediawiki" is the function library that the I bots I took over use. I believe that Chris G was the person coordinating it. As I recall I pulled the source off of his account on the former toolserver, but now when I look there I just see a "We've moved!" message. I also note that Chris G has been rather inactive for the past few months, since they turned their bots over to you. Looking at botclasses.php I see a single occurrence of the unserialize() function which you say is insecure for foreign data. However this is in the low-level query() function which "sends a query to the api". This query function seems to be used by virtually every other function in this library, and thus it appears that the entire library is insecure. It's a bit upsetting to learn that I've been running (potentially) insecure scripts on my personal computer for the last two years. Is there a new central location where this library is maintained, where I can look for a newer version, which is hopefully secure? Perhaps this is something that the highly paid programming staff of the Wikimedia Foundation can provide to their volunteer programmers and bot operators? Wbm1058 (talk) 14:36, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Legoktm: I see from Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Legobot 33 there is a link to the source code for the harej-bots on GitHub. Observe that your copy of botclasses.php there uses unserialize() in the query() function. So a fix would benefit both of us. Wbm1058 (talk) 20:48, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see: unserialize – Warning Do not pass untrusted user input to unserialize(). Unserialization can result in code being loaded and executed due to object instantiation and autoloading, and a malicious user may be able to exploit this. Use a safe, standard data interchange format such as JSON (via json_decode() and json_encode()) if you need to pass serialized data to the user.

I suppose that the encyclopedia that anyone can edit might have untrusted user input in it? I wonder if it's possible to track down everyone who is still using the botclasses library. How serious an issue is this? I might take a stab at the necessary code changes soon if nobody else does. Wbm1058 (talk) 16:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Wbm1058: Just replace format=php with json, and replace the unserialize line with return json_decode($ret,true);. By the way, the real risk is not from the editors, since the API will properly escape whatever they write. The problem is you don't know whether the API you are talking to is the real one or not (Using HTTPS will help a lot), and a fake one could return a maliciously-crafted string as the result. Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 04:51, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Zhaofeng Li: Thanks, I made the JSON changes and it worked fine. But when I changed "http:" to "https:" it responded with "Login error: ". Does the API not support secure http or is there something else I need to change to get it to work? Wbm1058 (talk) 16:59, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Number of unwatched pages

Is there a way to find the number of unwatched pages? They are listed at Special:UnwatchedPages but I suspect that, even 500 at a time, it would take a long time to get to the end of the list by using "next 500". JohnCD (talk) 17:46, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks. The problem is that I suspect the number of unwatched pages is very large, in the 2 - 3 million range, though that's what I want to check; so even stepping by 5,000 would take some time. If I'm right, do you think your script would cope? JohnCD (talk) 22:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Considering what my script does, sure. You could even just load it through the console on the last page (the one with no more "next 5,000") and it will tell you how many are on that page. Then you just have to go backwards and count the pages to get the larger number. That will still take quite a while for 2+ million pages. Let me see if I can find a better way. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 23:19, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of this is old hat. There were Most-watched pages (configuration) and other reports on the Toolserver. Nobody has unfucked Labs yet (cf. phabricator:T59617). For individual pages, you can use the info action (example). This data is also available via the MediaWiki API. For unwatched pages specifically, you'd want access via Labs or equivalent, I imagine (individual lookups are rough). An SQL query for this is trivial. Admins have access to Special:UnwatchedPages (as noted) and aren't subject to a threshold on the info action. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Technical 13: Concerning visibility of Special:UnwatchedPages, please see comments at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 92#js to add watchlist pages; Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 103#Unusual search advice; and the comment by Azylber at 00:06, 28 January 2013 at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 107#Have we lost the count of the number of watchers?. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:53, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@MZMcBride:, either I misunderstand what you mean by "Admins have access to Special:UnwatchedPages (as noted) and aren't subject to a threshold on the info action", or you're wrong. I have the Admin bit & can view no more than the first 5000 unwatched pages thru that special page. (Admins could run SQL queries directly on the database, but this access was removed many years ago.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:21, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Admins have access to Special:UnwatchedPages" refers to the fact that non-admins cannot use that special page at all. The special page only processes the first 5000 unwatched pages, though. "and aren't subject to a threshold on the info action" refers to the fact that the "Number of page watchers" on the action=info view for a page will show the actual number rather than "Fewer than 30 watchers". Anomie⚔ 12:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The "Number of page watchers" on the action=info view for a page can be completely useless. We need to make those count only people who have edited recently. Some old pages have 1,000+ watchers, 98% of whom haven't edited anything last month. A page "watched" by a blocked vandal, or a long-gone editor, is not actually a watched page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

llywrch: Basically what Anomie said. Certain Special pages are cached and only update every few days, as I recall. If you look at $wgQueryCacheLimit at <https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/InitialiseSettings.php.txt>, you can see it's set to 5000. Though as WhatamIdoing suggests, the value of knowing whether a page has 0 or more than 0 watchers is basically non-existent. I have thousands of pages on my watchlist here but I haven't used Special:Watchlist in years. I would certainly be considered an active watcher by any reasonable metric, but that means nothing. It actually almost gives a false sense of security to infer that someone like me is watching articles simply because they're on my watchlist. For nearly any wiki, the real answer is to find a way to review every action, but that's difficult. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:16, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Combining duplicate references

 – Redrose64 (talk) 23:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dear editors: At one time the "Expand citations" used to combine duplicate references. Also Reflinks used to do this. These don't seem to have this function now. Is there another gadget or process for this? —Anne Delong (talk) 12:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Technical 13. I was hoping for an existing process, but you are right that Zhaofeng Li is the most likely person to help with this, and I have left a message.—Anne Delong (talk) 18:09, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is actually pretty easy with visual editor. Delete the duplicate, select cite from the menu, and choose re-use. Visual editor will name the ref for you and make it all work swimmingly. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:20, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For the Reflinks functionality, please continue the discussion at User talk:Zhaofeng Li#Combine duplicate references? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 23:40, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Possible to form URL to download article source directly?

Given a specific article title, say Boekenweek, is it possible download its text source directly? I was thinking along the lines of by adding to the article's URL. Maybe there's better way. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jason Quinn: use the basic URL http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/plain&title= and append the page name, with spaces replaced by underscores - i.e. the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/plain&title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) will return the source for this page. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:28, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That works. Thank you. Jason Quinn (talk) 11:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And if you're going to do that, in an automatic fashion, please amend your user agent appropriately. Ironholds (talk) 06:04, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

hover not working

Hi, I'm using a different computer, but still logged in and using Firefox. The hover functions (eg diffs, history and the drop down with (un)watch etc all seem to have gone. I can't see anything in Preferences that I've unticked, what's wrong? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be that JavaScript is disabled on that different computer? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Don't know, how do I find out? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:21, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Jimfbleak: Do you have Hovercards turned on in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures? That has code to make only one or the other of Hovercards and Navpopups display at once - it's slightly buggy in a few browsers hence you might not have encountered the problem before. To fix: You can either click the "cog icon" in a Hovercard to access its preferences menu (screenshots) (which lets us select between the 2 options, or turn it off entirely), or opt-out of the BetaFeature. Either should work fine.
If not, then try either a hard-refresh (ctrl-F5 or WP:REFRESH), or check if your browser has JS turned on/off at http://www.javatester.org/javascript.html . --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I'm going to be away for a day or so, but I'll try these when I get back Jimfbleak - talk to me? 19:16, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

history in mobile beta?

Is there a way to access an article's history page in the betatest version of the mobile website? I've never been able to find one. Once I did get to an article's history page when I wasn't trying to, but I have no idea how it happened. Please {{ping}} me for discussion. --Thnidu (talk) 07:48, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Thnidu: If you click the text "last edited..." at the top of the page, it should take you to the edit history. It took me a couple of minutes of clicking different things to get that. I think it needs to be clearer that that is the history link, especially for copyright attribution purposes. Sarahj2107 (talk) 09:05, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Sarahj2107: By golly, you're right! Thank you. --Thnidu (talk) 09:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hidden heading

On the article 2 + 2 = 5, there is a heading 'Self-evident truth'. However on my screen, and that of another user, the heading is not visible. That it exists, can be known because it is in the table of contents, and when you view the raw code (with the Edit button), you'll see that it is coded correctly. Apparently the heading is hidden behind the 'Quote box' which is (or should be) above it. When I added a series of hard line-breaks and pressed 'Show preview', the heading became visible, but this is an awkward solution, since it is difficult to guess the number of line-breaks needed (when you insert too many of them, you get whitespace after the quote box) and this may well depend on the user's screen format. Bever (talk) 08:53, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a {{clear}} template just above the Self-evident truth header. This should solve the problem without the need to use line-breaks. Sarahj2107 (talk) 08:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It did, thank you. Bever (talk) 09:12, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Am I missing something?

I'm trying to use {{replace}} or alternatively {{str rep}} but it doesn't work. Is there something I need to do? NB this is for a standard page.
I have tried {{str rep | 9°39'N, 123°52'E | N | 3=latNS= }} and it just gives 9°39'N, 123°52'E (unless it works here, that is 9°39'N, 123°52'E). --Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Thu 20:55, wikitime= 12:55, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For some reason, the templates do not strip whitespace between pipes and parameter values:
  • {{str rep|Foo|o|a}} → Fao
  • {{str rep|Foo| o |a}} → Foo
  • {{replace|Foo|o|a}} → Faa
  • {{replace|Foo| o |a}} → Foo
In the second and fourth cases, the template searches for the string " o " instead of "o", which it cannot find. I'm assuming it's a bug/feature of Lua to take whitespace at the start and end of parameters into account. SiBr4 (talk) 13:12, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(3 ec later) See Help:Template#Parameters, looks like intentional behavior (or at least documented behavior). GermanJoe (talk) 13:30, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Never realized that. Is there a reason for the difference in behavior between named and unnamed parameters? SiBr4 (talk) 14:22, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The basic behavior is mentioned in the general meta help for templates as well. Maybe some old-timer in technical questions has more background knowledge - I'm just following the documentation :). GermanJoe (talk) 14:55, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't clear to me what it is that you are trying to accomplish with this:
{{str rep | 9°39'N, 123°52'E | N | 3=latNS= }}
Find: N
in string: 9°39'N, 123°52'E
and replace it with: latNS=
Taking out the leading and trailing spaces thus:
{{str rep |9°39'N, 123°52'E|N|3=latNS=}}
gives this result:
9°39'latNS=, 123°52'E
But, why?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:49, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is still at the development stge, and was just a test. I want to take coordinates output from wikidata (which is as shown) and turn it into a param string for use inside an infobox. I always develop by prototyping, so no point in getting too far ahead only to have to rework. And I need to make sure I had the concept right, as some documentation is laconic. "Trappist" is such a coincidence! --Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Fri 02:49, wikitime= 18:49, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So far, so good, but now I have hit a problem (of course). The output of #property, putatively 9°39'N, 123°52'E isn't actually as straight forward as that. Presumably the arcminutes sign is an apostrophe, but that's not allowed directly. As far as I can tell, it's not &apos; either. In fact I don't know what it is - using {{string|pos}} to show the chars, it displays

1.9
2.°
3.3
4.9
5.&
6.3
7.9
1.N
2.,
3.1
4.2
5.3
6.°
7.5
8.2
9.&
10.3
11.9
1.E

Note that sequencing restarted after (first) 7 and 11, but the character itself is not displayed/displayable.
Note too that these coords have no arcseconds. I guess the chars (first) 5-7 and 9-11 are showing the html entity code for apostrophe, &39; except that the ; isn't showing so it could be anything. I also can't find any template to break out a char into hex.

Any thoughts? --Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Fri 12:31, wikitime= 04:31, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Actually... It should be &#39; (') so you are missing the # too. The MediaWiki parser does this, and there is a ticket someplace about it but I'm too tired to dig it up. I can assure you that it is in fact using &#39; based on your results for that particular instance. That doesn't mean that it will use if for every instance, and you need to be prepared for that. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 04:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please post code and page link another time, or save the code and post a diff. The hardest part was figuring out what you were already doing. I guess you were on Cogon, Tagbilaran trying code like {{replace|{{#property:P625}}|'|m}} if you for example want to replace the apostrophe by m. It works if you do {{replace|{{#property:P625}}|&#39;|m}}. If you write {{subst:#property:P625}} on the page and click "Show changes" then you can see the apostrophe becomes &#39;. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:20, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well I was using Cogon as a testbed, but I never saved it there. I just used it because it's small. I save to local file.
    • I now have the parsing doing what I want. If you're interested the string latd= {{replace|{{replace|{{replace|{{str rep|{{str rep|{{str rep|{{str rep|{{str rep|{{str rep|{{str rep|{{str rep|{{str rep |{{#invoke:Wikidata|getRawValue|P625|FETCH_WIKIDATA}}|,| {{pipe}}longd{{=}}}}|°|{{pipe}} latm{{=}} }}|°|{{pipe}} longm{{=}} }}|'|{{pipe}} lats{{=}} }}|'|{{pipe}} longs{{=}} }}|N|{{pipe}}latNX{{=}} N}}|S|{{pipe}}latNS{{=}} S}}|E|{{pipe}}longEY{{=}} E}}|W|{{pipe}}longEW{{=}} W}}|"| }}|NX|NS}}|EY|EW}} produces what I was after - here latd= 9| latm= 39| lats= |latNS= N |longd= 123| longm= 52| longs= |longEW= E. Which is fine. It's in the format that {{infobox settlement}} wants. But it doesn't work directly, I guess because it gets treated as a single parameter with a lot of pipes in. So how can I get this code into the infobox? Should I just build a template which emits this stuff? My guess is that wouldn't work either, because it gets parsed too late.
    • (BTW my thinking is to produce a more robust template, one that could emit in other infobox formats, using |model=)
    • (BTW2 - subst: didn't seem to work)
    • Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Fri 15:50, wikitime= 07:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The symbol for arcminutes isn't an apostrophe, but a prime, U+2032 &#x2032; or ′ - it's closer to the vertical than a curly (typographic) apostrophe, U+2019 &#x2019; or ’. Similarly that for arcseconds is a double prime, U+2033 &#x2033; or ″ - it's closer to the vertical than a curly (typographic) quote, U+201D &#x201D; or ”. The prime and double prime are the symbols emitted by the {{coord}} template. Note that some fonts may show all of these symbols at the same angle - even vertical. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:07, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Problems with page curation

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T84996

Page curation isn't working properly for me right now. The mark as patrolled button doesn't work and the tagging button doesn't work. However, the next article and info buttons do work. This problem started around 12 hours ago, as far as I know. Mac OS 10.7.5 with Safari 6.1.6. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:29, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Swpb filed it as phab:T84996. More discussion at Wikipedia talk:Page Curation#Curation Toolbar. --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Block during page edit

When we need to record something in a block log, it's common to perform a 1-second block; for example, I unblocked a user recently without clear explanation, so I reblocked him for 1 second with a fuller explanation. What happens if the block occurs while you're editing a page? You click "edit", and while you're writing away, someone blocks you for 1 second, and of course this is long past when you hit "save". Will the software accept it, since you're not blocked at the moment you hit "save", or will it have some odd editconflict-type screen? Nyttend (talk) 15:29, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I just tested it on testwiki and there was no edit conflict or any indication on the user's end that there was a one second block[6]. My question is, how are you blocking for one second when that is not a listed option on MediaWiki:Ipboptions. Yes, I'm aware it can be typed in to "other duration", but that seems odd because if that is a used parameter, I would expect it to have been added to make things easier and ensure duration. I'm also wondering why there is redundancy in the options on that page; indefinite:indefinite is double listed. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I only see it in the list once - at the top of the drop-down box, but there appears to have been an agreement back in 2006 (MediaWiki talk:Ipboptions#Indef) to have it at both the top and the bottom. Perhaps the software has been changed since then to remove redundant entries? – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:47, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As you say, just typing it into the "other". I'm glad that 1 second isn't an option: there's no reason to place such a short block if you're not adding a log entry, and if it were an option, someone might pick it by accident when intending to place a much longer block for someone who really is misbehaving. Thank you for the technical confirmation! Nyttend (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly (well, to me), you can block someone for zero seconds: [7]. --Floquensock (talk) 22:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Weird. I just blocked ThisIsaTest for 0 years after getting an "invalid expiry" warning when I tried to place 0-decade and 0-century blocks. However, the block log says "0 seconds", not "0 years". Nyttend (talk) 22:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Try blocking someone for "a potato". (Note: please don't actually do this.) Matma Rex talk 23:01, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Why not? Will something go wrong? It looks like it just won't have the desired effect, and ThisIsaTest won't care: the sole purpose of the account is for blocking tests and blocking practice. Nyttend (talk) 01:19, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You can put in all kinds of nonsense in that field, and get unusual results. — xaosflux Talk 01:59, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
See also Gnu standard format. — xaosflux Talk 02:07, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see that "a potato" is apparently -3600 seconds. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 03:05, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More script errors: "The time allocated for running scripts has expired"

I see in the archives some technical discussion regarding this error (see this for a somewhat recent example. I don't know the particulars of why this happens, or how to resolve it, but it is currently happening at the Chris Sarandon article (twice at the top of the page, and eight times in references and external links). Assistance please? --Hammersoft (talk) 16:10, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Worry about it if it persists after a null edit. I introduced a lot of script errors the last time I updated the modules that render Citation Style 1 templates. In that particular case, there were four pages sequentially updated one after the other. For a brief period of time the various combinations of new and old code were incompatible and so caused errors in several hundred articles. So, wait a bit and then try a null edit.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:28, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of Wikipedians by article count

Could a tech-savvy person please offer some advice at Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by article count#Before reviving? That list is moribund, and was never implemented with the opt-out feature of lists such as Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. A number of people would like to see the list being regularly updated, and another number of people want to be sure that opting out is taken care of. I'd be happy to help with this, but am clueless about how to run or build such a thing. Can someone advise? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:23, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Usercheck template out of date?

I was just looking at the {{Usercheck}} template used for these elections, and I noticed that it seems to be out of date. At some point, ArbCom deprecated the Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/ scheme in favor of a new Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/ scheme. This skews the results returned by the template into thinking that editors who joined wikipedia after the date of that change have no experience at all and have never been involved in any kind of arbitration. This misinformation of the people could, as a result of this information, skewed the results of this election. I'm not calling foul, and I actually did better than I expected. I just wonder what the results might have been if the information was correct. In an effort to prevent this very likely issue for future elections, I would like to propose a modification to the template. I would like to propose that the link be changed:

arb / arb
Using this code
{{#ifexist: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1}}}}}}}}|[[Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1}}}}}}}}|arb]]|[[{{SITENAME}}:Requests for arbitration#{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1}}}}}}}}|<span title="There is no {{SITENAME}}:Requests for arbitration/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1}}}}}}}}" style="color:gray;">arb</span>]]}}
  • To:
1
arb / arb
Using this code
{{#ifexist: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|[[Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|arb]]|<span class="plainlinks" title="There are no specific cases naming {{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}; Click to search for experience">[{{fullurl:Special:Search|profile=default&fulltext=Search&search={{urlencode:"{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}"|WIKI}}+prefix:Wikipedia/Arbitration/Requests}} <span style="color: #808080;">arb</span>]</span>}}
2
arb / arb
Using this code
{{#ifexist: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|[[Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|arb]]|[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|<span style="color: #808080;">arb</span>]]}}
3
arb (search) / arb (search)
Using this code
{{#ifexist: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|[[Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|arb]]|[[Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}|<span style="color: #808080;">arb</span>]]}} <span class="plainlinks" title="There are no specific cases naming {{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}; Search all cases.">([{{fullurl:Special:Search|profile=default&fulltext=Search&search={{urlencode:"{{ucfirst:{{{User|{{{1|{{REVISIONUSER:Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents‎‎}}}}}}}}}}"|WIKI}}+prefix:Wikipedia/Arbitration/Requests}} search])</span>

For these examples, I'm throwing in the username of the last person to edit WP:AN/I (CycoMa1) in order to get a wide variety of results. Thank you for your time and consideration on this. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 16:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Partial Oppose- I oppose changing the link into a search link if no pages are found as it makes the template less useful in other places as a quick spot check. Note in particular mobile editors often can't see the pop-up notes on links easy, and so making the link blue always hides information. Usercheck is used in other places besides arb elections and in most cases experience in dealing with arbitration cases is not what is being searched. PaleAqua (talk) 18:43, 18 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Links to log entries in Atom feed

For usergroup changes, the watchlist feed links to "diff=0" of the user's userpage (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:GoingBatty&diff=0) instead of Special:Log. Is it a known bug? Zhaofeng Li [talk... contribs...] 03:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned non-free use files that are not orphaned

I regularly patrol Category:Orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files to see if the files are right for deletion and fix what I can to keep proper files on Wikipedia. Recently I have been noticing when an editor blanks either a section or the entire article and is quickly reverted within a minute, in the cases listed below by User:ClueBot NG, the files show that they are not being used in any article on Wikipedia. Eventually this ends up in where ever User:Stefan2 finds the list and he does his great work and tags them an being orphaned. Once I find them, I know a null edit is all it takes for me to make the article reappear in the file's usage section and then I remove the orphaned fair use template from the file.

Examples from yesterday's list that I have not done a null edit on so the blank usage sections can be seen.

  1. Adobe InDesign
    1. File:Adobe InDesign CS6.png
  2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    1. File:H2G2 first comic front cover.jpg
    2. File:Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide front.jpg
    3. File:HHGG UKLP covers.jpg
    4. File:HHGG REU cassette covers.jpg
    5. File:Hitch Hikers Theme Original Records Version.ogg
    But weirdly enough, the file in the infobox, File:H2G2 UK front cover.jpg, has the article listed in its usage section.

This seems like more extra work for both Stefan2, myself and any other editor who might be fighting vandalism or just regular editing. Is there anything that can be done in these cases or is this something we will just have to live with. Aspects (talk) 07:09, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think we'll have to wait to hear from Stefan to see which, if any, tool/script he uses to tag them as orphaned... If he is using a script, the script could do a check to see if the images are actually orphaned before applying the tag to save everyone effort (except the script code writer who would have to set it up XD). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 07:39, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Technical 13: The problem here is that the "what links here" information isn't being updated after ClueBot's revert. How is a script supposed to check whether an image is "actually orphaned" if it can't trust "what links here"? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Technical 13:A purge or null edit of the file page does not fix the problem; you have to guess which article has the image and do a null edit there. A script won't be able to guess correctly. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:55, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Since we're talking about non-free files, WP:NFCC#10c says that there must be "a separate, specific non-free use rationale for each use of the item" together with "the name of each article ... in which fair use is claimed for the item". Therefore, there should be a valid WP:FUR on the file description page naming the article where the image is intended to be used; it will probably be linked (but might not be), so follow that link, and WP:NULLEDIT the resulting article. Do this for every FUR on the file description page (there might be more than one, example), and if after processing all the FURs in this way, there are still no articles listed under "File usage", the file may be safely put up for WP:CSD#F5. If there are some left, check that each one of the linked articles has a FUR on the file page - if you find an article which uses the image but there is no FUR explicitly naming that article, the image may be removed from the article under WP:NFCC#10c; if after doing this, there are no articles listed under "File usage", F5 also applies. I don't think the task can be fully automated: many FURs are in template form, with an |Article= parameter which may be read, but a valid FUR may be constructed using no templates whatsoever. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:19, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If MediaWiki doesn't update Special:WhatLinksHere when User:ClueBot NG edits pages, then maybe User:ClueBot NG could POST action=purge with the forcelinkupdate parameter after each edit to reduce the damage.
I could maybe write a script which searches for articles based on WP:NFCC#10c requirements and purges the articles. I'll try to see if there is something I can do here and how difficult it would be to write that script. When I tag the files, I open them in my browser and tag them using Twinkle. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:11, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it's a bug in MediaWiki. Has anyone filed one yet? Especially if anyone can figure out what exactly ClueBot is doing that's causing this? Anomie⚔ 12:57, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A different bug in MediaWiki, also affecting orphaned non-free files: File:Dubai Club.png is correctly listed as used in the "File Usage" section at the bottom of the page, and the use also shows up properly in Special:WhatLinksHere/File:Dubai Club.png, and action=query also shows that the file is used. However, User:Diannaa has tagged the file as orphaned twice in December.

For some reason, the file appears to be missing from the imagelinks table. File:Doctor Who Series 7 boxset.jpg also has the same problem. I have tried purging (action=purge&forcelinkupdate=) File:Dubai Club.png, File:Doctor Who Series 7 boxset.jpg and their articles (Doctor Who (series 7) and Dubai CSC), but to no avail: they still show up as 'orphaned' in the imagelinks table. What is the problem here? Also, from where do Special:WhatLinksHere, action=query and the "File Usage" section obtain their information, if not from the imagelinks table? --Stefan2 (talk) 00:59, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Imdb-film-year

I was wondering if somebody could create a template. Sort of like Template:Imdb-japan-year but to cover all countries/languages. They're to go at the end of all the film year list like American films of 1955, South Korean films of 1982, Spanish films of 1990 etc. I think it would need some sort of coding like "if Japanese =jp" etc. Bascially there's a common format linking to a list on imdb, see the url for Japanese films of 1964 vs American films of 1964 It is controlled solely by the short country code jp for Japan, us for USA etc. What I want is to be able for the template to read what the year is in something like List of Japanese films of 1964 and for it to automatically or have to do very little in the current List of Japanese films of 1975. I want to be able to have one template I can use as an external link in all the country year lists linking to the appropriate page. So whoever creates it would need to find the index of countries on imdb and code it so it reads all shortcodes for each country by year. Do you follow? Ideally I want something which will read a year list like List of Australian films of 1987 and all I will have to do is add a Template:Imdb-film-year in the external link and it will read the Australian and 1987 in the title and correctly link to the correct page on imdb.♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:35, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Something like: {{Imdb-country-year|jp|1964}}? Or do you want it to be fully automatic where it might read the article title, for example Spanish films of 1990 and from that extract the country and year and populate the appropriate places in the url?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:15, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Something like that would be fine yeah, although fully automatic might make more sense seems as the page titles all have the same format.♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:32, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

{{imdb country year}}:
{{imdb country year|au|1987}}
→Films of 1987 at IMDb
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:03, 21 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Machine-readable authors in Template:Non-free use rationale

I notice that there is no machine-readable author field for {{Non-free use rationale}}. I am aware that {{Non-free use rationale 2}} does, but many (if not all) the specific-case templates are derived from the former, not the latter (search Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Non-free use rationale).

I believe these templates should include machine-readable authors; this will probably cut into a large part of the images in Category:Files with no machine-readable author. Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 20:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 64#Help with file metadata cleanup for a prior discussion. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:31, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A glitch in OneClickArchiver

I was just archiving some posts from my talk page using the OneClickArchiver. First post was ok, but when I archived the second post that one disappeared from the talk page but did not appear in the archive. instead a copy of the first post appeared in the archive. I manually restored the second post to the archive by copypaste it from the talk page's History. When I tried again, the same thing happened. This is the talk page history, and this is the archive page history, where you can see what happened. Any ideas about what's going on? I saw on the script's page that the script code now includes something by Technical 13. Is my code old and faulty? (Please ignore the "//", I just include that when I don't use it to prevent me from accidentally archiving something) - w.carter-Talk 21:38, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. Thanks for your quick answer. It's no biggie, I just wanted to know what it was and if someone was on it, which you are. :) I don't use it that often so I'll just wait and see. Have a nice weekend/holiday, w.carter-Talk 22:37, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Scripts stopped working

For the last couple of days the scripts User:Doug/closemfd.js and User:King of Hearts/closerfd.js have stopped working. I haven't made any changes to my setup (WIN7, FF34.05, Vector) and as they are from different authors there seems likely to be some common cause. Any ideas? JohnCD (talk) 22:14, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • JohnCD, both of those scripts were recently partly updated to address the addOnloadHook deprecation. Neither of those scripts have been changed in over two weeks though, so I'm wondering if there is something else in your common.js or vector.js that is causing the rest of the scripts to fail. I'm really busy with a final right now, but I'll certainly dig into it later. Feel free to revert the most recent changes to both of those scripts and see if that fixes the issue for you, then ping me and we'll go from there. Thanks. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:37, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Technical 13: You were right - I hadn't thought of the effect of caching. Reverting the most recent change to User:Doug/closemfd.js does indeed make it work again. I have left it reverted, as there is a backlog there, and will tell User:Doug.
Before doing that, I clicked "edit" on an MfD discussion, at which point a link "Close" should have appeared on the drop-down menu under "More", but didn't. I then pressed F12, and copied what appeared under "Console" to User:JohnCD/draft. I hope that is what you needed.
I haven't reverted User:King of Hearts/closerfd.js but will tell KoH, and BDD who does much of the work at RfD. There are also scripts for closing TfD, FfD, CfD, but they belong either to Doug or to KoH.
Thanks, JohnCD (talk) 17:04, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, I'm aware of all of those subscripts JohnCD, and both Doug and KoH applied the same fix to all of the modular scripts (at my request) which has me wondering why only some have been effected. That console will help me some (maybe not for this specific issue, but will help me find other scripts using things being deprecated). I'll tag it for CSD when I'm done with it if that is okay with you. :) Your userAgent string would still be very useful to help me debug stuff. Thanks again. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:15, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not familiar with the scripts to close CfD, FfD, TfD but, assuming they work in the same way, they are all affected - I don't get "Close" in the drop-down menu from any of them. The whatismyuseragent.com site isn't responding at the moment: "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server". I'll let you know when I can get through. JohnCD (talk) 1726, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
  • @Technical 13: it should be whatsmyuseragent, not whatismyuseragent. Result is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0
JohnCD (talk) 18:27, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template help?

Some articles I'm working on have templates in them that are not working properly. I'm not template literate. Where should I ask for help? SchreiberBike talk 07:09, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a good place to start. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:15, 20 December 2014 (UTC).
@SchreiberBike: You could also ask for help on the template's talk page. GoingBatty (talk) 15:14, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@SchreiberBike: What pages are affected, and what problems do you see? That should be enough to get us started. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:58, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The templates are: Template:Infobox New Jersey State Legislature district and Template:TR mayor. I have explained the problems on their talk pages. Thanks, SchreiberBike talk 17:29, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed Template:Infobox New Jersey State Legislature district.[8] The problem in Template:TR mayor is caused by Module:OrdinalSuffix where {{#invoke:OrdinalSuffix|main|11}} produces Script error: No such module "OrdinalSuffix".. That should say th as in 11th but says st as in 11st at the time of writing. I don't edit modules. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:11, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The module needs a fix for all numbers ending in 11 or 12 (Module talk:OrdinalSuffix has a poorly chosen test set). Looking at the simple code I could probably fix it without knowing Lua but I recommend it's done by somebody who actually knows the language. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:18, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
11th ,12th, ..., 20th. Pretty sure I can fix this if someone hasn't already got it in hand.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:21, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's fixed now. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:22, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ain't Wikipedia Great! Thanks for the help everybody; it warms my heart. SchreiberBike talk 18:44, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Notepad++

I've recently started using Notepad++. Does anyone know of a syntax highlghter plugin, for Wikipedia template code, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:49, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: sounds like you're looking for User:Equazcion/WikiTemplate UDL. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:54, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Mr. Stradivarius: Thanks; that seems to be just what I was looking for. But after importing it, I can't get it working :-( Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:12, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Andy, which version of NotePad are you using? That UDL only works with v6.2+ — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 16:39, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I was on 5.9.6.2; I've updgraded and that's working, now. Thanks again. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:08, 21 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor newsletter—December 2014

Screenshot showing how to add or remove columns from a table

Did you know?

Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from existing tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements

Basic support for editing tables is available. You can insert new tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid rowspan and colspan elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing ⌃ Ctrl+F or ⌘ Cmd+F.

You can now create and edit simple <blockquote> paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "Paragraph" into a "Block quote".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing "* " will make the line a bullet list; "1. " or "# " will make it a numbered list; "==" will make it a section heading; ": " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change. There are also two other keyboard sequences: "[[" for opening the link tool, and "{{" for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like ⌃ Ctrl+K to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead

VisualEditor will replace the existing design with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at MediaWiki.org in late December and at other sites early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January. Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Help

If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta.

Thank you! WhatamIdoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Technical feasibility of idea at VP proposals

Please have a look at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Bot tagging of edits and address whether this is technically feasible. Thank you. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 08:28, 21 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

javascript: testing whether a checkbox is checked (jQuery)

the correct way to test whether a checkbox is checked using jQuery is either $(selector).prop('checked'), or, alternatively, $(selector).is(':checked').

in the past, you could also ask $(selector).attr('checked'). this was "deprecated", but still worked. with the latest version of jquery, this does not work anymore. simple search of mediawiki and user pages for "attr('checked') shows dozens of pages that still use this form. (only 3 in mediawiki, many dozens in userspace).

less common breakage is programmatically turning checkboxes on or off: the no-longer-working-method looks something like $(selector).attr('checked', 'checked') or $(selector).attr('checked', ''). the correct way is $(selector).prop('checked', true) and $(selector).prop('checked', false)

if you maintain JS code in your userspace or in mediawiki, i suggest searching for this no-longer-working-pattern, and if found, replacing it with working one.

tagging User:TheDJ and User:Legoktm, who seem to be the maintainers of MediaWiki:Gadget-afchelper.js/submissions.js and MediaWiki:Gadget-PrintOptions.js that use this no-longer-working pattern.

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 16:15, 21 December 2014 (UTC) [reply]

I can't edit gadgets anymore, but indeed, do go right ahead with such a fix. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:33, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@TheDJ: hmmmm.... well, did you (formally or informally) pass the baton to someone else? who maintains this gadget? as far as i could tell, it's currently 100% dysfunctional. who maintains mw JS pages nowadays in enwiki? User:Redrose64 ? User:Mr. Stradivarius ? peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:11, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've replaced the obsolete uses in the above two scripts. Does that fix the problems? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Me? what gives you the idea that I maintain javascript pages? Sure, I've a few edits to them, but the changes that I made in almost every case were both small and obvious. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:57, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Edokter: i have no idea what afchelper is supposed to do, and i do not use it, so i can't say for sure. i noticed you left some dysfunctional stuff in MediaWiki:Gadget-afchelper.js/submissions.js, though: e.g., the line $("#afcHelper_blank").attr("checked", "checked"); should be replaced with $("#afcHelper_blank").prop("checked", true);. as far as i can tell, printoptions works ok now.
@Redrose64: what gave me the idea? elementary: i looked at Special:RecentChanges, filtered on mediawiki namespace, and looked for people who touched .js files. i did not try to analyze what were the nature of the edits (and btw, the changes i described above are small and obvious). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:12, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have many edits to MediaWiki:Gadget-geonotice-list.js, it is true (first edit 00:28, 17 August 2012): but not one of them was in the nature of maintaining a Javascript function. Every single one was the addition, amendment or removal of an object within a data structure, originally named notices but now named window.GeoNotice.notices and currently empty. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:53, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in a similar position to Redrose - my .js edits are just from answering edit requests. Recently my JavaScript has improved, but it's still not at a level where I could jump in as a maintainer for most of these scripts. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:20, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, fixed those as well. Btw, Afchelper is some helper script used with Article for Creation. That's all I know. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:48, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Technical 13: iiuc, you are one of the contributors to the master project on github. could you please update it there? even if this will be replaced, as long as it's out n the open, it's better if it will be correct - who knows who is going to take it for something... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:41, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Less user friendly search of late

I've noticed lately that when you search for something you have to include the parentheses or comma to get suggestions that include parentheses or commas to show up. Before it was not so, at least for parenthesis. For example just typing "boston m" doesn't bring up Boston (MA) or Boston (magazine). I wouldn't call this a huge deal but it makes "Enter" go to search, which I have also seen to use a flawed hierarchy of late. What's more, before I realized this issue was happening, I thought some articles did not exist and may not have gone as far as to search for them. This behavior would lead to a slight drop in viewership. If I'm searching for Rochester, New York, I want to just be able to type rochester new york into the search bar. B137 (talk) 03:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@B137: When I type "rochester new york" into the search bar, I get sent to Rochester New York, which automatically redirects me to Rochester, New York. I get similar results when I type "boston ma" or "boston mag". GoingBatty (talk) 03:51, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I shortly after realized that all three of those were bad examples. Though nothing shows up when you get most of the way through typing "rochester new..." the redirect does exist (with caps but that's not the issue). Now that I think of it, I don't believe the code ever did ignore in/ex-clusion of parentheses and commas, but perhaps it should. Either way, I do believe I need to catch up on sleep or something because I seem to be losing it.. B137 (talk) 03:58, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@B137: When I type "rochester", Rochester, New York is the third choice. If I keep typing "rochester new", then the redirect Rochester New York is the only choice. GoingBatty (talk) 05:59, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It seems then that for whatever reason certain links aren't popping up for me. I use IE and chrome. I'm over it. Ready to pass it off as a non-issue. B137 (talk) 06:19, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I was using Firefox 34.0.5 and get the same results on IE 11. GoingBatty (talk) 19:39, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2014-52

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

Recent software changes

  • The Technical Operations team is now using Phabricator to track their tasks. The Operations team manages the Wikimedia servers. In the future you will be able to see the tasks that are not private. [9]

Software changes this week

  • There will be no software changes this week and next week. This is because of the end-of-year holidays. The next update of MediaWiki will be on January 6. [10]

Future changes

  • The system that displays citations will change in the future. The new system will not change the style of citations. [11]
  • A new design for VisualEditor will come in January. You can try it now on test wikis. [12]

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

16:52, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

License choice in the upload form is not adequate

Hi all. The problem I have can be solved by a few lines of code so I am raising it here as a technical issue first. If this degenerates into a policy debate, we'll have to move it to another village pump.

Currently, a visit to Special:Upload shows that Public domain and Creative Commons are the only free license choices. This is clearly not the extent of free licenses compatible with the goals of Wikipedia. Wikipedia's own copyright tags section includes the Free Art License which should be an option when uploading an image. Another one that people might want to use is the WTFPL.

The best solution would be to add one new option: Custom. Any uploader using this must say what the free license is and provide a link verifying that the file is free. Otherwise the file will be subject to removal just like a non-free file. A flexible option like this will reduce our bias toward "popular" free licenses. Connor Behan (talk) 17:28, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Images under free licenses like FAL should normally be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, where they will be available to all Wikimedia wikis. If you really want to upload them to this wiki, I'm pretty sure you can just select "None selected" from the list and manually enter a license template into the text field above. It's not intuitive, but then, our File Upload Wizard normally directs users to Commons if they have a freely licensed image to upload. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I guess that will have to do. It sounds better than the mess at Wikipedia:Upload. Connor Behan (talk) 02:05, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Calculations in templates

Hi all, in the article Hanny's Voorwerp, I just tried to use {{Infobox astro object}}'s dist_ly parameter with the {{E}} template, since the value was so large. As you can see, when it then attempts to convert the value into parsecs, the template is giving it an error, apparently due to a <span> tag. Is there any way that we can get around this error, such as through coding the template differently, or will I have to find an alternate solution? StringTheory11 (t • c) 05:25, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@StringTheory11: The value that you pass to the dist_ly parameter will be evaluated as an expression, so you don't need to use the {{E}} template - you can just enter a value like "2e100" and it should work. (However, "2e400" gave me a result of "INF", so it depends how big we're talking about.) For the nitty gritty details, see m:Help:Calculation. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:18, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And after actually trying it out in the article, I see that the calculation works, but the result input is displayed as a plain "6.5e8", which is not ideal. This will need an update to one of the templates - probably to the infobox. Let me have a think about how to do it. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Additionally, |dist_ly=6.5e8 is converted by the infobox to an extremely falsely precise value of 199386503.06748 parsecs. If the distance in pc is explicitly set, no calculations are done, so you can use markup templates freely: |dist_ly=6.5{{E|8}}|dist_pc=2.0{{E|8}}. SiBr4 (talk) 11:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Actually, I think the best way to do this would be to set the dist_ly value with the {{E}} template, and to set the dist_pc parameter as well. That means that you have to do the conversion yourself, but it means that neither of them get evaluated as an expression, and therefore you avoid the expression errors. That's probably better than adding complicated logic to the template that will only be used for a few articles. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:42, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The upper limit for a distance in light years using exponential notation is approximately |dist_ly=1.7976e308 - 1.7977e308 or anything higher converts to INF. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:39, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Headlines in template columns

Why second level (===) headlines in template columns not working correctly? Basshuntersw (talk) 10:50, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Column-generating template families

The templates listed here are not interchangeable. For example, using {{col-float}} with {{col-end}} instead of {{col-float-end}} would leave a <div>...</div> open, potentially harming any subsequent formatting.

Column templates
Type Family
Handles wiki
table code?†
 Responsive/
mobile suited 		Start template Column divider End template
Float "col-float" Yes Yes {{col-float}} {{col-float-break}} {{col-float-end}}
"columns-start" Yes Yes {{columns-start}} {{column}} {{columns-end}}
Columns "div col" Yes Yes {{div col}} – {{div col end}}
"columns-list" No Yes {{columns-list}} (wraps div col) – –
Flexbox "flex columns" No Yes {{flex columns}} – –
Table "col" Yes No {{col-begin}},
{{col-begin-fixed}} or
{{col-begin-small}} 		{{col-break}} or
{{col-2}} .. {{col-5}} 		{{col-end}}

† Can template handle the basic wiki markup {| | || |- |} used to create tables? If not, special templates that produce these elements (such as {{(!}}, {{!}}, {{!!}}, {{!-}}, {{!)}})—or HTML tags (<table>...</table>, <tr>...</tr>, etc.)—need to be used instead. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have edit links in the above test. Is that what you mean by not working correctly? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:35, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't also good. English version needed in addition <br /> after headline. Polish version don't need it. Chcek also how this see on Polish version and English version. I want this same effect. Basshuntersw (talk) 15:02, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need a <br />, you can use a &#32; which is interpreted as a space by your browser, but ignored by MediaWiki - save for the fact that it "protects" the newline against whitespace stripping. See Wikipedia:Sandbox. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:30, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Okay but what is result of that different (space beetwen columns and main tamplate)? Basshuntersw (talk) 18:21, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redrose64 refers to a feature described at Help:Template#Parameters:

"Whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, returns) are stripped from the beginnings and ends of named parameter names and values, but not from the middle: thus {{ ... | myparam = this is a test }} has the same effect as {{ ... |myparam=this is a test}}."

This means 

|col1=

=== Heading ===

has the same effect as 

|col1==== Heading ===

Section headings only work at the start of a line but Template:Columns does not place col1 at the start of a line. Therefore the col1 parameter must have at least one non-whitespace character before a newline and === Heading === for the heading to work. &#32; is an example of non-whitespace characters for this purpose (the code produces a space but the code itself is not whitespace). I used it in [13]. The Polish version pl:Template:Kolumny does place col1 at the start of a line, so the parameter value does not need a non-whitepace character before a section heading. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:53, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What with width beetwen columns? Now it don't have sense because distance beetwen columns is too short. Basshuntersw (talk) 05:30, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Current spaceflights

Template:Launching adds non-existing unhidden Category:Current spaceflights to the articles (such as in Angara (rocket family) currently). Should the category be created manually or something else? Brandmeistertalk 14:12, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Brandmeister: Non-existent (redlinked) categories are never hidden; this is because the code for making a cat hidden must be placed on the cat page itself, which therefore makes the cat page exist and no longer a redlink. As for the cat not existing at the moment, it was deleted twice: first time was after Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 March 23#Category:Current spaceflights, second time was per WP:CSD#G4. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:55, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Since that category was deleted after Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 March 23#Category:Current spaceflights, it shouldn't be recreated without wider discussion. But I note that the similar template {{Current spaceflight}} adds Category:Current events, so I've edited {{Launching}} to match it. That should fix the red link at Angara (rocket family). -- John of Reading (talk) 14:56, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at recent edits to {{Launching}}, I find that John of Reading's fix mentioned above is essentially a revert of this edit of yesterday, although not described as such. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:10, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
...and I've been reverted, so the red-linked category has returned at Angara (rocket family). I'm out of here! -- John of Reading (talk) 19:51, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I reverted them, gave it a one-month semi-prot, and started this thread. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:25, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mediawiki is apparently producing dead links

This one: Special:FeedbackDashboard/38153. This is, apparently, WP:Article Feedback Tool? I see there was consensus shut it off, but I don't see any consensus for mass deletions. How do we get these back? Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:31, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That special page doesn't exist, where are you seeing these being "produced" ? — xaosflux Talk 15:56, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I saw it linked on a user talk page - User talk:Greek Fellows. The context clearly indicates that this was once a valid link, but now it's dead. What links here doesn't work, and who knows how many other links like this are around. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 23:49, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Special is not a normal namespace and WhatLinksHere never works on it. It would be nice if Special:FeedbackDashboard/xxx gave a message explaining that the Feedback feature has been disabled and the old content is no longer available. Can MediaWiki:Nospecialpagetext do that? The message is apparently not called with a pagename parameter so I guess it would have to use {{PAGENAME}} or similar to test for "FeedbackDashboard", but I don't know whether magic words for pagenames work on special pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:10, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

TemplateData editor adds whitespace

Hi.

I don't know if anyone has reported this or not but the interactive TemplateData editor seems to add additional whitespaces with every iteration of edit. For example, please the first three changes in revision 639328069. " author1", (note the leading whitespace) has become "  author1", (two leading spaces). It seems the editor populates its list by reading the contents of the JSON array "alias" and delimiting them with , ". However, upon compiling the array back, it take the delimiter to be strictly ",". So, the whitespace becomes part of the name.

Is this reported as a bug elsewhere? Or, how do I report it?

Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 16:37, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

phab: is the new Bugzilla. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ouch! It is painful to even go there.
It requires a login with an LDAP account. (I only know one LDAP: Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.) I don't have that anyway.
Best regards,
Codename Lisa (talk) 17:55, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There is a Phab task to improve the login. For the moment, you can ignore the LDAP boxes, and simply click the Wikimedia Flower button named "Login or register". Oauth will ask to run in your behalf, and will login with your Single Unified Login account. Phab dashboard will display your view of the WMF development tasks, with a link for you to report the TemplateData editor issue, and a help link. An email address is no longer required, as previous Bugzilla information has been migrated to Phab. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 18:49, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yellow message boxes gone

I'm not sure what the technically correct name for these things is, but I will try to describe them: they are the yellow text boxes that used to appear when you hovered your mouse over certain icons, such as the padlock in the corner of protected pages and topicons. But now they haven't been appearing, at least for me. Does anyone know why this is? Everymorning talk 16:48, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

They're sometimes called tooltips, and are very much browser-dependent. They show for me in Firefox 34.0.5 - have you changed browser recently? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:52, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, okay. I changed to Chrome a few months ago, so that probably explains it. Everymorning talk 18:05, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Red, "yellow" suggests to me that Everymorning may actually be talking about WP:NAVPOP. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 18:08, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I'm not talking about that, Technical. The popups I'm talking about are those that say, for example, "This article is semi-protected indefinitely" when you hover your mouse over the padlock or "This is a featured article" when you hover it over a gold star. NAVPOP only applies to wikilinks AFAICT. Everymorning talk 18:30, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Everymorning, the icons and padlocks are wikilinks actually, and NAVPOP does work on them. If it turns out that Red's original assessment was correct, turning on navpops might be useful to you if those are something you desire. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 18:57, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I've tried it in Chrome version 39.0.2171.95 m, and I get tooltips when hovering over a FA icon ("This is a featured article. Click here for more information." from the alt= attribute of the <img /> element) and a prot padlock ("This article is semi-protected until April 22, 2015, due to editing disputes" from the title= attribute of the <a>...</a> element). Maybe it's the operating system: I use Windows XP. They are not navpops: I turned those off because they conflict with too much. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:01, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
according to [14], this is an elusive, transient, hard-to-reproduce bug in chrome. it may or may not be related to the theme used. even if you use the default theme, it is likely that installing another theme will make the problem go away, at least for a while. i see more and more chrome-specific bugs recently. maybe it's time to return to FF as my main browser... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:17, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bot added {{Reflist-talk}} to talk page discussions.

I often notice people adding <ref></ref> type citations on talk pages and they do not know to add {{Reflist-talk}} to the discussion. It is not a problem if the discussion is at the bottom of the page as the citations automatically show up there on talk pages. However when the discussion moves up the page and later when archived the citation is separated from the discussion. Can we set up the bots to automatically add {{Reflist-talk}} to discussions that need them? Richard-of-Earth (talk) 22:59, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Or better yet: how about disabling that "feature"? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:40, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Template:Bug; see Help:AGRL for all bugs. --  Gadget850 talk 23:58, 23 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ooops - need help

I created an article in my Sandbox - North_American_Piedmontese_cattle - and when I finished editing, I clicked on "move" to get it in the main space. I got the following message: [15], but it doesn't actually redirect to Gabor B. Racz, which was the very first article I created in my Sandbox, and moved to the main space with help from another editor. It appears the Piedmontese article is a redirect from my Sandbox because under the title it states: "A start-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from User:Atsme/sandbox)". I would very much appreciate some assistance, and maybe a little guidance so this doesn't happen again. Thanks in advance.... Atsme☯Consult 00:12, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the earliest revisions need a history split - I'll do that now. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 01:52, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Atsme: I've moved the revisions that weren't a part of North American Piedmontese cattle back to User:Atsme/sandbox - take a look at the page history of both of them. To make sure that this doesn't happen in the future, you have two options: 1) create your article drafts in a new page, for example User:Atsme/North American Piedmontese cattle, or 2) move User:Atsme/sandbox to a different title, for example User:Atsme/old sandbox history, and then create your draft in User:Atsme/sandbox. As for changing the redirect from North American Piedmontese cattle to Gabor B. Racz, all you would have needed to do was change the code at the top of your sandbox from #REDIRECT [[North American Piedmontese cattle]] to #REDIRECT [[Gabor B. Racz]]. But for now, it doesn't redirect anywhere, as it's a blank page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:09, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Mr. Stradivarius thank you, thank you. For future reference, I copied your post to a sticky note on my laptop. Atsme☯Consult 02:51, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Math parsing problem

So at this revision, what do you see? Do you see big red text stating a parsing error for the equations, or do you see the equations displaying correctly? I have a discussion going on at User talk:Greek Fellows#Math formatting, where apparently I see an error but the other editor does not. I'm using Safari 6.1.6 on Mac 10.7. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:11, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two red "Failed to parse" messages on Windows 7 - Firefox 34.0.5 and IE 11, when logged in and logged out. GoingBatty (talk) 06:23, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It does work with MathJax enabled, but gives parsing errors in TeX (PNG) mode. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:12, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Is this is just my mistakes during the typesetting, or some more serious problem going on on Wikipedia? --Worst regards, Greek Fellows". Visit ma talk page and ma contributions. 10:20, 24 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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