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Save Page vs Publish Page - revisited July 2016

(Some prior discussion is in archive 146)

This may be more than a "technical" change, but most of the prior discussion has been on this page in the past. In a upcoming server update the WMF group plans to relabel button that say "Save" to "Publish". (c.f. phab:T131132). Local projects (such as here on the English Wikipedia) are able to replace this, and based on some prior discussions some prep work to keep "save" on enwiki has already been done. Most of the discussions were not widely participated in - so I wanted to put this out to ensure we are gathering the right community input from editors. There are not a lot of choices to make, we can keep the status-quo "Save", adopt the new labels "Publish", or come up with a (more complicated) plan (I don't recommend that at all). I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other personally and invite anyone to contribute below. Feel free to convert to RfC format or move to VP-Proposals if needed. Thank you! — xaosflux ^Talk 01:37, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Cross-posted to VP Proposals, linking to here. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:43, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

• Personally, I think this is not worth our time. The term "Publish" is correct and any perceived negative effects should be supported by evidence, not gut feelings. So before any measures are taken to circumvent this change, I expect to see some proof. With that in mind, I will be reverting MediaWiki:Publishpage, as there really is no broad consensus to block this. (This can change of course, but let's not pre-empt that.) -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 20:39, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

  To keep them consistent, I've removed MediaWiki:Tooltip-publish and MediaWiki:Visualeditor-savedialog-label-save until this gets any traction one way or the other. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:48, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

  Thanks. I didn't know about those. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 20:56, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

  Watch that we don't set a double-standard there. Without implying support for one or the other, where's the evidence supporting "Publish page"? I understand that the Phabricator task says that the change is intended to address newbie confusion over the meaning of the "Save" button, and another, linked task proposes having a separate message for creating new pages compared to editing existing ones, but … has the "publish" version had any testing of its own, anything establishing it as an improvement? In particular the "publish" version risks confusion with certain workflows, most obviously "publishing" articles by moving them from the Draft namespace to the article one. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 20:58, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

The choice is between Save page and Publish if I'm not mistaken. Akld guy (talk) 23:03, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Actually, it's Publish page. The only change is to the verb. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:13, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

In that case, it has been wrongly described on the phab:T131132 page, and wrongly described by User:Xaosflux above. Let's be clear about what it is that we're being asked to decide. Akld guy (talk) 03:40, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

[1] and MediaWiki:Publishpage show the default change is from Save page to Publish page. phab:T131132 and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 146#Tech News: 2016-17 inaccurately say "Publish". Per phab:T139033 it may later become Publish page for page creations and Publish changes for edits to existing pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:42, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

So it is not set yet. In any case, we seem to make a sport of blocking any visual changes. What is the point in developing the software if we continue to block them? As for evidence; the WMF held some interviews with users, and that is more then can be said of us. Perhaps Whatamidoing can share some of that intel? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 12:45, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

I did invite Whatami to share, (she is looking in to it). — xaosflux ^Talk 13:48, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

There is no logical reason for blocking this change, which brings us into line with virtually every other CMS on the Web.  — Scott • talk 13:23, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

I popped over to some of the other websites on List_of_wikis after sorting by articles - some of the larger ones (AboutUs.com, WikiMapia, TV Tropes) are all using "Save" and/or "Save changes". — xaosflux ^Talk 13:48, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

@Scott: What do you mean by "CMS"? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:16, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh - content management system. Re Xaosflux, we should be looking to compare ourselves to things that aren't wikis, given that MediaWiki is a leading player in the sector that many other engines draw influence from. Just because we've been doing it a long time (since the transition from UseModWiki, which itself was based on WikiWikiWeb) doesn't mean that it's the right thing - rather it's indicative of the resistance to change that Edokter mentioned, combined with the notoriously slow pace of development of our software.  — Scott • talk 18:40, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, every other site where I, erm, save a page says "save" not "publish". I have a hard time imagining any internet user who doesn't understand that "save" means that what they just wrote will be publicly viewable after they click the button. This is bikeshedding to the extreme, and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would think that new users are confused about what will happen if they click a button that says "save". Frankly, I think they're going to be a darn sight less certain about clicking a button that says "publish page". Risker (talk) 05:28, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Concur with the above, but I'll reiterate what I said in an earlier discussion. It's a trivial difference considering the many far more significant obstacles to entry as an editor. If this is a significant problem for them they won't be around much longer anyway. Virtually all editors, doing their first edit, will look for something that says "Save", not find it, and decide to try "Publish" instead. They will discover that it does what they wanted to do, and then they will no longer care what the button says. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:48, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

For more context, there was this followup thread on my talk page after the May discussion about this change. I didn't get the impression that any testing with the "Publish" version had been done (at least, not at the time), which is really the only way to settle the issue of whether it's more or less confusing. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:51, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Mandruss is right - to suggest that users would be bamboozled by changing "Save" to "Publish" is to vastly under-credit their intelligence. It's so trivial that testing is completely unnecessary. This is bikeshedding to the extreme - yes, Risker, that's exactly what you're doing.  — Scott • talk 10:36, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

By that logic, we could change the button to "qqyyzz page" and the editor would "look for something that says 'save', not find it, and decide to try 'qqyyzz page' instead. They will discover that it does what they wanted to do, and then they will no longer care what the button says." So should we next change "publish page" to "qqyyzz page"? There is nothing wrong with "Save Page" -- if it is "so trivial", then why is it necessary to change it? It's the responsibility of those suggesting change to prove that the change is necessary.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 10:53, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

I would submit that "Publish" is a closer approximation of "Save" than "qqyyzz" is. The rest is a question of process, of whether the change had some appropriate level of discussion and consensus. I'm not claiming that the change is so trivial that it didn't need that discussion and consensus; it is not. On the other hand, I don't declare a consensus void because I wasn't included and strongly disagree with the result. So my position would depend on the history of the change, of which I'm ignorant. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:07, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Between post-Wikimania travel and the US holidays, it's hard to track down the staff responsible for this right now. However, to answer a few minor points above:

• WordPress has a "Publish" button, which is separate from "Save" (the private behavior that is expected by some users during interviews). Wikihow uses "Publish" (and "Discard" rather than "Cancel").
• As noted above, checking other wikis is not necessarily a valid search, because MediaWiki software is the default for all MediaWiki wikis is currently "Save page". Also, those wikis will change to "Publish page" after this change is made (and they update their software).
• Speaking of "after this change is made", there's no particular rush to get this done. It might happen later this month; it might get postponed again. I don't know when this will happen.
• I tend to be sympathetic to the "bikeshedding" comments. This change seems to be worth the trivial amount of dev work to make the change (e.g., making this change will make Legal happy, which is a Good Thing™), but very few experienced editors are going to be affected. Or even notice. I don't normally see that button on my screen; with the size of my wikitext window, it is just below the scroll. When I'm done with my edits, I just hit Tab four times and press Return. I know that was meant as hyperbole, but it really could be qqyyzz page for all it would matter to me.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Four tabs? That's three more than me - Tab ↹ once, type in edit summary, press Return. Or ⇧ Shift+Alt+S if I had used Show preview or Show changes mid-edit. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:49, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Once to reach the Edit summary, then the minor edit tick box, then the watchlist tickbox, and finally I reach "Save page". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Try it with one tab and Return. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:42, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I made a user script to disable that behavior after accidentally submitting one too many times. Anomie⚔ 19:48, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Anomie, would your script stop the "oops, I double-clicked the Return key and got an edit conflict with myself" problem? And is the cost taking my hands off the keyboard to scroll down and click that button?

Redrose, if you see this, then one tab and return worked.  ;-) (I've prefilled my edit summary.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Probably, if it's two returns in the edit summary box. The cost would be that you have to keep on doing the four-tabs that you have been doing, no one tab plus return. Anomie⚔ 20:47, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Coming to the party a bit late, I figured I ought to chime in and say that this sounds like a good idea. It seems like we're always having to help the folks who misunderstand what "save" does, especially because "save" routinely means other stuff in computing contexts, e.g. Saved game. Just please put up a short writeup to which we can point editors who ask what's going on: in a few sentences, explain what's been done and why. Nyttend (talk) 04:11, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Also late to the discussion. Without having thought about this too much or even read all the background carefully, my gut instinct is that this would mostly be a lateral change and any perceived improvement is comparable in size to the disruption it will cause. I don't feel strongly about it, however, either way. But if changing the button text is going to be entertained, all possibilities ought to be put on the table and my quick glance over the discussion and phab report did not see that the discussion has considered the idea of a Save and publish button. Such a button may capture perceived benefits of each word while still being short enough to be acceptable. 2c. Jason Quinn (talk) 13:55, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

The change can't happen without James F's agreement, and he's completely opposed to "Save and publish". We continue to work on him, but, to be candid, our hopes are dim on that score. Apparently it is particularly infelicitous (i.e., long and awkward) when translated into some languages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:59, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Very few things would translate easily to all languages. That's why the act of translation is half mechanical but also half art. Thank you very much for the update. See you around. Jason Quinn (talk) 12:15, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Will it also say "publish page" for pages protected with Pending changes?; because the normal user doesn't publish that type of pages... Christian75 (talk) 14:10, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Determining one's browser

Is there a template or tag that determines a user's browser?

I'm wanting to modify {{Series overview}} per the following: With the usage of {{Series overview}} at List of Supernatural episodes#Series overview (for example), network2 is set to The CW and network2length is set to 10. I'm wanting to make it so that if network2length were set to current, its row-span would automatically span the entire table, instead it having to be increased every time a new season row is added to the table (to 11, then 12, etc).

In Chrome and other browsers, this is possible by setting the row-span to 100, as it doesn't break the bottom of the table, which it does in Firefox. In Firefox, this is possible by setting the row-span to zero, and it automatically spans the entire table, but this isn't possible via Chrome. This is the reason behind the original question. Alex|The|Whovian^? 01:55, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

@AlexTheWhovian: You can determine a user's browser via JavaScript, but not through templates. There is a simpler solution, though - do the arithmetic to find the correct rowspan value. This becomes unwieldy very quickly with template code, but is easy in Lua. Also, there is a lot of repetition in the template, so it is already a good candidate for conversion to Lua, even without this new feature request. I'll take a look at it now. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Please don't use things like row-span=100 ... Just because something works in one browser for you, is no reason to break the Internet. Hacks like that will bite you in the ass later and they also might affect Accessibility. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:47, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

The HTML5 spec documents rowspan=0 to mean that "the cell is to span all the remaining rows in the row group", so Firefox is working per spec. If Chrome doesn't respect this, it's a problem for Google, not us. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

rowspan="0" was even in HTML 4 and 4.01 — kudos to Firefox for supporting it early. Webkit and Blink are still non-conforming, though, as are all versions of Internet Explorer up to and including 11. (I didn't test Edge.) Even if Webkit and Blink get it fixed, IE is IE, so keeping rowspan a positive integer will probably be the only safe method for many years to come. Sigh. Matt Fitzpatrick (talk) 05:16, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I knew that I'd come across this before, but the other way around (see Template talk:Transperth platform#Firefox display issue). It seems that the calculations inside {{Transperth platform/row}} are relying on Chrome's non-standard behaviour, so the articles using that template break when viewed in a standards compliant browser like Firefox. In various browsers, check out Aubin Grove railway station#Platforms, where the should be directly below the , in the "Platform" column. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:09, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Squashed boxes for audio file

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T137632

I'm not sure why the boxes for the audio file are now suddenly smaller, for example in Poker Face (Lady Gaga song) and other pages, making the texts look squashed and ugly. Oddly enough here in WP:CMF the boxes for the sound files look normal. Is there some settings that I'm not aware of? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hzh (talk • contribs) 13:22, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

This is a regression due to T137632. Will be looked into. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:40, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Login problem

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T119736

(ticket:2016070710009847) An editor, deepugeorge14, is attempting to log in and received the following error

[V35DhApAIDkAAHLS5H4AAAAM] 2016-07-07 11:56:52: Fatal exception of type "Exception"

I urged the editor to try again, and the report is that the same error occurred.

Anyone know the problem?--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:07, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

On IRC I was told that this is "Could not find local user data for Deepu14basketball@commonswiki" hence phab:T119736. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

I think I have fixed this. There was some sort of database issue at the time that the account was created. The CentralAuth database recorded that an account had been created for this new user on commons, but the commons database did not end up with a record for the user. The "fix" I made was to manually delete the record in the CentralAuth database that pointed to commons. I can now load the Special:CentralAuth page for the Deepu14basketball account. The commons attachment should be made automatically on the next login attempt. --BDavis (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

@BDavis (WMF): I got a similar email from user:RuslanaRB (ticket:2016071110003951) can you see if the same fix will work?--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: Should be fixed now (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACentralAuth&target=RuslanaRB) Hopefully we will get a code fix soon to at least keep this from blocking logins. --BDavis (WMF) (talk) 00:15, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the extremely prompt response.--S Philbrick(Talk) 01:31, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Categories in mobile

Is there a way to view categories when a page has been loaded in mobile view? Since I have a basic phone, navigating by selecting links is much more important there than on my normal computer, but I'm totally unable to use the category system because category links don't appear on pages, and ordinary navboxes (e.g. {{Dubuque County, Iowa}}) also don't appear. The only way to view either one is to visit the category or template directly, by typing its address into the URL, and of course that can take a while on this type of phone. Nyttend (talk) 23:49, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

What it would look like at smartphone screen sizes.

Don't know about categories, but navboxes are intentionally left out from mobile version. Read intro at /doc. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:20, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

This is being tracked in phab:T24660 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:28, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Double question: (1) What's the rationale for not displaying navboxes? Presumably if they were always collapsed by default, they wouldn't occupy a ton of vertical space. (2) What's the mechanism that excludes them from displaying? Nyttend (talk) 15:09, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

I think the issue is horizontal space. Imagine that wide box on a three-inch-wide smartphone screen. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

No matter how wide or narrow the screen on my laptop browser, the navbox fills the width: it expands when I zoom out or widen the browser window, and when I make the window so narrow that the sidebar is as wide as the rest of the article, the navbox likewise contracts in width. It's like ordinary text this way, and distinctly different from infoboxes, which are routinely too wide for my phone, and which don't work properly when I reduce the size of my browser window. Would navboxes be unable to fit themselves to the size of the screen on a mobile phone? Nyttend (talk) 17:13, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, take a look at the screenshot. It would apparently look something like that: a full screen of tiny text. A fingertip is about three rows tall, so it would be very difficult to click on anything without zooming in. Oh, and that's a simple navbox. Imagine something like this in that shape:

That kind of complex navbox would turn into multiple screens of illegible links. I agree that readers on mobile do need a "go next" feature, but I don't think that showing them a made-for-desktop navbox is a good way to go about it. (It may not even be a good way for non-editors go find an interesting article. We've got no evidence that typical readers use navboxes much.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:52, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

(That's weird. I wonder why the rest of the page is indented?) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:55, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

(Fixed).--Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:01, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Nyttend asked "what's the mechanism that excludes them from displaying?" - navboxes belong to the navbox class, which in the site's mobile CSS has been given the declaration display:none;. Plenty about that in the archives of this page. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:38, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Navboxes aren't important to me, but the categories are. I sometimes forget to add cats to new articles because I can't see them, and if they could be made visible on mobile it would be much easier. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 22:03, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I have asked around, and it turns out that you can get cats on Mobile. Go to the main menu (three bars in the upper right corner), choose "Settings" (gear icon), and tick the box to opt into "Beta". Save your changes. After this (reload the page if necessary), you will see a "Categories" button at the end of every article, next to the "Talk" button. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Watch List/Period of time to display not working

I only get 2 days consistently, even though I change it to 3 days and 7 days and 30 days. It used to work properly on the library computers I use. Something is stuck now. Jed Stuart (talk) 05:03, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Have you tried turning it off, waiting a minute for it to cool off, then turning it on again? That may dislodge the stuck something. Also, if you aren't signed in when commenting, it has probably reset to default. (It may also have something to do with the electronic harassment rays being beamed at you) I could be wrong. -Roxy the dog™ woof 06:03, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Can you select 3 days in the "Period of time to display" drop-down box at Special:Watchlist? If you click "Show" afterwards then does it jump back to 2 days and only display 2 days? What is the url afterwards? What happens if you click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?days=3? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:04, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I can change the period of time, click "show" and it stays 3 or whatever else I try. Also, the top line adjusts to the 3 making it 72 hours. The url afterwards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?days=3&namespace=&action=submit. I clicked the link and everything reads as 3 days but still only 2 days is showing. Jed Stuart (talk) 00:17, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Does it look like you get exactly 48 hours? What number of changes does it say, e.g. "Below are the last 150 changes in the last 72 hours"? What is your first 3 settings "Days to show", "Number of edits to show" and "Group changes by page" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc? What is your first 3 settings "Days to show", "Maximum number of changes to show" and "Expand watchlist to show all changes" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:57, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

It says there are 250 changes in the last 72 hours. Todays changes start at 00.39 but yesterdays start at 13.58. So it is more like a day and a half showing. Jed Stuart (talk) 01:18, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

So the time isn't actually a round number but the number of changes is. That points to the changes being the limit. You didn't answer several of the questions. In particular, have you by any chance enabled "Expand watchlist to show all changes" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist, with 250 as "Maximum number of changes to show"? If so then the solution is obviously to increase the maximum. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:32, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

I have run out of time. I will have to get back to this in a couple of days. Jed Stuart (talk) 01:50, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jed Stuart: Set "Maximum number of changes to show in watchlist:" to zero. This will cause all edits within the timeframe to be displayed, no matter how many - and it doesn't max out at 5000 like some lists. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:39, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Did that, and it is now working normally. It was set at 250. (My 3 days worth would always be under 250). Thanks Jed Stuart (talk) 03:28, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Category sorting

I am not sure where to make this request, and figured that this was as good a place as any. What I would like to do is make Category:Articles to be merged after an Articles for deletion discussion sortable or organised by date of deletion discussion. Then I can just come in occasionally and merge the old articles, allowing other editors who are probably more familiar with the topics a chance to merge the more recent ones. I did attempt it myself at one point[2], but not only did it not work I screwed up AnomieBOT[3]. Pinging John of Reading and Anomie from that discussion. Thanks in advance. AIRcorn (talk) 07:16, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

The underlying module is Module:Message box, and I see that it can handle sort keys for categories. You'd need to set a sortkey - for example a date in the format CCYY-MM-DD - in the {{afd-merge to}} template, pass that through {{ambox}} and so on. Unfortunately, it's not at all clear from Module:Message box what the parameter name is. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:14, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Redrose, if you meant line cat = string.format('[[Category:%s|%s]]', cat, sort), then it looks like that sort parameter is internal, not for everybody use. But I may be wrong. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:10, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I do mean that line. Unfortunately, Modules are written in Lua, so all I can do is guess... there's no easy way of working out what may be passed in as a parameter. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:03, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

If there is something like args.foo, args[foo], frame.args.foo or frame.args[foo] in code, that may mean, that foo can be used as parameter. frame.args and args could be something like {{{ in wikicode. But there are much more competent people here, who can give you a better answer. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:45, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007 is correct - the sort variable in cat = string.format('[[Category:%s|%s]]', cat, sort) from Module:Message box is internal, and currently cannot be accessed directly by any template arguments. It wouldn't be hard to add such arguments, though, as the internal mechanism is already there. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:56, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@Aircorn: I've had a go at adding the sort key manually in the template. Is that what you were looking for? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:58, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Appears to be working, the first page listed at Category:Articles to be merged after an Articles for deletion discussion is Terrassa Metro where the AfD closed as "merge" on 25 August 2015; and the last one is Point No. 1 (song), closed on 11 July 2016. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:05, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, this is all Greek to me. It will work for my purposes though. My only concern would be if the backlog built up to 200+ again that it could get a bit ugly. I don't suppose there is an easy way to split them out by month or even year (e.g. December 2015, January 2016, February 2016 etc). AIRcorn (talk) 05:01, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

No, because category pages only subdivide by the first character of the sort key. In these cases, the sort key is similar to "2016-07-11" so the first character of the sort key is "2", so they're listed under "2". --Redrose64 (talk) 08:01, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Edit summaries in diff view

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T139722

After Thursday update, edit summaries are no longer italic (per default) in diff view ("Watch List/Period of time to display not working: set "Maximum number of changes to show in expanded watchlist:" to zero" and the other one here), at least in Monobook. I assume some JS was added there, as summary is in italic after some short time period. That was intended or it's some bug? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:16, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Well, thanks for picking my edits as examples! But when I view them, the ES is italicised both in watchlist and in diff view. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:04, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

It looks normal to me as well, even in monobook—but only when logged in. Eman235/talk 19:24, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

You're welcome :) Yes, in watchlist, user contribs, recent changes they are all in italics, but not in diff view... OK, let's take another project - do you see edit summaries in italics? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Not me, when logged in and in vector. Eman235/talk 21:47, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Upright text - both MonoBook and Vector. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:02, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Having been alerted to this, I'm looking more carefully at diffs as they load - and although the end result on English Wikipedia (in MonoBook) is always that the ES is in italic text, there is sometimes a short period when its definitely upright, before it then tilts to the right, implying a late-loading style sheet. The rule in question is

span.comment {
  font-style: italic;
  unicode-bidi: -moz-isolate;
  unicode-bidi: isolate
}

but I don't know where that comes from. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:09, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

It is not working on Serbian Wikipedia either. There's no italic when comparing diffs or in the preview of edit summary on sr.wiki project. On English Wikipedia italics is being added to the normal text for two mentioned cases (it can be seen if page loading time, for preview, is long). --Obsuser (talk) 16:35, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

This issue should be resolved on all wikis now (and for all skins). See phab:T139722 for details. Matma Rex talk 00:58, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

My bot can't edit extended protected pages

Cyberbot II (talk · contribs) has a bot flag and with it the needed right to edit extended confirmed pages. However I see several articles that the bot failed to edit, show up with the log, with the following reason, "protectedpage: The "extendedconfirmed" right is required to edit this page". Why is this?—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 21:09, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Special:ListGroupRights does display that userright for bots. I've granted it the access - does the problem persist? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:20, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I can tell you in about 5 minutes.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 21:23, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

no dice. Still getting the error.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 21:33, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

That is expected behavior - as our ECP implementation is very limited - adding the flag is easy enough (and can be requested at WP:PERM under the existing policy, so long as the bot operator is extended confirmed themselves). Should WP:ECP2016 change the policy, we may want to add this to bots by default. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:27, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Extended_confirmed_protection_policy#Bots. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:29, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Cyberbot II is in the bot usergroup and per Special:ListGroupRights this group has extendedconfirmed, but it doesn't appear to be working. It's a technical issue.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:31, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, lets see if manually fixing it resolved the issue - I'll do a test with my bot as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:35, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Note, my bot Fluxbot was able to edit through ECP without manually having ECP group (Special:Diff/729238014). — xaosflux ^Talk 21:37, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: - if you manually log on via the web interface can you make the edit under your bot account? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Are you using OAuth/BotPasswords? Did you grant the proper userrights if you're using those methods? Legoktm (talk) 21:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I used OAuth, and what grants? I created these consumers before EC came into existence.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 21:40, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Log in as the bot, go to Special:BotPasswords - see if it has "edit protected pages". — xaosflux ^Talk 21:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm not using BotPasswords. I'm using OAuth.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 21:48, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

To my understanding OAuth grants certain permissions. Does it give extendedconfirmed, if it works like that?Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:03, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

It does, but I don't know how to alter them once they're created. I also don't have my bot passwords at the moment to log into them atm, since they're pseudo-scrambled for security.—^cyberpower_Chat:Offline 22:10, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Log in and go to meta:Special:OAuthConsumerRegistration/list - you are still looking for "Edit protected pages". — xaosflux ^Talk 22:34, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Note: If that IS still in there, and not working - we may actually need to open a phab ticket to include that as an oauth grant type (as it didn't used to exist) (which also identified a flaw in the "create new protection" dependency workflow). — xaosflux ^Talk 22:38, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

It looks like your oauth consumer does not have that checked. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Note: I'm not seeing a good way to "EDIT" the grants on an OAUTH consumer (unlike in botpasswords) - you may need to regenerate a new consumer--will feedback here if I find something. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:36, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

• Need to regenerate, warning this may change your keys.

[19:40] <xaosflux> Is there a mechanism on meta: to change the grants of an existing consumer?
[19:40] <xaosflux> e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:OAuthListConsumers/view/4fc51567780d99e946537deeb115544c
[19:41] <xaosflux> I want to add more grants to my own private consumer
[19:41] <bd808> no. to change grants you need to submit a new request with a different consumer version
[19:41] <xaosflux> ok, use the same grant name, new version number?
[19:41] <bd808> yeah, that's the best way to do it
[19:41] <xaosflux> Thanks - OK to repost this on wiki?
[19:42] <bd808> sure

— xaosflux ^Talk 23:42, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Tested, it will definitely change your keys. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:46, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Created new consumers, and tested, and it works now. Thanks everyone.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 06:20, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• Just a note for future searchers: botpasswords and/or oauth consumer rights settings don't "give" you the permissions - they "restrict" the actions that can be used when authenticating that way. The account used must actually have the permission or it will still be refused. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:38, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

51.171.156.10

[begin text copied from WP:AN]

I've just blocked this IP for vandalism after warnings and while I was blocking a popup popped into my screen saying You are blocking a sensitive IP address belonging to the UK Parliament. Please be sure to notify the Wikimedia Foundation Communications Committee immediately. I don't see the IP on the WP:SIP list nor WHOIS data consistent with the warning. What is going on? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:11, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

That IP appears to geolocate to Eircom, county Sligo, and I'm pretty sure the UK Parliament doesn't operate from there ;-) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 22:27, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

But it's unusual, as well as undesirable, for a popup to say it is the UK Parliament (at Special:Block/51.171.156.10). Maybe someone at WP:VPT knows how it works. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:31, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Curious. WP:SIP doesn't mention 51.x.x.x as a sensitive IP. Bug perhaps? --Majora (talk) 22:33, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Alright, the popup is operated by MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js; it's that page which needs to be fixed, but it's all black magic to me and I know about the tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:38, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

[end text copied from WP:AN] Nyttend (talk) 22:40, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

This appears to be coming from MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js. There are a lot of regexes at the bottom of the page used to match IP addresses, and it looks like this particular one is wrong or out of date. The regex for the UK parliament that was triggered this time is /\b(51(\.([01]?\d\d?|2(5[0-5]|[0-4]\d))){2}|194.60.\d[0-5]?)\.([01]?\d\d?|2(5[0-5]|[0-4]\d))\b/. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:27, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

The code is marked as being maintained by User:East718, so they should know how to fix it. Or if anyone knows what IP ranges the UK Parliament uses, I can have a go at fixing it myself. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:59, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Try [4] and [5], and the table at Wikipedia:Blocking_IP_addresses#Sensitive due to public relations implications --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Aha, WP:SIP was linked above, which says that it's 194.60.0.0/18. That's in the regex already, but I'm not sure where the part starting with 51 comes from. The regex above matches anything in 51.0.0.0 - 51.255.255.255 or 194.60.0.0 - 194.60.95.255 (and there are a few sub-ranges left out of the latter range). — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:18, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• More of a headache is that the values on this list appear to have forked, see:

1. Wikipedia:Blocking_IP_addresses#Sensitive_IP_addresses
2. Template:Sensitive IP addresses
3. MediaWiki:Blockiptext
4. MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js

Now it is less of a "how" to fix it, but a "what is the appropriate value" problem. I've contacted ComCom to see if they have a current, master, list. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:12, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

meta:Communications_committee/Notifications#Current_sensitive_IP.27s_list message left. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I sent a second request on their noticeboard, no answer - they have a mailing list too, I can try that later. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:55, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Message left for User talk:Mdennis (WMF) as well - I'm not even sure that ComCom list is current - if there are still "sensitive IP addresses" that the foundation cares about, I've got to imagine they are wider reaching than just the English Wikipedia. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:07, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it would be best to have one master list which we can query for all related templates and JavaScript. Otherwise we might find this scenario occurring quite regularly. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:21, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• I wrote that script but don't think I've maintained the actual list in around eight years, no idea why my name's still on it haha. The code matches the following IP ranges: 194.60.0.0/20 (not exact but it gets the job done without problems) and 51.0.0.0/8. I went through the history of WP:IPB and didn't find anything around June 2008 with the latter range (since it was introduced here), but googling reveals that it was a large block of IP addresses formerly used by the UK government that was partially sold off in May 2015. Making matters weirder is the fact that the UK government never assigned an autonomous system number to it in the first place, which means my adding it to the template in the first place was erroneous, but didn't actually do any harm until around a year ago. — east718 | talk | 01:32, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

  I've removed the outdated range from MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js. — east718 | talk | 01:41, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• We need some master template that lists all sensitive IP addresses and is transcluded on all relevant pages; I'd probably repurpose Template:Sensitive IP addresses and transclude it on the relevant pages. But I don't think a JavaScript readable list can also be human readable, so the sysop.js page will need its own list still.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 05:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

  You could do something like list the IP ranges in a Lua data module, then use another Lua module to convert them to human-readable format for the templates, and to JSON for JavaScript. But even better would be something in a MediaWiki message which is centralised for all wikis, not just enwiki. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:10, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: I don't know anything about Lua to write such a thing, unfortunately. I am guessing something like Module:Sensitive IP addresses and Module:Sensitive IP addresses/list for the module that does the conversion and the list, respectively? A MediaWiki message may be another option but it would have to be per language domain, I believe - different language regions have different sensitive IP addresses.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 05:53, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

• Update, ComCom is still reviewing this meta:Communications_committee/Notifications#Current_sensitive_IP.27s_list to determine if there is a WMF requirement anymore. If not, we may still want a list of flagged addresses here on enwiki that our project considers sensitive; it does not appear there is any resistance to having lists or notification requirements - but I think we should have a semi-stable source somewhere. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:58, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Where do the images come from on https://www.wikipedia.org/?

This has probably been asked before but the archive search function is just not working for me (which is kinda funny seeing as this question is about the search function). Anyways, when you type in an article name on the main wikipedia.org splash page, images come up with the list of possible matches. Where do these images come from? How are they chosen? Is it WikiData? Is it just the first image on a page that gets displayed? I know the code to that page is on meta but I don't know HTML enough to discern if the answer is in there somewhere. Clarification would be appreciated and I thought here would have better answers than the help desk. Thanks! --Majora (talk) 04:04, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Majora: When you type into the search box, the page queries the MediaWiki API for the Wikipedia corresponding to the language that is selected in the dropdown menu. The query contains the pageimages property, which gives you the main image for the page. The algorithm that decides this image comes from mw:Extension:PageImages. It looks at all the images on a page and gives them a score for things like how far up the page they are, what size they are, whether they are on the image blacklist, and whether they are freely licensed. The image with the highest score is selected to be passed to the API. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:03, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: Well that is far more complicated than I thought it would be. Thanks for the explanation. That clears up a lot. --Majora (talk) 23:03, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

A2. They come from Free media repository (Commons wiki). To search the media archives for, say, violin, use any search box on any page, and specify the File namespace: File: violin. Those search results are thumbnails from the media repository. (Without the File namespace, they don't show images.) Click on an interesting search result, then click on View on Commons. Note the URL change. There you can use that search box, and their categories to find comparable media files. See Help:Searching for how to search (and the draft for details) categories using the Category namespace, and the incategory search parameter. — Cpiral§Cpiral 03:02, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Need technical help

I want that the my page background should not be white. I want to it be Silver or Dark Gray.

Can anyone edit these pages to change color?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Rambo_X-Terminator/vector.css&action=edit&redlink=1

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Rambo_X-Terminator/vector.js&action=edit&redlink=1

--Rambo X-Terminator (talk) 10:12, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Try this in your CSS:

.mw-body {background: silver;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 12:09, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter:, Thanks after doing that the main article background has become silver. But, the upper margin, the left margin is still white. Is there any way those two can also have silver background?

This is the snapshot: https://postimg.org/image/qebqzfs47/

Rambo X-Terminator (talk) 12:47, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

You'll want body {background: silver} too —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 12:59, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Crh23: Thanks, now the left margin also has become silver.

This is how I can see pages now,

https://postimg.org/image/f6sihq0lz/

But, the upper part of the page above the article title is still white. I hope it can be changed like these two.

Rambo X-Terminator (talk) 13:19, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-28

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

Recent changes

• A new image scaler fixed a number of bugs for showing SVG files. Some new problems turned up. [6][7][8]
• Notifications are grouped by types. They are now counted by number of notifications and not by unread groups. That change may increase the number of notifications displayed. The earlier way of counting was often incorrect. Unread notifications will also be displayed first. [9][10][11]
• Special:Notifications now has a maximum width for the notifications list on desktop computers. This allows long titles and descriptions to be cut properly. Notifications are now also better parsed. [12][13][14]

Problems

• On 5 July Wikimedia Commons had problems and could not be edited for 20 minutes. For a short while after that the recent changes log and some gadgets were not working properly. It affected administrative actions on other projects too. [15]
• Users who have multiple unread notifications can mark them as read by visiting Special:Notifications page on their wiki.

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 July. It will be on all wikis from 14 July (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Editor analysis tools in nav bar

Resolved

Until recently I had a set of links in my nav bar (by the edit buttons, twinkle menu, move links, etc.) that would appear on user pages that pointed to tools like X!'s edit counter, non-automated edit counter, requests for permissions, and so on. About a week ago these went away, and I can't figure out why (I'm sure I'm missing something simple) and I can't remember how I got them in the first place. Where did they come from, where did they go? Thanks —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 16:56, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

What browser (including version) are you using? Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 17:06, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Crh23: See if you have the gadget disabled. - NQ (talk) 17:08, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Perfect, that was it (I had checked the gadgets, but didn't see it). Must have disabled it accidentally. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 17:22, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Last chance

An API change is scheduled for tomorrow (less than 24 hours from now). Bots and user scripts (e.g., Huggle 2) will not be able to use http://. They must use https:// Please read the details: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2016-May/085618.html

You can read the list of known affected bots/script users at phab:T136674. There may be more, especially for bots or scripts that have not been used during the last 6 to 8 weeks. If you are worried about this, and you see this message in the next few hours, then you may want to consider running your bot or script now, so that you're "caught up" before this change happens early tomorrow, just in case you run into difficulties.

If you are affected and you need information to figure out which piece is using http://, then the devs can give you a user agent string and similar details from the logs. Tell me (or BBlack (WMF)) if you need more details about your bot or script.

Good luck, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) and BBlack (WMF): Please mention this at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard, an other likely place for affected users to go. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:52, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I did the BOTNs (all of them, not just enwiki's) first.  ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Authorlink problem

In this edit here I introduced authorlinks to Clifford Longley, but they do not appear to have generated the wikilinks that they should. Have I missed something obvious or is there a problem? DuncanHill (talk) 21:39, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: The cite template used is Template:Cite newspaper The Times, which does not seem to support the 'authorlink' parameter. - NQ (talk) 21:48, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Ah thanks, not encountered that before. Got around it by linking in the authorfield. DuncanHill (talk) 21:54, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Further to my query above, could someone add support for the authorlink field to Template:Cite newspaper The Times please? DuncanHill (talk) 21:57, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

The specific-source templates don't have a ton of parameters like the general templates. You can just make a piped link in the author parameter like |author=[[Clifford Longley|Longley, Clifford]]. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:46, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I know how to add a link when there isn't an authorlink field available, I did mention that I had done that. Can someone edit the Times template to make the authorlink parameter available? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DuncanHill (talk • contribs) 14:41, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

some kind of new bug somewhere in the "hidden begin / hidden end" templates?

There looks like some kind of new bug in {{hidden}}, although the template hasn't been edited since 2014 so it must be somewhere further up the line, where you'd think it'd have been notice, but it's been going on for a couple days, so I guess not.

"hidden begin -- hidden end" used to work great

They really did!

But now...

• using col begin

• and col end

• inside the hidden part

Really

• seems to

• mess

• it up

See? It treats {{Col-end}} like a {{hidden end}} (it never did before) and on top of that it causes the text after the {{Col-end}} to be center-justified (and it never did that before either).

And I checked on earlier versions of my page. It's not my code. Something's changed, but how do I find out what?

And it's putting this text (right here) above some of the text inside the hidden section, even though I'm writing it below in the source... it's really messed up. Herostratus (talk) 06:02, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

It appears that the recent changes to {{col-begin}} (see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2016 July 2#Template:Multicol) required changes to {{col-end}} which in turn had repercussions for {{col-begin-small}} that were not addressed by BU Rob13 (talk · contribs) or Frietjes (talk · contribs). There's a <div> / </div> imbalance. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:06, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I have added [16] an initial <div> to {{col-begin-small}} like in Special:Diff/729213165 to match the ending </div> in Special:Diff/729213521. I added a missing {{col-end}} to the above example which looks right now. So does User:Herostratus after a purge. Other affected pages may need purging to fix errors faster than when the job queue gets to them, but in many cases it appears to not have caused problems. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:25, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Not quite sure why I was pinged; I didn't make any edits beyond removing the tfm notices from those templates once I closed it. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 13:32, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Appears to be fixed and thank you, everything all Sir Garnet now! Herostratus (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: You were notified because you closed the TfD, and also listed the templates in the holding cell with the somewhat vague instruction "and related templates". I think that it would have been better to specify those templates, so that the person who actually performed the merge could do so without leaving a problem situation. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:03, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

The related templates were all listed in the linked discussion, which a merger must read in order to know what's being merged. Additionally, this error was caused by the introduction of div tags in {{Col-begin}} etc., not a merge. As best I can tell, the added div tags didn't bring this any closer to the merge; I'm not sure why they cited the deletion discussion. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:12, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

History splits for files - problems

So, at times it happens that people upload more than one image to a file page and that these images are unrelated. These are then tagged {{Split media}}, which recently was rewritten by Sfan00 IMG to recommend a WP:HISTSPLIT procedure based on concerns about losing the upload history raised in a TfD discussion by Stefan2. I've been performing the procedure a few times but I've seen that the vast majority of media requiring splitting tend to have a few issues:

• The page history does not always record an upload event. In that case, a history split may result in a file which has an upload visible in the page but no page history showing such an upload.
• Intervening edits between uploads by third editors, or a reupload by another editor, mean that if a history split is done, the edits to the file text (namely, license templates and description) end up being misattributed to the more recent uploader if the previous history is split off.

Because of these issues, I wonder if the recommendation of using history splitting is in fact a good one, and how to address such problems if a history split is warranted anyway.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:47, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

• This is the process used on Commons and the same process has typically been used on Wikipedia too. If you are afraid of losing important attribution of revisions of the text page, you could ask an importer or steward to duplicate the text page by exporting it as an XML file and then importing it somewhere else in the file namespace. You will then have two identical copies of the same text page history, I think.

Mediawiki makes a null edit to the page when you upload a new revision of a file. If the file was uploaded more than a few years ago, there is no such null edit. Is there a problem if no "upload edit" is included in the page history?

If the uploader hasn't made any edits to the page (other than an automatic null edit resulting from the uploader uploading the file), then the uploader hasn't provided any source or licensing information other than information which has been provided in the upload log summary. In such situations, the file typically needs to be nominated for deletion (instead of being split) due to lack of sufficient information, although there could be some situations where the log summary or the uploader's userpage or another page contains sufficient information. If, after a split, the file information page ends up having copyright tags or other information which refers to another file, then you need to change this information on the page and note in the edit summary why you are changing this information. --Stefan2 (talk) 11:54, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Technically, losing attribution is not the problem as much as edits being misattributed, which is also an issue when one history splits a file where not all uploads have a null edit. I've nominated some files for discussion when the intermediary uploads had questionable copyright status but that is the exception more than the rule.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

converting red links

I,m an active wikipedian on urdu and english wiki i mostly translate pages from eng to urdu wiki so i have to to copy articles and then paste on urdu wiki ,when i paste eng link ,so it will convert into red link,Now my question is that is there any shortcut or tool that i can convert these link into existing relative urdu articles with out wasting time in searching then again copy paste.--Baltistani (talk) 13:34, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

The bigger problem you may be having with copy paste is loss of attribution, you may want to discuss, on urwiki, enabling enwiki->urwiki tranwiki imports. Then you can import the enwiki page along with attribution directly (you would still need to translate). This can be requested via phabricator if not already enabled. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:08, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

The full instructions don't mention a tool. Even if someone could write some SQL using multilingual tables to generate a list of titles here (English) that already existed there (Urdu), you'd still have to match each redlink to that list manually. Cheers! — Cpiral§Cpiral 02:13, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

You probably want the new mw:Content translation tool, which is the last item in w:ur:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. User:Amire80 can answer any questions you have about it. I think you will find that it is much easier than what you've been doing. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:11, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

thanks all for this response i just have resolved my problem by enabling a tool in preference.--Baltistani (talk) 06:52, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Edit not shewing on watchlist

This edit I made to an article on my watchlist is not shewing up when I look at my watchlist. Any ideas why? DuncanHill (talk) 15:55, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Do any of your own edits show up on your watchlist? None of my edits show up on my watchlist as I have checked the box to not show them, I really don't need to see what I have edited). -- GB fan 16:00, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hello DuncanHill. The edit does show on you contributions page. Are you sure that you have added the article to your watchlist? I can't check that but if the star next to the search box is blue then it is on your list and something weird is going on. Cheers. MarnetteD|Talk 16:04, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes it is on my watchlist, it has been on my watchlist for years, and the edit I made was in response to some obvious vandalism appearing in my watchlist. And yes, I do normally see my edits on my watchlist. DuncanHill (talk) 16:06, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I see the same problem after watchlisting it, only this edit shown for today. No clue why as I see edits made later. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:09, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Mandruss, that's the edit that I then reverted. I saw it in my watchlist then, but now I see nothing. DuncanHill (talk) 16:19, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Hmmm, well I tried unwatchlisting and then rewatchlisting it and it still didn't appear. Then I made a small edit, and that, latest, edit is now shewing. Very strange. DuncanHill (talk) 16:29, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

I also have had Bodmin on my watchlist for ages, and the last edit that showed was that by TROAN LTD. Duncan's revert doesn't appear. I've now made a test edit to the page which appears in the watchlist, as does Duncan's second edit. Just one edit missing then - a glitch in the database?  —SMALLJIM  16:36, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Now seeing one edit for each of Smalljim, DuncanHill, and TROAN LTD. I use the watchlist options that show only the usernames and number of edits, btw. I guess DH's first edit is lost forever as to watchlist, although shown in page history and contribs. Suggest letting it go as a one-off mystery unless seen again. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:57, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Go to Special:Preferences, then select the "Watchlist" tab, check the box under "Advanced options" that says "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent", and finally click "Save". GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:14, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia.org portal update

Hello,

The Wikimedia Foundation Portal team has recently completed an A/B test on the Wikipedia.org portal. These tests were to see if a new design would be easier to navigate. This design added a dropdown that contained all the languages by article count.

The test results found that visitors were more likely to click through to a link. With the new design there was a lower amount of 'non-action' on the page. We also tested the page with many Wikipedia users. We received comments that the new page design was pleasing and less cluttered.

With this information, we would like to promote this into production on the Wikipedia.org portal. We would like to ask the community for feedback and suggestions.

Thank you and cheers from the Discovery Portal team! CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Template documentation

I'm updating the template documentation for {{Series overview}}, and I'm adding the new documentation test cases. Typically, I've always had two copies of an example, one in "pre" tags and under a collapsible section, then then the second instance of the code being the actual example. However, that means having to update two instances of every example every time a change occurs or a fix is implemented. Is there a template for doing this with only one instance of the code, like {{Test case nowiki}}, but without the headers or second test case? Or should I just make my own template to do this? Alex|The|Whovian^? 09:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

At WT:CS1, Trappist the monk (talk · contribs) frequently uses a template called {{cite compare}} which passes one set of params into both the live and sandbox versions of a template. Clearly this is not directly suitable for your needs, but may provide ideas. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:51, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

AlexTheWhovian, it would be great if you would pick up where Module:DemoTemplate left off. — Cpiral§Cpiral 19:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@AlexTheWhovian: It shouldn't be hard to extend Module:Template test case to do what you need. I think the easiest way would be to add two new arguments, |showheader= and |showtemplate2=, and then create a new wrapper template where |showheader=no and |showtemplate2=no are the default. Any suggestions for the template name? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:37, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@AlexTheWhovian: I've now implemented |showheader=no and |showtemplate2=no in Module:Template test case. You can test them out using {{test case nowiki}}. As for the template name with these arguments as default, how about Template:Nowiki template demo? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:15, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Brilliant. Thanks for that! (I reverted to my default method of duplicating the cases when I updated the documentation). And Template:Nowiki template demo works perfectly fine for me. Alex|The|Whovian^? 03:17, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

@AlexTheWhovian: {{Nowiki template demo}} is now working, and I've changed the module to not require the __TEMPLATENAME__ magic word if there is only one template being displayed. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:48, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect protection template?

Why is Pokémon GO showing up in Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates? – nyuszika7h (talk) 12:18, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

And apparently Pokémon Go is, too. nyuszika7h (talk) 12:20, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Is it to do with the move protection? —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 13:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Paine Ellsworth might have some idea — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:04, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

It seems to happen when {{#invoke:Protection banner|main}} is used on a semi-protected page where the protection expires later today, so maybe something is only checking the date and not time of day. I don't know Lua. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:11, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing, so I removed the pp template from the article and it disappeared from the category. Can't do same with the redirect since protection notification is hard-wired through the This is a redirect template. The redirect should fall out of the category on its own later today.  Wikipedian Sign Language Paine  14:22, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

PS. Have added a note to the category page about the This is a redirect transclusions. PS added by  Paine  

The redir was still listed in the cat page when I checked just now, although the cat wasn't shown at the bottom of the redir page. A WP:NULLEDIT to the redir page has caused it to be no longer listed at the cat page. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I had tried that earlier - perhaps it was the protection expiring? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:12, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I don't have time to check properly now, but I think the reason might be an invalid reason parameter. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:48, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Pokémon Go is back in the category – it was reprotected with an expiry of 14 July 2016 at 20:15. I hesitate to remove the pp template again as right now it's only 01:31, 14 July 2016 (UTC).  Wikipedian Sign Language Paine  01:31, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Ok, I've found the problem, and it's got nothing to do with the reason parameter. The problem is that Module:Effective protection expiry returns a date in YYYY-MM-DD format, which is converted to Unix time by Module:Protection banner. The original YYYY-MM-DD format doesn't have the time of day in it, so when it is compared to the current time in Unix time (up to the current second), the loss of precision causes the expiry to be interpreted as earlier than the current time, even though it is really later - just as PrimeHunter thought. @Cenarium: would it break anything if Module:Effective protection expiry was altered to output the expiry time as well as the date? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:00, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Changing the default state of a navbox

How do I edit the code of the navbox Template:Halcyoninae to specify the default state as collapsed rather than autocollapse? The Navbox is large and intrusive. I tried changing the line in the code

|state = {{{state|autocollapse}}}

to

|state = {{{state|collapsed}}}

but this didn't appear to change the behaviour. I could hard wire the template with

| state=collapsed

but then editors wouldn't be able to override the default state when the template in invoked in an article. Thanks. Aa77zz (talk) 13:07, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

|state = {{{state|collapsed}}}

in [17] is correct. If you didn't see it collapsed then maybe you viewed it on a page that needed a purge to update after the template edit, or already set the state parameter, or maybe you used a browser without JavaScript. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:24, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

"Purge" was the problem. I've been caught by this before ... Many thanks. Aa77zz (talk) 13:35, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Alerts/notices

Recently I noticed that talk page messages were moved to the red "Alerts" notification box and thanks to the blue "Notices" one, and I appreciated that change, but it seems it was reverted (and "Notices" is now "Messages" again). Is the WMF doing some sort of A/B testing? This is just going to confuse users. Either way, I didn't see any announcement about this change or its reversal. nyuszika7h (talk) 14:14, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

See #Notification issue. The MediaWiki version was rolled back from 1.28.0-wmf.9 to 1.28.0-wmf.8 yesterday due to phab:T119736: mw:MediaWiki 1.28/Roadmap. Special:Version confirms we are currently on 1.28.0-wmf.8. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

The alerts move is listed in mw:MediaWiki 1.28/wmf.9#Echo:

• git #11aef8f5 - Re-categorize notifications: (Task T123018)

mw:MediaWiki 1.28/wmf.9 was linked when the version was announced in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 147#Tech News: 2016-27. The alerts move was mentioned earlier under Future changes in Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 147#Tech News: 2016-26. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:41, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Who wants to be a MediaWiki hacker?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T139702

I'd like a new feature for the Global User Contributions tool. The goal is to be able to filter by dates, e.g., to find out if/where the user edited this year or this month, rather than to find out where the user edited ever. I will use this mostly to figure out whether an editor is still active anywhere, but I think that global sysops and other people will use it when dealing with cross-wiki spam and similar problems.

Doing this requires (I'm told) basic PHP coding skills and a basic understanding of SQL for querying the wiki database. If you've never worked on MediaWiki stuff before, then mw:How to become a MediaWiki hacker has some basic information that may be relevant.

The code is in Gerrit:

• https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/project:labs/tools/guc,n,z
• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/diffusion/TGUC/browse/
• https://github.com/wikimedia/labs-tools-guc

and there is some information in the feature request that I filed in Phab. Also, I think I can promise a reasonably prompt code review for whoever wants to tackle it. Is anyone interested? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Getting random pages by size

I know how to get a random page, and I know how to get pages in a specific size. But how can I get a random page in a specific size? I want to list pages from different wiki's, so I cant use 'apfrom=...' because I don't know the target language letters. I just want a random page above a certain minimum size and below a certain maximum size. How can I get it? רן כהן (talk) 05:32, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Given how the random pages are generated, I don't think this is possible. At least not directly, and not efficiently. Darkdadaah (talk) 13:35, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Edit count reduced

At the end of a session I check my edit count, just to see how many edits I've knocked off and to get an idea of the ground I've covered. The last time I checked a couple of days ago my edit count was over 53,400. After checking just a few minutes ago it's down to 53,044. Some how, about 400 edits just sort of 'disappeared'. No big deal I suppose, because my actual edits are still with us. Any ideas? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 09:28, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

It's probably a phab:T138967 issue of some sort. If someone can determine exactly what's wrong on the database level, they should report it there. Anomie⚔ 11:38, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

User talk:Cyberpower678#Adminstats losing edits may be related. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie and Redrose64: -- Okay, don't quite know what happened, but my edit count is back up where it belongs. (Ghost in the machine?) Thanks to any and all who may have solved this problem. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:01, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Anomie and Redrose64: Well, the problem is back. I informed Cyberpower678 and was told it was an issue with Labs' DB cluster, period -- whoever they may be. Don't even know how to contact them. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 07:12, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Edit counter still acting funny

The edit counter is at it again. Yesterday I reported a problem (posted above) -- the edit-counts were below par, but this morning when I checked things were back to normal. Just checked it again and my edit-count is even lower than before. Could someone report this to the people who manage this thing? Thanx. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:33, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

 Done    Just left User talk:cyberpower678 a message about the problem. Hopefully this will help.
Is anyone else experiencing this problem?-- Gwillhickers (talk) 01:03, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Cyberpower678 was unable to help and deferred me to something called "Labs' DB cluster", which I've never heard of and don't know how to contact. Anyone? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 07:16, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

HELP Welcome - {{Human timeline}} template?

HELP Welcome - re {{Human timeline}} template - PROBLEM => in the "present template code", "bar8" (re "Homo habilis" which appears between "-2.800 to -1.500" mya in the fossil record) ("bar8-to= -1.500") should overlap "bar9" (re "Homo erectus" which appears between "-1.800 to -0.070" mya in the fossil record) in the template timeline in some way - but goes to "-1.800" instead (due to "bar9-from=-1.800"?) - (Note: also related - "Neanderthal" appears between "-0.600 to -0.040" mya in the fossil record & template timeline - as well as - "Homo sapiens idaltu", from "-0.160 to 0.000" mya) - in any case - any help sorting out this code would be appreciated - Thanks in advance for any consideration with this issue - and - Enjoy! ) Drbogdan (talk) 14:43, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Take a look at {{Human timeline/sandbox}}. Is that more like what you want? It's not perfect, but I tried to make the different bars visually distinct. You can see the code differences with this link. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:17, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Thank you *very much* for your efforts - they're *greatly* appreciated - my ideal (which may, or may not, be possible) would be to extend a narrow vertical (on the far left side) from the present "-1.800" of the "Homo habilis" area upward to "-1.500" *into* the "Homo erectus" area - see => "similar area HERE which needs to be "moved" rightward *from* the outside on the left side *to within* the left side instead if possible" - so far, I've not been able to do this with the coding - in any case - Thanks again for your efforts - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 23:38, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

The Night Manager

Currently, the Episodes section of The Night Manager (miniseries) displays the following error:

Lua error in Module:Episode_table at line 83: malformed pattern (ends with '%').

I have no idea how to fix this. If someone with more technical expertise could fix this, it would be greatly appreciated. Also I apologize if this is the wrong place to put this. JudgeRM (talk to me) 17:27, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I suspect that this Lua-isation is to blame. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:21, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Seems like JohnBlackburne has fixed the issue.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:33, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Creating a new page: diff not available II

I'm sure that Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 127#Creating a new page: diff not available got fixed - it's broken again. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:48, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

New maintenance category: "Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags"

Attention gnomes!

I just created Category:Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags after seeing it in a redlink at the bottom of a page. It had 227 items when I created it, and 312 now, which usually means that something changed somewhere (in the Wikimedia code base, I believe) that is tagging articles with this new maintenance category as they are edited or processed by the job queue.

See this discussion from two months ago, which I think is related to this new category.

If I've done something wrong, feel free to fix, revert, trout, whatever. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Looks good. Maybe MediaWiki-added tracking categories should be hidden by default when they haven't been created yet. Some foreign languages now have ugly red category names displayed on articles (in English since the name hasn't been translated yet). Current example: pt:Paulo Magalhaes. The category name is determined by MediaWiki:Deprecated-self-close-category. Category:Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags sounds OK.

Module:TreeChart has 3020 transclusions and is responsible for many of the pages in the category. It's called by {{chart}}. Special:ExpandTemplates shows {{#invoke:TreeChart|main| }} produces code with <td colspan="2" rowspan="2" style="height:2em;width:2em" />. Can a Lua coder look at it? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:48, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

It looks like Module:TreeChart/data may produce the offending code. A line near the end says renderedCells:tag('td', {selfClosing = true}):css(v3.style or {}):attr(v3.attr or {}). – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:44, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Where is the function renderedCells:tag defined? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:57, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

"renderedcells" appears to be a function defined two lines above the code I quoted. It calls mw.html.create(). See the documentation. Maybe The Mol Man or Jackmcbarn will know how to fix this one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:39, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Done. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:56, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

^He fixed it. I used self-closing tags because why not. It reduced the size post-expansion. Had no clue this was deprecated in HTML5. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ moluɐɯ 22:14, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

There's another module/template on Andy Warhol producing it. --Izno (talk) 21:44, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

In Andy Warhol, the last ref in the Music sub-section is a {{cite web}} containing |journal=''[[HUMO]]'' magazine and that parameter is italicised in the cite templates - there's a function in Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities called safe_for_italics that inserted a <span /> to prevent four consecutive apostrophes from occurring, this would be interpreted as three then one - boldface and literal apostrophe. This edit should fix it. Also hundreds of others. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:08, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Categories can't be hidden by default when their cat pages haven't been created yet, because the mechanism by which they're hidden is by placing the behaviour switch __HIDDENCAT__ on the cat page. So the cat page must exist in order for the cat to be hidden. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:15, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I know that's how it works now. I was thinking of a change in the MediaWiki software, not something we can do here. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Here's an error in a mass message that someone could fix with AWB. Change "</big/>" to "</big>". – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:58, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Are the pages containing <br /> added to this tracking category? And if yes, should they be then changed to <br>? AFAIK HTML supports both of those tags? --Stryn (talk) 14:25, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Html 5 allows <br> to be self-closing, so a slash there is fine. --Izno (talk) 14:34, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Why are pages using <br /> (at least on sr.wiki) still added to the tracking category Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags? Example: sr:Проширени периодни систем. Note: Maybe it is other reason why is this page in particular added to the tracking cat; could you explain why is this happening?

Also, if there are some modules etc. that should be implemented on other wikis such sr.wiki so this category functions as it should, please tell. --Obsuser (talk) 14:41, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Wait a day or two to see if this change affects your category. Then start opening pages, see if /> shows up in the source; if it's an html tag which can't use that, replace/remove it. If it doesn't show up, it's probably in a module or template somewhere, and finding that is on you. --Izno (talk) 15:21, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

I've seen some module on en.wiki and discussions on how to get <br /> etc. accepted no matter that they contain /> (these are self-closing and accepted in HTML5). Is there anything additional that should be changed/made [such as the change you mentioned] in order for this categorization to function properly on other Wikis, or all of this is solved elswehere (outside of local Wikipedias such as sr.wiki) because category is a Mediawiki category? --Obsuser (talk) 17:24, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

<br /> and some others like <ref ... /> are valid and do not cause the category. All pages in the category for a specific wiki are caused by invalid self-closing tags on a page somewhere at that wiki, but it may often be another page which is transcluded by a page in the category. sr:Проширени периодни систем transcludes sr:Шаблон:Periodic table (32 columns, micro)/119+ which has many invalid <div ... />. They can be replaced by <div ...></div>. The categorization is made by MediaWiki and works as intended at sr. The only thing for the local editors to do (which can be a lot of work) is find and fix the invalid self-closing tags. the change you linked is an example of doing that. Special:Expandtemplates at the local wiki can be of help in finding transcluded cases. Actually, there is one more thing you can do: A local admin can rename the tracking category in the local MediaWiki:Deprecated-self-close-category. If you don't create that message at sr then it may suddenly get a Serbian name when somebody adds a Serbian translation to the MediaWiki software itself. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:01, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Here's a fun one: File:Smash_the_House_logo.jpg. --Izno (talk) 16:16, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Caused by {{OTRS received}}, now fixed. Reach Out to the Truth 16:36, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

If someone wants to tell me why my talk page is in this category that would be great. Even better if they can fix the problem. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 18:48, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Common non-void elements (div, span)

The category seems to have a lot of pages caused by

• <div id="divLabel" />
• <span id="spanLabel" />

Do we have a good standard for how we want these remediated? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:22, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

WP:ANCHOR says: code <span id="anchor_name">...</span>, or {{Anchor|anchor name}} (see {{Anchor}} syntax).

I don't know whether there is a reason to use a div instead of a span to make an anchor. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

OK the {{anchor}} template produces: <span id="VALUE"></span> (if expanded). — xaosflux ^Talk 01:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Self edit conflicts

Moved from WP:VPI

Is anyone else getting regular edit conflict with yourself and diffs of your own comment pre and post signature application? I get it in about one out of 10 talk edits. Is it just a problem with my signature or is this a general problem that can be fixed? TimothyJosephWood 23:07, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

I frequently get this when I "double click" the Return key to save my edit. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:34, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you mean by "pre and post signature application"? Don't you sign your comments before you post? And what "diffs of your own comment" are you talking about? Can you provide diffs of examples? Softlavender (talk) 16:56, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

• By the way, Timothyjosephwood, this should be at WP:VPT, as it's not an idea for something new, but rather a technical question. Softlavender (talk) 18:36, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Didn't know exactly where to post. I guess it's not really a diff, since edit conflicts don't create any permanent record. It's the pseudo-diff you get in an edit conflict, except both your text and the conflicting text is your own comment, one with "~~~~" and the other with "TimothyJosephWood". Not sure how else to explain it. I will try to screen shot next time it happens. Or maybe I should sit on it and post over at VPT when I get a screen shot. TimothyJosephWood 18:50, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Softlavender: Here you go. TimothyJosephWood 20:02, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

If you make an edit, save it, use the "Back" button to return to the editing window, make a small change and try to save again, you will get an edit conflict with yourself. If you have saved an edit, you need a fresh editing session - one where you explicitly clicked an "edit" link after the last save to that page. So use the "Back" button sufficient times to get to a view of the page which does not have an editing window, then go for "edit". --Redrose64 (talk) 07:57, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

login problems--device limit? or new additional cookies required?

My Windows10 laptop got stolen on May 21, so I bought this minilaptop, which also runs Windows10 but has a smaller screen, less memory, etc. I can login into wikipedia from this machine, my desktop, and my old, reliable Windows 7 laptop (which is missing a cover for one key since my dog pranced on it). However, for the last month or so, I've wanted to use my old Windows8 laptop for wikipedia editing at various reference libraries. All the machines have all security updates installed before I start editing wikipedia; and I generally use firefox as a browser. I don't want to update either my Win7 laptop or my Win8 laptop to Windows10 because of a lot of problems with that new OS on that stolen laptop, my converted desktop machine and this minilaptop. However, for at least the last month, I cannot log into my wikipedia account on that Win8 laptop--it gives me an error message about possible hijacking, so any edits I perform on it (like on Charles R. Fenwick) don't get attributed to me. The credit part doesn't annoy me, but sometimes it's nice to be able to keep track of my contributions, particularly when coordinating several related articles. (FYI, it was running firefox 46 and now is running firefox 47, as is this machine). Now, that coordination can't happen unless I go home and remember to do some more editing of the same articles on my desktop machine.

I know using many computers sounds extravagant, but they are all cheap machines, and I've chosen that route since someone threatened/bragged about cyberstalking me a couple of years ago--the multiple devices provide some additional backup. The Win8 laptop's refusal to loginto my wikipedia account (tho I can still edit anonymously) has me wondering whether wikipedia has a numerical device login limit which I've now bumped up against. Unfortunately, some of the threatened cyberstalking seems also to occur after I login or post to wikipedia (calls from anonymous callers or illegal robocallers within a half hour of posting on wikipedia--2 days ago my new phone got an amber alert shortly after I started attributed editing on this minilaptop). From my contributions list (contrary to the error message), I've seen no evidence that I've been hijacked. If there is a device limit, someone needs to take the stolen Windows10 laptop off the devices attributed to me, so I can use the bigger screen Win8 laptop.

FYI, I tried posting a shorter version of this at the Teahouse this morning from that machine, and an editor suggested posting here. I've looked in these archives, and seen suggestions from a couple of years ago that it might be a cookie problem. However, I think I did attributed editing on that Win8 laptop several months ago, and the login problem's recent. Plus, now I'm in a public library and apparently vainly trying to download Win10 updates on this native Win10 device (although its update history says all 4 successfully downloaded and installed two days ago--as I noted above, all my Win10 devices are problematic--and this machine doesn't seem to have an option to recheck for updates though it's been hanging on 0% download for over an hour). Thus, I can't check cookies on that bigger screen laptop, which right now is virus scanning at home (because it was seemingly vainly checking for updates for over an hour this morning).

No malware has ever been found on either the Win8 laptop nor this native Win10 mini-laptop (nor the stolen laptop, if it makes any difference), although some might've been found on my desktop computer over a month ago (trouble is, its location wouldn't show, so the malware alert was either bogus or the malware was completely removed before I gave permission). Any suggestions would be appreciated--I presume you're not going to suggest I give into the cyberbully and stop editing wikipedia:)!Jweaver28 (talk) 21:07, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Now the malware scan has finished (again no malware) and I brought the Win8 laptop to the library, along with the Win7 laptop that will log in. Seems the Win8 laptop is setup to accept cookies from wikipedia.org, but has none. By contrast, and to my chagrin, the Win7 laptop has been accepting cookies since the firefox upgrade, and has cookies from IMHO way too many sites, including wikidata.org (now allowed along with en.wikipedia.org and en.wikidata.org but to no effect), wikinew.org, wikiquote.org, wikisource.org and wikiversity.org and their en. subdomains), none of which I've consulted. I don't know if wikipedia has also partnered with advertising.com and other sites, but I'm now removing all cookies from that machine. I feel stupid for not noticing the settings change and would like to know what cookies wikipedia actually requires and why the allowed cookies from wikipedia.org aren't showing.173.15.51.213 (talk) 01:53, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Orphan template not displaying

It displays when the date is July 2016, but not other dates. Example:

• No display
• Display

Odd.

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:14, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Would explain why none of those categories are dropping anymore. Doesn't show up outside of multiple anymore. Someone changed this back in February I think. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:20, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

The behaviour is documented at Template:Orphan#Visibility. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I see the change was made here in March 2014. We can discuss if we want that I guess at the template talk page. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:26, 15 July 2016 (UTC)