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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 72.43.99.146 (talk) at 15:48, 31 December 2016 (→‎Request change to "date" parameter of cite templates: If the date is correct, any acceptable format will do.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

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Failed to parse (MathML) for no apparent reason

For the past few months, the page Endogeneity (econometrics) has had an equation not displaying properly, citing the problem 

 Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "/mathoid/local/v1/":): E(z_{i}u_{i})={\frac {\gamma _{2}}{1-\gamma _{1}\gamma _{2}}}E(u_{i}u_{i})

The syntax was not problematic, and the old versions of the article containing the exact same code displayed the equation properly. Emptying the cache apparently solves the problem, but it does not give us a satisfying explanation, or a way to solve it in the future. When I write this message, the problem seems to have been fixed permanently, but since we don't know how, starting a discussion seemed appropriate. The page chemical equilibrium apparently had similar issues earlier this week. I don't understand the way equations are translated in images enough to make any kind of progress alone. Luis Goslin (talk) 16:16, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Physikerwelt is really good at figuring out these questions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 20 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Whatamidoing (WMF): I had a look at the linked pages, but I could not see anything suspicous. I have no idea what to do about a temporary problem, since I can not access the log files. For the future it would be good to capture a screenshot and record time and date so that someone with access to the WMF infrastrucutre (i.e. the services team) can have a look at the log files. I feel sorry that I can not provide better help at the moment.--Physikerwelt (talk) 08:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply, User:Physikerwelt. I understand the difficulty of dealing with temporary problems. I mainly posted this because it was typed before I noticed the problem was somehow resolved. I did take a screenshot, though. How and to whom can I send it to help ? I uploaded it on my user page, if someone wants to take a look. Luis Goslin (talk) 17:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Services is User:GWicke's team. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 22 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A similar error can be observed at the moment on the converse nonimplication article. If not, I uploaded another screenshot on my user page. Luis Goslin (talk) 01:42, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

e-mail gone mad

I have received THIS message over 20 times in the last several days. Though each time I have confirmed, in a day or so, it comes back. I don't believe the issue is on my end, as I have received WP mail recently. How do I make the notifications stop and get someone to actually fix the problem? Thanks! SusunW (talk) 16:19, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

THIS is not a message but a link which displays different things for different users. Special:EmailUser/SusunW says: "This user has not specified a valid email address", and I see no mail link at User:SusunW. Please clarify what the mails say, what you see at Special:ConfirmEmail, what you do and what happens when you do it. Is the problem that you get mails without doing anything, or that you cannot confirm your email address? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:30, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The message says "Confirm email address You must validate your email address in order to use email features. Click the button below to send a confirmation email to your address. Then, follow the instructions in the email. To check whether you have already confirmed, please see your preferences. A confirmation code has already been emailed to you; if you recently created your account, you may wish to wait a few minutes for it to arrive before trying to request a new code."
Then I get something like this in my e-mail: "Hello SusunW, Welcome to Wikipedia! You've joined the English-language version of the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. To confirm your email address, please open this URL in your browser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ConfirmEmail/<long string of characters here> This link expires at 12:41, 30 December 2016 (UTC)."
Which when I press on the link, I get a message in WP that says "Your email address has now been confirmed."
In a few hours, I will get yet another message that says confirm your e-mail and the whole process repeats. My e-mail works fine. I've had the account since the late 1980s. This happens every single time someone e-mails me for the first time with WP, so it isn't my system, I am fairly sure it is a WP issue. SusunW (talk) 18:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think your email address can get unconfirmed if BounceHandler detects that emails to you don't get delivered. This can an issue on the side of Wikipedia (if it's detecting this wrong for some reason), or on the side of your email provider (if they're in fact bouncing some emails but not other). Can you file a Phabricator task? Someone with access to server logs should be able to see what is happening. Matma Rex talk 01:10, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I have access to them myself, I nearly forgot. @SusunW: Your email provider is refusing to accept some automated email from Wikipedia (all of the bounced emails I see are Echo email notifications in HTML format). You might have run out of space in your inbox (try deleting some unneeded emails), or you might have enabled some weird overeager security/spam filters (if you changed any settings recently, try changing them back), or it might dislike HTML email (try switching "Email format" to "Plain text" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo), or it might be some general problem with your provider that affects all of its users. But this is really not my area of expertise. If nothing I suggested above helps, please file a task, so that someone who knows more about MediaWiki email stuff will investigate. Matma Rex talk 01:26, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Matma Rex Thanks! Totally weird but I have copies of identical e-mails in both my inbox and my spam folder. Go figure. At least now I know what to look for. Marked them all as not spam and edited the preferences. Hopefully that fixes the problem. Thanks again. SusunW (talk) 01:53, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Help with the appearance of my Contributions page

I think I know why my contributions page looks different but I want it back to its previous appearance please - can someone help? Please? I tried to translate a deletion discussion from the Swedish Wikipedia using the internal-tool and now I have these three icons at the top of my Contributions page - New Page / Upload media / Translation. I want my old (just my) Contributions page back. I find the icons to be distracting - please can someone tell me how to make them go away? If I want to do an upload, I go and do it. If I want to translate, I'll use an external tool next time. I don't need an icon for a long list of "New Pages" (Wanted Pages) that I'll never use. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 22:24, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Shearonink: This is probably the Content Translation tool, which you can turn off by going to the Beta tab, unchecking it, and clicking Save. Sam Walton (talk) 22:29, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Bless you kind stranger, I just found those three large icons to be so distracting. Heh, it would be nice if "Did you upload this gadget by accident? Would you like to turn this feature off?" instructions were included with the gadget for those of us who are techno-challenged. Shearonink (talk) 22:33, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How to force search engines like google recognise page created from redirect?

A while ago I have created a few articles in pages which were redirect. After a few weeks, those articles are still not indexed by search engines like google. I have tried google's crawling request site https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url and that still does not work. Is there sone setting on wikipedia for former-redirect pages that prevented search engibe crawlers from crawling those oages and how to make those crawlers crawl those pages? C933103 (talk) 05:23, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@C933103: There might be such a thing, but we can't tell as you need to link to the page in question. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:20, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
We should probably add this issue to Phabricator, if it isn't there already. Do you have any specific examples? I don't think it's an issue on our end, I know the WMF has contacts with Google. Cenarium (talk) 10:37, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Are the pages in question yet marked as reviewed? They're no indexed until a page patroller has reviewed them. --Izno (talk) 10:54, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Jo-Jo Eumerus, Cenarium, and Izno: Xinjiang Time, Longest flights, Ultra long-haul C933103 (talk) 11:00, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Xinjiang Time was created as a redirect to Time in China#Xinjiang by C933103 on 9 December 2016 and changed to an article on 17 December. My Google search for "Xinjiang Time" finds Time in China as the second hit two and says it was cached on 26 December.[1] Thincat (talk) 11:15, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I can find the last two pages on Google just fine. The first does not display. Might have something to do with it being unpatrolled - didn't we recently change unpatrolled pages so that they don't index? Anyhow, patrolled it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:21, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Jo-Jo Eumerus - Yes: NEWER pages that are NOT patrolled are NOINDEX'ed. — xaosflux Talk 14:19, 27 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Media Viewer issue

On Android tablet, when zooming in to a picture displayed in Media Viewer, the effect is that the caption enlarges to take up more and more space, until only a sliver of the actual picture is left visible. What is required is for the picture only to zoom, if that is possible. 31.49.181.199 (talk) 04:14, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this note. User:Matma Rex probably knows whether this has been reported previously. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've never actually worked on the media viewer. I suspect the pinch zoom behavior depends on the browser you're using. Tasks T77620 and T77423 look vaguely related. Matma Rex talk 10:51, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Request change to "date" parameter of cite templates

I often refer to sources that publish less than once a month, like "Winter/Spring 1983". Unfortunately, the |date= parameter does not handle these sorts of formats. Yes, I know I can manually reformat it into a form that will work, but isn't that what computers are for? Is there any technical reason the template does not handle these? Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:45, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

See this help page for valid formats. In your case, something like this should work:
"Article about something". Title of Magazine. Winter–Spring 1983.
Will that work for you? If not, you can always hack it by putting the information into |issue=, but there are strict constructionists around here who will frown on that workaround. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:01, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That will work, technically, but means a) that I am not using the original format, and b) have to figure out how to type that character. Is there any reason / can't be used if that dash can? Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:45, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The cite templates follow MOS:DATERANGE. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:08, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Maury Markowitz: See Wikipedia:How to make dashes. Personally, I use the CharInsert edit tool, it's between the edit box and the edit summary box. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:14, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't want to be that guy, but this is clearly broken, why not just fix it? Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK, citation dates do not need verbatim formatting, so stating "Winter–Spring 1983" rather than "Winter/Spring 1983" is not material. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:48, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

List of stage names

Hi. I don't know exactly what happened but for some reason the columns setup has gone haywire. I tried to fix but I really am no good at tghis sort of thing and I can't manually retrofit the entire article, literally from A to Z. So would some kindly Yuletide/Chanukah/Kwanzaa spirit help. Thanks. P.S. -- Happy New Year to all. Quis separabit? 17:59, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I see nothing wrong in this article. Ruslik_Zero 19:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ruslik_Zero -- thanks but could you just take a look at letters "C" and "D", especially the columns. Thanks. Quis separabit? 21:28, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) It looks like the columns autospace to the width of the screen versus the length of entries in each column. Mkdwtalk 21:29, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Ruslik_Zero -- Thanks. But the list has been there for years and I only just noticed it. Is there any way to fix it? Quis separabit? 21:51, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Primefac has made some changes to {{Multicol}} as part of a merge with {{Col-begin}}/{{Col-break}}/{{Col-end}}}. Might try asking them. Mkdwtalk 23:04, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Using such templates causes an accessibility problem, in that each time you use {{col-break}} or similar, you are terminating the list earlier than its true finish, and starting another one. It is better to use a columnar system that emits a single list, and moves the problem of where to break the columns from the editor to the browser, such as {{div col}}/{{div col end}}; you can see this in use at Wikipedia:Meetup/UK#Oxford. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:57, 28 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As Redrose64 has stated, it's not about the template but its usage. If you put four items in the first column and twelve items in the second, it's going to show it like that. As suggested, use {{div col}} if the list changes often and you want to keep the columns even. Primefac (talk) 00:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Add categories to the articles result of a query

Hello. I have found with a query a list of articles [2]. Is there a way to add to the article of these items a specific category? Not by hand. Xaris333 (talk) 00:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a technical solution to allow Visual Editor to be used on Wikiproject pages

Hi all

I'm looking for ideas for a technical solution to allow Visual Editor to be used on Wikiproject pages.

Having VE enabled would make editing pages easier much in the same way as it often makes articles easier to edit, especially for things like tables which are incredibly useful for organising work within a Wikiproject.

However I have not been able to find a solution to enabling VE for Wikiprojects as they share the Wikipedia: namespace with many other kinds of pages, some of which break when someone edits a page with VE. There seem to be two options, perhaps there are more?:

  1. Implement VE in a non standard way for Wikipedia: pages e.g in the same way Wikidata does it, using a small pencil icon within Source Editor
  2. Move all Wikiproject pages to their own namespace allowing VE and any other tools to implemented that would help Wikiprojects.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 17:38, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No thanks, and no thanks. This has been discussed often. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:59, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The current version of VE isn't really suitable to edit WikiProject pages, because WikiProject pages usually contain a lot of code. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:28, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WikiBlame wizard needed

I just saw a very interesting article at [3] where the NSA had a secret Wiki based on Wikipedia content. They have an actual Wikipedia mirror, and then they have a page they add their own stuff to. Anyway, for the article Anna Politkovskaya, it contains text very like 2007-2010ish versions of ours, but it is not exactly the same as any of the revisions I have looked at. There is a sentence "She was the daughter of Soviet Ukrainian diplomats posted at the United Nations", for example. I've tried posted at the United Nations in Wikiblame and get nothing, but its output seems to suggest that it only tries a few random revisions rather than all of them. Is that true? Please, someone do us a favor and find exactly when this text was lifted from Wikipedia. I don't know that will shed any light on anything but my nose is twitching. Wnt (talk) 21:36, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Wnt: Weird. Unfortunately I am unable to understand the Russian language. I exported the article, including all of its revisions and the templates, to a file and searched (Ctrl-F, Find All in Current Document) through it with Notepad++. It contains the word "daughter" 4 times, three of which are in the following sentence: "She defended a thesis about poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva who hanged herself when her husband and daughter have been arrested by NKVD.".
The fourth result was:
<comment>update the makeWikitextError function - don't use [[Module:Category handler]], and use an addTrackingCategory parameter instead of a demo parameter, to make it easy for daughter modules to add a category=no parameter</comment>
This is obviously not the result I was expecting, because currently the article contains the word daughter 3 times.
  1. ...Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, the daughter of Stepan F. Mazep...
  2. ...namesake grandchild: Vera's daughter was named Anna in honour...
  3. ...interviews with her son Ilya, her daughter Vera, her ex-husband...
When I export the current version of the article I see all three occurrences.
I also searched for the word "posted" and I can only find it in this context:
Billionaire State Duma deputy Alexander Lebedev, who bought 90 percent of Novaya Gazeta in June 2006, has posted a reward of 25 million rubles, just under $1 million, for information leading to those responsible for Politkovskaya's death, Ekho Moskvy reported.
I googled and it warns me that some of the results have been removed (Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe. More information).
I checked archive.org and this revision contains a very similar sentence:
Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958 to Soviet Ukrainian parents, both of whom served as diplomats to the United Nations.
Here is another revision:
Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, where her Soviet Ukrainian parents were diplomats at the United Nations.
But look what I found in an even earlier revision:
Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, where her Soviet Ukrainian parents were diplomats at the United Nations (according to various sources her father was a high-ranking KGB officer[citation needed]).
Here is a website where someone who copypasted the article dated 13.10.2006 08:15:11 (she was killed ~6 days before that).
Note that page 18 of this PDF gives the following information about her father:
Mr. Stepan F. Mazepa
UN Secretariat Building
Room 3580 A
UNITED NATIONS, New York
There is some ambiguity about her name and place of birth (it is an old tradecraft trick to take advantage of the fact that there are different ways to transliterate certain foreign names, and changing someones place of birth makes it more difficult to track that person):
Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958, the daughter of Stepan F. Mazepa from Kostobobriv (Kostobobrov), Ukraine.
Some sources say that her birth name was actually Hanna Mazeppa.<ref>Halyna Mazepa: My fondest Ukrainian memories are of Katerynoslav, day.kiev.ua</ref>
Other sources state that she was born in Chernihiv (Chernigov) region of Ukraine.<ref>Biography, annapolitkovskayafund.com</ref>
Her parents, Soviet diplomats at the United Nations, were Ukrainian.<ref>Anna Politkovskaya, notablebiographies.com</ref> Politkovskaya spent most of her childhood in Moscow; she graduated from Moscow State University'...
Here is a picture of her father. This and that may also be of interest.
Not sure what this means... It is possible that that part of the article was written by someone on that secret wiki. Maybe you can find a Wikipedia dump that is very old? I checked https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/static_html_dumps/November_2006/an/ but I was unable to find it. She was murdered in October 2006 so you may need to find a revision older than that. According to this she was poisoned by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on the 1st of september 2004. After the dissolution of the USSR, the KGB was split into the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. Poisoning her didn't have the desired effect; but a later attempt with bullets did. Whoever ordered her murder had certainly enough power to force websites to remove information. Happy new year and remember... Putin khuilo! (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:52, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]


I asked Guy Macon for technical help but he is AFK for a few days. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 11:52, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article export feature sounds useful. If I understand correctly you have actually used it to go through all the history and not found that phrase. To me what is relevant about this is that I was thinking one of two things might be true: a) the NSA was using Wikitext with little revision, which would be very funny for all of us, or b) they have someone rewriting Wiki content (and the "posted to", for example, is indeed a very professional phrase. What the rewriting tells us is actually quite significant: the NSA, being willing to hire high-paid people with classified security clearances to rewrite any source text they could find in the world, went to Wikipedia to start their revisions! In other words, we are the best, not just in terms of free content, open content, public content, but in terms of any database the government can find to work with.
The article content seems like more of a distraction so far. I was only interested in it as an example and I don't see how any omission would indicate NSA editing. If we had an exact time of the download we could look to see if someone made an amateur-hour mistake of editing the content when they took it, but I'm not expecting that to be likely, and we don't have the time to work with. Wnt (talk) 12:18, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Wnt: Yeah I was basically using the export feature as a poor man's WikiBlame. It creates a big textfile with all the revisions, and I searched through that. I have tried to date the screenshot by using Google reverse image search and Tineye reverse image search, but neither of them could find anything. They have clearly spend a lot of time and effort rewriting it, because every section contains a classification level. U = unclassified, noforn = no foreigners, et cetera, see Classified information in the United States and Sensitive Compartmented Information for information on how they mark how secret which information is. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 12:40, 31 December 2016 (UTC) p.s. Of course Wikipedia is the best, that shouldn't surprise anyone![reply]
I don't know if this is relevant but the export facility says it is limited to 1000 revisions[4] but Anna Politkovskaya has 2047 revisions.[5]
Good point, it probably is. I am suprised that they would make a completely independent fork, which gets outdated quickly, instead of a layer on top of Wikipedia. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 13:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A report from OTRS

A user has contacted OTRS and reported this issue. I'm not familiar with such points, hence please address it here:

Ticket#: 2016081810005346

"I just tried to convert 'Naive Bayes classifier' wikipedia web to pdf form.

There is small problem that a formula of left column overlapped right column as follow. [Image available at the interface]

Thank you for providing nice service."

Thanks. --Mhhossein talk 08:36, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Mhhossein: I remember reading somewhere that the Create PDF feature is very underdeveloped, with markup like tables just not rendering properly. Sam Walton (talk) 09:14, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
{{Bookcreatorstatus}} displays a warning in several pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:32, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Mhhossein: the requester may find that the "printable view" (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Naive_Bayes_classifier&printable=yes) will meet their needs as a workaround. — xaosflux Talk 13:07, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you all. --Mhhossein talk 13:15, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
This project in Phabricator might already have an existing bug report. If not, please feel free to file one. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Replacement peer review bot - URGENT

Dear fellow Wikipedian village pumpers,

VeblenBot is a bot which supports the peer review process, used by thousand sof wikipedians and with generally 30-50 active reviews. The whole process relies on the bot to catalogue new reviews and remove old or closed ones. The bot is not supported and frequently fails for months at a time. We really need a replacement bot and I lack the skills to create or maintain one, but I hope an editor here may be able to help out. We need a committed editor as we have had (at PR) several unfulfilled promises in the past. I have also placed a request at "Bot requests" in the hope that someone can help. Further details are available from the "technical details" peer review page. Thank you for your help! --Tom (LT) (talk) 13:00, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Probably best to have one discussion at WP:BOTREQ, but, in short, Perl enthusiasts please enquire. - Jarry1250 [Vacation needed] 22:02, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Do sock suspects get notifications when an SPI is opened?

Anyone know if sock suspects get notifications when an SPI is opened? A few weeks back I opened a report on someone and they showed up to respond, which I thought was very odd, because I hadn't notified them, and it's extraordinarily rare for sock suspects to respond spontaneously to SPIs unless they've watchlisted the SPI or something. So I was curious if anything like the {{checkuser}} template might be generating the notification the way {{u}} might. My hope is to get a confident, "Yes, template X generates a ping" or "No, they shouldn't have been pinged--I think they were lying to you" or something of that sort, if possible. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:08, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User gets pinged, if you include in one edit your signature (with timestamp) and link to userpage of particular user (which can be done with {{checkuser}}, {{u}}, {{ping}}, plain link [[User:Edgars2007]] etc.). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:27, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think {{checkuser}} generates a ping, but let's find out: Cyphoidbomb (talk+ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki). If not, then more likely they're watching the page and were notified by some other means. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:29, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I think I got pinged there, Ivanvector. Thanks for helping me reason that through. Thanks also, Edgars. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:32, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Well, that's good to know then. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:33, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
{{checkuser}} includes a link to {{user}}, so that presumably generates the ping. --David Biddulph (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Templates don't generate "pings" (I don't like that word, in my line of work it has a very different and somewhat older meaning). What matters is that there is a link to a user page, it doesn't matter if that link is template-generated, nor if one template transcludes another. I have explained this many times, on this page and at WT:Echo, and I would put the explanation into Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical if I could make it suitably concise yet comprehensive and understandable. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:34, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Sure they do (def 3). --Izno (talk) 21:34, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's a management buzzword that originated when an engineer's boss overheard the engineer using that term, and misunderstood what they were talking about. Happens every day. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:05, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You forgot to wikilink engineer. --Unready (talk) 00:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ability to hide infoboxes in Special:Preferences

Hi! Some people dislike infoboxes. Would it be a good idea to add an option to hide them to Special:Preferences? Basically all it would need to do is add the CSS code .infobox {display:none;}. This may be helpful in reducing the amount of discussions about infoboxes (but maybe I am too hopeful). Not everyone is familiar with CSS, and checking a checkbox and clicking the Save button is more userfriendly than telling them to go to Special:MyPage/common.css and add that line there. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 23:46, 30 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If they really dislike them enough, they could add the style to their personal CSS themselves. --Unready (talk) 00:28, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
True, but those who are in favor of userinfoboxes are generally not nerdy enough to make that recommendation, and those who oppose them are generally not nerdy enough to know that this is even an option. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 00:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please avoid extending the infobox wars which have nothing to do with what someone wants to see in their browser. To put it another way, adding a gadget is not going to happen without evidence that "some people" exist, and even then it won't be considered unless there are many people. Mentioning infoboxes and userboxes shows some confusion. Johnuniq (talk) 02:02, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I was trying to reduce drama, not extend it. TBH IDGAF, I don't have a dog in this race, I have never added a infobox or deleted one. I have corrected the mistake, thank you for pointing it out. Seems like this is unlikely to happen. Oh well, I tried. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:33, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnuniq: I am kinda curious why you wrote: "the infobox wars which have nothing to do with what someone wants to see in their browser". What do you mean? I know very little about the infobox wars, but it seems to be a logical assumption that is is about what someone wants to see in their browser (or the opposite, what someone does not want to see). I wish there was a Wikipedia History book. If you mean that these conflicts are always more about interpersonal relations than the actual 'topic' of the dispute then I understand that. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:35, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Then they can either learn to do it through personal CSS, or their technical luddism is itself an indication of how ludicrously worthless this grudge against infoboxes is. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hehe. ok. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 02:56, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
People using the Wikipedia mobile app see infoboxes in a collapsed state but they can be expanded. Also, cleanup templates and other unwelcome material are hidden. I rather like this arrangement. Thincat (talk) 13:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User talk archiving

The bot that archives my user talk page is overdue for a visit. I set it up years ago and have not touched the settings since. I'd appreciate it someone familiar with bot archiving setups could look over my settings to see if it has somehow become obsolete or broken. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

On 27 December 2016 it archived 2 threads [6]. It seems to work fine. You probably need to change the settings from 60 days to something like 30 days. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 08:41, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Dodger67: I've updated your settings to have the bot visit your page more frequently. Feel free to play around with the settings and/or ping me if you have any questions. -FASTILY 10:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Fastily and The Quixotic Potato The posting rate is significantly higher now than it was when I initially set the archiving. Having 80 or sometimes even more "open" topics on the page is excessive, so halving the archive "age" makes sense. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:24, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

en.a0.wiki

I was searching earlier for something on Wikipedia and couldn't find it so went to Google. Followed the link back to Wikipedia and found I was logged out (however I am still logged in on regular pages). I then noticed that the address was "en.a0.wiki" (as in https://en.a0.wiki/wiki/Main_Page) and not "en.wikipedia.org". What is the a0? Also it says I'm centrally logged in and to reload the page to apply my settings, which didn't do a thing. Best thing was I got the IPv6 address (http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/2400:f100:2:0:4c45:aeff:fef4:4a58) which says I'm in Hong Kong. As it's −32 °C (−26 °F) I wouldn't mind being there rather than here. I realise this is a really trivial question. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 08:51, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is at wikipedia.org. en.a0.wiki is a live mirror not listed at meta:Live mirrors. .wiki is a top-level domain from 2014. https://www.whois.com/whois/a0.wiki says a0.wiki is registered to "Zhou Shi Peng" in China and not the Wikimedia Foundation like https://www.whois.com/whois/wikipedia.org. Do not enter your password at a0.wiki or other mirrors. They may claim to be the real Wikipedia but that is at wikipedia.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain how you "followed the link back". It is quite conceivable that companies like Google could start working with China or another country and start providing links to a local censored server in place of Wikipedia links - I don't think this happened, but we should rule it in or out. Wnt (talk) 12:55, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I had no intention of logging in there especially as it was clear I was still logged in here. I was looking for some information on Wikipedia on logging into WP:AWB that I knew I had seen but couldn't find. I searched for "awb two factor authentication" and got this. I checked the 3rd and 4th result then realised that the 5th was the one I remembered. Clicked on it before I saw the a0. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 13:18, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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