This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.
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]
In the case of issue months or numbers, it‘s not necessarily a range, often rather a combination or notionally double issue. Here, for example, it might indicate the magazine’s having previously changed its publishing schedule from quarterly to semiannual. Maybe a distinction without a difference, though.—Odysseus147906:59, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Maury Markowitz: You have made valid points but will need a wp:RfC to allow other real-world dates (unless date in parameter "issue="). Also common "2016-05" has been rejected as May. The problem seems to be people think wp:MOS format needs to be enforced by templates, but that elevates MOS wp:guideline as if a wp:policy and bullies people to comply as abandon real-world professional dates. Early January tends a poor time for RfC, when many educated people, busy post-holidays, have less time to debate issues. Try RfC later date. There are intelligent people here but...busy. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:54, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The correct venue for requesting changes to the cs1|2 templates is at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Since cs1|2 obeys the date format requirements established by MOS:DATEFORMAT, if and when the MOS is changed to allow a new publication date format, then cs1|2 can be modified to support it.
I just saw a very interesting article at [1] 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. UPDATE: you cannot use Special:Export to get all the revisions if there are more than 1000; it only shows the oldest 1000 revisions. You have to use the API or a dump to get them all.
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.
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]).
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.
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[2] but Anna Politkovskaya has 2047 revisions.[3]
So is there a way to get the export to "continue from" some point? It disturbs me that Wikipedia has basically allowed this feature to break, especially when so far I see no alternative -- for the average user. Yeah, if you own a supercomputer and can download all the dumps back to the beginning, or can program a web crawler to request every revision one by one, you can do this, but I don't think Wikipedia should be designed only for the Googles -- and NSAs -- of the world to use and not for anybody else. Wnt (talk) 20:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, I figured it out, you cannot use Special:Export to get all the revisions if there are more than 1000; it only shows the oldest 1000 revisions. You have to use the API or a dump to get them all. I'll write a script for this task. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 20:29, 31 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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
On behalf of the Luddites, I should say that I don't generally approve of hiding and unhiding stuff on the page. If you have to download it, you might as well see it. If it is large and optional, we ought to have some other page. We have a whole category system, and there's no reason why we can't have other dedicated clickable navigation pages for excessive infobox material. There is also a category system, which badly needs to be upgraded to the early 2000s with things like non-fixed page structure and length. And I still get junk hits every now and then, even though it's not supposed to happen, on web searches where every possible wrong answer is indelibly linked to whatever it was you were trying to find because of an infobox. Wnt (talk) 23:50, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
If you have to download it, you might as well see it. Well, then the gadget idea is useless, because something hidden by CSS is still downloaded. Using the CSS suggested, there isn't even an option to display it later, if desired. --Unready (talk) 23:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I have no strong opinions one way or another, but I’ve read enough of the infobox discussions to have noticed quite a few arguing against them on behalf of the general reader, ostensibly at least. So nothing that only affects logged-in users is likely to answer all the objections.—Odysseus147907:17, 1 January 2017 (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]
@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. -FASTILY10:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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), Sunasuttuq08:51, 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), Sunasuttuq13:18, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
A major factor in this is that the site is using Wikipedia's trademarked logo (image located at https://en.a0.wiki/static/images/project-logos/enwiki.png - archive of image [5] and Wikipedia's trademarked name in identifying itself in browser history as "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" and at the top of the page (archived image). These are clear legal no-nos, giving rise to confusion about site identity, and certainly could give the impression that they are trying to mislead people logging in, possibly damaging Wikipedia's security either directly or if their server were to be compromised. Certainly they are vulnerable to action here, though I would hope this is merely an accident of someone copying an archive without much thought. See also WP:Wikipedia logos. Wnt (talk) 23:26, 31 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The {{vanchor}} template states "This template should not be used within section headings. Doing so will result in broken links in edit summaries, as well as duplicate anchors" in a comment added in 2015 by an IP editor. On the other hand, {{anchor}} seems to assume that it will be used in section headings, though it does say that some may prefer using bare html. I don't see any reason why there should be any difference in the use of these templates. If so, it seems the documentation of the two templates should be aligned. Am I correct or am I missing something here? in replying, please {{ping}} me as I don't plan to watchlist this page. Thank you.YBG (talk) 05:54, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Without going over the doc, I would say that use of {{vanchor}} for section headings is redundant. MediaWiki inserts a visible anchor when text is marked as a section heading. On the other hand, there may be several reasons for using an editor-inserted non-visible anchor. 204.19.162.34 (talk) 15:05, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The comment about duplicate anchors is presumably referring to how if you have a heading like == {{vanchor|something}} ==, there will be two anchors for "#something" in the page. On the other hand, == {{vanchor|something}} something else == will have an anchor for the whole "something something else" and an anchor for just the "something", so no duplicate in that case.
The comment about broken links in edit summaries is referring to the fact that templates aren't expanded when generating the automatic edit summary for editing a section, so the automatic edit summary would wind up as something like /* Section name{{anchor|foo}} */
Section headings of Wikipedia:Citing sources contain numerous span tags such as <span>id="Adding the citation"</span><span>id="Inline reference"</span><span>id="Footnotes and references"</span>. What is the purpose of these tags? Is there a list of these codes somewhere? Why does the same id appear multiple times in the page? Is there some place where this is documented? I have looked everywhere I can think of. Thanks. Comfr (talk) 21:44, 1 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
At my recent nomination of a variant of this idea at another venue, two commentators whose "home wikis" are in other languages stated their belief that the necessary CSS exists for displaying lock icons according to the protection status of a page. Can anyone here confirm that this is the case? Samsara10:56, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
"already done with css" was said by a Dutch editor who may have misunderstood a Dutch Wikipedia feature. nl:MediaWiki:Gadget-ProtectionTemplates.js is a default Dutch gadget enabled for IP's. It checks for protection and automatically displays a protection template. Like all gadgets it requires JavaScript in the browser, changes the page after the rest has loaded, creates an overhead, and doesn't run in Mobile. A feature in MediaWiki itself would be better. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:57, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c) As far as I remember, not pure CSS, but JS. It is possible to retrieve the protection level using wgRestrictionEdit variable in javascript. Based on that, you could automatically add an indicator. And several wiki's indeed do this (and so does the mobile skin btw). The only problem is that it's not visible for people who don't use Javascript. We could also in the core of the software, add an option to automatically output a page indicator or something I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
That indeed would be (and was) my proposal, but it came in at no. 50 out of the 250+ proposals, and only the first 10 to 20 will actually get actively worked on (at least that's the current and official pronouncement and held true for last year's outcome), so it would need another public push to actually get implemented. Samsara16:33, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
While I don't necessarily oppose this in principle, it would have to be per-page overridable and highly configurable, as there are cases in which protection templates are not used or desirable, such as user pages. Any discussion about enabling this also needs to consider the precise criteria for an automatic template, or mandate a follow-up discussion to do so. BethNaught (talk) 16:40, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I see per-namespace configurability as a given, since protection and PC are already configured on this basis. As for the other issue, I would like to see a case where a page was protected, a clerk (for lack of an official title) came along to place the template that was originally omitted, and the clerk's change was then reverted. Does it happen in actual practice? Samsara17:00, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I've reverted such a "clerk's change" on several occasions. I don't have any recent examples to hand, but here is an example of where I reverted the addition of a prot icon that had been added by the protector of the page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:20, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
It's not fully automatic. It relies on the presence of either {{collapsible option}} or {{documentation}}, both of which contain code to detect the current prot level and its expiry. These don't use either CSS or JS to obtain that data - they use some Lua code that queries the page information. So in the absence of both of those templates, another means of displaying a padlock should be used. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:30, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I was later wondering if maybe that the code used for protection templates in {{collapsible option}} and {{documentation}} could be used in a template used in articles, such as {{Reflist}}, but that template is used on some non-articles, and thus would cause pp templates to appear on non-articles, such as user pages, and some users might not want pp templates showing on pages in their userspace. —MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 00:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Remove th e "Signiture" checkbox at bottom of page and its side-effects
Recently, when editing some pages (talk pages, user pages, project pages), I've had this "Signing" checkbox show up under the edit window much of the time. When it does, it will also change my edits to some degree, e.g adding a sig where it thinks there should be one, adding newline characters at wrong places (this page is transcluded in a link URL on my main userpage), and showing me a dialog box asking if I want to save despite not having signed (which I do every time it asks). How can I disable this? עוד מישהוOd Mishehu15:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
User scripts/gadgets are the most common problem, especially if they assume (without checking) that all pages contain a content area. You can differentiate between common.js problems (and enwiki gadgets) and global.js problems by seeing whether it loads for you at another Wikipedia. Go to, e.g., w:ht:Special:ContentTranslation and see what happens. (The Haitian Creole Wikipedia is particularly convenient for this kind of testing, because it has no local gadgets.) If it opens there, then the problem isn't your global scripts.
If the problem is only with local scripts, then I believe you could go to another Wikipedia to do the translation work. You can go to, say, the German Wikipedia to translate a Spanish Wikipedia into English. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Unable to log in
Firefox
This is me, User:Pigsonthewing, using an alternative account. I've just been logged out while editing a Wikipedia in another language. After several failed attempts to log in, and here, ("there is no current login for your session" was among the errors I saw), I deleted all my cookies that included the string "wiki". This all happens from time to time, and the latter action usually fixes the problem.
Now, if I try to log in on my main account, which has TFA, I get "verification failed", every time.
Do you mean WP:2FA? Delete your cookies that inlcude 'wiki' and 'wmf', clear cache - log back in. Are you getting past the password screen and TO the 2FA screen? — xaosfluxTalk00:27, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I get this from time to time too - especially when visiting other sister sites for a while, once you get a session data error you are hosed up until all cookies get dumped. You could also try opening a "private browsing" type tab - that may have its own set of cookies. — xaosfluxTalk00:28, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If sessions seem reliable but 2FA is failing, check that your device has the correct time, which includes it being set to the right timezone. TOTP requires your device and the server to have reasonably close to the same time, I believe within a minute or two. FYI, you can see the current time on the server (in UTC) via the action API if you need to. Anomie⚔03:20, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Pigsonthewing: since you are relying on scratch codes, you should un-enroll from 2FA to avoid a permanent lockout; your authentication device must have a reliable clock, if it is off it can break your 2FA. You can attempt to reneroll and get new scratch codes if you want. — xaosfluxTalk03:16, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox redux
I have just had another issue. I was already logged in, in Firefox, to en.Wikipedia. I clicked on an image, then clicked on its links to Commons, and was not logged in there. I tried to log in on Commons, and, as described above, verification failed. I was able to log in with a scratch code. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits10:52, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The first time that I tried to visit Commons today (see below), I also was not logged in; pressing F5 reloaded the page and showed that I was in fact logged in. I had assumed that this was because I had explicitly logged out overnight, and had formally logged in again to Wikipedia less than ten minutes earlier, and that the cookie creation hadn't been passed on from en.wp to commons. Firefox 50.1.0 --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I had a login failure a few hours ago, with both AWB and Google Chrome. (Just checked the time from my logs: about 11:5O UTC) It locked me out after the 5 attempts, and about 15 minutes later I logged in again with no problem. I know that it wasn't an error at my end, because after the first failure I wrote out my (lengthy) password in plaintext, and the next 4 failed attempts were all made by pasting that identical text. The successful logins 15 minutes later used exactly the same pasted text. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 13:10, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Checking the logs, I don't see any attempted logins for "BrownHairedGirl" around 11:50 UTC, although I do see something at around 9:50 UTC: 5 bad-password AWB logins over the course of 45 seconds followed by one attempted web UI login 83 seconds later that hit the throttle, then about 12.3 minutes later a successful web login followed by a successful AWB login. A few hours earlier I also see one bad-password AWB login that was followed by a successful AWB login 11 seconds later. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 13:45, 3 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
People do sometimes search for topics that don't exist yet, or click on redlinks that exist in other articles (e.g. because they think maybe they're going to buckle down and start the article, but then change their mind.) So those redlink "views" would still count toward the pageview total. Bearcat (talk) 17:18, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have a smartphone, so I've only occasionally seen Wikipedia on one. I've been thinking about the case of a new editor who was first blocked, then indeffed for repeating an action they'd been warned about on their talk page, and who has never edited anything except article space. They don't have e-mail enabled and the mini-orange bar is kind of small and the red numbers even smaller, and it occurs to me that all their edits are marked as mobile and using the mobile interface. What do such users see when they have a talk page message? Is it possible for them not to notice? And how easy is it for them to find their talk page if they do see the message and access the notification? (Since they don't have e-mail enabled, they won't be getting e-mail alerts, presumably, although I believe that's now a default setting for those who do enable e-mail.) Does anyone have a screenshot or any other clarification? Yngvadottir (talk) 06:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't notice it until i vread the comment in which you mentioned it, so it's quite possible that a newcomer (having less of an idea than me about how Wikipedia works) would miss it, too. עוד מישהוOd Mishehu09:39, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
OK, thanks to all. So they get the red numbers but not the little orange "new message" bar. If they then click on the red number, how easy is it for them to reach their talk page? Is it similar to what I experience on desktop view—the notifications screen loads slowly and then displays a list of who's left messages on the talk page, each of which is clickable? Since they are blocked, their talk page is the only place they can now edit, and they are actually required to copy the unblock template, but several of us have been hoping they will make any kind of response there, so the next issue is whether they can easily figure out how to. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:40, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The difficulty of figuring out how to deal with complex, template-based workflows is one of the reasons that WP:Flow was invented. Anyone who's watched unblock requests knows how many newbies get it right, even on desktop systems. It's a complicated workflow no matter what your device is. So imagine that the editor doesn't just get a message with technical instructions. Imagine that the message has a "Respond" button built into it, maybe with a few tickboxes (e.g., "I want to appeal this block" vs "I don't want to appeal this block right now"), and that this button adds the template, cats the page, and pings the admin – and all the newbie has to do, or even all the newbie can do, is provide the content for the message. Or imagine that it has a timer to remind the blocking admin to check back after a week (a day, a month, a year) to see whether an indef is still necessary (or whether a re-block has been earned).
But that's the idea for the future, and before we can do the fancy stuff with Flow, it has to be able to handle conversations. They're still working on some of that (e.g., making it possible to find comments made in Flow via Special:Search). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that doesn't answer my question. Flow destroys our ability to use talk pages for article collaboration and as a result the community has decisively rejected it. Even if it hadn't, completely reconfiguring all talk pages is clearly not a viable solution right now. So I'm still asking—right now, what is this editor's path to their talk page? If they do whatever passes for clicking on the smartphone version of the red number they see, can they get there to read the messages, and can they then see an edit button of some sort? Because if not, we need to treat editors flagged as using mobile differently, perhaps by feeding them a big and obvious link in warning templates. I'm going to ping in Cullen328 at this point, because he's been exploring both editing interfaces on his smartphone and has experience explaining the results to technical incompetents like me. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:31, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yngvadottir, I use the desktop view by default on my smartphone the vast majority of the time, but occasionally check out the mobile view, and did so just now. In desktop view, I have a highly visible orange bar telling me I have messages, plus a less prominent little bell icon with the number 2 telling me that I have been pinged or thanked. In mobile view, as mentioned above, the orange bar is absent, but the bell icon is more prominent and has a visible red box with the number 2 overlaid. So, if a user understands that they should click that box, they will see a list of pings, notifications of talk page messages and so on. The problem is that some new users may ignore the red box on mobile, but then again, some ignore the orange bar on desktop Cullen328Let's discuss it22:44, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
When one clicks on the red tick, one should have a list of notifications. These link to the pages they are on, i.e the talk pages. Also, plenty of projects work with Flow, not that transition here would be easy. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:15, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Jo-Jo Eumerus and Cullen328: Thanks for confirming. It does sound as though the editor has simply not clicked on the message icon, but it's possible they don't know how to respond. Is the path to the talk page as clear on mobile as it is on desktop (I have no idea how the click mechanism works on a phone, and as I say, for me at least, notifications load agonizingly slowly), and is there then an "edit" button? I dimly recall from the early days of the mobile interface hearing that mobile users don't see a tab for article talk pages. I'd like to be sure this editor has just failed to click through and respond, rather than needing instructions on how to do so. There are going to be increasing numbers of new editors using mobile only, so despite my own preferences and limitations, I'm concerned. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:58, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I found that talk page button at the bottom of each page a while ago. I think it's there under the theory that phones are better for reading than for editing, so a person who accesses Wikipedia on phone is less likely to need the talk page than one who accesses Wikipedia on desktop. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 23:07, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The massive problem with that theory, Jo-Jo Eumerus, is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. It is 100% possible for people to edit productively using a smartphone, and I know that's true because I do so myself. I have written many articles including Good articles, participated in thousands of AfD debates, answered hundreds of questions at the Teahouse, all on my Android smartphone. There are literally billions of Android smartphones in use today, and failure to encourage worldwide smartphone editing is a gigantic mistake. Please read my essay called Smartphone editing for further information on this critical issue. Cullen328Let's discuss it01:12, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Commons server problems - HTTP 404
Several times over the last two or three days, I've had problems when following links to commons:. The usual error message is:
Wikimedia Error
Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes.
See the error message at the bottom of this page for more information.
If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.
Request from 213.120.234.154 via cp3037 frontend, Varnish XID 874052594
Upstream caches: cp3037 int
Error: 404, Requested domainname does not exist on this server at Wed, 04 Jan 2017 10:54:50 GMT
The HTTP 404 referred to in my first post here is intermittent, and today it happened for my third visit to Commons. My second visit was OK; for my first visit, see above. Firefox 50.1.0 --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Recent changes took a four minute pause when servers went down, this is the main recent changes feed on EN Wikipedia
Why using the unit conversion template to convert 370cm and 390 cm to inch result in same inch number? 370 cm (150 in) 390 cm (150 in) C933103 (talk) 11:19, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Rounding, a controllable feature explained in detail in the {{convert}} documentation. Converting your values to the first decimal place, 370 cm (145.7 in) and 390 cm (153.5 in), we can see that the conversion template is actually converting correctly. But your values only have two significant figures, so the results are likewise rounded to two sig-figs by default (145.7 or 153.5 to the nearest tens is 150). DMacks (talk) 12:00, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For the better part of the entire past year, the Untagged Uncategorized Articles tool on the WMFlabs Toolserver has been cluttered with a set of phantom articles, mostly deleted titles which don't even exist at all but also including a smaller number of pages which are properly categorized. However, nothing I can do to the pages in question makes them drop from the list: restoring and redeleting doesn't work, creating a new temporary page with Category:Temporary maintenance holdings on it doesn't work, null-edits don't work, nothing works. I've asked on multiple occasions, both here and on the Toolserver side, for assistance in getting this fixed, but no matter where I ask the buck gets passed as a problem at the other end — if I ask here it just gets dismissed as a problem with Toolserver's database-replication copy, while if I ask over there they can't find a problem and it gets dismissed as corruption in the data that en is passing to Toolserver — so nothing ever actually gets done to fix it. The tool's official maintainer, User:JaGa, hasn't been able to fix it either — and he hasn't been on Wikipedia at all since September, so approaching him again isn't an option.
The last time a similar problem occurred, for the record, there appeared to be a number of ghost metadata files for the offending pages, which had them coded as articlespace pages even though they were actually in project or user or template space (see User talk:JaGa/Archive 17#New toolserver problem for a bit more background if needed.) I'm wondering if that may also be the problem here, but I have no idea how to figure that out. And, for the record, some (though not all) of them are still turning up on Wikipedia:Database reports/Untagged stubs as well, even though that page's most recent run was months after the pages were deleted, so I suspect the issue is indeed on this side or that wouldn't be happening either.
Accordingly, I wanted to ask if anybody is willing to actually look into this in depth, and do a thorough and holistic investigation on both en and Toolserver to figure out what's actually happening and how to actually fix it, instead of just passing the buck as "their problem, not ours, the end". This really needs to be fixed, because I can't just keep working around the problem into infinity — I really need somebody to actually solve this. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:08, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
All of those except for Đuli appear to be instances of phab:T138967: they either have a page table row in the Tool Labs database despite not existing here or they exist here but with a different page_id (you can check the page_id with the API). Đuli has page_id 45504597 in both places, although I see the Tool Labs database is missing some rows in the categorylinks table for that page. Anomie⚔01:58, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, as you note, deleting and undeleting doesn't work, but what about deleting and not undeleting? I created a placeholder at egger island, used Special:MergeHistory to move the contents there, and deleted Egger Island; it's still deleted. Does the page still show up in the report? It did just now when I viewed it, but it also still shows up as blue in this discussion section, so I can't rule out a simple caching situation. Nyttend (talk) 05:02, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
DuckDuckGo Zero-click box showing content of no-index pages
Background: from the Help Desk I found the page Simon Nwakacha which is currently tagged G11 (for good reason). I suspected the topic could be salvageable, hence set off for a web search.
Right now, a DuckDuckGo search for "Simon Nwakacha" does not turn up the Wikipedia article, which is the expected behaviour (pages are noindex-ed until a page patroller approves them). However, it does display a box with the current (or recent) contents of the page (see DuckDuckGo#Overview). This is probably not intended at least from Wikipedia's part.
If DDG just fetches the content of the WP page if the search string returns something else than a 404 error, there is probably not much to be done from our side (except maybe send them a polite request). However, I guess it could be due to a misconfiguration of Wikipedia leading to one of DDG's robots accessing supposedly no-indexed pages, so I am mentioning it there. I see no such behaviour from Google or Yahoo, FWIW. TigraanClick here to contact me17:49, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the vast wikitext-based measurement converter Template:Convert/old (and ~2,800 subtemplates) was deleted c.04:30, 5 January 2017 (per December 22 TfD), and typical editors can no longer see wikitext unit-conversion calculations. Meanwhile, still trying to fix Lua Module:Convert for precision errors converting some ranges, which {convert/old} had fixed in Dec 2013. Also Mach speed precision seems wrong, so can someone copy deleted Template:Convert/Mach to User:Wikid77/(same), and I'll try debug precision errors. Thanks. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:23, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Wikid77: This can only be actioned by an administrator--you should make your request at WP:REFUND if the deleting administrator is unwilling to un-delete and move the templates. --Izno (talk) 13:44, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia citation format (WCF) bibliographic database project
Note: was originally posted at the Wikipedia help desk.
Hello all. This post explores the idea of a python project to develop a modest Wikipedia citation format (WCF) native bibliographic database application. The software would be user local and represents a stop-gap measure until the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) develops a proper wiki-wide solution to the problem of handling references on Wikipedia.
Background
Creating and tidying WCF templates, like {{cite journal}}, is hard work. Zotero offers WCF export but does a really lousy job of formatting, being limited to horizontal output and an illogical ordering of fields. Its output invariably requires considerable hand processing.
On some occasions, almost all fields are missing, but it should be noted that the Zotero team would like help to improve its web translator routines. There are number of other projects which develop tools for harvesting bibliographic information and producing WCF cite templates. Harvesting citations is an upstream issue and such tools are different from and complementary to the proposal being presented here.
Once a particular citation template is complete and clean, there is no reference management software (that I know of) that can handle WCF natively or even remotely well. The Wikicite application is limited to Windows (I use Linux) and development seems to have stalled a few years back. The pybliographer project shares some structural similarities with what I am considering. It is no longer based on BibTeX, but pybliographer does not support WCF. Moreover, the last update was two years ago and traffic on their mailing list tanked around 2008 (if my memory serves me correctly their lead developer stepped aside about then). Notwithstanding, the pybliographer documentation is also a good place to start.[1][2][3]JabRef is clearly active, but does not offer WCF import or export. Even so, it might be an option to contribute code to the JabRef project. The downside is that JabRef is built around BibTeX and their underlying data model may not be very compatible with WCF.
In terms of data design, some of the WCF templates are rather poor, for instance: chapter handling in {{cite book}} and location and date handling in {{cite conference}}. Nevertheless, we have to live with what we have.
The Wikimedia WikiCite project is, of course, the best answer, but it will be a while (several years?) before it is running comfortably.
Proposal
UML class diagram of proposed database
So perhaps a new native WCF reference management system is in order:
written in current python (v3.5 at present on Ubuntu) and developed, in the first instance, on Linux
run locally (that has downsides as well)
command-line (at least while the core functionality is sorted)
good search features
checking and tidying (linting) of markup (the ultimate integrity check is running the template thru Wikipedia)
offers a range of export options including HTML, Markdown, wiki markup, and formatted text, as well as BibTeX and RIS
In terms of scope:
not international (because citation templates are highly language specific)
^
Gobry, Frédéric; Schulte-Stracke, Peter (29 May 2003). Pybliographer user's guide(PDF). Pybliographer Project. Retrieved 2017-01-02.
^
Gobry, Frédéric; Schulte-Stracke, Peter (26 July 2003). Pybliographer development guide(PDF). Pybliographer Project. Retrieved 2017-01-02.
^
Gobry, Frédéric; Schulte-Stracke, Peter (21 February 2003). Pybliographer design handbook(PDF). Pybliographer Project. Retrieved 2017-01-02.
Is it not true that there is no 'Wikipedia citation format' (no in-house format)? The example templates that you listed are all part of Citation Style 1 which is a commonly used suite of templates but they are, by no means, 'official' in any sense.
I agree that {{cite conference}} has problems and could/should be improved. I cannot find anything that suggests that you have raised that topic at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Neither can I find anything that suggests that you have raised the topic of |chapter= in the same venue. Surely, if there is something wrong with these templates, those issues should be addressed at cs1, should they not?
Hello Trappist. First, I should have been more specific: I am referring solely to the Citation Style1 template family and not to other citation frameworks supported by Wikipedia (the CS1 templates are the only ones I encounter in relation to the hard sciences). I note too that Zotero calls its Wikipedia export format "Wikipedia Citation Templates" and does not offer other Wikipedia export formats. That said, Wikipedia itself does not officially endorse one citation framework or house style over another. And second, you are quite correct that I have not flagged issues relating to two CS1 templates I obliquely criticized. Their widespread deployment means that any change to the syntax and/or semantics of their public interface will need careful consideration. But my mission is not to refine the CS1. My interest is to create linting and database tools to make the use of CS1 templates, as they stand, easier and more consistent. Thanks for your comments. Much appreciated. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 15:23, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Surely, Zotero can call its own citation exporting scheme whatever it likes, but that does not make it correct or binding. The CS1 templates have had the most systematic development and are pretty visible. That and the fact that they are more consistently presented than others could account for their popularity with science-article editors. It is also conceivable that such editors are the least in need of a biblio system, since they are far more likely than other editors to already know the objectives, mechanics, and semantics of citing article claims. Having citations in hard science articles that are usable is a more important matter imo. If the output is illegible to anyone without specialized knowledge, then it is not useful. The average non-expert reader of this non-expert encyclopedia will be unable to verify the cited claims. Howvwer, I am not dead set against the idea. Whether it may lead into another little Wikipedia island with its own peculiarities and small circle of adherents, is something to be seen I guess. 72.43.99.146 (talk) 15:55, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Wide margin in Watchlist
I just noticed this, but don’t know how long it has been like this. The left margin within the watchlist, where the “m”, ”b”, etc. flags go, is far too wide for this purpose. It’s wide enough for the whole of January above it to fit in it, and seems gratuitously to be taking up space. It does not matter which flags are displayed (and I only ever see those for minor and bot edits). The screenshot at the right shows the problem. This is with Safari on OS X, with e.g. all settings (such as browser zoom) at defaults and the default vector skin. It looks nothing like the screenshot at Help:Watchlist which allocates no space for that column.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds15:21, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
.JPG){kind=link}
