Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for five days.

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tagging IP editor

Hi. I'd like to leave an edit (which would include questions) for an editor with only an IP address on their talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:99.175.72.167&action=edit&redlink=1.

In the edit (which is some questions addressed to the editor), I tagged the editor, but when I checked the preview the tag was in red print. Does this mean they won't get a notification of my edit on their talk page?

The message concerns an edit someone with that IP address made on the Wikipedia article, "Soul patch." Is it true that whoever made the edit might not now be at that IP address?

If this is not the correct place to leave this query, please advise Greg Dahlen (talk) 15:15, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

@Greg Dahlen: According to Help:Notifications, "Notifications are only sent to registered users; notifying anonymous users (IPs) by mentioning their IP address is not possible." And yes, IP addresses change. Sometimes often, sometimes infrequently, so there is a good chance the person will not see it anyway. I suggest discussing it on the article talk page instead. RudolfRed (talk) 16:00, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

@Greg Dahlen: That particular IP last edited in 2015 and made only four edits, so I'd say that they are long gone by now. I find that some IP editors have quite active Talk pages and can readily be contacted, since if they have such a page they are almost certainly going to have it on their Watchlist and they will probably have static IP addresses (or they would realize they were hopping around and would likely create an account). Otherwise, as advised, you're stuck with the Talk Page of the article. Mike Turnbull (talk) 20:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

RudolfRed and Michael D. Turnbull, thank you, knowing what to do makes editing fun Greg Dahlen (talk) 13:45, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Testing, and while we're here....check out an article I created this week Apple worker organizations... because Think different! ~ Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:54, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

dtenable testing

Hello, all. I'd like some folks to test this upcoming feature for me. Here's how it works:

1. Click on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?dtenable=1
2. Scroll all the way down to this section and find the [subscribe] button for ==this section==.
3. Click that.
4. Post a comment here.
5. Wait for another editor to do the same.
6. Tell me what you think.

You should get a note via Special:Notifications (Echo) about the new comment. You shouldn't get notified if someone is just fixing a typo (same rules as trying to ping someone; notifications require a new comment/line).

I understand that on the technical side, you're actually subscribing to the timestamp of the first comment, not the section itself. Consequently, changing the section heading, moving this message to another page, etc., will not prevent you from getting notified about new comments. It doesn't matter what editing tools the other comments are posted with.

BTW, that link will give you the [reply] tool as well; if you like it, then turn it on in Beta Features. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

OK, leaving a comment to test. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:36, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for testing. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, that's pretty cool! Curious about how the timestamp thing works though - it's not uncommon for comments to share the same timestamp. Elli (talk | contribs) 19:42, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

There are some technical details in mw:Extension:DiscussionTools/How it works.

Maybe it includes the whole signature? But even then, someone could (with full-page editing) start several separate ==Sections== in the same edit, resulting in multiple identical signatures. Or we could copy it somewhere and have two copies of the same discussion. I'm not sure if it would track both, or neither, or pick one. @Matma Rex, do you have a prediction, or should we try to break it ourselves? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Subscribed and posting to test. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:39, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

No discernible alert - is there a delay? TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:41, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

No one had replied yet... now you should get a notification? Elli (talk | contribs) 21:42, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

and another persion replied —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:48, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Cool - I got the notifications. I thought it would alert me when any comments were added to the subscribed thread, mine or otherwise. The only thing I would have to think about is if it will overmessage people. Is there an easy way to unsubscribe if the discussion gets too busy? TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:50, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, the unsubscribe button is right there, too, from the same link. I'd assume if the feature was turned on generally, it would always be there. Elli (talk | contribs) 21:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Ah yes - you have to click the original link to see it - gotcha. Cool. This could be interesting, particularly when new users don't know to tag people. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:54, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

You can also unsubscribe directly from the notification, without having to view the subscribed-to page. Click on the "..." and then "Unsubscribe". MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 21:52, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm assuming that people don't actually want to get a notification when they post in a discussion (because you just posted your comment, so you already know that you did it, right?). But if my assumptions are wrong, please let me know when that would be useful.. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Oooh, cool, you can subscribe to sections now? I did wonder what would happen or how they'd be distinguished if the same person posted multiple sections at once. And would you be auto-subscribed to any sections you create? Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:17, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Somebody please reply to this :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 14:07, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Never mind, I'll get one of my socks to do it. RoySmith-testing (talk) 14:13, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Response for Roy. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:22, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I am not a sock! It's that stupid testing guy. He's always stalking me and calling me a sock. He should be blocked. I'm only here to improve wikipedia. RoySmith-Mobile (talk) 14:24, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Wow, this is major-league cool. Being able to subscribe to a thread has long been at or near the top of my wiki-wishlist. Very nice.

Somewhat orthogonal to this, it would be nice if there were a published spec for how to add buttons to a section. The "Close" link in the attached screenshot is from User:DannyS712/DiscussionCloser.js (ping DannyS712). I assume with some CSS tweaks, the visual style of both links could be harmonized, and a published standard would make that happen. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:33, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Coolest aspect is that it lets me subscribe to a section without adding the page to my watchlist. Schazjmd (talk) 14:36, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Cool, it worked! Does this work on mobile too? Opabinia externa (talk) 17:33, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Hey, sock, back in the drawer! Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm a dummy, I forgot to click subscribe first. Opabinia externa (talk) 17:43, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Try this one more time, because socks aren't very smart. (The link in the OP goes to the desktop site, will this also be enabled on mobile?) Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:44, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Success! Opabinia externa (talk) 17:45, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Testing, attention please! - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:40, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith @DannyS712 You can add the CSS class mw-editsection-like to any element that should look like a section edit link, but not behave like one (e.g. not open the visual editor when clicked). It's what we used for the subscribe links too (I'm one of the developers). Matma Rex talk 12:08, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith Re: this, I think User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/autoCloser.js aligns properly (I use it because it works on mobile devices way better). ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:48, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@Elli @Whatamidoing (WMF) Sections you subscribe to are identified by the username and the timestamp of the oldest comment. If two sections have identical username and timestamp (even on different pages), and you subscribe to one of them, everything behaves as if you had subscribed to both – you'll get notifications for both of them. Unsubscribing from one also unsubscribes you from all others.

It is perhaps not the ideal behavior, but it allows for sections to be moved, renamed, or archived/unarchived, without losing the subscriptions. And it's more reliable and understandable than if we were trying to detect whether two sections in different pages/revisions are the same using some heuristics. Matma Rex talk 12:05, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't see any issue with this. The chance of there being two threads that have the same (username, timestamp) pair seems so small as to be safely ignored. And the fact that the subscription survives archiving is a big win.

In fact, it would be awesome if this technology could be extended to links. People often link to threads on noticeboards. Those links soon go stale when the thread gets archived. Having a way to create a link which survives archiving would be huge. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

We've been thinking about permanent links (phab:T273341), and it should be possible to extend it this way, but it would be a somewhat large project – because right now we don't actually "remember" where each topic appears, we just generate notifications when we see it anywhere. Matma Rex talk 13:39, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Volunteer-me says that this will come up when people start complex RFCs. The simplest solution might be a social one, however: just discourage people from posting multiple comments (at the top of a ==Section==) in the same edit. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:51, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

(←) Clicking subscribe works even without having to post in the section as instructed. This is a Good Thing™.

Unscription becomes something of an adventure if the subscribed timestamp is edited away. I made the mistake of subscribing to Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention#User-reported, on the theory I'd see an update relatively quickly; I had to go searching back through old revisions until I found one that still had the original comment before the [ subscribe ] link turned back into [ unsubscribe ]. (I didn't notice until afterwards that there are also unsubscription buttons in the notifications themselves.) I didn't get notifications for edits made after the timestamp was removed, which I guess is probably the right thing to do for the sort of people who make reports to those kinds of sections, but it makes this feature useless for the sorts of people who monitor them. —Cryptic 22:26, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Given that those aren't really talkpages, perhaps a special "subscribe to this particular section on this page" option would also work (maybe require an invisible keyword or template be placed on the page to prevent it from being used accidentally)? Elli (talk | contribs) 22:36, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think the distinction between talk and non-talk pages is useful. We have lots of pages in non-talk namespaces which support talk-like threaded conversations. Many (but not all) are in Wikipedia space. Tools like this should work equally well on those pages. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:40, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it should work equally well in all namespaces. But a board like UAA (or AIV, RMT, etc) is not structured like a talk page. Therefore, I think a different subscription method for those would be reasonable to implement, instead of trying to pretend they're talkpages. Elli (talk | contribs) 22:43, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Maybe a commented-out timestamp, or one in a display:none span. Though that'd probably confuse the poor bots. Not really the original usecase, anyway, just a missed chance for additional awesomeness. —Cryptic 22:41, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I think it works in all namespaces, as long as there is a signature in the section. There was a brief bug that displayed the [subscribe] button on all ==Sections== (e.g., including in articles), but if there isn't a signature, you'll never get a notification.

Also, remember that it doesn't produce notifications for changes in sections. It notifies you only for new comments. This means less noise (especially if the editors you're talking to revise edit comments many times), but it wouldn't work for watching a section in an article to see if anyone changes it. You'll still need your watchlist for that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

How does it handle unsigned comments that get fixed up by SineBot (who, at more than 2 million edits, is one of our most prolific contributors). -- RoySmith (talk) 16:17, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't send a notification (it checks that the username in the signature matches the user who saves the edit). It should notify in this case (and we support comments signed that way for the [reply] links), but if we simply removed that check, it'd result in notifications being sent when someone (or a bot) is copy-paste-archiving a discussion. Resolving this might need to wait until we can "remember" each comment that has existed (same thing we'd need for the permalinks that you mentioned earlier). Matma Rex talk 16:25, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Roy, there should many be fewer unsigned comments once the Reply tool is deployed default-on for everyone (including new editors). That won't happen here (for at least weeks, maybe months), but it will help a lot with that problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

This is a test. Please reply to me and I will let you know if I get a notif. BEEEP! Note: I'm not actually a robot Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 19:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Using the 'reply' link to leave a comment. Nick Moyes (talk) 21:09, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I told you you should have blocked that sock! Now he's back, making a pest of himself again and stalking me all over. Imma not going to sign this because I don't want to even be associated with him.

I'm late to this party. Does someone need to reply to me with the reply tool for the ping to work, or does any update to the thread prompt a notification? CMD (talk) 12:39, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Any update (I'm using CD). ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:45, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what CD is, but I did get a notification, thanks. CMD (talk) 12:47, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

c:User:Jack who built the house/Convenient Discussions. ― Qwerfjkltalk 12:52, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

A comment here. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:29, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It'll notify you regardless of what editing-method someone is using, so long as whatever edit is made looks like it's a new comment. This pretty much means "adds a new list item that ends with a signature" -- so any tool that doesn't do that is already probably being complained about for violating discussion norms. :D

There's a description of how it's working, if you're interested in more details. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

A comment. ― Qwerfjkltalk 19:32, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Holy heck. That's actually rather cool. Didn't appear under my bell icon like I thought but under notices. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 19:36, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary subsection

One disadvantage of working with signatures rather than headers appears to be that the notification does not take you to the talkpage section, although this is perhaps a minor inconvenience. CMD (talk) 13:34, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

If you visit the page with ?dtenable=1, it actually does (for example, try this). Assuming this feature is turned on generally, it'll work. Elli (talk | contribs) 13:36, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Subsection added. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:38, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

For some reason that particular link doesn't work, however I tested with other links and it goes right to the comment, which is great. CMD (talk) 13:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It's been working for me. I especially like the blue background highlighting. I got a notification earlier this morning for multiple comments in the thread; not only were the multiple notifications collapsed into one (nice), but each comment was individually highlighted. Very nice. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:46, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It will also work if you have the "Discussion tools" beta feature enabled in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures (even though it doesn't enable topic subscriptions yet). I think we didn't consider this when testing the dtenable parameter, sorry! (I'm one of the developers) Matma Rex talk 13:43, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Testing... --Yair rand (talk) 19:53, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

We're still subscribed, and still getting notifications.  ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Flow?

Just curious, what's the relationship of this to WP:Flow? They both seem to fill much the same use case. Is this a successor to Flow? Will they both continue to be developed? -- RoySmith (talk) 22:38, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Flow hasn't been actively developed since 2015. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:51, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Flow doesn't use normal wikitext talk pages, and this does.

If Flow had been built fully, it would be far more feature-fun. Imagine a world in which AFD didn't require scripts and bots, and the nomination pages would automatically file themselves in the proper list/category when they were ready to be closed. Or that ArbCom's clerks didn't have to manually count how many Arbs had voted which way, because the software did it for them. This work is a great improvement, but it's never going to be even close to what Flow could have been. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm of mixed-mind about Flow. I didn't particularly like the U/I, but I really don't understand why people hated on it so much. The idea of having structured data that you could reliably manipulate and navigate (as in the examples you gave) made so much sense. Tools like this are great, but trying to do automated things on any human-edited text is way more difficult and less reliable than if the structure of the conversation was rigidly enforced by software. No more conversations getting scrambled because somebody 600 lines up the page forgot a closing curly bracket. Or people using random combinations of ":" and "*" to indicate what's replying to what. But you knew that already. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

The interface that made it out was not what I had in mind. It's def. not what I designed, and the real Flow doesn't ... work like how the WMF made it work at all. Jorm (talk) 21:35, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I see a typo in my comment above: "feature-fun" when I meant "feature-ful". But I kind of like it, so I'm not going to fix it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Large number of notifications

I log in into Wikipedia today and I see 34 notifications, a number which I had never had the chance to see before in Wikipedia and which reminded me of the beginning times of Facebook notifications. Is that what we want from this function? (I'm not against per se.) Maybe we should do the same as Facebook and other social media did and start grouping some notifications together? Maybe you could have only 1 notification per specific subscription with the names of all the new commenters? Maybe you could have 1 for each commenter (not for each comment)? As I said, having a lot of notifications is not a problem for me really but I'm imagining things could get quickly out of hands in pretty dynamic discussions, especially if you haven't logged in for some hours, and there may be users complaining for this. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:04, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

They are already grouped for me. Do you mean having the entire group display as just one new notification? CMD (talk) 01:25, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis, yes I suppose. And maybe not have a specific notification for each reply? I'm talking about having a general notification of this sort:

"X, Y, B and Z replied to [Specific Section]." This would remove the ability to immediately link to a specific reply and just show the discussion in general, maybe the new part of it, but maybe it would be better for some people? Or maybe we could have a preference tab for choosing between these 2 (or more) modes. - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:20, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if you're using the no-JS interface of notifications? In the JS interface, they are grouped exactly like you're proposing – you only see one notification per section, and it says something like 34 new replies in "‪dtenable testing"., and it highlights all of the replies in the topic when clicked. But it looks like this feature (called "bundling") has never been implemented in the no-JS version. Matma Rex talk 14:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi, are you concerned about the number on the bell/inbox icons? Or about the number of lines shown when you click on them? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Matma Rex, @Whatamidoing (WMF), I didn't spend too much time to look at the details when I wrote this because, as I said, it didn't concern me much personally. But after your comments now, I was examining it more carefully. I got 5 notifications (the number on the inbox icon) and when clicked, they opened as 1 notification which could be expanded in individual notifications in regard to this post. I guess this is similar to what I proposed, as you mention. My idea was to get 1 notification icon and 1 notification in total per post but I guess this can be fine as well. - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:40, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

An enhanced diff broke for me

Many years ago, I enabled a different version of diff on Wikipedia. This gave me a little triangular icon above a normal diff, and if I clicked that I got an additional diff displayed which made some changes easier to spot, particularly those involving whitespace. A few days ago, this little icon disappeared, so I can no longer use the other version of diff. I don't remember how I enabled this in the first place; it may be the line "span.diffchange { text-decoration: underline; }" in my standard.css file. Is there any way to get this enabled again?

About the same time, I also noticed that when viewing a diff I could no longer click on links to articles. I can live without this but it might be a symptom with the same cause.

I have the wikEdDiff turned on in Preferences/Gadgets, although nothing appears to change if I turn that off. I don't use the visual editor.-gadfium 03:29, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I assume you have scripting enabled and that WP:WIKEDDIFF fails to work (the triangle symbol does not appear). I have no idea but there is a newish "Browse history interactively" which might be a factor. Johnuniq (talk) 03:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful. So the triangle is WikEdDiff. I presume then that my scripting is broken or turned off. I do have Javascript enabled, so presumably this is some other setting, but I don't see it in Preferences. If I enable wikEd then the visual editor seems to work, and the diff is the WikEdDiff, but I prefer to edit the classic Wiki source.-gadfium 04:15, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

A workaround is to turn on wikEd (and turn off wikEdDiff since it's enabled with wikEd) and then use the wikEd control panel to turn off visual editing. This still gives me the wikEdDiff view (but no longer the standard diff, which I suspect I don't really need). I'd still like to get my old functionality back though.-gadfium 04:20, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Better workaround: I've installed wikEdDiff in my common.js file, and turned off wikEd in gadgets. Ultimately, the problem therefore seems to be that the manual installation works for me but the gadget doesn't. I'm still curious about why this should be. I'm on Firefox on Windows 10, and I run several security addons including uBlock Origin and Ghostery, but nothing should be blocking anything on Wikipedia and my setup hasn't changed recently.-gadfium 04:27, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I tried it: disable wikEd in gadgets, add to common.js (with proper reload) - not seeing the triangle. -- GreenC 15:49, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

This works in common.js: importScript('User:GreenC/wikEdDiff2.js'); .. it's a fork that implements the changes recommended at User_talk:Cacycle#wikEdDiff. -- GreenC 16:06, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC: Thanks, that works nicely. The triangle is back and links in the diff are working again. —Bruce1ee^talk 11:22, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I've got the same problem - the wikEdDif button is not visible. (I'm not sure how long it's been missing. I suspect no more than a day or two - I use it relatively often.) I have it enabled in my preferences, and (to my knowledge) I haven't changed anything recently. I'm using Pale Moon (web browser) on Windows 7. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:38, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

• Note, wikEdDiff is managed my a single user, User:Cacycle - who may want to look in to this. — xaosflux ^Talk 07:30, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
  • I've notified Cacycle, but they are all but no longer editing here - we may need to disable this gadget or convert it to a community-managed script if there is enough desire to update it and maintain it going forward. — xaosflux ^Talk 07:33, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

The post above yours at User talk:Cacycle#wikEdDiff looks relevant.-gadfium 08:43, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Xaosflux Well, I think you may know my opinion on that. ;D Izno (talk) 16:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

@Izno: I'm mostly suggesting that we simply move the page from Cacycle's userspace to mediawiki:gadget space if it is still wanted and will be maintained. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:14, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux, Gadfium, Johnuniq, Bruce1ee, and Mitch Ames: This should be fixed in the original gadget now. Izno (talk) 16:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks, the original gadget is working again. —Bruce1ee^talk 17:16, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, great service. Is strict class matching something turned on in the mediawiki platform recently, or was this a browser change?-gadfium 18:27, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Given the timing of when this started occurring (WP:THURSDAY), I would guess what happened is that additional classes were added to the elements of interest. Strict equality accordingly will not work. Izno (talk) 18:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

It's working for me again, too. Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:28, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Move wikEdDiff to community gadget

With Cacycle being absent, and the discussion above suggesting this gadget is still desired - any objections to moving this to a normal community gadget? From a end-user perspective, there should be no change; it would mostly just mean that Cacycle wouldn't be able to directly update it without seeking interface-admin access first. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:33, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It seems logical to make it a community tool, so we don't have precisely this situation with a sole maintainer unavailable to fix a breakage not of the program's fault. Luckily Serhio Magpie was able to identify the problem and offer a solution, caused by changes in MediaWiki elsewhere, we have to assume future changes could break it again. Keeping these scripts together could make identifying where problems occur easier, searching a collection of scripts. -- GreenC 17:38, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

It makes little sense to me that we allow any gadget to be one that merely loads another script in someone's userspace. That poses a huge security threat given they could go rogue or be compromised. Nardog (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Especially since MediaWiki.js pages can be invoked from URLs. ― Qwerfjkltalk 20:15, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Data/Graphics from citations and more...

Hey there! I'm an admin at SqWiki. I mostly look out for the technical side of the citations there. We have, for quite some time now, implemented this graphic which tells us in what language are most of our citations coming from. This can be interesting for quite some reasons which I can discuss further below if you want, not wanting to make the text longer now. For the moment I wanted to ask how you feel about this kind of "infrastructure"? Would it be a good idea if we could have more graphics similar to this implemented on EnWiki, tracking data from citations (or other areas)? Or do you think the categories are enough on its own? For example, again in relation to citations, we also have these:sq:Kategoria:Mirëmbajtja CS1, sq:Kategoria:Gabime CS1, sq:Stampa:Grafiku i faqeve me adresa që përdorin stampën e arkivës së rrjetit and sq:Kategoria:Faqe me adresa që përdorin stampën e arkivës së rrjetit që kërkojnë vëmendje, the benefits of which I can also discuss further below if you want. My question is not related to citations per se but to graphical data tracking in general. Tell me your thoughts on the subject and maybe even show me some kind of implementations you might already have here in regard to that. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Nice. I like the graphics at the top of the tracking category page. Quickly shows where problems are. Check out {{NUMBEROF}}. It's not a graphics, but does track statistics across multiple wiki sites using Commons Tabular and a Lua template. It could be useful for tracking citation usage data across multiple sites, which could then be fed into a template that produces a graphic, that would work universal on any site with the same Lua code. It would require a language translation table that users can customize. -- GreenC 15:23, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC, yes. I did check it out but I'm not sure how it could be used for citations or anything of the same sort. I mean, the statistics it tracks are pretty general, like number of articles or number of active users. What am I missing here? :P Klein Muçi (talk) 18:12, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

It's a model how the same could be done with citation statistic data. -- GreenC 18:35, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC, oh, yeah. Interesting indeed albeit unfortunately I'm not versatile enough on Lua as to create something like that. Especially on a global scale. But I like the idea, it's very in tune with what I've written. Citations aren't generally utilized for data/statistic purposes. Or even other utilities. The information on more than 6 million articles that we have here is vast and it does provide a lot of ground for introspective data collecting/analyzing of this sort. - Klein Muçi (talk) 20:07, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

It is indeed vast, and vitally important. This is one thing WikiCite was supposed to provide services for (citation stats) but the WikiMedia Foundation recently declined to fund the project (a WikiCite central db) so we are back in the untamed wilderness. -- GreenC 17:44, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC, really? I didn't know WikiCite was "stopped" as a project. I had high expectances from it. Last time I checked I saw that there were plans of creating an "inside" WikiLibrary for citations, can't remember the name correctly. I thought it was a continuation of WikiCite. Strange to hear that.

And on another discussion fork, I was thinking today that at least the graphical aspect I said above could be used on maintenance categories here for the reasons we both mentioned. Maint-cats in general, not related to citations. It would be interesting to read some opinions from users that usually work with categories what they think of the idea. - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:53, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

WikiCite is not stopped. You cant stop something run by volunteers who require no funds. But if you want to build a database and services, you need funds. That has been declined by the WMF. So WikiCite right now is aspirational - something that might be. -- GreenC 16:50, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I meant with "stopped". Here's to hoping we have more concrete steps taken towards that concept. - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:44, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Citation bot

Hi Technical Village Pump responser, I am try to run the citation bot but it cannot happen. When I entered the article name after that I clicked to the process page button and processing is happen but result cannot show. Why this happen? Please help me. Thank you ! Fade258 (talk) 14:49, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Try User talk:Citation bot. Remember to explain your problem clearly, including what article gives you an issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:26, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

I find that for large parts of the day it times out with gateway error. But at other times it works. So just keep retrying. I am guessing it is overloaded with massive requests. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:30, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Orphaned talk pages

I've been dealing with a lot of orphaned talk pages lately and it seems that when an admin mass deletes pages created by a sockpuppet, the script or tool used doesn't delete associated talk pages. And also, when admins close AFDs, the script that closes them doesn't delete any associated subpages like talk page archives. And when pages are deleted using Twinkle, Twinkle deletes redirects but not redirect talk pages. I've posted about that last item on the Twinkle talk page but it seems like these are all the same problem although different scripts and tools are being used.

The result is that this leaves a lot of orphaned talk pages that can disappear into the ether. I'm coming across subpages of articles that were deleted as far back as 2015 and "To do" subpages (which apparently used to be a thing that isn't done any more) that no one would stumble upon. Is there a fix for this? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:24, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I guess I should add that regarding the AFD closure & subpage problems, I am working with a list from 2020 so perhaps this is a problem that has already been addressed in the past year. The problem with mass deletion of pages and Twinkle is current though. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:28, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

For what it’s worth, I also don’t think it’s great flow wise that deleting an Article automatically/always deletes the associated talk page. Recently I created a bad redirect and requested G6 CSD and User:TheresNoTime additionally deleted the associated talk page accidentally. Luckily she was able to refund it so no harm done, but it felt look a shortcoming of the twinkle tools (pinging not because you did anything wrong but to bring attention to this question) Are there any bots that scan for orphan talk pages? That changes how I view the problem. Shushugah (he/him • talk) 06:47, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Shushugah: There's Wikipedia:Database reports/Orphaned talk pages. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 09:46, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Also see meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Admins and patrollers/(Un)delete associated talk page which was approved Shushugah (he/him • talk) 11:53, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Moving locally uploaded fair use image

Hello, could anyone move File:Community of the Lippovan Russians in Romania logo.png to File:Community of the Lipovan Russians in Romania logo.png? I recently moved the article of the organization, Community of the Lipovan Russians in Romania, as "Lipovan" is more common than "Lippovan" and is their standard name in Wikipedia (their article is titled Lipovans, I specify they are a Russian minority in Romania). I wanted to move this image to have consistency but I don't know how to do this, there's no button and I've never seen a locally uploaded image on places such as WP:RMT. Super Ψ Dro 16:42, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@Super Dromaeosaurus: Done; see Wikipedia:File mover for more information about the process of moving files here. Graham87 03:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Great, thank you. Super Ψ Dro 08:43, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Filters disappear from Recent Changes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T290113

Hello! So as I'm going through recent changes, I noticed that some of the filters randomly disappear from the list of chooseable filters, namely the filters determining what faith the edit was in (Very Likely Bad Faith or something). Is this a known bug or what? There doesn't even appear to be a pattern as to when it disappears and when it doesn't. I'm using the (most likely) latest version of Google Chrome if that explains anything. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 19:58, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I would assume since no one has answered no one knows why this happens. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 15:31, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Blaze The Wolf, are you having trouble with loading pages in general? For example, do you get messages about Twinkle not loading? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): No. My issue isn't with loading pages. Some of the filters just seem to disappear from the recent changes edit filter list even though the page loads fully. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 16:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Is anyone else having this problem? mw:Developers/Maintainers indicates that this is overseen by MMiller (WMF) and the mw:Growth team, although I'm pretty sure that the last major work was done on this before Marshall was hired. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Blaze The Wolf -- thanks for bringing this up. I'm the product manager of the team that works on the Recent Changes feed, and maybe I can help. I'd like to understand some more what you're experiencing. Is it one of these things?

• You go to open the menu to select filters, but some of the filters you're used to seeing aren't there.
• You do select the filters you want, and they show up in the filter menu above the feed, but then they disappear while you are using the feed.
• You do select the filters you want, and they show up in the filter menu above the feed, but they're gone after you come back to the feed from some other page.
• Something else?

Let me know! MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Also CCing @Trizek (WMF), who works on our team, too. MMiller (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@MMiller (WMF): It's sort of a mixture of 1 and 3. I select the filters I want to use and then occasionally after I come back from a page (usually from reverting), some of the filters don't show up in the selection menu at all. I even have a preset filter that uses the filters I want and sometimes when I come back, some of those are gone, even when I reselect the preset filter. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 18:33, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Hello everyone, the bug has been identified, we will work on it soon. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Thanks! DO you know what's causing the bug? Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 15:44, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Blaze The Wolf, not yet. Now that we have a way to reproduce it, the bug will be analyzed soon and the results will be documented in the Phabricator task I added at the top-right of this section. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@Trizek (WMF): Ah ok. I would tell you how many times I have to go back to the page to have the filters disappear but it seems to be random. Blaze The Wolf | Proud Furry and Wikipedia Editor (talk) (Stupidity by me) 17:42, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Midi files added to scores

Some articles, such as Pastime with Good Company, contain music scores written in the markup. These were temporarily removed a while back due to a security issue. They are now back, but the former option to play the score does not seem to be (by default, to my recollection). This is an accessibility issue; it's especially useful for readers who can't read music, and since the scores are .png images, this includes people who can't see well (there are formats for blind people to read music by touch).

Adding sound="1" into the <score> tag (see Help:Media (MIDI)) seems to fix. Has the default sound= parameter just changed from "1" to "0"? Should it be changed back? Should sound="1" be added automatically across the wiki(s)? It seems unlikely that people will often want a midi score visually but not want a button to click to play the generated sound file; even if you have an actual recording, having both is maybe cluttered but harmless. An alternative would presumably be reviewing all the pages including <score> tags, ideally in a semi-automated way, as there are a lot of them. Other suggestions welcome. HLHJ (talk) 20:24, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@HLHJ: While the score extension was broken some editors found that you could get the image of the score to display if you commented out the vorbis or sound parameter, in the article you link it was this edit from January [1]. To get the scores to play again you just need to uncomment the vorbis="1" parameters. Pinging @1234qwer1234qwer4: who did the AWB run to disable them all. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 21:04, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to run a mass-rollback at [2] for now; will fix ~70 of the 503 instances. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:16, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@192.76.8.74 and 1234qwer1234qwer4: thank you, and thanks also to everyone else who worked on keeping the content as available as possible. I don't have rollback rights, but I've manually uncommented-out the vorbis param to the scores to which I had previously added the sound param instead. HLHJ (talk) 02:14, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@1234qwer1234qwer4: It should be possible for someone with the technical know-how to do a reverse AWB run (looking for the "%T257066%" comment the surrounding bits). Then that will leave the few ones that were fixed manually. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

If anyone is doing this, might as well turn vorbis= into sound= btw.. then we're rid of the old syntax at the same time (clips are mp3 now, not vorbis) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:49, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Example edit here if anybody wants a clue what needs to be done and wants to make an AWB run. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:31, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @ProcrastinatingReader. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 11:52, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone! There is still apparently at least one, without the quotes on the digit, that thus didn't get replaced: L'homme armé. There may be more. HLHJ (talk) 03:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Mass delete broken?

I know this is not the right place to ask this, because its not really an en.wiki issue. Probably somewhere on meta. But is anybody tracking that mass delete is broken?

PHP fatal error: Allowed memory size of 698351616 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 8388616 bytes)

Anybody else getting this error on this or other projects? GMG^talk 11:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this is related to Meta either; a Phabricator task might be best suited. Just performed a "mass" deletion of one page at Meta and couldn't reproduce this. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 12:10, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, what I meant was that it seemed likely to be a bug in the software somewhere and not a project-specific issue. GMG^talk 12:56, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: is this with Special:Nuke? Is this still occurring now? What parameters are you using so someone else can try to duplicate the problem? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:46, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: It's hard to show you because I don't think we share advanced permissions on any project. Trying to delete these page creations, 42 in all. Haven't tested on Commons because I haven't found anything comparable that I can rightfully mass delete. But it's just the "mass delete" button when you're looking at a user's contribs. But it's still not working. Same error. GMG^talk 16:20, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: I'm going to assume that clicking on that brings you to Special:Nuke. The one twist I see in there is that that delete is targeting pages and Files. Can you try it without files and see if it is only broken for files? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:26, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Well I can use it to delete their user page. Their cat creations aren't even showing up as a mass deletion option. Maybe the problem is that they're not actually local files. Local uploads are disabled on WQ, and these are just local descriptions overwriting the page on Commons. GMG^talk 16:39, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@GreenMeansGo: I was able to use Special:Nuke on a single page, that was a local description page of a commons file (see log), so not sure what is going on for you. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:23, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

I dunno. Looks like UDScott already cleaned them up manually. I'll just try to keep and eye out and see if I can get more info next time something like this happens. GMG^talk 18:11, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

cannot log in to Wikimedia

Hi,

I can log in to Wikipedia but when using the same credentials, trying to log in to Wikimedia, it shows that they are incorrect. I requested a password reset but no email has arrived in my inbox (I've checked the spam folder). What's even stranger is that recently sometimes I was able to log in to Wikimedia (it's like I successfully log in in 20% of cases and I fail in the remaining 80% of cases). Using the same creds, I also successfully logged in to Wikispecies. Regarding Wiktionary, Wikisource & Wikiversity, for each of them, I was logged out, accessing a given project, than I clicked the "Log in" link at the top right corner, I clicked the login input and I became automatically logged in without typing anything. I have no idea how these accounts work and why there's no one single account so after logging in to any of the Wikimedia projects, I would be automatically logged in into any other project as well (of course I mean only the projects run by Wikimedia Foundation, without any 3-rd party wikis like Uncyclopedia or Ballotpedia). Grillofrances (talk) 18:41, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Grillofrances: all of the WMF public projects do share an account, yours is meta:Special:CentralAuth/Grillofrances. If you are sure you know your password you could try to log out, clear all your cookies, restart your browser and try anew. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:01, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. The reason why I wanted to log in was to vote in the Wikimedia Foundation Election. After I reloaded this page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021/Candidates/CandidateQ%26A or this one https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2021, it shows me that I'm logged in. This page https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1079 shows me a voting form. However, when I access https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/1079 in an incognito window and I try to log in with the same creds, it shows me again that they are invalid. Grillofrances (talk) 19:07, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

You can't log into the secure poll directly. You have to authenticate on your home wiki first. I'm confused as to why you want to load the voting form incognito, though - you gain nothing for it. Jorm (talk) 19:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

(I am speaking based on my understanding of the Secure Poll system, which I helped write parts of some ten years ago. Things may have changed in the underlying system since then but I think it's extremely unlikely that has happened since I had to beg to work on SP in the first place.) Jorm (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Another problem is that I'm logged out fast from the voting page so I have to go to the voting server again (clicking some links) and order the candidates by my preferences again. Generally I see several ways to improve this process:

• Keeping me logged in much longer (at least 24 hours instead of something like 10~30 minutes which is currently).
• Ability to download/upload my preferences.
• Drag & drop instead of selects so I can easily move a given candidate up or down.

Grillofrances (talk) 22:01, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

You have to keep going back to the server because your credentials keep getting trashed. You can't leave and go back. That's not how voting works; it's for the security of the voting.

Those sound like wonderful improvements (though I'd probably hard-nix the credential timers) but sadly I don't think anyone is every going to implement anything beyond what exists. Jorm (talk) 22:15, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Grillofrances and Jorm: The Anti-Harassment Tools team actually put significant work into SecurePoll this year, see mw:Anti-Harassment Tools/SecurePoll Improvements. The timeline mentioned in the first sentence I believe is incorrect; they are still actively working on the extension. I'm sure they'd appreciate reading any feedback you have on the talk page. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:13, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I'll make it clear that I support having a team working on SecurePoll. But I have to admit it's kind of odd for the one named "Anti-Harassment" to be the one working on a tool that has absolutely nothing to do with harassment. I'll say here that I disagree with most of the concerns expressed by Grillofrances; I can't think of a system where keeping a ballot open for hours would be considered a net positive; it's a pretty obvious security risk, even to me. Read about your candidates, make your decisions, THEN vote. Risker (talk) 16:24, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Some time ago I asked about MFA and I learned that it's an experimental feature so I have to request it to work for my account. IMO being able to use MFA is much more important for security as somebody might hack my account and vote. If somebody performs vandalism, hacking my account, it can be easily reverted. However, if somebody hacks many user accounts, he/she might affect the election results (e.g. to Wikimedia Foundation or ArbCom). On the other hand, logging me out from the election form gives nothing for security, as I can log in again, without being authenticated another time. Grillofrances (talk) 17:26, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

You will have to trust me when I tell you that there are security walls in place to prevent your "Multi-hacked accounts voting" scenario. You don't need to worry about it. Jorm (talk) 17:36, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Avoid interwiki links with Javascript regex?

Here's the example:

Example

'Rename:\n[[:File:Example.jpg]]\nExample.jpg\nFile:Example.jpg\n[[File:Example.jpg|thumb]]\nlogo=Example.jpg\nDo not rename:\nExample filename is Example.jpg\n[[:ru:Файл:Example.jpg]]\n[[b:en:File:Example.jpg]]\n[[:c:File:Example.jpg]]\nduplicate=c:File:Example.jpg'.replace( /(\n|=|\||:|\^)Example\.jpg/g, '$1Renamed.jpg'); The last four entries in the list shouldn't be replaced, but they are. I thought this would be the solution: 'Rename:\n[[:File:Example.jpg]]\nExample.jpg\nFile:Example.jpg\n[[File:Example.jpg|thumb]]\nlogo=Example.jpg\nDo not rename:\nExample filename is Example.jpg\n[[:ru:Файл:Example.jpg]]\n[[b:en:File:Example.jpg]]\n[[:c:File:Example.jpg]]\nduplicate=c:File:Example.jpg'.replace( /(\n|=|\||(?![A-Za-z]:[^:]*):|\^)Example\.jpg/g, '$1Renamed.jpg');

but it's not. So what is? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 13:22, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I guess this works: /([\n=\|\^]|([^a-z]:|[^:])\b[^:]+:)Example\.jpg/g.[3] Nardog (talk) 14:15, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Nardog, I think it's working. Thanks! — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:00, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Multilingual urls without going to mobile pages?

I am looking for a way to get a single URL that will redirect to the Wikipedia language page that matches the browser's language. Help:Interlanguage links#Multilingual links and QR codes says that this can be done with https://qrpedia.org/. "For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat, if changed to https://en.qrwp.org/Cat, will be redirected in a french browser to https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat."

This is exactly what I want…except that it only redirects to the mobile versions of the pages, even if you are on a desktop web browser. Is there any way to create a URL that will direct to a desktop version of the Wikipedia page that matches the desktop browser's language? (It's okay if it redirects to a mobile page when on a mobile browser, but I want it to go to a desktop version on a desktop browser). -Thunderforge (talk) 18:16, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Thunderforge, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:GoToLinkedPage?site=&itemid=Q146 is the closest I got, but you still have to enter "frwiki" to make it work. For wikis where {{int:lang}} works an on-wiki link would be: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:GoToLinkedPage?site=⧼lang⧽wiki&itemid=Q146 but it doesn't work here because {{int:lang}} just returns "<lang>". I can't remember where I18n translations are stored, pretty sure they are editable on-wiki so making {{int:lang}} work here should be possible. But that's no solution for anything off-wiki. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 21:56, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Installing userscript not working

Hello. I have recently put User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist on my common.js on the last line. This tool is one that assists in disambiguating links. However, despite me logging out and back in, as well as resetting Wikipedia's cache, the tool doesn't show up anywhere for me. I'm aware that the tool still works in general, so any help in getting this tool to work would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps I made a mistake in adding the code to the common.js? Lucky102 (talk) 00:32, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Lucky102, try putting it at the top. If that works, something else on the page halts the script. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 08:04, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Alexis Jazz it states that there are errors in the document, and asks me whether or not I would still like to publish. How can I go about figuring out what the error is and then fixing it? Lucky102 (talk) 08:09, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Your common.js seems to be mainly a copypaste of an old version of User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js. This means that if the original script gets modified, you won't see the benefit of the modifications, some of which may have been to do with MediaWiki features that are no longer supported. Try blanking the whole page, and replacing it with only the code shown at User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist, that is to say

{{subst:iusc|User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist.js}}

If this works, follow the instructions at User:Shubinator/DYKcheck#Using DYKcheck, that is to say

importScript('User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js'); //DYKcheck tool

and check that both are working as intended. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:31, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Redrose64 I have attempted that just now, removed the DYK from my common.js and added the DisamAssist to the script. I have cleared the cache on Wikipedia, however I still see my "DYK check" in my Tools, with the Disambiguate Links not appearing under "More" (the place it is meant to show up). I also tried logging out and in again. Have I done something wrong? I'm sure that the tool is working since I saw it in use today. Lucky102 (talk) 11:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Lucky102 You still have DYK-check enabled via User:Lucky102/vector.js. Better put all your scripts on a single page (common.js or vector.js -- preferably the former) so you can conveniently keep track of them. DisamAssist doesn't appear to be working for me as well, so maybe it's an issue in that. – SD0001 (talk) 13:06, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

SD0001 I've moved it now, but yeah, it's still not working for me either. Could be a problem with the DisamAssist itself. Are you aware of any tools similar to it that assist in disambiguation pages? Lucky102 (talk) 13:17, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Please always include an example when you report an issue. It only appears on disambiguation pages, e.g. Example where it works for me. Is it missing there? What is your skin and browser? I have Vector and Firefox. PrimeHunter (talk)

Indeed, I had tested on a non-disambig page. It works on Example – SD0001 (talk) 14:18, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

PrimeHunter it works on this page, thanks so much! Lucky102 (talk) 00:19, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

<mapframe>: The JSON content is not valid GeoJSON+simplestyle. The first validation error is on the element "/0/query": "The property query is required".

Moved to User talk:TerraFrost § Help me!

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Shushugah (talk • contribs) 11:18, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Glitch with the '[[File:…' picture template

The monopole antenna…

After text editing the previously visible illustraton is shown as the text of the relevant template - see here. Strange: this picture is still visible in the 'preview' mode but disappears as soon, as the text edit is published/ Cherurbino (talk) 10:41, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

At this time article Ingenuity (helicopter) shows only this text:

• [[File:Antenna for Ingenuity and Sky Camera on Perseverance.png|thumb|240 px|right|The monopole antenna of the base station is mounted on a bracket in the right rear part of the rover]]

instead of the picture which I place here resized to a thumbnail to confirm that the image exists at Commons Cherurbino (talk) 11:57, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

If code works in section preview but not on the saved page then it's usually due to unclosed code in an earlier section. It was fixed by adding a missing ]] in [4] I have added nowiki tags to your section heading to avoid issues here. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:48, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

How we can manually change the "Page image" of an article?

Hi, articles like Android (operating system) now has "File:Pixel_4a_Android_11_Launcher.png" as its "Page image", i.e., in its "Page information" (that is, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Android_(operating_system)&action=info ) and in the "Basic information" section and "Page image" item, its value is now a screenshot.

I think this "Page image" item is added automatically (perhaps by a bot), and apparently this image is not suitable for "Page image" of such article, because for example, when we are in the disambiguation page Android, and we hover our mouse curser to the text "Android (operating system)" which is a hyperlink, then the opening window shows Android (operating system)'s page image and it is its screenshot and what is rendered to the user is a totally black image. Clearly this page image is not appropriate for this purpose. I think the "Page image" can be a more meaningful picture, for example it can be the Android's logo ("File:Android robot head.svg" or "File:Android new logo 2019.svg"), since these images obviously convey more meaningful information.

Are there any way to manually change "Page image" of an article? Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:19, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: this can be quite complicated - but in general it is the first image of sufficient size used on an article. In this case, it is the image at the top of the infobox in the "screenshot" section. What do you think should be used instead? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:45, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

mw:Extension:PageImages has much more technical details on this, but suffice it to say - it is not done by a bot. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: What is rendered from existing "Page image" to a user is totally a black image, this is clearly wrong. It can be the image File:Android_robot_head.svg, for example. I think the "PageImage choosing algorithm" should be modified to avoid such problems, or wiki writers gain "PageImage changing" privilege. Do you agree? Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 14:58, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: are you seeing a pure black image, or are you just seeing a portion of File:Pixel 4a Android 11 Launcher.png - which has a lot of dark sections on it? A request to empower editors to select the page image is open at phab:T91683, where it has been open for 6 years. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:10, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Yes, you are correct, the rendered picture is a portion of the screenshot that is like a "totaly black image". See it was open for 6 years without the correct action toward it, and it may be open for tens of years afterward. Would any administrators correct the algorithm, or do the "empowering editors"? I think such action is easy to implement, i.e., it requires changing/writing just a few lines of code. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 15:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: AFAIK, there is nowhere that Wikipedia admins can do anything about this, it requires developers to write said new code, then for the code to be accepted for use in the WMF production systems. You may certainly volunteer to start in that capacity by submitting patches for review, mw:New Developers and mw:How_to_contribute are good landing pages for how to start on that process if you are interested. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:37, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thanks, but it is not so hard to be treated as starting a project. This simple scenario should be implemented:

• For changing PageImage of an article:

1. Go the page Information,
2. Choose an image by a dropdown list
3. Click the submit bottom,

• then a "textual" change is applied by our code to the database of "Page Information" of that article.

It is very easy. I promise a computer bachelor student in term 3 of university can successfully do it without any problem, I mean there is no need for making a project for it. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 16:01, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Hooman Mallahzadeh: the editors and "administrators" here on the English Wikipedia can not make these types of software changes here. We are just one of over 750 sites that WMF hosts that use the mediawiki software and extensions to the software, not to mention non-WMF sites that use the software across the world. While the UX you mentioned above sounds reasonable - this is just not the right forum to get your vision realized. You can comment at the phab task I linked above, or volunteer to help work on developing and implementing that task if you are up for it. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:22, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

The default configuration of the extension prefers images which are displayed at least 120px wide. I have set the logo to 120px so it's selected now.[5] PrimeHunter (talk) 18:07, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia, there are no simple scenarios. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:33, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

SUL

Hi, on my Wikipedia account, I am currently only logged in on Wikipedia, and for all the other Wikimedia Projects, I need to log in manually, also when I check "Keep Me Logged in" my session will still expire, how can I fix this? I am using Firefox browser --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 00:00, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Do you have Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection enabled? That will break SUL across Wikimedia sites. Legoktm (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, actually that is on. That probably explains it, thanks for the help! --つがる Talk to つがる:) 🍁 02:13, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Article titles

There are 10 communities named "Zion" in Ontario, Canada.

Only one of those communities, Zion, Northumberland County, Ontario, has an article.

The rest of the Zions are redirects, or have no article:

• Zion, Ontario
• Zion, Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh, Huron County, Ontario
• Zion, Grey County, Ontario
• Zion, Kawartha Lakes, Ontario
• Zion, Peterborough County, Ontario
• Zion, South Huron, Huron County, Ontario

When a reader searches Wikipedia for "Zion, Ontario", the result is a link to a redirect, Otonabee–South Monaghan. (What is interesting is that a Google search for "Zion, Ontario" returns "Zion, Northumberland County, Ontario")

My question is, should the Zion which actually contains an article, Zion, Northumberland County, Ontario, be renamed "Zion, Ontario", and the redirect currently using that name be renamed? Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 09:54, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

This seems like a question for WT:AT or WP:VPPOL or its own move request. IznoPublic (talk) 12:06, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah. It certainly doesn't seem to be a VPT matter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:36, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I'll try there. Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 12:39, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

• Firstly, I would note that the only reason the Zion in Northumberland County has an article is because the OP created an article themselves barely a week ago — until August 28, it was also just a redirect exactly like the others, and even the new article relies entirely on primary sources, rather than any reliably sourced evidence that Zion would actually pass WP:GEOLAND as a separate topic from Port Hope. So no, the existence of that article isn't convincing evidence that it should be accorded primary topic rights over any of the others, because anybody else could write virtually the same poorly sourced article about any other Zion at literally any time.
  Article vs. redirect isn't the determining factor here: the relevant question is whether the Zion in Port Hope is of sufficiently greater notability than any of the others to claim primary topic rights over any of the others, and as an Ontario resident I can assure you that it's not. The plain title is simply incomplete disambiguation regardless of whether any of the individual Zions have standalone articles or redirects, and incomplete disambiguation has to be avoided at all costs.
  That said, it's also true that this isn't really a question for VPT per se, as it's not a technical matter — but since I can't find any evidence that OP has made any effort to repost their question anywhere else yet, I'm adding my $0.02 here for the time being (although I will add it again to any new discussion that turns up elsewhere in the future too.) Bearcat (talk) 15:47, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@Bearcat: If the article is so poorly sourced, just turn it back to a redirect so we can get input from the wider community. You make it seem like there was some nefarious intent asking this question, when all I wanted to do was make it easier for readers to navigate. I reached out to you for your opinion about this matter, not your churlish tone. Find a tool other than a hammer friend. Magnolia677 (talk) 16:40, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I offered my opinion, and nothing about my tone was churlish in any way. That I didn't simply agree with you, but instead raised points that hadn't been considered, is not a failure on my part to do my job. Bearcat (talk) 17:08, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd revert the article back into a re-direct & then delete all the redirects. Note: We have this article pointing to those places, in existence. GoodDay (talk) 17:29, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Installing a (top) link

Is it possible, by preference or script, to cause a (top) link to appear next to the (edit) link at every section? Perhaps even a floating (top) link is possible, as long as it doesn't interfere with editing. In my opinion, scrolling becomes excessively cumbersome as the page increases in size and this could help considerably. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 12:22, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Site-wide shows two goToTop scripts. I haven't tried them. If you use a keyboard then there are probably Home and End keys to move to the top and bottom at any website in most or all browsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:33, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter, I'll visit that linked script directly. I am currently editing with a mobile device while using the desktop view. Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 12:42, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Finding the most important category?

Has anybody done any work with picking the most significant category for a page? For example, I'm looking at Viviparous eelpout. If you were looking for the most concise description, you'd come up with something like, "It's a kind of fish". And indeed, the short description is "Species of fish". But trying to discover that is not easy from the category tree.

You could find the path {Viviparous fish -> Live-bearing fish -> Fish by adaptation -> Fish -> Aquatic animals -> Aquatic organisms -> Organisms by adaptation -> Organisms -> Physical objects -> Objects -> Entities}. There's two big problems there. First is that I deliberately only followed the chain of is-a relationships, but I had to apply human intuition to know which those were. Following {Live-bearing fish -> Fish reproduction -> Reproduction in animals} would have quickly got me lost in the weeds. Second, I also have to apply my human intuition to know that "Fish" was the logical place to stop.

This is a distinctly non-trivial problem, so I'm not expecting miracles. Just some pointers to previous work so I can do some reading. Specifically about navigating the Wikipedia category graph, not graph theory in general.

@Diego (WMF) and Isaac (WMF): whose research interests look like they're in this area. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:28, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

This is why Wikidata exists. It basically can't be done using categories. Izno (talk) 21:45, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Odd image

In the article on Wireless Set Number 10 there is an image of the original cavity magnetron about halfway down the page. It is oddly compressed vertically, can anyone figure out why? I believe I used the trim tool on this. Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:03, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

It looks fine here - try purging the page on your end? --Masem (t) 16:06, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Text browser renderings

Is anyone able to check rendering in text browsers? There is a discussion on this at Template talk:Morse. Better still, some help creating a Lua module to change the rendering would be appreciated. It has been suggested that de:w:Vorlage:Morse will render better in text browsers, but I have no idea if that is so. SpinningSpark 09:30, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

You should be able to download a browser like w3m yourself. Glancing through the discussion, it doesn't seem like you'll have much luck if you insist on supporting non-monospace fonts since Unicode doesn't provide a space character for use with the block-drawing characters. They intend them to be used with monospaced fonts. You could try an en-space (▄ ▄) or em-space (▄ ▄) or figure space (▄ ▄), but none of those are guaranteed to be the same width as the block characters. If you insist on supporting non-monospaced fonts, your best bet may be to use a non-space block character for the spaces, something like ▅▁▅ or ▄▔▄. You could still hide the non-space block character using CSS for CSS-supporting browsers. Anomie⚔ 18:00, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

My watchlist looks... weird

S o c i a l d i s t a n c i n g

Someone has implemented social distancing to the text of my watchlist. Is anyone else experiencing this? ✗plicit 13:39, 5 September 2021 (UTC)