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).

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"As Session Musician" section for Ry Cooder article is invisible in Safari

I can see it in Firefox. But in Safari, the article ends with that section heading. And if I search for "Hiatt" on the page, it's highlighted in the invisible section, but I still can't see any text. I'm using Safari 17.4 and running Mac OS Sonoma 14.4. I also posted this to the article's Talk page. Peterh6658 (talk) 02:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

 Fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:41, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Why was it visible in Firefox but not Safari? Peterh6658 (talk) 07:14, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

@Peterh6658: Going to the relevant section in this old version, using Firefox 124, I see that the page is in two columns at that point. The left-hand column has the "Soundtracks" and "As Session Musician" subsections, plus the "Films" and "Written works" sections and the beginning (4 refs) of the "References" section; on the right, we have the remainder of the references, plus the "External links" and navboxes. This two-column layout ends after the navboxes but before the categories box, so something in the MediaWiki software is injecting sufficient </div> tags at that point to finish the page neatly. Viewing the HTML source (Ctrl+U) shows that this is indeed the case: there are <div class="div-col"> tags at each of the four positions that the Wikitext has a {{div col}}, there are </div> tags at each of the two positions that the Wikitext has a {{div col end}}, plus four </div> tags before the category box where I would expect there to be two - one to terminate the last navbox and one to end the page content.

This imbalance was caused by some earlier edits that removed a {{div col end}} from the bottom of the "Soundtracks" subsection and subsequently replaced it with a {{div col}}. This meant that with the {{div col}} being still at the top of the "Soundtracks" section, and another just below the "As Session Musician" subheading, there were then three nested {{div col}}, only one of which was subsequently closed. It could be that Safari doesn't like nesting in this manner; I can't test it, because the most recent version of Safari for Windows (Safari 5.1.7) was way back in May 2012. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:25, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Redrose64 🌹, for teaching us "Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils." (reply inspired by the song of the latter's same name by the band Bruford on their first proper album, said song being in turn inspired by you-know-who) Peterh6658 (talk) 17:45, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

The Mock Turtle's Story is where I remember it from. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:04, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Mobile site: Clarify "bytes" in page history?

Just encountered this Twitter thread where someone looked at a page history on mobile, and thought that the bytes ± indicator was actually part of an upvote/downvote system. This isn't the first time I've seen someone make this mistake. On desktop, the bytes ± number appears right next to the total bytes and lots of other dense information, which I think makes it clearer that it's not a voting system, but on mobile it's more ambiguous. Perhaps it would make sense to add the word "bytes" on the mobile site? Just a letter "B" could work if "bytes" doesn't fit – not everybody would know what it means, but at least they'd be less likely to think it's a voting score. –IagoQnsi (talk) 21:54, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

The "hover text" on that explains it is bytes, but it is otherwise absent there. Adding a units label to that would best be done upstream, you may make an enhancement request with the details. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:17, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The hover text in mobile page histories is MediaWiki:Tooltip-last which says "Difference with preceding revision". In user contributions it is MediaWiki:Rc-change-size-new which says "$1 bytes after change of this size" (I added "of this size" in 2017). Desktop uses MediaWiki:Rc-change-size-new in both page histories and contributions. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:08, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Looks like you get the "size-new" if you have "advanced mode" enabled in mobile, and the other if you are not in advanced mode. Both are not very useful for the use case of non-hovered viewing. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:12, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

In this case we seem to have quite a few choices, but since Cifaldi has taken an interest it may be worth a Twitter user telling him that he's welcome to donate photos he owns the copyright to, which can influence which photo(s) of him we use in the infobox of Frank Cifaldi. — Bilorv (talk) 22:45, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

City park missing outline on map

Today, I discovered Shawnee Park in Louisville had incorrect coordinates in its infobox and WikiData, and so I corrected all that and tried to ensure WikiData for Shawnee Park has the data that its sister flagship parks in the same city, Cherokee Park and Iroquois Park, have. Now, I'm wondering why Shawnee Park won't show its boundaries in red on the map like is done for the other ones. Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 20:50, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Am I asking in the wrong place? Is there a spot to do map-related requests? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 16:00, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I've moved my question to the Help Desk as I found another park article with an inaccurate boundary, and I'd like to get these fixed. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 16:54, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Explanation given on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps#Red boundaries on interactive maps. The Equalizer (talk) 20:22, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

How to create an anchor for a table row?

Help:Link#Table_row_linking refers to Help:Table#Section_link_or_map_link_to_a_row_anchor but that deeplink is broken. Uwappa (talk) 01:46, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Would {{Anchor}} in the first cell of the row suffice? Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 02:07, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a working workaround.

Yet, there seems to be a way to create an anchor for a row. How? Uwappa (talk) 02:16, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

The workaround is the solution here because HTML tables don't provide for jump links within the table structure, as far as I know. A link is an inline object, after all. And cells contain inline objects. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 02:42, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

@Uwappa: I think "id=" does what you're looking for, e.g. the "2023" row of the table in Oscar Piastri#Complete Formula One results starts with "|id=2023R" and Oscar Piastri#2023R takes you directly to that row of the table. DH85868993 (talk) 02:53, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly they assign the ID to a table cell rather than a row, from the page source thusly: <td id="2023R"> Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 03:24, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I have fixed the link to Help:Tables and locations § Section link or map link to a row anchor.[1] id should be in the row start |- id="section link anchor name". {{Anchor}} can be used in cells but then the link may take you to the first text of a vertically centred cell without displaying the top of the row. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:48, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

@Uwappa, StefenTower, and DH85868993: PrimeHunter describes the correct technique here. {{Anchor}} just adds extra complexity, and can only be used inside a cell, whereas the id="..." attribute may be used on any of the following: (i) the {| that begins the table; (ii) the |+ that marks a caption; (iii) the |- that marks a new row; (iv) the ! that begins a header cell; (v) the | that begins a data cell. The main difference between the last two and using {{anchor}} is that the former place the id on the cell itself, whereas {{Anchor}} places the id into a span element somewhere inside the cell, not necesarily at the beginning. Therefore, use id="..." in whichever table element is semantically correct, this aids accessibility. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:52, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both for the information. I guess I haven't worked with with tables enough to know things this sophisticated could be done with them. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 16:03, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

@StefenTower: The five places that I described for placing an id= attribute may also be used for class= and style= attributes. These are among the global attributes that are valid on all HTML elements. I suspect that some of the others, such as dir=, lang= and title=, may also be used in the same positions. I should, at some point, look into carrying out proper tests and writing it up, perhaps in Help:HTML in wikitext. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the |- id="section link anchor name" works like a charm for a row. Thanks. Uwappa (talk) 17:35, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

reFill & reFill 2 not working?

I have tried to run both of these citation-fixers several times today and every time I try to run them I get a FAILED An error has occurred. So is it me or is it the system... Shearonink (talk) 13:58, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I only seem to have this issue when I attempt to run it on an article I am working on atm - Joseph Yablonski. Shearonink (talk) 19:19, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

hello @Shearonink I'm not very clear about your message but do you mean you are having difficulties with the Auto citation when try to add references? If that's the case, then here is a quick tips on how I usually bypass that.

First use a different browser that is not logged in with your wiki account, run the Auto citation again and after when successful, then comeback to your main browser in which your account is logged in and try again ✅

I'm not sure of the cause of this technical problem, but this usually occur to me when I have used the Auto citation several times. Hence the only option is to try with a different browser that is not log in with your account. If this isn't the problem u are talking about please explain further.
Thisasia  (Talk) 01:53, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Some wikilink t(r)ails

Should

• [[Batman]]'s → Batman's (see Help:Link)
• [[World]]''schmerz'' → Worldschmerz (see Help:Link)
• [[bezant]]ée → bezantée
• [[Víkin]]gsvöllur → Víkingsvöllur
• [[ponor]]ić → ponorić

be completely wikilinked or are we OK with the status quo? That's $linkTrail in MessagesEn.php. This has become more obvious since the change of wikilink colors. Ponor (talk) 11:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

If you are asking about possibly changing the linktrail rules in MediaWiki then it's not controlled by the English Wikipedia. phab:T47126 has old discussion. If you are asking whether we should write [[bezant|bezantée]] to produce bezantée instead of bezantée (where ée is not link colored) then it isn't mentioned in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking but I would certainly say yes. You can post a suggestion to the talk page if you want a guideline about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:41, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I am asking about possibly changing the linktrail rule. Help:Link seems to suggest that the first two examples should be completely wikilinked, and they're not.

There was an attempt to fix this, which was reverted here, but things might have changed with the old dependencies by now (and there are other ways to do it anyway).

Any change to MessagesEn.php needs local consensus, which is why I’m asking here. Ponor (talk) 11:54, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Help:Link describes Batman's as the right thing, which is a reasonable but debatable opinion. Ignoring WP:OL, Worldschmerz also seems right. as World tells the reader nothing about schmerz (though Weltschmerz does). The others are a bug. The good news is that its ticket's priority was raised to Low ten years ago, so the WMF may find the funding to fix it real soon now. Certes (talk) 11:55, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

@Certes, if [[Batman]]'s produced Batman's at some point, the meaining of "this does the right thing for possessives" might have been different. It, for me, surely looks ugly as Batman's now. Where they mention [[a]]''b'', it's said "this rule also applies", where by "the rule" they mean that the trail should be wikilinked, I believe.

I am not here to discuss the particular examples, I only used the -schmerz example instead of the one generic one in Help:Link. The question is purely technical. Ponor (talk) 12:16, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it doesn't say what "the right thing" is other then implying it is however the page looked when the text was written. That may well be with the 's also linked. If so then we should be fixing this globally in MediaWiki rather than by editing all the wikitext to work around a bug. Certes (talk) 12:31, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Watchlist feed filtering doesn't work

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T361367

Wikipedia:Syndication#Watchlist feed with token describes how to use an RSS feed with a watchlist tokem. However, when I try it, the filtering parameters don't seem to work. The documentation for these parameters is at mw:API:Watchlist feed. Here are some tests:

• Watchlist feed with hours=72 (hours does seem to work)
• Watchlist feed with hours=72 and wltype=categorize - this shows an edit for me, which isn't a category change
• Watchlist feed with hours=72 and wlshow=bot - this shows an user edit for me, which isn't a bot edit

Am I missing something here? — Qwerfjkltalk 21:22, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl try building your query using the guided form here, see if you get the results you expect, and if the string is in the same format. If the string format is different, the documentation may be outdated. If the results are wrong, you can open a bug report on it. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:52, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Xaosflux, just tried it, seem to be a bug in the api. I'll try to file a ticket. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:04, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

phab:T361367 — Qwerfjkltalk 13:18, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Source quality tags

Could we add source tags (independent or not, is it reliable or not, etc) which are starting to be visible in visual editor as an opt in. I think it would help when writing a new draft and doing a self check of its notability, and to assist reviewers in carrying out their reviews (reviewer adds such tags for each source and instructs draft author how to view these tags to aid the new author in understanding which sources are better and which are worse). There could be semi-automated tagger which suggests in edit mode to tag youtube sources as unreliable, for example. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 00:15, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

@Gryllida I would oppose the "semi-automated tagger" part of this proposal. Whether a source is reliable or not depends upon context, and is often not a binary yes/no question - it is not the case that all YouTube videos are unreliable, for example. If the BBC uploaded an old documentary to YouTube that could be a perfectly reliable source for some information, or it could be hopelessly outdated (and indeed, different parts of the same video could fall into both categories). An interview posted on YouTube could be used in an WP:ABOUTSELF manner, or it could fall afoul of WP:BLP. This kind of thing really needs to be done using editorial judgement. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 13:45, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

IPA symbols

I’m not sure if this is a Wikipedia issue or a me issue but I thought I might as well mention it.

The issue is how the tense alveolar lateral approximate symbol (a.k.a ⟨l⟩ with a tense symbol) having a weird space after it which is odd since it isn’t there on Wiktionary. E.g. /l͈/ /l͈o/ /el͈o/ display similar to /l͈ / /l͈ o/ /el͈ o/. 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:39A0:EB40:5711:F8C2 (talk) 12:41, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

You must be referring to the IPA on the Áed Oirdnide article. After a small bit of messing around, I found that this seems to be an issue with MinervaNeue, as there is no space when I view it in desktop mode (Vector 2022). — Mugtheboss (talk) 12:13, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

More likely, it’s just font specific issue, and it just depends on the character fallback chain that the browser calculates depending on the fonts installed on the device. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:31, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Infobox

Hi, what is the process for directly generating data into an infobox from Wikidata? Riad Salih (talk) 18:15, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Riad Salih, it is done using Module:WikidataIB. An example of a template which uses this module is Template:Infobox bridge. —⁠andrybak (talk) 12:04, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I thought that we discouraged this, on several grounds - such as verifiability and the potential for undetected vandalism. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:49, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

The relevant RfC did not reach a general consensus, but to quote the close there is a consensus on one point: if Wikipedia wants to use data from Wikidata, there needs to be clear assurances on the reliability of this data. I don't think anyone has yet come up with a convincing way to provide that assurance. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:14, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

There's other 1,000 articles where the 'reference' from Wikidata is just an error message, see Category:Module:Wd reference errors. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:36, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Correction: the reference from Wikidata is being rendered as an error message. Actual data does exist on Wikidata that the template can't render properly. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:02, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

That's a difference without a distintion, the effect in Wikipedia is the same. The reference in Wikipedia is an error message. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:52, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Trying to understand table stylings

Resolved

At 2018–19 Big Ten Conference men's basketball season, the rankings section has borders while neither the coaches section nor the preseason national polls section shows borders, but they all seem to be styled by the {{CollegePrimaryStyle}}. What makes one section present cell padding/border and the others not?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:27, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

@TonyTheTiger: Many of the cells are missing quotation marks in style="...". {{CollegePrimaryStyle|Illinois Fighting Illini}} produces background-color:#13294B;color:#FF5F05;box-shadow: inset 2px 2px 0 #FF5F05, inset -2px -2px 0 #FF5F05;. Without quotation marks, only some of it is included in the style. The documentation at {{CollegePrimaryStyle}} should probably be updated to say that if it's assigned directly to style= in a cell then use quotation marks. The documentation seems to currently assume it's used as a parameter in a template which adds quotation marks. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:14, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

@TonyTheTiger: To expand on that: style= is a HTML attribute, and attribute values must be quoted unless they consist entirely of the 64 characters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, hyphen-minus and full stop. When you use something like style=background-color:#13294B;color:#FF5F05;box-shadow: inset 2px 2px 0 #FF5F05, inset -2px -2px 0 #FF5F05; this contains several characters which are not among the 64: there are three colons, four hashes, three semicolons, several spaces and a comma. How this is treated will depend upon the browser. Some may reject the whole attribute outright; some will ignore everything after the first 'invalid' character (the first colon), some may ignore the lack of quotes and process the whole value as if it were quoted. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:39, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter and Redrose64:, Neither style=“{{CollegePrimaryStyle|Illinois Fighting Illini}}; width=75” nor style=“{{CollegePrimaryStyle|Illinois Fighting Illini}}"; width=75 seems to be the proper correction for style={{CollegePrimaryStyle|Illinois Fighting Illini}}; width=75 in the Preseason national polls section.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:23, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, no. The first one is invalid because you're trying to put width=75 inside a style= attribute, and it's not valid CSS. The second one is invalid because you've put a semicolon after the closing quote - after the closing quote of an attribute's value, only two characters are valid: (i) a space; (ii) a greater-than character >. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:57, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

style=“{{CollegePrimaryStyle|Illinois Fighting Illini}}” width=75 does not work either.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:04, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any recent (later than 20:39 today) related edits at 2018–19 Big Ten Conference men's basketball season - are you doing this elsewhere? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:20, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I am not going to save stuff that makes the table break when I hit show preview. How would you make those other two tables show the secondary color for the borders?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:44, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

User:TonyTheTiger/sandbox/2018–19 Big Ten Conference men's basketball season test is the failed test.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:27, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter and Redrose64:, thoughts on my test?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:46, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

@TonyTheTiger: You didn't use straight quotation marks.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 12:02, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

The HTML spec permits the use of either U+0022 QUOTATION MARK (") or U+0027 APOSTROPHE (') as value delimiters; by implication, the “ and ” characters are not delimiters but are treated as part of the value itself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:02, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

• In a related matter, can you help me interpret the differences between {{CollegePrimaryStyle}} and {{NCAA color cell}}. It seems the former tries to use the true primary and secondary school colors, but the latter seems to use one of the two that constrasts well against white text. Is this correct?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:00, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  In both cases, the work is done through Module:College color. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  What do those 5 colmns of contrast mean and how do these two draw from the three columns of colors?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 17:17, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  There are three columns of colour dabs, headed 1, 2 and 3. The first three of the five contrast columns show how each of those relate to one of the others - 1/2 is for colours 1 and 2 in conjunction (either text of colour 1 on a background of colour 2 or text of colour 2 on a background of colour 1); similarly 2/3 is for colours 2 and 3 in conjunction; and 3/1 is for colours 3 and 1 in conjunction. The last two, 1/w and 1/b, are for colour 1 in conjunction with white or black respectively. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:31, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  It seems that {{CollegePrimaryStyle}} uses 1 & 3 and {{NCAA color cell}} uses 1 & 2. Is that correct? Or are there some conditions?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:58, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

  I think I am up to speed. Thx.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:50, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Misattribution of page reviews

I created a redirect page, and a human editor reviewed it. Unfortunately the title was a typo. I moved the redirect to the correctly-spelt title, and User:DannyS712 bot III okayed that.

In my notifications, it then appeared that the human had okayed the new title, and the bot had okayed the old typo one. I don't think this is intended behaviour. For redirects, it might give the impression that an editor has approved a highly inappropriate redirect.

I now think I should have RfDd the redirect before moving: Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2024_March_31#Medical-grade_silicon

HLHJ (talk) 17:04, 31 March 2024 (UTC)