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.


Red links seem brighter

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T288739

Hi, I don't know if my eyes are deceiving me but for red links the red now seems brighter than what it used to be ?, Or is it really just my eyes ?, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 15:52, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Davey2010: See Phab:T288739. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 17:06, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah thank you 192.76.8.91 much obliged, Good to know my eyes weren't playing tricks on me! :-), Many thanks, –Davey2010Talk 17:10, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they're definitely brighter in MonoBook too, #dd3333  . And, it's Thursday. The colour for visited red links, #a55858   doesn't seem to have changed. The orange colour of "active" links seems brighter. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:13, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In case anyone is wondering, the old colour was #ba0000  . This CSS snippet should restore it: a.new {color: #ba0000 !important;} Daß Wölf 06:43, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just noticed this thread. Has this global change been discussed in VP before? I've been active in Chinese Wikipedia (zhwiki) and given that the default font there has a lighter weight than that of the default font here, the new brighter red is making my eyes uncomfortable. Tiouraren (talk) 14:45, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bug report in my own contribs list

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T46841

I found abnormal behavior in Special:Contribs/LaundryPizza03 after I carried out a massive delsort onto 75 indexes for a bulk AfD covering various lists about 91 countries and territories. Beginning with the newest contribs (at time of writing) and query of 50 per page:

  1. Hit "older 50", which will skip part of the bulk delsort.
  2. You will need to hit "newer 50" twice to get to the newest contribs, which goes through the bulk delsort and ends on a truncated list of just the 19 latest contribs, including the filing of this report.

Is this bug known? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:36, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a consequence of having two (or more) actions with the same timestamp - the older 50 thing looks at the timestamp of the entry at the bottom, and searches for rows having a timestamp earlier than that. Timestamps are recorded to whole seconds, consequently there can be many entries with the same timestamp. It would be better if the revision ID were used, since those are not only unique, but their values are progressive integers. I don't know if there's a phab: ticket for that, but it would require a massive change to implement. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:49, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. There is an extreme example of this sort of bug in action in these contribs of Conversion script; compare the same contribs page set to a limit of 500 and what happens when you hit "older 50" on my first link. (I didn't think about this but this is a rather unusual problem with the new 500-contribs limit in Special:Contributions). In this case sorting by revision ID number would produce interesting results because those revision ID numbers are in a weird order, but it'd be better than the current situation. I've found a relevant Phabricator task and added it to the top of this message. Graham87 09:01, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This sounded familiar; sure enough, I did report basically the same issue with my contributions list one time. [1] Home Lander (talk) 19:06, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist spacing in monobook

So biting the bullet that Modern may be difficult to maintain now that the dev team have decided to deprecate it, I'm experimenting with Monobook but I can't work out how to increase the line spacing in the watchlist. It appears the default is 1.4em and I thought 

.mw-special-Watchlist .mw-changeslist-line  {
    line-height: 1.5em;
}

would work but it doesn't or at least doesn't appear to. Suggestions please. Nthep (talk) 11:22, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, Nthep, the same change actually introduced a rule to Monobook that overrides the rule you have; see the above thread (#CSS_not_working). Try a selector with higher specificity, like 
.mw-special-Watchlist div#globalWrapper li.mw-changeslist-line  {
    line-height: 1.5em;
}
HTH, Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:00, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Writ Keeper Thanks. Incidentally the editor tells me the syntax is overqualified and suggests .mw-special-Watchlist #globalWrapper .mw-changeslist-line which does seem to work. Nthep (talk) 15:12, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Haha, fair enough; I included the element types more out of habit than anything else. I'm sure it's not best practice, but if it works, it works. :) Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:18, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Basically ignore it when the editor says it's over-qualified. It is making a guess based on a different use environment which assumes it has access to more of the CSS you're trying to override. Izno (talk) 16:25, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For any one given page, an element's ID (if present) the ID for each element is supposed to be unique, so the element type isn't needed. In theory different pages on the same site might use the same ID in different ways such that specifying the element type is helpful to distinguish between them when using the same style sheet for all pages. I assume though in this case, the MediaWiki software is using "globalWrapper" the same way across pages. isaacl (talk) 21:06, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, for sure. Much like putting opening curly braces on a new line, it's a habit that every employer I've ever had has tried to break--mostly unsuccessfully. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 02:34, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Responsive monobook change?

Has there been any change to the responsive monobook skin (the one you get if you make your browser window narrow, or on my phone in "desktop" mode)? The notifications icons now overlay the "user tools" button in the top right in a way that makes it very difficult to click the "user tools". In particular, my fingers are almost too fat to find my watchlist on my phone now. Is this a recent change or am I getting old? And is there some CSS magic to fix this? —Kusma (talk) 16:18, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is likely due to recent work. I would recommend filing a task. Izno (talk) 16:30, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I found phab:T288681, but some of the comments there seem to be from users not familiar with responsive monobook. —Kusma (talk) 16:39, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Kusma: if you're still looking for a CSS hack in the meantime, try this:
ul#echo-hack-badges
{
	list-style:none;
	position:absolute;
	left:86%;
}
div#globalWrapper a#p-personal-toggle
{
	right:4.4em;
}
div#searchBody
{
	width:90%
}

It's not perfect--the search bar butts up against the menu button a little bit--but hopefully it should be a bit more usable. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:57, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hrm, does mess up the notifications dropdown though. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:59, 13 August 2021 (UTC) Wait, no it doesn't, it looks like it does that even before any changes. Sheesh. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:08, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks @Writ Keeper, I'll try this as a stopgap (looks great). Glad that you can also confirm that the notifications dropdown is weird, I was worried it might be my settings (but removing this, which I use to understand crosswiki pings, didn't help). Can you make a more coherent report at the phab than what I said? —Kusma (talk) 19:23, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T288871
@Kusma: I ended up filing a new Phab ticket for it: T288871. In the meantime, I made a Javascript hack that should return the notifications list to some sort of sanity: User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/monobookEchoFix.js. Install to your monobook.js page (or common.js if you prefer), as usual. It is *definitely* a hack, though; I don't think it will break anything, but it's definitely inefficient, so here's hoping the original bug gets fixed soon. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:38, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(thumbs-up). Thank you, both for the hack and for the report! Let's hope these issues do get fixed (and that responsive monobook doesn't stop being maintained because it is extra work). —Kusma (talk) 06:31, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lua help with find sources module

Myself and a few others are developing Template:Newspaper of record so that {{Find sources}} will be able to display an appropriate newspaper of record based on an article's location (determined via Wikidata) rather than only the NYT, as is currently the case. It's currently mostly working, based on the change at Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources/sandbox (see testcase). However, for articles that do not have an associated country on Wikidata, they should default to display nothing, and that's currently causing an error. Would anyone be able to help figure out a way to get around this issue? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:52, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like a meaningful error message to me so why would you want to get around it? It seems to be saying that code is nil or empty string so if that is the case, shouldn't you be providing code or at least setting a default, or if this is an expected condition, a prettier or more user-meaningful output?
And why so many separate little submodules? Is that really necessary?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:11, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Trappist the monk, yes, it is meaningful in that it's reflecting a real error—when {{Newspaper of record}} returns nothing, Module:Find sources/templates/Find sources/sandbox breaks, because it can't handle a blank input. By "get around it", I mean that I want to change the code so that the module can handle blank input, or the template gives input the module can handle. The end result I'm seeking is that, for countries without a listed newspaper of record, they just shouldn't display any newspaper for {{Find sources}}.
Regarding why so many submodules, that's just following the way that Mr. Stradivarius set up the find sources modules to work. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:24, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If I recall correctly, I designed the submodule scheme like that so that editors can add new links and new template configurations without having to make protected edit requests. It would have probably been easier to put all the configuration into one or two modules, but that way all the config modules would probably end up being protected, which would make it harder for non-template-editors to contribute. These days I might do things differently, but there is definitely something to be said for making the module more accessible to editors with less permissions. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:17, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I changed the sandbox so that the newspaper of record is only added if {{newspaper of record}} returns a non-blank string. It's hacky, but it works. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:41, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mr. Stradivarius, yay, thanks for the help! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 15:29, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Help

Hi Village pump participants, When i try to edit any article on Wikipedia by mobile at desktop mode at that time one notice appears i.e You are using a browser which is not officially supported by this editor. Please tell me how to solve this problem. Fade258 (talk) 15:45, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Fade258: What browser are you using? What happens if you try a different browser? Can you provide a screenshot? Always include details like these when asking for help with technical issues, because otherwise the only thing anybody can tell you is "I dunno, works for me". – Rummskartoffel 20:19, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Rummskartoffel:, I use google chrome.Fade258 (talk) 00:47, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fade258: Which version on which device, and with the standard source editor, VisualEditor, or something else? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:38, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter:, My device name is Redmi 9T of Android version 10 and the Google Chrome version is 92.0.4515.131.Fade258 (talk) 05:26, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Fade258: The message is MediaWiki:Visualeditor-browserwarning. Do you actually want to use VisualEditor? You have no recent edits with it. Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing has the option "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta". PrimeHunter (talk) 06:59, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter:, Yes, I want to use it.Fade258 (talk) 07:20, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I managed to reproduce it. You can stop the warning from appearing by ticking the "Desktop" box in the browser menu, but you could also just ignore it. I don't recommend you try to edit using desktop VE on your phone – judging from my very limited attempts, it doesn't seem to work very well –, but the warning isn't the limiting factor. – Rummskartoffel 11:20, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Template:aan issue at Four color theorem talk page

The template {{Aan}} at Talk:Four color theorem/Archive 1 through Archive_4 seems to skip the Archive_4 subpage and it shows Archive 1 through 3 only. Purging didn't seem to help. What else can I do to see Archive_4 link there? --CiaPan (talk) 16:17, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It looks fine to me. I see a link to Archive 4, and the link works. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:48, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ough, silly me! The fourth link was hiding past the right edge of my mobile's screen and, due to the absence of a horizontal scroll bar, I just didn't think I could scroll the page to look there. Thank you, Jonesey95, for directing me towards the answer. :D --CiaPan (talk) 19:16, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for template parameters

How do you search for template parameters? For example, you want to search for
all used of |bar= within {{foo}}, with {{foo}} having the parameters on individual lines. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:00, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

hastemplate:"foo" insource:/\{\{ *foo[^\}]+\| *bar *=/
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:26, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In tables, tags with {{!}} don't work and cause lint errors

Please see User:Anomalocaris/sandbox/Lint Test and explain why this markup 

{|
| <code>code</code>
| <code>{{!}}!code</code> <!-- not in code format, stripped </code> -->
| <code>code!{{!}}</code> <!-- doesn't appear at all, stripped </code> -->
| <s>strike</s>
| <s>{{!}}!strike</s> <!-- not strikeout, stripped </s> -->
| <s>strike!{{!}}</s> <!-- doesn't appear at all, stripped </s>-->
| <i>ital</i>
| <i>{{!}}!ital</i>   <!-- not italic, stripped </i> -->
| <i>ital!{{!}}</i>   <!-- doesn't appear at all, stripped </i> -->
|}

causes stripped tag lint errors and display issues as described in the comments. —Anomalocaris (talk) 09:05, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Template expansion is processed before the table markup, so it sees all those as if you had used | and therefore tries to interpret the part before as HTML attributes. Note a lot depends on that behavior, so it's unlikely to ever be changed. If you need a literal |, try &#124; or {{pipe}} instead. Anomie⚔ 10:53, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anomie: Thank you for the explanation! —Anomalocaris (talk) 19:57, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

mw-datatable

Since 2016 Help:Table #mw-datatable – row highlighting via cursor hover. White background is recommending that class without any limitation.

  • mw:Help:Tables #See also is pointing to this page for further reading.
  • The latter one is a kind of global recommendation.

Public usage of that class passed away deliberately now without prior discussion anywhere nor global announcement; knowing that this class is widely used.

  • 43 templates are using that here, as reported, and various other pages directly.
  • The effect makes it easier for people without extraordinary mental capabilities to read rows in large data tables.
  • Please see phab:T287997 for details.

Greetings --PerfektesChaos (talk) 09:06, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 191#class=mw-datatable no longer working in Firefox. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:20, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

delete-redirect userright

At a current discussion at WP:AE, it was discussed whether the ability to delete a single-revision redirect by overwriting was a use of extended permission. According to Wikipedia:User access levels (and Wikipedia:Page mover/delete-redirect where it was granted to page movers), the userright is restricted to admins and page-movers, however it is easy to find examples of users who are neither having the ability to do this (this user for example only has extended-confirmed, rollbacker and PCR). It's not really important as regards the AE report now, but does anyone know exactly who has access to delete-redirect? Black Kite (talk) 13:05, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I answered this at AE, BK. PMs have access to delete-redirect, but it's only required if you're moving over a page that points to a different target. If the page you're moving over is a single-redirect page that points back to the page you're moving from, then any confirmed editor can do the move. If however the page is multiple revisions, then regardless of where it points, an admin is needed to G6 it manually. For single revision pages, the G6 is done automatically by the software. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:09, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, the kind of move discussed here (first from A to B and leaving A a redirect to B; then from B to A and overwriting A in the process) is essentially a revert and is something anyone can do. I remember doing such reverts when I wasn't an admin. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:12, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Google books reference generator down?

I've been using this useful gadget for quite a while, but today I've gotten nothing but server errors. Is this just me? Vanamonde (Talk) 10:45, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Vanamonde93: I noticed it was down on Sunday, so doing Gbook refs manually. It is 500 error so server side. Any chance of getting fixed? scope_creepTalk 19:13, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The original maintainer appears to be Apoc2400, who hasn't edited in 4 months. They might still fix it though – who knows? – Rummskartoffel 23:09, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Easier way to see a page's move history?

(reposted from the help desk)

I've been using the move log tool to examine a page's move history, but it's cumbersome because you have to enter the former name of the page rather than the current name (so you have to dig through the page's history to find its original name), and it only shows one entry at a time. Buidhe suggested checking the edit history of the article's talk page, but this method is still far from ideal. Is there anywhere I can see an article's entire move history in one place? Rublov (talk) 16:35, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Rublov: I've made a tool for this precise task: User:Nardog/MoveHistory. It may not be perfect but it gets the job done most of the time. Nardog (talk) 11:02, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Nardog: Amazing. Thank you! Rublov (talk) 12:49, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-33

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

Recent changes

  • You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [2]

Problems

  • There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [3][4][5]

Changes later this week

  • A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [6]
  • Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
  • In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [7]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:25, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

How do I free up my sandbox?

I recently needed help in publishing my sandbox page "Proliferative fasciitis and proliferative myositis". The helper, Qwerfjkl, successfully moved the page to a Wikipedia page but now my sandbox page is locked up with the statements:

"This page is a redirect. The following categories are used to track and monitor this redirect:

From a page move: This is a redirect from a page that has been moved (renamed) or is the result of a page move. One reason this page was kept as a redirect is to avoid breaking links, both internal and external, that may have been made to the old page name. Any redirect with a page move logged on its history page should be tagged with this rcat template."

I and my helper do not know how get back to my original sandbox page; I have tried several ways but nothing is successuful. Can your advise me how to do so? Thank you. joflaher (talk) 21:16, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Joflaher: I was just passing and thought I'd help. I've removed the redirect from the sandbox, which located at User:Joflaher/sandbox You can create as many sandboxes as you want. Qwerfjkl doesnt' have the page mover permission, so it leaves a redirect automatically, when a page is moved. Hope that helps. scope_creepTalk 21:41, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I greatly appreciate getting my sandbox back. Is there any way that I can get back my original sandbox with all its additions and revisions of my 10 years of contributing. I frequently scroll through, going back to remind me of my old published articles and additions to other articles which I then check for important updates. Again, thanks! joflaher (talk) 17:49, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What was it called? scope_creepTalk 21:59, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately I couldn't find anything. I did find this: User:Anaplastic large cell lymphoma which need fixed. For some reason you created it under user namespace instead of the article namespace. I'll fix it right now. scope_creepTalk 22:12, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh my, this is interesting. It looks like in May, you moved User:Joflaher/sandbox to User:Anaplastic large cell lymphoma. That's technically a legal page title, but certainly not what you intended. The editing history of that page goes back to 2018, and it looks like you've kept reusing the same sandbox for multiple articles. That's not bad, per se, but in the long run it makes more sense to start a new page in your user space for each new article you begin. So, with that example, you would put it at User:Joflaher/Anaplastic large cell lymphoma. It's kind of like how you might sort files into various directories on your desktop computer. And then the next article you start might be at User:Joflaher/Interesting disease I want to write about. The advantage of this over using your sandbox is that each new article gets its own history. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:41, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @RoySmith: I posted a note up to @Primefac: to fix it, so I guess its deleted. I will CSD it. scope_creepTalk 23:24, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I put a G6 on it. scope_creepTalk 23:28, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's a load of sandbox like edits in the early page history of Eosinophilic myocarditis, this might be what you're after? 192.76.8.74 (talk) 23:29, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Scope creep I've undone your G6 tagging. We're still trying to sort out what happened. Maybe this needs to be deleted eventually, but for now, let's not make things more complicated than they already are. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:08, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: I know what happened. Joflaher copied the article from his sandbox to User:Anaplastic large cell lymphoma and another editor came along, fixed it, but left the user still created. scope_creepTalk 00:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's part of it. User:Anaplastic large cell lymphoma has history back to 2018. Anaplastic large-cell lymphoma has history back to 2004. I still don't understand how that came to be. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:41, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Joflaher did you at some point make a copy of Anaplastic large-cell lymphoma in your sandbox? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I added about 20,000 words to anaplastic large-cell lymphoma by copying the old page to my sandbox, updating this old copy with the ~20,000 edition, and copying this updated version over the old (i.e. just totally erased) anaplastic large-cell lymphoma blank page. This is my usual method when a make a very large addition to a Wikipedia page. joflaher (talk) 21:11, 16 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Joflaher that's (emphatically) not a good way to be editing, for several reasons. From the legal point of view, there's issues with copyright and attribution. From a practical point of view, what you're doing leads to page histories that are difficult to understand, such as we have now.
To be clear: please don't make copies of pages any more.
As 192.76.8.74 pointed out above, the page that's currently titled Eosinophilic myocarditis looks like it might be your old sandbox. Looking through the history, it looks like it's got a version of Resolvin from June 2016, a version of Dysfibrinogenemia from August 2017, a version of Hypereosinophilia from November 2017, and possibly others, all jumbled together. To be honest, this is beyond my ability to resolve properly. I'm going to leave this to somebody else who is more experienced with doing surgery on article histories. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:21, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Its not as simple as I thought. I've posted to Primefac, who may help. scope_creepTalk 10:27, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
You are right. I copied all of those pages and many more be copying the Wikipedia page, revising it, and then overwriting the original Wikipedia page with the revision. It is extremely difficult to directly revise the original with extensive changes that may take weeks to arrange. Can I make the sandbox copy by taking only parts of the original page piece by piece and then erase the orginal page, save the blank erased page, and then copy the sandbox to the empty page? The Wikipedia pages I hope to soon revise are seriously outdated and/or extremely incomplete. How do I procede. Thanks.Joflaher (talk) 13:13, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I run into the exact same problem when I edit large articles, and it is a pain, all the time. Unfortunately when Wikipedia was originally designed, it was designed for new editors who didn't know how edit a page, or use software and its been that way ever since. Time has marched on and the editing experience has never been updated, even though most of the world now know how to editing on Wikipedia means. For experienced editors it is extremely limiting, slow and bureaucratic, and I often think if we had a better interface that was less bureaucratic we would have had twice as many articles. Unfortunately, I think there is not much you can do, apart from edit in-place to preserve the version history. scope_creepTalk 13:50, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's two mostly-distinct issues here. I'll cover them one at a time.
First, there's the legal requirement to provide proper attribution for all content. You can resolve the legal issue by providing the required attribution in the edit summary and/or talk page. See Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia for more on this. An example is Special:Diff/1013612925. Note that I've not just included the page I copied it from, but also the exact revision number; I don't think that's strictly required, but it's good practice. You can generate that URL by going to the page you want to copy and clicking "Permanent link" in the navigation bar (at least on the web front-end). That will generate a URL of the form I used and take you there. You can then copy the complete URL from the browser's URL bar and paste it into your edit comment.
Second, there's the issue of intermingling the edit histories of multiple articles in your sandbox. The solution to that is to not keep reusing the same sandbox page. Make a new page in your userspace for each project. In the example I used above, I was only copying it to do some testing, so the intermingling of histories was not a big deal. But, if I intended to make a local copy, work on it, and then copy that back, what I would have done was created a page called User:RoySmith/Julio and Marisol temp (by just typing that into the wikipedia search bar), then copying the contents I wanted to work on, with an edit summary as described above.
All that being said, working in this copy-modify-replace mode is not how the system is designed. I really urge you to work on articles in-place. It's how most people do it, and it's how everything works best. I get what you're saying about how that makes it harder to do major changes, but it's still the recommended way to work. Consider, for example, if you make a copy of an article that has three sections, A, B, and C. You work on section A in your userspace. Meanwhile, two other editors work on sections B and C. What happens when you copy your local version back? Do you just blow away the changes the other people made and overwrite them with your obsolete copies of sections B and C? Do you work through all the changes and carefully resolve the differences? This is a real-life problem (called an edit conflict or merge conflict) which is exceptionally difficult to solve. The best way to avoid it is to not make local copies. You can still get edit conflicts if you work on the page in-place, but the window of time where this can happen is much reduced.
All of the above is in the vein of "If you're not going to do it the way I recommend, at least do it this way so you don't get yourself back into the mess you're in now". -- RoySmith (talk) 14:30, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Joflaher What would you like me to do with User:Anaplastic large cell lymphoma? Now that I understand the history better, I agree with @Scope creep that the best thing to do is delete it, but didn't want to do that without consulting you first. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:50, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: It can't be deleted. That is most modern version that Joflaher created of Anaplastic large cell lymphoma, it needs to be copied across as plain text intothe original article space and the user eventually deleted. Thankfully it wasn't G6'd, otherwise all that work would have been lost. That was good call, removing that G6, for sure. I never noticed at the time. I could do copy now, to get it started. Yip, looking at Signs and Symptons section, for example, on the old article, it much smaller than the new article. So user text needs ccopied, but I'm not sure what you would do with the revision history in the user: article. What would you do there? Could you take that across and plump it on top of the old revision history in the old article, then delete the user. scope_creepTalk 20:26, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: I've taken the article across. I'm assuming you'll fix the revision history and then delete the user? scope_creepTalk 20:34, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have inspected the article anaplastic large cell lymphoma to which I previously made a large update and revision. You did a simply great job: the article appears identical to my revision including a typo which I corrected (OK to do so?) I have often thought that this editor needs an editor to edit his work. I will surely make all revisions directly in the article rather than pasting from my sandbox. I am sorry for all of this. I may ask you all a question or two in the future. Thank you.Joflaher (talk) 21:27, 18 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Scope creep I really wish you hadn't done that. I had just finished explaining why copy-paste is a bad thing, and you went ahead and did another copy-paste. If the two pages really did need to be merged, there is a mechanism (WP:HISTMERGE) to do that and preserve the history. By doing yet another copy-paste, you've made things even more complicated, especially since there's been several more normal edits after your copy-paste. I apologize for being abrupt here, but please don't do anything further with this; leave it to admins who know how this all works and have the tools to fix things correctly. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:34, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd noticed this thread before, but didn't really know what to do with it ... after an alert about it at the admins' noticeboard, I've checked the edits out again. I've gone and moved the unrelated edits at Eosinophilic myocarditis to User:Joflaher/Early sandbox history. Re Anaplastic large-cell lymphoma, I might be missing something, but I really don't understand what the major problem is. Joflaher moved their edits from their user sandbox to the article in May 2021. There is no attribution issue because the user's copying text *they* expanded from their own sandbox; we're more after the author list than the number of edits they made, when it comes down to it. Because the userspace page has 3,156 edits, many of which over a long period of time are about anaplastic large-cell lymphoma, messing around with its history would be an exercise in extreme frustration. Sure the userspace page should be moved somewhere better (hnot deleted) but I don't have a problem with it. Graham87 07:05, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I also split out the sandbox history of Transient myeloproliferative disease into User:Joflaher/Early sandbox history2 and Fibroblastic and myofibroblastic tumors (which I found through the XTools edit counter because it had over 900 edits) to User:Joflaher/Early sandbox history3. Graham87 07:44, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Graham87 Thanks. So I know for the next time, what tools did you use to split the history? -- RoySmith (talk) 12:39, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and I see Anthony Appleyard has already merged things back. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:40, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I used selective delete/restore to do the history splits, mostly using WikiBlame to help find the cut-off points. Thanks Anthony for doing the histmerges. I didn't think to do them myself but it's probably neater this way. I'm normally not a fan of Special:MergeHistory because it only logs in one direction, but it's probably perfect for this sort of case. [[Graham87 13:25, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've gone and restored the Wikidata entries from Anthony's deletions/restorations. Graham87 13:33, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Graham87: I have merged the displaced editing history that was in User:Joflaher/Early sandbox history2, back to GATA1 where it belongs. Across Wikipedia there are likely countless snippets of edit history which got displaced because some user cut-and-paste moved a page to a scratch page to edit it, and back afterwards. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 14:58, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Graham87:, Anthony Appleyard Great to see it being finally actioned. What about the Anaplastic large-cell lymphoma and the User:Anaplastic large cell lymphoma? scope_creepTalk 15:13, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Graham87:, Anthony Appleyard, @RoySmith: Good work. Glad that's done. I never went through the whole revision list of's Joflaher. That user was the biggest one that jumped out. scope_creepTalk 16:47, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

two new template proposals: publicradiofan program and publicradiofan station

Public Radio Fan is a worldwide listing of public radio programs and public radio stations, and is similar in access structure to IMDb, but curated and not crowd-sourced. It would be used with {{FM station data}}, for example, in External links, like {{iMDB}}s are for visual media.

{{ publicradiofan program }}

{{ publicradiofan program | ID | NAME }}
or
{{ publicradiofan program | id= ID | name= NAME }}
would yield:

[http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgibin/program.pl?programid=ID NAME] at [[Public Radio Fan]]
  • Fresh Air
    • {{ publicradiofan program | 17 | WHYY }}
    • {{ publicradiofan program | id= 17 | name= WHYY }}
    • [http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgibin/program.pl?programid=17 Fresh Air] at [[Public Radio Fan]]
    • Fresh Air at Public Radio Fan


{{ publicradiofan station }}

{{ publicradiofan station | ID | NAME }}
or
{{ publicradiofan station | id= ID | name= NAME }}
would yield:

[http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgibin/station.pl?stationid=ID NAME] at [[Public Radio Fan]]
  • WHYY-FM
    • {{ publicradiofan station | 1 | WHYY }}
    • {{ publicradiofan station | id= 1 | name= WHYY }}
    • [http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgibin/station.pl?stationid=1 WHYY] at [[Public Radio Fan]]
    • WHYY at Public Radio Fan
    • {{ publicradiofan station | 4777 | WHYY 2 }}
    • {{ publicradiofan station | id= 4777 | name= WHYY 2 }}
    • [http://www.publicradiofan.com/cgibin/station.pl?stationid=4777 WHYY 2] at [[Public Radio Fan]]
    • WHYY 2 at Public Radio Fan


.... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 03:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My kneejerk reaction (or maybe it's just jerk) is to wonder why we should create templates pointing to a site so non-notable that we don't even have an article about it. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 03:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Discouraging spam would be a much better idea. Johnuniq (talk) 10:30, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
At a minimum, please avoid using multiple unnamed parameters in creating a new template. It often causes problems down the road, some of which are difficult to detect. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:59, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikifunctions

What will be the URL for the upcoming Wikifunctions website? When is it expected to be completed? 54nd60x (talk) 05:12, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you expect the answer to that question to be here? Izno (talk) 06:18, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Izno: I didn't necessarily expect it to be here, but I don't know where to ask. 54nd60x (talk) 09:56, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Try Talk:Wikifunctions or meta:Talk:Abstract Wikipedia? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:34, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

mw_datatable not working

I noticed it has stopped working, on both edge and firefox and ie. Is it deprecated, what should be done to pages using it? I am specifically asking for List of words ending in ology. Nikolaih☎️📖 06:12, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is deprecated. Switch to 'wikitable'. Izno (talk) 06:19, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It was not deprecated, just removed a week or so ago. I get the feeling that it is gone for good, but see phab:T287997 for the ongoing debate — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:43, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikolaih: It's not mw_datatable but mw-datatable, and see #mw-datatable above. ==Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:26, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget statistics

Hey there! Quick question: Where is it possible to check how many are using a certain gadget? Can anyone do that or do you need special privileges? I remember there was a way but... - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:47, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Klein Muçi: Special:GadgetUsage. — xaosflux Talk 17:50, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: thank you! :)) - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:54, 17 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sortable tables on Mobile

So, sortable tables don't work on the mobile site. Table sorting is a pretty important feature for many articles. It has not been turned on for mobile as of yet, because of ... Well, it looks like the devs would rather wait until another thing (which is more complicated) is fixed up so they can turn them on at the same time, which would be easier for them. (I may be misinterpreting this.) But from our perspective, maybe we'd rather just turn it on from our end, instead of waiting however much time (likely years) until someone gets around to it?

Does anyone see any reason not to just add something to the effect of mw.loader.using('jquery.tablesorter').then( function () { $('.sortable').tablesorter(); } ); to Mediawiki:Mobile.js, to turn on table sorting? It's certainly ugly to do it this way, but are there any actual problems it would cause? --Yair rand (talk) 06:42, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Possible COVID-19 template problem

Possible Template Problem: For some reason, several templates, "{{COVID-19 pandemic}}" and " {{Vaccines}}", no longer seem to be working at the "COVID-19 vaccine#External links" webpage - tried to fix the possible problem(s) - unsuccessful so far - Help Welcome - iac - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 14:41, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You have reached the template expansion limit. You can see in the current version, the source code near the bottom the stats generated on the page creation by MediaWiki, that "Post‐expand include size: 2095857/2097152 bytes". Those templates would exceed that, so it will not expand any more templates. You likely need to consider either reducing the number of sources (you have 700+ references, that's counting towards it), or splitting content. --Masem (t) 14:49, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Math 0

There seems to be problem with "<math>0</math>". It produces "" (nothing). Other examples at Talk:Trigonometric functions#Values of zero in table?.

Apparently a space must be inserted in front of the zero ("<math> 0</math>") to produce the desired result: "". Is this a bug or did I miss something? TIA. - DVdm (talk) 15:39, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DVdm: It's a known bug that was introduced today while they were fixing another issue - if you have a zero inside the math tags the wikitext parser incorrectly thinks that it's an null string and returns nothing. See Phab:T288846#7294135. 192.76.8.74 (talk) 19:05, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

How to change font size within Wikipedia?

  • My Wikipedia display's display font size has suddenly changed. Please how can I change it back? When I am not in Wikipedia, my screen looks like it was before. There seems to be a font size setting that applies only in Wikipedia. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:25, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If this is a continuation of the WP:AN thread, I've got to think Geni's explanation is the most likely. In Firefox (as well as other browsers), you control font size, and it's all too easy to accidentally change it.

  • If you're using Windows and Firefox, thee's probably a line near the top of the Firefox window that contains the url you're at . If the font size has been changed, just to the url's right should be a number. If the font is smaller than normal, the number will be "90%" or "80%" or ... If the font is larger than normal, the number will be "110%" or "120%" or...
Font size settings are stored based on the url. If in at the English language wikipedia the font is at 90%, switch to commons, and it will likely be different (unless you changed it there as well).
The easiest way to reset is with CTRL+0. By "CTRL+0", I mean:
  • Depress the CTRL key.
  • While the CTRL key is depressed, hit the zero key. To be safe, use the zero key above the letters. If you use the zero on the numeric keypad, make sure the NUMLOCK key has been hit; otherwise, you're actually hitting CTRL+INSERT.

Hope this helps! --Larry/Traveling_Man (talk) 18:06, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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