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. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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tagging wikiproject templates in other language using eng: counterpart as ref

is there such bot that does the following:

checks all members of a specific project in eng:, if versions in another language exists(for example zh)

if zh version exists tag it with corresponding template(zh)

I am planning to tag zhwp:pharmacology using this method Panintelize (talk) 04:15, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

I can give you the list of articles, that can be tagged. The tagging process itself would be up to you (or we can come up with another idea then). Moving further disscusion to your talk page. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:38, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! this is very helpful -Panintelize (talk) 15:06, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Watch for redirects when you do this. If the project has a sizable scope, then it may have some outdated tags that on the talk pages for redirects (e.g., if an article was merged, especially into a subject that you don't really care about). I found two of those out of nearly 150 articles on an en-to-ht list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, WhatamIdoing. Will keep in mind that. But at least in my current way most probably I don't have to worry about it, because I don't follow redirects, I stay at them. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 09:00, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Watchlist pages

So I go to a page, see that it's not on my watchlist, and think to myself, "I swear this was on there". Does this happen to anybody else? This happens here and there for me, I'd say at least once a week. I posted here because it's possible that it could be a bug. It's more than likely just me making a mistake each time. Either way, it would be interesting to see if anybody else experiences the same moments of 'confusion' as I do. —DangerousJXD (talk) 10:20, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Not happened to me yet DangerousJXD, so it's probably just you - either way, you might want to report it should it continue to happen? -- samtar ^whisper 10:31, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

It sometimes happens to me too, for pages I definitely used to watch. My guess is that I accidentally removed the checkmark at "Watch this page" before saving an edit to the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:06, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I get the opposite: pages appearing in my watchlist where I have never edited either the main or talk pages. 2-3 times a month I guess. I did mention this a few years ago, my theory was that somebody else had watched a page but that it somehow got linked to my watchlist. If this is happening, it explains DangerousJXD's observation - they watched a page, but it somehow got linked to someone else's watchlist. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:50, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Here's my guess at the three most common "accidents":

• You accidentally bumped the WP:Keyboard shortcuts while visiting the page.
• You pressed the spacebar when you were tabbed to that spot in the UI but thought your cursor was somewhere else.
• You aimed for something else, but accidentally clicked the watchlist icon because a script loaded just as you were clicking.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

That last one has happened to me more times than I care to remember. I go to click View history and the star icon shifts under my mouse pointer at exactly the same instant as my click. I'm not aware of any instances where I failed to notice and correct, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Damned frustrating for impatient people like me, having to wait an extra second for things to stop moving around. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:46, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

You might want to see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 143#Watchlist is not working. It can be fixed. --Obsuser (talk) 20:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@Mandruss: It might be because you have Twinkle turned on. The shift occurs in order to fit the "TW" menu. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:35, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Sounds likely, but turning off Twinkle is not a solution. I'd be giving up more than I was gaining. But, as Wikipedia annoyances go, this one ain't so bad. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:13, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Justin Lee is somehow on my watchlist. I'm not in the edit history (either main or talk); I don't see why I would ever have visited that page, let alone accidentally watched it. I don't even use Twinkle. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:12, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

What the heck is going on with the single edit tab?!?

Tech News says the Single edit tab is about to be enabled. When I go to the test server to try it, it still dumps me directly into Visual Editor by default, both when I'm logged out and when I make a new account. When I test it without javascript enabled then it completely blocks be from editing at all! And is the WMF still intending for there to be a pop up menu asking new users a question they obviously have no idea how to answer? And if so, do we really want to tell new users to blindly click to make the pop-up go away, and get chaotically dropped into a random default mode? We know from the May 2015 Visual Editor test that there was zero benefit when new users were offered two editor links, but we don't know if people randomly defaulted into VE mode will be more likely to quit before they ever figure out the extremely obscure button inside VE to activate the Wikitext editor.

Opposed to deployment until these issues get sorted out. Alsee (talk) 10:49, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Ugh, I am strongly opposed to the visual editor, I think it adds nothing of value to a wiki, and that it actually has overall harmful elements to it. If it were up to me, I'd virtually burn the visual editor and crypto-shred the drives it used to live on! Is there anything remotely close to community consensus for further trying to ram an unnecessary editor down people's throats? --Murph9000 (talk) 12:21, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@Alsee: If I understand correctly, then if you disabled VE for yourself, then you can ignore that message - it will be the same as it always have been. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 13:44, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Edgars2007, you seem to have misunderstood. If the test server is an accurate demonstration of what they plan to deploy, then the code is broken and deployment must be halted until this is resolved. If we assume it's just the test server that's screwed up, if we assume the WMF plan to deploy a bug-free-version of what they said it was going to be, then I strongly argue deployment should still be halted until it has a sane implementation. Alsee (talk) 14:29, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

@Alsee: Ok, yes I misunderstood. But editing at test2.wikipedia.org is as I expected. As I haven't disabled VE there, editing mode opens as VE, not wiki mode. Then I can switch to wikitext by pressing those [[]] at the top op page, which says "Switch to source editing". OK, I just know, that I have such option and I know where to look, so it could be made more clear to those, who doesn't know that. And I also can choose some preferences (look at that combobox). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:49, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually, there are a few tasks which are rendered more easily in Visual Editor (e.g. mass changes to text formatting), so I'm not a total hater of VE anymore. That said, I would strongly prefer that it would be an editor's personal preference as to whether a single "Edit" tab dumps you into "Edit source" or VE first... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:37, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

IJBall, this is, indeed, the plan. If you have disabled VisualEditor, then nothing will change for your account at all. But if you have it enabled, then you will see this the next time you edit:

If you choose "Always give me the wikitext editor" (the first option), then it will always open in wikitext. Whatever you choose, you will be able to change your preferences at any time, by going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and choosing whatever you want from the drop-down menu:

The main goal is to give people what they want, regardless of whether they want one or two buttons, or wikitext or the visual editor first. Personally, I'll be choosing two buttons, because I'm used to it and I regularly use both editing systems (different tools, different strengths). But I know that many experienced editors will choose "always wikitext", and only use the visual editor for things like adding and removing columns from a table in a single click. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Alsee, I believe that I have explained in other discussions, more than once, that IPs at the English Wikipedia will not see the page open in the visual editor. IPs at the English Wikipedia do not have access to the visual editor by default.

Also, as I have also explained to you elsewhere, more than once, Test2 is not "an accurate demonstration of what they plan to deploy" at the English Wikipedia. Nothing's being deployed anywhere until a few bugs are resolved (e.g., using NoScript in a Javascript-capable web browser), and even when those critical bugs are fixed, the setup at test2.wikipedia is not the setup that will be used here at the English Wikipedia. (It is probably the setup that will be used at some other Wikipedias, such as Catalan, Hungarian, and Portuguese.)

Edgars, you are correct: if you disabled the visual editor in Special:Preferences, then this won't affect your account at all. After it's deployed here, if you enable the visual editor but set this preference to "Always use wikitext", then the only difference you will see is the addition of a small pencil-shaped icon in the upper right corner of the wikitext window. That icon will allow you to temporarily switch to the visual editor if you want to make a one-time edit there (e.g., to add a column to a table). Everything else will remain the same.

Also, to be absolutely clear, Alsee is wrong when he claims that Tech/News says the single edit tab is "about to be enabled". Tech/News actually says that this is a planned future change – "future", as in "any time not in the past or present", which encompasses next month and even next year. No date has been set for any deployment to any non-test wiki. The only firm decision about the deployment is that the English Wikipedia will not be the first location for the deployment. I do not even expect the team to discuss a date for the English Wikipedia until after they've seen how well this system works (or doesn't) at several other wikis. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF), yes we've discussed before. I filed T122692 Phabricator two weeks ago which has gotten no response, and your latest reply gives no response to the question I asked. It was unclear from Tech News when deployment was planed, so I took this as a potentially urgent matter. As I indicated in my second comment above I was ready to assume that the test server is a useless demo which doesn't reflect what will be deployed. So fine, we're agreed that isn't what's being done. Can you switch from explaining various things that aren't being done, to helping provide some answer on what the WMF does plan? It the plan still to give new users a dysfunction menu and give new users a random default? (Randomly default VE / default Wikitext / default two-tabs.)

Note that my posts above didn't say oppose single-edit-tab, I opposed deployment until we sort out what it is that would be deployed. Keeping two edit tabs is reasonable, having one edit tab my be reasonable if it doesn't have a bad implementation. Alsee (talk) 01:24, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Realistically, I expect the Phabricator task you filed to be closed as invalid. Tasks are for actions that need to be done. "This is bad for users" is not an action; therefore, it is not a valid Phabricator task. I suspect that the only reason it hasn't already beed closed is due to the backlog of holidays and travel.

Test2.wikipedia is not "useless". It shows the likely configuration for the majority of Wikipedias, especially for the Wikipedias that are likely to make this transition before the English Wikipedia.

The current plan is:

1. To fix several critical bugs before deploying the single edit tab to any production wiki.
2. To use different configurations for different wikis.
3. To not implement this system at the English Wikipedia first.
4. To test (at test2.wikipedia) the configuration that is most likely to deployed to the first wiki that will see this system, rather than the configuration that is most likely to be deployed (eventually, perhaps months from now) to the largest wiki.
5. To identify potential target dates based upon experience at these early wikis, instead of making up arbitrary dates in advance.

The "default" is:

• to give you the wikitext editor if you have Javascript disabled, and
• to give you the wikitext editor if you have VisualEditor disabled, and
• otherwise, to ask you for your preference.

If you do not answer the question, then you will be given whatever editing system you used last time. This information will be collected in advance, for people who have edited before (both logged-in and logged-out). This is not a "random" default.

Note, again, that this is a general statement about the overall plan, for a hypothetical average wiki. It specifically does not apply to IP editors at wikis that do not currently permit logged-out editors to use the visual editor. If IPs are not permitted to use the visual editor at that wiki, then IPs will still not be permitted to use the visual editor at that wiki. There is nothing in here that gives any IPs access to two editing tabs. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

I am trying to address a brand new user. The proposed menu asks them a question they don't understand and forces them to click randomly to make it go away (a bad and potentially stressful design), then sets them to an effectively random default when they click randomly.

Either new users should simply get the site default, or if the the WMF really wants a menu it needs to be a menu that won't freak out new users, one they can rationally deal with. Maybe a radio button for the various options, with the default pre-selected, and a simple "continue" button. At least that way a new user who doesn't understand the options can more comfortably just click "continue". Alsee (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2016 (UTC) Adding ping: Whatamidoing (WMF). Alsee (talk) 06:56, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

(Alsee, adding a ping to an existing comment like that won't work; see mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details. --Pipetricker (talk) 11:14, 17 January 2016 (UTC))

1. Not all newly registered accounts are actually new editors.
2. Whether a brand-new editor will see the dialog box at this wiki is still being discussed. They will presumably make a recommendation after the formal user testing is completed.
3. The "potentially stressful" dialog box doesn't require a response. You can just click "OK" without making a choice. In that case, you will end up in the what you're calling the 'default' editing system, and if you switch after entering the editor, then it will remember that you switched when (if) you ever edit again.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:19, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Public logs

The Thanks log link is now shown first in Special:Log rather than last. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:48, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

@GeoffreyT2000: Is there any particular reason for this post? Do you think they should be in a different order? — This, that and the other (talk) 08:36, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

It used to say "Show patrol log Show tag log Show review log Show thanks log" and now it says "Show thanks log Show patrol log Show tag log Show review log". GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 21:10, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I believe that TTO is trying to figure out whether you believe that this change is a problem, or if you only wanted to say that you noticed the existence of the change. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:22, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Annoying question at prefs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T122702

At Preferences, if I click on any link, I now get a question "This page is asking you to confirm that you want to leave - data you have entered may not be saved." When this feature was first added, we asked for and then got a new option at Preferences → Editing "Warn me when I leave an edit page with unsaved changes" - and it worked. Why is it now being ignored? How can I suppress that message and go straight to the page that I want? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm getting this too. I have reset my preferences (adding HotCat) recently. Blythwood (talk) 23:42, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Hey, I got it also. I went to Prefs to see what you were talking about. Didn't click on anything in Prefs. Didn't change a thing. Didn't see anything wrong, so I clicked on my Watchlink. And up pops that message.— Maile (talk) 00:10, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I've got it too. Using Firefox as my browser. Only started happening this afternoon. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:57, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, it wasn't supposed to do that.. :) Should be fixed in a couple of days. Sorry about the confusion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:19, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Annoying font change at ExpandTemplates

At Special:ExpandTemplates, the font in the "Input text:" text box is now proportional, instead of monospace. The box is no longer full-width but is about 67% width, and the vertical gaps between the checkboxes are much larger. This means that on clicking OK, I don't get the "Result" without scrolling down. However, I do notice that the "Result" box is still monospace, and still full-width. Can we have the upper part of the page put back the way it was please? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:46, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

@Redrose64: See mw:MediaWiki UI. Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:23, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Not a good answer, might as well have been "we want MonoBook to look like a hotch-potch of Vector, mobile site and Facebook". --Redrose64 (talk) 23:29, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with you, Redrose. I also think that WMF / MediaWiki have it quite wrong in using abnormally/obnoxiously large controls and spacing on the basis of accessibility. In my opinion, they are fixing something which is outside the scope of things that web developers should do for accessibility. Making controls usable/accessible is an issue for browser developers, not web developers, in my opinion. MW should use the standard HTML controls at their normal/default size and leave it to browsers to solve any accessibility issues with them (most browsers have an easy zoom in/out feature these days, operating systems provide an accessibility magnifier, etc). MW should only concern themselves with making sure that the MW HTML works ok with the features provided by the browsers and operating system, and using HTML's tags and attributes in a way that is good for accessibility (i.e. correct tags for things and using the various accessibility attributes, but not routinely making most things abnormally large).

As for monospace in the input box, I support your call to revert to that, as dealing with code is much more accessible with monospaced fonts. --Murph9000 (talk) 00:06, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I concur. This was a poorly conceived 'fix' of something that wasn't broken. I don't care so much about the button size or color but the input text window must be monospace and the whole thing show adapt to fit the width of my screen (like the output); there is no reason to artificially constrain the size of the input text window.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 12:12, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

More general

It might be a more general change, see this page. MonoBook is supposed to be compact, with thin sharp borders to the boxes and clearly defined input boxes. I shoud not need to scroll down when I didn't before. The non-sharp smudged borders are not clear, I do not have perfect eyesight, this is now an accessibility issue. It was fine as it was before. Together with the bigger gaps, it needs to be reversed - in MonoBook at least. That goes for Special:MovePage too. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:40, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

This is the Apex theme of mw:OOjs UI, which is our library for controls and UI elements (both PHP and JS). I agree that Apex isn't terribly consistent with monobook really. I think it might be better to use the MediaWiki UI theme instead. Or someone can step up and write a whole new theme of course. I can't find right now where and why this got activated for those specific pages however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:29, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

"Where" is gerrit:255912 for ExpandTemplates and gerrit:251013 for ComparePages. The direct "why" is phab:T107037 and phab:T100161, but neither of those gives actual reasons to do so. Anomie⚔ 16:05, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Also Special:Export. I mean, what is the point of constraining the width? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:51, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Trouble with images

I'm on the current version of Chrome, Windows 8.1 (list of add-ons available on request).

In the greater majority of cases, when I load an article, any pictures included show a broken image icon, and not the actual picture. This has been consistent for at least a week now.

Does anyone know what's causing this, and more importantly, how to fix it? Seanette (talk) 07:45, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Pretty much could be anything. If you have any filtering stuff added to your browser, like ad blockers, etc, try testing with all stuff like that disabled. Something quick to try is to extract an image URL from the HTML source, and see what happens if you visit that URL directly (i.e. just throw it into the browser's location bar). That quick test will let you see easily if the problem is your browser failing to connect to the server for the image, or if you are connecting ok but getting some kind of error from the server.

One possibility is if you have an over-zealous ISP that is forcing some or all of your traffic through a filter. WMF use HTTPS for everything now, and certain ISP content filter configurations cause that to break due to your browser's security correctly identifying a "man in the middle" security attack/compromise via the SSL certificate mismatch. If you are from a censorship-heavy nation, your government may be forcing your ISP to attempt to block certain images on Wikimedia Commons. I do not know if that has ever happened for WMF servers, but I have witnessed it happening first hand while trying to view an entirely legal image on a general purpose image hosting site. --Murph9000 (talk) 08:00, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I tried changing a setting in Avast Antivirus, which so far seems to be helping. This was the only site I had that issue with. I'll revisit this topic if it turns out that wasn't it. Thanks for the input! Seanette (talk) 03:47, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Problem with loading Wikimedia sites

I'll keep it short and simple as I can; sometimes, when I'm editing, Wikipedia simply decides not to work. I can go for a while editing Wikipedia, then suddenly it stops loading. There's no pattern to this, it just decides randomly whenever it wants to stop loading things. Sometimes I can load things after a while, but it loads the page in a primitive HTML read-only version of the page. Sometimes it'll be 10 minutes, or half an hour, or at the worst of times a full hour before it works properly again. And then after that it stops again after a while. It has really crippled my ability to work on Wikipedia articles.

I know for a fact that it's not a problem with the site; I can easily access Wikipedia on my mobile and it works fine; no random breakdowns or anything. It also has nothing to do with my internet connection, since every other website I access works perfectly fine. The problem is limited to my access to Wikimedia sites such as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. I can only deduce that it must be a problem with how I'm accessing Wikipedia on my PC, but I don't know what it is. Does anybody have the slightest clue on what's going on, or how to fix it? :s

Thanks in advance. Philip Terry Graham 15:41, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Philip Terry Graham - would it be possible to have the browser and version of the browser you're using, as well as the operating system and version? -- samtar ^whisper 15:50, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Browser: Firefox 43.0.4, Operating system, Windows 10, version 1511. Philip Terry Graham 15:55, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks - during a period of Wikipedia not working, what does the browser do? Does it show the previous page while the "loading" icon spins on the tab? Has it ever shown the message that it has timed out? If it happens in a moment, can you try pinging en.wikipedia.org? -- samtar ^whisper 16:00, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

It simply does exactly as you described in the first scenario. There's never a "connection has timed out" or anything like that come up. The loading wheel just spins until it just stops, and I'm still on the same exact page. Philip Terry Graham 16:06, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Okay, and when this is happening can you access other webpages? -- samtar ^whisper 16:08, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, that's exactly what I do; when I can't be bothered to wait for Wikipedia to load, I just kill time on other sites like Facebook or Twitter; every other website works completely fine when Wikimedia isn't. Philip Terry Graham 16:10, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Next time it happens can you try: Windows key + R --> "cmd" --> "ping en.wikipedia.org"? -- samtar ^whisper 16:23, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

@Samtar: Okay, this was the result. Philip Terry Graham 17:11, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm still having problems with loading Wikipedia at times, as per my statements above. Can anyone else help out? :s Philip Terry Graham 00:19, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Philip Terry Graham, regarding pinging and your signature:

Your above attempt to ping @Samtar probably failed (so I did it for you now), due to your signature not directly linking to a page with your current username; see mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details, and also the guideline at Wikipedia:Signatures#Internal links.

So you should change the signature in your preferences so it links to your current user page (or talk page or contributions page per the guideline).

Also, I guess (but am not certain) that pinging through a redirected page doesn't work. So trying to ping you using the link from your current signature will fail, like it probably did when User:samtar did that, which is another reason for updating your signature.

Testing to verify: I guess you get no notification for this ping @Philip Terry Graham: Am I right? --Pipetricker (talk) 11:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Pinging User:PhilipTerryGraham. --Pipetricker (talk) 13:51, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi hi, sorry I missed your ping! Those results suggest there is no technical reason as to why Wikipedia/media isn't loading as the hostname is being resolved to an IP (suggesting it's not a DNS issue) and the IP is reachable (not timing out). Could you try using a different browser? -- samtar ^whisper 12:37, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Philip, have you tried all the usual things, like WP:BYPASSing the cache? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:26, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Whatamidoing, pinging User:PhilipTerryGraham by linking his former username most likely won't work; see my above comments. --Pipetricker (talk) 10:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Whoops. Sorry about that. I had completely forgot to change my signature after I changed my username a while back. Anyways, I did come across Wikipedia:Bypass your cache earlier, while I was doing my own research into what I could do, but it definitely doesn't do much help when trying to open up an editing page or, most importantly, trying to save edits. Philip Terry Graham 16:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Clarification: I thought it was working... I think my internet connection was simply slower earlier in the day, and I had been reloading pages too quickly and not realising it was acting normal. Caching no longer works for me. It's the old load-forever-then-stop-for-no-reason thing once more. :( Philip Terry Graham 18:06, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Also, I can confirm that it is a Firefox-only issue; Wikipedia works fine in Microsoft Edge, at least, when it doesn't work in Firefox. However, I ain't using Edge, I want to stick to Firefox, if that's possible. Philip Terry Graham 18:11, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Nope. It happens on Edge too, just not concurrent with Firefox. Also, Edge simply gives me a white screen, rather than just staying on the previous page, when it stops loading. I feel Murphy's law screwing around with us again! XD Philip Terry Graham 18:41, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I am now using Google Chrome. Let's see how this goes. Philip Terry Graham 21:25, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Nope. Google Chrome does the same thing, albeit less frequently. So, the issue is definitely not limited to a single browser. It has something to do with my PC's connection to Wikimedia sites, surely. @Samtar, Whatamidoing (WMF), and Pipetricker. --Philip Terry Graham 22:08, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

As of right now, both IE 11 and Firefox 43.0.4 have issues with Wikimedia sites. I was not having these issues before. User Edit Count brings up a page with the Wikimedia template for it, but all content is missing. User Articles Created brings up the Wikimedia page with a message at the top of the page "No webservice". Global user contributions works as it should. Edit summary search seems to work ok. — Maile (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Fwiw... as far as Edge goes; try disabling Use page prediction to speed up browsing, improve reading and make my overall [browsing] experience better found near the very end of the view advanced settings menu of the settings menu opened by the three dots (•••) in a typical Edge toolbar. I first noticed something was off soon after the Windows Update patches (~ Jan. 13) but only recently resolved Wiki project issue by turning that (new?) option off in Edge.

I also noted that most Internet-Explorer-browser-version-to-Microsoft-operating-systems-support for other than those running Windows 10 officially changed big-time around the same time as that window's update was released. It might be the case that between what is no longer supported by Microsoft in addition to and/or in combination with what the MediaWiki code also no longer supports (i.e not Class A + both going into effect early 2016) is behind some if not all of these recently reported on-WP 'issues' (but I've been wrong before so your mileage may vary :) -- George Orwell III (talk) 09:56, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

@George Orwell III and PhilipTerryGraham: Not something I'm aware of (above) - would you like me to compile this all together for a phab bug report? -- samtar ^whisper 10:06, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I use Firefox 43.0.4, I have two problems at the moment, which may be two symptoms of the same cause, and have appeared in the last day or so. One is slow loading of Wikimedia sites: the spinny thing which temporarily replaces the favicon in the browser tab sometimes takes a lot longer than it formerly did - whilst it's doing that, Firefox displays "waiting for en.wikipedia.org", "waiting for en.wikipedia.org", or "waiting for upload.wikimedia.org" etc. The other problem is that if I use the "back" arrow button, the previous page isn't just redisplayed - it's refetched, this doesn't just make it a lot slower than it need be, it's a pain in the ass when I'm previewing edits, since the edit window is reset to its initial state and my edit is lost. If I then try the "forward" arrow button, I get the message

Document Expired

This document is no longer available.

The requested document is not available in Firefox's cache.

    As a security precaution, Firefox does not automatically re-request sensitive documents.
    Click Try Again to re-request the document from the website.

Worse, if I carry out a non-edit action like a page move or delete, having done that an attempt to use "back" resends the request to move or delete the page. These reloading/caching problems don't occur with other sites: it's as if my browser is no longer able to cache anything from Wikimedia. Similarly, watchlist checking is now a real bind: having clicked a "diff" link and determined that the edit was OK, I click "back" - and now need to wait several seconds for the watchlist to be rebuilt and reloaded, then the Javascript to stop flicking the page up and down (collapsibles etc. at the top), before I can find the next "diff" link. It always used to cache my watchlist until I explicitly refreshed the browser tab. What's gone wrong? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:07, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I have the same problem as Redrose, also using Firefox 43.0.4. Jenks24 (talk) 12:51, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

IMHO; the "obvious" thing to check is to verify if this also happens on non-wikiproject based sites that are also serving content exclusively through the https//: and SSL/TLS protocols only. If the same thing happens elsewhere as it does under MW today, my guess would be that the change is/was being done by design & not accident -- and, unfortunately, you've "caught up" to the misery IE users have been experiencing for some time now. (Also see Losing Edits below - seems related to FireFox users) -- George Orwell III (talk) 13:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Inflation calculator for large values

I mostly work on historical articles where the unit of currency is in the millions or billions. I have always tried to use the inflation template to convert to today's values, like this : "$100 million ($250 million today)"

I would like to begin using fmt=eq instead of typing "today", but I cannot figure out how to do it in these examples. There is the difficult to type inflation-year example, but I am not going to use that.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:05, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: this page gets lots of attention for quick answers to such questions when necessary, but for the benefit of the template users, and those examples in their documentation, please consider asking at Template talk:Inflation. How's it going? — CpiralCpiral 21:06, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

There is an additional issue, for those who are unaware, in that there are different inflation indices for different purposes. I am not sure, however, that these specialised indices are more appropriate than a consumer price index. Certainly for calculating rebuilding costs, RIBA's building price indices are invaluable, and for economic study percent of GDP may make more sense. However for understanding the scale of expenditure RPI/CPI figures give it in terms of "about 1000 times what I spend in a year" or "about 10,000 family saloons".

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 04:34, 17 January 2016 (UTC).

Bug in display of footnotes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T70324

Sorry to be a bore, but is the bug whereby footnotes on talk pages are displayed at the bottom of the page rather than at the bottom of the thread to which they relate ever going to be fixed? Please? Pretty please? 109.145.180.55 (talk) 03:26, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

The template {{reflist-talk}} inserts all references used at that point of insertion. --MASEM (t) 03:32, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

This has no doubt been mentioned before as a workaround, but it is unsatisfactory. The person originally adding the footnotes will in all probability not bother to do this because, to them, everything looks fine, as their thread will be the last on the page. The next person to come along and add a new thread will be the first to see the problem. They most likely don't know about that template, and anyway, it shouldn't be their problem. There is, I would suggest, essentially never a case when footnotes should correctly go at the bottom of the talk page. They always need to go at the end of the thread. The software should take care of it. It should be automatic. 109.145.180.55 (talk) 03:44, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

See T70324, currently open at Low priority. — CpiralCpiral 04:20, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

We keep getting qs like this. Most recent is Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 142#References in section. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:16, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it is a perennial irritation. 86.183.129.68 (talk) 21:29, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Problem using the characters [ and ] in a link

I'd like to add the following external link to a page:

"https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search?f[subject_facet_ssim][]=Markets&f[subject_geographic_ssim][]=Boston"

But when I tried adding code containing this link to the page and I preview the result, what I see is this:

[subject_facet_ssim[]=Markets&f[subject_geographic_ssim][]=Boston]

Evidently, the presence in the link of the [ and ] characters corrupts the reference.

Can this problem be solved?

NewtonCourt (talk) 21:38, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Percent-encode the brackets as %5B and %5D, like this: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search?f%5Bsubject_facet_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Markets&f%5Bsubject_geographic_ssim%5D%5B%5D=Boston. SiBr₄ (talk) 21:54, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

That did it. Thanks very much. NewtonCourt (talk) 12:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Emails not getting through

On both of the last two occasions I've attempted to send an email through Special:EmailUser, the intended recipient has told me that they haven't received it in either their inbox or their spam folder. Does anyone have any idea why that might be? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:47, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 136#Email is not working. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:51, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Handling of <br /> tags broken

It appears that Wikipedia no longer honors existing styles or font sizes when two or more line breaks are placed in text. No matter what font size is in effect, the <br /> or <br> tag produces absurdly large vertical spacing between paragraphs. Here are some examples:

Example 1

This is a paragraph with default font size.

Note the spacing between lines.

Example 2

This is a paragraph with font size "-3".

Note how the spacing between lines stays the same as in the first example, instead of becoming proportionally smaller.

Example 3 (inserted answer)  Done

This is a paragraph using actual opening and closing paragraph <p> tags with it's inline font-size: styling set to "x-small" (~ to old "-3").

Note how the spacing between lines are now proportionally smaller too, as the OP requested.

It seems to me that this used to work correctly in Wikipedia and vertical spacing followed the font size/style currently in effect, keeping them roughly in the correct proportions. It certainly doesn't behave the way HTML and XHTML normally do in a Web page. The effect doesn't depend on which Wikipedia skin is in effect, as far as I can determine. — Quicksilver^{T @} 16:25, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

If the font changes, the spacing should follow. I opened T124000 for vertical changes, and T123904 for horizontal. — CpiralCpiral 04:22, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

user:Hydrargyrum, once you get the line wrapping to start chiming in, it doesn't look that bad? The last column uses the Extension:poem tags MediaWiki gives us to use instead of br tags, but they seem exactly the same.

Line followed by two <br /><br />. Note the acceptable line spacing between this line, started with two line-breaks, and the previous line; both inside a normal font. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Curabitur pretium tincidunt lacus. Nulla gravida orci a odio. Nullam varius, turpis et commodo pharetra, est eros bibendum elit, nec luctus magna felis sollicitudin mauris. Integer in mauris eu nibh euismod gravida. Duis ac tellus et risus vulputate vehicula. Donec lobortis risus a elit. Etiam tempor. Ut ullamcorper, ligula eu tempor congue, eros est euismod turpis, id tincidunt sapien risus a quam. Maecenas fermentum consequat mi. Donec fermentum. Pellentesque malesuada nulla a mi. Duis sapien sem, aliquet nec, commodo eget, consequat quis, neque. Aliquam faucibus, elit ut dictum aliquet, felis nisl adipiscing sapien, sed malesuada diam lacus eget erat. Cras mollis scelerisque nunc. Nullam arcu. Aliquam consequat. Curabitur augue lorem, dapibus quis, laoreet et, pretium ac, nisi. Aenean magna nisl, mollis quis, molestie eu, feugiat in, orci. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.

Line with a <font size="-3">. Note the unacceptable line spacing between these line-break lines, that start with two line-breaks, and their previous lines. They should have becoming proportionally-smaller vertical spacing because the font is smaller. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Curabitur pretium tincidunt lacus. Nulla gravida orci a odio. Nullam varius, turpis et commodo pharetra, est eros bibendum elit, nec luctus magna felis sollicitudin mauris. Integer in mauris eu nibh euismod gravida. Duis ac tellus et risus vulputate vehicula. Donec lobortis risus a elit. Etiam tempor. Ut ullamcorper, ligula eu tempor congue, eros est euismod turpis, id tincidunt sapien risus a quam. Maecenas fermentum consequat mi. Donec fermentum. Pellentesque malesuada nulla a mi. Duis sapien sem, aliquet nec, commodo eget, consequat quis, neque. Aliquam faucibus, elit ut dictum aliquet, felis nisl adipiscing sapien, sed malesuada diam lacus eget erat. Cras mollis scelerisque nunc. Nullam arcu. Aliquam consequat. Curabitur augue lorem, dapibus quis, laoreet et, pretium ac, nisi. Aenean magna nisl, mollis quis, molestie eu, feugiat in, orci. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.

Here's Epicurus in <p style="font-size:x-small;"> tags now. Epicurus expressed a non-aggressive attitude characterized by his statement: "The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can; and those he cannot, he at any rate does not treat as aliens; and where he finds even this impossible, he avoids all dealings, and, so far as is advantageous, excludes them from his life."  Done

It really doesn't look so bad when you get away from lines and into paragraphs. — CpiralCpiral 06:39, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

If you actually set the font-size attribute's value on the paragraph element and not through the now long deprecated font element (see newly added Example 3 at top) there no longer seems to be any spacing issue(s) under the wiki-markup. If it still works outside the wiki mark-up environment; consider yourself "lucky" that "old" behaviors still work for you I suppose. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

And I've replaced table column3 three with that solution, showing how well it works in larger forms, (and I've filed the solution at phabricator and closed that ticket.) See WP:HTML5 for all such deprecated usage. — CpiralCpiral 21:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-03

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 will be able to find or mark bugs and suggestions in Phabricator that are specific for your language or wiki. [1]
• Notifications have been upgraded with more detailed and easier-to-access information. See the documentation. Cross-wiki notifications will be available soon on the two test wikis. [2]

Changes this week

• The visual editor uses the TemplateData extension to make editing templates easier. You will now get a warning when you edit a TemplateData form and leave it without saving. [3]
• MediaWiki will get a new authentication and authorization system called AuthManager. This is planned to happen in a month or two. Some bots will need to change how they log in. Two new and more stable authentication methods will be available now: Owner-only OAuth credentials and bot passwords. You can read more about the change. [4]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all Wikipedias from 21 January (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is governance model. The meeting will be on 20 January at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:56, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Searching external links & citations

Remind me, please, what the tool or trick is for searching for a specific website in our external links (including in citations). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:49, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Special:LinkSearch? SiBr₄ (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

That's it, thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:54, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

LinkSearch can't do this: insource: "http yahoo brand edgar". — CpiralCpiral 00:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Not receiving email confirmation code

After my post earlier I was informed that there are problem with Yahoo mail and the Wikipedia email system, so I created a new Gmail address and changed the address in my preferences, but I haven't received the confirmation code. I've re-tried four or five times but it's not working, and it's not going to the spam folder either (the email address is brand new and has never received any spam). Apologies if this is a known issue but I'd appreciate any help. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:21, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Does your new address contain any special characters? Can you verify you can receive inbound mail from other sources? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:36, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

No special characters (it's just hjmwiki at gmail.com, the simplest thing I could think of that wasn't taken), and yes I can receive email from other sources. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:47, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I just tested another one to Gmail successfully, did you check the "All Mail" folder? Are you checking from a browser or a client? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:23, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I just used "Email this user" on your talk to test that aspect of your mail. Please report if you receive anything. Johnuniq (talk) 04:00, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks guys, the problem's solved now. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:05, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

API question

The following is a copy of an email sent to OTRS:

I'm currently conducting research that requires me to know the Wikilinks (as in, hyperlinks to other Wikipedia articles) within the text of an article. For example, the page on "Pistol-Whipping" (sorry I wish I had a more tasteful example, but this one is convenient to work with for many reasons--short, only available in English, etc.), which started off only 2 sentences long (below) and currently is a bit longer with more links:

To pistol whip someone means to hit someone on the head with a gun, usually to either knock them unconscious and/or cause them pain. It is a well known phrase in american popular culture, and was once featured on an episode of "The Simpsons". I want to obtain the following word-values: pistol, gun, unconscious, pain, american, popular_culture, The_Simpsons.

Article today (current version): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol-whippingArticle's oldest version (day it was created): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pistol-whipping&oldid=6563362

Getting the page revisions from latest to earliest is with this JSON URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&prop=revisions&pageids=30221421&rvlimit=500&rvdir=newer

From the top of this page we see that the revid of the earliest version of the page is 6330157.

To know the revid (revision ID) for the latest version, we use the same URL as above but replace the final word "newer" with "older" thus getting the most recent result (yes the terminology is counter-intuitive). This ID is 693397622.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&revids=6330157&generator=links OK all this was just to tell you that I now have the revision ID for the first version and the last version of the Wikipedia page for "Pistol-Whipping." Now this is where things get tricky.

I can get the hyperlinks for the most current version of the page with the following JSON URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&revids=693397622&generator=links Now, when I repeat the same URL JSON request, but with the *earliest* revision ID of the page's creation, I get the same, CURRENT links, not the ones corresponding to this old revID I'm using. See for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&revids=6330157&generator=links

I don't get the links I used at the example in the beginning of this email. Instead I get links to "Close combat", "American English", "Baton (law enforcement)", and other Wikilinks that are in the recent version of the page with revID 693397622, not 6330157 (old page) as I requested.

Can anyone help?

Thanks! --S Philbrick(Talk) 14:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T124083

You want the links in an old version of a page, but generator=links doesn't seem to work for its older revids. The links reported in

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&revids=6330157&generator=links for revids=6330157

just gives you the current links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=json&revids=6563362&generator=links revids=6563362

Have you tried at mw:API talk:Web APIs_hub and at mw:API talk:Main page? — CpiralCpiral 20:00, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Even if you try without a generator, like this, it doesn't work. I created phab:T124083 about this, so we can see what the developers say. Nirmos (talk) 20:07, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the current API is not capable of listing links for old versions of articles. Dragons flight (talk) 10:41, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

It's been a while since I last looked at MW's internals in detail, but I seem to remember that link searches are based on a database table which only stores the current links. So, the API can do a relatively simple database query to extract stuff for the live revisions, but it would be extremely expensive to do it for any other revisions (and therefore isn't available). I could be completely wrong about that, my memory of it is vague, and quite a few versions out of date. --Murph9000 (talk) 11:18, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

If this is what you want, you basically need to import old versions into a mediawiki instance and then retrieve the information from the database. There is no other way to do it as far as I can see. Remember that you also need working versions of old templates (including the extensions that such old templates etc depend on), if you really want all links. It won't be easy (which is the reason why it's not implemented). For a subset of the articles it might be easier, but you will need to do custom work on a custom MediaWiki implementation for that as well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:30, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

As User:Δ correctly pointed out to me on IRC, if you accept that any links generated by templates etc are 'new' (instead of as they were back then), than you can approximate this by making per page api requests like: parse api. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:24, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

But then there's the old page staring at us with those big blue links. It seems simple enough to extract them. If it can be done client-side, then it can be moved to the server-side. But then... it's more than API, its API plus post-processing? — CpiralCpiral 20:52, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Are there tools to track specific Jstor and Questia (etc.) citations?

I have found both Questia and Jstor access valuable tools. Is there a labs script to track how many times I've inserted either of those citations into articles? — Maile (talk) 15:06, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

You can use Special:LinkSearch to find how many times a particular URL has been used by anyone, but not how many you have added. User:Sadads or someone else from WP:The Wikipedia Library might have other ideas for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

You'd also need to account for Help:CS1's/Help:CS2's Jstor linkage (I'm unsure if there are parameters for Questia off the cuff). --Izno (talk) 13:00, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Maile66 and Izno: We are using Special:LinkSearch as a proxy for link data, and search dois using the main Wikipedia search tool. See our current process at Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Library/Processes. We are working on a better solution at this phabricator Ticket, but its coming along slowly. The way the data will be stored, however, it will be really easy to figure out who added the links, so we can do more cohort based assessment for GLAM-Wiki, TWL donations, or more generally. Sadads (talk) 15:02, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

@Sadads: This won't work. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:47, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Viewing tables with mobile devices

What's the story with this? Are tables hard to view? Should tables now be avoided due to the high percentage of smart phones? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:00, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

The mobile skin and app seem to handle this fine; have you tried it? Regardless, the answer to the last question is "no". --Izno (talk) 13:06, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I would say that because this is an encyclopedia, you should always consider the legibility of an article, and that by it's form, a data table is always rather limited in legibility and more so on a small screen mobile device (or a 1995 era large screen for that matter). It's a presentation form suited for looking up a specific fact, if you care enough to spend the time to actually look it up. In the context of a Wikipedia article, nice graphs or properly explained prose can be much more legible and informative and are a more suited form for encyclopedias. The fact that this becomes more noticeable on a mobile device, is just a side effect of this limitation of tables in my opinion. If you think the table is not useful enough on mobile, you can therefor wonder if it's actually a proper Wikipedia article, or just 'filling', a stub or a 'start quality' article. That's how I always judge this.

Nevertheless, some things could be done to improve tables on mobile a bit further. It's just not very easy to do, and our tables are too 'free form' to to reliably do it I presume. Anyways. I encourage anyone who has seen support for large data tables on other websites to actually 'work', to present those interface and UI ideas and file them in phabricator. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:18, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I have no issues with viewing tables on a mobile phone, and even wrote one here with no problems whatsoever. White Arabian Filly (Neigh) 00:26, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Template bleed in to page footer

Hi. The Teahouse template placed here bleeds down on to the page footer: User talk:Murph9000#Teahouse host invitation. I notice most of the Teahouse host templates suffer from a similar issue. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 01:44, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

The problem is almost certainly due to the position:absolute; CSS. "Do not leave space for the element."[5]. I'm looking at the way the HTML and CSS is working for it, not yet certain just how simple a fix it is. --Murph9000 (talk) 01:59, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@Checkingfax:  Fixed It turned out to be quite simple, just a quick shuffle of the HTML elements, and eliminate the troublesome part of the CSS. Only tested in Safari right now, but the HTML and CSS is sufficiently clean looking that problems in other browsers should hopefully be unlikely. --Murph9000 (talk) 02:22, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Weird code in articles

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T124152

Does anyone know what causes stuff like this? There are a couple of articles that contain similar stuff. Rong Qiqi (talk) 03:04, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

It looks like what a WYSIWYG HTML editor would spit out. Based on the fact all those articles are based on translations from it.wiki, I suspect someone copied the page into an WYSIWYG editor, made the Italian to English translation, and then copy and pasted the code back to en.wiki, leaving the WYSIWYG elements behind. They don't seem to be anything malicious, just not useful to us. --MASEM (t) 03:21, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

The common factor with all of them is them being created with a standard "Created by translating the page "link to some other language WP article" " edit summary. I'd say it's about 99% likely that it's some automated translation tool which spews bonus garbage in its output, but can't be certain. Yes, while I make no guarantees of the impact of them, I wasn't seeing any real signs of malice, just automated garbage generation. For me, it may or may not have been something involving WYSIWYG editors (or what you see may not be what you get …). It could easily be some tool that hits the source and destination wikis directly (without user involvement at the point of transfer), and just does a bad / buggy job of it. --Murph9000 (talk) 03:31, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

That message would be MediaWiki:Cx-publish-summary, which is used by the ContentTranslation extension. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:13, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Content Transcrapulator strikes again. Bgwhite (talk) 09:13, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Would somebody please, please disable the damned thing until and unless it can be made to work properly. More garbage to clear up is really just all we need. Oh, and it can't do translation, either: "There's also a town library and a theatre, whose name's 'M. A. Galdi'." Back to the drawing board, please (or the round file would do fine too). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:27, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

This is the browser extension grammarly, that corrupts the HTML in VisualEditor/CT. A ticket was already created for this and it now linked above. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:54, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! Rong Qiqi (talk) 21:22, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

File redirect pages

Content on redirect pages has been shown since January 2014. However, on file redirect pages such as File:TCOP.jpg, content such as the Redr template is still not shown. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 05:25, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

There are quite a few known issues with redirects of the file namespace, especially when it comes to redirects to shared namespaces. I suspect someone forgot to make changes to the redirect pages, to this 'exception' as well, causing the behavior to get out of sync. It's also missing the redirect arrow for instance. There are several bugreuports in phabricator around similar issues, i'll try to find a matching one. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:23, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

File redirs also differ from other redirs in that they lack the "bent arrow" symbol that precedes the link. This symbol is produced by formatting the link as the only item in an unordered list, and restyling the list item marker as an image. It actually uses some inline SVG to make that image:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="47" height="20" viewBox="0 0 47 20">
    <g id="Layer_1">
        <path fill="none" stroke="#000" stroke-width="2" stroke-miterlimit="10" d="M14.98 2.5V11c0 1.04 1.02 1.98 2.02 1.98h6l3 .02"/>
    </g>
    <g id="Layer_3">
        <path d="M23.48 9.5l.02 7L30 13z"/>
    </g>
</svg>

so probably won't work on older versions of IE. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:37, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Scrape Wikipedia page revision history

Does anybody know of a tool that will allow me scrape revision history of a Wikipedia page. I am actually only interested in the dates those revisions were made. —M@sssly^✉ 14:32, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't know of a tool. There is the revisions API which is probably the preferred way. You could alternatively get a page dump to play with, but that's in the 20+ GB area now for all revisions. --Izno (talk) 14:41, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

You can export the history (well, the latest 1000 revisions) of individual articles as XML using Special:Export. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:16, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

You could also get that information using SQL. If you need help, don't hesitate to ask. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 08:26, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Technical issue

I'm encountering an issue with Template:American Experience episodes. I've made edits to the template, but they are not appearing in other articles with the template added them.

Examples include American Experience (season 28) - the number 28 does not appear as the most current season. Nor does content about season 28 appear beneath it. See American Experience (season 27) to contrast difference between the two articles.

Second example, American Experience (season 12) - I made an edit to correct "John Brown John Brown's Holy War" to "John Brown's Holy War" on 06:34, 15 January 2016, but it still appears.

I've been seeing these issues for at least a few weeks. Originally, they appeared to be short delays in edit changes, but now appear to be an indefinite delay. What do I do? Thanks. Mitchumch (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Update: I tried to "force" a recaching of the page by (1) opening the page in edit mode (2) make no changes and (3) press save on the suggestion of a fellow wikipedian. It worked, but I will leave this post up for documentation. Mitchumch (talk) 15:27, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

You need to look at WP:Purge. Unfortunately you need to purge each individual page on which the template is transcluded. --David Biddulph (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

The system will automatically purge the pages, but this takes time depending on the length of the job queue. You can see the changes instantaneously by doing a manual purge, as described above. Mamyles (talk) 16:09, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

System just ate a chunk of my Talk page

Hi. I just completed this edit and when the page refreshed the section and several above it were missing. See my TOC User talk:Checkingfax and you shall see this latest edited section is no longer in the TOC. OK, I will try a purge. PS: Earlier tonight X!Tools went down for a bit. Showed last post dates for editors being 2099 instead of 2016. Using: Windows 7 Pro, and Firefox browser (latest build). Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 15:57, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: Did a to no avail. Before the edit in the Diff above I had 122 items in my TOC and now have 112 items in my TOC. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 16:01, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

UPDATE: My bad. I left an opening bracket off of a ping. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 16:05, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

It broke the page in combination with an open {{ earlier.[6] Never leave open tags, even if they cause no problems at the time. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:10, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

SSL somehow blocking Wikipedia?

We've got a request for WP:IPBE in the UTRS queue from a user who claims that due to "SSL certificate rewrites" they can now only edit Wikipedia by using Tor or other proxies. I don't know much about this sort of thing, but my instincts say this is baloney. Is it? Beeblebrox (talk) 18:15, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

There are some possibilities, but it's hard to diagnose based on "SSL certificate rewrites" alone. Some ISPs have badly configured filtering which intercepts HTTPS, and good browsers with strong security preferences will correctly flag a "man in the middle attack". In some cases, that filtering is forced on them by their government. So, basically 2 cases, a clueless ISP intercepting HTTPS for no good reason, or Commons or WP has made it onto a government's web censorship list and forced the ISP to do something fundamentally incompatible with HTTPS. I've personally encountered the censorship issue in the past when viewing a HTTPS page which had entirely innocent and legal imgur images embedded. At the time in question, imgur filtering was mandated by the government to block child porn or similar, but that broke all use of imgur on HTTPS sites. If WP or Commons has made it onto a censor list, it clearly won't be due to that type of pure evil, but will be due to a clash of legitimate freedom of speech vs. evil government regime.

It is technically impossible for HTTPS to cleanly coexist with any form of content filtering performed outside the two end point systems (i.e. anywhere in the middle), by intended design.

Alternatively, it could be baloney, it's impossible to say from here, without far more detailed information to go on.

Murph9000 (talk) 18:34, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

The specific claim is that they mostly edit from their school and that it is there that they experience the problem. The odd thing is, the`account is several years old, but has only like four edits, the last one being in 2014, so there's no way to use CU to see if there is any basis to their claims. I'm sort of inclined to think that if it is their school that is eliberately blocking Wikipedia editing from their own IPs, that is their prerogative. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:27, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Could also be a poorly configured MITM SSL Proxy server on their network. In any event, I don't see how the school would be good with their users using tor. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:30, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in this area, but I don't believe that it's possible to block only logged-out users from editing a page from your network. You could use a web proxy to drop all URLs that include &action=submit (which would catch previewing and saving pages, but not opening the page to look at the wikitext code), but there's no difference between logged-in and logged-out users there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

If I understand the assertion correctly, they are saying they can't access Wikipedia at all from these IPs, logged in or not, unless they use Tor. However, they are also claiming to have extensive knowledge of Wikipedia policies despite not even being autoconfirmed and not having made an edit at all in about eighteen months. I've gone ahead and declined the request, and told them they need to submit more specific information if they want IPBE. Thanks everyone for your input. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:04, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

MediaWiki's edit conflict detection broken?

I've just encountered a second case of one of my edits getting clobbered by an edit conflict. The first, I had just put down to a good faith failure to properly handle the edit conflict window (it is a bit complex for less technically skilled people). This second case, it's from a user that I believe would normally handle it properly, and they have now assured me in talk that MediaWiki did not warn them of the conflict, but just silently deleted my comment.

Edits at WP:HD where the problem occurred: [7][8][9]

Murph9000 (talk) 19:16, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Edit conflict detection has numerous issues unfortunately - see the list at phab:T72163. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:25, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposing change to Sp-contributions-footer

Since Xtools is down, changing to supercount, go here. --QEDK (T 📖 C) 20:34, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Oooh, now even SUL is down and both the tools show a 503 Error. --QEDK (T 📖 C) 20:42, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

It's a Labs outage according to this.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:28, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Having trouble with subheaders

The past couple of days I've noticed a problem with sub-subheaders, the ones created by typing 3 =s on either end of a word. I had written a user subpage using them instead of the larger subheaders, and when I went to edit it I couldn't without going to desktop view and then going to the window from there. I just had the same issue with a new article written by somebody else. If a sub-subheader is under a subheader, I can edit it separately on mobile, but if it's not I have to go to desktop. Has anyone else noticed this? White Arabian Filly (Neigh) 00:22, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Terminology:

== Heading == is a heading for a section (level 2).

=== Subheading === is a heading for a subsection (level 3).

==== Sub-subheading ==== is a heading for a sub-subsection (level 4).

For reasons of standards and accessibility, you shouldn't use a subheading without a heading at the superordinate level. The guideline WP:Manual of Style/Layout#Headings and sections says "Sections should be consecutive, such that they do not skip levels from sections to sub-subsections".

Notice the different levels aren't just for styling headings in different sizes; they also convey structural information. --Pipetricker (talk) 10:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Losing edits

Red alert on Wikipedia and Mediawiki sites. If you leave the edit page, you lose your edits. This abnormal situation just started happening withing the hour. — CpiralCpiral 01:45, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

If you don't understand the complaint, to test this, press any link from a preview page. Then go back. Any change you made should still be there, per WP:TESTLINK (howto test a wikilink from preview page before saving an edit), and per User:Cpiral/Surf your cache. — CpiralCpiral 07:53, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Turning off Preferences → Editing → live preview (which stores a local copy of the DOM) I then start getting

Document Expired. This document is no longer available. The requested document is not available in Firefox's cache. As a security precaution, Firefox does not automatically re-request sensitive documents. Click Try Again to re-request the document from the website... To display this page, Firefox must send information that will repeat any action (such as a search or order confirmation) that was performed earlier.

Sources say this is caused by Firefox honoring the instructions from Wikipedia servers of the page not to cache or store it, and that this is fixed by going to the php.ini file and changing session.cache_limiter = nocache to public instead of nocache.

On my end (FireFox 43.0.4) I've tried

• Options → Advanced → Override automatic cache managenemt
• safe mode
• clearing browser cache
• rebooting

— CpiralCpiral 07:53, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

cookie / login change?

Anybody know if anything changed today with the login mechanism?
My bot just stopped working. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:07, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Breaking_change. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:37, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you -- that looks like it's probably it. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:50, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:Huggle login and portions of WP:STiki functionality also seem to be broken, but these are not bot related on their frontends. Per [10], in this context, "our target is to have this rolling out to WMF wikis by the end of February." The timetable on the bot front isn't immediately clear in related postings, but CBNG is also having issues. West.andrew.g (talk) 05:20, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

The Feburary target is about the rollout of AuthManager. This may be related to this morning's deployment of SessionManager with -wmf.11[11]. Chenzw  Talk  07:55, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Logout = login

Nice, right after logout (Special:Logout) you now get the friendly message "You are globally logged in now" (and you are). Is that the great new WMF-tool not to lose any more contributors?! *eg* (Thanks to 213.169.163.106) --.js^{[democracy needed]} 09:28, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I used nowiki to disable your logout link. Please don't post easter eggs like that. When discussing technical issues, it is best to stick to the facts with plain language. Are you saying that Special:Logout in fact does not log out the user? Johnuniq (talk) 09:44, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I've posted this at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#No longer able to log out (thank you, WMF!). It happens to me as well and could cause serious problems. It is in any case unwanted behaviour, if someone explicitly clicks "log out" then the system shouldn't simply log them in again. Fram (talk) 11:27, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Community Tech status report

Hi, a short update from the WMF Community Tech team:

We did a community wishlist survey in December and got a list of things the community wanted to prioritize. We're currently investigating all the top ten wishes, but are also looking at two in more detail: migrate dead links to the Wayback Machine and pageview stats. For more details, see the status report. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 11:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Dead boxes on Article wizard/Ready for submission

The submission boxes go light and inactive when I address the page Wikipedia:Article wizard/Ready for submission that I've always used. Has someone blacklisted me without telling me why?Jzsj (talk) 12:14, 22 January 2016 (UTC)