Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by PrimeHunter (talk | contribs) at 09:52, 9 May 2019 (→‎Repeated child templates: Done). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

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Undo and Redo Buttons

Hello, I'm from ckbwiki. I want to add undo and redo buttons to ours Wikipedia. Who can help me to do that? What should i do? Thank you, ئارام بکر (talk) 11:48, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@ئارام بکر: ,WP:UNDO is built in functionality, you can see there is a link at this random ckdbwiki page I just loaded here. Can you describe this a bit more? — xaosflux Talk 13:00, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: No, I mean... add them such as button in Source edit, not history page. Just i want the source code. ئارام بکر (talk) 13:47, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You can already do that with CTRL + Z and CTRL + Y. Amaury (talk | contribs) 14:18, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"New wikitext mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures has such buttons (and other changes). It's also an option at ckb:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:00, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter: and @Amaury: thank you both, but i am a mobile user (not computer user) and i am use source editor (not visual editor). Mmm... i see the tool (on enwiki) in my preferences and active it. I think so it is an Mediawiki gadget. And i want to add that tool to ours Wikipedia. ئارام بکر (talk) 16:25, 19 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Gadgets are local user scripts.
User:PPelberg (WMF), I think that you might want to consider this for the toolbar improvements project. Without this available as an in-editor tool, then I don't know how else an editor on a smartphone would undo/redo a change inside the editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 22 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Whatamidoing_(WMF), thank you for bringing this to my attention. I agree with both you and ئارام بکر in thinking it ought to be clear in the mobile wikitext editor how to undo/redo edits/changes to the document. ئارام بکر, does this ticket task:T222316 accurately represent what you are requesting? As for prioritization, while we are planning to redesign the mobile editing toolbar this quarter (see task:T211255), that work – for now – is limited to VE. Which leaves me with a question, ئارام بکر what do you like most about editing using wikitext on mobile? It's what you're used to? It is difficult/not possible to make a certain kin of edit using the mobile Visual Editor? Something else? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@PPelberg (WMF): Thanks for your answer! When i joined to Wikipedia, i used wikitext on mobile and i'm happy with using it rather than VE. What about the result of this discussion? Can i see the buttons on ckbwiki in the future? Thanks! -- ئارام بکر (talk) 08:10, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tool

Is there tool which can mark all articles in category which are not on my watchlist yet? Eurohunter (talk) 22:07, 23 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Eurohunter: User:NKohli (WMF)/megawatch.js can add the pages in a category to your watchlist - does that help? --DannyS712 (talk) 21:41, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: After I tried it it showed me it's "restricted to top 50 pages only" so it's useless. As I said I would like to know just which pages I'm currently watching. Eurohunter (talk) 23:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Eurohunter: Oh, you want to see which one's you are already watching? I'll try to code something up --DannyS712 (talk) 23:47, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: Cool. If it is helpfull. This tool already exists on PLwiki. Eurohunter (talk) 23:50, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mobile app versus Mobile view

I can't believe I'm not sure where to post this after all these years. I also don't know where to post this if people say that this issue needs to be seen by the relevant devs or needs further discussion.

I want to know why has the development of the mobile browser view been ignored so much in favour of the app, given that I would reckon (if someone knows hard figures, provide them) majority of our readers view the former. The app, while great, will probably be used by a smaller niche group. I recently tried it out and as actually outraged that it was so good compared to the mobile view which I been using. I would still prefer to continue using mobile view despite all this. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 16:47, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The reading team has been working on revamping mobile web editing experience for sometime now. Part of the improvement has been already deployed on some wikipedias as a beta. You can read more details about the project at mw:Reading/Web/Advanced mobile contributions and you can leave feedback for them. So mobile web editing is not completely ignored. – Ammarpad (talk) 17:05, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Ammarpad. Good to see this but I'm a little confused about their work. I've posted my query on the link you've given. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 20:04, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ugog Nizdast just wondering why you thought it was so much better ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:37, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@TheDJ: a fair question. I'm not into advanced UX but I have one basic UI gripe that's on my mind since ages: the lack of an easy way to scroll through the Table of Contents for any decently sized article. Try it on mobile view, it's horrible. The app, however, has that nice scroll bar: which is persistently present as you read and can collapse, showing the relevant (sub)sections for even quickly jumping to. You won't get lost in an article wondering how to get back to a said section that was on your mind.
I'm browsing through the links given above to see if this has been pointed out or is a long term plan. To me, this seems like a problem most would love solved. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 12:25, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
In re "a problem most would love solved": I have sometimes wondered whether "most" of the core community members would care, or even notice, if the mobile site disappeared. The core community at the older Wikipedias are heavily invested in the desktop site. Half the world reads on the mobile site, but only a tiny percentage of highly active editors use it regularly (including me: I'm a laptop-only editor). Thank you for volunteering to give a voice to the concerns that regular users have. That team will really appreciate it. And if you ever want to try out the mobile visual editor, then feel free to talk to me about it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with you :) The only way I began to look at mobile viewing more seriously is when I took my indefinite Wikibreak...no longer being an editor but a reader. Of course, when I said most I was referring to the readers, not the community. Be well, Ugog Nizdast (talk) 05:44, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hangout invitation

I have created a hangout to improve collaboration and coordination among editors of various wiki projects. I would like to invite you as well. Please share your email to pankajjainmr@gmail.com to join. Thanks Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 16:30, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Capankajsmilyo: This sounds like you are trying to create an off-wiki cabal. Please note that I disapprove of such secret societies; the point about Wikipedia is that it is all-inclusive, therefore, discussion about Wikipedia matters should take place on-wiki, in full view of anybody who may be concerned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:08, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm a little bit leery of anyone soliciting the sharing of private email addresses as a requirement to join. — Maile (talk) 20:40, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As for a secret society, it would seem odd to advertise such a thing on-wiki. I have participated in discussion on WP topics via Facebook, Quora, Slack, and G+. The main reason for off-wiki was, better software. Our software is made for collaborative editing of documents; it serves that purpose with a modicum of competence but is dreadfully clumsy for operating a forum. Oh, I've also discussed WP matters in E-mail echo groups, and in past years I was summoned to several closed meetings in a basement. The main topic there was, what should we do at our open meetings in the next few months? My preference would be to do much less discussing off-wiki. However, as I say, primarily it's because our software stinks, and secondarily, there are some (few) matters that work better with some degree of confidentiality. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:18, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Jim.henderson, i would go as far as to say that MOST of my wikipedia related communication happens outside the wiki, be it in person, mailinglist or facebook. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:58, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Capankajsmilyo, soliciting for email information is probably not a good idea. invite links are much wiser. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:59, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have tried invite links before. But some editors are not comfortable in joining hangouts whose links are public. This way is more comfortable to them as only wiki editors will join. Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 07:13, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As far as secret society is considered, you can always join and police the matters being discussed. You won't be stopped from making those discussions public on Wikipedia (if you can find a good place to discuss multi-wiki topics and sufficient number of editors are aware of that system). Getting to know the multi-wiki system was not easy for me too. And still I know almost nothing. And there's a huge gap between how communities work and form policies. It's like different worlds altogether. I don't think that's a good experience for a reader to switch from English to Hindi and read two different stories about a person. Further, if a person from Malayalam wiki wants help in tech from enwiki, he will have to learn enwiki culture before he can do anything. Capankajsmilyo(Talk | Infobox assistance) 07:21, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
On a related point, I have been collecting types of off-wiki and on-wiki communication tools at mw:Talk pages consultation 2019/Tools in use. Please add any that you find are missing. I'd love a few examples, including some public links, but generally the catalogs are kept on Meta. For example, Jim.henderson mentioned "E-mail echo groups", and I'm not sure if those are different from mailing lists. (We've got the "meetings in a basement"; face-to-face meetings are primary communication channels for many groups, including the core community at the German Wikipedia.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Archive pages not moved when moving a page

When I recently moved an article to another name, I noticed that an archive page of the article's talkpage wasn't moved, despite me including the talkpage in the move. I had to do that move separately.

Aren't archive talkpages supposed to follow the talkpage when they are moved to another name?

HandsomeFella (talk) 18:14, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@HandsomeFella: Admins and page movers have the move-subpages right, giving them an extra checkbox to ask for the subpages to be moved. The rest of us have to move them one at a time, or ask for help. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:29, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why is this separate? If a page move is valid, wouldn't you want associated subpages to go along for the ride? Seems to me that it would make more sense to give admins and page movers the option to leave subpages behind and make moving them the default. --Khajidha (talk) 18:03, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Needs attention

Resolved
 – Seems like it wasn't in mainspace at all. --qedk (t 桜 c) 16:25, 30 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is User talk:WikiDan61 § Duplicate drafts with different titles. One of the drafts is in article space. Mitchumch (talk) 23:47, 29 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QEDK Is it okay for two drafts to have duplicate content with different titles? Mitchumch (talk) 19:32, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Mitchumch: Duplicate drafts aren't exactly an issue, although if one is copied from the other, it is a cause of concern (lack of attribution, copyright). If duplicated content exists in mainspace, it can be A3ed, and/or merged, but nothing like that applies to draftspace, for obvious reasons, as two people might be working on same topics separately. --qedk (t 桜 c) 19:58, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. Mitchumch (talk) 20:10, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Help with problematic tables

Certain tables in certain articles look fine in my desktop browser (Firefox 66.0.3 running under macOS Mojave v. 10.14.4) but in my phone's browser (iOS Safari v. 12.2) show an extra, empty column on the righthand side, which I cannot fix nor find the reason for. The articles and sections are:

Help, please? —DocWatson42 (talk) 02:28, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see an extra column in Safari (iOS 11.4). Maybe try purging your cache, or a null edit in iOS? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:16, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Appears in latest Chrome (Android 8.1). --qedk (t 桜 c) 10:01, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't appear in the desktop view so it's probably the mobile view rendering causing the issue. --qedk (t 桜 c) 10:07, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I can see it on Chrome if I use devtools to emulate a mobile device. For some reaon the wikitable class has a border: 1px solid #54595d;. This border doesn't render for me when using m.wikipedia or when using ?useskin=minerva, but it does show up when using the mobile device emulation. It also show up my Android phone (Android 9, Chrome 73). rchard2scout (talk) 10:37, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Rchard2scout, oh, that's not an extra column. It's because all tables are 100% wide on mobile and you are seeing the background of the table because the columns are so narrow they do not take up the full width of the table. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:04, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

URL shortener

Hi, I pasted [1] into the WikiMedia shortener page [2] and it generated "w.wiki/3X9". when I placed 2 brackets (one before and one after "w.wiki/3X9", it does not generate a link. Kindly advise. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 05:34, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

CASSIOPEIA, that is not a wikilink but a URL. Proper form would be https://w.wiki/3X9. I wonder why the link shortener does not display them this way? Eman235/talk 05:42, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Because they are not intended for links at Wikipedia. They are for external (outside Wikipedia) use. Johnuniq (talk) 05:45, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnuniq and Eman235: thanks guys for the info. Is that anywhere we could get WikiMedia to display "https://" when it generates the shortener? If it is as the present form, it doesnt make sense to use it, better still, to get add in one of the feature in Wikipedia for shorter link. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 05:49, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That'd be done in phab:T222146. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:00, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ammarpad thanks for informing. Cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 06:24, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Template talk:Shortcut#WMF short URLs also seems to arise from a misunderstanding as to the purpose of the short URL. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:08, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism in page preview hover

Hovering the mouse over "Hipparchus" at Julian calendar#Year length; leap years shows mention of homosexuality. The vandalism at Hipparchus has been reverted but the bad preview is still visible. Is there a mechanism to purge that? Johnuniq (talk) 05:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Of course now it's here as well. Johnuniq (talk) 05:47, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Now it is correct. Johnuniq (talk) 06:58, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Probably due to this edit, but it's odd that it was cached, having been reverted within minutes. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 10:30, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Adjusting main page column widths based on content

See WT:DYK#Added recycled hook to live DYK per main-page balance issues for context.

Is it possible for the widths of the TFA/DYK and ITN/OTD sections of the Main Page to be automatically adjusted based on the length of the content in the two columns? For example, if the TFA and DYK sections on a particular day are particularly short, can the width of the column containing TFA and DYK be narrowed? Currently, TFA/DYK is set to 55% and ITN/OTD set to 45%, which can result in a lopsided main page depending on content length. feminist (talk) 10:13, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Feminist no that isn't possible. Also, I'd say that the Main page's bigger issue is the revert of Talk:Main_Page/Archive_192#TemplateStyles_2 for any issue people would want to solve going forward. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:57, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
One fundamental problem is how the length is calculated. Each of the first five boxes contains an image and some text. The image sizes are nominally fixed, but the browser zoom level can alter that. The font size of the text is also affected by zoom level but also by several other factors, hence the length occupied by the text is even less calculable. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:32, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm asking this question because there have recently been many instances where admins have added an old hook to the DYK section or removed the oldest item from ITN to maintain main page balance. To me at least, it's much more effective to adjust the size of the container than to adjust its contents. I take it that the main effect of TemplateStyles for the main page is responsive design (i.e. using only one column when the screen is narrow)? In that case it doesn't alleviate the concerns raised by DYK admins. The only difference would be, instead of editing Main Page to adjust column width, an admin now has to edit Template:Main Page/styles.css. feminist (talk) 16:03, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Get rid of the pointless division into two columns and the problem immediately disappears. --Khajidha (talk) 17:48, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why does logging out from one device log out all my sessions?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T37220
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T217914

Every so often, I accidentally log out by means of a erroneous finger tap on a mobile device. What's really annoying is that it also logs me out of my desktop. Is there some way to make logout only apply to the single session? Even better, is there some way to make logout require confirmation, so a single bad finger tap doesn't cause it to happen? This is particularly annoying because I have 2FA enabled, and don't always have my phone with me to generate a new token. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:25, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Allowing per-session log out has been requested at phab:T37220 since around 2012. Confirmation for logout at phab:T217914. – Ammarpad (talk) 12:56, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The act of logging out invalidates all login cookies that have your login ID in them, no matter which device they were set on. The logout action is triggered by a client but is preformed entirely on the servers; when a client that believes itself to be logged in next accesses Wikipedia and sends back its freshest login cookie, that will not be recognised by the servers and the client will be served a page for a logged-out user. This is a useful feature: if you log in on a machine that is not your own, and forget to log out there, you merely need to go to any machine, log in and explicitly log out again. Similarly, if you believe that somebody else has gained access to your account (possibly because you disclosed your password), you should immediately change your password, then log out. Changing your password won't kill their cookie, but explicitly logging out will do so. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:20, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm. I was actually expecting the answer to be, "You dummy, you must have enabled this in preferences and then forgot what option it was". It's, um, unexpected that this is "working as designed". I agree that the ability to remotely revoke all your login cookies across all sessions is a useful feature, but it's crazy that it's the default behavior. Thanks for the explanation. I've commented on the two phab tickets. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:23, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: I wrote a quick userscript to add a confirmation prompt to the logout button. It's here: User:Writ_Keeper/Scripts/logoutConfirm.js; you can install it in the usual way (i.e. adding the text mw.loader.load("/w/index.php?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/logoutConfirm.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); on a new line to your common.js page). HTH, Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:50, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Cool, that does exactly what I want. Thanks! -- RoySmith (talk) 22:05, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've had the same problem and also really appreciate this fix. Thank you! --Khajidha (talk) 22:39, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Citoid/refToolbar does not work with ScienceDirect

Specifically, it insists to create "ScienceDirect". www.sciencedirect.com. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) as output even though the correct form is Matter, Albert; Mahjoub, Ayman; Neubert, Eike; Preusser, Frank; Schwalb, Antje; Szidat, Sönke; Wulf, Gerwin (October 2016). "Reactivation of the Pleistocene trans-Arabian Wadi ad Dawasir fluvial system (Saudi Arabia) during the Holocene humid phase". Geomorphology. 270: 88–101. doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2016.07.013. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:00, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jo-Jo Eumerus, see mw:Citoid#My_favourite_site_isn't_recognised_by_citoid_and_only_gets_basic_information and troubleshooting Zotero translator issues. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:24, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Mvolz (WMF) will know if this site has had persistent problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:52, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Odd blank map bug with OSM location template

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T216431

This started here Wikipedia:Help_desk#OSM_Location_map_template_problem

After testing I've found the following: If {{OSM Location map}} is used inside a section with a heading (any level), the map will appear as blank when viewed on mobile.

Examples: mobile version, desktop

But when it's not used in a section heading, everything is fine

Can someone check the template please and then escalate to Phab if needed. Thanks. - X201 (talk) 16:05, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Templates in headings are rarely a good idea. Is there any reason that it can't be on the next line instead? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:46, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
By "inside" X201 means "under" or "beneath", not something like ===Section {{template}}===. Nehme1499 (talk) 16:54, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
yep, have clarified it. - X201 (talk) 17:39, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed that this doesn't happen on all articles: see Barasat II. Nehme1499(talk) 18:23, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also, see this template talk and this ticket raised about the issue some months ago. Nehme1499 (talk) 21:38, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have some examples at User:J._Johnson/Sandbox3. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 18:08, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@J. Johnson: what do you think of Barasat II? Any reason why that displays correctly? Nehme1499 (talk) 20:51, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so for some reason the Graph:Chart template is making the OSM map displays correctly. The chart can be in any position and in any (sub)section of the article, or even outside of a section, as long as it is there somewhere. I'm going to test this with other template to see if it is only exclusive to Graph:Chart or not. Nehme1499 (talk) 21:06, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have no specific idea why, in mobile rendering, the "CD Blocks" OSM map comes out right, but the infobox (which is above the section header) comes out as an empty box labeled "Barast II". But (based on many years of programming) it sure looks a scoping problem. Likely an unbalanced terminator. One approach: copy that page to a sandbox, check that the problem displays, then start taking stuff out until the problem goes away. Tedious, but effective. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:22, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@J. Johnson: On my mobile view the infobox in Barasat II comes up perfectly. I "solved" the problem by adding {{Graph:Chart||type=pie||width=0||height=0||x=0||y=0}} in any location in the article (Lebanese Football League, I added it underneath the external links section but I could have put it anywhere in the article). This solves the problem, though it seems like a "crude" way of doing it. Nehme1499 (talk) 22:50, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, also works for my sandbox. And {{Graph:Chart}} is so simple! Is the essential bit doing the safesubst? Or the css style? If I had the time I would start digging. Depending on where the problem comes from, could even come up with a minimal {fix.m} template. Alas, no time. ♦ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:17, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

SAO/NASA ADS Physics Abstract Service due for deprecation; effects on citations?

As noted on, for example, here this service appears to be due for deprecation/removal. There are at least 60000 links to http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/; are all these going to break then? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:21, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See this ongoing discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1. Please comment there. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:09, 1 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

thead, tbody, tfoot cause fostered content lint errors

Please see the demonstration of this bug or issue at User:Anomalocaris/sandbox/Lint Test.

<thead>, <tbody>, and <tfoot> are treated as fostered content lint errors instead of valid markup. This happens only in Wikipedia, not in real HTML. What is going on? —Anomalocaris (talk) 04:18, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just as a wild guess I am asking. Will it be due to HTML5? Please check this link last line. Adithyak1997 (talk) 05:48, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
See Help:Table. Do a find on the page for "thead". You will see the thead, tbody, tfoot, colgroup, and col elements are currently not supported in MediaWiki, as of April 2017. That means if you put a thead tag in an HTML table, it will be processed as stray (fostered) text. See T6740 for a long-standing feature request. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:39, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Like the <a>...</a> and <img /> tags, <tbody>...</tbody> etc. are not in the MediaWiki whitelist. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:47, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Adithyak1997: It's nothing to do with HTML5, since those elements were included in HTML 4.01. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:06, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A small redirect issue

Please do refer to Template talk:Indian Premier League where I have posted an issue related to redirection. Adithyak1997 (talk) 05:43, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not a technical issue. Replied there. – Ammarpad (talk) 08:27, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist not being marked read

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T218511

So sometime over last night my watchlist behavior changed, and the nodes on the side won't change from green to grey after I visit the diffs like they usually do. The marked pages as read seems to work, though. I do have some custom CSS which I know might be an issue, and am using Monobook, but it is extremely useful to know if I missed anything when I go through my list. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 12:38, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not caused by your custom CSS, being looked at in phab:T218511. – Ammarpad (talk) 14:35, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I hope it's sorted soon. Today I saw a page on my watchlist with new edits not marked as new. It's the first time I've noticed this; it's generally been the problem described above. This behaviour's described on the phabricator page as well. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 04:05, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've been having this and related problems on and off since mid-March. See here for past discussion. I hope this all gets done with soon. —Granger (talk · contribs) 11:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm seeing it again too now, with the added benefit of changed, unseen pages showing up without bold. It's kinda insane this is STILL an issue six weeks later! —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:42, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sigh. And now bolded and non-bolded entries are entirely random. GMGtalk 12:18, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Melodia, I'm getting pages showing I've visited since the last change when it's not true. --valereee (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I get this too. – Tea2min (talk) 06:40, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My watchlist is buggered too, exactly as described above, but that Phabricator report is weeks old, and my issue only started a couple of days ago.Roxy, the dog. wooF 14:27, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that it was related to whatever update included a time stamp on the "view new changes" button. Or maybe that's just a coincidence. At any rate, it's a problem across all projects, and not just the English Wikipedia. GMGtalk 14:46, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The issue with Firefox certification made teh Internetz unusable for me yesterday. Mozilla script kiddies fixed that quite quickly. Could WMF poach some of the Mozilla nerds to help? Roxy, the dog. wooF 14:52, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As noted above, the issue has been affecting some users (including me) since March, so something else must be involved with the problem. isaacl (talk) 17:26, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Finding deleted article

Per the result of a query ticket:2019050210005769, I'm trying to track down a deleted page about the Hartford Police Department.

Searches for:

come up empty.

I have a note to myself that using Special:Undelete and appending "&fuzzy=1" will do a fuzzy search and find close matches, but I'm not seeing documentation.

Can anyone help me find the deleted article and/or confirm how to do a fuzzy search for a deleted article?S Philbrick(Talk) 17:58, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Do you know the approximate date it was deleted? You could then check the deletion logs for it. --Jayron32 18:05, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Jayron32, The guesstimate is more than two years ago but that's a pretty broad range. S Philbrick(Talk) 18:24, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Why not just create a new article? Why do we need to get the text from such a long-deleted article? It would seem to me that just starting from scratch would be less trouble. --Jayron32 18:27, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Sphilbrick: I have a small doubt. Was that article deleted by you? Adithyak1997 (talk) 19:07, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Adithyak1997, No S Philbrick(Talk) 20:20, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@S Philbrick: the only relevant result from this search is Hartford, Connecticut Police Department, which just contains a URL to the official website and the name of the police chief. Graham87 04:33, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Graham87, Thanks for looking. I've seen a lot of articles about the police departments of modest sized cities, so I was surprised that there was not one for Hartford, especially given that someone thought they had seen it. S Philbrick(Talk) 20:22, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I couldn't even find deleted drafts or userpages/subpages that were relevant. My guess is that they are actually referring to the "Police" section of the article on the city, which was both shortened and aggregated into the "Government" section in the last year. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:36, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Odd whitespace

Can someone suggest why there is extra whitespace (at least on my screen) before "BYTEmark" in this article? There's nothing obvious in the source. Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:08, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just check now. Adithyak1997 (talk) 19:11, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The eight extra characters were not whitespace (a term properly confined to six characters with ASCII/Unicode values 9 to 13 and 32 (09 hex to 0D hex, 20 hex)), they were U+10FC19 U+10FC1A U+10FC1B U+10FC1C U+10FC05 U+10FC0A U+10FC0C U+10FC24 which (so far as I can determine) are not valid characters at all. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:55, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsible blocks in mobile version

Is there any reason why collapsible blocks (like Hidden, NavFrame, mw-collapsible) do not work in mobile version? I understand that this is because the code that deal with collapsible elements are in Common.js and not in Mobile.js, but is there any reason why this is a case? Screen space is more valuable on mobile devices, so mobile users would benefit from this feature even more than desktop users. Alexei Kopylov (talk) 22:22, 2 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Alexei Kopylov: Will this be helpful? Adithyak1997 (talk) 03:11, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. I have not find an answer there why collapsible element are not collapsible in mobile version. Alexei Kopylov (talk) 14:56, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@TheDJ:: do you know why mw-collapsible is supported by desktop version and not by mobile version? Alexei Kopylov (talk) 08:39, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Alexei Kopylov, because no one put effort into making that so, and because a lot of the content would be inaccessible (due to tiny controls) because no one ever implemented mw-collapsible with mobile kept in mind (it literally predates mobile phones). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:49, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also it has ALWAYS been the case that editors should NEVER expect collapsing to work, which is why it is not advisable to use in primary content. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:50, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Alexei Kopylov (talk) 08:51, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Template parameter in wikitext

I expect the first of the following results, but not the others:

  • ({{{1}}}) → ({{{1}}})
  • ({{{1|}}}) → ()
  • ({{{1|hello}}}) → (hello)

Of course that's how it is supposed to work when a template is expanded, but has it always worked like that in bare wikitext? Johnuniq (talk) 10:17, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What is the argument to 1= on a page seen without transclusion? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:13, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is always how this has worked. The reason we don't often see this on the template page itself is because those are often includeonly/onlyincluded (and I hate that we have keywords like those two). --Izno (talk) 13:14, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Working as designed. Templates are merely normal pages that have their own namespace. They have no special syntax, unlike modules or JSON pages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The only thing special is that they don't need a namespace qualifier to be transcluded probably. --qedk (t 桜 c) 14:41, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, it's the lack of specialness about template space which is key, I guess. I often preview stuff while investigating things and sometimes forget to replace template parameters with text I'm testing so I see the parameter syntax in the first case above. I thought I had seen it with the other cases as well but it sounds like I'm mistaken. Johnuniq (talk) 23:48, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, of course, I just previewed the following in a sandbox and each of the above shows "(first parameter)".
{{:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)|first parameter}}
Johnuniq (talk) 23:52, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

SineBot down again

I noticed SineBot (talk · contribs) is down again. I have dropped a note on Slakr's talk page, and I suspect as soon as he reads it it'll be rebooted and all will be well. However, I'm not happy about (IMHO) essential services being run by external parties on closed source code. While Slakr is free to distribute his code under whatever licence he likes, it means we end up with one person being indispensable, with no possibility of the bot being transferred to somebody who's around more often, or giving a few more devs charge of it so the uptime is improved. I'm sure Richard Stallman would have harsh words to say to Slakr on this, and rewrite the bot in Scheme in an afternoon, but on a more pragmatic note, is there any appetite for doing an open source rewrite? Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:31, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It's always to good for bots to have two botops in opposing timezones so that things can get back on track asap. You can try wikitech IRC, I think (correct me if I am wrong) the admins can restart services as well, that would be the fastest way. --qedk (t 桜 c) 15:39, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
QEDK, I don't think SineBot runs on toolforge; if it did, the code would need to be released under an open-source license per wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Rules. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:43, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Right, I forgot that closed-source aspect of SineBot. Although, I did intend for a general answer as well, since Ritchie said he doesn't like essential services being run externally. The VPS is not exactly the easiest (or reliable) for botops to use, so I can understand why someone would not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But in this case, maybe it would be good to have atleast another botop, even if just to restart services. --qedk (t 桜 c) 15:46, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Populated places in Austria

A recent deletion discussion, Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2019_February_17#Template:Infobox_Town_AT, had the result of deleting a specialized infobox template for populated places in Austria, and replacing its uses with the standard {{Infobox settlement}}. However, the process of doing this has caused a major categorization fustercluck, which I need some input into how we can fix.

The problem is that the deleted template was violating WP:TEMPLATECAT, by taking entry fields from the infobox to artificially generate and transclude geographic categories for "[Type of populated place] in [Austrian state]" in lieu of those categories actually being directly declared on the articles themselves. But the replacement process did not properly account for this, and thus pulled a significant number of the affected articles entirely out of the Category:Populated places in Austria tree. I've caught well over 600 articles about populated places in Austria that got left completely uncategorized by the infobox replacement, and have had to be added to the uncategorized articles queue — and I have no way to even guess at how many other articles might have been pulled out of the Populated places in Austria tree and just haven't been detected as such because they still had other categories on them. I also have no way to even guess at what categories the pages might have been in before the replacement, since they were autogenerated by a deleted template and thus don't show up in the edit histories, so I also have no way to either restore the old category or figure out if some categories have been completely deleted because they got emptied out by all of this.

Again, I don't have any issue with the template replacement itself — but the process of replacement should have noticed and accounted for this issue at the time, because none of the rest of this ever should have happened at all. The replacement should never have left a single article decategorized, let alone 600 of them, and I'm struggling to identify how to fix it. It's possible that it may actually require at least a temporary restoration of the deleted template, so that we can check the edit histories of the affected articles to determine which categories disappeared from pages in the process, but I obviously don't want to do that arbitrarily — and even if the template were restored, the fact that it isn't transcluded anywhere anymore means that there wouldn't be anything in its "what links here" list to work with. I would somehow need to get a complete list of every article that transcluded that template while it existed, and/or a list of the complete contents of the Category:Populated places in Austria tree as of a time prior to the replacement/deletion process, but I also don't know if either of those things is even possible to generate.

I'm restraining my urge to smack anybody over the head with a baseball bat over this, but it should never have happened in the first place and template replacements need to take more care to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. Ultimately, the deleted template should never have been used to artificially transclude its pages into categories, in lieu of actually applying those categories directly to the pages themselves, in the first place — but given that it was doing that, the people who undertook the replacement project should still have caught and dealt with it in the process.

So, technical experts, how can we fix this? Bearcat (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not a solution, but a mirror site might give you some hints, such as this page of Category:Pages using infobox Town AT with unknown parameters at WikiVisually. Oops, forgot to ping: One more time for Bearcat. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 22:05, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It might be reasonable to construct a module which takes any place understood by an {{infobox settlement}} to be in Austria (requiring some string manipulation) to then categorize per the parameters of interest as translated to infobox settlement parameters. Subsequently to be replaced by categorizing on the pages-proper (using bot or otherwise) and removal of the module (i.e. the use of this would be a temporary fix). --Izno (talk) 01:45, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have a small suggestion. Will recreate the template -> Find the articles using this template using What Links Here -> Replacing this template with the required one -> Delete the template works? Adithyak1997 (talk) 08:00, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No. The old template was replaced, so no articles are using it. --Izno (talk) 14:34, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think using the dump (archive) is the way to go. I posted an request on Wikipedia:Dump reports.--Snaevar (talk) 09:34, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. I've been able to at least temporarily resolve the problem, by running through each Austrian state's geo-stub category in AWB with skips for "does not include infobox_settlement" and "already includes 'Cities and towns in [State]' category" and then adding "Cities and towns in [State]" to pages AWB stopped on, and then crosschecking the complete contents of the repopulated Category:Populated places in Austria tree against the search string Zackmann gave me to generate a list of all Austrian places that were calling the current infobox template in order to catch any non-stub stragglers — so as of now, every Austrian place article has been recategorized at the state level at least. However, many (although not all) of the Austrian places that didn't get decategorized by this were and are actually subcategorized more specifically than their state, mainly by district within the state — so the dump report would still be useful, in the hopes of potentially identifying whether some or all of the articles I batched through last night were actually in more specific district categories before the changeover (and/or whether there are any other articles hiding in the weeds that still got missed for technical reasons). Thanks for the assistance with this, let's hope this works out. Bearcat (talk) 15:15, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Is Dump reports still active? Nobody else seems to have posted there in eight years. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:50, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering that too. There hasn't been a response to the request at all — and while I read Snaevar's request when I was informed of it, I didn't review the whole talk page at the time, but you're right, it was the first new request made there since 2011. It looks like a dead project, and dump reports apparently now have to be requested somewhere else. But where? I do not know. Bearcat (talk) 16:16, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Bearcat, xml dumps are kept at archive.org - what approximate date? -- GreenC 16:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The deletion discussion on the template was initiated on February 17 of this year, and closed on February 25 with the replacement project starting after that. So I guess sometime during that week would be the best choice if possible — but if there aren't any dumps available within that week, then the last available date before the 17th would be the next best thing. Bearcat (talk) 16:32, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
February 1 and February 20. Someone would need to download the needed files and run the SQL query noted at Wikipedia_talk:Dump_reports#Categorylinks_dump (I can't help there). A more active page is Wikipedia:Request a query. -- GreenC 16:42, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thanks. I've posted a request there. Bearcat (talk) 16:59, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

did something break watchlist and make it too short again?

My watchlist is set for 30 days and 1,000 items. It's showing roughly 100 items starting at April 29, 2019, 9:50a (it's now only May 4). I want to see back to Apr. 20, and this happened once before (it was fixed somewhere behind the scenes, not by me), and apparently the starting date-time was a clue last time. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:44, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mine's showing the full list (250 items, which is my setting). Did you accidentally limit it to a single namespace or save a filter? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:50, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Does it say "Days to show in watchlist: 30" and "Maximum number of changes to show in watchlist: 1000" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist? What does the first line of the "Watchlist options" box at Special:Watchlist say? For me it says "Below are the last 300 changes in the last 70 hours". There was once a problem with some integer days which could be fixed by setting a decimal like 29.9 instead of 30. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:52, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Today, May 6, it's showing May 2-6 only and roughly 200 items only. Thus, the earliest date now follows the latest date, which is not the old problem but a different one. With all filters cleared (thus no active filters), the date range is the same but the item count is roughly 350 (including VP(T)). (I tried a quick and more precise count by searching for strings but got bizarre behavior: e.g., diffhist got some and (diff | hist) got others. No namespaces are checkmarked, so I should be seeing whatever is watchlisted in any namespace (I probably don't have anything in most namespaces). It does say "Days to show in watchlist:"/"30" and "Maximum number of changes to show in watchlist:"/"1000" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. I have no box titled Watchlist Options. I do remember that commonly there is a count of what's on the page, but I don't have that now. A browser search of the page for "the last" (which is part of the string you describe) finds nothing. I tried changing 30 days to 14 and back again on the watchlist page, but with no effect. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:43, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The quoted messages were because I have enabled "Use non-JavaScript interface" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. Without that I see "300 changes, 2.9 days" in a box to the right. Have you tried a decimal like 29.9? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:13, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Today, the range is May 2-7, I think the earliest date-time is the same now (time 18:22) as it was yesterday, though not what it was on Saturday, when it was an earlier date and, I think, earlier in the first day.
I tried 29.9 on the prefs page and then in the watchlist's URL but those made no difference. The latter change reflects above the watchlist items, where the menu title now says "1,000 changes, 29.9 days".
I cleared all filters again. This time, the earliest date-time, still May 2, is a little later for the time, suggesting that maybe the number that should be 1,000 is actually smaller but not saying so.
I removed VP(T) from my watchlist, since that's a frequently-edited page, so I hoped maybe earlier changes for other pages would show up. The odd result was that doing so extended the range a bit, May 1-7, but then I saw that the filters had come back (unsolicited by me), so I removed all of the filters, and the watchlist shrank to May 2-7. I don't understand how it shrank when filters went away.
I cut the intended number of changes from 1,000 to 100. That made the watchlist show 8 (eight) changes only, all for May 7. The URL says "limit=100".
I edited the URL to "limit=10000". That got me back to April 8. So now I have a kludge, but that's not the best solution.
I edited the URL from 29.9 to 30 and the start date became May 2 again, but then I saw that limit had become 1000, so I changed that to 10000 again with days left at 30, which got me back to April 7, a day earlier than a few minutes ago. A kludge, but not a happy kludge.
The basic problem is new, discovered last Saturday. My previous visit, on April 20, was uneventful, so the problem arose sometime between April 20 and May 4.
Nick Levinson (talk) 00:52, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Difficulties with Template:Chem molar mass/sandbox

I'm using a pipeline of templates to avoid repeated calculations, starting at Template:Chem molar mass/sandbox and ending at Template:Chem molar mass/format/sandbox, but there's something wrong. At Template:Chem molar mass/testcases, all of the testcases that aren't molar_mass=0 display Error in {{val}}: parameter 1 is not a valid number. g·mol−1, followed by a debug section that is also laden with errors, and I can't figure out why. Based on rounding_equation=floor(1-ln(()^0.5)/ln(10)) in the debug section, it appears that {{{usquare}}} is being passed blank into Template:Chem molar mass/sandbox/calculations/1, but I checked, and it's being defined in Template:Chem molar mass/sandbox. Can anyone help me figure out what the problem is? Care to differ or discuss with me? The Nth User 20:57, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@The Nth User: I made these two edits. Is it working better now? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:33, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Redrose64: Yes; it appears to be working now. Thank you. Care to differ or discuss with me? The Nth User 22:41, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Show short description in Preview mode

When I change a short description, I don't see any trace of it in preview mode, although I have my preferences or whatever it is set, so that I see them when viewing articles. Is there something else I need to set to view them in Preview, or is this a sw change request? Mathglot (talk) 03:50, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is not currently supported, so you've to make a request. I'm not sure how feasible or useful that'd be, though. – Ammarpad (talk) 12:22, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Time to deprecate Foreign character warning boxes?

Perhaps it's time to deprecate most uses of those templates under Category:Foreign character warning boxes? The huge majority of systems nowadays should have no problem rendering Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Thai, etc. scripts by default. The templates for Chinese, Korean and Japanese have already been deleted via TfD.

Templates for rarer scripts should probably remain though. The question is which ones to keep. If the most widely supported scripts are identified, it shouldn't be a problem bringing them to TfD. --Paul_012 (talk) 09:56, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still seeing boxes in Baybayin. But I agree they're generally no longer needed and do clutter pages unnecessarily. – Ammarpad (talk) 12:20, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. There's only a couple dozen of them, they should probably be examined individually. For rare scripts that aren't widely supported, they can stay; for the widely supported scripts, they can be deleted through TfD. It'd be great if we could get an overview of which scripts are supported on which platforms - I imagine this would be useful for far more people, but a quick google didn't turn up anything. rchard2scout (talk) 11:01, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Facing purging issues

In the category VIAF not on Wikidata, I opened 3 to 4 articles present in that category. But all of them were having VIAF IDs on Wikidata. When I clicked the Purge button, no change happened. Please confirm whether the category counts are correct or not. Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:05, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Adithyak1997: Purge won't do anything. Go to each individual page, and WP:NULLEDIT. Then check the category page again. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:30, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Purge will update which categories are displayed on the page but will not update the category page. The category currently says there are 637 pages. Do you expect us to check all of them? None of the ten examples I checked had VIAF on Wikidata. When you post here, always include a link or example showing the reported issue if it's possible. ALWAYS. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:38, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have actually understood the solution mentioned by Redrose64 (talk · contribs). @PrimeHunter: Just for your information, please check articles International Trade Administration and Mary and Conrad Buff. Adithyak1997 (talk) 18:59, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Those articles are not currently on the category page or displaying the category. Mary and Conrad Buff (Q6781008) has no VIAF anyway but it does not seem relevant. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Should redirect pages have Authority control templates?

Most of the pages in this category are redirects. Should redirects have Authority control templates on them? (Not strictly a technical question, I know.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:49, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Should all templates have their documentation as a separate subpage?

I was recently told that some editors have been steadily working over the years to move the documentations of templates into separate /doc subpages. The intention apparently is to have all templates have their documentation be in a separate subpage. The justification appears to be based on the last paragraph of Wikipedia:Template documentation#Where to place it, which says:

Text that is on a template page itself adds to the amount of text that must be processed when displaying the template, which is limited for performance reasons. Placing the documentation in a transcludable subpage avoids this. MediaWiki developers, who create the program that the Wikimedia Foundation's wikis run on, have recommended this placement for this very reason.

Now, this indeed seems to suggest that a separate doc page is always good, but it's justified by a a link to a 2006 statement that seems to recommend it only for templates whose documentations are big and frequently edited. Nonetheless, does the reasoning really extend to all templates? Should we strive to always have the documentation be in a separate subpage, so that there's ultimately less load on the servers? – Uanfala (talk) 22:02, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Uanfala: "server load" shouldn't be a concern here (as both /doc and direct documentation are noincluded anyway). One place to strongly encourage use of /doc pages is if the template is protected. And once a template gets "big" it is normally a good idea as well, but for small templates it doesn't really matter. — xaosflux Talk 22:31, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I can't say that "the amount of text that must be processed" seems like a huge concern to me, and I note that there does not seem to be a pre-expand include size anymore as mentioned in the link from 2006 (possibly it was removed in rev:43835 in 2008?). More interesting is that having the documentation on a /doc subpage means that edits to the documentation don't trigger reparsing of every page transcluding the template, while editing documentation included on the template page itself does. Anomie⚔ 22:55, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's interesting. How significant is this extra load for reparsing the transcluding pages? I guess that should be negligible for a small template with 100 transclusions whose documentation gets edited once a month? At any rate, we should probably remove the quoted paragraph from Wikipedia:Template documentation#Where to place it, and if replace it with more up-to-date information about the performance aspect of things, we should be careful not to leave the impression that it's advisable to split out the documentation solely for performance reasons (especially in light of disadvantages to maintenance that having separate subpages entails). – Uanfala (talk)
Yes, you were more specific about those disadvantages on my talk page. And perhaps those, too, should be included in any policy or guideline that shapes the way editors see the need for separate /doc subpages for templates? It is a common misnomer that noincluded parts of a template's code should not be a concern, because while noincluded parts do not appear where a template is transluded, they will still cause reparsing of every transclusion of the template when edited. And even if there are relatively few transclusions of a template, none of us have a crystal ball to show us if and when an editor might see a template and increase its transclusions significantly. Since Uanfala has raised this concern, I find myself wondering if my work to separate documentation out of template code and onto its own, separate /doc subpage has been in vain? Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  14:36, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Searching new-made articles on Google

Hi. Why some WP links related to [some] newly created articles do not appear on "Google" while searching? I recently created the articles Golnar Servatian and Reza Tajbakhsh. But they do not appear while searching on Google! — Hamid Hassani (talk) 04:05, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is because they've not been reviewed by a new page reviewer. Once they're reviewed, you'll be able to find them by Google search. – Ammarpad (talk) 04:31, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. I got the point. Thank you. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 05:04, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's time we put this in FAQ. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:58, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, don't. Editors who are here for promotional purposes are disproportionately more likely to ask this question and in doing so, attract the necessary admin attention. MER-C 11:35, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

G3

Hi, is there a parameter,a note to closing admin, I could use for CSD G3? thanks in advance. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 04:33, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

CASSIOPEIA, I don't think so; but I guess you could leave a note on the talk page, since admins always check those before deleting. Eman235/talk 04:42, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Eman235#top OK thanks for the quick reply, appreciate it. Cheers. CASSIOPEIA(talk) 04:46, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Another category redirect template problem

Category:Wikipedians in Nizhny Novgorod is a redirect to Category:Wikipedians in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast but populated by Template:User Nizhny Novgorod in such a way that it's not possible to simply amend the user category. Instead it seems to be detecting the redirect and populating it by default. Can anyone untangle this one? Timrollpickering (Talk) 10:56, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It can add a wanted category directly and call {{User Russian city}} with nocat = yes. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:15, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I tried that but it doesn't seem to do the trick. Timrollpickering (Talk) 23:10, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Eventually I reverted recent edits back until it got to the previous settings. This seemed to be the only solution. Timrollpickering (Talk) 23:15, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You tried to add nocat = yes to {{userbox-2}} (which is only called for |oblast) instead of {{User Russian city}}. I have done the latter now.[3] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Responsive images

Is there any way to enable full-width/%-based width automatic resizing for images? I know Meta uses a {{Image}} template with custom .css to do that but we don't have that. Am I missing a more obvious solution that already exists? --qedk (t 桜 c) 15:53, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

QEDK yes, using template styles and the File syntax has a 'class' param that no one knows about ;) See how I used that on the header image of the Wikidata main page in d:Template:Main Page/Header new and d:Template:Main Page/Header new/styles.css. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:12, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot, that certainly helps! I asked the {{Image}} salting admin to unsalt it for this purpose, let's see. --qedk (t 桜 c) 17:53, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
see {{scalable image}} Frietjes (talk) 19:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2019-19

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

Problems

  • Special:Watchlist can show the wrong information. It does not always show which edits are read and which are unread. The developers are working on solving the problem. [4]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 May. It will be on all wikis from 9 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • Recurrent item Advanced item You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 8 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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16:27, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Redirect question

Can someone tell me the difference between these two redirects: Doña Ana County Jane Doe and Dona Ana County Jane Doe as one works (goes to the correct portion of the target article) and the other doesn't (goes to the top of the target article) Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 07:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@GrahamHardy: Doña Ana County Jane Doe redirects to List of unidentified decedents in the United States, which doesn't mention Doña Ana County. Dona Ana County Jane Doe redirects to a different article, List of unidentified murder victims in the United States, which does have a section about her. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:21, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Doh! Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 08:42, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
She was moved from the decedents list in January 2018.[5] The same user made the redirects in 2015 but forgot to update one of them. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:52, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I have updated categories, but believe that Dona Ana County Jane Doe should be deleted as it is now identical to Doña Ana County Jane Doe, do people agree ? And what is the best mechanism for achieving this ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 09:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Further to the above I will remove all categories from Dona Ana County Jane Doe to stop duplication is categories. GrahamHardy (talk) 09:55, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@GrahamHardy: Neither redirect was created recently (both were created in 2015: Doña; Dona), so should not be deleted without a formal WP:RFD. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:48, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As one has an ñ and the other doesn't, they're not identical. The latter can be a redirect to diacritic. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 14:06, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Date templates

@J JMesserly, Hgrosser, and Zyxw: {{Birth-date}} and similar templates, for some reason, convert MDY dates to DMY dates, but only if no time zone is specified. The templates don't have |mf= or |df=.

  • {{start-date|November 22, 1964}}: November 22, 1964 (1964-11-22)
  • {{start-date|21:00 EST, November 22, 1964}} 21:00 EST, November 22, 1964 (1964-11-23UTC02)

Does anyone know how those templates actually work? There's clearly something wrong with them, and I noticed this years ago but I don't think I did anything about it. Jc86035 (talk) 10:28, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. The {{start-date}}, {{birth-date}}, {{end-date}}, and {{death-date}} templates all now display dates as entered. Same examples in DMY format (with |tz=y added for timezone as per documentation):
  • {{start-date|22 November 1964}} → 22 November 1964 (1964-11-22)
  • {{start-date|21:00 EST, 22 November 1964|tz=y}} → 21:00 EST, 22 November 1964 (1964-11-23UTC02Z)
-- Zyxw (talk) 15:57, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Visual editor citation tool munging URLs?

In the visual editor, if I pull up the citation tool, automatic tab, paste https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/a/augustus-holly.html into the box, and click Generate, it changes the hostname in the URL. Any idea what's going on? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:03, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing it's because VE takes url from that tag:
<meta property="og:url" content="http://public1.nhhcaws.local/content/history/nhhc/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/a/augustus-holly.html">. In code editor url stays the same (history.navy.mil). --MarMi wiki (talk) 16:22, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
MarMi wiki, the site publishes that as the ‘better url’ and also the one that should be used when sharing on facebook, twitter and google previews. That site really should be fixed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:20, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Page Preview Javascript error

I'm getting a JavaScript error window popup when I preview a page: https://imgur.com/a/Kiv9oCJ RedWolf (talk) 18:50, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@RedWolf: I get the same error, in my browser console. Does it go away when you disable Twinkle? It does for me. It may have been caused by Special:Diff/896151420 (pinging Amorymeltzer). Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:02, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, I think it's the mw.config.get('wgCurRevisionId') !== mw.config.get('wgRevisionId') check in Mediawiki:Gadget-twinklefluff.js that's the culprit. wgRevisionId === 0 when edit or previewing, apparently, so Twinkle.fluff.oldid is getting called even when there's no mw-revision-info element. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:16, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yup! Just pushed a quick fix; should take a few minutes to go through. Thanks for the ping, sorry for the inconvenience! ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:19, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That was quick! I no longer get the error, and the new "restore" button works for me. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:27, 8 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Seasons After font size too small

The font size on this article from the discography onward is too small, but I'm unable to locate any unclosed font tags that are causing it. Can someone resolve this? Home Lander (talk) 02:48, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Fixed. The unclosed tag was in the preceding section. – Ammarpad (talk) 04:05, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated child templates

(reposted with some changes from Template talk:U.S. premium television services)

{{North American TV}} appears three times in {{U.S. premium television services}}: As a child of {{U.S. premium television services}}, of {{U.S. premium television services (variety)}}, and of {{U.S. premium television services (PPV)}} (the latter two are children of U.S. premium television services):

  • U.S. premium television services
    • U.S. premium television services (variety)
      • North American TV
    • U.S. premium television services (PPV)
      • North American TV
    • North American TV

Removing it from U.S. premium television services leaves two copies; removing it from U.S. premium television services (variety) and U.S. premium television services (PPV) would leave those templates without it, should they be used outside of the U.S. premium television services template. What's the best way to clean this up? BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:52, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will make it optional to add {{North American TV}} in {{U.S. premium television services (variety)}} and {{U.S. premium television services (PPV)}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:41, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Done.[6][7][8] {{U.S. premium television services}} was the only template which duplicated {{North American TV}}. I don't know whether any articles have multiple navboxes which each add {{North American TV}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:51, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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