This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.
I know that there are limitations with Visual Editor and templates but I've started to notice it acting weird on a few specifically. If you edit certain templates with Visual Editor, it will most of time, mess up the parameter spacing and hidden comments that may also be in the template. Below are the templates which are effected by this (there may be more but these are the one I've used the most).
Other: If imputing bullet points manually, user can create multiple different bullet "charts" which don't merge into a single "chart" (Example).
To my best knowledge, these issues don't hurt the contents of the template if in "Read" mode (expect for the bullet point issue), but it does mess up the template layout which could be a problem for other users. I'm concerned that, due to the nature of the issue and amount of bytes it add/removes, Wikipedia might incorrectly ping newer users edits as vandalism and led to edit reverts or bans (which is unfair since many don't know). I've tried to minimize using VE with templates now but I've seen many others who use VE and unintentionally mess up the template(s). All in all, not an immediate concern, but it might be good to investigate the issue in the future. Thank you for your time; have a good day. DiscoA340 (talk) 23:15, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Editing a template means to edit the template page. I thought your post was about that but it's apparently just about editing template calls in other pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:12, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Infobox settlement is due to this recentish edit, and only changes the whitespace. Similarly for an even earlier edit on US census (harder to see, but it does make clear that it is a block-formatted template, which is what causes the whitespace adjustment).
Infobox US county does not have any TemplateData. Do you have an actual diff?
I do not see what you mean about Jct. Additionally, it also does not have TemplateData, so it will mostly default to whatever parameters you put in. Izno (talk) 23:57, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
Ok, so infobox US county will do that because there is no TemplateData, which means it defaults to inline formatting. Izno (talk) 00:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Turned off notifications for topics archived
I turned of notifications for topics being archived by accident. How do I turn them back on? I know it's a toggle button in Preferences, but don't know where exactly. Qwerty284651 (talk) 05:38, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Note there is a search box on the preferences page. You may be able to find the appropriate setting that way. isaacl (talk) 06:00, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
File:Helen martins.jpg was deleted due to being unused. However, that is only because a bot mistakenly removed the only use of the image in [1] after a page name swap that didn't update the links. Is there a way to restore the image? Aaron Liu (talk) 19:56, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I asked at HelpDesk and was told "You can try the MediaWiki Support Desk or make a bug report at MediaWiki", but before venturing into that alien territory (which presumably would lead me to Phab) I thought I would ask here.
I often edit from my Android Samsung mobile phone, as well as from my PC. I find that on my phone I cannot edit various talk pages other than article talk or user talk. This has been the case for some months; I raised it as a problem, I think in a zoom chat, and was asked for screenshots. Today I have at last discovered how to get a screenshot on this phone, so can read the error messages at leisure. So ...
I want to edit Draft talk:Honest History (magazine). If I use the "reply" link, I get a red box above my input saying "invalid response from server". If I click "read as wiki page" and do an ordinary edit (not VE), I get a red box saying "Error, something unexpected happened upon loading the preview. Please close and try again."
What is happening here? Can I fix it? Or are mobile editors considered to be an underclass who don't need access to backstage areas like Draft Talk?
To be honest I don't really know whether I'm using Chrome or the app: I start off by clicking a Chrome icon saved onto my home screen which gets to my watchlist, but then keep swapping between different configurations, in and out of "read as wiki page" and "View article in browser / on desktop" in an attempt to do whatever I'm trying to do: all a bit of a nightmare. I have another icon which might be the app but gets me to similar pages. In most cases I can find a workround, but contributing to Draft Talk pages, and various other Wikipedia Talk (non-article, non-user) pages, seems to be beyond the possible. PamD09:54, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
@PamD assuming you are using a browser, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click the "Desktop" link to get a more full set of controls. If you prefer to use mobile web exclusively just uninstall the app from your mobile device. The edit you made to this page right now appears to be NOT in the app, and NOT in the mobile ui. — xaosfluxTalk14:43, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
@Xaosflux I was editing on the desktop by the time I got here, and am now. This earlier edit was from my phone. Going in and out of the desktop version doesn't help on talk pages: clicking "desktop" at the bottom produces the same page, clicking "Read as wiki page" gets the banners displayed but makes no other difference. If I click on the "reply" option I get an input box, when I type and hit the blue "Reply" I get a red error box saying "Invalid response from server". Consistently on the Draft Talk page mentioned above, but I've encountered it elsewhere too. PamD15:08, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I am experiencing difficulties with the coordinates for Barton Broad. If they are placed at the bottom of the article, the "Infobox park" at the top of the article shows a map with a red area indicating the outline of the Barton Broad nature reserve. If I place the coordinates in the infobox, however, the red area disappears. I have tried playing around with the parameters to coord, but with no success. I am aware that placing the coords in the infobox works for some articles (eg Hainault Depot), although that uses an "Infobox Railway Depot" rather than the park variety. Can anyone explain what is going on, please, and is there a way to fix it? For the moment, I have commented out the coords in the infobox. Bob1960evens (talk) 13:26, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Just a small note to let you know that I've made a minor edit to MediaWiki:Userjsdangerous. We've been standardizing interface message boxes across MediaWiki for better accessibility and consistency so this change makes the message box you see when you edit JavaScript/CSS consistent with other message boxes across the site.
This results in a slight color change and padding change but no change to the text. Please let me know if there's any problem relating to this change. Jon (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
They are included if there is an article, except the proposed HTTP 451. Would readers expect lesser known codes like 505 to be found on "505" alone? A lot of things have names with a number at the end and we don't want to flood disambiguation pages with partial matches. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Random picture from Wikimedia Commons
I would like someone to create Template:Random picture which basically retrieves a random picture from Commons (for userpages). I can't figure out how to do this myself so I'm asking for advice here.
@CityUrbanism, Commons already has commons:Special:Random/Image, so I'm thinking it shouldn't be too hard. ... is not how that works. You cannot do what you are asking onwiki. Izno (talk) 18:07, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
It would require a script to automatically be loaded by all users but there is no justification for that. Somebody might write a userscript users could choose to load for themselves but I think very few users would do it. I don't see anything relevant by searching for "random" at Wikipedia:User scripts/List. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:40, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
You could use the "randomly select from a list" approach. Just create a list of randomly selected images and change that list every week/month/whenever you get bored. —Kusma (talk) 20:49, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm sure that RexxS (talk·contribs) wrote a random picture selector using Lua (so there will be a Module: somewhere). It didn't select from the whole of Commons, but from a preset list. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:47, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
I would add to the above that you definitely would want to use a predefined list. Commons has many, many images you probably do not want on your userpage. At best you would get poor-quality images, but you inevitably will get some seriously disturbing pictures.HouseBlastertalk22:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
YES! I came here to ask for a way to get a fully expanded clickable TOC, ideally next to the "Contents [hide]" link, e.g. "Contents [hide] [expand]" in the new skin. I really miss being able to skim all the subheadings which almost always appeared just after the intro in the old skin. Sandizer (talk) 12:33, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
To see a fully expanded TOC by default, this code in your common.css file should work (it works for me):
/* Auto-expand sections, and hide the H2-arrows */.client-js.vector-toc.vector-toc-level-1.vector-toc-list-item{display:block;}.vector-toc-toggle{visibility:hidden;}.vector-toc{padding-left:5px!important;}
Thank you so much, Jonesey95. Very useful. In addition, I was thinking of a module to create TOCs regardless of skins and csses. Directly. Thank you Sandizer, I like expanded ToCs too, but I also hope that editors can make different designs of ToCs for different kinds of pages with parameters. I believe that the table of contents, is the reponsibility of the editor and bodytext, not of outside areas, which, may repeat it, or not. Sarri.greek (talk) 05:18, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-15
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
There was a problem with all types of CentralNotice banners still being shown to logged-in users even if they had turned off specific banner types. This has now been fixed. [4]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
Starting on Wednesday, a new set of Wikipedias will get "Add a link" (Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia, Danish Wikipedia, Dinka Wikipedia, Lower Sorbian Wikipedia, Ewe Wikipedia, Greek Wikipedia, Emiliano-Romagnolo Wikipedia, Esperanto Wikipedia, Estonian Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Tumbuka Wikipedia, Fulah Wikipedia, Finnish Wikipedia, Võro Wikipedia, Fijian Wikipedia, Faroese Wikipedia, Arpitan Wikipedia, Northern Frisian Wikipedia, Friulian Wikipedia, Irish Wikipedia, Guianan Creole Wikipedia, Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Galician Wikipedia, Gilaki Wikipedia, Guarani Wikipedia, Goan Konkani Wikipedia, Gothic Wikipedia, Gujarati Wikipedia, Manx Wikipedia). This is part of the progressive deployment of this tool to more Wikipedias. The communities can configure how this feature works locally. [5][6]
I don't care about this enough to actually report it in the appropriate place, or even to figure out where that is, but based on the above 2nd item I went and looked at my Preferences/Notifications tab. I don't (yet) have "Edits to my user page" option (with plural "Edits"), but I do have an "Edit to my user talk page" and an "Edit to my user page". I thought they were duplicates until I caught the "talk" in the first one. My point: shouldn't these be right next to each other instead of 8 lines apart?
I don't know what's coming on Thursday, exactly, so maybe my whining is moot, but I also don't know why I already have something in my Preferences. Or is EN-WP a "test wiki? — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)01:26, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Notifications of user page edits are listed under "Recent changes" which means it already happened. I have tested the feature is working now. The new version of MediaWiki is listed under "Changes later this week".
uselang=qqx for Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo says "(echo-category-title-edit-user-page: 1)". That means MediaWiki:Echo-category-title-edit-user-page is used with $1=1. The message source says {{PLURAL:$1|Edit|Edits}} to my user page so it appears it may both say "Edit" and "Edits". With $1=1 it says "Edit". Maybe the plural form is used in other languages where singular would be considered wrong or weird, but I'm just guessing here. The source text of the above tech news says {{int:Echo-category-title-edit-user-page}} with no parameter. {{PLURAL:$1|Edit|Edits}} displays "Edits" if $1 is empty. I guess the tech news writer didn't know or care about these details. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:34, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, much, PrimeHunter, including the part where you read to me the "Recent changes" sub-head and politely explain that it means "recent changes". <Facepalm> what a doofus I am. I should either sleep more or write less. The rest was a bit over my head (even when I'm not too tired to read) but the qqx trick was fascinating; I'd never seen that before. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)05:24, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, both of you. I believe I was thinking of the situation (which I am positive I have seen) where some feature is being rolled out to certain wikis first. LIke English and Albanian Wikipedias and Esperanto Wiktionary would all get Fixed-Width Pending IP Flow two weeks before all the other Wikimedia sites. Again, the tip (for me) is to read for comprehension, not scan for speed. And thanks for Special:SiteMatrix; I hadn't known about that. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)14:39, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Home for Podcast RSS Feed of Spoken Articles
I recently wrote a python script that parses Wikipedia:Spoken articles into a podcast RSS feed, currently published at https://wcast.me/sw (paste that into your podcast app and check it out! ) with MIT-licensed source code at https://github.com/xenotropic/spoken-wikipedia-rss (Open an issue if it doesn't work with your app). I created it to use personally, but it also just to fill an apparent hole. Wikipedia has 1600+ recordings of articles in English, and podcast RSS is the main way people look for audio in the world these days, for good reasons (used by apps designed for the purpose, download management, keeping track of what one listened to, etc.).
My question is: does it make sense for that RSS file to be hosted on Wikipedia somewhere? I don't mind hosting the RSS file, but neither do I really want to. There is an apparent logic that Wikipedia would host an index of its own content; there are various other RSS feeds that Wikipedia publishes. It also would be nice if the RSS feed could not be buried in "external links" at the bottom of whatever pages where it is referred to.
If so, how would I go about this? Is this a sensible thing to make a bot out of? So something that runs on my server but writes a file to wikipedia or commons? (Are there examples of bots that write RSS to Wikipedia? Or even of RSS being hosted/updated like that on Wikipedia? Might be MIME-type issues). Or is there some method by which I could propose that Wikipedia itself "adopt" the code and just run it internally? It's a single python file with 200 lines of code, so not a huge thing to review. The main dependency is on the structure of the Spoken Articles page itself, but that seems fairly stable. morrisjm (talk) 01:03, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
@Morrisjm: very cool! Have you checked out Toolforge before? You can host it there, for free.
Wikipedia has limited feed generation support, we have FeaturedFeeds, but that's designed for date-based content, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't support the podcast stuff. I suppose you could publish the feed to a wiki page and tell people to access it with ?action=raw, but that feels a bit sketchy. I think Toolforge would probably be a better fit. Legoktm (talk) 06:33, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
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
The system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories. [7][8][9][10][11]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version. [12]
The deprecated jquery.hoverIntent module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery hover() or on() instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide. [13]
Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account. [14]
You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new __ARCHIVEDTALK__ magic word. There will also be a new .mw-archivedtalk CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page. [15][16][17]
Future changes
The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.
This branch cut initially failed because of some of the deploy services on toolforge being down. I'm assuming that has something to do with it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:17, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, I've pushed out __ARCHIVEDTALK__ to some of the major talk archive temples, will take a while for transcluded pages to get updated. — xaosfluxTalk13:58, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
And I've now done mw-archivedtalk for most of them. {{collapse top}} and {{collapse}} are currently used in mainspace and shouldn't be, so while it wouldn't hurt to add it to those, those do also need to be fixed.... Izno (talk) 21:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah this explains why my recent changes page no longer has colored highlighting and doesn't have the thing I can press to refresh the page anymore. Dang... Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 00:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
My browsers are old! I didn't think Wikipedia would no longer work for me! Eventually I'll be moving to a new computer but for now I don't get the highlighting or javascript based refresh. Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 00:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
You should be able to run a recent version of Firefox. The latest version (111) is listed as compatible with Windows 7, which was released in 2009, and on Mac OS Sierra (10.12), which can run on any Mac made in 2010 or later. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:56, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Watchlist.
Starting today my watch list is acting screwy. Normally it has dots next to edits I haven't looked at.....but that is (now) there regardless if I have looked at the edit or not.....it doesn't differentiate between edits you have/haven't looked at. And also normally a option is there saying something like "Mark all changes as seen". But that isn't there anymore. Anyone know what is going on? Thanks.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Modern Firefox (current version 111) still supports Windows 7, though it needs Microsoft security update KB4474419. Chrome 109, released a few months ago, also supports it, but is the last version to do so. I'd recommend upgrading; I can't see a reason to use an old version of Chrome of all browsers. (Firefox has some cliffs here and there that would make natural cutoffs like Firefox 56.) Izno (talk) 01:47, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I should probably upgrade. I still use a older version of windows based on a (work) program I use....but that shouldn't stop me from getting a newer browser.Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:02, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
JavaScript
Is there any way to allow JavaScript to work on iOS 10.3.3? Ever since the phab:T178356 update, I've no longer been able to run JavaScript on that software, which is the latest version that my iPad 4 supports. I would imagine a userscript to circumvent this would be impossible, though could adjusting my personal CSS make a difference? Thanks all, ‑‑Neveselbert (talk·contribs·email) 10:55, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
No, this is not possible. The iPad 4 is 11 years old and unfortunately Apple's model doesn't allow you to switch to alternative browsers either... On the bright side, overall browsing Wikipedia this way should be faster, without the JS overhead. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Not as far as I know. I'm not aware of any jailbeak that also installs 3rd party browsers or that allows you to install a newer version of iOS. .. "according to caniuse.com/es6 it's supposed to be supported on iOS 10". The lexical part of ES6 is supported on Safari 10, but some small critical ES6 parts are apparently missing/incomplete (specifically on the Promise front) (edit: I'm mistaken, we actually require some ES2018 it seems). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:06, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
@Chatul, the reason you no longer have the toolbar is because your browser does not support sufficient functionality in ES6. See #Tech News: 2023-14. Upgrading your browser or your OS and browser are your only recourses. Izno (talk) 17:35, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
To export your preferences you can copy or save the content at the following link:
the legacy (2006) toolbar@Chatul: Which toolbars are you talking about? If it's the legacy toolbar (as shown in the image to the right), then you will need to *disable* the "Enable the editing toolbar" option in the "Editing" tab, and make sure the "Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar" option in the Gadgets tab is enabled. As its description mentions, the former will override the latter. Writ Keeper⚇♔13:19, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
This morning I am suddenly finding myself unable to click on any links in articles or in article toolbars when viewing articles using the Vector2022 style. I had to change my preference back to monobook to get anything to work again. It is not a browser issue; I tried restarting my browser, without any change, and pages outside Wikipedia work fine, as does Wikipedia under monobook. Anyone know what is going on and how to fix it? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:40, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Also try to log out. What browser and what version of your browser are you using? Please give an example link which doesn't work. Are Example and The Example broken? Does Vector legacy work? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:28, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Alice Cooper, among others, exhibits this bug on Chrome Version 111.0.5563.148 on Windows 10. Vector legacy and MonoBook work. This is not consistent across articles, and on SOME articles (Republic of Ireland) refreshing or hard refreshing solves the problem at least until the next time the page is navigated to. It appears to happen sporadically - opening a new window (still signed in) might make links clickable, and might not. The top bar is functional at all times, though. PriusGod (talk) 21:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Something similar has been happening to me off and on all day. I'll load a page, and for about a minute, won't be able to click anything below the title/languages bar at the top. Refreshing doesn't fix it at first; eventually a refresh does make the problem go away, and switching to Vector Legacy also makes the problem go away. It happened on this very page just now (also over at Giétro Glacier, which I was reading when I noticed the problem again and decided to report here). It's happened in both Firefox and Edge. 199.208.172.35 (talk) 21:22, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm seeing this problem with the Fritos article in Chrome, also in incognito mode. From inspecting the page it seems that the article text is covered by a giant checkbox? See screenshot at right. —Bkell (talk) 21:23, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
This is being tracked at phab:T334699 but we are having trouble getting replication steps. If someone is still seeing this please could you share the raw HTML (obtained via view sourcd) on the ticket to help us replicate this. Thanks in advance! Jdlrobson (talk) 22:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
CS1 maint: url-status
Greetings, keepers of the eternal flame! I have sort of asked this question before, but can't remember if it was here or elsewhere. I have one of those very useful JS scripts installed (specifically for {{sfn}} errors) which also alerts me to CSI maint messages, which I often attempt to fix when I randomly come across them. But what is the point of the url-status messages, especially when they result in |url-status=live? Apparently a bot inserts them, but why? If a link is dead, that would make sense, but since a huge number of links are live, why go around letting everyone know all is fine? And why only some links on a given page rather than all of them? If the link is dead, I'm more than happy to see if it's on Wayback and amend as appropriate. And then what to do with the param? Or is it just statistics for the sake of statistics? :) MinorProphet (talk) 19:02, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
The maintenance message you speak of pertains to CS1/2 citations which have a status of live but which do not have an archive URL. Izno (talk) 19:10, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your replies. I came across this most recently in Telluric iron:
<ref name=MinDat-2063>
{{cite web
|title=Hatrurim formation, Middle East
|website=MinDat
|place=Keswick, VA
|publisher=Hudson Institute of Mineralogy
|url=http://www.mindat.org/loc-2063.html
|url-status=live
|access-date=2021-12-31
}}
</ref>
I'm fairly gnomish, and I don't much enjoy the needless addition of archive links to perfectly good references. This one is live, and the IA Wayback Machine tells us that the source was "Saved 74 times between November 13, 2003 and April 8, 2023." So no need to add more wikitext to the page.
What I might do, if I were making other changes on that page, is eliminate the unnecessary spaces in the ref citation. I see while in edit mode that the cite template is in expanded, one-line-per-parameter format, including a separate, ridiculous line for " }}" (space included), but as a minimum I would sneak the closing "}}" to come immediately after the access-date, and maybe even move the </ref> to come right after the ""}}"". Also I would determine a date format for that page and apply it everywhere (using a script). Also, I would delete the |place= parameter as meaningless for a website. And I would delete the |url-status= param completely, eliminating the error. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)14:46, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
You have two options: One is to fill in the archive URL (and date), either manually or with IABot, and the other is to remove the parameter and value (assuming the webpage at the URL is alive). Izno (talk) 18:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Is there an easy way to suppress the display of CS1 maint:url-status messages (which for me are just a distraction) while keeping the rest of the citation related messages? —Kusma (talk) 12:10, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
No. This could potentially be added, and it has been brought up at least once on WT:CS1. Further discussion should occur there. Izno (talk) 18:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
How to wrap signature markup as sample mediawiki text
I expected {{code}} to wrap its parameter in <nowiki>...</nowiki>, and attempted to do {{code|-- ~~~~}} to display -- ~~~~ as example (grey background) text; the signature markup was expanded; I had to wrap the markup in an explicit <nowiki>...</nowiki> to suppress rendering as a signature. Is there a cleaner way to do this? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:48, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
It's impressive how long something is caching the rendering of these pages for the Android app (and maybe iOS app as well). There were two other pages that were actively serving vandalized short description as of April 8 until I published new versions of the pages: Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1185#Issue with short descriptions. So it's possible they were still serving the old content and someone purged/did a null edit that finally forced cache invalidation (this is just a guess). Skynxnex (talk) 17:44, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
@Eurohunter: See WP:ACLASS, but check that the WikiProject concerned not only recognises A-Class but has a formal assessment procedure. If you look at Category:A-Class articles, you will see that of the hundreds of WikiProjects where A-Class is valid, most of the subcategories are empty - very few actually have any A-Class article. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:55, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I've had cause twice today to use the Undo tool to revert a non-constructive edit, and in each case when attempting to publish, I'm served a page reading The editor will now load. If you still see this message after a few seconds, please reload the page. Reloading gives me a "URI too long" error. Entering desktop mode allowed me to publish the revert. I saw another mobile editor at the Teahouse experience this issue (courtesy ping @Wikiexplorationandhelping:), and since I've just duplicated the behaviour moments ago and don't know how to file a bug report in phab I thought I'd come here. I'm on Firefox 111.1.1 on Android 11. I don't know what skin my mobile view uses or if that could even be relevant. Folly Mox (talk) 09:25, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Hello there, Folly Mox. I appreciate the ping :D. Yeah, I have the same problem as well. The undo button has not been working properly; as such, I will troubleshoot this on the desktop version. If you want to, you can also go to the desktop version of Wikipedia on a shortcut I have put in my talk page. Conversely, there's also a link there to go back to mobile version for convenience. I personally like to use mobile version more though. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 16:26, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I missed that you had to click "Publish changes" (or "Show preview" or "Show changes" for that matter) to reproduce it. Phab task filed. Nardog (talk) 19:20, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Deceptive diff
Considering this diff, why does it reflect the removal as if I'd removed the preceding span's closing tag and then the removed span less its closing tag when in fact I had removed the entire relevant span beginning with its opening tag and culminating with its closing tag? --John Cline (talk) 23:34, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
It doesn't track what you actually do in the text area before saving. It just compares the before and after and shows one of multiple ways to get there. I don't think MediaWiki's diff engine is particularly good at giving a plausible way but I have never seen it give a wrong diff, meaning a way that wouldn't actually get you from the before to after. I recommend enabling wikEdDiff but I don't display it by default. If the MediaWiki diff looks poor then I examine the wikEd diff and often prefer that. But it also has weaknesses and is sometimes worse. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:00, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
I agree that the diff isn't, in and of itself, wrong; I suppose it's literally impossible, in computational terms, for the machine to err. In practical terms, however, it is deceptive and could leave one with the wrong impression regarding another one's technical competence. As it is, I was compelled to hurriedly verify that I hadn't made such a mistake which would have resulted in a cut and paste move that published inoperable HTML. And if such a diff can engender doubt within myself, it's certainly fair that it could engender doubt within others. Perhaps, in the end, skepticism is more empowering than misplaced confidence; to that end, I may be indebted to software that might have caused many to look deeper at me, longer than they otherwise would, to ultimately develope confidence with less concern that it could be misplaced. One thing that is sure, it all works well in the end. I was, nevertheless, curious and thank you for your reply. --John Cline (talk) 01:05, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
"Show changes" produces the same diff as after saving. I sometimes tweak an edit before saving to give it a better looking diff. A good edit summary also helps. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:58, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Good advice, I appreciate that. I definitely endeavor to leave a good edit summary; especially after they increased the allowable size for it. I almost always preview changes I've made before publishing but never really made use of the feature to show changes; I intend to begin using it as you described and anticipate that it will be helpful to me. Thanks again for your replies and be well. --John Cline (talk) 20:16, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Hello! About an hour ago, the cosmetic design of my recent changes and watchlist changed to something that looks a bit odd. If an editor more technically minded than me could explain what's going on I would be appreciative. Images are https://filebin.net/l9g4636rgl3exqq8, note the bullet points missing and odd looking log entries. It is like this for all platforms and browsers. I have checked, and it is fine on Commons. It seems to only be EnWiki.
As the quality of the images on the filebin are very low, here's an explanation of what to look for. Hist and Diff links are moved to after page title. Bullet points are gone, apparently replaced with the UCT time of edit, and entries are indented weirdly. Public logs are looking very odd: they only state the editor doing the action. Schminnte (talk • contribs)20:44, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Schminnte, apologies if I misunderstood what is unexpected for you but I believe you may have enabled grouping. You can turn it on or off by clicking the gear button near the top-right of the watchlist or going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc and looking for "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist". I find it somewhat useful since it can show more articles on a screen at a time, even if there were many edits to some. Skynxnex (talk) 01:15, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
I also had my watchlist change and found that the group changes by page setting had been enabled. I did not enable it through either of those methods though. Do you happen to know if there is a keyboard shortcut that might be applicable? isaacl (talk) 04:48, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
Example of what my watchlist used to look like.Example of what my watchlist looks like now.
I signed up to the mentor list today and my watchlist seems to have subsequently changed format. In the past the (diff | hist) options appeared to the left, but now they're appearing in the center. Can anything be done to bring the old format back? — Nythar (💬-🍀) 00:45, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Is there a way to get a list of all pages at "https://dnd.wizards.com/" that are currently being used as sources on Wikipedia? I have been advised that they plan on getting rid of that domain entirely and putting all of their new content on a new site, and that they have a track record of just deleting webpages instead of porting them over to whatever the new platform is, so I was hoping to make sure articles using those sources have archive links. BOZ (talk) 16:16, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
It's a caching - one that is known about, I think but I can't find the phab ticket - Flea was vandalised and the page preview is still picking up the text of the lead paragraph of the vandalised version. Nthep (talk) 21:42, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Is anyone looking into this? Except for the first imsge in an article, captions only are displayed. Images do work in a mobile browser which iscreally annoying because like I don't already habe enough browser tabs open. 2601:1C0:CC00:45D0:A8FB:FF04:A450:D26D (talk) 07:52, 15 April 2023 (UTC)
I have the same problem but on iOS. I’m currently on the app right now, and I can only see the top image, but the rest are only captions. Hummerrocket (talk) 03:29, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
We reverted a patch that landed last week that combined with caching caused the issue. I added some details for the root cause at the ticket. For new requests things should be working fine. In case JS assets are cached on the client side images are going to be eventually fixed when client side cache expires. JGiannelos (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
@Eurohunter Since July 2015, I assume it's exactly the same data. Before then, it used a very different metric called pagecounts. It should not be used in side-by-side comparisons with pageviews as they are fundamentally different metrics. — MusikAnimaltalk16:55, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Maybe they're using different criteria or timezone? WikiShark appears to be roughly equivalent to pageviews.wmcloud.org when you set the platform to "Desktop" and the agent to "User". Nardog (talk) 18:51, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Adding a new barnstar to the default wikilove options
Due to the recent creation of new {{MilAward Desc}} and {{MilAward Ribbon}} templates to format military decorations in articles, there's a cluster of redlinked "Recipients of [military award]" categories that keeps turning up at Special:WantedCategories because the creator of the templates used complex module coding (see Module:MilAward) that's automatically generating them. They're typically populated by just one person, and thus can't necessarily be justified for creation yet — and while I have been able to make them go away by manually wrapping the implicated template in {{suppress categories}}, it isn't a viable long-term solution if this continues.
As of now, they've all been cleaned out with the suppress categories wrapper, but the problem is likely to recur in the future. So I wanted to ask if somebody with more experience in JavaScript coding than I've got can (a) ensure that the module only generates categories that exist, while not generating redlinks, and (b) ensure that the module suppresses all categories if the template is used on draft or userspace pages?
2. Check that the categories exist before adding them. Like this:
localcategoryTitle=mw.title.new('Category:'..mw.text.trim('Recipients of Order of Mendi'))ifcategoryTitle.existsandnotcategoryTitle.isRedirectthen-- category exists and is not a redirectelse-- category does not exist or is a redirectend
localnamespace=mw.title.getCurrentTitle().nsTextifstring.len(namespace)<2thenlocalrecipcat=data[code].RecipCator""-- If there is a recipient category specified, then add it to the outputoutput=output.." [[Category:MilAward Ribbon Description]]"-- Add tracking Categoryifstring.len(recipcat)>0thenlocalcategoryTitle=mw.title.new('Category:'..mw.text.trim(recipcat))ifcategoryTitle.existsandnotcategoryTitle.isRedirectthen-- category exists and is not a redirectoutput=output.." [[Category:"..recipcat.."]]"else-- category does not exist or is a redirectendendend
Ok. It's clear now. It's a recommendation which is why I didn't focus on it too much. How much weight should I give the recommendation? BoonDock (talk) 20:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
As you say it's a recommendation rather than a bright line rule, some people do have very strong feelings about automatic categorisation, but there isn't an overall community consensus to ban it. If you're going to add automatic categorisation the most important thing is to make sure that it isn't disruptive, there are a lot of editors who work on categorisation, and having special:WantedCategories flooded with nonsensical categories or a bunch of non-articles showing up in content categories due to a malfunctioning module will upset people (as you've just seen). A few ideas you might want to consider include making sure only pages in the right namespace are categorised, making sure the template doesn't add non-existent categories and having some built in way in the template to disable automatic generation of categories for cases where someone wants to categorise an article manually. Bear in mind that regardless of how well written your template documentation is at some point someone is going to put something wrong into the parameters, your template needs to be able to cope with that. It might also be worth considering using a hidden maintenance category to track pages where the module couldn't add content categories automatically - in those cases it might be that either a new category is required or one of the input parameters is wrong.
Ok, that's fair. I have been addressing the issues as they've surfaced, but let me just enumerate them here.
Checks for namespace and any namespace other than main, nothing is added
Checks for non-existent category. Does not add
Checks for redirect category. Does not add
There is only one "recipient" category possible per entry in the data table. This can only be added by adding to the correct field in the data table. There is NO way to do this from the template, whether on purpose or by accident by misconfiguring. If a category is added to the data table, it goes through the checks above, so that should prevent 99.999% of those cases you refer to. If it's a "malicious" edit to the data table, that's the same as a vandalism/disruptive edit and will get reverted asap just like any article edit.
A flag on the template to prevent addition of the category is definitely a good idea. I'll write that in and report back when done.
Two things about the maintenance cat.
I've been beaten up enough about adding maint cats to want to avoid doing it at all.
I cannot see the utility anyway because the module is written as I've outlined above to make checks any way. It's difficult (impossible) to prove a negative. It would be simple to create a maint category for all pages where a recipient category HAS been created, and I'll happily do that if there is consensus that that's required.
I think that covers everything.
One further thought. This isn't about an arbitrary adding of categories. The thought is that if you add in the article a display of an award then you are saying that person is a recipient of the award and thus the category. What I have not catered for is the case where the template is used on a page about the award, which would add that page to the recipient's list. That is specifically where the toggle option in point 5. above would be perfect.
There is now a parameter option "nocat". Calling the template {{MilAward Desc|PP|nocat=AnyGarbageYouLike}} will stop it adding the categories.
ifstring.len(nocat)>1then-- If ANYTHING has been specified as a value for nocat, then it's true-- Do nothing or add to tracking category?else-- Need to exclude adding the recipient category if it is not in mainspace.-- for now, that means checking it's not in "Template:" or "User:" spacelocalnamespace=mw.title.getCurrentTitle().nsTextifstring.len(namespace)<2thenlocalrecipcat=data[code].RecipCator""-- If there is a recipient category specified, then add it to the output--output = output .. " [[Category:MilAward Ribbon Description]]" -- Add tracking Category -- Note commented outifstring.len(recipcat)>0thenlocalcategoryTitle=mw.title.new('Category:'..mw.text.trim(recipcat))ifcategoryTitle.existsandnotcategoryTitle.isRedirectthen-- category exists and is not a redirectoutput=output.." [[Category:"..recipcat.."]]"else-- category does not exist or is a redirect-- Add to a tracking Category ???endendendend
One further (belated) observation is that I might have predisposed people against what I'm doing during the development of the templates/modules. In my defence, I learnt to program in Lua three days ago ;-) Mea Culpa, mea maxima culpa. BoonDock (talk) 20:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Tech News: 2023-16
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
At Wikimedia Commons, some thumbnails have not been getting replaced correctly after a new version of the image is uploaded. This should be fixed later this week. [26][27]
For the last few weeks, some external tools had inconsistent problems with logging-in with OAuth. This has now been fixed. [28]
Changes later this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 April. It will be on all wikis from 20 April (calendar).
I received a (formerly known as Echo) notification of an email. From what I recall in the past, the notification shown when you click on the alert icon used to just say that you got an email from another user, as seen in the image at Help:Notifications § Email received. However this time there was a brief excerpt of the start of the message. I didn't think any of the message was stored. Has the message or an brief excerpt always been stored? isaacl (talk) 01:40, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
It hasn't been stored always, but it has been apparently since February 2016: T121831#2023926. The screenshot on the help page you linked is, funnily enough, from January 2016! Matma Rextalk01:49, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the info! I see from the Phabricator ticket that the subject line is stored, unless it's the default, in which case the first line of the email is stored. That's good to know for privacy purposes... isaacl (talk) 02:02, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Given that {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Candidates for speedy deletion as having been created by blocked or banned users}}}} is returning 0 (1), I'm guessing this is an issue along the lines of T224360, T85696 and/or T221795. recountCategories.php is run monthly which should prevent most drift, but it may need running again for enwiki — this recounts all categories though, so I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable running it without getting the OK from someone "in the know" — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
I use VisualEditor for almost everything I do on Wikipedia, and I'm curious to see how many people share my editing workflow, because it seems that on most edit histories that I view, the article edit history consists mostly of regular edits, not VE edits. Where can I obtain statistics on the usage share of VisualEditor? Thanks! Félix An (talk) 12:23, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
There's probably some way to get more exact statistics, but I just checked Special:RecentChanges, with the filters "Human (not bot)" and "Page edits". Filtered for the tag "#Visual edit", the last 500 edits go back ca. 35 minutes, while with the filter "not #Visual edit", the last 500 changes only go back 5 minutes. So I'd guess that means approximately 1 in 8 human edits is done with VisualEditor. I'm not sure whether it's possible to get actual statistics "per editor" instead of "per edit", but I can imagine that it'd be a bit more than 1 in 8, because I think editors who make a lot of edits are more likely to use the source editor, but that's just my hunch. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:39, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
To improve on this method slightly, I think it's better to compare "#Visual edit" to "#wikieditor (hidden tag)" (to exclude edits made with various gadgets), and to limit the results to the main namespace (as usage in other namespaces is very different, e.g. templates and talk pages have ~0 VE edits for obvious reasons). With this method, the last 500 changes were made in ~40 minutes in visual mode [29] and ~10 minutes in wikitext mode [30]. Matma Rextalk18:53, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
You've got me interested enough to write a proper SQL query and try to actually count the users. Here's the best I got: https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/73006
In March 2023, excluding bots and counting only edits in the main namespace, ~18% of users used only visual mode, ~49% used only wikitext mode, and ~3% used them both for different edits. 30% of users used neither of the main two editors; I haven't tried to dig into this, but I think this mostly accounts for alternative wikitext editing experiences (e.g. the mobile site editor, AutoWikiBrowser, 2017 wikitext editor) and gadgets.
No promises that I didn't make some mistake in the query… I'm particularly surprised by the 3% figure. Perhaps someone is willing to review it, or explore different angles. Matma Rextalk20:24, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Are you surprised by the 3% because it seems low or high? If it seems high, it is possible that your query captured editors who made just one or two edits with VE, either unintentionally or because they were testing something. In the first three months of 2023, for example, I made 11,700 edits, including one lonely edit with VE. So I would be part of the "both editors" histogram column in a three-month sample. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:38, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
It seems low. I read comments all the time from people who use wikitext except for tables, or who use visual except for templates, etc., so I expected to see more of them here. I use both editors myself as well, so maybe I'm biased (although looking at my edits in March, I guess I would be counted as a wikitext-only editor in this query). Matma Rextalk20:52, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Did your query account for "visual edit: switched" tags? I would expect people who use an editor for only one purpose are likely to switch mid edit. small jarstc10:23, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
It didn't, but they should have been counted with the wikitext group (as that tag is only applied when switching to wikitext). I added it to the updated query below to be sure. Matma Rextalk17:26, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
IMO it just makes the already-easy stuff easier and makes the other things that a newish editor needs to learn harder to learn. North8000 (talk) 14:16, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I use both visual and source, frequently even using both in the same edit. I think markup and templating is far easier with source, while wikilinking and referencing (with the exception of {{sfn}}) is far easier with visual. I used to prefer visual for writing prose, but now I prefer source. Curbon7 (talk) 14:27, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I use a mix of both. I say that because the 2017 Wikitext Editor (see Meta:2017 wikitext editor although it is out of date) is the Wikitext editor with tools from the visual editor (my favorite is the automatic citation tool which fills out all the needed params for {{cite web}} and various other citation templates automatically). I quite enjoy using it because it makes a lot of things easier while not limiting what I'm able to do (such as editing the Wikitext directly). ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654514:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Die-hard source editor here. Totally agree with North8000. I suspect that visual might help me with complex tables once in a blue moon, but that's about it. In bygone days I suppose I would have been one of those who complained about the invention of the wheel, but something in me totally rejects the idea of clicking on an icon when I know just how to do it by hand - a bit like constructing a long bash command line. I'm obviously somewhere on the scale... (I'm only happy when it rains, I only like it when it's complicated) MinorProphet (talk) 18:27, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
North8000, Curbon7, Blaze Wolf, MinorProphet: I do not think Félix An expects to derive statistics from people remarking (forum-style) on their preferences here. Félix seems to be hoping for a clearer, more immediate approximation of editor usage. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)23:44, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
This handy spreadsheet says in Column R that 9.2% of non-bot edits on English Wikipedia used visual editor (from the start of Feb 2022 to the end of Jan 2023). Other wikis are generally quite a bit higher. How it breaks down by editor tenure is an interesting question though. the wub"?!"19:11, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
I use toolbars frequently rather than typing in, e.g., <ref>...</ref>, -- ~~~~, and VE seems to lack those. Add in its very sluggish performance and I generally strive to avoid it. What I'd really like is a snappy visual editor with all of the tools available in the regular editor. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:33, 14 April 2023 (UTC)
Visual editor: I typically use visual editor for everything I can. I resisted this for quite a while, but visual editor evolved quite rapidly and in the right direction. One of the things that would be useful is a drive to add content to templates to make them fully compatible with the visual editor. I find it unfortunate that I cannot use visual editor for talk pages, actually. There are, of course, things that are much easier in wikitext or even impossible in visual editor, so I am a switcher on an as needed basis. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:34, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Your response doesn't seem to help answer the question Where can I obtain statistics on the usage share of VisualEditor?, nor are we collecting !votes here. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits)03:42, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Implementing the consensus to set Vector 2022 to full width by default
Given the WMF has refused to do so, and given that they have ignored my comment that if they don't we will, although we would prefer they do as the solution will be cleaner, I think our only option is for us to do this ourselves.
A demonstration of this code can be seen here; note that the flash of unstyled content only appears for the demo, and putting the code in your own vector-2022.css style sheet or in MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css does not result in it.
Given this, and given their failure to reply to this comment, I don't see any reason to believe that this will change, regardless of whether the phab tickets remain technically open, and as such we need to do this ourselves. BilledMammal (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
The test would be if there was refusal to promote the patch, doing this server side would be much preferable then client-side hacks, especially for logged out users. As far as DIY, if you have a patch ready submit it and see. — xaosfluxTalk21:16, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
I don't have a patch, but I think a comment from the Chief Product and Technical Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation saying that they are continuing to make the right choice in the decision to keep it as the default is sufficient test; I doubt they'll suddenly reverse their opinion because a patch permitting such an option was provided.
I'm also not particularly eager to spend time learning the WikiMedia code base so that I could create such a patch, as I see no reason to believe it would be accepted - I also note Izno's comment about whether a solution for this would be better done in style sheets. BilledMammal (talk) 21:25, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, I tested that code snippet on test2wiki, and it is not ready as-is, many pages got forced in to an even-narrower viewport that could not be recovered from. Anything like this would need very very extensive testing (think of how much went in to the client-side darkmode hack, and there are still errors reported constantly). — xaosfluxTalk00:40, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Can you give an idea what sort of pages those appear in? I've also found an issue with preference/contribution/etc pages; I'm working on that one. BilledMammal (talk) 01:48, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Mostly on every Special: page. Note, it isn't just the icon being there or not, that CSS made the entire page much worse. As I noted, this would need extensive testing across all pages and actions before we would ever consider it for production. — xaosfluxTalk09:51, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I wasn't clear; the bug with the toggle was unrelated except for the fact that I discovered it while looking into this. The reason it fails there is because by default the width toggle is disabled on pages in namespaces 12 and -1 (with the exception of user preferences); because this wasn't accounted for it resulted in some unexpected behavior.
Alexis Jazz has produced an updated script that fixes most of those issues, although I believe there are a couple still to resolve - I'll look into it further when I have time, and in the meantime hopefully it will become unnecessary because the WMF will agree to implement it on their end. BilledMammal (talk) 22:41, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
It also seems to break the full/limited width toggle for logged out users.. is the idea to prevent unregistered users from selecting a preference? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 01:50, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
My tests suggest that it does work for logged out users, although there is still some work to be done per xaosflux - see the demonstration linked above. It could be that the version I'm currently working on broke something there? I've updated the link in the original post to a static container. BilledMammal (talk) 02:31, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
@BilledMammal: I just wanted to note this somewhere; my interactions with Vector 2022 and the resultant RfC/discussions/etc. have been entirely in my capacity as a volunteer (and I include the above-mentioned patch in that). I'm always more than happy to help where I can though, up to and including writing patches and trying to "prod" the right people to take a look — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 08:19, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
You might have to translate for us mere non-coding mortals. Would that make it the default for English Wikipedia? North8000 (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
Hi everyone, thank you for bringing this up. I just wanted to mention that the discussion on next steps is still ongoing on this page and we’re still working on the best way to proceed. We have presented a few different options for how all users can clearly choose which width they prefer, and which the community is currently discussing and weighing the pros and cons of. There is also discussion of how we can respect current existing user preferences on the width. We hope to allow a few more days for discussion and provide a summary and concrete next steps by Tuesday, April 4. @SDeckelmann-WMF is out this week, but will be back next week to continue the conversation. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
@OVasileva (WMF): To clarify, are you saying that things have changed since 25 March and you will now be respecting the consensus to set the default for logged-out users as full width? BilledMammal (talk) 01:05, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
All this is so sad, and I bet most people are tired of it. So there was a well hidden RFC, where someone snuck in a second question somewhere near the bottom of the page. And some people answered what they liked better, and there were some good arguments like why any publication ever published had limited line length. Expectedly, no agreement was reached. But hey, there's consensus, and we'll make the English Wikipedia different from any other Wikipedia in the World, and we're gonna push it just so we can show who's the boss. That RFC was like me standing in the long return line at Costco the other day; guess what, everyone had to say something against Costco, 100% consensus! 300 people is by no means a majority of users. It's not even a majority of this Wikipedia's administrators. But okay, keep pushing your agenda, enjoy your 1.5 foot line lengths. 2604:CA00:16B:990E:0:0:662:4239 (talk) 18:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
You are implying that the majority of arguments either way where WP:ILIKEIT, which is not the case. They presented considerations that involve the implications of the changes on the experience of all users, not just the preferences of the RfC's participants. It is also strange that you are calling one of the most participated-in RfCs of all time "well hidden," and the second question was there almost from the start. small jarstc09:18, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
well hidden the RfC was listed at WP:CENT, notified at every applicable noticeboard and talk page, even including Donald Trump’s talk page for some reason, and reached WP:300 levels for support, WP:200 for oppose, and over 150 participants in the second question alone. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
English Wikipedia was already different from the rest of the world long before a Vector 2022 was ever considered. Every wiki is unique. Not sure what you were heading at there. Tvx1 21:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I personally would wait to see what WMF does before diving into CSS. It is WP:NOTAVOTE, it is a consensus process. Whatever we do we should take into account practical considerations, like different screen sizes and devices. Maybe set the "limited width" to only take effect as soon as the screen is extended beyond a specific screen resolution (like 1080px)? This is a good compromise between those that want some fixed width and those that want unlimited width. Then we do not have to worry about window resizing or any of that nonsense. It could be an in-between toggle. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 14:30, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
Then the contention would be that the width that you need to go to before fixed width takes effect is wider than the scientific optimum. small jarstc15:41, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
We already have a consensus on the matter. A “compromise” here is unacceptable. Default width needs to be default. ToaNidhiki0522:03, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
Please also note that a hacky workaround like this can easily break if the skin gets redesigned. Vector 2022 is still a new skin, and there will certainly be changes to make the skin stable. We should certainly give it time to evolve to meet the needs of the community and its readers. I know of many of my tools that have broken because of redesigns. Let's not make this hack be one of them. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 22:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
It’s almost like the skin isn’t ready for prime time. But regardless, WMF can resolve this but implementing unlimited width. I hope they do so. ToaNidhiki0501:27, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
V22 has been in the works for years and always based on v10, a sudden redesign to the width is very unlikely. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
Maybe not right now, but when they fully deploy? This will certainly be something that will need to be considered given the skin is still a WIP. I have a feeling the Vector 2022 that you see in seven or eight months will be a different skin than the Vector 2022 you see right now. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 17:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
I don’t think they would make such a major change to limited width, a very small (code-wise) feature, after working on this skin for so long Aaron Liu (talk) 11:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
While technically any workaround would be our problem, in practice the WMF will need to be careful not to break it as they have a strong interest in not breaking enwiki. BilledMammal (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Patch rejection and further consideration of the proposed CSS change
It appears that the WMF is not willing to consider the patch I proposed, and do not appear willing to produce a patch of their own. As such, our only option appears to be the CSS. I will review the code provided by Alexis Jazz further, to identify any remaining issues, and similar efforts by other editors would be appreciated. BilledMammal (talk) 02:36, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
They don't consider your patch because a logged-out invert would require changing a variable in the source code instead of a dollar-sign preference. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:42, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu: Are you referring to where we replace the class name to switch? If you are I do it that way because the WMF's existing code does it that way and I wanted to minimize changes. BilledMammal (talk) 19:26, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Nevermind again, I was right the first time. Wouldn't the logged-out users snippet change the behavior for every wiki instead of delegating the preference to a variable? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:38, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
The Stable Release field on the SponsorBlock infobox is broken, displaying every version number instead of just the latest. I've compared the wikitext for the infobox to other software articles and it looks to be the same so I've no idea what is actually causing this. It could be Wikidata itself causing the issue but I'm afraid I just don't know enough about this to tell. Any help would be appreciated as it's been like this for a number of months now. – Mesidast (talk) 10:21, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
As User:Jonesey95 pointed out the number of sites with this problem can be found using the search function here: currently 22 articles with this problem are found. --Kallichore (talk) 16:38, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
What's the best way to set my preferences for editing, particularly adding citations?
Besides the usual, eg a toolbar with strike, etc., I want to be able to add citations easily - ie for journals, news, books, etc by adding either details or using an url. I must have messed something up. Using the Vector 2022. Thanks. Doug Wellertalk16:14, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: Have you tried using the 2017 Wikitext Editor? While that does make use of the feature through a toolbar that sounds like what you might be looking for. ― Blaze WolfTalkBlaze Wolf#654516:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@NardogNo, that's what I'm trying to get back. Wish I could have that with wiked but I don't think I can. I've tried to unclick most things. Did I always get a "Preview of references" and not notice it? I may have to give up tonight and comeback tomorrow with screenshots. Thanks. You've been great. Doug Wellertalk18:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
@Blaze Wolf@Nardog AGH! I've been checking it on Safari on my iPad, that's the problem. Well, I had lost it, but with help here I've got it back. I never add sources using Safari on my iPad and it just slipped my mind that I'm a Chrome user on my PC which is what I normally use to edit. iPad's just to clumsy. So I've got wikEd and Reftoolbar 2 now, life is good. Doug Wellertalk18:36, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Reports that I use that are issued daily by HaleBot and SDZeroBot didn't get published today. Is there some system-wide problem? I scanned this page and don't see any pertinent announcement. But I find every time I post on this noticeboard, there is usually someone who knows what's up. Thanks for any clue you can bring to this situation. LizRead!Talk!01:38, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Looks like there's a problem with the database. Page statistics like pageviews, date created etc. are not loading. JeeputerTalk02:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
The problems with HaleBot have been remedied but I assume other bots are still having issues. I noticed my own editing stats were not up-to-date earlier in the day. It's just usually when this thing happens or a ticket is filed, some technologically-minded editor posts about it here. But thanks for your observation, Jeeputer. LizRead!Talk!03:28, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Chatul: Izno mentioned in that thread that the reason you no longer have the toolbar is because your browser does not support sufficient functionality in ES6. See #Tech News: 2023-14. Upgrading your browser or your OS and browser are your only recourses. Izno is very knowledgeable about such things, so I'd expect them to be right. Are you able to upgrade your browser? Writ Keeper⚇♔14:46, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I misread the date on that and thought that it was the version I was already using. There is a version of Dooble curently in beta test for my system; I'll try that. I was somewhat surprised to see that it supports gopher but not mailto.
No problem, I hope that works for you. (Also, to answer your question from that thread, no, you shouldn't have to log out and back in for preference changes to take effect; you'll just need to navigate away from Special:Preferences, which is always displayed in Safe Mode for security reasons.) Writ Keeper⚇♔15:16, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Odd. The userbox template isn't adding the category to your userpage anymore, but it's appearing in the category. Purging the cache for either page doesn't help. Not sure! it might just go away after some time. SWinxy (talk) 17:04, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
I made a null edit of User:NameGame. This removed the user page from the category page. A purge only affects the purged page but a purge of a category page doesn't update the listed pages, only the output of the wikitext in the category page. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:29, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Good to know. If that's the case, the advice that is linked to by "This list may not reflect recent changes." should be altered: (It may help if you purge the page.)SWinxy (talk) 00:51, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I was unclear. I meant a purge of a category page doesn't affect which pages are listed. There is no way to get an updated list without already knowing which pages need adding/removing and making a null edit on each of them. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:28, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Today, I got pinged from a discussion in the Irish Wikipedia, something to do with User:Ritchie333/Irish Monopoly. Unfortunately I can't speak any Irish, so I cleared the notification with the idea I'd come back and run it through a translation utility to get the jist. However, the notification's now disappeared from my list, which only shows ones on the English Wikipedia. How can I get it back? Ritchie333(talk)(cont)14:32, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
You need to go to the Notifications page on the Irish Wikipedia: https://ga.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speisialta:Notifications (same as ga:Special:Notifications). Cross-wiki notifications have several annoying bugs: another one is if you use the "small screen" version of Monobook or Vector2010, you get the red number, but you can't access the notification. (I then need to rotate my phone to be able to see what the notification is). —Kusma (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
rather than the lead, not sure why, the page has two interactive map templates at the start however. The error occurs on Chrome, Edge and Firefox for me. DankJae22:35, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Fixed in this edit. The software was picking up the = in games=5.179 and treating all the text before that as a parameter name, meaning there was no parameter 1, which is why it complained about no content. Aidan9382(talk)16:33, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi! Whenever I click on the alert or notification buttons, there's always this "Javascript error" that pops up, and this distracts me from clearing my notifications. Does anyone know how to fix this? I thought it was the latest script I had added to my common.js page but apparently it continued after I removed it and even prior to the addition. TailsWx17:49, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Since when were those turned on? Anyway, thanks! Now I won't have to contend with the errors no more! TailsWx17:57, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm getting these new errors as well. I've had Javascript errors turned on for a while, and those red error messages pop up very occasionally, but they are more regular now when I click on the red notification bell. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:24, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
Is it "standard practice" to convert all links in an article, all of which are working properly, to Internet Archive links, on the reasoning that doing so "prevents link rot"? Isn't it the case that by converting all the links to IA links, if IA ever goes belly-up, we lose all of the links that have been unnecessarily converted, whereas if they were left as they were, each separate source would have to go bad in order the same the same effect? Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:39, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
Adding archive-url as a parameter is fine, done by bot like IABot, replacing the original url with an archive is not fine. Indagate (talk) 12:48, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
As Rhain noted, no links have been replaced. They've actually made the article better by adding backup IA links. Gonnym (talk) 12:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The links are no longer the actual links, they are copies of the linked material, which means that we are trusting the Internet Archive to be accurately reproducing the New York Times article, instead of just trusting the New York Times website to be accurately showing its own article. Trusting IA is fine when the original material is no longer online, since we have no choice in the matter, but why are we allowing the use of what are essentially secondary links when the primary links are still available? This makes little sense to me in terms of guaranteeing accuracy. If this is policy, I think it's a mistake (and Rhain's citations of supporting policy do not seem to be to be relevant.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 13:03, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
The original link hasn't been changed and is still there. They've added a second link. Please actually look at the citation text before reverting. Gonnym (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
@BMK: I see this is resolved but the point of adding the archive links now is that it is very likely that a link which works now will not work in a couple of years because websites change all the time with no thought for maintaining old information. Once a page has gone, it becomes very difficult (or impossible) to find and harder to be sure that what is found is actually what the original editor had in mind. Therefore, it is best if external links are archived now, while they are working. Johnuniq (talk) 23:03, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I find archiving live links to be perfectly acceptable IF there's a possibility or a suspicion of the link to go dead. Pages for a live sports competition (e.g. rio2016.com)? Sure. books.google.com? Less so. DatGuyTalkContribs01:25, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi there! I'm looking for a tool that would do the following:
Allow you to enter a page (from any namespace) and a category
If the page is included in a subcategory, then return a result showing the entire category path from the category entered to the category on the page (i.e. category, sub-category, sub-sub-category,...)
I'm in need of assistance with the "New articles" section on Portal:Algeria, as it is currently not functioning properly. To be honest, I have no clue how to address the issue.
I believe Wikimedia templates allow one to invoke a template once but pass it multiple sets of parameters but I have been unable to find the relevant template documentation. I found it several months ago so I'm fairly certain it is supported. So, instead of the above, I can do:
{{A|
red|255|0|0 ;
green|0|255|0 ;
blue|0|0|255
}}
The template syntax is probably not quite correct (i.e. semi-colon set separator) to distinguish the multiple sets of data. RedWolf (talk) 20:40, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
The template would need to support unnamed parameters |5=, |6=, etc., at which point you could write:
{{A|red|255|0|0|green|0|255|0|blue|0|0|255}} and the template would work just fine. A few templates have been set up to work like this. Off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is {{Video game release}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:21, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
If you're asking if there is an inherent feature of template syntax so that one invocation of a template will automatically be turned into multiple invocations, no, that doesn't exist. The template in question would have to be coded to support processing multiple sets of parameters, as you describe it. To do it in a way that supports unlimited sets of parameters (within underlying resource constraints) would require the template to be implemented with a Lua module. isaacl (talk) 01:29, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm certain that within the last few months there was a thread, not necessarily at VPT, about passing a table (or possibly an array) as a parameter into a template or module. It was explained that this was not possible, but the OP persisted in asking the same question with variations. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:10, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. I add several links in my personal JavaScript and they all got the dark mode icon before in Vector 2022. Now they get no icon. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:32, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh, it looks like we've been using portletId where it should have been portletLinkId all this time. My bad. Nardog (talk) 03:45, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
Sorry I was away, not sure if something is pending me? If it is a page that needs to be synced/updated that doesn't have an open edit request, please drop one of those in the meantime. — xaosfluxTalk16:47, 22 April 2023 (UTC)
I dislike Wikipedia's new look with a burning passion for many reasons, but one of the most annoying is how so many the buttons, including such important ones as the search bar, don't even work on mobile unless you switch to the mobile view (and kill categories). Please don't just say "just use the mobile view" because it should be obvious by now that it's not nearly as functional as the desktop view. Thanks. w.i.k.i.w.a.r.r.i.o.r991905:28, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
1. What if you genuinely like Vector 2022, consider it an improvement over Vector 2010, and don't want to switch back? And you think everything is fine except for the mobile search bug?
2. What about people who can't create accounts because they use Wikipedia at school, on VPNs, using mobile data, etc.? "Just create an account at home!" Well, what if you only want to browse Wikipedia and not edit? w.i.k.i.w.a.r.r.i.o.r991916:38, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm also confused. The recent changes to Vector didn't change any font AFAIK. The desktop search bar and other buttons work fine for me in a mobile browser. Although it shouldn't be a huge surprise that if you opt to use an interface specifically designed for large screens on a small screen, instead of the one specifically designed for small screens, it's a bit more fiddly. – Joe (talk) 07:11, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Joe Roe, the misnamed "desktop" site is fully functional on contemporary smartphones using Vector 2010. My edit history for the last 12 years demonstrates that. "Fiddly" is an almost incomprehensible term to Americans. To me, a Californian, it comes across as "resembling a violin used for dance music or bluegrass music" although I am sure you meant something else. Cullen328 (talk) 07:45, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
"Fiddly" is perfectly understandable to this American. And I have never had a problem with other Americans not understanding my use of it. Did you perhaps mean to limit your comment to those Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line or west of Texas? --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:09, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Ex-Californian here and although I've never heard the word "fiddly" before, I assume it means something that needs to be fiddled with to work properly. LizRead!Talk!16:58, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
When I press the magnifying glass, nothing happens. I literally can't access the search function, forcing me to either temporarily switch to the more zoomed-in mobile mode and then have to switch back, or directly edit the URL.
I apologize if this conversation has been had hundreds of times on Wikipedia already, but... what's the use of forcibly switching the entire wiki to a new interface when said interface is janky and half-baked? w.i.k.i.w.a.r.r.i.o.r991916:34, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
You haven't said what version of which browser you are using or anything. You are the only person with this problem so far, so likely it is something specific to your setup. Either the browser, the extensions, ad blockers, userscripts or gadgets. Which of those, is impossible to say from the outside without more information. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:11, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Wasted space at the top and bottom of <gallery> element
There is a lot of wasted space at the top and bottom of <gallery> element. Seen here using Pesticide browser extension.
Why is there a huge white wasted space at the top and bottom of <gallery> element? This pushes the gallery much lower than it should be. In this picture of 118th United States Congress, the html for Senate gallery is coded above the composition table, in order for them to hang from the same line, but a reader sees it some three lines down. It being down, further pushes the House diagram to the down, which both further push the images lower than where it should be. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})14:32, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
mw-gallery-slideshow gets margin: 4em 0; somewhere outside Wikipedia. 4em is the top and bottom margin. I don't know why it's so large. You can change it with for example <gallery style="margin: 1em 0;" .... PrimeHunter (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
That's quite unusual use of <gallery>...</gallery> to begin with. Why would anyone put it inside a floating table?? Should be {{multiple image}} or something like that. Ponor (talk) 12:21, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
For now, {{multiple image}} may work. But, in 117th Congress page, there are 33 images for the House composition, so this slideshow version is the one that works best for every Congress article. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})12:48, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
Templates being wrapped in nowiki tags when using the reply function
Has something changed with the reply function? I was posting a message including a template, and it was wrapped in nowiki tags. I've just tried to do something similar here, and instead a mass choose Template popup opened. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:22, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Due to security issues with the Graph extension, graphs have been disabled in all Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia Foundation teams are working to respond to these vulnerabilities. [32]
For a few days, it was not possible to save some kinds of edits on the mobile version of a wiki. This has been fixed. [33][34][35]
Changes later this week
All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on April 26. This is planned for 14:00 UTC. [36]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 25 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 26 April. It will be on all wikis from 27 April (calendar).
Click "Wikidata item" under "Tools" to see where the image comes from. You can override the Wikidata image with |image=. There doesn't appear to be a documented way to omit an image. |image=<nowiki /> currently works by producing an empty cell. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:34, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
I find the int cropping tool (template) to be invaluable, but difficult to use. Is there an interactive version that I'm not finding? Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:35, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
I want to create a subpage for a /doc page, say for a supporting (documentation) table. What is a good naming convention?
A. Always end with /doc: {{Infobox foobar/option-table/doc}}
B. Below /doc: {{Infobox foobar/doc/option-table}}
Only consideration I know of, IIRC: in module space, a doc page is recognised & handled by (B) name ending /doc. (A) has easier page listing. DePiep (talk) 13:23, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
{{documentation}} by default calls the documentation by appending /doc to the current title. Although, the called page can be changed using appropriate parameters, I'd still think that the best practice would be to have /doc at the very end, just like /sandbox and /testcases work. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})13:29, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
Makes sense, can do. Though, a supporting doc page (say, a table) would be called (transcluded) in an other docpages section; rarely by automated naming. DePiep (talk) 13:48, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
I'd think that option A would be for the documentation of {{Infobox foobar/option-table}} (which would be a subtemplate used in the implementation of {{Infobox foobar}}). Option B would be if you have a table that's transcluded onto {{Infobox foobar/doc}}. --rchard2scout (talk) 14:04, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
{{Annotated image}} seems to sometimes not show the image. At Nore, using Chrome I see a white frame with the words "The Nore" in red. In Safari on MacOS, I see the map. Other users on Discord reported seeing the image on Chrome, or not seeing the image in Safari on iOS. Is this a known bug? —Kusma (talk) 16:36, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
The Annotated image template say |image-width= should be the width of the original image, it's currently set to 3800 but the original image width is 11234. Setting image-width correctly in preview gets the image to display for me, but I'm guessing it not displaying the correct area as |image-top= and |image-left= will need to be corrected. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:03, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
i'm trying to build a template that does the following.
if pagename = stringA then
nothing
else
[category:...]
here, i encounter a problem. stringA should be a pagename, but sometimes the page has been moved, so stringA is the pagename of the redirect to the actual pagename. i can think of two solutions to this problem, either " pagename = stringA || target of stringA ", or test whether stringA is a redirect, if yes ignore.
See Eucalyptol as an example, edit, then preview which shows 3 script template errors: a maintenance message for a book template, an error message for a journal, and a maintenance message for a journal. Help provides this information. When previewing, I see no color notifications to enable a revision for repairs. Because these messages are "hidden", I added scripts to my common.css page, then cleared cache as suggested, but with no success.
I am still seeing such error messages on other articles, so apparently have not completed the scripts correctly. Would appreciate explanation/help to correctly load the scripts. Use my common.css page if needed. Thanks. Zefr (talk) 17:24, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I have fixed your CSS page. Refresh, and you should see the issues of interest.
Thanks, Izno. Quite sure I got the scripts from here, but can't explain why the "span" was omitted. On Eucalyptol preview, the template errors are now visible. Great fast response and solution - many thanks! Zefr (talk) 17:38, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Biographical article categorized as missing living, listas parameters even though it isn't
I'm not sure if this is a technical issue or if I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure it out. Recently (over the last week), I've noticed that when I add (or sometimes when someone else adds) a living or listas parameter to a {{WikiProject Biography}} template on an article's talk page, it occasionally just doesn't work. The BLP warning isn't included and the pages stay in the respective maintenance categories. Sometimes I can get it to work by rearranging the order of parameters (I have no idea why that would work) or by deleting them and readding them. A current example of this is Talk:Dorian Rhea Debussy. If anyone knows why this happens, please let me know! Clearfrienda💬00:48, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
After clicking Show Preview button, Vector 2022 skin doesn't show catalog of contents any more
The legacy Vector skin allow to preview the table of contents after clicking Show Preview button, which also display the level of each subtitle. Also, it looks have benifit for editing multiple sections together, or even edit the who article. However, I can't see such preview any more after upgrading to Vector 2022 skin. What's wrong with it? -- Great Brightstar (talk) 15:50, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Hello, do anyone know how do I check for list of page created in certain month in any Wikipedia specifically Malay Wikipedia? I'd like to check the list of past 3-4 month but I couldn't figure out how. Special pages only show limited to 1-2 month only. [Special page for new pages]. I need the list of this newly created pages to be enlisted in a WikiProject. Is there any tools or any ways I can do so? I tried changing the limit and days in the link, but I didn't work out. Would be glad if anyone could assist me. Thank you. CyberTroopers (talk) 19:51, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter I did check on that but only few days or a month only can be viewed. There was no option to select certain date or range more than 2 months. Any other solution? Thank you CyberTroopers (talk) 17:10, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Most of the time I add articles to my list simply because I'm interested in the subject, but sometimes I add an article because a particular vandal or LTA likes to edit it, or because the article is generally subject to sub-standard edits. It would be helpful if I could note on the watchlist (presumably in the raw list) any specific reason for my addition, so I could refer to it when articles pop up after a long hiatus, and I wonder why the heck it's on my list.
Those are good ideas. I'm attracted to PrimeHunter's mostly because I know how to do it, <g> and because I already have red links in my watchlist. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:17, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Ick! PrimeHunter's solution works, and it isn't costly in small doses, but it definitely won't scale. If we all did this we'd have a big problem, given the watchlist has long had performance problems as it is. "Dummy" rows used solely for annotation make this worse. I wish there was a solution in MediaWiki, but in the meantime there's my really, really crappy User:MusikAnimal/customWatchlists script, if you wish to try it. That allows organizing the watchlist items, so you might have a list called "vandalized pages" or something. I don't really recommend my script to be honest, as it's as cheap as they come, and also means your custom watchlisted pages are publicly viewable. But I thought I'd mention it as an alternative solution should it work for your use case. If I ever make another attempt at this functionality, it will be in MediaWiki proper (phab:T3492)! — MusikAnimaltalk17:30, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Custom watchlists are kinda already possible using external feed readers. I use feeder which has a Chrome/Firefox extension to avoid actually having to use a dedicated feed reader app. It allows creating "folders" which basically act as custom watchlists. Clicking on the "Atom" link in page history sidebar opens it in feeder. – SD0001 (talk) 12:02, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Would someone who has technical know-how please help me? What I'm trying to do is fix the wiki-code formatting over at Template:Navbox so that the link in the "show/hide" button is white. Here's what's going on (via Frietjes' user talk page):
This is the title
This is the body
This is the title
This is the body
in order to color the link, one would need to get the "color:white" from the style inside of the link for "show/hide".
Extra line break and missing line break at the top of articles
For me, across several browsers (Gecko, WebKit, Blink), there's a problem with the spacing at the very top of articles, and I believe this is recent. On Minnesota Senate, the geographic coordinates overlap with the infobox (yet shouldn't). On Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I see the opposite: there's an extra line break before the first line of the lead. And if I click Steve jobs, for example, I end up at Steve Jobs, and I see a line break before the note: "Redirected from Steve jobs" at the top. The extra line break seems to be caused by the semi-protection topicon. DFlhb (talk) 00:30, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Additionally, the text "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" has disappeared for me, on top of experiencing the same line break issues. Youngwii (talk) 13:24, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I don't see a bug report yet, but some change in this week's deployment appears to have had unintended consequences. I can't imagine why the "From Wikipedia" line has been hidden. I restored it by adding this line to my common.css file:
Many thanks for the fix, cleanly done + major QOL improvement. When you figure out just what caused sitesub to disappear, please share a recap ffr. – SJ +02:54, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yeah, even though the new zebra design hasn't been rolled out yet, someone added that new .vector-feature-zebra-design-disabled class to a bunch of the CSS styles in the page layout, screwing up a bunch of my custom CSS that fixes a wide (no pun intended) variety of excessive whitespace problems with Vector 2022. It's a bit of a Mogura Tataki situation trying to keep up with weekly changes to the Vector 2022 CSS. I feel that I should keep using the skin so that I can participate in reporting errors and problems affecting everyone using the default skin (including all IP readers and editors), but because it still has so many little quirks that need working around and the CSS changes every week, it does feel like a slightly abusive relationship (hint: I am not the abuser). – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:01, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Coordinates and the crappy new skin
Problem with the coords
I have the new skin installed despite it being largely awful, but there is an issue with the position of the coordinates in an article that I have not seen before. The image is a creenshot of the Malindi cult article, where the title of the IB is overlapping the coordinate text. - SchroCat (talk) 09:41, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I might just "fix" this at some point and see who comes to yell at me for what the WMF forced on us. I'm about done with the continuing reports and just want to have it all out in the open at once. Izno (talk) 15:55, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
The fix to #siteSub (aka "From Wikipedia...") above appears to have fixed the coordinate positioning issue for the time being. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:09, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
GAN/FAC notice at the top of articles not visible in Vector
I have the gadget or script (I forget which) installed that shows e.g. "A featured article" or "Currently a good article nominee" at the top of articles, as appropriate. It's stopped working in Vector, but works when I switch to Monobook. Has something happened to stop it working in Vector? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:32, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi Mike, I've just checked it on the Vector legacy (2010) skin and it appears there, but not on the new skin, so it's a script that doesn't work with the new skin (I have it installed and had noticed it missing already). Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 10:36, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
The site sub has gone missing as in the original of these sections. The WMF is adjusting some things about the skin and this may have been an unintended casualty. Izno (talk) 15:54, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I frequently cite IBM publications that are organized into bookshelves or other collections. I would like to include a link to the web page for the collection, but |website=[url collection][1] and |work=[url collection] get CS1 error messages. Should there be |website-url= and |work-url= parameters? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:43, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
There's an unclosed div further up the page in one of the Merry Christmas sections which has the class "plainlinks", which hides the arrow normally on the end of an external link for all the sections below it. Aidan9382(talk)12:09, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
It seems that every year, somebody sends out several dozen Christmas and/or new year messages where the closing </div> or </table>/|} is missing. Usually the cause is copypasting the code of a template, omitting the whole of a line that ends with <noinclude>. Usually, WP:SUBSTing the template would have avoided this problem. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:58, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
@Gtoffoletto: I fixed the "internal links" with [38]. By "scrubbed" do you mean the text "Scrapped" in the Status column? It's not carried over by {{excerpt}}. The text is made with {{unreleased|Scrapped}} which uses <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> and calls {{n/a}} which also uses <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>. It appears to not work with {{excerpt}}. The text "Destroyed" is made with {{lost|Destroyed}} which uses <noinclude>...</noinclude> instead and doesn't appear to have problems. onlyinclude can be problematic to work with and I try to avoid it. Can others comment? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
onlyinclude is handled at Module:Transcluder#L-170 and looks much the same way as when first added in 2019. However, SpaceX Starship development# seems to use includeonly instead. Transcluder doesn't handler includeonly but probably should. It's as simple as removing the opening and closing tags, leaving the text between them intact, i.e. adding something like :gsub("</?includeonly>", ""). The omission is probably my fault – I should have added it with the other two keyword in 2019 – and fixing it now requires a template editor. Certes (talk) 21:27, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
@Certes: It was me who added includeonly code to SpaceX Starship development to fix the "internal links" issue. That works fine in both pages. The problem is when SpaceX Starship development#Second stage prototypes says {{unreleased|Scrapped}}, e.g. in the Mk2 row. {{unreleased}} uses onlyinclude and says "Scrapped" as intended in SpaceX Starship development#Second stage prototypes itself, but it says nothing when {{Excerpt|SpaceX Starship development|Second stage prototypes}} was used here in another page. The problem existed both before and after my unrelated addition of includeonly code in other cells. Note that onlyinclude is not in the source of the page excerpt works on but in a template used there. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:58, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
Something very weird is going on. The article has changed now but I've revived the {{excerpt}} call in my sandbox and tried editing Template:Unreleased and previewing my sandbox with it. Nothing makes anything appear at all in the table cell, even removing the onlyinclude tags and replacing the entire content of Template:Unreleased by a simple "Hello from unreleased" message. I don't think this is an include issue. Certain templates are blacklisted from excerpts, and I wonder if a slack regexp is hitting "unreleased": perhaps the '[Uu][Nn][Rr][Ee]?[Ff]?' designed to catch {{unreferenced}} at Module:Excerpt/config#L-50. Certes (talk) 09:22, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
You're right. [Uu] means U or u. Question mark means 0 or 1 occurrence so it matches everything starting with "unr" in some capitalization. I guess it was meant to catch {{UNR}} which redirects to {{Unreferenced}} but it also hits the rest of Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Unr. For example, the last line of Mid central vowel#Features is transcluded from {{Unrounded vowel}} and currently missing in {{excerpt|Mid central vowel|Features}}:
Yes, I hadn't found where those regexp fragments are actually used nowadays, but they seem to be inserted in something like {{\s*fragment.-}} which require the template name to begin with the fragment (good plan) but allow more letters afterwards (potential for false positives). In that case, there won't be a syntax for excluding unr without also excluding unreleased, unless we terminate the fragment with %f[%W] or similar (which is the nearest I can get in Lua to PCRE's \b). Certes (talk) 12:19, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. The article excerpt in my sandbox now looks correct. Beware that adding $ excludes {{Unref BLP}}, which we probably want to include, but otherwise that looks like the right solution. Certes (talk) 12:39, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
For the record, I think the decision about not bothering to remove includeonly tags was deliberate and correct (though I should have documented it). The tag has no effect on transclusions – its only effect is to remove text within the tag when viewing the transcluded page directly – and transclusion of {{excerpt}} will remove the tag markup in the usual way. Certes (talk) 18:25, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Numerical changes without edit summary should be flagged "r" in watchlist
This is an extremely common form of vandalism and should be automatically flagged for review. Particularly without an edit summary, but more complex pattern matching could work as well to catch more.
They're certainly a major cause of vandalism. Some, such as dates of birth, are already caught, but most aren't. There are legitimate uses – Smith made one more appearance for United and scored another goal today – but it's far too easy a way to introduce subtle vandalism (and good-faith mistakes) that no one will notice. Certes (talk) 20:57, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
The "r" flag comes from WP:ORES, which is some kind of crude (by today's standards!) machine learning model. I don't think there are any hard-coded rules. But perhaps with a larger or more sophisticated model, it could learn to flag this sort of thing on its own.
Thanks for taking a look at it. I'm not sure Wikipedia can afford not to do this. Between good faith mistakes and intentional vandalism (I can't imagine what kind of person would think it is funny to deceive others like that) there is no telling how many errors in previously cited numbers have been introduced. The world relies on accuracy in Wikipedia, rightly or wrongly. —DIYeditor (talk) 22:21, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
This might be a bit of feature creep, but a similar and very common type of vandalism is changing dates. If a filter is created to tag numerical changes, it would be nice if it also tagged date changes; that is, it noticed changes to a spelled-out month name as well as to a (numerical) year or day of month. Also, perhaps this is already considered, but I want to mention that tagging numerical changes should handle numbers containing commas and decimal points. CodeTalker (talk) 02:44, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
– CityUrbanism 🗩 🖉 18:26, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
In the visual editor, it is now possible to edit captions of images in galleries without opening the gallery dialog. This feature request was voted #61 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. [2]
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 April. It will be on all wikis from 13 April (calendar).
The deprecated 
— TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:57, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
