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Need some help building a proforma with sections autofilled based on username

Hi all

I've spent quite a lot of time building a resource to help keep people's multiple sandboxes organised to make writing draft articles and publishing them a bit easier

Whilst people can simply copy the page and change the name in the wiki text manually I would really like to make a page on Wikipedia where people can make their own version of this simply by clicking a button, this will make it easier to discover and also use the tool.

To make a version of this page for other users all that needs to happen is for my name to be replaced in the wikicode with the user who wants to use it (I have instructions at the bottom of the page for doing this manually). Because the page uses multiple tools there are two versions of the username that have to be replaced, one which replaces a space with a '+' and another which replaces a space with _, eg John+Cummings and John_Cummings.

Does anyone have an idea of how to create a button that would

  1. Read someone's username
  2. Add their username to a proforma adding in their username with either a '+' or a '_' in different places in the proforma (people can have 0 or 1 or 2 or a lot of spaces in their username)
  3. Saves the page or makes it very obvious how to save the page, either overwriting their existing sandbox or letting users chose where to save the page

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 15:23, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@John Cummings: If I understand what you're asking, maybe an {{Edit}} link with a preloaded page (copy of your sandbox somewhere) and a Template to substitute their name, which would be pulled from magic word REVISIONUSER? Mathglot (talk) 19:36, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Take a look at how we manage signups for the GOCE copy edit drives. There might be code in there that is helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:41, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much @Jonesey95: and @Mathglot: the bit I'm really stuck on is how to take a username with a space in and replace the space with a + in some places and a _ in other places on the same preload? John Cummings (talk) 20:00, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@John Cummings: try {{#replace}}. Mathglot (talk) 20:24, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, I see what you mean, I think... maybe the preload page should just be a one-line, template invocation of a second page which has your actual sandbox data, with the template of your design in the preload, which executes the task of replacing tokens in the second page with the userid the way you want it. Never tried that with a preload, and not sure if it will work; try it and let us know. Mathglot (talk) 20:31, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I have used {{ROOTPAGENAME}} to automatically get the username in an unchanged copy.[1] I also made some other changes. PAGENAMEE with EE makes url encoding in magic words. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:15, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Direct link for users to create their own sandbox manager. Only needs saving. Seems to work well, with this account and with my space-containing old account as well. --mfb (talk) 14:30, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) If your /sandbox doesn't exist then this will open an edit window to create it with User:John Cummings/sandbox preloaded. There is no preload if the sandbox exists.
Adding &section=new will add a new section with the preload whether the page exists or not: [2]
&preloadtitle= can specify a section name which will also be in the automatic edit summary. It's blank in my example. I don't think you can make a preload command to overwrite existing content. You cannot preload from another wiki. mfb's link makes /Sandbox with uppercase S. This is not the link on "sandbox" in the default interface. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:35, 21 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed the sandbox capitalization. In the German Wikipedia we made a template that does nothing but providing "$1", that way you can preload arbitrary text by using that template as preload and passing your text as parameter. If there would be a software solution for arbitrary preload texts (instead of pages) this could be made more international. --mfb (talk) 05:54, 22 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Jonesey95:, @Mathglot:, @PrimeHunter:, @Mfb: thanks so much for your work on this, I've got a bit lost with the technical language, could someone recap to now what works and doesn't work? I'm not sure how to test it myself as I already have it on my sandbox and if I blank it and try to load the link above it just loads a blank page. Just FYI it seems that @Headbomb: has created a template at 'Template:Sandbox organizer' but not sure how this works or if it could be helpful building a button for people to use to make their own sandbox organiser. John Cummings (talk) 10:10, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's perfectly fine to register a second account for tests like that. Just don't abuse it. Above you can find links that will work for users who don't have a sandbox yet, and the new section link will work even if people have a sandbox already (but it will be below whatever is in there). The links all load the content of your sandbox organizer, so if you blank that there is nothing left to load. --mfb (talk) 12:48, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
thanks very much @Mfb:, how difficult would it be to make it load from the template rather than my personal sandbox? I feel like this is a much better long term solution. John Cummings (talk) 13:10, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
trivial, just change preload=User:John_Cummings/sandbox to preload=Template:Sandbox_organizer in the URL and make sure that template has the same code. --mfb (talk) 13:48, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Mfb: I created User:John_Cummings/sandbox2 using https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/sandbox&preload=User:Template:Sandbox_organiser&action=edit however it doesn't work correctly and just makes broken links in the page, I just tried to import all the changes that @PrimeHunter: made to my userpage over to the template and it broke the template. Any ideas how to fix it? I feel like we are very close to making it work and then I can write all the documentation. Thanks very much for your help John Cummings (talk) 15:03, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@John Cummings: The link to load Template:Sandbox organizer in /sandbox2 (if that page doesn't exist) would be https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/sandbox2&preload=Template:Sandbox_organizer&action=edit. My code in User:John Cummings/sandbox works fine when it's copied to somebody's userspace and can read their username. I could set a username (e.g. yours) to use as an example when the code is not in userspace. Do you want that? It's simple to make but it adds extra code with a username to each of the 15 {{ROOTPAGENAME}}. Users who copy it may find it odd and wonder whether something is wrong if they see somebody else's username 15 times in the wikitext. At Template:Sandbox organizer the current code in User:John Cummings/sandbox would make links for User:Sandbox organizer. I have created that account and can mail you the password if you want to use it as an example user. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:52, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @PrimeHunter:, thanks very much for your reply, I think I've understood at least 50% of it so far... So I think the best option would be to copy the way it works in my sandbox over to the template, that way its not reliant on my user account and people can make improvements over time. Is that possible? I just want to make it a easy as possible for people to be able to add the sandbox organiser to their sandbox by pressing a button on a page of instructions (I guess on the template page), if they could also just copy someone else's sandbox organiser from someone elses page that would be great also but not sure if that is what you meant. Thanks again John Cummings (talk) 21:26, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@John Cummings: My version at User:John Cummings/sandbox can already be copied to the userspace of any user, work correctly for that user, and be copied by others users to work correctly for them. You said it makes "broken links" at Template:Sandbox organizer. The question is which links you want the code to make when it's viewed on the template page and not copied to a user. My version makes links for User:Sandbox organizer because that's in the page name. The current version at Template:Sandbox organizer is coded to make links for User:Example. It's not possible to make links for whichever user is currently viewing the page Template:Sandbox organizer. When viewed there, it has to either make links for a specific user or disable the links. I can code my version to make links for User:Example on the template page, and still make links for a user who copies the code to their userspace. Do you want that? The code will look a little more complicated, e.g. replacing each of 15 {{ROOTPAGENAME}} with {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACENUMBER}}|10|Example|{{ROOTPAGENAME}}}}. That is designed to also work at other wikis. If it only has to work at the English Wikipedia then it could use {{template other}} and say {{template other|Example|{{ROOTPAGENAME}}}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:38, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @PrimeHunter:

Thanks so much for trying to explain things, honestly I'm pretty lost now with the new account and the template stuff, whatever way you think works best. Maybe if I just outline again the functionality and you make the magic happen whichever way you think will be the best option?

  1. A central page somewhere that people can go to find and understand what Sandbox organiser is.
  2. A button on that central page that creates a sandbox organiser for users.
  3. The sandbox organiser 'master copy' to not be my sandbox so I don't have to keep it the same for ever :)

I was thinking about asking for the button to be added to the bottom of the sandbox organiser as well but encouraging people to go get the most up to date version on the centralised page is probably a good idea. I assume people will adapt it to specific use cases and perhaps there could be several different ones people could chose from.

Thanks again

John Cummings (talk) 00:10, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Make two different pages. It's messy to put everything on the same page. A page describing and showing the sandbox organizer with a button to create one. And separate from that the template that gets preloaded, this one is never meant to be viewed directly by users so broken links there don't matter - the links are fine once it's used on sandbox pages. The second page can be what used to be your own sandbox. The first page can be whatever layout you want. --mfb (talk) 00:29, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes thanks what I meant by a 'central page' and then a 'master copy', glad to know I've understood some of what is needed to make this happen :) John Cummings (talk) 01:04, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: @Mfb: did I do this part right? User:Sandbox organizer/sandbox and then I just need to use a link but this one doesn't work and I don't understand why.... https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/sandbox&preload=User:Sandbox_organizer/sandbox&action=edit ? John Cummings (talk) 19:12, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It works for users who don't have a sandbox yet. To make it work for everyone use the link that creates a new section. --mfb (talk) 11:41, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Mfb: sorry, I don't understand, which is the link that I should use that uses User:Sandbox organizer/sandbox to make a sandbox for anyone including people who already have a page called sandbox (which is probably most users of this)? Please just paste it in your answer and then I can go do everything else so people can use it. John Cummings (talk) 18:24, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There is exactly one link posted here that has "section" in it. I can't believe it's too complicated to find that. --mfb (talk) 04:23, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hard redirect Googleable

My understanding, backed by multiple Google tests, is that redirects shouldn't appear in search engine hits and that their target is retrieved instead. However, Fish-eye disease shows as first result in Fish eye disease Wikipedia, tho doesn't in DDG. I tried to explain this by features like being connected to a WD item or being an R from merge, but results show this is irrelevant. Any explanation I'm missing? Assem Khidhr (talk) 01:27, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Assem Khidhr, Interesting. When you look at the Google cache (click the little down-pointing triangle at the end of the header line in the google search results), it shows that it has indexed https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Fish-eye_disease&redirect=no. Looking at the rendered HTML, it does include:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">
so it shouldn't get indexed. Beats me what happened. -- RoySmith (talk) 01:52, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see noindex in the HTML. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:38, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Me neither (at least for this), but I'm getting that it has to do with Google's indexes and probably nothing can be done on Wikipedia's end. Assem Khidhr (talk) 06:21, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"redirects shouldn't appear in search engine hits" - why? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 13:39, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is linking to articles beginning with a slash impossible in summaries?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T273860

Take a look at the summary of this diff. Even though I used [[:/æ/ raising]] with a colon in the summary as I did on the page (proof), it's linked to Talk:Near-open front unrounded vowel/æ/ raising, not /æ/ raising. (1) Has it always been like this? IIRC I feel like the summary parser would correctly point a link like this to the page in the main namespace. (2) Is there a way to link to /æ/ raising in a summary in a namespace that allows subpages? Nardog (talk) 14:14, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Nardog: I tried adding multiple colons and three is apparently the Goldilocks number. One or two gives a subpage link. Four or more gives no link at all. On a wiki page it already stops linking at two: [[::/æ/ raising]]. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:34, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How on earth have we got such articles, anyway? I thought they were prevented by the software, similarly to article names beginning with colons, square brackets, etc. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:00, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No, see Wikipedia:Page name#Technical restrictions and limitations. / is usually fine, although there are certain combinations of / with . that are disallowed. the wub "?!" 00:31, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Using the more verbose inter-language wikipedia syntax seems to work: [[w:en:/æ/ raising]] isaacl (talk) 19:08, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestion. But the heading was rather rhetorical and the issue isn't that it's impossible but that [[:/æ/ raising]] didn't work as expected in the summary. Task created. Nardog (talk) 10:17, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just addressing your question #2... My out-of-the-blue guess is that the colon-prefix behaviour you use is a fallout from MediaWiki's handling of interwiki link syntax. Perhaps someone familiar with the code could comment? isaacl (talk) 17:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Archive subpages over 20 level deep

I was looking at pages in all namespaces on this wiki with over 200 byte long titles when I found multiple pages which are archive subpages which are over 20 levels deep. One example is Talk:Clan Campbell/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1/Archives/2018 1, which ClueBot created. See quarry:query/4320. User:Cobi is the botmaster. What happened here?--Snaevar (talk) 21:06, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's funny. Johnsoniensis added == == in the lead [3] before {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} which should be in the lead. Is it or isn't it in the lead afterwards? ClueBot III couldn't make up its mind. It's only a valid archive request if it's in the lead and ClueBot III apparently thought it was because it archived the page. It should only archive non-lead sections but it archived the "section" including the archive request.[4] In the next run it saw the archived archive request and thought it was a request to archive the archive so it dutyfully continued doing so recursively until it hit the 255-byte limit on page names. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Funny bug. I fixed the intended archives, so all the extra archives can be deleted once Cobi doesn't need them for debugging any more. --mfb (talk) 09:55, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Commuter town nesting. Scottish clan of archives. Here is a more creative variation: Talk:History_of_Ybor_City/Archives/2013/August/Archives/2014/January/Archives/2014/July/Archives/2015/January/Archives/2015/September/Archives/2016/February/Archives/2016/August/Archives/2017/February/Archives/2017/August. I'm cleaning these up and nominate them for deletion. That's all in the article namespace. There are many more in the user namespace, but that's up to these users. At least one of them has been cleaned up in the past, see HighKing cleanup (the deletion request appears in the same query because of its long name). --mfb (talk) 10:40, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Update: The bug is not triggered by the empty section title, the other pages had filled section titles. Seems to be a general problem that the bot accepts archiving instructions in archivable sections. I realized Cobi has sysop rights so they can check the pages even after they are deleted, so I nominated all of them for speedy deletion. There are still user pages if others want to see examples. Found another archiving issue with Scottish articles in the process and fixed that as well. --mfb (talk) 13:05, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've found some additional messed-up pages; should these be MfD'd?

  1. User talk:Astroketh/Archives/2019/November/Archives/2020/February
  2. User talk:Astroketh/Archives/2019/November/Archives/2020/February/Archives/2020/May
  3. User talk:Astroketh/Archives/2019/November/Archives/2020/February/Archives/2020/May/Archives/2020/August
  4. User talk:Astroketh/Archives/2019/November/Archives/2020/February/Archives/2020/May/Archives/2020/August/Archives/2020/October
  5. User talk:Loksmythe/Archives/2020/August/Archives/2020/November
  6. User:ClueBot III/Master Detailed Indices/User talk:Loksmythe/Archives/2020/August/Archives/2020/November

jp×g 22:57, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If the "real" content of these pages gets moved to the most appropriate true archive page, such that all that is left in the fake archive is a {{Talkarchive}} or similar, then the fake archive can be tagged with {{db-error}} (there are not many valid uses for WP:CSD#G6, but this is one of them). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:57, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, chains that are still being formed. Move the archiving templates back to the parent talk page, make sure all the talk sections are in an archive, then nominate the nested archives for speedy deletion. G6, Db-error and G1, Db-nonsense both work. I wouldn't (and didn't) do this for user talk archives, however. It's best to ask these users first. If they want help with cleaning up, then U1, user request, is another possible deletion reason. For article talk pages there is no such concern. --mfb (talk) 00:28, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I cleaned up all article talk page archives with the patterns "[month]/Archive", "1/Archive" and "2/Archive". The last one had just one instance and there were no accidental "3/Archive" or "4/Archive", so I didn't search beyond that (there are plenty of false positives in these searches, like Talk:Fallout 4/Archive 1). That's another 40 soon-to-be deleted edits. It makes Category:Candidates for uncontroversial speedy deletion look weird. --mfb (talk) 02:15, 6 February 2021 (UTC) --mfb (talk) 02:15, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why user talk pages should be exempt - I can't think of a reason why the archive should itself be archived. Usually it's simply because the user concerned placed the archiving template in a section, as here, repeated here. I think I fixed up the chain rooted at User talk:Sgubaldo - this involved eleven edits and thirty G6 deletions. And that's for just one user talk page which only ever had three threads posted to it that didn't originate with that same user.
Looking at the last 5,000 edits by ClueBot III in User talk: space (i.e. back to 15 December 2020), I have also found other chains rooted at User talk:Astroketh, User talk:Denisarona, User talk:Loksmythe, User talk:Mdriscoll03, User talk:Tessaracter, User talk:Tomcat7 and User talk:Trillfendi. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:58, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What if I create User talk:Mfb/Archive 1/Archive 1/Archive 1 and archive things in it? Will you clean that up as well? I generally avoid changes in the space of other users unless it's clearly meant to be edited. I asked all active users with "endless" chains (one replied already), I skipped banned and completely inactive users. There are many additional users with a shorter archive nesting: Search 1, Search 2, Search 3 (similarly for the other months). By the way: The Cluebot subpages are irrelevant once their associated archive pages are deleted. There might be an automated clean-up script, I don't know. --mfb (talk) 15:13, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not talking about altering/deleting subpages that were deliberately created by the user, but fixing up archiving errors caused because the {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} was put in the wrong place - in a section of the talk page, instead of before the first heading of that page. If re-archiving like this is not stopped when detected, it will continue until the software limitations (which I believe are a limit of 255 characters after the "User talk:" part) cause the process to bomb out. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I know the cause and I have fixed many of them in the past week in the article talk namespace. I still think it's up to these users to decide if they want this reverted or not. It's not breaking Wikipedia, it's just an odd place for the archived discussion. --mfb (talk) 06:02, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Accounts lacking Login Wiki or Meta (or not appearing on CentralAuth at all)

Whenever I visit CentralAuth for an account, it almost always has local accounts on login.wikimedia.org or meta.wikimedia.org, even if it was just created. But occasionally it lacks them, like here and here.

And sometimes an account has no CentralAuth profile at all (i.e. it returns "There is no global account for '...'") even though it has some local edits here and was created long after the SUL finalization (I'm afraid I couldn't dig up an example of this, but I've seen it).

How do they happen? I'd like to know if it reveals anything about the accounts (e.g. created in some unusual way), which might help us combat cross-wiki abuse. Nardog (talk) 02:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Nardog: I think this may occur in certain cases for users that aren't running/are blocking javascript; normally you get an account there because $wgCentralAuthAutoCreateWikis = [ 'loginwiki', 'metawiki' ]; says to - but I think that process also fails gracefully if for whatever reason it doesn't pass. These types of users will normally end up getting these SUL users once they log in again. — xaosflux Talk 04:05, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also, those accounts appear to have been created normally here on enwiki. — xaosflux Talk 04:06, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: Thanks for the explanation. Any idea why a newly created local account may lack a CentralAuth page at all? Nardog (talk) 09:52, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nardog: can you be a bit more specific, are you saying there is a local account but nothing in Special:CentralAut for a user? Can you show me any sort of recent example (perhaps in the past year)? This may occur in some cases where a global account had a problem with a rename, where the SUL account was hidden, or when odd one-off bugs have happened related to replication/autocreation/etc. — xaosflux Talk 11:17, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: Yes. Example sent via email. Nardog (talk) 11:36, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Nardog: got your email, that (private) example is over 2 years old so it is unlikely we'll be able to get logs tracked down for whatever was going on and has likely been resolved back then - also I don't see any global contributions since then either - sorry not the answer you are looking for yet. — xaosflux Talk 12:13, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks anyways, and apologies for not realizing 2019 wasn't the past year! lol Nardog (talk) 12:18, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Usernames with invalid characters

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T160296

@Xaosflux: Also, I noticed some unusual cases that have accounts on centralauth with 0 attached wikis, but are totally impossible to create and I don't know why it ended up on there. For example, this username contains the invalid characters "{" and "}". Also this, and this. None of those accounts are possible to create as those usernames contain unsupported characters, so what is that about? 54nd60x (talk) 14:35, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@54nd60x: these occur from time to time for various reasons and will be cleaned up eventually - you can follow phab:T160296 for more information. — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@54nd60x: So is it because those accounts were actually created at one point, I'm guessing before the character restrictions were put in place? 54nd60x (talk) 01:23, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect will be redirected by bot; how to prevent this

I created the redirect And just like that but there is not currently an article called And Just Like That.... When one is created, my redirect will have to be changed to redirect to the new article. I can't just redirect to the proposed article name because the bot will get to it first.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:25, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if I did something wrong but EmausBot did it anyway. At this time the redirect does not happen but there will still have to be a manual fix when the article is created, something I was hoping to avoid.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:07, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Vchimpanzee: You did it right in [5], except that you shouldn't have changed the actual redirect. The bot was right to restore it. The point is that And just like that will automatically appear in Category:Avoided double redirects to be updated if And Just Like That... becomes an article (or starts redirecting to another article than now). There are probably editors who monitor the category and will quickly change the redirect, so you don't have to worry about it and periodically examine whether it should be changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:09, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If #REDIRECT [[some wikitext which produces the page name]] was possible (this is phab:T3575 from 2005) then we could use existing features to code things like: "redirect to PAGE1 if PAGE1 is an article, redirect to the same target as PAGE1 if PAGE1 is a redirect, and redirect to PAGE2 if PAGE1 doesn't exist". None of this is possible now. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Feature request: Preferences > Gadgets > Strike out usernames that have been blocked

Not sure if this is the smart place for this or not, but with regard to Preferences > Gadgets > Strike out usernames that have been blocked is there any way to strike out IPs that are part of rangeblocks? Or maybe dotted strikes for rangeblocks with partial site blocks? Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:01, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Cyphoidbomb: As far as I can tell, there's no way to query the API for more than one rangeblocked IP in a single request. By comparison, it's possible to check for up to 50 directly blocked IPs (or users) at once. So visiting a page with 200 unique IPs linked would flood the API with 200 requests (instead of 4), which seems rude, particularly from a popular gadget. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:40, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Suffusion of Yellow: Understood. Thanks for the info! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:58, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

En Dashes on Template:Excerpt

Template:Excerpt doesn't recognize en-dashes when taking out some paragraphs, only hyphens, and if I put an en dash there it just thinks nothing is there at all. Since MOS:DASH and some some scripts that I use to clean up are a thing, it makes it a bit tricky. Could someone go in there and make it accept en dashes or something? Thanks. FlalfTalk 05:11, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying you want to write {{Excerpt|Foobar|paragraphs=1–2}}, using an en-dash (1–2) instead of a hyphen (1-2)? If so, that's technically possible but... highly inadvisable, in my opinion. The template argument isn't prose so MOS:DASH needn't apply. This diff suggests the dashes user script should leave it alone. — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 05:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, missed that you linked User:GregU/dashes.js and I linked to User:Ohconfucius/dashes.js. The latter seems to be forked from the former, and has fixed this problem. — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 05:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bug report for Excerpt

I don't know if anyone watches the talk page, so reporting here as well. See: Module talk:Excerpt#Bug report: Failure to display templated content in fragment and parameter problem. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 09:55, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all

I'm working on a tool to help people organise their sandbox and with a lot of help from PrimeHunter I'm 99.9% of the way there. However I'm stuck with one last thing, I want to create a button which people click on to create the tool in their sandbox, however the link is a little complicated and is confusing the template I'm trying to use. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to embed this link into a button?

Currently I'm trying to use 'blue button' but its getting a bit confused and puts brackets around the link and adds a pipe to the title of the section it creates

[Click here to create a Sandbox organiser in your sanbox]


Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 11:11, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the source of {{Blue button}}, it has an undocumented elink parameter for external link syntax. The below uses that and the more portable fullurl, plus plainlinks to omit the external link icon. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:16, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Click here to create a Sandbox organiser in your sandbox

@PrimeHunter: thanks so much, I've added a note on the template doc page to make it clear this is an option. John Cummings (talk) 19:26, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Judgement Day (Watchlist)

My watchlist has become sentient. It thinks it knows what I want and has decided to act upon what it thinks. How can I control this before it is too late? -John Connor wooF 19:38, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Roxy the dog: I'm assuming you have unexpected entries on your WL? If so please check Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist and see if any of the "add pages" check boxes are on that you don't expect. — xaosflux Talk 19:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, and forgive me for not explaining properly, it is putting things onto the list that will magically vanish from the list after a time, and will no longer be watched. This kinda makes it all a bit silly, wouldn't you say? -Roxy the happy dog . wooF 19:43, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There's a dropdown menu next to the checkbox to put something on your watchlist (or a popup that appears if you click on the star icon) that lets you specify if you want to watch a page permanently or a fixed period of time. isaacl (talk) 19:52, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note, currently you can only do this by going to a page and using the watch control - a central/bulk control for this is being discussed at phab:T269318. — xaosflux Talk 20:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I noted the appearance of the drop down list a few days ago, realised that if I never touched it things would remain the same, except they haven't. New user talk pages that go onto my list now do so only for 28 days. I discovered this by seeing a lonely little clockface embedded into an entry on my list. -Roxy the happy dog . wooF 20:06, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Roxy the dog, were these pages watched because of Twinkle? The default watching behavior recently changed for things like xfd and csd and warnings recently changed to take advantage of the watchlist expiry. You can customize them all at WP:TW/PREF. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:17, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed yes. So it is Twinkle's fault. Whoever changed that behaviour without telling me should go and sit on the naughty step. I'll imvestigate and sort it out. Thanks, everybody, for your help. -Roxy the happy dog . wooF 20:22, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! It me. I'm already sitting, though. noted with minimal input here for two months, linked from this board ~ Amory (u • t • c) 20:31, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be lost without Twinkle btw. You can come in from there now, it must be cold. -Roxy the grumpy dog . wooF 20:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

IAbot can't work properly

For more details， please visit T269831. Therefore， please use "repair single page" or its similar function before the task is solved.--Alcremie (talk) 01:40, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

True, (diff), I tried to fix a page but it simply removes the dead link tags without adding any archives. enjoyer|talk 02:22, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know why the Classical music related changes is showing conversations and edits from the tea house & help desk? Best - Aza24 (talk) 10:02, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They are linked in {{Wikipedia help pages}} which is displayed below Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music#See also. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:50, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Sandbox organiser

Sandbox Organiser

A place to help you organise your work

Hi all

Wikipedia:Sandbox organiser is a set of tools to help you better organise your draft articles and other pages in your userspace. It also includes areas to keep your to do lists, bookmarks, list of tools. You can customise your sandbox organiser to add new features and sections. Once created you can access it simply by clicking the sandbox link at the top of the page. You can create and then customise your own sandbox organiser just by clicking the button. All ideas for improvements and other versions would be really appreciated.

Huge thanks to PrimeHunter and NavinoEvans for their work on the technical parts, without them it wouldn't have happened.

John Cummings (talk) 10:44, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

2FA

Can I disable 2FA with scratch codes? ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 12:19, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@CAPTAIN MEDUSA: Yes, according to Help:Two-factor_authentication#Disabling_2FA, which says you can use a normal code or a scratch code for disabling it. RudolfRed (talk) 17:59, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, as a PSA to everybody, if you have 2FA enabled, now is a good time to check to make sure you remember where you stashed your scratch codes and that you can still get to them. Actually, it's not a bad idea to burn one now to make sure you understand how to use them. There's nothing special about now that makes it a good time. But, "never" is most certainly not a good time. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:39, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Warning - never get down to less than TWO scratch codes, if you are down to 2 or 1 , regenerate codes by disabling 2FA and reactivating it. — xaosflux Talk 23:42, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In fact rather than rely on scratch codes, it might be a better idea to use an app like Authy that encrypts 2FAs and stores them on the cloud; you can then install the client on your phone, home laptop and work laptop. Then the only way to get locked out of your account (or be at the mercy of scratch codes) is if you lose all your devices. – SD0001 (talk) 17:21, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Template determinism

  1. Are templates defined to be evaluated in a specific order or are they defined to be evaluated an undefined order?
  2. During the template expansion of the page, can one template change the state of something so that another template can detect that change? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 12:25, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If they are nested then inner templates are evaluated first. If they are in parallel they should not depend on each other (but Lua can analyze the source code of the article, so in principle you can create trouble). --mfb (talk) 14:17, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A Lua module can find where its template is in the source (see {{#invoke:string2|findpagetext}} for one), but I assume that the source it sees is read-only? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:56, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. There are numerous safeguards so that templates can not change other template transclusions (that is, other than subtemplates). In lua editing the source would be done with the internal os libary, which is intentionally blocked on all WMF projects.
There are two situations where templates are evaluated, one if the page is purged or edited, and the other if there is any change in the template itself. For the former the templates are evaluated from top to bottom (e.g./f.x. the lead first), for the latter see Wikipedia:Purge#Server_cache.--Snaevar (talk) 17:43, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Snaevar, I assume they're also re-evaluated if a new version of Lua is installed? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:55, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting point but I don't think Lua has ever been updated in Scribunto. Special:Version is saying Lua 5.1.5 which is the same as six years ago and probably longer. Johnuniq (talk) 22:15, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, we have had 5.1(.x) since initial installation, with some 5.2 backports. (I am sad, because multi-line strings are directly supported in 5.2 but were not one of the backports.) I anticipate any upgrade to a newer version would have some amount of pre-upgrade linting work (apparently there is a fork in the community between LuaJIT and Lua >5.1, much the same as there was one between Python 2 and 3). --Izno (talk) 01:00, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK, in full — Templates (and their module children) are not strictly deterministic as they can output non-deterministic data (such as the time), but the evaluation is isolated and module code cannot write to anything outside of the evaluation of the current template. i.e. A template/module can only output HTML/wikitext and cannot alter any existing wikitext, cannot write to Wikidata, cannot write to any database anywhere and cannot alter any "global" or system variables. This means that a template/module cannot "pass" any information to another template/module other than the children being expanded within their own expansion. That right? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 19:19, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's correct. One way to look at it is that devs want people to be able to edit any section on a page and preview the result, without needing to parse the whole page. Indeed, a dozen people could be simultaneously editing and previewing different sections and each works in complete isolation. An enterprising editor found they could muck around with refs to break the isolation model, but that was regarded as a bug and the system patched to prevent it. It is possible to have a loadData module which does calculations and returns a fixed table of data. I would recommend against it, but such a module could read the page and decide what to do based on what it finds. Once loaded, subsequent accesses to the module would get a cached table. Johnuniq (talk) 22:20, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Number of rows in edit box

Fussed by the lack of a preference (any longer) I've edited Help:Preferences here basing myself on WP:Village pump (technical)/Archive 153#Edit box size Could someone savvy review this please? Since this is no longer a preference option maybe it should be somewhere else. Or maybe it is. Thincat (talk) 12:56, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I tested it exactly as described and it works. You could add a link to Special:MyPage/common.css. --mfb (talk) 14:16, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RefToolbar and Cite button

Hi. Why is this function so intermittent? I added it via the gadgets page in my preferences, and it works from time to time. But quite a lot of the time, clicking the button just sends it off spinning and doesn't do anything. Clicking cancel gives the "Error: Citations request failed". I'm using the latest version of Firefox. Anyone else having the same issues? Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 16:14, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Been hit-and-miss for the last two days now. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 10:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
maybe check Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0#Troubleshooting Gfigs (talk) 12:07, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That error message is from MediaWiki:Gadget-citations.js.--Snaevar (talk) 18:46, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

checking screen sizes

is there any way on Wiki, Chrome (mobile), or Android phone, to view what a mobile article page looks like in various custom screen sizes ? Gfigs (talk) 08:16, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

as @Aklapper posted in phab:T271288Gfigs (talk) 15:06, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Gfigs: If you use a PC, you can view an article on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or some other Chromium-based web browser. In such browsers, you can use the DevTools, which can be opened using F12 button on keyboard. You can emulate various screen sizes by following the instructions here: [6] The steps mentioned in the link can be used in Google Chrome or any other Chromium-based web browsers also. Hope it helps! CX Zoom (talk) 20:33, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
CX_Zoom, thanks Gfigs (talk) 22:50, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Disabling the reply button

Is there a way to disable that obnoxious [reply] button, preferably one that doesn't require logging in? I've been using the preview mode workaround but it's really getting old. 78.28.44.204 (talk) 12:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

#reply-link-wrapper {display: none;} in the css should do the job. Without login you would need to do that in your browser, logged in you can use the custom css page. mfb (talk) 13:02, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are any IP's getting it here at the English Wikipedia or is the post about another wiki? mw:Talk pages project/Replying#Deployment says it's only deployed as opt-out at the Arabic, Hungarian and Czech Wikipedia, e.g. at hu:Wikipédia-vita:Segítség. If you have an account then you can disable it at the bottom box at hu:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. The CSS to remove it is .dt-init-replylink-buttons {display: none !important;}. The class reply-link-wrapper is used by User:Enterprisey/reply-link which is loaded in User:Mfb/monobook.js. It's not targeted with #reply-link-wrapper but with .reply-link-wrapper {display: none;}. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:24, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That solved the issue, thank you! And to answer you, the question was indeed about the English Wikipedia. 78.28.44.204 (talk) 18:27, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see it whether logged in or out. I guess they are running an A/B test and you are in the group which gets the tool. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalized Article

I'd like to report that an article is heavily vandalized. Please help to restore its initial form. It is: The Three Fools. Thanks in advance for the help!--MrPanyGoff (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@MrPanyGoff: are you having a technical problem? You should be able to go to the article, select history, select any old version, click edit, then publish that old version again. — xaosflux Talk 21:19, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, thanks everybody who help to fix that issue!--MrPanyGoff (talk) 08:29, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Logins bounced

Typically I log in direct to my watchlist, then click through to any interesting-looking pages. Recently, when I begin to say edit an article, I sometimes find that I am no longer logged in and my edit is recorded under my IP address. This has begun to happen quite often. Is it a known issue, and if so is it more likely to be a server or browser bug? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:01, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Me too, actually. Trying to hit watchlist first has been a losing proposition of late. It usually happens to me on a mobile device though. --Izno (talk) 18:33, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Now I am noticing I a tooltip-style popup, top right: " Central login You are centrally logged in as Steelpillow. Reload the page to apply your user settings." It's appeared twice already this session. If this is signed by my IP address, we are homing in on the culprit. 85.255.232.32 (talk) 19:02, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! See that! It bounced me off and I have had to log in a second time to sign this. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:05, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds like Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 187#Why is Wikipedia logging me out?. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:09, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it does, thank you. However no mention was made there of the little popup. That popup suggests to me that the service knows there is an issue; presumably it remembers that you are logged in but has lost some of your session credentials. The fact that the problem is affecting/annoying multiple users and has only begun recently suggests to me that Something Needs To Be Undone. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:08, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-06

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

Changes later this week

  • You can see edits to chosen pages on Special:Watchlist. You can add pages to your watchlist on every wiki you like. The GlobalWatchlist extension will come to Meta on 11 February. There you can see entries on watched pages on different wikis on the same page. The new watchlist will be found on Special:GlobalWatchlist on Meta. You can choose which wikis to watch and other preferences on Special:GlobalWatchlistSettings on Meta. You can watch up to five wikis. [8]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Future changes

  • When admins protect pages the form will use the OOUI look. Special:Import will also get the new look. This will make them easier to use on mobile phones. [9][10]
  • Some services will not work for a short period of time from 07:00 UTC on 17 February. There might be problems with new short links, new translations, new notifications, adding new items to your reading lists or recording email bounces. This is because of database maintenance. [11]
  • Advanced item Last week Tech News reported that the IP address Cloud VPS and Toolforge use to contact the wikis will change on 8 February. This is delayed. It will happen later instead. [12]

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

17:40, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Textarea not always monospaced

In User:Redrose64/monobook.css I have the rule 

/* monospace font for input boxes */
textarea.oo-ui-inputWidget-input {
  font-family: monospace;
  font-size: 13.3333px;
}

and this works for most multi-line text input boxes, such as the one that I used to type this in. But it's ignored in the large text input box at Special:EmailUser/Oversight (or any other recipient name), where I'm getting a PS font. How might I get a monospace font there also? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:43, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can try adding the following class selector: 
/* monospace font for input boxes */
textarea.oo-ui-inputWidget-input,
.oo-ui-textInputWidget .oo-ui-inputWidget-input
{
  font-family: monospace;
  font-size: 13.3333px;
}
isaacl (talk) 21:56, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That worked for the textarea concerned - but it also matched all text input boxes, such as the subject line on that page, the edit summary below this box, and others. So I used an id instead: 
/* monospace font for input boxes */
textarea.oo-ui-inputWidget-input,
#mw-input-wpText .oo-ui-inputWidget-input {
  font-family: monospace;
  font-size: 13.3333px;
}
which works. But I'm still puzzled as to why the first selector wasn't matched. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:50, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Redrose64: I see a default CSS rule setting font-family: inherit; for .oo-ui-textInputWidget .oo-ui-inputWidget-input, which will have precedence over your rule. — The Earwig ⟨talk⟩ 23:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I saw the same rule as The Earwig (using my browser's developer tools to examine which rules applied to the HTML element in question), thus my suggestion. Rules that match with greater specificity take precedence over those that match with less specificity. So something that matches by matching two classes, or one ID and one class (for a total of two selectors) takes precedence over a match on just one class. isaacl (talk) 23:43, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Extra newlines when copypasting

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T271614

If I go to a page with the CSS content model, highlight two or more lines, copy to clipboard and paste those elsewhere, there are two linefeeds (U+000A) after each line instead of one, the result being a blank line between consecutive "real" lines. This appears to be a recent change: how may I restore the old behaviour? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:51, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Redrose64: This is a Gecko-specific issue and has been fixed for 1.36.0-wmf.28 (phab:T271614). I wonder why it hasn't been deployed here though; Tech News doesn't say. I guess you could override the CSS until then if you want it fixed now. Nardog (talk) 00:43, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I am pretty sure I saw WAID say elsewhere that our train got stopped for wmf.28. I assume it will come this week. --Izno (talk) 01:05, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Hezbollah - Military History Project not showing in mobile view

So, while investigating how to trim the banner spam, I noticed on mobile a blank section between two project notices (Lebanon and Organizations)

Switched over to desktop mode and found the page renders correctly with "Military History" being listed between the two.

A look at the wiki markup doesn't show any obvious reason this project wouldn't render on mobile. Though as I cut and paste I notice the importance field is missing.

{{WikiProject Lebanon|class=GA|importance=High}} {{WikiProject Military history|class=GA|Middle-Eastern=y|Post-Cold-War=y}} {{WikiProject Organizations|class=GA|importance=High}}

Slywriter (talk) 22:29, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to collapse selected rows of a table?

In IBM System/370#Architecture details I have a table with several long sections. There is a heading row showing bit positions, and I want cells in subsequent rows to align with those headings, so I don't want to put those sections in nested tables. I would like to make each of Control Registers and General Registers separately collapsible. Is there a way to do that? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:55, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikitable help; space between columns and rows?

I'm trying to get this wikitable format to look more like this div style one. In making a new project page for Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music I was advised to not use divs since they leave a huge white space when the window is decreased and are not optimal on many devices. I figured the best way would to put this in a table format but I'm having trouble finding a way to have it not looked so crammed; is there a way to put space between columns and rows? Best - Aza24 (talk) 23:04, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Aza24: I have taken the liberty of editing your sandbox directly, as it makes it really easy to try things out directly. Please feel free, of course, to revert my edit. My quick test was successful, if I measure it against your "look more like this" criterion; I'd say it does. It is not particulary responsive to changes in display size, which I don't much like, but then, your "div style" version isn't either.
I used two different methods to simulate the divider lines, the upper one (between rows 1 & 2) uses CSS border properties, which is cleaner (I believe) than using <hr>. The lower dividers, between rows 2 & 3, use <hr>. The border version has a small break between cells, but maybe that doesn't disturb you much.
Perhaps you can see where I set widths, so you can then adjust and try out your changes as suits you. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 00:39, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Whoever told you that about divs is wrong. That would be the preferred mechanism to do what you are trying to do. --Izno (talk) 01:48, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, the content Aza24 has is not tabular. That's why I added role="presentation" to my sample code, as it's purely for layout. The div sample might be improved by relaxing some of the constraints on it. As it is now, it can't resize either larger or smaller to adapt to various display sizes. — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 01:56, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks a lot JohnFromPinckney, that's exactly what I was looking for, I've opted for the version without the vertical spacing. @Izno:, I don't really know what to do—a user on the talk page was insisting I remove them. As I understand it, it's because of the white space it leaves by the section simply moving downwards rather than minimizing when a window is minimized. I don't know how much better this is, but at least it kind of addresses that issue? Aza24 (talk) 02:09, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
This is what they said, if that helps:
Every browser has the ability to increase and decrease scale. That is a first step to emulate large and small screens, before even going to different software and hardware (e.g. various screen height/width ratios) set-ups. When performing such first step checks you should see that your proposed layout (especially the second) is extremely problematic. For clarity, such checks, when working with <div> tags, are html student 1.0 steps. Note that the MediaWiki software allows to use <div> tags directly, but usually that shouldn't be done: <div> tags are, in wiki environment, commonly operated via templates and other features, without most editors actually ever seeing them. That is because they are tricky, and the template implementations of them at least avoid to make the most common mistakes. So, if you can't find a template to implement a layout feature, it should normally better not be implemented with html code directly, while those that are a bit more experienced in html specifically tried to avoid them (by not including them in a template or some such). So I've interpreted this as I should be using a Wiki Template, not pure HTML and a Wikitable seemed the only possibility...? Aza24 (talk) 02:15, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Aza24 Every browser ... set-ups. This is more or less reasonable. The word that we are looking for there is responsive, that is, a page design is responsive when it can change to fit the screen on which it is viewed. (Tangent: In reality the best way to test different resolutions is actually to test different resolutions by increasing or decreasing the width of the browser viewport. Zooming, which I assume is what is meant by increase/decrease scale, is usually secondary to that assessment.)
Your understanding that you should use wikitables is incorrect and in fact result in a much worse design on the responsive axis, as tables do not act like you might prefer at small widths. Moreover, they are wrong from a semantic point of view.
but usually that shouldn't be done Is more or less reasonable when dealing with article space because article space can be changed often, and where simplicity/wikitext is preferred anyway so that it is easy to use there (see WP:MOS#Use simple markup; especially, these reasons are not really the reasons proffered). It becomes unreasonable in a non-reader facing area, which usually do not change and where you might prefer to be fairly creative. Go hogwild!
What you definitely should do is use WP:TemplateStyles e.g. in Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music/styles.css (you will need someone to start that page and change the content model; feel free to ping me), and put all of what are now inline styles in one place. It will make it easier to test and adjust for different resolutions and text sizes, and most importantly, it makes CSS media queries available to you, which will help make your wikipage design responsive. What I would also recommend is to avoid position relative, etc., in favor of display: flex, which will also help make your design responsive. --Izno (talk) 02:50, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

plugin error message

I keep getting this type of message popping up, "You are importing User:Lupin/popups.js into common.js" and to remove it as it's unmaintained. I am not sure why I started getting it today, and how to get rid of it. Any help? Govvy (talk) 12:27, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Govvy: The code is in User:Govvy/monobook.js. You can remove the first 9 lines. Enable "Navigation popups" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets if you want a replacement. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:56, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter: I removed the first 9 lines and left importScript('User:Lightmouse/monobook.js/script.js'); there, you know, I forgot that page existed! Cheers. Govvy (talk) 14:24, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I tweaked the prompt at User:Lupin/popups.js to try to make this a little clearer. — xaosflux Talk 14:35, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Temporary watchlist

I just made a post on a user talk page, and somehow this was added to my watchlist for only 28 days. I did not select 28 days, I always leave it at the default permanently. What is occurring? DuncanHill (talk) 17:55, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DuncanHill: It is the default for Twinkle. You can adjust your preferences at WP:TW/PREFS — MusikAnimal talk 18:05, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@MusikAnimal: Thanks, I had no idea there was such a page. DuncanHill (talk) 18:17, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Did Thursday come early this week?

I'm seeing drop-down menus (More, TW, etc) getting stuck open. Any idea what's going on? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:25, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thursday came late, actually. Amorymeltzer has a fix for the bullet points issue in Twinkle that should be deployed soon. As for the hover states being broken, that's due to a bug in MediaWiki that has since been fixed but not scheduled to go out until the next deployment train (Thursday). See phab:T273143#6812849. — MusikAnimal talk 18:28, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I can tell Shubinator nevermind.[13]. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:32, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Davidwr: The issue with the MoreMenu submenus is separate, by the way, and that should be fixed now too. I only pushed that update a few minutes ago so it may take a few more minutes for it to show up on your end. — MusikAnimal talk 18:34, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MoreMenu is fixed for me. Multi-bug day, I blame it on being squeezed between Patch Tuesday and WP:THURSDAY. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 18:44, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MusikAnimal, Hmmm, 90-ish minutes later, it's still happening for me. I tried restarting Chrome and emptying my browser cache, to no avail. Maybe I just need a larger value of "a few more minutes" :-) -- RoySmith (talk) 19:52, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: Are you talking about the issue with MoreMenu submenus, or the broken hover states (where you have to click on "Page" or "User" to make the menu appear)? If the latter, that won't be fixed until the wmf.30 train arrives, which is scheduled for this Thursday.
If the former, I'm confused why it's still broken for you. I'm guessing you installed MoreMenu via the gadget. Maybe try turning the gadget off and then on again? Or try installing globally, which is the preferred route anyway because it works on all wikis. — MusikAnimal talk 20:29, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MusikAnimal, Ah, I guess I'm talking about the later (i.e. the screenshot I posted above). Thursday, then. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:36, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Twinkle fix now pushed; sorry all, had planned to put it up later today but didn't realize it was gonna come early this week. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 18:46, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also heads up about [14]. Release Engineering (with good reason) will now halt the train if any new errors show up. This should mean fewer errors will make their way to English Wikipedia, but as a consequence we may see more erratic train schedules like this, where the new version arrives on Monday/Tuesday/etc. instead of the usual Thursday. — MusikAnimal talk 19:01, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a way for us to get a notice here when the software is updated, perhaps with a link to release notes, or is there a page we can add to our watchlists to know about changes? The tech news that is posted here is forward-looking, so things listed there do not always happen on time, and the link to the new version always leads to a blank page when the news posting is added here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:37, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think the ecosystem is too big to have a fully comprehensive release notes for weekly trains. But anything notable should go through Tech News. Bugs like the broken hover states of dropdown menus are of course not announced in advance because they were not intentionally introduced.
As for when the train arrives, you can check toolforge:versions to see the current status, and wikitech:Deployments to see the current schedule. Whenever the train is delayed, an email is sent to the wikitech-l mailing list. You can also see if anything is currently blocking the train by checking toolforge:train-blockers. That redirects you to the corresponding Phab task for the upcoming train, and blockers there are listed as subtasks. At the time of writing there are no subtasks, so wmf.30 should hopefully come as planned on Thursday.
The recent policy change around deployments may actually improve the situation, as developers might get in the habit of reverting problematic changes, rather than holding up the train to fix them. Time will tell. — MusikAnimal talk 21:21, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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