Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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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]

Unable to set Pending Changes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T273317

I noted here that I am no longer able to set Pending Changes protection for articles. I have full access to the semi-protection fields, and the Move Protection option opens up when I click "unlock further protect options", but the Pending Changes box remains greyed-out and unclickable. I've tried logging out and back in again and the same issue occurs whether I use Firefox (my default browser) or Chrome. I'm using the Monobook Skin. @Xaosflux:.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 16:47, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Ponyo: what is the page you are trying to do this for? Can you copy the full URL of the page while you are trying to unsuccessfully make this adjustment? — xaosflux Talk 16:55, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If it is any page, try this page and see if you can access the PC section? — xaosflux Talk 16:56, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: I cannot set pending changes on any article page, including the one you linked.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 17:01, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ponyo: are you by chance blocking javascript either specifically or with a browser extension? In Chrome, try to open an incognito mode window, log on and try again with the link I put above. Next thing to try, if you use keyboard controls and TAB between the fields, does it enter the PC section or skip over it? — xaosflux Talk 17:06, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not blocking javascript, and pending changes still remains greyed out in Chrome incognito mode. Tabbing skips over the pending changes box. It goes from the question mark beside the words Pending Changes and skips down to the "Other/additional reasons" field.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 17:13, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I can't imagine it should help, but I'm going to reset your +sysop status. — xaosflux Talk 17:17, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ponyo: I really don't think it will matter - but please try to log out, log back in now and try again at this new random page here. — xaosflux Talk 17:20, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Logged out (upon which my Firefox coincidentally updated) and back in, but PC options are still unclickable. I also tried switching to Vector, but it didn't make a difference.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 17:24, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Just chipping in to say it's the same for me. I also use Firefox, so I wondered if it was browser-related, but I've tried in Chrome and Edge and it's the same. I'm also not blocking Javascript. Black Kite (talk) 17:34, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Black Kite: At least I'm in good company.-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 17:46, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ponyo: OK lets try something to see if it is client-side or permissions-side:
  1. Go to this page
  2. Click on "Make request" at the top. This will fail.
  3. Click on Correct token and resubmit at the bottom
  4. See if it added 1 hour of PC1 to Foo or if it failed (get the failure message).
— xaosflux Talk 18:46, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: I believe it failed. There is a red message that states:
 "error": {
       "code": "stabilize_denied",
       "info": "Permission denied.",
       "*": "See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php for API usage. Subscribe to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list at <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-api-announce> for notice of API deprecations and breaking changes."
   },
   "servedby": "mw1363"
-- Jezebel's Ponyobons mots 19:08, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ponyo and Black Kite: thank you for the updates, I've opened bug: phab:T273317 on this issue. — xaosflux Talk 19:15, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Ponyo and Xaosflux: Working again now. Looks like 660007 fixed it. Black Kite (talk) 00:45, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Could this have anything to do with the fact some edits by AC users are somehow not accepted (see my thread above)? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:41, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone, a brief update on this issue. When we noticed this issue, we decided to rollback all wikis to previous MediaWiki version (wmf.27), which fixed this. Right now, we believe the issue is successfully fixed by reverting two problematic patches, and we tested the fix at test2.wikipedia.org, which has FlaggedRevs enabled. Right now, all wikis but Wikipedias (including the English Wikipedia) are at wmf.28, while Wikipedias are still at wmf.27. Wikipedias should be upgraded later today, so we can proceed with the next version (wmf.29) on Tuesday, per the regular process. We're pretty certain the issue is fixed, and won't reappear, but if this becomes a problem again, please ping me, so I can investigate more. Best, --Martin Urbanec (talk) 14:17, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

editautopatrolprotected level of protection

Hello everyone, I'm on ckbwiki. A while ago, Mediawiki had added a new level of protection called editautoautorollprotected. Now, that level is not in Module:Protected edit request/active. For example, see ckb:وتووێژی داڕێژە:زانیاریدانی ئەنیمانگا/سەر, which is written that the protection level (editautoautorollprotected) is unknown as an error message. I edited the module according to exist codes (See the diff), but it didn't work. Can anyone help us? Thank you! ⇒ AramTalk 20:17, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aram, in the diff you posted, the user group was 'editautopatrolprotected'; I corrected it in the thread title. It looks like it was T230103, added in January 2020. I can't tell you any more than that, but perhaps someone else here can read the Phabricator/MediaWiki tea leaves. Best of luck, BlackcurrantTea (talk) 11:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Aram, this was a change made by me. Long story short, protection levels should generally have their own user right, rather than bind to some other already existing rights. Such rights are usually named editXXprotected, where XX is a string that explains the purpose of the protection well. For instance, fully protected pages use editprotected as the controlling right. Some wikis, like Czech Wikipedia, assign this right to non-sysop group(s) as well, allowing users in that group edit pages that are normally sysop-only. That's why I made MediaWiki to use editautopatrolprotected rather than the right autopatrol, which, by itself, means something different (it makes your edits as patrolled automatically). That makes the effect of individual rights more expectable.
I did not realize wikis might use a module with hardcoded protection levels. I fixed your Lua module. It no longer throws an error, through since I'm not a ckb speaker, I can't verify it displays what it is supposed to.
Best, --Martin Urbanec (talk) 13:15, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both PrimeHunter and Snaevar that I saw your efforts to fix the problem!
And thank you BlackcurrantTea, you replied to me and opened a door to solve the problem! And finally, thank you Martin Urbanec to solve the problem! Your edits were very good for solving the problem and now the template is shown properly and the error message is gone. Thank you all! ⇒ AramTalk 14:35, 1 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]

Sortable tables on mobile

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T233340

It's 2021, and our sortable tables still somehow aren't sortable on mobile. Is this sitting as a request somewhere, and if so, how do we give it a boost? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:49, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That would be phab:T233340. the wub "?!" 00:24, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sdkb, This issue is important and on quotehow do we give it a boost?/quote:
I think the way for that would be to make WMF implement easy-to-implement and overdue measures Wikipedia, as one of the world's largest websites (additionally equipped with millions of dollars), has at its disposal to a) attract more developers b) increase the efficiency and time of their work.
This is would be one of the most important things WMF could do in 2021, is something they should have done years ago and would basically only require one WMF individual to spend 2 days or so. Hence it is only a matter of will / decision-making.
Increasing the number of volunteer - and maybe some paid - developers is very likely to speed up such obviously overdue issues with the mobile website, the mobile apps and MediaWiki. Prototyperspective (talk) 12:39, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to second the need to prioritize this. It is frustrating and honestly rude to the reader that this functionality is removed on mobile – both the app and mobile browser. And on mobile Chrome browser "Request Desktop Site" just redirects back to the mobile page, even though I can manually remove the "m." from the url and sortability works. Wikipedia used to have many duplicative articles (actually still does) with related data but sorted differently, but sortable tables made these unnecessary and encouraged merges. The long-term failure to implement this capability removes the ability of mobile readers to get the best understanding in an article that its writers deliberately made possible. Thanks, Reywas92Talk 04:25, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Animations/gifs don't play

Resolved
 – This issue has been marked partially solved as it is tracked with a code issue on phabricator:
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T273389

I uploaded this animation and tried adding it to 2020 SO:

but the animation does not play despite only being the small thumbnail.

On the file's pages (Commons and WP) it displays: Note: Due to technical limitations, thumbnails of high resolution GIF images such as this one will not be animated.

How to add it in a way to make it play without having to upload a smaller version (there already are smaller rendered other resolutions)?

If that's currently not possible are there phabricator issues for this problem?

--Prototyperspective (talk) 23:53, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Prototyperspective: The limit is width × height × frames < mw:Manual:$wgMaxAnimatedGifArea. Wikimedia wikis set it to 100 million in [5]. commons:File:The Looping Orbits of 2020 SO.gif is 836 × 480 × 375 frames = 150,480,000. This would work: 681 × 391 × 375 frames = 99,998,250. Or 836 × 480 × 249 frames = 99,918,720. I haven't found a Phabricator request to increase the current limit. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:22, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
PrimeHunter, increasing the limit and/or solving issues due to which it exists/is that low would be the proper, longer-term solution but there should already be a way to get these gifs to play without doing so: there is a rendered 320 × 184 px version of the animation: how can one use this smaller version or is that not possible? Prototyperspective (talk) 00:29, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Prototyperspective: The 320 × 184 px version is not animated. You have to either upload an animated gif with width × height × frames < 100 million, or display it at the uploaded size. That works. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:37, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
PrimeHunter, I have to revise my previous comment: increasing the limit and/or solving issues due to which it exists/is that low isn't necessarily a better / more proper longer-term solution in this case.
→ The better solution would be to make pages use the downsized thumbnail version / a version automatically downsized to below that limit. Just like with images, pages don't need to use the full-size .gif when the animation is displayed in a smaller size on it.
(Whether or not larger animations could play isn't necessarily relevant for this. And only after this has been implemented would raising the limit be a longer-term solution to remaining issues and may currently not be appropriate - and possibly never so due to e.g. new file-formats.)
I made a separate upload (with which the animation does play) because I could not use the "Upload another version of this file"-functionality for this without reducing the main file's size (which could get automatically downsized renderings linked).
I will create a phabricator issue for it and link it here. Prototyperspective (talk) 14:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Prototyperspective, well.. you really shouldn't be using gifs as movies. Movies are movies. upload a movie instead of a gif. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:44, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2021-05

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

Problems

Changes later this week

  • You can soon use Wikidata to link to pages on the multilingual Wikisource. [7]
  • Often editors use a "non-breaking space" to make a gap between two items when reading but still show them together. This can be used to avoid a line break. You will now be able to add new ones via the special character tool in the 2010, 2017, and visual editors. The character will be shown in the visual editor as a space with a grey background. [8][9]
  • Advanced item Wikis use abuse filters to stop bad edits being made. Filter maintainers can now use syntax like 1.2.3.4 - 1.2.3.55 as well as the 1.2.3.4/27 syntax for IP ranges. [10]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Future changes

  • Minerva is the skin Wikimedia wikis use for mobile traffic. When a page is protected and you can't edit it you can normally read the source wikicode. This doesn't work on Minerva on mobile devices. This is being fixed. Some text might overlap. This is because your community needs to update MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext to work on mobile. You can read more. [11][12]
  • Advanced item Cloud VPS and Toolforge will change the IP address they use to contact the wikis. The new IP address will be 185.15.56.1. This will happen on February 8. You can read more.

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

22:37, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

As the way Tech News is written is the most common feature to be pointed out both in positive and a negative feedback, I have been making an en-gb version of Tech News for some months now. It's not necessarily British, but it merges extremely short sentences together and allows for terms that anyone well-versed in the English language would understand. Well-versed for example is a term you probably wouldn't find in the regular Tech News. Here's the above issue in en-gb. I also occasionally add some additional explanation or the situation for a particular issue on English-language projects. I haven't really advertised it, pageviews are generally disappointing. I'd like to hear some feedback. Do you like it? Do you have suggestions? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 06:15, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: my suggestion has nothing to do with content, just execution - we generally discourage anyone to use en-variants as their interface language since there isn't an en-gbwiki (or en-auwiki, etc) - and especially here on enwiki they will miss out on a LOT of localize interface messages since we don't translate them to the variants and variant-fallback support is subpar. — xaosflux Talk 14:25, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: This way I've been able to produce this version without spending a lot of time. Actually forking the newsletter is both much more work and would reduce exposure even further. The en-gb version isn't distributed to any wiki, the only way to read it is by going to meta, so I'm not sure what localized interface messages have to do with this. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:39, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Alexis Jazz: was just noting that we generally discourage the use of /en-xx pages because almost noone has it as their language pref, and we suggest noone does use it as their pref for the reasons above - no concern with this specific example! — xaosflux Talk 14:57, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Made a central feedback thread at m:Talk:Tech/News/2021/05/en-gb. Maybe should have done that from the start. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 15:02, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Trouble creating User:54nd60x/skin.css

Not that I want to create the page yet, but I am wondering, why is it impossible to create the page? Unlike trying to edit the page WP:123, which instantly redirects to Wikipedia:123, the skin page doesn’t work when you are logged in. In fact, you can’t even protect the page (I’m not admin) but when I tried to do it https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:54nd60x&action=protect it went to User:54nd60x/timeless.css a few seconds later because I use the timeless skin. So who can directly create the page? It wouldn’t be a problem for non-logged in users (I tried going to the skin.css page while logged out it doesn’t redirect.) Again, I’m not trying to create the page, but I just noticed this unusual pattern while trying to create the page and it surprised me. 54nd60x (talk) 03:11, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a real page. It exists solely as a Javascript redirect. If you want one for timeless, you have the above; if you want one for all skins, that exists at User:54nd60x/common.css. --Izno (talk) 03:59, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The code is in MediaWiki:Group-user.js. It enables links Special:MyPage/skin.css and Special:MyPage/skin.js to take any user with JavaScript to the css and js page for their current skin. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:43, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@54nd60x: if you really want to create that page you can - it won't do anything useful and will just be a pain for anyone in the future though so I suggest against this. — xaosflux Talk 14:17, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: Thanks for the advice. Actually, I never planned to create the page in the first place, it just surprised me that the redirect was not instant, but there was a small delay in the redirect. Now I know that it is because it is a JavaScript redirect and can be disabled, so that was the reason for the delay. 54nd60x (talk) 14:24, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

“New” skin

Hello, I was just browsing Wikipedia on my mobile device and I came across this “skin:”

However, it is not one of the five skins in preferences, and it is also not cologneblue or apioutput.. Doesn’t look like the Nostalgia skin either. So is this even a skin? If yes, what skin is this? If not, why and when does this appear? This “skin” doesn’t appear to me too often but it does occur occasionally. 54nd60x (talk) 09:18, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That looks like it's just missing CSS. It probably means there's some connection problem, which caused the CSS to not load. --rchard2scout (talk) 09:24, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What Rchard said. --Izno (talk) 15:35, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a way to make a number count up every week?

Resolved
 – thanks all — Czello 19:19, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For example, on WWE Raw the episode number is manually increased by +1 each week. This can be easily missed by editors, and if there's a factual error it means we're worsening the problem by adding a number each week. It would be grand if there was a way for this number to increase by one automatically every Monday. WWE rarely ever misses shows of Raw: they even filmed a live one on Christmas Day in 2019. Automating this seems like a no-brainer. Additionally, it would need to start on 1445 as that's the current number of episodes. — Czello 16:05, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The magic word {{CURRENTWEEK}} is the current week number. You could add that to the episode number for Christmas Day — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 16:25, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It would roll over at the start of each year setting the number backwards. -- GreenC 19:02, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Suppose you knew the 1000th episode was on January 1, 2016 (numbers made up). Then you could calculate {{#expr:1000 + {{age in weeks|January 1, 2016}}}} → 1437. If they ever went off schedule, you could adjust the starting point. That said, I'm not convinced this is a great idea. — The Earwig talk 16:32, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to IMDB the 28th season had 56 episodes. This suggest not all are 7 days apart, need to verify. -- GreenC 17:33, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is partially because of inconsistent "season" length (what they call a season is fairly arbitrary); it's not a perfect 52-week thing. However, Raw is always on a Monday night so it shouldn't really have to change from a 7-day thing. — Czello 17:48, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I guess it would be pretty simple: {{#expr:{{Time ago|2021-02-01|magnitude=weeks|numeric=y}} + 1445}} though I added a new |numeric= feature to {{time ago}} to make it work. It says add the number of weeks since 2021-02-01 to 1445. -- GreenC 18:53, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To add or subtract edge cases could do something like {{#expr:{{Time ago|2021-02-01|magnitude=weeks|numeric=y}} + {{#expr:1445<!--Shows as of 2021-02-01--> - (1<!--Christmas 2020 no show--> + 1<!--Easter no show-->) + (1<!--Special show 06-01-2021--> + 1<!-- Special show 08-01-2021-->)}}}} so it is self-documenting. -- GreenC 18:59, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Parser string functions not expanding

Why are Parser string functions not being expanded in Special:ExpandTemplates? Or in my sandbox, or here either, for that matter:

  • {{#pos:Žmržlina|žlina}}
  • {{#len:Icecream }}
  • {{#rpos:Žmržlina|lina}}
  • {{#sub:Icecream|3}}
  • {{#explode:Split%By%Percentage%Signs|%|2}}

I'm pretty sure this worked before. I must be doing something incredibly dumb; when you stop snickering, please clue me in; what am I missing? Mathglot (talk) 21:26, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • phab:T8455 suggests these were never enabled, and the supported alternative is to use Lua modules, like Module:String. — The Earwig talk 21:38, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @The Earwig:, that looks very familiar, must be what I remember about working before. Maybe this isn't the right venue, but couldn't those functions be repurposed as wrappers to the Module? Or maybe, just create templates with the same name, minus the hash... er, wait, maybe that exists already? Time out... Mathglot (talk) 21:45, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    They ought to be:
    {{pos|Žmržlina|žlina}} = Template:Pos
    {{len|Icecream } = 8
    {{rpos|Žmržlina|lina}} = Template:Rpos
    {{sub|Icecream|3}} = Icecream
    {{explode|Split%By%Percentage%Signs|%|2}} = Template:Explode
    but apparently aren't.
    Also, I can't quite make uot if phab:T8455 means they weren't enabled for en-wiki, or weren't enabled at all. If the latter, then there should be no objection if I delete/hide the information at mediawiki, and refer people to the Module instead, right? Mathglot (talk) 21:55, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    The ticket says they weren't enabled for WMF wikis, but they are still a part of the MediaWiki extension and may be enabled on other third-party wikis, so I wouldn't change anything there. No opposition to creating convenience templates like {{pos}} and {{len}}, though perhaps some other people watching this page have stronger opinions about that. — The Earwig talk 22:00, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    That makes sense, thanks. I've added a discussion at mw, which I need to go modify given this new data. Thanks again, Mathglot (talk) 22:15, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    {{String split}} already exists for #explode, {{Str len}} for #len, {{Str mid}} for #sub and {{Str find}} for #pos. #rpos is probably somewhere out there too. — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 22:25, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @GhostInTheMachine:, excellent; that saves me the time of creating them. I'll maybe make some template redirects so they match the Parser function names more closely, for folks who search for them that way. Too bad {{sub}} is taken for subscript, but {{substr}}[a] ought to do the trick for most folks as a mnemonic name to find the wrapper with.[b] Thanks much for this. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 00:30, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ Oh, {{substr}} exists already; will have to examine it to see if it's a decent match for #sub, and whether we need a different mnemonic if not.
  2. ^ And "string split" is way better than '#explode' anyway; {{split}} being reserved for article splits.

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]

MediaWiki namespace edit requests

In the future, can I post edit requests to the MediaWiki namespace here instead of on the talk page? I submitted some edit requests and the talk page says "Talk pages in this namespace are generally not watched by many users." I know that the edit requests are tracked, but I still think that announcing it here would bring more people to the discussion. 54nd60x (talk) 02:59, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@54nd60x: the edit request backlog is actually watched pretty well ( c.f. User:AnomieBOT/PERTable). Keep in mind, for non-customized messages we generally won't customize them without good reason; for ones that are about some special process - a venue common to that process is usually a good place to at least cross-advertise. VPT should only be for something primarily technical in the messages. — xaosflux Talk 03:52, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

{{Annual readership}} not working on all browsers/OSs

I went to post a note on the template talk page, and noted others were having the same problem. For me, it works in Chrome and FF on MS, but not in FF on Mint. (Though it does work in Falkon on Mint.) Others have had problems in Chrome, dating back to Sept., but didn't specify their OS. — kwami (talk) 07:50, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mystery modification

I prepared the wikitext of a response to a question at the Reference Desk offline in a text editor and then copied it over to the Wikipedia edit window using copy–paste. In doing so I must have made the mistake of giving the paste command twice, because the text was duplicated. At least, I assume that was my fault. In previewing I did not notice the duplication, but I saw a mark-up error, which I corrected in the second pasted copy before "publishing". Afterwards, it turned out there had been another modification, in the first of the two pasted copies: the text "the realm of" has been replaced there by "the [[Category:realm]] of". I swear I did not make this senseless change. Its provenance is a complete mystery to me. Does this ring any bells with anyone?  --Lambiam 12:13, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It could happen if "realm" was marked in the edit area and you accidentally clicked [[Category:]] in the "Wiki markup" selection of the drop-down menu below the edit area. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:23, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that must have been it.  --Lambiam 14:35, 3 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]

  • @Vchimpanzee:, place {{R avoided double redirect|And Just Like That...}} on the lowercase redirect (on mobile so can't expand further on it). — J947 ‡ message ⁓ edits 21:43, 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 [13], 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]

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]

Making a button which links to an fairly complex Wikipedia url

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]
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