Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 156

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Village pump (technical) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Double spaces

Could someone globally replace two spaces between "Contents" and [show]/[hide] buttons at the top of the contents box as these are *only two spaces that are found by CTRL+F search on all article pages (*except for improper manual ways of creating bigger margins between words in transcluded templates or article itself)? Maybe this needs to be reported to phabricator in order to be resolved.

Also, there are two spaces used on several occasions as separator in script that generates bottom extra toolbar (before "Sign your posts on talk pages:", for example).

This can be solved by using proper margins instead of bigger spaces (so that selection is prevented). --5.43.106.119 (talk) 21:34, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Why? So what if there's an extra space there? It's not breaking anything, there's no obvious negative impact from it. Murph9000 (talk) 21:54, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Selection would be prevented and CTRL+F search would not start from article body but editing box when one wants to find double spaces inside code and clean it so that there are no double spaces. --5.43.106.119 (talk) 22:01, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Use the code editor for CSS & JS, it has a search (and optional replace) feature which is independent of the browser's search-in-page. Inside article source, double spaces are not an error or something to be "fixed" in general (MOS allows traditional double space typography and states it should not be changed / cleaned). Murph9000 (talk) 22:06, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Selection is still not prevented. --5.43.106.119 (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Note that the double space is not treated differently from the single space when you look for a double space. When I do such a search in this section, I'm told that a double space appears in Why? So what if there's an extra space there? It's and also in lots of spots where single spaces are used. Nyttend (talk) 04:16, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

@Nyttend: In your example, there are double spaces in the code (if you do search in code editor, then it will find double spaces) but when previewed/saved – those spaces are displayed as one because that's how multiple   whitespace characters are always rendered in HTML (so search will not find double spaces in this case). It's not true that they are not treated differently from single space; they are, because we have extra characters (bytes).

@Murph9000: If someone was eager to take care even of spacing apostrophe if it follows quote mark in citation templates (CS1 does not display "' or '" but adds space between), it would be fair to resolve this much more present and visible (when making text selection, and copying to Word for example – to print out article) 'problem'. When designing web page one should not use multiple spaces for creating invalid 'margins' (and have ugly selection) but use horizontal margin or padding property to achieve the desired output. --5.43.106.119 (talk) 09:42, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

No, I'm referring to viewing the page in the edit window and saying that inserting a double space into the "find" bar finds both the quoted text and a lot of non-quoted ordinary text in which only single spaces appear; my browser, the latest IE, only finds the first 100 instances of a phrase. It has trouble because there are so many instances of such a "phrase", but if I open a much shorter editing window and do the same search, it finds a higher percentage of the spaces. For example, if I open the next section and look for a double space, it finds nine instances in the string that one does catch me out from time to time. Nyttend (talk) 11:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Some sort of glitch in mobile view

Originally at WP:AN, but I moved it because it's more appropriate here. Nyttend (talk) 10:39, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi,
The following are the screenshots of two pages. They are looking normal from desktop, but not from mobile devices (looked at it from iPad, and BlackBerry). Not sure where the problem is. I noticed this two days ago (almost 60 hours from now). Would somebody please take a look into that? Thanks a lot.

—usernamekiran(talk) 22:43, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks like you are getting the not-logged in banner from Wikipedia:PERM/Subpage, but it is not getting formatted well for mobile view. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:31, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
It's coming from Wikipedia:PERM/Subpage, which is transcluded into the other pages. It looks like the CSS classes (anonymous-show boilerplate metadata) are not having the intended effect in the mobile view. Desktop users can see this by visiting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PERM/Subpage, you don't need a mobile device to investigate the issue. It looks like MediaWiki:Group-user.css is not used or being overridden by the mobile skin (and obligatory "ugh!" at the use of !important in there…). It also needs a fix for the line wrapping (for cases where it should be shown). Murph9000 (talk) 01:21, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
It looks like the following in MediaWiki:Mobile.css is responsible (both for overriding the hiding of it, and for breaking the expected display: block on a div element, with yet more horrible !important-ness:
```
/* On en.wp .metadata is only hidden in article namespace... note :not must be qualified to body tag as otherwise it will match ANY tag that is not class ns-0 (T166451)*/
:not(body.ns-0) .content .metadata {
	display: initial !important;
}
```
Murph9000 (talk) 01:38, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Yeah I recently unhid some of this previously hidden stuff, had not really considered about the user groups hiding stuff.... Either we need to hide everything again, remove the metadata class from that specific template, or fix the upstream mobile specification, to account for more en.wp variation... I'll look into it later tonight. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:59, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

I've undone this change for now. Hopefully we can figure out something more sustainable at some point. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:22, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

/æ/ tensing

When trying to link to the above article, I noticed that the link does not point to the article, but instead points to the page you're currently viewing, plus "/æ/ tensing", resulting in a red link. The above link, for example, loads "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/æ/ tensing". The only way to properly load the correct page is to copy the text and paste it into the search bar. Is this a known issue with pages that start with a "/"? Home Lander (talk) 01:43, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I first noticed it here (see the bottom edit summary) when Huggle spawned a red link. Home Lander (talk) 01:54, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, although it doesn't occur in mainspace. You can work around this with a colon at the beginning, producing /æ/ tensing. Ppp ery 01:55, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Looks like Huggle therefore has a tiny bug in the edit summary programming. Home Lander (talk) 01:59, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

A wikilink starting with a slash links to a subpage of the current page per Help:Link#Subpage links. This is deliberate to allow links like /Archive 155. The subpage feature is disabled in mainspace so if the link is written in mainspace then it just goes to a page starting with a slash. Most mainspace names starting with a slash are redirects. There are 20 articles: [1]. Maybe they should be moved and use {{correct title}} to reduce confusion. They are currently allowed by WP:NC-SLASH. The above link here shows wrong edit summary links by both Twinkle and Huggle. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:26, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I observed that as well and left messages at both the Huggle and Twinkle talk pages. Home Lander (talk) 15:01, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Archival borked at AHCA

Can someone fix this ClueBotIII archival error?

Talk:American Health Care Act of 2017/Archives/ 1 should be located at Talk:American Health Care Act of 2017/Archive 1

And whatever error in the autoarchival request template would need to be corrected to account for that

-- 65.94.169.56 (talk) 21:25, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Done — Maile (talk) 21:40, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Downloading extract of Infobox data

Is there an easy way to download in CSV format (or similar format) the names of people and corporations in English Wikipedia? In other words, has someone already extracted the data from the Infobox records? I don't see a way to do this except to download the whole Wikipedia and parse all articles (even articles not about people or corporations).

Minimally the file should have the entity's name or entity type (person or corporation). It would also help to have the birth place because names differ by region.

If such an extract does not already exist, which tools would make this process the easiest?

My reason for asking: the open source probablepeople project parses the names of people and corporations, but it struggles with less popular names. Using Wikipedia data would help test the probablepeople software, and it would train it to better parse names.

I was preferred to WP:VPT from the Help Desk.

AndrewHZ (talk) 17:43, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

You can look at Wikidata:. Ruslik_Zero 20:02, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Pigsonthewing, one for you I think. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:56, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. Wikidata is certainly the best place to obtain data to solve User:AndrewHZ's need, but if he /must/ have what is in Infoboxes, he can parse one of the Wikipedia:Database downloads. On an article-by-article basis, he can also extract some data using microformats. To disambiguate people with similar names requires more than just birth places; for that, see {{Authority control}} template (and equivalent properties in Wikidata). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:26, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Parameters in Wikilinks

I often want to add parameters to wikilinks. The most common use case is for permalinks, eg. Daniel Berrigan?oldid=785863491. Also, occasionally I want to use other parameters such as Daniel Berrigan?action=watch. However, even though both of these links work fine, they are marked as redlinks as if they are for creating new pages. To workaround this issue, some Wikipedia pages end up using full URLs, eg. the links on Wikipedia:Article alerts/Report page footer. However, these are then decorated as if they are external links, even though they are not.

I suppose this is a feature request, but I wonder if there is some way to do this with existing wiki formatting that I don't know about. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 15:00, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

A wikilink to a page name cannot have parameters. Some things can be done with wikilinks to special pages. See Help:Permanent link and Help:Diff#Linking to a diff. We also have many link-producing templates but they don't work in edit summaries or other wikis without the templates. fullurl and friends at mw:Help:Magic words#URL data work in all wikis and accept a query_string but may be difficult to use and also don't work in edit summaries. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:19, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Many of the url-producing templates in Category:Internal link templates use the method at Wikipedia:Plainlink to avoid the external link icon. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Special:LinkSearch

I have noticed that Special:LinkSearch requires two searches, one with a prefix http:// and one with https://, in order to find all external links to one website. The template {{LinkSummaryLive}} has recently been updated to provide two links to do these two searches. Is there currently a way of finding both http and https links with just one search? If not, is it technically possible to modify Special:LinkSearch to accommodate this? Deli nk (talk) 14:38, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@Deli nk: It is not currently possible to search for both at once. phab:T14810 is the relevant request to modify Special:LinkSearch. — JJMC89 (T·C) 19:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

A bit earlier this week there was a similar question at WP:ELN#LinkSearch and https. --Izno (talk) 19:39, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Text wrap on right of an mbox

Hi there. I'm trying to fix the layout at Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, particularly the two population templates lost way down at the bottom right. You can see my fix at User:Magnolia677/sandbox. Unfortunately, in my fix the demographics section looks wonky because of all the white space at the top. Is there a way to get text to wrap on the right, around a left-aligned mbox? Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 22:16, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I added "float:left" to the mbox style in your sandbox, and I think it gets you what you want. What do you think? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:31, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I actually poked around first looking for a style guide for this template, but couldn't find anything specific. Thanks for your help! Magnolia677 (talk) 09:22, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: Assuming you mean {{mbox}}, the lack of a style guide would be because it's not really intended to be used for content like that. I'll stop short of asserting that the usage is invalid or inappropriate, and just say that it's unusual and not the intended use of the mbox-small-left CSS class (as far as I'm aware). Murph9000 (talk) 11:20, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Proposal_to_topic_ban_Magioladitis_from_COSMETICBOT-related_discussions

Please comment there. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:59, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Canmt S&R edit any more

Right now, I can not edit by "search and replace" any more. -DePiep (talk) 01:05, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

It works for me. Which feature is it about? I use "Enhanced editing toolbar with wizards" at "Help:Edit toolbar", click "Advanced" and then the icon

at the right. What is your skin and browser? What goes wrong? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:05, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Fractions

Can some people please indicate how they see the following two ways to write down fractions:

{{frac|2|1|2}}: 2+1⁄2
2{{frac|1|2}}: 21⁄2

To me (most recent Firefox on Windows), the first one looks like (2 to the first power) / 2, with the three numbers of roughly equal small size. The second looks like a standard 2 and then a small 1/2. MOS:FRAC prescribes {{frac|2|1|2}}, but (for me) this is much less clear, much harder to interpret when reading an article. Of course, if I am the only one with this problem (or if others get the same result but don't see it as a problem), nothing needs to change. Otherwise, either the frac template or the prescription at MOS:FRAC should be corrected. Fram (talk) 13:48, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: see image screenshots to the right, the biggest difference I'm seeing is the spacing between the whole number and the fraction component - in all versions. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:09, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I think I agree using chrome on win7.

'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000010-QINU`"'<span class="frac">2<span class="sr-only">+</span><span class="num">1</span>&frasl;<span class="den">2</span></span>

2'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000012-QINU`"'<span class="frac"><span class="num">1</span>&frasl;<span class="den">2</span></span>

It seems to me that the integer is misplaced in the first example and that it should be within the first span tag preceding the hairspace character; like this perhaps:

<span class="nowrap">2&#8202;</span><span class="frac nowrap"><span class="visualhide">&nbsp;</span><sup>1</sup>&frasl;<sub>2</sub></span>

2 ¹⁄₂

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you. I have added a screenshot of what I see as well, so you may get a better idea of why I discuss this. Fram (talk) 14:22, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh, and I use Vector, no css or other fancy scripts, and show math as " MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools)" I have the gadget " Vector classic typography (use only sans-serif in Vector skin)" enabled. I think these are the only ones that might affect this. Fram (talk) 14:26, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

But neither the math setting nor the Vector classic typography one have any effect on this apparently... I'm confused on what might cause this now. Fram (talk) 14:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

That top display on yours is defiantly bad - we should try to focus on where that is coming from as it could be reader-impacting. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Clearly part of the problem is that there isn't any space between the integer and the fraction which is why I suggested that the template output is wrong in how it positions the integer. Perhaps the correct output should be this:

2  1&frasl;2

2 ¹⁄₂

I'm not clear on the purpose of this tag:

 

~~Removing it doesn't seem to change the rendered output for me on chrome:~~

~~2 1&frasl;2~~

~~2 ¹⁄₂~~

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:44, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

That gives for me the correct result (with a larger 2), so this may be all that needs to be done. But I'll wait for some further reactions to see whether others have the same problem or even better solutions. Fram (talk) 14:54, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@trappist: Regarding the visualHide tag. It's to force screenreaders to add a 'space' between the two characters. I don't see how the position should influence it. Its just seems correct to me.. Maybe a gadget or something is interfering ? or a browser gadget ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:10, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm all for accessibility so keeping the visualhide is proper. I don't think that I understand you comment about position. I was not talking about the position of the visualhide tag but was talking about the position of the integer portion of the fraction. In Fram's first example there is no hairspace between the integer and the numerator portion of the fraction. I think that there should be.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: Does it look the same in this link ? [2] ? How about in a different browser ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:10, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Thanks! In safemode, I get (for the problematic version) now a large 2, then a space, and then the fraction. So you seem to be on the right track here :-) Fram (talk) 07:45, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: Then it's either a userscripts/style (which you don't seem to have), a gadget (most likely) or a piece of site wide styling. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:40, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. It would be great if someone else had the same problem, that would make it easier to really pinpoint the issue, but until then I seem to be the only one affected so I'll have to live with it (I'm not going to test all combinations of gadgets for something I encounter only sprodaically anyway). Fram (talk) 09:42, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Some more: I don't get the issue in Chrome (logged in or logged out), but I do get it in Firefox even when I'm logged out. So this would seem to suggest that it is not a gadget, but some Firefox setting / combination with OS or other add-ons on my part. I have very few add-ons installed though, nothing fancy. Anyway, thanks for your time, but unless others have the same problem I thnk it is not useful to spend too long on this. Fram (talk) 09:48, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Why is this not being discussed at Template talk:Frac? There have been several changes over the years concerning spacing and character size, some of them were aimed at improving accessibility (Graham87, are you awake yet?), so let's not compromise the hard work that various people have done in the past. For instance, the visualhide class has been there since this edit three and a half years ago, by Edokter (talk · contribs); WT:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 143#Spacing of mixed numbers was contemporary. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:26, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
- @Redrose64: Thanks for the ping, but all I've done for the frac template is make the slash usable with screen readers in {{sfrac}}. I'm not sure I can help out any further. Graham87 07:44, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
- Because a) I wasn't sure the problem was with the template and not some other issue, and b) in my experience you get much better results discussing something like this at VPT than at a template talk page. Fram (talk) 07:46, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Expanding edit box

This might be the wrong place, but I can't find where else to ask, does anyone how to expand the edit box? It used to be as simple as going into Preferences -> Editing, but it's not there anymore, any help would be appreciated. YellowStahh (talk) 11:33, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@YellowStahh: You can expand it by dragging the box larger. The drag control may vary depending on your OS & browser, but try dragging the bottom-right corner out. Absolutely no warranty on this next bit, use at your own risk. It could cause you problems if it's ever set too large for the device you are using at the time. If you are not comfortable playing around with CSS stuff, it may not be for you. Try adding something like the following to your common.css, to set the default height:

body.action-edit #wpTextbox1 {
	height: 666px;
}

Murph9000 (talk) 11:48, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 153#Edit box size. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:52, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Awesome, that's great it looks so much better to view now, thanks very much. YellowStahh (talk) 11:55, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Edittools

I requested a change at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Protected edit request on 13 June 2017 to reflect recent changes at Help:IPA for English. However, each letter of ɑːr, ɔːr, ɔər, ɜːr has become a separate button as opposed to four buttons as intended. Anyone know how to fix this? Nardog (talk) 12:53, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Redirection correction software

Hello everybody,
I'm trying to correct some articles for redirection... So, when I see a link to a redirected article, I try to replace it with the final article (the one leading the redirect), so people know if they opened a page or not (for example, if A person wants to compare several different elements). The question is: Is there a WikiLabs application to allow this or another thing?
--Anas1712 (talk) 16:36, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

(Translated by Google Traduction)

@Anas1712: It's not entirely clear to me exactly what you want to do, or where you want to do it. Please do not indiscriminately "correct" any redirects on English Wikipedia, per WP:NOTBROKEN. They should only be changed if the link via a redirect goes to the wrong target, or there is actually some other error being corrected. If it's on some other wiki where that policy does not apply (and local policies prefer to change them), it could probably be done using pywikibot. Murph9000 (talk) 16:45, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: What I would do is the modifications that I did this morning and that you undo... It's possible that in other wikis, it's done (personnaly, I edit most in French wiki but there are more infos to read in English wiki). Thank you for saying me that it isn't correct.--Anas1712 (talk) 17:06, 23 June 2017 (UTC) (edit conflict)

P.S.: Is it here the right section to ask the question? Because English Pump is so difficult compare to French Bistrot.

@Anas1712: Other wikis often copy English Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, but each community determines their own policies and their local interpretation of any that they take from us. So, you'll need to check with the local community on each wiki to find out what they prefer. Note that operating a bot to make large scale changes would usually require a proposal, discussion, consensus, and approval (that is required on English WP). Yes, "Village pump (technical)" is usually a reasonable place to ask about tools, or one of the other VP pages if it's not technical / tools. I believe it's roughly equivalent to the French WP's Bistro pages. Murph9000 (talk) 17:19, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@Murph9000: Oh, on French Wikipedia, you ask to the main page of the bistro and after you get redirected, maybe it's that stupid french "habitude" of being lazy... (I'm Belgian). Here you must choose one section and after you post your message. That's why I don't go so much on the Pump --Anas1712 (talk) 17:28, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Another Recent Changes edit filter problem

I have "Mostly good edits" in green, "May be bad edits" in yellow, "Likely bad edits" in orange, and "Very likely bad edits" in red as my filter setup (I call it "Patrollers' choice" since I like to patrol the recent changes), but it doesn't highlight any of the edits (but it does highlight experienced users' edits in blue, and I didn't tick on either three of them) unless at least any one of the eight checkboxes are ticked. (yes, I'm talking about my setup for both Contribution quality and User intent prediction filters) If the problem is already being discussed at wherever my last discussion about a now-fixed bug was being talked about, you may feel free to move this discussion there too. -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 12:26, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit: I just went back to the Recent Changes thing, and the filter has [sic] highlit edits green, yellow, orange and red (with all eight boxes unchecked) again. -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 20:16, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata bot reversion of vandalism

On Wikidata, there is an insubstantial amount of obvious vandalism which goes unnoticed for ages, likely because there just aren't enough people to take care of it (I had to spend more than an hour and a half today putting new item descriptions from the last two weeks through Google Translate), and there aren't really any bots which revert vandalism for some reason. If you have any experience running a bot which reverts vandalism, or writing software which helps in the reversion of vandalism, it would be very nice if you could comment on the Wikidata project chat. Thanks, Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 16:22, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Nihongo cite template always co-printing with unusual typeset question mark

When using the Nihongo template for Japanese character typesetting, the text is always co-printed with a unusual question mark always superimposed in the article. See for example Tokyo Story. The infobox and especially the cast section are all co-printed with this unneeded question mark for Japanese characters that appear to be perfectly fine for the entire cast section. This occurs in nearly all Japanese films and does not appear sensible or useful. Can these superimposed question marks be dropped. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:27, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The small question mark after Japanese text marked with {{Nihongo}} like in "Shūkichi Hirayama (平山周吉, Hirayama Shukichi)" is a piped link to Help:Installing Japanese character sets. Some users will see placeholder symbols instead of the Japapanse text. The page cannot determine what users see and only display it to those who don't see the intended Japanese text. Use {{Nihongo4}} to omit it.[3] This is mentioned at Template:Nihongo#See also. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:13, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

That worked well. The Nihongo4 should be the default for the Nihongo family of templates since this affects the dozens and dozens of Cast sections for Japanese films that use this template. JohnWickTwo (talk) 14:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

{{Nihongo}} is used in 80330 pages so "dozens and dozens" don't amount to much. Most of the pages probably don't have a list of uses in the same section like a cast list. It seems sensible that the default is to include the link. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:08, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Seems to me there should be some sort of css/lua magic we could do so only the first instance of the help link on a given page displayed. —Cryptic 18:03, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I have serious questions about whether that question mark still makes any sense to begin with. Japanese and Simplified Chinese are probably the best supported 'non-standard' scripts out there. This was intended for the days of Windows XP and explorer 6, but you can't even connect to Wikipedia with that anymore, so maybe it's time to shelve those question marks ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:36, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Which reminded me that there was actually a discussion on that going on: Template_talk:Nihongo#Remove_the_question_mark.3F —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:46, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks for your comment. Some other editors have also commented on this situation with a linked discussion. I think your point about 80,000 pages would normally make sense, however, in practice the template gives the correct orthography 99 percent of the time. That means that, in approximate numbers, that for every 79,200 appearances out of 80,000 the question mark is not informative. Any chance that you could remove the question mark as the default based on the linked discussion. JohnWickTwo (talk) 15:35, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

It was removed two days ago.[4] If you still see it in a page then it either uses another template or can be fixed with a purge. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:59, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

That's good news. It looks like nihongo3 is still forcing the question marks into the text as in: Ran (film). JohnWickTwo (talk) 17:30, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposal for new requirement for AWB bots

I opened a discussion in Wikipedia_talk:Bot_policy#Should_bots_perform_multiple_edits_in_a_page.3F to raise the problem of multiple bots editing a single page and how we could optimise that using AWB bots to perform many tasks. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:59, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

For clarity, since the linked discussion is something of a mess: The current bot policy is to allow AWB bots to include "general fixes" as long as they are approved to do so via WP:BRFA and as long as they do not make edits that violate WP:COSMETICBOT. Magioladitis proposes requiring that all bots (or possibly just all AWB bots) perform "general fixes" even if the operator does not wish to do so. Anomie ⚔ 12:37, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Magioladitis has also proposed removing WP:COSMETICBOT entirely in an earlier section on that talk page, and has generally been agitating against WP:COSMETICBOT since it became an issue in his recent ArbCom case. Anomie ⚔ 12:37, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Also note that WP:COSMETICBOT changed after the linked ArbCom case whose decision was based on the old definition. Also there is now an open discussion of the correct term of low volum edits. ArbCom suggested that the community has to re-examine these things. During the discussions it was made clear that an inbalance is created since in many cases BAG members would allow secondary edits or minor tasks only in combination of a different task. Note that even the title "COSMETICBOT" is subjct to change after many comments that show that dos not reflect correctly what does this policy tries to express.-- Magioladitis (talk) 12:53, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Again for clarity: ArbCom considered that the then-ongoing discussion to revise WP:COSMETICBOT (that resulted in the change Magioladitis refers to) satisfied their recommendation that the community re-examine that part of policy. Anomie ⚔ 13:26, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any discussion about "the correct term of low volum [sic] edits", a link would be helpful. Anomie ⚔ 13:26, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Anomie For clarity everyone is free to read the ArbCom and see what was actually proposed and what was the conclusion of the discussion. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:36, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll point out to this old VPR thread" which concluded with pretty much the status quo. At the policy level, genfixes may be allowed, but they are not required. I don't understand what's so hard to get about this. This is getting to a pretty high level of WP:DEADHORSE/WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, and right now I'm wondering if a topic ban isn't required.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:50, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb you just reported the current status. I claim that this is not enough because this does not constitute a solution. How can I make clearer this for you? We have the following:

We want low volume fixes to happen as a general concept
We don't want.

Then we have the follow options:

Allow bots to make low volume edits
Disallow them.
Allow them only under circumstances.

Then we have the following problems:

People claiming that a if a bot arrives too often to a page it clogs the watchlist
People claiming that if a bot arrives only once and does everything the edit is difficult to check.

The last two things are contradicting each other. Second threat that I will get a topic ban for opening the discussion and this is before a start the RfC for the concept and this is before the Bot issue in general reaches the Wikipedia Startegy for the next 15 years. Why is that? Wikipedia has over 5,000,000 pages and how the bots will work in such a big site is a general issue. The current changes in a policy page show that.

-- Magioladitis (talk) 15:45, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb This discussion is not a repeat of a question I did some onths ago. Because we can for instance create a superbot to do all in once. Not just "secondary" edits. We could find a way to meerge all major bots and major tools. This was th direction I am working many years now. ow it's time to start the discusion in the community for creating the superbot. But this requires more steps to convience people and the commmunity about it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:48, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Do you have tangible, concrete evidence to back that any of these supposed problems are actually problems? You'll also have to define some of your terms here, because they're certainly not terms I've seen before on Wikipedia. What is a "low volume" fix or "edit"? How do BRFAs somehow fail to make it clear what bot are and are not allowed to do, and under which circumstances they can be done? And yes the last two things contradict each other. Sometimes it can be too warm, sometimes it can be too cold. This doesn't mean I need to choose between a house where I'm cranking up the heat when it's 30°C outside to make sure it's not too cold, or bringing out liquid nitrogen to cool my house when it's –30°C outside to make sure it's not too hot. There is a spectrum of possibilities, and where on the spectrum of "does as much as it can" to "only does one specific thing" a bot's ideal location is depends greatly on the bot's task. Also, I have no idea what that supposed "Wikipedia Strategy for the Next 15 Years" is, but it's certainly nothing I've seen proposed on Wikipedia.

And concerning a "superbot", it again depends on which tasks you want it to do. If you're thinking about making a general fix bot, or a general checkwiki bot, I can see those being supported by the community, provided they abide by WP:BOTPOL and WP:COSMETICBOT/WP:BOTCOMM in particular. This might mean taking on T161467 and T138977, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Check Wikipedia#Identifying cosmetic fixes, and conducting a similar review for AWB genfixes. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:56, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I prefer the term "low volume" than "cosmetic" which is also not defined. I am also still waiting evidence that bot edits hide vandalism. The ArbCom case endd and still nobody brought any statistics. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:11, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Two things. 1) Don't be surprised if no one can understand you. Cosmetic has a definition and is a term the Wikipedia community has used for ages, "low-volume" is something you made up. 2) no one cares if you are personally convinced this is an issue, and even if the watchlist bug is fixed, it does not invalidate the general idea behind the prohibition of cosmetic edits, since the hiding vandalism concern is only part of the rationale behind the prohibition, not the entire rationale for it. Vandalism isn't even mentioned in WP:COSMETICBOT. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:18, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

"Cosmetic" as definition limits itself to bots as far as I understand since it is only mentioned in the Bots' policy page. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:34, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Th same problem of "understanding" holds for others and not only for me since here is a page for general discussion and your comment is far too technical I think. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

RexxS, this "Wikipedia Startegy for the next 15 years", is that what we were talking about in the pub on 21 May 2017? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Yes: meta:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017 and the associated pages. --RexxS (talk) 23:01, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

This is an obvious non-starter, we don't do "requirements" (as far as forcing people to make certain types of edits), and forcing AWB bot operators (who generally fall on the less experienced side) to add tasks outside their expertise is going to cause more problems than it solves. –xeno^talk 17:44, 20 June 2017 (UTC)
Comment: I am probably one of the most prolific AWB users on Wikipedia - at least half a million of my edits were made using this tool. I have used AWB for everything from simple typo correction to creating entire series of new articles, but the primary use to which I have put it is disambiguation link fixing. When so doing, it is important to be able to clearly and concisely see, as the editor, all fixes being made with each edit. When a substantial number of cosmetic fixes are included in such a fix, the disambiguation fix can be obscured. This is particularly the case where the cosmetic changes causes a paragraph to shift up, and the entire paragraph is highlighted as changed, obscuring changes within its text. I would note, however, that this can be fixed by improvements to AWB that highlight the noncosmetic changes in some manner that is different from the cosmetic changes. bd2412 T 19:12, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

These comments are really good because they show that clarity of edits is more important than watchlists. -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:03, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

The clarity of edits is ONE aspect, to be balanced against other aspects. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:45, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is important to balance all effects. If watchlist load is a concern, then we must also consider the effect of having to edit the same article multiple times to correct an error that was missed because it was obscured by the volume of automated changes being made to a page. bd2412 T 21:05, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Oppose per my comments at the original discussion from just this week as well as shake my head a bit at the forum shopping. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 00:45, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

What do you oppose exactly? I did not make any concrete proposal yet. I started a discussion before coming with a proposal based on opinions. As you see I presented the various pathways the community could take. Please stop jumping into conclusions and discouraging people from participicating in Wikipedia. -- Magioladitis (talk) 07:40, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Your thread here is titled "proposal...", and you have stated in the linked discussion " I ask to require bot owners to do more in a signle edit the same way it is required(?) for some valid edits to be done only in addition to other edits."[5]. This seems concrete enough and rather clear about "which" pathway you want the community to take. It is rather disingenious to now state that you have not made a proposal... Fram (talk) 08:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The proposal is not here about the bot. It is about the policy. First we have to examine the policy and then create the bot. So in this page we are now I made no proposal. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:11, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are replying to here. Of course your proposal is about the policy, and all comments and opposes are about your propsal to change the policy. "Create the bot" is not even on the table. It is very hard discussing things with you when what you mean is often completely different to what most other people read in your comments. Fram (talk) 08:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Fram I aam not in favour or against any pathway. I am OK either way as long as ALL the edits are done. If the community for clearness needs the bot to visit the page multiple times I 'll go this direction. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:14, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

The community seems quite happy with how most bots and operators work, and with the frequency of bot updates to most pages. Some tasks can easily be combined, some tasks should be kept separate for clarity. Bot requests usually deal with this kind of thing, and discussion with bot owners if things get messy or complicated. Only one editor seems to have a real problem with this. So perhaps you should first have a discussion to see if people really see the same problem as you do, and only then try to find solutions? Fram (talk) 08:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe we should think about this idea from a different perspective for a moment.

I think that, overall, the core community tolerates AWB and bot editors, but does not love them. They're useful, but we're also annoyed by them sometimes, even when we agree that the specific changes are ideal. For example, everyone loves having refs properly filled in, but nobody really loves reading the resulting lengthy diff, especially if these fixes are mixed with a dozen content and/or vandalism edits.

But here's a question: Since these edits are already annoying us, are there any advantages to getting all of the annoyance over with all at once? Or at least getting some slightly more important genfixes (not all of which are cosmetic) over with at the same time? Think of it as sort of a "tax" on using AWB: if you're using AWB to change <ref>Example</ref>. to .<ref>Example</ref>, then maybe you should also have to let AWB remove pointless <ref /> tags at the same time. This is a good edit, even if the diff is long, but what makes me happiest about it is that it fixed two kinds of problems in the same edit – the reference formatting plus a genfix. This means that (a) the page is better now than it was before, especially from the POV of any readers who had previously seen "800" at the end of the line and "mg/day" at the start of the next line, and (b) nobody's going to have to make those genfixes later, which means one fewer diff for the rest of us to look through.

I don't want all of the genfixes done in every edit, but is there any good reason against having all AWB automatically always do a few of them? We'd have to talk about which ones, but why not pick a few that have low potential for problems (here, I am thinking of BD2412's comments about being able to read the diffs, but we would also want to consider the probability of a particular genfix not being wanted in any given edit) and are relatively important for editors and readers (e.g., adding non-breaking spaces)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing Yes, this is avery good idea. We should find the golden ratio between readbility of diffs and not making a lot of edits in a single page. Very nice comment. Really appreciated. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:38, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: The negative is that I (and many others) who don't like running someone else's buggy code will just stop using AWB and developing bots with it. There are currently zero requirements to do anything on Wikipedia. Editors help out how and where they'd like to. If a requirement is added here, AWB will just see lower use. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:47, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

BU Rob13 No need to run the "buggy(???) parts". You can stick in the OK parts of choose which oart you can understand to run. It can even be a combination of two useful tasks you do. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:55, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Me, Bgwhite and other we wer co-writing code and we had no problem running "someone else's buggy code" because we were reporting bugs and ficing them in regular basis. We were removing tasks that were controversial and adding new tasks that were useful. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:00, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

There is some confusion here. Is the proposal to require operators to do something, or to let them choose what they want (which is the current situation)? If it is required, it can't be chosen. If it can be chosen, then it isn't required. So what is the precise proposal - to require something, or not? — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:58, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Rob, is all the code for genfixes buggy? Or is only some of it buggy, and we could pick only a fraction of the non-buggy parts? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: My concern isn't about specific bugs, although I've seen many and often been met with little urgency when they've been pointed out. The problem is that I don't want to be responsible for someone else's code that I cannot change or fix. When I make any edit on Wikipedia (manual, semi-auto, auto), I take responsibility for that edit. I can be sanctioned based on its contents if it violates policy, such as WP:COSMETICBOT, which has been a major issue with genfixes for quite a while. If AWB screws up and makes a genfixes-only edit when it shouldn't (this is an actual bug that existed in the past, don't know if it was fixed), that's a violation I'm responsible for, even though I have no control over that code. Do you see how that seriously puts off editors from using AWB? Further, it makes it much harder for me to test a bot task or semi-auto task because I have to wade through horrendous diffs with multiple fixes. I don't want to do that nor do I have the time to do that when I'm reviewing a 1,000 edit trial, either as a bot operator or as a BAG member, so I just wouldn't. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

CBM if you read carefully the entire discussion I am exploring the various alternatives we have based on comments like yours and others. I try to initiate a discussion that at the end of the day we will all be happy. I am not coming with ready answers and I don't claim the ultimate truth. I proposed various perspectives and possibilities. Maybe my title is not the best one but it was suppose to only link to a different place at the beginning. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:03, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Btw, this is a very good edit. Minor issues fixed in a single edit. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:05, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I did read the entire discussion - the title is Proposal for new requirement for AWB bots. What is the requirement you are proposing? Whenever someone asks what the requirement, you seem to indicate there is no requirement. As for my edit, it was not done by a bot, nor by AWB, which removes two significant issues. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:10, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

"Required" on Wikipedia is more of a continuum than a binary state, for anything except the spam blacklist (which is enforced in software). I expect that if we "required" AWB users to do some fixes, then the rule would change from something like "this huge set of genfixes strictly optional, and you have to get permission in advance via BRFA to use it" to "this small subset of genfixes is strongly encouraged, so if you don't want to do it, then your BRFA application should explain why you don't want to". I don't think that we would actually prohibit people from using AWB if they had a halfway-plausible reason for kicking that can down the road (to the next bot or AWB user). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

And if they just silently disable to genfixes in AWB without mentioning it? Your proposal was for "AWB automatically always" to do them, which sounds different from what you just wrote. I think it will be better to leave this discussion for a while until a concrete recommendation is actually made, and the goalposts stop moving with each comment. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:52, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I think it's important to try out all the different sizes, shapes, and locations of goalposts in a discussion like this, so that we can find the best arrangement.

If you explicitly agreed (i.e., at BRFA) that you would do an AWB task with Genfixes #392b (or whatever) turned on, and someone noticed that you didn't (and cared enough to mention it), then I think that we'd probably talk about why you did that. Is the script buggy? Did you have problems with it? I imagine that deliberate dishonesty (e.g., "Sure, I said I'd do that, but I never actually intended to do it. I just thought I'd be more likely to get approval if I agreed to help with this") would result in loss of authorization. But I really doubt that would happen. It's been my experience that editors here are very honest. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:32, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: To be clear, there is currently zero functionality in AWB to run some genfixes but not others. There exists a module that you can install and manually edit to run only some of the genfixes, but that's not a function in the software (it requires external code), and it's not something I would expect most AWB operators to know how to edit/run. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:18, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Sure, genfixes is a package deal at the moment, but (a) some people have already figured out how to run only some of them, and (b) if this were a desirable direction, then presumably that could be changed. Perhaps AWB users would be given an option in the software that would allow them to choose between "run all the genfixes" or "run only the five genfixes that AWB users have determined are the most important and the least likely to make messy diffs". At the moment, there's no point in creating that code, but if it were wanted, then I think it would be possible to do it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: There's definitely a point in creating that code. I've been asking for it for over a year, I believe. If I could check "off" the whitespace edits, bypassing redirects, etc. and only do substantive fixes (major layout issues on pages, fixing broken links, etc.), I would use that frequently. I don't use genfixes now because there are many largely-useless changes in there that make it impossible to run while thoroughly reviewing the diffs at a decent speed in a semi-auto setting. In the past, the response I've received is that this functionality is not desirable because we "should" run all the genfixes, not just some. There has been push-back from the side that wants these edits because allowing editors to run just the useful changes would possibly lower the amount of editors running the ones many consider of negligible benefit. Of course, note that this is all relevant to the semi-auto situation, not auto, where we still have the "not my code, but I'm responsible" problem. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 18:14, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Is there any way of adding a reference to every paragraph in an article automajically?

Hi all

I'm working with a new editor who has created a lot of new articles but has unfortunatley forgotten to add inline citations. Is there a way (maybe using AWB?) to quickly add a reference to the end of every paragraph of an article? It would be a different reference for every article.

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 15:06, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

No. How would AWB (or any other tool) know which references you want to append? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:35, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

I guess in essence what I want to do is the create a reference, reuse it and then repeat that reuse at the end of every paragraph. Can AWB recognise the end of a paragraph? --John Cummings (talk) 20:10, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

John Cummings How many paragraphs are you talking about? It only takes a couple of seconds to reuse a citation — I would think using AWB would be overkill unless there are dozens of paragraphs not worth the time.--S Philbrick (Talk) 20:32, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

You can just use named references for that.

Paragraph 1.<ref name=REF1>Reference 1</ref>

Paragraph 2.<ref name=REF1/>

Paragraph 3.<ref name=REF1/>

will give

Paragraph 1.^[1]

Paragraph 2.^[1]

Paragraph 3.^[1]

^ ^a ^b ^c Reference 1

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:52, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Headbomb, I think what I'm looking for is an automated way of adding <ref name=REF1/> at the end of every paragraph once I've done the first one. --John Cummings (talk) 15:24, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't exist. But there is CTRL+C / CTRL+V / copy paste. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:35, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

You could download the page source using https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=<page>&action=raw, and open that source in more powerful editors, or process it by any tool, like sed. The issue is mostly to copy the results back into the browser's source editor if the article is large. Bots mostly function this way, they get the source, obtain an edit token via the API, to then HTTP POST the new article/section version directly. What would be nice would be to be able to send the edited source back via POST+preview-mode (assuming the edit token and session are known to this out-of-browser tool) in a special mode that would return a temporary GET url to open in a browser tab and obtain the browser preview mode... I think that the current API does not allow this, necessitating browser plugins and/or JS gadgets to bridge between the browser and external tools for human-assisted edits that should return to the in-browser preview/submit mode... —Paleo Neonate - 19:18, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

But I'm not sure that what you want to do would result in good referencing. Do you mean that each article is only referenced by a single source and a single page of that source? If so, will not the result be lacking sources and/or precision anyway? —Paleo Neonate - 19:31, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Website link appearing in the infobox without being in the coding.

A link to a czech website appeared in the infobox of Mayday (Canadian TV series), presented as the show's official website. However the link isn't actually present in the article's source code. I have been able to successfully hide it through adding a blank website field to the infobox. However the link is still present somewhere. It reappears once you remove the website field. It should be removed altogether as it is by no means the official website and links should not appear like that. Trouble is I don't know where it actually is situated in the coding. I'm reporting it here because I think this might constitute a safety issue.T v x1 18:43, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

@Tvx1: d:Q527965 is the place you need to fix. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:50, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Right, the general answer is that some infoboxes and other templates pull information from Wikidata. Click "Wikidata item" under "Tools" in the left pane of the desktop version of the article. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:41, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for that. I see Izno has beaten me to it.T v x1 20:37, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. --Izno (talk) 21:17, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

The Czech website was imported from the Czech Wikipedia by a bot.[6][7] That sounds like a recipe for inappropriate links. I don't know whether Wikidata bots still do this. It's still listed in the Czech Wikipedia and sounds sensible there but not in Wikidata when the subject is not Czech. Wikidata correctly says "country of origin: Canada". PrimeHunter (talk) 21:55, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Truncated math expressions on Edge

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T168863

screenshot of truncated mathematical expression.

For example Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC).

I just noticed this earlier, in the caption of the first image in the Amplitude article. I've opened phab:T168863. — This, that and the other (talk) 13:43, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-26

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

Recent changes

The <inputbox> has a new searchfilter parameter. You can add values like searchfilter=insource:foo. It will add that to the user's search query. [8]

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 June. It will be on all wikis from 29 June (calendar).
Users will be able to choose whether they want to see Wikidata changes in enhanced watchlist/recent changes. Previously, this was disabled for everyone. [9]

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
You can join the next WMF Language team office hour, an open session to talk about Wikimedia Language projects. The meeting will be on 27 June at 13:00 UTC. [10]

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

15:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Search results from sister projects...

Resolved

– See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Disable/opt-out option needed for sister projects search results. --George Ho (talk) 16:09, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Is there any way to disable or opt-out of the sister project search results? For instance, I put in "Talk:Orlando shooting" wanting to see how something was technically set-up on that page and found what I needed "Talk:2016 Orlando nightclub shooting" along with other Wikipedia articles listed on the left. I also got results from sister projects over on the right side which consisted of:
Talk:Keira Knightley
girls off-cam, and they were ready to kill me because I kissed Orlando Bloom! On shooting a scene in Pirates of the Caribbean. The fact that we haven't
Quotes from Wikiquote
Talk:As You Like It
As you Like it. Actus primus, Scæna prima. Enter Orlando and Adam. Orlando. As I remember Adam, it was vpon this fashion bequeathed me
From Wikisource

I'd really like to be able to opt-out if possible. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 03:45, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to opt out, too, and not via custom css, but a simple checkbox on the prefs page. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 07:27, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Yep, I'd like to opt out as well. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:01, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

For those curious, see how search results from sister projects were discussed at WP:VPP. Such results went live as seen via mailing list. This isn't a technical problem but more of a complaint. BTW, I started a thread seen at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 55#Search results from selected sister projects now active. You can propose enabling/disabling search results from those projects at WP:village pump (proposal) if you can. George Ho (talk) 20:54, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Also, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 154#Sister projects search results. --George Ho (talk) 21:07, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: Not sure what your point is with the "...if you can" above there but ok. I went ahead and posted at proposal, probably worded it incorrectly or something but it would be nice to have an opt-out for this feature. That's all. Shearonink (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:00, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Another thread is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Disable/opt-out option needed for sister projects search results. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:55, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Just write a gadget —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:41, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

If anyone is interested, here's the code for disabling the 'sister-site-search':

#mw-interwiki-results { display: none !important } or div#mw-interwiki-results { display: none !important }<-Post on your common.css page. This fix was kindly posted at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) by Nemo. (I still wish that this had been an opt-in checkmark-feature.) Shearonink (talk) 18:29, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Here's a quick snippet you can add to your common.js to make it collapsible and collapsed by default:

	if ( mw.config.get( 'wgCanonicalSpecialPageName' ) === 'Search' ) {
		$.when(
			mw.loader.using( 'jquery.makeCollapsible' ),
			$.ready
		).done( function () {
			var $mwInterwikiResults = $( '#mw-interwiki-results' );
			
			$mwInterwikiResults.addClass( 'mw-collapsible mw-collapsed' )
				.find( '.iw-results' ).addClass( 'mw-collapsible-content' );
			$mwInterwikiResults.makeCollapsible();
		} );
	}

Murph9000 (talk) 19:15, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Update: Per discussion, the gadget option is now available "Do not show search results for sister projects on the search results page" via user preferences. Clicking that option and saving the changes will disable the results via user account. --George Ho (talk) 16:09, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Requesting suppression on search result from Wikibooks

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T168697

Wikibooks was included, yet I slowly realized that there was no consensus per RfC discussion to include search results from Wikibooks in English Wikipedia. The developers included it without double-checking it. Therefore, I filed a task at Phabricator. --George Ho (talk) 00:54, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Pinging TheDJ and Murph9000 about this. --George Ho (talk) 02:57, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

I support user choice in terms of being able to configure what is shown. There probably should be options added to preferences to control it. As long as there isn't a serious negative from it (I don't see one), and the presentation does not risk confusion about what is a local result vs. extended result (seems clear enough to me), I'm not significantly concerned about WMF using it to promote all projects (even when that does not align with the RfC closure). Murph9000 (talk) 08:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi, when I wrote the follow-up to the RfC and the actions we'd be taking, I also explained why we decided to include Wikibooks in the sister project snippets display on enwiki in a comment to that posting. I've also replied on your phab ticket with the same information. Thanks, DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Hey, Deb. I replied at Phabricator. BTW, I can quote what is said below from the RfC discussion:

Wikibooks--Strong consensus to oppose.Almost every work is seemingly incomplete.A garble of poorly thought out info at best!

--George Ho (talk) 14:45, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Update: Another proposal to include Wikibooks as part of cross-wiki search results is made at WP:VPP. --George Ho (talk) 22:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Small audio icon player

In the page voy:it:Inglese#Vocali I 'd like to substitute the current icon with a player that once clicked will not force the page change.

Thanks to User:DePiep has been found this solution:

Unfortunately it doesn't work on mobile view.

There's a way to show it on both view?
There's a way to show a different icon/symbol?

As a potential fix for the first point we have tried:

mobile:
desktop:

but since nomobile class works and nodesktop/mobileonly don't, it's not a complete solution.

Any idea? --Andyrom75 (talk) 15:57, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

My recap: this template allows playing an audio sound without opening an other window. However, that same elementary setup shown in mobile does not show any working button. This question is proposing to use two buttons, one with class="nomobile" and the other class effective as class="nodesktop" (i.e. the exact opposite). If there is such a class, what is it s name? -DePiep (talk) 19:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit, Fixed wrong classname, should be "nomobile". -DePiep (talk) 19:49, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Category:Pages with template loops

I'm not sure why Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mississippi is in this category.

(Most of the members are user pages incorrectly implementing {{Statustop}} of similar.)

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:53, 26 June 2017 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: After a lot of guessing, fixed with Special:Diff/787652794 - the project banner was trying to display the "to do" subpage, and the "to do" subpage had been tagged with a project banner. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:07, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Good catch! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:34, 26 June 2017 (UTC).

The question is, why was a project banner put on the to-do page? It's intended for a list of thinks that need doing. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:50, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Template:Infobox chemical element on mobile

Why chemical element infoboxes display unfloated to the right but span whole page width on mobile view? Example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hydrogen&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile.

I guess {{Infobox element/periodic table}} is what should be corrected (there we have width:100%;).

Also, infobox title loads with black background and dark grey text so it is unreadable (in some other infoboxes this happens too; color flashes are sometimes present too).

--5.43.78.13 (talk) 18:53, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Indeed the 'micro' periodic table in there is too wide (for an other reason than you mention). Already a current discussion here at WT:ELEMENTS on this. (Warning: an other discussion there is making that page nearing 600k size). -DePiep (talk) 19:34, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

That discussion is on removing or keeping navigation, what should not be replacement (excuse) for (not) fixing width problem; I want to say that width problem can be fixed also without removing navigation.

What do you think causes infobox to span whole page width if it's not width:100%; in {{Infobox element/periodic table}}? --5.43.78.13 (talk) 20:30, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

In this specific case, it's mostly that table cells inside infoboxes have a default padding of 7px when viewed on the mobile skin, and the template does not account for this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:41, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Fixed —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:44, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

re IP: it does, further down.

re TheDJ: thx. -DePiep (talk) 23:42, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Query at Template talk:Quote box

If anyone has any advice on how to set two separate quotes and their respective source/credit, stacked in a single quote box, it would be much appreciated. Please weigh in at Template talk:Quote box#Setting two short quotes in the one quote box. Thanks, JG66 (talk) 03:58, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Transclusion with multiple labelled exclusions

Hi

I'm trying to transclude a page but exclude multiple small sections, I'm looking at Help:Labeled_section_transclusion and Wikipedia:Transclusion and it is possible to transclude a page whilst removing a labelled section but I want to exclude multiple labelled sections, is this possible? Basically I want something like {{#section-x:fullpagename|label1 + label2+ label3 }}

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 13:30, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Big Blue Button to start breaking scripts next week

Hello, all,

Although this doesn't affect enwiki – yet – mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons is being deployed to Meta plus several of the largest Wikipedias next Wednesday, 5 July 2017.

As the regular denizens of this page already know, the WMF has been slowly addressing some sitewide technical debt and improving accessibility for readers. This is going to be yet another case in which some older scripts need to be updated.

The general plan looks like this (subject to delay, but no sooner than this):

Deployment to fawiki, plwiki, and mw.org – Done
Deployment to Meta and five large Wikipedias: French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Italian – Pending next Wednesday
Deployment to all Wikipedias (including the English and German Wikipedias) – two weeks later
Deployment everywhere – two weeks after that
Deployment to Commons – at least two weeks after that (after Wikimania)

The reason for the split deployment is to spread out the demand for script maintainers' time.

During the deployment, I believe that whether the script works depends upon where you're editing (not where the script is located). So, for example, if you have added a script that "lives" here at the English Wikipedia to your common.js file at the French Wikipedia (and if that script needs to be updated), then that script will work when you're editing here but not if you're editing there. And two weeks later, it won't work here either, but it would still work if you were editing at, e.g., Wikibooks or Commons. Bottom line: If your script is used on Meta or at those five large Wikipedias, may be reported as broken for all of those editors next Wednesday, even if it looks like it's working fine for you (here).

I believe that this will only affect a relatively small number scripts, but the affected scripts will stop working entirely. If you maintain a script, or if you know how to make (mostly simple) changes to user scripts and gadgets, then please check the scripts that you use now. You can find the (easy!) instructions for testing scripts at mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons, and there are diffs of how many scripts have already been fixed, so you can probably find a similar script and just copy the changes over.

Please share this information with other wikis, especially wikis with relatively few technical resources. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

transcluding page heading that uses translate tags

Hi all

I'm trying to transclude section of a page for a project I'm working on (the page is on Meta here) however I'm running into to some problems:

The transclusion is not able to see the section headings, I think this is being caused by the fact the headings have translate tags around them.
I also have a problem where if I transclude the entire page I get all the translate tags visible.

Any ideas of how to fix these problems?

Thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 12:08, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@John Cummings: I can usually fix problems like this, by simply replacing {{... with {{TNT|.... See m:Template:TNT for docs. (Imagining Wily Coyote holding a stick of TNT, is optional. ;)

If that doesn't solve it, then it might help if you give us the other link in your example, i.e. where you are trying to transclude it to. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Quiddity (WMF). --John Cummings (talk) 14:37, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Mobile icons (Read in another language etc.) aligned over title

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T169126

Icons for "Read in another language", "Watch this page" and "Edit the lead section of this page." in IE are not aligned right but overlap with title.

Also, button for adding to watchlist might be removed for IP users and "Edit the lead section of this page." does not need dot (for consistency) and might be removed or changed if page is protected. --5.43.78.13 (talk) 04:18, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Which version of IE? Old IE is hopelessly broken for CSS & JS support, i.e. it does not properly implement fundamental web standards. Is this on the mobile version of the site, or the desktop version viewed on a mobile device? The final version of IE wasn't quite so bad, I believe, but you might get a better overall web experience by using a more standards-compliant browser. Murph9000 (talk) 04:25, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't usually use IE but check how is content displayed there. It is latest version, 11.0.9600.18665; it automatically updates relatively often. It is on mobile view on PC, not the desktop version on a mobile device. You can see screenshot and look maybe into this problem too. --5.43.78.13 (talk) 06:53, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

task created. Thanks! Jdlrobson (talk) 18:40, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Bot talk page ignores talk

Closing per WP:FORUMSHOP. DePiep came here asking a technical question about a bot talk page. That technical question was answered. The other questions regarding the bot were requested (to avoid decentralized discussion) at BOTN, which it has been. Please feel free to join in the conversation at that board. Primefac (talk) 23:22, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Resolved
– Not a technical issue. Primefac (talk) 23:06, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

User:InternetArchiveBot is a bot. Responding to an edit of it, I posted on their talkpage this. After "saving", my post did not show?! I had to do research, to discover that the (regular looking) page said like: "Please do not edit this page. Messages left here will likely go unnoticed.". In other words: the bot is deaf. (to be clear: talkpage instructions are not defining. For example: we have Redirects). Why is this bot allowed to operate like this? -DePiep (talk) 20:40, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

As far as the "technical issues" of this goes - your edit is inside of an unclosed div earlier on the page, nothing is technically wrong. For your "concept" concerns, will follow up on your post at WP:BON. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:51, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually: No. I opened a "New section" on a regular Talkpage, and it was flushed. I did not ask for technical explanation as if I did something wrong. (And it was ME who opened that post on WP:BON. manually). -DePiep (talk) 21:03, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes I replied to your post at BON, please see that page to discuss bot operations, policy, guidelines, etc - it is a better audience. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:07, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

All fine, if we agree here it is not a technical but a bot-&-talkpage issue. Continued at WP:BON. -DePiep (talk) 21:33, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Not resolved at all. Over at WP:BON, I am being harassed for not understanding the problems my edit has (or something liker that). Hell, WP:BON is just as bad as WP:ANI: local friends blasting any outsider. -DePiep (talk) 23:18, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist.js

I have the above script installed, but can't seem to access its functions. Nothing changes as far as I can tell on any of the interfaces I use - I also use WP:POPUPS but nothing seems to change there either. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 10:15, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Zeke, did it ever work for you? When did it stop working? Do you see any warnings or errors in your JS console (ignore various CSS warnings which are most likely from hacks to support badly implemented Microsoft code in old versions of IE)? Murph9000 (talk) 10:20, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

It has never worked for me that I can tell. I certainly have never been able to use it. Using my console's search feature I can find no reference to this script. It has loads upon loads of warnings, though, all for "deprecated" parts of webpages or something and displaying CSS warnings has been disabled. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 10:28, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Zeke, it looks like User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty "left the building" in February 2014. So, I'd guess the script just isn't compatible with changes made to MW or WP since then. The script on ES-WP has not been updated since then. I suggest removing it from your config, and using a more current tool. Murph9000 (talk) 11:13, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Might as well. I'm also going to put a note at Wikipedia:User scripts/List next to this one if that's okay. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 11:14, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

@Zeke, the Mad Horrorist and Murph9000: I've just used the script to disambiguate a bunch of pages, and it seems to be working fine to me. Go to a disambiguation page, then click on the "Disambiguate links" option in the actions menu (the "More" dropdown menu on the top-right if you're using the Vector skin). Then you should see a big blue box appear underneath the page title. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:02, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: Thank you so much! That brings me much closer to understanding how to use this script properly. Perhaps when I'm done here I can write some documentation for it. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 04:22, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Alright, I just did something with this script (finally). I don't know how it chooses among what links to a disambig page since it doesn't bring up all the relevant links but I finally did something with the script here. Many thanks for your help. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 04:24, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

For three disambig pages I accidentally created unneeded "X (disambiguation)" redirects, all of which I've put up for WP:G7 speedy deletion. I don't know how the script is making me do that, but in all three cases the script found nothing to disambiguate, yet I've visited several pages now that had no incoming links worth disambiguating and I did not leave such needless redirects behind. Perhaps I clicked a wrong button somewhere... Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 04:38, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@Zeke, the Mad Horrorist: You mean $1000 (disambiguation), 2K16 (disambiguation) and 2K14 (disambiguation)? There was nothing wrong with creating those - indeed, WP:INTDAB encourages it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:27, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

I simply made them in error and found them unlikely to be useful. I'm not opposed to having them, ~~but I won't revive them myself~~ (EDIT: On the other hand, I might as well, if someone is going to anyway - as the link you provided says that's the practice nowadays). I'm also not keen on repeating those mistakes especially if they're truly unwanted, so I have to figure out what about the script made that happen - as well as what else it can do that might cross the wrong lines. The three pages to which these links redirected were among those I experimented using the script on. They were the only ones where this happened. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 09:38, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

New problem

It mostly works fine for me now, except that I can't seem to get the "Different link" function to work. I often use it to link to specific sections of disambig pages where applicable, but at least sometimes it doesn't seem to result in an edit that registers. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 05:47, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

GA nomination has been assessed but article's Talk page does not update

The nomination to Carroll Baker has been assessed but the Talk page updates have not taken place in order to update status and to notify the nominator here: [11]. Could someone look at this? JohnWickTwo (talk) 02:45, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

It looks OK to me. Maybe the page just needed a purge. If you still see a problem then please be specific about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:29, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Normally Legobot sends a notification to the nominator of the article once the assessment is started as it was here:[12]. In this case no notification was sent to the nominator and then I added a manual ping in order to try to let the nominator know that the assessment started. Legobot did not send the notification to the nominator since yesterday and I cannot see why it failed, possibly its related to the article going through three cycles of nominations. JohnWickTwo (talk) 13:18, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

A missing Legobot edit sounds like a question for the operator. Your attempted ping [13] probably failed the first bullet at mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Problems with Legobot are more extensive. Yesterday, Carroll Baker was promoted but Legobot recorded it as a fail. It also did not update the article page with the GA emblem. I placed a notice on the operator page for Legobot, but no answer. How does one fix these notification and update issues which Legobot previously took care of and are now not being done. JohnWickTwo (talk) 13:34, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

GeoHack page broken with "502 Bad Gateway"

Clicking on this should show dozens of mapping service links or information for an airport (PDX), but instead shows

   502 Bad Gateway
    nginx/1.11.3

The situation has persisted for at least 20 minutes. It does not appear to be related to the location; I tried it for several cities.

Is notification here enough or should I ping someone somewhere else? —EncMstr (talk) 21:30, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Already pinged geohack's lead Dispenser on his talk page. I agree with you, it appears to not be working at the moment. К Ф Ƽ Ħ Speak 22:52, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

[Labs-l] Mild but long-running Tools outage in process. GeoHack seems to be working again. — Dispenser 23:15, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

This explains a lot, I think. I also got a 502 Bad Gateway on other pages today; can't remember what, and I've started to just try a second, third, and how many times it takes to get to where I was going. However, editing has been a pain. It's about a 90% chance that if I open an edit window, the tool bar isn't there, no highlighting is in place, the little drop down box for wiki markup isn't there. So, I just keep hitting "Preview" until it all reappears. Takes about three or four Previews to get there, sometimes. But that's how it's been most of today. I've tried other browsers, so it's not my browser. It's just been a funky day for editing. — Maile (talk) 00:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

jQuery changes will break scripts next month

This is the lastest note from Krinkle about a months-long project. Some scripts need to be updated, or they will break. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T124742

TL;DR: In April 2017, the jQuery library in MediaWiki was upgraded from 1.x to 3.x (the current stable version), with the jQuery Migrate plugin enabled to ease migration. We temporarily still load jQuery 1.x on Wikimedia wikis. Read about the API changes at https://jquery.com/upgrade-guide/3.0/

Upgrade guide

An overview of the important changes is available at: https://jquery.com/upgrade-guide/3.0/

This page also contains advice on how to migrate your code. In most cases it involves fairly simple changes, such as using a different method name, or adding quotes in selectors.

The vast majority of the added requirements and removed methods are restored through the jQuery Migrate plugin with a deprecation warning in the console. As such, it's unlikely your code will require any immediate changes.

If you do find a deprecation warning in the console, you can use the warning documentation to find out more: https://github.com/jquery/jquery-migrate/blob/e967c3b98b/warnings.md

Once jQuery 3 is in Wikimedia production (with jQuery Migrate) it will be easy to find uses of deprecated methods with the deprecation warnings. However, you don't need to wait for August to start migrating. The methods removed in jQuery 3 have been deprecated for a while already, and their replacements are already available in jQuery 1.x in production, today.

Timeline

April 2017: jQuery 3 lands in MediaWiki core master with jQuery Migrate plugin.
April to July 2017: Testing and fixing of issues arising from the switch.
July 2017: jQuery 3 enabled in Wikimedia's Beta Cluster. [1]
August 2017: jQuery 3 enabled on Wikimedia wikis in production.

jQuery 3 will also be released as part of MediaWiki 1.30.0 (expected in November 2017). [2]

As part of MediaWiki 1.30, inclusion of jQuery Migrate will made configurable so that sites that have already migrated may disable the plugin for better run-time performance.

Track progress at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124742

-- Krinkle

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_Cluster

[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.30

17:56, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Hide AWB edits in Special:Contributions?

What do you think of addng a feature to hide AWB edits in Special:Contributions the same way we have for bot edits? WP:HIDEAWB provides this but some editors do not feel comfortable by adding a script to their preferences. AWB is probably the most popular automated tool responisible for many cleanup edits. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:23, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

From a recent changes technical perspective there is no such thing as an "AWB edit", unlike bot edits where the bot assertion is part of data, edits made with AWB are just normal edits. Perhaps a "reverse tag" filter, combined with having the AWB software changed to assert a tag would be possible? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:31, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Most AWB edits are worth looking over in watchlists. The problem is mass changes that provide no value, not watchlist behavior. The people who have complained about watchlists have stated the low-value AWB edits are hiding potentially significant past changes as well as potentially significant AWB changes, which would not be fixed by hiding AWB edits. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:48, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

It can be user's preference the same way bot edits are done. Lol. It's about user's freedom to choose if they like to see certain edits or not. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:54, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Xaosflux we could encourage MW Devs to sort this out. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

For devs to do filter on something, the something must be identified. This would require AWB devs to somehow assert that an edit was made with that software - tags are just one possible way. As far as non-technical reasons, not sure why people would want to hide edits based on the client application that was used to make them. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:07, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Xaosflux per dicussions, t turns many AWB edits are considered both trusted and "trivial". So many patrollers may would like to avoid them. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:09, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Xaosflux The alternative "approach" so far only states that "there is no actual problem. Just don't edit that lot with AWB". We have a record of editors using AWB in large scales. So, the alternative "approach" just ignores reality. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:18, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I like the idea of tagging edits by AWB and similar tools. Please let me know if you need any WMF devs poked to make this happen. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

If there's a will to tag AWB edits, it could be done via a relatively expensive filter. We could check all extendedconfirmed (and non-bot) editors' edits (assuming that no-one below that level would have AWB access) and have a filter tag everything with "using AWB" in the edit summary. Checking every extendedconfirmed edit summary for a string would take some server resources, but it could easily be done. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 18:28, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see a reason to deny users the option of hiding such edits (e.g. make WP:HIDEAWB something that can be done in user preferences), if they so choose. However I want to be clear that unlike approved bots, we absolutely cannot approach AWB disputes with a "if someone pollutes your watchlist with crap, just hide it" mentality, because a) AWB edits haven't been community-vetted b) even if there is a core of edits that are vetted, running custom scripts, and performing further manual cleanup is common with AWB.

The priority on giving such customization to hide AWB edits in the user preferences is pretty low however. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@BU Rob13: I'm not referencing the AbuseFilter (that would be too expensive) - but to have the AWB client apply a client-asserted tag, and have the software allow filtering to show edits containing (or NOT containing) certain tags. This is not a "trivial" solution. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:39, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that would be the better implementation and require WMF support, likely. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 18:42, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure bots as well as extensions (since IABot does it) can use the tagging system. --Izno (talk) 18:47, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: It's the filtering watchlists by tags that we'd need support to accomplish. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 18:49, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: T111663 -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:54, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb where was the "if someone pollutes your watchlist with crap, just hide it" argument used in this proposal used? Do you think AWB edits in general are crap? It would be at user's choice to decide in which day and time to tunr off edits. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:40, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm not saying it was used here specifically, I'm saying that if this option is given, it should not be taken as a sign that AWB edits can be treated as bot edits. This applies equally to you and as it does to every other AWB users. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb very nice point indeed. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:15, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Obvious vandalism that lasted for hours

I just reverted a bit of really obvious vandalism (diff). The weird thing to me is that 1) Cluebot didn't catch it and 2) it escaped all abuse filters. It changed the word "channels" to "poo", which I'd think is the sort of thing that our automated systems would detect. Am I missing something here? NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:56, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Recent changes slower than usual

Usually, it's only that slow if the "Very likely bad" tickboxes are ticked, but now the only way for it to work at normal speed is if I don't have it highlight likely good / may be bad / likely bad / very likely bad revisions. -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 11:36, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

PS. I realized that if I untick the other people's contributions box, it returns to normal speed again. -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 11:44, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Edit: The problem is back. If I try to get to it from the main page, it takes a moment to load. It loads just fine if I go to my user page first, but if I click "Show" regardless of whether or not I change which filters or which namespace, it takes a while for it to give me the list of changes. This makes it inefficient to patrol the recent changes for bad edits. -- MrHumanPersonGuy (talk) 15:52, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Why does this still blocked editor show up as not blocked?

See User talk:Apollo The Logician. It's a 2 week block expiring tomorrow. Doug Weller talk 18:55, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

The block was placed at 13:59, 17 June 2017 (UTC) for 2 weeks, which expired at 13:59, 1 July 2017 (UTC) - more than five hours ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

It's an autoblock. ipb_id=7622154, ipb_expiry=20170702104028, ipb_reason='[[Wikipedia:Autoblock|Autoblocked]] because your IP address was recently used by "[[User:Apollo The Logician|Apollo The Logician]]". The reason given for Apollo The Logician's block is: "[[WP:Edit warring|Edit warring]]: Violation of unblock conditions by '. ~~Lemme see if I can find it in the onwiki interface so I can remove it.~~ I've removed it. —Cryptic 19:18, 1 July 2017 (UTC):

thanks. I looked at the autoblock list and was obviously confused by the fact it said it wasn't expiring until tomorrow. Why didn't the autoblock expire correctly? Doug Weller talk 19:30, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: see Wikipedia:Autoblock - autoblocks are for 24 hours, and do not get removed during a natural expiration of the original block. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:50, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Triggered by him trying to edit during the last 24 hours of his block? I should have realised that. A pain that it isn't made to expire with the block. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 20:02, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: there are privacy reasons for that won't go in to details here. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:29, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Login problem

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T169261

I don't know if I'm posting in the right place, so if not, please point me in the right direction. But my alternate account that I use on mobile/public devices, User:BB-PB, seems to have been disabled somehow. I can't log in through my phone anymore, and I've tried on my desktop with no luck there either. It either gives me the "No active login attempt is in progress for your session" warning message or the "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking...try again" warning. I have been able to log in with my main account on my phone, so I know it's not a problem with the phone's browser. Can anyone help me out? Parsecboy (talk) 12:01, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Can I get any help on this? It's really rather frustrating to be locked out of my mobile account for the last 3 days, even more so when I'm out of town for the weekend. 134.228.87.203 (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

You could have a stuck cookie, delete all your cookies (at least all the ones related to WMF, wikipedia, etc) and try again. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

No, that didn't help, and it also wouldn't explain why I can't log in on multiple pieces of hardware. If it was just my phone, I would believe it was something on my end, but since it's not confined to one device, it seems clear the problem is somewhere on the server's side. 134.228.87.203 (talk) 10:40, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Probably another relevant piece of information: it will occasionally allow me to log in (or at least appear to do so), but as soon as I click on anything, it kicks me back out. 2600:1009:B007:F6D0:3423:A3D5:A4FD:8D1D (talk) 10:51, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Just in case, do you use any software or setting which could clear your cookies regularly, or refuse them? They are required to maintain the session. —Paleo Neonate - 10:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Nope. It's worth pointing out that I can log in with my main account on my desktop, and I created a throwaway account that is able to log onto my phone reliably. 134.228.87.203 (talk) 11:21, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Need to isolate the account vs device first. Try your non-working account using a browser you don't normally use on your desktop (e.g. If you usually use Chrome, Try Firefox or Opera). — xaosflux ^Talk 11:37, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

This seems to be phab:T169261. Note that not every login issue is that task; signs include (1) other accounts working on the same browser+device, (2) the same account not working on different browsers/devices, (3) clearing all cookies not helping, and (4) the login actually succeeding (i.e. not the "this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking" message) but the user not being logged in at the end of it or seeming to be logged out on the next page view. Also (5) a particular log message on every login attempt, but that one isn't possible for most people to check. ;)

You might be able to work around it by going to a wiki where you have no local account yet (e.g. Kashubian Wiktionary) and attempting to log in there. That login will still exhibit the problem, but in one case it fixed things so future logins would "stick". BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 11:58, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, BJorsch, trying the other wiki solved my problem! Parsecboy (talk) 12:58, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I am having the same problem with my account User:Thankyoubaby. I have tried all of the above, and I still am unable to login. Thankyoubaby2 (talk) 22:46, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Try logging in directly to login wiki. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:02, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
That worked, thanks! Thankyoubaby (talk) 23:36, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

InterWiki EMail notification preferences

Does anyone know if there's a way to have global preferences to disable notifications via email? I noticed that although my settings don't allow email notifications on en-Wikipedia, when I follow links to other language Wikipedias I commonly receive an automatic welcome message as well as an email notification. I then have to modify my settings for that other project to disable that. This means navigating through the menus and preferences of a language I don't know to change the preferences there. But notifications via email has privacy implications, and that first per-project email could not be prevented. An alternative could be to always have this off by default on all projects, but if I understand every project may have different defaults. Thanks, —Paleo Neonate - 09:25, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Another nice related feature would be if email notifications could use a global-account tied PGP public key (there also could be timing attack issues if they were very instant but I think this is not the case). I've not found any related documentation other than for userboxes. Thanks again, —Paleo Neonate - 09:34, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

There are no global prefs – yet.

In the meantime, you might be able to save yourself one step by copying the lines at m:User:Whatamidoing_(WMF)/global.js about changing the language to English (or whatever language you prefer), and putting them in your own global.js file at Meta. Then you'll get the UI messages in English at every site. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the tips, Whatamidoing_(WMF). —Paleo Neonate - 02:04, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata changes now also appear in enhanced recent changes

Good news! Wikipedia editors have been waiting for a long time for Wikidata changes to be shown in their Wikipedia watchlist and recent changes.

As you may know, two different modes exist for the recent changes page and watchlist. (You can activate the enhanced mode in your preferences, in the "Recent changes" tab, then checking the “Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist” box.)

Wikidata changes were already displayed in the default watchlist and recent changes page. This way you can see the changes that happened to data on Wikidata that is used in the Wikipedia pages you’re watching. (You might need to uncheck the "hide Wikidata" checkbox on the recent changes or watchlist page to see them.)

So far, this feature was not available in enhanced recent changes and watchlist. Later today (June 29th, 2017), it will be.

If you encounter any problem, feel free to ping me or add a comment on the Phabricator ticket.

Thanks go to Matěj Suchánek who developed this feature! Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 08:06, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

woot, feature parity at last ! —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:35, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Is there some delay in the Wikidata changes in recent changes? I get nothing in the most recent 5 minutes, and a lot of them before that, which seems suspicious. And indeed, when I refresh, the Wikidata changes still are at least 5 minutes old, but I now get more recent ones than before the refresh. It's not something I'll normally use, but it is something I would expect to see mentioned in the announcement as it is rather important (e.g. with the default 100 most recent changes shown, one will never see Wikidata changes). Fram (talk) 08:44, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

The delay is usually smaller than a minute (so yes, if the rate is around 100 changes per minute, you may never see them). This feature is actually less useful for recent changes than for watchlist. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 06:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Lea Lacroix (WMDE), TheDJ, and Matěj Suchánek: The item nucleus (Q40260) displays in my watchlist as the vandalized version of 18:59, 28 June 2017, even though the edit was reverted 5 minutes later. Is this a bug, or are there serious server caching issues? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 05:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Confirmed, I would also expect seeing the revert as well (same on another wiki). I don't what the cause could be. Maybe because it's a rollback, which requires some special handling on Wikidata items? Matěj Suchánek (talk) 06:36, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Matěj Suchánek: This page doesn't even have a Wikidata item. No idea what's happening. —Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 12:11, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Having an item is not mandatory. The key is whether some data are used on that page. In this case, it's the label of country of citizenship (P27), which was vandalised, and Willem Kloos (Q2574395) (from the section Template:Infobox person/Wikidata). (By the way, if you take a closer look, you can see that the last two changes are not formatted. This is bug I'm going to report now.) Matěj Suchánek (talk) 12:26, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Matěj Suchánek: Also noticed that the link for the vandalism edit and its revert isn't to d:Property:P27, but to the TfD page. Is there a bug for this? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:11, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

This is bug I'm going to report now. → phab:T169330. Matěj Suchánek (talk) 08:38, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Sortable column

Hello. Is there a way to have only one column of a table to be sortable and not all of them? Xaris333 (talk) 19:19, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Fruit	Colour
Banana	Yellow
Apple	Red
Orange	Orange
Plum	Purple
Greengage	Green

Yes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:29, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Xaris333 (talk) 19:57, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

The example is clear but if you work with sortable tables then see also Help:Sorting . PrimeHunter (talk) 20:10, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Technical placeholders

I came across {{foo}}, a template with no content. Is there a technical reason for keeping this template; as is? If so, it seems that its documentation should bear out this fact.--John Cline (talk) 20:05, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

In case you don't know, foo is a popular example or placeholder name. The template is harmless and Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Foo shows many links so I say keep it. A red link would be confusing in examples. You are free to expand the documentation. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:19, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Video player error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T169476

I am getting an error playing a video, the first one on this page, after Sumi Smorynski reported the same problem here. The video player pops up but does not play the video, instead showing a spinning loading/starting icon indefinitely. I am on a Mac using Safari which does not natively support the video format, but normally it runs using Javascript and other videos work. Looking at the console I see the following error, which happens every time I try playing the video:

 [Error] TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'mimeType.split')
   getMIMETypePlayers (Anonymous Script 1 (line 58:620))
   defaultPlayer (Anonymous Script 1 (line 59))
   isPlayableType (Anonymous Script 1 (line 77:410))
   getPlayableSources (Anonymous Script 1 (line 77:909))
   autoSelectSource (Anonymous Script 1 (line 71))
   setupSourcePlayer (Anonymous Script 1 (line 104:566))
   (anonymous function) (Anonymous Script 1 (line 103:395))
   doCallbackCheck (Anonymous Script 2 (line 36:1433))
   (anonymous function) (Anonymous Script 1 (line 230:436))
   (anonymous function) (Anonymous Script 2 (line 37:208))
   each (load.php:5:240)
   triggerQueueCallback (Anonymous Script 2 (line 37:125))
   checkPlayerSources (Anonymous Script 1 (line 103:334))
   (anonymous function) (Anonymous Script 1 (line 92:179))
   triggerQueueCallback (Anonymous Script 2 (line 36:1163))
   runPlayerSwap (Anonymous Script 1 (line 92:115))
   addPlayerElement (Anonymous Script 1 (line 92:552))
   (anonymous function) (Anonymous Script 1 (line 96:389))
   each (load.php:5:240)
   each (load.php:2:227)
   processEmbedPlayers (Anonymous Script 1 (line 96:108))
   (anonymous function) (Anonymous Script 2 (line 6:1378))

There’s nothing obviously wrong with the video, which is a few years old, and I can download and play it using VLC.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:41, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Exactly the same happens if I navigate to the file’s page directly: File:Editing basics - Uploading and adding images.webm, which might be a little easer to check it on, and also contains the file history.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 21:09, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@JohnBlackburne: Thanks! Going to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Editing_basics_-_Uploading_and_adding_images.webm?debug=true (note the "debug=true"), the console of the browser provides a better stacktrace which leads to TimedMediaHandler code. Could you file a bug report in Phabricator against the "TimedMediaHandler" project/tag, please? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Done.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:13, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2017

The "create" link (which appears 31 times on the linked page) has never worked right ... it preloads Template:TFA_preload, which includes CURRENTMONTHNAME ... but usually the TFA coordinators don't want the current month, we want the next month. I tried substituting NEXTMONTHNAME, but that doesn't work. CURRENTMONTHNAME would correctly fill in "July", but NEXTMONTHNAME doesn't fill in the desired "August", it fills in code that always points to the next month (so when we reach August, it will point to September). Help? - Dank (push to talk) 15:38, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

{{#time: F | +1 month }} prints May. You can try if it works on a preloaded page. Stryn (talk) 16:33, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Okay, putting "subst:" in front of that gives me what I want ... whether I can get it working with the existing Template:TFA_preload, which already contains a "subst:", I don't know ... I'll fiddle with it. Thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 17:12, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

I have coded {{TFA preload}} to pick the month and year from the page name instead of using the current time.[14] This should always work, also if pages are created the year before. It assumes {{TFA preload}} is only used on pages with the date in the name of the subpage. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Correct assumption. My hero! - Dank (push to talk) 20:23, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

By the way, {{NEXTMONTHNAME}} is a template and not currently coded to work with subst although it could be recoded (phab:T4777 would be a nice feature to avoid this). {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} is a magic word and works with subst. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:55, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Russia fucking up some websites?

Can someone check this website and see if they are getting the same results as me (to ascertain it's not simply my computer)? I cannot log into the website, or any articles on the website, of Greek Reporter. Can someone check for me? Here, for example, is a sample article:

Papapostolou, Anastasios. "Bill Clinton: 'There is Nothing Wrong with Greece – Issue Bonds'". Greek Reporter. September 28, 2012.

Any insight appreciated. Softlavender (talk) 06:01, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

There appears to be a DNS/resolving issue with usa.greekreporter.com, but greekreporter.com redirects me to russia.greekreporter.com (301 HTTP response from MS IIS server) which target also has a DNS issue. The DNS servers for the domain appear to be at domaincontrol.com (Wild West Domains). The hosting server for greekreporter.com (184.168.221.15) is on secureservers (GoDaddy). All this doesn't help me to access it (it's indeed down), but nothing seems to be in relation to Russia in the aforementioned data, it could be down for technical reasons (unless it was compromised), I have no idea, sorry... —Paleo Neonate - 06:23, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Here is a rescue link for it: [15]. —Paleo Neonate - 06:26, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Paleo. I'm not a techie, but I've used the Greek Reporter website and its articles a lot over the past 3.5 years, and it has never had a DNS problem and never redirected to russia.greekreporter.com before now. By the way, I follow Trump-Russia stuff heavily on Twitter, especially the techies, and they are unanimous in reporting that GoDaddy is a Russian-compromised site (although I'd never seen that reflected in real life until this and you telling me GoDaddy hosts Greek Reporter). By the way, the Greek Reporter site was working fine for me 16 hours ago. Also BTW, if anyone cares, I checked the Greek Reporter Twitter account and their last tweet was 12 hours ago: [16], if that is relevant. This whole thing is frustrating for me because I need several of their articles as new citations right now. I hope they fix this soon. -- Softlavender (talk) 06:39, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

DNS issues happen. It will probably be fixed soon. In addition to the above archive, you can try the Google cache. For example, a search for "bill-clinton-there-is-nothing-wrong-with-greece-issue-bonds" (I tried that without quotes) finds the website, and there is a down-arrow that can be clicked to access the cached page. Johnuniq (talk) 07:29, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks J, but this is obviously a hack (at least it's obvious to me), which is why it redirects to Russia. Also, by the way everybody that sample link I posted isn't one I need; there are about a dozen or so much more recent articles from GR I need to look at, but I'll just have to wait till they are back online. Softlavender (talk) 07:51, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

UPDATE: Back online now. Thanks all. Softlavender (talk) 07:19, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

New Issue: It seems that the author names have fallen off of many pre-2016 articles on the site. See for instance, the sample article I linked in the OP. It clearly had an author's name when I created the citation a couple of years ago, and still did until the recent hack. Now the site and the article(s) are back online, but the author(s) name(s) are missing for a lot of the pre-2016 articles. Very frustrating. Softlavender (talk) 10:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Edit summaries when reverting edits made by IPv6 users

When reverting an edit I find it useful to add a brief explanation of why I've made the reversion in the edit summary. This is possible with registered users or short IP addresses, but where the edit was made by a user using an IPv6 address, the edit summary auto-populates with the standard "Undid revision" text, and the length of the IP address leaves me with only 9 characters to add an additional note.
For example: Undid revision 780068317 by [[Special:Contributions/1234:C7F:2C13:D700:5044:7808:6908:D2A7|2A02:C7F:2C13:D700:5044:7808:6908:D2A7]] ([[User talk:2A02:C7F:2C13:D700:5044:7808:6908:D2A7|talk]])
And then there is virtually no space left to add anything else. I suppose I could shorten the note by removing the link to the user talk page (which probably contains nothing anyway), but this is not a user-friendly approach. Can the default note be automatically shortened, or the maximum edit summary length be increased for these types of IP addresses? Bazonka (talk) 20:31, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

There has been some discussion of this at MediaWiki talk:Undo-summary. Maybe it is a good idea to change to

Undid revision [[Special:Diff/780068317|780068317]] by 2A02:C7F:2C13:D700:5044:7808:6908:D2A7

(which looks like "Undid revision 780068317 by 2A02:C7F:2C13:D700:5044:7808:6908:D2A7")

as suggested there by PrimeHunter. —Kusma (t·c) 20:43, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Bazonka (talk) 21:01, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

I have changed MediaWiki:Undo-summary to Undid revision $1 by [[User:$2]] for IPv6 addresses and usernames above 25 characters.[17] I included a userpage link so you can quickly get to the talk page or user contributions from there. The details could be discussed but I wanted to first test whether wiki code works there. It does. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:19, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good, but it might be better to link the contributions, not the user page. The former is needed when reviewing page histories, and the latter is almost always useless. Since the aim is to save bytes, I would be happy with "[[Special:Contribs/IP address]]" (that is, "Special:Contribs/" would be visible). Johnuniq (talk) 04:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I also considered that and will make the change if there are no objections. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Surely edit summaries of reverts always linked the contribs and not the user page, even for registered users? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:03, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, but with a piped link to hide "Special:Contributions/". The former version, still used for IPv4 and user names of at most 25 characters, is Undid revision $1 by [[Special:Contributions/$2|$2]] ([[User talk:$2|talk]]). The problem is that Undid revision $1 by [[Special:Contributions/$2|$2]] repeats the IPv6 or username so it can take up a lot of the 255 bytes allowed in edit summaries, while the unpiped Undid revision $1 by [[Special:Contributions/$2]] sounds odd. Undid revision $1 by [[User:$2]] doesn't repeat $2 and doesn't sound odd but it makes a useless red userpage link for IPv6. The unlinked Undid revision $1 by $2 is also a possibility but makes it difficult to navigate to user contributions and talk. You would have to copy the address/username or click it in an earlier edit in the page history. The odd sounding Undid revision $1 by [[Special:Contributions/$2]] may be the lesser evil. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:03, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Userpage in both indexed and noindexed categories

I've added the user page and noindex tags to User:Emijrp/All Human Knowledge, which although clearly not fake seems to qualify as a User pages that look like articles. It was and still is in Category:Indexed pages despite my adding the noindex tag, something I don't understand. Full disclosure - this is the 2nd time I have added them, User:Emijrp states that he wants his userpage to show up in search engines although our guideline states that "Pages that look like articles outside of mainspace should not be indexed for search engines." Anyway, my question is why is it in both categories? Doug Weller talk 09:07, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Because it's got __INDEX__ on the very last line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:11, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

"Page information" currently shows indexing is allowed. The html source confirms this. The last magic word usually wins even though an earlier one added Category:Noindexed pages which isn't removed when it's contradicted later. You added both {{userpage}} and {{noindex}}. It could be discussed whether the former means that the noindex requirement in WP:FAKEARTICLE doesn't apply. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:42, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks both. It takes a long time for that large page to load and I didn't know there was an index magic word although in hindsight I should have. Hm, I thought I should add the userpage template, but it was me who added it and the creator of the article who removed it. So far as I know we try not to index userpages. Just as user talkpages aren't indexed. Doug Weller talk 11:53, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

And he's removed the userpage and noindex templates now so the question about whether fakearticle applies with a userpage template is moot. Doug Weller talk 11:54, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, he's going to keep edit-warring to remove those, either overtly or surreptitiously, so probably need to delete the whole thing outright. Softlavender (talk) 12:04, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Which makes me wonder why noindex is not enforced for user pages even if an index directive is present... And why this editor doesn't work on the more official portals rather than this index. Would Wikipedia: space be appropriate for such an index-essay? Thanks, —Paleo Neonate - 13:27, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@PaleoNeonate: there are legitimate uses for index, for example I edit here, and also at other WMF projects (that have not elected to noindex user: space). If someone searched for my username I'd much rather they end up here on the English Wikipedia than say on my userpage at Afrikaans Wikipedia (w:af:Gebruiker:Xaosflux). — xaosflux ^Talk 13:46, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Meaning that on Afrikaans-Wikipedia user pages are indexed by default? I understand that each project is separate, but never thought that this would be a sane default. Thanks for the answer, —Paleo Neonate - 13:58, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Correct, each project gets to pick their own indexing defaults as well as control their own robots.txt settings. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:42, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

By the way, the userpage is now at MfD: Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Emijrp/All Human Knowledge. -- Softlavender (talk) 14:46, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-27

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

There was a problem with maps on Wikimedia wikis that used <mapframe> when you clicked on the link to another map service. Open Street Map or Google Maps are examples of other map services. If you had marked a place on the map the marker would not be in the same place on the other map service. It was in the middle of the map. This has now been fixed. [18]

Changes this week

Very old and inactive unpublished translations in the Content Translation database will be removed. This is because of technical maintenance. If you have not worked on a translation after 1 January 2016 you will lose it after 6 July. If you want to keep the unfinished translation you need to open it before 6 July with the Content Translation tool. You can continue working on it later. Translations that were started or have been worked on after 1 January 2016 will not be affected.
There is no new Mediawiki version this week.
EventStreams is a new way to show activity on Wikimedia wikis. It works with the recent changes feed. It will do more things later. It will replace RCStream. Tools that use RCStream should move to EventStreams before 7 July. Tech News wrote about this in the 2017/07 issue. [19]

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

15:31, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Positions

Hello. With <center></center> we can put something in the center. What about left or right? Left is by default, but what about right? Xaris333 (talk) 06:02, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Help:Wiki markup#Center text says: "Please do not use <center>...</center>, as it is obsolete." The following section has code for aligning to the right. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:22, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Xaris333, why do you want to align the text to the right? The correct answer depends upon whether you're trying to line up a column of numbers in a table, or writing in a right-to-left script, such as Hebrew or Arabic. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I want to align a table not the text. Xaris333 (talk) 19:36, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Help:Table#Floating_table —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:44, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@Xaris333: For a demo, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Sortable column. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:00, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech issue from VPp discussion

[transcribed]:

There is now a gadget available to do this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:33, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

In other words, TheDJ, there is the gadget saying, "Do not show search results for sister projects on the search results page", under the "Appearance" section of the "Gadgets" tab, right? Thanks. Pinging Shearonink, "This, that and the other", Lugnuts, Ivanvector, Godsy, DGG, Kaldari, GenQuest, BD2412, and billinghurst. Therefore, they can individually decide whether to click that via user preferences, and done. --George Ho (talk) 13:52, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

FYI: The new gadget button does not appear to function for me. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 18:39, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

It does to me, GenQuest. I tested the option, and it still works. BTW, I wonder whether the "working" issue can continue at WP:VPT. --George Ho (talk) 19:00, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

OK. Moved. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 19:17, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the help and settings look-over @TheDJ:. Seems to be working better now. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 21:21, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

No problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:51, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

What if the image is smaller than thumb?

This image is 22x22px by default

This image is set to 220px but still displays 22px wide

I use thumb on my images because it allows the user to preference it how they want. However, if the image is smaller than their preference, or default, it is not scaled up to that same size. In some cases the images are so small to be essentially useless, so I have to define a size, and at that point, the user prefs no longer work. s there a way around this apparent catch 22? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:14, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

I thought that |thumb could resize in both directions; WP:EIS#Type certainly implies this. Apparently, it can't - or perhaps its behaviour has changed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:25, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, I had never seen that section but it clear states this should work. Perhaps a regression problem? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:55, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Odd vertical spacing in blockquote

In Newmarket_Canal#Water supply problems there is a blockquote. Can someone offer a reason why the first and last lines have extra vertical whitespace? The last line I imagine might have to do with the cite (although that shouldn't do that as there is ample room) but I can see no reason for the first one. Maury Markowitz (talk)

Because someone added tags to those lines? Just a guess of course

Regards So Why 13:08, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

To elaborate: Lines with <blockquote> and following lines are treated as separate paragraphs by the software, so a line that has both this tag and the tag creates double spacing. I changed it now so all lines have the same spacing. You might want to use {{quote}} instead of <blockquote> though which offers some additional benefits. Regards So Why 13:13, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Image rasterizing awkwardly

So, I came across this guy, and it seems to be rendering the text oddly, in IRC someone told me it might be related to how the image was rasterized. Anyhow, any feedback / solution would be great, because it's a pretty great graphic imo. Thanks in advance! Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 21:59, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Is this a new problem ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:52, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't think so. It's more likely to be an incompatibility between the fonts specified in the SVG and those that are recognised by our SVG-to-PNG converter; this usually happens when the person who prepared the SVG selected a font that is installed on their device, but which is not installed on our side.

In this particular case, two fonts are specified: the word "Mine" is in a <text>...</text> element with the attribute font-family="'MyriadPro-Regular'", whereas all the other textual information is in elements (either <text>...</text> or <tspan>...</tspan>) that have the attribute font-family="'ArialMT'". Neither of these are listed at m:SVG fonts so it's likely that a fallback font is being used. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:24, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Help at TFA

You know, the trouble with providing quick, efficient service is that people are likely to ask you guys for help again, so here I am. We're having a related discussion at WT:TFA. What we've never had but always needed at TFA is a condensed form of, for instance, WP:Today's featured article/June 2017: no images, and just enough text from each day to understand what the article is about. The first sentence from each day would be best if possible; if not, then the first x characters for some reasonable x. Is this doable? - Dank (push to talk) 22:38, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

mediastatistics-header-3d

When viewing the redesigned Special:NewFiles, there is the ability to filter by media type. Aside from the fact that some of these are formats we do not allow on Wikipedia (executables), there is also the entry <mediastatistics-header-3d>. I'm assuming this is a missing system message or MW page - this may be worth a Phabricator ticket. – Train2104 (t • c) 23:07, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

For the message issue itself I have filed phab:T169681. These are 'categories' or subsets of files. While we don't allow certain specific filetypes to be uploaded here, these 'categories' currently always exist regardless of if you can upload them or not. I don't consider that to be a bug, though i guess for some it might be less than ideal. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:33, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

How can I opt out of Wikipedia's HTTPS encryption?

I have an older computer (Mac G4 running 10.4.11) and older browsers and they do not work well with Wikipedia's encryption. Half of the time I try to visit a Wikipedia site, I get an error message saying that "Firefox and en.wikipedia.org cannot communicate securely because they have no common encryption algorithms." Other times I will be able to see the text of the Wikipedia page, but the images will not load because they are encrypted. Even when I occasionally get a full page with text and images, the page takes a long time to load. (I have a dial-up connection.)

How can I turn off the encryption so that I get more use out of Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.228.119.41 (talk) 00:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

You can't turn it off. The failure rate is deliberate to inform people and get them to stop using insecure browsers and upgrade them. Eventually users without proper encryption will likely not be able to use wikimedia wikis(https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T118181). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.84.244 (talk) 07:32, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

A possible solution, if you really intend to keep using that machine and browser, would be for you to install a special HTTP->HTTPS gateway between your internet router and your old machine. It may also be possible to update some components of your system to use a recent gnutls or openssl library, or to install another operating system (like a BSD or Linux PPC port) with a recent Firefox (or a minimal browser which still supports HTTPS correctly, like Links, NetSurf, etc). Any of these solutions will require a bit of reading. —Paleo Neonate - 09:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if this works, but you can try archive.org. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 10:04, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Have you tried using TenFourFox? Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 10:06, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Changes to the editing window and some broken scripts

mw:Contributors/Projects/Accessible editing buttons was enabled about 90 minutes ago at Meta and five larger Wikipedias. If you see complaints about scripts not working, then please see that page for information about how to fix them.

These changes will probably reach all of the other Wikipedias, including this one, in about two weeks. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:27, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Putting a list in the right place

In our article List of online image archives the list comes after External Links. Looked at the wiki-code until I became boss-eyed and can't see how to correct it. Aspro (talk) 20:59, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Aspro: Fixed it - if a table is displayed at the bottom like that, it usually means the |} end-of-table marker is missing or damaged. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:06, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Many thanks. Aspro (talk) 21:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Some updates about Recent Changes pages

Hello!

As you may already know, the Collaboration team has created a Beta feature. This feature is on your wiki since few months: "⧼eri-rcfilters-beta-label⧽". You can activate it in your Beta preferences.

What is this feature again?

This feature improves Special:RecentChanges and Special:RecentChangesLinked. It adds new features that ease vandalism tracking and support of newcomers:

Filtering - filter recent changes with easy-to-use and powerful filters combinations.
Highlighting - add a colored background to the different changes you are monitoring. It helps quick identification of changes that matter to you.
Quality and Intent Filters - those filters use ORES predictions. They identify real vandalism or good faith intent contributions that need help.

This last set of filters is available on your wiki, but there is an ongoing labeling campaign to refine the results (3885 left to do).

You can know more about all those features by visiting the quick tour help page.

What's new?

Since the release, we have fixed small bugs and improved the interface. We have also released a way to bookmark your favorite configurations of filters.

We plan to add more new features! The full list is on this Phabricator page (in English) but here are the most important ones:

Filters for Namespaces and tagged edits and, later, filters for Categories and Usernames
Redesign navigation by using an improved time selector and better integrated navigation options
Add live updates
Have a more clear interface by putting community-defined 'related links' into a collapsible panel

This last change is about links displayed on top of the RecentChanges (see how they look like on your wiki). We do that change because we have discovered that those links are not that much used. Also, they sometimes take a lot of space on small screens. To help people to focus on recent changes patrolling, we will hide those links, with an option to show them. We have created some examples to show you how it will look like. If you like to see those links all the time, you will have to click on the link to show them and they will remain open. We welcome your feedback about this change.

Most of this information was already introduced in the Collaboration monthly newsletter. Please subscribe to get regular updates!

You can ping me if you have questions.

All the best,Trizek (WMF) (talk) 10:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Bug in page history?

Resolved

This edit, made 04:57 on 6 July 2017, currently shows in the history as an addition of +163 bytes, rather than a very large negative value that I would expect, given that the user has removed all previous messages. A bug, or am I missing something obvious? Optimist on the run (talk) 17:46, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Looks to be a bug, the old page text is showing as 0, so it netted +163 (the new page size). — xaosflux ^Talk 17:52, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Not technically an abuse filter problem - but it is also presenting as a problem there, added this information to phab:T168736. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:10, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

The log [20] shows the page was deleted before the edit and restored after the edit, so the edit created the page at the time and did indeed add 163 bytes. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:43, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter - we can put THIS one behind us. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:41, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Women's World Contest

Hi, I'm planning on running this contest in October. However, given how much effort daily the Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon took I will need assistance with a bot to help check article length and sourcing once submitted. I was wondering if somebody could code Wikipedia:ContestBot with the ability to approve or decline articles submitted to the contest pages with a tick or x. It will be a new article contest, and 1 kb of readable prose the minimum requirement. The bot would also need to check that there are no unsourced paragraphs. Would this be reasonable to code? Getting a bot designed to reduce the time needed to run contests I think will be essential for future growth of contests in other areas. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:39, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Anybody?♦ Dr. Blofeld 06:21, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Nowrap template no longer working

I've noticed that Template:Nowrap stopped doing what it was designed to do overnight. I edit and access Wikipedia from a mobile device, and the template it very useful for organising complex tables—such as those at 2017 World Rally Championship—because it keeps the cells of the table on one line.

This isn't the first time this issue has arisen, so I'm guessing it's just a by-product of a software update or something of the like. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 08:52, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

This template only puts the content into an "nowrap" CSS class. Since it still works for me and that you have no custom CSS, it's indeed likely to be because of a software update on your side. —Paleo Neonate - 09:12, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Adding: unless the CSS was recently changed for mobile, which I can't easily test (my mobile systems use a custom solution which appear like a non-mobile browser to the Wikimedia software). —Paleo Neonate - 09:15, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I changed the CSS for mobile. I disabled it. I kept running into more and more problems on mobile where lines were not wrapping because people had added nowrap to it, causing the viewport to be wider than the width of the device. People are using nowrap in an excessive extent, beyond the purpose. Tables as described above is one such example. You should just set the min-width of the table cell using em units in that case. Much safer, much more flexible. I have disabled the Mobile styling for now, to find out if we can maybe live without it. If not we can always reenable, but I feel that the problems are elsewhere. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:25, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ — I didn't understand a word of that; you lost me at "CSS". Could you please explain your preferred solution and provide an example of the replacement markup that I can use? Prisonermonkeys (talk) 23:41, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

@Prisonermonkeys: TheDJ has temporarily stopped the template from working on the mobile site because it has been unnecessarily overused, causing text to overflow on narrow screens. His solution is to add width styling, such as style="min-width: 15em", to table cells. This change is not permanent as the CSS (styling) for the mobile site is largely controlled by MediaWiki:Mobile.css, which he edited to disable the template. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 08:59, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035 — thank you for that explanation. Unfortunately, the width styling is incredibly fiddly and unwieldly to use on mobile devices and it requires a whole lot of trial and error just to implement. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 02:22, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: I think it might be better to re-enable it. It's unavoidable that some tables are going to overflow on the mobile site, purely because some screens are too small for them. Even the third column of the table at Metropolitan line#List of stations isn't fully shown on my phone (when vertical), and no nowrap is used there. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 04:26, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

And sometimes it's beneficial to force a table to be wider than the width of the device. The aforementioned tables in the likes of 2017 World Rally Championship can get very complex, especially when individual cells can span multiple rows or columns. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 06:28, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Problem with logging in

Hello, I'm the user known as "nineko" and I'm mainly active on the Italian and on the English Wikipedias. I'm having a bizarre problem. My Cookies settings are correct, and, more importantly, I didn't change them recently. I've always been able to stay logged in and edit pages (see, for reference, my contributions in Italian and in English). However, earlier today I went to Wikidata to report a mistake ([21]), and since them I'm logged off from every Wikipedia. If I try to log back in, I either can't altogether, or I briefly appear as logged in, just to be logged off as soon as I change page. I tried to use another browser (Chrome instead of my usual Firefox), giving it the most permissive Cookies settings possible, but the problem was still there. I tried to delete all the Cookies in case some of them were corrupted for some reason, but nothing changed, either. So, if two Cookie-permissive browsers don't work even after a complete cleanup, I'm confident that the problem isn't on my end. Even though I'm quite expert when it comes to these issues, having been a webmaster and administrator myself in the past, I don't know what else to do. Visiting Wikidata maybe corrupted some of my session data on the server, which is obviously out of my reach. Can anyone help with identifying my problem and fixing it? Thanks in advance.
2.235.238.165 (talk) 23:23, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Try to clear all your cookies, make sure you are accepting cookies, then try to login here: login.wikimedia.org. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:25, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Been there, done that. As I said, I already tried everything I could, including deleting all my cookies and using another browser just in case. I tried again because you asked nicely, but with no success, in both Firefox and Chrome. To reinstate, I didn't change any cookie setting recently, the fact that this issue is present with two different browsers alone should tell that this isn't on my end. I just started to get logged off as soon as I visited Wikidata. Some administrator should check my session on the server.
2.235.238.165 (talk) 23:32, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

This may be related to a hash update (phab:T169261) try logging in at this wiki that you have never touched zh.wikivoyage. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:49, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a lot :D
Nineko (talk) 01:01, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It is probably worth suggesting that having achieved a successful login on a previously-untouched wiki, the user should explicitly log out; this will invalidate all login cookies server side, so at the next login attempt on a frequently-visited wiki, a clean cookie will be delivered which does not conflict with old corrupt cookies. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:20, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Huge delay for Wikidata changes

I already noted this in a previous section, but it seems to have become considerably worse. When I try to see Wikidata changes in my wtachlist or in recent changes, I need to scroll way way down before I get anything.

The delay now seems to be 1 1/2 hours, which means that no matter how I try it, no Wikidata changes appear in "recent changes" (expanded to 5000(!) items, mainspace only, no minor edits). In my watchlist (which of course is dependent on what I have in my watchlist) the most recent Wikidata change is almost 2 hours old, but then I get one every 5 or ten minutes, so this seems again evidence of a huge delay. For a watchlist this is annoying (I check mine regularly, I don't check if anything "new" has popped up 2 hours in the past), for recent changes this is unacceptable. It does explain why major Wikidata vandalism remains unnoticed for weeks or months, and it also seems to be indicative of how many people here actually have activated and use the Wikidata option... Fram (talk) 12:22, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@Lydia Pintscher (WMDE): Seems like an issue for you. --Izno (talk) 12:32, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks for the ping!

@Fram: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Is there anything special to the changes or is it all of them? --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 13:16, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

All of them. Fram (talk) 13:32, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Ok thanks. I think I have found the problem. Currently a lot of new items on Wikidata are being created for articles on cebuano Wikipedia. This leads to a lag in informing all Wikipedias about changes. I have brought this up on Wikidata. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 14:02, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

The discussion is at Wikidata:Project chat#Q32000000. Someone is running a megabot. Thincat (talk) 10:46, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Search for contributions to a specific page?

Is there a way to find all the edits I've made to a specific page? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:40, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Yes, the user contrbibution search tool which is also linked from page histories under the title "Edits by user". Graham87 07:05, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Cool. That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:19, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism still visible when I'm logged out?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T169894

Earlier today, I reverted some vandalism at Mort Walker and John Aloysius Farrell. However, it seems that when I view these pages now, when logged out, the vandalism is still visible. That's true regardless of the browser. I've looked at these pages in Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. Does anyone have any ideas?

The vandal's edits were severe BLP violations, so I hope that they don't remain visible to the masses. Zagalejo^^^ 23:05, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Are you possibly using a proxy server that may be caching (such as a corporate proxy server)? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:14, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

No... but it seems that the problem has now resolved itself, whatever it was. *shrugs* Zagalejo^^^ 23:24, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Remember, anonymous users are shown cached versions. There could be several reasons the article doesn't show up immediately to non-logged in folks: varnish cache didn't get purged (for any of a half dozen causes from software bugs to a network hiccup), the job queue is overly backed up, browsers still have a cached version locally, or some sort of corporate or ISP proxy that attempts to cache content. Long as it eventually shows up without further user action, it usually implies one of the latter reasons. As always, a purge should fix things up. If it continues to be outdated, that's a bug. FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY ^[u+1F602] 01:10, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

What is your username? All I see in Opera 36 is a plain rectangle. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The user name is the Unicode character U+1F602, which is officially named "FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY". It's an emoji code point, represented as

,

, and

in the emoji sets we have available with {{emoji}}. Anomie ⚔ 12:03, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

@😂: The relevant Phabricator task I have created is phab:T169894. It is about caches not being updated when viewed by logged out users. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikitext Syntax Highlighting beta feature available for testing

Hi everyone, the WMF Community Tech team has a new feature that's up for testing, if you'd like to take a look. The feature is Wikitext Syntax Highlighting, which was #6 in this year's Community Wishlist Survey -- a way to help editors parse the text in the edit window by using color, bolding, italics and size to make it easier to see which parts are article text, and which are links, templates, tags and headings. It's easy to separate the link target from the actual link text, section headings are bigger, and adding bold and italics actually changes the way it looks in the edit window. Plus -- thanks to the amazing performance optimization done by volunteer developer Pastakhov -- it loads a lot faster than previous versions of syntax highlighting.

Syntax Highlighting is currently a Beta feature on test.wikipedia, and here's a test article you can check out: Barack Obama. If everything goes well, we'll be rolling this out as a Beta feature on live wikis soon. Please feel free to test it out, and you can leave comments and questions on the project talk page on Meta. Thanks! -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 23:00, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Pink! Purple! Blue! --Izno (talk) 03:03, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

stress test :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:19, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ: Oh, good idea; I'm going to change the example links. :) DannyH (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Xi's tools- Edit counter

[https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=ClemRutter&project=en.wikipedia.org] just throws an error [error::mq] after 9.75 seconds of processing. Firefox and Chromium on Linux Mint. Sometimes change is not for the best. --ClemRutter (talk) 01:12, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

The xTools have been unstable for years. I don't know which change you refer to. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, appears that the edit counter is once agian being grumpy. I'll give it a kick.

Community tech and I are in the process of building a completely new, more stable version of XTools. We are preparing to enter beta at some point over the next month. Please keep an eye out for that. ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Say something · What I've done} 16:06, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Very nice to know, thanks! —Paleo Neonate - 16:17, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

As a follow-on to this, you've actually discovered a bug in both the new and old xtools. See T170005 for the bug report. You are welcome to keep an eye on that page for further information. Thank you so much! ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Say something · What I've done} 19:54, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Page categorization not being reported in watchlist

There seems to be a problem with the watchlist reporting of additions/removals from categories. For example when watching Category:CS1 errors: dates there is no report of additions to the category of 2017 Manchester Arena bombing or 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup. I have noticed this before and it appears to be with articles that start with a number that get missed from the watchlist. Keith D (talk) 18:52, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It works for me. Have you enabled "Show hidden categories" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering? For 2017 Manchester Arena bombing the category was not changed in the most recent edit and it only shows up when I enable "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:21, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It usually shows up for other articles that have been changed. Both of the articles have appeared in the category today but not on the watchlist. I have unchecked the page categorisation on the hide list before refreshing the watchlist page. Keith D (talk) 20:50, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Regular expression

Is there a PCRE regular expression which can match and fix incorrectly nested templates (e.g. {{Template|para=value{{Template|para=value}}}} → {{Template|para=value}}{{Template|para=value}}), where parameter values can themselves correctly contain other templates? This would be used by UsuallyNonviolentBot task 1, as there are several hundred pages where {{Extra chronology}}, {{Extra album cover}}, {{Extra track listing}}, {{Singles}}, {{Audio sample}} and {{External music video}} are incorrectly nested inside each other instead of being side by side. An example is Wonderwall (song), where {{External music video}} is nested inside {{Extra track listing}}. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 11:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

If you can narrow down your problem to one level of nesting, such as looking for {{External music video}} nested within {{Extra track listing}}, without any other templates nested within either one, and the fix is simply to extract the nested template and move it out immediately following, then it's not too complex. If you're trying to be more generalized, though, I think automated fixing is tricky with just a regular expression. Some kind of parser to separate out the template arguments would be better. isaacl (talk) 15:53, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Isaacl: Thanks. I've made a regex

(\{\{([eE]xtra album cover|[eE]xtra chronology|[sS]ingles|[eE]xternal music video|[aA]udiosample|[eE]xtra music sample|[aA]udio sample|[Ee]xtra track listing)(\{\{[^{}]+\}\}|[^{]|\s|\{[^{])*)((\{\{([eE]xtra album cover|[eE]xtra chronology|[sS]ingles|[eE]xternal music video|[aA]udiosample|[eE]xtra music sample|[aA]udio sample|[Ee]xtra track listing)(\{\{[^{}]+\}\}|[^{]|\s|\{[^{])*\}\})+)\s*\}\}\s*

→ $1}}$4. Unfortunately, even though Regexper says it works and it functions successfully in AWB's advanced regex testing with the infobox of 911 (Gorillaz and D12 song), loading the entire page causes AWB to hang and I have no idea why. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 12:46, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

It's not just tricky to make a generalised fix for nested templates using regular expressions - it's impossible. (The problem is analogous to trying to parse HTML with regex.) To deal with nested templates properly, you need to use a wikitext parser. I'd try using Parsoid or mwparserfromhell. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 14:40, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed the completely general problem needs a parser. The original poster might be able to get by with something else, depending on what specific subset of the issue that is being examined. isaacl (talk) 15:27, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Edit conflict not working

The new edit conflict dialogue doesn't work for me. I have spent some time puzzling over where I am supposed to put anything - the help says there are two columns, but I only see one. Eventually I have started noticing that there is a second column, but it then vanishes. am I missing something? (I use Vector skin. I haven't looked at my Custom js, but I haven't changed its contents in years). --ColinFine (talk) 11:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

This reminds me that when it was a new feature I tried it, but quickly disabled it as I had no idea what to do when presented with it and I didn't have the time to find out (with no custom JS scripts in use)... I have not tried it very recently, so am not sure if it is related. I would have less trouble dealing with raw text unified diffs

—Paleo Neonate - 16:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Hey you two!

Thanks for your feedback! We already got reports like that on the extension feedback page and in both cases the broken column layout seemed to be related to the wikEd extension. You could try disabling that and see if the two column conflict page looks fine without it. I wrote a small guide how to create an edit conflict with yourself to test the feature. It would be really great to hear from you again if that helped.

When the issue really is wikEd related, there is a patch coming where we temporarily deactivate wikEd on the two column conflict page. You could have a look at the ticket on Phabricator to see the progress in that matter.

Best, and thanks again Christoph Jauera (WMDE) (talk) 09:51, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@Christoph Jauera (WMDE): btw. would be cool to have a Special:EditConflictSimulator page, which allows us to test this. Much handier than having to follow complicated steps in a guide. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Can Edit summary dropdown box allow more lines?

Greetings, Before asking here I did check the FAQ and the Archives for a possible answer. Is there an easy way to increase the number of lines that appear on the Edit summary dropdown box? This is not a major concern, just thought it would be helpful to have more choices showing. I'm setup for the Vector skin. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-28

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

There are sometimes links to pages about the same thing on other Wikimedia projects. A Wikipedia article about Berlin can link to the Wikivoyage guide or Wiktionary entry about Berlin. You can now see when that page has a badge. A badge could be the star that shows that an article is a featured article. [22]

Changes this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 July. It will be on all wikis from 13 July (calendar).

Meetings

You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 11 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

Mobile users will be able to edit Wikipedia without JavaScript. This will make it possible to edit the wikis from older mobile phones. This will probably happen on 18 July for most wikis. [23]
We will not use Tidy on Wikimedia wikis in the future. It will be replaced by June 2018. It could be earlier. Editors will need to fix pages that could break. You can read the simplified instructions for editors.

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

15:07, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

MiszaBot I messing up Talk pages

I'm working on a couple of articles where an editor added MiszaBot I to the talk pages, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Single-payer_healthcare . The editors at Single payer didn't even want it because it disrupted the discussions.

Now I see that not only was the text removed, but I can't find an archive, and the text is apparently gone. For example, the MiszaBot search box doesn't return anything, and there is no page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Single-payer_healthcare/Archive_1 Furthermore, MiszaBot is deactivated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MiszaBot_I and the maintainer has been inactive since 2015.

(1) There was a lot of useful information in those archived discussions. Is there any way I or someone can get them back?

(2) Is it possible that Miszabot or some other bot will delete the text that is now on the talk page and lose it in a mistaken attempt to archive it?

I apologize if this is not the right place to ask these questions, but I got here by following the help links. If this isn't the right place, what is? --Nbauman (talk) 23:27, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@Nbauman: The history of that page does not show any recent archiving, and MiszaBot hasn't editing in over 5 years. The last bot archive on that page was 2014. Is there a recent problem that you are seeing? Can you provide a diff link or the specific date and time you think the page had a bad edit? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:32, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

More info: Look here - the talk archives appear to be under an alternate spelling, feel free to move them to the current title. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:35, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

The article and main talk page were moved without moving the archived subpages. I have moved them now. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:39, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

How do you suppress those annoying watchlist dropboxes?

See https://gyazo.com/3b890d5350145ebb2e2d8cbad3da43cc. Those tend to show up randomly, and I don't know what causes them, or how to stop them from popping up. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:41, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: You have User:UncleDouggie/smart watchlist.js in your User:Headbomb/monobook.js which does that. The fact that it doesn't always work, is likely because one of the other scripts in your monobook.js is sometimes failing, and then taking everything else with it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:21, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

better ?? I also fixed some of the other scripts you were including and removed ones that were either empty, broken or otherwise pointless. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:57, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Alright, I'll give this a try, although I've lost my CitationBot link, which was one that most definitely worked. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:56, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Enabled it via Gadgets. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:58, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

TheDJ (talk · contribs) while you're at it, could you take a look at User:Js/watchlist.js? Previously, there was a function that let your sort your watchlist by namespace/alphabetically, and it stop working a while ago. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:15, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, I tried my best, but it's still ancient and fragile. Still requires a lot more time to invest. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:29, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, so far, whatever you did seems to have fixed it. At least as far as the functionality I cared about goes. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Creating an account

Is there a way to identify who created an account? I'm dealing with a situation where someone has an account, but they claim they did not create it. I'd like to track down who created it.--S Philbrick (Talk) 02:16, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: Check the user creation log. User:Musabello was created by another user (me). User:Sphilbrick was created by an unregistered (or not signed in) user. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:04, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

This method only works at the wiki where the account was originally created. You may have to look for that wiki at Special:CentralAuth. Special:CentralAuth/Musabello shows a green plus at en.wikipedia.org so it was created here. If the user means they got the password from another person who created the account the normal way without already being logged in to some account then the log cannot show it. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:22, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Undoing IPv6 edits - IP link in edit summary

Admittedly a trivial issue, but undoing IPv6 edits produces an edit summary like "Undid revision 790078900 by Special:Contributions/2A02:1810:2F0E:5900:E1D3:5966:F505:1029 ..." (emphasis mine) without a talkpage link, while undoing IPv4 edits produces something like "Undid revision 790086475 by 46.173.6.193 (talk) ..." (piping the special:contributions link and adding an additional talkpage link). Could undoing an IPv6 edit produce a similar edit summary with piped link and a talkpage link as well? It would make the display slightly more consistent and accessible. Is this an en-Wiki internal issue or should it be reported via Phab? GermanJoe (talk) 17:05, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: Space. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 156#Edit summaries when reverting edits made by IPv6 users. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:07, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Somehow missed that thread - thank you for the information. GermanJoe (talk) 17:12, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Issue with scripts loading

Hi all, hoping someone might be able to help with this. When I go to some pages all of the scripts I am using load, while when I open others only a couple do (from what I can see only m:MoreMenu and WP:Refill). Sometimes if I refresh the page all of them will and sometimes only some (those two) will load, when I edit a page all of the scripts load. I'm guessing this might have something to do with a timeout as the page loads (though page size doesn't seem to affect it - seems much more random). Is there a way to work out what the issue is (including if it's with a specific script). I'm using Chrome on Windows 10. Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 08:50, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@Callanecc:--I too have my share of this problem.Entirely similar in nature.Somewhere read, Kudpung too facing this.So, it wouldn't be un-expected if a lot of users felt the problem.And no, it's not some specific script based.In my case, using Edge solves the problem. But still, sometimes you have to go for a F5! Anyway there are often some interesting developments on the console! Winged Blades^Godric 17:51, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

That is correct, I am indeed having exactly the same issue as described by Callanecc. Using OSX and Firefox, latest releases. No fancy plug-ins on Firefox. Same issue on all my Macs, and which ever IP I'm using. I usually find that if I immediately refresh the page, the rest of the scripts will load. The one to fail to load most often is Twinkle - particularly the parts of it that are only visible to admins. I tried pruning my .js page a couple of days ago but it hasn't helped. I don't have problems with any other web sites that use a lot of js or server-side apps. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:01, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: have you got any ideas what could be causing this? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 00:22, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

My bet is some of the scripts you are using are not properly declaring dependencies on other scripts. This is why sometimes they work, sometimes they don't -- it's a race condition. Fortunately it's easy to fix. When I'm back home later tonight I'll go through all of your scripts and see what I can do :) TheDJ might also want to help. We should try to get a bot-generated list of scripts that need fixing — MusikAnimal ^talk 00:46, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@Callanecc: I updated several scripts. I think this should fix your issue, but let me know otherwise :) — MusikAnimal ^talk 03:04, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: thanks for working on this! The scripts seem to be working consistently in mainspace, but not elsewhere (only the menus on userpages and at SPI). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 04:48, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I've done some more assorted fixes, but many of these scripts are so old and there are so many of them, it's making it hard to find specific problems. Some of this stuff hasn't worked for years, it's a miracle both of you were able to do anything at all one the site :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:27, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I've been having issues for the last month or so, especially w/Twinkle. Loads about 1/4 of the time. Running on updated W10 and Firefox. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 19:08, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

You broke your own javascript, by accidentally adding CSS to it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:34, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

I think what I've been experiencing is related. Also, look back through archives of about the last month, malfunctioning scripts seems to be a recurring problem with a lot of issues and editors. With me, it's the edit screen. When I first open the edit window, it's plain text with no toolbar, no distinguishing colors in the text. Nothing. It takes 3 "preiews" before everything looks like it's supposed to ... the edit toolbar visible and the distinguishing text colors for inserted templates, etc. But if I edit when it finally looks normal, and do a Preview, it goes back to everything missing but the text. This is very hard to look at and edit within. — Maile (talk) 19:26, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
See mw:Help:Locating_broken_scripts. If you keep having problems and are not able to fix them, then just disable EVERYTHING. Get back to a clean slate and start adding your scripts from scratch (and only those you actually use, and that seem slightly maintained. I realize people are attached to their scripts, but if you cannot maintain scripts, while at the same time you have problems editing, then it is time to get back to square 1. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:31, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Well ... I just noticed a script that I apparently added last year, and looks like it came from the German wikipedia. Removing that script seems to have helped. A year later, I have no idea why I added it in the first place. Thanks for the suggestion. — Maile (talk) 19:52, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
TheDJ As it turns out, removing that one script didn't really correct anything. The problem has returned. However, when you say "if you cannot maintain scripts", I'm not maintaining what I have. They are "imported" from other user pages. I'll try removing another one.— Maile (talk) 20:22, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Removing another one didn't do anything either. — Maile (talk) 20:24, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
TheDJ Per your advice, I removed all scripts from my commons.js and rebooted my browser. The sporadic edit window issue still exists. Strange. The only thing I can conclude is that this is part of some weird blip happening because of ongoing changes. Hopefully, things will work out. Unless you have another idea what is causing this. — Maile (talk) 12:15, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
@Maile66: The only other thing I can think of is that maybe it's a Gadget in your preferences. Usually gadgets are pretty well maintained, but perhaps there is an outlier in there. from "distinguishing text colors" i suppose you at least have enabled the syntax highlighter extension by Remember the dot enabled. I note this gadget has some pretty strange postfix in it's description of "(works best in Firefox and works almost all of the time in Chrome and Opera)". —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:47, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Yesterday, I tried unchecking gadgets, just because they can have quirks. However, when the colors don't display, the edit toolbar also doesn't load. As far as I know, this started back on June 30, when I (and others) were also temporarily encountering that 502 Bad Gateway quirk. Whatever is happening, all this seems to be linked together. — Maile (talk) 13:22, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
And finally, I think I have a clue. Refreshing my Firefox 54.0.1 browser once in the edit window has the same effect as clicking "Publish" three times - all the scripts load correctly with a browser refresh. Looking into the Mozilla files on my computer, June 29 is the date I updated to the new browser. And, yep, the problems began then. So, eliminating all else already, it surely must be this new version of Firefox. — Maile (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
I am experiencing the same issue with Twinkle and some other scripts I use. It loads about 35% of the time. Callmemirela 🍁 ^talk 22:52, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks MusikAnimal and TheDJ for the help! I think I've solved my problem. I ran the debugger as suggested above and it identified a problem (hasClass being a null value) with the markblocked gadget which I was importing from ruwiki (as that's where it was when I added it) in my global.js page. I updated that to the version of script on meta, which seems to have solved the problem. Thank you, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 00:52, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
- Do you have a link to the debugger? Callmemirela 🍁 ^talk 01:07, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
  - I think I've figured out my issue. It seems to be this script that's interfering with my scripts. Callmemirela 🍁 ^talk 01:21, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
    - I just noticed a problem in that script, that might affect people using incognito/privacy mode, or cookie blockers etc. Alerted it's developer. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:50, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
      - I use Firefox and my scripts seem to load reliably. I did not have the script that was causing problems installed though. —MRD 20 14 13:27, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting on Firefox is not working consistently

I have syntax highlighting enabled on my account, and I primarily use Firefox for Wikipedia. However, the syntax highlighter is not always working. It did when I typed this messages, but elsewhere it refuses to work. When it doesn't, it never gives me the "Syntax highlighting is disabled message", it just never loads at all as if I had never enabled it in my preferences. —MRD 20 14 01:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@MRD2014: See my comments above. Does your syntax highlighter work if you reload the page? My similar issues happened on the date I upgraded to Firefox 54.0.1 on June 29. Took me a while to figure it was Firefox, but I have the same problem as you. Not only does the highlighter not work (usually) the first time I open an edit window, but the edit toolbar is not there. If I reload the page, the highlighter and everything else shows up. Sometimes it takes a couple of reloads. But having eliminated all other possibilities, and the problems coinciding with when I upgraded to 54.0.1, the problem is Firefox. — Maile (talk) 11:21, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@Maile66: I do have version 54.0.1 installed, and my edit toolbar shows up (the one with the bold and italic buttons), but the syntax highlighter is very unreliable and sometimes loads but most of the time it doesn't. —MRD 20 14 13:27, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@MRD2014: Exactly, except for the toolbar.

As I am typing this, I see the toolbar above, but no highlighting.
Now I have reloaded the page by clicking the arrow in the URL area, and the highlighting now magically appears.
Now I just clicked "Preview" and both the toolbar and the highlighting disappeared.
I have now clicked on the arrow in the URL area, and it asked me if I wanted to Resend the page. I said I did. Now both the toolbar and highlighting are back.

If that's how it's more or less working for you, and you have Firefox 54.0.1, I believe it's a Firefox issue. — Maile (talk) 13:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

This is what happened to me.

I clicked "edit" and the highlighting appeared, and the toolbar was there.
Upon clicking "Show preview", everything was still there (I have live preview enabled).
When clicking on edit on other pages, it seems to load the highlighter more often that not after typing this.

Very weird issue. —MRD 20 14 13:43, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

It happens to me in both Firefox and Chrome. It's a resource issue. dawnleelynn^(talk) 16:13, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@MRD2014 and Dawnleelynn: If you think this looks weird in Wikipedia, try editing in Commons. It's awful there. — Maile (talk) 16:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

It seems like the syntax highlighter is working more reliably for me now here (still on 54.0.1). —MRD 20 14 16:51, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Maile66 MRD2014 I haven't been in Commons since Christmas. But that's unfortunate. I've been in Chrome due to a different Firefox issue I just posted, and the syntax highlight issue is occurring there. dawnleelynn^(talk) 17:00, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@MRD2014 and Dawnleelynn: The syntax highlighter, and the appearance (or not) of the edit toolbar, are still hit and miss for me on Wikipedia. Until recently, I think it had been weeks or months since I'd edited any text at Commons. There's no highlighting or formatting at all in the edit window at Commons, and the edit toolbar is also hit and miss over there. — Maile (talk) 17:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to add that I was having a similar problem with the editing toolbar and the CharInsert extension not loading. I ultimately found the problem to be an old script in my monobook.js that I removed and now everything's loading fine. I use Firefox 54.0.1 (64-bit).--十八 20:30, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Script has stopped working. Is this MW update-related?

I intensively use the script User:BrownHairedGirl/biogdashes.js, but this evening it has stopped working. I tried force-reloads on both Firefox and GoogleChrome, but still no go. So I tried MS Edge (which I have never used before on Wikipedia), and it didn't work there.

Is this something to do with today's roll-out of MediaWiki 1.30/wmf.9? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:51, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

It's not due to a release, since en.wp is in group2, which gets releases on Thursdays. It's likely because your User:BrownHairedGirl/monobook.js page has all sorts of outdated scripts. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:18, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Many tks, TheDJ. One edit by you[24] fixed it.

BHG happy :) --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:26, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

The article that won't be edited

Tonight I've run into a technical problem I've never experienced before: I cannot edit an article. Just one article: Nigeria. In trying to undo two good-faith edits, I went to history, clicked on the revision of 4 July , clicked edit, added a summary, clicked save changes, and...nothing. Eventually, I got a page (generated by my browser, I believe) saying "Secure Connection Failed". The url displayed in the address bar was https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nigeria&action=submit. This happened four times over several hours. I also tried to remove the edits manually, starting from the current revision, with the same result. I tried to do a null edit, with the same result. The article is semi-protected, and I was logged in during each attempt. I'm editing various other pages in main space and user space without any problem, so I'm guessing it's the article itself. I'm running Firefox 54.0.1 (current version) with Mac 10.11.6. Any thoughts? Rivertorch^FIRE _WATER 02:13, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Rivertorch: I've managed to make the edit, though that doesn't explain why you couldn't. Firefox 54.0.1 and Windows 10. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:07, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, I just edited the article with no problem, so I guess whatever was wrong has resolved itself. It's a mystery. Rivertorch^FIRE _WATER 14:11, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

My scripts and gadgets don't load half of the time

Okay, this has been an ongoing issue, that I thought would be temporary, for the last 2 months now at least give or take. Sometimes they load just fine, and sometimes only half of them loads, and other times not at all. And this isn't on different pages. Same pages, different loading effects. I just can't figure it out. This is also problematic when I try to OAuth into my own tool, since the OAuth window is JS, when the JS fails to load, so does the window leaving me a blank OAuth page. I for the life of me can't get it to load consistently, and would appreciate the experts here.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 20:45, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: your statuschanger scripts are broken, causing other stuff to fail as well. I disabled them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:58, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: That didn't fix anything. Still getting intermittent failures like right now. I would also appreciate telling me what's broken, then flat out disabling them, or helping me to fix them. Because they never caused a problem in the 5 years I've been here.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 21:01, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: That is likely due to meta:User:Cyberpower678/global.js. I have left some tips for you at meta:User_talk:Cyberpower678/global.js. Regarding your statuschanger scripts, i left some pointers here. They go for both of them. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:29, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: thanks for the tips, so for the status changer, I have no idea what I'm doing. My JS experience is minimal.—CYBERPOWER (Message) 00:04, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I followed your advice as best as I could and it seems to have worked. As a matter of fact, it seems to load a lot faster now, so thanks. :-)—CYBERPOWER (Message) 02:06, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Same here, the .js issues a few weeks ago were fixed, but today I've had to clear the cache to get the Twinkle tab to load. I also just noticed the edittools is also not working. - FlightTime (open channel) 20:54, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Well, things seem to be loading correctly, edittools is working, but I've had that version active for some time, strange it would start causing issues just today. Thanx anyway, so far so good :) - FlightTime (open channel) 21:25, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

(e/c)@FlightTime: You had an outdated version of oneclickarchiver, and I fixed User:Lourdes/PageCuration.js and User:Ohconfucius/script/flagcruft.js. As always I advise you to evaluate what you are actually using and get rid of anything you are not using. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:28, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Thanx for your help. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:39, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I realized that all these additional reports are likely due to me removing deprecation wrappers from MediaWiki:Common.js. I have undone that now (even though it really should be removed), but i need to sleep and we don't have enough people able to fix this it seems. I might have to do something nasty to move this forward.. Like have everyone who still uses this automatically make an edit to a list of 'victims' without them knowing about it. That seems the only way to be able to proactively fix this, without running into these kinds of problems. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:37, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I would posit that no amount of javascript inconveniences or breakages would justify making users perform edits without their knowledge or consent. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:24, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

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