Informatics Educational Institutions & Programs

Is that deliberate? — 𝐆𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚 ☎ 08:09, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

  Works for me @Guarapiranga: see this sample page. Notably however, big and default are rendering the same for me in minerva. I tried with Chrome and with Firefox current builds. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:27, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I stand corrected! It actually doesn't render in mobile mode (I assumed everything mobile was simply Minerva, without testing it in desktop mode). And indeed, vector in mobile doesn't render <big> and <small> either. — 𝐆𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚 ☎ 14:38, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Guarapiranga: thanks for update (I added extra link on that page for demo). I think this is disabled by design - good chance that @Jdlrobson: can point us to any documentation about support for font-size tags with the MobileFrontend extension... — xaosflux ^Talk 14:51, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

What Izno says. These are deprecated HTML tag that browsers may not necessarily support now or in future. Minerva intentionally does not support them for this reason, and we should be working towards moving away from these tags. There are much better alternatives that are more future proof available Jdlrobson (talk) 20:41, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: <small> is no longer deprecated. Probably worth a Phab task (wherein a technical group can decide whether it should have a smaller font-size now/remove the reset). Izno (talk) 01:32, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

The small tag was repurposed in the HTML 5 spec. Where it's used to decrease font size that may or may not be an appropriate usage . Given the small tag can only ever be used by template editors introducing raw HTML I think that is a concern of the template that uses it (using template styles) not a concern of the software itself.

Note we only add styles in core for HTML produced by core code. Jdlrobson (talk) 14:43, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Jdlrobson: the small tag can only ever be used by template editors This is not true. There are currently some 400k uses (times out). Where did you get the idea it was only available in templates? Izno (talk) 18:07, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Was going to say, that was news to me... SamStrongTalks (talk) 18:43, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Templates are user generated content. Not the PHP or JS code that powers the MediaWiki software. Jdlrobson (talk) 03:13, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Jdlrobson, why do you think I was confused about the various and sundry notions of template external to the template namespace?... That doesn't answer the question that I asked either. (Sorry to grill you, but I'm really confused about why you're really confused....) Izno (talk) 04:10, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion. I'm still not 100% sure where I've confused you 🤪 but the point I wanted to get across is as a developer of the MediaWiki software I do not recommend using deprecated HTML tags under any circumstances. The small tag does have meaning in HTML5 but I am working on the assumption that most wikitext that uses these tags uses them with the HTML4 definition since wikipedia predates HTML5 and there are probably better elements that could be used in their place.

From a mediawiki software POV it doesn't make sense to provide styling defaults for small (since the definition has changed during the lifetime of Wikipedia), nor does it make sense to provide defaults for big (since it's deprecated).

With parsoid we are moving towards HTML5 semantic elements. If styling for small or big is needed they must live in templates or inside MediaWiki:Common.css IMO as wikitext is the only way these elements can end up in the HTML of the page. They are no longer used in the generation of special page HTML for example.

Does that make sense of have I made things more confusing? Jdlrobson (talk) 20:37, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Big is an obsolete HTML element and should not be used. Replace it where you find it with any other template or HTML suitable (perhaps {{big}}, perhaps removal entirely). So far as I know, it is reset in the CSS for MobileFrontend to 100% and never made bigger than that, which I understand to be deliberate as it was obsolete.

Small on the other hand is somewhat conflicting for me. It was made obsolete for a brief period in HTML 5 but is no longer and is used to mark up some things you would expect to be "small" text, such as disclaimers in television advertisements. It does not mean "small text" however, even though it remains commonly used for that purpose on Wikipedia in a callback to its deprecated use in HTML 4. ("People use tags in the way they are spelled and not necessarily what they mean semantically.")

Like big, small is also reset in the same styles for similar reason. Whether it should be 100% font size today is a question mark; that it is named small does not imply that it must make text small, only that it mark up text in the way that HTML 5 expects. Izno (talk) 17:19, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I now see that <small> has been set to font-size:85% in MW's common.css for the last 5 years. Why doesn't mobile mode pick that up then? Just curious. — 𝐆𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚 ☎ 22:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Guarapiranga, mobile loads from MediaWiki:Mobile.css, not Common.css. The reason small is in Common.css at all is because it is not consistently rendered by browsers at a certain size, and it is valuable anyway to set it to the minimum onwiki % established (a long time ago when font sizes were smaller -- Monobook's particularly). Izno (talk) 01:39, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

This worked for me a while ago (I added it to Special:MyPage/Minerva.js):

big {font-size:124% !important;}
small {font-size:76% !important;}

―Qwerfjkltalk 18:37, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Wrong page – that's CSS, not JS, so you have to put in Special:MyPage/minerva.css. – Rummskartoffel 21:08, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Rummskartoffel Oops, I meant .css. Thanks for correcting me! ―Qwerfjkltalk 21:34, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Guarapiranga ―Qwerfjkltalk 18:40, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Qwerfjkl, but my concern is with what readers see, not what I see when logged in. Interestingly, as Xaosflux demonstrated above, <small> works in Minerva when in desktop mode even without your hack, as it is set to font-size:85% in MW's common.css (why mobile mode doesn't pick that up is what I'm asking about). Now, out of curiosity, how did you choose 76 and 124%; did you eyeball it, or copy another standard? Cheers. — 𝐆𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚 ☎ 22:39, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Guarapiranga I originally got got it from here, then doubled the difference to make it stand out more. ―Qwerfjkltalk 06:11, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

The <small>...</small> element dates back to 1997, with the HTML 3.2 specification (although it was included in the never-adopted HTML 3.0 spec of 1995). Until HTML 4.01, the various specifications merely showed that it rendered text in a small font. Beginning with HTML5 (2014), it has been repurposed to have a semantic meaning, and is used to represent side comments such as small print: small print typically features disclaimers, caveats, legal restrictions, or copyrights; it is also sometimes used for attribution, or for satisfying licensing requirements (see HTML 5.2 spec). So it does not necessarily have to use a font size that is physically smaller than the normal font for that passage of text, although most browsers will do that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:33, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Right. Thanks, Redrose64. I'll use {{small}} instead from now on. Perhaps this should be documented somewhere (where?), and the tag possibly replaced everywhere by the template (IOW, perhaps WP should deprecate the tag to avoid the confusion). — Guarapiranga ☎ 10:43, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I clicked on the box to stay signed in each time. This seems to happen whenever I use another computer at a library and I sign in to Wikipedia to see if anyone responded to me or one of my edits.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:21, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Just guessing, but perhaps Wikimedia has instituted some account security safeguards against the current ransomware hijacks. — Maile (talk) 23:15, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Or maybe the library has disabled cookies in the browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:31, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: Is this your sequence of events:

1. Logon at trusted computer, set "stay signed in" option during logon
2. Logon at untrusted computer
3. Logoff from untrusted computer
4. Expect that trusted computer is still logged in, but it is not

? If so, that is expected behavior, logging out from anywhere logs you out from everywhere. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:34, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that is what happens. "trusted computer" is the one in my house.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:17, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: currently logging you out anywhere, logs you out of everywhere. Sometimes this message may not display to let you know that is what happened (c.f. phab:T226736). Being able to log out of only one session is not currently available, see phab:T37220 for the development request for that feature. It is a good idea to be able to log out from everywhere, but I agree it can be annoying (especially with 2FA) and I'd prefer that there were separate functions for logging off a specific session/device and logging off of everywhere. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:11, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

To prevent this from occurring again, Vchimpanzee, you could create a public account for use in libraries/work/school/on mobile so that when you leave that public area, you can log out without logging out on your "main" account. Sdrqaz (talk) 18:44, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Or clear cookies or use incognito mode. Nardog (talk) 20:23, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I did that but then I never remembered to sign in with that account, so now I use it to test how things are for new users or with the standard preferences. Incidentally, I forgot to sign out at the library and I'm still signed in at home.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:01, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux it is only "expected behavior" from the point of view of the people who built the system. I don't think it's "expected behavior" from the point of view of most users. I'm not aware of any other auth system anywhere which has that behavior. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:16, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith: I meant that it is not a malfunction, but yes it could be seen as a UX design issue. phab:T37220 is opened to change to log-out-of-just-this-session, feel free to add additional insights there. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:26, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I know what you meant :-) I've already commented there (May 1, 2019). -- RoySmith (talk) 18:38, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello, Village pumpers,

In my work, I do searches on some bots' contributions and I frequently get the message "Server timed out" before any results can be displayed. I don't get this message every time but it's definitely most of the time. I also work on a laptop, not my phone. So, I'm wondering is there anything I can do on my end to extend the amount of time given to a search so I don't get a "timed out" message? Or is this a pretty uniform result that every editor would get if they did the same search?

Thanks for any help you can offer. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:33, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

@Liz can you be a bit more specific on what requests are timing out/what data you're trying to look up? Examples would be helpful. Legoktm (talk) 07:51, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, Legoktm, what I'm doing is looking at contributions in a particular name space and "Only show edits that are latest revisions" box checked and that is no problem. All the results are displayed. But when I try to view "Oldest" edits, that's when the system times out. As an alternative, I've tried to go backwards in time with these selected results, clicking "Older 200" repeatedly but it always sticks at the last group of oldest edits in this selection. I've tried it with several different bots and it's usually the same results...timed out when trying to view the oldest edits in this selection of contributions. Oh, and this selection of edits isn't old edits, they have all occurred in the past 12 months. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:43, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

You guys are brilliant here and this can't be an unique problem. Is there anything I can do to lengthen the amount of time an action can take before the server times out? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:19, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

The namespace filter is just slow (I found some historical discussion from 2011 when our then-volunteer database admin disabled the feature for a while), and if that account hasn't made any edits in that namespace recently, it'll probably time out. There's no way to bypass the 60 second timeout, it's global across all requests.

However, you can use Quarry and other tools to run slower queries to get the same data. If there's a common pattern/theme to your requests, it shouldn't be too difficult to build a slow tool that gets you the data you're looking for. Legoktm (talk) 08:35, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, thank you, Legoktm, you answered my question about whether I could do anything to extend the amount of time for the server to do its sorting. I don't know much about Quarry except that usually when I ask a technical question, someone gives me a link to it. I guess my last question is where should I go next to learn about using it or ask for assistance? And remember, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. ;-} Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:26, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Request a query is a dedicated page for this kind of thing, m:Research:Quarry has some more detail. However asking on this page is totally fine too :) Legoktm (talk) 07:43, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there any way to see talk pages when you are searching? For example, if I search for "Nepal" it would display like this Nepal (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). If there is please let me know. Thanks. Bada Kaji (talk • श्रीमान् गम्भीर) 12:47, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bada Kaji: If you enable Navigation popups at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets then you get these options and more when you hover over a link and then "action". PrimeHunter (talk) 20:46, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I just moved King Arthur's Hall, Tintagel to King Arthur's Great Halls, but for some reason the talk page Talk:King Arthur's Hall, Tintagel didn't get moved with it. I'm sure that whenever I've moved a page before the talk page has gone along for the ride. I've now moved the talk page, but is this some kind of site improvement, a momentary glitch, or something else? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 09:21, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

"Move associated talk page" is a checkbox on the move form, e.g. at Special:MovePage/Example. It's enabled by default, at least for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:40, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

And it's enabled by default for me. So why didn't it work? DuncanHill (talk) 21:09, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Try going to the page of Dong_Jingwei (a man), then switch to its counterpart in the Standard Chinese language (中文). The unrelated page of 浮游生物 (plankton) turns up. The problem is one way, i.e. the language-switching links on the latter's page function normally. Who can get rid of this error?--165.228.11.59 (talk) 09:32, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

It was introduced here by @Abovfold:, apparently in error. I have removed it, and the article now links correctly to the Chinese page. DuncanHill (talk) 09:48, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for teaching us. I shall be able to fix similar problems on my own next time. The trick in short: Someone probably played a joke by adding '[[zh:浮游生物]]' to the article.--165.228.11.59 (talk) 11:00, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

(per User talk:Bogger#An odd photo when you look up my Edwin J. McEnelly page on Google.)

A google image search of "Edwin J. McEnelly" shows a link to the article but with an unrelated image (two men posing for a photo). Any ideas? Bogger (talk) 09:58, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

The images are taken from Google's own search index and not from Wikipedia. Your best bet is to use the Feedback button. Kleinpecan (talk) 19:14, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

We get many such posts. See Template:HD/GKG for a stock reply. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:36, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, does this file possibly exist on Wikipedia or at Commons? Reverse image searches find no sign of where the file came from, other than here. Could it have been inadvertently transcluded onto the article? Home Lander (talk) 01:26, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

This is a completely different case. Google Images specifically shows the unrelated image as their cached thumbnail of https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Edwin.jpg. My guess is that the hash of our image somehow collided with that of the other image in their database. Nardog (talk) 03:26, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Images at commons:File:Edwin.jpg were deleted 14 October 2017 and 30 December 2020.[1] I don't have access to see them. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:23, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Ah, that must be it. The only living contribution of the uploader of the 2020 image, on the Spanish Wikipedia, contains a mention of an artist named Edwin, who resembles the guy on the left in the picture in question. It's still weird considering the old image was deleted six months ago and the new one has been up for two months. Nardog (talk) 11:00, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Additional discussion started at Commons:Commons:Village_pump/Technical#Bad_Google_cache_of_File:Edwin.jpg. Home Lander (talk) 01:03, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

What on earth was going on with this revision of User:Catcallofcthulhu? It caused my main screen reader JAWS to freeze for a couple of seconds, along with causing Chrome to crash when I tried to edit it, because of its extreme line length. Is this what passes for ASCII/Unicode art these days? I'm asking here because, apart from one other edit that brought them to my attention, their edits seem generally good, and I figured that people here would have the best explanations. I've written a message on the user's talk page but they use the mobile app so they may or may not see it. Graham87 16:25, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, Unicode has all sorts of weird sideways-reading fonts that seem to be mostly good for this sort of stuff. I was going to suggest that a user's freedom to express themselves on their user page reaches its limit when it breaks other people's browsers, but I see you've fixed that already. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:29, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It seems to be Zalgo text that decodes to "This user is fdşag". No, I have no idea what that means either. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:31, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

A google search for fdsag reveals that, um, well, I guess what it reveals is that I'm enough older than the current generation of kool kids that I've lost all hope of understanding WTF they're talking about. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:36, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, wow you learn something every day! Graham87 16:52, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

The g is fdsag is not supposed to be there, it is defined here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fdsa . Spelling is not really important to these youngings.--Snævar (talk) 07:19, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I see what you did there😉 Catcallofcthulhu (talk) 07:08, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

That's literally just me hitting random keys. Catcallofcthulhu (talk) 07:07, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Is a list of all usernames on enwiki available somewhere as a file? I would have thought it would be in the XML dumps, as a dump of the user table, but I'm not seeing it there. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:20, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Special:ListUsers. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:50, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Depending on what you want to do with it, what you are looking for may be available here. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:47, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I found enwiki-20210701-user_groups.sql, but that's just the users that are admins and groups like that. I'm looking for a list of all the usernames as a file, so I can slice it and dice it with regular unix command-line tools. I may end up writing something trivial that walks the user table and dumps it into a file, but it just seems weird that such a thing doesn't already exist in the dumps. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:36, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

This sounds like phab:T51132. Depending on what fields you want, it should be fairly trivial for a sysadmin to run an export of this if you ask (especially if it is a one-time). Now you mentioned, "enwiki" so do you really only want an account if it is attached here, or would the SUL list work? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:02, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I assume the SUL list is a superset of the enwiki list? Either would be fine for my purpose. If somebody could do a one-off export for me, that would be excellent. How does one normally request something like that? Open a phab ticket? -- RoySmith (talk) 02:24, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Have you tried generating such a list on toolforge with a sql query? -FASTILY 06:51, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll try that (query 56702 is running) but expect it to time out. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:43, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Nope, too big. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:56, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux just out of curiosity, what were you expecting to do next if it didn't time out? The query would have returned 41M rows. How would you have gotten them out of quarry into a file?

In any case, thanks for trying. I've opened T286488 -- RoySmith (talk) 15:46, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Just split the query. Chunks of a million at a time take about 5 seconds each to query and another 5 to compress.

for i in $(seq 0 42); do echo $i; echo "SELECT user_name FROM user WHERE user_id BETWEEN ${i}000000 AND ${i}999999;" | sql enwiki_p | tail -n+2 | gzip -c > usernames-$i.gz; done

—Cryptic 16:21, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! -- RoySmith (talk) 17:29, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

See here for the discussion leading up to this. The coordinates of the object an image is of are often not the same as the coords of the subject of the article. It would be nice to have the option of placing a WikiMiniAtlas coord link, as {{coord}} does, inside an image caption, but the WikiMiniAtlas link pops up inside the image caption space and so disappears if placed last in the caption. As an IP in the linked discussion pointed out, there's also a risk of having the coords in the caption not match the coords in the image file. Could a template be built that would be placed inside an image caption or as part of the extended image syntax, that would retrieve the coords from the image file and display a readable WikiMiniAtlas link in or next to the image or its caption? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:40, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there any information, like id or hash, that can be extracted from Lua functions (without calling them) to at least partially sort them, in an array? Alexiscoutinho (talk) 13:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Alexiscoutinho: would you elaborate on what you are trying to do? For a specific script, there can be wide use of both builtin and script defined functions. A hash of something is unlikely to result something useful for a sortkey for anything other than looking for duplicates. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:54, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I was referring to Lua functions in modules. It could be used to quickly compare the equality of two initially unordered tables/arrays. Alexiscoutinho (talk) 14:03, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

What I actually wanted to do was to hash a set (represented by a table) containing immutable data types, but then I noticed sorting functions would not help as they would still have to be converted to a string ("function") before calculating the hash. Only the number of functions in the set would be meaningful thus there would be more collisions... But I just thought the original question remained relevant. My suggestion above could be used to increase collision handling speed. Alexiscoutinho (talk) 14:15, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

No. The best you can do is muck around such as in Module:Dump, search for "onames[var]". Johnuniq (talk) 00:05, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi,

I noticed an instance of undocumented/unexpected behaviour in said template: There's an optional "display" parameter to be used when markup needs to be applied to the page name, such as italicizing a work's title, which works when there's only one "section" parameter but doesn't work when there are several. I looked at the source code, and the cause seems straightforward: Handling of the optional parameter was only implemented within the single-section branch.

In Module:Section link/sandbox, I moved the relevant logic into a new function which is being called from both branches, and it looks like it's working: The Template:Section link/testcases are all green, except for #14, demonstrating error handling, and #17, which I added to demonstrate the fix.

However, this brings the grand total of number of times in my life I've worked with Lua to two, so it might not be the worst idea for someone slightly more conversant to take a closer look before un-sandboxing the fix.

Cheers,

- 2A02:560:4259:7600:D74:5C5B:9A6D:FD9F (talk) 19:05, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I vaguely remember seeing this done somewhere, perhaps on a script demo, but my search yielded no results. Is this possible? What I mean is running a script by adding an argument to the url, e.g.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?script=example.js

— Guarapiranga (talk • contribs) 13:24, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

The correct URL parameter is withJS and the script must be in the MediaWiki namespace. So the correct url pattern would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?withJS=MediaWiki:[script].js. – BrandonXLF (talk) 14:39, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

You're a legend, BrandonXLF! Cheers.

Wait, does that then mean no can do with user scripts (i.e. scripts in the User space)? — Guarapiranga ☎ 21:59, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, only MediaWiki namespace is allowed for security reasons. We don't want normal users to be able to get others to load arbitrary JavaScript by clicking a Wikipedia link. JavaScript in the MediaWiki namespace can only be edited by interface administrators. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Of course!   Thanks, PrimeHunter. — Guarapiranga ☎ 04:18, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I left some feedback for the Reply Tool developers noting that it doesn't show page notices. Apparently this is a deliberate design decision, which I disagree with. Folks might want to comment on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Wcrovxjwvulr9n2g. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:37, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello, I saw this edit which has an edit summary of "Tags: Golygu ar declyn symudol Golygiad gwe symudol" Any idea where this tag information is coming from? Keith D (talk) 21:04, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I already started a thread Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Tags_in_Welsh. DuncanHill (talk) 21:06, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Welsh!

If your interface language is set to en-gb - British English, some interface messages will be in Welsh, not English. This is because someone contributed translations to the wrong language on translatewiki.net. The translations will be removed from Wikimedia servers soon, but you can fix the problem for yourself by switching to en - English in Special:Preferences. MediaWiki does not normally include translations in en-gb, and many interface customizations on the English Wikipedia are not available in en-gb. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 22:05, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Glad it's not just me then! Jr8825 • Talk 11:41, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

It's a consequence of Brexit. Now we're out of Europe, we've started a gradual transition back to the language of the indigenous inhabitants of these parts. Starting, of course, with Wikipedia.--Verbarson (talk) 17:19, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Keep in mind that en-gb is strongly discouraged here, if we could remove en-variants completely I'd be quite happy. The reason why is that you will miss out of most all localized messages. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:31, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

We're starting to get questions pertaining to this at the Teahouse and the help desk, which we're redirecting here for answers. I'm not sure how much of the userbase is affected by this, but would a temporary banner telling people to not use en-gb be helpful? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 19:26, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

A banner? No. The ticket above should take care of this. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:04, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I have several hundred saved searches, which I use to find misspellings, duplicate words etc. These have all worked perfectly well, for several years, until yesterday, when I started getting

"A warning has occurred while searching: The regex search timed out, so only partial results are available. Try simplifying your regular expression to get complete results"

As I can't "simplify the search", and still get the right results, the only way for me to get the full search results is to keep refreshing the search, often 4 or 5 times. Has the regex "time-out" period changed? Are the servers currently running slower? Or is there another reason I have suddenly started getting problems? and, the inevitable question, what is the way to resolve it? (W10, Edge, Vector) - Many thanks - Arjayay (talk) 12:54, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I am getting similar problems, been happening for a couple of days. Also the time for a change to appear in the search results has degraded considerably, yesterday it took over 6 hours for the search results to be updated for a change. Keith D (talk) 13:09, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

@Arjayay, is this still a problem? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF) - no problems with the regex in the last 12 hours - although the time for changes to appear in the search results, as reported by Keith D, is still much slower than usual. - Arjayay (talk) 20:39, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm glad that it's working again. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:10, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

How do you get Publish changes as non-clickable? ―Qwerfjkltalk 06:51, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: I believe this is not possible using normal wikisyntax, only with JavaScript. This is because in order to disable the button, you would need a HTML element that supports the disabled="" attribute. However, none of the elements that support this attribute are allowed to be contained in Wikitext as they are either derivates of <input>, <textarea>, <form> or require the <a> tag. Victor Schmidt (talk) 06:59, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something here, but template "button 2" is by definition a clickable button. Maybe you want Template "button" which gives an unclickable button: Publish changes?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:57, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shantavira I was asking how to get a button identical to the one in my first post, but non-clickable. ―Qwerfjkltalk 13:51, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Qwerfjkl How about this:

Publish changes --Shantavira|^{feed me} 15:37, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll use this: Publish changes| Publish changes ―Qwerfjkltalk 15:42, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shantavira @Victor Schmidt It looks different on mobile (the padding is a lot bigger). Any idea how to fix this? ―Qwerfjkltalk 19:54, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry I don't, I never use mobile view.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:58, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't mean mobile view (I never use it either). I mean on my mobile device. ―Qwerfjkltalk 12:43, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Shantavira ―Qwerfjkltalk 12:56, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I have no idea how to fix that.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 13:26, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I'll move it to Wikipedia:VPT. ―Qwerfjkltalk 20:45, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Publish changes – <span class="mw-ui-button mw-ui-progressive">Publish changes</span>. Nardog (talk) 00:56, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

When I take (or find) a good photo, oftentimes I will go hunting around for topical articles that don't have illustrations in them. One good way to do this is Special:WhatLinksHere. However, I've noticed that, for example, Special:WhatLinksHere/San Luis Reservoir is nearly useless for finding related articles, since the reservoir is linked to by a few widely used navboxes. {{Protected areas of California}}, in particular, links to San Luis Reservoir and is transcluded on some 627 pages -- which means that there are 627 inbound links for the article that are tangentially (if at all) related to its topic, like Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Yosemite National Park.

It seems to me like there ought to be some way to use computers to produce a WhatLinksHere page that only includes links from article body text. I am considering writing one, but would like to see if the issue has already been addressed by someone else first. jp×g 21:35, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

JPxG, something like this? --Trialpears (talk) 21:38, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

That would fail to return pages that have the navbox but also link to the page in the body. Nardog (talk) 21:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I usually just search for linksto:"page name" insource:"page name". It gets a bit cumbersome if you want to find links to redirects as well, but it works fine most of the time. If the page name is too generic, add insource:/\[\[[Pp]age[ _]name[\#\|\]]/ to get links only. Nardog (talk) 21:42, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

These both seem like smart things to do, and seem like they will solve my problem. Thanks to you both -- I'll try this, and see if it works (and if it doesn't I will still consider writing something for it). jp×g 21:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

If you write something, please let me know. I often find myself staring at those lists and finding the links hardly helpful in figuring out what actually links there. Gonnym (talk) 22:00, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, I have this custom MoreMenu link:

mw.hook('moremenu.ready').add(function (config) {
	var pc = config.page.encodedName.replace(/_/g, '+');
	MoreMenu.addLink(
		'page',
		'Direct links',
		'/w/index.php?search=linksto%3A%22' + pc + '%22+insource%3A%22' + pc + '%22'
	);
});

Nardog (talk) 23:20, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

You can use User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:04, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@JPxG: I can highly recommend PrimeHunter's offering. I find it invaluable. DuncanHill (talk) 00:16, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, wow, this kicks ass! More people ought to know about this script. Let's see what pages link to it..... :^) jp×g 00:21, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Now easily found here or with {{Source|User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js}} 🤣 Shushugah (talk) 00:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

It's {{Source links|User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js}}: Source links. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:22, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

The title of the article Mark Twain is somehow italicised. I have removed a template:italictitle from the article, but it has not fixed the issue. Perhaps it is due to another template. I am grateful if someone could fix it or shed some light on the problem. Cheers--Chanaka L (talk) 05:58, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

It was in {{The Adventures of Tom Sawyer}}, added here. This was a particularly bad idea (and I assume it was rather a mistake) because in most articles that could use {{italic title}}, it's added by {{Infobox book}}, {{Infobox film}}, etc. anyway. Nardog (talk) 07:43, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Nardog: Nice that you have located and fixed the issue. Nice work, cheers!--Chanaka L (talk) 08:38, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I tried to set up {{Infobox chess player}} to display the revision month of the {{Elo rating}} template by including the magic word {REVISIONMONTH} in {{Elo rating}}. I thought that it was working, but when I look at Mamikon Gharibyan (please do not edit that page, so that others can view the problem), {REVISIONMONTH} accurately shows "March 2020", the revision month of the article, rather than the revision month of {{Elo rating}}. This means that {REVISIONMONTH} is working properly, but not the way I hoped it would.

Is there a template or other way to write something like {{REVISIONMONTH|Template:Elo rating}} so that I can display the revision month of the template when I am viewing an article? – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:22, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

You want {{REVISIONMONTH:Template:Elo rating}} * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:32, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I changed the {{Elo rating}} template accordingly, and now the correct timestamp is being displayed on Mamikon Gharibyan. Joriki (talk) 14:49, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Groovy! Is that documented anywhere? I didn't see it at Help:MAGIC. Oh, there it is: "The magic words above can also take a parameter...." – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:54, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I use the black background with green text gadget, set in my perferences. In the last few days I've noticed things like "{{font|size=106%|{{serif|Fufi}}}}" displaying as black text on a black background (I can see the text if I click and highlight). In the past I think that's only happened when someone deliberately sets the font colour to black. Has something changed somewhere? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 21:44, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: In the absence of an explicit value for the |color= parameter, {{font}} uses the style declaration color:black; - this is documented. This has been the behaviour since the template was created nine years ago. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:24, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi,

We have an issue here regarding the font selected by the OS/browser to display varieties of Arabic such as South Levantine Arabic (ajp) and North Levantine Arabic (apc). Apparently on Windows 10, using Firefox, Edge, or Chrome, the following words don't look the same and may not be readable depending on the language code used: ‏احنا‎ (ar) ‏احنا‎code: ajp is deprecated (ajp) ‏احنا‎ (apc) // ‏اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة‎‎ (ar) ‏اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة‎ (ajp) ‏اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة‎ (apc) On MacOS + Chrome/Firefox/Safari everything looks OK. Do you know if there's a way to solve this problem?

(I initially posted this question there but it seems here is a better place, so I copy/pasted it...) A455bcd9 (talk) 22:08, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Using Edge in Windows 10, and starting the Developers Tools, it appears that in the paragraph above the 'ar' script is rendered in Segoe UI, but the 'ajp' and 'apc' scripts are rendered in Arial. This explains why they look different, but I don't know what mechanism causes the selection of a different font for each script.--Verbarson (talk) 10:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Simple Windows doesn't have these particular arabic glyphs available in Segoe UI, and it thus falls back to a font which does have the characters available. By default Windows doesn't install all fonts of every language (it takes up a lot of space) if the language isn't likely to be spoken in your region. You only get a basic set. If you want full support for languages on Windows, you have to install the language packs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:04, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your answers. @TheDJ: I don't understand your point. The characters are exactly the same in the examples, the only difference is the language code selected. So for me, the question is why Windows displays the same characters in different scripts depending on the language code. And I have no idea... A455bcd9 (talk) 14:10, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

@A455bcd9: in short, we (Wikipedia) don't specify the special font for that - we only include a language declaration on the element, it is up to the browser (and generally the underlying operating system) to determine if it wants to do something special with it. The ability to do this may be limited if certain languages are not installed in the OS/browser. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Do you have any idea how users can solve this problem on Windows? Then we could display some warning/help like Template:Contains special characters. A455bcd9 (talk) 14:40, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

As was already mentioned above, install additional system language packages from the manufacturer. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:16, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

As far as I know (and I also checked on Microsoft's website), there's no language pack for ajp and apc on Windows, unfortunately. Do you have any idea of where we could find help? A455bcd9 (talk) 18:22, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

You could go ask over at w:ar:ويكيبيديا:الميدان/تقنية - they will probably be more familiar with technicalities of that language. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I think people on the Modern Standard Arabic (ar) Wikipedia won't have any idea at all of this problem which only concerns ajp (South Levantine) and apc (North Levantine), which are different languages from ar. (and I don't speak Modern Standard Arabic anyway... ^^). And unfortunately, neither ajp nor apc has a Wikipedia. So I asked the question on superuser. A455bcd9 (talk) 20:56, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

This [2] page (article?) on the W3C site shows how to associate specific HTML lang tags with a particular font using CSS. I take it that it is possible to create a personal CSS file that will link the 'ajp' and 'apc' lang attributes to Segoe UI, to stop them defaulting to Arial. However, I don't have the wiki-skills to test it. (It might even be desirable to do this as a default in Wikipedia, but that seems a much bigger topic.)--Verbarson (talk) 13:58, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

This would be amazing. Not only for 'ajp' and 'apc': I guess all varieties of Arabic suffer from the same problem. This means the 28 languages in the Arabic macrolanguage (excluding Standard Arabic, ar/arb) and the 6 from the Judeo-Arabic macro-language. Among these languages, arz (Egyptian) and ary (Moroccan) have their own Wikipedia. (arq may be next...).

SarahFatimaK: do you have the same issue on Windows 10 with ary and arz when you visit their own Wikipedia? And what about these examples: ‏احنا‎ (ar) ‏احنا‎ (arz) ‏احنا‎ (ary) // ‏اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة‎‎ (ar) ‏اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة‎ (arz) اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة (ary) A455bcd9 (talk) 22:20, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Strangely enough, both ary and arz are rendered in Segoe UI in Firefox, Chrome and Edge. Apc is rendered in Segoe UI in Chrome and Edge, but Arial in Firefox. Ajp is rendered in Arial in all three browsers. SarahFatimaK (talk) 06:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

It may be that because ary and arz have their own Wikipedia, the CSS was modified to associate these lang tags with a particular font. I asked the question on the ary Wikipedia.

For Firefox there was this ticket 7 years to change the font of arz, they may have added apc but not ajp (mistake?)?

What about arq (Algerian)? ‏احنا‎ (ar) ‏احنا‎ (arq) // ‏اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة‎‎ (ar) اللَّهْجَةُ الشَّامِيَّة There's also an arq Wikipedia in the incubator which is quite active so they may have setup a special CSS as well. Does the font look okay there?

Another solution, but only for registered users, as suggested in {{Lang}} ("Applying styles"): "Registered users can apply custom CSS styles to articles by placing style declarations in their user style sheet. [...] To apply a specific font to all text marked as [...] of any script or region:" A455bcd9 (talk) 08:16, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Algerian looks fine (Segoe UI) in all three browser. I know that it's possible to setup own styles, but they only apply to the own accout. Most people who read Wikipedia articles probably aren't registred users. It would be nice if Wikipedia can define styles for apc and ajp as well or basically the same style for all Arabic dialects. SarahFatimaK (talk) 11:16, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

A global solution would be great, but success depends on linking each language code (from a known finite list - could be done) with a font that is present on the PC of every reader. I don't have Segoe UI on the laptop I'm currently using. You would have to find a set of acceptable fonts (ie look good - which may be subjective - and are GPL or equivalent or public domain), that cover every lang code, and download the correct one(s) on demand to any user that browses to an article using non-Latin characters. Sounds impracticable to me. Instead, what about a template that says: 'This article uses this script <insert example> with language code <whatever>. If it doesn't look good enough for you, go to [[this wikilink]] for further advice.' where the wikilink tells them how to pick a font and set up the CSS?--Verbarson (talk) 21:21, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi,

Regarding the template: yes, good idea, I'll try to do this.

Regarding a global solution: I think that 99% of people interested in Arabic variants such as ajp and apc are also interested in (Modern Standard) Arabic (ar) and therefore have Arabic fonts on their computer. So we just want ajp and apc to use the same mainstream fonts as ar. It doesn't sound impracticable to me, did I make a mistake in my reasoning? A455bcd9 (talk) 11:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for looking at the template.

Re Global solution: It is possible to tell the browser 'If Lang is "ajp" then use Segoe UI (if present)'. But I don't see a way to tell the browser 'If lang is "ajp" use the same font as for "ar"'. What I am curious about, but cannot find an answer for, is why Edge/Chrome displays lang:ar in Segoe UI, but falls back to Arial for lang:ajp etc. It doesn't happen on Lubuntu/Chrome (though that may be because I don't have Segoe UI on that combination). Is there some default CSS that associates lang:ar with Segoe UI? Or does the browser have secret information that Segoe UI has the best/most complete character set for lang:ar. (Admittedly Arabic is a widely-used script, in international terms, so picking a global default may make practical sense for Chrome.)

Further thought: I don't suppose it is possible to associate a CSS file with a specific article? --Verbarson (talk) 18:36, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Also found this [3] Chrome extension. "Advanced Font Settings - Customize per-script font settings. This extension allows you to customize font settings for different language scripts. For example, you can set the default font for Simplified Chinese content to be different than the font for Japanese content..." and so on. I have no personal knowledge, but it looks easier than setting up CSS, and will apply to all sites not just Wikipedia.--Verbarson (talk) 19:43, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi,

According to people on the Moroccan Wikipedia, part of the problem is to add the language code on this GitHub file, so I did a pull request yesterday about this, wait and see...: https://github.com/wikimedia/language-data/pull/165

As you said, Arabic is widely used so I think most if not all main operating systems and browsers have a default "Arabic font". For instance, Geeza Pro on MacOS apparently. A455bcd9 (talk) 07:15, 5 July 2021 (UTC) A455bcd9 (talk) 07:15, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I've been told by one contributor on the Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia (ary) to use this file:https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css

There's "Fonts per language" (with various languages written in Perso-Arabic script) and "RTL Languages". I asked people on the incubator to add ajp to the RTL language list. Regarding the font I need to check if we want tahoma (the font suggested for languages written in Perso-Arabic script in the file).

There's something similar on Wikipedia according to Wikipedia:Common.js and common.css. It is this file: MediaWiki:Common.css

I think that the "Fonts per language" and "RTL Languages" from the Incubator's Common.css file should be copied into the MediaWiki:Common.css. According to the disclaimer on that file: "Any major changes to this page should first be proposed on its talk page or the Village pump." So... should I post a message on its talk page or is it enough to talk about it here? A455bcd9 (talk) 06:30, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Here is the task that the Moroccan community filed back then. Suggest doing the same. Local hacks should only be used as a very last resort. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:55, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Also this does also seem like a browser support issue, and even a CLDR issue indeed. Tickets should be filed for those specifically, so that every software vendor can benefit. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:58, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi @TheDJ:,

I've already made a pull request on the same file as the one edited by Moroccan contributors: https://github.com/wikimedia/language-data/pull/165

Do I also need to open a ticket on Phabricator about this pull request?

Also, I think this pull request only affects directionality (to have right to left text, instead of left to right) but it seems unrelated to the font issue. Should I open another ticket on Phabricator about the font issue? (or do you mean by "Tickets should be filed for those specifically" that I should open tickets for each browser on their own ticketing system?) A455bcd9 (talk) 12:27, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

"Do I also need to open a ticket on Phabricator about this pull request?" Yes. Phabricator is the primary tracking tool of issues. Pull requests might go unnoticed for a while. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:48, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

The font issue likely is because the correct information is not in CLDR and thus NOT used by the operating system and the browsers and therefor the primary cause of the incorrect font being selected by those. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:50, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I opened a ticket on Phabricator: phab:T286290

I understand well, CLDR = Common Locale Data Repository and I need to open a ticket for CLDR to create a new locale for ajp here, right? I'll try to do it now... A455bcd9 (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

CLDR ticket created here. I think the issue is that according to CLDR rules for languages with a macrolanguage (such as Arabic national colloquial variants) the local code (ajp or apc for instance) shouldn't be used but instead ar-COUNTRY_CODE. However for Levantine, there's no country code for "the Levant" (should be LB + JO + IL + PS + SY + TR + EG + CY). A455bcd9 (talk) 16:06, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Amire80: posted a potential explanation there. I copy it here:

"I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's a Firefox thing. It sometimes applies some extra font logic for certain languages when it sees the HTML lang attribute, for example Arabic and Korean, and maybe some others. Codes like ajp are much more rarely used in comparison to ar, so Firefox doesn't do anything with them. Sometimes it does it totally incorrectly: for example, it tries to apply a Korean font to language code koi, which is completely unrelated to Korean. I think that Chrome doesn't do it. The only thing I can think of is to apply explicit fonts to everything and force it to be the same, although it's probably overkill."

As the problem seems to happen on Firefox, Chrome, and Edge on Windows (but not on macOS), I don't understand your reasoning Amire80, could you please elaborate? Thanks a lot! A455bcd9 (talk) 07:16, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, maybe I'm wrong! Maybe it's not just Firefox. Maybe it's more of a Windows thing. I mostly use a Mac these days, and I couldn't reproduce it on a Mac. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:48, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Just making a test here to display the different languages and their respective font:

Here's how they look on:

• Chrome 91 on macOS (Catalina): https://i.ibb.co/G3nZk4P/Screen-Shot-2021-07-09-at-08-45-31.png
• Chrome 91 on Android 10: https://i.ibb.co/56GMRt5/20210709-090337.jpg
• Firefox 89 on macOS (Catalina): https://i.ibb.co/KW4bFZZ/Screen-Shot-2021-07-09-at-09-08-48.png
• Safari 14.1 on macOS (Catalina): https://i.ibb.co/QfG4nnp/Screen-Shot-2021-07-09-at-09-11-48.png

They all look good to me. And on a given configuration, all characters are displayed identically. (Update: I added the "en" line after I took the screenshot, so that's why it's not displayed...)

If they look different and/or weird on your browser, please post a screenshot with your operating system + browser version (for instance using https://www.whatismybrowser.com/ ). A455bcd9 (talk) 07:07, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Why are you asking us to use a third-party website? In what way does WP:WPSHOT fail? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:35, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Could you please assume good faith: WP:GF? I didn't know WP:WPSHOT. I've just read it, it seems so complex and long that I won't use it (unless it's mandatory). It takes me a few seconds to take a screenshot and then host it on this third-party website. A455bcd9 (talk) 08:07, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

They look different on W10 Edge (Chromium) Version 91.0.864.64 (Official build) (64-bit):

 

(Edit) The wider renderings are Segoe UI, the narrower ones are Arial.

--Verbarson (talk) 09:32, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, the fonts really look terrible :( ... And here is how it looks on Windows 10 + Firefox, courtesy of SarahFatimaK who took the screenshot and sent it to me: W10 FF. apc looks fine (Segoe UI, I guess), whereas ajp (and en) are not readable (Arial I guess). A455bcd9 (talk) 10:23, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Here's a solution used by the English Wiktionary: wikt:MediaWiki:Common.css#L-783

I understand that all characters written in "Arab" script are displayed in 'Iranian Sans', or 'Segoe UI' (if the Iranian Sans isn't available).

So if we modify MediaWiki:Common.css accordingly, it would probably solve the problem on the English Wikipedia. Then we problem would still be present on other Wikimedia projects (especially Wikipedia and Wiktionary in other languages). A455bcd9 (talk) 10:52, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@A455bcd9: When you posted here, you were shown this notice; see the third bullet. As regards ibb.co, I do not trust the kind of javascript that it attempts to run when I visit it; it also goes against WP:ELNO because of the objectionable advertising: I don't want to know about Gorgeous single ladies (near you) or some of the stronger phrases used there. Those are two reasons why we prefer people to follow WP:WPSHOT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:16, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I use the "Discussion tools" in Beta so I think I had never seen this notice. You're right, a direct link to the image would be better, I changed links. A455bcd9 19:33, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

On Phabricator, I opened:

• One ticket for directionality, if I understand, the problem will sort itself out once we complete the translation of the "Most used" messages on TranslateWiki.
• One for the font issue on Windows 10, still no answer. A455bcd9 (talk) 07:13, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

As discussed, I created a template to warn users, not sure it's the good or best way to do though... A455bcd9 (talk) 10:10, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@A455bcd9:, I really like it. It looks good on Levantine Arabic and points to helpful documentation. Thank you.

Of course, there are lots of ways it might be made even better; I have started a list at Template talk:Contains Levantine characters. Consider it a reward for work well done.--Verbarson (talk) 10:03, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I'll have a look! By the way, @SarahFatimaK: followed the Template's instructions and it now works fine on Windows 10 + Firefox. A455bcd9 (talk) 13:50, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello! I have a question related to TranslateWiki.

Can someone tell me where I can find the group of messages in regard to the toolbar in the photo? Not really sure about its exact name. I'm mostly interested in translating the remained English terms under "Futni". I'm looking for something like this if that's possible. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:04, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Try visiting [4], it shows you the page names of the messages used (MediaWiki:Wikihiero-visualeditor-mwhieroinspector-title is one example). This trick works on any page. As you can see the messages that are not included in the VisualEditor group are defined in the group of other extensions, namely wikihero, score, math, graph and cite. The dialogs that pop up when you click those options also have messages in those same groups.--Snævar (talk) 11:34, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Snævar: thanks for the reply! Would it be too much to ask from you if you did send me the links to all the groups that you mentioned, assuming those are all the groups that are related to it? The reason I say that is because the question, along with the screenshot was given to me by another user. My toolbar, if I'm not wrong, is not the same as the one he's showing in that screenshot and I'm not very fond on experimenting on my preferences because I've had problems in the past with those. If you could give me the list of links to those groups, I can just copy-paste them to the said user and tell them to search on those or possibly translate them all. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:15, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Sure, but translating those groups would also involve translating for support with the wikicode editor, these groups are not only connected to VisualEditor. I picked UI (short for User Interface) only groups where there where ones (for Math and Graph). Cite was allready fully done in your language, so I skipped listing that one.

1. https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-wikihiero&language=sq&filter=!translated
2. https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-score&language=sq&filter=!translated
3. https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-math-user&language=sq&filter=!translated
4. https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-graph-user&language=sq&filter=!translated
5. https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&group=ext-syntaxhighlightgeshi&language=sq&filter=!translated

--Snævar (talk) 16:19, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Snævar: thanks a lot! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:49, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi, you may be interested in the mw:qqx trick.

This link to TranslateWiki.net will give you a list of all of the messages in VisualEditor that still need to be translated to Albanian. There are currently seven. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): yes, thank you! We're working as a community to fully translate those. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 06:55, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm getting a lot of 503 errors, such as this one on the List of shipwrecks in 1791 - Request from 2a02:c7d:c22:8000:80bb:d466:4f8c:e79c via cp3058 cp3058, Varnish XID 401023227 Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 19 Jul 2021 07:50:26 GMT. Happening of about 1/4 to 1/3 of articles. Some are taking several attempts before they are accepted. Mjroots (talk) 07:52, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Steps to reproduce:

1. View MediaWiki talk:Blockedtext#Not detecting IPs properly.
2. Observe that it has four blue links to Module:IPAddress.
3. Edit Module:IPAddress but don't change anything.
4. Paste MediaWiki talk:Blockedtext under Preview page with this template.
5. Click Show preview and scroll down to "Not detecting IPs properly".
6. Observe that the four links to Module:IPAddress are now red.
7. Type explanation below!

Johnuniq (talk) 07:36, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

A bug report with clear instructions to reproduce the bug. Every debugger's dream. HighInBC ^{Need help? Just ask.} 07:39, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I repeated the above experiment editing other modules such as Module:Navbar—the links are blue on preview. Then I copied the section to User:Johnuniq/sandbox2 and did the experiment using User:Johnuniq/sandbox2 as the preview page—the links are red. Then I removed stuff from the sandbox to leave only what is required to trigger the issue so it's much simpler. Feel free to edit the sandbox. Johnuniq (talk) 10:00, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought I had previously found that the directional markers were needed to trigger the bug but they are not. I have now edited User:Johnuniq/sandbox2 so it shows a link to Module:String and invokes that module. Previewing an edit to the module shows a red link. Johnuniq (talk) 10:46, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I noticed this a couple of days ago.

1. look at Template:EB1911/testcases. The links to {{EB1911}} and {{EB1911/sandbox}} are blue (as they are here)
2. edit but do not change {{EB1911/sandbox}}
3. paste Template:EB1911/testcases into 'Preview page with this template'
4. click Show preview (the one next to the 'Preview page with this template' box)

The {{EB1911/sandbox}} links in the rendered testcases page are redlinks

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:12, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

15:29, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I will move this to WT:US if required.

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property 'outerHTML' of undefined
    at Object.<anonymous> (<anonymous>:124:70)
    at fire (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.ui&skin=vector&version=18fma:46)
    at Object.fireWith [as resolveWith] (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.ui&skin=vector&version=18fma:48)
    at done (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.ui&skin=vector&version=18fma:130)
    at XMLHttpRequest.<anonymous> (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.ui&skin=vector&version=18fma:134)

Seems to be preventing me seeing certain scripts on Special:History pages ―Qwerfjkltalk 16:59, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The infobox in Elbow Cay Lighthouse has the location marker when previewed during editing. In ordinary view of the page, the marker is absent. Observed here at least. Does this depend upon screen size? A bug? Ideas? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 03:56, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I see the marker in ordinary view now. I think this is just a caching issue. Anytime a map looks correct only when previewing, (which I have seen multiple times), the article is also fine eventually. MB 04:46, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough but my current display still lacks the marker. Partial screenshot here. http://easthope.ca/ElbowCayLighthouse2021-07-18.08-44-00.png Anyone else not getting the marker? Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 15:52, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Showing fine for me. Have you tried purging the cache? Mjroots (talk) 07:35, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The marker shows up for me, so I agree the most likely cause here is caching. If you're using Chrome, an easy way to test this is to view the page in an incognito window, which will bypass the browser cache. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:24, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Firefox here. Doesn't reload fetch a fresh copy of the page and render it? In any case, the marker is present now. Thx, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 03:24, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

• Device - HP Pavilion (Windows 10 Version 2004 Build 19041.1110)
• Browser - Microsoft Edge Version 91.0.864.70 (64-bit) (InPrivate Mode)
• What I tried - reloading (no effect), reopening Edge with InPrivate Mode (no effect), restarting (worked but took too much time)
• When it happened - after I temporarily switched to mobile data (via tethering due to power outage), then tried editing (the mobile data IP was range-blocked if I understand correctly). When I switched back to regular wifi I was still blocked but restaring fixed it (I'm still on the unblocked IP which I was using when Wikipedia "blocked" me). Was this a bug? 45.251.33.74 (talk) 06:38, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

What was the message that you saw? Ruslik_Zero 07:52, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't remember the exact words but it said that users on the mobile data IP range were blocked till January 2022 for block evasion. I don't remember what IP range it was, unfortunately. 45.251.33.74 (talk) 08:04, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

This sounds normal, as a Wikipedia:Autoblock#Cookie_block. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:04, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay, so it wasn't a bug and somehow Edge didn't remove the cookies before I restarted the browser. Thanks! 45.251.33.26 (talk) 10:12, 20 July 2021 (UTC) PS - if anyone is wondering why my IP is different, I had another power outage. 45.251.33.26 (talk) 10:18, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Over the last few days, I've noticed that Interwiki links have stopped appearing in some languages; certainly French, and possibly others.

For an example, see Jacques Behnan Hindo. That article, de:Jacques Behnan Hindo, pl:Jacques Behnan Hindo and wikidata:Q1677891 show the four articles in that family. The fourth one, fr:Jacques Behnan Hindo, shows no Interwiki links; though it does link to Wikidata.

For a higher profile example, see fr:France. Narky Blert (talk) 13:49, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Narky Blert: this sounds like Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_190#Disappeared_languages - frwiki has the 'new vector' that moves where these appear in the interface. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:38, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Oh I see - top right, where I'd expect the coordinates to be, broken down into 8 non-alphabetic sections for added inconvenience. Thanks! Narky Blert (talk) 15:10, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Narky Blert: you can leave feedback on that here: mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:13, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I've merely skimmed that thread so far, but have a sense of dejà vu. "We're going to make these changes, and you WILL love them."

On another site, after several months during which us sysops exploited all the unplugged loopholes we could find (including a Firefox add-on that made it look as if you were using IE2, and finding their load balancing server) while the "improvements" were rolled out, they finally made the site impossible to monitor for our main concerns - malware, commercial spam, copyvios, pornographers and underagers, with trolls for relish. The 40-some of us all gave up, and left them to their own devices. Strangely, that site fell off Quantcast, and was closed down completely a couple of months ago (which was 2 or 3 years later than I'd predicted).

I may post in that thread, though I have the feeling that it'll have about as much effect as whistling (or making a different sort of noise) in a thunderstorm. Narky Blert (talk) 16:14, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

 

 

Hello! Wikipedia in French is the largest "early adopter" of Desktop Improvements. Indeed, we have recently deployed a new change.

You can read more about the language button on MediaWiki.org. In a nutshell: based on three different tests with various groups of readers and editors (first, second, third), we have decided to create a button with a list of interlanguage links, and put it right there. Yes, the challenging part is that this change is against the muscle memory of experienced editors (me included, and I was a n00b 11 years ago). However, the tests have proven that readers are more likely to spot the interlanguage links and switch between the language versions, and that most random editors appreciate that change.

(Interesting fact: some readers have been frustrated by looking for the traditional interwiki list - because one needs to scroll in order to get to those, because they generally ignore the sidebar, etc. As a result, they would go to Google and type, say, "Super Bowl Spanish Wikipedia", rather than go straight to interwiki.)

Also, the interlanguage links list will soon be improved. Just look at this Phabricator ticket and these slides. The Language team is building this.

Currently, we're running A/B tests on all early adopter wikis. A half of logged-in users can see the traditional list in the sidebar, and a half can see the button. Next week (I think) we'll know the usage statistics. We'll also compare before & after for logged-out. We hope that using interlanguage links will be way, way easier after we've built the sticky header and added buttons to preferred languages next to the existing button with the full list.

Also next week here on English WP Village Pump I'll post an update about the state of the project. Finally, I hope our Wikimania submission will be accepted, and if that works out, then you will be able to talk to us.

I encourage you all to take a look at our documentation. In particular, the main page of the project, and the FAQ. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Isn't the button confusing? Saying "read in English" sets an expectation that the reader is going to get a translation of the page they are viewing when actually they are going to be redirected. "Read the English Wikipedia article on this topic" is more accurate. Nthep (talk) 07:59, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Good point. Sadly, "Read the English Wikipedia article on this topic" is three times longer. This may work for a small pop out, but not a button. The real problem in the background is way more difficult to solve, though. Readers don't know that each wiki is a universe of its own, with its own community, culture, schools of thought, etc. They don't interpret the phrase "the English Wikipedia article on this topic" as we do. On the other hand, another Wikimedia wiki is still a member of one family. It's better to encourage readers to stay in the family rather than to let them jump to an entirely different website. So finally, when the Web team was establishing the scope of the Desktop Improvements project, we decided to take care of issues we can solve. It's the only way to eat an elephant. This is why we think that a not ideal button is better than a way less useful list. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:55, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

I accept the point, coming up with something snappy is not easy, I realised that as I was typing my comment. The risk for reader satisfaction is that they are taken from an extensive article in one language to something that is little more than a stub in the preferred language and think "huh, what happened there? Is there some sort of error?" Nthep (talk) 13:06, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

You're right @Nthep, I admitted that (problem you're pointing out) by calling it an elephant. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): "However, the tests have proven that readers are more likely to spot the interlanguage links and switch between the language versions, and that most random editors appreciate that change." Really? ko:샘 해밍턴 (I can't copy the relevant bit of Hangul, which I don't read). I wasted several minutes composing an {{ill}}} link before discovering there was a parallel English article - fortunately with the same name as the one I had chosen. I could have picked Sam (entertainer); which would have helped no-one, and might have led to someone writing a duplicate article. Narky Blert (talk) 08:07, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Narky Blert, I'm sorry to hear that it took you several minutes. Do you have the Desktop Improvements enabled? Were you editing while trying to look for interwiki? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 08:37, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): An everyday piece of DABfixing. An English article about a Korean TV show linked to Sam. I went straight to the Korean equivalent, used Google Translate to find the matching text, and found the relevant Korean bluelink and article from that. Korean and Japanese (and to a lesser extent Chinese) in particular are languages where it's common for there to be no corresponding articles elsewhere, and I've learned not to waste time looking for cases where there might be duplicate Wikidata entries (which are pretty common). Narky Blert (talk) 09:10, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I wanted to get a random unsigned 32-bit integer. However, math.random(0, 2^32-1) gives (interval is empty) error and math.random(0, 2^31-1) gives -476707714 (overflow this early?!) with the default seed. Alexiscoutinho (talk) 20:26, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Alexiscoutinho:: There was a bug in Lua 5.1, which is what Scribunto uses, where math.random incorrectly used a signed int instead of an unsigned int in one of the behind-the-scenes functions. This was fixed in Lua 5.2, but here on Wikipedia we're stuck with 5.1. If you run your examples at https://www.lua.org/cgi-bin/demo, which uses Lua 5.4, both your statements correctly evaluate to positive integers. The best workaround would be to just use math.floor(math.random()*(2^32-1)). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 21:01, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

You can also try using the number() function from Module:Random. isaacl (talk) 22:14, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm curious, Alexiscoutinho: what for? — Guarapiranga ☎ 01:18, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Guarapiranga: As a cheap alternative to the inaccessible table/object's id for hashing (when I don't want to hash its content) Alexiscoutinho (talk) 05:07, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

  Cheers. — Guarapiranga ☎ 05:11, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

MOS:CONTRAST is fairly clear. It states that:

"Articles (and other pages) that use color should keep accessibility in mind, as follows: [...] Some readers of Wikipedia are partially or fully color-blind or visually impaired. Ensure the contrast of the text with its background reaches at least Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0's AA level, and AAA level when feasible (see WCAG's "Understanding SC 1.4.3: Contrast (Minimum)"). To use named CSS colors for text on a white background, refer to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/CSS colors for text on white for recommended colors."

However, the default skin does not accomplish this. For context, to meet WCAG 2.0's AAA level, a contrast ratio of 7:1 is required.

• Red links have a contrast ratio of 6.8:1 against a white background, and 6.5:1 when used against the grey background of a table.
• Interwiki links have a contrast ratio of 5.6:1 against a white background, and 5.3:1 when used against the grey background of a table.
• External links share the same, low-contrast colour as interwiki links. The icon next to them is a slightly lighter shade of blue, with a contrast 5.4:1 against a white background, and 5.1:1 when used against the grey background of a table.

First of all, should we address the issue? MOS:CONTRAST says that we should hit the AAA level when feasible. I think that it is feasible - just a small colour tweak is necessary - and given that users interract with these links constantly on Wikipedia, it's worth improving accessibility. Here is my proposal: adjust the shade of the colour in the Colour Contrast Analyser programme until a contrast ratio of 7:1 is reached.

Is there anything I've overlooked here, or any reason why this couldn't or shouldn't be done in the name of increasing readability for colourblind readers and editors? I understand that it's a subtle change, but a worthwhile one when we consider that an estimated 4.5% of people are colour blind to some extent, and many more would benefit from increased contrast from the default skin. If this is in the wrong section, I apologise. I saw this as more of a technical issue than something for the idea lab, but it seems borderline. Domeditrix (talk) 23:53, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

This is a great idea and I support it whole-heartedly. Jorm (talk) 00:00, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Two things: since we're talking about accessibility, make sure to consider contrast of links in wikitable cells as well as wikitable column/row headers (I've added scope attributes to the table above); and because we're talking about Internet/WWW/browser behavior, don't forget about visited/unvisited differences. Obviously, there's no problems with visited non-existent links, but some users might expect a purple (rather than a blue) for the links they've visited. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 00:37, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@JohnFromPinckney: Maybe I just read the wrong articles, but I don't really recall seeing links in wikitable cells, which is why I didn't test against the darker grey colour. As for visited vs unvisited, the visited colour for external and interwiki links ( ) passes the contrast test, while red links and the external link icon do not appear to change colour after being clicked. The colours I've proposed changing are the problematic ones within articles. There are further issues in (for example) the watchlist, but I wanted to keep this narrow. If we do consider wikitable cells, red links would need to change to a darker red (to   example), interwiki and external links would need to change to a darker blue (to   example), as would the external link icon (to   example). One potential pitfall of this is that these would become virtually indistinguishable from unvisited links within Wikipedia (  example). I can envisage this causing further issues - changing the colour of unclicked blue links to a slightly darker blue may cause a fight the likes of which we've never seen. Domeditrix (talk) 01:02, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

List articles can often links in tables. For an example see: List of Netflix original programming. Terasail^[✉️] 01:07, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think this is something we should hack in "sitewide" on the English Wikipedia, if the colors are an issue they should be changed at least on the entire skin upstream by requesting a software change. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:03, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

phab:T213778 is relevant. Izno (talk) 04:47, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Izno:! @Domeditrix: contributing suggestions at that task would be welcome. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:59, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I have no objections to the new red link color, but if we're going to change the interwiki and external link colors, we should either make them identical to normal wikilinks, or actually make them different enough that you can tell them apart. I personally use my custom CSS to change the interwiki links to   (unvisited) and   (visited) so I can tell them apart from normal wikilinks. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:27, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I use User:Anomie/linkclassifier. ―Qwerfjkltalk 06:54, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Not sure if this or the Help desk is the best place to ask this question. An IP range is partially blocked. It expires in February. A single IP that is part of the range is sitewide-blocked. It expires in January. When the single IP's block expires, does the partial block remain in effect and include the single IP?--Bbb23 (talk) 18:56, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bbb23: Yes. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 20:12, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Zzuuzz: You'd be a great witness in a courtroom. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:54, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Filmreference .com references occur 2,566 times, yet it is blacklisted. .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 05:43, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@0mtwb9gd5wx: If you want to request a bot task please post at WP:BOTREQ. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:49, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

web citation (reftoolbar) does not autofill. but wiki-mark-up coloring does work .... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 06:25, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@0mtwb9gd5wx: Please provide clear and exact steps and settings to reproduce how to see something somewhere in some web browser on some page. Thanks! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@0mtwb9gd5wx Citoid can't expand PDFs' URLs, which may be the problem. ―Qwerfjkltalk 10:46, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Today might be my first time trying the "What links here" Tool. i happened to visit Special:WhatLinksHere/Miracle Workers (2019 TV series). i only tried 2 of the links there, but neither the 3rd (Battle of the Planets) nor the 7th (Captain Planet and the Planeteers) seems to link to Miracle Workers (2019 TV series). (i opened each of those links and did a CTRL+F search for "Miracle" returning 0 results. i also did the search while "editing" each of those pages, in case a pipelink was involved.) i suspect many more of these links do not, should not, and probably never did link to Miracle Workers (2019 TV series), so why are they on the list of "What links here"?

p.s.: Below, i copy-paste what that page shows me (edited for clarity/brevity):

The following pages link to Miracle Workers (2019 TV series)

Displayed 50 items.

--96.244.220.178 (talk) 04:49, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

The link is in the navbox entitled "TBS original programming", at the bottom of most of those articles. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:41, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js gives a way to avoid the navbox entries: Source links. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:34, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Installed and proving very useful. Thank you.--Verbarson (talk) 11:17, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

May I ask precisely what data is removed by use of the Special:RemoveCredentials page? Sounds dangerous... :-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:39, 24 July 2021 (UTC).

You will get a list of what you could remove. AFAIK this is very limited, and the only time you might functionally make use of it would be if you used the "forgotten password" feature, then didn't reset your password and then resumed a logged-in session. Then, before the temporary password expired, you could use this function to void the temporary password. It has no impact on your normal logon, and doesn't reveal anything about the temporary password. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:14, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

E.g.: {{#section-h:Special:Permalink/1034515626|Area and population}} — Guarapiranga ☎ 10:19, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

No. All transclusion methods only work on the current version. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:00, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

We're going to have to discuss the merits of mirroring stuff from one page to another, as I have grumpily hinted at Module talk:Transcluder which implements {{Excerpt}}. I started on that when noticing Electoral results for the district of Parramatta which uses {{Excerpt}} 65 times, and which consequently breaks the article. Johnuniq (talk) 11:02, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Isn't the whole point of transcluding instead of copying that you benefit from changes to the transcluded page? —Kusma (talk) 12:15, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, this would be a shortcut to copying, especially for discussion in talk pages, as the linkage to the version in question would be made more explicit. But, yeah, there are other ways of getting the same result. OTOH, why not? — Guarapiranga ☎ 12:35, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Guarapiranga, with regard to "why not", I think "because it would be immensely complex and a large amount of development work for scant benefit" unfortunately. firefly ( t · c ) 12:51, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Firefly: Yes, unfortunately. — Guarapiranga ☎ 01:23, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Having said that, I'm curious, Firefly... How's transcluding an old revision any more complex than transcluding a live revision? — Guarapiranga ☎ 01:26, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

phab:T31051 from 2014 is still open for this type of functionality to be developed. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:29, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Xaosflux. The use case there in that phab is also interesting; I hadn't thought of that. And you're right: it'd be the same logic. I can't imagine why it'd be any harder to address pages in transclusion by their permalinks rather than their logical addresses. I can only imagine it's deliberate to preclude ill intended editors from transcluding reverted or superseded content onto current versions. OTOH, that doesn't seem in line with the general spirit of WP of giving editors carte blanche—literally!—and letting content be guided by policy rather than technical constraints. — Guarapiranga ☎ 21:33, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

To transclude a page that made use of no templates or other transcluded content, identifying a specific page version to transclude is straightforward. However if the page being transcluded in turn transcludes other content, then you need to figure out what version of each transitively transcluded page should be used. From a user perspective, I imagine the simplest approach would be to specify a given date/timestamp. From what I understand of Wikipedia's current underlying database format, though, this would be a time-consuming operation. Of course anything can be done if it really needs to be, but there's an opportunity cost, and so whether or not this feature has higher priority over other tasks has to be evaluated. isaacl (talk) 22:35, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Identifying old versions of a template is especially challenging when the template has been deleted. Certes (talk) 00:22, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

However if the page being transcluded in turn transcludes other content, then you need to figure out what version of each transitively transcluded page should be used.
AFAIK, MW's engine already does that, @Isaacl. Just check that old revisions aren't garbled by later template changes. — Guarapiranga ☎ 11:05, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "just check that old revisions aren't garbled by later template changes". Later than when? That is the exact functionality that I said needs to be implemented. Currently, it always uses the current version of transcluded pages, no matter which version you are looking at. isaacl (talk) 13:50, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think we should get a way to display reverted vandalism, copyvios, BLP violations, and so on in live wiki pages. Old revisions are not indexed by search engines and rarely viewed by readers so bad content doesn't matter much there. Enabling it would also give problems for some reusers. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:41, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

If we could do that (provide a date and have the software look at all templates as of that date), we could have real permalinks (by which I mean permanent links to the rendered page, not permanent links to some wikitext that may turn out to have a completely different interpretation later), which would be super useful in general, especially for people trying to cite a specific version of a Wikipedia article (currently, thanks to things like Template:Latest stable software release/Linux, several years old versions of Linux kernel will tell you it was most recently updated in July 2021). Of course you immediately run into nightmares of deleted revisions of the templates or images used (gets more fun if you consider page moves), not to mention tracking what happened to the relevant Wikidata items. Best not to use transclusion for anything you want to be readable in the future, I guess. —Kusma (talk) 12:11, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

ProveIt doesn't follow style retention, and just like Visual Editor, is a clusterfuck. Stop pushing this, they're garbage. This is a case of WP:STYLERET amongst others. They need to go.[8] I will follow this and revert every single edit made by it. Dumbasses follow, learn basic coding. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 21:49, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Floydian for those of us unfamiliar with the Provelt tool, and who don't understand significance of the diff you linked, can you please go into a little detail? Thanks. — Maile (talk) 22:05, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Maile66 Compare the wikitext of the two pages - the had cite web templates where each parameter was spaced onto it's own row, in the the citation templates have been automatically altered so all the parameters are on the same line. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 22:13, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

"Citation format" in respect to the lines typed into wikitext is not protected by our various *VARs, and particularly not CITEVAR, which is the controlling guideline on the point (see this RFC). Seeing as Walter is fundamentally improving the citation content, do not revert him again. Thanks. Izno (talk) 00:00, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

And please don't refer to well-meaning contributors as dumbasses, either. — MusikAnimal ^talk 00:55, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, no. While I'll agree it's well meaning, it's detrimental. Learn basic coding. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 03:37, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

While MA used the word "please", 'yeah, no' is a good reason to say "yeah, no". Do not refer to well-meaning contributors as dumbasses. Period and end of story. Izno (talk) 03:40, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Floydian is complaining because the tool minimizes a reference like this

to <ref name="IndigenousFoundations">{{cite web | title=The Residential School System | website=Indigenous Foundations | publisher=UBC First Nations and Indigenous Studies | url=http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/ | access-date=April 14, 2017}}</ref>. The style did not change one iota. WP:CITESTYLE lists several different style, and both styles—the expanded form Floydian likes and the compacted form that ProveIt minimizes to—are Citation style. The tool does not change to APA style, ASA style, MLA style, The Chicago Manual of Style, Author-date referencing, the Vancouver system or Bluebook. I tried to explain that on the article's talk page, but I was threatened to be taken to ANI if I "changed the style again". I suspect it was because I mentioned the editor's personal attacks toward me (talk about the content, not the contributor), and their use profanity on my talk page might merit a trip there if the poor behaviour continued. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:06, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I love ProveIt, it's my favourite citation gadget. No need to start calling people dumbasses because it changed the code style (which is not cosmetic, so no actual reason to revert) — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 18:23, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I like it too (though I'd wish it used mnemonic ref names when normalising everything). I also use the Expand citations gadget, BrandonXLF's Expand References script, WMFLabs' ReFill² and Fix dead links ones. What do you use? (and, yeah, Floydian's trash talk was really uncalled for) — Guarapiranga ☎ 21:41, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. I have apologised to Walter Görlitz as it really was uncalled for language; bad day is all I can chalk it to. However, I do still feel that changing an article from vertical citations to horizontal citations is something that falls under a "style change"; regardless, this is an issue that can be dealt with on the talk page of the article, so please disregard my rude posts. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 22:12, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

We all have bad days and I bear no hard feelings. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:15, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I'm loading User:TheDJ/mobileVector.css, but I'm not sure how (it's not in my global, common or skin .css or .js pages), and it still loads in safemode. This is not a really a problem, but I was confused about how it's loading. ―Qwerfjkltalk 18:57, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

No idea why but you added this to your User:Qwerfjkl/common.js file. Qwerfjkl, you are really starting to take up a lot of time at VPT with your own personal scripts - we try to attend to this page frequently to help everyone - but if you want to do all of these custom experiments you really need to learn to start being able to debug them yourself. I suggest you read everything on Wikipedia:User scripts/Guide, including the section on debuggers. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:37, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I think I disabled the line in my common.js. I have posted a few problems that are low-priority, and have been bugging me for a while. I probably (hopefully) won't post a large number of questions in the future, and will try to post script-related problems at Wikipedia talk:User scripts, so as not to clog up this page. Thank you for your time. ―Qwerfjkltalk 21:23, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

It is also uncommented in common.js on your alt account, but in safemode it shouldn't load (unless safemode doesn't affect the css?). MarMi wiki (talk) 20:59, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Xaosflux ―Qwerfjkltalk 15:22, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Is this still happening? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:40, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux Yes. ―Qwerfjkltalk 06:19, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

What makes you think it's loading? safemode means a url like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?safemode=1. Is it really loading there? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:02, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Yes, it's loading there. Sorry for the late reply. ―Qwerfjkltalk 14:03, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Did you do anything to your browser, like try to load scripts directly from your browser? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:12, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux I am (almost) certain that I haven't done this. ―Qwerfjkltalk 14:05, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @PrimeHunter @Xaosflux ―Qwerfjkltalk 06:57, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

What makes you think this is loading? — xaosflux ^Talk 09:49, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux It changes the appearance of pages. ―Qwerfjkltalk 09:54, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Sure, but lots of things do. Do you have something specifically showing this exact script is loading in your debug? Have you tried the standard method of : unlink ALL of your userscripts and and them back one by one? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:48, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux The main change is the addition of this:

	<label
		id="mw-sidebar-button"
		class="mw-checkbox-hack-button mw-ui-icon mw-ui-icon-element"
		for="mw-sidebar-checkbox"
		role="button"
		aria-controls="mw-panel"
		data-event-name="ui.sidebar"
		tabindex="0">
		Toggle sidebar
	</label>

I'm not sure this actually is User:TheDJ/mobileVector.css ―Qwerfjkltalk 14:47, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

The <label>...</label> element is normally used in a form, it allows a control (element within that form that interacts with the user, such as input, button, select, etc.) to be given a descriptive label. The control needs to have an id= attribute that has the same value as the for= attribute of the label element; this id/for pair creates an association between the control and its label. So in the above example of a <label>...</label> element, there is the attribute for="mw-sidebar-checkbox" and somewhere in the enclosing <form>...</form> element, there will be another element that has the attribute id="mw-sidebar-checkbox". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:46, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

If you're not sure what's going on, it might be a good idea to read mw:Help:Locating broken scripts. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: None of that code is in User:TheDJ/mobileVector.css so I don't know why you think it's loading. The code is part of mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Features/Collapsible sidebar. It appears if you use the Vector skin and disable "Use Legacy Vector" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. I asked "What makes you think it's loading?" 13 July. It took you five posts and ten days to give a meaningful reply. If you seek help then please answer questions from the people trying to help you. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:17, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there any reasonably easy way to get a full list of all articles and redirects about the current Olympics and the subsequent Paralympics containing the number 2020 (anything containing "2020 Olympics", "2020 Summer Olympics", "2020 Paralympics", "2020 Summer Paralympics" or "Tokyo 2020"; all regardless of capitalization) with no corresponding 2021 redirect? Animal lover 666 (talk) 17:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

quarry:query/57098 for non-redirs, and quarry:query/57100 for redirs. —Cryptic 18:27, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

A recent IP edit (diff) made a good change but also changed "(2100–2000 BC)" to "([tel:2100–2000 2100–2000] BC)". The tel URI displays as 2100–2000 which is intended to dial a phone number. I assume there is a broken browser extension which "fixes" text like this and I'm posting in case others notice the problem. I'm also hoping someone here would search articles to see if there are other instances. Johnuniq (talk) 03:16, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

This looks like a six-year-old bug, but it may be happening with greater frequency recently. I checked a few edits, and they are all tagged "Mobile edit Mobile web edit Visual edit". A crude search finds 300+ articles with this error. I don't know anything about edit filters, but this may be a good use of one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:51, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

All external links to tel:, for reference. Plenty of other errors in there screaming for helpful gnomery, especially things like [tel:(123) 456-7890]. —Cryptic 06:00, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I requested an edit filter to try and tag these, for fixing and also to get an idea of the scale of the problem and whether further technical action is necessary. the wub "?!" 11:26, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

T256758 says that this problem has been fixed in the new version of MW, to be deployed on 29 July 2021. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:07, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I would like to suggest redesigning the mobile sidebar which is short on helpful links. Because this is a technical matter, I would like to know who to contact on suggesting this. If you could help me out with this, that would be great. I'm having trouble with WP:PHAB which was suggested by another editor. Interstellarity (talk) 12:05, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

You have to be more specific about what problem you're having and what you wish to be accomplished, or you're unlikely to get the help you need here. Nardog (talk) 14:37, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Nardog: To be more clear, I would like to add more links to the mobile sidebar like a help link and a contact us link to help users better navigate the site. I’m asking where I should go in order to make this happen. Interstellarity (talk) 14:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

What trouble are you having with WP:PHAB? Nardog (talk) 14:57, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Step 1 is probably getting local consensus, someone else (such as myself) can deal with the implementation if consensus is reached. --Trialpears (talk) 15:04, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: I tried getting a consensus on pages such as WP:VPPR and RFCs, but not many people commented on them. What I could do is list the discussion on VPPR, make it a RFC, and add a link to the centralized discussion page to attact more people to it. I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it. Could you tell me what I should do in this kind of situation? Interstellarity (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Could you link the discussion? I don't recall seeing a VPPR thread about it and couldn't find one with a quick search either. --Trialpears (talk) 20:39, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Sure, here it is: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_176#Proposal:_Adding_more_links_in_the_sidebar_in_mobile_view. Interstellarity (talk) 21:14, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Hm, that isn't much discussion and I doubt interface changes would be made based of that. Based on mw:Skin:Minerva_Neue#Configuration_of_menus it also seems to be significantly more difficult to implement then I thought. --Trialpears (talk) 21:45, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't believe there's an interface message like there is for desktop, but you can use mw.util.addPortletLink in MediaWiki:Minerva.js. Because it's JavaScript, there is a slight delay, but the mobile sidebar is collapsed on page load so the links should populate before the user is able to reveal the sidebar. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:01, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

All Good article reviews take place at the subpage Talk:PAGENAME/GAX. This link is found automatically in areas such as Template:GA. However, if an article and its talkpage are moved, Good article reviews are not moved with them, leaving them harder to find and breaking the template. I think that talkpage archives currently move with talk pages. Would there be a way to have GA subpages also move automatically during page moves? Thanks, CMD (talk) 13:48, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: You need to either have WP:Page mover rights or be an administrator. If you have either of those when you go to move a page there will be a checkbox labeled "Move all subpages, if applicable" which allows you to automatically move things like talk page archives and good article nominations. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 17:36, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Talkpage archives and other subpages are treated the same by the software but there may be more movers who forget to move other subpages. Wikipedia:Moving a page#Talk subpages says to check for subpages. Maybe we should add it to MediaWiki:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer which is displayed on the move form. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:37, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: can you provide an example of where archive subpages but not gax pages were moved recently? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:03, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Not off hand, perhaps 192 and Primehunter correctly identify the issue as the subpage box not being available/checked. Is there a particular reason subpage moving is locked behind an additional move right? It seems like it should be the default action. CMD (talk) 01:12, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: It was originally implemented as vandalism control. It used to be the case that when you moved a page with a load of subpages each of the subpages would leave a redirect behind, but if you tried to move the page back to it's original title the software couldn't automatically move the subpages over the redirects, so you had to manually go through and delete all of the redirects one at a time first. One of the ways JarlaxleArtemis/Gawp used to cause a ton of damage was by moving pages with loads of subpaages to inappropriate titles, in a few minutes they could cause damage that would take literally hours to clean up. I don't know if the more modern versions of mediawiki are smarter and can move subpages over single revision redirects, but that's the reason it was originally restricted. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 01:35, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, that's an unfortunate history. I suppose the next question is if there is a way to identify unmoved subpages, such as a tracking category for subpages of redirects. CMD (talk) 03:50, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: Perhaps it would be worth asking the people who run the community tech bot to put together another database report? "Subpages of redirects with non-redirect content"? 192.76.8.91 (talk) 15:18, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

That does sound like a good idea. I raised this issue here on the technical page looking for that sort of engagement, I'm unfamiliar on what further steps I'd need to take. CMD (talk) 05:26, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

You can make a request at Wikipedia talk:Database reports. Legoktm (talk) 20:44, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

The list of failed Good Article redirects can be found here --Whiteguru (talk) 22:15, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Whiteguru: I'm not seeing an example or this condition - for example Italian_battleship_Caio_Duilio is on that page, but Special:PrefixIndex/Talk:Italian_battleship_Caio_Duilio shows that all subpages are redirects, and that there are no archive talk pages. Can you point to an example of what User:Chipmunkdavis is describing, because I haven't seen a tech issue yet. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:20, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Of the 13 redirect listed currently following page moves, only 5 had their GA pages moved with the article. A couple were move reversions so ended up with the appropriate name, so that leaves about half with the subpages not moved and links breaking if Template:GA is used. (Template:Article history requires a written link and is thus not affected by page moves.) CMD (talk) 07:35, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Can you provide a specific example, preferably of one "broken" now? Trying to determine if there is a tech issue, or if this is just human error. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:46, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Talk:Cool Me Down (Margaret song) provides an example of what I mean. The page and talk page were moved, but the GA subpage was not. If it helps as a potential comparison, there's also Talk:2015 Wootton Bassett rail incident, where the subpage appears to have moved one minute after the talkpage. (I don't know if that indicates it was manual or a delay on the software.) CMD (talk) 13:53, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: this isn't an example of a talk page that was moved, with its archives, but not with a GA archive. This just looks like a page that was moved (in this case by Cartoon network freak) where the mover simply didn't also move the subpages at all. Basically, there is nothing special about the */GA page and this would have been the same condition for any other talk subpage. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:06, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

For example I went to a random GA and clicked move (Special:MovePage/Codex_Alexandrinus) the move page has a list of the talk subpages - but the directions may not be as clear about making sure the mover deals with them. The message directions for this are located here: MediaWiki:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer, and can be updated. Feel free to suggest improvements and open an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:12, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I believe that's what 192 was getting at, which led to my second question about identifying unmoved subpages. Presumably that would apply to archives as well? The instructions don't seem to mention moving subpages at all. I myself was unaware page movers needed to move subpages until this point. CMD (talk) 15:06, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi all. Reflinks are down again with what looks like a similar issue to last time. Can someone fix this please? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 15:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

@The C of E: our editors and admins can't fix this external site, you can try asking over at User talk:Dispenser/Reflinks. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:01, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

It's been done before. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 19:03, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

21:09, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello. My question is regarding Template:Cast listing. There are certain pages where where you have the cast list side by side with a multiple image template box. However, when you decrease the size of your browser, the image box size remains the same, but the cast listing section gets smaller. Eventually, it is just squeezed to a very small portion of the browser screen and is virtually unreadable. Look at the "Cast" sections for Interstellar (film) and El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie as examples. Decrease your browser horizontally on a smaller laptop to replicate the problem I am talking about.

These sections are fine on mobile, the cast listing seems to be "flexed" below the multiple image box. Is there a way to fix these on the browsers? — Flowerkiller1692 (talk) 22:09, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Ever since the new system went in, the bot has been doing weird things with the "appears to be already protected, please confirm" response. Here's what happens: I protect an article and post the usual notice saying so on the RFPP page. And 2 or 5 or 10 minutes later, the bot posts the "appears to be already protected" notice right under the "semi-protected" notice. At first I replied to it with the "already protected by" template; more recently I have been striking through it; but now I see that the item gets archived even if no one responds. You can see multiple examples here. I guess this is kind of a non-problem, but it can be confusing nevertheless. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:54, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Something has gone missing at “requests for increased protection”: there is no longer a tag letting us know that there was a declined request for protection in the past 10 days. That was valuable information. Now we have to either go searching in the archives on a hunch, or else assume there have not been any previous requests. There is nothing to stop an editor from re-requesting protection over and over after it has been declined. Example: Pongal (festival) was re-requested for protection on 10:10 July 26, after it had been declined on July 24 and there had been only one problem edit since the previous request. (It was eventually declined again.) Maybe this is no longer possible now that we no longer have a “rolling archive” right there on the page, but it was a valuable tool. I actually have seen the “previously requested” message at Requests for Reduction, but I haven’t seen it at Requests for Increase. Any way to reinstate it? -- MelanieN (talk) 16:50, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Frankly I think we should leave the over-worked bot operator alone. Burning him out would be a bad idea. I haven't been to RFPP much lately and haven't noticed this issue but if it's not just a temporary glitch it would be a downgrade. If I may rant a little, this is what happens when people get a great idea (with unclear benefit) that someone else has to implement. Johnuniq (talk) 23:56, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

This is the first of several posts I am going to make about glitches with the new RFPP system. @Cyberpower678: I apologize for pinging you because I know you have had a lot of hassle over glitches with the new system, without much recognition or appreciation for all your work to get it set up. I realize some of these things have nothing to do with you, but I thought you deserved the courtesy of notification - and maybe you will know who else should be notified about an individual glitch. In this case, the template {{RFPP|ispr|Example}} seems to have gone bad. When we replace "Example" with the name of the protecting administrator, that name does not show up. Instead, the response is shown as "Already protected by administrator Template:No ping." You can see several examples here. -- MelanieN (talk) 16:48, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

@MelanieN: This isn't a bug with the bot per se, this is occurring because the archive pages are too big and are running into the template limit. From the limit report: Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes. The solution here is to either substitute the templates (which I don't think would work with the no ping template, it would just end up pinging everyone) or split the archives into smaller chunks (weekly?). 192.76.8.91 (talk) 17:11, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Having said that the issue here is almost certainly the hundreds of transclusions of Template:Pagelinks, each of which creates a couple of rather long URL's, rather than Template:No ping. 192.76.8.91 (talk) 17:17, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not just that it's calling Pagelinks. It's that {{pagelinks}} calls {{page-multi}}, which then then invokes {{#invoke:PageLinks}}, which means that the actual links are being triple-counted in the post-expand include size. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:24, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

I improved the efficiency of {{pagelinks}} so that the current July archive isn't broken, but the post-expand include size is still 1,377,368/2,097,152 bytes, so a modest increase in volume could still break the page. We might want to think about substing {{pagelinks}} in the preloaded text going forwards (it would switching to the version of pagelinks at {{pagelinks/sandbox}}). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 02:46, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Whatever you did, it must have worked. In the link I posted above, showing examples where it said "protected by administrator Template:No ping", those items now show the name of the administrator. Nice work! -- MelanieN (talk) 16:22, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm looking for someone who is already using Chrome on Windows 10 or Chromium on Ubuntu, and who's willing to watch for a "cursor jumping around" kind of bug. If you're interested, please go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and enable the "Discussion tools" item. It'll give you a [reply] button on talk pages. Ping me if you run into problems with the cursor jumping around. This may be caused by a gadget or plugin. I'm hoping to find someone who encounters a similar problem, so we can find a common thread. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I think I've encountered a bug with inclusion control. At my sandbox, I've got the following code: <section begin=test/><ref><noinclude>Reference for original page.</noinclude><includeonly>Reference for transcluded page.</includeonly></ref><section end=test/>. When I try to transclude that labeled section reference to another page using {{#section:User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage|test}}, it should produce "Reference for transcluded page". However, instead, it produces this: {{#section:User:Sdkb/sandbox/testpage|test}}

This only happens when there's a reference involved; taking that element away makes it work properly again. Does anyone know if this is a known issue and if there's any workaround available? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:29, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: This is probably another issue with certain operations (like template substitutions) not being evaluated inside ref tags. There's been a bug report open for this for over a decade at this point. Try using the #tag magic word instead. <section begin=test/>{{#tag:ref|<noinclude>Reference for original page.</noinclude><includeonly>Reference for transcluded page.</includeonly>}}<section end=test/> 192.76.8.91 (talk) 18:56, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Or you could swap the order of the tags so that the ref tags are inside the inclusion control tags. <section begin=test/><noinclude><ref>Reference for original page.</ref></noinclude><includeonly><ref>Reference for transcluded page.</ref></includeonly><section end=test/> 192.76.8.91 (talk) 19:05, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

That works; much thanks! Hopefully eventually the refs thing will be fixed. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:15, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I realise that this is not necessarily under the purview of this section, but perhaps someone could answer easily? I chanced upon the following formatting:{{dot}} used to produce a space between two consecutive refs, thus:

|website=Detroitnews}}</ref>{{,}}<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.al

Why has this been included, and is it correct to use in this instance, according to MOS? You can see the original usage here. The editor concerned is inactive. I've looked at Template:·, but find no clear answer there. Thank you.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 18:22, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@Rocknrollmancer According to MOS:REFSPACE, there should not be any space between adjacent ref tags, so putting that template between ref tags is not correct usage. It is also not what the template is intended for nor is it standard practice. – BrandonXLF (talk) 20:06, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

ThanQ - that's what I expected.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 21:22, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

• upstream connect error or disconnect/reset before headers. reset reason: overflow

For awhile now I was receiving this error (white screen in browser with this text at the top) when trying to view a category or even to sign in. It finally just now allowed me to sign in. And there was significant lag in even trying to view regular pages. Does anyone know what may have been going on? - jc37 11:07, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Something to do with a database overflow on ruwikinews caused due to a bot — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 11:09, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

See also phab:T262391 firefly ( t · c ) 11:11, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

oh ok, thanks for the info. That was really crazy lol - jc37 11:23, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Background here: https://ru.wikinews.org/wiki/Викиновости:Форум/Общий/Архив/2020#DynamicPageList.

BTW, I know I'm preaching the choir on this page, but remember Wikipedia:Don't worry about performance? It has two sides. One is, don't worry unless the devs tell you to. The other is, if the devs actually tell you that mass-uploading hundreds of thousands of pages could make the servers fall over, then don't do that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

See also explanation on Wikinews. By the way, Russian Wikinews hasn't been got any direction for the whole year until last crush. But who cares. DonSimon (talk) 07:39, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi Village pump (technical), A few days ago I had created [9] this user page to use Disam Assist. How can i use this to fix Disambiguation link? Please help me. Thank you ! Fade258 (talk) 06:00, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Fade258 You should find an option when on (disambiguation) pages. ―Qwerfjkltalk 09:03, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

For Eid al-Ghadir there are several messed up interwikis. E.g. Azerbaijani Wikipedia equivalent Qədir-Xum which is about the same holiday is not linked to Eid al-Ghadir and its interwikis are different from those at Eid al-Ghadir (e.g. Spanish Ghadir al-Jumm linked to Qədir-Xum is not the same thing as Eid al-Ghadir). Could someone sort those irrelevant or possibly duplicate interwikis? Brandmeister^talk 13:30, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

This would be better to ask at d:WD:PC probably. Izno (talk) 13:32, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Brandmeister: you should be able to update all of these here: wikidata:Q15109140. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:34, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Issue raised at WD:PC since I'm unable to reassign interwikis due to conflicting interconnections. Brandmeister^talk 14:30, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

TL;DR How can I add |} to the end of my talk page? I used to have it in the form of subpage, but this clashes with the new 'reply' system. So I merged the subpage back into wiki code, but now the formatting is affected (check my talk page to see the problem - I want beige coloring all the way, but it stops few posts from the bottom as the |} code is above the newer messages. TIA. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:59, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

An unclosed table is automatically closed at the end of the page so you can omit |}. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:26, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Note if you use the visual differences beta feature (which can be enabled as an option on diff pages in your preferences or by adding &diffmode=visual to the end of a diff URL, and can be used even if you use the traditional wikitext editor for editing), leaving an unclosed element will break the output, as the autoclosing won't happen in the context of the diff. isaacl (talk) 14:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Expect this to break all the time when other people go to your talk page, especially if they use "". — xaosflux ^Talk 19:20, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Piotrus has been trying to resolve several formatting questions, and they are beyond me. There are two lint errors on his talk page at the moment, but I doubt that those are relevant. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): <center> is considered a low-priority "obsolete HTML tag" - we have over 9million of these and I don't expect them to get resolved en masse anytime soon. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:48, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

phab:T287040 mentions Help:DiscussionTools/Why can't I reply to this comment?#Accidental complex transclusion. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

My talk page has color all the way to the bottom so I used that as a clue as to how to fix. Getting rid of the table seems to work. There's an unclosed div tag but that seems to not matter to the end result.— Diannaa (talk) 13:20, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Diannaa: In general, if a HTML element is left unclosed, its effects persist until the closing tag of the next element up the tree. So if you have

<div>
  <table>
    <!-- some valid table rows and cells -->
</div>

that </div> will terminate the table as well as its matching <div>. But it's bad practice to omit closing tags unless the HTML documentation explicitly says that a closing tag is omissible - this is not the case for either div or table. The MediaWiki software goes some way to adding in missing closing tags, but isn't perfect - which is why we have Special:LintErrors. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:13, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Pretty much this. If someone makes a complicated page and purposefully has malformed coding on it, they shouldn't expect other utilities that depend on standardized coding to function normally. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:18, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I suspect we have a lot of colorful talk pages with flawed mark-up. Mine was originally adapted from User talk:Casliber.— Diannaa (talk) 14:36, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Except not really. See for example Special:WhatLinksHere/File:Van Halen - 1984.jpg where File talk:Van Halen - 1984.jpg is listed as containing a link to the main file, but of course, it doesn't. I found this is caused by {{WPBannerMeta}} which calls {{Pagetype}} which is a wrapper for Module:Pagetype but the actual culprit could also reside in Module:Namespace detect which is loaded in Module:Pagetype.

My problem with the erroneous link is that LuckyRename uses WhatLinksHere to compile a list of pages to update and as a result frequently tries to edit the talk page of files and fails because there's no link there. This error isn't fatal but it's very common and just annoying.

How can that erroneous link on WhatLinksHere be made to go away? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:17, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Found a way. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 10:39, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually I didn't. Now what? — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:38, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Help:What links here#Overview says: The parser function #ifexist: causes a listing in "What links here" among the normal links even though no link is produced. I don't know a workaround and haven't heard of cases where we omit template features to avoid such WhatLinksHere entries. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:52, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello there! I need help with this issue: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Sources#How can I contribute to the code?. Is there any chance you can help me? :) --ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 19:32, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I have moved your question to the correct location, which is WT:AWB. Izno (talk) 19:40, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

User:Maile66/Nettie Houston Bringhurst - I was going through checking myself, and clicked on something - don't know what- in the left-hand tool bar, don't know what. Now I can't get rid of this piece of crap popup on the right-hand side that wants me to: Minimize, Shoe metadata, Send appreciation to myself, or go to the next age in the queue. I just want this ugly floating thing to get off my work and stay away. Forever. Closing down my browser did no good, and neither did purging the page. And it floats up and down the page as I scroll, covering over part of the view of my window. What a piece of junk. Please advise. — Maile (talk) 22:56, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Maile66: sounds like the curation toolbar. In the top of it click the right arrow to minimize it, then click the little x in the top right to close it. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:11, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thank you! I got rid of it. I never was a fan of page curation, and now less so. But thanks for your quick help. — Maile (talk) 23:15, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

I was wondering if there is a bot or script which can scan over one previous discussion, like an RfC, and list of users involved in such a discussion. The reason is would be useful is be able to quickly ping all previous user if a new discussion or RfC came up that is highly related, and saves human time looking over old discussion trying to list all users manually. For example it would be great to easily ping all users in this previous RM automatically (given it is lengthy) for the now same RM that is now ongoing. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 14:01, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any such tool. I believe it would have to be a script, as I'm not aware of any way to make a lua module grab the text of the page it's invoked on, which is what you'd need to feed the function for it to pick out the names of participants. But I'm not intimately familiar with WP's backend, and other users may be aware of something I'm not. I could probably write such a tool in Javascript, if there's a call for it. I believe I've offered to write this very tool once before.

I've done this a few times, and I've never had much trouble gathering up all the names for a mass ping. I usually open each signature link in a new tab, then copy & paste out the names (this avoids the problem of accidentally trying to ping an editor's displayed name, as opposed to their actual username). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:17, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

For reference, you can get the wikitext of a page a module is invoked on, using mw.title.getCurrentTitle and then calling getContent() on the title. See mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual for more (it's great)! Tol | talk | contribs 15:27, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I've often thought this is something I needed, but never got around to writing it. Maybe some day. One of the difficulties is figuring out what a discussion means. I guess anybody who edited a particular section delimited by a level-2 heading? -- RoySmith (talk) 15:57, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I would say any editor who left a signature between the level 2 header that starts the RfC (a user could type this into a template that invokes the module) and the next level 2 header.

Should be simple enough to find whatever text is between User: and either |, or ]] and turn that into a list. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:28, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you, Tol I had the manual open and was looking for it, but I just didn't see that. That makes it easier, as it could be put in a module and then invoked via a template. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:25, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

No problem! Tol | talk | contribs 17:18, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

• Spy-cicle and Tol & RoySmith (because I suspect you two might know a thing or two that's useful here). I put together a function in a sandbox module I've been fiddling with at Module:Sandbox/MjolnirPants. I also slapped together a template at {{Rfcping}}. I haven't figured out how to print the output of the module to the page (subst-ing the template will naturally just place the invoke statement on the target page), and my Lua is probably shitty because I hate regex like it was satan and my entire Lua resume is right there in that module.

If someone with more experience writing modules than I wants to take a poke at cleaning up my code or tell me how to "subst" the invoke call, that'd be awesome.

Right now, the discussion has to be on the page you're editing, and you've got to use the page-level edit button, but I already know how to solve both of those issues, I just don't have the time tonight.

If I (or we) can get this fully functional, I plan to make a dedicated module for it and fully document the template, at that time. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:48, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@MPants at work: In a function in p, just return what you want to output. Tol | talk | contribs 23:24, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry; I misread your question. Perhaps check out safesubst? I'll take a look at it later. Tol | talk | contribs 23:26, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm back and looking into that now, thanks for the tip. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:37, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Ha! You nailed it. From your link, I followed the "Recursive substing" link, and the first suggestion there works. When I tested it just now, it produced parseable wiki markup. So now I'm going to go ahead and fix the two issues I mentioned above before I start moving things around. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 12:46, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

• Okay, seems to be working now. Use {{rfcping}}, passing it the name of the discussion header and the name of the page the discussion was held on, and be sure to subst it. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 14:51, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

  @MPants at work: You might want to consider wrapping it in {{require substitution}}. --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 20:56, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

  @Ahecht: Thanks. I was not aware of that. I've done it and tested to make sure it's still working. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 21:01, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all for the responses to my intial post (did not manage to reply quickly as caught up with other stuff). And thank you in particular MPants at work for creating the template, I will try using and try to mention on it on relevant talk pages now that such a tool exists. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 00:38, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

For example Yuriko Koike (image from Commons, resolution 225 × 300 pixels), and there are many pages like this I've encountered before. Resolution too small? Hddty (talk) 10:40, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

It displays for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:27, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: It still doesn't display for me when logged out. Hddty (talk) 02:31, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Hddty: Are you using an adblocker or any other browser extensions that can block elements of a page? 192.76.8.91 (talk) 00:25, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

My hunch is that this is a connectivity issue. Right-click and open the image (in a new tab) and tell us what the page says. Nardog (talk) 00:29, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not because connectivity. The image still doesn't displayed after I disabled all browser extensions. After previewing all bio on 2020_Summer_Olympics_opening_ceremony#Nations another person with image that doesn't displayed in preview is Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior (image in Commons/not fair use and resolution quite small), so its probably because low resolution (though I think all image should be displayed even if the resolution is small). Hddty (talk) 07:00, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Ah, you mean mw:Page Previews. You're right, it's because the original resolution is too small: [10]. Looks like a landscape image has to be at least 320px wide and a portrait at least 250px tall. Nardog (talk) 07:30, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I still see the Page Previews image for Yuriko Koike but not Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:11, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Maybe that's because of monitor size? After zoomed out this page I can see the image for Yuriko Koike but not Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior (even after max 25% zoom out in Chrome). Hddty (talk) 03:30, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there a template or something that can produce multiple regular spaces? {{5x}} does what I'm trying to do but it's limited to 5 characters:

{{subst:5x| }}

I know you can add two spaces like this to produce 10 spaces, but I'm looking for something simpler than this:

{{subst:5x|  }}

{{Loop}} would be perfect but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work with regular spaces:

{{subst:Loop|10| }}

(nothing happens)

85.76.142.4 (talk) 22:11, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

This seems like a case of the XY problem. What are you trying to do that would require large numbers of regular spaces? Is there anything in Category:Inline spacing templates that would do what you need? 192.76.8.91 (talk) 22:29, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the vagueness. I need it for my AWB regexes that use the #expr function (for example, something like {{subst:Loop|{{subst:#expr:$1-5}}| }}). Didn't find any help in that category, unfortunately. 85.76.142.4 (talk) 22:57, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

But why do you want a certain number of regular spaces? Saying how you want to compute the number is not an answer. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:17, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I try to make this type of edits that VisualEditor does automatically to infoboxes. 85.76.142.4 (talk) 09:42, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

But if there's no template that supports regular spaces, I can just probably make {{subst:Loop|{{subst:#expr:$1-5}}|AWBSPACE}} and then after doing that I'll replace AWBSPACE with one space. 85.76.142.4 (talk) 09:54, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Just realized I can't make this in one edit because you need to save your edit before subst works. I'd have to make two edits to make this work, so that's a no go. 85.76.142.4 (talk) 11:06, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

See Module:String#rep but people get a bit irritated when others go around changing the style of existing articles and note WP:COSMETICBOT. Finally, AWB is supposed to be used by someone with an approved registered account. Johnuniq (talk) 10:02, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I did look at that module, but I couldn't figure out how to substitute modules. And don't worry, I won't be doing this on en-wiki. 85.76.142.4 (talk) 11:06, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Then why ask for a template? Templates are local to a wiki. {{subst:#invoke:String|rep| |10}} works but modules are also local. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:03, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! That did work after all. I'm pretty sure I tried that before, but the "show changes" button didn't show what I expected it to show (but now that I tried again, it does - how strange, maybe I typoed something). And now that I actually tried to save the edit, it worked. Fortunately many templates/modules have been imported to other wikis and work similarly. And if not, I can always copy the template from en-wiki. The reason I asked here is that usually I find technical help here more easily. 85.76.142.4 (talk) 13:27, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

If a post isn't about the English Wikipedia then please always say what it is about. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:53, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

In the preferences settings under the first tab named "User Profile" there is a section about: Gender used in messages, where a user can specify to be addressed by gender neutral, feminine, or masculine pronouns, and when another user hovers over the username the chosen pronouns will be displayed as he/him or she/her along with the user rights and other user groups of the user as well as their edit count and some other basic information about the user.

However, there is a technical issue with this feature that makes the preference appear to be biased in nature where the feature appears as if it doesn't work at all if a user chooses that they wish to remain gender neutral because if this option is chosen there is simply nothing at all displayed when you hover over the username, and there should be at least something such as they/them to indicate the user has made the choice and the feature is working. Huggums537 (talk) 18:35, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I propose we add they/them to the feature to avoid the appearance that the preference is biased against people who choose to remain gender neutral, and to ensure that all editors will have a way of knowing the feature actually works. Huggums537 (talk) 18:42, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I just realized this is probably the wrong place to post this. I will copy this over to village Pump (Proposals) in order to get community consensus to take it to Phabricator and then come back here and link back to the discussion. Thanks! Huggums537 (talk) 19:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Link to proper discussion area is here: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Gender_used_in_messages_is_biased_in_preferences_(copied_from_Village_Pump_(Technical)) Huggums537 (talk) 19:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

A section on "Dynamic tonality" was added into Contemporary classical music and again, identical, into Classical music. I replaced the latter identical text with a selective transclusion from the former, following the instructions at WP:SELTRANS. I can swear that when I did that on 25 July, it worked as expected. When I now look at the version where I did that, no transcluded text is shown. The code I used is:

{{transcluded section|source=Contemporary classical music#Dynamic tonality}}
 {{#section-h:Contemporary classical music|Dynamic tonality}}

Why is it so? Did anything happen to the transclusion mechanism? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 04:52, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

This fixed it. Apparently you can't place a comment in the same line as the section heading. Nardog (talk) 05:11, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, trailing comments break other features as well, such as the URL fragment after editing a section. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:46, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

This announcement is for Wikipedians who are using the new Vector only. For more information about the project, see WP:VPM#Desktop Improvements update.

In the week of August 2nd, the link for "Add links/Edit links" will be restored to the sidebar. It will appear in the Tools section as "Add interlanguage links/Edit interlanguage links".

When building the language button, we did not include the "Add links/Edit links" link. This was because this functionality is a part of improved language selector. That selector is currently being built by another team of the Wikimedia Foundation. As a result, the link was missing. We have received requests to restore it.

We explored the best way to do it as a temporary solution. We decided to add it into the sidebar in the Tools section. You can see the location on the screenshot.

When the improved language selector is deployed, the "Add links/Edit links" link will be back together with the language links in the button. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:40, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I just happened to notice I had been mentioned in Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Vyaiskaya, but never got a ping. Investigating, it looks like the signature and the mention came in two different edits, so the ping failed. I see this a lot. Why was it designed this way? It seems like an unnecessary complication which just means a lot of broken pings because people don't jump through all the hoops properly. -- RoySmith (talk) 13:38, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

A "mention" without a signature is often archiving or refactoring which shouldn't give pings. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:42, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Would it help to add "show list of pings on preview/save" to next year's wishlist? Certes (talk) 15:12, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

On save is "Successful mention" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. I do sometimes miss it on preview. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:30, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi, hoping interested/knowledgeable parties might know something about abbreviated journal titles, which I am coming to as a newbie. It is called ISO 4 and there is an API https://abbreviso.toolforge.org/ for translating from long form to short (unclear about internationalization support). I am interested in going the other way, from short form to long. Does such a thing exist? -- GreenC 18:28, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

The ISSN LTWA or redirects tagged with {{R from ISO 4 abbreviation}} may be useful. If not then I'm sure WP:WikiProject Academic Journals will be able to help. Certes (talk) 18:36, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

I think you want to talk to @Headbomb. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

WP:JOURNALS uses TokenZero's tool quite heavily. There's an API for it and other advanced functions, and its also integrated into {{Infobox journal}} (although you have to opt-in, see this in particular. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:44, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

As for short to long, there's no way to do this automatically, since you lose information by abbreviating. For example J. Phys. Chem. could be Journal of Physics and Chemistry, Journal of Physical Chemistry, Journal of the Physical Chemist, Journal of the Physical Chemists, Journal of Physicists in Chemistry... and many others. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:51, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

It can sometimes be done automatically. J. Phys. Chem. is a {{R from ISO 4 abbreviation}} to The Journal of Physical Chemistry A. However, not all journals have such redirects, especially those where the abbreviation is ambiguous with another journal or a different topic. (Trivial example: Tetrahedron is about pyramids and not a redirect to Tetrahedron (journal).) Certes (talk) 22:00, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

Another thought: Wikidata property:P1160 holds the abbreviation. You could create a local rainbow table of those and look up your abbreviation to decode the full name. Certes (talk) 22:05, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

@Certes and Headbomb: - thank you for your help. -- GreenC 22:25, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi there, I sent an editor a message on their talk page wanting to show them how to add dashes to text. So I added both dashes within "nowikis", but instead of the text showing up, the dashes showed up. Eg. – —. Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 21:40, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: The issue is that the – and similar are HTML entities, rather than wikitext constructs, so wikitext escaping doesn't work. I displayed the code earlier with <code>&amp;ndash;</code>, using an extra level of escaping. Vahurzpu (talk) 22:22, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Vahurzpu: That did it! Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 22:24, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Magnolia677: You could send them a link to Wikipedia:How to make dashes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

{{ndash}} and {{mdash}} also works too, if you want. Sdrqaz (talk) 12:10, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Consider this simple construction:

{{Annotated link|Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques|{{lang|fr|Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques}}}}

which produces (as it should)

Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques – International organisation for underwater activities

It works fine here. It works in my sandbox. It works at Template:Annotated link/doc#Examples (see 'Piped to use template:lang per MOS:FOREIGNITALIC' [which I added yesterday per discussion at template talk page]). But if I put it in the See also of a live page, any live page, I get

[[Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques|Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques]] – International organisation for underwater activities

(except that the second instance of Confédération etc is in italics, suggesting that it almost worked.

What am I missing? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:14, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@John Maynard Friedman: When used in mainspace, the {{lang}} template also spits out [[Category:Articles containing French-language text]], which breaks the syntax of your intended wikilink. You can add nocat=yes to avoid this. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:23, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Result! Have a barnstar on me. Thank you. I'll update {{Annotated link}} accordingly. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:30, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Hello! Can someone help me with a weird phenomenon I've been having at SqWiki? At en.wiki, module documentation is rendered over a colored background; see for example, Module:Documentation. At sq.wiki, module documentation is rendered over an uncolored background; see for example, sq:Moduli:Documentation. What needs to be done at sq.wiki to render module documentation over a colored background in the same way that template documentation is rendered over a colored background; for example sq:Stampa:Dokumentacioni?

I don't know what causes the discrepancy. Our module's sandboxes are also lacking the sandbox template (even though I imported it from EnWiki) which I believe it is also related to the problem I explained above. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:08, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The messages are under MediaWiki:Scribunto-doc-*. Probably should add a note to that effect on Template:Documentation and/or Module:Documentation since I have to look that up every time. Izno (talk) 15:26, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Added to Module:Documentation/doc#Porting to other wikis. Izno (talk) 15:38, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks man! It got fixed. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:42, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I have some code which parses SPI pages using mwparserfromhell. It's mis-parsing Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Anglo Pyramidologist/Archive. I suspect there's a missing curly brace or something like that. Do we have any good tools for finding such things? -- RoySmith (talk) 20:47, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Just FYI that page is reporting the following pile of errors:

Old behaviour of link-wrapping font tags	11
Missing end tag	4
Obsolete HTML tags	21
Stripped tags	4

— xaosflux ^Talk 23:14, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@RoySmith: Do these edits help? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:21, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

@Redrose64 Yes, they did fix the problem, so thanks for that, but it did give me a few WTF moments as each time I tried a new debugging technique, I got different results as I hit different versions of yours :-( How did you find those problems? And, @Xaosflux what tool did you use to generate your list of errors? -- RoySmith (talk) 23:27, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Brute force attack: look for any opening brackets, double-brackets, double-braces and triple-braces, and check that each has the appropriate closing construct that balances it at the same nesting level, and which encloses non-markup text. For example, this is a fix for an unmatched closing double-bracket that also fixed an unmatched opening single-bracket. By checking from the innermost level outwards, we pick up this where every opening tag or double-bracket also has a closing double-bracket or tag; but they overlap instead of nest, which is wrong. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:08, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I see Page information from the tool bar to get the list of error counts. Then how do you actually dig down and find the specific places? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:09, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I for one use lintHint on Special:ExpandTemplates to find responsible code. Nardog (talk) 01:53, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Pageinfo gives the counts, but doesn't show you where they are or their precise nature. The 11 instances of "Old behaviour of link-wrapping font tags" are in peoples sigs where you have a construct like <font color=A>[[User:B|C]]</font> which should be altered to [[User:B|<font color=A>C</font>]] - I don't know why it's counting 11 where there are actually 13; whilst the 21 instances of "Obsolete HTML tags" should be the <font>...</font> tags (of which there are more than 50 pairs) and the <big>...</big> tags (of which there are more than 30), so I don't know why it's counting 21 where there are almost 90. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:37, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

The lint counter is not real-time. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:18, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

I have fixed all Lint errors in that page Special:Diff/1036275398. Redrose64, it was showing the count as 11 because font tag with face attribute is not counted as old behaviour of link-wrapping font tag error. Lint error count in page information is not accurate because the count for each type of error in a page maxes out at 20, sometimes 21. So a page can have hundreds of errors and it would still show the count as 20. <big>...</big> tags while obsolete in html 5, is not considered as obsolete by Linter. Apparently MediaWiki will continue support for big tags per mw:User:Legoktm/HTML+MediaWiki ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 14:59, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

That page is Legoktm's opinion; there are several tasks about big tag in Phabricator. Izno (talk) 15:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

A proposal really :) I added a notice at the top to clarify though. That said, MediaWiki will continue supporting <big> tags until someone (some group?) decides otherwise. Personally I don't think going around fixing them is a worthwhile use of time, but I'm sure others disagree. Legoktm (talk) 04:32, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi all

A couple of years ago I spent quite a lot of time creating a guidance page on Commons to help people find high quality photos to use in Wikipedia articles and also outside of Wikimedia. I know at least a couple of people who use it regularaly in their organisations. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Simple_media_reuse_guide

I've just come back to it and some of the formatting has really broken:

1. The titles which are overlayed over the images have disapeared, I guess some ways of coding have been removed?
2. The blocks of text and the title images are different sizes seemingly at random lengths

I've tried all the ways I know to try and fix this, if anyone is able to help I would really really appreciate it.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 12:40, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I didn't see anything wrong with the page's display, but I fixed a big pile of unclosed tags. Maybe it will help. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:58, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Jonesey95 thanks very much, I've got quite a high resolution display so maybe that has something to do with it. I got it to display to do the wrong sizes on my older laptop by zooming the page out with ctrl and -. John Cummings (talk) 20:19, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I got the headings back by removing position: relative; from the divs enclosing them. However the page could really use a complete rewrite, ideally using TemplateStyles, so that it works on mobile. the wub "?!" 16:32, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

the wub thanks very much indeed, I've no idea how to do that, do you know anywhere I could make a request like that? John Cummings (talk) 20:19, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

@John Cummings I've started working on it :) The blocks should hopefully all be the same width now. Making it mobile-friendly is going to be tricky though, I'll take another bash at it this weekend. the wub "?!" 00:12, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

the wub thanks so much for this, I spent ages writing it and always very frustrated in trying to make it look right. John Cummings (talk) 08:31, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@John Cummings Okay, I'm done tinkering with it now and it should look fine on mobile, as well as the code being much easier to maintain. Also took the opportunity to update some of the content, including the lists of competition winners. the wub "?!" 22:48, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@The wub thanks so much for your help, it looks great. I'll try to reuse the code in other places. Thanks again, John Cummings (talk) 14:44, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

What is the official / correct way for a user script to test for a page being viewed by a user that is configured to use the new evil Vector rather than the real Vector? They both show up as mw.config.get('skin') = "vector" — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:06, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@GhostInTheMachine: try: "options":"VectorSkinVersion" — xaosflux ^Talk 18:23, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

mw.user.options.values.VectorSkinVersion — xaosflux ^Talk 18:25, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Though technically, that is a user preference, and not necessarily how "a page being viewed" is set, as that page view could have an override such as ?useskin. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:28, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

So — just for anybody else watching — mw.user.options.values.VectorSkinVersion = 1 for real Vector and mw.user.options.values.VectorSkinVersion = 2 for evil Vector — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:41, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, but I guess what I really want is to know the skin as it is now being displayed, so that a user script can code around the damage inflicted by Evil Vector — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:54, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Old Vector has the skin-vector-legacy class on the <body> element, new Vector does not. (Both also have the skin-vector class.) Matma Rex talk 19:33, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I was browsing the list of protected titles. While most of the forbidden titles are forbidden for obvious reasons, I noticed that a few links were blue (mostly ones that would break major articles or tutorials if messed with). One of the ones that stuck out the most was File:Pump.jpg. The inclusion on the list raised a few questions.

1. Why is it on the protected titles list if it is such a uncontroversial image?

2. How does this image exist if it was on the protected titles list?

3. How would this be controversial considering it links to no other pages?

Is there something I am missing here? Maybe it used to be a file related to the village pump that was replaced? Please call me Blue (talk) 18:52, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

See the log (log links are often not displayed). The image uploaded with this filename was, how shall I say, a bit more offensive than the current image. It was repeatedly uploaded and used for vandalism in articles, which you can see by following the links in the log. The protection means that it is 'locally' protected, meaning no one can upload an image with the same name on the English Wikipedia. If the filename exists on Wikimedia Commons (WP:COMMONS), then that's what you see. Anyways, that was 14+ years ago - IMO it's probably been protected long enough. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:50, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I was wondering what was up with that. Please call me Blue (talk) 20:24, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

When I made this edit, I got a warning message stating "Your edit includes new external links." As the diff shows, my edit does nothing of the kind; it merely corrects some punctuation in the text, not even changing an internal link, let alone adding an external one. So whatever script triggers that warning message is buggy. 2605:A601:AADC:2100:C2FA:4802:5984:FA49 (talk) 05:37, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

That sounds like an edit filter false positive. ―Qwerfjkltalk 08:50, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

No, it's from MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-addurl, the MediaWiki feature which asks for a CAPTCHA when IP's and new users add external links. It can be triggered if a template somewhere on the page produces a new url. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:57, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

My edit neither added nor modified any templates, so if the filter thinks any template generated a new URL, it's still incorrect. 2605:A601:AADC:2100:C2FA:4802:5984:FA49 (talk) 19:20, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

A template anywhere on the page. Hard to say without knowing how Fancycaptcha-addurl works but there are weird things that can happen. If the problem is replicatable, you could save the HTML and extract the http://... and compare to see what is changing from a recent older diff version of the page (also the HTML). -- GreenC 21:56, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

If no one here has access to the Fancycaptcha-addurl code, would someone be willing to report the bug to MediaWiki? They apparently don't want bug reports from the unwashed masses, requiring an account to add one to their bug tracker. I can't determine whether the problem is replicatable without making bogus edits to the live page, but as you say, examining the code is the next logical step anyway. 2605:A601:AADC:2100:C2FA:4802:5984:FA49 (talk) 00:18, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

You could, of course, wash. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 05:51, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

It's most likely this edit to Module:Find sources/links/google newspapers, which is transcluded via the {{BLP sources}} banner, that triggered the warning. The article cache wasn't up-to-date before your edit. Nardog (talk) 06:04, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I see. So the root problem is a bug in Fancycaptcha-addurl, where it is unaware of the difference between URLs in the page and URLs present only via transclusion. Should transcluded URLs even be under its consideration? For instance, if my edit had added the {{BLP sources}} banner where it wasn't previously present, this still doesn't seem to fall under the situation the captcha is trying to prevent, that of bots adding spammy external links. If an external link in {{BLP sources}} is inappropriate, that should be addressed to the editor of the template, not the editor of a page using the template, correct? 2605:A601:AADC:2100:C2FA:4802:5984:FA49 (talk) 22:28, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

After several days of debugging, I can't find what's wrong with this simple template:

• {{density|{{UN population|Bangladesh}}|{{country area|Bangladesh}}}} → 1,148 works,
• {{country density|Bangladesh}} → 1,094 doesn't,

when {{country density}} is just basically {{density | {{UN population | {{{1|}}} }} | {{country area | {{{1|}}} }} }}. — Guarapiranga ☎ 07:02, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that {{country area|source=|Bangladesh}} is currently returning "Template:Country area/" and presumably the square brackets in the red link are then reported as a problem. Omitting |source= gives a number. Johnuniq (talk) 09:17, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I've went ahead and set source to default to UN (as it does in {{country area}}). The way parameters work in MediaWiki means if you pass an empty parameter to a template, it will not use the default value. – BrandonXLF (talk) 21:42, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Aha! Thank you, BrandonXLF.

So is my lesson from this that a parameter passed as empty is not the same as omitted?

Cheers. — Guarapiranga ☎ 22:29, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Correct. If there is no default then most but not all templates are coded to treat omitted and empty the same. If there is a default then few templates are coded to give the default for an empty parameter. The caller must usually omit the parameter to get the default. If the default for foo is bar then templates usually say {{{foo|bar}}}. If you also want the template to give bar for empty foo= then you can do the more complicated {{#if:{{{foo|}}}|{{{foo}}}|bar}}. Maybe Help:Template should mention this. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:40, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

The list in this article shows strange behavior for which I can't find an explanation:

• Delicate Mitrella instead of Mitrella delicata
• Mitrella flocked instead of Mitrella floccata
• Fortuitous Mitrella instead of Mitrella fortuita
• Mitrella inaccess instead of Mitrella inaccessa (with a pop-up showing Mitrella inaccessible)
• Neocaledonic Mitrella instead of Mitrella neocaledonica
• Nomadic Mitrella instead of Mirella nomadica
• Mitrella Peroniana instead of Mitrella peroniana

The edit page shows the right spelling of the species names. I have no idea how the wrong names show up. What is the cause and what can be done ? JoJan (talk) 16:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. It's as if you have some translation script running. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:33, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, that must be machine translation at your end, probably by Google Chrome or Google Toolbar. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:20, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I've added a photo gallery to South Bronx Greenway, but after playing with the layout a couple of times, it's still butt-ugly. Could somebody who's good at image layout take a look? This is a DYK, so it would be nice if it could be un-butt-uglified before it hit the front page. Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:00, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Scibaby

It says "Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character ",". Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character ",".". I checked the source code and found nothing wrong. What is the error that needs to be fixed? Yleventa2 (talk) 23:12, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

It is not expecting an thousand seperator in Template:SPI archive notice, which it does get from the count of entries in the category for this person. {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of {{{1}}}}} needs to become {{formatnum:{{PAGESINCATEGORY:Wikipedia sockpuppets of {{{1}}}}}|R}}. This line is used several times.--Snævar (talk) 23:29, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Snævar and Yleventa2: You can just add a parameter value of "R" to the magic word to display a raw number. See mw:Help:Magic words#Statistics for more. Terasail^[✉️] 14:14, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

See: Help:Table#mw-datatable.

I noticed this today. I don't know when it started.

class=mw-datatable is no longer working in Firefox in desktop view. I checked in 2 Windows 10 Pro desktop PCs.

In desktop view it works in Chrome and Edge.

It does not work in mobile view in all 3 browsers. I don't know if it ever did. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:17, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

mw-datatable works fine for me on that page. That said, the class in question is not obviously for non-MediaWiki-internal use and you should not expect that it will always work in arbitrary locations. Izno (talk) 04:12, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Izno. I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying mw-datatable is highlighting rows in your Firefox browser on the Help:Table page? It is not working for me in 2 desktop PCs in Firefox.

And not just on the Help page. But also in article space. See "What links here" for Template:Static row numbers table. It uses mw-datatable.

Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Static row numbers table

See the first article listed: Bauxite

I see the table row highlighting (when cursor is over the row) in Chrome and Edge, but not Firefox.

--Timeshifter (talk) 04:46, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Also   Works for me, PC and Android. I suspect it's an extension you've installed that's interfering. Nardog (talk) 05:55, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Works for me in Firefox using the monobook skin in desktop view, but the highlighting doesn't work in mobile view or using the minerva skin. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:03, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Izno: I don't think that the mw- prefix means that it is for MediaWiki-internal use, but that it is a class that has styling that is bundled with the MediaWiki software, so that it doesn't need to be added to the site's own common.css. As an example, consider the mw-collapsible and mw-collapsed classes: these are documented at mw:Manual:Collapsible elements and are generally preferred to our own collapsible and collapsed classes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:17, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah I also don't think mw-datatable is internal only.. However, it might be that it isn't loaded automatically in the way that collapsible is, so wether or not it works might depend on the skin used and as we know, the skins are seeing quite a few changes recently... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:55, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I haven't seen anything anywhere to indicate that mw-datatable is meant for non-developer consumption given that it brings styles that conflict (slightly) with wikitable. mw-collapsible and co. were however clearly made to replace collapsible and co. Were mw-datatable meant to be used generally, the styles would be cleaned up such that the only addition they would bring would be the hover. Izno (talk) 13:58, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Izno is right. This class is tied to an internal PHP class and those styles are not always added, shipped as part of the mediawiki.pager.tablePager module. They have never worked on Minerva for this reason.

It is currently not added in the same way as collapsible, (but could be). Jdlrobson (talk) 20:17, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I would not have said "works fine for me" if it did not work. Izno (talk) 13:58, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

As regards the original q.:   Works for me in Firefox 89.0.2, Windows 7 Home Premium, version 6.1.7601 --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:19, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I disabled all my extensions in Firefox, closed all Firefox windows, restarted the PC, and did Ctrl-F5. Nothing has helped so far. It seems that my Firefox is not loading anything from class=mw-datatable. All I see at Help:Table is this:

To me it looks like that with or without class=mw-datatable

I could uninstall all the Firefox extensions and see if that helps. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:46, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Which skin are you using? —  Jts1882 | talk  16:29, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

The skin is Vector. I've updated the URL above to make that reproducible. This will also impact Modern, MonoBook and CologneBlue this week. I've opened a Phabricator ticket. See top. Jdlrobson (talk) 21:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I am using Vector. Thanks Jdlrobson for the Phabricator ticket. mw-datatable is used in a lot of tables. People like it for 2 reasons:

1: The row highlighting on hover.

2: The white background for non-header cells. It makes for more contrast especially when there are non-bolded links in the non-header cells. The blue links against the normal gray background of non-header cells are not very contrasting. Bolded blue links against the gray background of header cells are less of a problem, though I think the gray background of headers is too dark of a gray. class=mw-datatable is often used with class=wikitable and the gray header background of class=wikitable overrides the blue background of class=mw-datatable headers. People can see the "Vectorized" Help:Table link in Chrome or Edge to see it working correctly. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:12, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

To clarify, right now mw-datatable works everywhere except on mobile web and in New Vector (e.g. you have opted-in by checking Legacy Vector in the preferences. Perhaps @Timeshifter has done that?). However as others have mentioned, this is indeed not meant for on-wiki use and will, in coming weeks, also become unavailable for wiki pages with regular Vector and in other skins. I've added two lines of CSS to Template:Import-blanktable, which could use instead for cases where you think there is an extraordinary need for highlighting or white background (example). As I pointed out on Phabricator T287997, though, I would recommend against bold adoption on millions of pages. If you believe that wikitable tables have insufficient colour contrast by default for simple text and links (and you may very well be right!), then please override .wikitable { background: #fff; } via MediaWiki:Common.css itself, which would be a far less work and disruption to accomplish. After some exposure and experience, this could then even be taken back into the wiki software itself and benefit all other wikis. If an opt-out is needed for rare cases where a grey background is actually better, a different class could be introduced for that in the same way. E.g. .tpl-wikitable-shaded { background: #f8f9fa; } on {{import-wikitable-shade}} and use as class="wikitable tpl-wikitable-shade". --Krinkle (talk) 00:59, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Krinkle. I left a note at Template talk:Import-blanktable. I had my preferences set to "Vector (default)". That appears to be the new Vector. Mw-datatable is not working for me in Firefox and Chrome in new vector. It works in Edge. When I changed to "Legacy Vector" on that preferences page you linked to, then I see that mw-datatable works in Firefox, Chrome, and Edge. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:14, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Comment. There seems to be some confusion about the number of articles mw-datatable is used in. It is used in a lot of articles, and it is expanding due to its use in templates. An article search for mw-datatable currently pulls up 300+ articles. But mw-datatable is also currently used in 43 templates. The articles those templates are used in are NOT listed in the previously mentioned 300+ articles. For example, the 107 articles using Template: Static row numbers table. See transclusion count. See discussion at Phabricator:T287997. I edit Help:Table and people ask about how to do row highlighting. The info was only relatively recently added to Help:Table. But it is rapidly being used by more and more tables. It would be a shame to lose this very useful function. It is difficult sometimes to follow a row of data across a wide table. Row highlighting on hover makes it much easier. And the white background of mw-datatable makes the light blue hover color stand out. And thus easier to follow across the row. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:37, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I have imported Template:Coord and subtemplates/ modules to Wikispecies, as species:Template:Coord, but it fails with a "Lua error: callParserFunction: function "#coordinates" was not found." error.

How can this be fixed, there? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:11, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

The GeoData extension needs to be enabled there. See m:Requesting wiki configuration changes for the process. Legoktm (talk) 09:19, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Answered on wikispecies.--Snævar (talk) 12:19, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the infobox map isn't working. Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 10:46, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean by not working? Both maps appear to work for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:03, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I tried it in a different browser and it works fine. Must be a Firefox thing. Cheers. Magnolia677 (talk) 11:22, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

  Works for me in Firefox. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:31, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

I often come across editors who are marking all or almost all of their edits as "minor" even though they are not minor according to our definition. I'm wondering if they must be doing it consciously or there is some preference they have set or tool they are using which could be doing it for them. I know that there used to be a preference option "mark all edits minor by default" but I can't see it available in my preferences now. Zero^talk 14:26, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

It may be that it still works for those who chose it in the olden days. I've also noticed that some academics & journalists have a wholly different concept of what is "minor" to the WP norm. Of course some usage is deliberately deceptive. Johnbod (talk) 14:30, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

20:45, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

You can test that 'subscribe' feature on this page by clicking this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&dtenable=1 Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Over the past couple of days my signature has sometimes not fully appeared, even though I've used four tildes and checked in preview. It looks like others may be having a similar issue. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:31, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Please post an example. Always include an example when you report an issue. The usual cause is an unclosed tag in an earlier section which didn't affect a preview of the edited section, but we have no way of telling without knowing the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:54, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. If I see it again, I'll post it here. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:45, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

The site footer is currently appearing on the bottom-left side of the screen only. below languages, with the categories the last thing on the right. I suspect something's missing a clear. I'm seeing this on every page with more content than sidebar. I'm using Google Chrome Version 92.0.4515.131, MonoBook, on a widescreen laptop. Please see attached screenshot - I zoomed right the way out, but it's on the bottom left. I checked another computer to see if it had the same issue, which it did, but I don't seem to have it when I'm logged out.--Launchballer 19:56, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the image! You're using the Monobook skin, which looks to have been broken (WP:ITSTHURSDAY), that's why it only happens logged in. I've left a note on a ticket I think might be the cause (phab:T287410), it may get split out as its own issue. Izno (talk) 20:07, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Also ITSTHURSDAY: the styling for the "[Mark this page as patrolled]" thing has changed in some skins. Timeless still behaves as previously, it has the rule

div.patrollink {
    font-size: 75%;
    text-align: right;
}

but other skins (Cologne Blue, MinervaNeue, Modern, MonoBook and Vector) have the changed rule

div.patrollink {
    clear: both;
}

which mean that it is now normal size and left-aligned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:49, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

(Isarra got fed up with the CSS changes ongoing since a year and a half now and is now just using all the CSS from 1.34. That's why Timeless is unaffected.) Izno (talk) 22:52, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

What is the difference between Special:Redirect/revision/123456789 and Special:PermanentLink/123456789? Kleinpecan (talk) 16:40, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

They are equivalent. Special:PermanentLink is older. Special:Redirect from 2013 has more features and can add new features.[14] I suggest to always use Special:PermanentLink or Special:PermaLink for permanent links. More users know it, it's documented at Help:Permanent link, and the link under "Tools" says "Permanent link". PrimeHunter (talk) 20:35, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Interesting, I never even knew Special:Redirect existed. Playing around, it looks like they're almost equivalent. One does (at least by default) a 301, the other a 302.

permalink:< HTTP/2 302
redirect:< HTTP/2 301

-- RoySmith (talk) 20:59, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

None, Special:PermanentLink was introduced in 2010 (after originally being requested in 2004), and in 2013 a more generic Special:Redirect was added primarily to be able to link to users by ID instead of username, but also added revision support since it was trivial. Legoktm (talk) 21:52, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all. Kleinpecan (talk) 01:22, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I am working on BrikWars. The third reference is to a PDF. I have tried archiving it using the "Fix Dead Links" tool. However the archived pdf comes back blank. I can see there are good files further back in the wayback machine. I suppose I could just edit the archive tags manually, but I suspect that would not get to the root of the issue. Slimy asparagus (talk) 23:15, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

The archived file ([15]) is cut off at precisely one megabyte (1,048,576 bytes). I assume the archiving simply failed in this one case. Either way it must be a problem with Wayback Machine itself, not our tool. Nardog (talk) 02:53, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I am perplexed in finding that the desktop appearance and editing experience is considerably different when editing with a mobile device depending on which of two possible links you may happen to choose when launching the desktop skin. To conserve space I have collapsed the screenshots and additional details in the box below. I am curious to know why this happens.

Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 18:17, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline: those "three dots" controls don't seem to be coming from us at all - I think they are a control of your specific browser, that when clicked is trying to re-fetch/re-render the page? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:04, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline The first image seems to be on the mobile site, en.m.wikipedia.org―Qwerfjkltalk 19:17, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Adding to what xaosflux and Qwerfjkl said: use the "Desktop" link at the bottom of the page. The "Desktop" button in the three-dot "kebab" menu is a browser feature that makes it try to pretend to be a desktop browser by changing the User-Agent string. This trick doesn't work correctly on some sites, including Wikipedia. In theory, it should be possible to update Wikipedia's software so that it pays attention to the User-Agent string in this case, but right now it doesn't. – Rummskartoffel 10:18, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

The three-dot menu doesn't work as you expected because our mobile site does not redirect you to the desktop site if you visit it using a desktop browser (or a browser pretending to be desktop) – even though the desktop site redirects to mobile in the opposite scenario. This is known as bug T60425. Matma Rex talk 19:36, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the replies and will comply with the advice therein. Cheers.--John Cline (talk) 05:10, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Metrolyrics has been offline since 29 June 2021 and is most likely dead, there are many metrolyrics references on Wikipedia. Should these dead links be replace with another site's? Powering everyone (talk) 17:24, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I've always been a bit suspicious of Metrolyrics, partly because it's javascript-heavy, partly because of the advertising, mainly because it seemed to be a wholesale violator of copyrights. Maybe it's been taken down for that last reason. According to www.isitdownrightnow.com it's been down for at least a week. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:07, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

about 1400 hits all namespaces.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:22, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

So what should be done? Powering everyone (User Talk:Powering everyone) 05:37, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

When you are ready to call it dead post to WP:URLREQ and we'll get em archived. -- GreenC 22:02, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I'd suggest outright removal, or replacing them with {{citation needed}}. Lyrics sites, much less this one, are most likely to be copyvio and fall within WP:ELNEVER. Nardog (talk) 22:23, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

It would require a consensus discussion, probably at RSN, with a result to remove them. The archive bots are not really setup for it, maybe some users have AWB scripts? In the mean time converting dead links to archives is a step forward. -- GreenC 23:44, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

There have been numerous problems with MetroLyrics over the years, leading it to be added to WP:NOTRSMUSIC (see the linked discussions there). "Outright removal" would be better than archiving. —Ojorojo (talk) 14:40, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

And would be much easier and quicker? But then, in many cases, we may be left with empty section... Martinevans123 (talk) 14:52, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Then the empty section will be removed in the meantime. Lyrics websites are not that fundamental for the articles, don't add anything new and in many cases, if not all, violate copyright. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 09:04, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

How are potential cyber security issues with a website given in a source dealt with? Having enquired of the user in question, this edit was because they "clicked on this link a couple of times and (their) Norton software flagged it up in large red print as a dangerous website". Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:50, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Apparently some security software flags www.fifeminingheritage.org.uk as dangerous. That may be accurate either because the site has been hacked and malware installed, or as often happens, the domain name has been taken over by a scammer with malware. Usually, however, it's a false alarm and the website is ok. Putting that URL into the Google checker claims it is ok. Regarding lapsed domain names, the site I used to use for whois no longer works. Is there a whois for domain names at tools? Johnuniq (talk) 11:05, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

How do I make this thing work? What am I doing wrong? —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 14:51, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

How are you trying to make it look? You've defined one bar with multiple labeled intervals. But most of the intervals are too small horizontally for the text to appear without overlapping other text. If you want each interval to be on a separate line, you can make each one a separate bar by adding "bar:NAME" to the start of each line in the PlotData section. CodeTalker (talk) 22:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@CodeTalker: I restored it to an older version and it works just fine without "bar:NAME". The problem with the older version is that it's not showing 2021 and 2020 is "2020.2". —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 01:30, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not really an expert on timelines, but a little experimentation indicates that adding a BarData definition like this:

BarData =

barset:PM

and also adding

barset:PM

to the PlotData (both of which you have in the older working version) resolves the problem. However I don't know why this is necessary; the documentation seems to indicate that declaring a barset should be optional. CodeTalker (talk) 02:50, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

@CodeTalker: Thank you for your suggestions. —hueman1 (talk • contributions) 13:48, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I noticed the issue at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification_and_Amendment#Motion:_500/30_amendment

The numbering of the list is messed up. Apparently it's due to this CSS:

.messagebox :only-child, .errorbox :only-child, .warningbox :only-child, .successbox :only-child {
    margin: 0;
}

I can't tell where it's coming from, though. Doesn't seem to be in Common.css or Vector.css. I'm not entirely sure why it's there in the first place. Is it safe to unset this property? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:47, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

These are all WMF classes. (.messagebox is technically our class first but is legacy since .*mbox showed up. It's on my hit list to remove entirely.) As such, they should show up in the ResourceLoader module for the particular skin of use.

In our context, I would guess you can remove .messagebox, first importing the CSS from Common.css while ignoring the CSS from upstream. You can identify more easily in console what that CSS is by using ?debug=true, which will separate the RL files into their different sources. Izno (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

The module is skins.vector.styles.legacy, but the code itself appears here, which says it's for printing, which is weird. Whatever its purpose, all only children in mboxes (as opposed to e.g. .messagebox > :only-child) seems way too broad; who knows what else it's making invisible. Nardog (talk) 00:39, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

I had revised {{User UTC}} to let it display the time of the user instead of plain UTC. I hope I didn't break anything. ——羊羊/Yangyang (talk) 03:07, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

My watchlist currently has on it:

Move log 15:59:40  Change352 talk contribs block moved page Draft:Tammi Harrison to Draft:Smoke Out Queen ‎(name)

What's weird about that is that after that move, I also moved it (after doing a histmerge). It looks like the watchlist is showing "the most recent move other than your own". Is that intended behavior? Maybe the histmerge is confusing things? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:42, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Template:Admin tasks currently shows UAA reports at -1. I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask, but I was confused and thought that someone here would likely have some idea of what is going on there. Clovermoss (talk) 00:21, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

The count assumes there is a commented out {{user-uaa. I have restored that comment.[16] PrimeHunter (talk) 01:11, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Yesterday, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_181#Delete_all_books_within_the_book_namespace closed with consensus for deletion while retaining WP:REFUND possibilities. The only way to achieve this is to move the pages to another namespace (presumably the Wikipedia: one) before deletion. Early on in the discussion I was under the impression this was not required (and thus the proposal itself was formulated under this assumption) but it definitely is as can be seen from the education program discussions.

My concrete proposal is to move all pages to subpages of Wikipedia:Books/archive with a bot and host a list of (deleted) books at Wikipedia:Books/archive. This will remove the possibility of refunding previously deleted books though. According to the WP:REFUND archives this has never happened though even though WP:BPROD explicitly allows for this. After this I will file a phabricator ticket for removal of the namespace. I also plan on dealing with related Book namespace cleanup which may have to occur before or after the massmove and namespace deletion. --Trialpears (talk) 07:49, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: wait - do you want to undelete every page in Book:, move it, and redelete it? We are under no obligation to host deleted version indefinitely. — xaosflux ^Talk 07:57, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Xaosflux No I was just noting that it won't be possible to undelete previously deleted books after this but considered that no big deal since we literally never had a refund request for a book as far as I can tell. Perhaps I formulated that poorly. --Trialpears (talk) 08:00, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: OK thanks, I agree - and don't think we should do anything to try to maintain those currently-deleted-versions. — xaosflux ^Talk 08:06, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

There's only ever been 24 restorations in those namespaces, almost half for history merges or splits, and so there's little chances of this being an issue. On the other hand, there aren't all that many deleted pages there to start with - some 1319 in Book: and 952 in Book talk:, compared to 7691/7357 currently existing - so briefly restoring them for the move seems like it would be low-effort. —Cryptic 13:28, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

I mean it wouldn't be too annoying with twinkle d-batch and und-batch, but I'm inclined to just not bother given the tiny amount of restorations historically as well as how unlikely it is for there to be worth while content among them. If someone thinks it should be done I'm happy to do it though. --Trialpears (talk) 14:14, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Trialpears, FWIW I also agree that undeleting previously-deleted Books isn't worth the time and effort given there has been negligible interest in REFUNDing them up to now. firefly ( t · c ) 16:45, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Like I've put at in the closing note of the RFC, I disagree with moving to userspace. It would be very problematic, because Book-namespace books were community endeavors, and had multiple editors and no 'owner'. Before the book namespace existed, community books were hosted at Wikipedia:Books/Foobar. This is where their resting place should be as well. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:07, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Headbomb A few books were indeed proper community endeavors with more than one significant editor, but the vast majority was not with only one editor making significant edits. For the former category I have no problems if they get refunded to Wikipedia:Books/Foobar. --Trialpears (talk) 17:18, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Put them all there, there's no reason to treat pages in the namespace differently. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:58, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Headbomb I'm unsure exactly what you're suggesting: That all books be moved to Wikipedia:Books/Foobar without deletion, with deletion but with refunds or moved to Wikipedia:Books/archive/Foobar with refunds to Wikipedia:Books/Foobar.

In my opinion just refunding to either userspace or Wikipedia:Books/Foobar depending on what the requesting user requests makes the most sense. As for the reason I suggest Wikipedia:Books/archive/Foobar is that would make Wikipedia:Books/archive an obvious place to list all books moved in this process, give instructions on how refunds should be handled and a short explanation of how come books were deleted.

If it is that you don't think they should be deleted but just moved I don't necessarily disagree (I !voted neutral in the RfC and remain so) but I really don't want to prolong discussion more which would be necessary in case there are objections to the deletions per the close. --Trialpears (talk) 19:45, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

That they should all be moved to Wikipedia:Books/Foobar, and not User:Foobar/Barfoo. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:24, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

This is all an irrelevant tangent. The only reason pages are being moved at all is that if they are deleted in-place, their deleted revisions will become permanently unavailable (even to admins) once the namespace is removed. The correct location for a book (whether it should be in userspace, Wikipedia namespace, or somewhere else) can be discussed if and when a specific book is restored. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:27, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

The should all be preserved at Wikipedia:Books/Foobar, not deleted to begin with. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:49, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

No point in debating the outcome here, this isn't how you'll get it stalled or changed. Gonnym (talk) 08:43, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

The consensus was to get rid of the book namespace, not delete all books therein. RFC closed with "Editors felt that it should still be possible to access books currently in this namespace." Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:56, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

I think we can start by disabling all editing in book namespace (except for admin editing), title blacklist or otherwise. Currently, the title blacklist disables the creation and the saving of new books to book namespace. After, we can contact all book creators about the book namespace being deleted and help them move it to userspace, giving them six months to a year to have their book moved. If an editor does not claim their book, then it will be gone, presumably permanently. Books with multiple authors can be moved to Project: space. Anyway, this is how I would approach it. Aasim (talk) 21:29, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Awesome Aasim I think your proposal would make a lot of sense if this was the one time where something would be essentially non reversable and the books wouldn't be undeletable, but since the books will first be moved to Wikipedia space and then deleted refunds will work just as usual. Anyone visiting a book should notice the big red banner on top of the page explaining that books will be deleted. We can also clearly communicate what happend using Mediawiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-book and {{no article text}} and give instructions on how to request refunds. Also worth noting that most edits in the book namespace currently are dab fixes, red link removal and userfication, so I don't see any reason to stop editing there. --Trialpears (talk) 11:26, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

So I've been away a few days and am just catching up on this, so forgive me if I get something wrong. It seems like there is consensus to delete pages in the Book: namespace, but in a such a way that deleted revisions are retrievable. It doesn't seem like pages have been deleted yet, so we're still in the planning phase, yes? If so I want to summarize what I think the plan going forward is and how to do it efficiently.

1. Move all pages matching r/ Book:(.*) / to r/ Wikipedia:Books/archive/\1 / without leaving a redirect
2. Delete all subpages of Wikipedia:Books/archive
3. Create a documentation page at Wikipedia:Books/archive explaining the historical context, where titles hosting deleted book revisions can be found, and how to request undeletion if one wishes
4. Disable the book namespace in the site configuration

The first two seem relatively simple to do by script, and given the consensus to have the revisions accessible in some future way, I believe we should not skip straight to disabling the namespace. The minutia of where to restore can be handled by the relevant admin when requests come in, and I don't think we need to figure that out right now. For books that are currently deleted, I agree that undeleting them would not be wise; we would open ourselves up to restoring BLP violations or other inappropriate content, and without much interest in them I don't believe we need to retain stably deleted content just for the sake of retaining revisions editors are unlikely to request. That said, it would be nice to establish a timeline for namespace deactivation and advertise it so that interested editors have time to request any pages they might wish to keep.

Is there anything I'm missing? Have we coordinated volunteers for any of these tasks? — Wug·a·po·des​ 20:42, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Wugapodes, Trialpears currently has a BRFA open that’ll handle (1), and I believe they will then do (2) as a batch deletion. If nobody else has yet claimed (3) I’m happy to draft it. firefly ( t · c ) 20:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Seems that the BRFA has been closed as approved though it has only run on the Education Program namespace so far. @Trialpears: do you have an estimate on when you plan to expand to Books? — Wug·a·po·des​ 21:04, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Wugapodes you've essentially said everything I was thinking but clearer, I don't believe you're missing anything major either. The one bot currently interacting with books has been disabled, but we should ensure nothing using the {{ns:}} parser function breaks and MediaWiki:Coll-community book prefix should be deleted along with the namespace. There are also a couple of categories and other things that should be cleaned up afterwards, all of which should be included at User:Trialpears/book related things but again nothing that actually influences the plan you outlined more than adding a point 5: Miscellaneous clean up.

I plan on doing everything necessary if noone wants to help out. Firefly just volunteered for 3 which I think sounds great, and I got the impression 54nd60x was perhaps interested in helping looking over documentation, backlinks and other miscellaneous parts as they did for the Education program namespace. For when I would say no earlier then a week from this discussion opened so probably Sunday if nothing here indicates that would be inappropriate. My opinion is that a big red banner on all books for a month is sufficient notification, I also plan on personally making sure Book refunds are handled quickly and smoothly. Ultimately though I'm not in a hurry and can wait if people think there's a benefit to doing so. --Trialpears (talk) 21:25, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

As nothing have come up I plan on proceeding tonight. --Trialpears (talk) 10:13, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. We will then proceed with tagging for speedy deletion the thence empty Bookspace-related categories under criterion G6, housekeeping. Best, UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:24, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I am quite upset that as an active creator and user of multiple Wikipedia books I was not notified of this proposal until it became a fait accompli and the moves started appearing on my watchlist. I can re-host them under my user space, of course, but I have been using these as curated collections of readings for my university courses and this move will break (has already broken?) all of the links from all of my old course syllabi, as well as the links to them from my Wikipedia user page, and any off-site links that may well exist beyond my control. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:23, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

David Eppstein I'm sorry you didn't get notified, but I think a reasonable attempt was made to reach all interested parties. The discussion was listed at WP:CENT for over a month, the discussion occured at our most active page for major proposals, Help talk:Books was notified as well as Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books including a ping to all project members and there's been a big red deletion banner on {{saved book}} which is used on literally over 99% of books, yours being in the tiny minority that don't. I'm quite happy though that the mystery of why Book:Fundamental Data Structures got significantly more views than any other page in the namespace with about 15 a day is now solved.

Your comment brings up quite a good point though: We haven't used watchlists to notify about this discussion and given that we now are moving all these pages generating watchlist entries it would be a good idea to give people time to see these and move their books if they so want. I'm thinking waiting another week between moves end and deletion starts would be a good idea. --Trialpears (talk) 21:47, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

There is a reason why my saved books stopped using the {{saved book}} template, and therefore why I never saw any notifications that way: because, long before this proposal, it stopped being a useful thing to include on Wikipedia-books and instead turned into a big banner explaining why some external service for printing things that I never cared about in the first place wasn't working any more. Since that banner was not useful information for my books, I removed it. And I am still mystified why the fact that this external service going away was used as a justification to delete our internal space for keeping curated collections of articles. Why do they have to be printable to be useful? Also, I don't watch any of the VP pages; they are for the most part a firehose of uselessness. I expect that the same is true for other editors more interested in content than bureaucracy. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:55, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

David Eppstein Your frustration is understandable and it's very unfortunate. I'm wondering though what concrete thing you want there to be done about it. I've stopped the bot while we have this discussion, but I don't feel much can be done. I guess you could ask for a review of the close at AN possibly reopening the discussion, but I don't believe there was anything wrong with the close nor the notifications given or any other procedural point. --Trialpears (talk) 22:06, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I believe that a process that did not make any attempt to notify the content creators, even of a book that you already knew was the most frequently accessed on the whole namespace, and bring in their point of view before the formulation of the RFC, is fundamentally broken. The whole RFC was pre-judged by people who don't use these books, without any input on who uses these books, what they use them for, and whether the existence of a third-party service has any relevance to their existence. The only reasonable outcome would be to throw out the entire RFC and start fresh, with proper notifications. But I don't expect the people invested in process and bureaucracy to do this and I don't think escalating to AN is likely to be anything but a waste of time and effort. As for stopping the bot moves until this discussion subsides: Why? So that others who might have seen the moves through their watchlist remain ignorant of it and don't bring their point of view to the discussion? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:10, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Just because I've seen other cases where people (quite reasonably) think it's inappropriate to run a bot while its activity is under discussion. Since you don't intend to take it to AN and are fine with the bot running I've restarted it again (and I was in fact contemplating how to deal with it when I saw your message). --Trialpears (talk) 22:28, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I too am surprised that you did not seek to directly inform either the creators or the main editors of the books. It's not like we're inactive. We're just not always looking at a book we created for others to use, perhaps initially created a decade ago for a set group of topics. As only existing templates were changed, not the books they were on, the impending change would presumably not show up on watchlists. As Book:Furry fandom was created by members of WP:FURRY (probably not an uncommon situation), I have moved it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Furry/Book. I suggest that informing related WikiProjects might be beneficial due to the risk of creators who may be absent for more than a week. Perhaps a bot could do this based on project templates or categories on talk? In our case we had {{WP Furry}} on it resulting in Category:Book-Class furry articles being added; a subcategory of Category:Book-Class articles. GreenReaper (talk) 22:36, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

In fact the whole process appears to be counter to Wikipedia policy (specifically, Wikipedia:Deletion policy, which outlines methods for coming to consensus on the deletion of content, none of which were followed here). —David Eppstein (talk) 22:44, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

GreenReaper I mean I could certainly notify the around 580 WikiProjects that have a Category:Book-Class articles (great category name) and the about 5000 accounts from a purely technical perspective. I do feel it is a bit excessive though. I'm not even sure if this could be called appropriate notification under the canvassing guideline with it likely being deemed spamming and possibly partisan.

For the deletion policy objection that feel like wikilawyering to me. The important part is that there's consensus for deletion. I could just as easily see objections to taking this via MfD since that is a less watched forum that would only require a week of discussion as well as MfD being illequipped to handle complex outcomes since almost all decisions there are just a binary delete or don't delete without significant prep work. --Trialpears (talk) 09:30, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm thinking waiting another week between moves end and deletion starts would be a good idea. I think it is important to pause much longer than a week before deleting anything. Somebody mentioned 6 months. Perhaps that is excessive, but a single week is far too hasty — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:49, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

GhostInTheMachine Sure it could wait longer, but I really don't see much reason to. We've had notifications placed on top of essentially all books for over a month already and if they weren't noticed during that month I doubt many more would notice them if you give it another month. The reason I thought a weeks wait would be significantly beneficial was that everyone who have a book on their watchlist would see the move and possibly move it if so desired. My thought was that items older than a week were unlikely to show up on peoples watchlists and be checked, but given that it's possible to see things up to 30 days after the edit occurred I guess it's reasonable to keep it for that long. Any longer than that I have a hard time seeing will matter from a practical perspective. Refunds will be easily available with clear instructions. Does another 30 days hold time seem reasonable then? --Trialpears (talk) 13:24, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I tried to userfy Wikipedia:Books/archive/Malaysia by moving it to User:Chipmunkdavis/MalaysiaBook, but as a non-admin I cannot move "a title with a double-namespace prefix". Would someone be able to carry this out for me? CMD (talk) 02:03, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: I just moved it and I'm not an administrator (unless a bureaucrat has gone rogue). Did you put an extra "User:" for your intended target? Sdrqaz (talk) 02:27, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I really couldn't say either way, but thanks to you and your rogue bureaucrat. If this is a me issue and not a technical, that's good news. CMD (talk) 02:33, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I was somewhat bold and created {{Book namespace deletion}} so that consistent information could be inserted into the various places that still talk about the Book namespace in the present tense. I will add a link to Wikipedia:Books/archive as soon as that exists — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:36, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@GhostInTheMachine: I created Wikipedia:Books/archive; please feel free to edit. Best. UnitedStatesian (talk) 20:11, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

 Y added a link to the book archive — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:40, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

UnitedStatesian thanks! Firefly also made a version of that page at User:Firefly/booksdraft. I took the liberty to combine your two versions. --Trialpears (talk) 13:39, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

All books have now been moved. The Book: and Book talk: namespaces are empty (except Book:A Novel) so I've filed T285766 asking for the namespace to be removed. This will have no impact on userfying books at Wikipedia:Books/archive from the Wikipedia namespace. --Trialpears (talk) 14:41, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: to help me and others plan, how long do you expect to wait until you proceed with the batch deletion of all the subpages of Wikipedia:Books/archive? UnitedStatesian (talk) 11:46, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

UnitedStatesian My current plan is waiting a month to allow more time for userfying books before deletion. The deletion of the actual namespace I see no reason to delay as there's no content there. --Trialpears (talk) 14:26, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, @Trialpears: that sounds great. Question: why did you recreate Book:A Novel after your move designed to save its history? I'm worried its existence will hold up the Phab task and think you should delete it now, so the namespace is completely empty. UnitedStatesian (talk) 15:59, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

UnitedStatesian That was indeed brought up at phab. Since Urbanecm who will be implement this is a steward he will just delete it before deleting the namespace. --Trialpears (talk) 17:43, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: What should we do about MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-book? Should we keep the blacklist entry, or should it be removed as the ns no longer exists? If it should be kept, then the wording of the message and the wording of the comment of this blacklist entry on MediaWiki:Titleblacklist should be changed. 54nd60x (talk) 05:11, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

54nd60x honestly I'm not sure. On one hand the namespace doesn't exist anymore, but on the other it is still very unlikely that people want to edit a page with a Book: prefix and I can see people attempting to do so since it exist on other wikis. For the time being I've edited the message. Xaosflux, do you have any thoughts as the editor who added the blacklist entry? --Trialpears (talk) 07:38, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

At the least we should have a cool-down period, we can live without article titles starting with "Book:*" for a little while, maybe 6 months or a year. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:15, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: In my opinion, Template:No article text and MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-book still need to be changed in some way for the following reasons. First, Talk:Book:Example and other pages beginning with "Book:" after the ns prefix (including e.g. MediaWiki:Book:Example as well) still shows the message when it's not supposed to, because for example, it creates a broken link to [[Talk:Wikipedia:Books/archive/Example]] when the first example is used. "Talk:Book:" or any other "Book:" after any namespace was never a namespace before. MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-book doesn't show properly on Book talk:Example either, it doesn't link to the project book archive subpage. 54nd60x (talk) 10:52, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

54nd60x Thanks, I misremembered the scribunto pattern limitations, they have limited zero-width assertions not none. It should now be fixed as well as enabled on book talk pages. Same goes for MediaWiki:Newarticletext. --Trialpears (talk) 11:25, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Trialpears Book talk:$1 is still being rendered as Wikipedia:Books/archive/$1, but it should be Wikipedia talk:Books/archive/$1. Also, Book:Book: is showing the second "Book:" as "Wikipedia:Books/archive/" instead of just "Book:" 54nd60x (talk) 11:30, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

54nd60x First part is intentional because I thought that would be the more useful location, but I can see both sides of that. We had no orphaned talk pages in the book namespace though. The Book:Book: issue is fixed. --Trialpears (talk) 11:44, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Is the noindex of Book namespace from search engines preventing us from finding the article? google:Book: A Novel only shows the former page title, I don't know if it has to do with this. 54nd60x (talk) 07:41, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

54nd60x I believe that's just because google hasn't re-crawled it after the move. Looking at the config change it removes indexing for the relevant namespace ids, not based on the url meaning it should be completely unaffected. --Trialpears (talk) 13:00, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks to Trialpears for planning and executing this plan in such detail. Must be worth at least a barnstar when all is complete! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 04:20, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Tomorrow there has been a month since the move. I will probably begin deletions then, but I will also do my first traveling since the start of this over the next few days, so it is likely it won't be done for a couple days, especially when considering some of the related cleanup that can only really start after deletion. --Trialpears (talk) 07:02, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

All Wikipedia:Books/archive/ subpages have now been deleted. There is still some minor cleanup ongoing but all big things should now be done. --Trialpears (talk) 12:26, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Category:Book-Class articles and Category:Wikipedia books sub-categories still need to be deleted. Gonnym (talk) 12:58, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Gonnym: Would you please explain why you are blanking pages within user subpages? The move of some to userspace was explicitly in line with the community consensus. It might also be a good idea to notify users as a courtesy if you are blanking pages within their userspace. CMD (talk) 14:07, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see the templates are up for deletion. Does this mean the old talk pages must be deleted? If so it seems better to ask for them to be deleted instead of simply blanking them. CMD (talk) 14:25, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Before we delete Category:Book-Class articles and its subcats, we need to ensure that none of them can be populated by mistake - such as by somebody using |class=book for an article about a book (it has happened). Is it best to tackle the individual custom class masks first (example), or amend {{class mask}} together with {{class mask/templatepage}}? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:35, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I've deleted Category:Wikipedia books and Category:Wikipedia books (community books with bugs) now and made sure there's no category pollution in Category:Book-Class articles. My plan for the assesment categories is to deal with the class masks first with Category:WikiProject_templates_using_the_book_class listing them all (I'll give it a day to populate) and then remove it from {{class mask}} and friends as well as deleting the categories. --Trialpears (talk) 22:14, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: How come Wikipedia:Books/archive/Algorithms has not been deleted? Also, should the "do not archive" tag be changed to later after August 7? Because I think more time is needed to discuss the implementation of book (namespace) deletion. 54nd60x (talk) 01:11, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

The article history shows that Indefensible moved the book to user space on 2021-07-05 and moved it back to the archive yesterday (i.e. after the deletions) — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 06:34, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Was I not supposed to do that? Noticed the wipe occurred but someone else preserved a bunch of books, so thought moving it back was appropriate instead of just archiving it in my userspace. - Indefensible (talk) 06:37, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Indefensible Eh, I would say it's fine. It's a clear request that it shouldn't be deleted and placed in a sensible place.

The assesment categories have been dealt with, thanks WOSlinker and Explicit for the help!

There are still some documentation that should be updated and backlinks to deleted categories that should be checked. Books are still supported at {{class}} and quarry:query/54292 with links to the book namespace should be looked through. All of this I intend to deal with if no one else gets to it first.

Some other things that could be done but I feel is quite unecessary is nominating {{Book}} and User:WildBot/b01 for deletion and marking Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books as defunct or historical instead of inactive. That could include deletion of {{User WP Wikipedia-Books}}, {{WikiProject Wikipedia-Books}} and Category:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books. I won't do any of these, but won't object if anyone else feel like it.

Is there anything I've forgotten here? --Trialpears (talk) 09:23, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Trialpears: I would prefer the book-related pages you mentioned to either be deleted or marked as defunct or historical. 54nd60x (talk) 12:42, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

This is a heads up for VPT: WP:NavFrame is now removed. It was long deprecated in favor of mw-collapsible. There are some 10k uses remaining, predominantly on user, user talk, and general talk page archives. If you want to migrate, there is a brief migration guide at WP:NavFrame#Migration. Any remaining uses will degrade gracefully to display the entirety of the content (without effort to migrate). Izno (talk) 18:17, 8 August 2021 (UTC)