Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 136

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Article count jumps by 100,000 in a day...

I asked a question about the fact that the total number of articles increased by 100,000 overnight (Statistics page) on the Main Page talkpage and was told to bring it up here. I've included the entire conversation for context. I'm particularly interested if anyone can confirm what Dragons flight is saying. If the article count is indeed manually updated every now and then, how often does such an update take place? I've been closely following the article count since February 2013, and this is the first time I've seen the article count increase so dramatically. Anyway, I'd be very grateful for any light you can shine on this matter. Thanks! AmericanLemming (talk) 21:04, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The Main Page lists the total number of articles on the English Wikipedia, and normally that increases by 1,000 articles a day, give or take a few hundred. However, between yesterday and today the article count jumped from about 4,753,000 to about 4,848,000. That's an increase of roughly 95,000 overnight. Either the counting methodology has been changed to include tens of thousands of articles that were simply being left out previously, or some software bug has started counting non-mainspace pages as articles. I know this talk page isn't really the best place to bring this up, but I'm not really sure what the proper forum for such a question is; for all I know the folks at WMF are responsible for the Statistics page, which even admins can't edit. AmericanLemming (talk) 19:36, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd suggest bringing it up at the Village Pump. 331dot (talk) 20:14, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The running tally is somewhat approximate. It attempts to increment / decrement the count every time an article is added / deleted. Occasionally though it gets confused and misses one. The fix is to periodically update the tally by counting every article in the database, which is more accurate but too slow to use routinely. My guess is that the jump was triggered by such an update, though I don't know that for sure. The more accurate offline stats have shown 4.8 million articles since December [1]. Dragons flight (talk) 20:16, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Main Page talkpage

Main Page is cached many times daily at https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. The four caches currently listed early today don't have the jump. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:19, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

The last cache shows 4,752,922 (6:04:37 Mar 29, 2015, whatever timezone the wayback machine dispays). The current number shown is 4,847,959 (21:39 Mar 29, 2015 UTC) – an increase of 95,037 since the last cache, so the jump has yet to make it to the cache. —Quondum 21:41, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I believe such an update occurs automatically once a month ([see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T68867]). HTH, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:27, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Possibly relevant; of the new page_ids created over the last 30 days, the range of 450000 ids from 45720000-46169999 looks decidedly odd, containing as it does 448500 user_talk pages (99.6%) and only 479 main namespace articles. - #TB (talk)

Red herring. User:MediaWiki message delivery created these user pages while delivering messages about account renaming between 21:28, 19 March 2015 (User_talk:-Y-) and 04:27, 20 March 2015‎ (User talk:ＮｉＫｅ). - TB (talk) 16:07, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

These statistics had many errors over the years and previously, it had to be manually fixed by running a maintenance script. The script is now run once a month starting from this month onwards. See also [2] [3] [4] Glaisher (talk) 16:13, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointers, everyone. I get the sense that although no one can definitively tell me that the drastic jump in article count is legitimate, it is more likely to be legitimate than not. It's probably not a bug or human error. And if what Glaisher says about this article-count fixing script is true, then I expect that in the future the adjustments it makes to the article count will be much, much smaller, owing to it running so often. I'd imagine that this kind of manually fixing hasn't been done for years, which is why the true article count is so much higher than the automatically generated article count. Running the script monthly should keep the displayed article count much closer to the true count. AmericanLemming (talk) 04:01, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Setting the caching issues aside, the jump in the article count is "legitimate". The count before March 29th was "wrong" and then became "right" on March 29th (at 5am, BTW). I'm not sure which article-counting bugs still haven't been fixed, but presumably there are some, and so the count will again drift off of the "real" number over this month. On April 29, the count will be recalculated again, and then become "right" again. (If you're interested in the details of how articles used to be counted in the past, and how they are counted now, see m:User:Dcljr/Article counts.) - dcljr (talk) 22:42, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I've added the following note to the Wikipedia:Good article statistics and Wikipedia:Featured article statistics pages: "The unusually large increase in the number of articles in March 2015 was caused by a maintenance script running for the first time on 29 March. The purpose of the maintenance script was to correct the automatically updated count, which was missing roughly 95,000 articles. Since the maintenance script will run on the 29th of each month from now on, the reported count should stay much closer to the true count." AmericanLemming (talk) 17:40, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. - dcljr (talk) 07:33, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

What's going on with XTools?

Looked up a few topics above and they said it was fixed, but it's down. Lately it's been sluggish and I like using it to run an audit on where my strengths and weaknesses are. Buffaboy (talk) 00:22, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

What page was this on? I can take a look at the server. Nakon 04:13, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Never mind, it's working now. Buffaboy ^talk 14:42, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Massive issue

I am using a mobile with browser. No app. When I try to edit, the page Will not load! This only worked by switching to desktop mode. This is huge!!! DangerousJXD (talk) 08:03, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

It appears to be fixed. Maybe I was overreacting. I would like an explanation as to what happened. The edit mode version of the page wouldn't work. I just wouldn't load. –DangerousJXD (talk) 08:10, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

There was some brief(?) outage, especially affecting the api and maybe other things. I think it is resolved now. Aude (talk) 08:56, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Any more information? DangerousJXD (talk) 09:10, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Information about outages normally will be made available on https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation once investigated. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:56, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

There are still problems. I've had these since yesterday. On mobile, for about half the articles, the sections don't collapse. Great Wall of China is one where, if you visit on mobile (or you fake your user agent on your desktop), then the sections won't collapse. Gary (talk · scripts) 16:22, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I have no such problems. Perhaps you got a partial javascript stuck in your browser cache or something. Try hitting the refresh button on the same page twice, that usually makes it bypass the cache. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:22, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Continued on your talk page if you don't mind. Gary (talk · scripts) 14:41, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Inter-language links are misbehaving in my (old?) skin

Although my Preferences ( Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering ) are set to MonoBook, the inter-language links appear different than if i use &useskin=monobook. Any idea why or how?!

Fwiw, by "different" i mean that the links are now shuffled, since they include the target article's name and are thus sorted by that name, instead of the language name (!)

Thanks. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 11:27, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I cannot reproduce. Maybe something didn't load correctly one of the times. Try to clear your entire cache. Does it still happen? If so, please give an example article with full url for both cases. Do you have "SidebarTranslate" enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? Do you really see and sort by the target article's name and not the English name of the target language? What is your browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:12, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, i cannot reproduce it with IE8 or Portable Firefox 15.0.1 either. :-??

What's it got to do with the cache, though? I've opened Special:Random to check pages i've never loaded before, and i'm actually using "Private Mode" in Firefox, so what kind of cache would be there? Specific version is 12.0, if you think it's relevant.

Anyway, what i'm asking is if there has ever been any need for some piece of code that displays the target page name besides the language ( [5] ), and later some other process is tasked with hiding it... -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 13:26, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Do you still see the problem there? Many parts of the interface are made with files which may be cached by your browser so they don't have to be reloaded each time you visit a new page. The language names and foreign page names are page-specific but they may be rendered with cached code. If you use the mentioned gadget (you didn't answer) then they are sorted with JavaScript in MediaWiki:Gadget-SidebarTranslate.js. tinypic.com doesn't load for me and you didn't name examples so I'm still unsure what you actually see. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Note: I don't know how "Private mode" works and whether it stores things like JavaScript during a session. Firefox 12 is from 2012. Can you install a recent version on your computer? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:11, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, didn't see the question about the gadget. And good catch, it's from that one: if i disable it, the issue goes away. I'll try to investigate this further, now that i know what causes it. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 17:36, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

The screenshot shows that SidebarTranslate displays and sorts by the tooltip which is only supposed to be seen when you hover over the links. Something may be incompatible. Gadgets aren't always tested with all combinations and MonoBook Old browser may have caused a problem for SidebarTranslate. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:39, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

From what i read at the gadget's page, that's partly how SidebarTranslate is supposed to work: get the language name from the tooltip, i.e. remove the page name and display what's left. Guess the RegEx that does the splitting into relevant parts isn't doing its job with my dated JS engine, and the rest is just by-design. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Surprising font of Persian texts

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T91260
Open

I have a criticism about the recently chosen font for Persian texts on the English Wikipedia (with the Perso-Arabic alphabet). It's an atypical, strange, and surprisingly bold font! Here's what I'm talking about: (Tehran in Persian: تهران - Tehrān)

I suggest using the standard font of Tahoma, instead of the recently chosen one.

Rye-96 (talk) 18:59, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Unless you enabled web fonts in the Universal Language Selector, font selection is handled by your browser and it uses the fonts provided by your Operating System. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:15, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

old revisions, at least articles, showing new templates or other replacements

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T2851

Either an old revision (at least of an article, a talk page, etc.) that has a template either should show the template as it existed at the time of the revision or the old revision's heading box (where it says "[t]his is an old revision of this page, as edited by ...") should be edited to add something like "[t]emplates are present-day revisions, not necessarily those in use at the time of this page's revision." Apparently, I can't edit or even find the name of that box, so I assume someone else has that knowledge. An example is at this old article revision, which should show this template's old revision instead of what it is showing. I didn't test for images but the same might be true of those and of any other replacement content. I didn't test a talk page or in other namespaces. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:27, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

uselang=qqx shows the message is MediaWiki:Revision-info. It includes the link "permanent link" which explains that templates are shown at their most current versions. I think that is enough and the interface message should not be expanded. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:41, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

The destination does explain that, but the message context on the revision page says "[t]he present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision", thus implying that the link is about how the URLs work, and not on currency of replacement content. Thus, it lacks clarity on point, needed for editors. Thank you for showing the name of the box. I've opened a discussion at MediaWiki talk:Revision-info#propose edit to clarify about replacement content, so replies should go there, since I now assume that the other solution, displaying the contemporary replacement rather than the latest, is too complicated to program to be worth doing. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:07, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

This seriously spooked me when a contested (= removed) {{subst:PROD}} claimed that it was invalid due to an AFD. Actually the AFD was started after the PROD was removed. But I don't think that this can be fixed at all, let alone easily, otherwise it would already have been done. Maybe you can find an old WONTFIX bugzilla number on phabricator: ( 2000 yields the task number), it should exist. ;-) –Be..anyone (talk) 01:49, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

It's probably impractical to fix the old revision view to display the templates as they were at the time; even if it were possible, that would be requested as a software feature request - see Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests.

As to the possibility of modifying the header, all what needs to be asked here is which system message that is; this question was answered - MediaWiki:Revision-info. Any discussion about changing it should probably be made in a better place, where more users will be seeing it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:52, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

The bug is phab:T2851, and is in fact still open (although it doesn't look like it is about to be fixed anytime soon). — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:15, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Invalid day of death?

Anyone knowns why an "invalid day" appears below the date of death in the Nino Manfredi infobox and how to fix it? Thanks in advance. --Cavarrone 12:38, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

He was apparently born on the 22nd and not the 32nd of March. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 12:43, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Cavarrone: Fixed. His date of birth was set to the 32nd of March, which is why the error message displayed. These error checks have been added to the age templates quite recently, which is why the error message is only showing up now. See Category:Pages using age template with invalid date for instructions on how to fix some common cases. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:45, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks! Cavarrone 13:00, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Elevation at any given point on Earth

Hi. As you might know, Google has a somewhat accurate database of the elevation at any given point on Earth. There are also many sites online that uses this database, to derive the elevation, when presented with coordinates or other location input. Can this feature be made available to Wikipedia? Or is such a feature already existing here? For example, as an option, can the widely used coordinates template also be made to output the elevation of the given area? Ping: Magnus Manske, Kolossos. Thanks, Rehman 05:31, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Or possibly an enhancement to GeoHack, so you don't get the added overhead unless the reader clicks on the coords? ―Mandruss ☎ 05:51, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

It would be good to have the elevation displayed in infoboxes, so having the feature just in GeoHack doesn't seem optimal. One fairly easy way to make these elevations available in articles would be to use a bot to add them to Wikidata, for all Wikidata entities that have coordinates. Perhaps better would be to do it on Wikidata through an extension that caches the data, so that it doesn't require actual bot edits for the system to work, but doesn't require looking up the data from Google every time the page is parsed. I'm not sure how difficult writing such an extension would be, however. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:32, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

It'll be possible to do this easily in Wikidata once we have support for units. This is being worked on by the development team right now but will still take a bit. If you want to track progress you can follow phabricator:T77977. --Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) (talk) 11:00, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Synonyms Available in Wikipedia

[copied post removed] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shanus444 (talk • contribs) 08:55, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

This was also posted to Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Synonyms Available in Wikipedia. Please only start a discussion in one place. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:21, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Revdel reason length limitations

The "other/additional reason" textfield accepts only 100 characters on the admin revdel interface, however the field in the database where the reason ends up can accommodate 255 bytes. Is this a deliberate design decision or a bug? MER-C 13:16, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-15

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

Recent changes

• You can join a new email list for important news about Wikimedia Labs. [6]
• You can read the last monthly report. In the future you can read team reports every three months. You can see current work on the roadmap. [7] [8]
• The number of articles in Special:Statistics is now updated once a month. [9]
• You can use a new version of the Wikipedia app for Android. Using the app, you can now share a fact with your friends. [10]

Problems

• The import tool was broken for a few days. Imports didn't add log entries. You can delete and import pages again if necessary. [11]
• Labs was broken several times this week. [12] [13] [14] [15]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 1. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 8 (calendar).
• You can now add the same special characters with VisualEditor as with the wikitext editor. [16]
• Many bugs around copy-paste in VisualEditor are now fixed. [17] [18]
• You can now use basic tools of VisualEditor in the new talk tool. You can add links, bold and italics. You can also mention people. [19]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 8 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You can again comment on how you want to see Wikidata edits in your watchlist on other wikis. [20]

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

15:42, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Slow response and load time?

Has anyone else problems with very slow page loading of Wikipedia (and Commons) pages at the moment? I can easily get a cup of coffee, while a page loads. Other internet sites with lots of content work fine. My provider is O2 in Germany. Maybe some remaining problems from the server maintenance? GermanJoe (talk) 16:51, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Never mind, apparently whining fixed the problem :). As of now the lag is gone. GermanJoe (talk) 17:26, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I've also been experiencing unbearably slow load times over the past 1-3 days, and it's still ongoing. Hopefully my whining will fix it as well. --Bongwarrior (talk) 17:35, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I've been having the same problem. I see a "Waiting for bits.wikimedia.org..." message for a ridiculously long time while the page is attempting to fully load. It's still there; I had time to draft, re-think, and re-draft this message in the meantime. 2602:306:8019:581F:C04A:172:4C19:B890 (talk) 14:51, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

It has been hit-or-miss for me. It was bad yesterday afternoon, fine last night, and bad again today. --Bongwarrior (talk) 20:40, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I've pinged someone about this, but I hope it has resolved itself by now anyway. Thanks to those who posted their locations, ISPs and/or IP addresses. That is particularly helpful information for decoding these problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:04, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the report (and thanks for escalating it, Whatamidoing (WMF)). I don't see anything unusual in our front-end performance dashboards, which makes me think that these are most likely isolated cases. One thing you can do to help us troubleshoot this further is to try browsing the site in Privacy mode. This will have the effect of logging you out, which will tell us if MediaWiki might be having some specific problem rendering JavaScript for your account.

The reason this problem happens at all is something we have to fix. Our JavaScript is render-blocking by (bad) design. What this means is that we allow JavaScript code to modify the page before it is shown to the user. We do this by telling the browser not to render the page until some JavaScript code has executed.

We load JavaScript from an external domain, bits.wikimedia.org. Guess what happens when bits.wikimedia.org is unreachable for some reason? You guessed it: no one can see any content. This problem is called Frontend SPOF (hey, red link!) or "single point of failure" (because the failure of just bits.wikimedia.org is enough to effectively take all wikis down, as far as users are concerned). You can read more about this phenomenon in this blog post by Steve Souders.

I am hoping to have a fix for this sometime this coming quarter. (Making the JavaScript not block rendering is easy, but there are various extensions that depend on this behavior, and we need to go over each one and find a viable alternative on a case-by-case basis.) You can track progress at T95152. --Ori.livneh (talk) 06:11, 6 April 2015 (UTC) (wearing my Wikimedia Foundation hat).

Thanks to you and Whatamidoing and whoever else looked at this. I'm not sure if someone fixed it or if it fixed itself, but I haven't had any problems for a few days now. --Bongwarrior (talk) 01:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #2—2015

Did you know?

With Citoid in VisualEditor, you click the 'book with bookmark' icon and paste in the URL for a reliable source:

Citoid looks up the source for you and returns the citation results. Click the green "Insert" button to accept its results and add them to the article:

After inserting the citation, you can change it. Select the reference, and click the "Edit" button in the context menu to make changes.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's performance, the Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 11:00 (noon) PDT (18:00 UTC). You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug. Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal.

Recent improvements

VisualEditor is now substantially faster. In many cases, opening the page in VisualEditor is now faster than opening it in the wikitext editor. The new system has improved the code speed by 37% and network speed by almost 40%.

The Editing team is slowly adding auto-fill features for citations. This is currently available only at the French, Italian, and English Wikipedias. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections by contributing to the Citoid service's definitions for each website.

Citoid requires good TemplateData for your citation templates. If you would like to request this feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

The special character inserter has been improved, based upon feedback from active users. After this, VisualEditor was made available to all users of Wikipedias on the Phase 5 list on 30 March. This affected 53 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh.

Work continues to support languages with complex requirements, such as Korean and Japanese. These languages use input method editors ("IMEs”). Recent improvements to cursoring, backspace, and delete behavior will simplify typing in VisualEditor for these users.

The design for the image selection process is now using a "masonry fit" model. Images in the search results are displayed at the same height but at variable widths, similar to bricks of different sizes in a masonry wall, or the "packed" mode in image galleries. This style helps you find the right image by making it easier to see more details in images.

You can now drag and drop categories to re-arrange their order of appearance ​on the page.

The pop-up window that appears when you click on a reference, image, link, or other element, is called the "context menu". It now displays additional useful information, such as the destination of the link or the image's filename. The team has also added an explicit "Edit" button in the context menu, which helps new editors open the tool to change the item.

Invisible templates are marked by a puzzle piece icon so they can be interacted with. Users also will be able to see and edit HTML anchors now in section headings.

Users of the TemplateData GUI editor can now set a string as an optional text for the 'deprecated' property in addition to boolean value, which lets you tell users of the template what they should do instead (T90734).

Looking ahead

The special character inserter in VisualEditor will soon use the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki will also have the option of creating a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Instructions for customizing the list will be posted at mediawiki.org.

The team is discussing a test of VisualEditor with new users, to see whether they have met their goals of making VisualEditor suitable for those editors. The timing is unknown, but might be relatively soon.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• Can you translate from English into any other language? Please check this list to see whether more interface translations are needed for your language. Contact us to get an account if you want to help!
• The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
• File requests for language-appropriate "Bold" and "Italic" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Wikipedia:VisualEditor#Newsletter. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

-Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk), 17:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

The template data editor used to be intuitive about 3 or 4 months ago, since that time it deteriorates towards total unusability. –Be..anyone (talk) 22:30, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I haven't tried to do anything signifiamt with it for weeks. What would you like to see changed/fixed/un-broken? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:09, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Vital articles link in the Recent changes

I have proposed it here: MediaWiki talk:Recentchangestext#Vital articles link. Any comments welcome. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 00:22, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Associated namespace

For about three years now, Special:Watchlist has had an "Associated namespace" checkbox which means that if you have selected e.g. Template namespace, it will also display changes in Template talk: namespace. The URL query string parameter for Template namespace is namespace=10 but what is the additional parameter for "Associated namespace" being selected? When I select it manually and click Go, the entire URL is reduced to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist (I guess it's now using POST instead of GET) which is not just useless for bookmarking, but Firefox periodically complains "Document expired" and I need to go through all the selections again. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?namespace=10&associated=0 vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?namespace=10&associated=1 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:23, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Date errors

There are two date errors (refs 122 and 127) in Endocrine disruptor due to missing days, i.e. only year and month is given. How can this be fixed without just inventing a day (e.g. by adding -01)? --Leyo 09:01, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

|date=2008-07 is not a supported date format, so you would have to use |date=July 2008, which would be consistent with a number of existing examples in the article. (By the way, Wikipedia:Help desk is better suited for usage questions like this.) ―Mandruss ☎ 09:17, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. But is there a good reason why this format is not supported by the template? --Leyo 11:15, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Because it's ambiguous. This was discussed at Help talk:CS1 errors and other places. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:26, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

What might it be confused with? The number of the week? I had a quick look at the archives but I couldn't find any mention. Alakzi (talk) 11:34, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

If a reader sees 2008-09, should they read it as September 2008 or 2008-2009? ―Mandruss ☎ 11:36, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

See Is YYYY-MM an acceptable date format? (Feb–Apr 2014). Warning: it's a deeply unsatisfying experience to read this RFC. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:12, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

@Mandruss: I see your point. But anyway, why doesn't Template:Cite web automatically convert e.g. 2008-09 to September 2008? That would be the easiest to read. --Leyo 19:18, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@Leyo: Because the template wouldn't know if 2008-09 means September 2008 or 2008–2009. GoingBatty (talk) 23:31, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

But it doesn't do it with unambiguous dates such as 2009-03-14 either. That's what I don't understand.

BTW: commons:Template:Information converts e.g. | Date = 2008-09 to September 2008 (or in any other language). --Leyo 23:59, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

@Leyo: Are you saying you don't understand why Template:Cite web doesn't automatically convert to another format? YYYY-MM-DD is a perfectly acceptable format, so it doesn't need to be converted. GoingBatty (talk) 01:17, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Also, how would the citation template know whether to output "14 March 2009" or "March 14, 2009"? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Stats.grok broken again

I think I should let the teccies here know thst the stats tool is broken again. It has failed to capture the stats for 1 April which of course was AFD, which means that the DYK stats for that day cannot be added to the statistics page. Can someone fix this please? The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 12:10, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

• Wikiviewstats is likewise down. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:54, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
• I believe that the best way to report this is to send e-mail to this mailing list about analytics. Stats.grok.se's owner is reportedlty subscribed to the mailing list. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:15, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Now it appears to have stopped working altogether. It appears to have stopped capturing data after 3 April. This is a bit of a problem. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:09, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

stats.grok.se not working

I can't get the last 3 days page views on any article? Is anybody else aware of a problem here? Nathan121212 (talk) 11:28, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Article disappeared without being deleted

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T92046

I went to update Na dialect, and when I hit 'save', I got a message that revision #0 does not exist. I checked the deletion log, and there's no listing. Could someone restore it, please? — kwami (talk) 01:06, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

•  Done; reverting yourself twice resets the page and fixes the error. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:08, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami and Crisco 1492: (edit conflict) This appears to have just occurred on all pages. Script error of some sort, lasting for about 15 seconds. Very brief, however. Someone might have pushed a bad commit at WMF HQ or something. ResMar 01:09, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Weird. Thanks! — kwami (talk) 01:09, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I've had this happen a few times; a WP:NULLEDIT cleared it. Alakzi (talk) 01:10, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

It was discusssed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 135#Weird deletion display error. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:15, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. They better fix it. This has the potential to cause great damage. ResMar 01:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

The error message is MediaWiki:Missing-revision which has made false claims for weeks in most cases. It seems time we change it to say something like "This page could not be generated, probably due to a server problem. Clicking may fix it." If we only do it when $1 is 0 then I guess there will be very few cases where the original message was right. We can change it back when the bug is fixed. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Some debug code has been added to the live website to figure out what is causing this. Please do keep reporting such issues with as accurate a time as possible —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

The search "This is usually caused by following" currently reports these 17 mainspace cases listed with UTC times:

17 cases of error

Astronomical catalog of the page named "Astronomical catalog" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 5 KB (37 words) - 22:40, 29 March 2015 Leo Gregory revision #0 of the page named "Leo Gregory" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 4 KB (37 words) - 01:01, 30 March 2015 Cork Airport revision #0 of the page named "Cork Airport" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 31 KB (37 words) - 19:53, 6 April 2015 DuBois, Pennsylvania of the page named "DuBois, Pennsylvania" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 21 KB (37 words) - 00:55, 7 April 2015 Denville Township, New Jersey page named "Denville Township, New Jersey" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 44 KB (39 words) - 00:19, 3 April 2015 Grid The revision #0 of the page named "Grid" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 4 KB (36 words) - 01:01, 6 April 2015 History of Nickelodeon the page named "History of Nickelodeon" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 33 KB (38 words) - 19:34, 29 March 2015 Peking Union Medical College page named "Peking Union Medical College" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 6 KB (39 words) - 01:01, 6 April 2015 Thighmaster revision #0 of the page named "Thighmaster" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 3 KB (36 words) - 19:00, 6 April 2015 The Breakfast Club (radio show) named "The Breakfast Club (radio show)" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 4 KB (40 words) - 01:01, 6 April 2015 Michael J. Tyler #0 of the page named "Michael J. Tyler" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 11 KB (38 words) - 01:41, 3 April 2015 Scott Arnold revision #0 of the page named "Scott Arnold" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 422 B (37 words) - 19:46, 29 March 2015 Terrorism in Yemen #0 of the page named "Terrorism in Yemen" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 29 KB (38 words) - 01:01, 4 April 2015 Timarcha lugens revision #0 of the page named "Timarcha lugens" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 7 KB (37 words) - 19:47, 31 March 2015 Pseudomugil paskai #0 of the page named "Paska's blue-eye" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 901 B (38 words) - 22:01, 27 March 2015 Ministry of Transport of the page named "Ministry of Transport" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 19 KB (38 words) - 01:01, 6 April 2015 List of schools in Honduras page named "List of schools in Honduras" does not exist. This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted 540 B (40 words) - 01:01, 4 April 2015

Some of them don't currently display the error message. Others may be missing from the search results. Google found List of entertainers who died during a performance where I see the error now, but it's not in the above search. If you want to track current cases then you could add a tracking category to MediaWiki:Missing-revision. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:13, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

15 seconds? A few hours later and it is still displaying the error message on the article you've suggested. When I originally reported Forever, no edits were made and it sorted itself out on its own. Is it just a bug or something else? Simply south ...... time, deparment skies for just 9 years 13:36, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

best professional mediawiki skin?

Hello, I want to create a wiki for my lawfirm. Looking for a skin that:

1. looks very professional, (think http://www.bsp.lu/) but is
2. widely used enough that I can get support with the skin if needed.
3. also I would like drop down menus, also like http://www.bsp.lu/

Thank you. Twolegalsystems (talk) 13:37, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I would recommend to take a look at mediawikibootstrapskin.co.uk, they have Bootstrap based skins there and you should be able to get support and customization for these. --Sitic (talk) 19:50, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Issues with maths font

Hey all, just passing this on. I can pass on a screenshot if you need it (for agents – Ticket:2015040310016461) For OTRS, Mdann52 (talk) 16:36, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I am a visually impaired person who uses 'High Contrast Black' for my Windows colour scheme. I have no choice but to use this scheme if I am to be able to read text on my computer.

My problem is certain types of text being used by some articles. An example of this problem is contained on the following page:

Single transferable vote#Voting

The example of text I want to take issue with is reached by first clicking on item 3: Voting, then read down to the heading 'Counting The Votes; Setting the quota'. The actual text immediately follows the words '...given by the formula' and immediately before the words '...where the quota is an integer'.

I'd tell you what the text says, except I can't actually read it because it shows under Windows 'High Contrast Black' as just a mess.

I saw exactly the same problem on a page entitled 'Net migration' where all the formula's were written in the same type of text.

I can't, to my knowledge, change anything on your page to correct this. I certainly can't change my colour scheme. This is something that only Wikipaedia can correct, but how you do that is down to you guys. One thing is for sure, as it stands, I am being excluded from the information contained in this type of text, and I have no idea how widespread across your site this is occurring. I've never seen it before, so it must a fairly recent introduction.

Yes this is a problem with math. Unfortunately math is still not a first class citizen on the web. We have made some progress in this regard, but for many platforms it is still sub-par. I have no problems with the "invert colors" option of my Mac however. (not sure how high contrast black works on Windows). I've send you a mail to forward the results to me, perhaps I can help out finding a workaround for the user by setting a different mathjax option or something in his preferences. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:46, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@TheDJ: I've already mentioned this to them, they said that maybe we should consider changing the default. I'll check with them they are happy for me to pass it on to you - just something I need to do with regards to all OTRS communications, as they are covered by the non-public data policy, I cannot pass them on unless they consent to me doing so. Mdann52 (talk) 18:33, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

We are not ready to switch the default yet. We can't break 10% of math for the sake of the 0.5 % of people who have trouble reading that math. If we did that for every accessibility problem, the website would become unreadable unfortunately :( We are looking into 'accessibility' preferences that can also be used by anonymous users. But it's a side project by a few people who are interested in such problems. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Ogg file stuttering

Someone left a message on my talk page suggesting that several of the audio files I had uploaded were stuttering, and are sometimes truncated, proposing that I add 0.5-1s to both the beginning and the end of the file. Beyond the fact that many of these files are pronunciations are are only about 1s long total, this seems like a kludge. It seems to me that the right solution would be to either improve the load behavior of the file so that the stuttering and truncation don't happen at all or, if we're sticking with the kludge - have the silence added server-side with the canonical version preserved, so that it can all be removed at once if the problem is fixed in the future. If this is the wrong forum, I apologize, let me know where to take this. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 21:25, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

To some degree, yes this is a thing. It takes a bit of time for the decoder to start up, especially with such a fuzzy codec as Vorbis is. If your computer is slow, and the player is badly written, it will probably be a lot worse even. The cutting off is also something that happens with badly authored players. The wikimedia player is TMH, and it is actually a JS wrapper around an assortment of potential playback engines, so figuring out what Quicksilver was using will be important to seeing where the actual player issue is located. Then you also have to consider that the audio chip (with energy saving these days) needs to start up and shutdown, and perhaps even an external amplifier. All having been primarily designed to playback continuous audio, not 1 second fragments. So yes, as a general rule: The landscape of playback technology is bad, and you probably shouldn't rely too much on the first 300ms and the last 300ms (300ms being more or less the time it takes to start or stop and the action actually materializing in audio signal) being present. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm using primarily Mozilla SeaMonkey on Linux. I'm not sure how my installation of SeaMonkey produces sounds from all Web sources, although I know that it uses the VLC plugin for some, which is fairly lame compared to the sound support one finds in Microsoft Windows or on Mac OSX. It's an HTML5-capable browser, and it seems to reproduce HTML5 AV content flawlessly, but it has difficulty with the startup of short OGG audio files on Wikimedia. Others have commented on the ends of short audio clips being truncated with Mozilla Firefox, without specifying their operating system or hardware, though I don't recall seeing that problem with SeaMonkey. Since the combinations of hardware, operating systems, browsers and AV plugins is vast, my thought is that we can't optimise for all of them, but by padding audio files with 500 ms to 1000 ms of silence at both ends, we can at least give most site visitors a good chance at a better experience. — Quicksilver^{T @} 18:13, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@ Quicksilver, when you click on the player's "Menu" option, then go to the gears and click that, it will show you what kind of playback technology it is using. For native Mozilla on linux, I would suspect is should be able to use Native HTML5, which is probably the best option if it is available. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

My concern here is that the padding of silences breaks the abstraction of the file itself - taking as an example the pronunciation of the word bream, the "actual" data is the part where the word is being spoken, and nothing external will change that. The purpose of the prepended and appended silences is an implementation detail that overcomes the limitations of various players. Since these two things are orthogonal, it would be better not to tie them to one another by modifying the canonical representation of the files themselves. If, until players improve, it is necessary to prepend and append silence, I think maybe it's preferable to do so server-side if possible. Of course, if this is not practical for some reason, a bot can probably be created that pads silences in audio files, but again it doesn't seem like the right design, conceptually. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 12:08, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Unknown, pervasive, unstable bug with editing

Some of the time when I start to edit source I am not able to use the up or down keys (and only the up or down keys)—pressing them does nothing. No reaction. Other times this is not the case and they work as expected. I have no idea what is causing this issue and it is disturbing me greatly. Any ideas? (and, no, it's not the keyboard). ResMar 00:55, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

(if it's worth anything the keys appear to always work 100% when I create a new section). ResMar 00:58, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Which browser and operating system is this about? Also wondering if browser plugins or add-ons come into play here - trying without them and with a fresh profile might be worth a shot. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:21, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF): I cleaned my user-scripts, saved, exited Firefox, restarted, tested. Everything worked fine. Ok, I thought, so it must be one of the user-scripts. I started adding them back again and, lo and behold, after adding all of them back one-by-one the issue...failed to re-appear. I'm still at a loss for what the problem was, but I've not experienced it since. Very, very strange. Probably not actionable, unfortunately. I'll let you know if it comes back up. ResMar 18:35, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

the source of the issue is the "autocomplete" gadget from hewiki (which you never brought back - hence the disappearance of the issue... the comment in your vector.js says "doesn't seem to work" - i can attest that it *does* work on enwiki). personally, i think this annoyance is fair price to pay for this super-useful gadget (basically, it detects when you enter [[ or {‎{ and then it autocompletes the ‏‎‎article name of template name as you type, in a little drop-down box that appears on the far end of the editing window). there is a workaround: once the cursor get "stuck", hit escape once to "unstick" it. admittedly it's an annoyance, but IMO the benefit of the gadget far outweigh it. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:40, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia Server Clock

DST for Europe occurred on Sunday, March 29, but it looks like the Wikipedia server clock has yet to be adjusted. It is currently 9:34 PM here, and they're eight hours ahead of me when both them and the US are in or out of DST, which means it's 5:34 AM for them, but the server clock is saying 4:34 AM. - Amaury (talk) 04:34, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Test edit Nakon 04:39, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Isn't the server time in UTC? If so, it is correct. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 04:42, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

The server clock is always in UTC, which doesn't observe daylight savings —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:31, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Consider also, that if the Wikipedia clock did observe daylight saving, somebody would need to decide which hemisphere it should follow, and on which weekend it would change. In Europe, when clocks go forward by one hour, they stay the same in Australia; but a week or two later, they go back. Six or so months later, the Australian clocks go forward, and three or four weeks after that the European clocks go back. This means that at the start or end of the year, when it is 12:00 noon in London, it is 23:00 in Melbourne, Vic - that is, they are 11 hours different; and in mid-year, when it is 13:00 in London, it is 22:00 in Melbourne - 9 hours different. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:11, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Not to mention the havoc it would wreak on edit histories. –xeno^talk 18:56, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Though if he likes that he could set personal preferences to display local time. But that is so confusing I think it ought to be not allowed. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:52, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Idea

I am not sure but somebody would have already asked it.
Can there something be done to Teahouse so that unanswered questions have some notice (either in bold or a tag on it like {{unanswered}}) for those questions which has not been answered yet?
Sometimes, I see some user's question goes down (under other questions:) and other were actually answered quickly but not his/her
aGastya  ✉ let's have a constructive talk about it (: 05:01, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Try WP:BOTREQ —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:32, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Have you discussed it at WT:Teahouse to see if there is any support for the idea or whether it has been discussed previously? Nthep (talk) 12:19, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

@Nthep: Yes I had asked it over there, but no answer!
aGastya  ✉ let's have a constructive talk about it (: 15:03, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Previously posted at Wikipedia talk:Teahouse#Idea, subsequently posted at Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 63#Unanswered questions, please see WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:23, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

New editing option?

On the editing screen, I suddenly saw a "Citations" option next to "Show changes"! What's going on? Is it a new feature? Or is it just me? Or what? --Mr. Guye (talk) 23:41, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I still see "Cancel" next to "Show changes". Is this reproducible, i.e. consistent? ―Mandruss ☎ 04:19, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

It's made by enabling "Citation expander" under the Editing heading at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:11, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Issues with random page

Hey all, Someone mentioned to me the other day that when they used random page feature on Safari, the history of the pages they visited didn't save - it just saved lots of instances of "special:Randompage". Is this intentional, or a bug? Thanks, Mdann52 (talk) 18:34, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

@Mdann52: Bug in Safari, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 129#Random article and browser history. It seems to be recording the URL that you sent, rather than the URL that you received. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:41, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

New article template

I don't know if this is the place to ask this question or not, but a few issues with the new article template seem like they would be a minor fix and would be helpful for editors.

• Why does the {reflist} not automatically appear as {reflist|30em}? (With just reflist, the references can be as long as the article with in-line citations.)
• Why does {DEFAULTSORT:} not appear? (I was totally unaware that this effected the sort of categories. Thankfully another editor added it to some 30 articles for me, but it should not be something that a new editor has to find out after the fact.)
• Why is there not a drop down or key that one can choose an info box from? (I understand that an infobox is optional, but it seems odd to have to save your file and add it after the fact when the information is more easily input from the beginning.)

Thanks for your help. SusunW (talk) 16:41, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

1. Because some people have voted against it on the talk page of Reflist
2. There is always some information missing. This is not a problem, we are a work in progress. The VE editor has it somewhere in the "page options"
3. You should try using VE, it has a nice template inserter. You still have to know what to look for though, there is autocomplete, but we have thousands of templates.

Hope this helps —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:06, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

There is no way for {{reflist}} to detect the number of citations in the list. If there is only one reference, then {{reflist|30em}} will split it into columns. And {{reflist|20em}} is more appropriate for Shortened footnotes. -- Gadget850 ^talk 17:22, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I think it would be better to use the plain <references /> tag for brand-new articles created through the Article Wizard. Since they changed the fonts (years ago) {{reflist}} without any additional parameters is just a more expensive method of getting <references /> into the article.

Also, phab:T53260 is about supporting column formatting directly in the <references /> list, and it might be possible for that to use autoformatting options that can't be done in a template. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Maybe I can save this before I get stuck in another 20 minute loop telling me there is an edit conflict which will not allow me to even leave the page. If you mean by VE , Virtual Editor program, no thanks. Tried it, it is even more user-unfriendly than this version of Wikipedia. I couldn't even sign my posts. It seems to me it is no wonder people give up editing. Writers, researchers and readers are not all programmers, nor do they wish to be. I don't understand most of your answers. A simple it isn't possible would communicate more than a list of programming options or telling me to look through thousands of options. I've been on Wiki hide-n-seek for months and many of the pages that tell you in the contents that the answer you seek is there, do not contain the answer at all. Thanks anyway. SusunW (talk) 17:59, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Just so you do not think I am randomly complaining look at this page Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Creating a new category Though it says creating a new category, it tells you everything thing you need to do before you create a category, but not how to do it. Apparently programmers and writers just do not speak the same language. Not your fault, nor mine. We just are not communicating. I do appreciate the effort. SusunW (talk) 18:05, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I think we have a misunderstanding here. Most documentation is historically a community and volunteer driven effort. Anyway, much of the complexity is because people have asked for complexity. If you want to configure hundreds of things, then at some point something becomes unusable for common folk. PS. The page you link to with regard to categories are all community rules. Technically, categories 'exist' (forever) as soon as you've used them (once) on a page (but they might be empty and/or not have a wiki description page). Also, where did you encounter VE on pages where you are supposed to sign ? I suspect that this shouldn't be happening, it's not made for having discussions. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:17, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I truly don't know one writer who wants the system to be any more complex than it is. It's way more complicated than most editors I know want it to be. :) FYI Categories don't exist unless you create them. They remain red on the bottom of an article unless you can figure out to create them, with trial and error because the instructions don't actually give an answer. I did manage to figure it out, no help from the help page. The VE page was a discussion page for a project, clearly it didn't function like that and the great programmer gods in the sky suggested that it wasn't designed for that. (I actually posted on the page that "maybe the programmer gods in the sky can explain it" and someone did.) In my utopia, editing would be simple and straightforward. Instructions would be concise and clear. Again I thank you for your time. SusunW (talk) 23:41, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

"They remain red on the bottom of an article unless you can figure out to create them" This is a common misunderstanding. The category technically exists independent of the page that is attached to it, there can be pages inside a red category, there just isn't a page present for that category. Any requirement for a category not being red, is a community rule. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:49, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Gif issue

• Hi everyone. Going through our backlog of FPs that haven't been on the main page yet, I came across File:Shallow water waves.gif. However, at Template:POTD/2015-05-03 it is not displaying. Is this fixable? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:03, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Armbrust fixed it by allowing the image to keep its original size, adding an edit description of "fix, it looks like image isn't rescalable". Actually, the image itself *is* resizable (i just checked at w3schools), but wikimedia's mechanism of sizing images (using cached versions for specific w h combinations) isn't working in this case. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 11:23, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

• That's... odd. Is it fixable? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:53, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

If you open the actual failed thumbnail, it reports error 137, which usually means it took longer than 15 seconds to finish resizing the image (it has 300 frames...). So reduce frames, reduce w x h, or turn it into an actual movie instead of a GIF. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:53, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

• Not sure that's the right link; elves? Anyways, it appears the only solutions to that are all things that a) I could not do myself and b) would end up causing the current FP to be delisted / replaced, so I guess the "no downsampling" trick is it for this and other gifs in the future. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:45, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

No idea why DJ linked to T5258, but i found out that 137 = Out of memory. Beats me why they can't actually include this explanation in the error page. :-?? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 00:32, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

He may have meant phabricator:T84842, phabricator:T72296, or phabricator:T25063 (still open and filed by him, so probably likeliest), from a quick search. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:41, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Guide for editors to deal with mobile version functionality?

I'm having trouble finding a guide for editors to the current function differences in the mobile version. Basically an explanation of what the mobile version does with wikicode that is different from what the desktop version does with it, a catalog of what features don't presently work in the mobile version (navigation templates and certain table formatting are two that I've found on my own), and tips for editors to work around these to maximize page compatibility or at least flag a page as better viewed through the desktop version. However, I can find no relevant link from Help:Mobile access (not even an acknowledgment there that pages may render differently, let alone how to deal with it) and searching is proving impossible given the "mobile view" link that appears at the bottom of every page. postdlf (talk) 15:18, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

The "Mobile view" link may make it hard to search with external search engines like Google but our own search engine ignores the interface messages. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:06, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

That's good to know, but not proving helpful here. Maybe it's on meta somewhere? postdlf (talk) 22:31, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Thats an interesting question Postdlf. The Mobile web page on Mediawiki, explains some concepts around MobileFrontend, and how the mobile web experience works. You can also test new features on beta mode, which you can enable from settings. Through testing, and with hints from mobile users like yourself, we are able to work on enhancing functionalities, something which is usually updated; where a catalogue might not be efficient for a long term. In addition, eventually the target is to have a mobile experience that is comfortable enough for mobile use. Maybe, instead of flagging for "best viewed on mobile" we can use phabricator, to report issues on mobile to help enhance it. What device and browser do you normally use? Thanks for the interesting question :-) --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 00:01, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Given that the mobile version is, what, six years old now? And there are still common page elements that don't work... So I'm very unclear on what you're considering the "long term" to be here. I don't even have any way of knowing what's a feature and what's a bug because I don't know what choices have been made about what specific code to support or not or how to process it. We should have a summary from the developers of 1) features that have been deliberately omitted that will never be included, 2) features that developers intend to include but have not yet, and 3) features that are supposed to be already working but aren't because of known bugs that have not yet been corrected. Without that, WP editors have no way of maximizing a page's functionality and visibility of all its elements regardless of whether it's viewed through the mobile or desktop version other than through trial and error. We should have that support. postdlf (talk) 15:47, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

This is just of the top of my head. Feel free to put it somewhere for further refinement
What doesn't work on purpose right now and probably will never work

• User and site javascript

What doesn't work, because it requires another form of interacting with the page

• navboxes
• Section level maintenance templates
• Page title coordinates (phab:T91481)
• Page top emblems like FA, GA etc

What works badly due to requiring different way to interact with pages

• Very large tables
• File pages

What doesn't work due to technical challenges

• Some audio and video embedding
• Deprecated HTML style attributes like border, bgcolor on tables etc
• Hundreds of templates that simply never considered the fact that they would have to work on a small screen

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:39, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, TheDJ. It's shocking to me that the developers apparently have never put this together and don't seem to even think it would even be useful, let alone necessary.

So we should be using CSS attributes in tables rather than html, to ensure greater compatibility with the mobile version? Though I've seen that not all CSS parameters seem to work either, nor does the sortable table class.

And why are navboxes special? The mobile version doesn't ignore all templates, so what's different about navbox code?

How do we determine what wikicode in a page loads depending on whether it's being processed through the desktop or mobile version? postdlf (talk) 16:12, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Based on this, I believe that you'll want to ask User:Edokter your questions about navboxes. Even if there were no technical difficulties, the value might be limited. Take a look at these navboxes. On my laptop, the first navbox-with-children set fills a full screen. Imagine that it were constrained to a smartphone. How long would it take to scroll through it (assuming that Module:Navbox were re-written to make it wrap onto a small screen in the first place)? Do you realistically think that you would be able to find what you wanted? (I'm not convinced that navboxes are used much by non-editing readers anyway. Perhaps someday, someone will track the links and let us know.)

Also, it's probably "thousands" rather than "hundreds" of templates that need to be redesigned. Many of them are visible, but awkward. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

We don't want to gut or abandon features we rely upon in the desktop version just to make the mobile version easier to deal with. But assuming you have a point about navboxes being far less practical when viewed on a small screen, it seems that there are work-arounds we could be using right now to both make them visible in the mobile version and make them less unwieldy, by coding in alternate mobile versions of navbox templates that don't use {{Navbox}} (if compatibility issues with that master template's CSS is the problem), and that have fewer, higher priority links so as to take up less viewing space (though defaulting to collapsed would also help with that). But as I mentioned above, I don't know how to make different versions of a page load depending on desktop/mobile version viewing.

That there are thousands of templates that need to be redesigned is a rather compelling reason for the overview I was asking for on how to make wikicode mobile version-compatible, based on the current state of the mobile version's functionality. postdlf (talk) 17:30, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree that a significant amount of work needs to be done. I have suggested before that the WMF coordinate a program similar to the structured data cleanup work at Commons, so that problems can be identified, tracked, and fixed by community members. I don't know if it will happen, but if you have any ideas about what kind of support it would take (maybe a class on when and how to use CSS?), then please feel free to ping me.

I'm not sure that I agree that many non-editing readers actually rely upon navboxes. I'd like to see some evidence that a lot of people scroll to the end of pages (kind of unlikely: a lot of people read just the lead) and click on a collapsed box (unlikely) and find what they want there (possible, but only if you make it that far). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

"It's shocking to me that the developers apparently have never put this together": It's not been really asked for before. And it is constantly changing as well. Also the average user cannot really fix it anyway.

"So we should be using CSS attributes in tables rather than html [...] not all CSS parameters seem to work either, nor does the sortable table class", no because, because you should be using CSS declarations instead of deprecated HTML attributes and a sortable table isn't a CSS class (classes are HTML, which can be referenced in CSS rules). But that has nothing to do with mobile, you should be doing that anyway, it's just even more broken on mobile. No for mobile you should be using CSS rules and CSS statements in style blocks, but you cannot, because it isn't possible with wikicode yet. And this paragraph shows why the average users shouldn't care. It's too difficult to get all this right, without turning everyone into a web and/or PHP developer and large parts of it are simply not fixable yet. Work on it if you are capable of it, or trust that other people will fix it eventually.

"And why are navboxes special?", Well, first; they aren't really content. They are a really verbose, structured form of navigation for related content. Written in an unstructured technology, in a style that won't fit (technically and editorially) a small screen. Anyone with a little bit of UI design insight will see that it is hopelessly broken (even barely usable for desktop in my opinion). It's not directly fixable, because it's basically the completely wrong system authored in the complete wrong technology. Any slightly better system you will make, is still using the wrong technology.

Anyway, the majority of remaining problems require fundamental changes to the foundations of the wiki, which are being worked on, but simply happen VERY slowly (lest we have a user revolt because some template suddenly starts adding 1 space char extra on desktop or because some form of interactivity is considered to be too 'Facebooky'). This is also why it's not that easy for editors to help with this. It's not hopeless, we are making new technology like WikiData, Lua, MMV and even VE that are making changes to the foundations that at some point will enable us to close the gap, but it's slow none the less (and often unpopular, because it is change). As a mobile developer myself (and one that even worked on the first mobile web version of English Wikipedia) I'm really freaking impressed what they have been able to do so far with the mess that is Wikipedia and wikicode. it just requires a few more years to really get there, because our sites are simply put very unique. And spray painting race stripes on the car simply won't make it a Nascar, no matter how many people think that all that is missing is the race stripes. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:00, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Probably good advice. Other than when I've occasionally been involuntarily redirected to the mobile version when using my iPad (which is really annoying, particularly when you've manually typed in the URL), I've completely ignored it up until a couple days ago when I happened to see my wife looking at a particular article on her phone and I had to wonder "where the hell's the rest of the content?" I'm happy to go back to pretending the mobile version doesn't exist if the support just isn't there for me to do otherwise. postdlf (talk) 20:07, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

• @TheDJ: Actually, i would agree that it is getting "too 'Facebooky'"... And how exactly does a new threading mechanism (or even two different ones) help with improving the handling of CSS, or with prototyping better ways for the presentation of content? But when the editors are asking for a road-plan, so they know not to focus on stuff that will get deprecated, then i believe you should no longer insist that "it's not that easy for editors to help with this" -- they're not asking for ways to help with foundations, but for details on what will those foundations support. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 20:34, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

What you are saying is: "How does landing a man on the moon help me ? I just want a non sticky pan and you are building a rocket." Which is fine. It just doesn't mean that the developers can promise recognizing the qualities of teflon and marketing it to a popular markt, before they have flown a rocket. Cleanup is gradual, don't focus on the specifics. If it is REALLY problematic, then at some point we will automate something to solve it or change the software, and maybe we will ask for assistance with volunteers. It's like consists of vs composed of" an endless task, because the majority of people simply won't know, no matter how much time you spend trying to correct or educate them. That doesn't make it a useless task or a pointless task, but it does mean you have to know what you are doing and not just randomly replace stuff with a designated alternative. That might be worse than leaving the old stuff in. The web standard has become a living standard for a reason. Conformity to set rules was breaking it more than non conforming is pushing it forward to not being broken. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:52, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Mobile editor is pretty much useless when it comes down to it. Where is the Undo button?!!! Why are talk pages so damn hidden? Where is the user talk page button? Why aren't you sent direct to the user page? Why are users contributions so hidden? And the watch list is super confusing, just make it more like the desktop version... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 17:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I believe the answer to your question about the Undo button is "in same place that it's in the desktop site: in your browser". VisualEditor (available as a Mobile Beta feature) has an undo button, but the wikitext editor does not. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

So one last comment: This is basically much like WP:PERF. Don't worry about it, but don't do stupid things; Get involved if you really want to help out and aren't interested in writing articles anymore, because it will consume you :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:30, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

TheDJ, this is an almost shockingly optimistic view of what it's like to work with the Wikimedia Foundation mobile team.

In my experience, any change to the mobile interface (MobileFrontend) is nearly impossible. The extension is a scope-creep abomination that's closely guarded by a small cabal that's insistent on ensuring that mobile users are treated as second-class citizens, with a hobbled interface and missing content. Instead of acting as a mobile front-end, the extension tries to implement myriad unrelated functionality as a means of bypassing community consultation and scrutiny. Instead of falling back to the working desktop site, the interface often just pretends as though the user's request is insane (why would a user ever want to visit a talk page or view category links?!).

Of course, the mobile team has "easy" answers to these issues such as completely re-implementing the idea of groups of pages (Gather), never mind that the we already have watchlists, categories, and even a very similar extension called Collection. Or when looking at the site-wide set of permissions we have that control who can edit pages (cf. Special:ListGroupRights), the mobile team has no issue (re-)inventing its own separate permissions system in order to bypass the standard system and enforce a view that every user must log in to be able to edit. These parts of the design philosophy of the mobile front-end are completely contrary to Wikimedia's values. And the mobile team is quickly accumulating technical debt that we'll someday be forced to mop up.

All of this has been pointed out repeatedly, and in some ways, it's difficult to blame the mobile team for taking advantage of its lack of oversight. In my opinion, both the Wikimedia community and people like Erik at the Wikimedia Foundation really need to step up and join others in saying that the current behavior of the mobile team is harmful and unacceptable to Wikimedia. (cc: postdlf) --MZMcBride (talk) 14:10, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

What happened to the UNDO feature?!?

I mean, what's the deal with all those unneeded nbsp's? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 00:56, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Let's start with pinging @Whatamidoing (WMF) and TheDJ: and work from there. I bet one of them can either puzzle it out or bug some more techy people. --Izno (talk) 02:37, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

More likely some browser extension that the user is using that is mangling the textarea. Remember, undo is nothing more than, 'load a previous old version in the current edit screen'. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:30, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Probably. Also, it's likely that the user is on a Windows box. Macs seem to provide better support for these things. How the non-breaking spaces get added (I assume that they are present) is probably due to sloppy typing on my part: option-space (the Mac command) is easy and the difference isn't visible. Why they get converted, rather than left alone, by subsequent editors, is beyond me.

I occasionally see the same thing when User:Doc James edits a talk page. If he and Ugog Nizdast have the same browser/OS/extensions/whatever, then we might be able to narrow down the list of possible causes. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I had no idea I did this. Let me try to recall what happened that day. I use Firefox and of late, it has been giving trouble only on Wikipedia by taking almost forever to load. I think that's what happened regarding my double post. I don't know if that has anything with my preceding undo action though. I checked all my recent undos and no sign of this problem.

The only extension I have is this recently-installed "Wikipedia references creator" which I never tried out; I've just disabled to see if it helps my loading problem. My OS is Gentoo by the way. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 08:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

• While not identical, I'll note there was a similar report of something funky going on over at User talk:Jackmcbarn/editProtectedHelper#Changing from hex to rgb in signatures? where syntax was being changed. It was assumed based on the information we could gather that there was something funky going on with Parsoid, and I'm not sure if the same thing happened here or not but it would probably be a good idea for someone (TheDJ—Whatamidoing (WMF)—Jackmcbarn—Legoktm) to look into it. At least that is my take on it, opinions of others may vary and one of those people I pinged might know the answer without digging too much. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 12:46, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Category:Articles using football box collapsible parameter assistantreferees

Looking at the 2012–13 in German football article I noticed it was listed in the non-existend Category:Articles using football box collapsible parameter assistantreferees, as are 146 others. I had a look at Template:Football box collapsible to see whether it comes from there but was not able to trace it down. Does anybody know what is happening there? Thanks, Calistemon (talk) 12:15, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't know why Secret Agent Julio added the category but the code is near the end of Template:Football box collapsible: {{#if:{{{assistantreferees|}}}|[[Category:Articles using football box collapsible parameter assistantreferees|{{PAGENAME}}]]}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I dropped User:Secret Agent Julio a line asking him whether he intended to do this. Thanks for the quick clarification, Calistemon (talk) 12:46, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

It's due to either this edit or this one. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:48, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I did not intend for the category to display, as I thought I had hidden it (using "main other"). I guess I was wrong. Apologies, as it was unintended. I now have removed the code from the template. Sorry about the confusion. SAJ (T) 17:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

My own vector.js ang vector.css

Hello, what the participants can see the unusual styles JS / CSS? For example, I want to Wikipedia pages are displayed in white lettering on a black background instead of black text on a white background. Thanks.--Парис "Анима" надаль (talk) 13:20, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Парис "Анима" надаль: White on black is not as easy as green on black. At Preferences, go to the "Appearance" tab, select "MonoBook"; then go to the "Gadgets" tab, select "Use a black background with green text" and save. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:35, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikilink in a footnote not expanding

In At Freddie's#Notes and 7½ Cents#Notes there can be found footnotes that contain a wikilink that refuses to become a blue-link. I have no idea if this is an actual bug or some minor incompetence on my part. Choor monster (talk) 15:44, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Choor monster: The pipe trick doesn't work inside of <ref>...</ref>. --Izno (talk) 16:03, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I did not know it was called the Pipe trick, just monkey-see-monkey-do on my part all this time. Choor monster (talk) 16:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

is there a function to determine if page X is in category Y?

Originally posted this at Wikipedia:Help desk, where it was recommended I ask here.

I could've sworn I'd seen some template which did this, but now I can't find it and can't find an answer in the magic words or parser functions help pages (unless I'm missing something). The idea: I'd like to be able to run a basic function to say if page X is in page Y, and to specify true and false actions.

For example (and I'm totally making up the terms):

{{#IFEQ:{{PAGEINCATEGORY|April|Months}}|yes|positive|negative}} → "positive"
{{#IFEQ:{{PAGEINCATEGORY|April|Dubstep}}|yes|positive|negative}} → "negative"

Possible? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikibase API changelog

Where might one find the Lua Wikibase API (mw.wikibase) changelog? Wikidata-generated location maps broke unexpectedly today, and I thought I'd track down the change that did it. Alakzi (talk) 16:15, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, we announced the breaking changes in several places, including Wikimedia Tech news and the Wikidata mailing list (Using mw.wikibase.getEntity? Read on!). Also we tracked migrating modules on T88950 and migrated many ourselves. I'm sorry that we still caused disruption here, for some reasons these modules appeared as unused on our to do list P272. I've just fixed a module per hand and hope there aren't any further problems. Cheers, Hoo man (talk) 17:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Hoo man! It looks like I'd fixed it properly. I assume getEntity is simply an alias of getEntityObject now? Alakzi (talk) 17:10, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Alakzi: Indeed, as documented on mw:Extension:Wikibase_Client/Lua#mw.wikibase.getEntity (updated that earlier today as it has been deployed yesterday evening). - Hoo man (talk) 17:15, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Special:Maintenance

What is (or was) Special:Maintenance, and what does/did it do? It doesn't appear to exist, but https://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt prevents compliant bots from archiving it. Nyttend (talk) 22:48, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

It was before my time but based on searching it had different features to help editors with maintenance work. Search results include "check for double or broken redirects", and url's with Special:Maintenance&subfunction=brokenredirects, Special:Maintenance&subfunction=mispeelings, Special:Maintenance&subfunction=disambiguations. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

See also rev:13270. Helder 20:08, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Draft-class is not included in WikiProject statistics table

Please see User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Disability, the table is not counting the Draft-class pages. Similar tables belonging to other WikiProjects do include Draft-class stats, but I can't figure out what's different about the way the bot task has been set up for WikiProject Disability. The Project banner is correctly set to use the "Full Quality Scale" for the Class parameter so the page tagging is working correctly, just the stats table is missing/ignoring the category. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Dodger67: - just tested this for WP:GER (see table), drafts as separate statistic row were added after I changed the assessment main category with this edit:[21] in Category:Germany articles by quality (and did a manual bot-run). A similar change with your project values in your project's main assessment category may work as well, see the documentation for "extra" parameters at Template:ReleaseVersionParameters. Disclaimer: projects can have different assessment settings and methods. You'll have to test, if a similar change works with your project's categories and template settings. GermanJoe (talk) 18:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks GermanJoe, that fixed it! BTW As you have added Drafts to the list I have tagged a few pages in Draft-space for WikiProject Germany. If you search for pages containing the word "Germany" or "German" in Draft-space you'd find many more relevant drafts you could tag - just look them over first to see if it's worth doing. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:58, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Scrolling in mobile edit

I've been in the habit of catching small grammar, spelling, syntax, and usage errors on my mobile device (iPhone 4, updated iOS--I think--editing in Safari). However, whenever I go into mobile editing, it doesn't let me scroll down so I can fix the error. What is this? Lockesdonkey (talk) 21:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Lockesdonkey: See #Scrolling disabled for iOS above for more about this. Seems to only effect iOS, I am using it on Android Lollipop on my Galaxy S5 with no problems. Obviously that means I use Google Chrome for Android (v41). While this bug is fixed, maybd try using Chrome instead? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 03:36, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere/VA_Tech

Can anyone tell me why Special:WhatLinksHere/VA_Tech claims that this redirect is transcluded in Virginia Tech? Thanks, --B (talk) 22:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

"transclude" does not have to mean "display the contents". Virginia Tech contains {{redirect|VA Tech}}. {{redirect}} will in some cases (I'm not sure of the specifics) use a module to transclude a page by the name of its argument, in order to examine the page source and detect whether there really is a redirect pointing to the page where {{redirect}} is placed. If there is no such redirect then the page containing {{redirect}} can be added to Category:Articles with redirect hatnotes needing review. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:29, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. --B (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Noindexing

Hi everyone. Where can I find information on what types of pages are noindexed by default? Also, is it possible to automatically noindex all subpages of a page (e.g. my own userspace), including pages that haven't yet been created? Thanks, Sunrise (talk) 23:04, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Sunrise: I don't know if it helps, but take a look at Category:Noindexed pages and MediaWiki:Robots.txt. Helder 02:17, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Helder! The Robots.txt file seems close to what I'm looking for in my first question. That said, other than Category:Noindexed_pages, all the entries seem to be individual pages. (For example, how is noindexing of the article talk namespace enforced?)

For my second question, it occurs to me that some application of a category might work; is it possible to add a category in a way that also applies to subpages? Sunrise (talk) 07:12, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Article talk is indexed by default but in many cases noindexed via {{BLP}}. Some languages noindex their whole article talk in wgNamespaceRobotPolicies but we don't. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:38, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Robots.txt is what gets appended to the system defaults and results in the actual robots.txt file (the robot/crawl policy, not necessarily the same as not being indexed). Pages that use the __NOINDEX__ magic word are the pages that get added to Category:Noindexed pages and then for namespaces, it is wgNamespaceRobotPolicies inside the config. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:07, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Stewards confirmation rules

Hello, I made a proposal on Meta to change the rules for the steward confirmations. Currently consensus to remove is required for a steward to lose his status, however I think it's fairer to the community if every steward needed the consensus to keep. As this is an issue that affects all WMF wikis, I'm sending this notification to let people know & be able to participate. Best regards, --MF-W 16:12, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Redirects to user pages where the global user page is transcluded are mistakenly classified as broken

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T90978

See for example User:Abigor001 which is supposed to redirect to User:Abigor. Abigor has a global user page transcluded on it (meta:User:Abigor and the feature is mw:Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage) . However Abigor001 does not redirect to Abigor, and it appears as a broken redirect in Special:BrokenRedirects. Anomie's link classifer also classifies it as a broken redirect. KonveyorBelt 17:14, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

This has been reported as phab:T90978. Cenarium (talk) 17:22, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

An old problem in a table

Somebody, please take a look at the table in "Calendric predictions" in Timeline of the far future and correct the error in it. This is a Featured List and shouldn't have remained like this for such a long time. -- Tisfoon (talk) 00:43, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

The error message must be new due to edits of {{Age in years and days}}. I fixed this article [22] but the template shouldn't behave like that. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:28, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Scrolling disabled for iOS

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T95465

I have encountered this problem for for maybe two weeks now, possibly more. I am unable to scroll while editing on the Wikipedia mobile site on iPhone, iOS 8.2. Does it have something with technical problems or it is my mobile? Callmemirela (talk) 04:05, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I just tried it and encountered the same problem. This is apparently something to do with the most recent version of iOS Safari. Scrolling works when editing with iOS Chrome or the Wikipedia app, but not with Safari. Scrolling while editing in the desktop view works just fine in iOS Safari, on the other hand. For another twist, this affects both Safari and Chrome on an iPad. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 17:53, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

@Callmemirela: Bug report filed. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 19:20, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

@DoRD: I wanted to know if there's been any progress on the fix. I still can't seem to scroll. I am now currently on the newest iOS update 8.3. Thanks, Callmemirela (talk) 23:47, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

insource searching for unicode symbol does not work as expected

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T95849

I was doing some searching the unicode symbol "★" and getting odd results:

• "insource:★" search has no results. [23]
• "insource:/★/" search (i.e. the regex version of the search) has 81 results. [24]
• A simple "★" has only one result [25], Star (glyph), which was not returned on either previous search?
• "intitle:★" has no results [26], though ★, ★Macy*s and ★NSYNC all are suggested by autocomplete.
• And none of the searches finds the articles Emoji or Miscellaneous Symbols which also contain the black star symbol in their text.

Anyone have any insights into what is going on? Does the search just suck at unicode, or is something else happening here? Dragons flight (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Reported in phabricator. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:26, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Infoboxes

There have been several contentious discussions regarding infoboxes, including the one at Talk:Laurence Olivier#Infobox and it has even been discussed at ARBCOM. Some editors really like infoboxes and would be happy if there were an infobox in nearly every article. Other editors really dislike them. Right now, it seems that it's up to the author or authors of an article to choose whether to include an infobox, that the status quo needs to be respected, and that in order to change the status quo there has to be a consensus to change it, and that has been the difficult part: reaching a consensus. I wonder whether it might be possible to make the appearance of an infobox a display option, so that people can select the option to display, or show, the infobox in the articles that have them, or hide the infobox. Perhaps someone generally does not want to see the infobox but occasionally would like to see it in a particular article. Or perhaps someone generally wants to see the infobox but one day wants to change his or her preference and hide the infoboxes. An infobox could be created for most articles, and then readers can select the display option they prefer. This would solve a lot of problems and might make everyone happy. (Images such as portraits and coats of arms, etc., maybe could be left in the article even if the rest of the infobox is hidden.) CorinneSD (talk) 23:59, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I do think this would be useful ... optional display of infobox based on preference. Personally, I'm pro-Infobox. We do not want to cripple the feed to WikiData that Infoboxes enable in order to satisfy a display preference. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

If an infobox is created, and then hidden, wouldn't the feed to WikiData still continue? CorinneSD (talk) 00:49, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@CorinneSD: Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 135#Suppressing Infobox Person. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:46, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Redrose64 Thank you Redrose. I read that discussion. I like infoboxes, by the way, but I understand that quite a few editors don't like them in certain types of articles. Other than having to insert code to suppress the infobox, couldn't something simpler be developed so that a person would only have to click on something to hide or show the infobox – either for all articles at once or in individual articles? CorinneSD (talk) 12:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think you should try to solve an editorial problem like this with a show/hide option. It tends to further polarize the opinions, because people no longer discuss with eachother and then at some later point there will be a clash anyway, which will be deeper and more emotional due to the polarized opinion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:29, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't think this is an editorial problem, is it? I do not think people are not saying "ban infoboxes because I don't like to see information organized" rather "ban infoboxes because they get in my way of viewing the article the way I like to", which is a presentation problem, not an editorial one. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 19:02, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I think there are two issues with infoboxes.

• First, as for their content, they tend to elevate comparatively trivial details to an importance not deserved (because trivial details are easier to fit in the short format allowed) and often do so in a way that actually misrepresents the subject. Even things that may easily be summarized in a sentence or two in the lead get distorted when compressed to two words or simple mentions (such as those "influenced"/"influenced by" lists).
• The other problem is that the boxes do this while occupying some of the best real estate on the page, where many would perhaps prefer a larger image, a map or just more attention directed at the actual article. Compare categories: sometimes controversial (things such as religion, ethnicity or sexuality) but trivial-but-true categories (alumnus of X College, that sort of thing) aren't that problematic because they don't get the same prominence at the bottom of the page as the same facts do inside a brightly-coloured frame in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

A box with less prominent placement or one slighty hidden that one has to click to open would probably be less of an issue. --Hegvald (talk) 20:01, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

This has the potential to steer this discussion into the pro- or contra-infobox controversy, which my suggestion was designed to eliminate. I do understand the point that for certain subjects, some material in an infobox may have the potential to mislead readers simply because a complicated issue is being expressed in less than five words. Is there a rule that says every category in an infobox must be filled in? For those particular subjects, couldn't that potentially misleading information simply be left out? Or, if the information cannot be left out, perhaps we can rely on an editor's choice to show or hide the infobox. If the infobox is hidden, it is less likely to mislead someone. For the editors who like infoboxes, I don't think they would be pleased if infoboxes were tucked away lower down in the article. Also, and this is the 21st century now, perhaps, when an infobox is hidden, an alternate image (photo, portrait, map, etc.) could take its place. (But I had already suggested that any image in an infobox remain in place when and if an infobox is hidden.) CorinneSD (talk) 20:21, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Preferences and css?

Resolved

I've noticed that some, if not all, of my custom css (at User:Purplewowies/monobook.css, if this behavior is something specific to me and the css I have) doesn't work when I visit the preferences page. I don't remember this happening before, so is it a recent development? Is that an intended behavior? If that's the way it's been working/supposed to work, I guess I'll just stick my foot in my mouth now... - Purplewowies (talk) 03:26, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

User specified CSS does not run on Special:Preferences since phab:T72672 was fixed last September. Legoktm (talk) 04:35, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@Purplewowies: It's intentional. If a user sets up their personal CSS or JavaScript page or combination of gadgets in such a way as to break every page, we should still allow them to fix it by preventing similar breakage at prefs. On any page, if the preferences link is invisible or off screen, you can still open prefs, by visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences if (like me) you have that bookmarked in your browser. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:26, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Makes enough sense, and when I considered it being intentional, I guess the situation that went through my head was exactly what you described, Redrose 64. *sticks other foot in mouth* - Purplewowies (talk) 06:10, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Obscure parser bug

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T95830

Can anybody work out why when you view the following wikitext, there are paragraph break between the "bar", "baz" and "qux"?

=== Example heading ===
[[Category:Foo]]
[[bar]]<del>baz</del>qux

There's an example in my sandbox. Here's the generated HTML:

<h3><span class="mw-headline" id="Example_heading">Example heading</span></h3>
<p><a href="/wiki/Bar" title="Bar" class="mw-disambig">bar</a></p>
<del>baz</del>
<p>qux</p>

I would expect all of the words to be inside the same set of p tags rather than the above result. This behaviour is also very fragile - if I change the heading, or the category, or stop "bar" from being a link, or remove the <del>...</del> tags, it returns to normal.

I noticed this due to a report by an IP at Template talk:Requested move#Markup bug, and I have been able to reduce the issue to this minimal example, but I'm not sure what's causing it. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

A similar issue was discussed at Template talk:Rfc#Formatting bug. No specific cause was found. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:04, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it's HTML Tidy playing silly buggers. Not the first time. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:38, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Tidy will swap things around, but I haven't caught it inserting <p> tags. That sounds like the parsers behaviour. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:01, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you replace the "del" with the stylistically equivalent "s", you don't have this problem. Quirky little bug. Dragons flight (talk) 19:16, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

It's not semantically equivalent though. I think that Graham87 (talk · contribs) has previously mentioned that screen readers ignore the <s>...</s> markup, but announce the <del>...</del> markup as a deletion. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:33, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Nope, that is not the case; I don't remember saying that. Graham87 07:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I can see this isn't going to be an easy one to resolve. I've done what I probably should have done at first and reported it at phab:T95830. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:45, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

It's Tidy doing cleanup. ins and del are a bit special, in that they partly act as <p> elements. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

OSM availability

Trying to use commons:Template:Object_location on some image(s), i checked the link it provides to OpenStreetMap. Didn't work, the page stayed completely blank. Investigating this, it seems i am getting 503 errors (Service Temporarily Unavailable) for many of the files used, e.g. http://tools.wmflabs.org/osm/libs/openlayers/2.12/OpenLayers-min.js ... Trying to open it directly, i get a page titled "No webservice" (The URI you have requested, [...], is not currently serviced.). Where can i ask how "temporarily" is this, or whether it's just a MIME-type issue? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 07:37, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Nevermind, now it's working. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 20:52, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Page protection - reverting to previous protection when a higher form expires

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41038

I'm not entirely sure how to put this, but many pages are semi-protected indefinitely due to a long history of vandalism, or similar things. Sometimes, an edit war will break out that leads to the page being temporarily fully protected. Of course, when this full protection expires, the page is left with no protection whatsoever. So what I'm thinking is this; if a semi-protected page was protected indefinitely, and was later fully protected/template protected (or, theoretically, PC2 protected) temporarily, the page protection level automatically defaults back to semi protection after the expiration of the higher state. That, or an admin bot immediately comes back in to reinstate the semi-protection. What do people think? Lukeno94 (tell Luke off here) 12:13, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that it's an excellent idea, and I know it has been discussed previously (give me an hour or so and I'll find one). However, it needs a change to the MediaWiki software, so there's nothing that we can do about it ourselves except file a phab: feature request. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:50, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Got it - Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 123#Page protection check-box and phab:T41038. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:00, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

The impression that I get from the Phabricator page is that anyone is welcome to submit a patch, but that any fix will have to be checked quite thoroughly as there are a lot of places in the MediaWiki codebase that might be affected. So if you know PHP, feel free to start working at the code - if you do a good job, your patch will probably be accepted. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 16:03, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

For now, you can PC it, along with temporary full-protection, and make an appropriate summary; once the full protection expires, admins will either restore the semi (if they think PC isn't enough, note that PC will remind people about the protection as soon as an anon or new user edits the page), or just leave it at PC; note that PC tends to make vandalism less visible, and as a result tends to discourage it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Auto sig ability

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T25037

It may have been discussed before my time, but is there any way to automatically detect when an editor forgets to sign his post, and possibly activate an automatic sig when we hit save page, or better yet prevent it from saving like what happens when we forget to add an edit summary? LOL I just forgot my sig. Atsme☯^Consult 17:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

It has been discussed before, yes; and there are strong arguments against it, because not all edits on discussion pages should be signed. Examples: [27]; [28]; [29]; [30]; [31]. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

At least we can detect if a user clicked the "signature and timestamp" button and put a little warning somehwere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dixtosa (talk • contribs) 18:09, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

and maybe one day, when the community thinks it is ready, Flow will replace talk pages and make signatures unnecessary.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 18:17, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, there is a bot that floats around and autosigns some pages. And I know on commons there is a gadget for edit summaries, there may be one here. (found it SineBot (talk · contribs) obviosuly) EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:24, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes on Commons, saving without an edit summary results in this error message Reminder: You have not provided an edit summary. If you click "Save page" again, your edit will be saved without one. Now I can't remember if this was a gadget or what, but can we get this on en.wiki? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:32, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

You can turn it on in Preferences. It is in the editing tab right under "Rows" -- GB fan 18:40, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

@EoRdE6: GB fan refers to Preferences → Editing → Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary) and there is also Preferences → Gadgets → Add two new dropdown boxes below the edit summary box with some useful default summaries. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:54, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Can we get it to also apply to a sig? That way it won't force a sig unless we make it that way. Reminder: You have not signed your post. If you click "Save page" again, your edit will be saved without your signature. And then we can turn on the feature in Gadgets or under Editing? Just a thought. Atsme☯^Consult 19:05, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Russian Wikipedia has enabled reminder (if I'm correct - like a dialog window) to sign your comment on talk pages. And personally I like much better Polish edit summaries (see for example in this page those two green lines). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

What two green lines? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:18, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

These green lines --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:26, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

No, I don't have that. Maybe it's a gadget that you have enabled. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:34, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is a gadget (See Zielone przyciski do szybkiego wstawiania opisów zmian.). But it is interesting – it's a default gadget, maybe you have disabled it? :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:48, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

That gadget is enabled (as are all of those from 'refTools – skrypt dodaje przycisk "cytuj" do paska edycji, umożliwiając szybkie wypełnienie i dodanie najczęściej wykorzystywanych szablonów cytowania.' down to 'Rozszerzona strona specjalna Prześlij.' inclusive). I've found that if I leave the gadget settings alone but change my language from en to pl, the green lines then appear. So it's dependent upon the user interface language. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Does English Wiki have it? Atsme☯^Consult 21:06, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("#wpSave").one("click", function() { /* change to wpPreview for testing */
        $("#editform").on("submit", function() {
            return !(this.wpTextbox1.value.indexOf("~~" "~~")===-1 && (
                mw.config.get('wgNamespaceNumber')%2===1 ||
                $.inArray("Non-talk pages that are automatically signed", mw.config.get('wgCategory'))!==-1
              ) && !confirm("No sig, send anyway?"));
        });
    });
});

Here's my first shot at a JavaScript SineBot. Its missing a lot, but if there's serious interest I can develop it more. — Dispenser 23:38, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Can I use it now?? Oh yes, it will definitely be used, and should probably be included in the WELCOME message that goes out to all new users!! Thank you Dispenser - your efforts are greatly appreciated. Let me know if I can use it, and I will spread the word!! Atsme☯^Consult 00:00, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Werelate.org, which uses WikiMedia as their platform, has implemented an auto-signature function, but I'm not sure how. The main developer over there is Dallan. An inquiry to him could provide details. The overall platform implementation (such as use of MediaWiki 1.7.1) is described at http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Special:Version . --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:09, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Eh that MediaWiki version is from July 2006. I would not comfortably use that website. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:22, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Dispenser's code works!!! It works. What a jewel, and a go-back-and-add-sig-saver!! Love it!!! Thanks again, Dispenser!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atsme (talk contribs) 13:45, 13 April 2015‎ Obviously didn't work that well as I had to sign it... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)}

This is good, the post that says that the code for autosig works is unsigned. -- GB fan 17:49, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Obviously overcome with joy. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:55, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Works so well that you... forgot to sign your post? Super. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:13, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually my fault, I removed it from vector.js and forgot to add it back to common.js when I posted this!! Atsme☯^Consult 18:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Ahhhh....the irony of it all. I also misspelled Dispenser but have since corrected it Atsme☯^Consult 18:26, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Atsme, the ping probably won't work, the way I understand it, they only work if you add the ping and the signature in the same edit. -- GB fan 18:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, GB. The excitement over the sig reminder actually working got the best of me. I think when I changed it from vector.js to common.js I missed some code in the copy/paste. I have since recopied the full code, added it back to vector.js and saved it this time. As evidenced above, I really need it. - hold on - it appears it reminds you after show preview...wait so I can check it....Atsme☯^Consult 18:42, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmmmm....code reads Non-talk pages that are automatically signed so it may be that it doesn't work on all pages? Dispenser can probably explain better than I can. It may not work here. Atsme☯^Consult 18:46, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

mw:Manual:Interface/JavaScript: "If the category box is not shown on the current page (as is the case when editing/viewing history), wgCategories will be an empty array." IIRC, the usability people broke it when redesigning the edit screen. — Dispenser 23:44, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Hello guys, I've written for long time an script for auto-signing, that anyway also have such forgot check (sorry if my English is not the best :P). I'm not sure you wanted this, but it would be nice if someone can test it on the EnWP!? de:User:Perhelion/signing.js → User: Perhelion 21:12, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Is a commented & non-minified version available somewhere? But it looks like a good starting point for a gadget. — Dispenser 23:44, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

If a missing sig could be made to respond the same as a missing edit summary, it would be perfect. If it could ignore article pages, that would be even more perfect. Maybe a not if command (or whatever) to ignore auto sig if the page has a rating for example, and list the ratings. I know as much about writing script and/or code that it requires a microscope to see it. Either way, can I please be added to a beta tester list? Atsme☯^Consult 01:00, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Red X next to image files in Edit Mode

Printscreen CorinneSD; she's got a question on the "red x"

In the last day or two I started seeing a red X (actually, it's a white X inside a red circle on a light gray square background) at the right margin next to every image file in Edit Mode. Another editor has noticed it, too. See User talk:CorinneSD#Red X. What is that "X"? How can I get rid of it? Might it have something to do with the re-arrangement of my talk page done by another editor about three days ago? (See User talk:CorinneSD#Re-arranged talkpage.) CorinneSD (talk) 16:43, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@CorinneSD: I don't see it. Please provide a WP:WPSHOT. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:49, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I've never done this before, so I've got to go step-by-step. I'm following the instructions on the link you provided. When I press either just PrintScreen or "Alt" and PrintScreen, I don't see anything happening. (The PrintScreen button is not in a color, so I don't think I have to use the Function key.) It says that it is saved to "the clipboard". What clipboard? I opened MSPaint, and could use it, but there's nothing in the Paint clipboard. What am I doing wrong, or not doing? CorinneSD (talk) 17:06, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

It happens for me in Firefox when wikEd is enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. If the wikEd icon in the upper right corner is black and white on en edit page then click it to enable wikEd on that edit. I don't know why wikEd displays the "red" X near image code. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:17, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

The clipboard is the normal Windows clipboard. In Paint, press Ctrl V to paste from clipboard. Notifying Thryduulf, who wrote most of that page (but is probably photographing the Boat Race about now). --Redrose64 (talk) 17:36, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I was indeed photographing the boat race - I've just got home from standing by the finish line. I'm not going to have time to look into this until Monday at the earliest, and I don't have a windows computer to test it on, sorry. Thryduulf (talk) 19:04, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I still don't know what you mean by "normal Windows clipboard". I've only ever seen, or used, a clipboard in Word. CorinneSD (talk) 19:14, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I've had wikEd enabled for a long time, and I just checked and it's still enabled. CorinneSD (talk) 19:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

The clipboard in Word is the Windows clipboard. It's shared by all applications running under Windows, and is what makes it possible to copy text from Word and paste it into Excel - or into this edit window. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:35, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

O.K. I have the template in the Word clipboard. I have the upload form open. I have "browsed" and selected the screenshot file (so now a small version is visible at the right side). I don't know how to copy the template from the Word clipboard to the "Summary" part of the upload form. Word and the upload form are two different windows. CorinneSD (talk) 20:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

In the Summary part, either press Ctrl V to paste from clipboard, or right-click and select "Paste". --Redrose64 (talk) 20:25, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I've added the screenshot; it's got to do with WikEd. I guess the red is just a handy took to find the pictures; maybe the red x has got the same function. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 20:27, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Redrose64 and JJ. I decided to disable wikEd, save it, log out, close my browser, get on-line, log in, and then enable wikEd to see if it would be different, but it wasn't. It was the same. I find the red-circles-with-a white-X-in-them annoying, and I wish someone would get rid of them for me. I noticed that the image file, not the size details or captions, but just the image file name, is red. In the Gian Lorenzo Bernini article, one is red and the rest are blue. Were image file names always in color like that? I don't remember that. CorinneSD (talk) 21:38, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

• I do believe the red x indicates that the file does not exist locally. Normally, if the file exists locally, it will show a small preview of what the image looks like. To disable this feature (which seems to not be working as intended, ping Cacycle) simply add:

.wikEdFilePreview { display: none; }

to your common.css page (untested, but should work - please let me know if it doesn't and I will test and give you a working chunk of code). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:20, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Technical 13 It didn't work, so I deleted the code from the css page. Why should this happen all of a sudden when I've been editing for three years and haven't had this problem? Could it have anything to do with Joshua Jonathan's re-organization of my talk page just three days ago? CorinneSD (talk) 22:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

• Nothing at all. At this point, we'll need Cacycle's assistance to figure out why wikEd isn't working like it used to for this and to give us the correct class name to hide those for those who don't want them. I'll drop a note on his talk page pointing him here. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:56, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Image preview/redlink detection seems to be broken, I will check into this and update wikEd as soon as I find the time. Cacycle (talk) 20:59, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Fixed in wikEd version 0.9.144a, please Shift-Reload to update. Cacycle (talk) 13:06, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Cacycle. I know what "Shift" is, but what's "Reload"? Is that a special key on the keyboard? CorinneSD (talk) 14:01, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@CorinneSD: It varies according to browser. At WP:BYPASS#Bypassing cache, find your browser, and then use any one of the key sequences shown for that browser. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Disappearing bullets in template

The bullets in {{ScienceFictionFantasyWeirdPulpMagazines}} display for me when I look at the template page, but on a page that uses the template, such as Tales of Wonder (magazine), the bullets have disappeared. Any idea why this is? I'm on Windows 7 and I see this on both Chrome and IE. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:09, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Fixed by adding a blank line before the navbox.[32] Adding a newline would have been enough. Before this the navbox was on a line starting with an asterisk. That makes a list entry and a navbox shouldn't be placed there. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:22, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I should have looked at the source text myself; hadn't realized that would cause that problem. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

GA count drops 3,500 overnight

Hello again. I'm the guy who asked about the 95,000 jump in the article count on 29 March 2015. I follow the GA total very closely (I maintain the GA stats page), and I noticed that it was about 21,800 yesterday and that it is now about 18,200. Has the script that fixed the article count now started running on the GA count? I highly doubt that 3,500 GA were demoted overnight, so I'm guessing a change in or correction of the counting algorithm is responsible. Also, I've noticed that the total article count has decreased by about 3,000 or so over the past week, which is a stark contrast with the usual 1,000 article increase/day we usually see. I suspect a script is responsible, unless we've been deleting articles like crazy. As before, any explanation you can give me would be most appreciated. Thank you. AmericanLemming (talk) 21:53, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

@AmericanLemming: Where do you see this GA total? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:20, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

It's given on the Wikipedia:Good articles page. Sorry for not providing it; I thought everyone knew enough about the GA process that they would know where to find the total. AmericanLemming (talk) 23:40, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

It's made by {{GA number}} which is currently coded to show how many pages are in Category:GA-Class Good articles. It has just been decided at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 25#Category:GA-Class Good articles to delete this category. A template edit [33] is removing the category from talk pages when the edit propagates to them. It seems {{GA number}} should switch to count pages in Category:Good articles, currently 21839. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:48, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

I have made the change to {{GA number}}.[34] PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I think the count yesterday was something like 21,836, so I'm a lot more comfortable with 21,839 than I am with 18,166. AmericanLemming (talk) 00:36, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Accessing WikiData page

Usually, for pages with existing inter-language data, clicking on "Edit links" opens up the WikiData page for that article. But for pages without any such link, (e.g., Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt) clicking that "Edit links" opens an in-page dialog asking me to provide a Language and a Page (title)... Is there any way to access the WikiData entity page for the latter article(s)? This can be avoided by right-clicking the link and copying the target location, then opening the URL manually (or by a Right-Click and opening in a new tab; Note: Ctrl Click doesn't work). Is this in-page dialog by design, (presumably since for existing data, the dialog wouldn't know whether i intend to change something or add a new entry, but for an empty list there's only one action possible) or was leaving it active an oversight? -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 21:58, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

The "Tools" section in the left pane has a "Wikidata item" link. I assume the in-page dialog is by design. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:12, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Exactly. The languages area is about linking between languages, not about accessing Wikidata, it just happens to use Wikidata. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:37, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Can't accept pending change

At Malala Yousafzai the two revisions made at 10:32 today are shown with a light brown background and "[pending review]". However, if I click that "[pending review]" link on the ClueBot NG revert, or view the diff, it says "[accepted revision]", and the Accept revision button is greyed out - both of these contradict the light brown background and "[pending review]" shown on the history, and imply that the revision has been accepted. But on returning to the history page and refreshing, it's brown and "[pending review]" again - how can that be cleared? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. From the diff view, I unaccepted and reaccepted Cluebot's edit. BethNaught (talk) 11:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you --Redrose64 (talk) 11:06, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Offline editing tools

Is it possible to work on complex drafts offline, but in such a way that all the markup and templates still work correctly? How? What are the better tools editors use? Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Browsing through some Logs...

Is there some way i could restrict Special:Log from showing all those not-really-relevant "account auto-created" lines? This also happens on WP, but it's somewhat less visible since there is much more actual info (and account created on demand, not auto-matically) in the logs here... -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 11:45, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't know a good way. You could place this in Special:MyPage/common.css at the wiki:

.mw-logline-newusers {display: none;}

However, it hides all account creations in all pages, also when the log is restricted to a single named user. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:08, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter:Most MediaWiki pages produce a class you can target on the body tag. Following example from Special:Watchlist.

<body class="mediawiki ltr sitedir-ltr ns--1 ns-special mw-special-Watchlist page-Special_Watchlist skin-vector action-view">

So we should be able to narrow the specificity, but my CSS is rusty. --Izno (talk) 18:54, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Specificity-wise, we could try to target "mw-special-Log" or "page-Special_Log", but it won't really help, since the classes are not different between "All public logs" and specific logs like "User creation log"... After all, it's the same URL. -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 21:54, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, even if i won't hide it and use something like color: #c0c0c0; instead, it's not much help, since (1) it still loads the same data, it just displays it differently; and (2) there's no CSS difference between an on-demand creation (first time on WM) and an automatic creation (via SUL, most likely). As a last resort, i think i will try to query specific types of logs, one at a time. :-< If only that type drop-down list was a check-box list... :-) -- Jokes_Free4Me (talk) 21:54, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Maybe file a bug in phabricator (looks like a couple bugs we could punch in, though I bet at least one of them would be a duplicate...)? --Izno (talk) 00:38, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-16

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

Recent changes

• You can read the latest news about VisualEditor.
• You can now use the new translation tool on 22 Wikipedias. You now see the tool the first time you create a new page. [35]
• The list of bad user names on your wiki no longer works. The global list replaces it. You can ask to add rules for bad user names on Meta. [36] [37]

Problems

• Some wikis had issues on Wednesday. [38] [39]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 14. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 15 (calendar).
• Developers will start to rename 1.5 million accounts on Wednesday. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [40] [41]
• All users can now test link previews ("Hovercards") on several Wikipedias. [42]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meetings you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 15 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:41, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

End of an era, start of a new one

I think you can truly call it that. Eloquence early editor, early software developer, board member and long time Director at WMF is moving on. Thank you Erik, for all that you have done to get us from those early days of pure volunteer chaos (as Brion called it) to the organization that we have now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:27, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Edit counters that works ?

Can anyone tell me if there are any global edit counters who works. Most of them seams to be out of order.--85.166.159.202 (talk) 04:10, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

This tool should be what you're looking for (and it seems to be working all right for me). ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 04:13, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Is there really some other global edit counters? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:19, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

There used to be loads, but they were all on Toolserver, which died last June. AFAIK the XTools one (linked at the bottom of your contribs as "Edit counter") is the only other one which got ported to ToolLabs. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:45, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I was talking about the global ones. I know there was (is?) plenty of edit counters for edits made in local Wikipedia (like this one and this one). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 20:14, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

The XTools one is global. Here are your counts for Croatian Wikipedia; Estonian Wikipedia; Latvian Wikipedia; Russian Wikipedia; Meta; Wikidata. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:06, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Well don't look at stats.grok.se, it's been broken since 3 April and no-one has fixed it. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 22:21, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

We had different opinion what is global. I though that global means one page, where is every Wikipedia, but you - one tool, which can be used for every project. Ok, nevermind :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:27, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

• Edgars2007, as a maintainer for xTools, I need to ask what you mean by all stats on one page. Do you mean have one really long page which lists all wikis (there are 720 last I checked) or do you want a combined total on one page as if it was a separate wiki? The later could probably be done, if there was enough of a demand for it. I'll note that it would be an extensive amount of processing to do it, so there would have to be a discussion between myself and the other maintainers to see what level of community request we would need to attempt to undertake that task. Give me a couple weeks (let's say by May 1st) and I'll create WP:XTOOLS to describe the existing tools and then you can start a discussion on the talk page for that page and we can take it from there. Thanks for your suggestion. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 12:39, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Technical 13, you misunderstood me. I am satisfied with xTools. Everything is fine. But I had some ideas about it last summer, if you're interested in them I could tell them to you (if i've not forgotten them). Actually, I would be more interested in this one :) --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• No worries. Does the script on that page not do the job you want at all or is it just the pretty interface you drew up that allows you to manage multiple redirects to the page you are on that is missing? I probably can find time to make it so clicking the link will allow you to add a redirect to the page one at a time if it is not working but the latter will take more time than I have currently (not to say in a few months I can't do it). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:15, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I use any of these three: Meta Wiki, Tool Labs (Quentinv), Tool Labs (GUC) that work pretty well, and the first one never goes down (it can't). EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 22:26, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Sandbox link

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T95669

At the top of the page, inbetween my talk page and preferences. It's appeared in the last 20 minutes or so. Anyway to get rid of it? Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:39, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Place li#pt-sandbox { display: none; } in your CSS. (Already mentioned later but added here with simple instruction for convenience) PrimeHunter (talk) 00:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Just today a link to my userspace sandbox has appeared in my personal bar. I remember this used to be an optional gadget, which I long ago disabled. Why has this reappeared, and how can I get rid of it? BethNaught (talk) 18:43, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

What's wrong with it? It encourages new users to use their sandbox's instead of testing in the mainspace. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:47, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't need a link to it. That's what's wrong with it, smart arse. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:53, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

One, that doesn't answer the question and two: I rarely use my sandbox, I draft articles at ~/Article title and it's a red link for me because my user sandbox is ~/Sandbox with a capital. Now the personal bar takes up half my screen and it's just annoying. To repeat, where did it come from and how can I send it back there? BethNaught (talk) 18:51, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

(ec) I just noticed this as well. here is the edit that has caused this, but a glance at the Phabricator link doesn't make it clear how to re-disable the sandbox link - Matma Rex, can you shed some light on this? ​—DoRD (talk)​ 18:53, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

And, most of those of us who have been here a while don't want or need the link. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 18:54, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

It's good for newbies, but there should definitely be an easy way to disable that link. --Leyo 18:57, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Not an "easy way" exactly, but adding:

#pt-sandbox {
	display: none;
}

to your CSS file will hide it. If using the vector skin the appropriate file is Special:MyPage/vector.css. Dragons flight (talk) 19:03, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

(ec) It's not "easy" in the gadget sense, but I've been told that you can add li#pt-sandbox { display: none; } to your common.css page to disable it. ​—DoRD (talk)​ 19:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to both, this has worked for me. BethNaught (talk) 19:07, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

By easy way, I was referring to Preferences or so. --Leyo 19:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

This really should be a preference/gadget or otherwise be turn-off-able. 98% of users having to do CSS-workarounds isn't quite the solution. Jared Preston (talk) 19:19, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

This did not work for me, either in the skin CSS (MonoBook) or in the common.css file. And other ideas? BMK (talk) 19:45, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Just replace the old gadget by a new CSS-only gadget which will hide the link provided by the extension. This should be enough to make it easy to enable/disable it again... Helder 20:00, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Could you do that? --Leyo 20:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC

The only thing needed (once there is consensus for this) is to create e.g. MediaWiki:Gadget-HideSandbox.css with the CSS above, and add this page to a new line on MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition, similar to the "HideFundraisingNotice" gadget. Then a description should be added to MediaWiki:Gadget-HideSandbox. This would make the option to appear at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. Helder 02:12, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

It also needs an administrator to approve the gadget at Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals, which seems to be a bit of an issue. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:35, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Sad to see the lack of substance in the comments of the two admins one admin who opposed its addition. Killiondude (talk) 22:32, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It was only opposed by one admin and supported by another. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:42, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry. You are right. I was reading it incorrectly. Killiondude (talk) 23:10, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

• The code does not work for my MonoBook skin. Does anyone have a workaround? SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 21:01, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

  monobook.css, not monobook.js! --Leyo 21:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

• Try putting li#pt-sandbox {display: none;} in your monobook.css or common.css file. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 22:24, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

@Mandarax: Thanks, that worked in the monobook.css. BMK (talk) 03:26, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. That worked for me. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 07:27, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Filed a ticket phab:T95669 and submitted a patch. Glaisher (talk) 11:14, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Maybe the link could be done at least blue, as all other links at the top? Regardless does the sandbox exists or not. Will remind, that link was blue in the gadget version. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 13:54, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you for this information. I had to change my skin to MonoBook (not necessarily happy with it, but whatever. I do already use it on Simple Wikipedia). Had to create my CSS page and add above code. Although it gave me dire warnings of several varieties, I managed to rid myself of the sandbox link. Nothing has exploded...I so do not need a mandatory link to my cat litter box. I am adult and brave and create all my text right in the edit window. Wow. Thank you again for this conversation. ツ Fylbecatulous talk 14:01, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

@Fylbecatulous: I can't say I'm an expert, but I don't think you were forced to change to Monobook. Doesn't this code

#pt-sandbox {
	display: none;
}

added to Special:MyPage/common.css work in Vector? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:07, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Edgars2007, thank you. I was using the Modern skin. Appearance-wise it was best for visibility on my PC monitor (something to do with less glare with the background colours and font. I had LASIK in the past and I am really glare sensitve, even with the LCD). I sometimes stare at Wikipedia for hours, as my time card usage shows 12-16h faithfully. <smile>. thanks. I will hope for a permanent disengagement by the powers-that-be but we all know how that usually goes... Fylbecatulous talk 14:58, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Forgot there are more styles without Vector and Monobook :) Well, if you want continue using Modern, then copy this to your Special:MyPage/common.css. That should work (I tested). --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 15:14, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Excellent. thanks for the links, as well. That works and you can go ahead and patrol my new css page. I shall keep my Modern skin. Fylbecatulous talk 15:28, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

With monobook there is a #p-personal li { display: inline; } rule that takes precedence over (props Orlodrim), so you have to add an !important clause:

#pt-sandbox {
    display: none !important;
}

Od1n (talk) 21:20, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

S

I'm fine with having a link to a personal sandbox, but it should be an uppercase S. User:Jc37/sandbox is where the link points to. It should be pointing to User:Jc37/Sandbox. - jc37 21:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

The gadget (which, if I recall, was enabled by default) linked to /sandbox, so linking to /Sandbox would probably result in unexpected redlinks. wctaiwan (talk) 22:08, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Then fix the gadget? - jc37 22:13, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

That wouldn't help. The (potentially large number of) people who have already created a sandbox using the gadget would have their sandboxes at /sandbox. As a drop-in replacement, this change shouldn't be breaking the sandbox link for those people. wctaiwan (talk) 22:22, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

And the sandbox gadget has already been removed anyway [43] since its function was redundant to the new mw:Extension:SandboxLink. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:37, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

So because some coder didn't give a thought to capitalising the initial "S" in sandbox, it can't be changed because the few who were using the gadget might have a redlink, as opposed to the millions of accounts on Wikipedia which now have this link at the top of the page? I presume there are lots of bots that know how to move a page. This shouldn't be a difficult fix.

Of course, the better solution would be for the wikisoftware to not have the letter after a slash to be case sensitive, like the initial letters. For example, User:jc37 and User:Jc37 manage to go to the same place. So why can't /S and /s go to the same place? - jc37 23:23, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I don't know how lowercase sandbox was chosen in the gadget but all the skin subpages like /vector.js are also lowercase. mw:Extension:SandboxLink allows each wiki to choose a subpagename at MediaWiki:Sandboxlink-subpage-name. "sandbox" is the default for English. The subpage feature is disabled in some namespaces (notably main) and I think it would cause too much confusion if /s was converted to /S in namespaces where subpages are enabled but not in other namespaces. Should it for example be possible for an article to have /s in the name but not for its talk page? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:09, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

"the few who were using the gadget" Just like this new extension, the gadget was enabled for everyone by default. You probably just turned it off and forgot about it. There are approximately 192,400 lowercase sandbox pages, compared to 23,600 uppercase ones.[44] Not saying the original decision was the right call, but it's how it is. wctaiwan (talk) 00:55, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Some sort of presentation bug

On the mobile version of Wikipedia, user profiles are all wierd all of a sudden. Here is mine as an example. I am using a phone and no app. It is hard to explain but I'm guessing it's some technical stuff. It looks like the page hasn't loaded properly, but it has. No other pages have this issue. I'm not sure whether the desktop version experiences this issue. —DangerousJXD (talk) 03:46, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Which parts exactly are "weird"? Which browser do you use? It's hard to know whether someone else sees the same problem without knowing how to reproduce and what the problem is. :) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:27, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Special:UserProfile/DangerousJXD is not the same page as User:DangerousJXD. I don't see any problem with the user profile page. Nthep (talk) 09:43, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

The browser is Chrome. You "reproduce" it by just going to any user's user profile page and you'll see it. It is hard to explain. There used to be shading, the users last uploaded picture used to be displayed, a picture from the last article the user edited used to be displayed, some of the writing used to be bold, the writing is thinner than it was, writing is all 'smooshed' together, and the writing was in a box sort of thing. That's the best I can explain it. Any change it was just changed on purpose and that is now how it is supposed to be? I am assuming it is not on the desktop version. Just to clarify, it is only on user profile pages (not user pages) and I am using a phone. It isn't a big issue, just a little one. —DangerousJXD (talk) 10:31, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

On a related matter, I see that Special:UserProfile/Redrose64 shows that I have 140 uploads. That's far too high (should be about 13) unless Commons is included. This is probably the case, since c:Special:UserProfile/Redrose64 gives the same figure - as do m:Special:UserProfile/Redrose64, cy:Special:UserProfile/Redrose64 and several others. But that is more confusing, since I have only uploaded to English Wikipedia and Commons, so I would expect Special:UserProfile/Redrose64 (on English Wikipedia) to show a different figure - either 13 or 153. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:20, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I haven't seen this feature before but at other wikis it sounds more like you say it used to be. Compare for example https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Benutzerprofil/Magnus_Manske?uselang=en and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UserProfile/Magnus_Manske?uselang=en. At de I see boxes (big boxes with a brief line) and bold text. At en I don't. I like the en version better. I don't see images anywhere. They should be gone after phab:T90801. The edit count line has different wording because de displays MediaWiki:mobile-frontend-profile-footer-ancient while en displays MediaWiki:mobile-frontend-profile-footer-years. I don't know why. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:46, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

This is how they used to look here (as pointed out above), why don't they still look like that? That is exactly what I was talking about, it used to look like that but now it doesn't. --DangerousJXD (talk) 22:01, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks guys for letting us know about this. This is now fixed. Jdlrobson (talk) 00:00, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Public thanks

A completely separate issue with UserProfile: I thought thanks were only supposed to be visible to others if they go looking for them at Special:Log/thanks. But Special:UserProfile/DangerousJXD displays MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-profile-last-thank which says "Last thanked by [username]." This does not seem consistent with Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks#What the feature is not. PamD posted to Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Thanks#Thanks and mobile view but was just told to discuss it with the mobile team. Based on phab:T58818 they deliberately want thanks to be more public. They also displayed which page the thanks was about but removed that part two months later. Based on what has has been told, most users probably don't expect a thanks they give to be displayed on the recipient's mobile user profile (Special:UserProfile/DangerousJXD is also visible at desktop but not linked from the desktop interface as far as I know). I propose we blank MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-profile-last-thank. I'm not sure how mobile works but I guess this will remove the thanks message at the English Wikipedia for unregistered users and users with the default en language. However, it might leave a blank line, or even a blank box if en starts displaying boxes again at UserProfile. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:34, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

How to disable mobile interface?

Hi. Is there any way to stop en.wikipedia.org redirecting to en.m.wikipedia.org when accessed on my Android phablet? I'm using Firefox on a 1280x800 screen, and I find the desktop interface much better; in particular the mobile Watchlist page has loads of bugs. I can of course "request desktop site" after the page starts loading, but that's a load of hassle. Thanks for any help. Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 11:58, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Rwxrwxrwx: Click the "Desktop" link at the bottom. It should set a cookie that prevents the mobile redirect. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 12:41, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I keep switching back and forth because the mobile watchlist stinks but the mobile editor is pleasant. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:05, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Zhaofeng Li: - That seems to work, thanks! Why didn't I notice it? Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 16:23, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Can we have an option in preferences to disable mobile interface altogether? It's damn annoying to the point I hope it has never been created. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 16:29, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm with you - the mobile interface sucks. Moreover I've made the mistake of downloading the app, so it always tries to open stuff in the app which doesn't have the "Desktop" link. The mobile version lets you edit, but it doesn't notify you of talk page notifications, you don't get other notifications, you can't see talk pages, user pages, or WP pages... Blah. @Zhaofeng Li:, when I click "Desktop" it does go to the desktop version, but I don't think it sets a cookie because the next time I visit it opens in mobile again. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:46, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

@ONUnicorn: It does for me, it seems (Chrome on Android 5.1). I've never checked my cookies, but it is described on wmf:Privacy_policy/FAQ#Can_you_give_me_some_examples_of_types_of_cookies_and_how_you_use_local_storage.3F Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 02:41, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Protection change details should always appear in edit summary (or somewhere else)

Due to vandalism, some of the Reference Desks are currently semi-protected. Note these successive changes on the same desk: [45] [46]

When the first change was made, there was an automatic comment in the edit summary giving the details of the chosen protection (type and duration). When the second change was made, the person's own summary of the reason was almost 250 characters long and the result was that the automatic comment was truncated to nothing.

I appreciate the intent of making a long edit summary, but I think that when the protection level is changed, the most important thing is to record the details. Either they should be given precedence in the edit summary (perhaps by giving the user a way to shorten his/her part) or they should show up some other way. Is there even a way to find out the duration of the change when it isn't in the edit summary?

--65.94.49.82 (talk) 14:06, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

See the protection log. Graham87 14:24, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. And the other bit of the answer is that to see that, on the page's history page I click on "View logs for this page". --65.94.49.82 (talk) 23:36, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Broken template

I reported this via the bug reporting scheme, only to be told that Phabricator deals with MediaWiki bugs but not bugs in the Wikipedia template machinery. They pointed me here. The "cite EWD" template worked a month ago but right now produces bad output and a broken URL. The article about the template shows it, as well as articles that use it. Paul Koning (talk) 16:01, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Fixed by [47]. That template has 100000 uses and should probably be protected. Thanks for the report. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:11, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

167176 transclusions to be precise. I gave it an indef template-prot. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:38, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Performance

Anyone else getting bad performance today? This page took 80.3 seconds to load, with the majority of time taken up by api.php calls. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:34, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Articles load fairly quickly, but the top and side bars take forever. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:43, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

The bits server is being slow intermittently. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:31, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Any idea what is causing the slowness and when it'll be fixed? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 05:46, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Nope. I'm just an observer, but know from five years experience that if a page takes more than five seconds to load, and the status shows "Waiting for bits.wikimedia.org" while the spinny thing is revolving, and what I am eventually displayed is a page lacking some or all of its styling, the problem is at bits. --Redrose64 (talk) 05:49, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

This might not be the case as the slow requests are directed towards en.wikipedia.org and not bits.wikipedia.org. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:42, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Mobile Web Block Warning

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T96257

A screenshot of the notice received I received attempting to edit. Note the message at the bottom.

So I discovered today that if a blocked user attempts to edit on the mobile version of En.Wiki, they will be allowed to edit the code and put in an edit summary, before they are notified that they are blocked, and any work they have put in is lost. Not only that, the block notice in not clickable and it gives no reason why you are blocked and no method of appealing. If mobile editor is to become more popular as we are being told, this needs sorting out. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 21:13, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

This should be filed in Phabricator, (with full user story background). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:47, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi there, thank you so much for noting this! I'm currently poking around in here looking for stuff - this isn't what I was looking for but I'm glad I did. EoRdE6, I'll notify the mobile team. -Rdicerb (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

EoRdE6: This would be very welcome as a task in the bug tracker indeed. Could you file it against the "Mobile-Web" project? Thanks in advance! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:02, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

• @EoRdE6: I would highly recommend you explain how you acquired this screenshot. I know that you are a net positive to the Wikipedia project, but without clarification, someone could make false sockpuppetry accusations against you. Steel1943 (talk) 14:53, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

• Steel1943 Oops, should have clarified that yeah. The IP address I edit from is blocked until 15:25, 9 September 2020. Not from me I assure you, its a shared IP. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 14:58, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Pushing for bug to be fixed

This continues to be an annoying problem which shows no sign of ever being fixed. Is there any way to bump up the priority and get someone to look at it? 86.152.163.58 (talk) 13:42, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

• Sure, fill out the form on Special:Login/signup and then visit Phab:T70324 and add some details or use cases to the ticket. Tickets that get the most usable input from the most people tend to get resolved the quickest. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 13:59, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Weird redirects left by double redirect fixing bots

See also: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 14#Bot should fix double-redirects

There seem to be occasional problems with the several bots which fix double redirects, often resulting from vandalism but occasionally resulting from move wars and even more rarely from good-faith bold page moves. For example, see the recent RfD discussions on these confusing redirects:

• Gangsta Bitch Barbie → Null set: a band article which was redirected to a new name, then determined not to be notable and redirected again to a different subject, creating a double redirect which was fixed by AvicBot.
• Creatures of the Id → Insanity: a redirect to a comic book article which was moved because it was missing a disambiguator, with a new redirect put in place of the original target, leaving behind the odd double redirect (now deleted) which was fixed by Xqbot.
• Ennialation → My Little Pony: was a redirect from a misspelling of Annihilation which at some point was vandalized to redirect to My Little Pony. Before the vandalism was repaired, Xqbot detected the double redirect and helpfully repaired it for us.

In each of these cases, of course it's not the bot's behaviour that is the problem, yet a problem is created and nobody is aware of it until someone happens to stumble across the weird redirect. I don't think this is a big enough problem to suggest that the bots should not automatically fix double redirects, but I would like to suggest that when doing so, the bot flags its action somehow. My thought is it could populate a list in the format of the one above, which could be watched, and the entries checked and cleared by interested editors, to weed out the occasional improper fix. Thoughts? Ivanvector (talk) 19:27, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Question about 'Child' Template:Navbox - smaller font

Greetings, Recently I noticed that font is smaller on a child Navbox compared to a regular (parent) Navbox. IMO it is harder to read because of the size reduction. Can the software be changed to keep Child Navbox font size the same? Example at Template:Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 20:08, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I added |{{{1|}}} to each of the four child navboxes [48] to permit the existing |child in the four calls in {{Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati}} to be passed on. Does that look good? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:04, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks PrimeHunter (talk). It looks fine, much better! Being somewhat new to Wikipedia, this is magic. Now I can backtrack to update a few more child navboxes with this same issue. And I learned something newtoday! . Thanks so much! JoeHebda (talk) 21:56, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

tracking category sporadic

Resolved

Can someone help me with what I'm overlooking here? It's a tracking category: if the info box has a field 'glotto' without a corresponding 'glotto(ref)name', then it should add the page to the category so we can review it. (Many early pages with Glottolog codes don't specify the name, which throws of the ref if the language is renamed in the info box.) The cat contained hundreds of articles last week, and I cleared them up, but I just came across another (Bolyu language) that didn't generate the cat. (Doing a test revert of the Glottolog name now, and it's not doing anything.) — kwami (talk) 20:18, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

If you change a template such that the pages transcluding that template are recategorised, you need to wait for them to work their way through the job queue before the categories concerned are both populated correctly and shown at the bottom of the affected pages. This can take from minutes to weeks. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:52, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I was checking for that. When you save, the article itself should update, even if the category isn't populated. — kwami (talk) 22:25, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It still takes time, and it often occurs that the cats at the bottom of the article are displayed correctly when the category pages that they link to are not. A WP:NULLEDIT on every article that transcludes the template will synchronise, but this is not feasible when there are 8122 transclusions. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Before the glotto code is this line: {{#if:{{{iso3|}}}|<!--okay-->|{{#if:{{{lc1|}}}|<!--ok-->|{{#if:{{{linglist|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{{isoexception|}}}|dialect|[[Category:Dialects with Linguist List code]]|[[Category:Languages without ISO 639-3 code but with Linguist List code]]}}}}

It has four nested #if or #ifeq so if it's supposed to be a closed line then it needs eight }}}}}}}} at the end and not only four. The following glotto code is currently part of the unclosed #if's. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:10, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I should have inserted the code further done. Fixed! — kwami (talk) 22:21, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Reference/Citation bot

Resolved

Hi all, I was wondering how I can activate (I did in my preferences) citation bot for this new article: Corporate Election Services, not very technical minded here, the way I read it I'm supposed to hit the Citation button (but it takes me to a blank white page with an error--completely white page no Wikipedia icon or toolbars at all?!) I went the route listed in the instructions of <ref>{{web cite| website URL}}</ref> but now I get problems on the reflist. Please help! Thanks! ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 22:54, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I tried to fix it, but another contributor was faster. Check out {{cite web}} for its syntax, notably url=...|author=...|date=...|title=...|publisher=...|accessdate=... and put the reference after punctuation (period or comma). –Be..anyone (talk) 23:12, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

(sorry for the ec, Be..anyone). @Marketdiamond: the references are cleaned up - I used the citation bot link in the toolbox in the left sidebar, not the one in edit mode though. However there are still a lot of citation details missing (titles, dates, authors, ...); the citation bot can't fetch all types of information from all URLs for technical reasons (see bot documentation for details). You'll have to add the remaining information manually (or you could test Visual Editor's new citation functions). GermanJoe (talk) 23:56, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Much thanks to you both! I will check out the Visual Editor as well! ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 00:39, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Sending thanks to IPs

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T63022

So, when I look at the edit history of a page, there's something that says "(undo | thank)" next to the edit summary, and if you click the thank button, the editor gets a message that they have been thanked for the edit. However, that button is missing from IP edits. Is there a reason for this? Sometimes someone editing under an IP has quite obviously done a lot of work that has drastically improved a page (or several). I would like to be able to thank them the same way I do named editors.

I realize that many IPs are not static, but many others are. Moreover, if you thank them within a few minutes of the edit, chances are they're still using the same IP and will see it. It just doesn't make sense not to have that as an option for them. So, why is it like that? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 03:21, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

"Thanking" someone sends them an "Echo" notification. However notifications are only available to logged in users, and as such IPs can't get thanks. Similarly, IPs won't get a notification if their edits are undone or reverted, since that requires Echo as well. Stickee (talk) 06:06, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Another thing is that unless you know that an IP address is static, or that the edit that you wish to send thanks for is very recent, you might be thanking somebody who had nothing to do with it. For example, I made one of these edits, but none of the others, so I am certain that more than one different person has edited from that IP address. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:06, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

IMO not really a problem, another user of the same IP could interpret it. I'd like to send thanks to bots and IPs. When I used IPs for about six years I sometimes got a {{welcome}} on the IP talk page, no harm done. –Be..anyone (talk) 23:22, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

So with the echo notification; isn't that the same as the notification you get when you get a new talk page message? If they aren't able to get echo notifications how do they know when they have a talk page message, and if the answer is that they don't, then why do we bother warning IP vandals on their talk page, or leaving talk page messages for IPs at all? I know IPs sometimes see and respond to messages on their talk page, but if they aren't getting notifications, then how? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 13:21, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Echo notifications for registered users and "You have new messages" for IP's is not the same feature. IP's still get "You have new messages". PrimeHunter (talk) 13:38, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Also known as the Orange Bar of Death/Doom. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:32, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

How do you get rid of the @#$%^&*! banner?

There's a Wikimedia banner that goes "Help the Funds Dissemination Committee"...

and no matter how many times I click on the x to close it, it keeps coming back!

I'd like never to see it again.

Please help. The Transhumanist 06:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

@The Transhumanist: That would be Preferences→Browsing→•Suppress display of fundraiser banners and/or •Suppress display of all Central Notices. Should work :) EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 07:08, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Under gadgets - why I didn't find it. Your tip worked great. Thanks! BTW, I don't mind reading a notice once, but they should provide a way for it to stay away after you close it. The Transhumanist 07:49, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that making the banners go away requires keeping cookies, but I'm not sure. Are you clearing cookies frequently? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Map alignment in infobox

Recently Template:Infobox subdivision type has been added to the lead of States of Germany. The infobox uses Template:German Federal States as map/image and shows a strange display glitch: the map is not centered, but left-aligned on my display (Windows XP, FF, vector skin). That problem seems to be somewhat system-dependant: on another editor's display the map was centered correctly. The map template German Federal States is quite old and may need improving of its parameter handling. The template is used in several Germany-related articles, any improvements or advice for possible improvements appreciated. GermanJoe (talk) 16:28, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Oddly I can't reproduce this (FF10 IE9 QupZillla Chrome monobook, FF10 Chrome useskin=vector). I tested (preview) to put the map template in {{center|{{German Federal States}}}}, and nothing happened, it still worked for me. –Be..anyone (talk) 23:07, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for checking, @Be..anyone:. Knowing the problem is on my side then, I checked a few more possible reasons and found the culprit: I have NoSquint for FireFox installed (add-on to modify zoom levels when needed). Disabling this and switching back to "Firefox default zoom functions" fixed the mis-alignment. Do you use any zoom tool by chance for FireFox under Windows or just the FF default functions? GermanJoe (talk) 23:32, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

No special tricks, it's a vintage 2013 portable FF10 ESR for a virtual Windows 2000, only "noscript" still offers updates. Chrome IE on Windows 7 might use some "smart scroll" Setpoint software for a Logitech wheel mouse, but that's not about zoom. –Be..anyone (talk) 23:43, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

No problem, I'll look around for a better add-on or get used to the Firefox default functions ;). Thanks again for your help. GermanJoe (talk) 23:56, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Why does "Template:Current Florida statewide political officials" list non Floridians?

This template: Template:Current Florida statewide political officials

For the links to the template, the wiki system lists a variety of politicians that are not from the US state of Florida, and also the Florida template is not obviously on the individuals' wikipedia article page, even via a redirect. See here:
(links to the Florida statewide political officials template)
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere&target=Template:Current Florida statewide political officials&namespace=0

Can anyone state what is going on, and how to correct the improper links to non-Florida people?
-- Yellowdesk (talk) 21:39, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Some of these pages link to that template indirectly via another template. For example, {{Current Minnesota statewide political officials}} includes a link to the equivalent Florida template, which is why MN officials like Governor Mark Dayton show up in your list. You can exclude those by using the "Hide links" button, which will then only show transclusions (articles that have the FL template). Mamyles (talk) 21:40, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

• OK, I'm desiring to de-link these superfluous links. Makes no sense to have them, from my view. I am looking at the Minnesota template, I cannot find a link. Can you educate me, Mamyles ?
  Yellowdesk (talk) 21:56, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

All 50 state templates transclude {{Current statewide political officials footer}} at the bottom for navigation to the other states. I don't see a good reason to change that. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:09, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

WP:NAVBOX is probably a good reason. --Izno (talk) 04:45, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Many navboxes have links to related navboxes at the top or bottom. 50 links may sound like a lot but the official two-letter state abbreviations means it doesn't use a lot of space. {{Current statewide political officials footer}} is four years old and only used for this purpose so it shouldn't be removed from 50 templates without discusion. There is no point in removing it from one or two and keeping it in the rest so a removal would be equivalent to deletion and should be discussed at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:54, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

One (but only one) item in a list is failing to sort properly

I'm stumped as to why. See here: 1. Hit count twice and watch Incubator rise to the top. The rest come up in order. What could cause this? The numbers of left-padded with zeroes with padleft if that helps. ResMar 00:44, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Note that the Wikimedia Labs item also fails to sort properly (is x2, but lists in the middle of x0). After looking for awhile I'm still not able to decipher what exactly {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Index item}} does, but I'm guessing that's a good thing to look deeper into. Mamyles (talk) 01:49, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not going through all the templates and modules to work out how the sortkey is generated but maybe the following can help you. You can use Special:ExpandTemplates to see the generated code. The Incubator sortkey is 03823. I notice Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Index item says x3823 on the template page. Swedish Wikipedia also sorts incorrectly. It has sortkey 00003. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:49, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Just checking, but should the Incubator parameters have a defined "search_string" too? That parameter is missing in the incubator definition, and the sort value calculation uses this value in the sub-template for counting. GermanJoe (talk) 02:08, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Excellent observation - that fixed the Incubator entry's sorting. Wikimedia Labs or Swedish Wikipedia still has a problem though. Mamyles (talk) 02:20, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the remaining minor glitches: Sorting and display use different search tags (sorting depends on the "search_string" parameter, display counts the "tag" parameter). Maybe those minor differences (lowercase <-> uppercase, 2 words <-> 1 word) in some Wiki names lead to different count results. GermanJoe (talk) 02:30, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Beat me to it. The template Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Index item was using tag instead of search string, for some reason, resulting in the wrong number being displayed for a number of wikis. Think I've fixed it in this revision. Mamyles (talk) 02:32, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

@Mamyles, GermanJoe, and PrimeHunter: Thanks for the assist, after copy-pasting this stuff for an hour I was a little bug-eyed. ResMar 03:22, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Location of picture in SN 1987A

In SN 1987A, there is a left-aligned picture in the SN 1987A#Progenitor. However, it doesn't display until the reference section, and it's displaying somehow behind the text of the references. What gives? This problem happens in monobook and vector. The picture displays a bit differently depending on your zoom level, but it always displays after all the other (right-aligned) images. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:23, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

An image on one side of the page will not display any higher than the top of the previous image on the other side of the page. Instead of having three images directly after the infobox, try spacing them out throughout the article, or at least after the left-floated image. - Evad37 [talk] 01:57, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Fixed with {{Stack}}.[49] PrimeHunter (talk) 02:00, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Merging / reorganizing tiny Talk archives?

I was looking at the talk page for Talk:4G, and it's really strange. There's monthly archives, with maybe one post in them, and no discussions of anything. After poking around a bit I see that when archiving was first implemented, the person that did it, set a 180 hr archiving period (7.5 days) and monthly archiving.

It doesn't get enough activity to need that heavy-handed archiving rate, and I think this high speed arciving is probably killing off discussion by archiving issues so fast. I've changed the bot archiving speed to 90 days now to slow it down, though the archiving should also probably be yearly.

Is it possible to merge the tiny 2012/13/14/15 monthly Talk archives into year archives?

I also noticed the "2012/January" archive actually has nothing from January, it's all 2011 and earlier from before archiving started. I tried moving it to a new name to reflect that (Talk:4G/Archives/2011_and_earlier) but it's still shown in the Talk archive list as 2012/January. I'm stopping here. I don't know how the Talk archive list box works, I don't want to bork it trying to reorganize for the better.

-- DMahalko (talk) 21:44, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

@DMahalko: I've merged the monthly archives into Talk:4G/Archive 2, instructed ClueBot III to archive the talk page by number rather than by date, and made it so that there need to be more than five threads on the page for the bot to archive it. I've also removed ClueBot III's archive box and advertisement, as it's not necessary. Graham87 14:11, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Error deleting file

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T96498

I am attempting to delete File:'Appetite For Construction' Album Cover.jpg. When I try, I get, "Error deleting file: Could not delete file "mwstore://local-swift-eqiad/local-public/archive/e/ef/20150401060250!'Appetite_For_Construction'_Album_Cover.jpg"." Any ideas? --B (talk) 04:56, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Looks to me like a bug. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:34, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

After moving it to an other name, I had no trouble deleting it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:35, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Created a bug report - phab:T96498. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:19, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I would like the following template on my user page

{{User:Cyberpower678/Status}}

Not the "Are you my friend" part. This shows whether Cyberpower678 is online, but not me. I often forget to update my status since it has to be done manually. I would like something to show I might be online but forgot.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:23, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I cannot help you concerning this matter, but should you like to see the last activity of other users at one glance, you might be interested in this script. The documentation is in German, but the script works here (in English), too. Transclusion using

importScriptURI("//de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Schnark/js/letzteredit.js"   "&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript");

--Leyo 20:41, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

That's not exactly what he's looking for. He's looking for a way to show his inactivity to everyone else without having to update his page.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 21:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I am fully aware of this. --Leyo 22:04, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

C678 explained on his/her talk page the templates involved are too complicated to explain. For me, that's probably true. Thanks for trying.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:24, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• They're often too complicated for CP too... I've spent a bit of time poking around at them trying to make them HTML5 compliant. If you want to try to set it all up, pay attention to what he has set up and what transcludes what else (there are a couple trick ones in there). You'll learn some template lessons and don't worry about if you get stuck, just ask for help with whatever you are stuck on my talk page or CPs. ;) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:08, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Oversight question

Since one can download all revisions, all pages of Wikipedia, is it possible to compare versions of that download to see what has been changed by oversight? If it is possible, is anybody doing that? More specifically, if I ask for some pretty old identifying information to be oversighted from my real account, am I actually bringing more attention to it? Njfma5piii3gymb (talk) 00:40, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I seem to recall some instances. Initial treatment with admin deletion (delete/restore or revdel) can make things less interesting in this respect. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 02:08, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

It's perfectly possible, assuming the oversighted information is old enough that a database download would contain it. To make things wworse, it would presumably be possible to write a program to compare the dump with the extant Wikipedia data, and find these revisions that way. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:27, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

But then you remember how many hundreds of Gigabytes of information are in these dumps and on the live wiki and what pointless results you would get... An occasional phone number? Maybe someones email? I bit of negative BLP? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 00:25, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Here we come to the difference between possible and plausable. Yes, it's possible to get all oversighted revisions which survived for long enough to end up in a dump; however, it's not plausable that someone would go through all that effort of having software sift through millions of revisions to find the few hidden ones. If you're asking about getting a specific revision which someone noticed in a page history, I think that may be plausable. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:02, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Oddity when clicking on the notes links

No matter which letter I click on at the List of Murdoch Mysteries episodes#Notes I get taken to note "c" next to the date April 7, 2014 in the "Death of Dr. Ogden" episode listing. It is probably something simple but I am not sure how to fix this. Any help will be appreciated. MarnetteD|Talk 21:17, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Suppose, this edit fixed the issue. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:26, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

One of the reasons Footnote3 is deprecated. -- Gadget850 ^talk 10:39, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Albert de Louvain

Page says can translate from French wiki but is not linked to French Wiki page and cannot be. When you try, it says "The page you wanted to link with is already attached to an item on the central data repository which links to Albert of Louvain on this site. Items can only have one page per site attached. Please choose a different page to link with." If you click on the imbedded link to item it takes you here [50]. How does one link the pages together properly? SusunW (talk) 04:15, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The two English pages about Albert of Louvain/Albert de Louvain need to be merged; I've tagged them as such. Once this is done, the Wikidata entry can be updated if need be. Graham87 08:33, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. SusunW (talk) 12:26, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-17

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

Recent changes

• There was sometimes a problem when saving a page in VisualEditor. It is now fixed on all wikis. [51]
• VisualEditor sometimes showed empty warnings for wikis using Flagged Revisions. This is now fixed on all wikis. [52]
• You can get the new version of the Wikipedia app for iOS. With it you can share facts with your friends. [53]
• If you write JavaScript, you should stop using importScript and importStylesheet. [54]

Problems

• There was a problem with Labs on Monday. [55]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 21. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 22 (calendar).
• Developers are renaming 1.5 million accounts. After that all accounts will be unique and will work on all wikis. [56] [57] [58]
• If your wiki has the auto-fill tool for citations, you can now use it when you edit a reference. [59]
• You can now give examples for template options in TemplateData. [60]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 22 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• You will soon be able to add and remove tags on edits. [61] [62]

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

15:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Is SineBot playing up?

See these two edits at the help desk: First a new contributor, User:Deadroses posts a question, omitting to sign. [63] Then SineBot steps in, signing the post as 'User:Webbe' - a non-existent account. Very strange... [64] AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:55, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

SineBot was right. Webbe was renamed to Deadroses after the SineBot edit.[65]. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Language --> Add Links

Praemonitus (talk · contribs) is having trouble using the 'Add links' entry under the Languages section to add non-English language links to an article. Please offer advice here. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:35, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Article count is off?

Recently there was an issue of a sudden article count jump. Now the article count seems to be moving too slow: 4.856 million, which would imply that only 7,000 articles have been created this month. Since the article creation rate is normally 20-30k per month, either it has slowed down considerably, or the article counter is not working correctly. GregorB (talk) 17:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

M is for Mystified

Why is the thumbnail for M not showing up like N? The full size picture appears with no problem. Same issue on Simple. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:44, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

It works for me in Firefox. What is your browser? Does it look like an image might be there but your browser is unable to display it? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:54, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I have Firefox 37.0.1 - the upper box contains a blue link to the file that looks like M cursiva.gif, and not the image. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:00, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a thumbnail cache problem - those usually depend on what size you have thumbnails set to display in your preferences. (It appears fine for me, and I have them set to display at 300px.) Now if only I could remember how you clear the thumbnail cache... — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 21:04, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

And sure enough, setting my thumbnail size to 220px causes the M thumbnail to not display properly. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 21:08, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Purging the file's description page (on Commons) seems to have fixed it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:15, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Jackmcbarn, thanks! --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:42, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia and ISPs

Occasionally I have seen persistent Wikipedia vandals warned along the lines of "We will report you to your ISP and they will block your Internet access". It surprises me greatly that any ISP would block someone's Internet access merely on the basis of a complaint from Wikipedia. Has there ever been a case of this happening, or any realistic prospect of it ever happening, or are such warnings just empty threats? (I am asking out of curiosity, but I would like to make it clear that I have never vandalised Wikipedia myself, nor do I have any intention of ever doing so.) 86.188.80.40 (talk) 13:59, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:BEANS this will probably not be answered —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:48, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia would never ask an ISP to block. We have our own internal protocols to to deal with this sort of thing.--Aspro (talk) 19:35, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

ISP's have been contacted. See Wikipedia:Abuse response. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:46, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Do you know with what outcome? 86.150.71.4 (talk) 19:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes.

It's important to remember that "ISP" in this context means one of four things: the ISP for a home or small business; the IT department for a school or library; the IT department for a large business; and the IT department for a government agency. Some react and some don't. From the school and library category, I know that some students have received stern warnings. In the third category, the response may depend on whether the contact is about spam or about other problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Can "ISP" really mean an IT department for a business, agency or school? Is that standard usage of the term? I can believe that organisations' IT departments may possibly respond in some way if contacted directly about abuse of computers they are responsible for. What I can't believe is that what I would call an "ISP" (i.e. a telecoms company) would discontinue all Internet service to a customer on the basis of a complaint from Wikipedia. I wouldn't be surprised if in my country it would even be illegal for them to do so (at least, not without a complicated legal process involving wider issues). That is what the warnings that I referred to appeared to me to be implying. 86.150.71.4 (talk) 17:08, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

In practice, "an ISP" is whatever's in between you and the next upstream provider, and is providing you with a way to reach the rest of the internet. There are many university networks that are at least as large as the "telecom-style" ISP I use at home, and more than a few corporate networks dwarf it.

Not only is it "legal" to cancel accounts for any violation of the contract (are you giving out your wifi password too freely for their taste? Did you set up a low-traffic e-mail server in your home even though your contract specifies "no servers"?), there are some US laws that may require it under certain circumstances.[66] Copyright violations are one of those. It's also normal to disconnect service for spam. I don't know if the UK has similar laws, but even the most heavily regulated telecom-style ISP will have the right to cancel your internet service if you violate the terms of your contract with them. Whether something like spamming Wikipedia will "count" as a contract violation will depend on the contract. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:34, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I also don't know if the UK has similar laws, but some of our broadband suppliers include conditions like these. See for instance the Terms and Conditions for Plusnet Residential Services, particularly section "Plusnet Residential Standard Terms" items 16 and 22. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:52, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Obsolete <big>...</big> in the Edit toolbar

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40487

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T96387

From User talk:Technical 13

So I notice you are big into implementing HTML 5 compliancy (a good thing), and I wondered if you could explain why the wikitext edit box still provides users to option to use <big>...</big> if it is now deprecated (Wikipedia:HTML5#big). Shouldn't it be replaced with {{Big}} or <span style>...</span >, or is there a reason that I should know why it hasn't. Thanks in advance! EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 05:48, 17 April 2015 (UTC) I'm not sure which "wikitext edit box" you are referring to. I may have it turned off or hidden somehow by my use of WP:wikEd. If it is an interface thing, I can't personally change it but I know that Edokter, Redrose64 or any one of the other administrators who have worked on similar interface pages (MediaWiki:Edittools) would be happy to remove it or update it to something appropriate. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 13:12, 17 April 2015 (UTC) To be exact, the <big>...</big> element is marked as obsolete in HTML5, which is stronger than deprecated. It's not in Edittools - which these days is loaded from MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js (and is still discussed at MediaWiki talk:Edittools). --Redrose64 (talk) 13:21, 17 April 2015 (UTC) @Redrose64: I was referring to Help:Edit toolbar under the advanced tab. I thought this was turned on for everyone, but maybe it is just a default on for newer users? Directly above the edit window for me, under the advanced tab. EoRdE6(Come Talk to Me!) 13:36, 17 April 2015 (UTC) I think that it's part of the MediaWiki software, and so I don't think that it's locally configurable; you could ask at WP:VPT. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:14, 17 April 2015 (UTC) mw:Extension:WikiEditor to be exact, and yes, it is customizable (in JavaScript). I agree 'big (A )' is somewhat 'anachronistic', and probably should be replaced. This is best raised in Phabricator. For now, while obsoloete, it is still in use on meany pages and is therefor still whiltelisted. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:12, 17 April 2015 (UTC) Ugh... Okay. Yeah, I'll see what I can do to fix that. Thanks for the information of where it is Edokter. I'll see if I can't work up a patch for the extension tomorrow or Sunday. This should be a really easy on to do. Would you suggest it should be updated to <span style="font-size: larger;">...</span> as that is the css the most closely resembles the effect of <big>...</big> (yes, I realize how it is rendered is browser specific, but so is the big tag itself). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 16:21, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

To confirm, is this locally configurable or should this instead be put in Phabricator? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 14:40, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

See above; it should be raised in Phab to find a suitable replacement (probably using a span). Local versions may be customized to call {{big}} instead. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:21, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

It is already tracked since 2012, but it is considered low priority. Helder 19:20, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Template doc: why that intimidating useless bar?

About {{High-use}}: can someone please turn this into a sidebar box, by default, instead of a being an affonting intimidating useless intro? Really, not a single editor comes to {{Convert}} to change the template. So why warn them, this intimidating way? They come to the documentation page to use the template. -DePiep (talk) 21:38, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Good point. Helder 02:31, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I have an idea. Ignore it. It shouldn't affect you then. It's just a simple reminder to those who do edit templates to use the sandbox and carefully preview. The notice also follows the standard page notice setup. 90% of people reading a Wikipedia article come to read it, not edit it, but they are still displayed the big notices at the top of articles too. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 02:38, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

EoRdE6, yes I can ignore it, now tell that to the visiting editors ('readers'). And to be honest, your reply reads like an ignore the question. Never met that before. -DePiep (talk) 18:25, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Template space arent for readers - its for editors - and the message is a warning not to edit it without consensus on the talk page (for template editors/admins) and an explanation why the rest of us cant edit the high risk 800 transclusion template. Christian75 (talk) 18:39, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Most editors do not edit templates. Maybe we could convert it into an edit notice? Alakzi (talk) 18:43, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

re Chris75: visitor of a template home page, like this, are 99% article editors who want to apply the template, not to edit it. No need to scare them off with a big bad irreleant bar. Already, the Lua and Translate notices have sided nicely already in my demo link. -DePiep (talk) 18:57, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Click it. The BANG takes six lines. -DePiep (talk) 19:23, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

And let's not forget: Christian75 always throws shit at me without even reading the question. -DePiep (talk) 23:27, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

@DePiep: - Please document that, og revert your edit. Christian75 (talk) 10:05, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The idea that it is intimidating is nonsense. It is a thin yellow box with text and a picture of an exclamation point. Now, if it were a huge red box with lots of text and bolded lines, that would be another thing. As far as not really needing it, well, okay. I wouldn't mind seeing it in an edit notice instead. But there shouldn't be a hubbub about it, either way. Killiondude (talk) 00:24, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

• The reason I think the box should stay is that I hate protected pages¹, and after template editor was introduced a lot of templates are "template editor protected". Before the new level of power was introduced, they would have been semi-protected or not protected at all. The high-risk, and high-use boxes shows that this is a page which "everybody cant edit" despite the "slogan" of Wikipedia. ¹I fully understand a template with 40.000 transclusion should be protected Christian75 (talk) 10:05, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion, full protection, because everything that might need "frequent" updates is already in a separate /doc subpage, and full protection has a nice icon (page status indicator) not needing extraneous prose. JFTR, I passionately hate pointless full protections, but a finished template is finished, period. –Be..anyone (talk) 13:40, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Template protection has got nothing to do with whether a template is "finished". Templates are protected in cases where a vandal or a well-meaning - but inexperienced - template editor could cause widespread disruption; see WP:HRT. Alakzi (talk) 13:47, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

That's what I said, semi-protection plus allegedly affronting intimidating useless intro has the same purpose as full protection without intro. –Be..anyone (talk) 14:03, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Not Staying Logged In

For the last few days I've been having problems where if I'm inactive for a while, I get logged out and have to log back in, even if I checked the remember me box. At first I thought it was being caused by Huggle, but even on my laptop, which doesn't even have Huggle, I'm having the same problem. I asked Apparition11 if he was having any issues, but he's fine, so I wanted to see if anyone else was having this issue and/or what the issue could be. It's localized only to Wikipedia, as I'm staying logged in just fine (provided I checked the remember me box, which I did) on my other sites like YouTube, Facebook, and my forums. - Amaury (talk) 19:09, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@Amaury: I've been having the same issue too on both my computers. It's not just you. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:49, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Glad to hear it's not only me. - Amaury (talk) 19:52, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Happening here too. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:35, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

This is probably related to SUL finalization, see my comment here. Sorry about the trouble, it'll be over soon :) Legoktm (talk) 14:44, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Legoktm! Keep us updated. :) - Amaury (talk) 16:03, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I believe that SUL finalization finished about half an hour ago. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:13, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

{{math|R}} and {{math|C}} are not viewable in mobile view

It looks like there is nothing there. —User 000 name 09:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Now that's what I call an imaginary unit! (I'll get my coat.) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:29, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Seriously, though, the Math is showing up for me there on Ubuntu/Firefox. Perhaps it's a browser or device issue - which were you viewing it with? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:31, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I guess you wrote "{{math|R}} and {{math|C}}" because you had trouble writing what the article actually says: "{{math|ℝ}} and {{math|ℂ}}" which renders as "ℝ and ℂ". If we skip the {{math}} part then we are left with the characters "ℝ and ℂ". On a desktop computer with Firefox I see the right symbols in all cases at both the desktop and mobile view. I guess your mobile device does not support those characters, Double-Struck Capital R and Double-Struck Capital C at Letterlike Symbols. I see all characters there except Fax Sign (℻), Double-Struck Small Pi (ℼ), Per Sign (⅌), Symbol for Samaritan Source (⅏). In those cases Firefox displays a square with the Unicode number. Maybe your device shows nothing when it encounters unsupported characters. Just to be clear, I assume you are not saying that you see the characters at the desktop view https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit and they are only missing at the mobile view https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:50, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

{{math}} does nothing in mobile view (which will have to be rectified). That means whatever device you are viewing it on simply does not support the characters ℝ and ℂ. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 11:34, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Anything that {{math}} does right now is purely decorative anyways. The content should be visible, if you have a mobile device that is shipped with half a decent font set at least. :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:43, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Just tested mobile view on Android; they fail to show, meaning native font support is lacking. With {{math}} in desktop view however, at least it falls back to a serif font. So it is not purely decorative. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 12:31, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Scrap that... Somehow, these characters will only show in desktop view, and only in {{math}}, and I don't know why. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 13:25, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Serif vs sans-serif font-family is what probably would make the difference between desktop and mobile. It might be that the font fallback works different if only one type of font has the glyph. We set texhtml to have an explicit serif font-family on Desktop view. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:59, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

I know, I created it. I tested all permutations of the serif declaration, and still Android refuses to display ℝ and ℂ in all of them. The fallback only works with the full font stack on desktop view, but not on mobile view. There should be no difference. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 07:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I need a character that does nothing

I know I've seen this on one of the help pages but I have no idea where to look. I discovered a situation where I need a character, which I can put between two other characters, which will not appear but will change what those two characters do.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:17, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

"does nothing ... will change" sounds contradictory. Maybe you want something in Category:Control characters. We may be able to say more if you say which type of change you want, or describe the problem you are trying to solve. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:52, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: If this is for MediaWiki's parser, then putting <nowiki/> between the two other characters should do what you want. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:58, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I used <nowiki> ... </nowiki>, but I thought there was a neater solution.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:05, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Looking at the other solution, I may have been looking for Zero-width space. The specific problem is that [sic] is the proper way to use "sic", but I wanted a wikilink (sic) for anyone who might wonder what that meant.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:09, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

How about {{sic}}, which gives [sic]?--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:13, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

That's it! Thank you. I was thinking there ought to be a template since people will run into that, and there was. And I see you did the fix for me too.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 16:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Category Watchlists

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T9148

So currently; when you add a category to your watchlist you get notified of changes to the text on the category page. Is there anyway to watchlist a category so you get notified of changes to the contents of the category? i.e. when pages are added to or removed from the category? ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:43, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

No. But many of us would like that. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:58, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

And have wanted so for very long... -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 16:18, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

There is no native way to do this through the watchlist, but check out Related Changes on the Tool Lab. It is by far my favourite tool, as I use it to check whole category trees for changes on Commons. It'll work here too. Once you plug in the information you want, you can save the resulting URL to easily check later on that tree with your specific settings. You can see how I've done this on my Commons userpage on the right side. If you have any questions on how to operate it, leave a note on my talk page. — Huntster (t @ c) 16:21, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

There is a tool at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ais523/catwatch which will show additions to cats. Not perfect, but I do use it...Naraht (talk) 17:08, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I gave that one a try, but found it simply wasn't up to par compared to Related Changes, but perhaps others will enjoy it. — Huntster (t @ c) 18:04, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

There is currently a RFC for a suggested implementation, see mw:Requests for comment/Watch Categorylinks and phab:T94414. --Sitic (talk) 17:45, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Zooming in and out results in many spaces between sections

I went to a random page (Selma Bajrami (album)) and zoomed in 400% to find the color of the text. When I pressed "ctrl 0" to go back to 100% zoom I thought that someone vandalized the page. —User 000 name 04:56, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Zooming is controlled by the browser and not Wikipedia. I tested Selma Bajrami (album) in five browsers on Windows Vista. The problem was in Chrome and Safari, but not in Firefox, IE and Opera. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:06, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

The problem appears to only occur after columns (not table columns) are used. When Chrome and Safari go back from a high zoom they apparently don't know where the column text ends, so they display a lot of whitespace after the last text in the columns. This often means the columns become so long that all the text is in the first column, and there can also be whitespace at the end of that column. The page layout is fixed if the page is reloaded. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:28, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Since it seems to only occur in the Personnel and References sections, both of which are formatted as two-column lists, I'd agree with that expln. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:38, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Image alt text: can be with the image

Resolved

-- wrong forum. -DePiep (talk) 18:21, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

As far as I understand the WP:ALT TEXT topic: there could be a default alt-text (per language) for each image. In any article, an editor can overwrite that default all right. (personally, I find it tiresome to having to re-read the alt-text essence again and again to get it, and then having to re-enter my same(?) handcrafted text for an image). -DePiep (talk) 19:25, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Where does it say (or imply) that "there could be a default alt-text (per language) for each image"? ―Mandruss ☎ 19:41, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Not "it" says so, it is "me" saying (suggesting) so.

For example (using the file from said WP:ALT TEXT). File:Jacques-Louis David 017.jpg, can have the alt-text "The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries" at commons, for lang=en, by default. In an article at enwiki about "Napoleon's career", an editor could overwrite this default by using good old |alt=Painting of Napoleon the day after he became Emperor (in 1804). -DePiep (talk) 20:25, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

@DePiep: Oh, you're making a proposal for a change. For that, you might get more response at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). ―Mandruss ☎ 09:09, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Get it, will go to the right forum (coined it! ;-) ). -DePiep (talk) 18:21, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

This idea has been proposed by me and others before, but hasn't gotten enough support to be implemented to date. See Phabricator bug T21906. --agr (talk) 02:25, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

User:UBX -> User:UBX~enwiki Broke Everything

Ok so we seem to have an issue here. User:UBX was automatically renamed to User:UBX~enwiki, resulting in all 7,243 subpages being moved with no redirects thus breaking 7,243 userbox templates (like the one on my userpage). Any idea what to do now? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 02:57, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

There is probably a more graceful solution, but could we get a bot run approved to create the 7k redirects? Monty₈₄₅ 03:00, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

• Why can't we get a steward or global renamer and rename the account back and move them back? — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 03:18, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

It broke more than just UBX. I was using a User:Christopher template on my userpage which also broke, so I had to creat a redirect. Dustin (talk) 03:19, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Well then @Keegan (WMF): who is supposed to be managing this stuff, are any of these ideas feasible? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} — Preceding undated comment added 03:25, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. There are many feasible options/ideas. Bot, AWB, there are several ways to solve this on the community end.

The global User:UBX is owned by @Liangent: on the Chinese Wikipedia, but it's not being used. Liangent, would you be willing to have the zhwiki account renamed and then I can rename UBX~enwiki back to UBX? That would probably be the easiest solution. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 03:58, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

After talking it over with Liangent and Legoktm on IRC, renaming back and forth probably isn't going to be the best option, so we have a quick bot request instead. We'll get this cleaned up :) Keegan (WMF) (talk) 04:36, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

There was absolutely nothing wrong with using User:UBX so why change it? Also, I've also been noticing "REDIRECTS" showing up in some of my userboxes. If somebody could let me know what's going on, it would be great. You can leave a message on my talk page, please. Gregdox (talk) 03:34, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

This is all due to SUL finalization. Eleven years in the making, the process is unfortunately bound to cause some temporary issues. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 03:58, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I guess User:Mets501 didn't have a confirmed email address set up on that account and forgot he had this account :( —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:41, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Legobot has moved most of them back, a few were blocked by the titleblacklist. If someone could take care of those manually, that would be appreciated. Legoktm (talk) 08:07, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I'll do those ones. Hang on a sec... — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:25, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Ok, all done now. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:37, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Nope. User:UBX/water is broken on my page. The others on the page are fine. Akld guy (talk) 09:47, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

@Akld guy: That's probably just because the job queue is still catching up. Try purging the page - that should fix it. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:50, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

On editing User:UBX, I get a "User account "UBX" is not registered" message. I'll try to get Liangent to visit enwiki using their UBX account to fix that. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:03, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Purge worked instantaneously at 10:03. TYVM! Akld guy (talk) 10:06, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

• Very nice. Thanks to all for the quick action to rectify this! Swarm ^{we ♥ our hive} 15:01, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

...and now A WMF bot has nuked USER:Example. :( --Guy Macon (talk) 16:08, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I fixed this one. Cenarium (talk) 16:44, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

• @Cenarium and Guy Macon: User:Example is not fixed; see my comment in the section below. Steel1943 (talk) 13:35, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

It is now - the account is now created on this wiki. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:42, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Updating graph on Wikipedia editor retention

File:Enwp retention vs active editors.png is a very interesting, helpful and often used image. It is also very, very old: it shows data for up to 2009. User:Howief_(WMF) who uploaded it was asked if he can update it several times over the past few years but it seems he cannot do it (at least, he is not replying to those requests, see commons:User_talk:Howief_(WMF)#Update_reqeuest). Perhaps someone else could help? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:19, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Indirect answer, click on the image, go to commons if you are not already on commons, click on "more uses" in the global uses, click on 500 to get rid of the enwiki uses at the begin, scroll down to strategy wiki, and now, if you know that this is a frozen read-only historical wiki, with a finished frozen strategy:Editor Trends Study page based on polls and interviews, the data for a fresher image simply might not exist. –Be..anyone (talk) 12:44, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Improving editor retention is one of the WMF's main focuses and it's been a driving force behind a lot of their software development and community activities. The suggestion that editor retention data hasn't been monitored recently is very disturbing. This graph should be update-able at the drop of a hat. Public scripts to do that would have been a great asset from this study, not only do update the graphs but to scrutinize the implementation of the method. I wonder if the code to do so in in the github link for Research:WikiPride, which is, I guess, the project that originally made the graph. I haven't followed the topic of editor retention in depth so I'm not sure. (As an aside, the reason I haven't followed it is because, in general, I'd prefer seeing the WMF focus almost exclusively on making the software/hardware side of the project great. If that is great, they've done the best they should to encourage editors will come and stay. This "build it and they will come" approach would streamline the WMF's focus and maximize the usage of a lot of donated money. The rest of the equation regarding editor retention is dependent on the community itself and the WMF trying to change that component is largely futile.) Jason Quinn (talk) 20:40, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Is there a precise description of what was measured for retention rate? My guess would be

(number of editors making at least 5 edits in month X who also made a least one edit in month X 12) / (number of editors making at least 5 edits in month X)

But that's just a guess, add one could imagine a variety other definitions, e.g. requiring at least 5 edits in month X 12, or counting it as retention is any edit was made from X 12 to present. It is not a hard thing to program, though it would take a while to run. Dragons flight (talk) 22:49, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Approximate fraction of active editors that remain active in the following month

The image at right roughly estimates what fraction of the active editor population is retained month-to-month (about 80%) and suggests that this value has been fairly stable for most of Wikipedia's history. It's not exactly what you asked about, but it would suggest there probably hasn't been large changes in 1-year retention. Dragons flight (talk) 23:34, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

User:Example

@Keegan (WMF): the SUL finalization killed User:Example, can this be fixed? It's referenced so many places :(. Thanks! Kharkiv07^Talk 16:22, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. Kharkiv07^Talk 16:34, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

• Keegan (WMF), Kharkiv07, and Cenarium ... no, it's not fixed since the page User:Example is technically now eligible for speedy deletion via criterion U2 since it's not a redirect. In my opinion, someone needs to take ownership of that username, and per the SUL, apparently, it has to be the owner of the global account User:Example. The only other options I can see are to replace all links to User:Example with links (or piped links) to User:Example~enwiki, or move User:Example back to User:Example~enwiki and then possibly leave (and maybe permanently protect) the redirect. (In the event that the individual who owns the global account of User:Example ever wants to claim the name on this Wikipedia, the latter aforementioned option could be adjusted.) Steel1943 (talk) 13:20, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Make an exception for U2. Cenarium (talk) 15:00, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@Cenarium: Do you mean User:U2? That doesn't seem to be a pseudo-account like User:UBX or User:Example. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:21, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: He means Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#U2 Christian75 (talk) 15:26, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I edit conflicted with you just as I realised. Sorry about that... — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:39, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

• @Cenarium: Making it an exception for U2 doesn't help when anyone (or the global user who may have no connection to the local user page's purpose) can freely register this username. Per the UBX section above, looks like Mr. Stradivarius found a solution for that issue. Steel1943 (talk) 17:40, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

• Not anyone can create that account. It is already taken (even I couldn't create it as an account creator). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:52, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

• The global account Example is locked, so it can't be created locally. Cenarium (talk) 17:58, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

• Okay, I suspected that the SUL conversion worked in that manner. My concern has been resolved ... except if there are other global account that conflict with an existing user name/page set that needs to remain for technical purposes. Steel1943 (talk) 18:07, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

When software upgrades break basic functionality, the correct answer is to fix the software, not try to find a workaround. The WMF needs to make it so that certain usernames are exempt from unified log in. I will make a proposal to do exactly that. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

This exists at m:Title blacklist, and it's community managed. The WMF does not manage account names and what's permissible. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

• @Keegan (WMF): Ironically, I thought that adding these names to the title blacklist would have been the resolution as well. Assuming that the Titleblacklist also prevents global account users from creating accounts on wikis which they have not registered yet, two issues would still remain: 1) The user of the global account could, in theory, have a very valid reason for wanting to claim the name on the wiki where they have not registered yet, but be blocked from doing so due to the blacklisting of their username's creation and 2) The community here on the English Wikipedia has a speedy deletion criterion designated criterion U2 that, in its current wording, would technically make pages (not redirects) of users not registered locally eligible for speedy deletion (which is the end result of these SUL migrations, given that the name that had to be moved is no longer registered after the move.) Steel1943 (talk) 19:53, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the speedy deletion criteria :) Sure, as worded now that means pages may be eligible, which is not the same as must be deleted. It seems like tweaking the wording in the policy would rectify this; policies can be amended/clarified after all. As to the first point, I do think we're talking about far, far edge cases here and I think bringing up the discussion on the title blacklist talk page might have some fruitful solutions. Guy said that the WMF needs to make sure certain names are exempt, and I'm rebutting that: that is a community matter, not a WMF matter. Communities control what is and what is not allowed as far as usernames go. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

A more elegant way of doing it might be to keep a list of pseudo-users whose user pages shouldn't be moved. For these users the local account could be automatically created with the new global account owner after the bot renames the old account. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:21, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

This wasn't a software upgrade. This had nothing to do with software. This had to do with consolidating a broken username database system. These "breakages" as a result are actually just breaking hacks that were put in place due to an already broken system. Now that the system is fixed, these hacks can be as well. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

What about User talk:User 2 → User talk:User 2~enwiki? Not as widely used, but still a purely example account. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:47, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Only the user talk page was ever created (and that was by the SUL migration bot) so I don't think any action is necessary. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 08:46, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Color change on infobox doesn't show up on most articles

Hi all, the box:

still shows up as blue on things like Culture of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Any reason why? ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 07:12, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Looks like this was resolved a few hours later (a minute or two after I posted this) but interested to see if others are having this lag problem with this or other infoboxes. ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 07:12, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Be patient; the job queue will eventually get round to updating all the pages. You can force an update to any particular page by "purging" it, as I did at Pittsburgh metropolitan area. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:25, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for that very specific answer, much appreciation! I can wait, just good to know that its in the 'pipeline'. ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 08:10, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, WP:PURGE will normally fix the appearance of a transclusion, although it won't fix incorrect categorisation. BTW it's not an infobox but a navbox. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:01, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64, I'm just thankful I didn't call it a hexagonal circle. ^{Market St.⧏} _{⧐ Diamond Way} 06:11, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Adding coordinate field to Template:Reqphoto

Is anyone interested in adding a coordinate feature to Template:Reqphoto? I want the ability to add specific coordinates to a photo request so the requests properly show up in OSM. See: Template_talk:Image_requested#Coordinates_for_individual_photo_requests.3F.

Example: The coordinates at The Japanese School of New York reflect the school's current location in Connecticut, but I want to be able to add specific coordinates to the photo requests for the school's former campuses in Queens so they can show up in the New York City OSM photo map. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:15, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Paging Mr. @Pigsonthewing: --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:44, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

This will require integration with the osm4wiki tool. I can't comment further without having inspected its source code. You might wanna get in touch with either of the authors, de:User:Plenz and de:User:Kolossos. Alakzi (talk) 00:40, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! I notified both users about this discussion. WhisperToMe (talk) 03:29, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. We can also ping User:Kolossos on this project. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:04, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Getting rid of "my sandbox"?

Hi, how do I disable the new "sandbox" in my top right hand personal link bar? According to Help:My sandbox it is a gadget and I would be able to switch it on or off in the preferences. But the link there is missing. --h-stt !? 09:49, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Place li#pt-sandbox { display: none; } in your CSS. Help:My sandbox is obsolete. The sandbox link changed from a gadget to a MediaWiki feature in an extension. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:55, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

THX for the quick reply. --h-stt !? 10:19, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 136#Sandbox link --Redrose64 (talk) 11:00, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I have updated Help:My sandbox.[67] I noticed the current feature didn't preload a red Sandbox link with {{User sandbox}} like the old gadget did, so I have created MediaWiki:Sandboxlink-preload-pagename to make the same preload. mw:Extension:SandboxLink also enables us to make an editintro with MediaWiki:Sandboxlink-editintro-pagename. Should we do that? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:29, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, Re the first paragraph of the Help:My sandbox. Where it appears probably depends on which skin. I have Modern, and the Sandbox is in the upper left on mine. — Maile (talk)

Help pages often assume the default skin. Users who change skin probably tend to have some experience and know that their skin can change the page layout. MonoBook is the most common alternative to Vector and doesn't change the placement of the Sandbox link. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:18, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible to add a custom link to that toolbar? Kharkiv07^Talk 12:41, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, with addPortletLink() in your common JavaScript. mw:addPortletLink has a bit of documentation. What do you want to do? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:25, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Well I wanted to eventually be able to link to my "dashboard" (User:Kharkiv07/Dashboard) easier. Kharkiv07^Talk 15:39, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Put the below in your common JavaScript. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:10, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

mw.util.addPortletLink(
  'p-personal',
  mw.util.wikiGetlink('User:Kharkiv07/Dashboard'),
  'Dashboard',
  't-dashboard',
  'Show my dashboard',
  null,
  '#pt-preferences'
);

Thanks a ton! Kharkiv07^Talk 16:32, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Problems

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T97145

I've been having problems with Twinkle (?). This morning a block warning wouldn't go up and some error note came up, and then I found I added it twice. I had something similar last night. Just now something popped up after an AfD, though the AfD seems to have gone correctly: "Adding discussion to today's list: Failed to save edit: [ce5a25aa] Exception Caught: wfDiff(): popen() failed". Drmies (talk) 17:52, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Paging This, that and the other. Alakzi (talk) 17:55, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

That a new bug in the MediaWiki-API, see phab:T97145. --Sitic (talk) 18:44, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Move option has gone missing (All pages)

Hi there, I recently tried to move the page Project 15B to a new name Vishakapatanam-class destroyer, only to find out that my move option has gone missing! I don't have the slightest clue what might have happened! Later a kind user from RCchat helped me by moving the page himself and suggested that my .js might have caused the problem. But I'm not sure which .js is the culprit or what should I do even if I find one... This issue persists on all the pages I visit! Here is what it looks like. this link. Can someone throw some lighten here... Thanks in advance! --†ããrøn95^® 12:16, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Is it on the "More" tab? Do you get a move form or error message at Special:MovePage/Project 15B? Do you get a Move tab or a move option on the More tab if you disable "Add Page and User dropdown menus to the toolbar" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:32, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi @PrimeHunter:, thanks for your quick reply..! The more tab previously had 'auto ed' and 'Google Trans'.. but after disabling "Add Page and User dropdown menus to the toolbar", the move option magically came into the more tab!! But can't I enable "Add Page and User dropdown menus to the toolbar" with move option?? there are no errors, just the move option missing! Regards--†ããrøn95^® 12:48, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I enabled that gadget and found the move option under the Page menu. Maybe another gadget or script you have installed is removing it. Try disabling other gadgets until it comes back. Reach Out to the Truth 13:11, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It's also on the "Page" menu for me when "Add Page and User dropdown menus to the toolbar" is enabled, also in my autoconfirmed non-admin account. I don't know why it's missing for you. What is your browser? Do you have it in MonoBook? I have it in both MonoBook and the default Vector (other details vary, they don't use the same script). Do you get a normal move form and not an error message at Special:MovePage/Project 15B? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:31, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi @Reach Out to the Truth:, check this link to find out what I see in Pages option. I've also tried disabling all the gadgets from preferences.. Yet, no use! It still won't appear in Pages dropdown...! Thanks for your reply! Hello @PrimeHunter:, I am using Chrome. No, I use Vector! I tried MonoBook, it's still not there. Yes, I do get a normal move form in Special:MovePage/Project 15B and not an error message. The only problem is, I don't have a move option in pages.. Regards --†ããrøn95^® 13:41, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

It works for me in Chrome. Try to clear your entire cache. I see you got the rollbacker right yesterday. Do you think Move disappeared after that? If it's possible then may I temporarily remove rollbacker from you? It shouldn't make a difference but rollbacker and move are both rights and the page script MediaWiki:Gadget-dropdown-menus-vector.js tests for the move right so it's conceivable that another right messes something up somewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:05, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi @PrimeHunter:, I too suspect that the rollback right might have caused the problem.If the 'temporary revoking' won't do any harm to my future benefits , you may do so... Regards --†ããrøn95^® 15:10, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, I have removed rollbacker.[68] PrimeHunter (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Bwallah!! Move Page is Back in pages drop down!!! @PrimeHunter: --†ããrøn95^® 15:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Great! Pinging MusikAnimal who maintains the script. I have given you rollbacker back. Please say whether the move link on the page tab has disappeared again. You can still move a page by for example entering Special:MovePage/pagename in the search box, or disable the gadget during the move. But let's hope MusikAnimal can make it work. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:52, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Gone again (Move page again missing) !! . But thanks for all of your help! --†ããrøn95^® 16:00, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm unable to reproduce this. I used MusikPuppet which is has only rollback, then went to Project 15B (w/o redirect) and I see the Move link. The script works by checking permissions. The "move" permission should be present for any registered user, regardless of any additional rights. However there is some caching of the user rights, so we don't have to make extra AJAX calls (user permissions don't change often). Maybe that's the issue... @Jaaron95: What browser are you using? I'm going to have you check your rights by making the API call through your browser's JavaScript console. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:10, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi @MusikAnimal:, I am using chrome... let's make the call... --†ããrøn95^® 16:14, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

@Jaaron95: If you are using Windows hit Control ⇧ Shift J (⌘ Command ⌥ Option J on Mac), then type the following and hit Enter: mw.user.getRights().then(function(data){prompt("",data)}) then copy the selected text to your clipboard (Control C) and paste it here. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:22, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal:

rollback,createaccount,read,edit,createtalk,writeapi,editmyusercss,editmyuserjs,viewmywatchlist,editmywatchlist,viewmyprivateinfo,editmyprivateinfo,editmyoptions,centralauth-merge,abusefilter-view,abusefilter-log,abusefilter-log-detail,vipsscaler-test,ep-bereviewer,flow-hide,collectionsaveasuserpage,reupload-own,move-rootuserpages,move-categorypages,createpage,minoredit,purge,sendemail,ep-enroll,flow-lock,mwoauthmanagemygrants,patrol,reupload,upload,move,collectionsaveascommunitypage,autoconfirmed,editsemiprotected,movestable,autoreview,transcode-reset,skipcaptcha,flow-edit-post,mwoauthproposeconsumer,mwoauthupdateownconsumer

This one.. Right?--†95^® 16:30, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeap that's what I was looking for. You have the same exact permissions as my test account MusikPuppet, so I don't think that's the culprit. Let's try clearing the MoreMenu cache, if for some reason it got stuck at a time where you somehow did not have the move permissions, which again, should always be there for registered users. Back in the JavaScript console, type this and hit Enter: $.jStorage.deleteKey('mmCacheDate'); $.jStorage.deleteKey('mmUserRights') Refresh the page and let me know if you see the Move link. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:37, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Jaaron95 is autoconfirmed so this shouldn't be an issue but just for the record, only autoconfirmed (and confirmed) users have the move right, as shown by Special:ListGroupRights. I have an alternate account which is not autoconfirmed. As expected, the account has no move link anywhere whether the gadget is enabled or not, and Special:MovePage/Project 15B displays "Permission error You do not have permission to move this page". PrimeHunter (talk) 16:42, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes, it is restricted to (auto)confirmed users. The script doesn't care about most user groups though, instead favouring checking permissions because they are consistent across wikis. The cache only last for a week, so unless Jaaron95 wasn't confirmed a week ago the move permission should be there. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:51, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

@MusikAnimal: hurrah!! You got that right geek!! Move option is back and is spic and span! Thank you for your time! MusikAnimal and you too PrimeHunter!! --†95^® 16:55, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Glad to hear it! Though I'm still baffled how this happened. Welp, if anything, thank you for finding the bug! :) I will investigate further. — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:02, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

archive

hi, I think the talk page for wikiproject medicine Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine is not archiving , what should I do? (its suppose to archive articles past 14 days)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:29, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: It's working fine; it's archiving sections that have had no comments whatsoever for 14 days, not those that are 14 days old. Graham87 07:18, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:35, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: To expand upon what Graham87 wrote, at the top of the page you will find a pseudo-template {{User:MiszaBot/config}}, containing the |algo=old(14d) parameter. This controls the minimum period (in days) that can elapse between the last posting to a thread and its archival. If you follow that link, you will find more information about the various parameters. If you want the time period extended, this can be done easily - but I would advise obtaining consensus at WT:WikiProject Medicine first. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:53, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:02, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Coding Page

Can I have the link to the page where this template {{#invoke:AutomaticArchiveNavigator|tan}} was actually coded by that markup language?
My Archive navigation is showing an error so I need it.
aGastya  ✉ Dicere Aliquid :) 10:21, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Acagastya: When you come across code like {{#invoke:}} this means that a Lua module is being used. Take whatever comes after the colon, up to (but not including) the next pipe or pair of closing braces (i.e. AutomaticArchiveNavigator), and prefix that with Module: - this gives Module:AutomaticArchiveNavigator. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:41, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Acagastya: Your page User talk:Acagastya/Archives is displaying oddly because you have copied some template code there and then tried to comment it out. Since the code contains HTML comments, which do not nest, the effect is that only parts of the template code are commented out. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:53, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Downloading page view statistics per page

Hello, Could anyone help me with downloading and ordering daily page view statistics for ca. 125 pages on enwiki for ca. 25 month periods in a spreadsheet format? The only option I found is to download JSONs from stats.grok.se, then convert and combine them one by one, but over 3000 pieces seem an awfully lot to do manually. I would need it for my Master thesis. Any idea? - Matthew Beta (talk) 08:52, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

It looks like this question was already answered by Nemo in https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=12009828&oldid=12009556&rcid=6373329 (and on a general note, also be aware of Wikipedia:Consensus#FORUMSHOP with regard to bringing up the same question in several places) --Malyacko (talk) 09:21, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I waited 24 hours for a reply first, and I didn't assume that it would be harmful in any way, if I asked the same question there. - Matthew Beta (talk) 18:22, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

@Malyacko:: Since Matthew isn't seeking consensus, I don't think the forum-shopping guideline is relevant here. In my view, it's quite appropriate to seek different opinions or solutions to a particular problem in a few different locations. — This, that and the other (talk) 04:06, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Template:Winners problem

Can someone fix this problem? {{Winners}} is not working correctly by some sports. It displays a current flag instead of a flag variant.
See these examples with parameter davis & hopman:

sport parameter: davis flag variant: 1993
Montenegro

sport parameter: hopman flag variant: 1993
Montenegro

sport parameter: davis flag variant: 1992
Bosnia and Herzegovina

sport parameter: hopman flag variant: 1992
Bosnia and Herzegovina

sport parameter: davis flag variant: 1991
Serbia

sport parameter: hopman flag variant: 1991
Serbia

But most of the flags/sports are displayed correctly:

sport parameter: fed flag variant: 1993
Montenegro

sport parameter: fb flag variant: 1993
Montenegro

sport parameter: ih flag variant: 1992
Bosnia and Herzegovina

sport parameter: hb flag variant: 1992
Bosnia and Herzegovina

sport parameter: bk flag variant: 1991
Serbia

sport parameter: wp flag variant: 1991
Serbia

Thanks, Maiō T. (talk) 13:33, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

It's not {{winners}} but its subtemplates. Compare these two {{davis-big|MNE|variant=1993|size=45x32px|name=}} {{hopman-big|MNE|variant=1993|size=45x32px|name=}} against these two {{fed-big|MNE|variant=1993|size=45x32px|name=}} {{fb-big|MNE|variant=1993|size=45x32px|name=}} --Redrose64 (talk) 14:18, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I fixed them with this edit and this one. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:29, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done Thanks !!! Maiō T. (talk) 15:02, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Confusing behaviour when moving articles

Hi, when I move an article called A to the new name B (which creates B), it is article A that is marked as a new article in the log, not B. If I for example want to see what articles I have created, A is shown in the list, not B. If I remove article A after the move I will no longer see that I have created B when I look at the list of articles I have created. (I know the "N" mark actually means an edit that created a new page, but the behaviour feels strange despite that.) Would it not be better to give article B the "N" mark instead? Svensson1 (talk) 19:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

@Svensson1: No, because when you move an article, what actually happens is that you give an existing article a new name (its unique number, or "curid", is unaltered), a bit like right-clicking a file name in Windows Explorer, selecting "Rename", and typing in a new name. If that were all that happened, it would break links: and so a redirect is created from the old name to the new, in order to keep the links working. The redirect is new, hence it gets the N. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:34, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Help: Am I allowed to crop this image? What's the drill? (should I upload the cropped file as new? - what tools can I use?)

File:Petar Božić.jpg Hello, I'd really like your advice on this. Gtrbolivar (talk) 09:48, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

NEVERMIND, I FOUND THE CROP TOOL. THANKS ANYWAY. Gtrbolivar (talk) 10:25, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Where?--agr (talk) 03:35, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Question relating to infoboxes

My first time to be here, so I have a question regarding infoboxes. Should I propose a suggestion for a military infobox-type template in Village Pump? Ominae (talk) 04:44, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

If you could describe what you have in mind, it's possible we already have something that will serve the purpose. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:47, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

For military things I would suggest going to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 05:20, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Mandruss - Yeah. I was thinking about suggesting an infobox template for military gear (e.g. helmets for starters).

Edgars2007 - I tried raising that up there as well. So far, one person came back to me very unclear if the idea is good or not. Ominae (talk) 05:39, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Have you read Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Infoboxes? If not, do so and see if you still feel it's a worthwhile idea. If you do, put together a list of proposed fields and add it to your thread at the WikiProject. If you haven't received much response by about ten days later, you might try the same at WP:VPI. Also watch this thread for better ideas; infobox invention is a new area for me. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:17, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Mandruss. I'll see if I can get something up. Ominae (talk) 07:44, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I would seriously suggest asking at WT:MILHIST before you begin work. That is a highly watched page - exactly 1,000 watchers when I checked just now - and one of them is bound to know if there is an existing infobox; and if there isn't, whether it's been proposed before - and if the idea was rejected, they will know why. If not previously rejected (or deleted), they will also advise on the sort of information which is likely to be acceptable. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:04, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-18

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

Recent changes

• All accounts are now unique and work on all wikis. [69] [70]
• You can read a report from experts who tested the security of MediaWiki. [71]
• There was a problem between VisualEditor and an antivirus software. It is now fixed. [72]
• You can help test VisualEditor to see if it works in your language. [73]

Problems

• Some Labs tools had problems due to a software bug. [74]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from April 28. It will be on all Wikipedias from April 29 (calendar).
• It is now clearer that you can delete several rows and columns when you edit tables in VisualEditor. [75]
• You now see more information when you search for a template in VisualEditor. [76]
• You can now cancel when you add citations on desktop, or edit links on mobile, in VisualEditor. [77]
• You can now see the list of other formats for videos only after they're ready. [78]

Meetings

• You can join the next weekly meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on April 29 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

SPI report not formatting properly

Hey all, I just filed an SPI report via Twinkle and it didn't format correctly (See here), then when I tried to file via the SPI main page, the result wasn't any better, with the garbled result in the collapse.

Extended content

{{subst:SPI report |checkuser=no |sock1=GooseMail II |sock2= |sock3= |ip1= |ip2= |ip3= |evidence= Sockmaster was prone to "serial thanking" Sockpuppet [is into the same thing and has thanked me for reverting user Allan Bao, which they also thanked me for via the previous account. GooseMail II has no edits to main space. Ponyo did a CU on the master a while back and thought (with some hesitation) that he miiiight be related to BuickCenturyDriver. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:13, 27 April 2015 (UTC) |admincomment= }}

Oddly enough, if I exclude the "nowiki" tags here, the content looks fine, but not at the SPI page. Thanks for any help you can provide, and a ping would be appreciated. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 23:19, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Replace [[https://...] by [https://...]. [[ tries to start a wikilink you never close. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Scripts not loading

Just lately I've noticed various scripts in my monobook.js (unchanged since September 2004) are failing to load. The problem is intermittent, and refreshing page will sometimes - but not always - make them load. I'm using Firefox 37.0.1 under Windows 7 on the same machine I've used since last September. Any tips? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:07, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Are you viewing the SSL version of the site? Try changing the URLs to be protocol-relative (remove all instances of http:); Firefox might be blocking insecure requests. Alakzi (talk) 18:22, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Alakzi: Thanks. I am, but if that was the issue, then how would reloading fix it? Also, I'm not sure which URLs you mean - those in User:Pigsonthewing/monobook.js ? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:48, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Having looked at your monobook.js, I don't think that's the issue. Can you paste any JavaScript or network errors from the web console when it happens? Alakzi (talk) 18:54, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Alakzi: Does:

"Exception in store-localstorage-update:" load.php:175:555
"NS_ERROR_DOM_QUOTA_REACHED: Persistent storage maximum size reached" DOMException [NS_ERROR_DOM_QUOTA_REACHED: "Persistent storage maximum size reached"
code: 1014
nsresult: 0x805303f6
location: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery,mediawiki&only=scripts&skin=monobook&version=20150422T225207Z:173] 

help? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:01, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that would be it; the quota exception is unhandled. The easiest thing for you to do is to bump the per-site quota. Navigate to "about:config", look for dom.storage.default_quota, and double its value. Edokter, would you be able to identify the underlying cause? Alakzi (talk) 19:21, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not very knowledgable about local storage. Besides, I use Chrome. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 23:17, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

@Alakzi: I'm still experiencing the problem. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, Alakzi, due to the fact that all wikipedia.org sites share the same localstorage cache it is rare that you'll get a page load without exceeding the quota (even if you clear the cache and reload). There is actually a bug ticket on Phabricator about some part of wikipedia using all of localstorage and I'm unsure of the current status. It's more likely wikibits failing to load for you Andy. The only thing to do is a reload of the page when that happens (happens to me occasionally too). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:49, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

See phab:T66721. Helder 14:31, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

There is at least one error in User:Frietjes/watchdoc.js, where doc_editlinks is looked up, but then the result is used without even checking if something was found. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:22, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

User:Frietjes changed that on April 15; I wonder of that's the cause? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:17, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

that change was to match changes made by Mr. Stradivarius to another one of my scripts. I have seen the scripts sometimes fail to load, but usually a forced reload fixes it. using the scripts in greasemonkey is less flakey. Frietjes (talk) 14:29, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Edit window text slightly different

Is it just me, or does the text within the edit window feel slightly different than it did yesterday? I noticed it today at work (IE browser) and now at home (Firefox), but there seems to be extra white-space between each line of text. Is it related to the tech news item (above)? Was something deployed site-wide recently (in the last 24hrs)? And most importantly, can I change it back?! Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:26, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes. I don't know excatly which file changed, but it seems that the line-height was increased from 16px to 19.5px; you can restore previous appearance by adding

textarea#wpTextbox1 { line-height: 16px; }

to Special:MyPage/common.css (like this). --Redrose64 (talk) 18:52, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Bazinga! Thank you. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 19:00, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Fwiw... you should avoid using unit measurement lengths for line-height values; a unit-less number is preferred (see Mozilla's reasoning on this for starters).

So to return to a Used value that is the equivalent to 16px, your css should be

textarea#wpTextbox1 { line-height: 1.6; }

. -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:44, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

That may be true for a CSS that is shared by several people, but for single-user CSS, we should be allowed to use any value that gives the desired result and which is valid for the line-height: property. The value 16px meets the requirements for a <length> in CSS 2.1, and so is syntactically valid. As I noted (and misspelled) earlier, I don't know exactly which file changed, so I cannot compare the actual values given by the global CSS, the site CSS or whatever.

I noticed the line-height change independently of Lugnuts, and decided to do something about it on a personal basis. I used the "Inspect element" feature of my browser (Firefox 37.0.2), and the actual figures that it displayed were 16px for this user CSS page (which had the spacing that I was used to in an edit window), and 19.5px for the actual edit window. So I worked out a CSS rule for my own personal use that would give the edit window the same line-height as the CSS page. It was only after doing that that I saw the post by Lugnuts, and so I gave my first response above. I don't claim that 16px is "correct", merely that it gives me what I wanted. Lugnuts is apparently satisfied with my suggestion. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:59, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks both. Yes, I'm happy with the first response. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 08:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Just to confirm, I've tried the second suggestion, but that doesn't work for IE. Thanks again. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:02, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

This should be resolved. I added some 'missing' CSS for WikiEditor (the enhaced toolbar), not accounting for those not using the enhaced toolbar. I have fixed that now. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 14:10, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

error rendering

I'm trying to download the book I created from our wiki site and I keep getting a render error.

An error occurred on the render server: RuntimeError: RuntimeError: command failed with returncode 256: ['mw-zip', '-o', '/home/pp/cache/84/84f91ab7993a0cb2/collection.zip', '-m', '/home/pp/cache/84/84f91ab7993a0cb2/metabook.json', '--status', 'qserve://localhost:14311/84f91ab7993a0cb2:makezip', '--username', 'vnarula', '--password', '{OMITTED}', '--domain', 'thehackettgroup'] Last Output: 1% creating nuwiki in u'/home/pp/cache/84/84f91ab7993a0cb2/tmp2GFpJp/nuwiki' removing tmpdir u'/home/pp/cache/84/84f91ab7993a0cb2/tmp2GFpJp' memory used: res=16.4 virt=92.1 1% error Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/pp/local/bin/mw-zip", line 37, in <module> sys.exit(mwlib.apps.buildzip.main()) File "/home/pp/.buildout/cache/eggs/mwlib-0.15.14-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/apps/buildzip.py", line 155, in main make_zip(output, options, env.metabook, podclient=podclient, status=status) File "/home/pp/.buildout/cache/eggs/mwlib-0.15.14-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/apps/buildzip.py", line 50, in make_zip make_nuwiki(fsdir, metabook=metabook, options=options, podclient=podclient, status=status) File "/home/pp/.buildout/cache/eggs/mwlib-0.15.14-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/apps/make_nuwiki.py", line 151, in make_nuwiki assert x.wikiident in id2wiki, "no wikiconf for %r (%s)" % (x.wikiident, x) AssertionError: no wikiconf for None (<article {'_env': <mwlib.wiki.Environment object at 0x1974e10>, 'title': u'CCure', 'url': u'https://wiki.thehackettgroup.com/index.php/CCure', 'timestamp': u'1336625181', 'currentVersion': 1, 'content_type': u'text/x-wiki', 'revision': u'10021', 'type': 'article', 'latest': u'10021'}>) in function system, file /home/pp/.buildout/cache/eggs/mwlib-0.15.14-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg/mwlib/nslave.py, line 64 in function qaddw, file /home/pp/.buildout/cache/eggs/qserve-0.2.8-py2.7.egg/qs/slave.py, line 66

I've tried using IE and Chrome. Running on win 7 pro. When I try to render/export to opendoc or pdf this is the message I get. I am also logged in through my company's credentials on our wiki site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.69.246 (talk) 19:09, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

We cannot help you with your company website. Please first turn to the administrators of your company website, who in turn when required can contact the MediaWiki software development team, through either the mailinglist or directly on phabricator. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:14, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

mw:Project:Support_desk should also be a good starting place, if providing MediaWiki version information and Collection extension version information. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:13, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Weird byte count change

Why is this edit to Hebrew school recorded in the page history as having removed 20 bytes from the article? I may be missing something due to my screen reader, but all I can find in the diff is decapitalisation of words. Graham87 12:44, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• The word education was removed twice. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:51, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

@Crisco 1492: Argh, can't believe I missed that! Thanks, that'd do it! Graham87 14:59, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Not receiving any pings

I've been noticing that whenever someone tries to ping me (which I usually notice if the page is on my watchlist), I am not receiving to notification, even though I have ping notifications enabled. I have heard that the system is rather "glitchy" (made that up), but with me, it seems entirely broken. --Biblioworm 14:48, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

@Biblioworm: Please post diffs to edits you think should have caused pings. Did you get a ping from me? Do you have a checkmark in the Web column at "Mention" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo? Do you have "mentioned you" entries at Special:Notifications? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:55, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

@Biblioworm: (edit conflict) I just tested mine, still works fine... Did you get these pings? ^{P.S Glitchy is a word.} EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 14:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I received both of your pings. However, the last one I received before that was on April 4, on a DYK nomination page. I can't remember all the instances when it did not work, but here's a recent example. Jonesey pinged me and re-signed his comment, but I did not receive any notification. Even if not "completely broken", it seems to be inconsistent. --Biblioworm 15:04, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I also seem to have not seen one or two, as intended, today. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:07, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

If you want it examined then you must give an example. mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details includes: "The diff hunk must be recognised as an addition of new content, not a change to existing content." I don't know the precise implementation but it sounds to me like [79] isn't supposed to cause a ping. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:13, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that would explain it (for me, at least). But I am (obviously) surprised and I think many editors will not be aware of this limitation. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:17, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, many users don't know in which circumstances a mention will not cause a notification. phab:T68078 would help with that: When mentioning other users, indicate mention notifications in the "your edit was saved" message. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Alt text in tables with X mark icon (observed in film articles)

With images disabled, in Firefox 37.0.2 on Windows 7, on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ruben , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Tarantino and many other pages which include a table of collaborators or professional roles towards the bottom, the alt text for the X mark shows as "no" when in the table it is used to represent the films in which a role or partnership did occur. The hover text says "x mark" but with images off the visible text shows as "no". Suggested First option: the X marks could be replaced with Check marks which might more consistently have alt text of yes. Second option: but I do not think it looks as good, is to do the tables like articles like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_FTP_client_software, where yes and no and color coding are used instead of check boxes or X marks. Third: the X marks could have alt text of "yes". Is there some form of template that lies behind all tables that work this way? Is there a way to see where they exist - if they are only among film articles and do the software articles use the red and green no pictures tables? Pebpole (talk) 00:48, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Email is not working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T66795

When I'm sending mails, the wikipedia page is confirming that Email sent, but in reality, the mails are not being sent. I can further confirm this as I'm also not receiving copies of my mails. It last worked well on 17 April. After that, I'm having problem.

The account is Yahoo, and of course, working outside wiki. -AsceticRosé 01:06, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

• Known issue:

Yahoo recently changed their DMARC configuration, which has two results that are relevant for us:

It's no longer possible to send e-mails From: [email protected], even if it's allowed from an SPF point of view (i.e. '[email protected] via wikipedia.org'). This means Yahoo users cannot send e-mail from the wiki anymore.

It's no longer possible to change parts of an e-mail (e.g. the subject to add a mailing list name) sent by a Yahoo user. This means Yahoo users cannot send e-mail to a mailing list anymore. If they do try to, they will receive a flood of error mails from mail servers rejecting the e-mail.

See http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg87153.html for more info on issue 2).

For issue 1), we might want to block Special:SendEmail for people with a @yahoo.com address, telling them their e-mail will not be delivered.

Your option is to get another email account (avoid AOL, Comcast, Hotmail, and GMail accounts too per my comment in the ticket). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 01:13, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Technical 13, thanks for the info. As far as I can tell from that posting, only Yahoo now has a policy to reject all (yahoo.com) mail that fails DMARC. Why do we need to avoid AOL, Comcast, Hotmail, and GMail accounts too? Also, the posting doesn't mention AOL at all ... can you explain why you included that one in your advice? Thanks very much; this is all very interesting and informative. Softlavender (talk) 01:52, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

• Copied from the Phab ticket I posted: DMARC issues apparently effect AOL, Comcast, Hotmail, and GMail accounts too: http://www.dmarc.org/faq.html#u_1'); - http://postmaster-blog.aol.com/2014/04/22/aol-mail-updates-dmarc-policy-to-reject/ - http://www.emailonacid.com/blog/details/C4/could_yahoo_and_aols_dmarc_policies_destroy_your_deliverability - which is the "ticket" to which I was referring when I said Your option is to get another email account (avoid AOL, Comcast, Hotmail, and GMail accounts too per my comment in the ticket). Thanks for asking for clarification. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 02:01, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Technical 13 for your reply. Can you please tell me what reliable mail service I can use apart from yahoo and Gmail, as I am not familiar with any other service apart from the two. -AsceticRosé 02:03, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

• You could wait for it to be fixed (I bumped the ticket again on Phabricator and I already bumped the priority to high a bit ago since I prefer Yahoo!). You might want to try https://www.zoho.com/mail/ https://mail.yandex.com/ http://www.gmx.com/ http://www.inbox.com/ and have them forward all your mail or redirect it to your Yahoo (that's what I do from my http://mail.firehousemail.com/email/scripts/loginuser.pl that I use). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 02:16, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Template:Extra track listing

When adding this template to the misc field in {{infobox single}} or {{infobox song}} and then setting the type to soundtrack, the border surrounding the heading for said track listing would then change color, but now the border appears to just be a plain white background that thus seems to blend in with the rest of the infobox. I thought that maybe someone reworked the template but it hasn't been edited at all since 2013. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 02:40, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Article download error as pdf

Hello Volunteers,

I am a new reader of Wikipedia.Today I was wanted to make a pdf book with this page JavaScript . But when I Want to download it that's book's feedback was -

" Rendering process died with non zero code: 1"

When I removed it from my listed page of that book, that's download was successful. And also some other pages are give same feedback. Would anyone help me to solve this problem? 119.30.32.8 (talk) 17:35, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Various articles seem to have problems, see the list of related bug reports. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:19, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Your given link is not working.Help please AlfredBob 05:30, 30 April 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alfredmini (talk • contribs)

Technical input needed

I've just made a request at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) suggesting a new software feature (the idea being to submit a Phabricator request if the proposal gets support), but I'm not sure if it's feasible. Please go there and offer your opinions on its feasibility and on whether you think it's a good or bad idea. Nyttend (talk) 23:13, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Oops, the section is "Edit-conflict warning". Nyttend (talk) 23:14, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Issue: Navbox template not populated from yesterday

Greetings, on April 29, I updated Template:Catholic_religious_institutes and today it is still not populated into article Servants of St. Joseph. Since this is unusual, I checked the VP archives and found a job queue backlog issue at Here.

Also when I run API-Siteinfo-Stats it shows over 10 million Jobs waiting.

Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 11:40, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Those are normal numbers, but it may appear to slow down page updates. A purge of the article fixed it. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 12:26, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, did not know about Purge. Learned another new WP thing today . JoeHebda (talk) 13:23, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MediaWiki message delivery (talk • contribs) 09:33, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

An admin query

It mightn't be a real change - I've been having monitor problems (old 17" CRT died, 23" widescreen replacement s t r e t c h e d everything to full width (totally useless for someone doing DTP work), and current choice of 17" flat (and almost square LED or LCD) screen stretches very slightly the other way (but practically imperceptibly). When deleting pages and in the 'delete' window with the real delete button, the lower of the two reason lines seems to be very short, and thus hiding a lot of the info it should be displaying. This is in Monobook, XP Pro Classic View, and Firefox 20. Peridon (talk) 18:53, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

While I obviously can't answer the delete question, when you plugged in the new monitor, did you change your operating system's resolution output? If not the monitor is trying to autoformat the 4:3 resolution into 16:9 or 16:10. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Current setting is 1280x1024 - 1600x1200 gives me "Input not Support", and 1024x768 is jaggy. As my desktop icons have all headed northwest, I would think I was on 1024x768 with the CRT (and everything available with the widescreen). Is that stretching normal with a widescreen on XP? It doesn't happen with 7 on the laptop. Peridon (talk) 20:25, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

@Peridon: Most 23" widescreen monitors these days are 1920x1080, although some cheaper ones are 1366x768 and some more expensive ones are 1920x1200. 1280x1024 is not a widescreen resolution (some widescreen TVs are 1280x720, but I've never seen a computer monitor with that resolution). If you don't see those resolutions listed as options you may need to update the drivers for your graphics card.

Unlike a CRT, which can use multiple resolutions easily, the image quality on an LCD is significantly degraded and blurrier if you're not using its "native resolution". That resolution should be listed on the box or in the manual for the new monitor. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:49, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Orphan tag misaligned in Multiple issues template

I haven't done a ton of diagnosis on this to figure out all of the possible permutations, but I have noticed that when {{orphan}} is used inside of {{multiple issues}}, the orphan statement is indented one level to the left of all of the other statements. I don't know if posting a multiple issues template on this page will cause problems (or is even possible to do in a section), so I have created an example at User:Jonesey95/sandbox3. Does anybody care to dig into the layers of templates involved here to figure out why the poor orphan tag does not line up with its friends? Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:04, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

It works for me in Firefox with all skins. What is your browser and skin? The orphan line is the only one on User:Jonesey95/sandbox3 which linewraps for me. Is it also for you and if so, is the indentation fixed if you decrease font size with Ctrl - until it's on one line? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:09, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. It looks aligned correctly for me in Chrome (Mac OS) and Safari (Mac OS), but not in Firefox (Mac OS, Firefox v37). It still looks wrong if I shrink the font or make the browser window smaller so that more of the tags wrap.

It looks fine in Firefox if I log out. Something in my skin files? What files should I look at? – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:54, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

When used inside {{multiple issues}}, {{orphan}} varies its action according to the |date= parameter and user custom CSS. To get a consistent experience for all users, whether logged in or out, try altering the |date=March 2015 to either |date=April 2015 or |date=May 2015. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:09, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: I worked it out. The problem only occurs for logged-in users who have applied the custom CSS described at Template:Orphan#Visibility - it was advising the use of the value inherit but this should have been table. I've fixed it in the documentation, and so you should fix your custom CSS like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:08, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Brilliant. That worked for me.

 Fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:00, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Super! Those misaligned orphan messages had been bugging me for over a year; I was aware of that issue before I installed the hide-older-messages solution... unfortunately nobody could figure out the answer until now. Thanks much! Wbm1058 (talk) 19:14, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I did a search - 22 users have a personal CSS rule for the .ambox-Orphan class. Of those, two used it to set display: none so they're already OK; three (Jonesey95, myself and Wbm1058) have altered it to display: table today as a direct result of this thread; so for the reamining 17, I sent a note like this, and two of them have since applied my fix. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:55, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Checkboxes

I'm seeing little checkboxes on page histories. This started just recently. I've got no use for them. How can I disable this feature? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:11, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Try the code in #Edit Tags above. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:17, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

• It is due to the ability for certain user groups to modify the tags on each history entry. There is already a patch that will be push relatively shortly that should fix it if you can't actually change any tags. :) — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 22:09, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Usernames showed as redlinks

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T97636

I don't know if its mi browser but Usernames and User talks appear as redlinks, specially in the New Pages Feed, any problem there? Lgcsmasamiya (talk) 00:23, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I also see it at Special:NewPagesFeed but haven't seen it anywhere else. For example, the entry for James Brodie (died 1708) says "Created by BrownHairedGirl (talk | contribs)", but at NewPagesFeed the links BrownHairedGirl and talk are red and have redlink urls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrownHairedGirl?action=edit&redlink=1 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:BrownHairedGirl?action=edit&redlink=1. All userpage and talk page links are red whether the pages exist or not. BrownHairedGirls' pages have existed since 2006. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:42, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I thought that the software must have decided to describe me to some users as a scarlet woman, but when I look at Special:NewPagesFeed, I see all users are redlinked. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:59, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

It would appear that NewPagesFeed is broken, though why is up to those who understand coding and absolute gibberish. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 01:06, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Reported in phabricator. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:49, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Phabricator people did their magic and the blue links have returned EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 03:03, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Incoming links: Slow job queue, stuck cache?

So I moved Fresh (song) to Fresh (Kool & the Gang song), and redirected Fresh (song) to Fresh (the dab page). I fixed up all the links to the dab redirect in articles. Trouble is, days later, whatlinkshere still thinks the pages link to the dab redirect: [80] If you check those mainspace articles, you'll see none of them actually do (either directly or via templates). It's not just that page, DPLbot thinks so too. Is there a magic button to make it actually purge? - David Gerard (talk) 09:37, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I think this is related to my post, above. Very slow job-queue! I do a lot of page moves too, but I give-up checking if the redirects have been fixed from templates. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 13:11, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm running into the same problem. Going to each article and doing a dummy edit or null edit fixes them, but that's not really worth the time. It makes it difficult to find the real problems. Is there a way to make null edits with AWB?  SchreiberBike | ⌨  17:44, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not going to waste my time doing dummy edits. Hopefully something can be done to address the issue and not to go to plan B of null edits. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 09:51, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

I did edit all the pages! (To fix the link originally.) In any case, the pipes appear to have unclogged and all is now well ... it's a pity there isn't actually a way to take a plunger to it - David Gerard (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Confusing CS1 date error

Can anyone work out what's wrong with the accessdate in ref 77 in Mika Häkkinen? It looks fine to me, but it's reporting a CS1 date error. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 11:36, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

The linked help page includes: "Access dates (in |access-date=) are checked to ensure that they are between 15 January 2001 (the founding date of Wikipedia) and the present, since they represent the date that an editor viewed a web-based source to verify a statement on Wikipedia." PrimeHunter (talk) 11:41, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Of course. Fixed. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 11:58, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

WMF Banner Glitch

Picture showing issue.

Is it just me seeing a large block of text followed by a green WMF on the top of most pages? The large block of text contains a bunch of technical gibberish. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 02:12, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Extended content

/* Determine if banner should be shown based on: * A) if user has enough edits * B) if user hasn't seen banners too many times * * Parameters (names should be self-explanatory) * min-edits * views-cookie-name * max-views * * View counter cookie expires after being untouched for 60 days * which ought to be long enough for all non-fundraising campaigns * * Result is stored in mw.centralNotice.bannerData.hideResult as usual */ (function(mw) { var editCount = mw.config.get('wgUserEditCount'); var minEdits = parseInt('300'); var viewCount = parseInt($.cookie('FDCElectionBanner')) || 0; var maxViews = parseInt('5') || 0; var hideBanner = true; var hideReason = null; if ( mw.util.getParamValue('force') ) { hideBanner = false; } else if ( editCount < minEdits ) { hideBanner = true; hideReason = 'belowMinEdits'; } else if ( viewCount >= maxViews ) { hideBanner = true; hideReason = 'viewLimit'; } else { hideBanner = false; viewCount = 1; $.cookie('FDCElectionBanner', viewCount, { expires: 60, path: '/' }); } // Store the results mw.centralNotice.bannerData.hideResult = hideBanner; mw.centralNotice.bannerData.hideReason = hideReason; mw.centralNotice.bannerData.viewCount = viewCount; })(mediaWiki); mediaWiki.centralNotice.bannerData.alterImpressionData = function( impressionData ) { // Data for Special:RecordImpression // Returning true from this function indicates the banner was shown if (mediaWiki.centralNotice.bannerData.hideReason) { impressionData.reason = mediaWiki.centralNotice.bannerData.hideReason; } if (mediaWiki.centralNotice.bannerData.viewCount) { impressionData.banner_count = mediaWiki.centralNotice.bannerData.viewCount; } return !mediaWiki.centralNotice.bannerData.hideResult; };

It is not just you. I am experiencing the same thing. Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 02:15, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Yep, someone screwed up the code. I'm seeing it too. ansh666 02:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

It's JavaScript, not technical gibberish. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Mobile view: Section order

Someone with less of a prejudice against Phabricator than me may want to report that this issue doesn't seem resolved; in my sandbox there's no way to edit the "Sources" section in Mobile View. Huon (talk) 11:04, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I think the fix has not been deployed yet. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 15:02, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

WP slow when saving changes

Anyone else having this issue? Seems to take an age to post any edits. Started this morning and continues to now. Takes approx. 10 seconds to save a change. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 12:31, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

@Lugnuts: Same issue here. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:22, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

1 ―Mandruss ☎ 14:42, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I had this problem last night too... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 15:57, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks both. Seems OK now. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 16:50, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Possible issue with "Automatically accepted" being improperly issued after reversions

I think I've found an issue with non-"Pending changes reviewer" editors getting their revisions marked "Automatically accepted" if they revert a previous reversion from a Pending changes reviewer. I noticed this happening yesterday at the article Charley Webb (though the issue seemed to go away when another Pending changes reviewer (Davey2010) reverted the reversion that a new editor (Bjcressy) had made to my reversion of their changes (did you get all that?!)). But now I've just noticed it again Sajal Ali, where another relatively new editor, Saqibbsse (talk · contribs), just reverted my reversion of their changes, and had their revision "Automatically accepted"). So, is this some kind of "bug" that needs dealing with?... Thanks in advance. --IJBall (talk) 16:23, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

It's more widespread than I suggested above – at Rebel Wilson, at least two editors who do not have "Pending changes reviewer" status have had their recent edits marked "Automatically accepted", including the most recent edit there by User:JosephSpiral. It seems there might be something kind of significantly wrong with the "Automatically accepted" tagging system currently... --IJBall (talk) 17:30, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

@IJBall: I suggest you read up on how pending changes works again. There are no bugs here, any editor who is auto confirmed (has account, ten days, x edits) will have their edits Automatically accepted. Only unconfirmed editors (IP's and less than 10day accounts) must have their edits reviewed, and that is the only purpose of the pending changes right, to review those edits. Having EVERY edit needing review is known as Pending Changes 2 (PC2) and is not implemented anywhere on en.wiki. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 17:44, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

@EoRdE6:, thanks for the response, and I will admit that the PC1 vs. PC2 thing is something I was dimly aware off, but had forgotten the details of. However, that still doesn't explain yesterday's situation at Charley Webb where the Bjcressy (talk · contribs) edits were "automatically accepted" when the account had been registered that same day (i.e. certainly not for 10 days). But what you're saying probably does explain what happened at Rebel Wilson. --IJBall (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Also, for context, previous discussion of the Bjcressy situation took place at the Help desk... --IJBall (talk) 17:55, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Note also that User:Saqibbsse is also not on the "auto-confirmed" list yet either. --IJBall (talk) 17:57, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

@IJBall: Bjcressy registered on 2 May 2014 and made that edit on 2 May 2015, so yes, he was autoconfirmed. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:01, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

@EoRdE6: PC2 is in use, on these three pages. They are test pages, it is true: but it means that the PC2 level is implemented somewhere on en.wiki. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:03, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @IJBall: (i) Who are the users at Rebel Wilson who should not have had their edits "automatically accepted"? (ii) There is no problem with edits by Saqibbsse showing as "automatically accepted": looking at the history of Sajal Ali, only this edit was shown as "automatically accepted". This was their twelfth edit, they had been registered for almost three weeks, and by that time had been autoconfirmed for 9 hours 50 mins. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:16, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

At Rebel Wilson, none – EoRdE6 pointed out that long-standing editors are autoconfirmed, and both of the "accepted" ones at Rebel Wilson were long-standing. I had thought that Bjcressy and Saqibbsse weren't autoconfirmed, but with what Jackmcbarn said, and rechecking, I see that both are auto-confirmed as well. Thus, there's nothing to report – which is why I wrote the 'mea culpa' below. Again, sorry for the confusion – now that I've been reminded about the details of PC1, it shouldn't happen again. --IJBall (talk) 18:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Ack! Well, that's embarrassing!!... And I guess User:Saqibbsse has been registered for more than 10 days... Oh, well, sorry for wasting everyone's time! Lesson learned!! --IJBall (talk) 18:08, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Email notifications not consistent

I've recently enabled notifications to send email alerts. It was working fine but in the past week, it failed to alert me for at least two notifications. One was a thanked edit (on 30 April) and the other was a talk page message (27 April). I've checked the known bugs at WP:ECHO and bugzilla but couldn't find anything related to this. In the email, searched through the categories including spam for those two email alerts. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 17:14, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

CATEGORY:PAGES WITH LOGIN REQUIRED REFERENCES OR SOURCES

The all-caps in the heading is intentional. This category is populated when {{registration required}} is inserted into the |format= parameter of a CS1 template. The citation templates capitalize the format so if, for example, someone enters |format=pdf, the citation template will display "(PDF)".

I recently fixed all of the articles in this category, but new ones were added since then. So, I'd like to ask: Is this a proper use of |format=? If it is, how should this category be handled (category redirect, fixing the citation templates)? If not, is there an automated tool that is doing this? Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 19:32, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know about an automated tool, but it's certainly a misuse of |format=, and also of {{registration required}}. The correct way is to either set the parameter |registration=yes inside the CS1 template, or to put {{registration required}} outside the CS1 template. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:38, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

We definitely don't want Category:PAGES WITH LOGIN REQUIRED REFERENCES OR SOURCES to be a visible red category on articles. I have created the category so it can be hidden and display an explanation. It would be possible for citation templates to test the format parameter for certain inappropriate values like the output of {{registration required}}, but I'm not sure it would be worth using server resources on that. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:42, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Whatever you do, registration=yes and subscription=yes should be handled in a consistent way, e.g., if you want a hidden tracking category for "registration" it could include the worse case "subscription", or track the latter in a different way, depending on your goals. –Be..anyone (talk) 03:05, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Might I suggest sending this to Help talk:CS1, since I see a feature request there in that suggestion? @Trappist the monk: --Izno (talk) 14:34, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-19

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

Recent changes

• You can now chat with other users in Phabricator. [81]
• There was a rare problem with VisualEditor. The text of another wiki could be added to your edit. The issue is now fixed. [82] [83]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since April 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 5. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 6 (calendar).
• It is now easier to add a link in VisualEditor. You can see an image and a description about the page. [84]

Meetings

• You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on May 5 at 14:30 (UTC). [85]
• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 6 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join an event in France on May 22−25. You need to sign up before May 8. [86]

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

15:22, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Question about toolserver

I've noticed that Wikiblame hosted at wikipedia.ramselehof.de always seems rock solid while the tools hosted at tools.wmflabs.org are about as stable as a bowl of jello. Are they run by the same group? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:43, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Nope. Toolserver is run by the DE folks whereas the Labs server is hosted at by the WMF folks. Giraffasaurus (talk) 20:51, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Any chance the WMF group can take lessons from the DE folks? Yes, I know this is pointed. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:00, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's even worse, NeilN. WMDE is not running this, WMDE has decided to shut down the toolserver (with pressure "support" by WMF) and i don't think WMDE is in any position to give lessons. The reliable wikipedia.ramselehof.de is a website by a german Wikipedian, de:user:Flominator. And the reliable http://vs.aka-online.de (global Wikipedia search, WPPageHistStat /article edit history overview, RCHistStat) is also a website by a german Wikipedian, de:user:Aka. And the fantastically helpful scripts-compendium by de:user:Schnark is also... well, you get my point. And some toolserver-tools are gone that i really miss (mydiff/wikisense, and geolocation/coordinate and stats of gesichteteVersionen and... mw:Tool_Labs/Collection_of_issues_after_Toolserver_shutdown) :-( I better stop. --Atlasowa (talk) 08:32, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request subdivision

Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request has gotten to be around 400k, leading to a complaint about the length. In order to ease that situation, I split off as subpages Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request/Discussion and Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request/Discussion/Closing and structural issues. This solution was reverted, so I am wondering, is there any way to prevent the page from causing loading issues and the like without splitting it up? bd2412 T 20:40, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

No. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:59, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand what the problem is or why everything has to be "centralized". Why not just follow another link and have two adjacent browser tabs? Dustin (talk) 21:02, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

That is what I tried to do; it was reverted by another editor who feels that it is important that everything be "centralized". bd2412 T 21:03, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Many people have submitted their rationale for opposition or support of the proposal into the "discussion" section, as it was not clearly demarcated at the start. As a result, removing the discussion section would amount to balkanising the request, and marginalising the well-thought rationales that are found that in that section. Huw is just one of the editors who placed his whole opinion in the "discussion" section. RGloucester — ☎ 21:05, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

It's 2015, if someone can't load a 300k web page then that's not an important concern; time to stop catering to people running IE6 on windows 95 or Nokia flip-phones. Tarc (talk) 23:34, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

IBTD and actually support closing accounts of users thinking that mobile devices or old hardware are irrelevant. –Be..anyone (talk) 09:25, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

There's a balance, and people are asked to be considerate towards others. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:20, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

"Considerate" is one thing, but breaking pages because of length in this era is just absurd. Should we continue support for lynx and NCSA Mosaic too? 300k is not inordinately large. Tarc (talk) 13:34, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• Except that it isn't just a 300K web page, It's over 400K of wikitext and ends up being a 2.81 MB (2,949,120 bytes) web page all inclusive. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:27, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• Where on earth are you getting almost 2.9M from? Even if you count all of the actual html and such behind the page...and that is not an accurate measure of page load at all...that comes out to 684k. Tarc (talk) 14:58, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

• First of all, I don't believe any editor has stated that they are having trouble actually loading the page. I believe the complaint/s was/is that the page is just too damn long. That can't be helped, for the most part. Since many editors have weighed in with their reasoning and policy arguments. If there are any loading problems, perhaps editors shouldn't insert misleading and irrelevant images on the page. Especially pictures that take up the whole page and push the boundaries of the page beyond the regular single page view. What we should not do is remove the discussion. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 14:01, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

  The proposal to split the page is neutral, as it would not seek to characterize the relevance of particular comments. bd2412 T 14:07, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• I know you were trying to be neutral when you made the change, and your subsequent proposals. I just do not believe that splitting the page up is a good idea. Dave Dial (talk) 14:53, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I like my picture thank you very much. I only used that size as unlike normal pictures it was actually the topic of that discussion and it was unreadable in thumbnail view. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 16:00, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• Because there is so much other stuff on every page such as css style sheets and javascript and the mediawiki UI itself, it's normal that people start having page size issues between 150-200K worth of wiki text. Pages really should never exceed 300K of wiki text if we want people to be able to actually load them and contribute. Currently, that page is about 2.9MB inclusive for me with 400K of wikitext. That is over the boundaries for some mobile devices. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 17:27, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Clickable button 2 and images

Hello,

I am using a Clickable button and have spent 2 hours attemping to insert an image into it, with noincludes, includes, transclusions, you name it, to no avail. This is the closest I've come so far:

Talk

Is it possible to remove the "leftovers" surrounding the button, i.e. the brackets and text? Buffaboy ^talk 23:23, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

@Buffaboy: Try |link=, like [[File:Example.png|frameless|link=Whatever]] Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 01:05, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

@Zhaofeng Li: I've tried that already. Buffaboy ^talk 03:50, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Buffaboy, what do you actually want? I looked at User:Buffaboy/Navbar/Talk, but I can't figure out what your goal is. An image that takes you to a page? Or—tell me what URL you want to end up with, and (separately) show me what you want it to look like. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I'm trying to use a {{clickable button 2}} to link to my talkpage but I would like to embed an image within it. I think limitations with Lus and the template itself prevent this however.Buffaboy ^talk 19:24, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Buffaboy, why do you want to do that?

If you tell me what the end result is supposed to look like, and what's supposed to happen when someone clicks on it, then I might be able to give you a solution. (It won't use that particular template, though, because that template doesn't do what you want.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Use {{Clickable button}}. {{Clickable button 2}} automatically inserts a pair of square brackets at the start and end, with the assumption that you're providing a wikilink. This behaviour cannot be overridden. Alakzi (talk) 19:26, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hiring technical people

The Community Tech team, whose remit is doing stuff that experienced editors actually need done, has started hiring. If you're interested or know someone who ought to be interested, then please look at the job posts for the Community Tech Developer and Community Tech Engineering Manager positions. It's usual in the WMF for community members to be given preference in the hiring process (just like multilingual candidates are always preferred), but I believe that is even more true for this team. If you apply, be sure to include your username. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Question about a script

@Jackmcbarn, Anomie, Writ Keeper, and Technical 13: Greetings folks, I found a useful script at User:Equazcion/CatListMainTalkLinks.js that adds a link when viewing categories to view the associated talk page or main page when the appropriate page is viewed in the category (Article shows up as Article (talk) and Article talk shows up as Talk:Article (main)). This is a very useful script to folks like me who add WikiProject banners (or to see if a talk page is missing its associated article page). The code seems to indicate that it should light the corresponding page in red if that page doesn't exist. The script does not appear to be working however and it does not show in red if its missing. I was going to leave User:Equazcion a note about it but it looks like they stopped editing and User:Technical13 says they are busy and suggests I talk to you abou it. Since its probably in appropriate to fiddle with somone else's code under their user page I copied it here. I'm not trying to claim ownership, I'm just trying to facilitate fixing the problem. I noticed there were some missing namespaces and added those, but I can't figure out why the applicable pages aren't showing in red like they are supposed too. Its probably something simple in the code but I don't see what it is.

Is there any chance you all might be willing to take a look at this page and see why its not working right? Sorry to post this again here but I thought it might be better since the others might be busy. Thanks in advance for the help. Please let me know if you have any questions. Giraffasaurus (talk) 20:49, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

@Giraffasaurus: It's probably because the API call is specifying http, whereas Wikipedia gets served by default as https; thus, the API call gets blocked by the browser since it's insecure. Replacing:

url:"http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&titles="   encodeURIComponent(cloneTitle)   "&format=xml",

with:

url:mw.util.wikiScript('api')   "?action=query&titles="   encodeURIComponent(cloneTitle)   "&format=xml",

should fix it, I think. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 23:15, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Outstanding! That did fix the problem thank you. It works like a champ now. You can mark this problem as resolved. Giraffasaurus (talk) 23:29, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I've copied over the changes to the main script at User:Equazcion/CatListMainTalkLinks.js. Graham87 10:38, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Weird things

I am using chrome browser on a phone. I have noticed some weird things that all started yesterday. I am not sure whether these are bugs or intensional changes and they all aren't present on the desktop version. I'll just list them:

• Several links (including the links to the side menu, the watchlist, the notifications side menu, edit buttons, the "This page has issues" link, the names of articles as presented on the page itself, and possibly others) are all of a sudden slightly bigger, slightly, smaller, or are spaced out differently.
• I reported a real deal bug here. I was going to report it here but I did it there.
• The mobile watchlist all of a sudden is outdated and wrong. For example It'll say a page changed 2 hours ago but if you go to the page you'll see it was actually 10 minutes ago.
• The writing on user contributions and recent changes pages on both desktop and mobile views, is all squashed together with no spaces in between.

There could be others I'm not thinking of right now; if I think of any others I'll add it to the list. —DangerousJXD (talk) 08:19, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reports @DangerousJXD. I've created Phabricator tasks to cover all bugs but the one you reported over at Wikipedia talk:Notifications. The tasks are as follows: T97791, T97792, and T97794. You'll note that I've only been able to reproduce the icon sizing issue in the main menu. Could you provide an example of a page that has an incorrect last changed date? —Phuedx (WMF) (talk) 20:23, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I would just like to add that the spinning page loading icon is another icon that is still smaller than normal.

I'm not sure how to give you an example of the watchlist thing, Phuedx (WMF). I will clarify the page history of pages isn't the issue, just the watchlist. If I go into the watchlist right now, the top article (this, not that it matters) says it was changed 2 days ago. On the page itself, it says 5 days ago. That is the best example I can give. When will these things be fixed? —DangerousJXD (talk) 21:55, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm still having all these issues. The notifications system is broken; the rest are just little annoying things that I really don't care about. —DangerousJXD (talk) 11:55, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Accessing image when obscured by popup caption

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T93393

A reader noticed a problem in a specific article, but I believe the problem is likely to be more widespread. In some cases, it may be difficult or impossible to open up a larger version of an image. To see an example, go to the Galley in Roman Baths Roman_Baths_(Bath)#GalleryIf you hover a mouse over any image, a popup will display a caption. In some cases, you can still click on the image, to access the larger version of the image itself.

With my monitor and resolution, I see the following:

Roman baths screen shot 1

My mouse is over the second image in the second row. There is enough of an image displayed to click on it. However, the situation may be different for different monitors or screen resolution settings. I simulated a different setting by opening in a window that was slightly less than full screen. In this case, the popup obscures the image so that it is impossible to click on the image.

Roman baths screen shot 2

I do not see an easy way to get to the image. (There is a difficult way, go to the source and find the file name, but this would not constitute a reasonable work-around for general readers.) While this reader identified one particular situation, it seems likely that this would be a common problem, especially for diligent editors who provide descriptive captions. Any thoughts on a solution? --S Philbrick(Talk) 13:36, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: Click on the previous image, then use the back button to return to the Roman Baths article. In some browsers, the border of that image is now styled differently - in Firefox, it's a fine-pitch dotted line. Use the Tab ↹ key twice to get to the image in question, which should now have that border styling, and press ↵ Enter. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:49, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Frankly, I didn’t follow your instructions. (I did see that if I clicked on one of the other images, I can use the right and left scroll arrows to cycle though the images.) However, my point is, unless the right answer is obvious to most readers, and the two of us just failed to know the obvious, we have a situation where casual readers will not find it easy to access an image. I think we need a technical solution, e.g. some way to render the caption so that it is offset or presented in some way that the reader can click on the image. I expect a Wikipedia editor to know how to get to the image, but do you agree that our main audience is very likely to be stymied?--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:10, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

This really needs to be addressed at the Wikimedia developer's level. Far too often we devise overly-complex workarounds for problems in the way the Wikimedia software behaves. They are being paid to fix this sort of problem.

That being said, here is my favorite overly-complex workaround for this sort of problem: :) In FireFox there is an add-on called "Nuke Anything" ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nuke-anything-enhanced/ ) It allows you to delete anything you can click on or highlight with the mouse or shift arrows. It also lets you highlight a selection and delete everything else -- perfect for printing a page without the banner ads at the top or the long list of stupid comments at the bottom. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:03, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

It looks like this was reported about six weeks ago as phab:T93393. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that is very helpful. I asked the person reporting it to monitor this page. I see some specific workarounds that may help that reader in the short-term, and it now is clear that the general problem is known to the developers. I realize it may take some time to address, but I trust it will eventually be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sphilbrick (talk • contribs) 20:18, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

"Collections", mobile front beta

I use the beta version of the Mobile FrontEnd on my smartphone, Samsung Verizon Android Galaxy S-3, SCH-I535 OS v4.4.2. In the menu accessed by the three-horizontal-lines icon at the top left there is an item "Collections". When I click on it, it shows a list of just one item, "Watchlist (private)".

The implication is that I can develop and add more collections and make some of them public, but there's no indication of how I would do any of that. Searching for Collections or WP: Collections or Wikipedia help: Collections gets me nowhere. What is this crypto-feature about? To discuss this, please {{Ping}} me. --Thnidu (talk) 17:33, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

@Thnidu: See mw:Extension:Gather. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:57, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I guess. And now the "Collections" entry is gone altogether.* In case anyone else wonders what happened to it, I've put up a brief summary at Wikipedia:Collections, with a wikilink to mw:Gather and a xref to this section. --Thnidu (talk) 02:41, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

* The"Collections" item is back on the menu, apparently still as I described it. --Thnidu (talk) 04:59, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

"Tagging information" on the mobile site

I was reading a Wikipedia article on my mobile device when a box popped up asking me to "Improve Wikipedia by tagging information on this page". I followed through with it, curious what it was. It asked me to "Select tags that correctly describe article name". After, it told me that "Wikipedia is experimenting with new ways for people to contribute...Entries are submitted to Wikidata and are freely licensed under...". Curious, I checked my Wikidata contributions (since I was logged in) and the page history of the Wikidata page about the article. Neither had any record of what I had just done... So what is this feature and what purpose does it serve? Thanks! EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:41, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

See mw:Extension:WikiGrok. It includes: "Right now (during prototype testing) claims are recorded via EventLogging (and are not yet being pushed to Wikidata)". PrimeHunter (talk) 20:48, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Google book citation tool problem?

Dear editors: I have been regularly using the Google book citation tool at http://reftag.appspot.com . Recently I tried to click on some of the links in the citations that I had previously created, only to find that they don't work (for example the first two references in Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Matthew Murray (writer). Is this tool no longer functioning properly, or has Google changed its URL structure, or is there some other explanation? Has this problem already been noted, and, if so, can someone point me to the discussion? —Anne Delong (talk) 03:11, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh my. It's not the tool but Google books itself giving a "500 error The server encountered an error and could not complete your request". I just tried and couldn't access some random books. I assume Google will fix this quickly. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 04:26, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

For me (in the UK) http://books.google.com/books?id=ZsjpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA124 fails and http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZsjpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA124 is working. Thincat (talk) 09:12, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's a relief in one way, since it's good to know it's not a glitch in the tool, but let's hope that Google puts things back the way they were. I am remembering when the Canadian Encyclopedia decided to reorganize the structure of their database and changed all the URLs, without redirects. This was rather embarrassing, since I discovered it by demonstrating in front of a group of genealogists at a live streamed meeting, how the citation tool could be useful... —Anne Delong (talk) 11:57, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

This is being discussed at the Google Books API forum here because the correct forum, linked to from here doesn't exist. This is perhaps the best thread. Google will be looking into the matter when they have finished their present game of DotA. Thincat (talk) 08:05, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

My Samsung 10.1" 32gb tablet is only displaying Geo = {IPv6: true} when I go to wikipedia on it

Greetings! My wife was looking something up on Wikipedia and when she followed a link from Google to the page, she encountered this: GEO = {"city" : "Fresno" . . . lots of stuff including our actual latitude and longitude and my tablet's IP! Needless to say, she was perplexed. We're, neither of us, super technical people, so she handed the tablet off to me. She told me she was asked about "being a Guinea Pig" for something in Wikipedia, but she assured me she responded "No". She also said she MAY have tapped something within the Wikipedia page. I have no idea what it could have been to change the display to radically. In any case, I did what everyone does. I restarted the tablet. LOL Now, instead of a long trail of pretty personal information, I get Geo = {IPv6: true} Is there some way to change the display in Wikipedia back to the nice, normal, incredibly informative view or are we trapped with me being forever told that IPv6 is true? LOL Thank you very much. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sak1776 (talk • contribs) 10:14, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

A similar problem has been reported a couple of times on the Help Desk. Those specify that it has something to do with the Chrome browser. Dismas|^(talk) 11:37, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Hey! That is very weird! Certainly a bug. I've opened a bug on phabricator: phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98311 to talk about the issue. Phabricator is where bug reports go and where programmers deal with them and fix them. Feel free to go there and post whatever you need (you can use your Wikipedia account). It would be very useful if you could post there (or here) more information. We would need the address/url where you saw that text (or if it happens everywhere), and information about what is your browser and version, and what is your operating system and version. If you don't know where to look those things up, the easiest way is going to whatismybrowser.com and whatismyandroidversion.com from the tablet's internet browser. With that information it should be easy to replicate and we'll get to fix the problem. Thanks! JHernandez (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

It seems like the bug was already identified and has been fixed and deployed, so you shouldn't experience the problem any more. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98309 for context. JHernandez (WMF) (talk) 08:10, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Looking for volunteers to help us label edits as damaging/not

A screenshot of the "wiki labels" interface for evaluating a diff

Hey folks!

If you have not been following our work, we have been working on developing the infrastructure that will help introduce smarter Artificial Intelligence based tools to Wikipedia that utilize the most cutting edge Machine Learning algorithms.

Hence, we are looking for volunteers to help us build new and better quality control tools for Wikipedia. We need help manually assessing the quality of edits to train machine learning models that will help with quality control work. We've built a fancy tool to make the work quick, easy and maybe even fun. :) If you're interested, check out our project page WP:Labels/Edit quality.

-- A Certain White Cat ^chi? 08:20, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist not loading

When I click on watchlist, it hangs. If I try to back out, I get logged out. Anyone else having this problem? Victoria (tk) 18:11, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Roughly speaking, how many pages do you have on your watchlist? To the nearest thousand. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:31, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Only 2000. After posting here, I got bumped off again. I can log in through the main page, I can see my contribs, it hangs if I try to go the watchlist, and I get logged out if I try to refresh or re-load. I've cleared caches, done a restart but it keeps happening. Was fine earlier in the day. Safari 6.1.6. Victoria (tk) 18:34, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

It might be a corrupt cookie. Try doing a deliberate logout, then log in. If it still logs you out without you asking, you could clear your cookies. There were two ways of doing this in Safari 5.1.7 (they may differ for 6.1.6), both start at Cogwheel → Preferences → Privacy. Then you can either: (i) go for Remove All Website Data... Remove Now or (ii) Details... and in the little search window, enter "wikipedia.org"; highlight the row that is shown and click Remove. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:11, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Redrose64 I've deleted all cookies, removed WP from "topsites" and from toolbar, emptied cache again, restarted again, and it still hangs. It might be something else, or something other than the watchlist. To log in I have to navigate to the main page from the log in page, and log in from there, and I can get here by following my contribs. As soon as I post, I get logged out. When I am logged in, I can't load the watchlist. Victoria (tk) 19:51, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

It sounds a bit like Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 130#Problems logging in and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 132#Severe problems with log-in. I don't know what fixed it there. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:44, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

I get the change password message every day and I've been ignoring it. That, I think, is a separate issue.

So, in Monobook and Modern I cannot load the watchlist. In Vector and Cologne Blue I can. I have css and js pages for one of those skins but not both - so I leave you to you all to figure out. For now I've switched from Monobook to Vector and will see whether I get bumped out after making this post. Victoria (tk) 21:22, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

• I'm back and wondering if anyone here can help or tell me where to seek help. I've managed to log in via the mainpage and I changed my skin to Vector. Then I went to the raw watchlist, dumped it all into a text file, saved and was able to access the watchlist via all the skins. I then copied the watchlist back and got a message that there were too many entries - I don't know the exact count but it's between 1800 and 2000 pages - and now it's hanging with all the skins. I'm guessing there's a problem with the count. Suggestions? Help? Anything? Victoria (tk) 20:54, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
• Adding: through the watchlist tab on preferences I was able to clear the entire watchlist and it loads fine in all skins. Then I added back about 100 pages and got a message telling me there were too many pages. So basically I can't have a watchlist? Victoria (tk) 21:13, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

• Hi Victoria, the usual troubleshooting advice (and I have no idea whether this is the right thing to do here) is to check whether it's happening with other browsers. Next, set up an account (e.g. Victoriaearle1) with default preferences, then copy-paste your watchlist to it, or restore your main account's preferences to the default if you prefer, and see what happens. The latter will tell you whether it's something in your preferences that's causing a problem. Scripts that we add can cause clashes too. Is your monobook.js the same as your vector.js? Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 21:34, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) 100 is very few. I've got over 20,000 on my watchlist and the main problem that I have is that when I go to Edit raw watchlist, alphabetical ordering breaks down about half-way through the list. Try visiting that page, copy its contents off somewhere, and then go for Clear the watchlist to force it to start from a blank sheet. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:40, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, SlimVirgin I actually tried to see if I could log in as Truthkeeper88 and I could! I went through the same thing there, copied the watchlist out, it was fine, copied it back and it hung. Thanks Redrose64 for suggesting Clear the watchlist - I've always wondered what that was for. Will give it a try and report back. Right now I have a single page (this one) on watch and it's working. But would probably like to have a few more. Victoria (tk) 21:47, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Okay, so I hit clear watchlist, and tried to load my watchlist and it hung. Had to force quit, log in again through the main page, go to preferences, at the raw watchlist deleted the one page that's there, this one, got the "there are too many pages" message. So something's wrong. Victoria (tk) 21:57, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Forgot to ping above so adding. Btw - Redrose64 would it be worth trying to change the watchlist token? Victoria (tk) 22:34, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't know. I never use one. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:03, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Redrose64, I noticed one in preferences at the "Watchlist" tab with a link to change it, if necessary. I never created it, just assumed everyone had one. Haven't a clue how it got there. Would someone else know about this? Victoria (tk) 23:24, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The watchlist token (in preferences) is not relevant. I have never used it, but if you visit your watchlist, in the "tools" box in the left sidebar, there is an "Atom" link. Copying the URL of the link into a text document shows that it contains the watchlist token—anyone who knows that token can view a web feed, presumably listing changes to articles that are on the watchlist. What is the exact text (copy/paste) of the "too many pages" error? It is sometimes useful to view the html source of a page to see if there are any clues in comments (for example, there is a NewPP report showing certain resource usage—conceivably there could be information with some technical detail about your error). Sometimes programmers re-use error messages for unlikely problems, so the actual error might be quite unrelated to the number of items on the list. If you have access to another computer where you have not logged in to Wikipedia, and if you are confident that computer is secure without malware, you should log out of your main computer, then go to the other computer and log in there. Does the problem recur? Did you try another browser on your main computer (preferably one where you have not logged on to Wikipedia before)? What is needed is a clear demonstration of whether the problem is related to corruption on your system, or whether your account is corrupted at Wikipedia (very unlikely). Johnuniq (talk) 02:15, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Johnuniq thanks for the help. Clicking the Atom brings up the dialogue box for Apple email, which I've never used.

Image is attached, showing the error message when I try to copy in the watchlist, and may or may not help for these many errors I found when looking at the source. When I tried save the watchlist the 16 or so errors jumped to 75 and then the machine hung again. I don't currently have access to a machine I've never used to access WP, but work will on that tomorrow. Maybe this img will give you a clue, if not, if there's anything there that's identifiable, pls delete it.

I only use one browser, but will download another tomorrow. Thanks for the suggestions. Victoria (tk) 03:01, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Johnuniq, more info. We do have a machine I've never used to log into WP, so I tried that. But because I've deleted my watchlist, there was none. So I logged back into my machine, copied in the watchlist from the text file, got the error message again, logged out and logged back into the other machine - and could see my watchlist. So, it's either a Safari issue, (the other machine is a PC w/ Google Chrome), or my machine. I'll download Google Chrome tomorrow to see if that works. If not, I guess I have corrupt data on my machine, which isn't good news. Thanks for the suggestions. Victoria (tk) 03:34, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Re the Atom link: I was just trying to show what the purpose of the watchlist token is (it is to get a web feed of your watchlist which is not relevant for this discussion). There is no need to click the Atom thingy.

The screen shot shows that you are seeing MediaWiki:Watchlistedit-too-many. Searching all the MediaWiki source for "Watchlistedit-too-many" shows it is only used once, namely in SpecialEditWatchlist.php (that link is for anyone interested; nothing for a user there). That applies when editing a watchlist. I do not understand the source which outputs the error if the number of titles currently being processed is 100 or more, and someone more familiar with the source would need to see how the count could exceed that limit (it obviously works with watchlists that contain thousands of titles, so something should be splitting it up).

One thing I would suggest is that you experiment by clearing the watchlist, then adding very boring titles which use only simple English text with no accented characters or funny dashes. During these experiments, you may have pasted titles into the edit watchlist window with broken characters (to do it correctly, your system and your editor would need to be working in UTF-8 encoding). For example, use titles like 1 and 2 and Car. If you keep your computer switched on, you might try shutting it down with a full reboot. I don't expect either of these thoughts to help, but they are simple and rule out some things. Johnuniq (talk) 04:53, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Johnuniq, ok I tried that, adding a few titles at a time, very boring titles and it was working, so I got bolder and added titles with accents and so on, and all was well. I managed to slowly 1000 pages in batches with no problems, but when I tried to add the next 25, I noticed the alphabetization was lost and 8 were at the bottom of the edit window in the raw watch, out of order. I looked at the watchlist and those 8 had just been updated, 4 with with Kasparbot and the others general edits, which rearranged the sequence in the raw watchlist. So, I know I can get to 1000 but beyond that things get a little iffy. Don't know whether this is helpful. Thanks for the advice, btw. Victoria (tk) 16:16, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Update - the alphabetization issue seemed to go away, I managed to get to 1300 pages and it came back. I got a new error message in source code and so deleted some scripts, [87], [88]. That brought back the edit notice, which I hadn't realized wasn't displaying, so that's good. But at 1300 pages I stopped adding them because whenever a page on my watch is edited it gets moved to the bottom of the list in the raw list window. So I downloaded Google chrome, and have the same problem. At this point I'm giving up. Victoria (tk) 00:11, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Just to add during these experiments I found that I can still log in as Truthkeeper88 and under that name today have a complete and fully alphabetized watchlist. But yesterday it wouldn't load. Also under that acct all there are no scripts. Victoria (tk) 00:20, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Your .css pages shouldn't be causing trouble like this, they didn't contain any scripts. common.css contained six CSS rules: the first two hide certain items on a watchlist; the third de-bolds some text in a watchlist; the last three affect how the bullets in a watchlist are displayed. monobook.css contained two CSS rules: both hide certain items on a watchlist.

All of those eight rules appear syntactically valid (some are identical to CSS rules that I use myself), and none can have caused the example error messages that you gave in that screenshot; they look very like they are from a JavaScript processor. I see that you have three JavaScript pages: of those, two (User:Victoriaearle/monobook.js and User:Victoriaearle/vector.js) are empty, which is never a problem; however, User:Victoriaearle/common.js is not, so try (i) removing the first script only; (ii) removing the second script only; (iii) blanking the page entirely. In this way you may identify one which causes errors. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:13, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64, Johnuniq and SlimVirgin for helping with this; it's now resolved. I thought I'd blanked User:Victoriaearle/common.js but apparently missed it, and it was almost certainly the script for the orange bar, [89], that caused the problem. An additional problem, too, is that I'd turned on the gadget that prevented those green bullets from displaying, and looking at the source I found it was causing an error: Screenshot here.

After removing the gadget and the orange bar script, the banners reappeared and the watchlist is now loading. It's still not alphabetizing correctly but I don't often look at the raw watchlist so don't know if that's normal behavior or new.

Something to keep in mind, I suppose, is that given the many combinations of scripts browsers various other configs, what works for one person might not work for another. For whatever reason, my upper limit for a watchlist seems to be 2000 (I'd just gone beyond that when this happened and have now pared back). Anyway, thanks again for all the help and suggestions. Victoria (tk) 15:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Background to first paragraph in last post above is at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 112#Reset code. The raw watchlist always used to sort in namespace order, and alphabetical order within each namespace. I first noticed that it was getting out of order in about March this year, but I put it down to excessive size. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:40, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for linking to that thread. I'm not sure that had anything to do with the hang but it does throw up a warning as seen in the screenshot (the warning only displays when the gadget is selected). As for the raw watchlist sorting, I think it does have to do with size. It was consistently sorting alphabetically as I added pages in small batches; at 1000 pages it started to sort by most recent page edited. Whether that causes a hang, I don't know. I suspect the culprit was the script for the orange bar - I'd noticed it was sort of hiccuping before displaying. Anyway, again, thanks for all the suggestions. Victoria (tk) 15:59, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

need help with userpage design strategies

So, basically, I'm creating an awesome userpage to showcase all of the work I'm doing, and it will be an incredible upgrade over my current one. However, I'm not too experienced with CSS tables or CSS in general, and I'm really not that experienced with tables in Wiki markup.

Here is where the work is being done, and I have had an issue trying to restore the gold interior container as seen in this diff. Plus I can't seem to get the padding right anymore. The reason I have made it more complicated now is because I've attempted to pare down the "tabs" seen in the diff, just so I could have one wide column with about 3 or 4 boxes and a narrow column with a couple boxes, including one with a scrollable list of infoboxes.

I've put a lot of time into it (probably too much) and it is taking away from article editing time. Anyone have any suggestions to fix the page so I can continue? Buffaboy ^talk 15:58, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata date errors

Seeing these on a few pages, suspect there are a lot more that will appear in the category as it updates. Lemery, Batangas, Orangeville, Ontario and Lake of Bays all have identical script errors due to trying to access date information to do with population data. But except 1 the pages haven't changed, the data hasn't changed, the script hasn't changed in the last couple of days in any way that I can see that would cause it. Has something changed in WP's Lua implementation that might be the cause?--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:17, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Try pulling the data directly in the article using #property; it returns nothing. Alakzi (talk) 03:14, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

This is an problem in the module, Module:Wikidata. The module fetches an timestamp from wikidata, but looks for the day in said timestamp in the wrong place. In line 240 in said module the module thinks that the day is "0:", which is actually a part of the time in the timestamp. This string then gives an error at line 247. Now, this error does not show up anymore because the module is no longer used on those pages.--Snaevar (talk) 15:54, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Manila, Parañaque (fixed those, using local values for now) and possibly a few more articles have the same broken function - not sure how to search for that specific module call, only a few of the 3000 Wikidata-transclusions (all with the mentioned date functionality) seem to be affected. GermanJoe (talk) 16:31, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

They appear in Category:Pages with script errors, seven now. It's only ones accessing dates, and seemingly only for census dates. I notice Lake of Bays has been fixed by removing the 'broken' code but it's not the code that's broken, that code had been in since March not generating errors. It also seems unlikely to be the data for the same reason, it mostly hasn't changed recently. The script was last modified by RexxS, and that change might be related as it’s to do with the date, but reverting (checked with a preview) doesn't seem to help. Besides it was seven days ago which is a long time for a script change to percolate to the error category.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 17:02, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

It would be a long time, in the normal course of things; but as Technical 13 noted elsewhere on this page, the job queue has been down for some days, so when a template or module is changed, the changes are only propagating through to articles as and when those articles are edited; and only at that point are the error messages shown and cats populated, one article at a time. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:16, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

(copied from Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2015 May 7:) Sorry, I've been out all day, campaigning in the UK General Election. It seems that the way Wikidata stores dates has changed in the last week. As you can see at Module talk:Wikidata #Module_talk:Wikidata, I dumped the claims for European green toad and showed that P574.datavalue.value.time was stored as " 00000001768-00-00T00:00:00Z" on 29 April, but if you try {{#invoke:Wikidata|Dump|claims}} today, you get the time as " 1768-00-00T00:00:00Z". Because we didn't have the mw formatting functions when I initially wrote the module, I relied on pulling year, month, day, etc. out of the zero-padded string using substrings at fixed positions. Of course now that the year is in the second to fifth characters, instead of in the ninth to twelfth characters, we get errors. Many thanks to Alakzi for spotting the problem and applying a fix. Using the current mw date format functions should harden the code against changes to the way data is stored and provide a less error-prone module in future. --RexxS (talk) 20:56, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Someone's fucked around with the UKIP page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party

This is a big issue given it is election day. I can't find the offending diff, anyone else, (quickly this article is getting lots of views today). EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 15:18, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

No clue how it was done, I tried reverting the last edit but that did nothing (feel free to undo that now that it's fixed)

ElectrifiedSpork (talk) 15:19, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Someone want to clue the rest of us in what you were seeing, even if not how? DMacks (talk) 15:21, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

The article starts to load normally, then is overlain or replaced in some way with a "Vote Labour" message and a big picture of Ed Milliband. DuncanHill (talk) 15:22, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes, several admins reverted and protected a few things to stop that. DMacks (talk) 15:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

http://i.imgur.com/3km8RFv.png is what it looked like. Care to explain what happened? Must've been someone with admin privileges. ElectrifiedSpork (talk) 15:25, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't an admin. And the accusation is insulting to the admins who have been cleaning up the vandalism. - X201 (talk) 15:46, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Someone edited a page that was transcluded, not that page itself. DMacks (talk) 15:28, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Template:UK_MP_links, among others, were the culprits. Are all protected now, so no WP:BEANS there. Offending users have been blocked. Mamyles (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

UK election page, too

The page 56th_United_Kingdom_general_election also shows that partisan political ad. Attempt to view the revision diff redirect to the same ad, so can't revert. The problem vanished as I logged in. This does not seem to be a birthday attack, reloading does not help. This is a big problem, needs a dev fast. HLHJ (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Purging the page fixed it, just the template vandalism. Template editor protection is implemented and IP's are getting proxy blocks. SHould be getting better. Keep and eye on them all though. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 15:35, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Related Changes in the left sidebar will help tack down this sort of vandalism. -- Gadget850 ^talk 16:38, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Another way is to install Anomie's script, see User:Anomie/previewtemplatelastmod, and then on the page with the problem, go for the "Edit this page" tab (not a section edit link). Go to the bottom, and under "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help):" (which you may need to expand), the most-recently edited templates and modules will be listed first. The culprit will probably be the first one listed. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:06, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Bug reporting. Excess whitespace, trying to render Mongolian script

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T98565

There's a browser bug that means that when I try to load any page with Mongolian text what I get is a large block of whitespace, for me specifically its a problem with Chrome running on Android 4.4.2. I've tried the pages with Firefox, and things seem to render just fine with Firefox.--KTo288 (talk) 21:48, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

How to adapt the languages list?

• I posted this question in the Miscellaneous section; they replied I should post it here in the Technical section. Anyhow they suggested it could be done by creating the CSS below. I tried but it doesn't work yet. Ceinturion (talk) 21:31, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

The list of language editions at the left of each Wikipedia page is a set of exotic languages that rarely contains the three languages that are useful for me (English, Dutch, German). Is there a way to adapt the list to my needs? Ceinturion (talk) 07:12, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

@Ceinturion: This is really a WP:VPT question. However, it's possible to selectively hide interlanguage links that you're not interested in using CSS, if you know the language codes; to hide all except a select few is also possible, but slightly more complicated - what we do is to hide them all and then selectively unhide the ones that you want to see. For example, to hide all except the links to the English, Dutch and German Wikipedias, which are language codes "en", "nl" and "de" respectively, you would use

/* Hide all interlanguage links - Vector, MonoBook and Modern skins */
li.interlanguage-link {
  display: none;
}
/* Unhide interlanguage links for English, Dutch and German - Vector, MonoBook and Modern */
li.interlanguage-link.interwiki-en,
li.interlanguage-link.interwiki-nl,
li.interlanguage-link.interwiki-de {
  display: list-item;
}

which would be added to Special:MyPage/common.css. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:12, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Or to meta:Special:MyPage/global.css to work at all wikis. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:26, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I tried both but it doesn't work yet. Any suggestions? Ceinturion (talk) 21:53, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

What is your browser and skin? For me in Firefox on Windows Vista it works in all skins except Cologne Blue. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:54, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I am using IE 11 on Windows 7, and skin Monobook. Neither did the changed common.css work on another browser (Chrome 42) and other skins (Vector, Modern, Cologne Blue) either. I clicked on (Ctrl) Reload. Ceinturion (talk) 08:53, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

All skins except Cologne Blue also work for me with IE 9 and Chrome 42 on Windows Vista. IE 9 is the latest version which runs on Vista. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:17, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

My code works for Vector, Monobook and Modern skins, in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and IE8. It doesn't work for Cologne Blue, because the "list" of interlanguage links is actually a single paragraph. In Cologne Blue, the links may be hidden and selectively unhidden, by using CSS based on the above - by altering all the li. to span. and the list-item to inline - that is, use

/* Hide all interlanguage links - Cologne Blue skin */
span.interlanguage-link {
  display: none;
}
/* Unhide interlanguage links for English, Dutch and German - Cologne Blue skin */
span.interlanguage-link.interwiki-en,
span.interlanguage-link.interwiki-nl,
span.interlanguage-link.interwiki-de {
  display: inline;
}

This is specific to one skin, so it's best placed in Special:MyPage/cologneblue.css; however, the result looks messy, because the pipes and non-breaking spaces between those links can't be hidden (unless we resort to JavaScript). It works in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and IE8. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Job queue

What's up with it? I started checking it when I got frustrated with links not updating. It was like 3 million (which I thought was very high), but then it steadily grew over the last week to current 15.7 million. That's almost half of Wikipedia's pages! What's going on? That does not sound like your run-of-the-mill slowdown. Renata (talk) 03:09, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Is someone needed to make 15 million edits? I'll do it. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:26, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

19.9 million now... I do agree that seems odd its growing so fast, but not knowing what it normally rests at I couldn't tell you if that is normal or not... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 14:28, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

• I'm poking in -operations on IRC to try and get the job queue turned back on. Apparently, it was accidentally disabled last week. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:33, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
  • User:Technical 13, it's still steadily going up. 21 million now. Renata (talk) 16:08, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Continued above in Very slow category population from stub templates. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 16:50, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
      • Filed as phab:T98621. --Glaisher (talk) 17:26, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Short footnotes not showing up in citation counts

I've taken to using {{sfn}} and Harvard style references in articles I'm heavily involved in, and ordinary <ref></ref> now for ordinary footnote-worthy side commentary. I notice that when I check articles I created on Special:NewPagesFeed the articles with just sfn's and no ref's are showing up as having "No citations". See for example John Elder (pastor) versus 7½ Cents. This doesn't actually fool patrollers. For all I know it's red meat that draws their attention. I assume it would not be hard to count {{sfn}} and its variants. Choor monster (talk) 11:25, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Not to mention pages that use parenthetical referencing. If it were a pure count of <ref>...</ref>, then even if {{sfn}} were taken into account, Actuary would fail: but it's a featured article. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:39, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

The point being that the feed is to help reviewers, not to do the job for them. The presence of a flag doesn't mean the article is bad; the absence doesn't make it good. If your article is good (as John Elder (pastor) very obviously is) then you have nothing to worry about. Relentlessly (talk) 16:08, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

I wasn't worried. But thanks for the comments.

Thinking of NPP, are redirects turned into articles patrolled? Choor monster (talk) 11:24, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

No, because they're not new pages. The patrolling will have been done when the redir was first created, if its creator had the autopatroller right; otherwise, at some point within the following thirty days. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:34, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

That makes sense, but it does seem like a loophole in the patrolling process. Choor monster (talk) 14:22, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Displaytitle with quotation marks

Currently Template:DISPLAYTITLE doesn't seem to have the quotation mark option and article titles that typically require quotation marks per manual style are displayed without them (e.g. "Marry the Night"). The quotation marks are not listed among prohibited characters at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions)#Forbidden_characters and I don't see any prior discussion of that at template's talk. In something like {{DISPLAYTITLE:"Marry the Night"}} the quotation marks are ignored and the title is displayed without them. Are there any actual technical restrictions to that or there were prior objections? Brandmeister^talk 15:44, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Unless the quotation mark is a part of the proper title itself, e.g. "Weird Al" Yankovic, I don't think you'd use them. Formatting text within the article body isn't the same as formatting an aviatrices title orper. Tarc (talk) 15:51, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Quotation marks which are not actually in the page's title are invalid per mediawikiwiki:Help:Magic words#Displaytitle. --Izno (talk) 18:01, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

If we wanted the page title to be "Marry the Night", we could move the page to that title. However, the Manual of Style does not recommend quotation marks in titles. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 18:29, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

There was a RFC, with a fairly large amount of input, about this just last January. You can see the consensus that was reached here Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 50#RFC: Quotation marks in displayed article titles. MarnetteD|Talk 18:49, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

“Only capitalization changes and replacing spaces with underscores are allowed”—according to that, italics and bold aren’t allowed either? Anyway, quotation marks can be added to a DISPLAYTITLE as <q>...</q>, but like Marnette said, it’s been discussed previously. At that time, there was no consensus to allow it. The primary argument against it, if I recall, was ambiguity over whether the extra characters were part of the article title or not, so you might accidentally link "Marry the Night" instead of "Marry the Night". There were also opposing arguments that could equally apply to the use of italics. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 18:25, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

The quote "Only capitalization changes and replacing spaces with underscores are allowed" refers only to character changes. Lots of text formatting can be done, for example italics, bold, color, size, font, positioning. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:19, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Table Alignment

Is there any way to set a table's alignment to ‘none’ so that it can be placed above floated multimedia objects that are above it in the source code (see Labour Party (UK)#Electoral_performance for an example of the problem I'm trying to solve)? Esszet (talk) 14:48, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

try using {{stack}} with the other objects. -- Gadget850 ^talk 14:54, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Esszet (talk) 22:40, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Variable.

Is someone here willing to help me make a variable for use in the Wikibreak template that I have on my user page? It's just one the checks the date that I last edited and gives it. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 18:34, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

That information is not available in wikitext. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:26, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

You can get as far as this, using the fact that Special:Contributions is transcludable:

28 January 2024

• 21:3621:36, 28 January 2024 diff hist 437 User talk:Tharthan →Rhoticism

AFAICT, Lua replaces special page transclusions by strip markers that only expand after Lua's part is done, so you can't just pass that code into a Lua-based string template to extract the date. Module:Module overview includes some code to directly expand such markers and manipulate the resulting HTML, but I haven't been able to reuse it in a way that works. SiBr₄ (talk) 22:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I know a fella who works with Lua. He might be able to help me. Thanks to SiBr4 for that useful bit. I will use that for now (I might even stick with it, it looks not too shabby!). Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 23:33, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Edit Tags

I just noticed that there is a new feature on Commons that allows users to edit tags on edits (Example)? I seem to remember reading about this somewhere, but what is the purpose and is it coming to en.wiki soon? If so, how will it be used? Sorry if this has already been asked... Thanks! EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 19:20, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I suspect that it will - English Wikipedia tends to get new MediaWiki versions a day or two after Commons. phab:T20670 might be relevant. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:53, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I found where you read it - Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 136#Tech News: 2015-17, under "Future changes". --Redrose64 (talk) 19:58, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Within the past few minutes, I noticed something the same thing on the English Wikipedia. Dustin (talk) 21:41, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Though I can see some benefit to removing tags if they're inappropriate, I'm not sure I see the benefit to editing or manually adding tags. I like knowing that tagged edits have been tagged as a result of a strict rule set (an edit filter) which can be checked and improved if it's not tagging the correct edits. Under what circumstances would someone want to add or edit a tag? If an edit is problematic surely we can just deal with it there and then. Sam Walton (talk) 23:01, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

It also seems that any user (unconfirmed accounts included) can edit tags - shouldn't we have some higher bar restricting this feature? Especially seeing as there doesn't appear to be any obvious way to track tag changes. Sam Walton (talk) 23:03, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Nevermind, I just read the original email (I should have RTFM), and it seems my concerns are largely unnecessary. Sam Walton (talk) 23:10, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I still don't understand the purpose here, I can click edit, look at the tags (ie. Possible libel or vandalism) and do absolutely nothing. Can anyone elaborate on what is the point of this? The email didn't really help. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 00:17, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Unrelated note, should the HHVM tag be marked as inactive now in Special:Tags? EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 00:17, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Should WP:Tags be updated? --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 01:52, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

So another little gadget that's useless / of little use to the community .... Why am I not surprised ?..... –Davey2010^Talk 02:17, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

This feature was implemented by a volunteer developer. [90]. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 02:28, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

If this feature is mainly to let bots and scripts add tags, and let experienced users remove false-positive tags, then why not have the checkboxes and edit tags button hidden by default, and let the experienced users unhide them with CSS (maybe as a gadget, and maybe unhidden by default for all admins)? - Evad37 [talk] 02:44, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah I feel like as it stands it serves only to really confuse new users (and experienced ones :p). Also, what is the point of removing false positive tags? Not only pointless you could spend days doing that and achieve nothing. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 02:48, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

The following CSS seems to hide it (though I would appreciate it if a more experienced coder would check)

/* == Hide tag editing button & checkboxes == */
input[name^='ids['],
.mw-history-editchangetags-button { display: none; }

- Evad37 [talk] 05:09, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I was the volunteer developer who implemented this, and I have to say I was never particularly comfortable with cluttering up people's history pages with a feature they are rarely likely to use. (Administrators won't really notice the difference, since they already see the column of checkboxes as part of the revision deletion feature.) Do you think the untagging feature should be restricted to sysops by default? Or should something different happen to it? — This, that and the other (talk) 10:09, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, restricting to sysops and removing the clutter for other editors seems like a good idea. In most cases, tags shouldn't be added or removed manually, as that defeats their purpose (software tracking and identifying potentially harmful edits). - Evad37 [talk] 12:51, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Currently, tags applied by the software (e.g. AbuseFilter tags and tags like "visualeditor") cannot be manually removed. That feature is yet to be implemented; the only tags that can be removed are ones that are "applied by users and bots", of which we appear to have none here yet. So until the feature becomes more useful, I would not oppose a restriction of the relevant permission to sysops. — This, that and the other (talk) 13:05, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Bots or scripts adding tags to their edits (presumably through the API) I can understand, but what would be the point of users manually adding tags (by pushing the edit tags button), and why should any of these "applied by users and bots" tags be easily removable by any user? - Evad37 [talk] 14:19, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Just give it to sysops. There's really no reason for users to be removing tags, and it just adds clutter. Kharkiv07^Talk 16:01, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Kharkiv07, just in case you missed it, not only is there no reason (yet) but also there are no tags to be added or removed, I have tried. I would say yes to hiding it until someone can come forward with a good use and management system. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 18:07, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

That's what I meant, strange as I said it, regardless thanks for the clarification. Kharkiv07^Talk 18:22, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I think this should be removed asap. To add that much clutter to an already-cluttered page needs a lot more justification than this has—or will ever have, even with more functionality. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:11, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree. It reminds me of the first Andy Griffith Show episode, where they erected a stop sign at a place where they intended to build a road someday. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:05, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

This appears to have been removed by someone responding to our concerns (thank you whoever you are). At least it's gone from my page histories, and I haven't done anything to make that happen. I don't know whether it would be necessary to log out/in to pick up the change. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:57, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

So does anybody knows what is going on...? Because I would really like to see them, they refuse to show for me. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:19, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Seems they have been removed, possibly centrally. Gone from Commons too. Wish they would occasionally tell us whats going on or keep an updates board... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 19:26, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

If you are an admin, the only difference on history pages was an extra button, adjacent to the existing Delete/undelete selected revisions button. I don't recall the wording. If you are not an admin, you got that extra button (level with the Compare selected revisions button, but positioned far right), plus a whole column of checkboxes just to the left of the time/date stamp. So the change was much more obvious for non-admins. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:30, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

@Edokter: phab:T97773 - the new features now hide themselves until an admin has set up some tags that can be added and removed. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:57, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

When was the WP:VPR discussion on this? ―Mandruss ☎ 21:13, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

This change was announced in m:Tech/News/2015/17. If you want to know what's happening to the software, you should subscribe and read it.

Volunteer devs aren't actually required to discuss their ideas for MediaWiki software in advance with this community (or any of the communities at the other other 800 WMF wikis). Having 800 discussions is just not practical. MediaWiki development is its own community. That community's discussions usually happen at mediawiki.org or on Phab:. You will find relevant links in the Tech/News announcement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Most of us here are volunteers, but the rest of us are required to get something resembling a community consensus before making controversial changes that affect everyone. MediaWiki development does not in any sense represent the larger community. You're speaking of how things are; while I don't much expect to change that, there's nothing wrong with objecting, calmly and constructively, when things are not as they should be. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:07, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I am also no longer seeing them. Thank you! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:43, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

• See original feature request. This was requested for bots and scripts, and admins when cleanup is required. Cenarium (talk) 15:14, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

See also discussion for global default at meta. The consensus on enwiki in the original discussion was to grant it to bots and sysops, which I'm also proposing as global default. Cenarium (talk) 15:18, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

• I personally see it as productive for TEs and AFs to also get the permissions needed to create and edit tags (managetags), and I've commented as such (or am about to) on every discussion I've seen that is relevant to this. It doesn't make sense that this wonderful new feature isn't accessible to EF people (who have been using tags long since before this was available to scripts and bots) and TEs who are more likely to create and maintain scripts and should be trusted enough to manage tags related to their scripts. I've also suggested something similar for if/when the new Gadgets 2.0 usergroup gets defined on MW: (IIRC). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 15:27, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Follow up discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Which_usergroups_should_be_allowed_to_add_and_remove_tags_.3F. Cenarium (talk) 00:34, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Question about the wiki markup on the Faroese Wikipedia

Hello. I am an administrator from the Faroese Wikipedia. There is a problem witht the wiki-markup codes which used to be between the edit window and the edit summary. They seem to have disappeared. This happened around two weeks ago or so. I have tried from different computers and different browsers, logged in or logged out, but the codes are not there, which makes it difficult to edit (without using the VisualEditor). I have created a lot of templates and modules lately by copy-pasting them from the English Wikipedia, some of them have been customized a bit by translating a few words to Faroese like they have done in the Danish/Norwegian or Swedish Wikipedias (those are the languages which I understand best), they seem to work as they are supposed to. Could my work with creation of templates and modules have caused the problem? Does anyone here know how it can be solved? How do we get back the wiki markup? Best regards EileenSanda (talk) 08:52, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@EileenSanda: Do you mean the CharInsert extension? On English Wikipedia, that is a gadget: "^(D) CharInsert: add a toolbar under the edit window for quickly inserting wiki markup and special characters (troubles?)", but Faroese Wikipedia has only one gadget, HotCat. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:45, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

On the Faroese Wikipedia:

• fo:Special:Version shows that the CharInsert extension is installed.
• fo:MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert.js and fo:MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js are not defined, so it is not being used as a gadget.
• fo:MediaWiki:Edittools is defined, so the non-Javascript version is used. This has not been changed since 2008.

-- Gadget850 ^talk 12:29, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I am not sure that I understand everything you write here. Yes, I mean the CharInsert which you write about here. I have copied the content from the pages you mention, nothing happened. But then I tried to copy the text from MediaWiki the MediaWiki:Edittools, and some of the codes are back now, but it looks untidy, it does not look correct. Can you see what could be missing or what could be wrong? How could I make it a gadget on the Faroese Wikipedia? EileenSanda (talk) 13:22, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Featured lists borked?

Featured lists are showing up as borked. Looking like this. I inspected the FL template and I see nothing has been changed recently... so what's up? Nohomersryan (talk) 00:37, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

List of Eagle Scouts is OK. The page is in the category Pages where template include size is exceeded, which probably is the problem. -- Gadget850 ^talk 00:47, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, List of The Simpsons episodes is in Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded. I guess image size code in {{Top icon}} is not evaluated and File:Cscr-featured.svg is therefore displayed at full size. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:48, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Broken anchor links

Templates {{anchor}} and {{vanchor}} (and probably others) can be used as mentioned at WP:ANCHOR. Several discussions have argued about where {anchor} should be placed:

• Before the heading (where subsequent editing will almost certainly damage or move the anchor).
• After the heading (then, clicking a link with the anchor sometimes does not show the heading at the target, although someone attempted to fix that at some stage by inserting some html for a vertical offset, I think).
• In the heading (which works perfectly for readers, but is ugly for editors, and which leads to broken links in diffs and history pages).

An IP (contribs) has changed a lot of anchors, and wants to do more. The IP has changed Template:Anchor/doc (three edits) and Template:Visible anchor/doc to say that {anchor} should not be used in a heading.

My question for VPT concerns whether there is any fix for the broken link issue in the last point above. Examples:

• This diff shows "(→{{visible anchor|Public address}}es: no reference)" at the top of the right-hand side, and the arrow is a link. However, the link is broken because the anchor portion is #.7B.7Bvisible_anchor.7CPublic_address.7D.7Des (should be #Public_addresses). The same edit is shown on the history as the last of these three, and the link in the arrow is similarly broken.
• This diff shows the same link problems using {anchor}.

I like using span tags for anchors, but they are a inexplicable mumbo-jumbo for subsequent editors. Is there a solution to the broken links problem? Could the problems, at least in principle, be fixed with something like a new magic word to add anchors? Johnuniq (talk) 08:18, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Mostly, the anchors I’ve changed were simply wrapping the section heading, i.e. == {{visibleanchor|Lorem ipsum}} ==, which is all kinds of wrong. But I have no objection to my other anchor edits being reverted if there’s no better alternative. I thought it was common for alternate anchors to be included beneath the heading, though. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 09:02, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

That's not something we need to consider here (and I agree that anchors-in-the-heading are a pain for editors). I gave an outline only to list the issues—what is needed is a technical solution that avoids the problems mentioned. Johnuniq (talk) 09:22, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree this is a problem that could have a technical fix. I'd like to note that if I link to the anchor Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section management, the result does not show the section heading and is likely to be confusing to the reader, but if I link to the shortcut MOS:SECTIONS, which is on the same line in the edit window, it goes to the right place. However in another example, this anchor Wikipedia:Manual of Style#US again doesn't show the heading, but neither does this shortcut MOS:U.S.. The wiki text looks the same as the previous example, but the performance is different. So sometimes it seems like {{Shortcut}} works better than {{Anchor}} but not always.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  17:28, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

MOS:US redirected to {{anchor|US}} rather than the section title. I’ve just fixed it to match the heading. I don’t think {{shortcut}} includes an anchor itself (in the case of US, it’d be a duplicate anchor anyway), but relies on redirects being properly set. Correction: {{shortcut}} does include anchors, but using the full shortcut name, e.g. WP:MOS#MOS:U.S. takes you to the shortcut box at MOS:US. Anyway, I think the behavior of {{anchor}} varies by browser; on mine (Mac/Safari 8.0.5), such links land slightly above the section headings, farther up than direct section links. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 17:58, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

You have probably seen Template talk:Anchor#Positioning. I gave up on that a year ago, but you are welcome to tackle it. -- Gadget850 ^talk 21:08, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

For completeness, the fourth solution is to make use of the implicit anchor created by the section name. The problem there is that if the section name is edited, it breaks links to the section. I have used this with a comment <!--There are links to this section from other articles. Changing this section name will break links.--> immediately after the section heading. Then I got lazy/clever and started using {{visible anchor}} in the heading is a self-documenting means of alerting others of incoming links. I appreciate that this is a bit subtle and has side effects and broke section links are not a disaster so I have not been reverting any of the changes made recently by 174.141.182.82. ~Kvng (talk) 16:09, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@Kvng: Thanks for the explanation! I’d been wondering about why someone would do that, makes a lot more sense now. But like I’ve said elsewhere, that practice results in invalid HTML and duplicate anchor names; perhaps <!-- {{va|headingname}} --> on the line following the heading, and then uncomment it when necessary? —174.141.182.82 (talk) 16:03, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Hidden comments (whatever they contain) placed after the section heading will break the pre-fill of the edit summary. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:20, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: When on the same line as the heading, this is true, the summary is blank. But with a comment on the first line after the heading, the prefill works as expected. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:17, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Last 20 footnotes not showing up in footnote section

In the article about Carly Fiorina, the last 20 footnotes are not showing up in the footnote section. Why?Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:45, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. There was a missing "}}" and, much further on, a mis-keyed "{{". I suspect that everything in between these was disappearing into the first broken footnote. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:52, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Great work, thanks.Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:56, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Clint is not on

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

---

I was concerned that, on doing a google search on "clinton", that, while the article on "Bill Clinton" came up as first result, that the article on "Hillary Rodham Clinton" did not come up in the first search pages and was not found. On a visit to the 5000 most accessed pages presented at User:West.andrew.g/Popular pages I was also surprised to find "Bill Clinton" ranked at 430 and "Hillary Rodham Clinton" ranked at 609. Search David Cameron and the article comes above news. Search Hillary Clinton and the article comes after news and then in second place.

Is there anything that can be done to, perhaps, give the Hillary article a more equal presentation? GregKaye 16:22, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

No. Let Google (and publicists, of course) worry about SEO; it's not our job. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:32, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

(Incidentally, .co.uk gives different search results than .com does; if you search for "clinton" on google.com, the Hilary page comes in second, right below the Bill page.) Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:37, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Writ Keeper, thank you. I just find it surprising, in a situation in which only one of the top twenty "clinton" related news articles is about Bill, that his article seems to be getting accessed more than her's. Ping also, Tarc GregKaye 17:50, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

I have a suggestion: Drop the damned stick. You made a ridiculous number of comments in the latest move request - almost to the point of responding individually to each person who expressed an opinion to which you disagree (and are currently doing the same at Talk:Sarah Jane Brown). This thread is WP:POINTy and basically forum shopping to pre-plan your next attack should the move request at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton not be decided in your favour. Frankly, based on current action alone, I think you might merit edit restrictions. At the very least, a one-comment restriction on future such move requests, if not entire topic bans. Resolute 18:03, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Resolute please try to assume good faith. Honestly and as I have said before, if I were able to "vote Hillary", I would do so. Please be aware that efforts to present encyclopedic information and efforts to give political support are two different things. The Hillary Rodham Clinton debate has closed. I am trying to give her better Wikipedia coverage. PLEASE AGF. What of my comments were unreasoned or unreasonable? Its not about things being done in anyone's favour. We are trying to present an encyclopedia.

Also perhaps have a look at the proposal at Talk:Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom#Propose changes to: List of spouses of British Prime Ministers and see how it fits with, I think, your stick preconceptions. GregKaye 18:32, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Are you sure she doesn't appear on the first Google page for you? For me Bill Clinton is the first result and Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first of four Wikipedia subresults under the Bill Clinton entry. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:36, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

When I search on clinton the address is:
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=clinton
I can then change this to:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=clinton
in the first case the results are:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton
• http://www.clintoncards.co.uk/ an ad I think
• news results
• https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton
• https://www.clintonfoundation.org/
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074826/Hillary-Clinton-fire-South-Carolina-old-white-rich-Republican-presidential-hopefuls-pile-Democratic-runner.html
• http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/clinton
• http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/hillary-clinton
• http://fusion.net/video/132240/watch-george-clooney-pledges-to-support-hillary-clinton-any-way-he-can/
• http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n03/jackson-lears/we-came-we-saw-he-died
• http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/
• http://www.vogue.com/865319/waiting-in-the-wings-an-exclusive-interview-with-chelsea-clinton/

in the second case the results are:

• news results
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton
• https://www.hillaryclinton.com/
• https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton
• https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/presidents/williamjclinton
• http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/hillary-clinton-2016-book-controversy-117774.html
• http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-fact-check-under-fire/article/2564125
• https://www.clintonfoundation.org/
• https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-presidential-center
• https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative

I live in Good Old Sussex by the Sea and so out of voting area but, all the same, I find the absence of the Hillary article and the, I think, surprisingly low ranking on in the top 5000 list to be potential cause for concern. GregKaye 18:54, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

You do know Wikipedia has no control over how Google choose to rank articles, right? Mogism (talk) 19:17, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

I do know, having written a handful of websites, that there are various ways to present content in relation to searchability. I have no idea as to how things are worked in Wikipedia. It just seems that something is going wrong somewhere. GregKaye 19:32, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Like I say, we don't deal with Google searches; that's Google's job, not ours. What you're describing is (as you know) search engine optimization, or SEO, and (as you probably also know) we not infrequently block people who engage in SEO manipulation on Wikipedia articles. This is no different. Let the search results fall where they will; it's not up to us to guess what people are searching for and to try to manipulate the results they get, and it's certainly not our place to try to artificially make Wikipedia content more prominent than other content in Google search results. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:43, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. I just am flagging up what I consider to be an anomaly. Perhaps its just another thing to gainfully grumble about. However, if someone here can address any potential issues, all well and good. GregKaye 20:13, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm in Denmark. In both your searches the Bill Clinton entry looks like below with Hillary as the first of four subresults. Doesn't Google show Wikipedia subresults in England? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:09, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Bill Clinton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United ...

Hillary Rodham Clinton - Chelsea Clinton - ‎Impeachment of Bill Clinton - ‎Pardons

Hmm interesting,when I search Clinton

Google.com

• news
• Bill Clinton Wikipedia
• Hillary Rodham Clinton Wikipedia
• Other crap

Google.co.uk

• Bill Clinton Wikipedia
• Clinton Cards
• news
• Other crap
• No Hillary Rodham Clinton page in the first 100 results I looked through

I have to admit that is really odd... It's almost Google UK has blocked it from that search, even if it wasnt the top result, it should be in the 100... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 00:29, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

EoRdE6 Taking another look at my .co.uk listing, the first item reads:

TY PrimeHunter as you indicate Hillary is presented as one of the site links in relation to Bill's article which still seems rough to me as, within the current news, Bill seems arguably to only be the third most newsworthy Clinton.

I started working through top level domains and then started to sequence results in line with American diaspora:

• https://www.google.com.mx/#q=clinton hrc as enlarged site link to Bill
• https://www.google.ca/#q=clinton hrc as small site link to Bill
• https://www.google.com.au/#q=clinton hrc as large site link to Bill
• https://www.google.co.nz/#q=clinton 1 news 2 Bill 3 Clinton, New Zealand 4 Hillary

Perhaps this is a common thing to happen even with US political families. It just seems that HRC is perhaps unavoidably disadvantaged in that she is associated with another famous family member. GregKaye 03:25, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

When checking google.co.uk, instead of searching for "Hillary Rodham Clinton", search for "Hillary Clinton" - British news services hardly ever use the "Rodham", except when reviewing her books. Even then, the use of this name is confined to the places where the book's author is shown against its title, for example compare Hard Choices by Hillary Rodham Clinton, review: 'a calculating tome' with Hillary Clinton book knocked off top of New York Times best sellers’ list. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:35, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

• Generally a person's personal site(s) will come up before the Wikipedia article; such is the case here. Also, if someone has been in the news hundreds of times a day in the past week or so, the news items will come up before the Wikipedia article; such is the case here. There's no way to force or guarantee that someone's wiki article will come up first, ever. It will generally come up in the top five, which is all that matters. In the case of David Cameron, he doesn't have a personal site that matters, and even though he just got reelected, he has been in that office for five years already, so isn't as newsworthy as Hillary Clinton's pressing news. Softlavender (talk) 09:59, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

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

Lua Parser on Commons to figure out date precision

I would like to perform a template merge per the discussion at c:Template talk:Taken on#Merge with Template:Taken in. I would like the new template to detect the precision of the date parameter to conform with language rules which differ based on said precision.

Unfortunately, the language rules can get pretty complex. For example, in English:

• If the precision is a week or longer, then we say taken in. Examples: Taken in 2015, Taken in May 2015., Taken in the second week of May, 2015.
• If the precision is down to the date, then we say taken on. Examples: Taken on May 10, 2015, Taken on 2015 May 10.
• If the precision is down to the minute or shorter, then a two-part sentence is required. Examples: Taken on May 10, 2015 at 4:45PM.

Workarounds like just using the word taken are fine in English, but apparently too clumsy for other languages. I am fine with workarounds like Taken at May 10, 2015 4:45PM" if necessary.

I would like to write the template in Lua, but I do not have any previous working knowledge of Lua. Any help would be appreciated. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 20:31, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

While not really related to what you're doing, Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation may be useful. If you have any questions about it, shout.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:15, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Created new navbox

I've created a new navbox, {{Wikipedia technical help}}

The inspiration was to help navigation to technical help pages, without increasing the size of {{Help navigation}}, which is too big already. Any comments would be appreciated. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 14:10, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-20

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

Recent changes

• You can now make charts and maps on your wiki with the new "graph" tool. If you have an old browser, you will see images instead. It uses a tool called Vega; you can learn how to use it and write help pages for your wiki. You can use the Vega edit tool to make charts and copy the code to your wiki. Charts and maps use complex code and you should put them into templates. In the future, you will be able to create charts with VisualEditor. [91] [92] [93]
• You can apply for technical jobs to develop tools for the community. [94]
• The logos of all wikis are now in a new place. It will make pages load faster. You can still ask to change the logo. You can also use local CSS for brief changes. [95] [96]

Problems

• There was a problem that caused slow editing. [97]
• Pages were sometimes removed from your watchlist in VisualEditor. This problem is now fixed. [98]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since May 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from May 12. It will be on all Wikipedias from May 13 (calendar).
• You can now use data from Wikidata on more pages. The page doesn't need to be linked to the Wikidata item. It works on a few wikis and more wikis will be added soon. [99] [100]
• You should get fewer errors when you add files to Commons. [101]
• When you use an external link to link to a wiki page, VisualEditor now converts it to a wiki link. [102]
• When you add a link in VisualEditor, you see pages that match what you type. It is now easier to see where they match. [103]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on May 13 at 18:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

16:00, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Book Creator Failure Message

The book creator function often fails because - Rendering process died with non zero code: 1 - what can I do? — Prsaucer1958 (talk) 16:49, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Failing to jump to article section

I typed [vs. low-energy surfaces] into the url bar and presses Enter but the page didn't jump to the section High-energy vs. low-energy surfaces. It does properly jump to that section if I instead type [[104]]. Blackbombchu (talk) 21:28, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Now Wikipedia has another glitch where the previous message I wrote in this section doesn't display the way it's supposed to according to the source code I typed? Blackbombchu (talk) 21:35, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

URLs can't contain spaces. Either percent-encode it as or (in Wikipedia) use an underscore. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:44, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Actually, he's complaining about the section after the # which would need to be dot encoded (anchor encoded). — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 21:52, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh yes. Different parts of a URL have different encoding mechanisms. But the main point is that spaces aren't allowed anywhere in a URL. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:34, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

How come the computer doesn't automatically convert the spaces into underscores like it does when I type "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cara Operations" then press Enter? Blackbombchu (talk) 23:15, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Because it doesn't know when you want the space vs. when you don't want the space. Unlike in a browser url bar, where it can make assumptions, about what users would input there. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:24, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

To your second q: double square brackets are for internal links. For external links, use single square brackets. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:45, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Never finishes loading

My problem came up a week or so ago and was deemed to be phab:T66721. Pages just don't finish loading, or if they do, it takes over a minute of spinning blue "loading" circles, with no apparent change. Sometimes (less than half the time), a forced reload worked.

The proposed workaround was to double the local storage. I did that, but it still (almost) never finishes loading pages! While I'm typing this, it says "Transferring data from upload.wikimedia.org". Reading a diff on a talk page gives me "Transferring data from commons.wikimedia.org".

This only happens to me in Firefox 37/Mac OS 10.10. In Safari 8 (different account, probably fewer scripts) I don't have this problem. Any ideas what I should try next? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem with Firefox 37.0.2/Windows 7 and have noticed this oddity occurring myself. What user scripts/gadgets are you using? I have a sneaking suspicion it's one of them but I want to see if there's overlap first. --Izno (talk) 04:53, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

This happens to me too! I switched from Firefox to Chrome for this very same reason, it still didn't stop. I'm currently on Chrome 41.0.2272.118/Linux. I tried commenting out all my scripts too, didn't work. I concluded that it was my network problem but now seeing this post makes it more confusing. It seems to be random, some days it's horrible while on others it works fine. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:33, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I had this a while back and it was due to having the reflinks script in my Custom JavaScript page. Try removing that text and see what happens. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 13:15, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that I have reflinks installed. User:WhatamIdoing/common.js and User:WhatamIdoing/vector.js show the local lists, and m:User:WhatamIdoing/global.js has the global list. Additionally, I have 17 gadgets turned on, which I believe differs from the default by adding ImageAnnotator, "Open external links in a new tab/window", Twinkle, suppressing fundraising banners, HotCat, "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article", "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page", "Add a toolbox link to reload the current page with the system message names exposed" and "Enable tracking bugs on Phabricator using the {{tracked}} template". It looks like I also removed DRN's form and CharInsert (I wonder why I did that?).

I don't have this problem at de.wp or fr.wp, so it's probably something in the local lists. Does anyone see anything suspicious in these lists, or does anyone else have this problem and see something unusual that we have in common? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:39, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

User:Izno/common.js, User:Izno/vector.js. Gadgets-wise I've got Twinkle, Reference Tooltips, Watchlist Geonotice, DRN form, CharInsert, refToolbar (as a gadget and separately loaded--awkward), new section tab -> , User:Pyrospirit/metadata, radio buttons for maps (?), Mark navigation links to FA/GA.

So, commonly, only rater.js, Twinkle, Assessment colors.

Could be due to the deprecation of the importScript function, though I find that unlikely (obviously all the scripts load still). --Izno (talk) 03:51, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@Ugog Nizdast: Do you have any of those three? --Izno (talk) 03:53, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Let's see I've commented out most, the remaining are link classifier and sectionlink (User:Ugog_Nizdast/vector.js), and among the gadgets popups, WikiEd, and Twinkle. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 16:56, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I had possibly the same issue a couple of days ago and commenting out rater.js seemed to resolve it. Nthep (talk) 17:49, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I can live without rater.js in the long run. Does anyone have any idea why that might be the cause? (I'll go remove it and check in a few minutes, but...) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Update: Removing User:Kephir's script appears to have solved the page-loading problem. I guess I could put it back when I want to run through article assessments again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:56, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Extension:InputBox

Hello. I am trying to use Extension:InputBox (type=create). I want if you put an article name in the box, a new page will showed to be create with the name Talk:ARTICLENAME/zzz (zzz is an example, something that always be the same for all articles). The problem is that the inputbox will not be in articles talk page, but somewhere else. Is that possible? Xaris333 (talk) 03:06, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, it's possible. Please be more specific since sub-pages are turned off it article space, so they're pretty much off in article talk as well except in very few exceptions. — {{U|Technical 13}} (e • t • c) 05:18, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Technical 13 I want to apply it not in english wikipedia. Well, in greek wiki we have subpages for Wikipedia:Peer review (greek el:Βικιπαίδεια:Κριτική λημμάτων). For example, for the article MAD TV (Greece) we create Talk:MAD TV (Greece)/Peer review (in greek of course Συζήτηση:MAD TV (Greece)/Κριτική λημμάτων). The inputbox will be in Wikipedia:Peer review page (greek version). How can I do this? Xaris333 (talk) 05:33, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@Technical 13: Subpages are not "pretty much off in article talk as well": they are fully enabled, and some things - such as the to-do and FAQ features, talk page archiving, peer reviews and GA reviews - rely on that. For instance, at Talk:Barack Obama, go for Page information, and in that, click Number of subpages of this page. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:41, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

What about my problem? :) What do I have to put in parameter prefix? Xaris333 (talk) 09:51, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Does prefix=Συζήτηση: not do what you want? --Redrose64 (talk) 10:01, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

You can explain with english words. Well, no. I am in Wikipedia:Peer review page. I want to put in the inputbox the word "MAD TV (Greece)" to create "Talk:MAD TV (Greece)/Peer review". Xaris333 (talk) 10:11, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

User:Redrose64: Xaris is looking for an suffix, not an prefix.--Snaevar (talk) 10:18, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think you can make a suffix. You could load a default text in the box and tell the user to enter the article name at the start. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:27, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I can use this if there is no something else. Thanks. Xaris333 (talk) 17:01, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Hmm... I'm not making any promises here, but I think that you want to look at what I did for m:Template:StrategyButton. If you change the "subst:REVISIONUSER" to "subst:BASEPAGENAME", and customize the text around it to construct the desired talk-page link, then you might end up with something that works for you. I'm thinking this might work for you because I started by trying to use Inputbox, and eventually ended up discovering the ability to pass parameters in the URL. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:12, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Search page doesn't return the most recent diff in the summary

Special:Search doesn't show the most recent diff in the results returned. So a search for Lois Lerner showed this diff as the result thus perpetuating the serious abuse that had been reverted over a week ago. A null edit to the article by me has stopped this by the search now returning the edit after the revert but is this a one off or does the search engine not pick up the most recent diff for any article? Nthep (talk) 10:51, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Nthep, I don't know much about this, but I suspect that this problem is due to the job queue having stopped last week. I'm assuming that it will return to normal (which is usually slightly delayed) soon. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Graph

Thanks to the work of Yuri Astrakhan and many others (see announcement), we can now make live graphs on this wiki:

This is a very powerful toolset based on the Vega visualization language. The main limitation at present, is that graphs can't be included from a central repository (Commons). See mw:Extension:Graph for more information. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:07, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Very nice! Though it seems to require HTML5-capable browsers (by way of <canvas>). The page mentions Graphoid for fallback support. Are there plans to install that as well? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 11:26, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

The graph should work on all browsers, including the ones without JavaScript. Graphoid service is alive and kicking, but it is only used as a fallback for older browsers. Moreover, I plan to switch to Graphoid-only rendering everywhere except during the editing in the upcoming weeks. As for including for commons - Graphs are no different from any other templates, thus we really should make it possible to include any templates from Commons. Is there a phabricator task for that? --Yurik (talk) 12:08, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Started Help:Graph as a stub. -- Gadget850 ^talk 12:15, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@Yurik: There's the ancient phab:T6547 and phab:T11890... — This, that and the other (talk) 12:29, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

@This, that and the other: There is a wiki-editable github tutorial on vega. We might want to either copy it, or direct editors to it. Thx for the links. --Yurik (talk) 12:35, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

P.S. @This, that and the other:, you can already host all data on the Commons - graphs can pull all data sources and impages from external URLs (any Wikimedia site). The first 3 examples pull data from the action=raw links. So I would recommend hosting world/contry maps, and data blobs on Commons, and only define graphs templates that use them locally. --Yurik (talk) 13:44, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T98689

No graph shows in IE8 though. Viewing the source shows a script being called, I it probably fails to load due to a JavaScript error:

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C)
Timestamp: Sat, 9 May 2015 14:36:10 UTC

Message: Expected identifier
Line: 294
Char: 230
Code: 0
URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=es5-shim,oojs|ext.cirrusSearch.loggingSchema|ext.cite,eventLogging,graph,inputBox,navigationTiming|ext.eventLogging.subscriber|ext.gadget.DRN-wizard,ReferenceTooltips,charinsert,featured-articles-links,refToolbar,switcher,teahouse|ext.imageMetrics.loader|ext.uls.eventlogger,interlanguage|ext.visualEditor.targetLoader|ext.wikimediaEvents.statsd|jquery.checkboxShiftClick,getAttrs,hashchange,hidpi,highlightText,makeCollapsible,mw-jump,placeholder,scrollTo,suggestions|mediawiki.action.view.postEdit|mediawiki.cookie,hidpi,searchSuggest,template,toc|mediawiki.page.ready|mediawiki.ui.icon|mmv.Config,HtmlUtils,bootstrap|mmv.bootstrap.autostart|mmv.logging.ActionLogger,DurationLogger,Logger|schema.NavigationTiming,Search,UniversalLanguageSelector&skin=vector&version=20150509T142626Z&*

And in debug mode:

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C)
Timestamp: Sat, 9 May 2015 14:38:43 UTC

Message: Unexpected call to method or property access.
Line: 11139
Char: 6
Code: 0
URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=jquery,mediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20150509T003149Z

Message: Could not set the href property. Invalid property value.
Line: 11531
Char: 6
Code: 0
URI: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?debug=true&lang=en&modules=jquery,mediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20150509T003149Z

I'm not getting these errors on other pages. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 14:41, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Odd. I just tested IE 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. The graph showed on all but IE8. -- Gadget850 ^talk 16:15, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

IE8 works in Compatibility View mode. -- Gadget850 ^talk 16:24, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't work with IE, because the vega library defines: "vg.true = function() { return true; };" aka, they use a reserved name (true) for a property identifier, which isn't supported in older browsers. In IE 6 and 7 it probably just falls back to the pre-rendered image. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:35, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I think you are right about IE6 and 7, as it is a static image. -- Gadget850 ^talk 17:28, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Can this be fixed in Vega, or at least configured so that IE8 falls back to the static image? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:08, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Well that would be the plan, but it's not too simple. Requires a lot of shimming and changes to the vega lib. I played around a bit with it today, but couldn't get it working yet. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:50, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Please add IE8 bug to phabricator. I have made a list of the serious known issues at Extension:Graph. Thanks! --Yurik (talk) 21:48, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

TheDJ already did, see the Tracked box above. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:59, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

The software is great and the result is sensational, but usage is difficult. The above amazing example requires 230 lines of formatted text—it's only 1445 characters in a single line after omitting whitespace, but that's pretty ugly. (BTW, while checking that, I had to enable scripting to see a preview.) I doubt many people would want to put that directly in an article—the graph would be put in a single-use template and transcluded. By contrast, see Module:Chart#Examples for a very simple format that editors could readily master and place in the wikitext of an article. I suspect that reproducing the example bar chart at Module:Chart with the graph extension would require much more arcane wikitext. The author of the chart module has suggested that a module might be written to transform the input from an "editor friendly" format to the format required by the graph extension. An alternative for the future might be for the extension to also accept simple tables of data to produce some pre-formatted graphs/charts using defaults. Johnuniq (talk) 05:16, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

If you want to know more, then there's an upcoming talk about the new Vega-based graphing system this week. It's 13:00 PDT on Thursday, 14 May, which I think works out to 21:00 UTC. If you're interested, the link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7DTn9jHnI0 That link might work afterwards, too; they often record these kinds of talks. There should be a demo as well as some technical information about how the system is built. Please share this information with anyone (WikiProject Mathematics? Mapping people?) who may be interested. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:15, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Need help to understand how wikipedia works

Hey!

I was wondering if you could help me understand how Wikipedia articles work with Google? For instance, when I look up "Charles Correa" on Google, I see a box on the right side of my google search results, which shows information extracted from wikipedia. However, this doesn't happen when I search for "Bimal Patel" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimal_Patel) Infact, this wikipedia page does not even show up in the first few results unless I search "Bimal Patel Wiki/Wikipedia"

Could you please explain what the logic here is? I was referred to your page for my query by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Just_Chilling

ParizadBaria (talk) 03:43, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

You seem to be asking how Google generates its content - which is something that Wikipedia can't answer. We have no control over what they do, or whether a Wikipedia article appears in a search at all. It probably depends mostly on how often it is searched for, but Google don't reveal exactly how their search results are generated. As for information 'extracted from Wikipedia', quite often only part of it is - which can be frustrating when people blame us for things Google gets wrong, when the error is theirs. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:53, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Google often serves different search results to different people. It may depend on their country. Bimal Patel is the fourth result for me on a Google search for Bimal Patel. We have a stock answer when people apparently blame us for errors made by Google:

Are you by any chance referring to a photo or text shown to the right of a Google search? Google's Knowledge Graph uses a wide variety of sources. There may be a text paragraph ending with "Wikipedia" to indicate that particular text was copied from Wikipedia. An image and other text before or after the Wikipedia excerpt may be from sources completely unrelated to Wikipedia. We have no control over how Google presents our information, but Google's Knowledge Graph has a "Feedback" link where anyone can mark a field as wrong. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:07, 12 May 2015 (UTC)