Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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Green watchlist bullets do not turn blue

Today is Thursday. And now when I visit a link from my watchlist, and then go back to the watchlist, the green bullet stays green instead of turning blue. This problem occurs even for deleted redlinked pages. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Wow, you just beat me here by like 3 minutes. I've noticed this a couple times today, but in both cases, my watchlist had green bullets for articles in which I had made the most recent edit. If I actually go back to the article, the bullet will go back to blue. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 23:40, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

(Well, now that I say that, a couple of them are now insisting on staying green, even though some have gone back to blue, so I dunno). –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 23:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

They change to greyish cyan (specifically,   #638c9c) for me. But then I use MonoBook skin. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:56, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I've been having this problem on other wikis too, including en.wiktionary and en.wikivoyage. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:54, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

They look OK to me in monobook and in vector. Do you have "Use non-JavaScript interface" set in your prefs? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:24, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

(e/c) GeoffreyT2000, there have been some changes in the watchlist logic this week. Can it be that they work, but are not updated as quickly as you are used to ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm a monobook user and have "unseen changes" set as a filter and "expand watchlist to show all changes" set in preferences. Until recently, if I viewed a change and returned to the watchlist, that change would no longer be showing. Now the item remains stuck in the watchlist. This would seem to be the same problem as above. I think they might clear on browser restart, but I'm not sure on that point – I'll try that in a moment and report.SpinningSpark 13:13, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm finding that on all the WMF wikis where I'm active, pages are only inconsistently marked as read after I look at the changes. I'm pretty sure this problem started less than 48 hours ago. It's really frustrating and makes my watchlist hard to use. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:22, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@TheDJ: If this is a timing issue, then it is persistent for an extraordinarily long time. Yesterday, I had items in my watchlist that hadn't cleared after several hours. I eventually dealt with it by "mark all pages visited" nuclear option. There does seem to be some inconsistency - I was looking at the possibility that it was connected with the number of unseen edits on an individual page or whether one viewed the page or the diff, but for the last couple of hours it been somewhat better behaved and I didn't get anywhere with that. SpinningSpark 14:41, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I now think the way it works is this: if there are multiple unseen edits on a page and the one you look at is not the first one made, then that edit will get stuck on your watchlist, even if you then go back and view the first one, which will also stay stuck. Those who don't have their watchlist expanded to show all edits don't have a choice; they are going to view the last edit and it will stick on the watchlist unless it was the only one made. If you actually make an edit to the page it's taken off the watchlist. SpinningSpark 19:13, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

To me it seems much more random and inconsistent than that. Sometimes editing the page doesn't even solve the problem—I just edited wikivoyage:Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub, and my own edit (along with the other recent edits to the page) is still displaying on my watchlist as if I haven't yet visited it. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:04, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm seeing my own edits that I've just made show up on my watchlist too, whereas previously they hadn't. I often can't clear those pages from the watchlist, even if I visit the current incarnation of the page or view the last diff. Has been happening since 10am Pacific for me. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:26, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Can anything be done about this? Who can I contact to fix this problem? It is still extremely frustrating. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Mx. Granger: see mw:How_to_report_a_bug. Please share the bug number here for other's benefit after creating. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:14, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I suspect this might be fixed with this change. It is a followup change that is part of phab:T188801. Hopefully it can be deployed asap. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:36, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem. If I visit a page any way other than by clicking on it on my watchlist, it's not marked as read. TheDJ, Neither of those links are working for me. Is that broken too? Natureium (talk) 18:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

There's an issue at the moment with, among other things, phabricator. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:09, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Also an issue: if there's a long list of unseen changes, and I compare the oldest unseen and the subsequent, say, 3 changes (but there are more than 3 changes unseen after that), then return to the article History, it lists all revisions as seen. Definitely not what should be happening, because I haven't seen those other revisions. —Joeyconnick (talk) 02:41, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed this issue too. It doesn't interfere with my workflow, so I haven't brought it up, but I can imagine it might bother other editors. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:53, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

It seems they overfixed this, as I now have the opposite: a page which is marked as "visited" now stays marked as "visited" even after new edits have been made to it (I don't use the green and blue, I use the blue circle / filled blue circle version, FWIW). Fram (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Looking at this further, it seems as if a page stays "read" until a new section is posted, while in the past it changed to unread as soon as anything was posted. I don't know if this change was deliberate or not, but I prefered the old way, certainly since there is no per section watchlisting. Fram (talk) 16:21, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

For me this issue seems to be solved. I haven't encountered the new problem Fram describes. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:23, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Seems over for me too, thank goodness!!! —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:44, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I have the opposite problem: after refreshing my watchlist, there are new diffs marked as having being visited, even though I have not. If I go to the history page then they are correctly marked as unread. Has anyone seen this problem? isaacl (talk) 21:21, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Typing consecutive spaces in the Wikipedia iOS app editor causes NBSPs, which can break templates

Earlier topic heading: "Spaces changed to NBSPs (by the iOS app), breaking template parameter assignments"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T218993

Copied to here from WP:VPM by Pipetricker 15:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC):

What happened here? Some spaces seem to be replaced by spaces of a different kind. After this edit, the items type and fatalities are no longer displayed in the infobox. --FredTC (talk) 07:54, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Those were "raw" (meaning not encoded like   or  ) non-breaking spaces (NBSP), and those don't work as separators in template parameter assignments like regular spaces do, hence the disappearing items – same thing happens if you replace those spaces with  . --Pipetricker (talk) 10:22, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

But how did such spaces get there? I have no way to detect that they are there. When I edit the version I mentioned, and select/copy (ctrl-C) the code for the infobox, then paste it to a notepad.exe file, I cannot see a difference. Can I produce it by accident? How? --FredTC (talk) 11:13, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Per the tag of the edit you linked to, in this case the culprit was the official Wikipedia iOS app.

If you want to report this as a bug in the iOS app, go to mw:Wikimedia Apps/Team/Bug reporting.

Some text editors highlight NBSPs (for example LibreOffice Writer) or have an option to do so (the Show all formatting marks, ¶, option in Microsoft Word). There are feature requests for MediaWiki at Phabricator:

• T96666: Make non-breaking spaces (nbsp) visible in VisualEditor
• T181677: Implement syntax highlight for U+00A0 (no-break space, nbsp)

--Pipetricker (talk) 15:10, 15 March (UTC), 23:26, 09:38, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I found another occurrence of this (another iOS app edit) and have submitted a bug report:

• T218993: Typing consecutive spaces into the iOS section editor converts every other space to a NBSP, which can break templates

--Pipetricker (talk) 14:25, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I replied to "Can I produce it by accident? How?" at WP:VPM. --Pipetricker (talk) 16:48, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The translation tool also inserts the 160 nbsp character which I have removed several times while cleaning another of its bizarre habits, most recently at diff. Johnuniq (talk) 23:01, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject Yorkshire clean up list

Hello all, sorry about this but I am a complete novice when it comes to this stuff, hence why I am asking for help..... The clean-up list for WP Yorkshire has been going to a blank page with 502 Bad Gateway error for about five days now; anybody any ideas how to resolve this? Is it as simple as repointing the link? Help! *Clean up list is here. Thank you and regards. The joy of all things (talk) 19:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

This has been sorted. Thanks anyway. Regards. The joy of all things (talk) 06:29, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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

Changes later this week

• When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [1][2]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [3]
• Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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

19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

About the "Partial blocks": My team isn't involved, so my information may be out of date, but this is supposed to let admins block someone from ≤10 specifically named pages, or from one namespace (e.g., no direct editing of articles or templates), so it might be useful for enforcing some types of TBANs in software. If the English Wikipedia wants to try this out, then I believe that the team will need proof of community consensus, and that if you don't specifically request it, then it won't be offered here until most of the other wikis have tried it out first (because scale). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Being able to block editing based on one or more categories would be absolutely aces for topic bans.--Jorm (talk) 19:37, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

That team has talked about it, but hasn't figured out how to make it happen yet. I suggested once that they consider planning for hidden cats like "Category:Pages covered by ArbCom case Example", rather than a regular content cat such as "Category:Cancer" (which might be added or removed by people who didn't understand the related effects). Of course, it wouldn't be perfect (for example, if you're banned from editing about a subject, then you're banned from creating pages on that subject, too, even though those new pages won't be in any category yet), but it might be helpful overall. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Another danger is someone adding or removing the category to screw around with what someone else's block covers. True, in most cases that would lead to a swift block for the user/IP doing the screwing-around, but we do have plenty of wikilawyers around who might take "broadly construed" pretty broadly... Anomie⚔ 02:14, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

List of pages using multiple infoboxes

Is there any list of pages using multiple infoboxes? What does the Wikipedia policy say about that? Capankajsmilyo^{(Talk | Infobox assistance)} 15:33, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: I don't know of such a list. Normal wikitext searches won't work for this because most child infoboxes also have names beginning with "infobox".

I don't think there are any policies that would directly affect infoboxes in this way. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes does not have any guidance on this, and the language implies (but does not explicitly say) that one infobox is the default. Regardless, as you've probably noticed, in practice there are a number of pages which include more than one infobox, often to describe multiple topics or entities covered in the same article (e.g. Great Belt Fixed Link), or to separate information into groups (e.g. Georgetown University). Jc86035 (talk) 14:35, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

This search which times out (for probably obvious reasons) is a short list of some multi-infobox pages. --Izno (talk) 01:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

• Do we need multiple infoboxes in these articles, especially after |module=? Capankajsmilyo^{(Talk | Infobox assistance)} 06:00, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  Not all infoboxes permit nesting in that manner. Then there are articles with two independent infoboxes because they deal with two different objects or two different events, that share an article because they have certain things in common, such as location - for these, nesting would not be appropriate. For example, Manchester Piccadilly station where there is one in the lead and another at Manchester Piccadilly station#Piccadilly tram stop. Then there is Rail accidents at Morpeth which has five, none being in the lead. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way to have a vertical 'no wrap'

If you have something like

• Header1
  • Item 1
  • Item 2
  • Item 3
  • Item 4
  • Item 5

• Header 2
  • Item 1
  • Item 2

• Header 3
  • Item 1
  • Item 2
  • Item 3

and you zoom at different levels, you will often have lists broken up over multiple columns. Is there a way to have everything on Header 1/Header 2/Header 3 kept together, much like {{nowrap}} prevents things from spilling over multiple lines, so you have something like

Header1 Item 1 Item 2 Item 3 Item 4 Item 5 Header 2 Item 1 Item 2

Header 3 Item 1 Item 2 Item 3

or

Header1 Item 1 Item 2 Item 3 Item 4 Item 5

Header 2 Item 1 Item 2

Header 3 Item 1 Item 2 Item 3

depending on your zoom level. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:26, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I think using Template:No col break should do it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to work. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:52, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Actually, it works in Chrome, but has some issues in Firefox. Does the nocolbreak class need tweaking in MediaWiki:Common.css? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:01, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Request for testing and feedback: Automated article section recommendations

The Wikimedia Research team is developing a new method for automatically recommending sections to add to stub articles. This method uses machine learning to suggest sections that could be added to an article, based on the sections that exist in other articles on similar topics.

We think this method could be useful for helping new editors find useful onboarding tasks to do. But before we build anything, we need to test the quality of the recommendations.

We are looking for experienced editors to evaluate these recommendations and provide feedback to help us improve them. We have built a testing tool that makes it easy to provide quick, survey-style feedback on the quality of the recommendations, and we are also interested in more detailed feedback on the project feedback talkpage.

If you are interested in giving us feedback, please get started by reading the instructions here and then start rating articles!

If you have questions about the project or more general feedback, you can reach us here.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Morgan & Diego Saez-Trumper, Wikimedia Foundation Research

Jmorgan (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

BRFA for Xinbenlv_bot

Dear Technical Wikipedians

FYI

I would like to ask for your opinion on a BRFA I am applying for m:User:Xinbenlv bot.

(by the way, should I use {{rfc}} instead?)

Xinbenlv (talk) 22:46, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

@Pipetricker:, actually this is a global bot so the main page is in m:User:Xinbenlv bot

Behavior of settlement infobox

I noticed that the Template:Infobox settlement has two population fields: population_total, and population_density_km2. A person asked a related question at the help desk and when trying to answer the question, I noticed that these aren't text fields, and so you can't put a year in parenthesis ex: (2019) after the values, in case they are from different years. I tried to add citations after the numbers, and population_total allows it, but if I try to put a citation after population_density_km2, the field disappears. Is this the intended behavior? The article I tested this with is Jeju City if you want to see if you can duplicate this. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 00:34, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox settlement is active. You can ask questions there. Some numeric infobox parameters are used for calculations, e.g. conversion between km² and sq mi, or density = population/area. This requires pure numbers (commas may be stripped but not always). If they are not numbers then calculations may be omitted or produce errors, or the parameter may be ignored. If population_density_km2 is set to auto then it's calculated from population_total and area_total_km2 so those parameters cannot have a reference in this case. population_note can be used for a reference. If the infobox cannot convert density between km² and sq mi then it appears to omit the field. I suppose it could be coded to just output whatever was put in and hope it makes sense. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks PrimeHunter. Good explanation. 15:11, 22 March 2019 (UTC)TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)}

@Timtempleton: This is why the |population_as_of= parameter was provided. There is also |population_footnotes= for the reference, and |population_note= should additional text be necessary. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:50, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Some recent examples of fixing population problems can be seen at Template talk:Infobox settlement#Merge problems. Johnuniq (talk) 23:05, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Bug in timestamps - messages from the future :D

See File:Future - Bug in MediaWiki timestamps.png Posts available at my talk page for review (perm diff). Lol. I have time-travelling students :D --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:15, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Piotrus, this is not in the wikisource though. Are you using the Comments in local time-gadget ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:37, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

But the UTC time in the source is in the future. It's from a new user. I guess they haven't learned to sign with four ~~~~ which adds a time stamp. They probably wrote the time manually in their own time zone and copied "(UTC)" from another post without knowing the meaning. Maybe their teacher is to blame :D PrimeHunter (talk) 10:51, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Template:Popular pages

The Template:Popular pages does not appear to be generating monthly reports on Wikipedia:WikiProject Civil Rights Movement in the Statistics section. User:Mr.Z-man does not appear to be active. Does this bot continue to operate? If yes, then how do I generate monthly reports. Mitchumch (talk) 12:52, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: Mr.Z-man's system has been superseded by meta:Community Tech/Popular pages bot. I have added WikiProject Civil Rights Movement with Special:Diff/888984428. Note there is also toolforge:massviews, e.g. [4]. — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:36, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Changes not being marked as read immediately

Seems to have started a few days ago. If I view a diff for a change made on whatever page, it still shows up as bold in my watchlist. Amaury (talk | contribs) 13:26, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Looks like it's taking 6 or 7 minutes for the read marker to be applied. Amaury (talk | contribs) 13:39, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

See also § Green watchlist bullets do not turn blue. It's definitely been going on for days now. —Joeyconnick (talk) 18:48, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

@Amaury: I find that if you remove the affected article from your watchlist temporarily (remove it, then add back ... with that "star" by the read, edit and view history tabs), it will clear the bold. Still annoying, but that's one workaround. MPFitz1968 (talk) 07:02, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Further customizing comments in local time

Resolved

 – I cross-posted this at Wikipedia talk:Comments in Local Time‎ because I wasn't sure where I would get a response faster. I've gotten help there as well, and since that's the more appropriate venue, I'm going to close this to keep discussion to one place. Special thanks to PrimeHunter for responding here. Amaury (talk | contribs) 20:21, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I have the following in my vector.js: LocalComments = { dateDifference: false, dateFormat: 'mdy', timeFirst: false, twentyFourHours: false, dayOfWeek: false, dropDays: 0, dropMonths: 0 };

This changes signature display for me from 2:21 pm, 9 March 2019, Saturday (12 days ago) (UTC−8) to March 9, 2019, 2:21 pm (UTC−8). I want to further customize it to capitalize the AM/PM and remove the time zone (UTC -X), since I know that all times are in my time zone of Pacific. Is that possible? CC: Redrose64. They directed me here after I asked them on their talk page here here. Amaury (talk | contribs) 05:38, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

The gadget uses MediaWiki:Gadget-CommentsInLocalTime.js which loads User:Gary/comments in local time.js. You could disable the gadget in preferences, copy the code to User:Amaury/comments in local time.js with a few changes, and load it with mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Amaury/comments_in_local_time.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript'); in your vector.js. It looks like the only needed changes are ' am' : ' pm' to ' AM' : ' PM', and remove two + ' (UTC' + utcOffset + ')'. You would not get future changes to the gadget. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:19, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Three minutes is extremely short to wait before cross-posting a non-urgent issue. You got the same code change in both places.[5] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Amaury: Yes, I suggested you could ask at Wikipedia talk:Comments in Local Time ... if the gadget's talk page isn't fruitful, you may get better luck posting at WP:VPT. Comments in Local Time isn't on my watchlist, so at first I didn't realise that you had posted in both places. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

New Tool: Whodunnit

I just threw together a git blame-like tool to help visualize who the text on a page came from. It could be useful for cleaning up after problematic editors, or just for the curious. It's still fairly WIP, but it works well enough. It's available at toolforge:whodunnit; the source is here. Gaelan 💬✏️ 06:57, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Don't we already have WP:WIKIBLAME for this? It's linked from each page history. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:09, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Redrose64, not quite the same thing—WikiBlame searches for a specific phrase, while my tool displays the text of the page, color-coded by the user that added it (and lets you hover over a piece of text to see the specific edit). Gaelan 💬✏️ 15:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Gaelan, See wikiwho. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:32, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Galobtter, I hadn’t seen that before, but it does look fairly similar. I’ll give it a try when I get a chance in a few hours. Gaelan 💬✏️ 16:05, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Generating a page log

What mechanism is responsible for generating a log entry for a given page or action? In particular: why does this command show an entry for the adding of an {{unreferenced}} tag whereas this command does not, even though both articles are tagged with an unreferenced template? More specifically, what would need to happen in order to cause the action of adding a {{PROD}} tag to an article to also generate a log entry for said action? Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 07:19, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@John Cline: the logging of adding maintenance tags, deletion tags, etc is a part of the page curation system (see WP:NPR for more) while just adding the template manually (or semi automatically using twinkle) does not. --DannyS712 (talk) 07:29, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Those log entries are created by new page reviewers (and admins) using mw:Page Curation (Special:Log/pagetriage-curation, Special:Log/pagetriage-deletion). — JJMC89 (T·C) 07:33, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@John Cline: See [6] for the code that actually adds the log entry --DannyS712 (talk) 07:33, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you both for this information. I am not sure how to use it to reach the end I desire which is an effective method of ascertaining whether or not an article has ever survived the proposed deletion process, effectively retiring that process for the given topic. Right now the determination is entirely too cumbersome to glean yet there are situations where policy stipulations mandate that it must be considered in concert with other pending or contemplated actions. I would like to see this problem solved. Can it be resolved? Thanks again.--John Cline (talk) 09:20, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Addition of PROD probably should tag the edit as attempted proposed deletion, which is possible with an edit filter I believe. You will need to leave a request at WP:EFN to see. --Izno (talk) 14:03, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Alternatively, it might be good if Twinkle did it at runtime and that would probably take care of the majority of PROD taggings. --Izno (talk) 14:08, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Personally, I would find it very helpful if there was a way of finding out a page's entire move history. Special:Log/move is tied to the title rather than the page itself, so it would only show moves that originated at the current title. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree. As it stands, an idea to incorperate a bot to assist with this is being pursued here. I recall seeing it mentioned that it would be helpful if evaluating iterations of the page being discussed, where it may have existed under a different title, was part of the bot tasking. King of Hearts it would be great if you look in on that discussion to help ensure that we endeavor a best effort in this regard; I know you have a surplus of insight regarding XfD. Anyone else interested in seeing this done right is not only welcome, as well, they are entreated to help, if they so kindly will. Sincerely.--John Cline (talk) 02:26, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@King of Hearts: Regarding a true move log, it is unclear to me if Mediawiki even retains the information you would need. When researching all previous names, I usually have to do detective work. Diffs in the history don't even seem to remember what article name they were originally diffs of. They proudly announce they are diffs of the current article name, whatever if happens to be at the moment. EdJohnston (talk) 16:03, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Editing Wikipedia pages with vi

What is the keystroke sequence to initiate editing a Wikipedia page with vi? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy: vi as in the *nix text editor? We don't have a 'edit in vi' mediawiki hotkey. You could install text editor extensions in to your browser. What browser are you using? — xaosflux ^Talk 20:08, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: You're mistaken. It exists. I know it exists because I've entered it accidentally several times. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:07, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy: lately? There used to be an option in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing for "use external editor", but that was removed 5+ years ago. See mw:Manual:External editors. This still required you to configure such an editor (such as vi) in your browser it didn't force a specific application on your computer to launch. You certainly could still have a browser extension for something similar. If anyone else has an idea, hopefully they will chime in and add or correct this below! — xaosflux ^Talk 21:15, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Within the past couple of days. And a bunch of other times within the past couple of years. One was maybe about a month ago. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:32, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

See also Help:Text editor support (though again, these all look like they are on your browser client). — xaosflux ^Talk 21:40, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I'm using Google Chrome. I can't say I've ever thought about browser extensions. Is there a quick way to tell whether I have such a thing? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:47, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I've never seen it but there is a browser extension known as "it's all text" which I believe can be configured to use whatever editor you like when normally a browser edit window would open. Google that phrase for information. I just copy from the browser edit window to my editor, then copy back if I want to post what I edited. Johnuniq (talk) 21:49, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (multiple) This feature was at Preferences → Editing, under the "Advanced options" heading, and was titled "Use external editor by default (for experts only, needs special settings on your computer)". It was always disabled for new and logged-out users, I'm guessing that Michael Hardy must have enabled it at some point after registering. It was removed from Preferences with the deployment of MediaWiki 1.22/wmf2 to English Wikipedia on 22 April 2013; AFAIK the removal of this preference also disabled it for all users who had previously enabled it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:52, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

@Redrose64: @Johnuniq: I'm using a laptop that I bought in 2016. I've never configured it for anything like this nor enable any such features. Michael Hardy (talk) 00:51, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

To see whether any extensions are installed in Chrome: Click the three vertical dots at the top right, then "More tools" and "Extensions". PrimeHunter (talk) 01:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: ok, I've done that, and I see no such extension. But the fact remains: I've accidentally stumble into editing a page with vi several times. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:29, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

@Michael Hardy: so just for reference, how do you launch vi normally? (Are you on a *nix variant machine)? Is it pure vi, or vim? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:34, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: This laptop runs MS Windows, and I've installed vim. Michael Hardy (talk) 01:38, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

I've been using https://github.com/aquach/vim-mediawiki-editor lately; seems to work fine for this purpose. Enterprisey (talk!) 15:39, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I have played around with a few external editors tied to browsers, but -- at least to me -- cutting and pasting the source into an external editor, editing (and saving a copy -- occasionally having a copy comes in handy) and pasting it back works really well. Getting off-topic here, but for anyone using Vi or Vim, I highly recommend NeoVim.[7] (In particular. read the section "The Codebase".) [8][9] --Guy Macon (talk) 16:06, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

ScienceDirect not correctly formatted by cite tool

Wikipedia:RefToolbar isn't interpreting ScienceDirect links correctly. For example, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1125786504700090 isn't being resolved or resolved to a "cite web" template when it should make "cite journal". Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:27, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like something to bring to WT:RefToolbar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:34, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Relayed there. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:43, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Twinkle (redux)

Moved to Wikipedia talk:Twinkle

— xaosflux ^Talk 23:07, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Numbers OK in "Desktop View" - but Very Low in "Mobile View"?

Question: Numbers added to the "Template:NFPA 704 diamond" are *entirely* OK in the usual "Desktop View" (see, for example, the noted diamond and added numbers in the "Ammonia" article) - HOWEVER - the added numbers are all *significantly lower* in the noted diamond in the "Mobile View" of the same "Ammonia" article (esp with Windows 10/Dell8930/Chrome-Firefox-Opera Browsers) - Thanking you in advance for your help with this - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:08, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

(Downgraded caps, in GF and in good understanding with Drbogdan). -DePiep (talk) 20:30, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

3

1

0

I guess you mean it varies whether the numbers are centered in the squares or appear in the lower part. I see the same. Alignment like this can be tricky. I posted the example {{NFPA 704 diamond|F=1|H=3|R=0|S=-}} above. Special:ExpandTemplates shows the complicated code it produces with an image map:

<div style="width:100%; background:transparent;"><div id="container" style="margin:0 auto; width:82px; font-family:sans-serif"><div id="on_image_elements" class="nounderlines" style="background:transparent; float:left; font-size:20px; text-align:center; vertical-align:middle; position:relative; height:80px; width:80px; padding:1px;">
<div id="diamond_image_and_mw_ImageMap" style="position:absolute; height:80px; width:80px;"><imagemap>
File:NFPA 704.svg|80px|alt=NFPA 704 four-colored diamond
poly 300   0 450 150 300 300 150 150 [[NFPA 704#Red|Flammability code 1: Must be pre-heated before ignition can occur. Flash point over 93 °C (200 °F). E.g., canola oil]]
poly 150 150 300 300 150 450   0 300 [[NFPA 704#Blue|Health code 3: Short exposure could cause serious temporary or residual injury. E.g., chlorine gas]]
poly 450 150 600 300 450 450 300 300 [[NFPA 704#Yellow|Reactivity code 0: Normally stable, even under fire exposure conditions, and is not reactive with water. E.g., liquid nitrogen]]
poly 300 300 450 450 300 600 150 450 [[NFPA 704#White|Special hazards (white): no code]]
desc none
</imagemap></div><div style="width:12px; text-align:center; position:absolute; top:12px; left:35px;">
[[NFPA 704#Red|<span style="color:black;" title="Flammability code 1: Must be pre-heated before ignition can occur. Flash point over 93 °C (200 °F). E.g., canola oil">1</span>]]</div><div style="width:13px; text-align:center; position:absolute; top:31px; left:15px;">
[[NFPA 704#Blue|<span style="color:black;" title="Health code 3: Short exposure could cause serious temporary or residual injury. E.g., chlorine gas">3</span>]]</div><div style="width:13px; text-align:center; position:absolute; top:31px; left:54px;">
[[NFPA 704#Yellow|<span style="color:black;" title="Reactivity code 0: Normally stable, even under fire exposure conditions, and is not reactive with water. E.g., liquid nitrogen">0</span>]]</div></div></div></div>

PrimeHunter (talk) 20:46, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Image shows the issue indeed. My thoughts: the creator (could be me ;-) ;-) ) used css styles that are discarded when in mobile view. -DePiep (talk) 20:51, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter and DePiep: Thanks for your comments - is there some easy way of centering the numbers in both, the "Desktop View" and "Mobile View"? - or maybe - it may be too difficult - and - perhaps best - to leave well enough alone at the moment - iac - Enjoy :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:57, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd say: rebuild css/style from scratch, but don't distrust <imagemap> for now. It's these pesky little 'style=""' details mobile view ignores, per my first suspicion. -DePiep (talk) 21:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-13

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

Recent changes

• The new version of the content translation tool will be used for all new translations. The older version will still be used for translations that were started with it. Most users won’t see any change. More than 80% of the published translations are already using the new version. [10]

Problems

• There was a problem with editing with Safari on iOS. When you wrote an edit summary you couldn't save the edit. This has now been fixed. [11]
• The editing toolbar sometimes disappears when you scroll on iOS devices. This will be fixed soon. [12]
• Wikis can over-ride interface messages on-wiki. A problem meant that sometimes an old versions of any changed messages were shown instead. This included the sitenotice and other important parts of the interface. This was fixed at around 2019-03-22 16:00 (UTC). Logged-out users may still get the wrong message. Purging the page should fix it for them. [13]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 March. It will be on all wikis from 28 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 27 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

18:04, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Template Hadith-usc is broken because the source website is defunct

Template Hadith-usc generates a URL pointing to a website at USC, but the USC website is permanently defunct since at least Oct. 2018. archive.org seems to have a complete archive of the USC website, and I suggest to modify the template to generate a URL based on archive.org, unless there are better sources. --Happyseeu (talk) 19:50, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

@Happyseeu: Following up at Template_talk:Hadith-usc#It's_time_to_modify_the_defunct_USC_website_with_a_functional_website -- GreenC 06:06, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

How to move to the new Debian Stretch job grid?

Greetings - On 23 March,I posted a notice here about enwp10 tool being down. Wondering if anyone here knows how to do this move? It's totally beyond my knowledge. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 00:29, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Documentation is at wikitech:News/Toolforge Trusty deprecation, but migrating tools requires maintainer intervention. Pinging Kelson. The other maintainer listed is "tmoney" but I'm not sure what their username is here.

Just FYI, there are a LOT of tools that were not migrated to Stretch and probably broke today. Maintainers should have received numerous emails about this over the past two months. — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:53, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Thx JoeHebda, things are under control on our side. Let us know if not. Kelson (talk) 05:04, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Today is the day (for the first time since the toolserver migration 5 years ago), where we will find out how many tools are not being used (broken but no complaints) and how many are not being maintained (complaints but no one to fix them)... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:13, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

 Done - Thanks to audiodude for completing this. Details here. Cheers! JoeHebda (talk) 19:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Almaty

Resolved

Please see Talk:Bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics#Map issue. 2607:FEA8:1DE0:7B4:1426:377C:72E2:A4B6 (talk) 07:59, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Broken infobox

Hi! I see in the infobox of this article erroneous text "include" and "back to article". I can't figure it out, can you? 2001:14BA:980E:7700:0:0:0:8EA (talk) 12:48, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

 Fixed, like this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:59, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Redrose64, much improved! :) 2001:14BA:980E:7700:0:0:0:8EA (talk) 13:29, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

User interaction analyzer not working

Resolved

 – Amaury (talk | contribs) 01:08, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

"503 Service Unavailable" Amaury (talk | contribs) 15:19, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Probably because Toolforge moved to new servers. User:Σ is this yours by any chance? GreenC 15:28, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

In the more general, why does toolslab have to be so slow and/or crap? Every other day it's giving 404s and 501s etc. Can't the WMF spend just a percentage of its hard-earned (read: given), and provide us with the tools we need to actually improve the encyclopedia? I assume that's what the donations are given towards, rather than merely allowing various unnamed yet by no means unknown characters pissing about in Lear Jets Transatlantic Stylee [/RANT] ——SerialNumber54129 15:37, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Serial Number 54129, because we editors do crazy stuff ;) Seriously though, what people don't realise is that keeping things working requires investment by people. All maintainers of these tools received several emails over the last 4 months that they needed to do something because their software was running on 5 year old operating systems that had been deprecated for 3 years. And really in most cases the maintainers didn't have to do much, other than follow several instructions. They did nothing at all however and thus those tools are now down. I don't see how to fix that problem. If anything, this is a result of WMF continuously giving maintainers of tools maximum liberty, while they should have been more forceful 3 years ago to get people to put in the work of upgrading their software. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Not to say there isn't a lot wrong with toollabs that can be improved, there most definitely is (but this is also happening, and if you are a toolcmaintainer it is notable noticeable). At the same time, there are many tools that haven't seen their official maintainer log in for several years, yet being used by thousands of people. The WMF is not an adoption agency for that code just because it runs on their servers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:22, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that you appreciate my work. I'm sorry if you feel that I have been shirking my duties, but I must clarify that I am not tech support at the WMF's beck and call.

The WMF is not an adoption agency for code, but the flip side of that coin is that we editors and tool maintainers have no obligation to do any more work than we want to. Personally, I'll keep doing what I've been doing. But as it is right now, priorities list wise, this will always sit comfortably below doing what it takes to put a roof over my head and keep the lights on. Which should give you one hint to "fix the problem", in my case at least. I hope this helps. →Σσς. (Sigma) 17:32, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Σ, oh don't get me wrong, that wasn't a value judgement of your work, far from it, it is an observation of how this works. This is exactly why often when Wikipedians say "we need more time", "you should give better announcements" etc etc. I note that it is pointless to do so, because volunteers won't do 'low prio' things until stuff starts breaking. Most volunteers just don't have the bandwidth to handle much of this and neither do I personally as a fellow volunteer expect them to (my hiatuses often stretch for months). Within the tech circles of Wikimedia this is also pretty much universally recognized. But that's also what makes these services completely different from the production level services. Having these tools unavailable once in a while is a sacrifice that needs to be made simply because WMF can't go and hire every tool developer fulltime to turn it into a production level service (although they have hired a sizeable portion of them through the years). Simply respecting things for what they are and then working from there to see how to improve them within those constraints is probably more fruitful than passing around blame. The fact is that our tools can virtually grow infinite in number, but our maintainers of them are not, nor usually have access to the tools of those who left. And after 5 years there is now a moment where that became unavoidably visible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:07, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

+1 to TheDJ. The 404s/502s/whatevers are usually because of maintainer neglect. WMF Cloud Services merely provides the infrastructure for volunteers to host their tools. They are not and should not be responsible for maintaining code they didn't write. Yes the platform has problems, many of them, but all things considered it is in my opinion a pretty phenomenal service for being free. From my data, actual percentage uptime (at least on VPS) is somewhere between 3 to 4 nines. Many for-profit websites don't come close to that.

@Amaury: There is also toolforge:interaction-timeline which provides similar functionality. — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:52, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Another one three. -- GreenC 18:43, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all the answers, and apologies if it sounded like I was digging anyone out or being particularly unappreciative  :) I was not. If anything, it's the WMF I am unappreciative of, as although WP:VOLUNTEER is a sound enough principle for crowd-sourcing an encyclopaedia, it sounds like they could start putting some bloody money into what yous all do. If not by direct payments (although I don't see why not, since the tools directly affect WMF income) then at least with support. Imagine an employee of Google getting 404 when they need to check a copyright status! We might be smaller, but the principle applies, as many of these tools are fundamental to the structure we operate within. Buy the bloody techies a drink for X's-sake! ——SerialNumber54129 19:07, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Serial Number 54129, I note that several tools services over the last years have been upgraded to production services over the last year based on prioritization by the Community wishlist surveys. From advanced search, to xtools, maps, page view stats etc etc. Please contribute again next year in those surveys to continue that effort and celebrate the goals they are achieving. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:15, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all the answers - no harm at all. Things should be back up now. →Σσς. (Sigma) 21:18, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

While you are here; prep for database changes!

While many tool developers/maintainers are paying attention.. Because of the size of Wikimedia websites and in prepping for future development, several major changes to the core of MediaWiki have been made over the past two years and will be made in the upcoming year.

If your tool talks to the database replicas and does things with editsummaries or log files, usernames, and/or revisions (yes that is a like 90% of what you use that database access for most likely), you should check out the new comment table, the actor table and probably the Slots table if you do a lot with the contents of revisions. At some point in the future, some of the columns that you rely on right now will likely have moved their contents into these new tables and their backwards compatible view will at some point disappear.

For that reason, you should definitely subscribe to the cloud-announce@ mailinglist to keep up to date about the deadlines for such eventual changes.. The one for comments just happened for instance, and since new services on jessie were just made impossible, if you currently run on jessie, now is the time to think about when in the next 1,5 year you are updating your tool, so that when the time comes in 2020, you won't have the same problem as the tools that broke today. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:43, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

All of the database reports (except for lists of edit counts) generated by the Bernstein Bot haven't updated in five days when they are typically updated daily. TheDJ, are you saying that it is likely they won't be updated ever again in the future? Because they are necessary for maintenance of the project. I've contacted the bot operator but a fellow editor said on his talk page that this was a WMF issue of deprecation. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:57, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Liz if a tool is not maintained, then at some point it might stop working. Maybe if a new volunteer maintainer can be found, the bot can be handed over and brought up to date ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:58, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

TheDJ, would you recommend posting a request on the bot request page? I'd wait a few days to see if the tool is updated. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:32, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Liz, seems like a suitable place yes —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:34, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedians by language

It's not possible to easly check which user in these categories was recentlty active. Is there list with users speaking certain language by activity? Eurohunter (talk) 18:47, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Strange Memory Behavior on Toolforge with Java

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T219351

Hi all, when I run the following command on toolforge:

jsub -once -mem 2g -quiet -j y -o a.txt java -Xmx1G -version

And view the log file:

$ cat a.txt
Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not allocate metaspace: 1073741824 bytes

I see an error related to (lack of) memory. Changing the memory values to something crazy seems to yield the desired output.

For example:

$ jsub -once -mem 8g -quiet -j y -o a.txt java -Xmx4G -version
$ cat a.txt

results in the desired output

openjdk version "11.0.2" 2019-01-15
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.2+9-Debian-3bpo91)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 11.0.2+9-Debian-3bpo91, mixed mode, sharing)

That leaves me with the following questions

1. Is this a bug or the expected behavior?
2. Is the latter example the best practice on toolforge these days (i.e. set crazy memory values)?

Thanks in advance. -FASTILY 00:23, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

@Fastily: I have created phab:T219351 to investigate this issue.

Thank you to TheDJ for pointing this question out on irc. Broadly speaking bug reports and technical questions about Toolforge should be made via the cloud mailing list, the #wikimedia-cloud ^connect channel on Freenode, or Phabricator. The various wiki village pumps are not monitored for such reports because of lack of staff to watch pages in 800+ Wikimedia wikis. --BDavis (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good, thanks! -FASTILY 03:38, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Yet another bug in the Visual Editor

There seems to be another bug in the Visual Editor (people tell me there are so many bugs in it). If you have an inline citation you cannot set the insertion point to edit any text to the right of the citation. Has anyone else noticed this? 81.139.163.204 (talk) 11:01, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

works in my browser.. Which browser and version of that browser do you use ? If you know how to, maybe make a screen recording that shows your problem ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:00, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

If I open Equinox in the Visual Editor and try to edit the words after inline citation [7] the insertion point appears between "[7]" and "It" and refuses to move. This is on Microsoft Edge. I don't have the problem on Google Chrome or Firefox. 81.139.163.204 (talk) 12:43, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

The thing that makes things look like a paper letter

I remember fairly recently seeing Wikipedia newsletters with a background that looked like a page with a folder corner on the top left. I'm trying to find them again, and I've been searching for half an hour without much luck. Does someone know the CSS class that makes this happen, or failing that, an example of such a newsletter? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:10, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Are you looking for {{Letterhead start}}, {{Letterhead end}}, and Template:Letterhead start/styles.css? --DannyS712 (talk) 15:22, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

That's the one, yes thanks! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:28, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Clickable button on SK Wikipedia

Hi, can you please look at this? Thanks a lot, --Luky001 (talk) 18:59, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

AFD STATS down

Hey, https://tools.wmflabs.org/afdstats/ fails now, has failed for a day or two at least. Is there something wrong with wmflabs? I am totally out of it, tech-wise, but I like to check on my wp:AFDSTATS. --Doncram (talk) 01:09, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Explained above in #User interaction analyzer not working by the ever-excellent TheDJ. Basically, a thing that tools were running on changed and not everybody running tools​ changed yet. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 01:19, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Seems fixed. (Thanks, Sigma!) Enterprisey (talk!) 05:45, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Pageviews error

The current featured article is William Matthews (priest). Clicking Pageviews on its history goes here. That displays "Error querying Pageviews API - Unknown". I don't recall using this tool before. Is that a known issue which clears up in due course, or should I hassle its devs? Johnuniq (talk) 02:06, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: It works for me. Do you by chance have a privacy or adblock browser extension, such as Privacy Badger? That is a common cause for this tool failing. Otherwise, please share which browser and version you are using. Better, follow the steps at WP:JSERROR, which will give us even more debugging info. Best, — MusikAnimal ^talk 02:43, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Sorry about the noise. I normally check unexpected issues in another browser and when I did that just now it worked. I have NoScript but I thought I had disabled it. There is some issue here, thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 03:09, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

A little technical problem

You know those drop down templates found at the bottoms of articles, such as Template:Xiamen? Also know how there are three buttons at the top left on all of them that say "V", "T", and "E", for "view", "talk", and "edit"? I'm on Chrome on a Huawei phone, and none of the buttons work at all. Pressing them only brings up descriptions of the buttons, "edit this template", etc. I can still edit them of course, but it's kind of inconvenient. How do I fix this? Woshiyiweizhongguoren (🇨🇳) 11:17, 28 March 2019 (UTC) (Originally asked at the Teahouse but later moved here)

@Woshiyiweizhongguoren: You cannot personally fix this. If anyone can, it will be at Template talk:Navbar. --Izno (talk) 13:02, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Is there a string template/module that 'counts' the number of times a specific character/combination of characters in a string?

For example, if there something that could check

{{character count|\*|
Lorem ipsum
* ABC
* DEF
* HIJ
}}

{{character count|e|
Lorem ipsum
* ABC
* DEF
* HIJ
}}

{{character count|G|
Lorem ipsum
* ABC
* DEF
* HIJ
}}

and return 3 in the first instance, 1 in the second instance, and 0 in the third instance? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:42, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

{{#invoke:Text count|main|text=|pattern=}} where pattern is a Lua pattern, not regex

{{#invoke:Text count|main|text=Lorem ipsum
* ABC
* DEF
* HIJ|pattern=%*}}

→

{{#invoke:Text count|main|text=Lorem ipsum
* ABC
* DEF
* HIJ|pattern=e}}

→

{{#invoke:Text count|main|text=Lorem ipsum
* ABC
* DEF
* HIJ|pattern=G}}

→

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:03, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, that works. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:08, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Page move fail

I tried to move Template:Civil Rights Movement-stub to Template:Civil-Rights-Movement-stub in order to correct a format issue. However, none of the contents of the old page was moved to the new page. Not sure what happened. Mitchumch (talk) 17:34, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Mitchumch: may have been caching or job lag, it appears to be done now - are you still seeing a problem? — xaosflux ^Talk 17:36, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I do. Mitchumch (talk) 17:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Mitchumch:  fixed the content moved, but the stub template ({{asbox}}) has some special rules - Special:Diff/889896029 solved it. --DannyS712 (talk) 17:36, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. Mitchumch (talk) 17:40, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Template:More citations needed section is a talk page?

Am I going crazy? Why is Template:More citations needed section a talk page? It's transcluded in a bunch of pages. Eman235/talk 17:46, 28 March 2019 (UTC) On a closer look I think it's because Anthony Appleyard messed up a page move. Eman235/talk 17:48, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Eman235: Because of a page move by @Anthony Appleyard - I reverted the move, but now the prior template needs to be undeleted. I blanked the page, so for now it shouldn't show up on pages when it is transcluded. --DannyS712 (talk) 17:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

• @Mitchumch, DannyS712, and Eman235: Sorry. Thanks. (Template:Refimprove section has 3 old deleted edits, but they are all redirects.}} Anthony Appleyard (talk) 21:54, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way to automatically collapse a table on mobile?

WP:CRAPWATCH displays fine on the desktop view, but loading up the mobile website seems to lose the collapsible tables (class="mw-collapsible mw-collapse"). One of the big reasons to make these tables collapsible is to make the mobile view more manageable, so it's a bit annoying that this doesn't work. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:11, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

If you are referring to the navbox, which is the only collapsible thing that I see on the page and which is not a table, the navbox class is not displayed on mobile. See WP:NAVBOX. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:00, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: do you not see "All 106 MDPI-related entries" in the very first row of the table (Rank 1, MDPI) ? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:52, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose I should have searched the page for "show" and "hide" like a smart person. Sorry about that. Anyway, I think your question will need an answer by someone more familiar with the interface configuration files like MediaWiki:Common.js and the other files listed at Template:CSS and JS MediaWiki messages. My guess is that the collapsible show/hide stuff is not rendered on mobile for some reason. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:12, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

It's mostly to display automatically collapsible article content in articles for phones that have old browsers / browsers without javascripts. Wondering if there's a way to bypass that, and support collapsible tables for modern mobile browsers, which do support collapsible tables. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:25, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Broken clickable map

Something appears to have broken the {{Indian states and territories image map}} clickable map, and a quick check shows that this 2011 edit now throws up a "Invalid coordinate at line 61, must be a number." and subsequent versions don't render (prior versions still work; example). I am assuming this is a recent issue unrelated to an edit made to the particular template, since the error otherwise would surely have been spotted sooner. Anyone have an idea what the issue could be and how to resolve it?

Pinging @Begoon and RaviC: who have been involved with the template and are currently active. Abecedare (talk) 22:25, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Honestly I'm not too sure. The last time I edited the template was back in 2014, and it was working well back then. Looking at the revision history in 2011, the map was edited to add the shapes of states as polygons as opposed to before, when just a rectangle for a link was present for each state. That could be where the problem lies. I recall adding more polygons to the map using ImageMapEdit. --RaviC (talk) 22:34, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Ok. It was the "x.y" coordinate format that was causing the problem (don't ask me why!). Changing it to "x y" seems to have resolved the issue. Abecedare (talk) 22:54, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Is it working properly, even after that change? Hovering my mouse over various parts displays two different pointers - an arrowhead for non-sensitive areas, and a finger for sensitive areas. The sensitive areas do not cover the whole map, missing out the southern portions. Clicking on a sensitive area displays a criss-cross tangle of blue lines covering a roughly rectangular shape, before going to the article for the relevant state. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:14, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

I think it is working "as written". The issue you point to is due to the fact that not all states have a clickable area defined by their polygonal boundary corresponding to their borders. Many states (eg, 7, 15 etc) have a clickable area defined by a much smaller rectangle that covers only (approx) the numerical index in the image. The way to resolve this would be for someone to trace the boundaries of the latter group of states and update the template code. The current version is non-ideal but functional. Abecedare (talk) 23:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be working properly for me as it used to before. I'm not sure why, but the polygons for some states (e.g. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu) aren't there any more. Clicking near Gujarat brings up a hyperlink for the Siachen Glacier. Something has happened to the template and it probably needs to be rewritten now. --RaviC (talk) 00:01, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

You are right! What I was interpreting as "x.y" coordinates, seems to be just the x- or y-coordinate to two or three decimal places. My converting them to "x y" made the result acceptable syntactically, but completely mucked up the location of the polygons. So undoing that edit.

It's possible that for some reason 'poly' now accepts only integer parameters; but would be good to know that defnitively before someone puts in the effort to repair or rewrite the template. Abecedare (talk) 02:13, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I think your guess was correct. It wasn't much effort to round all the poly co-ordinates to integers using a perl command on a text file of the wikitext - perl -i -pe 's/(\d*\.\d*)/int($1+0.5)/ge' filename, so I've done that. There's this recent gerrit commit that's probably related. -- Begoon 02:56, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

@Begoon: Thanks for nailing down the diagnosis and the quick fix. Abecedare (talk) 03:36, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Abecedare, See also phab:T217087. A change in the behaviour of the php parser, caused these numbers to throw errors. Because of this, the sanitisation was changed to become more strict and instead of implicitly ignoring the floating part, it now creates errors. This also makes our image maps aligned with HTML behaviour of image maps. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:19, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Fwiw, I agree with your comment there that the rounding/typecasting should ideally happen after the scaling. Abecedare (talk) 14:35, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Importing an image from the Icelandic Commons

Hi, I'm trying to add this image [14] to this article Logi Már Einarsson. I searched the English Commons but it doesn't exist there. Is there a quick way to import the image to the English Commons? I can use google translate to transfer the Icelandic text to English. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 22:27, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

@Somedifferentstuff: There is no such thing as "Icelandic Commons", nor is there any such thing as "English Commons". The image is:Mynd:Logi Einarsson.jpg is hosted at Icelandic Wikipedia. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:11, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Looking at the original image, it's taken from the Alþingi website, and appears to be under copyright. Therefore, to use it on English Wikipedia, you need to satisfy all ten of the non-free content criteria; and straight off, I can say that it will fail criterion 1 since the subject is still alive, and so there is a reasonable chance that a free image may be created - perhaps when making a public speech. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:25, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Redrose64, according to the copyright section on the photo, it says "Höfundaréttshafi hefur veitt leyfi fyrir að nota myndina - The copyright holder has granted permission to use the image." I assume that is because the person in the picture is an active politician and the Alphing is the Iceland government website. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 00:22, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

That being in the template is:Snið:Leyfi-rétthafa. Have they granted permission to Icelandic Wikipedia alone, or to all Wikimedia projects? If the former, they also need to grant permission here (see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials) before we can use it. If the latter, where may the permission be examined?

It's not "Alphing", it's "Alþingi". The letter "þ", known as "thorn", is pronounced like "th" as in "thing". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:41, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

From Google translate: The copyright holder has granted permission to use the image. It may not be used for marketing or reproduction unless otherwise stated. To the person who uploaded the image: Specify the type of use allowed. All images that can be used for marketing purposes and make reproductions transfer to the Commons. Explanation of fair use. Downloaded wikipedia with informed consent of editor althingi.is; "Portrait photographs of members of the Althingi taken in 2016 and later marked as photographers and with the following text on their permission for re-publishing: The re-use of this photograph is free, provided that the name of the photographer appears where it can be found. In addition, the copyright rights of the author must be respected so that re-use does not improve or alter the author's work to impair his or her authorship or identity." --- Is there a way to tell if this is only for Icelandic Wikipedia? -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 00:54, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

That sounds like a no-derivative licence.Nigel Ish (talk) 13:35, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

The files from Althingi where discussed awhile ago at the Icelandic Village pump. One of the users there emailed Althingi, which along with the rights organization of photographers in Iceland decided that the pictures of the congressmen where under an Non-Commercial licence. Their response is quoted in the linked discussion in a comment on November 11 2009, at 23:20 by Jabbi. There is no Icelandic Wikipedia specific restriction on those files, but obviously the Non-Commercial clause does stop them from being transferred to Wikimedia Commons.--Snaevar (talk) 17:22, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Snaevar, so a government photo can be used on the Icelandic Wikipedia but not the English Wikipedia? I am not well versed on Commons, copyright, etc., but I find that strange. Is it to protect the rights of the photographers? -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 20:07, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Authority control issue

While editing the article Henry Moskowitz (activist), a "Warning: Page using Template:Authority control with "VIAF", please move this to Wikidata if possible (this message is shown only in preview)." displayed on the screen. Also, there are two Template:Authority control assigned to this article and both have this warning message. I don't know how to fix this issue. Mitchumch (talk) 22:32, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

This might be better asked at Template talk:Authority control. However, the issue is that the article contains {{Authority control|VIAF=190653772}} (and a second) and the warning is saying it should just be {{Authority control}} and the VIAF value should be placed at Wikidata. To do that, click "Wikidata item" in the toolbox on the left and play around with the VIAF setting. Problem: Wikidata already has VIAF=21135876 with a claim that it was imported from enwiki. Some checking of the VIAF values needs to take place to determine what's going on. There should be only one VIAF, and it should be at Wikidata. Johnuniq (talk) 22:57, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Both VIAFs are unfortunately valid. VIAF needs to be contacted. --Izno (talk) 03:30, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Izno, Mitchumch can also be documented at Wikipedia:VIAF/errors —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:47, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I added entry on Wikipedia:VIAF/errors to section "Two or more VIAF identities for the same article". The two VAIFs were added to article by blocked User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) on 18:56, 28 January 2015. Mitchumch (talk) 11:37, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

It looks like the bot that maintained that page no longer runs and stopped right around the time Wikidata started, but I don't see if a similar automated process was set up on Wikidata. --Izno (talk) 13:01, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

That would be d:Wikidata:Database reports/Constraint violations/P214 - the equivalent exists for every Wikidata property. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:06, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

The page exists, but it does not indicate any automatic provision of duplicate IDs to VIAF. --Izno (talk) 13:50, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Both VIAF and ISNI are federated databases. A close look at the two VIAF records or at the corresponding two ISNI records shows that they originate from different national libraries. One identity [15][16] comes from US and Israel, while [17][18] comes from the Netherlands, Ireland, and France. Each attributes a different birth year (1878 vs. 1880), which may have delayed ISNI in recognizing and resolving the duplication. A simple heuristic of referring to the lowest-numbered VIAFid (the former) will avoid having a duplicate Q number in such cases, and when the VIAF and ISNI deduplicates are eventually done, that lowest number will either be used or redirected. A more challenging problem arises when the VIAF or ISNI records conflate identities, as is almost unavoidable for common names, but this too is well understood by librarians.LeadSongDog come howl! 16:43, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Talk page button on Kindle gone

I often browse WP from my Kindle eBook reader, including Talk pages. Up until a few days ago, at the bottom of each article page there was a button to link to the Talk page (it does not appear on my desktop in Chrome). The Kindle browser does not display the usual WP top-of-page menu (talk history &c) so this was very handy. Now the <Talk> button no longer appears. Was this a recent WP change, or do I assume it was a Kindle update? --D Anthony Patriarche (talk) 12:11, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

D A Patriarche, are you still logged in ? The button only shows if you are logged in. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:20, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

D A Patriarche I also happen to do that sometimes. Best solution could be to use desktop view by going to the very bottom in mobile view (I think it uses that by default) and pressing "Desktop". SemiHypercube 15:35, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Aha, that's it! For some reason I've been getting logged out recently despite checking "Keep me logged in". Thanks. --D Anthony Patriarche (talk) 18:07, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

email

I forgot the password for my account and there's no email attatched, is it possible to put an email onto my account?Muur (talk) 18:28, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Muur as described here: Help:Logging_in#What_if_I_forget_the_password? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:02, 29 March 2019 (UTC)