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).

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"Remember me" not working as intended for me

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T372702

Exactly as title. The checkbox states that it would last a year, yet sometimes I would find myself not logged in even though I am using the same device, same browser, etc. It is just a mild annoyance, but can someone give me pointers on how to fix this? Thanks in advance. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 01:26, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Could happen if you log out on another device in the meantime. hgzh 10:51, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

But I am only using this one device logged in, and I'm quite sure my account wasn't hacked (hopefully(?)). —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 11:23, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Anything that clears or blocks your local storage (cookies) can invalidate your saved logon. Some browser or browser extension updates can cause this. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

FWIW I was logged out unexpectedly under similar circumstances on the day this was posted as well. I use Windows primarily with Chrome; if you also have a similar configuration, that *could* be an explanation. Graham87 (talk) 04:26, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Well I am using windows and chrome, but this combination is probably so widespread that I would assume it is not where the problem is, or a lot more people would have reported this already. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

@Mint Keyphase: Do you use uBlock Origin like me? That's the only thing I think we could have in common. But even that would be a pretty common combination .... it could've just been bad luck. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't report being unexpectedly logged out, because it's a relatively minor inconvenience; I certainly didn't think to. Graham87 (talk) 12:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Nope —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:13, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Using Linux + Chrome: I was logged out today, after a Chrome s/w update. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 15:38, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

How often does this happen? Every time you close the browser? Shut down the computer? Can you log in to other websites with the same browser and they persist just fine? Nardog (talk) 15:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, other websites like Fandom don't seem to be affected. But a similar thing happens on Edge for the website of a tutoring service, which may or may not be related(?) —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 10:46, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

And the first question? Nardog (talk) 23:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Kinda random, to be honest, at first it was like twice a week, now it is once every two weeks or so. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 02:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Does your device have any kind of storage problem; if there is cookies are likely to be auto-deleted. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 04:48, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think so. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 03:25, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I’ve been noticing a similar thing. Most of the time I get auto logged back in the moment I hit log in, but sometimes I get fully logged out. I use WIN11+Brave and IOS+Safari. Lordseriouspig 04:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

If it's as infrequent as once every couple of weeks (and I'm guessing you use Wikipedia considerably more frequently than that), then I'm going with you either logged out on another device or you logged out from some other Wikimedia website. For most web services, your session is tied to your browser or browser instance, but on Wikimedia, when you logout from any Wikimedia session on any browser instance or any computer, you will be logged out on all instances. Fabrickator (talk) 04:52, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

The one where I only have to click login once happens daily. Lordseriouspig 05:03, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm having the same issue; Sometimes I am logged out and a message comes up saying "You're Centrally Logged In" and I'm logged in automatically; Sometimes I am logged out and logged back in when I press the log in button; Sometimes I have to re-enter my log in credentials again to log in. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 06:24, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

As I recall, I was seeing that business of being logged out and a message came up saying "You're Centrally logged in" and then I would be logged in automatically a few weeks ago, but not lately. Editing only from a chromebook. Donald Albury 15:43, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Being logged out when you visit a new wiki but becoming logged in when you reload the page, or when you click login (but without actually having to submit a login form) is sort of normal on Safari and Brave, as these browsers limit cross-domain state transfer for privacy reasons. AIUI it shouldn't happen on Chrome though, at least not with default settings. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I was opening pages on other language wikis around that time, but I don't remember if the message was tied to that. Definitely using Chrome browser on the chromebook. I do have Grammarly, Acrobat Extension, Malwarebytes, Wayback Machine, Who Wrote That and RSS Feed Reader loaded, all with access to the WP tabs. Donald Albury 01:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

But, it's not only happening while visiting a new wiki; it's happening on en-wiki recurrently. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:31, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like maybe your browser has trouble saving cookies for enwiki (en.wikipedia.org and .wikipedia.org)? You could try deleting the existing cookies and see if it helps. (In theory MediaWiki automatically deletes invalid cookies to prevent such issues, but maybe that doesn't work for some reason.) Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

It happend on MediaWiki site also. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 01:17, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

As the issue does not seem easily reproducible, I left some questions at phab:T372702#10075955 - if you have been experiencing it and can answer some of them, that would be very helpful. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@Tgr (WMF): I encountered the problem again on en-wiki a while ago; and used the DevTools to figure out what went wrong, and I got this message,
One or more websites are allowed to bypass user settings to set third-party cookies on this page. Microsoft Edge no longer supports third-party cookies and web developers should take steps to remove these sets without disrupting user experience.
Also this page on Google for Developers site says that Third-party cookies are being deprecated in chromium browsers. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 12:19, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

See T345249 about that. But third-party cookies are only involved in automatic login, not when you enter your username and password in a login form. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Can't save edit due to blacklisted link, but edit doesn't contain blacklisted link

I'm unable to save an edit due to the error "Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist."

"The following link has triggered a protection filter: about.com"

I haven't added any external links. I can't share the text that's triggering the apparently erroneous alert, since that text is triggering the blacklist filter. If there is in fact a link to about.com, I can only think it would be due to a typo or some kind of technical issue with a template transclusion, but I have exhausted my own ability to troubleshoot the issue.

How can I get assistance in troubleshooting this? Thanks! —danhash (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Danhash: It's about User:Danhash/Film project and not a live article so you can wrap the whole page in <nowiki>...</nowiki> before saving. Then we can see your code and track down the cause. I suspect you are transcluding blacklisted links from 3D film and Hearing loss. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:45, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I have been working with the {{get short description}} template to pull Short Descriptions of pages in my project into a table for easy reference. I removed the transclusion of the Short Descriptions of those two articles, and the page saved. I don't know why either of those Short Descriptions would trigger the blacklist for "about.com" though, as the transcluded text is "Film that gives an illusion of three-dimensional depth" and "Partial or total inability to hear" respectively. Is there a technical issue with those descriptions or with the template itself?

Also, when in Edit Source mode, I'm getting the message "Warning: Post-expand include size is too large. Some templates will not be included." How do I resolve this?

Thanks! —danhash (talk)

In Edit Source mode I'm also getting multiple messages about {{Cite Web}}, {{Cite Journal}}, and {{Citation}} templates, which are not present in the page I'm editing. I'm assuming that the {{get short description}} template is transcluding them somehow, though they aren't showing up when viewing the page. —danhash (talk) 18:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The cs1|2 messaging is likely because of this. The code fetches the article wikitext and then calls frame:preprocess() on it which renders the wikitext into html (same as happens when you click the publish button). Converting to html causes all cs1|2 templates in whatever article is being preprocessed to be rendered. If there is anything in the cs1|2 templates that creates an error or maintenance message, those messages will show up in the preview message box.

Once converted to html, Module:get short description looks for the <div>...</div> tags that wrap the short description. Not at all obvious that such a complicated mechanism is required. Pinging the author who can perhaps explain.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

This peculiar mechanism may also explain the inability to publish. The preprocessed page that holds the blacklisted item triggers the filter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:40, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: That seems awfully complex as well as resource-intensive for what seems like could be a simple database call. Is there an easier way to query for Short Descriptions (such as querying Wikidata)? —danhash (talk) 18:50, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I expect that there is. Wikidata is possible, but I think that I've seen editors overriding the wikidata short description so, if they are doing that, wikidata won't be very reliable (if it ever was). Let us see what the module author has to say.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe the confusingly named Module:GetShortDescription (not the same as Module:Get short description) would work better for this purpose. You might also look at {{Annotated link}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:52, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Apparently not reliable for 3,959,819 articles. CMD (talk) 20:00, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

{{get short description}} is very expensive on the 2 MB limit for Help:Template limits#Post-expand include size. For example, {{get short description|Sign language}} uses 485K (23%) of the limit even though the whole wikitext of Sign language is only 124K. It doesn't help to invoke the used module directly with {{#invoke:Get short description|main|Sign language}}. But {{annotated link|Sign language}} only uses 0.2K. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:42, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I have hacked a lightweight version of Module:Get short description in its sandbox. This version recognizes all to the {{Short description}} redirects in addition to its canonical name.

To test it, copy the ~/sandbox to your clipboard, and then edit Module:Get short description. Replace its contents with the contents of your clipboard. Put User:Danhash/Film project in the Preview page with this template textbox and then click the attached Show preview button. And yeah, do not click Publish changes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:47, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

This would be a fine addition to Module:Template redirect regex, if you choose to use it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  10:16, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Danhash, I made a quick test on your subpage and undid it back to your version. Please see revision 1240520247 of 20:35, 15 August 2024, and see if that does what you want. Mathglot (talk) 20:39, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot, your test worked! And I reverted back to your version. Thank you!

Jonesey95/PrimeHunter/Trappist the monk, how does one invoke a Module; is it through a template? I also noticed that Module:GetShortDescription returns the Wikipedia Short Description by default, but if one doesn't exist, it returns the Wikidata Short Description. You can, however, specify to use *only* the Wikipedia description and return a blank string if it's empty, which would be the needed functionality for my purposes since the Wikidata description isn't always suitable for Wikipedia (see WP:Short description#Why not simply re-use Wikidata's item descriptions?). Does the edited version by Mathglot use the correct module parameter for this? —danhash (talk) 19:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Danhash my solution uses the short description value directly from the template in the article, and does not go through the module, so it knows nothing about the Wikidata value at all. If there is no {{shortdesc}} template in the article, it will display blanks. For how to invoke a module, see Help:Module. Mathglot (talk) 22:42, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Implementing category editnotices

Just today, it became possible for Lua to read out the categories used on a specific page. See phab:T50175. You can see how this works in this sandbox module and in testwiki:Module:Editnotice load and [1].

I want to see if we can implement category editnotices here. Other improvements I have made to this module include page ID-specific editnotices, useful because it allows the page to move around without having to move the editnotice around to match the title. There is probably some cleanup that can be done with this module, for example using Lua functions instead of preprocessing {{replace}}, but I think it is a good start. Awesome Aasim 20:19, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I wish this existed two months ago when I wrote Module:Engvar/detect. Would've been so much easier to grab categories rather than trying to capture the name of every redirect to every template. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Actually, never mind, looks like it's expensive (unlike getContent(), which grabs the entire contents of the page). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 00:09, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

How is grabbing the entire contents of the page not expensive? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:19, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Because it doesn't require much compute, and because it stays with tables of the database, that we are already accessing while parsing anyways. Things are only marked as expensive if they cause potential exponential increases of load. Crossing from parsing one article to parsing many articles or dependencies of the article is such a case, as this creates a spiderweb of parsing dependencies that have to be accessed. Accessing a blob of text we already have in memory is much less expensive. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:29, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

More specifically, my thinking back when I was working on Scribunto was that getContent() is the same thing from a data-loading perspective as transcluding a page (and, IIRC, it uses the same underlying data-fetching functions), and since transcluding a page isn't considered an expensive operation so getContent() shouldn't be either. On the other hand, most other parser functions that have to make a separate database query to load some data are considered expensive, and so Scribunto functions that make database queries are marked as expensive for that reason. Whoever implemented the new feature likely followed the same reasoning. Anomie⚔ 19:05, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Is transcluding a page that contains a dozen or a hundred expensive parser functions considered an expensive operation? Is it possible to get the raw wikicode without interpreting it? (I need that for something else.) That should be inexpensive regardless, right? Mathglot (talk) 22:49, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Transclusion isn't expensive but it results in an increase in the post expand include limit size. Something I was running into that made parsing to see categories impractical. Awesome Aasim 20:02, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Valid point about PEIS, but that's a separate concen, isn't it, and doesn't really address the question I raised about transcluding a page full of expensive functions, so I hope someone comments on that. It seems to me that an "expensive parser function" is well-defined and quantifiable, but "transclusion isn't expensive" is not. I would say it depends on what's being transcluded. Mathglot (talk) 20:36, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Indeed it does. If a page uses expensive parser functions then it adds to the expensive parser function count. But otherwise transclusion does not add to this count, and only adds to the post expand include limit. Awesome Aasim 00:45, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I think you're agreeing, but I can't quite tell what you mean by that. Concrete example: after your comment was published, this page had 41 expensive functions. Now, after this comment, it has 51. The increase of ten comes from transcluding User:Mathglot/sandbox/Templates/ten expensive calls in this comment. I think you would agree that transclusion not only adds to the PEIS but also to the expensive count, by the number of expensive functions it transcludes (after full expansion). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathglot (talk • contribs) 01:17, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I am 90% there on the Scribunto rewrite of the editnotice loader on testwiki:Module:Editnotice load. Because of the sheer volume of links I decided to put all of the links in a collapsible before the editnotice. I want to make the bullet horizontal like an hlist, do you know which styling needs to be applied to do this? Awesome Aasim 01:43, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Deleted contributions invisible

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T372444

I'm having a weird admin problem and that is that Deleted Contributions don't show up when I know that an editor has them. For example, I deleted Draft:Peter Bianca as a hoax article by User:Borris Lana but nothing shows up on Special:DeletedContributions/Borris Lana (sorry only visible to admins). I thought it was just a weird glitch, I just moved on. But I was investigating an edit by User:Abdullah Hill Mahin and in the blocking rationale on Special:Contributions/Abdullah_Hill_Mahin it states Spam / advertising-only account; see also deleted contribs. But when I look at Special:DeletedContributions/Abdullah Hill Mahin, the page is blank, no deleted contributions appear. Luckily, looking at these pages is a small part of what I do as an admin but I do check Deleted Contributions while I'm editing and if there is a problem, I'd like it to get fixed.

Any admins facing similar problems or have an idea what might be going on? Thanks. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:28, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

This is phab:T372444 as mentioned at WP:AN#DeletedContributions broken. Workaround in the meantime: Go to Special:DeletedContributions and put the user's name in the form; you'll get something like this. —Cryptic 02:36, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

User:PrimeHunter/Deleted contribs.js adds a working "Deleted contribs" link under "Tools" in userspace. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:26, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

These work:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:DeletedContributions&target=Borris%20Lana
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:DeletedContributions&target=Borris+Lana

but replacing that plus sign with an underscore breaks it, as does replacing the &target= with a slash. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice, folks. I didn't return to this noticeboard until now to see it because the problem looked like it was fixed but it returned today. A sockpuppet account that had reportedly made 100 edits has 0 contributions and 0 deleted contributions (it's User:Santana Montana (Muse)), so I'll try some of your work-arounds. I just want to see if this sock farms keep recreating the same draft or main space article over and over again. Thanks again. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:27, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I've deployed the fix a few days early (skipping the normal process of waiting for Thursday), so this should now be fixed. WBrown (WMF) (talk) 12:21, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, your script is a useful addition even when the bug's squashed Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:23, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

@WBrown (WMF) looks to be fixed to me. Thanks. Nthep (talk) 12:45, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

No favicon on Google

I know this is probably out of our remit, but does anyone have any idea why Google currently shows a placeholder instead of the "W" as the favicon for en.wikpiedia.org (example)? It seems to be occurring only for some subdomains (en, fr, la, nn, no). Is there anything WMF can do about it? Nardog (talk) 05:27, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

This is related to the issues that are described in phab:T348203, has been happening for a while. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 09:16, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

How do you know it's related? Nardog (talk) 10:21, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

There are various comments saying that the favicon is missing. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 12:40, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

None of them identify the cause or its relation to the issue described in the task. Nardog (talk) 00:12, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Is this still happening? I see the expected W in the example link you provided. – 2804:F1...D1:BB5D (talk) 17:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Seems like its fixed now. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 17:25, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Still happening with fr. Nardog (talk) 01:59, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Section link scripts

They (User:SoledadKabocha/copySectionLink.js and User:Bility/copySectionLink.js) don't seem to be working even though they're enabled in my common.js page. What is wrong? Kailash29792 (talk) 10:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Many scripts related to section headers broke due to changes in HTML layout. You can try using forks of such scripts with fixes for that, like User:Andrybak/Scripts/copy-section-link. The scripts you've linked and their forks are listed at Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Sections. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:47, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @SoledadKabocha... --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:46, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I am no longer actively maintaining my user scripts (which were never fully intended for public consumption anyway, especially forks of other user's scripts). To the best of my memory, I stopped using any version of copySectionLink a long time ago. If there is some reason you need to use my version rather than Bility's or other alternative mentioned above, I can try to find some time to look into it over the weekend. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 17:55, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

@SoledadKabocha I went ahead and marked your scripts as (unmaintained) at Wikipedia:User scripts/List, feel free to revert if that changes. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:35, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Ahecht, the latest script works. Thank you. If the older scripts don't work, they are best deleted to avoid misleading orhers. Kailash29792 (talk) 00:38, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Redirecting them to a newer version of the script that actually works is also an option. Polygnotus (talk) 00:40, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

List of articles for clean-up by wikiproject

Hi! I'm wondering if it is possible to create a clean-up list of articles by Wikiprojects that are assessed as a stub, but don't have a stub template in the bottom of the article? In such cases either wikiproject assessment is outdated, or a proper stub template is missing. My main interest in this matter is WP:Estonia. (And are there any other tools that can help to find higher than stub quality articles that are still assessed as a stub? My guess is Wikipedia has 5-10% more quality than the statistics show) Pelmeen10 (talk) 13:01, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

quarry:query/85598. (Spoiler: there are, as usual, lots.) WP:Request a query/Archive 4#Stub-class articles not tagged with a stub template has the more general case, now somewhat out-of-date and not sorted by the talk page cat name, but that wouldn't be difficult to add.

#Stubs by Article Size higher up that same archive has one method for your second question, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. —Cryptic 13:33, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

PetScan works great for producing that. Here's one I generated of the 500 largest stubs for WP Louisville. And with a minor change I made a report for Estonia. Stefen Tower_{s among the rest!} ^{Gab • Gruntwerk} 19:30, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Notelist template

I'm not sure what happened, but the {{Notelist}} template has been displaying additional bullets and after a dummy edit instead displays error messages. I noticed it at this page: Top Cooku Dupe Cooku season 1. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Can you please make a screenshot? Which error messages? Cite error: A list-defined reference with the name "ep11t" has been invoked, but is not defined in the <references> tag (see the help page). <= that one? Polygnotus (talk) 03:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one. But, the ref is defined in the {{Reflist}} Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:40, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

The error message links to Help:Cite errors/Cite error empty references define, which explains the problem: Note: It is possible to get this error message when nesting footnotes in list-defined references, unfortunately the only fix in this situation is to not use list-defined references for entries that are nested. —⁠andrybak (talk) 06:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Another thing is when using the new "Parsoid"; the error message doesn't appear but instead a couple of more letters are displayed. Error message appears afeter a dummy edit. Screenshot: [2] Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 07:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

That missing-error-message is tracked at phab:T372709 (I noticed and filed it over the weekend). Thanks for noting it here. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:29, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Offtopic but you seem to have installed User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist.js twice in your common.js. Polygnotus (talk) 03:16, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I've removed the duplicate one, Thanks! Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:39, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You can't use list defined notes that contain references, it's a limitation of the MediaWiki software and is mentioned in the template documentation (see Template:Efn). If you define the notes outside of the notelist the error messages will go away. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!

Hello. For many years, community members have requested an easy way to re-use references with different details. Now, a MediaWiki solution is coming: The new sub-referencing feature will work for wikitext and Visual Editor and will enhance the existing reference system. You can continue to use different ways of referencing, but you will probably encounter sub-references in articles written by other users. More information on the project page.

We want your feedback to make sure this feature works well for you:

• Please try the current state of development on beta wiki and let us know what you think.
• Sign up here to get updates and/or invites to participate in user research activities.

We are aware that enwiki and other projects already use workarounds like {{sfn}} for referencing a source multiple times with different details. The new sub-referencing feature doesn’t change anything about existing approaches to referencing, so you can still use sfn. We have created sub-referencing, because existing workarounds don’t work well with Visual Editor and ReferencePreviews. We are looking forward to your feedback on how our solution compares to your existing methods of re-using references with different details.

Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We will reach out to creators/maintainers of tools and templates related to references beforehand.

Please help us spread the message. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 11:11, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a very important task to work on, but I am not sure how this proposal is an improvement for those of us who do not use the VisualEditor.

Compare:

<ref name="Samer M. Ali">Samer M. Ali, 'Medieval Court Poetry', in ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women'', ed. by Natana J. Delong-Bas, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), I 651-54.</ref>

{{r|Samer M. Ali|p=653}}

or:

<ref name="Samer M. Ali"/>{{rp|653}}

with:

<ref name="Samer M. Ali">Samer M. Ali, 'Medieval Court Poetry', in ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women'', ed. by Natana J. Delong-Bas, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), I 651-54.</ref>

<ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="Samer M. Ali, p. 653">p. 653</ref>

existing workarounds don’t work well with Visual Editor and ReferencePreviews OK, then VE and ReferencePreviews need to be fixed so that they work well with the existing ways of referencing.

Adding another competing standard (obligatory XKCD) is not very useful unless you want to disallow the others which will probably make people very mad (see WP:CITEVAR) and is not necessarily an improvement.

There is no reason why VE or RP would require a new standard, they could just as easily support one of the existing ones (and ideally all of em).

Am I missing something?

Polygnotus (talk) 15:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Sfn is routinely out of sync with its parent and requires the use of third party scripts to detect that it is so. Extended references do not i.e. the Cite extension will issue a warning when you have an extension without a parent.

And Rp is objectively subjectively ugly. Presenting it as a potential option is offensive. :)

In <ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="Samer M. Ali, p. 653">p. 653</ref>, a name for the subreference is not required (<ref extends="Samer M. Ali">p. 653</ref> will be typical I suppose), and even when it is you can abbreviate since you know what the parent is (e.g. <ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="SMA653">p. 653</ref>).

Some other benefits:

• Reference extensions work with reference previews to display the extension directly with the primary citation.
• The extensions are grouped with the primary citation in the reference lists.

And the third, which you brushed aside: VE works well with reference extensions.

None of which can be said of the other two items. Izno (talk) 16:01, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

And as for OK, then VE and ReferencePreviews need to be fixed so that they work well with the existing ways of referencing., MediaWiki systems try to be agnostic about the specific things that wikis do around X or Y or Z. As a general design principle this helps to avoid maintaining systems that only some wikis use, and leaves the burden of localization and each wiki's design preferences to those wikis. Rp additionally has nothing to work with in regard to VE and ref previews. Izno (talk) 16:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@Izno: Thank you. Gotta sell these things a bit, you know?

Is this style of referencing intended to replace all others? If its better, then lets just abandon all other variants.

The extends keyword is familiar to codemonkeys but perhaps not the most userfriendly for others. I am not sure why it would be harder to show an error when someone writes <ref name="nonexistant" />{{rp|653}} than when someone writes <ref extends="nonexistant">p. 653</ref> but in theory this new system could auto-repair references (has that been considered?) Category:Pages_with_broken_reference_names contains 1300+ pages.

Also I am curious what your opinion Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2024_August_15#Template:R here would be. Polygnotus (talk) 16:17, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Izno—I'd rather have a syntax that integrates with the <ref>...</ref> syntax, rather than relying on templates, which mixes in a different syntax, and are wiki-specific. isaacl (talk) 16:28, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

If you control the parser you can make any string do anything you want so the currently chosen syntax is, in itself, no advantage or disadvantage. Polygnotus (talk) 16:31, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You provided the wikitext for two examples and asked if one seemed to be an improvement, so I responded that in my opinion, the syntax of the sub-referencing feature under development is conceptually more cohesive to an editor than one where wikitext surrounded in braces follows the <ref ... /> code, or uses solely wikitext surrounded by braces. Sure, any strings can be turned into any other strings, but there are still advantages of some input strings over others. I also prefer the resulting output of the reference list. isaacl (talk) 16:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, but I assume that things are not set in stone yet. I don't mind the difference between [1]:635 and [1.1] or what exact wikicode is used. So I am trying to think about functionality (e.g. automatically repairing broken refs/automatically merging refs instead of how things get displayed/which wikicode is used). Polygnotus (talk) 16:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I apologize as your first post seemed to be concerned about the wikitext markup being used by users of the wikitext editor. From a functionality perspective, I think as Izno alludes to, it will be easier to implement features such as detecting hanging references and merging them together with a syntax that is within the <ref> element, rather than relying on detecting templates and associating them with <ref> elements. That would require the MediaWiki software to treat some wikitext in double braces specially. (It would be easier if the extended information were flagged using triple braces, since it would avoid clashing with the extensible template system, but I don't see any advantages to that over extending the <ref> syntax.) isaacl (talk) 17:09, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Please don't apologize to me (even if there would be a reason to do so, which there isn't), I am a very confused and confusing person and I understand myself roughly 4% of the time (and the world around me far less often than that). Polygnotus (talk) 17:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Good to see this moving forward. My main interest was how it would look on the hover, rather than in the References section. I thought the ref extends might 'fill in' variable fields into the general ref, but it seems instead that it just created a new line below. How flexible is this below line, will it display any wikitext? Could we for example add chapters and quotes? (Which will need manual formatting I assume.) CMD (talk) 16:53, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

URI fragment support might also be useful. One sub-reference could link to, for example, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mexico/#government and another to https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mexico/#economy Polygnotus (talk) 16:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

As noted here meta:Talk:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing#Unintended_consequences .. unleashing this complexity into the mainstream without guidance is a huge mistake that is going to cause years of cleanup work, if ever. There are two main issues I can think of:

• What parameters should be sub-referenced? It should be limited to page numbers, and quotes. Not, for example, multiple works, authors, volumes, issues, IDs, dates of publication, ISBN numbers, etc..
• How is data in a sub-ref added? If it's free-form text, it's a step backwards from CS1|2's uniform |page=42 to a free-form text like "Page 42" or "(p) 42" or whatever free-form text people choose. Bots and tools need to be able to parse the page number(s). Free form text is not semantic. Templated text is semantic. Anything that moves from semantic to non-semnatic is bad design.

Before this is set loose, there must be consensus about how it should be used. It opens an entirely new dimension to citations that is going to impact every user, citation template, bot, bot library (PyWikiBot etc), tool, etc.. -- GreenC 17:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah its also a bit weird to ask for feedback and then already have a proof of concept and say is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. You must ask for feedback before code is written and before any timeline exists. Polygnotus (talk) 17:05, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

At a minimum, it should not be added until there are clear guidelines for usage. More specifically, it should have a feature that issues a red error message if the sub-ref does not contain a special template for displaying page numbers and/or quotes ie. anything else in the sub-ref is disallowed. Then new parameters can be added once consensus is determined. We should have the ability to opt-in parameters, instead of retroactively playing cleanup removing disallowed parameters. -- GreenC 17:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@GreenC: So then you would get something like this, right?

<ref extends="Samer M. Ali" page="" chapter="" quote="" anchor="">
<ref extends="Samer M. Ali">{{subref|page=""|chapter=""|quote=""|anchor=""}}</ref>

And then a form in VE where people can fill it in.

Polygnotus (talk) 17:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

The former was deliberately not chosen during design work as being too inflexible for all the things one might want to make an extending reference. Izno (talk) 19:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

"All the things", which below you said was only page numbers, chapters and quotes. What else do you have in mind? -- GreenC 20:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

There have been previous requests for support in CS1 for subsections of chapters of works. But that's beside the point: we don't need to lock this down out of some misbegotten idea of chaos. YAGNI. Izno (talk) 20:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

It will be chaos as currently proposed, though I never said "lock this down". Johannes asked for feedback. The two main issues I raised, Johannes already said, these are known issues. He said, make a guideline. So I suggested at a minimum, let's make a guideline. You and Johannes don't seem to be on the same page about that. You hinted that were part of the development team, is that correct? -- GreenC 23:09, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

No, I am a volunteer interested in this work since when it was first discussed at WMDE Tech Wishes and/or the community wishlist and have been following it accordingly, working on a decade ago now.

Guidelines are descriptive also. "We usually use it for this, but there may be exceptions." is reasonable guideline text. "You are required to use it only for this." is another reason it's not going to fly. Izno (talk) 16:06, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

That's a shame, the former was precisely what I imagined and was excited for when I first read about the idea. CMD (talk) 02:36, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

@GreenC We don't do that with regular references. There's nothing in the software that produces a red error message if I do <ref>My cousin's roommate's friend told me</ref>, so why should subrefs be enforcing that? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus: This has been being discussed for many years now. m:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing was created in 2018, and even then the idea had already been being discussed for a while. phab:T15127 was created in 2008. It's not odd that they're finally at the stage of having an implementation (or if it is, it's that it took so long to get here). Anomie⚔ 21:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@Anomie: Ah, thank you, I didn't know this was a "plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit"-type situation. Polygnotus (talk) 22:19, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You should probably assume that's the situation for any MediaWiki change. A few years back, some user script authors were mad because a code change had been throwing error messages at them for "only" seven years(!), which was obviously too short a time frame for them to notice that anything needed to be adjusted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I actually totally disagree and think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. My anticipation is that most people will use it for the obvious (page numbers). In some cases they may use chapters (a single long text with a single author or even for anthologies). Rarely do I anticipate them using anything else, but I think they should have the luxury of putting whatever they want in the reference.

As regards mandating some use like templates, that's not how it works, though I can imagine some sort of {{Cs1 subref}}... which is probably basically {{harvnb}} and some others.

One thing however that is sure not to occur is to have subreferences of subreferences. This should prevent the vast majority of pathological cases. Izno (talk) 19:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You think it's a mountain to have a guideline for usage before it's turned on? -- GreenC 20:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Uh, yeah. People have successfully used our current mechanisms for extending a parent reference in many many ways which notably don't fit what you want. Izno (talk) 20:44, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

/me looks back 20+ years… sure is a good thing we wrote all those guidelines before making a wiki that was to become the most popular encyclopedia……. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

No one's stopping you from writing some guidelines. There might not even be any opposition if you put sensible things in it. But as Izno says, the guidelines would be advisory rather than prescriptive. – SD0001 (talk) 14:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

See WP:PROPOSAL if you really want to bother with this. I personally wouldn't recommend it, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

When a document has a nested structure, e.g., chapters within sections, it is natural for an editor to want citations that match that structure. I would expect nested citations to include arbitrary combinations of author, editor, page, quote, title and URL, depending on the type of document. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:15, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Does "will work for wikitext and Visual Editor" cover the list-defined references examples on the demo page? I'm testing right now and the Visual Editor still seems to have the same problems with list-defined references that have existed for some time.[3] Will this update fix any of those issues? Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 02:28, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your feedback, questions and interest in sub-referencing! Given the large number of comments, I’ll try to provide answers to all of them at once:

1. replacing other referencing styles: We don’t intend to replace other citation styles. We are fulfilling an old community wish, creating a MediaWiki solution for citing a source multiple times with different details. Citation styles are a community matter and per WP:CITEVAR you can continue to use your preferred way of referencing. If the community wants certain referencing templates to be replaced by sub-referencing, they are of course free to do so, but that’s up to you.
2. reference pop-up:

   • Reference Previews are going to display both main- and sub-reference in one reference pop-up, showing the sub-reference’s details below the main information (example). There are still a couple of details going to be fixed in the next couple of months.
   • ReferenceTooltips (the gadget enabled by default at enwiki) will need an update. It currently only displays the sub-reference’s information (example), similar to the behavior with sfn (example). But different to sfn (example) it currently doesn’t show a pop-up on top of the first pop-up for the main information. Given that gadgets are community-owned, we won’t interfere with that, but we’ll try to assist communities in updating the gadget.
   • Yes it will be possible to display any wikitext in sub-references, just like it is possible to do so using normal references (without any templates). We’ve intentionally allowed this, because local communities prefer different citation styles (and even within communities users have different preferences), therefore our solution shouldn’t limit any of those. Citing sources with different book pages will probably be the main reason to use sub-referencing, but it’s also possible to use it for chapters, quotes or other details.
   • You’ll need to do the formatting (e.g. writing details in italic) yourself, except if the community creates a template for sub-references

3. URI fragments: Those can be used for sub-references as well (example)
4. List-defined references in VE: We are aware of the issues mentioned in phab:T356471, many of those also affect sub-references. As we are still defining some VE workflows (currently we’ve mostly worked on the citation dialog) we haven’t found a solution yet, but we might be able to resolve at least some of those issues while continuing our work on sub-referencing in Visual Editor.
5. What parameters should be sub–referenced?

   • As already mentioned on meta this should be up to local communities, given the many different referencing styles. It should also be up to them to decide if they want to use templates for sub-referencing or not. We’ve reached out to communities much in advance, so you should have enough time working out some guidelines if your community wants that.
   • But as Ahecht said: Users can already use references for all kinds of unintended stuff, sub-referencing is not different to that. It’s necessary to technically allow all kinds of details in sub-references, due to the many different citation styles within one community and across different communities.
   • From our user research we expect most people using sub-referencing for book pages. There will be a tracking category (example) which could be used to check if there is unintended usage of sub-referencing

6. Nested citations: Should be possible with sub-referencing (example), if you’re talking about WP:NFN?. Feel free to test other referencing styles on betawiki and give feedback if anything doesn't work which should be working.
7. VE and RefPreviews should be fixed to work with all existing referencing styles: Just like Izno said it’s unlikely to achieve that, because local communities are using many different types of referencing and could come up with new local referencing templates every day. That’s why we’ve chosen to add a new attribute to the existing and globally available MediaWiki cite extension.
8. Adding another referencing style isn’t really useful: We are fulfilling a wish which is more than 15 years old and has been requested many times in the past years. Existing template-based solutions for citing references with different details only work on those wikis who maintain such local templates – and most of those have issues with Visual Editor. That’s why a global MediaWiki solution was necessary. You can always continue to use your preferred citation style per WP:CITEVAR.
9. Doesn’t look like an improvement for Wikitext: If you compare it with template-based solutions like {{rp}} you are correct that those allow for simpler wikitext. But if you’re editing in multiple Wikimedia projects, your preferred template from one project might not exist on the other one. That’s why a MediaWiki solution will be beneficial to all users. And most current template-based solutions have the already mentioned disadvantages for Visual Editor users. Also readers will benefit from a more organized reference list by having all sub-references grouped below the main reference.
10. The attribute “extends” doesn’t seem user friendly for non-technical users: We’ve done several consultations with the global community and a lot of user testing in past years where we asked for feedback and ideas on the attribute name. One takeaway is that the name is less important for many users than we initially thought, as long as they can remember it. And our user tests showed a surprisingly large number of Wikitext users switching to VE in order to use the citation dialog (for referencing in general, not just for sub-referencing) – if you do that, you don’t need to deal with the attribute name at all. We didn’t see any major issues with “extends” for people exclusively using Wikitext in our user tests. But so far there is no final decision on the attribute name, so if you have any ideas let us know (we’ll make a final decision soon).
11. You should have asked for feedback earlier: We’ve been working on this feature (on and off) for almost 8 years and had a lot of community consultations (e.g. at Wikimania, WikiCite, discussions on metawiki where we invited communities via Mass Message) and many rounds of user testings – always with the involvement of enwiki users. And we are doing this big announcement now in order to make sure that really everyone knows in advance and can provide further feedback while we are finalizing our feature.

Thanks for all of your feedback, it's well appreciated! --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 16:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be wise, in future, to make a list of predictable reactions/questions and incorporate the responses to those in the announcement. Highlighting the advantages of a change/addition, USPs if any, why decisions were made and perhaps even a short timeline can make the reception much warmer. Some people here (e.g. Polygnotus) don't know the 15 years worth of background information. The good news is that I think that it is an improvement (although it could be a bigger improvement). I assume others have also mentioned things like ensuring refs don't break and automatically merging refs (but I do not want to dig through 15 years of history to figure out why it wasn't implemented) and this is/was an opportunity to make something superior to the existing methods that could replace them. The OrphanReferenceFixer of AnomieBOT will need to be updated. Polygnotus (talk) 17:04, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

It's always difficult to write such announcements in a way that they answer the most important questions while also being short an concise so that people actually read the them ;) Some of the questions raised in this section have already been answered in meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#FAQ and we'll continue to add more frequently asked questions there, if we notice (e.g. in this village pump discussion) that certain questions come up again and again. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 17:16, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, it is super difficult to strike the right balance. And even if you do, some will still be grumpy. But its also very important. Polygnotus (talk) 17:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

If the announcement is too long, then nobody reads it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed response and the included screenshots. I was a bit glum following my comment above but I think I have a better grasp of the underlying concept now. If we are able to use citation templates in the sub-reference field, that may provide a way to fix at least some of the potential issues raised above. Is there a place to track changes to the reference pop-up (File:Sub-referencing refpreview.png)? My first impression is that's perhaps not a necessary large white space but I'm curious to read more discussion on the matter. CMD (talk) 17:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

@CMD depends on what you mean by "place to track changes"? There are several phabricator tags which might serve this purpose (although we've collected a lot of user feedback which is still under discussion and therefore not filed as a task yet). We want to use meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Recent changes and next steps to document important changes on the current prototype and can certainly document further changes to Reference Previews for sub-referencing in this section as well, if that's what you imagined? Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, reference previews are one of the great benefits of the Wikipedia reference system. I'll follow on meta. CMD (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the lengthy reply! Can a template tell if it's being used in an extended reference?

If there is any probability of this all working in the Visual Editor, we should also aim to make templates that work in the Visual Editor. That would mean a template that slots inside of an extended reference, rather than a template that invokes one (the way that {{r}} or {{sfn}} work). There is already some discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 about building a template for consistency between the main named reference and the extended sub-references. I considered making a proof of concept template that would only handle pages, quotations, and so on, but folks have already mentioned citing named sections in a larger work and other broader ideas.

For a template to plug into this, I've checked the parameters currently available in major templates that cite locations within a longer work. If I've missed anything feel free to update this table:

In-source location parameters in existing templates

Element	{{Cite book}}	{{rp}}	{{Sfn}}	other CS1
Page	page, p pages, pp at	page, p, 1 pages, pp at	p, page pp, pages loc, at	minutes time event inset
Quote	quote trans-quote script-quote quote-pages quote-pages	quote, q, quotation translation, trans, t, tq, translation-quote, translation-quotation, trans-quotation, xlat quote-page, qp, quotation-page quote-pages, qpp, quotation-pages quote-location, quote-loc, quote-at, quotation-location	(within loc)
No pp	no-pp	no-pp, nopp	(not available)
Postscript	postscript		ps

Also, regarding formatting, CS1 and sfn are based (to an extent) on APA and Harvard citation styles.

Also(B), regarding LDR, one of the issues with list-defined references in the Visual Editor is that removing all usage of a reference from an article's body text makes the reference become invisible in the VE and emits this error message on the rendered page, "Cite error: A list-defined reference named "Bloggs-1974" is not used in the content (see the help page)." To have an un-called reference isn't exactly an error, though. Editors move citations from the bibliography and standard references down to other sections (Further reading, External links, and so on); some articles still have general references at the bottom. Is there a way to push un-called references down to the bottom of the list and treat them as a maintenance issue rather than an outright error, like the below example with citations borrowed from Template:Cite book/doc^(11-02-2024)

References

1. ^ Mysterious Book. 1901.
2. ^ Bloggs, Joe (1974). Book of Bloggs.
3. * Bloggs, Joe; Bloggs, Fred (1974). Book of Bloggs.

* Notes with an asterisk (*) are not cited inline.

Also(C), regarding guidelines and guidance, we could create Help:Sub-referencing before the feature goes live, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 02:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Can a template tell if it's being used in an extended reference? No, not currently. Lua experts feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Polygnotus (talk) 02:57, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

push un-called references down to the bottom of the list and treat them as a maintenance issue it isn't even a maintenance issue; it is useful if people name refs so that those names can be used later to refer to those refs. But if no one refers to em that is fine. Polygnotus (talk) 03:01, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I have adjusted the table; |postscript= is for terminal punctuation only, not for in-text locations. As for LDRs that are named but not cited, those are most definitely errors. They are generated by the MediaWiki software, hence the name of the help page (Help:Cite errors/Cite error references missing key) and the use of the word "error" on the Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting page, and the name of the MediaWiki page that holds the error message, MediaWiki:Cite error references missing key. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:08, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: But why would it be considered an error if a ref has a name but nothing that refers to it? Polygnotus (talk) 08:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Indeed to best of our knowledge templates currently cannot tell if they are being used in a sub-reference. But it should be possible to make such changes. As templates are community-owned, we cannot do that ourselves, but we'll try to assist communities (e.g. by providing documentation or some examples) with the necessary changes to citation tools and templates. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:47, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, additional parameters might be needed on <ref>...</ref> and on citation templates to designate main and sub-references.

LDRs that are named but not cited are most definitley treated as errors; that doesn't mean that they should be treated as errors. There are other markup languages where uncited references are treated as legitimate. Admiitedly {{Refideas}} is a workaround, but it would be nice if {{Reflist}} could include incited references and if the LDRs were listed first. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Page continually crashes on mobile

When I view large milkweed bug on my iphone without logging in (just default skin for anon users) using Safari browser, the page repeatedly crashes with the message "A problem repeatedly occured on [the url]." The page partially loads and then crashes. The page loads just fine on my laptop.

I have a hunch that it might be related to the multiple videos embedded on the page. 1) Is there anything to fix this on the page? and/or 2) Is there anything I can do when this happens on my phone? I suppose I could try logging in, but I almost never edit with my phone and only use it to look things up, so would prefer to use anonymously to avoid distractions and overhead related to logging in (e.g., notifications and other stuff). older ≠ wiser 17:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

What version of iOS is your iPhone? Izno (talk) 19:21, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

iOS 17.5.1. older ≠ wiser 19:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Eyeballing Phabricator, it looks like videos don't work on versions of Safari much older than that but there are no issues otherwise with Safari + video. This may possibly be phab:T242895 instead, but you're having the issue logged out, and CentralNotice doesn't show up as often for logged out users I think. So maybe a new bug? Izno (talk) 19:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I just loaded the page logged out in Safari on an iPhone 12 mini with iOS 17.6.1 and am having the same issue. Switching to Chrome generates a similar error, "Can't open this page." Home Lander (talk) 22:52, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

• Could someone having the issue try to open the page using this safemode link to see if it is different? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:08, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  Still crashes on my iPhone. older ≠ wiser 23:40, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

  When you say "just default skin for anon users" do you mean Minerva (mobile site) or Vector 2022 (desktop site?) 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 13:08, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

  Beats me. Whatever is the default skin for anon users on an iPhone. older ≠ wiser 13:27, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

  Is the URL en.m.wikipedia.org or en.wikipedia.org? That's the question, I presume. 2804:F1...A7:C558 (talk) – 15:11, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

  I would assume it is the mobile website. I did nothing to force the iPhone browser away from the mobile site. older ≠ wiser 16:22, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

  In parallel to this, please open a bug with Apple here. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:35, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-34

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

Feature news

• Editors who want to re-use references but with different details such as page numbers, will be able to do so by the end of 2024, using a new sub-referencing feature. You can read more about the project and how to test the prototype.
• Editors using tracking categories to identify which pages use specific extensions may notice that six of the categories have been renamed to make them more easily understood and consistent. These categories are automatically added to pages that use specialized MediaWiki extensions. The affected names are for: DynamicPageList, Kartographer, Phonos, RSS, Score, WikiHiero. Wikis that have created the category locally should rename their local creation to match. Thanks to Pppery for these improvements. [4]
• Technical volunteers who edit modules and want to get a list of the categories used on a page, can now do so using the categories property of mw.title objects. This enables wikis to configure workflows such as category-specific edit notices. Thanks to SD001 for these improvements. [5][6]

Bugs status

• Your help is needed to check if any pages need to be moved or deleted. A maintenance script was run to clean up unreachable pages (due to Unicode issues or introduction of new namespaces/namespace aliases). The script tried to find appropriate names for the pages (e.g. by following the Unicode changes or by moving pages whose titles on Wikipedia start with Talk:WP: so that their titles start with Wikipedia talk:), but it may have failed for some pages, and moved them to Special:PrefixIndex/T195546/ instead. Your community should check if any pages are listed there, and move them to the correct titles, or delete them if they are no longer needed. A full log (including pages for which appropriate names could be found) is available in phab:P67388.
• Editors who volunteer as mentors to newcomers on their wiki are once again able to access lists of potential mentees who they can connect with to offer help and guidance. This functionality was restored thanks to a bug fix. Thank you to Mbch331 for filing the bug report. You can read about that, and 18 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Project updates

• The application deadline for the Product & Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) has been extended to September 16. Members will help by providing advice to Foundation Product and Technology leadership on short and long term plans, on complex strategic problems, and help to get feedback from more contributors and technical communities. Selected members should expect to spend roughly 5 hours per month for the Council, during the one year pilot. Please consider applying, and spread the word to volunteers you think would make a positive contribution to the committee.

Learn more

• The 2024 Coolest Tool Awards were awarded at Wikimania, in seven categories. For example, one award went to the ISA Tool, used for adding structured data to files on Commons, which was recently improved during the Wiki Mentor Africa Hackathon. You can see video demonstrations of each tool at the awards page. Congratulations to this year's recipients, and thank you to all tool creators and maintainers.
• The latest Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin is available, and includes some highlights from Wikimania, an upcoming Language community meeting, and other news from the movement.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

I cleaned up the broken pages on enwiki already. There were a few instances of a proxy-blocking admin posting multiple redundant notices on different normalizations of the same IP address, and two Unicode character redirects that got corrupted by some earlier maintenance script and not handled properly. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:52, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Getting a Zotero translator into Citoid

Two months ago, an updated Zotero translator for the Bangkok Post (by Matthewmayer) was merged to the Zotero repository. What else needs to be done to have it working in Citoid? The instructions at MW say to create a Phabricator ticket, but also to check some tests first which I can't make sense of. --Paul_012 (talk) 08:00, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Then I'd say there are two tasks to make, one to help with the documentation and one to update our local installation. ;) Izno (talk) 16:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding new language versions to Watchlist

I often find that articles I start eventually get translated, particularly into Portuguese as I write mainly on Portuguese subjects. However, I only find out about these translations by accident. Would it be possible for Watchlist to be programmed to alert us when new-language versions of articles we are watching are published? Thanks Roundtheworld (talk) 09:55, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

If nothing like that is on the list then you may wanna look at WP:SCRIPTREQ. Polygnotus (talk) 10:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

@Roundtheworld: If you enable "Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist then it will show if a new language is added to the Wikidata item for the page. Other edits to the item will also show. If you only want language additions then somebody could probably make code to hide other Wikidata edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:04, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Great! Thanks.Roundtheworld (talk) 12:40, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Math Rendering of \R^n

I am sorry if this issue has been already raised, or if it's only a local problem.

I am noticing that a specific mathematical expression (\R^n or \mathbb{R}^n ) does not render properly on Wikipedia pages when using the laptop version with Google Chrome or Safari (See for example, the page Isoperimetric inequality). My Wikipedia skin is Vector 2022 and the Math Setting "SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin)" is enabled. Interestingly, this problem does not happen on the mobile version.

Weirdly, $\mathbb {A} ^{n}$, $\mathbb {B} ^{n}$, $\mathbb {C} ^{n}$, $\mathbb {R}$, and $\mathbb {R} ^{n}\subset \mathbb {R} ^{n}$ are properly displayed, but $\mathbb {R} ^{n}$ (\mathbb{R}^n) fails to render as expected. Clerel (talk) 13:29, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

It also failed for me. The image for \mathbb{R}^n was missing for some reason. I tried Help:Displaying a formula#Force-rerendering of formulas on this page and it worked after reloading with Ctrl+F5. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:53, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

How does a bot know when a page is added to a category?

You could of course get the entire category every x minutes or hours and check if anything has changed and if so, what. Because some categories are rather big this could take a bunch of API calls. But there must be a more elegant solution, right? I found Wikipedia:IRC#Channels_for_specific_tasks but there was no channel for "pages added to a category". I also found https://stream.wikimedia.org/v2/stream/recentchange which is somewhat similar to what i want but filtered to "added to category X"-events. Polygnotus (talk) 02:06, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Is this what I want? Polygnotus (talk) 02:23, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

[7] or [8]. Nardog (talk) 02:33, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Not exactly what I want but the closest I will get. Polygnotus (talk) 03:17, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Polygnotus, my bot uses wikitech:Event Platform/EventStreams HTTP Service. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:09, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Thank you. What is the URL the bot is looking at? Also can I have the bot code please? Polygnotus (talk) 10:24, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Polygnotus, the URL is https://stream.wikimedia.org/v2/stream/recentchange. I've just published the code at User:Qwerfjkl (bot)/code/CategoryMonitor. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:29, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Thank you, this is perfect! Polygnotus (talk) 11:22, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Polygnotus, great! Out of curiosity, what are you trying to do with this? — Qwerfjkltalk 11:46, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Well, I was trying to make something similar to the thing you made, see User_talk:AnomieBOT#OrphanReferenceFixer. But I was also just trying to understand the Action, REST, XTools APIs and the EventStreams. I have written some code for each. I am desperately trying to become less stupid. Polygnotus (talk) 11:54, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

In theory it might be possible to warn people who have introduced possible typos User:Polygnotus/Scripts/TypoFixer. Polygnotus (talk) 11:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

What would be the best way to replace all usages of a file?

Hello, I'm am currently doing a massive overhaul of Slovakia city flags, included in this is replacing old raster flags with their svg counterparts.

What would be the most efficient way replace all uses of "flag_x.jpg" with "flag_x.svg" across all Wiki projects for multiple flags? EnzoTC (talk) 06:26, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@EnzoTC: WP:AWB (or if you don't have that, WP:AWBREQ), perhaps WP:BOTREQ. You should supply a clear description of exactly what needs changing and in what manner. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:34, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I haven't tried it but see commons:Commons:GlobalReplace#Replacement. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:57, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

User:Alex 21/script-categoriessort

Is it possible to make this viewable in mobile desktop mode, much like this? The categories script is viewable only when I rotate the mobile sideways. Pinging the creator Alex 21 if he can do something. Considering how less desktop time I'm getting of late and the need for using this script more often, I hope something can be done. Kailash29792 (talk) 12:38, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Kailash29792: So like User:Polygnotus/catsort.js? Polygnotus (talk) 12:59, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes exactly! I was not even aware this script existed, so thank you! If one script gets deprecated the other should serve as alternative. Kailash29792 (talk) 13:03, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, it didn't exist until recently. Please copy the script to your own userspace and install it from there. Polygnotus (talk) 13:05, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for copying my script. -- Alex_21 _TALK 21:15, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Alex 21: And thank you for writing it! Polygnotus (talk) 22:12, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Kailash29792: forgot to ping. Polygnotus (talk) 13:05, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I've done accordingly. And it works. Kailash29792 (talk) 13:07, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Kailash29792 and Alex 21: Turns out that Wikipedia:Categorization says: The order in which categories are placed on a page is not governed by any single rule (for example, it does not need to be alphabetical). Normally the most essential, significant categories are listed first. since 2009. Polygnotus (talk) 08:33, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Me having attempted a few FAs, a common comment in them was the request to sort categories alphabetically. I agreed with them as it makes for easier searching. Kailash29792 (talk) 08:37, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Kailash29792, Polygnotus, and Alex 21: I've only just read this properly. Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 114#Create a BOT to alphabetize and organize categories automatically. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:01, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't have an opinion on if categories should be sorted by importance or alphabetically. I just saw a request to make a minor modification to a script so I posted a modified version. Then I happened to read a bit of a guideline so I quoted it because it might be of interest. Polygnotus (talk) 14:13, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

TLDR: Bot proposal failed Wikipedia:COSMETICBOT and this userscript: User:Paradoctor/CatVisor is pretty cool, it adds user-configurable ways of arranging and displaying the categories on articles. CatVisor does not touch the article source, and will not change anything for those not using it. Polygnotus (talk) 14:22, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

My code shall remain thus. Anyone who wants to copy it without asking, if there's issues with it, that's on them. Cheers. -- Alex_21 _TALK 21:28, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Audio generated with Score extension is inaudibly quiet

I was trying to listen to some audio found on the page for Lydian mode, but none of the audio was playing. Then I downloaded one of the generated MP3s, and saw that the volume level was extremely low, you can't hear anything at all. Had to use a Normalize feature just to hear the music.

The audio is being generated using the MediaWiki extension called "Score". Dwedit (talk) 23:09, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

@Dwedit: What operating system and browser are you using? On a phone/tablet/laptop/desktop pc? I don't see the bug on phabricator (yet). I can't reproduce the problem. Polygnotus (talk) 23:12, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I am using Firefox on Windows 10. But the problem is not only seen in the browser. I can save the generated mp3 to my PC, then load it into a sound editor. GoldWave sees the maximum amplitude level as 0.0385 (on a scale between 0 and 1). I also tested Mp3Gain on this file. After running Mp3Gain, I instead see a more reasonable maximum amplitude level of 0.3960, which is about 10 times louder than the original. Dwedit (talk) 23:26, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

I downloaded the file from the first audio player on Lydian mode (rightclick-save audio as) and I ran ffmpeg -i ~/Desktop/a.mp3 -filter:a loudnorm=print_format=json -f null - and the output was:

"input_i" : "-39.23",
"input_tp" : "-27.57",
"input_lra" : "1.80",
"input_thresh" : "-49.79",
"output_i" : "-24.34",
"output_tp" : "-12.84",
"output_lra" : "1.10",
"output_thresh" : "-34.77",
"normalization_type" : "dynamic",
"target_offset" : "0.34"

So it is indeed rather quiet (-39.23 LUFS). But when playing it in VLC I just heard it at a normal volume because of its Normalizer. Polygnotus (talk) 23:37, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

Just to add something to the conversation, in this case the `f_ebur128` filter may be more suitable. Hym3242 (talk) 12:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Where are user right links chosen?

When viewing Special:ListUsers or Special:UserRights, the user rights are all clickable and take you to specific pages. What controls what the rights link to and where can I request a change?
I ask because I want to request a change to the edit filter managers link (to this) and also because I'm curious. – 2804:F14...0F:8750 (talk) 23:49, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AllMessages?prefix=Grouppage. You won't have to look far. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:12, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Grouppage-abusefilter was set to Wikipedia:Edit filter in 2009, and Wikipedia:Edit filter manager only got its own page two months ago. I have updated to the new page.[9] PrimeHunter (talk) 01:25, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you :). – 2804:F1...0F:8750 (talk) 02:55, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

In regards to {{Lang}} and subtemplates like {{Lang-xx}}

I'm sorry for not making the title more informational, but if I did try to explain it, it would just be the entire post.

I have a very specific issue; so specific that I don't really know whether or not this is the right place to ask here, so apologies if I should have placed this somewhere else. This doesn't exactly relate to Wikipedia itself, but because my issue uses templates and modules that comes from Wikipedia I feel this is the best place to ask.
To cut it short, on another wiki, we use the likes of {{Lang}} and its counterparts, Lang-xx (ex: lang-zh) in the same capacity that Wikipedia uses. When using Lang-xx correctly: ex: German: Deutschland, the 'link' to the page obviously uses the standard Wikipedia style of [[ ]] to create a link to the German language article.

The problem is that because this wiki is not actually on Wikipedia, when the page 'links' the article, it does not link to Wikipedia, it links to a non-existent article on the wiki that then either has to be filled with a redirect already to Wikipedia or not created at all. I'd like to replace the (apparent) [[ ]] markup with a [[Wikipedia: ]] markup so that these pages on the site link to Wikipedia rather than to these nonexistent pages. I know how to do that, I just don't know where in the world to look for it. I've combed through nearly every module I can find for Lang and I haven't found anything. TheodoresTomfooleries (talk) 19:51, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Asking on Template talk:Lang is the right place. Izno (talk) 20:07, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

On this site Module:Lang#L-436 is where this happens. Look for this code on your site and change it there. Gonnym (talk) 20:08, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Map SVG not rendering correctly

I'm not sure if this is the place for this since this straddles Wikipedia and Commons. For the map used in 2023–2024 mpox epidemic, I added diagonal hatching (stripes) to certain countries. This renders correctly on my SVG editing tool (Inkscape), when viewing the raw SVG file in my browser (Firefox), and when exporting to a PNG. However, within Wikipedia's and Commons' viewer, the stripes don't show up. I'm somewhat new to editing SVGs, but it seems like I did this correctly (or correctly enough), and so I'm a bit lost. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 20:32, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

If I go to the file description page, and try some of the links after "Other resolutions", I find that the 2,560 × 1,315 pixels and 2,921 × 1,500 pixels sizes both show the stripes, whereas 1,280 × 657 pixels doesn't - and nor do the smaller ones. So, when you export to a PNG, what resolution do you use? Have you tried making the stripes wider? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:46, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

@Redrose64: So this is interesting: when I adjust the resolution on Wikipedia to 2300px, it only shows some of the countries, namely the ones where I used 0.400 for the pattern scale in Inkscape. However, when I export to a 2300px PNG locally, it still displays all of the lines just fine. Scaling down to 600px export from Inkscape, it still "shows" the lines, although by that point it's too bit-crushed to distinctly make them out as lines. Thus, this appears to be some sort of failure on MediaWiki's end. Edit: Even the highest-resolution default PNG on Commons fails to display Taiwan, Portugal, and the Philippines.TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 22:24, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki feature for broken section links

Since July there's been two different kinds of notices when trying to open a wikilink with a broken section (either because it was archived or just broken/refactored). They are the following texts on English Wikipedia:

• This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, moved or renamed.
• This topic could not be found on this page, but it does exist on the following page: Example

It is documented MediaWiki feature at mediawikiwiki:Extension:DiscussionTools. Added here to make it easier to find. I could not find the second message, but found the first at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_213#absent_section_links_&_popups so making it easier for others to find it. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:35, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

To see the second message, you can try this archived discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:42, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

AFD Stats down

Any chance getting AFD Stats back up? Below is the message that comes up. — Maile (talk) 11:12, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/data/project/afdstats/pyvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pymysql/connections.py", line 644, in connect sock = socket.create_connection( File "/usr/lib/python3.9/socket.py", line 822, in create_connection for res in getaddrinfo(host, port, 0, SOCK_STREAM): File "/usr/lib/python3.9/socket.py", line 953, in getaddrinfo for res in _socket.getaddrinfo(host, port, family, type, proto, flags): socket.gaierror: [Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/data/project/afdstats/public_html/afdstats.py", line 112, in main db = pymysql.connect( File "/data/project/afdstats/pyvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pymysql/connections.py", line 358, in __init__ self.connect() File "/data/project/afdstats/pyvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pymysql/connections.py", line 711, in connect raise exc pymysql.err.OperationalError: (2003, "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'enwiki.web.db.svc.wikimedia.cloud' ([Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution)") None Fatal error.

I asked over at User_talk:0xDeadbeef#AfD_stats but I have no idea if that is the correct place to ask. Polygnotus (talk) 11:15, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus if you are referring to afdstats, this is an external tool; the maintainers are listed at that bottom of that page, with links to where bugs can be reported. Those are the only people that can help with this. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:42, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I have no experience with this kinda stuff but I figured that since Enterprisey and Σ are inactive, and Enterprisey listed 0xDeadbeef on their talkpage as a maintainer of apersonbot, which also runs on Toolforge, that 0xDeadbeef may have the required access to fix the tool as well. Can you explain a bit more? It would be bad if each tool had a bus factor of 1. Enterprisey's talkpage contains Time to finally touch some grass. May be back someday. You can consider my projects "unmaintained"; I would be happy to help anyone looking to take on maintenance of any of them. In particular, Legoktm and 0xDeadbeef are the two other maintainers of apersonbot on Toolforge and should thus be your first point of contact for any of those projects. People seem to inherit or adopt Toolforge tools from others when someone becomes inactive. Polygnotus (talk) 12:52, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus "AFD stats" isn't part of the English Wikipedia; so our volunteers can't do anything about it. Most anyone can run tools on toolforge, each tool is managed only by the specific owners of that tool. If all the owners of a tool quit, there is a process where the toolforge admins can let someone else become the maintainer. "apersonbot" and "AFD stats" have nothing to do with eachother. "AFD stats" has a maintainer, Σ who is still around - so their talk page is where to bring up problems with their tool. Note, they have a notice on their talk page that if you want them to look at something, you should also email them. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:03, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! I wasn't sure if the accounts were tied to a person (or persons) or to a specific tool. I will send Σ an email. Polygnotus (talk) 13:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

It looks like it has several maintainers; pinging Ahecht, Legoktm. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:35, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Would be nice if the maintainers would maintain a consistent list of maintainers! — xaosflux ^Talk 18:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

You'd have to talk to one of these folks about updating the source code to list the current maintainers. I have server access but not source access.--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:58, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Maile66 et al: I have no idea what the problem was, but restarting the webservice seems to have fixed it. Feel free to ping me if you're seeing other errors. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:54, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ahecht, Thanks. — Maile (talk) 21:04, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Gadget to display a user's rights

I used to have a gadget enabled that showed a user's rights, with little icons next to their username that showed whether they were an admin, oversighter, arbcom member, etc. Those are no longer displaying, so I don't know if the gadget is no longer working or if I somehow disabled it. Unfortunately, I don't remember this gadget's name, so I can't look more into it myself. Does anyone else know what I'm referring to? Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 15:23, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jauerback: The list of gadgets is here. I don't see a recently removed gadget that does what you want there. But gadgets are basically userscripts with an attitude. And there are plenty of userscripts that do what you want. The relevant section of the list of userscripts is here and you are probably talking about something similar to UserRoleIndicator or markAdmins. Polygnotus (talk) 15:56, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Ah, found it, the gadget you are referring to is on Commons, not on enwiki. See commons:MediaWiki:Gadget-markAdmins.js. Polygnotus (talk) 16:20, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. It was a user script; not a gadget. After looking through the list, the one I was referring to is User:Anne drew/admintagger. Jauerback^dude?/_dude. 18:33, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

NOT a dark mode problem

but maybe a problem with reporting dark mode problems

The Appearance menu has a link to Report an issue with dark mode which i just clicked by accident while on Wikipedia:Sandbox. No problem to report there at this time. 173.67.42.107 (talk) 06:57, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

So leave the form blank and, without saving, back out of it. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@Redrose64: i didn't see any form... When i clicked the link, the words Report an issue with dark mode changed to something like Issue has been reported or Report submitted... i forget the exact words. But you say a form is supposed to appear? In the same browser window or a new window? or a new tab? or a pop-up within the tab, like some websites' chat function? --173.67.42.107 (talk) 12:25, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Can't close tab via Javascript when syntax highlighting (CodeMirror) is enabled?

Resolved

When I enable syntax highlighting with CodeMirror (I am using the old editor), window.close(); does not work anymore. Polygnotus (talk) 08:22, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus: Your link is to a dab page which doesn't mention CodeMirror. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:31, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

It links to this which links to this which links to this to report a bug so thats what I'm doing now. Polygnotus (talk) 08:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The only link to a page on meta is meta:Community Tech/Wikitext editor syntax highlighting. I see that it is a redirect to meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2016/CodeMirror which mentions mw:Extension:CodeMirror in its first paragraph. That does have a Report a bug link, but following that link I find no mention of Wikipedia, let alone Village pump (technical). I also don't find either Wikipedia or Village pump (technical) mentioned on either of the two CodeMirror pages, so I don't see why you're reporting here. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:58, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Because the nerds are here. My people. I am no Javascript expert, and I am unsure why CodeMirror seems to block window.close() and how it does that and how to get around that if possible. As you can see on Special:Version, CodeMirror is installed here on en.wikipedia.org. Polygnotus (talk) 09:05, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Hm, I see window.addEventListener( 'beforeunload' in CodeMirror/resources/ext.CodeMirror.WikiEditor.js on line ~368. I don't see a CSP that could prevent window.close() in the code (but that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't there in the rendered version. Polygnotus (talk) 09:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Does it have to do with CodeMirror? Closing is prevented (by the module mediawiki.confirmCloseWindow) as long as the content of the textbox is different from when the page was opened. Nardog (talk) 09:43, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, but the script only closes the window when no typos can be fixed (so the content of the textbox has not changed). In any case I have "Warn me when I leave an edit page with unsaved changes" unchecked. I think the beforeunload eventlistener is the source of the problem. But I found a workaround, I just repeatedly attempt to close the window until it lets me. That works fine. Polygnotus (talk) 09:48, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

FWIW you could set a breakpoint for the beforeunload event in DevTools and see which script was preventing it. Nardog (talk) 09:59, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

True, but programming languages are a very dangerous rabbit hole for me. So for once I am going to use self-control. A simple workaround and a happy wife is better than an elegant solution and a divorce. Polygnotus (talk) 10:18, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

How can I convert Google Books urls to neutral format?

Object: For a citation, I want to include the url for the Google Books page. (It's in Preview mode.)

Problem: I live outside the U.S., so the url I get here is country-specific. Furthermore, the url I get includes irrelevant data, like the search term I used to find it in the first place.

Question: How do I convert the url to the country-neutral, approved short form?

And a suggestion: It would be helpful if this knowhow were included in WP:Help? Ttocserp 10:32, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Ttocserp, can you link using the ISBN (e.g. https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0863163165)? — Qwerfjkltalk 10:41, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, although that will give me the book, but not the page. Also, it won't work for older books since there was no ISBN then, Ttocserp 11:44, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah someone should file a WP:BOTREQ to remove unnecessary parameters and use the correct language version of Google Books. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:LinkSearch?target=books.google.de for example. If possible it would be even better to convert them all to {{cite book}} or {{Google Books URL}}. We already have a bot removing tracking parameters from URLs (although I can't remember the name) so it might be a good feature request for them. Polygnotus (talk) 11:47, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

User:Citation bot normalizes Google Book URLs. Polygnotus (talk) 12:34, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you; problem solved. Ttocserp 12:46, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, not yet. @Ttocserp: nothing on this planet is easy. There are currently 198 articles with one or more links to the German version of Google Books. And there are many languages other than German and English. Working on it. Polygnotus (talk) 12:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

So, this simple request led to a lot of todoes:

1. MediaWiki doesn't appear to have a way to filter Special:LinkSearch by namespace. many Phabricator tickets, T37758 dates back to 2012... But the functionality already exists in NewPagesPager.php so it shouldn't be too hard to make something similar.
2. I couldn't find a userscript that allows the user to filter Special:LinkSearch by namespace. User:Polygnotus/namespace.js does it, exceptionally poorly (it does not make API requests it just filters whatever is displayed on the page).
   • If there are no other scripts that do this task better then something like this should be improved and added to the list.
   • Help:Linksearch#Toolforge claims there is a toolforge tool that can filter external links by namespace but it is dead. Can it be resurrected? Can it also be used for the other Special: pages?  In progress I asked over at User_talk:Giftpflanze#toolforge:Linksearch
   • Have to check if there are more Special: pages that also don't have filter capabilities but should have.
   • AWB also appears to be unable to use External link search as a list generator. Should that be added as a feature request?
3. According to this there are 187 language versions of Google. Someone should probably scan the latest dump to see which appear in it.
4. We need either a feature request for User:Citation bot or a WP:BOTREQ for whoever wants to deal with this.  In progress I asked over at User_talk:Citation_bot#Feature_request:_Google_Books

To get an idea of the scale of the problem, here we got: de, nl, es, fr. 620 combined articles that contain one or more of these links. Polygnotus (talk) 13:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

You might find this and variant searches useful: insource:"books.google" insource:/\/\/books\.google\.(de|fr|es|nl|pt|it)/. That search finds about 1480 articles.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Thank you! I do not understand why Special:LinkSearch returns a different number than the same languages in that regex via the searchbox. Polygnotus (talk) 14:12, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The search looks for that pattern in the wikitext of pages. Linksearch looks for links in its rendered output. Consider templates like {{geoSource}}, which can produce links to google books from wikitext like {{geoSource|DE|AHL|42}}. (Or even the Template:GeoSource page itself, which has many links to google books despite that url not appearing in its wikitext at all, through its transclusion of Template:GeoSource/doc.) —Cryptic 14:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Ok, that was a stupid question. Thanks! Polygnotus (talk) 15:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

And because it is only looking for six of the who-knows-how-many languages google books supports. And because the search is constrained to mainspace.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I managed to avoid those pitfalls ;-) Polygnotus (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Probably the best task to look at is phab:T12593, which is specifically about Special:LinkSearch. It's not as simple as you seem to think, the SQL query would be too inefficient. NewPagesPager and some others have different enough table structure that efficient queries can be written. Anomie⚔ 16:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Guidelines concerning presentation of HDR images in Wikipedia?

Sometimes in articles concerning HDR technologies there is a need to present an HDR image.

I want to create a (public domain) rendition of ITU-R Rec. BT.2111 (an HDR&WCG color bars test signal image) to be used in article SMPTE_color_bars. It has to be presented with full PQ HDR and BT.2020 WCG to be able to illustrate properly.

I am considering AVIF since it seems to have better support and overall easier to understand if you know ffmpeg well.

But considering that not all devices support HDR and/or WCG, do I need to also create a SDR version? maybe also a SDR & sRGB version?

For what it's worth, this test signal can be seen in some recent large scale high end television broadcasts (& the studios they are produced in) like the Paris Olympics. Hym3242 (talk) 12:24, 24 August 2024 (UTC)