Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 215

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?  In progress T373261
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)

Since a bot can only edit URLs that literally exist in the wikitext, insource is more accurate for that purpose. Unless the bot is programmed for those special templates, which most are not since there are thousands, each with their own syntax that can change on a whim. -- GreenC 13:14, 26 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)

Very interesting, thank you! I will have to do a bit more research. Polygnotus (talk) 09:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Polygnotus, you can use the API for this, e.g.:

async function fetchGoogleBooksLinks(languageTLD) {
    const api = new mw.Api();
    let params = {
        action: 'query',
        format: 'json',
        list: 'exturlusage',
        euquery: `books.google.${languageTLD}`,
        eunamespace: 0,
        eulimit: 'max'
    };

    let titles = [];
    let continueToken;

    do {
        if (continueToken) {
            params eucontinue = continueToken;
        }
        console.log(`Fetching for ${languageTLD}`)
        const data = await api.get(params);
        const exturls = data.query.exturlusage;

        exturls.forEach((exturl) => {
            titles.push(exturl.title);
        });

        continueToken = data continue ? data.continue.eucontinue : null;
    } while (continueToken);

    return titles;
}

async function fetchAllGoogleBooksLinks() {
    const tlds = ['de', 'fr', 'es', 'nl', 'pt', 'it'];
    let allTitles = [];

    for (const tld of tlds) {
        const titles = await fetchGoogleBooksLinks(tld);
        allTitles = allTitles.concat(titles);
    }
    console.log("* [["+allTitles.join("]]\n* [[")+"]]")
}

fetchAllGoogleBooksLinks();

See User:Qwerfjkl/sandbox/Language-specific Google Books links. — Qwerfjkltalk 09:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! I know this cool little trick where I can take any piece of code and double it in size... by converting it to Java. Let me tell you, bigger is not always better. Polygnotus (talk) 12:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

In case it helps, I keep statistics, Enwiki has 2,122,411 Google Books links as of last month. If all you found was about 1,500 malformed links, about 0.0007 percent, is pretty good. We do have a much bigger problem with the corpus of GB links, which BTW is one of the largest corpuses<sp?> comparable to nytimes.com and web.archive.org .. the problem is that many of them have stopped working, directly (hard-404), or indirectly (soft-404 and crunchy-404 - see WP:LINKROT#Glossary). It could be 10% or more (200,000+). Nobody is really maintaining the 2 million corpus other than the URL normalization work of Citation bot. IABot typically skips them since archives usually don't work. Dead-ish GB links sit there, unresolved, often providing nothing more than an "About the book" page confirming the author and title, with a "Buy this book" button. At one time the link had content, but GB changes things around, removing content leaving little behind. All 2 million are at risk of becoming hard, soft and crunchy 404s. -- GreenC 13:44, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

Looking in to reports that geohack (where article coordinates go) is down. Getting 504 timeouts when following links such as [1]. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:37, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

• Reported at mw:Talk:GeoHack#Geohack seems to be down. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

  Appears to be back up, no idea who fixed it. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

This search – -hastemplate:"short description" prefix:"List of" – returns just two results and they are the same page – List of Coastal Carolina Chanticleers head baseball coaches. One copy (2024-06-09T16:09:55) is a version of the article just before it was moved to draftspace (2024-06-09T16:49:44). The other version is the article that was re-created under the original article name. Any clues as to how we expunge the undead version from the search index? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

copied from WP talk:Short description — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 14:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

phab:T331127 maybe, which should have been fixed a while ago. Izno (talk) 14:59, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks like it, but the ticket was closed a few weeks back. Should it be re-opened? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 15:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I nudged it, we'll see what the response is. Izno (talk) 15:52, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery 20:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Any idea how DN27ND is still able to edit the page Nori Bunasawa? They appear to have been partially blocked from editing it on July 31, but were able to make dozens of edits to it on August 27. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

The most likely explanation is that, because of an AfD debate, the article was deleted and the pageblock then ended. And then the article was recreated, and the editor was then able to contribute to it. The current incarnation of the article was deleted by another administrator a few minutes ago, just as I was about to click the delete button. My explanation is an informed hunch and those with deeper understanding of the software may have a better explanation. Cullen328 (talk) 07:44, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

On 28 August 2024, Special:Contributions/DN27ND moved User:DN27ND/sandbox3 to Nori Bunasawa. I guess a partial block from editing does not prevent moving a page to the deleted and unsalted target. The edits occurred in the sandbox, before moving. Johnuniq (talk) 07:46, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

There's some edits after the page was moved. I think Cullen328 above might be on the right track. Maybe partial blocks are by page_id rather than page_title. Thank you both for the ideas. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Just a brief update here...

The previously blocked user is already arguing for undeletion at Requests for Undeletion, here [3].

Given that the article coudl as easily have been deleted under G5 as G4, would it not be possible for an admin to just site block the user, rather than for others to have their time wasted by his continual bad faith actions? Axad12 (talk) 08:29, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

That's off-topic for the technical discussion. Nardog (talk) 08:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

You can post future updates about user behavior in Wikipedia:Teahouse#Speedy deletion criteria, which I'm subscribed to. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

No problem, I will open a thread at ANI and copy you in. (I will say for now however that I feel that the user's behaviour at Requests for Undeletion was quite unacceptable). Axad12 (talk) 08:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae Partial blocks apply to a specific incarnation of a page, not the page title (as you say, it works by page id). If you move a page to a new title the partial block should move with it.

You also cannot use a partial block to stop an editor creating a page.

See the manual on mediawiki: MW:Manual:Block and unblock#Partial blocks

See Phab:T271253 for a request to make this clearer. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 10:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps changed recently or I did not pay attention but Special:Watchlist has filter for namespace and refers to Article/Mainspace as "Content", the first I've seen it named as such anywhere. I like content but find it confusing when elsewhere e.g in Special:MovePage it's called (Article). I don't have a strong opinion on the correct name, but think we should minimize confusion. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:55, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Are you perhaps confusing the "All contents" entry with the "Article" entry in the drop down ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

If you really see "Content" and not "All contents" then what is your language at Special:Preferences? "All contents" in the watchlist means all non-talk pages. There is also a MediaWiki concept of "content namespaces" which can be set by a wiki with mw:Manual:$wgContentNamespaces. I think it's only mainspace for all Wikimedia wikis (no mention in InitialiseSettings or CommonSettings). I haven't seen it used in any watchlist settings. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:52, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

{{trout}} me 🎏 You are right! I did not read closely enough, despite bothering to report it here, because I would have expected it to select all content/talk pages then. Thank you for the informative links down MediaWiki rabbit hole! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I was wondering, has it always been the case that <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> tags, if placed inside of a hidden HTML comment, will still transclude its contents when called from another page? (For example, see here and here in my sandbox.) This seems strange to me, if the code is hidden it seems like it should not be transcluded elsewhere. This doesn't seem to apply to includeonly though.

I'm aware of the issue with onlyinclude+nowiki tags mentioned here, but found nothing about hidden comments. Thanks, S.A. Julio (talk) 06:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I assume it has always been like that and it seems logical to me. Comments <!-- ... --> are saved as part of the page and not stored somewhere else. If the page has onlyinclude tags inside then all other parts of the page are ignored on transclusion so the comment start and end tags are not seen. includeonly works different. A page with includeonly but no onlyinclude is processed from the beginning on transclusion so the comment tags are seen there. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:10, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification. S.A. Julio (talk) 19:11, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

I use the green on black gadget available through preferences. When I go to the history of a page which has pending changes, the bytes and the user-entered edit summary for the top two entries are in black text on black. I struggle to read this. If I click-and-highlight then I can read it. I'm not sure how long ago it started. For example here. Can it be fixed? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 16:07, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Which skin are you using? Are you also in dark mode? (If so, which dark mode?) — xaosflux ^Talk 17:36, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Monobook. No, I'm not using dark mode. DuncanHill (talk) 17:45, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

The other day, I had a notification I had already seen reappear a month later. Apparently this is something which is seen on occasion, but nobody knows how to reproduce it. If this happens to you, please leave comments on T373443 with whatever details you can figure out, or just email me if you don't have phab access and I can do it for you. RoySmith (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi, can someone with a good knowledge of template code have a look at my request over at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Template:Permanent dead link? Thanks! — AP 499D25 (talk) 02:00, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I have been experimenting with dark mode (&withgadget=dark-mode). While doing that, I received a "You have a new Talk page message" notification. In dark mode, I had no idea that the notification was there. The text is black on a dark brown background that visually disappears in the black window. I did not even see the light red badge on the bell. Looking at it now, the pink badge is kind of obvious but I only noticed it while looking for it after seeing the normal notification in another window with the original white background. It is essential that new editors receive an in-your-face talk notification because we block people who do not respond but continue with problematic editing. I know this should be requested elsewhere but there is not much point adding the opinion of one person so I'm looking for thoughts. Johnuniq (talk) 05:07, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Which skin ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:02, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Good point, monobook. Johnuniq (talk) 08:47, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

If I filter my recent contributions, for example to show only page creations and exclude the User: namespace, I am returned a list of edits.

If I only want the names of the pages concerned, as plain text, can I extract that, using some too or other? If so, how? Or can I get the results as, say, a CSV file? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:09, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Not via the WEBUI, you may get close with the API - but a quarry report is likely going to give you what you want assuming your filters are supported cheaply. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:26, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

WP:RAQ. Izno (talk) 21:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Another possibility is old-school screen scraping. Just go to your contributions page in a browser and save the page as HTML (in Chrome, it's File/Save Page As..., and I'm sure similar in most other browsers). Then hack at the HTML with standard command-line tools. This did a pretty good job for me:

 % grep "mw-contributions-title" User\ contributions\ for\ RoySmith\ -\ Wikipedia.html | sed -e 's/<\/a>//' -e 's/.*>//' | sort | uniq

It's ugly and hackish, but for a one-off job where you can accept occasional errors, it's often the best way. If you're not into the command-line, google for "HTML to CSV conversion" and you'll find lots of other tools that do this. RoySmith (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I use Notepad++ + regex. I copy the list into Np++, useAlt to column-select all the text to the left of the page names & remove it, thenCtrl+H to remove diffhist [^\r\n]+, leaving only the page names.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:23, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, Tom.Reding (and all) that's an interesting approach. But the recent results for my contribution include:

    12:02, 26 August 2024 diff hist +32‎ N De Cotiis ‎ #REDIRECT Vincenzo de Cotiis current Tags: New redirect Uncategorized redirect

18 August 2024

    18:59, 18 August 2024 diff hist +32‎ N Taxa inquirenda ‎ Species inquirenda current Tags: New redirect Uncategorized redirect

7 August 2024

    22:04, 7 August 2024 diff hist +31‎ N Jablochkoff electric candle ‎ #REDIRECT Yablochkov candle current Tags: New redirect Uncategorized 

and not only does your regex not work for that (it removes the page titles as well as other stuff), but the "diff hist" columns do not align, as the dates are of differing lengths. Are we at cross purposes? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Replacing: (\r?\n)[^\r\n]+? diff hist [\+\-][\d\.,]+[‎ ]+(?:N[‎ ]+)?([^\r\n]+?)(?: ‎ )[^\r\n]+

with: $1$2

worked for me for the sample text.

A couple caveats:

1. The 2 apparently empty brackets [ ] actually contain 2 whitespace characters each, present in sample text, 1 of which is 0-width, so be careful when copy-pasting, since misplacing and/or losing the 0-width character is never good.
2. There are 3 whitespace characters in (?: ), which are also required.
3. The position & formatting of diff hist/diffhist probably differs based on skin, but the idea is to use some string that appears at the same relative position on each line.
4. Make sure there is a blank line before the first line, to match (\r?\n), which are the CRLF characters, or else the regex won't evaluate the first line.

~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:57, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

What Izno said. Or, to save you the trip, here's a list going back to late June 2018 (when the create log began). I've removed creations in user talk, too, since I assumed that's what you meant; there were 585 in that namespace, compared to just 21 in User:. CSV available in the cyan "Download data" box. —Cryptic 14:46, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

The redirect Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans seems to have once been an article. Its history shows DRosenbach making an edit that converted it to a redirect and reduced the pagesize by 2037 bytes – but it doesn't show any revisions before that! What might have caused this? (I checked nost:Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, but it didn't exist.) jlwoodwa (talk) 19:52, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jlwoodwa: It's probably something to do with the histmerge that Dreamy Jazz (talk · contribs) carried out at 21:25, 22 May 2024 - the other page involved was Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Special:Redirect/logid/162249345 is the log entry with slightly more details. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes this because I history merged the page. The tool doesn't update the "diff count" on the revision that is left behind. The same thing occurs on the history page for Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, but that incorrect count has a revision before it. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 15:44, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi

I am trying to use "|show_designation=no" and "|show_type=no" commands on Template:Public art row when I use the template on list of public art pages, but it keeps showing these colons.

What should I do to stop them being shown?

Cheers Shkuru Afshar (talk) 00:29, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Please link to an example page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:18, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I created an example on Template:Public art row/testcases. Shkuru Afshar (talk) 06:15, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

The simple answer is that these parameters are not recognised or supported by Template:Public art header. Perhaps it was thought that every table should have these columns. Are you sure it is appropriate to omit them in the article you are working on? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:36, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

No. I am not.

But what if all items don't have a grade? Like List of public art in Melbourne.

And "Type" parameter could be confusing. Some items could be both a sculpture and/or a statue. (Check "Driver & Wipers Memorial" and "King George V" on List of public art in Melbourne) Shkuru Afshar (talk) 06:43, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

If you like, we can take this discussion to Template talk:Public art row (which I have now watchlisted) and we can explore further options — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:47, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree.

There, I am going to submit an edit request for both Designation and Type columns. Shkuru Afshar (talk) 06:54, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

When logged out, in dark mode, at {{Soulfly}}, the actual link for Soulfly is an extremely dark grey that is difficult to see on a black background. It was not this way before. Does anyone know how to fix this? --Jax 0677 (talk) 12:41, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Here - it says 'Error' and then "This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project. Maintainers can find troubleshooting instructions from our documentation on Wikitech." Any idea what's going on? GiantSnowman 13:43, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Now appears to be back up. GiantSnowman 16:37, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

 – There was a subsequent edit. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:31, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Phabricator and I'm not sure it's the best place to point this out. I made this edit. It appeared on the page after I clicked on the button to publish. As I clicked back to where I was before, the edit disappeared. It was gone from the live page and also gone when I clicked the edit button to browse the page's text, this without any intervention via succeeding edits. This continued to be the case after I cleared the cache for the page. However, the edit was still there when I checked the page's edit history and my own contribution history. I thought this to be bizarre, as I don't recall anything like this ever happening before. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 20:14, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Your edit was undone by Sunshineisles2 in Special:Diff/1243313302 about 40 seconds after yours. I'm assuming this was an inadvertent reversion due to an edit conflict. RoySmith (talk) 20:23, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I saw that edit but I guess I neglected to scroll all the way down. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 20:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I was unaware this happened and it was completely unintentional. Apologies for any confusion. Sunshineisles2 (talk) 21:24, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: User talk:Mathglot § Ships of ancient Rome‎‎
History link: these 6 edits at Ships of ancient Rome

(Note: not sure this is the right venue for a tool request; I searched around and the hatnote at Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests pointed me here.)

I would like to request a tool that, given a revision number (or title) of a page and timestamps T1 and T2, would run down all the transcluded templates, {{excerpt}}s, and modules in that rev, and return a most-recent-first sorted list of transcluded/invoked items which have changes recorded in their history between T1 and T2, or since T1 (if T2 is empty). The tool should recursively expand templates (maybe only if |recurse=y?). Possible format: four columns, with 1) Item name, 2) last change timestamp, 3) rev. number, 4) userid; where item name could be template, module, or excerpted source pagename. Bonus: column five, containing the template traceback sequence, if the row item was not found at top level, i.e., the item was not directly transcluded by the given page rev., but further down.)

Here is my use case: I recently panicked when I noticed that Ships of ancient Rome, which has over one hundred {{sfn}} short citations and makes liberal use of {{excerpt}} had fifty harv errors of the type 'Harv error: link from CITEREFLastname-YYYY doesn't point to any citation'. (I am very familiar with sfn/Harv errors of this sort and how to fix them, and wrote part of the doc for it; ditto {{excerpt}} doc.) The offending edit was a very minor change to add a {{convert}} template to the body (diff) which resulted, very oddly, in the 50 errors. No one had changed {{convert}} or Module:Convert, so I first suspected PEIS issues or nonprinting characters, but that proved wrong, and the problem went away during the time I worked on it (see these 6 edits), so I presume an upstream problem had been fixed in the interim. It could have been an entirely different template, but my investigation was hampered, and then I abandoned it, because of the impracticality of tracking down every transclusion made by the article, possibly recursively if nothing changed in directly transcluded items.

Having a tool that would return a sorted list of most recently changed transcluded items would be a powerful aid in this situation. (O/T: we need a word that encompasses the meanings of transcluded, invoked, or excerpted; I vote for eval'ed unless somebody has a better idea.)

The way things turned out, the problem I observed (whatever the cause) was fixed while I looked into it, and that's great, but what if it hadn't been? Such a tool would be very useful to help someone track down a real problem and make it possible to find and advise the author of a recent change that broke something, whereas now, it is so impractical as to be near hopeless. Can anyone build this? (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 21:04, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Sounds a lot like Special:RecentChangesLinked, except substituting the templatelinks table for pagelinks, only going in one direction, and without the unfeasible complication of looking at old revisions instead of the current one. I'm surprised it's not in MediaWiki already (and wouldn't be surprised if it was and I just didn't know where to find it). Twenty years ago I'd have suggested making a feature request. For now, something like quarry:query/85974 is probably the best you can hope for. —Cryptic 21:43, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

resolved

i am looking for something that works like the following two examples
; between abc → a;b;c
{{key| followed by }}{{key| between abc followed by }} →abc
thanks in advance ​akizet talk 20:34, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

{{#invoke:String|replace|source=abc |pattern=(%a) |replace={{key|%1}} |plain=false}}

abc

—Trappist the monk (talk) 20:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

thank you :) ​akizet talk 21:05, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

A while ago, I asked about references. I put that aside for a while and now I'm picking it up again. It's obvious that my original strategy was not going to work, so I'm starting again. Before I dive into this too deeply, is there any actual documentation on how references are rendered in HTML? Some of it I can suss out. For example, the first citation in Special:Permalink/1233803324 gives:

 <sup id="cite_ref-:2_1-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-:2-1">[1]</a></sup>

for the in-line citation and links to:

 <ol class="references">
 ...
 <li id="cite_note-:2-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink">^ <a href="#cite_ref-:2_1-0"><sup><i><b>a</b></i></sup></a>
 ...
 </ol>

in the reflist, with the backlink for citation 1a, and I should treat the "cite_ref..." and "cite_note" ids as opaque strings (as opposed to trying to parse them, as I was originally doing). Is that it, or are the more bits of magic that will only become apparent when this iteration of my code breaks on something I haven't seen yet? RoySmith (talk) 19:26, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

There is no documentation on the current parser's format, but there is documentation for the new parser: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML/Extensions/Cite. You will probably have a much more enjoyable time working with the new parser's output anyway, since it includes lots of extra output to make it more machine-readable (e.g. the values for ref name in the data-mw attribute – no need to try to parse them out of the href/id).

You can access the new parser's HTML like this in your browser: [4] or like this from the tool you're working on: [5]. Matma Rex talk 00:20, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

OK, that looks like it might work, thanks. RoySmith (talk) 01:04, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Matma Rex what does the about attribute on the <sup> tag mean? RoySmith (talk) 18:53, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

It's somewhat vestigial. For other wikitext XML-style tags, and for template transclusions, it's used to mark all of the HTML tags that were generated by that wikitext tag or template. But since every wikitext <ref> corresponds to exactly one HTML <sup>, the attributes don't provide any extra information. This is mentioned at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/HTML#DOM_Ranges, but it could be documented better… Matma Rex talk 21:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

it's used to mark all of the HTML tags that were generated by that wikitext tag or template Wow, that's (in the general case) really useful. I've often looked at the pile of HTML in my browser and tried to figure out what generated it. Now I know! RoySmith (talk) 22:48, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Or is that somewhere else? Doug Weller talk 12:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Hm, maybe that is only for user contributions, sorry. Mind you it would be nice if it worked in watchlists. Doug Weller talk 12:33, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Preferences - Watchlist - Changes shown & Watched pages? Donald Albury 12:57, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Donald Albury Nothing there, I think I'm just forgetting it was only contributions. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 13:00, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: You load User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/commonHistory.js in meta:User:Doug Weller/global.js. That should give an option to show or hide diffs in both contributions and watchlist. Maybe something interferes with the watchlist part. It works for me. Do you know how to run mw.loader.load("//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/commonHistory.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); in your browser console? If yes, does it display the option at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?safemode=1? If no, what is your browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:00, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter Thanks. I'm afraid I am not sure how to add that to my global.js - or how to load the other one in my browser console. In fact, I'd never heard of my browser console until today. I use Chrome and have found it now, but am still pretty clueless. Sorry. Doug Weller talk 08:06, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: You already load it in your global.js. That's why you have the diff option in contributions and used to have it in your watchlist. safemode=1 omits user scripts and gadgets. The browser console is a way to run specific JavaScript on a page you are currently viewing. Right-click on an empty part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist?safemode=1, click "Inspect", click the "Console" tab in the lower part of the right pane, copy-paste the above command and press enter. Does that give you "Inspect diff" links at the time (it won't last when you leave the page), and do they work? What happens if you do the same at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:08, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter I copied mw.loader.load("//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/commonHistory.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); into the console and hit return but got the message "undefined". Doug Weller talk 10:27, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Not sure if it is relevant, but I've 3 watchlists, one for user and user talk pages, one for articles and their talk pages, the third for Wikipedia and Wikipedia talk, and that one has show and hide diffs. I'm not sure if that's always been the case, sorry. Doug Weller talk 10:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: I also get "undefined" but that's normal and just means the command has no return statement. The question was whether you get "Inspect diff" links. I do. What do you mean by having three watchlists? Are you referring to pages like Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Doug Weller/usertalkwatchlist? That's not your watchlist although it has similarities and "Inspect diff" works for me there. If that's actually the page where it's missing for you then try the console command at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Doug_Weller/usertalkwatchlist?safemode=1. Say whether you get the missing diff option, not whether the console says "undefined". PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter No, but I've taken up far too much of your time, I can live with what I have. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 11:07, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Although now my ANI list no longer has hide/show diffs. Doug Weller talk 12:07, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter sorry to ping you again, but any ideas who to undo this? Thanks. Doug Weller talk 15:02, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I've had help and it's fixed. Just had to removed some entries. Doug Weller talk 16:37, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi, for example during type of "edit summary" after an edition or during writing "Other/additional reason" for moving a page, users may press enter button, but they may or may not tend to submit their form. In the case of not tending to submit their form, this behavior of Wikipedia may be considered ill-posed. For example consider this scenario:

1. Enter my sandbox page
2. Do all the edits you want
3. Type some edit summary at the final text box
4. Press Enter

During the third stage, casual pressing enter key may lead to ill-posed submit of this form. So, I propose adding this EventListener to avoid wrong submit:

var input = document.getElementById("myInput");
input.addEventListener("keypress", function(event) {
  if (event.key === "Enter") {
  }
});

Or somehow showing a confirmation message box, like this:

var input = document.getElementById("myInput");
input.addEventListener("keypress", function(event) {
  if (event.key === "Enter") {
      let text = "Are you sure?";
      if (confirm(text) == true) {
        document.getElementById("myForm").submit(); 
      }
  }
});

Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 15:46, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

This is the default behavior of forms on in HTML. I don't think it is wise to change that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:46, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I myself have had many problems with this «default behavior of forms on in HTML». This behavior is not the intended behavior for such important actions like "Edit" and "Move" of pages. I really think that other users of Wikipedia sometimes have had many problems with this default behavior.

• This default behavior is good for other applications, like entering a password and then checking it on back-end code.

But for "editing" or "moving" an article, this default behavior is not appropriate. In fact, at least a confirmation is required. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 08:56, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

There are a few scripts like that listed in Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Edit form (SuppressEnterInForm, NoSubmitSummary, enterInSummaryPreviews). Nardog (talk) 11:28, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) See Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Edit summary if you want to disable save on enter. I haven't tried it and wouldn't support it as default. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I really think that showing a confirmation before publishing an edit (only showing confirmation in the case of pressing Enter key in the textbox, otherwise not showing) would be helpful. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:14, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

To be really blunt: No, it would be absolutely terrible. Izno (talk) 19:24, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

This should not be the default, and I agree with Izno. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 21:19, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

As you can see Hooman, many experienced editors are very used to being able to press Tab and then Enter to quickly save their edits ;) even though it causes mistakes sometimes (I've seen many edit summaries cut off because someone pressed Enter instead of an apostrophe).

For what it's worth, other editing interfaces actually show a confirmation message when pressing Enter, and require Ctrl+Enter to actually submit the edit. This was implemented in the visual editor (where the edit summary field appears multi-line, so trying to press Enter to input a line break would be a common mistake) and in the reply tool (the edit summary is hidden under "Advanced" – there was some discussion about that behavior at the time at T326500). Matma Rex talk 21:43, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

And in the CAPTCHA confirmation menu for the reply tool, which might be a side-effect? Thankfully it doesn't happen often, I'm not a fan of needing to press Ctrl+Enter there.

Also, in the 2 years I've edited as IPs I never learned you could edit the summary - only now learning it from you. – 2804:F1...4C:A92D (talk) 23:00, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

If possible, could someone assist me with a template which checks if a user is blocked?

The syntax would ideally go something like this:

• {{ifblocked|Blocked User|foo|bar}} would return foo because Blocked User is blocked.
• {{ifblocked|Magog the Ogre|foo|bar}} would return bar because Magog the Ogre is unblocked.

I'm happy to use Lua if necessary (I have never learned to use Lua, unfortunately).

If possible, I would prefer to also check global locks. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 13:25, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

This is currently not possible. See phab:T27380 and phab:T325146. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:44, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Do you have a certain use-case in mind? And especially, is this something for mainly personal convenience or a tool you might share, or instead is it for something you are developing for wider adoption/generally used template-tags? DMacks (talk) 21:48, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

@DMacks: yes it would come in useful on c:User:SteinsplitterBot/Previously deleted files. I have written an API script which could be installed globally on a project (if we still support that?) and could be used for any use case. But it's an onerous workaround. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 00:11, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

My thought was basing something on MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js. But I'm not a JS whiz, and it's JS/API so it's maybe not lightweight or easily deployable. DMacks (talk) 04:08, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery 01:03, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Does anyone know how we can get the new keyword into the automatic "This is the template sandbox page for..." note that appears on template sandbox pages? – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: It's been done by WOSlinker (talk · contribs) with this edit. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:35, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Usually when I mark a COI edit request as answered or declined Category:Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests updates almost immediately, but I've answered several today since the morning and they're still in the unanswered requests category. Any idea why this might be? I've purged the cache of the page and I don't believe I'm doing anything differently than usual. Example of an answered request still showing up in the category at Talk:Pershing Square Capital Management. Rusalkii (talk) 23:00, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Rusalkii: Do you mean the box with the rows having differently-coloured backgrounds, or the list below the heading 'Pages in category "Wikipedia conflict of interest edit requests"'? They have different origins.

The second one is the primary list, it is driven directly by the use of the {{edit COI}} tag (with no parameters, or with certain param values) on a talk page, and it should update at the exact moment that you save an edit that adds e.g. |D or |answered=yes to the tag.

If you mean the box, it's transcluded from User:AnomieBOT/COIREQTable which is built periodically by AnomieBOT (talk · contribs). I would not expect this to update instantaneously, a delay of minutes or hours is not uncommon. If AnomieBOT is not updating the page, that's a matter for the bot operator, i.e. Anomie (talk · contribs), but please read the bot's User: and User talk: pages before raising what might be a duplicate complaint. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:26, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Something on Toolforge had taken out several of the bot's processes. The bot has been restarted now. Anomie⚔ 11:31, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Got it, thanks! Rusalkii (talk) 17:09, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm a long time editor. Throughout my career, I have used Safari. I am not updated to the most recent OS because my computer cannot handle it. I have no problem editing in mainspace. However when I make an edit to a talk page (even this page), if I move my cursor, the next capital letter will jump the cursor to the first character of the edit box, meaning I have to go back to move all sentences through cut and paste. It's obnoxious. It makes it hard to concentrate when so many sentences now constructed in reverse order need to be moved.Trackinfo (talk) 19:40, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@Trackinfo: A Firefox user reported the same at Wikipedia:Help desk#Glitches when typing on talk pages. They used the same "Enable quick topic adding" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing as you so it may not be the browser but a conflicting preference, script or something else. The tool works for me in the same Firefox version 129.0.2 (64-bit) as the help desk report. If you keep the tool enabled for testing then does it work or fail at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?safemode=1? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:11, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

It's been reported here several times over the last few years, they'll be in the archives. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:51, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

If i remember correctly, it was the fault of the Google Translate gadget. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:50, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Over a year ago, User:Mliu92 expressly conceded an error at Talk:California superior courts but never attempted to fix it.

I just tried to fix a few examples and it's taking way too long. As a busy practicing attorney, I don't have two hours to spare to clean up someone else's mistakes. I have better things to do with the Labor Day holiday weekend, like going through more of my photography library to identify more photos for upload to Commons.

One of the longest running debates among lawyers for many centuries is whether a trial court should be organized as a nationwide or statewide entity that merely happens to sit in multiple counties, districts, or circuits—or whether each county, district or circuit should be regarded as having an entirely separate trial court. There are strong public policy arguments for and against each position, resulting in worldwide gridlock on this issue.

California is among the majority of American jurisdictions that adhere to the latter position. In other words, it has 58 superior courts, not one superior court that happens to sit in 58 counties. Section 1 of Article 6 of the California Constitution refers to "superior courts" (notice the plural) and Section 4 starts with the following words: "In each county there is a superior court of one or more judges."

Unfortunately, User:Mliu92 created many articles for superior courts that imply that California adheres to the former position. For example, the article for Santa Cruz County Superior Court incorrectly states that the "Superior Court of California, County of Santa Cruz, is the branch of the California superior court with jurisdiction over Santa Cruz County."

We need a bot to go through the English Wikipedia and replace every instance of the phrase "is the branch of the California superior court" with the phrase "is the California superior court". How do I go about initiating that request? Coolcaesar (talk) 19:11, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

You can request bot work at WP:BOTREQ. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:32, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I will take a look at that page. Thank you! --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:06, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Isn’t this something AWB could do fairy easily? Mathglot (talk) 05:56, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

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 forOK, 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 sayis 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.[9] 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)

Yes, the {{collapse}} is super useful. Polygnotus (talk) 01:35, 29 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:

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)

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)

Wanted to ask about a recurring problem I run into occasionally when working with Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories to clean up userspace content in articlespace categories. When I use each category's "search user namespace" link in that report, I will either get a list of one or more userspace pages, or the text "There were no results matching the query" — the majority of the time, the latter means that the category has already been cleaned up, either by me via another query earlier in the batch (since pages are often in more than one category at the same time) or by somebody else before I even got to it. However, on occasion there are categories on a redirect in userspace, which the search link seems to fail to detect because it's a redirect instead of a straight sandbox "article", and thus tells me that the category is already clean when it actually isn't.

So because the link failed to detect the redirect and told me that the category was clean, I just move on, but because the category isn't actually clean, that redirect just stays in the category until I notice, on a future run of that report, that the search link was purple (meaning I've visited that exact search link before) and the category is still empty — meaning that I have to take the extra step of manually eyeballing the category to see if there's a userspace redirect in it. Examples: User:Upgov.in/sandbox, which had been in categories since August 19, and User:Luis Santos24/sandbox2, in categories since August 11, meaning they both survived multiple regenerations of the report before I finally caught them today.

TLDR, the polluted categories report does catch userspace redirects, but the search link fails to find them when I use it.

However, since the majority of "there were no results matching the query" categories are actually genuinely clean, it wouldn't be a productive use of my time to consistently double-check every category whose search link produces that result across the board — so my question is whether somebody can look into ensuring that the incategory search stops failing to detect redirects so they can be caught the first time instead of loitering around for multiple regenerations of the report. Bearcat (talk) 17:51, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

No search actually returns redirects. Izno (talk) 18:00, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, then, is there any other way to solve the problem besides the total non-starter "just let userspace redirects survive multiple regenerations of the report before getting caught" or the total non-starter "manually double-check every single category that came up as already empty"? Bearcat (talk) 18:07, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

This was quite tedious to go through; please be concise next time.

quarry:query/86063 will list the userspace redirects that are in any one of the categories linked from Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories. You can use {{database report}} to get the list periodically dumped to the wiki if desired. – SD0001 (talk) 19:37, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Over on the article Bagar region there's a big red error showing at the top of the article, "<mapframe>: The JSON content is not valid GeoJSON+simplestyle." I've never seen this before and don't know how to fix it, so I thought I'd put it here to bring it to the attention of anyone who does know how to fix it. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 21:04, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

The template was using invalid |type= values. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:10, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

When searching for the article Faya Dayi, the short description that shows up is "2021 ?'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000002-QINU`"'? film". Does anyone know why that would happen? It looks like something on the page ({{Infobox film}}?) is supposed to set it to "2021 film" but ends up inserting some kind of markup in the middle of the text. hinnk (talk) 09:43, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

See the section #Strange short description - how to fix it? above. Nthep (talk) 10:12, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Guess my search term was too narrow and I totally missed that. hinnk (talk) 10:28, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I started typing "Space-Men" in the search bar and it suggested the Space-Men article with the strange short description of 1960 Italy?'"`UNIQ--ref-00000004-QINU`"'? film. It shows up in the page information page that way too, but not in the article's source/wikitext, so I'm not sure how to fix it. Any ideas? 28bytes (talk) 17:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it? DonIago (talk) 17:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

it does, but it doesn't explain how it got there. Nthep (talk) 17:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Looks like a bug, something to do with strip markers. Nthep (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

{{Infobox_film}} builds a shortdescription from the country. The country ends with a reference. A reference gets replaced by a strip marker, for technical reasons. But a short description doesn't have wikitext support, so the stripmarker is not automatically replaced/removed. The template that adds the automatic short description should be updated to strip the strip markers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:27, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@TheDJ: is that something you could adjust? Template in question would be Template:Infobox film/short description. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 20:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@Doniago it's almost never a good idea to "fix" something like you as you didn't actually fix the issue and it's probably on other articles. Instead you just have posted it at Template talk:Infobox film/short description so it can be fixed at the source. Gonnym (talk) 20:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

While my effort to fix it evidently didn't address the underlying issue, if you're going to slap my hand you could at least acknowledge that I made a good-faith effort to fix the most immediate problem that was presented in the OP, and that I made it clear in my own message that I wasn't sure that I'd really fixed it at all. I'm not sure what you're talking about with the second part of what you've said, unless you meant to say that I could have posted it there. Except that I couldn't have posted it there because I didn't know that the underlying issue was with the template, nor did the OP indicate that the issue lay with the template. DonIago (talk) 20:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Not sure what this was supposed to accomplish. lets be glad some people try to make things better before complaining about their work. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

After thinking more on it, I agree. Fixing the broken case as a temporary measure seems fine, not different from CSS fixes people make. I do think VPT should try to find the root cause of problems, but I don't think DonIago's change should have been reverted while the problem is not fixed.

Fixing it like that would be bad if it was done in mass as that would create future work, but it wasn't. – 2804:F1...00:86B7 (::/32) (talk) 00:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm unclear if the strip markers not being detected is a larger issue, or something that needs to be coded into Template:Infobox film/short description. Nthep and DJ's comments made it seem like an easy fix, so I restored Space-Men to using the auto-generated SD so it will be as it was prior to the issue and utilize that auto SD. But if it is not an easy fix, then yes, we can implement the workaround that Doniago did. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:10, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

The problem is fairly common where the infobox generates a short description from values found in the infobox. Often a country is expected, but the country name turns out to be a list of countries. Often (like here) a field is expected to be a simple piece of text, but has a reference appended or includes an extra formatting template. In this case, the reference should be moved into the article text – the infobox should be only a summary of details that are present in full in the article. Otherwise, just add a manual SD like DonIago did. The sandbox is well out of date, so I assume that nobody has signed up to fix the template? If not, can we please just fix the Space-Men article? It hurts — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

It seems easy enough to fix, just wrap the parameter in {{KillMarkers}}. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Ah. I would have first tried {{Strip tags}}. Is that too aggressive? However, us mortals make such changes. We need somebody with superpowers to fix the infobox template for us. So, for now, I just fix individual articles as I find them — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 21:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

{{KillMarkers}} added. Should solve the Space-Men issue. Please note here or on the talk of the template in question if more issues arise because of this change. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 22:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

@Favre1fan93 I just came here after running into the same issue at Faya Dayi, which uses a {{Plainlist}} for the countries and shows up as "2021 ?'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000002-QINU`"'? film". I'm not sure if there's a tag that's not being caught by {{KillMarkers}} or if it's just stale data from before the fix to {{Infobox film/short description}}. hinnk (talk) 11:05, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

It was stale data; you can fix it yourself by clicking Edit and then Publish. This is called a null edit. It's quite useful for situations like this one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:13, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Glad the fix is working, I'll try that if I run into any other cases. hinnk (talk) 20:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I have recently noticed that, in navigation templates (both navboxes and sidebars), on an article, that article's entry appears clickable. The entry is correctly bold black (ie not a blue link) but when hovered over it displays as a clickable black link, ie, the I-cursor becomes a pointer, though no action occurs.

For example, on Sockeye salmon, see the horizontal Salmon nav box at bottom. The entry for Sockeye salmon is correctly appearing black but seems clickable. Similarly, on Battle of Elands River (1900), see the Transvaal Front vertical side campaign box. The article's entry rightly appears black but seems clickable.

Am I misremembering that only an I-cursor would appear when hovering until very recently? JennyOz (talk) 11:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

It only happens in Vector 2022. I don't know whether it always happened in that skin. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:23, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

It can be avoided with a.mw-selflink.selflink {cursor:text;} in your CSS. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

How do you add extra language links to an article these days? The link now says "No languages yet." (untrue) and gives options to "Translate this page" (not what I want) and "Open language settings" (not what I want). I used to just give an option to add another link. I can do this on the other languages but not on the English Wikipedia. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Which article? I can see "Add languages" then "Edit interlanguage links" which goes to wikidata where can enter names of articles in other languages. If the article isn't linked to Wikidata yet can do it manually or wait for it to be linked. Indagate (talk) 10:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The article I was working on is Catharina Weiss. There are companion articles it:Catharina Weiss and de:Catharina Weiß. And there is no "Edit interlanguage links". I tried going to Wikidata [10] and adding the English, German and Italian links there but I should never have to go there. It should work from the English Wikipedia. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Article only created yesterday and it can take time for Wikidata to be updated, just need to give it time or do it manually. Indagate (talk) 11:42, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I have never added languages in Vector 2022 so I don't know how it's supposed to work but I cannot find a way to do it if there are no languages or Wikidata item. I picked Mayank Vahia at Special:NewPages. The top right says "Add languages" but it only gives a search box which does nothing no matter what I try, and the options "Translate this page" and "Open language settings". They don't appear to have a way to add a language. Are you saying it's meant to not work for new pages? It would be awful design to give users an "Add languages" link which cannot add languages. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is an awful design. It doesn't offer an option if there is no Wikidata item or it cannot find it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:07, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I tried going to Wikidata ... but I should never have to go there. When you use the "Edit links" feature, you are always taken to Wikidata: that is the way that interlanguage links are always added, ever since Wikidata was launched in early 2013. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:39, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I meant instead of having to log on to Wikidata on a another screen rather than being taken there. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:03, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Although your English Wikipedia account was created in June 2005, almost three years before WP:SUL came in, nowadays you should be automatically logged in on all other WMF wikis, including Wikidata. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:26, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

That stopped working a while ago. What I meant though, was that I opened a new tab, put in the URL of Wikidata, and logged in there to look at what was going on. I don't normally touch Wikidata because I lack expertise. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:07, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Looking at other new articles, they have the same poor drop down box, but with a third option "Edit interlanguage links". Unfortunately, this takes you to Wikidata, which we don't want. In my case, it could not find the Wikidata item (although it existed), so (incorrectly) did not offer the option at all. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The functionality appears to still work in V2010, if you want to go back. This seems to be the topic of Phab:T329570. CMD (talk) 12:05, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The link is somewhat hidden, but you can find "Add interlanguage links" (or "Edit interlanguage links") in the sidebar, under "Tools". Matma Rex talk 13:29, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I have a script that runs whenever I start up or shut down my laptop. I created the script quite a while back to experiment with the Wikipedia API, and have generally ignored it since.

The script records in a log file, my Wikipedia edit count and the number of edits so far today. It also checks the running total — does the edit count at the end of yesterday + the edits today = the edit count for the end of today?

When the total fails to match, it indicates that some edits have been "lost" because a page that I edited today was deleted during the day. Fair enough, if I am motivated, I can look up the page for which the edits were lost — even if I now cannot see my own edit summaries.

Today, however, the script alerted me to a mismatch in the other direction.

• At the end of 3 September, my edit count was 74,841
• During 4 September I made 168 edits
• My edit count at the end of 4 September was reported as 75,008

Now, call me picky, but I think the total should be 75,009. Replag is zero, and edits today are being correctly counted (although the grand total is still out by one).

While inexact edit counts is not a cosmic catastrophe, I am offended when maths seems to break.

So, please, can anybody think of a reason for my overall edit count to be reduced? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:20, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Increasing the edit count is a separate step after saving the edit, and occasionally it can fail. I had a look for related issues in Phabricator, and apparently there's an issue known as T369461 that occurs about 30 times per day, preventing some edits from being counted. Maybe one of your edits was among the unlucky ones.

There are also some actions that create edits, but don't increase an edit count. Moving a page with a redirect creates two revisions (one on each title), but only counts as one edit. Protecting a page creates a revision, but doesn't count as an edit. It doesn't seem like you moved any pages yesterday though: Special:Log/move/GhostInTheMachine (but you did today, so you might see a new discrepancy).

Also, revisions imported from another wiki will show up in your contributions, but won't be counted. Did you know that on German Wikipedia, you have 10 edits, but your edit count is 1? They usually import the history of pages when translating them. That's not what happened here, given Special:Log/import, just mentioning it as a curiosity.

Matma Rex talk 23:24, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. So it is possible that anybody's overall edit count could be short by a small number of edits. I suspect that I could conjure a query to derive a "better" version of my count from the revision table (and the archive table?). Maybe a project for a rainy day ...

I am surprised by even a single counted edit on the German WP. My German was schoolboy level about 50 years ago and I would never dream of editing there — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:16, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

• Short answer, as I finally bothered to note in the documentation, reported edit counts may not be reliable. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:54, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Figured this would be the place to see if anyone knows what's going on. Historically, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion has been a rather expensive page, processing-wise, But what is currently going on has not happened at any point recently. The bottom-most sections are appearing as links instead of sections. This was not the case a few weeks ago. Does anyone know what's going on? Steel1943 (talk) 22:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

See WP:PEIS. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

It's been categorized as >2,000,000 PEIS since 01:00, 2 September 2024 [11] and as >500 expensive parser calls since 02:28, 2 September 2024 [12]. Anything happen just over 3 days ago? SilverLocust 💬 02:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Though the reason why the expensive parser function limit was hit is simple enough. There are >500 redirects currently nominated, and therefore >500 instances of

* {{no redirect|...}} → [[...]]

And {{no redirect}} uses an expensive parser function. SilverLocust 💬 04:41, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

This happened to us a few years ago at TFD when we embarked on a project to delete a few thousand unused and redundant templates. We had to slow down our nominations and list some of them on subpages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:02, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Listing redirects at RfD should have a simpler template which just generates the link without checking anything. Johnuniq (talk) 06:03, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The inexpensive alternatives are (1) a non-redirecting link that doesn't turn red after the RfD is closed as "delete" (or it's otherwise deleted), or (2) a normal wikilink that doesn't prevent redirection once the RfD is closed as "keep" (or the RfD banner is removed). SilverLocust 💬 07:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Option (3) would be to just have both links, i.e. "Terrorblade (no redirect)". It's a low-tech solution but it may be good enough? Matma Rex talk 13:26, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

One could hide the second link if the first doesn't have the mw-redirect class in TemplateStyles. Nardog (talk) 13:28, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Unless {{No redirect}} gets updated in a way that prevents expensive parser calls, I think either Option 2 or weak Option 3 is the winner there. The redirection should be prevented when the discussion is in progress due to the substitution of {{Redirect for discussion}} on the nominated redirect(s), and the option also allows the link to be red on the RfD if the redirect ends up being deleted. I can see a reason to have both links though, so my "weak option 3", but I don't see that option incredibly user-friendly as option 2. Steel1943 (talk) 19:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, this discussion may need to be moved to Template talk:Rfd2 at some point if this discussion gets large. Steel1943 (talk) 19:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Given the number of transclusions on Template:Infobox settlement, it looks like the problem reported at Template talk:Infobox settlement#Location labels unreadable in dark mode is affecting over half a million articles for anyone reading in dark mode. Does anyone feel competent enough to poke around the CSS? -- Beland (talk) 06:44, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

As my account has now been "blocked" - I began to ponder, peacefully - if Wikipedia has a forum of experts who deliberate as a technical team to "block or not" or is it an individual who decides and activates a "block" on a fellow wikipedian? I will patiently await a response or redirect to an article addressing my concerns. ZAWADI NPC (talk) 07:57, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

See WP:BLOCK for more information about the blocking process. 331dot (talk) 08:26, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Your account is not blocked, ZAWADI NPC (as evidenced by your ability to post here). Why do you think it is? It has never been blocked. Bishonen | tålk 08:31, 6 September 2024 (UTC).

Their user page was deleted, maybe they think that is a block? 331dot (talk) 08:34, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

You were advertising on your page. Advertising is not allowed on Wikipedia, not even on your page. You don't own that page – it is only there to show people what kind of Wikipedia editor you are, not anything about your business. You may say something about hobbies or interests that you don't get money from, for example if you take great photographs and put them on Wikipedia (for free of course), then you can say so. TooManyFingers (talk) 19:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

i have added templatedata to Template:Infobox card game. why isn't it showing up when editing, say, whist? ltbdl☃ (talk) 08:58, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

That's weird. Izno (talk) 16:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Works for me. I null-edited the Infobox template. Editing the /doc template should, in a perfect world, immediately provide a null edit to the single page that transcludes it, but it rarely does so. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I was able to reproduce earlier in Firefox up to date, but no longer. Maybe indeed it was a question of needing a null edit. Izno (talk) 22:39, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

The default template for dating tags Template:Currentyear and Template:Currentmonth turn into a nowiki format after entering and exiting source. Roasted (talk) 00:52, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Aren't they supposed to do that? They mean "today as I am writing", not "today as someone is reading 30 years later" ... TooManyFingers (talk) 06:19, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

@Roastedbeanz1: Your post could refer to different situations. Describe what you did from the start, what you expected and what happened instead. Save and link an edit where it happened. If you tried to add templates using source code like {{...}}} in VisualEditor then it's not supposed to work. VisualEditor has its own way of adding templates. See Help:VisualEditor#Editing templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:20, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

This is with reference to the trouble a user reported at Talk:Turkey#Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 August 2024 and similar reports I've seen elsewhere. In mobile view, the tags at the top of a talk page are hidden under an expandable link reading "Learn more about this page". These tags may include, among other things, a FAQ tag. When, in a discussion on the page, we want to route an inquiring editor to the FAQ (such as to Talk:Turkey#FAQ), we can't do so for a mobile user because the link doesn't work and the user, even if they scroll to the top (which is now the second thing they've tried in their attempt to see the referenced material), don't see the FAQ and don't see the third thing, clicking "Learn more about this page" that they'd have to do to get there, or perhaps at that point they've already given up.

Is it possible through some feat of CSS and/or Javascript wizardry to cause the top material to expand automatically upon navigation to an anchor that's within it? Largoplazo (talk) 17:31, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

The search box at the top of the main page en.wikipedia.org is absent on the default skin, at least on certain browsers. There is an empty area where it would belong, but there's nothing visible or clickable there. This happens at least on some versions of Chrome. The default skin on mobile is still working fine. On desktop, switching skins fixes the problem. Could this be dark mode related? TooManyFingers (talk) 16:39, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

I found my problem.

1. Clicking the magnifying glass icon is now required, to use the search box.

2. My magnifying glass is not visible in dark mode. But it's there and I can click on it. TooManyFingers (talk) 17:19, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Clicking the icon should be required only at smaller resolutions. But it should still be visible, so something there is weird. Izno (talk) 18:39, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Another user who's not on dark mode says the magnifying glass is invisible or barely visible for them too. So it's not just dark mode. TooManyFingers (talk) 19:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

Several similar complaints at WP:Help desk recently. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:30, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

An example: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#Search box. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:36, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

The problem I'm having is actually on wikiconference.org, not here, but I'm asking this here because this is where all the really smart people hang out :-)

I'm trying to generate some custom CSS for https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Schedule which will let me highlight the talks I want to go to. this works, but only highlights the talk title. this one highlights every table cell (as expected). this one does exactly what I want (i.e. highlights the table cell containing the desired title), but when I go to save it, I get an error message "The document contains errors. Are you sure you want to save?" and "Error: Expected RPAREN at line 1, col 9". Ignoring the error message and clicking "OK" seems to work fine.

Is this really invalid CSS, or is the editor just giving me a bogus warning? RoySmith (talk) 14:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

The editor is older than the CSS you're employing. Izno (talk) 15:54, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. As far as I can tell, :has() was introduced in 2018, but I guess that's not a long time by wiki standards. RoySmith (talk) 16:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

:has() was first-implemented in 2022 by Safari, then Chromium, then late 2023 by Firefox (implementing it was non-trivial for performance reasons), and I think went through a few name changes between 2018 and 2022. I am not surprised that the editor doesn't know it. Izno (talk) 16:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

@RoySmith: The W3C doc that you link is a Working Draft, which is a long way from being a Recommendation. The :has() pseudo-class is not part of the Selectors Level 3 spec, which is a W3C Recommendation. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:00, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. RoySmith (talk) 19:43, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Originally reported in Phabricator but closed as "invalid" because "this is a local gadget". https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T374327

Basically, enabling "Make headers of tables display as long as the table is in view" in Special:Preferences Gadgets results in the first table data row in templated tables being hidden by the table header rows shifted down. See Phabricator ticket for example and screenshots. ~Anachronist (talk) 14:19, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Interestingly, it displays properly in Chrome if my window is about half the width of the screen, or if I turn on Developer Tools so that the display area is about half the width of the screen. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:28, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Your Phabricator example is Template:Series overview/doc. That template has code which works poorly with the gadget. See MediaWiki talk:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css#Not working at The Economist Democracy Index#List by region. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:03, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I had noticed it in other places, but I got bothered enough yesterday to report it after my most recent occurrence, which happened to be the series overview template. It also happens to every table in Historical rankings of presidents of the United States, for example. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:21, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Using Firefox and Dark Reader with Light Mode on, the icons are the same hue as the background and are not visible.

Fix by using Wikipedia's new Dark Mode? Not so fast. The background is too dark and the text is too bright. My eyes hurt when looking at it, and they don't hurt when using Dark Reader. This issue has already been raised by multiple users,[13] and will no doubt be solved in a timely fashion. But until then it would be nice to hit the undo button on whatever happened this week to the icons.

Here is some color data:

Wikipedia dark mode - harsh contrast

icons 234 236 240 Luminosity: 93%

back 16 20 24 Luminosity: 8%

Dark reader - easy on the eyes

text 232 230 227 Luminosity: 90%

back 24 26 27 Luminosity: 10%

This broke only a few days ago. Before, the icons were mostly correct except for the drop-down arrows. Wizmut (talk) 02:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Possibly phab:T374180 which is now fixed. 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 00:31, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Still broken. Is there a better place to report this issue? Wizmut (talk) 00:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Can anyone have a look at phab:T367643, please? I submitted this task almost four months ago. Thanks, ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 22:02, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

You are running into Apple's browser's inflation algorithm which is adjusting your font size to what it thinks is the preferred minimum font size because they consider the current font-size too small for the current page and your preferences. It's best to set your preferred font size locally on your device so it doesn't change again.

You can alter this by changing your font size on your device or if you have an account applying text-size-adjust in your user CSS.

html {
  --webkit-text-size-adjust: none !important;
  text-size-adjust: none !important;
}

🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 00:42, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: thanks for responding. I've tried something like this already, by having JavaScript revert the viewport back towidth=100 (reverting the font size back to normal). What I don't understand is why this change was applied to legacy Vector, instead of just the new Vector. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 18:59, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi,

Whenever I click on the language selector, it shows not only languages in which the article is available, but also suggestions of new languages to translate it in. (Which are never useful to me, but that is beside the point.)

The problem is that this suggestion appears with a delay of a second or so. See screencast:

Typically, I move my mouse cursor to the language name that I want to select, then just before I have the time to click, this suggestion appears and moves the target, so I end up clicking on the wrong languages.

Firefox 129.0 on Fedora 40. EDIT: Also reproduced with Google Chrome. Jean Abou Samra (talk) 13:02, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

This appears to be an issue with the mw:Content translation beta feature, we can not fix this directly here on the English Wikipedia. You could bring this up at the feature talk here: mw:Talk:Content translation and/or open a bug on that feature. If you open a bug, please let us know your bug id so if others come upon this discussion they can follow up on it. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Done, thanks. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T374449 Jean Abou Samra (talk) 13:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jean Abou Samra: If you never use the Content Translation tool then you can disable it at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. If you still want the tool enabled but never want the "Missing in [languages]" message then you can add this to your CSS:

.cx-uls-relevant-languages-banner {display:none !important;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 15:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! TIL I can edit my own CSS directly in Wikipedia (rather than Greasemonkey or similar); this is going to be useful! Jean Abou Samra (talk) 19:07, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

When a bot edits a watched page or file, notification emails for subsequent human edits stop being sent. Notifications only resume once the page is manually viewed or the entire watchlist is marked as read. Has anyone not had this problem? ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 19:11, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Primefac has also highlighted this problem in phab:T358087. It's still a problem, and I've missed dozens of edits because some bot edited a bunch of pages on my watchlist. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 19:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

See this tool and this discussion for more information. It doesn't get 100% of bot edits but it is about 99% accurate. Primefac (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Primefac, but how do I get a "Watchlist token"? ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 21:13, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@Neveselbert: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist Polygnotus (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the right place, but why are navboxes not visible in mainspace articles in mobile view (unless rotated sideways)? They are visible in drafts. Kailash29792 (talk) 01:38, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

phab:T124168 has some background, particularly phab:T124168#1948388. Izno (talk) 01:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I have been having this issue for a while now and would like some help solving it. I use Advanced Mode as a mobile user. Occasionally, going to some pages in the Wikipedia or User namespaces will show me the non-Advanced Mode UI. Going to another page typically fixes this, and going into Settings shows that Advanced Mode is still turned on. This seems to happen most often when clicking a link from one Wikipedia namespace page to another page in that namespace, but will sometimes also happen in other circumstances. There is no visible pattern to when it happens. Does anyone know why this happens or how it can be fixed? Thanks, QuicoleJR (talk) 14:42, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Which mobile client type (Apple, Android) and Version are you using? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Using the mobile browser version on an iPhone. I'm not sure what you mean byversion. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:51, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

@QuicoleJR thank you, was clarifying if you were using the browser or the Wikipedia App. For your browser, assuming you are using Safari? Are you using the current version of Safari? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Actually, no, I do not use Safari. I use the Google app (not Google Chrome, Google itself). I am using the current version of Google AFAICT. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:01, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

To verify if this is some browser problem, can you try again using a different browser? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:09, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok. I will ping you after I do that. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:05, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I tried using Safari and encountered the same issue. It seems to be most common with FACs. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:08, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@QuicoleJR when browsing are you logged in? Non-logged in users may get cached versions of pages. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:17, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I always use Wikipedia logged-in. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery 18:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Deployment of the MOS namespace on English Wikipedia is expected to happen tomorrow. I'll post a list of titles that need to be cleaned up after it happens; expected the bare [[MOS:]] and [[MoS:]] etc to break; please replace these with WP:MOS. C. Scott Ananian (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I want to mark some of my edit as Minor Edit, but unable to do so with source editor. only Visual Editor provide interface to do that but i mostly work with source editor. how to mark any edit as minor edit on source editor of mobile website.

• Browser: Google Chrome 128.0.6613.127

-- kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 15:19, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

• This feature is not currently available in the mobile web view, see phab:T123694. As a workaround you could change to the desktop view. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

  @Xaosflux@KEmel49 we have also fielded a couple wishes on this. There might be an update regarding the availability of this feature.

  Out of curiosity, how would you feel if all editors saw this UX? JWheeler-WMF (talk) 19:03, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

  I'd be fine, as they do in VE mode already - think it should at least be consistent. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:47, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

  @JWheeler-WMF: As someone who uses the mobile source editor, I would appreciate the change. I don't think it makes sense to keep it from only one type of editor. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:12, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

• As we note any Minor copy edit as CE at Edit summary field, can't we note any minor edit as <m> or with any other tag,that cannot be marked on checkbox for technical limitation.-- kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 15:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Buttons for watching or marking an edit as minor are nonexistent on mobile website source editor.

I tested the issue on both Safari 15.6, iPadOS 15.8 on an iPad Mini 4 and on Firefox 129, Android 14 on a Samsung Galaxy S23.

Hopefully this is enough info. Treetop-64bit (talk) 23:24, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

See above section. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:03, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I noticed that my userpage was in Category:Pages with image sizes containing extra px. As it turned out, this was because I had specified |widths=80px. Removing the px solved it. This appears to be a WP:PXPX issue. Checking a random sample of a dozen pages of the currently 8k+ in the category, I found that, in all cases, the member pages had the exact same issue with |widths= and/or |heights= specifications. Paradoctor (talk) 10:25, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

This is phab:T374311. I think it has always been suggested to include px in gallery sizes but now it adds the new tracking category. I think the gallery tag or tracking code should be modifed to allow one px in gallery wikitext without triggering the category, rather than mass-removing old px from all wikis to avoid the category. The suggestion to include px was removed from mw:Gallery examples yesterday and today.[19] PrimeHunter (talk) 12:49, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

This category appears to be broken at this time (false positives on properly configured gallery tags, per long-standing documentation at mediawiki.org), and possibly not needed at all, since Linter started detecting pxpx errors in 2023. I have commented at two related Phab tasks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:48, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that. Fix in gerrit, but it did uncover the fact that the 'px' suffixes weren't being localized properly on non-English wikis. C. Scott Ananian (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Gallery within mediawiki core itself does add an "px", so there definatly is an "pxpx" when the user gives one too. See for example https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/core/+/4d588557172511e7931bcdb63a87e9a6281c8cb3/includes/gallery/TraditionalImageGallery.php#65. That hardcoded px in code should go away, this is usually a bad practice anyway. It could also open the possibility of other units in galleries, but given that this has been hardcoded for years, it is most likely not tested at all. Snævar (talk) 14:13, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Color me confused. When I run

<gallery widths=180px>
foo.jpg
</gallery>

through Special:ExpandTemplates and ask it to show me the raw HTML, I see

<div class="mw-content-ltr mw-parser-output" lang="en" dir="ltr"><ul class="gallery mw-gallery-traditional">
		<li class="gallerybox" style="width: 215px">
			<div class="thumb" style="width: 210px; height: 150px;"><span typeof="mw:File"><a href="/wiki/File:Foo.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Foo.jpg/180px-Foo.jpg" decoding="async" width="180" height="118" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Foo.jpg/270px-Foo.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Foo.jpg 2x" data-file-width="300" data-file-height="197" /></a></span></div>
			<div class="gallerytext"></div>
		</li>
</ul></div>

I don't see any pxpx in there. I agree that any hardcoded px should go away and live in the "gallery" declaration. That might allow us to use other units like em with code like "widths=10" being ambiguous. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:31, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

gallery tags are not template-expanded to other wikitext so Special:ExpandTemplates doesn't show it but there is an internal MediaWiki process which adds px before passing code from gallery tags to other parts of MediaWiki. phab:T374311#10137524 says a patch has been uploaded today. It has to be approved and deployed but I suggest we just wait and ignore the tracking category for now. Category:Pages with image sizes containing extra px already has a note [20] about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:04, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I noticed some recent gallery's in articles that have this heading: <gallery mode=packed heights=250px>. The result is such a gallery having very big images, not the specified 250px but 469px high. I found the 469px by making a screenshot of the page (using Edge as browser, with zoom 100%), followed by cropping is to contain one image only. For an example see Wat Ket Karam. FredTC (talk) 11:14, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

According to dev tools they are 501x375 — Qwerfjkltalk 17:09, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

The thumbnails are shown too big, because the parameter is not "heights" but "height". "<gallery mode=packed height=250px>" works fine.--Snævar (talk) 22:30, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

No, "heights" is correct. "height" is ignored as an unknown parameter and you get a default size. I don't know the precise algorithm when heights is used but it looks like the browser may calculate how many images will fit in a row with the current window width, and then enlarges the images so the whole window width is used, except it's limited how much it will enlarge an image. And MediaWiki apparently offers a larger image file than requested with the heights parameter so the browser has a good image to work with if enlargement is needed by the algorithm. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:01, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Then this text:

heights= Image heights in pixels (has no effect if mode is set to slideshow)

in Help:Gallery tag is incorrect. Should the help-info be modified to explain what really happens? --FredTC (talk) 10:58, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I tried to guess what happens from some tests but I'm not comfortable writing documentation based on that. Help:Gallery tag#Usage notes says:

• The packed mode will automatically adjust image sizes to use available display space optimally.

Help:Gallery tag#packed says: "It may relatively enlarge some images that were smaller in the above views."

The potential enlargement should maybe be mentioned when packed is introduced in Help:Gallery tag#Attributes and values. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

"Except with very good reason, a fixed width in pixels (e.g. 17px) should not be specified, because it ignores the user's base width setting." Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images#Size Snævar (talk) 22:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

That doesn't apply to gallery tags. Help:Gallery tag#Usage notes says: "The default width and height are currently 120px. Images displayed by the <Gallery>...</Gallery> tag do not obey user viewing preferences." PrimeHunter (talk) 22:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

An odd bug that for some reason only affects, ironically enough, the article VisualEditor, which is why Parsoid began in the first place.

For some reason, all citation links, which should normally cause the query fragment of the citation ID to be used as a hyperlink, for example #cite-note_24 in the Technical section, instead get #Technical, the name of a subsection, prepended to them (so something like #Technical#cite-note_24) This naturally is an invalid ID for any element on the page, and thus citations aren't able to send you to where they're stored. Despite the name, this bug appears to affect every citation on the page, as well as the caret links back.

A quick search for another article with a level 3 header as Technical was, Oura Health, did not provoke this bug.

I do apologise if this isn't the right venue for such a technical issue, but I suspect that something on VisualEditor is responsible for making Parsoid act up. Thanks for reading. Regards, User:TheDragonFire300. (Contact me | Contributions). 15:32, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

So, you mean that at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisualEditor?useparsoid=1 (link for the Parsoid version) the anchors are broken? Can confirm the described bug happens to me in that link, yes. As for the Oura Health test, I don't see a #Technical subsection in that article.

*edit: I tried with Main sequence, which does have a #Technical subsection, and the bug does not happen there. – 2804:F1...EE:9927 (talk) 19:34, 11 September 2024 (UTC) *edited 19:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Something of note(maybe): The previous revision (permalink) of the VisualEditor article with Parsoid did not have broken anchors. I don't see anything in Special:Diff/1245017847 that could have caused it, though it is an edit to the #Technical subsection, hm. – 2804:F1...EE:9927 (talk) 20:15, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I've purged the article and the links appear to be working again. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:35, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

...How did I forget about Special:Purge? Such a simple thing to fix a bizarre (?) bug. But yeah, the reason why I brought up Oura Health was that was my Special:Random-found "control group" article, to try to understand the nature of the bug. ("as Technical was" was meant to be understood in the sense that both articles had a level 3 header, not that Oura Health literally had a "Technical" subsection. But yeah, I wonder if/how this should be reported, given that the purge got rid of it. Regards, User:TheDragonFire300. (Contact me | Contributions). 23:22, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I've come across some articles like List of repunit primes that have section titles like Bases ${\displaystyle b}$such that ${\displaystyle R_{p}(b)}$is prime for prime ${\displaystyle p}$which appear in the table of contents sidebar as Bases ?'"`UNIQ--postMath-00000001-QINU`"'? such that ?'"`UNIQ--postMath-00000002-QINU`"'? is prime for prime ?'"`UNIQ--postMath-00000003-QINU`"'. I presume this is another issue related to strip markers, but I'm not sure what the correct fix is. Should the section titles just be reworded and the <math> tags stripped out? Or is there a way to keep the math markup in the section titles without breaking the table of contents? 28bytes (talk) 22:13, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

MOS:HEADINGS says "For technical reasons, section headings should: ... Not contain <math> markup." PrimeHunter (talk) 22:22, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Well, that sounds pretty straightforward! I'll go ahead and remove it. Thanks. 28bytes (talk) 23:00, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I have "fixed" a few of these in the past—not really a fix because the math markup often gives a far better result in section headings. A bluesky solution might be for some new wikitext to define the heading for the contents, although that would give ugly wikitext and another hassle for visual editor developers. See this search to find more. Johnuniq (talk) 03:24, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Category:NA-Class medicine articles contains a short list of pages. However, if you click on the pages in the cat, e.g., Talk:2024 United States listeriosis outbreak, there is no sign of the cat on those pages. It's been almost 8 weeks since anyone edited that talk page. How do I get this page out of that cat? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Make a null edit of the page. I did and it disappeared from the category. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:04, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that's working on most of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I can't get Help talk:Wikipedia editing for medical experts or Talk:Rorschach test/top business out of the cat. The help page would ideally be Category:Project-Class medicine articles, and the second should be an ordinary article (Category:B-Class medicine articles). I wonder whether the use of a subpage on the second one affects the template's behavior. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

It looks like it's working as intended. The category is actually on those pages so null edits will have no effect. Help talk:Wikipedia editing for medical experts says {{WikiProject Medicine|class=Project|importance=NA}}. The WikiProject tag detects the page is not in the project talk namespace so it refuses to add Category:Project-Class medicine articles. There is no category for help pages so it's put in Category:NA-Class medicine articles instead. I would just leave it there. Talk:Rorschach test/top business serves no purpose now and should probably have been deleted or blanked after [21]. I assume the category is added because Rorschach test/top business doesn't exist. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I've the templates on Rorschach page, since it's not being used. That seems to be enough. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:57, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

With the impending addition of MOS as a namespace on English Wikipedia, [[MOS:]] links (and [[MoS:]] etc) need to be replaced with [[WP:MOS]]. Can anyone help with that cleanup before the MOS namespace rolls out tomorrow? See T363538 and the Tech News item above for more details. C. Scott Ananian (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@CAnanian (WMF) wasn't the point of this supposed to be not have to touch 2000+ pages?? Why would we even want a new namespace added here otherwise?? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:27, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Special:PrefixIndex/MOS:, Special:PrefixIndex/Mos:, Special:PrefixIndex/MoS:. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:29, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

And more specifically to not have to touch every link to these pages on every other page. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:29, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

The request is to fix wikilinks which only say [[MOS:]] (or other capitalizations) without anything after the colon. Those links will become broken like [[Wikipedia:]] which produces [[Wikipedia:]]. It can be fixed by replacing the links with [[WP:MOS]] which produces WP:MOS. A linksto search currently finds 4908 links to [[MOS:]] so it sounds like a job for a bot or patient AWB users. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:43, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. Some of these prob don't need to be done (like old talk archives). — xaosflux ^Talk 16:21, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Most of them came from {{GAProgress}}, which Stjn already fixed. insource search shows 597 pages still to fix, most of which are old talk archives. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:36, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I've also filed phab:T374555, since this concept should be supported even though it currently isn't. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:36, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

It’s still many, many pages due to that template being substituted in every GA review. So PrimeHunter’s link is better (since it captures most of the cases which are boilerplate [[MoS:|…]], and your link doesn’t). stjn 16:40, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

True. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Old archived pages are routinely cleaned up after changes like this. Please include them in the AWB/bot work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:11, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm in principle willing to run a bot to fix this. But I'd like to see what happens with T374555 first. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:12, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I have just done it. I have skipped user talk pages and just a handful of sandbox pages, for which a bot may be better to avoid OBODs.

I find it telling that of the 500 some odd links, the vast majority were added because of the one template being substed or transcluded. I think maybe only some 100 uses were actual natural links, and those across the time-space of 20 years... well, I wouldn't support the work of that task. There are better edge cases to support. Izno (talk) 17:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Some links start with MOS:#.[22] PrimeHunter (talk) 18:24, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Nice catch. I've sorted these outside user talk. Izno (talk) 20:35, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Izno, I can run this on my bot if it would help, I think this falls under WP:IAR. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:42, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I just did it after cscott made it obvious what the impact of many of these links was (adding an iw link to mos wiki and vanishing the original link in the process). Izno (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Script just finished running. The list of affected titles is at T363538#10141129. Most of these look fairly harmless, eg if MOS:HEAD already exists, then the existing MoS:HEAD is (a) a conflict, and so gets moved to Broken/MOS:HEAD but (b) is also unnecessary, because the namespace is case-insensitive so existing links to MoS:HEAD "just work". So the Broken/ page can be safely deleted. C. Scott Ananian (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

It looks like Izno deleted the first set of broken pages. The second set at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex?prefix=MOS%3AT3&namespace=0 still needs to be deleted. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:17, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

And JJMC took care of another batch, including those and others like these. Izno (talk) 15:27, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Filed a related edit request at MediaWiki talk:Title-invalid-empty. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:52, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I've taken care of that now. Elli (talk | contribs) 15:38, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Template:Linux layers is working fine in light mode, but in dark mode, the <code>...</code> blocks (with text like "fopen") are unreadable dark gray text on dark gray background. It looks like that's happening from this CSS block:

@media screen {
  html.skin-theme-clientpref-night table:not(.infobox):not(.navbox-inner):not(.navbox) [bgcolor] a:not(.mw-selflink), html.skin-theme-clientpref-night table:not(.infobox):not(.navbox-inner):not(.navbox) th[style*="background"]:not([style*="transparent"]):not([style*="inherit"]) a:not(.mw-selflink), html.skin-theme-clientpref-night table:not(.infobox):not(.navbox-inner):not(.navbox) td[style*="background"]:not([style*="transparent"]):not([style*="inherit"]) a:not(.mw-selflink), html.skin-theme-clientpref-night table:not(.infobox):not(.navbox-inner):not(.navbox) tr[style*="background"]:not([style*="transparent"]):not([style*="inherit"]) td a:not(.mw-selflink) {
    color: var(--color-base-fixed,#202122);

Firefox is telling me it's the last item in the comma-separated list which is active. I think this might be coming from the built-in skin CSS? This is a complicated case because the surrounding background colors are pastel in both light and dark modes, but the background of the code tag itself is white in light mode and dark gray in dark mode. It would require careful testing if this is in fact a skin problem. -- Beland (talk) 03:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's a skin issue. @Jon (WMF) Izno (talk) 03:41, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Is this related to all HTML tags (that used to appear as green text in syntax highlighter) are now indistinguishable from plaintext when viewed in dark mode? Started yesterday on Wikivoyage, and today here on en.wiki. Zinnober9 (talk) 22:06, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

We can use TemplateStyles here to fix the local case, but links inside <code> is an unanticipated edge case. Izno (talk) 03:42, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

There seems to be somethings wrond with the tool that {{check completeness of transclusions}} uses. It doesn't return an answer. HandsomeFella (talk) 22:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

That tool asks for bugs to be reported here. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:56, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Until today, the "New pages" list were bright yellow highlight if no one had looked at them. It was very helpful in spotting new articles that needed editing. As of about an hour ago, that bright yellow went away and has been replaced by a very blah and light flesh colored background for the new pages. The new color, if you can even call it a color, only makes it more hard to scroll for entries. — Maile (talk) 00:25, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

You can add this to your CSS:

li.not-patrolled {background-color:yellow;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 04:29, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. It's been years since I edited that CSS and I'm not getting it correct. — Maile (talk) 13:56, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Just copy-paste the line to User:Maile66/common.css and ignore the warning about li.not-patrolled being overqualified. It's a yellow warning, not a red error. I added li to override the existing color declaration for not-patrolled. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:27, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Success! Thank you! — Maile (talk) 21:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

We at Wiki Project Med are working to build mediawiki based calculators. One can be seen here on MDWiki mdwiki:Body_mass_index.

Within medicine there are hundreds of such calculators.[23]

Wondering about getting this functional here as a trial? More development is going to be required before this is extensively used of course.

We would need an interface admin to copy this over for it to work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:33, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any calculator on mdwiki:Body_mass_index? – SD0001 (talk) 14:36, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Do you see it on mdwiki:Template:Calculator#Example ? Bawolff (talk) 15:10, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

On that remote wiki I see it labeled as "BMI calculator". — xaosflux ^Talk 15:17, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

ah never mind, for some reason I had JS disabled on the site. – SD0001 (talk) 15:58, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Baring any actual objections to testing I'm not seeing any showstoppers to forking over as an opt-in/?withgadget test. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:12, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Xaosflux. Have built another example here mdwiki:CHA2DS2–VASc score. Once we have a testable version on EN WP will be easier to discuss with others who may be interested. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I feel like specifying formulas inline could be susceptible to subtle vandalism which would be undesirable. I'm also seeing mentions of eval, can you comment on how this calculations are being done ? (I'll note evaling user-generated content on Wikimedia sites should probably be a no-go from a security POV). Sohom (talk) 16:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Everything on Wikipedia is susceptible to vandalism; it doesn't mean we stop mentioning people's birth dates and other details which can be subtly fabricated. The calculators could be made templates which can be protected if necessary. Evalling is fine if inputs are sanitised. – SD0001 (talk) 17:10, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@SD0001 Wrt to the first point, my thought process was that manipulating birthdays would be a lesser issue than manipulating a BMI calculator that could be potentially be used by people to self-diagnose metabolism disorders. Regarding the rest, on looking further at the code, I agree that security shouldn't be a issue for it's current version, however, it would be nice to document the method the script uses anyway (as a comment) to make sure future editors of the script are aware of this consideration. Sohom (talk) 19:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The tl;dr is that the formulas are parsed using a simple Recursive descent parser into an AST type structure. The AST is evaluated by walking through the tree. In the tree there are OP nodes that represent an operation from a fixed set of valid operations implemented in javascript. A dependency graph structure is also created in order to refresh any widgets that depend on a value that was changed with loop detection. Bawolff (talk) 19:41, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I added a code comment to the script. Bawolff (talk) 19:53, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

@Sohom Datta this would serve the user some javascript, execution is client-side via browser. The script code itself could only be modified by interface admins. The current script would always be viewable by anyone, and is currently available to see at this link. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:30, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

The script does not use eval() as a security precaution. It is designed with security in mind. Bawolff (talk) 19:31, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

See my comment just above regarding this, I agree that is probably safe, but it would make sense to document the security considerations in the code for future interface admins/script editors. Sohom (talk) 19:36, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

I have made some enhancements to User:SDZeroBot/Gadget sync so that it also supports wikis with a non-local interwiki mapping (like mdwiki). Could be used for this. – SD0001 (talk) 08:24, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

• Not seeing any blockers to testing, will work on import/setup. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

  Useful gadget, but it should be placed below the infobox rather than inside it, because it's somewhat unnoticeable when its placed inside the infobox. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 14:42, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

  The gadget can go outside or inside the infobox. I think the decision of were it goes can be left up to the editors of the article in question. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:39, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

  In that case, I was talking about mdwiki:Body mass index. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 00:34, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

• @Doc James and Bawolff:} this has been mirrored in. This gadget may currently be used 2 ways: (1) OPT-IN from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets-gadget-section-test (2) Using a ?withgadget query parameter. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:09, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

  Prior to larger development, a trigger category Category:Pages using gadget Calculator should be built. Additionally, related templates and documentation are needed. How to present the template when the gadget isn't running or javascript isn't running should be discussed. Finally, the non-technical consideration of article styling/usage consideration (such as what @Vestrian24Bio brought up above) should be discussed. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:14, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

  Just for reference there is some documentation on Template:Calculator Bawolff (talk) 16:38, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Who controls the tooltips, popup, etc.? Is it the developers, or can we administrators edit some MediaWiki page that controls them? I just now logged out, and I was shown a brief popup with the following text:

This has a clear comma splice, so it needs to have the comma replaced with a semicolon, but I'm not sure how to do it or whom to ask. The popup wasn't really a separate window; it looked more like a tooltip, but it appeared only after I clicked the link, so it's not really a tooltip. Nyttend (talk) 04:49, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The default MediaWiki message can be changed by administrators at MediaWiki:Logging-out-notify but I wouldn't create a localized message for such a small change. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:17, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

gerrit:1072652 * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:33, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Aparently @SD0001 disagrees with the semi-colon — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:26, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I see the message as two sentences, so how about a full stop.Please wait is also an imperative, so perhaps it deserves an exclamation? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:28, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

A full stop would work fine as well. I don't think an exclamation mark is needed (I can't tell if the above is humor). – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:03, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Only semi-serious on the pling. Can go with or without. Perhaps we need a {{not serious}} or {{inline humour}} template? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 12:49, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

We have an entire collection of such templates. – SD0001 (talk) 07:30, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I've submitted my information to the "Reset Password" form, but I am not receiving the "Reset Your Password" email(s). I've submitted:

• Both username and email • Username only • Email only

I have access to the email account, and my last login with my username was 2018.

How can I reset my password? 2001:5A8:49C4:BC00:90B:103A:2BA0:38B0 (talk) 21:10, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Accounts and passwords never expire. If you have a spam folder, maybe at your email provider, then try checking it. If you post the username (on this public page which already shows your IP address) then we can check whether the account exists and has an email address stored, but that's all. We cannot see what the email address is. If you didn't store one or cannot receive mail at it then you have to create new account. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:41, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I've been checking my spam folders, but I'm not getting an email.

Username is Emdub510 2001:5A8:49C4:BC00:90B:103A:2BA0:38B0 (talk) 22:02, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The account User:Emdub510 does exist and has set an email address but has chosen to not receive mails from other users. The account was created in 2006. Most users rarely or never use our email features so it's plausible you gave the email address in 2006 and never needed it before now. Maybe you changed email address? The account has made 119 edits (only 1 since 2011). That's low by Wikipedia standards. You can just create a new account. If you want you can write on the user page of the old and new account that you are the same user. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:28, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

For privacy reasons, somebody who isn't logged in to the account cannot test at Special:PasswordReset or elsewhere whether it has a specific email address. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:32, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Your best course of action might be to file a bug report in Phabricator about not receiving the password reset emails for your account. The developers can both look into that and offer any alternatives. Anomie⚔ 13:34, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm unable to create an account, because I always get the message "Visitors to Wikipedia using your IP address have created 6 accounts in the last 24 hours..." It seems like something is broken. I asked about it a few days ago at the Help Desk: Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2024 September 10#Unable to create account - a few admins looked at it, but couldn't help.

My Mac computer has a dynamic IP on O2/Telefonica in Germany. It changes once a day usually, or if I power-cycle my router. I've tried about 20 different IP numbers, over the past week, and it's always the same. I've tried several different browsers, emptying my cache, and creating a fresh browser profile in Firefox. It's also happening on my phone. I've tried using my phone's browser on WiFi. Then I turned off WiFi, and used the phone's cellular data, which is also on O2/Telefonica, but mobile. I tried using the phone as a mobile hotspot for my computer. But it's always the same error message, no matter what I do.

It seems unlikely that every single address has been used to create multiple Wikipedia accounts in the past day. Like there would have to be some kind of bot net cycling through IP numbers and creating thousands of accounts. Otherwise, because the number doesn't change that often, it feels like something is malfunctioning, and that it's not my equipment. If so, it may be affecting a large number of people, since this is a major ISP and this address pool covers a large part of Germany, including Berlin. I understand I could try to use the "request an account" page, but I wanted to report this as possibly a bug. Any ideas, or someone else I should talk to? Thanks. 77.183.18.209 (talk) 15:17, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

@77.183.18.209 You can request an account via this page. A volunteer will review your request shortly after it is submitted. NightWolf1223 <Howl at me•My hunts> 15:25, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I understand I can request an account that way, but I prefer not to give my real e-mail address (even if it's not retained), and it says that I can't use a throw-away address. So it's a little inconvenient. But the main thing is that this seems like a bug that should be reported and fixed, if it's affecting more than just me. 77.183.18.209 (talk) 15:37, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

There may be a more legitimate reason as to why your IPv4 address hits the 6-account creation limit: your service provider may be using a CGNAT setup in which the same IPv4 address is potentially shared across hundreds of their subscribers. How to determine you are on CGNAT, check your modem/router WAN IP address, and see if it matches your public address (which you can check with a third party website such as https://whatismyipaddress.com/). If indeed it is a CGNAT setup, you can only registere through WP:ACC or access Wikipedia on another ISP that does not use CGNAT or see if you can force an IPv6-only connection on your current provider (not sure if this will work through). – robertsky (talk) 15:38, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

@Robertsky: Thanks for the info. I don't think that's the case though. If I log into my router's admin interface, the WAN address listed is the same as the public IP address reported by whatismyipaddress.com. The IPv6 number is blank in the router, and not listed on whatismyipaddress.com. But if I use my phone as a mobile hotspot, with cellular data (which I'm doing right now), I do get an IPv6 number. But I just tried again, and I still get the "more than 6 accounts" message. 2A02:3032:312:C23E:651B:88A4:497B:5E99 (talk) 16:01, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Back on DSL again - according to o2 customer service CGNAT is not used on my DSL line. I also did a traceroute on my WAN IP, and there's only one hop. 77.183.18.209 (talk) 17:19, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

About how text is displayed:

• As for the Italic text feature in English, it is towards the right. But this happens even for the Arabic language, and this is considered a Wrong.

• There is another matter, I see that the level of spacing between the lines along the article page is too far apart from each other.

Mohmad Abdul sahib talk☎ talk 16:48, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

@Mohmad Abdul sahib: I don't know Arabic but if I understand you correctly, you are saying that Wikipedia displays italic text slanted to the right for the Arabic script but we shouln't do that. Our software just places the html tag <i>...</i> around text to say it should be displayed in italics. Your browser makes the rendering you see on your screen. Arabic text: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ. Same text in italics: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ. I do see the italic version slanted to the right in Firefox. I Googled the issue and found that italics traditionally aren't used at all in Arabic but if fonts support italics for Arabic then they generally slant it to the right like the Latin script. Slanting Arabic italics to the left doesn't appear to be an option with normal fonts. Is your concern about the English or Arabic Wikipedia? If it's the Arabic then you will have to take it there. If it's English then please give an example page. Should we try to avoid using italics in Arabic text if slanting it to the left is not possible? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:16, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter. I meant that every language has a way of writing. For example, when you write in English, the direction of the text will be from left to right, but in the Arabic language, the way of writing is from right to left. What I mean is that in all interfaces, the display locations will differ, whether fonts, icons, options, and the like. I do not mean only the Arabic language, but rather all languages ​​​​on Wikipedia. The text must be Italiced according to the way it is written.

I think that this is a technical Wrong that must be fixed across all Wikipedia languages. Mohmad Abdul sahib talk☎ talk 21:03, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

~~~ Mohmad Abdul sahib talk☎ talk 21:03, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

You lost me when you started talking about icons, options and all languages. I thought this was something specific about how to slant italic text in the Arabic script. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

The issue should be irrelevant, as long as pages are complying with MOS:BADITALICS, which saysText in non-Latin scripts (such as Greek, Cyrillic or Chinese) should neither be italicized as non-English nor bolded. Italic markup around Arabic script should pretty much always be removed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:13, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Client side issue, resolved by reporter. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:43, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I tried enwiki-20240820-pages-articles.xml.bz2 and the latest enwiki dump but 7zip and bzip2 keep failing. I redownloaded it multiple times. I'm on Pop OS and there is plenty of disk space available of course.

I am using 7z x enwiki-20240820-pages-articles.xml.bz2 and

bzip2 -d enwiki-20240820-pages-articles.xml.bz2 to extract.

Error messages like ERROR: E_FAIL Archives with Errors: 1 are not very helpful. Polygnotus (talk) 22:33, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

The mailing list may be your best resource for help with that, see meta:Data dumps "Getting help" section for info. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:07, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. So far I figured out that the problem is in all tools that use libbzip2 under the hood (I think 7zip and pbzip2 and bzip2). The problem is that the default block size is 900.000 bytes, and if you go over that you get:

pbzip2 -dkv enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2 

Parallel BZIP2 v1.1.13 [Dec 18, 2015]
By: Jeff Gilchrist [http://compression.ca]
Major contributions: Yavor Nikolov [http://javornikolov.wordpress.com]
Uses libbzip2 by Julian Seward

         # CPUs: 20
 Maximum Memory: 100 MB
 Ignore Trailing Garbage: off
-------------------------------------------
         File #: 1 of 1
     Input Name: enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2
    Output Name: enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml

 BWT Block Size: 900k
     Input Size: 22880311372 bytes
Decompressing data...
pbzip2: *ERROR: Could not write 900000 bytes to file [ret=-1]!  Aborting...
pbzip2: *ERROR: system call failed with errno=[2: No such file or directory]!
pbzip2: *ERROR: system call failed with errno=[5: Input/output error]!
Terminator thread: premature exit requested - quitting...
Cleanup unfinished work [Outfile: enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml]...
Deleting output file: enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml, if it exists...
pbzip2:  *INFO: Deletion of output file succeeded.

SO recommends some .NET lib or provides no answer.

I'll give it a try with Python before I use the mailinglist. Polygnotus (talk) 09:03, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I figured it out: for some reason you need to sudo. sudo pbzip2 -dkv enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2 works fine. Polygnotus (talk) 20:19, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus I think that might be a limits issue. Maybe the unzipping is using more inodes or memory etc then what they are allowed to and root can use more. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:57, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@TheDJ Yeah I wondered about that. To be honest I was so happy it finally worked that I didn't do any digging. The memory was limited to (the default) 100mb I think, despite the fact that there was ~64gb RAM available. Polygnotus (talk) 04:03, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Could we revert to how the position of the "pending changes" lock looked before? Now it looks like this, with "Pending" wording next to it with a crossed out eye. The previous lock was a simple compact lock icon with a tick, did not include text or other additional features (like the crossed-out eye) and was less obtrusive and didn't draw as much attention. I'd like to restore the lock to its previous visual format whilst making sure users can still understand its meaning (that there are pending changes, which should already be handled by users pressing "Edit source" and the note coming up). Best, 750h+ 16:54, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

@750h+ Could you be specific which page this is; I don't see it in ordinary pages.

Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:22, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's because of the number of gadgets you have installed. Log out and see. 750h+ 03:33, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but the check does shows information about the page review status when hovering over it. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:37, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I still see no point of it. It's obtrusive (the previous layout was much better) and i feel that this could be fixed by allowing the user to hover it and see the review status. 750h+ 03:39, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree with that. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:40, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I also dislike the change. It's too "busy", the eye icon seems out of place (there's already an equally awful glasses icon which has a different meaning), and it's not visually pleasant. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 04:29, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

• Eww, yuck. I'm seeing this too, File:Screenshot 2024-09-16 061722.jpg, also if I dare hover that ugly "pending" area this popup comes, and stays open until manually dismissed. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:19, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

This especially looks bad with FAs or GAs like Communication or Sims 4 750h+ 10:21, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Note, this is not coming from our "lock icon" template {{pp-pc}}, haven't tracked down what is sourcing this yet. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:21, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Probably something that is on, or should now be on this workboard, but I don't have time to go through it right now. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:26, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I opened phab:T374829 as a bug/complaint about how this popup persists and covers content until manually dismissed. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:32, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I recently ran into a problem with Template:Infobox aircraft at NAL Hansa in which a long "designer" parameter input resulted in an excessively wide infobox (see this diff). I was able to temporarily fix the issue on the article, but I would like to prevent similar issues by constraining the infobox size to a fixed maximum value. With how much experience I have with templates, I should know how to do this, but I don't. Does anyone know how to do this? - ZLEA _T\^C 19:43, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@ZLEA: It happened because Prarambh20 used {{Nowrap}} on the designer parameter in [24]. I don't see a good reason for nowrap and suggest to just remove it. Prarambh20 hasn't edited since June 2023. nowrap was also used on two other parameters but those parameters have been removed. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:02, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Template:Infobox/doc § Examples shows how to set an infobox's width. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:04, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Just realized that this doesn't fully answer your question. I think replacing width with max-width might have the effect you want. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:06, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

PrimeHunter Jlwoodwa Thanks. Removing the nowrap template seems to have fixed the issue, but I'll keep the max-width parameter in mind if further problems arise. - ZLEA _T\^C 20:22, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Could anyone remove User:Fuddle/Cold Default Sort.js from Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts? I have checked with the user, and they don't know how to — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:02, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Fixed. Izno (talk) 21:09, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:11, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

An IP editor came to my user talk, and said he was unable to edit an article talk page. So, I logged out, and tried editing article talk pages, but was also unable. What’s up? Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:04, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

What talk page can an IP not edit? What happens when they try? Johnuniq (talk) 05:31, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

When I logged out, I went to several article talk pages and couldn’t add a topic. Clicked “add topic” and nada. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:38, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Seeing your user talk page, the person who asked you is not an IP editor. Their described problem also happened after clicking "Add topic", which you managed to do successfully (you just hit an edit filter that prevents creating very short talk page topics as an IP or new user, the user in your user talk page did not hit that filter though).

I didn't want to finish adding a topic just to test, but I'm pretty sure I would have been able to. – 2804:F1...EE:9927 (talk) 05:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

He just registered, and doubtless will be able to add topics now. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:38, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I just logged out again and tried the “add topic” feature and it still doesn’t work. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:41, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Again, you are hitting an edit filter, specifically Special:AbuseFilter/1245, which, if I read the code correctly, prevents users who are not autoconfirmed or confirmed (which includes all IPs) from adding new talk page topics that have a title that is 2 words or less and a content that is 2 words or less (and less than 300 characters total).

It's there to prevent a common type of talk page spam. – 2804:F1...EE:9927 (talk) 05:45, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay, it works when I add more words. Thanks. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:52, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I had originally tried to add the topic to Talk:Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy without logging in. When it failed I created User:Swan2024, but I still have the same problem. I just tried again while logged in and it still fails the same way (moving slanted lines over the text for a few seconds, then gives up). I don't see any warning/error messages. I checked Special:AbuseLog and do not see any entries for me. Any other ideas? Swan2024 (talk) 00:11, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

@Swan2024: If you are trying to add external links then place them inside <nowiki>...</nowiki> in source mode to deactivate them. The add topic feature doesn't currently work with external links for users who are not autoconfirmed which requires four days and ten edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:28, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Huh? Is this mentioned anywhere? That does seem to be it (can reproduce with a link to Google)...

Odd considering you can add external links just fine in replies, just have to type a captcha. – 2804:F1...A7:E311 (talk) 20:39, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

That fixed it! Thanks! Swan2024 (talk) 20:53, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

There was an issue with the new topic tool which was stopping any save error messages from being shown, which includes captchas. This is being fixed, and should be back to working for everyone by Thursday (or earlier if we decided to go to special efforts to backport it) DLynch (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I was editing an article (in the old, non-visual editing format, in case it matters) and upon clicking Submit, a notice came up encouraging me to log in before posting the edit. I clicked the notice's link to the Log In page, filled in my user info, successfully logged in, and was brought back to the same Edit page I was on... only to notice, to my horror, that all my changes did NOT get saved and were completely gone! This is a horrific thing in terms of user friendliness! No one should be punished for following Wikipedia's own suggestion. Thankfully my edits were only 5 minutes of work so I was able to reconstruct it, but what if it had taken, say, hours? I would definitely be so disconcerted that I would probably never edit Wikipedia again out of sheer trauma. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ericobnn (talk • contribs) 23:28, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Ericobnn, sorry that happened to you. Your browser should have displayed a warning message that you will lose unsaved changes when clicking the "log in" link. Anyway, there is a fairly new Edit Recovery feature, which would have helped in this scenario – you can enable it under "Editing" in your preferences, and hopefully it will be enabled by default soon. The visual editing mode has a similar feature enabled by default already. Matma Rex talk 05:24, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I was reading The Eustace Diamonds and noticed an addition that needed to be removed because it wasn't constructive. I was reading on mobile and realised I couldn't use the undo function via the page history on mobile. Is this deliberate? Red Fiona (talk) 20:14, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

The undo buttons appear if you turn on the advanced mode. Nardog (talk) 02:29, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Red Fiona (talk) 09:36, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

This template no longer works because the target has changed to [25]. Can someone expert fix the problem. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:34, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

See Template talk:PASE for further discussion. – Jonesey95 (talk) 10:57, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery 23:58, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

@Ahecht @Novem Linguae @Awesome Aasim you maintain scripts which are affected by the removal of mw-message-box, see [31]. Izno (talk) 00:35, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

@Izno As I'm reading it, this change only removes support for mw-message-box from the Vector 2022 skin, and won't actually remove the class from system messages, so it wouldn't affect scripts like mine that are using it as a selector. Scripts that create message boxes should use both the mw-message-box and codex classes to maintain compatibility with Vector 2010 and other older skins. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Cluebot keeps archiving unanswered edit requests from Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Shields task force/Requests. Is there any way to stop it other than what I've been doing (reverting, then changing the dates on the requests)? - Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 01:51, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Instructions are at User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis. I doubled that page's archiving time from one month to two months. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:42, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

That will help. Now all I need to do is get some help fulfilling the requests. - Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 02:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

@Sumanuil: Archiving bots don't care if a request is answered or not, and generally speaking, have no way of knowing. They work on a basis of time elapsed since the last post to that thread. However, ClueBot III has a feature where it will also archive threads that are explicitly marked with some tag, such as {{done}} even if the archiving time limit has not been reached. I see that this has been set up at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Shields task force/Requests - it's the |archivenow= parameter - but that does not prevent the |age= parameter from also being taken into account. The thing to do is set |age= to a very high value - a minimum of 4368, which is six months.

Also, archiving bots perform two edits at once, to different pages. If you revert one edit of the pair, you must also revert the other one - otherwise you have the same thread on two different pages. So your "List of state highways in Arkansas" thread is still at Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. Roads/Shields task force/Requests/Archive 9. I've not checked for other duplicates. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:22, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I've removed it from the archive. And I know that it doesn't care about if it's been answered, that's the problem. - Sumanuil. _{(talk to me)} 22:07, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I just dropped by Category:Pages with template loops on patrol, and found several "Cite Grove" templates there. I couldn't figure out what was causing the loops but after subst: the doc the problem went away. Why? Is there a better solution? wbm1058 (talk) 22:59, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

@Wbm1058 All these cite Grove templates include a copy of {{Grove templates}} in their documentation page to link between each other. {{Grove templates}} does not have it's documentation template in noinclude tags (it was deleted by accident in this edit [32]), so you end up with a documentation template in a documentation template. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 23:07, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

fixed here [33]. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 23:09, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

We have templates such as {{Vertical header}} and {{Vertical text}} which are used to display text in narrow table columns. Do we have a view about text being displayed in a narrow column as a series of one-character lines? For example List of Tulu films of 2023 — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 09:12, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

The linked article shows a terrible practice that hurts accessibility as well. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 10:51, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Oof, horrible. This is really a WP:MOS question rather than a VPT question, but I killed that formatting with fire. The all-caps months can probably be fixed as well. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:00, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

With fire? That was a stronger response than I was expecting. However, if you check the page history, you will see that I actually went a bit further but was reverted. I was going to post in the project talk page to discuss an overall fix – there are lots^{[clarification needed]} of other film list articles that use that pattern — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:40, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

In case Anishviswa (talk · contribs) doesn't understand the problem here, both Template:Vertical text and Template:Vertical header use the CSS writing-mode: property to realign the text. These can have potential accessibility issues for the partially-sighted, but there is zero impact for screen reader users. However this edit uses the <br /> tag to split words into individul letters, and that does cause issues for screen reader users, because the month names are no longer complete words, but groups of from three to nine discrete letters. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:04, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Issue is not with just one article as some people jumped in and started editing after the start of this discussion😂. Same format is there in British films and Australian films also. The fundamental question is regarding the template used for film lists (year-wise). Make or improve the template and deploy to all film lists and let us follow it.
Anish Viswa 04:54, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 (talk · contribs) You could try to kill this article with fire and see how it is received there - List_of_American_films_of_2024
Anish Viswa 13:11, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

It is horrifying to see that this is not just a one-off problem. Thanks for the link. I opened a discussion on the article's talk page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:10, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with the presentation per se as long as it's done purely through CSS (and w/o <br>). We even have {{Vertical header}} for that. Nardog (talk) 14:13, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Fame (Confederate monument). I succeeded in removing them but I'm certain that what I removed to accomplish this should not be removed.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:24, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

They shouldn't be removed, no. Swapping their order fixed the whitespace, as did moving {{italic title}} below the infobox; moving {{short description}} below it instead did not. It's not immediately clear why. —Cryptic 21:57, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, and is there somewhere we can document this in case someone finds the same problem elsewhere?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 23:13, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Something to do with templates that produce no output. Perhaps phab:T369520? The cure, apparently, is to add a leading <nowiki /> tag. Why? Don't know.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:23, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

If a template has no output then a call of the template placed on its own line becomes a blank line, causing whitespace. If the template returns a nowiki then MediaWiki doesn't treat it as a blank line. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

The current (better) workaround, in case anyone else looks at the article's history, just sees the reverts, and is confused. {{short description}} already had something similar for blank shortdescs; and non-blank ones do have output, a div that's hidden by css. —Cryptic 01:20, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

At List of Women's Basketball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year the header sort is not working for the Aliyah Boston rows.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:14, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

• • Also problem in table two sorting Division III column winner.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:23, 18 September 2024 (UTC)
• Similar issue at List of Men's Basketball Academic All-America Team Members of the Year with John Amaechi row in table 1 and and college winner columns in both tables.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:23, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

  Well, the cells in question use a flag icon, it's not going to sort correctly like that. Gonnym (talk) 12:31, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

  More specifically, the table sorter code includes the alt tag of the flag image, so it sorts the row as something like "United States Virgin Islands Boston, Aliyah". Does MOS:FLAG apply here? Otherwise you might find Help:Sortable tables#Specifying a sort key for a cell in determining a workaround. Anomie⚔ 12:57, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

  Workaround using data-sort-value works, added example for 2022, Aliyah Boston (2). Uwappa (talk) 13:13, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

  User:Uwappa, Thank you for showing me how to implement this correction.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:10, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:11, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Not sure where else to properly propose or showcase this, but I did a refactor of the Unicode block template design, introducing various BCP bells and whistles—namely dark mode support via TemplateStyles (Template:Unicode chart/styles minimal.css). Sadly, I can't use <tfoot>. Compare {{Unicode chart CJK Radicals Supplement}}

with {{User:Remsense/Unicode chart CJK Radicals Supplement}}

Thoughts? Remsense ‥ 论 07:51, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Gonnym suggested the bare EL be converted into a reference. I think I agree with that, but I didn't want to unilaterally change everything at once. It's a pretty dated design though, while several editors have tried to redesign it but haven't completed it. So, I guess I wanted to triage it and do everything right while keeping the manual work of fixing every block manageable. Remsense ‥ 论 15:37, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

A nitpick: I don't love the use of two different fonts and font sizes for the column and row headers, especially since both appear to be different from the base page font. Is there a reason for these fonts to be different from the base page font? See MOS:FONTFAMILY for a guideline. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:09, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the nitpick, of course! I wouldn't do it purely for decoration per guidelines and good sense; I could easily lose one of the font sizes which was just mirroring the original, but the monospace is due to it being a computer-based code point, I guess? Now that I'm interrogating that again, it's a rather weak reason to insist on it, I think I can 86 that too. Remsense ‥ 论 17:13, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I do think the table footer is a bit visually distracting at 1rem, especially if the string appears several times on a page corresponding to several blocks. What do you think? Remsense ‥ 论 17:19, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Can convert it to a {{efn}} note maybe. Gonnym (talk) 17:34, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm—I think what will work is visually (but not semantically) folding it into the table like in the original. Remsense ‥ 论 17:36, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Iterated as such. Remsense ‥ 论 17:54, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Definitely restore the normal-sized and fixed-pitch row and column headers (you might try making *all* the characters normal-sized). Try to make the cells perfectly square and as small as possible, they seem to not be square and are bigger than before. I would just put the text "Unicode 16.0" in the header with a ref leading to the PDF, and also there is no need to tell them that gray cells are unassigned, so both footnotes are removed. Spitzak (talk) 18:22, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure about making square cells—which would be easy to do—of course we inspect isolated glyphs in an ideal square, but I think this becomes significantly harder to read as a table that way. Though, I realize I've picked a CJK block to test this with, maybe that's different with a graphetically different script so square cells would be best.Remsense ‥ 论 18:26, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm no, I'm full of it and square cells is obviously the move. I've allowed the headers to be bolded like in other tables instead, and I think that's good. Trying to step away so people can analyze for now. Remsense ‥ 论 18:35, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

@Remsense: You can't use tfoot for the same reason that thead and tbody (also a, img and a bunch of others) can't be used - none of these are whitelisted in MediaWiki. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:45, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I know why! It's just a bummer in this case and a few others. Remsense ‥ 论 20:46, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I support the rewrite, especially on accessibility grounds, but nounderlines class should probably be removed: does it even serve a purpose here? (If it even has one at al.) stjn 15:09, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, that was another importation. I'll pull it too. Remsense ‥ 论 15:10, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Also, thank you for the tweak—I misremembered the threshold as being 80% as opposed to 85%. Remsense ‥ 论 15:11, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Ah, seems like it was intended to remove the underlines from symbols that get linked, e. g. Currency Symbols (Unicode block). Then it can be moved to individual <tr> blocks, I think. stjn 15:18, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Right! Yes, I remembered then forgot that. Good catch. Remsense ‥ 论 15:19, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

nounderlines is this little bit of Common.css. Izno (talk) 15:28, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Seems like a pretty bad relic of a different time. I get the case for why someone though this might be a good idea, but removing underlines is also just removing pretty much the only way you can tell a link from a non-link apart in Wikipedia, so moving styles like that to TemplateStyles (where they target specific things) seems much better. stjn 19:52, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes, hence why it's in the TemplateStyles section of the page. The problem is that none of the classes of interest really go with specific templates, or are additionally employed in the "table" use case even when they do have a specific template in mind. So I haven't spent a ton of time trying to fix this one. Izno (talk) 20:11, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Looking better but can you please restore the cell size to what it was in the original? We seem to be suffering some bloat, it is even larger than before. In addition the cell sizes should match the inline tables being used for 8-bit character sets, which were designed to match the original.

Though it was not in the original, making the row/col headers be fixed-pitch (as well as bold) would help for recognizing Hex values.

I still think the footer can be removed in the majority of cases. Put "Unicode 16.0" and the PDF link into the title, and just remove the "gray indicates non-assigned" as this is well known. Spitzak (talk) 17:46, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I've reduced the effective padding, that looks better. I think I would like to maintain the table caption being used exclusively for the name of the block. I am also a hair skeptical that the meaning of gray squares is adequately intuitive to many readers who might be learning about Unicode or any related concept for the very first time, and they might not even really know that letters are assigned as such. That is to say, I think the note plausibly should remain. Remsense ‥ 论 17:56, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I found that fixed sized boxes with a very small padding is the way to get smaller boxes. They are still too large.

For the gray, perhaps making the tooltip say "U+ABCD: unassigned" would work. Spitzak (talk) 18:16, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

That's what I've done. Are you sure they're still too large? This is the worst case scenario for readability I think, with rather complex and diverse, square-filling glyphs. I worry if I reduce the spacing any more it will become more difficult to discern one glyph from another at a glance. Remsense ‥ 论 18:18, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Of course, then I actually try it again and decide it's fine after staring at it for a few seconds. Design is hard. Remsense ‥ 论 18:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe just add the PDF as a ref to the title, with no unicode version text. The Unicode version is part of the title of the reference anyway.

Yes they are still too large, as they are larger than the original. Copy however the original version set the box sizes. These glyphs should not be causing the boxes to get larger, that should not happen until the glyph literally does not fit in the box, with zero padding. Spitzak (talk) 18:19, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Nevermind you did fix the box sizes. Looks good to me! Spitzak (talk) 18:20, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Nevermind you did fix the box sizes. I should have taken a look. Spitzak (talk) 18:21, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I like the fact that you fixed the width of the row headers. Do you think you could try fixed pitch? I think that will help as usuallyU+AB12 is being shown in a fixed-pitch font. Spitzak (talk) 18:23, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

I am on the fence about this choice as well, but I am often tugged towards parsimony (i.e. only using one font) but I'll try it out again now. Remsense ‥ 论 18:29, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I think that's pretty perfect. Remsense ‥ 论 18:32, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

The titles are showing with serifs for me, not asU+2E8x. Spitzak (talk) 17:58, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Actually the row titles are in a different font than the column titles. Spitzak (talk) 17:58, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

That's odd, there's no reason for that to be the case, they're both set to font-family: monospace. I'll change it though to what our templates do instead. Remsense ‥ 论 18:02, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Oh, lookie here. I've discovered why we need a WP:MONO shortcut. Fixed. Remsense ‥ 论 18:09, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Removing the lang="mul" from the row headers fixed it for me. Spitzak (talk) 19:52, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense! I have no idea why they would be tagged that, as it's not the case that the text is writing several different languages! Not sure why I bothered copying it over. Remsense ‥ 论 20:20, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm concerned about making the table design slicker at the expense of conveigying information clearly. That said, User:Remsense asked for my feedback on the redesign...

• Is it possible to use a sticky header for the "0 1 2 3 4 ..." heading? This would be very useful for longer charts like Template:Unicode chart Egyptian Hieroglyphs and many CJK related blocks. You can see it in action on the here.
• I'm as adamant about the use of "nounderlines" as I was ten years ago. Yes, readers are used to the use of underlines on Latin letters but it gets very confusing with unfamiliar letters/symbols. The best example is Template:Unicode chart Mathematical Operators. I contend that the change is color of the linked symbol is sufficient to alert the reader of a link.
• I would like a PDF symbol in the header of the chart to the official Unicode code chart. I don't think it's intuitive to follow a reference for "As of Unicode version 16.0" to find the chart. That just buries this incredibly useful information. If you want to condense the information, what about this for the heading: Early Dynastic Cuneiform as of Unicode version 16.0 ‍ or Early Dynastic Cuneiform as of Unicode version 16.0 (official chart)
• The size/shape of the table cell gets thrown out the window for some charts. See Template:Unicode chart Javanese and Template:Unicode chart Early Dynastic Cuneiform for example.
• Be sure to test that the new block layout works when multiple charts appear on the same page, like Mon–Burmese script.
• I don't really care which font is used for the headings/column heading but it will need to be different than the fonts (if any) for the data cells themselves. For example, Template:Unicode chart Ahom. We don't want to use Noto Serif Ahom for the entire chart, just the data cells. Not sure if the new format makes this an issue or not.
• FYI: I think this is a complete list of charts with notes other than "as of" and "grey": Arabic, Arabic Presentation Forms-A, CJK Compatibility Ideographs, General Punctuation, Hangul Jamo, Khmer, Latin Extended-A, Miscellaneous Technical, Specials, Superscripts and Subscripts, Sutton SignWriting, Tags, and Tibetan.

DRMcCreedy (talk) 20:40, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much, it's just what I was hoping for! Of course, the last thing I want to do is make anything less clear, but I need to do everything wrong first Remsense ‥ 论 21:35, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

The problem with nounderlines even in {{Unicode chart Mathematical Operators}} is that it affects the table caption. I wasn’t saying that nounderlines needs to be completely removed, just that it shouldn’t affect legit links unnecessarily. stjn 13:35, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I understand now. I agree with you that links outside of the table data cell contents should have underlines. DRMcCreedy (talk) 14:56, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to judge the EL vs. reflist citation position as no consensus for the moment, meaning I'll try a version with the existing convention as well. Further thoughts on each?

Unicode 16.0 – grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

Unicode 16.0 (official chart) – grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

Remsense ‥ 论 03:18, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

I strongly prefer the EL with the PDF symbol because it's much more obvious there's a PDF chart available. Especially nice if it's a block I don't have fonts installed for. DRMcCreedy (talk) 14:48, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

The lang="mul" reappeared for some reason Spitzak (talk) 04:23, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

It's a citation. EL should not be placed in the middle of articles per WP:NOELBODY. How does this usage satisfy "rare exception"? Gonnym (talk) 15:16, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm so used to the current format that this never occurred to me. I guess that pushes us towards a normal citation. That said, I'd like the citation chapter parm changed to "Code chart for xxx" (where xxx is the block name) and the page number parm removed (because of the maintenance issues with new releases). DRMcCreedy (talk) 16:02, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm happy to make any future changes if consensus agrees to them or problems are indicated; for the moment, is everyone okay with me starting to implement this new design, possibly as a handful of metatemplates, that can replace the existing unicode block templates? Also, third option: just put the citation template itself in the bar?

"CJK Radicals Supplement" (PDF), The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0.0, South San Francisco, California: The Unicode Consortium, 2024-09-10, pp. 325–329, ISBN 978-1-936213-34-4 – grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

Remsense ‥ 论 22:00, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

That is probably the worst option. Just make it a citation, there is no reason to prefer an inline icon for the link in the footer. stjn 16:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I only worry that it'll cause heartburn for those working with the bespoke citation styles existing in maybe 2–10 articles ever, but whatever at this point. Remsense ‥ 论 17:01, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes I think it should be a plain old citation in the header. The header could look like this:

CJK Radicals Supplement Unicode 16.0

I do think the link to the PDF has to be in the title somehow. Spitzak (talk) 17:43, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

@Drmccreedy @Spitzak @Stjn @Gonnym how's that, y'all? —you know what, I won't apologize for including the full citation template. hurts no one!Remsense ‥ 论 20:02, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Hard no on using the full citation in the header. I think that is still an inline citation so if breaks the MOS. I'm fine with just a reference so long as the title is "Code chart for ..." or "Official Code Chart for ...". DRMcCreedy (talk) 21:44, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I dropped the inline cite idea. Remsense ‥ 论 21:58, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

Current version looks good to me Spitzak (talk) 22:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I notice the page numbers are still on the reference. I'd like to reiterate that these are a maintenance issue and not useful to the reader because they will just pull up the PDF, not look up the page numbers is some hardcopy or omnibus PDF. DRMcCreedy (talk) 14:33, 20 September 2024 (UTC)