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This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See
task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget
in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking
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If you go to ?action=info for any page, you will see a table with various statistics, including two lines about how many people are watching the page, e.g.:
I am finding that the ratio shown here is not at all unusual for older articles, but the first line gets more attention from editors. They think "hundreds of editors are watching this page", when they should be thinking "almost nobody is watching this page". Is there a way we could remove/hide the irrelevant number from this info page? Or should we just change
MediaWiki:Pageinfo-watchers to something like "Total number of watchlists (includes inactive editors)"?
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 04:53, 10 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I’m one of those who ‘think "hundreds of editors are watching this page", when they should be thinking "almost nobody is watching this page"’ ...
I think we should have that “second line” added to these pages (or replaced the “first line”):
I bet someone here could write a .css script that would blank that out, or rename it to something like "This is the wrong line – ignore it". I checked a bunch of
Special:Random pages, and most of them showed no data, due to there being too few people watching the pages.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 21:11, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
For hiding that row on the page information page on Wikipedia, try #mw-pageinfo-watchers { display: none; } in one of the .css files. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 22:43, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks, @
Novem Linguae.
That seems to have worked for me. That suggests that iff we ever decided that we wanted to do that globally, it could be done in (e.g.,) global.css. I'm going to try this out for a while. I suspect that I'll like it.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 22:32, 12 April 2024 (UTC)reply
If it's on <30 watchlists, no number is given for either item (the second item is simply suppressed).
If it's on ≥30 watchlists, an exact number is given for both items.
If the second number is zero, it says "There may or may not be a watching user visiting recent edits" instead of a second number.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 23:53, 10 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Is there a way we could remove/hide the irrelevant number from this info page? I would not support removing this. Presenting both numbers, and letting the user decide which they want or need, seems like an acceptable status quo here. The less than 30 thing for non admins is for security reasons. Admins can see both numbers at all times. The linked phab ticket mentions changing the second message to mention 30 days explicitly. I could get behind a change like that. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 02:05, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Under what circumstances do you think it would it be useful for to you to know that the watchlists associated with 1,991 mostly inactive (and sometimes
actually dead) include the defunct
Wikipedia:WikiProject Contents?
The number of active editors presently watching that page is a single-digit number. I can understand why that number would be useful to know, but not why the first has practical value.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 02:56, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
As far as I can tell, pages can be watched actively, without the user being considered active there - such as through email or syndication. —
xaosfluxTalk 08:45, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Or by looking at the watchlist but not visiting the links.
Nardog (
talk) 09:43, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I suspect that the scenario Nardog describes is far more common than the one Xaosflux describes.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 18:32, 11 April 2024 (UTC)reply
That was an argument against hiding the total number of watchers. I was echoing Xaosflux.
Nardog (
talk) 05:58, 13 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I've never spent much time reading about the internal mechanism, but I believe that it works like this:
If you have some pages on your watchlist, and then get permanently locked out of your account, you are "a watcher" for all of those pages forever, even though you can't actually watch anything from that account.
If you have some pages on your watchlist, go to
Special:Watchlist, close the tab without clicking on any link or visiting an article at all, and then get permanently locked out of your account, you are counted as "an active watcher" for all the pages on your entire watchlist for the next 30 days (including pages that did not have any changes made, so they weren't listed at Special:Watchlist on the day that you visited that page).
This means that there are 9 active editors with this page on their watchlist, of which an unknown number – but it is quite possibly zero – actually looked at the page in question during the last month.
So Xaosflux says, yes, there may only 9 editors who have that page on their watchlists and actually went to Special:Watchlist at any point during the last 30 days, but maybe a few more people also get e-mail messages about changes to articles on their watchlist, so the "9" might be a slight undercount.
The scenario you describe – visiting the watchlist but not checking every page – is certainly common. The "9" is probably an overcount, if the goal is to know whether anyone actually checked the specific page.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 02:54, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
WhatamIdoing, I don't believe merely viewing the watchlist makes you an active watcher. —
Qwerfjkltalk 07:45, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
You're correct. The count uses the same "first unseen timestamp" data used for highlighting of unseen edits on the history page. If a revision older than the configured age would be highlighted, the user is not counted as having visited recent edits. Viewing the watchlist or history page doesn't reset that, while visiting the page itself will and viewing old revisions or diffs may.
Anomie⚔ 11:41, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks. I have corrected the errors I introduced last week to
Help:Watchlist ("Number of page watchers: 3,644; Number of page watchers who visited recent edits: 29; Number of editors who noticed my error: 0").
The "visited recent edits" should probably be changed to "visited the page recently". I think most editors will interpret this as "checked a diff" (i.e., the ) instead of "clicked on the article" (e.g., displayed the page via Special:Random).
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 16:42, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Does hovering over the diff with
WP:POPUPS count as "visiting" the edit? I rarely click on anything unless the popups diff is unclear, or I want to investigate the history.
Suffusion of Yellow (
talk) 16:47, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
That doesn't reset the "first unseen timestamp" (a fact that I've found particularly convenient).
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 17:43, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Personally, I would interpret "visited the page recently" to mean "visited the current version of the page recently". I think the natural assumption is that "page" without a qualifier refers to the current version.
isaacl (
talk) 16:59, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Would you feel the same about "visited the page during the last 30 days"?
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 17:44, 15 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I think referring to a time-bound period does change the natural assumption to having viewed the page as it appeared at the time of viewing during the specified period. I don't think it would be interpreted as having checked a diff.
isaacl (
talk) 16:56, 20 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I like the idea of having clarity.
BTW, I'm finding that I'm happy with the script @
Novem Linguae wrote for me. I'm still sometimes startled to see that there's only the one line, but it gives me the information that I want, and if for some reason I need to see the number of inactive accounts, it's only one incognito/private window away.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 19:11, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Why does the talk page visual editor not have a "cite" button?
Am i missing something, or is it impossible to automatically cite urls from the talk page visual editor? Yes, you can use the source editor, but is there a specfic reason why this is? Is there any way to get a more featured editor on the talk page visual editor?
MarkiPoli (
talk) 12:14, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Not sure if it's intentional, but the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+K (Cmd+Shift+K on macOS) still works for this.
the wub"?!" 13:17, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Yeah, i noticed that too. Its still annoying not having a full featured editor exactly the same as the main page editor
MarkiPoli (
talk) 09:39, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
There's some things that're not allowed there because they don't work well in list-indented discussions, but mostly it's because of space constraints for the toolbar. The compromise is that the things left out are more on the power-user end (e.g. citations are very rarely used in discussions), and we hope that power-users will be able to use keyboard shortcuts and sequence triggers for these things. (You can press ctrl/cmd + ? to see all the options here. Or type \ if you're in visual mode for a nifty command-palette...)
DLynch (WMF) (
talk) 16:04, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Or edit the full page in source mode with all the bells and whistles of course. —
TheDJ (
talk •
contribs) 19:49, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Yeah, but they said they already knew about that. :D
DLynch (WMF) (
talk) 21:05, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
MarkiPoli, it's at least theoretically possible.
Look at this diff (noting that @
DLynch (WMF) has not yet promised to maintain it for the rest of my life). Since we can add a special character button from the visual editor, it should be possible to add other buttons.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 19:17, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see a need for this. Could you give me an example? Thanks --- thetechie@enwiki:
~/talk/$ 19:32, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
If you want to make a citation so that others can easily see it and potentially copy paste it into the article if useful (if its part of a discussion and can't be immediately put in the article for some reason i.e. its contentious). Also, a gaping flaw that's worse in my opinion is there's no real way to even insert templates at all in the replier (it literally says that wikitext is not allowed in the visual reply editor when it doesnt say this in the article editor). Is there any way at all to insert templates in the visual talk page editor without switching to source?
MarkiPoli (
talk) 19:49, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Maile66 It looks okay to me. Can you describe in more detail the problem that you are experiencing? --
Ahecht (
TALK PAGE) 18:33, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
The top listings are from yesterday, the 15th. I have made two deletes today that are not showing up there. The change is usually instantaneous if I reload the grid page.
— Maile (
talk) 18:41, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Maile66 Per
toolforge:replag, there is currently about 2 hours of lag on the enwiki database replicas that all toolforge tools use, likely related to the database maintenance mentioned in
#pagelinks normalization above. --
Ahecht (
TALK PAGE) 19:12, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks. I'll just wait out.
— Maile (
talk) 19:19, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
And now it's up to over 4 hour lag and my Quarry and bot reports are not updated. I hope this is not a maintenance tasks that takes several days. Work will just pile up. Thanks for pointing out the message from yesterday. I assume this will affect database and bot reports and not article content, right? LizRead!Talk! 22:03, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Yeah, I was just re-checking, and it's now been 4-plus hours for me on the above AFD Stats.
— Maile (
talk) 22:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Liz and
Maile66: do you think we start a bug report? Found this thread through my watchlist and looks like it is a bug that should be reported. thetechie@enwiki:
~/talk/$ 22:32, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I think that's a good idea. Do you know how to do that? This might affect even more processes than we've mentioned above.
— Maile (
talk) 22:36, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Maile66:This page is a good start. You should follow the instructions there to create a Phabricator account, then you can create a bug report. If you need me to, I can, and I can give you the link. If you or Liz does, please put the link in this thread, I'd like to keep track of it. thetechie@enwiki:
~/talk/$ 22:44, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks,
TheTechie, for starting this but the bug report just mentions AFD stats, not Quarry queries or any of the bot reports. LizRead!Talk! 23:31, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks I added my issue. Seems I already had a Phabricator account. It's been such a long time since I was over there, I had forgetten.
— Maile (
talk) 23:39, 16 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Yes, my primary participation is subscribing and following problems not filing reports. The discussion there goes over my head once it stops being English and starts into code. LizRead!Talk! 01:15, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Looks like it's fixed. Now finally, I can view my mainspace edit count without 1 day of lag. Stay safe, thetechie@enwiki:
~/talk/$ 00:16, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
As of today, April 24, the issue has returned. I have filed Phabricator Task T363077, hoping this resolve it once and for all.
— Maile (
talk) 21:03, 21 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This issue cannot be resolve[d] once and for al[l]. There will be spurts of replag lasting a few hours to a day from time to time, for the foreseeable future.
* Pppery *it has begun... 21:10, 21 April 2024 (UTC)reply
And my understanding is that these Phabricator tasks are not helpful - with only one exception I can think of replag has been due to deliberate database maintenance that the people involved are aware of the impact of, and it will resolve itself when its done.
* Pppery *it has begun... 21:15, 21 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thank you. At last, someone has given us some insight on how this works.
— Maile (
talk) 21:21, 21 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Well, looks like I was mistaken and this report was helpful, and this replag instance was a real standalone bug not an expected consequence of database maintenance. So, I guess you can report it, but sometimes you will get "this is a known issue that the DBAs are working on" ("DBA" is an acronym for
database administrator).
* Pppery *it has begun... 21:29, 21 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thank you for all this insight. I have previously come across "this is a known issue ... " and usually just back off on those types.
— Maile (
talk) 21:41, 21 April 2024 (UTC)reply
As of right now, this has not yet been resolved.
— Maile (
talk) 11:31, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Great! Wow - it's working today. Thanks.
— Maile (
talk) 15:53, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Database replication lag
Replication lag
The database on which this query was executed has a synchronization delay with the wiki. This can be caused by maintenance or incident on database, and should be resolved soon.
The modifications that was made in last 20 hours on the wiki are not taken into account in results bellow.
Just bellowing here to make sure that someone in charge is aware of this, and working to resolve it. Every time I've checked in for the past several hours, the lag has grown longer; there is no sign as yet that it's started to get shorter again. I searched for a Phabricator, and couldn't find any. Would like to have some idea of the meaning of "soon" in this case.
wbm1058 (
talk) 14:08, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks! Aha, I didn't find this because
T362732 "enwiki_p database replica has stopped updating" doesn't match the search string "replication lag".
I was pinged to the
#pagelinks normalization discussion, but that discussion did not warn me that the process of "normalizing" pagelinks would temporarily abnormalize database replication. –
wbm1058 (
talk) 15:03, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
"FWIW, this is a data corruption issue. Last time it happened on sanitarium hosts the whole system went down for a week. I'm trying to figure out if I can avoid re-cloning the whole host (which would take a lot of time, potentially weeks) and only reclone the corrupted table but there is no easy way to do this AFAICS."
wbm1058 (
talk) 10:51, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Does anyone know what "reviewed an image suggestion" means and its use? See this
user's log for an example.
S0091 (
talk) 20:35, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This appears to be
coming from the Android app. I can't find the option to try it out, even in the Alpha version, but at first glance this seems to be a privacy violation. We've never publicly logged pages that people were just viewing (or previewing an edit for) but decided not to edit. Is it being disclosed, up front and clearly, that the choice not to edit will be visible to the whole world?
Suffusion of Yellow (
talk) 21:03, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
DBrant (WMF): How can I try out this feature? All I see under "suggested edits" is "Article descriptions", "Image captions", and "Image tags". And is my assumption correct, that we are logging when someone decides not to edit a page? If so, are they told that their username, along with the page they were viewing, is being publicly logged?
Suffusion of Yellow (
talk) 21:36, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Alright, for some reason it doesn't work for me on the enwiki or testwiki, but I found it on the desktop site at
es:Special:Homepage. I was told that Your answers improve future suggestions. but for all I would know, that just means I'm training an AI or something. There was no indication that by clicking "Submit",
this log entry would be created, and my name would be publicly recorded. This feature needs to be disabled.
Suffusion of Yellow (
talk) 23:08, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This is a "growthexperiment" log type. Pings to @
Trizek (WMF) and
KStoller-WMF: who can hopefully point to the documentation. Notably, @
Suffusion of Yellow: this doesn't say it is about "viewing" but about "reviewing" so I'm assuming there was an affirmative user action performed here other than reading. —
xaosfluxTalk 00:07, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
You're asked if an AI-selected image should be in an article. If you click "Yes", you're given an opportunity to add it. If you click "No", you're asked why, but not told that your "No" is going to be made public. This is equivalent to logging every time someone previews an edit, and then abandons it.
Suffusion of Yellow (
talk) 00:17, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I think that is a bit of a stretch. Patrolling essentially is similar in nature and we don't warn from the interface that those actions are publicly logged either. I do see however that the barrier to entry is significantly lower here, so some additional caution might indeed be warranted. —
TheDJ (
talk •
contribs) 08:28, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the ping! The Android app is indeed using the same underlying API as the Growth team, but their implementation is a little different:
Android/Image_Recommendations I'll follow up with that team and ask them to review this discussion. Thanks, -
KStoller-WMF (
talk) 16:51, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
DBrant (WMF) is under the weather, I think I've coordinated with each of you before at some point, but I am Jaz the PM for the apps.
"Reviewed an image suggestion" means that someone determined that an Machine suggested image for an article is either adequate for an article, and the subsequently adds that image OR the image is not adequate (rejected). The reason it is important to track is so that we can remove bad recommendations from the stack that we share with the Growth experiments. Do we need to publicly log this information? Probably not, I am investigating why we are showing rejecting a suggestion publicly, if there isn't a super compelling reason, I will ensure we suppress the public log but still send the API call that is necessary for the feature.
As far as accessing the feature, you'll need to be:
Logged In
Set your app primary language as one where you have more than 50 unreverted edits
If you follow these steps and are still unable to see the feature, would you kindly file a task and screen record the steps you are taken, because that would be a bug. The feature is available in both the Beta version of the app and the production version.
The requirement of having over 50 unreverted edits for the language wiki you are using the feature in is the implementation difference that @
KStoller-WMF. Under the hood and the flow of the feature is the same, however who has access to it is different. The Growth implementation is available to new editors on select wikis and we use the same API. New editors do not have access to this suggested edit task on the app.
The onboarding and guidance for the feature on Desktop is not the same as on Android. For example,
on this screen we do let users know that their answers improve future suggestions.
Once DBrant is back in office (fingers crossed he's feeling better tomorrow) our team will update this thread about removing the rejection log.
JTanner (WMF) (
talk) 19:05, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks. I don't like putting using my main password on my phone, so I had used an alternate account with only a few edits. Honestly I spoke too quickly when I said "this feature needs to be disabled". So long as the messaging is changed to be more like
MediaWiki:Thanks-confirmation2 ("Publicly send thanks?") I don't think the log needs to be removed. The problem with "Your answers improve future suggestions" is that it sounds like I'm training an AI ("select all squares containing Sarah Connor"), or taking an anonymous survey.
Suffusion of Yellow (
talk) 19:42, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks @
Suffusion of Yellow this is helpful, digging into the code we were able to determine the rejection log is coming from the Growth Experiments API, which means the rejection log publishes for the Growth Experiment implementation as well. We are going to coordinate with them on next steps to see what makes sense regarding the public log. @
ARamadan-WMF will follow up with the link to any phab tickets should they be created to make the rejection log private.
In the meantime, I've created
task T362935 to update the copy in the UI for the app should the decision be to keep it public. I've subscribed you to it @
Suffusion of Yellow, I welcome all of you to subscribe and comment on the proposed language change.
JTanner (WMF) (
talk) 20:37, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This is Amal Ramadan, I am Sr. Movment Communications Specialist supporting the Mobile Applications team; I wanted to provide you with an update: both the Growth and the Apps teams are going to discontinue publicly logging rejections. If you're interested in following the progress of this change, please subscribe to ticket
T363002.
Thank you for initiating and engaging in this conversation.
Getting table captions to render with conditional statements
Per
MOS:DTAB (and general accessibility best practices), all data tables must have a table caption. {{
Linescore}} is a template that generates a data table and it ostensibly has a parameter Header that should generate one, but in reality, it does not. See
Lee Richmond's perfect game where the HTML is:
line 82:<caption><span class="nowrap"> </span>
line 83:</caption>
rather than actually generating the caption "Line score for Lee Richmond's perfect game". I
briefly made a fix for this that just removed some if/then statements and I previewed it on many pages (
2001 World Series,
Disco Demolition Night,
2009 Claxton Shield,
box score (baseball)) and no problems appeared, but since there are 1,400+ transclusions, I wanted to be conservative so I reverted myself and came here to see if anyone thought there was a better solution or saw any problems with my approach. If anyone can debug this as-is, that would be great, but I can't and it seems like my solution actually works. ―
Justin (koavf)❤
T☮
C☺
M☯ 01:59, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Koavf:Template:Linescore#Optional parameters doesn't say Header is supposed to be displayed. It's a flag to hide other parameters which can be used to generate a heading. You could use Other for your wanted heading.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 14:31, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
New posts not showing up as separate posts on a user talk
Myself and one other editor have posted on
Jweaver28's user talk and I just realized our posts are showing up all mashed-together. Any subsequent posts will also show up all mashed together under the wrong header. Someone with more bandwidth than myself please take a look at
User talk:Jweaver28 and the oddness going on at
Unblock request for library wifi address. I've tried and tried to figure out how to fix it and have given up. Thanks,
Shearonink (
talk) 18:35, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Something got messed up with the unblock request template on that page, and it had an unclosed <nowiki> tag. I fixed the markup:
[1]Matma Rextalk 18:46, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thank you! Those darn unclosed tags...At first I thought it might be some stray }} but that obvi wasn't the issue. Thanks again,
Shearonink (
talk) 19:12, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Sometimes, a blocked user doesn't read the instructions properly and screws up the Wikimarkup when attempting to request unblock. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 21:15, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
They don't quite make sense to me and don't seem to be telling me anything useful about the edit. Anyone care to explain? Thanks,
Shearonink (
talk) 19:38, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Oh interesting. So it's the Android and iOS apps appending these strings to the edit summaries? –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 05:37, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Hello, I have 2 user pages, one in Arabic and another one in English, but the problem is that when I click on the languages tab on any of them it says "No languages yet"
Could there be a stopgap solution for the Graph module until its replacement is developed?
It has been 1 year since Graphs were disabled due to security vulnerabilities in the extension.
The update plan as of now is to completely replace the Graph extension, because the other solutions to upgrade it were found to not be feasible. This process has only just started to gather the members necessary and will not start in earnest until July, per the update posted. This extension will then obviously take time to develop. In the meantime, there's 18k articles, per
Category:Pages with disabled graphs, with data that is completely inaccessible unless you view the page source. We could either put the data in a table so at least the data is there, in an expando if there are many rows. We could even have a link to an external graphing service that graphs it visually on a separate page (Quickchart.io being an example that works simply, simply putting the data in JSON format in the URL.). Thoughts?
MarkiPoli (
talk) 15:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
6 weeks ago I did a deep dive for 1-2 days helping to debug, reproduce, identify the root case and help formulate a fix for the following issue.
[2] This issue affects any user using webauthn aka 2FA security tokens across wikimedia. @
Reedy (WMF) was very responsive and back-ported a fix from another repository. The fix was committed March 5.
Could I ask your help getting more detail on what the next steps are to integrate and deploy the fix?
Tonymetz💬 20:20, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
There's nothing anyone on the English Wikipedia can do about problem with webauthn directly. See
Help:Two-factor_authentication#WebAuthn. I suggest no one use this method with any account they care about. There is now a ticket open, so some developers may eventually work on
phab:T358771. If you want to personally work on this see:
mw:How to become a MediaWiki hacker. —
xaosfluxTalk 21:01, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
my issue is more about getting help from WMF to deploy the fix that is ready to go. maybe this is better for village pump WMF
Tonymetz💬 21:08, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Patches are primarily deployed by volunteer developers not "the WMF". There are currently
over 70 tasks open for OATHAUTH alone, most of which are significantly older. This isn't anything specific to the English Wikipedia, so none of our noticeboards are the right venue. You could email the mailing list that has a team of volunteers that look over technical matters relating to MediaWiki software and interface - this team can be reached at mediawiki-llists.wikimedia.org. —
xaosfluxTalk 22:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Agreed this is the wrong venue, but the fact that patches are as usual not getting reviewed in a timely fashion is ridiculous.
* Pppery *it has begun... 21:25, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Patches are primarily deployed by volunteer developers not "the WMF". It might be more accurate to say that patches are auto-deployed by the weekly train for most repos. And a combination of volunteers and wmf do both the patch writing and the patch approvals. What's needed here is a patch approval (+2). Which can be a lot of brain power, because it involves wrapping your head around the ticket and the code, reviewing the patch code, and loading up the patch code in a localhost environment and testing it. But sadly, many repos are backlogged or do not have active maintainers or do not have any wmf team currently assigned to them. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 22:58, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Is there more information on how to apply to be a maintainer? I had assumed we were blocked by WMF. I’m happy to help contribute as a maintainer if it would help.
Tonymetz💬 23:26, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
First, you'd need to write a bunch of patches in gerrit for the repo you want to apply for. Do you have a gerrit account yet? Then you'd also want to get the support of the existing maintainers. Seems like an existing maintainer is a little frustrated with you in the linked phab ticket, so would need to mend that. Finally, when those two things are looking good, you'd ask the community for +2 of that repo via a Phabricator ticket.
Example. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 23:57, 19 April 2024 (UTC)reply
thanks for the guidance and the example that's helpful. i'll look into it.
Tonymetz💬 03:37, 20 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Cursor keeps teleporting to the very start of the box I'm editing whenever I press shift
Is there any way to make the cursor stop teleporting to the beginning of the line or paragraph if I press shift?
Shadow311 (
talk) 00:47, 20 April 2024 (UTC)reply
did you think that was enough information for anyone to know what box you're referring to? See
mw:How to report a bug.
Jeremyb (
talk) 01:59, 20 April 2024 (UTC)reply
also thanks 143.208.238.228, that's what I was talking about.
Shadow311 (
talk) 17:14, 20 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Sounds like
mw:Extension:DiscussionTools is the box you're using. According to the linked thread, turning off the GoogleTrans gadget may fix the issue. Can you go ahead and try turning off the GoogleTrans gadget via
Special:Preferences and report back? –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 11:04, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Shadow311, if you didn't have the GoogleTrans gadget enabled, then it might be
phab:T316838. Please ping me if that's the case.
If you do have GoogleTrans enabled, and you need to keep it enabled, then there's a chance that you could bypass this bug, in the Reply tool and New Topic tool only (e.g., not in the visual editor, which you don't seem to be using) by going to
Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion and turning off "Enable editing tools in source mode". You'd lose the whole toolbar, including the button to @ ping someone.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 22:52, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Lua error
i keep getting a Lua error everytime I try to put a picture, is there a way to solve this issue? thanks
Cassopeia...talk?... 18:37, 20 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Please always say which page or code a question is about. I guess it's about
User:Penny(Cassopeia) where you used {{
Portal image banner}}. Like many image-displaying templates, it takes raw file names as parameters and not image code: {{Portal image banner|Zinnia elegans with Bombus 01.JPG|...}}.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 19:24, 20 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Process template parameter in Lua before MediaWiki does its thing
Request: To provide /update pictorial, video or tutorial help on how to use
Template:Citation#Quote.
The policy regarding these types of quotes is briefly covered at
WP:FOOTQUOTE.
Description: In the visual editor, under the 'cite' button, you first put in the basic parameters (sometimes just a URL is sufficient to get started), then scroll down the list of fields to find the one named 'Quote', which is a text box you can enter the quote into. (This is too verbose does not seem to save first time readers from confusion)
Why needed:
as a help in verification if needed
WP:VERIFY states "..Readers must be able to check that any of the information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up. .."
When we refer to academic sources many times those are not easily accessible to readers / copy editors and also who wish to verify. Specially in contentious topic area providing original quote from the source remains easier for transparency and verification and saves a lot of misunderstanding, stress and time.
When some user urged me to provide quotes from sources it took me months to understand what that user was urging about and how to do that although it is very easily accessible in visual editor.
When I also urge other editors I find they are confused what I am requesting all about.
I do have strong perception that updating related help pages with pictorial, video or tutorial help can save lot of hassle.
Idk if this is the right place to seek help in this respect, if not then please guide me where to make this request.
Also, quotations are not sufficient. If an editor were willing to put false information in the article, then that editor could just as easily put false information in the quotation field of the template.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 22:58, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
IP Information feature issue on the English Wikipedia on iPhones
When I click on an IP address's contributions and click on the IP information window, it shows The IP information could not be retrieved. even though it works on other wikis, such as the Simple English Wikipedia.
This issue can only affect users who use iPhones and not on computers, so is anybody who uses this beta feature experiencing this issue when using it on their iPhone (including me)?
Codename Noreste 🤔
La Suma 03:34, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Does the tool work on the Simple English Wikipedia when on your iPhone?
I don't have an iPhone, so I cannot personally test this. The tool displays the The IP information could not be retrieved. error on any kind of "generic" error, which doesn't have a defined message. This could suggest that the request has not been getting through to the servers.
Dreamy Jazztalk to me | my contributions 10:06, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Smells like an API error. Are you using a browser on your phone, or the official Wikipedia iOS app? Are you still getting the error right now? Is it one IP only (please share which one if you can), or all IPs you try? –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 11:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I am using Safari, and this applies to all IP addresses.
Codename Noreste 🤔
La Suma 16:05, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Can you provide a screenshot so that we can see your skin, screen size, what page you're on, if you're logged in, and what IP you're trying to view? Also, does the problem go away in
WP:SAFEMODE? –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 20:33, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
The screenshot is here. About the IP addresses, this do not matter since the error applies to every IP addresses' contribution pages, and for safemode, the issue still persists.
Codename Noreste 🤔
La Suma 22:47, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Xaosflux: Which guideline? "IP information" refers to "information obtained through this tool", so nothing covered by the guidelines is disclosed in the screenshot, no?
Nardog (
talk) 10:21, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I second this. If this violates something, we should
WP:IAR here. It's just a screenshot of an error message. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 10:22, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Oops, too many screens open, the screenshot with the successful results would have been the problem, but that is in phab not here. —
xaosfluxTalk 10:25, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I've removed it in phab just in case. Should be all set. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 10:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks. I've filed
phab:T363118 for you to help get dev attention. They may be able to search server logs to help see what the bad API query is. Please reply to devs if they ask you questions there since they are the most likely to be able to debug this. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 23:55, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Codename Noreste: Are you able to from the same device and browser? I get the same error if I try to view the IP info when my IP is hardblocked. Perhaps this has something to do with
iCloud Private Relay?
Suffusion of Yellow (
talk) 00:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
To your question, my answer is that I edit from the Safari browser in my iPhone and I don't have iCloud+, so iCloud Private Relay is not enabled for my iPhone.
Codename Noreste 🤔
La Suma 00:21, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I think SoY's question is if you get a block notice when you try to edit articles on this device. SoY suspects that you might be editing from a blocked IP range and wants to rule it out. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 00:22, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
My other answer would be no, since I'm not currently hardblocked.
Codename Noreste 🤔
La Suma 00:26, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Someone else in the phab ticket was able to reproduce. Also on iphone and safari. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 01:34, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Would it solve the problem if the STV candidate template used the shortname in all cases? — Martin (
MSGJ ·
talk) 20:24, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I tried to do that with
this edit, but ended up breaking the links in all cases. Could you see a means to include the shortname linked if there is an article, not linked if there is not?
Iveagh Gardens (
talk) 06:50, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This should do it. I've put that in the sandbox so you can test it before deploying if you wish — Martin (
MSGJ ·
talk) 08:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks, that does fix it, although I'm not sure the existence of a page is required. It can be useful for once-off microparties that have become defunct, as with Seniors Solidarity at
2009 Fingal County Council election, to have an entry there, without needing a page. In ten years, if The Irish People is no longer registered, it might not even warrant a redirect.
Iveagh Gardens (
talk) 06:48, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Easier way to mark an edit as minor
The minor edit button is very small and not very mobile or laptop trackpad friendly. Its too bothersome for me to actually use it. I do mark these edits as minor in the edit summary with the letter "m". Leaving "m" in the edit summary should tag the edit as a minor edit. This would encourage use of the minor edit button for minor edits and help declutter the watchlist (for those that filter minor edits from their watchlists). How easy would this be to from a technical standpoint?
Schierbecker (
talk) 18:33, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I can't help with the change you're proposing, but in case it helps, there are actually some more accessible ways to toggle the "minor edit" checkbox: you can click (or tap) its textual label as well, not just the box; or on a laptop, while writing the edit summary, you can press Tab and then Space to move to and toggle the checkbox. This works with all other checkboxes on Wikipedia too, and also in most other websites and apps.
Matma Rextalk 21:10, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Then there's Alt+⇧ Shift+I. --
Redrose64 🌹 (
talk) 22:02, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Or you could just not use it. Using it is never required.
WhatamIdoing (
talk) 23:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I'm rather inclined not to use edit summaries either! Just trust me, bro!
Schierbecker (
talk) 06:23, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Tech News: 2024-17
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you.
Translations are available.
You can
nominate your favorite tools for the fifth edition of the Coolest Tool Award. Nominations will be open until May 10.
Changes later this week
The
new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 April. It will be on all wikis from 25 April (
calendar).
[4][5]
Future changes
This is the last warning that by the end of May 2024 the Vector 2022 skin will no longer share site and user scripts/styles with old Vector. For user-scripts that you want to keep using on Vector 2022, copy the contents of
Special:MyPage/vector.js to
Special:MyPage/vector-2022.js. There are
more technical details available. Interface administrators who foresee this leading to lots of technical support questions may wish to send a mass message to your community, as was done on French Wikipedia.
[6]
Is there a convenient functionality to merge/extend Lua arrays?
I know I could iterate over the second array and append the values at the end of the first array, but I thought "hang on, there must be a closed function/method like Python's list.extend defined somewhere"... Am I right?
Alexis Coutinho (
talk) ping me 20:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I had checked Module:TableTools to no avail. I guess I could use the "union" functions from Module:Set, but that seems like overkill as those are not optimized for arrays. I think such simple function should be added to Module:TableTools. Ideally, it should actually be in the standard Scribuntu table library, alongside table.concat...
Alexis Coutinho (
talk) ping me 22:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
That's one of the functions in the Lua standard library, not added by Scribunto. Your other options besides the modules are 1) iterating over table 2 and table.inserting into table 1, or 2) doing it with indices.
Izno (
talk) 23:11, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
This isn't really a problem, per se, but I'm just curious if anyone has a similar thing going on. When I go to
Template talk:Did you know (and only there; I've tried this on other talk pages of templates as well and all of the other namespaces work fine), my toolbox on the left side of my screen (I use vector legacy dark mode) turns white. I tried switching to light mode, and nothing happens. Is anyone experiencing something similar?
The image on the left is my screen in light mode, and the image on the right is my screen in dark mode. Relativity ⚡️ 00:13, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Relativity: It's caused by importScript('User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js') in
User:Relativity/common.js. I haven't examined exactly why
User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js has this effect but it only affects users with both that script and dark mode so it's not important when the sidebar is still readable.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 01:49, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
History indexing
I got a revdel request for removal from page history of some relatively innocuous adolescent pranks from a couple of years ago. The requester is concerned that it could be found by search engines. I haven't been able to replicate it, and I seriously doubt that search engines care about history like that. In order to reassure the requester that they can quit worrying about it, can somebody clarify whether and to what extent article histories are or aren't indexed or considered by search engines? Acroterion(talk) 13:49, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Nearly everything that starts with /w/ is disallowed to be indexed by search engines in
our robots.txt (see
what is robots.txt). E.g. google site:en.wikipedia.org inurl:/. There could be theoretically ways to circumvent this, but I haven't found any Google results for old versions and diffs.
Jack who built the house (
talk) 14:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Diffs and old revisions also have
noindex in the HTML so Google and other compliant search engines will not index them if they come across them in other ways at Wikimedia sites.
PrimeHunter (
talk) 14:44, 23 April 2024 (UTC).reply
Thanks, that's what I thought. I'll reassure them, since their request really doesn't meet revdel criteria. It's the kind of silly thing I'd have done at 16 if we'd had an editable online encyclopedia. Acroterion(talk) 15:10, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Early access to the dark mode (mobile web, logged-in)
Hi everyone, as
announced in November, the
Web team at the Wikimedia Foundation is working on
dark (sometimes also called night) mode. Now, we have released the feature for logged-in users of advanced mobile mode across all wikis for testing purposes. But don't worry, the new feature is not disruptive! (See the "known limitations" section below.) It's just important for us to work together with you before we release this feature to a wider audience. Our goals for the early rollout are to:
Show what we've built very early. The earlier you are involved, the more your voices will be reflected in the final version
Get your help with flagging bugs, issues, and requests
Work with technical editors to adjust various templates and gadgets to the dark mode
Go to the
project page and the
FAQ page to see more information about the basics of this project.
Known limitations of the initial release
Currently, dark mode is only available on mobile, for logged-in users who have opted into advanced mode, as an opt-in feature.
Gadgets may initially not work well with dark mode and may have to be updated.
Our first goal is making dark mode work on articles. Special pages, talk pages, and other namespaces have not been updated to work in dark mode yet. We have temporarily disabled dark mode on some of these pages.
What we would like you to do (the broad community)
If you have questions - ask us! Also, where appropriate, consider linking to the
Recommendations for dark mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis. We would like to emphasize that the recommendations may evolve. For this reason, we are not suggesting to create your local wiki copies of recommendations. At some point, the copy could become different from the original version.
What we would like you to do (template editors, interface admins, technical editors)
When most bugs are solved, we'll be able to make the dark mode available for readers on both desktop and mobile. To make this happen, we need to work together with you on reporting and solving the problems.
To turn it on, use the mobile website and go to the
settings part of your menu and opt into advanced mode, if you haven't already. Then, set the color to dark. (Later, we will be allowing the device preferences to set dark mode automatically).
Next, go to different articles and look for issues:
If you have noticed an issue with a template but do not know how to fix it