I'm trying to wrap my head around that. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 14:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

See Help:Substitution#Limitation, substitution doesn't work within references. SD0001 ( talk) 15:43, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Stupid bug. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 15:59, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

{{subst:#tag:ref|{{cite MIAR |title=FEMS Microbiology Reviews |issn=0168-6445 |access-date={{subst:TODAY}}}}}} will succeed. ― cobaltcigs 22:13, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

I made an edit to {{ Infobox airline}} here so that a second image the infobox. It works correctly but when I check preview I get the warnings "Warning: Page using Template:Infobox airline with unknown parameter "caption2" (this message is shown only in preview).", "Warning: Page using Template:Infobox airline with unknown parameter "image2" (this message is shown only in preview)." and "Warning: Page using Template:Infobox airline with unknown parameter "image2-width" (this message is shown only in preview).". So what did I do wrong. There's an example here, Summit Air. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 21:55, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

It uses Module:Check for unknown parameters so the new parameters must be added to the list of known parameters. [1] PrimeHunter ( talk) 00:03, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 00:05, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

If you search for, e.g. '"Bouncing Ball" +Wikipedia' on google, you get a ton of Wikipedia hits. Which is normally what most people would look like.

But what I want to know is where else on the internet Bouncing ball is mentioned. Does anyone know how to do that? Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 02:51, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps by adding -site:wikipedia.org? Eman 235/ talk 03:53, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

You could try services like ahrefs (limited number of results for free). — xaosflux ^Talk 04:20, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi all

I know that this is probably possible but I don't know exactly how to make it happen. I'm talking to an organisation with a huge number of shapefile maps of species distribution which could be imported in to Commons if they change the license (fingers crossed). I'd like to know is what would be the process of adding them to the infobox, I guess my main questions would be:

1. Can shapefiles be displayed in English Wikipedia articles?
2. Can they be displayed in infoboxes?
3. Would I simply propose that the maps are added as a new section of the Species infobox template?
4. Any other steps I'm missing?

Thanks

John Cummings ( talk) 09:07, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

The Kartographer extension is installed in English Wikipedia. So, you can use them. Ruslik_ Zero 08:16, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks very much @ Ruslik0:, very helpful. John Cummings ( talk) 09:21, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Hello, I have recently created the page of Tarık Biberovic however whoever I try to add my sources it says “error edit not saved”. How do I fix this? Thank you Wiki Facts fixer ( talk) 13:19, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

I have just notified that it also says “(basketball)” beside his name. How do I remove this? Thanks Wiki Facts fixer ( talk) 13:20, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi Wiki Facts fixer the best place to ask for help is Wikipedia:Teahouse or Wikipedia:Helpdesk. Please post your next questions there. You created the article at Tarık Biberovic (basketball) and you've successfully saved some edits. I've moved it to Tarık Biberovic, you should add the sources there. – Ammarpad ( talk) 14:02, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Wiki Facts fixer ( talk) 14:53, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

While common.js/.css will load when going to en.m.wikipedia.org on a desktop browser, on mobile these pages are not loaded. From my understanding, this was done because userscripts weren't written for mobile in mind, and has to do with the resourceLoader (related bugs: [2] [3] [4]). What I want is to use my userscript on the mobile site.

I've tried creating User:<username>/minerva.js and User:<username>/mobile.js pages, but using Chrome Remote Debugging, neither works. Opencooper ( talk) 19:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Opencooper: I added a popup to your minerva ( User:Opencooper/minerva.js) - and verified that it worked on mine. Can you see it? (Feel free to revert of course). — xaosflux ^Talk 19:47, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Xaosflux: I'm an idiot. Turns out I wasn't even logged in on mobile... Thanks for your help. It was PBKAC all along. Opencooper ( talk) 20:13, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I submited a request for undeletion of File:1917.mp3. Obviously you see that there is nothing in the deletion log. It is reported that there is a deleted description page but no deleted file. It is assumed that it was deleted before July 2006 and Mediawiki 1.7.0 which allowed to keep the deleted files archived. Does anyone have a hint on how to recover the deleted file? (Yes, I checked in my own hard disk it is not there 😃) - geraki ^(talk) 16:58, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

The deletion is from 2003 ((diff) 2003-09-30T15:36:31 . . Geraki (talk | contribs | block) 57 bytes (Eleftherios Venizelos speech to the Greek people in 1917.)). — xaosflux ^Talk 17:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Manually logged in Wikipedia:Upload log archive/September 2003. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

The 2003-09-30 is the upload date. There is no deletion log even for the description page. The file is mentioned in the article up to January 2006 [5]. - geraki ^(talk) 17:17, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Graham87: do you have any archeological insight in to this? — xaosflux ^Talk 17:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Based on my own observations, back in the day deleted files did not preserve the actual file in Special:Undelete, only the page history. Notice how other files on Wikipedia:Upload log archive/September 2003 show no file when you click (admin only) on the undelete link. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 17:52, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

That's my recollection, and it appears to be reinforced by the Mediawiki release notes from 2006 that I quoted over at Wikipedia:Requests_for_undeletion#File:1917.mp3. I was hoping I was wrong.

Unfortunately, I can't find the file on archive.org either. -- kingboyk ( talk) 17:57, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Xaosflux: I've got nothing ... except sometimes deletions have happened without a deletion log entry, even post-2004. Graham 87 03:40, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Geraki, where did you find this in the first place? Source? Anyway, you kind of lucked out that another editor made a copy at File:1917.ogg, which I've restored. As I also mentioned at refund, this assumed still under copyright, so please request that it be deleted again if you decide not to make use of it. Someguy1221 ( talk) 07:38, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

We didn't keep deleted versions of images/files until 1.7 as far as I know (only their related deleted pages were tracked). The database table keeping track of it was only introduced in 1.7 at least. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 09:45, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

When I go to Simon I (High Priest) and look at the bottom left, there is a Hebrew link to the page for שמעון השני (which is incorrect). When I click "Edit links", however, the Hebrew link that appears is to a different page (the correct page) שמעון הראשון. Why the inconsistency, and how can we make it link to the correct page? Ar2332 ( talk) 08:23, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

The wikitext of Simon I (High Priest) says [[he:שמעון השני]] at the bottom. This overrides the Wikidata link. PrimeHunter ( talk) 08:33, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, nice simple answer and deleting that text worked. Thank you! Ar2332 ( talk) 05:59, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Ar2332: Did you understand PrimeHunter's response? it looks like someone added that particular bit of syntax to the article way back in 2007 with this edit, but I've got no way of knowing why because they didn't leave an edit summary. The editor who made the edit doesn't seem to be active any longer; so, you can can "fix" the syntax or maybe just remove it if you feel it's not needed. Maybe checking a few more similar aticles to see whether that syntax is needed might be a good idea before removing it altogether. Once the syntax problem has been "fixed", the links should work correctly. -- Marchjuly ( talk) 01:23, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

The only effect of the code is to add an interlanguage link to that article regardless of what the Wikidata item might say. Wikidata didn't exist at the time and all interlanguage links were made like that. See more at Help:Interlanguage links#Local links. I don't know Hebrew or ancient priests so I didn't evaluate whether there was justification for the link. I don't think there is. The link he:שמעון השני apparently goes to the Hebrew version of Simon II (High Priest). PrimeHunter ( talk) 08:29, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Moved to MediaWiki talk:Gadget-metadata.js

— xaosflux ^Talk 20:39, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Hey, eveyone.😊 I'm gonna copy this question verbatim from where I originally posted it. I've ran into something wrong in Wikipedia, but I have no idea how to edit it.

If you are interested in helping, please visit these three links:

• /info/en/?search=Sherlock_Holmes?useskin=vector#External_links
• /info/en/?search=Sherlock_Holmes?useskin=minerva#External_links
• /info/en/?search=Sherlock_Holmes?useskin=timeless#External_links

In the pages that open, you should be able to spot a grey box titled "Sherlock Holmes at Wikipedia's sister projects". The box looks okay on the first link, but not on the other two.

I understand the HTML side of this problem: The text labels are given an arbitrary width of 182 pixels, but the Minerva and Timeless skins add a padding of 1em to the box. Because of insufficient space, the label are placed on the next line. But I don't know where I must fix this problem. So far, I know how to edit articles. I know about templates too. But do I edit a skin? Or, do I need to edit a skin in the first place? If not, where must I edit? flowing dreams ( talk page) 10:02, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Flowing dreams: alignment and overflow are hard :( The "182" value is coming from the template code directly: Template:Sister project links. Using 180 seems to fix it - what do you think? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:25, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

See also here. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:28, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

May need more tweaking for minerva, in any case feel free to test at Template:Sister project links/sandbox and check at Template:Sister project links/testcases - when you have something you like drop an edit request at Template talk:Sister project links. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:30, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Xaosflux:. Hi. Why reduce to 180? Why not remove the width altogether? flowing dreams ( talk page) 10:37, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

NVM. I see why now. We're going to have to problem if the width gets larger than 180px, whether dynamically or otherwise. Maybe we should switch to table or flex grid. flowing dreams ( talk page) 11:01, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Flowing dreams: feel free to try new designs in that sandbox. Another possible option would be to increase the width of the div around it (mbox-small class) however this appears to be heavily used elsewhere so I'm hesitant to touch it. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:00, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for everything, Xaosflux. I'll think of something. If I felt I need consultation or help, I'll ping you in the template talk page. Cheers. flowing dreams ( talk page) 07:06, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

When I try to use notifications on mobile Firefox (Firefox 68.0.2 mobile version running on Android 9). I use the "desktop version" of the Wikimedia sites as I can't stand the mobile ones. When I click the notification button, the page locks up and I have to back out or refresh to continue, and I can't click to view the changes or anything like that. They work fine on desktop Firefox. Has anyone else encountered this issue? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 17:03, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

I've created phab:T223609 3 months ago without any attention. Stryn ( talk) 11:14, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

How would a bot retrieve a reference by its number, for example ref #7. The ref number is not in the wikitext. The number is in the HTML, but the source is HTML, not wikitext, so difficult to retrieve the original cite. Checking if there is something I am missing. -- Green C 03:13, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Fetch the revision, preview it, parse the resulting HTML? Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 03:47, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

The parsoid html output ( example) carries information from the both the page's html as well as its wikitext. Should be useful as far as refs use the citation templates I guess. SD0001 ( talk) 05:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@ GreenC: Assuming that yours was not a hypothetical question, one thing that is missing is context. Is this to do with Wikipedia:Bot requests#Fix or tag references that were incorrectly copied along due to a VisualEditor bug? -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 09:28, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. Need to retrieve the (wikitext) for a given citation number in a reliable way. Everything else for that bot is basically done/solved. -- Green C 12:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Looks like a solution is REST API which lists the references by number with an HTML version of the ref. Then Parsoid to convert the reference to Wikitext. -- Green C 13:11, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Eh this doesn't work, the REST API for references doesn't have Parsoid markup so it doesn't convert correctly from HTML to Wikitext. -- Green C 14:22, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

They are numbered in order of first usage, which is not necessarily the order of definition. If you're sure you can avoid or exclude cases where footnote instance(s) from a template's wikitext are emitted to the article's reflist (which requires unusual syntax and is probably rare) you wouldn't actually have to run the parser. ― cobaltcigs 14:24, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Can't be sure. It will be thousands of articles. There are also refs transcluded from infoboxes for example, that are basically non-existent in the wikisource but show up in the final render. -- Green C 14:31, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Working on a solution involving w3m, conversion to plain text and approximate grep. Fun times. -- Green C 14:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I opted into the new experimental mobile page. It seems to be missing a link to my watchlist: the old/standard mobile view had one. Thanks! Grover cleveland ( talk) 15:52, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Grover cleveland: please send your feedback on "advanced mode" to mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Advanced_mobile_contributions. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:55, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

It's under your account options (top right icon) Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 16:09, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! It took me forever to realize that option even existed -- on my browser (Chrome / IOS) I have to slide the entire page to the left to make it appear. Grover cleveland ( talk) 18:04, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

How can i change the editor font? i previously have tried putting these into common.css

#wpTextbox1 {
  font-family: 'Consolas Regular';
}

.mw-editfont-monospace {
  font-family:'Consolas Regular';
}

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Erentar2002 ( talk • contribs) 11:28, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Try increasing the specificity of the selectors by including the name of the element, textarea. You can also save some space by having both selectors share a declaration-list:

textarea#wpTextbox1,
textarea.mw-editfont-monospace {
  font-family:'Consolas Regular';
}

Also ensure that the font concerned is installed on your device. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 12:17, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Are we missing some early version histories? The oldest version of global warming I can find is from October 2001 but that's obviously not when the article was created. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 12:41, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. PrimeHunter ( talk) 12:46, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 13:34, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

In List of countries by prevalence of genital cutting, there's two layout problems. One is the 2 x 2 table of maps, and the other is the large table of data below that. Both of these display poorly, especially on a mobile device. If anybody's a layout guru, could you take a look and see if you can do something better? Thanks. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:01, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed when I open the right-hand "developer tools" sidebar in Chromium (web browser) and drag the panel separator too far to the left, the MediaWiki interface layout changes from normal to total shit when given fewer than 551px horizontal space (compare red-circled areas in screenshots). Naturally this is annoying when I'm trying to inspect portlet elements (in the course of debugging CSS/JS). Any ideas on how to disable whatever triggers this behavior? Yes, I'm on a small-screen laptop. Yes, the skin is monobook. ― cobaltcigs 10:19, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

This is a deliberate feature in MonoBook called responsive web design. When your skin is MonoBook, "Enable responsive MonoBook design" is an option at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. You can disable it. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

 Done Hard refresh needed, but I had no idea it would be that simple. Thanks. ― cobaltcigs 10:51, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I created a customized version of a script recently and added it my User:MB/common.js and everything was working fine. Yesterday, I edited the script and immediately after that I saw some unexpected behavior - in the edit window I seem to have an unexpected very colorful syntax highligter and some other scripts I use frequently no longer work.

I tried to start over by reverting back to the prior version of my common.js, but that did not help. Have also tried switching to a different browser. Not sure what to try next. MB 14:11, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

There are several syntax highlighters. Does WP:HILITE help? PrimeHunter ( talk) 15:57, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Directly under my user page, a subtitle reads: Joined 12 months ago. This isn't technically correct, as I registered an account on September 16, 2018 (and it's still August). Clovermoss ( talk) 21:45, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Clovermoss: while the text of that message (in MediaWiki:mobile-frontend-joined-years) is controlled here, the value appears to be from mobile.common.js.map.json which uses rounding - I suspect it is rounding "up". If you would like to request a mediawiki developer change that you can submit a bug report at phabricator. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:18, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

The rounding appears a little odd. I currently see "11 months ago" for Bmlarred created 20 September 2018, and "12 months ago" for Pirerre1875 created 19 September 2018. If 11 months ago is 30 September 2018 then they are 11 months and respectively 10 and 11 days ago. Maybe it first computes days ago and then assumes every month is 30 days. With this assumption, 20 September 2018 is 11.47 months ago, and 19 September 2018 is 11.50 months ago. With normal rounding rules that becomes 11 months and 12 months like it says. PrimeHunter ( talk) 04:07, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

The website should probably always round down. -- Izno ( talk) 18:44, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Lately I've noticed identical ref markup like <ref name=":0">, originating from users who don't appear to be related or bots. This is actually less useful than the default numbering (e.g. cite_note-1, which at least matches the visible footnote number, even when moved around) when no name is given. Any idea what tool might do this and where to provide the above feedback? ― cobaltcigs 20:18, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

It's the Visual editor that does it when an editor reuses a reference. Nthep ( talk) 20:28, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

In addition, naming these references was one of the top 10 for the community survey this year. Who knows where that work is though.... -- Izno ( talk) 20:43, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

The Community Tech team keeps a list of what they work on here. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 07:39, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Could this also be the source of excess newline patterns like [[Category:Foo]]\n\n\n{{foo-stub}}? ― cobaltcigs 07:07, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Cobaltcigs: Three newlines produces two blank lines before the stub tags, which for many years (10+) has been accepted practice, and this is what is shown on some advice pages such as WP:TAGSTUB and WP:WSS#General rules. At one time, certain bots and scripts required these two blank lines; but AFAIK they're now more tolerant and won't choke if there is just one blank line before the stub tags. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 15:08, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Wow, that seems really misguided. One should adjust the .stub { margin-top:NNpx; } CSS for Template:Asbox if (for some reason) extra space is wanted. Rendering an empty paragraph (namely <p><br /></p>) above it on each page is just sloppy HTML. ― cobaltcigs 09:34, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Stub template CSS has been suggested before, it's fine when there is just one stub template but many articles have two or more and that would produce undesirable extra gaps. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 09:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Infobox layout

Unrelated: what about infobox parameters all on the same line? Is that a visual editor shibboleth as well? I suppose I should try using it someday to find these things out (and just be careful not to save anything, lol). ― cobaltcigs 09:34, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

To the infobox matter: that's usually due to incorrect or incomplete templatedata. In this case, Template:Infobox river/doc#Template Data does not have a "format":"block" name-value pair. WhatamIdoing ( talk · contribs) can explain this better than me. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 09:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

User:Cobaltcigs, Redrose64 is correct, and you should totally try out the visual mode. Try inserting a column in a long wikitext table. If you're not going to save it, then there are plenty of tables in WP:FL. If you like to add images, then try out Insert > Media, which lets you search Commons without leaving the editing window. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 19:46, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

See [6] It appears to turn all of Lake Huron into land. Where and how to get this fixed? Alanscottwalker ( talk) 20:45, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Alanscottwalker: This was surely vandalism on OpenStreetMap. I see all is back to normal over there. If I remember correctly the Wikimedia tile server is cached for 24 hours, so it may be a bit before it fixes itself. I'll try to poke someone on IRC to see if they can invalidate it manually. — MusikAnimal ^talk 21:47, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 21:54, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't know how the map is implemented but if you zoom in enough then Lake Huron changes to blue. PrimeHunter ( talk) 21:59, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, probably those tiles for the higher zoom level have since been invalidated, or weren't replicated at the time the vandalism was still live. Anyway the Operations team is aware. Task at phab:T231691 — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:08, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Most of the time when I save I get an edit conflict message although the edit has been saved - of course I have to check each time in case there really is an edit conflict. It happens with Firefox (where my wikEd) has died, and Chrome. Doug Weller talk 07:04, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Doug Weller: In the above, "has died" is hard to parse. I do not know what the problem might be but for troubleshooting I would try the following. I assume you click Publish to save an edit which then gives an edit conflict. Try an alternative: click in the edit summary box to position the cursor there, then press Enter. That should publish the edit. Does that make a difference? A second thing you might investigate is whether you can disable wikEd for a while and see if normal editing makes a difference. Johnuniq ( talk) 01:42, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

The conflict is a problem of wikEd, which may need some update. Ruslik_ Zero 06:10, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Johnuniq and Ruslik0: using the edit summary box and enter seems to work. By "died" I mean no longer showing at all, and nothing seems to work, even disabling and reenabling it. And cacycle hasn't been around for over two months. Doug Weller talk 15:44, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

I have the same problems - all my edits results in a reported edit conflict with my own edit. Thue ( talk) 23:11, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Greetings,

is there a way to make a graph (similar to the one produced by Template:Line chart) which shows error margins? It's intended for the Coropuna#Recent area and retreat section which currently has a long bulleted list with various data points (not all of which should go into the final graph), plus error margins. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 08:07, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Would an bar graph work? If so, check out https://vega.github.io/vega/examples/error-bars/ and https://vega.github.io/vega/examples/box-plot/ . Both of those should work here.-- Snaevar ( talk) 10:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Snaevar:Maybe, but I don't know how to turn that into a Wikipedia graph. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk, contributions) 07:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I have a link in my menu to the long-gone grok page hit counter. I just tried to update my js page at User:Spinningspark/monobook.js to use the wmflabs version. My efforts have completely broken the js and I can't work out what the problem is. Anyone willing to take sympathy on me and help? This is the last version of the page that was working. Spinning Spark 09:22, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

You could import User:PrimeHunter/Pageviews.js. PrimeHunter ( talk) 09:27, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Are you missing a '+' after '&end=' ? Someguy1221 ( talk) 09:34, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Perfect. That was it. Spinning Spark 13:40, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I would like to add this to the da:wiktionary similar to the one on en:wiktionary but I have no idea how to do it. Any hints would be welcome.-- So9q ( talk) 15:18, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

So9q Are you refering to the box containing additional characters? -- Trialpears ( talk) 23:41, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Its mw:Extension:CharInsert. Though I have little idea on how to add it to another wiki. SD0001 ( talk) 16:17, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I found out that they roll their own on wiktionary. It's here.-- So9q ( talk) 17:19, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

There are 40+ userpages listed in this category. Most of them are not actually tagged with U1 or G7 and never have been. What gives? -- MelanieN ( talk) 23:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, The category is empty now. How weird. Adam9007 ( talk) 23:56, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it is. I didn't make this up, honest! But it may have solved itself, or some invisible helper here fixed it. -- MelanieN ( talk) 00:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, I know: I saw that the category had loads of pages, but they disappeared after I bypassed the page cache (though I don't think that did anything to fix it). Adam9007 ( talk) 00:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you were the invisible helper? 0;-D There was no reason why they should have been in the cache either, since none of them had been U1'ed. Anyhow, case closed, I hope! -- MelanieN ( talk) 00:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

MelanieN, I highly doubt it: reloading bypassing cache is one of the first things that occurs to me to do whenever something queer happens, as it makes sure the problem isn't at my end if that doesn't fix it. Adam9007 ( talk) 00:09, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

It was probably a transcluded page like a userbox which had been tagged for deletion without using <noinclude>...</noinclude>, but it's hard to tell now when no example was given. PrimeHunter ( talk) 00:13, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, I thought it's something like that, but the problem fixed itself before I could dig much further. Adam9007 ( talk) 00:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I examined the deletion log between 23:50 and 23:56. User:Doodoobutter/UBX/User Animaniacs was deleted after being tagged with {{ db-user}}. Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Doodoobutter/UBX/User Animaniacs shows it was transcluded in around 40 user pages. Please always give an example when a problem is reported. PrimeHunter ( talk) 00:26, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

So MelanieN, it seems that you fixed it . Adam9007 ( talk) 00:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Sorry about that, PrimeHunter! I'll remember that next time. -- MelanieN ( talk) 01:02, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Is there a script that allows users to highlight certain phrases in their Watchlist? I already have a script that highlights admin names and my name but I also want to highlight certain kinds of pages that I might otherwise forget, such as GA nominations and FAC reviews I watchlisted. I know I can use the custom watchlist script but I don't really want to have a separate watchlist, just have certain phrases highlighted. Regards So Why 07:21, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

@ SoWhy: Depending on your requirements, you might be able to do this with just some custom css rules (as kinda described here). For example, the following rule will highlight in yellow all watchlist entries for pages in the Wikipedia talk namespace:

.mw-changeslist-line-inner a.mw-changeslist-titlehref*="/Wikipedia_talk:" {
  background-color: yellow;
}

That rule matches links to pages where the URL contains /Wikipedia_talk: somewhere (you could also change href to title to match against the article title). If you wanted to match subpages for good article reviews, you could just change "/Wikipedia_talk:" to "/GA". (Well, technically you might get a false positive if you have GABAA receptor on your watchlist. Though there are clever things you could do to avoid that if you really care.) Colin M ( talk) 02:44, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Colin M: That looks indeed like a great solution, I hadn't seen that. Thanks for pointing it out! Regards So Why 07:04, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

It works but now User:Ais523/highlightmyname2.js does not seem to work on my Watchlist anymore Regards So Why 07:11, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Nvm, works again. Weird... Regards So Why 07:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

At least it does for [7] - trying to undo the edit of a sock. Doug Weller talk 08:14, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I guess you clicked at "( Tag: Undo)". The edit was tagged because it was itself an undo. Links in tags at Special:Tags are meant to help understand the tag. Click "Undo" at the time stamp to revert the edit. PrimeHunter ( talk) 08:30, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Of course. Doh! I don't know why I did that. Doug Weller talk 15:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Does anyone know what needs to happen for https://tools.wmflabs.org/templatetransclusioncheck/index.php?lang=en&name=North-American+Interfraternity+Conference to work again? Naraht ( talk) 18:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Naraht, seems to be working fine if you add the namespace. -- Trialpears ( talk) 18:33, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Trialpears Thank you for the correct assessment of my idiocy. I have it working now. Naraht ( talk) 18:50, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello! How to move a draft to article? I am asking that for Draft:Terran Shield. -- Țuțulișcă Vodă ( talk) 19:28, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Is there a simple way to check if a given page is watched, using the API, short of pulling the entire list of watched pages and checking if the given page in that list? SD0001 ( talk) 21:36, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

@ SD0001: I believe you'd want to use API:Info. Sam Walton ( talk) 21:48, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, that works! SD0001 ( talk) 21:55, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Discussion will continue once reopened at the MediaWiki talk page linked below UnitedStatesian ( talk) 13:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

The code that creates the redirect at the old page location whan a page is moved (unless the mover has suffcient permissions and chooses to suppress such creation) adds the {{ R from move}} template to the newly created redirect. Could this be modified to include the {{ rcat shell}} "wrapper" around the {{ R from move}} template, so that the resulting code would be:

{{rcat shell |

{{R from move}}

}}

This would save editor steps if the redirect page subsequently needed additional rcats added to it. Let me know, and thanks, UnitedStatesian ( talk) 03:45, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• I'd class this as a 'nice to have' feature (COULD in MoSCoW speak), and one that would under many circumstances not lead to benefit. I think most movers don't even know about rcat shell nor are they concerned about templates on redirects; just an extension of observation :-) . What might be more useful to the subset of people who are benefited from this would be a script which supported a one-click-addition of the rcat shell template around an existing template. Do I know how to write such a script; sorry, no I don't. Regards --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me) 03:56, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
• {{R from move}} is added by MediaWiki:Move-redirect-text. It was changed to {{redr|from move}} for a month in 2015 but reverted on request. [8] {{ redr}} and {{ rcat shell}} both redirect to {{ Redirect category shell}} today. There was no consensus at MediaWiki talk:Move-redirect-text#Redr to use {{ This is a redirect}} which was similar to {{ Redirect category shell}} (created later) and currently redirects to it. PrimeHunter ( talk) 08:38, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for pointing to the prior discussion; I believe the functionality of the Rcat shell has changed significantly in the intervening 3 1/2 years, but in either event will consider opening a full revisiting discussion over there (pinging editors who commented here, of course). UnitedStatesian ( talk) 13:51, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

So I've just read the documentation of this template, but can't understand why the hell it exists. Or why "help newer contributors learn the redirect category system" would be a priority for anyone anywhere. ― cobaltcigs 14:42, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

The documentation explains that inexperienced redirect categorizers can either tag a redirect with the plain template or add an rcat or two and leave an empty first parameter. Either way, the redirect is sorted to Category:Miscellaneous redirects. So the inexperienced user can learn how a more experienced user categorizes that redirect. Why wouldn't that be a priority? In addition, the Rcat shell applies protection rcats and sorts to protection categories automatically, and that's something admins like because it means that they don't have to categorize manually, nor do they have to change anything manually when protection is changed or lifted. So it's a shell template – like other shell templates – with benefits! P. I. Ellsworth,  ed.  ^put'r there 02:02, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I want to add a tracking category to {{ Grading scheme}} to track any uses where A-Class has been disabled.

The template displays A-Class by default or with |A=yes (case sensitive); if any other value is used, or if |A= is defined but left blank, A-Class is removed from the table.

I tried using the following code:

{{#ifeq:{{{A|}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}

How do I get it to ignore the default usage (i.e. where |A= is not used at all)? PC78 ( talk) 12:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Just to add, I did come up with a solution in the sandbox but that alters the behaviour of the template somewhat (for the better I think, but still); if possible I'm keen not to break any transclusions where a blank |A= might be used intentionally to disable A-Class. PC78 ( talk) 12:46, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

{{{A|}}} evaluates to empty both if A is set to empty and not set at all so you cannot use that alone. You need {{{A}}} which evaluates to the value of A if it's set (empty if A is set to empty), but evaluates to the same seven characters {{{A}}} if A is not set. You could nest if and ifeq, or combine the cases in a switch: {{#switch:{{{A}}}||yes=|#default=[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}. This code only uses that {{{A}}} evaluates to something non-empty when A is not set. It says: If A is set to empty or yes then return empty, otherwise the category. PrimeHunter ( talk) 13:26, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I tried your switch but it doesn't work as intended: the category is added by default if |A= is not set at all (it shouldn't be) but is not added if |A= is set to empty (it should be). See test example at User:PC78/grading scheme. Tried a few other things but still can't nail it. PC78 ( talk) 14:29, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I misread the goal and coded what I described: "If A is set to empty or yes then return empty, otherwise the category." This should do what you actually requested: {{#ifeq:{{{A}}}|{{{A|}}}|{{#ifeq:{{{A}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}}}. "If A is set but A is not set to yes then return the category." PrimeHunter ( talk) 15:32, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks for the help! PC78 ( talk) 15:37, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@ PC78: It works but I made it more complicated than necessary. We don't have to test whether A is set, only whether it's set to something other than yes, so your original code can just use yes as default in the comparison: {{#ifeq:{{{A|yes}}}|yes||[[Category:Grading schemes without A-Class]]}}. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

This may be related to the above somehow. At David_M._Bennett and Dennis_Relojo-Howell I am seeing this error in place of every reference. Clicking on it gives: Backtrace:

1. [C]: in function "eror"
2. Module:Citation/CS1:802: ?
3. Module:Citation/CS1:2276: in function "citation0"
4. Module:Citation/CS1:3765: in function "chunk"
5. mw.lua:511: ?
6. [C]: ?

Replacing {{ reflist}} with <references /> fixes it. SmartSE ( talk) 13:16, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

This has been fixed: this was due to an unfortunate edit (discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Is_there_a_semi-automated_tool_that_could_fix_these_annoying_"Cite_Web"_errors?). It has been reverted now, but in case Lua errors are still visible anywhere, you can just make a null edit to the article to force reparsing. – Uanfala (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Uanfala: Thanks. Just came across that myself. SmartSE ( talk) 13:26, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

See: Old revision of Wikipedia:Sandbox —this shows the result of omitting refs= for named group reflist. whereas using the refs= results in an error msg.

Decomposing the templates to: {{#tag:references||group=}} and {{#tag:ref||group=|name=}} —produces the same error msg. as "using the refs=", as noted above. -- 2db ( talk) 00:09, 3 September 2019 (UTC) && 13:56, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

2db, the parser doesn't seem to be able to deal with list-defined references that are nested. When you leave out "refs=" it tries but is generating an extra backlink, maybe because it has to go through everything twice. This may have once worked. A few years ago a change to the MediaWiki software broke nested footnotes completely - the parsing order of the page had changed significantly. This was repaired but still does not operate in quite the same way. StarryGrandma ( talk) 15:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

However moving the nested refn out of the named reflist to the article space works perfectly (see: Old revision of Wikipedia:Sandbox). -- 2db ( talk) 18:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

(disclaimer: yeah, I'm a super experienced Wikipedian, but I have never taken the time to learn how to cite webpages the "new" way and still do it the way it was done over a decade ago, which is probably why this is happening) The page in question is Swan Lake fire. I recently added a reference to an article on TIME's website. It got tagged as a dead link only a day later, and sure enough when I click on it it goes to a 404. So, I searched the article title "About 2.5 Million Acres in Alaska Have Burned. The State's Wildfire Seasons Are Getting Worse, Experts Say" and found the article again. When I copied the URL it was...the same as the one that led to the 404 error. I don't get it. Lil help? Beeblebrox ( talk) 18:51, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

The URL you want is https://time.com/5657188/alaska-fires-long-climate-change/ -- Green C 19:05, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

( edit conflict) There should be a space where the url ends and the title begins, otherwise the link is malformed. SD0001 ( talk) 19:07, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Now that, I actually did know but for some reason just didn't see it as the problem. How silly of me. Thanks. Beeblebrox ( talk) 19:24, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

RFC notice: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RFC: Block edits that contain a VisualEditor bug -- Green C 00:01, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I gnome a lot of foreign translated articles. The French leave a space before their colon : like that, often on every line in long lists. It's been so easy to fix until now, using the search–replace function at the top of the edit box: search for space+colon, replace with colon (spelled out here for clarity). But today I find the search function will not pick up space+colon. Any ideas? Tony (talk) 00:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

It works for me. There are different editors. Are you referring to the default editor where the search and replace icon is to the far right but only displayed when "Advanced" is selected? If "Match whole word" is checked then uncheck it. Please link a page where it fails and specify a location in the page. Maybe it has special characters. What is your browser? PrimeHunter ( talk) 00:27, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

PH, thanks. Yes, it does work now (in my sandbox). That's odd. Safari for the Mac. Tony (talk) 08:57, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

09:07, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Is somebody running this? This is how it looks like, seems useful to me. Apparently the author ran out of resources. He did try hosting it on Wikimedia Tool Labs but had some issues. The source is available at https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool-wikicheck (GNU LGPL) 2001:14BA:984A:F200:0:0:0:8EA ( talk) 12:41, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

seems to have stopped. Or perhaps all the admins have gone undergound. Anyone else got the same issue? —— SerialNumber 54129 16:12, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Serial Number 54129: just checked, it works for me. What specific page are you looking at, and what admin isn't highlighted? DannyS712 ( talk) 04:34, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

All pages incl watchlist, none of them. But it's back now. —— SerialNumber 54129 06:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm on mobile right now, and it occurs to me that ^^^was on desktop. Will check that soonish. —— SerialNumber 54129 06:05, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Greetings, Recently User:PrimeHunter helped me with titleclass = wraplinks to solve a template spilling beyond the right margins. A more complicated template is {{ Basque conflict}} where it looks like the two right-most columns should be stacked underneath the first "Participants in the Basque сonflict" column. The template is linked from article Marian Beitialarrangoitia. I tried several templates updates, and this is way beyond my ability. So I'm asking for expert help here. Regards, JoeHebda ( talk) 15:06, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Five columns with long nowraplinks is a lot. A simple solution would be changing listclass = plainlist to listclass = plainlist wraplinks. A narrow window would get many wrapped links which doesn't look good so a more complicated redesign with fewer columns is also an option. I'm not doing that. PrimeHunter ( talk) 16:55, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

You could also consider a complete rewrite to rotate it 90 degrees, as is often done with complex topics that have many articles. See Template:Mammals and Template:Queen for examples. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 19:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

 Done - @ Jonesey95 and PrimeHunter: - Thanks for your suggestions. Being a "cloner" I copied {{ Pre-Roman peoples in Spain}} into my sandbox to rewrite. Hoping not to repeat, but at least I have some experience. Cheers! JoeHebda ( talk) 19:37, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

This morning I noticed that many of my articles with thumbed-images have large amounts of whitespace in the text they are part of. As of the time I'm writing this, examples can be seen in AMES Type 80, and formerly in Dowding system. There appear to be no related edits to the articles that would have caused this. Maury Markowitz ( talk) 13:58, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

They look normal to me. Does it happen if you log out? Try to bypass your cache, using Ctrl+F5 in many browsers, not just F5 alone. PrimeHunter ( talk) 14:05, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

For some reason, when I click on "New editors' contribs" at Special:RecentChanges, I get a page with no contributions. Did something change on WP's end or am I out of the loop on something? shoy ( reactions) 14:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

That is in MediaWiki:Recentchangestext - and was referenced in Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_174#A_"special"_page_is_taking_a_very_long_time_to_load - I think I saw this was recently deprecated? (If so we can remove it from that box). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:03, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

See also phab:T220447. I can't look in to this right now, but that may be enough for someone else to start. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:04, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

You can now filter on RC by newcomers, learners and experienced. This should make things easier and, imo, removes the need for the new editor's contribs page. Agent00x ( talk) 16:51, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Agent00x: @ Xaosflux: Thanks, I must have missed that new feature. shoy ( reactions) 18:14, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Shoy: I've removed that link from that header, as it was deprecated. If you have some other link you'd like to see up there, you can drop an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Recentchangestext. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:24, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The radio button for selecting new editor contribution mode is still present beside the User field. Can this be removed as well? -- Trialpears ( talk) 19:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Trialpears: do you mean the checkbox in Special:RecentChanges for "Newcomers"? that one works, if it is somewhere else can you provide a link to the page you see it on? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:51, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Xaosflux no the lonley radio button beside the user field at Special:Contributions. It's now useless since the other choice, the new editor contributions mode, has been removed. I can add a screenshot if necessary -- Trialpears ( talk) 15:50, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Trialpears: OK, someone is working on that already, I subscribed you to phab:T232173 for progress. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:10, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I am not even sure if this is where I should be posting this issue and though I did try to search for it, I couldn't find the conversation the last time this happened. I know that the problem has to do with the use of both left-right and right-left text, but have no idea how to solve it so that the original titles to articles in the references section (and her name variants) are in the proper order without doing weird flipping things. Can someone please wave a magic wand and fix this technical problem for this article or tell me where to go to get it fixed? It is highly unlikely that I will comprehend an explanation of coding. Thank you. SusunW ( talk) 20:33, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Start by using |script-title= in the cs1|2 templates. That will isolate the Arabic (?) script (rtl) from the Latin script (ltr). Read abot this parameter in the cs1|2 template documentation.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 20:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Trappist the monk Thank you, that fixed most of the issue and surprisingly, I was able to do it myself. Appreciate your pointing me in the right direction. SusunW ( talk) 21:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I have a technical question related to the template code that generates WikiProject banners on talkpages. Any experienced editor knowledgeable in that area willing to spend some time helping me out? UnitedStatesian ( talk) 17:44, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@ UnitedStatesian: think you are looking for: Template:WPBannerMeta. @ WOSlinker and Happy-melon: have done a lot of work on it. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:13, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I also know quite a lot about how it works. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 22:37, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

The citations at Ancestry.com can get very complex. For example:

Webpage name: "Joe Blow in the 1930 United States Federal Census".

Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Buffalo, Erie, New York; Page: 4B; Enumeration District: 0242; FHL microfilm: 2341165

Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.

Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls.

I can't figure out how to fit all this information into a standard citation template, can anybody assist? Thanks, Gatoclass ( talk) 12:46, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. You got it from Ancestry.com, so you cite Ancestry.com. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 15:15, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Sort of...the problem is that Ancestry.Com is considered a user-edited source so when an original reliable source - US Census or whatnot - is cited by an Ancestry.Com user then that original source should somehow be clearly delineated within the cite.

I like the example posted within SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT:

John Smith (2009). Name of Book I Haven't Seen, Cambridge University Press, p. 99, cited in Paul Jones (2010). Name of Encyclopedia I Have Seen, Oxford University Press, p. 29.

but confess I don't know how that particular cite style is supposed to fit within one of the existing/pre-loaded templates (cite web/cite news/cite book/cite journal)... Shearonink ( talk) 17:40, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

You still should should cite it as Ancestry.com because that's where you got your information, and you didn't check the sources Ancestry.com based itself on. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 16:10, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

... Unless you really did check that book, obviously. And yeah, Ancestry.com is user-submitted and generally considered unreliable, and that extends to material it cites as a reference (i.e. users also fill in citations, there are no guarantees they actually checked those sources). AFAIK U.S. census data is easy to find online, you should just verify and cite it directly. Ivanvector ( ^Talk/ _Edits) 16:15, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1930 -- RoySmith (talk) 15:47, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Ivanvector, the user-submitted pages at Ancestry.com are unreliable, obviously, but the site incorporates scans of the original census pages and other government documents and there is nothing unreliable about those. RoySmith, thank you for the link, I will take a closer look at that, though I doubt it provides the ease of access to a host of government records that Ancestry does (though it would be preferable to use the government site where possible as the latter requires a subscription). Gatoclass ( talk) 16:50, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Oh absolutely, I don't doubt the reliability of the census. I do doubt the reliability of some transcriptions, and some conclusions that are drawn on census data from different years, but that's besides the point. Ivanvector ( ^Talk/ _Edits) 16:54, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

My personal take on this (i.e. may not even be correct) is that if all ancestry.com is doing is hosting a mechanical reproduction of the census data (i.e. a scan of the microfilm), then what you want to do is cite the census data directly, with some sort of "archived at" or "via" entry which points to the ancestory.com repository. In much the same way I would cite something I found in newspapers.com, or JSTOR. It's like if I went to my local library and looked at their collection of New York Times on microfilm. If I found something I wanted to use, I would cite the NY Times, I wouldn't cite the library. I would only cite ancestory.com if they provided some editorial input. I stand willing to be corrected by people who actually know what they're talking about, however. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:00, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Well I guess if one thing can be gleaned from this discussion it's that there is no obvious solution, so it looks as if I will have to find one of my own. Thank you RoySmith and everybody else for your input. Gatoclass ( talk) 12:50, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Trappist the monk: I'd like to help with this one but I'm a bit busy. Maybe you can work out how it would be cited in CS1/2. -- Izno ( talk) 18:40, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I can answer this without details about what is really being cited. I get the sense that ancestry.com is not a reliable source so shouldn't be cited unless it can be shown that whatever it is that OP wants to cite is clearly a faithful copy of a source that meets WP:RS. Without knowing what that is and the necessary details, it is difficult to suggest how cs1|2 should be used.

— Trappist the monk ( talk) 23:53, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

As I stated above Trappist the monk, Ancestry.com is definitely a reliable source, as it provides scans of the original documents - much like hathitrust or archive.org. However, it also allows the public to create family trees, individual life histories and so on, on its website, using those documents. The documents themselves are obviously reliable, the user-created content is not. Gatoclass ( talk) 15:17, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@ Gatoclass:, remember that the <ref> tag is one thing, and the various {{ cite}} templates are another. You can embed between <ref> tags, whatever you need to properly establish verifiability, including more than one {{ cite}} tag. For something this complex, it might be advantageous to use two {{ cite}} templates, where the first one cites Ancestry, as Headbomb and others have pointed out, followed by some connecting text, such as, "citing:", or, "taken from:", or whatever makes sense, followed by a second {{ cite}} template for the source that Ancestry (or their editors) got it from. Even if there is a way to combine everything in one, huge, complex template, there's no need to knock yourself out. If you just keep your eyes on the prize ( WP:V), and do it whatever way makes sense to you, that's the main thing. Heck, if it's that complicated, just write the citation in plain text if you want, and embed the plain text between <ref> tags. That's a perfectly acceptable solution. Best of luck, Mathglot ( talk) 23:38, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Why is the article so hard to find? Is it the asterisks? There should be some check, e.g., before treating the asterisks as wild cards, try taking them literally and see if there's a match there.

Here's why I ask:
Lieutenant Kijé contains the paragraph

Parody

The story is often parodied in fictional works making fun of bureaucracies, most famously in the form of the M*A*S*H episode " Tuttle", featuring a fictional captain of similar provenance.

After several diversions, I searched Wikipedia for [[M*A*S*H (TV series)]]. This is what I got:

Search results Results 1 – 20 of 11,140

(Each of these entries was followed by a paragraph of description and, I think, a line of datestamp.)

• Macintosh
• Maschinenmensch
• Mash
• Manoush
• MacLeish
• Manish Makhija
• Manish Paul
• Macintosh TV
• Groundling Marsh
• Tammy MacIntosh
• Mahesh Thakur
• Gavin MacIntosh
• Jodie Marsh
• Michelle Marsh
• Steven Mackintosh
• Mahesh Bhatt
• Kym Marsh
• Mahesh Manjrekar
• Rodney Marsh
• Heinie Manush

Results from sister projects

• television show
• show (plural television shows) A live or recorded broadcast or program, or series of broadcasts or programs, meant to be viewed on television. 1995, Margaret.

  Word definitions from Wiktionary

... (And finally)

Wikipedia has an article about: M*A*S*H (TV series)

Quotes from Wikiquote

...

Results 1 – 20 of 11,140

Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. -- Thnidu ( talk) 17:02, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Thnidu, one thing I have learned about searching the web is "don't overthink it". If you search for "mash" or "MASH", you will be taken to a disambiguation page that has the link you will be looking for (no matter what kind of mash, MASH, or M*A*S*H you seek). If you search for "mash tv series", you will be taken directly to the correct page. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 17:29, 6 September 2019 (UTC):

@ Jonesey95: I believe Thnidu is referring to our internal search engine's (CirrusSearch) limitations. Compare searches for M*A*S*H (TV series) and "M*A*S*H (TV series)". Nardog ( talk) 17:34, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Thnidu: If I enter M*A*S*H or M*A*S*H (TV series) in the search box at top of all pages then I'm taken directly to the page with that title. It's also suggested as soon as I type M*. You only get search results if you use Special:Search or do something to avoid the default Go feature of the normal search box. I think it's acceptable that those search results assume that search syntax is not the literal page name. How many would even search on M*A*S*H instead of just MASH or mash? PrimeHunter ( talk) 17:44, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@ PrimeHunter, Jonesey95, and Nardog: PrimeHunter, you have a good point, as emphasized by your last sentence. But I should have mentioned that I am using the mobile interface, on my smartphone. That can make a lot of difference; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine#serious format issue on this page.

-- Thnidu ( talk) 18:54, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

It's roughly the same for me in mobile and in the regular interface. If I open en.WP in Safari for iPhone (in the mobile view) and search for "mash", the first search result is the disambiguation page. If I search for "mash tv series", the first search result is the page for the TV series. The plausibility of someone searching for "M*A*S*H" on a mobile keyboard, requiring an absurd number of keypresses on my iPhone, is something I am not going to lose sleep over. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 20:46, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Thnidu: You could also surround the search term in quotation marks i.e. "M*A*S*H", which will prevent the * from being treated as wildcards. the wub "?!" 23:17, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Jonesey95 and the wub. It makes sense. -- Thnidu ( talk) 03:10, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Has something changed of late, as to editing from mobile skin? Whenever I intend to edit from my mobile, a top-bar (which used to be not there) displays 'Loading Editor' for an extraordinarily long time .... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Winged Blades of Godric ( talk • contribs) 04:59, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Winged Blades of Godric: Are you editing in the app, the mobile domain (en.m.wikipedia.org), or the desktop domain on mobile (en.wikipedia.org)? -- Izno ( talk) 04:43, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Winged Blades of Godric: This new style was deployed as part of the new project, mw:VisualEditor_on_mobile. It may take more time to load, depending on your internet connection. Masum Reza ^📞 05:15, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Although I don't see a change in the history of {{ cite web}}, every article I checked that uses the template, is getting red CS1 errors. See for example, World War II#Citations, as well as the documentation in the Examples section of Template:Cite web itself. This applies to params |website= (now required, apparently), and |deadurl= (now deprecated, apparently). What's going on? Mathglot ( talk) 19:36, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Being discussed at WP:AN. They are separate issues but performed in the same update of the CS1 template base. Discussion is now based how to resolve it, but its affecting the bulk of en.wiki. -- Masem ( t) 19:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I just saw that "cite news" requires newspaper. I use TV stations, radio stations and magazines all the time, but this just looks sloppy until someone fixes it. Is this related?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:40, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

:( edit conflict)( edit conflict) Oh, must be this change to the module. Mathglot ( talk) 19:42, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Here is a link to the AN discussion about this mess Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Is there a semi-automated tool that could fix these annoying "Cite Web" errors?. MarnetteD| Talk 19:43, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, which is part of this discussion at AN. Mathglot ( talk) 19:47, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

This stinks. Possibly every one of the almost 500 articles I've ever created or contributed to in the last decade or so, now have these ugly red tags all over the References section. Probably the same thing with tens of thousands edits of mine. Not cool, and it makes Wikipedia unsightly. — Maile ( talk) 20:06, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

It's a well known fact that Trappist the monk ( talk · contribs) WP:OWNs the modules underlying the {{ cite web}} etc. templates. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 20:38, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Proposing we close this discussion, and/or add a {{ Discussion moved to}} template, targeting WP:AN. Mathglot ( talk) 20:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Parameter name changes should be widely advertized for discussion before being implemented. People should stop complaining about the red links. Some time ago most of these warnings were turned off by default because it was precieved to be better for readers of Wikipedia. That is a HUGE mistake. All the warnings should be displayed. They are all errors to be fixed and errors to fix is how Wikipedia attracts new editors. Yes they are "ugly" and it is exactly that that annoys some people enough to figure out how to fix it. Turning them off simply sweeps dirt under the rug but worse it helps exacerabate our low editorship rate. Jason Quinn ( talk) 08:25, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi all. Perhaps someone can help me out. 2-3 months ago, several of the tools I use in my gnomish activities stopped working. It has to do with signing in to WP on that tool, and the OATH script. I keep getting the message: "There was a script error --> --> A problem occurred in a Python script. /home/dispenser/public_html/cgi-bin/tracebacks/connect_OAuthException_120_SjBvb1.html contains the description of this error." Anyone know I can fix this? Thanks in advance. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 17:40, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Onel5969: For the start, sharing a full link where to find/use "WP tools" would be welcome so someone else could try reproducing without having to guess. -- Malyacko ( talk) 18:42, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

My apologies, Malyacko. The two main areas I use are Reflinks and DabSolver. If you notice, there is a down arrow in the upper right corner, which says "sign in". When I click on the option to "Connect to Wikipedia", that's when I receive the error message. I hope that's enough detail. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 20:11, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Onel5969 Thanks! Confirming: "A problem occurred in a Python script. /home/dispenser/public_html/cgi-bin/tracebacks/connect_OAuthException_120_49JvV7.html contains the description of this error." I assume that Dispenser could look up the exact error and check the code. -- Malyacko ( talk) 13:37, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Is it allowable to use a hat note (see also, further, or other) in the lede of a political candidate's bio page to link to their separate 'political positions' page? Humanengr ( talk) 19:16, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Humanengr is talking about this Special:Diff/914471844 I removed it because the template document says: "This template is used to create hatnotes to point to a small number of other related titlesat the top of article sections (excluding the lead). It also looks weird in a BLP article. From what I know, see also template shouldn't be used in the lead. I think "see also" section does the job.-- SharabSalam ( talk) 19:27, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Aah — was double-checking; I had missed the explicit instruction on Template:See also re "excluding the lead". (my bad) Are there any other allowable mechanisms to use near the top of an article to link to the 'political positions' page? Humanengr ( talk) 19:35, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Humanengr, I guess you can use the template Template:for but I feel it wouldn't look like a normal biography of living person article.-- SharabSalam ( talk) 19:41, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Thx so much — agree it's awkward but {{For|details on Gabbard's political positions|Political positions of Tulsi Gabbard}} might resolve the Google issue. OK if I try that? Humanengr ( talk) 19:44, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

​Yea sure!.-- SharabSalam ( talk) 19:51, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't know which Google issue you refer to but we don't use hatnotes at the top to link to other articles about the subject of the article. Hatnotes are for other subjects which could be confused with the article subject, e.g. another person or thing with the same name. Besides, we have three other articles about her: Tulsi Gabbard 2020 presidential campaign, Political positions of Tulsi Gabbard, Electoral history of Tulsi Gabbard. They are all linked in the box "This article is part of a series about Tulsi Gabbard" below the infobox. It's not displayed in the mobile version but there is also an appropriate hatnote at Tulsi Gabbard#Political positions. "Political positions" is in the table of contents so it shouldn't be hard to find. PrimeHunter ( talk) 21:07, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Thx, I should have closed this. Humanengr ( talk) 21:32, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Whenever I contribute in Wikipedia articles, an icon called "Provelt" appears at the bottom-right of the window. What is this? —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata ( talk • subpages) 06:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Soumya-8974: Do you have the ProveIt gadget checked at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? If so, that's probably it. -- Yair rand ( talk) 06:27, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, I have unmarked the gadget. —Yours sincerely, Soumyabrata ( talk • subpages) 06:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I received a notice on top of my watchlist for an ongoing RfA. The thing is, it turns out that I have already participated in this RfA. Can the notification system be set up so that it passes on notifying people who have already participated in the discussion, and do not need to be notified? I ask because I have no way of knowing that this isn't an entirely new RfA without visiting the page, which is not the best use of time. The same might apply for any kind of noticed discussion. bd2412 T 02:37, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't know of a proper solution, sorry. I don't know if you typically find your way to RfAs using that notice, but if you do then you could open the RfA in a new tab when you see it and dismiss the notice. It's just a workaround, but it might work for you. -A lad insane  (Channel 2) 02:49, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. bd2412 T 04:07, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The watchlist message can be discussed at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages but I doubt an automatic system can work efficiently. Naming the candidates was opposed at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 254#Usernames in watchlist notices and other discussions linked there. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:46, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

For all those that are wondering, yes Wikimedia did go down and may still be down for some, Wikimedia Operations is aware and is working hard to fix that issue. There is a phabricator task, located here. Thank you!

(English Wikipedia Tech Ambassador) Ⓩⓟⓟⓘⓧ _Talk 20:32, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Slightly more info: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/wikipedia-down-after-malicious-attack-19686646 and https://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/1170133355901251585 Kaldari ( talk) 04:08, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

The perps are broadcasting their activity on twitter [18] looks like they have now moved from targetting Wikipedia to attacking Twitch servers. -- Salix alba ( talk): 04:31, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Problems loading pages, logging-in?

Problems logging in, also often just reading or trying to edit - last eight hours - no notices on Wikipedia or Wikimedia... how does one report such problems, how are they notified to the community? And how is progress in fixing them? Thanks 2A00:1370:8117:4B0D:C4ED:E9B:7451:EB70 ( talk) 07:06, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

It's a known problem: See T232224 and above comments. Also people are working to get things right. – Ammarpad ( talk) 07:42, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Downtime information and links

I this the goto place for information on downtime? What links are there to downtime information? Could/should there be a link or info on Downtime (disambiguation)? Just asking, had some trouble finding here. Anyway, thanks for the info. Rakeroot ( talk) 22:26, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

IRC (specifically #wikimedia-tech) is generally the best place to get information on ongoing downtime. This page usually has reports too if it's reachable. After the event technical reports are posted at https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incident_documentation, although it can take some time for the relevant information to be gathered. the wub "?!" 00:02, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Should Wikipedia use Cloudflare?

There are some concerns. [19] Benjamin ( talk) 11:45, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

• Katherine (WMF) stated in Twitter that WMF had made a decision not to use any commercial CDN at all: "this has been a deliberate choice to preserve privacy and maintain independence". IMHO, "A massive IOT botnet attack is a new challenge, we’ll adapt" is not an assuring answer, and neither I can see how an own custom CDN could be a safer and more effective feature than a professional one. However, I don't know where it is an appropriate place to discuss advantages, disadvantages and possible change of this policy. Ain92 ( talk) 11:19, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

  Is there no existing open-source/ libre CDN that we could use and/or adapt? — Cheers, Steelpillow ( Talk) 11:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

  Ain92, it should be noted that there is a big difference between a CDN and DDoS mitigation systems. I know that people are very used to buy the whole cloudflare package and think everything is one and the same but that's not exactly the case. We don't need a CDN per se, but we do require DDoS mitigation. But this too is complicated within our privacy limitations. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 13:30, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I mostly edit political and climate articles, both very contentious areas subject to DS. Sometimes upset editors tell me to stay off their user talk page. Is there a way to customize my watch list so their user names appear differently than those of other editors? I'm just looking for a way to help me remember so I can respect such wishes. NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 20:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I bet a modification to the admin highlighter script could manage that for you.-- Jorm ( talk) 20:50, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

You don't need scripts, just one CSS rule will do it. Each row of a watchlist has the user name several times, so if you want to make edits by User:Example1 and User:Example2 to have a red background, you can highlight all of the links by using

/* make it easier to skip past edits by Example1 and Example2 */
li.mw-changeslist-line ahref="/wiki/User:Example1"],
li.mw-changeslist-line ahref="/wiki/User_talk:Example1"],
li.mw-changeslist-line ahref="/wiki/Special:Contributions/Example1"],
li.mw-changeslist-line ahref="/wiki/User:Example2"],
li.mw-changeslist-line ahref="/wiki/User_talk:Example2"],
li.mw-changeslist-line ahref="/wiki/Special:Contributions/Example2" {
  background: red;
}

This goes in Special:MyPage/common.css or Special:MyPage/skin.css, whichever one you normally use for custom CSS. You can replace the keyword red with any valid web colour. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 21:01, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

This will prevent you from editing their user/user_talk pages (if that's the real problem) whilst still seeing what goes on:

var myEnemies = "Cobaltcigs", "Tom", "Dick", "Harry"];
var iAmEditingUserspace = (wgAction == "edit") && 2,3].includes(wgNamespaceNumber);
var thisGuyHatesMe = myEnemies.includes(wgRelevantUserName);
if(iAmEditingUserspace && thisGuyHatesMe) $("#editform :input").prop('disabled', true);

Configure the first line as appropriate but please keep my name on it. ― cobaltcigs 21:19, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the tech answer and the laugh. If I use this, I think I'll tweak the variable names a bit to reflect the optimistic hope that despite todays bumps one day we might be friends. Still, that was funny. And thank you everyone else for the alternative answers to this problem, also!! NewsAndEventsGuy ( talk) 21:23, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

hi

I have forgotten the process for using emails to validate refs.

Can someone please remind me where to go to find the info to start the process of getting an email sent in to Wiki?

Thanks Chaosdruid ( talk) 19:03, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Should this be @ help desk instead of here? Chaosdruid ( talk) 19:06, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Possibly. For starters, I am unsure of what you're asking. Could you more clearly give us an example scenario? Killiondude ( talk) 03:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Chaosdruid: Is it possible that you're thinking of OTRS? I'm not sure if they handle exactly the type of request you're talking about, but OTRS is the main place that emails to Wikipedia are handled. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:20, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

@ This, that and the other: & @ Killiondude: It was a process where something to be used in an article/as a ref had to be proven to be from the person in question, rather than Joe Bloggs with a made up email address ... In this case I need to get the names of band members out of an email from their management team, but need to be able to say "this is where it came from" Chaosdruid ( talk) 17:34, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Emails are private communications, and so will not satisfy WP:V because other people can't check what the source is claimed to state. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 19:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

There is a process for verifying them, that is the whole point of my query. I used it years ago to get email validation on a source, and I believe it DID involve OTRS. Chaosdruid ( talk) 17:00, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

No. OTRS can be used to verify the identity of someone. That might be used, for example, to demonstrate that the author of a blog was in fact a recognized expert on the subject, and that might make the blog a reliable source. There is no other kind of email verification of an assertion. What is certain is that an unpublished email is not a reliable source, and nothing can make it reliable. Johnuniq ( talk) 00:32, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Which is exactly what I wanted, to prove that the source of the information is who they say they are ... thanks, well, not really, but at least you gave me the OTRS info which got me there in the end ... Chaosdruid ( talk) 21:59, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Please fix:

• The broken syntax on "elevation" in the infobox
• Reference 10

Thank you!

2607:FEA8:1DE0:7B4:7811:3461:7039:276 ( talk) 21:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Fixed by other editors. – Ammarpad ( talk) 22:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

In en.Wikipedia, some links creating a new report via section=new don’t specify the heading in preloadtitle=, pushing it into the body-text form instead. It usually leads to empty edit summary, which is despicable. Moreover, a proposed fix in Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring/Example is ignored. Opinions? Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 06:13, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

You're the only one who looked at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring/Example in the last 30 days, so your comment was not ignored, it was just not seen. There's little reason to watch that page. The code for that new section link comes from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring/Header, you can edit it yourself. – Ammarpad ( talk) 07:03, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Did I ask how to do? Expectedly such questions form 90% of threads here, but pay please some attention to who posts stuff and how. As for “little reason to watch that page”, in the shoes of an en.Wikipedia technician I certainly would watch thousands such pages. Even having denied promotion to template editors I watch hundreds templates and similar things. Incnis Mrsi ( talk) 07:38, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

If you were not asking how to do it, what are you asking? You already know the fix you want to apply, so you can either apply it and see if someone disagrees, or ask whoever will be affected. In the latter case, it likely means a post at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring - the people here might have no idea of the technical details (i.e. not be "en-wp technicians"), but they are the ones you need to convince (assuming you want to get a consensus in the first place, IMO you should go for the BOLD route). Tigraan ^{Click here to contact me} 08:35, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

I think the specific template does not work right during the last weeks. Graphs do not show up and look like broken images. But when previewing in editing mode they do appear working actually. Examples can be found on the template itself or here. Any suggestions? -- Αρκάς ( talk) 20:21, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Αρκάς, changes are being made to the version in the German wikipedia and imported here. Pinging @ Yurik, Yair rand, and IagoQnsi: who have been working on the graph template and Module:Graph, though the problem seems to have started before the most recent changes here. It is very strange that the graphs appear in preview just beautifully, but vanish when reading the articles. StarryGrandma ( talk) 03:18, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. Then i guess we will have to wait for them.-- Αρκάς ( talk) 06:38, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

I ended up reverting all my changes right after I made them, so it wasn't something I did. When you are previewing the articles, the images are rendered on your machine with JavaScript, but when you save the article, the images are rendered by MediaWiki's servers. So the issue must be with the server-side renderer if it's only broken on the saved pages and not the previews. -- IagoQnsi ( talk) 22:49, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

IagoQnsi, Αρκάς recorded the problem at the template talk page Aug 8, before your changes. I was hoping one of you would know where we could go from here. Someone reported this at mw:Template talk:Graph:Population history two months ago on July 4 (where it is also not working) and got no response. Is there anything about this in Phabricator? StarryGrandma ( talk) 23:27, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, actually it is definitely been going on for some months now. When i mentioned "weeks" i was not precise, but since we are trying to timestamp it...-- Αρκάς ( talk) 00:18, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

It is a known problem, T226250 at Phabricator, "Graph not displayed if linked to a wikidata query". The uses of the template you gave, both in the template documention and at the Bogotá article in question, are going to wikidata for their information. StarryGrandma ( talk) 00:22, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Ok thanks. Also pinging @ Geraki:, as i'm guessing he would be interested as well. -- Αρκάς ( talk) 00:25, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Any possibilities that this gets fixed? Thanks. -- Αρκάς ( talk) 12:11, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello all, I have been dealing with this visual error for a while now and find it quite annoying. Whenever I hover over the "show" boxes in my infobox on my userpage, it continually "drifts" downwards the more you hover over the "show" buttons. I have also experienced this problem on Chrome using my desktop, however, Chrome on my Mac appears to like it now. Does anyone have any ideas? ( Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 60#Template:Boxboxtop not working correctly in Firefox or Chrome might be related?) -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 02:52, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

TheSandDoctor, iv seen this before. The caption of the table wrapping your user boxes gets pushed below the table for some reason. I suspect this is a CSS or html validity error or something, but I've never been able to figure out a cause completely. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 07:42, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, TheDJ. Huh. The issue appears to now just be on my mac, but I have removed the offending boxes and re-done my userpage over the past few days for a number of reasons (badly needed update, to get rid of that stupid visual error, etc). Hopefully the cause and fix is found eventually. Have you experienced it yourself or just heard others complaining of it ( )? -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 15:20, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical) § Zhaofeng Li/reFill

 – Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 22:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The Zhaofeng Li/reFill tool does not add Retrieved (date) data anymore. I can not get into contact with Zhaofeng Li as he seem to have left the project. But if someone could take a look at the tool I would appreciate it. [20] -- BabbaQ ( talk) 21:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

It seems he made it now you have to explicitly request for the date to be added (i.e disabaled by default). If you use the new (beta) interface directly, there's a "Preferences" link by your right. You've to enable it from there. If you use, the old interface (which redirects to the new in background) you'll notice that an option "Do not add access dates" is checked by default. You've to uncheck it. – Ammarpad ( talk) 07:55, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

The problem with the old beta is that I do uncheck it but it still does not add the data I want. I will try the new one. -- BabbaQ ( talk) 08:47, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

One more thing, right now when I click on View History and then Fix dead links I get the old beta. Perhaps a change to the new and improved version would benefit the project. Thanks. BabbaQ ( talk) 10:11, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

The tool that fixes dead links is a different tool. I don't know where its new version is, but you can suggest changing the link at MediaWiki talk:Histlegend. – Ammarpad ( talk) 10:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I have been through a cold and is a bit off. Thanks for your help anyway. BabbaQ ( talk) 17:40, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

On the Usufruct article, the interlanguage link for Romanian links to ro:Drept de uz and, apparently, ought to link to ro:Drept de uzufruct; see talk:Usufruct#Incorrect link to Romanian Wikipedia article. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:50, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

You'll want to edit wikidata:Q160474 in the lower left area. ― cobaltcigs 20:57, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

There's a conflicting Wikidata item preventing it from being corrected. I requested its deletion and posted a note on the article talk page for the concerned editor. BlackcurrantTea ( talk) 22:02, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

I don’t know if this has been brought up as a topic previously, but if not, is there a tool that can locate/search for pages that have been removed from categories? If not, I feel like this kind of tool would be useful, as it’s very difficult to keep track of this type of thing. Dohvahkiin ( talk) 18:21, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

It has serious limitations and you may want to use an alternative account with a tiny watchlist but see "Category membership" at Help:Watchlist#Limitations. PrimeHunter ( talk) 22:58, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

For the past few days, probably since after the Wikipedia outage that happened a few days ago, I have not been able to save edits while on and using the cellular network on my mobile device. I am able to save edits when my mobile device is connect to WiFi, but not on cellular. I’ve tried...

• ...On my iPhone...
  1. ...Multiple internet browsing apps (Safari, Chrome, and Firefox)
  2. ...tried editing from both "mobile" and "desktop" view
  3. ...tried clearing my browsers' cookies and history
  4. ...resetting the network settings on my mobile device
  5. ...resetting my entire phone and attempting to use the internet before restoring my phone

...And none of this worked.

What happens is when I click the "save" button after creating an edit, the next page doesn’t load, and I get an error that says the server is not responding. In the past 5–6 years I have been editing primarily from a cellular network, this has never happened, and it's a bit alarming. Either way, I hope there is a fix for this issue since I really enjoy volunteering on Wikipedia, but may now have long periods of not editing due to these issues (since I primarily edit using a cellular network connection.) Steel1943 ( talk) 20:36, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Steel1943: T232491. -- Ahecht ( TALK
PAGE) 20:48, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Ahecht: I’m unfortunately glad to see I’m not the only one experiencing this issue. I went ahead and added a {{ Tracked}} to the top of this section since I didn't see this discussed anywhere else. Steel1943 ( talk) 21:05, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Ahecht: @ Steel1943: - Can you try again (possibly with a browser or phone restart if necessary). I've made some experimental changes on the Wikimedia side of things which may (hopefully) fix this for you. BBlack (WMF) ( talk) 01:25, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@ BBlack (WMF): I made this on my cellular network (as well as this one), so that may have resolved it. Steel1943 ( talk) 02:30, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@ BBlack (WMF): It's working for me too. -- Ahecht ( TALK
PAGE) 14:39, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello everyone, has anyone else had an issue where the "Publish changes" button saves your edit but then the editing interface says that there was an edit conflict? I have had it happen rather frequently as of late, yet when I check the page history my edit was saved correctly. It appears to quite literally be either an error in the interface or for some reason trying to publish the same edit twice (consecutively) and causing me to self-conflict. It doesn't happen every time, but does occur a lot. It is rather annoying.... -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 15:16, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

I have the exact same problem. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 176#False edit conflict problem when saving. Thue ( talk) 18:41, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

There are many bug reports for this issue, two of them are: phab:T28821 and phab:T59264. – Ammarpad ( talk) 05:41, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, @ Thue and Ammarpad:. I have subscribed and commented on both. I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this . -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 15:11, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

/info/en/?search=Slab_pull?action=edit

On that page, attempting to save edits, I get "Something went wrong" "HTTP 404". I cleared all caches as documented in WP but did not help. BrucePL ( talk) 19:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Ammarpad saved an edit after your post. I had no problems saving an edit now. PrimeHunter ( talk) 21:08, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@ PrimeHunter: thanks. I saved a few edits but it bombed again. Cannot switch to source editor and cannot save in VE. BrucePL ( talk) 22:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

"Error loading data from server: apierror-visualeditor-docserver-http." BrucePL ( talk) 22:19, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I tried VisualEditor this time and it also worked fine for me. PrimeHunter ( talk) 22:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't know what to do. I can save eidts on other pages not this one. BrucePL ( talk) 22:33, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I openned the article in a new tab and editors worked. BrucePL ( talk) 22:51, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

There's something going on. I saw something like this twice, a couple of days ago. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:45, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, getting this again. I edited Draft:Morse Robb using visual editor, and when I went to save it, got the 404 error. I'm now at a point where if I try to switch to source editing, I get, "Error loading data from server: apierror-visualeditor-docserver-http." If I select "Visual editing" from the drop-down menu (even though I'm already in visual), I get in the javascript console:

load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116 Uncaught TypeError: Illegal invocation
    at add (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150)
    at Function.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123)
    at Function.jQuery.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144)
    at Object.requestParsoidData (<anonymous>:461:31)
    at VeInitMwDesktopArticleTarget.ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor (<anonymous>:787:643)
add @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150
ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123
jQuery.ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144
requestParsoidData @ VM206:461
ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:787
ve.init.mw.DesktopArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:1238
ve.ui.MWEditModeVisualTool.switch @ VM218:798
mw.libs.ve.MWEditModeTool.onSelect @ VM218:320
OO.ui.ToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:11
OO.ui.PopupToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:20
OO.ui.ListToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:25
OO.ui.ToolGroup.onDocumentMouseKeyUp @ VM218:11
load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116 Uncaught TypeError: Illegal invocation
    at add (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at buildParams (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116)
    at Function.jQuery.param (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150)
    at Function.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123)
    at Function.jQuery.ajax (load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144)
    at Object.requestParsoidData (<anonymous>:461:31)
    at VeInitMwDesktopArticleTarget.ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor (<anonymous>:787:643)
add @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
buildParams @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:115
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:116
jQuery.param @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:150
ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:123
jQuery.ajax @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:144
requestParsoidData @ VM206:461
ve.init.mw.ArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:787
ve.init.mw.DesktopArticleTarget.switchToVisualEditor @ VM218:1238
ve.ui.MWEditModeVisualTool.switch @ VM218:798
mw.libs.ve.MWEditModeTool.onSelect @ VM218:320
OO.ui.ToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:11
OO.ui.PopupToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:20
OO.ui.ListToolGroup.onMouseKeyUp @ VM218:25
dispatch @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:69
elemData.handle @ load.php?lang=en&modules=jquery%2Coojs-ui-core&skin=vector&version=0ymep1p:65

I'm not sure, but I think a common theme is that the page I'm editing was recently moved. It certainly was in this case, and in one of the previous ones that I saw a few days ago. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:32, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

phab:T230272 possibly? There's some others in the backlog also. -- Izno ( talk) 17:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

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

Changes later this week

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikidata for up to 30 minutes on 10 September at 05:00 (UTC). [21]
• When you log in, the software checks your password to see if it follows the Password policy. From this week, it will also complain if you are a "privileged user" and your password is too short. If your password is not strong enough, please consider to change your password for a stronger password. [22]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 September. It will be on all wikis from 12 September ( calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Soon, the AbuseFilter will recognize new syntax errors. Specifically, it will recognize errors about empty operands. You can see a list of examples in phab:T156096. Any active filter with such an error will stop working; hence, please take a look at the list of affected filters, and fix the ones that you can fix. Note that there is also an ongoing RFC on meta-wiki about the creation of a new abusefilter-manager global group.

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

(manually posting due to problems with MassMessage this week.) 19:22, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

Were there any recent changes in class="sortkey" area? Template:Track_gauge#List_of_defined_track_gauges now shows (in 1st row for example):

00003 mm0.118 in

Expected, as it was until ~some weeks ago:

0.118 in

What shows extra is the sortkey, with source code being (unchanged):

<span class="sortkey">00003 mm</span>0.118 in

Any ideas? - DePiep ( talk) 12:45, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Has to do with this in {{ Convert}}? @ TheDJ and Johnuniq:. - DePiep ( talk) 12:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Nothing to do with convert. If you edit Template:Track gauge/doc/input options, you will see that there are no convert transclsions, but does have something to do with an edit to common.css. You'll need to update Module:Track gauge/autodocument to use the data-sort-value method for sorting. -- WOSlinker ( talk) 12:54, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

OK. I only mentioend {{Convert}} becasue the class change was announced there. - DePiep ( talk) 13:00, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

• So instead of

<span class="sortkey">00003 mm</span>0.118 in

write

<span data-sort-value="00003 mm">0.118 in

Solved. - DePiep ( talk) 14:23, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

DePiep, actually, I'd say: <span data-sort-value="00003">0.118 in</span>. You 'mask' the content of the cell, with the numerical value 00003. And of course this assumes that you use the same sort of numerical values in all the other rows. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 14:42, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I get it, thanx. However, I don't have time to refine & test that in the detail template. - DePiep ( talk) 20:57, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I have noticed that on Win10 using Chrome that upon loading a page history that the page is reformatted after a couple of seconds, I guess because of CSS or script mods. When this happens the rollback button moved exactly to where the thanks button was. Not, in itself a big problem but, embarrassingly, if I click thanks before this change occurs (from ~0.5 to ~3 seconds) the interface reads it as a rollback. Anyone have any ideas? I use the script that should hide rollback on my watchlist - sometimes it does some times not - but it is useful from page history. As an aside, is there a way to add a thanks button to the watchlist? Jbh ^Talk 14:37, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Seconded (Win7/Opera). I have probably inadvertently rolled back around half a dozen times, followed by an undo, and a red-faced summary, "self-revert; fat-finger error". Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 02:50, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't get the page reformatting issue. Perhaps related to a gadget or .js script? Sam Walton ( talk) 15:26, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Jbhunley: It's probably due to my inline diff script; the view history button loads a little bit after the page does. I have a CSS hack that will reserve the space normally taken up by the button on page load--this prevents the script from significantly shifting any UI elements (at the cost of an ugly blotch of whitespace for a split second before the script loads in). If you'd like to try it out, you can add the following lines to your common.css page:

.mw-changeslist-edit .mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:84px;}
.mw-changeslist-edit .mw-changeslist-separator~.mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:0px;}
#pagehistory .mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:84px;}
#pagehistory .mw-changeslist-separator~.mw-changeslist-separator {padding-right:0px;}

...which should fix the problem for both the watchlist and history pages. If you need more or less space (it could vary, depending on fonts and the like), you can adjust the 84px up or down. Let me know if this helps with the problem! Writ Keeper  ⚇ ♔ 17:11, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. That works. I upped it to 120px which does not seem to cause issues on lower res displays. The button still jumps but it is to 'undo' on the laptop. I can catch the error before it commits the undo. Jbh ^Talk 19:03, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

In Module:JCW, I have in this version, the following,

function p.pattern (frame)
	local n = mArguments.getArgs(frame, {parentOnly = true})
	local length = TableTools.length(n)
	local text = string.format ('*%s', n1 or '')
	n1 = nil --make next loop only target arguments >=2
	for i, j in ipairs(TableTools.compressSparseArray(n)) do
		text = text..string.format("\n** {{replace|%s|.*|<code>.*</code>}}", j)
	end
	return text

The line text = text..string.format("\n** %s", j) is apparently shorthand for 'dumbass that can't code LUA', because if if you have a string like '*Bibcode*', you don't get, as I'd expect

• • .*Bibcode.*

but rather an un-parsed

• • {{replace|.*Bibcode.*|.*|.*}}

If someone could de-dumbassify my code, that would be peachy. The goal is if the substring '.*' is present in a string like '.*Bibcode.*', I want those to become wrapped in code tags, like so <code>.*</code>Bibcode<code>.*</code>.

@ Galobtter: maybe? Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 13:59, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I think you need to escape the special characters (. and *) in your search. See this tutorial and this manual. I think you need something like %.%* to find '.*'. – Jonesey95 ( talk) 14:18, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll double check, but it would be a bit weird since {{replace|.*Bibcode.*|.*|<code>.*</code>}} works fine. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 14:47, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Nope, throws off a bunch of errors if I do that. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 14:51, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Headbomb: Templates won't be expanded from lua output. To use a template, you'd need to use frame:expandTemplate. However, in this case, there's no reason to use lua to call {{ replace}}, since that template is just going to call back to a lua module anyway. Just do:

 text = text .. "\n** " .. mw.ustring.gsub(j, "%.%*", "<code>.*</code>")

mw.ustring.gsub is just the unicode-compatible version of string.gsub. -- Ahecht ( TALK
PAGE) 15:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah that works. Thanks. Still got other issues, but less pressing ones. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 16:13, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Plain string.gsub works fine in Ahecht's code because there is no search for Unicode characters: it's just searching for dot and asterisk. Johnuniq ( talk) 23:44, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

True, but I always prefer to use the unicode-compatible versions as a matter of habit since it makes re-using the code later easier. -- Ahecht ( TALK
PAGE) 20:04, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Unicode is definitely better than non-unicode. A lot more scalable. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 20:12, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

How do I display an external link that contains "[" and "]"? Here is an example: The first result of this Google Scholar search takes you to a bioone.org page. But its url has "[" and "]" in it. I tried to paste that link into this Resource Request, but the "[" and "]" garble the result. Is there an escape character that can be used to "hide" the "[" and "]"? Thanks. — Bruce1ee ^talk 13:23, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

See Help:URL#Fixing links with unsupported characters: [23]. PrimeHunter ( talk) 13:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you – that's what I needed. — Bruce1ee ^talk 13:34, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

So I found Pullman Square entirely by accident when trying to find GA-class WP:MALLS articles. But for some reason, it was only assessed as a C-class Shopping Malls article despite being GA-class in every other Wikiproject. Is there an easy way to find articles that have contradictory assessments of this sort? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{( What did I screw up now?)} 21:54, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

It should be possible with WP:PETSCAN, you need the intersection of Category:Good articles with subcategories of Category:C-Class articles etc.; you need to enable both mainspace and Talk: space. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 22:35, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

I also got a list using the page_assessments database: quarry:query/38930. There are a lot of false positives though, for instance if the article belongs to inactive WikiProjects. I don't think I can check for those. Same query but for FA: quarry:query/38931. I think category intersections such as with Petscan is going to work better. — MusikAnimal ^talk 22:42, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

When I edit my common.js and save it by clicking the "Publish changes" button, there is no edit saved. I don't get the timed "Your edit was saved" popup afterwards either. It doesn't matter whether I'm trying to insert new code (e.g. to load another script) or add or edit an existing comment – none of them get saved. The history of the page shows the last edit was in May and my contribs don't show the edit either. I am able to edit User:AlanM1/sandbox as well as WP:Teahouse. Any ideas? —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 09:50, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Disregard. Enabling WikEd and then disabling it again solved the problem for some reason. I'll note for the record that the syntax-checking and coloring wasn't working either (and is now). —[ AlanM1( talk)]— 10:00, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

• Special:Contributions/*sOpHIa2387

Something about this particular username (maybe the asterisk at the beginning?) seems to be breaking a couple of the links at {{ Sp-contributions-footer}}, but I'm afraid I don't know much about the features being used, so I'm not sure where the problem is exactly. Just thought it would be worth bringing up here. Thanks, – Deacon Vorbis ( carbon •  videos) 03:01, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Template:Sp-contributions-footer should be fixed a little. I did these changes on fiwiki and extra characters in username are now rendering correctly. Stryn ( talk) 08:58, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh, actually not, now it's not working usernames where is a space like "Given name". Stryn ( talk) 09:00, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I fixed it, hopefully without causing any other issues. urlencode takes a formatting option, and using WIKI leaves leading * and : unadulterated (as if it were wikitext) and thus unacceptable for a url; changing to QUERY seems to take care of the issues. Interestingly, a leading # doesn't cause the same issue, not sure if that's intentional or not. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 09:52, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

That also broke on usernames with spaces so I reverted it. I think it would work to wrap urlencode in {{ encodefirst}}: {{encodefirst|{{urlencode:{{{1|Example}}}|WIKI}}}}. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:51, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Urgh, thanks. I tested spaces, but... Anyway, seems DJ and xf took care of it. ~ Amory ( u • t • c) 12:57, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Resolved per below. -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:23, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

In case this is affecting anybody else: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T232698. The problem is under investigation. ↠Pine (✉) 05:31, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Update: the problem is believed to be related to network maintenance, and has been resolved. -- ↠Pine (✉) 06:10, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

The skin preference doesn't affect mobile sites (*.m.wiki*edia.org). I can not change mobile skin no matter how hard I try. So we were chatting on #wikimedia-tech about this. Isarra told me there was a phab task about this problem, and Jon Robson commented there that there is a mobile skin preference but it is hidden. I asked Isarra and other people on #wikimedia-tech, but they didn't seem to know too. Some of them tried to enable it via api, but that ended in failure. Anyway, he told me to find some gadget maker nerds and ask them as "they might know". So I am asking here. How to change skins on mobile? Masum Reza ^📞 05:39, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

How can I reformat {{ Anthony}} so that it is a tad wider and so that multiple links may appear on a line?- TonyTheTiger ( T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:26, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

TonyTheTiger Increase width and remove bullets. -- Trialpears ( talk) 05:09, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

@ TonyTheTiger: Alternatively, increase the width and alter |contentclass=plainlist to |contentclass=hlist. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 09:36, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Redrose64 thank you. Also, thanks to Trialpears, but the other solution seemed easier to me.- TonyTheTiger ( T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:18, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

-- qedk ( t 桜 c) 10:29, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Recently, whenever I try to follow a link to a .pdf, such as for instance this, I only get a blank page, while other people seem able to access it without trouble. Admittedly, I am in the EU, and so I get shut off from various US media because GDPR, but the .pdf thing seems different. There's no message at all, just a blank page. Bishonen | talk 09:24, 15 September 2019 (UTC).

@ Bishonen: What is your operating system and browser version? Does it happen for all links to .pdfs (for posterity, the .pdf on the link shows up fine on my Catalina 10.15 machine's Safari 13, Firefox 69, Chrome 76) or only some? -- qedk ( t 桜 c) 09:30, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

OS X El Capitan and Firefox Quantum extended support release, 60.9.0, and it applies to all .pdf's. And, aha, I just tried that .pdf in Safari and it works there. So I can manage. I'd like for the links to work in Firefox, since it's my usual browser, but I can manage. Thank you for your helpful questions, qedk! They made me realise I should try a different browser. Bishonen | talk 09:42, 15 September 2019 (UTC).

Works in Edge on Win10 in the EU too. DuncanHill ( talk) 09:44, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

If you go to Options -> Applications on Firefox, what is PDF set to? Nardog ( talk) 09:52, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Bishonen: you are not alone. DuncanHill ( talk) 09:53, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

To spell that out: Click the triple horizontal bar "hamburger" menu button at top right, then click Options. Scroll down to "Applications / Choose how Firefox handles the files you download...". Near the bottom of the list you should see "Portable Document Format (PDF)". If it is set to "Save File", each time you click a pdf, it is downloading that pdf to your downloads directory. You probably have a hundred duplicate pdfs there! The location of the downloads directory can be seen in "Save files to" just above Applications. Johnuniq ( talk) 10:01, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I probably have, I never look in dusty corners like my downloads directory (which I never knowingly direct any downloads to). I've now set the .pdf option to "Use Preview (default)", and it works. Thank you all! Bishonen | talk 10:15, 15 September 2019 (UTC).

Glad to know you found the culprit. -- qedk ( t 桜 c) 10:29, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Anyone else noticing that Wikipedia emails seem to take a while to arrive lately (e.g. notice of one in the interface long before it shows in your inbox), or is that just me & my provider having issues? Received one that took around 20 minutes (from what I recall) to arrive in my inbox earlier this week (just had time/remembered to ask now). -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 20:44, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Someone sent me one today, and I received it promptly after the notification. —  JJMC89 ( T· C) 04:24, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Huh. Thanks, JJMC89....it might be just me then....I wouldn't put it past that provider (used to be good, but down hill in recent years), but oh well. Thanks again! -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 05:22, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

@ JJMC89: I accidentally stumbled across another user affected by this. Ticket filed ( phab:T232928). -- TheSandDoctor ^Talk 04:37, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm in Australia (GMT +10) and edited Wikipedia up until about 05:00 today. When I went to edit at about 14:35 today I updated my watchlist but it only shows edits from 07:53. I've changed nothing so I don't understand why it's only showing some edits from today. My prefs are set for 500 edits and the last 5 days but I'm showing nowhere near that. Is this an issue affecting anyone else? -- AussieLegend ( ✉) 06:36, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

This is kind of amusing. In the process of reviewing Draft:Manoir du Clap, I did a google search for "manoir du clap" and was surprised to discover we already had such an article on enwiki, at least according to Google. Problem is, I couldn't find it. My first guess was maybe this draft was once in mainspace and got draftified, but no evidence of that either. Lots of head scratching ensued. Turns out, the article really is on frwiki (and indeed, if you click on the link, it takes you to frwiki), and Chrome's auto-translation not only translated the text, but "helpfully" translated the hostname too. Mentioning it here in case anybody else has been tripped up by this silliness. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:00, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

This may be related to Project Toledo, even though the project's page does not mention translation back to English. But it's quite similar. – Ammarpad ( talk) 16:58, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

In the mobile version, the diffs always says "No change in size" even if there is change in size. See for example [24].-- SharabSalam ( talk) 19:52, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

This is phab:T232941. PrimeHunter ( talk) 20:30, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't know if this is an appropriate place to put my feedback but I have to say that I am not impressed by the very new update to the mobile version, I hope Wikimedia doesn't go forward with this, for example what's the point of having the number of contributions bigger in diffs? I think it should actually be removed from diffs because there is prejudice against those who have few edits in Wikipedia community and therefore they usually get reverted often. Instead Wikimedia made the contribution number bigger! Also my phone screen is small and the numbers make the interface looks weird like the word "edits" disappear when the user has so many rights. Also what's the point of using these icons? to differentiate between anonymous and logged-in users? They are pointless. Anyone can differentiate between the IPs and the logged-in users. I feel like the new update didn't offer any improvement. If this update was the old version and the old version was the update I would actually count the old version as an improvement.- SharabSalam ( talk) 00:12, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

It was a regression. It will be resolved together with the task mentioned above. – Ammarpad ( talk) 06:02, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

AWB (version 5.10.1.0, running on Windows 7 64-bit) is failing to connect, reporting:

and then:

So far as I can tell, my configuration files have not changed since I last successfully used AWB two days ago. Obviously my internet connection is currently working, and Wikipedia appears to be functioning for normal editing.

Is there a problem with the server? Mitch Ames ( talk) 11:41, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Mitch Ames: seems to be related to phab:T233070. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:48, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Mitch Ames ( talk) 13:06, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

[25]. "Error querying Pageviews API - Not found." Help? Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 13:08, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

America (Maurizio Cattelan) was moved to the current title today. The tool doesn't use live data. The former name America (toilet) has data [26]. I suppose the tool could check whether the requested page exists currently and give another message but it still wouldn't have page view data. PrimeHunter ( talk) 15:31, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

I have numbers in various 'sizes' in a table (see demo right). I want to have them aligned as decimal number, i.e., all decimal signs (=periods) below each other. What are today's best practices available? Any smart template I have not found yet? - DePiep ( talk) 14:42, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Maybe Help:Table#Decimal point alignment is still true. Thincat ( talk) 15:32, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

thx. Should have found that before. - DePiep ( talk) 15:41, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Good afternoon Wikipedians!

I have a rather fundamental question.

When you send a search to Wikipedia using the:

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=George Washington

URL, it seems like this function returns 3 different manifestations of Wikipedia search:

1) An actual article 2) A disambiguation page 3) A list of articles, like a Google search

3 examples would be:

If you search for “George Washington”:

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=George Washington

Would return the George Washington Wikipedia article.

If you search for “tom jones”:

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=tom jones

This search returns the disambiguation page for “tom jones”

If you search for “akbur”

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=akbur

This returns a listing of articles, much like a Google search does.

My question is, when the pages are returned. How do I determine what type of page was returned, just by analyzing the HTML that is present? What keywords or phrases can my program look for in the HTML to definitively determine that I have come upon a Wikipedia article, disambiguation page or a search listing?

This is made more difficult by the seeming inconsistency of the search results. For instance, when searching and a disambiguation page is returned, some of these pages contain the phrase “may refer to:” and some may contain the phrase “may also refer to:”. And some of these key phases may, seemingly have 1, 2 or even 3 spaces, between these words, in these key phrases, which makes using key phrases, to figure out the type of page returned, that much more difficult.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!

Jroehl ( talk) 18:16, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

What's the application for this? It seems like there will be some simpler solution here. -- Trialpears ( talk) 18:32, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

This is being used for selecting a Wikipedia article on my website. Jroehl ( talk) 18:44, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

There is a mw:API which is designed for programs. The normal interface is for humans. By default, the search function goes directly to a page if there is an exact match to the search phrase. The page may be an article, disambiguation page or redirect. If there is no exact match then you get search results. Add &fulltext=1 to the url if you always want search results. The API can be asked directly whether a page exists and what type of page it is. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=pageprops&ppprop=disambiguation&titles=Tom%20Jones%7CGeorge%20Washington%7CAkbur shows that Tom Jones is a disambiguation page, George Washington is not, and Akbur doesn't exist. PrimeHunter ( talk) 18:58, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, this was very helpful PrimeHunter! Thank you! Jroehl ( talk) 19:03, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Jroehl: One thing that I notice is that you have spaces in your URLs. These are never valid (see Query string#URL encoding) - you either need to encode them, or use a recognised placeholder character: the plus sign is universal, and Wikipedia also recognises an underscore:

• http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=George%20Washington
• http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=George+Washington
• http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=George_Washington

Try these instead. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 20:51, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Thankyou very much Redrose64. It is always important to remember this! Jroehl ( talk) 15:59, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, I am sorry to bother you here on English Wikipedia but we do not have technical users on our one, so after wrongly using Phabricator for the first time, I hope this could be a place where I will find somebody that will be able to help.

What I need to help with: Our Community portal looks good when accessing it on desktop. This, however, does not apply for the mobile view. So I basically need help with making the page responsive so that it displays correctly on all kinds of displays.

Here is the detailed request (on Phabricator): phabricator:T231949

It was recommended to me to get inspired by this responsive template, so I hope that can help.

If you want to help, feel free to contact me on wiki (here, Meta, Slovak one, ...) or via e-mail and we can discuss further. If there is going to be a need to create a css or js file, I can request interface admin's rights and put it there, meanwhile, it can be tested on Testwiki.

Thanks a lot for reading this!

-- Luky001 ( talk) 16:02, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Looking at the source, I think this is meant to be an ambox, but it does not actually render for some reason. I found this issue when I proceeded to add the tag to Patchwork religion, currently linked only from this page and a 2010 RfD, to find that it had already been tagged in 2015. However, someone else may have noted that this tag is invisible. I cannot try to fix it myself because the page is template-protected. – LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄) 02:40, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Please, read the documentation of {{ orphan}}. Ruslik_ Zero 04:35, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Is the mw.user.options object in the JavaScript interface a reliable area to store data through scripts (for later access from the scripts)? If so, I am guessing that it can be for setting up scripts for creating private to-do lists and custom watchlists, etc. SD0001 ( talk) 06:43, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

You should store it in the actual user preferences (e.g. Just modifying the object client side won't actually store it). But yes, they are saved similarly to normal preferences like the one's in Special:Preferences and are an alternative to using localStorage to save stuff, and unlike localStorage will follow the person around if they log in on a different computer. See also mw:API:Options Bawolff ( talk) 05:23, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

There has been a change to how the maximum template expansion depth is handled. The maximum is still 40 but the change has increased the expansion depth calculated for the page so that some deeply nested templates are now broken. This happens with a number of cladograms constructed using the {{ clade}}, as can be seen in Afrophidia. Pages generating the error can be found at Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded. Strangely, some of the cladogram still look OK on the saved page but fail in edit preview. I think this is due to caching, but cannot explain why these pages look OK but already appear in the error tracking category.

The following code used to be able to expand 40 nested templates, but now fails at 21.

* Nest 21 templates: {{1x|1 {{1x|2 {{1x|3 {{1x|4 {{1x|5 {{1x|6 {{1x|7 {{1x|8 {{1x|9 {{1x
|10 {{1x|11 {{1x|12 {{1x|13 {{1x|14 {{1x|15 {{1x|16 {{1x|17 {{1x|18 {{1x|19 {{1x|20 {{1x |'''21'''}}
}}}} }}}} }}}} }}}} }}}}  }}}} }}}} }}}} }}}} }}}}

• Nest 21 templates: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

You can see similar examples at Checking the current expansion limit and [27] :mw:Help:Expansion_depth#Nesting depth on the page itself. These still appear to allow transclusion to a depth of 40, but if you test in edit preview they fail at 21. Again, I think that this is because cached pages are being displayed.    Jts1882 |  talk  16:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Gadget, I'm attempting to start a discussion here about the likelihood of User:Evad37/XFDcloser (commonly referred to as "XFDcloser") being eligible to be promoted to "Gadget" status. For those who do not know what this script is used for, it is used to automatically close a majority of types of WP:XFD discussions. There are quite a few editors who use this script, including myself. However, if it can be, I think it is time for this script to become a gadget (provided that it meets all criteria in Wikipedia:Gadget#General criteria for gadgets.) The main reason I'm proposing this script become a gadget is not only because of several editors using it, but also since its creator/maintainer, Evad37, hasn't edited in almost a month and a half, and if it were promoted to a gadget, other editors could respond to update requests to the script. So ... does this look like a good candidate for "Gadget"-ification? Steel1943 ( talk) 16:58, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

It can be hard to tell on these, but WLE results show <100 people are actually using this (and I haven't attempted to determine how many are active). If gadget-izing, the users would need to actually make a change to use the new gadget. The old script could possibly be changed with a "Deprecated" alert or something. I'd like to see if Evad37 has any comment on this first though; has anyone tried emailing him? — xaosflux ^Talk 17:21, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I would be against gadgetizing this. This is a niche tool, not something that RandomJoe123 needs access to. Headbomb { t · c · p · b} 17:34, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Actually, this reduces the number of people who can change the script: we go from all interface admins + Evad himself to just all interface admins. (It may increase the number of people willing to implement an edit request, but that is not a question of can but willing to.) -- Izno ( talk) 17:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

...Ah yes, I forgot about the recent addition of the interface administrator user right ... an admin exclusive. I'm tempted to say "Never mind about this whole thing" now. Steel1943 ( talk) 17:48, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Izno: so yes, technically it reduces it by exactly 1 person. However: Evan could request access as he is an admin, as far as processing edit requests go: interface admins are much more likely to implement an edit request made for a gadget then to some personal user script. If the maintainer is inactive, another option for you @ Steel1943: would be to fork the script, and make it Steel1943's XFD closer script. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:08, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

xaosflux, where do you get the <100 figure from? There are ~349 people who have this script installed directly from source and another ~639 who are importing User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD.js which redirects to this one. SD0001 ( talk) 05:23, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

@ SD0001: WLE ( Special:WhatLinksHere) which I noted wasn't very reliable for this. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:22, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

My recent addition of a Popular culture section to the article appears to be alternately installed, and the uninstalled in the article. It seems to sometimes appear there, and then not to appear a few minutes later when someone else edits another part of the article. I do not know if when you link to the film if you will see the Popular culture section or not. It does appear as having been made in my edit history [28], but it does not appear in the article consistently after the edit is made and confirmed. It just seems to disappear 5 minutes later and then reappear again later without anyone editing it. Any thoughts? CodexJustin ( talk) 17:59, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

I see it now and in all revisions since you added it. Maybe you need to bypass your cache. "This page was last edited on" at the bottom shows which revision you are viewing. PrimeHunter ( talk) 18:36, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

I discovered today that I've got a bunch of edits on dewiki. To the best of my knowledge, I've made exactly one edit there. The rest seem to be some random assortment of edits I've made on en that were mirrored to de. What's the deal here? Is there some bot or something that's doing this? -- RoySmith (talk) 14:39, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

They'll all be on articles imported into dewiki from here. The import keeps the edit history from enwiki for attribution purposes and boosts your edit count on dewiki. Nthep ( talk) 14:54, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Note: imported edits don't actually impact your "edit count" - but they will appear in your "contributions". — xaosflux ^Talk 15:07, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

It depends where you get the edit count. Special:CentralAuth/RoySmith says edit count 1 at de.wikipedia.org. https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/de.wikipedia.org/RoySmith says 44 under general statistics but 1 for de.wikipedia.org under "Global edit counts". Imported edits are not counted in preferences or when rights like autoconfirmed are assigned. See Help:Import for the import feature in general. PrimeHunter ( talk) 15:31, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

So that ec tool isn't really a count of "edits" :) (Think it is just screen scraping contributions) — xaosflux ^Talk 16:28, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

dewiki have been importing our edits for years - de:Special:Preferences shows that I have made only 13 edits there; most (if not all) of those were in the days before Wikidata, when interlanguage links were handled on each wiki. However, de:Special:Contributions/Redrose64 shows 809 edits credited to me. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 15:57, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Which part of global did I not understand?

So, it turns out, there's more to this story. The only reason I noticed my de edits was that I was looking for a recent edit that I thought I had made on https://www.mediawiki.org, but couldn't find it. Then I realized it might not have been on that wiki, so I checked global. Turns out, when Global user contributions says, Show user contributions from all Wikimedia wikis, they mean that for very small values of all. Specifically, it doesn't include wikitech.wikimedia.org. But, I guess all really means, all external-facing, or something like that. Anyway, I eventually found what I was looking for in my browser history, and learned something about inter-wiki imports, so a positive experience. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:43, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

The "all" must certainly means SUL wikis, wikis that you log in with one account. Certain wikis, including wikitech.wikimedia.org are not in SUL set up and require separate account for you to log in (though you can use what you have on SUL, if it's not taken). Be aware that wikitech:User:RoySmith is a separate and distinct account from User:RoySmith and you can have different password on each. – Ammarpad ( talk) 16:58, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

( edit conflict) It's a pretty large value of 'all' actually, just not 100%! It should be all publicly facing projects that use SUL. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:59, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikitech is not replicated to toolforge. Wikitech has a really weird setup that's isolated from a lot of the rest of the sites. The idea being that wikitech contains instructions on what to do if the sites go down, and if all the sites go down, you probably don't want the site that has all the how to fix things instructions also going down (Just in case though, there is also a totally offsite static backup of wikitech as well). GUC may also exclude public non-SUL wikis as well, I'm not sure, but even if it didn't it wouldn't include wikitech as the info is just not on toolforge. Bawolff ( talk) 20:05, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Hello colleagues. When a citation looks like this:

^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx by bz ca cb cc cd ce cf cg ch ci cj ck cl cm cn co cp cq cr cs ct cu cv cw cx cy cz da db dc} Howard, Greg (2014-02-06). "The Big Book Of Black Quarterbacks". Deadspin. Archived from the original on 2019-03-04. Retrieved 2019-03-10.

Is there a better way? This is as a result of the source being used a lot in the article, and especially because it is used to source some, but not all, rows in a large table. Can those little letter backlinks (what are they called?) be suppressed, hidden, grouped, or something? It seems to me that it not only looks bad, but is entirely useless to a reader. Is there a doc that covers this? Thanks in advance! – Leviv ich 17:04, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Levivich: If you want to hide them for yourself, it's easy - the CSS rule is

span.mw-cite-backlink {
  display: none;
}

and that goes in either Special:MyPage/common.css or Special:MyPage/skin.css, whichever you normally use. It hides both the subscripted letters and the up-arrows that occur when the ref is used just once. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 17:42, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip! That would hide all cite backlinks for myself; I was wondering if there was a way to hide them (or something) just for that one cite, for readers. – Leviv ich 02:26, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Levivich: An article may have multiple reflists, with |group=groupname used to control which refs are grouped in which list. See WP:REFGROUP for details. Consider putting each table ref in a group using <ref group=table>Content</ref>, and putting {{reflist|group=table}} in a footer of the table. That may be enough to make the main reflist manageable. If the resulting table reflist still offends you, you don't have to use <ref></ref> markup in the table, you can roll your own link from each row to the source in the footer, with no backlink. -- Worldbruce ( talk) 01:35, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Worldbruce, brilliant! Thank you!! – Leviv ich 02:08, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Our preferences pages have a timezone setting, is it used anywhere? — Pelagic ( talk) 07:41, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Pelagic: Yes, in software-generated lists such as page histories and user contributions. -- John of Reading ( talk) 07:47, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

And almost everywhere else except wikitext, e.g. in diff times and "This page was last edited" at the bottom of pages. You can use it more by enabling "Change UTC-based times and dates, such as those used in signatures, to be relative to local time" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:12, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh, facepalm, I really wasn't thinking straight. Thanks, John. Those pages would have access that doesn't depend on parser functions or screen scraping. And thanks for the tip about the gadget, PrimeHunter. — Pelagic ( talk) 10:47, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but WikiHiero doesn't seem to work in the mobile version. This is a problem at decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs#Champollion's breakthroughs, where tables of WikiHiero glyphs display neatly on desktop (or at least on mine) but aren't visible at all on mobile. There are possible substitutes—images or the Unicode Egyptian hieroglyphs block—but both would be awkward to implement in the table, and the hieroglyphs block doesn't seem to be widely supported yet. Should I make a bug request? Does anyone have other suggestions? A. Parrot ( talk) 23:46, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure this has come up before but I can't find it in the archives, either as "hieroglyph" or "heiroglyph". BTW, that Search all village pumps & archives button at top of this page doesn't do what it claims - it looks in mainspace, and nowhere else. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 07:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

The search button works for me by using prefix= in the url. Did you actually get mainspace results or do you just think it searches mainspace because the url ends with ns0=1 and the interface says "Search in: (Article)". If I search hieroglyph then I get /info/en/?search=Special:Search?search=hieroglyph&prefix=Wikipedia%3AVillage+pump&fulltext=Search+all+village+pumps+%26+archives&fulltext=Search&ns0=1. prefix=Wikipedia%3AVillage+pump means I only get results with that prefix, and the top of the page says: Only searching in pages whose title starts with "Wikipedia:Village pump". PrimeHunter ( talk) 11:02, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I missed any notice of the fact that my watchlist now (in the last few hours) shows every addition to a category that I'm watching, and every removal. This is not a complaint but it's strange that, unlike edits to watched articles (which show only the most recent edit), it appears that every category membership change is listed. Here is a rough representation of what appears in my current watchlist for one category.

Johnuniq ( talk) 07:13, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

A couple of slightly interesting updates. First, a bad edit at 12:22, 21 September 2019 added Niranjana Anoop to the category, but that did not appear in my watchlist (so the watchlist change was after that time). Second, I reverted the IP edit to Luther Reigns shown above. Now my watchlist shows my removal of that article from the category, but not the IP's addition. In other words, the watchlist logic is consistent—it is showing only the most recent membership change to each article added or removed. To spell it out, I'm not watching any of the articles mentioned. Johnuniq ( talk) 07:23, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

This has long been an option which is disabled by default. The top of the watchlist includes "page categorization" after "Hide:", and Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist has "Hide categorization of pages". The page history of a category does not show added or removed pages so it makes sense that the watchlist feature shows all. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:30, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

It's still disabled by default so I guess you accidentally changed it. If "Use non-JavaScript interface" is disabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist then it's under "Filter changes" on the watchlist. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:42, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

I plead guilty to clumsy and it's quite possible that I accidentally changed something. However I definitely have not changed my preferences for a long time and it shows "Hide categorization of pages" enabled with a tick. OTOH the watchlist "Hide...[ ] page categorization" is not ticked. I'll experiment later and decide what I want. Thanks. Johnuniq ( talk) 11:10, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

• @ PrimeHunter: I am afraid what the OP describes is not how unchecking that option "Hide categorization of pages" works.

Here's a typical watchlist entry with the option unchecked:

As you can see, it's quite different from what Johnuniq gives above; as there's emphasis on the placement of the category page now. (Unless maybe he's using a skin/script that reorders the element?)

I watched the category pages but could not reproduce the issue. @ Johnuniq: Could you please upload a screenshot of the watchlist entries?. I think that'd be more clear than any explanation. – Ammarpad ( talk) 05:21, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll have look at a longer watchlist later but at the moment there are no category entries in my watchlist and I have not changed anything. I know there have been some changes to the category membership because I reverted a couple of bad edits that put articles in the category in the last couple of hours, but there was no record of that in my watchlist. Johnuniq ( talk) 05:36, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Correction: I did enable "Hide...page categorization" on my watchlist after PrimeHunter's advice above. However, I just disabled it and displayed the most recent 1000 items on my watchlist. The text "Category:Age errors" does not appear in the result. I'm watching a couple of other categories and their membership changes also do not appear. I still have the default "Hide categorization of pages" in my preferences and I definitely have not changed anything in preferences for a long time. I am using Monobook and have no scripts. My first example above (for List of current UFC fighters) is very close to what appeared in my watchlist. I got that text by copying everything the browser displayed into an editor, then deleting all lines that did not contain "Category:Age", then manually recreating some of the links shown in the watchlist. I deleted the (talk contribs ...) user links that the watchlist shows. Johnuniq ( talk) 10:11, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Ammarpad: Your displayed watchlist entry is the normal entry you get by watching the article. If I also watch both category pages and uncheck "Hide categorization of pages" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist then I get three separate entries (links and formatting omitted):

14 September 2019

• (diff | hist) m Amir al-Mu'minin‎; 22:01 -52‎ ‎Mohanad Kh (talk | contribs‎) (-Category:Politics of Morocco; -Category:Jihad using HotCat un-related) (Tag: PHP7)
• (diff | hist) Category:Jihad‎; 22:01 ‎Mohanad Kh (talk | contribs‎)‎ (Amir al-Mu'minin removed from category, this page is included within other pages)
• (diff | hist) Category:Politics of Morocco‎; 22:01 ‎Mohanad Kh (talk | contribs‎)‎ (Amir al-Mu'minin removed from category, this page is included within other pages)

@ Johnuniq: If "Hide categorization of pages" is enabled at preferences then changing the option on the watchlist itself is only remembered during that watchlist session. Next time you click "Watclist", page categorization is hidden again. Are you unticking "Hide .. page categorization" on the watchlist page and then clicking the "Show" button (not the "Watchlist" link) right after? It works for me. PrimeHunter ( talk) 10:58, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm sorry about all the noise. It works exactly as you say. I must have accidentally clicked to remove the default tick in "Hide ... page categorization" thereby enabling page categorization in my watchlist. I had never seen that before and confusion followed. I confirm that after removing the tick again as an experiment, new changes to category membership appeared when I clicked Show. Thanks for your guidance. Johnuniq ( talk) 11:05, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh I see that. So this happens only when you're watching both the category page and the article concerned. Thanks. – Ammarpad ( talk) 11:12, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

You don't have to watch the article but you do have to watch the category. PrimeHunter ( talk) 11:19, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

13:26, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

There appears to be a problem with Navigation popups in showing previous versions of a page, in some cases showing vandalism. At 19:16, 20 September 2019‎ the Great Stink article was vandalised; it was reverted within a minute, but the pop up still shows the vandalised version. Any thoughts? – SchroCat ( talk) 07:22, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Its Page Previews not nav popups. Should be fixable by making a null edit or dummy edit. I filed T233777. There are a lot of caches in Wikimedia, sometimes something gets stuck, it happens. — TheDJ ( talk • contribs) 08:17, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Something is breaking the formatting on Woolworth Building. For some reason there is nearly a full page of blank space after the sentence "The ornate lobby contains various sculptures, mosaics, and architectural touches." I've tried a couple things but nothing worked. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{( What did I screw up now?)} 06:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I think your dummy edit (a minute before posting the above) must have fixed it because I don't see a problem now. Johnuniq ( talk) 07:27, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Johnuniq: I'm still seeing it even after a reload and cache purge. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{( What did I screw up now?)} 07:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@ TenPoundHammer: Please confirm we are talking about the second paragraph in the lead of Woolworth Building which has URL /info/en/?search=Woolworth_Building. What I mean is, you are not using the mobile website? I checked that there is nothing other than normal text following "and architectural touches." You pressed Ctrl+F5 or some other equivalent for the reload (not just F5)? Johnuniq ( talk) 07:47, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Johuniuq: Even after a ctrl-F5, it still looks like this. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{( What did I screw up now?)} 23:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

re-ping @ Johnuniq: since I misspelled the first time. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{( What did I screw up now?)} 23:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

So it's not after a sentence but after "The" at the end of a line. Your screenshot is in MonoBook. The default skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering is Vector. I see no problem in any tests, and I tried MonoBook with zoom and window width adjusted to get the same line breaks as you. What is your browser? Does it happen in Vector or safemode or when you log out? Does the broken sentence continue with "structure" later? Exactly where relative to the infobox? PrimeHunter ( talk) 23:36, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't happen in Vector or Safemode. The "structure" sentence continues after the very bottom of the infobox. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{( What did I screw up now?)} 01:52, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

What happens if you click the "is in MonoBook" link in PrimeHunter's comment? In theory, ?useskin=monobook should be the same as having monobook in preferences, but the different URL might get a different response from your browser? Johnuniq ( talk) 05:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

I was able to reproduce this in Monobook, but only if the width of the page is exactly 1349 pixels ( screenshot). rchard2scout ( talk) 10:35, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I appear to be having this same issue at #Darryl Jones below. Home Lander ( talk) 00:46, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Darryl Jones

There is a large blank area in the middle of Darryl Jones. I've tried to resolve it in preview; removing the image from the infobox removes some of the blank lines, but not all of them. Can someone figure out what is causing this? Thanks. Home Lander ( talk) 21:38, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I didn't see any abnormal blank area in the "middle" of the article. Did you mean after the external link section? – Ammarpad ( talk) 22:03, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Ammarpad, weird, I just tested the page and the blank area disappears if I shrink my brower's text size magnification. Must be a text wrapping issue. FWIW, I'm on Windows 10 64 bit, Chrome 77.0.3865.90, Vector skin. I'll see if I can get a screenshot uploaded here. Home Lander ( talk) 22:14, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

See File:Darryl jones blank.jpg. If I shrink the text size to 90% the page appears normal. Home Lander ( talk) 22:18, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, that shouldn't happen —you needn't to change the text default size for that large gap to disappear. If I shrink my text size to 90%, 80%..., it looks OK on Chrome 76.0.3809.13/MacOS. (Text gets a bit smaller accordingly, no any abnormal gap). So this may be an issue with Chrome 77. A similar problem (which I did reproduce) was reported in phab:T232066, whence a link to this Chromium bug report was given. In that task, the problem was supposedly fixed in Chrome 77.0.3865.70. So now I am not sure whether it's the same problem that returns or it's entirely different. – Ammarpad ( talk) 22:55, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

See #Woolworth Building above. Not resolved. Johnuniq ( talk) 23:33, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Johnuniq, yep, that looks to be the same problem. Ammarpad, poor choice of words on my part above, I meant to say adjusting my browser's magnification corrects the problem - everything shrinks - text, images, etc. Home Lander ( talk) 00:38, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Should have mentioned that Woolworth Building does display correctly for me, which is quite odd IMO. Home Lander ( talk) 00:43, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I can reproduce this one as well, with a page width of exactly 1583 pixels, and at a width of 1555 pixels. Worth noting that this one happens in Vector, while Woolworth Building happens in Monobook. Tested on both Chrome 76.0.3809.100 on Ubuntu 19.04 and Chrome 77.0.3865.90 on Windows 10. I also tested on Edge 41.16299.1004.0, but the problem does not occur there. rchard2scout ( talk) 10:24, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I have two column edit-conflict enabled as a Beta feature and it seems that VE is unable to process any edit-conflicts. I was frequently conflicting with an IP over Rupi Kaur and every single time (thrice), the publish button returned a 404 error. I needed to relaunch the edit-page and re-write it, pending which it was possible to publish. ∯WBG ^converse 15:28, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

This seems to be (or related to) #cannot save edits 404 error. There are bug reports for it, such as phab:T230272. – Ammarpad ( talk) 15:38, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

​And phab:T233320 as the parent task. {{ping| waddie96}} { talk} 15:17, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm using the timeless wikipedia skin, and is there a way to remove the right-hand column, either in the settings or with JS? If it does involve JS, could you show me the code which does it? Thanks! Aven 12:50, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

To completely remove it, add #mw-related-navigation { display: none; } to your Special:MyPage/timeless.css page. -- AntiCompositeNumber ( talk) 14:55, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

There was a preference for this recently added. Maybe only on beta.wp right now? Isarra? -- Izno ( talk) 16:15, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, that change got reverted and the feature is no longer available. Apparently ResourceLoader doesn't really support anything involving preferences due to... well, a lack of actually handling modules in any sane way, frankly. Every module gets added to a giant list and is sent out every visit in the js regardless of whether or not it's apt to be remotely relevant, and that's kind of not good and apparently results in something like 4TB of pointless data transfer on wikimedia sites per month. Naturally we (basically everyone, really) were only told about this after this particular feature went out (among, like, several hundred other things also using modules for everything from dependency management to separation of code), and, naturally, there really isn't anything we can use to do this properly and not add to the problem. So, uh... I'm not really sure what to say. Or do. (There is apparently a proposal to remove/separate out skin-specific modules, which might help resolve this, at least, but I'm not actually sure if it will as it's not really clear what's being proposed in practice. And frankly I'm really tired of trying to figure it out, as those involved are possibly even worse at effective communication than I am and it took several months to get to the bottom of what the objections were at all.)

Anyway, if you want to do it locally you should be able to use css to just override the flex-positioning of the right sidebar, and maybe making the middle column wider? Might be enough with just that. Not sure, and at the moment I sadly don't really have time to try to figure it out myself. (Might be worth adding a gadget if you do figure out a way, though.) -— Isarra ༆ 19:58, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Isarra Thanks, glad I wasn't crazy. Could you maybe provide the CSS in question for Aven13? We might also consider starting a Help:Timeless or WP:Skin/Timeless for the more-common questions that pop up that maybe can't be fixed on the developer side right now (like this one). -- Izno ( talk) 20:06, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Or possibly Wikipedia:Customisation/Timeless. -- Izno ( talk) 20:07, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Izno: At the moment, I'm just too busy, sorry. If it comes to it, can you remind me in a month or so? (Or file a task for it on the workboard so it's tracked, even if it is about an onwiki thing?) -— Isarra ༆ 22:42, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll, er, Phab-bug you. :) -- Izno ( talk) 00:01, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed the toollabs viewcount tool we use for DYK is down. When you click on the link, it buffers for a few seconds then shows you no results and no name in the search bar as usual. You also cannot manually enter the name as the system doesn't appear to recognise you have typed in the box. Could this be looked at please? The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 07:03, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Reported at m:Talk:Pageviews Analysis where a few other people seem to be having the same problem. the wub "?!" 09:54, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

This should be resolved. Apologies for the disruption! — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:44, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@ The C of E: Could you point to me where that link lives? I assume it is a template. There are a few problems: for one it doesn't specify the project (en.wikipedia.org). It just happens to go to the right place because that's incidentally the default. Also it appears it's putting in the date range incorrectly, with the end date 10 days in the future. That's not really a problem, but you will unnecessarily see warnings in the tool. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:03, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

It's {{ DYK talk}} on Talk:Glory to Hong Kong. It requests an interval from 10 days before to 10 days after an article appeared in DYK, so page views before and after can be compared. If you click within the first 10 days then you get a future end date. The template could be coded to check for this and change the link, but if the talk page isn't rendered again for a long time then you can miss page view data that actually exists by the time the link is clicked. PrimeHunter ( talk) 18:57, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@ PrimeHunter: and @ MusikAnimal:, I've had to remove the resolved tag because when I click the link here and at the talk page, it's still doing the same thing so the problem hasn't been fixed yet. The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 19:19, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@ The C of E: You might need to clear your browser cache. Could you try that? Eventually it will clear itself. This issue (not serving the latest code) has been there all along, and I'm working on a solution to that.

@ PrimeHunter: Good points. Let's just leave the date parameters as-is. I did add the project to the URL, though. Thanks, — MusikAnimal ^talk 19:40, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Based on https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/url_structure/ the link could add mutevalidations=true the first 10 days to avoid a warning. PrimeHunter ( talk) 20:20, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Ha! A feature I forgot about :) I think we can mute validations all the time, in this case, rather than deal with extra templating logic. Any other warnings or critical errors will still be shown, say if a nonexistent article was requested, or that pageviews aren't yet available for new pages, etc. — MusikAnimal ^talk 20:40, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

@ The C of E: I believe I've finally got this fixed, and you don't need to clear your cache either. Please confirm :)

If anyone cares, the issue was that there was a bug in the code where it shows warnings, in this case for an end date that's in the future. This is why it didn't affect but so many people; there aren't many links to specific date ranges as is the case with {{ DYK talk}}, rather usually they link to the latest data, such as with MediaWiki:Histlegend. It only took me ~3 hours to figure this out! Polish Wikpedia was using parser functions to set the date range in their Histlegend that sometimes went into the future, and that's why they had the same issue. — MusikAnimal ^talk 04:51, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Seems fine now. The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 15:16, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

I've discovered a few issues with Template:Graph:Chart. I made my first comment at the talk page a few days ago but it hasn't received any replies, so I'm hoping a message here will spark some interest. The sections are Template_talk:Graph:Chart#Problem_with_<nowiki>_and_this_template and Template_talk:Graph:Chart#showSymbols_doesn't_respect_opacity_values. 202.159.169.45 ( talk) 23:52, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

And still nothing! Is there anywhere else I can go to see if someone will take an interest? 202.159.169.45 ( talk) 03:41, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

And still nothing!! Good to see the Wikipedia "community" doing its usual bang-up job. 202.159.169.45 ( talk) 03:34, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Resident Mario, Yurik, MSG17, Mps, and Tom.Reding: Pings to the modules contributors. -- Trialpears ( talk) 06:16, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Recently there has been a number of reported issues with the graphs - please report on phabricator to let the devs know when you discover a new one. Thanks! -- Yurik ( talk) 15:48, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Makes sense that I’d see notices posted on watched editor’s talk pages, but why see that another editor “has opted-out of message delivery”? Hyperbolick ( talk) 14:23, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

It's a warning, to indicate that the relevant subscription list (which is meta:The Wikipedia Library/Newsletter/Recipients) has that person ( Winged Blades of Godric) listed as a subscriber, and either should be removed from the subscription list, or should opt back in to mass messages (by reverting this edit). -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 14:34, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

( edit conflict) @ Hyperbolick: it is a known quirk ( phab:T73600) that noone has spent programing time on to review. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:35, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Feels like not my business to see somebody else’s opt-outs or preferences. Or others mine. Hyperbolick ( talk) 14:37, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Hyperbolick: these are publicly logged, so it's not a privacy leak. From your screenshot it looks like you are purposefully showing "bot" edits on your W/L, you can toggle that off and remove a lot of "junk". — xaosflux ^Talk 14:40, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Hyperbolick: Feels like not my business to see somebody else’s opt-outs or preferences. You're watching their talkpage, that is why you're notified of actions that happen on it. So you really have business with the page —and any other page you watch. – Ammarpad ( talk) 14:50, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Also note, unlike most Special:Preferences, this preference is actually a category someone puts themselves in to on their page - so it is also not something private. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:15, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Is there a way to disable the scrolling arrow buttons in the bottom right? Appear to be added to WP:ITNC recently and displayed by default. Brandmeister ^talk 10:42, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

They were added by Nixinova yesterday. You can hide them for yourself (on all pages) by adding the following css to your common.css:

.skip-to-top-button .skip-to-bottom-button {
	display: none !important;
}

rchard2scout ( talk) 10:59, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

That won't work, there are no elements matching that selector. Also, you shouldn't need the !important annotation. This should work:

#skip-to-top-button,
#skip-to-bottom-button {
  display: none;
}

If this rule isn't taking, the thing to do is not to throw !important annotations at it, but check the selectors and, if necessary, increase their specificity:

div#skip-to-top-button,
div#skip-to-bottom-button {
  display: none;
}

It's rare that the !important annotation is necessary - usually, it's a cop-out. The thing is, once it has been used, it becomes much harder to override. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 13:48, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

It works without div or !important. I have added it to the documentation. [34] PrimeHunter ( talk) 14:12, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Works, thanks. Brandmeister ^talk 20:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

In Template talk:Update § "This template"? I wrote

The text displayed at the top of this template's page says (boldface added):

This template needs to be updated. Please update this template to reflect recent events or newly available information. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page.

Is this template supposed to be used only to update templates??? Or if it really is a comment/warning about {{ Update}}, where's the sample text (template output) that's usually at the top of a template page?

Having read the documentation more carefully since writing that, I see that the message says "template" there because it's being included in a template. In an article or section it would say "article" or "section" instead:

The template detects which namespace it is used in and changes accordingly: ...

I've been editing Wikipedia for 14 years and I have never encounteredv this kind of confusion before, where the example text of a template displayed at the top of its page appears to say (falsely) that the template is to be used only in templates. That part of the documentation needs a warning, an assurance that the template is not just for use in templates, but happens to say "template" there because it's being used in a template-doc page. And that explanation should include a link to § Example; I didn't twig to the explanation till I got to that section. Adding such a warning adjacent to the example text of a template doc would probably be very non-standard, but this is a non-standard situation. Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. -- Thnidu ( talk) 02:12, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

@ Thnidu: I am afraid to say there's no any confusion there, that's how all templates that detect namespace works unless they are deliberately modified to display something different in the template namespace. The template uses {{SUBJECTSPACE}} magic word that returns the name of the namespace where the template is. So if the template is in template namespace, then definitely the name to return is "Template."

The documentation is clear too. Nowhere it says the template is for "use only in templates." In fact it explicitly says the opposite: This template can be used to mark articles or sections with old or out-of-date information. Actually, you're only confused because you're releasing this for the first time. – Ammarpad ( talk) 03:51, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

It for example happens for any template displaying "project page" on Wikipedia:Template messages/Deletion. noinclude and includeonly can be used to control what is displayed on the template page itself versus transclusions (a documentation part with example displays would count as transclusions with this method). {{ Update}} could for example say | demospace = {{{demospace|<noinclude>main</noinclude>}}} to display "article" on the template page. PrimeHunter ( talk) 04:15, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I already have code on my vector.css page that recolors redirects green, which I find very helpful. I was wondering if I could do something similar for wikilinks that go directly to a page without using a redirect; I find the dark blue and black difficult to distinguish between when text is not in bold and my screen is not at full brightness, and I would really rather keep my screen at the minimum brightness setting. IF possible, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's not, I would also like to know how to turn the background black and the regular text white; that would obviate any need to recolor direct wikilinks. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 19:24, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Something like a:not(.mw-redirect) { style: here; } should work. The second request is possible but much more difficult to do given the number of stylings to be made if you want the colors consistent; someone has a user script for it hanging around but I don't have that to hand. -- Izno ( talk) 19:51, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I can't figure out how to insert that code without generating an error. Anything else I try seems to have no effect. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 21:26, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

What exactly did you put? It seems you've not saved whatever it was. Anyway, to change the links to green (for instance), you need to save a:not(.mw-redirect) { color: green; } in your vector.css. I don't know why Izno decided to give you extra work. And for your second question, you can use this script being developed by WMF. – Ammarpad ( talk) 22:09, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I used the Preview function because the notice on the .css page says, "The code will be executed when previewing this page." I tried monkeying around with a few things, hitting Preview, and using a random article to see if it affected the wikilinks at all. No matter what HTML color code I used, nothing happened, and yes, I did purge my cache with each refresh of the article I tested it on. Otherwise, I kept getting errors with the red X and yellow !, so I didn't even bother previewing things when I saw those in the edit window. I didn't want to save the page for fear I'd totally screw something up. I should point out I'm pretty useless with code; I have tried learning it before but always hit a roadblock that prevented me from studying any further. So really what I'm asking here is for someone else to do the work for me, hee hee Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 22:17, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't think previewing the change can make it come into effect on other pages when you haven't saved it. -- qedk ( t 桜 c) 22:25, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Right. The code is only executed in the preview itself. My skin is Vector and if I preview Special:MyPage/vector.css with a:not(.mw-redirect) { color: green; } then many links in the preview become green. Some things cannot be tested this way because they don't appear on the css or js page you are editing. Browsers usually have a feature to view a page with added css or js you can enter somewhere in the browser. PrimeHunter ( talk) 11:12, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

( edit conflict) Okay, I installed the script you suggested, but I can't find the switch to turn it on. Would it be located somewhere in the "Vector (default | Preview | Custom CSS | Custom JavaScript)" bunch? Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 22:26, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Wait, nevermind, I found it. It's up at the top of the screen. Thanks for all the help everyone, I'll be glad to help test this script! 22:30, 28 September 2019 (UTC) Zeke, the Mad Horrorist ^{(Speak quickly)} _{(Follow my trail)} 22:31, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I emended the help page so that the link your common.js takes you to the actual page where the script should be installed. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 11:38, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

When Template:Anchor is placed after the section title, the browser may scroll the page, so that the section title is just out of view. When the anchor is placed before the section title, then the anchor belongs to the preceding section, and it is not visible in a section edit. So the proper place for an anchor is the section title. However, then the template code will appear in the edit summary of a section edit. It is therefore suggested to use direct HTML (by substituting the template). In the German Wikipedia, a solution to this issue was implemented in August 2012, and it is strongly recommended to use the anchor in a section title ( de:Hilfe:Überschrift#anchor). So, please, implement the German solution.-- 77.6.73.196 ( talk) 13:28, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

The German solution requires active javascript to work. MOS:SECTIONSTYLE recommends substituting the template or using <span> directly as you mention, but there are a lot of unsubstituted template invocations. Perhaps a bot could be tasked to tidy these up? -- Mirokado ( talk) 13:46, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

What happens if there isn't JavaScript active? -- Trialpears ( talk) 13:57, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

The template code remains in the edit summary for edits by users without JavaScript. Compare https://de.wikipedia.org/?title=Boson&action=edit&section=1 and https://de.wikipedia.org/?title=Boson&action=edit&section=1&safemode=1, where safemode=1 doesn't load local JavaScript for the wiki. Their code to remove the code from the edit summary is in de:MediaWiki:Common.js. Any added JavaScript slows down the site and increases the risk of errors so I'm not sure it's worth it. If I zoom out enough to have the edit summary in view from the beginning then I can see the code being removed after page load. PrimeHunter ( talk) 14:29, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

The documentation for {{ anchor}} already mentions this. -- Redrose64 🌹 ( talk) 13:54, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I oppose non-opt-in JavaScript for this. I would support a bot to subst {{ anchor}}s in section headings (if run continuously, such a bot would greatly reduce the need for any JS even at user level). The description of the subst technique is currently buried at Template:Anchor#Limitations (bullet 4), and I would also support the addition of a strong recommendation to that doc's lead. ― Mandruss  ☎ 15:33, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Based on a search [35] there are currently around 7000 pages with {{ anchor}} in a section heading. That sounds suited for a bot. PrimeHunter ( talk) 15:57, 29 September 2019 (UTC)