Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 195

Add 'Subscribe to discussions I edit' to Preferences
I currently have "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist" enabled in section Watched pages in Preferences tab Watchlist, and my Notifications tab notifies me about subscribed discussions. But I'd like to fine tune my preferences (not sure which tab), to propose a new, Subscribe to discussions I edit so that happens automatically, on any page with 'talk' as part of the prefix. Concomitantly, there might need to be another watchlist preference (or divide the current one in two: talk, and non-talk) so that if enabled, it adds non-talk pages that I edit to my watchlist, but does *not* add talk pages to my watchlist if the 'Subscribe to discussions I edit' is enabled. This would be helpful for fast-moving talk pages with many sections. Mathglot (talk) 23:40, 22 December 2022 (UTC)


 * @Mathglot There should be an automatically subscribe to topics selection in: Special:Preferences. Do you have that on? — xaosflux  Talk 22:56, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I do now, thanks. I did not expect to see that in the "Editing" tab; I looked in Notifications (and Watchlist) and didn't see it there. Any reason that a particular preference item that seems to straddle a topic boundary couldn't be placed on more than one tab? I would not have found it, without your message, as I don't think of enabling an automatic notification as an "editing" issue. Mathglot (talk) 23:05, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @Mathglot I think it is there because it is grouped with all of the other Discussion Tools configuration items (and it is only available if you also enable other of those options). Technically, I suppose it could be on multiple tabs, but this wouldn't be the first like that (e.g. Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist that is not on the watchlist tab). You can give the team working on DT feedback about this at: mw:Talk:Talk pages project. — xaosflux  Talk 13:44, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Contents box dynamic scrolling
Hi, Not sure if this is the right place for this or if somebody already posted something similar, probably yes, anyway, I was not able to find it. Was wondering if the contents box on especially for lengthy wiki entries could be made more dynamic so that it moves down (or up) the page as you read. Even better would be if it is possible to fold it in (so that you don't have to look at the full table of contents all the time) and that it is this folded in tiny box that moves up and down the page. A 'move to top' and 'move to bottom' arrow(s) would be great too.

Dokuwiki has already developed this tool / api: https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki

I believe they call it a navigation box. De Morgenstond (talk) 14:56, 27 December 2022 (UTC)


 * @De Morgenstond Soon this project is going to be moving to the Vector 2022 skin, which includes a complete redesign of the contents system. It is being moved to the sidebar, follows you up the page as you read and is collapsible. That link takes you to a page on mediawiki, a project that has already swapped to the new skin, where you can get some idea of how it will look. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 15:30, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @De Morgenstond see page example here; is that what you were thinking of? You can enable the Vector (2022) skin in Special:Preferences if you like that. —  xaosflux  Talk 16:17, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
 * yes, thanks a lot De Morgenstond (talk) 23:58, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Replace GIF with PNG, APNG or SVG in most cases
As title, since GIF's compression method is inferior to PNG's, and does not support true color or color management at all, and graphics files that can be expressed in vector should be SVG rather than other formats in webpages. Some might argue that because Internet Explorer never supports APNG this format should not be used. Nonsense, because (1) IE is now rarely used (2) Mediawiki already stopped giving IE11 modern support (3) Because Microsoft stopped supporting IE11, people should stop using it (unless in a virtual machine) for the sake of cybersecurity.--RekishiEJ (talk) 17:19, 20 December 2022 (UTC)


 * @RekishiEJ this page is for concrete, actionable proposals. How do you propose this is done? — xaosflux  Talk 11:16, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Non-animated GIF files should be replaced by PNG or SVG, depending on the content, unless in GIF and its related articles, such as GIF art. Animated GIF ones should be replaced by SVG or APNG in most cases. --RekishiEJ (talk) 15:48, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @RekishiEJ that's more of a "what" not a "how". You are free to remaster most any file and upload a new version. As far as a non-animated GIF, if the issue is that it is lossy, you can't un-lossy it from the GIF directly. For example, here is a file that someone very recently uploaded: File:HDSSD- Croatian Democratic Freedom Alliance of Dalmatia.gif; you are free to create a new version in your preferred file format, but how do you propose this gets done if you aren't going to be the one to do it? —  xaosflux  Talk 15:57, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * We have several tags you can apply to images that are of poor filetype, and some editors work on them: Bad GIF autopopulates Category:Images with inappropriate GIF compression. Same is true on commons, where BadGIF autopopulates commons:Category:Images with inappropriate GIF format. DMacks (talk) 16:02, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah I think the question that Rekish needs to put to a discussion is whether to deprecate GIF uploads. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 17:12, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Keeping in mind that most uploads are not here, on the English Wikipedia, but on commonswiki. — xaosflux  Talk 17:43, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah probably should have mentioned that as well, with the overall point that this is a discussion that mostly needs to happen on Commons first. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 19:45, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
 * APNG is still not universally supported. According to https://caniuse.com/apng, it's still not supported by Opera Mini browsers.Blue Pumpkin Pie (talk) 17:06, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, Opera Mini is rarely used worldwide, according to Can I Use..., and by replacing animated GIF by APNG and announcing the fact that Mediawiki and Wikimedia projects no longer can support Opera Mini can force Opera Mini users to use browsers that support APNG instead, forcing Opera Software to make Opera Mini support APNG.--RekishiEJ (talk) 04:49, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
 * mw:Compatibility lists the browsers supported by MediaWiki. Opera v.18+ is supported; Opera Mini is not mentioned. (Also, I don't think that "unable to see one or more images in 1% of articles" would actually constitute being "unsupported".) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)