Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 132

Phabricator update
For those of you who deal with bug reports and the like, the current, tentative notion is that Bugzilla will go offline on 21 November, and Phabricator will go live the following Monday or Tuesday, after importing things. You can read more about it at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T15

It would probably be a good idea to think about what needs to be updated here (e.g., the recommendation that bugs be reported at Bugzilla at the top of this page). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:31, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The bugzilla page says "The migration from Bugzilla to Phabricator is planned to start on November 21st." So bugs are unavailable until "the following Monday or Tuesday, after importing things"? Really? --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 19:14, 9 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Apparently it will take all weekend, and maybe a little longer, to import the entire database. It may be possible read everything, but you won't be able to add new information during that time.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 10 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not a simple task. Nobody has done a Bugzilla to Phabricator migration before, and ours needs to handle 73k reports. You have the planned sequence of steps at Phabricator/versus_Bugzilla. We hope you enjoy your bug-free weekend. ;) --Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:51, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

2x office hours about the Bugzilla to Phabricator migration
Hi, next week we will host two office hours to answer your questions about the Bugzilla to Phabricator migration:


 * Tuesday 18 Novembre 16:00 UTC
 * Tuesday 18 Novembre 23:00 UTC

On, as usual. The plan is to start the migration on Friday 21 November at 00:30 UTC. We will post more information, but in the meantime you can check the details at Phabricator/versus_Bugzilla.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 23:48, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

History time stamps wrong
Why are the time stamps here one hour in the future? SpinningSpark 13:04, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing them as 01:37 and 01:43 UTC, which is over 11 hours ago. It is now 13:16 UTC. What times are you seeing? -- John of Reading (talk) 13:17, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Aaargh. 24-hour clock. I thought they were just posted now. SpinningSpark 13:28, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Template help needed
While reading Green Line bus route 724, I found some severe mayhem halfway down the page: should be visible on this revision. I assume a template has gone funny somewhere. Can anybody help?  Hassocks 5489  (Floreat Hova!)  20:29, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It was this edit, which I reverted some hours ago, but a number of pages are still broken as a result. All you need do is WP:PURGE. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:43, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Great, that's fixed it – thanks.  Hassocks  5489  (Floreat Hova!)  20:46, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Someone arrived
at a new article, The Sciences and The Arts Fountains, and placed geo-coordinates (?) in the middle of the text. It's a good idea to have them some where but I do not think that how it is done is how it should be done. Can you help? Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 14:53, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Technically it's a valid thing to do but in this case, because the two fountains are so close together, I think it would be better to have a single coordinate in the header. MOS:COORDS and WP:WikiProject Geographical coordinates may (or may not) help. Thincat (talk) 15:06, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I've put each one of them in their respective image caption. This looks clean enough. Cenarium (talk) 15:14, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That looks fine to me as well. Thincat (talk) 15:18, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Google thinks Neuron may be hacked


I just Googled "Neuron", and the first hit was Wikipedia's article. Under the article url, Google displayed the message "This site may be hacked", a phrase that doesn't appear in the Village Pump or Help Desk archives. Clicking the message took me here, which was uninformative. I couldn't see anything unusual at the article (not that I'd know what to look for), unless you count this bit of juvenile vandalism, which I guess Google might have interpreted as some kind of hack if it happened to crawl the article in the brief window while the vandalism was live.

Anyone got any idea what could be up? Is there anywhere this should be reported? Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 03:22, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm in Adelaide, Australia, in case it's an issue with a local server. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 03:27, 12 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I get the same message in Florida. --NE2 03:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Same in Hong Kong. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 03:36, 12 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Googling and clicking "repeat the search with the omitted results included" shows Google has indexed the article at both https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/neuron?previous=yes. "This site may be hacked" is only displayed for the former. The latter was cached by Google 26 Oct 2014 22:12:30 GMT. The former does not show Google's cache on the little green down-arrow, maybe because Google suspects it is hacked. I don't know a direct way to see when they indexed it when their cache is not shown, but the search  shows "This page was last modified on 24 June 2014 at 23:52." That should be [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neuron&oldid=614293676 this] old version which was next edited 19 July. Google usually seems to index articles frequently. Did they stop revisiting it after they thought it was hacked? I have no idea why they think it. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:02, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Is there a Wikipedia administrator with a Google Webmaster Tools account? If so, they should be able to find out the reason why Google thinks the site is hacked. 71.178.51.4 (talk) 05:04, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This was discovered by a week ago: search for "neuron" in the IRC log here. I don't know if anything was done about it. As you can see from the log, no-one seems to know if there is a Google Webmaster Tools account for English Wikipedia, or if there is, who can access it.
 * On the advice of I filed a bug in Bugzilla: 73305 Hopefully this gets some eyes on it. — This, that and the other (talk)  11:35, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks all. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:34, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * According to the Google Webmaster Tools:

Currently, we haven't detected any security issues with your site's content. If you want to learn more about security issues and how they could affect your site, review our resources for hacked sites.
 * I'm guessing whatever it was has either been fixed, or was a false positive... Reedy (talk) 13:03, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 2014110510000676, I had a user discuss this issue as well a week ago. ///Euro Car  GT  03:15, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Google still indexes the June 24 version and says "This site may be hacked". Can you resubmit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron with the procedure at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812? It says "You can submit up to 500 individual URLs per week in this way." Is there a general way for editors to request resubmission of an article in case of serious BLP vandalism or other problems in the version indexed by Google? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Not been granted enough rights. Poking ops to get more access... Reedy (talk) 12:36, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, done now. Reedy (talk) 14:28, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Google hasn't changed anything yet but I will post here if something happens. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:35, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Success! Within the last hours, the above Google search has changed to say "This page was last modified on 17 November 2014", and it no longer says "This site may be hacked". Thanks again Reedy. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:59, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

HotCat bug?
I have just used HotCat to add an article to Category:Youth organisations (with an "s"). That was automatically changed to Category:Redirects from alternative spellings. (The former is a redirect to Category:Youth organizations (with a "z")). What's broken? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:02, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Probably HotCat that's broken. It shouldn't offer cats that are in, nor should it offer cats bearing -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:52, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It appears that you found a bug in HotCat. You can report it at Commons:MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-HotCat.js. Ruslik_ Zero 20:53, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Reported, and solution suggested. I'd say it's OK that HotCat offers redirects (you can just type them in anyway), as long as it's properly resolving them. The latter failed here, but I think that can be fixed for all realistic cases. &mdash;&thinsp; H HHIPPO   22:13, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Fixed. May need making your browser reload its cache to get the change immediately; otherwise the fix will propagate as the MediaWiki servers see fit. Lupo 22:29, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Insert symbol box vanished
The box of symbols on my editing page has disappeared. Rothorpe (talk) 21:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Can anyone help with this, please? Rothorpe (talk) 13:51, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, I had something similar and this discussion solved the problem. But if others are experiencing it, maybe it's worth looking into for more than a case-by-case basis. Victoria (tk) 14:09, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Victoria. Do you mean I shold try blanking the page User:Rothorpe/monobook.js? Rothorpe (talk) 15:10, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * worth trying, no? especially since its content is completely useless, and causes js errors which might be the reason other scripts fail for you, you got nothing to lose...
 * i'd say, blank User:Rothorpe/vector.js too while you are at it. it's just as useless (or just as harmful), and you might want to switch to vector someday, peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 15:17, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Success! Many thanks to you both. Rothorpe (talk) 16:13, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, yes, I blanked the page, got the symbols back (to my enormous relief) and then I started adding back the scripts I use the most, one at a time. I've managed to put back the dashes script and the page size script and haven't encountered problems. I use monobook, btw. Victoria (tk) 19:00, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't use scripts, but I've got all my symbols back, and more neatly arranged than before. Big thanks again! Rothorpe (talk) 19:08, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You might assume that you don't use scripts because User:Rothorpe/monobook.js is empty; but the feature in question is a script, as are most of the other gadgets and some non-gadget features that are present on most pages (such as the code for expanding and collapsing boxes, or sorting tables).
 * When you had this in your monobook.js, that isn't valid Javascript (if you had wanted a single character there, a semicolon would have been valid); and it broke some of the other scripts because the MediaWiki software takes your monobook.js, all the gadgets that you have enabled, and some more Javascript code too (collapse, sort, etc.) and makes one big JavaScript file. If your browser doesn't like one tiny part of that, it might chuck the lot out the window. Not all browsers are so picky though. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:33, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. I think I more or less understand. Someone told me I needed to type something, anything there a long time ago, I forget why. So should I continue to leave it blank? Rothorpe (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A blank file does nothing; a single semicolon also does nothing. It doesn't matter which you use. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:47, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, thank you. Rothorpe (talk) 20:53, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Languages & continents
When I hover the "Languages" menu item (say in main page; in the LH tool bar), I see that there is a continent added called "Middle East". Where can I ask about this? WP:VPT, enwiki, mw? -DePiep (talk) 12:05, 15 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't see it. It sounds odd. Are you saying it happens when you hover over the "Languages" heading at Main Page without clicking anything? Where is the text placed? Does it say "continent" or list continents? Does it happen on all pages, for example Libartowo and Corwen F.C.? What is your browser and skin? Does it happen when you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:38, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I found it. With Preferences, Beta, Compact language links on, if you click the three dots under the short language list. Thincat (talk) 15:55, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I also had to disable the SidebarTranslate gadget to see it. DePiep, are you saying you see this when hovering and not clicking? Does it claim "continent"? They are regions, including "Worldwide" for some widespread languages, and "Pacific" on some articles, for example Cat. I get "About 160,000 results" on a Google search of "Middle Eastern Languages". It's a common concept. The feature is enabled at Special:Preferences which has a "discussion" link to mw:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links. It mw:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links has a post mentioning the issue. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:32, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I have various betas enabled (ask me for more info). Excample page George W. Bush. Under some ten iw "Languages" mentioned, there is the "..." box/button (suggesting: more here); below that it says "139 more languages" - unlinked. Now when I click that button (not just hovering ), I get a popup(?) that lists languages "Language search; common languages; etc.". My question is where this is set or maintained. -DePiep (talk) 15:09, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's part of mw:Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector which is made by the Wikimedia Foundation. The source code can be downloaded but the English Wikipedia does not have access to change the code. I don't know whether it has a setting to choose language groups for a specific wiki but even if it does, I guess it would require a developer to set it. As mentioned, you can discuss the feature at mw:Talk:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links. mw:Universal Language Selector/Design/Interlanguage links specifically says "Please leave feedback at the talk page." PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

"Template:flag|Islamic State"
Can you advise about how to get into and revise Islamic State ? The main article on Wikipedia on the topic is known by consensus as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and yet, for whatever reason/motivation, content is still in existence/being created under the non consensus name Islamic State. One usage of the template is at Template:Iraqi insurgency (2011–present) infobox. Any help to resolve this would be appreciated.

Gregkaye ✍ ♪  16:30, 15 November 2014 (UTC)


 * produces Islamic State with the piped link "Islamic State" going to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, so I'm not sure what the issue is.   produces  Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant with an unpiped link to the same article. Are you saying flag should ignore which name is specified in the parameter and always display the long name? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:46, 15 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Exactly yes. Just "Islamic State" (the non-consensus name) should never display regardless of what is input. Legacypac (talk) 16:34, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * invokes Template:Country data Islamic State, which redirects to Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Deleting the "Islamic State" redirects (Template:Country data The Islamic State is another) would prevent these aliases from being used but should be discussed at WP:RFD.
 * As an alternative to flag, which uses the given first parameter as displayed name by default, there is flagcountry which displays a standard name specified within the country data templates. results in  undefined. The displayed name can be overridden using name in both templates. SiBr4 (talk) 16:56, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This works because "Islamic State" is an alias in Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and because redirects to that template. Removing the alias from the template would break all the pages which use it, so instead you can just use   (which produces  Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) on the pages you need to change. If that's too long you can use   as well (which produces  ISIS). You can also manually specify a name with the name, e.g.   (which produces  ISIS). See more options at Template:Flag. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 17:00, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

SiBr4 and Mr. Stradivarius  that's all a great help and appreciated. Gregkaye ✍ ♪  17:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

On another point can anyone help with Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. In the "Redirect aliases" it would be really helpful to add "ISIL" and to remove "Iraq and the Levant", "The Islamic State" and "Islamic State". from the list. Any advice will be appreciated. Gregkaye ✍ ♪  01:33, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * SiBr4, Mr. Stradivarius , can you help? Gregkaye ✍ ♪  09:57, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * already removed the "Islamic State" and "The Islamic State" redirects from the list in Template:Country data Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The actual redirects still exist though. Entries can be added and removed from redirect lists quite easily; see Template:Country showdata/doc. SiBr4 (talk) 10:27, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note that the "ISIL" redirect was already added in the template code with this edit, but it was not displayed because the five-redirect limit of Template:Country showdata was exceeded. SiBr4 (talk) 10:43, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * My intent is exactly like Gregkaye. If someone inputs flag|Islamic State it needs to display "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant".  I don't want it not to work at all. Now if I could just understand how to get that. Legacypac (talk) 16:30, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Ping SiBr4 re: query by Legacypac if that's OK. I still have another issue that I will try and raise in a separate thread.  The two of us have are amongst those that have been working against a lot of non-consensus editing.  And this support would be appreciated.  I have just gone through the article usages of Template:Country data The Islamic State and Template:Country data Islamic State and changed text either to ISIL or to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.  I have not made changes on User pages that link to the templates but a simple delete of the templates may also be in order.  However Legacypac's suggestion is preferable if possible.  Thanks.  Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  16:59, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Adding a simple parser function to the data template could prevent the name "Islamic State" from being the displayed name.  should do that.   would even set the displayed name to ISIL regardless of the first parameter and name, preventing any other name from being used. I doubt whether using either of these would be a good idea. SiBr4 (talk) 21:06, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * SiBr4, excellent. Is this ok?  Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  09:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This is, though again it would display ISIL even if the name is explicitly set, e.g. . SiBr4 (talk) 09:20, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Amount of work for "What links here" to distinguish between links from within templates and those that aren't.
One thing that I've look for almost since I started editing wikipedia about 10 years ago is the ability to tell which entries in "What links here" are from links in templates from those that aren't. Can someone please give me an estimate on how long it would take someone (or someones) who know what they are doing to implement that? (On a scale from, "Yeah, I've got a few minutes" to "tear down the entire coding of how the wiki software works")Naraht (talk) 15:02, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A related thread was recently archived to Village pump (technical)/Archive 131. SiBr4 (talk) 21:27, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Which in turn linked to an even more complete discussion in Archive 122. Would it be worthwhile to set up an Frequently Requested Features (FRF) page? Note the suggestion to get around this was a insource search with Regexp, but the insource search in Mainspace only of insource:"Alpha Phi Omega" does most of what I want.Naraht (talk) 21:45, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Creating automatically links
I have the idea of a bot which links automatically non-linked pages to a specific page by analysing what pages are visited after a specific page (which should be part of the same theme). Example: Many persons which were on the page tree visited after this the page plant to inform also about plants. Because there was no link in tree to plant they had to search for it in the searchbox. The bot would recognize that many persons visit plant after visting tree and turn the already, in the text of tree, existing word "plant" into a link. Is this possible? --Impériale (talk) 17:32, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It is possible. But is it a good idea?  See WP:OVERLINK for one side of it.  Doing this automatically doesn't seem compelling.  If you think a link should be added, it is the Encyclopedia which anyone can edit for a reason.  —EncMstr (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the problem with the overlinking could be solved with a order that makes the bot only adding f.e. the 10 most often after-searched pages (and of course not linking already linked pages). Of course the links could also be added by ourselves but this bot would place links on pages where we, the authors, just don't know that a link should be placed. On the other side there are many readers which see pages with missing links but they're often just too unmotivated or don't know how to do it. Furthermore the bot would undertake much redundant work and because of that safe much time and nerves. --Impériale (talk) 22:09, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I am not sure we actually log this sort of user-specific browsing information in any useful way (and tbh, I'm not sure if we should). Andrew Gray (talk) 20:07, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Yahoo will be right back
Did anyone else have trouble over the last 10 minutes or so getting a Yahoo error message? I mean from any Wikipedia page, including previewing an edit. The core content was:
 * (Yahoo logo) Will be right back...
 * Thank you for your patience.
 * Our engineers are working quickly to resolve the issue.

—EncMstr (talk) 18:48, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia has no relation with Yahoo. If you get a Yahoo error, then you must be using one of their services (proxy, DNS), and one of those is having problems.  19:02, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I am well aware of the (non)relationship. However, either my browser has something seriously wrong, or there is an injection problem on some of the servers.  I was wondering if it is only me.  —EncMstr (talk) 19:28, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Strange. Maybe you were unable to reach the Wikipedia servers and your browser tried to fallback on a yahoo query? In case you want to dig further, most browser have now a developer console, accessible using the F12 key, with a network/net panel that will tell you what pages your browser is calling. -- Luk  talk 10:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I get it quite often actually. For me, it is because I have the Yahoo! 404 search assistant enabled for the Yahoo! Toolbar.  I'm guessing you do as well.  Just hit back a couple times and try again. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:54, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Google Maps and GeoGroupTemplate
Please see this page from Google; we're about to be losing KML support for Google Maps classic, and apparently KML files can't be hosted on the ugly new version of Google Maps either. Cross-posting to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates. Nyttend (talk) 04:29, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This was also brought up over at WT:USRD regarding KMLs more directly used in articles. Another editor has brought this up at Tech to bring this to the attention of the WMF. We should consolidate these discussions in one place going forward.  Imzadi 1979    →    20:48, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-47
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Software changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki ( 1.25wmf8 ) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 12. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 18, and on all Wikipedias from November 19 (calendar).
 * The new search tool ("CirrusSearch") will be on the English Wikipedia from November 19.

Move from Bugzilla to Phabricator
 * The tool to track bugs will change on November 21.
 * You won't be able to add or edit bugs between November 21 and November 24.
 * You can make the change easier for you by creating your account.
 * Bugzilla will be frozen after the change. You will see, edit and report bugs in Phabricator.
 * You can join two IRC chats to learn more about the change. The chats will be on Tuesday, November 18 at 16:00 (UTC) and 23:00 UTC.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W47"/> 18:28, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Loading a special page used mediawiki guided tours
For The Wikipedia Adventure we need to load a specific url using mediawiki code that lets a user register and then returns them to the game at step 8 while suppressing the Getting Started tour (which is loading on top of The Wikipedia Adventure's tour).

The full guided tour is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Guidedtour-tour-twa1.js

I'm trying to have it load this url which works properly:

I'm using this code:

The url result is a bad title: 

Because the url prefix is wrong:

That's partly due to the way mw.util.getUrl loads the url prefix, I get  rather than

But if I put in the entire prefix:

rather than starting at:

then it appends a double url prefix which doesn't work.

Is there a trick to get around mw.util.getUrl or a different way to load the correct link? Or am I making a small error anyone can see in the url? Thanks and cheers, Jake Ocaasit &#124; c 21:10, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Yep:
 * Should work for you as it will return:
 * == [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Wikipedia:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Wikipedia:TWA/1/Start&returntoquery=tour%3Dtwa1%26step%3D8%26showGettingStarted%3Dfalse&type=signup]
 * Happy editing. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 21:30, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Afterthought, you may also want to make use of  for noting that the account was created as part of TWA.  I know we make use of it for tracking accounts made through ACC.  If you need help with the parameters for index.php for Special:UserLogin, I've done some research on it as part of my script creation for my ACC userscript.  Let me know. :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 21:35, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Gosh you are useful! Thanks a lot.  This was completely breaking the tour and you fixed it! I also like the idea of &wpReason, I will look into that simple addition.  Best, Jake Ocaasit &#124; c 22:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Afterthought, you may also want to make use of  for noting that the account was created as part of TWA.  I know we make use of it for tracking accounts made through ACC.  If you need help with the parameters for index.php for Special:UserLogin, I've done some research on it as part of my script creation for my ACC userscript.  Let me know. :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 21:35, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Gosh you are useful! Thanks a lot.  This was completely breaking the tour and you fixed it! I also like the idea of &wpReason, I will look into that simple addition.  Best, Jake Ocaasit &#124; c 22:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Help! Unable to Log In
I've been attempting to Log In periodically starting approx. 15 hours ago, but have not been able to do so because the Log In pages simply will not load. (This happens whether I try to log in thru the links at the upper right of different articles, or if I try to go directly to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin.) Every time I try, I get the same error message, "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" -- which normally only displays if my DSL connection has been interrupted. I've never run into this issue before, and I'm not having any problem with other Wikipedia pages, they all load & display properly. Thanks in advance for any help! User:Cgingold
 * This may be connected with Village pump (technical)/Archive 131. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:13, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey there - good guess, Redrose. I wasn't feeling very hopeful after reading the discussion you linked, since that happened a month ago and my Login problem only cropped up in the last day. But I gave it a try anyway, and it seems to have done the trick. (It's strange, though, that my error message didn't say anything about SSL. That sure would have helped!) Well, thanks for your very helpful suggestion. Much appreciated! Cgingold (talk) 05:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Talkpage archiving
I have tried to set up archiving on my talk page, but it isn't working. I'm sure there is a simple fix, but I don't know what it is. Can somebody help me? Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 04:02, 18 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It will only archive to subpages (unless  mentioned at User:MiszaBot/config is set). I have corrected the username.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mellowed_Fillmore&diff=634327492&oldid=634325678] PrimeHunter (talk) 04:10, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I guess that's what I get for being unable to properly type my own username! Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 04:11, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

revision history statistics
(I hate to bring this up again)hi, the "revision history statistics " link is down,its at "External tools" in page histories at the English Wikipedia for users with en or en-gb as language. It's made by and goes to (well it wont open).thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:48, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Should be back up now. Was fixed about an hour ago. --Glaisher (talk) 15:41, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

revision history link,,,,it's not my fault, I can only report it (5x in last month)
(I hate to bring this up again)hi, the "revision history statistics " link is down,its at "External tools" in page histories at the English Wikipedia for users with en or en-gb as language. It's made by and goes to (well it wont open).thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:36, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

(I hate to bring this up again)hi, the "revision history statistics " link is down,its at "External tools" in page histories at the English Wikipedia for users with en or en-gb as language. It's made by MediaWiki:Histlegend and goes to (well it wont open sometimes).thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:54, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * If there is some issue with something, please provide the URL/link that this is about. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/ec/.. (talk) it wont open so how do I tell you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:39, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * When I go to MediaWiki:Histlegend and click on the link for [//tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/articleinfo/index.php?article=&lang=en&wiki=wikipedia Revision history statistics], I get the following error in my console  and a blank page.  Hope this help clarify what the complaint here is... — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:50, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

what is problem
https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools/ec/,,   this link for "revision history statistics" still doesn't work (4 days now), the reason im interested in it is because I can keep track of edits and bytes on the article(s) I work on. I would fix it if I could, and Ive reported it a lot of times here at Village Pump Technical(am I in the wrong place?).--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:10, 18 November 2014 (UTC)


 * See the So... discussion, above, for an exhaustive explanation. Regards, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 16:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Repeatedly posting the same comment (I've seen you do it on five user talk: pages and the help desk) isn't going to make the problem go away any sooner. The thread to which TransporterMan refers is directly below this one; responses have also been provided in some of the places where you have previously posted on this matter. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

thank you its working again--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:48, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Pages not displaying
A user reports at WP:EAR that some pages such as collard green are not displaying on some devices in mobile view. Editor assistance/Requests. I thought it best to mention it here so it can be checked out. -- Diannaa (talk) 16:49, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

To provde a bit more information. I search Google for [collard greens]. That returns a link to a wikipedia article - not a scraper site or anything. I click the link. The page loads, but none of the article text is displayed. There's an imgur link in the above post (I really don't want to fight the captures to repost the link here, sorry). I am using latest version Google Chrome on iOS 7.1.2 on an iPhone 4s. My carrier is a UK carrier GiffGaff, who use O2. My Google Chrome is using the "reduce data usage" under settings -> advanced, which is causig another problem with blocks applied to the caching proxy. 82.132.214.221 (talk) 18:22, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, this is a bit odd... It certainly seems to be to do with the MediaWiki mobile view (Minerva) rather than mobile browsers, as you can replicate the issue in Chrome using the dev tools. I also observed the bug in various mobile device emulators (Safari on iOS 7, Android Browser on A4.4/5 and IE Mobile on WP 8.1). The content just isn't returned from the server - the response is a 200 OK, and everything is as it should be, but the main content element is empty! Addendum: It's also unclosed - you get the opening but no corresponding closing tag. 18:58, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What's even more strange, is that you can 'fix' the problem by shoving a query string on the end of the URL. It doesn't matter what, anything will do! For example, this link will display the bug: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collard_greens, whereas this one will not https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collard_greens?what. For those who want to test, you'll probably need to open a new 'private' browser session to prevent data being pulled from your browser cache and polluting the test.
 * Do you know if any other pages are doing this? Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 18:47, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * hello and thank you for looking at this. I have noticed it in the past on a few articles but cannot remember what they were. I will post here if I see it again.  Gustavail (but logged out) 82.132.214.221 (talk) 19:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Collard greens seems to be working as normal now for me - anyone else care to test? Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 00:03, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, working for me too. I tested the mobile version of the URL in an incognito browser.  Thanks for looking at this. 82.132.239.148 (talk) 11:12, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Further Information please see this previous link of similar behaviour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_131#Minimal_display_in_mobile_view I know that I've seen this behaviour before in different articles. I had considerable difficulty in reporting the collard greens article. I suspect this is an i termittant recurring bug. 82.132.239.204 (talk) 19:56, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Flag mouseovers and links from flags at Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
This is a follow on request from "Template:flag|Islamic State" above where greatly appreciated guidance was given by a SiBr4 and <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius . I was also wondering if it is possible to override the way that links to flag related articles work from Template:Infobox country. I understand that the flag link goes directly to "Flag of (name of article)". Is there anyway to override this?

If it can be worked out please advise on how the flags and links on the main Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant page can give mouse over indications related to "Black Standard" preferably with a reference such as "Black Standard variant" and that the links go directly to this page. The group do not have a unique flag of their own. The flags are set within a use of Template:Infobox country and I've been looking at it a lot and haven't been able to find the code elements that control the caption. I have raised the issue of the currently used name of the flag at User talk:Hedwig in Washington as current the file name is erroneously titled File:Flag of the Islamic State.svg after some incomplete or inaccurate information was given. Hopefully soon the files will be titled as something like "Black Standard variant as adopted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" or "Black Standard variant as adopted by ISIL". Thanks for the help. Gregkaye ✍ ♪  17:31, 16 November 2014 (UTC) ping also
 * The template code that controls the flag caption is <pre style="overflow:scroll;"><td align="center" style="font-size:85%;"> . This shows there are three "name" parameters that can override the part after "Flag of" in the flag link, the outermost being linking_name. The flag_caption parameter overrides the link text "Flag". There is currently no way to change the entire link, though one could easily be added. SiBr4 (talk) 21:18, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * SiBr4 Perhaps, instead of inserting it as a flag, it could be inserted as an image with caption. Could this be made possible. It would be good to disable the mouseover on the image so that it displays the file name as normal. Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  09:04, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The mouseover text uses the same "Flag of name" formula the flag link uses, again without an option to change or omit it. To be able to completely customize the flag image and caption, it could be moved to an other_symbol field like this: If set this field appears further down the infobox, after the motto and anthem. Alternatively the infobox template could be changed to add more options for the flag. SiBr4 (talk) 15:07, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

SiBr4, This may be causing trouble. I have added a cut down version of the infobox as is followed by a cut down version of infobox with the addition of the suggested code. I'm not sure how possible it is but, if practical, it would be great to get a set up like in the existing infobox but with the other mouse over info.

Gregkaye ✍ ♪  18:00, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * For some reason your pings don't work anymore. The one earlier in this section didn't either.
 * I could add some parameters for the flag caption and mouseover text, though what should they be called? flag_caption is already in existence and use for the link text in the caption. SiBr4 (talk) 19:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * SiBr4 That would be great :)
 * Mouseover preferrably: Black Standard variant as adopted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
 * label preferably: Black Standard variant
 * Gregkaye ✍ ♪  23:00, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That wasn't exactly what I meant. Anyway I added a flag_mouseover parameter to the template as Template:Infobox country/sandbox2. In the sandbox flag_caption currently replaces the entire flag link if it itself contains a link; don't know if that really makes sense but it works here. SiBr4 (talk) 09:33, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks SiBr4 but something is going wrong. I placed the text exactly as you wrote it firstly as a replacement of the original flag text in is previous place in the infobox and then by moving the text to the end of the infobox information. Either way I got a mouseover result that still read "Flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" and a caption that read " Black Standard variant

I am not sure if content from other parts of the article are interferring. The article also uses "Infobox war faction" and imports template:History of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Is there any chance that you could install the text in place. It looks really great on this page but I am failing to get it fixed in context. Thanks. Gregkaye ✍ ♪  16:35, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The mouseover tooltip is generated differently in different browsers: if it's set up to work properly in e.g. Google Chrome, it might not work quite the same in Internet Explorer. Then there are things like WP:POPUPS which are known to interfere with mouseover. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:15, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * More likely it's because I made the change in a sandbox; I haven't changed the actual infobox (yet). SiBr4 (talk) 20:01, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Template "not rendering correctly"
I have been told that the code at "does not render correctly"  but no details have been supplied.

is a fix for, which has a parameter  which is not fully implemented - shortcut, schedule and staff are not working.

The comparison between the two is at, where you can see with a case name set, the sandbox version works correctly, the live version doesn't. (Without a case name both break, because it is not an arbitration case page.)

The same comparison has been on the talk page of the template Template talk:Casenav for 14 days and no-one has identified any problems.

I have also tested the sandbox template with "preview" on 17 arbitration case pages, and have seen no issues. I have even tab-switched between the livepage and the preview, I can still see no difference.

Can someone point me in the direction of the error?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:33, 18 November 2014 (UTC).


 * What was the issue (as I noticed the change was reverted)? Also, the main template uses a number of subtemplates. May be the problem is in them? Ruslik_ Zero 03:18, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know what the issue was, other than "box now renders inconsistently" the edit summary of the reverter. I left a question, but they did not answer.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 04:25, 18 November 2014 (UTC).


 * Where did you leave the question? I couldn't see it. I suggest you leave it on the template talk page. If there is no response within a week, try editprotected. It's not the first time I have seen these ownership issues with ARBCOM-related stuff and it's disappointing to see it again. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:37, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I left the question on the talk page of the editor who reverted. I have asked the Clerkes also, I will take  your advice and add a question on the talk page of the template.  The ownership issues I will deal with later, but thanks for confirming it's not just me seeing them.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC).


 * I've gone through and made it HTML5 compliant, in case it was a bad piece of code that was causing the issue. It seems to be rendering find for me on a Win7 machine in the latest Firefox and also on my android phone with Firefox.  I'd be happy to fix any issues, but I'll need more details as to what appears to be not rendering correctly for others. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 00:43, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Can not log in on AT&T
See bugzilla report. Long story short, I've eliminated all possibilities on my end, and some other AT&T subscribers in South Carolina are lagging too. I can also no longer log back into bugzilla, but attempting to log in from the main page, it takes:
 * 3 second before displaying an error, reloading takes an additional 7 seconds,
 * 10 minutes to load "load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.uls.nojs|ext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.noscript|ext.wikihiero,wikimediaBadonly=styles&skin=vector&*"
 * 46 seconds to load "load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector&*"
 * 2 seconds to load "load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery.makeCollapsible|mediawiki.special.userlogin.common.js&skin=vector&version=20141119T150924Z&*"
 * 0.6 seconds to load "checkLoggedIn?type=script&wikiid=enwiki&proto=https&return=1&returnTo=Main+Page"

The log in page has loaded incorrectly as well, displaying only text and hyperlinks, and the login field. I can now only access Wikimedia based sites from my Sprint phone, which has a crappy keyboard, so if someone could relay this to the Bugzilla report, I'd be greatful. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Sweet lord, we're playing the "go complain at the other desk" game today aren't we? Others may (hopefully) still be able to help you here, but I'd also like to transfer you through to, especially since you indicate you aren't the only person affected. Terribly sorry about sending you all kinds of different places. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:00, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Attempts to do so only get the message "irc.freenode.net: Terminated". Ian.thomson (talk) 17:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's stopped locking up, but it's still lagging (this site and bugzilla.wikimedia, but not non-Wikimedia sites). It must be a problem with AT&T handling Wikimedia sites in South Carolina.  Ian.thomson (talk) 19:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Wait, no, it's starting to lag to the point of locking up again. I can post if I restart my browser after every post and go straight to where I'm making the post. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

"Enbolding" or "normalising" parameter info in infobox country
I have another question related to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Sorry about this but the situation is made tricky as we have a group in this case with no legitimacy with articles that use Wikipedia facilities that are relevantly used in connection to legitimate groups. sigh.

As a group with no legal or recognised right to territory it cannot have a capital. The problem is that Administration center gets presented as normal while Largest city as following gets presented as bold.

Is it possible to get Administration center to be presented as bold or, as a second option, to get Largest city to be presented as normal?

Thanks Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  17:10, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yup - has a   parameter. You can assign an arbitrary string to it, and that gets used in place of Capital in the infobox. Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 21:29, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Reticulated Spline Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  03:39, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Transclusion
A now banned editor has set up a transclusion on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant page and consensus is that people want its length changed.

The article text that anchors (my word) the transclusion is but when I looked up Template:Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events all I got was an option to create a page. I hope there are no more transclusions for me to have to deal with but would appreciate instructions as to how to change the settings on this one. It is currently set to display 15 days worth of text. Looking at developments I'd aim for 5 days if its easily changeable. Otherwise 7 days covers the previous decision. Also the timeline article is a currently in request move procedure so I will also need to make changes if a change happens.

related discussion: Talk:Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

Thanks Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  13:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A colon right after the opening curly brackets indicates that not a template but a mainspace page is being transcluded. The code   does not transclude Template:Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events, but the article Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events. See WP:TRANS point 2. SiBr4 (talk) 13:32, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Where there is a colon such as in  then it transcludes the article, in this case Timeline of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant events. That article has content wrapped in <onlyinclude ></onlyinclude>, so only that content is transcluded. A more versatile way to do this is with labeled section transclusion. --   Gadget850talk 13:37, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * SiBr4, Gadget850 I will raise all this at the ISIL page.  Resolved nicely!  Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  16:19, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

502 Bad Gateway: nginx/1.1.19
By just clicking on a wikilink to Requests_for_adminship/Northamerica1000_2, I just got a "502 Bad Gateway" error with an error page that says "nginx/1.1.19". I've seen this sporadically recently but have generally ignored them. The error is not reproducible and clicking the same link moments later worked fine. A web search suggests that this "nginx/1.1.19" error could be related to Windows servers having a hex formatting problem. Anybody know what steps I can do next time I encounter this problem to try to make a better error report? Jason Quinn (talk) 21:50, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Less intrusive video player icon
Reposted from here: (Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 15) Previously, videos could function as stand alone illustrations in addition to being videos, which made them more useful, especially when a thumbnail was manually selected. See for example here, where it could show both a famous image, and a video of the event. But for some reason, the player icon has become big and dark, obscuring much of the thumb. I think the previous version was much more useful, for the reason mentioned above. See also here, where the icon pretty much destroys the thumbnail.

Perhaps the icon could be moved to one of the corners of the thumbs, instead of smack in the middle? And be smaller, too. Or maybe there could be a parameter for making the icon either dark or light, depending on the thumbnail, so where wouldn't have to be a huge, dark bar around it to make it discernible? Or maybe the play icon could be moved to the caption field? Maybe videos should have their own kind of window, like sounds have, see for example here. A player bar like that, and with the thumb over it, would be much more useful, I think it looked more like this initially, if I recall correctly. FunkMonk (talk) 10:53, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Which problem do you try to solve? That the thumbnail of the video should be more recognizable? And is that more important than helping users to realize that the image displayed is actually not only an image but a video that could be watched? --Malyacko (talk) 11:40, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * If you want to work on this, then please just checkout the TimedMediaHandler code and start fixing it. Discussing it probably won't get us really far. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:44, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the icon as it is now prevents using thumbnails as standalone images. It has worked like that before, so I don't see why it would make it harder for users to play, and I've also proposed several ways it could be clear without obscuring the image. As for changing the code, I thought it would be better to get consensus, and I'm not a programmer. FunkMonk (talk) 11:47, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Before was 4,5 years ago... That's 1/3 the lifespan of the project. As for changing something like this: you need a programmer to do it, and that seems to be the scarcest resource, not wikipedia's ability to have discussions (just my disgruntled opinion :P ). My personal opinion would be a small camera icon inc the corner of the thumbnail and then show a play button when you hover the thumbnail. But that's desktop only, on touch screens, i'd always want to see what I see now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:18, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, what you suggest is good, anything that makes the file more useful will do. The problem is that many don't use video files because they take up so much space and look like total crap on top of that, therefore people use images instead. If the video could be used as an image as well, they would simply be more useful. FunkMonk (talk) 16:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree that TheDJ's suggestions are good place to start but I think the real roadblock to rectifying this issue goes back to the idea to [re]use the "still image" thumbnail container for "motion video" files to begin with. Again, developing something like that just for "motion video" cases would need some considerable attention from programmers. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:56, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Seems it was like that before. And reusing what is now used for some auduo files would seem better than the regular image container. FunkMonk (talk) 09:22, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I just wanted to say I think this is an excellent idea that should probably go in the queue, if possible. I like 's proposed form factor - small camera icon in the corner with a play button in the center. With touch screens, I feel like the giant play button is really not doing a good job - it completely obscures the thumbnail image, generally essentially requiring you to press the button in order to see a clear image of what's in frame. I think people are generally smart enough to realize that if it has a "Play" button or a camera button in the corner, that's an indicator that this is a thumbnail from a video which will play if you click it. 0x0077BE ( talk ·  contrib ) 16:13, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This was also discussed on the multimedia mailing list, and moving it to the bottom-left corner seems to be widely agreeable, perhaps in a similar style to that seen in http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30016007 - It is probably just a SMOP, and I've now filed 73438 to collate these notes/links. "Patches welcome!" as they say. Quiddity (talk) 22:10, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll see if I can dredge my PHP knowledge up from where it waits dreaming in the depths of my mind and propose a patch tomorrow. Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 01:49, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'm sure videos will be more widely used as a result. They are quite useful on animal pages, but many don't use them for the reasons outlined above. FunkMonk (talk) 12:39, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Patch submitted, which will allow us to move the overlay and have it resize automatically for small videos. Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 23:52, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Seems (based on a comment at code review) that this would be better handled via CSS locally on en:wp - I'll experiment and then propose the change at MediaWiki_talk:Common.css. Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 20:10, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Request made on the talk page for . Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 00:40, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

✅ thanks to the admins and CSS gurus over at the  talk page. Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 20:31, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, looks great now! FunkMonk (talk) 22:34, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Substituting complex templates
The template Subst:itution I made left behind a load of conditional statement markup and other crud. Is there a way to substitute templates, which doesn't do that? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, nothing except manual action. But there is quite a lot I don't know, and agree some sort of deep/recursive substitution mechanism would be useful, so I'm listening along. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:33, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * In the template change all the  to   and do something similar for #switch as well and then when you subst, it will be neater. -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:40, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * If you're willing to do some copying and pasting, then you can use Special:ExpandTemplates. If not, you have to change the template code; you need to add  or   to the start of every template and parser function (anything with double curly braces). — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 21:55, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, but that leaves me with a first line of, rather tan the desired  .  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:59, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Also note that if the template you are subst:ing uses other templates, you may have to subst, save, subst, save, repeat until there are no more sub templates and parser functions. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 22:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:59, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

An "Allegiance to" parameter in Template:Infobox war faction
Sorry but this is another question relating to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It relates to groups like Ansar Bait al-Maqdis that have declared allegiance to ISIL but which are marked as being part of the group which seems to be an overstatement of the fact but they are still more than allies. Can something be added such as "Allegiance to"? Thanks Gregkaye ✍ ♪  07:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Is there no way round this? If not I may need to find an alternate template. Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  10:53, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It'd be easy enough to add something like "Affiliation" as an option. Does that sound like it would work? If so then ping me and I'll add it to the infobox code. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:11, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) TY, its a definite imprvovement and better than things stand but the situarion is of a very specific Arabic promise being made. "Allegiance to" would be more accurate.  I am sure that Affiliation might be relevant for other groups in other situations.  Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  12:39, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅, use . Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 13:43, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Chris, you're a star. This is a genuine help and much appreciated, Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  18:42, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Really strange bug: Missing initial letter H
Today I came across a really weird bug. On all articles that start with the letter H, the H in the title is missing. Its place is empty instead. This happens in all browsers I've tested on my computer, but not on my mobile phone or my colleagues' computers. Does anyone know why this is happening?



--Shandris the azylean  08:25, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not technical but like your colleagues, np here. I tried on Windows 7 to successfully load Hippopotamus onto Explorer 11. Chrome38.02125.111 (2014), and a 2014 version of Firefox.  Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  10:23, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Try running a virus checker. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:45, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That's refreshingly strange. Something is "wonky", probably with either your system, or your account. Could you check if it happens both when logged in and logged out? If it only happens logged in, it has something to do with your personal stylesheets/js, otherwise, something with your system. We can try and minimize from there. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Could you save a copy of one of the pages on which you see the oddity (File > Save page as in most browsers) and upload it somewhere? Copying and pasting the raw HTML from within the file into something like PasteBin would be ideal. Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 12:18, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I've done some investigating and it seems to have something to do with the font that is used for titles in Wikipedia - Linux Libertine. Strange though that it only occurs on my computer, regardless of the browser I'm using. @Redrose64 I don't think it has to do with a virus, my computer runs just fine. --Shandris the azylean  12:24, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps your computer has simply run out of "H"s in that font! More seriously I doubt it is virus related, though your computer will usually appear to run "just fine" even with several dozen viruses.
 * If you install/uninstall that font does the problem go away? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:00, 20 November 2014 (UTC).


 * There are many computer viruses; the number passed 1000 more than twenty years ago. Their effects are varied; some target just one kind of program, others look for data to corrupt. It might be that one has decided to hook itself into the page renderer of your browser, where it look for <h1 ></h1> elements where the first character is "H" and munges those. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:08, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Linux Libertine is the first font that we have defined for h1 elements. If it is installed on your computer, then that is the font that is used to render. If it's not, it takes the next font in line, which is Georgia. IMO the easiest way to check which font is actually used is in chrome, inspect element on the title element, then on the pane on the bottom right selected computed, and scroll all the way down to "Rendered fonts". That will show the font your browser is actually using to display. If that is Linux Libertine, and you're not using that font for anything else, I recommand uninstalling it; apparently there is brokenness there. If you remember where you got that font, it would be good to know. I'd like to be able to reproduce, and file a bug where the actual bug is (probably the font packaging, but I can't say for sure). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 15:46, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That is Georgia (no need to test). My first thought is that perhaps your Georgia font is corrupt, or is not rendered correctly. Is this Windows 7? It has a component called DirectWrite, which may have bugs.  16:21, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I've never been good at Optical Font recognition, thanks for saving the OP the trouble. Shandris, does the capital H disappear in all h1 elements, or just on the first one (you could check on my user page, which by fortuitous accident has one of those in it). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:46, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Can you, in FireFox or Chrome, right click the element, inspect the element, and then copy the entire <h1 ></h1> tag? Also, can you take a screenshot of the below section, uncollapsed, which will help us troubleshoot further:

Moved to: /temp


 * I expect that many of them will see no change whatsoever, but it will be useful to me to see which ones seem to be affected. Also, as a final lighter note for now, I'm guessing your computer has been infected by a dentist which is taking up all your H's with the computer trying to keep her happy saying AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 16:42, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

The  at the top of this collapsible section screws the TOC for the page. All of the demonstration headings in this collapsible section will confuse archiving bots: they'll take the part before, possibly the part after, but will leave the middle bit behind. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:51, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I've moved the relevant markup to a sub page. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:04, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I've solved the problem! It seems my Georgia font was corrupt. Also, when I opened the TTF file, all letters seemed to be in Arial font style. I compared my font file with my colleagues and both dates and file size were the same, even to the byte. Anyway, he sent me his version which I replaced with my corrupted and now I can see my capital H's again! Thanks everyone who contributed with advice. --Shandris the azylean  09:57, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Can the preview image of an ogv file be altered?
Take a look at File:20090124 WeeklyAddress.ogv, which catches the President in an awkward eyes-closed image. Is there any way to change or choose what frame of the file is chosen for the preview image? Tarc (talk) 20:09, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Which president? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:32, 20 November 2014 (UTC).


 * The President of Kenya. --NE2 23:08, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Any non-snarky input? Tarc (talk) 20:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * There are images such as |this one perhaps you can figure out how to display it and have a click-on-this link take you to the ogv. I'm not sure if MV has messed up clickable images. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:17, 20 November 2014 (UTC).


 * There's of course |thumbtime=0:00| for articles, but don't know what would work for the file page itself. I changed the Obama page. Feel free to tweak further. FunkMonk (talk) 22:23, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, that will work the articles at least, thanks. Tarc (talk) 17:26, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Arabic & Hebrew style names in Bio intros
Is there a method to editing around Arabic & Hebrew names in opening paragraphs of bio articles, without one's edits going crazy? For example, when trying to type in 1925, the 19 ends up infront of the Arabic and/or Hebrew name. GoodDay (talk) 00:24, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Does MOS:RTL solve your problem? If not then please link a specific article and say what you try to do in it. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:48, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * In my experience it's just a pain in the butt to work with, but you can get there in the end. I know that's not a "howto" but consider it gentle encouragement. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:01, 21 November 2014 (UTC).


 * Another alternative is to wrap the Arabic or any rtl language for that matter in <bdi ></bdi>, html expressly designed to isolate rtl from ltr. Consider using the  where   is the ISO639-1 language code (  for Arabic,   for Hebrew, etc).


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 01:11, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * When writing with RTL text, I tend to do the following. "John Doe (rtl), born 1925, is a..."  With this done, delete rtl and copy/paste the RTL name into the parentheses.  Alternately, you could just write the parentheses, write the name inside, and delete the parentheses.  Either method lets the parentheses serve as a boundary between RTL and LTR.  Nyttend (talk) 01:14, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A tad confusing. Kinda like when the 'edit line' goes in the opposite direction when ran across these Arabic/Hebrew names. GoodDay (talk) 01:18, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * lang-ar includes the the left-to-right mark. --  Gadget850talk 15:31, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Table covering up text
There's something wrong with Maria_Theresa, and I haven't located the problem.

Section 7.1 (aka Issue, if you don't have section numbering) covers up several sections. The tail end of section 12 is visible, then 13 (Ancestry)

It looks to me like the are the close div tags and only two open, but I tried removing one of the close div tags, and that didn't do much.

I note the Hide button on the table doesn't seem to do anything.

I've looked at it on a desktop in Chrome and Mozilla, same issue.

Any thoughts?-- S Philbrick (Talk)  17:54, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I fixed it. For future reference: WP:NAVFRAME (but I'll note that NavFrame is slightly abused here).  19:46, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank-you, looks good. I'll pass them information on to the reader who alerted us.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  21:28, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Citation formatting RfC
Please see Talk:Aspromonte goat for an RfC about the scope of WP:CITEVAR and whether it can be used to prevent changes to underlying technical coding of reference citations, including correct XML, and changing problematic ref IDs. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  19:48, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer Update: Last Improvements


Hi folks: we're happy to let you know that our multimedia team has completed all the requested 'must-have' improvements to Media Viewer for this release, based on community feedback.

Here are the new features that we developed and released on all Wikipedias and sister projects:
 * A caption or description right below the image - ✅ (new)
 * Move license label after source and adjust layout - ✅ (new)
 * An easier way to enlarge images by clicking on them - ✅
 * "More Details" button: a more prominent link to the File: page - ✅
 * Separate buttons for "Download" and "Share or Embed" - ✅
 * An easier way to disable Media Viewer for personal use - ✅
 * Re-enable Media Viewer from a file page - ✅
 * Rename File page button: "Open in Media Viewer" - ✅
 * Make MediaViewer text larger in Monobook - ✅
 * A simpler metadata panel with fewer items - ✅
 * Faster image load with thumbnail pre-rendering - ✅

These improvements are now live on all Wikimedia-hosted sites. You can.

These features are based on the most frequent requests from our recent community consultation and ongoing user research. We are now conducting a final round of usability research to confirm that they provide a better experience for readers and casual editors, the primary target users for Media Viewer.

Many thanks to all the community members who suggested these improvements! Your feedback was invaluable and helped us build a better product together. :)

Please let us know what you think on this Media Viewer talk page. We will post one more update in December, to share our research findings. Best regards. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 02:44, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Page up/page down and Home/End problem with section anchors
Looking at, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_National_Archives_(United_Kingdom)#Forgeries_discovered_in_2005 there are that page up can act as page down/end, and page down can act as page up. There is an order effect, so it is possible to be "trapped" in the top part or bottom part of the page. Home and End are at best apparently unresponsive (moving the caret to the beginning an end of "This page was last modified on 22 November 2014 at 16:07." or "Navigation" in the side bar.or other lines on the page) or unpredictable.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:21, 22 November 2014 (UTC).


 * The effect of navigation keys is controlled by your browser and not Wikipedia. In my Firefox, the keys work as expected on that page. If a control key like Shift/Ctrl/Alt is pressed or your computer registers it as pressed for some reason then it may affect navigation keys but the result depends on your browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:06, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Weird user page view stats
There are a number of user pages (all?) getting anomalous view stats in the last few days. . I could be wrong, but the size of the spike seems to corrolate with the number of page watchers or maybe edit count. No big deal. Just curious if anyone knows what's going on. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:17, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Not sure if this is related to the bug that was discussed back in June. That one still seems unresolved; I'm seeing huge spikes from October for some articles. User:Ironholds might be able to give us an update on the issue. --Paul_012 (talk) 15:15, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's unresolved in the sense that there's no mechanism to prevent it, sure; we know, however, what happened. These spikes are comparatively tiny and probably not worth investigating, though. Ironholds (talk) 17:54, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Can you tell us what happened without stepping on beans? &mdash;&thinsp; H HHIPPO  20:09, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Cirrus search
I am having a lot of trouble with searching:

''An error has occurred while searching: Search is currently too busy. Please try again later.''

Maybe this needs to be backed out? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC).


 * I am seeing the pool queue getting a little filled with traffic. The nice thing about these errors is that they're transient and tend to only come in waves...you can always try again shortly as the message says. All that being said, the error's not nice and we can probably adjust the queue size further (fwiw, this used to happen with MWSearch too, I'm surprised you haven't seen it before considering how common it is/was). BZ/Phabricator are down right now for migration but I'll get a task filed Monday for looking at this further. <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz] <em style="font-size:10px;">17:40, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I had a look at this as well just now. The good news is that the problem comes in waves and the wave you saw was the worst one.  The bad news is that its happening at all.  I see a spike in load right before you posted this message but nothing interesting in the logs.  The load spike was long enough ago that I've lost precision on how long it was but if I had to guess it'd coincide with us serving these errors from 22:06 to 22:09 UTC.  I don't _think_ this is a rollback thing because we're used to seeing these from the old system as well.  Admittedly the old search produced a constant chatter of these while the new one is silent and save for a few complaints and one *huge* spike right before you reported this.  The current plan is to segment the prefix searches from the full text searches sometime early next week.  When this happens next this'll let us figure out if the spike is caused by one particular flavor of search and it'll preserve the other flavors in the process. NEverett (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oooh! I just tracked the spike that you saw down to a super duper troll search.  I'll see if I can setup some more defences for it.  You'd be amazed at what people try and search for.... NEverett (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * When was Cirrus implemented? I had some other search bugs that I didn't log, but I might be able to recreate if I have reason to think they are relevant to the current search engine. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:21, 22 November 2014 (UTC).


 * It's been under active development for the last year and a half; it was deployed as the default for English Wikipedia just the other day on the 19th. The old search engine is still accessible by appending  to your Special:Search or API queries (great for comparing to see if bugs still exist or have been added :)) <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz]  <em style="font-size:10px;">01:49, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to add "report technical issue" to Wikipedia:Contact us
Does Wikipedia have a place for users to report bugs? (eg, a WMF email address?) Having so would seem like a commensense move to let readers report issues they are having. I was surprised that this is not present on Wikipedia:Contact us. If there's an email address, can another user point it out? Otherwise I think it would be quite useful to have one. --Tom (LT) (talk) 21:00, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You can report Wikipedia bugs on this page (if the issue is specific to our templates, modules, etc.), or at Phabricator (if it is related to the server software). If unsure, the best place to post is this page - if the bug report should have been placed in Phabricator, someone else will point you in the right direction (or even do it for you).
 * Note that, as I write this, Phabricator is down for maintenance; it will most likely be restored on Monday.
 * I would support adding a brief sentence or two relating to technical issues to the "Readers" section of WP:Contact us; seems like a sensible idea. — This, that and the other (talk) 04:34, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note that the top of this page mentions where to put "Bugs and feature requests". --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * There really isn't a good place for non-technical non-editors to report technical issues. Most of the email addresses on the Contact Us page go to one of the info-en OTRS queues and there is a tech-issues queue. But unless it's a really easy answer they tend to sit around for a long time (weeks, sometimes) with no response or they're referred elsewhere (here, mailing lists). From what I understand, Phabricator won't be any more layperson-friendly than Bugzilla (probably worse), so that's probably not the best place to refer readers. This page is probably easier to figure out than Phabricator and more likely to get a response than OTRS. But for a non-editor, it may still be difficult. Mr.Z-man 17:53, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Compared to Bugzilla, Phabricator will improve the situation in some areas. The most common complaints I've heard about Bugzilla apart from its user interface were the separate login and the fact that email addresses were exposed. Both is not the case anymore with Phabricator. Also see Phabricator/versus_Bugzilla for a list of improvements and known issues. Personally I'd say that I'm still waiting for that perfect bugtracker fitting everybody's needs and tech-savvyness levels and I'm convinced that I'll still be waiting in 50 years - it's always a compromise/trade-off. Plus it can be really hard to define or find out where a bug starts and where "strange but intended behavior" or user support questions end, as expectations are something subjective. :-/ --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Login page on iPad 1
I can no longer check "Keep me logged in" on my iPad 1. The checkbox doesn't function. Is this a known problem? Thanks -- Jo3sampl (talk) 03:33, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * But you can successfully log in? Which browser is this about? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks -- I can log in -- it's just the control next to "Keep me logged in" that doesn't work. The browser is Safari (native for the iPad). I'm having trouble finding a version ID, but the version corresponds to IOS 5.1.1, the last operating system update for iPad 1. I think I'll have to accept the idea that I'm (pretty much) the last WP editor using iPad 1. Christmas is coming. . . Thanks again -- Jo3sampl (talk) 23:29, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Reported in the ticketing system. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:21, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Edit counts (again)
Last time I looked (often I can't even reach the page) it said 1500 minutes behind. It's got stuck again and needs a kick.

I imagine the original provider wasn't expecting a delay of more than a few minutes, so didn't bother to parse it into hours (and days!)

Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Sun 20:25, wikitime=  12:25, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You should contact the maintainer of the tool about this (also note you do not need to interwiki link your signature!) -- Mdann 52   talk to me!  13:32, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * i all I know is it's a button at the bottom of my "User contributions" page. How am I supposed to know who maintains it, and why should I care?
 * ii it's supposed to stop redlinks when I write on other wiki pages. Doesn't seem to work with commons though. What difference does it make to anybody? -- Unbuttered parsnip  (talk) mytime= Sun 22:48, wikitime=  14:48, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Issues with Xtools can be reported to the maintainers at https://github.com/x-Tools/xtools/issues. There are tools looking for internal wikilinks in page sources.  is formatted like an interwiki link to another wiki and may confuse some tools. It can also confuse readers looking at the page source. I'm not sure what your redlink comment means but a red link is a wikilink to a non-existing page at the same wiki. You have not created a Commons user page at commons:User:Unbuttered Parsnip so a wikilink to that page from another Commons page will be red. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:33, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Last time I looked, the signature you define at enwiki will have no effect at another wiki. I guess you mean you just copy/paste the identical wikitext for use on other wikis? You should omit the ":en:" from your signature here. Johnuniq (talk) 00:19, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Undo|thank
I am feeling somehat hard-done by. On the Revision History page for this article, I am the only editor who does not have (undo|thank) by their username. It is the same on a related page, where many usernames don't have (undo|thank) by their name. Why is this? ~ P123ct1 (talk) 17:10, 23 November 2014 (UTC)


 * You cannot thank yourself. Others see a thank link at your edits. Edits by bots and IP's don't have a thank link. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is semi-protected so there are no IP edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:17, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Why didn't I think of this? About the bots and IPs I might just have guessed. ~ P123ct1 (talk) 17:58, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Time zone settings
When I was trying to update my time zone ("Time offset") settings, I realized that Asia/Beijing was not an option. While I was able to change my time zone to Asia/Hong Kong to achieve the same effect, I think that Asia/Beijing should be added to the list because it is a capital city of a country (and a significant one, too). It is also listed in the timezone options for most major operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, many distros of Linux). I understand that there are other cities in the same time zone, but there are already many cities listed for any given time zone. For example, America/Toronto, America/Montreal, America/New York, America/Bogota. and America/Lima are all in the -05:00 time zone yet they are all individually listed due to their significance.

In short: I would like to request that Asia/Beijing be included in the list of time offsets under Preferences -> Appearance.

Thanks. Tony Tan 98 &#183;  talk  04:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This is a feature of the MediaWiki software, so we can't fix it locally from the English Wikipedia. I've filed a bug report in our (new!) bug tracking system so that the MediaWiki developers will see your request. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 04:50, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I see. Thank you for filing the report! Best, Tony Tan 98  &#183;  talk  04:54, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki is written in PHP which like many others uses the tz database. List of tz database time zones does not have a time zone identifier called Asia/Beijing so that's a red link. Beijing is covered by Asia/Shanghai. Asia/Hong Kong also works for just setting your Wikipedia preferences but officially only covers Hong Kong. See also Time in China. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:54, 24 November 2014 (UTC)


 * , I understand your frustration. I have to use "America:New York" instead of "America:Boston" (which is available in most OS and other program settings as Boston is the capital city of Massachusetts which is kind of a central hub for New England of which New York is not part of).  I also have done some research in this, and until it is added to the tz database, there isn't much the software developers can reasonably do. Happy editing! — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:04, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * There is one thing they could do: Add other major cities to the right of some of the tz identifiers, maybe in a smaller font. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-48
<section begin="technews-2014-W48"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The move from Bugzilla to Phabricator is done. You can now report bugs in Phabricator.

Problems
 * There was a problem when editing tables in VisualEditor. VisualEditor was trying to fix bad values for the  or   option. VisualEditor now leaves the bad values to avoid making things worse. This was fixed on November 17.

Software changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki ( 1.25wmf9 ) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since November 19. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from November 25, and on all Wikipedias from November 26 (calendar).
 * You will be able to try VisualEditor on many new wikis for the first time. After November 26, VisualEditor will become available on Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, and Wikinews wikis. You can find it in your Beta options.
 * VisualEditor now tells you if your edit needs to be approved.
 * You can now use VisualEditor's tools directly when you resume editing after closing the save window.
 * VisualEditor's table editing tools now work better in right-to-left languages.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W48"/> 19:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Reference wrapping to the next line
Depending on how a screen is set, a reference may wrap to the next line, which looks awkward and strange. See Reference 41 from the end of the paragraph in this screenshot File:Screenshot_showing_ref_wrap.jpg from Philae (spacecraft). There is no space between "November." and the start of the reference. Is there a way to keep this from happening? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:23, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What browser are you using? For me, In Firefox and IE9 on Win7, the reference always appeared on the same line as the preceding word and full stop. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 01:55, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm using IE11 on Windows 8.1. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 02:57, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Couldn't help but chime after trying to reproduce the same effect using the same Philae (spacecraft) article earlier with no luck and now see we happen to have the same setup. Fiddled with the basic IE11 font families & browser widths but no matter what I tried, the point where it decided to wrap was never after the period and opening bracket of the ref [like in the pic above] but seemed to always happen between the word "at" and the 00:36 time stamp that followed. Seems like a css thing to me but I'm not up on the latest dealing with inline elements & no-break-before attributes to be honest. -- George Orwell III (talk) 03:38, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * For me the problem goes away if I make the text larger or smaller. But then it might happen somewhere else.  I think I've seen it elsewhere.  I think I have my Windows font size set at 125%, if that could matter. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:57, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This is one of those things that has come up previously; there's something in the archives of this page (such as Village pump (technical)/Archive 125). The point at which wrapping occurs (and the decision to wrap) varies a great deal. Factors that influence it (some of which were mantioned above) include: physical screen resolution; operating system; installed fonts; browser; window sizing; zoom level; style sheets; page layout. The only ones we can exercise any control over are the last two; and trying to get it "right" for one user may well get it "wrong" for others. We try to satisfy the majority, but can never achieve universal success. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:35, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Help:Reference display customization has two methods for resolving this. Looks like IE 8+ should support the  pseudo-element. --   Gadget850talk 13:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that a simple rule "if there is no space, don't break" would be an easy solution. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 18:16, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I wonder what would happen then, if you had a long string of refs—one so long that it was wider than your screen? (That's not difficult to do for someone who has a smartphone.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 25 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Would zwj, something I found recently, be a red herring here..? Sardanaphalus (talk) 17:42, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * is as good as anything for a workround. I have used  on the article to stop "15 November" from being broken. I don't think we can insert zero-width-joiners between every "." and "&lt;ref>", so the general solution will rely on making the bug reproducible and raising a bug.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:16, 22 November 2014 (UTC).


 * Now it is wrapping after "hard as ice" for me, highlighted in blue in File:Ref wrap problem 2.jpg. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:22, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Note that in the two screenshots, the references with the problem are #41, but they are now different references. The problem couldn't have anything to do with the number 41, could it?  Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:14, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm no expert, but I doubt it. Per Redrose64 above, this looks like one of those "Varies according to the browser, its version, the phase of the Moon..." Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:52, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Extra tab for merge pages
I would like to add a tab (in Monobook skin) for the merge page (the url would be https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MergeHistory&target= ) before the Twinkle tabs. How can I do it? (I assume it would be some relatively simple javascript, but I don't know.) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:22, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:35, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I tried, but it didn't work. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:14, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It works for me (in Monobook). Does the link not appear at all, or does it appear but not work? Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:42, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It doesn't appear at all. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:48, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Try putting  at the end of the file. It seems to prevent lots of other links from showing too. Cenarium (talk) 09:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you,, the tab is there now. How do I put it before the Twinkle tabs? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:15, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know. I'm not using TW, I'd like it only for user talk warnings. Cenarium (talk) 13:47, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia technology blog
So, I was just reading the Wikimedia technology blog, and it struck me that it would be good to have a bot or something post a note here on VPT when there is a new post written. It seems to me that a lot of the editors that read this page would be interested in what the technology blog has to say, but at the moment I don't imagine that many are aware of it, and that even less remember to check back for updates. Is there an easy way that we can get notifications of new posts here? — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 15:11, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A bot that periodically makes a note of new posts here in batches will work. Alternatively, we can integrate it into the weekly Tech News. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 04:13, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Tech News already features them (but if someone has time, please feel free to double-check if links are there and add them if they're not!). --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:25, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

SUL tool returns: 404 - Not Found
I've noticed, while trying to process requests for accounts, that our quentinv57-tools/tools/sulinfo.php has been returning "404 - Not Found" for at least a few days now. This is a fairly critical tool to the assessment of whether or not request for usernames that are similar to existing usernames should be accepted as the existing name has been ACTIVE or not. If someone could look into this, that would be great. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:45, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Now that centralAuth shows unattached accounts is the tool still necessary? – xeno talk  18:58, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The SUL tools does offer a little more information than CA, including more accurate registration dates (all accounts in CA created before April of 2013 show as April 2013). IIRC, SUL tool also offers a date for last activity that CA does not. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:09, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yes it would be nice to have this tool back. – xeno talk  18:11, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Quite a few of the tools are returning 404 at the moment it seems - at least that's what I've been experiencing, and a brief scatter-shot test just now did nothing to convince me otherwise! Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 19:02, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * per User_talk:Cyberpower678. Thanks . — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 17:26, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

So (again)...
, what's the haps? The tools are down again? I see that also weighed in, above, but I didn't understand what they were saying; I only got the sarcasm. Look, I really don't care who runs what and in what way. I want a working edit count and article creation count, and I want the WMF to make that happen. Please. Drmies (talk) 02:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey Drmies, perhaps I can help talk about this. Please note that I'm not an engineer nor a lawyer :)
 * The tools that run on labs, just like the tools that ran on toolserver, are the responsibility of the tool owner. Perhaps you can recall when X!'s tools went down on toolserver before TParis and others helped take over maintenance? It's the same problem. On-wiki, the same thing happens when gadgets break. The owner has to fix them. Well, gadgets are better, because anyone can fix the code as long as they can edit it :)
 * The question of the Wikimedia Foundation taking over and hosting edit tools is...tricky. Sure, it's easy to do. The question is of the ethics and local community sentiment. The privacy policy makes it quite clear the the WMF itself holds very little in regards to access logs, and those findings expire. This follows what even volunteers with advanced tools can access, like CheckUser.
 * Every edit and action people take is logged by the wiki software. This is inherent to both the wiki-philosophy of personal accountability as well as licensing terms. Histories must be kept. However, what data mining is done by analyzing said histories gets on very, very shaky ground. Many communities are uncomfortable with edit counters, and in some places the use of one might violate the law.
 * So in the end, I think the better question is: what can be done to help duplicate the tools and leave them in the hands of volunteers? All the tools on labs are open source, it should be trivial to fork a service or two if it's vital to a local community. Are there any developers with labs accounts willing to take on this role? Keegan (WMF) (talk) 07:45, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keegan (WMF), I appreciate your translation into human English (previous answers all took for granted that the reader a. knew the history of the matter and b. understood various technicalities). I think I understand some of the intricacies now. I guess I don't understand why such gadgets keep breaking down, but I'll take your word for it. Anyway, I need these tools to evaluate an editor for RfA; it's very hard to do so without. Thanks again, Drmies (talk) 13:52, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Just a thought, may be an inappropriate place to state this, but the money spent on creating unneeded stuff like the "media viewer", "visual editor", etc. should instead be spent on keeping essential features like the editing tools/bots running. It is really frustrating to see so much effort being wasted on features no one really like, while the core features break down every other month, and are only fixed after several weeks. FunkMonk (talk) 18:10, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * See above under "So..." for an answer to that. Then again, whom would you trust more to maintain our software tools: your average Wikipedia volunteer, or the people who worked on stuff like MV & VE? -- llywrch (talk) 21:08, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Page Transitions
All of a sudden, as I move backwards and forwards (using IE10 Back and Forward navigation buttons) between pages, there's a "transition" whereby one page sort of 'slides' into the other, rather than a crisp instant refresh. Have the tech guys changed something, or is this caused by some aspect of my IE settings? It's happened once before, a few months ago, then suddenly stopped. Thanks, 141.6.11.14 (talk) 12:29, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * My guess would be IE; This is nothing to do with Wikipedia. -- Mdann 52   talk to me!  13:31, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Request for edit to Template:Infobox holiday
This template categorises the page according to the field "frequency", e.g. "annual" puts the page in Category:Holidays and observances by frequency (annual). The trouble is that a capital A on Annual puts the page into a duplicate category, Category:Holidays and observances by frequency (Annual). Please edit the code in the template to use a lowercase version of the frequency in the category name. – Fayenatic  L ondon 14:51, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_holiday&diff=635244494&oldid=604956728 Fixed] using the {{lc:}} magic word. The duration and scheduling fields may need the same changes. SiBr4 (talk) 15:05, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! We'd better avoid this magic word on scheduling, as one in Category:Holidays and observances by scheduling begins with "Christmas". It should be safe to use on duration, though. – Fayenatic  L ondon 23:56, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Popups
I'm I the only one who has lost navigation popups in the last 12 hours? It makes SPI cases, already backlogged, tedious to investigate.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 16:54, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Apparently not. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:03, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. According to that thread, and my own experience, popups have...popped back up. -- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 18:35, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

How do I suppress the pending changes banner in my watchlist?
I'd like to make the salmon-colored "There are currently pending revisions" banner on my watchlist go away; it is both alarming and redundant, as the individual pages in my watchlist that need attention are already marked. I don't see a preference for this and I tried chipping away at it with CSS but no luck. Any ideas? Regards, Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 20:18, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The trick is to get the selector specific without being too specific.  should be placed in Special:MyPage/common.css - tested in MonoBook and Vector. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:37, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 20:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Archives
I had two sets of archives showing on my Talk page, but they have suddenly disappeared. When I put "User:P123ct1" in the search box, Archive 2 appears, but Archive 1 does not. I cannot see any diffs in Revision History that might explain this. An editor has changed title headings on my Talk page recently, without asking permission. Can you help? ~ P123ct1 (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You removed it yourself, with . -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:25, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Redrose64: I was trying to remove what looked like a spam message at the top at the time.  I didn't see that I had removed Archive 1 at the same time.  WP technical stuff baffles me and I seem to waste an awful lot of time on it instead of editing.  Thanks. ~ P123ct1 (talk) 18:00, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: enable opt-in two-factor authentication
Two-factor authentication has become popular in the last few years as a number of big online service providers like Google, Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox and Apple's iCloud have enabled it to increase the security of user accounts. It makes it so that when you login you have to type in a one-time password that is generated, usually by an application installed on a mobile device. There are two extensions for MediaWiki available: OATHAuth and TwoFactorAuthentication that could provide two-factor authentication for users of Wikimedia wikis including Wikipedia.

I propose something like this: to increase user account security (especially for administrators, functionaries and others with elevated user rights), we ask the Wikimedia Foundation to consider installing an optional TOTP-based two-factor authentication solution on English Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia Foundation wikis subject to further community consultation) if an implementation can be found that passes reasonable security auditing and user testing and integrates reasonably with CentralAuth. Users would not be required to use two-factor authentication, and a reasonable recovery process should be instituted.


 * Support as proposer. —Tom Morris (talk) 14:58, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. It would be nice if it had Google Authenticator support, though I don't know how the backend verification works on that, and if you have to query Google servers in order to verify the time-based token, I wouldn't use it.  0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 15:01, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 0x0077BE: Google Authenticator is a popular implementation of TOTP, but Google Authenticator does not (as far as I know) contact Google's servers when you authenticate (only way to be sure would be to use it and monitor traffic from the device to see). You can use it when your device is offline. I personally use Authy on iPhone but there are a variety of implementations including Red Hat's open source FreeOTP. There's a whole list of implementations on this article: Time-based One-time Password Algorithm. There may be broken (intentionally or not) implementations of TOTP, but it is up to the user which TOTP client they use. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:07, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know that the Authenticator doesn't contact the servers, but I don't really know much about the back-end on the server side. If Wikipedia can generate Authenticator-compatible tokens on their own servers, then I'd be in favor of that, but if Wikipedia has to contact Google to get a token, I wouldn't use it. I imagine that no contact to Google will be necessary, since that would presumably significantly complicate the security by adding unnecessary connections that need to be secured. If Authenticator is just an implementation of a specific protocol (I had always thought of TOTP as referring to the class of time-based token generators, not a specific algorithm, but I never looked into it), then obviously it would be possible to have Authenticator support with no Google involvement. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 15:18, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * 0x0077BE: Nope, the WMF wouldn't have to contact Google's servers (or anybody else's) to generate the keys. —Tom Morris (talk) 15:26, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Oppose for now. I like the idea, but my experience with OATHAuth on wikitech has been less than ideal. I've gotten locked out of my account more than once and I fear others will accidentally do the same. I'd like to see improvements to these extensions before using them wider. <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz] <em style="font-size:10px;">15:24, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you remember what led to you being locked out? Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:36, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Wiped my phone, got a new phone. Had lost my recovery key thingie. <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz] <em style="font-size:10px;">18:58, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it should probably provide more recovery options (SMS, email, etc.), and the UI of both extensions aren't exactly user-friendly IMO. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 22:41, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Support in principle depending on sufficient and positive technical and user review of any implementation. -- KTC (talk) 15:57, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose: Both of these extensions seem to be at an early stage in development. Also, there is another much more serious reason not to enable them. That reason is that OATHauth will not work on wikipedia, as wikipedia does use MariaDB, and OATHauth only has support for MySQL, as can be seen in 65658. I would not be surprised if the same applies to TwoFactorAuthentication as it is based on the former.--Snaevar (talk) 16:07, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Uhh, MariaDB is basically MySQL. Legoktm (talk) 17:04, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What Legoktm said. The bug referred to an issue with running on Postgresql. Postgres is very different from MySQL. MariaDB is not. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:10, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Question: I would like the proposer to provide an explanation in a reliable source of the benefits of two-factor authentication. In particular, since this is to be an opt-in and most who opt-in will probably be using good security practices, how will this benefit the user who uses an encrypted connection, does not use the same password on all his/her accounts, and doesn't keep the password posted on a bulletin board next to the computer? Jc3s5h (talk) 17:15, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Using two-factor authentication is part of good security practices, and I don't think it's true that someone who otherwise uses good security will be immune to attacks. I imagine many people who would enable this do not disable Javascript and other scripting by default, making them immune to many zero-day attacks which could secretly harvest passwords. Additionally they may not be sufficiently careful about not logging in from potentially compromised terminals (or indeed they wish to be able to log in from potentially compromised terminals without allowing replay attacks) - both of which are attacks that could be mitigated by a TOTP or other two-factor authentication system. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 17:47, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Basically what 0x0077BE said. TOTP-based two-factor auth is a tool that a security-conscious user can add to their arsenal. You can't use it for every website, because not every website has it deployed. But it is worth enabling on key security assets—that is, accounts where you need enhanced security. We like to pretend that adminship is no big deal, but the ability to hand out blocks and the ability to view deleted content are important things that are entrusted to administrators. To me, anyway, though I've made some mistakes in the past, I try hard to go about doing my admin tasks in a trustworthy and responsible way. Having the ability to make my Wikipedia account as secure as, say, my Facebook account would be quite nice. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:48, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Support The WMF uses this now on Wikitech, so we know there's no big problems. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:35, 18 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Support. Security wise, i see this as a great idea. In fact until I saw it here I was going to propose it myself. Lor Chat 00:25, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Support but no external services and smart phones are not secure devices. People who want to opt in can upload their PGP public key and the system can challenge them to decrypt a single use key when they log in. With public/private key encryption trusting a 3rd party defeats the purpose. <b style="color:SteelBlue">Chillum</b> 00:29, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * No external services are suggested. As for "smart phones are not secure devices" so let's use GPG? That's frankly grade A bonkers. Google Authenticator-style TOTP is usable and secure enough. People have experience using it for their Gmail, Facebook, Github and other accounts. PGP/GPG decryption is too much of a faff. In the use case of "I'm sitting at a friend's house and want to edit Wikipedia", TOTP means I pull out my phone, then login with my username, password and TOTP token. With PGP decryption, I can't log in at all because my GPG key is on my laptop. Unusable security doesn't help anybody.
 * Also, what does "not secure" mean. Things aren't secure or not-secure. Things are secure against certain threat models. Is my house "secure"? Well, the locks and so on are secure enough for my insurance company to insure the contents. Does that mean it'll never be broken into? No. But the security needed for my house are perhaps slightly different than for Fort Knox. Security needs to be pragmatic: opt-in TOTP means that users can choose to set up the current most widely used two-factor auth process that is used by everyone who matters in the industry. Rolling your own 2FA based on GPG means nobody except a few neckbeard hackers use it, meaning less extra security overall. —Tom Morris (talk) 18:25, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Search in Mobile Version of Wikipedia No Longer Works
For about the last month or two (possibly since the new search was implemented), the search function on the main page of Wikipedia on the web browser of my mobile phone has not been working. I am using a Samsung Intercept with Android 2.2.2 and the standard web browser and the web URL "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page".

When the page first appears, the search box at the top of the page has three menu bars and says "Search Wikipedia". If I touch "Search Wikipedia" once, the words go away but the menu bars remain. If I touch where the words had been a second time, the menu bars are replaced by an "X" and the cursor is positioned after it. As soon as I start typing in a search word, a smaller "x" within a gray circle appears at the other end of the line and suggested search words begin appearing below.

If I then try to select one of the search words below, one of two things happens:

1) If I touch a search word and then immediately lift my finger off, or if I touch a search word and leave my finger on it a few seconds, but no "box outline" (to show something as selected) surrounds any of the search words, and then I lift my finger off, the page instantly returns to it's original appearance, with the menu bars, "Search Wikipedia", no "x" within a circle, and no search words.

2) If I touch a search word and leave my finger on it a few seconds and a "box outline" surrounds not only the search word but other whole or partial search words (on different lines, as if it cannot figure out what I am trying to select), a box appears, asking me which of various options (Open, Open in new window, etc.) I would like to perform on a TOTALLY UNRELATED URL AT THE TOP OF THE BOX.

I can no longer get the search function to select and surround only the search word(s) I am trying to select with a "box outline".

I also cannot just type in a search word and have Wikipedia search for it, because there is nothing in the search box like a "?" or "Go" button to start a search; instead there are only "X"s to end one.

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on this or could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.87.95.204 (talk) 10:32, 26 November 2014‎ (UTC)


 * Thanks for telling us about this problem, which sounds very annoying. I'll make sure that User:Maryana (WMF) knows about the problem, and I hope that it will be fixed soon.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

HTTPS certificate change?
Someone reported on this before Village_pump_%28technical%29/Archive_129 with the conclusion that that there was some kind of malicious certificate exchange/MitM attack.

I've recently noticed a change in the certificate when attempting to access https://en.wikipedia.org both at work and at home. Here's what Certificate Patrol tells me - has anyone else seen a similar thing?

Original: - GTE CyberTrust Global Root - DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA   - DigiCert High Assurance CA-3 - *.wikipedia.org

SHA-1 = 87:A6:CC:C9:08:A0:0B:4F:B0:66:31:B2:4B:24:3F:39:82:FA:E0:30 Issued 2012-10-22, 01:00:00, expires 2016-01-20, 12:00:00

New: - GlobalSign Root CA - GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - SHA256 - G2    - *.wikipedia.org SHA1 = D1:B3:F4:B9:EF:27:75:07:EE:DD:B5:61:75:15:3F:EA:B9:EF:85:C9 Issued 2014-11-21, 18:06:02, expires 2015-11-22, 18:06:02 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.102.15 (talk) 13:36, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I get the new certificate too. --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 14:07, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I have the newer SHA-256 certificate as well, everything appears to be in order with the certificate. — xaosflux  Talk 14:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks - it's not a problem on my end. Now I'm curious as to why the certificate and CA was changed a year before its expiry date.131.111.102.15 (talk) 15:12, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The old cert was SHA-1, which is being deprecated, now we look good in Shaaaaaaaaaaaaa :D — xaosflux  Talk 15:41, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * See T73156, Chrome 41 will warn users if SHA1 certificates are used and expire after January 1, 2016. --Sitic (talk) 13:59, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Linking to other languages
It used to be easy to link to a parallel article in another language. Unfortunately, such links are now hidden in both traditional editor and VE. I tried to add a link to a Korean article, but I guess I have forgotten the coding, since it didn't work in the traditional editor and the VE was hopeless. I wanted to add 한국어:탑정저수지 as a link from Tapjeong Reservoir. Kdammers (talk) 09:32, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Click on "Add links" in the sidebar of either article, enter the language and title of the other article, and a script should automatically create or edit the Wikidata page for the pair of articles. You don't need to actually edit the articles anymore. (The pre-Wikidata method would be adding  to the enWP page and   to the koWP one.) SiBr4 (talk) 09:44, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * But this requires that you either have a central login for all Wikimedia projects or create a separate account at Wikidata. Otherwise the shortcut to Wikidata won't work. De728631 (talk) 11:16, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A central login is made automatically. Special:CentralAuth/Kdammers shows Kdammers's account is linked to a Wikidata account. SiBr4 (talk) 11:29, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * On another note, there is no such article ko:한국어:탑정저수지 at the Korean Wikipedia. De728631 (talk) 11:23, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I think  was intended as an interwiki prefix (it means "Korean"). The Korean article in question is ko:탑정저수지. SiBr4 (talk) 11:29, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, that sneaky colon between all the hangul characters had escaped me. :-) De728631 (talk) 11:40, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Template
I am working on Template:Navbox subgroup, this template allow 20 subgroups, I have more than 20 entry in subgroups. Is there any other template like this, in which i can insert more than 20 subgroups?Ameen Akbar (talk) 11:07, 27 November 2014 (UTC)


 * You could use {{Navbox|child  instead. -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:09, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Wiki mark-ups are missing
A couple of days ago I noticed that the wiki mark-ups when editing are completely missing. There were no changes made in my prefs nor PCs (2) or laptop. Does someone know what's going on here? Thanks.TMCk (talk) 18:03, 27 November 2014 (UTC) More info: Just checked on IE (instead of Chrome) and get the same unless I'm logged out. No problem tho on the German wiki.TMCk (talk) 18:30, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What are "the wiki mark-ups"? I'm using Firefox 33.1, and have typed in wiki markup here, to make the colon indent, the template at the start of this reply, and my signature; all with no problem. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:40, 27 November 2014 (UTC)


 * When you edit a page, there is a drop-down-menu (or whatever it is called) near the bottom left named "insert" and mark-ups are one option in the list. I don't get this drop-down-menu when signed in.TMCk (talk) 19:50, 27 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I figured that is what you meant. Ensure CharInsert is enabled: --   Gadget850talk 19:55, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You should also blank User:The Magnificent Clean-keeper/common.js and bypass as that line of text is invalid and may interfere. --  Gadget850talk 19:57, 27 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. it was my code-page that interfered here. All fine now ;) TMCk (talk) 20:15, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Category:Articles with Old English-language external links
Non-existing Category:Articles with Old English-language external links, which is appended to some stuff, appears unhidden in Earth and possibly other articles, could someone have a look to fix this? Brandmeistertalk — Preceding undated comment added 23:06, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ in by removing instances of ang icon.  GoingBatty (talk) 01:56, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I had already created Category:Articles with Old English-language external links a minute before it was emptied of the only article Earth in the above edits. Treating Old English as a foreign language like others in Category:Articles with non-English-language external links may appear odd but it's a hidden category, and Category:Articles containing non-English-language text already has the subcategory Category:Articles containing Old English-language text with lots of articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:06, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, I reverted my edits to Earth so it's in the category again. GoingBatty (talk) 02:18, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Non-existing categories always appear unhidden, in all articles. This is because a category can only be hidden if its cat page has  (or a template that includes that markup); for this to be done, the cat page must exist. Therefore, if you want articles to be in that cat and still have the category hidden, the only "fix" is to create the category page. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:00, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Sig markup issue
Hi there. I just noticed while commenting on a talk page that one user's signature seems to have had its markup go a bit haywire. I asked the user about it and I was referred here. The sig in question looks like this when I edit after the user:

(I'm going to ask for the file to be deleted once it's been seen - hopefully Monday's not too soon?) Is this a problem anyone else has been having or is it just something in my browser (Firefox 33.1) or OS (Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1) ? Thanks for your help. Daveosaurus (talk) 09:07, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This edit to Font color should make all parser functions substitute correctly, but still keeps a hidden comment if substituted:  now results in

DerbyCountyinNZ
 * Note that using templates in signatures is discouraged, so it's better to directly set  as signature. SiBr4 (talk) 09:22, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing the reason doesn't do that has to do with the 255 character signature length limit in the system.  The problem is they don't seem to realize that WP:SIGLENGTH says that signature code isn't allowed to be longer than that by social policy anyways.  I'll leave a message on their talk page tonight suggesting an appropriate HTML5 compliant signature tonight, when I get home to a computer. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:44, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's the unsubstituted parser functions and hidden comments that made the signature so large; without those it is only 173 characters long (excluding the timestamp). Does the sig currently contain any obsolete HTML parts? SiBr4 (talk) 17:49, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, now I'm at home where I have a full size screen and a keyboard. Apparently  has reverted to the default wiki signature, and I've already offered my services to help them code a new one that is compliant if they wish.  So, no, the default sig has no obsolete HTML parts. :p — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:55, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I used that sig for years (having never known about WP:SIG:NT) without ever noticing any extra formatting when editing later. Anyhoo, have now changed to the code above. Cheers, DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 21:16, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It was this edit to Template:Font color on 23 November that made it "subst-unfriendly". Before that it expanded completely. SiBr4 (talk) 21:43, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

ClueBot III
Is not running  or did I not correctly add the template to have it archive resolved requests in  WP:ANRFC edits? Thanks for any help. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 21:40, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Bare URLs help needed at Wikiquote
We need help at Wikiquote setting up something to deal with the proliferation of bare URLs and linked URLs with no other text, as these should not be included in our citations. I gather that Wikipedia has been dealing with these for a long time, so we would appreciate any help in setting up a list of these issues needing to be fixed at Wikiquote (or, better yet, a bot to automatically tag or make common fixes). Cheers! bd2412 T 17:50, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * We manually tag pages with Cleanup-bare URLs and use tools such as Reflinks to assist in the creations of citation templates. I'm not aware of any Wikipedia bots to do either of these tasks.  GoingBatty (talk) 18:15, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm more than willing to add Wikiquote integration to Reflinks. For a start, I've added an experimental integration on the test version (Select "enquote" from the drop-down menu), and here's an example edit made with the tool. As I'm not familiar with Wikiquote, some help is needed to make it meet your requirements. Information about the tool is available here. You can get in touch with me on my talk page. Thanks. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 03:03, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Another test edit. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 03:15, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I have commented on your Wikiquote talk page. Cheers! bd2412  T 03:44, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

revision history statistics
revision history statistics "link"  is down again--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:21, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Reporting two bugs with PDF renderer and Wiki books
Hello all, I want to report two bugs with the Wiki books and PDF rendering.
 * 1) I cannot render the page Ethiopia as a PDF as the software says the font for Ethiopian is not included (or something like that)
 * 2) PDF for printed forms displays hatnotes, which is not very useful in written form (eg "The main article is..."). Especially not useful is when I visit a page to add to a book and then the page prints with "This page is about [x]...", which is a little redundant in printed form as I did have to personally select it to print.

Browser is current firefox (32/33) and this was current as of a few days ago. I hope this is the right venue. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:56, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Duplicated the error when I clicked the "Download as PDF" link in Firefox 33.1 and IE11: "Generation of the document file has failed. Status: ! Package polyglossia Error: The current roman font does not contain the Ethiop". However, when I used Firefox's print functionality, everything looked fine, and the hatnote templates about and redirect were not included.  GoingBatty (talk) 04:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * For bug-related issues, seee Bug reports and feature requests. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:55, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Opened a new bug - let's see what happens. GoingBatty (talk) 23:07, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks.--Tom (LT) (talk) 23:09, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to swap Government to Governance in Infobox geopolitical organization?
This would be really helpful to know as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are still defined as a rebel group an sources don't tend to describe them as having a government. Gregkaye ✍ ♪  23:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)


 * The term only has two options. If you omit  in the infobox at Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant then it will say "Leaders" instead of "Government". In the reduced example here you would also have to add   or   to get "Leaders". PrimeHunter (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Enable content translation
Per this section, can we please request the change with the Wikimedia Foundation as appropriate? Gryllida (talk) 00:31, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It's currently being tested on the beta cluster, I believe. --Glaisher (talk) 05:57, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Yep, you can enable it as a beta feature here and then go to Special:ContentTranslation on that wiki to try it out. --Glaisher (talk) 06:01, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * As I understand it, this proposal is about enabling it here (on the real enwiki). Since it's already available on the beta cluster, when can we expect it to hit enwiki (if at all)? Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 06:35, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * As I already said, it's currently being tested. Extensions are deployed to the production cluster after extensive review and testing. So when it's in a stable state, we can expect it to be deployed here. might be able to inform us about an ETA. --Glaisher (talk) 06:49, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Knew its interface and feature set are incomplete. But are you also implying that the extension is not sufficiently reviewed for safe deployment? Would you please release a well-tested version now, before finishing the extra non-critical features such as automated translation? Gryllida (talk) 08:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Its like a trained soldier that hasn't seen war yet. You trust the trainers, but that doesn't mean you trust the guy if he joins your squad fresh out of boot camp. He needs to prove himself first. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:50, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

"Education Program article log" watchlist link broken
My watchlist has an entry: where "Education Program article log" is a link to Special:Log/eparticle. That page is "all public logs" for Performer:eparticle, which is nothing (there's no such User:eparticle, etc.). Should it instead be picking a specific log-type and leaving Performer blank? Or is there a different Special: page for EPOnline stuff? Or is "eparticle" some pseudo-user that isn't getting attributed properly for certain actions? DMacks (talk) 10:29, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * (Education Program article log); 07:29 . . Taweetham (talk | contribs | block) removed article Green chemistry from 5680023.navee's list of articles for course Education Program:Mahidol University International College/ICCH444 (2014-15 T1)


 * This is a known bug T50495. If logtype is a valid log type then Special:Log/logtype with lower case l displays that log. Otherwise it displays the same as Special:Log/Logtype, i.e. logs of the user named "Logtype". That's what happens here. Compare for example Special:Log/delete and Special:Log/Delete for how it works for a valid log type. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:29, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for finding/linking it! DMacks (talk) 20:32, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Missing section edit link
The last conversation at Template talk:Citation is missing its section edit link. How do I get it back?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:16, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This is caused by an unmatched  in the preceding section. Hhhippo just fixed it. SiBr4 (talk) 11:34, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * (ec) Agreed. ;-) &mdash;&thinsp; H HHIPPO  11:37, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Excellent, thank you.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:38, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Navigation popups versus alt text
One of the best features of the encyclopedia's user interface, the salmon-colored Navigation popups ('nav-pops'), is currently colliding with the black alt-text balloon. The black balloons appear to be a recent update (I first noticed them in the last few hours or so; they didn't used to be black). The navpop still operates as expected in certain places, for example when I hover the cursor over a link in my watchlist entries. They are very useful when referring to multiple other pages in one tab, while editing an article in another tab. Navpops are still visible when I preview a page I am 'editing'.

On the other hand, when 'reading' that article, the navpops no longer appear, and only the black balloon text appears. The black balloons also appear, for example, when I hover the cursor over the text links in the upper right hand corner of a wiki page, or the interwiki links in the left hand sidebar.

In the past few days, I have also noticed the light blue hovercard balloons as well as the navpops, but the black balloons are recent. Since I prefer the navpops, the current absence of the hovercards is OK. But there is less information in the black balloons, which is not an improvement in my view.

The sporadic nature of the light blue hovercard/salmon navpop/black balloon behavior appears to be the result of updates to the infrastructure of the encyclopedia, perhaps to better support mobile editors?

Or perhaps the navpop javascript is now inadvertently overridden or disabled when displaying article pages on web-based browsers? --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 09:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I can think of no script or gadget that produces 'black balloons', much less one that was recently introduced. So I am tempted to blame this on something you use in your personal scripts, or some browser plugin.  10:54, 29 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm also unsure which feature you describe as black balloons. Have you enabled "Hovercards" at Special:Preferences? If so, do you get what you want by disabling it? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:57, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * As of 15:10, 29 November 2014 (UTC), I see "Special:Preferences" in a little box of white text on a black background, which I denoted a "black balloon", when I hover the cursor over the link to "Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures"; when I hover the cursor over the link to "PrimeHunter" I can read your first name, and the salmon-colored navpops are back! (At least when I was editing, but I was also just reading, and the navpops also appeared.)
 * Hovercards are not enabled in the Beta preferences, and both Navigation Popups and Reference Tooltips are selected in the Gadgets. Regarding the "black balloon", a tooltip with black background color: it appears to be part of the Firefox browser, as I also see one called "Open a new tab" when I hover the cursor over the [+] at the top of the browser, as well. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 15:10, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I also see the page name "Special:Preferences" when hovering over Special:Preferences, but it's black text on white background for me, in a rectangular box. I don't know why the colors are reversed for you but apart from that, what you describe is the standard tooltips seen by IP's, and by registered users who haven't enabled Navigation popups or Hovercards. For a wikilink, Wikipedia sets the tooltip to the page name. Popups and Hovercards override that. For unknown reasons, popups didn't have the full functionality for a while on your computer. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:29, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Keeping only the common.css that sets image background to transparent (so I don't see black around the images), and commenting out the common.js which loads Hedonil's XTools, navpop is back on the articles. The navpops were available for watchlists. To me, this means that XTools consumes a resource that currently never completes the refresh when attempting to complete the load of the articles, and that the watchlist display does not have this burden. Hazarding a guess, the problematic data feed is from the edit counters. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 21:31, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

In Firefox 33, ran a developer console (selected Network|Timings) when in bottom half. Atop, ran Nervous system, with the XTools loading, saw

For the last line of the table,
 * DNS resolution:| 0 ms
 * Connecting:| 257 ms
 * Sending:| 0 ms
 * Waiting:|600536 ms
 * Receiving:| 0 ms

24 requests, 1,309.62KB, 606.03 sec It appears that the tools server is carrying a heavy burden for its size? Is there a way to share its burden with other machines? --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 04:17, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Reported to Phabricator T76297 --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 17:53, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

I am using both, and they don't collide (much): hoverecards are on the left, popups on the right. Neither is black. --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:32, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The black tooltips are probably from my environment, and yes, there can be occasions when both hovercards and navpops work, ... but not always. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 13:59, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In File:Both hovercard and navpop.png, the upper balloon (blue border) there is not Hovercards, it's Reference Tooltips, which is at as "". The lower balloon (yellow border) is indeed Navigation popups (""). -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:56, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

"Connection interrupted", and similar issues
A colleague has posted the following onto my talk page. I'm stuck for an answer, but hope that someone here can help:
 * whenever I try to use the WP search box to go to an article, I get "Connection interrupted" and have to log in again. The same thing happens when I click on a TOC heading to find a section, or if I click on a citation number to locate the reference in the text. But other wikilinks are working perfectly normally, and there are no problems with external links. Having to find ways round these constant interruption is time-consuming and annoying, makes article reviewing difficult and source reviews impossible. It's hard to understand so selective a disfunction – have you any ideas as to how I might overcome it?

If you are able to provide any help he and I woud be most appreciative. – SchroCat (talk) 23:01, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Which browser and which browser version is this about? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:28, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Share this [in social media]
Looking at articles like this one, I see in the top right corner the "Share this [in social media]" link, with a collapsible list. How is this achieved (template link, please)? And - why is this not a basic feature for all mainspace articles?? As the Signpost article shows, it's clearly not a "technical can't do" issue. --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:29, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's in this page. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 07:02, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As for why it is not a basic feature, see Perennial proposals. SiBr4 (talk) 08:32, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's more a navel staring issue :) When it comes to social media, we are like old librarians telling kids not to use the Internet. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Translation of the user interface
Hello everybody, i am currently working at hywiki (Armenian Wikipedia). For easier usage i switched to German language for Wiki user interface. Unfortunately, not all items are translated. Even the top one "Main page" stays in Armenian letters. Can someone tell me where these translations are located and if i can improve them? Is it done at one place for all wikis or is it something needed to discuss at hywiki? Thanks in advance, --Aschroet (talk) 15:02, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The translations are per-wiki. See hy:Special:AllMessages and [//hy.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D5%8D%D5%BA%D5%A1%D5%BD%D5%A1%D6%80%D5%AF%D5%B8%D5%B2%3A%D4%B2%D5%B8%D5%AC%D5%B8%D6%80%D5%B8%D6%82%D5%B2%D5%A5%D6%80%D5%B1%D5%B6%D5%A5%D6%80%D5%A8&lang=de the same list, but in German]. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:11, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Some of the interface messages are from the MediaWiki software and come with translations in many languages. Other messages are created on a per-wiki basis and would have to be translated there in the MediaWiki namespace (which can only be edited by administrators), but that rarely happens. You appear to especially be interested in the sidebar. That is made with code in hy:MediaWiki:Sidebar. I don't know why the  entry was changed in [//hy.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar&diff=79760&oldid=67456] but if that edit is reverted then I think you will automatically get the translations which come with the MediaWiki software and can be seen (and changed if wanted) at hy:MediaWiki:mainpage/de (German), hy:MediaWiki:mainpage/en (English) and so on. IP's and users with the default language setting   would get hy:MediaWiki:mainpage which says "Գլխավոր էջ". I don't know Armenian but that is what the link already says now so the suggested revert seems OK to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:33, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Anti Link Spam/soapboxing tools?
Hello, I was directed here by a teahouse host For my Question, As I am wondering, Is There a tool to detect Link Spam Or Soapboxing via Links? Thanks,

Happy_Attack_Dog ( Throw Me a Bone ) 15:16, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

How does one provide evidence of a user's deleted contribs?
For example, Special:Contributions/Die-yng. If I wished to take that 16:45, 6 November 2014 redacted edit to Talk:Brianna Wu and present it to someone else, how does one do that? There's no diff since it has been rev-deleted? Just linking to a short edit history like this editor works here, but not with one with an extensive edit history. I feel like I'm missing something simple here, on how to do this. Tarc (talk) 18:49, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You can still link to it just like any other diff - go to a revision either side of the deleted one, move forward or back as appropriate and you'll see something like this. Obviously you won't be able to see the content, but you can see the entry in the page's history this way. – Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 19:04, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Education Program article log on watchlist
How do I switch these off? I have this example:


 * (Education Program article log); 18:28 . . Courtpm21 (talk | contribs) added article T. Hayes Hunter to their list of articles at course Education Program:University of Massachusetts Amherst/Race, Gender and the Sitcom (Fall 2014)

How do I stop these from showing on my watchlist? Thanks.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 19:28, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Is this the same issue as ? -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:12, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Not sure TBH. This is some sort of log that triggers on the watchlist, similar to if a new page is reviewed, or page protection is added to an article.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 20:25, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This is yet another type of education program log, but one that isn't even listed at special:log, as noted above. They should not show up in article logs but instead in the EP page's log, so bug filled. Cenarium (talk) 20:56, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 08:12, 2 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 125 was also about this but no bug was apparently filed then. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Targeted vandalism prevention?
Is there a way to prevent an edit to an article from even being saved if it contains a particular phrase? I've been dealing with a repeat IP- and username-hopping vandal who keeps adding the same nonsense over and over to the same article. It would be nice if the system itself could be set by admins to just prevent the whole mess rather than dealing with page protection and whack-a-mole blocking. postdlf (talk) 21:49, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure there is, Edit filter. Cenarium (talk) 21:52, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've never worked with those before. I've posted a request so those who are more code savvy in this area can hopefully set it up. Any advice on what makes requests of this sort tend to be denied or accepted? postdlf (talk) 22:13, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Jackmcbarn has created one. I would say it depends on the increase in processing time it generates, the ability to catch enough of the intended edits while keeping false positives low, and the available alternatives. Cenarium (talk) 23:12, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the time to respond. Cheers, postdlf (talk) 23:01, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

My DraftHeader template
I created User:Technical 13/SandBox/DraftHeader ...

... 11.1423562283105 years ago in the interest of making it easier for new users (and experienced users alike) to make it easier to keep track of and create new drafts (of multiple types). Since we are pushing the 18 month mark, I'm wondering if this template which hasn't been advocated for anywhere except a few additions to user sandboxes for them to resolve questions on WP:THQ and for transwikification to the Bengali Wikipedia that is used on 27 pages by 24 editors on two projects should be moved to the Template: namespace and added to some of the Category:Welcome templates to help more new editors. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:44, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Interwiki links link in German yet not in Italian using same format.
As everyone can see the following interwiki link does work in German Thomaskirche, yet it does not work in its Italian version when I place it on the redlinks for the English page for Villa del Poggio Imperiale. The links are "coded" into the English article for the Villa and print out as redlinks rather than giving the Italian interwiki link page to the 2 existing Italian biographies which are interwiki linked. The same double-curly bracket format does work on the J. S. Bach page (in the Leipzig section) when connecting to the German links to "Thomaskirche". Has anyone encountered this interwiki situation differing for German compared to Italian interwiki links (the German link works and the Italian link does not)? FelixRosch  (<font face="Trebuchet MS" size="1">TALK ) 18:17, 2 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Your post is unclear to me but you seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings. An interwiki link is a link to another wiki. See Help:Interwiki linking.  is not an interwiki link. It's a use of the template lang. It links to the wiki you are already at. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:59, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I changed both of them to use ill which generated a Interlanguage link for the first. The second there was already a redirect for the person to a section of another article for that name, who I believe is the person. When articles for both people are created in the enwiki, everything with sort itself out since we are using the ill template.Naraht (talk) 19:38, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

not appearing
Hello.

I am posting here to report that for an unexplained reason, the template is not appearing on the page Template:Uw-botun. Can somebody please look into this? Thanks. 2602:304:59B8:6639:C5F4:2D05:4E99:820B (talk) 23:57, 2 December 2014 (UTC)


 * was removed in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Uw-botun&diff=576444910&oldid=507905631] so there is now an unclosed . PrimeHunter (talk) 00:25, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Give rate limited move-subpages and supressredirect-new-self to autoconfirmed users
I suggest to give to all autoconfirmed users the move-subpages userright, but rate limited, meaning the moved subpages are included in the rate limit for moves, which is 8 per minute here. So autoconfirmed users could not move more than 7 subpages. I think this should be modified in mediawiki core (not just for en.wp). Administrators and bots having no rate limits, they could still move up to 100 subpages. (As a side note, this would also apply to account creators, but the solution here should be to give them noratelimit-account instead, as with .) I also suggest to allow all autoconfirmed users to move a page without creating a redirect when it has been recently created and they are the unique contributor. This could also be modified in mediawiki core. Comments ? Cenarium (talk) 12:58, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Please, explain for what purpose an average autoconfirmed you may need move-subpages userright? Ruslik_ Zero 11:49, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * For moving templates, with their doc and other subpages, and pages with talk archives. Some other projects may have more specific uses. This will save them the clicks and time without any additional risk since the rate limit is respected, so I just don't feel that restricting this is necessary in any way. Cenarium (talk) 12:16, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I couldn't comment specifically on the need on enwiki as I have never found the need to move a subpage, but as a core feature it would certainly help Wikibooks where all books are structured as subpages under a main page. Therefore when a book title is changed it is necessary to move lots of pages one by one... QuiteUnusual (talk) 17:05, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It sure would be useful there, and if the rate limit of eight per minute is too restrictive, it could be increased a bit, and set even higher for reviewers. I've suggested using the rate limit for this reason too, easy to vary it depending on usergroup. Cenarium (talk) 20:18, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Proposed at Wikibooks:Wikibooks:Reading_room/General. Cenarium (talk) 10:41, 28 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I've filed a bug to allow autoconfirmed users to move without leaving a redirect pages they have recently created,, and another one to make move-subpages rate limited and grant it to autoconfirmed, . Cenarium (talk) 18:12, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Both ideas sound good to me. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

XTools and Supercount
Right now, accessing it gives this error: "No webservice The URI you have requested, [URL you tried to request] is not currently serviced." Meanwhile, Supercount gives this error: "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 524288000 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 64 bytes) in /data/project/supercount/public_html/core.php on line 513 Call Stack: 0.0058 1304128 1. {main} /data/project/supercount/public_html/index.php:0 0.6314 2665736 2. API->get_stats /data/project/supercount/public_html/index.php:145" The people maintaining these tools have been rather inactive lately. Now what? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 00:56, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Confirmed. I know that there have been problems with XTools lately, but I haven't heard anything about Supercount. APerson (talk!) 03:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I suggest reporting this directly to one of the maintainers. I know that  is on a wikibreak right now, but I'm pretty sure that  is a maintainer also and is around to take a look. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 03:26, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See User talk:Hedonil. According to a message on the aforementioned page, apparently TParis is no longer involved with the tools; nevertheless, I'll go and contact him .Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 03:31, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I was a maintainer but as I am retiring soon, I asked to be removed from the tools. Looks like that request has been made effective and I cannot access them any longer.  Sorry folks.--v/r - TP 04:09, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So maybe someone else can take over the tools now? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 09:05, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In case anyone is not aware. I'm silently active.  Just message me.  It's fixed.— cyber power <sub style="color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Offline <sup style="margin-left:-6.4ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Merry Christmas 12:51, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * When I try X! Edit Counter, I get "Notice: Again issues with Tool Labs databases after db maintenance. Some wiki's won't work. Sorry about that!". Your continued assistance would be appreciated.  GoingBatty (talk) 19:18, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a site notice. If it works, ignore it.  If you notice high execution times being printed on the page, that's what it's talking about.  In any event tool lab users have no control over that.  They can just helplessly stand by and wait.— cyber power <sub style="color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Offline <sup style="margin-left:-6.4ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Merry Christmas 20:42, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Still not working for me. I still get the "No webservice: The URI you have requested, /xtools/ec/?user=K6ka&project=en.wikipedia.org, is not currently serviced." message. --I am  k6ka  Talk to me!   See what I have done  22:10, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I asked about it on IRC, and the webservice has been restarted by Yuvipanda. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 08:56, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Edit notices @ VE
Has anybody thought what to do with editnotices, when people are editing using VisualEditor? If somebody doesn't know, then - if you are editing with VisualEditor, then you don't see any editnotices. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 07:07, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Edit notices work just fine with VisualEditor. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:12, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry. I just picked some random BLP and saw that BLP notice isn't showing. Then everything is fine :) -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 11:55, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not entirely fine in fact, since indeed the notices added by mediawiki:common.js, i.e. the BLP editnotice and disambiguation editnotice (or editintros to be accurate) do not show there, this should be fixed at some point. Cenarium (talk) 12:15, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe you're talking about this known request. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * While we're on the subject, I'd like to get up on my soapbox again and say that we have a problem with the desktop-focused formatting of many editnotices. When you look at things like TFA-editnotice in a smartphone-wide screen, half of the screen (vertically) may be blank, because the icon is placed in its own column, regardless of how awkward that is on the screen.  It would be better if the text wrapped around the image (similar to a drop cap).  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:21, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Example, Education Program:Example, Topic:Example and their talk pages
For the sake of demonstrating templates such as lm, lep, ltp, etc, could these pages be created with the following content, please?:

[...:Example page]:

[accompanying talk page]:

Sardanaphalus (talk) 10:00, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Education Program and Topic (Flow) are not normal wiki pages; it would be possible to do this for the MediaWiki space. — xaosflux  Talk 13:57, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response. For the time being, I've disabled examples that link to these pages. Sardanaphalus (talk) 11:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Inability to select on Diacritics(?) in Category:Redirects from Unicode characters
When I view Category:Redirects from Unicode characters on the second page, starting 10 entries down on the third column, the entries become unclickable/selectable. This continues onto the third page. These appear to be the ones that run from wiki/%CC%80 to /wiki/%CD%AC which appear to be the diacritics. I'm using Windows 7 SP1 and Chrome 38.0.2125.111. Naraht (talk) 20:40, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * That's very odd. I get the same problem in Safari 6 on Mac 10.8.5, so it's probably affecting everyone.  I'm not sure who the best contact is for something so basic in categories.  Perhaps User:AKlapper (WMF) could suggest a dev to contact.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Left a message for him. My bet is that the link created has to have something so that the diacritic won't automatically combine with the following character (take a look at that page source)Naraht (talk) 15:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I cannot suggest a dev (Developers/Maintainers provides a list) but you could file a bug report under the "MediaWiki-Categories" project in Phabricator. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Bug Report filed.Naraht (talk) 18:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * i do not think it's specific to categories: this link to the redirect page will get you to the redirected article with a sub-header "  redirected from ̀   ". normally, you can click the sub-header to get to the redirect page, but in this case, it's not clickable. simply placing the grave accent diacritic within square double-braces, like so:   ̀  is also not clickable (and sometimes, such as in edit window, it's not even visible). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Showing both new and unregistered users in recent changes
Is there, as I believe, no way to show both new (non-autoconfirmed registered) users and unregistered users in recent changes or watchlists ? We can show only IPs in RC, and on the other hand we have special:contribs/newbies, but what if one wants both at the same time ? Cenarium (talk) 21:06, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It would seem that special:contribs/newbies uses another definition for 'new' than non-autoconfirmed, is it one month old or something like that ? Cenarium (talk) 12:13, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it's three weeks. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:42, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I am thinking of requesting a show/hide autoconfirmed users option in recent changes and watchlists. Newbies contribs doesn't look much used, I wonder if it shouldn't be deprecated in favor of this. Cenarium (talk) 15:53, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's "users with user id within 1% of the current maximum user id, excluding users with the 'bot' right". Anomie⚔ 12:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reference. It makes sense to have a definition adapted to the rate of new registrations at the wiki in question. I've added this at Help:User contributions. Cenarium (talk) 13:18, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Edit sections not displaying on portal
See Portal:Christmas Where some subsections include an correctly-formatted "edit" section in the transcluded subpages but others have a malformed " [ edit] " I can't figure out why. Can someone help? Thanks. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Some work was done on Random portal component which was not fully tested. I reverted for now and the portal should display fine.  10:55, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It appears that that template's internal Lua module fails to pass the name of the randomly chosen subpage through to the formatting template Portal:Christmas/box-header. Maybe someone more familiar with Lua than I am could take a look at the module. SiBr4 (talk) 10:58, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Pinging . He wrote the module.  11:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * What's unusual about Portal:Christmas is that the "header" parameters contain equals signs once the  has been expanded. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:43, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So is that a fault in the module, or the portal?  13:34, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The module. If my hunch is correct, then the line that formats the call to the box-header template should be changed from "%s | %s" to "1=%s | 2=%s". But I've never written or debugged any LUA code. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hmm, my code from a year ago wasn't the greatest. John of Reading is right - if any parameters containing equals signs are passed to the template invocations in the module, then anything before the equals sign will be interpreted as a parameter name. To fix this, we could prefix the parameters with 1= and 2=, etc., but it would be better to use frame:expandTemplate as it is faster and it deals with equals signs automatically. I'll have a look at the code tomorrow when I have a bit more time. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 15:06, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've rewritten the module and restored the template to the Lua version. Portal:Christmas is now displaying fine. Let me know if you spot any other problems. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 10:56, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Tossed out of login onto a page for Wikipedia fund raising
In the middle of going from one article to another, I was completely thrown out of my login to a Wikipedia fund raising banner. I have "Suppress display of the fundraiser banner" already clicked on my gadget preferences, so I guess this is their way of getting around it. I like to think this was a momentary glitch that won't happen again. — Maile (talk) 21:46, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Whenever you retrieve any page anywhere in Wikimedia, whether it be Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata, etc., your login cookie is sent along with the http or https request. This happens for every page that you visit, even if you are staying within English Wikipedia and merely follow a link to another article. If for some reason that cookie doesn't get through (perhaps it was corrupted en route), you're treated as being logged out until the Wikimedia servers successfully receive your login cookie at a subsequent page request. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:56, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

Highlight redirects: vector.js
Hello. Is there a code for users vector.js that can highlights the redirects links on a page? Xaris333 (talk) 04:07, 4 December 2014 (UTC) You can highlight the links with any style you want. Darkdadaah (talk) 09:44, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * , see User:Anomie/linkclassifier. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 04:11, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Redirect links are styled with the class "mw-redirect". So you just need to put something like this in your vector.css (not js):
 * Put a redirection arrow to the right of redirect links: .mw-redirect:after { content: "↳"; }
 * Color the redirect links in green: .mw-redirect { color: green; }

User:Darkdadaah, many thanks!! Xaris333 (talk) 12:16, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Different colour for article text and markup text
Is there an existing gadget or add-on that I can use to display article text in the edit window in a different colour than the references, templates, categories, etc.? (It would make editing long articles a lot simpler, I think.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:24, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, just enable the Syntax highlighter gadget (under the Editing section). Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 04:34, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Zhaofeng Li! --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:49, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Criteria clarifications...
I need help in setting the criteria for the script to make it as useful as possible, please see Criteria clarifications... on the WikiProject Orphan talk page. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:27, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Detect whether any erences on page..?
Is there a way for a page to detect whether it includes any <ref ></ref>s..?

Curiously, yielded "111" here; perhaps that always occurs..? (It explains, though, why doesn't work.)

Sardanaphalus (talk) 11:32, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * gives 111 because the template outputs 111 characters (the HTML). You cannot query the length of any wikitags like because they are generated outside the page context. Only JavaScript could do what you want, but why?   13:21, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation; it hadn't occurred to me that it'd be length of 's code when converted to HTML. As to why, I could divulge the reason, but then I'd have to (etc). Regards, Sardanaphalus (talk) 14:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * This sort of thing in general will never be possible to do within the parser. The reason is that changing one part of a page (such as by adding a reference) shouldn't be able to affect how other parts of the page are preprocessed. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:15, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm going to take a SWAG that might be of interest. --   Gadget850talk 21:35, 29 November 2014 (UTC)


 * , depending on how you need to retrieve this information (for a template? for a userscript?  for some other purpose?) it can be retrieved.  If you are using it for a javascript userscript, you can get the wikitext of a template and search for the tag in some fashion.  An example of using the API to get the wikitext of a page is . — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 06:12, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for suggesting; I was wondering whether it'd be possible within wikicode/HTML (i.e. without relying on the installation of a script, etc) in order to guide action taken by a template. Regards, Sardanaphalus (talk) 09:26, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There was some discussion on IRC about this. To answer some questions there, there's no way to get the final parsed HTML from Lua, and there's no way to detect whether a page uses references. For various reasons that have been discussed at length before, neither of these features can be added. However, depending on the use case for them, it may be possible to integrate the desired functionality into mw:Extension:Cite directly. Can you please describe the use case? Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:05, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not something major; it would've been for a template to decide whether to add a heading and/or (e.g.) to pages such as template testcases pages. Sardanaphalus (talk) 08:49, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Via email or on one of our talk pages if you want a little more privacy due to WP:BEANS concerns for some reason. Thanks. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:15, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Severe problems with log-in
I am currently having very severe problems with my log-in on both Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. It started happening suddenly yesterday afternoon. The exact same thing happened six (correction, three) months ago, and back then this problem went on for at least 2 weeks before it got better by degrees spontaneously. Here is what is happening:

I am on a Mac with OS X Yosemite, version 10.10.1.

I am losing my logged-in status, AND MY PASSWORD VALIDITY, numerous times each hour. Every time I open a new window, go to another site, or even just go away from the computer for 20 minutes and then click back in again, the software drops my log-in. Then my current password no longer works to log me back in, so I have to request a temporary password and then create a NEW PASSWORD, again and again and again every few minutes that I am working here.

This is extremely difficult and extremely time-consuming, but the previous time this happened I couldn't find anyone who had any idea what could be causing this or had any idea how to fix it. I was using Safari yesterday, but I just now switched to Firefox to see if that would make a difference: it didn't.

If you have a concrete suggestion, please reply to me via email as well as here, because using the site is very difficult for me right now. I very much appreciate any insight you might have or any idea as to what to do next, Invertzoo (talk) 12:48, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Previous thread was Village pump (technical)/Archive 130 (three months ago, not six). -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:36, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, do you have any potential solutions to offer? I don't need to reread old discussions! Editing via IP because this website has invalidated my bloody password AGAIN! Invertzoo 104.156.240.157 (talk) 17:39, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

NOTE: The reply above this was not written by me. I am currently still logged in OK and will not be leaving messages from any IP address. Invertzoo (talk) 22:56, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * No, I don't have any practical solutions. My addition of a link above was not directed specifically at you, but intended to assist others - those who may be able to help; they might first need to read up on the background to this. It's surely better for one person having found the previous thread to advertise that, than to expect everybody else to conduct their own searches - that's if they are aware that there was a previous discussion on this page. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:16, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I am going to go on a limb here and guess you have an failing hard drive. If your hard disk or computer is younger than 10 years old, you should be able to check that quite easily. There are two ways to do that. Firstly, when you go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility, click on your drive, what is written next to "S.M.A.R.T. status" at the bottom of the screen? Secondly, have you gotten errors like "S.M.A.R.T has predicted that it will fail" or "S.M.A.R.T Status BAD, Backup and replace" when you have turned on your computer in the past 3 months? --Snaevar (talk) 20:52, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It certainly sounds like a problem on your computer and not at Wikipedia. Until you use a temporary password, the old one should continue to be valid. Do you get the message "Incorrect password entered. Please try again." when the login fails? Have you tried the same password on another computer after getting that message? Does it work at least once if you log in at a new Wikimedia wiki, for example es: after the login fails here? Do you have any browser extensions which are enabled in both Safari and Firefox? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:56, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

The desktop computer I am working on is less than a year old, and so I very much doubt that the hard drive is failing, but I will check as you suggested. And yes, I have tried the same thing on my laptop, and I have the exact same problem there too, which seems to indicate it is not my machine that is at fault. I have not tried logging in on another Wikimedia wiki. I will find out if I have any browser extensions enabled. Thanks for your interest and for your suggestions. Once again, I did not write the rude reply that appeared further up this thread. Invertzoo (talk) 23:02, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I've been having the same problem, and couldn't get in at all earlier today. It's been happening on and off for a few weeks. The sequence is this: on the log-in in page I enter my password, then there's a quick processing/refresh/something and the password in the password field disappears. Then there's a lag of up to 30 seconds or longer. Sometimes after the lag, i get logged in. Sometimes I have to try again. Last night, after the lag I kept getting a screen telling me to change my password. But I didn't want to change my password and after the second try noticed the tabs were visible at the top of the page, so clicked watchlist and it appeared without having to change the password. Same thing his morning, but now everything is normal. I'm on a Mac, OS 10.7.5, running Safari 6.1.6. Hope this is helpful. Victoria (tk) 23:36, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

My problem sounds rather different from yours. Whatever my last or most recent password is, is no longer recognized as being valid. There is no time lag, and I can get in just fine if I click "forget your password?" and get a temporary password and then change my password. Invertzoo (talk) 00:48, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: Right now I do not have the problem any more. Let's hope it stays that way! Invertzoo (talk) 00:51, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

It's still OK this morning; let's hope it stays that way! Thanks everyone who tried to help me diagnose the problem. It went away by itself without my doing anything. Invertzoo (talk) 13:10, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Alphabetical
I used to have a coding in my script for a browsing option of articles in alphabetical order on wikipedia with an article at the top left and top right at the top of the page with an arrow. So when you visit an article the next one forward and last one in the A-Z index appear. There was a line arrow under each article either side at the top whenever you hit a wiki page for clicking forward or backwards Can somebody remind me of the coding?♦  Dr. Blofeld  17:57, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Is this the same q that you asked at User talk:Redrose64? -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:39, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Did somebody steal your brain Redrose? :-)♦ Dr. Blofeld  22:29, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link to the discussion on your user talk, . It certainly looks like it should be User:PleaseStand/prevnext.js which doesn't appear to do anything for me when I try to run it from the console, and I'm guessing it is because it is using methods no longer supported or it is conflicted by one of my other gadgets I have enabled.  I have no way of seeing what User:PleaseStand/wikiapi.js because it is deleted, could I get an administrator reading this (perhaps Redrose64) to please restore the contents of that deleted page to User:Technical 13/SandBox/wikiapi.js and then put   on User:PleaseStand/wikiapi.js, so I may see what it was and perhaps improve it to make it useful again?, I could probably repair the issues with the prevnext script if there is interest in having that available.  Let me know.  Thank you.  Input from  may be useful here as well. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 22:27, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Basically something which allows you to browse Special:AllPages/Aa for instance and when you visit the Aaadonta fuscozonata article at the top of the page the left option with an arrow is Aaadonta constricta and the right one Aaadonta irregularis in alpha browsing.♦ Dr. Blofeld  22:35, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Fixed. The problem was that the script was using the deprecated hookEvent function, which now does nothing. It also used a non-protocol-relative URL for the CSS stylesheet.
 * As for wikiapi.js, it was deleted because it was merged into the prevnext.js script. Now MediaWiki provides a "mediawiki.api" module that does more or less the same thing. PleaseStand (talk) 08:15, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, it works now. Cheers, have a good Christmas all!♦ Dr. Blofeld  10:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Edit Count widget??
I wanted to use Phabricator for this, but I couldn't get my unified log-in stuff squared away......so, any-hoo: At the bottom of each 'User Contributions' page, there is a list of little widgets. One of my long-time favorites has been 'Edit count'......right on schedule, this "breaks" about every two years. I think whoever invented it and put it at Meta forgets about it. I love the pie chart, etc. that it generates!! Can someone please look at it and see if they can get it unconstipated? It's broken again, and just runs and runs and runs but doesn't do anything...... --Bddmagic (talk) 15:32, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Have a look at the first section on this page. --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 15:39, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, well at least that sheds a bit of light on things. I'm not the only one who has noticed! --Bddmagic (talk) 16:20, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Should this link be hidden until the counter is fixed? Or should a note be added stating that it's broken, with a link to the appropriate discussion?  Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 01:42, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Problem with rendering a book
I have been trying to render my book but it keeps on failing It comes up with this message "Generation of the document file has failed. Status: Rendering process died with non zero code: 1" Heres a link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PerpetuaLux/Books/The_Codex_-_Physics Any help would be appreciated, I run on Ubuntu 14.04 and Mozilla Firefox 34.0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by PerpetuaLux (talk • contribs) 22:28, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Both the Letter and A4 variants generated fine for me (Windows 10, Firefox 33; although I doubt that matters as the actual rendering is done server-side). Have you tried using a different browser and/or OS? – Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 15:54, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

sparatic links
At the bottom of my Talk Page (under == .. =) is certain links that I can not get rid of. I have tried everything. Any ideas how to remove those links? Thanks for the technical help.--Doug Coldwell (talk) 23:05, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Do you mean the references now at User talk:Doug Coldwell? They were automatically displayed at the bottom before because there was no reflist or similar telling where to display them. I added Reflist-talk PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

What's the point of div class="usermessage"? The orange banner disappears instantly.
When I try this code

To leave a message click here

the orange banner containing the link a user is to click to leave me a message disappears instantly. It's like an orange flash and it's gone. So what exactly is the point?

The following of course does work

To leave a message click here

but I'd like to understand why the other piece of code doesn't.

Also where in the WP doc do I find information on the parameters for that div class HTML "thing" (whatever it's called)?

Thanks

<font style="color:#C0C0C0;font-family:Courier New;">Contact <font style="color:blue;font-family:Courier-New;">Basemetal <font style="color:red;font-family:Courier-New;">here 21:16, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's used by mw:Manual:Skinning. I'm not sure what else you have going on. I'll post some stuff on your talk page to help you figure it out though. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 21:37, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's being hidden by the 'topalert' gadget that you have enabled, supposedly "just in case". I think that line can be safely removed. Matma Rex talk 22:41, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Ahh! Very good . In that case all you need to do  to show that section for you is to add a line to your common.js:
 * Happy editing! — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 23:30, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys. It worked. <font style="color:#C0C0C0;font-family:Courier New;">Contact <font style="color:blue;font-family:Courier-New;">Basemetal <font style="color:red;font-family:Courier-New;">here 19:38, 3 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I've updated the gadget so it no longer hides the usermessage class. Legoktm (talk) 02:30, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Edit Tools
It's been a few weeks since the CharInsert toolbar has vanished from my edit box. At first I thought it may have been just some kind of glitch but it seems not to be. Maybe it has to do with the push to simplify the edit window; simplification is great but not when you're throwing useful stuff out. Perhaps there the idea that it was redundant was floating around; the idea is would be false. It was very useful. It was more comprehensive and less cumbersome than the edit box at the top. Where did it go? Jimp 05:32, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See the Wiki mark-ups are missing section above. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 08:26, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So yeah, you broke it yourself with this change. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:55, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Jimp 16:40, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Circumventing asynchronous script loading on Mediawiki
I have a script I've written on Commons which a lot of users load into their myskin.js file. It has a global function defined which I would like users to be able to call with their custom script. However, it appears the importScript function loads scripts asynchronously, and as such users are getting an error message: “ReferenceError: (my function) is not defined." (Background)

How can users force their custom script to load only after my script has finished loading? Magog the Ogre (t • c) 03:23, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the easiest way to do this is if your script triggers a custom event (for instance on the body tag) once it's been loaded. Users can then in their own file, which does the importScriptURI, put code that depends on your script into a handler for that event. In other words, they'd do in their myskin.js:


 * and your script would do, once it's ready to be used, . Optionally, you could even pass data with that event. Or perhaps the ResourceLoader's mw.loader.using could be enhanced to work not only with module names but also with URLs. (Or does it already? I didn't check lately.) Lupo 06:04, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * JavaScript is asynchronous by nature. ResourceLoader has a mechanism to circumvent this using dependencies, but that is not available for scripts loaded throuhg  or  (which are just aliases for  ). The only reliable method to ensure synchronous execution in this case is by using a callback, which is way less clunky then Lupo's suggestion above (no offense intended).   10:03, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Out of curiosity: a callback from what? At least mw.loader.load doesn't take a callback as far as I see. Lupo 12:06, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Something else that you can use is MWiki's hook system.  That is a formalized 'MW'-way to trigger events and add callbacks to those events.   for instance is fired whenever wiki content is added to a page (VE, live preview or just initial page load). None of all that are formalized dependencies, those are only available to resource loader and gadgets so far. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:52, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * an alternative is to use jQuery getScript. you will need to give your users the full url of the script (including the "ctype" at the end). it should look something like so (this example loads navpop from enwiki and then does something once it finish loading):


 * peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 15:20, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't recommend using getScript for this because although it works in most browsers, the documentation clearly states that "The callback is fired once the script has been loaded but not necessarily executed" and I've had bugs in some browsers because of that in the past. Also, getScript disables caching of the script file. You can use $.ajax with cache: true instead, but that still leaves the first problem. --V111P (talk) 23:47, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You generally try to avoid this problem by letting users set some variables before calling importScript (e.g.:  and  ) and then when your script loads you read these variables and do whatever is appropriate. --V111P (talk) 00:15, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you everyone for your responses. I've gone with TheDJ's answer. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 16:10, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

How does sthe watchlist work?
This is mostly just curiosity, but what happens when I check my watchlist? Does the server have to call every page on it to see if they've been updated each time I check it? I feel bad about checking it often if large watchlists use up lots of server resources. --Cerebellum (talk) 11:46, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't worry about it... The database contains a special "recent changes" table, which is automatically updated whenever a page is edited. Your watchlist checks this table to look for changed pages. This is quite an efficient process.  00:22, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Watchlists also get handled by a separate DB server, so checking your watchlist won't impact the rest of the site. Bawolff (talk) 19:10, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

eMail
I am having problems with my personalised eMail account, me@thomassales.com. Wikipedia has stopped sending me eMails for pages on my watchlist that have been edited. I tried sending it to another account (my SCOLA eMail account), which received eMails fine, but when I tried to reset the registered eMail address on here no confirmation eMail was sent. I had similar issues with my previous, Overton Grange School eMail address of sales002k@suttonlea.org on Wikia. I need to hand my laptop to my local computer repairman because of a battery fault so I'll ask him to see if this is an issue at their end, but I want to see if there is a problem here. (If anyone needs to get into it, the log in page is webmail.easyspace.com and the password is the same as my Wikipedia account password.)-- Laun  chba  ller  11:48, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't know your Wikipedia password, and can't find it out even if we wanted to; but we don't want to know what it is either. It's not a good idea to disclose your password - or even to suggest that somebody else use it, see User account security - if you do, your account could be blocked for ever, per WP:COMPROMISED. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:40, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm used to surrendering it to computer people. That said, without knowing one, how is one supposed to work out the other?-- Laun  chba  ller  17:02, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's probably because your mail provider has a problematic spam filter that is blocking the emails. Accessing your mailbox wouldn't be helpful in this case. You need to contact your mail provider to address this issue. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 05:28, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Character encoding outgoing links from a template for a target page expecting ISO-8859-1
I have written a template Almanacco to act as a wrapper for accesses to an external site. Everything is working except the passing of accented characters in one of the parameters. The problem seems to be that the Wikipedia's urlencode is encoding in UTF-8, and the target page is expecting ISO-8859-1 (the old ISO Latin 1)

Eg: If I want to search the target site for the word "Tragödie", I would invoke the template with The template invokes urlencode and is given "Trag die" (UTF-8 encoding) which it duly embeds in the outgoing link URL, but the target page only understands "Trag die" (ISO Latin 1). The search on the target page fails, and no matches are found.

The only solution approach that I can think of is to add some hairy programming in the template, specifically to handle each of the accented characters available in ISO Latin 1. This is beyond my skill set.

Can I request someone to code this for me? (or Is there another solution that has escaped me?) Scarabocchio (talk) 13:41, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * only thing i can think of is to make the urlencode in the template conditional (i.e., add some "no urlencode" parameter to the template, such that when setting this parameter to anything, the template will use the raw link instead of the urlencoded one), and in those cases, handle the encoding manually (like so: ). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 16:15, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I created a function in the Latin module that might do what is wanted here. For example yields.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:48, 7 December 2014 (UTC).


 * I installed it in your template, let me know if there are any problems. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:57, 7 December 2014 (UTC).


 * Excellent!! exactly what was needed, many thanks! Scarabocchio (talk) 05:04, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Problem with X_(Ed_Sheeran_album) appearing as "x (Ed Sheeran album)"
X_(Ed_Sheeran_album) appears as "x (Ed Sheeran album)" at the top of the page. This is in contradiction to Talk:X (Ed Sheeran album) and Talk:X (Ed Sheeran album). Can the x be capitalised? Gregkaye ✍ ♪  08:12, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's set by the  that is in the References section. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:23, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * that's really helpful! Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  14:20, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I didn't realise that what you wanted was to de-lowercase and de-italicise the article title - in other words, to neutralise the effects of both the previously-existing in the References section and the one that is built into . Since this appears to be the case, the proper way, per the box at the top of  is to remove the one from the References section and add no to the infobox - . -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:30, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Red rose64 but to be fair I didn'trealise what I wanted either . It had been a while since I had referred to the RM and had forgotten all the content.  gregkaye  ✍ ♪  11:18, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

extra space at bottom which needs to be deleted
International_taxation 174.3.125.23 (talk) 13:00, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The page looks fine to me (on Windows 10, Firefox 33) - could you upload a screenshot of what you see, and let us know what browser you're using? – Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 14:56, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I could see it using Chrome on my MacBook. Removing the columns in the explanatory notes section has made the white space go away. -- Diannaa (talk) 18:42, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This is one of those things that varies between browsers, with Chrome being particularly badly affected (it miscalculates the bottom margin); it's come up a few times before on this page. Generally speaking, columns are almost never necessary when the number of notes is low - in this case there are six; and when columns are used and the notes are so long that all of them wrap to a second line, there are too many columns: in the example screenshot given above, they all wrap, and note 4 is worst at 8 lines. Going to a modest resolution - such as 1280px wide - makes it worse, where note 4 is now ten lines, and even note 1 is three lines. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:41, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Search results
Is there some problem with the search results that are not updating? I made an edit on 30 November to remove some text yet the text is still showing in the search results today. Also the search results indicate the last change to the page was on 8 November. Could be because in draft space but would not have though that would cause the problem - see Draft:Liam Payne Keith D (talk) 02:55, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The edit is [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Liam_Payne&diff=636091721&oldid=635417828] This search gives me two results to the same page Draft:Liam Payne:

Draft:Liam Payne "One Direction Invite You To Remix ‘Steal My Girl’ Read more at http://www.mtv.co.uk/one-direction/news/one-direction-invite-you-to-remix-steal-my 17 KB (1,681 words) - 14:35, 8 November 2014

Draft:Liam Payne premiere Liam Payne's Big Payno remix of 'You & I'". "One Direction Invite You To Remix ‘Steal My Girl’".  Rutter, Claire. "Liam Payne goes solo to drop 17 KB (1,659 words) - 23:31, 30 November 2014
 * Restricting the search to either "(Article)" or "Draft" shows that the November 8 result is registered in "(Article)" while the current version from November 30 is registered in Draft. For a few days in November the Draft namespace was declared a content namespace. See Wikipedia talk:Drafts. One of the unfortunate consequences was that drafts were included in search results by default. T75136 shows this was reverted November 8. The Draft result in Article space has not been removed from search for some reason, maybe because the page was edited November 8 in a transition period. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:20, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Technical difficulties in Template talk:Did you know?
I see some templates article nominations not transcluding properly. Is there a problem to the server or something? --George Ho (talk) 05:27, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The transcluded templates are too long. Actually, the servers leaves a comment besides the omitted templates: . See also  above. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 05:52, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Default editing - minor edits
As a bit of an experiment, I just went as reset my Preferences to all of the default settings, and I went and turned off all of the Gadgets that I had selected. I then went and edited a page (it doesn't matter which one) and noticed this problem: screenshot of bottom toolbar in default editor

Notice that the "minor edit" checkbox is cut off. Who do we talk to about getting this resolved? Ohms law (talk) 11:34, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The problem originates in your vector.css. There you have set  to  . So I think you should talk to yourself...    11:46, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * doh! Thanks. Ohms law (talk) 11:58, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

A bit of template help needed on GOCE award/sandbox
This is a request for a bit of help with the sandbox of a new template I have created, GOCE award/sandbox.

I am not a seasoned template creator, so the code is a dog's breakfast, but it works as intended (when substed, which is the intent). My only technical problem with it is that the month name is not substituted properly. It works, but when you subst the template into an editor's talk page, the resulting wikitext shows a bunch of code instead of a simple month name. I am trying to calculate the month name, and it uses substitution, but it does not substitute all the way down.

Any insight and advice you can provide will be welcome. Feel free to modify the sandbox code if you can find other ways to improve it. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:05, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There are several parser functions and magic words in the template code that are not recursively substituted using . The ones I can find are four instances of  and the first of the two usages of {{formatnum}}. SiBr4 (talk) 17:25, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Right. Hence my question here. Here's what the rendered code looks like at the moment when I subst it onto my sandbox page:
 * I'm looking for a fix for the unsubstituted code. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:06, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I was referring to the code of the template GOCE award/sandbox, not the code it results in if substituted. I now see the s do have the substituting empty parameter, but it is misplaced: it should be  , not  . SiBr4 (talk) 18:21, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I saw it wrong; the #expr functions don't have  in front of them. Adding these should fix it. SiBr4 (talk) 18:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * My most recent series of edits should fix it. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:23, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Much appreciated. However, after all that, the output looks essentially the same to me. Here it is now, when I subst the template:
 * I see that " " has been replaced with "11", but I still see all of the if/switch/MONTHNUMBER code. Is it too many recursion levels deep to make it fully substitutable? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I see that " " has been replaced with "11", but I still see all of the if/switch/MONTHNUMBER code. Is it too many recursion levels deep to make it fully substitutable? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I see that " " has been replaced with "11", but I still see all of the if/switch/MONTHNUMBER code. Is it too many recursion levels deep to make it fully substitutable? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I see that " " has been replaced with "11", but I still see all of the if/switch/MONTHNUMBER code. Is it too many recursion levels deep to make it fully substitutable? – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

I think I've got it sorted now. Thanks to both of you for your help. I was able to achieve the desired effect (no parser functions in the resulting message on the editor's talk page) by essentially removing one layer of recursion, moving some of the raw code from the "MONTHNAME" function directly into my template. You can see what I changed here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:26, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Request help removing incorrect links
Although Special:WhatLinksHere/16 includes Template:USCongDistStateOH and many Ohio congressional district articles, I can't find the link to 16. Could someone please help me with this? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * From some quick testing, the template is just Template:USCongDistState with some terms filled in, including . Changing this value to 15 drops it off of the WhatLinksHere/16 and puts it into WhatLinksHere/15. Illinois, with 18 districts, appears in WhatLinksHere/18. There are multiple ParserFunctions in USCongDistState calling   that I can't unravel. Nanonic (talk) 01:45, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, I moved the conversation to that template's talk page - thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:53, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Chrome vs. Firefox Wikipedia rendering
I don't know if it's a MediaWiki bug or just Wikipedia, but it's time to code same appearance for major browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. There are some bugs: --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 13:11, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * different font sizes
 * white-space break doesn't work in Chrome in Infobox
 * Actually, it's a different font; Firefox seems to use Verdana as default sans-serif; browser setting.
 * The wider infobox is caused by the URL at the bottom of the infobox; Firefox handles this better.
 * Different browsers will always handle stuff slightly differently.  14:36, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You could add "word-break: break-word;" to either the infobox table cell containing links, or to the Module:URL. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:56, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That will get you ugly breaks like "pd f_links". How about a descriptive link instead?  19:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * And we should also set default font for Wikipedia (it could be changed via common.css). Please support me, Chrome users should see the same thing as the others. --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 17:12, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Remember Typography refresh? We tried setting a font... it did not go to well. As far as I can see, Chrome uses the same fonts as the "other" browsers (on Windows at least).  19:46, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm reminded of <http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/>. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Just fix this word-break bug and will be ok. --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 12:15, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi. Is it possible to tweak Module:URL to emit zero-width non-joiner after ".", "/" and "_"? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 01:55, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Is no one willing to comment on this suggestion? May I take this instance of silence as consensus and implement it?, I thought you said you were watching this discussion. Can I have your opinion on this please? Codename Lisa (talk) 02:36, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
 * As I remarked at Template talk:Infobox, I have indeed been watching this discussion, but as I also noted there, I see no clear indication of a solution which will not break other uses. I need to see at the very least a firm proposal for a change, and a demonstration of that change (see WP:TESTCASES). If part or all of the proposed solution involves a change to a module (whether that be Module:URL, Module:Infobox or another), I'm not going to implement it: I very rarely edit modules, mainly because as an experienced computer programmer, I know well enough not to alter code that I do not understand. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:39, 24 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Very well, I have a firm proposition. HTML5 has adopted, which have had widespread browsers support long before standardization. I propose changing Module:URL to insert one such tag after ".", "/" and "_". It is standard, supported, tested and working.
 * Best regards,
 * Codename Lisa (talk) 04:19, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * A soft hyphen has better support.  09:37, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I am tempted to ask "what constitutes better support?" but I am afraid soft hyphen leaves a visible hyphen. That's extremely dangerous because links may contain hyphens themselves. Therefore, soft hyphen nullifies the print utility of the bare link. So, as long as there is nothing wrong with, I am going with a firm "No". Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 11:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The idea has been proposed before, see Village pump (technical)/Archive 117 and Village pump (technical)/Archive 129. But where has the current proposal been sandboxed and tested? -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:47, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * So practically, you are saying "I like it! Let's do it. But first implement one in sandbox." Only I seem to have misinterpretted your message as opposition. Well... Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 15:26, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Better support means more browsers support it, as is HTML5 only. Soft hyphens have existed much longer and enjoy universal support. It may show a hyphen at the break point, but such would not be part of the string, so copy/paste is safe. And printed links can't be clicked anyway.   20:10, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You couldn't be more wrong. You could try; you will fail. Chrome and Firefox supported WBR since v1.0. Safari since v4.0. Opera since 11.7. IE since v5.5. Printed URLs are typed in; with soft hyphen, users must figure out which hyphen is part of the URL and which is not. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 20:44, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know where you get your info... is new in HTML5. Firefox does have support since 3.0, and IE dropped support since 8.0.   21:17, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/wbr
 * Codename Lisa (talk) 21:25, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Testcase at User:Codename Lisa/sandbox proves this tag has full support in IE 8, 9, 10 and 11. I must get my hands on 7 somehow. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 21:29, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * IE6 passed the test. Codename Lisa (talk) 22:03, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * IE7 passed the test. Codename Lisa (talk) 23:02, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Mobile browsers seem to lack support; somewhere where this is most needed. So apart from someone typing a printed link... what is the major problem with  again?   22:40, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Mobile testing results are coming through, but so far, they look good. Still, you'll have to wait. Screenshooting all I want takes some times.
 * Did you say "Apart from?" Print-friendliness is the only purpose of URL and as long as a problem that defeats its very purpose exists, there is no "apart from". It's a blocking issue. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 23:25, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * From mobile - fails to wrap anything before first  after domain with userAgent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:33.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/33.0". — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 00:49, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Screen spec please. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 02:42, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. In case things are made worse than the original, I am going to need a screenshot. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 02:45, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't do screenshots on that device. It uses Android OS 4.1.2 and the built in screenshot feature doesn't work correctly most of the time  the old version of the Android OS (v3.x) that doesn't have it built in and none of the apps that are suppose to do it seem to work that I've tried (they all lock up the phone and I have to pop the battery to restart it).  I can tell you that whatismyscreenresolution.com tells me it is a 320x533px screen.  Any other information I can provide that may help, I'd be happy to. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 02:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Your screenshot shows the wrong portion. The "Encoded URL" portion is where you must look. Also it says "Linux x86_64" in the User-Agent. This is no standard Firefox user-agent. Something is not right. What device is it? Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 03:33, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * , it is specifically a Samsung Galaxy Axiom. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 03:49, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Strange! Samsung Galaxy Axiom runs on an ARM-based CPU called Krait. Your phone is allegedly running an x86-64 version of Firefox. Also Axiom runs Android v4.0.4, not 4.1.2. You know, I am growing anxious to see the missing screenshot. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 05:54, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Strange! Samsung Galaxy Axiom runs on an ARM-based CPU called Krait. Your phone is allegedly running an x86-64 version of Firefox. Also Axiom runs Android v4.0.4, not 4.1.2. You know, I am growing anxious to see the missing screenshot. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 05:54, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually... My phone is running 4.1.2 since I keep making sure it's updated at least once a month. I have the screenshot, and emailed it to myself. Will upload it to commons tomorrow. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 06:05, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Why does your table entry say "Word break+Overflow"? I am seeing a slight overflow but not a word break. Also, other stuff in your screenshot doesn't look like anything I see in other screenshots. Looks like something on your smartphone is broken. Are you sure you opened http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Codename_Lisa/sandbox? Fleet Command (talk) 04:11, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * X11... You must be kidding me. It's a useragent from the desktop Firefox. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 06:50, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks like you have "Request Desktop Site" selected. Wasn't aware Firefox spoofs the user agent string like this. Uncheck that and see if anything changes. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 08:11, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That is all I ever use because I literally despise the mobile version of the site.  are you asking if my useragent changes when I do that or if the rendering changes? — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 14:47, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * , my userAgent changes to  when I uncheck that. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:29, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * File:FF33 on Android OS 4.1.2 (3).png && File:FF33 on Android OS 4.1.2 (4).png show it makes no difference. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:56, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I order to conclusively resolve all doubts, I believe we need a screenshot from http://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Codename_Lisa/sandbox&oldid=636147649, which contains no new code. For your convenience, I've added this link to en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Codename Lisa/sandbox. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 09:40, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * P.S. Thanks in advance for all your troubles. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 03:28, 2 December 2014 (UTC)

Test results

 * I've implemented the first test. It is an alpha version, so you can find it at User:Codename Lisa/sandbox. Module is implemented at Module:Sandbox/Codename Lisa/wbr test. Let me know what you think while I familiarize myself with Lua. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 19:53, 27 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Presenting test results, with screenshots:
 * Best regards,
 * Codename Lisa (talk) 01:53, 29 November 2014 (UTC)


 * The following is submitted by User:Technical 13:
 * Fleet Command (talk) 03:54, 30 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Great! I examined it with BrowserShots.org and looks great even in rare or old browsers. Grat job! Thanks for everyone! --Rezonansowy (talk | contribs) 19:47, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Barnstars!
Again, many thanks! Great work.

Search bar not responsive sometimes
I used an updated version of google Chrome and after waiting many seconds for the search bar list to offer me new results, it didn't. Instead of narrowing down the previous options because I input new letters, the results under the search bar are not helpful. I took a screenshot to demonstrate. Is this a tracked bug? What's going on here? This is a recurrent issue for me. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. &#123;&#123;U&#125;&#125;) while signing a reply, thx 19:23, 24 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I recently started having an issue with my searches, also. I don't have to wait for the list to appear, but whenever I type in just "User talk:", the first and only item that appears in the suggestion area below the search bar is "User talk:Friendly AIDS". What's that? I'm getting tired of this and would appreciate it if someone could fix it. If I put one letter after "User talk:", then it works fine. CorinneSD (talk) 22:57, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That is weird, and I can confirm that it's doing it here too. (user:Friendly Aids was blocked in 2005 and had made no edits). I don't get any search bar suggestions when only typing "User:" or "Wikipedia:" or "Wikipedia talk:", but the search bar does suggest Talk:High Blast Explosive (and nothing else) when I type "Talk:" ... never had noticed this before either. ---Sluzzelin  talk  23:10, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * User talk:­Friendly AIDS and Talk:️High Blast Explosive both have a non-displayed character (not the same) after the colon. I guess you are not supposed to get any suggestions when you only write namespace and colon, but certain special characters can apparently fool that. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I have tested all namespaces and the only other cases were User talk:⁬⁬⁬⁬⁬ (a user with only undisplayed characters), and for File: where the maximum ten suggestions are listed, so there may be more which didn't make the list. All ten have an undisplayed character after the colon. One of the ten is File:‌Baharestan New Town Iran.jpg which is tricky because it goes to a page with no undisplayed character and no redirect message at Wikipedia, but the file was moved at Commons where commons:File:‌Baharestan New Town Iran.jpg shows the redirect from the bad title. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:28, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I've filed this as T76350. I imagine it is related to the undisplayed characters but I'll have to dig into it some more.NEverett (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * And proposed a patch. If all goes well this'll disappear from wikipedias sometime December 11th.  Thanks again, . NEverett (WMF) (talk) 15:08, 2 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I can replicate this bug in Chrome (the updated 39.0.2171.71 m version), but it does not occur for me with Firefox. I can type "Bio", then wait several seconds, and new letters, such as "sen", do not help narrow the original Bio search results in Chrome. Ping to User:AKlapper (WMF). Might this be logged/tracked? I bet you're busy with rolling over to Phabricator from Bugzilla but thought I'd notify just in case. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. &#123;&#123;U&#125;&#125;) while signing a reply, thx 23:04, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * should know the best as he's into the search, pinging him here. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. &#123;&#123;U&#125;&#125;) while signing a reply, thx 18:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks bringing this up, and .  I'll have a look into this more closely soon.  Does it _feel like_ the not narrowing down issue comes close together?  Like, if you try again in 20 minutes is it gone?  Or is it all the time but only with Chrome?  I'm unable to replicate in the Chromium version I have installed (Version 39.0.2171.65 Ubuntu 14.04 (64-bit)) so it could be a narrow thing.  Or something even more fun.  NEverett (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello NEverett (WMF), and sorry for the delay. For me this always happens in Chrome. I also run anti-keylogging software, so I suppose that might play a factor. But for some reason Firefox never has trouble updating results, just Chrome. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. &#123;&#123;U&#125;&#125;) while signing a reply, thx 00:03, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Indeed NEverett (WMF), it was my software after all. After uninstalling that program, Wikipedia search in Chrome is behaving as expected. My apologies for the false alarm, and thanks anyhow. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. &#123;&#123;U&#125;&#125;) while signing a reply, thx 22:08, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Progress template missing categories
Template:Articles lacking sources progress seems to be malfunctioning. It's supposed to keep track of all the monthly categories of articles without any references, but the counts for October, November, and December are missing. Now it would be great had these categories disappeared due to being cleaned out, but unfortunately that's not the case: combined they still have 6,000+ articles left to fix (sidenote: join WikiProject Unreferenced Articles! We have over 222,000 pages in the backlog!). Can anyone fix the progress template? Thanks, Altamel (talk) 20:55, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I see:

October 2014 1,863 November 2014 2,615 December 2014 231
 * Did you try to purge before posting? This template also has a "(refresh)" link to do it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, I've tried that and nothing happens. And the categories that missing are from October, November, and December 2006. Altamel (talk) 23:34, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The documentation for, which all of the 'Articles lacking X progress' templates derive from, states that "[This] template will only list the last seven years backlog" - 2006 is more than 7 years ago, so the links to the 2006 categories won't appear. – Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 23:52, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Got it, thanks. Altamel (talk) 00:03, 5 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well at least I documented the limitation. I suppose I had better add another year! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:56, 7 December 2014 (UTC).


 * Ah! User Wbm has extended it to nine years, for which thanks. Let's try an make sure it doesn't need extending again! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:01, 7 December 2014 (UTC).

Wildlife tourism is the sole member of Category:Articles lacking sources from October 2006. Whoever finds a reference for it, let me know and the appropriate barn-star will be awarded! All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:43, 7 December 2014 (UTC).


 * I have added one source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Responsive images
"Responsive web design" is based on CSS formatting that automatically resizes content based on the size of the viewport. It may be a good idea to implement responsive design for images only, so that we can display images in full size to fit the width of a container, be that the full page itself or a portion of it. This could be done via inline sytle or using media queries: style="max-width:100%;height:auto;"

-  Cwobeel   (talk)  23:46, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

To accommodate MSIE 9:

max-width: 100%; height: auto; width: auto\9 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cwobeel (talk • contribs) 23:10, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Its not that simple. You need to overcome the default image containment by usurping the existing .css values and building your own template to act as an image container. We've done something like this on Wikisource. See Temp Image Testing over there and (hopefully) you can resize your browser all day long and the images should dynamically resize themselves accordingly. -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:09, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not only that, you alternatively can call responsive images:"Really big images inside a smaller dynamically sized frame". Which immediately brings to the light the major problem with responsive images. They are HUGE and most people are not waiting for more bits to come down the line when viewing a Wikipedia page. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:20, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

how to tag "not in citation given"?
I've seen it before, but I didn't notice how to make the tag "not in citation given", for when there's a controversial statement, with a citation, but the citation doesn't back the statement. How do you do that? Darx9url (talk) 16:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Use the Failed verification tag. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:32, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Darx9url (talk) 13:52, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-50
<section begin="technews-2014-W50"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * All users are now getting pages from servers that run the HHVM tool. HHVM should make pages load faster.
 * You can join a video chat about Phabricator on December 11 at 18:00 (UTC). Phabricator is the new tool to report issues.

Problems
 * There was a problem with Phabricator on November 29. It was due to a network issue.

Software changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki ( 1.25wmf11 ) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 10 (calendar).
 * You can now exit VisualEditor by pressing the "Esc" key.
 * It is now easier to use VisualEditor with IMEs. Typing in Malayalam now works better.
 * The new version of OOjs UI fixed many issues with the size and layout of buttons in dialogs.
 * (Lua) You can no longer use  to get the HTML from special page transclusion. You can see a list of scripts to fix.

Future changes
 * Starting next week JavaScript tools won't work if they use jQuery Migrate.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W50"/> 17:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Gadgets not working
Some of my gadgets have stopped working (Twinkle, navigation popups, reference tooltips, double clicking to edit page). I'm using the vector skin and Firefox 34.0 (just updated but they weren't working in 33.1 either). Does anyone know what could be causing it or how to fix it? Sarahj2107 (talk) 19:18, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The media viewer and visual editor have also stopped working. Looks like a server issue. Cenarium (talk) 19:22, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Twinkle is not working for me either. Bummed, because that thing is so useful. &mdash; kikichugirl  inquire 19:29, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

It looks like it's working again. Cenarium (talk) 19:33, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not for me. Altered my UI, no Twinkle etc, destroyed my useful pop-ups. WMF, rollback please. Philg88 ♦talk 19:47, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This problem affects all Javascript (intermittently) and is being fixed right now. Some performance improvements were not deployed correctly.
 * The devs and ops people apologize for their mistake. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Cursor appears in headers
Since a few days with me a cursor appears in the top-row (=personal login menu row) or in section headers. The cursor is the common blinking vertical line (for in-text position), and in the lefthand position, against the LH margin. Any clarification? (Screenshots needed? Did I miss an earlier topic? Firefox update into v34?). DePiep (talk) 22:45, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Kelsea Ballerini broken URL
Can anyone tell me why the last citation in Kelsea Ballerini is breaking? For some reason it's choking on the URL and putting wrong brackets around it. I have checked and rechecked the coding, and I can't for the life of me figure out why it's messed up. Anyone? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 03:18, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I have added  to the url.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kelsea_Ballerini&diff=637267952&oldid=637266939] Adding   alone would also have worked here. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:32, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I knew it'd be something insanely obvious. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 04:06, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Display a byte count beside each '+' or '-' sub-item in 'Difference between revisions'
Per spotting small changes in 'Difference between revisions', a byte count beside each '+' or '-' would be beneficial. 96.28.43.27 (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

New users whose only edit is db-user
I am seeing an increasing number of new users - four in the last five days - whose first and only edit is to create a userpage consisting only of db-user. I can't think of a reason for this - why create a userpage if you don't want one? How would an absolute newbie know this code? Is there some glitch in our sign-up process? Along with welcome messages, I have asked some of them why they did this, but no replies. Any ideas? JohnCD (talk) 16:05, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't have an answer but examples are always good. User:Alarabr (Special:CentralAuth/Alarabr) and User:Maxthoburn (Special:CentralAuth/Maxthoburn) both created their accounts long ago at other wikis. Maybe they think db-user will delete their automatically created English accounts. Alarabr has no other edits. Maxthobur has some Commons uploads in April. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:08, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That sounds a plausible reason, thanks. Today's was different, now I look at it: User:Parijyya (Special:CentralAuth/Parijyya) made two unhelpful edits, saw them reverted, and then put db-user on his user page with edit summary "Leave Wikipedia". I can't find yesterday's - I think I left it for someone else to deal with. JohnCD (talk) 19:11, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

What Links Here generating too many listings due to navboxes
What Links Here would be less overwhelming for some pages if the results could be separated according to whether an item in what links here is a navbox or not. For example, if a page is linked to from sixty pages but on fifty of them the link is only in a navbox or two, we could focus our attention on the just ten that probably link to the page from inside the body or lead. Technically, I suppose this might be implemented by generating the list by examining the edit fields of pages other than navboxes in the Template namespace, thereby ignoring what's in navboxes, and examining navboxes in the Template namespace separately. In the case of a linking page having a link both in the body and in a navbox, it could be listed both ways. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:13, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Please see Village pump (technical)/Archive 132 and the earlier thread linked from there. SiBr4 (talk) 22:17, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I really hate this when fixing links to a newly created disambiguation page. But there's nothing we can do about it besides getting rid of those silly boxes.
 * Actually, would it be reasonable to change the links in navboxes to a 'fake external' link, like is already done for the edit link at the top? The downside would be no bolding of the article you're at. --NE2 22:58, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * - for your use-case, limit the "WLH" to templates first and fix them.  Then, if you are in a hurry, null-edit the pages including the nav-boxes with AWB or some other tool. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:07, 8 December 2014 (UTC).


 * That's what I do already. --NE2 04:28, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's a frequently requested feature. Here are some of the requests:


 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 132
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 131
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 126
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 122
 * Village pump (proposals)/Archive 104
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 69
 * Help talk:What links here
 * Help desk/Archives/2009 June 20
 * Help desk/Archives/2012 May 9
 * Help desk/Archives/2011 January 18
 * Help desk/Archives/2008 February 25
 * T3392
 * T5241
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 23:59, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * How about just changing the default results of What Links Here to be the either the article namespace or the current namespace, rather than "all"? — xaosflux  Talk 00:26, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You're not understanding the problem. You move Oak Hill, Virginia to Oak Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia to disambiguate. Then you go to fix the incoming links, and you find that everything on Template:Fairfax County, Virginia is in what links here (see Special:Whatlinkshere/Oak Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia for what it roughly looks like, though of course you're looking at pages that link to Oak Hill, Virginia). If you change the template, it takes several hours at least to propagate through the articles and reduce what links here to actual links that need to be fixed.
 * (Note that simply omitting all links generated by templates won't work, since other templates may need to be fixed manually: .)
 * --NE2 05:25, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Please, see also User:V111P/js/What Links Here link filter. Unfortunately it will also remove pages linking both from the body and a navbar template. --V111P (talk) 05:06, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

In terms of long-range planning, I wonder if it would be possible to move navboxes entirely out of articles, and place them in some sort of metadata footer? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 8 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Here's an incredibly simple way to solve this problem.
 * Make a Navbox: namespace
 * Force all navbox links (by some Lua magic, say) to go through a redirect in Navbox: space.
 * Exclude Navbox: from what links here.
 * (optional) Add a little magic to bold the self-links.
 * The new namespace can be magical (redirects don't actually have to exist) or normal (redirects are created by hand or by tool). This could be implemented in its simplest form without any development.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:09, 9 December 2014 (UTC).

Magic word for article subject
For a disambiguated article like John Doe (example), is there a magic word, similar to , but that will return just "John Doe"? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:53, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * There is no magic word, but there is a magic word like template : Template:PAGENAMEBASE. Cenarium (talk) 18:58, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:11, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The redirect might make for clearer coding.  All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC).

Proposal: new tool for making redirects
If I want to create a new redirect to an existing page, perhaps for an alternative name or spelling, I have to do the following:


 * 1) Copy the page name
 * 2) Type the new name in the search box
 * 3) Click "Search"
 * 4) Select the red link
 * 5) Paste the page name
 * 6) Select the pasted text
 * 7) Click the "Redirect" button on the toolbar
 * 8) Figure out which "Redirect from..." template to use
 * 9) Type two new lines
 * 10) Type (or copy and paste, in another tab) the "Redirect from..." template name
 * 11) Enter an edit summary
 * 12) Click "Save"

I would like to see a new "make redirect" tool (perhaps a user script, or later a gadget), where I would:


 * 1) Click the tool (in, say, the "tools" menu)
 * 2) Type the new name
 * 3) Select a "Redirect from" template from a drop-down menu
 * 4) Click "Save"

and the tool would do everything for me, including checking that the new name is not already in use.

Would anyone like to code such a thing? I'd be happy to do testing. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:23, 8 December 2014 (UTC)


 * VisualEditor does most of what you want: Edit the page, go to the Page options (three-bar) menu on the left, choose "Page settings", and type in the name that you want.  "R from" templates are added via the Insert > Template menu.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I decided to give VE another go last week. It corrupted the first page on which I made a (simple) edit. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:39, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying it. I just checked your contributions (here) back to November 1st, and I didn't find any edits tagged for VisualEditor.  Do you remember which page you were editing?  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Steps 8-11 are unnecessary (redirects get auto-edit summaries). 5 and 7 can be reversed, making 6 unnecessary. That's 7 steps, which is probably no more than your proposed tool when you list each click/copy/paste. --NE2 19:45, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Which "click/copy/paste" do you think I've omitted? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:07, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Find the tool, click the tool, type the name, click the drop-down menu, figure out which template to use, select the template, click save. Maybe more depending on how it's laid out. --NE2 00:09, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So no copy and paste? There may be two clicks for a dropdown-then-select model, but "finding" where to click happens in either scenario. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:12, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I started throwing a script together (User:Technical 13/Scripts/Gadget-createRedirect.js‎), but real life is calling me away... I'll let you know when and if I finish it assuming someone else doesn't beat me to it. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:55, 8 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:39, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Should the fundraiser banner, at the least. Be shortened?
The fundraiser banner seems too big, taking up almost a quarter of the main page. Any comments? Lor Chat 00:50, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't oppose the foundation advertising their fundraiser. But the sheer largeness of the fundraiser banner itself I find slightly absurd. Why does there need to be a full payment form at the top of the screen? It makes scrolling down with the sudden pop of it at the top of the screen hard. And for registered users makes it hard to reach for the 'login' button. I'm not going to make a proposal on it, but I wonder how the community thinks about it. Lor Chat 00:50, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree it is somewhat large, but you can click on the 'X' in the top right corner of the banner, to remove it. Richard Harvey (talk) 07:41, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I too have had conflict and issue with the size of the fundraising banner interfering with my ability to easily log in. As such, I've created T78023. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Adding "##div.cn-fundraising" (without quotes) to your Adblock filter list removes the banner entirely. Fundraising is one thing, obnoxious ad banners that take up more than half the vertical screen space are another. Cynical (talk) 00:22, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * VPT is not the place to hold RFCs. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:34, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * , can you point me to where it says that editors are not allowed to hold appropriate RfCs on VPT? Village pump (technical)/Before posting doesn't mention that, nor do I see anything about it on Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical) (nor its only archive).  I also don't see any restriction on Village pump.  If this is in fact a guideline or policy somewhere, it should probably be written on Village pump (technical)/Before posting with a link to the discussion that formed the consensus. Thanks! — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:02, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For a start, it's not a technical issue. Can you point me to somewhere that says that VPT is an appropriate venue for non-technical RfCs - or even any kind of RfC? WP:VPR hosts a lot of RfCs, and that would seem to be a much more suitable venue. Indeed, it often has RfCs of a highly technical nature, such as this one which doesn't seem to have the signature of its proposer, except in the first !vote in the Support section. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:28, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not talking about this specific section, I honestly think this is something that should have been taken directly to Phabricator: instead of here I'm talking about the broad statement you made, VPT is not the place to hold RFCs. which implies that no RfC can ever be held at this forum, and I strongly disagree with that statement.  for "RfC" on "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)" backs up my claim that RfCs may be appropriate here.  I'm asking you to back up your claim that this is not the place for RfCs.  Thanks. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:08, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As for your poke about me not signing my RfC, signatures are not required, only timestamps are. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:24, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Better still lets remove it entirely, If I'm honest I've got better things to spend my money on plus it's probably going to Jimbo's pocket anyway!. – Davey 2010 •  (talk)  19:42, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Phabricator status set to Stalled since the place to discuss this is m:Talk:Fundraising principles. Oliv0 (talk) 08:44, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Linebreaks in infoboxes
I've asked this before, but does anyone have an idea of why I seem to be getting more linebreaks in infoboxes recently? Specifically with the birth/death parameters - a line break will appear before the (aged xx) or (age xx) part of the birth/death date and age templates (fixable by the nowrap template). This hasn't happened up until recently - I'm using Google Chrome. Connormah (talk) 07:39, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the relevant template has changed - but there are several of these, so which article are you looking at? -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:12, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * - Well, for one, Ken Weatherwax's infobox seemed to be fine until the death_cause parameter was added. The death date and age template as well ad birth name parameter had linebreaks after. It seems that the relevant parameters (at least the birth/death date ones) had a nowrap setting. Connormah (talk) 17:17, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem seems to have manifested itself with, but the actual cause seems to have occurred a couple of weeks earlier, with by . See Template:Infobox person/testcases where the right-hand (sandbox) version uses the template as it was before 23 November. This change increased the padding in the left-hand column of  by 0.55em, and since the overall width of the infobox was unchanged, the available space in the right-hand column was decreased by the same amount. The edit seems to have been made on the grounds that nobody commented at . -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:45, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Would it be at all possible to add nowrap to the birth/death fields in the infobox by default? I find the linebreaks add unnecessary volume and make the infoboxes harder to read. Connormah (talk) 18:08, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, does this spill over onto other infoboxes, like officeholder, scientist, etc.? Connormah (talk) 18:11, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's certainly possible - nowraps almost all of the data entries by default, and we recently  to de-nowrap the player's full name for those cases where the name is very long (see e.g. Charlie Oatway); but it's a matter to bring up at Template talk:Infobox person.
 * and are unaffected, because they are independent of . However, several infoboxes are not -  is a wrapper, and  is a straight redirect, so both of those will be affected, as will several others. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:56, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

- hm, are you sure this isn't affecting the officeholder infobox as well (what's the padding set at)? For example, Marion Dewar/Karl Dönitz have linebreaks in the death date parameter that have never been there before (I added a nowrap to Donitz). I will probably take this to both talkpages. Connormah (talk) 19:53, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Marion Dewar looks fine, as did . -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:23, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That's very strange. Do you have any idea if there may be something with my browser? Connormah (talk) 23:19, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I do suspect that there is inconsistency between browsers, and in "fixing" it for one browser, a problem has been introduced in others. I use Firefox (yesterday 33.something, today 34.0.5). -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:00, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've reverted the edit that caused this.  21:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Need a little help from somebody familiar with MediaWiki
I need a few moments from somebody who's familiar with MediaWiki, particularly admin tools. Yesterday, not for the first time, I dealt with an editor who had edited about two dozen pages in quick succession, each with an obscene edit summary which required revision deletion. Alas, the only way to revdel them all is to do them each one-by-one, which is tedious and time-consuming, and it doesn't take much for a troll to work out that it takes far longer than it took them to make the mess in the first place. I'd like to file a Bugzilla request to allow bulk revdels from user contributions (ie replace the (del/undel) links with the square boxes and "delete/undelete selected revisions" button). Considering this already exists for page histories, and voersighters have a similar function (though that's for accounts, and suppresses all trace that the account ever existed) Would somebody mind translating that into techspeak and opening the Bugzilla request on my behalf? I'd be happy to add my rationale in a comment, but Bugzilla does my head in. Thanks, HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  19:45, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Good news, everybody! Bugzilla is no more - Phabricator has been invented. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:07, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Is that good news in the literal sense or good news in the Farnsworth sense? HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  20:25, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * you might want to take a look at twinkle. i am not sysadmin, but i think twinkle might have what you need. regardless of "mass delete", if you spend any time at all fighting vandals, you want to at least _try_ twinkle. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:13, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I use Twinkle prolifically. None of its functions allow the deletion of individual revisions (as opposed to entire pages, in which case I'd just use Special:Nuke). I'm intimately familiar with the tools I have (I think I'm just outside the top 50 most prolific admins by number of logged actions) and they don't do what I want. Redrose: Phabricator looks even harder to navigate than Bugzilla (although the 1995 look is out and a more early-2000s look is in, I see). Any help would be appreciated... HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  21:50, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Pretty much. I think it would be worth filing a Phabricator issue about. Lor Chat 21:55, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

XTools and View stats
The XTools view stats hasn't worked for a while. It links to a test pattern that says "Again something is messed up after Tool Labs database maintenance Sorry for that! No db-connection" And as much as I can figure out, the developer Hedonil hasn't edited anywhere since August. Does anyone have a direct link to the daily view stats? I don't mean Henrik's tool, because that goes to a different stat tool. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 22:42, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

A little bit of template help needed on passing a parameter to a reference in reflist.
Example  .

The ultimate aim is to write a template, Listed building (England) that will take the buildings uid, provide a category, and a linkable reference- to the Images of England web site.

To do this the reference code in reflist needs to accept a parameter from the calling template. Is this possible?

In the example, if you have over the number- you see the full url with ?uid=1038008, but hover over the same detail in the reference (you need to add your own   to see it)- the url appears without ?uid=1038008.

Ideally I would have used a   reference but this add another level of complexity. How do you pass the contents of an outer templates first positional parameter as a parameter to the inner template? I assume that you can't write   to an   ? Or is there an undocumented markup trick?

-- Clem Rutter (talk) 11:48, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * A bit confused here. I don't think you are referring to the reflist template. Perhaps you want something like Australian Dictionary of Biography? --  Gadget850talk 12:03, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * This is my test box- ignore the stuff commented out, its not relevant. ADB seems interesting, but is a lot simpler, as the value is added directly into the ADB template not passed as a parameter, and yes  is central to the final rendering. Once this is solved there is still a lot to do but I am back in familiar territory. --  Clem Rutter (talk) 15:01, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * reflist is simply a wrapper for . It makes it easier to use, especially when using and grouped notes but it cannot change the content of any of the included citations— those are rendered by the  software extension.


 * Take a closer look at Australian Dictionary of Biography. The id is passed as two parameters: id and id2. It uses cite encyclopedia which simplifies the template and ensures it matches the style. If you want the  style then use citation. --   Gadget850talk 15:15, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * So you are confirming that it is not possible dynamically generate references passed to . cite.php doesn't process wikicode- it is similar to putting a <nowiki ></nowiki> around the reference or . Thanks
 * With Australian Dictionary of Biography all I see is a conditional, such as is oftern used in infoboxes. But thanks any how. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm also confused. What is it exactly that makes  central to the final rendering?  Why, in your example is  without further qualification?  Does  do what you want done?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:22, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * In your confusion you have given me the links I need to proceed. I hadn't found - and it does give a good work around, and loads of code to study. I would still like to devise a solution where all the data is entered from the text- but as I default to using in my articles the result is possibly cleaner. Sorry if the example was confusing- but when you are reducing a template to describe the core problems- bits do get left out. --  Clem Rutter (talk) 18:41, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

So...
Any plans by the WMF to make their toolserver as reliable as the German one they "upgraded" from? Or are regular outages for tools like edit counter and page stats the new normal? --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 01:36, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I've had the same issue of those 2 tools working for a few days, and then being down or extremely slow the next couple of days. I'm not exactly sure if their toolserver will be upgraded; it would be a nice upgrade, though ;) -Fim atic  (talk &#124; contribs) 01:39, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I would suggest going back to the German toolserver would be an upgrade but that might be seen as churlish :-j --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 01:49, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * So, it would kind of be like a cross-wiki tool server (hosted on another but used here)? -Fim atic  (talk &#124; contribs) 01:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, you're new here. Welcome. Many tools, including the two specifically listed, used to run on a server in Germany, outside the direct control of the WMF: Toolserver. The WMF, in its wisdom, declined to fund its continuing operation and in summer 2014 set up a new architecture in-house. The results have been less than stellar... --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 02:09, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * "Edit count" in user contributions and "Revision history statistics" in page histories are both among the Xtools. Xtools have been on and off for a month. They are hosted at Tool Labs but made by volunteer editors. I don't know the cause of the down periods but many other tools at https://tools.wmflabs.org are currently working. One of the Xtools authors User:Cyberpower678 said at Village pump (technical)/Archive 131 that GitHub is the best place to report bugs. That means https://github.com/x-Tools/xtools/issues. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:13, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What PrimeHunter said. If Xtools are not working but other tools on Tool Labs are, then it's probably something to do with Xtools' configuration rather than a problem with Tool Labs itself. But we will have to wait for someone to investigate before we can find out for sure what's happening. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 02:54, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm newer than some people, but not exactly. My first edit with an IP was around 2 years ago (although I've only made a few with my IP), and I've had a past account here which was registered in early August. -Fim atic  (talk &#124; contribs) 03:43, 11 November 2014 (UTC)


 * There are no current outage of Tool Labs as a whole, though there was a brief (~4h) outage last week caused by a hardware fault; but my understanding is that the tool's maintainer, Cyberpower678, is currently away from the projects. I took the liberty of restarting the xtools's webservice – which appears to have hung for some reason – but I'm not in a position to debug the setup to diagnose the problem more precisely.  &mdash; MPelletier (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * NeilN this looks like typical nostalgia: first of all, closing toolserver was not a decision of wikimedia - it was a decision of the german chapter. as far as i remember, the maintainer of toolserver announce that the current setup (hw, hosting, infrastructure) was EOL, and the foundation decided not to pay for an upgrade (i did not see the projected budget/cost, but it wan an expensive setup). my guess is that the residual cost of wmflabs, being a par of much larger setup, is significantly lower. regarding "how great life was with toolserver" - this is not what i remember. even before the last days, when the setup was crumbling and outages were a daily occurrence, i do not remember toolserver as especially reliable, and it had many outages. it also had this annoying behavior of shutting down accounts of users who did not log in for 6 months, so tools written by people who became inactive would stop working at unpredictable times, and we had to hunt for the editor and beg them to login to their toolserver account, which gave us a "fix" for the next 6 months... (amusing anecdote: iirc, at one point some tools in Brion's account were shut down because he did not login to the toolserver for 6 months...). קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:32, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * "EOL" = "end of life". --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 08:23, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I'll tag along here rather than make a new section...something over a year ago, i noticed a couple of days worth of edits disappeared from the records; i put it down to Toolserver going away. The same thing happened a few days ago (27 October, to be precise), and about 80+ of my edits were (and are) no longer showing in either Xtools or others which presumably access the same data. While it's a bit annoying, a new question arises from it: How, if there are gaps in the database, is there a proper attribution record of everyone who has contributed? Isn't that potential lack of a record contrary to the terms of the licence? Cheers, LindsayHello 12:27, 12 November 2014 (UTC)


 * The page history on the "View history" tab is where the license should be satisfied. Holes in external tools don't seem like a license problem to me. Such tools could shut down completely at any time without affecting the attribution required by the license. It's possible that some reusers use an external tool for attribution and don't link to the wiki page or its page history. Stable external tools could reduce this problem slightly, but the number of reusers which give no attribution at all is far larger. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh, i see. So, the assorted tools get their data from a different location than the history page does?  Fair enough.  I wasn't really worried about it, more curious, and you have satisfied that; thank you.  Cheers, LindsayHello 23:32, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Last night the edit counter told me it was running 900+ minutes behind, so my edit count for the previous 24 hours was zero. Today (Philippines, UTC+8) edit stats says it is 1500+ minutes late, so my edit count is still zero.  Seems like it has got stuck somewhere.  Unbuttered parsnip  (talk) mytime= Thu 08:49, wikitime=  00:49, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

...so they seem to be working right now. Woohoo! This is irritating beyond belief. We're doing volunteer work here, unpaid labor, and somewhere is a bankaccount where all these donations are coming in, out of which someone should pay someone smart so we can do this work decently. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. I don't care about chapters or organization or whatever. If folks used to do this for free, I thank them from the bottom of my heart. But someone in San Francisco needs to take an executive decision and make this work consistently and well. Drmies (talk) 18:15, 15 November 2014 (UTC)
 * ...and it's not working again. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 14:15, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
 * ... but keep those donations rolling in, folks! Even if they don't contribute directly to the content of Wikipedia, or provide the improvements its contributors have come to rely on. -- llywrch (talk) 00:42, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Tools

 * Do you think that the communities would appreciate the WMF taking over something that's popular, like X! Tools, or would this be perceived as the WMF encroaching on the volunteers' territory and disrespecting them? What if the WMF decides to re-write it (as volunteers periodically do), but you don't like the new version as well?  Would you be able to live with that, in return for (possibly) more reliable maintenance (I say "possibly" because some volunteer devs and tool maintainers have been providing top-quality support for years, so in that case you can't really expect an improvement).  What do you think?  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:13, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd rather see the WMF just make Toollabs a more stable platform to host on, and let the tool creators maintain their tools.  Konveyor   Belt   03:19, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The bug is probably in Xtools, not Tool Labs itself. The solution to this is for someone to find out whatever is making Xtools fail sporadically and fix it, and once it's fixed it will stay fixed. Tool Labs is actually showing itself to be a pretty reliable platform by not failing every time Xtools does. (And if anyone here likes debugging php/js, the code is on Github.) — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 10:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't know which is more discouraging to think about: that donations to the Foundation do not directly help the volunteers create an encyclopedia & other reference sources, or that many volunteers don't trust the Foundation to actually help them achieve these goals. I would happily ignore the Foundation & its silliness, were it not for the fact it raises millions of dollars which it fritters away on badly-designed & unwanted projects it imposes on unwilling communities, while volunteers like me have to fund the research needed to write & improve content from our own pockets -- which is what the end users come to Wikipedia for, not K-RAD K3WL bells & whistles. -- llywrch (talk) 07:16, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I haven't spent much time looking at the budget, but I've got the impression that most of it is indeed helping volunteers fulfill educational goals—just not specifically helping established, first-world editors (like you and me) add content to the world's largest reference source. In addition to spending several million dollars just on basic operations (their "internet bill" is a couple million each year by itself), projects like Wikipedia Zero are not free, and they make a few million dollars in grants each year, with an emphasis on the Global South and developing countries.  I believe that all of the "engineering and product" expenses amount to less than half the total expenses each year, and some of that work is definitely wanted by very willing communities.  This year, they are spending more than a million dollars on making the sites run faster, and I haven't seen anyone complain about that.  Note, too, that some projects are not paid for by donations, but by specific grants.  The first years of VisualEditor's development were paid for by a grant, even though producing a rich-text editor was one of the top priorities identified by editors at strategy.wiki, and so you might have thought that spending money on it would mean spending money on what editors wanted.  (As a side note:  VisualEditor's popularity varies significantly by language.  About half the editors at the Portuguese Wikipedia are using it on any given day, but it's only a quarter of users at some other languages.  I wish that I knew why.)
 * You are, however, correct that the WMF never pays for content.
 * I asked this question because some WMF staff know that there are some great tools (or tools that could be great, with a re-write) in a few of the larger projects. Most of them aren't available at smaller projects.  One conversation has been whether it would be desirable, from the perspective of the volunteers, to incorporate one or more of those tools into MediaWiki and for the WMF to provide support for it.  HotCat has been mentioned as an example.  It occurs to me that some users might get more value out of having one or more of the X! Tools supported.  But it also occurs to me that if writing and maintaining a tool like that were what I did for fun, then I might not appreciate the WMF taking it over, and, as you say, providing a "revision history search" isn't exactly "directly help[ing] the volunteers create an encyclopedia", so maybe you would see that as just money "fritter[ed] away on…K3WL bells & whistles".
 * Anyway, if anything's going to happen with this idea, then there will be an opportunity for people to talk about which tools they think are most important, and I'll make sure to post a note here at VPT about it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

My guess is xtools has some sort of memory leak that eventually leads to timeouts. Supercount just a little bit less so, eventually giving a response. Judging by what and  are saying, a restart seems to fix the problem? if an occasional restart is all that's needed, I wouldn't think the developers would be that offended, especially since they are trying to take an intentional break from the project. Anything beyond that may require a larger discussion on whether the WMF can takeover tools should the loss of the service be a detriment to the project. &mdash;  MusikAnimal talk 06:19, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Given the history in the foundations deployment of software, and how well it's been received, echo, flow, the loss of the OBoD, I would be opposed to having the foundation take over xTools. Anyone is free to suggest patches on GitHub, to help fix memory leaks, if any.  I think there might be too much load on xTools, given the restrictions imposed by tool labs, is causing the load times to increase, and some people try to refresh mid load, increasing memory usage, and eventually crashing the web service.  xTools is a highly used tool.  I think it's time for it to move to its own instance.  As for super count, something I wrote on my own, I don't see memory leaks being an issue, but slow DBs do cause slow load times, which leads to refreshed mid-load, etc.  I will do some thorough looking into next week to see what the culprit is.— cyberpower <sup style="color:black;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Chat<sub style="margin-left:-4.2ex;color:black;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Absent 14:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Supercount, albeit slow, is an adequate substitute for the regular edit counter, at least so long as there is an expectation that the regular edit counter will be fixed and back up to speed soon. But is there a alternate tool or tools for "Revision history statistics"? I've looked and can't find one. Also, I'm not a coder or database maven so what I'm about to ask may be roll-your-eyes stupid to those of you who are, but would it be possible to write a simple tool which, in the interim, restarts the Xtools every couple of hours? Regards, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 15:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hedonil wrote a gadget for the web service, called web watcher, which monitors the service of xtools, and did a pretty bang up job, until we all switched to Big Brother, another Labs concoction, that doesn't seem to be reliable. All tools are slow as long as the DB takes forever to deliver the results.  Lately, the database has been working slowly and not been keeping up with replication.  The WMF Labs staff in charge of those DBs really don't seem inclined to do anything about it, meaning you can expect slow results for a while longer.  Supercount and xtools will operate faster if the DB responds as fast as it used to when replication was first introduced to labs.  ATM, I wish I was on tool server.  At least that seemed to be more stable.— cyberpower <sup style="color:black;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Chat<sub style="margin-left:-4.2ex;color:black;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Absent 15:50, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

supercount has pretty large security holes in it. I wouldn't advise anyone to use it. Legoktm (talk) 01:34, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * What do you meany by 'security holes' - apologies if I've missed something somewhere, genuinely curious! Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 01:58, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Cross-site scripting ones specifically that were reported to the maintainer nearly a month ago that still haven't been patched. Legoktm (talk) 02:36, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * If you haven't noticed, I haven't been very active. But even so, grabbing a the OAuth session cookie of a user OAuthed into the tool, will not get very far, because they need the secret key to get it to work, and the cookie does not save that.  That made no sense actually since my tool reads the cookie and all a user has to do is replace their own with the stolen cookie.  I advise not using OAuth on the tool for the time being and logging out if you're logged in, per Legoktm.— cyberpower <sup style="color:black;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Chat<sub style="margin-left:-4.2ex;color:black;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Absent 13:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Valuable tools should be turned into MediaWiki core features or MediaWiki extensions. In my opinion, relying on Wikimedia Labs is a bad idea for the same reason that relying on the Toolserver was a bad idea. It's great for quick scripts and demos and proofs-of-concept, but it simply doesn't have the same quality control and consequently the same level of uptime and performance as the production cluster. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * MZMcBride, or anyone else who's interested:
 * If you made a list of the "valuable tools" that should be turned into MediaWiki core features or MediaWiki extensions, what would be on the list? My own list would unfortunately look a bit too much like "the couple of tools I use", so I'd love to hear suggestions from people with broader experience, or tools that are only in use at other projects.  Please let me know—post here, send me e-mail, add lists on my talk page, send singing telegrams to the office, whatever works best for you.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Whatamidoing (WMF), why wait for a complete list? Start with XTools which is the one causing the most aggravation judging by the mentions here and elsewhere. --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 14:31, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I would argue that page and user statistics, similar to those provided at 'Revision history statistics' and 'Edit count', should be a standard service provided by Wikipedia (MediaWiki) and it should guarantee a minimum service level regarding up-time and performance.--Wolbo (talk) 21:39, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Whatamidoing (WMF), I need the range block calculator, which has not been operational for at least a month. Thanks, -- Diannaa (talk) 04:26, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly its purpose, how about IP Range to CIDR? —&#91;  Alan M 1  (talk) &#93;— 10:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't seem to do the same job. The range block calculator allowed the user to input several IPs and the tool would calculate the smallest possible range block that would cover all the IPs. -- Diannaa (talk) 15:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Survey
Whatamidoing (WMF) (and others), I noticed the link to the new Tools survey on top of my watchlist and thought, "Great! Some progress in this area!" Then I actually took the survey. My thoughts are here. Warning - they're not pretty. --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 23:29, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Mass message like extension to help renaming or deleting categories
Until such a time as we have category tables, I was thinking that it would be useful to have an extension that allows a user with the appropriate permission to request on a special page that a bot makes all the necessary changes to directly categorized pages (in the format), either updating for a rename or removing for a deletion. This would work similarly as mass message, we could grant the rename permission to a "category renamer" usergroup, maybe with a limit on the number of pages in the category, and grant the unlimited rename and remove permissions to admins. Users would have to move the category beforehand when renaming (there should be a warning message if the category to rename to doesn't exist), and admins would have to delete it afterwards for deletion. This would significantly simplify CFD procedures and implementations. Cenarium (talk) 15:10, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Isn't there a bot that does that? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 15:19, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes there is, three bots in fact, but it is exceedingly complicated to operate, see Categories for discussion/Working. This would make everything smoothly in one click for directly included categories. Cenarium (talk) 15:26, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The current process is not "exceedingly complicated": uncontroversial requests are listed at WP:CFD/S and processed after 48 hours if no one objects. Controversial requests are more complicated because they require a full nomination and discussion, but there is good reason that they should not be left to the discretion of individual users with a particular user right. -- Black Falcon (talk) 20:09, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * They wouldn't be granted the userright if they weren't active and experienced in this area, as with file mover, and it wouldn't be left to their discretion, there would still be discussions. There is a general long term need to offload some of the admin workload to trusted established users, and that's totally the kind of things that could be done with minimal issues. After all, the category move userright didn't create as many problems as anticipated, and it's granted to all autoconfirmed users. But it can be restricted to admins, if necessary, this would still save lots of time and allow more admins to help in this area due to the much easier implementation, as I mention below. Cenarium (talk) 20:28, 28 November 2014 (UTC)


 * This also seems like a fairly simple task for a UserScript to accomplish, if anyone is interested in that of course. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:34, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * WP:AWB has that function. --Glaisher (talk) 15:40, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that it clogs up user contributions. And while having bots do this is complicated but feasible on wikipedia, it's not on other projects where there isn't the technical expertise, so an extension would help them even more. Cenarium (talk) 15:54, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't really consider "clogging up contribs" as it's not hard to make AWB or a script mark all the edits as minor or as bot (for bot accounts) which makes them easy to filter out of contribs. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 17:03, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, I presume the closing admins don't do this because it is too much of a hassle or takes too much time (even more than using the bots). There's a reason most admins stay far away from WP:CFD, me included, not only the possible outcomes and criteria used in discussions are exceptionally obscure even by WP standards, but the implementation of closures is excessively complex, so it's constantly backlogged. A simple, fast and effective way of repopulating or depopulating categories would go a long away in improving the situation. (As a note, I should mention that the special page should allow to merge multiple categories into one - just an example.) Cenarium (talk) 20:06, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

A simple way for an admin to do this without without clogging his/her edits is to create an alternate AWB account (and declare it publicly, to be sure not to have SOCK issues); autherize that account to use AWB (at AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage - mention that the account is yours in the edit summary); and use it for CFD implementations. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:32, 29 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Well nobody has ever shown me how to do Mass-deletes or Mass-moves using AWB and, as an Admin elsewhere, the lack of such built-in, Special: pages to do either of those tasks (like Nuke does) has pissed me off to no end. The best that I could find was just for mass deletes and was lifted from Wikimedia Incubator awhile back (see s:MediaWiki:Gadget-massdelete.js; needs delete rights). Its not exactly "perfect" rendering wise and is probably in need of a refresh given the deprecated .js/json stuff since its last re-write but it works reliably. I'm sure a similar script to do mass-moves can be gleamed from it as well but stuff like that is beyond my skill-set. Still, if anyone takes a stab at [re]doing either, I sure would appreciate a heads-up on any progress or suggested changes. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm thinking one of us is missing something. We are talking about moving categories from say Category:Bar to Category:Foo for example, right?  If so, then there is only one page being moved, the actual category page itself.  All of the members are moved by editing each one of them individually and replacing   with  .  This is just a series of edits, which should be simple to do. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 03:16, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The edits are simple but it's not the issue. The issue is that the vast majority of users are not well versed in semi-automated editing, there are 2361 WP:AWB non-admin users, not all active, compared to 130000+ active users. Even among admins, I'm pretty sure more than 90% of them have never used a semi-automated tool for maintenance like AWB. It's not going to change, it's just too much of an investment to learn semi-automated editing when personally you don't have a great need for it, so an easy to use software addition would be worthwhile. Mass messaging users can also be made easily with a semi-automated tool, but only for those experienced in using them, so having a mass message extension makes it much more accessible, same with categories. Cenarium (talk) 12:14, 30 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Not at all what I was suggesting. What I'm saying is that a userscript can be written in JavaScript so that if the user is on Special:MovePage and   starts with "Category:" then the script would modify the DOM to add a button on the Special Move page or if it is on a category page that doesn't exist but has members, add a link in the sidebar, next to move in the toolbar up to, or whereever people want to move the contents of the category to another category either based on the move log or what the editor defines. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:00, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

This sounds like the kind of idea that's been proposed before (because it's been a source of pain for years). Does anyone know if it ever made it into an official feature request? If not, I can file one. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 14:33, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I didn't see anything at phabricator, and I was planing on making a request but please go ahead. I feel like I've filed enough of those recently and I'm sure you'll know how to get more attention for it. Cenarium (talk) 15:09, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

FYI. Updated Tracked as the bug there was identified as duplicate of T5311. &mdash; <span style="color:green;font-family:Courier new, serif;font-variant:small-caps">Revi 06:06, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Just noticed this. That shouldn't be a duplicate, it's a fix until we have category tables and such, which we know isn't going to be any time soon. Cenarium (talk) 18:56, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Map template problem
Could someone please take a look at the map on the Cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War article. It is using a template that is some 2.5 times wider than normal page width, requiring a fair bit of scrolling to view it. When viewed on a tablet you get a full page map, with the text so small you almost miss seeing it. EG:-

Richard Harvey (talk) 10:51, 6 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I removed the navbar template, which was doing nothing useful. I also removed the map on the grounds that it was breaking the page, but it has been restored by an IP.  There is disagreement over removing the map, see the talk page.  I have made a minor improvement to the map module in the sandbox, which relies (as does much of the module) on the module being used only on that page.
 * There are several similar maps
 * Module:Iraqi insurgency detailed map
 * Template:Iraqi insurgency detailed map
 * Template:Syrian and Iraqi insurgency detailed map
 * Template:Lebanese Insurgency detailed map
 * Though none of these are used in article space.
 * There are significant issues in keeping these maps updated and reliably referenced (they are not referenced explicitly, only in the sections relating to the towns, if at all). While these are being raised on the talk page of the article, and no disruption is taking place, most of the issues seem unresolved at a first glance.  The general issue has also been raised at the OR noticeboard
 * I have suggested splitting the map that is used (and the article) by governorate, if that level of detail is needed. That would solve the problems with the size of the map, and the slow loading of the page.  It would not, of course, resolve the RS/NPOV/OR... etc. issues.
 * Pinging who understands these modules/maps, and can probably help with the tech side.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:41, 8 December 2014 (UTC).


 * Here is how the page loaded for me earlier today. I think this map is pushing the technology beyond its limits. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:00, 9 December 2014 (UTC).


 * Please note that the navbar is absolutely essential to edit the map.
 * As well, the map works quite well on a desktop or laptop computer, and is not overly slow to load for a map of that size. It is not surprising that it might not work well on a small tablet without a special version.
 * The nature of the map content is such that splitting it is not desirable.
 * It could be improved, but it is better to leave it to someone with the technical skills and familiar with the project. Regards :) André437 (talk) 22:23, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, a few things:
 * The navbar template is useful: it lets you jump to the map's definition from the article (basically the same thing any other navbar does).
 * The history in that sandbox is so messy that I can't tell what you did. Can you explain it?
 * The brokenness you screenshotted was because the base image failed to load. I assume it's a one-off failure, since it hasn't occurred since, and nothing has happened that would have either caused or fixed it.
 * It's technically feasible to split up the map into smaller ones, while still having the large one available (in the exact same way that the Syrian and Iraqi maps are combined now).
 * It would be possible to hide the map from mobile view while retaining it on desktop view.
 * Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:29, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
 * (Excuse my numbering your points.)
 * Yep, no need to belabour this point - though a loose  is extremely unusual.
 * The last but one edit by me is a synchronization with the live version, as the edit summary says. The last edit removes the page name from many of the anchors.  Simples.
 * The "one off failure" is almost certainly related to the size of the image, the massive number if sub-images, and general bigness of the data constructs. I have worked with pages that took longer to load, but never with one as complex as this.  I doubt I am the only person who has had the image crash.
 * That's cool, I think it would help, Andre disagrees: I understand his viewpoint, but rank usability higher.
 * Further to this would it be possible to display an alternative thumbnail map?
 * I have a few couple of ideas that may improve speed/size slightly. One is to create combined dot-images rather than overlaying, say, red on green.  The second (and I have not looked at the way the map works so this may not be practicable) is to use a method that has the same link for the label and the dot, without having to specify it twice.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:48, 9 December 2014 (UTC).
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:48, 9 December 2014 (UTC).


 * 2. My guess is that some of those were there so that when you're looking at the map by itself, the links still work.
 * 5. Perhaps. I'll look into this.
 * Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:08, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * (I'll use the same numbering, adding #6 7 8 9)
 * 2. I intend to use a variable to make links always link to the map (when that is the intended target). I've tested it in the sandbox and it works.  This does reduce the size of the module, since the page title is much longer, and should make edits easier.  Depending on how it is processed, it might reduce the footprint.  This will also make the links work wherever the map is used, which is currently not the case.
 * 4. For usability, it is important to display the map together, since many critical points to understanding the war cross governorate boundaries. Note also that splitting would a very time-consuming exercise, since the map is coded more or less by latitude, with very few references to the governorate of a point.  As well, it would be very challenging for future edits to the map.  (Many different maps.)
 * Some points on the border with Iraq aren't being updated since they belong to a different map, even though inside Syria. Not advantageous for maintainability.
 * 6. (added number) Combining dots instead of overlaying could help. I've already been thinking of creating icons for certain such cases.  (I've created most of the icons listed in the caption.)
 * Another idea could be a means of specifying more than 1 icon in the same line. (Maybe mark2="..." overlays mark="..." or mark="...|...")  At least for Syria, that is common.
 * 7. (added number) As for label and dot links, I am hoping to eventually persuade other editors of the page to agree to remove most if not all label links, displaying the label without a link. With so many dots, the label links (which cover a much larger area) tend to interfere with the dot links.  Many labels will then be much shorter.  To now there has been a certain resistance.
 * In any case, it would make sense for a label="text" to take the link of the dot. I can't see a use case for a label without a dot.
 * 8. (added number) Other things that might help save space : remove spaces around equal signs. (They also make the code somewhat less readable, since the associations are less visible), unambiguous abbreviations for parameters (like pos= instead of position=)
 * 9. (added number) I've documented some of my tests at the top of the sandbox map. (If not still there, I can recover that from the history.)  Could we document tests there, so as to be more easily kept ? André437 (talk) 13:17, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 2. I'm not sure if this will work the way you want it to, but I guess it's worth trying.
 * 4. I could automate the splitting process, and there still would be an easy way to view the map as a whole.
 * 6. Combining dots would definitely help and is worth doing. It's not worth trying to specify multiple icons in the same line, though.
 * 7. There's a software bug that makes that a bad idea right now. Once it's fixed (I'll let you know), you should do that.
 * 8. Please don't do that. That will make it more confusing to edit, and the way the module works, it wouldn't actually improve anything.
 * 9. The talk page would be a better place to explain what you've tried. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Question for Jackmcbarn :
 * What is the point of a secondary module for the border between Syria and Iraq ?
 * Everything that isn't static (like a bridge or river) is either on the Syrian side or the Iraqi side. This would include control of border crossings.  So control would be specified by whoever is editing the appropriate side.  By having a third map to update, it complicates updating.  In Syria, we are talking about tens of changes each day, and it is likely close to that in Iraq.
 * If the idea is to show what is just across the border, couldn't there be some means of referring to the map of the other country ? Maybe this third map explains why some points in Syria appear on the wrong side of the border.  So far, it hasn't shown anything that is really on the other side. André437 (talk) 15:27, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The point of the secondary module is so that the border crossings only need to be maintained in one place. If the different sides of the border crossing aren't in the same hands, then feel free to move them back to the primary modules. The closest thing we have to being able to refer to maps of another country is the system currently in place, though. I don't think it's responsible for points being on the wrong side of the border. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I just noticed the ping markup :) I'll start using it. (Note my id has an accent.)
 * (responding by numbers)
 * 2) Ok, I'll start implementing the variable for the page name. It has a plus for the editors (being much shorter to type), as well as making links show reliably when invoked on other pages.
 * 4) I'd like to try other things before splitting the map, since it would give more maps to edit, but the fact that it can display together makes it feasible.
 * 6) Ok, I'll make up combined dots for stable shared control. That is the only place with more that 2 icons for the same point.  It will make things easier for editors as well.
 * Multiple icons in the same line would have been a neat trick if it were feasible, but one can't have everything ;)
 * 7) That bug affects labels without links ? That explains the strong objection of certain editors.  It looked ok on the browsers I run on Linux.  Awaiting it being fixed.
 * It would be nice to have the enhancement I mentioned of taking the link address of the icon.
 * 8) You mean don't do remove_spaces_around_equal_signs -or- don't do abbreviations ?
 * The first would put id=value on the same line in edit mode (except maybe for space in value, thus a little easier to see),
 * the second was just less to type. In any case, I'll cooperate with whichever you meant.
 * 9) Right. I should have thought of putting notes on the sandbox talk page.
 * last_post) As far as I know, only al-Bukamal (Syria) and al-Qa'im (Iraq) are in the same hands (ISIS/Daesh) both side of the border (among points on the Syria map). In the north, the kurdish groups are different.
 * As for points on the wrong side of the border, that has happened with other countries as well, so probably just an error in coordinates.
 * I'm inclined to move everything back (including al-Bukamal), to keep it simpler. It wouldn't be hard to maintain one point separately.  In fact, since Daesh removed the border crossing, at the moment there is only 2 towns about 25km apart.
 * I'll discuss it with my fellow editors first. Several also work on Iraq.
 * Thanks for the feedback :) André437 (talk) 18:09, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 2. Good, but can you put it in the sandbox first and show it to me before you put it in the main module?
 * 4. Okay, that's fine.
 * 6. Good.
 * 7. Yes. It should be fixed shortly (in a few weeks).
 * 8. Neither one will make the page any faster or smaller for readers.
 * last_post. Okay. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:17, 11 December 2014 (UTC)


 * 2. Very good idea. Will do, soon.  And let you know when done.
 * 4. A thought on that. Could Syria be split in 2 (among governorate boundaries) instead of 14 ?  Although as long as there is enough space, would there be any advantage in footprint size if the parts are always displayed together ?
 * 6. I'll work on the combined icons soon too.
 * 7. Nice to know. That would be a huge space saving.  Plus a much more user-friendly map.
 * 8. Ok. I had been thinking only from an editor point of view.
 * BTW, I tend to be over committed with things, so soon could be a week or 2. André437 (talk) 19:03, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 4. From a performance perspective, displaying the two half-maps is exactly the same as displaying a full map. Splitting the map would only help performance if you didn't display all the pieces at once. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:23, 11 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I suspected so. Thanks for the info :) André437 (talk) 02:36, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

What redirects links here
What happened to ? -- Fauzan <sup style="margin-left:+0.5ex"><font color="BDB76B">✆ talk <sub style="margin-left:-4.6ex"><font color="BDB76B">✉ mail  04:36, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Per Wikimedia Labs/Toolserver replacements, it moved to http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py - don't know why the toolserver links stopped redirecting - maybe Dispenser can tell us. GoingBatty (talk) 04:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Damn it, not again. --NE2 05:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I have updated the link used in Special:WhatLinksHere. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:12, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * - you need to use  in that link, otherwise the namespace is omitted. – Reticulated Spline (t &bull; c) 12:46, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've changed it. Cenarium (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Its one thing to destroy a community to strike-out a "while elephant" from WMDE's budget, it's an entirely another thing to bullshit us about supporting users transition to cloud services then pull the plug. This is simply unacceptable.  I written to the head of this whole mess,  Silke Meyer.  — Dispenser 22:26, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * So WMF doesn't want to redirect toolserver.org links to non-WMF sites for privacy policy reasons. What else should we update? Disambiguation needed contains .  I guess that should be  ? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:26, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Phantom links mystery
According to, there is a link on Template:France topics to Government of France, a disambiguation page. The API confirms that a link exists from Template:France topics to Government of France. But I can't find any such link in the template's wikitext. I also tried Special:ExpandTemplates and I can't find any link in the expanded wikitext. (I also checked in case the link might be going through a redirect, but found nothing.) I'm tempted to file a bug report with Wikimedia, but before doing so, wanted to check here to see if there is something I have overlooked. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 21:53, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * causes a WhatLinksHere entry. France topics contains and Country topics contains {{#ifexist:{{{country|{{{territory|{{{region|}}}}}}}}}, so there is no bug but only an odd feature which has confused many others. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * More accurately, the entry for Government of France is caused by {{#ifexist:Government of {{{prefix|}}} {{{country|... . The template has many #ifexist for something involving {{{country}}} . PrimeHunter (talk) 23:15, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the explanation. At least I'm not crazy. :-) But this is going to make maintenance of Disambiguation pages with links extremely difficult. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 11:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I need help setting up a table
I have created List of Post Office Murals to serve as a place to deal with a lot of murals being listed at Post Office Murals. I would like to break the list down into US states so that each state could be edited separately, because I suspect that the list / table is going to get large. How can I do this other than creating 50 separate lists? Einar aka Carptrash (talk) 23:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You can put the headers in the table: list of primary state highways in Kentucky (but it may not be sortable then). --NE2 01:47, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

The process of converting classic talk pages to Flow
(BG: Flow). There are various ways to convert talk pages to Flow. Discussed at this page. I would like to know what we would like to have. Please join the discussion. Gryllida 23:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)


 * How about we don't convert talk pages to flow? Our current system works great and flow looks like something that would be more at home on facebook than wikipedia. <b style="color:SteelBlue">Chillum</b> 00:00, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * mw:Flow shows the routine problems Flow addresses. --Gryllida (talk) 01:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Like forgetting which wiki you're on? --NE2 01:46, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Would you like some Kool-Aid with that? Johnuniq (talk) 00:49, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That's both offensive and unconstructive. Please tone it down and substantiate your objections. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits}&#125; 02:01, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I had a typo in my piped link so it read "Kook-Aid"; sorry, that much snark was unintentional and I've fixed it. Regarding the issue: we will have no idea what Flow is like until it goes live on many pages, with some of them large and frequently edited. Small tests with people posting artificial messages will not give any idea of how it would work for serious discussions. The problem is that once it is switched on, it is very difficult to rollback. Johnuniq (talk) 03:20, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above no one wants this shite and as I said before we aint Facebook .... Also Don't fix what ain't broken. – Davey 2010 •  (talk)  02:15, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm cautiously interested in Flow. Sure, wikitext discussions are conceptually purer and more flexible, but they're also not intuitive to people unfamiliar with wikitext. If that's a barrier to participation—which it seems to be—then a "don't fix what's not broken" argument doesn't apply. The drastic change in format that Flow entails does mean we should tread carefully, but that's not the same as dismissing it immediately. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits}&#125; 04:19, 12 December 2014 (UTC)


 * A product that no one wants, is clunky & obtuse, and is inferior to what it purports to replace; it could only be the product of either government contractors or non-profit employees, i.e. the people that excel at burning through other people's money. Tarc (talk) 03:46, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

visual editor revisited
i would like to make a proposal, but before i do, i'd like to hear what the distinguished wikipedians frequenting this page think, and hopefully refine the proposal based on feedback.

some background: when VE was initially enabled on enwiki, the VE team was not quick to response to real problems and issue reports, and even worse, responded dismissively, basically creating the impression they do not really care what the community thinks, and confident in their ability to steamroll enwiki community and force their view that "VE is good enough". the community revolted, and it seems, at least this once, that the community was more powerful than the devs, and we turned VE off by default for enwiki.

since then, the VE team have constantly worked and improved the tool. as far as i know, it is "on" by default on most wikimedia wikis, and the results are largely positive. the tool have improved a lot: e.g., loading times, which was prohibitive long, seem to be much better now (opening a large article like Paris - ~190K, took me about 8 seconds. it takes about 5 seconds to open it with the wikitext editor).

some features of VE are just not available anywhere - try to edit a table with VE - either edit its content or add a new row or column - it's pure pleasure compared with doing *anything* with tables without it.

there are other little delights: e.g., when you want to add an internal link to the page, VE actually uses the same "suggestions" as the search box (so after entering "mar" you can select Martinique and never have to worry about spelling - same for harder links, like 2014 World Indoor Athletics Championships), and if the IL you chose happens to be redirect or disambiguation page, VE will let you know. there are more goodies that will help even veteran editors, but i'll stop here.

i'd like to propose an experiment: let's turn VE on for a controlled subset of new editors (e.g., all those whose hashed username modulo 7 is 3 or something), and use some metrics to compare those users with a control group for whom VE will remain off by default, and look at the results within a couple of months.

if your initial reaction is "hell no", then i guess it's based on one of the following:
 * 1) hell no! VE will never be "on" on enwiki! wikitext editor was good enough for my grandmother, it was good enough for my mother, it's good enough for me, and it will be good enough for my daughter!
 * 2) we might turn on VE on enwiki at some date in the future, but it's not time yet: not until (X and Y) or until VE will (A and B and C)

if it's #1, i guess there's little to discuss. however, if it's #2, i'd like to hear what should improve before we can run the proposed experiment.

my intention is to open a WP:VPR proposal for this, but before i do, i'd like to hear what wp:vpt thinks about it.

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:22, 25 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I've been thinking for a while that we should made VE the default. I think it's improved enough now that the community should be much more receptive to it. Also, I think new editors might already be asked if they want to enable VE as a part of Onboarding new Wikipedians? I'd have to check the details on that, though. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 01:11, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Until VE supports table editing, I will not support making it the default. Adding columns is incredibly tedious in wikicode and could be made much easier by a working visual editor, but without it, visual editor is far more restrictive than the normal wikitext editor in terms of what it can do, and it prevents people from editing important areas of articles. StringTheory11 (t • c) 04:50, 25 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Table editing was recently deployed. It may not work for tables that are entirely generated from templates (which quite a few of them are, unfortunately), but for basic tables or tables that partially contain templates, operations like inserting/deleting rows/columns or even creating colspan/rowspan rules should work now. Try it e.g. on this article (without saving) or in the VE sandbox.--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 05:25, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Erik Moeller (WMF) me and some other work on fixing tables all around Wikipedia. This will make VE's work much easier. At least we don't have any tables directly written in html anymore. Now we work on removing deprecated parameters and close all unclosed tables. (Very few left). There is still some things to be done though. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:50, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Slightly meandering thought: Is there merit in the idea of having a "strict" parser function that when present on a page catches illformed wikitext (like unclosed tables) and HTML, and refuses to save? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:23, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Why would we make VE the default when it isn't even the editor of choice on wiki-versions where it has been the default for more than a year? I wanted to test table editing, random article opened Francis Schmidt, went to the "head coaching record" templates, tried to open these (no, not a table, but needs to be edited anyway), and got

"Een script op deze pagina is bezig, of het reageert niet meer. U kunt het script nu stoppen, de scriptdebugger openen, of het script laten doorgaan. Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20141124T040933Z:4"

I choose to stop the script, and now VE hangs on that page and nothing works (cancel, browser back and forth, ...). VE has improved a lot (not too difficult if you start from a really terrible thing and spend a lot of resources which could have been used to improve wikitext editing instead), but any attempt to make this the default editor is again a push to justify the WMF-wastes of resources without any solid argument for it. Table editing? I did another random article search, and got to Oh Kwang-soo. You can open and edit the tables. You can't add a header row (a row spanning the table, like there is now). The table editing "works", but is cumbersome to say the least. I add a row, enter some text,but it is left-justified, while all the cells above have centered text. Worse, the table doesn't even look the same in VE as it does in standard view. The "final" row is moved to the left for no apparent reason.

Or take Parallel adoption, go to the tables, add a new column at the end. Background color of the header cell is copied, noce! Now I add text in it. Oh, he formats it as a content cell, not a header cell. No problem, I can change that in the dropdown at the top! But if I do that, I lose the background colour of that new header cell... This supposedly works? This has been tested? As much as is usually the case, probably...

As usual, a new "tool" is deployed where only the most basic functionalities work, and all the rest is still very buggy..., you above point to Yuji Nariyama as one that works, but even there, try to create such a table in VE, or to add a subtotal or other country or anything beyond the most basic rows... It simply doesn't work. Claiming that "table editing" works is similar to claiming that the WMF is known for succesful software releases.

Oppose any change to the status of VE, support immediate end to all paid development of VE and transferring of those funds and some of the people to development of wikitext editing, the editor of choice of all environments where VE has been made the default over a year ago anyway. Fram (talk) 10:54, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Agree with Fram, funds should be used for keeping essential tools running, per my older comment here. It's not about being "against" the VE, there are just other more urgent things that need to work properly, as a minimum requirement fr editing efficiently. FunkMonk (talk) 11:26, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose, due to this community's hostility towards the developers creating too much friction and noise for it to be beneficial to the larger goals of our software development processes. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:41, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I presume you are in Kipod's category 1, then? :) I admit that it would be better if the templates on Francis Schmidt loaded before Firefox popped up its "this script may not be responding" dialogue. But it does work if you let the script continue running. (Perhaps it would be faster if we added TemplateData to the templates?) On Oh Kwang-soo I managed to get a header row without too much trouble. Here are the steps: 1) click on one of the existing header cells, 2) click on the row arrow on the left hand side of the table, 3) click "insert below" from the menu that pops up, 4) select all the cells in the new header row, 5) go to the table menu at the top and click "merge cells". I couldn't make it the same colour as the other existing header row, but for newbies this has to be easier than raw wikitable syntax. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 14:12, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I fixed the wikitext of Parallel adoption and Oh Kwang-soo —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:24, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but they didn't need fixing, they rendered perfectly. That VE can't handle them is VE's problem (and VE still can't handle them, although some cases have been solved now). Fram (talk) 14:36, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That did need fixing, they were broken wikitext syntax. Just because something renders, doesn't make it valid. If I stumble over a bucket of white paint and the floor ends up painted white, then that might be just what you want, but not what you intended. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:50, 25 November 2014 (UTC)


 * But to add colour, or center the text in a new row at the bottom, or... they still need to know and edit the wikisyntax anyway. So with VE, you need to know VE tricks (like the way you used to add a real header row) and wikitext editing (see also: template editing in VE; see also the lack of a preview button and the wikitext in "review your changes"). The list of things lacking or deficient in VE is way too long, even after all this time. You may consider as being in Kipod's category 2, but where "not until "X and Y"" include some rather serious X and Y. Take e.g. a look at Oh Kwang-soo, where the table (which showed up differently in VE) has been "fixed" by theDJ (isn't it strange that the code, which renders perfectly allright for readers and for wikitext editors, needs fixing in VE?): if I now add a new row at the bottom, I still can't do a lot of basic layout things with it, and I can't even edit the bottom right cell! But the basic problem I have is the choice to spend all this effort on a tool not used by most editors anyway (based on other language versions), and with unclear if any results for editor attraction and retention, instead of seriously improving the main editing tool (e.g. some of the things developed for VE could be useful as a gadget in Wikitext editing, e.g. a file selector or template editor: but I still haven't seen any sign that anyone at the WMF (apart from perhaps Tretikov) is interested in improving the main tool that has created Wikipedia and that will be used for years to come). This gives a very strong impression that the WMF (or the few people directly responsible for VE and similar misfortunes) only cares about developing new fancy software, and not about what is actually needed by the editors (and would be a great improvement for new editors as well, making file and template handling easier in wikitext editing would benefit everyone!). If they are not interested in what we need, why would I support their ambitions to make VE the default editor? The default editor needs to be the best of the options in most cases, not the best for some very simple tasks, somewhat usable for other tasks, and useless for the rest. Fram (talk) 14:36, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Fram asked above: "Why would we make VE the default when it isn't even the editor of choice on wiki-versions where it has been the default for more than a year?"
 * i thought i made it clear in my original post, but please be patient and let me iterate the relevant points:
 * i did not suggest to make VE the default. i suggested to re-start an experiment that will allow us to measure what effect it has on contribution of new users. personally, i think that objecting vehemently to conducting such experiment/measurement, hints that the protester maybe suspects the measurement will have conclusions they won't like.
 * i tried to explain the point about "where it has been the default for more than a year": i happen to agree that it was a mistake to turn it on at the time it was turned on - IMO it was not ready, and turning it on was premature (if Fram is correct claiming it's "not the editor of choice" in wikis where it's the default, it supports the view it was wrong to turn it on at the time it was done). i also mentioned that VE made great improvements in recent releases, so data about "where it's been the default for over a year" may not be relevant. all i suggested was to try and measure its effect on new editor's ability to contribute.
 * as a side, i'd like to ask anyone, including Fram, to report any bug they encounter with VE, rather than "hoard" it and use it as ammo for the holy battle to kill VE. if you do not want to log-in to phabricator, you can report any VE issue here: VisualEditor/Feedback. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:39, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The stats on use by logged-in editors are generally divided into two groups: people who started editing with wikitext and people who started editing after VisualEditor was offered by default (NB that "offered by default", which is what's done at about half the Wikipedias, is not the same thing as "the default editor".  "The default editor" is the editor you get when you don't have any choice, e.g., the editor that is used when you WP:UNDO an edit.  VisualEditor has never been the true default editor anywhere).
 * I believe that the latest global stats are that about 35% of the editors who created their accounts after VisualEditor was offered by default are using VisualEditor (although not necessarily using only VisualEditor), compared to only about 5% of people who started editing with wikitext. It varies significantly by language.  One thing that's a bit weird about the English Wikipedia is that in most projects, IPs have an editing pattern similar to brand-new accounts, but here at en.wp, the adoption rates by IPs mirrored that of experienced editors (during July 2013).  So at, say, the French Wikipedia, if you have 25% of brand-new registered editors using VisualEditor, but only 5% of old hands using it, then you'll have about 25% of IPs using it.  But here, it was 10% for old hands and 10% for IPs, and (if memory serves) a bit more than double that for the newly registered editors.
 * On the question of how new editors respond to VisualEditor, there was a little bit of research attempted at the end of June 2013, but there were some problems with it (including a very short time period, due partly to a technical problem that killed the first several days' work—I'm not sure any longer, but that also might be the study that had some event logging problems, like more people allegedly saving pages than allegedly opened pages in VisualEditor, which is impossible) and a very limited experience in VisualEditor, which could only barely add references or templates at that time). If the analytics team weren't so overloaded, it might be possible to re-create that study here, only over a more useful timeframe and with more time to get all the details tested beforehand.  For example, we could offer VisualEditor to a certain percentage of brand-new accounts for a month or two, and see whether people using VisualEditor were more likely to get blocked (or whatever other outcome you want to measure).
 * Fram has provided a lot of practical support for VisualEditor during the last year and a half, especially with reporting bugs that appear in Firefox. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:48, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * i guess i owe User:Fram an apology for implying that he(?) is only collecting bugs as amo for the battle to nuke VE, rather than reporting them. sorry about that. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:37, 25 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Week oppose while VE has got a lot better, there is still one show-stopper for me, the adding of &lt;nowiki&gt; tags. Looking at nowiki added tag VE is still adding a good number of nowiki's where they are not needed for instance . Until it can produce clean edits its not ready for prime time yet.--Salix alba (talk): 21:24, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * That particular edit looks like user error rather than a VE problem. The user probably typed in  character for character, not realising that it wouldn't be interpreted as wikitext. It is correct for VE to add nowiki tags in this case, as what you type into the edit window of VE should be interpreted visually, not as wikitext. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 22:10, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * it's still a VE bug: VE should do something more intelligent when the editor enters [‏‎[  than simply surround it with "nowiki". i suggested one way to deal with it more than a year ago (T53897). there are other ways, but the current behavior, even if nominally it's "user error", should still be considered VE bug. however, if the community can commit to "once this issue is fixed, enwiki will agree to re-run the experiment Whatamidoing mentioned, it may give VE team some extra motivation to do something about it. i think User:Salix alba gave an excellent answer to the question in my original post ("option #2"). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:37, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I believe that the product manager calls that behavior a feature rather than a bug. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * i think your comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but actually, this is sadly true. this unfortunate attitude of the product manager is (IMO) the main reason VE is now disabled on enwiki. if the product manager would have respected the community and listened to it a year and a half ago, when the community tried to explain, loud and clear, that this is indeed a bug (and a very disruptive one, at that), we would have VE enabled on enwiki by now. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:29, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose The proposal seems to be that 30% of new users will have one editor, and 70% will have another- at random. So when I am training a group of nervous new users, some will have an editor that I know and the others will have a bit of beta eye-candy. So before I start, to teach them the basics I have to explain how they edit their preferences! ................. No.  --  Clem Rutter (talk) 22:51, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * actually, my proposal was for 14%, not 30%, but this, of course, is immaterial. however, i am not sure we are talking about the same thing here: the proposal was to *enable* ve by default for the test group. an editor for whom VE is enabled still has full access to wikitext editor (under the "edit source" menu item), so they can choose which editor to use. the other editors ("control group") do not have a choice and are limited to wikitext editor. in a training situation, you can tell the trainees to use "edit source", or you can simply tell them to disable VE altogether - it takes less than 8 seconds (prefernces => Beta => VisualEditor => disable => save. 5 clicks in all). better yet - you can tell all the others to *enable* VE in their preferences, and train them using VE... either way, i do not see how this can be considered rational reason to oppose an experiment. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:08, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor is getting pretty good reviews from new editors in Wikipedia workshops these days, but which one is best depends on what you're doing (if you want to edit blockquotes or make tables rainbow-colored, then you need to use wikitext still). However, if you wanted to have a wikitext-based class, then there would never be a need to edit their preferences.  You would just say, "Who sees both 'Edit' and 'Edit source' on their computer screens?  Okay, I want all of you to always click on 'Edit source' so you can see the wikitext source itself.  If it looks like a regular word processing program, then you clicked the wrong one.  If you only see 'Edit', then that will automatically take you to the wikitext editor."  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:23, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I know this is the place for Technical discussion, but something that was dramatically wrong last time round with VE should still be mentioned - Change management. It was a complete disaster on that front. I cannot remember all the details of the process editors were confronted with, but the impression I have (and impressions are critical) was one where the developers declared "It's ready. You will have it." Is this an equivalent process being proposed now? The mere fact that Change management hasn't even been mentioned suggests that it's still being ignored. HiLo48 (talk) 07:44, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Oppose as per User:Fram. For a small fraction of the effort that has gone into VE, we could have beefed up the WikiEditor into an awesome state and still had funds leftover to tackle some Mediawiki bugs and do some stuff at Wikimedia Labs. VE has gotten better — that's true — but for all but fairly simple editing, it is often more confusing to use than editing the source. Mediawiki was designed around text editing and unfortunately it doesn't seem that a modern GUI interface is easily retro-fitted onto it. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:40, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Oppose To be fair, a lot of issues have been fixed. Necessary functions, that should have been implemented right from the start, have been added. But there are still too many open issues, most of them minor, but also persistent complex bugs in fundamental areas like referencing, template editing and certainly in the new table functions. When all basic functions are working with no significant problems, VE can be switched to default. PS: Developers need to go back to traditional methods (like having a finished concept before starting development), the current approach to release an unfinished alpha-version and to finish it "along the way" was a major disaster. GermanJoe (talk) 08:06, 28 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Note the auto-suggest feature for wiki-links works in the wiki-text editor on Wikia. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:24, 4 December 2014 (UTC).


 * FWIW, there is an "autocomplete" script in WS:US that does autocomplete for internal links and templates in enwiki. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:31, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Comment. Not quite opposing, I can switch it off (won't use it). In my area of edits, templates, I run into this: &lt;TemplateData> is very limited and not useful as documentation. It pertains to a very small part of the template whole. It can not be extended, no data structure deepening/widening, no textual support (in a popup or hyperlink?), no example option. In fact, one is required to document a template twice. Pick any well-documented template and compare how TempalteData can/does cover that. On top of this, I am supposed to learn JSON (structure & punctuation) even without preview option &tc., where we have Lua. -DePiep (talk) 22:27, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

"nowiki" issue fixed in latest version
basically, hitting [ or { twice, now opens the appropriate dialog instead of adding them to the page "as is" and wrapping the result in "nowiki" tags. please try it and see if there's any problems with this solution. : is this enough to change your "weak oppose" to "support" ? peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:38, 4 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks to ping me, but Salix is not the same user as  --Salix (talk) 18:41, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll wait and see. There are quite a few different cases where nowiki's occur. Such as, where VE is being very precise.  The use added a space at the start of the paragraph, it really should not be there at all but VE insists in quoting it inside nowiki's. Apologies to the other Salix for username confusion.--Salix alba (talk): 19:12, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * apologies for confusing between the different Salixes. as to the "nowiki": adding space at the beginning of a paragraph creates the same issue with wikicode (where it's interpreted as "pre"). i think the way VE handles it is the lesser evil, so i'm not willing to count this as a deficiency that can be used to justify not testing VE. i am about to open a new section in VPR. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:05, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Automatically archiving reference links when pages are promoted to features article
Over at Village pump (proposals)/Persistent proposals is a proposal that when articles are promoted to featured status, all the links in their reference be automatically archived. It is universally supported at that discussion, so I'm bringing it to technical now to discuss how to make it happen. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You may try a bot request at WP:BOTREQ. Cenarium (talk) 03:51, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Withdrawing this here. Taking it to WT:FAC for now. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 17:39, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Search query
Is there a way to search one's contributions to find specific ordinals? For example to find my 10,000th and 20,000th edit. Thanks.—John Cline (talk) 17:16, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Excluding all deleted edits, your 10,000th live edit is Special:Diff/427671969, and the 20,000th is Special:Diff/474889717. FYI, I used the following database query to get this:  Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 12:57, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you Zhaofeng Li. I am glad seeing this capability. How could a lay-coder perform such a search (if possible)?—John Cline (talk) 13:14, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've hacked together a little tool at fengtools/milestones/. Not pretty, but at least it works. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 13:54, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I really appreciate this.—John Cline (talk) 15:10, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Hide "New articles" from "recent changes"
I had asked a question in Help Desk few days back. They suggest me to ask here. My question was- "How can i hide newly created articles from recent changes ? There are options in recent changes to hide 'bot edit', hide 'minor edits' etc. Similarly I want to hide new pages. Is there any method/script ?"-- Shiti (talk) 10:09, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not aware of any existing script but you can write one using the fact that for new articles 'diff' is not linked. Ruslik_ Zero 11:59, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, in that case, can you provide link for any existing script to 'hide bot edits' or something like that, that works on recent changes. It'll be easier to modify, instead writting new one. thanks.-- Shiti (talk) 17:53, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * How would one distinguish between "new articles" and others? There are some with only one edit which were created years ago.  —EncMstr (talk) 20:24, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I don't have any clear idea. Can we filter "new" tags ? And can you provide links for those scripts you have said (those are created year ago) ?-- Shiti (talk) 18:08, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

DabSolver and DabLinks unavailable
I used DabLinks a little over a week ago with great success. Now, I want to apply it to other articles. But its page says "We've moved!" without a forwarding address. Maybe the referring page can be updated? Or maybe the forwarding logic isn't in place? In either case, the index at the toolserver needs an entry for them. Anyone know how to go about these? —EncMstr (talk) 20:23, 12 December 2014 (UTC)


 * See discussion at which links to de:Benutzer Diskussion:Silke WMDE. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:47, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Or, to save you the trouble, the tool is now located at http://dispenser.homenet.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:21, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Flow chart
Do we have a template or something to create flow charts? And yes I know about chart but it doesn't have the features I need. Otherwise I would need to create an image. --  Gadget850talk 22:22, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Discussion about education program issues
There is a discussion at Education noticeboard about various technical fixes that might be helpful in dealing with some problems. Editors who are interested in technical things might want to take a look there, and see if there is anything where you could contribute. Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:45, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Not possible with edit filter without a usergroup, but even then it would be suboptimal. If the tagging can't be done directly by the extension, it would be yet another case where bot tagging would be clearly worthwhile, but the phabricator request is stuck. Cenarium (talk) 06:09, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Duplication Detector kaput
The labs tool Duplication Detector no longer works. I assume that's because the creator seems to be banned from Wikimedia. I know about Earwig's tool. But Duplication Detector was always more workable for the DYK purposes. Is anybody going to come up with a replacement? — Maile (talk) 00:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * What features of Duplication detector made DYK easier than Copyvios FAQ? Perhaps  can help you find the features you are missing or improve it to add whatever features you feel are missing. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 01:29, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know the details. That question is better asked over at DYK.  But I know the Earwig tool missed too much, and Duplication Detector was better for the DYK purposes.— Maile  (talk) 01:33, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If you haven't used it since July/August of this year, then I invite you to try it out again, because I've made some substantial improvements since then. If you have, then my apologies for it not being as good. I don't have much time right now for major improvements, but if you are able to suggest some concrete things, I can work on them in the future. — Earwig   talk  02:27, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

With regards DupDet, the problem with the tool is unrelated to the ban. The creator's other tools are still functioning. Regardless of the respective merits, we need to find somebody else to manage it. Hopefully, we'll be able to get it back online in general in a few hours, but it needs a maintainer. Um, User:The Earwig? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:51, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Would really rather not take on a new job like that, but I guess I can do it if no one else is able... — Earwig   talk  21:51, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * perhaps I could help, with your oversight? I've been taking an interest in copyright on WP, and have some geek cred. Cheers, Basie (talk) 19:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm still unclear about what DupDet offered that Copyvios doesn't. Is it just a cosmetic difference in tastes or is it the actual search algorithms that are different?  Why can't they just be merged? — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 22:29, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know if they can be merged. They each have strengths, but they are different. I really like the way EarwigBot highlights the text side by side, an elegant design that makes it much easier to find content. DupDet (which at the moment has been revived by User:Jalexander-WMF) offers more options. It allows you to compare Wikipedia articles against documents (including PDFs) as well as active URLs, allows you to eliminate quotations from your search, and allows you to specify word count/character size. If they can be merged into one tool that can do it all, that would be awesome. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:12, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The Earwig tool is superior, and I use it almost exclusively. But it can't at present compare a wikipedia page with a PDF source, while the Duplication Detector can. -- Diannaa (talk) 16:23, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hmm... I added PDF support a few months back, could you check that again (or give me an example where it doesn't work)? The software it uses to read PDFs isn't perfect, so I could see it having problems with certain sources. If we have examples of PDFs that it can't understand but DupeDet can, I can try to fix that. (On rereading your comment, I'm unclear if you mean PDFs on the web or PDFs that you upload? If it's the latter, that's a feature I hadn't considered, but I can look into it if people want it.) — Earwig   talk  20:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Here's an example one that didn't work in yours, and did work in Duplication Detector: http://www.dot.gov.in/sites/default/files/AR_English_2008-09_0.pdf, used as a source in Central Monitoring System. -- Diannaa (talk) 22:06, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. There's a 1MB-per-URL size restriction, but that PDF's 2.2 MBs. I'll work on that. — Earwig   talk  22:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I upped the limit for PDFs to 15 MBs. I imagine some are larger than that, but I'm uncomfortable raising it much higher. — Earwig   talk  23:23, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: I updated Wikimedia_Labs/Toolserver_replacements to reflect the current situation. Please update again (this tool or others), when necessary. GermanJoe (talk) 09:32, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Logged out
How come I was logged out a minute ago in the middle of watchlist checking? Glitch at WP end, or mine? Jim.henderson (talk) 01:25, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe just your login expiring?  Konveyor   Belt   02:28, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Unless you see it happenning a lot, just log back in and ignore it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:58, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Central Login failure in Firefox
Until Wednesday 10 Dec, if I logged in on e.g. English Wikipedia using my normal browser (Firefox), the Central Login system - which I think is part of WP:SUL - meant that I was automatically logged in on commons, meta, Wikidata, etc. although sometimes on first visit to a wiki it would show "Create account Log in" top right, and alongside that a bubble "Central login You are centrally logged in as Redrose64. Reload the page to apply your user settings."; pressing would reload the page and I would be shown as logged in.

After I logged out on Wednesday, my next login was yesterday morning (13 Dec) - and it only logged me in on en.wp: if I go to commons, or any other Wikimedia site, I'm shown as logged out ("Create account Log in"). This would be OK, except that the "You are centrally logged in" bubble does not appear, not even if I try a hard refresh of the page. This is particularly annoying on Commons, because without being logged in there, it opens images in Media Viewer. I've logged out, cleared cookies, tried again, started off on different sites (there was a period some months ago when Central Login only worked properly if I logged in on Meta first, even though my "home" wiki is en.wp), but whatever I try, no luck. The only way to be logged in on all sites is to log in to each site separately, which defeats the purpose of Central Login and indeed of SUL.

I suspect a browser problem. If I switch browsers from Firefox to Opera, it works as it should (I get the "You are centrally logged in" bubble when visiting another wiki for the first time after logging in). Firefox was recently upgraded from 33.something to 34.0.5, so I suspect that something has changed in Firefox - is there some configuration relating to cookies which might affect it? -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:20, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * After trying several more times after posting the above, Commons and Meta are now recognising my en.wp login after some six hours. Since I didn't upgrade Firefox, restart it, or even alter any Firefox settings during that time, it can't be a browser problem. Most odd. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:29, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Regression in backlink symbol
Occasionally I come across a page where in the references list, the backlinks are malformed. When this happens, there are two effects: for all refs, an arrow is shown instead of a caret; and for those refs used two or more times, numbers (2.0 2.1 etc.) appear instead of letters (a b etc.). If I WP:PURGE the page it fixes itself. It's not a caching issue at my end, and is replicable in various circumstances - on different browsers, whether logged in or out, using Vector or MonoBook, and when viewing the article proper (e.g. Epping tube station) or a diff (e.g. ); it's as if there was a software regression. This has happened more frequently in the last few weeks. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:44, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I see it to (but then I purged). My guess is the Cite extention somehow fails to replace the default messages with the locally defined one (MediaWiki:Cite references link one and MediaWiki:Cite references link many).  23:06, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Edokter is correct. What you are seeing is the default styling. We've had a very similar issue where cite error messages would show in a non-English language because of the last editor's language preferences, until the page was purged. I don't recall seeing this on the . --  Gadget850talk 23:20, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Ping notifications working?
I and another editor have tried repeatedly to ping some users with Template:ping (Template:Reply to), at Talk:Houston_Riot_(1917), but we don't see any notifications. I tried a test at my talk page, without the template, too:  User_talk:Dicklyon; still neither of us saw a notification. Each time, I used a four-tilde signature. Is there some magic I'm missing, or are notifications broken? Dicklyon (talk) 01:58, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You have to ping them and sign in the same edit or it doesn't work. See User:Floquenbeam/Pinging.  --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:03, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I did that every time. It's hard to see from the history, since the four-tilde signatures are expanded, but each one is new, not a copy of an old signature.  Dicklyon (talk) 02:15, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * There are many factors that can cause this. See Template_talk:Reply_to or do a search on Phabricator for echo tickets. Signatures must include a non-colon prefixed link to the pinger's userpage and can not overwrite a previous ping (best to delete the signature (leave the old timestamp) and add a new four tilde signature at the end).  Happy pinging! — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 02:23, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't see how that would be the issue. My signature is pretty vanilla.  Dicklyon (talk) 02:29, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I've found it best (if slightly annoying) to undo the edit, then re-add the corrected ping and the corrected signature together, rather than overtype it. Also, Dicklyon what did you mean by "we didn't see any notifications"? You wouldn't have seen any notifications when you ping other people, it isn't a talk page thing it's a notification button thing.  You can only ever see it when someone pings you. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I mean notifying myself didn't work, and and my attempts to notify each other didn't work.  Dicklyon (talk) 02:31, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You can't notify yourself. And, as I said, your ping test on your user page didn't include a new ping and a new signature at the same time. I don't see where RGloucester tried to ping you. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:40, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * From where I am standing, it seems working because I did receive your ping. I am referring to the edit in which you called me "Asshole" and the associated talk page edit. It is possible that the editor is ignoring you. Also editors can disable notifications, in whole or for certain person. Codename Lisa (talk) 02:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I called you "asshole" in an edit summary. What's not working is a ping caused by mentioning a user name.  Actually, my edit summary of "asshole" was more a reaction to your edit summary than to you, per WP:NPA, since I know nothing about you and expect you're actually a nice guy in real life.  Dicklyon (talk) 02:33, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, based on that, I looked at your actual edits. Talk:Houston_Riot_(1917) failed to ping anyone because you exceeded the hard coded limit of 20 pings per post. You can see, you did not add a new signature to the end, you attempted to overwrite an existing signature, which will not work.   failed because there was no signature at all, and  failed because you only added a signature.  You have to link to the user page of the person you want to ping and have an entirely new signature with a clean link to your userpage for it to work.  Hope this clears it up. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 02:43, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, those make a bit of sense. What about this one?  Would I need to do intervening edits to remove the ping and signature, so that adding the new one is "clean"?  I can try that.  Why the 20 limit?  Dicklyon (talk) 03:26, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * An intervening edit like that should do it. A whole new post after the original should also work. If there are more than 20 pings then there is probably a significant risk that it's either disruptive or an accident like copying a lot of signed posts with user page links and adding your own signed post in the same edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * See mw:Help:Echo and if you still think a notification is missing then post a diff to the edit. Don't just say which page it was on. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I have added the total limit of 20 to the documentation for reply to.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Reply_to/doc&diff=638141202&oldid=638133920] PrimeHunter (talk) 03:37, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Using a tilde signature in a template
When I join or initiate a discussion on a Talk page, I usually end my first entry in the thread with something like If you would like to discuss this with me, please me. --~ where of course the " ~ " turns into my timestamped signature. This way, I can be available for discussion without cluttering my watchlist.

Since I do this fairly often, I'm trying to make a template in my userspace that would expand to that ↑↑. But I haven't been able to make the final result include the expanded date/time. Either I still get plain old " ~ " in the result, or I get the timestamp in the template itself, which will never be correct when the template is invoked. Advice, please? And, of course, please me. --Thnidu (talk) 02:54, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You can use . Cenarium (talk) 03:06, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * , try . — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 03:07, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that works with.
 * User:Thnidu/Template:pingme
 * User:Thnidu/sandbox
 * --Thnidu (talk) 04:04, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Blacklisted links ... or not?
Dear editors: Can someone who understands the blacklisted links process please take a look at the history of this page ITM LAW School? Thanks. &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 03:02, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The history links at Special:Contributions/Cyberbot II shows the bot is edit warring with itself on lots of pages (maybe a case for Lamest edit wars). It has been reported to the operator at User talk:cyberpower678 PrimeHunter (talk) 03:15, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Slow access
I am experiencing unusually slow access to Wikipedia these days and was wondering whether this is a site-wide issue and whether I can speed it up by tweaking options. I use Firefox with MonoBook skin and very few gadgets, if any; I've switched off Java support in web browser, which brought little improvement. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 04:39, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've also been experiencing this slow access today. The page seems to load very slow, and the top(with the messages and Watchlist) seems to lag for minutes. I use Google Chrome Version 39.0.2171.95 m. I can ping en.wikipedia.org with normal results. Irritating. Dave Dial (talk) 01:11, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Problems like this often depend on location. Whereabouts in the world are you? (I'm in Hokkaido, Japan, and the site is working normally for me.) — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 01:35, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm in South Detroit(born and raised, lol). It's loading faster now, but it still lags a bit(the loading wheel spins for a minute or so). Something has been up, since I can load ESPN, Google and Facebook normally. Dave Dial (talk) 01:41, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

It recovered with me automagically, without me doing much, so I assume this was some issue at wikiservers. Materialscientist (talk) 22:06, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Tech News: 2014-51
<section begin="technews-2014-W51"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent software changes
 * You may see a new tool tested on the mobile site of the English Wikipedia. It asks simple questions to make the article better. In the future, your answers will go to Wikidata.
 * You can watch a video to learn how to use Phabricator to manage projects.
 * You can test a new version of the Content Translation tool.

Software changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki ( 1.25wmf12 ) has been on test wikis and MediaWiki.org since December 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from December 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from December 17 (calendar).
 * You can now find and replace text in VisualEditor. You can open the tool via the menu,  or.
 * VisualEditor now doesn't change the space at the end of a text that you make bold.
 * The "Apply changes" button in the reference window of VisualEditor is now disabled until you make a change.

Future changes
 * The star image of the watchlist may change soon.
 * You won't be able to use Phabricator on December 18, 2014. It will be down between 00:00 and 08:00 (UTC).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2014-W51"/> 16:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Formatting, signatures not working on a talk page
See the last section of. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 22:03, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That is due to an unclosed added with this edit. SiBr4 (talk) 22:10, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 22:15, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I cleaned it up. Wbm1058 (talk) 22:42, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Socks (cat)
If the article Socks (cat) is in the category "Category:Individual cats", then why does it not show up anywhere when you check the category page? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:40, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Mediawiki hiccup. It's fixed. DS (talk) 23:57, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Occasionally such glitches happen - see, for example, Wikipedia talk:Special:UncategorizedPages. There is always the olption of null-editing the page. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Campaignbox
I'm having trouble getting Template:Campaignbox Syrian Civil War to look like Template:Campaignbox Afghan War. The border parameter doesn't work somehow. Fitzcarmalan (talk) 12:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Having the same problem in Template:Campaignbox Iraqi insurgency (2011–present) and Template:Campaignbox French Revolutionary Wars. Fitzcarmalan (talk) 12:59, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Each of the used templates must implement the border parameter:

|border   =
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 13:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * , can you show me how it is done in the Syrian box, for example? I will do the same with the other ones. Fitzcarmalan (talk) 13:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The first used template: [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Campaignbox_civil_uprising_phase_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War&diff=638349652&oldid=632261184]. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:16, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Fitzcarmalan (talk) 13:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Phabricator Profile Pic Placeholder
Does anyone else realize that this placeholder is a silhouette of the Pokemon Psyduck? Who's idea was that? While I am a huge fan of Pokemon, isn't this a copyvio?— cyber power <sub style="color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Offline <sup style="margin-left:-6.4ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS">Merry Christmas 17:43, 16 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You mean https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/rsrc/image/avatar.png is´Psyduck? That looks right. A phabricator search for Psyduck shows mention in T65 and T256, but no discussion of copyright issues. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:05, 16 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure it doesn't meet the threshold for originality and is PD as such. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 18:27, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Why wouldn't it meet the threshold for originality? If we can tell that it's Psyduck, which on its own certainly meets the threshold, doesn't that imply that there's enough unique material in the silhouette to qualify for copyright? {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits}&#125; 19:04, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We have the 'serious' mode enabled in Phabricator, but by default, phab has a lot of non-seriousness and cultural references in much of it's UI texts. I presume this is just one more, but now in outside of the magic that is switched by modes. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:03, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Infobox DOB problem
Apologies in advance if this is the wrong place but there are that many forums on here now that I don't know which is which any more.

Anyway, I've recently added full dates of birth to infoboxes in a bunch of articles (specifically Jackie Thompson, Donald Hodgen, Mo Courtney, Winkie Dodds and James Millar (loyalist)) and whilst I have included both day and month only the month is showing up. Have I screwed up somewhere (probable as the technical aspects of editing often go wrong in my hands), is it a glitch, is it my browser (Firefox) or is something else going on? Any help appreciated. Keresaspa (talk) 19:53, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * - it appears that you are using the birth year and age template, rather than the birth date and age template. Connormah (talk) 19:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, I didn't notice that. I knew it would be me screwing up a technical thingy :D Thanks muchly, Connormah. Keresaspa (talk) 19:57, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For those people where mdy dates are inappropriate, you should also use the yes parameter to set the display of day-first dates. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:39, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Search function much faster
On the Help Desk and in The Teahouse, people have been told for years it could take several days for the Wikipedia search function to find a certain article.

Yesterday, while looking for further information on a topic for which I had just edited a related article, I was amazed to find the edits I had just made minutes earlier, on the screen of the Wikipedia search function!— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  21:33, 16 December 2014 (UTC)


 * November 19 mw:Help:CirrusSearch became default on the English Wikipedia. Before that it had been an option called "New search" at Special:Preferences for a long time, but it's gone there now it's the default. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:00, 16 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:48, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Can't log in
On Friday, attempting to log in from work (not too far away from where I live). resulted in a 503 error message all day. I remained logged in at home until some time today. Now I can't get logged back in ... but only to Wikipedia; all other Foundation projects I have accounts on (Commons, Wikivoyage, Wikiquote etc.) work just fine. I have tried multiple browsers and other Internet access points in the area; no luck. So I am posting via my IP address in the hope someone will be able to make sense of the error message from my recent attempt to log in:

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&action=submitlogin&type=login& returnto=Wikipedia:Village+pump+(technical), from 10.64.32.106 via cp1067 cp1067 ([10.64.0.104]:3128), Varnish XID 2153850834

Forwarded for: 173.85.86.72, 10.64.32.106, 10.64.32.106

Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Tue, 16 Dec 2014 03:10:52 GMT

If this requires any personal follow up, email me from my userpage or (if that doesn't work) use my Commons talk page (I have email notification set up there). Daniel Case (talk) 03:23, 16 December 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.85.86.72 (talk)
 * I have no trouble, so I don't know... If, as yyou say, you can log in to other Wikimedia projects, can you then come into Wikipedia using your SUL? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:02, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This sounds like T75462 and the last comment asks for coordinating with someone whose account is affected so help is welcome in that ticket. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Reading through that ticket, it is exactly the problem I'm having. Points of perhaps useful information:
 * I do not have an SUL, just like some of the other people having the problem.
 * I am getting the usual error message if I mistype my password, just like the other people having the problem.
 * It is only occurring on enwiki, which, if I did have an SUL, would be my home wiki. Nowhere else.
 * To reiterate, it is not specific to Firefox, even though that's my primary browser. It has occurred without fail in IE, Chrome and (when I tried logging in from my iPad) Safari.
 * At this point I very much believe it is specific to my account, although no one else that I know of logs on at any of the other points I've tried from. I will try creating an alternate account (which I probably should have done a while ago anyway) and see if that works. Daniel Case (talk) 20:27, 16 December 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.85.86.72 (talk)

OK, I was just able to log on. If someone implemented one of the older bug patches mentioned most recently in the ticket, it worked. Daniel Case (talk) 23:42, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Lost tools
I seem to have lost many of the tools that made editing here easier, including: Has there been a change in the software, or could it be because I tried, without success, to install Cat-a-lot by following the instructions here? Can anyone advise on how to get those things back? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 10:32, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The special characters, four-tilde group etc from below the edit window
 * User:Ohconfucius/script/MOSNUM dates.js
 * User:PleaseStand/segregate-refs.js
 * User:Ohconfucius/script/EngvarB.js
 * User:Scottywong/diffconverter.js
 * MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js
 * Something (can't remember what) that gave me page sizes (total, readable text etc.)
 * If it is because of Cat-a-lot, all you would need to do is undo the addition and purge your cache. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:40, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, that has indeed resolved the problem, so it looks as if there is something adrift with the Cat-a-lot instructions or implementation. That is a very useful tool (I've used it on Commons), and it would be excellent if it could be made to work here too. Thanks for your advice, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 13:46, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yeah the instructions on that page don't work indeed and will require some updating. JS pages don't allow you to 'render' wikicode anymore... This is part of the stricter separation of the different types of content that the developers are trying to create. Slowly we are moving in a direction where something is either wikicode or javascript, but not both (including the complexities and peculiarities of both). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:29, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You attempted to install it by . Templates are Wiki markup, and Javascript pages expect Javascript, not Wiki markup; so I don't think that subst: would work either. The proper way is, as described at User:קיפודנחש. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, that has worked and I now have the tools I used before and Cat-a-lot too. I'm most grateful. I did of course see that the subst-ing had failed, but had no idea how to fix it. I attempted to install it in that way because that is what the installation instructions told me to do. It seems that with a few exceptions all other installation instructions on that page also involve subst-ing an iusc template. Thanks again, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:34, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * , that's entirely wrong and not the problem. {{subst:InstallUserScript}} ({{subst:Iusc}}) is a script specifically designed for substituting user scripts on to the script page. The issue is with the deprecated  and   (see mw:ResourceLoader/Legacy JavaScript for details) that are used on User:קיפודנחש/cat-a-lot.js., or a willing administrator, can you please update the script to use   instead so that this will work for users again? Thanks. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 16:43, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, none of those answers are right. You can still subst templates on JavaScript pages currently. The only reason it didn't work in Special:Diff/637096033 was the unclosed &lt;pre> tag before it. Also, there's no problem at all with importScriptURI or importStylesheetURI yet. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:04, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Jackmcbarn is right, of course, and the problem was the " " tag. however, due to the pings, i looked at this again, and found that my little three-liner that basically sets a single global variable and then loads one script and one stylesheet from commons was broken: apparently, the comons script developed a new dependency ("jquery.ui.resizable"). so something good came out of it - i made it a four-liner, and now it works again... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 04:28, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Diffusing template error categories
I've started a discussion about possibly diffusing the template error subcategories of Category:Wikipedia template parameter issues if anyone is interested. The discussion is here. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:00, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Narrow screen tabs
I have two Internet Explorer 10 browser windows running at part-width, so this one doesn't have room for all the tabs on a normal unprotected article like Matthew 2:23. I get "Article," "Talk," a space, "Read," "Edit," and "More" with a dropdown. If I click "More," I just get "View history." No tabs saved. No real difference. Could you change this, so "More" appears only if two or more tabs are hidden? 65.210.65.16 (talk) 19:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This only happens when there isn't enough space horizontally to fit in the "View history" tab. The skin is smart enough not to do this when there is enough space, and not to do this if the width of the "More" tab is greater than the width of "View history" (which happens in some languages, but not English). On my computer, the difference is 14 pixels, it varies depending on your browser, OS and available fonts. Matma Rex talk 20:20, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

"Under construction" tag?
Hi, I don't know if this is the right place, but could someone tell me if there is a "under construction" tag for articles or something similar? I'm not talking about the "expand article" or "expand section" tags. I wanted something for articles that are currently being worked on. Thank you very much, --Lecen (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Under construction? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:54, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I looked everywhere in the list of templates but I couldn't find it. Thank you very much, PrimeHunter. You helped me a lot now. Regards, --Lecen (talk) 11:07, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
 * - There is also In use, which asks that other editors refrain from editing the page. GoingBatty (talk) 02:20, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Twinkle problem for at least one admin
I've just done it again - deleting an article with Twinkle instead of tagging it. I don't use Twinkle for deleting, only for tagging - and keep forgetting to tick the 'tag only' box. Is there any way I could (without great complication) set a default of 'ticked' for this box? I find restoring something to tag it a bit embarrassing... Peridon (talk) 20:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Enable "Default to speedy tagging instead of outright deletion" at Twinkle/Preferences. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks - I didn't know you could do all that stuff.... Peridon (talk) 11:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Excellent - I'd just done the same thing, have now checked that box. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:11, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

CiteGen
Hello, folks! I've just made User:Zhaofeng Li/CiteGen which is a replacement of Cite4Wiki. It's an extension for both Firefox and Chrome which generates a cite web citation from the current page. It's different from Cite4Wiki because it uses Reflinks as the backend, whereas Cite4Wiki parses metadata in the browser. As a result, it supports more metadata fields and its functionality can be extended without the user updating the extension. The source code is available here (Patches are welcome!)

To install this on Firefox, simply click this link. For Chrome/Chromium, right click this link and select "Save link as..." to download it. Next, open Settings in Chrome and select the Extensions menu, then drag the .crx file from your file browser to Chrome.

Any thoughts on this? Thank you. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 01:21, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I have installed this add-on for Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0 and will be testing it shortly. Thanks for developing it! — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 00:21, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * , I've used it a bit today to try it out, and I have a couple things I might request. First, since I tab flip a lot (and sometimes forget to wait for it to load to copy the material), it would be great if it could cache the results locally so when I flip back it I don't have to wait for it to start over and try again.  Also, it would be great if the pages it fails to work on could either offer some kind of report to help figure out why it didn't work on those pages (I've hit quite a few free pages not behind a paywall it fails on). It would be nice to have it have a checkbox that will wrap the citation in <ref ></ref> tags (named refs are preferred of course, so they can easily be reused :D). It would also be appropriate to introduce a user option for whether it should be {{cite web or {{Cite web and it should allow the user to select the date format (MDY vs. DMY vs. YMD) if not set it should pull the browser default for the date format.  Another thing that would be a great addition would be a button that an editor using the tool to work on a GA or FA could press to prevent linkrot by caching a version of the page on the way back machine or some other similar site and add the archive info to the citation template.  I'm sure some of those ideas are much easier than others, and I'll throw more ideas at you as I have them. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 01:03, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * {{ping|Technical 13}} Many thanks for your testing. Caching will certainly help, and more options will be available soon. As for pages it fails to work on, it will currently outputs an error message at the bottom ("HTTP Error: 403", etc). Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 07:58, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Expired security certificate
I'm using IE9 to view the site (not my choice -- mandated by the company) and as of this morning, I'm getting errors indicating that the site's security certificates are expired. Anyone else seeing this? I can navigate around it, but it's quite annoying. WikiDan61 <font color="green" size="5px"> ChatMe!ReadMe!! 14:35, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See Village pump (technical)/Archive 131. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:41, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You won't be able to browse at all if it's related to SSLv3. It's more likely that your company intercepts your HTTPS traffic with a rouge certificate which is expired. In this case, contact your IT department. Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 04:46, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure you mean a rogue certificate, not a rouge certificate! A lot of native English users make this error, too. --Thnidu (talk) 04:53, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Combining duplicate references
Dear editors: At one time the "Expand citations" used to combine duplicate references. Also Reflinks used to do this. These don't seem to have this function now. Is there another gadget or process for this? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 12:22, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * , are you using 's reflinks? Perhaps  could add that for you or explain how to make it happen.  :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 13:38, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . I was hoping for an existing process, but you are right that Zhaofeng Li is the most likely person to help with this, and I have left a message.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 18:09, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This is actually pretty easy with visual editor. Delete the duplicate, select cite from the menu, and choose re-use. Visual editor will name the ref for you and make it all work swimmingly. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 18:20, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

For the Reflinks functionality, please continue the discussion at User talk:Zhaofeng Li Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 23:40, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Possible to form URL to download article source directly?
Given a specific article title, say Boekenweek, is it possible download its text source directly? I was thinking along the lines of by adding to the article's URL. Maybe there's better way. Jason Quinn (talk) 22:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * When you say "text source" do you mean wikitext, parsed text (what renders on the page when reading), or raw HTML? — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 22:55, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Wikitext. Basically the contents of the edit window. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:12, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You can play around in the ApiSandbox. A place to start might be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=query&prop=revisions&format=json&rvprop=content&rawcontinue=&titles=Boekenweek - Good luck! — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 23:29, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
 * use the basic URL http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/plain&title= and append the page name, with spaces replaced by underscores - i.e. the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/plain&title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) will return the source for this page. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:28, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

That works. Thank you. Jason Quinn (talk) 11:12, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * And if you're going to do that, in an automatic fashion, please amend your user agent appropriately. Ironholds (talk) 06:04, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

hover not working
Hi, I'm using a different computer, but still logged in and using Firefox. The hover functions (eg diffs, history and the drop down with (un)watch etc all seem to have gone. I can't see anything in Preferences that I've unticked, what's wrong? <b style="font-family:chiller;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> - talk to me?  19:31, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Could it be that JavaScript is disabled on that different computer?  19:59, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't know, how do I find out? <b style="font-family:chiller;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> - talk to me?  07:21, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Do you have Hovercards turned on in Special:Preferences? That has code to make only one or the other of Hovercards and Navpopups display at once - it's slightly buggy in a few browsers hence you might not have encountered the problem before. To fix: You can either click the "cog icon" in a Hovercard to access its preferences menu (screenshots) (which lets us select between the 2 options, or turn it off entirely), or opt-out of the BetaFeature. Either should work fine.
 * If not, then try either a hard-refresh (ctrl-F5 or WP:REFRESH), or check if your browser has JS turned on/off at http://www.javatester.org/javascript.html . --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'm going to be away for a day or so, but I'll try these when I get back <b style="font-family:chiller;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> - talk to me?  19:16, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

history in mobile beta?
Is there a way to access an article's history page in the betatest version of the mobile website? I've never been able to find one. Once I did get to an article's history page when I wasn't trying to, but I have no idea how it happened. Please me for discussion. --Thnidu (talk) 07:48, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * If you click the text "last edited..." at the top of the page, it should take you to the edit history. It took me a couple of minutes of clicking different things to get that. I think it needs to be clearer that that is the history link, especially for copyright attribution purposes. Sarahj2107 (talk) 09:05, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * By golly, you're right! Thank you. --Thnidu (talk) 09:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Hidden heading
On the article 2 + 2 = 5, there is a heading 'Self-evident truth'. However on my screen, and that of another user, the heading is not visible. That it exists, can be known because it is in the table of contents, and when you view the raw code (with the Edit button), you'll see that it is coded correctly. Apparently the heading is hidden behind the 'Quote box' which is (or should be) above it. When I added a series of hard line-breaks and pressed 'Show preview', the heading became visible, but this is an awkward solution, since it is difficult to guess the number of line-breaks needed (when you insert too many of them, you get whitespace after the quote box) and this may well depend on the user's screen format. Bever (talk) 08:53, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I have added a

template just above the Self-evident truth header. This should solve the problem without the need to use line-breaks. Sarahj2107 (talk) 08:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It did, thank you. Bever (talk) 09:12, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Am I missing something?
I'm trying to use replace or alternatively str rep but it doesn't work. Is there something I need to do? NB this is for a standard page. I have tried 9°39'N, 123°52'E and it just gives 9°39'N, 123°52'E (unless it works here, that is 9°39'N, 123°52'E). -- Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Thu 20:55, wikitime=  12:55, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * For some reason, the templates do not strip whitespace between pipes and parameter values:
 * &rarr; Fao
 * &rarr; Fao
 * &rarr; Fao
 * &rarr; Fao
 * In the second and fourth cases, the template searches for the string " o " instead of "o", which it cannot find. I'm assuming it's a bug/feature of Lua to take whitespace at the start and end of parameters into account. SiBr4 (talk) 13:12, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * (3 ec later) See Help:Template, looks like intentional behavior (or at least documented behavior). GermanJoe (talk) 13:30, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Never realized that. Is there a reason for the difference in behavior between named and unnamed parameters? SiBr4 (talk) 14:22, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The basic behavior is mentioned in the general meta help for templates as well. Maybe some old-timer in technical questions has more background knowledge - I'm just following the documentation :). GermanJoe (talk) 14:55, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It isn't clear to me what it is that you are trying to accomplish with this:
 * Find: N
 * in string: 9°39'N, 123°52'E
 * and replace it with: latNS=
 * Taking out the leading and trailing spaces thus:
 * gives this result:
 * 9°39'N, 123°52'E
 * But, why?
 * 9°39'N, 123°52'E
 * But, why?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:49, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This is still at the development stge, and was just a test. I want to take coordinates output from wikidata (which is as shown) and turn it into a param string for use inside an infobox.  I always develop by prototyping, so no point in getting too far ahead only to have to rework.  And I need to make sure I had the concept right, as some documentation is laconic.  "Trappist" is such a coincidence! -- Unbuttered parsnip  (talk) mytime= Fri 02:49, wikitime=  18:49, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

So far, so good, but now I have hit a problem (of course). The output of #property, putatively 9°39'N, 123°52'E isn't actually as straight forward as that. Presumably the arcminutes sign is an apostrophe, but that's not allowed directly. As far as I can tell, it's not &amp;apos; either. In fact I don't know what it is - using to show the chars, it displays

1.9

2.°

3.3

4.9

5.&

6.3

7.9

1.N

2.,

3.1

4.2

5.3

6.°

7.5

8.2

9.&

10.3

11.9

1.E

Note that sequencing restarted after (first) 7 and 11, but the character itself is not displayed/displayable. Note too that these coords have no arcseconds. I guess the chars (first) 5-7 and 9-11 are showing the html entity code for apostrophe, &amp;39; except that the ; isn't showing so it could be anything. I also can't find any template to break out a char into hex.

Any thoughts? -- Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Fri 12:31, wikitime=  04:31, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually... It should be &amp;#39; (&#39;) so you are missing the # too. The MediaWiki parser does this, and there is a ticket someplace about it but I'm too tired to dig it up.  I can assure you that it is in fact using   based on your results for that particular instance.  That doesn't mean that it will use if for every instance, and you need to be prepared for that. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 04:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Please post code and page link another time, or save the code and post a diff. The hardest part was figuring out what you were already doing. I guess you were on Cogon, Tagbilaran trying code like  if you for example want to replace the apostrophe by m. It works if you do  . If you write   on the page and click "Show changes" then you can see the apostrophe becomes  . PrimeHunter (talk) 05:20, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Well I was using Cogon as a testbed, but I never saved it there. I just used it because it's small.  I save to local file.
 * I now have the parsing doing what I want. If you're interested the string   produces what I was after - here latd= 9| latm= 39| lats= |latNS= N |longd= 123| longm= 52| longs= |longEW= E.  Which is fine.  It's in the format that infobox settlement wants.  But it doesn't work directly, I guess because it gets treated as a single parameter with a lot of pipes in.  So how can I get this code into the infobox?  Should I just build a template which emits this stuff?  My guess is that wouldn't work either, because it gets parsed too late.
 * (BTW my thinking is to produce a more robust template, one that could emit in other infobox formats, using model)
 * (BTW2 - subst: didn't seem to work)
 * Unbuttered parsnip (talk) mytime= Fri 15:50, wikitime=  07:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Use {{subst:!}} instead of Pipe and {{subst:=}} instead of =. You should actually be substituting all the parser funtions and template calls if you want it to work right in the end. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 08:06, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * The symbol for arcminutes isn't an apostrophe, but a prime, U+2032  or &#x2032; - it's closer to the vertical than a curly (typographic) apostrophe, U+2019   or &#x2019;. Similarly that for arcseconds is a double prime, U+2033   or &#x2033; - it's closer to the vertical than a curly (typographic) quote, U+201D   or &#x201D;. The prime and double prime are the symbols emitted by the  template. Note that some fonts may show all of these symbols at the same angle - even vertical. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:07, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Block during page edit
When we need to record something in a block log, it's common to perform a 1-second block; for example, I unblocked a user recently without clear explanation, so I reblocked him for 1 second with a fuller explanation. What happens if the block occurs while you're editing a page? You click "edit", and while you're writing away, someone blocks you for 1 second, and of course this is long past when you hit "save". Will the software accept it, since you're not blocked at the moment you hit "save", or will it have some odd editconflict-type screen? Nyttend (talk) 15:29, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I just tested it on testwiki and there was no edit conflict or any indication on the user's end that there was a one second block. My question is, how are you blocking for one second when that is not a listed option on MediaWiki:Ipboptions. Yes, I'm aware it can be typed in to "other duration", but that seems odd because if that is a used parameter, I would expect it to have been added to make things easier and ensure duration.  I'm also wondering why there is redundancy in the options on that page; indefinite:indefinite is double listed. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 15:57, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I only see it in the list once - at the top of the drop-down box, but there appears to have been an agreement back in 2006 (MediaWiki talk:Ipboptions) to have it at both the top and the bottom. Perhaps the software has been changed since then to remove redundant entries? – Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:47, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As you say, just typing it into the "other". I'm glad that 1 second isn't an option: there's no reason to place such a short block if you're not adding a log entry, and if it were an option, someone might pick it by accident when intending to place a much longer block for someone who really is misbehaving.  Thank you for the technical confirmation!  Nyttend (talk) 21:56, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Interestingly (well, to me), you can block someone for zero seconds: . --Floquensock (talk) 22:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Weird. I just blocked ThisIsaTest for 0 years after getting an "invalid expiry" warning when I tried to place 0-decade and 0-century blocks.  However, the block log says "0 seconds", not "0 years".  Nyttend (talk) 22:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Try blocking someone for "a potato". (Note: please don't actually do this.) Matma Rex talk 23:01, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Why not? Will something go wrong?  It looks like it just won't have the desired effect, and ThisIsaTest won't care: the sole purpose of the account is for blocking tests and blocking practice.  Nyttend (talk) 01:19, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You can put in all kinds of nonsense in that field, and get unusual results. — xaosflux  Talk 01:59, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * See also Gnu standard format. — xaosflux  Talk 02:07, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I see that "a potato" is apparently -3600 seconds. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 03:05, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

More script errors: "The time allocated for running scripts has expired"
I see in the archives some technical discussion regarding this error (see this for a somewhat recent example. I don't know the particulars of why this happens, or how to resolve it, but it is currently happening at the Chris Sarandon article (twice at the top of the page, and eight times in references and external links). Assistance please? --Hammersoft (talk) 16:10, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, seems to have cleared up now...no idea how or why. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:09, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Worry about it if it persists after a null edit. I introduced a lot of script errors the last time I updated the modules that render  templates.  In that particular case, there were four pages sequentially updated one after the other.  For a brief period of time the various combinations of new and old code were incompatible and so caused errors in several hundred articles.  So, wait a bit and then try a null edit.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 19:28, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

List of Wikipedians by article count
Could a tech-savvy person please offer some advice at Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by article count? That list is moribund, and was never implemented with the opt-out feature of lists such as List of Wikipedians by number of edits. A number of people would like to see the list being regularly updated, and another number of people want to be sure that opting out is taken care of. I'd be happy to help with this, but am clueless about how to run or build such a thing. Can someone advise? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:23, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Usercheck template out of date?
I was just looking at the Usercheck template used for these elections, and I noticed that it seems to be out of date. At some point, ArbCom deprecated the  scheme in favor of a new   scheme. This skews the results returned by the template into thinking that editors who joined wikipedia after the date of that change have no experience at all and have never been involved in any kind of arbitration. This misinformation of the people could, as a result of this information, skewed the results of this election. I'm calling foul, and I actually did better than I expected. I just wonder what the results might have been if the information was correct. In an effort to prevent this very likely issue for future elections, I would like to propose a modification to the template. I would like to propose that the link be changed:
 * From:  / Example


 * To:
 * 1


 * 2


 * 3
 * <span class="plainlinks" title="There are no specific cases naming ; Search all cases.">([ search]) / <span class="plainlinks" title="There are no specific cases naming ; Search all cases.">([ search])

For these examples, I'm throwing in the username of the last person to edit WP:AN/I in order to get a wide variety of results. Thank you for your time and consideration on this. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 16:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Partial Oppose - I oppose changing the link into a search link if no pages are found as it makes the template less useful in other places as a quick spot check. Note in particular mobile editors often can't see the pop-up notes on links easy, and so making the link blue always hides information. Usercheck is used in other places besides arb elections and in most cases experience in dealing with arbitration cases is not what is being searched. PaleAqua (talk) 18:43, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * , I've modified the proposed replacement to address your concerns. :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:02, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, still seems mostly targeted towards elections and also seems to be a bit NPOV. And a little bike sheding but how about split the search link out. i.e. something like "arb (search)" where arb is only linked if a page is found and search is always available. PaleAqua (talk) 19:18, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to make other modifications once I get back to a computer. What would you think about using my exact example replacement in a new ACEcandidate wrapper template? Where else is this used exactly? I'd love to make it suit those needs better as well. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 19:38, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I've added a few more options. I hope there is one everyone likes. :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 22:14, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * 3 of course is my choice, going to drop out of the discussion for now though so you can hopefully get other input as I have no desire to go to further down the bike trail I started us towards. PaleAqua (talk) 01:59, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I missed you wanted search always available. I've fixed it in example 3. :) — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (e • t • c) 02:15, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Links to log entries in Atom feed
For usergroup changes, the watchlist feed links to "diff=0" of the user's userpage (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:GoingBatty&diff=0) instead of Special:Log. Is it a known bug? Zhaofeng Li [ talk... contribs... ] 03:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

how to collapse giant template
Template:Languages of the United States has no documentation page. It's quite lage and I am trying to figure out how to display it collapsed. I tried a few random guesses like collapsed=yes and state=collapsed and neither worked. Hoping there is some simple answer I'm just not aware of? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:07, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * In the template, the state parameter was defined in a way that could not be overridden. It should now be fixed. Use state=collapsed for Navboxes.Mamyles (talk) 20:24, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Beeblebrox (talk) 21:04, 24 December 2015 (UTC)