Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 140

Pages in categories
Could somebody point me to Phabricator ticket (I just don't believe, that this hasn't been reported) about those situations in categories, when the first entry of some letter is in new column, but the letter itself is in the previous (tha last one). Like currently it is with E and Eslamabad-e Kahur Khoshk in this one. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 16:50, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, this! Current version of Chrome, XP.  Eslamabad-e Kahur Khoshk is the last link in the column.  When I click on it, the link bounces to the top of the next next column.  Because the click release must normally occur on the link, the target page does not load and I must scroll up to click again.  Seen this a lot in a variety of category pages.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:25, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Category listing has changed twice this year, once in March, and again in (I think) April. In between those two changes was this thread. should know if there are related Phab tickets. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:47, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * T46304 is pretty close. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the link.  Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 08:58, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Andre's fu is stronger than mine. I believe that User:Bawolff and User:Matma Rex also know a thing or three about categories, and they might be interested in this issue, or at least know who else should be.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm more involved with the backend stuff of categories. This sounds like an issue with the css, which I'm less familiar with. Just to verify, this happens to you when you're logged out as well? (Just to rule out any custom css or gadgets) Bawolff (talk) 03:59, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * yes - both logged in and out. Both Vector and Monobook (yes, also in logged out - with ), currenlty tested only (some of the latest) Firefox at WinXP (tested also as logged-in at Win7). -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 07:44, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Turn off
Hello. How can I turn off MediaWiki:somejs.js for themselves ? — Green Zero   обг  14:31, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Please try to clarify the question. Give an example of what you are trying to achieve. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, what do you mean by MediaWiki:somejs.js? It doesn't exist. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that somejs is placeholder text, not a real js script. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 18:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * In the https://lt.wikipedia.org I want turn off for themselves MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js . I asked the question out there, but did not get response. I decided to ask here, since the decision must surely be universal in all wiki projects... — Green Zero   обг  12:17, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Your question at lt:Vikipedija:Forumas only said the same as here. I'm still unsure what you want. Do you want the code in lt:MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js to not be run for your own account? Autoconfirmation requires four days and zero edits at the Latvian Wikipedia (that's the Wikimedia default) so the code is currently run for you even though you only have five edits there. I don't know a way to prevent it from running but in this case I can give code to remove the purge tab it adds. Add the below to lt:Special:MyPage/common.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)


 * 1) ca-purge {display: none;}
 * Small geography lesson, . Latvia (lv) isn't the same country as Lithuania (lt) :) -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 07:37, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have global purge-button (m). lt:MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.js on the lt-wiki add to my interface the second purge-button. Code #ca-purge {display: none;} turn off both buttons.. — Green Zero   обг  17:30, 5 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Ok, since lt-wiki forces the local script to run for every auto-confirmed user, you could choose to exclude the global purge script from running on the Lithuanian Wikipedia by wrapping the script in your global.js with the following condition :  You will end up with only one purge button that says "Išvalyti podėlį", the lt-wiki default. - 185.108.128.15 (talk) 18:03, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Translation tool
Does not make it clear when a page you are creating has already been deleted. This should happen in big red letters as soon as you fire up the tool.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:20, 4 September 2015 (UTC).


 * Hi, I don't see this request among the existing ContentTranslation tasks so feel encouraged to create a feature request in Phabricator (see Phabricator/Help for more information). Thanks! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Interface delay
For at least the last week, I'm having trouble with the user interface. It is almost always delayed in rendering the page, adding some pieces right away but other pieces later. I believe that during this delay the Firefox status at the bottom left says "read en.wikipedia" - can't remember if it says wikipedia.org. I have the latest version of Firefox for Windows. It's very annoying because the page jumps around and if I do something before it's stopped jumping, I can click on the wrong thing - not a particularly good idea if I'm blocking someone and the drop-down box moves.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:30, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Same here, several days now. It's due to some javascript that only kicks in once page loading is complete. The most annoying aspect is that I might be undoing a bad edit, and about to click on the edit summary box - and it suddenly moves down by half an inch so I click on { – } or similar, squirting that into the edit window. So I then need to "undo". -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:40, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * But it must be something new or changed, right? Wasn't that way before. For me at least my body actual learns and remembers methodology/timing, so I click on something and hit Enter at a pace that is almost automated. Now my mouse hand clicks before it's finished because it didn't take as long before, and I screw up.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:39, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Do you have any pull here? No one else has responded, let alone addressed the issue, and sometimes (e.g., today) it's pretty bad. I don't mind if it turns out to be something in my technical configuration. I just want it fixed. Oh, btw, on I assume a completely unrelated topic, I had the weirdest thing happen today. I tried to delete a page (QQF (Qu'est-ce Que Fück?)) that had been tagged for speedy delete, and instead of deleting it, it just redisplayed the page. I tried over and over. I tried blanking the page and then trying again - no go. I was able to delete other pages but not that one. Never happened to me before. And another admin later deleted it. Maybe someone up there doesn't like me.--Bbb23 (talk) 04:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Although I have met quite a few Wikipedians, I don't have any "pull". -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:51, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have also noticed similar behaviour, though I can't say it has been only for the past week. I am with Redrose64 that this is likely just some scripts that modify the interface taking longer than they should to load. Perhaps something's up with ResourceLoader. I will try to ping a few people on IRC and see if they know anything about it. Your issue with QQF (Qu'est-ce Que Fück?) is 100% my doing with WP:MOREMENU. Or rather, lack of doing by the WMF. We ran into this issue before, if you recall... where we couldn't delete pages with a question mark at the end. That's because I use the MediaWiki-provided JavaScript API, which uses the  kind of URL, as opposed to   which is what the normal native Delete link uses. Here is a similar issue because it thinks the ? is where the query params are, when that character should be properly escaped. Anyway it's really WMF's fault, but I can still fix this once and for all with a little workaround so no worries :) &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  22:46, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You have a better memory than I, but I do remember this now. Hopefully, you'll get somewhere with the delay issue, and "past week" was a minimum.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Tried asking about the delay issue on IRC and didn't get a response. As for QQF (Qu'est-ce Que Fück?), I think I've successfully worked around the MediaWiki bug. Let me know if you have any issues with that. Best &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  02:48, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Bugzilla vs Phabricator
Why are the Phabricator T numbers 2000 more than the Bugzilla id numbers? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That would be T857. or bugzilla id [-1143?]. The T2000 in your username makes sense now. - 185.108.128.12 (talk) 14:43, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * In short, phabricator.wikimedia.org was already used for some tasks before tasks in Bugzilla were transferred and before ending up with a random number, implementing +2000 for redirects looked like an acceptable solution. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Global user pages
The well known user User:Place holder has a user page on meta (which I created for them).

It didn't seem to propagate, elsewhere perhaps because User:Place holder wasn't registered there. Once they visited Meta, and became registered it then propagated to de: when they visited that site, and became registered there too.

I checked sw: and there was no propagation.

However per this page it has propagated to Login, Commons, Species and Incubator, which User:Place holder has never visited.

What's happening?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:15, 6 September 2015 (UTC).


 * meta:Global user pages says: "The global pages will only be inherited on wikis where you have a local account that's not detached (see a list of accounts attached to your global account). That primarily means your global user page won't appear on wikis you've never visited." Special:CentralAuth/Place holder shows the account was attached the same minute at several wikis. I don't know why but this seems to happen for many accounts. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:26, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I guess you could log in to it and visit those other wikis? Eman 235 / talk  04:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Have fun clicking through Special:SiteMatrix. I think there is a tool somewhere to create an account at all Wikimedia wikis with unified login. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Tagged for deletion
Yesterday while going through the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion I found this which was in some other categories. I removed several and it fixed the categories. Now User talk:Strawkipedia is in the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. I tried removing everything from the sandbox but that didn't seem to help. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 14:56, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed. —Kusma (t·c) 15:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I completely missed that. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 15:12, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-37
 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
 * You can now mention up to 50 users in a post and they will get a notification. Previously you could notify up to 20 users.
 * A new version of the Wikidata Toolkit has been released. It now has Wikibase API support.
 * You can now use Wikidata to find all good or featured articles in a Wikipedia version.

Problems
 * There was a problem with Tool Labs due to kernel issues. This has been fixed.
 * The Content Translation tool published some pages with the same reference repeated several times. This has been fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 8. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 9. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 10 (calendar).
 * The maximum character length when you search for something on the Wikimedia wikis is now 300 characters.
 * The notifications list has been split into two lists. As a first step, notifications about messages on your user talk page will be placed in the second list. Feedback is requested at the Echo talk page.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 8 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join the Wikitech ambassadors mailing list. The list is for Wikimedians interested in spreading information about Wikimedia technology news. See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists will be moved to a new server and the software will be upgraded. This will happen on September 9 at 14:00 (UTC). The mailing lists will not be working during the move. It can take up to four hours.
 * Wikidata will soon be able to store measurements, such as a mountain's height or the distance between two places.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.  17:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Redirect pages appearing as red links in the pages directed to
Is there any way of facilitating this?

Sometimes you go to list of pages and there are loads of blue links yet some (sometimes many) of them connect to redirect pages of either deleted articles or pages that were created as redirects. The result I think may be confusing for readers. Is there anything that can be done on this? GregKaye 06:46, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's probably a cached copy - WP:PURGE it. -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Content missing in mobile view
The "Electoral history" section of Harold Stassen is missing in mobile view. I expect it is a problem with the electoral history template being hidden; could someone comfortable with template coding take a look? 28bytes (talk) 21:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Confirm this problem, and not just Harold Stassen. Trump'16 also fails in mobile-view, using Template:Endorsements_box for collapsed-by-default-bluebox.  I believe all the "Fname Lname presidential campaign, 2016" articles use this very same bluebox trick.  Trump'16 works properly in non-mobile-view.  Even in mobile-view, you can see the wikitext when you click edit, so the information is not gone, just the bluebox is invisible in mobile-view.  Tested in firefox 38.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 00:55, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Same goes for the WP namespace here; closed/archived discussions on WP:DRV, as well as similarly closed discussions on AN/I do not appear on mobile enwiki. lavender |(formerly HMSSolent )| lambast  04:29, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Any templates that use the following classes are hidden by MobileFrontend: ambox, navbox, vertical-navbox, topicon, metadata, nomobile. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 138, T55437 and T68747. 185.108.128.19 (talk) 04:49, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I would say that this is more of an editorial problem. Any time you need to collapse content in order to keep a page readable, sounds like a authoring problem to me. Navboxes is one thing, but to use collapsible inside the actual content is just... bad form —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:14, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * MOS:COLLAPSE actually says you need a really really good reason to use collapsible content in articles. --Izno (talk) 15:38, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, you need a really good reason, because you are opening yourself up to problems as the one described here. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:47, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
 * What change(s) would you recommend that would fix the problem? 28bytes (talk) 18:22, 31 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I suggest to rewrite the section to actual discuss the electoral history and remove the list per WP:INDISCRIMINATE and possibly move that into wikidata. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:58, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Outside the Stassen case, what do you think?  (As an aside I disagree with you about Stassen -- detailed election results for perennial candidates ARE what makes them perennial -- the detailed info shows they have less and less of a shot as time goes by, and yet also shows that despite it all they kept running, again and again, in Stassen's specific case something like a dozen times over the decades.)  But since I don't actually work on that Stassen article, I'm less concerned about the outcome there.  What is your suggestion for endorsements in the 2016 election?  The campaign-articles have details that the comparative-across-candidates "main" article doesn't, and furthermore, the candidate-specific articles have the endorsements organized in a distinct layout, too.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There are templates such as Hidden (links) and Collapsible list (links) that will display in mobile view, although they display fully expanded without the show/hide link (which is preferable to not at all). Both of these templates can be found in articles, though at a quick glance they mostly seem to be used inside an infobox. -- Zyxw (talk) 07:12, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Endorsements box has been fixed so the content is now visible in mobile view, pending the articles containing it being updated as suggested above. -- Zyxw (talk) 08:40, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, so now the non-mobile-version of the Trump article has a collapsed bluebox, and the mobile-version has an uncollapsed one. Considering how small the mobile screen-sizes are, this seems like only a partial fix.  :-)      Ping User:Zyxw, is there an ongoing effort to make the mobile-version of the bluebox aka Endorsements box be tap-to-show-tap-again-to-hide, in much the same way that the non-mobile-bluebox is click-to-show-click-again-to-hide?  If such work is not ongoing, can I request such work, please?  Think of the children!  Err... I mean to say, think of the 4" smartphone users!  75.108.94.227 (talk) 12:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Good question, but I'm just a user/contributor and don't know what the developers have planned for mobile view. If they make changes, it would likely involve "class=collapsible" (see Help:Collapsing and NavFrame) rather than specific templates. Hopefully others reading this could answer or better direct you. -- Zyxw (talk) 15:19, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Direct editing of templates
Can we find a means to directly get to a template's edit menu? Example: List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women) is made up mostly of templates. As we have a new year's worth of data to add, getting into each one of those templates to add the new data requires a multi step process. As much as we had tremendous help in posting information during the event last week, only a few of these were updated because of the difficulty for average editors to get to each template. I obviously know how, but it requires sacrificing your copy cache to copy each complicated title, thus you can't hold the information you could have transported there to post again complicating the process beyond what most editors will go through. Trackinfo (talk) 17:55, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You could add a Navbar to each table. Alakzi (talk) 17:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you don't know some of the ways to get to the template page. If you click the "Edit" tab then the bottom of the edit window has a list with links to templates used on the page. If you click a section edit link and then preview then the bottom has a list of templates used in the section. If you click "Page information" in the left pane then you get a list of templates used on the page, but it may be cut off after 50 templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:20, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I obviously don't. Please tell me more because from your directions I do not see it.  What I am requesting is one or two keystrokes to be able to edit content of the template as viewed from a page using the template.  The suggestion above yours is a great deal of legwork for one topical page and clutters the page up. Trackinfo (talk) 03:48, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Option 1: Click the "Edit" tab at top of List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women). Then look for "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" at the bottom of the whole browser window. You may have to click the quoted text it to see the list of templates like Template:World Championships in Athletics medalists in women's 100 metres, but it should then remember your click so you don't have to click it next time. Option 2: Click the section edit link at List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women). Then click the "Show preview" button. This time there should be a shorter list at "Templates used in this preview" at the bottom of the window. If you don't see it then what is your browser, skin and interface language? Option 3: At List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women), click "Page information" under "Tools" in the left menu to get . The last table "Page properties" says "Transcluded templates" in the first column and has a list in the second column, but it only lists 50 of the used templates.
 * We could also add an edit notice to List of World Championships in Athletics medalists (women) explaining where to edit the templates and maybe linking to Category:World Championships in Athletics templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:14, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not criticizing your prose, but it took 8 lines of text to explain those. Yes, I eventually found it.  Do you expect the average user to know this?  How about an inexperienced IP?  We are supposed to encourage input.  Anybody can edit.  But the absence of a convenient edit tool will prevent the majority of the population from attempting to edit.  Now, putting information into such a difficult to edit process might be good to make it difficult for vandals to figure out.  IP editing does have its drawbacks.  Someone like me, who watches a lot of pages that should have stable content (like this, which requires updating usually only every two years--except when a drug cheat is disqualified) would also be discouraged from watching this content.  For one simple page like this, it takes locating and watching 21 templates.  There should be a way to wholesale group watch all the content resolved onto one page.  This is the technical pump, repeating the two as proposals:


 * idea#1. There should be an easy, one step method, from a regular article page, to edit content resolved from templates.
 * idea#2. There should be a way to wholesale watch the content resolved onto a single page (regardless of it being embedded in a template). Trackinfo (talk) 01:50, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello, User:Trackinfo, I believe it is *possible* to implement what you are asking about. Not sure it will be easy (or feasible-given-mediawiki-codebase-and-such).  Let us take a very simple example, the done template.  This particular template is not used on articles, of course, but the editing of articles and the editing of talkpages is pretty similar, under the hood. and the template is a simple one, good for hypothetical examples.  So in scenario#1, we have a wikipedia page which has the following information:
 * This is a sentence. ✅ Another sentence.
 * And when you click the 'edit' button on that page, what you see is this wiki-markup stuff:
 * This is a sentence. ✅ Another sentence.
 * In order to implement idea#1, there would have to be some changes made to the way the textarea works when you click that 'edit' button. These changes could be made by implementing a special text-area, or by using some kind of AJAX magic, but would not be something 'easy' to do methinks.  Fundamentally, what you are wanting to have happen, is that after clicking the 'edit' button on the page, what you would see is something like this:
 * This is a sentence. ✅ doc/editMe! Another sentence.
 * This way, there is no need to visit the page in question, click '[edit]' on a section, click 'preview', click "Templates used in this preview", ctrl+f, manually type the name of the one you want, and finally click the '(edit)' thing. Right?  Obviously the software already knows *how* to generate the correct bluelinks... the problem is, getting those bluelinks to appear inside the edit-screen-textarea.


 * visit List_of_World_Championships_in_Athletics_medalists_%28women%29, pageload#1
 * click edit, pageload#2
 * which looks like this....
 * click preview, pageload#3
 * click Templates used in this preview
 * type ctrl+f, type "World Champio"
 * click (edit), pageload#4
 * do some work
 * click save, pageload#5
 * What is desired is something simpler:
 * visit List_of_World_Championships_in_Athletics_medalists_%28women%29, pageload#1
 * click edit, pageload#2
 * which once upgraded looks like this....  docs/editMe!
 * click preview, pageload#3
 * click Templates used in this preview
 * type ctrl+f, type "World Champio"
 * click (edit), pageload#3
 * do some work
 * click save, pageload#4


 * Saves one pageload, and three user-steps. Anybody have an opinion on how hard it would be, to implement idea#1, so that a little clickable-edit-button appears in the edit-textarea, next to the curlycurly of a template? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:49, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Make a list of templates?
Is it reasonably easy to make a list of templates that contain one or more of these classes?


 * ambox,
 * navbox,
 * vertical-navbox,
 * topicon,
 * metadata, or
 * nomobile

Each of these classes cause the template and its contents to be invisible on Wikipedia's mobile website. If we could make a list, then we could spam the /doc pages for each template with a warning that the contents will not be visible to about 30% of our readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 1 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Something like this query seems to get at what you're looking for. You could play with the \=\" to try different syntax various people have used. ^demon[omg plz] 04:32, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't "play with" regex. ;-)
 * That search only finds five templates with "ambox", but there are 1.1 million pages that transclude ambox itself—and Template:Ambox doesn't appear in that short list (probably because its contents are in Module:Message box instead. Maybe this will have to be done by hand (ugh). WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
 * maybe can help with database scan. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 07:49, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * A database scan is roughly equivalent to an "insource" search. I'm not sure how I could use one to construct the list reliably. There are [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&search=insource%3Anavbox&fulltext=Search&ns10=1&profile=advanced over 100,000] template pages that mention the word "navbox", so the proposal involves a lot of edits. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:38, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That's more than I'm prepared to do. Can we identify a few meta-templates that use these?  Anything using navbox and ambox will be affected, so we could tag those two, and at least people using them to create new templates would be informed.  But I don't know how many such templates exist.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Texas Historical Commission atlas has changed information links
This has also been posted at the WP Project Texas. The home for the Texas Historical Commission atlas URL remains the same: http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/

However, once you access information, those links have changed. Whatever you have linked to THC as sources in articles are now dead links. I just made a recent change to an article. You can see by the diff how it's been changed.

These atlas links have been used for NRHP citations, as well as other historical marker citations. I have no clue how many thousands of links in articles this affects, but I imagine it's considerable. — Maile (talk) 21:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If there is a trivial way to correct the link from A to B, I might suggest you file a bot request. --Izno (talk) 22:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Special:LinkSearch finds 718 links to http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us. The count includes all namespaces and cases with multiple links on the same page. There are around 370 different articles. http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us currently says: "Welcome to the new Atlas! The original Atlas, now located at http://atlas1.thc.state.tx.us, will eventually be phased out in the coming weeks. Please begin transitioning your use to the new Atlas." The links I examined work if atlas is replaced by atlas1 but it sounds like this is temporary. It would be good to find and update to new atlas url's while the old content can be seen at atlas1 (not all url changes are of the same form). If you want bot help then you can post to Bot requests which is what Izno tried to link. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:25, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for suggesting. I just input a request. — Maile  (talk) 22:27, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Navigational Popups
The navigational popups have changed from the standard yellow-ish background to a white background and they now take up more space on the screen. I don't see an opt-out on the Preferences section. Is there an opt-out or some code to get it back to the smaller yellow-ish background? Thanks. -  Neutralhomer •  Talk  • 02:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See Wikipedia talk:Tools/Navigation popups. There is currently no easy way to get the old style back. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Well that stinks. :( Thanks for the info. -  Neutralhomer  •  Talk  • 03:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Image cycler and randomizer idea
It could reduce some periodic strife at articles like Human, and be a generally useful feature when we have many high-quality images, if we had an image randomizer. It could also be used to replace galleries where space is a concern. (If we already have something like this, perhaps the ideas in here could be used to improve it, but I find no mention of such a thing at WP:IMAGE, WP:PIC, Help:Images, etc.)

This would consist of template or other markup (e.g. a MediaWiki tag) that presented a randomized selection from a pre-defined set of image specifications, given in essentially the same format as within , and they could be optionally cycled through on-the-fly, at a specified interval or manually. It would adjust image size to fit within the size specified for the entire container.

Three obvious use cases:
 * Load a different image and caption (and alt text) at Human, rotating randomly between various ethnicities, to avoid any seeming bias that one particular group is more "exemplary" of humanity. This could cycle (in series, or pseudo-randomly without repetition, not randomly) through additional images slowly while the user is reading, or only load a new image upon new page visits.
 * Replace a gallery with a fairly quickly cycling, non-random, set of images and descriptions, while using much less space than a gallery. The first image displayed (i.e., start point of the cycle) could be randomized or fixed, depending on need.
 * Simple and accessible, slow animation with very few frames which are of individual value as separate files, e.g. of a sequence of maps showing the expansion of an empire. [Presently, we only do this with GIF animation as far as I know, built from pre-existing stand-alone images.] This would have non-random start, non-random order. This would be superior to using video (requiring support that may not be built into the browser) and to animated GIFs, in a specific sort of case, in that each image would remain separate, be independently examinable and downloadable, often have a separate caption (though a sequence of visually similar images might share a single caption, but have separate descriptions on their file page). In other cases, video or animated GIFs would be superior (e.g., for realtime playback, for long sequences, and when retention of the sequence as a replayable unit is expected, with individual frames not being independently informative (e.g. growth of a crystal over time, or the stroke of an engine).

In any of these cases, it would be possible to a) manually cycle through the images (forward and back, and jump to start or end for fixed sequences), and b) show the entire gallery. The latter should probably be done in a pop-up or new browser tab, since it would do undesirable violence to an infobox or the like, if done directly within it. Such features should be disableable, where their use was superfluous (e.g. to randomize the icon in a wikiproject banner or whatever).

I reason that Commons could make good use of this feature, as could various other WMF projects (and other sites using MediaWiki), so I would suggest doing it as a MW extension, though for the short term if something like this worked as a template on WP that would be useful.

PS: The images and descriptions to include would be given in the code in the page in which they appeared, so that watchlisters of the page would be alerted to any potentially vandalous alterations. This would also discourage the use of the feature for long sequences better done as GIF animations. A sequence used by multiple articles could easily be transcluded as a template, however.

— SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure this has been suggested and rejected before, and not just for accessibility reasons. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:53, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm in favor, but usually people at en.wp hate randomness and it's also very difficult to write something like this in a way that makes it work in all types of media and on browsers without javascript. Easy to write, hard to write for en.wp. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * On a similar note, you might be interested in knowing about the image cycler at c:User:Hellerhoff. It does not auto-play, but it takes still images and makes a sort of video out of them.  (Use your mousewheel or scroll very slowly through the images to see the "animation".)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

HTTPS for selected external links, but how?
As many of you know, Wikimedia has adopted HTTPS-by-default in all of its projects in June 2015 (I don't want to explain why this was a smart decision; those who don't know may be referred to this Federal CIO info website). Since we don't want our readers' privacy to be harmed when they exit Wikipedia, it is only reasonable to also have external links from within Wikipedia point to an HTTPS address rather than HTTP. Unfortunately, of course, not all websites offer HTTPS support yet, but some who do are actually among the most linked-to websites on Wikipedia. This includes most importantly: Those websites do not only offer HTTPS, they want people to use it. The Internet Archive, for instance, encourages people to update their inbound links to HTTPS. Giving the number of links on Wikipedia to those services—literally millions—I consider it of utmost importance to convert those outbound links from HTTP to HTTPS. As a matter of fact, I have been converting a large number of those links over the past months semi-automatically (using AutoWikiBrowser). However, bureaucracy prevents me to further do this, because while these edits are deemed useful, they are not considered significant enough (by AWB rules) to be done on their own. A bot request of mine to have this done, from a couple of months ago, was dead-end.
 * all Google services, such as Google Books, Google News, and also YouTube.
 * the Internet Archive, including its much used service Wayback Machine (see also WP:WBM).

Therefore I want to know how we can further improve readers' privacy on Wikipedia. We know what it is that we have to do, but how shall we do it? --bender235 (talk) 19:55, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * In addition to submitting an AWB feature request, you may also want to update the Wikipedia documentation (e.g. WP:WBM, Template:Cite web, Template:Citation) to encourage people to use HTTPS for the Wayback Machine. GoingBatty (talk) 20:23, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * AWB feature request ✅ --bender235 (talk) 14:40, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * unsurprisingly, this request was halted, too, after Billinghurst turned it into a "style issue" and asked for even broader consensus. --bender235 (talk) 12:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Bitey! How about you accurately report what I said. I challenged that the English Wikipedia is able to dictate that the AWB tool should be setting https as genfixes within AWB, when the AWB tool is more than English Wikipedia. I said that you should go and get a broader consensus involving those wikis. My argument was never about blinking style. — billinghurst  sDrewth  14:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Please note that there are already several AWB general fixes that are specific to the English Wikipedia. Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 15:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I understand your concern about the English Wikipedia imposing something on other language versions. But at the same time, I fail to see why the German, Italian, or Arab Wikipedia would be damaged by having these links fixed. For the same reason Wikimedia's move to HTTPS-by-default applies to all language versions, I don't see why privacy protection in this regard would disturb anyone. --bender235 (talk) 16:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * You might also want to submit feature requests to User:Ohconfucius/script/Sources, WP:REFLINKS, and User talk:Zhaofeng Li/reFill. GoingBatty (talk) 21:54, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have added a couple of Wayback Machine items recently. There is scope for improving the cite system here: one has to add two long fields:
 * and
 * It would be simple to have instead:
 * to generate both the url (https, or protocol relative) and the date.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:08, 6 September 2015 (UTC).
 * to generate both the url (https, or protocol relative) and the date.
 * All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:08, 6 September 2015 (UTC).


 * How would wayback know which date format to use to be in sync with the rest of the article? Thanks!  GoingBatty (talk) 22:16, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Might I suggest that this side topic of wayback is best raised and discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1 so that Editor Bender235's topic isn't completely derailed?


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 22:49, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

This is not a technical issue, this is a manual of style issue, and should be dealt with through that process. Prior to enforcing a means of linking to https, this should be put to the whole community as an RFC. — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This has nothing to do with “style,” because the appearance of the link itself doesn't change at all. It is a technicality. --bender235 (talk) 12:48, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This is also about how we get users to add links, so clearly that includes aspects of style, and is more than technical. You are wanting our users to do something without telling them what or why, or you are wanting to change something that our users are doing without any explanation, other than words of "technical fix", and you want to do it without broadly consulting them. If you want to change greater than ten of thousands of links on this wiki alone, go out and get a broad consensus. If you want to turn it into a proper fix, and truly make a difference and truly protect our users from a privacy breach then I would suggest that you do it properly, and put a proper Request for Comment at Meta and address this to the whole Wikimedia community as collectively there will be hundreds of thousands links to google, and archive.org. If you are truly concerned, you will do the job properly, you will do it respectfully involving the community. — billinghurst  sDrewth  14:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but you're wrong. If any user adds a WBM link for archive purposes these days, it will automatically be HTTPS, because the Internet Archive switched to HTTPS by default in October 2013. (Try for yourself and browse to .) So unless someone manipulates the URL he has copied & pasted, it will always be HTTPS. The same goes for Google Books. If you enter   today, you will automatically be redirected to  . So what ever (new) link a user copies, it will be HTTPS already.
 * What this discussion is concerned with is old existing external links. Those need to be fixed, and its a mere technicality. Nothing will look or feel different. --bender235 (talk) 15:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Please ignore billinghurst's trolling. The suggestion is perfectly valid, and there is no reason why you should not raise it here. An RFC or similar might help shed light on potential unforeseen consequences.--Anders Feder (talk) 16:10, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I do not consider his comments "trolling." In fact, over the past years that I have been fixing these links on my own, I had dozens of similar complaints by people who do not understand the issue completely. People who complain it would break existing links (which it does not), people who complain the HTTPS version might be different from the HTTP version (which they are not), people who oppose HTTPS in general (for Wikipedia itself, too) because they don't value readers' privacy as much as others or simply because they don't understand that there is no such thing as non-sensitive web traffic. I take those comments and concerns seriously, and I am willing to address them. --bender235 (talk) 16:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Then you should go ahead and create the RfC. It should give you plenty of complaints to deal with.--Anders Feder (talk) 16:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅. --bender235 (talk) 17:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Commented. You should probably sign the first part.--Anders Feder (talk) 17:16, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

RfC moved to WP:VPR upon request.

Mobile talkpage editing when blocked
Please see the "Talk page editing when blocked" section at WP:AN as of right now. In short, User talk:Gothaparduskerialldrapolatkh is absolutely full of new sections, because the user has discovered that he can create new sections while blocked, but he can't edit existing sections while blocked. Someone noticed that this user's edits were all through a mobile device, and Samwalton9 discovered that when you're using a mobile device to edit as a blocked user, you get a "you've been blocked and can't edit..." message when you try to edit your own talk page, except if you're creating a new section. People not using the mobile version of the site don't have this problem: unless talk page access is totally disabled, you can create new sections and edit existing sections on your talk page when you're blocked. Could someone request a bug fix? Nyttend (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Hmm, are you sure? That's not good, but I'm not sure how that would happen. The code definitely checks if you're blocked, but even if it doesn't blocks are managed in the back-end of MediaWiki, which doesn't care about whether you're editing from mobile, VE or elsewise. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Here is a more direct link to the thread at AN that began this Administrators' noticeboard/Archive274. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 22:07, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yep. Testing again, I blocked Samwalton9Testing (without autoblock to avoid issues) without talk page revoked. I can definitely edit the whole page fine in the web view but in mobile view I get the error shown in the image to the right. I can click Add Discussion with no problem. Sam Walton (talk) 22:12, 7 September 2015 (UTC)


 * OK, interesting. Two distinct bugs, which I've filed as T111739 and T111741. Thanks for finding them! Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 23:10, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Problem with icons and wiki editor
I can't see the icons in the wiki editor toolbar as well as the wikipedia logo in the up and left of the page. I use firefox. What happened? -Odythal (talk) 16:35, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It works for me in Firefox 40.0.3. Files in file pages are stored at https://upload.wikimedia.org while the logo and edit icons are stored locally at https://en.wikipedia.org. Maybe you have accidentally disabled images from https://en.wikipedia.org in your browser. Can you see https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/project-logos/enwiki.png which is used in the upper left corner? Can you see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Wikipedia-logo-v2-en.svg which is displayed on File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-en.svg? Are you accessing Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:15, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

TfD placing all template pages it's transcluded on into Category:Templates for deletion
All welcome templates that are being used by the ACC Wikilove template, for example, are in that category due to ACC WikiLove Welcomer having that template in it. Note: was originally posted at User talk:Anomie/linkclassifier. Eman 235 / talk 03:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Have you informed the person who made those edits, and asked them to check over their work? -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:59, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I suppose this wasn't very good action, but at least pages, that don't need to be categorized, don't get into categories. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 09:01, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there has to be a better way to do this...will link this discussion from Template talk:Template for discussion. Eman <font color="#6643d1">235 / talk  03:37, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Something like this should work to have only the template page itself be categorized. I've tested it by changing ACC WikiLove Welcomer to use the sandbox of the /dated template (without saving) and previewing it on different pages. <span title="User:SiBr₄">SiBr4 (<span title="User talk:SiBr₄">talk ) 09:59, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Or this, which uses an #ifeq check to set category handler's nocat parameter instead. <span title="User:SiBr₄">SiBr4 (<span title="User talk:SiBr₄">talk ) 10:06, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

nested footnotes wiki-syntax help, or maybe, feature-request
Hello, I'm working on several articles where it will help to be able to make *multiple* fair use quotes from a *single* cited source, as a means to WP:PROVEIT for several sentences in the body-prose. It is possible to do this now, using normal  for the first sentence, and then repeatedly using   for the additional sentences.

However, the |quote= parameter of cite web can only be used *once* that I am aware of, so if you want to have quoted-snippets that back up five different factoids in five different body-prose sentences of the article, you end up having a VERY LONG ascii string in the |quote= portion of the cite_web template. So long, in fact, that Other Editors ... not naming any names :-)   ... might complain.  Or, uh, not saying this happened or anything, just delete the entire |quote= param with an edit-summary like "this is way too long are you out of yer dern mind???" ... ahem.

An *alternative* existing solution, see WP:Nesting_footnotes, which is reasonably workable, is to stop using |quote= with a huge glommed-together set of five fair-use-snippets, and instead put individual efn templates containing each quoted-snippet. This works out pretty well, but requires adding a new section to the article, and makes the readership hop twice. (It also requires the addition of template:efn syntax.) The difference in how the alternative-layout works compared to the long-ellipsis-layout is best illustrated by example, see greenbox. I've also proposed (inside the greenbox) a hypothetical third way, which I don't believe is supported in wiki-syntax.

Barely-Okay Style#1 == one big  Prose-sentence#1. Prose-sentence#2. Prose-sentence#3. Prose-sentence#4. Prose-sentence#5. (Comment: here, I'm using a huge |quote= which contains snippets to back up five distinct factoids, ellipsis-separation.  Downside:  not easy to tell which prose-sentence is WP:PROVEIT'd by which backing-snippet.  Downside#2:  |quote= field of the cite_web template gets very long very quickly.)

Kinda-Okay Style#2 == new 'Notes' with efn. Prose-sentence#1. Prose-sentence#2. Prose-sentence#3. Prose-sentence#4. Prose-sentence#5. (Comment: here, I'm using five efn 'Notes' which contain individualized-snippets to back up five distinct factoids, curlycurly-separation.  Downside:  requires adding a new subsection to article, which might be seen as WP:UNDUE emphasis on the quoted snippets.  Downside#2:  because the quoted-snippets are physically split from the cite-web-metadata, requires two hops for the readership to make the connection.)

Hidden sections on this page
There are several discussions on this page that aren't visible except when editing. It seems to be this edit that did it? Eman <font color="#6643d1">235 / talk 21:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed, they were missing a closing ref tag. Sam Walton (talk) 21:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry everyone! 110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Default edit summary for G6 moves
Currently when making a move and deletion of articles found in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion you get edit summaries like this and this. These were both tagged as G6, Criteria for speedy deletion, uncontroversial moves/deletions of redirects holding up a page move (point 3 in the list). It turns out the second was not uncontroversial and makes it look as if I was suddenly making strange page moves. Obviously the work around is to put in the summary that it was a G6 move. However, in the long run it would be much better to have the link to G6 as part of the edit summary by default, the same as a regular deletion. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 22:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The logs for the deleted target pages [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Phillip+Wright][//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Baahubali] do say "G6: Deleted to make way for move". G6 is not a reason for the move so I'm not sure why you want it in the move summary. Do you want others to know you were just responding to a request and didn't move it on your own initiative? Administrators are responsible for their actions and should evaluate the request before making the move. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:57, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not disputing that I screwed up the second (Baahubali) move. Yes it would be useful for others to see that it was done as a request rather than just my own idea. Not everybody thinks to go to the log and it seems that one editor thought I had just decided to do the move. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 23:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The prefilled move summary is made by db-move. If the move request didn't state a reason in the second parameter then it defaults to . If a reason is stated then that reason is used. You can suggest on talk that something with G6 is also placed in front of a stated reason. It would mean a long reason is cut off earlier. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 23:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I meant Template talk:db-move (which redirects to Template talk:db-meta) but I see you have posted to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:08, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Missing creation option when searching for all uppercase under certain circumstances?
I don't know if this is something that's always been the case and I just never noticed, or something new. For me, sometimes a search triggers the option to create a page and sometimes it does not. Let's be concrete. I noticed this this morning upon attempting to create a redirect for OREDA in answer to a Teahouse question. When I placed that in the search bar (I use Monobook), it did not give me any option for creation (regardless of whether the search or Go button was used). That is, no:
 * "You may create the page "RedLink", but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered."

I then created the redirect but only by the mechanism of previewing a red link. That redirect subsequently became an article, which was then deleted, so I can report that right now the same results obtain: any search for OREDA provides me no page creation option. (Does it for you?) But most – but not all – other things I type do result in the option, and I see no rhyme or reason to what triggers the option and what does not, other than that the common denominator seems to be that it only happen when the word is in all uppercase. However, it's inconsistent. I just tried some other combinations of random all uppercase searches and the creation option was present. Is this a bug or feature? And if a feature, what are the ground rules for what does and does not invoke it? I note that Help:Searching says in mealy-mouth fashion that "It can report that You may create the page..." (emphasis mine).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 22:43, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have an idea why it happens. MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new is usually called on searches but not on OREDA. There was once reports that people created pages with silly titles like prefix:Talk:Main Page, because they clicked the red link after making an archive search. To prevent such creations, some searches no longer give the create option. Upper case OR is part of Help:Searching so maybe a primitive string analyzer thinks it was using OR as search syntax and not as part of a word. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I think you're onto something. I just tried some searches with AND at the start of some random all uppercase words like ANDLDKF, and the same thing happens; no search option. Remove the N and creation option is back. Aha, NOT also triggers this.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:14, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * T23102 is "Don't propose to create a page under a title with prefix:, intitle:, incategory: or other search operators". The last post says "We actually did this with Cirrus." PrimeHunter (talk) 03:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Summary ad
Ckatz uses an empty summary ad for Twinkle, but User:Ckatz/twinkleoptions.js does not exist and has never been created or deleted. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 03:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This user sets the summary ad using the legacy  object in User:Ckatz/vector.js. This method of setting Twinkle preferences is discouraged and incompatible with the WP:TWPREFS setting page, but we still support it, because a number of long-term users still have their settings stored in this way.  — This, that and the other (talk)  03:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Cookies problem?
After writing this post to the Administrators' noticeboard on Wikidata, I had this problem. I tried deleting my cookies after seeing this advice on Pale Moon forums, but now I'm getting a different error when directly clicking on the d:Wikidata:Administrators' noticeboard link from my Wikidata contributions:

"XML Parsing Error: unexpected parser state" ...

Could anyone offer any insight perhaps? Pale Moon 25.7 (latest version) on Windows 7. Jared Preston (talk) 12:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Have you tried the usual steps, like clearing the Pale Moon cache, using a different browser and restarting your computer? Do you have the same problem in Firefox? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 13:12, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ähm, yes. I can't tell you about Firefox, but with (an old version I have of) Internet Explorer I don't have the problem. It also doesn't matter if I'm logged in or not, the page just refuses to load with the same error message "This page isn't redirecting properly". Clearance of cache and cookies makes no difference, nor does safe mode. However, no problems whatsoever in "privacy mode" which is why I'm slightly confused as to what else to do... That really would suggest that it is the cookies. Jared Preston (talk) 13:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I have the same problem in Firefox with certain Commons pages like Administrators' noticeboard/User problems. Says "The page isn't redirecting properly ... Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. ... This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies." I am doing nothing different than I have been for years. -- Veggies (<font color="blue" face="Times New Roman">talk ) 13:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've noticed that the problem has something to do with apostrophes in the article or page title. For example: Commons:Category:People's Heroes of Yugoslavia also fails to load properly&mdash;just like the "Administrators' noticeboard" that Jared Preston is having issues with. -- Veggies (<font color="blue" face="Times New Roman">talk ) 14:06, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

It's related to this ticket. Hopefully someone will deploy the latest fix soon. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The fix has been deployed. Matma Rex talk 16:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys, I can confirm that the links to Wikidata's Administrators' noticeboard as well as those on Commons all work now. I appreciate your work and quick fix-deployment. Thank you very much! Jared Preston (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

MathJax
Can someone tell me when and why MathJax was removed? I liked it. —Keφr 15:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T99369 and Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07-22/Technology report for the removal. If you're using Chrome, there is a third-party app https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikipedia-with-mathjax/fhomhkjcommffnlajeemenejemmegcmi?hl=en-GB that can re-enable mathjax, although in my experience it has some trouble with font sizing in display math. As for why, I don't think it's clearly discussed anywhere, but possible explanations include (1) previous developers implemented mathjax badly and the result was so difficult to maintain that they had to rip it out again, (2) the developers want to pressure the browser makers to support mathml by making math rendering bad for anyone whose browser doesn't support mathml, (3) the developers don't particularly care about mathematics at all and have given over that part of the software to volunteers who are more interested in helping mathml beat mathjax than they are in providing a good user experience to editors and readers. For more evidence of #3, see VisualEditor/Feedback where it turns out that the VisualEditor is incapable of editing displayed mathematics formulas in the style used in Wikipedia and the developers have instead added a parameter to the math markup that produces formulas in a different incompatible style not used here. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:26, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See also the usertalk discussion here, which further delves into the 'why'. Basically, the WMF doesn't feel qualified to be involved, and wants volunteer devs to make the decisions.  (Cf, WP:FLOW, and recent schedule slippage thereof.)  Complex userland front-end software projects are not the remit of the WMF; that said, they are pretty good at doing complex server-hardware-and-backend-database-stuff, I will note.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * @David Eppstein: Ping fail. See why. —Keφr 21:27, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I need help
I'm using someone else's gadgets or user scripts by editing User:Jarodalien/vector.js, but about couple months ago most of them just not working anymore, or least not working properly.

Those three are completely gone:
 * importScript('User:Liangent/User:Pyrospirit/metadata.js');
 * importScript('User:Liangent/User:Pyrospirit/metadata/assesslinks.js');
 * importScript('User:Pyrospirit/metadata/projectbanners.js');

And this one is not working properly, when there's a page like: FAC, is fine, but if I open an article page, they're not working, I needs to refresh (maybe again and again)to make it work, but even when they work, is like can not translate most of the categories, even some link could show properly: This tool could using wikidata, to show me which wikilinks already had article at Chinese wikipedia.
 * importScript('User:PortalandPortal2Rocks/translatelinks.js')

My English is not well, hope I express my problem properly.--Jarodalien (talk) 01:48, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Remove all of the lines mentioning "User:Pyrospirit/metadata", go to, where under the heading "Appearance" you should find "". Enable that, and save. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:23, 5 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you Redrose64, but this one I already know and enabled, but the scripts I mention above had different functions, after open an article (actually almost any page in English wikipedia), when I click "Tools>Assess links" on navigation bar of the left (under "wikidata item", thoses scripts will add this "Assess links" to navigation bar), current page will show every wikilinked article's quality level by different color, just like the photo.--Jarodalien (talk) 09:32, 5 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I've created an updated version of the assesslinks.js script at User:Nihiltres/assesslinks.js. Replacing  or   with , and removing any call to older versions of the metadata gadget (it'll automatically load the gadget for you if it's not already loaded), should fix it. If it doesn't work, let me know how it's malfunctioning and I'll take a look. {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 01:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Problem fixed! Thank you so much!!!--Jarodalien (talk) 07:34, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Could we update the tz database?
Articles like CST6CDT are totally broken. I have no idea how to update the database, having tried before. ~  Nott Nott  let's talk! contrib 15:32, 6 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I've fixed Template:Time zone/coord by adding the timezones which disappeared at the last tz refresh nearly 18 months ago - see User talk:Hytar - but at least another 5 templates will need fixing for them to do a job they were never intended to do. They were intended for specific locations like Europe/Lisbon not whole zones (or variations of them).
 * Excluding the articles which were dabs or redlinks, the timezones which had disappeared were :
 * CST6CDT is a variation on Central Time Zone
 * EST5EDT is a variation on Eastern Standard Time
 * MST7MDT is a variation on Mountain Standard Time
 * PST8PDT is a variation on Pacific Time Zone
 * which do little more than transclude the tz templates (which haven't worked for them in over 18 months) and refer the reader to their parent timezones.


 * Rather than fixing at least another 5 templates (Template:Time zone/coordinates, Template:Time zone/country code, Template:Time zone/comments, Template:Time zone/utc offset, & Template:Time zone/utc dst offset), and having to re-fix them every time the tz database is refreshed, I'd recommend redirecting those 4 articles to the timezones to which they belong and will do so shortly if there are no objections. Bazj (talk) 16:50, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Done. Bazj (talk) 18:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

CAPTCHA Broken
I edit as an IP address, and as of a few days ago the CAPTCHA doesn't display any more when I try to add URLs, no matter how often I refresh the CAPTCHA or which browser I use (Chrome and Firefox) the image never shows up. I can't add any urls to wikipedia as references, I just get the little broken image box. If I look at the source, I can see that the image url changes every time I refresh. I haven't made significant changes to my browser installs since 'before' and 'after' it stopped working. I have experimented with turning off my ad blocking plugins and with different browsers. --110.20.234.69 (talk) 01:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you post the image url and try another computer? I see CAPTCHA's when I log out in both Firefox 40.0.3 and Google Chrome 45.0.2454.85 on Windows Vista. My tests gave the images at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=1233632646 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=1231865122. Do you see images there? I still see them in all tested browsers. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I can't post any urls on wikipedia, not even to a service such as imageshack, etc. The portion of the url that I can see is src="/w/index.php?title=Spec...ge&wpCaptchaId=29266332" in the page source viewer.  (as an example, I could provide more...) I am using Windows 8.1, Firefox 40.0.3, Chrome Version 45.0.2454.85 m.  I can't see any images at the URLs you provided.  I don't have access to another computer.  Thanks for trying to help me. --110.20.234.69 (talk) 02:36, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You could post the url in <nowiki ></nowiki> or without https but it's not needed now. I assume it's https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=29266332. I see a CAPTCHA image there. It's a png image but without .png in the url. Can you see https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/wikimedia-button.png? Can you see a CAPTCHA at another domain like https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=560643765? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:00, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * PrimeHunter, 110.20 cannot post URLs, about the busted captcha-imagefiles, because the busted captcha-filter prevents them from doing so. :-)      It's not a case of needing nowiki, it's a case of not being able to fill in the captcha-bot's demands due to busted imagefile-viewing, methinks.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * nowiki prevents the url from producing a clickable link and then you don't need a captcha. In addition, you don't need a captcha to post an "external" link with a url to this site itself so it should also have been possible without nowiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:05, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay. So I was wrong then, thanks for fixing me up.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't see any image at the first url (the 29266332 one), can't see the wikimedia-button, but can see the meta.wikimedia.org captcha. Odd. 110.20.234.69 (talk) 03:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Files in articles and other wikitext are from https://upload.wikimedia.org. If you can't see the wikimedia-button then maybe it isn't CAPTCHA specific but about interface images with url's at en.wikipedia.org like the reports at and . Can you see two small images at the bottom right of this page? They should say "a WIKIMEDIA project" and "Powered by MediaWiki". Can you see the Wikipedia logo at https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/project-logos/enwiki.png and the top left of this page? I uploaded your missing CAPTCHA to my own site at http://primerecords.dk/Wikipedia/CaptchaId29266332.png. Do you see it there? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:29, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I can see all of the images in your last example, but am still having problems viewing captchas. This gets weirder and weirder. 110.20.234.69 (talk) 03:44, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello 110.20 -- are you still unable to properly see https://en.wikipedia.org/static/images/wikimedia-button.png ("can't see the wikimedia-button")? I would work on solving that issue first, and then see if the captcha-problem is also solved.  Do you have image-viewing turned off, presumably on a subdomain-by-subdomain basis using some plugin, for speeding up your browser?  Or maybe one of your ad-blocking plugins has determined that en.wikipedia.org is a spam-site.  ;-)    Any proxy stuff, or upstream-ISP-related caching/blacklisting/pornfirewalling/etc?  I also edit anon, and I can see the captcha-info from firefox 38, when I post URLs.  Can you see images in wikipedia-articles, that are from commons.wikipedia.org, but not see images in articles that are from en.wikipedia.org?  Elvis and United Parcel Service, here is the one from commons , https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Elvis_Presley_promoting_Jailhouse_Rock.jpg , and here is one from enWiki , https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9f/United_Parcel_Service_logo.svg -- are all four of those visible?  75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:33, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your assistance! Can now see the wikimedia-button, but still can't post links.  Don't have image viewing turned off, and have disabled my ad-blocking software for en.wikipedia.org.  I don't know about proxying, or ISP related stuff - it's only happened in the last week or so. I was able to add links to Granny Weatherwax.  I can see Elvis promoting Jailhouse Rock, and the UPS logo.  Does this help at all? 110.20.234.69 (talk) 11:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, if you can see the button, and the Elvis, you should be able to see the CAPTCHA. You are obviously able to post here, on this talkpage.  If you try to post a barelink, http://facebook.com, here on this page, you should get a CAPTCHA warning.  Do you know how to use the browser's developer-console-tools?  In firefox you hit F12, and a little window pops up, which shows the HTTP 200 traffic going on under the hood.  When I try to submit with the barelink to faceebook, with the F12 window logging all network events to the dev-console, I see POST followed by seven GET requests, all of them giving me back "HTTP 200 OK" including the fourth one, which is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Captcha/image&wpCaptchaId=890835297 that loads the CAPTCH image dynamically (and which I can see in a separate tab when I paste the URL there as well as in the save-button-tab).  Actually, the 2nd http get request was 304 Not Modified, aka cached locally.  Are you seeing similar type of HTTP traffic, when you attempt to post http://facebook.com to this conversation-thread as a barelink?  75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So in my post immediately above, I saw the first captcha-image 890whatever, and saw it in another tab. I made some more edits to my comment, clicked preview again, and got a second captch-image, which I responded to so as to click save.  *After* clicking save above, I am still able to see the first 890whatever imagefile, but the second 132whatever imagefile, which I actually responded to by typing the visible text, no longer works now that I've clicked save on my comment up above.  When visiting 890whatever at this point, I can see it, but when visiting 132whatever at this point, I get "HTTP 400 Bad Request" in the F12 dev-console, and printed "Request Error: Requested bogus captcha image" in the body-area.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Once a captcha image is successfully responded to, it is no longer valid. This is to prevent someone from somehow reusing a solved captcha to bypass the protection. Anomie⚔ 14:39, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Has anybody tweaked that code recently? What kind of timeouts are we talking about?  Maybe the reason that I can see the captcha-images, and 110.20 cannot, is because my pingtimes are better, being physically nearer to the enWiki servers?  75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:23, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It looks like, this isn't only en.wiki problem. One IP user reported this also in Latvian Wikipedia. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 14:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So is it related to physical location? I'm in the lower 48, whereas 110.20 is trying to post to enWiki from Australia.  Where was the editor on the Latvian wikipedia geolocated?  75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:32, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * http://facebook.com Test#3. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:25, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Uh, that time I didn't have to go through captcha, at all. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The IP editor is in Latvia. BTW, he has Win 7 and Firefox, if it's interesting to anybody. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 15:51, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

So, I'm not alone, then? :D http://facebook.com  110.20.234.69 (talk) 20:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Ok, that was bizarre, no captcha at all - it just let me post a url onto this page without any bar. Trying again with a news link formatted in — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.20.234.69 (talk) 20:59, 9 September 2015

I think I know why we can post the facebook link - as IP editors, we're allowed to move around existing links within an article. Because it was 'already there' when we tried to post it, we were allowed to reproduce it. A novel link would trigger a captcha. 110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:07, 9 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Same problem, the captcha image won't load. Is anyone working on this issue? --89.0.239.42 (talk) 22:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Just to inform: I have same problem with captcha at swedish wiki (haven't tried here) and then I can't see e.g. wikipedia logo either, neither here nor at any other wiki. Going to ask about this at my local fi.wiki as well.87.93.114.115 (talk) 13:55, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi again. After a long discussion at fi.wiki we found out that the problem is Avast antivirus. See this: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 and this (the comment by Stryn at the bottom of the page): https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112110. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 19:08, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this! It's fixed now! --110.20.234.69 (talk) 22:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

GIF showing link instead of image
Has anyone having issues with GIFs showing link instead of image? For example, I was at ALM Antillean Airlines and the airline logo is showing the link rather than the image. I'm on Firefox and it's only the only browser with this problem (I tried in IE and Chrome, both are fine). <b style="color:#0000FF;">OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 03:53, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This has come up before, it usually means that the image was moved at some point and the page with the error still points to the old name of the image - a redirect. In this case, the article links to File:ALM logo.gif which is a redir to File:ALM Antillean Airlines (logo).gif, it was moved at 18:55, 8 March 2014 so I would have expected any problem to have shown up before now. Redirected images should work transparently, and often they do, but sometimes they don't. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * On that page just now, using Firefox 38.2.0, ALM Antillean Airlines has a properly-visible-logo for me being displayed in the infobox. That properly-visible-logo can be clicked, and is hyperlinked to here.  If that's not what you see, what version of firefox (instructions here) is giving you problems, User:OhanaUnited, and what operating system version are you running?  75.108.94.227 (talk) 11:09, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm using Firefox 40.0.3. In the box, it's showing the redirected path link but not the image. When I click on it to go to the file page, the file page is still showing the file name and not the image itself. <b style="color:#0000FF;">OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 16:17, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If you have Avast antivirus then see this: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 and this (the comment by Stryn at the bottom of the page): https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112110. I had varoius problems seeing images and adding scanning exception to avast solved them all. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 19:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That indeed fixed it. Never thought of anti-virus being the culprit. <b style="color:#0000FF;">OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 02:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Ping from talk page not working
Recently, I had Windows 10 installed. Then I found WikEd wasn't working in Chrome (I saw the recent discussion). I changed to Firefox, and now WikEd works, but the ping from my talk page doesn't. Is there anything I can do to fix that? Corinne (talk) 14:37, 10 September 2015 (UTC) It appears that this problem has resolved itself. Corinne (talk) 15:17, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

How to combine categories?
How do I combine categories? such as:

Checkingfax (talk) 21:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Links to the mentioned categories:
 * Category:American male film actors – a subcategory of:
 * Category:American film actors


 * Category:American female film actors – a category redirect to:
 * Category:American film actresses


 * Category:Gay actors – a subsubcategory of:
 * Category:LGBT actors
 * What do you mean by "combine"? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Merge them for redundancy. Checkingfax (talk) 22:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * File a request at WP:CFM. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:32, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * First you discuss it somewhere, maybe WP:CfD Christian75 (talk) 06:44, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * WP:CFM is WP:CfD. I used M not D because what is asking for is a merge, not an outright deletion. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:49, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, point taken :-). I didnt know WP:CfM was a redirect to CfD. Btw. the D stands for discussion. Christian75 (talk) 10:12, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Only platform I have is Wikipedia?
I mentioned it up above, but ever since the change was made where I now have separate "alerts" and "messages" buttons, I can no longer access "hot cat" or link to other wiki language pages. I cannot go to commons, nor any other wiki formats, i.e. no MediaWiki, Wikidata, Meta-Wiki, etc. I signed out and back in to no avail. At one point, it popped up and told me I needed to sign in to Meta-Wiki, which I did and then the site crashed. Surely I am not the only person this is happening to. And please don't give me a technical answer, I will not understand it. I need a step by step of what to do to fix it. Thanks! SusunW (talk) 01:28, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Here is a clue: Meta-wiki en español only has the bell icon. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 01:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * As I said, I am not technically inclined. I went to my file on es.wikipedia and I still cannot link it to the English or Portuguese version. I still cannot access any other wiki platform. And when I am on it, it has both icons. SusunW (talk) 01:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't go on Commons either. This is all kinds of messed up. Manxruler (talk) 02:32, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I see a few sections up that you both have Avast so I guess that's the problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:03, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I had tried the Avast fix earlier and it didn't fix it. So, I signed out of Wikipedia *again*, cleared the cash *again*, redid the steps to put it back on https scan, saved and then undid it again. Signed back in and now it works. Good grief. But, I seem to have all functionality back. Thanks . Perseverance pays off. SusunW (talk) 03:25, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I did that too (the Wikipedia exception at Avast), and now I 've got Commons back and (spoke too soon) can see images again. One exception, though, the Wikipedia logo on the top left is still gone. Anyone else seeing that? Manxruler (talk) 11:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Removing HTTPS scanning worked. All's well. Manxruler (talk) 13:31, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Book Creation
When creating a book, is it possible to isolate a single section of a page for book creation? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.99.20.102 (talk) 03:08, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
 * (This was originally asked at WP:HELPDESK.) Hello, I don't understand your question.  Are you creating a paperback book?  Are you trying to put a single section of a wikipedia article into your paperback book?  Please give us more details.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * 174.99.20.102 is asking about Books. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks like what they are attempting to do, is not directly supported. Here is the official place for questions.  Help:Books/Feedback  However, there are complaints there which nobody seems to be answering.  Apparently the project is somehow related to the Germany company PediaPress, which serendipitously I ran across earlier this year.  There is an  live-help-chat, too.
 * Anyways, 174.99, here is the deal -- if you are trying to use the WP:Books tool to create-a-book, there is no explicit support for just adding a section of a wikipedia-article. However, you can use the following workaround (I believe -- did not actually test these steps work).  First, find the article that you want, and the section that you want.  I'll assume your book is about Jet Li, and you want to add just the Jet_Li section to your wiki-book.  The workaround is like this:
 * in one browser-tab, open up Jet_Li.
 * In another browser-tab, create an empty blank subpage in your userspace, such as User_talk:174.99.20.102/Jet_Li_Taiji.
 * Click 'edit' next to the Taiji_Zen section in tab#1. Select the sentences with your mouse, and hit ctrl+c to copy the wiki-text.
 * Over in tab#2, paste the wiki-text into the blank empty userspace page with ctrl+v
 * in the edit-summary of tab#2, specify that "this information was copied from Jet_Li under the CC-BY-SA license".
 * That last bit is important, to satisfy copyright-infringement-laws and the wikipedia terms-of-use! Finally, click 'save'.
 * With the steps above, you will have just created a new page, which *only* contains the wiki-text you were after, in this example we used a copy of the Jet_Li section, but you can repeat this process with as many article-sections as you wish. Once you do that, navigate to the user-sub-page you just created, and add that custom-built-temporary page into your wiki-book.  (You can adjust the wiki-book-chapter-subtitle as explained here.)  Make sense?
 * If this was confusing, please feel free to ask further questions here (or at the help-links above or at the WP:TEAHOUSE). Sorry that the feature you want isn't available by default, it seems like it would be a nice thing to have.  Maybe the workaround will be good enough, if you don't have too many article-sections you are trying to capture in this fashion.  75.108.94.227 (talk) 18:59, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I understood all of the steps, and after trying it out on the Jet Li example I can see that it works decently enough. Thank you! 174.99.20.102 (talk) 01:49, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Cleanup template
The number of articles in the cleanup categories by month has greatly decreased. I found a page (Centre for Environment Education) that has on it and the template message isn't visible and doesn't seem to be in the cleanup categories. Is this known about? Intentional? RJFJR (talk) 13:58, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The reason it isn't functional in that article is because the date set is prior to July 2012. I do not know the specific background, but in all likelihood this was done to reduce backlog due to overtagging.--Anders Feder (talk) 14:19, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Also known as "hide the problem and it will go away". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC).


 * Seems to have been a now-reverted edit to the template. I would hazard that normal service will be resumed, subject to the WP:Job queue. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:14, 11 September 2015 (UTC).


 * Judging by two recent edit/self-revert pairs in, it appears that has been making tests in the live version, rather than its sandbox. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:44, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You are quite the astute observer. Alakzi (talk) 22:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * – I did not make tests in templace space – rather my tests to the sandbox weren't exhaustive. I didn't realize the code was so complex it took into account the date the box was added. Have reviewed it properly this time. -- CFCF  🍌 (email) 11:07, 12 September 2015 (UTC) Had missed the excellent Template:Cleanup/testcases that would have helped me avoid this.--  CFCF  🍌 (email) 11:30, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's mostly covered at WP:TESTCASES. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:51, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Images won't load
I tried working through this problem on IRC with ShakespeareFan00, but I could come to a fix with him. To the right you can see a screen cap of my problem. I can't get most images to load, they either show up as white blocks with a gray border or as a blue link to their file page, and won't even show there. What's going on? <span style="font-family:Oswald, sans-serif;text-shadow:1px 1px 1px #69b3e7;color:#fd0;"><font color="#041e42">True <font color="#041e42">CRaysball | <font color="#041e42">#RaysUp 20:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What browser? What do you see in its developer tools about network requests? Max Semenik (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing TrueCRaysball is another one of the users with the Avast problem discussed several times on this page now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not running avast, and I saw the problem in the screenshot (no logo visible just a text-bit), yesterday. I assumed it was a syntax-bug, since I didn't see the |image= param listed in the Stanley Cup Finals helpdocs.  I messed around with trying to change the image-retrieval-wiki-syntax, and clicked preview a few times, but go nowhere.  So I never clicked save, and I never figured out why the image wasn't showing up, but assumed it was something to do with the recent changeover from commons to enWiki image-hosting on August 31st (logo is trademarked).  Turns out I was wrong:  the logo-image shows up *fine* for me today.  Nobody has edited the page in question.  I've never visited the page before, so it cannot be caching issues local to my PC, that I can imagine.  And as mentioned, I'm not running avast, so that can also be ruled out.  Also not running any weird plugins.  I think there was a backend problem, and then either somebody fixed the back-end problem, or maybe the image-serving-task slash page-generation-task rotated to another vserver?  75.108.94.227 (talk) 14:14, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, TheDJ, I do use Avast. However. I disabled Avast and it still wouldn't show up. <span style="font-family:Oswald, sans-serif;text-shadow:1px 1px 1px #69b3e7;color:#fd0;"><font color="#041e42">True <font color="#041e42">CRaysball | <font color="#041e42">#RaysUp 18:35, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I posted about this issue almost three weeks ago and images are still being erratic. It has nothing to do with Avast, I am running Ubuntu 15.04 and the issue occurs on both Firefox and Chrome. <font color="#009933">My<font color="#009933">name <font color="#009933">is<font color="4000FF"> not <font color="#009933">dave (talk/contribs) 14:32, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

What's happened to the row of editing buttons above the editing area?
The row of editing buttons above the editing area (above were I enter these letters) has changed. Both the wikilink button and the italics button is gone. Why? In what way is this an improvement?

Now I have to go all the way down to Wiki markup to find the relevant button, which frustrates me. Manxruler (talk) 23:35, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * And now I find that Wiki markup doesn't even have an italics button. And the buttons are back here while I edit this entry, but not over where I originally wanted to edit. What is this? Manxruler (talk) 23:38, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * All the buttons are there for me but this page currently has many reports from users who don't see various interface images which have url's at en.wikipedia.org and not at upload.wikimedia.org where uploaded files are stored. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:44, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you have Avast Antivirus? That appears to be the cause of many other reports. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have Avast. Right now the buttons are back, but on the left of the "Bold text" button the words "Mat formula (LaTeX)" have appeared. Strange, very strange indeed. Manxruler (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The buttons seem to come and go now, without any regularity. I guess I'll see if the problem's resolved itself tomorrow. Manxruler (talk) 01:16, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have this problem too. No buttons are showing in the markup area. And yes I have Avast. SusunW (talk) 02:57, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * These buttons are appearing and disappearing at random for me. I have no anti-virus, and I'm on a Macintosh. It is very strange and very annoying. RGloucester  — ☎ 15:21, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Searching in logs
Is it possible to search in Wikipedia-logs with wildcard expressions somehow - assuming I want to search for all deleted pages that include "King" in the title (just a completely coincidental example ...)? Or is there an external tool for such a feature? GermanJoe (talk) 15:53, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Add draft to default internal search?
Recently there was some messiness in the creation of Into the River. The root cause of the problem was that someone created an article in Draft: namespace and that wasn't found by another editor who created a similarly named article in the article namespace. The root cause of that appears to have been that Draft articles don't appear in the default site search. Is this something that could potentially be fixed? Stuartyeates (talk) 20:16, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing this helps a very small percentage of searchers, but would confuse the other 99% who might not understand that they're getting a draft. However, I understand the problem; maybe the article creation process could conduct this search on your behalf if you try to create a page? "It looks like a draft for this article already exists" or something? Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 20:23, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That has been discussed MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext and Wikipedia talk:Drafts/Archive 4. There was support but no action. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:33, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

View source
Editnotices, such as Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), say "Edit", or "Edit source" if you have VisualEditor enabled, even though the page cannot be edited. Editnotices should say "View source", as well as any page viewed by a blocked user, except the user talk page if that can be edited by the blocked user. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:11, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Coincidentally, I recently found that cascade-protected pages use "Edit" instead of "View source", and found this very old VPT thread saying it is "due to performance reasons". Maybe the reasons for using "Edit" in case of blacklisted titles (which editnotices are) and blocks are similar. <span title="User:SiBr₄">SiBr4 (<span title="User talk:SiBr₄">talk ) 22:26, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes it's the same reason. If protection is not 'with' the page, then it is very difficult and expensive to communicate that information to a page view. It would break/complicate the cache ability of such a page. On Edit view, pages are never cached, so there it's not a problem. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 07:21, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-38
<section begin="technews-2015-W38"/> 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
 * You can now use the Wikidata query service.
 * Belarusian-Taraškievica Wikipedia was moved from be-x-old.wikipedia.org to be-tarask.wikipedia.org. This caused some issues, but most of them were resolved.
 * Language preferences might not be changed immediately when you adjust them. Language selection might work slower. Please report any problems.

Problems Changes this week
 * There was a problem when editing International Standard Book Numbers in Visual Editor. This has now been fixed.
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists should have been upgraded on September 9. It didn't work as planned and will now happen later.
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 16. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 17 (calendar).

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on September 15 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * ContentTranslation will show more data on the Special:ContentTranslationStats page. For example, it will show translation trends and information about deleted translations.
 * The first version of the translation suggestions feature will be deployed soon.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W38"/> 16:18, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Lua
Does anybody know how to use various symbols and scripts as <tt>self.args.</tt> i.e. <tt>args.</tt> in Lua? For example, if I want to use <tt>self.args.ћирилица</tt> (cyrillic script) I get redirected to Debug console and don't know what to do... I guess there're some extra signs before and after the text <tt>self.args.он отхер сцрипт ор витх вариоус сумболс</tt>. --Obsuser (talk) 00:57, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Use . You can only use the dot syntax with names that only consist of a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and _, and that don't start with a number. If you try to use it with any other string, it's a syntax error. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 02:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Face-smile.svg --Obsuser (talk) 02:28, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, it's not working. I get . I have also problem with . Any way to solve these? --Obsuser (talk) 02:40, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * is another syntax error. You need to write  (see here for an explanation of how the colon operator works). As for the other error, I think I will need to see your script. Can I have a link? — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 03:04, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Here. You can compare English version and the one from link to see what I've changed (you can check differences here). I need cyrillic script for all of those words (Strana, strane, datum, lokacija, akcija etc.) so they can be used as parameters in the template. You can change module on .sr project to see if it is working (if you want) because with  style I get error. Thank you! --Obsuser (talk) 03:53, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm, it looks like the best way of doing that would be to use the argument translation feature in Module:Arguments. I see that argument translation isn't documented at Module:Arguments/doc - is there a particular reason for this, or is it ok to encourage people to use it? — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 04:30, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * So what should I do now to make my module working with cyrillic script? --Obsuser (talk) 23:10, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It works differently than the getArgs in Gerrit will, so I don't want to encourage use of the old way. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:17, 8 August 2015 (UTC)


 * How can I use cyrillic now? There must be some detour...Obsuser (talk) 20:23, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You can look at how de:Modul:Vorlage:Wertungsspiegel Computerspiel (a translation of Module:Video game reviews) does it, and just go along with it. (Just be prepared to have to do some rewriting when getArgs comes out.) Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:06, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

✅ Thank you all. I managed to solve the problem by proper usage of  and , after all. It’s working now with cyrillic parameters’ names, and I didn’t have to use complicated translations.--Obsuser (talk) 22:03, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Images not displaying (moved from Help desk to VP)
Does anybody know why is Wikipedia on my PC (when I use Chrome or Firefox) looking like this and this and this? When I use Internet Explorer everything is just fine... Problem emerged after 1st or 2nd of September, 2015 and is also present on Facebook (many images are missing there too). I updated everything; still, nothing works. Maybe (probably not) the problem is about NPAPI removal, but why is then Firefox experiencing same issues? --Obsuser (talk) 14:19, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I can only speak for Chrome but on the address bar all the way to the right next to the favorite star, does anything else show up when you try to load the page? Error messages in Chrome are displayed with little symbols next to the star. --Stabila711 (talk) 14:42, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you have an extension common to both Chrome and Firefox? An adblocker perhaps? Browser versions and OS details please. - 185.108.128.19 (talk) 15:05, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Nothing shows up...
 * Only extension that is common to both Chrome and Firefox is Avast Online Security (which is NOT enabled). I used to have the Adblocker in Chrome for about a year, but have uninstalled it before two or three days to make sure it won’t make any problems. Browser versions are all up-to-date (Chrome: 45.0.2454.85 m; Firefox: updated to latest version). [I also used to have crashes of Flash player in Chrome, and crashes of screen/display/monitor (after five or ten minutes of using of Chrome, Windows theme would have changed (from blue to lighter blue) and I would have get message The exception breakpoint. A breakpoint has been reached. /with Chrome.exe, not Robocraft.exe/; screen would have disappeared and get black; it would have crashed like this few times and then stopped crashing with message Shockwave player has crashed. in Chrome and changing of resolution of my monitor to lowest possible; however, this is NOT case right now after I updated all drivers so I just mentioned this in case and actually don’t need help with it but only with missing images).] OS: Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit --Obsuser (talk) 15:39, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Just to make sure, have you tried clearing your browser caches and checking again? Next step would be to use Safe Mode in FF. 185.108.128.19 (talk) 15:55, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, nothing works. I assume problems are caused by some software conflicting with each other or recent updates of Mediawiki and/or Chrome/Firefox/system... Weird thing is that other pages display properly but only Wikipedia encounter errors (Facebook is now OK). Can anybody help? --Obsuser (talk) 03:01, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The problem is Avast antivirus itself. See this: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 and this (the comment by Stryn at the bottom of the page): https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112110 I had same problem but adding scanning exception to avast settings solved it. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 19:03, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I recommend posting this problem at the village pump. They are more familiar with technical issues regarding Wikipedia and may be able to help you better (and quicker). Also, they can file a bug report if necessary. --Stabila711 (talk) 20:26, 8 September 2015 (UTC) ✅ Problem is resolved now. Everything works as it should. --Obsuser (talk) 22:04, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia logo seems to be missing
Am I the only one? NorthernThunder (talk) 19:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No, you are not. Ive had the same problem for days and there's some talk about it a little higher on this page and some irc-discussions too. I don't know the solution but Internet Explorer shows the logo for me, firefox and chrome don't. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 16:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My chrome hasn't had any problems at all. Try purging the cache.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-13.5ex;color:\#FF8C00;font-family:Comic Sans MS"><span style="color:\#FF8C00">Chat :Limited Access 17:22, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi NorthernThunder. If you have avast antivirus then the problem is solved. We had a long discussion about this at fi.wiki and one of our admins summarized the findings thus:


 * "We found out that the problem seems to be Avast! antivirus program. At https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=174202.15 had instructions to //disable HTTPS scanning (avastUI > Settings > Active Protection > Web Shield > Customize - disable HTTPS scanning)// or alternatively add an exception for not scanning https://*.wikipedia.org/* and such sites. It was reported  on fiwiki that those instructions did help to solve the problem."
 * I had tried everything, clearing cache etc... but it was only the adding of the aforementioned scanning exception to avast that solved the problem. 188.67.212.90 (talk) 18:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

✅ I think it’s resolved now. --Obsuser (talk) 22:05, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Why Timeline doesn't work with years before 1800
See: List of Presidents of the United States. If you're trying to change it to include the very first two presidents, it said - Period attribute 'from' invalid. Specify year >= 1800. --fireattack (talk) 08:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Don't know why, but if dates and months aren't important, you can try only years. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 09:26, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The main page for <timeline ></timeline> is mw:Extension:EasyTimeline, and there's a directly-related bug at T59634. In this case, I suspect that months are important; and indeed, also days - consider William Henry Harrison. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:58, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * mw:Extension talk:EasyTimeline/syntax says the below. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:56, 14 September 2015 (UTC)]]

Den fjättrade ankan 01:36, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * It would be nice to have DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyy work from at least 1500, not only from 1800.
 * > I am afraid this is not possible. Ploticus uses an internal date/time format in which 01/01/1800 is zero. Many programming languages have a similar internal representation. Of course this could have been implemented otherwise, but I assume in the seven years Ploticus exists noone used it for historical timelines, it is often used for scientific plots. Maybe I can ask Steve Grubb to look at, but even if he wants to modify this it will not be soon, new releases are some half year apart. Erik Zachte 03:46, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)

What we really need is to get rid of the "EasyTimeline" extension. It's a really terrible old bit of software - it's implemented as a massive Perl script with next to no comments or documentation, making it almost impossible to modify - and it uses the ancient "Ploticus" graphics generator, which is apparently not very good at vector graphics... (see T29156) — This, that and the other (talk) 12:32, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The modern analog is Graph. It uses a different syntax though, so either timelines need to be converted to Vega format, or a plugin could be written to consume the old format in Graph (in Node.js). Max Semenik (talk) 08:54, 15 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yeah, EasyTimeline was nice enough as a toy but it's not really that useful given its huge limitations; you absolutely have my moral support to remove its use everywhere on wiki. Long-term I suspect once it's no longer needed we should disable it so it doesn't get additional uses added. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Mariel boatlift doesn't link to other WPs
The article in es:WP es:Éxodo del Mariel shows the link to the English article Mariel boatlift. But the English one doesn't show any other language, despite the Spanish article has 10 links. Can some Technic-Guru repair the links?. -- Keysanger (talk) 18:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I see ten on the English article: العربية; Azərbaycanca; Deutsch; Español; Euskara; Français; Italiano; Norsk bokmål; Português; Svenska. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:38, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not in my browser File:Boatlift.png. -- Keysanger (talk) 19:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Now is it there!. Meanwhile I started the Firefox browser. -- Keysanger (talk) 20:22, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a cache issue.--Anders Feder (talk) 20:31, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Also have seen this sometimes somewhere. Even for those articles, which have been connected long time ago. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 21:34, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Can anyone figure out what is going on?
Hello. Please take a look at The Muppet Show. I've never seen that many cite errors before. I did some searching through the edit history but couldn't find when things went awry. I am heading out the door for an appointment so I wont be able to fix it and I thought I would turn to the people who watch this board for help. Thanks for your time. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 17:04, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This edit made way back in 2012 transcludes some content from a different article (List of The Muppet Show Muppets). That content now includes a list of references which are no longer used (List of The Muppet Show Muppets is full of cite errors too).--Anders Feder (talk) 17:22, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Those errors start from this edit. It looks like someone is expanding the article who didn't finish their work. I'm trying to rescue it at the moment. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 18:01, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg Fixed at List of The Muppet Show Muppets. The cite errors at The Muppet Show are unrelated, but I'm working on them now. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 18:33, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting keep.svg Fixed now at The Muppet Show as well. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 18:55, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My thanks to you both for your efforts in fixing this. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 21:08, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Appeal for coders
Do we have any Javascript coders who would be willing to make some improvements to Tools/Navigation popups? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:53, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Popups are an outright intimidating project. It might be an interesting challenge, but … aren't Hovercards planned to take over most of their functionality? {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 03:34, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not for the foreseeable future; and not, AFAICT, as tools for editors, but for readers, who have different needs. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:41, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Personally, rather than making improvements to Popups, I would write a new extension mimicking its functionality but based on the Hovercards code. What improvements are you interested in, anyway? — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 11:01, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I wonder if it'd be feasible to simply use Hovercards, but overwrite its renderer and some settings with "Popups 2.0" code. The catch is that that approach might become very hackish very quickly, depending on Hovercards' quirks, and it risks being fragile to Hovercards updates. {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 16:37, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * In the short term, the addition of links to Wikidata items and template sandboxes and testcases. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:11, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Notifications indicators have changed
There are now two, each has a little symbol in black, which is very difficult to see against the red background. This change was in the last 25 minutes. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:15, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It became live on Wikidata yesterday already I think. Whatever, IDONTLIKEIT! Jared Preston (talk) 19:19, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'll probably be in the minority on this one, but I actually like this change. It was kind of a pain having the 2-in-1 alert/message indicator.  Having one for each works better. :) - <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #900;padding:1px;"> Neutralhomer  •  Talk  • 19:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * +1. C'mon people, let's try and embrace a smidgeon of change perhaps? -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 20:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My first reaction is that I don't like it. My stronger reaction is that such things shoud not be changed without a prominent announcement. The first might change with time, the second won't. DES (talk) 19:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * +1. Also, for me it's changing size midway through page load, and the end result is absolutely huge (with the two indicators taking up more space than my username and talk combined). Is there a way to restore the old version, even if only on an individual level? Nikkimaria (talk) 19:27, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There's a red background? On both IE and Firefox, I get the symbols in white against a rather wide faded grayed out background.  That's with Modern skin, my normal one.  Cologne and Vector skin have the white against faded gray, but the background is more concise, not so much spread out. With Mono, it's the black symbols against the grayed out background, which is easier to see than the one on Modern skin. Maybe it's just my vision, but I find white against grayed out harder to see than the old style. — Maile  (talk) 19:29, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's red if the count is non-zero. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:38, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * They seem to be bored again. So why not keep playing around some more and fill up my huge and still empty looking widescreen monitor? And when you're done I'll buy an even bigger one for you to keep messing around further.--TMCk (talk) 19:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I actually love it as it is less confusing and I will not be as likely to accidentally miss an alert but I agree with DES in the fact that there should have been a notice. Tortle (talk) 19:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For the advance notice you are complaining that wasn't made because you have failed to read it, see above.--Anders Feder (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't call that prominent. DES (talk) 23:53, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm not sure what issue you're having. Is it that the two icons take up more space now? Legoktm (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * +1 - The notifications now look bloody tiny on my laptop!, Sorry to moan but I don't see what was wrong with the previous one, As the saying goes - Don't fix what isn't broken. – Davey 2010 Talk 19:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I mean, they're clearly larger now. Look at the image below. As for the rest of your statement ... if we held to that principle, Wikipedia would still look like this. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:41, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah so my eyes are playing tricks on me!, That is true to a point but at the end of the day IMHO there was no need to change it, The previous worked fine (well for me anyway). – Davey 2010 Talk 20:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * They're very distracting. How do I change it back?  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 19:48, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There's a bug about them slightly flashing that is being worked on, but are there other things you find distracting? Legoktm (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If I may comment on the bug report - on my system, the size is changing by approximately 50%, which I wouldn't call "slight". But I'm sure it'll be fixed soon. Tevildo (talk) 08:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This change looks awful if you're running a font with text figures like Georgia (pictured). When you have no notifications, the zero is squished to the bottom of the grey field. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 19:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

There is little point in having both a talk page link and a notification button for messages. These should be merged somehow. DrKiernan (talk) 19:50, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes – the 'messages' one should link to your Talk page directly, not to "Notifications". As for the change, I reserve judgement until I see how they fully work (if somebody's bored, feel free to 'ping' me or leave a message on my Talk page, so I can see how the new system works when "activated"...). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 20:05, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, I do like that the new messages notification icon now shows up in "blue" rather than "red". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:12, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Didn't we recently have a consensus for keeping notification colours red? I thought it should be a different colour personally, but I thought the consensus was quite clear in favour of red notifications. Sam Walton (talk) 21:13, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My interpretation of that discussion was less that "there was a consensus for keeping red" than that "there was no consensus for a change away from red". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:52, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Gah! So the "alerts" icon still highlights to red when "live" with new alerts – I still really think that it should turn green when letting you know about a "Thank". IMO, it should only be red when telling you about a revert. Oh well, maybe the coding folks can work on adding "color coding" functionality next! --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:26, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I like having the new drop-down list of talk page messages — with the old system, whenever anyone added to an old conversation, it was always annoyingly complicated to find where their change was. However, with my rendering preferences (monobook etc) there's a big UI glitch: at the bottom of the drop-down window, I see in huge text "< All Notifications * Prefere". That is, the links at the bottom are in such a big font that they overflow the window and I can only see half of the preferences link. Why is there a preferences link there at all, anyway, when I can get to it more directly from the preferences link in the top menu bar? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:23, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We fixed the preferences link already, but it didn't get deployed . I'll do that asap. There has always been a Preferences link there though (it might have gotten a little bit bigger?). Legoktm (talk) 20:48, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Like - I've been using the dual notifications/message buttons on Wikidata and like it. Boy, if only all the effort used to whine about this UI feature were spent on more useful endeavors... -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 20:09, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't really care that it changed, but I do care that it made my "hot cat" option and my linking ability to languages on other pages go away. Not sure if I need to make this another topic, as it all happened simultaneous to this change as far as I can tell. SusunW (talk) 20:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it's related, but around the same time this happened I started having an issue with popups. I'm forced to reload the page to get it to work - it won't load the first time. Also, the collapsible notice boxes on editing pages, like the one for the admin templates we use to respond to RFPP requests, aren't collapsing anymore unless I do that reload. Very annoying. KrakatoaKatie 20:37, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That's more likely because of the fact that you don't have valid JS in your KrakatoaKatie/common.js. And what's in your vector.js, also looks like an ancient mess. Try blanking all of that and building it from scratch... And you should make use of Gadgets if they are available. Especially for Twinkle and popups for instance. If all that wasn't hindering you before, than it was a bit of a miracle —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:46, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I use Monobook, but I've been meaning to clean up the JS for a while. Thanks for the help! :-) KrakatoaKatie 21:10, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have no strong feelings one way or the other. Sam Walton (talk) 20:50, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not really a complaint (they're still better than the old WP:OBOD), but (a) I can't think I'm alone in believing that the standard "Beware of the Leopard" notifications for this sort of thing could be improved - considering the excessive obtrusiveness of the fundraising/committee elections/meetups notices, there must be potential for finding a middle ground, and (b) is it possible to at least keep the size of the boxes constant? At the moment, they start off about as wide as the "sandbox" link, then shrink to the size of the "talk" link when the bell and callout images are loaded. Tevildo (talk) 21:22, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Can we please have an option to turn this off? This adds no functionality, is ugly as hell, and amounts to "someone on the technical team was clearly bored". If they want to keep it as the default, then I guess whatever floats your boat, but I would really like to be able to turn off those unnecessarily gigantic buttons when the previous alerts were far better. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 02:45, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I haven't got a problem with the new format, but both times tonight when I've clicked on the alerts to zero them, a minute or so later I'm being told I have 1 alert, when I haven't actually got anything new. It's just told me I have 1 alert, but when I clicked on it the last entry was 1 day old.  This is presumably a bug. Black Kite (talk) 00:04, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Help? Currently I have one alert displaying, but nothing happens when I click on it. Perhaps it is a problem with my browser? I am able to access the alert from my mobile phone. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 02:27, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Or, at the very least, fix the colour scheme? The two garish slabs of grey in my usual blue interface is the ugliest bit: the splitting up into "messages" and "notifications" is unobjectionable if they hadn't made it so bloody ugly. The Drover&#39;s Wife (talk) 02:49, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I'm indifferent about the idea but did they have to make the implementation so damn ugly and with little icons that make us look even more like a social media site, which we're not. (Don't have the grey on blue problem but it's damn ugly). I see they still haven't learnt to run these thing by users BEFORE implementation - one of the main reasons I've largely become inactive as an editor. Dpmuk (talk) 04:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If we left it to the community here, we'd never change a thing and we'd be a relic of 2008 with a few changes around the edges, we object to everything no matter how minor and the last thing I'd want is to leave any form of progress for the site in the hands of a bunch of ossified lumps who'd never change a thing. tutterMouse (talk) 08:23, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I dont like the new change and Im going to try to revert it to something I like using CSS. It seems to be more complex than last time, though; just typing colors in CSS doesnt work because there seems to be also a transparency involved ... i.e. the colors I type dont actually appear. — Soap — 05:38, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Reverting the appearance would mean combining what is now two separate features, and you can't use CSS to do that. It might be possible in JavaScript, but I wouldn't know how. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Like Its a good change. Makes sense. Seddon talk 09:13, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Meh. Splitting it in two is a reasonable choice. Having a single notification location was also a reasonable choice. Personally, I don't really care so much. However, when pages load it does seem like the notifications flicker slightly. I assume this means that part of the notification space is being changed by javascript during load. It would be good to pin this down so there is no unnecessary flicker, especially for cases where there are no new messages (which I assume is true for most people, most of the time). Dragons flight (talk) 10:00, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I see the flicker too, but I put it down to the same problem as . -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:04, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Don't like "Embrace change"? When there are changes worthy of embracing, I will. Change for the sake of it, no. This looks tacky, and I can't see the need for it. Is one being regarded as less important than the other? "Someone's thanked you, but you needn't bother looking who it was" or "You've been mentioned somewhere, but what the heck"? Will it save time? No. If you get both a message and an alert, you've got to use two drop-downs instead of one. If you've only got the one sort, you're still only clicking one anyway so it's irrelevant. Peridon (talk) 13:01, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * In the source I see:


 * After javascript runs, it looks like:


 * Obviously, the javascript is changing the notification content significantly at load, which shouldn't really be necessary, especially in cases where there are no notifications. Dragons flight (talk) 11:03, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Splitting them is a reasonable idea. It does look terrible though, at least in Monobook. —Kusma (t·c) 10:06, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * DESiegel summarizes it well. My first reaction was dislike, probably purely because it was a change; I'm currently undecided (I originally posted at Wikipedia talk:Notifications, thanks Redrose for the post about this discussion). — Godsy (TALK<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;"> CONT ) 12:23, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * My biggest complaint is that these two buttons are now taking up more space than they used to. I liked it when both messages to my talk page and other information were put into one button. Now they're just using up more room, especially considering the "messages" indicator is just a pointless redundant link to my talk page, which I don't need and I don't care about. Also, it just makes Special:Notifications a bit laughable... we have two buttons that essentially are connected to the same page. You may as well make a filter in Special:Notifications that allows us to specifically filter out what we want to see, say, if we're looking for a specific something. --I am  k6ka  Talk to me!   See what I have done  20:36, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

By the way, there are some Wikipedias (ru:, es:, fr:, and most probably some else), where is on;y one bell. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 23:20, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * whatever, it is not the eighth wonder of the world, but it ain't bad either. Though I do not get the need to have "my messages" and the "talk" page link has they both light up when there are messages. - Nabla (talk) 11:34, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I want to burn this with fire already; I've got a big red ALERT taunting me and clicking on it does jack-all. Might be this godawful plugin-riddled IE8 this computer forces me to use, but I have yet to test this on Chrome at home. Either way I loathe it, what was there before worked fine even on this shitty browser. If it ain't broke... BLUSTER⌉⌊BLASTER 17:15, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Got it to go away by going directly to Special:Notifications, but still. Shouldn't need to do it. BLUSTER⌉⌊BLASTER 17:32, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Command-clicking (Ctrl-clicking) on a link in notifications is not working right
This may be just me, but with the previous notifications menu, I could Command-click (I have a Mac; Ctrl-click does the same thing on Windows, I believe) on a link in the menu to open a new tab in the background (Firefox 40.0.3 for Mac), as I do with any other link on a web page; the existing tab remains unchanged. Since this new style of notifications rolled out, Command-clicking on a link in the notifications menu opens a new tab in the background and also opens the same link in the current tab. This is undesirable.

Is this happening for anyone else? If not, I'll debug my own setup. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It happens for me also on Windows (firefox 40.0.3). I always prefer to open notifications in a separate tab, loss of this functionality overshadows any possible positive with this change, and i find that i prefer a single list, not two lists to check. Please provide an opt out. DES (talk) 02:08, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It is happening to me too. Cannot open a separate window but I have lots of functionality issues. Since the change. SusunW (talk) 02:24, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the confirmation. I have reported this as a bug in Phabricator. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:08, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

There is currently a Signpost poll for this change here. Please provide your input there as well. Thanks! 02:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

bell?
Hi. By now I receive messages both with a bell and with a talkballoon. I do not know what this means. Now don't explain it here, just improve doc I suggest. -DePiep (talk) 00:37, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Looks like a new feature? Eman <font color="#6643d1">235 / talk  00:46, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * . --Izno (talk) 01:11, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

This change makes things harder to use
Why do I to load a new page to see my mentions. What happened to the nice dropdown?—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-11ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat :Offline 09:13, 11 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I still have dropdowns. I'm guessing this is related to the javascript problems you mention below.  Dragons flight (talk) 11:13, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For it takes me to a separate page to look at my notifications.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-13.5ex;color:\#FF8C00;font-family:Comic Sans MS"><span style="color:\#FF8C00">Chat :Limited Access 17:59, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

This change seems to have broken my JS scripts
I've got 2 scripts so far that aren't loading for me. The first one being my clock on the top I can click to purge a page and my on the fly preview generator. These scripts stopped working around the same time the change was deployed.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-11ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat :Offline 09:13, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Diddums. Nightmares always talk 16:30, 11 September 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peryglus (talk • contribs)
 * Make that 3. My OBoD isn't working either.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-13.5ex;color:\#FF8C00;font-family:Comic Sans MS"><span style="color:\#FF8C00">Chat :Limited Access 18:00, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Make that 5. My admin highlighter and user statistics don't work either.  I've tried purging the cache, but that failed.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-13.5ex;color:\#FF8C00;font-family:Comic Sans MS"><span style="color:\#FF8C00">Chat :Limited Access 18:01, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * 6. I have no Twinkle either.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-13.5ex;color:\#FF8C00;font-family:Comic Sans MS"><span style="color:\#FF8C00">Chat :Limited Access 18:02, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Is there anything in your browser's JavaScript console? It's unlikely to be related to the notifications changes, and due to some other change deployed with 1.26wmf22. Legoktm (talk) 01:14, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yea. Here's the report:

[Error] TypeError: null is not an object (evaluating '/\d+/.exec($("#pt-notifications").text)') (anonymous function) fire add ready (anonymous function) [Error] Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 (HTTP/1.1 500) (queryTasks, line 0) Being a JS idiot, I can't understand what that means.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-11ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat :Offline 09:42, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, it is related. There is code in your global.js that was creating a fake orange bar if one of those unread notifications were an edit to your user talk page. Do you still need this functionality now that these messages have their own flyout and it should be more obvious? If so, I can re-write it to work again. Legoktm (talk) 01:51, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes. I still used.  I've only been using it, after the emergence of echo and want to continue to use.  If you could possibly fix that, I would be really grateful.  On a related note, does this explain why my other JS won't load?  Including my JS gadgets?—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-10.1ex;color:olive;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat:Online 14:15, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Changing  to   might fix it—give it a shot. If it doesn't work, let me know and I'll take another look. {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 15:56, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There's a simpler way to do this; User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/orangeBar.js might be worth a shot. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 16:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I have now done so. I hope my JS can survive the change now.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-11ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat :Offline 07:46, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Unnecessary

 * I will 'embrace a smidgeon of change' when it is necessary. This is not. It is schnickschack for the sake of schnickschnack. There are far more really serious issues still remain unaddressed that those with programming skills,  whether salaried or not, could be helping us with. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:15, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For once I completely agree with . DES (talk) 02:01, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The "problem" of not splitting alerts from new messages is WP:BIKESHED
This is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist with a combined alert indicator. It only takes a few seconds to see if an alert is a new message or action (e.g. a ping). It doesn't matter if an alert is the former or the latter, you probably won't leave alerts outstanding for long. While it isn't hard to turn on email notifications, use an email client that audibly alerts upon new email, and  the notifications; it is still a waste of a few kilobytes on both ends. <span style="color: #3BB9FF; font-style: italic; font-family: Lato, sans-serif'">Esquivalience t 02:36, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Pretty horrid. But it works
Fascinating to see so many opinions and issues on these new gadgets. I won't miss the absurdly over-the-top nuclear insistence of the "orange bar of doom/death" but I did scratch my head wondering what those tiny black symbols were. A guardsman wearing a ridiculously large black hat? And what was that little black rectangle with a serif at one corner? It meant a MESSAGE? Why? And why was it black as a coal-hole when the whole of the rest of the menu bar was blue? Pretty horrid. But it works. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:10, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I see a bell and a speech bubble, respectively. On my screen they are white-on-grey though, but maybe you are using some other skin.--Anders Feder (talk) 14:18, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, then it must be a skin bug, thank you for letting me know. (And I thought speech bubbles were round with a long downward-pointing stalk.) It sounds as if such bugs have been reported multiple times already so with any luck it'll be fixed soon. If any techie is reading this, the trouble occurs in MonoBook. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:49, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether it's a bug or deliberate. The icons (like the whole line) are smaller in MonoBook so maybe they are black instead of white to make them more visible. Here is Example in [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?useskin=vector Vector], [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?useskin=monobook MonoBook], [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?useskin=modern Modern], [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?useskin=cologneblue Cologne Blue]. The messages box is misaligned a little for me in Cologne Blue, but Modern and Cologne Blue are not officially supported by WMF or something like that. The icons can be removed while keeping the numbers with this in (not tested when there were alerts or messages):

.oo-ui-icon-bell {display: none !important;} .oo-ui-icon-speechBubble {display: none !important;}
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 11:22, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * OK yes I would prefer to see them as white, if anyone knows how. My objection isnt to the two-picture setup, just the color scheme.  wiktionary uses white bell/speech bubble for me, perhaps that is because Im on Vector? I want to stick with Monobook but I also want white bubbles/bells if possible.  I was working with CSS myself to see what I could do but I stopped when I realized that the images are hard-coded using "data://" URLs instead of being normal images.  Even so, it seems that proper URLs do exist for those images, and now I realize that there is probably more than one image for each type, since there are differnt color morphs.  Does anyone know if its possible to change only the color of the images using CSS (I assume this means using a different URL for the image)? — Soap — 06:39, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have now tested the above icon removing code when there are alerts or messages. The colored numbers are still there to notify you so the code can be used. If there are alerts then the black bell is displayed but with a red background so the use of black matters less. The icon can be removed with this addition (note "On" in bellOn):

.oo-ui-icon-bellOn {display: none !important;}
 * The code with  removes the icon whether or not there are messages. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:39, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Question
I don't like the change, but I figure that its pointless to lobby for the return of the old system since changes are usually forced on us regardless. My question then is whether the orange alert bar thing is suppose to stay up and active after you go to your user talk page, because it still stays orange on mine and its very...misleading, shall we say. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:05, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems to be T107655. --Stryn (talk) 11:03, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that the issue to a tee. At least the tech folks are on this. Thanks for the reply :) TomStar81 (Talk) 11:08, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Temporarily reverted
We've had to temporarily revert the Echo changes due to an unintended performance regression (T112401) and a severe bug for Safari users on Commons (T112552). Very sorry about the disruption. :-(

Suggestions on how to organize the different types of notifications, including the many proposed new types that might be coming in the future, would be greatly appreciated. Details in that thread. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:44, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * At least my scripts are working again.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-11ex;color:red;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat :Offline 06:04, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Was this notification change somehow messing with the "cite" functionality on the text editor in Firefox 40? The addition of the new notification was chronologically correlated with my loss of the cite button, and now that the notifications are reverted my cite button came back. VQuakr (talk) 07:17, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No, at least not directly, possibly indirectly. There are often bugs in scripts that go undetected for a long time, until a change is made that makes the change visible. This is a problem for instance: You include the ref toolbar in your vector.js file, but it is already a default enabled gadget. You should remove that line, because it will cause ref toolbar to try and start up twice... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:59, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hopefully the bugs are fixed and the "split-view" notification indicator comes back. I was probably the only person who liked it. :) - <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #900;padding:1px;"> Neutralhomer  •  Talk  • 16:39, 15 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Here's a crazy idea, maybe it would be nice if someone who actually uses this site a bit, rather than some token WMF'er, has a say in implenting this.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 19:54, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Only popped by here because I saw it had been removed. I loved the new notification system, and beyond being simpler to navigate it worked so much better. Please do get it running again soon. CFCF  💌 📧 22:50, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I also really liked it and look forward to its return. It's not incredibly important here, but at mediawiki.org, it makes Echo practical again.  I can tell at a glance whether that's really for me or likely to be just another thread started on a busy page.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Incorrectly notified about revert
I made an edit, and I was notified that someone reverted my edit, when in fact they didn't revert anything changed in my edit. nyuszika7h (talk) 15:00, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * They did change something in your edit but also made other changes. The notification is caused by using the "undo" link. It's possible to change the prefilled edit summary and manually make other changes before saving. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:23, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, that looks like an edit conflict that wasn't caught. The background color was changed while I was editing. nyuszika7h (talk) 14:49, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Generate list of users from a particular geo-location
Is it possible to generate a list of registered users that have made edits to Wikipedia articles' category from a particular geo-location within a time range? E.g. List of accounts that have made edits from Ghana, on Ghana-related articles, in the year 2014. Is there any tool that can already do this? <font style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#ADFF2F 0.1em 0.1em 1.5em,#01796F -0.1em -0.1em 1.5em;color:#000000"><font color="#01796E">—M@sssly <font color="#FF0000">✉ 21:58, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Presumably not, since user location information is confidential.--Anders Feder (talk) 22:23, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I see. Excluding geo-location: Is there a way I can get a list of users, that have made edits on Ghana-related articles, in a particular time/date range? <font style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#ADFF2F 0.1em 0.1em 1.5em,#01796F -0.1em -0.1em 1.5em;color:#000000"><font color="#01796E">—M@sssly <font color="#FF0000">✉ 23:48, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think many editors would be uncomfortable about a public tool collecting data to try to guess where they are. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:38, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

The information is available should anyone want to make a bot. Someone with the skills to do so would have to see a good reason behind it though. <b style="color:SteelBlue">Chillum</b> 00:40, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be accurate though; see User:Redrose64 - my IP address presently geolocates to 51.5°N, -0.13°W which is the Methodist Central Hall Westminster - more than fifty miles away from the truth. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:17, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

this probably isn't what you wanted to get, but there is such page: WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Ghana. A little bit (un-)related use-case of such tool (list of users, that have made edits on Foo-related articles). I have a user category, for example, Category:User ca-N, and I want to get those users, who have made X edits in last Y days/months or whatever. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 09:21, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually a lot of Wikipedians state where they're from on their userpage, so that information isn't necessarily private. It would be  a pain in the neck, but a database could be compiled based on where the users were stating they were from and then organize said list by location and compare it with a certain page to see who has edited from their stated location.  It could be done, but it would be a pain.   KoshVorlon  We are all Koshundefined  15:56, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * One can do all sorts of weird things. I was responding to the actual question posed by the OP.--Anders Feder (talk) 16:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Without the consent of the individual users, WP:OUTING comes into play if the database gets too specific. — Maile (talk) 16:28, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Quite true, but which username edits which article is public info, so the sort of tool described above which gives a list of users who edit any of a set of pages (possibly derived from category membership) between one date/timestamp and another would not in any way violate any privacy rights, it is just aggregating what could be seen by visiting a set of page histories. I am thinking of trying to make this work as a tool, rather than a bot, where one would input the base page and timestamp limits, and get a list of editors back, perhaps sorted by frequency of edit. This would be as much an exercise in tool creation as anything. DES (talk) 21:28, 15 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Actually WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Ghana is somewhat useful and I did not know it existed. The problem is that the list there is not exhaustive and it doesn't give us any other perspective, most importantly that of time. I may have to ask Harej about the regexes that generated those usernames. Editorship in the Ghanaian community lacks clarity in so many ways and I needed such a list to improve a proposal I am developing here that would allow me get in touch with them and ask them questions. <font style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#ADFF2F 0.1em 0.1em 1.5em,#01796F -0.1em -0.1em 1.5em;color:#000000"><font color="#01796E">—M@sssly <font color="#FF0000">✉ 04:32, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

History: flagging speedy deletion template removal when it wasn't removed
On at least two occasions I've observed an entry in my watchlist or an article's history stating that a speedy deletion template was removed, to find that the template was still there. What's going on there? An example is at. —Largo Plazo (talk) 21:05, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I just came cross another case: . —Largo Plazo (talk) 21:13, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Must be a bug in abuse filter #29.--Anders Feder (talk) 21:19, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No, the bug is that the edit filter gets a wrong diff. Compare [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ghazanfar_Ali_Abbasi&curid=47816824&diff=681046280&oldid=681044588] to [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog/13101216], and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Waz&curid=47816432&diff=681046247&oldid=681045617]] to [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog/13101211]. I notice VisualEditor was used in both cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:08, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
 * More examples: [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog/13099618] and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salam_Masdoosi&diff=prev&oldid=681023984] (mobile IP edit, not VisualEditor), [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog/13101647] and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stuart_Baillie&diff=prev&oldid=681053168] (VisualEditor). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It's like a hybrid diff. Looking at the Waz example, both diffs show the same addition of body content (the SSA Annual Competition section), the correctness of which can be confirmed by looking directly at the pre- and post-edit versions. But on the other hand, the pre- and post-edit versions both have this at the top:

&lt;!--- Don't mess with this line! --->&lt;!--- Write your article below this line --->


 * yet the diff that's being sent to the edit filter gives the false impression that the db-hoax template has disappeared, that a new unreviewed article template has been added after the first comment, and that the second comment has been pushed down one line. Basically, it's the exact reverse of the diff for the revision immediately preceding the one we're discussing, the one from my tagging the article for deletion: . To sum it up, the edit filter got the current diff for the body and the reverse of the previous diff for the preamble. —Largo Plazo (talk) 22:37, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Since the edits (or at least those I can view, most of the links above refer to pages that were apparently already deleted) are all close together, this is probably T73947 (related to automated edit conflict resolution). Matma Rex talk 01:11, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Certificate Error: Navigation Blocked
When viewing the edit summary search in Internet Explorer, the tab says "Certificate Error: Navigation Blocked" and the page says the following: There is a problem with this website’s security certificate. The security certificate presented by this website has expired or is not yet valid. Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server. We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website. Recommended iconClick here to close this webpage. Not recommended iconContinue to this website (not recommended). More information GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:29, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The Tool Labs HTTPS certificate expired a hour or so ago. Our renewal request is in process at the CA and should be back with us soon. In the meantime you can use the http version . Apologies for the inconvenience. This is tracked at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T112608 YuviPanda (WMF) (talk) 01:46, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

This pretty much has my hands tied. I can't see editors contributions history nor see any of my WikiProjects cleanup listings. I use the first to judge how to warn for vandalism and I am waiting to vote in two RfAs. The second I use to find work. I am on Chrome and Google is issuing me rather nasty warnings: Attackers might be trying to steal your information from tools.wmflabs.org ... This may be caused by a misconfiguration or an attacker intercepting my connection. Your computer's clock is set to Tuesday September 15 2015. Does that look right?. Nice. sigh... <b style="color:#595454">Fylbecatulous</b> <b style="color:#DB7093">talk</b> 13:48, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What are the specific URLs you are trying to access? As YuviPanda wrote above, you should use the HTTP version until the HTTPS version is back up. Editor contribution histories (Special:Contributions) is not affected by this issue.--Anders Feder (talk) 14:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The one that says "edit count": at the bottom of my page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Fylbecatulous:. I click edit count and getz this:https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=Fylbecatulous&project=en.wikipedia.org. (privacy error). <b style="color:#595454">Fylbecatulous</b> <b style="color:#DB7093">talk</b> 14:50, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * When you get the error, just remove the 's' from the 'https' in the URL in your address bar and hit, so you get e.g.:
 * http://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=Fylbecatulous&project=en.wikipedia.org --Anders Feder (talk) 15:00, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, okay I can do that. Please don't access my computer in the meantime (Tongue-in-cheek-meow...) Thank you. <b style="color:#595454">Fylbecatulous</b> <b style="color:#DB7093">talk</b> 15:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The warning given by Chrome is indeed quite over the top in this case. Even WMF can not somehow access your computer when you use this method. The philosophy behind the warning is "rather safe than sorry". If someone was asking you to do this in connection with banking or payment services you should be much more careful. But here there is not really any deeply sensitive information involved.--Anders Feder (talk) 15:14, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The new certificates have been deployed now, so https links should be working again. If you notice any problems, please leave a message here, or even better, at T112608. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 06:03, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Can't delete file in speedy-deletion queue
Although File:1920 Protocols & World Revolution 3.0.png has been the first file in Category:All Wikipedia files with the same name on Wikimedia Commons for several days, when I've tried to F8 it I'm told that it's already been deleted. However, according to the deletion log that's not the case. Purging the server cache with a null edit doesn't help. Anyone know what's going on? All the best,  Mini  apolis  13:14, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hm, my deletion went straight through, not sure what the cause of the issue you were having was. Sam Walton (talk) 13:23, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks; the important thing is that it's finally gone :-). I do a fair number of F8s, and don't know what the problem was with this one. All's well that ends.  Mini  apolis  23:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)


 * and, possibly the same problem I had. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 135. The & causes the same problem as the ? `~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by CambridgeBayWeather (talk • contribs) 02:41, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Change in display for &lt;pre style="overflow:auto;"&gt;
is often used in template documentation, particularly with infoboxes to display template code to the left of the actual infobox. Previously, a long line in the code would cause a horizontal scroll bar to be added and the text would not wrap in the middle of a line. Now the scroll bar is not added, but instead the line wraps once it reaches the right edge:

<pre style="overflow:auto;">

Now to see the old format I need to use :

<pre style="overflow:auto; white-space:pre;">

I think this changed sometime between 21 June 2015 (see Internet Archive copy of Template:Infobox political party#Usage which shows the template code with a horizontal scroll bar and no wrapping) and 23 June 2015 (see Internet Archive copy of Template:Infobox settlement#Examples which shows the template code wrapping). Checking the HTML source shows that both used  in the documentation. I do not think this is a browser or browser-version problem since I could see the scroll bar on the older archived template, but not on the newer one. I checked changes at MediaWiki:Common.css but did not see any that would have caused this. I also searched the archive here but did not see any discussion about this. Does anyone know exactly what caused this change? If it was not intentional, can a change be made to restore the former output? Thanks. -- Zyxw (talk) 13:40, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This was changed in core following the deployment of Pygments as syntax highlighter. Pygments does not support GeSHi's "enclose" attribute, which was used to apply, and the decision was apparently made to make "pre-wrap" the default for all s. The bug report is T103780 and the commit 220701. Alakzi (talk) 15:01, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It was intentional and something we wanted to do for a long time (and which was first requested in the year 2004 and a number of times since), but which was previously impossible due to weird interactions between GeSHi and Tidy. See T2260. Matma Rex talk 01:14, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the responses. -- Zyxw (talk) 10:36, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Using two sets of "quotes" in searches produces odd results
A search for "rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" returns one result which is expected:
 * 1) Stephen Hawking

A search for "rare early-onset" "amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" returns five results with the first four not being expected:
 * 1) Quotation mark "The symbols  "  and  '  redirect here."
 * 2) Apostrophe
 * 3) Hyphen-minus "-" redirects here.
 * 4) Modifier letter apostrophe
 * 5) Stephen Hawking

A search for "rare early-onset" -"amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" also returns five results with four not being expected:
 * 1) Quotation mark "The symbols  "  and  '  redirect here."
 * 2) Apostrophe
 * 3) Hyphen-minus "-" redirects here.
 * 4) Modifier letter apostrophe
 * 5) Claudine (TV series) "Soon after, however, Andy contracts a rare, early onset of Alzheimer’s causing him to gradually forget his love for his wife"

I tested the above using both the "basic search" in the upper-right corner and Special:Search.

In the latter two examples above results 1 to 4 are unexpected and seem undesirable. Result #5 in both test cases was correct. This report is only about the first four results when using two sets of "double quoted" search terms.

Should the additional results be considered a bug or am I missing something?

Apparently we are in a transition from the LuceneSearch engine to the wikimedia:Help:CirrusSearch engine. Editors updating Wikipedia's Help:Searching article are still struggling with how to and what to document in terms of changes in the syntax. At present Help:Searching documents both the "double quoted" and -negation syntax. wikimedia:Help:CirrusSearch indicates that the "double quoted" form should still work though with the added features that it also enables exact matching and disables metacharacters. Negation or exclusion is not explicitly documented on the CirrusSearch help page but their examples hint that it should still work. Their examples include:
 * {| style="border: thin solid;"

! align="left" | Example !! align="left" | Explanation text --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 18:08, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * || Find articles whose title does not contain foo and whose title or text contains bar.
 * || Find articles that are not in Category:Musicals but are in Category:1920
 * || find articles that mention CirrusSearch but do not link to the page Help:CirrusSearch
 * || will filter pages that do not contain that template.
 * }
 * || find articles that mention CirrusSearch but do not link to the page Help:CirrusSearch
 * || will filter pages that do not contain that template.
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * Is this related to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T91219 ? GoingBatty (talk) 02:39, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It looks like a different issue.
 * # The repro is different. ""foo"" versus "foo" "foo"
 * # The behavior is different. In T91219 ""foo"" gets one unexpected record in the result set while "foo" "foo" returns four unexpected records.
 * Here's some interesting data points as part of the repro. At the moment:
 * "foo" returns 4,611 records.
 * ""foo"" returns 4,612 records. I'm not sure how many records are expected as this could be interpreted as a search for 'empty-pattern AND foo (in meta mode) AND empty-pattern'. If that was the case then the result would be the same as a search for foo which returns 4,868 records. The extra record for ""foo"" is for Quotation mark.
 * "foo" "foo" returns 4,615 records. We expected 4,611 records. The unexpected records are for Quotation mark, Apostrophe, Hyphen-minus, Modifier letter apostrophe.
 * Searches for "foo, ""foo, """foo, " "foo, foo", foo"", foo""", foo"" ", etc. all return 4,868 records which is the same as a search for plain 'foo'. This indicates the parser seems to be ignoring extraneous double-quotes before or after the text.
 * --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 04:47, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * , I read the T91219 thread again and realized I'd missed before that it was mostly about the interplay between single and double quotes. After more testing I'm leaning towards that I'm reporting the same issue though with a with a different repro. Here are the tests I did that lead to me leaning the other way:
 * These all return 4668 records. foo 'foo foo' 'foo' "foo "'foo "foo' "'foo' '"foo '"foo' foo" 'foo" foo"' 'foo"' foo'" 'foo'". All 16 test cases are combinations of single and double quotes with none of them having "foo" inside double quotes.


 * I then tested with "foo" combined with various single quotes. The next to last result is a bit odd and may be a decent clue on what's happening.
 * {| class="wikitable"


 * Search pattern || # records || extra results
 * double-foo-double || 4,611
 * double-single-foo-double || 4,611
 * double-foo-double-single || 4,615 || Quotation mark Apostrophe Hyphen-minus Modifier letter apostrophe
 * double-foo-single-double || 4,611
 * double-single-foo-double-single || 4,615 || Quotation mark Apostrophe Hyphen-minus Modifier letter apostrophe
 * double-single-foo-single-double || 4,611
 * single-double-foo-double || 4,615 || Quotation mark Apostrophe Hyphen-minus Modifier letter apostrophe
 * single-double-foo-double-single || 4,614 || Quotation mark Dash --
 * single-double-foo-single-double || 4,615 || Quotation mark Apostrophe Hyphen-minus Modifier letter apostrophe
 * }
 * --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 05:53, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * double-single-foo-single-double || 4,611
 * single-double-foo-double || 4,615 || Quotation mark Apostrophe Hyphen-minus Modifier letter apostrophe
 * single-double-foo-double-single || 4,614 || Quotation mark Dash --
 * single-double-foo-single-double || 4,615 || Quotation mark Apostrophe Hyphen-minus Modifier letter apostrophe
 * }
 * --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 05:53, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * single-double-foo-single-double || 4,615 || Quotation mark Apostrophe Hyphen-minus Modifier letter apostrophe
 * }
 * --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 05:53, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * }
 * --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 05:53, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * You're looking for info on You got something related to, which I just opened because your efforts here reminded me about it. Thanks.
 * P.S. You may also want info on &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  05:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. It's interesting how adding 'AND' fixes the issue even though there's supposed to be an implied AND in there. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 06:01, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you. This is one of those discoveries I'll be adding to  Help:Searching/Draft.  There really is only paltry amounts about CirrusSearch, (now at version 0.2),  even at MW:Help:CirrusSearch and its  talk page, and at elastica, and at phabricator and here at the village pump. &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  07:41, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

✅

charinsert dead?
Is it just me or is charinsert no longer working?

The gadget is checked in my preferences gadget tab; When I look at this page's source, charinsert is mentioned twice, once in a  tag and once in a <script ></script> tag-pair. Same in Chrome 45.0.2454.93 m, Opera 31.0.1889.174 winxp win7

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:14, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed - I saw that the tool was still there in the HTML but hidden from view when we are signed into Wikipedia. One of the following classes was hidden: mw-editTools, editpage-specialchars, or edittools-text. If you signed out the tool was visible. I was about to look further when the underlying issue was fixed. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 00:44, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

User:Anomie/linkclassifier not displaying
I have been using 's link classifier user script for a long time now. I had done something or other per instructions in a discussion on this page to make the user script appear as a link in my tools. But just very recently, the link disappeared. It had been working fine just a few hours earlier today. older ≠ wiser 00:16, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It is back now. older ≠ wiser 00:35, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Script system breakage
With the above two posts, it looks like something got busted with the scripting system. I can also mention that hidetopcontrib.js is also nonfunctional within the past hour. Javascript settings seem OK locally. There's apparently a general breakage. Dl2000 (talk) 00:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's back... Dl2000 (talk) 00:39, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Additions to user menu no longer visible
The first 2 lines of my User:GermanJoe/common.js used to add 2 menu items named "Subpages" and "MySubpages" to my top user menu (the topmost line with Preferences, Watchlist, etc.) - until a few hours ago. Now both are no longer visible since the latest changes. I could live without "Subpages" (as that is covered by a gadget in another menu tab), but I would like to retain "MySubpages" for a convenient link to my userspace pages. The issue is probably related to the already mentioned problems above - any idea, why those 2 menu items are no longer visible? GermanJoe (talk) 00:24, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have a similar subpages link in User:DESiegel/common.js as well as a "Tools" link. Nor is the standard Teahouse helper script working for me. DES (talk) 00:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * All scripts imported in skin.js haven't been loading for a while. - 185.108.128.22 (talk) 00:23, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Checking the network log it appears as if they are downloading, just not executing. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  00:27, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems to be working now. 185.108.128.22 (talk) 00:34, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * OK again for me too (user menu items). GermanJoe (talk) 00:36, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

2015 Conference USA Women's Basketball Tournament
2015 Conference USA Women's Basketball Tournament includes a visible in the lead. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 22:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ with . -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:24, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Personal tools bar
The links + text at the top right of site pages changed very recently for editors who're unregistered. Before:
 * WMF-Agora-Language selection-crop 3492D1.svg

Now it's eleven words; eight in blue, three in grey. The ULS input-tools button is gone (and it did look nice). Preceding "talk" & "contributions" links with "IP" is redundant—logged-in editor's links aren't preceded with "Account". The words in grey are very jarring when editing, unnecessary with the Log in link already present and take up a lot of screen real estate at the top. Can it be changed back please? Alternatively, if we're to keep the talk & contribs links, lets drop the "IP" and the words in grey as these are all redundant. Thank you. –84.92.129.87 (talk) 16:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See also MediaWiki_talk:Common.js and Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Archive_125 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:12, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the "IP" is too much, but a direct link to an IP's user page and contributions is handy. I'm not sure how the language tools ended up there; I have never seen them here, not even when logged out.  16:41, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The language tool icons in File:WMF-Agora-Language selection-crop 3492D1.svg seem to be the same as the ones displayed on . I can't be sure, because Firefox's "Inspect element" feature won't tell me how they get there. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:02, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Same image, but it's loaded as background image for  (under  ) from the ULS extension's directory. My point is, enwiki's ULS controls are located in the languages sidebar, not in the user toolbar.   17:22, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hah I could've sworn the ULS was present; lately I've been on sister projects like wikidata too, so guess it got stuck in my head! Previously the bar was even more compact then. –84.92.129.87 22:39, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, TheDJ. I'd somehow missed those threads in my search. I'm happy to keep the handy "Talk" & "Contributions" links. –84.92.129.87 (talk) 22:39, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Let's remove the grey text please. The always-on dark icon–text is very obtrusive when editing, redundant with the blue Log in link already present, and redundant to the editnotice. The bar width is about 40% of the edit window. Every edit, every page. It's too much.

In the discussion, which only had a few days of participation, one proponent said it's invisible if you're logged-in. That's as maybe. It's not so for not-logged-in contributors. I appreciate sometimes some editors that're normally logged-in users can edit logged out, wrt suppression. But that's why we have a mediawiki notice. Much effort's gone into it to make it effective without being excessive. If it needs further improvement, let's do that. Between the bar and the notice we've eye-arresting blue links and external links, bolding for strong emphasis, and a high contrast coloured fmbox. The fact is, irrespective of what's onscreen conceivably some people still might miss it.

It's analogous to the various sitenotices. We try to avoid their overuse. And they can be dismissed, these notices can't. To be clear I'm all for the editnotice prompting as it does, but once there's already a not‑logged‑in-warning, it's excessive to be duplicating it—having one then centimetres later another. –84.92.129.87 (talk) 22:39, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata: Access to data from arbitrary items is here
Hi everyone,

I have previously announced that your wiki will get arbitrary access. This has now happened. What does this mean? Previously you could only use the data in an article from an item on Wikidata that is directly connected to it. This means for example in the article about Berlin you could not get data about Germany. This has now changed and you can use all data from Wikidata in any article you wish. You can do this by using the property parser function or via Lua. For more information, usage and questions please see d:Wikidata:Arbitrary access.

I hope this will help you do great things here and ease your workload.

Cheers Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 10:47, 16 September 2015 (UTC)


 * :D--Anders Feder (talk) 10:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * So to do this we need to know the P number and Q number? It would be more intuitive if we could use  -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:11, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * IMO such uses of  should actually be deprecated, since the name of a Wikidata item (or property) is not guaranteed to be unique. Why the request for that was catered to, I will never understand. --Izno (talk) 13:27, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd have to agree. The name/label may also change subject to edits on Wikidata, whereas the item number is fixed.--Anders Feder (talk) 13:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See the long thread "property label/alias uniqueness", on Wikidata list. Helder 12:27, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My point is that somebody coming across  in the wikicode will have no idea what either P36 or Q183 mean, even if they know what   does - it's way too cryptic, whereas   has clues - even if you don't know what   does you can at least guess that it's something to do with the capital of Germany. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:51, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We are probably going to write templates to use this, otherwise there will be too much research required for each individual use. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:46, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Hidden ? next to diacritic.
I noticed, in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Academic_Journals/Journals_cited_by_Wikipedia/A1 the entry "Abhandlungen der K?öniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu G?öttingen". Upon looking at the article that had this citation, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Riemann_invariant&oldid=660047450, I saw that in the rendered text, it had "Abhandlungen der K?öniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu G?öttingen", but in the edit window it had "Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen". I manually deleted and overwrote Kö/Gö, and it created a diff, that now renders correctly.

Question 1) WTF? Question 2) Can someone do a database scan of Wikipedia to find this sort of stuff, and do an AWB run or something to clean them up?

17:36, 16 September 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Headbomb (talk • contribs)
 * For some reason there was a Delete character in front of the diacritic. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Korean headings in edit-count and articles created
The heading of mainspace edits appears in Korean (일반 문서) when using the edit counter in English Wikipedia. The rest of the headings are in English. Same thing happens in the article creation counter when 일반 문서 appears to indicate the article creation heading. Does anyone know why? Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.5ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 01:53, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I get the same thing and have for many months. Google Translate says that the Korean text says "General Documents". I submitted a bug report, and I'm hoping that, who is one of the editors listed at the bottom of the page, knows who might be able to fix it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:43, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. I agree, it's been there for a long time. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.5ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 03:48, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes - a long time this has been there.
 * Namespace:	일반 문서 (0)
 * Pages created 일반 문서
 * Under Namespace Totals, the Korean characters even have a blue link that, when clicked, takes you to the same page you were already on. — Maile (talk) 12:41, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The Korean text is a known issue. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 138. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:16, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Submarine U-475 Black Widow
Can someone tell me what's wrong at Submarine U-475 Black Widow? I tried moving the "italic title" template in to the "Infobox ship begin" but that didn't help. Kendall-K1 (talk) 03:23, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * See here - someone decided that it would be a good idea to play around with ship infoboxes without any real concern about how much damage there experiments would cause.Nigel Ish (talk) 05:53, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It used to be possible to fix this by setting no within the but that facility was removed with . I would restore the wikicode of the lead section of Submarine U-475 Black Widow to the state it was before, then post at WT:SHIPS notifying them of your concerns. You could include a link back here, if you like. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:30, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure
Would someone be able to help at Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 05:59, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I fixed it, found the headerlevel in the cluebot settings was set to 4, and the headers were all 3. AlbinoFerret  11:52, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Cannot access the Wikimedia Commons for past 2 days
For the past 2 days I have been unable to browse the Wikimedia Commons. It returns an SSL certificate error. Blackberry Bold 9900 browser using the Desktop view. Checkingfax (talk) 04:40, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What is the exact error message and the full web address to try this with? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:00, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the reply, .  is the URL. Here is the error:   Then there is an   button. If I try an http as a workaround URL Wikipedia renders it to https.  Checkingfax (talk) 21:38, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Yay! I can now get to the Commons. Thank you to the Wikigods. Checkingfax (talk) 02:21, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Editnotices
Editnotices, such as Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), are now editable by anyone. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:30, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I raised T113121 about this issue. TTO&#39;s apostrophe (talk) 02:25, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Now fixed. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:32, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Undeleting old IP talk pages
Please comment at WP:BOTREQ - a proposal to use a bot to undelete some 400,000 IP talk pages that were deleted as stale. 103.6.159.88 (talk) 06:01, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Stylesheet changed?
AWB seems to have a broken preview today. I suspect that stylesheet changed on mediawiki or an API option changed? Can anyone help?

Check this out. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:48, 19 September 2015 (UTC)


 * No changes (it's weekend). It seems CSS is just missing.  09:18, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Buttons
Does anybody know why are not these buttons 1 and 2 being displayed while transcluded (i.e. in template’s documentation itself too), but correctly while using  option? --Obsuser (talk) 00:20, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know why saved pages and previews render differently. sr:User:PrimeHunter/sandbox has a simplified case where the only content is . I see a button in preview but only the text in the saved page. At the English Wikipedia it renders as a button for me in both preview and a saved page like here: Test . PrimeHunter (talk) 22:11, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Last edited
The "Last edited" part is now on the bottom rather than the top in Mobile Wikipedia. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:58, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We know. :) See T104697. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:17, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

User access levels
I'm not overly familiar with the different permissions that each user access level has. Can someone confirm whether this edit is correct or not? The edit changes the "skipcaptcha" permission for registered accounts from "granted" to "limited" status. -- benlisquare T•C•E 06:25, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, that edit is correct. Graham 87 12:45, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Emails not going through from my Talk page
has used the "email user" three times from my Talk page and they never went through to me. I get Wikipedia emails all day but not these sent from the "email user" link". I use Gmail and have successfully for 10 years. Checkingfax (talk) 04:50, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Problems of this sort usually come down to "what is the sender's email provider?" see Village pump (technical)/Archive 129 and the threads linked back from there, also T66795. It mainly affects Yahoo, and the recipient's email address has little to do with it. That said, have you checked your spam box? -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * , nothing in my Gmail Spam folder nor Junk Mail folder. I do not know what email server uses. I need a Checkuser run because there is a security hole in Wikipedia that needs to be patched. I have a strong password plus a username that is not in the dictionary. Checkingfax (talk) 21:42, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I finally got one. Checkingfax (talk) 22:33, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Template signing borked
See. This worked before, it is supposed to sign your name when you add it to a page, but for some reason this time it added four tildes without them being converted to a dig. I wouldn't have thought that was even possible, but there it is. The only recent change to the template was a move, I don't know how that could have borked it but that's why I'm asking here. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:53, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe it's because you didn't substitute it. Sam Walton (talk) 21:58, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * aw crap, I believe you are correct. Never mind. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:22, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

User-defined layout of the Main Page?
What would it take to present a Main Page that each user could personalize the inclusion/arrangement of the content features (Today's featured article, In the news, On this day, etc)? The Transhumanist 08:47, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * First, make a copy of Main Page in your userspace. You will find that most of it is transcluded content that's been arranged into boxes with tables and s. Just move it around to get the arrangement that you like. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:46, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think the question is asking for a customisable Main Page, i.e. you can click a button and the Main Page suddenly appears differently, as if you're visiting Facebook. This kind of setup would require radical changes and extensive coding work that wouldn't be compatible with our MediaWiki software.  Nyttend (talk) 15:23, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * More like My Yahoo. Select the components you want, and in what order they are presented. The Transhumanist 18:35, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * And if you want to see your version instead of current Main page, then do this. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 15:26, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know. I started that page. Preferences are much more prominent (users can readily find them). The Transhumanist 18:35, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Whoops :) -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 21:46, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

What about pre-configured alternately arranged versions selected by gadget?
, you've given me an idea. There are only so many layout combinations possible with the few content features the Main Page has. Therefore, a version of the Main Page could be done with Today's featured article alone at the top, another with In the news and On this day at the top, etc., therefore offering several possible layout configurations. A gadget item can be placed in preferences for selecting each of them, like the one that is there now for the Main Page redesign.

This seems doable. What are the relevant issues? The Transhumanist 00:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

CitationBot randomly intercepting article edits
Citation Bot is randomly intercepting occasional article edits performed by me. Then CB appends my Edit Summary with:. Checkingfax (talk) 22:14, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It is probably to do with what you have in User:Checkingfax/common.js, in particular https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Zhaofeng_Li/Reflinks.js Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:19, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Are you sure you didn't click the "Citations" button, assuming you have one? It can be disabled at "Citation expander" at Special:Preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:25, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have a Citations button and I have never pressed it. Checkingfax (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That's hard to say with certainty. If you never use it intentionally then you can just disable it. Whether it's activated by a bug or misclick, it will probably stop if you disable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:45, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe it doesn't like you. The Transhumanist 00:31, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Why can't I send an email, the sequel
I posted here and was reverted since we're not supposed to edit archives. But if this is true why is there an edit button for every section?

I did get a response after all. It seems the recipient found the emails in his/her spam folder. This still doesn't explain why I didn't get a copy of my sent email.HarleyRandomBoy 22:05, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been having some issues with sending emails, which meant I had to click twice on the button in order to actually send it. I wonder if that's related. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:04, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Moved pages remain protected
If page A has been moved to page B and the protection settings for A moved to B, why is A still protected? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 21:23, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you have an example? Does it involve pending changes protection, by chance? Graham 87 12:57, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For example, Template:Edit protected, which is semi-protected, was moved to Template:Edit fully protected, which is also semi-protected, which in turn was moved to Template:Edit fully-protected, which again is semi-protected. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:02, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This is probably intended. –<b style="font-family:verdana;color:#000">xeno</b><sup style="color:#000">talk 14:31, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, when a page is moved, the redirect which is created during that move inherits the prot settings of the moved page. This has been the case for as long as I've been around. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:46, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Visual Editor and page creation
The latest note at User talk:KDS4444 surprised me: another editor reports that it's impossible to create pages with Visual Editor, so aside from creating pages in userspace, the only practical way to do it is to use the normal editor mode to create the page and then actually do the writing in VE. This can cause problems; the note is related to the GIET page, which consisted only of "GIET can refer to" upon creation and was therefore tagged for speedy deletion before the creator could add more content. Is this a known problem? I'm not seeing anything relevant at WP:VE. Nyttend (talk) 14:47, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I did succeed in launching a page through ?veaction=edit here.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:03, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * How did you get there: did you have to change the URL, or could you simply pick an option somewhere? (I've never used VE, so I don't have a clue how it works.)  If the former, I don't see the benefit, since the whole reason for VE is to support editors who just want to sit down and write, rather than worrying about coding and editing tricks.  Nyttend (talk) 15:17, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * By appending ?veaction=edit to the URL of the page. I believe there are settings to have a "VE mode" page but I don't use them - maybe these don't work on non-existent pages?Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:29, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have the visual editor enabled and I definitely have the option to create new pages using it without any URL manipulation. Not sure what's going on here. —  Earwig   talk 21:51, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello everyone. This report is strange indeed. If you do have VE enabled in your Beta Preferences, then you do get a "Create" tab to start pages with VE. However, that will only work on namespaces where VE is enabled; even when you have VE enabled, clicking on a red link will not launch it for you - you have to click on the VE tab deliberately. I'll ask the editor for more information anyway :) Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * As I imagined, Nyttend, the problem was accessing VE from a red link (in this case, after searching for the article). The easiest workaround is the one I described above. FWIW other Wikipedias have changed the interface messages that editors see when looking for/landing on the page of an article which doesn't exist, adding a link so that editors can launch VE directly to create the article. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Redirect to Commons on one issue
I've never come across this before. In Firefox 40.0.3, at this article, I clicked on the table image of Akmal Ikramov, and it redirects to the main page of Commons. The article creator does not have that problem. I clicked on the image from IE 11, and it goes directly to the image in Commons. I did not have that peculiar issue with any other image in that table. — Maile (talk) 19:52, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess you have the Firefox add-on NoScript. The double parentheses in the url https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Soviet_Union_1968_CPA_3668_stamp_(One_of_Organizers_of_the_Communist_Party_of_Uzbekistan_Akmal_Ikramov_(1898%E2%80%931938)).jpg can trigger a Noscript filter against cross-site scripting. https://noscript.net/faq#qa4_2 mentions other problem url's. It should work if you disable NoScript, make a NoScript exception or use a url with percent encoding like https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Soviet_Union_1968_CPA_3668_stamp_%28One_of_Organizers_of_the_Communist_Party_of_Uzbekistan_Akmal_Ikramov_%281898%E2%80%931938%29%29.jpg. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:36, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You guessed correctly. Thanks for solving the mystery. — Maile (talk) 21:44, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

How to test for first use of a template on a page?
Is there a way to test for the first use of a particular template in a page? Use case would be to provide a longer alt text on the first use of a symbol template on a page, but for subsequent uses of the same symbol template to use just the name of the symbol as the alt text. Thisisnotatest (talk) 22:13, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Even if there were, it would likely break when the page was parsed with Parsoid. Anomie⚔ 01:17, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Is there a way to use 'Related changes' across sub-categories?
I'd like to keep a watch on everything in several categories that contain a boatload of subcategories; e.g., Category:Prehistoric mammals. 'Related changes' would normally be the tool of choice, I guess, but this will not descend into sub-categories, forcing me to set up 50+ links to individual subs. Is there a way to have 'related changes' span pages in sub-categories? At the moment I'm using CatScan as a work-around to show all pages in a cat with changes in the last 24h, which isn't half bad, but it still requires me to click into the history of each article to check the nature of the edit, rather than providing a nice summary for quick triage. Any advice? -- Elmidae (talk) 06:52, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There is such tool, but it isn't working. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 07:24, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Eh. So no dice on that front, I suspect?-- Elmidae (talk) 08:49, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-39
<section begin="technews-2015-W39"/> 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
 * There is now an experimental Wikimedia maps service. You can give feedback here.
 * Last week a few issues with UploadWizard were fixed. Before this was done, UploadWizard would stop you from uploading your files if something went wrong.
 * More Wikipedias can now use information from any Wikidata item in any Wikipedia article. Previously they could only use the Wikidata item that matched the subject of the article.
 * The VisualEditor welcome dialogue has been changed. The intention is to make it more helpful for new users.

Problems
 * Wikimedia Labs' HTTPS certificate expired for most of Tuesday 15 September. To reach Wikimedia Labs and Tool Labs securely you had to ignore your browser's security error message. There was no risk to data security during this time.
 * Last week the notification system was split into two parts. This was temporarily undone because of a bug and performance concerns. It will return to two parts this week.
 * UploadWizard couldn't upload files larger than 5 MB when using chunked uploads. This has now been fixed.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 22. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 23. It will be on all Wikipedias from September 24 (calendar).
 * The page move tool has been switched over to the new standard look for forms.
 * You can now choose whether to extend a link or not when editing one in VisualEditor. This means it is easier to choose how much of what you type before and after the link is part of it.
 * Wikibooks can now use data from Wikidata.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. It will be on September 23 at 17:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * You can register to the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 in San Francisco 4–6 January 2016. Gadget, template, bot, and tool developers are welcome as well. Call for participation and travel sponsorship requests are open until 2 October.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W39"/> 18:29, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * And an additional update, just for English Wikipedia: as requested in an earlier discussion, we now ask that search engines do not index pages in the user name space. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Am I losing it or does the page move tool still look exactly the same? Or was the change just some backend stuff that users aren't meant to notice? Jenks24 (talk) 10:16, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You're not losing it. I noticed no difference myself. --Izno (talk) 13:55, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * As written above on the "changes this week" section, the newest version (1.26wmf24) will be deployed on Thursday (Sept. 24). --Stryn (talk) 15:03, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe I could have formulated that clearer. Mea culpa. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 09:52, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, there it is. Can't say I'm a huge fan of it being so huge, but then again I still wish that it hadn't been changed to select namespaces. Jenks24 (talk) 18:33, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've added a bug/complaint to the phab task that made this change, see T86865 on the very off chance someone is interested. Jenks24 (talk) 18:59, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Section blank, though it has text
I have just edited List of pharmacy schools, the Rwanda section; it shows completely blank, other than the heading, on the page, though the section (in the edit screen) has the correct text. What am i missing? I have bypassed my cache and purged the page (though i barely know what those phrases mean, i can talk the talk!), and if i go back to the editor what i expect to see is visible, it simply is not showing on the rendered page. In addition, the History page shows the right increase in page size, so the edit "took". I use Chrome, on Windows 7, if that matters. Oh, and i should add that i have made several other edits, to that page and to others, and have not had the same issue arise. Cheers, LindsayHello 14:43, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed.


 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 14:49, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * My gosh, now i feel silly. Thanks, Trappist. Cheers, LindsayHello 15:05, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Did the site just go down for anyone?
English Wikipedia returned a 503 error for me for about five minutes. Was anyone else having this problem? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samwightt (talk • contribs) 16:30, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Servers are back! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes. It went down and came back.  Robert McClenon (talk) 16:38, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment: Whilst we are on this subject. I have noticed occasionally that some references on WP have been deleted on Saturdays and Sundays on the basis that they are dead links, when all that is happening, is that the site is under going a little weekend maintenance. I ask editors here to please wait at least 48 hours. Perhaps we should approach the Wayback Machine organisation to make an archive copy of all the pages we link to - or do it ourselves. I've spent hours tying to find alternative copies of verifiable source material that has just evaporated into the either when the sites die. Would this idea get support if I posted it on proposals?--Aspro (talk) 17:02, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * References should not be deleted, and never on the grounds that the link is dead. Add a inside the <ref ></ref> but outside any  (or similar) that might be present. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:51, 23 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Agree. Yet, WP has so many polices and guidelines that many editor are not aware of all of them all and just delete. Even then, leaves the reader without the verifiable source to  read. Jimmy Wales has had the foresight to provide the WMF with a little war-chest.  A expository of verifiable WP references may not cost a lot and would be well worth it. It would make WP not just an encyclopedia but the depository of human knowledge. Oh gosh, on re-reading that last part, it sounds far too grand and precocious – but I hope you see through to what I am getting at.--Aspro (talk) 20:33, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

C program running
I think Wikipedia should have a feature that only those administrators who are granted the ability to use can use, of typing in any algorithm they want to run on the entire Wikipedia site to detect properties of that site. I think the right type of research group, if its people were granted that ability could probably be very good at identifying problems in Wikipedia and researching how to fix them. For example, one thing they might be able to do is run a program that will detect which articles are written in a style where they don't look like they belong in Wikipedia. Another thing they might be able to do is detect when an article is too technical and if the information needed to explain it can be found elsewhere in Wikipedia, which articles have that explaining information. They might even be able to run a program that will tell based on all of Wikipedia's past experience of which articles passed good article nomination, whether another article would pass it or not, and another program that will for each person participating in a good article discussion seek out the relevant Wikipedia policies to teach them based on what they said in the discussion and how the rest of the discussion before that went. Blackbombchu (talk) 02:58, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestion. This is pretty much already available in the form of database dumps. Interested users can download copies of the database that they can do whatever they want to, including running queries on them. There are several advantages to doing it this way, such as allowing users maximum flexibility in what users do with the data and how they do it, improved security from not letting users run arbitrary code on the site, and improved performance by not having people slowing down the database access by running performance intensive queries. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 03:11, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * And there's Tool Labs. Graham 87 08:20, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I would think that for many of the good suggestions, the problem is not access to the data (as pointed out, we have dumps, or bots for less intensive work). But the problems are nearly AI-hard. I think we (as in the scientific/academic community) might be able to do some of them, but not with great reliability, and not without significant research. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:12, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

"Watching" article does´t work
Since I by now have 4000+ articles “watched", I have my preferences  “ticked” for “Hide bot edits from the watchlist”. However, this means that I do not see the changes done *before* a bot edited, either!  Take a look at , and “watch” some of the latest articles it edited, and you will see what I mean.

This is not good; a vandal could e.g. insert some vandalism, then write   knowing that a bot would be along very soon to add    …and none of the people “watching” that article would note it (if they have  “ticked” for “Hide bot edits from the watchlist”.)

I noticed the problem on Beit Hanina: I could not see that an IP had removed substantial material, as AnomieBOT had come along with "Rescuing orphaned refs."

Is this something the developers are aware of? Can they please change it, so we will see the edits done *before* the bot-edit? Also, either I have just been very slow, or this is a “new” feature. At least: I have never noticed it before, and I have had the ignore “bot edits from the watchlist” option for years.

Btw, I´m using the latest Safari-version, and I have adblocks installed (I´m not sure if this is relevant, or not), Huldra (talk) 08:37, 24 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This is phab:T11790, first logged in 2007. The "Hide" options only work properly when using the "expanded watchlist" - "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" on the "Watchlist" tab in the preferences. Presumably if this could be fixed easily it would have been done by now. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for your reply. I find this situation pretty horrible; I tried "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent", but if you keep much-used pages "watched", (like Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents) it makes the "watch-list" an unmanageable clutter. I have ended up "watching" bot-edits instead. A very unsatisfactory solution. But since I "watch" a *lot* of articles on Palestinian history, with few other "watchers", articles which are often the object of vandalism: I have to. That WMF haven´t been able to fix this since 2007 is, IMO, quite unbelievable. Huldra (talk) 09:24, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree it's unfortunate. I documented the behaviour in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Watchlist&diff=634317552&oldid=634263545]. It's also mentioned at mw:Help:Watching pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:38, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * "That WMF haven´t been able to fix this since 2007 is, IMO, quite unbelievable." You must not be paying attention to the WMF. It's actually quite predictable, not unbelievable. - 2001:558:1400:10:9060:C8F1:6CE5:698F (talk) 14:29, 24 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I have commented on this problem before, that there is a .js script that fixes this but I can't remember by whom. Maybe as in the previous case someone will be able to help. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:25, 24 September 2015 (UTC).


 * Aaaaargh! Huldra (talk) 21:29, 24 September 2015 (UTC) (tearing her hair out in frustration...) (PS: if they don´t fix the bug, at least they should give a warning on "preferences"? Now, there is nothing to warn editors against unwanted side-effects when enabling "Hide bot edits from the watch list")
 * Have you tried the enhanced watchlist? - File:Enhanced recent changes expanding screencast.ogv. Enable "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent” in Special:Preferences first and then enable "Group changes by page in recent changes and watch list” in Special:Preferences.  - 185.108.128.22 (talk) 21:41, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that was an interesting alternative; I will try it… Huldra (talk) 22:52, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

"Move succeeded" links
Not sure if this is part of an obscure template somewhere, or a MediaWiki bug, but I've noticed a few times that after moving an article, the success message I get is:


 * ✅ The page "Old example" (links | edit) has been moved to "New example" (edit | history | links | revert | log)

That last link always seems to be to Special:Log/move, a log of all page moves across the project. Should it be (or would it make more sense to be) a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=New+example, the public log for the new name I've just given the article? I occasionally click it to check that I haven't just moved an article to a page with a long history of deletions, and it never does what I expect it to. --McGeddon (talk) 11:02, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * To whit, the page that controls the URL is MediaWiki:Movepage-moved.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:06, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The log link was added in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Movepage-moved&diff=197315392&oldid=190379673] on request at MediaWiki talk:Movepage-moved. I think a general log link makes sense since it will show all performed moves of talk pages and subpages (only admins can include subpages in a move). You can suggest a change or an addition of a new link at MediaWiki talk:Movepage-moved. Or maybe the layout should just be changed so it doesn't give the impression that "log" only applies to the target title. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:27, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Whilst on that matter, in the watchlist and recent changes, a loggable action has e.g. "(Move log)"; "(Deletion log)"; "(User creation log)"; etc. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:38, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've raised it over at the interface talk page. --McGeddon (talk) 16:20, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

"Bad title" message; can't F8 files
When I tried to F8 File:'Meme' By Mark Lloyd.jpg and File:'Daisy Daisy' by Mark Lloyd.jpg, I got the error message 'The requested page title contains invalid characters: "%27"'. Does it have to do with the apostrophes in the titles? Do the files have to be moved (losing the apostrophes) before they can be deleted? All the best,  Mini  apolis  13:41, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * How does the URL look in your browser address bar? Browsers sometimes mangle such special characters.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:50, 24 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Weird; I tried to duplicate your problem, and the deletion went through seamlessly. I would offer to temporarily undelete to figure out what was going on, but I assume anyone who could actually help you has the tools to do so themselves. --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:55, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Floq; I saw your deletions and was glad they went through. I just deleted another file from the queue, so apparently it was a hiccup :-). All the best,  Mini  apolis  17:03, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Less than one week left for Individual Engagement Grant proposals!
There is less than one week left to submit Individual Engagement Grant (IEG) proposals before the September 29th deadline. If you have ideas for new tools, community-building processes, and other experimental projects that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers, start your proposal today! Please encourage others who have great ideas to apply as well. Support is available if you want help turning your idea into a grant request. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Submit a grant request
 * Get help with your proposal in IdeaLab
 * Learn from examples of completed Individual Engagement Grants

Version 1.0 Electorial Team
In subpages of Version 1.0 Editorial Team, links to pages in the draft namespace begin with a colon. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:48, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Incorrect appearance of badtitletext
I just now looked at a section higher up on this page and clicked the link to, a diff for a now-deleted page, but instead of getting the ordinary message about "you have followed a link to a page that does not exist in the database", I was presented with MediaWiki:Badtitletext. Same thing with. Any idea what happened? It's not a case of someone accidentally including an illegal character in the URLs; in both cases, when I strip out everything after the title (i.e. &curid= and everything following), I'm presented with a normal this-doesn't-exist page, complete with the deletion log entry and (since I'm an admin) a link to view or restore the deleted edits. Nyttend (talk) 10:19, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Diffs like that don't work for deleted pages because, as I understand it, once a page is deleted each revision stops being 'known' by its revision ID and is instead known by its timestamp. For example, here is a diff from the deleted page that works. Jenks24 (talk) 11:00, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * The diff isn't supposed to work but the error message should be different. It appears to happen when curid (a unique page ID seen on "Page information" in the left pane) is used with the old page ID of a deleted page. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ghazanfar_Ali_Abbasi&diff=681046280 with no curid in the url works (in the sense of saying the page may have been deleted), but https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Waz&curid=47816432 fails (in the sense of giving a confusing message). If the page name is replaced by an existing page then it still fails when curid is for a deleted page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Example&curid=47816432. curid works when the ID of an existing page is used: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Example&curid=1646233. I don't know whether it's a new issue. A page name and not a curid is usually in url's so it may have gone undetected but Largoplazo posted url's with both page name and curid in . I don't know where Largoplazo got the url's but they worked at the time when the page existed. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:06, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * A large curid which has never been used also produces the confusing error message: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Example&curid=99999999. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:17, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The confusing error message on https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Waz&curid=47816432 is made with MediaWiki:Badtitletext which has been customized at the English Wikipedia and could add mention of this possibility if it's a feature and not a bug that the message is used on non-existing curid. The default message MediaWiki:Badtitletext/qqx is maybe less confusing but still unhelpful. The more helpful message on https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ghazanfar_Ali_Abbasi&diff=681046280 is MediaWiki:Difference-missing-revision which has not been customized so we see the MediaWiki default. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:27, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * There is a relevant protected edit request at MediaWiki_talk:Badtitletext &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:15, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

One month later, still can't see navboxes
Referring to this, I tried to help someone on the Help Desk and what he/she needed help with disappeared. I saw V-T-E with a navbox, and then I didn't. And I went to Temporary test page and the navbox there appeared and then disappeared.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  20:54, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Please try completely clearing your browser's cache one more time, and tell me if that works. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Nothing has changed. I can't see tags saying articles need improvement either. Whether there's another step to "completely" clear the cache I don't know, but I followed the directions in the Wikipedia space directions. CTRL and F5, and I cleared my history too.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  18:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Other discussion

 * I have completely cleared my cache in IE9 on Windows Vista, and I still don't see navboxes in mainspace, for example https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Temporary_test_page&redirect=no where the navbox is only visible a fraction of a second when the page is reloaded. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:04, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Can you see it if you go incognito? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:08, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It's called InPrivate-browsing in IE. It makes no difference. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:13, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Nor does logged-out status. T108727 had been closed 10 September, I just changed that.LeadSongDog come howl!  17:33, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

The change I made wouldn't have affected you, so clearing your cache wouldn't do anything. At this stage I'm not convinced that you and Vchimpanzee are experiencing the same issue, because that CSS that was in Vchimpanzee's subpage would definitely remove navboxes. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:29, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * is not used in navigation templates. It's only used in WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk/header for a floating box at the bottom left of WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk. It has been used similarly on Help desk in the past but was removed there.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk/Header&diff=663402854&oldid=653727185] PrimeHunter (talk) 19:20, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * win7_ie_9.0 and win7_ie_11.0 PrimeHunter has outlined the exact issue at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Temporary_test_page&redirect=no. I'm assuming the navboxes will display properly on Win7/Vista IE9 if the related css classes are temporarily removed from MediaWiki:Print.css, but the underlying issue at T108727 needs to be fixed. - 185.108.128.10 (talk) 19:45, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Well then, you all know far more about this than I do. I guess I'll leave you all to it. Good luck. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:48, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Unused data parameter
Hi! What is the unused_data= parameter (used in cite book) in the article Ship transport and cite web in the article Light pollution) ? Why does it exist? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 01:02, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * One reason (maybe all) is that that Citation bot 1 used to handle arguments that did not have a parameter set. A  finds a little over 200 instances in the encyclopaedia. Most of them are empty and can be safely deleted. The non-empty ones could be investigated to see if the arguments are useful and can be salvaged. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:23, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This common parameter was added by a bot that cleaned up "unnamed parameters" before these CS1 errors existed. You have to look at the data to determine if it should be removed or if a parameter name should be added to it. The parameter is written by a bot to "park" a lone data-value that misses a parameter. - From Category talk:Pages with citations using unsupported parameters and Template talk:Cite doi/Archive 1. - 185.108.128.5 (talk) 05:26, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you both! I am running the Database Scanner to find em all. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 05:49, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

New style notifications
Now that the new style notifications are back Notifications is left looking inaccurate and outdated. Bazj (talk) 08:26, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

File renaming
In a recent MediaWiki update the move interface was slightly changed. However, it seems to have broken rename media. Previously, clicking on the "perform this move" link in that template would prefill both the new filename and the reason given (if provided). However now only the filename seems to get filled in. BethNaught (talk) 08:48, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, wpReason is now ignored in moves, both for files and other pages. File example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Movepage/File:Turn.jpg?wpNewTitle=File%3ATurn+%28Travis+song%29.jpg&wpReason=More+suitable+name. I assume this is a bug in the move feature. wpReason still works in deletion url's. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:52, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Also mentioned in a comment at T86865, but after it was closed. It hasn't been reopened. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:00, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * T113718 tracks the bug. --202.153.86.194 (talk) 11:55, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry folks, I indeed accidentally broke 'Reason' field prefilling with this patch, and I've only noticed the comments about it today. It's now being handled at the Phabricator task, we'll try to get the fix deployed today (if possible; it's Friday and Friday deployments are generally frowned upon) or on Monday. Please watch the task for updates. Matma Rex talk 12:59, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The issue should be fixed now, Krenair deployed the patch. Matma Rex talk 14:38, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems to work now. (If you try clicking on one of the 'move' links at WP:RMTR it now fills out all the fields in the form correctly, including the Reason field). The file example given above by User:PrimeHunter also expands correctly. The relevant code change must be this one to SpecialMovepage.php. Thanks to everyone. EdJohnston (talk) 15:55, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Move protection
Yesterday, I move protected the Great Western Railway (train operating company) article. It later became apparent that move protecting the article did not move protect the talk page, which I later move protected too.

Is there any technical reason that move protecting both article and talk page cannot be implemented by the action of move protecting the article? If this is possible, can it be introduced please? Mjroots (talk) 06:44, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * They are distinct pages, and have distinct prot settings. To tie them would mean a change to MediaWiki software, and thus a feature request at . -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:47, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * We could have a bot that looks for such pages and move-protects the talk pages. Is there any reason why such a talk page should not be move protected? --Guy Macon (talk) 12:13, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It might be OK if automatic move protection was part of the software but let's not make a bot run around and add to protection logs unless unwanted talk page moves are a common problem. If move protection is removed from an article then the talk page might keep the protection until a bot catches up. Moves have been used to archive talk pages. It's still possible but generally not done. See Help:Archiving a talk page/Other procedures. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:41, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Leaving a talk page non-move protected meant that an editor who objected to the article being moved was able to move the talk page back to its original title (but not the article). This left us with the situation of article and its talk page being housed at different titles. A bit confusing at best and highly disruptive in any case. Said editor threw a major hissy fit yesterday, moved a lot of talk pages and got himself indeffed. Would be nice if we could avoid this situation occurring again. If it means that Admins have to remember to move protect talk pages when they move protect articles, so be it. Mjroots (talk) 13:04, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There could be at least note, that talk page won't be move protected. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 16:27, 21 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Anyone who,would deliberately do that is editing disruptively. It seems far more likely to me that they are the problem, not the software. Any admin can move that back for you, and warn or block that user as needed.  Beeblebrox (talk) 22:43, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Search
The Multimedia, Everything, and Advanced links when searching appear blue even when they were already visited. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 03:41, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Are you using Chrome? In Chrome they stay blue, but in the latest Firefox and in IE9 they turn purple after you've visited them. It probably has something to do with the a:visited pseudoclass in Chrome. I never see the color of links change after I've visited them in Chrome; even when the website explicitly tells the browser to change the color. Do you have the same problem with all the other links on all other websites? There are many possible fixes, for example you can put the following line in your Wikipedia stylesheet or your Chrome User StyleSheet (Custom.css).
 * Or you can try using an extension like Change Colors or Stylist. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 05:48, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I use Internet Explorer 11. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 20:07, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I do not. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 21:14, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I do not. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 21:14, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist loading slowly
Hi, For the past 4-5 months or so my watchlist has taken a bit longer to load and when it eventually does load the page then jumps and it pretty much causes shit like this, The accidental rollback isn't the first time it's happened and because I've always been used to it loading instantly it's hard to remember to wait,

I haven't cleared my browser since April (or longer!) but pages load fine on other sites as far as I know so I'm not entirely sure if it's my browser/laptop or this place, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 04:00, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you use the simple or the expanded/enhanced watchlist? If you do use the expanded watchlist, you could try limiting the maximum number of changes in your watchlist in Special:Preferences and see if there is any difference in loading speeds. I wasn’t able to replicate any loading issues using the scripts in your common.js/vector.js. Which browser version, OS and skin do you use? - 185.108.128.5 (talk) 04:30, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The page jumps could be due to Watchlist notices appearing and disappearing. You could use User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/ConfirmRollback to hide rollback links from the watchlist. - 185.108.128.5 (talk) 04:41, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * , If you mean the "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" option then nope, My watchlist is set to 3 days and max number of changes is 250, Thinking about it I don't actually know why I have 3 days anyway!,
 * I use Chrome 45.0.2454.99, Windows 8 and Vector :), Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 05:49, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah no you're right it's those bloody watchlist notices, I'd completely forgot about them as I always tend to ignore them!, Thanks for not only your help but solving the 4-5 months of bloody misery, – Davey 2010 Talk 05:53, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The notices fall into two groups - from top to bottom they are geonotices and true watchlist notices, and they behave differently. True watchlist notices (such as the one beginning "New Wikipedia Library free research access:") are always displayed at page load, and towards the end of page rendering the associated cookie is acted upon, at which point the notice might disappear. By contrast, geonotices (which are in a larger font) are not displayed at page load, and towards the end of page rendering the associated cookie is acted upon, at which point the notice might appear. It is the disappearance of true watchlist notices which causes the watchlist to suddenly skip upward by a few lines; and the appearance of geonotices which causes the watchlist to suddenly skip downward by a few lines.
 * Therefore: never "[dismiss]" a true watchlist notice, and always "[Hide]" a geonotice as soon as you've read it; in this way, you can avoid the skipping up and down. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:21, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Well for better or for worse I've hid & dismissed them all, Thanks for your help :), – Davey 2010 Talk 14:57, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Can True watchlist notices be loaded in the same manner as geonotices to avoid the jumps? Is it something that can be easily done? - 185.108.128.6 (talk) 18:42, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know. Although I have added and removed both types of notice - several times a month for the geonotices - I don't know enough about the rest of it to know how it could be changed. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:18, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * As a more general point—unrelated to watchlist notices—I don't know the size of your watchlist, but there's a point at around 10,000 entries at which the load time increases dramatically. If your watchlist has accumulated years of assorted crud, you can generally make it speed up dramatically by opening Special:EditWatchlist/raw and thinking "do I really need to keep this user I warned about vandalism in 2007 and who hasn't edited Wikipedia since watchlisted?". &#8209; iridescent 11:56, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Edit summary search
The Edit summary search does not return results when the text to be searched contains a wikilink. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 18:42, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No; consider : a search for "exists at Amy" does not find it; nor does " exists at Red rose64 (talk) 09:14, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It also doesn't work when searching for the redirects and null edits from page moves with "Username moved page", but it does work when searching with "moved page". GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:29, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I found a minor typo that I've fixed. It addresses Redrose's problem but let me know if there's still anything wrong. Thanks. →<font color="#BA0000">Σ <font color="#036">σ <font color="#036">ς . (Sigma) 17:00, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * When does it go live? -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:41, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Rollback confirmation on mobile
I've just found out that I get a confirmation dialog when clicking on a rollback link in my watchlist when I'm editing on the desktop site from my iPhone. Can anyone tell me if the confirmation dialog also extends to other mobile devices, e.g. iPads or other tablets? Or even better, could someone point me to the code where the confirmation dialog is defined? I'm trying to find out if this edit to my ConfirmRollback script is correct. Until I made the edit, my iPhone was showing me two confirmation dialogs, one from MediaWiki and one from my script, but that edit is going to be a problem if it is going to allow rollback without confirmation from other mobile devices. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 12:38, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't comment on your coding, but I can confirm that the confirmation dialog for rollback does appear on my iPad. It is a recently-introduced default gadget, see User:MusikAnimal/confirmationRollback-mobile for documentation. BethNaught (talk) 12:48, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Aha, that makes sense. In that case, I'll reinstate the confirmation dialog in my script and just recommend that people who use it opt out of the default gadget. Thanks! — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 13:13, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Typo in drop-down list in preferences.
On the "Preferences" page, in the "User profile" tab, in the section "Internationalisation" there is a drop-down menu for selecting a language. A new French Canadian editor by the name of Natalie.Desautels has pointed out that the drop-down list entry for French Canadian says "frc français cadien" instead of "frc français canadien". Either if you are able to correct this, or if you can't do it but know who can, that would be very helpful. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 15:44, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The "frc" language is apparently Cajun French, not Canadian French, so "français cadien" is correct. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 16:06, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Aah! That explains it. I was surprised that such a glaring mistake should have lasted so long. Thanks, Mr. Stradivarius, for clarifying that. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 16:09, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you; that's very interesting. That would make perfect sense! Naturally it's still surprising to the see a choice for Cajun French listed in the drop down, with about 200,000 speakers, and not have Franch Canadian listed since it is the mother tongue of about 7.3 million Canadians. Natalie.Desautels (talk) 16:57, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Presumably Canadian French is similar enough to Standard French that it wasn't thought necessary to add a new language option to accommodate Canadian French speakers. Cajun French, on the other hand, seems to be quite different from Standard French. (Although that doesn't explain why we have English, Canadian English and British English.) Also, I assume that the translation of the MediaWiki interface to Cajun French was done as part of the bid to have a Cajun French Wikipedia, although it seems to have stalled. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 17:36, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a parser function which can decode language codes:  → ;   → . -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:20, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Search request is longer than the maximum allowed length
Many searches I use to find errors are now coming back with the message "An error has occurred while searching: Search request is longer than the maximum allowed length." Indicating that a search string can only be 300 characters long. Examples of such searches are at User:SchreiberBike/Workspace/Centuries1. The only reference to this I can find is at www.mail-archive.com/mediawiki.... What is the reason for this change? Is there a work around? Any other ideas? Thanks,  SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   04:59, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For reasons, see the corresponding Phabricator task. This change was also mentioned in Tech News. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 07:13, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response. I guess there is a good reason for it, and if a workaround would leave vulnerabilities to a denial-of-service attack I'm out of luck. This is a small thing Wikipedia wide, but it dramatically affects the wikignome work I do. I suspect this will similarly affect other people looking for typos etc. Any other ideas would be appreciated. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   19:04, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * To seek specific typos, use an "exact string" or "exact phrase" search. For a little more generality, use regex.
 * The queries on the link you provided appear to be removing pages containing a long list of non-words "spelled" correctly. That's a rare case that could be solved with offline processing.  Copy the search results pages of two queries, each half of the terms in the current length 500 or so character queries.  Then find the titles that are in both lists.  Those will have none of the correctly spelled non-words. &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  09:01, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, that would work. These errors are not that big a deal. If they can be found in a few seconds they are worth while, but if they take a few minutes I guess it's not how I will spend my time. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   06:58, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

more problems with mobile-view

 * Heading shortened from "more problems with mobile-view not rendering template-output the same as PC-view does". Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:56, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

There is a custom-chart-producing-template located at Abortion which gives a floating-bar chart, plus caption. In working through some text-wrapping difficulty, it was discovered that the same floating-bar chart is rendered very poorly in the mobile-view. See discussion of the wordwrapping issues (plus a screenshot-upload from an actual mobile device), at Talk:Abortion. Can somebody please look into how the Abortion methods, and perhaps the former use of Pseudo image, are non-functional? Also, is there a way to make one or both of those templates automagically insert nbsp chars into the floating-captions that are associated with the floating-bars, such that there is no unexpected-wordwrap-problem, in future? Thanks, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 21:03, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * User:Pigsonthewing, apologies for the over-long heading. Do you know anything about the problematic templates here, which are rendering "okay" in PC-view but poorly-to-the-point-of-illegibility in mobile-view?  Or where I should go, to figure out the problem?  I realize that pixel-perfection is not the goal of wikipedia, but some of the text is wrapping improperly and obscuring the chart-caption, at times.  Thanks, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 20:05, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You're in the right place, someone who can help should be along soon. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:45, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * How about now ? There was an error in pseudo image—Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:39, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Read only mode
Just for documentation, I just got a "read-only mode" error with a gold lock. However, my edit was saved.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  18:05, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Which page? - 185.108.128.6 (talk) 18:39, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * According to my contributions, Hawaii Five-0. It was a database error, not specific to that page.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:13, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Complete error messages and exact steps to reproduce are always welcome if this happens again. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It was probably due to some random DB slave lag spike. Those are being worked on in general.  Aar on Sc  hulz  06:01, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Search engine relevance
Something is still seriously wrong with the built-in search engine. Today I searched for "Upper Paleolithic Era" and the article Upper Paleolithic is not to be found on the first page of results (I would expect it to be at the top). This is but one of many bad search experiences I have had over the past months, which I usually band-aid with a redirect. Is there any ongoing effort to fix this? -- Beland (talk) 21:04, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Feedback at mw:Help_talk:CirrusSearch (Flow page, so you wont actually find anything with Ctrl+F in infinite scroll; and also comments in random order, not chronological)
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/cirrussearch/
 * https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-search/ HTH, --Atlasowa (talk) 21:18, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Note that all articles on the first page of results contain "Upper Paleolithic Era" as consecutive words. Upper Paleolithic only says "era" once in "the emergence of cooperative and coherent communication marked a new era of cultural development", far away from the nearest occurrence of "Upper Paleolithic". You could help our search engine by writing "Upper Paleolithic Era" once or making a redirect on Upper Paleolithic Era. Google often does better but they also have vastly more resources for search engine development. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:22, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Missing inter-language links
Why are there no inter-language links at Handbag? The article is linked in Q467505. Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 16:15, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Purging fixed it. --<b style="color:navy">Neil N </b> <i style="color:blue">talk to me</i> 16:19, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 16:20, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Individual Engagement Grants
Since they're telling me its a popularity contest. I am a programmer—not a writer or project manager, but I hope my reputation with creating tools (BTW, Dab solver and Dabfix are fully working again) will let you consider my grants. — Dispenser 17:31, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * m:Grants:IEG/Alt text tools - Something like Dab solver and WP:DPL to get more people working on alt text
 * m:Grants:IEG/Color blindness content checker - Like above, but research would be done into automatically detecting drawings that have problems for colorblindness.
 * m:Grants:IEG/Telnet - Only a half joke. Would be a modified Links.  Would be awesome if we could fast track in time to have it running on an Apple ][ for the 15 anniversary.

Links to sections on other pages not going to beginning of section
When following a link to a section on another page, I sometimes end up, not at the beginning of the linked section, but lower down on the page. I've been noticing this on links to sections of talk pages for a while now, I'm not sure if I've seen it with links to sections of article pages. Is this a known issue? (I'm using the latest version of Firefox on a Windows 7 desktop.) — Mudwater (Talk) 21:24, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Is this the same as Village pump (technical)/Archive 139, or maybe Village pump (technical)/Archive 139? -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:32, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it's different, because in that discussion they seem to be talking about links to sections via redirects. These are just regular links to talk page sections, without redirects.  And I can't find a pattern, sometimes a link goes to where it should and sometimes it doesn't.  — Mudwater (Talk) 21:40, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I ; did you check that one? -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:24, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, it does sound a lot like Village pump (technical)/Archive 139. That links to something called T110770.  What's that all about? — Mudwater (Talk) 22:53, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Phabricator is the issue tracker used by Wikimedia. See Phabricator for more information. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 06:40, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, so this is a known issue, and will presumably end up being fixed at some point. That's good.  Thanks. — Mudwater (Talk) 06:48, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If you allow the page to load (including the JS) and then you tell the browser to go to the same URL again (don't refresh, just click in the adressbar of your browser and press Enter) do you suddenly end up at the correct spot? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 03:39, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, that works, either some of the time or all of the time, I'm not sure which. — Mudwater (Talk) 10:27, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This is the kind of bug that is difficult to fix, but if you remember this trick then it won't bother you. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 10:37, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Thanks for the tip. — Mudwater (Talk) 12:35, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Custom script to obscure a link?
Following a wikiproject discussion that I supported, Infobox NRHP was recently edited so that a number in the  parameter is automatically linked to an external resource. It's wonderfully useful for virtually everyone, but not for me; I must be the only person who doesn't benefit. Is there a way to use my monobook.js (or any other custom scripting) to hide the link, making it look as if the change hadn't been made? See the Arnold Homestead article: I want to be able to highlight 77001077 without clicking it, i.e. have it be effectively 77001077 instead of 77001077. Nyttend (talk) 19:30, 25 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Try adding the following to your monobook.js:  - just a quick hack, gets the job done.- 185.108.128.5 (talk) 01:21, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not specific enough, 185.108.128.5: It catches the reference link too. Modifying that code to  solves the problem. {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 14:54, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It works, Nihiltres. Thanks!  Nyttend (talk) 11:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Problem adding new section to "Timeline of materials technology" talk page
Hi,

I tried to add a comment on the talk page of "Timeline of materials technology", but on saving, it doesn't show. I've tried several times, in some cases my text "crashed" into previous comments, so I always undid edits (see history). This last time, the text just doesn't show on the talk page, but does appear when I select the talk page "edit" tab. Not that my comment is urgent, just wondered if it is me (never had that problem before or after), the position of the planets, some error on just that one page, or a software bug.

T 88.89.219.147 (talk) 21:21, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed. The previous SineBot comment was not closed. This caused the entire rest of the page to be commented out. You should be all set now. --Stabila711 (talk) 21:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For the record, the error was made by an IP who had removed SineBot's comment closing  in 2009.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Timeline_of_materials_technology&diff=314435034&oldid=308962690] PrimeHunter (talk) 22:08, 26 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you.. T 88.89.219.147 (talk) 03:38, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

IMDB hack
When did this hack Iris Quinn get introduced?

This distinctly violates the WP:EL  and also flies in the face of the fact that IMDB is more and more considered not a good source, particularly for WP:BLP claims. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  02:55, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * TTRPoD is pointing out that an interwiki link encourages the following spam:
 * → Iris Quinn
 * I don't know how/when/why it was introduced, but it is mentioned at Help:Interwiki linking. Johnuniq (talk) 04:35, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * This is a terrible idea. I've used the database scanner and discovered that there are over 200 articles that contain " imdbname: ". I've checked about a dozen of them at random and they are low-quality external links in the body of the article (which isnt allowed per WP:EL). IMDb is not a reliable source, its all usergenerated content, and the links do not have the external link icon [[File:Icon External Link.png. The best solution is to remove this useless functionality and delete all the useless links. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 05:00, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I would definitely propose to not allow this on en.wiki per EL guidelines. A link to IMDB on a person's biography article as an EL is fine, but it should not be to used to link people that do not have pages anywhere else. --M ASEM (t) 05:23, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The functionality is put in place by MediaWiki software, and I can see its usefulness on non Wiki sites (such as at Commons) so disabling it can't happen. But we definitely should at this to WP:ELNO. --M ASEM (t) 05:39, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Do you mean "add"? It is already clear that links like these are unwanted. Disabling and removing this useless functionality can and should happen; it is the best solution for this problem. I cannot see its usefulness "on non Wiki sites (such as at Commons)". We have a couple of template with names like IMDb name, IMDb company and IMDb episode that are used to generate external links; we do not need The Quixotic Potato (talk) 05:49, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Are we sure it can't be changed? Is there nothing that can be done in MediaWiki-space to make these appear as external links? Someguy1221 (talk) 05:53, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Of course it can be changed. But removing it is better. There is no reason to have external links that use this syntax; we already have a set of templates that work fine and are less confusing. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 05:58, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It should be changed to display as external link in general, and be cleaned up on en-Wiki (per WP:EL). We should try to get both improvements - no need to choose only one. I agree, that most of such usages should be removed. GermanJoe (talk) 18:04, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * A search at WP:ELN (where I just mentioned this) shows a previous discussion in July 2013. Johnuniq (talk) 05:47, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * A more appropriate place for discussing the removal of this interwiki prefix is at m:Talk:Interwiki map. However, I don't think such a request is appropriate, since any such removal would apply Wikimedia-wide, and this interwiki prefix is heavily used on many other WMF wikis (see ). — This, that and the other (talk) 08:00, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The same reasons why we don't want this stuff here also apply on all other WMF wikis. We probably need a bot to remove all those useless links. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 08:56, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * No, not really. It's bad on en.wiki due to WP:V as well as MOS, but that is the bounds of the extent of those policies, they do not apply universally to all WMF sites. We can enforce its non usage here, but can't force it's removal. --M ASEM  (t) 09:27, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It is bad to use these links on other wiki's too. Give me an example where you think this would be useful, and I'll explain why it isn't. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 10:14, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * For example a category page that is about a person on commons, which has no V/RS policy. The link to Imdb.com help a user find more potentially free images.--M ASEM (t) 12:22, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * In that case we should use a template, so that the syntax is consistent and it has an external link icon. IMDb isn't a good source for potentially free images btw. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 16:32, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Look at for example Dirty_Grandpa, here is a part of the list of castmembers (references omitted):


 * Adam Pally
 * Jason Mantzoukas
 * Jake Picking


 * The link "Jake Picking" leads to an external website with usergenerated content. There is no indication that this link will lead to an external site unless you hover over it and check in the bottom-left corner of the browser. If he is notable then his name should be redlinked. If he isn't then his name shouldn't be linked. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 09:11, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

meta:Interwiki map includes four handy links; the count is the number of times each was used in an article in the April 2015 database dump. IMDbName       http://www.imdb.com/name/nm$1/           2064 IMDbTitle      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt$1/          1457 IMDbCompany    http://www.imdb.com/company/co$1/          39 IMDbCharacter  http://www.imdb.com/character/ch$1/        16 There was a single imdb link in the first revision of the interwiki map (May 2004) so it's been there essentially forever. Johnuniq (talk) 09:40, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Will people just please stop confusing WP:EL with WP:RS? Linking to IMDB in the External links section is perfectly fine to point readers to more information. But it may not be used as a source. Those two are very distinct uses. 09:51, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ehm, we aren't talking about external links in the External links section. Like I mentioned before, we got a couple of templates like IMDb name, IMDb company and IMDb episode that are used to generate external links. Those are fine. WP:EL says: "Wikipedia articles may include links to web pages outside Wikipedia (external links), but they should not normally be placed in the body of an article" (emphasis mine). In the example I gave above, Jake Picking, you see that these links are not in the External link section, but in the Cast-section of an article about a movie. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 10:06, 27 September 2015 (UTC)


 * IMDB is a very reliable website, I have worked on it for 9 years and honestly its still more reliable than wikipedia when it comes to major titles/names. I think the interwiki linking is good as its wikipedia's own policy to not include certain things to wiki articles which users can click the IMDb link to go and find easily...If we can allow the use of wikia links, IMDb isn't any different, the character and FAQ pages are actually run on a wiki software (swiki) especially in regards to wikipedia and an example would be character pages, some IMDb character pages are in more detail than those on wikipedia and have been updated as well, There is no need to remove the links as its very useful in building the encyclopedia....-- Stemoc 10:01, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Don't be silly, IMDb is a mess. We do need to remove these spammy links, and there is consensus that they are not welcome here. It's even worse than I imagined, people are using Wikia links as references (e.g. in the article Ennio Morricone) and its impossible to see that they are external links. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 10:06, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The default color of interwiki links is light blue versus blue for internal wikilinks but many people may not notice it. See Help:Link color and note you can change the color for your account if you want the difference to be more visible. The system of making links to selected non-Wikimedia sites with interwiki prefixes is at least 11 years old, it includes hundreds of websites at meta:Interwiki map, and it's used in all Wikimedia wikis. One of the advantages is that if a site changes domain or url structure then it only needs one correction to fix all uses in all wikis. I think Wikimedia's collection of interwiki prefixes is also used by many other MediaWiki installations, maybe it's default.  was added in 2005  and is used at least 58000 times in Wikimedia wikis. An old correctly working widely used interwiki prefix should not be removed to break huge numbers of links without an exceptionally good reason. Uncertain reliability or sometimes inappropriate placement per English Wikipedia standards is certainly not a sufficient reason. If it was then we should also remove interwiki prefixes to Wikimedia wikis. Inappropriate uses can just be removed like normal external links. By the way, we also have a feature to omit the external link icon in normal external links. See Help:Link. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The light-blue v.s. blue thing is impossible to see, we need to use the external link icon [[File:Icon External Link.png]]. For WMF-related sites we don't have to use the external link icon, I don't care about those, but for all others we do have to use it. Part of the problem is that in those 11 years many shitty non-Wikimedia websites have been added to that list (it looks like any admin can add any site without seeking consensus first), which has resulted in a mess. The advantage you mention is not an advantage over using templates; which is the preferred way. If you look at this then you'll notice that no-one has bothered to update certain items on that list, for example tibia.wikia.org should be tibia.wikia.com. The interwiki prefix isn't working correctly (it doesn't have the CSS class "external" for non-WMF wikis). The feature to omit the external link icon is irrelevant, and probably not very popular. We were talking about the IMDb stuff, not all interwiki links in general, and it is clear that we can use them as external links but that we do not want them in references or in the body of an article. Like I mentioned before, we got a couple of templates like IMDb name, IMDb company and IMDb episode that are used to generate external links. When I am less busy I should write some software to remove the useless IMDb interwikilinks en masse. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 11:16, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

There's a great wikia example here: For a comprehensive list of Kermit parodies, see the Muppet Mentions category on Muppet Wiki. Lavish use of imdbtitle is illustrated here. Johnuniq (talk) 11:48, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I found 259 Wikia links in en.wiki mainspace, I have not checked all of them but most of the ones I have checked should be removed. The rest should get the external link icon. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 11:59, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed they should. Linking to them via the interwiki map instead of an external link means they do not have the "nofollow" attribute that external links from Wikipedia have by default. This kind of preferential treatment for Wikia (or IMDB) over other external links should be avoided. (In an ideal world, we would not use the "nofollow" attribute, but we do not have the manpower to fight all of the "SEO" links that would probably take over Wikipedia). —Kusma (t·c) 20:33, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Should we introduce an edit filter to stop wikiasite: and imdbname: being added? It could issue a warning, just log entries for others to clean up, totally prevent it, or perhaps allow only a subgroup to use it such as template editors. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:01, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Deleted pages
Deleted pages do not show the "This page has been deleted" notice when logged out. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 17:58, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have just tried looking at ten recently deleted pages while logged out. Four of them did show a deletion notice, and six didn't. I then tried the same ten pages logged in, and they all showed deletion notices. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 20:14, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Are these recently deleted pages? May be related to the same reason logged-in and -out editors sometimes see different revisions of an article - the caches are held on different servers. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Help desk might be related. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

BitGo
No patrol link appears on Talk:BitGo, even though the page has been recently created, is not a redirect from a moved page, and Draft talk:BitGo (the original title before a page move) has an empty patrol log. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 14:45, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-40
<section begin="technews-2015-W40"/> 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
 * In UploadWizard, the dialog to see an image preview has been removed. You already see the images in the thumbnails when you upload them.
 * UploadWizard dialogs look a bit different now. They have been updated to the new OOUI look.
 * You can now edit music scores in VisualEditor. You can add new sheet music scores and get live updates when you edit one.
 * When you send an e-mail to another editor using Special:EmailUser, that user will now get a notification on the wiki as well.
 * You can now see 500 images when you upload images from Flickr with UploadWizard. Before this change the limit was 50.
 * The Wikimedia mailing lists have been upgraded.
 * MediaWiki developers spent a day looking at proposed code changes in Gerrit. The goal was to clean up the backlog and give feedback to volunteer developers.

Problems
 * Some visitors had problems reaching the Wikimedia sites for an hour on September 24.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from September 29. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from September 30. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 1 (calendar).
 * There will be a new beta feature that allows editors to use Flow on their user talkpage if they want to. Each wiki can decide if they want to enable it.
 * The Content Translation tool can give translation suggestions. This feature will now be available in more languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Italian, and Catalan.

Meetings
 * You can join the strategy process of the Reading department of Wikimedia Engineering.
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 September at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Wikimedia Foundation developers want the community to decide who can use OAuth in the future. You can discuss it on Meta.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W40"/> 15:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

The double badges (alerts & messages) have reappeared but they aren't working for me
I don't think the double badges (Your alerts & Your messages) are working for me. I was pinged on talk:double negative but neither alerts nor messages bumped up their counters. The content of the popups for Your alerts & Your messages hasn't updated from a month ago, either. Is there a way to disable them until they are ready for primetime? Or better, go back to the previous look? --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 16:17, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ...or at least make them not so incredibly ugly? Is there perhaps a css tweak or something that can be used to change that ghastly black/grey/white combo to something more palatable?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 28, 2015 ; 16:50 (UTC)


 * You can add something like I have, at User:JohnBlackburne/common.css. I was just trying out things so do not especially recommend the colour scheme but that’s how to modify the colours.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 18:20, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this looks promising. I can certainly tweak the colors; I just wasn't sure where it could be done. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); September 28, 2015 ; 18:39 (UTC)
 * The edit [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Double_negative&diff=prev&oldid=683139390] didn't have a valid signature with a user page link so it isn't supposed to cause a notification per mw:Manual:Echo. Did you get a notification about my post here? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:20, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, the badge turned red. --Ancheta Wis   (talk  &#124; contribs) 22:44, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Good, and I see User talk:Ancheta Wis had not been edited in a month before a test I just made so I assume all is in order. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Reimagining WMF grants report
Last month, we asked for community feedback on a proposal to change the structure of WMF grant programs. Thanks to the 200+ people who participated!  A report on what we learned and changed based on this consultation is now available.

Come read about the findings and next steps as WMF’s Community Resources team begins to implement changes based on your feedback. Your questions and comments are welcome on the outcomes discussion page.

Take care, I JethroBT (WMF) 17:02, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Big problem with WPMILHIST Infobox style
Fellow editors. I am B. Jankuloski, bureaucrat at mk.wiki. The WPMILHIST Infobox style template on mk.wiki is creating problems, in the form of aligning heading text/flags/coats of arms etc. in infoboxes to the left (example). This is affecting a huge number of pages and we have done everything to follow the en.wiki in the code, but there is obviously some other style page that we are unaware of, that needs modification. Can anyone help? --B. Jankuloski (talk) 17:21, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The <tt>align</tt> attribute is not supported in HTML5. You should use   instead. nyuszika7h (talk) 17:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The element, which you ironically just used yourself, isn't either. (See WP:HTML5 for all obsolete elements and attributes.)
 * Regarding the original question:, despite being obsolete and needing to be changed anyway, still works in most browsers and shouldn't be the culprit. The headers and images are centered if the classes of the infobox  are removed, which indicates something in mkWP's site-wide stylesheets forces the parts of the infobox to be left-aligned. <span title="User:SiBr₄">SiBr4  (<span title="User talk:SiBr₄">talk ) 18:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed. It must be internal, but noone there knows what is wrong with the stylesheets or what stylesheets may be in question. Any advice? --B. Jankuloski (talk) 18:32, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * "The element, which you ironically just used yourself, isn't either." I'm aware of that. I only used it because I thought it looked better than in that case, and neither  nor  are appropriate there. nyuszika7h (talk) 18:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * As an an alternative to without the grey box, you could use Template:Mono, which internally uses a  with CSS for a monospaced font. <span title="User:SiBr₄">SiBr4  (<span title="User talk:SiBr₄">talk ) 19:41, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

mk:МедијаВики:Common.css contains the following rules: This is most likely what causes the left-alignment in infoboxes. No changes to the stylesheet are actually needed, however. Replacing the  attribute with   CSS within the infobox template does solve the issue, because inline CSS  has precedence over rules from stylesheets affecting the same element, whereas all CSS trumps HTML attributes. Removing the  rule from the stylesheet works too, of course. <span title="User:SiBr₄">SiBr4 (<span title="User talk:SiBr₄">talk ) 18:43, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * is a declaration, not a rule. The chunk of code preceded by the text "mk:МедијаВики:Common.css contains the following rules:" is a single rule. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:52, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

I tried various things mentioned above and they didn't seem to make a difference. I did, however, change part of the code relating to infoboxes in the Common.css, replacing it with the same as it stood on en.wiki and now the problem has been remedied. It seemed to be remedied for a moment, but it came back to its old problematic self quickly. Any ideas?

I would rather if someone of you was kind enough to personally intervene in the pages, perhaps copying the code and correcting it on the talk page, so that we may copy it straight away. That is, if isn't too inconvenient. Thank you very much for your exhaustive help! --B. Jankuloski (talk) 19:00, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry if I wasn't clear, but the  replacement is supposed to go into the   attribute, like this. I replaced the equally obsolete   as well. mk:Либек looks OK now. <span title="User:SiBr₄">SiBr4  (<span title="User talk:SiBr₄">talk ) 19:30, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Now they all work a treat. Thank you very much indeed! --B. Jankuloski (talk) 19:59, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Template people - need some help with proposed "Cite archive"
While working with professional archivists through GLAM and the Wikipedia Library, we heard from many that they are frustrated that Wikipedia lacks a citation template to cite archival holdings. While we prefer secondary sourcing for article content, there are situations where it is appropriate to cite an archive. Certainly, archives that hold significant resources on a topic can be placed in a "Further reading" or "Additional sources" section. Some articles even have "Archival sources" headings. This template would allow ease of use and consistency for providing an archival cite, and provide the reader with the info needed to find the item in the physical archive. Links to "finding aids" about the collection are often rich resources in themselves on a topic; this template gives a good place to link them.

We've been discussing the ideal fields and presentation for quite a while, and have achieved rough consensus on which fields should be represented (this is a difficult task - globally the archives world uses a variety of terminology and intellectual organization schemes. However, we've looked at how the professional orgs are tackling this problem, and used them for guidance). So, after all this, we don't actually have anyone involved who builds templates :P Looking for template experts to help, and, of course, general feedback on the idea.
 * Proposal page, with desired fields and sample markup/display
 * Discussion page
 * Best regards, The Interior  (Talk) 18:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Our citation templates are all based on the Lua module Module:Citation/CS1, which is maintained by User:Trappist the monk. I see Trappist is already aware of the discussion, so it seems you've already found your template editor. :) If you need any other help, though (or if Trappist would like a break), then you can of course ask here again. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 02:49, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Unlisted article
The search window does not recognize the article Ferdinand Ferber. Entering the string "Ferdinand Ferber" results in a search that lists the article first, but not articles linking to it. — Rgdboer (talk) 22:11, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed typo: missing "r" in "Ferdinand Ferber". --83.255.51.226 (talk) 07:20, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The search engine can list all pages containing the phrase "Ferdinand Ferber" in there visible text. It also offers the linksto operator.  Searching for both may be what you want:, or you can run the terms separately. &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  01:50, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Still no recognition in search window. Suspect wikitext error but don't see any in article. — Rgdboer (talk) 22:32, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Just tried it myself. Typing it into the search box lists just the article and the search link as expected. Selecting the second of those finds the articles mentioning him, again as expected. All working properly as far as I can see.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 22:41, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, problem gone now. — Thanks all — Rgdboer (talk) 03:05, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Template help
A new template has been created noredlink which shows a link to the article if it exists, and shows plaintext if the article doesn't exist. Unfortunately, it appears to be linking (as shown in Special:WhatLinksHere) to pages even when the plaintext is shown.

For example,, shows the plaintext "Jessica Pratt", as Jessica Pratt (cyclist) is a redlink. The issue is that in Special:WhatLinksHere/Jessica Pratt, that template creates a link to the Jessica Pratt disambiguation page (as you can see by this page on that list), even though no link is shown on the screen.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to keep the template doing what it is intended to, but to remove the link to the second parameter's page? Thanks in advance! -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 06:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * You are 'accessing' the link, even if you are only parsing it and not inserting it. Without that registering as a 'link' the database wouldn't know when to update pages that include your template. Think of 'Whatlinkshere' as 'what uses a reference to this page' instead of 'what pages draw a link to this page'. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok, that makes sense. Unfortunately, with the entries at Special:WhatLinksHere/Jessica Pratt, the bots that generate the lists of ambiguous links (used at WP:DPL) think that the links are ambiguous and need to be fixed, even though the links don't exist on the page. As far as I've seen, no other templates that exist currently do this (create an entry in WhatLinksHere that effectively can't be fixed). -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 07:49, 28 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I once documented the behaviour at Help:What links here: The parser function #ifexist: causes a listing in "What links here" among the normal links even though no link is produced. noredlink has to use #ifexist on the first parameter but it also uses it on the second parameter due to a strange undocumented feature of the template: If the second parameter is a non-existing page name then the parameter is ignored and the first parameter is displayed. shows J. Pratt. At the time of writing this renders as "Jessica Pratt (cyclist)" since J. Pratt is red. I think it should render as "J. Pratt".  is there any reason for this behaviour? I suggest   is replaced by   to test whether the parameter is assigned and not whether it's an existing page. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I have made the suggested change.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Noredlink&diff=prev&oldid=683447401] Pages saying will now be removed from Special:WhatLinksHere/Jessica Pratt when their link tables are updated (a null edit can force it right away). PrimeHunter (talk) 10:39, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:Notifications in Modern skin
Notifications in Modern skin have a couple of oddities Neither is any major deal but can they be fixed in css somewhere? Nthep (talk) 12:40, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * All links are in lower case
 * Hover over is white type on a white background.


 * Try this for lower case fix?  User:Nthep/modern.css - 185.108.128.8 (talk) 13:49, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Worked a treat. TYVM. Nthep (talk) 13:54, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * as a temporary fix? Not sure if it's the right way to do it, hopefully someone who knows css will come along and provide a better solution. Anyway, these need to be fixed at the mediawiki level. - 185.108.128.8 (talk) 14:14, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Translating/typofixing citation template parameters with AWB
AutoWikiBrowser states: "An edit that has no noticeable effect on the rendered page is generally considered an insignificant edit. If in doubt, or if other editors object to edits on the basis of this rule, seek consensus at an appropriate venue before making further edits."

I am "in doubt" so I came here to ask: what do you guys think about fixing these errors?

Is it OK to use AWB to change (for example): There are another 106 items on that list... I think that fixing these problems improves the encyclopaedia because someone who doesn't speak Italian/Spanish/French and is trying to make his first edit is going to be very confused. I didn't know that "apellido" means "last" in Spanish and Italian. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 23:17, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * "enlaceautor" to "author-link"
 * "fechaacceso" to "access-date"
 * "lire en ligne" to "url"
 * "ubicación" to "location"
 * "suscripción" to "subscription"
 * For parameters which are deprecated, I would suggest that it is absolutely okay to remove them through the use of AWB edits. Less am I sure for undeprecated parameters. --Izno (talk) 23:52, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Maybe it is better to use a bot like Monkbot to fix the deprecated ones, because Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters contains over 10.000 items. But the ones I have listed above aren't deprecated, but they also aren't undeprecated... they are unknown! Module:Citation/CS1/Suggestions is a list of suggested alternatives to use when an unknown parameter is encountered by a citation template. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 07:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC)


 * AWB has a lot of rules to replace template parameters, including translating some into English. Hopefully you're running general fixes and typo fixes at the same time to maximize the chance that your edit will have a noticeable effect on the rendered page.  If you use AWB to make lots of edits that could be perceived as violating the rules of use, be prepared for some editors to express their concern on your talk page.  GoingBatty (talk) 02:49, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I have left a message at Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Rename_template_parameters, would you be so kind to take a look? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 07:20, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * If, for example, enlaceautor is unrecognised by the citation template that is used in that context, and on some other Wikipedia it has the same effect as our author-link parameter, then replacing enlaceautor with author-link is not an WP:AWB violation. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:22, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! If the parameter is used then it shows the error "Unknown parameter |enlaceautor= ignored (|author= suggested)" but if it is empty then you don't see an error, so there is no "noticeable effect". The Quixotic Potato (talk) 09:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Removing whitespace from template unnamed parameters
Why isn't removing the newline for the "d" parameter-value in:



whereas is doing so for the "foo" parameter-value? Or whatever else am I doing inconsistently in order to have so much whitespace in the entries here:

DMacks (talk) 02:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I've [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:FormerAdmin_Table_Account&diff=683424872&oldid=683408496 edited] the template, and your example looks ok now. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:10, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks! DMacks (talk) 06:23, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Broken template
Various users are reporting issues with Template:Track listing and how it renders on Chrome. Any editors who can help are invited to comment at Template talk:Track listing. Thanks &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:22, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

How to implement error-tracking within a template that normally lives in a citation template's URL parameter?
I would like to implement, or help another editor implement, an error tracking category in BillboardID (and in BillboardChartNum). It appears that each of this template's subtemplates responds with "Illegal name entered" if the artist name that an editor types is not listed in the template, but there does not appear to be a tracking category associated with this error message. A recent improvement in error-detection in the CS1 citation templates is placing articles with these instances of the Billboard templates in, but that is a noisy category, so it's hard to work on just Billboard-related errors. To see an example of the error, see Alesso or search WP for "illegal name entered".

I have recently added error tracking to a number of age-related templates (see, e.g. Death date and age). This led to detection of many articles with undetected errors, and it serves as a good vandalism-detection tool. I would like to install similar tracking in BillboardID, but because it is normally used in the url parameter of a citation template, I don't think I can simply emit a category, because that category name will be contained within the rendered URL.

If I type "illegal name entered" (with the quotation marks) into WP's search box today, I get 318 articles displaying that phrase, all presumably generated by this template. My experience with WP's search has been that it only ever finds a subset of what I ask it to find, so there may be more articles with this error.

Any ideas? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you'll have to modify the master citation templates so that they don't break from the extra parsed category. Or put the errorchecking into the master templates.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:04, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

The visual editor’s preference will be moving tabs
(crossposting from WT:VE)

Hey all,

This is just a quick note to highlight that the location for the visual editor’s preference is about to move – from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences (as is currently the case on almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta” though).

This action will not change anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users will continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab will still be after the “Edit source” one.

We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case there are, please let us know at VisualEditor/Feedback as usual! This should be done in the next few days, and I’ll post a follow-up message then.

Best, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Search autosuggestions or typeahead are not reliable
It appears there are two issues with search autosuggestions or typeahead.
 * 1) It is not offering suggestions for redirects that people are likely interested in. It is particularly surprising that there are no suggestions at all within MOS:...
 * 2) It is offering suggestions for pages that do not exist and had never existed.

When doing this edit I wanted to make sure I was using the correct shortcut/abbreviation for the MOS disambiguation page. In the search box in the upper-right corner I typed MOS: and then the letters D-I-S-A slowly hoping to get a hint on the abbreviation I was seeking. I was surprised that from MOS: on out that there were no suggestions. I then tried WP:MOS: and there are many suggestions. I add "D-I-S" (forming Wikipedia:MOS:DIS) and was offered Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG and Wikipedia:MOS:DISAB. I thought, excellent, I wanted Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG, selected that and was surprised by a "Wikipedia does not have a project page with this exact name" notice.

I checked both Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG and Wikipedia:MOS:DISAB and neither of them had ever been deleted.

I went ahead and added a redirect at Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG as I figured that was a page people would use. A Google search for "MOS:DISAB" returns "No results found for site:en.wikipedia.org 'MOS:DISAB'." It's not clear why the search suggestions offered this phrase as it does not exist anywhere in the Google searchable content of Wikipedia. It turns out there is a MOS:DISAB shortcut which may explain why the search autosuggestions or typeahead thing offered Wikipedia:MOS:DISAMBIG though it also means that we may end up needing to add redirects under Wikipedia:MOS:... for all of the redirects that exist under MOS:...

, here's a heads up as I know you are interested in search related issues though I don't know if you want to document this behavior which is that MOS:... shortcuts are not available to the search lookahead and instead that they are available under WP:MOS:... but you then need to remove the leading Wikipedia: (or we add thousands of redirect pages). --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 19:54, 30 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for documenting this bug—now (via phabricator at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org). IMHO this deserves high priority.  We'll see how they triage this, then probably decide not to go ahead with temporary redirects.


 * It looks like the wp:ns titles, (like the pagenames that start with MOS: and H:), are indexed to the wrong namespace. As soon as the colon is typed, they can't be found in mainspace where they belong. It's most telling you found them in WP. I'm pretty sure this used to work properly. Any idea when it this stopped working? &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  19:24, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

How could I add an [edit] link after each returned search result?
I do a lot of cleanup of specific problems in the source of articles. Usually I do a search, click on each hit, and then click the edit link from the article. I'd like to skip going to the article itself and go straight to editting. Anybody know how I would go about adding an "[edit]" link after each search result to do this? Jason Quinn (talk) 16:42, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Try Tools/Navigation popups? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * This solution has the requested functionality but is sub-optimal. In general I find the nav-popup gadget gets in the way when I'm reading articles; so I don't really want it on all the time. Plus there it involves unnecessary time-lag and downloading. Been years since I tried it so I'm glad you mentioned it but there's hopefully better ways. (EDIT: I see there's now functionality to turn off the preview which is a better. But still not perfect.) Jason Quinn (talk) 17:39, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I though I would mention what I use :) Good luck and happy editing! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 1 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Use { {edit|fullpagename}}. Text process the Search results page. Select out the titles somehow, and embed into edit. &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  00:01, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think I remember that admins have a special setting in there profile that enables them to choose to have all the pages they visit be in edit mode. &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  00:14, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Jason Quinn: You can add to Special:Mypage/common.js. You can then style the link any way you want at Special:MyPage/common.css. Example: Nirmos (talk) 00:24, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Nirmos solution worked perfectly to give edit tabs behind every search result. I just clicked, cut, and paste as given, and walla.  &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  01:32, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This is brilliant. Thanks for this solution. I added a space before the left square bracket above as a style tweak. Having it jammed right up against the article name didn't look right to me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:00, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Jonesey95: That's what the CSS is for. If you want to do it with spaces, there is no need for the script to add an HTML class. Nirmos (talk) 03:03, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Even though this is a small amount of code, it's probably still best to put this kind of thing in a proper gadget to make maintenance easier. I've had a go at creating one at User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/SearchEditLink.js. This uses MediaWiki's  class, so it gets automatically styled. I tried to do the same with the   class as well, but the brackets don't seem to be styled correctly for some reason. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 05:20, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Your gadget seems to work too. I've seen no problems yet but I cannot really edit at the moment. I'll let you know if I see any trouble. Thanks too. Jason Quinn (talk) 06:48, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Mr. Stradivarius: I have tried your code and it works fine for me. It sounds like there is another rule overriding the rule you want. To pinpoint the problem, you can try to put your code on m:Special:MyPage/global.js and see if the problem persists on other projects. Nirmos (talk) 07:33, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Wow! This is exactly what I was envisioning. Thank you, Nirmos! Looks like other people find this useful too. Wikipedians are awesome. Jason Quinn (talk) 06:38, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Archives
The archives listed in Village pump (proposals) stop at the 125th archive. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:25, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Fixed.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&diff=683721789&oldid=683715014] I don't know whether there is a bot supposed to keep track of it or somebody always has to do it manually. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:36, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It's manual. I too, otherwise Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 51 (which is next to be created) wouldn't have been shown. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:13, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

XTools is dead again?
Earlier it seemed to only be WikiHistory, but right now it seems they're all down. As in, WikiHistory is giving me a 404 and even loading the 404 takes a while (example), while the main XTools page is not loading at all. also giving me a 404 error. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:34, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * There's currently a cronjob that restarts the services once daily, and I guess that's not often enough =P We had a continuous auto-restart script but it apparently was forking new jobs when there should just be one. I'll try to make this a priority and work with the labs folks to get it figured out. Best &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  04:39, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Robert Dale Owen
The presence of Template:Infobox book in this article has made its title italic. What can be done to bring the regular title back without removing the infobox?--The Traditionalist (talk) 13:29, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I have added . It's at top of the documentation at Template:Infobox book. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:33, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

I broke the Assume Good Faith option for myself

 * Moved from WP:RD/C since it hadn't received any responses. Maybe this is a better place for it anyway.

A few minutes ago, I was going through an editors contribs. I went to one and clicked on the Twinkle option to undo the edit and Assume Good Faith. I accidentally hit the "don't allow page to open additional windows" checkbox and hit enter. Now the AGF, and I assume other Twinkle functions, don't work. I just get an error saying that the action was aborted by the user. I've poked around in my browser settings but I don't see where I can re-allow this.

I'm using Win7 with Chrome.

Any help? Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 13:41, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Have you tried closing and reopening the tab? That should be enough. nyuszika7h (talk) 13:46, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I was editing from work and had a bunch of tabs open. I believe I had tried closing the tab but maybe not. Just now, I was able to close the whole browser (didn't want to lose too many open tabs) and tested on my own user page. That seems to have cleared it up. Thanks, Dismas |(talk) 13:53, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Jump up!
These words appear before every reference. I have IE9, Vista and Monobook.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  18:55, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It appears to be an accessibility label, and AFAICT IE9 doesn't properly support the CSS being used to hide it. Someone made a mistake… {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 19:18, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What is the fix?— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  20:09, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I would think that  in Special:MyPage/common.css should do it. I can't test, as I don't have IE9. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:00, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I can confirm that this happens on Vista in IE9 in Monobook and Cologne Blue (but I haven't seen it while using Vector and Modern) and that the CSS instruction written by Redrose64 fixes the problem. I think it should be added to MediaWiki:Monobook.css and MediaWiki:Cologneblue.css The Quixotic Potato (talk) 01:02, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If Vector and Modern are unaffected, common.css isn't really appropriate. Amended above. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:57, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not skin specific. It depends a bit on whether or not the article content is coming from cache. If you purge the page, the problem seems to be gone. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:24, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hm, you are correct, I did clear the browsercache, but I didn't purge. After purging a couple of times the Jump up! links have disappeared (in Monobook). Weird. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 10:54, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

I made the change but am not at home to test it.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  17:24, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It worked. Thank you.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  18:23, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

No collapsing headers on mobile
The headers on the mobile site no longer collapse once fully loaded. They worked fine yesterday, anybody else having this issue? Using a BlackBerry 9900, with the default browser. lavender |(formerly HMSSolent )| lambast 05:50, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * All I can say is that this happens to me intermittently on mobile browsers, and has since I started using mobile browsers. So nothing new to me. Clearing cache or perhaps just restarting browser may help. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:54, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, the collapsing headers are working now. I suppose that could be the result of an OOM error, although I've never really ran into that issue before. I've never ran into cache probs up until now, so will keep that in mind. lavender |(formerly HMSSolent )| lambast  06:54, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorting problems
Hello. I've recently noticed that tables that use for dates will no longer work, while those that use  seem to be working fine. Is there a reason for this? To illustrate my point, I've included examples below.

– Zntrip 17:24, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I just now saw the deprecation warning on . I suppose this that explains it. – Zntrip 17:29, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Plain dates will work fine there, should not be used unless really necessary, per the warning at the top of its documentation. nyuszika7h (talk) 12:51, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Contributions
Suppose that page A is a redirect to page B and has not been modified since it was created. If page B was moved to page A over redirect, then the creation of page A still appears when viewing its creator's contributions on mobile. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Missing stats dates
February 5 and September 3 continue to be missing at http://stats.grok.se/. Note that in Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_139, you can see I already mentioned this. I have left another note at User_talk:Henrik.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:23, 21 September 2015 (UTC) Other missing dates: GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 20:33, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Can someone look into this?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:46, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Now we are missing September 25 and 26 along with February 5 and September 3--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:28, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
 * January 31, 2008
 * February 28, 2008
 * March 1, 2008
 * March 3–4, 2008 #
 * June 1–2, 2008
 * July 1, 2008
 * July 13–31, 2008
 * October 20, 2008
 * October 21, 2008 #
 * September 23, 2009
 * September 25–27, 2009
 * October 14, 2009 #
 * October 15, 2009
 * October 16, 2009 #
 * November 15, 2009
 * November 22, 2009 #
 * January 23–24, 2010 #
 * February 8, 2010 #
 * June 26, 2010
 * June 28, 2010 #
 * July 5, 2010 #
 * July 7, 2010 #
 * July 8–9, 2010
 * July 10, 2010 #
 * September 2, 2011
 * October 20, 2011
 * December 24–25, 2011
 * April 30, 2012
 * July 23, 2013 #
 * January 6, 2014 #
 * August 28, 2014 #
 * , the underlyinbg data is missing on many of those dates. Can you restrict your list to dates where the data is available for all 24 hours. E.g., June 26, 2010 has data while June 28, 2010 is missing data for 8 of the 24 hours according to the data dumps.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:14, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * , Since you seem to be non-responsive. I struck your request. I believe almost all of these dates are for dates in which the data is incomplete.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:18, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems that the recent dates have been caught up, but February 5 and September 3 continue to be missing even though the underlying data is complete.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:18, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Looking more closely, several of these dates also have underlying data now. Maybe they have been restored. I will start running through this more closely, but of the first five dates above 3 of them had complete data. I have some time right now (I awoke in the middle of the night) and will look at these for a while.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 10:21, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * , I went through these and there are three types of dates. 1. Dates with complete data that has not been made available, 2. Dates with partial data that has not been made available, 3. Dates with no data that has not been made available. I have struck your list with an # signifying partial data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TonyTheTiger (talk • contribs) 11:13, 30 September 2015‎ (UTC)
 * , Also note that since this thread will archive in a few days, I have added the information to User_talk:Henrik.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:23, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Let me make this list easy for someone to take care of:


 * Complete datafiles in need of compiling:
 * January 31, 2008
 * February 28, 2008
 * March 1, 2008
 * June 1–2, 2008
 * July 1, 2008
 * July 13–31, 2008
 * October 20, 2008
 * November 15, 2009
 * June 26, 2010
 * September 2, 2011
 * October 20, 2011
 * April 30, 2012
 * February 5, 2015
 * September 3, 2015


 * Partially complete (between 1 and 23 hourly files have data) datafiles which should be considered for compiling:
 * March 3–4, 2008
 * October 21, 2008
 * October 14, 2009
 * October 16, 2009
 * November 22, 2009
 * January 23–24, 2010
 * February 8, 2010
 * June 28, 2010
 * July 5, 2010
 * July 7, 2010
 * July 10, 2010
 * July 23, 2013
 * January 6, 2014
 * August 28, 2014


 * dates without datafiles that can not currently be compiled:
 * September 23, 2009
 * September 25–27, 2009
 * October 15, 2009
 * July 8–9, 2010
 * December 24–25, 2011


 * Can anyone tell me if the database has been augmented recently or were these dates always available yet uncompiled?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:36, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I also noticed that the June/July 2008 omissions may have something to do with User_talk:Henrik.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:50, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

IP editing from invalid addresses
IP editing from certain IP addresses, such as 127.0.0.1 (loopback) and 192.168.n.n, 10.n.n.n (like 10.0.0.3 with edits in 2005), and part of, I think, 172.n.n.n (for intranets), and some IPv6 addresses, probably should be attributed to Internet IP addresses, i.e., addresses at the nodes where the above addresses connect. For example, 127.0.0.1 should not have reached your servers. (I don't know how to check an IP range as users or for contribution lists.) An attempt from one of these addresses should be viewed as an attempt to circumvent your protective systems until proven innocent (innocence due to a glitch for a loopback address was reported in VP(T)). Therefore, a filter should detect attempts to edit from certain IP addresses. and perhaps log the attempt for a technical geek to see later. Nick Levinson (talk) 01:08, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you have any recent examples (links) for edits from such IP addresses? --Malyacko (talk) 07:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The loopback address hasn't been used in over two years, though to my knowledge edits attributable to that address are usually the result of server glitches. That said, edit filters are not "free", and impose a small server resource cost on edits. For that reason, we generally would not make an edit filter unless we suspected such a filter would actually catch an existing problem. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:59, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

10.0.0.x 16 found 2012 10.0.0.8 41 found 2005 10.0.0.60, 217.135.250.237 2 found 2002 10.0.0.60, 217.135.230.12 1 found 2002 10.0.0.60, 217.135.223.116 4 found 2002 10.0.0.60, 217.135.220.165 1 found 2002 10.0.0.60, 217.134.222.177 3 found 2002 10.0.0.3 8 found 2005 10.0.0.24 5 found 2005 10.0.0.23 9 found 2005 10.0.0.22 1 found 2005 10.0.0.13 1 found 2005 10.0.0.11 35 found 2005 192.168.0.2 1 found 2002

172.0.0.14 3 found 2015

127.0.0.1 84 found 2013

24 found 2008 (not blocked)

Adresses like 10.0.0.60, 217.135.250.237 are bit weird... The Quixotic Potato (talk) 08:40, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Some of the cacheing/db stuff sits on 10.0.0/24 I suspect that is the reason (again glitches). Blocking these would probably result in valid edits being stopped.
 * The accounts that look like malformed IP addresses are probably just accounts. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:55, 5 October 2015 (UTC).

An idea regarding infoboxes
I assume most of us know about the Infobox Wars, so I won't bother going into a big explanation here. I will say that compromise on this issue is nearly impossible, because one side says "we need an infobox" and the other says "we don't need an infobox", so there is no middle ground. That got me thinking about a possible solution. What if we made collapsible infoboxes that could be placed underneath an image? That way those who want to see it can expand it, and those who don't want to see it can leave it collapsed. Does this sound doable? RO <sup style="color:blue;">(talk) 22:51, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Infoboxes could certainly be made collapsible for users with JavaScript. That's the technical part. This isn't the place to discuss whether to actually do it. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:05, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think this is an excellent idea. If it can save just one of the infobox wars then it will have been worthwhile. It just needs someone to code it. I might be interested in trying to do one if no one else does, although I'd probably have to think about how to do it. Already done it seems. <b style="font-family:'Segoe Script',cursive;"> --Jules (Mrjulesd)</b> 14:00, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * As I suspect you (RO) know perfectly well, collapsable infoboxes have been around and in use for years, but there are rarely circumstances where their use is appropriate; they cause serious WP:ACCESS issues, screw up hard-copy printouts, and cause subsequent images to jump around as their state changes; their main use is for the route descriptions on railway articles rather than as true infoboxes for precisely these reasons. The issue with infoboxes isn't generally whether they're collapsed or uncollapsed, it's whether summarising information in an infobox leads to oversimplification of complex information, and this proposal does nothing to address that issue. &#8209; iridescent 14:30, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I had no idea we had them. RO <sup style="color:blue;">(talk)  15:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No I think the real reason is that people dislike the aesthetics, finding them unattractive. After all, the content in an infobox shouldn't affect what is in the rest of the article one bit: it is merely a summary of some of the points from an article. Or it at least it shouldn't, and doesn't seem to be the case in any articles I've seen.


 * Looking at WP:ACCESS and what do I see: two collapsible boxes! And from a look at the talk page of Frank Sinatra it seems to headed off one potential war. <b style="font-family:'Segoe Script',cursive;"> --Jules (Mrjulesd)</b> 15:08, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That's exactly the article I was thinking about? Didn't realize they already put in a collapsible one! RO <sup style="color:blue;">(talk)  15:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * One pf the perennial issues. Collapsing infoboxes (or better not) has been discussed at length. It came up again on Frank Sinatra, but I prefer them open as in Gary Cooper. See also Joseph (opera) with a collapsed navbox compared to the infobox on the talk. - In the opera navboxes, it took me months if not years to understand that you need to click on [show] in order to get to the information, and I am only German: think of people from more exotic languages who come to the English Wikipedia because not even Sinatra is covered in their language. Collapsing also doesn't work on mobiles. - An infobox under an image has been discussed (and rejected) on Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her. - Reminds me to make the discussion about collapsed boxes available on WP:QAIPOST. Btw, I think the infobox war is a myth, and simple respect for the other person's view and work is all technical help required. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:41, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It would seem "expand" and "collapse" would be clearer than "show" and "hide" Thisisnotatest (talk) 06:44, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Editors sometimes have a problem with the aesthetics of an infobox, often it seems in biographies. If any editor doesn't want to see the infobox, but just wants to see the picture, you can easily add the following lines to your common.css (available via Preferences -> Appearance): You can omit the  on each line to suppress all infoboxes (this doesn't work so well as some infoboxes don't have a picture in the second row). Purists who only like text can omit the second and third lines completely, if you don't want to see the picture either (the Lady Whiteadder option). --RexxS (talk) 22:20, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Unable to revert multiple revisions
When I'm on an article's history page and select multiple revisions to compare, I do not get the "[restore this version]" link. I've tried multiple browsers. What's strange is I do get the link on user pages, user talk pages and article talk pages. Bgwhite (talk) 01:39, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * For the record, the "[restore this version]" link is made with JavaScript when Twinkle is enabled at Special:Preferences. It's documented at Twinkle/doc. I still have it in article histories. What is your skin? Do you have the link in MonoBook like here? It should be in all skins but I guess you use Vector and wonder whether something in your vector.js or vector.css is interfering so I ask about MonoBook. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:01, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I have vector. I haven't changed my .js or .css files in awhile.  I wiped both files clean and still could not get the "[restore this version]" link. Bgwhite (talk) 04:10, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess twinkle is having bigger issues. See below  at Twinkle and Page Curation failing to load. Bgwhite (talk) 04:54, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If the "TW" Twinkle tab is missing on the affected pages then it certainly sounds like the issue below. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I spoke to a user on IRC yesterday who was having the same issue of not seeing Twinkle at all despite seeming to have it installed fine. Sam Walton (talk) 10:56, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Issue is related to the one below. Problem is Content Translator.  If one has it installed via the beta menu, twinkle will not load.  For the moment, uninstalling Content Translator gets things working again.  Bgwhite (talk) 20:58, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Twinkle and Page Curation failing to load on certain pages
Twinkle and Page Curation are not loading on certain pages. It appears that this is only happening on new pages, but I'm not quite sure if that's the pattern. My talk page is working fine, and Category:Articles needing additional references from June 2006 works fine, but neither Baphomet (band) nor Soulless Child nor other new pages load Twinkle or Page Curation. Firefox 41, Vector skin, Mac 10.10.5. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 04:17, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Having the same problem. It seems to work if you look at the article's history page, but not on the article itself. Seems to be the problem for all articles, not just newly-created ones. Currently using Google Chrome 45.0.2454.101 m, Windows 8. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:22, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing this is the same issue was talking about on my talk page... I'm not seeing it. Twinkle is working fine for me. Would you mind reviewing WP:JSERROR and writing back here with the errors you are seeing? (Step #6) &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  04:28, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * "TypeError: Cannot read property 'data' of undefined TypeError: Cannot read property 'data' " Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:34, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * At Mastuj tehsil, I get

"Use of "wgServer" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead. load.php:156:550 Use of "wgArticlePath" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead. load.php:156:550 Use of "wgScriptPath" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead. load.php:156:550 Use of "wgCurRevisionId" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead. load.php:156:550 Use of "wgPageName" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead. load.php:156:550 Use of "addOnloadHook" is deprecated. Use jQuery instead. load.php:156:550 TypeError: $.uls is undefined" "Unknown property 'zoom'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:312 Expected declaration but found '*'.  Skipped to next declaration. Mastuj_tehsil:2:315 Error in parsing value for 'font-weight'.  Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:3:2123 Error in parsing value for 'display'.  Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:3:3052 Expected 'important' but found 'ie'.  Expected ';' or '}' to terminate declaration but found 'ie'.  Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:3:6017 Expected 'important' but found 'ie'.  Expected ';' or '}' to terminate declaration but found 'ie'.  Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:3:8098 Expected 'important' but found 'ie'.  Expected ';' or '}' to terminate declaration but found 'ie'.  Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:3:11619 Unknown property '-moz-box-shadow'.  Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:23 Unknown property '-moz-border-radius'.  Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:279 Unknown property '-moz-border-radius'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:1532 Expected 'important' but found 'ie'. Expected ';' or '}' to terminate declaration but found 'ie'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:6104 Expected 'important' but found 'ie'. Expected ';' or '}' to terminate declaration but found 'ie'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:8012 Unknown property '-moz-border-radius-topleft'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:9636 Unknown property '-moz-border-radius-bottomleft'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:9732 Expected 'important' but found 'ie'. Expected ';' or '}' to terminate declaration but found 'ie'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:14124 Unknown property '-moz-border-radius-topleft'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:15877 Unknown property '-moz-border-radius-bottomleft'. Declaration dropped. Mastuj_tehsil:2:15973 Expected 'important' but found 'ie'. Expected ';' or '}' to terminate declaration but found 'ie'. Declaration dropped." Oiyarbepsy (talk) 12:04, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I do have some custom javascript routines loaded. Also, I get a lot of CSS errors, if that's relevant:
 * To add another point reFill is having the same problems, just giving a heads up as it occurred to me as well. -- Eurovision Nim (talk to me)(see my edits) 04:32, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Remove  and   from your monobook.js, and enable Twinkle from preferences (if not already enabled), that should solve it. - NQ-Alt (talk) 04:36, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I did just that and the problem hasn't been fixed. I've also tried purging and clearing the cache, to no avail. Also, I already have Twinkle enabled in preferences. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 04:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm clueless. Unfortunately that error by itself isn't going to tell me what's wrong, but thanks for taking the time to report it! also probably unrelated, but I noticed you are copying/pasting the source of user scripts into your common.js. You should be importing them as with  . Also WP:MOREMENU is a gadget that you can enable at Special:Preferences. Look for "Add Page and User dropdown menus..." &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  04:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I too am having the same problem on Baphomet (band) nor Soulless Child. Wonder if it is related to my problem above of Unable to revert multiple revisions as that is twinkle related.  Bgwhite (talk) 04:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The part about it only happening on mainspace pages is just baffling. First off, could you also do step #6 of WP:JSERROR and see if it's the same error Narutolovehinata5 had (<tt>Cannot read property 'data' of undefined</tt>)? Next, while you have your JS console open, type the following and hit enter Twinkle.protect. That I think should initialize Twinkle if it hasn't been already. E.g. if you aren't seeing the TW menu that code should create it, with "PP" as the only menu item (Twinkle.protect = protection module). &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  05:03, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Not Bgwhite, but I attempted to enter "Twinkle.protect" and afterwards I get a message which says that it is "undefined". The strange thing is that Twinkle works fine if I'm viewing a page history. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 05:27, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I tried myself, but it says undefined. I tried other tricks but it did not work for me -- Eurovision Nim (talk to me)(see my edits) 05:28, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah mate, but it does not work on all the articles, an example Ford Kuga and Mitsubishi Outlander. I tried but it was no success-- Eurovision Nim (talk to me)(see my edits) 05:32, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The undefined return value is actually expected. The function is supposed to add whatever to the TW menu. That would have told me it's one of the modules, but looks like it's not. It does tell me that the Twinkle code is there, as otherwise you'd get a "Twinkle is not defined" error. Maybe the culprit is some conflicting gadget all of you are using? I checked your JS files and I see that there's no common script being used there &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  05:37, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Could the rest of you try #6 at WP:JSERROR and let me know what it says? If all of you are getting the same error, that'd support the theory of a conflicting gadget &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  05:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay so I tried it again, and when I typed in "Twinkle.protect", Twinkle did show up. However, it would only appear as long as it was on the current page; it would disappear again if I refreshed/clicked another page. Could a more permanent solution be found? Also, in addition to the aforementioned error, on the console I'm also getting a series of orange messages which goes something like "Use of "wgServer" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead." Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 05:45, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Alright, now we're on to something! There's other code that is supposed to run Twinkle.protect on every page, and obviously it isn't. The orange messages you can ignore. I'm going to have to sign off soon but we're on the right track at least. I'll let you know if I think of anything, best &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  05:51, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I had this big long edit to type, but there was an edit conflict. Long story short.  I get same error Narutolovehinata5 sees about cannot read 'data' in Chrome and IE, but not in Firefox.  When I type , Twinkle does shows up, but my only option is to page protect. Bgwhite (talk) 06:06, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Did you lose the text you had written due to an editconflict? The Quixotic Potato (talk) 08:37, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No. It looked like MusikAnimal had narrowed in on the problem and didn't need the longer post. Bgwhite (talk) 08:40, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Wonderful, I do hope that it can be fixed. Please also make sure that all the gadgets are fixed as well and can be used on all different software. The next thing you do not want is to have the same problem as well tommorrow or the next day. Also if other users with experience in scripts can help that would be wonderful :)) -- Eurovision Nim (talk to me)(see my edits) 08:53, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

There seems to be a problem with the "Content Translation" beta feature. Go into Special:Preferences and turn it off, then see if Twinkle and other scripts come back for you... — This, that and the other (talk) 13:17, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * When I look at a file information page, the Twinkle menu is usually missing. However, if I try to edit the page, the Twinkle menu shows up, but some Twinkle menu options remain missing. --Stefan2 (talk) 10:14, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * See also T114462. — This, that and the other (talk) 13:23, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I have never switched on the Content Translation beta feature, so this is some other problem. Although the Twinkle menu usually is missing at 'action=view', it usually shows up at 'action=edit', but unfortunately, the XFD and DI menu items are missing at 'action=edit', so I've had to create lots of sections at PUF and FFD manually, which is annoying. --Stefan2 (talk) 12:38, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I figured out the problem. On your beta preferences you will see content translator. You must untick that to make the Twinkle gadget to work on all the articles. Sorry it's late at night for me so I am going to get some sleep before my grandma finds out and confiscates my iPhone :) -- Eurovision Nim (talk to me)(see my edits) 13:29, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Also to add, if anyone has questions regarding it, please ask me on my talkpage and I will do my best to reply -- Eurovision Nim (talk to me)(see my edits) 13:35, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm quoting this from Phabricator, "Hmm, does this still happen? I cannot reproduce it - the GoogleTrans gadget works for me, and I do have ContentTranslation enabled. We did have some issues in this area of the code, but they should be fixed in the English Wikipedia since yesterday. If it happens again, can you please reload the page with  at the end of the URL and post the line at JavaScript line at which the error happens? Thanks!" Twinkle works for him (User:Aaharoni-WMF, who works on ContentTranslation) as well. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think it would have to do with the beta features. Those are overriding the scripts. If you disable them then it would make life a whole lot easier. -- Eurovision Nim (talk to me)(see my edits) 03:42, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
 * More precisely, the ContentTranslation tool seems to be causing an error, after which jQuery's $(function) doesn't work anymore and so all other scripts that depend on it don't work either. MediaWiki developers should really fix that jQuery function, so that scripts that have nothing to do with each other don't depend on each other in this way. I found some solutions on the Internet some years ago and I may file a bug report if I can find them again. --V111P (talk) 13:29, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I no longer see error messages in the console caused by the Content Translation gadget. --V111P (talk) 10:02, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Twinkle appears to be broken
Revert links in diffs are missing, and warnings do not actually go through after submitting them. I'm using Firefox 41 on Windows 10. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nyuszika7H (talk • contribs) 20:59, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * See above at Twinkle and Page Curation failing to load on certain pages. Short answer... turn off Content Translation under the Beta options.  Bgwhite (talk) 23:32, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I didn't realize it's the same issue. I've never actually used Content Translation, as I prefer creating the articles myself, but I had it enabled. nyuszika7h (talk) 10:09, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Redirects from module doc pages
When viewing a redirect from a module doc page to another module doc page, the link in the part that says "This is a documentation subpage" (below "Redirected from") refers to the parent module of the redirect (usually a redlink due to module pages not supporting redirects) rather than its target. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 01:02, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * You're right (see e.g. ) but I don't think it's worth fixing this. — This, that and the other (talk) 08:49, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The example should be when the redirect is actually followed: Module:Sandbox/QuimGil/Flagicon/doc. The text "This is a documentation subpage for Module:Sandbox/QuimGil/Flagicon" is made by the interface message MediaWiki:scribunto-doc-page-header which calls documentation subpage which uses the magic word  which in this case returns the name of the redirect page instead of the target. T74230 ("Magic words broken after redirect in template called by wfMessage)" seems related. A comment by Bawolff says: "What title wfMessage considers the current page to be can vary depending on at what time in execution it is called (Evil hidden global magic), so it helps to know at what point the function is being called." This timing issue can apparently also affect interface messages. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:55, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

History of agriculture
Template:Citation needed is not listed as being transcluded in History of agriculture when editing or clicking "Page information" on the left side. Also, Category:Articles with unsourced statements from January 2007, Category:Articles with unsourced statements from November 2008, Category:Articles with unsourced statements from December 2008, Category:Articles with unsourced statements from January 2011, Category:Articles with unsourced statements from December 2011, and Category:Articles with unsourced statements from July 2015 are not listed as hidden categories containing that article, and that article is not listed in any of those categories. Probably due to [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_agriculture&oldid=683883694 revision 683883694] by 183.83.50.106. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 19:52, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Page information does not list more than 50 templates - if there are more, it shows the actual count at the top of the list, then the first 50, then the comment "This list is not complete." -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:42, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The problem seems to be fixed now. When going to, it says that there are 30 transcluded templates. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 20:49, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Redirect one image link to Commons
My gadget in Preferences is checked to redirect all image links to Commons. It works on everything, except one image that appears in three different articles. I'm guessing the problem is in the file name itself:

File:John Mix Stanley - 'Mrs. Benjamin Pitman (High Chiefess Kinoole-o-Liliha)', oil on canvas, 1849.jpg - this file is on Wikipedia, and the image is on Commons. The articles the image appears in are: Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman, Hoolulu and Kinooleoliliha. If I click on the image from any of those articles, I am redirected to Commons with this message:

"No file by this name exists, but you can upload it."

If I click on that image directly from the file page, I get this message:

"File not found: /v1/AUTH_mw/wikipedia-commons-local-public.3e/3/3e/John_Mix_Stanley_-_%20Mrs._Benjamin_Pitman_%20High_Chiefess_Kinoole-o-Liliha%20%20,_oil_on_canvas,_1849.jpg".

Also pinging because he has Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman at GAC right now. — Maile (talk) 20:45, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Do you have the Firefox add-on NoScript? It's probably the issue at Village pump (technical)/Archive 140. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:02, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, that was you. Do you have reason to think it isn't NoScript this time? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:04, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yep. The image works fine on IE.  Sorry about that. — Maile  (talk) 21:14, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorting problems with annotated tables
The "expand-child" class for subordinate/child rows in sortable tables has stopped working properly; using it now breaks the sorting feature when at least up until a few months ago it worked fine. Is this a temporary glitch, or is there now different code performing this function? Example table using it at 2014 term United States Supreme Court opinions of Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the code I was using for the child row is |- class="expand-child". postdlf (talk) 12:11, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Possibly this broke because we tried to fix colspan. Expand-child doesn't have testcases, so a breakage would go undetected there probably. Please file a bug report. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 18:07, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That's kind of reassuring, as I was concerned that it was intentional deprecation. This is the first time I've used this bug reporting system, so let me know if I did it right. postdlf (talk) 23:23, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Auto-expire watchlist items
Most articles that I make serious contributions to I want to watch for ever. There are other articles where I have only done maintenance tasks or fixed some vandalism that I only want to watch for a short period to see if there is any feedback on my work (ie Bots fixing my mistakes, heaven forbid) or returning vandals. For these it would be useful if there were a box or boxes to tick to choose to watch the page for either so many days, or so many edits, at which point they would automatically be removed from my watchlist. Derek Andrews (talk) 14:38, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * See T100508 in Phabricator. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

JS redirects
Some JS redirects, such as User:LimitationsAndRestrictions495656778774/common.js, do not work. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 15:46, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That one is not properly formatted.  16:27, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The code  is a comment, nothing else. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:49, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Most vandalized pages
Is there any tool which shows the most vandalized pages in past 12 months; or pages with maximum reverts in past one year?--The Amazing Spiderman (talk) 17:05, 5 October 2015 (UTC)


 * &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  04:28, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * How do you define "vandalism" or "reverts"? It's hard to get a tool-calculateable definition of either one, since vandalism can be sneaky (to a computer, really simple vandalism is no different from typo correction) and vandalism reversion can involve custom edit summaries and someone both undoing vandalism and fixing something else in the same edit.  Also note that pages subject to non-vandalistic edit warring might rank high on the maximum-reverts list.  My best suggestion is to figure out a way to track the mainspace pages most frequently edited by ClueBot NG: it doesn't edit mainspace except to revert what it believes to be vandalism, its false-positive rate is quite low, and it uses standard edit summaries.  Nyttend (talk) 14:19, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-41
<section begin="technews-2015-W41"/> 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 link editor in the visual editor now shows results below the search box. This improves the usability on desktop and mobile.
 * The description at Special:ChangeEmail now clearly explains that the page can also be used to remove your email.

Changes this week
 * The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from October 6. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from October 7. It will be on all Wikipedias from October 8 (calendar).
 * UploadWizard will remind users to add a category.
 * UploadWizard's category selectors will be easier to use.
 * A new Cite error will be shown if a named reference is defined more than once in the same article.

Meetings
 * You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Wikidata requests your input on how to improve the editing of Wikidata's data in other locations, such as Wikipedias.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2015-W41"/> 18:33, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist stars and section buttons missing on mobile
Since today, the watchlist stars at the top of articles and section links (which expand sections) have vanished. I'm using version 45.0.2454.94 of Google Chrome on Android Lollipop. I tried purging the cache but that failed to work. Everything works fine on the desktop site. -Jesant13 (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I cleared the appropriate cookies and cache data for the site. When I came back to the site, I was logged out. While navigating the site, I was automatically logged back in and the issues returned. So something is obviously not right with the mobile site. I couldn't even find an edit link! Also,Search Wikipedia doesn't appear in the search bar. -Jesant13 (talk) 00:45, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Just to make sure: You refer to the address https://en.m.wikipedia.org here, or what is "the mobile site"? --Malyacko (talk) 08:30, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm referring to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/. I checked again before posting this and the issues still persist. -Jesant13 (talk) 16:24, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I cleared all of the browser cache and all of the cookies yesterday. As soon as I logged in the issues returned. Some additional information is below.


 * My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S6 (SM-G920T).
 * The operating system I'm using is Android Lollipop. The version number is 5.1.1.
 * My ISP is Comcast and my cellular carrier is T-Mobile.

I also remember reading about a new version of MediaWiki being rolled out to English Wikipedia by October 1, the same day the issues began. I'm suspecting the update is to blame. I didn't change any preferences nor did I change any browser settings.

In the meantime, the desktop site continues to work normally. That's how I started this section and submitted my other edits (including this one). If there's anything else I can do to help troubleshoot, please feel free to let me know. -Jesant13 (talk) 23:28, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I've got the same issue. Edit links are also missing, even if I turn on beta. This is a big problem for me because most of my editing is done on mobile. Like Jesant13, the desktop view works, but I prefer mobile because the zoomed-out view is harder to read. Firefox Mobile 41 on Motorola Moto X, Android 5.1. Oddly enough Chrome (and Naked Browser, also WebKit-based) is unaffected. Hairy Dude (talk) 00:00, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

I created a bug report, T114599. I realized that would help improve knowledge of the issues I reported here. -Jesant13 (talk) 01:22, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm having the same issue. I asked at the Teahouse, and they directed me to this post. I am hoping the issue is fixed soon because it's driving me crazy and making editing 15 times harder. I logged on and off several times hoping to clear it up, but it didn't work. White Arabian mare (Neigh) 17:37, 4 October 2015 (UTC)White Arabian mare
 * This has been happening to me too on my iPhone 6. The edit symbol (i.e. pencil) and watchlist stars are gone, and the sections are all permanently collapsed, making it much slower to scroll up and down pages than it should be. Also, the references for inline citations aren't popping up at the bottom of the screen on my phone when I click on them. Everymorning (talk) 01:03, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Double badge notification count is stuck at "2"
My double badge notification count is stuck at "2" and does not reset after messages are viewed, a page cache purge, a browser close, or even a device reboot. Blackberry Bold 9900 browser. Customized common.js Checkingfax (talk) 01:59, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Notification stuck on a number
Hi, Just lately when I've been getting notifications, I click the notification box and it fades to grey but it still stays at "1" or any other number, I have to click the X on the notification for it to disappear which is rather annoying, It was working fine few weeks ago so I'm assuming it's some sort of glitch?, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 13:38, 2 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi The second badge, "Messages", is purposefully not marking notifications as "read" immediately, merely by our opening the flyout. This is so that editors have a way to leave the badge-number as a reminder to themselves, of something that they don't want to work on immediately but do want to get back to, but without the attention-catching (red) coloring. Not keeping the red color for "seen but not resolved" notifications, also makes it easier to see when a new notification arrives.
 * You can change the number to "0" by clicking on either the "Mark all as read" button, or the per-item "x" buttons (see screenshot in File:Notifications mark all as read and x.png). (The "x" button is due to be enlarged, per T112217, and the color of the grey numbered badge is due to be changed for improved accessibility, per T98526).
 * This feature is partially in preparation for cross-wiki notifications, which work is now starting on, and which will increase the number of notifications that highly-active editors receive. There will be wider requests for feedback, once the technical possibilities and constraints are further narrowed down. For now, there's a request for feedback on this iteration over at mediawiki with more details there. Hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi, I've read the Phab part and it kinda makes sense but I'm someone who "If I'm reverted I'll check it out there and If I'm pinged I'll reply there and then" so for me it's more a hinderance than a help, Well we can't please everyone I suppose! . – Davey 2010 Talk 19:47, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . Checkingfax (talk) 20:17, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm, i have come here for almost exactly this question ~ except in my case it's not the messages icon but the notifications one which stays on 2 all the time and, if i'm reading you correctly,, you're describing the actions of "Messages"? Also, "Mark all as read" doesn't seem to exist on the "Notifications" badge, or am i completely blind?  I'm not really interested in having to manually click on an "x" to get rid of the notifications one by one, so the utility seems a bit lost.  Cheers, LindsayHello 14:39, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I just asked the devs, and there's a patch to fix some behaviours related to the flyout that were written/merged last week, and will be deployed to this wiki on Thursday (following the standard deployments timeline). Please let me know if you experience this bug again, after that.
 * To confirm/clarify: Yes, only the "Messages" flyout has the "Mark all as read" button, and individual "x" buttons. The "Alerts" flyout should be marking all items as read (and reducing the badge number to '0') as soon as you open it. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Cool beans, thanks Quiddity. Cheers, LindsayHello 20:52, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

e-mail issue
On 28 September, I sent an e-mail to. I also asked that a copy be sent to my e-mail. The system said it was sent and that it might take "some time" for it to arrive. Neither of us have ever received a copy of the e-mail. In the time that has passed, I could have driven from Mexico to Texas and delivered the message myself. Is there an issue with the e-mail system? Can the message be retrieved and resent? I don't need her help anymore, but would still like to confirm that we have the ability for e-mail contact. SusunW (talk) 14:00, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hey SusunW, I assume that both of you have also checked the Spam folder? I think I remember this was the case for the editor who had a similar complaint recently. If you can confirm none of you got the email, I'll try and dig deeper. (OTOH, is a road trip from Mexico to Texas really so unpleasant? :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:06, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * We have both checked our spam folder and there is nada. (I should also say I have gotten other e-mails from Wikipedia people during this time, but we had already been connected). And no, the road from Texas to Mexico is often lovely, if one takes care in the northern states, to drive only in daylight. But I am about as far south in Mexico as you can get, thus it is about a four-day journey to the border. SusunW (talk) 14:51, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I should also state we tried this again today and also tried in reverse (her to message me). Neither worked. SusunW (talk) 20:41, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * SusunW, OK, thanks for the details, I'll ping you after I put this on Phabricator. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Any chance you both use yahoo as your email provider? - NQ-Alt (talk) 15:31, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * No, my provider is AOL. I know, I know, but I've had the e-mail since 1979 so everyone I know has that address. To change it would be a major PITA. SusunW (talk) 15:33, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I use Gmail. I've received email in the past, but I'm not getting it now. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 15:35, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Ok. You not being able to send emails might have to do with T66795 that concerns Yahoo and AOL users. I've emailed you both via the wiki interface, please check your mailbox and see if you've received it. - NQ-Alt (talk) 15:53, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I got your e-mail and responded to it. SusunW (talk) 15:57, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I got the email and replied, too. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:06, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks to T56130, I received notifications on Wikipedia confirming that you both emailed me via the Special:Emailuser interface, but unfortunately only Megalibrarygirl's email made it to my inbox. SusunW, have you been able to successfully send emails via the wiki interface before? - NQ-Alt (talk) 16:12, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If you try emailing SusunW via Special:EmailUser/SusunW, it should go through, could you check please? - NQ-Alt (talk) 16:16, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * OK. I've emailed . Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:22, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that I understand what you mean. I have sent e-mails without problem to at least 3 people from their user pages on Wikipedia. Is that "interface"? If so then yes, never had a problem before. SusunW (talk) 16:24, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * And yay! I got 's mail. Did you get my response? SusunW (talk) 16:26, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It worked this time, ! :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:27, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Woo Hoo! Thank you so much for waving your magic wand . I don't really understand technical issues, but whatever ou did, it is much appreciated. SusunW (talk) 16:31, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, I didn't do anything. If this is what I think it is, you still won't be able to send email to other users. Others can send you mail and you'd be able to reply to it which is what happened just now. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 134 and Village pump (technical)/Archive 136 - NQ-Alt (talk) 16:40, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * shhhhhhhhh, you are magic. I am in awe of your powers. I can only say that all of the people I have contacted through Wikipedia e-mail have been in the last 2-3 months and contact was initiated by me. That link you provided said the problem with Yahoo and AOL began in January. Thus, whatever the problem was that you used your superpowers to fix, I am not convinced that it was that. I do totally appreciate whatever you did. SusunW (talk) 16:50, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * haha, well... okay! any thoughts? - NQ-Alt (talk) 16:58, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * What if we found AOL users to test this further and check if NQ's hunch is correct? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Read-only mode
I was editing a typo here and got the read-only error message just a few minutes ago. Just for documentation.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:10, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation error message
I was getting the error "PHP fatal error: Call to undefined function arrray" when browsing Wikipedia for a minute. What happened? Gparyani (talk) 23:40, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If that was just a minute or two ago, I got an error message that Wikimedia was temporarily having problems. When I clicked again, the message went away. — Maile  (talk) 23:49, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Incident_documentation/20151005-MediaWiki. 2601:646:8301:E297:AEB5:7DFF:FE20:498A (talk) 15:10, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Case folding question
An editor posted a dispute resolution to the dispute resolution noticeboard, using the as specified. The editor identified the article in question as Programmatic Media, which results in a talk page link of Talk: Programmatic Media. The former was a blue link, but the latter was a red link. My first thought was that maybe the article did not yet have a talk page (in which case it would be necessary to decline the dispute due to lack of discussion on the talk page). However, then on viewing the article itself, I saw that it was actually Programmatic media. I then edited the reference to the article, and everything worked. My question has to do with the case folding. This apparently worked for the article, but not for the talk page. Does case folding work differently for article pages than for talk pages, or is there some anomaly about the template? Seeing a blue link to an article and a red link to a talk page made me draw a reasonable but incorrect initial conclusion. Where are the rules on case folding documented? Is this the proper forum for this question, or should I go back to the Help Desk? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:45, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

After entering the references to the article and to the talk page without using a template, I see that the article is blue-linked and the talk page is red-linked. Is there a reason why case is folded in referring to article pages, but not to talk pages? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:46, 6 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The talk page for the redirect Programmatic Media (under the title is the link to the redirect) does not exist. &mdash; Cp i r al  Cpiral  04:08, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The rules are the same in all namespaces: wikilinks are case-sensitive on all except the first character (ignoring any namespace prefix like Help:). See Help:Link and Case sensitivity. -- Red rose64 (talk) 07:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * So the case folding is done entirely by redirects? Are the title redirects to fold case created automatically, or are they created by the originator of the article?  Robert McClenon (talk) 15:12, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Anyone can create redirects at any time. It's not automatic (except for the old title in page moves). I don't know statistics about how many redirects are made by the article creator. Redirects for talk pages are almost never made, except for the automatic redirect if the talk page existed when a page was moved together with its talk page. The search box has a feature where you are automatically taken to a matching page name with other capitalization. But wikilinks and url's must have the right capitalization, apart from the initial character. Programmatic Media is a redirect to Programmatic media.  produces: . All links in the parentheses are for the redirect title and therefore wrong.   produces the right links: . The error was made when the section was started [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard&diff=684260014&oldid=684257745] by the creator of both the article and the redirect. It has been fixed now. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:51, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

infobox3cols template with a url with parameters doesn't work when the parameters get too long
I am currently working with a template that implements infobox3cols. In one of the columns I have a url with several parameters. Previously, these were fairly short, but have increased in size as I am using various lua functions. Now the url no longer links correctly. It seems like if it goes to a newline it could be breaking the link. Anyone else experience similar issues?

ie: Here is what I had when it was working (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:PBB/6239 at the bottom of the info box UCSC):

Now that I have replaced with various lua calls it breaks the url link (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RREB1): Julialturner (talk) 04:37, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Which link on RREB1 is broken? Both the links at the bottom of the infobox look like they are working to me. Also, you shouldn't be using subpages of Module:Sandbox in real templates - if the code in the sandbox is ready for use in real templates, it would be better to rename it. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 06:50, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * The first infobox field after "Location (UCSC)" on RREB1 currently says "6:7107597-37952005 Chr 6: 7.11 – 37.95 Mb". Is it this text you wanted to be an external link similar to the same field at Template:PBB/6239? When Infobox gene is used on RREB1, the code  in parameter data21a produces the wikilink 6. Maybe you want it to only produce the unlinked digit 6 so it can be used in a url. Something similar happens a second time in the parameter. That's as far as I got. Hope it helps. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:04, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That is it exactly. I want it to produce the unlinked digit 6 so it can be used in a url, but I am not sure how to make that happen.  Julialturner (talk) 20:37, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Module:Wikidata says:


 * <tt>getValue</tt>: Returns wiki-linked values, if applicable. All other values will be output similar to <tt> </tt>, except that if values with preferred rank exist, then only they are returned.
 * <tt>getRawValue</tt>: Returns non-linked property values and numbers with the thousand separator. All other values will be output similar to <tt> </tt>, including normal values, even if preferred values exist.
 * Replacing getValue by getRawValue will produce an unlinked 6. If you have a wikilinked value then you can also use Delink to remove the wikilink and only return the text. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:18, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much it works perfectly now that I added getRawValue! Julialturner (talk) 05:52, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Dashboard
Dashboard hasn't been updated in a while; is there a problem with Legobot? Per this, it stopped on 2 October 2015. ʍw 17:32, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello? Pinging (I would have tried that first, but it seemed like he might not be around). ʍw 01:37, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * He's around and looking into the issue. 2601:646:8301:E297:AEB5:7DFF:FE20:498A (talk) 04:42, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It should be running now. Legoktm is silly and forgot to update his bots for a breaking change he announced. 2601:646:8301:E297:AEB5:7DFF:FE20:498A (talk) 05:15, 7 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks! ʍw 16:16, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Flac files
I would like to access music via plain text instead of using icons. For example, clicking on this plain text causes an "ogg" file to play music: Likewise, clicking on this plain text causes a "mid" file to play music: But, clicking on this plain text does not cause a "flac" file to play music: Do I need to use a different code or format to get the flac file to play? Note that I have no problem playing this flac file using the usual icon format: Thanks for any advice.Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:06, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * [[media:Sergei Rachmaninoff - Concerto 1 in F sharp minor, 3rd movement.ogg|Sergei Rachmaninoff - Concerto 1 in F sharp minor, 3rd movement.ogg]]
 * [[media: RAMEAU Tambourin.mid|RAMEAU Tambourin.mid]]
 * [[media: Maurice Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit - 1. Ondine.flac|Maurice Ravel - Gaspard de la nuit - 1. Ondine.flac]]
 * Operating system and web browser and web browser version information is highly welcome, to start with. --Malyacko (talk) 09:02, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd like this to work for most people pretty much regardless of their web browser. This is for Sound/list/C and the like.  But as regards my own, I use Mozilla Firefox, version 41.0.1.Anythingyouwant (talk) 12:27, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Then you need to talk to browser and Operating system vendors, because they are the ones who determine if a file is playable as a raw file download. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:27, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, then maybe I'll have to use the crummy icons.Anythingyouwant (talk) 13:34, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Recent Twinkle changes
The protection module now checks the protection and pending changes logs and reports if there were previous protection periods. This makes it considerably easier for admins in deciding what duration to go with, and also for non-admins in what duration/type to request. There were also some styling changes made affecting all of Twinkle and any other script that uses the Morebits library. If you are using OSX the checkboxes might not be vertically aligned. Unfortunately there's no perfect cross-platform solution, but I don't think it looks that bad and hopefully you'll agree. That aside, let me know if you run into any issues/bugs! Best &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  14:48, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

The visual editor’s preference has moved
Hi all, this is just an update to my (now archived) announcement from last week. You can read a longer note at WT:VE if you’re interested in details. Best, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

New Pages Patrolling Script
Any ideas why the new pages patrolling script I installed from the instructions here does not appear to work User:JustBerry/monobook.js? Where should the script appear? Please ping me when you reply. --JustBerry (talk) 14:40, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * From above, turn off Content Translation from the beta menu.  Content Translation is currently causing problems to different scripts including the NPP script.  Bgwhite (talk) 22:54, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. In my Beta Menu, Content Translation wasn't checked in the first place; however, I unchecked Visual Editing, leaving no checked boxes in the Beta Menu (and pressed Save). I can't seem to find or access the script at all - seems very weird. Where exactly d o I find it? I also reset my browser cache and all. (Reminder: Please ping me when you reply.) --JustBerry (talk) 01:25, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Look for the "New Pages" box under the WP logo in the sidebar. - NQ-Alt (talk) 15:38, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Nothing found. Did Ctrl+F too. --JustBerry (talk) 00:44, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I just tested with your script configuration and there doesn’t seem to be any conflicts. Do you use the monobook skin? If not, you need to add the script to your common.js - NQ-Alt (talk) 05:57, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Works, thanks a bunch! --JustBerry (talk) 14:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Do you have Safari browser? Can you check this URL works?
Hi, I'm a template author and a user is reporting they are unable to access this URL via Safari on Mac:
 * https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/6950

Could anyone with Safari check that it works for you? The problem being reported is the https doesn't work. Thanks, -- Green  C  19:04, 5 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Using 5 year old iPad with Safari here and it does not open. Returns "Safari cannot open the page because it could not establish a secure connection to the server". Other users with later iPad/Safari may succeed, but I normally have no trouble opening any page. Akld guy (talk) 22:01, 5 October 2015 (UTC)


 * The same happens to me in Safari, Opera and IE on Windows Vista. It works in Firefox and Chrome. The problem is for all pages at https://www.gutenberg.org. There are no problems at http://www.gutenberg.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:30, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * SSLLabs report shows that gutenberg.org have setup their HTTPs so strictly, that it doesn't support a whole slew of older browsers/Operating systems. Seems they have gone a bit overboard there... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:38, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yea, gutenberg.org only supports TLS v1.2. Matrix shows no support for IE on Vista and only Safari on OS X 10.9 or iOS 5  and above.  Bgwhite (talk) 22:49, 5 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I get the same security error on Safari on an iPad 1 with iOS 5.1.1. On the desktop, using Safari 9.0 on OS X 10.11 it opens fine. The Gutenberg site also works on the iPad if you open with 'http' instead of 'https'. Until Gutenberg fixes this (if they do) it's another reason not to go around putting 'https' in all references mechanically. Making a protocol-independent link would solve this. EdJohnston (talk) 18:40, 7 October 2015 (UTC):
 * I'm poking their hosting partner —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:42, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

i'm now live in china. how can i visit chinese wikipedia?
i'm now live in china. i can't visit chinese wikipedia, it was blocked by chinese government. how can i visit chinese wikipedia?--Zhouxingxingxx (talk) 08:25, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * See Advice to users using Tor.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:27, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

How to hide minor edits from Contributions page
Does anyone know of any simple way to hide minor edits in one's Contributions page? One can set Recent changes or one's Watchlist for this, but apparently not one's Contributions page. I do a lot of minor editing, so I could really use a quick way to examine my major-contribution history. Thanks for any suggestions. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:15, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I just asked for this feature at phab:T114763. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Od Mishehu! However, I see that it's been crossed off as a duplicate. This is apparently a very old request that's had at least 2 earlier incarnations (phab:T16086, T11605), some confusion about its target (Contributions, not Recent changes), and a low priority that leaves it unresolved for 7 years. That's a shame. Wish I had the wherewithal to attack MediaWiki stuff myself. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:20, 6 October 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ Almost done. phab:T16086 - courtesy of User:This, that and the other. - NQ-Alt (talk) 11:58, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Good to know, and much thanks to TTO! I'm looking forward to it going live. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 08:55, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Coordinates via API
Why does https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=coordinates&titles=Shropshire&format=xml&redirects not return the coordinates visible at Shropshire? --Flominator (talk) 13:33, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Coordinates are added to the page using the coord template, and (AFAIK) transcluded templates are not accesible via the API.  15:40, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Coordinates aren't scraped from teplates though, relying on . And in this case, it was working, but the coordinate wasn't marked as primary, thus it wasn't returned unless <tt>coprimary=all</tt> was specified. Fixed with. Max Semenik (talk) 21:42, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Edokter, coordinates are stored in database, BTW (see, for example, this one). And that's why(?) they are accesible via the API -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 06:32, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, --Flominator (talk) 07:59, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

"HTTPS everywhere" considered harmful
Supporting what a number of users have said, Tim Berners-Lee recently published a note with the above title.

The crux is that migration to only https: breaks the web. Breaking the web is something WP has been reluctant to do from the early days. Berners-Lee presents alternative ways forward.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:46, 8 October 2015 (UTC).


 * Although we don't wish to break the web, we cannot single handily fix it either. What Berners-Lee proposes goes much deeper than we have influence over and can only rly be solved by standards committee's, browsers and Operating system vendors... I personally think he is probably right, but the web is developed much more around practicalities then around 'right' :) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:11, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed, if the Web were built around what was right we probably wouldn't have a Web... --Izno (talk) 20:27, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Stats.grok.se capitalization question
Does anyone know how stats.grok.se works with capitalization? My question is in relation to the page view stats for Eta and ETA. I find it hard to believe that the view stats are identical (the stats are the same for all time frames). Is there a way to know which page the stats are for, and knowing that, how to get stats for the page it isn't showing (assuming that it isn't combining the two pages into one chart)? -Niceguyedc Go Huskies! 11:13, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * See User:Killiondude/stats. Legoktm (talk) 04:36, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

WP:NOTIFICATIONS - Needs content updating
Hi all, I've run across the WP:Notifications page and noticed that it hasn't been updated to include the new system currently being used which I presume is permanent now? I put up a post on the talk page asking for help to update the content as I am not wanting to "butcher" the article and be slammed by editors, as well as a general lack of style and technical knowledge. Wondering if I could get at least one preferably more editors interested in helping update the page? Mention me or drop me, leave a comment here or on the talk page, or drop a line to my talk page. Cheers, Drcrazy102 (talk) 11:49, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * See Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_140, and please update that page Drcrazy. I'm afraid all you'll get is "be bold". See also Help:Searching/Draft.  Happy editing! &mdash;  Cp i r al  Cpiral  19:00, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Recent change to how timestamps are shown in protection logs
For everyone's benefit, I'm going to post my findings about the recent change (around 3 October) to timestamps in protection logs, as outlined at T47988. I believe this is only a concern if you are using the timezone conversion gadget, listed as "Change UTC-based times and dates...".

As a preface, in the logs, the timestamp of when the protection was applied does not contain the string "UTC" even though it is in UTC. On the contrary, the expiry does contain the string "UTC".

Now, while logged out, or with the gadget off, see. Here I protected my sandbox for three hours. The times you see are in UTC and are correct, it's just that the expiry timestamp doesn't indicate it's in UTC (compare with the bottom entry in that log). Looking at the same log with the gadget on, you'll see it correctly converted both to your timezone.

Now, with the gadget off (or logged out), have a look at. Here I protected Robin Williams at 5:07 UTC and it expires at 5:07 UTC, which is correct. The difference here is that the expiry timestamp does indicate it's in UTC. Looking at the same log with the gadget on, you'll see the gadget converted the first timestamp (when the protection was applied) but did not convert the second one, which will still say 5:07 UTC.

So there you have it. Unless I've done a horrible job of diagnosing the issue, we are better off now than we were before. For the logs, the gadget for some reason didn't convert timestamps that contained the string UTC. It was a bug that we all got used to, and was incidentally fixed by the MediaWiki change. Hooray.

Hope this helps someone other than just myself &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  16:07, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * To be clear, the format of the log has not changed; it is the format of the log entry which has changed. This is stored as 255 bytes of text, optionally including Wiki markup, consequently what is found in the text beginning at the word or phrase "protected", "changed protection level for" or "removed protection from" cannot be predicted with certainty.
 * The change under discussion occurred at some point between 18:01 and 18:05, 1 October 2015 (UTC), since when the six characters " (UTC)" are no longer suffixed to expiry times. The five protection actions before and after the change may be found [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=protect&offset=20151001191000&limit=10 here]. At the same time, other changes to the content of the log entry also changed: "edit=autoconfirmed" became "Edit=Allow only autoconfirmed users"; "create=sysop" became "Create=Allow only administrators", etc.
 * The displayed expiry times may be timezone adjusted in either of two ways: there is the aforementioned gadget, but there is also the setting at . Try turning off the gadget, go to  and at "Time zone" set the dropdown to "Other (specify offset)", then put various values like "00:00", "+01:00" etc. into the window immediately below the dropdown, and try my "five protection actions" link again. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:08, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Collapsing MOS-compliant tables
I posted a suggested change earlier to. I'm not sure how many eyes that page gets, however, so I'm cross-posting here so any interested people can have a look. Relentlessly (talk) 19:10, 9 October 2015 (UTC)