Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 151

Trials and tribulatons in Javascript
A previous discussion here inspired me to experiment with Javascript. I'd like to toggle the annotations of bulleted list items, without having to add wikicode to them in the page they are on (to avoid making the markup on those pages harder to read).

So that:


 * Moving a pawn – pawns move straight forward one space at a time, but capture diagonally (within a one-square range). On its first move, a pawn may move two squares forward instead (with no capturing allowed in a two-square move). Also, pawns are subject to the en passant and promotion movement rules (see below).
 * En passant – on the very next move after a player moves a pawn two squares forward from its starting position, an opposing pawn that is guarding the skipped square may capture the pawn (taking it "as it passes"), by moving to the passed square as if the pawn had stopped there.
 * Pawn promotion – when a pawn reaches its eighth rank it is exchanged for the player's choice of a queen, rook, bishop or knight (usually a queen, since it is the most powerful piece).
 * Moving a knight – knights move two squares horizontally and one square vertically, or two squares vertically and one square horizontally, jumping directly to the destination while ignoring intervening spaces.

Gets presented as:


 * Moving a pawn
 * En passant
 * Pawn promotion
 * Moving a knight

The experiments explore how aspects of hiding works. I've described my experiments below, with some questions:

My first experiment was to search and replace endashes:

(Note: the N in &Ndash; is capitalized because I didn't know how to escape the actual special character code so it doesn't render as an endash. Which it does even if you use "nowiki".)

This didn't have any affect. My guess was that it didn't see the code "&Ndash;" on the screen, and therefore it couldn't have been accessing the wikicode.

Question 1: What do I need to put in the above script to have it access the wikicode before the page is rendered?

Next, I tried this:

Which stripped out all occurrences of the word "Chess" when I viewed the Outline of chess. But something unexpected happened. When I went to edit the script for the next experiment, the script stripped "Chess" out of itself!

'''Question 2: Why did it strip out "Chess" and not "&Ndash;" ?

I tried escaping the "&" and ";", with no effect.

'''Question 3: What is the difference between mw-content-text and mw-body-content?

'''Question 4: What is the sequence of events from the time the script is accessed and the page is displayed on the screen for the user to read?

'''Question 5: Where in that process can a script access the material for modification?

'''Question 6: Is there more than one opportunity in the process to do this, and if so, what are they?

Out of curiosity, I tried stripping out all spaces, like this:

Which made all pages practically unreadable, and blasted the edit window out of existence, so that I couldn't edit the script to undo the configuration. Fortunately, my connection was slow, and I was able to click on x (stop loading page) after the regular edit page was displayed but before the script was executed. Disaster averted.

That was a close call. I'll be using auxiliary accounts to test scripts in the future.

Question 7: Can admins delete a user's js pages? (For example, to undo an account corruption).

Question 8: How do you affect just the article content and not the edit box and surrounding text?

Next I tried to use regex strings anchored to the bullets in the list items, but I couldn't find a way to select them using the cursor to copy and paste them into the script.

Question 9: How can regex be used to find the bullets in list items?

Nor could I find a way to anchor the regex on the "  " string in the html.

Question 10: How could the script access the HTML so it can regex for "  "?

I'm hoping you could shed some light upon the mysteries confronting a Javascript newb.

I look forward to your replies. Any and all feedback is welcome. The Transhumanist 15:28, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Answering a couple: yes, admins can delete/modify any user's js or css pages, so you can always ask one to help you undo changes. For a lot of what you're doing (searching through the html body), there are libraries thst make things much easier. Try taking a look at the JQuery library; Wikipedia automatically loads it for you, and it has a lot of functions that should be helpful. I know that throwing a whole library at a newbie is overwhelming, and I'll take a closer look at stuff that might help your situation specifically in a bit if no ody else has, but that might help you get a start. Good luck! Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 17:22, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Actually, taking a stab at an in-depth answer. First, what you're trying to do is going to be very difficult to accomplish without some unpleasant side effects, because programmatically, there's not really any difference between an annotated list as you've defined it and any other list. So whatever code we write is unlikely to be able to distiguish between the two unless we make changes to the wikicode source (to add identifier classes, perhaps).
 * now, to your questions:
 * 1) the problem with your first example is your regex itself. You can't operate on the wikicode before it's rendered, you can only operate on the result of the page. So you shouldn't look for, you should look for  , because that's what it is in the end result of the page. So, your regex should look like   instead of.
 * 2) An extension of 1); the code still sees Chess, because Chess is what it is in the final page result, but &Ndash; isn't.
 * 3)mw-content-text and mw-body-content are two ids of elements within the HTML structure of the final page. mw-body-content contains mw-content-text, along with some other things (like the footer that contains categories, for example). For your purposes, you're going to want mw-content-text; it's more specific.
 * 4-6) This gets pretty in-depth, and honestly I don't really know all of it off the top of my head. Suffice to say, your hunch is correct, and the time during the page render in which the scripts get executed is an important thing to keep in mind. Generally, you want your scripts to run last, when the page is already rendered. Generally, the way I do this is through handlers, which are functions that you specify to be called when certain things happen. In this case, we want the "ready" handler, which runs a function when the page becomes ready to display. Using jQuery, this is pretty easy to do:


 * You can treat most of this as magic words, but basically, this will execute your code when the page is ready to be shown to the user.
 * 7) As I said above, yes, admins can delete or modify other users' JS and CSS pages, so that shouldn't be a problem. We can always help you fix anything. :)
 * 8) -- leaving this for later --
 * 9-10) You can do this through regex, but the aforementioned jQuery actually gives us an easier way. jQuery allows us to use CSS selectors to discover HTML elements. W3Schools has a pretty good reference source for CSS selectors (and most other things, really, it's a great site to start at for learning this stuff), but if all we want is to find all the li elements on a page, then all we need is the  selector. The way we actually call it through jQuery is like this:  . That will give us an object that contains pointers to all the li elements on the page.
 * Now, if we want to be more specific, we can be, and this is what's great about CSS selectors and jQuery. We only care about stuff that's in the mw-content-text element, since that's where all the text on the page is, and anything outside of the page text we don't care about. So, we can combine selectors like this: . What that means is: "give me all of the li elements that are contained within the element with the id "mw-content-text" ". (The "#" is what tells it that we're looking for an id.) And there's more you can do with it, too.
 * HTH, Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 18:03, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * 2) But "&Ndash;" was in the edit window, rather than "–". So, why was it not stripped out, even though it was literal, while "Chess" was stripped out? Never mind. It's looking for the rendered character because the code has already been accepted. The Transhumanist 18:47, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * 4-6) Is there a handler that makes your script (or part of it) run *first*, on the wikicode, before the page is rendered? The Transhumanist 19:00, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * What did you mean by "You can treat most of this as magic words,"? The Transhumanist 19:12, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, first of all, I definitely recommend reading TheDJ's response; he knows his stuff. :) But to answer your questions: first of all, no, there is no way to get your scripts to operate on the wikicode. This is because of how Wikipedia works. JavaScript runs strictly on the client side, which is to say on your computer, within your browser, on whatever your browser has to look at. The parsing of wikicode, however, is a server-side operation; the Wikimedia servers, in Florida or California or wherever they are these days, take the wikicode, turn it into HTML, and then send it to your browser. This means that you can't run your Javascript on the wikicode, because your browser never even sees the wikicode; by the time it gets to you, it's already been turned into HTML.
 * For your second question, "magic words" are kind of a term of art in programming--it basically just means that you can use the words by rote, without having to understand the ins and outs of how they work. Basically, you just assume they work by magic (hence the term) and use them without understanding them. It sounds backwards, and it can get you into trouble, but it's how many people start out programming (or at least, it's how I learned). You start by using magic words, and as your experience and knowledge grow, you learn what they mean, and they stop being so mysterious. :) Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 19:44, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * 9-10) How can you do this through regex?  The Transhumanist 20:17, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * concerning the  selector:  How would that fit in to the code below?



I'm gonna answer this, because it's always good when people are eager to learn. I want to start by talk about something else that is much more important (and a bit related to question 4). HTML is a markup language in which we write webpages. It is important to realize however, that a browser basically only looks at HTML once, when it loads the page. After that, the browser will turn the HTML into a Document Object Model (DOM), a standardized method to represent a webpage using a definition of objects. For instance, when you write in HTML the [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/table Hope that helps a bit. Just keep experimenting, it's the best way to learn. Also, try using a live HTML editor like plunker to improve your HTML and JS basics. You can't use all the MediaWiki/Wikipedia specific stuff there, but it is great for improving your basic skills. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:27, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * which will make sure that your code only runs when you visit your personal sandbox page. (and wgAction === view/edit/submit to only run on view, edit or preview/showchanges
 * yes
 * 1) Again, by making sure you target as little as possible, only those pages/actions that you need it to run, only query those elements that are as unique as possible for your situation
 * 2) and 10 By not using a regex, but by selecting the right elements out of the dom with selectors as Writ explained and only modifying those.


 * So, user javascripts don't get run before the user's browser receives the page? The Transhumanist 20:12, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Correct, they will always be later, because they are referenced from this page. Until the browser has the document, it wouldn't know what JS to load. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:18, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Pertaining to 1), it was mentioned above not to use "innerHTML". Does that mean I should replace "content.innterHTML" on the 2nd and 3rd lines, with just "content", as below?




 * What contents will that script work on, since it isn't working on the contents of innerHTML? The Transhumanist 20:50, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * No, you use the DOM manipulation functions.
 * I'll make you an example for this particular case. Its a bit complicated though, because you picked an example that is complicated.. (Mostly because your human eyes see structure where there is little actually structure for the browser). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:15, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Writ Keeper test script
Here's something like what I was thinking of:

Again, this is going to be pretty messy; there's nothing distinguishing the lis you want to change from the lis you don't. But that's more like what you'd need to do (though TheDJ will probably have a better yet way of doing it). Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 21:44, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * The li's I want are distinguished by having " – " (space-ndash-space) in them. The only format ambiguity I can think of would be an li with " – " used in a different context. The Transhumanist 22:09, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * What did you mean by "top level text"  and   "all the other stuff"?    The Transhumanist 22:17, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * YEah, i'm getting towards something like this User:TheDJ/thetranshumanist.js, but it breaks sublists.
 * "The li's I want are distinguished by having " – " (space-ndash-space) in them". For a human yes. For a computer it's like saying: Hi, please find me a red ball in your christmas tree. Now cut the christmas tree in half exactly at that ball, so that it can still stand up on it's own, and still looks like a christmas tree to humans. Please don't break the ball.. Now if you are a human carpenter, you might be able to do that, but try programming an industrial robot to do it, and he will fail miserably :) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:31, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Isn't that what regex is for? I was thinking about this search/replace sequence:      The Transhumanist 22:48, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * No its' not. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:11, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * In any case, that's not really the regex you would want. You might want to try: . --  The Voidwalker  Whispers 23:33, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Is that because single-line is the default, and the multi-line parameter is usually needed for the ^ and $ anchors? The Transhumanist 19:56, 27 October 2016 (UTC)


 * I tested the above script using (/ – /g,' XXX ') as the search/replace to be easier to see. Then I looked at Outline of chess, comparing before and after (in 2 different windows). It looks like the filter is filtering out stuff that it shouldn't. Because when I changed the search/replace string to (/ – /g,' – '), replacing nothing, there's still stuff missing. The Transhumanist 22:44, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I've no doubt; it wasn't a functional script. It was just to illustrate the most basic principles one might use.
 * I know you said you don't want to add to the wikicode, Transhumanist, but that's really the correct way of doing this sort of thing. Like TheDJ alluded to in his comments on the example page, trying to find a certain element in an HTML page that doesn't have any class, id, or other identifying markers is like trying to find a needle in a stack of other needles. Ideally, you would encase the text that you want to be able to hide in an HTML element and assign it a class. Classes are the standard way of connecting similar things, and they make this all much, much easier (not least of which because a human will have made the decision of what should and shouldn't be hidden, rather than having to rely on rules and regexes). This would probably look something like . That way, we can access the elements we want to modify directly (through   in this example), rather than having to traverse the entire body of the page and possibly get it wrong. Then, it's as simple as hiding them all (perhaps through , which would keep the information in the page while hiding it from the viewer, which would let us then call it back if we want to via  ). Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 22:59, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * A non-intrusive script would be far less cumbersome, and would require no added maintenance of the pages it viewed. Which would be really cool, if it were possible. The question is, "Is it possible?" So, if you can access the "LI" elements, then stripping out annotations (without having to add wikicode) should be easy.


 * The script is partially functional. It seems to be doing the regex portion without a hitch.  Please explain the filter:




 * What did you mean by "top level text"  and   "all the other stuff"?


 * Can you get the li element without filtering anything out of it? The Transhumanist 23:45, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Okay, so. Say we have the following list: This would look something like:  Testing text  A link more text   Now, say we want to retrieve the text from these elements, while ignoring the links. (Which is of course what we want to do in your above example.) The usual way of retrieving the plain text within an element is through the  function. So, for the first li element (note1), we can retrieve the text simply by calling. This will return us, and we can continue to use the same method to modify the text too. All well and good. Things change, though, for note2. We might expect  to return , since that's the plain text contained within the note2 element. But it doesn't: it actually returns. It included the plain text that's within the  element. We didn't want that, because in the examples you gave, the text within the link was what we wanted to keep unchanged. So what that filter line does is it goes through and takes anything that's not in and of itself plain text--in this case, the  element--and takes it out of consideration, so that we don't even try to modify its text. Writ Keeper &#9863;&#9812; 23:54, 26 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Very interesting. When I used the script without any regex changes being made, and viewed Outline of chess, it looked like it was filtering stuff out and putting it back in, slightly scrambled, with a second copy of the whole list item, sans link, appended to the end of the item. Here's a sample:


 * Form of entertainment – form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience, or gives pleasure and delight.

became this:


 * Form of – form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience, or gives pleasure and delight. entertainmentForm of – form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience, or gives pleasure and delight.
 * Any idea what is happening there? If we can fix that, then perhaps the script will be done! The Transhumanist 00:54, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, how do you grab the text from the current li element without filtering it?


 * I look forward to your reply. The Transhumanist 08:23, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

TheDJ test script

 * I made a correction: changed "$content" to "$contents". That was a typo, right?


 * I also copied the active part of the script, stripped out the comments, and placed it at the top of the script for those who wish to inspect the bare code.


 * I posted the code here, because I shall have plenty of questions about it, and in case anybody would like to make observations or ask questions.


 * I installed the script and viewed Outline of chess. The script hides most, but not all annotations.  I'll see if I can track down what is keeping the other annotations from disappearing.


 * Thank you for this sample plus tutorial. This should help immensely. The Transhumanist 13:23, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Have you seen some other work on chess boards? Village pump (proposals)/Archive 132 talks about two different approaches.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:32, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the heads up. By the way, skimming over that discussion, the 2 approaches escaped me. What are they? The Transhumanist 01:16, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It looks like a more complete list is at WikiProject Chess/Interactive chess boards. There have been some questions about how to code such a thing (e.g., Lua vs not) and which form of notation to use.  At least one of the scripts has some WP:PERF concerns (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Interactive chess boards for a review).  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:16, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Testing, and further development
The script is a damn good start. Thank you!

So I installed it, by including the following line on my vector.js page:

Then I went to Outline of chess and hit "x" (stop loading page) before the script was run to process the page. That gave me an unchanged base page for comparison.

Then I loaded the Outline of chess in another window, letting the script do its thing.

Then I switched back and forth between the two verions of the outline, looking for differences.

The script missed the annotations of list items that don't have bullets (such as the top-level list items in outlines). And it missed annotations in which the marker (" – ") included a no-break space. It also missed hanging en dashes (en dashes in place waiting for annotations to be added after them. They have a preceding space but no succeeding space, which is why the script did not find them).

Functionality for hiding the above should be fairly easy to code.

But, the script was hiding something it shouldn't have: all but the topmost level of bullet items. Bullet items that were children of a bullet item disappeared. I'm not sure yet what is causing that, but I'm looking into it. It'll be slow, because I'm learning Javascript as I go. If you discover what's causing it before I do, please let me know!

I couldn't figure out why it was doing that, so I switched to trying to adding a toggle.

I spent several hours trying to adapt code from User:PleaseStand/hide-vector-sidebar.js, modifying it and pasting it in, in place of the line. So far, I haven't been able to get it to work. Check out the attempt at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:The_Transhumanist/anno.js&oldid=746595354 I have no idea why it didn't work. The Transhumanist 11:35, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

error
Is there anything wrong with this markup? Example text.


 * Endnotes


 * Footnotes

--Namoroka (talk) 14:17, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Don't know. Where are you using it? Examples always help. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:42, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Could you check these links? Special:diff/746591080 and ko:Special:diff/17441679.--Namoroka (talk) 09:46, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * WP:LDR is not my forté. I avoid such refs as much as possible. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:47, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Example text.
 * Try this:


 * Endnotes


 * Footnotes

There are two issues with the first form. Firstly (as is an ancient problem in computer programming language parsing) the parser doesn't do enough passes to correctly parse it all. It does enough that references in bare wikitext can reference items defined in lists, but not enough that references in one list can themselves reference items defined through a list. So the linkage from within one list to within another list fails.

Secondly, you get a rather confusing error message. And more confusingly, just the one of them, not two. This is because the processor (after the parser) gives up after just one message (later messages are rarely helpful).

The solution isn't a solution, it's a work-around. It is to define the footnotes in-line, with embedded citations too if needed. This isn't a problem - unlike references, footnotes are very rarely shared, so there's little benefit to defining them in a list. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:54, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks.--Namoroka (talk) 09:15, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Sort watchlist by...
I've been thinking more lately about how to better manage the watchlist. Until we get expiring watchlist entries, it would be nice if I could take my list of watchlist entries and sort by 1) last edit date; 2) last vandalism date; 3) how many are watching (if over 30). These sorts could help me make up my mind about pages to no longer watch.  My watchlist isn't exactly out of control at this point, but I'd like to have better control to prevent that, without having to go through all my entries one-by-one and determining these aspects.  Are there any scripts/gadgets that can assist me here?  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 16:25, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Note that this doesn't have to be a script/gadget that works within the watchlist itself. I can easily generate a list of pages that happen to be on my watchlist. So, basically, what I need is a tool that can sort pages by the above criteria. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:49, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Just some thougths:


 * 1) last edit date - could be done with an sql query (see below), but you would need to specify all of the pages on your watchlist, as it is not available, or at least not in the public table.
 * 2) last vandalism date - this would take a while to do. Probably you would need to query ORES with edits on a specific page until an edit that has an high probability of being vandalism is found. Below is an query that lists links to the assessment of ORES on the latest edit on each page. Someone that knows anything about api (not me) should be able to make something better than this.
 * 3) how many are watching - I don't think this can be done with either sql or api.

1) use enwiki_p; select page_title, rev_timestamp from revision join page on page_latest = rev_id and page_title in ('article_1', 'article_2') order by rev_timestamp

2) use enwiki_p; select concat("*https://ores.wmflabs.org/v2/scores/enwiki/damaging/", page_latest, "/") from page where page_title in ('article_1', 'article_2')

"Article 1" and "Article 2" are examples of entries in your watchlist. Expand that list as needed. Note that any spaces need to be replaced by underscores. You can run these queries on quarry.wmflabs.org.--Snaevar (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Help with vandalism from an IPv6 range
About half a year ago, I noticed that one of the pages on my watchlist about the One pound (British coin) had been vandalised by somebody changing the mintage numbers around. Looking through the histories of the other pages, I found similar activity, so they've all been on my watchlist so I can check on them every now and then. Below is a sample of the vandal's edits:


 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:bc65:8817:542e:5cf7 :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:3d9b:918f:62a7:f1e2 :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:6809:59:6fdc:79cc :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:4404:b600:2b4c:d1cf :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:8d32:79ee:6770:76b5 :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:dddc:f02d:3454:6f25 :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:c8c:f3e7:cf34:58c :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:8c86:c749:58f:2634 :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:9da3:8ed:6986:724 :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:dc45:4d50:4183:d447 :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:8149:88:88:586b :
 * as 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00:ddbc:e9e4:1664:b72d :

I assume these are all the same vandal with an ever-changing IPv6 address, but I'm not sure how to deal with this, because:
 * I can't post a warning, because the address changes almost daily
 * Is it possible to block all IPv6 addresses starting with 2a02:c7d:bf3c:6f00? If so, what's the collateral damage?
 * How can I find other edits by this block? I only extended my search for his edits to other British coins because it seemed logical, but now I'm stuck.

EditorInTheRye (talk) 19:56, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * At first glance there seems to be no collateral. There are 40 IP addresses which have been used in that range, all but one on coin articles. As a Sky range it's likely to be assigned to and remain with one household. To check the range, enable "range/CIDR contribs" gadget in your preferences (under advanced). Someone might also post a helpful link to an external range contribs checker. Blocks can normally be obtained by posting to WP:AN or WP:ANI, but before you do that I'll have a check through the contribs to see if there's any non-vandalism, as at first glance it probably merits a block. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:15, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * blockcalc is pretty useful here:


 * and will provide both the range and a contribs link --  samtar talk or stalk 20:30, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The link from the template output defaults to the last month, whereas this guy has been going since April. This is the link once the gadget is enabled. I've now blocked it for 3 months. Drop me a line (or post to the admin board) if there's a recurrence. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:55, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, I didn't actually expect any useful answer to this question, so this is actually awesome, thanks! EditorInTheRye (talk) 22:16, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
 * IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long. Virtually all ISPs hand them out to individual subscribers as a /64 range, so it's safe to block a /64 range and assume it only affect a single individual. The general idea is that a /64 range is assigned to a single subscriber, then every single device (computers, phones, refrigerators, toasters, vacuum cleaners, whatever) are reallocated uniquely from that. Network address translation on IPv6 is highly discouraged. --Unready (talk) 23:18, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

References preview on mobile devices
Why are standard external link icons not displayed in preview of references on a mobile device? Instead, there is a space between a last character of a title and a dot that separates citation units, for example "Title . Publisher.".

One more thing I've noticed is that links that should be red are blue in preview of references on a mobile device (at least mine). --Obsuser (talk) 04:21, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It would help if you linked to an article and let us know what mobile browser and OS you are using. – Jonesey95 (talk) 10:47, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * It is for every article, every external link; mobile browser is the only one available on Nokia Lumia 520 – I guess HTML5; OS is Microsoft Windows Phone v8.1.
 * I understand it is not possible to fit all needs; I see now on my PC (Google Chrome, Win7) that mobile version displays icon for external link as it should – so it is not error for all mobile versions but only some (specially cheaper and older ones)... --Obsuser (talk) 06:45, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Pie charts
Why pie charts (pie chart) on mobile devices have some vertical line at their right side (next to the cirle itself)? That line is colored in colors used by pie; segments of this line are made as if one drew lines from the center of the pie towards right and where those lines intersect with the line I'm asking about (vertical one, it is thin) – colors change at that place. Was this intentional; problably not, but if it was what is its purpose? --Obsuser (talk) 04:21, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * There is a 2 pixel size difference somewhere.. Haven't exactly traced the cause yet. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:28, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Template has some white space on its inner side (on the left) when in mobile view, too.
 * Also, template contains a lot of spaces (used in legend boxes and for indentation) so selection is not looking nice as it could. --Obsuser (talk) 09:53, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed I think. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:48, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. --Obsuser (talk) 06:45, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

python replace.py
Hello. I am using python replace.py -cat:Β΄_κατηγορία_πετοσφαίρισης_ανδρών_Κύπρου "[[Εθνικός Λατσιών|" "[[Εθνικός Λατσιών (πετοσφαίριση ανδρών)|" -always -pt:0

Greek words. Is it possible to have 2 or more categories to search in to? In parameter -cat:. Xaris333 (talk) 21:14, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * What is "python replace.py"? Is this a question about Pywikibot? --Malyacko (talk) 11:58, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Its ok. Solved. Xaris333 (talk) 15:41, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Impact of title tag change
The suffix "the free encyclopedia" was dropped from the title tag of all articles a couple of weeks ago, per this pump proposal. A/B testing was touched on before the discussion was closed - is there any meaningful way to measure whether inbound Wikipedia traffic might have been affected (specifically on a country-by-country basis) as a result of the title change? --McGeddon (talk) 21:50, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Double quotes in reason parameter of Citation needed template
I noticed that if double quotes are used in citation needed, the reason ends up displaying malformed (only the first word), like this: Escaping it as  fixes it, is it possible to do that on the template's side? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nyuszika7H (talk • contribs) 21:51, 30 October 2016 (UTC)


 * See Template:Citation_needed and Template talk:Citation needed/Archive 11 - NQ (talk)  21:56, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * This is technically possible by calling a lua module from the template, which I've done it the sandbox:  →  - Evad37 &#91;talk] 02:47, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Error when using Alert template
I'm not sure if this is something that goes to Phabricator or not, so I'll post here first. I posted a discretionary sanctions alert using alert (substituted). Typically when you use this template it alerts you to check this logs for past notifications. Instead I got a jumble of error code instead of the alert. The text of the error is below:

Error: {| class="messagebox plainlinks" style="width: 100%; background: #ffdbdb; border: 2px dotted black; padding: 0.5em;" 
 * style="padding-right: 1em; padding-left: 0.5em;"|




 * A system filter has identified you are trying to alert EvergreenFir (contribs · logs · <a class="external text" href="//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog%2Fblock&page=User%3AEvergreenFir">block log</a>) to the existence of <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions" title="Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions">arbitration discretionary sanctions</a>.

Special rules govern alerts. You must not duplicate an alert given in the past year. Please now check that this user has not already been alerted:

Search logs: <a class="external text" href="//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:EvergreenFir&action=history&tagfilter=discretionary+sanctions+alert">in user talk history</a> • <a class="external text" href="//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseLog&wpSearchFilter=602&wpSearchTitle=User+talk%3AEvergreenFir">in system log</a>. Search elsewhere (optional): <a class="external text" href="//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=EvergreenFir&prefix=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FEnforcement&fulltext=Search+archives&fulltext=Search">in AE</a> • <a class="external text" href="//tools.wmflabs.org/sigma/usersearch.py?name=EvergreenFir&page=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FEnforcement&server=enwiki&max=100">in AE contribs</a>.

Do you wish to alert this user? If so, click 'Save page' again. If not, click 'Cancel'.

<a href="/wiki/MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-DS" title="MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-DS">v</a><a href="/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Abusefilter-warning-DS" class="mw-redirect" title="MediaWiki talk:Abusefilter-warning-DS">t</a><a class="external text" href="//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-DS&action=edit">e</a>

Please <a href="/wiki/Template_talk:Ds" title="Template talk:Ds">submit a false positives report</a> if you received this message in error.


 * }

Please ping me if this is something that should be reported somewhere else. Thank you!  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 21:58, 27 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Steps to reproduce: Try to save (not preview) this code on a user talk page: . It's caught by Special:AbuseFilter/602 which deliberately prevents the save and apparently tries to display MediaWiki:Abusefilter-warning-DS, but the user sees the above code with visible html. It includes the text: "Do you wish to alert this user? If so, click 'Save page' again. If not, click 'Cancel'." If you click Save again then the save goes through like a normal edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:38, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for clarifying. That is indeed what I experienced.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 04:37, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

This was reported to Phabricator by a few moments ago. --Martin Urbanec (talk) 08:47, 29 October 2016 (UTC)


 * This appears to have been resolved. Thank you.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) 05:16, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Watchlist: "Are you sure you want to mark all pages as visited?"
I am probably at the wrong place...

What just happened to me: I tried to click on one of the "hist" links in my Watchlist, when the browser finished updating the page and inserted the button "Mark all pages as visited" directly under my mouse. I had found the information I accidentally deleted pretty helpful, so I am sure I did not want this to happen.

I think an "Are you sure?" question at this point would be vastly more useful than the unnecessary "Are you sure" question when you add or remove articles from your watchlist. After all, that one is reversible, and I have difficulties imagining a user saying "oh no! I accidentally added this article to my watchlist!". Maybe both questions should have a checkbox in the Preferences, so I could activate the one I want and deactivate the one I don't want? Just an idea. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:38, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * You can hide the button with the below in . PrimeHunter (talk) 20:15, 30 October 2016 (UTC)


 * 1) mw-watchlist-resetbutton {display: none;}
 * Cool! Thanks! --Hob Gadling (talk) 21:17, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * If you copy  to your common.js, it should provide you with a confirmation prompt. - NQ  (talk)  21:34, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but the problem is already solved now. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:43, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Preference re-setting
On an older mac with 10.6.8, and firefox 48, when I re-set preferences to include the 'D' setting to see Data edits - it was great!

But then when the bots started warming up, my watchlist flooded... so tried reverting (disabling in preferences) but it looks like it doesnt want to revert to no "d" - I still keep geting them showing on watchlist. I am on older equipment which support older things which might not want to do things, but curious whether which side this is - mine or the other, so to speak.

Also, sometimes when I am trying to see what is happening the 'save' button on the bottom of the page is not 'live' - maybe this relatesdirectly to the issue. Any clues as to the possible issues would be appreciated, thanks JarrahTree 10:52, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Have you remembered to check the "Hide Wikidata" checkbox at the top of your watchlist? &#8209; Iridescent 11:33, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) If "Show Wikidata edits in your watchlist" is enabled at the bottom of Special:Preferences then disable it and save preferences. If the "Wikidata" box is enabled at the top of the watchlist after "Hide:" then disable it. Note that preferences and watchlist are opposite. In preferences you disable to say you don't want to show Wikidata. In the watchlist you enable to say you want to hide Wikidata. Does this help? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:39, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you both! fixed - thanks again, embarrassing :)  11:48, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-44
<section begin="technews-2016-W44"/> 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
 * Now you can include Commons video films with subtitles in your wiki language. Before you could see translated videos on file page at Commons only.
 * Search now has an updated preference tab to configure the search completion suggester.
 * The visual editor is now available on all wikis using only one language script.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 1st. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 2nd. It will be on all wikis from November 3rd (calendar).
 * Now you can use autocomplete for page names in "" field when editing templates.
 * Special:NewPages can now be filtered by page size.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg New MediaWiki deployments will be now based on MediaWiki 1.29.

Miscellaneous
 * The Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Collaboration Guideline is available for community review. Any feedback welcome, in any language.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W44"/> 16:18, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

DYK template transclusions on nomination page
This problem has existed for a few months on Template talk:Did you know. Once you get down to the newest subsection dates, the templates don't transclude very well. We were told back in September that the problem was that page is exceeding Template limits Post expand include size. At that time, we had a large special occasion holding area for various special events. The holding area has very little in it now, and the number of nominations we have are otherwise a lot less. The problem is worse than ever. Regardless of what is causing this, can it be fixed? As the internet expands, so does the size of everything programmed into it, and DYK won't be the only ones this happens to. How do we fix it for the future? — Maile (talk) 21:52, 30 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Abandoning Template limits would be a decision that would need to be taken at WMF level, and they're vanishingly unlikely to authorise it since it's not a bug, it's an intentional feature to prevent DDOS attacks. The way around it is to use fewer transclusions; remember that each DYK nomination includes DYK conditions, DYK nompage links, main page image, DYKsubpage and DYKmake plus whatever else the reviewing bot adds, so each transcluded nomination counts as six or more transcluded templates. &#8209; Iridescent 22:02, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The standard fix for template size problems is to substitute templates and to remove any nested transclusions. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 22:13, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Exactly how would DYK go about that? — Maile (talk) 22:23, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * On a quick skim, the DYK conditions template doesn't appear to have any great use and has three nested templates of its own, so getting rid of that would save four templates-per-nomination immediately (with the current 53 nominations, that's an instant saving of over 200 templates, which will probably solve the problem on its own). Basically, go through the five templates I list above, and anything that's not actually both essential to your process, and essential that it remains unsubstituted, think about whether it would be possible to do without it or enforce substitution of it. You could also probably shave quite a bit off by ruthlessly enforcing a "no untranscluded templates in discussions" rule, and clamping down on anyone who uses od, tq, done etc in discussions. &#8209; Iridescent 22:41, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Neither DYKmake nor DYKnom should be of concern, since they're commented out. I imagine that increased use of the DYK checklist for reviews is also contributing to the problem. Does the use of the * template contribute to the problem or not? It's currently being used by the DYKReviewBot. One template that we absolutely need to retain is the DYKsubpage template, since it is the final substitution of that template that closes the nomination. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:14, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Every time this happens I hope it will finally be the motivating factor to do the seemingly obvious and move the reviewed/approved nominations to a different page. DYK that nobody can read that thing on a phone? Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:12, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, and the answer is yes, templates that are actually transcluded all count, so if there's a bunch of templated bullets then that's definitely contributing. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:19, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Then calling Intelligentsium, to see whether the templated bullets can come out of the reviews done by the DYKReviewBot, and any other avoidable templates. Also pinging John Cline, who created DYK conditions, to see whether there is some way to get the job done more efficiently templatewise, assuming that the job still needs to be done. I have no idea whether the 2015 conversion of NewDYKnomination to invoke a Module with the same name rather than do the work in a template would have affected the need for DYK conditions or not. BlueMoonset (talk) 07:52, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your kindness and astute manner; inviting me to join this discussion. I was not aware of it until now, nor did I know anything of the circumstances forbearing it. I am therefore disadvantaged from giving an answer; ore the research I've yet to do.


 * When I catch up with the topic, however, I am confident that the answers being sought will be found.


 * If I wasn't so Spock-like, I can imagine myself getting all butt-hurt about not being notified of questions being asked of these templates, perhaps others as well. I was told in the past, things about my style in writing; and before that, of many ill effects that style was cursed to engender. Here, it seems that enduring months of template malfeasance was preferable to enduring discussion where I would invariably be. Being all Spock-like; and all: I feel terrible that this may in fact be. I really do.--John Cline (talk) 11:24, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Keeping this here so we don't jump back and forth on threads in two different places. OK, so we know that an approved hook does not always stay approved upon a glance by a different editor/promoter.  How would this work if we did it this way:
 * The nomination page stays but only includes those which have received no approval whatsoever.
 * Reviewers who only are only interested in non-problem hooks have less to scroll through to find something of interest.
 * This would make a cleaner page for first-time reviewers who get confused by the glut we now have.
 * A new subpage is created where any nomination that receives an approval is moved there by a bot (or human).
 * Special occasion holding areas, including April Fools' Day, appears at the bottom of this page. It stays consistently as is, in the fact that hooks are only moved here after approved on the main nominations page.
 * Prep promoters draw from this page.
 * Reviewers who like to check for problem areas on approved nominations look here.
 * Any disputed approval and any post-approval ALT hooks added are worked out on this subpage
 * Any hooks pulled from Prep, Queue, or the main page are put back here.
 * This idea is a start. Input from the community? If this sounds workable, maybe we could open an RFC at DYK.  — Maile  (talk) 12:12, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep, sounds like an excellent idea to me too. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:44, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The bot will now used the substed the template - it's weird that the page exceeds the transclusion limit so easily though. The previous time involved,  which were being used more than once per nomination, and had several transclusions underneath as well, whereas  seems to be just a Unicode character. However I think it may be a bit of a hassle to move hooks between two pages - if you move them the moment they are seen by a human, you would probably quickly get the same problem on the second page, but moving them back and forth would be a huge hassle. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  00:59, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Emoji usernames
So I was curious the other day as to whether or not the system would allow creation of usernames with emoji, and it turns out it does (but only when you click the checkmark to bypass anti-spoofing features). Now that I'm stuck with User:🌪, I kinda want to use it as my main alternate account, but I hesitate because I know emoji show up differently across different platforms and I'm unsure of how they would work technically with the MediaWiki software, gadgets, etc. Is there any policy or technical reason that I shouldn't use 🌪 as my alternate account, or would I be in the clear to go ahead and do that? Ks0stm (T•C•G•E) 00:36, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * One thing that might apply is Username policy. I don't have the correct support to see what emoji you are using so if we have a number of editors all using different emoji then some editors are going to have no idea which is which. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 00:48, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * That was one thing that worried me. For reference, the emoji I'm using is cloud with tornado. Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 00:53, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the answer is in how you got the username to begin with. The fact that you need to click a special button (override antispoof) to acquire such a username should tell you that we do not want such usernames being created to begin with. -- The Voidwalker  Whispers 00:54, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know about that. The anti-spoofing is more to prevent similar looking usernames from being created. Those are sometimes created, but they require a certain user right (not sure which) to create. The ones we just flat don't want created are the ones on the title blacklist, which I didn't have to bypass. Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 00:57, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I suppose so, but to more answer your question, I have no device with the ability to add that emoji easily. It displays, but it is not easily accessible for me on my keyboard or mobile devices. Thus I stand by recommending not using the symbol. However, I am unaware of any potential technical limitation related to emoji usernames. -- The Voidwalker  Whispers 01:04, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Typing it is rather easy to get around; I'd just have to do something like User:Sigma, perhaps with User:Tornado (which I'd have to usurp) or put on the userpage a place to copy the symbol for pasting or something similar. I don't think it would be that different from users with Chinese/Japanese usernames or other non-latin scripts in that respect. I'm more worried about the variance in how it displays to users. Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 01:09, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Here are some links to different user names: 🌪 and 🙰 and 🙱 and 🤴 and 😮 and 😯 and 🤵. Such names seem undesirable to me, but I suppose we would have to battle it out at WT:Username policy. Johnuniq (talk) 02:44, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The above usernames all appear as little boxes for me:
 * [[File:Emoji usernames VPT.png]]
 * That's with Google Chrome on Windows 7 - Evad37 &#91;talk] 03:02, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * the first four and the last in Johnuniq examples are boxes fifth and sixth are round faces. Using FF on Linux Mint. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 03:36, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * They all appear as boxes for me as well (also using Chrome / Windows 7). Dustin  ( talk ) 03:39, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * None of those display for me, on 3 different computers with 3 different browsers - and your examples all look pretty much the same - so from an "antispoofing" point of view - those are displaying as practically the same username - for different users - and as such do not appear to be appropriate to use. — xaosflux  Talk 03:57, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Can y'all see ? Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 04:35, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I can (Safari on OS X 10.10.5). — <b style="color:#FFCC33">Yellow</b> <b style="color:brown">Dingo</b>&#160;<b style="color:BLUE">(talk)</b> 08:32, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I can see ☈. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 10:57, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm. If ☈ is more universally visible to users I would be more than happy to rename the emoji username to ☈, which would solve this problem pretty easily. I just want to make sure that ☈ doesn't have the same sort of visibility issues as the emoji, first. Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 11:00, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Remember, these things look totally different depending on a user's hardware and software configuration. I'm assuming from the context of this thread that you're aiming for a pretty picture of a cloud, but on my system (Chrome on OSX) I'm seeing the US symbol for "thunderstorm without precipitation" (see right) which isn't going to mean anything to 99.9% of readers and I'm assuming isn't what you're aiming for; you don't need to just ask "Can y'all see it", you need to ask what everyone is seeing. &#8209; Iridescent 11:26, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, judging by your screenshot you see exactly what I see. I specifically chose ☈ because it's not an emoji and I figured it would be less prone to display variance. Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 11:32, 31 October 2016 (UTC)


 * In Firefox on the same OSX machine on which the above screenshot was taken I just get a Unicode box (see right). &#8209; Iridescent 11:47, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know then, to be honest. WP:UNICODE seems to suggest that most browsers should support it, and I would assume that's the case since the symbol has been in unicode since 1993 and can be typed on Windows computers using Alt+2608 (or so I see...my laptop doesn't have number lock with which to do that). Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 12:00, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Chances are it's more a question of which fonts that the browser uses, rather than the browser itself. Anomie⚔ 16:32, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Correct, it's about fonts, not browsers. You need to have a font installed that supports the desired characters, and the browser needs to be using that font to render said characters. Here's a Unicode primer. --47.138.165.200 (talk) 23:46, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Just my 2¢ but the only thing I can see is boxes (I'm using Chrome/Windows7), That aside I personally believe we shouldn't allow emoji usernames at all - Unicode characters I don't have a problem with but emojis just look silly in usernames (They look even more stupid to me because as as I said they're just boxes), Perhaps there should be an RFC which would then solve this issue. – Davey 2010 Talk 17:14, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Emoji are Unicode. --Izno (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Whoops sorry I probably should've done my homework first!, Anyway thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 18:44, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * All characters are Unicode. The problem with these particular ones is that to some users - such as myself - they're little boxes containing six figures that are so tiny that I cannot make out what they are. That, in itself, makes this an accessibility issue. And yes, the talk page link "⚔" that uses is also a little box of tiny figures, but at least there is a readable username immediately before, so it's much less of a problem. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:26, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, there are characters not in Unicode, but you won't be able to use them in Mediawiki since Mediawiki doesn't support other character sets. --47.138.165.200 (talk) 23:46, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Emoji usernames will be hard to ping on mobile devices. They really aren't userfriendly and IMHO we shouldn't allow them. Doug Weller  talk 18:32, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Mobile devices usually have good emoji support. We manage with non-Latin usernames just fine, and have no evidence that emoji usernames would cause any more of a problem than any other unusual characters, so prohibiting them preemptively sounds pointless to me.
 * Besides, I couldn't resist. My cat now has User:🐱 ;) Whoever registers User:💩 had better not waste it.... Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:00, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * So my kitty made some test edits to see if there are any problems with emoji names. He couldn't create his user page, talk page, or sandbox because of the title blacklist. (Is there a reason emoji are blacklisted, or is that a "can't think of why you'd want to do it, so it's banned" thing?) He also got blocked for his trouble, which is a hilarious education in the efficiency of our vandalwhackers ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:26, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * They were probably added by User:Ilmari Karonen, probably as a consequence of Grawp attacks or somesuch. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 07:03, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Missing article
Hi, yesterday I created a new article, but overnight, my computer updated and restarted. I was logged in when I created it, but now I can't find it anywhere! HELP! It was a lot of work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ophelia550 (talk • contribs) 17:25, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The only contributions I see for you are here Special:Contributions/Ophelia550, and you have no deleted contributions. — xaosflux  Talk 18:39, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Your account has not saved anything between the 11 September edit at Special:Contributions/Ophelia550 and your post here. Maybe you only clicked "Show preview", or maybe you clicked "Save page" but overlooked a message saying it didn't save. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:41, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi - thanks for the reply. It's really odd. I worked for several hours on a new article, and I know I hit "save changes" dozens of times. It was previewing normally. I didn't move it yet, because I had to get going somewhere else. But this morning, I found that my computer (iMac, Chrome) had updated and restarted, and now I can't find any evidence at all of it. It's odd and frustrating.

Ophelia550 (talk) 18:47, 1 November 2016 (UTC)ophelia550


 * Ophelia550, were you by any chance using the content translation tool (it would have shown two columns of text – one for the source and one for yours)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Though we would eventually block that it could still be in private storage - no edit filter hits on this editor though. — xaosflux  Talk 20:41, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Featured logs in mobile view
Per this discussion, does anyone know why nothing appears on this page in mobile view? I presume it is caused by one of the templates used... Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:51, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Those pretty blue boxes belong to the  class, which in mobile view has the declaration   - there's plenty on this matter in the VPT archives. -- Red rose64 (talk) 02:36, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I sometimes wonder whether mobile should stop hiding content outside mainspace. For example, if you view a navbox on its own template page then it doesn't make much sense to hide it. Many navbox documentations add to the mobile confusion by transcluding the visible Template:Collapsible option. It shows "How to manage this template's initial visibility", but it's a feature unrelated to why mobile users never see the template. Compare for example Template:United States presidential election, 2016 and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:United_States_presidential_election,_2016. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:01, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, so the metadata class is deprecated. Would it fix the problem if I changed Template:Fa top to remove "metadata"? Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:27, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Partly; it's a substituted template, so it would only fix it for future cases. Also it's not deprecated, it's just deprecated in those particular use cases. I believe we tried removing it once and that it broke a bot however... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:57, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You can see the effect of the  class by looking at the first two lines on, and clicking the link. We could change the rule - this is what it presently looks like:   If we removed that   selector, or changed its specificity so that it no longer applied to a  that belongs to one or more of the other classes set by  (that is,  ), then the boxes would be unhidden in mobile without breaking any bots. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:58, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * We should just align it with the print stylesheet in my opinion, where it is . Unfortunately the mobile skin right now does not support .ns classes, I have submitted a patch for that, but that will take a bit. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:55, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should actually discover whose supposed bot uses this HTML class for its work. Post at WP:BOTN and see who comes out of the woodwork. Then if no-one does, break the bots. If someone does, document such at its uses in our CSS files. Instead, of course, of speculating on who or what removing the class entirely would do. --Izno (talk) 12:04, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a plan. There's no visible difference between the two in the desktop view, so I'm not sure what its purpose is. It's been there since the template was created in 2007. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:58, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I've found Village pump (technical)/Archive 144. Notifying . -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:30, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure the metadata class shouldn't appear anywhere outside template space, so a bot could be used to remove this CSS class from wherever it appears. This could affect more than 80,000 pages, virtually all of them in project space. The class does still see some use in templates that are applied in mainspace and the Talk: namespace, so removing it altogether would cause other issues. I find it unlikely that removing the class will break any existing bots. — This, that and the other (talk) 00:04, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Template talk:Query web archive
Comments and proposals are requested at Template talk:Query web archive § Future of this template – Allen4names (contributions) 01:09, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

LUA/WikiData troubleshooting help for rowiki
Hello all, I've been doing some clean up on rowiki and have gotten stuck - there are some pages (example: Graham_Booth) that are getting classified as having invalid self-closing HTML tags. These only seem to appear when there is mapped wikidata information that is processed by their templates/modules (e.g. w:ro:Format:Infocaseta_Om_politic, w:ro:Modul:InfoboxPolitician). Would someone familiar with this syntax take a look at let me know if you see what is going awry? Thank you, — xaosflux  Talk 15:02, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Just FYI, this module uses ro:Modul:InfoboxBiography, which in turn uses ro:Modul:Infobox, which uses the mw.html API to create HTML elements. You can correct anything erroneous you can find or leave a message in my talk page if there's something I can do.- Andrei (talk) 15:39, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * ro:Special:ExpandTemplates shows this code is generated: . The data is pulled from a reference in wikidata:Q4405632 but one of the ro modules must be adding the selfclosing span tag. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:21, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem was an old version of ro:Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities. I fixed it in this edit. This module is used by ro:Module:Citation/CS1, which was called from ro:Module:Citation/Wikidata, which was in turn called from ro:Module:LocationAndCountry, which was called from ro:Module:InfoboxBiography. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 01:41, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your help, - the fix is in! —  xaosflux  Talk 02:02, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Planned labs outage
I haven't seen this announced, so... On November 14, WMFLabs could be down for upto 48 hours in order to work on the file servers. This does not mean Labs will be down 48 hours. It should be a shorter time frame if everything goes well. Most tools should be down during this period. Here is the original announcement. The downtime has been postponed from an earlier date. Bgwhite (talk) 05:44, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Very old edits and editor account
This edit, creating CountrY on 22 January 2001, says that it was performed by LinusTolke, and it shows up properly in his contributions. However, no such account exists! There once was such an account until it was moved to LinusTolke~enwiki during the SUL finalisation process, but in that case, this and all of LinusTolke' other edits should be credited to LinusTolke~enwiki. Any idea why a nonexistent account is credited with edits, why Special:Contributions says that an account doesn't exist simultaneously with providing a list of edits by that account? Nyttend (talk) 22:51, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There are many inconsistencies in logs from 2001. Wikipedia changed from UseModWiki to MediaWiki in January 2002. Some of the UseModWiki edits were rediscovered many years later and imported into MediaWiki but not perfectly. See Wikipedia's oldest articles. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:19, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I've seen something like this before with Computer. (and that was from 2008) -- The Voidwalker  Whispers 23:22, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * [edit conflict with the Voidwalker] Understood, but I'm addressing the current behavior of the software. Why does the software currently say that an account with contributions doesn't exist, or why does it currently say that a nonexistent account has edits?  On the page history, if you click the username, you're taken directly to contributions, as if it were an IP address.  Nyttend (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Computer was renamed very close to the time of the edit [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=User%3AComputer&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_thanks_log=1&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_tag_log=1&hide_review_log=1] which can confuse MediaWiki, maybe if edits are entered in the database while the rename is being processed. LinusTolke had not edited for 14 years at the time of the rename [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=renameuser&user=&page=User%3ALinusTolke&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_thanks_log=1&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_tag_log=1&hide_review_log=1] so that was a different situation. As I said, old edits were imported into MediaWiki but not perfectly. Connections may have been missing or unparsable in the database when the account was renamed and only four edits moved to Special:Contributions/LinusTolke~enwiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:56, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I apologise in advance for the length of this post; it's a rather complex situation indeed. I'm also sorry, Nyttend, for accidentally blocking you while researching this message; I've [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3ALinusTolke%7Eenwiki re-blocked the LinusTolke~enwiki account], for reasons that I'll explain below.
 * The problem is that UseModWiki used a different system for user accounts from MediaWiki (see the FAQ on the Nostalgia Wikipedia, particularly the questions from "What's the point of getting a user ID ..." onwards). When Wikipedia was upgraded to the Phase II software in January 2002, the UseModWiki edits weren't initially imported and an entirely new system for storing users' information was created. The user ID number of each edit is now recorded in the database; that number is greater than zero for most edits by registered users and 0 for IP addresses. When the UseModWiki edits were imported in September 2002 (and this is true for any imports of edits into MediaWiki), if the account did not exist, the edit was recorded with the old username but with a user ID of 0. LinusTolke is among those users. While these users had edits attributed to them, they didn't have accounts, which left a hole for Grawp and others to exploit, which they did. This, along with the introduction of CSD U2, which allowed speedy deletion of user pages attached to supposedly nonexistent users, led me to create accounts for these UseModWiki editors who lacked them, such as Forgotten gentleman. Any edits attached to these usernames that were imported after the accounts were created had a user ID greater than zero, so they were moved when the accounts were renamed; where this was not the case, the edits stayed behind. If the rename hadn't taken place, Linus' 2001 edits would have been invisible using the regular contributions page due to a bug filed as T36873, which affects some accounts such as Conversion script. Graham 87 08:41, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hooray; I get to use User accidentally blocked now! No problem :-)  Thank you for the detailed analysis; I'm impressed that anyone without direct shell access is able to find that much information (I figured the answer would be "Here's the Phab bug" or "No way to know"), but with your interest in old page histories, you're the one that I would have expected to know, if anyone would.  And thanks for the reblock and the careful explanation.  Nyttend (talk) 16:00, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hooray; I get to use User accidentally blocked now! No problem :-)  Thank you for the detailed analysis; I'm impressed that anyone without direct shell access is able to find that much information (I figured the answer would be "Here's the Phab bug" or "No way to know"), but with your interest in old page histories, you're the one that I would have expected to know, if anyone would.  And thanks for the reblock and the careful explanation.  Nyttend (talk) 16:00, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Infobox headers
I made User:White Arabian Filly/Infobox Standardbred horse per the request of a user who creates many articles about notable harness racing horses. They want the wins, honors and awards parameters to be in their own little "boxes" with the header on top like Template:Infobox horse person but for the life of me I can't figure out how to make it work right. Can anybody look at it and tell me what I'm doing wrong? (By the way, I'm not keeping them that weird green color that looks like tree fungus. That's just for the development process.) White Arabian Filly  Neigh 21:01, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Fixed by [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:White_Arabian_Filly/Infobox_Standardbred_horse&diff=747354826&oldid=747299861]. header numbers cannot be used as data numbers in Template:Infobox. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:12, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's really not a good idea to use thumb for images inside infoboxes. You get two extra borders; see WP:INFOBOXIMAGE. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:14, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the fix; I couldn't figure out what was wrong, even looking at similar boxes. I don't normally use the thumb tag for the photos, but for some reason the picture was humongous without it. White Arabian Filly  Neigh 20:43, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Email a user issues
I know the issue with receiving emails sent via Special:EmailUser has been ongoing for a while, but until yesterday that didn't seem to affect gmail users. I've now not received two of the emails I got notifications of being sent to me - just thought I'd drop a message here in case anyone else is having new problems. These new issues have been reported to the phab task -- samtar talk or stalk 20:04, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that the sender's email address is [something]@gmail.com, or that yours is? -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:31, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * mine - used to be issues with Yahoo addresses not recieving emails and the such, but this now seems to sometimes affect gmail too (though, it could well be the fact I don't normally have users email me and that the recent influx has hilighted the issue). It's been very intermittent today -- samtar talk or stalk 16:09, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The Yahoo problem didn't affect emails where the recipient's address was @yahoo.com, only those where the sender's was. So the question here is now: was the email sent to you by somebody whose email address is [something]@yahoo.com? -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:21, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmmmm, well one of them may be as I'm yet to find out, but the other was not - it was a custom .com domain -- samtar talk or stalk 16:23, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Safari
When I view Wikipedia in Safari on OS X, it says "Safari can't verify the identity of the website 'www.wikipedia.org'." 63.251.215.25 (talk) 16:00, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * What does it say about https://en.wikipedia.org/ ? -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:22, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you be more specific about OSX and Safari version numbers? Also, when did you first observe the problem?  Is it persistent or intermittent?  Do you have the same problem if you try an alternate browser such as Chrome or Firefox on the same OSX machine?  Are there any deeper details from the browser about the nature of the verification failure, e.g. from clicking "Details" or "Advanced" or something? Also, can you try these two test URLs from the broken Safari and report whether either one of them fails to verify for you? R1: https://r1.globalsign.com/ R3: https://2029.globalsign.com/ BBlack (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Strange problem with Module:navbar?
at the bottom of ZiL, the last navbox says "parent" next to the title. but, when I look at Template:ZIS/ZIL timeline 1930-1960, I don't see the same thing. It seems like a LUA problem? thank you. Frietjes (talk) 14:27, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * ZiL actually transcludes ZIS passenger car since 1937 to 1960 but that template has code which generates a "V" link to ZIS/ZIL timeline 1930-1960 instead of to itself. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:38, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * should fix it. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * thank you. not sure why I was looking at the wrong template (probably the broken v-t-e links). Frietjes (talk) 16:50, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject quality rating on Talk page not showing
Talk:Yohannes IV has "WikiProject Ethiopia| class=C" but it displays as "has not yet received a rating on the project's quality scale". Any ideas? Nurg (talk) 09:48, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * In WikiProject Ethiopia/class the line  means that this WikiProject doesn't grade articles as C class. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:59, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. Nurg (talk) 19:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

My footnote links don't work properly
I am copying the footnote syntax used in United States v. Progressive, Inc., in which if you click on the link in the Notes section you jump to the relevant highlighted entry in the References section. In the Doris Grumbach bio I am working on in my sandbox, User:HowardMorland/Sandbox-6, the link from Notes to References fails to work. What am I doing wrong? Thanks. HowardMorland (talk) 19:48, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There were multiple reasons: (i) a typo Nowak -> Nowack; (ii) you used simple dash instead of ndash in two anchors; (iii) citation template generates anchors, which include only years but not full dates. Ruslik_ Zero 20:14, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The ndash seems to fix it.  HowardMorland (talk) 20:38, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

HELP - ImageMap Problem
QUESTION: Seems some of my imagemap work may have gone well - esp "Template:Features and artificial objects on Mars" and my newly created template "Template:Features and memorials on Mars" (imagemap image for each = "File:Mars Map.JPG"; imagemap coordinates determined via http://imagemap-generator.dariodomi.de/) - However - adapting another image ("File:Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Luncheon of the Boating Party - Google Art Project.jpg") (related to the article => "Luncheon of the Boating Party") does not seem to work at all - ie, coordinates related to people pictured in the painting (via http://imagemap-generator.dariodomi.de/) do not seem to be noticed on a newly created template page similar to the templates mentioned earlier - what might I do to make this imagemap effort work with this Renoir image? - in any regards - Thank you for considering the issue - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 21:06, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Where is the template? I couldn't find it in your contributions or uses of the image. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comments - my earlier template efforts were "Preview" only - and not saved since the effort did not seem ok - a very recent return try seems to have worked ok and, if interested, the newly created template is at => "Template:Renoir-BoatingParty-ImageMap" - seems the coordinates worked with the original image file size (at 3973x2933) - but not with a smaller image file size (ie, 800x591) - I should now be ok with this - Thanks again for your comments - and for considering the issue - it's *greatly* appreciated - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 22:38, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Ref "Wrapping"
How plausible and helpful would it be to set up ref's in such a way that upon putting a cursor over the number of the ref, it would highlight anything in the section that it was verifying. This would likely be achieved by putting certain words, perhaps  and then   before and after (Respectively) the sentences the ref pertained to, it would pull from the ref (one of the main weaknesses I can see in my proposal is that it would likely require that all refs use a   format.) What do you guys think? Iazyges  Consermonor   Opus meum  23:44, 4 November 2016 (UTC)


 * It's an interesting thought. I'd find it helpful; it's not satisfactory that there's a lack of clarity as to which sentences or sentence fragments are covered by a ref. Equally, I have some slight UI concerns, and a more general pessimism about uptake ... but then, references and categories once were new on wikipedia. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:48, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have found that very few people even use refnames, I personally love them, mostly because I work with classical history, where most of the article is from a few books, but I haven't come across much usage of them. I don't know how many people will use it as their first choice, but it may be useful when clarity is requested. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  23:53, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Refnames are ace, but sfn is more ace ;) --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:59, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm gonna have to disagree with you their. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  00:03, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Unfeasible. Was discussed very recently. Forget where. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:49, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * what exactly about it is unfeasible? The coding or the usage by users? Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  23:53, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ironically, we have a template to mark the inverse case: the lack of citation for a span of text (Template:Citation needed span). – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 23:56, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
 * so (Arguably) it would be very helpful for those cases? Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  00:03, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Arguably, but I'm not arguing for that. Personally, whenever I find that, say only half of a paragraph is sourced to the ref that sits at the end of it, I split the paragraph. It's a fairly standard convention that references apply to the preceding paragraph, from start to finish. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:07, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but in some cases, the only logical place to add content with the ref is in the middle of a paragraph, and sometimes you have a lot of these, which makes it somewhat confusing. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  00:09, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It is not a secret that sloppy referencing by previous editors causes confusion and hard work for others. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 00:12, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Which is why i'm making a proposal for something that can help minimize future confusions and hard work for others. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  00:16, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is tracked as a Phabricator task. I'm aware of a handful of discussions onwiki as well. --Izno (talk) 02:03, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * so will it likely be added? I admit my lack of knowledge with phabricator. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  02:15, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

CXT
Inside Special:SpecialPages, the link to the Special:ContentTranslation seems to have something wrong. Maybe it should be fixed. --<font face="Cursive"><font color="#F50">Stang  01:47, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It appears MediaWiki:Cx by Xaosflux cannot currently parse wikilinks when it's used. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:20, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ I removed the first pipe, the second one is left for copy and paste purposes from the translation screen. — xaosflux  Talk 02:25, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Can these text appear inside Special:CX? --<font face="Cursive"><font color="#F50">Stang  02:27, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm up for any suggestions where to move this - the developers for that special page didn't seem to make it very customizable. — xaosflux  Talk 02:33, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * see also WT:CXT where this was discussed. — xaosflux  Talk 02:33, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks for your help:) --<font face="Cursive"><font color="#F50">Stang  02:34, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Need template adjustment at Template talk:Infobox television
Hello! Per the discussion at Template talk:Infobox television could someone please lend a hand to add native_name to Template:Infobox television underneath show_name_2? I'm not sure what it all entails to do this, but the idea was to duplicate Template:Infobox film's film name parameter. So for instance at the film article for Drishyam:
 * | film name     =

produces:
 * Malayalam      ദൃശ്യം

in the infobox. We want that same thing to be possible for TV articles, but we're changing the parameter to native_name. Thanks in advance for the help, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 02:41, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

DYKN broken
Is it just be, or does WP:DYKN not display properly after November 1 (the nomination templates no longer transclude)?  Satellizer el Bridget <sup style="color:magenta;">(Talk)  05:01, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. It's exceeding the post-expand include size. Already discussed in WT:DYK as I see. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:45, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is Village pump (technical) and Wikipedia talk:Did you know. Quick précis: WP:TLIMIT. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:32, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

URL encoding colon and slash
Given this URL:


 * http://www.webcitation.org/66gupqQDM?url=http%3A%2F%2Fviewer.nationalmap.gov%2Fviewer%2F

The "http%3A%2F%2F" has been percent-encoded because it's in the query portion of the URL (the part following the "?"). This is in accordance with RFC 3986, which states in section 2.2 that : and / are reserved characters, meaning they should be encoded in the path and query strings.

There is also a special rule in section 3.4 that in the query string for characters / and ?, because they are frequently used in URIs "it is sometimes better for usability to avoid percent-encoding those characters". Thus this would also be acceptable:


 * http://www.webcitation.org/66gupqQDM?url=http%3A//viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

However the question is, why don't we do this?


 * http://www.webcitation.org/66gupqQDM?url=http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

Drop the percent encoding of the colon %3A. According to section 2.2, percent encoding is needed only if there is a possibility of conflict with interpreting its meaning.. and the only purpose of the colon is in the protocol and port strings. Once we get to the path and query strings there is no possibility of conflict and so it's safe not to encode it. Certainly we do stuff like this all the time:


 * https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://example.com

Any thoughts on not percent-encoding the : and / in the path and query strings? -- Green  C  04:50, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You can do this, but it is harder when you have to use implementations of query encoders. Adapting a generic implementation to follow your bidding can be hard, invites human error. Also server implementations cannot be relied upon 100% to stay consistent on an edge case like that. (though I think you'll be hard pressed these days to find a server implementation anymore that implements this incorrectly, those were actually still quite common up to like 5 years ago). Note that archive.org is following it's own server specific interpretation of that url. It requires work in a server to make sure that you always get the right value if you have your urls specified like that, and it makes it harder to parse with generic solutions and for the software of reusers of the links. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok thanks. I guess the question is specific to webcitation.org and their servers have proven to work using : instead of %3A .. the query encoder I'm using Python 2.7's query which I believe has the option to exclude characters from encoding so shouldn't be a problem. -- Green  C  15:33, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I should probably point out that the long-form URL that is supplied in this example, the url value being passed is completely ignored by their server because the snapshot is actually retrieved from the supplied base-62 encoded timestamp.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-13.5ex;color:\#FF8C00;font-family:Comic Sans MS"><span style="color:\#FF8C00">Chat :Limited Access 20:40, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You're right it doesn't seem to matter what's in the url query. This presents a problem for the security of blocking blacklisted websites, per the long-form RfC. We probably should have be doing this:
 * http://webcitation.org/query?url=http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/&date=20131023000000 .. --  Green  C  14:31, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's that big of a problem. Since webcite doesn't crawl, the chances of inappropriate cites being archived don't seem as high.—cyberpower <sub style="margin-left:-10.1ex;color:olive;font-family:Comic Sans MS"> Chat :Online 14:35, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well true but someone who wants to link to a blacklisted website can .. manually initiate the archive of the blacklisted page, then link to it on Wikipedia using a false url parameter. But you're right it's probably not going to be a big problem, though it does essentially violate the spirit of the RfC which was to prevent web shortening from hiding blacklisted sites. I don't think this information was known during the RfC, that the url parameter is ignored. Right now WP:Using_WebCite says either format is appropriate. -- Green  C  14:49, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think I'll keep using the base62 + url query because a future bot can always do the work of verifying they match up, searching for hidden blacklisted URLs. If that bot discovers a big problem then we can deal with it then. -- Green  C  15:01, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Mathematical equations' font too tiny in mobile view.
I use Opera v.30 on a Samsung Android 5.1.1 device to read most articles on here. But, whenever I get to the math equations, they virtually atomise. I can only see them after zooming so far in or switching to desktop. The mobile view is a lot more convenient on a phone for me. Please, what can be done? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Daimler Ben (talk • contribs) 02:17, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Corresponding ticket in the issue tracker is T150052. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

A navbox
Is it possible to use custom bullets in an hlist? Jc86035 (talk) <span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left">Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125; to reply to me 05:37, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As I understand, no. Ruslik_ Zero 19:58, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Category sort by number: now grouped in single 0–9
Apparently, category sorting now groups numbers 0–9 in one single caption. (Used to be ten captions: 0 ... 9). Does anyone have a link for the background ratio of this? -DePiep (talk) 12:17, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The purpose is to sort all numbers in numerical order which is not possible if you group by leading digit. See T8948, 2015 Community Wishlist Survey/Categories, Village pump (technical)/Archive 149. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:33, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Answered, thanks. -DePiep (talk) 20:05, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
 * one late question, just curious. With this, within the 0–9 category caption, are articles sorted numerically truly? (how are sorted articles: '500 X' '51 X' '050 X'?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by DePiep (talk • contribs) 23:43, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * See [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Disambiguation_pages?from=50#mw-pages this category from 50]; and then [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Disambiguation_pages?from=500#mw-pages same category from 500]. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:12, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Perfect example demo! Just see how article $2000 ends up there. -DePiep (talk) 00:23, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, isn't in that cat; however the page that it redirects to ($2,000) is, but it has   which is why it doesn't sort [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Disambiguation_pages?from=$#mw-pages with $1 etc.] but between 2000 Continental Championships and 2000 Emmy Awards. The thing to do is to look at pages where there isn't a   - such as $1000. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:36, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course. I get it. -DePiep (talk) 20:46, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Template:Finance links
How come Yahoo isn't showing up in the Finance links at Goldman Sachs? The template doc says you can put in the Finance ID, but not to include it for public companies. Kendall-K1 (talk) 18:52, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Finance links has been edited without changing the documentation. The current behaviour is to only make a Yahoo link if the  parameter is set to a non-empty value. The value is ignored. The link will always be decided by the   paramter: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s= . PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That seems like very unhelpful behavior, even if it were documented. Kendall-K1 (talk) 21:55, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Accessing "Cite" in the wikitext edit window
In Village pump (technical)/Archive 144, I mentioned a problem I was having in able able to use the Cite function in the wikitext edit window, so as to use the pop-up forms for the "cite web", "cite book", and other cite templates. Well, the problem has recurred. Not only do I only get the "Cite" function to appear above the edit window only occasionally, but when it does appear, clicking on "cite web", "cite news", "cite book", or "cite journal" has no effect at all; no form pops up to enable me to supply the author, title, etc. This problem appears to apply to all articles I have been trying to edit today, but in case anyone is wondering, the first one I noticed it on was Leopold Frankenberger, Jr. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 02:43, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The last time something like this came up, it was related to user language settings; are you using an English variant as your use language (e.g. Canadian English, British English etc) rather than just plain English? That might be the cause of this issue. — foxj 04:08, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * In my preferences under Internationalization, it's just en - English, not Canadian or British English. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 18:16, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I've had this quirk, but not often. That is, when it happens to me, I click the dropdown for Templates, and select one of the cites.  And absolutely nothing happens.  Repeatedly.  How I clear that, is to "Show preview", and after it goes through the motions of that, it seems to clear the issue.  Then I can do a cite.  It's been happening a few times the last week or so.  It's happened in the more distance past, also. And then it doesn't happen again for long periods. — Maile  (talk) 18:20, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This problem is JavaScript that is either failing to load completely, or failing to run to completion. For the first, it might be slow servers, a poor connection, or a memory issue on your machine. For the latter, it might be a bug in the JavaScript, or a browser problem at your end. There are other possibilities for both. In Firefox, if the page tab doesn't display the [//en.wikipedia.org/static/favicon/wikipedia.ico "W" favicon] but instead remains at a spinny thing, that's a giveaway for a page that hasn't finished loading/executing. Usually a hard reload ( in Firefox) will fix it, but will refresh the edit window so you will lose your changes. Going for the Preview button also loads a fresh set of JavaScript files. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:24, 6 November 2016 (UTC)


 * You need to have the "Enable wizards for links, formatting, tables, citations, and the search and replace function" option checked in Special:Preferences for the Reftoolbar gadget to work. Please see if that's the case. The preferences and documentation for the various toolbars are very confusing. - NQ (talk)  19:51, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Mine was already checked. — Maile (talk) 20:59, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm unable to reproduce it using your . Do you see any errors in the console (WP:JSERROR) when you load the editing window? Might be a conflict with one of the gadgets causing the js to fail. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 148. - NQ  (talk)  21:13, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * From my console, are these error messsages?— Maile (talk) 21:25, 6 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Use of "wgPageName" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead.(unknown)
 * Use of "wgPageName" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead.(unknown)
 * Use of "escapeRE" is deprecated. Use mediawiki.RegExp instead.(unknown)
 * Use of "wgNamespaceNumber" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead.(unknown)
 * Use of "addPortletLink" is deprecated. Use mw.util.addPortletLink instead(unknown)
 * Use of "wgPageName" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead.(unknown)
 * Use of "wgContentLanguage" is deprecated. Use mw.config instead.


 * Everything seems fine. Could you try checking while logged out? If you still encounter the issue then it could be due to any number of things Redrose64 said above. - NQ (talk)  21:44, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not that important to me. Why don't we just drop this?  It take so little effort for me to clear it on my own.  Thanks for your input. — Maile  (talk) 21:47, 6 November 2016 (UTC)


 * According to the documentation at RefToolbar/2.0 and Help:Edit toolbar, if I have the "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" option checked and the "Enable wizards" options unchecked, I should get  with  . Instead, I get   with   but no working popup. - NQ  (talk)  20:08, 6 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hey. Could you clear  from your monobook.js and see if that solves it? - NQ  (talk)  19:13, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, NQ. Removing that line seems to be working to solve the problem so far. If the problem recurs, I will post again. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:07, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

language=bn in cite templates changed to "in Bangla" from "in Bengali"
Please see this discussion at Help Talk:CS1. It appears that somewhere, the language code "bn" has been changed to return "Bangla" instead of "Bengali". These are two names for the same language, according to Wikipedia, but most other parts of en.WP use "Bengali" as the name for this language.

Please respond at the original discussion. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:24, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

reftool
would appreciate any help w/ Wikipedia_talk:RefToolbar, thank you --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:13, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Deletion and page history
To the outsider, one of the harsher aspects of MediaWiki is that, ignoring cases appropriate for Oversight, page deletion hides the page history. One can ask an admin for temporary undeletion to gain access to the history, but that seems odd and inconvenient. Has there ever been a discussion about separating the two functions? Perhaps an option could be added to the delete function to the effect of "page history visible". If it takes many years to schedule such software modifications, perhaps Wikipedia could change its ways. For instance, in closing an AfD, admins could be encouraged to move to draft namespace. Perhaps better than that, a new namespace pair called "Deleted" and "Deleted talk" could be created to move pages to. Such a change might encourage a few more experts and professionals to participate as editors.--172.56.33.76 (talk) 11:17, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * See Perennial proposals. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:30, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Such a change might encourage a few more experts and professionals to participate as editors. Because they're the sort of people most likely to be enthused by writing articles that'll be semi-deleted? What arrant nonesense. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:31, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is already technically possible in the software, see User_access_levels. The permission to view deleted titles & history is currently only granted by the WMF to official researchers. Mamyles (talk) 15:18, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Automatic alteration of section order in all articles (Basque WP)
Hi! Just by chance if anyone has a clue and answers to this it would be really appreciated. Is there any way to alter the section order in the general layout of articles for a specific WP project (Basque WP), I mean automatize it? Regards Iñaki LL (talk) 12:01, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You can create a bot to do this. Ruslik_ Zero 20:06, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you Ruslik, will check this with the bot managers in the Basque WP. Iñaki LL (talk) 22:25, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Photo of famous physicists
I would like to upload a photograph of a group of physicists taken at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1942. I have no idea what the copyright status is. However, the photo (and parts of it) is found in quite a few places on the internet including the 5 different URLs below. Is this an indication that the photo is open source and may be used in WP, say in the article about the Dublin IAS? OTH, If someone is sure that it is hopeless to use this photo, just say so and I will move on to other things.


 * Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
 * The Undergraduate Awards Medal
 * Etienne Klein of popular science blog
 * ZTFNews.org
 * google.com

Thanks for taking a look.--Toploftical (talk) 20:58, 7 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Mere use isn't enough to indicate it's public domain or open source. You need to know when it was first published (presumably 1942), where, and whether it was published with a copyright notice (and if so, if that notice was renewed.) The easiest course would be to e-mail DIAS and ask them. I suspect they hold the copyright, and probably won't release the photo under any licence we use. But asking is free.- Nunh-huh 21:08, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the great advice. I will try that.--Toploftical (talk) 22:27, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-45
<section begin="technews-2016-W45"/> 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
 * Victoria Coleman is the new Chief technology officer for the Wikimedia Foundation.
 * First release candidate for MediaWiki 1.28 is now available.
 * Octicons-tools.svg for MediaWiki branches and extensions switched from targeting a specific branch to using.
 * Section numbers in Table of Contents boxes will use grey to improve readability.

Changes this week
 * The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey begins on 7 November.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 8th. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 9th. It will be on all wikis from November 10th (calendar).
 * Special:ActiveUsers will allow users groups selection.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 November 2016 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topics this week are Image Thumbnail API and allow SVG files uploaded on MediaWiki to have XHTML namespaces. The meeting will be on 9 November at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * RevisionSlider will be enabled by default on all beta wikis, on testwiki, testwiki2, mediawikiwiki and de.wikipedia.org.
 * Upcoming holidays will impact deployments. The schedule has been published.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W45"/> 23:01, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Search for articles containing N'
Hi all. I'd like to know how to search for articles whose titles contain N' - e.g. Charles N'Zogbia.

The trouble is, if I search with the apostrophe, the results contain N-, N_ & all manner of not quite N'!

So, is there a way to restrict results to articles containing strictly N'?

Many thanks, Trafford09 (talk) 20:08, 7 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Are you talking about titles containing N', or beginning with N'? If the latter, Special:PrefixIndex is your friend; if the former, you're probably better off searching the database dump (follow the instructions here—the file you want is all-titles-in-ns0.gz) of page titles in an external program. &#8209; Iridescent 20:30, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Boo. Show us the regex. It's defeated me. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:35, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Not to oversimplify this, but would  suffice? Could whip up a Quarry query? --  samtar talk or stalk 20:42, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * What's the g for? And no, doesn't seem to work from search. Neither does escaping the apostrophe . --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:47, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * is the 'global flag' - find all matches in string (linky) - wouldn't be needed here though, so apologies for including it. Special:Search doesn't support regex by the looks of it (though CirrusSearch does) so I'm running a quarry query -- samtar talk or stalk 20:58, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 'g' means global, if one does not include the g, the regex only acts on the first match. -- The Voidwalker  Whispers 20:51, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Search  at https://tools.wmflabs.org/grep. I get 543 mainspace results. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:55, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Did not know about /grep, thank you! -- samtar talk or stalk 20:59, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Iridescent and all. I was referring to articles whose titles contain N', so I'll follow up your very helpful links. Trafford09 (talk) 00:10, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Subset
Is there a way to find the files that are Unused and Fair use. Xaris333 (talk) 20:39, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * From the looks of things, none? I did a search for files in the category Fair use images, that have been tagged with Orphan image. The search produced nothing. I don't know how accurate this is, but it is all I've got. -- The Voidwalker  Whispers 21:17, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Database reports/Unused non-free files is updated daily by a bot. Does that satisfy your needs? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:57, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Also tried a slightly different search but got the same result. You can start to see some results if you dive into the various subcategories for non-free images here, but we can't do recursive searches in categories onwiki. The DB report above is probably more useful here :) <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz] <em style="font-size:10px;">01:59, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Notifications awry.
I have often had problems with notifications through email. When I had it set to send by email they often did not come. For ages I got none. So, I started just using the Wikipedia website and I unchecked all email notifications, which is how it is now. That was quite some time ago, but a few months back some started to trickle through in the email, about one in seven? Jed Stuart (talk) 02:56, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Weird logging out/in
I have just got logged out several times, "automatically", after just changing to other browser window. Once I couldn't log in even with correct password (after that, in second try, login was successful).

After third logout and reloading page notification came that I am logged in centrally and it logged me in automatically. Very weird... /WB: latest Chrome, OS: Win7/ --Obsuser (talk) 13:41, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's been logging me out after every single edit today; it's driving me insane, especially when using Huggle. Something's definitely happening. FoCuS contribs ;  talk to me!  14:40, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Looking for small tasks and mentors for Google Code-in - Got something in mind?
Hi everybody! Google Code-in (GCI) will soon take place again - a seven week long contest for 13-17 year old students to contribute to free software projects. Tasks should take an experienced contributed about two-three hours and can be of the categories Code, Documentation/Training, Outreach/Research, Quality Assurance, and User Interface/Design. Do you have an idea for a task and could you imagine mentoring that task? For example, do you have something on mind that needs documentation, research, some gadget or template issues on your "To do" list but you never had the time, and can imagine enjoying mentoring such a task to help a new contributor? If yes, please check out Google Code-in 2016 and become a mentor! Thanks in advance! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Log in problems
Hi, User:Ms Sarah Welch emailed to inform me that she is having logging in problems. "No active login attempt is in progress for your session." is coming up. Can somebody look into it?♦ Dr. Blofeld  15:44, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Thanks. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 17:16, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Can either of you help at Help desk? What was the fix? -- John of Reading (talk) 18:24, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hello Dr. Blofeld or Ms Sarah Welch, can you help me with my login problems (the same as you have today). What was the fix? 84.104.223.208 (talk) 19:29, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Have you tried clearing your cache, per suggestions on WP:BYPASS? Then reboot? Let us know if that does or does not work. Sorry, frustrating this must be, Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 20:47, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your 'support' but it does not work. Can you tell me what they did to fix your login problem? 84.104.223.208 (talk) 21:00, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Lets discuss it at one place, where you started the discussion. Hopefully, those who know better than me will join you there, to help you. Ms Sarah Welch (talk) 21:07, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Math coding (Hyperbolic function)
Can someone finish the job and code  ? יהודה שמחה ולדמן (talk) 14:38, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Infobox embed function
Why does the embed function at John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan create a box within a box for the "person" embed and form properly for the previous "military" embed? Is it that I am not nesting them properly? Please ping me so I see the answer. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:53, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * In preview it displayed: Warning: Page using Template:Infobox person with unknown parameter "embed". I fixed it by changing embed=yes to child=yes. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:24, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Is there a primer on how to use embedded infoboxes? We really need a master biographical infobox that contains all biographical fields and people can just copy and paste the subset that they need for say, tennis people or baseball people. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:40, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Each infobox needs to be set up individually to allow such embedded usage. Not all of them have been done; and those that have been are inconsistent. But see Template:Infobox. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:48, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you add color to the header for an embed? See: Meriwether Lewis Walker where his military info does not have a colored background for the header "Military career" the way "Personal details" does. It makes it hard for the eye to jump to the starting point of the military data. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:12, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * sets the headerstyle parameter of, essentially to the value  - this is non-standard; whereas  doesn't set the titlestyle parameter of , which is standard behaviour. So for the sake of consistency, it's the coloured background that should be removed. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:37, 10 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I see, so it really is a matter of adding the three fields missing from military to officeholder and using officeholder if I want the stripe. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:39, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Preview page with this module:Page title
It used to be that I could save a version of my sandbox as a simple test for work to be done in a Lua module. I could then make an edit in the Lua module, put the name of my sandbox in the Page title box and click the Show preview button. Very handy, that. If the module change that I had made was not quite right (not at all uncommon), I could tweak the module and again click Show preview. Repeat ad nauseum.

That worked well because my browser remembered the value in the Page title box so I only had to enter it once (the browser also remembered it session-to-session so on the first module edit preview of a new session, a couple of letters was enough to get the browser to show the full name of my sandbox, thereafter retaining it until I was done.

Now, every time I want to preview a module change, I have to type  at a minimum to get to my user pages and then scroll down the list to my sandbox. Every time. Who thought that this would be a good idea?

Is there any way to get around this 'improvement'?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:11, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Template changes, too. I first noticed it at approximately 15:00, 3 November 2016. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:12, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Works for me in Firefox 49.0.2. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:36, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Not a browser issue, then: I have Firefox 49.0.2 -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Works correctly for me too, after submitting a preview the box continues to be pre-filled with the same title. And I note the HTML served includes the title as expected. You should check to see if you have a user script or gadget that is interfering with it somehow. Anomie⚔ 17:34, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * For me, chrome on both winxp and win7. Does not work on either regardless of whether I'm logged in or not logged in.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:47, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing this was caused by T148324 - there's a new JavaScript autocomplete which might be overriding your browser's history of the form field? Legoktm (talk) 18:39, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Translation of VE suggester not complete


Hi,

I've just wanted to try out the new Visual Editor "wizard", which suggests new users some page to edit. Sadly, the incomplete translation catched my eye. May you please fix the field [vector-view-edit]?--Kopiersperre (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hmm, odd bug in the WMF localisation of GettingStared (by way of GuidedTour). The message . Not quite sure what's going wrong here —, might this change have broken it? Did we need to do a change in WikimediaMessages too? Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

How to widen clickable space for linked "I"?
In the periodic table of chemical elements, we have character/symbol "I" for iodine. How can I widen the clickable space? So I better &rarr; I, but of course we won't use spaces-to-format (and it copy/pastes badly). Any ideas, css maybe? -DePiep (talk) 00:16, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Certainly not non-breaking spaces, but a inside the link (with suitable styling) does work:  I . -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:21, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * An easy solution would be to wrap the symbol in a  inside the   in Template:Element cell-named. That would expand the clickable area to the width of the table cell. It would need a bit of testing, considering how many pages use it. --Unready (talk) 01:18, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, maybe not so easy. The parser doesn't want to let a  through the  . Forcing it with   works nicely, but it's not practical. --Unready (talk) 01:43, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Redrose64 provided the solution above. Here it is, with "abc" before and " xyz" after:
 * → abc I xyz
 * I had to put a space before "xyz" to avoid it being part of the link. Johnuniq (talk) 01:57, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I would suggest instead . It makes the   into a   and gets it through the parser. It doesn't inflate the element artificially, but lets its width expand to 100% of its containing block. --Unready (talk) 02:07, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Using Unready's  gives:
 * &rarr; abc I xyz
 * ... so, with newlines. Or do I mistake? Anyway, I see the underline does not expand in any situation, even though the sensitive area is wider. Methinks this could be by w3c design. -DePiep (talk) 20:43, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You're missing that free text (some text, the block, some more text) creates a new block in the middle of some text. The periodic table has only a centered line of text (a new block inside another block). Therefore there are no new newlines in the application. (Feel free to try it there yourself.) The underline text decoration is not longer, but the clickable area is wider, which was the original request. To have a longer decoration, you need to have longer text. --Unready (talk) 22:26, 6 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I get it, the span acts as a div-block. Now nicely covers the whole table cell, not just some text area any more :-). Deployed for the "I", planning to do this for all cells (had to add 3 parameter naming, obviously). -DePiep (talk) 14:18, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Without using, you could also use   for   in  . Even better IMO would be to put the   in Template:Element cell-named for all the symbols. I'm not certain if that'll break any other pages, though, so it would need testing. --Unready (talk) 07:09, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, in the subtemplate. Now deployed for Template:element cell-compact for all cells indeed. See this article (not navbox, so mobile check possible too!). Template:Element cell-named will follow, though people now start asking to have the whole cell sensitive (over 3 text lines) ;-) . What do you think of the Template:Element cell-named/sandbox2 construct? (testing is in the first, hydrogen cell in Template:Periodic table/sandbox). Too much of a hack, or acceptable w3c design? -DePiep (talk) 12:05, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

I've edited sandbox2 for what I think is a simpler HTML document. See what you think. --Unready (talk) 11:37, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ping just to make sure you see it. --Unready (talk) 12:01, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, great. Will deploy that. I'll go with your authority that there is no link-decoration required at all. Mobile view tests good too. Thx. -DePiep (talk) 12:52, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I only kept the  in there because you added it. I don't actually have any strong opinion about it either way. --Unready (talk) 16:33, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I forgot, yes that was me. Otherwise we'd end up with four textlines underscored. Fine now. -DePiep (talk) 19:28, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Sucky category tree rant - do we have a tool?
Here's a Petscan which takes a wee while to run, and looks for the intersection of articles in Category:Women to 8 levels with Category:20th-century births to 3 levels (and where there's no wikidta item). And guess what? It's full of stinking men. wtf. Do we have any tools which would assist in working out just where our category hierachies go so badly wrong that we get this sort of result? --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:24, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The category system is not designed to give logical results for such searches. It's mainly designed for readers who manually browse categories. For example, Category:Women contains Category:Women's rights which contains Category:Women's rights activists which includes men. This seems reasonable to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:37, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The Wikidata query service might give you usable results for what you're after, and here's a tutorial on using it. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 13:07, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks both. Yes, PrimeHunter, very reasonable, though still very sucky. I'm looking for articles which have no wikidata item ... WDQ not so good for that AFAIK. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:41, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * But the tool question still holds: do we have a tool which can answer the question "how (what is the path by which) this article or this category is found beneath that category? --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:46, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * lists pages and subcategories about the topic woman. You'd need  (which, indeed, would not contain any man in any category depth). The logic stands. So re : it is not designed to give logical results for such searches :-) (btw is it just me, or is there some distracting language around?). -DePiep (talk) 16:04, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "Are we just going to ignore the fact that Cap just said, 'Language?'" The Transhumanist 19:40, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Good-oh. The tool. What about the tool? --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:55, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Insert – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · §  etc. etc.
Can anyone tell me where the system message (or whatever it is) is stored, that gives shortcuts to commonly needed unicode glyphs, wiki markup, and so on while you're editing a page? I know I edited it on la: once a long, long time ago, but I can't find it now, and for all I know it's kept somewhere else now anyway. In case I'm no being clear, I mean the thing that currently says
 * – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · §  Sign your posts on talk pages: ~   Cite your sources:

directly beneath where I'm writing. --Iustinus (talk) 01:48, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * See MediaWiki talk:Edittools. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:56, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You might also want to read mw:VisualEditor/Special characters, since the visual editor is used by about a third of the newest editors there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Geoiplookup
The link http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ has gone dead - does anybody know if there is a replacement? -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:04, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No, see T100902. What were you using it for? Legoktm (talk) 18:35, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's linked from WP:URIP2. Also, I use it to find out where I currently geolocate to, as it varies wildly - see User:Redrose64 When people ask for geonotices that are to be confined to an area smaller than about two degrees by two, I use this as justification for using a somewhat larger area. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:11, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If you want to look at your own geolocation, you can do  in your browser's console. It's also set via a cookie. And there are external sites probably that display a user's IP address. Legoktm (talk) 22:02, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Red dot ping for edits to my userpage
Is there some bit of script that I can drop into my common.css page that gives me a red dot ping (the same as if an edit is reverted, etc) if someone makes an edit to my userpage? Thanks.  Lugnuts  Precious bodily fluids 08:36, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, as there isn't anything shown at, I guess not. You could suggest it at WT:Echo. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:13, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That is a good suggestion. I just have mine on my watchlist, so at least it shows up there. <b style="color:#595454">Fylbecatulous</b> <b style="color:#DB7093">talk</b> 11:45, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There is no builtin feature so it would have to be JavaScript and not css, and at best be similar to echo. A simpler task would be a script to highlight user page edits on the normal watchlist if they aren't made by the user. Some of us have huge watchlists and can easily overlook edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:17, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Need assist with table formatting
Hey all, if you're good with tables, can you donate a few minutes to List of highest-grossing Indian films, please? I'm having trouble making head-or-tails of the formatting...it's very confusing. It looks like some attempt was made to jury rig the column widths so that the table works on smaller devices, but the columns do not line up on my large monitor. The double-border of the table is inconsistent with the other tables. We need a Source column which should contain the references for consistency with the other tables, etc. Many thanks in advance, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:21, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Just throw out all those templates and make a normal table. It is impossible to understand anything in this template mess. Ruslik_ Zero 20:41, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yup, same thought here. Not sure who in the film project thought that Template:Highest-grossing films franchise template was a good idea, but... they were wrong :) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:05, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 21:18, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Additionally, the HTML produced is a mess of nested tables, which causes accessibility problems P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 19:32, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If anyone has any time to redesign the table so that it makes more sense and doesn't run afoul of WP:ACCESSIBILITY, it would be most appreciated. Tables aren't exactly my strong suit. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:50, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Somewhat borked records
We have a number of records which appear to be damaged in some way ... I'm wondering if anything could be done about them. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:18, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Charles de Brouckère (1757-1850) redirect which appears in a petscan report which excludes redirects
 * Francis Wilson (Royal Marines) ditto
 * Frank Mitchell (cricketer born 1878) ditto
 * Stephen Mack, Jr. ditto
 * Deborah L. Kerr, who appears in a petscan report despite being deleted.
 * Bill Parry (footballer) - redirect turning up on another petscan which excludes redirects
 * Brian Johnson, Jr. ditto

Plethora of Toolserver links exist; interwiki map cleanup
We still have so many (dead) toolserver links as part of full urls, or using tools: from the interwiki map, and we should really doing better, especially in templates and in more important parts of the site. I encourage users to look to see what makes sense to clean up, especially if there is a replacement tool at.

To note that I have a T150598 request with suggestions with how we can manage the dead interwiki_map components, so feel free for those with a technical/environmental nouse to express your opinion there. — billinghurst  sDrewth  04:35, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The situation evolves, I see that my above description is not complete. There are some toolserver redirects that work, and many that do not. It is not an easy cleanup job, especially where the tools are written inside &lt;includeonly> tags. ` — billinghurst  sDrewth  05:41, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe you want to create a list of pages by using the insource search to track down all the still in use toolserver links. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:37, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I did an sql query of toolserver links, using the "tools:" interwiki prefix with an limit of 10,000 results. The query reached that limit. In the batch I have, there are mainly links to the tools dispenser made, which are currently at dispenser.homenet.org. Given the sheer size of the backlog, I think it is best to get editors to find alternatives or an updated url of the tools and then let bots edit the pages themselves and update the urls.--Snaevar (talk) 13:17, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

List of top 100 most linked base URL. The toolserver.org minihost craps out (Labs' "better infrastructure"). Used httpstatus.io for the HTTP status. — Dispenser 18:25, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Similar query for the interwikilink. Basically 139,000 links left by User:DPL bot on talk pages. — Dispenser 20:02, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Spelling "correction" that I did not make
In this diff I corrected "access date" to "accessdate", yet when I saved, Wikipedia decided to re-spell "Urbana-Champaign" to "Urban-Champaign", thus re-instating a typo which I had corrected in my previous edit. Is there any way to stop Wikipedia introducing errors like this? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 19:53, 13 November 2016 (UTC)


 * This is almost certainly happening on the level of your browser or OS. What OS are you using? I know that these days, one of the first things I need to do on a fresh install of Mac OS is to disable automatic spelling corrections and (ugh) "natural" scrolling. {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 19:58, 13 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Edge on Win10. DuncanHill (talk) 20:01, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Your edits were in consecutive minutes. My guess is that your second edit was to the old version instead of the version you had just saved. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:08, 13 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Seems unlikely to me, I'm not in the habit of going to history pages to find an old version to edit. DuncanHill (talk) 20:15, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This looks like a database syncing problem. In essence, you had an unreported edit conflict with yourself. This is a long-standing bug that it very hard to reproduce, as far as I know. I've seen this happen on busy talk pages, where one editor will "delete" the previous editor's response without getting an edit conflict message. Maybe similar to or  or lots of others listed at . – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:12, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 23:37, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Media player has weird buffering problem when replaying
Example: (File:Close central unrounded vowel.ogg)

STR:


 * 1) Play the media once with the player. Everything is fine.
 * 2) WITHOUT refreshing, play it more times. Every time it begins, there is a short "buffering" period that interrupts the sound. It's quite annoying for short media such as this example.

It can be reproduced on both Chrome and Firefox. If I use their native players (i.e. play this directly: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Close_central_unrounded_vowel.ogg), no such problem.

--fireattack (talk) 00:10, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Password reset
''I apologise that this message is in English. ''

We are having a problem with attackers taking over wiki accounts with privileged user rights (for example, admins, bureaucrats, oversighters, checkusers). It appears that this may be because of weak or reused passwords.

Community members are working along with members of multiple teams at the Wikimedia Foundation to address this issue.

In the meantime, we ask that everyone takes a look at the passwords they have chosen for their wiki accounts. If you know that you've chosen a weak password, or if you've chosen a password that you are using somewhere else, please change those passwords.

Select strong passwords – eight or more characters long, and containing letters, numbers, and punctuation. Joe Sutherland (m:User talk:JSutherland (WMF)) / MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 23:59, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Please accept my apologies - that first line should read "Help with translations!". Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) / MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:11, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Template:edit fully-protected
When I transcluded edit fully-protected, the template displays the other template, edit semi-protected. Is the template broken or something? --George Ho (talk) 06:07, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it fixes itself if the page isn't actually fully protected. Can you show an example? —  xaosflux  Talk 06:13, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Never mind; I made a mistake, which I corrected. See the difference? --George Ho (talk) 06:14, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

No Google results?
Hye. I wrote the article Irina Nevzlin a long time ago, butfor some reason it wouldn't show in Google. Is there an explanation for it? Sloewn (talk) 07:18, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's indexed by Yahoo and Bing. Wikipedia recently started to noindex new pages until the page has been patrolled. I'm concerned about the delay in indexing after noindex is removed. The page was created 14 October and patrolled 2 November.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Irina+Nevzlin&hide_patrol_log=0] If a search engine has already visited a page and seen it was noindexed at the time then I don't know how long it may take before the search engine comes back and discovers the page now allows indexing. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:09, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

How to replace text?
What I'd like to do is create a script that hides annotations in the list items in lists, without having to change the source text of articles in any way. The annotations I'm interested in start with an en dash surrounded by spaces. Like in the list items below:


 * Dendrology – involves the study and identification of economically useful tree species
 * Energy forestry – includes specifically managing for the production of energy from biomass or biofuel derived from a fast-growing species of tree or woody shrub
 * Forest ecology – studies the patterns and processes of a forest ecosystem
 * Forest economics – studies the impact of economics on forest management decisions

I found some sample code that homes in on elements with one's desired text in them, and altered it to do a test to find all list items with an en dash surrounded by spaces, and color them orange:

(I then looked around with the script active to see how well it found annotated list entries, and it does so very well. The list above, for example, turns orange.)

Now I'd like to do a test of text replacement. How can the above script be changed with a regex to replace the " – " and all text that follows it, with nothing?

I look forward to your reply. The Transhumanist 04:18, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Use  to hide the cells from view.


 * Or you can use  to remove the cells from the DOM entirely.


 * Hope this helps. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 07:44, 9 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the suggestions.


 * Both of those appear to make the items disappear, and will help in the future when I need to make entire items go bye bye. What I need currently is for just a part of the items to disappear. The part starting with the en dash surrounded by 2 spaces, and all text that follows that to the end of the item.


 * In other words, the script should make the above list look like this:


 * Dendrology
 * Energy forestry
 * Forest ecology
 * Forest economics


 * Is there a function that applies regex to elements?


 * I look forward to your reply. The Transhumanist 08:42, 9 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Ok, now I see. This gets more complicated, because of the nature of HTML. It is possible to use a regex with the raw HTML, but that is very ill-advised; you might match something inside a tag like, and that can lead to security holes. The proper way to do this is to iterate over all the elements recursively, and remove everything after the dash. I have put some code together that does this, although it is probably not very efficient; others might know of better ways to do it.


 * Again, hope this helps. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 05:11, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Interesting script. To test it, I first loaded Outline of chess in one window. Then I installed the script and looked at Outline of chess in another window, and compared the two views of the outline. The script eliminates much of the list (it's structured, with bullet lists that are many levels deep). The above script doesn't appear to like nested lists. Look at Outline of chess before and after, and you'll see what I mean.
 * The script apparently makes sublists disappear. No items should be disappearing from the list. In the remarks in the script it says "We found the first dash already, so remove the node if it is of an appropriate type." What are you removing, exactly? I don't understand why   is being used right there.
 * Is there a way to use regex on the contents of an element? The Transhumanist 19:47, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I wrote the script without nested lists in mind, as I didn't realise that it needed to parse them then. The script removes everything after the first " – ", including sublists, which obviously isn't ideal for outline articles. The  is necessary because annotations are not necessarily just text; they might include links or references too, and it would be strange if you removed all the text but left link and reference elements intact. Having the script remove everything after the dash but leave sublists alone is not easy, though, and would require more complex code than the example above. It also wouldn't work in edge cases such as the table in Outline of domestic violence, as those outline items are not in HTML lists at all. For your proposed script to be robust, I think you would need to add markup to all of the outline articles. For example, you could have a template call like , which would expand to  . Then hiding the annotations would be as simple as  . Also, yes, it is possible to use regex with the contents of an element (you can get/set the HTML as a string using innerHTML), but please don't, because it is a really bad idea; doing so is liable to break and/or introduce security flaws into your script. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 11:26, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have some questions:
 * There must be a way to process each li. It appears that what the above script does is process the DOM starting at each li. Not the same thing. Rather than nest the walk the dom function inside an "li:contains.each" loop, perhaps what is needed is to nest an li-processing sequence inside the recursive walk the dom function. Walk the dom applies a function to each element. You should be able to check the current element for the dash, process the element based on whether it has a dash or not, and then move onto the next element. How do you do that?
 * What is "func", what does it do, and where is the documentation for it?
 * Concerning regex, of what "security flaws" are you referring to? If you could introduce security flaws (that is, exploits) into a script, that's a security concern right there, and an aspect of the underlying platforms which the developers have a vested interest in fixing.
 * Again, concerning regex, wouldn't look-aheads allow exclusion of matches within DOM elements?
 * I look forward to your answers. The Transhumanist 18:27, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

What's the gist?
Are you trying to make it possible to transclude a list (that contains descriptions of items) into an outline (without those descriptions)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 9 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Like template transclusion? No. Most lists are not in outline format, and so transclusion is not compatible.
 * The tool will be for toggling annotations, so that you can look at lists and outlines clean. Annotations are nice, when you need them.  When you don't, they just slow you down.  So, one way to browse lists and outlines is to look at them bare, and then when you get to a term you don't know, push the annotation toggle hotkey, read the definition, then hotkey again as you continue to browse the menu of articles to choose from. Bare lists are so much faster to read and skim. Annotation toggling is a feature from outliners. It will be nice to have as Wikipedia's outlines accumulate more and more annotations.
 * Bare lists are nice. And annotated lists are nice. With a toggler, we can have both. The Transhumanist 05:07, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for explaining why you want to do this. I think you should take this idea to m:2016 Community Wishlist Survey (probably the "Reading" sub-page, but you should look at the options and decide for yourself).  An individual user script isn't going to be used as much as a core feature, and it's probably not going to be as fast.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:38, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * True, but that probably isn't the fastest way to bring it into existence, nor the surest (the thing looks like a lottery, with a remote chance of being chosen). And it appears that the feature does not fall within their scope (it does not pertain to curation or moderation, nor is it a heavily used gadget). Besides, it isn't the only feature that the script will include. It's probably best to wait until the script is refined, and then propose it (to another branch of engineering) to be converted into a core feature after all the quirks (and bugs) are worked out. The Transhumanist 08:29, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Who has set up a WP mirror using MediaWiki?
I need to talk to someone who actually has one up and running, and who wouldn't mind sharing the details on how they did it. The Transhumanist 18:45, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Proposed removal of ifexist from the check mark template
Check mark template is constantly getting repeated use in a single page such as a large list like this (I know this page suffers not only from checkmark template, but this still doesn't overshadow the shortcoming of #ifexist from this single template). Even if the whole page only checks for one non-green tick image file, the expensive parser function count still accumulates per usage. Without #ifexist the page will load slightly faster and score smaller preprocessor visited node count which means a lot in large lists. Please consider my sandbox version. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 05:27, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know the server load of #switch versus #ifexist but it could also use switch to list common colors known to exist like . PrimeHunter (talk) 10:57, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Considering the very limited set of available colors, i would definitely advise to use a switch for this use case indeed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:57, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think the reason that we don't use #switch here is that in case this template gets fully protected for whatever reason (speaking of which, this template is indeed highly visible and susceptible to vandalism), any user without special privilege can still add new color check mark by uploading the new SVG file with correct file name format to Commons without modifying the template. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 12:45, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "check if color exists..." in my code is meant to be an #ifexist when the listed colors are not used, so any user can still upload new color files and use them without changing the template. They can also make an edit request to add the color to the template list to reduce #ifexist calls. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:08, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I would prefer we avoid parser function (#if, #ifeq, #ifexist and #switch) altogether for a simple but highly visible template like this one which is how I did in the template sandbox. I just can't see any benefit or necessity of adding the #switch to . As long as the editor reads the doc and gets the correct value for parameter, the #switch is pretty much a pointless decoration. The only real benefit we can get from #switch is to allow alternative color names for the existent color check marks which, in all honesty, is not good enough to trade for the additional preprocessor visited node count and post-expand include size when being transcluded for more than 30 times in a single page which is very common in many large lists. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 16:04, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Check mark is only used in 1364 pages. Special:MostTranscludedPages shows many with millions of uses, often much more complicated. I wouldn't worry about a short switch here. It currently falls back to displaying a green checkmark if the color file does not exist. If we changed this to display a red file link then we should track down existing cases and fix them. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:35, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Aren't we supposed to leave performance alone unless it is an issue? imo, after going to the PrimeHunter #switch code, the #ifexists are mostly gone, there is a development option (as described), and the switch allows for multiple color/colour names to be catched nicely (editor friendly: no need to go to the doc page). The last few % performance improvements described and traded by Sameboat are not relevant PP numbers any more. -DePiep (talk) 21:28, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Cite this page
A reader reported ticket:2016110310003941 that they were blocked while trying to use the "cite this page" link. They are not a registered user and I think I've tracked down that they were using an IP address, probably dynamic, which is blocked for other reasons, but I'm unclear why clicking the "cite this page" link would trigger a message that they are blocked. While I'm not a regular user of that feature it appears to generate some information but doesn't trigger an edit of the page so why would it be unavailable even if the IP is blocked?-- S Philbrick (Talk)  18:48, 11 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I’m unable to reproduce this on a blocked IP. No such warnings or messages pop up on Special:CiteThisPage. - NQ  (talk)  19:36, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for checking, although I'm now even more puzzled.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  21:49, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

List Generation
Would it be possible to create a list of all Redirects created by User:Neelix which do not appear on this list, or almost equivalently, a list of redirects created by Neelix, and then subsequently edited by a different editor (including bots)? If both are practical, the former is preferable. The list should contain approximately 30,000 redirects. Thanks. Tazerdadog (talk) 08:37, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I've put the second option on your talk page. Summary:

<pre style="margin-left: 1.6em;"> 58689 new pages (created by Neelix) 48272 redirects (at creation) 28213 titles (have only Neelix as an editor)
 * --Unready (talk) 20:04, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * After a brief skim, it appears one of us missed a logical operator. I'm looking for redirects that were created by neelix, and WERE subsequently edited by a non-neelix user.  My quick skim suggests that you got the ones that were created by Neelix, and not subsequently edited.  Sorry if I wasn't clear on this the first time around, and thank you for putting in the effort. Tazerdadog (talk) 23:34, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Updated.

<pre style="margin-left: 4.8em;"> 58689 new pages (created by Neelix) 48272 redirects (at creation) 20059 titles (have at least one other editor)
 * --Unready (talk) 04:10, 15 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much, this appears to be exactly what I need. Tazerdadog (talk) 05:15, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Watchlist redirect of mobile view
One of the major reason I hate mobile view is that when the site decides to switch from the desktop view of special:watchlist to mobile view automatically, it is not redirected to the exact counterpart which shows the recent changes of my watching pages, but actually the special:editwatchlist page. If I want to go back to my usual watchlist, I have to click the counter-intuitively named "modified" button and in case I want to access the desktop view, I need to switch 2 pages in total from the mobile editwatchlist page which I rarely use. If you can fix this I will be happy. If you can provide an option in the preferences to disable mobile view altogether for registered users, I will be deeply grateful. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 07:54, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * What watchlist view is default on mobile is being discussed at bug, you may wish to add an opinion there. I for one think the current default is wrong. —  Scott  •  talk  08:39, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have trouble to login to Phabricator which I have a unified account between Wikimedia and Mediawiki but LDAP just would not let me login. Anyway Jdlrobson holds a strong belief that this is not an issue at all, so I would instead ask for an opt-out of mobile view in the preferences. I don't want the mobile view at all, but Wikimedia would randomly redirect me and this is a plain annoyance. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 09:39, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Did you try using the "Login or Register" button rather than the LDAP fields? Anyhow I'll link to this discussion from the ticket so that your comment is represented. —  Scott  •  talk  10:27, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If you have a unified account then you should not use the LDAP login, as explained on the Phabricator login page. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I suspect that the login via unified Wikimedia account to Phabricator does not support Windows XP. When I use Windows 7 to login, I was immediately prompted to login with unified account. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 11:30, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

File:Grand Theft Auto logo series.svg
Can somebody please revert File:Grand Theft Auto logo series.svg to the previous version because the new version represent the logo of one of the games of the series, but not all series? --Tohaomg (talk) 10:23, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I reverted, but you could have done that too. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:08, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Allow summary gadgets hooks (interface message edit request)
Please see this discussion. The RedBurn (ϕ) 15:59, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Problem with template lang-fa
There was a problem with template lang-fa at the article, which was subsequently fixed by. My question is, can there be a global fix of this problem at the template level instead of patching it up at the article level? It seems ironic that the problem is generated due to the right-to-left writing of the Persian language, since the template is designed for that language. Dr.  K.  22:22, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I can't see any problems there with what the template displayed or any broken code, but then I can't read Persian either. Can you please explain what was the alleged problem with these edits? This edit by Mhhossein " (14 March 1946 – 15 March 1995)" looks alright to me, except for the opposing pair of brackets ") (" with is undesirable in terms of style. But I don't see any problems with numerals as HyperGaruda mentioned in the edit summary. De728631 (talk) 22:37, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Mhhossein's edit, on pop-up preview, appears as: ) (14 Notice the "14" of Khomeini's DOB has entered the lang-fa template. Similar irregularities appear on edit-mode. Dr.   K.  22:49, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * generates: . Here   marks text as right-to-left. Note the template adds two &amp;lrm; (left-to-right) markers after the text. I find it odd that HyperGaruda  apparently had to add a third in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ahmad_Khomeini&diff=next&oldid=749056561]. My Firefox 49.0.2 had no display problems with the former version but such things can be browser dependent. Browsers can try to guess whether numbers and special characters should also be displayed right-to-left next to right-to-left text. We could add a third &amp;lrm; in Lang-fa and similar templates if that helps some browsers but three sounds a little excessive to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:18, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't the direction be reset with  anyway? But I'd agree that three lrm markers are a bit much. De728631 (talk) 23:27, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * RAS syndrome detected. (Left to right markers markers). P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 21:39, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You're right PrimeHunter. I tried Mhhossein's diff on IE11 and it doesn't show the DOB number displacement. It only shows up on Chrome. Thank you. Btw, always nice to talking to you. :) Dr.   K.  23:31, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If I'm correct, then the final view should be rendered correctly even without an additional lrm. The problem is probably limited to the editing window, where the template's native lrm characters are of course not present. --HyperGaruda (talk) 00:28, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. The problem appears in the editing and pop-up/diff preview windows only and only in Google Chrome. Dr.   K.  00:58, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Fetch data from Wikidata
Hello. I am trying to fetch data from Wikidata to Wikipedia, using a template. I have some problems with qualifiers and other things. Does anyone can help me? Xaris333 10:58, 13 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I think I can help; please elaborate on the problem. :) {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 21:58, 15 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello. I am using a Greek template. el:Πρότυπο:Κουτί πληροφοριών ποδοσφαιρικού συλλόγου (Template:Infobox football club). The first problem is about the stadium. I am using P115 from club's wikidata page. Its ok. But I also want P131 and P1083 from stadium's Wikidata page, not for club's Wikidata page. Xaris333 (talk) 22:06, 15 November 2016 (UTC)


 * OK, so what you're really trying to do is basically a nested query: get the item of the stadium from P115, then get the value of P1083 from the stadium's item. As far as I know Wikidata doesn't offer a way to provide raw output and therefore be nested itself, but you could definitely do it in Lua, perhaps with something like this:
 * There's probably a more elegant way to do that, but that should work well enough for practical purposes; just output  somewhere. {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 22:46, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There's probably a more elegant way to do that, but that should work well enough for practical purposes; just output  somewhere. {&#123; Nihiltres &#8202;&#124;talk&#8202;&#124;edits}&#125; 22:46, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Links in image captions on mobile
There seems to be a bug in the display of links in image captions. The first image above illustrates it at (current version). I thought it might have something to do with the CSS display property, so I thought to force display: inline by wrapping the entire caption in. I don't know how to inspect elements on this browser (Firefox for Android 49) so I don't know if this is actually the issue, but the hack certainly fixes the display, as shown in the second image. Hairy Dude (talk) 22:52, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that maybe my mistake in trying to fix something with the mobile skin. I'll look at it later today when I get back from work. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 07:00, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Patch on it's way. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:28, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Edit malfunctions
In this edit, I only added the new comment. I did not modify the existing comment. I and others easily could have missed it, and it could have been in an article instead of an article talk page. I know we have been aware of this for awhile, but I'm really surprised it has persisted for this long. What is the status? Can anybody point me to an existing phab ticket? &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  08:42, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You and Polentarion edited the same version and saved the same minute, you last [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ADonald_Trump&type=revision&diff=749800073&oldid=749799709] without getting an edit conflict I assume. See which has Phab links. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:03, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ok, a fundamental database integrity problem that is unfixable as far as we know. I will work on getting my head around that concept. I'm seeing this several times a month. Thank you. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  10:26, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Add HTML5 autofocus attribute to improve Wikipedia search user experience
Dear Wiki DEVs, please add this HMTL5 code to make the cursor auto focus on the search bar as soon as the search text field finished loading:

https://davidwalsh.name/autofocus

This will make it a lot easier to search articles in Wikipedia.

Thank you. 77.180.36.32 (talk) 14:07, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Take a look at FAQ/Main Page, it gives the usual reasons that we don't do this. Also note the workarounds listed in that section. — crh 23   &thinsp;(Talk) 14:48, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

RfC to regularise spacing between paragraphs on talk pages
RfC is at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. All comments appreciated. --RexxS (talk) 22:57, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Black background and green text gadget still malfunctioning - gadget CSS order
The gadget to give green text on a black background is still malfunctioning. This was raised in this thread a month ago. Does anyone know of a fix or if anything is being done to create one? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 13:30, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have been experimenting to get a working setup, and you can see the tweeks at User:Axl/monobook.css. The things to fix were colours of links, and visited links, the duplicated logo in the wrong spot, personal navigation and tools links, and article title. But it would be great to get the gadget working.  From what I guess is the page it should be possible, but there should be some thought given to the colours of things. So if any user needs help with a hacked stylesheet to make this gadget workable, I can assist you. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:19, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that is a vast improvement, especially getting rid of the intrusive logo. Still hoping for the gadget to be fixed tho'! DuncanHill (talk) 20:57, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Is this the stylesheet that the green on black gadget uses: MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css? The intrusive logo should get a better fix than just making it vanish for an official release. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:41, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 21:37, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * So the detail should be discussed at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Blackskin.css. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:03, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have raised this issue there, with links to this thread, the thread from a month ago, and phabricator. DuncanHill (talk) 22:43, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As mentioned in this thread linked by the OP, the problem appers to be loading order after a MediaWiki change. MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css already works correctly (at least for me) when it's loaded with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?useskin=monobook&withCSS=MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css. It fails when it's loaded via preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:43, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Oyveh. Try the night mode on the official Wikipedia android app. --Atlasowa (talk) 22:59, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

References section scrollbars
For putting the reference section in a box with a scrollbar Help:Reference display customization says to put the following in your skin.css:

The thing is, it doesn't work. It seems to want to scroll horizontally and not vertically. And the entire webpage has a horizontal scrollbar. I've tried disabling columns/column width, setting a max-width, and playing around with the overflow values. I imagine that the above is outdated (indeed, Help:Reference display customization edited last over two years ago). Can anyone offer a solution? I'm on Chrome version 54.0.2840.99 m. Brightgalrs  (/braɪtˈɡæl.ərˌɛs/)[1] 23:25, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Emails not arriving
On 3 November, I received notification that an e-mail had been sent to me, but that e-mail never arrived. I had forgotten about this until today, when I received notification about another e-mail, which 90 minutes later has not arrived either. This feature has previously worked, I have not changed the "Enable email from other users" under Preferences, and I still receive e-mails telling me that there have been changes to my talk page - so Wikipedia has the right e-mail address, Is this a known problem, and/or is there a cure? - Arjayay (talk) 11:12, 17 November 2016 (UTC) I suppose in the meantime I should remove the "email this user" option so people do not waste their time/get annoyed at the lack of response - Arjayay (talk) 13:54, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Mmmm - I have just used "Email this user" to send myself an e-mail, which has arrived - Arjayay (talk) 11:34, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Is your email provider Yahoo? There are documented incompatibilities between MediaWiki and Yahoo, because MediaWiki spoofs headers to show the email sender's address which flags their protection systems. &#8209; Iridescent 11:40, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Recently gmail has also been affected by this -- samtar talk or stalk 12:03, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes it is gmail - interesting that it accepted the spoofing of my e-mail address, any chance of a fix? Stop spoofing the address, but include it in the top line with an explanation?
 * It's been tracked in (previously Bugzilla) for over two years - the WMF know about the issue but your guess is as good as mine as to when and if a fix is ever going to happen --  samtar talk or stalk 14:09, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Can't log in on iPad
I get Going back and reloading doesn't help. It happens here and on Meta. No problems logging in with my Dell laptop running Windows 10 or my Samsung Galaxy 5. Any thoughts? (I first noticed this about 12 hours ago, and I'm pretty sure I haven't changed any settings.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:27, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

So, this is still happening. I'm on my iPad and can't log in. Is there someone at Wikimedia technical who I can ask about this? (Anthony) -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anthonyhcole (talk • contribs) 13:46, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is a caching issue. Close all Wikimedia pages, and clear the cache. On iOS, this is in Settings > Safari > Advanced > Website Data, then remove any Wikimedia page from the list. Unfortunately, this is only a temporary fix and will have to be reapplied. -- AntiCompositeNumber (Leave a message) 14:20, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Make sure you're using the desktop version of the site, even on your tablet or phone. I have experienced issues with logging in on the mobile version and changing to the desktop version always resolves it. Tvx1 14:41, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. AntiCompositeNumber's suggestion worked. I'll try just going to desktop view first if it happens again. Much appreciated. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:55, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Correctable edit summaries after saving
Not 100% sure whether this was raised before, but I think it could be worthy to make edit summaries correctable after saving. There are several issues with this. First, obviously when you mistyped something your error becomes permanently and irreversibly logged (particularly during common tasks, like "wikilink" instead of "italics", etc). Secondly, at least Firefox by default uses auto-filling in edit summaries, so when you enter letter "w" for example, the browser may suggest "wikilink" or "wl" (I accidentally got this recently). Third, canned edit summaries probably may cause similar accidental errors on mobile devices. So overall such feature could be useful and handy, unless there are technical limitations. Brandmeistertalk  12:46, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's definitely been raised lots of times before. I think the main reason for opposition has generally been that we depend on the impossibility of changing an edit summary: if Cyphoidbomb would go back to the "Need assist with table formatting" section up above and replace "WP:ACCESSIBILITY" with "WP:CSD", people who know that comments can be edited could check the page history and see that the initial comment made sense (if someone else came in and said "Huh?" and then ACCESSIBILITY got put back, we'd be confused because it was a response to something that wasn't there), but because we know that edit summaries can't be changed, we can trust that his edit summary for that edit will always be visible as "R", so we can always ask "Why did you write 'R'" without risk of a change in what was written.  Moreover, we'd want to log the changes to the edit summary if it were something that could always be changed: would we want an edit summary for edit-summary changes, or a page history for them?  However, it's been proposed that an edit summary be changeable only immediately after the change is made, within a minute or two, and that idea lacks the problems that the other does.  I can't understand why not to adopt it, so I'm guessing that it's just technical difficulties.  Nyttend (talk) 13:02, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Probably won't be here... 2015 Community Wishlist Survey/Miscellaneous and T15937. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 17:54, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Blocked and unblock instructions do not work
I am a major contributor with serveral thousand new articles who's coming up to my 15th year. Today while playing Tuesday trivia at a local pub I received several emails from the wiki, which is highly unusual. I opened them to find I had been globally banned from the wiki for something trump and something namespace, neither of which I have any idea about. In spite of limiting my edits mostly to WWII UK radar, nuclear fusion, and 1960s ABM systems, other editors apparently felt I was responsible for this, and immediately universally banned me.

There are instructions about how to appeal a block, but these require you to log in, which I cannot do. So can anyone help me out? I have an FA in progress.

Maury Markowitz

PS posting from my iPhone,please forgive any spelling issues.
 * You weren't banned; your account appeared to be compromised and was globally locked as a safety measure. It has been globally locked, rather than just locally blocked, and thus the instructions for appealing local blocks do not work. See Global lock P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 02:55, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I read the page,non trivial on the phone,and am still not sure what to do. The correct button did nothing and I'm not sure if I should post publicly. And advice?
 * You'll have to contact the Stewards through meta, IRC, or email, as described at meta:Stewards. You're account was definitely hacked, and the lock was necessary to keep the hacker from exercising your accounts permissions. You will be asked to change your password, and it would be a good idea to implement 2FA to protect your account in the future, since someone did manage to figure out your password. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:15, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * While I certainly won't discount the possibility, it seems unlikely, I suspect they came in from elsewhere. I also suspect I am not the only one that's been penned, and it's likely I was targeted because of my admin bit. Time to get rid of that, methinks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.168.93.48 (talk) 04:04, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Your local account was blocked, and then unblocked because of the global lock covering the situation.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3AMaury+Markowitz][//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=&page=User%3AMaury+Markowitz%40global&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&subtype=] Maybe the button that did nothing was in a mail about the no longer relevant local block. Your global account has been unlocked and I see you have started editing. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:23, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

This whole process was sub-optimal and needs fixing: This was a heap of fail. And before anyone smugly tries to blame me for this, I should point out I am the victim here. So my suggestions: Maury Markowitz (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:46, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) No message was posted to my talk page about what was going on. There were random messages about being banned or blocked, but not one accurate description of what actually happened. It was not until after the block was removed that someone posted such information, and it was the wrong information.
 * 2) Searching on the Wiki for information on the problem turns up the wrong pages. Those describe requesting unblocks by posting to your talk page, which you can't. It was not until Pppery posted above that the term "globally locked" came up, and even then without a link.
 * 3) Attempting to log in results in a pink box on the login page that has a slightly more accurate description, but no link to the appropriate pages.
 * 4) The appropriate pages are jargon filled and far too long to be immediately useful.
 * 5) The solution I ultimately used does not work on mobile devices.
 * 1) Like any block, there should be a requirement for the blocking admin to place a correct description of the problem and solutions on the user's talk page.
 * 2) If the terms are so similar that they might be confused, we should choose clearer terminology.
 * 3) The "pink box" for login fail should link to the correct page.
 * 4) The page should list the "how to fix" at the top, in short, clear language.
 * I think you probably want to discuss such improvements on the Administrators noticeboard. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:52, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The closest I've come to being blocked is when an IP on a public computer I was using for logged-out editing got hit with a vandalism block caused by somebody else, and on that occasion I agree it is confusing and difficult to appeal. It stands to reason - admins, by and large, have never been blocked (it's kind of difficult to pass RfA without a clean sheet, let's be honest) so they'll have no real idea of the experience. Additionally, you were lucky here - if you were a casual editor nobody had heard of, you could have been smacked with a sockpuppetry block soon after you posted your initial thread as an IP (and I've seen that happen with my own eyes). So I support Maury's attempts to make the process simpler and easier to understand. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  13:08, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * User talk:Maury Markowitz has a correct message about the local block, posted by the blocking admin two minutes after the block. If you had logged in while only that block was in effect then you should have gotten correct instructions in the interface. The confusion was caused by the global lock. Global locks are made at meta by stewards and apply to all Wikimedia wikis so you cannot expect to get a message on your English Wikipedia talk page. I don't know what happens when globally locked users try to log in but they can only be unlocked at meta by stewards. Did you see MediaWiki:Centralauth-login-error-locked and nothing else? Maybe meta:Global locks should be linked there. It's a brief page and includes:


 * Global locks may be requested and appealed at Steward requests/Global.
 * Default MediaWiki messages never link to wiki pages because the messages come with MediaWiki software which is used by thousands of unrelated wikis and have no wiki pages when MediaWiki is installed. MediaWiki:Centralauth-login-error-locked is currently the MediaWiki default but we could customize it here. Maybe it could also be suggested somewhere (at Phab?) that on all Wikimedia wikis it should replace the normal MediaWiki default with a message linking to meta:Global locks. Local wikis could still make their own versions if they want. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:21, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * We can adjust messages across all Wikimedia wikis while still having it generic for mediawiki using the WikimediaMessages extension. Anyone have a proposed alternative wording for the message? BWolff (WMF) (talk) 15:19, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Link it to the Meta page on global locks, and I'll update it to have more useful information (and people can help with that too if they'd like). -- Ajraddatz (talk) 23:52, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki:Centralauth-login-error-locked can just add the link without changing the wording: "You cannot log in because your account is globally locked." PrimeHunter (talk) 19:12, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi, as the locking steward I have a couple of things to mention here. First off, when dealing with compromised accounts, we do not and will not post public information on how to regain control of the account. The account has already been compromised; we don't want to tip the person off as to how they can gain further control of it or pretend to be the original account holder. Instead, we attempt to privately contact the account owner - not always easy, especially when people don't allow email from other users or don't have an email specified here. In your specific case, I tried to contact you through a couple of venues, though I was unfortunately unsuccessful in doing so. The documentation on global locks is also pretty sparse, mainly because it is a powerful tool which is rarely used. In 99% of cases, accounts which are globally locked have no chance of ever editing again, because they are either obvious cross-wiki socks or spam-only accounts. That doesn't help for the other 1% of cases though, and I agree that the documentation could use some more information.
 * I can add information on how to find out why your account was locked, and an info section on how to request unlocking on the Meta page. From here, linking to the global locks page from MediaWiki:Centralauth-login-error-locked would make sense. I can't add this to all interface messages globally, but I'll see if we can get the default modified on Wikimedia to link to the Meta page. As to messages regarding what happened, that is something that could be organized at the local level. Thankfully account compromises don't happen often, and if more people change their passwords and use 2FA they'll happen even less in the future :-) -- Ajraddatz (talk) 23:51, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Technical feasibility of password audits
Hi all, I've been looking at last years security review RfC with the view to launch a specific RfC to implement password audits. The 2015 RfC established consensus to perform these audits on administrator and functionary accounts, with a view to discuss the technical implementation in the near future - I hope to get the community to decide which method to use and have been drafting the RfC at Draft:Security review RfC 2016, but I can only think of one feasible method of checking. Does anyone else have any other suggestions for methods of auditing specific user groups' passwords? (Not which one we should use (that's for this RfC) or if we should audit passwords (consensus was made here) ). -- samtar talk or stalk 11:05, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It would have to be done by WMF developers using the hashes stored in the production server database. Given that, they'd just run them all through a standard password cracking/auditing tool and (my preference) privately notify any holders of passwords found to be crackable.  Then check again a few weeks later and if the password is still vulnerable, lock the account and notify the person that they have to do a password reset using the email mechanism. 50.0.136.56 (talk) 01:18, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

What is the parameter supposed to do?
I've seen this...thing on Template:Charlton-trademark-copyright. No parameter named DC is part of the calling structure so I think this is a parser function. Unfortunately all the materials on WP, Meta and MediaWiki said nothing about this. What does it do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by T3h 1337 b0y (talk • contribs) 07:08, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You can see what it does in the code. It is used in DC-Charlton-trademark-copyright. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:33, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No parameter named DC is documented. It's still a parameter. Looking at the template source, setting DC to anything non-null makes the template omit the blah blah defunct blah blah statement. --Unready (talk) 07:52, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-46
<section begin="technews-2016-W46"/> 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
 * When you edit with the visual editor you can use  +   +   to add a reference. The meta key is often the control key or command key.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 15. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 16. It will be on all wikis from November 17 (calendar).
 * In Special:Preferences you can choose which language menus and buttons will be in. If there is no translation for that language, MediaWiki has a list of fallback languages. A fallback language is a language many will understand better than English. MediaWiki will now use English when there is no Ukrainian translation.

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

Future changes
 * Magic links might not work in the future.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W46"/> 19:17, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * "when there is no Ukrainian translation" - why is Ukrainian special? -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:02, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not, but it's changing from another language (Russian), which is why it was included. This could probably have been more clear. To be honest, I was on the fence whether to include it or not, given that it's less relevant for most Wikimedians. /Johan (WMF) (talk) 09:08, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The fallback chain for Ukrainian is the only one that is changing. All the other fallback chains (e.g., Catalan to Spanish to English) remain the same.  This will affect anyone who is reading or editing a page with   or  .  (But not very much, because >98% of the UI is already translated into Ukrainian.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:37, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's just that the sentence "MediaWiki will now use English when there is no Ukrainian translation." doesn't have context - Ukrainian was not mentioned previously in the message, and I'm thinking "what does that have to do with the English Wikipedia?" -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:26, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Tech News is for all of Wikimedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:43, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Sure, so why not amplify the sentence with something like "if your language is Ukrainian, and the Russian fallback is not available, ..." It's all about not making us guess. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:51, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The described patch (which I am not involved in) changes it so Russian will not affect localization when you are browsing in Ukrainian. It won't be part of the fallback chain.  It will go straight to English if a Ukrainian translation isn't available. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 00:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Infobox coordinates conversion
If anyone with template experience is interested in doing mildly boring and repetitive things, you could help out with the conversion of coordinates-related infobox template parameters by editing infoboxes so that they can have superfluous parameters removed. Thanks, Jc86035 (talk) <span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left">Use &#123;&#123;re&#124;Jc86035&#125;&#125; to reply to me 09:36, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Main Page mysteriously appearing in watchlist
The main page appeared in my watchlist despite me not adding it to the watchlist. Does this have anything to do with the recent hack and subsequent edits to the main page? SwineHerd (talk/contribs) 15:14, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Unless you've also been hacked and the hacker added it, it was probably always there. You just didn't notice it, because it hadn't changed. --Unready (talk) 15:55, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If a page is moved then watchers automatically get the new title on their watchlist and also keep the old. I don't know whether there are oversighted vandalism moves of the main page. I guess you just accidentally clicked the watch tab somewhere between your account creation 19 September 2016 and the vandalism 12 and 16 November. The main page had no other edits in this interval because the content is mostly transcluded from other pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:07, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Did you at any point add Talk:Main Page to your watchlist? You can't have one without the other. Reach Out to the Truth 20:44, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Here's a possibility. Let's say that at some point you watchlisted a page, let's call it Hypothetical case Xyz, which was later deleted (at this point, Hypothetical case Xyz remains on your watchlist). You forget about it, after all, it's an unimportant redlink. Much later (we'll assume that Main Page isn't on your watchlist here), somebody gains improper access to an admin account, and maliciously moves Main Page to Hypothetical case Xyz; at this point, Hypothetical case Xyz is still watched by you, and Main Page still isn't. Another admin soon spots this and moves the page back, with redirect suppressed - and at this point, Main Page is added to your watchlist (Hypothetical case Xyz is still watched by you). -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Page moves, as well as deletions, are disabled for the main page on WMF wikis. The only move of the main page on Wikipedia was 11 years ago to Hauturu/Little Barrier Island by Moriori. GeoffreyT2000  ( talk,  contribs ) 05:07, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Awww shucks, it's so long ago I can't remember details, but rest assured it wasn't me. It was a friend who was looking over my shoulder as I was demonstrating how Wiki is edited. Wow, people still remember that. Moriori (talk) 07:15, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Village stocks remembers that for us. --Unready (talk) 15:35, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Page Curation Toolbar not working for me
As the title suggests, the Page Curation toolbar is not appearing for me as it should, and in fact never has. I was told you not need to add any JS for it to work, and I have the latest Java update, as well as the new NPP permission. Tried on 2 laptops & mobile using Chrome & Firefox, so guessing it's an account-related issue. Does it have to be enabled in some way? <b style="color:#CCCC00">Joseph</b><b style="color:#00FF00">2302</b> 10:55, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * , the Page Curation toolbar now requires group membership in the new page reviewers group to use. — xaosflux  Talk 11:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have that permission, see . <b style="color:#CCCC00">Joseph</b><b style="color:#00FF00">2302</b> 11:53, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Oops you do :D What skin are you using?  I never seem to get that bar to work with monobook and all my custom js.  Try turning off these, then turn on one by one. —  xaosflux  Talk 12:18, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Using Vector. And I've just tried that and it didn't work. <b style="color:#CCCC00">Joseph</b><b style="color:#00FF00">2302</b> 12:22, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Just off the wall - are you accessing this via Special:NewPagesFeed ? — xaosflux  Talk 12:31, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes I am, then clicking review on a page, and the tool should be on the right hand side, correct? <b style="color:#CCCC00">Joseph</b><b style="color:#00FF00">2302</b> 12:35, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Could you please open your web browser's developer tools and reload the page on which you see the problem? If there is a problem or an error with JavaScript (e.g. from other gadgets interfering) it should be printed in the 'console' of the developer tools. For more information please see Firefox/Google Chrome. (Java is not needed and I don't know what "NPP" stands for.) --Malyacko (talk) 14:12, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Have you clicked "Curate this article" under "Tools" in the left pane? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:39, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Working now. The "Curate this article" thing wasn't there until just now, but suddenly it is. And FYI, NPP= new page patrol, which now needs a user right to do. I guess because I only got the right 2 days ago, that might have caused the issue. <b style="color:#CCCC00">Joseph</b><b style="color:#00FF00">2302</b> (talk) 19:17, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Jmol, JSmol in the wiki?
About Chemistry, 3D images. By Infobox drug and Chembox (17K transclusions), we have input ACII string SMILES that can be fed to an external link, to show a 3D model called Jmol or JSmol, interactive eg by mouse. Example: This is what I know. (from here: my projection only). Now for a long time people have suggested we could incorporate the code into mw. So that we can have an interactive 3D image right in the infoboxes (not an el any more). See this and this talk. Is this worth a Phabricator id? -DePiep (talk) 23:26, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * DDT, SMILES, Jmol interactive 3D model (worth trying)
 * It might be even nicer if it could be even more general than just the infoboxes. Have some way of generating an interactive 3D model so it can be placed anywhere appropriate in the articles like other media can be placed. For instance, it would be neat if in a section of an article talking about metabolites of a drug we could place interactive 3D models of the metabolites. Sizeofint (talk) 00:39, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * For general 3D models there is a long running feature request documented in: T3790. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:25, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I just looked at that JSMol again.. My god that is terrible. Someone PLEASE hire a proper Javascript developer or just kill it already. I mean: It has Java style  inside the Javascript... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:40, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's auto generated code apparently...? That implements the Java framework... It's terrible though... Someone needs to take a long hard look at that, strip tons of deadweight in backwards compatibility and drag this out of 2009. It's clearly a research project in Javascript, and not a Javascript library implementing a standard. I do not consider it suited for usage in larger websites. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:08, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * We can call this DOA I guess. Create a phab number saying this for future questions? Thanks TheDJ. -DePiep (talk) 16:13, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well as an idea, it is certainly not DOA of course. I'd very much encourage it. But the technology is being prohibitive right now. We should stimulate and look for alternate technology oppertunities. If someone were to create a D3.js based renderer for the notation, we would be in much better shape. I would definetly advise to open a phab ticket. I'm a bit surprised actually that I cannot find an already existing or closed ticket for this topic. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:39, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Please start a number in phab, . I'm not in there yet, and anyway your remarks should be in there. -DePiep (talk) 20:40, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * To help keep information centralized, Using_Jmol_to_display_molecular_models looks long-untouched, but Jmol itself has and and http://wiki.jmol.org/index.php/MediaWiki]. DMacks (talk) 22:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Also of relevance is T7535. That refers to "bug 16491 (Which is asking for the ability to upload molecule files, and have them display in the wiki with 3d models", but I can't find that bug-item itself in phab. DMacks (talk) 23:00, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
 * To convert from bug numbers to phab numbers, add 2000 and prefix with "T", i.e. T18491. Or, prefix the bug number with "bugzilla:" and wikilink it, as in 16491. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:43, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Any good tools for dealing with IPv6 ranges?
I'm looking specifically for tools that will let me figure out what the true range is of a series of IPs, as well as find all anonymous edits on that range. This would all be for the purpose of guessing the collateral damage caused by an IPv6 rangeblock. How do other admins handle these? Thanks. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:56, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * See blockcalc. There is a lot of mumbo jumbo in the documentation, but that can be ignored. You feed a block of wikitext containing the IP addresses to the template, and it provides contributions links with a note about what is needed to make the links work. Johnuniq (talk) 08:06, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Be aware that most ISPs hand out IPv6 addresses to individuals as /64 blocks, with the intent that subscribers will subnet their homes and not use NAT, so any range that comes back as smaller than /64 (e.g., /120 is "smaller" than /64, because the number is how many bits are fixed, not how many vary) can probably be bumped up to /64. --Unready (talk) 15:34, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

ref cleanup scripts?
Is there a script or bot that can clean up the refs at History of Cleveland Clinic? This is a new article that was written by somone who used an awkward ref format. In particular I find all those urls hard on the eyes. Even just putting them all inside brackets would be an improvement. Kendall-K1 (talk) 20:34, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Coloured characters in edit mode
At Wikipedia talk:Password strength requirements, in the post by timed at 06:30, 18 November 2016 (UTC) there is a character before the signature which looks like a yellowish circle. I assumed an image, but on going into edit mode, I saw that it is yellow there as well - an anomaly amongst the otherwise black text on white. It even shows up yellow in. Using Unicode code converter I see that when pasted into the first green box it is yellow there too, and may be encoded as  or. When did fonts start having inherent colour? Note: I updated to Firefox 50.0 overnight, which may or may not be coincidence. -- Red rose64 (talk) 08:42, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * They've been around for a while; see Emoticon. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:56, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ever since I found the emoji shortcut on my keyboard I've kinda been abusing them🙃 <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz]  <em style="font-size:10px;">18:43, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It must be that Firefox upgrade, since I'm now noticing them in places where I didn't before, like the "⚠" in which is also seen in ; and in  sent by  signing as.
 * That last one brings up a problem: per MOS:CONTRAST, links must be clearly identifiable as links. Yet if the character has some inherent colour (like pink, in the case of ❤️), and cannot be coloured otherwise even by CSS (consider  which displays as ❤️ which is clearly not blue), use of such characters in links constitutes an accessibility violation. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:02, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Whooah! I've just found that at Village pump (technical)/Archive 151, most of the characters which previously showed as little boxes of figures now show as coloured pictures instead. These are: 🌪 🤴 😮 😯 🤵 ☈ 🐱 💩 and also 's crossed swords ⚔ which had been a problem for me since I joined 7½ years ago. The only ones mentioned in that thread which still display as little boxes of figures are 🙰 and 🙱. So it's definitely that Firefox upgrade. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:22, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks like Firefox 50 has started shipping a built-in color emoji font based on EmojiOne. Anomie⚔ 20:36, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

action=purge via GET is deprecated
I sometimes use mw:API:Purge to purge page caches, using the option to update categories. That can be useful when investigating error tracking categories. Even using the example in the API:Purge documentation shows a warning: "Use of action=purge via GET is deprecated. Use POST instead."

Following is a URL I used a few minutes ago to remove some fixed pages from articles with script errors. I have split up the URL to make it easier to follow: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php ?action=purge &forcelinkupdate=1 &titles=207109_Sturmenchopf|Dasher_High_School|Davidson,_Indiana|Port_Julia,_South_Australia

Presumably the warning is related to the changes a few weeks back which mean that adding  to a URL requires a manual confirmation. I understand the slightly WP:BEANSy reason for requiring POST, but what is going to happen to the API? How can a POST equivalent to the above be done? Johnuniq (talk) 09:35, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is what I have in my personal common.js. Some gadgets, etc., that used to do purge via GET have been changed to use POST, so you could use them, too.  HTH. --Unready (talk) 15:28, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If you're doing it from the browser, the easiest way to make an API call as a POST would probably be to use |Dasher_High_School|Davidson,_Indiana|Port_Julia,_South_Australia ApiSandbox. If you're using a script, it should be easy enough to change your script to use a  method in your framework instead of  . Anomie⚔ 20:32, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't see mention of POST there, but it seems to work. Johnuniq (talk) 01:11, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Script problem
I have regularly used the SpamUserPage script in SD patrolling, but the button seems to have disappeared. Script reads importScript('User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/SpamUserPage.js');. Also pinging <b style="font-family:Lucida;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> -  talk to me?  14:32, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I've just fixed it. The OOjs UI interface changed for the input boxes that I was using, and I hadn't updated the code, which is why it broke. Sorry for the inconvenience. — <span style="color: #194D00; font-family: Palatino, Times, serif">Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 23:47, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * , many thanks, I'll get back to smiting the ungodly! <b style="font-family:Lucida;color:red">Jimfbleak</b> - talk to me?  06:28, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

GhostText with live preview
Anyone looking for a project? My kingdom for an external text editor with a live preview. I sometimes use GhostText to get syntax highlighting and general external text editor benefits, but it could use a few tweaks, namely some live preview option while the Wikipedia window's editable text area is not in use. Even some small script that periodically toggled the live preview function (from Preferences > Editing > Preview > Use live preview) would be great, but even better would be previewing the specific section active in the external editor. Something like this would make editing much more productive (Bret Taylor would agree). czar 08:18, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * My Actual Live Preview does something similar for the internal editor. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:25, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-47
<section begin="technews-2016-W47"/>

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
 * Administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers can now use two-factor authentication. This makes their Wikimedia accounts more secure. This can be turned on in Special:Preferences. There are discussions on how to best turn it on for everyone.
 * You can now search for file properties. For example you can search for media type, how big a file is or what resolution it has.
 * The latest Collaboration team products newsletter has been published. It has more details about their work than Tech News has.

Problems
 * A hacker group is hacking Wikimedia accounts. They can probably do this because users have the same passwords on Wikimedia wikis as on other sites. Please have a password you use only on the Wikimedia wikis and nowhere else. This is especially important for administrators, bureaucrats, oversighters and checkusers. These users can also turn on two-factor authentication.

Changes this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * RevisionSlider will be a default feature on German, Arabic and Hebrew Wikipedia. This will happen on 22 November. It will come to other wikis later.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * It will be possible to do cross-wiki search. The developers who work on this are looking for communities that want to test this.
 * Hovercards will leave the beta stage. The Wikimedia Foundation Reading Web team wants communities to set Hovercards as a default option for readers who are not logged in. Communities that are interested can say so on the Hovercards talk page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W47"/> 15:32, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Caption issue on mobile devices
It appears that recent updates to the software are causing a minor issue with image captions on the mobile site. Ordinarily, the captions would be spaced to the width of the image, but now they are being forcibly stretched across multiple lines. It's like a paragraph typed in Microsoft Word where the margins are justified and you press shift and enter halfway through a line; you end up with three or four words in a line. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 02:32, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Here is a screencap of what the issue looks like:



However, some captions&mdash;such as the boy scout one in the above section&mdash;do appear properly, though I have no idea why. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 02:40, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * See Village pump (technical)/Archive 151 and T150706. The fix hasn't been deployed yet. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:56, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, there will be no normal deploy this week, i'll try to get this into a SWAT emergency deploy. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:22, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * should be fixed now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:43, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

@ &mdash; it's all good now, thanks. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 00:45, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Login and password reset
I cannot log in or reset my password. I have been a registered Wikipedian since 3 September 2003. I am a system administrator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hawstom The system will not email me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.201.76.62 (talk) 17:47, 7 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, I did indeed make an unsigned comment. 72.201.76.62 (talk) 17:49, 7 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I noticed this problem about a week ago when I wanted to make a minor edit to an article. I tried again today with the same result. 72.201.76.62 (talk) 17:52, 7 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Do you see an option below the password that asks "Forgot your password?" That takes you to a page that asks for your user name and email address.  The only other thing I can think of is Help:Reset password.  I believe they used to take shorter passwords, but are now requesting Password strength requirements. — Maile  (talk) 17:57, 7 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but I will probably need to talk to a developer or high level bureaucrat. "The system will not email me." 72.201.76.62 (talk) 19:50, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is a strange question for a system administrator. However you are not actually one of them. You are just a local sysop. Ruslik_ Zero 19:53, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No signature and a claim to be a system administrator are odd mistakes for an administrator but User:Hawstom has claimed to be a system administrator since 2005.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Hawstom&diff=11966152&oldid=11892610] What exactly happens when you try to log in and when you use Special:PasswordReset? Does "The system will not email me" mean you get a message saying something like that, or do you just not receive a mail at the address you think is stored in your account? Try to look in spam folders in your mail software and the website of your mail provider. Try other mail addresses you have access to if an old address may be stored. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, one can be a system administrator and not an administrator of this system.. . . That is, the claim of being "a system administrator" and of being "a Wikipedia administrator" are two different things. - Nunh-huh 20:56, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The user group used to be called, which is short for system operator. Given the other things on that user page which indicate its age, that it should refer to the permission as "system administrator" isn't particularly bothersome. --Izno (talk) 05:12, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

User:Hawstom login and password reset
Please see above this discussion.

Thanks, PrimeHunter. What's happening is that I am simply not getting a message (including spam) at the address I believe I have been using since before 2001. Since it is a gmail address, I could have done some sort of cutesy when I registered at Wikipedia like added ****+wikipedia@gmail.com to my address. I don't know. But thst should not prevent the message from getting to me assuming I wasn't using some sort of obsolete alias like *****@despammed.com or *****@spamgourmet.com. Anyway, what are my options at this point? I am happy to register a different account, though I am sorry to see my vintage account go by the wayside. I do have many old Wikipedian friends who could vouch for me, if that's an option. I also can demonstrate I control the web sites that I have claimed as my own at User:Hawstom for the past 15 years or so. There's a 2006 version of User:Hawstom about 15 edits ago at 72.201.76.62 I guess it would also be very easy to show in the usual ways (driver license, passport, etc.) that I am really Tom Haws, whom I have identified myself as on Wikipedia in my talk signatures. Thanks again. No rush. 72.201.76.62 (talk) 20:36, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

I am only a Wikipedia administrator (sysop was the term back in the day when they dubbed me an admin (broom, dustpan, and hand grenade)). In any case, the login problem persists. Sorry. I don't edit much in the past ten years or more. 72.201.76.62 (talk) 20:23, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

And yes, it's a drag to be using an IP address to be discussing this. I could have created a sock puppet, but oh well. 70.167.218.19 (talk) 23:27, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This account's email is not gmail. I obviously can't disclose which one it is, but it seems to be a work email. Max Semenik (talk) 23:43, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into that for me. I don't have access to anything at thaws@kwhpe.com or thaws@hubbardengineering.com anymore (that is where I was working 1999 to 2010). But I still do control hawsedc.com and constructionnotesmanager.com. I thought that Wikipedia used to have a private messaging system, but I do not see that at the moment. If it's one of the latter, I can go into the mail system at my web site and get the mails. If the account email is one of the former, I possibly could ask Hubbard to look into it for me. Or you could just point the email to something at hawsedc.com like tom@hawsedc.com since that is obviously a web site that belongs to User:Hawstom based on the status of User:Hawstom since 2006 I referenced above. 70.167.218.19 (talk) 00:28, 16 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, I think what you're asking for is technically impossible, because anyone could say what you just have and get access to a sleeper admin account to wreck havoc. The policy at WP:SOCK says you should create a new account and tag the old one as abandoned. If you want to use the admin tools, I think you would be best filing a fresh Request for adminship, stating in your RfA that you would like the old account desysopped as compromised / abandoned. However, given you have barely used the tools in ten years, I suspect the odds of you passing RfA in today's climate are extremely low, so I think you'll have to treat your tools as "retired", whatever option you choose. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  16:21, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Not following you around I swear Ritchie - Ritchie is correct though, there are ways our sysadmins can restore access to this account, but it's unlikely we can prove ownership of the account. In the future (and to anyone reading who is worried this could happen to them) please consider adding a committed identity to your account -- samtar talk or stalk 16:28, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Hawstom, your email does not belong to any of these. I believe you but I need to be absolutely sure - so I'm unable to help you unless a trusted Wikipedian that knows you can confirm your identity. Max Semenik (talk) 19:40, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Max. I did research and find that perhaps my gmail account only goes back to 2005 (???) and before that I did use hawstom@sprintmail.com. I don't have access to that anymore. If it's not too much trouble, can you let me know if any of the following would be suitable trusted Wikipedians? Alternately, couldn't I just put a breadcrumb at one of my (Hawstom's) personal web sites, like a message to you? -Tom
 * User:Visorstuff Met on Wikipedia. Probably can identify me via Facebook, LinkedIn, web sites, etc.
 * User:Sam Spade Met on Wikipedia. Have spoken on the phone many times.
 * User:Rednblu Met on Wikipedia. Have emailed, I believe.
 * User:Wesley Met on Wikipedia. Have emailed.

Also, the plot thickens. Not only can I not access this account, I also cannot access my es account es:Usuario:Hawstom. Hmm. Maybe I really am not myself!?! Whoa! -Tom — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.167.218.19 (talk) 19:56, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * See WP:SUL. You now have only one login across most WMF websites. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:52, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

News flash. I just found out I am logged in on my smart phone on en. I am going to see if I can resolve the issue for en from my smart phone. Yay! Tom Haws (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Follow-up: As I suspected, the smart phone interface is not robust. I will keep trying. In any case, I do confirm that the anon claiming all the above is really me. Anything you can do to help is still appreciated. My real world identity on this account has never been hard to guess. I am Arizona Registered Civil Engineer #30503, Thomas Gail Haws, and I am the sole author of [tomsthird.blogspot.com] and [hawsedc.com]. Tom Haws (talk) 17:23, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Here are some links that may help from smart phone. Special:ChangeEmail Special:Preferences. 72.201.76.62 (talk) 17:37, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, that didn't work. The system asks me to verify my identity with a password. I am starting to think my account was hijacked even though I don't see any surprising activity yet. Consider the following facts: Is it possible for a person with sufficient rights to change my email to tom.haws@gmail.com? Tom Haws (talk) 17:59, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This smart phone is less than 1year old. I never had a smart phone before this.
 * I have been receiving all my email at my tom.haws@gmail.com inbox for over 10 years.
 * I was able to sign in to this account on this device (smart phone) without fanfare within the months I have owned this phone.
 * I can no longer sign in without or with fanfare here or on es.
 * Any legitimate email address on this account would have some combination of my name or initials: hawstom, thaws, tom.haws, tomh, tom, etc. If not, it was hijacked.

Since MediaWiki 1.27 (~6 months) users must log in again before accessing ChangeEmail or the like, to make it harder for attackers who obtain a session somehow (stolen phone, copied session cookie via XSS etc) but don't know the password.

Changing the email for an account with such a clear link to an IRL identity is probably fine, but I'd like to see community consensus on it first. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think this should be taken offline, probably to Arbcom, because it may not be helpful to spell out to attackers what they need to do in order to take over an admin account. There is no reason to think that a particular gmail account is connected with a particular person unless confirmed by very good personal information from trusted third parties, and that should be evaluated by Arbcom. Unfortunately that would take time (several weeks), but it may be best. Johnuniq (talk) 00:26, 22 November 2016 (UTC)


 * That sounds good to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hawstom (talk • contribs) 04:08, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

User creation log missing ?
Is there a problem with user-creation logs? I cannot seem to be able to find mine. Shyamal (talk) 03:57, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You registered at 26 Nov 2002, 12:34:13Z. The earliest log entry for anyone is 7 Sep 2005, 22:16Z. --Unready (talk) 04:26, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Not quite; the time of registration wasn't recorded before the log was introduced, and it was estimated based on the time of the first edit. Also see this Signpost story. Graham 87 09:54, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

need help from someone good with coding! re: Template:Infobox WorldScouting/uniform
I have two issues on the same template, am no good at coding myself, and have asked several places with no positive response.
 * 1) now that we have new hats and skintones at commons:Category:Scouting uniform templates, can toggles like "skintone medium", "skintone dark", "overseas hat", "bush hat" and "bucket hat" be incorporated into the template Template:Infobox WorldScouting/uniform?
 * 2) If you look at Scouts Australia, the boy renders smaller than the girls do. Most countries will want to show both boys and girls side by side... can we fix the feet space and head space? I mean the background of each image.. they have not only different sizes but also "float" in different positions inside the template (my graphist friend explained usually defined as x points from left, y points from top) And my graphist friend made four basic test images for the template. changed a bit the names to not disturb the older ones until the template is done. the files are:

File:WikiProject_Scouting_uniform_template_male_male_head.svg

File:WikiProject_Scouting_uniform_template_male_longshirt.svg

File:WikiProject_Scouting_uniform_template_male_bermudas.svg

File:WikiProject_Scouting_uniform_template_male_boots.svg if you need a bitmap let me know.

Thanks anyone who can help!--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 02:20, 21 November 2016 (UTC)


 * You might also try Graphics Lab/Illustration workshop where editors hang out who can, I believe, address the sizing issue. They may or may not monitor this forum.-- S Philbrick  (Talk)  18:30, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The graphist I've got, the coding is the problem. Thanks for keeping this going, though!--Kintetsubuffalo (talk) 18:33, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Cat history
While it is easy to find what an article look like at any point in time in the past, I don't know how to do that with categories. I haven't really had a need other than idle curiosity but I'm feeling an email sent to Wikimedia in which someone states that the category Category:Human proteins, now with 837 entries, had over 11,000 at one time. Can anyone tell me how to see the history of a category?-- S Philbrick (Talk)  21:01, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Human_proteins has cached many versions of the category page with such numbers, e.g. 20 April 2016 saying 11,320. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:22, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It's possible to see page categorization with a watchlist setting but it can only go back 30 days. The only change in that period is adding one article in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TSEN54_(gene)&diff=747198353&oldid=745003596]. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:32, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That does confirm it had many more entries, but, unless I missed something, Wayback has only the first page. Is there a way to access the other pages?-- S Philbrick (Talk)  21:58, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know a way. I think the category reduction is mainly caused by bot edits like [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collagen,_type_XV,_alpha_1&diff=prev&oldid=721814457]. The former version transcluded PBB/1306 which adds the category when it's used in mainspace. It's one of 11,144 templates in Category:Human protein templates. I guess most or all of them were previously transcluded in mainspace articles and added the category. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:05, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Aside: The linked edit was performed by User:ProteinBoxBot, which purports to be shared among 3 users. Is account sharing legitimate? --Unready (talk) 22:32, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Username policy says it's legitimate for bots. Hmm.... --Unready (talk) 22:36, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not only fine with shared accounts, I think it should be required. It can be a bit annoying when a bot account screws up (perhaps because something else changed) and there's no one to fix it. If I were in charge, I'd insist on identification of a primary account, but in this particular case, two of the three haven't edited in years, so if anything, it would be nice to add an active account.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  22:56, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Category pages are generated (sort of) dynamically, based on the table of category links in the database. When a page is categorized, a record is added to the category link table. When a page is removed from the category, the record is deleted. There is no archive for old category links. Unless someone has taken snapshots of the category pages, like InternetArchive does, you'd have to sift through database backups. --Unready (talk) 22:24, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

A lot of templates in CSD
I see that User:Pppery recently edited Testcases notice to prompt a G8 under certain conditions.

I've looked at a few, e.g. Abbr/testcases and don't think it is correct. Am I missing something? This has dumped about 250 templates into CSD, which I think are in error. (and yes, I have asked User_talk:Pppery)-- S Philbrick (Talk)  22:02, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently now fixed.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  22:52, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * by was part of the fix. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No, that didn't actually fix the problem. The real fix was the later edits made by, who pointed out I was missing the namespace. P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 23:52, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm concerned that you are going straight in with changes to live templates, without (a) discussing your proposed change; (b) creating a testable version in the template's sandbox or (c) setting up some testcases. You have done this at least three times today - at, and at . Points (b) and (c) are covered at WP:TESTCASES, and you are clearly aware that such things as testcases exist, otherwise you would not have gone near . -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:18, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Interwiki links problem
Interwiki links for Minute and second of arc shows only two other links from en., instead of 39, needs fixing, please. --Mpj7 (talk) 19:28, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You need to check the Wikidata entries. It looks like there are only two other articles with the same title but there are 39 called minute of arc that are linked to the redirect Arcminute. Nthep (talk) 19:40, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but it is not usual. I don't see the recent redirect(s) much helpful, one cannot link to the other 39 from en. why not redirect to minute of arc instead. The project is somehow isolated from other 39 interwiki links. This usually does not happen in other redirects, the broken links automatically fixed usually, I think.--Mpj7 (talk) 10:24, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There are three related Wikidata items:, , . Some languages have separate articles for Arc second and Arc minute. Here they both redirect to Minute and second of arc. The redirects are in the corresponding Wikidata items. Minute and second of arc is only linked to articles which are about both. Wikidata requires precisely matching subjects. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:53, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Add CentralAuth link to sidebar
Hi y'all! I've started an RfC on adding a CentralAuth link to the sidebar when viewing user or user talk pages. Please chime in at MediaWiki talk:Sidebar. Ks0stm (T•C•G•E) 19:25, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

User:Tagishsimon destroys his own account
I seem to have screwed up my account royally by this edit to my common.css page. I know; I should be wheeled out & shot. Is anyone able to revert the edit? ... I now see only the headings of pages and none of the content, so I don't seem to be in a position to do anything. (And it follows that I'm having to make this edit from my ip addy ... anyone familiar with css will probably confirm, from the diff, that I'm an idiot and that the probability is that this request is indeed from ). thanks --164.215.104.187 (talk) 05:41, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If you use Firefox, you can use inspector to override the style. I think Chrome has a similar feature. --Unready (talk) 05:51, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I did it, probably. As it says "Note: After saving, you have to bypass your browser's cache to see the changes. Internet Explorer: hold down the Ctrl key and click the Refresh or Reload button. Firefox: hold down the Shift key while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R). Google Chrome and Safari users can just click the Reload button. For details and instructions about other browsers, see Bypass your cache."  Zerotalk 05:52, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks both. I managed to use the "Restore all default settings (in all sections)" option in preferences whilst you were reverting my edit ... I'm back, although not quite as I was - section edit now say "Edit source" when previously iirc they said "edit". I can live with that until I discover how to change it again. Exciting :) --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:58, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * the thing about "Restore all default settings (in all sections)" is that it does exactly that - but User:Tagishsimon/common.css isn't in any of the sections of ; although it is linked from, it's not part of it; as far as prefs is concerned, it's just another (editable) page, and not a setting. Zero0000 took the correct action with . -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:50, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Right. You could have edited your common.css in the mobile version instead. I had no problems doing that in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:PrimeHunter2/common.css&diff=751257396&oldid=751257293]. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:20, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Category contents issue.
I'm unable to select anything in this category up to H. Select any letters A to G causes results to start at H. CV9933 (talk) 11:16, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I guess there just aren't any pages before H because somebody fixed them alphabetically. I deliberately added Australian Broadcasting Corporation to the category in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Australian_Broadcasting_Corporation&diff=prev&oldid=751259308] and it shows up. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:43, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I tried to watch the category and unhide categorization of pages in watchlist settings. Trappist the monk is fixing them alphabetically as suspected. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:48, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks PrimeHunter, I'm doffing my hat to that.CV9933 (talk) 13:33, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Automatic CC of email not being sent
Sorry if this is a duplicate. I have the "Send me copies of emails I send to other users" option set in my preferences. I also have the "Email me a copy of my message." option set when I send mail to another user. However no copy arrives even though the mail is sent to the other user (as best as I can check). I tried about 6 times to 3 different destinations. Are other people having this problem? Zerotalk 04:57, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You had better check your email address is in Wikipedia correctly. Or whether emails are hitting your spam folder, or some oether sub folder apart from inbox. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:20, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I get emails that other users and the notification system send me (several in the past day), so my email address is not a problem. I also checked my spam folder etc and nothing is there. Zerotalk 05:28, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you get emails from other users on your domain? (By domain I mean what comes after the @ character, e.g yahoo.com) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:31, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know. Why would it matter?  I get mail from plenty of other domains, including wikipedia.org. Also from myself, though that doesn't prove much. Zerotalk 12:16, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * What matters is that if the mail is sent from a Wikimedia server, and the sender's email address (as configured at ) is [something]@yahoo.com, it gets rejected between our servers and your inbox, regardless of what the recipient's email address is. This has been covered many times on this page, check any archive for the last couple of years and search for "yahoo". -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:25, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That's it, thanks. Maybe this is the technical page for it. Basically, yahoo rejects mail with spoofed 'From' headers. Actually lots of smaller mail servers do too, as an anti-spam measure. (I don't see why it is so hard to solve though.) Zerotalk 12:42, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah ha! I had this problem for ages, and never knew why. A while ago I changed the IP address that I use for Wikipedia because of vast amounts of spam, and I have not had the problem again. The old account was a yahoo one, and the new one isn't, so all is now clear. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:04, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Nitpick: You mean email address. IP address is something else. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:52, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Commons category box linking to Commons galleries rather than category
There was a discussion at Commons that got plenty of support but ended up archived with no action. I reposted but nobody seems to want to handle it.

Can anything be done on this end? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:25, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * So for every page in the (Gallery) namespace which contains a  tag (which is probably everything that isn't a redirect), you want an extra link to every category for every   link? So once that would be done, every time a category is added or removed from any page, it would have to be added or removed two places? That sounds suboptimal. Perhaps a slightly better solution would be something in JavaScript that duplicates the links. Lua isn't smart enough to figure out a page's categories while the page is being generated. I think it would have to be JavaScript, which runs after the page is generated. --Unready (talk) 18:14, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi Unready. I am sorry. I am quite daft when it comes to the technical hows and whys.
 * It is best if I leave it to you and others discuss things, if that is okay.
 * I'll look out for a final "Yes, it is sorted out." or "No, nothing can be done."
 * Again, I am sorry for not being good at this sort of thing. Best, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 18:23, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm suggesting something like this for MediaWiki:Common.js. It can be made prettier, of course. --Unready (talk) 19:41, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Even though no one has commented, here's something simpler that leaves out hidden categories, which is probably desirable. --Unready (talk) 21:55, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It is shorter but I wouldn't say prettier. Maybe some orange and a splash of purple? Kidding! I have no clue what it does, but I get the feeling it will do something good toward fixing this! I am grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you! :)  Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:14, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If you want to see what it does, you can add it (temporarily) to your commons common.js and go to, for example, Vending machine. --Unready (talk) 22:46, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi Unready. I'm terrified of adding anything to those pages. To me, it's all some sort of witchcraft and that code is like a spell or hex. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:28, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm suggesting it (or something like it) for MediaWiki:Common.js, so it probably won't turn you into a newt. --Unready (talk) 02:56, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hi Unready. A newt wouldn't be so bad. :) Just not a centipede. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:51, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Hello World: What do you think of this? Isn't this a pressing issue? Why no input from others? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:51, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Orphan template has just stopped working
Not sure what's happened here - I used the orphan template on an article ten minutes ago and it was fine, but it's now no longer appearing when added to articles. (From the HTML source, it's there but with a "display: none" CSS style.) Other amboxes still seem to render okay. What changed? Neither the orphan nor ambox templates have been directly edited in months. --McGeddon (talk) 11:09, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * See Template:Orphan. I see it in tested articles in Category:Orphaned articles from November 2016, e.g. 3D Fold Evolution. If you think it's missing from a page where it should be visible then please give an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:42, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, apologies, my fault for not reading the documentation - didn't occur to me a problem template making itself invisible might be an intentional feature. The page I'd found it missing from was, yes, an old one, and I was just testing it with an undated orphan tag, which wasn't appearing either and apparently isn't meant to. Which seems a bit odd, but fair enough. --McGeddon (talk) 11:59, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

What links here not hiding transclusions
I'm sure this used to work, but I keep coming across pages recently where the "hide transclusions" button does not do anything on Special:WhatLinksHere. For instance Ethics committee has only one or two "real" incoming links, but after I added the article to Template:Research participant rights there are many more due to the template transclusions. They don't disappear when the hide transclusion button is pressed. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 14:14, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "hide transclusions" works as intended but not as expected by many users. It doesn't hide pages with transcluded links. It hides pages which are transcluding the page Ethics committee, and no pages do that. Articles are rarely transcluded. "hide transclusions" is mainly useful on templates. The feature you expected is often requested. Here are some of the requests:


 * Help talk:What links here
 * Help desk/Archives/2016 September 7
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 147
 * Teahouse/Questions/Archive 328
 * Help desk/Archives/2015 March 25
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 139
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 132
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 132
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 131
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 126
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 122
 * Village pump (proposals)/Archive 104
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 69
 * Help talk:What links here
 * Help desk/Archives/2009 June 20
 * Help desk/Archives/2012 May 9
 * Help desk/Archives/2011 January 18
 * Help desk/Archives/2008 February 25
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive S
 * T3392
 * T5241
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 15:21, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Category:Interwiki link templates
For some reason, there are a large number of articles about parliamentary constituencies appearing in Category:Interwiki link templates; I can't work out why. Could someone more adept with these things than I take a look? Josh Milburn (talk) 23:02, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Some template (not sure which one) used on the pages included the category. It appears to have been corrected already, but some pages are listed from before the correction. If you null edit the pages, they disappear from the category listing. --Unready (talk) 23:11, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It may have been [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:/meta/color&diff=748681203&oldid=689083582] from November 9, fixed 2 hours later. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:56, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It was by, since reverted. Affected pages just need a WP:NULLEDIT to fix the categorisation. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:59, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you, everyone, for looking into this and offering explanations. The problem now seem to be resolved. Josh Milburn (talk) 22:49, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Black Kite
User:Black Kite is a bluelink, but clicking on it brings up a notice saying the page does not exist. Why is this? 86.147.228.21 (talk) 14:29, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If I understand correctly, where there is a created user page at Meta, that will be used on all other Wikimedia sites where no local user page exists - e.g. M:User:Bencherlite is used at It:Utente:Bencherlite on the Italian Wikipedia, where I have never edited (though one edit of mine from here has been imported). M:User:Black Kite exists but is blank. BencherliteTalk 14:36, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * meta:Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage says: "If the page is empty or consists only of invisible content like, it won't be shown on other wikis." It's confusing that the link is blue when the meta page is blank and not shown or linked. See User:Harej for an example where it's not blank and the bottom displays MediaWiki:Globaluserpage-footer: "" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Black_Kite?uselang=qqx does not show any MediaWiki message for a blank meta page. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:13, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Partly my fault. I had my user page as a redirect to my talk page for years, but forgot to reinstate it after I deleted it a while back.  I've put it back. Black Kite (talk) 18:23, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If you have a user page on meta, you can hide parts of it from display on other wikis by careful use of <noinclude ></noinclude> - compare m:User:Redrose64 with gd:User:Redrose64; the latter doesn't exist, so what's displayed there is transcluded from meta - minus the noincluded portion. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:57, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Category:Articles which use infobox templates with no data rows
Cross-posted from Template talk:Infobox software for better visability.

Can anyone figure out why pages are added to Category:Articles which use infobox templates with no data rows if  isn't set in Infobox software? After a quick glance myself, I'm not sure what the issue is, but I know it's related to this row. There are 2339 pages that are in both this category and use Infobox software, and I'm betting it's related to this bug. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 09:44, 25 Cheshvan 5777 / 09:44, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Replied there. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:13, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Lua
I need some one to help me with Lua about taking data from Wikidata to Wikipedia through template. Xaris333 (talk) 14:22, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You should be more specific of what you want to do. Ruslik_ Zero 16:46, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You may want to get in touch with Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikidata instead. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Part-time temporary job for technical intern
It looks like my department is searching for a Technical Intern. Regular editors/contributors are preferred. In fact, (current or former) regular editors may be the only people who are actually qualified, so I'm hoping you all can find some good applicants for this job.

The technical skills needed include:
 * wikitext, including creating or editing templates;
 * proficiency in at least three of the following four programming languages: Javascript, Lua, Python, MySQL;
 * developing or running MediaWiki websites; and
 * design skills related to web content curation and user flow.

You'd be working on the creation of the Wikimedia Resource Center, redesigning the Evaluation Portal on Meta, and moving the Learning and Evaluation portal pages to new a namespace, among other tasks.

This will be a 12-week position for up to 20 hours/week. The complete job description is here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/488570#.WBE6X-ErKRs

This is remote work. I'm guessing from the North/South America restriction that they want someone whose work hours will overlap with San Francisco. Very few remote jobs at the WMF have an absolute requirement for your location. So if you're not in the Americas, but you'd be happy working when California does, then please consider applying anyway and explain your preferred working hours in your application.

Also, all WMF staff need to speak/write English well enough to talk to other staff, but being proficient in any other language is always a benefit. Always. Even if it's not mentioned in the job description and doesn't seem relevant. Ditto for being an established editor.

Please share this information with people that you think would be good matches for the position. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:13, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Edit session data problems
I'm getting a lot of "Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try saving your changes again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in." ... any advice? It's making me v.sad. (I'm trying this report whilst logged out, lest this is something to do with my account) --164.215.104.187 (talk) 16:41, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * So, yes, on a straw poll of my last 10 edit attempts, I'm getting the Sorry message when logged in, no such message when logged out. Very frustrating. --164.215.104.187 (talk) 16:44, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Testing testing testing. Started yesterday ... some edits do work, some do not. Bah. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:46, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The above edit - probably worked on the 20th time I clicked save. grrrr. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:51, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The usual advice is to WP:BYPASS everything. I believe that this behavior can be caused by a corrupted cookie.  If that doesn't work, then it might be helpful to know your web browser/operating system information.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've followed that advice; I'll hope not to have to bother you about the issue any more... --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:12, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Help with Module
Hello. I need help for Module. el:Module:Περισσότερεςκατακτήσεις (is in English).

See, property 1346, qualifier P1355. I want to show the item of P1346 if it has the largest qualifier P1355. Xaris333 (talk) 23:58, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

WikiProjectBannerShell
Talk:Coldharbour Mill Working Wool Museum

is the code but when it renders (Chromium on Linux Mint) two of the projects show class=C. I think it is the first time I have visited the page. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:19, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Those two projects use WPBannerMeta/hooks/bchecklist for their B-class assessment. If its six extra parameters are missing or not set to "yes", the attempt to set "B" class is rejected and the template assigns "C" class instead. When I added  to the Mills and Technology assessments and previewed, they were shown as "B" class. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:46, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks- that certainly was less than obvious! --ClemRutter (talk) 11:14, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The documentation for both and  mentions the B-Class checklist (I added this to the doc pages myself, some years ago), although it didn't stress that all six criteria need to be satisfied in order for b not to be reduced to C. I've . -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:54, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is fun. I have gone back and c&p the suggested code to both the projects- with slightly different results. Recently I have been looking at all problems from the perspective of the tutor. So how on earth am I explain to a questioning student why   works but    doesn't? ClemRutter (talk) 00:16, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Tell them that the Energy people are not as strict as the Technology people in the interpretation of WP:BCLASS. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:30, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

User:AnomieBOT
User:AnomieBOT notifies on the talk page of a recently created article; if the article was deleted through a deletion discussion in WP:AFD. Since the bot also makes other maintenance edits, when I was once trying to find deleted articles by looking at the bot's contributions, I had to spend more time.

I found some articles tagged through AFD tagger. Most recreated articles had extra sources, some AFDs were years old, though there were some which didn't have any development.

If the bot is separated into two parts, then I can find these articles in less time. -- <b style="color:Red">Marvellous</b> <font color="OrangeRed">Spider-Man 01:06, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Would have been nice to ping me when you're discussing my bot. I'd rather not have to maintain 30 or so bot accounts for all the different things AnomieBOT does, 4 accounts is plenty. Anomie⚔ 01:47, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Amen! Just brainstorming - but could this possibly be addressed through the careful use of tags (and not not a   specific tag!) —  xaosflux  Talk 01:52, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You could use an edit summary search. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 02:03, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

, Recreation of deleted articles is very important edit. the edit summary search is very slow. <b style="color:Red">Marvellous</b> <font color="OrangeRed">Spider-Man 02:51, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Since these edits are all in the Talk: namespace, you could significantly reuce your search by looking in just that namespace; there would still be some unwanted results, but much of what you will find is correct. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:59, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

J.John is an very sophisticated scam
Hi ppl. I am just a gnome. I happened upon the page J.John, and reference 37 stunned me. The reason I brought it here is 'cos the con is far too sophisticated for me. Ref 37 pretends to link to Huffpost; it even sports Huffpost's banner and links - but the article itself is cut&paste. Just so we're clear - I have a folder on my bookmarks bar named "P's", the contents of which are 21 links to the most recognized newspapers on the planet, and top of the list is Huffpost. So when I clicked on link 37 of the J.John article - it was obviously not Huffpost. Of course I had to double check that I was observing trash so I clicked on my own Huffpost link and manually typed in "J.John", "Canon J.john" - every permutation of J.John takes you to this site - canon J. John site:www.huffingtonpost.co.uk- and that site lists innumerable supposed Huffpost articles that just aint real - THEY ARE NOT REAL.

At this point I expect you might be persuaded of the view that I'm munching the wrong mushrooms - so I went amining.

Reference 25 - Mass annointing Will Follow - it seems thefreelibrary is now extolling the virtues of this J.John - the page ends "Tonight's sermon begins at 7.30pm".

Reference 34 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10318089 - titled "Preacher attracts thousands". The site at bottom says, quote, "The BBC News Channel is available in the UK only" - and then says - "You can send comments and pictures to the BBC News Channel by texting 61124, or emailing yourpics@bbc.co.uk". THIS IS NOT THE BBC.

Reference 35, (fish in a barrel), interview with Justin Welby - https://www.canterburydiocese.org/archbishop/philotrustinterview/ - does anyone actually believe that Justin Welby gave an interview to J.John??? The site is a sham. The Coat of Arms on the site is a cartoon compared to the real coat of arms, as seen on Justin Welby.

In my view the tech wing of Wikipedia have a legal and moral responsibility to inform Huffpost, BBC, and any other efficacious body who might have been injured by this sham, of the extent of the misinformation perpetrated on this site.

Get to it folks - delete J.John forthwith - and then work out how something so disingenuous as J.John could have infected our space.

And now I've said my piece I'm just gonna go back to mining. Let me know what transpires, or, at least, delete J.John <font face="verdana" color="#00AA11">Mark <font color="F0A804">Dask  01:53, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This is the technical Village Pump. Did you have a technical question? If you think the article should be deleted, take a look at WP:AFD. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:46, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Are you saying the Huffington Post in the UK is not a real site or that the Canterbury Diocese isn't either? 🔯 Sir Joseph <sup style="color:Green;">🍸 (talk) 05:10, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for responding Joseph. I am saying that when you type J.John. or Canon J.John into the huffpost search you get redirected to [Aol]. My concern is that if there were anything genuine about J.John on Huffpost the search would be "inline", by which I mean Huffpost would list the articles without recourse to AOL. And that is my question to Tech ppl - why does the J.John search redirect to AOL??? <font face="verdana" color="#00AA11">Mark <font color="F0A804">Dask  02:02, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You're wrong on every count, . Still. High quality 'shrooms you have there. There are a number / many dubious quality references, but there are no outright forgeries. The HuffPo is J John's bio on Huffpo ... he appears to write for them, iirc. The Beeb site is genuine. Doubtless there's promotion going on in the article and it needs a good checking through. But there's nothing especially devious going on. --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:50, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I also see no sign of false sites. co.uk is for commercial and general sites in the UK. Go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/?country=US, click "EDITION" at the top left, select United Kingdom, and you are taken to http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/?country=UK. Thefreelibrary.com has copies of millions of articles from other sources. There is nothing odd about having an article from July 4, 2000 saying "Tonight's sermon begins at 7.30pm". PrimeHunter (talk) 10:19, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If you want to source that FreeLibrary article further, it was from the Coventry Evening Telegraph from the date mentioned. There's another article after the event in the Coventry & Warwickshire News here.  The article needs a cleanup - it is promotional and large chunks are unsourced - but it certainly meets GNG and I don't see any dubious links.  The BBC one mentioned above doesn't work for me, though. Black Kite (talk) 10:36, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Here is the BBC citation from the article: . Not sure why the OP posted something different. Softlavender (talk) 11:12, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks all for your responses. Be assured no 'shrooms were harmed in the creation of this post. So maybe I was a tad judgemental, but I would still like it explained why a Huffpost search redirects to AOL, (try it - type J.John into the Huffpo search and you will get AOL). I have emailed Huffingtonpost.co.uk for an explanation and await their response. Meanwhile, move along everyone - nothing to see here, (other than me with my pants around my ankles :) <font face="verdana" color="#00AA11">Mark <font color="F0A804">Dask  02:02, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Their search feature it just misbehaving. Lots of websites don't have their own search engine but use an external search engine with a site-specific feature. If I search  in the "Search The Huffington Post" box at http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/?country=UK then I get http://search.aol.co.uk/aol/search?s_chn=cha_huffpo&s_it=aoluk-vertical-HuffPost&q=example which searches the whole Internet. They are probably trying to do something similar to http://search.aol.co.uk/aol/search?s_it=sb-home&v_t=na&q=example+site%3Ahuffingtonpost.co.uk, but without placing extra code like   in the search box. Maybe their approach worked earlier but aol.co.uk changed something. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:32, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Sincere thanks Primehunter for your input but someone should tell you the "Search.aol.co.uk" has installed itself on your comp and overridden your default search engine. You need to go to settings and delete search.aol.uk as an option. I only deal with google and Firefox but every now-and-again I engage with some dipshit software and it installs "Search.Aol.uk", or other variants of that "search" engine. Trust me in this - "search" is one of the most insidious commercial engines that exist. Go to settings - search options - then delete "SEARCH.aol.com". Then reboot. Once you've deleted the "Search.aol.uk" option then try Huffpo again. With thanks again <font face="verdana" color="#00AA11">Mark <font color="F0A804">Dask  04:18, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Markdask your continued use of this page as a host for your paranoid theories is reaching the point of becoming disruptive; if you want to share conspiracy theories, do so on your own userpage. The Huffington Post is the media wing of AOL, and the fact that you see AOL links and branding on HuffPo pages is no more "malware" than seeing a Commons link on a Wikipedia page. I don't know if this is an elaborate troll or if you genuinely believe this stuff you're posting, but either way please do it somewhere else in future; the Village Pump isn't your blog. &#8209; Iridescent 10:06, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, the html of http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/?country=UK includes the below. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:18, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

GeoGroupTemplate and Google
For some months now, GeoGroupTemplate's results with Google have been messed up. For example, go to National Register of Historic Places listings in Richmond, Virginia and bring up each of the three basic options in a new tab. OpenStreetMap and Bing both bring up full-size maps of the city with all of this page's coord locations marked. Google, however, brings up just a little square (not located in Richmond, either) with the spots marked. And as I note, this has been happening for several months for every page that uses GeoGroupTemplate, both when I use IE and when I use Firefox; I don't have Chrome to check it in there. Any idea why? Presumably it's a problem with the template or with Google Maps, but I don't know how to determine which one, let alone how to determine more precisely what elements have caused the problem. Nyttend (talk) 01:49, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * , who modified that link last September. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:07, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Something is really weird about the rendering of superscript minus sign
A^-_x

$$A^-_x$$

This is rendered very badly when using the SVG fallback: the minus sign (which is supposed to be a superscript) is practically on the verge of colliding into the subscript x. I tested this on MathJax and LaTeX and it doesn't render it like that, so I suspect this is a bug specific to Wikipedia's math renderer. I am using Chromium 54.0.2840.100 (64-bit) on Linux. --Fylwind (talk) 10:38, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Please file a ticket in phabricator. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:57, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * And please add a screenshot. Does it look similar to my screenshot?--Physikerwelt (talk) 15:42, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-48
<section begin="technews-2016-W48"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes this week
 * When someone tries to log in to a blocked account they will be blocked by a cookie. This means their browser will be blocked even if they change their IP address. This makes it more difficult for returning vandals.
 * When you use Content Translation to adapt a template to a new translation it will work differently. You can adapt big templates such as infoboxes. Translators will have control over the template parameters. A first version of this is released this week. It is possible it will not work correctly with all templates. There will be more updates for this soon.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 November. It will be on all wikis from 1 December (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets will have a new option called "hidden". This means you can register gadgets that can't be turned on or off from the preferences page. Hiding gadgets was already possible by using . You should now use   instead.   in old gadgets should be changed to.

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 29 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Tool Labs could get two new policies. One would be to be able to adopt tools without an active developer. The other would be a right to fork. There is a request for comment on Meta.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W48"/> 21:16, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Strange error message


I get this when accessing Wikipedia from Firefox. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:45, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Apparently solved by a NoScript update. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:17, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

lowercase sigmabot III not archiving Talk:Economy of Brazil
I was looking over the edit filter log and saw that lowercase sigmabot III keeps tripping Special:AbuseFilter/702 when trying to archive Talk:Economy of Brazil. I've set up ClueBot III to archive the page. If anyone knows what's wrong, that would be great. — MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 00:21, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You might want to leave a note on WP:EFN also. --Izno (talk) 00:40, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Posted there. — MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 00:42, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The filter is behaving as intended. I have fixed the offending text in the page.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Economy_of_Brazil&diff=752012250&oldid=752008645] PrimeHunter (talk) 00:50, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Holy cow... That "Read more" is what tripped the filter?!? I never would have thought of checking for that. Thanks for finding it and putting me out of my misery. Shearonink (talk) 00:58, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you. — MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 01:03, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Special:AbuseFilter/702 says: "System message to use for warning: abusefilter-warning-clipboard-hijacking". That means the filter displays MediaWiki:abusefilter-warning-clipboard-hijacking to the user. Click "Preview selected message" at the bottom of Special:AbuseFilter/702 to see the message. Maybe the notes should also mention the "Read more" trigger. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:18, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Or just exempt bots from the filter, since the filter purports to stop interactive logins from copy/paste errors. --Unready (talk) 01:45, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Inlines linking to a word in Wiktionary
I know someone here must know how to put an inline Wiktionary link into a Wikipedia article. I have just spent about 10-15 minutes poring over various instructional pages - like Template:Wiktionary pipe, Template:Wiktionary-inline, Wikimedia sister projects, etc., trying to figure out exactly which template to use. Please, post instructions/helps here, along with examples. (I've got to have examples - please.) Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 23:44, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You don't need a template, just an interwiki internal link, for example, definition produces definition. -- zzuuzz (talk) 23:51, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * THANK YOU. That is exactly what I needed - the code (oops I called it a template) with an example.  I swear I went over so many pages and couldn't find what you just posted.  Could you please take a look at some of the instructional pages and post something along the lines of what you just posted here?  If I couldn't find how to do something here on WP, there are probably others in the same boat... Thanks again, Shearonink (talk) 00:07, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The full current interwiki map is located at meta:Special:Interwiki. "wikt" is listed here. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:47, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Odd glitch
When I start typing the name theresa villiers in the search box, Theresa Villiers does not come up as expected as a suggestion, giving the false impression that the article does not exist. By the time I get as far as theresa villie, the suggestion list is empty. Also, when I start typing theresa may, the suggestion that comes up is Theresa may, not Theresa May as expected. While the former redirects to the latter, the behaviour seems undesirable and contrary to what happens with other names. E.g. when I start typing donald trump, I get a suggestion of Donald Trump not Donald trump. (You may presume that even people who understand how to use capital letters correctly do not bother to use them when typing names into a search box.) 81.136.6.92 (talk) 21:38, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Strange. I see the correct suggested target when I get to <tt>theresa v</tt> and <tt>Theresa v</tt>. I tried both as a logged in user and not having been logged in. May have been a one-off experience? Killiondude (talk) 23:18, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I was also missing the article long after the original post but I get it now. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:49, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The search box works in mysterious and inconsistent ways. For example, there is a persistent sockpuppeteer who keeps creating vanity articles about himself, under different titles, so every so often I search for his name. If there is no article mentioning him, sometimes the search just comes up with a message telling me that it hasn't found anything, sometimes it tells me that it hasn't found anything on English Wikipedia, so it's listing hits on Spanish Wikipedia instead. If I search and get one of those two results, and then immediately repeat exactly the same search, sometimes I get the same result again, sometimes it switches to the other one. It appears to be completely random, as far as I can see. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 13:10, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * When I get different results for the same action within seconds I usually guess it depends on which server I hit. The developers have confirmed this in some cases. Wikimedia pages have code like  at the end of the html but the number of servers makes it hard to investigate. Is there a way to request a specific server? Note your browser may retrieve the page again when you view the html so the result may be from another server than the rendered page you were watching. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:12, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * There is a way to request a specific server. It requires some technical know-how though, or an extension.  See X-Wikimedia-Debug ~ <font color="#5e0231">Matthewrbowker  <font color="#e6af4b">Drop me a note 05:59, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * (OP) It is now working fine for me too. Even theresa now brings forth the suggestions Theresa Villiers and Theresa May. Strange. 86.185.218.189 (talk) 14:20, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Parameter "level"
Hello. Is there a way to find which templates are using a parameter named "level"? Xaris333 (talk) 18:32, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Try [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&profile=advanced&profile=advanced&fulltext=Search&search=insource%3A%2F%5C%7B%5C%7B%5C%7Blevel%5B%5C%7C%5C%7D%5D%2F&ns10=1 this search]. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:44, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. Xaris333 (talk) 11:44, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Twinkle and AFC script malfunctioning
Twinkle is not working correctly for me. I tried to make an AIV report and it gave me an error (the user wasn't already reported). Tagging a page for speedy deletion did not mark the page as patrolled (I am a new page reviewer), did not notify the user, and did not log the nomination automatically. I've also had trouble with the AFC helper script loading on certain drafts. Is anyone else having these issues? — MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 03:29, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * About ten minutes ago, I had popups for usernames have no content, pages stall while loading, and Twinkle fail with "could not contact API" (approximate wording). Seems better now. DMacks (talk) 03:35, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That was the error I was getting. — MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 03:36, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Was able to issue a uw-delete1 using Twinkle without problems. — MRD2014 (talk • contribs) 03:38, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, api.php was overloaded for a bit (cf. <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Server_Admin_Log&oldid=1041668#2016-11-27>). --MZMcBride (talk) 15:07, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

UI design flaw with watchlist and alert list
I unwatched Lomography and was told: The page "Lomography" has been removed from your watchlist. I then dropped down my alerts list (the bell icon) and wanted to mark the topmost item as read (by clicking the blue ball, which does this). I could not click the ball because it was still covered by the unwatch message. I also could not find any way to clear/remove the unwatch message without reloading the page: clicking it, or outside it, or pressing Esc, does nothing. Equinox ◑ 07:14, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This doens't really seem a proposal, so i moved it to technical. But normally the watch/unwatch message automatically dismisses after just a few seconds. Not sure why it didn't for you. Can you reproduce this consistently and perhaps mention which browser and skin you are using —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:09, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Even though it should disappear within a few seconds, it might be ideal if it could be relocated slightly for those of us who are impatient. So perhaps a Phab request should be filed anyway?  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:09, 29 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I am using Chrome 54.0.2840.99 m on Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. I tried it again and the caption did eventually disappear, so apparently that was a one-off problem. My suggestion would be that the newest thing comes to the top, so a menu that wasn't visible before, that I subsequently drop down, should overlap any previous pop-up: that is most intuitive. Equinox ◑ 05:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree. The alert menu should probably come above the "removed from your watchlist" notice. I kind of figured it already did. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:08, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Second fundraising banner after the first is closed
Hello. I was an IP who landed on the main page and saw the large black and white text fundraising banner. I closed it. Then I clicked on "view history" and a second, smaller green and white text fundraising banner appeared. Are people supposed to be solicited once more, after they already close out of a banner? This seems clearly inappropriate and aggressive to me. I think something needs to be fixed here. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. &#123;&#123;U&#125;&#125;) while signing a reply, thx 17:13, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Hey, So this is the intended behaiviour. Closing the first (large) dark blue banner only dismisses that first occurrence of a banner. You will then see a small banners as you indeed did. Closing this banner should then hide all banners for 7 days. If logged in, you will see no fundraising banners. Hope that helps. Seddon (WMF) (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * What's more, if after closing the big, page-filling one, then navigating to a second page, if you don't dismiss the green one, but scroll down, you get yet another banner (orange this time). The green one also claims that the time is running out to help Wikipedia. Yes, it adds "in 2016", but we still have all December, and the WMF is hardly short of cash at the moment, even if donations did plateau last year. I agree this is excessive and tending back towards the disingenuity of previous fundraising campaigns the community loudly decried. BethNaught (talk) 19:33, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Help test offline Wikipedia
Hello! The Reading team at the Foundation is looking to support readers who want to take articles offline to read and share later on their phones - a use case we learned about from deep research earlier this year. We’ve built a few prototypes and are looking for people who would be interested in testing them. If you’d like to learn more and give us feedback, check out the page on Meta! Joe Sutherland (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Workaround for collapsible boxes
I need some sort of workaround for hiding/displaying large chunks of code without collapsible boxes. The problem is that using collapsible boxes will break anchor links on the page. In essence, auto-collapsed boxes will render with the boxes fully expanded on page-load and then quickly collapse once that element is processed by the browser engine. The result is that following an anchor link to a specific part of the page will jump you to a down-shifted portion of the page offset by the length of all of the previously occurring collapsible boxes. Tested on Firefox and Chrome latest stable builds + on OSX 10.11.4 and Windows 10.

Please refer to this thread for more details. Or just follow MOS:TVCAST for an example. An editor has raised an objection to using expand=yes to render the boxes pre-expanded (due to the length of the code snippets), so I am looking for an alternative fix here. Alex Eng <small style="font-size:50%;">( TALK ) 21:10, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Template calls vs Switch
I have a question regarding template calls and switches. Hypothetical scenario: From a technical standpoint, which is the better method? In other words, if I have some sort of meta template that transcludes either #1 or #2, which one should I use? (Please ping me on reply) Primefac (talk) 02:29, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) I have 26 "alphabet" templates, let's call them word A through word Z. Each template returns a one-word reply starting with that letter.
 * 2) I have an alphabetWords template with a #switch statement. Based on the parameter passed to the template, it also returns a one-word reply starting with that letter.
 * As far as "calling #1" in this meta template it would be something like  vs   for #2. Primefac (talk) 02:32, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I think Primefac wants to know which method is recommended/better. Typically #1 would be Template:Word/A through Template:Word/Z requiring multiple subtemplates, with the correct one being called depending on a parameter. An alternative would be to put the logic in one template and use switch. I am allergic to template syntax and was thinking of recommending extending a module to handle some tricky template stuff Primefac has been working on (we have been discussing a module here). If using a template, the complexity of maintaining multiple subtemplates would put me off that technique, although it can be an extremely efficient divide-and-conquer strategy. Johnuniq (talk) 02:44, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * To get slightly off-topic,, I relish template syntax so I'd be happy to code whatever you don't want to. Just hit me up on my talk page (or at the module if that's what you're planning on). Primefac (talk) 03:08, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Can I vote for Scribunto/Lua? I think managing many subpages is tedious and annoying, but #switch is kind of slow and inefficient. Scribunto/Lua solves both problems by being fast and centralized (one page edit instead of twenty-six). --MZMcBride (talk) 15:02, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, that's an even better idea... given that I've got three sets of these "alphabet" templates, I could put them all into one Module and save a bunch of time (and some really odd coding). Primefac (talk) 20:54, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * In checking, all three of my alphabets are pretty much identical. Seems like a waste of Lua to basically code a 280-line (branching) #switch... Primefac (talk) 00:15, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Possibly, but if it is related to our recent project, a function could be added to the module and it would be much cleaner and provide more robust handling of data. I would recommend working in the sandbox modules because I see the main module is used in over 7000 articles. I'm happy to code it. Johnuniq (talk) 00:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * This came up as a result of that project, but is really only connected by circumstances and names. Primefac (talk) 00:36, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Table template with incorrect formatting
I've created a template for standardizing lists of election referendum here: Template:Election_box_referenda_begin and Template:Election_box_referenda. However, when the ballot information on the page List of Oregon ballot measures is put in for the first table of the November 2014 general election, there are some weird formatting issues showing up that I don't fully understand as compared to the second-half November 2014 table that does not use the template but has the same parameters. For one thing, the padding in the cells seems to much greater than the default table row values. Secondly, the last cell in each row under column heading "No/%" is vertically aligned on top despite being explicitly coded for vertical-align:center. Another interesting result of the template is that, in a addition to having greater cell padding, how much greater the cell padding happens to be is inconsistent. Compare the first table of the November 2014 general election to the only table for the May 2016 primary election. Both use the template but they have different padding. I've worked on it for awhile now but cannot find any indication of what is going wrong. --Curoi (talk) 23:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * blank lines are a problem. also there are apparenlty redundant   separated by three blank lines.  Special:ExpandTemplates is your friend.  I took one line from your example and this is the result:

<pre style="margin-left:3.2em">{| class="wikitable sortable mw-collapsible autocollapse" style="width: 100%;"

! rowspan="2" width="40px" | Meas. № ! rowspan="2" width="40px" | Type ! rowspan="2" | Ballot Title ! colspan="2" width="110px" | Yes ! colspan="2" width="110px" | No ! width="80px" | votes ! width="30px" | % ! width="80px" | votes ! width="30px" | %
 * + style="background-color:#f2f2f2;margin-bottom:-1px;border:1px solid #aaa;padding:.2em .4em" colspan="7" | Oregon's general election, November 4, 2014


 * style="text-align: center;"           | 86
 * style="text-align: center;"           | LRCA
 * style="text-align: left;"                | Amends Constitution: Requires creation of fund for Oregonians pursuing post-secondary education, authorizes state indebtedness to finance fund
 * style="text-align: center; vertical-align-center;"           | 614,439
 * style="text-align: center; vertical-align: center;"           | 42.79
 * style="background:#F99; text-align: center; vertical-align: center;"           | X mark.svg N 821,596
 * style="background:#F99; text-align: center; vertical-align: center;"           | 57.21
 * style="background:#F99; text-align: center; vertical-align: center;"           | 57.21


 * }
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 23:42, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You should have kept it at the help desk where I saw and fixed it.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Election_box_referenda&diff=752384720&oldid=752258086] The cells you call top aligned were actually center aligned but had newlines after the text. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:44, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, the  value should be , not  . --Unready (talk) 23:47, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Wow, thanks all 3 of you! That was extremely helpful and productive. One final question: is there a way to float the show/hide link to the far right of the title row rather than right next to the title? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Curoi (talk • contribs) 00:17, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The pad or nbsp template may be used as in:

's ,
 * or

's ,
 * However, be careful with those – if you for example use the medium font size to view, and the numbers in the first parameters are too high, readers who view in larger browser font sizes might get peculiar results. There might be a better way to float the show/hide link; however, I haven't found it.   Paine Ellsworth   u/ c  08:58, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm taking the liberty of pinging, as your previous attempt to do so wouldn't have worked because [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=752391563&oldid=752386040 you didn't sign your message]. Graham 87 12:39, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

One way to do it is to change:

to

which does this: The serious problem with that is that you loose the <caption ></caption> tags which are useful for those who use screen readers so this 'solution' isn't really a solution. Help:Collapsing isn't much help.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:49, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Notification of deleted page disappear?
Hi! Notifications of deleted pages disappear? I recently declined the speedy deletion of a category page (Category:Italian commune articles using deprecated parameters) and asked, on the summary, for clarification. A editor explained it on the talk page, and pinged me. Then another admin deleted the category. All fine so far. What is not fine is that the notification got lost. I received a email notification (good and expected), but the on site notification is nowhere to be seen. I would consider that a bug. I want to know someone tried to reach me. I trust the system to do so. As an admin I can go on and read it even when deleted, and even if not an admin I could have reached to that editor and ask what was it about. Is this a known bug? (or a known feature change request :-) - Nabla (talk) 11:22, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Whenever a page linked in an echo notification is deleted, the notification disappears because there is no more page with the deleted page id. If the page is later restored with the same page id (which is possible since January this year after T28123 got fixed), the notification reappears. If, on the other hand, a page linked in an echo notification was moved, it will automatically update to the new title. GeoffreyT2000  ( talk,  contribs ) 01:07, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you, GeoffreyT2000. It makes sense, off course, still it feels like there should be something better. I am not used to suggesting features, but I'll try to place a feature request - in wp:Phabricator I presume - as soon as I can make a decent proposal. - Nabla (talk) 01:31, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Blanking Template:BLP editintro in edit mode
Template:BLP editintro is injected into page source for BLPs in edit mode. How can I suppress the display of this notice, the contents of which I'm familiar with? I'd like my screen real-estate back, please. in custom CSS doesn't seem to do it. thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:56, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Try . It's a class, not an ID. --Unready (talk) 06:40, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That worked. (but you probably know that ;) --Tagishsimon (talk) 06:45, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Problem with position of blocks in a portal page
I have a problem with that page Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipack Africa Content/WikiFundi:Welcome. One block is displayed lower than it should be, leaving a gap in the structure. I can not find what is wrong. Could someone else me please ? I would appreciate. Anthere (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:35, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There are two unclosed tables, one unclosed, one case where a closing and  are the wrong way around. Those are not the direct cause: the primary fault is that you have four blocks each with the   declaration, but not enough room to fit them in as a row across the page. The first one goes top left, as it is supposed to; the second sits to the right of the first (again correct), the third sits directly below the second, but there is no more room for the third - so it goes below all these and hard left. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:00, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

help needed with formatting of template that includes section heading
Hi all

Hope this is the right place to ask, I'm looking for a way to maintain the appearance of this box but to make the text within it a section heading e.g ==Heading1==

I found an example that does it here but I can't work out how to match the formatting of the box above (i.e white text), I found this example here but now when I have copied it into the page it shows an edit section button, I really don't want that.....

{| width=100% cellspacing=10 style="background:none;" ! colspan="2" style="border:1px solid #aaa; background-color:#4b92db; font-size:120%; padding:0.0em 0.4em; text-align:center;"|

Example text

 * }
 * }

Any ideas?

Thanks very much

--John Cummings (talk) 16:28, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * you can use the magic word:  to disable edit sections on an entire page. —  xaosflux  Talk 20:21, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks very much, I still can't work out how to turn the text white though......--John Cummings (talk) 10:25, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Just use the same span color code as before: . PrimeHunter (talk) 11:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, but it just gives me this.....any ideas how to fix it?

--John Cummings (talk) 13:32, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Don't use tables for layout/styling, use divs. Wrap the text in <H3> instead of === ; It will appear in the ToC, but not have an edit link.

<div style="width:100%; background: #0077D4; border: 0 solid #ffffff; white-space: nowrap; text-align: left; padding: 5px 15px 15px 15px"> <h3 style="color:#ffffff>Example text foo
 * HTH Quiddity (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks so much, perfect. --John Cummings (talk) 00:07, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

If statements containing several statements don't work anymore in edit filters
In edit filters, it has been possible to use if statements that contain several statements in both the then part and the else part. That has stopped working sometime between 15 November and 2 December, probably sometime during the first few days during this period. A semicolon in the then part or the else part results in a syntax error. That means that edit filters that contain such if statements are not run at all anymore since they contain a syntax error. An example of how such an if statement can look like:  I hope this newly introduced error soon is corrected, so that the edit filters start working again. (I cannot login to Phabricator, so I mention this error here instead.) Svensson1 (talk) 08:49, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've created phab:T152281 now. Nirmos (talk) 10:38, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Previous issues in sending emails from the site
Please help the awesome user:Legoktm test his fix to this hideous problem. If you have had issues in the past sending email messages from your wiki account, please head to https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EmailUser/Legoktm and send him a test (or a Thank You!) message. HTH, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:28, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, "o"s with umlauts are very hideous. Perhaps you mean phab:T66795? :) --Izno (talk) 18:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I would have noticed that if I were using a visual editor! /runs away --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Note: this will reveal your email address (As with all uses of email user) - I hope Legoktm signs me up for only the finest newsletters! — xaosflux  Talk 20:19, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If you will go vote at the m:2016 Community Wishlist Survey, and tell your wiki-friends (especially at smaller/non-English projects) about the best ideas there, then I'm sure that Lego will remove your name from spam-subscription list. 😉  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Ping @ user:Eddaido, user:Dirtlawyer1, user:AsceticRose - as you had related issues in the past, could you help here? thank you! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * My WP email problem was solved by opening a new email account (with iCloud) and scrubbing Yahoo. Hope this helps. Eddaido (talk) 20:57, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Same to me as Eddaido. I opened a new account at g-mail and abandoned Yahoo. The g-mail did not cause any problem. - Ascetic Rosé   15:22, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikiget tool
I wrote a tool for myself, found it pretty useful so cleaned it up and posted on GitHub in case anyone might be interested.

It's a unix command-line tool to retrieve lists of article names, such as all pages in a category, backlinks of a template, pages edited by a user during a certain period, etc.. it's generally useful for work with AWB or bots, but probably other things as well in a unix environment. Only dependency is GNU awk and one of wget, curl or lynx.

https://github.com/greencardamom/Wikiget

-- Green  C  01:36, 26 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Right on. Perfect direction with the generation of titles-only query-results.  Its easy, and it works fast and flawlessly. AWB nutrition! Your wikiget.awk tool offers Contributions' titles.  It offers Categories' titles.  It offers backlink titles.
 * But I'm sure development should proceed with Search titles via the Search API (not just stop with Contributions and Categories APIs). (See for this Search feature request.)
 * Also the text post-processing of titles, in your Usage section on GitHub, should mention comm as well as grep. &mdash; Cp i r al &sect; Cpiral  03:05, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Cpiral, thanks for the interest and glad to hear it works :) Wasn't aware of the Search API. Agree it should be added. Any other ways to retrieve lists of titles? Re: comm it could link to this page which has all the options with pros and cons. Awk is my favorite but I chose grep for brevity, but if working with millions of records comm is best. --  Green  C  18:07, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * , version 0.4 supports search. -- Green  C  17:38, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks GreenC. See mw:API_talk:Search. See ya on Github. &mdash;  Cp i r al &sect; Cpiral  19:35, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah there's a solution for it. Fixed in 0.45 0.46 -- Green  C  03:25, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
 * 0.47 fixed a couple edge case bugs and should be stable now. -- Green  C  17:39, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Main Page buttons
Why does the Main Page have a move tab but not a delete tab? Moving is impossible; Special:MovePage/Main_Page gives you a message You do not have permission to move this page, for the following reason:

You cannot delete or move the main page. This is identical to the message you get at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=delete, except of course it says "permission to delete". Since the tech folks have disabled doing both, and disabled the delete tab, why do we need a move tab? Nyttend (talk) 14:33, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ Special:Diff/753005631 removed tab consistent with having the delete tab removed. —  xaosflux  Talk 17:28, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe the delete rule should also be moved to MediaWiki:Group-sysop.css? --Izno (talk) 17:41, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * These may both be able to be moved, please discuss at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. — xaosflux  Talk 17:51, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Why do you want it to have a delete tab? -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:25, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * So someone will put me on WP:STOCKS :-) I didn't want a delete tab; I was suggesting that we get rid of the move tab. Nyttend (talk) 23:14, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Several technical problems
For the past hour, I have faced several problems, which appear to be related. Pop-ups no longer work. On my Watchlist, edits still appear grouped by page; but I no longer have a drop-down arrow next to each page to expand and look at these. Twinkle has disappeared. I see several other display problems. I have tried clearing my cache, opening Firefox with add-ons disabled, rebooting my PC; but none of this has helped. These all appear to be Java-related issues, but I do not have any problems on other websites, and this just started about an hour ago, for no apparent reason. Are others facing similar problems, or is it just me? And if it is just me, do you have any suggestions about how I can correct the error? RolandR (talk) 23:27, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Same here, not getting popups, watchlist announcements (such as RFAs) and things. I've had this problem before and usually a refresh or two solves the problem. No such luck this time.-- &#9790;Loriendrew&#9789;  &#9743;(ring-ring)  23:33, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Iiiiit'ssss Thuuuursdaaaaayyyyy.... -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:20, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Seriously though, several gadgets have stopped working, these include "" and "". On the latter, see WT:Gadget. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:23, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * "" had disabled itself for me and one or two others at Help desk. It worked for us to enable it again. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:44, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Oh, it isn't just me! I've noticed a slowness in how a page loads, with that little spinning thing happening at the top of the tab on English Wikipedia.  I suspect it might be part of a phenomenon I've noticed on Wikisource for the last couple of days.  Replication is not always instantaneous the last 18 hours.  And while I can purge the cache on the individual pages, the Index of any work has been iffy in that regard (sometimes yes, but mostly not enabled on a purge of Index). And, oh yes, the watchlist changes in bold has disabled itself on mine also. It magically unchecked itself on my Preferences.  — Maile  (talk) 01:03, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Hi this problem is being investigated and looks like another api problem today, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T151702 please Paladox (talk) 16:12, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That is definitely a separate issue, not related. Matma Rex talk 16:26, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

What happened to the bolding on Watchlists?
For quite a while there, unvisited changed pages on my watchlist appeared in bold, and that was quite helpful as I could easily tell how far I needed to scroll down the list and which pages I still needed to look at if I so chose. Now the bolding has been removed. Can someone tell me why it has been removed, and how I can get the feature back if I desire? Thanks. Softlavender (talk) 05:08, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * See the thread above this one. Certain technical things are awry at the moment. Normal service will be resumed, one hopes... --Tagishsimon (talk) 05:12, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh thank goodness. I had just forlornly accepted my fate. Glad to see that it's an actual issue and not just my browser/machine. Alex Eng <small style="font-size:80%;">( TALK ) 05:23, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks all. Appreciate the quick feedback. Softlavender (talk) 05:31, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Just to add to this, pages with changes don't have the green marker either (I use good old monobook). Also, I see a flash of bold when the page initially loads. It's almost as if all the pages are being marked as "visited" once the watchlist has finished loading. -- Scjessey (talk) 14:38, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * At, check the setting of "": whatever it is, flip it and save. If it's now incorrect, flip it again and save again. Then do the same checks on "". -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:31, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Ahhhhhh - thank you. Both now work as expected. I wonder what caused it to eff up in the first place? -- Scjessey (talk) 23:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-49
<section begin="technews-2016-W49"/> 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 choose to see users from specific user groups in Special:ActiveUsers.
 * Everyone can now see Special:UserRights. Previously only those who could change user rights could. Other users got an error message.
 * ORES can now show how likely an edit is to be damaging to the wiki with different colours. This only works for languages that have trained ORES to recognize damaging edits.

Changes this week
 * You will now see categories with 0 pages in Special:Categories. Previously you did not see empty categories there.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 December. It will be on all wikis from 8 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 December at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The 2016 Community Wishlist Survey will decide what the Community Tech team will work on next year. You vote for wishes on the survey page until 12 December. You can see what has happened to last year's wishes on the 2015 results page.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W49"/> 18:07, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Substitute partial page name
Long background explanation for why I'm doing this, but basically I have a ton of categories that are called "Category:Pages using TEMPLATE_NAME with unknown parameters". Rather than having to repeatedly type out "This category tracks transclusions of TEMPLATE_NAME using unknown/unsupported parameters." I wanted to have a subst I could copy and paste that would pull it from the page title... Now I know that will give me what I need... but how do I subst that?! -- Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 00:02, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What happens, if you subst only str right or all three templates? -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 00:50, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, all three should work fine: . PrimeHunter (talk) 01:07, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * thank you!!! I was lost on the syntax. That worked perfect! -- Zackmann08 (Talk to me/What I been doing) 01:11, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Showing related articles, at the bottom of the article on mobile


Greetings, the Related Pages feature is currently running on stable mode, on almost all Wikipedias, except English. It has been live on beta for over six months (to review, select beta from the settings page on mobile). The feature allows readers to be exposed to content that is similar to the topic that they are reading, a good way to further engage readers, and allow for more access to knowledge. After reviewing the feature's performance on beta, which displayed very high usage for the feature in mobile and significantly lower usage in desktop, the reading web team, responsible for developing the feature, would like to move the feature to stable on mobile web and potentially discontinue the feature on desktop. If no major concerns are identified, the team will be prepared to apply these changes in early January. Thank you --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 09:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Specific range of user contributions
Is it possible to get a specific range of user contributions? I was expecting the  parameter to work like it does in recent changes, but it doesn't seem to. The  parameter may not be sufficient to narrow it down to the required contributions when dealing with a prolific contributor. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 10:18, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Click "older" in user contributions to see the url structure like https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Spinningspark&offset=20161203012537&target=Spinningspark. You can then edit the date and time in the url directly. The time is UTC. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:37, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I may as well post this which I wrote before seeing PrimeHunter's answer.
 * You can use  with , for example the following shows 10 contributions older than 1 April 2014:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Spinningspark?offset=20140401&limit=10
 * A time ( or  ) can be added:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Spinningspark?offset=201404011400&limit=10
 * Johnuniq (talk) 10:40, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Doh! 'click "older"', obvious when you put it like that! <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 13:56, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Nowrap templates
Sometime in the past 24 hours, the nowrap template has stopped working. I use them fairly extensively because I edit from a mobile device for mobile users; they're very helpful in making tables readable. Does anyone know why they have stopped working or how to fix the issue? Prisonermonkeys (talk) 20:36, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It seems that it's is only non-functional on the mobile site.Tvx1 20:53, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Weird custom JS/CSS of inactive users
Querying DB I just found these weird custom JS/CSS of some users with only few edits on en.wp. Were they created automatically by some MW engine feature? If so, I'd say it would be better to delete these custom user scripts/styles.


 * Page_title (page_size) // user editcount


 * User:23849uhfnkewsjhsdb/monobook.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:4ut0m4g1c/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:ABCDEFG12345678901/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Adaptation97/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Adramelech5236/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Adriancoman/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Alejoforero/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Allentomdude/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:AlliserThorne/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Anonymousduder/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Antfrisby/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 10
 * User:Anton-Babinski/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:ArcticSearcher/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Arianda17/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Ashton91/common.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Asit1234509876/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Asit_choudhary/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Badbromance/common.css (155305 bytes) // 7
 * User:Batistajj/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Beanclerk/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Belldavid3/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Besherma/monobook.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:Besherma/nostalgia.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:BlueLinkAddict/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 19
 * User:Bnjohnson/common.css (155305 bytes) // 4
 * User:Bnjohnson/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 4
 * User:Bulipap/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Cdemetri/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Cerparts/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:ChadOett/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:ChillPenguin66/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:CloudCForever/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Commedesgarcon/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:CrysusPariah/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Daem101/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Dantronix/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Dgminville/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Drekkaci/modern.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Duuurn/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Edsterz/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Edsterz/vector.js (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Edwinabc/modern.css (155305 bytes) // 24
 * User:Edwinabc/myskin.css (155305 bytes) // 24
 * User:Egger3rd/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Elchicochino/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:EpicNinjaMuffin/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Erif_NeZorf/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:EternalRuin/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:F4ciof4cio/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Faceless_clown/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:FlinstoneRO/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Frankylam1k25/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Frogman1171/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Gabriel_voicu/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Ginemginem/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Goape13/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Haener/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Hanultari/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Hedian/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 15
 * User:Heyitsmejulio420/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Hinduxranger/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Hydr0g3n85/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Iamleo7/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Inayethece/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Janus_Kannuberg/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:Jarenfox2012/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 5
 * User:Jeregio/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Johan.torp/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Jonathanchristopherfrancis/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Juncoder/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Karrthick62/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Kcsfelty/modern.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:KieranWalsh95/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Konwledgemonger/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Koshums/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Kuzukuzukusu/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Larry.stubbs/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:LavaPlate/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Ldarjan/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Loganewing636/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:LordZanny/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 24
 * User:LukasTor/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:MUFC95/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 7
 * User:Mackmason/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mai15011/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Master729/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mikha7/monobook.css (155305 bytes) // 6
 * User:Mikha7/simple.css (155305 bytes) // 6
 * User:Mikha7/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 6
 * User:MikiCurik/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Milkbath/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mmunevar/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mookyjooky/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mrb1778/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mrmoonrocket/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mujohaso/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Mysasisyphus/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Nailles/monobook.css (155305 bytes) // 16
 * User:Nighttimereader/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Okihita/chick.css (155305 bytes) // 12
 * User:Ookthebla/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 5
 * User:Pburk89/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Pdivos/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 18
 * User:Pleaserespectprivacy/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Poetofpiano/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:ProductNumber01/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:Qringo/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Ratevad/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Razzie89/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 5
 * User:Rednic/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 16
 * User:RicoBert1/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 9
 * User:Robert_labyrinth/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Rodry_acha/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Rooock_Cree/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Rorohajj/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:Rst13/common.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:SYKED/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Sakeuon/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 12
 * User:Satish003/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:ScrapMetalHead/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:ShinBattousai/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 5
 * User:Shinytentacool/common.css (155305 bytes) // 9
 * User:Silenwind/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 6
 * User:Sogolprime/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Soren9/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Stadanko42/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Stambalero/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Stevenknevets/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Stjamesh/common.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:SuperSpy00bob/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 42
 * User:Sutherbj/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Swswenson/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Th_chia/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:TheKGOY/common.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:TheKGOY/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Thecommandingofficer/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Thehighlander1234/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Thelastocean/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Tiborbelay/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 8
 * User:Tim-J.Swan/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 18
 * User:Tofm01f61/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Tom10167/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Tonib88/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Truesdale110/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:Tuckz/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Ud88/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 7
 * User:UltravioletPB/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Upgrader11/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Uprooted/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Uvicsolar/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:VK18/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 23
 * User:Vagostrx/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 2
 * User:Whimbles/common.css (155305 bytes) // 3
 * User:Wolf_Koch/monobook.css (155305 bytes) // 25
 * User:Wyvers/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Xblueberry/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Xisled/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Zach_Lyle/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:ZebOrt/common.css (155305 bytes) // 1
 * User:Zuzuf/vector.css (155305 bytes) // 4

--XXN, 21:48, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It appears to be a dark theme. Considering they're all virtually identical, they're probably copies of each other, possibly from some other source. I also found a copy of that css here. The people who have a dark theme probably really want it. The fact that they don't edit much other than their own css isn't necessarily an incompatible personality characteristic. Also, the users aren't all inactive. Some of them have recent edits. They just don't have a lot of edits. --Unready (talk) 22:24, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I guess the pages were created by a browser extension, maybe Stylish, shortly after the users created an account or installed the extension. The creations were only around 2011–12 and seem harmless. Maybe not the best use of server space but the space usage is tiny for Wikimedia, and deletions don't actually save space. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:25, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Tool request
Hey all, not sure where the best place for this would be, but in my capacity as a gnome admin, I'm interested in some sort of tool that will search for key phrases, say, daily or weekly, then notify me when they appear. Examples: Being notified when these things as they pop up would be helpful in combating disruption and it's gotten really hard to remember all the phrases I'm supposed to search for. I'd love to automate that. Thanks in advance for any help. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:08, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've been dealing with one or two disruptive editors who keep adding "Background Muppets" sections to articles.
 * Another disruptive editor is a young Indian actor who keeps adding his name, "Prem Khan" to articles.
 * An Iranian IP-hopper keeps adding (unsourced) "Komail Shayan" or " Komail Shayan " to articles.
 * "declared as blockbuster" "declared as super-hit" "all-time blockbuster status" are (obviously problematic) phrases some editors from India add to film articles.
 * Those all sound like something that could be an edit filter, at least a edit filter log. Post over at Edit filter/Requested. —  xaosflux  Talk 00:46, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * What about just having some links on your user page like this
 * "Background Muppets"
 * "Prem Khan"
 * "Komail Shayan"
 * Komail Shayan  (this one is not working right so you'd have to figure it out)
 * "declared as blockbuster"
 * "declared as super-hit"
 * "all-time blockbuster status"
 * This is what I tend to use. See User:Jason Quinn/searches. Wouldn't take long to customize your searches to group them and do whatever you want. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:04, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for taking the time to post these. I'll take a closer look and see if I can figure 'em out. :) Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:21, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Search needs a basic "literal regex" to find non-alphanumerics like square brackets. The other searches don't need insource. Please see Help:Searching/Draft and Search link.  &mdash;  Cp i r al &sect; Cpiral  04:13, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Search needs a basic "literal regex" to find non-alphanumerics like square brackets. The other searches don't need insource. Please see Help:Searching/Draft and Search link.  &mdash;  Cp i r al &sect; Cpiral  04:13, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Rowspan, TBA, and tables
Why didn't this edit work properly? I'm not completely familiar with how templates work, so it's probably quite a simple mistake. <font face="Papyrus"><font color="#3ab628">Anarchyte ( work  &#124;  talk )  08:21, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The documentation at TBA explains what was wrong. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Creating a related account name
I just encountered a editor with an unusual name, What cat?, and as we chatted I mentioned the awkwardness of the username due to the terminal question mark — it gets left off when you type the URL, so  goes to the nonexistent User:What cat. I suggested creating a doppelgänger account, "What cat", and the user agreed that it would be a good idea, but I ended up sending him to WP:ACC after he reported that he couldn't create it due to its similarity to the names of two other accounts, including his own. When you're trying to create an account, why would similarity to your existing username be an issue? I was under the impression that the restriction on creating names similar to existing names was imposed to prevent impersonation, and clearly "What cat?" won't be creating "What cat" to impersonate himself. Nyttend (talk) 01:37, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * A sysop or account creator can make this for them for the immediate need. As far as the antispoof here is a quick example why:
 * First existing user User:I love cats
 * Second existing user User:I love cats!
 * Either of them wants to make User:I love cats? - a check could be put in that they are not spoofing themself - but what of the other account? — xaosflux  Talk 01:45, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * An enhancement may be possible if there is "only one collision" and "collision=me". phab requests are around the corner :D —  xaosflux  Talk 01:47, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * [ec with your enhancement note] In this case, there was also the unrelated User:Whatcat, so What cat? shouldn't have been able to create What cat. The problem is that the similarity to What cat? was even mentioned — if you're using one account to create another, it should ignore the creating account's name when determining if any existing accounts have too-similar names.  Nyttend (talk) 01:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

ENWIKI server changes?
Were there signficant changes to the Wikimedia server configuration for ENWIKI that would affect login APIs deployed in November?

(This is related to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#API_PERL_question.._correct_specification_of_HTTPS_connections, but here I just need a yes/no.) --joe deckertalk 16:48, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Watch category?
Okay I know multiple watchlists is a perennial proposal and I know one can already watchlist a category for additions to/removals from that category; my question is (hopefully) neither. Is there an easy way to watch every page in a category, besides cutting and pasting to the raw watchlist? Alternatively, is there a way to automatically add or remove pages to one's watchlist based on membership in a category? Cheers. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:17, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * RecentChangesLinked. --Izno (talk) 14:35, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That helps, thanks, but it's not quite what I'm looking for. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:53, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm a big, big fan of http://tools.wmflabs.org/erwin85/relatedchanges.php, which is nicely customisable. Just save the results URL to your userpage or somesuch for future reference. I use it to track image changes and additions over at Commons, so I'm sure it would work fine for en.wiki. — Huntster (t @ c) 17:09, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

xTools
Hello all!

As you may or may not be aware, I'm a maintainer for xTools, which is a wonderful suite of tools originally developed by User:X!. As many of you have no doubt noticed, there are some lingering stability issues since User:Hedonil (One of our last maintainers) retired in 2014. His rewrite and maintenance also tied us tightly to Tool Labs, which has its own stability issues at times.

I have been working for a few months to rewrite xTools. I have decided to use Symfony, which has built-in caching and template functionality. My current development version is located at [xtools-dev.wmflabs.org xtools-dev.wmflabs.org], though please note that it is pre-alpha software and very buggy!

I have also asked for assistance from Community Tech. If you believe that xTools is useful, a vote would be appreciated: 2016 Community Wishlist Survey/Categories/Moderation tools.

Note: While technically in violation of WP:CANVAS, Canvassing is permitted as part of the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey. See here. ~ <font color="#5e0231">Matthewrbowker <font color="#e6af4b">Drop me a note 18:13, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Pinging interested parties:, ~ <font color="#5e0231">Matthewrbowker  <font color="#e6af4b">Drop me a note 18:13, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

G13 notification issue
Greetings. I do some work over at G13 deletions. In the past, editors were given a warning when a draft had lain dormant for 5 months. This was done by a bot called HasteurBot. Then at the 6 month mark, if no further editing had occurred it appeared on the list. Then it is reviewed and either asked to be deleted, or ask for the deletion to be postponed for another 6 months. When the request for deletion is made, admins can delete the article (or editors/admins can remove the deletion tag), in a relatively short span of time. It appears that HasteurBot is no longer working, so the 5 month warning is no longer being sent out. Any ideas?  Onel 5969  <i style="color:blue">TT me</i> 22:06, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Courtesy ping to User:Hasteur who created the bot. Their wiki page says they are retired, but they do seem to come around Wikipedia sometimes and may have helpful input to this discussion. --MelanieN (talk) 22:48, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The 5 month was simply a curtosey, The bot's process was a nice to have running in advance of the activist G13 editors. I'm not interested in re-upping the process.  It's nice for creators of AFC articles to recieve notice before hand, but it's not a requirement. Hasteur (talk) 04:21, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the perspective, Hasteur. And all your efforts here.  Onel 5969  <i style="color:blue">TT me</i> 11:51, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's true that this was just a courtesy notice to users with inactive drafts and not an essential function. For those whose drafts get deleted, it isn't hard to get them reinstated, so there's probably no point in trying to recruit another bot-writer to reconstruct this. I'm sure there are much more important things for those rare-and-much-valued techies to be working on. --MelanieN (talk) 20:04, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I've requested G13 on well over 1000 drafts, and in all that time, this is the first instance of someone getting upset by it. I felt that if it was an easy fix there was no harm in asking for it to be corrected. Thanks for the input, as usual.  Onel 5969  <i style="color:blue">TT me</i> 20:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Still no Google results
Hey. My article about Irina Nevzlin still has no Google results. Is there any way I could fix it? Thank you in advance. Sllm (talk) 06:35, 4 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I've submitted it via https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url ... we live in hope. --Tagishsimon (talk) 06:49, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I wonder if this is because recently we changed unpatrolled pages to be noindexed. If google picked up the page in it's unpatrolled state and isn't aggressively updating it's noindex setting after the article was patrolled, then that might explain. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:33, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed user page protection
How is it that User:LizeB was able to create the page Cedric Tylleman 30 minutes after I had protected the page from creation with extended confirmed access required? The user certainly did not have confirmed status, let alone extended confirmed, as this was her only edit. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 14:58, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The page was created at Cedric tylleman, then moved to Cedric Tylleman by an extended confirmed user. Cenarium (talk) 15:07, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Ah, I missed that. Thanks also, for dealing with the Cedric tylleman page. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 15:43, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Should T152829 get support - it would give more visibility to the move log that would should have avoided some of this confusion. — xaosflux  Talk 13:10, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Easy way to spot user renames?
Hey all, I can't figure out which tool is supposed to indicate the various previous usernames a person has had. For instance, here I see no results for a user name change, here I see no results for a user name change, but from what I can tell from stuff like this and this, the editor has changed names at least three times. I'm sure this is totally an issue of my ignorance. Thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:27, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Standard way I use is to check the page history of the user talk page for moves. When an user is renamed, that page is automatically moved. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:31, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There isn't a log for this? That's bizarre. Also, any idea why nothing shows up when I select Move log? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:37, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You need to use the previous username for both logs - it works the same way for normal page moves. This method requires that the user previously had a talk page, or user page, which was moved. Another method is to look at their early talk page signatures. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:02, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What links here, show redirects only. -- Green  C  18:10, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * So I would first have to suspect that someone has been renamed in order to think to use one of the methods listed to figure out who they were before? That is so weird. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:21, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The same can be said for all page moves; there's probably an ancient bug report for it. You'd have to suspect a rename in order to look at their previous-names log, if it was there, so there's not a huge extra amount of work involved. Sometimes though, without userpages or signatures, it can be almost impossible to tell. -- zzuuzz (talk) 19:37, 6 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Yeah it would be a good idea for a User Script to highlight a username when they have backlink redirects from User space. I've never written a user script but it would be similar as User:Theopolisme/Scripts/adminhighlighter.js (highlight admin), User:NuclearWarfare/Mark-blocked script.js (highlight blocked user). -- Green  C  19:46, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it would be generally awesome to have a "user info" script that would tell me a bunch of crap that I often forget to look for when investigating socks. Like, if I could click one link a and it would tell me what other accounts the user has created, or if another account created that user account, or if the user has any deleted edits like this guy or how many times the person has been blocked, and for what, whether they've had their account renamed, how many times, etc. A central "rap sheet" might be helpful instead of having to manually go through all the various tools. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:18, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's unfortunately late now but the 2016 Community Wishlist is nearing closure. I agree a tool that helps discover bad actors would be very useful. Automating the best practices for searching for problems. -- Green  C  20:04, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Did you try the global rename log on meta (example)? — xaosflux  Talk 19:56, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Never mind - that is the same direction you don't want. — xaosflux  Talk 19:57, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've created a feature request T152830 for this - feel free to subscribe. — xaosflux  Talk 04:52, 10 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Other than page move hints, for global renames you can recursively check the logs backwards from the current name. — xaosflux  Talk 16:06, 10 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Example:
 * 1) Current to -1
 * 2) -1 to -2
 * 3) -2 to -3
 * 4) -3 to nul
 * — xaosflux  Talk 16:06, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

If it can be done manually, it is also trivial to do it through a userscript using API:Logevents (which is outdated by the way). The internal API docs are probably much better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.81.248 (talk) 16:27, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Occasionally inflexible image placement
Sometimes no matter where an image is placed within the wikicode, it shows up in the same place in the article. Case in point: Rubus strigosus (version I'm referring to, in case someone fixes it). No matter where I put that image on the left, it shows up there, next to the references, with an obnoxious block of white space above it. This sort of thing happens regularly, and is usually a matter of moving things around until it looks acceptable. It drives me nuts, though, and there's just not much flexibility when we're talking about a short article. Whyyyyy does it do this, and how do I fix it? The left side of the article has no images save this one, so I want to be able to put it wherever I want -- top of a section, end of a section, between paragraphs, etc. What am I missing? &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 02:52, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, if you change the location specification from  to   it displays perfectly where you tell it to. I'm not an expert in the ways files work, but I guess that works. Cheers --  The Voidwalker  Whispers 03:07, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That clears wrapping. Not exactly the best aesthetic option as it creates a bunch of whitespace around the image. --Majora (talk) 03:10, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, and it is the infobox that does this. Removed, the images work as expected. I'm testing some alternatives. --Majora (talk) 03:14, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * By using the stack template I think I managed to put the image where you wanted to put it. --Majora (talk) 03:25, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmmmmmm. Ok, follow-up question: Why did that work? :) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 03:33, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Quite honestly, I wish you hadn't asked that since I have no idea the technical reason why it works. I just know that it does since I remember seeing it before. It definitely has something to do with infoboxes on short articles. If you look you will see that the image without stack didn't just appear in the references. It appeared immediately after the infobox ended. Why this happens and why the stack template fixes it? No idea. Perhaps someone else with more template knowledge than I do can explain it to the both of us . --Majora (talk) 03:42, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's hard to explain, but it is one of the side effects of having mutliple floating elements in webpages on both sides. Stack works, because it combines two of those elements on the same side and makes it one floating element. Basically, you are running into the limits of what the web was designed to handle. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:04, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Put fairly simply, floated objects are displayed from top to bottom of the page in the same order that they appear in the page source. Infoboxes are floated objects, as are most images (such as those with thumb). If they float on opposite sides, the earlier image will force the later image down, the reference point for both is the upper edge of the object.
 * So for the page in question, the leaves image is floated right, so it will be pushed down by the infobox. It is in the page source before the berries image, so the upper edge of the berries cannot be higher up than the upper edge of the (right-floated) leaves. Wrapping the infobox and the leaves in / converts two floated objects into a single one, so it is now the upper edge of that combined object - in essence, the upper edge of the infobox - which now determines the highest point that the berries can float to.
 * It's a common question on VPT. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:01, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe not always simple to contend with in practice, but simple enough to understand. Thanks :) &mdash; <span style="font-family:monospace, monospace;"> Rhododendrites <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk  \\ 13:56, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Thank you for the explanation. Both of you. --Majora (talk) 17:28, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

stats.grok.se
On the Wikipedia article traffic statistics site, I can't get any statistics past 201601. For the months after that, all I get is a message that says "internal server error".

I've checked many subjects, and the same thing happens.

Is it working for you? The Transhumanist 21:51, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It no longer works, per Traffic_reporting
 * You should probably be using https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/ instead, unless you need info pre-mid-2015.
 * More details at Pageview_statistics. Quiddity (talk) 21:58, 10 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you. The Transhumanist 01:16, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Infobox display
has an infobox that appears to be correctly formatted. But instead of appearing as an infobox, the text appears instead. Using latest Chrome on W10. Lfstevens (talk) 02:11, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ǀ (U+01c0) is not the same as |. --Unready (talk) 02:23, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Program on/off switch in JavaScript
[ The Transhumanist/anno.js] is a script that toggles (removes and restores) list item annotations, so you only have to look at annotations when you want to.

The program creates a menu item in the tab menus at the top of the page, and also activates a hot key. So, the user could click on "Hide anno" (or "Show anno") or press Shift-Alt- to control the program's behavior.

Presently, the script resets when the page is reloaded or when you go to another page.

I'd like to make the script work without resetting. So that if it is in the "Hide anno" state, it hides annotations from whatever page it goes to.

At the end of the program is code to make the script work for the Vector skin only, and it includes a function that sets the program's default to "Show anno" for when a page is loaded or reloaded. How do I specify the current state of the program? That is, I want to tell it to run the same function that was used last.

I look forward to your replies. The Transhumanist 21:14, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * A cookie or local storage would be the way to transfer state to new windows or page reloads. They won't work in private browsing modes, but then it's kind of the point of private browsing that nothing like that works. --Unready (talk) 22:11, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What about a global variable? And what is "local storage"? The Transhumanist 22:36, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Global variable values exist only within a window. They're global among all code in that window. See mdn for local storage. --Unready (talk) 00:09, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In this context, what's a "window"? The Transhumanist 19:32, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * "This context" would be a browser. A browser window is a user interface area that displays a DOM document. This is not a cutting edge or fringe concept. --Unready (talk) 20:32, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * so, while the browser is running, global variables live on? Even if you leave the page the script was on (within which the global variable was created)?  The Transhumanist 01:14, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If you reload the page, go to another URL, open a new window, or anything else that creates a new window object, global variables are lost. That's generally why people use cookies or local storage. --Unready (talk) 01:31, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the clarification. I tried localStorage.setItem and localStorage.getItem, and these work fine. Cheers. The Transhumanist 09:17, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Petscan borked?
I'm getting mainly anomolous results from petscan. Example should pull up Rose Fernando but does not. Can anyone confirm that my example here is not finding Rose Fernando. Does anyone know if there is a problem affecting Petscan? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:55, 11 December 2016 (UTC)


 * This returns seven results (should be 8): https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?language=en&project=wikipedia&categories=Sri%20Lanka%20women%20Test%20cricketers&ns%5B0%5D=1&interface_language=en&active_tab=
 * When I run the request through the Wikiget tool it returns 8, so looks like a problem at Petscan.

mintbox:[/home/adminuser] ./wikiget -c "Sri Lanka women Test cricketers" | grep Rose Rose Fernando
 * -- Green  C  20:31, 11 December 2016 (UTC)


 * This example should bring back biography articles with no wikidata item. Instead it's bringing back mainly redirects - suggestive of the database against which Petscan is run not having received updates from the current wikipedia database for some time. --Tagishsimon (talk) 14:34, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That would make sense. According to this the Tools accounts have access to a "replica" of the production database. If that replica is out of date or a 24hr delay etc.. could explain a temporary mismatch since Rose Fernando is a brand new article. -- Green  C  20:31, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The replicas are often lagged and/or corrupted. I suggest creating a task on Phabricator for someone to investigate. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 20:42, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

trying to create a toggled script
I'm working on a script to alter the display of an article.

But because I've run into a problem, I took the operational stuff out, in order to test the switch: the script adds an item in the tab menu that alternates between "Hide anno" and "Show anno".

The below script worked fine, until I added this to it: The words "Hide anno" are supposed to show up in the tab menu, but don't because of the above line.

Why does the creation of this variable cause the script not to work?

Here's the script: I thought variable assignment was non-invasive. Please explain how that line affects the rest of the script.

This problem has me totally stumped. I look forward to your replies. The Transhumanist 08:28, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I suspect you are running into a JavaScript error, which causes script execution to cease. Some browsers are not very good at reporting JavaScript errors inside anonymous functions. The error would be because the method  doesn't exist in JavaScript; it is called  . — This, that and the other (talk)  09:01, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That worked. Thank you! The Transhumanist 09:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * By the way, I've been trying to return the content to its previous state, which is what the clone is for.
 * I added this line:


 * but it causes the script to cease execution. Can you spot an error in that line?  The Transhumanist 09:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Never mind, I found a fix:


 * orig2 is a clone of orig. I found this necessary due to the limiting effects of local scope.


 * Thank you for the help. The Transhumanist 13:34, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Loading a RL module
And as a note, you are using mediawiki.util RL module, without guaranteeing that it is loaded. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:27, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * How do I guarantee that it is loaded? The Transhumanist 09:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ResourceLoader/Modules --Unready (talk) 19:56, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * what would I use it on? I have no clue what an RL module is. The script seems to work fine without the loader. What are the potential problems? The Transhumanist 00:59, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ResourceLoader/Modules is a RL module. If something loads it before you try to call it, then it's already available. However, mw.util is not loaded by default, so if you try to use it when it's not loaded, the call will fail. --Unready (talk) 01:26, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What happens if you try to load it when it is already loaded? The Transhumanist 09:26, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I tried this: The above did not work. I do not know how to load the RL module, and the documentation is not very clear. The Transhumanist 10:34, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The module name is, not  . If you try to load a module that's already loaded, the load request succeeds, but nothing additional is loaded. If you try to load a module that doesn't exist, it fails. --Unready (talk) 20:58, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

DAB WikiProject
(Copied and extended from Wikipedia talk:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes)

WikiProject Congo is a DAB, referring to either WikiProject Democratic Republic of the Congo or WikiProject Republic of the Congo. There are probably more; this was the first I saw after sorting by name.

Clearly this should be fixed, and not just for this instance but systemically, but as for how to do it, I have NFI*. --Thnidu (talk) 02:03, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

* "No idea whatsoever"
 * What's the problem? older ≠ wiser 02:12, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you want it removed from Database reports/WikiProjects by changes? It seems a minor issue and the report hasn't been updated since July. The page history shows it was done by User:Reports bot so you could contact the operator and ask to remove or mark disambiguation pages. Category:Wikipedia disambiguation pages shows a few other. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:04, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It is certainly one of many. I can't see a problem with it. Agathoclea (talk) 10:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

List from a category
Is there an easy way of obtaining a list of page links from a category? <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 19:44, 11 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Do you mean the list of article names contained in a category? 'Page links' could mean something else so want to clarify what that means. -- Green  C  20:04, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There is PetScan for a web interface and Wikiget for a unix tool. The later can get very large lists without crashing the browser. -- Green  C  20:07, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant list the contents of the category. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 20:09, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links, but I now realise I should have also said I need the list in wikitext. The category itself already gives me the list. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 20:17, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well the category view limits to 500 (or 5000) paginated rather than a single list which is useful if there are many thousands. To convert to Wikitext I don't know of a pre-made tool. If you have access to a Unix account it would a simple 1-line awk command. Copy the list to "list.txt",  then copy-paste list2.txt back into Wikipedia. Just one example, or as Xaosflux said could also use a text editor. --  Green  C  20:46, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I usually use a capture and text editor - do you need this in general or just for a specific category? — xaosflux  Talk 20:23, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You can build a list in AWB. Saving the list will result in a text file that contains a wikitext list. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 20:38, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * AWB sounds like the best bet for me. I don't have it installed, but it's likely useful to me in other ways as well once I learn how to drive it.  I don't have Unix and I don't really understand how to get the list into a text file in the first place.  A screen scrape includes leading spaces and headings which complicates matters.  The code looks like something I could do just as easily in Excel.   I'm really asking in general.  A frequent decision at WP:Categories for discussion is that should be deleted as a category, but would make a sensible list or list in an article.  The one under discussion that brought this to mind right now is category:Northward flowing rivers but that one is so short it could easily be typed manually so I'm not asking you to produce anything. <b style="background:#FAFAD2;color:#C08000">Spinning</b><b style="color:#4840A0">Spark</b> 22:20, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well if you ever want to give Unix a try there is Cygwin for Windows. The command would be
 * This automatically loads the results into the clipboard which can be pasted into Wikipedia with cntrl-v --  Green  C  18:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This automatically loads the results into the clipboard which can be pasted into Wikipedia with cntrl-v --  Green  C  18:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Editor Interaction Analyser
Hi there. The Editor Interaction Analyser doesn't seem to be working with IP addresses. Not sure who to notify. Thanks. Magnolia677 (talk) 20:15, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Σ appears to be the maintainer listed. — xaosflux  Talk 18:48, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Strike out usernames that have been blocked - does not work anymore
Since a few days the possibiliy to Strike out usernames that have been blocked does not work anymore. Option is in Preferences, Gadgets, Appearance. Both in Firefox and IE. - DVdm (talk) 09:58, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * recently edited the gadget. I have it loaded from ruwiki, which works. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 10:23, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I estimate that it's a week now. can you check it out? TIA. - DVdm (talk) 10:36, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It broke about a week ago due to some change in MediaWiki's JavaScript loading. I patched the gadget at the time just to make sure it didn't prevent other JavaScript from loading, as it was throwing a fatal error. I revised the dependencies in the gadget definition just now, and I think it should start working once the server-side cache clears. Give it 10 minutes or so and try it again. Kaldari (talk) 19:34, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * tried again after 20 minutes. Opacity works, but strike still does not work. Disabling the gadget and pasting this (modified) original code into my private common.js‎ does the job too, even if line-through does not work—I had to replace strike with a coloured box. Strange. - DVdm (talk) 19:56, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Still nothing. I have put my private version back in place. - DVdm (talk) 10:12, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It seems to be working now. Just took a while for the server-side cache to clear I think. Kaldari (talk) 00:13, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * not here. Only the opacity part works. no line-through:
 * - DVdm (talk) 07:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's working for me, including strikethru. Have you removed your custom scripts? Kaldari (talk) 07:04, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. Currect custom script is set back to empty. I have this on every tested combination of Win 8.1 and Win XPsp3 with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. It cannot be a problem with the environment, nor with the syntax, because all CSS experiments on correctly combine the used style elements, including line-through. So there must be another gadget (active here, but not on yours) that somehow interferes. I'll have to experiment a bit. I'll be back . - DVdm (talk) 07:48, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * got it! I have the option, Preferences, Appearance, Advanced options, Underline links: Always. When I change that to Skin or Browser default, the line-through works. It fails with options Always and Never. I prefer Always. This is new behaviour since a week or so. I know that underline and line-through can be combined in CSS, and up until recently these links did indeed show like this one Struck underlined link . - DVdm (talk) 10:00, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I sort-of fixed it. It now overrides the preference CSS. I have absolutely no idea how this would have worked before as it isn't possible to apply two different text-decorations to the same element in CSS. Kaldari (talk) 18:53, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, The additional a. does the trick. But... the links are now line-through but not underlined. Perhaps this is again as it was before—I'm not sure. Anyway, when I copy the current version to my private common.js, with underline added, I have both:
 * Finally the villains links are struck again . Thanks a bunch. - DVdm (talk) 19:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Finally the villains links are struck again . Thanks a bunch. - DVdm (talk) 19:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Finally the villains links are struck again . Thanks a bunch. - DVdm (talk) 19:23, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Image Map extension
Could someone with experience doing the markup for image maps and mouseovers (and, even better, experience with really cheesy TV series from the 1970s) please check the graphic at List of The Brady Bunch characters? The relevant discussion is on the talk page. Rivertorch  <sup style="color:#FF0066;">FIRE <sub style="color:#0066FF;">WATER   20:07, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * . – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:17, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Visual editor reorganization of infoboxes
Whenever a visual edit to an infobox is made to an article that doesn't have an infobox in sorted the visual editor sorts infoboxes, it appears to reorganize the infobox. This causes the diff to be slightly more confusing than it needs to be. I propose we either make the diff system recognize lines/statements being moved around, or we make the visual editor not do this. The first one sounds better, but I'd guess that it'd take much more work than having the visual editor remember the order. Thoughts? – 🐈? (talk) (ping me!) 00:58, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You can try User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff. It parses that diff quite finely. --Izno (talk) 01:37, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Can someone who uses VE please make a dummy edit to this article to verify that it really does move infobox fields without an editor specifically doing it? If that happens, it should be filed as a bug against VE. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:32, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * VE reorders template parameters to match the order given in the TemplateData for that template. Any params not explicitly listed there, in this case  get moved to the bottom. Of these,
 * imagesize is not documented, but is a valid alias for image_size which is both documented and listed in TemplateData
 * debut_works is obsolete, and was and, see Template talk:Infobox writer/Archive 2 and Template talk:Infobox writer/Archive 2
 * influences and influenced are obsolete, they were, see Template talk:Infobox writer/Archive 8 also older archives
 * I think that the real fix here is to make sure that VE is capable of handling aliases. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:37, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think VE can handle aliases if they are defined in the TemplateData. I added the imagesize alias for image_size. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 20:49, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * See VisualEditor/Feedback and T150763. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:50, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor (well, Parsoid) is supposed to order the template parameters (for templates that you edit, but not templates that you don't touch) to match the order given in the TemplateData for that template. However, it's not working perfectly at the moment.  This is a known bug.  Please feel free to add comments at T150763 if you've got any insight into the likely cause.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-50
<section begin="technews-2016-W50"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Users who have Yahoo email addresses could not use Special:EmailUser to send emails. This has now been fixed. Emails will now come from a @wikimedia.org address. Users who get an email from you will still reply to your email address and be able to see it.
 * You can now see how many categories and pages there are in the categories in Special:TrackingCategories. This is to help you find pages that could need attention.
 * Markup colours for reviewed and pending revisions in the page history and recent changes and logs now match Wikimedia standard colours. The "You have a new message on your talk page" notification will have a slightly different colour.

Problems
 * Because of work on cross-wiki watchlists, global renaming is not working. The plan is to turn it on again on 16 December. Global renaming was turned off for a while in late November and early December as well.

Changes this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 December. It will be on all wikis from 15 December (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on December 13 at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2016-W50"/> 19:29, 12 December 2016 (UTC) -- עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:14, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Global block vs. local block
Hi all, I'm just wondering if a global block overrides a local block on an account? I'm viewing the block log of a user and it shows nothing but in the global block log, it shows the local block reason. --   LuK3      (Talk)   03:50, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * If I know which account you're talking about, that'd be my fault. I locally suppressed the username when blocking. Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 03:53, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I see now, thanks Ks0stm. Why would the local block not show up though (although, for this case, it's pretty obvious)? --   LuK3      (Talk)   03:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Basically, when an oversighter blocks with the "suppress this username" option checked, the block shows up in the suppression log (the log of oversight actions) instead of the block log. I'm not really sure why it does it that way versus just hiding the username in a block log entry, but for whatever reason the entire log of the block is in the suppression log. Ks0stm  (T•C•G•E) 03:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think it's for coherency reasons - all suppression actions land in the same log. Global lock (global block is only for IP addresses) does not interact with local suppression at all, it merely prevents people from logging into the locked account. There is global oversight which is more complex. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:22, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

User box populating category to be deleted
Category:Wikipedians who previously had access to HighBeam is to be deleted per Categories for discussion/Log/2016 November 24; however it's populated by Wikipedia:HighBeam/Userbox which uses complex syntax to detect current/former status and thus a simple edit can't remove it. Can someone with the technical know-how please adjust the template to remove the former category altogether? Timrollpickering 14:23, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've removed the offending category. Should the userbox remove the "has" category from users who "had" access? --Izno (talk) 14:40, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes - the arrangement's a bit of a mess by using the same template for current and former. Timrollpickering 18:07, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Should be good to go then. Check in a day or two a user who you know "had" access to make sure that they do not have a category on their page. --Izno (talk) 18:36, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I think some are instead using Wikipedia:HighBeam/Topicon which may also need modifying. Timrollpickering 18:39, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Used the same entry and it seems to be working. Many thanks! Timrollpickering 18:41, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Why cant I see the visual editor option on Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_Nations
Hi all

I'm doing some work to restart WikiProject_United_Nations (a mainly abandoned Wikiproject with very little activity) and I just realised that I can't see the VE button on any of the pages, can someone explain why this is happening (I can see VE button everywhere else) and also enable it?

Many thanks

--John Cummings (talk) 13:34, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The Visual Editor is disabled on pages with the "Wikipedia:" prefix; see VisualEditor. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:22, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * As a technical matter, it's possible to do this. However, there's no way to enable it at the WikiProject pages and simultaneously enable not enable it at, say, ANI and VPT.  The visual editor is not designed to function well on talk pages (e.g., no indentation to fake threading in discussions).  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks and, I'm afraid you have lost me a bit, the pages I'm talking about are not talk pages. Is there any way it can be enabled for a specific Wikiproject like what was done with Flow? The main problem I have is the pages I have created use a lot of tables e.g the page for reusing open license text, which are really useful in organising work but basically impossible to edit in Source Editor.


 * Thanks again


 * --John Cummings (talk) 09:18, 9 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The point that they are trying to make is that WP:ANI, WP:HELPDESK and many other pages in the Wikipedia namespace (including this particular one), although not using a talk namespace, do actually function as talk pages. Since VE is not designed for discussions, and the Wikipedia namespace inhabiting both content and discussion, there is a conflict there, which is the reason that VE is not enabled in this particular namespace. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:25, 9 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Ok, can someone suggest a way forward? Is there another acceptable namespace for Wikiprojects on English Wikipedia perhaps? Or perhaps it can be enabled for this specific Wikiproject? Is it a technical issue that is going to be fixed any time soon? It seems as though it would be very very helpful for participation in Wikiproject to be able to use VE, tables especially are good for organising but horrible to edit in Source Editor.


 * Thanks


 * --John Cummings (talk) 14:14, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
 * A workaround is to copy the source text to a place where VisualEditor works like Special:Mypage/sandbox, and switch to VisualEditor there. You can switch during editing and don't need to save before copying the source back. It takes a little work, and some things like relative links and namespace dependent features will not work right. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:57, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that sounds like a royal faff but the only available option.... --John Cummings (talk) 18:39, 9 December 2016 (UTC)


 * is it possible to enable VE for pages starting with Wikipedia:WikiProject? --John Cummings (talk) 08:24, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... I wonder if a solution would be to introduce a new content model for wikitext discussion pages. This would be applied to all Talk: pages by default, and could be manually applied to Village pumps, ANI etc. The only difference at first would be to disable VisualEditor, although I imagine there's other useful things the software could do once it knows a page is for discussion (such as reminding users to sign their posts). the wub "?!"  15:05, 10 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks, do you mean VE is applied everywhere but automatically disabled for pages that start with Talk: and could be manually disabled on Wikipedia: pages using a Source editor command e.g __NOVE__ . is this possible? How would it be implemented? --John Cummings (talk) 07:30, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The wub's approach sounds plausible to me (not that my opinion means anything, since I'm not a dev ;-).
 * VisualEditor is currently enabled per-namespace. That means that it's all or nothing for everything that starts with "Wikipedia:" (or "Help:" or whatever).  It's not current possible to have it enabled for "Wikipedia:WikiProject..." but not for "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/..."
 * The suggestion of enabling or disabling individual pages has been considered and rejected previously (at least once because I asked for it in 2013 – and I have no reason to think that the devs' views on that have changed since then). Some other wikis don't have as many long/complex discussions in the Wikipedia: namespace, so it has been enabled in the Wikipedia: namespace there.  But here at enwiki, the idea of making the visual editor available to unsuspecting editors who are encountering ANI or VPT for the first doesn't seem like an act of kindness.  We'd be setting them up to get yelled at  for failing to indent their replies properly.
 * John, I've occasionally copied pages to my sandbox precisely to use the visual editor to make some changes (tables, of course, but also for complex page re-organizations). It is a bit of a pain.  But personally I think I'd rather endure that little bit of pain myself than to potentially inflict a different kind of pain on a lot of less-experienced editors.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Have you considered using the WikiProject X design instead? E.g. like WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health does (more live examples in WikiProject X/Dashboard). I think it takes some assistance to get it setup and there's a backlog at the moment, but it's worth it in the end. Add your project at WikiProject X/Pilots to indicate interest. Quiddity (talk) 23:22, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, do you know if it is planned to add the functionality to allow Wikiprojects to have VE but not in other spaces within Wikipedia:? --John Cummings (talk) 22:36, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There are currently no plans to make VisualEditor configurable per page, rather than per namespace. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 13 December 2016 (UTC)