Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 162

Could the empty fields be hidden in templatedata tables?
When setting up template data, the preview on the template doc page ends up showing reams of this:
 * Default
 * empty


 * Example
 * empty


 * Auto value
 * empty

There often isn't any reason to fill these fields in, but they do make it quite hard to scan the tables for what's actually been specified. They also often mean the tables are too big to be a sensible replacement for existing parameter tables, which means the parameter list ends up being written out (at least) twice on template pages. Would it possible to just get rid of them when empty? User:GKFXtalk 19:59, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Yep. Using CSS one can only hide the fields, but not the "label" using something like  until they add that class to the sibling dt tag (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T176956). It is possible to hide all of it entirely using javascript. 21:27, 13 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.2 (talk)


 * That CSS should really be put into the site-wide stylesheet. I've been adding quite a bit of templatedata recently and it's frustrating that the tables are just too unwieldy to become the primary source of parameter information on all but the simplest templates. If these tables were actually readable on doc pages, they could be used as a replacement for existing information more often. On the DRY (don't repeat yourself) principle, that would make both maintaining and reading doc pages easier. User:GKFXtalk 10:04, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
 * User:GKFX, I believe that User:PerfektesChaos has a script that will do what you want. See the Module description (English), de:Wikipedia:Lua/Modul/TemplateData/Test (test overview) and  de:Wikipedia:Lua/Modul/TemplateData/Allerlei (presentation).  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * User:Whatamidoing (WMF), thank you! I've made a page import request. User:GKFXtalk 01:23, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Imports of the base pages are done, the English documentation likely needs creating. — xaosflux  Talk 16:29, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've done most of the template documentation, but since de:Wikipedia:Lua/Modul/TemplateData/en is so detailed I'm going to open an import request for it to be Module:TemplateData/doc. User:GKFXtalk 16:35, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked that code a bit to match the style of doc pages on the English Wikipedia, and Template:FormatTemplateData is now working very nicely. User:GKFXtalk 15:01, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

DisplayTitle
In consistent with my signature style and color, I want to make my user-page's title that way. I've prepared the displaytitle which is. But the problem is it is bold. I want to remove this bold feature but don't know how to.

Another problem is that is there any way to use é (as in my signature) in the title? When I put é, the warning message says it is not consistent with the original title. Can anyone help? -AsceticRosé 09:21, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That's not what that functionality is for... Page titles look the same for every page for a reason, dressing it up like a Christmas tree is not what displaytitle is supposed to be used for, as documented in Template:DISPLAYTITLE. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:36, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It's for a user page. Users are allowed to style their username there.  means bold. Use instead:  . You cannot change e to é. The display name must resolve to the real name in wikilinks so it must use the same characters with a few exceptions like space/underscore and lowercase initial letter. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:48, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's allowed because some people insist on doing it.. But its annoying as hell. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:31, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for resolving this. I see it works. -AsceticRosé 12:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * AsceticRose, If you want the é, then you'll need to rename your account, see Changing username. -- WOSlinker (talk) 14:02, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I find the bold red in the signature annoying but don't mind the title on the userpage. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:45, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

undefined undefined template and range measurements: "adj=on" doesn't work?
Is the undefined undefined template's "adj=on" parameter intended to be used with a range measurement?

Currently, if you try it, the "adj" formatting is turned on for the initial range but not for the converted range (see example below). The documentation for that template describes the "adj" parameter in Section 3, but makes no mention there of its potential functionality with ranges. "Ranges" are covered in Section 7, but, again, there's no explicit mention there of the "adj" functionality with ranges. Here is an example I came across.


 * PROBLEM EXAMPLE
 * The coding:
 * The electronic license plate has a 12 by digital display.
 * Displays as:
 * The electronic license plate has a 12-by-16-inch (30 by 41 cm) digital display.

Notice how the hyphens are correctly placed in the first range, but hyphens have not been added in the converted range. One workaround is to omit the "adj=on" parameter after rewording the sentence to make the range measurement into a noun.


 * WORKAROUND EXAMPLE
 * The coding:
 * The electronic license plate has a digital display measuring 12 by.
 * Displays as:
 * The electronic license plate has a digital display measuring 12 x 16 inches (30 by 41 cm).

Perhaps the "adj=on" parameter is not expected to work with a range measurement, but perhaps the documentation should be amended to specify that (lack of) functionality? Thanks to those who may be able to shed light on this. Timbuk-2 (talk) 22:09, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * In the future, please discuss convert issues at Template talk:Convert. My reading of MOS:HYPHEN is that convert is working correctly. The following shows that hyphens are inserted when units are not abbreviated:
 * → 12 by
 * → 12 by
 * Johnuniq (talk) 22:21, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you and apologies. (I'm still learning the ropes here.)  I appreciate your help.
 * Timbuk-2 (talk) 22:26, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Media Viewer still showing incorrect dates on photographs
When the source description page gives only a month or year, e.g. only "July 2010", or only "2010", the Media Viewer is STILL incorrectly showing the date as the first of the month. This was raised months or even years ago, and seems to have incorrectly been given a "never bother to fix" priority. Showing a spurious "1st" date is just WRONG. It needs to be FIXED. 86.191.166.249 (talk) 02:39, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This appears to be T58794. You can follow the development at that link. —  xaosflux  Talk 03:47, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've since proposed a direction for solving this, but as MMV is not currently an actively developed product, there are no developers assigned to it and thus unlikely to be fixed any time soon. This is not unusual, almost every part of the software has a couple of hundred outstanding problems with the same severity. Patches are always welcome... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:42, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

It probably didn't take much time for developers to realize this limitation. So it isn't due to resources, it is simply due to lack of interest. Anyway, the so-called "community" doesn't care much either way, it would take less than 30 seconds to create a CSS to override it: span.mw-mmv-datetime { visibility : hidden; }

span.mw-mmv-datetime::before { visibility : visible; content: "Click 'more details' to see date"; }

Or alternatively read the "one true date" from the file metadata API and overwrite whatever the software adds. In any case, in a few updates of the library it will eventually turn into an exception, so both sides may get what they want:

Deprecation warning: value provided is not in a recognized RFC2822 or ISO format. moment construction falls back to js Date, which is not reliable across all browsers and versions. Non RFC2822/ISO date formats are discouraged and will be removed in an upcoming major release. Please refer to http://momentjs.com/guides/#/warnings/js-date/ for more info. Arguments: [0] _isAMomentObject: true, _isUTC: false, _useUTC: false, _l: undefined, _i: 1926, _f: undefined, _strict: undefined, _locale: [object Object]

14:41, 19 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.80.129 (talk)


 * This bug is worse than many others that are just presentational or cosmetic, or cause inconvenience, since it results in the display of INCORRECT INFORMATION. Some photos only have a month or year attached. A way to display these dates correctly in Media Viewer is ESSENTIAL. Making up a false date with spurious accuracy is BLATANTLY INCORRECT. Fixing this needs to be given HIGH PRIORITY. 86.191.166.249 (talk) 03:08, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment on the phabricator ticket please, there is nothing that we can do about it here. But when you do so, don't shout - they are less likely to give priority if you do. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:46, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I have no account there. Could someone possibly copy my comments across? As far as shouting is concerned, normal volume has had no effect for more than four years. Somehow, someone needs to get through to the people who prioritise tasks that fixing this is important. What else do you suggest? 86.191.166.249 (talk) 00:59, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi,, I just wanted to let you know that I have taken and copied your first comment to phabricator (use task button in top right to reach my post), and I explained it out. Hopefully this makes the process faster.
 * And, if you need anything, just ask. Now I have a phab talk page.
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 01:58, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

How do I handle this cut-and-paste move?
The user who moved the SBS Broadcasting B.V. article to Talpa TV could have just made a request at Requested moves/Technical requests. But instead, the user just cut-and-pasteed the content. What should I do? JSH-alive/talk/cont/mail 15:43, 21 January 2018 (UTC)


 * This sounds like something that belongs in the regular Village pump, or Incident board, and I recommend taking it there.
 * However, I would probably revert the edits manually then notify the user. I'll check to see if the edits match our manual of style for you.
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 15:56, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * A history merge is needed, see this section. I'll act on it once I checked whether the rename is warranted. Please don't revert blindly, that makes messes put of the history. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 15:58, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, now done. If it should be renamed to something else, use a move request or just move. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:03, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing the move for us :).
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 16:22, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Erroneous "no pages in this category" message - can we fix it locally?
When you click on a link in a category table of contents (TOC) near the end of the alphabet, and there are no pages in the category that start with that letter or a letter that is later in the alphabet, you get a misleading message: "There are no pages or files in this category." See, for example, this link, which currently shows the erroneous message. If you click earlier in the alphabet in the TOC for the same category, you get a message like "The following 102 pages are in this category, out of approximately 702 total. This list may not reflect recent changes."

On the "no pages" page, there are also no "previous page / next page" links, even though there should be at least a "previous page" link.

Are these things that we can fix locally, or will I need to submit a Phabricator request? I searched phab for related search terms and did not come up with anything. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:57, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It's MediaWiki:Category-empty, so yes we could easily resolve the issue you're talking about. The problem is that the same message appears in categories that really are empty — we can't change one locally without similarly modifying the other.  Therefore, resolving the underlying issue will require a Phabricator request.  Nyttend (talk) 05:48, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think we could do some trick using to see if the category is empty - the code would look like:
 * I think this should do the trick. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:42, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki messages don't have access to url parameters so we cannot make a "(previous page)" or "(next page)" link. We also don't know whether the problem is that we are after the last page. Clicking "0-9" in the category TOC at Category:CS1 errors: invisible characters and then "(previous page)" gives [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:CS1_errors:_invisible_characters&subcatfrom=0&filefrom=0&pageuntil=0#mw-pages] which displays MediaWiki:Category-empty because we are before the first page. Can we do much else than replace "There are no pages or files in this category" with something like "There are no pages or files in this category satisfying the parameters" in the case "Content for non-empty category"? We could add a link to the whole category. This link is already on the "Category" tab but users may not realize that. The link might need an anchor or url to avoid the bold selflink feature. I don't know how reliable PAGESINCATEGORY = 0 is. Village pump (technical)/Archive 46 from 2008 mentions false 0 results. A false non-0 on an ordinary category view without parameters would cause a misleading message if we say "satisfying the parameters". PrimeHunter (talk) 13:39, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Added "or within your selection" to the description for now. There already was a ticket for this problem. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:13, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Added "or within your selection" to the description for now. There already was a ticket for this problem. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:13, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Odd image in popups
Is there any reason why File:White x in red rounded square.svg appears in popups when hovering over Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 January 19? I'm not seeing it displaying anywhere on the page. Home Lander (talk) 22:59, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * , personally, this sounds like template vandalism, so I'd check the hidden templates, but I'll mention this to some admins and see what they say.
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 23:53, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The image gets displayed when it's transcluded on the main RfD page. -- zzuuzz (talk) 23:35, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The thread Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 January 19 has  which means that it's only visible when transcluded. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:41, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This is unrelated to the template vandalism link by Zanygenius. I think popups looks for an image name in the source without caring whether it's displayed on the page itself, when the page is transcluded, or not at all. Except it ignores images in comment tags . And I think popups can both detect file links in the source and images in some common template parameters like , but not image names in running text like "A common example file name is example.jpg". You would have to examine MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js or make more tests to figure out the details (or find somebody who already knows them or has written them somewhere). PrimeHunter (talk) 00:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Home Lander. Navigation popups uses a very naive JS based wikitext parser from 2004 to achieve it's results. Problems like these are expected as many new features were added to MediaWiki since that time. There are currently no plans to replace the parser. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:34, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting, I wouldn't have expected that because its operation is so fluid; it never seems to produce errors. Guess it shows that while some things change, others never seem to. Home Lander (talk) 21:21, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Per your idea, I inserted File:Example.jpg into the Sandbox with an tag in front of it, and sure enough, the image did not display on the page, but hovering over any link to the Sandbox generated the image in popups. So it apparently happens any time the tag is used with an image. It also doesn't appear to care whether an image is on the MediaWiki:Bad image list; I put 2005 walking penis.jpg in instead and popups had no issue displaying it either. Something to be aware of, particularly when linking to problematic images on noticeboards. Home Lander (talk) 21:37, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Popups looks for file syntax in the wikisource. is one of many ways to have file syntax without displaying an image. Another way is an ignored template parameter. User:PrimeHunter/sandbox6 contains  which produces  nothing. Popups displays the image. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:51, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Flagging overwriting of articles
At present, edits that replace most of the content of a page with new content of less than about 1,000 bytes are flagged in two ways: a tag that reads "Replaced" and is named, and an automatic edit summary drawn from MediaWiki:Autosumm-replace reading "Replaced content with '.....'". The automatic edit summary only appears when the editor did not enter an edit summary themselves.

A proposal that edits should also be flagged when the new content is more than 1,000 bytes has received support at VP Misc. Would anyone with Phabricator access care to submit the proposal there? Noyster (talk),  18:59, 19 January 2018 (UTC)


 * This proposal seems misguided:


 * 1) It is not 1000 bytes, it relies on size of new revision (90% less than the older rev)
 * 2) The opposite is not as noteworthy. It is normal for a short page to be increased by 90%
 * 3) It will result in massive amounts of false positives (e.g. undo by simply loading old revision and saving)
 * 4) It will just be waste of database space tagging many (potentially millions) of needless changes


 * It would be way more sensible to use the same query as the one used in special:newpages for size differences. Newpages and recentchanges both fetch from the same table, so it may potentially be performant enough to reuse. Or at worse have one new filter that checks for irregular additions, e.g. edits larger than 100% or 200% or whatever. 23:52, 19 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.88.180 (talk)


 * How is this to be detected? Does it rely on the removal of all existing page content?  For example, sometimes I'll add a new line at the start of the list, and instead of inserting a new line at the top of a list, the diff viewer says that I blanked the top line, changed every other line, and added a new line of text below the old bottom line.  I'm concerned that adding or subtracting lines could be misinterpreted as replacing all page content with new content.  Nyttend (talk) 00:19, 20 January 2018 (UTC)


 * As noted, it is not in any way intelligent or anything. It just does pure math using the difference between old and new revisions, something similar to (Newrevsize / oldrevsize < 0.1 ). In any event, this doesn't even need a software change, if users here believe such a strange thing is sensible then tagging can be done using abusefilter. 197.218.91.123 (talk) 00:52, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, we're not concerned here with size difference, but with removal of all or nearly all article content and replacement with something else. To the supporters of the proposal it appears sensible, and not strange, to want to flag such edits for review, as they amount in all but name to creation of a new page. Now as people here have pointed out, flagging would need to exclude such actions as insertion of a small amount of content or restoring a previous version. The questions for this technical board are, whether this is technically feasible and whether someone will help get it implemented? Noyster (talk),  18:26, 20 January 2018 (UTC)


 * In other words looking for something like the Levenshtein_distance ???
 * That would require doing something like a difference check on every single edit. That of course may cause performance issues.  It would also have numerous false positives due to the fact that one can increase content by reducing (or vice versa)  using a transclusion. Expanding all wikitext and then running the diff check adds even more time to it. In other words, probably unlikely to be technically feasible. It might be more reasonable to have that in an extension like abusefilter (and there is already a task for that anyway (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T36912)). If such a feature were integrated into it, and deemed performant enough then it could tag all relevant edits, as suggested here. 19:52, 20 January 2018 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.91.184 (talk)
 * It certainly looks as if T36912 would provide the means to detect these edits. That task has been sitting since 2012 with low priority and no-one assigned. Could it be boosted up the priority scale, or do we have to wait to put it on our Santa Claus wishlist coming up to next Christmas? Noyster (talk),  10:04, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

VisualEditor and notifications
Hello, folks. Perhaps this is not the right place to ask this question, so feel free to point me to somewhere else. Earlier today, one of my edits had been reverted, but I found out about it only from my Watchlist and not from the usual "red number at the top of the screen" notification system. When looking into it, I saw that the edit summary for the revert used the same "Undid revision ###### by ..." language that is used for reverts done with the "Undo" function, but the edit wasn't tagged as an "Undo". Instead, it was tagged as a "Visual edit". I've checked the User Guide for the VisualEditor, but found nothing relevant. And so, I've come here to ask -- does the VisualEditor bypass the notification system? And if so, does anyone here know whether this is a deliberate feature? Thank you for any assistance you can provide. NewYorkActuary (talk) 16:28, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The visual editor doesn't do undo's. Maybe someone initiated an undo and then switched to visualeditor and finished it there ? Not sure. How about asking the person who made the edit ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:57, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the prompt response. And yes, that's probably exactly what happened, because the edit wasn't a pure revert -- it also added a source.  But that raises a different question.  Although I don't use VisualEditor, I sometimes do use the "Undo" button to initiate a revert, but then restore some portion of the material that would otherwise have been removed.  So, now I'm wondering whether I too have been inadvertently by-passing the notification system.  No need to look into that -- I'll just check the edit history to see how the edit gets tagged the next time I do it.  Thanks again for the prompt response.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 17:23, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Tags don't show whether a notification was sent. If you use the undo link and stay in the source editor then a revert notification is always sent, tested in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:PrimeHunter2/Sandbox&diff=821635155&oldid=821503074] where the default undo summary was changed and no revert was actually made. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:28, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. The edit in the link you provided does show a "Tag: Undo", so that seems to address my second question -- if that "Tag: Undo" notation appears in the edit history, then a notification has been sent.  And it also seems that the opposite is true -- if you click "Undo" and then switch to VisualEditor, you have indeed by-passed the notification system.  Please correct me if I'm wrong about either of those two conclusions.  Thanks again.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 18:53, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * NewYorkActuary, I'm interested in this. Feel free to undo a of my few edits in my sandbox and then leave a note on my talk page about what you did.  Let's see if we can figure out how to reproduce this reliably.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for following up on this. I've made two edits to that page.  The first was a simple "undo".  The second was an "undo" combined with some editing, both done within the basic (standard?) edit window and both done before clicking "Save".  Becuase I don't have the VisualEditor installed, I was unable to demonstrate what would happen if I clicked "Undo", but then switched to VisualEditor before saving.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 20:48, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * P.S. I just went back to your page to check that both of my edits did have "Tag: Undo" attached to them. But I also saw that you have VisualEditor installed.  So how about undoing the most recent edit on one of my pages (this one), but switching to VisualEditor mid-process?  We'll see if I get a notification of that edit.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 21:03, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You have two accounts so you should be able to make tests by using one account to revert the other. That's what I did in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:PrimeHunter2/Sandbox&diff=821635155&oldid=821503074] and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:PrimeHunter2/Sandbox&diff=821824097&oldid=821635155]. The second edit switched to VisualEditor before saving so the edit was not tagged with undo and the reverted account was not notified. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:15, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You might want to re-try that second test. You seem to have edited the alternate account's test page using that same alternate account.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 21:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That was intended. I had edited it with my main account earlier and swapped accounts for the second test. I used PrimeHunter2 to revert PrimeHunter in VisualEditor so I could see if PrimeHunter would be notified. He wasn't. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Got it (finally!). Thanks.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 22:20, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-04
<section begin="technews-2018-W04"/> 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
 * Filters on Special:RecentChangesLinked will get the new look similar to on the recent changes page. Special:RecentChangesLinked will also get some new features.

Problems
 * With the new OOUI look menus and popups can open upwards instead of downwards. This was meant to make long dropdown menus easier to use. Sometimes these menus have been overlapped by other things. This is now fixed.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 24 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * will be rebooted on 22 February. Some bots use this to get the recent changes feed. They need to be able to reconnect automatically or they will not work until they have been fixed. Most bots can reconnect automatically.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W04"/> 23:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Edits (rather than the text of edits) being imported into Wikipedias of other languages
(Before the heading title above raises false alarms that my account's login credentials have been somehow compromised, they have not. This issue appears to involve some sort of (new?) MediaWiki importation tool.)

I've been editing Wikipedia for a long, long time, around a decade and a half, during which many articles I wrote or contributed to have been copied and pasted and translated into Wikipedias of other languages. That's fine/great; no problem! I'm happy/delighted to share the results or work product of my edits in other languages! But I just encountered something new and different.

I was just given a welcome message to the Bihari Wikipedia by another user, thanking me for my edits there. This surprised me as I don't speak or understand the Bihari languages, so why would I ever have edited there? So, I checked bh:Special:Contributions/Lowellian. And I recognize those edits: I did make those edits, but I made those edits to the English Wikipedia, not the Bihari Wikipedia!

After poking around the page histories some more (and navigation is difficult due to the aforementioned fact that I don't understand Bihari, so I have to do some informed guesswork clicking on links), for example https://bh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Countries_and_territories_of_Southeast_Asia&limit=500&action=history, I can see that my edits have been somehow "copied" from the English Wikipedia to the Bihari Wikipedia, and in a way different from a normal page move: normally, when a page is moved, the edits are also moved with it so that each edit still only appears in one page history (unless it was a copy-and-paste move, in which case the text of the edits but not the edits themselves get copied/moved). But this situation appears to be something different, in which my edits are now duplicated so that the same edit history appears on both the English and Bihari Wikipedias, accredited to me.

This is fundamentally different from normal copying-and-translation of articles into other languages since that copies the prose/text (the work product of edits) rather than the actual edit history (the edits themselves). This concerns me because those page histories make it look like I have been editing the Bihari Wikipedia when I have never done so. I don't want, for instance, people complaining to me about edits I made on another-language Wikipedia that I had no knowledge of and did not make. (This is different from normal copying/translation of articles into other-language editions, since normal copying/translation doesn't make it look like I directly edited those other-language editions.)

This all appears to be done by some sort of (new?) MediaWiki importation tool? Can someone in the know provide background for what all is happening here?

—Lowellian (reply) 22:42, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
 * from bhwiki's log I can see that has imported these using the normal transwiki import process.  This part is OK and normal.  T179832 describes some of the intricicies of imported usernames and how it is being dealt with. —  xaosflux  Talk 23:32, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay, I don't really understand the issues described in T179832 or whether they apply to this specific case, but maybe someone can at least clear this up for me: if you look at https://bh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Countries_and_territories_of_Southeast_Asia&limit=500&action=history, some edits are marked "imported>" followed by the username. My problem is that my edits, at least, seem to have been imported without even that "imported>" designation, as if I made the edits directly to the Bihari Wikipedia, when I did not. My edits should be marked "imported>" if they were imported. Is this something that has been looked at and fixed so that it won't happen in the future? —Lowellian (reply) 23:41, 12 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See meta:Help:Import for the feature. It's from 2003.[//meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help:Import&diff=21895&oldid=21894] You can select English as interface language at Special:Preferences at a foreign wiki. This may make it easier: https://bh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences?uselang=en. I don't know when an edit will say "imported>". I haven't seen that before so the anomaly may not be that it's "missing" from you but that it's shown for some of the others. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:02, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The import process recently got a few enhancements, which is what T179832 was talking about.
 * When importing edits, the importer must specify the source of the import, and can choose whether imported edits by users who exist in SUL are attributed to the local account for the user or in a fashion like "en>Example" that links to the source wiki from the edit history.
 * Of course, we also have over a decade of imports that were done under the previous system, where edits were attributed to a local user even if that user didn't exist. A cleanup script is being run on the servers to update the attribution to the SUL user where possible and with a "imported>" prefix otherwise. Since Lowellian's account is in SUL, they were attributed to that SUL account. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 02:00, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. In that case, I would like to strongly make the following suggestion: in all cases when edits are imported, including for SUL accounts, there should always be some sort of marker/designation in the page history that the edit is an import in order to avoid the incorrect implication that the editor made that edit directly to that particular language-edition Wikipedia. It is inconsistent and misleading that only some users' imported edits are marked as imported while other users' imported edits are not marked as such, and unfair to make users look like they were spamming English edits onto Wikipedia editions in other languages when they did not do so. —Lowellian (reply) 02:38, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The best place to make suggestions is in Phabricator. The best indication would probably be a tag. But note there's no way to reliably identify all past imported edits. Anomie⚔ 14:07, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See also Requests for page importation where we handle requests to copy histories TO enwiki from elsewhere for reference. — xaosflux  Talk 23:36, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Local accounts attached without a visit (and welcomed without an edit)<span id="Welcome_messages_when_never_having_edited">
Today I have been getting Welcomed on both the Latvian and Kazakh wikis. I have never edited over there. I checked my contribs over there, but nothing shows. Could this be part of the same issue [ the previous topic about imported contributions ]? Bit of a coincidence that they both happened today and it has never happened before. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)  07:26, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * This is exactly what the previous topic is about. These welcome messages are being triggered by your edits being imported over to other-language-edition Wikipedias without your knowledge, making you look like a new editor to welcomebots, so they start leaving you welcome messages. Everyone complaining here, please add your voice to that topic if you have complaints about how this process is happening. It is wrong that edits from the English Wikipedia are being imported over to other-language Wikipedias without any indication that those edits are imported. —Lowellian (reply) 21:16, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It happened on the Punjabi Wiki as well... What is going on here? —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)  10:38, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Insertcleverphrasehere, local wiki accounts get attached to your global account the first time you visit that wiki while logged-in. All three of lv:, kk: and pa: were attached to your account this morning. On some wikis you automatically get a welcome message the first time you log in. So I don't think this has any relation to the topic of imported edits (and have therefore separated this topic from that section). --Pipetricker (talk) 11:41, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Turned out I was wrong about that. --Pipetricker (talk) 10:56, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I wonder why all three happened today though? Must be the rollout of some kind of welcome bot. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)  11:47, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * As Pipetricker said: "local wiki accounts get attached to your global account the first time you visit that wiki while logged-in. All three of lv, kk and pa were attached to your account this morning." According to Special:CentralAuth/Insertcleverphrasehere you visited a large number of wikis for the first time today. Many users have been confused by such welcome messages in foreign languages. I have thought about suggesting at meta to ban welcome messages to users who have no edits at a wiki and didn't create the account there but just had it created automatically by viewing a page. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:55, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, I definitely didn't visit all of those wikis today. I did however submit a SQL Query on Quarry for the first time, which required me to authorise it on Mediawiki, which is probably related? Still strange though. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)  12:04, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * That's unrelated. I have done no such thing recently and was welcomed on three wikis also. :) --Izno (talk) 12:23, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Izno, are you saying the SQL query is unrelated to the attachment of a number of local accounts at about the same time, despite Insertcleverphrasehere not having visited those wikis? --Pipetricker (talk) 14:04, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes. --Izno (talk) 15:41, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, it probably is related. The process of attributing those old imported edits to the SUL account includes creating the local account for the attribution to belong to, which would trigger the welcome message on wikis that do automated welcome messages on account creation. Anomie⚔ 14:10, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Probably related to the topic of imported contributions, that is. --Pipetricker (talk) 16:46, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing this too. Of the 32-and-still-rising wikis that Special:CentralAuth/Cryptic says I attached in December 2017, I've only ever been to two - Gujarati Wikiquote and Persian Wikivoyage, and those only afterward, because I can't couldn't get the notifications for the welcomebot messages to go away no matter what I try. —Cryptic 14:50, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * (In case that crops up for anyone else - what finally worked was logging in directly on those wikis and checking off the notification at Special:Notifications, not just the dropdown on the sidebar.) —Cryptic 15:21, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I also got two or three notifications. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 14:55, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * CentralAuth shows many accounts being added. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:01, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I notice now that ilo.wikipedia.org was attached to my account tonight, when I was asleep and my computers were turned off. It's not in my browser history previous to that, and I have no contributions there (and have received no welcome). --Pipetricker (talk) 15:10, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * My wuu.wikipedia account was created 45 minutes ago when my computer was turned off. There is clearly some current process creating accounts at other wikis without user action, maybe releated to work on T179832: "Handling of imported usernames". I don't currently have edits registered at wuu:Special:Contributions/PrimeHunter but maybe there are old imported edits somewhere which have not been added to my contributions. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:05, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is some current process, as I stated in the section above. See T181731 for the task about it. I note that the script is already done with all the "small" wikis. The wikis still in progress or pending are dewiki, enwiki, eswiki, fawiki, frwiktionary, hewiki, huwiki, itwiki, jawiki, kowiki, metawiki, nlwiki, nowiki, plwiki, ptwiki, rowiki, ruwiki, svwiki, thwiki, trwiki, ukwiki, viwiki, wikidatawiki, and zhwiki. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 00:40, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * If the script is still pending for larger wikis, then those future runs should be stopped and held off until the problems people are complaining about are fixed. As a starting point, per User:Anomie's suggestion above, it should tag imported edits of SULs as imports instead of misleadingly implying that they were normal edits to Wikipedias of that particular language-edition. —Lowellian (reply) 06:33, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Something should be done. See Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 57 where I raised this. Andrewa (talk) 10:18, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I see those things as honestly unnecessary. It causes a one-time notification on a per-wiki basis where any of your edits have been imported. Given that there are only 20 wikis left, spending time now would only prevent finishing the task while waiting for the extra work that is already planned-for down the road. --Izno (talk) 12:26, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The problem is not really the welcome notifications. That's just a side effect / symptom of the ultimate cause and real problem, that we are being attributed, without our permission, to edits that we did not make. —Lowellian (reply) 20:58, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * We made our edits to articles which according to the licences we agreed to can be copied provided they are attributed. So it seems to me we agreed to the copies being attributed to us. (Maybe I misunderstood what you mean, but any way if it isn't a technical issue the tech Village pump isn't really the place to discuss that.) --Pipetricker (talk) 23:26, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Attribution has multiple components: who wrote something, what was written, when it was written, and where it was written. The problem is that imports without tagging misrepresent one of those components: where it was written. These attributions aren't accurate because they are edits made to a specific wiki that are now being attributed as edits to a different wiki. And this is certainly a technical issue: it started out as a technical question asking why certain unusual behavior was being noticed, and it has continued as a technical discussion that includes how to, on a technical level, get those edits properly attributed; see the comments below where Xaosflux works out a technical solution to add tagging. —Lowellian (reply) 23:40, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * When you make an edit, above the edit box there is a notice containing the sentence "Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions." So by making the edit, you implicitly gave permission for reuse. Checking those T&Cs, I see that attribution allows several alternatives; one of them is "or c) a list of all authors". By crediting each individual edit to the person who made that edit, even if that edit was on another wiki, sufficient attribution is given. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:21, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * No, it isn't, and the legal language being quoted here only says that reuse and redistribution is allowed with proper attribution, which actually supports my point. Wikipedia allows reuse and redistribution with proper attribution, and the problem here is that the attribution is wrong. Redistribution copies text without claiming that the text was originally written directly to the copy. An attribution that claims someone wrote something somewhere that they did not write it (directly to the copy, instead of somewhere else that is then reproduced by the copy) is a fundamentally incorrect attribution, particularly when, as in this case, the copy is only a partial, non-identical copy, being in a different language. Copying over text from one wiki to another is not the same thing as claiming someone wrote directly to a wiki that the person did not. —Lowellian (reply) 22:32, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I see you have twice listed four alleged requirements for proper attribution. The policy at Copyrights says that attribution under CC-BY-SA has exactly one requirement, namely that you must "provide credit to the authors". It further says that "a list of authors" (even if just plain text), is adequate.  Do you believe that the policy is wrong?  Can you find anything in Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License that requires, for example, that attribution include "when it was written"?
 * Why does it actually matter to you that your revision has been copied from the enwiki database over to another one, without saying "copied from this other database" on it? Do you think that someone (who?) will think you've done something disreputable, as a result of omitting such a label?  If you're familiar with the 5 Whys analysis, then I'm very interested in the "fifth why", or the underlying problem.
 * WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Exactly, attribution must "provide credit to the authors". That is the problem: when a credit claims someone wrote something somewhere that they did not write it, then that credit is wrong, since the actual editor is the import script, not the person claimed by the import script. Consider the following example: Alice adds the text "lorem ipsum foobar" to an article. Bob copies that "lorem ipsum foobar" text and then pastes it into another article. Alice may be the originator of the text, but the edit history would correctly show Bob, not Alice, as the editor who added it to the second article. If that text is disputed on the second article, then Bob, not Alice, is accountable for adding that text on the second article. But here, the import script is breaking that standard and instead giving the false appearance that Alice was the editor who added the text to the second article, so that Alice becomes the person who is then held accountable.
 * False attribution is false attribution; it should be corrected without any further justification being needed. I would think that accuracy and truth are fundamental to the goals of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. That said, at the very least, these wrong credits also give the false appearance that the author is spamming a wiki with text in the wrong language for that wiki. On top of that, different wikis have different stylistic guidelines regarding things like formatting or titling conventions. This gives the false appearance that the author is ignorant or willfully ignoring those guidelines and conventions. Furthermore, what if text added is controversial? The author could then potentially be accused of, for example, POV-pushing on a wiki that the author has never even edited.
 * —Lowellian (reply) 22:03, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Is there an example of "false attribution"? You might copy the URL of a diff from a history page on another Wikipedia. Lots of fake books are sold by scammers who have copied various articles. They usually include a list of authors from the history pages to comply with the re-use procedures, so your user name may be printed by them. It's not false attribution. Johnuniq (talk) 23:45, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Let's have a look at a page that Lowellian created - Template:Undated ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Undated&action=history Revision history]) and the same at bh.wikipedia - bh:टेम्पलेट:Undated ([//bh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=टेम्पलेट:Undated&action=history Revision history]). Other people made edits, and checking the lists together, there is a remarkable correspondence, apart from one or two users like Enterprisey / APerson which can be explained as a username change back in May 2016. Oh, I see that I'm in both lists too. Did I make this edit? There's no denying it, guilty as charged. Did I also make this edit? Well, it says that I did, but I don't recall ever making that edit on that wiki. However, if that edit is going to be credited to anybody, I'd rather that it was credited to me and not to somebody else pretending that it was their idea. Am I kicking up a stink? No. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:57, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
 * If these attribution issues don't bother you, that's fine, but please don't just dismiss others' concerns as "kicking up a stink". I'm not the only one who has raised concerns about the behavior of these imports. Why is it so terrible to have an imported edit be credited to both the original author and the import script via an automated tag? Automated tagging doesn't hurt you in any way, while it improves the situation for those who do care about proper attribution. That's all I'm asking for: that the import script should place a tag indicating, in addition to the original author of the text, that the edit is an import, so that there is a way to distinguish between edits made directly and edits that are imported. —Lowellian (reply) 22:49, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you see the imported edit as saying not only "Lowellian wrote this", but actually "Lowellian personally placed this content on this wiki"?
 * I don't think that's what's intended. The point is to identify who owns the copyright, not which software database you originally placed the content in.  (In your example, the copyright holder would be Alice, not Bob; if Bob copied Alice's text from one article to another, then Bob needs to include an edit summary that identifies either who originally wrote the text or which article it came from).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:02, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Having the implication be "this user personally placed this content on this wiki" is not intended, but it is what is happening. That is why it is so important to have some sort of tag indicating that it's an import rather than something written directly. —Lowellian (reply) 22:49, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Who do you think interprets it that way? Not you, of course, because you already know that's not what happened.  Not the admin who imported it, or the regulars at any wiki where importing edits is typical, because they already know how it works.  So who do you think would be both aware of these imported edits (i.e., not >99.9% of readers) and honestly confused by it?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:28, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The only reason that I even know about these imports is because of those welcome alerts that drew me into this issue. I've been an admin over a decade and still didn't even know about of this import mechanism until I started asking questions in this discussion, which makes it very likely that >99.9% of editors aren't aware there is an import mechanism and upon seeing those untagged edits while examining edit history (which will become ever more common as those wikis grow in the future and more and more editors join and edit) would think they were regular edits and not know that they were imports. This issue is fresh in the minds of the editors here in this discussion right now, but we cannot expect editors outside this discussion to be aware of it years from now. That's why we need a tagging mechanism, so there will be not be any long-term future confusion. —Lowellian (reply) 23:01, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
 * If you're a regular editor at a wiki where this is done, then you will have seen this in dozens of articles at your wiki. If you don't know, you'll ask, and one of the other regular editors will tell you.
 * This has been done for years at the German Wikipedia. It looks like you've got about 10 imported edits there for every "real" one you've made directly.  The numbers are very similar for me.  Apparently, neither of us have ever been asked about those imported edits.  I don't think that I've ever seen a question or complaint about an imported edit, and I assume that's true for you, too, or you'd have already known that it was possible to import edits.  I therefore think that it's reasonably safe to assume that the likelihood of some hypothetical future editor yelling at us for doing something "wrong" on another wiki is pretty close the actual experience of it never having happened before in all these past years.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:10, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, that you're saying that this has been done for years at the German Wikipedia actually raises another issue about there being no way from the edit history to tell when the imports were done. But to get back to the original issue, only a very small number of my edits have thus far been imported to the German Wikipedia, concentrated on a few articles. It is not reasonable to conclude from a small number of imports that that there aren't going to be complaints as the number of imports grows. And I will reiterate that fundamentally, attribution should be correct without needing to be justified. Tagging imports helps the situation for those of us who care about this attribution issue and has no effect on those who do not care, so there's no reason not to do it. —Lowellian (reply) 17:22, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

You've had about 200 edits imported to the German Wikipedia so far, which the median editor would likely not describe as a small number, and about as many again across some other wikis ( one at tewiki, two at arzwiki, three at gdwiki, orwiki, and lmowiki, six at mlwikisource, eight at hiwiki and simplewiki, 10 at elwiki, 12 at the testwiki, 15 at maiwiki, 20 at bhwiki, 24 at knwiki, 34 at mlwiki, and 52 at the English Wikibooks, for anyone who's keeping count ).

And, as the edits are attributed to you, I suggest again that the attribution is already correct. It appears to be your personal preference for attribution to say which wiki you happened to be using at the time your original edit was saved, but I have found no actual requirement to do so. I'll cheerfully admit that I'm wrong on that point when you quote me a line from the license that says that attribution must include information about which sub-domain of which website you first posted your copyrighted content to, rather than just your name.

This is where the disconnect seems to be. You seem to have gotten the idea that there is only one "correct" way to provide attribution, and that this One True Way™ requires four specific details, and the current system provides only three of them. I can find no source that supports your belief that anything more than your username is required. For that matter, I can't even find out whether your alleged requirement of "where it was published" refers to the physical location where it was published, the legal/copyright location where it was published, or the name of the larger work that it was included in. (There is, after all, a big difference between "printed in China", "published in the United States", and "published as part of the Anthology of Something", and (given the realities of printing costs) all three of those might be simultaneously true for any given work.) So at the risk of sounding rather Wikipedian about this, please cite your sources. I've cited mine: the license doesn't mention any requirement beyond identifying (in some fashion) the human who originally created and licensed the work in question, and which work is so licensed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 27 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The sources you cite do not support the argument that untagged imports are providing proper attribution. You've cited a license that says that for redistribution, credit must be provided to the authors. But this isn't a simple case of redistribution, and credit has not been provided to the authors. Redistribution should not change the meaning of the underlying text; if it does, then it is not just redistribution, but new authorship. Let's say Alice adds to the article on the planet Earth the text that "The subject of this article is the third planet from the sun," a true statement. Bob copies that same exact text ("The subject of this article is the third planet from the sun") to the articles on Pluto and on mathematics: those statements have now become, respectively, false and absurd. Should Alice be held accountable as a liar or vandal for text that she originated but whose meaning Bob altered by placing it on a different article? No.
 * Is Bob or Alice the author of that text on Pluto or television? It is at least as much Bob as Alice; Alice may have originated that text, but by placing that text in a different context that changes its meaning, Bob has also become an author. Similarly, since these import scripts are copying text to different articles in different contexts, the import scripts are also an author, and the attribution is wrong when it only credits the originator of the text, since the text no longer has the same meaning in this different context. This is why imports need to be tagged as such for proper attribution.
 * —Lowellian (reply) 00:51, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Again: Where are your sources, the ones that allegedly support your claim that "Lowellian wrote this" (complete with a link to your account, so that everyone knows which Lowellian we're talking about) does not "provide credit to the author"?  I see repeated assertions and a whole lot of IDONTLIKEIT, but I also see zero sources behind those assertions.  Can you please provide any (single) plausibly reliable source to back up your personal opinion?  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:06, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I have absolutely provided a source: the license, which requires credit be provided to the authors. Where are your sources, the ones that allegedly support your claim that the entity posting an edit is not an author? I see repeated assertions and a whole lot of IDONTLIKEIT, but I also see zero sources behind those assertions. Can you please provide any (single) plausibly reliable source to back up your personal opinion? (Note that, for the previous last two sentences, I just reused your words in a different context, that of my argument. In the edit history of this page, this reuse of words is attributed to me, not to you, because their context has been altered as part of this comment that I am posting, demonstrating the principle in question: the editor is an author.)
 * I don't think you and I are going to reach agreement on this issue, so let's just agree to disagree, since the debate is academic at this point, given that Xaosflux provided below a solution to tag imports.
 * —Lowellian (reply) 20:56, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm still looking for the part in the license that says "It's not credit to the author if you don't identify the location". The fullest description of what it means to give "credit to the authors", to quote section 4(c) of the license, says: "You must ... provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; (ii) the title of the Work if supplied; (iii) to the extent reasonably practicable, the URI, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and (iv), consistent with Section 3(b), in the case of an Adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author")."
 * Notice that dates are not mentioned in this definition of what it means to give credit to the authors. Notice that locations are not mentioned in this definition of what it means to give credit to the authors.  Notice that websites (URIs) are encouraged but technically optional in this definition of what it means to give credit to the authors.  I simply cannot find anything at all in here that supports your claim that there's been a license violation if someone imports your work without adding a note that says "and he posted it to the English Wikipedia first".  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:44, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If you're going to try to restart a debate 10 days later, after not replying within that whole time, on a discussion page that receives many, many edits on other topics, at least give me a courtesy ping. After over a week without a response, I thought we were done here, but I guess not. From now on, whenever I post in response to a comment of yours here in this topic, I will give you a ping. Please do the same for me.
 * That citation you keep repeating does not support your point and is in fact contrary to it, since it requires credit for the authors. Nothing you wrote shows that the entity posting an edit is not an author. And license aside, it is against the ethos of Wikipedia to omit authors, give a misleading credit that implies someone edited an article they did not, and alter the meaning of a person's words while still attributing it to them by reposting those words in a different context.
 * As I said previously, let's just agree to disagree, since the debate is academic at this point, given that Xaosflux provided below a solution to tag imports.
 * —Lowellian (reply) 20:54, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
 * What exactly do you mean by your claim that authors are being omitted by Special:Import? Your complaint above is that "edits are now duplicated so that the same edit history appears on both the English and Bihari Wikipedias, accredited to me" (emphasis added).  You've said that you're actually getting credit for the work, and you're unhappy about that.
 * If you read the license above, what constitutes "credit" is spelled out in numbered detail:
 * name of author [NB: not full identity – just the name],
 * title the author gave the work (if any),
 * URL (if reasonably practical), and
 * acknowledgement of any subsequent changes.
 * Which part of those four numbered requirements do you claim is being omitted here? (This isn't entirely academic, because the solution below is not going to work in every case.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You're just repeating arguments already made earlier which I've already rebutted. I don't want false credit for work/edits that I did not make, and the import mechanism, as the editor, is the author being omitted. I've already stated that I'm satisfied with Xaosflux's solution. So I don't know why you're continuing to extend this debate: what actionable technical change are you wanting to happen? —Lowellian (reply) 02:17, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I'm trying to figure out why anyone would (apparently) think that a piece of software can be an author of anything. I cannot understand why anyone would think that merely copying something from one place to the other, with zero changes, would make either the file-copying software or the person who did the equivalent of typing cp file.text copy.txt, become an actual author of the original work.  AIUI copyright law simply does not work that way.  A person cannot become an author of a work merely by copying someone else's work.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to figure out why anyone would (apparently) think that falsely naming a person as an editor is okay when the person didn't make the edit and has never even been involved with the wiki. I cannot understand why anyone would think that it is okay to alter the meaning of someone's work and then hold them responsible for that altered work with which they had no involvement or even awareness. We're not getting anywhere, and there doesn't even seem to be any actionable technical change you want, so let's just agree to disagree and let this debate end. —Lowellian (reply) 00:08, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If you are seriously concerned about someone altering the meaning of your work, then, I'm really sorry to say this, but Wikipedia is probably not a good match for you. You might investigate whether there is a place for you to contribute that has CC-BY-SA-ND licensing (the "ND" part means that the license that does not allow people to change your work).  Under Wikipedia's CC-BY-SA license, one of the risks that all editors take is the risk that someone will post their work, with their usernames, in other contexts and on other sites.  (I understand that more than one admin has had some of their CC-BY-SA contributions copied to attack sites, for example.)  If you were unaware of this risk and would be distressed to find your name and your work on a horrifying website, then you may wish to consider WP:VANISHing.  I would be sorry to see you go, but Wikipedia's contents, for better or worse, get copied to a lot of sites, including some that are not nearly as innocent as a small Wikipedia.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There is no such license as CC-BY-SA-ND - the -SA and -ND are mutually exclusive, since -SA concerns subsequent licensing of derivative works (the wording is " ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original."), and -ND explicitly forbids derivatives (the wording is " NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material."). You may be thinking of CC BY-ND. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:49, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * @User:WhatamIdoing: That's a misportrayal of the situation. I have no problem with people altering my work, and I encourage it: that is at the core of Wikipedia, collaborative editing in which people alter others' work. Also at the core of Wikipedia is that people get correct credit for work. The problem here is not that work is being altered, but that credit is not being properly given for the work. What third-party websites do is irrelevant to this discussion; by definition, they are outside Wikimedia control, and no one uses them to confirm what edits someone made on Wikipedia. They check Wikipedia for that, and this discussion is about edit histories on Wikipedia. —Lowellian (reply) 02:26, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Tagging imports
There's no way to reliably identify old imports to tag the edits, so that's not going to happen. The unexpected creation of accounts should be mostly done since most of the wikis are done. Anomie⚔ 13:56, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * But I'm not asking to identify old imports to tag the edits. I'm asking that future imports should tag imported edits as they are being imported. —Lowellian (reply) 20:56, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See the history of User:Xaosflux/Sandbox3z (for enwiki) and test2wiki:Male user:Xaosflux/Sandbox3z (for a remote wiki) for how NEWLY imported pages will appear in histories. Does the   identifier satisfy what you are looking for? —  xaosflux  Talk 22:18, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's great, thank you so much, that's pretty much exactly what I'm looking for! :) I don't know how involved you are in the process of these Wikipedia imports; are you in position to actually get that change done immediately for all future imports? —Lowellian (reply) 22:41, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not working on the ticket, so here's the situation: any newly imported revisions will follow that already - its already live. The problem that you are seeing is that pages that were imported to projects previously have no information stored to change them in to this new style.  —  xaosflux  Talk 23:20, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Given the lack of stored information on previous imports, I see the difficulty there and am satisfied as long as these identifiers apply to all future imports. But I want to ask for clarification on something: these identifiers will apply to ALL future imports, including imports of edits from SUL accounts, right? Because that was the previous issue: imports of edits of non-SUL accounts were already being marked with an "imported>" identifier before the username, but edits of SUL accounts were not marked/identified in any manner. —Lowellian (reply) 23:52, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * unless the software changes again in the future, then yes that is the plan for all imports going forward as far as I know, I think it is a good thing. The problem with the other edits is they USED to say your name on them, but in the database they didn't reference your userid, some of these appear to be resolvable, but many were not - in the database cleanup they are now saying "import>NAME" instead of just "NAME", because there is no way for them to know if it should be en:NAME, or es:NAME, or fr:wikisource:NAME, etc.  For edits that did match a SUL account from the point of view of the destination wiki they already did match your SUL ID and there is nothing to do. —  xaosflux  Talk 03:56, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Unless the person doing the import checks the "" checkbox. If they check that box, then SUL accounts will be attributed to the local name as was done by the maintenance script. As I told Lowellian in this edit, feature requests are better made in Phabricator than by continuing to demand changes here. Anomie⚔ 15:10, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * thanks for the clarification. I wasn't demanding anything, but will open a feature request to include an edit type identifier. — xaosflux  Talk 15:57, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See T183061. — xaosflux  Talk 16:10, 16 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I can see how the welcome notification when you haven't visited the wiki is annoying. There is no moral or legal obligation to "fix" anything in regards to attribution of your edit. Lowellian: Please see Copying within Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Killiondude (talk • contribs) 00:05, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It's annoying, confusing, unnecessary and just plain bad design. As is using a lonely bullet point for emphasis. Bullet points belong in bulleted lists. Andrewa (talk) 00:21, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your input. Killiondude (talk) 00:50, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The normal process of copying within Wikipedia attributes that copying, within edit history, to the editor who was actually doing the copying. These imports are copying while attributing the copying to someone who didn't do the copying, to a wiki that they didn't edit. To repeat part of what I wrote above, attribution has multiple components: who wrote something, what was written, when it was written, and where it was written. The problem is that imports without tagging misrepresent at these components: who wrote it (since it is really the import script copying over what someone else wrote rather than that person writing it directly) and where it was written. These attributions aren't accurate because they are edits made to a specific wiki that are now being attributed as edits to a different wiki. —Lowellian (reply) 01:03, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Regardless, the way it's happening is a confusing and annoying mess. The "welcomes" in unintelligible tongues of men and angels (for all the good they do) are just a symptom.
 * The problem appears to be, these so-called attributions are undecipherable. If this were not the case, the scripts would not have such problems. And since attribution is required, this is serious. Andrewa (talk) 01:46, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Auto-created local accounts though no imported contributions<span id="Auto-created_accounts_though_no_imported_contributions">
Here's what I haven't yet understood about this: So, on wikis where articles previously have been imported, local accounts are created in order to attribute the contributing users. But most or at least some of the newly created accounts that have been reported in this thread have no contributions! Are those accounts just a side effect with no big significance (other than causing annoying welcomes and uncertainty)? Or do they reflect that contributions by that user have been imported, but the details have somehow been lost and won't therefore appear in the contributions list? --Pipetricker (talk) 10:09, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * This recent comment by jhsoby at phab:T181731 seems to say it's basically a side effect, related to Wikidata. (@Anomie) --Pipetricker (talk) 10:38, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
 * This comment is probably more relevant. BTW, for some reason your ping didn't work. Possibly because the edit edited another line in addition to adding a comment.  Anomie⚔ 15:15, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't see how that comment is relevantUser:Anomie I didn't mean to ask about edit counts, but about why for example ilo:Espesial:Contributions/Pipetricker and wuu:Special:用户贡献/PrimeHunter have no contributions listed, when those local accounts were created by the maintenance script. --Pipetricker (talk) 09:59, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Information vs text
The issues raised at Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 57 seem better discussed here. Perhaps I should in hindsight have come here first.

One of the possible problems that occurs to me is really a restatement of the initial problem raised here by. Somehow, we've lost sight of the difference between information, which can't be copyrighted but must be sourced by references, and text, which can be copyrighted and so must be attributed.

Accurate translation preserves the information but not the text. So when going from one language wiki to another, the references should be kept, but the attributions should not be.

In English Wikipedia, other language Wikipedias are not acceptable references, so translation into English should not be a problem: The sources are kept, the attributions discarded. Other language Wikipedias may have different policies on this, in which case it may be acceptable to add a reference to English Wikipedia if translating from here. But regardless, the attributions belong only in English Wikipedia.

Am I missing something? Andrewa (talk) 05:55, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems you would be interested in reading derivative work. Killiondude (talk) 06:13, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Good point but not quite so simple. While translation of a literary work certainly preserves the creative element of the original, the translation of an encyclopedia article does not. The creative aspect of the text of an encyclopedia article is purely in the phrasing (we prohibit original research, for example), and is lost in the translation.
 * It's a bit of a can of worms with regard to lists, but in general, the translation of an encyclopedia article is not automatically a derivative work.
 * In fact the better the article is written and the better the translation is performed, the less of a problem this becomes. But it's a very good point, and probably where the paranoia for preserving attributions through translation arises.
 * Preserving attributions is in general a good thing, and often required, and always important when required. But not as simple as it might appear, as we have been finding out. And playing safe is not always the safest strategy! Andrewa (talk) 07:37, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Not to impugn on any of your thoughts here, but Wikipedia is a top 10 website. Much time, effort, and legal help has been put into its licensing. Killiondude (talk) 08:15, 16 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Not to suggest that it's not! But perhaps it is not perfect, despite its popularity? Perhaps fixing this might help us to stay popular?
 * Nor to suggest that my legal opinion is superior to that of the legal department. IANAL. Lawyers are important (perhaps unfortunately, if Shakespeare is to be believed). But they should never be allowed to tell an organisation what it wants to do. Their role is to help an organisation to decide how best to do it.
 * This has all the earmarks of lawyers calling the shots. The main problem with the legal perspective is that they tend to want everything spelled out in terms only another lawyer would understand. And isn't that exactly what we are doing with these useless attributions? Ones that even our own coding cannot interpret correctly?
 * There must be a better way. And yes, the lawyers have a role in finding it. And so does the community. Andrewa (talk) 16:36, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Math rendering behavior change
Since Wikipedia seems not to support  in <math ></math> mode (the starred version is to make a following subscript display under the operator name, as with , as opposed to a usual subscript), I discovered a workaround at some point in the past, which was to use   instead (which I added to the fourth paragraph at Help:Displaying a formula). However, this appears not to work anymore. I'm not sure exactly when this changed, but I don't think it was too long ago. Can anyone offer any insight to what's going on or how to proceed? Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 14:33, 21 January 2018 (UTC)


 * If anyone actually cares, I submitted a ticket for it. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 04:24, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Proper tags for AWB edits
I couldn't find it easily, but a while ago, people were talking about having proper Special:Tags on AWB edits. Thanks to User:Reedy, this may get done sooner rather than later. Two things:


 * It looks like users will have to update their AWB software to get this tag, so it won't be 100% (and it's almost nobody right now). If you're familiar with AWB and/or the .NET Framework, and you would like to help get an updated version out the door (including, but not limited to, this particular feature), please look over AutoWikiBrowser/Technical and then pitch in.
 * It looks like the tags need to be created at each AWB-using wiki. This doesn't look hard, but it does require action by an admin at each wiki.  If that's you, please check T111663 for the instructions.

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:38, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure (perhaps the AWB team can confirm this), but I believe there is a mechanism built in to AWB to allow them to prevent using versions which are too old (presumably defined by the content of some web page). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:41, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, the software looks at AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage/Version when it starts up. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject Bridges and Tunnels
"WikiProject Bridges" has changed its name to "WikiProject Bridges and Tunnels." Now we need help changing the template to work with the new name. Please have an experienced template editor make the change.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Bridges_and_Tunnels#Tunnels_tag for more information.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 19:47, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Broken link. I think that you mean Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bridges and Tunnels.
 * No request for assistance at Template talk:WPBannerMeta, but there is comment at Template talk:WikiProject Bridges, whilst indicates to me that the desired outcome is unclear (doc page changes should follow, not precede, the template changes), and that no sandbox testing has been performed. See WP:TESTCASES. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:03, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know what's going on with the revert,, though it was me who annexed the forementioned comment, as I tried to do it myself, a d found it was protected.
 * The next step might be to just copy over the template, as Template: WikiProject Bridges has edit-able parameters that I could borrow Will need your input, User:Redrose64.
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 01:20, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've moved the templates and partially amended them. See Template talk:WikiProject Bridges. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:35, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

What links here? - Exclude links from templates
Is there any way when using "what links here" to exclude those incoming links which are the result of a template in an article? DuncanHill (talk) 21:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It's a frequently requested MediaWiki feature. I use User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 155. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that looks helpful. DuncanHill (talk) 14:57, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

mediawiki.action.history.diff
I have a script (User:R'n'B/dplupdate.js) that loaded the module. Apparently, this module no longer exists, since the script will not run unless I comment out the reference to it. Is there a replacement for it? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:53, 20 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I think they changed  to  . --  Green  C  20:27, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That is correct. The old module was renamed more than one year ago and then finally removed by Fomafix 2 weeks ago. Helder 19:55, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

In contributions, "current" should go after "tag"
While I'm sure there are other ways, I go to my contributions and see which recent ones are not the latest edit. If there is a tag such as on a redirect (I create a lot of those), I think something has been done and go there and find out mine was the last edit. This wouldn't happen if "current" was on the right.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:06, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Example: [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Vchimpanzee&offset=20180119204403&limit=2&target=Vchimpanzee]. [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Vchimpanzee&offset=20180119204403&limit=2&target=Vchimpanzee&uselang=qqx uselang=qqx] shows MediaWiki:uctop is displayed before MediaWiki:tag-list-wrapper. We cannot swap the order here at the English Wikipedia. It would require a change to the MediaWiki software with a Phabricator request. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It'd be kinda nice if we swapped (current) for like C and put it next to the N for new page indication. The whole line could use condensing.... FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY  <sup style="color:#c22">[u+1F602]  <em style="font-size:10px;">05:53, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It was worth a shot. Obviously this is of such low importance we can't change the software.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  17:15, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It's not that it can't be done; it's that it can't be done on wiki. We'd need a dev, and the way to get a dev is to bribe User:😂 or Moriel with Stroopwafels file a Phab task that explains the goal and hope that someone will decide that it's a very simple change.
 * Step one: Does anyone think this would be a bad idea?  If not, then we can file the task – it's just a matter of filling out this simple form – and maybe it'll happen.   Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I actually prefer my bribes in liquid form ;-) FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY  <sup style="color:#c22">[u+1F602]  <em style="font-size:10px;">02:34, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Making such an arbitrary change will not help with a single thing (as far as usability goes). It will just be superficial. In any event, making it look as requested here is certainly possible without server-side software changes. Instead of changing the html this can be changed using CSS, the simplest  approach is probably. 09:53, 23 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.173 (talk)
 * in will float "(current)" at the right margin. Some users may prefer it but I don't recommend it for site-wide css. Depending on window size, font and zoom I get results like a line ending with "(Tag:  (current)", and then "New redirect)" at the start of the next line. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:20, 23 January 2018 (UTC)


 * As noted above, that was a simpler approach. It goes without saying that the changelist formatting is quite badly structured. It would simpler to make such changes if that wasn't the case. Anyway, here's an approach that is a bit more complex, but works in a similar manner: 197.218.84.235 (talk) 12:34, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That's better but I still don't like messing with site-wide css over it. Contribution entries can have other items like rollback and Twinkle links. Moving them around can cause confusion. But it could be suggested at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:21, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Editor font size
At some point since my last edit 29 minutes ago, the font size in my wikitext editor window dramatically increased, roughly doubling. What happened? &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  21:27, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I have the opposite problem, as shown in the [sub-]section below. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:33, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I have the same thing as User:Mandruss. I searched throughout the preferences on a way to change it back but have come up empty so far. Adamtt9 (talk) 21:45, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It happened to me too, at the same time. It's happened before - anyone know how to fix it?  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  21:52, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * For some reason the font has been changed to a Monospaced font in the wikitext editor in both Firefox and Chrome. --Bamyers99 (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Just found the Tech News: 2018-02 notice about this: --Bamyers99 (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The font size in the editing window will change slightly for some users. It will now look the same on all browsers and operating systems.
 * The latter sources says "This will shrink the height of the characters, by a barely noticeable 2.5%, for editors using Chrome, IE, and Edge", I certainly noticed. It also says " Editors using Safari or Chrome on OS X/mac OS (about 12%) will notice a significant increase, which should improve accessibility", which would explain the case in this section. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:08, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

(Firefox) I got back to my preferred size by changing 150% to 110% in my common.css. I assume any editor can get any size they want by copying the last 3 lines there and setting the percentage as desired. I hope this is the last time I have to change it. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  22:20, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that Mandruss. I think that for Chrome, IE, and Edge 95% works better. Another suggestion I have is to make this at Meta in your global common.css, because as I documented below this change affects other projects but obviously if you don't use other projects then disregard this. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I wish the tech guys would stop "improving" the default text editor and NOT making it opt-in. As in, I would like to be able to use the original pre mid-2017 change UI. Now I'm stuck with various preference changes which barely negate it or having to change my CSS as demonstrated above. Safari& Chrome MacOS L3X1 Become a New Page Patroller!  (distænt write)  01:37, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I nerfed mine all the way down to 85% and but the font still looks weird. L3X1 Become a New Page Patroller! (distænt write)  01:42, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You might want to change the line-height (stylesheet-only) and the font-family (possible in Preferences). Jc86035 (talk) 16:50, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Text is smaller in source editor
I have suddenly come across a very strange problem. The text is my source editor has suddenly gone small. I use the Vector skin and I have many scripts as shown at User:Emir of Wikipedia/common.js. This is not a browser specific I have tested in on multiple browsers. It is also not a display or scaling issue as this is the only thing affected. Commons also seems to be affected by this issue. Looks like I am not the only one having this type of problem as shown in the above section. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:33, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This issue has been resolved due to the content in the above section. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:34, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Font size in source text editor
For me, the font size in the source text editor (what I am typing into now) has got noticeably smaller, and is now rather too small for comfort. Nothing has changed at my end, that I am aware of. Has it been changed at the Wikipedia end, and, if so, is this a change that has been generally asked for? For me, I would like it put back to how it was, please. 86.191.166.249 (talk) 03:12, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Press either the command-plus or control-plus key combination on your keyboard (depending on what type of computer). -A la d insane  <small style="color:#008600">(Channel 2)  03:32, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Huh? I know how to use Windows Magnifier, if that's what you're suggesting. I also know how to change the browser zoom. That's not the point. Windows Magnfier is very inconvenient to use in this case, for numerous reasons. I already have the browser zoom set to my liking for general use, and I do not wish to increase it just for Wikipedia. My question remains. Has the font size been decreased at the Wikipedia end? If so, why? Have there been many requests for that to be done? 86.191.166.249 (talk) 11:42, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
 * See . Registered users can set the font size in their Special:MyPage/common.css with code like below. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:27, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

font-size: 130%; } /* increase edit window font size */
 * 1) wpTextbox1 {
 * OK, thanks, I didn't notice that it had already been reported. By the way, moving my comment made it very hard for me to find. Only by chance did I notice it. Perhaps you could have left the original section in place and added a link. The change of font size is said above to be "barely noticeable" in Edge. Actually, it is easily noticeable. On a general point, people who decide these things are usually young people with very good vision sitting in front of huge high-resolution monitors. Wait until they get to my age, and then see how they like the absolutely minuscule fonts. All Wikipedia text, and now especially the editor font, is too small for me in Edge at default zoom. 86.191.166.249 (talk) 01:20, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi 86.191.166.249. Sure. Even for young people, the default zoom can be too small. I would (and do!) embrace browser zooming. It makes editing wikitext significantly easier and more enjoyable, in my opinion. Your browser should generally be able to distinguish between sites, so if you change the zoom level for en.wikipedia.org specifically, it should not apply to other sites such as google.com or nytimes.com. There's sometimes a separate setting to change the default zoom level for all sites, at least in the browsers I typically use. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Page protections
Asking for the Central Kurdish Wikipedia: on the English Wikipedia, when you protect a page with one of the options, there is a different-in-color lock icon (appearing in the right side of the pages) for each of those options. I was wondering what module/template causes these locks to appear? Because on the CKB wiki, it is not working properly. Is there anything we can do about it locally or should we talk about the issue on Phabricator? Thanks in advance.--&#9666; ‎<b style="color:purple;font-size:13px;display:inline-block;border:1px solid purple">épine</b> <b style="color:black;font-size:11px">talk</b> &#9836; 11:26, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It's not for Phabricator. The lock icons are added by local protection templates like pp which uses Module:Protection banner. A protection template has to be added manually (or by a bot if you have it) to protected pages at ckb:Special:ProtectedPages. You do have some protection templates at ckb:Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Pp and you have ckb:Module:Protection banner but the module is currently only transcluded on one mainspace page and that page is not protected. It seems to be working on some non-mainspace pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:12, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Just a bit more: There is a feature request to add this to MediaWiki. --Izno (talk) 12:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * what can I do so it will work properly on all the namespaces? Also, since we're at it, we don't have the feature where the protected pages give you the option to submit an edit request either. How can I fix that one?--&#9666; ‎<b style="color:purple;font-size:13px;display:inline-block;border:1px solid purple">épine</b> <b style="color:black;font-size:11px">talk</b> &#9836; 15:50, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * see MediaWiki:Protectedpagetext for where we added that edit request part. — xaosflux  Talk 16:12, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know the language and don't have administrator rights or even an autoconfirmed account there so some things are difficult to test. I'm not aware of errors. Just try adding the templates to protected pages and see what happens. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:59, 22 January 2018 (UTC)


 * You can also use Gadget-ProtectionIndicator.js which will automatically be added to all protected pages and make it appear as default for all users (as done on fiwiki). Stryn (talk) 16:22, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It seems to display the padlocks without problem for the template namespaces, with the gadget that suggested, it displays the padlocks twice on the template namespaces (see this for example), and if I shut down the gadget, then the duplicate padlocks disappear from the template namespaces but it will no longer be displayed on the articles either. I've did as you said and tested on the articles but the templates do not work at all. And in the page I just referred to, there are no extra templates to show the padlocks, it's just detected by the system. I'm an administrator and can give you the right to edit temporarily to test if you (or anyone else) wants to. Sorry for being so needy, but I'm not so good with all these technical stuff, but I still want to improve our Wikipedia :P--&#9666; ‎<b style="color:purple;font-size:13px;display:inline-block;border:1px solid purple">épine</b> <b style="color:black;font-size:11px">talk</b> &#9836; 22:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I couldn't find any addition of protection templates in your recent edits. Please post a diff. Always give an example when something is not working as expected. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:12, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * there.--&#9666; ‎<b style="color:purple;font-size:13px;display:inline-block;border:1px solid purple">épine</b> <b style="color:black;font-size:11px">talk</b> &#9836; 07:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I see a banner with a silver lock icon there. If you want a small lock icon with no banner then say  in ckb:Template:Pp. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:16, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks!! Problem solved. I will bother you with only one more question: do we have to add the PP template to all the protected articles in order for the icons to appear? If so, is there a bot for that in the English Wikipedia that we could also deploy at CKB?--&#9666; ‎<b style="color:purple;font-size:13px;display:inline-block;border:1px solid purple">épine</b> <b style="color:black;font-size:11px">talk</b> &#9836; 13:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You only have 17 edit protected mainspace pages.[//ckb.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%AA%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%A8%DB%95%D8%AA:%D9%BE%DB%95%DA%95%DB%95_%D9%BE%D8%A7%D8%B1%DB%8E%D8%B2%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%88%DB%95%DA%A9%D8%A7%D9%86?namespace=0&type=edit&level=0&size-mode=min&size=] Protection templates must be added manually or by bot. There is no automatic MediaWiki feature which can display an icon on protected pages (Izno mentioned a feature request from 2007). I don't know how well uk:MediaWiki:Gadget-ProtectionIndicator.js works but it runs client side like all JavaScript so it would add the icon after page load and only run for users with JavaScript in the browser. User:TheMagikBOT adds protection templates to pages missing them. User:MusikBot removes protection templates from unprotected pages. Getting them to run in another language may be difficult. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:09, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Tidy being turned off at 389 wikis next week
T184656 has a list of 389 wikis where Tidy will be removed (and replaced by RemexHTML) on 31 January 2018. These wikis currently have fewer than 10 high-priority problems (so not the English Wikipedia).

If you are active at other wikis, please look over the list and check your favorites. If you notice problems after the switch, then please feel free to ping me, or (especially if it's urgent) leave a comment in the Phab task where the devs will see it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Revdeleted edits visible with popups
I noticed recently that if someone posts a permalink to an edit that has been revisiondeleted (for example this one) that I am able to hover over the link and see the content of the edit. I assume this is because as an admin I have viewdelete rights and would be able to see the edit anyway if I clicked a few buttons, but is this intended behaviour? Also, is it visible this way to non-admins? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:42, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It apparently is visible because you are a sysop, because I can't see it; all I can see in the popup is the page title plus the "actions" and "popups" menus. I think this has been discussed before here regarding the "browse history" gadget thing that appears when viewing a diff, and admins also were able to see them through that, but no one else could. If you want, popups should work in a brand-new account, so you could create an alt account to verify this. Home Lander (talk) 21:48, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Home Lander is correct that this is something only admins can see using popups, and also correct that this has been brought up here before (although I don't have diffs handy) and verified by people technologically more trustworthy than me. I've also tested and verified with User:Floquensock in the past. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:51, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * See File:Popups revdel screenshot.jpg. Hopefully I did everything correct; first time I've uploaded a file. Home Lander (talk) 22:07, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, verified I can't see the details with my alt. I guess I could've checked that first, but I was interested in whether it was intended behaviour or not. Good enough, I guess. Ivanvector's squirrel (trees/nuts) 23:38, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Regarding File:Popups revdel screenshot.jpg, did you follow the instructions at WP:WPSHOT concerning licensing? If so, you shouldn't need and its presence on an image that is not used in any article can make the image liable for speedy deletion. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:23, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

✅, thanks for the constructive advice instead of calling me out for stupidly missing that. Home Lander (talk) 00:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

"Cookies are required to switch view modes. Please enable them and try again."
Someone sent me a link to a mobile Wikipedia page and I opened it on my PC, clicked "Desktop version" on the bottom and got this message. Really, they're not required at all. All you need to do is remove ".m" from the URL and that works even with cookies disabled. Why display this message then? 93.142.83.36 (talk) 18:50, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi,, I'm not personally sure what that's all about. Though, I can tell you I have been working with tech for a few years, so I can tell you that Wikipedian was designed in order to hold information (if you have a name account, you login one day then click "keep me logged in", it keeps you in, 'holds' your info for easy access. That's the purpose of cookies. So I would guess that same applies here, but since your an IP that shouldn't be a problem. I guess you could always take the m out of the url, or enable cookies. Or better yet, you could have your friend remove the m for you. ;)
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 18:58, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I know how to edit an URL (lol) and I know what cookies are for. I keep them disabled on purpose because of all the other functions they have besides holding login info. What I'm asking is, why does the "Desktop version" link display that message instead of just leading me to the desktop version? Cookies are completely unnecessary for this, so why annoy the reader? 93.142.83.36 (talk) 19:08, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * For that you would have to ask The Founder himself. Sorry,
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 19:17, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The message is MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-cookies-required. translatewiki:MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-cookies-required/qqq says: "Error message shown when user attempts to switch site modes and cookies are not enabled." I don't know the purpose of the message but maybe it's related to remembering user settings. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:51, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * But there can't be any user settings when the cookies are disabled. It occured to me that this might be a warning to preserve login info if the user is logged in, but you *cannot* be logged in with disabled cookies (I presume). The only intentional purpose I can think of is a way to track an anonymous visitor from mobile to desktop site, but I wasn't under the impression that Wikipedia dealt in such nefarious stalking... 93.142.83.36 (talk) 20:03, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It works when you're on a desktop browser, sure. But on a mobile browser, if you remove the ".m" it'll just redirect you back unless you have the cookie that says "don't redirect me back".
 * If you want to file a task in Phabricator to request that they don't show that message on desktop browsers you're free to do so, although the logic to determine that seems somewhat complex to be duplicated into JavaScript. Anomie⚔ 03:49, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Category:Articles without Wikidata item
Hi. The category Category:Articles without Wikidata item has 200+ articles contained within it, some of them date back to before Christmas. Some newer enteries get dealt with almost straight away, but there appears to be an issue with older ones. Does anyone know how to purge this, or which bot adds the new articles to WikiData? The user who created the category hasn't been active in a couple of months. Thanks.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 11:16, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It's unclear what you mean with purge. Please clarify the problem with an example. Do you expect the Wikidata items to be created by a bot? Or do you see articles in the category which do have a Wikidata item but are not removed from the category by a null edit? A purge of the article will only update the article page and not the category page. A purge of the category page will not affect which pages are listed in the category. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * "Do you expect the Wikidata items to be created by a bot?" - Yes. So for example, the first article in the category was created more than a month ago, but as yet, does not have a WD item. However, several similar articles I created in the same style yesterday all have WD items. It seems that the bot that does this stopped for some reason towards the end of last month. Does that help explain it? Thanks.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 12:50, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Is it said anywhere that a bot will create a Wikidata item for all new articles? Your example is Abdoulaye Traoré (athlete). A Wikidata search finds four items for people called Abdoulaye Traoré. It's hard for a bot to reliably determine whether any of them is right but creating a fifth item is likely to duplicate one of them. Indeed, your example should be added to . Did your other articles have a disambiguated name or a name not matching existing Wikidata items? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:15, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

PrimerHunter is right. When bot finds conflict names, it avoids to add more noise. I checked the bot contributions for 18th December, and it created this item correctly for another biography you started, so it doesn't seem like the bot stopped working. emijrp (talk) 20:41, 24 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks both.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 08:32, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Image map
Hello. I want to create an image map using File:LimassolDistrict (1).png. I know how to do it. The problem is to have the coordinates of each place. I am using polygons but is too difficult and need a lot of time. And the result is not so good. Is there a way to easy choose the shape of each place and have the coordinates of the place? Xaris333 (talk) 20:16, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh boy 😱, don't expect to be done in a day. You can use this website or the following template  to make the image interactive, which produces this:


 * Or this code,

which produces


 * I would get someone to help you. Good luck!
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 21:55, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

is not that I need. I know how to create the image map. The only problem is that all programs are using rectangles, circle or polygons. I used polygons to have the coordinates of an area but is not easy and the results are not good. I need something that can select the perimeter of an area an give the coordinates of that area to use in image map. Xaris333 (talk) 12:12, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Have you tried :https://sites.google.com/site/mujibab2/labelledimageeditor ?
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 15:04, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Not helpful. Xaris333 (talk) 16:04, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Xaris333, I think that the short answer to your question is "no", but if you don't find a solution here, then you might repeat your request for help at voy:en:Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub, where maps are regularly discussed.
 * Also, I'm not entirely certain whether you're seeking coordinates for a border/line (like a city boundary), or just for specific points of interest (like a building), and that might be important information. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Border/line (like a city boundary). Xaris333 (talk) 20:13, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikimedia sites down for a couple of hours this am (UK time)
All Wikimedia sites were inaccessible for a couple of hours this morning, UK time. I noticed it about 10.00 UTC, has just come back up about 13.00 UTC. Have seen reports from elsewhere in Europe that others were having the same problem. DuncanHill (talk) 13:11, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was accessible but slow (and some aspects of page loads not completing) this morning UTC, though I wasn't using between 10:00 and 12:00. Rjwilmsi  14:17, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I was using Wikipedia btwn 10:30 and 12:50, during which I made [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Redrose64?offset=20180125130000&limit=11 these edits] w/o trouble. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm hearing (vaguely/full disclaimers apply) that all the affected people seemed to have the same ISP. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the UK, were all affected to my certain knowledge. I emailed the Foundation at 12:22 UTC, and at 14:41 got the response "There was a brief period this morning when the WMF servers experienced a significant slowdown, but this has since been fixed". DuncanHill (talk) 22:23, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * THAT user page- again ;) ha! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Serial Number 54129 (talk • contribs) 22:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I have been having issues today. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 16:50, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

common.js templates not working?
I tried to add this following template into my common.js page: User:Caorongjin/wordcount.js (Don't worry, I put nowiki tag). I expected the template to load, but instead I get this error: When I removed 1 bracket on both sides, I got: Remove the brackets that are left and I got these 4 errors: and the final error just said I am currently confused as to why this template will not work on my page. I do not know how to translate this template into JavaScript anyways. I am running Google Chrome 63.0.3239.132 (Official Build) (64-bit), according to chrome://version.

So far, I have tried: and there's not much I think I can do in this situation. Cheers from CryfryDG. (talk) 05:38, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Changing Caorongjin to my username, CryfryDG
 * Looking back at reference 81 of the page where I found this template
 * Where did you do this? There is no evidence that you tried it on English Wikipedia, since User:CryfryDG/common.js does not exist and [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributions&target=CryfryDG&namespace=2 your userspace contributions] include no .js pages. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:59, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you either previewed without saving, or you saved it at a wiki where Template:iusc does not exist. Special:CentralAuth/CryfryDG shows no edits to other Wikimedia wikis so I guess you only previewed. The code has to be saved to work. It's not valid JavaScript by itself but  will transform it to JavaScript on save, assuming Template:iusc exists and outputs valid JavaScript as it does here at en.wikipedia.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:01, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Put User:Caorongjin/wordcount.js and then save; click ok (save) if it complains about errors. Need to save then it will convert to JS Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:05, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Email
Anyone aware of any special interaction with media wiki and gmail wrt being able to send emails and not receive them when they're sent via media wiki? I seem to be broken at the moment, and we tested it a bit on IRC to no avail. G M G <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   23:36, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this is a similar situation to that which we had a year or two back concerning Yahoo (see archives of this page). -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:42, 25 January 2018 (UTC)
 * - sent myself an email from an alt account to a gmail address - was delivered in seconds:

-- This email was sent by user "Fluxbot" on the English Wikipedia to user "Xaosflux". It has been automatically delivered and the Wikimedia Foundation cannot be held responsible for its contents. .
 * — xaosflux  Talk 02:11, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That's strange. I really don't have any idea what might be wrong.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   19:25, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

display of user's IP address when logged in ?
When I am logged in, is there a way I can see what IP addrress I am connecting from? - Bevo (talk) 16:57, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There isn’t on-wiki, but you can browse to http://whatsmyip.org which will report it. <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  17:16, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that Bevo might have meant what IP's are logged in on there account, a feature that is available on other popular websites. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * In that case, no, and the feature you requested has already been declined &#123;&#123;3x&#124;p&#125;&#125;ery (talk) 18:16, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks! For now, I logoff temporarily and browse to the Wikipedia Contributions page to see it- Bevo (talk) 20:38, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * if you want it just for that purpose, you could open a "private browsing" window if you browser supports it, that other window will not be logged in. — xaosflux  Talk 20:56, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That is clever! Thanks! - Bevo (talk) 21:29, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * , yes there is, go to WP:URIP2 and it's the link after the first sentence "You are an IP too." No need to log out. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:01, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That is convenient, but not quite what I was imagining I might find. I was imagining that my IP address might show up via my Preferences page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences - Bevo (talk) 21:12, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Articles created by IPs
I was just thinking about creating a WikiProject to find articles created by IPs back when IPs could do that (before 2005), but I couldn't find any kind of record of pages created during that time, much less one of pages created by anons. Does anyone know how one might find as many of these articles in one place? Is there some tool or special page on WP that would allow you to do so? Every Morning (there's a halo...) 04:49, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There's this, to a reasonably close degree. That shows pages that are currently in the main namespace, aren't redirects, whose first edit wasn't by a currently-registered user and was before 2006 (direct creation of main namespace pages for anons was disabled in December 2005). —Cryptic 11:47, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Your list outputs Hearse, which was created by Larry Sanger. In fact, it looks like it lists all of his creations. Out of curiosity, why is that? Killiondude (talk) 19:04, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * See Wikipedia's oldest articles. Some early page histories have been imported into MediaWiki, our software since 2002. The import isn't always perfect. Larry Sanger is listed as "Larry_Sanger" with an underscore in the page history [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hearse&dir=prev&limit=20&action=history] unlike the space used in MediaWiki. I guess his account isn't fully connected to his edits in all databases. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:16, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I also noted the page history has no "contribs" link at his username. That is usually done for IP's where the IP address is a link to the contributions. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:20, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's T2323 on Phabricator. Graham 87 07:02, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Uneven columns with
Multi-column layouts with col-break have uneven columns. Specifically, columns with only one paragraph or list are narrower than those with more than one paragraph or list. (Columns in each category are the same width.) An example follows:

Any explanation? I would expect that all the columns would be the same width. Anon 126  (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 09:03, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * col-begin, col-break, col-end makes a html table with no column width specification by default. Browsers adjust table column widths to make tables less long. If you want the same width of 4 columns then say, or use other column templates like Columns-start, Column, Columns-end which use CSS and not a table. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:34, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Advisor script


Hi, Every time I go to edit a page the User:Cameltrader/Advisor.js script never loads - I have to load another script on the left for the script to then load, I'm not sure if it's a case of I've got too many scripts or if it's related to my laptop or internet ?, Upon looking at User:Davey2010/vector.js I noticed I had scripts that were already at User:Davey2010/common.js so I removed these and thought that would fix it .... but unfortunately not, So I didn't know if someone more knowledgable than me might know, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 18:05, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I run Advisor without any problems and with more scripts loaded than you (unless you load a lot from your global.js). I do load all the Ohconfucius scripts only on demand via User:MusikAnimal/scriptManager, I don't know if that makes a difference. Did you try to move Advisor to the top of your common.js? Sam Sailor 18:14, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Sam, Ah ok, My global.js page has never been created, Nope I'll give that go now and see how that goes, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 18:21, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Nope that didn't work unfortunately :(, – Davey 2010 Talk 18:25, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * And wikEd is disabled in your Prefs/Gadgets? Sam Sailor 18:30, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yep that's disabled, – Davey 2010 Talk 18:34, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Dunno then - other than disabling them one by one trying to find the culprit.On a side note: substitute User:Evad37/XFDcloser.js for User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD.js. And you do know that importScript is deprecated? ;-p Sam Sailor 18:39, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah okay well thanks for trying anyway :), – Davey 2010 Talk 18:50, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

*Update - Well having removed all scripts and adding them back one by one I think I've found the issue-
 * I think importScript('User:Plastikspork/date.js'); and importScript('User:Ohconfucius/script/flagcruft.js'); are the culprits but I suppose I'll fully know when I turn the laptop off later ?
 * I'll close for now and will update tomorrow, Atleast for now the script appears to work, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 19:28, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Update again - Yep the issue was to do with both importScript('User:Plastikspork/date.js'); and importScript('User:Ohconfucius/script/flagcruft.js');, Noting this here incase others have issues, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 23:05, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

"Edit count" tool semi-broken?
Clicking "Edit count" at the bottom of a contribs page fails with "The requested user does not exist" if the username contains a space. Is this a new failure or just the first time in my wikilife that I've tried it for such a username? I've already figured out the workaround, but it shouldn't be necessary. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  13:57, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I think it's a new glitch. I just tried it on a name with a space and got the same message. — Maile  (talk) 14:11, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It does appear to be a new glitch in the way it handles names when they are sent from that link, it used to work. It works if you type in a name with a space but it doesn't work with the link from the contributions page.  ~ GB fan 14:20, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The link for mine does not work, it sends my username as GB+fan. If it is changed to GB_fan it works.  ~ GB fan 14:23, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * as the active maintainers of the tool. ~ GB fan 14:28, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * thank you for the ping. We recently made a change to the username parsing script, I'll take a look and see if I can fix it. XTools should be able to handle spaces just fine. ~ Matthewrbowker (alt)  Say hi! 18:51, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * See T185850 ~ Matthewrbowker (alt)  Say hi! 18:58, 28 January 2018 (UTC)


 * ✅ Fixed by changing the string presentation in Template:Sp-contributions-footer. — xaosflux  Talk 15:23, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Gotta love this page. Thanks. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  19:06, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Fixed FYI. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  19:09, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that... I fixed T185411 then inadvertently broke this legacy encoding. I think here the proper way to do it is to encode spaces as  instead of   (or you could use underscores), but it appears the MediaWiki   parser function prefers plus signs. This means there are probably a lot of broken links all over the place... we may have to go back to the old system and add some special handling for   (percent-encoded + sign). My goal is to make it work just like MediaWiki does, however far that may be from an actual standard. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  19:11, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
 * So the issue is with the URL scheme. Here the link to XTools was using paths, so we need to encode accordingly as with  (but using , which adds underscores, works just as well). This is not unique to XTools -- basically   only means a space when used in the query string (the part that follows a   in the URL). Note query strings still work, in which case you don't need to do any specialized encoding, e.g.  . Anyway I've updated all the links within templates here on enwiki. I think most everyone else is using the old URL scheme, which will properly redirect, so hopefully there aren't many broken links on other wikis. &mdash;  MusikAnimal  talk  00:47, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Didn't understand a word (although I know the definitions of most of them), but it's clear I should thank you too. So thank you too. &#8213; Mandruss  &#9742;  00:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Globe link to the left of title coordinates gives 502 Bad Gateway error
The globe link to the left of title coordinates on any article (AFAIK) with coordinates gives a 502 Bad Gateway error. How to reproduce: Go to New York City, for example, and in the upper right, to the left of the coordinates, click the little globe icon with the black downward arrow on it. I see "502 Bad Gateway (hr) nginx/1.13.6" in a pop-up window. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:33, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I see that too Good evening by the way. I'll take this to the phabricator, but for now, click on the actual coordinates, then on one of the provided services (eg. Google Maps), and It'll take you to the position.
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 04:38, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hmm, geohack is up on wmflabs... — xaosflux  Talk 04:39, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Template:Coord not working correctly. — xaosflux  Talk 04:41, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Looks like the WikiMiniAtlas is failing. — xaosflux  Talk 04:43, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * is listed as maintainer, but appears to be gone. — xaosflux  Talk 04:47, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * https://wma.wmflabs.org is down, seems to be the source. — xaosflux  Talk 04:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * T185797 opened for wma.wmflabs.org being down. — xaosflux  Talk 05:00, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, that's a good thing! Hopefully now they'll get it back up and running soon. I'll look over it quickly, then just wait and see what happens.
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 16:46, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * - looks like the server that runs this is crashed, and noone is yet working on it. I've disabled WikiMiniAtlas site wide in (via MediaWiki:Common.js) so that our readers don't end seeing that failure screen.  Once it is fixed it could be reenabled.  According to some quick irc chats, an issue is that there is no SLA for repairs to wmflabs.org instances - it is depending on volunteers to be available.  Should it be fixed, any admin can re-enable it. —  xaosflux  Talk 15:50, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Additionally, it has been suggested we migrate to the Kartographer extension - updating of templates/etc would be needed if someone wants to start testing. — xaosflux  Talk 16:24, 27 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Service has been restored to the failed instance. Support groups recommend migrating to mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer. —  xaosflux  Talk 18:43, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, this seems like a particularly awful way of embedding content: 08:07, 29 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.89.69 (talk)
 * 1) Proper netiquette dictates that at the very least when loading external data, the user is informed, especially before leaving the site.
 * 2) It is downright irresponsible to load data from a third party external source whose maintainer is inactive, regardless of whether it works.
 * 3) It is quite trivial for the maintainer of the service to redirect it to somewhere else, to start randomly showing up illegal content such as child pornography or anything else
 * 4) It also seems to needlessly load extra javascript regardless of whether the user will ever click on it.
 * 5) This seems to go against the privacy policy (similar to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107085#1486238, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T136768#2347326), as wmflabs seems to be at best be an experimental site that random volunteers can create or change their stuff at will. The service will also likely be able to pull in ip information and maybe other private data without user consent.

Tech News: 2018-05
<section begin="technews-2018-W05"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 31 January at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Wikimedia Foundation is working on how to get less unmaintained code on Wikimedia wikis. This could be by finding maintainers or removing unmaintained features. They are now looking for feedback on what do do with AbuseFilter, the IRC RecentChanges feed, the RelatedSites extension and TimedMediaHandler. You can leave feedback on the linked talk pages.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W05"/> 17:06, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

ß
I just needed to type a "ß" and was surprised not to find that character in the "special character" dropdown (the one above the editing window in source view). Is there any way to add it? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:12, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Isn't it the one seventh-from-last in the "Latin" section of that menu? Like this: "ß"? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:28, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, thank you - I was looking for it with the "s" characters (though I also checked "B", just in case!) Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If not drop a note at MediaWiki talk:Edittools, we can update MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js and/or MediaWiki:Edittools as needed. — xaosflux  Talk 21:36, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * There should be no need; it's already there (twice): ß is in the Latin list, as Justlettersandnumbers notes, but it's ninth from last, not seventh; ß is also the last character in the S group, between ṣ and T. They are identical, yielding U+00DF. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:57, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You are talking about the menu made by MediaWiki:Gadget-charinsert-core.js below the edit box. Andy asked about the "Special characters" menu above the edit box in File:RefToolbar 2.0b.png. It's seventh from last there under "Latin" as Justlettersandnumbers said. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh, I turned that thing off just a few days after it was foisted on us. The javascript takes far too long to load, and having it reloaded for every edit was way too much hassle. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:02, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Bogus notifications from fr.wp – Flow?
Why am I getting repeated notifications from a user talk page on fr.wp when I have not contributed to it, or been mentioned on it, in years? Does this have something to do with Flow? If so, who knows where the tap is, and how to turn it to the "closed" position? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:32, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Go to fr:Spécial:Préférences and uncheck Structured Discussion or Discussion structurée depending on your language settings there. Nihlus  19:38, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Could you provide a link to what you were notified about ? That will make it easier to analyse the problem. Otherwise we might as well blame any and all of the other features of mediawiki while we are at it. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 05:11, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Total Pages Count - Something is wrong
Hello Tech Exp.

Look at this table. It says here that the "total" amount of pages reflects baisically every page that is not an article (and probably doesn't include former revisions of articles. But A simple exapmle show this count is wrong. "Cebuano" Wiki has about 5M articles and less then 9M pages. Even if it has 0 ammount of WikiSpace articles, each article on the main space should have a talk pages. This alone should bring the total amount of pages to nearly 11M.

If this count is being done by technical funcation, there is a Tech issue here. If only the definitions are wrong, pls transfer this input to the correct talk page. I will make the change according to your assistance.

BTW I have a feeling this table can be found in other wikiprojects. So if something IS wrong let's fix it accross the board.

Peace be with you all, 15:23, 30 January 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mateo (talk • contribs)
 * “each article on the main space should have a talk pages” eh nope... just because there is article does NOT mean that this article will have a talkpage. Their mutual existence is not a requirement by any part of the system. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed. An interface link to a page does not imply the page exists. The link will be red like Nosuchpage if the page does not exist. It returns a HTTP 404 Not Found error message to browsers and Internet robots. A MediaWiki 404 has more content than the average 404 message on the Internet (compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosuchpage and https://en.wikipedia.org/Nosuchpage), but it's still a 404. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:49, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Error when trying to access Wikipedia pages
When I try to access certain Wikipedia pages, I get "Request from 63.145.101.232 via cp1068 cp1068, Varnish XID 549421111 Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:41:51 GMT". --Jax 0677 (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2018 (UTC)


 * About a minute ago I got this error: pasted as found
 * Request from (my ip) via cp1066 cp1066, Varnish XID 902889495
 * Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:41:06 GMT
 * Bardic Wizard (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2018 (UTC)


 * +1 - Probably went down for everyone and probably related to servers. – Davey 2010 Talk 19:46, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Merged this section with the one above. – Davey 2010 Talk 19:47, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I was on biodiversity. Bardic Wizard (talk) 19:50, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

It seemed to last for less than a minute (for me, anyway), and I think it affected all pages/all wikis. I wonder if this was the same error that User:Vchimpanzee reported at Village pump (technical)/Archive 161 on 15 January.

The main text of today's error said, next to a logo similar to File:Wikimedia-logo black.svg: Error

Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem.

Please try again in a few minutes.

See the error message at the bottom of this page for more information.

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Only about a minute. I have a screenshot, but I’m not currently able to provide it (different device). Bardic Wizard (talk) 20:03, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * fixing ping. Bardic Wizard (talk) 20:05, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I saw the Wikimedia Foundation error. There's no screenshot on that page, but the error is formatted there to look recognizable (and to be searchable, which is how I found that page).  It could perhaps be replaced by a WP:WPSHOT with good WP:ALTTEXT, if you wanted.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

There is now a post-mortem on this incident at Incident documentation/20180129-MediaWiki for anyone who's interested. TL;DR - Some configuration files were updated in the wrong order, causing server errors for about 8 minutes. the wub "?!"  00:19, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

21 Jan- Redlinks to working pages!?
From Zanygenius

(s), I find (2 times) that I'll create something, say on my userspace, {if--the link was there to start with, then I create it} and find it's redlinked for 5-10 minutes. I find that a little weird. I mean, I can live with it, but it is something of interest that this can even happen. (Yes I've tried purging the page). Any thoughts? Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 05:07, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This is expected behaviour. Pages are cached for performance reasons so they don't have to be rebuilt each time they are viewed. User:Zanygenius/Statistics/Mainspace Edits did not exist when the link was added to User:Zanygenius/Statistics so the link was red at the time. A purge of User:Zanygenius/Statistics will immediately update the cached version. Otherwise it waits for the job queue to invalidate the cached version. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I almost figured that would be the case, and yet I didn't know. Well, it's a grateful thing that you let me know. So, I'll keep that in mind, though yeah, I wasn't to bothered anyways. Thanks again!
 * Sincerely, User: Zanygenius(talk page) 16:37, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * You should purge the page. <span style="background-color:green;display:inline-block;text-align:center;line-height:18px;border-radius: 9px 9px 9px 9px;color:#ffffff"> User:Anchorvale User talk:Anchorvale  10:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Filter deletion log to only include mainspace titles
Is there a way to filter the deletion log so that it only includes pages deleted from mainspace? I've tried adding  to this link like in contributions but it has no effect. Please ping if you reply. SmartSE (talk) 01:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * not natively, T120764 shows some progress is being made (check in on it from time to time for updates), the general request is over 10 years going back to at least T16711! — xaosflux  Talk 04:47, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the links. That's annoying but we'll get there eventually! I'll figure a workaround for what I want to do in the meantime. SmartSE (talk) 13:29, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

My Account Has been Hacked
I received a notification that an edit I made had been reverted. The problem is that I didn't make that edit. When I looked at my contributions, I found that someone has been using my account to create an article and edit two others. I changed my password and then reverted all the edits that were made. I could not revert the edit that created the article, We Leak Info, so I deleted the content and posted a note asking someone to delete the article. If anyone reading this can do so, I would appreciate it. I don't know whether there is anyplace I should make a formal report of the hacking. So if someone could point me in the right direction, that would be great. At the very least, I wanted to document here that the edits made on my account on 30 and 31 January 2018 are not mine. Taxman1913 (talk) 18:38, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Account blocked per WP:COMPROMISED. Will discuss with you on your talk page - TNT❤ 18:44, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Article text to store a parameter for a template used multiple times in that article
I would like some general thoughts on that. The specific situation behind the question is a template (interlinear) that formats long-ish strings of linguistically annotated text. One parameter of this template gives a list of the meanings of the glossing abbreviations used. This list is likely to be the same for all invocations of the template on a given page. There can be dozens such invocations in a given article, so it's undesirable to have to specify the same long parameter each time (as pointed out on the template's talk page).

One solution I can think of is to specify this list once: in an invisible (style="display:none;") section at the end of the article and then to set the template to automatically look for this section and transclude it (via labeled section transclusion) as the needed parameter. Does anyone see any issues with that? I'm aware of the performance cost (adding about 50% to overall processing time), but at the scale that this is going to be used, it's unlikely to make a noticeable difference. Are there more elegant alternative ways of achieving the same result? – Uanfala (talk) 22:41, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If you really insist on doing this, use <includeonly ></includeonly> tags instead of markup that remains invisibly in the HTML. &#123;&#123;3x&#124;p&#125;&#125;ery (talk) 23:16, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Gadget for highlighting images in CAT:COMMONS?
This... may be somehow difficult to implement and not useful enough to justify the trouble, but is it possible for us to cobble together a gadget that would make a nice little highlight around images that are part of CAT:COMMONS? I'm thinking similar to the gadget that highlights links to disambiguation pages. I realize I could just slog through the category directly, but that doesn't really solve anything as far as what I'm doing.

For context, as fortune has it, I'm picking through a lot of articles on US Civil War generals, and most of the images (unsurprisingly) are from the 1860s, meaning that they're pretty much automatically eligible for transfer to Commons. But what I'm ending up doing is opening a new tab for every single image in the article, to see if it pops up with a Commons icon or a Wikipedia one (I have it set to take me directly to Commons if it's already there and skip the enwiki page). That just seems like a lot of extra clicking for something that intuitively seems it should be fairly easy to streamline. G M G <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   13:22, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * if you enable Navigation popups in your preferences, then when you hover an image, it will tell you if it's an image from Commons or not. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:49, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'm missing it. I've had it enabled for a while now, but it's not doing anything for me re: images. Works fine on wikilinks, diffs, contribs, and usernames. But doesn't give me anything at all on images.  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   13:53, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Hmm, no I think that it clashes with "I have it set to take me directly to Commons if it's already there and skip the enwiki page".. those modifications might be incompatible with Navigation popups. Never really tested that honestly. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I've got a nifty piece of CSS for ya  This basically puts a black border - actually comes out as a black bar on the left, on any image that links directly to a url with "commons" in it. I can customize the effect, but yeah it works. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * (Forgive me, I edit Wikipedia despite a pronounced technical handicap.) That would go in GreenMeansGo/common.js or GreenMeansGo/monobook.js?  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   14:09, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It would go in either User:GreenMeansGo/common.css or User:GreenMeansGo/monobook.css. It doesn't work for me, though, and I can't see how it would - images link to their file page on enwiki, without "commons" appearing anywhere in the href.  (Maybe because I have the mediaviewer abomination disabled?)  What does work for me is  —Cryptic 14:19, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * you need to enable the gadget that greenmeansgo has (and I enabled), that makes images go directly to commons if they are on commons. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:23, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Works for me. Strange that it should be just a little half inch black box on the side of the image rather than a border around it. At any rate, it's something that can be easily checked. Thank you very much!  G M G  <sup style="color:#000;font-family:Impact">talk   15:51, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Good that it works! There's some conflicting going around with the box around the image + it's actually not around the image but a thin rectangle, dunno about that, but indeed strange. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:01, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that the size/extent/separation of the box will depend on your browser, specifically, what it considers to be the "hot" part of the image and its surroundings, within which a mouse click will cause the link to be followed. In Opera 36, images with thumb get the black bar on the left, non-thumb images (such as those in an infobox) get it both sides. Very small images - such as those in a - get the black border all round. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:25, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Unknown parameters to infobox itself
I have seen a lot of Wikipedia pages using Infoboxes with unknown parameters. A module is being used now in some of the Infoboxes to add such pages to a tracking category and such tracking is highly useful. Would it be possible to add such code to Infobox or Module:Infobox itself, so as to get rid of adding each parameter to every template manually? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · [//tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-ec/?user=Capankajsmilyo&project=en.wikipedia.org count])  03:27, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * That is not possible. Infobox and Module:Infobox don't know which parameters are known in infobox templates using them, and they don't even have access to the parameter names used in articles with infoboxes. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:37, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

It is not impossible. It is just somewhat hard. One way would be to redesign the templates so that they to use lua internally rather than a hybrid inefficient mix of templates + lua + templates + parser functions. That way lua modules invoke the main infobox as a library, rather than as a pseudo-template / parser function. That would give module:infobox full access to all parameters. Of course this would make those templates harder to customize for the average user. Although that is mostly a function of bad design and a lack of separation of input / processing and output. 197.218.89.69 (talk) 11:30, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Can this thing be initiated? Would that improve rendering too? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · [//xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/?username=Capankajsmilyo&project=en.wikipedia.org count])  05:25, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I think there is a new error within Module:Wikidata
What should be true is (Module:Wikidata/doc}
 * : Returns wiki-linked values, if applicable. All other values will be output similar to, except that if values with preferred rank exist, then only they are returned.  Unlike   from ru:Модуль:Wikidata,   does not yet pick up any references (see Module talk:Wikidata/Archive 1).

I.e. only preferred rank should show. But now it takes everything, not just preferred rank but also normal rank and even deprecated rank. See Pilar, Cebu – bottom of infobox. Uses =

Kangaroo caught (talk) 02:59, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The better place to ask this is on the talk page of the module, where and others can see it. But what you describe has always been true in my experience - getValue returns all values. If you use Module:WikidataIB instead, then you can use 'getPreferredValue' that does what you want. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:32, 31 January 2018 (UTC)


 * the main trouble with most (?all) "difficult" templates is that most of them have no proper documentation. Module:Wikidata doesn't give any starting values, but starts at the middle.  Module:WikidataIB is even worse.  The change works, but I don't know what I was doing.  Also, now there is a "pencil" after the text (see San Francisco, Cebu).  It leads to "Edit this on Wikidata" – wouldn't it make editing too easy? Kangaroo caught (talk) 00:23, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Subpages
Hello. How can I found all my subpages? Xaris333 (talk) 21:36, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Try Special:PrefixIndex/User:Xaris333/ Mduvekot (talk) 21:41, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It's linked on "Subpages" at the bottom of your contributions. I use User:PrimeHunter/Subpages.js to link it in the navigation on every page. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:50, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You can make an index of all your pages by transcluding that too, for example that hardcoded "sandbox" link at the top of each page, I made that an index of my sandboxes, look at the source on User:Xaosflux/sandbox. — xaosflux  Talk 22:05, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Third method: go to your user page; in the left margin there will be a "Page information" link, click that; in there you should find an entry "Number of subpages of this page" which is a link, when clicked this produces the list. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:39, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yasu . Fourth idea: since you work on several Wikimedia projects, why not drop over to Meta and install MoreMenu in your global.js; Subpages is only one of many useful features. Sam Sailor 23:48, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yay :) It's also available as a gadget here on the English Wikipedia. Look for "MoreMenu: add Page and User dropdown menus..." under "Appearance". &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  01:21, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Workaround for dropped ")" in titles?
FWIW - seems that sharing certain Wikipedia article titles in email messages and related may be a problem for some - the ending ")" in a title like " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability) " may be dropped/omitted - resulting in an url like => " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability " instead - one workaround seems to be creating a "WP:Redirect" for "Spectre (security vulnerability" directed to the correct main title (ie, "Spectre (security vulnerability)" - is there some other (even better) workarounds? - perhaps underneath-the-hood coding (or even policy adj?) of some sort may be needed for such titles? - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * this sounds like a bug in an email handler, could you paste the raw email text on to a sandbox (redact your address/etc) so we can see a better example? — xaosflux  Talk 18:15, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * not sure how to paste "raw" email text to the sandbox - but copy-pasted several instances of "received" email messages to => User:Drbogdan/sandbox/EMail - seems the links drop the ending ")" in my POP Peeper (v4.5) email program for some reason - and - in the copy received in the Yahoo and Comcast Email programs - but - the Wikipedia links seem corrected (ie, the ending ")" is NOT dropped) when copy-pasted to the Wikipedia sandbox - hope this helps in some way - iac - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 19:19, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * BRIEF Followup: adding < > to the url => <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover)> url seems to work OK in the POP Peeper mail program and when Yahoo and Comcast receives email messages (the ")" is NOT dropped) - but the url may NOT work well when copy-pasted to the Wikipedia sandbox - or in this discussion forum (NO link is formed?) [NOTE: the url in the sandbox and forum seem ok after all - corrects itself? - when the edit is "published"?) => see User:Drbogdan/sandbox/EMail - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 03:02, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * how are these emails being created? — xaosflux  Talk 19:28, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Originally, the email messages were created in "POP Peeper (v4.5)/Compose new messages..." email message creator, although sometimes I'd first use W10/notepad, and afterwards copy-paste to the usual POP Peeper composer - with identical results to those initially created in the usual POP Peeper composer - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It's a known issue but not really a bug. Many programs, both for emails and other purposes, try to turn a raw url like  into a clickable link but they have to guess where the url ends. They often guess some characters like a period, comma or right parenthesis is not part of the url. Mediawiki can also guess wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Davis_Jr. drops the period and only works because Sammy Davis Jr redirects to Sammy Davis Jr. It's much more common to write a period after a url than for the period to be part of the url so MediaWiki makes a sensible guess. We already help all users coming from a link which dropped a right parenthesis at the end. Non-existing pages display MediaWiki:Noarticletext. We use it to transclude No article text which checks whether you get an existing page name by adding a right parenthesis. Then we suggest that link like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(song which says "Did you mean: Spectre (song)?" I don't think we should make automatic redirects. If you mail a raw url to somebody and don't know whether their mail software has the issue then you can percent-encode   as  : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(song%29. This url should work in more programs which turn url's into links. It may work in even more if you also encode   as  : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_%28song%29. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:47, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your comments - and suggestion re the percent-encode ( ie, [ [Curiosity_%28rover%29]] ) - didn't think of that - but perhaps should have - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 20:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * probably not a 'bug' in the 'defect' stance - I was asking mostly to see if these were mediawiki generated emails (e.g. watchlist updates, etc) where we coudl have a 'bug' in the 'feature request' stance to better encode things. — xaosflux  Talk 20:09, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Fair point. I tested the email watchlist feature and got a mail with this in plain text:

The Wikipedia page Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) has been changed on 1 February 2018 by Xaris333, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) for the current revision.

To view this change, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=next&oldid=823531010

For all changes since your last visit, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=0&oldid=823531010
 * My mail provider produced correct links including https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical). Mail software may produce a correct link, an incorrect link, or no link at all. MediaWiki could increase the number of correct links by encoding to, but it's less readable for humans. It's requested in T40265 and others. See also T23615. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:03, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

"å" can go directly to search match with "a"
It was reported at Teahouse that entering "Sevåg" with å in the normal search box (corresponds to the "Go" button in some other skins) goes directly to Sevag without displaying search results. A redirect at Sevåg has since been created so that example is now invalid. My tests show "å" only goes to "a" in some cases. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Emmy+Awård goes to Emmy Award, but https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Awård does not go to Award. Is this intended behaviour and is there a system to it? Emmy Awård and Awård are red links and should remain so. https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Emmy+Awård goes to simple:Emmy Award and https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Awård goes to simple:Award, unlike enwiki. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:13, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This is called "character folding" or just "folding". There are different behaviors depending on the specific character and language. (For example, å is a native Swedish character and so it is not folded on Swedish wikis. It is not a native English character and so it is folded.) It is not obvious to me why those two results would differ (might be length of search string). --Izno (talk) 15:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I have seen it in other contexts but was surprised by the Go behaviour and apparent lack of system. [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Sårg Sårg] goes to Sarg but [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Sårk Sårk] does not go to Sark. If there is a system it seems complicated but I'm not a linguist. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Unlike most European languages, diacritics in English are few, and so many of use are not fully appreciative of what their purpose is (we generally know that they affect the pronounciation of the word, even if we are not sure in what way it is changed). Where they do occur (such as in words like naïve, and names like Brontë, Chloë and Zoë) they are considered to be modifiers of the letter that lacks the diacritic, much like the accented letters of French words like café and depôt: like written English, written French has 26 letters. In some other languages, the use of a diacritic forms a letter that is distinct from the letter that is similar in appearance apart from the diacritic. This is the case with the main Scandinavian languages - the Swedish alphabet has 29 letters: the first 26 are the same as in English, and Z/z is followed by Å/å, Ä/ä, Ö/ö in that order. In Danish and Norwegian, Å/å is the twenty-ninth letter, not the twenty-seventh. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:32, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * To make it really difficult, "aa" folds to "å" in Norwegian. Jeblad (talk) 13:52, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I can explain the difference between Emmy Awård and Awård—it should make sense, but it is entirely opaque if you don't know what's going on. Emmy Awård (or Ȇṁṃƴ Ẵẅɑṟȡ) gets folded on English projects—as Deskana mentioned—to emmy award. Since no other title or redirect gets folded to emmy award, that's where the "go" search takes you. Awård on the other hand is ambiguous because it isn't an exact match to anything, and there are at least two titles/redirects that get folded to award, namely Award and AWARD (a redirect to Award Software). Since there's no way to choose between them, the "go" search rolls over to the full text search. I don't know an easy way to find these cases; I just had to guess that AWARD existed. The title case version (Award) counts as an exact match for weird case versions without diacritics (like aWard, awaRd). With diacritics, it becomes a toss up between the two options. Hope that helps. TJones (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for solving the mystery. That also explains the other example where Sark and SARK are different pages so [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Sårk Sårk] doesn't go to an article. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:15, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Watchlist layout
I wasn't sure whether to post this here or at Proposals. Feel free to copy/paste it there if necessary.

I think the Watchlist could make better use of space. To the left there's a column that's almost entirely empty where edits are marked with m for minor and b for bot edits, etc. The placeholders are left blank if they don't apply, the upshot of which is an inch wide space with the rest of the content squashed into the remaining space. I think it would be better if that column had a dynamic width so it could be kept to a minimum while still displaying relevant information. Does anybody else agree? <b style="font:1.3em/1em Trebuchet MS;letter-spacing:-0.07em"><b style="color:#000">nagual</b><b style="color:#ABAB9D">design</b></b> 09:46, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It's not a separate column by default. I guess you have enabled "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" at Special:Preferences. I agree it seems wide. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestion. I tried unticking the box but then the Watchlist becomes inordinately long. I'd like to retain the groupings, so each page shown has a little arrow to expand the content, but I do like the ungrouped style where the m or whatever is just prepended to the article link. At the moment there's no happy medium. <b style="font:1.3em/1em Trebuchet MS;letter-spacing:-0.07em"><b style="color:#000">nagual</b><b style="color:#ABAB9D">design</b></b> 10:32, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * And reworking it is a hellish job, because there will be more people wanting to keep the old layout than any new layout and before you know it we have to support 3 (or actually 4) layouts making everything even more delicate than it already is... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:41, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to add a few lines of script to my common.js page to modify my own Watchlist? <b style="font:1.3em/1em Trebuchet MS;letter-spacing:-0.07em"><b style="color:#000">nagual</b><b style="color:#ABAB9D">design</b></b> 13:04, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * In theory, yes. That column that mostly seems to be blank and overwide is intended to show none or more of various single-character codes. When one of these codes doesn't apply, a  is used instead; there may be up to seven nbsps. So you would need the script to eliminate those nbsps from the table cell that matches the selector   but that in itself might not reduce the width of the column by much. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 14:56, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You've given me something to aim for at least. I might have a crack at it over the weekend. Cheers. <b style="font:1.3em/1em Trebuchet MS;letter-spacing:-0.07em"><b style="color:#000">nagual</b><b style="color:#ABAB9D">design</b></b> 15:59, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

View source script is not working
User talk:Misza13. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:01, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Input requested
This thread Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents may need the assistance of the regulars at this village pump. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 05:50, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

How to use this tool
Trying to use this family tree tool User:GregU/familytree.js. Added these codes to User:Makeandtoss/monobook.js and User:Makeandtoss/vector.js, but nothing happened. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:27, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It uses, which AFAIK has been obsolete fro over a year. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:59, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Turning off auto-insertion of period after a sentence?
When I type two spaces, I get a period automatically inserted in the edit box. Well, at least in Chrome using the web editor (I don't know about other platforms). Most of the time, that's fine. But, when I type a citation at the end of a sentence, i.e., that goes after the period I've already typed, so it's wrong (and annoying). Is there any way to turn this auto-insertion feature off? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:55, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm 95% sure that isn't coming from us. Are you using an apple product to edit by chance? If so this article may help you. —  xaosflux  Talk 19:58, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow, yeah, that was it! Thanks for the help!  -- RoySmith (talk) 20:10, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

MediaWiki bug - undoing a protection
I think that there is a bug in MediaWiki. I a recent, the cumulative effects of which should have been nil, other than two entries in the page history, and one on each user contribs list. In fact, the full protection that had been added by was silently lifted, as if I had also undone. Worse, the fact was not logged in either the page history or logs, so my of the prot may seem odd when somebody reads through [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=INews_TV&action=history the page history] at a later date. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:56, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It wasn't your undo that removed the protection; it was Malcolmxl5's deletion and subsequent restoration of the page nine hours earlier. —Cryptic 11:05, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * When I made my undo at 10:38, 3 February 2018 (UTC), the edit box was pink, which is a sure sign for a page that is either template-protected or fully-protected at the time of the edit. If protection had been removed (deliberately or inadvertently) by Malcolmxl5 earlier on, the edit box would have been white at the time of my edit. When I made my second edit, the one of 10:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC), I noticed immediately that the edit box was now white when one minute earlier it had been pink. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:57, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, if the prot level had changed nine hours earlier - presumably coincident with the actions of Malcolmxl5 at 01:58 - why would have been unable to edit the page half an hour later, as reported ? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:13, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Hrm. Testing on User:Cryptic/sandbox, it was still protected after I deleted and restored, and after I made a null edit, but not after I blanked it. —Cryptic 12:23, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Protection is not supposed to survive a deletion and undeletion as far as I know and can tell from searches. If there is a bug then it is that the pages indicated they were protected right after undeletion. There was no sign of protection after undeletion in my test at User:PrimeHunter/sandbox3. If you make another test then try whether you can edit the page while logged out during the alleged protection. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:59, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "This page is currently protected so that only administrators can edit it." User:Cryptic/sandbox (log) again - it's still in that state, and I suspect it will remain so until it gets a (non-null) edit.  action=protect also consistent with the page being protected.  The most obvious difference between INews TV+my tests and yours is that the former all had a timed protection while yours was indef. —Cryptic 14:31, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * This time I semi-protected User:PrimeHunter/sandbox3 for 3 days and got the same result as you. The page says it's protected and it cannot be edited logged out. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:56, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Knowing the redirect had been protected, I checked the edit box after I’d finished, saw that it was pink and assumed it was still protected. Maybe not. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I replicated the issue in my user space, deleting and undeleting a test page with the edit box being pink after I undeleted. I tried to edit the page as an IP and the page was protected. After I edited in admin mode, the protection was lost. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 18:09, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * can you give an exact step-by-step description of how to reproduce the problem so we can get a bug open? — xaosflux  Talk 19:27, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I managed to reproduce it and filed T186428 with reproduction instructions and an explanation. Short version: cached protection information isn't being cleared in this situation. Anomie⚔ 22:06, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Looks like you've captured it all, Anomie. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 01:35, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Unsuccessful logins
Since the last week, somebody is attempting to login to my account, about 6-8 times a day. Though I'm not much concerned about them being successful at it, what's bugging me is the loads of messages that are filling the alerts and my e-mail. Is there something that can be done to get rid of this? Thanks, MT TrainDiscuss 03:35, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * you can turn this notification off in Special:Preferences (make sure you have a strong password you don't share with other sites as well). — xaosflux  Talk 03:42, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Lots of blank space at end Seto-Ōhashi Line article
Below and to the right ! Can it be fixed ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 07:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The image map was badly broken. I’ve stopped it overflowing all over the page but it still needs some work.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 08:25, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 16:52, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Is there a place on Wikimedia projects somewhere to make Javascript requests
Hi

I want to make a request similar to a bot request or a Lua request but for Javascript, does anyone know of anywhere I could make this request? What I want I think should be quite simple, its a form that fills in sections of a table and then saves to a new section of a talk page.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 19:24, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You can try at User scripts/Requests. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 20:10, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much . John Cummings (talk) 22:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Strange behaviour of an archive.org link
A user trying to find an archived version of a dead link pointed me at this, which leads to the appropriate archived article -- and then after a couple of seconds blanks the page. I'm going to say this is OK (though obviously not ideal) as an archive.org link, since one can see the text (and it is visible in the source), but does anyone have any idea what causes this and how to prevent it? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I wonder if this behavior is due to the fact that the article seems to be behind a paywall when I try to search for it - wonder if the site is trying to block the archiving of it? Home Lander (talk) 22:24, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Ask for help: Broken GeoGroup links on cswiki
Hello, on Czech Wikipedia we have an issue with our GeoGroup template. The template is correct, urls are correct, but sometimes (only sometimes) both the osm4wiki tool (OSM link) and the wp-world tool (Google Maps link) give broken output, as you can see here or here. If you find a GeoGroup template on these pages and click on OSM link, you get broken encoding, but map shows correctly. If you click on Google Maps link, there is no map shown. If you click on Export... link (kmlexport tool), the link is also correct, but the resulting KML is blank. Do you know, what could be the problem? Is there some bug in kmlexport tool (used by all three links)? It happens only for some Czech Wikipedia pages, not for all pages using our GeoGroup template. --Dvorapa (talk) 01:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Template:BusyEmail vertical justification
Could someone take a look at Template:BusyEmail to see why the text isn't vertically justified? It'll have something to do with how either Template:Busy or Template:tmbox are set up, but it must be fixable – I've seen plenty of tmbox templates where the text sits nicely in the vertical centre without any issues.--Newbiepedian (talk · contribs · X! · logs) 05:58, 5 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Even if you write  it's actually not vertically centered; it's just not as noticeable. There's a small amount of space you can see if you use the "inspect element" tool (in Firefox, Chrome, and I'm sure other browsers as well).   Anon 126   (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 07:25, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

collapse/expand problem for many templates
Wikipedia has a problem with top right side templates expanding and then collapsing when the page is loaded. For example, in calculus article the Template:Calculus loads expanded then immediately collapses. This is a widespread problem on many wikipedia articles and templates. If nobody can figure out how to fix this issue, I propose eliminating the "[show]" and "[hide]" parameters of the templates so the templates always load fully expanded. Brian Everlasting (talk) 01:25, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Collapsing depends on a CSS display:none command, primarily from MediaWiki:Common.css. This is working on this page for me, but it may be a client-side delay.  What browser are you using? —  xaosflux  Talk 01:42, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm using the latest version of Chrome. This problem persists on both Windows 10 and Mac. The template loads completely expanded then immediately collapses. Am I the only one having this problem? Brian Everlasting (talk) 01:55, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I can get it to do it as well, even with it being the "only" thing on a page (User:Xaosflux/sandbox51 for example) - it has a huge output for 1 template (see User:Xaosflux/sandbox51/expanded). I'm getting the jumping on it with Firefox as well. —  xaosflux  Talk 03:24, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * This is normal, and there's not a lot that can be done about it without eliminating a clearly, and broadly, beneficial functionality. The term (or at least closely related) is FOUC. --Izno (talk) 04:46, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think this FOUC can be completely eliminated by just deleting the "[hide]" parameter. I'm proposing changing the templates to be show all only. Another reason to avoid using the "[hide]" parameter is that the reader must make 1 extra click on the "[show]" button to see the information. 1 extra click may not sound like much but it is a huge requirement and most people don't click on anything when they come to a page, they simply want to read that page rather than having to interact with the page. On second thought, maybe this is a bad idea. I tried my idea of expand all for calculus template on calculus article and it was a bit overwhelming. Brian Everlasting (talk) 05:13, 1 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Some observations here. It's not pure CSS, Javascript is an essential component; there is no "[hide]" parameter: the "[hide]" and "[show]" are links, created by Javascript. When there are collapsible boxes, they always load in an expanded state, and it is only when your browser executes the Javascript that any collapsing occurs and the "[hide]" or "[show]" link is presented. We cannot control at what point your browser executes the Javascript. What can be done, usually for each collapsible box individually, is alter the box so that the default state is uncollapsed instead of collapsed. Consider the two tables here: the only non-textual difference is the absence or presence of the  class.
 * So essentially, this is a matter for Template talk:Calculus, specifically, whether to alter the default state from collapsed to uncollapsed. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:04, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * This is always a hard problem to solve, but in this case it can actually be improved a little bit. This sidebar navigation box uses the outdated NavFrame logic. I had already made an optimisation for certain other types of collapsible content, but not for this older form of collapsible content. But this change should definitely help. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:17, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * To clarify a bit more. This problem is hard to solve when we need to interpret something. Autocollapse, or "read/unread" status for watchist notifications, are impossible to really fix. But if the content is expliticely marked collapsed, like in this case, then we can use that knowledge to hide it before the Javascript runs. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks User:TheDJ the calculus article looks so much better now. If you or someone is interested the bottom collapsable templates need the same fix. See for example my sandbox of calculus templates. You can see the templates load fully expanded then immediately collapse. Brian Everlasting (talk) 02:48, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Like I said, that's a different case, that cannot be fixed, without removing the 'autocollapse' behaviour from those templates. Which might be controversial. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:33, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect (or ... confusing) background coloring of areas (on map)
Please [feel free to] "see" the oldest (and, at this time, the "only") version of the "Talk:" page File talk:Boko Haram insurgency map.png. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 19:01, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-06
<section begin="technews-2018-W06"/> 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
 * Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to.
 * The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language.
 * Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded.

Problems
 * Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this.

Changes later this week
 * When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users.
 * When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like . You could use   or   instead of   but it would make no difference. You can now only use   or nothing . If you write something else, instead of treating it like , it will not work.
 * The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of  or   it will say   and  . It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public.
 * Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2018-W06"/> 20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Writing a javascript to edit the edit box
I am interested in writing a (java)script that will apply some conversion functions to a highlighted piece of text in the edit box and change it to replace the highlighted piece. A simple example would be to swap lower and uppercase, when the caps lock was left on. Another example would be to do the function of this sed command "sed -e 's/, P/|/g' -e 's/P//g' -e 's/, and /|/'" which converts a comma separated list of precaution codes into the template format. I have quite a few more conversions I would like to do. Are there any scripts around that I could copy and use to adapt? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:55, 5 February 2018 (UTC)


 * You'll want TemplateScript, I believe. ~ Amory <small style="color:#555"> (u • t • c) 15:17, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that looks to be very powerful, it has removed every P from my test page, I will have to learn to tame it! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:14, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Why do tags come after "current"?
Hey, I normally use my contribs page to see if others have edited pages since I did, and having "current" at the end of the line is useful for this purpose, whereas I imagine tags (like the "new redirect" one) are mainly meant to be searchable via Ctrl+F or equivalent, and do not need to be at the end. Obviously it's not worth fighting over either way, but I'm curious if anyone knows the reason or where I can find it. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 10:44, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know whether there is a design reason or tags were just placed at the end because the feature was implemented last. Village pump (technical)/Archive 162 has a suggestion and code you can place in . PrimeHunter (talk) 11:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Way to validate Wikidata entities/QIDs in Lua?
Re T143970 (created in 2016), is there a work-around for validating a Wikidata entity/QID in Lua? ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:33, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

PAGE ]]) 19:57, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * A hacky workaround is simply to use frame:preprocess, e.g. create a module, put something like:  Essentially for whatever reason the wikidata tool isn't catching those errors properly, so instead let a parser function catch and show them. An awful hack to be sure, but it'll work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.92.196 (talk) 09:59, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that and  are the ones to ask here. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:01, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Ok, pinging too, since they originally brought this to my attention while working on a module.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I created Module:resolveEntityId which functions like  but for properties. However, it's still uncomfortably hackish. --Ahecht ([[User_talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#00F;display:inline-block;padding:1px 1px 0;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK

There seems to be a non-hacky approach to get this (might need more thorough testing): local id = "P00000000000000000" -- or "Q00000000000000000" if mw.wikibase.getEntityUrl( id ) then return true end

This is presumably better because it probably doesn't need to load the whole entity which can consume a lot of memory and potentially hit the parser limit. Still, this is something that should be implemented in scribunto & wikibase itself. Catching errors like this should be trivial. The hacky approach is probably still the only valid way to catch strange unexpected errors like the "nil error of doom" (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T170039). As long as xpcall, and pcall can't be trusted it is probably a good idea to either wrap all critical modules with that, or use a string check for "class = error" before rendering the final output. 15:05, 6 February 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.244 (talk)

API page save and self edit conflicts
From some inadvertent issues, and subsequent testing on a sandbox page, it seems that the Mediawiki API does not report an edit conflict when the conflicting edits are made by the same user? Testing: I opened the same version of the same sandbox page in two separate AWB sessions, made and saved an edit in one session, then made a conflicting edit in the second AWB session and saved (AWB save uses API to update page). At the time of second save the second session must have had an out of date revision of the page, yet the API saved the page without error (overwriting page content with that of second save, effectively reverting changes from first save). Does anybody know if this is expected behaviour? Thanks Rjwilmsi  15:05, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * See T30720. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.83.244 (talk) 15:29, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Notice of a non-existent action - where in the h do I report this?!?
I just now signed on and had a Notification that is odd for many reasons:
 * It said I was mentioned on a specific user's talk page & I was not.
 * The message that was referenced at that bell symbol (next to my user name up in the right-hand corner) was this
 * [User] mentioned you on their talk page in "February 2018"
 * Hi The world is watching See the world in green and blue See C...

And that's it. Anyone have any idea what is going on? I have had no interactions with this particular editor, they didn't mention me on their talk page any where at all, so ??? Shearonink (talk) 01:36, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * If you go to Special:Notifications is it still there for today? Where does the "view changes" link take you? —  xaosflux  Talk 01:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "View changes" takes me to the User's talk page where I have not posted and where they have not mentioned me.
 * Special:Notifications takes me to my notifications & a little more of the supposed message is shown (everything else looks fine):
 * Hi The world is watching See the world in green and blue See China right in front of you See the canyons broken by the cloud See the tuna fleets cl...
 * and when I click on the Notification box for February 4, 2018 I am taken (just like the shortened bell-notice at the to of the page) directly to the User's talk page where the user has never mentioned me... Shearonink (talk) 02:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Considering that text you quote, I'd guess someone accidentally transcluded the page User:GeneralizationsAreBad (which includes a barnstar signed by you) onto that talk page, and then it was reverted or fixed. Anomie⚔ 02:33, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else I could think of, just seems so odd, that an action is being attested to by the system and it never happened... and there doesn't seem to be a record of the attesting around here anywhere. I would guess, then, that everyone who gave GAB a barnstar would also get a notice about a non-existent action?...lol, happiness loves company.  Thanks for the explanation. Shearonink (talk) 02:44, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There almost certainly was an action and Anomie is probably right. I guess somebody tried to ping GeneralizationsAreBad but wrote  instead of  . The former transcludes the user page which has a link to your user page in an old signature by you. Notifications of mentions are caused by a signed edit with a wikilink to your user page in the rendered page. The software doesn't know whether the link is intentional or accidental. We could quickly confirm this or give another or more precise explanation if you just posted the link on "View changes", or at the very least the username so we could look for the diff in the their talk page history. I have no idea why you continue to keep it secret and force us to guess. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:37, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The exact same thing happened to me yesterday. The username was Havarb, and Generalizations are bad was being pinged. The link took me here, and View Changes took me here.  I hope this helps :-)  Scr ★ pIron IV 15:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. As I guessed, a user made a ping error by writing  instead of  . They quickly fixed it so it was difficult to find the edit later without knowing the page. We could have saved a lot of time if Shearonink had justed posted the page from the start or at least when xaosflux asked for it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I responded to xaosflux as I understood their request, saying what I saw on the page - wasn't aware that they might have wanted the actual linkage as provided by above. The situation was puzzling and the issue was the content only appeared in my notifications - I didn't know what to do so I asked here, hoping to get some help & clarity on understanding what had happened.  I was thinking there might be something wrong internally with WP and was concerned about the encyclopedia. Thanks for your help. Shearonink (talk) 16:25, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikivoyage notice: volatile cookie
There's a banner that first popped up several days ago containing the text "Wikivoyage is celebrating its 5th anniversary! Help us grow by sharing travel information about destinations that interest you". When I first received it, I used the "X" link to dismiss it, that would (I presume) have set a cookie to prevent the notice reappearing. But it has reappeared several times, each time I have dismissed it again but it comes back a while later - sometimes a day or two, sometimes much less - like ten minutes just now. Do they keep changing the cookie ID or something? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:20, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * it is a CentralNotice, and may be set up a bit agressively. There are multiple campaigns using this banner. This was recently activated by . —  xaosflux  Talk 00:50, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Anchoring table headers
The option "Make sure that headers of tables remain in view as long as the table is in view" under Testing and Development no longer keeps the headers anchored for me. This used to work. Did something change? I am still using Chrome. Terrorist96 (talk) 01:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * For the record, the option is at the bottom of Special:Preferences. It's by TheDJ and uses MediaWiki:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.js and MediaWiki:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css. I haven't tried it before but it currently has no effect for me in Chrome, tested at List of highest-grossing films. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I believe Chrome rolled back part of the functionality, because it was breaking Netflix.. It's marked as 'testing' for a reason :) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:52, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Images
Anyone here proficient in the handling of images, both here and at commons? Or the delinker bots that update images? An editor deleted an image in favor of a different image. The image is of a military award ribbon. This affects the BLPs of numerous military officers and other articles. I brought this to his attention, and he said that we need to wait for the delinker to start. At one point it did, and it changed 73 articles. But there is still over a 100 pages in need of updating, that are currently showing a blank spot on the officer's ribbon boards.
 * file deletion log of original file
 * discussion at commons editor's talk page ("JuTa")
 * the delinkers contribs
 * (Delinker is replacing "File:Silver Star ribbon.svg" with "File:Silver_Star_BAR.svg" which actually links to: "File:Silver Star Medal ribbon.svg")
 * this is supposed to be the new file at WP
 * this is supposed to be the new file at commons
 * redirect created by me (on WP), this shows a redirect created by "JuTa" and a list of article's still in need of updating by the delinker. (There are still yet other articles that are also in need of updating for this image file, that aren't listed on this page, FYI.)

The delinker has stopped. "JuTa" has stopped replying. Can someone here take a look at this problem and see if there is fix to be had? Thank you - the <em style="font-family:Matisse itc;color:red">WOLF  child  04:38, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * JuTa has responded to you. Remember that we are all volunteers and that nobody is obligated to respond to you, let alone provide instantaneous replies.  73.222.64.139 (talk) 10:41, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "We"...? You edit history shows all of one contribution to this project... that being your snotty little comment here. Now go away, the grown-ups are trying to build something here. - the <em style="font-family:Matisse itc;color:red">WOLF  child  19:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * See dynamic IP and WP:CIVIL/WP:BITE. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:28, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yup, seen'em. Well aware people like to hide behind dynamic ip's, but thanks anyway. - the <em style="font-family:Matisse itc;color:red">WOLF  child  03:59, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Underscore as part of a username
A new editor asked if they could use an underscore as part of their username. They were successful creating a username with an underscore but it renders as a space. Is it possible to do something so that it renders as an underscore ? I think the answer is no, but I thought I'd check here. S Philbrick (Talk)  17:04, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * They could simply pipe the links in their signature. from  to  . The title of pages can be replaced, as well, using the DISPLAYTITLE template.  ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  17:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Or just A_Username_With_Underscores . &#123;&#123;3x&#124;p&#125;&#125;ery (talk) 17:10, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * In the database behind Wikipedia, spaces in usernames are replaced by underscores. So there is not really a difference between a name with spaces and the same name with underscores. The same applies to the title of an article. It is possible to hide the space in some situations, for example by using a custom signature. But many pieces of code make the assumption that an underscore is meant to represent a space, so it will probably be impossible to avoid that assumption completely.  To some extent, it would be a losing battle. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 17:13, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the prompt feedback. I pointed the editor to this discussion so they can decide whether to use the pipe option or not. S Philbrick (Talk)  17:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * As Pppery said, no pipe is needed. User:Sphilbrick_alt and User:Sphilbrick alt is the same link, and  would display "Sphilbrick_alt" at top of the page. I guess you can also type underscores at login, but page histories, logs, search results and many other places cannot display underscores instead of spaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:27, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * At one time, underscores in usernames were permitted and were distinct from spaces, see Village pump (technical) above. We won't be restoring this behaviour: too much would be broken. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:36, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks-- S Philbrick (Talk)  13:13, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Media viewer and subscript/superscript
It seems that image captions that contain subscript or superscript do not render as such when an image is clicked on to see in the media viewer (example provided here). Is this on Wikipedia's end? Either way, does anyone know of a workaround? Thanks, –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 01:19, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * looks like a (now) known issue, being tracked at: T186844. — xaosflux  Talk 01:58, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

and tables. Other things are kept, e.g. font-size, color, italics, bold. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:17, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Many things are ignored in Media Viewer captions, e.g. ,

A bird's eye view of JavaScript and its coverage on Wikipedia
Wikipedia's coverage of JavaScript is a bit rough. But, it has grown immense, with coverage of the JavaScript ecosystem beyond the core language far surpassing that of JavaScript itself.

Here are some pages that attempt to organize and provide access to all this information:

"The Outline of JavaScript is a hierarchical presentation of the entire JavaScript ecosystem. When complete, it will be added to the outline collection at Portal:Contents/Outlines." "The Glossary of JavaScript is an alphabetical list of terms and jargon used in working with and talking about JavaScript. After the definitions have been filled in, it will be added to the collection of glossaries at Portal:Contents/Glossaries, where, hopefully, others will develop it further." "The Index of JavaScript-related articles will eventually include every article about JavaScript-related topics on Wikipedia. Though incomplete, it has already been added to the collection of indices at Portal:Contents/Indices." "The JS Resource library is a listing of reference material that can be mined for citations. It is more extensive and is organized differently than the further reading list included in the outline mentioned above. It aims to include all significant material on and off the Web about JavaScript." "To organize project-level information about JavaScript is the Outline of scripts. It attempts to cover everything about using and developing JavaScript programs (user scripts and gadgets) on Wikipedia. Especially, where to find them and other JavaScript source code."

These are very rough and no doubt full of gaps and errors. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind taking a look at them to see how they might be improved.

All comments and contributions are welcomed and appreciated.

Sincerely,   The Transhumanist 07:04, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Is this a clue a sockpuppet is evading a block a proxy...
I have had a couple of wikistalkers, who subsequently used sockpuppetry to evade indefinite blocks imposed on them. I wonder whether a recent stalker may be using a proxy to obfuscate their actual IP address. Anyone here with experience tracking abuse of proxies?

They don't seem to have noticed, but, their most recent edits also changed some URLs, inserting ".proxy1.lib.uwo.ca" after the domain.

UWO is the University of Western Ontario, in London. Only some of the URLs get mapped.

In this edit ".proxy1.lib.uwo.ca" gets inserted into 25 urls.

In this edit ".proxy1.lib.uwo.ca" gets inserted into 23 urls.

In this edit ".proxy1.lib.uwo.ca" gets inserted into 13 urls.

Trying one of the proxified urls gives an error message.

Has anyone got an explanation for this?

Thanks! Geo Swan (talk) 10:14, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There is often nothing wrong with using a proxy. Many setups involve editing through a proxy, including governments, companies, schools and libraries (as is the case here), and mobile providers. What these edits show is that the proxy is probably misconfigured as of 30 Jan. I'm not saying it isn't a sock who uses other IP addresses, but using a proxy is not evidence of a sock. It's a sign that someone has access, probably legitimate, to the network of the University of Western Ontario. Why they are using this network is anyone's guess. And it's a bit difficult to say why it's only rewriting some URLs. It's also changing, eg, web.archive.org into web-archive-org, which is a bit weird but another sign of misconfiguration. I'm tempted to block this proxy because it's obviously misconfigured and screwing up pages as opposed to anything else. Saying that, briefly looking at the bigger picture, it probably is a sock. -- zzuuzz (talk) 10:42, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Could Template:Birth date or similar templates display the "BCE" texts?<span id="Could_&#123;&#123;tl|Birth_date&#125;&#125;_or_similar_templates_display_the_&quot;BCE&quot;_texts?">

 * (Section heading changed to remove template call, see the comment in the wikitext. --Pipetricker (talk) 15:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC))

For example:

now displays February 5, -123 (solid: February 5, -123), maybe it is actually 124 BCE.

I wish that it can displays February 5, 124 BCE. This is  Taiwania Justo  speaking (Reception Room) 02:11, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Looks like this was identified once before, see Template_talk:Birth_date/Archive_2. You could start a discussion at Template talk:Birth date to make a new parameter for BC tagging at the least. —  xaosflux  Talk 02:18, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There are way too many date and age templates. They really need some brave soul or souls to merge them into a single set of coherent templates, presumably using a Lua module. Maybe this could be one of those Google Coding Week (or whatever it's called) projects; that event seems to come around once a year. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:51, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I've been working on that, for example, see Template talk:Birth date and age. The tricky work is done by Module:Date and the front-end fiddling is done with Module:Age. The main reason I leave it for months without progress is that the current templates work well and a fair bit of courage would be needed to switch them to use the modules. I have a bunch of enhancements in a local copy of the module that I'm going to upload real soon now. The module can be told to use BC or BCE but I don't think I have exposed a way to pass that option to the module at the moment (except by giving a hint in the input). extract uses the module and it can show the date (without the birth metadata).
 * Johnuniq (talk) 04:11, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Keep up the good work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:56, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Johnuniq (talk) 04:11, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Excellent. Keep up the good work. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:56, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Edit summary drop down box
Is there a way of editing the entries that appear in the drop down box to remove entries that are of my creation that are no longer useful? Nthep (talk) 18:31, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * the edit summary is a text box, not a drop down box. If you have autocomplete data happening in here it is from your local browser and you would have to clear it there. —  xaosflux  Talk 18:33, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, ok, thanks. Nthep (talk) 20:17, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It depends on the browser. Try moving to the unwanted summary and press or  . If it doesn't work then name your browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:21, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Neither work which surprises me as the browser is Waterfox, a FF spin-off. Nthep (talk) 21:15, 9 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Did you move with the arrow keys? It works for me in Firefox. I haven't tried Waterfox. Reference desk/Computing is the place to go for browser help. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:27, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Adding "Portal:Current events" to your Watchlist
Hello, all! I've never used the watchlist feature before, but I recently wanted to try it out to get a basic stream of content from the Current Events page and eventually set the watchlist up in an RSS reader. However, after adding Portal:Current Events to my watchlist, it appears to only be showing Portal talk: Current events and its changes, as opposed to the page itself. I can watch the individual days with no issue, but watching the entire page seems to not work. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance. Kilroy94 (talk) 02:03, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * As you can see if you view source on this page, it has very little actual content of its own but it transcludes other pages which themselves have content. The events are listed on pages like Portal:Current events/2018 January 23, Portal:Current events/2018 January 24, etc. ―Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:22, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * So basically - due to format, it won't be able to do what you want. You could watchlist Template:In the news to get the front page updates. —  xaosflux  Talk 02:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The page history [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Current_events&action=history] shows Portal:Current events hasn't been edited since October. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:57, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, I understand now. Unfortunate, but it's whatever. Thank you so much for the replies! Kilroy94 (talk) 03:55, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
 * This would be awkward, but you could watchlist each day in the future out to a set time. It would be tedious though. -A la d insane  <small style="color:#008600">(Channel 2)  03:54, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * While not a watchlist, Special:RecentChangesLinked/Portal:Current events might be useful? FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY  <sup style="color:#c22">[u+1F602]  <em style="font-size:10px;">03:14, 10 February 2018 (UTC)