Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 210

Arabic names and how they are displayed in wikisource
How doe the changes in this appear to different editors? The actual wikisource is (with pipes in-between) رازنهان followed by خلیلی followed by 1392. The correction I made was because the cite includes خلیلی but they were missing from the short form reference. For me the diff shows two different changes (even though they are copypastes of each other) with pipes and names in the wrong order in the second change. Either this is my browser unhelpfully showing fields in right to left order because the fields contains Arabic script, or the wikisource doing the same. Obviously the names in Arabic should be r->l but the fields should still run l->r. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 14:17, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Is the issue limited to Arabic, or foes it also apply to, e.g., Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Mandaic, Razihi, Syriac, Tigre, Tigrinya? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 15:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This is the only instance I've come across, so I can't answer that question. Does the diff look correct to you? -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 16:26, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Both occurrences in your diff look the same to me. Screenshot: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F41661372
 * You can copy the text into Unicode Text Analyzer (https://www.fontspace.com/unicode/analyzer) to verify that the characters are in the expected order.
 * You can also mark up the text with left-to-right marks to make it appear in a more intuitive order for English-language text. Compare:
 * (without LRM)
 * (with invisible LRM added after each name – use the Unicode Text Analyzer tool to see them, or enable syntax highlighting in the wikitext editor, which marks them with red dots)
 * Matma Rex talk 16:45, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Your screenshot doesn't show them in the right order, the wikisource is "|رازنهان‎|خلیلی‎|1392|" that the fields contain Arabic doesn't mean the fields themselves should be back to front. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 16:55, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * To clarify "back to front" |A|B|C| should appear as |A|B|C| regardless of what A, B or C represent. The contents of A, B, or C should not change the way the fields are ordered. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 17:02, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also just to be clear this is separate from how the results are displayed as a webpage, where running the result r-l would be correct. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 16:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It shows the right order according to the normal text rendering rules (the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm), where "|" isn't a special character. I don't think it's possible to affect that. But we can add the LRM in the wikitext, like I suggested, which will affect how the text appears in the editor, the diffs and the final webpage . I did that in your article now:  Matma Rex talk 17:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah I see the issue here is "|" is expected to be a special character in wikisource but isn't in the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm. Adding invisible unicode characters is likely to make the situation more confused not less. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 17:29, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Third RfC on Vector 2022
Æo (talk) 20:55, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Requests for comment/Evaluation of Vector 2022 is open.

Wikipedia Mobile website problem
The left sidebar buttons on Wikipedia mobile don't work, when I push on them the list simply hides again/exits. I've tried this on multiple Android phones all running the latest Android Google Chrome version and have ran into the same problem everytime. I can't even log in from the mobile site, I have to first scroll down to the bottom to force desktop then I can log in and then go back to mobile after. I have no problems editing articles using the mobile version however. Bzik2324 (talk) 19:55, 7 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I can reproduce this on both Firefox and Chrome on Android 14. And yet, you've asked this question twice without a single "me too". So there must be something unusual about our settings. Do you have animations turned off under Android Settings -> Accessibility -> Visual Enhancements -> Remove animations? Does the boat move at WP:Articles for deletion/Ever Given? If you turn animations back on, does the problem go away? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:15, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Nope, my animations are normal/on. Still having this problem! Bzik2324 (talk) 10:15, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Any other suggestions? Bzik2324 (talk) 10:16, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This sounds like T354315 but we have been having trouble replicating the issue. Can you replicate it on the desktop site? e.g. visiting the same en.m. domain on your desktop browser?
 * Which Android device are you using? Jdlrobson (talk) 02:55, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

How do people edit on here effectively?
Currently, I go between the visual and the source editor depending on my task. The switching seems unnecessary, and I wish there was a source editor that hid extraneous content somehow (for example, if it could collapse templates or ref tags etc so that I can focus on editing the body text). Also, I like the smart features of the visual editor such as [[ triggering a link search and the automatic citation creation (which is based on zotero AFAIK).

My question, are there better software tools for editing wikipedia than the wikipedia editor in the browser? There just has to be something at least supporting those features I described above. DMH43 (talk) 22:15, 9 January 2024 (UTC)


 * If you're into external text editors, take a look at these recipes. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 23:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note you can auto-create cites in source using the reftoolbar, see RefToolbar/2.0. Any of the fields with the magnifying search icon allow you to autofill the cite fields. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 23:23, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It doesn't hide any wikicode, but the 2017 wikitext editor has all the tools VisualEditor does with source text Mach61 (talk) 05:21, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Google curiously refusing to index a page
I've noticed this curious case regarding Google's behaviour in indexing Wikipedia. The page Elephant duel was created as a redirect to War Elephant in 2009. I converted it into an article on 3 October 2023, but so far Google has refused to show it in its search results, not even when specifying the Wikipedia domain in the query. However, it is shown as a knowledge panel. Other search engines behave normally, so the problem lies with Google, but I'm curious if anyone has an idea of what might be going on? The article isn't a new page, so it shouldn't have anything to do with the 90-day noindexing. --Paul_012 (talk) 16:32, 8 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Pages which are newly converted from redirects must go through NPP the same as others. Izno (talk) 19:35, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Paul_012 is autopatrolled since 2017 so an article creation should allow indexing right away. Does that not apply when autopatrollers convert a redirect? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:06, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Also it's already beyond 90 days, and the knowledge panel showed up long before then (as well as the Bing results). --Paul_012 (talk) 04:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone here will know the answer. You probably have to file a Phabricator ticket and then hope that someone from WMF can contact someone at Google (not always super successful). But this is not the first time that redirects cause problems. And then there is the whole issue that sometimes they get the name of the entire website wrong as well. In general Google has been a total mess over the last couple of months. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:45, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Solving this shouldn't need any direct contact with Google. A website's account-holder can simply request re-indexing of a page through Google Search Console, though I don't know how the GSC account for the wikipedia.org domain is handled. There's probably an established mechanism to handle such requests via Phabricator, but I'm kind of also interested to see if it will go away by itself (and how long it takes) so I just might leave it be for now. --Paul_012 (talk) 11:33, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Finding longest AfD discussion by character count?
Does anyone have a handy way to find the longest AfD discussions by character count? Am specifically looking for ones related to ARBPIA over the years, but it's a general question that is useful. 14:42, 10 January 2024 (UTC) ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:42, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * User:JPxG/Oracle/Largest AfDs * Pppery * it has begun... 14:58, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Reusing references: Can we look over your shoulder?
Apologies for writing in English.

The Technical Wishes team at Wikimedia Deutschland is planning to make reusing references easier. For our research, we are looking for wiki contributors willing to show us how they are interacting with references.


 * The format will be a 1-hour video call, where you would share your screen. More information here.
 * Interviews can be conducted in English, German or Dutch.
 * Compensation is available.
 * Sessions will be held in January and February.
 * Sign up here if you are interested.
 * Please note that we probably won’t be able to have sessions with everyone who is interested. Our UX researcher will try to create a good balance of wiki contributors, e.g. in terms of wiki experience, tech experience, editing preferences, gender, disability and more. If you’re a fit, she will reach out to you to schedule an appointment.

We’re looking forward to seeing you, Thereza Mengs (WMDE) 08:53, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea. No need to apologize for using English here.  RudolfRed (talk) 16:52, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

spacing between non-indented paragraphes and indented lines
As an example: Talk:Jess Bush

Under the headers, the spacing between the first paragraph and the following colon-indented line is larger than the spacing between subsequent colon-indented lines. There is no excess space in the code. I'm using Safari 17.2.1 on macOS Sonoma 14.2.1. —  Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 17:29, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can replicate this, at least in Vector 2022 (logged in or logged out, in Firefox and Brave for Mac OS). The colon-indented paragraphs are in one big block whose CSS includes  The opening (non-colon-indented) paragraph's CSS includes   the relevant portion of which translates to   Someone more versed in site-wide CSS will have to take it from here, or debunk my research with a better explanation. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:29, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for getting much further than I did! Is this the/a correct venue for this, or should I have posted it somewhere else?  —   Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 15:07, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It makes general sense -- a top-level block of text is a , but the : syntax creates (nested) definition-lists and the text within them will just be contained in  s. CSS that applies spacing to paragraphs won't automatically also apply to list items.
 * It's plausible that we should have Vector 2022 incorporate its own version of that override to the .ns-talk list item spacing. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * (Or amend the site CSS to match the presumably-new paragraph spacing in Vector 2022.) DLynch (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A fix is being discussed in . DLynch (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Vector 2022 Timeless Sidebar problem
The way Vector 2022 Timeless displays seems to have altered on my PC screen, though not on my Android device. On my PC I use the Vector 2022 Timeless Skin on Chrome, on Windows 10; on my Android I also edit using the Chrome browser rather than an app, using Desktop view with the Vector 2022 Timeless skin. Since yesterday, my PC has displayed pages differently, with a large left sidebar rather than a drop-down toolbar under the search bar. Pages still display correctly on my Android, and I have not altered my preferences. I am not aware of any change I have made on my PC which could cause this behaviour. Can anyone suggest what might have happened to cause this and how I can recover my preferred display without the obtrusive sidebar? RolandR (talk) 22:30, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Did you try clicking the "hide" link at the top of the sidebar? – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:49, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There doesn't seem to be one. RolandR (talk) 03:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have discovered that if I log out of Wikipedia, the Hide link appears and I can close the sidebar. But as soon as I log in again, the sidebar reappears, and the Hide does not stick. There seems to be something in my settings which blocks this, but I can't figure out what, or why it should suddenly have started. RolandR (talk) 23:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Curiouser and curiouser: today if I log out ,it jumps to the default skin and I don't see Timeless at all. And I have checked, and get the same problem if I use the Edge browser. -- RolandR (talk) 21:36, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds like it is maybe a gadget or a user script. You have a "User:PleaseStand/hide-vector-sidebar.js" in your common.js, maybe that's it ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:28, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've tried disabling that, but it makes no difference. RolandR (talk) 20:33, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know where I've put my brain (well, I do know really, but private issue), but of course I am using the Timeless skin, not Vector 2022. Still have the problem. RolandR (talk) 21:06, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Transclusion that isn't
See [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere&target=Template:WikiProject+Canada+Roads%2FProvinceName&hidelinks=1 this WhatLinksHere]. Apparently, Templates for discussion/Noincluded tags transcludes, which doesn't exist, but I cannot find where that transclusion occurs. What's going on here? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The page transcludes all templates listed at TfD. The transclusion will go away in a day or so when Templates for discussion/Log/2024 January 4 is closed. * Pppery * it has begun... 22:11, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Worth noting that a "transclusion" doesn't necessarily require any content be transcluded; almost anything that causes one page's content to be determined by the content of another page, even if indirectly, will count. Elli (talk &#124; contribs) 22:13, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Module:Noinclude tfd attempts to read the wikitext of each template at TfD (even if it doesn't exist), which is recorded as a transclusion. Certes (talk) 22:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Coding issue with a referenced caption & efn note...
I can't figure out what in the world I am doing wrong. Can someone please take a look at Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, specifically and tell me here how to fix it? I spent a lot of time on it earlier today and couldn't get the Cite error fixed. Thanks in advance, Shearonink (talk) 22:30, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There were several errors. I have fixed it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:41, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh! Thanks! Was hoping to do it myself but I'll take a look and remember for next time. Cheers. Shearonink (talk) 22:48, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines § User talk page size
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines § User talk page size. &#x0020;The discussion is aimed at workshopping a possible proposal to set an upper limit to user talk page size as an editing guideline. — Callitropsis🌲&#91;talk · contribs&#93; 05:50, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError
I got this error when trying to edit an article. I see this has happened before in 2020. Looks like someone at Help desk has filed a ticket at Phabricator, tracked at T352628. InfiniteNexus (talk) 07:17, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


 * @InfiniteNexus I encountered the same bug about 10 minutes ago. Bug now, it seems that the this DB bug is resolved. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 08:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I keep getting this error trying to edit Wellington (disambiguation). I'm able to edit other articles. older ≠ wiser 12:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I just got it, and reproduced, trying to do a small edit on Handball (disambiguation), something's fishy here.
 * [880bbfb7-540e-49ff-bd80-5d1f0880e872] 2023-12-04 13:11:04: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError"
 * --Joy (talk) 13:12, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * My new attempts there also get:
 * To avoid creating high replication lag, this transaction was aborted because the write duration (3.465854883194) exceeded the 3 second limit. If you are changing many items at once, try doing multiple smaller operations instead.
 * [5b6f2722-25fb-4736-a8a1-061b5bc2d481] 2023-12-04 14:31:18: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBTransactionSizeError"
 * --Joy (talk) 14:31, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * JFTR that edit went through in the meantime. And Phabricator indicates the developers are figuring it out. --Joy (talk) 17:05, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I also had errors on two edits in the last couple of hours. I didn't record the first but the second was   on .  Both worked after I used the browser's Back button and clicked Publish again. Certes (talk) 14:17, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Still getting an error on this. I was getting something about a transaction being too large and taking too long (>3 sec) for a couple attempts. This attempt I got
 * Attempts to edit my user sandbox page were successful.
 * Kimen8 (talk) 14:45, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've been getting this error this morning too: To avoid creating high replication lag, this transaction was aborted because the write duration (15.307519674301) exceeded the 3 second limit. If you are changing many items at once, try doing multiple smaller operations instead. [1cd8ddfe-f560-4300-b162-1d4d0448423c] 2023-12-04 16:19:03: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBTransactionSizeError" These aren't large changes I'm attempting. I have gotten a few edits through, but it's hit or miss. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:23, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems to be an issue with DB queries taking too long, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T352628#9379558 for more information NW1223&lt;Howl at me&bull;My hunts&gt; 16:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Got it when trying to edit Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica, but when I tried a second time, the edit went through fine. Cremastra (talk) 17:44, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

I got this type of error just now trying to edit Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. At least now I know what the problem is. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Database error
I'm trying to revert this unsourced/WP:CRYSTAL edit to 2007 Formula One World Championship, but I keep getting error messages of the form:

A database query error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. [38a2ed1b-239f-4448-841c-e65ec46331ef] 2023-12-04 08:28:23: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError"

I've tried a couple of different edit summaries, and I'm able to edit other articles. Could someone else please try reverting the edit? Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 08:32, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I tried to revert it and also got a DBQueryError. It looks like there is already a ticket filed on Phabricator; see Village_pump_(technical). Malerisch (talk) 08:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Am having the same problem at First Mithridatic War and another editor has reported similar problems at WP:Teahouse - Arjayay (talk) 11:52, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Have now edited First Mithridatic War - problem may be cleared/clearing? - Arjayay (talk) 12:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Me as well at Vista, California ... [ab2894fb-78ff-4187-a212-713464e91635] 2023-12-04 12:22:58: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError". Magnolia677 (talk) 12:25, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Same here, at Deer Park, New York: [a4dc9654-fbed-48be-8eb3-a597446272e9] 2023-12-04 12:32:07: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError" WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 12:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * And the same here (in the UK), from about 2 hours ago, editing Caligula, using MacBook. Sometimes it lets me edit but not save. Other times, it works fine but not for long. There's no pattern to it that I can discern. My Watchlist responds to changes in all other articles. Haploidavey (talk) 12:59, 4 December 2023 (UTC) Just tried a test edit, and was treated to the following:
 * I am getting this with many different articles. Mellk (talk) 13:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Database error

To avoid creating high replication lag, this transaction was aborted because the write duration (5.7858679294586) exceeded the 3 second limit. If you are changing many items at once, try doing multiple smaller operations instead.

[b08b554e-cf70-4cd8-8291-03dd2733d85a] 2023-12-04 13:01:46: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBTransactionSizeError"

Haploidavey (talk) 13:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

This is the kind I'm getting, and lots of them:

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Getting the same issue with the article Martin Artyukh. [85a67d40-833b-409f-a662-ba0486de9b09] 2023-12-04 15:51:16: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError" --BlameRuiner (talk) 15:52, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yup, I'm getting the same error across multiple articles - sometimes takes multiple attempts to get a change to save. Parsecboy (talk) 16:23, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Recovering from it?
When this error hits me, if I go "back" in the browser to get back to the text I was working on, all my changes are gone. This is actually weird behavior in Chrome. E.g., if I instead get an edit-conflict page, I can "Back" in the browser freely. But when this DB error happens, it's like it somehow messes up the page cache. Does anyone know of a way to recover the text that was being worked on? I have an article that did a whole lot of cleanup work in (probably a good half hour of it) and don't want to lose all that work if I can help it. I'm still sitting on the DB error page on that one. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Update: I took a gamble, and it turns out that clicking the Reload button worked (caveats: in Chrome, and without triggering another DB error; I have no idea what another browser would do, or what would happen if the DB error had recurred, and it might, since in trying to make a typo fix at another page I had to try five times, though each time I did it as a manual edit, not a reload).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:28, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * FWIW in my Firefox, the back button got me back into the previous state, with the content and summary fields intact, so I can keep retrying trivially. --Joy (talk) 14:33, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm in Microsoft Edge, and the back button gets me to the state pre-submission, with edits and summary in place. Though I am now taking a copy of the text before clicking Publish. Tacyarg (talk) 14:55, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm using Chrome on a chromebook and if I hit the Back button, I get the original article state from when I hit edit (i.e., I lost my changes and edit summary). I'm just going to wait until it seems to be resolved before making any more edits. Kimen8 (talk) 14:58, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Fixed?
T352628 claims the issue is fixed. I went back to retry my edit at Deer Park, New York and was successful. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 18:06, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It is indeed fixed. NW1223&lt;Howl at me&bull;My hunts&gt; 18:11, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yep, fixed now. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:54, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * FYI I just got this error (Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBTransactionSizeError") a few minutes ago, when attempting to edit FKA Twigs. My edit worked the second time I tried it. Funcrunch (talk) 17:45, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Map in infobox on Bowery isn't displaying
Anyone know why this might be happening? Jake Wartenberg (talk) 19:11, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This problem also affects Park Row (Manhattan), Worth Street, and Mott Street and probably many others. Worth Street is worst: I suspect a problem with the Wikidata that is read by . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:46, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The article specifies to non-conditionally add a mapbox (specifically maplink-road). This thus depends on the Q code being looked up and being available in OSM. If it is not, it will fail to draw the map. It seems that the relationship for Bowery in OSM has disappeared, I can only find the way parts. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:47, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, is there a way to specify some coordinates so we at least get something, even if the road isn't highlighted? Jake Wartenberg (talk) 04:24, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * On way is to populate  with the right values, and then use   to specify an existing map like Module:Location map/data/United States Lower Manhattan. In this case, that solution works but doesn't look great, so in the meantime I've disabled the map entirely rather than keep an obviously broken infobox in production. It can easily be re-enabled once a better solution is found.  Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 22:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've taken care of the rest of these. Jake Wartenberg (talk) 23:07, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Redrose64 and @Jake Wartenberg, by the way, this is an issue with most articles in Category:Streets in Manhattan. About two years ago, a user added Template:Maplink-road to all of the articles in that category, but most of these articles' Wikidata items may not be connected to OSM. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:09, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

MobileDiff coloring
Looking at Special:MobileDiff/1194770191 on my desktop computer using Vector2022, the header-legend has and. But then in the actual diff, deleted lines are appear as instead. I don't know enough about site CSS to know where to look. But I get the same result when I am not logged in, so it's not a personal CSS, gadget, or other preference changing it. DMacks (talk) 06:12, 11 January 2024 (UTC)


 * ping @Jdlrobson seems mf, or minerva is missing this new class definition ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:33, 11 January 2024 (UTC)


 * T354840 has been opened on this, appears to be an upstream problem, not something for us to fix here on enwiki. — xaosflux  Talk 10:49, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! DMacks (talk) 14:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Unable to publish an edit due to an error
Hello! I was just trying to edit this article and was unable to do so due to being roadblocked by the following error:

Any idea what may have happened here? Thanks :) Mercedes-Fletcher (talk) 23:57, 11 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Try again. Is it only happening when you try to make a specific kind of edit? If so, what? — xaosflux  Talk 00:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've tried it several times and its still happening. I dont think I did anything unique, just a handful of minor text edits. Mercedes-Fletcher (talk) 01:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Mercedes-Fletcher some editors have reported similar problems in T353889. I just made a change to the source of that article, could you try again? If it works, please let us know? If it still fails please record the exact step-by-step process you are following that leads to the error. — xaosflux  Talk 14:28, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Mobile web thank buttons
Recently, the mobile web UI has started showing thank buttons in diffs for edits by bots, which it hadn't been doing before. Is it intentional? Janhrach (talk) 11:44, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Janhrach, what happens if you try to thank a bot? — Qwerfjkl  talk  11:50, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It thanks the bot successfully. You can see that I thanked (as an experiment) from my thank log. Janhrach (talk) 12:02, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Janhrach, it looks like I (on the desktop interface) can also thank bots, so I think this is intentional. I vaguely remember seeing a phab ticket about thanking bots a while back. — Qwerfjkl  talk  12:03, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's T341388.  at mw:Extension:Thanks has been changed to true for Wikimedia wikis in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:15, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have updated Help:Notifications/Thanks. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:25, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Piped name inside ref
Is there any workaround that will make a wikilink for a parenthetically named page inside a ref? I scanned Disambiguation and found Help:Pipe_trick. Unfortunately, Vox has come up in two separate FAs, like this ref.

The style of those articles is to link to each occurrence of the source. Thank you. -SusanLesch (talk) 16:00, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Although the pipe trick doesn't work, ordinary piped links are fine. Just type the missing name in yourself: -- John of Reading (talk) 16:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Help:Pipe trick said: "Where the pipe trick doesn't work, the link must be written out in full manually." I think "written out in full" could be misinterpreted as not allowing pipes at all so I have added an example. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:51, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Perfect! Thanks much, John of Reading and PrimeHunter. Happy camper here. -SusanLesch (talk) 17:27, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

A news source I frequently use doesn't seem to get "converted" any more by Refill toolforge?
hi - not sure if this is the right place. A news publication in NJ USA called TapInto has a number of city-based news pages by different journalists. When I put a bare URL recently using the Refill Tool forge tool, it no longer seems to fill it? Wondering why and if there is a fix? I also opened a discussion awhile back on TapInto' talk page. Thanks in advance Bhdshoes2 (talk) 15:45, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Try posting your question at Wikipedia_talk:ReFill RudolfRed (talk) 00:13, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you!! Bhdshoes2 (talk) 19:54, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Overlapping issue with the "contents" box on List of Doctor Who episodes (2005–present)
Hi,

I use the vector skin to read wikipedia. So to reproduce my problem, you can look at the following page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_episodes_(2005%E2%80%93present)?useskin=vector. I use a +130% zoom (due to vision problems) on the last version of Firefox, and my laptop screen resolution is 1366*768.

In short, the "contents" box overlaps the table listing episodes. I can't use a smaller level of zoom due to my vision. So the box hides a good part of the content. Here's a partial screenshot of what I see: https://imgur.com/a/EVQJ19D

Of course, I can click on the "hide" button, and the box will stop overlapping. But I don't think I should have to do that in the first place. This is really annoying if I want to come back to this "contents" box at various points when reading the list; it forces me to click "hide" and "show" multiple times, this is absolutely not user-friendly.

It would be great if someone could try and fix that. I can't fix my vision issues (so changing my zoom level is not possible) and my screen settings works well for other tasks on my laptop - changing anything on my end could create a cascade of new issues on other websites or software I use, so I'd prefer to avoid changing anything on my end.

Thanks, 85.169.195.108 (talk) 20:27, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's what happens when editors combine a wide table with TOC right. Options include removing TOC right, switching to a different skin, putting clear after the TOC, moving TOC right higher in the page (maybe), or making the table narrower. Or, if you have extra money, getting a monitor with a higher resolution, or probably other options. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:38, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The cannot easily be moved up the page, unless either the lead is split, or another section is inserted before the Series overview. This is because the TOC must be the last element of the lead - if placed earlier in the lead, any content between it and the first section heading becomes inaccessible to screen readers. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:13, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Searching lists
Not so much a question as an "is this a reasonable thing to do and a reasonable way to go about it," but the past couple days I've been thinking about article-specific search boxes in, for example, lists of lists. (If you want background, start here or ask, but that's not particularly important; for an example, see List of films based on actual events.) I was looking around a bit and search box doesn't really seem to be intended for mainspace use (as we don't have proper subpages, among other reasons); so I threw together search lists based on the (very) small number of mainspace uses, which appear to all be adapted from one addition to a list a dozen years ago or so. (Courtesy ping to Michael Bednarek.)


 * Is this a reasonable thing to do? (I'm inclined to think that most good ideas are thought up and implemented by someone else before me.)
 * Having not really started many templates from scratch before, have I made any horrible mistakes here? (Or, other general comments/suggestions.)
 * Minor technical question: I know regex is generally discouraged when searching with insource; does the same apply to intitle, or is that generally fine?
 * And barring any issues in the above, I guess... feel free to use this if you know of a list that could use it. Hopefully it's helpful.

And hopefully some of that makes sense, rather than being an incomprehensible mess of gibberish to everyone except me. Cheers. LittlePuppers (talk) 00:30, 14 January 2024 (UTC)


 * From a user perspective, I tried it out here using an intentionally ambiguous term ("Waco", which is both an actual event and a settlement) and found that the list-specific results returned correct and relevant sub-lists, but not the articles themselves. This is a drawback, since I then had to go and open three new pages and conduct three more searches within those lists, which was no fun. Having said that, the mainspace search (for which I used "Waco film" and "Waco movie") was much less useful in general, returning too many irrelevant results and omitting relevant ones. Regards, Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 01:29, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Huh, I wasn't thinking of returning the articles in the lists. That's an idea, but I'm not seeing a great way to implement it - we have   but no  .  The closest you could probably get is checking if it's in a category, but it appears that there is often not quite a one-to-one correspondence between categories and lists.  (And then you run into a whole lot of other ambiguities, because there are things on a list that redirect to a section, so you couldn't find them by searching in titles, and searching texts would bring up a whole lot of irrelevant stuff, and so on.)  Hopefully searching the lists themselves should cover most cases reasonably well, though. LittlePuppers (talk) 03:05, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Sticky header
Is there a way to add a sticky header to a wikitable? If I use sticky header and add class="unsortable" to all the 17 columns it works, but looks ridiculous. I hope there is something simpler. IKhitron (talk) 01:14, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See Help:Table/Advanced, especially the hatnote. InfiniteNexus (talk) 07:46, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you. IKhitron (talk) 10:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Delayed reveal for images in notices
Some notices have images that are initially undisplayed, but which become visible when an editable input or textarea element receives the focus. The image remains even when focus moves elsewhere. I have seen this happen on two kinds of page, there may be others. The steps to reproduce for each are: I am using MonoBook skin, Firefox 121 and Windows 10. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:22, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * From any page history, watchlist etc. visit any non-current revision of a page, for example Special:PermaLink/1195410333. Observe that the yellow box at the top, beginning This is an old revision of this page, contains no image. Click on the "Edit" tab. Observe that the yellow box is still there, unchanged; also that there is a second yellow box, beginning You are editing an old revision of this page, which also lacks an image. Now click on any one of: the main edit window; the edit summary window; the "search" window in the left sidebar. Observe that both of the yellow boxes immediately gain a triangular yellow warning sign containing the "!" character.
 * Go to Special:MyPage/common.css. Click on the "Edit" tab. Observe that the pink box at the top, beginning Please note: CSS subpages should not contain confidential data, contains no image. Now click on any one of: the main edit window; the edit summary window; the "search" window in the left sidebar. Observe that the pink box immediately gains an octagonal red warning sign containing the "!" character.
 * I don't see any icons appearing when following these steps. The boxes remain iconless. Anomie⚔ 20:37, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For both cases, the element concerned is (it's empty} and initially there are no matching CSS rules. For the first case, when the edit box receives the focus, the following CSS rules suddenly appear in the DOM:   and for the second case they are   Presumably they're injected by JavaScript somewhere. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:56, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I see style rules like those in the  ResourceLoader module, which would also be loaded by the   module. I'd guess some script, gadget, or feature you have enabled is loading it, and I don't have whatever it is enabled. Anomie⚔ 23:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know what this  or   modules might be. I have turned off everything in User:Redrose64/common.js and the behaviour described above does not change. I have also found that it is replicable in all skins (including Cologne Blue and Modern), except for MinervaNeue. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Issue with the XTools gadget
Hey all, I've been experiencing an issue with the XTools gadget across all article space, where the HTML container for the infomation section (id: xtools) is duplicated; the first instance of it works as intended, the second contains only "." within its "#xtools_result" span tag. I'm using Firefox 121.  Frzzl  talk; contribs  15:46, 14 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @Frzzl it appears that issues related to xtool are asked to be reported here. — xaosflux  Talk 16:34, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much!  Frzzl  talk; contribs  16:41, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You load mw:XTools/ArticleInfo.js at all Wikimedia wikis with code in meta:User:Frzzl/global.js. If you have also enabled "XTools" (MediaWiki:Gadget-XTools-ArticleInfo.js) at Special:Preferences then I'm not surprised if something is duplicated but non-functional at the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Article under construction
Hi everyone,

I have a question and I figured someone must have asked before but I could not find an answer with MANY different questions asked in this section.

So, my question is if I am working on one area of the article (expanding it) and I am translating from one language to another (Serbian > English), what template can I use to "advise" everyone that I am working on this and I will remove this template as soon as work is done ?

I found few templates but I wanted to know what is the correct procedure if, say, for example, I want to put the content out in one edit and then add references in another, proof read on third edit, etc.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Боки Nuvola apps gaim.png Write to me! 20:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In use is usually a good choice. Make sure to remove it when you are done, or when you plan to stop editing for a few hours. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:28, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95 Thanks for your help!
 * What about if I am not done anything what I wanted and I want to go to bed ? Should I go with what @Redrose64 mentioned where bot will automatically remove it after 7 days.
 * Of course, I am planning to finish what I started within 1-3 days but just in case if something happens.
 * Боки Nuvola apps gaim.png Write to me! 21:38, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Either template is fine. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:28, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Jonesey95 Thank you ! Боки  Nuvola apps gaim.png Write to me! 07:57, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That, or . I think that there's a bot that will remove both of these if the page isn't edited for seven days. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

wikilinking to a PDF page
A public-domain multi-page PDF is hosted on the site. Let's say it's File:1901 phone book.pdf. If I wanted to link to page 47 in that PDF, what would the wiki-markup look like? —  Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 17:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/link-html-pdf-page-acrobat.html – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:19, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * But that link doesn't say anything about wiki-markup at all, though? —   Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 18:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * WikiPress 1 Wikipedia.pdf I don't think it's possible with a wikilink, i.e. wiki-markup like   . You can display page 47 with   in the image syntax like I did here. Clicking on the image goes to page 47 with the url https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:WikiPress_1_Wikipedia.pdf&page=47. Wikilinks do not allow query strings like  . I doubt there is a way to link it without using external link syntax with a url instead of a wikilink. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:31, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's exactly what I was wondering. That's a bummer, but thanks for the info!  —   Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 18:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Adding #page=x to the URL will link to that page in most browsers, but I don't know of a way off hand to link to the PDF itself instead of just the info/preview page, short of something like plainlink. LittlePuppers (talk) 18:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Could file a Phab ticket asking for something like File:1901 phone book.pdf to load that page when visited. Looks like the PDF viewer code is in MediaWiki core, so maybe tag it MediaWiki-File-management, as was done in this similar ticket. – Novem Linguae (talk) 07:48, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * "when visited" what counts as a visit ? The file page, a media link, a download link ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:44, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I was thinking the file page, but I just googled and apparently PHP can't read #theseTypesOfURLTags. So would need to be done in the LinkRenderer I guess (detecting File namespace and PDF type, then converting the #47 to &page=47). If it's worth the trouble. Just an idea at this point. – Novem Linguae (talk) 11:21, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

extendedconfirmed edit count threshold
Currently (as of 2024-01-13), extendedconfirmed status is conferred upon an account of sufficient tenure upon its reaching 501 edits, rather than upon 500 edits, as suggested by the WP:30/500 documentation. Dotyoyo (talk) 00:59, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that there has been a detrimental change to the way that the MediaWiki software works? I don't see what the problem is here. One edit either way won't make any difference, except to those confirmed users who wish to involve themselves in editing ECP pages, and so are making lots of edits with a view to passing the 500 (or 501) threshold as soon as possible. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:49, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There are a bunch of minor edge cases related to this, but none that are going to be changed technically. The relevant configuration item is  and the settings are:
 * The local pages describe to concept in plain language for the majority of users. If you think there is a tech issue with the process please report it as a bug. I would not support trying to work around by doing something like changing it to "499" in the configuration, converting to an implicit group, etc. — xaosflux  Talk 17:11, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Feel free to adjust plain language from something like "and at least 500 edits." to "has exceeded 500 edits". — xaosflux  Talk 17:12, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Off-by-one errors are common. I have checked several users at and you are right, they all became extended confirmed on edit number 501. I haven't examined the code but my guess would be a timing issue where the check for 500 edits is made before the updated edit count is available. 500 or 501 seems unimportant so I would just ignore it but Phabricator would be the right place for a bug report. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:38, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not a timing bug. auto promote is evaluated before an edit is made (as part of the permissions check). So AFTER 500 edits, on the next time your state is evaluated, you will be extendedconfirmed. That means that for your 501st edit you are extended confirmed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:02, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation. That sounds pretty much like my "timing issue" guess even if it's not considered a bug. I had not guessed you can apparently edit an extended confirmed page on your 501st edit, but neither will users with exactly 500 edits if they still see "View source" and no edit links. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:54, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Checking the times to the second of the events, it appears that edit no. 501 is saved one or two seconds before the log entry recording the user rights change. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As a slight aside, is there any way to get the edit screen for a page one cannot edit, even though (I hope) the Publish button wouldn't work? I would actually find that feature useful for previewing changes to nested protected templates that I'm considering requesting where creating a chain of sandboxes would be awkward. Certes (talk) 13:42, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Certes I don't think so, but a similar ask is in T301615 and I asked there. — xaosflux  Talk 14:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For the specific use case you provided, you can use User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:58, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For the specific use case you provided, you can use User:Jackmcbarn/advancedtemplatesandbox.js. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:58, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Errant spaces in URLs
This probably happens when cutting and pasting wikitext from an editor with automatic line wrap enabled. An example in two places:  and in archive-url after "wins-the". (this is on mswiki but it happens on every wiki). The example shows how it makes GIGO with bots. The question is, how to find and fix? Presumably the url field contains only URL information so one can stitch together pieces of text separated by spaces, but I don't think this would hold in practice, there could be many exceptions. It can also occur in other arguments like. The space(s) can occur anywhere within the URL. I have come across some articles where most URLs have this problem. -- Green  C  19:11, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Gadget Creation
When opening a non-existent gadget page, like Gadget:example, the message says "You need to log in or create an account to create this page", even though the namespace is deprecated and this is not possible. This may be an issue or oversight with Template:No article text or it may be intentional. -322UbnBr2 (Talk &#124; Contributions &#124; Actions) 06:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * It looks like No article text doesn't have a special case to deal with the gadget namespace, so it tries to detect what permissions are needed to create the page and... well, I don't know how deprecating a namespace works in MediaWiki (or wherever it's deprecated, if it's a WMF thing), but somehow it comes to the conclusion that you just need to be in the  group to do so. LittlePuppers (talk) 06:25, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Since there isn't a specific protection level applied (it's just... not possible), Module:Effective protection level comes to the conclusion that it's not protected, a talk page, or in draftspace, so you just need to be a registered user to create it. (Fun fact I just discovered: an IP can't create an IP user page, even for their own IP.)  To fix the error message, you'd have to modify that module to return 'impossible' (or something) for the gadget namespace, and then modify every template/module that depends on that (or, modify No article text and hope everything else can deal with it), and so on... LittlePuppers (talk) 06:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I have just added an edit request to Template talk:No article text. -322UbnBr2 (Talk &#124; Contributions &#124; Actions) 17:37, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Reading through my comments from yesterday... yeah, you could definitely fix it in the template without having to touch the module. (The module is the root cause of the present behavior, but the template could easily check the namespace and override.)  LittlePuppers (talk) 18:33, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Why bother? This seems like a corner case not worth fixing to me. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:35, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * On second thought I've just suppressed that sentence entirely for these two namespaces, to put an end to this ridiculous timesink. * Pppery * it has begun... 20:48, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-03
 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
 * Octicons-tools.svg Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets and personal user scripts may now use JavaScript syntax introduced in ES6 (also known as "ES2015") and ES7 ("ES2016"). MediaWiki validates the source code to protect other site functionality from syntax errors, and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. Previously, Gadgets could use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option. This option is no longer needed and will be removed in the future.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Bot passwords and owner-only OAuth consumers can now be restricted to allow editing only specific pages.
 * You can now thank edits made by bots.
 * An update on the status of the Community Wishlist Survey for 2024 has been published. Please read and give your feedback.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Starting on January 17, it will not be possible to login to Wikimedia wikis from some specific old versions of the Chrome browser (versions 51–66, released between 2016 and 2018). Additionally, users of iOS 12, or Safari on Mac OS 10.14, may need to login to each wiki separately.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module was deprecated and replaced with the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> module last year. A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses, and this week the temporary alias will be removed.

Future changes
 * Wikimedia Deutschland is working to make reusing references easier. They are looking for people who are interested in participating in individual video calls for user research in January and February.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W03"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 00:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)


 * A script has now been run to replace any remaining uses Note the script was buggy, you may want to check recent edits to scripts you maintain. Anomie⚔ 03:42, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

View tab and failing visual editor tab
I now have a view tab ("view images related to this article") and while the source editor tab/link works, the visual editor seems no longer working. There is also a link to replay edits being shown on the submenu instead perhaps of inside the tools dropdown. Shyamal (talk) 08:39, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * PS: the visual edit tab now works. Shyamal (talk) 08:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Still seems to occur sometimes Shyamal (talk) 15:53, 15 January 2024 (UTC) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector-2022 line 10 > eval at line 18: TypeError: $(...).textSelection is not a function
 * Does this still happen in WP:SAFEMODE? If not, does it still happen if you blank User:Shyamal/common.js? I noticed your tried to comment out some code in your common.js with  and  . Surprisingly, that parses without error, but it doesn't do what you expect. Use   and   instead. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:28, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Surprisingly, that parses without error Not so surprising if you know "ancient" web history. 😉 Way back when Netscape first introduced JavaScript in the mid 1990s, if you were to have used a tag then many browsers would have rendered the code as text in your page, since they didn't recognize the tag. So what they did is made   and (as the first non-whitespace non-comment token in a line)   in JavaScript be the start of a single-line comment, same as  . Then people could start their scripts with   so browsers that didn't recognize the  tag would treat the script itself as being a big HTML comment and therefore still not display it as text. All this is still required by the ECMAScript spec when inside web browsers for legacy reasons. Anomie⚔ 03:40, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh that's why often had  ! TIL. Nardog (talk) 03:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That reminds me of our use of <nowiki ></nowiki> in some scripts like MediaWiki:Gadget-XFDcloser-core.js:
 * js pages are evaluated as wikitext when they are saved. The result is not displayed on the saved page but the evaluation can have side effects like additions to link tables. If a script has parts which would be valid wikilink syntax then it can generate entries in WhatLinksHere or add the script to categories. This is avoided by the above where  is a JavaScript comment but not a wikitext comment, so the nowiki tags are active code when the page is evaluated as wikitext. This prevents the JavaScript code from being evaluated as wikitext. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:20, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I use this trick on all my user scripts. I think it's a good practice. It prevents subtle bugs such as 4 tildes turning into a signature. – Novem Linguae (talk) 09:41, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have blanked my common.js and yes, it does seem to work fine now! Thank you. I am surprised though by the sudden appearance of the issue... Shyamal (talk) 09:36, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have blanked my common.js and yes, it does seem to work fine now! Thank you. I am surprised though by the sudden appearance of the issue... Shyamal (talk) 09:36, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

How to limit Category display to subcats with non-zero contents
Is there a way to look at a diffusing category and only see the cats in it that themselves have anything in them? Use-case is a large cat of maintenance categories that each should be empty, where I want to find those that do need attention efficiently. DMacks (talk) 05:06, 16 January 2024 (UTC)


 * You could set up a Database report to run either ad hoc or regularly. Example for (almost certainly) the wrong category: User:Certes/Reports/Populated subcategories. Certes (talk) 11:55, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've written (with some difficulty) a CSS rule that on a category page will hide all the entries where the category link is followed by the text "(empty)":  I wanted to write the selector as   but for some reason my browser (Firefox 121) doesn't like the sequence comma-space-character in an attribute selector. Anyway, the CSS rule goes in Special:MyPage/common.css, because it works in all skins. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I suspect DMAcks wants an option but still be able to see empty subcategories without logging out. Assuming your normal skin is not MonoBook, if you only save the above CSS in Special:MyPage/monobook.css and install User:PrimeHunter/In MonoBook.js in then you can click "In MonoBook" on a category page to view it in MonoBook where empty subcategories will be hidden. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:11, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Minor edit shows large removal of bytes
Special:diff/1195384588 shows that „User talk:Rusty4321“ was added by Rusty4321.

View history shows that this edit makes a difference of −16,430 bytes.

What has happened there? Doesn't look normal. Killarnee (talk) 21:31, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * says:


 * Octicons-tools.svg Pages that use the JSON contentmodel will now use tabs instead of spaces for auto-indentation. This will significantly reduce the page size.
 * This has apparently also been done for the contentmodel "MassMessageListContent" used by that page. The diff doesn't show the real changes in the underlying page for that contentmodel. It shows a simplified representation of the changes without the change in the format used by the contentmodel. The page source before and after shows the change if you examine the whitespace at the start of lines. I don't know a way to display the "real" diff. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Template causing category loop
The template call returns the value Nonconformist hymnwriters from Northern Ireland. This causes to put  inside itself. How do we resolve this category loop? It's reported at Database reports/Self-categorized categories. The template has only one watcher; judging by the page history, it's BHG who is sitebanned and indeffed. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:14, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I've just removed the template and added manual parents. That's what BHG did when I pointed out a similar issue at Category:Dancers from Northern Ireland before she was banned. The redirect Category:Irish nonconformist hymnwriters is clearly wrong IMO, but I don't have the energy to care further. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 00:22, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Random article
Hi all, Is there any way to filter the output of Special:Random, perhaps with a script? I'm not particularly keen on e.g. any sort of sport, minute sea snails, DNA or proteins, villages in Iran or Poland or US gubernatorial elections. Cheers, MinorProphet (talk) 21:06, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I suppose you could write a script that fetches a random page, and then discards it and picks a new one if it matches certain strings.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1705440699885:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  21:31, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You could use Special:Randomincategory to try something in a random category. — xaosflux  Talk 23:19, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You mean a random page in a category, the category won't be random.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1705481000935:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  08:43, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Then it wouldn't be random ;) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I could write a script if I knew how to, but I don't. Is there any chance of someone having a go if it wouldn't take too much time or trouble? MinorProphet (talk) 23:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Vector 2022 overrides personal .css
Following a discussion at the Help Desk about Level 5 and 6 headers, I experimented with changing the format of those headers in my Common.css, and also in my Vector-2022.css, but nothing made any difference. Until, that is, I changed from the default Vector 2022 skin to Monobook, whereupon my chosen formatting immediately appeared. I am using the latest update of Chrome on Linux (Lubuntu).

I know that other parts of my Common.css are active. Using F12 to show the HTML and Computed attributes, it appears that the Common.css format is used, but is then overridden by the Vector 2022 default; however, I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about web rendering to understand why.

Is there a way to format these headers under Vector 2022? And is anything else, possibly of greater import (as those header levels are almost never used) that is also blocked by the default skin? -- Verbarson talkedits 21:27, 16 January 2024 (UTC)


 * CSS is a programming language. It follows logic. When you don't know about this logic, then it is difficult to make it work correctly. It is not vector 2022 overriding your choices, it is you not having specified your overrides to a level that they apply correctly in multiple situations. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:02, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Specifically, you have to understand the concept of CSS specificity. As 3mi1y stated !important will generally allow you to raise your specificity to very high, so that you don't have to worry too much about what others have specified. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:55, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The quick and easy way is to add !important to the relevant rules. <span style="display:inline-block;transform:scale(-1,1)rotate(-30deg);">&#x2130; mi1y<sub style="color:#b766d2;">&#x29fc;T&middot;C&#x29fd; 07:56, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For "quick and easy", read "quick and dirty". The  annotation is a cop-out, its main problem is that you then need to also use   on subsequent rules if you want them to override the one with  . Usually it's better to increase the specificity of the selector and forget all about  . The only times that I use   are when increasing the specificity won't make a difference - this happens in two situations: (i) the declaration that I'm trying to override already has a  ; (ii) the declaration that I'm trying to override is inside a   attribute. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In general, I agree, and I wouldn't suggest this to someone working on a product of any sort. In personal CSS overrides, I add (iii) I want to override upstream CSS unconditionally, just do what I say and don't make me reverse engineer things :) <span style="display:inline-block;transform:scale(-1,1)rotate(-30deg);">&#x2130; mi1y<sub style="color:#b766d2;">&#x29fc;T&middot;C&#x29fd; 09:43, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I will grant that I do not understand CSS very deeply - I was just following suggestions given in the Help Desk. However,
 * The rules have !important specified.
 * They work in Monobook
 * What else must I change to make my common.css header formatting work in Vector 2022? (My vector-2022.css no longer has active code) -- Verbarson talkedits 09:23, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hard for me to properly debug CSS on my phone in bed, but one thing I do see is that the  for   is missing  . It applies to individual styles, not to the block as a whole. I don't know if that's your only problem, though.  <span style="display:inline-block;transform:scale(-1,1)rotate(-30deg);">&#x2130; mi1y<sub style="color:#b766d2;">&#x29fc;T&middot;C&#x29fd; 09:54, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Since the underline still appears for h6 headers in MonoBook, I deduce that !important is not required. Since underline does not appear in h5 or h6 in Vector 2022, there is indeed some other problem specific to that skin. (Currently using Chrome on Edge, but the same result happened using Chrome on Lubuntu). -- Verbarson talkedits 10:30, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In this case, the problem isn't even specificity. The problem is that you're targeting  while in Vector 2022 there is no such element (it uses  rather than ). If you just do   and   it should work even without  . Anomie⚔ 12:33, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Tested (without !important) and working on Vector 2022 and MonoBook.
 * Thank you all for your help. -- Verbarson talkedits 12:43, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

HotCat vs. uncategorized template
An issue has been brought to my attention by another editor, involving the use of HotCat to add categories to a page that has been tagged with uncategorized. Specifically, what's happening is that if they try to add categories to an uncategorized category, then if the uncat tag is the only thing on the page everything works fine, but if there's a "usage note" on the category before the uncategorized tag, then adding a category fails to remove the uncategorized tag and it ends up having to be removed manually.

I tried test-categorizing a few of the categories in, and was able to replicate the same results.

Obviously the presence of other text on the category shouldn't change how HotCat behaves, and it should remove the uncategorized tag either way. So could somebody with more expertise in tool coding than I've got take a look at this? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 16:11, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The two notification icons at the top of every page are blurry.
The two notification icons at the top of every page are blurry. I don't know if this is a css or javascript issue or just something else. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 15:08, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * They are not blurry for me. Can you share a screenshot? Matma Rex talk 17:09, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * They are no longer blurry, It must of been a css issue because I have a heavily modified css & not all of it works properly on every device, although I don't know what in it would have caused the issue. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 17:59, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Turns out they ar eonly blurry on chromebooks. 😎😎PaulGamerBoy360😎😎 (talk) 19:52, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

addPortlet not working
I am using the following code for a script:

I have refreshed cache and the menu that its supposed to create is not showing up. Is this an error on my part or does this not work? First time using Village Pump so please forgive me if this is the wrong place to be asking this.

I am using: Chrome v120.0.6099.235 Vghfr (talk) 19:01, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You have created User:Vghfr/EasyTemplates/Easytemplates.js which also defines  but I see no attempt to run the script in your account. It doesn't happen just because you create a random js page in your userspace. Special:Preferences has links to the pages which run automatically, some of them only if you have the corresponding skin setting. You can for example add this to  (or test code directly there with preview):


 * It works for me. Does that solve your problem, or were you already running the code in some way like your browser console? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:20, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, oops! I didn't think to add it to my common for some reason. Thanks a lot! Vghfr (talk) 22:47, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Looking for help setting up Turkish wiki news feed for wikifeeds service
Hi, I am working on the wikifeeds service and fixing the feeds and hoping to add more features such as a news feed which isn't currently implemented on the wiki. I can probably copy a news request template from other wikis but I assume that the Turkish Wiki would need a bot to grab news from Turkish news media sources and place them in specifically named pages. I am just starting to look at the news feed capability and how it is implemented in other language wikis, but anyone with insights about this would be very helpful. SBailey (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @SBailey (WMF) is this implemented elsewhere (like here)? If so can you point to the specifications that are already in use? — xaosflux  Talk 23:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know Wikifeeds but there are pages about it at mw:Wikifeeds and wikitech:Wikifeeds. The first says:
 * : current news, irrespective of day requested. This item is only available for a few wikis right now: da, de, el, en, es, fi, fr, he, ko, no, pl, pt, ru, sv, vi. Latest list and implementation if you want to help us expand it to more languages.
 * The link has a line saying:
 * I don't know Turkish. Template:In the news does not have an interlanguage link to the Turkish Wikipedia (trwiki), and their main page tr: does not have a news section. That's all I can say. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:38, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know Turkish. Template:In the news does not have an interlanguage link to the Turkish Wikipedia (trwiki), and their main page tr: does not have a news section. That's all I can say. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:38, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Vector 2022 skin display problems
The Vector 2022 skin has just started giving me some very odd displays when I look at my talk page or contributions list. See the attached image. What's going on? <b style="color:#7F007F">Ritchie333</b> <sup style="color:#7F007F">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(cont)  09:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Main Page shows this for me, other pages OK. -- Verbarson talkedits 09:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ...and it's stopped. -- Verbarson talkedits 09:49, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks like it's not loading fully. Happens occasionally to me. I find a hard refresh normally sorts it out. Nthep (talk) 10:01, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hard refresh is in Windows browsers (not F5 or the reload button alone). See more at Bypass your cache. With two users seeing the same problem at the same time, there may also have been a temporary issue with our servers. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Or, it's Thursday. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:07, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Seems to happen every week, for some reason. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I saw that too, on an article, but it's gone now. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:45, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Non-admin deletion by 'bot?
Is article / category deletion now available to non-admins?


 * Non-admin close: WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 January 1
 * 'bot with admin rights then enacts the deletion:

Seems a little risky. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:25, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's an adminbot, i.e a bot and admin simultaneously. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 16:35, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that these closures need to be listed on the fully-protected Categories for discussion/Working before the bot will act on them. —Cryptic 16:38, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, that explains it. Here is where TimRollPickering (a human admin) effectively gave it permission to act. Thanks Andy Dingley (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's a bot that has admin rights, and the bot operator is an admin; there is no technical change. — xaosflux  Talk 16:49, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Minor thing with afdstats.toolforge.org
I've noticed that if I nominate an article for afd, and then, during the discussion, !vote for something else (keep, redirect etc), I will not be "(Nom)" in the stat page Vote-column, like in these examples: Articles for deletion/Fatma Hatun Articles for deletion/BLIT (short story). It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, and presumably I'm not the only (Nom) who change their mind on occasion. It seems that making a bold outcome !vote makes afdstats "forget" about (Nom).

"(Nom (flip-flop))" perhaps? ;-) Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:43, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That external tool asks users to submit questions and feedback to this page: User talk:Enterprisey. — xaosflux  Talk 16:51, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Tried that User_talk:Enterprisey so I thought I'd try here. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:11, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

editing window bolding
In the editing window, with syntax highlighting enabled, everything under a third-level header is now rendered in boldface. Anybody know why? —  Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 21:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * T355290. Izno (talk) 21:40, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Can this article get fixed
Can someone please fix the article India at the 2022 Asian Games. There is a dropdown issue in the page. The sections are collapsed/open by default. There is no option to close the sections. If someone can't understand me please see the discussions that have taken place at the article's talk page. To clarify I just like many others is facing this on mobile (Android), my browser is Google Chrome, latest version no updates required. Same issue with both Desktop and mobile version. Don't know about Laptop/Computers and other devices.

See: Pinging some participants who may help in explaining more. @Ku423winz1, @Kumarpramit, @Magentic Manifestations, @Jroberson108, @Fade258.  ShaanSengupta  <i style="color:#FF7518;">Talk</i> 02:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Talk:India at the 2022 Asian Games
 * Talk:India at the 2022 Asian Games
 * Talk:India at the 2022 Asian Games
 * Talk:India at the 2022 Asian Games
 * Talk:India at the 2022 Asian Games
 * @Shaan Sengupta The software that adds mobile phone specific functionality, such as collapsible sections, does not run on pages with more than 1000 images for performance reasons. This page goes over the limit due to the hundreds and hundreds of flags, medals and icons. There's an open task to fix this at T318991. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 03:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay now I understood, if someone here knows how to use the phabricator website to fix this, please do it for the Wikipedia article India at 2022 Asian Games. Thanks. Ku423winz1 (talk) 03:18, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * They cannot fix individual pages - the wiki software needs fixing. The mobile software needs to be rewritten so that it is fast enough to work on pages with lots of images (this seems to have already been done) then they need to remove or increase the limits. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 03:25, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, I've removed a number of purely decorative images from the article, and it appears to work for me on mobile now. CMD (talk) 04:21, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes it worked. Thanks for helping. Ku423winz1 (talk) 04:25, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you @Chipmunkdavis. It worked. The page is finally ok.  ShaanSengupta  <i style="color:#FF7518;">Talk</i> 04:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry for my misunderstanding, but anyway someone here has solved the issue. Thanks. Ku423winz1 (talk) 04:27, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No worries. Yes, someone has solved that issue. Thanks for that. Fade258 (talk) 04:35, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

How to make a list of text into two columns side by side?
Hi all

I'm working on some documentation and I want to use some specific formatting, however I can't work out how to make lists I've created into the format I want, everything I try breaks the font or something else. Can someone suggest a way to turn this list into two lists side by side?

<p style="color: #757575; font-size: 100%;padding-left:0px;margin-top:0x;"> List item 1 List item 2 List item 3 List item 4 List item 5 List item 6 List item 7 List item 8

Thanks very much John Cummings (talk) 07:23, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

UPDATE:

I worked out how to do it with flex columns, I'm sure there are other ways but this seems to work

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 07:58, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Those aren't lists, they're single pieces of text interspersed with tags. If intended to be treated as a list, it's an accessibility issue, see MOS:NOBR; and dividing it into two groups causes a further accessibility issue. A properly-formatted multi-column list might look like this:


 * List item 1
 * List item 2
 * List item 3
 * List item 4
 * List item 5
 * List item 6
 * List item 7
 * List item 8


 * The number of columns that you see will depend upon a number of factors, such as screen width. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:00, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * thanks very much, can you tell me how to split it into two lists that sit side by side? I know there used to be a way but I think it was discontinued? John Cummings (talk) 12:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not really, unless you say which page this is in relation to. Real situations are much easier to sort out than hypotheticals. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:32, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Have a look at Template:Div_col. Either col-begin, col-break and col-end or col-float-begin, col-float-break and col-float-end should do what you want. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 14:02, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * With the caveat that those split a single list into two, which is what I am cautioning against. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 14:30, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Search Special:Contributions for IPv6 only?
I am investigating a type of spam/vandalism coming from unregistered users with IPv6 addresses. Is there a way to filter Special:Contributions to show only contributions from IPv6 users? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 10:40, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Barnards.tar.gz that page already only outputs the type of IP you put in. Are you seeing something different? What are the steps you are following? — xaosflux  Talk 11:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * To clarify, I'd like to see all contributions from all IPv6 users. If I could enter ::/0 it would give me what I'm looking for, but I think the page won't allow a CIDR range wider than /32. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You can filter Special:RecentChanges to only show IP edits, but I don't think there's a way to differentiate between IPv4 and IPv6 editors there. --rchard2scout (talk) 17:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

What is the colour coded formatting support called in source editor on English Wikipedia and how can I ask for it to be enabled on Meta?
Hi all

When I use source editor on some pages on English Wikipedia (like this one) I get really helpful colour coding of what I'm writing, green when the formatting works, red when it doesn't etc. Can I ask what this is called and how could I request that it is added to Meta?

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 08:03, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It should be available there, press the pencil to the left of "> Advanced". Sjoerd de Bruin   (talk)   08:58, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, when I press the pencil I just get the options for source or VE, nothing else, and nothing that says advanced :( John Cummings (talk) 09:32, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There are two pencils. The first is actually a marker and this turns on syntax highlighting. The second pencil switches between Source editing and the Visual Editor. If you are using Visual Editor or the 2017 WikiEditor editors, the marker is in the dropdown menu left from the pencil. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:46, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, weirdly I don't have two pencils... but I did find it in a drop down menu. John Cummings (talk) 12:54, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It could be that the VE wikitext editor has been enabled as default on Meta. Sjoerd de Bruin   (talk)   13:13, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Such features are called syntax highlighting. We have several. See Syntax highlighting. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much . John Cummings (talk) 12:56, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Need Help, for Missing Infobox items
Hi Supports, How to find the missing or empty Infobox parameters, for e-g, Template:Infobox Indian constituency this template have multiple parameters, "| constituency_no" and "| constituency_no = " is blank/empty. Kindly suggest any other tools - IJohnKennady (talk) 17:22, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * If tracking a parameter is important, you can add a tracking category to the template. So for this, you can add something like  Gonnym (talk) 17:52, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Is there any gadget/style to make categories one column?
I would like to have only one column of pages in a category. I assume this can be done with a CSS snippet but my CSS is very poor. Maybe something like that already exists? ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 00:32, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Nardog (talk) 03:45, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Nardog it worked! Thank you very much. ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 08:00, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Opening a portlet link in a new tab
I'm trying to add a Special:RandomInCategory link to my sidebar on category pages, and I've succeeded in getting the portlet link present and working, but I'd like to make it open the random in category link in a new tab. How would I go about doing that? I can't see anything about it on Help:Customizing toolbars. Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 13:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Add  as the line following  . Nardog (talk) 13:27, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That worked, thank you! :] Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 13:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * addPortletLink actually returns the element that it adds, so you don't have to look it up from scratch in the document. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:23, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

What is removing the button that this script adds to the search bar?
I'm trying to write a userscript to add a "WP" button to the search bar; it's intended to make it easier to look up shortcuts. For example, I can type "AIV" as a search query, then click "WP", and it will take me immediately to Administrator intervention against vandalism. This is what I have so far:

It does work as expected, but a few seconds after it runs, the button it creates is somehow removed. This still happens with  added to the URL, so it isn't caused by one of the other userscripts I have installed. It seems like something in the default JavaScript does this; is there a way to stop it, or work around it?

(reposted from the Help Desk) Luke10.27 (talk) 06:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The page is replaced (injected/infused) with a javascript based version after a few seconds. So when you add your modification on the original served DOM, it might be that that DOM is removed and replaced with a JS generated new DOM. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:32, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In general, I'd say that it should be faster to type WP: yourself, rather than having to switch between keyboard an your mouse to hit the button ;) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:34, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Filtering bots from logs?
Apologies if this is a really obvious question but is there a way to filter bots out of Special:Log and view only actions by humans? ST47ProxyBot, for example, makes so many blocks that it makes the log essentially useless. <b style="color: teal; font-family: Tahoma">HJ Mitchell</b> &#124; <span style="color: navy; font-family: Times New Roman" title="(Talk page)">Penny for your thoughts? 12:52, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not yet. This is T21322 (circa 2009), which is mostly blocked by T18816 (circa 2008). A user javascript may be able to delete those lines from your view. — xaosflux  Talk 15:10, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * HJ Mitchell, try adding  to your CSS page.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1705938079628:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> —  Qwerfjkl  talk  15:41, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Template coding
In Short description, I have seen it written into the infobox as short description; I think I've also seen it being changed from upper to lower case manually, but can't give an instance, however I will be sure to memorise any such change in future. Is there any difference? Normally, the first character is not case-conscious, as with a wikilink? I've always written using an initial capital. I've just added a hat to Split link, and it's showing in lower case, as added in his diff. Clicking-through to Shortdesc helper from the edit summary is immediately beyond my comprehension. Is this (lower case initial character in infobox) an anomaly written into the gadget? As the infobox presence does not conform to the clickable link in the edit summary, and the tool writes both simultaneously.

I've also added a clarification word into the short descripion as it was too vague or specialised, IMO, just using the phrase "knot theory" compared to mathematical knot theory. Thanks. 82.13.47.210 (talk) 22:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As per, the MediaWiki configuration for English Wikipedia is set to require all pages to start with an uppercase letter. Thus any attempt to access any page starting with a lower case letter, such as short description, is converted by the MediaWiki software to access the equivalent page with the first letter uppercased. isaacl (talk) 22:40, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There is never a need to alter template transclusions in that manner, e.g. from to, or vice-versa. Some people use scripts that make such alterations, and I do wish they wouldn't. It makes absolutely no difference to either the page loading time or its appearance, but it does take time for people like me to check among all the other useless crud that clogs up watchlists. Too much of that, and the real worthwhile changes get missed. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:53, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * - my sentiments entirely - some things I see make me doubt myself - I've enquired about cosmetic edits previously, such as lining up the = sign in infoboxes; I've added alt text that scrolls around two or three lines, so can't see the point in excessive wsp. I know some are using visual editor, though and I'm not familiar with it so shouldn't judge. Also just posted on a user talk the variations in infoboxes that make me look them up, seeing the red error on the editing pane: image=, image-alt=, static_image=, and I just wish there was more standardisation. Thanks.--82.13.47.210 (talk) 02:02, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There's a comment, I believe in the MOS, to the effect that the desirable capitalization form for templates is the 'native form' and I would take that as what is documented. No apparent standardization here. Anyone therefore changing the uppercase 'S' on this template to lowercase at anytime should presumably be asked to cease and desist, there is no mandate. There was an interesting discussion on the effect of incorrect capitalization on page load times a while ago however it was deleted, a millisecond here or there not considered to be of consequence. Neils51 (talk) 17:22, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There is no "millisecond here or there"; when a template (or other page) is retrieved, the page name has its first character uppercased in order to perform the access, but it takes exactly the same time to convert "s" to "S" as it does to leave "A" alone. I won't go into the details of the computer logic, but the necessary operations are so simple that we're talking in terms of nanoseconds. If somebody is altering the case of a first letter, the amount of time taken to serve the page in edit mode and then save the resultant edit takes much, much longer than the uppercase-first-letter function uses. In short: WP:DWAP. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:35, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Need help parsing JSON from within wikipedia (in a user subpage)
I am trying to grab JSON data from here, and I'm not sure how to grab a specific piece of data, such as. I want the script to search the JSON for this specific piece of data and then assign a variable to it. I tried using, but it seems to error out somewhere. I'm not great with JSON (nor javascript) and I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction. The script is here Vghfr (talk) 03:11, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Vghfr, works for me. You don't need to JSON parse the data when you're fetching it in json form (which is what the ctype does). Does that help?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1705947888923:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> —  Qwerfjkl  talk  18:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Works perfectly. Thanks a lot for the help! Vghfr (talk) 18:39, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Measuring the total number of references to a specific domain, search and massviews give very different answers
Hi all

I'm trying to help FAO understand how much their website is used as a reference source for Wikipedia articles. I know of two ways of doing this:


 * 1) The search tool in Wikipedia, this gives a total number of articles which is quite helpful.
 * 2) Massviews which gives a total number and also pageviews (which is really helpful)

However there is a problem, the search tool give me a total of 6,994, but Massviews gives me a total of 5,708, which is a really big differece.

Does anyone know why this difference is happening? Is the search tool in Wikipedia counting every instance of a URL and Massviews counting only every article? Or is something else happening?

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 08:50, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Could the difference be articles with fao.org in the final article text and those with fao.org in the source. Some links may not show fao.org in the output. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 13:09, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We also have an index of links that can be queried via Special:LinkSearch. Unfortunately this cannot be filtered on other aspects very easily. For that you'd have to descend into Quarry and write a custom query. There might also be differences caused by fao.org as a distinct domain, vs fao.org as domain set. And search can only see the url as a written text. If there is a template generating links, that the normal insource search won't be able to spot those of course. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, the "External link" option under "Source" at https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews gives all pages which actually have an external link in the rendered output. It doesn't care whether the link is in the source or from a template. https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/faq/ indicates it uses the same data as Special:LinkSearch. There can be many reasons for your insource search to return pages without a link. For example if the link is in commented out or otherwise inactive code, or the string "fao.org" is not used to make a link to the domain fao.org. I found some citations with  but no url to that. The insource search can also miss pages which do have links, if the link comes from a used template. insource only searches the saved wikitext of the page itself. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:25, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Let's make Template:convert go away.
I'm tired of reading "465 feet (142 m)". It's ugly and it breaks up the flow of reading. Why can't we have the user specify whether they want sane units or freedom units in some user setting and then everything automatically gets displayed for them how they want it? It probably doesn't even require any software changes, just a version of convert which wraps things in  and   and a trivial amount of CSS to pick which you see. RoySmith (talk) 03:49, 14 January 2024 (UTC) PAGE ]]) 21:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Most readers aren’t logged in. With that said, it is possible to customise content based on the location the reader is in - we could give imperial units to readers in the US, Myanmar, and Liberia, and metric units to everyone else. BilledMammal (talk) 03:58, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I knew somebody was going to bring up IP users. They can make accounts.  Or things can fall back to how they are now for IPs.  Or WMF can figure out how to let IP users set preferences.  Whatever.  In the case of a logged-in user, setting which units you want should not be a function of location, it should be a function of what units you prefer to see.  Maybe geolocation could be a first guess at a default, but the user should certainly be able to  override that in their prefs. RoySmith (talk) 04:12, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * So what about certain technical usages? For instance, certain projectile weights or diameters are always presented in the reliable sources under a certain unit. I've never seen 20-pounder Parrott rifle or the 8-inch Columbiad referred to as the 9.07-kilogram Parrott rifle or the 20.32-centimeter Columbiad. So do we either just not convert these things and leave metric readers unfamiliar with the size/weight of these projectiles or automatically convert them and create made-up nomenclature that's not going to be found anywhere else. Hog Farm Talk 04:25, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , what is preventing you from editing the sandbox of convert to add the classes, creating appropriate test cases, and then documenting how editors can set up custom CSS to show one class or the other? Also, why not start this discussion at Template talk:Convert? – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * None of this is a reasonable response to the concern. Sorry. Your suggestion to mark certain kinds of units up is fine, but "I want it my way" isn't. There is a reason we removed auto date formatting, and logged out users are it. Remember, they are the 99%, not you. Izno (talk) 20:40, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I concur that the autodate formatting and the issues surrounding it are a good precedent to take into account. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:46, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Some regions, nations, and people use and (more importantly) understand a mix of imperial and metric units. A preference could be set for those people logged-in, but those logged out would be left with articles that don't suitibly explain themselves.  —   Fourthords  &#124; =Λ= &#124; 21:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can also see problems where the units are normally given in one set or the other (eg 500m dash) so there should be a non-user preferred version shown first with the converted unit later. M asem (t) 04:34, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Me personally, I like seeing both units of measurement, so it doesn't bother me at all. ♠ JCW555  (talk)  ♠ 04:31, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Australia has been metric for 50 years, but we still talk 8-pound babies, 12-foot tinnies and quarter-acre blocks. The present system is fine, but we too often see inappropriate degrees of precision. Doug butler (talk) 06:05, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * 12-oz tinnies, surely? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 10:38, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's a small boat used for fishing. On a more relevant issue, I agree that inappropriate precision is something more important. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 11:24, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And there was me thinking it was a tube of amber nectar. No worries. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:27, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * WP:WHAAOE - Tinnie. Mitch Ames (talk) 07:23, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This is not a technical topic. The correct venue is Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. Nardog (talk) 11:32, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It is technical in implementation details, there might be difficulties this forum could raise. -- Green  C  21:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised convert doesn't already have a way to configure a default system, for logged in users. I agree there is too much complexity reading 2 systems, by default. If a measurement is globally preferred in one system, convert can have an override switch that will force display of both systems ignoring the user config to limit to one system (unless that one is the same as the globally preferred system).  --  Green  C  21:04, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Template talk:Convert/Archive 2. That said, the problem with any user preference is that it leaves the question of non-logged in readers (probably the majority) unanswered. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:37, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's easy, they default to status quo, showing both systems. -- Green  C  19:14, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Insulting a broad swath of editors like that isn't exactly collegial... IMO its neither ugly or breaks up the flow of reading. Horse Eye&#39;s Back (talk) 07:31, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * IMO, adding some spans with classes as suggested in the original post would be an easy and uncontroversial technical solution. This would not affect IP editors nor most logged in editors, who would still get to see both. Editors that care about such things could add the appropriate code to their User:YourName/common.css, such as, which would hide the undesired units only when logged into their account. Simple, uncontroversial. This could be done with a template protected edit request at Module talk:Convert. – Novem Linguae  (talk) 07:36, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We should keep using convert to overcome the global tyranny of the metric system. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:46, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Conversions are often necessary, and allows us to keep track of the original, referenced measurement. Well-meaning editors often convert numbers back and forth until they have changed considerably; keeping the original unit in the template helps avoid this. I would hate to forced to see only inches and grains and furlongs just because my IP address happens to be located in a retrograde, anti-knowledge society. But by all means, give people the option to hide additional numbers if they find them annoying. On the other hand, I agree we ought to stop converting numbers which do not need converting - automobile wheels, for instance, are measured in inches everywhere on the globe, and people keep applying conversion templates which is utterly inappropriate. Similarly, I bet some zealot/inattentive editor wrote "Royal Mile (1 mi)" about Edinburgh.  Mr.choppers &#124;   ✎  21:29, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not always. The Dunlop Denovo run-flat tyre used an associated belt of pressurised cans which couldn't be fitted once the tyre was on the rim, and the tyre couldn't be worked over the cans without damaging them, so special bolt-together wheels were designed. These could be split in order to fit a tyre and the can belt. Since the wheel construction was very different from the traditional form, the manufacturers took the opportunity to start with a clean sheet in terms of dimensions, and used a metric rim - 310 mm on the Austin Mini 1275GT and 375 mm for the Rover 3500 (SD1), for example. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 01:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Clearly some zealot needs to add a template to clear up misinformation, as some would say it should be "Royal Mile (1,814ish m)", given the Mile in question is Scottish. CMD (talk) 02:10, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * We have the wonderfully over precise Nthep (talk) 14:12, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * To reiterate per comments above, for the one percent of readers who would be affected by an output choice, this choice would introduce false precision in some cases, would suppress the original unit of the source material in others and would introduce ORish phrasing in some cases (beer comes in pints in Ireland, TV screens are in inches in Korea, speedometers show miles per hour in the UK, cocaine is in kilos in the US, &c.) A measurement might even be "globally preferred" in some contexts, but not others (the UN uses nautical miles; astronomers worldwide use their own units).  Focus institutional energy on false precision issues or something like this instead.  — <span style="border:1px solid #93010b;background:#ef0000;padding:2px;color:#efe6e6;text-shadow:black 0.2em 0.2em 0.3em; font-family: Georgia;"> AjaxSmack  16:22, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In theory you could just make the template output something like  and then people could add something like   to their custom CSS, which means that the default for everyone else remains unchange. The tricky technical implementation would be how you mark up something like 12 in (or any other case where both metric and imperial units aren't present). The only downside would be a significant increase in the post-expand include size of the template, which can have a cascading effect. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK

As an American who prefers sane units but often has to use freedom units for compatibility with people who value freedom over sanity (i.e. preferring metric but often using US customary units to avoid confusion), I appreciate having both. I wouldn't mind only showing one by default, but if that is done, I would definitely want a way to show both as an option. Luke10.27 (talk) 06:30, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Please can someone help me with a formatting issue with flex columns?
Hi all

I would really appreicate some help with flex columns, I'm working on some documentation and there is some kind of fault with flex columns (or the documenation) which means when I try to make 3 columns in a line (doesn't matter if the columns included text or images) the second or third column always gets pushed to the bottom instead of just having 3 columns side by side. Does anyone know how to fix it?

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) John Cummings (talk) 09:30, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Flex columns just have a default minimum width (as stated on the page) of 360px, so they don't work for this situation, as 3 columns just won't fit within the space available. Unfortunately the flex columns template doesn't have a lot of options yet to have it adapt to its contents. You might have to use a different method. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation, do you know of any other method that might work? I tried making the images 360px wide but this hasn't made a difference. John Cummings (talk) 10:57, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Flex columns is for two columns. The documentation doesn't even mention that it can fit three columns for a few readers with unusual circumstances. If you want three columns then use something else at Template:Flex columns. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:17, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much, do you know if there is a way to set images as a percentage of the width of the page eg 50%/30% etc rather than just a set ???px? It would need to be something that would work with flex columns. I think there used to be this option in the main Extended image syntax but I just can't find it any more... Sorry for all the questions, I really appreciate your help :) John Cummings (talk) 03:42, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I have never heard of such a feature. I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * thanks very much, I will consider it impossible :) John Cummings (talk) 00:34, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-04
<section begin="technews-2024-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.

Problems
 * A bug in UploadWizard prevented linking to the userpage of the uploader when uploading. It has now been fixed.

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

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W04"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 01:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Problems with gadget: "Open search results in a new tab or window when holding down the Ctrl key"
See:
 * Special:Preferences
 * MediaWiki talk:Gadget-search-new-tab.js

Currently the gadget works from the search page (Special:Search), but not from the search form at the top of every article. That needs to be fixed by someone who understands this stuff. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See the JS here:
 * MediaWiki:Gadget-search-new-tab.js
 * It used to work on the search forms almost anywhere including the one on the top of almost every page on Wikipedia.
 * So I think it is a simple fix for someone who understands this stuff.
 * Pinging:
 * --Timeshifter (talk) 00:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Based on the discussion at, it may be a race condition, with the script attaching its event handler before the search box gets replaced via Javascript with a different implementation. isaacl (talk) 01:27, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

How to remove new(?) watchlist pop-up
Vector 2010 here. Just now I added an article to my watchlist and an undesired pop-up appeared telling me what I had just done and offering me further options I don't need. I feel like this is somewhat new. The popup does not support light-dismiss and scrolls with me on the page for about five seconds, so I would like it to never appear again. I checked the prefs for any new options but didn't see anything. Is there any way to remove it? For example, by CSS-ing it out of existence? Regards, Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 01:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * do you want the entire box about adding/removing a page from the watchlist hidden? The id is "mw-watchlink-notification". — xaosflux  Talk 01:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, and that did the trick. Thanks! Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 02:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Can you not just click on the notification to dismiss it? And not only is the watchlist expiry dropdown a couple years old already, the popup itself has existed for at least 15 years IIRC. Nardog (talk) 03:03, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't want it there at all, so I'm not interested in performing any additional clicks to dismiss it while I'm editing. Regarding the popup itself has existed for at least 15 years IIRC, I've definitely removed similar things in the past; when I was editing my CSS to get rid of this one, I noticed that there were a couple of older entries to remove other watchlist things. The pop-up at hand here had a dropdown to select how long to add the article to my watchlist; I do not believe that dropdown is 15 years old, and is either something that has changed relatively recently or is something that existed before but one of my older CSS specs removed it and now it's back. In any case, with this audience's help I've disabled it, so all good until the next thing. Orange Suede Sofa  (talk) 03:35, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Photo requested
Photo requested seems to have a major error. The link to toolforge Free Image Search Tool has been returning a 500 error for me for months now. Anyone know what's going on? (I post this here and not on the template talk page as I find nobody ever reads those.) Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 07:41, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My gut instinct was that fist.toolforge.org got caught in the Grid deprecation, but I don't see it on the list at https://grid-deprecation.toolforge.org/. So perhaps it's just a normal error. To turn that error 500 into a proper error message, the maintainer should turn on error reporting. In PHP this would be done with  type code. According to https://admin.toolforge.org/tools#!/search/fist, the maintainer is . Last edit was a month ago, so if they don't see this ping, may want to leave a message on their user talk. Hope this helps. – Novem Linguae  (talk) 07:53, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Phabricator list
Hi. I was wondering if it is possible to get a list of open tickets in Phabricator by number of subscribers or tokens? Commander Keane (talk) 22:48, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not really. Re: Subscribers see T329749, especially the comments from Peachey88, Whatamidoing, and Aklapper. Re: Tokens there is a list but it doesn't differentiate between all the different positive/negative/ambiguous token types, plus the feature has never been widely used, so it isn't useful for much. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:56, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks Quiddity (WMF), at least the list you gave was a little bit helpful. I was really searching for an equivalent of the bugs by votes list in Bugzilla. I have the old link here but it doesn't work anymore. Is there any way for me to view the old Bugzilla list? I tried the Wayback machine with no success.--Commander Keane (talk) 06:34, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Too bad https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/token/leaders/ doesn't let you filter by open tickets and positive tokens. That'd be a super useful list. Basically a list of "popular" feature requests. – Novem Linguae (talk) 08:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Randy Travis
Can someone fix the citation error on Randy Travis? I've tried everything and can't get it to clear. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 22:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I fixed the ones in the Biography section. There's also one in "Personal life", but I can't look into that easily on mobile. --rchard2scout (talk) 22:42, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You appear to have added a bunch of new text, including a self-closed reference called "mary". Did you copy that text from somewhere? There is no attribution in your edit summaries, so I can't tell where it came from. In any event, the reference called "mary" needs to be provided in full (e.g. using Cite book or a similar template) at some point in the article. I tried to fix other errors, but you are actively editing the article. It's difficult to help you fix errors when I get edit conflicts. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:43, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks like I fixed it somehow. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 22:53, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * – Novem Linguae (talk) 09:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Theodore Roosevelt
Some of us have been teasing out referencing issues with this massive article - so very many harv cite errors! - and I just cannot get one fixed. Help please for Theodore Roosevelt Association Cyclopedia listed in Sources as: Roosevelt, Theodore (1989) [1941]. Hart, Albert Bushnell; Ferleger, Herbert Ronald (eds.). "Theodore Roosevelt Association Cyclopedia" (Revised 2nd ed.). with a cite web ->> URL–wikilink conflict Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 00:12, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's been fixed. Thanks! Shearonink (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * – Novem Linguae (talk) 09:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Template naming restrictions and categorisation
I created a few templates with numbers (0 – 9) and hyphen-minus symbols (-) in their names. I put them all in the same category and after saving my edits, I can see that they have been categorised as I specified by looking at the bottom of the templates where categories are listed. However, when I navigate to the category in question, the templates do not appear there. I am wondering whether there is some known issue with the categorisation of templates which contain numbers and hyphen-minus symbols in their names. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 03:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Assigning pages to categories takes time. If you provide a link to a page and say what should appear there but doesn't, we might try WP:PURGE. Johnuniq (talk) 03:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Click Edit on the template page itself (not the documentation page), then Publish without making any changes. That might get the template into the category. If that doesn't work, do like it says in the edit notice here at VPT, or in Johnuniq's message, and link to a page that demonstrates the problem. (I looked in your contributions but did not see any templates matching the description above.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:40, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I assume you refer to edits at wikisource:is:Special:Contributions/Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson. Please add links when possible when you ask for help. As Jonesey95 guessed, you added the cateogry via a /doc subpage. Whenever a category is added via transclusion, also from a /doc subpage, the category may appear on the page before the page appears on the category page. The solution is to make a null edit (not a purge) on the page as Jonesey95 described, or just wait. It will eventually happen automatically per Help:Job queue. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:00, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys. I had the suspicion that this was a purge issue but the project in question does not provide the purge gadget and I was not sure about the effectiveness of a null edit in this case, let alone which I should attempt to purge, template or template subpage (documentation). For some reason my attention zeroed in on the template names being the culprits. I can not recall creating or using a template before with exclusively numbers and symbols in the name, hence the confusion. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 04:20, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A purge wouldn't have worked anyway. It requires a null edit which is not the same. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:31, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I am learning something new. I understood them to be different ways to achieve the same result. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 05:04, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * They have the same result on the page itself but purge ends there while null edit can also affect other features like category pages and WhatLinksHere. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:16, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You can get the purge gadget everywhere with the below in meta:Special:MyPage/global.js.
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 12:31, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 12:31, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Blocking a bot from archiving a discussion
Several authors have criticized my work on Wikipedia at WP:ANI, but I cannot reply within 3 days due to lack of resources, is it possible to prevent the lowercase sigmabot III from archiving a section? The Other Karma (talk) 18:59, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See DNAU, but not responding to an ANI thread for days is almost always a bad idea. Also note that the article period is however many days since the last comment, not since the thread was started, and complaints about you not responding will keep it alive. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:59, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

IP Address issue
I'm OK on English Wikipedia (so far). And I only use my account name. But I just got messages on Commons, Wikisource: "Your IP address is in a range that has been blocked on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis." What's going on? Hope I can log in to English Wikipedia tomorrow. This is strange — Maile (talk) 02:29, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You are an administrator here at enwiki and WP:IPBE tells us that admins are exempt from IP blocks. Presumably you do not have similar rights on the other projects and are caught up because your ISP is sharing IPs and a lot of vandalism is occurring. Johnuniq (talk) 02:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. You are correct, in that I am not an admin on other Wikis.  I have emailed Tegel for an unblock.   — Maile  (talk) 03:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

As of right now, Tegel has not responded. If by chance they do not respond in the next day or so, what is my alternative option to get unblocked? — Maile (talk) 12:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * meta:Steward requests/Global. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:37, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can access what you linked. However, it will not allow me to copy and paste,or even fill out the necessary form.  What am I doing wrong? — Maile  (talk) 13:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A VPN through a clean provide might be a solution. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:38, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I already have a VPN. My McAfee APP was updated yesterday, and VPN is checked. — Maile (talk) 14:54, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Might be something else going on with the net. I've been checking some non-wiki sites I visit, and two of them are "Secure Connection Failed".  — Maile  (talk) 15:30, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Maile66: Apologies if you're already aware of this, but there's details on how to request a global IP block exemption at GIPBE. Best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 15:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , thanks for showing this to me. I'll look into it. — Maile  (talk) 20:19, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Have you tried just turning off your VPN? You can also request a GIBPE using Unblock Ticket Request System - on the where are you blocked, just pick global and it will enqueue you. — xaosflux  Talk 17:30, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Turned off VPN. Problem solved.  Thanks. — Maile  (talk) 17:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Good deal, enwiki isn't the only project that blocks VPN's either; the global policy is to disallow by default as well (see meta:No open proxies) and some of the other large projects also maintain local blocks on proxy/vpn use. — xaosflux  Talk 17:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * thank you for confirming my instincts. I have avoided VPNs as long as I can remember, because I just didn't understand enough about them. But when McAfee updated my app, they are the ones who turned on the VPN.  I figured they knew what they were doing.  Live and learn.— Maile  (talk) 20:42, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

The accuracy of new ORES scoring system
Hello, I'm not sure where's the right place for this. Maybe mediawiki or other WMF working place? The new ORES system scores edits badly, it missed so much vandalism compared to the old one. For example, with the old system, setting threshold for score as 50 can filtered a lot of common edits from vandalizing ones, however, with new system, there's hardly any edits get score higher than 50. More common, good faith edits tagged as higher scores, while bad faith edits are marked randomly. In other words, this system has become harder to use after these update. -Lemonaka‎ 01:46, 19 January 2024 (UTC) PAGE ]]) 22:27, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Linking WP:ORES -Lemonaka‎  01:49, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if there will be any fixes, since it says "Warning:	The ORES infrastructure is being deprecated by the Machine Learning team, please check wikitech:ORES for more info." RudolfRed (talk) 02:34, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The new system was made by Wikimedia Research and is also being looked at by the Moderator tools as part of automoderator. Just ask them. Snævar (talk) 07:15, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Lemonaka, can you give some examples? It shouldn't matter because the Lift Wing (the "new" ORES) hosts the same models, just on a different server infrastructure. That said, if it does matter then we should definitely take a look! CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @CAlbon (WMF) I though the new system has a new language-agnostic  model that replaces   and  . --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * @Ahecht Yeah I think there is some confusion with names. TL;DR The new model serving infrastructure (Lift Wing) has replaced the older model serving infrastructure (ORES). Lift Wing has the long existing language specific models (Revscoring), a new language agnostic model (language agnostic revertrisk), and a new multilingual model (multilingual revertrisk). CAlbon (WMF) (talk) 16:31, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @CAlbon Hello, I'd like to understand what the new score mean. Previously, higher ORES score means more possible for vandalism, however I cannot figure out the meaning of score in this new model. -Lemonaka‎  01:19, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

ReFill appears to be down?
Or at least not working for me... GiantSnowman 20:00, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * GiantSnowman, works for me.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706128460533:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:34, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's failing for me too. It's waiting and waiting for an available worker. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 21:57, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's the error message I get (when I get one at all...) GiantSnowman 22:10, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Order a list of articles by number of incoming (ns0) links
Petscan's sorting by incoming links (ns0 - that is, mainspace subject pages, i.e. articles :) ) isn't working (not sure if it ever did), so is there any tool available that can take a list of articles and sort them by the number of incoming links? I'd like to figure out the "semi-orphans" within a WikiProject. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 02:10, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Greetings @StefenTower - Check out my User:JoeNMLC/Article orphan query page for Query details that may answer your question. For a given category Month/Year, the query can make an article list. Pass No. 1, I set to Incoming Links greater than one ( > 1 ). Many articles can be un-tagged as no longer orphan articles. Pass No. 2, Incoming links > 0, so fewer articles. In both cases, every article needs to be checked via "What links here" before possible un-tagging. As you can see, it's a long (and tedious manual process, over-and-over), but I have already un-tagged several thousand articles, helping to reduce the Orphan article backlog. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 03:49, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you. There may be something there I can work with, and I notice similar other queries over at Quarry. As my knowledge of this database is weak and my SQL is rather rusty, I may have to seek help. At any rate, I'll play with this tomorrow. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 05:09, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * StefenTower, I think there's an option for doing this with the search API, with srqiprofile=popular_inclinks .<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706117290074:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:28, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know what I'm looking at when viewing the data at the link, but is this a search parameter of some sort? Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 22:00, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

-@StefenTower - PetScan tool and be used to find Orphan articles within any WikiProject's category. PetScan is not perfect, and requires some "tricks" to work correctly. Here is an example, to find Orphan articles for American basketball players.
 * First Request
 * Depth 0
 * All orphaned articles


 * Note - may take a while to run


 * Second Request
 * All orphaned articles
 * American men's basketball players


 * Optional: Output - Plain text

On PetScan's Output tab, there is an option to sort by incoming links (ns0). After first request, all search results show zero Incoming. After second request, it shows Orphan articles with additional Incoming Links. Cheers! JoeNMLC (talk) 00:13, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks but I'm already aware of that. I want to know about articles (like the list of such covered by a WikiProject) that are not in the orphans category, and be able to sort by number of incoming article links, ascending. I want to see what articles that could use more incoming links. Like if an article just has 1 to a few - I might be able to connect them better to other articles. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 00:27, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

OK, this exercise has gotten my hamster wheel turning, and I finally figured out how to get the result I want from PetScan:
 * 1) Run PetScan query I already have for generating articles in a WikiProject, but instead of displaying 500 results, I send all results to a PagePile.
 * 2) Run a new PetScan query that uses that PagePile as a source, and sort by incoming links, ascending.

This works. But I wish I could do it all within a single PetScan run rather than two. Hrmmm. Stefen Towers among the rest!  Gab • Gruntwerk 00:40, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

How to turn off the notice seen at the top of the Watchlist page?
I am not interested in notices such as "Hate unreferenced articles? Sign up for the February 2024 Unreferenced Articles Backlog Drive and earn barnstars!" when I just want to look up some page updates, is there a way to turn such notices off for good? I am tired to have to click "dismiss" every time I see them, and there is no such thing in the Chinese wiki watchlist. George6VI (talk) 05:26, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See Watchlist notices. Graham87 (talk) 05:34, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It doesn't seem to work, I still see "Voting on the ratification of the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) charter is open until 2 February 2024" today. - George6VI (talk) 03:33, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, try using  instead of the # selector - may be because there are currently multiple messages. —  xaosflux  Talk 10:48, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Line 98
Please, add for first span element style element to have left padding/margin (e.g. ' ').

A problem is visible at: Toilet (desktop version seen at mobile). --109.175.38.135 (talk); 11:12, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Under discussion at Module talk:Excerpt‎‎. Certes (talk) 12:59, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.js § Class-triggered gadgets
You are invited to join the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.js § Class-triggered gadgets. – SD0001  (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding new articles created to the list on Portal
Greetings everyone,

I have a technical question that I would like to see if I can accomplish on Serbian Wikipedia.

As someone who is into associational football, I am editing and maintaining Portal's page and I want to ask you if there is any way that I can put a list of newest article, kind of what they have here. Is this something that is possible to be done automatically or does this have to be done manually?

If it can be done automatically, how can it be done ? If it does have to be done manually, is there any way that we can track new article posted on certain portal if portal tab has been added to the article ?

Thanks a lot for any help!!!!

 Боки  ☎   ✎  20:32, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki itself does not have a way to automate it. It can be automated by a bot. They require programming for specific tasks and are difficult to make. WikiProject Football/New articles is made manually but many other WikiProjects at the English Wikipedia use the process at User:AlexNewArtBot. The current bot doing the work is User:InceptionBot. I don't know whether the Serbian Wikipedia has a suited bot or a user who can make such a bot. It's possible to make a request at sr:Википедија:Ботови/Задаци but it doesn't look like the requests are answered. I don't know Serbian. If you don't already know a suited programming language then don't try to make your own bot. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @PrimeHunter This is exactly what I was looking for! I will involve my guys from Serbian Wikipedia to get something going for me on their side. Thanks ! Greatly appreciated.  Боки  ☎   ✎  21:35, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Two different views of talk pages not yet started
I had to sign in to a web site where my IP address is shown, and it was a new IP address. I may be asking this in the wrong place, but why do I see three two different versions of the Wikipedia talk page for that IP? When I was using private browsing, there was a welcome message. I signed in with an alternate identity that is not autoconfirmed and saw what I thought was a slightly different version, but looking again maybe not. Then I copied the URL to where I was signed in with this name, and saw what I have traditionally seen when a talk page hasn't been started.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  21:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know which website you refer to or why you don't reveal it. I guess it's a Wikimedia wiki but they have different talk page features. See mw:Talk pages project/Feature summary. One cause of differences here at the English WIkipedia is settings at Special:Preferences. I don't know wether all Wikimedia wikis currently offer those features. For a little history, MediaWiki always used the same software for articles and discussions for many years, probably because the coding had already been done for articles. There have since been different attempts to make something with features more suited for discussions but it has been a troubled history. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Why would I talk about web sites that show my IP? I just mentioned that because I didn't know my IP had changed.


 * Oh, I see. First post corrected.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:02, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki can show your IP address in several ways when you are not logged in and not editing, e.g. Special:MyPage, Special:MyTalk and Special:MyContributions. After your correction and new post I realize you were talking about two unrelated websites, one irrelevant which showed your IP address somewhere and one (here) with a talk page. Unregistered users currently see a message from mw:Extension:DiscussionTools on non-existing user talk pages. Registered users depend on preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:52, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Implementing increase in default thumbnail size to 250px
Hello! I've just closed the discussion over at the policy page with a consensus to increase the default pixel size on English Wikipedia from 220 to 250 pixels. My understanding is that implementing this change requires action from the WMF to adjust MediaWiki, but given that this change has already been made for other wikis (Swedish, Finnish, etc), my hope is that it will not be too onerous. Would the correct next step be to open up a new ticket at Phabricator?

@SGrabarczuk (WMF), I'm hoping you can help bring this to the attention of the correct team at the WMF. @Masem, @Sdkb, @WhatamIdoing, as you all mentioned implementation considerations during the discussion, I'd be glad to have your input as well. Thanks all! —Ganesha811 (talk) 21:27, 24 January 2024 (UTC)


 * My guess is that Mark Bergsma (WMF) will want to schedule this.  You can use T18739 as a model for writing up the request on Phabricator. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Opened a phab ticket - T355914. Hopefully should be taken care of fairly shortly. —Ganesha811 (talk) 00:08, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Histories/RSS
Do the histories of diffs on each page match the time that their RSS is updated? (i.e. whether one looks at the former or the latter, are they equally output?) 78.151.136.201 (talk) 21:15, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I will say yes, looking at the RSS outputs by using the URL given for RSS history at WP:RSS. The only difference I saw is that the RSS output uses "GMT" and Wikipedia history page for an article uses "UTC" but the date/time itself is the same.  RudolfRed (talk) 04:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Gallery isn't working
I'm working on lint errors and on the List of Shanghai Metro rolling stock article and the gallery is busted. It's very dense and I'm having a hard time seeing the issue. Would appreciate a second pair of eyes.

the show button for the code block is broken, thats rather odd. Vghfr (talk) 15:41, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "the gallery is busted"? List of Shanghai Metro rolling stock looks fine to me and it has no lint errors. The lint errors are somewhere else on the page. You apparently refer to your above post with "the show button for the code block is broken", but I see a working "[show]" link to the right. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:58, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I'm having a hard time navigating the wikitext for that article and i cant figure out where stuff is. What's actually broken it seems is at List of Shanghai Metro rolling stock, right at the end. I'll take another look at it and see if i can find the issue. Vghfr (talk) 17:08, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It appears that made some changes to the articles from which sections are being transcluded in this article, causing various problems. I reverted one set of changes, which made the Linter errors go away, but the table is still very broken. If  can fix the problems, that's great. If not, I would recommend looking at "related changes" for that article and revert all of the recent changes to the articles from which sections are transcluded. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:40, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm looking into it. Please nobody else try to edit the 18 transcluded pages until I say so. It will be a big mess if we interfere with eachother. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:56, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I fixed the worst errors. "Line 3", "Line 4" and "Line 10" at List of Shanghai Metro rolling stock are still different from the others but I stop now so others are free to edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:07, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I fixed it a little bit more. "Line 3", "Line 4" and "Line 10" are now showing better, but their columns are not aligned quite right. Nice job, . – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:16, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Nice work, PrimeHunter. Vghfr (talk) 20:38, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm Sorry for these troubles, I just trying to expand the rolling stock information about Shanghai Metro......But it looks like I might have done something wrong Lekvwa (talk) 04:35, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And I want to fix some descriptions, such as remove "series"...... Shanghai Metro's rolling stock names cannot use "series". It should only be used to name the type of train produced by the manufacturer.
 * But I'm not sure how to edit them without causing errors though, is there any way to do these? Lekvwa (talk) 04:47, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * All done. I fixed all the tables by filling in the missing parts of some of the embedded tables. Hope they won't go wrong again... Lekvwa (talk) 12:30, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks good. Vghfr (talk) 14:14, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Is there a way to pre-load interwiki links when you open any page
I've become accustomed to the new Vector skin, but there's one aspect I truly dislike: the new Language menu.

As someone who speaks multiple languages, I rely heavily on this feature. However, each time I access the "languages" menu, there's a noticeable delay because it initiates a separate request only when the menu is opened. To compound the issue, there's a bug (phab:T344028) where the "missing relevant languages banner" triggers yet another request, leading to further delays. This causes the menu to shift down unexpectedly, resulting in frequent misclicks.

I'm curious to know if anyone has developed a toolkit or user script to address this problem.

Thanks for any help! fireattack (talk) 08:10, 26 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I haven't noticed a delay. Is this happening to you on all articles or just those with extensive versions in other languages? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:55, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The delay doesn't always happen, but it does happen from time to time. It usually is caused by an API call to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=sitematrix&format=json&origin=*&formatversion=2 which has a whopping 23.5 kB filesize. --fireattack (talk) 16:56, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Recurring redlinked category issue
In December last year, I brought to VPT an issue with WikiProject U.S. Roads generating a redlinked category for. The discussion on it clarified that since a road junction or interchange wouldn't be expected to have KML in the first place, the category was unwanted, so it was resolved by being suppressed on the implicated talk pages. It then recurred just before Christmas, and I was able to resolve it myself by spelunking through edit histories to find out what was done on the implicated talk pages to suppress the category and then applying the same fix — but on the most recent run of the redlinked category report it recurred again, but since it's been a month and I couldn't remember what the fix was, I had to spelunk through edit histories to find the fix again.

The issue here is that I shouldn't have had to spend time spelunking: if the category genuinely isn't wanted, and has to be manually suppressed every time it recurs, then the template should really just be prevented from being able to generate it in the first place.

I previously asked at Template talk:WikiProject U.S. Roads if the template could be edited to abort that category at the source, but nothing was done, so I need to ask here instead. Could somebody edit that template to automatically prevent the generation of "needing KML" categories if the page is coded as type=JCT? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:03, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 19:52, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Possible WP:ITSTHURSDAY change causing Linter errors
When Special:Recentchanges/25 is transcluded in pages such as my sandbox, it is causing Linter errors, specifically the error in which div tags are placed inside span tags. I do not see any code that I can change, so I'm hoping that it is a MediaWiki (or en.WP?) change than can be resolved easily. Here's the expanded code for one of the list entries, with the problem lines indented:  Note that   is wrapping , which is invalid syntax. Should I file a phabricator bug, or is there another explanation or resolution for this apparent problem? I found from 2021, but this problem appeared on the Linter reports only today, so it may be new. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:34, 25 January 2024 (UTC)


 * The reason for the sudden appearance is because of the patch that went out this week for T59886. Prior to that, Parsoid wasn't rendering / linting special page transclusions.  I will look into updating the output of the RecentChanges page in MediaWiki to avoid the misnesting but we might want to think about having the larger discussion in T306205 with regard to this and other error types from the tidy migration. Arlolra (talk) 21:05, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not just Recent changes, it's Watchlist as well. I noticed this misnesting more than a week ago when analysing the watchlist structure for the purposes of making this post at WP:BON. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks like a patch has been added to a future MW release. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Editing around Israeli & Arabic style names
Editing around Arabic & Israeli style names is difficult, when trying to fix up birth/death dates in the intros of bio pages. Can the project create a mechanism to help? GoodDay (talk) 16:30, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's your browser which automatically switches to right-to-left for some scripts like Arabic and Hebrew. The switch may include surrounding numbers like dates and cause confusion. You can try adding this to to disable the switch completely when editing, also for text:
 * If you don't know Arabic and other right-to-left scripts then you probably don't mind that they will be shown left-to-right when editing instead of their correct form. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I fear that's all beyond my knowledge. GoodDay (talk) 19:43, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Click "" and save the above line. That's it. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:49, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can't find any key on my keyboard that says "CSS". GoodDay (talk) 19:53, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Click the quoted text "" on your screen in this sentence. Blue text usually means a link you can click. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:59, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Firefox line breaking rule change
Hi, as of Firefox 1.22 released earlier this week, the rules for line breaking have changed. To quote the release notes: "The line breaking rules of Web content now match the Unicode Standard. This improves Web Browser compatibility for line breaking." I find that this degrades the experience when editing and when viewing diffs. Some examples: These line-breaks occur in diffs and also in the edit window. I know that Firefox has a behind-the-scenes configuration page, giving access to lots of settings that are not found in about:preferences, so how might I restore previous behaviour? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 17:57, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * a template parameter like  can now break between the pipe and the "f"
 * a closing HTML tag like  can now break between the slash and the "r"
 * this can also happen in URLs where a slash is followed by a letter. Like, any URL ever
 * where a URL has a query string, a break may happen after the ? character


 * This appears to be bug 1854032, so based off the patch there you could try going to  and setting   to  . LittlePuppers (talk) 18:15, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yep, that worked. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:18, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Help me!
Please help me with... How can I modify my settings to have the [edit] button appear next to section headers, instead of just at the top of a page? (I can't find the option; I only see one to make the section headers appear on the right-hand side instead of the left-hand side, but regardless of which one I use, the [edit] button won't appear...) Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 02:34, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It is possible that you are looking at an old version of a page, via the "View history" link. Old versions do not have section edit links, just a single edit link at the top of the page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:53, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Please always give an example when you report a problem. Some pages disable section edit links. Are they missing here? I see them. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:34, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * They were missing here (and on all pages).
 * Ultimately it looks like it was some problem with my preferences, because resetting them fixed this. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:49, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

An error message


About 10 minutes ago, this error message popped up on my screen. I couldn't access any article or page on the entirety of Wikipedia, not even my own user homepage. Can someone explain what happened back there? <b style="color:#ff6600;">The 🏎 Corvette 🏍 ZR1</b><b style="color:#0a0a0a;">(The Garage)</b> 21:03, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Had the same, and variations, seems to have been a temporary glitch. Neils51 (talk) 21:22, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No info up at wikitech:Incident status, but looking at the graphs at wikimediastatus.net, there was a brief spike of error messages, increased response time and reduced successful edit rates right around that time. Seems to have either resolved itself or been resolved, though. AddWitty  NameHere  21:30, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Messages like this happen from time to time. Usually it simply means that the servers are trying to do too much at once, and cannot handle any more requests until they've caught up with essential operations like saving recent edits. Treat it as a hint that it's time to make some coffeee or walk the dog; by the time that you've done that, the servers should be back to normal again. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:16, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Dispute resolution and Javascript
I cannot fix the Javascript issue that is needed to file a request in the dispute resolution noticeboard. I previously discussed this at the Teahouse. Please help? Thanks, Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 15:52, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Looks like I needed to go into desktop mode to request DRN. Wikiexplorationandhelping (talk) 06:16, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Minor mystery
Why is this afd Articles for deletion/Jilly Juice not showing on my afdstats ? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:15, 23 January 2024 (UTC) PAGE ]]) 14:54, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It shows at AFDstats in the list of "pages without detected votes". I don't know how AFDstats works but I suspect it is because your keep vote and your signature are in different paragraphs so it's not tying the two together. Nthep (talk) 14:25, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Correct. The regex that identifies !votes does not have the multiline flag set (see line 163 of gitlab:toolforge-repos/afdstats/-/blob/main/public_html/afdstats.py) --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * That makes sense, thanks! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yup, fixed it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You may be able to use   to achieve your original paragraphed effect. CMD (talk) 07:11, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

iPad display of equations - can scroll bars be forced?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_integral_rule Some of the equations are truncated on iOS safari, and by default they do not have scrolling. It seems that CSS can force them on. Some equations on iPhone stop exactly so that the missing math is not obvious. AManWithNoPlan (talk) 12:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * These images actually already scroll. But iPads/iPhones don't give any visible queues about the presence of scrollbars. It's an issue that iOS users have been complaining about ever since the first version of the web browser being released, but it doesn't seem like Apple is interested in making this easier for users. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:01, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Different editor plugins in different namespaces
I am having issues with a different editor plugin being used for Talk namespace and non-Talk namespace. For example, right now, I'm using what looks to be the standard default editor, and this is what I also see on Article Talk pages and User Talk pages. When I edit articles, though, I have a different editor (at the moment, wikiEd, though this issue still happens if I toggle off wikiEd). The editor I am using at the moment is broken in some way. If I backspace, especially deleting lines, they seem to be "silently" deleted, in that if I Ctrl+A this text box and paste into a text editor, they are still there, and they will show up when I post the comment, but do not show in the preview below this text area or in this text area. Moreover, when I simply type my signature on a new line at the end of this sort of comment, it is submitted with a space or two before it, such that it is rendered as a quotation. I am having to write my comments for Talk pages in a text editor and paste into a fresh text area to avoid having issues. I'm not sure where to start to debug this, so any assistance is appreciated. (Of note: when I edited this comment, it has now pulled up wikiEd to edit it, though this was not the plugin it used when I composed it.) Kimen8 (talk) 23:17, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I really advise against using wiked. It hasn't been fully maintained and developed since 2015 and it hasn't been able to keep up with all the major changes that happened since. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I will disable it. Is there another edit plugin that allows for some more advanced features, such as find-and-replace (especially with regex support)?
 * I was having this issue even with wikiEd turned off, though. Kimen8 (talk) 18:13, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The 2010 editing toolbar has access to regex F+R. It also does highlighting these days. Izno (talk) 18:56, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * When you say The editor I am using at the moment are you talking about wikEd or something that's not wikEd? Nardog (talk) 14:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No, not wikiEd. What I believe is just the default editor box.
 * The editor being activated is different between Talk and non-Talk namespaces, and the Talk namespace one is not functioning for me as expected. Kimen8 (talk) 18:14, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-05
<section begin="technews-2024-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.

Recent changes
 * Starting Monday January 29, all talk pages messages' timestamps will become a link. This link is a permanent link to the comment. It allows users to find the comment they are looking for, even if this comment was moved elsewhere. This will affect all wikis except for the English Wikipedia. You can read more about this change on Diff or on Mediawiki.org.
 * There are some improvements to the CAPTCHA to make it harder for spam bots and scripts to bypass it. If you have feedback on this change, please comment on the task. Staff are monitoring metrics related to the CAPTCHA, as well as secondary metrics such as account creations and edit counts.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-gift.svg On February 1, a link will be added to the "Tools" menu to download a QR code that links to the page you are viewing. There will also be a new page to create QR codes for any Wikimedia URL. This addresses the #19 most-voted wish from the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets which only work in some skins have sometimes used the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option to limit where you can use them. This will stop working this week. You should use the <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> option instead.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W05"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:29, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Editing of large page times out repeatedly and won't finish loading
In a couple WikiProjects I maintain, I have a page that lists all the pages in the respective projects, which is used for "Related changes" to do project-level change patrol. Lately, these pages won't complete loading in the editor and therefore I can't edit and update them. Has there been a technical change in the past two weeks or so that prevents loading of very large pages? This happens with both the 2010 and 2017 wikitext editors. Stefen Towers among the rest!  Gab • Gruntwerk 01:25, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * What size? I'm having some problems, eg with WP:FTN. Doug Weller  talk 14:28, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of any changes, but I will point out that very large pages... by definition will not be performant. This is also why almost any type of proper list view is always paginated. Because if they are not, at some point problems arise, and one of those problems could be requests failing. However since no specific examples have been linked to... there isn't much sane things that anyone can say about this. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:04, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Always give an example. I don't have problems loading edit pages near the 2 MB size limit in MediaWiki, e.g. CHECKWIKI/WPC 545 dump. Does it happen if you log out or add  to the edit url? safemode omits User:StefenTower/common.js and some other things. What is your skin at Special:Preferences? What is your browser or device? Database reports/Long pages shows some huge pages. I don't know how the top-3 were made above the 2 MB limit. The first page has a special contentmodel  where the editable part is smaller so that may explain it but not the next two. All three give a size error message on edit but I would ignore those pages for this discussion. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:44, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * , : WP:WikiProject Louisville/Watchall is one of the couple pages in question, the smaller of the two Watchall pages I work with. It is over 700 KB, and is a list of links. The problem still happens with the safemode setting, and I had already coded a bypass in my common.js so as to not run any user scripts while working on this page. This page was loading fully into the editor around a couple weeks ago (and for years before that point), although not usually with great performance (I have a contemporary Windows gaming laptop with 24GB RAM and use Google Chrome, so I don't think my equipment/browser poses an issue here suddenly). Both Watchall files I work with are on the "Long pages" list, but are not anywhere close to the top. I also don't see them in the 545 dump. My skin is Vector (2022). Hope this info helps clarify. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 19:49, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It works for me unless I enable syntax highlighting on a highlighter marker button Codemirror-icon.png to the left of "Advanced" in a toolbar above the edit area. If it's enabled for you on another page like Example then try to disable it there and then click https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Louisville/Watchall&action=edit&safemode=1. Does that work? If so then try whether https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Louisville/Watchall&action=edit also works. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:27, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, the safemode loading after disabling syntax highlighting works, although the regular edit load still gives me the timeout problem. But since I don't need syntax highlighting or scripts to update this page, this will work great. Thanks! Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 20:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You lose  on Show preview or Show changes. I was going to suggest "Always enable safe mode" at Special:Preferences but I haven't tried it before and it does nothing for me. All my scripts and gadgets still load after enabling it and bypassing my cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:11, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The preference problem is reported in T355314. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:15, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I normally didn't preview or show changes in this case due to the normal performance issues. I just replace the list and save. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 21:22, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Then you might like User:PrimeHunter/Safemode edit.js, a variation of User:PrimeHunter/Safe mode.js. The latter may fail for you if the interface doesn't work when you try to load a large edit page without safemode. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:35, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. I'll try that. Thanks again! Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 21:43, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Confirmed. Possibly related to T184272 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Interesting. So does this mean if I replaced # with * I could avoid the extra performance lag? I don't think the list in question has to be numbered for its purpose. Stefen Towers among the rest!   Gab • Gruntwerk 21:26, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

One page looks like Wikipedia does now
This isn't true of any other page. I like MonoBook. Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1167 looks like it does when I am signed out or using one of my alternative accounts to see what newcomers see (I have one account with too few edits to be autoconfirmed, and one I used for The Wikipedia Adventure after the account had too many edits). — Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:32, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Bypass your cache on the page. Use in Windows browsers (not F5 or the reload button alone). PrimeHunter (talk) 23:48, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can reproduce, so I don't think it's a cache issue. This is probably the same bug as T352592 Pages transcluding Special:WhatLinksHere are sometimes being rendered in the default skin: Special:WhatLinksHere is transcluded on that page in the section Teahouse/Questions/Archive 1167. Matma Rex talk 03:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It didn't happen for me when I made the first post. It did happen now so there is a real problem, but bypass worked for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  21:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Looks normal again.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  16:53, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Back to the way it was.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:31, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Weird. Now it's back to how I want it, after I linked to the archive and clicked to make sure the link worked.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:36, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Can I get my searches to open "Edit date - current on top"
I carry out a lot of searches for typos. I use the Advanced search, which always opens "Sort by relevance", whereas I need "Edit date - current on top" as I know when I last searched that particular list. I know it is only a few clicks and then running a new search to change it, but when doing it a hundred times or so, it is laborious and reduces my productivity. Adding "&sort=last_edit_desc" to the URL is equally clumsy, and I can't find any other options. Is there a way I can get my searches to open "Edit date - current on top" - Arjayay (talk) 20:13, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * How do you typically open the advanced search? If you want all searches you make through the search form on every page on the site to be sorted by edit date by default, you can add  to your Special:MyPage/common.js. But if you're making the same queries anyway it sounds like the simplest solution is to bookmark the URLs for the search results already with  . Nardog (talk) 03:45, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nardog. I'll play with the code version. I already have the most common searches I do bookmarked; I don't know if there is a limit on bookmarks, but when I say lots of searches I am talking thousands.  Thanks again - Arjayay (talk) 13:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Nardog. I've added that script, leaving one blank line below the previous instruction, and then pressed shift + F5 to bypass the cache (MS Edge), but searches still open "Sort by relevance". I then rebooted the entire machine - but searches still open "Sort by relevance". What am I doing wrong? - Arjayay (talk) 18:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Which form are you using to search? Is it the one at the top (or the left on Monobook) on every page? Nardog (talk) 18:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The search that appears automatically whenever I click on any item in any of the Lists of common misspellings - Arjayay (talk) 19:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This is CirrusSearch, it appears to have some degree of configuration capability. Discussion here.The answer may be here under Rescore Profiles. I don't have time at the moment to research further. Hmm.. much of this stuff appears server centric. Neils51 (talk) 00:01, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying Neils51 - I've looked at the pages you linked, but I don't understand them enough to try and work out how to re-order the search parameters. I used to write programmes to run on mainframes, but that was over 50 years ago. Anyway, thanks again. - Arjayay (talk) 17:00, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Arjayay, I decided to have a play with this as it 'should' work. Found that when I copied the string that somehow the field name 'sort' ended up with an uppercase 's'. Fixed that and it is working.  Open the Wiki search, click on 'Search' and the CirrusSearch field will then open with the 'Advanced Search' option set as 'Sort by edit date'.  Have a look and let us know how you go! Neils51 (talk) 01:36, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Any Bulk Option to update Infobox parameters?
i have data like this

i want to update the data, which is missing infobox paramters. Kindly help me this. Thanks in advance - IJohnKennady (talk) 15:55, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Can you provide some more detail? That doesn't look like an infobox. Which article is this for? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:40, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I assume it's one article per row, e.g. Attari Assembly constituency. -Kj cheetham (talk) 21:36, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * If that is all the data you have, then manual editing will be fine. Infobox Indian constituency has a field for, is that relevant? And why are they all 20? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:20, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * These consistencies have the same constituency number. I thought it would be easier for bulk operations when it's unique. - IJohnKennady (talk) 05:09, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For bulk changes on the one page I use the regex editor, see TemplateScript. For bulk pages, WP:AWB can do the job but you need to know what you are doing, prove it, and get permission. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:17, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I already using WP:AWB, but it's take more time, i have around 500 Indian Assembly constituency pages. - IJohnKennady (talk) 07:59, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Popups when I subscribe or unsubscribe
Are these new? They're intrusive. Doug Weller talk 15:49, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't think so, if you're talking about topic subscriptions, I think they've had the same popups since they were introduced. Can you share a screenshot of the popup you're seeing? Matma Rex talk 16:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Empty element error?
I logged onto Wikipedia this morning and every page is spamming the following error message: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.math.popup%7Cext.popups.images%2Cmain%2CreferencePreviews&skin=vector&version=wcg8y at line 39: Uncaught SyntaxError: Failed to execute 'closest' on 'Element': The provided selector is empty. Any ideas what the cause might be? —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:04, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm getting it too, but mine says "line 35". The pink boxes on the right side of my screen are never ending. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I am experiencing the same thing. As of now I have narrowed it down to the Reference Tooltips gadget, which is enabled on en wiki by default, which for now can be disabled in your preferences: Special:Preferences. Mvolz (talk) 16:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm getting the error too, but turning off that gadget didn't do anything for me. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:13, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Huh. Well, disabling it worked for me. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 16:25, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm still occasionally getting a couple errors from other scripts, but most of my errors (like, hundreds) were coming from that gadget. Try a hard page refresh and also disable all your common.js scripts as well? There's clearly a different underlying issue that broke a lot of scripts, not only that one... Mvolz (talk) 16:29, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Nope, that didn't work. I even rebooted my laptop. I'm not getting these pink boxes on my smartphone though. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:33, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It's been reported now and it's being fixed. Matma Rex talk 16:41, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Turning off the "Navigation popups" gadget fixed it for me. You have to reload pages to get rid of the script.— <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:41, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * ain't that a wacky coincidence?
 * good to know it's not just my pc being barely functional garbage this time  cogsan (nag me)  (stalk me) 16:49, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Go to gadget preferences and uncheck the box that says "Show an alert when you encounter JavaScript errors". That option is really only intended for developers testing out stuff. Not sure why you all have it enabled. – SD0001  (talk) 17:12, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, it tells me when custom scripts I've installed are malfunctioning. —Compassionate727 (T·C) 17:31, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * THANK YOU SD0001! I don't need that many pink boxes telling me something's broken. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:51, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Quoting from WP with link
Hello! We can link to link to pages and even to their specific sections but is there any way to "link" to specific parts of the text inside those sections/pages? The end-result of what I'm looking for would be to have the said text focused and highlighted after clicking a link.

I'm thinking of a mechanism which in a very, very crude way would be something like this: Link=Title#Section+quote="Text_that_gets searched_in_that_section_and_highlighted" - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You may use an element id (we often implement via a template such at anchor) to make a link you can target to any part of a page; most browsers will follow that request. We don't have a parameter to make text highlighted based of the URI in mediawiki, you would have to run an expensive javascript for something like that. — xaosflux  Talk 11:20, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * NB, some browsers have browser-specific parameters (i.e. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Text_fragments ); but this may be inconsistent and not actively supported. — xaosflux  Talk 11:22, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm aware of ways of creating anchors. I was mostly talking about you refer in the second part of your answer: We don't have a parameter to make text highlighted based of the URI in mediawiki
 * So basically the answer is no. Would this be a reasonable Phab-request? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:30, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This sounds a little like T62520. — xaosflux  Talk 11:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Or T12476. There has been some work done via discussion tools on the concept (c.f. T295475). — xaosflux  Talk 11:57, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Xaosflux, thank you!<span id="Klein_Muçi:1706530330991:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Klein Muçi (talk) 12:12, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I suspect the MediaWiki developers might be inclined to see if the URL Fragment Text Directives community group report makes any progress towards being placed on the standardization track by the W3C. (Right now it's just it's a document written by Google that specs out the feature currently implemented in both Apple's and Google's rendering engines.) isaacl (talk) 19:08, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * If it's a discussion page, this is already possible - try this link. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:23, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As I understand it (from the original post and a previous discussion), the request is to be able to flexibly link to and highlight a specified portion of text, rather than an entire predefined section. isaacl (talk) 19:30, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Did you try my link? It goes to one specific post. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course I did. I previously wrote a script to copy such links to the clipboard to make it easy to use those links. The original poster has written before about creating a search feature where the relevant portion of text related to the search would be highlighted, much like Google search does. The comment linking feature works for blocks of text that the implementation identifies as a single comment, which isn't as flexible (though of course still very useful for linking to comments). isaacl (talk) 23:04, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Doing this on the server would create caching complications, so I think a client-side implementation would be the best tradeoff, which means Javascript, or standardized browser support for text fragments or something similar. isaacl (talk) 19:43, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Isaacl, I was wondering what was the previous discussion you referenced until you mentioned that and it made sense. Funny enough in my mind the two episodes weren't connected because they had different stimuli (and overall different aims). On the first case the highlight functionality was supposed to be an addition to the search functionality. The idea was to have a better search box, able to understand and answer questions by highlighting the relevant parts for the answer in the relevant article. This seemed a bit futuristic back then but now with GPT it's already happening. Thinking back on that, I believe that question can easily be reframed to say "Can we incorporate a GPT model in WP?", don't know if anyone has made that discussion yet so far.
 * The current case is more about the process of (deep)linking and sharing specific text portions from Wikipedia and less about having a question-answer relationship with Wikipedia. There are sections which are rather large in which section-linking wouldn't be a good choice when you just want to share 1-2 sentences in total (which you might as well manually copy-paste but having information be seen in-place in WP is more credible than that). YouTube was the initial inspiration which already allows you to timelink to any second of a given video so I thought it would be reasonable to ask for a similar thing in WP as well. But when you think back, it makes sense to connect both cases. Glad that you remember our past discussion!
 * @Redrose64 I believe my explanation above will make my use case a bit more clear. Part of the inspiration was also the already happening highlight functionality we have on discussions but the idea is to extend that in the mainspace and more (other namespaces and other sister projects). - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:28, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A more realistic scenario to put my idea to life is to maybe use the search functionality we already have when using advanced searches on the search box. Make such functionality be easily accessible through URLs by giving commands to it, something like this:
 * Link=Title#Section+Search=this_exact_text
 * Or you could even omit the section part completely if you wanted to search the whole page.
 * And that's it.
 * Basically take what we already have and create a button that can easily create a simple short link for the text you selected and add highlight functionality to it. Then you can share that link which basically is a search link prompt and the same search will be replicated in the other's machine and they will get the same text highlighted in their screen. The simple link button is just an added convenience. What we need is just the highlight functionality and this idea can already be implemented, coming to think of it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:55, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The underlying principle sounds similar to me: sharing a flexible portion of a page. It's reminiscent of Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu, the first hypertext project. I think standardizing the URL format would be a better way to achieve this in the medium to long run. isaacl (talk) 18:10, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Problem with Quarry
I'm having problems running Quarry queries and received an E004 error message that has something to do with OAuth. I can't log in or run queries. I know that this isn't the place to ask questions about this site but I'm not sure where is an appropriate place. Anybody know who to contact about Quarry? Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 07:59, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think this is a larger problem with OAuth as I am currently unable to log into anything that uses it (including Citation Bot, InternetArchiveBot, and Phabricator itself). Everything gives the same E004 error. :Jay8g [ V•T•E ] 08:04, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OAuth seems to be working again now. :Jay8g [ V•T•E ] 18:13, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Problem with displaying contrib lists
Hello. For some reason, I can't see anyone's contributions list, not even my own. This has been going on for quite some time now, and I don't know how to fix it. I tried logging in and logging out and restarting my computer (which is a MacBook Pro from 2021, if that matters in any way) but to no avail. Anyone know what's going on? Thank you, <b style="border-radius:3em;padding:6px;background:#e82c52;color:white;">‍ Relativity </b><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"> 20:28, 30 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @Relativity Can you see them here? — xaosflux  Talk 21:00, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * If that works, turn off these, these, and these - then try again. — xaosflux  Talk 21:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Nope. <b style="border-radius:3em;padding:6px;background:#e82c52;color:white;">‍ Relativity </b><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"> 21:02, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Relativity how about this? — xaosflux  Talk 21:06, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Xaosflux Yeah, I can see that. I don't really know what's going on. I also turned off my beta features and removed the scripts from my common.js file. (I didn't remove any of my preferences other than the Beta features; I really didn't want to unless nothing else worked.) <b style="border-radius:3em;padding:6px;background:#e82c52;color:white;">‍ Relativity </b><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"> 21:08, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Relativity ok so that link manually set all the filters, pull down the "search for contributions" section and reset the values in there. — xaosflux  Talk 21:09, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Xaosflux It worked! Thank you! <b style="border-radius:3em;padding:6px;background:#e82c52;color:white;">‍ Relativity </b><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"> 21:10, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * (It makes sense, since the only value I had checked was "Hide probably good edits". So all of my edits were deemed as "probably pretty good"?) <b style="border-radius:3em;padding:6px;background:#e82c52;color:white;">‍ Relativity </b><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"> 21:12, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Unable to fetch Parsoid HTML
Hello. When I try to use the visual editor, I get a message that says "Unable to fetch Parsoid HTML". My source editor works just fine, but I had to completly disable the visual editor to be able to edit. What do I do? Paul Vaurie (talk) 07:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I just started getting this error too. PARAKANYAA (talk) 07:42, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I got an error too.Kanzcech (talk) 07:50, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm also receiving an error. <small style="color:#663399;background:Thistle;border:2px solid;border-radius:4px;padding:0 4px">Schrödinger's jellyfish &#9993; 07:52, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Me three. The Last Penguin (talk) 08:13, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And me. But working now. Doug Weller  talk 08:41, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Good to know I'm not the only one who had this. It's fixed on my end now. Paul Vaurie (talk) 02:44, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

About wikia flag in Special:Interwiki
Almost all wiki projects in WMF have the wikia's prefix flags, and accoding to the history of the template Wikia (used instead of directly writing cross-wiki links), there existed at least from 2009 (possibly even further, since here is from 2005). Is there some reason we need to keep these flags or should they not be removed? This question was raised because a user in zhwiki often added cross-wiki links to some wikia projects, but another user removed that links because of the worrying quality of the articles on those projects, and proposed to remove the wikia flags to eliminate future troubles. Technically counting the number of uses, there are 740 pages referenced through templates, and about 150 pages referenced through cross-wikis. If there is a strong reason for "non-removable", maybe this is a good reason to object it. --Cwek (talk) 01:22, 31 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Regarding the wikia interwiki, it is part of the Special:Interwiki matrix, centrally maintained. Questions about changing that for all Wikimedia projects should be brought up at meta:Talk:Interwiki map. Local projects can not override this list. That has nothing to do with what we would want to do with our own template above. — xaosflux  Talk 01:39, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Does it mean that this matrix is configured and managed by Meta-Wiki for all WMF Wiki projects and cannot be adjusted for specific projects? There are records mentioning why we retained the prefix of wikia? Or is it just path inertia or mutual jump support for wiki projects? --Cwek (talk) 08:34, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, there is one matrix for all projects. You could go through the talk link above. In short though, inclusion on this map is not an endorsement that such an external site is a reliable source for "content" - it could just be something that is useful for discussions or meta-discussions. Locally, the template you referenced has been kept in 4 deletion discussions (see links at Template talk:Wikia). How zhwiki wants to manage their project is up to them, they could make an abusefilter if they don't want wikia links. — xaosflux  Talk 10:41, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

"Always enable safe mode" is broken
I discovered in that "Always enable safe mode" at Special:Preferences is broken. MediaWiki:Prefs-help-forcesafemode is displayed at the preference. I have added "This setting is not working as of January 2024." It links to T355314 where the bug was reported 18 January with no patch so far, but maybe something will happen after a post by Matma Rex today. I wonder whether we should do more to warn users. I don't know how popular the preference is but some users may be upset that unwanted scripts are running in their accounts. As far as I can tell, the only real effect of the setting is currently that you cannot see or change Special:Preferences. The already enabled gadgets are running along with sitewide JavaScript, personal js pages and so on. The setting causes MediaWiki:Prefs-custom-cssjs-safemode to be displayed under the skin setting at Special:Preferences, and MediaWiki:Gadgets-prefstext-safemode is displayed at Special:Preferences. Both messages are currently misleading or false. I haven't edited them. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:47, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I always prefer telling readers and editors the truth. Unless this bug is fixed quickly, we should probably change any misleading or false system messages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:18, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not have to hack all those pages if this is going to be backported. Related, once resolved I think we should put more info in MediaWiki:Prefs-help-forcesafemode - perhaps linking to Help:Safemode with more information. Casual editor really shouldn't opt-in to that unless they know what they are doing. — xaosflux  Talk 14:57, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki:Tog-forcesafemode is displayed next to the check box with a link to mw:Manual:Safemode. MediaWiki:Prefs-help-forcesafemode is an explanation below it with smaller grey text. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:46, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The preference is working again. I have deleted the custom MediaWiki:Prefs-help-forcesafemode so the MediaWiki default is used again. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:54, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

"Template:A-Z multipage list" is invisible on mobile
I was recently looking at the article Airline codes on my phone, and was confused that the first sentence said it was a "list of airline codes", when I couldn't see any such list. It turns out that the list is controlled by Template:A-Z multipage list, which disappears completely in mobile view. This was pointed out on the template's talk page several years ago (giving the example of List of names of European cities in different languages) but evidently nobody noticed who knew what to do about it.

The problem seems to be that the template uses, and somewhere in the mobile CSS is a rule. Quite possibly there are other templates suffering the same problem, I wouldn't know where to look.

Note that to reproduce the problem you need to be both on the ".m." site (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_codes rather than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_codes) and have a browser window less than 720 pixels wide. (A wider screen triggers an additional rule,  which makes it visible again.)

Either the template and/or CSS needs changes to keep this visible, or an alternative mobile view of the template needs to be created, as many pages using it are completely nonsensical if it is invisible. - IMSoP (talk) 15:08, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

PAGE ]]) 20:57, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @IMSoP I added templatestyles that should force  as long as the minerva skin is being used and the width is under 720px. Let me know if that fixes the problem. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * Ah, fabulous, that seems to have sorted it. Thanks! - IMSoP (talk) 21:01, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Bishops by country and century
The latest run of Special:WantedCategories featured two template-generated redlinks for obvious errors, and.

These were both autogenerated by the use of Bishops by country and century category header on the brand-new, which additionally featured three disabled category statements appearing on the page as text instead of categories, , and. (That's not an error, either: the two identical category statements in there were actually appearing as two separate declarations of the exact same text.) All of these, including the text, were transcluded by the template rather than being coded in-page — but trying to add a piped "the Papal States" to the template, as is the common solution in other similar situations, failed to change a damn thing, so for a temporary resolution I've had to wrap the template in suppress categories to abort the kludge, while simultaneously tagging the category as uncategorized due to the lack of any other categories.

So could somebody look into how to fix this? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 19:38, 1 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Template Bishops by country and century category header uses Template:Find country, which doesn't consider "the Papal States" as a country. —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Categorization discussion is off-topic for WP:VPT, feel free to move it elsewhere.
 * Category:Roman Catholic bishops in the Papal States doesn't exist. Is the split by century really needed?
 * Other potential parent category doesn't exist either: Category:19th-century bishops in the Papal States.
 * Should Category:19th-century Roman Catholic bishops in the Papal States be categorized into Category:19th-century bishops by country of work? It definitely qualifies to be categorized into Category:19th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Europe.
 * —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:05, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed, the question of whether it should exist or not is off-topic for VPT, which is why that wasn't the issue that I raised — but if the real issue is that it's using a module pack that isn't even prepared to recognize the Papal States as a country at all, then that in combination with all of the other issues you've raised suggests that I should just take it to CFD instead of trying to get the template wrapper modified. So I'll do that. Bearcat (talk) 22:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Wedlock
Not leap year day yet (in fact women have 366 days, not 1 to propose) but a one-month block placed on 30 January 2024 expires at the same time on 1 March. When a block is made to expire after an exact number of months, and the day of placement does not exist in the month of expiry, how can one calculate the expiry date? 78.146.96.26 (talk) 18:53, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

PAGE ]]) 19:22, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See https://www.php.net/manual/en/datetime.examples-arithmetic.php. It would first say the block expires on 30 February, but since February only has 29 days, 30 February is equivalent to 1 March. A 1-month block placed on 31 January would expire on 3 March in a normal year and 2 March in a leap year. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * Thanks.  30th February brings up a fascinating article. 78.146.96.26 (talk) 20:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The formula is essentially  → . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * What has this got to do with wedlock? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:19, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * See Leap year for the reference. It's irrelevant to the question. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:39, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Displaying blocks when the block log was hidden
How feasible is it to display a "blocked" notice in an account's Special:Contributions/, even while the block log was hidden? To be clear this is sometimes done when the user's name is disruptive - what it results in is there being no blocked notice in the contribs. The contributions page does include an empty div with the "mw-contributions-blocked-notice" class, the user's rights page does still say "blocked" and the global accounts list does still show the block reason and length, it's just that people can get misled into thinking that the account is not blocked:.

It isn't particularly bothersome, I've only witnessed it happening twice and causing re-reports at UAA once (although it might have happened the other time as well, I just don't remember for sure). Just figured I would ask if it was possible to make the block display even without the log. – 2804:F14:80C4:6501:F90A:5BF2:504C:9AA6 (talk) 07:25, 31 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Also not sure why they were being reported today since they have apparently been blocked since the 20th, maybe talk page abuse ? *Edit: Actually, pretty sure this was a case of someone just now seeing the revert summary at Uniondale, New York, only one contribution in the account. – 2804:F14:80C4:6501:F90A:5BF2:504C:9AA6 (talk) 07:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC) (*edited 07:52, 31 January 2024 (UTC))
 * Please provide specific page examples. — xaosflux  Talk 10:42, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I was trying to avoid linking directly to the user in case it triggers the edit filters (*just confirmed* yes, it does trigger the edit filters), the first link I gave was of the user being reported, you can access their contributions from there. – 2804:F14:80C4:6501:F90A:5BF2:504C:9AA6 (talk) 11:47, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, seems like a possible bug, you can report with the directions at WP:BUG. Something along the line of the "This user is currently blocked." message does not appear on Special:Contributions when the block log has been redacted. — xaosflux  Talk 16:04, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I do not wish to make an account on Wikipedia at this time (apparently necessary to report). At least this is a rare situation, with even rarer impact, not much problem in letting it be. – 2804:F14:80A2:2E01:383A:951C:7025:13F2 (talk) 22:43, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It's maybe more common than you suggest. I'll try and word this tactfully. What admins should be doing in one go is: revdel the block log, revdel the account creation log, revdel the page history (plus maybe some other logs, usually there's a talk page, and a noticeboard report - many patrollers will write it in an edit summary somewhere). And that's for precisely the reasons you've mentioned. You've already mentioned some of the ways you can (often) get this information if you want to. The trick is to stop it coming to their attention in the first place. -- zzuuzz (talk) 01:03, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

One other thing...
Also, every time WantedCategories updates, there's virtually always at least one, and more commonly several, completely new template-generated redlinks of the "Articles containing Foo-language text" and or "Pages with FooLanguage IPA" varieties, because of people adding new foreign-language text to articles in small or obscure languages that didn't already have their own text or IPA tracking categories. This seems rather like the kind of thing that a bot should be able to catch and handle before it turns into my job to deal with, as we regularly have bots that can troll for and automatically create non-empty redlinked maintenance categories. So, is there a bot that could be programmed to catch and resolve such categories on its own before they get detected as WCs, or at least check the WC report itself and automatically create any categories of that type that turn up so that they're already resolved by the time a human even gets to the list? Bearcat (talk) 19:53, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This does sound like something a bot could do. You could ask at Bot requests for someone to write the bot; you'll probably want to include details as to exactly what the category page itself should contain. If no one there takes it up, let me know. Anomie⚔ 02:11, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Is there a way to see all usages of Commons uploads
I know that on Commons one can see where a file is used by looking at its description page. Is there a gadget that will provide that information summarized for all uploads for a given user? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Are you wanting something that will go to commons:Special:ListFiles/Mike_Christie and include file usage for every line? — xaosflux  Talk 14:12, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, exactly. I've been uploading some pictures of south-east Asia and of Cyprus from the 1950s and 1960s and I'd be interested to see if any of them are getting used.  I've had one or two people contact me about the images (e.g. this, which was fascinating) and it made me realize that if others are using the pictures I have no easy way to find out about it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 14:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of one, but may be possible as the information you are looking for seems to be available from the API (example). It may be very "expensive" to run that on-demand from live text. A database query may also be possible if you just need a point-in-time report. — xaosflux  Talk 23:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I could see that might be expensive. Thanks; this is helpful -- I will look into a database query. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 01:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Snævar (talk) 02:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Works like a charm, and it was quick too. Thank you very much! Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 03:43, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

A new feature for previewing references on your wiki
''Apologies for writing in English. If you can translate this message, that would be much appreciated.''

Hi. As announced some weeks ago [ 1] [ 2], Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team introduced Reference Previews to many wikis, including this one. This feature shows popups for references in the article text.

While this new feature is already usable on your wiki, most people here are not seeing it yet because your wiki has set a gadget as the default for previewing references. We suggest removing the default flag from this gadget on your wiki. That will mean:

The benefit of having Reference Previews as the default is that the user experience will be consistent across wikis and with the Page Previews feature, and that the software will be easier to maintain overall.
 * The new default for reference popups on your wiki will be Reference Previews.
 * However, if you want to keep using the gadget, you can still enable it in your personal settings.

If your wiki wants to make this change, you can remove the default flag yourself or ask the Technical Wishes team to remove it for you, ideally by February 12. – Kind regards, Johanna Strodt (WMDE), 09:40, 23 January 2024 (UTC)


 * This seems like a simple and positive change for us to make, as it will harmonize the viewing experience of readers without losing any functionality (it actually adds functionality). Plus, although not a requirement, editors who would like to continue using the gadget can do so. Ed [talk] [OMT] 18:48, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * A pity that it and page previews aren't compatible with Tools/Navigation popups. Nthep (talk) 18:57, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Nthep, presumably it would need to be the other way round i.e. Navpopups compatible with this and page previews.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706036334757:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  18:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As Navpopups goes back to 2005, not necessarily. But either way round it's a shame that there is functionality in one and not the other. The main one for me being the disambiguation function. Nthep (talk) 19:02, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What do you mean ? Navpopups has its own references preview… —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:04, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I know and that's why I'm sticking with it. My disappointment that these WMF developed extensions haven't included (over the years) all the available functionality of Navpopups. Nthep (talk) 19:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Navpopups is a community-maintained gadget, the other two are WMF-developed extensions.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706036718969:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  19:05, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Navpopups is mainly made for editors and only works for registered users. Page Previews is made for readers who have no use for many Navpopups features like disambiguating links, and many other features would just be distractions to most readers. And Page Previews is designed to work for unregistered users so it has no configuration options apart from a way to disable it. I prefer Navpopups as an editor but Page Previews looks better for readers. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:26, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Reference Previews seems to address the needs of readers, which presumably was its intention, but Navpopups remains better for many editors. Is it possible to make Reference Previews the default for unregistered visitors (presumed to be mainly readers) but not for logged-in accounts (presumed to be mainly editors)? Certes (talk) 13:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)


 * This shouldn't happen quietly with just a post here. Interface changes such as this one should be formally proposed to the community via a well-advertised RfC, especially for UI elements that have been in place for quite some time. We saw what happened when the WMF suddenly rolled out V22 with little notice (the RfCs did not expressly give the go-ahead for a launch). InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:55, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not sure we really need to have a big discussion over every change to the interface.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1706554920624:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  19:02, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe not for minor changes, but this change would surely be noticed by anyone who ... you know, clicks on references. InfiniteNexus (talk) 22:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi everyone, in case it was not clear: Our team is only suggesting you make this new feature a default on your wiki. We are not planning on doing this for you, only in case you are asking us to. Apologies if this wasn't clear from my original message.
 * I'm typically not watching replies to all the village pumps, so if you have feedback or questions, please leave them on this talk page. -- Thanks and a good weekend to you all, Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 13:21, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Transport maps
maplink allows the creation of dynamic maps using OpenStreeMap, that offer a small map with direct link to a full-page map. Is there a way to ask for such a map to use a different layer on OSM, such as the Transport Map or Tracestrack Topo? These would be more appropriate for road- and rail-themed articles.

Or is this one for the proposals board? -- Verbarson talkedits 10:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)


 * "using OpenStreetMap" Technically, they are WMF maps, using OpenStreetMap data. The layers you mention are all 3rd party layers (also based on OSM data). We however do not have similar layers and for privacy reasons do not integratie with such 3rd party layers. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:14, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah. That explains why the full-page maps don't have the usual OSM interface. Makes sense now. Thanks. -- Verbarson talkedits 14:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Template:CSS image crop: Now easier with Template:Easy CSS image crop! ...If it passes testing.
CSS image crop is great, but maybe not user friendly.

I've decided to take a stab at making it a little easier to use, at least if, like me, you just play with values until it looks right.

Easy CSS image crop allows you to state how wide you want the final image to be, and it will try to crop it so that you end up with an image exactly that wide. For example:

which is just

Note how, since I didn't want to crop the bottom, I simply put nothing in. Not cropping from the bottom with CSS image crop is much harder and involves doing all the calculations this templates does. It uses percentages to crop, so it scales if you change your mind on the desired width. If you want it bigger, just change  and the whole crop scales automatically.

Before we go live with this, though, could I ask people to test it out? I think it's easier, but... is that just me, or is that true of everyone? Is there some script that can tell the original width and height of an image so we don't have to ask (maybe with Lua? image.width and exist in base Lua.)?

I'd like to be able to use the user preference settings for default image width, but I don't think there's any way to do this. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 04:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

PAGE ]]) 19:06, 31 January 2024 (UTC) PAGE ]]) 15:12, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes you can retrieve the image width and height with lua. Module:Multiple image does this for instance. "I'd like to be able to use the user preference settings for default image width" This information is not available as far as I know. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:54, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay. That was a little difficult, but it works, and I can lose two parameters from the template. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 09:12, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The easiest replacement for CSS image crop is CropTool, and not another hacky template. stjn 16:05, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * No, because that has some severe disadvantages when it comes to reuse of images. People use our articles to find images. We know this. We also know that MediaViewer will not even tell them that a non-cropped image exists. We also don't want a million variant images while discussion happens over the exact crop for an article. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.8% of all FPs. 16:59, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not until CropTool (which is mostly abandoned at this point) fixes lossless cropping so that it is actually lossless again. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * Does CropTool overwrite the original, or are you asked for a new filename? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:17, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It can do either. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK

Please comment here concerning Template:Sort under
See:
 * Template:Sort under
 * Template talk:Sort under

Comment at the above-linked talk page. Comments are requested there here specifically concerning whether the default class=sort-under should be centered sorting icons or right-aligned sorting icons. Or even left-aligned ones. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:55, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * We are not getting any comments on the talk page. So please comment here about which location for the sorting icon you prefer (center, right, or left-aligned) in the 3 tables below. The 3 tables below use raw wikitext (no template). Sort under produces the same results much more simply. And there is no border between the column header text and sorting icon.


 * {| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers sticky-header mw-datatable col5left col6left" style=text-align:right;
 * {| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers sticky-header mw-datatable col5left col6left" style=text-align:right;

! Location ! Rate ! Count ! Year ! Region ! Subregion ! style=background-position:center| || style=background-position:center data-sort-type=number| || style=background-position:center| || style=background-position:center data-sort-type=number| || style=background-position:center| || style=background-position:center|
 * +Intentional homicide victims per 100,000 inhabitants. From UNODC.
 * || 4.0 || 1,613 || 2021 || Asia || Southern Asia
 * || 28.3 || 4 || 2014 || Americas || Latin America and the Caribbean
 * }
 * || 28.3 || 4 || 2014 || Americas || Latin America and the Caribbean
 * }


 * {| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers sticky-header mw-datatable col5left col6left" style=text-align:right;
 * {| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers sticky-header mw-datatable col5left col6left" style=text-align:right;

! Location ! Rate ! Count ! Year ! Region ! Subregion ! style=background-position:center| || style=background-position:right data-sort-type=number| || style=background-position:right| || style=background-position:right data-sort-type=number| || style=background-position:right| || style=background-position:right|
 * +Intentional homicide victims per 100,000 inhabitants. From UNODC.
 * || 4.0 || 1,613 || 2021 || Asia || Southern Asia
 * || 28.3 || 4 || 2014 || Americas || Latin America and the Caribbean
 * }
 * || 28.3 || 4 || 2014 || Americas || Latin America and the Caribbean
 * }


 * {| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers sticky-header mw-datatable col5left col6left" style=text-align:right;
 * {| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers sticky-header mw-datatable col5left col6left" style=text-align:right;

! Location ! Rate ! Count ! Year ! Region ! Subregion ! style=background-position:left| || style=background-position:left data-sort-type=number| || style=background-position:left| || style=background-position:left data-sort-type=number| || style=background-position:left| || style=background-position:left|
 * +Intentional homicide victims per 100,000 inhabitants. From UNODC.
 * || 4.0 || 1,613 || 2021 || Asia || Southern Asia
 * || 28.3 || 4 || 2014 || Americas || Latin America and the Caribbean
 * }
 * || 28.3 || 4 || 2014 || Americas || Latin America and the Caribbean
 * }


 * Wikitext for one of the above choices:
 * --Timeshifter (talk) 08:21, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't recommend having a separate discussion here per WP:MULTI, respond on sort under's talk page. Also, it's not a "choose one" discussion, but a "multiple or one". Jroberson108 (talk) 09:02, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It was not working there. We tried, and as you said: "no other editors have joined for almost a week."
 * It's a choose one discussion concerning a default class: class=sort-under for the more popular choice.
 * I doubt anyone will choose left-aligned. But if so, it is no big deal to provide that option too. We have 2 classes now: (center and right-aligned).
 * It is common to go to the Village Pump for more opinions, expert advice, etc. when discussion is inadequate elsewhere. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:09, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Tables or its parent page, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, would be a better place to seek opinions? The technical village pump is a place to discuss technical problems and concerns, and there aren't any issues with how to implement any of the options. isaacl (talk) 19:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the idea, . See: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Tables. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:02, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the idea, . See: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Tables. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:02, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Piped links with VisualEditor
From my discussion with @Mathglot on their talk page:

Thank you for your help! IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 14:47, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If I'm following the edit history correctly, the wikitext source was changed from  to  . Without user intervention, I don't think the VisualEditor would be able to assume that the user wanted to change the destination link from "ancient Romans" to "ancient Roman". Do you know if the VisualEditor provide an easy way to enter links such as  ? (Though since in this case the ultimate destination is Ancient Rome, I'm not sure the suffix approach is the most natural one.) isaacl (talk) 18:03, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yep, so, I notice that when other editors copyedit my work, the majority of their edits is precisely to rewrite  to  . I've just replicated the issue in a quick test on VisualEditor now, where linking   leads to the source code  .  It might be that I'm missing something or not using the editor correctly, but this is a consistent correction I've noticed other editors make to my work. If I try to link without the s, the result is:  . IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 18:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it kind of runs counter to the concept of a visual editor to provide a way to specify how the underlying wikitext source will be represented, so I'm not surprised that there isn't a way to do it. isaacl (talk) 18:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think VisualEditor can change  to   in one step. Once you have a link and want to change something, the link text and link target are changed in separate ways. Click the link and then "Edit" to change the link target. Delete the s to change the link text. Alternatively you can  delink it, delete the s, and link it again. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, this is very useful information. A subtext or side issue here for me, is that I'm trying to see how to best help guide others in the use of VE by not losing the wisdom, tips, and tricks of the trade that arise out of specific situations such as this one. Accordingly, in response to OP's query on my Talk page (linked top), I made a change to WP:VE to add a bullet item to the list, and started a proposal for ; your input there would be appreciated. Mathglot (talk) 22:47, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * A different but related point is that it seems very easy in VE to type incorrect text, find a valid link but leave the original text displayed, e.g. [&#91;deity|diety]]. It would be wonderful if any solution could encompass this problem too. Certes (talk) 22:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)


 * AWB already knows how to fix many misspellings when the typo is not a real word, so maybe it could handle a common subset of these in link form. I can conceive of a script which could do: {if (WikiProject = Food or Health) or (ratio of (frequency of words like 'weight', 'lose', 'Atkins', 'fat' on page) :: (frequency of words like 'God', 'Allah', 'Vishnu', 'religion' on page)) > 2) then 'diety' else if < 0.5 then 'deity' else unlink) but even if such a script were possible I doubt the problem is severe enough to request it; moreover, it would be tedious to produce. Mathglot (talk) 00:00, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I wonder if we could produce a warning if the displayed text is a R from misspelling to the link target. It's hard to collect statistics, but I suspect that case occurs quite often.  (If I'm wrong then it's not worth considering.)  The downside is that we should sometimes retain the misspelling in quotations. Certes (talk) 18:23, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If I'm understanding the VisualEditor behaviour correctly, I think your modification is a bit overspecific. Any edit to link text will leave the original link unchanged, thus producing a piped link. This isn't necessarily a limitation per se; it's just a difference between wikitext, where you can explicitly see any difference between the link text and link destination, and the VisualEditor, where the user interface has to be used to see the link destination. isaacl (talk) 23:22, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Isaacl, my problem is precisely understanding the VE behavior correctly, and I took my best shot in that mod, attempting to generalize based on a single use case; a tricky prospect at best. If you can improve the wording, by all means please do. Mathglot (talk) 23:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * (post-ec) Well, let's say a limitation in what the user wanted != what resulted, where using the wikitext editor would have given a different outcome. Maybe limitations is not quite the right word for that. Mathglot (talk) 23:40, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * A rough analogy is if the original wikitext source were  and an editor changed it to  . Without analyzing the context of the rest of the changes, the wikitext editor wouldn't know if the editor really wanted to point to Indiana Jones (to which Indiana Jones franchise redirects) or say Indiana Jones (character). Now of course no one expects the wikitext editor to change the destination link on its own, as its underlying premise is that the user has full control over linking. In a similar manner, the VisualEditor also doesn't try to alter the destination link on its own, and leaves it up to the editor to change the destination link if desired. isaacl (talk) 04:22, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Not sure if that's a good analogy here or not. In your example, the link is piped before and after, whereas in the OP use case, iirc VE converts a simple link into a piped link when the target is changed, which is what we'd like to document, and avoid. PrimeHunter offered a workaround, and ultimately, a bug should be filed on VE unless converting it to a piped link is desirable for some reason. Mathglot (talk) 05:50, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * With wikitext, the link text can be the same as the destination link, and you can change both at the same time. Because you can see the underlying markup, you know when you're changing both or just changing one. With WYSIWYG-type editors, though, typically the link text and its appearance is separated from the destination link. My analogy was just to illustrate that editing link text in VisualEditor is akin to editing the link text in a piped wikitext link, and VisualEditor doesn't know if the user wants to change both the destination link and the link text, or keep them separate.
 * Based on their experiences with other WYSIWYG-type editors, I think users of VisualEditor generally do expect to be able to copy edit the link text without modifying the destination link, and so creating piped links in the underlying wikitext does align with their expectations. In theory, a new feature could be added (say a link overwrite mode) where editing the link text would also change the destination link. I suspect it would be somewhat complex to implement (I think extensive copyediting in a link overwrite mode could result in empty links scattered about that would have to be handled, so there would be a lot of edge cases to consider). isaacl (talk) 06:30, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, we might need additional content at WP:NOPIPE to mention that it does not apply to users of Visual Editor. I'm not in favor of addition of complex features for something of this magnitude. Mathglot (talk) 06:47, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should change our advice about when to use a pipe, but we could mention that following that guidance is more difficult when using VE. Certes (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We may have been talking past each other. I think there may be a possible misunderstanding in the first response, assuming it's not I who misunderstands. You said:
 * Agreed; however, there was user intervention. OP in that edit changed the visible text ancient Romans to ancient Roman (because the sentence required an adjective in that position). VE, rather than leave well enough alone, unnecessarily turned that into a piped link under the hood, when leaving it as  would have been sufficient. So, it's not about VE making any assumptions about what the user wanted in the absence of human intervention, but rather overriding what they wanted or implementing it in a less than optimal fashion. If any assumptions were being made, it was VE assuming that the user didn't really mean to say ancient Roman, when they did; or perhaps assuming that ancient Roman wasn't equally as good a redirect as ancient Romans, who knows; it should just accept the user's change. What if the user made a typo and placed ancient Romanx there, will VE try to fix that up with a piped link? I hope not; in that case, it should become a simple red link containing a misspelling so a human can come by and decide what it should be later. I don't think VE should be fiddling with piping to determine what it thought the user meant in the RW case, or in this hypothetical. Mathglot (talk) 20:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * VE left the link target alone when the link text was changed. That's how links are handled in VE and almost all other software when the link text is not a full url. You probably only think it's wrong because you are used to the source editor where MediaWiki has a special feature allowing the link target and link text to be defined at the same time. In HTML it would have said . I don't think any HTML editor would automatically change the link target if the user removed a character from the link text. Suppose an article said   and somebody changed the displayed text to "Dane" in VE. Should VE automatically change the link target from the article Danes to the disambiguation page Dane? Clearly not. In your example ancient Roman and ancient Romans are currently redirects to the same article but I think it would be too confusing for VE users if there were complicated rules for when a link target is or isn't changed when you change the link text. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:18, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you saying VE operates directly on the Html without considering the wikicode? I thought our servers saved only the wikicode, which is interpreted into the Html of the page when someone GETs the page; that's why looking at an old revision of a page that contains templates whose output has changed since the old page rev, shows the current output of the templates in the context of the old page, not the output of the template as it was back then. In wikitext editor preview mode during a change, you have the rendered Html at the top, and the wikitext (changed or not) at the bottom; next time they click 'Preview', the Preview window is re-rendered from the wikitext, right? VE doesn't show the wikitext, of course, that's the whole point of a visual editor, but in the end it has to produce it because that's what ends up in the server again, right? In your Html example, that's what would happen if it was acting on the Html instead of on the wikicode; is that the way it is designed? As far as a special feature, any text editor can alter both the href and the embedded anchor simultaneously if you place the cursor there; that preceded visual editing and hardly seems special. I used to use Amaya, that may have been the oldest predecessor to VE; I wonder how they handled the situation, and whether they stored the Html directly, or interpreted it from an internal code. But now I feel I'm getting a bit far afield.
 * As far as too confusing for VE users when a link target is changed, if they type 'XYZ' why shouldn't it just go to 'XYZ'? I understand your previous comment about a two-step process, and that seems ideal as a workaround, but why can't we have that live at editing time in VE, instead of a second step the VE user has to read about in some 'limitations' section and then act on? Since I think we both agree that we don't want VE making guesses about what a user means, if a change in link text leaves some uncertainty about target, why can't VE pop up a small dialog box with two input fields, the target and the link text, with the link-text pre-populated from user input, and maybe/maybe-not prepopulating the target page as well, and ask them to confirm or adjust? Seems to me that would fix this problem. Doesn't VE do something like that when a user adds a link to a disambig page, or am I mixing that up with a different feature? Mathglot (talk) 23:10, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * VE makes wikitext. I only brought up HTML to explain that VE behaves normally for link-making software. It's MediaWikis wikitext which is unusual. VE is designed to be usable by editors who don't know wikitext. It's not relevant here but MediaWiki actually does process the wikitext as soon as you save a page. The result is cached so it doesn't have to be recomputed on every page view. Old versions are different. MediaWiki does recompute the result when you view them but they get far fewer page views so the server cost is limited. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Post-ec edit: From what Isaacl wrote simultaneously below, it sounds like VE does have such a pop-up as I was theorizing. Mathglot (talk) 23:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not a VisualEditor user (other than a few tests, mostly recently using the reply tool), so I went to VisualEditor and clicked on the test link to test it out. You can also affix ?veaction=edit to an URL for a page to test it. As I mentioned before, though, I think based on their experiences with other WYSISWYG-type editors, that most users would not expect editing the link text to automatically change the destination link. isaacl (talk) 23:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am aware of the circumstances of the edit described in the initial post. As I mentioned, VisualEditor does not have a feature that allows you to edit both the destination link and the link text at the same time by simply typing in the main text box, unlike wikitext. Thus all edits in the main VisualEditor text box are by design leaving the destination link unchanged. Its model for entering links inherently keeps the two separate. As you move your cursor through a link, a popup appears, showing you the destination link and the link text. Thus when copy-editing the link text, the user will see that the destination link remains unchanged. isaacl (talk) 22:53, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If that's the case, then my addition to the 'Limitations' section is wrong; can you have a look? Mathglot (talk) 23:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * when you made the edit in question, did VE pop up a dialog box showing the link text and the target page? Mathglot (talk) 23:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I previously said I think your modification is a bit overspecific. Any edit to link text will leave the original link unchanged, thus producing a piped link. It's a consequence of the editing model of the user interface. (Whether or not the implementation roundtrips from wikitext to HTML then back to wikitext, as your question above touched upon, is a side issue. The UI handles the destination link and the link text separately.) So whether or not someone perceives this as a limitation depends on their point of view on the model. isaacl (talk) 23:26, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Isaac mentioned that they are not a regular VE user; I use it almost exclusively and I can attest that from my point of view there is no limitation here. It does exactly what I would expect. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 23:27, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that perspective; I get it. And if VE users were the only users, I see no problem with it. But WP:NOPIPE exists, and I sometimes clean up what I see as unnecessarily piped links, without drawing a distinction based on what editor they used to create it. Should we maybe get rid of WP:NOPIPE? Mathglot (talk) 23:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think so. I think all that's happening here is that a user with VE is doing something that the interface permits and which they're unaware we'd prefer they did not do.  They may be failing to understand the VE interface, or they may be unaware of NOPIPE.  Editors using wikitext also do things we'd prefer they didn't do; other editors follow behind and clean that up too.  The type of edit that began this conversation is less likely with wikitext because you have to be a non-beginner to even understand that it's possible to have link text that differs from the target; in VE that's built in to the dialog so new users are more able to make that mistake.  It's a natural consequence of allowing separate editing of the two components of a link.  I don't think there's a problem with either wikitext or VE here; it's just that the natural errors made in each type of editor differ.  More experienced editors are less likely to make this mistake. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 23:44, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Generally there's no harm in tidying up piped links (though as I discuss below, there can be cases where users deliberately want to link to a specific destination that is different than the link text). However, as mentioned in the original discussion on the article talk page, as repetitive as it may get for wikitext editors, we shouldn't be judgmental about other users who create these links, particularly if they are VisualEditor users. isaacl (talk) 23:46, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, and I click the target page, which causes a piped link. For a slightly different example, clicking target page "Milan" on "Milanese" leads to  not  .  IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 00:02, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, and I click the target page, which causes a piped link. For a slightly different example, clicking target page "Milan" on "Milanese" leads to  not  .  IgnatiusofLondon (talk) 00:02, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Enhancement proposal
Now that I think I finally understand what is going on, here is what I think VE should do: This doesn't seem to qualify as a "complex rule" to me. Does anyone see an objection to my raising an enhancement request at Phab for this? Mathglot (talk) 23:29, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * 1) User changes link to newpage
 * 2) After resolving redirects, do 'link' and 'newpage' point to the same target page?
 * 3) * YES: code newpage in the wikicode.
 * 4) * NO:   code newpage in the wikicode.
 * VisualEditor users can't change  to   without changing both the link text and destination link, in which case I assume the result will be  . However assuming you meant that VisualEditor should take some action based on whether or not the link text, if used as a wikilink, would eventually redirect to the same destination as the final destination of the destination link: I don't like VisualEditor making decisions based on the current state of the pages in question. Users sometimes want to point to a page that is a redirect today, but in future could be a standalone page. Thus personally I don't want VisualEditor or the wikitext editor, for that matter, checking the ultimate destinations of the destination link and link text. I prefer to keep control over when the two should be made the same. isaacl (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:46, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That seems to represent a divergence in implied guidance for how editors using VE and editors using the wikitext editor should act. As a wikicode editor, when I change a link that may already be a redirect to what I want, I check if it's a redirect, and then code it accordingly. Are you saying that a conscientious, experienced VE editor should skip that step? Neither user can see the future, so I think any decision based on what might some day happen with a redirect page is not germane to the discussion. But we may not be in disagreement on this point: I also think the user, whatever editing program they happen to be using, should keep control over when the two should be made the same; as a wikitext editor, I already do that; should that decision be taken out of the hands of a VE user? Mathglot (talk) 23:49, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the root cause is that the dialogue box has two fields – target page and displayed text – and changing them both in sync is twice as much work as changing one of them. I wonder if there could be some toggle which lets the user optionally change both at once.  For example, some calendar applications have a button, often featuring a chain icon, which can be clicked to toggle between linked (making the event start an hour later also makes it end an hour later) and unlinked (making the event start an hour later leaves the end time unchanged).  I've also seen it on graphics applications for changing the size of an image: linked maintains the aspect ratio but unlinked allows height and width to change independently.  I think it's a well-understood UI metaphor, though the icon I've seen elsewhere is confusingly similar to the "create/edit a link" icon in VE. Certes (talk) 00:01, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Although I had earlier discussed having an overwrite link mode, to be honest, personally I find it sufficiently intuitive to highlight the link, delete it, and add a new one. isaacl (talk) 00:19, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Good point, though someone changing 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup qualification – UEFA Group F to 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup qualification – UEFA Group G might want to edit rather than replace the link. Certes (talk) 12:03, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure. Another alternative would be to copy the link text, delete the link, then add a new link, by pasting in the old link text and editing it. isaacl (talk) 18:15, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor users have complete control over the destination link. You can try creating and editing links yourself and see. I don't want the editor to decide that I really should link to a different destination. If I chose to link to  in an article where the context establishes that the Minnesota team is the subject of discussion, then I don't want the editor turning that into  . isaacl (talk) 00:11, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * And perhaps it should be mentioned here that NOPIPE is neither a policy or a guideline; it's simply sensible advice. There's no need to spend editing time on fixing violations of NOPIPE if you don't want to; it's just not that serious a problem, and is probably best fixed if you happen to be editing that text for other reasons anyway.  The root cause is that the editor making the edit doesn't realize what they're doing, not that there's something wrong with VE.  Of course if you can think of an enhancement to VE, by all means propose it, but as an experienced VE user I don't see the need, and I'm afraid it would only further confuse an inexperienced user. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 00:18, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Nobody wants the editor program deciding anything; I think once again, we are in agreement. And maybe Mike's comment was a good last word on this. Oh, and it is a guideline, but that doesn't really change anything that's been said. Mathglot (talk) 03:45, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

citation tooltips no longer working when logged in?
I used to be able to hover over a citation and get a pop-up with the citation template in it. Today, that's not working when I'm logged in, but continues to work in a Chrome incognito window. I can replicate both behaviors in Safari. Any clue what I might have done to break this? RoySmith (talk) 17:01, 27 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Ugh, the problem turned out to be that Gadgets/Reference Tooltips was disabled in my preferences. Which is totally mystifying since I'm sure I didn't turn it off. RoySmith (talk) 17:10, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Did you change any user preference while in mobile / using minerva skin? If you did, that would have caused this gadget to be disabled, because this gadget is not defined for minerva and there's a bug. There's a phab ticket for this that I can't find. – SD0001  (talk) 17:18, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't use minerva, and never log in using this account on mobile, so probably not. One of the continuing annoyances with prefs is that there's (as far as I can tell) zero versioning or logging of changes, so it's impossible to audit what changed or revert back to a previous configuration.  I think I might have opened a phab ticket on that once but I also can't find it :-) RoySmith (talk) 17:35, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, I think I figured this out. When you hover on a reference, the tooltip box that comes up includes a gear icon in the upper-right.  If you click on that, you get a dialog box titled "Reference Tooltips" with some buttons for enable/disable.  I remember looking at that a while ago.  What I don't remember is looking at it and saying, "Oh, that's convenient, this is how I can edit my saved Special:Preferences", because nowhere does it say that's what it's doing.  I must have clicked disable not realizing what it was going to do, and then promptly forgot about it.  Yet another win for incomprehensible U/I design. RoySmith (talk) 00:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @RoySmith: Incomprehensible U/I design developer here. I suspected this can be unclear but wasn't sure. Do you think replacing "Enable / Disable" with "Enable Reference Tooltips / Disable Reference Tooltips" will make it clear enough? Then I'll ask to make the change. I didn't do it right away because the dialog box is already titled Reference Tooltips, so I tried to avoid duplication. Jack who built the house (talk) 00:09, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. I think the core problem is that there's nothing which makes it clear that this is the same as something you set in Special:Preferences.  In fact, I'm not even 100% what it's setting.  In Preferences, I've got under the Appearance tab, under "Reading preferences", "Enable reference previews", which is greyed out.  That in turn says, "You have the Reference Tooltips gadget enabled..." so if I go over to the gadgets tab, I see " Reference Tooltips: hover over inline citations to see reference information without moving away from the article text", which seems to be describing this same functionality, but it's unchecked in my prefs.  So I don't even know what I've got turned on and what I've got turned off, and which of those is the same as the little dialog box the gear icon gives you. RoySmith (talk) 00:55, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, what you describe is mostly the problem of the architecture of wiki projects per se, where you can have native features like "reference previews" and gadgets like Reference Tooltips side by side. It is reinforced by the fact that we can't disable a gadget for non-logged in users, so we only disable its external effect. I asked to change the two strings mentioned above; there's not much I can do about the rest. Jack who built the house (talk) 20:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Statistics - visitor screen resolutions?
I checked the Statistics and did some web search but I couldn't find any statistics regarding user screen resolution (could be a part of User Agent details). 1. Is it being collected? 2. Is it available anywhere?

My end goal is to get such statistics for the Russian Wikipedia but anything near it would also be helpful. ￼ Nikolay Komarov (talk) 09:16, 4 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure this is available - you can see views by type (web/mobile/mobile app) using the Siteviews tool; meta:Talk:Pageviews Analysis may be a good place to follow up on your question. — xaosflux  Talk 11:31, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * User Agent does not include screen resolution. LittlePuppers (talk) 20:47, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Ciro's (London)
can't purge Ciro's (London) at en.m.w.....3MRB1 (talk) 01:35, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I use mobile app.... 3MRB1 (talk) 01:37, 5 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I sent a purge to that page. — xaosflux  Talk 14:41, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-06
<section begin="technews-2024-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
 * The mobile site history pages now use the same HTML as the desktop history pages. If you hear of any problems relating to mobile history usage please point them to the phabricator task.
 * On most wikis, admins can now block users from making specific actions. These actions are: uploading files, creating new pages, moving (renaming) pages, and sending thanks. The goal of this feature is to allow admins to apply blocks that are adequate to the blocked users' activity. Learn more about "action blocks".

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Talk pages permalinks that included diacritics and non-Latin script were malfunctioning. This issue is fixed.

Future changes
 * 24 Wikipedias with Reference Tooltips as a default gadget are encouraged to remove that default flag. This would make Reference Previews the new default for reference popups, leading to a more consistent experience across wikis. For 46 Wikipedias with less than 4 interface admins, the change is already scheduled for mid-February, unless there are concerns. The older Reference Tooltips gadget will still remain usable and will override this feature, if it is available on your wiki and you have enabled it in your settings.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W06"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 19:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Incorrect copying of my links
While investigating to see if a problem reported on Italian Wikipedia had been solved, I saw that links to my user and talk pages were formatted incorrectly. The links work, but what it says they are is wrong.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:34, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Wait, that happens when I click on translate.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I have no idea what you are asking for help with here. Can you rephase in the form of: When I do X, I expect Y to happen, but Z is happening instead. With diffs for anything you demonstrated on-wiki. — xaosflux  Talk 23:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Likewise mystified by this. The only quantum of help I can offer, is that the links you provide above go to your user page and talk page at Italian Wikipedia whose content does not actually reside there, but at Wikipedia's international sister project called "meta"; that is, the user page you see at it-wiki is actually hosted and editable at meta:User:Vchimpanzee. The full-url style code you used there (starting with the  scheme) is overkill; you could've just coded [ [:en:User:Vchimpanzee]] instead, but the full-url version should, and does, work. As for what you are actually asking about here, I haven't a clue what you mean. Mathglot (talk) 00:38, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Didn't know I could do that when I created the meta page but there's no need to fix it now.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You said "that happens when I click on translate". I guess you refer to some browser feature to make machine translation, and the only problem is a poor translation by software with no relation to Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:28, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I completely overlooked that sentence, huh. Just something I noticed with Google Chrome's page translation function - they sometimes "translates" Wikipedia urls:
 * If you access the russian CentralAuth and translate (link), it transforms "ru.wikipedia.org" into "en.wikipedia.org". While if you access the portuguese CentralAuth and translate (link), it instead transforms "pt.wikipedia.org" into "en.wikipedia.org".
 * I guess it sorta makes sense, from the point of view of a machine translation AI just matching patterns, even if it really doesn't. – 2804:F14:80D5:A101:9DF8:4468:10D7:D792 (talk) 05:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Machine translations are sometimes hard to make sense of. If you Google translate "ru Wikipedia" from Russian then you get "en Wikipedia" in both English and German but "es Wikipedia" in Spanish (language code es). You get "på Wikipedia" in Swedish. "på" is not a language code but means "on" in Swedish. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:14, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I should have just deleted the question when I saw the problem was with translating. However, the words shown on the screen are incorrect, which may be a problem but it would be rare.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:59, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Diffonly is forced
Something's happened to my watchlist user interface in the last 15-20 minutes. At I have "" disabled, yet when I click on a "diff" link in my watchlist, the query parameter   is appended to the URL, as is a redundant second   parameter. These are not present if I right-click the link and copy it to my clipboard. For example, link as copied:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&curid=3252662&diff=1203863882&oldid=1203853716

link after clicking:
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&curid=3252662&diff=1203863882&oldid=1203853716&title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28technical%29&diffonly=1

What's changed? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Addendum: this happens for all diff links (e.g. contributions, page history and indeed the first one that I pasted above). I can produce proper behaviour by altering  to   but this is suboptimal. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This is happening to me too, just in the last hour or so. When I click on a diff from my watchlist, I see only the diff, and not the whole rendered page below that. This appears to be a bug, but it's not Thursday. [ETA: I created a bug report, T356711, linked above.] – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Same here. –  22:03, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't have this problem. It may be caused by some user script. Matma Rex talk 22:18, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Appending  to the original URL doesn't fix it for me. –   22:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I was testing it wrong, I can reproduce now. Matma Rex talk 22:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Same here (regarding the original issue). Thought I might have inadvertently changed something. I want the original diff function back! Dirkbb (talk) 22:26, 5 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I brought it up on IRC and @Jon (WMF) realized what change caused the problem and how to fix it. It should be fixed soon. Matma Rex talk 22:46, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Aaaand we're back! to whoever fixed it. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:13, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Ditto, thanks guys! Dirkbb (talk) 23:15, 5 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Should be fixed now (997281, sal). --Zabe (talk) 23:18, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

XfDCloser not showing up
Just now I went to close an RfD, and I don't see XfDCloser showing up. I made completely sure I had it turned on in my preferences, and I also confirmed I'm not seeing it show up when I go to AfD or MfD. I'm on mobile in desktop mode, and as far as I can tell everything else I have turned on in preferences is working. Is it just me, or is anyone else having an issue too? The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 21:29, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Also noting I checked on a computer and saw the same, it just isn't there. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 23:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It shows up for me, e.g. on Articles for deletion/Tufts Magazine, both on an iPhone and Firefox on a Windows PC. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:20, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I just tried that and Chrome, it's still not there. I see the manual buttons (I manually closed one RfD, I'd forgotten what a bitch it is to manually close these discussions), but not the standard options for XfDCloser. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 04:00, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The Blade of the Northern Lights, what happens if you try to load it manually? Try loading the page with  (and without) and then running   in the console. I've personally been having issues with the main script, but running the beta script  worked for me.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1707147986607:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> —  Qwerfjkl  talk  15:46, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll give that a try once I can use my laptop again, hopefully that works. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 18:09, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Success! Thank you, never more do I appreciate technically minded people than when these issues arise. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 02:31, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Question about using Massviews to query Wikipedia to create instructions for researchers
Hi all

I'm trying to create a query in massviews that would create a comprehensive query for researchers/partners to use to understand where content from a source is referenced on Wikipedia. I want to then create documentation for people to be able to run their own queries. I want to use Massviews specifically rather than string lots of tools together to lower the barriers for use and Massviews also does pageviews. I have a question about searching for two things in the same query (to avoid duplicates across mutliple queries). I asked the question on the Massviews talk page, if anyone can help I would really really appreciate it (please reply there).


 * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pageviews_Analysis#How_to_use_massviews_to_search_for_all_English_Wikipedia_pages_which_use_references_from_a_source?

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 02:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Excluding watchlist entries by tag
We are getting reports (see Template talk:WikiProject banner shell) that the option to exclude watchlist entries based on the "Talk banner shell conversion" is not working. I have just tried it, and it did not seem to be working for me either. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:00, 5 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Would you provide an example diff, especially if it is the most recent edit to the page? — xaosflux  Talk 14:40, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I have just tried excluding the "Talk banner shell conversion" tag is not enough. What steps did you take on what page, and what happened? Nardog (talk) 15:29, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll try again and report back - Gonnym says it works for them &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Is something causing many templates to transclude themselves when they were not doing so before?
RelationIconLink is transcluding itself, according to What links here. It, and some other templates, were not doing so a couple of days ago, but a significant number of templates just dropped off the unused template report. Does anyone know what may have changed? Was this change intended? Does the unused template report need to be adjusted to account for this change? – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:00, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This is caused by the recent edits to Module:Pagetype, which is invoked by uncategorized. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 06:05, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, it looks as if the report needs to exclude the template itself when checking whether any pages use it. That would also filter out genuine recursive usage but, if no one calls a recursive template, it's still unused. Certes (talk) 10:39, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Can someone fix this?
Can someone fix this article preview - Solar gain? <b style="padding:5px">SailingInABathTub</b> <b style="padding:5px;background:#3366cc;color:white">🛁</b> 13:06, 6 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I changed Cite journal to Cite web, because the cited work is not a journal. Is there some other problem with the preview?  It looks good to me. Certes (talk) 13:31, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It said "i am gay" when you hover over the link. But seems ok now. <b style="padding:5px">SailingInABathTub</b> <b style="padding:5px;background:#3366cc;color:white">🛁</b> 13:32, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Might have been a caching issue. That bit of vandalism only existed for 2 minutes and was from back in late January. DMacks (talk) 13:36, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, that sort of preview! (I assumed that you meant the whole-page rendering that we see before saving an edit.)  Someone inserted that text at the start of the lead, but it was quickly removed. Certes (talk) 13:37, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Non-free image with same filename as free image on Commons
Hello. In the article Petrus Vertenten a non-free image is now used in the infobox. I recently added a different and free image of this person on Commons. Unfortunately, for the image on Commons, I chose the same filename ('Petrus Vertenten. jpg') as the local non-free image has here on en-wiki. Usually after I added a free image on Commons that can replace a non-free image on en-wiki, I adjust the filename in the infobox and about a week later the non-free image is semi-automatically removed (because non-free images that are no longer in use are deleted after one week). Is there a way to enforce using an image from Commons if a different image on en-wiki with the same filename exists? Robotje (talk) 17:12, 27 January 2024 (UTC)


 * No. The only way to deal with this is to use different names. There is/was a report for what this is called ("image shadowing"). Izno (talk) 22:56, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I think a bot by uses/used to fill it. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:46, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. You can create an image redirect on Commons. Assuming that you want c:File:Petrus Vertenten.jpg to be displayed, choose a new image name that isn't presently in use either at Wikipedia or Commons, for example "Petrus Vertenten drawing.jpg". Then, go to c:File:Petrus Vertenten drawing.jpg, and create a redirect there - it only needs to be one line:  and save it. Then edit Petrus Vertenten so that instead of Petrus Vertenten.jpg it has Petrus Vertenten drawing.jpg and save. File:Petrus Vertenten.jpg (on Wikipedia) should then be tagged . -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 00:03, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I did what you advised me and that works fine. Thanks. - Robotje (talk) 07:48, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Because the non-free image was no longer in use for a full week, it was automatically deleted here at en-wiki. At the infobox I could remove the " drawing" from the filename and the image from Commons is still visible. - Robotje (talk) 12:31, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It wasn't automatically deleted, nor was it deleted for the reason that you state. The [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=File%3APetrus+Vertenten.jpg deletion log] shows that it was manually deleted (by ), per WP:CSD, for which the threshold is two days, not seven. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:43, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I should have checked the deletion log first. Anyway, soon after it was no longer in use, the non-free image on en-wiki was deleted. Right now the redirect on Commons is no longer needed but there is also no problem to just leave it there. - Robotje (talk) 13:52, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

What makes in-line diffs happen?
When I click at the end of a history entry, I get a little diff that pops up in-line. What causes that? I assume it's something I enabled at some point by loading a script or turning on some gadget, but (like so many of these things), I don't remember the details. RoySmith (talk) 14:23, 7 February 2024 (UTC)


 * User:Bradv/Scripts/ExpandDiffs. Nardog (talk) 14:33, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Mobile site diff links
Since today, on mobile web, clicking on the link to a diff from either my watchlist or a page’s history no longer takes me to Special:MobileDiff. In my opinion, the non-MobileDiff version is much more cluttered on a small screen from a UX perspective, & so not (currently) as suitable for viewing on a mobile device. (While writing & testing this, I noticed that it also causes a weird bug with the ‘new section’ tool.) Does anyone know if this was an intentional change? All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 00:03, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * mobile history markup was changed T353388, however there should still be a marked-up diff example. If you have found bugs, please open and link to that ticket though. — xaosflux  Talk 00:14, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hey @A smart kitten the change was not intended to introduce clutter and I was hoping it would be barely noticeable so I'd appreciate some feedback! Currently this is enabled only for logged in users, so you use an incognito window in the mean time if you need the old layout. The intended benefits include adding rollback functionality for editors on mobile that need it. I've created T356727 for capturing the issue you have already flagged.
 * For this url this is how it should look before and after:
 * Before: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F41787295
 * After: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/F41787427
 * Knowing the source of your clutter would be really helpful so I can help prioritize the right fixes with the right people?
 * What kind of device are you using? Mobile phone? Tablet phone?
 * Do the screenshots above compare with what you are seeing? If not could you share more on how they do not?
 * Is the revision slider the source of the clutter you are referring to? If so could you provide this feedback on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356725
 * Do you have any gadgets interacting with the mobile diff page that could be adding clutter? If so could you let me know which?
 * If it's the visual diff tabs, your feedback would be welcome on T351946.
 * Thanks in advance for helping us improve this experience!
 * @Xaosflux I don't think we should track that in the above resolved ticket. It would be better to create separate tickets for all the issues as we identify them! Jdlrobson (talk) 01:18, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * New ticket is fine, if it caused a 'problem', linking is more then sufficient! @Jdlrobson - please note that the tech news notification of this specifically asked to point issues to that task. — xaosflux  Talk 01:21, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Jdlrobson Thank you for the thorough response - I appreciate it. (re using the old layout, I've introduced a hack into my minerva.js for now that *seems* to work).
 * I'm currently running on about zero energy but I'll try and type up some feedback (either here, in the tasks, or both) at some point later on :) (also, thank you for filing T356727 for me!) All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 01:53, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hope your energy levels replete soon and thanks again for voicing your concerns! Jdlrobson (talk) 14:50, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

IABot
Hi, I hope some IABot experts can help. The domain http://www.iranica.com/ is tagged in IAbot as permalive (for reasons I don't fully understand), although it is dead and usurpated. Who could change it to permadead? I tried to do so but I seemingly lack admin permissions. Broc (talk) 14:16, 8 February 2024 (UTC)


 * At the top of User:InternetArchiveBot there is a "Report problem" link. — xaosflux  Talk 14:31, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Reply notifications
I left a message on a user's talk page and when they replied to me I wasn't notified. Is that normal? Surely there should be a way to be notified of replies. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:53, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It's not automatic. You'll either have to watch the page, subscribe to that section, turn on automatic subscription for posts started by you, or ask them to ping you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:00, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia tool link not working as a wikilink, any suggestions?
Hi all

I'm trying to link to a specific query in Massviews for a partnership I'm working on, however there is something about the special characters it uses which breaks the link on wiki (and weirdly also in whatsapp etc)


 * https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=search&range=latest-20&project=en.wikipedia.org&sort=views&direction=1&view=list&target=insource:/(fao.org|publisher=FAO)/ (you will have to copy and paste this link, even the link it creates here is broken, it misses off some characters at the end)


 * |publisher=FAO)/ link broken

Does anyone have any suggestions of how to fix this? is there any way I can replace any of the characters with html entity codes or something? Its really weird, it seems like the link stops with one of the = signs but its like the 3rd or 4th = sign in the URL. I've tried to use the Wikimedia URL shortner but it says 'URLs to domain https://pageviews.wmcloud.org are not allowed to be shortened'.

Any help would be really appreciated

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 03:46, 9 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Use  for efficiency per mw:Help:CirrusSearch. Use   to encode parameter values in url's, and encode a pipe as   inside urlencode since it has a special meaning in urlencode syntax.


 * https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=search&range=latest-20&project=en.wikipedia.org&sort=views&direction=1&view=list&target=
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 04:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi, this is wonderful, thanks so much, you always know how to fix these things :) John Cummings (talk) 05:55, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Column width / Headers
Hi all, I'm doing tests on tables (on the fr wiki but I think it's the same syntax here).

I have a width issue. I made these two tables (in the "source" section, hidden by default). I would like to set a minimum width for the first column of each table (the one called "texte"), let's say 250px (I know percentages are better for dynamic display but that's just a draft page so I don't care, I just want to understand how it works).

In the second table (no headers), I put  just before the first cell of the first row and it seems to be working.

First table has headers though, and I don't really know where to put that style attribute. I've tried different places and nothing works. I tried putting it before the header cell (as per the French version of Help:Table), but it doesn't work either. Could someone take a look? Thanks! Castor Gravy (talk) 01:51, 5 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Do you mean like this:
 * {| class="wikitable" style="border:dashed; min-width:350px" |

! style="background:blue"                   | Blue Heading ! style="background:orange; min-width:250px" | Wide Orange Heading
 * style="color:red"  | Red Data
 * style="color:green" | Green Data
 * }
 * which is coded as:  Martin Kealey (talk) 10:40, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * which is coded as:  Martin Kealey (talk) 10:40, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Is Toolforge down?
I have attempted to access two separate tools and both returned a 503. Is anyone else having issues? NW1223&lt;Howl at me&bull;My hunts&gt; 03:35, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Works for me. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 03:41, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * And now it is working for me too. Must have been a temporary glitch. Oh well.  NW1223 &lt; Howl at me &bull; My hunts &gt; 18:42, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Keyboard navigation to page bottom
In Chrome on Windows 10, on Wikipedia, not only is Ctrl-End not taking me to the bottom of a page, but it's taking me to the top. I think this is recent, perhaps with the latest big skin update? Largoplazo (talk) 11:28, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * try an incognito tab on a page to rule out if it is one of your personal settings or extensions. — xaosflux  Talk 12:29, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * When the focus is on what? Plus, I don't know when you have to use Ctrl+End, and not just End, to go to the bottom of a page. Ctrl+End gets you to the end of the textbox when the focus is inside one but that still doesn't take you to the bottom of the page. Nardog (talk) 04:31, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Neither End nor Ctrl-End works. This is both when I have just arrived at a page and haven't interacted with it and when I've clicked somewhere within the body text first. Ctrl-End is typically how I get to the bottom of the page, standard keyboard navigation. Though I just now went to random pages I pulled up from a Google search and some of them presented the same failure to react to Ctrl-End. Wait, here's what Google says: . It says End alone is the way to do it. But End doesn't seem to work for me anywhere. Now I'm thinking that modern page layout has thwarted the browser's built-in shortcuts. For example, on the pages (different sites) I tried, End took the cursor to the end of the first link on the page, sometimes a "Skip navigation" link that then was made visible. OK, so it isn't a Wikipedia-specific problem. Largoplazo (talk) 12:22, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You could try checking if you've accidentally switched on Caret Browsing. Press F7 or find Caret Browsing in the settings. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:35, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Error on Talk:Grand Duchy of Lithuania
There is an error on the bottom of Talk:Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a comment I made isn't rendering properly and is cutting off other comments. please help? Victor Grigas (talk) 16:55, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I have closed a which seems to have cleared things up. -- Verbarson talkedits 17:07, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

And then Schrodinger took a trip to the Caribbean...
Separate issue, so separate header, but there were also two redlinks for and, both of which were being autogenerated by the use of the bog-standard Women writers by nationality and century category header on.

Now, as we well know, Dominica and the Dominican Republic are two different countries that each have their own separate literatures and their own separate citizenries and their own separate pools of women writers — but there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in that template to manually mix them up, meaning that the error is being imported from a module.

I've resolved the problem for the time being by reverting the recent addition of the category header template back to the category's prior form, but obviously this might happen again elsewhere if it isn't fixed.

So since I don't know what module it is that's doing this, could somebody figure that out and ensure that it's keeping Dominica and the Dominican Republic separate from each other since they are two different countries? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:27, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * in Module:Find demonym * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 18:56, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Schrodinger's redlink
The latest run of Special:WantedCategories includes a redlink for, supposedly with two articles in it, yet if I actually click on the category it is empty at that level. Even a temporary undeletion failed to uncover any hidden contents, while redeleting it failed to resolve its "non-emptiness" on the WantedCategories report, so obviously there's some other kind of technical issue.

I've seen situations like this on occasion before, but I obviously don't know how to fix that myself — I've always had to bring these cases to VPT to get somebody with more expertise in the matter to look into them.

This may also be related to the other oddity I saw today. Last year, there was a spate of phantom draftspace redirects that would show up whenever I tried to do an incategory search for draft or userspace pages that were filed in, where the redirect didn't actually have any categories on it at all, and what had really happened was that somebody had added categories to the page while it was still in draft form and then moved it into mainspace a few moments afterward, so the system was somehow registering the resulting draftspace redirect as categorized because the categories had been added while the page was still technically in draftspace. That started out as a one-time thing about a year ago, and then didn't recur again for about a month, at which point it suddenly came back as an epidemic of dozens of pages — but after a while it got fixed by the bugfixer gurus, and then never recurred afterward.

Until today, when there was a new page exactly like that again.

For the time being I've solved the issue by applying the same workaround I started out with last year: move the page back into draftspace, wrap the categories in the draft categories wrapper, wait until the page drops from the search, and then move it back into mainspace again. But since the last time I saw this it turned into a carpet-bombing barrage of pages that needed special technical intervention to solve because it would have taken me the entire day to just apply that manual fix every time, I'm worried that that's going to happen again — so I wanted to bring it to VPT's attention now, in the hopes of solving it before it metastasizes again. Bearcat (talk) 18:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * the first issue. I don't think the second is related to it. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 19:02, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Edit conflict
I've just lost a bunch of content which I've added to the Dangers of creationism in education article. I've clicked on the "Solve conflict" or something like that button and I've just saw a source code of the current version of the article and all my edits were lost. UA0Volodymyr (talk) 19:18, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I've always gotten confused in that screen, it was only after seeing it multiple times that I realized that your original change is displayed underneath the source code of the current version in the edit conflict screen(link with a screenshot). That said, if you closed that tab it's unfortunately gone yes. – 143.208.236.146 (talk) 20:03, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I didn't even see my edited version. I'll leave Wikipedia if it's not fixed. I've very angry and tired. UA0Volodymyr (talk) 04:10, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * See Help:Edit conflict. Edit conflicts are not common, but when they do occur, you are presented with two big edit windows. The first one, as you note, shows the current page version. The second is a copy of the edit window that you were using prior to clicking . Unless you have a very tall monitor, or a tiny font, this second edit window is always "below the fold", and you need to page down in order to see it. Between the two edit windows there are the usual publish/preview buttons plus a diff.
 * What I normally do is to locate my text in the second edit window and copy it to the clipboard; then back right out and try the "edit" link again, paste my text to the appropriate place, and save. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 16:37, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Depending on your browser, reopening the tab (History→Recently Closed Tabs or similar) may or may not bring back the discarded text. Certes (talk) 20:19, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Tried. Doesn't work. I use Firefox. UA0Volodymyr (talk) 04:08, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The Firefox extension Form History Control by Stephan Mahieu got me out of some similar diabolical situations. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:59, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Aligning shc and WikiProject Tennis
Can the templates below be aligned in the same row, for example, in WT:TENG's lead? Qwerty284651 (talk) 10:15, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * They are aligned at the top if your window is wide enough. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:44, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * So, it is a monitor size thing. Qwerty284651 (talk) 19:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Α3IA
The correct title of this article is α3IA, and it is forced to upper case for technical reasons. Can someone tell me whether the first character is a capital Alpha or a capital A? Robert McClenon (talk) 07:17, 11 February 2024 (UTC)


 * @Robert McClenon I pasted the title (copied from the url) into https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html, it said the first character is "U+0391 : GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA", while the last character is "Latin capital letter A". – 143.208.236.146 (talk) 10:36, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The title can also be pasted to the magic word  (lc means lowercase) which produces α3ia. Somebody has added lowercase title which also works for Greek letters so the article displays α3IA now. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:35, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Weirdness with citation formatting
I'm doing some work on the Pitchfork (website) article and encountering some weirdness with citation formatting.


 * When using the visual editor, all the mentions of "Pitchfork" in the citations (under work=) are bolded. I can't figure out why this is happening or if it matters, as it only seems to display like this when editing.
 * I'm having trouble turning those mentions of "Pitchfork", in the citations, into wikilinks.

Does anyone know what's going on? Popcornfud (talk) 12:20, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Edit: I'm being a moron. It's because I'm trying to link the Wikipedia page to itself and didn't even realise I was doing that. However, I'll leave this post here as it seems to me like the displaying in bold might be a Visual Editor bug, so it might be of interest to someone.
 * Links in a page to itself are displayed in bold by MediaWiki, so VisualEditor is accurately depicting the resulting appearance. isaacl (talk) 18:20, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Interesting — why does it do that? If the purpose is to indicate a circular link, well, it didn't help me there, heh... Popcornfud (talk) 01:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't know if this is why it is the way it is, but this is useful in navboxes: you can have the same list of links on each page but the one which would normally link to the page you're viewing is both not circular and is easy to distinguish. LittlePuppers (talk) 01:37, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * mw:Help:Self link gives navboxes as an example. I also find it very useful there. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:42, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Keyboard shortcut for my sandbox subpage
I would like to create a keyboard shortcut for my sandbox subpage with Alt + Shift + A. The letter A is one of a few letters of the keyboard shortcuts available for using the Alt+Shift + letter combination listed in WP:K). Any help would be much appreciated. Qwerty284651 (talk) 00:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Add to your common.js:  Nardog (talk) 04:15, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Qwerty284651 (talk) 20:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

A reverse twl2c
Need a param for twl2c that reverses the display for W/L followed by % without having to create a sister template with a swapped code? Qwerty284651 (talk) 20:55, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * , sorry for the edit conflict. Got the message and piped the tenplate instead. Qwerty284651 (talk) 21:02, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Creating a theme
I run Linux with a custom tiling window manager setup with the Catppuccin Mocha theme. The colors list is available at https://catppuccin.ryanccn.dev/palette; Mocha is the last one, so you'll have to scroll to the very bottom.

I've been theming the websites I use the most, and for most of them I have to install an extension. Wikipedia is nice and has theming functionality built in, but I'm struggling with the CSS classes it uses.

Ideally, my theme should work with both Vector 2010 and 2022.

Any guidance? Thanks in advance! —charmquark she/they talk contribs 20:09, 10 February 2024 (UTC)


 * You may be able to use MediaWiki:Gadget-dark-mode.css as a template, that is most of what we style for the "dark mode" community gadget. — xaosflux  Talk 16:27, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! :) —charmquark she/they talk contribs 19:56, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There are specific pages for this, namely mw:Manual:How to make a MediaWiki skin and mw:Manual:Installing MediaWiki. Follow-up questions should go to mw:Project:Support desk. Snævar (talk) 20:23, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hey @Charmquark we are currently transitioning to CSS variables for Vector 2022 and Minerva (and aim to be done with that by the end of March). You may find it worthwhile for waiting for that to happen - as implementing a theme will then simply be a case of re-defining the CSS variables.
 * If you use developer tools and inspect the HTML/CSS of Minerva you will already see some of these colors. The same variables will soon be used in Vector 2022. Jdlrobson (talk) 21:46, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Issues with font color used on mobile for clicked links
I'm not sure if this is the way that it has always been or if this changed recently, but I just noticed a bit of an accessibility issue when it comes to links using the mobile version of Wikipedia: Clickable links to other articles, after they've been clicked on once, changed to a color that is the same color as the rest of the text on the page. In other words, after clicking on the link once, since the link is indistinguishable from the rest of the text on the page, it is unclear that it is still a link. I know on most of the desktop skins, a clicked link goes from blue to purple in color, whereas a link on mobile goes from blue to black in color. Steel1943 (talk) 22:14, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing it too. It definitely wasn't like that before. Looks like it's WP: THURSDAY? --rchard2scout (talk) 22:31, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it's been a while since a WP:THURSDAY broke something. Wonder how many weeks that was. Steel1943  (talk) 22:44, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * "0.5" is the answer. Or "two", if you want to be pedantic. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah-ha! That proves that ... I'm not on here regularly enough! 😂 Steel1943  (talk) 00:46, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Same thing happening on my end, i noticed it immediately. Wasn’t like that this morning! Elvisisalive95 (talk) 23:49, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm having the same issue on mobile. It doesn't seem to be isolated to just English Wikipedia either. <b style="color: #06aaff;"> RajanD100</b> (talk) 00:51, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for knowing about and posting the phab. Steel1943  (talk) 00:55, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Just noticed this too. Glad to see I'm not the only one! Loytra (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It's awful. Please fix! Masterhatch (talk) 03:48, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Links is blacked
Hello, why is Wikipedia like this? Why are the read links in the text of the article no longer purple? They are the color (Black) of the problem in the article and no different than the unlinked text in the article. By doing this, the users get extremely confused and cannot understand which part of the text of the article is a link, because when they click once on a link that is blue, the second time, that part is no longer purple, and the color of the text of the article is the same, it is black. Click on the black to find out (If you click on the black that has a link and then return to the this page, you will no longer notice that the black is linked). Ahilcaspian (talk) 22:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This is an issue on your end. Amaury • 22:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Per my section above, I don't think so. Looks like you are using mobile, so I will bundle this section with mine since it's the same problem.  Steel1943  (talk) 22:37, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Amaury No, it's not about me, the same problem happened in the discussion above. Even when I log out of my Wikipedia account, the links are still the same color (black). Ahilcaspian (talk) 22:38, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * No, it's happening to me too, as of tonight. There's a reddit post about it too. Zanahary (talk) 01:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've also had this happen. CSS will always be Wikimedias mortal enemy. WiinterU (talk) 13:18, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It only happens in the mobile vesion. For a fix, add the below to Special:MyPage/minerva.css.  PrimeHunter (talk) 03:43, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for this, I couldn't stand having the links black ;-;
 * P.S. for those who use the Vector 2022 skin and think the colour looks off, replace "#0B0080" with "#795CB2" Loytra (talk) 07:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Vector 2022 doesn't have the bug. I suggested to place the code in Special:MyPage/minerva.css which is only used in the mobile version. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not too well-versed in the technical intricacies of Wikipedia, but in that case the colour you suggested in the code was the wrong one. Mobile Wikipedia uses the Vector 2022 link colours. Loytra (talk) 10:54, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I based it on Help:Link color which doesn't mention mobile but shows Vector 2022 as a special case. Visited links are currently black in mobile so I didn't know which color they were supposed to have. It may be  as you say. When the right color is returned, I may update Help:Link color. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The new CSS variable used is --color-link--visited and the old one is likely --color-visited, which is defined as . Is there a chance that this was the color used before? It looks right to me. Kkuhlau (talk) 16:46, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! My colours are back to normal. Masterhatch (talk) 14:49, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Workaround added
I've added the manual css workaround site-wide via MediaWiki:Minerva.css; once deployed or if issues any int-admin should revert. — xaosflux  Talk 10:34, 9 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The backport was deployed this morning, so I went ahead and reverted the local hotfix. This whole thread can be marked as I think – Novem Linguae  (talk) 18:56, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Notification bell icon changed color on mobile
Another Mobile/Minerva skin issue that might or might not be related to the above. For logged-in users in the top right corner, there are two icons:


 * "User menu" icon, which I can simply link. From SVG code, one can see that color is used
 * and a notification bell icon to the left, which I can't link, because it's a data URI scheme file hardcoded in CSS. The SVG code uses . This CSS variable is supposed to be, but the icon shows up as #000 (black) both in Firefox and in Chrome.

The notification bell icon seems to be the only outlier. As an example, the settings icon is a regular SVG file with the correct color. —⁠andrybak (talk) 19:22, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

For reference, found a place in code related to the bell icon CSS. —⁠andrybak (talk) 19:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Git blame suggests that this code was recently refactored in commit 59fd0cd (Convert all color related Less variables to CSS custom properties, 2024-02-01). I don't know how Less works, so I can't comment on the change itself, but the recency is conspicuous. —⁠andrybak (talk) 19:34, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * , could you please take a look at the bug report in this subsection? —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:45, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * JDrewniak (WMF), could you please also take a look? —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This is being tracked in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T356540. Jdlrobson (talk) 21:50, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-07
<section begin="technews-2024-W07"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The WDQS Graph Split experiment is working and loaded onto 3 test servers. The team in charge is testing the split's impact and requires feedback from WDQS users through the UI or programmatically in different channels. Users' feedback will validate the impact of various use cases and workflows around the Wikidata Query service.

Problems
 * There was a bug that affected the appearance of visited links when using mobile device to access wiki sites. It made the links appear black; this issue is fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg As work continues on the grid engine deprecation, tools on the grid engine will be stopped starting on February 14th, 2024. If you have tools actively migrating you can ask for an extension so they are not stopped.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W07"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 05:46, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Module edit needed, again
was recently renamed to, but five subcategories for individual Olympic Games were left behind in the old category because they were artificially transcluding it via a template instead of directly declaring it in text form. The implicated template is Sportname at the YYYY Summer Olympics category, but once again that template isn't actually generating the category itself, and instead it's just a pass-through from another module or template I can't identify.

For the moment, I've recreated the old category name as a redirect to the new one so that it isn't sitting red — but could somebody who knows a lot more about where the category generation is coming from update that to "equestrian events"? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 21:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've listed the categories for speedy renaming, which will fix this when it's processed. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 21:29, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Bearcat, the problematic wikicode is in Template:Sportname at the YYYY Summer Olympics category/core. This resolves to The solution is probably to wrap a further ifexist in there.  How I found it: It's obviously caused by Sportname at the YYYY Summer Olympics category on the page, which itself just calls the /core template Using Special:ExpandTemplates with "Category:Equestrian at the 1900 Summer Olympics" as the title and   as the wikitext, and "Remove comments" off, a Ctrl+F for the category gives which matches up in the source template with the wikicode above.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1707860024624:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> —  Qwerfjkl  talk  21:33, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Link behaving badly?
Pls see the infobox at Dave Sharma, specifically the link at Member of Parliament for Wentworth.

It should go to Division of Wentworth, an electorate in Sydney, Australia. Instead it links to Wentworth (UK Parliament constituency).

It seems to have worked correctly until the edit of 07:39, 30 November 2023 Special:Diff/1187603022. A change was made in that edit to the link's field but not to link itself which remained Wentworth. Even mouseover at that stage starts showing "Wentworth (UK Parliament constituency)".

The links to Division of Wentworth in first para of lede and in navbox at foot of Sharma's article work properly. Likewise, in the iboxes of his predecessor Kerryn Phelps and his successor Allegra Spender, both link to Australia's Wentworth as they should.

Other editors have tried to fix to no avail. One tried by adding an (Australia) dab ie Wentworth but that didn't help - that page has apparently never existed? Sorry if it's something simple I'm missing. Any enlightenment gladly received. JennyOz (talk) 10:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * JennyOz, replacing  with   seems to fix it in preview.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1707477806540:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> —  Qwerfjkl  talk  11:23, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fixed now.
 * Yeah, it's the infobox transclusion that's the problem, not the link per se. However it would be nice to know how it managed pluck "Wentworth" from the rest of the article. Martin Kealey (talk) 12:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Martin Kealey, Wikidata perhaps.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1707483257585:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  12:54, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks both! The "why" will remain a mystery but very relieved it now links correctly. JennyOz (talk) 01:02, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Could we please get some feedback from Wikimedia boffins on how `|constituent_MP=Wentworth` was synthesized when neither label nor value was supplied? Martin Kealey (talk) 04:31, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Wentworth was always supplied in the infobox. When it linked the wrong target, the infobox said . To match constituency and parliament parameters correctly, it should have said either   or  . The wrong combination   meant that no parliament was associated with  . Infobox officeholder/office has UK as default. For UK it delinks   to get "Wentworth" and then automatically links Wentworth (UK Parliament constituency) when that page exists. Maybe it should test whether the parameter is already linked and accept that instead of delinking and trying to add its own link, but it would require more code. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:18, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * PrimeHunter, thanks.
 * That explains how, at least partly.
 * I've started a discussion on the Template's talk page. Martin Kealey (talk) 07:59, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech tip: how to figure out which script did something
I have way too many scripts in my common.js and I often forget what they all do. TIL a trick to help with that. In Chrome (and I suspect most modern browsers), you can search all of your loaded scripts in a single operation. In my case, I was wondering what had added a blue or green background to various bits of text. In the element browser, I saw that the text in question had   So I searched all my loaded js for "lightskyblue" and out popped the script that added that style. RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Random timelines no longer appearing on pages after any edit
I think there's an issue with EasyTimeline but for the life of me I can't figure it out.

If you try to change anything whatsoever on a timeline (a person's date, color of an instrument, anything at all), such as here or here, it will display as if there's no image. There's no error message or anything.

However, on timelines such as here or here, it's perfectly fine and displays as normal when something is changed. But the latter two were created in the same way as the former two.

I have absolutely no idea why this is affecting some timelines but not others. I cannot find any major differences between the first two and second two examples, and I've even tried copying the attributes (timeline size, colors, etc.) of a working timeline into a broken one, and it still doesn't work. It's random and I don't know the cause of it. Xanarki (talk) 17:49, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Default url-status fails
Hi, here's a reference that by default shows the archived URL, when it should show the live URL (if I'm correct that it defaults to "live"):

I've solved this by inserting and forcing "url-status=live", though I also note that I've seen editors (and a bot?) removing this parameter as redundant if live.

Am I missing something. Thanks,  Esowteric +  Talk  +  Breadcrumbs   20:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Or maybe I'm just having a "senior moment"?  Esowteric +  Talk  +  Breadcrumbs   20:37, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Nope. Default is  .  Module:Citation/CS1 (and the wikitext  that preceded it) assume that the value in url is dead when archive-url has a value.  To link title with url when the template has archive-url you must set live.
 * When a template has url and archive-url, dead is superfluous; when a template has url but have archive-url, &lt;any value> is also superfluous.  In both cases, url-status should be removed because unnecessary clutter.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:39, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks a lot.  Esowteric +  Talk  +  Breadcrumbs   21:20, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:39, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks a lot.  Esowteric +  Talk  +  Breadcrumbs   21:20, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Basic reproduction number page errors
Can't work out what's gone wrong here: My display, using Safari or Chrome, is unreadable, peppered with errors like Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "http://localhost:6011/en.wikipedia.org/v1/":): {\displaystyle R_0}. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 22:01, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That article works for me. Possibly a temporary server glitch. If it's still happening for you, try a null edit or a purge of the page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:23, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I saw such an error message a single time after "The underlying matching differential equation is". It was this formula: $$\frac{dn_E(t)}{dt} =n_E(t)\frac {\ln(R_0)}{\tau}.$$ It worked after a purge and it works here. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:26, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

REST API returning HTML that doesn't exist in standard page
I'm unable to upload screenshots of the HTML, so I'll do my best to explain. In the table for https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/html/List_of_Chainsaw_Man_chapters, the second row is an empty table row element;. But on the normal page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chainsaw_Man_chapters, this empty table row element does not exist.

I looked at the source code for the table template, but I don't have much experience there, so I didn't see anything obvious that would explain it. Why does the REST API have this empty table row element? Tyephlosion (talk) 13:42, 14 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The output of the REST API is generated by a new wikitext parser called Parsoid, which will eventually also be used for normal page views. You can see the Parsoid output in the context of a normal page view like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Chainsaw_Man_chapters&useparsoid=1 (there's also a preference to enable it: Special:Preferences).
 * So the question now is, why is Parsoid output different from the old wikitext parser? I'm not sure, but we can make some guesses. You can paste the  templates into Special:ExpandTemplates to reveal the wikitext that is fed to both of the parsers, and there's a fragment that looks like this:
 * I would guess that the  markup preceding the   generates the extra empty table row. I have no idea why that doesn't happen in the old parser. The   doesn't seem necessary anyhow, and if you track down which template it comes from, you could probably remove it. Matma Rex talk 17:01, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The template generating the  is
 * But I don't see anything to change in the template. Is is the Parser that is adding it and there is nothing to change here? Tyephlosion (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Like I said, just remove the   . I tried it out, found and fixed another minor issue, and made an edit request for the template: Template talk:Graphic novel list. Matma Rex talk 16:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * But I don't see anything to change in the template. Is is the Parser that is adding it and there is nothing to change here? Tyephlosion (talk) 14:22, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Like I said, just remove the   . I tried it out, found and fixed another minor issue, and made an edit request for the template: Template talk:Graphic novel list. Matma Rex talk 16:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Like I said, just remove the   . I tried it out, found and fixed another minor issue, and made an edit request for the template: Template talk:Graphic novel list. Matma Rex talk 16:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Category tree bullet color change
If you visit a category page that has subcategories to at least two levels (e.g. ), each subcat name is preceded by a right-pointing triangle. If this triangle is clicked, the next level of subcats are listed and the triangle changes to point downwards. This triangle, being a clickable hotspot, counts as a link, and in the past it was clearly indicated as a link by being shown in the blue link color. As of today, it's now the black text color. This seems to be the following rule:  Specifically, it's the   declaration, since if this is suppressed, the triangles take on the blue color that they previously had. I think that the change to inheriting the black text color is detrimental, as itt goes against MOS:COLOR, second bullet Links should clearly be identifiable as a link to our readers. Is there a phab task related to this? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:50, 15 February 2024 (UTC)


 * This seems to be an unintentional effect of change https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/CategoryTree/+/992275 by @Nardog. This CSS for  has already existed in the extension, but it didn't apply to anything (as far as I can tell – don't know how that happened). The recent change replaced some   tags with , accidentally causing it to take effect.  Matma Rex talk 22:36, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the report and apologies for the oversight. Patch submitted. Nardog (talk) 23:15, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Correcting or changing a repeated word
How can I change a specific word, for example a name that appears many times in the same article? Is there a Gadget to help? Or do I have to do it manually? Anyway please kindly let me know as soon as possible so I can move forward with my project. Arbabi second (talk) 08:25, 14 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Probably the easiest way is to use VisualEditor's search and replace feature. Nardog (talk) 08:28, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The desktop source editor also has search and replace. Click "Advanced" in the toolbar and then the magnifying glass icon at the far right. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:26, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * But that doesn't allow you to replace only the occurrences visible in the output. Nardog (talk) 07:11, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * On the basis of the more the merrier, most browsers have plugins that will enable such a function (if not natively available). Neils51 (talk) 23:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I have to imagine Arbabi second is looking for a feature that allows them to replace a word for everyone reading the article, not just for themself. Nardog (talk) 23:38, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Absolutely, I have a Firefox plugin that does that (well, once you have clicked on 'Publish Changes'). It's great to have options. Neils51 (talk) 07:52, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Huh? What is the plugin? You mean there's a plugin that allows you to replace occurrences of a string only in the parts of wikitext that get rendered as entered in the parsed output? Nardog (talk) 08:12, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I use it for global replace in the page or section being edited. Rare to have to do this though. I use substitution lists for say 'accessdate', etc. https://github.com/Woundorf/foxreplace.  Neils51 (talk) 08:46, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Sortable table is not sorting numbers correctly
For some reason, at List of people with absolute pitch, if you try to sort by year of birth, most of the entries will show up in proper ascending or descending order, but some will be strangely at the end. E.g. click to sort that column for either "sort initial" or "sort descending" and Brian Wilson (1942), Stevie Wonder (1950), and Yo-Yo Ma (1955) are always at the end. ...? ―Justin ( koa v f ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:31, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Fixed Indagate (talk) 11:51, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Wow, someone was accidentally throwing in an empty table caption in the middle. Thanks, I. ―Justin ( koa v f ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:54, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ―Justin ( koa v f ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:54, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Re-using source on VisualEditor does not work
Hiya, while trying to re-use a source using VisualEditor via adding a citation on User:Tails Wx/1965 Colorado floods, it apparently would not let me click on the source that I intend to re-use. As I'm editing on desktop, it does show a list of sources that I could re-use, but I can't seem to click on a source that I'd like to re-use. Automatically and manually adding a source does work, however. Thanks! ~ Tails   Wx  (🐾, me!) 02:59, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pointing this out. You're right, and it seems to be because of a change made in . I've made to revert that change, so once I get that approved I'll try to get it backported so this will work again. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 03:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm also having this problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It'll be happening to absolutely everyone, unfortunately. (Though fortunately I think it's only citation reuse that's affected. But I didn't go hunting for other side-effects.) DLynch (WMF) (talk) 04:59, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This wound up being put in phabricator as, and the fix was put out to all the wikis about 3 hours ago. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

and
says that the template Deceased Wikipedian ; however, this isn't mentioned in the template documentation. I therefore just wanted to check whether or not this is correct (and therefore, whether talk pages that contain Deceased Wikipedian should also contain nobots). (Pinging, who WikiBlame tells me in 2015.)

All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 17:34, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Template talk:Deceased Wikipedian. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:40, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that link, and apologies that I didn't think to check that talk page :) Based on the final comment in the linked section, I'll remove the part of the guidelines that says the former template includes the latter. All the best, &zwj;—&zwj;a smart kitten[ meow] 17:47, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Page stats tool effects unclear
I installed the following editing tool in my common.js page and when I open VE or source editing I don't see any difference. It says it adds more links to the toolbox. What toolbox does it mean? Qwerty284651 (talk) 06:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

PAGE ]]) 15:50, 16 February 2024 (UTC) PAGE ]]) 16:00, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Qwerty284651 Replicating the  function call, it seems it adds them to the end of the "Tools" dropdown menu to the right of "View history" at the top right of the page. – 143.208.236.146 (talk) 07:14, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Qwerty284651 (talk) 03:46, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It's also debatable if ten year old scripts still function well. Sjoerd de Bruin   (talk)   09:07, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Of the four links that that tool adds, only one currently works. http://stats.grok.se/ should probably be changed to WikiShark, and the other two are down until ports them to Kubernetes (which is somewhat unlikely as they had a number of spats with the wikitech team and haven't been active for years). --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * Courtesy ping to, as it's their script. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * I haven't used it myself since 2017, after I noticed that my ad blocker had been blocking it (probably because of "stats" in the name) for some time and I hadn't missed it. 🤷 Anomie⚔ 17:34, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * 😢 Qwerty284651 (talk) 17:57, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Template:Colored box 2
Hi,

Could anyone assist me in completing the page for this template?

Regards Riad Salih (talk) 21:21, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks like you copied this template from French Wikipedia. If you want it to work here, I recommend changing the parameter names to English and then documenting them in the /doc subpage. Before doing that, though, why is a new template needed here? Is there an existing template that can do what you need? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:34, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've translated the parameter names roughly into English. Cremastra (JWB) (talk) 19:22, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Sandbox page in categories
A user sandbox page, User:Blenge Hackett/sandbox/L-Z, is sitting in by virtue of the transclusion of dozens of "next election" results templates from pages in articlespace. User sandbox pages can't be in articlespace categories as if they were already finished articles, so it has to be removed from the category, but I'm struggling to figure out how to do that — trying to manually wrap each individual template in the suppress categories wrapper one-by-one would be a long and tedious task, trying to do it in AWB didn't work because I couldn't make AWB replace }} with }}}} at the end of each line (it's presumably programmed to consider that a likely error and thus refuse to do it), and trying to embed the whole mass of templates in a single invocation of suppress categories just breaks the whole page with a "Post-expand include size is too large" error.

So is there another way that I'm missing and/or a bot that can be programmed to whip it out, or am I just going to have to sit here for an hour manually wrapping each individual template on the page myself? Bearcat (talk) 18:42, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I figured out how to get it done in AWB, I needed to turn off "Apply general fixes" so that it wasn't simultaneously fixing }}}} back down to }} at the same time as I was trying to expand it the other way. Bearcat (talk) 19:02, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Disregard my nevermind, that also broke all the templates, so I do still need help getting the page out of the category some other way. (Though I am thanking my lucky stars I tried that before wasting an hour doing it all manually...) Bearcat (talk) 19:04, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think fixed it for you with this edit. I was working on copying the whole page into Special:ExpandTemplates, which would have revealed which page was causing the problem. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:29, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Your AWB attempt didn't work because it produced, whereas the syntax you wanted was  , but that probably also would have PEIS-ed out. This is moot now, since I've fixed the categorization via an edit to Weald of Kent (UK Parliament constituency) and filed T357813 for the underlying issue I was working around. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun...  19:30, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If only  was ever created.... (Set the WABAC machine to 2008 Mr. Peabody). —  xaosflux  Talk 19:06, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * or deploy mw:Extension:NoCat. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 19:30, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Couldn't you just place no wiki tags around the entire contents of the page? You could then remove them and edit the page, only using preview instead of actually publishing your edits. When you have it looking the way you want, you would simply readd the no wiki tags before saving. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:04, 17 February 2024 (UTC)
 * And templates should not normally be adding categories to articles. Any categories should be in a noinclude section. This is to avoid this sort of situation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:08, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Free Image Search Tool broken?
As seen on Photo requested, the Toolforge Free Image Search Tool has been broken for quite some time. Every time I go to https://fist.toolforge.org/fist/fist.php I get a 500 or 404 error. Is there a replacement or workaround for this? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 01:53, 18 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Have you notified the owner of the tool ? https://toolsadmin.wikimedia.org/tools/id/fist —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:53, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * How do I do that? I don't see a way to do so on that site. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 21:36, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks like that external tool's maintainer has asked for issues to be reported here. I've removed the broken listing from that template, feel free to revert if it ever gets fixed. — xaosflux  Talk 15:09, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-08
<section begin="technews-2024-W08"/> 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
 * If you have the "" option enabled, edits by bot accounts no longer trigger notification emails. Previously, only minor edits would not trigger the notification emails.
 * There are changes to how user and site scripts load for Vector 2022 on specific wikis. The changes impacted the following Wikis: all projects with Vector legacy as the default skin, Wikivoyage, and Wikibooks. Other wikis will be affected over the course of the next three months. Gadgets are not impacted. If you have been affected or want to minimize the impact on your project, see  this ticket. Please coordinate and take action proactively.
 * Newly auto-created accounts (the accounts you get when you visit a new wiki) now have the same local notification preferences as users who freshly register on that wiki. It is effected in four notification types listed in the task's description.
 * The maximum file size when using Upload Wizard is now 5 GiB.

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


 * Octicons-tools.svg Selected tools on the grid engine have been stopped as we prepare to shut down the grid on March 14th, 2024. The tool's code and data have not been deleted. If you are a maintainer and you want your tool re-enabled reach out to the team. Only tools that have asked for extension are still running on the grid.
 * The CSS <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> property can now be used in HTML <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> attributes in wikitext.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W08"/>

MediaWiki message delivery 15:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Xtools
Many wikis allow users to opt-in to showing some of the more private information on XTools. En-WP, on the other hand, seems to have done a project-wide opt-in by default. How do I opt out of that? 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 14:39, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * You can't, as per local consensus. I found Village pump (proposals)/Archive 111 but I seem to recall at least one other local RfC. At any rate, it's been quite a while since this was last discussed. If anyone feels compelled, they should feel free to start a new RfC. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  15:38, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I have started a discussion at VPPR. 🌺 Cremastra (talk) 20:15, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

AbuseFilter warning for WikiProjects
Related to Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WikiProject Glasgow:

A WP:WikiProject is a group of people, not a group of pages. We have a difficulty with pages being created when there's no group, sometimes due to a Build it and they will come mentality. The end result is that we have two thousand "groups", of which only a fraction are really effective.

My question for you all is: Could we have an AbuseFilter/something like that to "warn" against (but not prevent) the creation of new WikiProject pages? It would need to pick up "Wikipedia:WikiProject Foo" but not subpages. The warning message ought to say something like "A WikiProject is a group of people. Please do not create a WikiProject page unless you have already identified several other editors who want to join the group." (They can be directed to ask for more help at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council.)

Is this feasible? Is it worth it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This is feasible. No opinion on worth, or whether it's common enough to warrant a filter. * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 21:54, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * And the correct venue would be WP:EFR * Pppery * <sub style="color:#800000">it has begun... 21:54, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Findlinks

 * https://github.com/greencardamom/Findlinks

Tool I recently made that might be of use to bot operators or admins who want to know which pages contain a certain domain name. There are other ways to do this (Quarry, Elasticsearch, Dumps etc). The advantage of the method - SQL query over an ssh tunnel to the replication server - is that it doesn't top out at 10,000 results like Elasticsearch, it can be called from the command-line on any computer and thus incorporated into other programs, it's fast and accurate, and can return results from 1 to over 800+ wikis with a single run. It's an awk script that doesn't require libraries. Only requires you have a Toolforge account (free registration). -- Green  C  23:39, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Italics question
This question has probably been answered before, but does anyone understand why the italics in Useful idiot are behaving as they are? —Compassionate727 (T·C) 23:56, 19 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Removed unclosed . Nardog (talk) 00:01, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The syntax highlighter gadget can be helpful in finding problems like this., you can enable it in Special:Preferences. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:54, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You don't need the gadget for syntax highlighting. Just click the pen button in the source editor to enable it. It's also way better than that gadget. Aaron Liu  (talk) 03:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Help report at WM Phabricator
Images for Sonu Gowda doesn't get loaded in preview popup (example: at Paramesha Panwala casting section), most probably because her image from Wikipedia was deleted as it was already available on commons (cache issue). I don't use email on Wiki, so somebody could report it? Exclusive Editor  Notify Me! 09:26, 21 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Purging worked. Nardog (talk) 09:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Manually trigger an edit conflict
Recently, my browser has been going berserk (i.e. suddenly using a lot of CPU after the page has loaded along with that page, and only that page, freezing) whenever it sees the slightest of edit conflicts. How can I manually trigger one so I can investigate what's happening? Aaron Liu (talk) 03:28, 20 February 2024 (UTC)


 * You just need to:
 * 1. Open 2 tabs in the edit screen for the same page,
 * 2. Make different changes on each editor (to the same part of the text, adding a new line works),
 * 3. Publish changes in one of the 2 tabs,
 * 4. Try to publish changes in the other tab after the first has finished publishing. – 143.208.238.126 (talk) 05:37, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You need two different user accounts to trigger a conflict. Open the 2 tabs in different browsers logged into separate accounts. – SD0001  (talk) 06:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I (who am the IPv4 IP, not sure why it changes sometimes) tested this in the sandbox(with this edit) before I mentioned it.
 * Did it only work because I am an IP? – 2804:F14:809C:9001:40B8:9DB3:208F:16FD (talk) 08:37, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Apparently yes, I had a look at how it works and it only checks user IDs, which you don't have as a logged-out user . It's a weird limitation. This behavior isn't really thought out well, and some people have wanted to change it for a while (T175745). Matma Rex talk 16:38, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It worked for me. Aaron Liu  (talk) 17:11, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll try that! Aaron Liu  (talk) 14:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Weird, my browser didn't lag out this time. Aaron Liu  (talk) 15:11, 20 February 2024 (UTC)


 * One idea about what is going on, could be to check out User:Aaron Liu/common.js. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I only have the problem on Firefox ESR but not on mobile Safari. Aaron Liu  (talk) 14:16, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In this case check for Firefox plugins. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:47, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

spreadsheet to table?
Is there an easy way of importing a simple Excel spreadsheet into a table in Wikipedia? I will shortly have 100 lines of a four column spreadsheet that analyses the citation and informational footnote style of a sample of featured articles (the results are a little surprising – so much for consistency of citation style within an article!)

Thanks, ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. Just copy-paste it in VisualEditor. (I tested this with Google Sheets, but it should work while copying from Excel as well. If not, just upload it to Google Drive first). – SD0001  (talk) 10:21, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If that doesn't work you can just use an excel formula to generate the wikitext for the table rows
 * e.g. formula for e1:
 * I may have the syntax slightly off, but that demostrates the idea. This is how I usually do it. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 10:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There's also an excel2wiki tool on Toolforge, which seems to work fine as well. --rchard2scout (talk) 11:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In addition to copy-pasting, you can also drag-and-drop a .csv or .tsv file into the visual editor. It's a bit of a secret feature. Matma Rex talk 16:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * For future reference: Help:Tables covers copying and pasting into Visual Editor (or dragging a .csv file to it) and the Toolforge link. has a more detailed step-by-step about using Excel to generate the desired wikitext. isaacl (talk) 18:01, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks – I actually used the concatenate function in excel as that is something, within the depths of the memory banks, with which I have some familiarity. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 13:51, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:TemplateStyles § RfC: converting sitewide CSS to TemplateStyles
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:TemplateStyles § RfC: converting sitewide CSS to TemplateStyles. <b style="font-family:Courier New;">House Blaster </b> (talk · he/him) 15:30, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

@import doesn't work
I've recently moved some styles from m:User:Aaron Liu/global.css to m:User:Aaron Liu/v22.css, and added  to the top of the former file. However, now the latter styles don't load. Any idea why? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:05, 21 February 2024 (UTC)


 * should be . Matma Rex talk 18:07, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * To further expand, without the appropriate ctype parameter, the returned page doesn't have a CSS content type specified in the response headers and won't be processed by your browser as CSS. isaacl (talk) 18:10, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, m:Template:Css import lied to me then. Thanks! Aaron Liu  (talk) 19:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

To upload the image
From which center in Wikipedia can you ask for help to upload the image and possibly correct the permission label. Arbabi second (talk) 07:53, 21 February 2024 (UTC)


 * What image? Nardog (talk) 08:36, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Nardog Biography picture of Reza Roosta which is very old and probably under public ownership. Arbabi second (talk) 13:53, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You mean fa:File:Reza rousta.jpg? We can't help with matters on other wikis. If you want to determine the copyright status, c:Commons:Village pump/Copyright might be able to help you. Nardog (talk) 14:31, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Nardog.😊 Arbabi second (talk) 20:10, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Template:Dubious span
Could someone please look at the page and edit the instructions?

'Span' does not appear in the body, just.

I got it working perfectly in this change, formatted as.

So, I had to add the word  after Dubious. Thanks.-- 82.13.47.210 (talk) 02:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)


 * is used without explicating the specific span of dubious text, unless I'm misunderstanding your trouble. Remsense  诉  02:55, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I would prefer - for clarity - if the usage/instructions were to read, instead of  . Never mind, I should remember for the future .--82.13.47.210 (talk) 13:09, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You're talking about two different templates: Dubious and Dubious span. The first is used after a dubious statement, while the second includes the dubious statement. Compare:
 * Dubious: Here is some text.
 * Dubious span:
 * Hope this helps! --rchard2scout (talk) 13:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * - apologies for promoting confusion. I wrote it wrongly in the first line here, showing as Template:dubious instead of Template: dubious span (too many tabs open at the time and it was after 2.00AM). The long sentence I pasted in above was actually what was added to the article, but I felt that the instruction showing text= would better-serve the end-user if written as span text= (emphasis added). I have used before, but infrequently. Thanks.--82.13.47.210 (talk) 12:23, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

The tool
The tool is supposed to delete a promotional page, normally a userpage with advertising on it, and block the user, and has always worked fine for me. But today, when I tried to use it on the page User:Baby Life for Manufacturing of Hygienic Products, it only blocked the user, and did not delete the page — I had to do that separately. Is something up with the tool? Bishonen &#124; tålk 10:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC).
 * After some searching I guess you refer to User:MusikAnimal/spamublock by MusikAnimal. You import User:MusikAnimal/spamublock-toolbox.js in User:Bishonen/common.js. I don't use the script and haven't examined it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:40, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Bishonen I just tested it now on User:MusikPuppet and it worked as expected. I'm assuming there was a network hiccup or something like that. Let me know if it keeps happening and I can investigate further. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  18:32, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry, I didn't remember if it was a script or what — I've had it since forever. Thank you, Musik. And thank you for creating the script, it's very useful. Bishonen &#124; tålk 19:15, 22 February 2024 (UTC).

Invalid detection of infinite template loop with only one level of nest
I'm getting a Template loop detected error in Draft:RecursionTester:

But WP:TEMPLATE LOOP says:
 * A template can call itself, but the recursion will stop after one nesting to prevent an infinite loop. Attempting to go beyond one nesting produces an error message and causes the page to be marked by MediaWiki as having a template loop.

As there can never be more than one level of nest in the recursion tester, it should succeed; nevertheless, it fails. As a guess, the loop detector appears to dislike multiple calls at the same level, even though it only nests one level down.

This draft is a stripped-down tester created to illustrate the problem; my RW use case is Draft:Article attribute decoration. I know how to work around the problem with a wrapper, but I don't see any reason this shouldn't work as coded. Unless I'm missing something, it seems to me that either the template loop detection software is broken, or the description at WP:TEMPLATE LOOP is wrong, and should be rewritten. Mathglot (talk) 22:01, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * WP:TEMPLATE LOOP is inaccurate. A template is only allowed to call itself on its own template page. This is used extensively in template documentation. But if page A calls Template:B then Template:B is not allowed to call itself at all during the evaluation. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:32, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's very different than what it says now.
 * I propose the following change to WP:TEMPLATE LOOP: delete the paragraph quoted above, and replace it with this:
 * Generally, template recursion is forbidden; that is, a template may not call itself. Attempting to do so produces an error message and causes the page to be marked by MediaWiki as having a template loop. The one exception is that a template may call itself on its own template page for the purpose of documentation.
 * That ought to avoid a lot of wasted effort going forward. Mathglot (talk) 22:46, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've boldly changed Help:Template per above. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 22:51, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The one nesting only rule applies on the template page itself but I guess this limitation is not important. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Tool to convert external links to refs
When I'm in visual editing, there's already a tool that, when I click a bare reference, displays a Convert button to click to generate the full reference. Is there something like that for pure external links ? If not, can there be one? Largoplazo (talk) 23:24, 22 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I suggest one of two ways. First, in VE, click the Cite tool (the big quote marks on the toolbar), click "Automatic", and then paste the URL into the box.  Another way is to install User:V111P/js/WebRef.  Neither is perfect, but both are better than constructing the citation entirely by hand. RoySmith (talk) 01:15, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, the former is what I've been doing. I was looking for something with fewer steps. Largoplazo (talk) 01:51, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Question regarding page IDs
Hullo friends. This isn't really a problem with Wikipedia, but rather something i was curious about something involving page IDs, and I figured someone here would know. Why is is that page IDs seem to randomly cut off at 5281 and smaller numbers? To me, it would make sense if page IDs were given by order of page creation, but that doesn't appear to be the case. That's all. Thanks! ''⸗ Antrotherkus ❲ Talk to me! ❳ ⸗'' 16:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The smallest is actually https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10, Page ID 10. mw:Manual:Page ID says "New page IDs are incrementally generated." I think the page ID of a deleted page may be reused, or was in the past. The English Wikipedia originally used UseModWiki and then Phase II software before MediaWiki. See Wikipedia's oldest articles. I don't know whether page ID's existed before MediaWiki or what happened when existing pages were transferred. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * AFAIK page IDs are never reused. This is because when a page is deleted, it may subsequently be undeleted - and it regains the page ID that it had before it was deleted. During the intervening time, the deleted edits still exist in the database - and are keyed to the page ID.
 * Anyway, is the expert for such matters. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:29, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, page IDs are indeed never reused for more than one page. They may change however when a page is deleted/undeleted but MediaWiki now attempts to give a restored page its old page ID. This wasn't the case however before 2016 and when a page was restored it got a new page ID. See this help page on MediaWiki.org (which is actually fairly new) for more information. To demonstrate that old pages can have newer page IDs on-wiki, I'll adapt and update my message in this thread from 2009. The whatlinkshere function orders pages by namespace and then page ID. For example, in Special:Whatlinkshere/Fleishhacker Pool, one would expect the swimming pool article to be listed first, as it was created in March 2002. However this is not the case because it has been deleted and restored several times.
 * When a page is deleted, its primary key becomes the ar_id, not the page ID, per this page about the archive table on MediaWiki.org. Graham87 (talk) 03:54, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Cross-language links for "Pig butchering scam"
In advance, sorry for the verbose post, but if you have patience, it should all make sense.

FIRST, I am massively frustrated by this editor. If I switch to another window (say, to copy text), then return to this edit, and paste whatever - it gets pasted at the 'START of the line or paragraph, NOT where the cursor is (was). WTH?!? This also (sometimes) happens if I return and just simply type where the cursor is (was). Also, if I press [Shift] the cursor flies to the start of the line or start of paragraph. This means that whenever I type a caps [Shift], the cursor flies to the start of the line or paragraph.

The workaround appears to be to place the cursor in the middle of a word and start typing there. To add to the confusion, sometimes the characters appear in reverse order, as if it were a right to left scrip (such as Arabic). Meaning that I have to cut text from the beginning of the line and paste where it belongs (assuming that it is not backwards words). Damn!

This obviously appears to be a bug. I wish I could revert to the old and trusty Wikipedia interface.

Anyway, to the task in hand, I have just been editing the cross-language links for Pig butchering scam which, previously, did not have any cross-language links - although I knew that there are pages in Chinese (simplified, HK, TW, SG, etc.). However, since the Chinese language pages were previously linked to Romance scam, I first unlinked it in order to link the Chinese page 杀猪盘.

BTW why does 杀猪盘 not render as expected, per:
 * Help:Interlanguage_links ?!?

Just to add to the confusion, after successfully linking the (simplified) Chinese 杀猪盘 page to "Pig butchering scam" and creating a "Pig butchering scam" section in Romance scam, with link to "Pig butchering scam" — I discovered that the Chinese page now ONLY shows cross-language links to the English page "Pig butchering scam" — apparently (unintentionally) severing the several other cross-language links which included, amongst others: There are others...
 * 杀猪盘 simplified CN Chinese (still linked to English language page)
 * 杀猪盘 HK Chinese
 * 杀猪盘 TW Chinese
 * 杀猪盘 SG Chinese
 * etc.

I tried to repair this in WikiData here:
 * Wikidata page for Pig Butchering Scam (Q116149824)

If I type zh (ISO code for Chinese), a drop down appears with (ONLY) three cryptic options:
 * 文言 (zh_classical) - which I understand to be ancient Chinese
 * Bân-lâm-gú (zh_min_nan) - which I understand to be Southern Min (Taiwanese, Fujian and other regions)
 * 粵語 (zh_yue) - which I understand to be Cantonese

This is a far from complete list of Chinese written languages. No matter, the three options proffered by Wikidata are not easy to recognize except, perhaps, for Chinese scholars.

I realize that the above issues are probably partly due to the migration (in progress) from in-page cross-language links to linkages between the different language editions mediated by Wikidata.

I also suspect that, possibly, the issue with the "flying cursor" may be some conflicts between Wikipedia editor and some browser add-on, Google "assistant" or other wigit. Maybe others have similar experiences and/or know what else might be causing the cursor to fly-away when typing. I suspect that this is Google automatic translation pop-up wigit (maybe [Shift] is a hotkey) - I just turned it OFF.

Anyway, hopefully someone reading this post can assist me in repairing and re-connecting the cross-language links for Pig butchering scam

Enquire (talk) 04:31, 21 February 2024 (UTC)


 * For reference, I found the following:
 * Chinese_language lists 18 dialects of Chinese
 * Language tags in HTML and XML (W3C)
 * Language codes for simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese? (Stack Overflow)
 * Enquire (talk) 04:48, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

BTW why does 杀猪盘 not render as expected, per: Help:Interlanguage_links#Syntax ?!? Because that's the wrong syntax. The link there would change the interwiki link value in the sidebar (in what is now basically a project-specific override for Wikidata). If you want to see the link, you need a colon in front of the language code: zh:杀猪盘 produces zh:杀猪盘. :Izno (talk) 05:21, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If your wish is to link the article zh:杀猪盘 and Pig butchering scam together, it is already working as intended.
 * Chinese Wikipedia is a multilingual Wikipedia. Different from most other language versions of Wikipedia, Chinese Wikipedia has a built-in mw:LanguageConverter (which is often forgotten by developers and it causes lots of troubles) that converts between CN, TW, HK, SG Chinese listed above. Linking to "CN Chinese" article equals to linking "TW Chinese", "HK Chinese", "SG Chinese" (as well as "MO Chinese" for Macau and "MY Chinese" for Malaysia) in one place.
 * You are seeing TW, HK, SG Chinese options in Language Switcher because you are in mobile view. You see them disappear because you are in desktop view. Milky  Defer  06:14, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @MilkyDefer, @Izno, thank you both for pointing out the correct syntax for cross-language links. zh:杀猪盘 is what I was looking for. However, this appears to conflict with the advice here:
 * Help:Interlanguage_links
 * In this page, the syntax is stated to be:
 * Apparently, this is in conflict with what actually works. I was tempted to edit that Help page, but first I would like to check back with you.
 * I didn't know before about the built-in Chinese Wikipedia mw:LanguageConverter – this is most helpful. However, I am still wondering why the Chinese (zh) page previously showed several Chinese dialects (plus, AFAICR, other languages) in the language pull-down [Language] menu before I linked it to the English page via Wikidata.
 * If I am not mistaken, some of the language options that I saw previously were not Chinese dialects. Is there a simple way to idenfify other language pages on the same subject?
 * Moving on, what did you mean by "mobile view" and "desktop view", per:
 * and,
 * For clarification, I made these edits using Chrome browser on Windows 11 – what I saw before (half a dozen language options on the Chinese page) and after my edits (just one alternate language) was all done in Chrome browser on Windows 11.
 * I do know that the Language switcher was moved from the sidebar to the top right of the page, but I was not clear what you meant by:
 * Does this mean that, notwithstanding the switch to top-right language switcher menu (mediated via Wikidata), that it is still possible to add specified language links in the sidebar under "Languages"?
 * AFAIK, going forward, Language switching is accomplished solely via the top-right pull-down language menu. Am I missing something?
 * Regards, Enquire (talk) 20:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In this page, the syntax is stated to be
 * This syntax is the syntax to create the override for Wikidata (in general, don't do that). That page is completely correct in its details. As before, there are two closely related syntaxes. One creates a wiki link to another project, and that uses the colon. The other overrides the Wikidata inter wiki link, and that does not.
 * Izno (talk) 21:17, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In desktop view, the language variant switcher and the language switcher are kept in separate places. You can find the language switcher on the rightmost of the article title, but the language variant switcher sits below the title.
 * In mobile view (either by using Minevanene skin or visit, they are merged in one place. You linked four links, only the first one (CN Chinese) is the desktop address of the article, all three other links are mobile addresses.
 * The current available Chinese dialects are shown below. I am not sure which ones are missing according to your memory:
 * Chinese (CN, TW, HK, MO, SG, MY)
 * Classical Chinese (lzh:)
 * Cantonese (zh-yue:)
 * Wuu Chinese (wuu:)
 * Gan Chinese (gan:)
 * Min Chinese (zh-min-nan: and cdo:)
 * You might also mistake Japanese (ja:) as Chinese.
 * Milky  Defer  02:33, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @MilkyDefer, @Izno Thank you both, this feedback has been most helpful. I previously lived in HK and travelled around Asia, including organizing a product launch at Computex Taipei for CJK text - so I would not confuse Japanese as Chinese, even if do not really read or write either. However, I do not take note or recall what languages (Chinese or other) that previously showed up in the language switcher pull-down since it never occurred to me that they would apparently disappear. Is there a simple way to cross-seach other Wikipedia languages to find other instances of "Pig butchering scam"?
 * Enquire (talk) 00:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @MilkyDefer I did find a very long list of hits when I searched Google:
 * 杀猪盘 site:wikipedia.org
 * Since I only recognize at most 100 Chinese characters, it would take me an awful long time to groom through the results to identify other language instances that could or should be linked.
 * Enquire (talk) 01:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * From my search results, all of them except the first one are only remotely related. Other results: zh:信任骗局, zh:网络诈骗, zh:电信诈骗, zh:珍愛網 (a dating website), zh:分类:诈骗 Milky  Defer  13:49, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Since I only recognize at most 100 Chinese characters, it would take me an awful long time to groom through the results to identify other language instances that could or should be linked.
 * Enquire (talk) 01:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * From my search results, all of them except the first one are only remotely related. Other results: zh:信任骗局, zh:网络诈骗, zh:电信诈骗, zh:珍愛網 (a dating website), zh:分类:诈骗 Milky  Defer  13:49, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

@MilkyDefer, @Izno Incidentally, the page "Pig butchering scam" was created only 3 months ago (2023-11-03). AFAICR, there was a page with the same name prior to that. I am therefore inclined to suspect that a previous incarnation of this page was deleted for whatever reason. If true, is there any way to recover the contents of such prior instance of that page? Enquire (talk) 02:07, 23 February 2024 (UTC)


 * @Enquire there may have been a previous page but it is not at the same title as the page you've created has no deleted history. You would need to be able to produce the exact title, and then you could request the contents at WP:REFUND. Izno (talk) 02:09, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

everything is broken
I am confused every top badge on a proflie is breaking also it keeps forcing redlinks on actual things with pages  •C y b erw o l f• talk? 14:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Try to deactivate everything in User:Cyberwolf/common.js and meta:User:Cyberwolf/global.js, then reload. — xaosflux  Talk 15:31, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Even simpler, try opening the page in an incognito window. RoySmith (talk) 16:27, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * or with  on your url. —  xaosflux  Talk 16:28, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Span style problem in signature
I may be asking in the wrong place, but take a look at this. I went to the edit screen and saw Wikiwow is just W0W!! (talk) 19:21, 29 November 2022 (UTC). Now this has been archived, so there's no point in asking the person to change their signature, unless it's still happening. — Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  22:28, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Diff. They probably didn't sign with four  but either wrote the whole signature manually or signed with three  . This omits a time stamp which can be faked by being part of the stored signature, using subst on code which produces the current time. It's confusing and I would ask an active user to change it but they haven't edited since January 2023. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I have to wonder why the span style didn't do anything to the actual signature, though.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:16, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Links are colored to clearly identify them as links. It can only be overwritten by setting a color inside a piped link.  produces:  Wikiwow is just W0W!!  ( talk ). Silver text on white background has awful contrast but that's another matter. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:25, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In my years of fixing Linter errors, I have seen a few signatures in which people have applied formatting to the time stamp as well as their signature. I suspect that it involves some trickery and that it confuses bots. If the signature also has Linter syntax errors, I will sometimes move the formatting so that it leaves the time stamp alone. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:52, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * No trickery, it can be done manually:  →  Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 18:06, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You can get just the timestamp part of the signature by typing, 5 instead of 4. – 2804:F14:80C5:3C01:95F6:953B:7E66:6B4C (talk) 23:45, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Category template mess
Is anyone able to work out why the redirect Category:Infobox road instances in has recently filled up with 273 entries when they should be in Category:Infobox road instances without location? I can't spot anything in the templates that shows why they're populating this one. Timrollpickering (talk) 09:55, 24 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Following the chain of templates and modules used in Infobox road, it appears this change is causing Infobox road/meta/mask/category to return just the word "in" (at least for A21 road (England)). Whether this is an issue with the template usage or the module edit I don't know. Aidan9382 (talk) 10:30, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Changing country=ENG to country=GBR seems to solve the technical problem but the cost of altering the display on some entries. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:55, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah it knocks out constituent country and the links for Northern Ireland are different. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:58, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Deleted Category Articles
I was directed here to ask my question about the “murderers for life insurance money” category. I’d like to know the list of articles under that category before it was deleted. I’m sure it’s under the contribution history of a user or bot, so I’m trying to find exactly which was responsible for it. If that’s not how I can find the list, I’d like to know how I can find that history. Reference me with “@“ so I may get an alert to your reply form the mention you leave. ContributingHelperOnTheSide (talk) 18:07, 24 February 2024 (UTC)


 * You can see the bot removing the category from articles here when it deleted it. Nardog (talk) 19:07, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * And you can find the bot by clicking a link to the deleted page Category:Murderers for life insurance money, or enter the page name at Special:Log. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:17, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! ContributingHelperOnTheSide (talk) 20:28, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! ContributingHelperOnTheSide (talk) 20:28, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

More contrib list trouble
Back here I had a problem with displaying editors' contributions lists because my filters were permanently set to "Hide probably good edits". Well, this has caused some problems lately. First of all, I'm getting tired of having to manually uncheck that box when I see someone's contributions list. But more importantly, I've been having some problems pressing the "Older 50/100/250/500" button. Here's what happens: 1) I uncheck the "Hide probably good edits" button (which, by the way, I've seen nothing pop up on vandalism-only accounts' contributions list because the programme thinks that they're "probably good edits") 2) I click "Older 50", although it could be for any other amount too 3) Nothing shows up. 4) I unclick "hide probably good edits" 5) I am shown only the first 50 contributions of the user. Nothing I've tried seems to work. Any advice? Cheers <b style="border-radius:3em;padding:6px;background:#e82c52;color:white;">‍ Relativity </b><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"> 23:03, 24 February 2024 (UTC)


 * None of the options in the form get reflected unless and until you click "Search". So in order to see an unfiltered list of the 51st and older contributions, you have to uncheck the option, click Search, and then click "older 50". Nardog (talk) 23:09, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * How are you accessing the contributions? "Hide probably good edits" isn't checked by default and I'm not aware of a user preference to make it so. Nardog (talk) 23:15, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Apparently checking "Show only likely problem edits (and hide probably good edits)" in Preferences -> Recent changes causes the option in Contributions to be checked by default. Nardog (talk) 23:29, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Nardog Yes, unchecking that worked! Thank you! <b style="border-radius:3em;padding:6px;background:#e82c52;color:white;">‍ Relativity </b><span style="display:inline-block;margin-bottom:-0.3em;vertical-align:-0.4em;line-height:1.2em;font-size:80%;text-align:left"> 01:32, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

What if there is an error in a headline?
The cite news template won't let me do sic.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  19:07, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

PAGE ]]) 19:52, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @Vchimpanzee Generally leave it as is or use not a typo, but this is more of a question for Help talk:Citation Style 1. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK

PAGE ]]) 15:14, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I asked there.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  20:59, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * You can put [sic] in plain text, or if it is just an obvious typo, you can correct it (However, insignificant spelling and typographic errors should simply be silently corrected). – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:09, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I did that. I was advised to use the template for a similar situation but I have no idea where I asked.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  23:23, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Use sic template like this: errror txet . But check the original publication, as sometimes the indexing web site makes an error, but the original was correct. And Wikipedia editors have also made errors too. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:06, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * sic can't be used within citation templates as the italic text it outputs breaks the COinS metadata. --Ahecht ([[User talk:Ahecht|<span style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:-.3em;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK
 * @Vchimpanzee, you can use  which is using the Not a typo template however is more indicative of a misspelling.  Not a good idea to correct titles as this can make searches for titles problematic. The template supports obfuscation as well which means that these items don't have to appear in search lists (once flagged). Neils51 (talk) 07:44, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

Harv and Sfn template errors
I have been using sfn pointing to cite gnis2 citations, for example Denton Hills. This creates false no target errors, and sfn puts the articles into Category:Harv and Sfn template errors. has kindly been fixing the errors by adding sfn whitelist entries for each target. This seems daft. The point of using cite gnis2 rather than cite gnis is to get support for sfn footnotes, but to avoid the errors we have to code e.g.

I started a crude alternative, Cite antgeo, which formats a citation as expected, does not result in a no target error, and the link seems to work but the citation is not higlighted when I click on the short footnote. E.g.
 * ..some text

generates
 * ...some text

Is this some trivial, fixable bug, or am I completely missing the point? Aymatth2 (talk) 14:43, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In your example, I see the Module:Footnotes-generated error message: sfn error: no target: CITEREFKeble_Hills_USGS.  I also get the pale-blue highlight when I hover my mouse pointer over the superscripted [1] and also when I hover over the Keble Hills USGS link in the reference list.  Clicking   in the reflist causes a page jump to the  template in the 'bibliography' but there is no pale blue highlight.
 * If your primary complaint is the loss of the pale blue highlight, I can be of no help because I think that that is a function of mediawiki some place.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:05, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * My concern is that  is a very clumsy way to format a citation. There is surely some way for cite gnis2 to make the target visible. My shot at it with Cite antgeo did not really work, but there must be some way to do it. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:09, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Here I have slightly mangled the parameter values assigned to and  to avoid confusion with existing templates:
 * No error message; no need for.
 * To avoid the false positive error message, Module:Footnotes must be able to construct a  id from information available in the article wikitext.  To do that it looks for known author and date parameters and for known ref values (ref and ref or plaintext CITEREF...).  Without any of that, Module:Footnotes cannot construct a   id that matches the   id created by the long-form citation template.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:53, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That seems an reasonable solution. I put it into Denton Hills and it works. It would be nice if syntax was a bit more compact, but this is o.k. The cite gnis2 documentation needs to be updated. I can do that. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 18:25, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * is a cop-out, it's just sweeping the problem under the carpet. If you feel that you need to add it to more than one page it's much easier to add an appropriate entry to Module:Footnotes/whitelist. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:15, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * it's just sweeping the problem under the carpet Oh, I don't know about that. Module:Footnotes/whitelist is just a bigger broom.  For me, single use   ids should not clutter the whitelist module.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * A lot of the cite gnis targets will be used only on one or two pages, although the web source is the same for all of them. E.g.
 * https://web.archive.org/web/20210602235014/https://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=gnispq:5:::NO::P5_ANTAR_ID:12345
 * Adding a ref parameter like
 * is workable but clumsy. It would be better if Module:Footnotes understood that cite gnis creates a target like . Aymatth2 (talk) 20:12, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Best of all would be if Module:Footnotes could scan the generated code and see if the id was present. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:15, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Module:Footnotes is not going to understand or  or any of the other hundreds (thousands?) of wrapper templates because each wrapper seems to have its own proprietary way of creating short-format reference anchor ids.  Generated html is not available to modules so Module:Footnotes will never scan it.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:38, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The main whitelist doesn't check template and reference details. So if CITEREFKeble_Hills_USGS is listed with 'cite gnis' then CITEREFKeble_Hills_USGS is suppressed on all pages with any 'cite gnis' template, even if it's the wrong template and the correct one is missing. Using 'sfn whitelist ' is a far superior option for templates that have many different CITEREFs. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 20:54, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should think about some sort of mapping table for the hundreds (thousands?) of wrapper templates. The entry for cite gnis2 could be something like
 * Then Module:Footnotes could check the source code for templates in the mapping table and predict the anchor ids they would generate. We could populate the mapping table on demand. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:12, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The CITEREFs for some templates is anything the editor adds in the article, DBI for instance. There's no way of knowing beforehand what an editor might add. Getting mediwiki to suppress the error messages during page creation if the CITEREF does exist in the finished page would get rid of the issue altogether, but that's likely not possible. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 21:35, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * See any of the edits that I made to Module:Footnotes/whitelist. All of them concern wrapper templates; for example, in, the wrapper is Template:Quick-stations-5.05. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If we could eliminate most false errors that would be a big improvement. Perfection may be impossible. My guess is that a small number of cite wrappers cause most of the problems. The module can see the page source. It could scan until it found, then start checking all the templates after that. If they were in the mapping table, it would work out what anchor id they would generate, and suppress error reporting for those anchor id's.
 * The main whitelist doesn't check template and reference details. So if CITEREFKeble_Hills_USGS is listed with 'cite gnis' then CITEREFKeble_Hills_USGS is suppressed on all pages with any 'cite gnis' template, even if it's the wrong template and the correct one is missing. Using 'sfn whitelist ' is a far superior option for templates that have many different CITEREFs. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 20:54, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should think about some sort of mapping table for the hundreds (thousands?) of wrapper templates. The entry for cite gnis2 could be something like
 * Then Module:Footnotes could check the source code for templates in the mapping table and predict the anchor ids they would generate. We could populate the mapping table on demand. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:12, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The CITEREFs for some templates is anything the editor adds in the article, DBI for instance. There's no way of knowing beforehand what an editor might add. Getting mediwiki to suppress the error messages during page creation if the CITEREF does exist in the finished page would get rid of the issue altogether, but that's likely not possible. -- LCU A ctively D isinterested  «@» °∆t° 21:35, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * See any of the edits that I made to Module:Footnotes/whitelist. All of them concern wrapper templates; for example, in, the wrapper is Template:Quick-stations-5.05. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 22:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If we could eliminate most false errors that would be a big improvement. Perfection may be impossible. My guess is that a small number of cite wrappers cause most of the problems. The module can see the page source. It could scan until it found, then start checking all the templates after that. If they were in the mapping table, it would work out what anchor id they would generate, and suppress error reporting for those anchor id's.
 * If we could eliminate most false errors that would be a big improvement. Perfection may be impossible. My guess is that a small number of cite wrappers cause most of the problems. The module can see the page source. It could scan until it found, then start checking all the templates after that. If they were in the mapping table, it would work out what anchor id they would generate, and suppress error reporting for those anchor id's.


 * If a template takes whatever it is passed, that is not an issue. The table says . The module finds   and puts CITEREFwhatever in the list of do-not-report anchor id's. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:19, 25 February 2024 (UTC)

I fixed the issue with cite gnis and cite gnis2 here. — hike395 (talk) 11:31, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Talk page font size
On mobile edition, the first post in a talk page section (or anywhere else that uses the same tool for topics, including this page) has a larger font size than normal. This does not apply to the title, subsequent posts in the section, or desktop edition. Is this supposed to happen? QuicoleJR (talk) 19:43, 15 February 2024 (UTC)


 * It also applies to Meta-Wiki, so it seems to be a MediaWiki thing. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:47, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, upon looking at mainspace, it seems like talk page replies and section titles are some of the only things not affected. Can someone with a bit more technical knowledge please explain why the font size went up? Thanks, QuicoleJR (talk) 19:49, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This is probably related to T349303, by . You should be able to change the font size at Special:MobileOptions. It seems like indentation size has increased drastically on mobile too. Sdrqaz (talk) 20:03, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Weird, seems like setting it to small and then back to the default it was on fixed the problem. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:18, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, that only fixed it for this specific page, and not any of the others. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The indentation issue is now tracked in a separate ticket . Jdlrobson (talk) 01:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Really hope this isn’t the intended design 70.23.34.176 (talk) 20:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm noticing the font size is drastically differing between articles in the mainspace on mobile. It is quite disorienting. Y2Kcrazyjoker4 (talk &bull; contributions) 21:37, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Came here to ask about it too. Not happy with the change at all. Would appreciate any help in how to revert it back if possible. Thriley (talk) 21:40, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Quite literally made an account about this. Looks awful and is just way too big of a font. Not everyone that uses wikipedia is my 97 year old grandmother. Also would like a way to revert this. Someguyfromminnesota (talk) 23:36, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Click the hamburger button at the top, "Settings", and then "Small". Nardog (talk) 23:41, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There are two issues here. For logged in users as Nardog suggests change your font size to small. It is mislabelled but this is meant to be default.
 * For anonymous users we have an issue with cache. It should fix itself over the next 24 hours. Jdlrobson (talk) 00:14, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Jon, is the line spacing supposed to remain close together or as it was before? Victor Grigas (talk) 02:05, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * According to T356339, this is an intentional change. —&#8239; The Earwig (talk) 02:24, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't be. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:40, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I’d echo the complaints about the font size/line spacing change, as it’s actually creating an accessibility issue for me- I have vision issues that make it difficult to follow lines of closely-vertically spaced text, and it is genuinely difficult to read the mobile wiki right now. Setting it to “regular” helps but it makes everything look stupidly large (because it is). I’d also advocate for a revert.  Padgriffin  Griffin's Nest 01:13, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It looks awful. Left alignment instead of justified? Are they insane? --2800:AC:4010:C67:1:0:28ED:3368 (talk) 13:44, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Justified text is generally a bad idea on the web. The technology isn't advanced enough to match print typesetting and W3C advise against it for accessibility reasons . the wub  "?!"  14:30, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * At one time we had a user preference "Justify paragraphs", which IIRC was in somewhere near to "Show hidden categories". It was removed a little over ten years ago as part of a general clearout of little-used preferences (every preference, whether enabled or not, adds a little to the overhead of every page). For those who complained about the loss,  instead, to achieve the same effect. It's still there, at, under the "Appearance" heading. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:53, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Mobile font line spacing
This update in my opinion is hard to read, it’s harder to tap hyperlinks, I looked at the New York Times app and for every 10 lines on New York Times now Wikipedia has 11. Victor Grigas (talk) 02:58, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

A comment was posted about this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility; I've copied it below. Graham87 (talk) 07:37, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I can't use Vector Wikipedia due to migraines, and redirect to Mobile Wikipedia.

I also switch fonts and increase font sizes due to eye strain. Now Mobile Wikipedia limits many lines to 24 px to 27 px. Which can be awfully cramped. I think Mobile Wikipedia should either revert the change or use a multiple of the users' specified font size. 173.66.17.86 (talk) 02:27, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

New text size / format issue
Is there a way I can revert back to the old mobile version? I really don’t like the new format. Hurts my eyes. Thriley (talk) 06:46, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I agree. Spent the last hour trying to track this. It’s also on WikiMedia too. The rendering of inline styles is affected too with content bleeding over each other. I can’t believe this was by design, feels more like a gaff/malicious event hopefully to be changed soon. 109.151.12.170 (talk) 07:17, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Mobile line spacing
This new mobile spacing, which I see was an intentional change, is just unreadable for me. Everything is hard to read and cluttered. Is there any way to revert it on my end? And I think it should be reverted altogether; this is awful. Zanahary (talk) 11:13, 16 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Ok, I found this custom CSS that works: ` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zanahary (talk • contribs) 11:21, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * If you already increase font sizes, that may still be too cramped. 173.66.17.86 (talk) 17:17, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Font change on mobile view
Hello there, Wiki changed the font on Thursday night but is there any way you are able to revert it back to the original font before the changes on Thursday. The new font changes on mobile looks very ugly and I personally would much prefer the original font design. VileName8089289 (talk) 18:16, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * VileName8089289, you can personally change it back, as described above.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1708289642200:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  20:54, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Could you help direct me to this please. VileName8089289 (talk) 21:18, 18 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello there, Wiki changed the font on Thursday night but is there any way you are able to revert it back to the original font before the changes on Thursday. The new font changes on mobile looks very ugly and I personally would much prefer the original font design before Thursday night. Could anyone help send me the instructions to revert it back to the original font design on mobile please. VileName8089289 (talk) 13:09, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * VileName8089289, Click the hamburger button at the top, "Settings", and then "Small".<span id="Qwerfjkl:1708361944143:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt">— Qwerfjkl  talk  16:59, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I meant the fonts used before Thursday night not the current ones in use now. Even when I click on settings it comes out with the current font designs I.e. Small, Standard and Large as opposed to the prior four options of Very Small, Small, Medium and Large. Is there any way of going back to the original font designs on Wikipedia before they changed everything. VileName8089289 (talk) 17:48, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * No.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1708364999634:WikipediaFTTCLNVillage_pump_(technical)" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:49, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

The new font size on mobile is awful and half-baked
The larger font ("standard") for paragraph texts looks awful. The ability to switch font size is appreciated, but it's hidden behind a hamburger menu and then a settings page on mobile site, which few, if any, persons will notice. It took myself days to realise that it is a personalisation option, and not shoved down the throats. And personally, I believe that the "standard" font size is way too large than it needs to be, considering that most mobile sites like news articles, etc. uses a font size comparable to the "small" size on Wikipedia, to which my (and other people's) eyes have been accustomed over the years. Furthermore, the &lt;li&gt; items, infobox items, image captions, etc. do not respect the personalisation choice, which is bad, they are always "small". If someone does choose "large" or "standard" font, they should have the entire article in that font, not just the paragraph text. Thanks! &#8212;CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 17:22, 20 February 2024 (UTC)


 * There is currently a typo in the interface. The small is meant to be standard (default) and standard is meant to be "medium" but some logged in users are getting the incorrectly labelled "Standard" as default. This will be corrected soon. Jdlrobson (talk) 02:18, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Change font text design
Is there any way Wikipedia are able to revert back to the original font text design on mobile before they changed it on the 15th February? I'm having difficulty reading and using the new font and Wikipedia were fortunately able to revert back the font used for tables on pages relating to constituency seats for general election pages. Torres2000X (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-09
<section begin="technews-2024-W09"/> Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The mobile visual editor is now the default editor for users who never edited before, at a small group of wikis. Research  shows that users using this editor are slightly more successful publishing the edits they started, and slightly less successful publishing non-reverted edits. Users who defined the wikitext editor as their default on desktop will get the wikitext editor on mobile for their first edit on mobile as well.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The mw.config value  now only contains groups that are active in the wiki. Scripts no longer have to check whether the group is active on the wiki via an API request. A code example of the above is: <bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr">.

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

Future changes Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. <section end="technews-2024-W09"/>
 * The right to change edit tags (<bdi lang="zxx" dir="ltr"> ) will be removed from users in Wikimedia sites, keeping it by default for admins and bots only. Your community can ask to retain the old configuration on your wiki before this change happens. Please indicate in this ticket to keep it for your community before the end of March 2024.

MediaWiki message delivery 19:21, 26 February 2024 (UTC)