Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs). Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for five days.

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Hatnote modules

I have always been too scared to ask this, but I can't stop wondering. Why do {{main}} and {{further}} use two different modules? Are they really that different in implementation that we needed two different modules for them?

Follow-up question which I suspect I have answers to but don't really, why do hatnotes even have modules? You would think a bit of text and some special formatting wouldn't require much work that couldn't be accomplished through conventional wikicode, but maybe these templates do something more that I just don't fully understand? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 03:31, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

There does need to be a module somewhere along the track, to support the fact that templates can take an arbitrary number of parameters. As for why each hatnote template uses its own module, there's no good reason for it, and I tried to TfD the specific-template ones in 2018 and 2019 as part of a broader crusade against overuse of Lua, but ran in to a lack of consensus. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:35, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

@MJL: Hi, I'm a major author of a lot of hatnote module code. {{Main}} needs a bit of special code to handle the case where it's used on category pages, where it has different output. If we could establish consensus to force category pages to use {{cat main}} or similar, and thereby removed the special case, then I'd happily transition {{main}} to use Module:Labelled list hatnote, which I wrote to standardize the behaviour of many simple hatnote templates. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 21:46, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Nihiltres: If I understand it right, currently {{Main}} needs to act like {{cat main}} in category-space (which makes me wonder why we even have {{cat main}}..). If we switch {{main}} to Module:Labelled list hatnote, that needs to get changed. That seems reasonable, so I guess the question is where should we do that RFC? This is assuming that Module:Labelled list hatnote can't be changed to efficiently make {{main}} output something different in category-space without effecting {{further}}. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 22:25, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

It was previously attempted by TfD, which … wasn't quite the right venue, but appears to be Pppery's favourite. I would start with a discussion on the talk pages of both (probably primarily on Template talk:Main with a message pointing people there from Template talk:Cat main) and solicit primarily objections. My expectation is that we'll get some grumbling about the status quo or leaving functionality in place, but that most people would agree that they should be separate templates and the current overlap removed by simplifying {{main}}. From there, getting rid of the "main" module in favour of the generic "labelled list hatnote" one becomes practically a G6 speedy, because a result for narrowing the template scope is nearly as good as a TfD for the module in practice. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 06:39, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@MJL: I've started a discussion at Template talk:Main as suggested in my previous comment. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 17:04, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Mapframe bug with references

I'm trying to use {{Mapframe}} here. However, when I click on the map, the text along the bottom turns into Map of Pomona College's campus[130][131] .mw-parser-output .div-col{margin-top:0.3em;column-width:30em}.mw-parser-output...

Additionally, when I try to add a reference to the |description= field for any of the markers, it spits out things like '"`UNIQ--ref-000000C1-QINU`"' (click on one of the teal icons in the northwest corner to see the issue).

Is whatever is causing these bugs a known issue? Is there any way around it? I was able to find a workaround for {{abbr}} by using <abbr title="Information Technology">IT</abbr> instead of {{abbr|IT|Information Technology}}, but I'm not sure if anything like that can be done for references, especially when they're SFNs. Help?

(I also have an additional mapframe question here if anyone here knows it well.) {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:33, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I recall there being a bug for the first one but I can't find it. I would recommend filing a new one under the Maps and TemplateStyles projects on Phab. It's not TemplateStyles fault, it's whatever lightbox implementation Maps are using not dealing gracefully with <style> elements and their contents, but tagging it for other just makes it obvious.

I'm not really surprised the second exists. In general, when you see a UNIQQINU pattern, it's a strip marker. Sometimes there's a limitation in the MW software can handle some input and sometimes we didn't code things properly on our side. That should start with a talk page message for the template/module to see if local template editors can see why that would be.

I don't really understand what issue you thought you had with the third that you "worked around". Izno (talk) 22:43, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

(Now that I look, I see one directly pertinent to the strip marker issue and <ref> specifically.) Izno (talk) 22:44, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I created phab:T292598 for the first one. For the second, ɱ appears to be active at the module talk; would you perhaps be able to help? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:31, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sdkb: - it seems that mapframe doesn't support inline references (except in captions, but you have the minor display issue at the bottom, like you mentioned). If I were you, I would move the map to its own page, like {{Ohio Statehouse map}} or {{George Floyd protests map}}, and there you can list out what is sourced for what, without dealing with display issues. Like how an image's file description page has attribution, same deal. ɱ (talk) 16:05, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ɱ, do you know what would need to be done to get mapframe to support inline references? I'll consider moving to a subpage, but that comes with some significant drawbacks, such as losing the ability to repeat references and requiring readers to click through. I'm planning to take the article to FAC and some reviewers may be hesitant to allow that. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 06:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Reference desk introduction on mobile devices

When viewing a section of the Wikipedia Reference desk using a mobile device with a narrow screen, such as the page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Language, the introductory parts (How can I get my question answered? / Select a section:) do not fit and can only be viewed and accessed by awkward horizontal scrolling. Is there a way to make this less awkward? (I suppose there is a way to make the page display adapt to the viewing device, but this is not my cup of tea.)  --Lambiam 08:21, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I've created a sandbox version to work on improving this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:40, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

How about this version ? Its not too pretty, but it's a start. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:38, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not getting any horizontal scrolling on my phone with that version, but there is a bit of horizontal overflow when using Firefox's responsive design mode with the iPad preset, which isn't present in the live version. I don't have a real iPad or anything with a similar screen size to test this, though. – Rummskartoffel 21:15, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

found it, was the input fields trying to be wider than possible. Thx for the report. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:06, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Thanks. I can't test it on an iPad but it is fine on my phone. Can you install it? I could try but fear I'll muck up things in the process.  --Lambiam 22:37, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

i'll install it somewhere next week. I'm gonna need a bit of assistance in deploying it, because some parts are protected pages but i'll find someone for that. In the mean time, I also worked on Wikipedia:Reference desk, Wikipedia:Questions, Wikipedia:Village pump and Wikipedia:Community portal (in progress). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:42, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

 Done —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:08, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Authority control not showing up

Does anyone know why authority control isn't showing up at the bottom of Godric of Finchale's article? Best – Aza24 (talk) 21:55, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Because the article's Wikidata item doesn't have any IDs that {{authority control}} knows about. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:04, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

I just added the VIAF and GND to the associated Wikidata item, so the template appears now. Vahurzpu (talk) 20:24, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Can't fully see UTCLiveClock gadget

I'm using a 13-inch macBook with latest version of macOS Big Sur. While using the newer look of the site, I see the live clock gadget pushed out by a tiny margin in the upper-right collapsible menu. To put this another way, I can see the hour hand and barely the minute hand but not the seconds hand. I'll provide an image if necessary. --George Ho (talk) 02:56, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@George Ho: The hour, minute and second hands are three revolving pointers on an analog clock face. I guess you don't mean hands but the numbers on a digital clock. I guess "the newer look of the site" means you have disabled "Use Legacy Vector" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. I see the problem with numbers there. It's caused by width: 6em in MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.css which is copied from mw:MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:40, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Pinging Mr. Stradivarius who made the CSS in 2017. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:46, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

The below in your CSS is a temporary fix. It looks bad if "Use Legacy Vector" is enabled. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:57, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

.skin-vector #utcdate {
	width: 10em !important;
	margin-left: 0em !important;
}

I'll await Mr. S's response. Meanwhile, I found out that the same issue occurs on an iPad mini while using Desktop view. George Ho (talk) 05:29, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem is not so much the CSS that I wrote, but rather that the UTC clock gadget never supported the newer Vector skin in the first place. It needs to be updated to support the new Vector (and also Minerva and Timeless, for that matter). There are some suggestions for how this might be done on the talk page. Also, it might be worth looking into the CSS solution that they are using on the Russian Wikipedia, which looks like it will alleviate some of the problems with calculating widths. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Draft notice for redirects and other existing pages

If I attempt to create an article at a title like Cotesworth P. Smith, I get a notice above the edit box indicating that "There is a draft for this article at Draft:Cotesworth P. Smith". However, if I go to a title like Paint mixing (currently a redirect to Primary color) or Climate change in Pennsylvania (currently a redirect to Renewable energy law in Pennsylvania), I get no such notice about the existence of Draft:Paint mixing or Draft:Climate change in Pennsylvania. Similarly, if I go to edit a disambiguation page like Dramatization or War zone, I get no notice that Draft:Dramatization or Draft:War zone exist as possible WP:DABCONCEPT pages.

I am concerned that an editor who has the idea to write an article at a title currently serving as a redirect or holding a disambiguation page or the like may miss the existence of a working draft for this purpose. Can notices be added to the edit windows for existing pages where a draft exists? BD2412 T 03:27, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@BD2412: Edit request filed at Template talk:Editnotices/Namespace/Main#Protected edit request on 1 October 2021, for making the message appear when the article is a redirect or disambiguation page. – SD0001 (talk) 06:29, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. BD2412 T 03:09, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Removing "Publish changes" and the rest

Hi. Is there a way to remove all of those buttons by using js/css? Hộp cát (talk) 05:17, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Hộp cát: To hide the buttons only (not the adjacent text or links), use

#wpSaveWidget,
#wpPreviewWidget,
#wpDiffWidget {
  display: none;
}

in Special:MyPage/common.css. You can still activate the buttons by using Alt+⇧ Shift+S, Alt+⇧ Shift+P or Alt+⇧ Shift+V respectively. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:23, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Nice, thanks. Hộp cát (talk) 10:37, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

@Hộp cát, why do you want to do that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

This username literally means "sandbox". You get the idea. Hộp cát (talk) 17:44, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Template:skip to top and bottom

When I noticed a bug elsewhere, Xaosflux suggested I take notice if I see others and approach the developer directly; I can't see any such (one) developer for this Template. The problem is it doesn't go all the way to the top. As someone mentioned recently, it's used on The Teahouse and the Template wiki-page itself. It misses the top two lines of visible text (on 16:9 display at 100%). Thanks.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 00:34, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

That seems impossible without making it skin/interface-dependent. I just compared all elements that are at the top and have IDs in Legacy Vector and mobile view, and there was no overlap. Nardog (talk) 02:07, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I guess I gotta wonder why anyone would use that template. Each time I click to go to the other end of a page that uses that template it adds an entry into the browser's history so if I click the up or down several times and then use the browser's back button to get back to where I started, I get the entire sequence played in reverse. Doesn't seem like the best or most friendly user interface to me...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Hiding the "Languages" sidebar section

Resolved

span.editHelp { display:none; } #editpage-copywarn { display:none; } div.mw-tos-summary { display:none; } #editpage-copywarn2 { display:none; } span#minoredit_helplink { display:none; } span.mw-newpages-length { display:none; } #pt-betafeatures, #p-navigation, #footer-info, #footer-places, #footer-icons {display: none;}

I have this set on my common.css page. What I would like to do is add the sidebar section "Languages" also. Thanx in advance :) - FlightTime Phone (open channel) 03:51, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@FlightTime Phone: seems to be:

#p-lang {
    display: none;
}

— xaosflux ^Talk 09:32, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Thank you, seems to work just fine. Again thank you, - FlightTime (open channel) 17:31, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@FlightTime, why do you want to do that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): There are a number of userscripts posted below that sidebar section, I would have to scroll past the "Language" section to get to the links of the scripts, I would collapse it (cause I'm using Vector), but the section would not stay collapsed, so I thought if I could hide it using .css, I wouldn't have to keep re-setting it. - FlightTime (open channel) 21:07, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It sounds like you want the sidebar to contain links to some scripts, and for those to be convenient to reach. I believe there is a way to insert your links into a specific section. Then your links would be higher up, with no scrolling required. Gadgets such as Wikipedia:Prosesize do this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Maintenance template mobile view

Maintenace templates are shown below infobox and they shouldn't why shouldn't user know more citation are needed bi (talk) 05:49, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: is this a technical issue? What makes you think the display order is technically incorrect? If this feedback on layout style you could follow up Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:34, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

List of external URLs on a page

Does there exist a relatively easy way, such as a tool, to list all the external URLs on a page? ie. outbound http(s) links that are not Wikipedia. -- GreenC 06:38, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

You could use the API. A list of urls is obtained with this code which gets the eternal links on the lion page. It includes all the links in citations, so I'm not sure if this gets what you wanted. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:11, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: thank you very much. -- GreenC 16:40, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

doi citation tool down

I've being using http://reftag.appspot.com/doiweb.py to generate {{cite journal}} citations from a doi for several years. The tool is down for the last couple of weeks and giving the following error message: "Error: Server Error. The server encountered an error and could not complete your request. Please try again in 30 seconds." Does anyone know if this tool has been replaced, moved or what to do to get it working again? —  Jts1882 | talk  06:54, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

No idea about the status of that specific tool, but see WP:REFTOOLBAR or WP:UCB/User:Headbomb/Tips and tricks for alternatives. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:28, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I have both Reftools and citation expander activated, but haven't used them much. Now I see how the two together do what I want, reftools to create a minimal citation with just the doi and citation expander to complete the job. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:41, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

DOI is also accepted as an input in citer.toolforge.org. Links to this tool should be changed to something else, this issue has been reported several times allready.--Snævar (talk) 09:22, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

You will need to contact the creator, who I believe is Apoc2400. Izno (talk) 14:18, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Apoc2400 has only one edit in the last year so seems to be inactive now. It was a very useful tool that I've used a lot. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:41, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

As you can see from the talk page, this was reported some time ago. I do not think further discussion here will be useful. Izno (talk) 16:02, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests § restore the Wikipedia Citation Tool for Google Books. – Rummskartoffel 21:15, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

I see that Wikipedia DOI and Google Books Citation Maker has just been added to Help:Citation Style 1 by Medgirl131. That does the doi bit like the old tool. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:17, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That's a big help; can someone with javascript skills please create a bit of code that will add a link to citation-maker to the left sidebar, under section 'Tools', the way User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js does? Second choice, add a link just above the Edit summary field in Preview mode, the way User:Anomie/unsignedhelper.js does. If you can do this, I love you. Or, you get a barnstar; your choice . (please {{reply to}} on reply; thanks!) Mathglot (talk) 17:04, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

(Hopefully)  Done @Mathglot - see User:Qwerfjkl/scripts/generatedoi. ― Qwerfjkltalk 17:55, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: thanks! Further comments at User talk:Qwerfjkl/scripts/generatedoi#Install methods. Mathglot (talk) 18:20, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Spellcheck issue

I have a new laptop running Windows 10. My issue, is the spellcheck doesn't recognize a pipe ( | ) or a colon ( : ) in Wikilinks, as seen in this screenshot. I have no idea why it's like that, I don't think I changed any of those settings and hope there's a way to fix it. - FlightTime (open channel) 23:37, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no spell checker. It's done by your browser. Do you use Microsoft Edge? I see it there and haven't found a way to tell it that pipe and colon should be treated as word separators. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:49, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I'm using Chrome. I just found a spellcheck, grammar check...ect app Microsoft Editor: Spelling & Grammar Checker I'll disable the browser check and use the app and see how that goes. Thank you very much for your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FlightTime (talk • contribs) 03:02, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Watching if a bot is live with in-wp notifications?

TL;DR: I want to get a notification (ideally, a ping or talk page notice, but an email would be ok) whenever Special:Contributions/Muninnbot has no recent edits in the last day (or maybe the last 30h). Is there an easy way to make this happen?

I am the maintainer of Muninnbot. That bot is set up to check some unit tests before firing notifications, so that (hopefully) changes in the MediaWiki API or PyWikiBot stop the bot from sending any notifications rather than sending malformed notifications.

The bot broke back in March (due to a breaking change in PyWikiBot, but the stability of PyWikiBot is a topic for another place). I did not notice it until GoingBatty found out about it last week, so the bot has been broken for about half a year (hopefully it's back up now, I will check after the next cron run). This has been the second breakage in (slightly more) than three years of operation of the bot, so while it is not exactly frequent, I still would like a better mechanism to detect this than having a human check Special:Contributions/Muninnbot or the talk pages of newbies.

I can imagine two ways of doing this, but either of them requires some work:

1. make Muninnbot send me a notification (how?) when the tests fail (right now, when tests fail, a message goes into the logs, but I am not reading the logs on Toolforge unless I already know something is wrong)
2. have a second bot read the page Special:Contributions/Muninnbot and post me a talk page message whenever there has not been any new contributions in a while (I could code this, but it is a bit of work)

Has something similar already been done? I can easily imagine similar requests, for instance anti-vandal fighters could want to watchlist a user's contributions, so that an account that vandalizes, gets a level-4 warning, then sleeps for two months is detected as soon as it wakes up. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 14:54, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

@Tigraan Try Wikipedia:Bot activity monitor. – SD0001 (talk) 14:55, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Resolved

I must say, of all the questions I have asked during my time on Wikipedia, none has been asked with as little hope, answered with as much haste, or resolved so fully. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 15:06, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Failure of section collapse mechanism in mobile view provoked by excessive templates/images

On mobile view (using en.m.wikipedia.org) long pages typically have section collapse arrows (^ pointing up for an expanded section, v pointing down for collapsed). This appears to be broken on some pages, such as List of professional sports families. Narrowing down the issue, this version is broken while the next edit, just removing a {{JAP}} template, fixes it. The difference is in 1009 vs 1008 total templates.
For a more artificial test case, 1001 copies of {{BEL}} causes the issue, while 1000 (next revision) is fine. It looks like a template issue, though something must account for the difference of 8 templates between the page when it was full of things (1008 templates ok), vs my artificial test case (1000 templates ok).

Another, even simpler test case: 1001x {{aye}} is broken, while the next revision (1000x) is ok.

I think it's really just an images issue. 1001 of the green ticks (directly substituted from {{aye}}) is broken, while again, the next version, with 1000 of them, works. – Anon423 (talk) 15:44, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

mediawikiwiki:Recommendations for mobile friendly articles on Wikimedia wikis#Limit number of images in a page has some background for what's going on. It is indeed related to the number of images. I am surprised it is breaking at 1k rather than the specified 10k. Jon (WMF) might know/care more. Izno (talk) 16:01, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Could then the page be fixed by altering/replacing the flag templates to use unicode emoji flags instead? Your mediawikiwiki link suggests so, and MOS:FLAGS does not explicitly proscribe unicode flag emoji as an alternative. – Anon423 (talk) 22:06, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I think that is a question for those pages' talk pages. Izno (talk) 22:17, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

It's indeed limited to 1000 images by this in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php:

'wgMFMobileFormatterOptions' => [
	'default' => [
		'excludeNamespaces' => [ 10, -1 ],
		'maxImages' => 1000,
		'maxHeadings' => 4000,
		'headings' => [ 'h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6' ]
	],
	'wikivoyage' => [
		'excludeNamespaces' => [ 10, -1 ],
		'maxImages' => 1000,
		'maxHeadings' => 4000,
		'headings' => [ 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6' ] //T110436, T110837
	],
],

It was done after phab:T232690. phab:T248796 requests feedback to editors about it. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:16, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to find out how many pages this affects? Izno's mediawikiwiki link suggests a JavaScript command that counts the images, but that's hardly a global view. – Anon423 (talk) 03:00, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That would be the phab:T248796 link that PrimeHunter provided. Izno (talk) 04:02, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

The typical way would be an automatic tracking category at Special:TrackingCategories. I don't know whether the problem is discovered at a time and place where a tracking category could be added. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:35, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

In the meantime, I have listed pages in mainspace which have this issue in quarry:query/4320. The first field is the page title, the second is the number of image links.--Snævar (talk) 09:30, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Maybe it's a real use for presently TFDd {{too many images}}. Izno (talk) 14:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. However, is there a particular reason why the query doesn't find List of professional sports families, which is known to have the issue? It seems to be finding pages with 1000 or more distinct images. – Anon423 (talk) 14:43, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Excuse my lack of comprehension, but I don't quite see a way to find affected pages mentioned in that Phabricator thread. It seems the currently-unpublished suggested patch by BrandonXLF would only embed an HTML comment (or with Jdlrobson's comment, a hidden HTML span). I don't think that would be searchable, or would it? – Anon423 (talk) 15:23, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps you should give feedback on the discussion such that a tracking category is added in the vein of those already in Special:TrackingCategories, as mentioned above. ;) Izno (talk) 16:13, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Geohack Google maps display

This is a small issue, but I don't find it in the archives. Why, when I look at Google maps from the coordinates given in an article, via the Geohack page, do I see a double location marker thingie as of (IIRC) a month or so ago? My most recent experience of this is Bodega Bay, California; I checked that there is only one coordinates template on the page. I don't see this behavior either when I type in a different small settlement directly in Google maps or when I select a different mapping service or three at Geohack. (I'm using Firefox, but it doesn't seem to matter; I get the same thing in Chrome.) Yngvadottir (talk) 23:05, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

File:Focus of Bedford Park Garden Suburb.svg

Resolved

 – The specific issue with this SVG file was made by adjusting the file, the root cause upstream will continue to be tracked in phab. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:59, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292439

There seems to be an issue displaying this image in the media viewer. The error message said "Error: could not load image from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Focus_of_Bedford_Park_Garden_Suburb.svg". The image looks fine when reading the article, and it works fine both when editing in Inkscape and when viewing it locally using Firefox (i.e. not via Wikipedia), so it seems to be specific to the media viewer. I've tried adjusting the image without success. Could start again and redraw it but presumably there's something in the .SVG file that the viewer doesn't like? Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:34, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• Note, this is not a media-viewer specific issue, having a problem viewing at all resolutions (e.g. 313px example). — xaosflux ^Talk 10:49, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Possibly phab:T200866 - while not ideal, @Chiswick Chap: you may want to upload an additional non-SVG version of the image for now if this is holding you up from improving an article here. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:53, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
    • Many thanks. I'll see if I can rustle something up temporarily. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:56, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
      • I've put a .PNG file there temporarily. Feel free to ping me if the issue is fixed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:26, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: You distorted the pattern too much: patternTransform="matrix(-.00444 6.6367 -2620.7 22.904 44653 549.3)".  — Johannes Kalliauer - contrib. 18:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: It occurs immediately, therefore it crashes, no time-out.  — Johannes Kalliauer - contrib. 18:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: the new version JoKalliauer uploaded seems to be working. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:06, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks guys, both quick and precise, great help! Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:48, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

AWB network error

For the last few days, every time I try to run WP:AWB it tells me:

Network access error
The operation has timed out

I'm running AWB v6.2.1.0 on Windows 7, and nothing has changed on my system, as far as I know. Checking my contributions I can see that the last time I used AWB successfully was 2021-09-30. Is there a problem at the Wikipedia end? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like the lets encrypt problem. Your client cannot connect, because the root certificate has expired and it doesn't know about the new root certificate most likely. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:52, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That seems likely. I'll add the Windows certificate and try again. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:32, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I wanted to test the process before changing anything on my real PC, so I started up a virtual machine with a clean installation of Windows 7 SP-2 (from the DVD) with no additional updates or software, to see if I could reproduce the problem. I installed .NET 4.5.2, copied ABW and ran it - and it works fine, allowing me to login. The certificate manager says that DST Root CA X3 (which expired 2021-09-30) is not present at all on the clean VM. It is present on my real PC (where AWB does not work). I presume that DST Root CA X3 was installed by some piece of software that I installed in the past. (I have fairly detailed notes on changes I've made to the system, including MicRooCerAut2011_2011_03_22, per [1], so I'm confident I'd know if I'd manually installed DST Root CA X3.) So I installed DST Root CA X3 onto the VM - and AWB still works.

I could just remove DST Root CA X3 from the real PC to see if that fixes the problem, but I'd rather understand what's going on first.

Does anybody have any other ideas, or shall I just raise a Phabricator ticket? Mitch Ames (talk) 13:14, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Deleting %LOCALAPPDATA%\AutoWikiBrowser, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\AWB and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\AutoWikiBrowser does not fix the problem. Mitch Ames (talk) 13:47, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

See also: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#AWB_stopped_working_on_one_PC. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

It's fixed now. For the record it was not the Let's Encrypt problem - it was caused by a change to the router settings a week before. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:20, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Pseudo-telephone numbers

Hi techies. There's something out there that turns perfectly-valid number ranges - such as page numbers in references - into things that are apparently intended to be interpreted as telephone numbers. This is the search that I'm using, and here is an example which I've since fixed, but I know that CycoMa (talk · contribs) is not the only person who makes that error. The tags to that edit are "Mobile edit Mobile web edit Visual edit Advanced mobile edit", so is it a bug in one of these features, or a misbehaving browser add-on? If the latter, is it worth putting an edit filter together for that? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:04, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

You participated in the discussion we had about it. Izno (talk) 14:19, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

The ticket for the remaining problems of this is phab:T116525. Apparently in some conditions iOS still auto formats those links and we don't fully understand how (I suspect it's somewhere in a out of document context where we handle some VE actions or something vague like that). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:25, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I forgot about that. But it seems to concern numbers formatted like 999-9999 and in my example the format is different - the page range is "184/185 – 253/254". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:31, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Redrose64: the flags recorded in Special:AbuseFilter/examine/1427973382 mobile app (user_app):false; mobile interface (user_mobile):true suggest this was made using the mobile web site, not the mobile app - so I suspect this was introduced client-side, somewhat related to phab:T116525. If CycoMa would like to share their browser version with us we may have a bit more to go on. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:23, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

This edit suggests that if it is local, it's VE, not Mobile. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:47, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

VE desktop can still be done from a mobile device though. I guess it could be that other systems also do this auto formatting, but so far, I only know about iOS and the Skype extension doing this like this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:58, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

When I started this thread, there were 32 affected pages, all of which I fixed over the next few hours. Only three or four were due to edits made more than a month earlier. Whilst carrying out this task, a further four or five happened, which I sometimes picked up within minutes (example). Repeating the search just now, there are 14 affected articles, so the problem is ongoing and may be on the increase. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:02, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure this has been proposed before, but would it be practical to just have an edit filter that disallows adding tel: URIs? – Rummskartoffel 16:09, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I've also found a few of these and have been discussing the causes with the editors who add them. It may be due to a Safari extension. See also WP:Edit filter/Requested/Archive 18#Tag addition of tel: links. Certes (talk) 17:17, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to rescue that frmo the EFR archive back to the main page. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:39, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Now unarchived to Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested#Tag addition of tel: links, and I've added a table of examples. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:27, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Autofill for citations not working

Discussion about topic already talked about here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T292267. Said to come here for it.

--Apollo468 (talk) 15:29, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Since I can not reproduce, on win10, edge 94, could you open up the tree dots in the top right corner, then more tools - developer tools - network (opens to the right), then try to add an autofilled citation, write down what messages you get in the network and console tabs and post it here, thanks. It would tell what the tool is doing and whether the browser understands it.--Snævar (talk) 07:46, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

--@Snævar

Sorry for not replying sooner, you didn't ping me so I didn't get a message. So, as of now, it has been resolved. It works currently for me, but I've had numerous instances of when it hasn't. I can contact you - if I remember - if this happens again if you wish. I was able to get to the developer tools though by using shift, control, and I. -- • Apollo468•  02:02, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

--@Snævar (talk)

God, nevermind. Here is the error messages.

[Intervention] 1. Images loaded lazily and replaced with placeholders. Load events are deferred. See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2048113

load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:8

    2.  Skipped unresolvable module ext.cx.entrypoints.languagesearcher.init

resolveStubbornly @ load.php?lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&raw=1&skin=vector:8 VM66:573

    3.  This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.throttle-debounce".

Please use OO.ui.throttle/debounce instead. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T213426 (anonymous) @ VM66:573 load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.CodeMirror%2CTemplateWizard%2Ccharinsert|ext.CodeMirror.data|ext.TwoColConflict.JSCheck|jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.highlightText%2Csuggestions%2Cui|mediawiki.action.edit|mediawiki.action.edit.collapsibleFooter%2CeditWarning|mediawiki.icon|mediawiki.language.specialCharacters|mediawiki.widgets.DateInputWidget.styles|oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation%2Cicons-editing-list&skin=vector&version=1edjk:466

    4.  This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.ui".

Please use OOUI instead. mw.loader.implement.css @ load.php?lang=en&modules=ext.CodeMirror%2CTemplateWizard%2Ccharinsert|ext.CodeMirror.data|ext.TwoColConflict.JSCheck|jquery%2Coojs-ui-core%2Coojs-ui-widgets|jquery.highlightText%2Csuggestions%2Cui|mediawiki.action.edit|mediawiki.action.edit.collapsibleFooter%2CeditWarning|mediawiki.icon|mediawiki.language.specialCharacters|mediawiki.widgets.DateInputWidget.styles|oojs-ui.styles.icons-editing-citation%2Cicons-editing-list&skin=vector&version=1edjk:466

DevTools failed to load source map: Could not load content for https://localhost:49506/8ee4ea609a6346c4cf34c2b621ac79ba.js.map: HTTP error: status code 404, net::ERR_HTTP_RESPONSE_CODE_FAILURE

-- • Apollo468•  13:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-40

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

• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them has been enabled for the following 10 wikis: mediawiki.org, the Italian, Catalan, Hebrew and Vietnamese Wikipedias, French Wikisource, and English Wikivoygage, Wikibooks, Wiktionary and Wikinews. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist on those wikis you can let the developers know.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 October. It will be on all wikis from 7 October (calendar).
• Some gadgets and bots that use the API to read the AbuseFilter log might break. The hidden property will no longer say an entry is implicit for unsuppressed log entries about suppressed edits. If your bot needs to know this, do a separate revision query. Additionally, the property will have the value false for visible entries; previously, it wasn't included in the response. [2]
• A more efficient way of sending changes from Wikidata to Wikimedia wikis that show them will be enabled for all production wikis. If you notice anything strange about how changes from Wikidata appear in recent changes or your watchlist you can let the developers know.

Future changes

• You can soon get cross-wiki notifications in the iOS Wikipedia app. You can also get notifications as push notifications. More notification updates will follow in later versions. [3]
• The JavaScript variables wgExtraSignatureNamespaces, wgLegalTitleChars, and wgIllegalFileChars will soon be removed from mw.config. These are not part of the "stable" variables available for use in wiki JavaScript. [4]
• The JavaScript variables wgCookiePrefix, wgCookieDomain, wgCookiePath, and wgCookieExpiration will soon be removed from mw.config. Scripts should instead use mw.cookie from the "mediawiki.cookie" module. [5]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:28, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Why is there a Lilypond error on this page?

Resolved

 – zhwiki fixed their module. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:00, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi, just wondering why this page on Chinese Wikipedia has a Lilypond error when I can't see any Lilypond scores in the source. Is it being included from somewhere and where can I check it? (Error: "line 5 - column 1: bad grob property path (Staff.Clef stencil), line 6 - column 1: bad grob property path (Staff.TimeSignature stencil)") thanks. A1415 (talk) 16:15, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

• Haven't solved it yet, but comparing w:en:User:Xaosflux/sandbox112 and w:zh:User:Xaosflux/沙盒 suggests that it is something in w:zh:模組:Listen. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:55, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Confirmed it is in the module and not some other project-local setting.... — xaosflux ^Talk 10:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
    • @A1415: Perhaps User:Great Brightstar who introduced a custom midi handler to the zhwiki version of the module can help on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:01, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
      • When I loaded the zhwiki module to our sandbox, I get the same problem- but only on midi files, see User:Xaosflux/sandbox112. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:05, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

The source code used in Chinese Wikipedia was ported by myself, just with minor changes for translation, when English Wikipedia used the same code base for rendering MIDI audio. As the server is now able to converting MIDI directly without any workarounds, I think it's resonable to update source code in there. --Great Brightstar (talk)

@Great Brightstar: thank you for the update, @A1415: seems like this is something you can fix at w:zh:模組:Listen, and you can use Module:Listen as a reference. zhwiki has applied protection such that only their administrators can update that module. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:39, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It's fixed now. @A1415: Thanks for your digging up. --Great Brightstar (talk) 15:47, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I also introduced a TemplateStyle in that module, which used to improve the display of this template for mobile phone screen, which affects the grey line. Anyone who have rights to edit the mudule could port it to here. --Great Brightstar (talk) 16:28, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

That should not be ported here. As you have been told before, making piece-part changes here and there is not the solution, and especially if it's tweaking CSS display. Izno (talk) 16:46, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

As a general debugging tip for the future, you can use Special:ExpandTemplates to find the underlying <score> tag and the markup that's being passed to it. Legoktm (talk) 17:48, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Basic pywikibot question

Back in 2010-2011 I used to run pywikibot a lot on various projects (perhaps never en.wikipedia). After I stopped doing this, the source code moved from SVN to Git and things started to changes names in a way that I didn't care to catch up with. Now I'm trying again, and I find various instructions that conflict each other. The instruction I followed was to download the software with the "pip install pywikibot" command. This got me some source code and the files say they are from 2021, so this should be up to date. But it doesn't run, since the file logging.py says "from logging import CRITICAL, ..." and this is a circular reference. This appears seriously broken. Is that the state of pywikibot source code nowadays? Is anybody fixing it? On this page, I'm informed that there's a mailing list, but it has seen only one message in August and two in September, which is very little. Is the project dead? Where should I look? Which other bot software should I use instead? --LA2 (talk) 12:31, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Ticket management and activity of pywikibot is tracked in Phabricator. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/87/ —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:56, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but the kind of error I experienced was beyond the level where a ticket can fix it, like beating a horse that is apparently already dead. Now I tried instead to download the tar archive. It works. What the "pip install pywikibot" did was download the pywikibot/ subdirectory of the whole project, which is called "core-stable". I have no idea why there is a command for downloading just that subdirectory. It's not useful. Maybe I should write a ticket that the instructions are wrong. If I knew what the right instructions were, I would just update that wiki page. --LA2 (talk) 13:22, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Installing pywikibot requires more than python nowadays. See phab:diffusion/PWBC/browse/requirements.txt for an list of required software packages. Sure the docs could be better.--Snævar (talk) 15:07, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Do not use SVN or Git. Installing Python 3 (not 2) and running 'pip install pywikibot' is all that is required. Try 'pip list --outdated' and fix any problems shown. To update a package called xxx use 'pip install --upgrade xxx' (for example, xxx = pywikibot). Johnuniq (talk) 22:16, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Edit causing ref errors

Here, the edit by my bot has apparently caused empty ref errors. Any idea why? ― Qwerfjkltalk 15:25, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: can you provide a diff? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:39, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Diff. I have posted a query at Template talk:efn. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:00, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem was caused by the = sign inside the span tag within the {{efn}} template. The workaround/fix is to put |1= in front of the unnamed parameter of {{efn}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:34, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

ai making disambiguation pages

disambiguation pages are the main navigation tool so why are n't they automatically genereted by software bi (talk) 15:51, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Talk Page/User Page

Hello,

It was brought up on my talk page that the format isn't very mobile user friendly. I'm trying to correct this as I really don't want it to be such a pain for a user to be able to view my pages. I'm not even sure if this is the right location for this but it was suggested to ring it up here. I don't want to lose as much of my formatting as possible but I don't mind sacrificing a little if it means a more user friendly page. Any assistance would be most grateful. I'm not great at formatting so I am sure I made a ton of mistakes but since I don't use a mobile device other than my tablet I cant see what they see. Tank you for not throwing me out right away. --ARoseWolf 17:35, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

@ARoseWolf: look at them like this: Your Mobile Userpage and Your Mobile Talkpage - and try making your window narrow to see what it will look like for others. Your talk page will also appear mostly blank to mobile users because of phab:T241402 - so you might want to design around that. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:40, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I fixed a bunch of syntax errors on the page, but I don't know enough about mobile view to know what it is supposed to look like. When I click "Read as wiki page", I can see the page just fine. I do notice that the normal mobile TOC (under "Active discussions") is not listed in mobile view, at least for me, possibly because it is placed in a custom location on the page. Maybe there's a phab task about this? I hear that a lot of people use mobile, but I don't see how it is really functional for active editors. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:47, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you both. I sincerely want to get it right. No one should have to scroll around when looking at the page and I don't want that. --ARoseWolf 18:57, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Just now, I made your talk page a bit more boring in order to make it work in mobile view. You are welcome to revert my change if you do not like it, but the mobile problems will persist. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:14, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

File's old versions

Hello. DeltaQuadBot has stopped hiding old versions of my files. I reached out to its owner (User talk:AmandaNP#DeltaQuadBot) and she found out that the problem is not in the bot, but in the category. Category is empty. But my files (for example: File:Paseo (film).jpg, File:Prince's Tale.jpg, File:Souls of Totality.jpg) must be in this category. What could be the problem? — Vladlen Manilov ✉ / 04:19, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I find it even more concerning that there might be almost 2,000 files sitting because it's not coming up in the category. I proposed here might be a better place to try and resolve this as it's not a bot issue. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 04:23, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem seems to be that Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old isn't added to the pages in an edit, but by {{Orphaned non-free revisions}} based on date, so if the template is placed before the revisions are a week old, the category isn't updated. Null-editing the file propagates the change, but manual null-edits aren't exactly the fix for an automatic task. Maybe DeltaQuadBot could instead operate on Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions and check the dates itself? – Rummskartoffel 10:40, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

That would require a large write in the code, which i'm not going to lie, is not what I want to do. I'm sure though that my bot wouldn't be the only one affected by this. So i'm not sure a small fix is really the optimal solution here. It used to work perfectly, so I'm assuming that this was a change, and if so, some back porting should have been done to allow them to change categories. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 18:39, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

There is an bug for this issue at phab:T51803, when it gets fixed it would populate the category based on the #time parser function in the template, so 7 days after the last edit. Currently the files will end up in the category 1 month after the last edit, so 3 weeks later than they should.--Snævar (talk) 23:28, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that's it. The date does get calculated correctly and the category shows up on the file page, but the file doesn't show up on the category page. For instance, at the time of writing this comment, this is the case for File:Vanessa Carlton - Be Not Nobody.jpg, which was supposed to be revdelled on October 3. You can quite easily find more affected files by just looking through transclusions of {{Orphaned non-free revisions}}. – Rummskartoffel 10:12, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

My comment is not about calculating the date correctly, it is about invalidating server side cache. So, once the bug gets fixed once the resulting time of #time is up the cache server side would get purged. The rest of the comment is also only about server side cache.--Snævar (talk) 11:33, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I phrased my comment badly. The problem is not that the template isn't putting [[:Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions more than 7 days old]] on the file page after 7 days – it does that, at least in some cases (such as the example I linked to), as evidenced by the category showing up in the box at the bottom of the page. The problem is that the cache invalidation doesn't seem to propagate to the category, so the file "thinks" it's in the category when it really isn't. Does that make sense, or am I misunderstanding something? – Rummskartoffel 14:44, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

It does make sense, and it's been a problem ever since a MediaWiki update in (IIRC) mid-2014. When you get a situation like this (page has a category at the bottom but doesn't show on the category itself, or (less often) vice versa) the thing to do is WP:NULLEDIT the affected page, and then WP:PURGE the category. Joe's Null Bot (talk · contribs) used to carry out the first part frequently, so that files sitting out the grace period of a CSD criterion would move to the appropriate "ready for deletion" category within 24 hours of the grace period expiring. The bot hasn't run for about three years now. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:15, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

And ProcBot has partially taken up the task (see User:ProcBot/PurgeList). * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:23, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Pppery: So would I put that in the category I want them to show up in, or a category where they already are? Because I'd like to get this set back up. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 19:23, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

The category where the pages are presently being listed. This is not necessarily the category shown at the bottom of the page concerned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:55, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Which is Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions in this case. I believe adding {{/purge-cat|Category:Non-free files with orphaned versions|1|day}} to User:ProcBot/PurgeList2 would work, but I have no relevant experience here other than having read the documentation. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:18, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I also note that DeltaQuadBot seems to have already processed ~1000 files in the last few hours, so someone must have done something. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:24, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Weird. Definitely wasn't me, but i'll likely still put that up sometime soon just to make sure files are being processed. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 03:02, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. Though I wonder, if this issue has existed for so long, why hasn't it previously affected DQBot? – Rummskartoffel 15:26, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

It seems that the bot is working fine now. At least with my files. — Vladlen Manilov ✉ / 06:38, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Where did my "reply link" go?

A while ago I installed a script that adds a "reply" link to the end of signatures that very conveniently opens an edit window with the appropriate indent and a ping already set. It suddenly stopped working a few days ago. See line 30 of my common.js . If this script is no longer functional, is there an alternative that works similarly? I've become rather used to it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:29, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Dodger67: It's deprecated. The alternatives are DiscussionTools (enable from Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures) or Convenient Discussions. – SD0001 (talk) 06:35, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:49, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Updated Commons image displays strangely in en-wiki, correctly in most other Wikipedias

I'm seeing a strange problem with an image recently updated in Commons and showing up strangely at English Wikipedia, but fine in most others. It appears like this in the article Philippe_Pétain.

After a request at the Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Photography workshop, a new version of File:Foch Pershing Petain and Haig.jpg was uploaded. It has better contrast and brightness, and an aspect ratio closer to landscape, where the original one was a darker version in portrait mode.

The new image is showing up correctly in articles in Norwegian, Italian, Basque, and Czech Wikipedias. And to my surprise, correctly above right.

But the old image is still showing up, but stretched out of shape to match the aspect ratio of the new image in the article Philippe_Pétain in en-wiki, and also in articles at Esperanto and Serbian Wikipedias, and in the top image in Commons. I tried purging pages, no help. What's going on here? Mathglot (talk) 08:43, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I checked with another browser, and the en-wiki image shifted to the new one, but Serbia didn't, and then switched later. Could this be some strange browser cache issue? Tried a third browser, and everything displayed the new image. Switched back to the first browser, which originally had the problems, but now everything is working. Some combination of delayed updates, and cache issues? Anyway, whatever it was, it's gone now. Mathglot (talk) 08:50, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Damn, it came back again! At Philippe_Pétain#End of war, and at the en-wiki file page, at File:Foch Pershing Petain and Haig.jpg. I give up. Mathglot (talk) 08:54, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot Try WP:BYPASS, it worked for me with a similar problem. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:55, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try that. Mathglot (talk) 08:57, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Article is both draft and start class

Hello! So I recently created the article Splatoon 3 which was copy and paste moved from Draft space by Panini and then properly moved by GeneralNotability. It's currently rated as start class, however XTool's page history of Splatoon 3 says it's Draft class. I looked at the article and I couldn't see any draft related category. Anyone know why XTools still doesn't say it's Start class? ― Blaze The Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:57, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

•  Works for me https://xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Splatoon_3 says "start class" when I look at it. Keep in mind, xtools works off of a replica, so may be delayed - and class ratings aren't actually part of the article at all - they are just notes on the talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

• XTools gets assessment data from Special:PageAssessments, which indeed still had it listed as "Draft". I made a null edit and that fixed it [6]. I'm not entirely sure what happened here; it seems Draft talk:Splatoon 3 and Talk:Splatoon 3 both coexisted at the same time. Perhaps because the talk pages weren't moved, no update to the templates on those pages was triggered. At any rate, if you see this happen again, a null edit (or actual edit) should fix it. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:28, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
  • So maybe ignore the part I said about the replicas, if this is live-loading, but it could still hit caching/job log backlogs. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:31, 6 October 2021 (UTC)
    • mw:Extension:PageAssessments just to note for future reading if this is found in the archives. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:32, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

      No, it's true XTools can suffer from replication lag (in addition to job queue lag), but you would see a warning at the top of the XTools page if that were the case. You can also check toolforge:replag. You just happened to check XTools after I made the null edit. At any rate, Special:PageAssessments is the authoritative source. If XTools says something different, it's lying. — MusikAnimal ^talk 15:35, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

      Ah ok. I'll see if I can move the Draft's talk page to the Article space talk page since a copy and paste move was performed and see if that fixes it, or if it's already fixed. ― Blaze The Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 17:12, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

expired SSL certificate

On linux, I'm getting an expired certificate error when accessing enwiki using multiple CLI tools (wget, w3m). It doesn't happen with firefox. It only occurs on one machine (IP?) on a different machine/IP no problem. Typically this points to system date being wrong, but the date is accurate. Other SSL sites work OK only *.wikipedia.org - Any ideas what it might be? Example: wget -q -O- 'https://en.wikipedia.org' returns empty response. Cert check can be bypassed with --no-check-certificate but is insecure and weird security errors are disconcerting. -- GreenC 17:37, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@GreenC see HTTPS/2021 Let's Encrypt root expiry. Legoktm (talk) 17:45, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Thank you, that must be it as my OpenSSL is old. I've spent hours trying to get it work, upgrading SSL and adding the new root certificate and removing old, but nothing works.

/etc/ssl/certs/ISRG_Root_X1.pem -> /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/ISRG_Root_X1.crt

Updated /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

For now, will disable certificate checking on each tool, I'm sure this will haunt me later. -- GreenC 21:26, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what system you are using, but for old debian variants: In /etc/ca-certificates.conf, for the entry mozilla/DST_Root_CA_X3.crt prefix it with ! (so !mozilla/DST_Root_CA_X3.crt) to disable it and then run update-ca-certificates. This removes this expired root from the evaluation path. update everything that uses ssl. And then update the OS, because... it's clearly not up to date ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:56, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

@TheDJ: .. OMG it worked. I had removed DST_Root_CA_X3.crt and rebuilt ca-certificates.conf using dpkg-reconfigure ca-certificates then updated with update-ca-certificates - but guess it still requires DST_Root_CA_X3.crt to be around and marked off with ! in the .conf .. whew not obvious. Thank you! -- GreenC 22:17, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I personally found this explanation to be very readable. And that this worked basically means that you are using outdated openssl/gnutls/libressl etc... Maybe your OS version has a version-backports apt repo you can add that has a backport of the openssl version you need. But hard to say. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Wow this is really convoluted. It's a 2016 VM of Mint. I was able to upgrade OpenSSL to 1.1.1 and libraries. It also broke another machine, installed in 2005. There must be old machines breaking everywhere this past week. -- GreenC 04:38, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Symbols rather than "Show" or "Hide"

In regard to an idea by editor Hooman Mallahzadeh to use the single-character symbols "˅" and "˄" rather than the words "show" and "hide" in sidebar and navbar templates, I wonder how feasible and accepted such an idea would be? Reference the following previous discussions:

• Template talk:Sidebar with collapsible lists#Remove redundant words "show" and "hide"
• Phabricator: T292328

I think this is an idea whose time has come, so I thought I'd bring it here since Phab. appears to be the wrong place to raise this issue. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 11:06, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Nope, that is completely unintuitive for screen reader users like me. The "~^" symbol sounds like "carrot" and the ˅ symbol is not pronounced at all by default in the latest beta version of JAWS, my screen reader, for example. Graphics showing those symbols with sufficient alt text would be accessible, but I don't think that's ever gonna happen either. Graham87 11:52, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

And don't even think about using abbr for this purpose; expansions of abbreviations are not read out by default and screen reader users generally have to know about the abbr tag's presence on a webpage to be able to use it. Graham87 12:05, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Graham87 You see Javascript-generated "Show/Hide" in a screen reader? :) Izno (talk) 13:57, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Note: that phab ticket was rejected - no software change is expected to be needed even if this was to be done. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:24, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

  Wwell... I doubt that.. I think andre is mistaken here. Because we wouldn't use symbols here. We'd use image buttons with labels, because like Graham87 said, otherwise it wouldn't be accessible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:54, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

  Okay, "image buttons with labels" sounds like we're on the right track. So do you mean that this is an issue that would have to be handled by the devs at Phab? P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 15:13, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• I've found [show] handy as something to search for when trying to find content buried in dozens of hidden sections nested at multiple levels. (I now use a bookmarklet.) Certes (talk) 13:46, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
  • I also use my browser's Find feature to search for "show" when I can't find content on a page and need to expand all of the (grumble) hidden sections to use Find to find it (sorry for so many "find"s!). It would be nice to have a "show all hidden sections" gadget; is there one I don't know about? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:04, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
    • @Izno: Yes, I do see the show/hide buttons in my screen reader. Maybe the advice re CSS/JavaScript and screen readers in the accessibility guidelines is a little conservative these days, but there are still unusual screen readers out there to which it might apply. I use my screen reader's feature to navigate between buttons to find show/hide boxes to click ... I agree a show all gadget would be nice in certain situations. Graham87 15:32, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

      Good to know! Izno (talk) 15:40, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

    I think someone has a scriptlet for that somewhere in the VPT archives. Izno (talk) 15:40, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

    I use javascript:void($('.mw-collapsed').each(function () { $(this).data('mwCollapsible').expand() })); (not my work). Certes (talk) 15:45, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

    Yup, that should do it. Izno (talk) 15:54, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Please stick to understandable text! What expected benefit would come from replacing "show" with a squiggle? If someone does not understand what "show" means, they should be at another website. Johnuniq (talk) 22:46, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
  • How could a down-arrow be misunderstood as the same as "open" or "show"? How could an up-arrow be mistaken for anything but "close" or "hide"? I do like the idea of showing the symbols alongside the words for a short time. That would work as a transition to the symbols alone. Those up and down arrows are used widely and would reduce the size of the indicators. Lots of benefit there even for mobile viewing. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 09:15, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the idea and it would probably be a good one in another design context. As we are on Wikipedia, the interface must be made as easy to use as possible, and that means text instead of symbols whenever we can. No objection to including the symbols alongside text, as that might look more pretty. Enterprisey (talk!) 23:19, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

including the symbols alongside text might "look pretty" but it adds clutter and no value - it makes the interface slightly harder to use if the brain has to filter out the unnecessary symbols. Mitch Ames (talk) 23:21, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

• Please keep text. I've never been a fan of the "Find the most annoying and user-unfriendly features of other websites and add them to Wikipedia" tendency. DuncanHill (talk) 10:33, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  How about ⮓ (pronounced Tafkas, or The Arrow Formerly Known As Show)? Certes (talk) 10:50, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Is there a way to do a mass upload of files to enwiki?

I am thinking specifically of these deleted at en:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Mapas Provinciales Atlas Centenario2; since enWikipedia mainly cares about US copyright, some of these files could get a home here. Yes, I know I should have thought of this earlier; with apologies to FitindiaJo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:14, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: nothing that is ready to go, there are discussions at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Import_from_Commons and phab:T214280 related to such a process. Looks like there are only 23 files right now, so not even worth writing a bot for it. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:47, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Logout & Outage

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292779

I'm going to assume the strange outage an hour or so ago plus the unexpected logout is a Thursday thing? -- Veggies (talk) 19:39, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

I got that also, but it was page specific. When I clicked on William Barr, it logged me out and made a fund raising plea (for Wikimedia, I think). I ran two different malware/virus scans on my computer, and it doesn't seem to be my end problem. — Maile (talk) 19:43, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

See Phabricator. —A little blue Bori v^_^v ^{Jéské Couriano} 19:45, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Rolling back changes, should see improvement shortly ~TNT (she/her • talk) 19:55, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for resolving it so quick! Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:56, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: Definitely should have said they're rolling back changes - I am but a simple bystander! 😅 ~TNT (she/her • talk) 20:01, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the rolling back of changes solved the issue for me, thanks. — Maile (talk) 22:40, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

On two occasions, I was informed that I was logged out; I quickly found that all I needed to do was back up and try again. I assumed that I had a flaky connection and the login cookie didn't make it through. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:05, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Login page seems to be broken.

I'm trying to log into my account on my PC. I'm logged in on my phone, but I forgot my old password. Trying to log in with a temporary password, but that won't work. Probably something to do with the captcha (always a bad idea), but otherwise no idea. I can't get in to ask this question on my PC, because my IP has been blocked (no reason given, blame "NinjaRobotPirate"). Any advice? Could someone from the technical team just get me into my account? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Henry Kingdon (talk • contribs) 21:01, October 7, 2021

@Henry Kingdon: Hi, sorry to hear you're having issues logging in - I can see you successfully requested a password reset today at 21:42, then failed to log in a few times. What error message are you getting? The IP block you mention shouldn't prevent you from logging in ~TNT (she/her • talk) 21:19, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

It's not related to this problem is it? DuncanHill (talk) 21:24, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Coordinates error

Salar Ignorado's coordinate link does not work properly and I have no idea why. Hitherto this format usually worked. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:26, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Fixed I fixed it. Abductive (reasoning) 09:51, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Technical problems

Hello! I am suddenly having some technical problems:

• I can't see/find my edit tools on the edit screen (no ref tags, pipes, etc.)
• I can't get my notifications (when I click on the bell, my screen creates a light grey pattern of diagonal lines moving).
• My search box doesn't work correctly -- it doesn't go directly to the article searched, but instead gives me a result as if I had searched approximately for an article name.

I have a Windows 10 desktop and am using Microsoft edge. Can anyone help? -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:21, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ssilvers: Do you have an option setting or a privacy or ad-blocking tool that prevents JavaScript from running? Certes (talk) 18:05, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Certes: Not that I can find in my settings, but I am hopeless with computers. Can you suggest where in Windows 10 to look? It's not in my extensions. It's gotta be something with Edge, because I can use WP ok in Firefox, but I prefer to use Edge if possible, as I use it for everything else.... -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:43, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I believe that edge://settings/content/javascript allows you to turn JavaScript on and off globally, but if that were set wrongly then you'd also see many other websites breaking in Edge. The problem seems more likely to be caused by an add-on. If not then other editors may be able to point you at more relevant settings. (I'm one of the few editors who use neither Windows nor a Chromium-based browser such as Edge.) Certes (talk) 00:16, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

It says that Javascriipt is "allowed", not blocked. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:33, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ssilvers: What happens at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Notifications?safemode=1 (which should show your notifications as at Special:Notifications but without your personal scripts. Johnuniq (talk) 22:39, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Under the heading "Notifications", I get a stripe across the top of my screen of light gray, diagonal stripes, and that's pretty much all I get on the screen, other than the Wikipedia globe and stuff on the left side of the screen, like Main Page, Contents, etc. -- Ssilvers (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Echo Notifications not loaded yet 2021-10-08

I think those light gray, diagonal stripes indicate that the content is still loading. @Ssilvers, does it look like this? This is what I see just before the page loads. (The stripes go across the full width of the screen.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but it never loads. It just keeps going and going (and I have very fast internet). I also can't use the search box, and my edit tools are missing from the edit screen. -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:34, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

From above, I think you are saying that it works in Firefox—that is, when logged in and using Firefox, Special:Notifications works. I have no idea but perhaps some caching by Edge on your computer has got corrupted? An easy but probably ineffective test might be to use Edge to log out of Wikipedia (top right of window), close Edge, start Edge again, log in to Wikipedia. If that doesn't work, try clearing cookies and data for Wikimedia and Wikipedia in Edge. It appears that the technique, in Edge, would be to click the three ... at top right, Settings, Cookies and site permissions, Manage and delete cookies and site data, See all cookies and site data. Scroll down to the bottom (press End key), click the downwards pointing > next to wikimedia.org and click the trash bin for what it shows. Repeat for wikipedia.org. That will clear Edge's cache which will log you out. Log in and see what happens. Or, wait another 24 hours in the hope that someone who understands what's going on replies here. Johnuniq (talk) 01:38, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Johnuniq you are a genius. That seems to have done the trick! Rascally cookies!! -- Ssilvers (talk) 08:04, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Less interwikis in other Wikipedias

How's that possible that, for example, Russian Wikipedia shows less interwiki links to the same English article? For example, in Карельский язык I see only 9 interwikis, while the English-language equivalent Karelian language shows them all. I thought Wikidata handles all of them simultaneously and instantly syncs with other languages. Brandmeister^talk 16:44, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Brandmeister: On those wikis that show fewer languages than expected, go to Preferences → Appearance → Languages and check that "Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you." is turned off. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:49, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I see a button underneath the 9 listed languages that says "Ещё 74" (74 more). If I click on that, I get a pop-up window with a full list. If I disable scripts in the browser, I see the full list directly in the portlet on the left. Vexations (talk) 17:50, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

If you get a 74 more button, that tells me that "Use a compact language list, with languages relevant to you." is turned on. Try turning it off. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:03, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I've missed that being used to the default full list in English WP. Brandmeister^talk 18:14, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Upside-down history

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292791
Resolved

When I go to see the earliest history it's upside-down, with the earliest at the top. DuncanHill (talk) 18:34, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

• That's the intended behaviour of &dir=prev, I believe. Black Kite (talk) 18:37, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  So how do I stop it doing that as it's never done it before and I never asked it to? DuncanHill (talk) 18:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Then it's changed. That query option would normally display oldest at bottom, and if there was a &offset= option, that would be the bottom of the list and the 50 (or whatever is set by &limit=) edits newer than that would be displayed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:42, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  And look at the first edit, −1,771 bytes. How is that possible? DuncanHill (talk) 19:05, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) It's subtracting the size for one line from the size for the line above, as normal, But because they're now in reverse order, this means that the newer file size is subtracted from the older, instead of the other way around: the reported change should be +1,771 bytes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:09, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  Clicking on "older 50" on the history page gives me 4 edits! DuncanHill (talk) 19:07, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  I think it's comparing the size to the last edit displayed on that page, the same if you click the "prev" diff link. Definitely not the desired behaviour, being tracked at phab:T292791. the wub "?!" 19:09, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's definitely broken. Black Kite (talk) 16:54, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, just noticed, this is quite broken. Going to the oldest history, the history is upside down, which would be fine, but the initial edit has a functioning "prev" link and byte diff, which compares it to the last item on the previous page of newer history. Or something. Very confusing.  Nixinova   T   C   01:11, 9 October 2021 (UTC)
• Came here to report the same thing. For me, if I go to a history page, the first page is fine (newest revisions at top). If I click on "older 50", the next page still has the results in the same order. If I click on "oldest", the oldest 50 revisions are shown, still with the newest of those 50 at the top. Any time I click on "newer 50", the results are reversed, with the oldest at the top, and the diff links and bytes changed are incorrect (they're not referring to the previous or next edit but seemingly to a random edit - I haven't figured out the pattern yet). Clicking "older 50" or "newest" will then bring up a page with results in the correct order. Hoping it gets fixed soon. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 23:01, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

  Size change is 0 for the middle row (call this row n). Size change for row n+k is its page size minus that of row n-k. For example, if the version six rows above the middle is 9123 bytes and that six rows below the middle only 9000 bytes, we get (+123) on the former and (-123) on the latter. Uses for this novel statistic are not immediately obvious. Certes (talk) 00:26, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, incorrect size changes doesn't matter that much, what matter is that the "prev." version difference became useless - compare what is shown for changes in edits "added category" (when only category is added) in normal and reversed order.

This makes the reversed list entirely useless. MarMi wiki (talk) 13:33, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now.  Nixinova   T   C   04:59, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

This got fixed yesterday. the wub "?!" 08:19, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Bot to automatically handle some CSD U1 requests

Hello! I'm wondering if someone could build a bot to automatically handle CSD U1 requests with some limitations:

• Page has never been moved
• Page has only been edited by the user whose user space it is in (this should handle revdelled usernames as a different user)

Would this be feasible? I'd write it myself, but I'm not an admin. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 19:59, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Technically, it should be possible. Practically, Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user is almost never backlogged, so there's not really a need. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:55, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

We once had Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/7SeriesBOT 2 back in 2010-2012 (and its operator was desysopped in 2014 for unrelated reasons). Agreed that there isn't really a need for a bot now. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:52, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

No need, and these are deletions that admins get thanked for and not yelled at, which can make CAT:CSD patrol a bit more pleasant :) —Kusma (talk) 22:03, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Alright! If there isn't a backlog, then there's no issue. Tol (talk | contribs) @ 23:44, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Can you search only redirects?

Similarly to how you can exclude or include name spaces when refining your search criteria, is it possible to perform a search which only delivers results that are redirect pages?--John Cline (talk) 04:05, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Looks like the answer is no or, at least, not currently: phab:T204089. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:06, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm glad to see that it may be in the works.--John Cline (talk) 06:53, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@John Cline, You can try de:Benutzer:Schnark/js/search++. ― Qwerfjkltalk 09:03, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

PetScan has an option to limit its output to redirects. However, Other sources → Search still invokes Cirrus search, searching within the target page rather than the redirect itself, so you'd need to search on other criteria (in category, has template, linked from page, etc.). Certes (talk) 11:01, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: Thank you for that useful link which also implements several other missing filters such as titles linked from a given page. Certes (talk) 14:09, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Script budging

I have an admin-only script that I use to add websites to handle requests at WT:SBL at User:Beetstra/Gadget-Spam-blacklist-Handler.js, including automatically adding and appropriate logging. Since yesterday (or earlier?) the script suddenly gives an error message where it shows that it was not able to save the MediaWiki page (and I have the feeling the same things happened to User:Ohnoitsjamie). I have been stepping through my code in the console, but it seems to fail somewhere deeper in the MediaWiki code (not in my script itself). I have the impression that it has something to do with our tokens, but I fail to read the gibberish code that is displaying at the breaking point. Does anyone know what has changed in the MediaWiki code that makes this error happen, and what we need to do to get the script working again. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:21, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

(For those admins who want to test: add importScript('User:Beetstra/Gadget-Spam-blacklist-Handler.js'); in Special:MyPage/vector.js, after which you can test it on Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/Local/jobtody.com (needs to be added anyway and the script fails on me). Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:44, 10 October 2021 (UTC))

@Beetstra The old method of retrieving edit tokens that your script is using was removed from MW recently. See mw:MediaWiki_1.37/Deprecation_of_legacy_API_token_parameters. – SD0001 (talk) 06:55, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@SD0001: Thanks, I did try some things, but I don't seem to get this fixed (I'm not a JS specialist though I do know my programming; I have adapted the script from meta to make these so I am not aware of what the original way was).
Is there s.o. who can help me further? -- Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:36, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

meta=tokens is part of action=query, not action=edit.

Anyways, I would recommend you avoid getting the tokens from the API and just use mw.user.tokens.get('csrfToken') wherever you need an edit token. Ideally you'd use mw.Api.postWithToken, but that's probably a more involved change. Legoktm (talk) 08:43, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Legoktm: Thanks, that seems to work like a charm (still need to test the other locations where the script is operating, but I don't expect problems on that end). Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:35, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Export to Wikimedia Commons process/ tool not working

I got this error message, "Can't import file because at least one of its file revisions is hidden" when I tried to export a Wikipedia file to Wikimedia Commons using a process or tool already on the file's page. Please, see [7] from this page here [8] Can it be fixed?

Thanks --Ooligan (talk) 19:28, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ooligan: I've restored the first version uploaded. —Cryptic 19:34, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Scan for malicious external links

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T292971

I just today corrected the official website of Atrium Health Navicent Peach. The lapsed domain had been captured by malicious actors. How come there isn't a bot that scans for this? Is there but did it not scan a link that had previously been ok? 1Veertje (talk) 10:39, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@1Veertje: do you mean to check whether we have a bot/code in place that checks whether a domain that is used has changed owner while sitting on a Wikipedia page? And then do that for every single external link throughout Wikipedia on a regular basis. I do not think we have that, and that would be rather server intensive for a rather low hitrate (domain ownership changes do not happen that often). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

No, check if a domain is a known vector for virusses/malware. Services like StopBadware help with that and should be responsible thing any big website does. 1Veertje (talk) 10:50, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

No, that is not something that is done systematically (not even at time of addition). I could probably make m:user:LiWa3 scan webpages at addition time against this website (or Google's blacklist) and provide alerting for it, but that does not help a lot (as it more often happens that websites get hacked or repurposed later while they are already available on Wikipedia).
It would therefore likely make more sense to have a database scan that checks whether sites on such lists appear on Wikipedia and make reports on that on a regular basis. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:03, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

The externallinks table already indexes all external links on WP, so can't you use that? – SD0001 (talk) 13:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

@SD0001: m:User:LiWa3 is working of the current feed of edits as, next to plain documenting, it also tries to catch ongoing spamming and is feeding user:XLinkBot. It does some scans for typical spam checks at addition time of the link (stopforumspam is one, trying to catch some typical spammer tags is another), I could add checks against google's blacklist and other websites like StopBadware there as well (IF those website allow the hammering by a bot, which not all allow). It might catch some malicious websites at addition time and would then throw an alert on IRC for that.
What 1Veertje wants indeed should run from the externallinks table, probably by making a database of all domains with certain data (that should not be too hard by running a proper query on the table) and go through selected data and scans for listing of already existing links on the database. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:31, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Would indeed be nice. I created a ticket for this, even though I don't expect this to be picked up any time soon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If you come across a hijacked domain (spammers, hackers etc) report it to WP:URLREQ where it can be usurpified by bot ie. |url-status=usurped and some other things. -- GreenC 14:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-41

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 October. It will be on all wikis from 14 October (calendar).

• The "auto-number headings" preference is being removed. You can read phab:T284921 for the reasons and discussion. This change was previously announced. A JavaScript snippet is available which can be used to create a Gadget on wikis that still want to support auto-numbering.

Meetings

• You can join a meeting about the Desktop Improvements. A demonstration version of the newest feature will be shown. The event will take place on Tuesday, 12 October at 16:00 UTC. See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:28, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Picking random users?

Do any tools exist for picking a random sampling of users who meet some criteria, for statistical studies. For example, I might want 1000 users who have more than 500 edits, are not blocked, and have made at least 10 edits in the past 90 days. I can write something like that, but why reinvent the wheel? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:06, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT N? (I'm assuming you can get the sample space with an SQL query). – SD0001 (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

slow pages saves waiting for intake-analytics.wikimedia.org

Anyone else having intermittent problems saving pages today, with timeouts "waiting for intake-analytics.wikimedia.org"? — xaosflux ^Talk 18:16, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If you are using adblock or blocking third party cookies that could happen. There is a bug for an third party cookies issue, although it is not an save issue, at bug T262996. There is also another issue I can think of that could impact it, it is entirely an adblock issue, I am going to save that one for later.--Snævar (talk) 18:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Interface protection message bug

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:No article text § Incorrect advise given to IPs who try to create template pages. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:36, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

InputBoxes position

Hello! Is it possible to choose the position of input boxes? So they don't appear like this but in a structured manner, say for example, 2 aligned on one side, 2 aligned on the other side and 1 in the middle?

I read the documentation many times but couldn't find any helpful information in regard to that. - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:47, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

You will need to make a template and use TemplateStyles for that, probably using display: flex or display: grid (floating the boxes might work but it won't be as easy I suspect). Most MediaWiki-supported browsers work with display flex; display grid is a little patchier but still most browsers that MW supports. Izno (talk) 02:02, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Izno, yeah thought that that would be the only way. I was hoping to find a wrapper template already here and only deal with the customization but {{Inputbox}} doesn't seem to offer that kind of functionality yet, does it? (Although it does offer some quite... nice... documentation...) - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:14, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

CSS Flexible Box Layout Module Level 1 is at the Candidate Recommendation stage, and CSS Grid Layout Module Level 1 is at the Candidate Recommendation Draft stage. This means that they are still not finalised, and shouldn't be relied upon. They are at least out of the Working Draft stage, which means that they're being taken seriously and the chances of being abandoned (as a Working Group Note) are fairly low. See the W3C Recommendation Track: if they make it through to Proposed Recommendation there should then be a good chance that they'll eventually reach W3C Recommendation, at which point virtually all browsers current at the time will support these features. But it can take years. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:20, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Defacto, flexbox is supported 99.9% by browsers we deliver content to and grid is supported 94%. I've used flexbox in dozens of templates over the last year. And we even use grid somewhere as an experiment (with some basic fallbacks) and no one seems to have noticed yet. The status of the documents doesn't matter. These are all living standards now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:27, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

^. Flexbox and grid aren't going anywhere. Izno (talk) 12:05, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

wikimedia projects link

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris new mediawiki computer browser interface update has new language bar so maybe it should point to wikiquote and wikinews etc as well their are the only one that is left in the left menu they could be in subject bar/authority control/unified template but top has better visibility bi (talk) 14:09, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@Baratiiman: the "in other projects" relationship is already active on the frwiki page. Are you having some problems here on enwiki? If your technical issue is only on frwiki, you may want to ask at w:fr:Wikipédia:Questions_techniques. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:42, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF), I think this feedback is for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

It is. Thanks, we'll look into it. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:41, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Language variables

We have received a question in the Incubator about how to translate language names for #language. I have tried to search for such messages on translatewiki.net to no avail, but they are probably there somewhere.

Here is the original message:

{{#language:ary|zgh}} gives Moroccan Arabic instead of ⵜⴰⵄⵕⴰⴱⵜ ⵜⴰⵎⵖⵔⵉⴱⵉⵜ, and {{#language:he|zgh}} gives Taɛebrit instead of ⵜⴰⵄⵉⴱⵔⵉⵜ, same thing for some other language names are untranslated or translated incorrectly. How can this be fixed? And where?--Brahim-essaidi (talk) 18:30, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Could someone point us in the right direction? - Xbspiro (talk) 00:25, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xbspiro: may want to try at mw:Extension talk:CLDR - from what I can tell we only copy the CLDR data from further upstream (likely from [9]) so you may need to make sure the data is good there first. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:05, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. (It seems that the data we were looking for is here.) - Xbspiro (talk) 01:54, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Xbspiro: see the instructions at translatewiki:CLDR#Localised_language_names. Legoktm (talk) 06:38, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Contributions/edits without a tag?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T119072

Hi. On the contributions page you can type in tags and just see edits with those tags. Is there a way to do the opposite and see my contributions that don't have certain tags? DemonDays64 (talk) 01:36, 13 October 2021 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

not yet ;) - that is feature request phab:T119072 if you would like to follow it. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:52, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Until that bug gets fixed, Demon can ask for an query to be run to get the results he wanted, at Wikipedia:Request a query.--Snævar (talk) 12:03, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Edit filter links at UAA

Good day. I noticed something yesterday at WP:UAA. There used to be a list of commonly-used edit filter links between the page header and the bot-reported names section, but now they're gone. I found those very handy, so I am just curious as to what happened to them. Thanks. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 06:40, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Looks like they were removed by Taking Out The Trash. --rchard2scout (talk) 06:51, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I've reverted, but have reworded it to put the two public filters first, per TOTT's reasonable concern. I don't believe we have EFH/EFM equivalents of sysop-show. If we were to make those, we could make it even smoother by just wrapping the private ones in those three classes. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 07:39, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

I've created the EFH/EFM user group classes and wrapped the private filters with the appropriate classes. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:23, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

User:Lowercase sigmabot III down, usage of a deprecated feature

This bot has not run since October 7, per User talk:Σ#Lowercase sigmabot III seems down. All the noticeboards appear to use the same bot. User:Legoktm believes the failure may be due to mw:MediaWiki 1.37/Deprecation of legacy API token parameters which was implemented on October 7. It appears that User:ClueBot III went down briefly for the same reason but was quickly repaired. Other data can be seen at Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard#General query. There is a table that shows which bots are up or down at Wikipedia:Bot activity monitor#Current status report. I hope that a solution can be found soon for archiving the noticeboards. I am archiving WP:AN3 by hand for the moment. EdJohnston (talk) 15:30, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

WD link

WD link doesn't works anymore? I can't find it also in preferences. Eurohunter (talk) 18:55, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: You mean inline links to Wikidata, like wikidata:Q42 or d:Q42? Or something else? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 20:05, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Tamzin: No WD link enables links to WD item at every Wikipedia page under the name. Eurohunter (talk) 21:03, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

@Eurohunter: Like d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js? That's what I use. I don't see anything like that in User:Eurohunter/common.js. There's also a built-in "Wikidata item" link under "Tools" in the sidebar. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 21:24, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

d:User:Yair rand/WikidataInfo.js is loaded in meta:User:Eurohunter/global.js. I don't know why it fails for you. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:47, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Search index

Hello, is there a problem with the generation of the search index. I am getting articles that were changed at 11:34 this morning still appearing in search results. An example is List of current National Football League head coaches where the date error was fixed this morning but is still showing in the search results. Regards. Keith D (talk) 21:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)