Wikipedia:Village pump (technical): Difference between revisions
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{{Village pump page header|1=Technical|2=The '''technical''' section of the [[Wikipedia:Village pump|village pump]] is used to discuss technical issues ''about'' '''Wikipedia'''. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in [[mw:Phabricator|Phabricator]] (see [[mw:How to report a bug|how to report a bug]]). Bugs with [[web application security|security implications]] should be reported differently (see [[mw:Reporting security bugs|how to report security bugs]]). |
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If you want to report a [[JavaScript]] error, please follow [[Wikipedia:Reporting JavaScript errors|this guideline]]. Questions about [[MediaWiki]] in general should be posted at the [[mw:Project:Support desk|MediaWiki support desk]]. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for five days. |
If you want to report a [[JavaScript]] error, please follow [[Wikipedia:Reporting JavaScript errors|this guideline]]. Questions about [[MediaWiki]] in general should be posted at the [[mw:Project:Support desk|MediaWiki support desk]]. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for five days. |
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== VPNgate blocking bot == |
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I am seeking consensus on a proposal to develop and deploy a bot to help block VPNgate IP addresses used by a particular [[WP:LTA]]. For [[WP:DENY]]/[[WP:BEANS]] reasons, I cannot provide full details, but users familiar with the LTA in question will understand the context. |
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== Saving user preferences == |
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=== Background === |
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Whenever I attempt to save my settings (both on mobile and laptop) it instantly resets as soon as I leave the settings page, regardless of whether I have clicked save. Has anyone else experienced this? The main issue for me is the email settings and I am considering just removing my email address so I am not constantly receiving emails, however it does mean that if I forgot my password I will be locked out of my account. Any help would be greatly appreciated. [[User:Longhorncowfish|Longhorncowfish]] ([[User talk:Longhorncowfish|talk]]) 20:32, 1 July 2024 (UTC) |
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I have tested several VPNgate IPs, and very few of them are currently blocked. According to Wikipedia's policy on open proxies and VPNs (per [[WP:NOP]]), these should be blocked. Given the volume of VPNgate IPs, I propose using a bot to automate this process. |
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This is building off [[WP:BOTREQUESTS#VPNGate|this discussion]] on [[WP:BOTREQUESTS]]. |
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:Try accessing [[Special:Preferences]] and saving the preferences with JavaScript off (google how to turn it off, it depends on browser). [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 02:45, 2 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Or try another browser or device. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 03:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::I have tried on both iPhone and laptop and it doesn’t work :( [[User:Longhorncowfish|Longhorncowfish]] ([[User talk:Longhorncowfish|talk]]) 01:59, 3 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::I cannot do that on my current device, but I will try when possible [[User:Longhorncowfish|Longhorncowfish]] ([[User talk:Longhorncowfish|talk]]) 02:00, 3 July 2024 (UTC) |
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This is supposed to happen at [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal]] in desktop: |
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# The Save button is grey |
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# Click once in the box at "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" |
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# The box changes state between empty white and blue with checkmark. |
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# The Save button is now blue |
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# Click the Save button |
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# The Save button is now grey |
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# "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" still has the new setting |
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# If you leave preferences and come back then it still has the new setting |
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If it's different for you then at which step? [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 10:20, 3 July 2024 (UTC) |
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I am posting here to gauge consensus needed for a [[WP:BRFA]]. |
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:The button never goes gray. If I click it nothing happens [[User:Longhorncowfish|Longhorncowfish]] ([[User talk:Longhorncowfish|talk]]) 03:35, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Not even a page reload? [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 06:16, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::{{ping|Longhorncowfish}} What is your skin at [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering]]? What is your browser and operating system on the laptop? If you change a setting so the Save button becomes blue then does it become lighter blue with a hover-text like "Save preferences [Alt+Shift+s]" when you hover over it? Does it turn grey if you use the keyboard shortcut? Alt+Shift may be different for you, see [[Help:Keyboard shortcuts#Using access keys]]. Can you save by pressing {{keypress|Tab}} until the Save button is marked and then {{keypress|Enter}}? [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 20:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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=== Proposal === |
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== Running counter for figures, equations, linguistic examples, and so forth? == |
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I propose a bot to automate blocking these VPNgate IPs using the following steps: |
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# The bot will use [https://www.vpngate.net/enwiki/api/iphone/ this list] provided by VPNgate, which contains OpenVPN configuration files in Base64 format. The provided "IP" value is only the one that your computer uses to talk to the VPN (and sometimes wrong), not the one used for the VPN to talk to Wikipedia/external internet - this requires testing to uncover. |
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Is there any way to include a running counter for equations, figures, linguistics examples, and so forth, with automatic cross-referencing? The idea being that the third equation in an article would automatically render with the label ''Equation 3'' and that code like <code>As shown in <eqn name = "LEM"/></code> would produce text like ''As shown in Equation 3''. These numbers would automatically update if equations were added or removed from the article. |
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# The bot will iterate through each config file and use OpenVPN to test if it can connect. If successful, it will then use the VPN to send a request to [https://www.ipify.org/ this WhatIsMyIPAddress API] to determine the real-world IP address used by each VPN to connect to Wikipedia. This is sometimes the same as the IP used to talk to the VPN - but sometimes completely different, see the demo edit I did using VPNgate on the Bot Requests discussion linked above and I also did one as a reply to this post. Also, testing is needed before blanket blocking because VPNgate claim to fill the list with fake IPs to prevent it from being used for blocking, again see the BR discussion. |
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'''Blocking or Reporting''': |
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As noted by {{user|Uanfala}} in a previous discussion, this seems like it should be possible since we already do it with references, but somehow the functionality has proved elusive. Does anybody have any ideas? [[User:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo">Botterweg14</span>]][[User talk:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo"> (talk)</span>]] 17:58, 4 July 2024 (UTC) |
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* If the bot is approved as an admin bot, it will immediately block the identified IPs or modify block settings to disable TPA (see Yamla's recent ANI discussion per the necessity for this) and enable auto block. |
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:I'm also gonna ping {{ping|Colin_M}} and {{ping|Biktor627}}, who both edit in topic areas where this functionality would be useful. [[User:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo">Botterweg14</span>]][[User talk:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo"> (talk)</span>]] 18:03, 4 July 2024 (UTC) |
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* If the bot is not approved to run as an admin bot, it will add the IPs to an interface-protected JSON file in its userspace for a bot operated by an admin to actually do the blocking. |
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::{{ping|Botterweg14}} Automatic numbering is not possible. See [[Help:Displaying a formula#Equation numbering]] for a system with manual numbering. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 20:55, 4 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::Hey, thanks for the reply. Is this something that could in principle be built by a user? Or is this really beyond what the wiki software can do in its current form? [[User:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo">Botterweg14</span>]][[User talk:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo"> (talk)</span>]] 14:53, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::{{ping|Botterweg14}} It might be possible with a module which reads the whole page source at each location and cross-reference in order to count occurrences but it would be expensive (resource-demanding on the servers) and doesn't seem worth the cost. It wouldn't merely make rendering slower but also break some pages which are near a resource limit. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 19:15, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::Ah, and there's no way this could be floated on top of the pre-existing architecture used by <code><ref></code>? [[User:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo">Botterweg14</span>]][[User talk:Botterweg14|<span style="font-family:Baskerville;color:indigo"> (talk)</span>]] 20:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::A more specific problem is that MediaWiki is intended to work section-by-section: someone can edit a section and preview it, and that should not require the system to process the rest of the page. [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 02:14, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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=== Additional Information === |
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== Module redirects and {{Tl|R from move}} == |
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* I have already developed and tested this bot locally using Pywikibot. I have tested it on a local MediaWiki install and it successfully prevents all VPNgate users from editing (should they not be IP block exempt). |
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* I’m posting here to gauge broader community consensus beyond the original [[WP:BOTREQUESTS]] discussion. |
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=== Poll Options === |
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So, today I learned that Module redirects exist and I've been going around adding [[WP:RCATS]] to them. I've been doing this by adding the rcats to {{Tl|Sandbox other}} per [[WP:CAT#T]] and I've updated [[WP:REDCAT]] to reflect this. The purpose of this section is twofold. One, I want the community to tell me if there are any objections to the instructions I've added to [[WP:REDCAT]] and two, I wonder if there would be any interest to update the moving process so {{Tl|R from move}} is added to the module redirect (or, more accurately, to an [[WP:includeonly]] block in its doc page) after a move. [[User:Nickps|Nickps]] ([[User talk:Nickps|talk]]) 22:24, 4 July 2024 (UTC) |
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* '''Oppose''': Object to the bot proposal. Feel free to explain why. |
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: The documentation you've added at [[WP:REDCAT]] is fine. But, in addition to technical feasibility, I would object to doing what you proposed with the doc page. Either the doc page didn't exist prior to the move, in which case creating a separate page just to add rcats is an unnecessary waste, or it did exist, in which case it should itself be a {{tl|R from move}}. [[User:Pppery|* Pppery *]] [[User talk:Pppery|<sub style="color:#800000">it has begun...</sub>]] 23:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC) |
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* '''Support''' options: |
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::You make some good points. Especially the technical feasibility was the reason why I wasn't really hoping that my proposal would be accepted.{{pb}}I'll note however that I personally don't agree that {{tq|creating a separate page just to add rcats is an unnecessary waste}}. Per [[WP:RCAT]]: {{tq|Normal ("hard") [[Wikipedia:Redirect|redirects]] should be placed in one of several [[Wikipedia:Template index/Redirect pages|maintenance categories]] specifically for redirects.}} Module redirects are the only case in which there is literally no other way to add categories to them ([[Module:Module wikitext]] doesn't work after all), so I feel that creating an empty doc page is justified. Or better yet, one should create a doc page that says something like, "Redirect to [[<target>]]" since for some reason, module redirects don't provide a link to the target module. [[User:Nickps|Nickps]] ([[User talk:Nickps|talk]]) 01:00, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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# '''Admin Bot (admin given code)''': An admin will run the bot, and I will provide the code for them to run, as well as desired environment setup etc. and will need to send any code changes or packages updates to them to perform. ''Admin needs to be quite technically competent.'' |
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:::One more thing. Consider [[Module:Adjacent stations/HSL]]. [[Module:Adjacent stations/HSL|Its doc page]] is redirected to its target's doc page. I didn't want to disable that redirect since having the target's documentation accesible without an extra click is useful. So I [[Special:Diff/1232792517|added]] <syntaxhighlight lang=wikitext>{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Module:Adjacent stations/HSL|{{Rcat shell|{{R from subpage}}{{R to subpage}}{{R from short name}}}}}}</syntaxhighlight> to [[Module:Adjacent stations/Helsinki commuter rail/doc]]. <del>Assuming we want to go that direction a Template that does this and also checks if the Module is still a redirect would be necessary</del>. [[User:Nickps|Nickps]] ([[User talk:Nickps|talk]]) 16:37, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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# '''Admin Bot (admin gives me token)''': An admin provides me with the bot token (scoped per Anomie below) of a newly created account only for this purpose, allowing me to run the code under myself on Toolforge and fully manage environment setup (needs install and config of multiple python and brew packages not needed for standard pywikibot) as well as instantly deploy any needed code changes or dependency updates without bottlenecks. ''Admin only needs to know how to use Wikipedia UI and navigate to [[Special:BotToken]], check some boxes, and then submit.'' |
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# <s>'''Admin Bot (I run it)''': For this specific case I am permitted to run my own admin bot.</s> Withdrawn per Rchard2scout and WMF <code>viewdeleted</code> policy. |
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# <s>'''Bot without Admin Privileges''': The bot will report IPs for potential blocking without admin privileges. ''Not recommended per large volume.''</s> Withdrawn per 98 IPs/hour volume, too much for a human admin. |
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# '''Non-admin bot v2 (<u>preferred by me</u>)''': My bot, [[User:MolecularBot]] is '''not''' an admin bot. It can, however, add IP addresses that it finds are the egress of open VPNgate proxies to [[User:MolecularBot/IP HitList.json]] (editable only by the bot and [[WP:PLIERS]]/interface admins). This means I can run the code for it and manage the complex environment. An admin's bot will be running the uncomplicated code (doesn't require the complex environment and OpenVPN setup for this bot) to just monitor that page for changes and block any IPs added. |
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== |
=== Poll === |
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* <s>'''Oppose''' for now. From reading that discussion, it looks like the IPs available through the API are only the "ingress" IPs, which is what you connect to on their side when using the VPN (and even then, it seems like the VPN client might sometimes use another IP instead?). If there's actually a publicly available list of outgoing IPs available, I'd be very surprised. From an operational standpoint, those IPs don't need to be public, and if they are, that's a serious error on their side. If we do somehow get our hands on a list, I'd be in favour of '''option 1'''. There's plenty of admins available who are able to run bots. --[[User:Rchard2scout|rchard2scout]] ([[User talk:Rchard2scout|talk]]) 08:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)</s> |
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*:Hi {{u|rchard2scout}}, I think you misunderstand the bot. The bot connects to each "ingress" IP and then finds out the "egress" IP that it uses by sending a request to a "what is my IP address API" (not associated with VPNGate in any way), then blocking the egress. This fully disables VPNgate on my local instance of MediaWiki. Thus, a list of egress IPs are not required, because it makes it own by connecting to each of the ingress ones and sending a request. I apologize if my documentation wasn't clear. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 08:44, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::Noting that I currently do have a complete list of "egress" IPs from my local run of the bot, so should I take your vote as a '''support''' of option 1 like you stated? Thank you. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 08:45, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:Oops, you're right, I somehow missed this. Hadn't had my first coffee yet ;). Striking, adding new vote. |
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*::That's so fine, my brain is a little laggy in the early morning as well! My technical/documentation writing probably needs some work as well, it's not my best skill (anyone please feel free to edit this post and make it clearer, if it's wrong I'll just fix it). Thank you for your time in reviewing this even though it's still the early morning where you are! :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 09:38, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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* '''Support option 1'''. Options 2 and 3 are probably incompatible with our local and WMF policies, because an admin bot can do anything an admin can do, and you haven't gone through RfA, so you're not allowed access to rights like {{mono|viewdeleted}}. Or (@ anyone who know this) are OAuth permissions granular enough that an admin can generate a token that allows a bot access to {{mono|block}} but not to other permissions? In any case, I think option 1 is the easiest and safest way, there's plenty of admins available who are able to run bots. --[[User:Rchard2scout|rchard2scout]] ([[User talk:Rchard2scout|talk]]) 08:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*: Hi {{u|Rchard2scout}}, thank you for your new comment and feedback. I hope your morning is going well! Ah yes <code>viewdeleted</code>, silly me to forget about that (I have the opposite problem as you before, it is far too late at night where I live!), I do recall it from someone else's declined proposal of admin sortion, I've struck Option 3 now per WMF legal policy. Re OAuth permissions, I know from using Huggle that when you create a bot token there's a very fine grained list of checkboxed for you to tick, and "block" is in fact one of them, so it is that granular as to avoid all other admin perms, I've expanded Option #2 above to clarify this and more circumstances. I do believe this would be my preferred option, per the reasons I've placed in my expansion, but are really happy with anything as long as we can deal with this LTA. Anyway, enjoy your morning! [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 11:29, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*: There's no grant allowing <code>block</code> but no other permissions. The minimum additional admin permissions would be <code>block</code>, <code>blockemail</code>, <code>unreviewedpages</code>, and <code>unwatchedpages</code>. [[User:Anomie|Anomie]][[User talk:Anomie|⚔]] 12:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*: '''Support option 5''' as well, and that doesn't even need a BRFA or an RFC. We do then need consensus for the adminbot part of that proposal, so perhaps this discussion can focus on that. --[[User:Rchard2scout|rchard2scout]] ([[User talk:Rchard2scout|talk]]) 10:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*'''Option 1'''. I believe this is the only option allowed under policy. Admins need to run admin bots. This RFC is a bit complicated. Usually an RFC of this type would just get consensus for the task ("Is there consensus to run a bot that blocks VPNGate IP addresses?"), with implementation details to be worked out later. –[[User:Novem Linguae|<span style="color:blue">'''Novem Linguae'''</span>]] <small>([[User talk:Novem Linguae|talk]])</small> 12:09, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:'''Option 5''' is fine if the bot doesn't need to do any blocking and is just keeping a list up-to-date. Don't even need this RFC or a BRFA if you stick the page in your userspace ([[WP:EXEMPTBOT]]). –[[User:Novem Linguae|<span style="color:blue">'''Novem Linguae'''</span>]] <small>([[User talk:Novem Linguae|talk]])</small> 09:50, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*I'd like to suggest an alternative approach: Write a bot or Toolforge tool that generates a data feed of IP addresses, starting with VPN Gate egress IP addresses, perhaps including the first seen timestamp and last seen timestamp for each egress. The blocking and unblocking portion of the process is relatively simple and a number of administrators could write, maintain, and run a bot that does that. (I suspect most administrators that run bots would prefer to write their own code to do that.) [[User:Daniel Quinlan|Daniel Quinlan]] ([[User talk:Daniel Quinlan|talk]]) 23:04, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:Well, I started writing this suggestion before option 5 was added. Since it looks like this is basically the same as that option, put me down as being in favor of '''Option 5'''. [[User:Daniel Quinlan|Daniel Quinlan]] ([[User talk:Daniel Quinlan|talk]]) 23:15, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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** Hahaha, great minds think alike I guess! Thank you for your input. :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 09:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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* Courtesy ping for {{u|Rchard2scout}} and {{u|Novem Linguae}} notifying them of the new preferred option 5 above, which I believe makes everything easier for both myself and the admin who wishes to help me (I'll leave a note on AN asking nicely once BRFA passes for MolecularBot). Also, {{u|Skynxnex}}, you expressed support for option 5 below, did you mean to format that as a support !vote in this section (my apologies for the confusing layout of everything here). Thank you very much to everyone for your time in reviewing this proposal and leaving very helpful feedback. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 09:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:I don't feel like I've thought about the different aspects to do a bolded !vote yet. [[User:Skynxnex|Skynxnex]] ([[User talk:Skynxnex|talk]]) 15:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::That's so fine, thank you anyway for your feedback! :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 23:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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=== Discussion === |
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When I was viewing the page [[New Mexico]], I found that most of the references display a "Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2058: attempt to index a boolean value." I did a search for the error message and found more than 300 articles with the same reference error. I'm not sure what's going on, but something appears to be broken. [[User:Johnj1995|Johnj1995]] ([[User talk:Johnj1995|talk]]) 15:31, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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*Hey, it's me, [[User:MolecularPilot]] on VPNgate. This VPN is listed as 112.187.104.70 on VPNgate cause that's what my PC talks to. But, this VPN when talking to Wikipedia, uses 121.179.23.53 as shown which is <u>completely different</u> and '''not listed anywhere on VPNgate''', showing the need for actually testing the VPNs and figuring out the output IPs are my bot does. Can this IP please be [[WP:OPP]] blocked? [[Special:Contributions/121.179.23.53|121.179.23.53]] ([[User talk:121.179.23.53|talk]]) 06:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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: A [[WP:NULLEDIT]] seems to have fixed the problem. That line of code loads data from Commons so maybe there was some issue talking to Commons when the page was rendered? [[User:Pppery|* Pppery *]] [[User talk:Pppery|<sub style="color:#800000">it has begun...</sub>]] 15:35, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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**Can confirm this is me! :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 06:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::I currently get 240 hits on {{search link|"Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line"}}. I examined the first 40 and none of them had the error. Whatever caused it, it appears to be gone. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 17:12, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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* There is a relevant Phabricator ticket: {{phab|T380917}}. – [[User:DreamRimmer|<span style="color:black">'''DreamRimmer'''</span>]] <small>([[User talk:DreamRimmer|'''talk''']])</small> 12:02, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::This sort of thing sometimes pops up when the Citation Style 1 modules are updated, which happens a few times per year. (These distractions are one of the reasons for infrequent updates.) No matter how short the time between updates of each of the sub-modules, there is always a bit of time during which the sub-modules may be incompatible with each other, for example because one of them introduces new code that doesn't interact well with the older code in a different sub-module. This extremely temporary discrepancy can cause errors to pop up in at least a few pages. Null edits usually take care of the problem. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 18:18, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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* I don't think non-admins can run admin bots. Perhaps you would like to publicly post your source code, then ask an admin to run it? cc {{u|Daniel Quinlan}}. –[[User:Novem Linguae|<span style="color:blue">'''Novem Linguae'''</span>]] <small>([[User talk:Novem Linguae|talk]])</small> 12:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::I haven't seen a live example of the error but the above search shows it at this in [[Serom (state constituency)]]: |
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* I don't think blocking a single VPN provider will have the effect people want it to have. It's easy for a disruptive editor to switch VPNs. This is really a problem that needs to be solved by WMF. [[User:Daniel Quinlan|Daniel Quinlan]] ([[User talk:Daniel Quinlan|talk]]) 15:45, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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<pre>{{cite news |
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*:Hi {{u|Daniel Quinlan}}, I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post but this is designed to work with existing WMF proposals that are being worked on. Both {{phab|T380917}} and {{phab|T354599}} block/give higher edit filter scrutiny based on existing lists of "bad" IPs, this is the same as the old ST47ProxyBot (which actually does scanning but doesn't monitor "egress" IPs, it only attempts to connect to the "ingress" and then blocks it if successfully). This is great for a wide variety of proxy services because ingress/egress is the same, but for modern, more advanced services like VPNgate (and perhaps some services that because a problem for us in future) the ingress IP address is often '''not the same''' as the one used to edit Wikipedia, and so requires this solution (this bot). I'll admit that blocking VPNgate won't fully stop this LTA or all proxy vandals but VPNgate is quite a large and widely used network (claiming a total of 18,810,237,498 lifetime connections) that is currently almost fully permitted to edit Wikipedia, and by blocking it this significantly reduces the surface area for proxy attacks. This also creates the infrastructure for easily blocking any future VPN services that use different ingress/egress IPs - the bot can be easily expanded to use new lists. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 21:14, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| title = Johor 14th General Election Malaysia (GE14 / PRU14) |
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*What is the actual expected volume per day of new IPs to block? It looks like the current list has 98 ingress IPs (if I'm understanding the configuration blocks correctly). I'll also say I have pretty strong concerns about sharing "personal" tokens of any kind between users, particularly admin permission ones with non-admins. [[User:Skynxnex|Skynxnex]] ([[User talk:Skynxnex|talk]]) 19:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| work = [[The Star (Malaysia)|The Star]] |
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*:The list available through [https://www.vpngate.net/enwiki/api/iphone/ this API] frequently rotates. It only provides 98 ingress IPs at a time, as you stated and refetching the list without [some duration of time, from my estimates it's around '''1 hour'''] passing returns the same 98 IPs. After 1 hour (estimated) passes, a new 98 IPs are randomly selected to be provided to all users - but these may include some of the same IPs as before because they are picked by random selection from the whole list of 6057 (not available to the public), this has happened a couple times during my data gathering. Therefore re volume per hour, the ''maximum'' number of IPs to be blocked is '''98''', but it could be less due to already blocked IPs being included in that given hour's sample of 98, I hope this makes sense if there's anything that needs clarifying please don't hesitate to ask. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 21:34, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| publication-place = [[Petaling Jaya]] |
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*::Re "personal" tokens it's actually not a "personal" token to the admin's account, it would be (in theory) a token to an adminbot account with the only things it can be used for being those helpfully specified by Anomie above. However, regardless I see the concerns so I've added a proposal 5 which hopefully is a decent compromise above and ensures that I don't have access to any admin perms/tokens, but that there aren't any bottlenecks and that admins don't need to setup a complex running environment. Thank you for your time in commenting, {{u|Skynxnex}}. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 22:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| date = 23 March 2019 |
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*:::I see bot tokens as fairly similar to personal tokens since bots are associated with an operator. I think proposal 5 has promise. [[User:Skynxnex|Skynxnex]] ([[User talk:Skynxnex|talk]]) 23:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| url = https://election.thestar.com.my/johor.html |
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*:VPN Gate claims they have about 6,000 servers which is fairly close to my own estimate of how many IPs they are using. If we block each IP for six months, we'd end up averaging about 33 blocks per day. There would be a pretty large influx at the start, but I would want to spread that out over at least several weeks to avoid flooding the block log as badly as ST47ProxyBot did. [[User:Daniel Quinlan|Daniel Quinlan]] ([[User talk:Daniel Quinlan|talk]]) 23:10, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180511081855/https://election.thestar.com.my/johor.html |
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*::It's worth noting that an unknown amount of 'servers' are user computers that people have volunteered cpu time for (this information is somewhere on the website), so, like we see often with IP users, the IP that each server uses can and likely will change with time. This doesn't mean that an effort like this bot won't help, of course, but it's unknown how effective (as a percentage) it would be with just 33 blocks a day. – [[Special:Contributions/2804:F14:809E:BA01:D0BD:CD6F:7C33:D1A2|2804:F1...33:D1A2]] ([[Special:Contribs/2804:F14::/32|::/32]]) ([[User talk:2804:F14:809E:BA01:D0BD:CD6F:7C33:D1A2|talk]]) 23:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| archive-date = 11 May 2018 |
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*:::33 blocks per day is a rough estimate, not a limit. Certainly there will be some delay when adding entries to any list generated as proposed above so the block rate will never reach 100%, but the egress IPs don't seem to change that much over time based on what I've seen. [[User:Daniel Quinlan|Daniel Quinlan]] ([[User talk:Daniel Quinlan|talk]]) 00:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| url-status = live |
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*:::So, I'm posting this anonymously through VPNGate because I don't want people to start suspecting me of things just because I admit to having used a VPN service some others are abusing to make disruptive edits here. Due to its strong base in Japan, I've used VPNGate many times in order to shop at Japanese web stores that block purchases from outside Japan (they typically don't want to offer international support and see this as the easiest solution for avoiding that), and I know a number of other people who've used it for similar reasons (also for Korea, which often has even more hosts available than Japan).<br> |
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| access-date = 16 April 2019 |
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*:::In any case, while I've personally never enabled this on my PC, I can confirm what IP 2804: said: there's definitely a swarm of short-term volunteer IPs associated with this service who aren't part of VPNGate proper. The overlap between such people and good faith Wikipedia editors may not be large, but it's unlikely to be zero. Unless you have a good mechanism to avoid excessively punishing such users for popping up on your list for the short period of time they themselves use the VPN, maybe it's better to wait for and official WMF solution, which (based on the phabs) seems to intend to take "IP reputation" into account and would thus likely exclude such ephemerals, or at least give them very short term blocks compared to the main servers. Because getting blocked here for several months for having been part of VPNGate for a few hours hardly seems fair.<br> |
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*:::Actually, now that I think about it: if you're going to connect to VPNGate servers for the express purpose of determining and blocking their exit IPs, you'd probably be in violation of their TOS. While you might consider this an "ends justifying the means" situation, are you sure you want to associate the WMF with such unauthorized usage? There's a difference between port scanning or getting an IP list via an API and actually '''traversing''' the VPN in order to investigate it. This absolutely is ''not'' a legal threat ''by me'', but if VPNGate were to learn of this, I wouldn't be surprised if they took action. Aren't there enough services out there that provide VPN IP lists without having to roll your own scanner? It would seem a safer bet for the WMF to use something like that. [[Special:Contributions/125.161.156.63|125.161.156.63]] ([[User talk:125.161.156.63|talk]]) 16:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::Oh, you didn't have to anonymise yourself, we don't cast [[WP:ASPERSIONS]] here and now you won't get a reply notification but that's okay! :) I checked the terms of service of their website before making their bot and it just says not to do anything IRL illegal otherwise they'll give your logged data to authorities if subpoenaed, but I will reach out to the VPNgate operators in Japanese (good practice opportunity, huh) when I have time just to double-confirm they're okay with everything. But btw, they encourage checking that your IP has changed to demonstrate it has worked in their how-to-guides, and this isn't 'tranaversing" as we're not collecting data on every single node but only the public IP of the exit node. Re short-term volunteers, that's a great point, and I'll update the JSON schema of its published data to include a "number of sightings" number, so that the blocking adminbot would escalate blocks as this increases so maybe it starts really short term like 2.5 days/60 hours (6000 active volunteers on average, divided by 100 checked every hour, minimum time to ensure the IP has truly stopped) if it's just 1 sighting but ramps up exponentially if it's seen again as an egress IP untill we're talking like 6months - 2 years blocks. Re WMF tickets, the distributed fact of VPNgate that anyone can start hosting means that most VPNgate IP addresses won't have a bad "reputation" (I checked a whole bunch on a variety of reputation lists and the egresses always had "good"" reputations) so reputation checking won't help (but they need short term blocks), also as you can't publically see the egress with VPNgate cause it's different to ingress (unlike most networks). So WMF solutions are actually quite innovative and smart for most VPN/proxy networks, it's just that VPNgate is a bit different needing a unique solution, this bot. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 04:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::It currently produces: |
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*:::::I guess I'm just too careful or chicken even if most people would refrain from casting aspersions.<br> |
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::::{{cite news |
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*:::::I don't quite understand why you say you're not traversing. You're not just touching the network from one side, you're passing through it and coming out on the other side, that's traversing. However if they don't mind it, then I guess you're in luck. Ecxept maybe if those Japanese laws they mention a mllion times in their documents have a problem with something like this.<br> |
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| title = Johor 14th General Election Malaysia (GE14 / PRU14) |
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*:::::I don't know what the WMF is basing its reputation measurements on. My meaning was that sites like browserleaks.com almost always seem to know about the VPN status of the exit nodes I've used over time. I don't know where they're getting this information from exactly, but that's what I meant by reputation, not whether they're good or bad but what they're known to engage in, like being a VPN node. And that database is probabably built either through collaboration or by specialized services, which the WNF can use as well. Like email providers use common antispam databases instead of each rolling their own.<br> |
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| work = [[The Star (Malaysia)|The Star]] |
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*:::::In any case, good luck with your bot, because I'm afraid these persistent abusers you want to keep out by this probably won't be averse to paying for commercial VPNs if they have to, and many of those only cost a handful of bucks a month. Commercial companies will almost certainly have a TOS that would prohibit your bot, so to counter them the WMF would in the end still have to resort to a specialist or collaborative VPN IP list of some kind. You can probably cut down on casual troublemakers by tracking VPNGate but I don't think it'll help all that much much against anyone highly motivated. They can even continue using VPNGate, it'll just be less convenient because they have to find brand new nodes before you catch those. |
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| publication-place = [[Petaling Jaya]] |
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*::::: [[Special:Contributions/92.253.31.37|92.253.31.37]] ([[User talk:92.253.31.37|talk]]) 17:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| date = 23 March 2019 |
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*::::::I'm not sure what you mean by "Japanese Laws" they keep mentioning they don't seem to mention any, when I told you that the ToS said don't do anything irl illegal I was referring to [https://www.vpngate.net/en/about_abuse.aspx this ToS page] which doesn't mention any "Japanese Laws" but just says don't do anything like CSAM like your government can subpoena us for, because we'll comply (and directions for LEOs to request this). Re reputation yes, the major VPNgate nodes that have done it for a while do have bad reputations, particularly 219.100.37.0/24 which is the example servers run by the university themselves - but as you said, because anyone can start a VPNgate server and then there's always brand new nodes that won't have bad reputations and can be abused. But - as I've stated in a different discussion above, the list of VPN servers to connect to only updates with new servers hourly, so while reputation services won't catch the new exit nodes (because they won't be used poorly enough to trigger flagging for a white), the bot constantly waits for updates to the list and then immediately tests it to determine the new egress IPs. Re commercial services generally, unlike VPNgate, they use datacenters and static IPs that are assigned to "Hotspot Shield, Inc." (as an example) so it's easy to CIDR range block them and also the reputation of those deteriorates over time as they do bad things - the companies don't randomly get new IPs in random locations around the world, like VPNgate. In fact commercial reputation services excel at identifying commercial services (from my testing), but VPNgate is community distributed, like Wikipedia, and needs a unique approach. And yes, as I said to Daniel, I'll admit that blocking VPNgate won't fully stop this LTA or all proxy vandals but VPNgate is quite a large and widely used network (claiming a total of 18,810,237,498 lifetime connections) that is currently almost fully permitted to edit Wikipedia (the bot currently has 146 IPs in its [[User:MolecularBot/IPData.json|list]] and as shown by the stats section of the [https://molecularbot2.toolforge.org/ toolforge frontend], ~60% are currently unblocked (and this is an underestimate because the list is mainly the "obvious" ones that are always provided first in the 98 hourly sample, like 219.100.37.0/24. This is because the bot has only had 1 full run of all IPs in a given hour's list, and many failed partial runs of just the first couple. I think blocking VPNgate significantly reduces the surface area for proxy attacks - only looking at only 10 of the blocked IPs I see link spam, edit warring, block evasion, vandalism and our favourite [[WP:LTA]]. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 08:38, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| url = https://election.thestar.com.my/johor.html |
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*:::::::They mention Japanese laws repeatedly in the texts shown when you click the licence and notice buttons under Help > About of the SoftEther VPN Client Manager. It's a canned statement saying they only comply with Japanese laws because they can't possibly follow every law worldwide.<br> |
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| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180511081855/https://election.thestar.com.my/johor.html |
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*:::::::{{tq|the bot constantly waits for updates to the list and then immediately tests it to determine the new egress IPs}} Are you going to run multiple instances of the bot in parallel, because the 98 IP list you get per hour seems far from sufficient for make claims about a strong level of protection if there are ~6000 egresses, many of which churn. With your current setup, an abuser can get their own list refresh, which would be different from what the bot gets, run it past your very helpful :) IP check tool and then make edits from any IP not covered. Which may not be many, but they only need one out of their 98, so it's likely they'll get something as long as the volunteer swarm keeps changing.<br> |
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| archive-date = 11 May 2018 |
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*:::::::Getting a bit more facetious, VPNGate could conversely determine the IP of your bot and block it as a censorship agent. :) I really think it contradicts the spirit of their operation even if they haven't prohibited it explicitly, since you don't happen to be a state agent. This is just my conjecture, but I'm guessing that if you looked at your IP list edits without focusing solely on the abuse, you'd also see constructive edits coming from them, quite possibly from people using VPNGate to bypass state firewalls. I am well aware of Wikipedia open proxy policy, but it can make editing somewhat difficult for such people.<br> |
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| url-status = live |
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*:::::::These remain my two sticking points: while useful, the bot won't be quite as effective as you represent; and you're arguably abusing their service to operate yours.<br> |
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| access-date = 16 April 2019 |
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*:::::::Once this bot starts issuing blocks, you should probably amend [[Help:I have been blocked]] to include verbiage about having used a VPN in the recent past, because this situation isn't really covered by the "you are using a VPN" or collateral damage statements. [[Special:Contributions/211.220.201.217|211.220.201.217]] ([[User talk:211.220.201.217|talk]]) 15:21, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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}} |
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*::::::::VPNgate does not have as firm of a ground as you claim. Yes, companies have terms of use and those terms of use often have clauses of disputes being filed in their local country. However, as multiple attourneys have pointed out, this local dispute solving when dealing with an customer from abroad does not really work. In reality, VPNgate is forced to deal with international laws, because otherwise they will just lose their case. (one of the legal opinions supporting this: https://svamc.org/cross-border-business-disputes-company-use-international-arbitration/ ) |
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::::None of the used modules and templates have been edited recently so the cause was something else this time. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 18:54, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::::::As far as blocks go, yes, they could block one user, but let me remind you that there are 120,000 active wikipedia users. The script could just be passed on between users until all of their IP ranges are blocked. They would lose that war, every time. [[User:Snævar|Snævar]] ([[User talk:Snævar|talk]]) 20:11, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::Might it be possible to make the edits in such a way that this doesn't happen? All the best: ''[[User:Rich Farmbrough|Rich]] [[User talk:Rich Farmbrough|Farmbrough]]''<small> 22:38, 5 July 2024 (UTC).</small><br /> |
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*:::::::::I don't recall claiming anything about firm ground. I have a problem with the WMF or parties associated with it engaging in somewhat questionable practices, even if it is for a good cause. I'm OK with port scanning or getting data from an API, because that's external probing, but actually passing through someone's premises with the intent of later restricting their users is something I find objectionable, and it is my conjecture that VPNGate would think likewise. If VPNGate blocked one user's bot, that would simply be an indication that they object to such activities, and having a million other users on the ready to take over would change nothing about that, and I'm fairly certain the WMF does not subscribe to this sort of hackerish way of thinking anyway. VPNGate aren't outlaws against whom anything goes, they operate a prefectly legitimate service, albeit one that some people abuse. It's also possible that it's just me, and VPNGate themselves have no objection to any of this. The OP was going to ask them, so I presume they'll inform everyone about the response sometime soon. [[Special:Contributions/220.81.178.129|220.81.178.129]] ([[User talk:220.81.178.129|talk]]) 11:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::Seems possible: Update sandbox submodules, update the main module to use the sandbox versions, update the normal submodules, change the main module to use the normal submodules again. Not sure it's worth the effort, and something worse might happen if it isn't done carefully enough. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 22:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::::::::Yes, this is definitely not something that should be adversarial or "us against them" and if they express concerns about this behaviour, we should totally not try and evade it - after all VPNgate does share our mission of spreading free knowledge to the world (and are very useful to spreading Wikipedia and other websites around the globe, it's just some bad actors taking advantage of the kind service of both the university and the volunteers creating a problem). We just need to find a way to work together to ensure that we both can continue to do our things. Being the holiday season, it's pretty busy for me and I'm sure the [[Christmas in Japan|same is true]] for the operators so I will reach out in the new year re their thoughts on this. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 04:45, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::::::Hi! The abuser can't get their own list refresh seperate from what the bot sees, I guess I wasn't clear before but what I meant was that '''everyone''' gets the '''same''' 98 IPs every hour, and then the next hour another 98 are randomly selected to be shown to everyone. |
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*::::::::Re censroship/state agencies this doesn't help state agents or censorship at all, because they want to block the input/ingress IP addresses that citizens would use to connect to the VPN network, and knowing the egress that the VPN network uses to connect to servers doesn't help them at all. I have clarified this in the README.md now so anyone who sees the project will know that it can't be used for censorship. |
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*::::::::Re users bypassing state firewalls, they can still read and if they want to edit we have [[WP:ACC]] for that (abusers could go through acc I guess, but then they can't block evade once their account gets indef'ed - and VPNgate has been used a lot by link spammers, people who want to edit war (especially someone who got really upset about [[caste]]s, I've seen a lot of edit warring from detected IPs about that) to evade the blocks on their main account). |
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*::::::::Btw, thank you for calling my tool helpful, I'm not the best at UI design but I tried to put some effort in and make it looks nice and have useful functions. Thank you to you as well for your time in providing soooo much helpful feedback to make the bot better. :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 03:52, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:::::::::Also thanks for reminding me to provide guidance to users on this, I think the current [[WP:OPP]] block message doesn't really fit with the VPNgate mode of temporary volunteers (who the user effected might not even know about but could get a dynamic assignment with an IP blocked for a few days). I'll make a custom block template! :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 03:54, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::::::::Tada I guess... {{tl|Blocked VPNgate}} Anyone reading this please feel comfortable to be [[WP:BOLD]] and make it better if you'd like, it's still a very early draft. :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 10:06, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:::::::::While tone of you thanks seems to include some aspersions :), you're welcome if what I've said has helped you. If the list is the same for everyone, you can indeed be a lot more effective. My point about censorship was less about you helping state censors and more about you using the loophole that VPNGate haven't said anything about private actors, and giving the impression that abuse is the ''only'' thing it is being used for. [[Special:Contributions/220.81.178.129|220.81.178.129]] ([[User talk:220.81.178.129|talk]]) 11:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::::::::Oh no I'm really sad now, please don't take my tone when I thanked you in the wrong way (it can be both hard to express and pick up on the internet)! Maybe saying "sooooo" was a bit over the top, but you've genuinely gone back and forth with me a lot of times and always written detailed, logical suggestions or concerns to help, so genuinely, no sarcasm, thank you!!! :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 04:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:::::::::::All right then, and sorry about my tendency to lean a bit on the paranoid side. [[Special:Contributions/159.146.72.149|159.146.72.149]] ([[User talk:159.146.72.149|talk]]) 09:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::::::::::That's so fine! :) [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 05:00, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*:::::::::::How feasible would it be to make the list of IPs private/admin-only? I mean, they're still going to get blocked, and that's public, but I feel like making a ''public'' list, even if one may or may not already exist, might be an unnecessary step? |
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*:::::::::::If I ran a VPN service I'd be a lot less upset about Wikipedia defending itself than Wikipedia creating a public up-to-date list of VPN IPs that everyone can use, without effort, to mass block most of my VPN. – [[Special:Contributions/2804:F14:80DD:5501:947B:8E40:2657:88CF|2804:F1...57:88CF]] ([[Special:Contribs/2804:F14::/32|::/32]]) ([[User talk:2804:F14:80DD:5501:947B:8E40:2657:88CF|talk]]) 02:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*::::::::::::I'm not really sure, I don't think there's a way to restrict viewing a page on EnWiki (I could whip up a MediaWiki extension enabling "read protection" of a page, but I doubt the WMF would install it), but we do have things like checkuserwiki, arbcomwiki etc. which have limited viewership so prep haps the bot could operate on a new antiabusewiki (but this would require even more work from WMF than installing the extension) and then a stewardbot could issue global blocks from there? I would also have to take down [https://molecularbot2.toolforge.org molecularbot2.toolforge.org] and the [https://github.com/IntegralPilot/Gateslam GitHub repo] (that anyone could just download code and run it to get their own list). But even if we don't have a list, it's trivial to query the MediaWiki API for block status (that's what the toolforge tool does in addition to seeing if the IP is listed at [[User:MolecularBot/IPData.json]] when you lookup an IP or generate stats), there's very high ratelimits for this, and you just need to check if the block reason is {{tl|Blocked VPNgate}} or whatever message the adminbot/stewardbot leaves. [[User:MolecularPilot|<span style="color: #0369a1; font-family:monospace">MolecularPilot</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:MolecularPilot|🧪️]][[Special:Contributions/MolecularPilot|✈️]]</sup> 04:54, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== |
== Why are frwiki talk pages so much nicer than ours? == |
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Take a look at (for example) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Oracle#Li_M'H%C3%A2_Ong_(2). This seems to be typical of talk pages on frwiki. The threading of replies is so much easier to follow. Is this just some snazzier CSS they're using, or something fundamentally better to edit the pages? [[User:RoySmith|RoySmith]] [[User Talk:RoySmith|(talk)]] 01:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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{{multiple image |
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: It looks like just some snazzy CSS. [[User:Pppery|* Pppery *]] [[User talk:Pppery|<sub style="color:#800000">it has begun...</sub>]] 01:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| align = left |
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:I see no reason not to adopt the CSS over here, or some other form of threaded discussion by default.'''[[User:JayCubby|<span style="background:#0a0e33;color:white;padding:2px;">Jay</span>]][[User talk:JayCubby|<span style="background:#1a237e;color:white;padding:2px;">Cubby</span>]]''' 01:22, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| total_width = 800 |
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::There are some gadgets that support it. I think ConvenientDiscussions is one of them. I'm not a general fan of the styling. [[User:Izno|Izno]] ([[User talk:Izno|talk]]) 02:08, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::A screenshot of [[c:User:JWBTH/CD|Convenient Discussions]] for reference: |
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:::[[File:Convenient Discussions screenshot en.png|frameless|none]] |
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:::Threads are collapsible, and a change is coming that would allow to collapse/expand all replies to a comment in one click, similar to how you can do that on Reddit with a +/− button.{{pb}}And, of course, pure CSS is only a half-solution here since markup and HTML produced by it are trickier and don't correspond to the actual comment structure as one-to-one. [[User:JWBTH|Jack who built the house]] ([[User:JWBTH|talk]]) 05:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::I'd love to see that too! [[User:Closed Limelike Curves|– Closed Limelike Curves]] ([[User talk:Closed Limelike Curves|talk]]) 23:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:I created my own experimental CSS stylesheet to add style formatting to discussion threads; see [[User:Isaacl/style/discussion-threads]] for an example of how it looks and instructions on using it. There is an accompanying user script to temporarily turn the style formatting off for the current page, should you want to see how the page looks by default. [[User:Isaacl|isaacl]] ([[User talk:Isaacl|talk]]) 02:25, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:I don't personally like that layout, but the customer is always correct in matters of taste I suppose? It's just styling hacks ([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Oracle?safemode=1#Li_M'H%C3%A2_Ong_(2) see without]). frwiki has thousands of lines of custom css being loaded by default (e.g. from [[:w:fr:MediaWiki:common.css]] , [[:w:fr:MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css]], [[:w:fr:MediaWiki:Gadget-Mobile.css]]). Someone could write a "pretty talk pages" script here, and if it was popular we could make it available as a gadget. — [[User:Xaosflux|<span style="color:#FF9933; font-weight:bold; font-family:monotype;">xaosflux</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Xaosflux|<span style="color:#009933;">Talk</span>]]</sup> 14:53, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::What's been done in the past is A/B testing of different gimmicks by the WMF. I'd be curious to see the rate of abandoned comments now versus with a shiny new layout is. '''[[User:JayCubby|<span style="background:#0a0e33;color:white;padding:2px;">Jay</span>]][[User talk:JayCubby|<span style="background:#1a237e;color:white;padding:2px;">Cubby</span>]]''' 15:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::My stylesheet continues to be used by (double-checks)... only me. I like it, but it's not evident yet that there's a significant demand for different styling of discussion threads. [[User:Isaacl|isaacl]] ([[User talk:Isaacl|talk]]) 18:17, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:That looks HIDEOUS. All the boxes and colors distract me from the text. I would find it harder to follow those conversations. --[[User:Khajidha]] ([[User talk:Khajidha|talk]]) ([[Special:Contributions/Khajidha|contributions]]) 15:51, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:The threading is entirely frwiki's custom CSS. It's pretty easy to do, with how talk pages use nested definition-list syntax for discussions already; <code>body.ext-discussiontools-replytool-enabled dd { border-left: 2px solid lavender; padding-left: 1ex; }</code> gets you about 95% of the way there. There's plenty of room to get fancier, of course. (And sometime people use unordered lists instead, which would need to be handled separately.) |
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:There's also a visible difference since enwiki is the only place that the DiscussionTools "visual enhancements" haven't been turned on yet ({{phab|T379102}}). That's why they have the fancier thread summaries in the topic list and under the headings, and the more button-like reply links. If you're curious what that'd be like here, you can [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)?dtenable=1 turn it on with the dtenable URL parameter]. |
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:We did experiment with going much further in page-reformatting with DiscussionTools as well. You can see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:DiscussionToolsDebug?pagetitle=Wikipedia%3AVillage+pump+%28technical%29 our structure-debug page] for an example of that. It's actually what the talk pages in the mobile apps use now -- they get the talk page data from the DiscussionTools API and build the view from that, rather than from the normal wikitext render. [[User:DLynch (WMF)|DLynch (WMF)]] ([[User talk:DLynch (WMF)|talk]]) 16:39, 18 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::This looks so cool! I'm really looking forward to it on enwiki :) any way I can opt-in to DiscussionTools improvements like this sooner? [[User:Closed Limelike Curves|– Closed Limelike Curves]] ([[User talk:Closed Limelike Curves|talk]]) 03:45, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::You can enable DiscussionTools in the beta menu. I don't know where that's located in Vector 2022's menu (I use MonoBook), but it's in there. <span>♠[[User:JCW555|<span style="color:purple">JCW555</span>]] [[User talk:JCW555|<span style="color: black">(talk)</span>]]</span>♠ 04:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::Right, I have it on, but it looks like FrWiki and other wikis are using a newer version with more features (which is what I'm interested in). [[User:Closed Limelike Curves|– Closed Limelike Curves]] ([[User talk:Closed Limelike Curves|talk]]) 19:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::For the record, those boxes don't show up on mobile. That issue, combined with the fact that replies aren't as far apart in the new version, makes it ''harder'' for mobile users to tell who is replying to who compared to the current version. [[User:QuicoleJR|QuicoleJR]] ([[User talk:QuicoleJR|talk]]) 19:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:Woah, it looks like [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Talk_pages_project/Feature_summary MediaWiki has an even nicer talk page GUI]? Any way I can enable ''that'' on all wikis? [[User:Closed Limelike Curves|– Closed Limelike Curves]] ([[User talk:Closed Limelike Curves|talk]]) 19:56, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::I have since learned that this would be a terrible idea. (I still like the look, though, and it would be great to have some way to sort threads by age.) [[User:Closed Limelike Curves|– Closed Limelike Curves]] ([[User talk:Closed Limelike Curves|talk]]) 20:14, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::It would be indeed great to have more control over sorting threads, especially since there are a number of wikis (including the main wiki I contribute to, Russian Wikipedia) which have to resort to bad hacks to display certain forum pages in recent-oldest sorting order and not oldest-recent as it is default. It would’ve been great to see these hacks made obsolete with DiscussionTools, see [[phab:T313165]], but AFAIK no one actively develops it any more, so I guess we’ll have to wait till WMF decides to fund it again. [[user:stjn|stjn]] 21:40, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::That's [[Wikipedia:Flow|Flow]]. It failed for complicated reasons, has limped along unmaintained since 2016-ish, and is currently in the process of being completely removed now that DiscussionTools was deployed as the outcome of the [[Wikipedia:Talk pages project|2019 talk pages consultation]]. [[User:DLynch (WMF)|DLynch (WMF)]] ([[User talk:DLynch (WMF)|talk]]) 20:20, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::This is also as ugly as homemade sin. Way too much whitespace.--[[User:Khajidha]] ([[User talk:Khajidha|talk]]) ([[Special:Contributions/Khajidha|contributions]]) 20:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== Undesirable (and new?) line wrapping == |
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| image1 = MW Dark Mode bug when Software Notice shown by CX Zoom 20240704.jpg |
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| caption1 = Light mode footer appears when a software notice is shown above. [logged out] |
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I don't know if it's just me noticing something that has been there for a long time, or if something new is happening, or if my CSS or browser is to blame, but I am noticing undesirable line wrapping that I have not seen before. I am seeing references after full stops (periods) that wrap to the next line. I'm seeing the ")" in "{{f/|16}})" (in the lead of [[Exposure value]]) wrapping to the next line. And I think one other kind of wrapping that should not be happening but that I can't remember at the moment. I don't think this sort of wrapping was happening before; references stayed with the preceding punctuation, and a closing parenthesis would stay with the text that preceded it. I could be wrong or misremembering, of course. My gut feeling is that I just started noticing it in the last month or so. |
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| image2 = MW Dark Mode normal behaviour by CX Zoom 20240704.jpg |
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| caption2 = Dark mode footer (normal behaviour) appears when software notice is dismissed and page refreshed (or notice not shown at all). [logged out] |
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If it's just me, I'll live with it, but I thought I would post here to see if this prompts anyone else to chime in. I am using Vector 2022 on the latest Firefox for Mac OS. I can link to example pages and even provide screen shots as needed. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 01:01, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| image3 = MW Dark Mode normal behaviour in Commons (logged in) by CX Zoom 20240704.jpg |
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| caption3 = Dark mode footer appears even when software notice is shown on Commons Main Page. [logged in] |
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}} |
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{{clear}} |
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Hi all, recently I was scrolling through the mobile version of Wikipedia as an anonymous user, and got advertised with a pop up to try the new Dark Mode feature, and came across this bug: When a software notice is shown to a logged-out user, the footer does not respect the dark mode, and continues in light mode. This happens to all pages. |
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:{{tqb|I am seeing references after full stops (periods) that wrap to the next line.}} |
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But, if one dismisses the notice and refreshes the page, the footer behaves normally. Similarly opening any page without the notice also causes the footer to behave normally. When I was logged-on to Commons, I saw another software notice, but the footer behaves normally. I don't know if this bug is already reported or not. Thanks! <span class="nowrap">—'''[[User:CX Zoom|CX Zoom]]'''[he/him]</span> <sup class="nowrap">([[User talk:CX Zoom|let's talk]] • {[[Special:Contributions/CX Zoom|C]]•[[User:CX Zoom/X|X]]})</sup> 17:47, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:This has unfortunately always been the case. I found Phab tasks and comments documenting this going back to 2016: [[phab:T100112#2027495|T100112#2027495]], [[phab:T125480|T125480]]. There have been cases where line wrapping around references behaved even worse than that (interesting ones I found: [[phab:T96487|T96487]], [[phab:T110057|T110057]], [[phab:T132255|T132255]]), and those have been fixed. |
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:{{tqb|I'm seeing the ")" in "f/16)" (in the lead of [[Exposure value]]) wrapping to the next line}} |
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:I can reproduce this, screenshot for reference: [[phab:F58028918|F58028918]]. This is caused by using <code>display: inline-block;</code> in the template {{tn|f/}} (basically the same issue as [[phab:T110057|T110057]] mentioned above, actually). It was added not quite a year ago: [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Template:F//styles.css&diff=prev&oldid=1196926970]. I'm not sure what these rules are for, but someone could probably find a way to do this differently and avoid the problem. |
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:{{tqb|And I think one other kind of wrapping that should not be happening but that I can't remember at the moment.}} |
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:Well, it's a bit tricky to guess from that ;), but my crystal ball shows me you're thinking of [[phab:T353005|T353005]], where some error and warning messages now break words with hyphens when wrapping lines, starting also about a year ago. I heard a few people complain about that and I find it a bit unpleasant myself. Did I guess right? |
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:[[User:Matma Rex|Matma Rex]] <small>[[User talk:Matma Rex|talk]]</small> 01:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::Adding a <code>&zwj;</code> after the span in {{tl|f/}}, as shown in [[Special:Diff/1263967231]], would at least fix the issue in that template. <span class="nowrap">--[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] ([[User talk:Ahecht|<b style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:middle;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK<br />PAGE</b>]])</span> 17:15, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:The problem with NOT wrapping (especially when dictated by templates), is that it works for 90% of the cases. But there is also the 10% of cases where the value is too small to fit in the infobox or on a mobile screen in 1 line. But the templates can't make that distinction, so it's generally a bad idea to put 'no wrap' as a default in a template. Overall it is better to depend on the browser to mostly do things right and not fret too much about the occasional times that it gets it wrong. Because flipping that assumption around tends to create harder to maintain wikitext that gets it wrong about the same or even more often. —[[User:TheDJ|Th<span style="color: green">e</span>DJ]] ([[User talk:TheDJ|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/TheDJ|contribs]]) 09:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::Thanks for the responses. As I said, I really can't tell if I'm seeing something new, or if I noticed one and now the [[Baader-Meinhof phenomenon]] is in effect. If I see something really egregious, I'll take a screen shot. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 15:50, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== contentious topics/aware plus "topic code" == |
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:@[[User:CX Zoom|CX Zoom]] Hi, looks like it was just an issue with that Bangla Wiktionary centralnotice banner. I've [https://meta.wikimedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Centralnotice-template-BanglaWiktContest2024_banner&diff=prev&oldid=27065391 fixed] it now. The banner templates were updated to fix this back in May, so hopefully we won't see any more banners with the same problem. [[User:Pcoombe (WMF)|Peter Coombe (WMF)]] ([[User talk:Pcoombe (WMF)|talk]]) 23:47, 5 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Thank you very much! <span class="nowrap">—'''[[User:CX Zoom|CX Zoom]]'''[he/him]</span> <sup class="nowrap">([[User talk:CX Zoom|let's talk]] • {[[Special:Contributions/CX Zoom|C]]•[[User:CX Zoom/X|X]]})</sup> 15:25, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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i want to add the contentious topics/aware template to the top of my talkpage, but [[Template:Contentious_topics/table#Codes|the list of topic codes]] says to substitute the template so i did but the israel/palestine topic code did not display. how do i include the topic code? [[User:Daddyelectrolux|Daddyelectrolux]] ([[User talk:Daddyelectrolux|talk]]) 19:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== Article preview showing completely different article == |
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:@[[User:Daddyelectrolux|Daddyelectrolux]] You don't need to subst that template, you would just do {{tlx|Contentious topics/aware|a-i}}. <span class="nowrap">--[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] ([[User talk:Ahecht|<b style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:middle;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK<br />PAGE</b>]])</span> 19:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC) |
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{{multiple image |
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::the topic codes page states that the template should be substituted. perhaps that should be removed, to avoid new people from make my same mistake? thank you [[User:Ahecht]]. :) [[User:Daddyelectrolux|Daddyelectrolux]] ([[User talk:Daddyelectrolux|talk]]) 00:23, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| align = left |
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:::{{ping|Daddyelectrolux}} You wanted to use [[Template:Contentious topics/aware]] which doesn't say to use subst. [[Template:Contentious topics/table]] is used to document other templates and it varies whether they require subst. I have added this to the documentation.[https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Template:Contentious_topics/table/doc&diff=prev&oldid=1264094584] [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 12:14, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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| total_width = 400 |
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::::To be fair, up until yesterday [[Template:Contentious topics/aware/doc]] just linked to [[Template:Contentious topics/table]]. I updated it so that it properly transcludes the table, which hides the <code>subst:</code> syntax. <span class="nowrap">--[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] ([[User talk:Ahecht|<b style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:middle;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK<br />PAGE</b>]])</span> 15:27, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== Updating broken JavaScript user script for adding a template to RefToolbar 2.0 == |
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| image1 = DownTown One bug.png |
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| caption1 = The page preview, which for some reason links to a different article |
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Hi! Hopefully this is the right place to put this. [[:Template:Cite RCDB]]'s documentation contains a suggested user script to add the template to [[Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0|RefToolbar 2.0]]. However, it imports [[User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar 2.0.js]], which hasn't been a think since 2013. On the page is now a note saying "This script is now enabled by default." The existing script, however, does not work out of the box, throwing the error below. If someone who knows JS could help modify the script to work without the linked user script, that would be great! |
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| image2 = DowntownOne bug 2.png |
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<pre> |
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| caption2 = The article itself, which shows that the page previewer is jacked up |
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VM385:2 Uncaught ReferenceError: $j is not defined |
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}} |
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at <anonymous>:2:913 |
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{{clear}} |
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at globalEval (startup.js:1141:17) |
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at runScript (startup.js:1292:6) |
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at enqueue (startup.js:1179:5) |
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at execute (startup.js:1399:5) |
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at doPropagation (startup.js:748:6) |
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</pre> |
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[[User:Plighting Engineerd|Plighting Engineerd]] ([[User talk:Plighting Engineerd|talk]]) 01:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:The instructions were VERY VERY outdated. I have updated them and tested the 'new' fragment and it works. —[[User:TheDJ|Th<span style="color: green">e</span>DJ]] ([[User talk:TheDJ|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/TheDJ|contribs]]) 10:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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I was working on an article, [[Downtown One]] (which is not a redirect), when I realized that the article preview links to a completely different article, which is [[List of tallest buildings in Albania]]. A redirect from the former to the latter did exist at one point in time, but was deleted in 2023. The bug '''should''' be visible to others, if it's not just let me know, I can post an image up. This is a relatively serious bug aswell, because it basically removes the ability to visit that page, effectively eliminating the purpose of Wikipedia. I've never seen this before, so I thought I'd let yall know. (Also I attempted to report it over at Phabricator, but for some reason the ver. email link never sent). At least one person over at WP:TEAHOUSE is completely clueless as to why that happens, and honestly so am I. Thanks :) [[User:MemeGod27|Sir MemeGod ._.]] <small>([[User talk:Sir MemeGod|talk]] - [[Special:Contribs/Sir MemeGod|contribs]] - [[User:Sir MemeGod/Creations|created articles]])</small> 03:32, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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: |
::Thanks so much! Works perfectly now! [[User:Plighting Engineerd|Plighting Engineerd]] ([[User talk:Plighting Engineerd|talk]]) 13:23, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::It just fixed itself. That is the weirdest thing. [[User:MemeGod27|Sir MemeGod ._.]] <small>([[User talk:Sir MemeGod|talk]] - [[Special:Contribs/Sir MemeGod|contribs]] - [[User:Sir MemeGod/Creations|created articles]])</small> 05:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::[[File:DowntownOneBugFix.png]] [[User:MemeGod27|Sir MemeGod ._.]] <small>([[User talk:Sir MemeGod|talk]] - [[Special:Contribs/Sir MemeGod|contribs]] - [[User:Sir MemeGod/Creations|created articles]])</small> 05:23, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::The redirect existed for 15 hours on 7 August 2023. Page Previews uses caching. I guess the cache was never updated after the deletion. I don't know whether this is normal for deleted redirects or pages. Page Previews doesn't activate on red links so it wouldn't normally affect users but it did when you recreated the page with other content. The cache was apparently updated between your first and second post, meaning between one and three hours after page creation. There are reasons for caching but 11 months is too much so I would call this a bug. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 10:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::Page previews don't get actively purged on delete/revert/move/etc, only on edit. And then they still are cached for 24 hours (not sure what the exact value is). This is a known issue (or rather two of them). So what happened is that when you recreated the article, it used the OLD information (as it was still somewhere in the database), that got cached, edits were made causing references to update in the databases, and then 24 hours later the cache expired and it used the new information from the edits. —[[User:TheDJ|Th<span style="color: green">e</span>DJ]] ([[User talk:TheDJ|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/TheDJ|contribs]]) 11:03, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::So, say someone creates a vandalistic page containing an objectionable image. The page gets deleted as G3. Later, someone creates a legitimate page at - or moves an existing page to - the same title. Is the preview going to show whatever picture that was previously on the vandalistic page? That could cause some surprises. [[User:Home Lander|Home Lander]] ([[User talk:Home Lander|talk]]) 20:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Site is under maintenance == |
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==absent section links & popups== |
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If I click on a link to [[WP:ANI#Pizza]] (but not [[Mars#Pizza]]), a popup appears in the upper-right hand corner of the browser satating the obvious, {{talk quote inline|This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, {{sic|moved or renamed.}}|q=yes}} Which preference or gadget has enabled this? I can't find anything that describes such in my preferences, and I don't see anything documented at [[WP:ANCHOR]], [[Help:Section#Section linking]], or [[MOS:SECTIONLINKS]]. Anybody know what's causing this? — '''[[user:Fourthords|<span style="color:#c00">Fourthords</span>]] | [[user talk:Fourthords|=Λ=]] |''' 04:49, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:[[mw:Extension:DiscussionTools]]. Just curious, why "[sic]"? [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 04:56, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:: I don't see that specific popup listed at that link, but I'll take your word for it. As it's both new and woefully superfluous, is that something still being experimented upon (and we can wait it out), or does it need to be fixed at the project or individual-editor level? (I just used {{template link|sic}} to denote that the missing serial comma was original to the popup, and not a mistake on my part.) — '''[[user:Fourthords|<span style="color:#c00">Fourthords</span>]] | [[user talk:Fourthords|=Λ=]] |''' 10:28, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:It's a MediaWiki feature that has existed for several weeks. The HTML is <syntaxhighlight lang=html><div class="mw-notification-area-overlay"> |
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<div class="mw-notification-area mw-notification-area-layout" id="mw-notification-area" style=""> |
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<div role="status" class="mw-notification mw-notification-noautohide mw-notification-type-warn mw-notification-visible"> |
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<div class="mw-notification-content">This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, moved or renamed.</div> |
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</div> |
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</div> |
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</div></syntaxhighlight> and it's right at the end of the HTML source that is served to your browser. The same {{tag|div|params=class="mw-notification-area-overlay"}} is used to contain the "Your edit was published." message that you get when you save an edit, also some other messages. --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] 🌹 ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 14:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::I don't know how to remove only this message. This in {{yourcss}} removes all <code>mw-notification-area-overlay</code>: |
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::<syntaxhighlight lang="css"> |
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.mw-notification-area-overlay {display:none;} |
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</syntaxhighlight> |
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::This in {{yourjs}} only works if it runs after the popup has appeared but it normally runs before: |
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::<syntaxhighlight lang="javascript"> |
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$('.mw-notification-area-overlay:contains("This topic could not be found")').hide() |
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</syntaxhighlight> |
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::[[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 14:21, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::I've found two more messages that go in the same area - '"(page name)" and its talk page have been added to your watchlist permanently.' and '"(page name)" and its talk page have been removed from your watchlist.', so that makes four, although there may be others. {{replyto|Fourthords}} I've worked out how to hide the "This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, moved or renamed.", leaving the other three visible: <syntaxhighlight lang="css">#mw-notification-area:has(div.mw-notification-noautohide.mw-notification-type-warn) { |
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display: none; |
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}</syntaxhighlight> which goes in {{yourcss}}. The selector might be overspecific. --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] 🌹 ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 16:12, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::: Oh gosh, I hadn't mean to attract so much attention and assistance; I was just expecting a point in the correct direction. Thanks so much! — '''[[user:Fourthords|<span style="color:#c00">Fourthords</span>]] | [[user talk:Fourthords|=Λ=]] |''' 18:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::A problem with all these approaches is that it would also hide a notification which ''does'' point to an archived section (e.g. [[WP:VPT#Heading markup changes]]). [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 04:09, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::The two messages have the same classes and id's and the unwanted message doesn't have anything unique apart from the actual text which cannot be selected with CSS, but only the wanted message has <code><nowiki><p></nowiki></code>. We can use this to hide both and then unhide the wanted: |
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::::<syntaxhighlight lang="css"> |
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#mw-notification-area:has(div.mw-notification-noautohide.mw-notification-type-warn) { |
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display: none; |
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} |
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#mw-notification-area:has(div.mw-notification-noautohide.mw-notification-type-warn p) { |
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display: inline; |
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} |
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</syntaxhighlight> |
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::::[[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 09:32, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::{{replyto|PrimeHunter}} Which two messages have the same classes and id's? --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] 🌹 ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 18:26, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::The "This topic could not be found..." popups on [[WP:ANI#Pizza]] and [[WP:VPT#Heading markup changes]]. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 19:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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I was unable to complete an edit a few minutes ago. I got an error message saying the site was under maintenance. Clicking on "back" did get me the edit I was trying to make and a few seconds later I was successful. |
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== Unseen search box == |
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I posted just for documentation but I am having difficulty with a site that is very slow and I came here to do an edit to have something to do while waiting for pages on that slow site to come up. The slow site slows everything else down.— [[User:Vchimpanzee|<span style="color:#070">Vchimpanzee</span>]] • [[User talk:Vchimpanzee|<span style="color:#aa4400"> talk</span>]] • [[Special:Contribs/Vchimpanzee|<span style="color:#700">contributions</span>]] • 21:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC) |
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When I do not login, the search box is not visible (on my HP laptop running Windows 11, using Firefox or Brave) unless I hit ctrl and the minus key at least three times. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't potential users who have come to Wikipedia and left after not finding a way to search. Can't this set-up be changed? (When I'm logged in, the issue does not occur.) [[User:Kdammers|Kdammers]] ([[User talk:Kdammers|talk]]) 03:48, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Blacklisted website not on any blacklist == |
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:If I zoom in 175% it turns into a magnifying glass symbol, which I can then click to display the searchbox. – [[Special:Contributions/2804:F14:809B:301:4587:12FB:9F04:60E|2804:F1...04:60E]] ([[User talk:2804:F14:809B:301:4587:12FB:9F04:60E|talk]]) 04:06, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:{{replyto|Kdammers}} See [[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#Search box]] and [[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#Bugs persisting after last week]]. --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] 🌹 ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 18:23, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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I wanted to save an edit containing a link to tradingview.com but it keeps showing a message: |
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== POTY (Picture of the Year) competition needs help! == |
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"Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist. [...] The following link has triggered a protection filter: tradingview.com [...]" |
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POTY desperately needs new volunteers who can do the things required to run the competition. With the current state of the committee, it is likely that there will be no POTY this year, as the main member who ran scripts for the competition has burned-out from doing wikipedia tasks and isn't up for it. Others on the committee are also missing in action. |
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So I tried to figure out whether I shouldn't use that website as a source and on what blacklist that website is supposed to be but I couldn't find anything. Is that a bug? [[User:Killarnee|Killarnee]] ([[User talk:Killarnee|talk]]) 14:18, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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Check out the Discussions here [[commons:Commons_talk:Picture_of_the_Year]] and here [[User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Wikimedia_Commons_POTY]]. @[[User:Tacsipacsi|Tacsipacsi]] has helped out with fixing some issues with code. |
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: It's on the global blacklist at [[meta:Spam blacklist]]. [[User:Anomie|Anomie]][[User talk:Anomie|⚔]] 14:29, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::Yeah. It was added in October 2017. See the [[meta:Talk:Spam blacklist/Archives/2017-10#tradingview.com|request]] and [[meta:User:COIBot/LinkReports/tradingview.com|link report]]. – [[User:DaZyzzogetonsGotDaLastWord|Daℤyzzos]] ([[User_talk:DaZyzzogetonsGotDaLastWord|✉️]] • [[Special:Contributions/DaZyzzogetonsGotDaLastWord|📤]]) <small>''Please do '''not''' [[Help:ping|ping]] on reply.''</small> 14:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::Hm now I found it too, somehow the find tool in Safari wasn't able to find it. Thanks you both. Looks like I have to search for another source. [[User:Killarnee|Killarnee]] ([[User talk:Killarnee|talk]]) 14:58, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== [[Special:Shortpages]] == |
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Volunteers familiar with Rust, JavaScript, wikitext and SQL are needed. Links to scripts: [https://github.com/legoktm/poty-scripts] and [https://poty-stuff.toolforge.org/]. Please help out if you can.[[User:Shawnqual|<span style="color:#FF91AF">'''''•Shawnqual•''''' 📚</span>]] • [[User talk:Shawnqual|💭]] 23:22, 7 July 2024 (UTC) |
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When I try to view this special page I just get the following error: |
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== Fixing the random article buttons on each level in vital articles == |
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{{!tq|[8f6642e6-42f2-4bba-8e7d-01bac9220c2f] 2024-12-21 18:40:02: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\RequestTimeoutException"}} |
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On each level of the [[WP:Vital articles]] pages, the random article buttons somehow stopped working. I tried this on my laptop and phone, and it doesn't work. What happens is when I press the button, I get an error that says the tool is down. I was wondering what caused this and how I can fix it so that it works again. [[User:Interstellarity|Interstellarity]] ([[User talk:Interstellarity|talk]]) 13:40, 8 July 2024 (UTC) |
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Is anyone else getting this error when viewing that page? Thanks. [[Special:Contributions/2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:E9BC:B9ED:405A:596B|2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:E9BC:B9ED:405A:596B]] ([[User talk:2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:E9BC:B9ED:405A:596B|talk]]) 18:42, 21 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:It looks like that uses the RandomInCategory tool, which is maintained by {{u|Ahecht}}. --[[User:Rchard2scout|rchard2scout]] ([[User talk:Rchard2scout|talk]]) 15:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:It works now. Problems come and go. I had to restart my phone half an hour ago to get something to work. ''Extra: That was a problem with an app on my phone (nothing to do with Wikipedia).'' [[User:Johnuniq|Johnuniq]] ([[User talk:Johnuniq|talk]]) 03:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::@[[User:Interstellarity|Interstellarity]], [[User:Rchard2scout|Rchard2scout]]: Thanks for the ping. I'll look into that later when I have access to my home computer. <span class="nowrap">--[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] ([[User talk:Ahecht|<b style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:middle;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK<br />PAGE</b>]])</span> 16:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:I see a similar error when I try to check logs for [[Special:Log/ProcseeBot]]. {{!tq|[1d666f00-ed84-4e73-928d-04edc6edc844] 2024-12-22 10:33:05: Fatal exception of type 'Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryTimeoutError'.}} – [[User:DreamRimmer|<span style="color:black">'''DreamRimmer'''</span>]] <small>([[User talk:DreamRimmer|'''talk''']])</small> 10:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::@[[User:Interstellarity|Interstellarity]], [[User:Rchard2scout|Rchard2scout]] All set. The webservice just needed a kick, and had a little trouble starting the first time -- probably something to do with the gridengine shutdown. <span class="nowrap">--[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] ([[User talk:Ahecht|<b style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:middle;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK<br />PAGE</b>]])</span> 18:03, 8 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Likely also worth noting that, above the error, it says {{tq|To avoid creating high database load, this query was aborted because the duration exceeded the limit.}} Though I suppose that's the definition of a timeout... – [[User:DaZyzzogetonsGotDaLastWord|Daℤyzzos]] ([[User_talk:DaZyzzogetonsGotDaLastWord|✉️]] • [[Special:Contributions/DaZyzzogetonsGotDaLastWord|📤]]) <small>''Please do '''not''' [[Help:ping|ping]] on reply.''</small> 15:43, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::@[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]]: Thank you for fixing it. [[User:Interstellarity|Interstellarity]] ([[User talk:Interstellarity|talk]]) 00:43, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:Tracked at [[phab:T325062]]. – [[User:DreamRimmer|<span style="color:black">'''DreamRimmer'''</span>]] <small>([[User talk:DreamRimmer|'''talk''']])</small> 18:00, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== Colors of images in {{tl|Infobox government agency}} are inverted in the dark mode == |
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== Tech News: 2024-28 == |
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When the {{tl|Infobox government agency}} template is included into some page, SVG images inside it have their colors [[Negative (photography)|inverted]] if the dark mode is on. See, for example, the article [[United States Department of State]], specifically the seal: it should have dark blue outter ring, white inner circle with a brown eagle, but instead you can see the seal with a bluish-white outter ring, black inner circle with an orange eagle. Looked at several other infobox templates, none of them have a simmilar issue. Also, only vector images are affected by this, raster images are not. I wanted to try to debug it, but the template is fully protected. [[User:Tohaomg|Tohaomg]] ([[User talk:Tohaomg|talk]]) 17:30, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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<section begin="technews-2024-W28"/><div class="plainlinks"> |
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Latest '''[[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News|tech news]]''' from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. [[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2024/28|Translations]] are available. |
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:@[[User:Tohaomg|Tohaomg]] it's most likely [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_government_agency&diff=1260245952&oldid=1245207838 this edit] by {{ping|Jonesey95}} that has introduced the behaviour. Probably best discussed at [[Template talk:Infobox government agency]]. [[User:Nthep|Nthep]] ([[User talk:Nthep|talk]]) 18:04, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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'''Recent changes''' |
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::See [[Template_talk:Infobox_government_agency#Template-protected_edit_request_on_28_November_2024|the previous discussion]]. A more comprehensive fix is welcome. The sandbox is open for anyone to edit. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 18:57, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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* At the Wikimedia Foundation a new task force was formed to replace the disabled Graph with [[mw:Special:MyLanguage/Extension:Chart/Project|more secure, easy to use, and extensible Chart]]. You can [[mw:Special:MyLanguage/Newsletter:Chart Project|subscribe to the newsletter]] to get notified about new project updates and other news about Chart. |
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:::This is not an acceptable solution, please revert. [[User:Sjoerddebruin|<span style="color:var(--color-progressive,#36c); font-weight:var(--font-weight-semi-bold,600); letter-spacing:0.05em;">Sjoerd de Bruin</span>]] [[Overleg gebruiker:Sjoerddebruin|<small style="color:var(--color-progressive,#36c); letter-spacing:0.05em;">({{int:Talkpagelinktext}})</small>]] 20:52, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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* The [[m:Special:MyLanguage/CampaignEvents|CampaignEvents]] extension is now available on Meta-wiki, Igbo Wikipedia, and Swahili Wikipedia, and can be requested on your wiki. This extension helps in managing and making events more visible, giving Event organizers the ability to use tools like the Event registration tool. To learn more about the deployment status and how to request this extension for your wiki, visit the [[m:Special:MyLanguage/CampaignEvents/Deployment_status|CampaignEvents page on Meta-wiki]]. |
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:::The reason skin-invert worked for signatures was that white writing paper is common and even though colors in pens is varied, the most commonly used ones are dark. |
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* Editors using the iOS Wikipedia app who have more than 50 edits can now use the [[mw:Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Apps/iOS Suggested edits#Add an image|Add an Image]] feature. This feature presents opportunities for small but useful contributions to Wikipedia. |
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:::Logos are not created on the basis of a palette of colors, unlike signatures. Logos are created to be visible and understandable from far away and close up. As such, they should not be inverted at large. |
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* Thank you to [[mw:MediaWiki Product Insights/Contributor retention and growth/Celebration|all of the authors]] who have contributed to MediaWiki Core. As a result of these contributions, the [[mw:MediaWiki Product Insights/Contributor retention and growth|percentage of authors contributing more than 5 patches has increased by 25% since last year]], which helps ensure the sustainability of the platform for the Wikimedia projects. |
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:::I consider the edit request in the template to be unactionable, as it did not ask for any particular solution, not even a hint at one. [[User:Snævar|Snævar]] ([[User talk:Snævar|talk]]) 23:24, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::I'm not sure why people are continuing to reply here. This discussion will be lost in the archives of VPT; please post at the template talk page with comments, suggestions, proposed fixes, or requests. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 06:00, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::@[[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]]: I am not buying that argument for one second, also you are refusing to talk about the issue itself. Stop this bureaucratic nonsense. Most issues are solved during discussion not after, it being "lost in the archive" is a non starter as an argument. Clearly neither myself or Sjoerddebruin are going to move this discussion to the template talk page. If you continue attempting to refrain from discussing about the issue itself, consider this your first warning. I would also like to voice my disappointment of how you are handling this, I do expect better than this. [[User:Snævar|Snævar]] ([[User talk:Snævar|talk]]) 09:24, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::Responding like this and bypassing the instructions that are clearly indicated at the top of the template page is really something, especially with an unsure edit summary. [[User:Sjoerddebruin|<span style="color:var(--color-progressive,#36c); font-weight:var(--font-weight-semi-bold,600); letter-spacing:0.05em;">Sjoerd de Bruin</span>]] [[Overleg gebruiker:Sjoerddebruin|<small style="color:var(--color-progressive,#36c); letter-spacing:0.05em;">({{int:Talkpagelinktext}})</small>]] 09:32, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::::I wasn't discussing the issue here because of [[WP:MULTI]]. See the template's talk page for further discussion. I have reverted the change and continue to welcome a better way to fix the problem that was identified and that is still present. – [[User:Jonesey95|Jonesey95]] ([[User talk:Jonesey95|talk]]) 15:55, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== Historical use of File:Wiki.png as the top-left logo == |
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'''Problems''' |
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* A problem with the color of the talkpage tabs always showing as blue, even for non-existent pages which should have been red, affecting the Vector 2022 skin, [[phab:T367982|has been fixed]]. |
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I wonder if anybody remembers some technical details of the use of File:Wiki.png for the logo in the top-left corner during the 2000s (not limited to enwiki). [[Talk:Wikipedia logo#Early logo of Wikipedia used in 2003|This discussion]] led me to asking this. I found some clues on Commons – quoting myself from the aforementioned discussion: |
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'''Future changes''' |
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{{tq2|1= |
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* The Trust and Safety Product team wants to introduce [[mw:Special:MyLanguage/Trust and Safety Product/Temporary Accounts|temporary accounts]] with as little disruption to tools and workflows as possible. Volunteer developers, including gadget and user-script maintainers, are kindly asked to update the code of their tools and features to handle temporary accounts. The team has [[mw:Trust and Safety Product/Temporary Accounts/For developers|created documentation]] explaining how to do the update. [[mw:Special:MyLanguage/Trust and Safety Product/Temporary Accounts/For developers/2024-04 CTA|Learn more]]. |
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The log for File:Wiki.png shows two interesting entries: |
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* protection, 11 July 2005: {{tq|it's the sitewide logo in the upper left corner. Very bad if it were to get vandalized.}} |
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'''Tech News survey''' |
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* deletion, 7 October 2005: {{tq|block upload of local logos for other wikis. Commons now uses [[:Image:Wiki-commons.png]] as the site-wide logo. See also [[commons:Template:Deletion_requests#Image:Wiki.png|Template:Deletion_requests#Image:Wiki.png]].}} |
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* Please [https://wikimediafoundation.limesurvey.net/758713?lang=en help us to improve Tech News by taking this short survey]. The goal is to better meet the needs of the various types of people who read Tech News. The survey will be open for 1 more week. The survey is covered by [https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal:Tech_News_Survey_2024_Privacy_Statement this privacy statement]. Some translations are available. |
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[[commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/Archive/2005/09#Image:Wiki.png]] is also interesting. [...]: |
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'''''[[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News|Tech news]]''' prepared by [[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/Writers|Tech News writers]] and posted by [[m:Special:MyLanguage/User:MediaWiki message delivery|bot]] • [[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News#contribute|Contribute]] • [[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2024/28|Translate]] • [[m:Tech|Get help]] • [[m:Talk:Tech/News|Give feedback]] • [[m:Global message delivery/Targets/Tech ambassadors|Subscribe or unsubscribe]].'' |
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</div><section end="technews-2024-W28"/> |
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{{tq2|1=[[commons:Image:Wiki.png|Image:Wiki.png]] should be moved to a different name (already re-created at [[commons:File:Wiki-commons.png|Image:Wiki-commons.png]]) as it currently is aliasing that name on every wiki project and therefore not allowing local logos on those projects. Tim has already changed the logo location, so it shouldn't break the commons logo, but we should wait about a week before moving it to give time for the caches to update. The logo is now hardcoded so there is no need to protect this specific image.}} |
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<bdi lang="en" dir="ltr">[[User:MediaWiki message delivery|MediaWiki message delivery]]</bdi> 21:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC) |
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}} |
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<!-- Message sent by User:Quiddity (WMF)@metawiki using the list at https://meta.wikimedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors&oldid=27080357 --> |
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== How are repeated references numbered? == |
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When you use the same reference more than once, the individual instances get assigned tags a, b, c, etc. Once you get past 26, it wraps around to aa, ab, ac and so on up to az, then picks up with ba, bb, and so on. As part of a tool I'm writing, I need to be able to generate these. My first thought was "its just base 26 using "a" through "z" to represent 0 through 25 in each column". But its not (he says after beating his head against the wall writing some python code to do base 26 conversion). If it were, then after "z" would come "ba" for "1 in the 26's column plus 0 in the 1's column". So what is this sequence? Is there some standard name for it? [[User:RoySmith|RoySmith]] [[User Talk:RoySmith|(talk)]] 15:49, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:@[[User:RoySmith|RoySmith]] See [[Bijective numeration#The bijective base-26 system]]. <span class="nowrap">--[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] ([[User talk:Ahecht|<b style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:middle;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK<br />PAGE</b>]])</span> 15:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Here is some quick python code to do the conversion: |
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::<syntaxhighlight lang="python">def bijectiveHexavigesimal(n): |
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outStr = '' |
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while n != 0: |
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outStr = chr((n - 1) % 26 + 97) + outStr |
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n = (n - 1) / 26 |
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return outStr</syntaxhighlight> <span class="nowrap">--[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] ([[User talk:Ahecht|<b style="color:#FFF;background:#04A;display:inline-block;padding:1px;vertical-align:middle;font:bold 50%/1 sans-serif;text-align:center">TALK<br />PAGE</b>]])</span> 16:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::''(for the archives: this takes 1-based numbers, and the "/" should be "//" for Python-3)'' <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[User:RoySmith|RoySmith]] ([[User talk:RoySmith#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/RoySmith|contribs]]) 17:36, 9 July 2024 (UTC)</small> |
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:I'm curious, why do you want to generate reference numbers? [[User:Legoktm|Legoktm]] ([[User talk:Legoktm|talk]]) 16:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::@[[User:Ahecht|Ahecht]] Cool, thanks! |
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::@[[User:Legoktm|Legoktm]] I'm not sure exactly where this is going, but I'm working on something to make it easier to do reference spot-checks for GA and FA reviews. So you'd be able to say something like "pick 10% of the statements in the article and show me what they're sourced to" Using [[Special:Permalink/1233521905|the current version of Oceanic whitetip shark]]), it might tell you that {{tq|It is eaten fresh, smoked, dried, and salted and its skin made into leather}} is cited to reference 6-k. I can dig out of the generated HTML <code><nowiki><sup id="cite_ref-FAO_6-10"></nowiki></code> but I don't want to show that gibberish to the user. |
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::This has been a frustrating project so far. It's been a series of, "Oh, all I need to do is..." false starts, foiled by the reality of just how perverse everything related to wiki text is. Not to mention how we don't have one uniform referencing style I can target. [[User:RoySmith|RoySmith]] [[User Talk:RoySmith|(talk)]] 16:33, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::I hope that you stick with it. A tool like that would be very helpful to those of who do spot-checks and might create an easier learning curve for new reviewers. [[User:Firefangledfeathers|Firefangledfeathers]] ([[User talk:Firefangledfeathers|talk]] / [[Special:Contributions/Firefangledfeathers|contribs]]) 19:19, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:You would think that it's some clever algorithm, but actually, there is just a big list at [[MediaWiki:Cite references link many format backlink labels]]. [[User:Matma Rex|Matma Rex]] <small>[[User talk:Matma Rex|talk]]</small> 19:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::And which article was it that required more than 702 repeated uses of a reference, and pushed MediaWiki to use three-character ids? Or was it just paranoia? <span class="nowrap">[[User:Verbarson|-- Verbarson ]] <sup>[[User talk:Verbarson|talk]]</sup><sub>[[Special:Contributions/Verbarson|edits]]</sub></span> 19:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::This edit from 2010: [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cite_references_link_many_format_backlink_labels&diff=prev&oldid=361107137] refers to [[List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War]], which is today mercifully a list of lists, but the 2010 version: [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Lists_of_allied_military_operations_of_the_Vietnam_War&oldid=363346470#cite_note-vietnam.ttu.edu-1] re-used a reference a cool 1037 times. [[User:Matma Rex|Matma Rex]] <small>[[User talk:Matma Rex|talk]]</small> 19:25, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Oh, my [[User:RoySmith|RoySmith]] [[User Talk:RoySmith|(talk)]] 20:39, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::I see you and raise you [[List of marine bony fishes of South Africa]], with 1,378. I found it the same way I found [[Special:Diff/939760290|the previous record holder]]. [[User:Graham87|Graham87]] ([[User talk:Graham87|talk]]) 03:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::Which was right on the limit. Via search/replace all I thought it was one less than the limit (because there were 1,379 instances of the ref name), but the other one turns out to be because of [[WP:LDR|list-defined references]]. I'd [[Special:Diff/1233634000|added more ref labels]] to the MediaWiki page before realising this; if someone really wants to revert my edit there, be my guest, but I can't think of a good reason to do so at this point. [[User:Graham87|Graham87]] ([[User talk:Graham87|talk]]) 03:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::What actually happens when someone adds more repeated refs than the list provides for? <span class="nowrap">[[User:Verbarson|-- Verbarson ]] <sup>[[User talk:Verbarson|talk]]</sup><sub>[[Special:Contributions/Verbarson|edits]]</sub></span> 07:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::See the end of [[User:Graham87/sandbox30]], which apparently answers your question; in this case it says <nowiki>"[[#cite_ref-test_1-2054|]]"</nowiki> before the ref text, which is "Test ref". I created this file by adding the first line with the ref declared, then writing the next line with a named ref, copying it to the clipboard and pasting it, copying and pasting the resulting two lines, then the resulting four, eight, sixteen, etc. ... lines, all the [[power of two|powers of two]]. [[User:Graham87|Graham87]] ([[User talk:Graham87|talk]]) 09:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== I need help! == |
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I recently left a standard [[WP:ARBPIA]] alert on [[User talk:EliasAntonakos]]. Apparently I didn't get it right (I'm a bit rusty at the moment; I am mostly on wiki-break), as no messages after that shows up on their page. (see talk-history for futher messages) What did I get wrong? [[User:Huldra|Huldra]] ([[User talk:Huldra|talk]]) 21:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:There's an unclosed <nowiki><!--</nowiki> from the original notice causing everything after it to be hidden, need to close it with -->. [[User:Indagate|Indagate]] ([[User talk:Indagate|talk]]) 21:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:: [[User:Indagate]]; thanks! It worked! [[User:Huldra|Huldra]] ([[User talk:Huldra|talk]]) 21:20, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::{{ping|Huldra}} How did you make the original post? You were supposed to write <code><nowiki>{{subst:alert/first|a-i}}</nowiki></code> per [[Template:Contentious topics/alert/first#Usage]], but that should automatically include the closing <code><nowiki>--></nowiki></code> with no way to delete it in the same post. Did you instead try to copy-paste the message from another page? [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 21:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::{{ping|PrimeHunter}} Indeed I did (copy-paste the message, that is). As I said above; I'm a bit rusty at the moment (mostly on wiki-break until the end of the year), [[User:Huldra|Huldra]] ([[User talk:Huldra|talk]]) 21:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Dark mode for logged-in users on desktop coming this week! == |
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[[File:Accessibility_for_reading_mockup_with_dark_mode_on.png|thumb]] |
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Hey, this is a continuation of the topic "[[Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#Dark mode for logged-out users coming soon!|Dark mode for logged-out users coming soon]]", specifically about desktop (the [[Wikipedia:Vector 2022|Vector 2022]] skin). |
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In that previous message, we announced that dark mode on desktop would be rolled out in one step, for both logged-in and logged-out users, in the week of July 15 (that is, next week). However, we'd be more comfortable to enable it for logged-in users first. Articles here on English Wikipedia look very good in dark mode, and again, thanks to everyone who is contributing to it! |
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We are going to '''enable dark mode on desktop just for logged-in users this week'''. If everything goes well (it has been going very well so far!) we will enable it on desktop for logged-out users next week as we previously announced. It's gonna be exciting :D Thanks! [[User:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|SGrabarczuk (WMF)]] ([[User talk:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|talk]]) 01:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:{{re|SGrabarczuk (WMF)}} What do you mean by "We are going to"? I thought it was enabled for logged-in users already? [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 06:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::It was only Logged in users with the beta option enabled before. —[[User:TheDJ|Th<span style="color: green">e</span>DJ]] ([[User talk:TheDJ|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/TheDJ|contribs]]) 07:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::Oh. Does it mean "Accessibility for Reading" will no longer be a beta feature, or just the dark mode? [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 07:38, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::Yes, exactly. [[User:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|SGrabarczuk (WMF)]] ([[User talk:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|talk]]) 11:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::{{re|SGrabarczuk (WMF)}} Yes, what? That was not a [[polar question]]. [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 11:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::Oh, sorry, I wanted to give a quick answer and misread :D Dark mode will no longer be a beta feature. <del>Font size control will continue to be a beta feature.</del> [[User:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|SGrabarczuk (WMF)]] ([[User talk:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|talk]]) 11:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::Correction: The font size control is already available by default. The beta feature will disappear from the list because after this rollout, all options will be available for everyone. [[User:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|SGrabarczuk (WMF)]] ([[User talk:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|talk]]) 18:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::::What happens to people (like me) who don't use Vector? Will dark mode still be available in MonoBook? <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[User:Nigel Ish|Nigel Ish]] ([[User talk:Nigel Ish#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Nigel Ish|contribs]]) </small> |
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::::::::Dark mode is supported only in Minerva and Vector 2022. [[User:Izno|Izno]] ([[User talk:Izno|talk]]) 21:30, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::::: So the existing dark mode (that does work in MonoBook) will stop working. Wonderful.[[User:Nigel Ish|Nigel Ish]] ([[User talk:Nigel Ish|talk]]) 21:43, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::::::If by "existing dark mode that does work in Monobook" you mean the gadget? No, that will continue to function. [[User:Izno|Izno]] ([[User talk:Izno|talk]]) 21:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::Eww, this one caught me by surprise... The contrast doesn't seem quite right at the moment. I don't think "dark mode" should be black, it should be off black for the best ease on the eyes. Hopefully the WMF will get these things right in due course. — [[User:Amakuru|Amakuru]] ([[User talk:Amakuru|talk]]) 21:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:It's flicking black/white off-and-on for me. Page loads in dark & then seconds later turns white. The next page loads in white & seconds later flicks to black. Plus the diffs aren't visible in black. Instant migraine for me. Safari 16.6. [[User:Victoriaearle|Victoria]] ([[User talk:Victoriaearle|tk]]) 21:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Same. On my end, it was enabled by default and I had to go into preferences to enable the toggle just to turn it off in the interface. Now it flickers every time the page loads. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 22:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::I turned off the toggle in preferences, emptied my cached, restarted the machine. Still happening. Now the white pages render with the dark colors before turning completely black after about 5 seconds. I took screen shots. It seems to take 3 to 5 seconds to flick from white to black & then back again. [[User:Victoriaearle|Victoria]] ([[User talk:Victoriaearle|tk]]) 22:37, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::Yeah, one wonders if this is causing seizures. "For 3% of people with epilepsy, exposure to flashing lights at certain intensities or to certain visual patterns can trigger seizures." [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 22:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::This is true which is exactly why I'm unable to upload the screenshots. This is very very bad. [[User:Victoriaearle|Victoria]] ([[User talk:Victoriaearle|tk]]) 22:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::Makes me wonder why nobody else is reporting it or is the least bit concerned. I've got a brand new computer as well. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 22:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::I switched to Vector legacy in preferences as a workaround. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 23:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::Hey there! I've added this to our [[mediawikiwiki:Reading/Web/Accessibility_for_reading/Frequently_asked_questions#I_am_experiencing_a_flash_of_styles_on_every_page_-_how_do_I_disable_the_gadget?|FAQ]]. If you are seeing a flick from white to black, you have enabled the gadget AND have attempted to try out the new feature (possibly via preferences when it was in beta or via the new preference that now appears in the preferences page). |
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:::The number of people using the gadget is quite low compared to the number of viewers so I am not concerned that this is impacting a large amount of people. [[User:Jon (WMF)|Jon (WMF)]] ([[User talk:Jon (WMF)|talk]]) 23:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::Hi {{u|Jon (WMF)}}, please re-read my message. I disabled the gadget, doublechecked that it's gone, emptied my cache, restarted my machine. It's still happening. I will have to log out to override this. If you would like to see screen shots taken with ''the gadget disabled'' I'm happy to send them on, but you'll have to contact me. [[User:Victoriaearle|Victoria]] ([[User talk:Victoriaearle|tk]]) 23:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::That's what I initially thought, but the gadgets were all unchecked when it went live. Now, I get dark mode by default ''unless'' I check the preferences. I'm in Vector legacy to avoid all of it, because I can't fix it. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 23:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::Note, the dark-mode-toggle-pagestyles gadget is hidden on user preferences so it is possible you still have that enabled (it doesn't show up in preferences) |
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:::::A few questions which will help us get to the bottom of this: |
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:::::* In legacy Vector are you seeing the dark mode gadget toggle in the top right? |
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:::::* If you enable Vector 2022, do you see the message "You're using a dark mode gadget". If yes, what happens when you click it and the page reloads? |
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:::::[[User:Jon (WMF)|Jon (WMF)]] ([[User talk:Jon (WMF)|talk]]) 23:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::::{{tq|In legacy Vector are you seeing the dark mode gadget toggle in the top right?}} |
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::::::No. |
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:::::::{{tq|If you enable Vector 2022, do you see the message "You're using a dark mode gadget".}} |
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::::::No, unless I'm missing it. How do I fix dark-mode-toggle-pagestyles, if that is the problem? [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 23:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::::Okay, I found it. There are two toggles for dark mode in preferences >> gadgets. One under "appearance" and then ''another one'' all the way under "utility". Both have to be turned off. Mine was still turned on under utility. The flickering only stops when they are both turned off. To find the control for dark/light mode now, one has to go to preferences >> appearance >> color. Color?? Seriously? In the meantime, {{u|Jon (WMF)}}, I sent an email with screenshots, but it's now irrelevant. [[User:Victoriaearle|Victoria]] ([[User talk:Victoriaearle|tk]]) 23:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::::::Yeah, that's in "gadgets", and doesn't work for me. I have both off, and I'm still in dark mode. If I switch them on, and then turn off dark mode, I get the flickering. If I switch them off, I'm in permanent dark mode. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 00:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::::::Oh, Victoria is right, that worked. I had to change appearance > color to "light". Problem solved. [[User:Viriditas|Viriditas]] ([[User talk:Viriditas|talk]]) 00:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Did footnote popup CSS just change? == |
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The font size in footnote popups seems to have suddenly changed to dramatically larger font size than previously, and now appears to be significantly larger than body copy in my skin (old-school MonoBook + some personal CSS modifications). |
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Because the width of footnote popup boxes hasn't changed, much less text now fits on each line, which combined with the bloated font size makes the footnotes now take up like 1.5 or 2x more space than previously. I find the new popups both less legible per se, and also much more disruptive because they cover more of the content below. Footnotes which try to include more detailed material end up fitting worse inside the available popup space. |
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Was this change discussed anywhere? In my opinion it should be reverted. There is no good reason for footnote popups to ever have a larger font size than body copy. Ideally they would have a slightly smaller font size, but the same size is also okay. (I can't even remember precisely what they were like before.) |
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–[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 05:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:It's [[MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js#Update request 9 July 2024]], and [[User:JWBTH|JWBTH]] is on it. [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 06:27, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Thanks! –[[user:jacobolus|jacobolus]] [[User_talk:jacobolus|(t)]] 06:52, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:For anybody interested – please join the discussion at [[MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js#Update request 9 July 2024]] as to how should the tooltip font size correlate with body font size across different skins and text size settings, and whether we should use <code>#mw-teleport-target</code> as the wrapper for the tooltip. [[User:JWBTH|Jack who built the house]] ([[User:JWBTH|talk]]) 07:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Problematic page previews == |
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I found a couple of pages where the page previews isn't working properly: [[E. O. Wilson]] and [[Fiji]]. I'm guessing that there is some wikitext element (bracket etc) that isn't closed properly, but can't see anything. — <span style="white-space: nowrap;font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> [[User:Jts1882|Jts1882]] |[[User talk:Jts1882| talk]] </span> 09:19, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:They look fine in [[:mw:Page Previews]]. The problems are in [[Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups]]. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 09:43, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::Examining old revisions of [[E. O. Wilson]], Popups failed on [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?diff=1136505577] which inserted <code><nowiki><!-- Work in Progress Lede --></nowiki></code> in January 2023 and made Popups only display <code><nowiki>}}</nowiki></code>. Popups tries to identify and display text from the first paragraph excluding an infobox and various stuff at the top of pages. If something makes Popups think it has reached the first "real" paragraph then it displays that, sometimes producing an empty display because Popups ignores templates. I don't know why this displayed <code><nowiki>}}</nowiki></code> instead of empty when the brackets were correctly balanced. Anyway, I removed the obsolete comment [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=E._O._Wilson&diff=prev&oldid=1233683161] and Popups works well now. [[Fiji]] has a long infobox code. [[Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups#Options]] says: "popupMaxPreviewCharacters | 600, an integer | The maximum number of characters to extract from something approximating the beginning of an article for the preview." The [[Fiji]] popup only displays "Fiji ( , ; " with the default 600. That's not an error but just an unfortunate result of skipping templates and cutting off before the closing parentheses and following normal text is reached. It works well with <code>window.popupMaxPreviewCharacters = 6000;</code> in {{yourjs}}. It still only gives "Fiji ( , ; " with 5000 so the default 600 is far from reaching a good result here. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 10:59, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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::: Ah, thanks for tracking that down. I've added the javascript. I suppose for an opt-in gadget the few failures at 600 is probably acceptable. If the main Page Previews had the issue it would be more of a concern. I thought I'd checked that the error was Page Previews, not Navigation Popups, so clearly screwed up there. — <span style="white-space: nowrap;font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> [[User:Jts1882|Jts1882]] |[[User talk:Jts1882| talk]] </span> 12:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Custom formats of TemplateData == |
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I have a question concerning the [[mw:Help:TemplateData#Custom formats|custom formatting options of TemplateData]], specifically for {{tl|Episode table}}. |
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I noticed that when editors edit this particular template in [[WP:VE|Visual Editor]], VE would [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=The_Boys_season_4&diff=prev&oldid=1232742699 remove] all the spacing between the parameters. To fix this, I [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Template:Episode_table/doc&diff=1233225569&oldid=1207089138 added] custom formatting of the paramaters into the TemplateData to keep the spacing. It worked! However, with this fix, the new issue is now the [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=House_of_the_Dragon&diff=prev&oldid=1233274793 removal] of just the spacing after the <u>last</u> parameter, which I then need to [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=House_of_the_Dragon&diff=prev&oldid=1233280790 restore] manually. |
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In these examples linked, every other parameter declaration and value for {{tl|Episode table}} can be displayed inline; however, {{para|episodes}} spans multiple lines, and its value should begin on the line ''after'' the parameter declaration. |
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My question is: how can I add spacing to the custom formatting for just the last parameter, to prevent [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=House_of_the_Dragon&diff=prev&oldid=1233274793 this] sort of removal? -- [[User:Alex 21|<span style="font-variant:small-caps;color:#02B">Alex_</span><span style="font-size:smaller;color:#02B">21</span>]]<sub> [[User talk:Alex 21|<span style="font-size:xx-small;color:#009">TALK</span>]]</sub> 10:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:This is not possible. [[User:Izno|Izno]] ([[User talk:Izno|talk]]) 21:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Category/template redirect problems == |
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Can someone with the knowledge apply [[Template:Resolve category redirect]] to the whole of [[Template:Country establishment category by century]]. Currently the latter is causing [[:Category:Medieval Belgium]] to be populated instead of [[:Category:Medieval history of Belgium]]. Thanks in advance. [[User:Timrollpickering|Timrollpickering]] ([[User talk:Timrollpickering|talk]]) 10:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:{{ping|Timrollpickering}} I currently see no pages in [[:Category:Medieval Belgium]] and the mentioned templates haven't been edited recently. Please give a clear example of the perceived problem, e.g. a page you saw in a wrong category if that was the problem. Maybe it was automatically fixed by a delayed process rendering the affected pages again and updating link tables after yesterdays move of [[:Category:Medieval Belgium]] to [[:Category:Medieval history of Belgium]]. [[User:PrimeHunter|PrimeHunter]] ([[User talk:PrimeHunter|talk]]) 11:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== 2022 FIBA U18 Women's Asian Championship == |
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Please create the following redirect: |
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* [[2022 FIBA U18 Women's Asian Championship]] → [[2022 FIBA Under-18 Women's Asian Championship]] |
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I was going to do it myself, but this redirect page is fully protected. Thanks, [[User:Maiō T.|Maiō T.]] ([[User talk:Maiō T.|talk]]) 14:12, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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Does anybody remember any further details? |
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== Different kind of redlinked category problem == |
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Thanks, [[User:Janhrach|Janhrach]] ([[User talk:Janhrach|talk]]) 20:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC) |
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The latest run of [[Special:WantedCategories]] features a redlinked {{cl|Philippine articles requiring maintenance}}, populated by the single page [[Liloan]] — and while the redlink obviously has to either get created or go away, that's not the only reason I'm bringing it to VPT: the page itself is absolutely ''buried'' in blaring red template-error messages, like tables smothered in "Formatting error: invalid input when rounding" and an Economy section that consists entirely of the text "Lua error in Module:Chart at line 301: bad argument #1 to 'max' (number expected, got string)." with no actual economic data, and even an external link that's been drowned in multiple instances of "String Module error: String subset index out of range". |
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:I don't really remember, but we have historical records of the configuration going back to 2012. The current system, where logos of each wiki are stored in the configuration, was introduced in 2015 in [[gerrit:c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/209616|change 209616]] and other commits around that time. Wikis had the option to use the locally uploaded Wiki.png as a logo until 2017, when it was removed in [[gerrit:c/operations/mediawiki-config/+/359037|change 359037]]. Alas I don't really know the historical context around these changes, I just found them in the history. [[User:Matma Rex|Matma Rex]] <small>[[User talk:Matma Rex|talk]]</small> 14:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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The page was ''moved'' within the past 48 hours from the former title [[Liloan, Cebu]], so this ''may'' stem from a mismatch between its new title and the title the templates are expecting, but I wouldn't know how to fix that. So could somebody with more skill in that area than I've got look into this page and figure out what's causing the errors? Thanks. [[User:Bearcat|Bearcat]] ([[User talk:Bearcat|talk]]) 14:52, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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: |
::Thanks. [[User:Janhrach|Janhrach]] ([[User talk:Janhrach|talk]]) 14:17, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:: Ah, OK. Great, thanks much! [[User:Bearcat|Bearcat]] ([[User talk:Bearcat|talk]]) 15:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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== Log out == |
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== Does dark mode give you the Willys 77 == |
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I keep logging out every time I close the browser on my phone. [[User:Achmad Rachmani|Achmad Rachmani]] ([[User talk:Achmad Rachmani|talk]]) 22:11, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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Thanks for giving Wikipedia a dark mode option! The [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Special:MobileOptions&returnto=Willys+77 settings page says] ''Experimental version, high likelihood of experiencing issues''--am i being helpful if i say i think i've found one? |
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:Do you have some sort of ad blocker or privacy thing enabled that isn't allowing you to save cookies perhaps ? —[[User:TheDJ|Th<span style="color: green">e</span>DJ]] ([[User talk:TheDJ|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/TheDJ|contribs]]) 22:15, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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<sup>Do we have (or should we have) a central thread where [[#Dark mode for logged-in users on desktop coming this week!|all]] of [[#MW Dark Mode bug when Software notices shown on page|the]] discussions about the launch of dark mode should be in one place?</sup> |
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::{{ping|TheDJ}} I have some sort of ad blocker enabled. [[User:Achmad Rachmani|Achmad Rachmani]] ([[User talk:Achmad Rachmani|talk]]) 22:22, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== Cat-a-lot gadget == |
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i've visited maybe a half dozen pages where dark mode seems to work, but the ''[[Willys 77]]'' page still won't turn to the dark side, even after i: |
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Hi. To follow up a query [[User:GiantSnowman|a user]] had on my talk page, I wanted to see if there was any way that edits using [[Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot|Cat-a-lot]] could be marked as minor by default? At present there is now way I am aware of to mark these edits as minor. Alternatively, would there be another way these edits could be filtered out of watchlists? We have a tick box to hide "page categorization", so could they maybe be included in that for example? Thanks. [[User:Jevansen|Jevansen]] ([[User talk:Jevansen|talk]]) 23:42, 23 December 2024 (UTC) |
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*reload the page, |
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*close and reopen the tab, |
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*open a new tab and type the URL into the address bar, |
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*create a new link to that page (as in this post) and use that to open the page, |
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*change [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Special:MobileOptions&returnto=Willys+77 settings] back and forth a few times, |
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*or retry the methods listed here, but in a different order. |
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:[[commons:Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot#Preferences]] says there's a preference for that, it also shows this image: [[commons:File:2013-03-31-Gadget-Cat-A-Lot-prefscreen.png]]... is that just outdated info? does the interface still look anything like that? |
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Additionally, [[Wikipedia:Help desk]] is ''mostly'' dark. i'm not sure if it's the same issue mentioned [[#MW Dark Mode bug when Software notices shown on page|here]], but this part: |
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:Edit: erm, right, [[commons:Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot#As your user gadget]] also shows how to set preferences with javascript, which I think is what you might have to do if there is no option (due to it not being a gadget on Wikipedia? You installed it as an user script, at least.) – [[Special:Contributions/2804:F14:80DD:5501:947B:8E40:2657:88CF|2804:F1...57:88CF]] ([[Special:Contributions/2804:F14::/32|::/32]]) ([[User talk:2804:F14:80DD:5501:947B:8E40:2657:88CF|talk]]) 02:23, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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<sup>Welcome...<br>(Am I in the right place?)...<br>For other types of questions...<br>Do not provide your email...<br>New editors may prefer the Teahouse...<br>[Ask a question]<br>show/hide Wikipedia help pages |
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::Aha! The userscript you imported the gadget from ([[User:קיפודנחש/cat-a-lot.js]], you import them [[User:Jevansen/common.js|here]]), manually sets the preference, including a <code>minor: '''false'''</code>! |
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this part stays white. |
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::I'm pretty sure you can overwrite that by just adding a line setting the preference after you import the script, but you could aso just copy their script into your common.js (replacing the import) and change that part to <code>minor: '''true'''</code>, that would also do what you want. – [[Special:Contributions/2804:F14:80DD:5501:947B:8E40:2657:88CF|2804:F1...57:88CF]] ([[Special:Contributions/2804:F14::/32|::/32]]) ([[User talk:2804:F14:80DD:5501:947B:8E40:2657:88CF|talk]]) 02:36, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::Hi. Thanks for this. I've updated [[User:Jevansen/common.js]], but this doesn't seem to have changes things. Perhaps I've not done it right? [[User:Jevansen|Jevansen]] ([[User talk:Jevansen|talk]]) 21:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::Then I'm really not sure hm, [https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?search=%22window.catALotPrefs%22+intitle%3A%22.js%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns2=1 I had tried] looking at how other people did it, like [[User:Roland_zh/common.js]] (which seemed to work: [[Special:Diff/873083270|diff]]), but I'm not really seeing much different? I mean it's set after the import, I guess. Well that and they are importing the gadget two different times, in two different ways... |
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::::I did find [[User:Liz/cat-a-lot.js]], but I cannot confirm that it works, since Liz seemingly never used it. |
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::::If those don't work then I don't know, I'm sorry. Can't test it without an account anyways - maybe someone else will know. – [[Special:Contributions/2804:F14:80BB:6C01:8532:F8A0:9726:F77C|2804:F1...26:F77C]] ([[Special:Contributions/2804:F14::/32|::/32]]) ([[User talk:2804:F14:80BB:6C01:8532:F8A0:9726:F77C|talk]]) 21:27, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::Huh... the script you used was intentionally set to false this year: [[User talk:קיפודנחש/cat-a-lot.js#Minor: false]] |
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:::::Because [[Help:Minor_edit#What_not_to_mark_as_minor_changes|Help:Minor edit]] says adding and removing categories is not a minor edit... – [[Special:Contributions/2804:F14:80BB:6C01:8532:F8A0:9726:F77C|2804:F1...26:F77C]] ([[Special:Contributions/2804:F14::/32|::/32]]) ([[User talk:2804:F14:80BB:6C01:8532:F8A0:9726:F77C|talk]]) 21:40, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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::::::Good find. I have to admit this isn't a guideline I could recall. Think it's generally an accepted practise to mark as minor any automated cat additions done on mass, as long as they're not in contentious topic areas or especially BLP sensitive etc. It was an admin that made this request to me after all. At any rate, you've definitely solved the cause of the issue here. Appreciate your help. [[User:Jevansen|Jevansen]] ([[User talk:Jevansen|talk]]) 01:32, 25 December 2024 (UTC) |
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== Is it unproblematic to use `lang=` spans in section headers? == |
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Wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing. |
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Of course, I know it's wrong to use templates like {{tlx|lang}} in section headers, but I know anchors work correctly in the transcluded HTML, so is there any reason a header like <code><nowiki>=== <span lang="la">Tu quoque</span> ===</nowiki></code> would break something? <span style="border-radius:2px;padding:3px;background:#1E816F">[[User:Remsense|<span style="color:#fff">'''Remsense'''</span>]]<span style="color:#fff"> ‥ </span>[[User talk:Remsense|<span lang="zh" style="color:#fff">'''论'''</span>]]</span> 16:59, 24 December 2024 (UTC) |
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--[[Special:Contributions/173.67.42.107|173.67.42.107]] ([[User talk:173.67.42.107|talk]]) 22:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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:Considering how {{tls|anchor}} works in section headings, this ''should'' be fine. I tested it in the sandbox and nothing went immediately wrong. [[User:Jlwoodwa|jlwoodwa]] ([[User talk:Jlwoodwa|talk]]) 05:22, 25 December 2024 (UTC) |
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:''[[Willys 77]]'' turned black. --[[Special:Contributions/173.67.42.107|173.67.42.107]] ([[User talk:173.67.42.107|talk]]) 23:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC) |
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VPNgate blocking bot
[edit]I am seeking consensus on a proposal to develop and deploy a bot to help block VPNgate IP addresses used by a particular WP:LTA. For WP:DENY/WP:BEANS reasons, I cannot provide full details, but users familiar with the LTA in question will understand the context.
Background
[edit]I have tested several VPNgate IPs, and very few of them are currently blocked. According to Wikipedia's policy on open proxies and VPNs (per WP:NOP), these should be blocked. Given the volume of VPNgate IPs, I propose using a bot to automate this process.
This is building off this discussion on WP:BOTREQUESTS.
I am posting here to gauge consensus needed for a WP:BRFA.
Proposal
[edit]I propose a bot to automate blocking these VPNgate IPs using the following steps:
- The bot will use this list provided by VPNgate, which contains OpenVPN configuration files in Base64 format. The provided "IP" value is only the one that your computer uses to talk to the VPN (and sometimes wrong), not the one used for the VPN to talk to Wikipedia/external internet - this requires testing to uncover.
- The bot will iterate through each config file and use OpenVPN to test if it can connect. If successful, it will then use the VPN to send a request to this WhatIsMyIPAddress API to determine the real-world IP address used by each VPN to connect to Wikipedia. This is sometimes the same as the IP used to talk to the VPN - but sometimes completely different, see the demo edit I did using VPNgate on the Bot Requests discussion linked above and I also did one as a reply to this post. Also, testing is needed before blanket blocking because VPNgate claim to fill the list with fake IPs to prevent it from being used for blocking, again see the BR discussion.
Blocking or Reporting:
- If the bot is approved as an admin bot, it will immediately block the identified IPs or modify block settings to disable TPA (see Yamla's recent ANI discussion per the necessity for this) and enable auto block.
- If the bot is not approved to run as an admin bot, it will add the IPs to an interface-protected JSON file in its userspace for a bot operated by an admin to actually do the blocking.
Additional Information
[edit]- I have already developed and tested this bot locally using Pywikibot. I have tested it on a local MediaWiki install and it successfully prevents all VPNgate users from editing (should they not be IP block exempt).
- I’m posting here to gauge broader community consensus beyond the original WP:BOTREQUESTS discussion.
Poll Options
[edit]- Oppose: Object to the bot proposal. Feel free to explain why.
- Support options:
- Admin Bot (admin given code): An admin will run the bot, and I will provide the code for them to run, as well as desired environment setup etc. and will need to send any code changes or packages updates to them to perform. Admin needs to be quite technically competent.
- Admin Bot (admin gives me token): An admin provides me with the bot token (scoped per Anomie below) of a newly created account only for this purpose, allowing me to run the code under myself on Toolforge and fully manage environment setup (needs install and config of multiple python and brew packages not needed for standard pywikibot) as well as instantly deploy any needed code changes or dependency updates without bottlenecks. Admin only needs to know how to use Wikipedia UI and navigate to Special:BotToken, check some boxes, and then submit.
Admin Bot (I run it): For this specific case I am permitted to run my own admin bot.Withdrawn per Rchard2scout and WMFviewdeleted
policy.Bot without Admin Privileges: The bot will report IPs for potential blocking without admin privileges. Not recommended per large volume.Withdrawn per 98 IPs/hour volume, too much for a human admin.- Non-admin bot v2 (preferred by me): My bot, User:MolecularBot is not an admin bot. It can, however, add IP addresses that it finds are the egress of open VPNgate proxies to User:MolecularBot/IP HitList.json (editable only by the bot and WP:PLIERS/interface admins). This means I can run the code for it and manage the complex environment. An admin's bot will be running the uncomplicated code (doesn't require the complex environment and OpenVPN setup for this bot) to just monitor that page for changes and block any IPs added.
Poll
[edit]Oppose for now. From reading that discussion, it looks like the IPs available through the API are only the "ingress" IPs, which is what you connect to on their side when using the VPN (and even then, it seems like the VPN client might sometimes use another IP instead?). If there's actually a publicly available list of outgoing IPs available, I'd be very surprised. From an operational standpoint, those IPs don't need to be public, and if they are, that's a serious error on their side. If we do somehow get our hands on a list, I'd be in favour of option 1. There's plenty of admins available who are able to run bots. --rchard2scout (talk) 08:37, 17 December 2024 (UTC)- Hi rchard2scout, I think you misunderstand the bot. The bot connects to each "ingress" IP and then finds out the "egress" IP that it uses by sending a request to a "what is my IP address API" (not associated with VPNGate in any way), then blocking the egress. This fully disables VPNgate on my local instance of MediaWiki. Thus, a list of egress IPs are not required, because it makes it own by connecting to each of the ingress ones and sending a request. I apologize if my documentation wasn't clear. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 08:44, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Noting that I currently do have a complete list of "egress" IPs from my local run of the bot, so should I take your vote as a support of option 1 like you stated? Thank you. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 08:45, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Oops, you're right, I somehow missed this. Hadn't had my first coffee yet ;). Striking, adding new vote.
- That's so fine, my brain is a little laggy in the early morning as well! My technical/documentation writing probably needs some work as well, it's not my best skill (anyone please feel free to edit this post and make it clearer, if it's wrong I'll just fix it). Thank you for your time in reviewing this even though it's still the early morning where you are! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 09:38, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hi rchard2scout, I think you misunderstand the bot. The bot connects to each "ingress" IP and then finds out the "egress" IP that it uses by sending a request to a "what is my IP address API" (not associated with VPNGate in any way), then blocking the egress. This fully disables VPNgate on my local instance of MediaWiki. Thus, a list of egress IPs are not required, because it makes it own by connecting to each of the ingress ones and sending a request. I apologize if my documentation wasn't clear. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 08:44, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Support option 1. Options 2 and 3 are probably incompatible with our local and WMF policies, because an admin bot can do anything an admin can do, and you haven't gone through RfA, so you're not allowed access to rights like viewdeleted. Or (@ anyone who know this) are OAuth permissions granular enough that an admin can generate a token that allows a bot access to block but not to other permissions? In any case, I think option 1 is the easiest and safest way, there's plenty of admins available who are able to run bots. --rchard2scout (talk) 08:59, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Rchard2scout, thank you for your new comment and feedback. I hope your morning is going well! Ah yes
viewdeleted
, silly me to forget about that (I have the opposite problem as you before, it is far too late at night where I live!), I do recall it from someone else's declined proposal of admin sortion, I've struck Option 3 now per WMF legal policy. Re OAuth permissions, I know from using Huggle that when you create a bot token there's a very fine grained list of checkboxed for you to tick, and "block" is in fact one of them, so it is that granular as to avoid all other admin perms, I've expanded Option #2 above to clarify this and more circumstances. I do believe this would be my preferred option, per the reasons I've placed in my expansion, but are really happy with anything as long as we can deal with this LTA. Anyway, enjoy your morning! MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 11:29, 17 December 2024 (UTC) - There's no grant allowing
block
but no other permissions. The minimum additional admin permissions would beblock
,blockemail
,unreviewedpages
, andunwatchedpages
. Anomie⚔ 12:33, 17 December 2024 (UTC) - Support option 5 as well, and that doesn't even need a BRFA or an RFC. We do then need consensus for the adminbot part of that proposal, so perhaps this discussion can focus on that. --rchard2scout (talk) 10:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Rchard2scout, thank you for your new comment and feedback. I hope your morning is going well! Ah yes
- Option 1. I believe this is the only option allowed under policy. Admins need to run admin bots. This RFC is a bit complicated. Usually an RFC of this type would just get consensus for the task ("Is there consensus to run a bot that blocks VPNGate IP addresses?"), with implementation details to be worked out later. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:09, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Option 5 is fine if the bot doesn't need to do any blocking and is just keeping a list up-to-date. Don't even need this RFC or a BRFA if you stick the page in your userspace (WP:EXEMPTBOT). –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:50, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- I'd like to suggest an alternative approach: Write a bot or Toolforge tool that generates a data feed of IP addresses, starting with VPN Gate egress IP addresses, perhaps including the first seen timestamp and last seen timestamp for each egress. The blocking and unblocking portion of the process is relatively simple and a number of administrators could write, maintain, and run a bot that does that. (I suspect most administrators that run bots would prefer to write their own code to do that.) Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:04, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Well, I started writing this suggestion before option 5 was added. Since it looks like this is basically the same as that option, put me down as being in favor of Option 5. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:15, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hahaha, great minds think alike I guess! Thank you for your input. :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 09:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- Courtesy ping for Rchard2scout and Novem Linguae notifying them of the new preferred option 5 above, which I believe makes everything easier for both myself and the admin who wishes to help me (I'll leave a note on AN asking nicely once BRFA passes for MolecularBot). Also, Skynxnex, you expressed support for option 5 below, did you mean to format that as a support !vote in this section (my apologies for the confusing layout of everything here). Thank you very much to everyone for your time in reviewing this proposal and leaving very helpful feedback. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 09:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't feel like I've thought about the different aspects to do a bolded !vote yet. Skynxnex (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- That's so fine, thank you anyway for your feedback! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 23:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't feel like I've thought about the different aspects to do a bolded !vote yet. Skynxnex (talk) 15:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
[edit]- Hey, it's me, User:MolecularPilot on VPNgate. This VPN is listed as 112.187.104.70 on VPNgate cause that's what my PC talks to. But, this VPN when talking to Wikipedia, uses 121.179.23.53 as shown which is completely different and not listed anywhere on VPNgate, showing the need for actually testing the VPNs and figuring out the output IPs are my bot does. Can this IP please be WP:OPP blocked? 121.179.23.53 (talk) 06:22, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Can confirm this is me! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 06:24, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- There is a relevant Phabricator ticket: T380917. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:02, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think non-admins can run admin bots. Perhaps you would like to publicly post your source code, then ask an admin to run it? cc Daniel Quinlan. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:05, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think blocking a single VPN provider will have the effect people want it to have. It's easy for a disruptive editor to switch VPNs. This is really a problem that needs to be solved by WMF. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 15:45, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Daniel Quinlan, I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post but this is designed to work with existing WMF proposals that are being worked on. Both T380917 and T354599 block/give higher edit filter scrutiny based on existing lists of "bad" IPs, this is the same as the old ST47ProxyBot (which actually does scanning but doesn't monitor "egress" IPs, it only attempts to connect to the "ingress" and then blocks it if successfully). This is great for a wide variety of proxy services because ingress/egress is the same, but for modern, more advanced services like VPNgate (and perhaps some services that because a problem for us in future) the ingress IP address is often not the same as the one used to edit Wikipedia, and so requires this solution (this bot). I'll admit that blocking VPNgate won't fully stop this LTA or all proxy vandals but VPNgate is quite a large and widely used network (claiming a total of 18,810,237,498 lifetime connections) that is currently almost fully permitted to edit Wikipedia, and by blocking it this significantly reduces the surface area for proxy attacks. This also creates the infrastructure for easily blocking any future VPN services that use different ingress/egress IPs - the bot can be easily expanded to use new lists. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 21:14, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- What is the actual expected volume per day of new IPs to block? It looks like the current list has 98 ingress IPs (if I'm understanding the configuration blocks correctly). I'll also say I have pretty strong concerns about sharing "personal" tokens of any kind between users, particularly admin permission ones with non-admins. Skynxnex (talk) 19:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- The list available through this API frequently rotates. It only provides 98 ingress IPs at a time, as you stated and refetching the list without [some duration of time, from my estimates it's around 1 hour] passing returns the same 98 IPs. After 1 hour (estimated) passes, a new 98 IPs are randomly selected to be provided to all users - but these may include some of the same IPs as before because they are picked by random selection from the whole list of 6057 (not available to the public), this has happened a couple times during my data gathering. Therefore re volume per hour, the maximum number of IPs to be blocked is 98, but it could be less due to already blocked IPs being included in that given hour's sample of 98, I hope this makes sense if there's anything that needs clarifying please don't hesitate to ask. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 21:34, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Re "personal" tokens it's actually not a "personal" token to the admin's account, it would be (in theory) a token to an adminbot account with the only things it can be used for being those helpfully specified by Anomie above. However, regardless I see the concerns so I've added a proposal 5 which hopefully is a decent compromise above and ensures that I don't have access to any admin perms/tokens, but that there aren't any bottlenecks and that admins don't need to setup a complex running environment. Thank you for your time in commenting, Skynxnex. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 22:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- I see bot tokens as fairly similar to personal tokens since bots are associated with an operator. I think proposal 5 has promise. Skynxnex (talk) 23:08, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- Re "personal" tokens it's actually not a "personal" token to the admin's account, it would be (in theory) a token to an adminbot account with the only things it can be used for being those helpfully specified by Anomie above. However, regardless I see the concerns so I've added a proposal 5 which hopefully is a decent compromise above and ensures that I don't have access to any admin perms/tokens, but that there aren't any bottlenecks and that admins don't need to setup a complex running environment. Thank you for your time in commenting, Skynxnex. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 22:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- VPN Gate claims they have about 6,000 servers which is fairly close to my own estimate of how many IPs they are using. If we block each IP for six months, we'd end up averaging about 33 blocks per day. There would be a pretty large influx at the start, but I would want to spread that out over at least several weeks to avoid flooding the block log as badly as ST47ProxyBot did. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 23:10, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- It's worth noting that an unknown amount of 'servers' are user computers that people have volunteered cpu time for (this information is somewhere on the website), so, like we see often with IP users, the IP that each server uses can and likely will change with time. This doesn't mean that an effort like this bot won't help, of course, but it's unknown how effective (as a percentage) it would be with just 33 blocks a day. – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 23:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- 33 blocks per day is a rough estimate, not a limit. Certainly there will be some delay when adding entries to any list generated as proposed above so the block rate will never reach 100%, but the egress IPs don't seem to change that much over time based on what I've seen. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- So, I'm posting this anonymously through VPNGate because I don't want people to start suspecting me of things just because I admit to having used a VPN service some others are abusing to make disruptive edits here. Due to its strong base in Japan, I've used VPNGate many times in order to shop at Japanese web stores that block purchases from outside Japan (they typically don't want to offer international support and see this as the easiest solution for avoiding that), and I know a number of other people who've used it for similar reasons (also for Korea, which often has even more hosts available than Japan).
- In any case, while I've personally never enabled this on my PC, I can confirm what IP 2804: said: there's definitely a swarm of short-term volunteer IPs associated with this service who aren't part of VPNGate proper. The overlap between such people and good faith Wikipedia editors may not be large, but it's unlikely to be zero. Unless you have a good mechanism to avoid excessively punishing such users for popping up on your list for the short period of time they themselves use the VPN, maybe it's better to wait for and official WMF solution, which (based on the phabs) seems to intend to take "IP reputation" into account and would thus likely exclude such ephemerals, or at least give them very short term blocks compared to the main servers. Because getting blocked here for several months for having been part of VPNGate for a few hours hardly seems fair.
- Actually, now that I think about it: if you're going to connect to VPNGate servers for the express purpose of determining and blocking their exit IPs, you'd probably be in violation of their TOS. While you might consider this an "ends justifying the means" situation, are you sure you want to associate the WMF with such unauthorized usage? There's a difference between port scanning or getting an IP list via an API and actually traversing the VPN in order to investigate it. This absolutely is not a legal threat by me, but if VPNGate were to learn of this, I wouldn't be surprised if they took action. Aren't there enough services out there that provide VPN IP lists without having to roll your own scanner? It would seem a safer bet for the WMF to use something like that. 125.161.156.63 (talk) 16:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- Oh, you didn't have to anonymise yourself, we don't cast WP:ASPERSIONS here and now you won't get a reply notification but that's okay! :) I checked the terms of service of their website before making their bot and it just says not to do anything IRL illegal otherwise they'll give your logged data to authorities if subpoenaed, but I will reach out to the VPNgate operators in Japanese (good practice opportunity, huh) when I have time just to double-confirm they're okay with everything. But btw, they encourage checking that your IP has changed to demonstrate it has worked in their how-to-guides, and this isn't 'tranaversing" as we're not collecting data on every single node but only the public IP of the exit node. Re short-term volunteers, that's a great point, and I'll update the JSON schema of its published data to include a "number of sightings" number, so that the blocking adminbot would escalate blocks as this increases so maybe it starts really short term like 2.5 days/60 hours (6000 active volunteers on average, divided by 100 checked every hour, minimum time to ensure the IP has truly stopped) if it's just 1 sighting but ramps up exponentially if it's seen again as an egress IP untill we're talking like 6months - 2 years blocks. Re WMF tickets, the distributed fact of VPNgate that anyone can start hosting means that most VPNgate IP addresses won't have a bad "reputation" (I checked a whole bunch on a variety of reputation lists and the egresses always had "good"" reputations) so reputation checking won't help (but they need short term blocks), also as you can't publically see the egress with VPNgate cause it's different to ingress (unlike most networks). So WMF solutions are actually quite innovative and smart for most VPN/proxy networks, it's just that VPNgate is a bit different needing a unique solution, this bot. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 04:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- I guess I'm just too careful or chicken even if most people would refrain from casting aspersions.
- I don't quite understand why you say you're not traversing. You're not just touching the network from one side, you're passing through it and coming out on the other side, that's traversing. However if they don't mind it, then I guess you're in luck. Ecxept maybe if those Japanese laws they mention a mllion times in their documents have a problem with something like this.
- I don't know what the WMF is basing its reputation measurements on. My meaning was that sites like browserleaks.com almost always seem to know about the VPN status of the exit nodes I've used over time. I don't know where they're getting this information from exactly, but that's what I meant by reputation, not whether they're good or bad but what they're known to engage in, like being a VPN node. And that database is probabably built either through collaboration or by specialized services, which the WNF can use as well. Like email providers use common antispam databases instead of each rolling their own.
- In any case, good luck with your bot, because I'm afraid these persistent abusers you want to keep out by this probably won't be averse to paying for commercial VPNs if they have to, and many of those only cost a handful of bucks a month. Commercial companies will almost certainly have a TOS that would prohibit your bot, so to counter them the WMF would in the end still have to resort to a specialist or collaborative VPN IP list of some kind. You can probably cut down on casual troublemakers by tracking VPNGate but I don't think it'll help all that much much against anyone highly motivated. They can even continue using VPNGate, it'll just be less convenient because they have to find brand new nodes before you catch those.
- 92.253.31.37 (talk) 17:39, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not sure what you mean by "Japanese Laws" they keep mentioning they don't seem to mention any, when I told you that the ToS said don't do anything irl illegal I was referring to this ToS page which doesn't mention any "Japanese Laws" but just says don't do anything like CSAM like your government can subpoena us for, because we'll comply (and directions for LEOs to request this). Re reputation yes, the major VPNgate nodes that have done it for a while do have bad reputations, particularly 219.100.37.0/24 which is the example servers run by the university themselves - but as you said, because anyone can start a VPNgate server and then there's always brand new nodes that won't have bad reputations and can be abused. But - as I've stated in a different discussion above, the list of VPN servers to connect to only updates with new servers hourly, so while reputation services won't catch the new exit nodes (because they won't be used poorly enough to trigger flagging for a white), the bot constantly waits for updates to the list and then immediately tests it to determine the new egress IPs. Re commercial services generally, unlike VPNgate, they use datacenters and static IPs that are assigned to "Hotspot Shield, Inc." (as an example) so it's easy to CIDR range block them and also the reputation of those deteriorates over time as they do bad things - the companies don't randomly get new IPs in random locations around the world, like VPNgate. In fact commercial reputation services excel at identifying commercial services (from my testing), but VPNgate is community distributed, like Wikipedia, and needs a unique approach. And yes, as I said to Daniel, I'll admit that blocking VPNgate won't fully stop this LTA or all proxy vandals but VPNgate is quite a large and widely used network (claiming a total of 18,810,237,498 lifetime connections) that is currently almost fully permitted to edit Wikipedia (the bot currently has 146 IPs in its list and as shown by the stats section of the toolforge frontend, ~60% are currently unblocked (and this is an underestimate because the list is mainly the "obvious" ones that are always provided first in the 98 hourly sample, like 219.100.37.0/24. This is because the bot has only had 1 full run of all IPs in a given hour's list, and many failed partial runs of just the first couple. I think blocking VPNgate significantly reduces the surface area for proxy attacks - only looking at only 10 of the blocked IPs I see link spam, edit warring, block evasion, vandalism and our favourite WP:LTA. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 08:38, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- They mention Japanese laws repeatedly in the texts shown when you click the licence and notice buttons under Help > About of the SoftEther VPN Client Manager. It's a canned statement saying they only comply with Japanese laws because they can't possibly follow every law worldwide.
the bot constantly waits for updates to the list and then immediately tests it to determine the new egress IPs
Are you going to run multiple instances of the bot in parallel, because the 98 IP list you get per hour seems far from sufficient for make claims about a strong level of protection if there are ~6000 egresses, many of which churn. With your current setup, an abuser can get their own list refresh, which would be different from what the bot gets, run it past your very helpful :) IP check tool and then make edits from any IP not covered. Which may not be many, but they only need one out of their 98, so it's likely they'll get something as long as the volunteer swarm keeps changing.- Getting a bit more facetious, VPNGate could conversely determine the IP of your bot and block it as a censorship agent. :) I really think it contradicts the spirit of their operation even if they haven't prohibited it explicitly, since you don't happen to be a state agent. This is just my conjecture, but I'm guessing that if you looked at your IP list edits without focusing solely on the abuse, you'd also see constructive edits coming from them, quite possibly from people using VPNGate to bypass state firewalls. I am well aware of Wikipedia open proxy policy, but it can make editing somewhat difficult for such people.
- These remain my two sticking points: while useful, the bot won't be quite as effective as you represent; and you're arguably abusing their service to operate yours.
- Once this bot starts issuing blocks, you should probably amend Help:I have been blocked to include verbiage about having used a VPN in the recent past, because this situation isn't really covered by the "you are using a VPN" or collateral damage statements. 211.220.201.217 (talk) 15:21, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- VPNgate does not have as firm of a ground as you claim. Yes, companies have terms of use and those terms of use often have clauses of disputes being filed in their local country. However, as multiple attourneys have pointed out, this local dispute solving when dealing with an customer from abroad does not really work. In reality, VPNgate is forced to deal with international laws, because otherwise they will just lose their case. (one of the legal opinions supporting this: https://svamc.org/cross-border-business-disputes-company-use-international-arbitration/ )
- As far as blocks go, yes, they could block one user, but let me remind you that there are 120,000 active wikipedia users. The script could just be passed on between users until all of their IP ranges are blocked. They would lose that war, every time. Snævar (talk) 20:11, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't recall claiming anything about firm ground. I have a problem with the WMF or parties associated with it engaging in somewhat questionable practices, even if it is for a good cause. I'm OK with port scanning or getting data from an API, because that's external probing, but actually passing through someone's premises with the intent of later restricting their users is something I find objectionable, and it is my conjecture that VPNGate would think likewise. If VPNGate blocked one user's bot, that would simply be an indication that they object to such activities, and having a million other users on the ready to take over would change nothing about that, and I'm fairly certain the WMF does not subscribe to this sort of hackerish way of thinking anyway. VPNGate aren't outlaws against whom anything goes, they operate a prefectly legitimate service, albeit one that some people abuse. It's also possible that it's just me, and VPNGate themselves have no objection to any of this. The OP was going to ask them, so I presume they'll inform everyone about the response sometime soon. 220.81.178.129 (talk) 11:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, this is definitely not something that should be adversarial or "us against them" and if they express concerns about this behaviour, we should totally not try and evade it - after all VPNgate does share our mission of spreading free knowledge to the world (and are very useful to spreading Wikipedia and other websites around the globe, it's just some bad actors taking advantage of the kind service of both the university and the volunteers creating a problem). We just need to find a way to work together to ensure that we both can continue to do our things. Being the holiday season, it's pretty busy for me and I'm sure the same is true for the operators so I will reach out in the new year re their thoughts on this. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 04:45, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't recall claiming anything about firm ground. I have a problem with the WMF or parties associated with it engaging in somewhat questionable practices, even if it is for a good cause. I'm OK with port scanning or getting data from an API, because that's external probing, but actually passing through someone's premises with the intent of later restricting their users is something I find objectionable, and it is my conjecture that VPNGate would think likewise. If VPNGate blocked one user's bot, that would simply be an indication that they object to such activities, and having a million other users on the ready to take over would change nothing about that, and I'm fairly certain the WMF does not subscribe to this sort of hackerish way of thinking anyway. VPNGate aren't outlaws against whom anything goes, they operate a prefectly legitimate service, albeit one that some people abuse. It's also possible that it's just me, and VPNGate themselves have no objection to any of this. The OP was going to ask them, so I presume they'll inform everyone about the response sometime soon. 220.81.178.129 (talk) 11:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hi! The abuser can't get their own list refresh seperate from what the bot sees, I guess I wasn't clear before but what I meant was that everyone gets the same 98 IPs every hour, and then the next hour another 98 are randomly selected to be shown to everyone.
- Re censroship/state agencies this doesn't help state agents or censorship at all, because they want to block the input/ingress IP addresses that citizens would use to connect to the VPN network, and knowing the egress that the VPN network uses to connect to servers doesn't help them at all. I have clarified this in the README.md now so anyone who sees the project will know that it can't be used for censorship.
- Re users bypassing state firewalls, they can still read and if they want to edit we have WP:ACC for that (abusers could go through acc I guess, but then they can't block evade once their account gets indef'ed - and VPNgate has been used a lot by link spammers, people who want to edit war (especially someone who got really upset about castes, I've seen a lot of edit warring from detected IPs about that) to evade the blocks on their main account).
- Btw, thank you for calling my tool helpful, I'm not the best at UI design but I tried to put some effort in and make it looks nice and have useful functions. Thank you to you as well for your time in providing soooo much helpful feedback to make the bot better. :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 03:52, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Also thanks for reminding me to provide guidance to users on this, I think the current WP:OPP block message doesn't really fit with the VPNgate mode of temporary volunteers (who the user effected might not even know about but could get a dynamic assignment with an IP blocked for a few days). I'll make a custom block template! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 03:54, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Tada I guess... {{Blocked VPNgate}} Anyone reading this please feel comfortable to be WP:BOLD and make it better if you'd like, it's still a very early draft. :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 10:06, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- While tone of you thanks seems to include some aspersions :), you're welcome if what I've said has helped you. If the list is the same for everyone, you can indeed be a lot more effective. My point about censorship was less about you helping state censors and more about you using the loophole that VPNGate haven't said anything about private actors, and giving the impression that abuse is the only thing it is being used for. 220.81.178.129 (talk) 11:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Oh no I'm really sad now, please don't take my tone when I thanked you in the wrong way (it can be both hard to express and pick up on the internet)! Maybe saying "sooooo" was a bit over the top, but you've genuinely gone back and forth with me a lot of times and always written detailed, logical suggestions or concerns to help, so genuinely, no sarcasm, thank you!!! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 04:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- All right then, and sorry about my tendency to lean a bit on the paranoid side. 159.146.72.149 (talk) 09:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- That's so fine! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 05:00, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- How feasible would it be to make the list of IPs private/admin-only? I mean, they're still going to get blocked, and that's public, but I feel like making a public list, even if one may or may not already exist, might be an unnecessary step?
- If I ran a VPN service I'd be a lot less upset about Wikipedia defending itself than Wikipedia creating a public up-to-date list of VPN IPs that everyone can use, without effort, to mass block most of my VPN. – 2804:F1...57:88CF (::/32) (talk) 02:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not really sure, I don't think there's a way to restrict viewing a page on EnWiki (I could whip up a MediaWiki extension enabling "read protection" of a page, but I doubt the WMF would install it), but we do have things like checkuserwiki, arbcomwiki etc. which have limited viewership so prep haps the bot could operate on a new antiabusewiki (but this would require even more work from WMF than installing the extension) and then a stewardbot could issue global blocks from there? I would also have to take down molecularbot2.toolforge.org and the GitHub repo (that anyone could just download code and run it to get their own list). But even if we don't have a list, it's trivial to query the MediaWiki API for block status (that's what the toolforge tool does in addition to seeing if the IP is listed at User:MolecularBot/IPData.json when you lookup an IP or generate stats), there's very high ratelimits for this, and you just need to check if the block reason is {{Blocked VPNgate}} or whatever message the adminbot/stewardbot leaves. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 04:54, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- All right then, and sorry about my tendency to lean a bit on the paranoid side. 159.146.72.149 (talk) 09:25, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- Oh no I'm really sad now, please don't take my tone when I thanked you in the wrong way (it can be both hard to express and pick up on the internet)! Maybe saying "sooooo" was a bit over the top, but you've genuinely gone back and forth with me a lot of times and always written detailed, logical suggestions or concerns to help, so genuinely, no sarcasm, thank you!!! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 04:41, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- Also thanks for reminding me to provide guidance to users on this, I think the current WP:OPP block message doesn't really fit with the VPNgate mode of temporary volunteers (who the user effected might not even know about but could get a dynamic assignment with an IP blocked for a few days). I'll make a custom block template! :) MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 03:54, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- They mention Japanese laws repeatedly in the texts shown when you click the licence and notice buttons under Help > About of the SoftEther VPN Client Manager. It's a canned statement saying they only comply with Japanese laws because they can't possibly follow every law worldwide.
- I'm not sure what you mean by "Japanese Laws" they keep mentioning they don't seem to mention any, when I told you that the ToS said don't do anything irl illegal I was referring to this ToS page which doesn't mention any "Japanese Laws" but just says don't do anything like CSAM like your government can subpoena us for, because we'll comply (and directions for LEOs to request this). Re reputation yes, the major VPNgate nodes that have done it for a while do have bad reputations, particularly 219.100.37.0/24 which is the example servers run by the university themselves - but as you said, because anyone can start a VPNgate server and then there's always brand new nodes that won't have bad reputations and can be abused. But - as I've stated in a different discussion above, the list of VPN servers to connect to only updates with new servers hourly, so while reputation services won't catch the new exit nodes (because they won't be used poorly enough to trigger flagging for a white), the bot constantly waits for updates to the list and then immediately tests it to determine the new egress IPs. Re commercial services generally, unlike VPNgate, they use datacenters and static IPs that are assigned to "Hotspot Shield, Inc." (as an example) so it's easy to CIDR range block them and also the reputation of those deteriorates over time as they do bad things - the companies don't randomly get new IPs in random locations around the world, like VPNgate. In fact commercial reputation services excel at identifying commercial services (from my testing), but VPNgate is community distributed, like Wikipedia, and needs a unique approach. And yes, as I said to Daniel, I'll admit that blocking VPNgate won't fully stop this LTA or all proxy vandals but VPNgate is quite a large and widely used network (claiming a total of 18,810,237,498 lifetime connections) that is currently almost fully permitted to edit Wikipedia (the bot currently has 146 IPs in its list and as shown by the stats section of the toolforge frontend, ~60% are currently unblocked (and this is an underestimate because the list is mainly the "obvious" ones that are always provided first in the 98 hourly sample, like 219.100.37.0/24. This is because the bot has only had 1 full run of all IPs in a given hour's list, and many failed partial runs of just the first couple. I think blocking VPNgate significantly reduces the surface area for proxy attacks - only looking at only 10 of the blocked IPs I see link spam, edit warring, block evasion, vandalism and our favourite WP:LTA. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 08:38, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- I guess I'm just too careful or chicken even if most people would refrain from casting aspersions.
- Oh, you didn't have to anonymise yourself, we don't cast WP:ASPERSIONS here and now you won't get a reply notification but that's okay! :) I checked the terms of service of their website before making their bot and it just says not to do anything IRL illegal otherwise they'll give your logged data to authorities if subpoenaed, but I will reach out to the VPNgate operators in Japanese (good practice opportunity, huh) when I have time just to double-confirm they're okay with everything. But btw, they encourage checking that your IP has changed to demonstrate it has worked in their how-to-guides, and this isn't 'tranaversing" as we're not collecting data on every single node but only the public IP of the exit node. Re short-term volunteers, that's a great point, and I'll update the JSON schema of its published data to include a "number of sightings" number, so that the blocking adminbot would escalate blocks as this increases so maybe it starts really short term like 2.5 days/60 hours (6000 active volunteers on average, divided by 100 checked every hour, minimum time to ensure the IP has truly stopped) if it's just 1 sighting but ramps up exponentially if it's seen again as an egress IP untill we're talking like 6months - 2 years blocks. Re WMF tickets, the distributed fact of VPNgate that anyone can start hosting means that most VPNgate IP addresses won't have a bad "reputation" (I checked a whole bunch on a variety of reputation lists and the egresses always had "good"" reputations) so reputation checking won't help (but they need short term blocks), also as you can't publically see the egress with VPNgate cause it's different to ingress (unlike most networks). So WMF solutions are actually quite innovative and smart for most VPN/proxy networks, it's just that VPNgate is a bit different needing a unique solution, this bot. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 04:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- It's worth noting that an unknown amount of 'servers' are user computers that people have volunteered cpu time for (this information is somewhere on the website), so, like we see often with IP users, the IP that each server uses can and likely will change with time. This doesn't mean that an effort like this bot won't help, of course, but it's unknown how effective (as a percentage) it would be with just 33 blocks a day. – 2804:F1...33:D1A2 (::/32) (talk) 23:47, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
- The list available through this API frequently rotates. It only provides 98 ingress IPs at a time, as you stated and refetching the list without [some duration of time, from my estimates it's around 1 hour] passing returns the same 98 IPs. After 1 hour (estimated) passes, a new 98 IPs are randomly selected to be provided to all users - but these may include some of the same IPs as before because they are picked by random selection from the whole list of 6057 (not available to the public), this has happened a couple times during my data gathering. Therefore re volume per hour, the maximum number of IPs to be blocked is 98, but it could be less due to already blocked IPs being included in that given hour's sample of 98, I hope this makes sense if there's anything that needs clarifying please don't hesitate to ask. MolecularPilot 🧪️✈️ 21:34, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
Why are frwiki talk pages so much nicer than ours?
[edit]Take a look at (for example) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Oracle#Li_M'H%C3%A2_Ong_(2). This seems to be typical of talk pages on frwiki. The threading of replies is so much easier to follow. Is this just some snazzier CSS they're using, or something fundamentally better to edit the pages? RoySmith (talk) 01:07, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- It looks like just some snazzy CSS. * Pppery * it has begun... 01:09, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- I see no reason not to adopt the CSS over here, or some other form of threaded discussion by default.JayCubby 01:22, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- There are some gadgets that support it. I think ConvenientDiscussions is one of them. I'm not a general fan of the styling. Izno (talk) 02:08, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- A screenshot of Convenient Discussions for reference:
- Threads are collapsible, and a change is coming that would allow to collapse/expand all replies to a comment in one click, similar to how you can do that on Reddit with a +/− button.And, of course, pure CSS is only a half-solution here since markup and HTML produced by it are trickier and don't correspond to the actual comment structure as one-to-one. Jack who built the house (talk) 05:31, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- I'd love to see that too! – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 23:06, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- There are some gadgets that support it. I think ConvenientDiscussions is one of them. I'm not a general fan of the styling. Izno (talk) 02:08, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- I created my own experimental CSS stylesheet to add style formatting to discussion threads; see User:Isaacl/style/discussion-threads for an example of how it looks and instructions on using it. There is an accompanying user script to temporarily turn the style formatting off for the current page, should you want to see how the page looks by default. isaacl (talk) 02:25, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't personally like that layout, but the customer is always correct in matters of taste I suppose? It's just styling hacks (see without). frwiki has thousands of lines of custom css being loaded by default (e.g. from w:fr:MediaWiki:common.css , w:fr:MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css, w:fr:MediaWiki:Gadget-Mobile.css). Someone could write a "pretty talk pages" script here, and if it was popular we could make it available as a gadget. — xaosflux Talk 14:53, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- What's been done in the past is A/B testing of different gimmicks by the WMF. I'd be curious to see the rate of abandoned comments now versus with a shiny new layout is. JayCubby 15:16, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- My stylesheet continues to be used by (double-checks)... only me. I like it, but it's not evident yet that there's a significant demand for different styling of discussion threads. isaacl (talk) 18:17, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- That looks HIDEOUS. All the boxes and colors distract me from the text. I would find it harder to follow those conversations. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 15:51, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- The threading is entirely frwiki's custom CSS. It's pretty easy to do, with how talk pages use nested definition-list syntax for discussions already;
body.ext-discussiontools-replytool-enabled dd { border-left: 2px solid lavender; padding-left: 1ex; }
gets you about 95% of the way there. There's plenty of room to get fancier, of course. (And sometime people use unordered lists instead, which would need to be handled separately.) - There's also a visible difference since enwiki is the only place that the DiscussionTools "visual enhancements" haven't been turned on yet (T379102). That's why they have the fancier thread summaries in the topic list and under the headings, and the more button-like reply links. If you're curious what that'd be like here, you can turn it on with the dtenable URL parameter.
- We did experiment with going much further in page-reformatting with DiscussionTools as well. You can see our structure-debug page for an example of that. It's actually what the talk pages in the mobile apps use now -- they get the talk page data from the DiscussionTools API and build the view from that, rather than from the normal wikitext render. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
- This looks so cool! I'm really looking forward to it on enwiki :) any way I can opt-in to DiscussionTools improvements like this sooner? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 03:45, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- You can enable DiscussionTools in the beta menu. I don't know where that's located in Vector 2022's menu (I use MonoBook), but it's in there. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 04:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- Right, I have it on, but it looks like FrWiki and other wikis are using a newer version with more features (which is what I'm interested in). – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- You can enable DiscussionTools in the beta menu. I don't know where that's located in Vector 2022's menu (I use MonoBook), but it's in there. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 04:46, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- For the record, those boxes don't show up on mobile. That issue, combined with the fact that replies aren't as far apart in the new version, makes it harder for mobile users to tell who is replying to who compared to the current version. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:05, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- This looks so cool! I'm really looking forward to it on enwiki :) any way I can opt-in to DiscussionTools improvements like this sooner? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 03:45, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- Woah, it looks like MediaWiki has an even nicer talk page GUI? Any way I can enable that on all wikis? – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:56, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- I have since learned that this would be a terrible idea. (I still like the look, though, and it would be great to have some way to sort threads by age.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- It would be indeed great to have more control over sorting threads, especially since there are a number of wikis (including the main wiki I contribute to, Russian Wikipedia) which have to resort to bad hacks to display certain forum pages in recent-oldest sorting order and not oldest-recent as it is default. It would’ve been great to see these hacks made obsolete with DiscussionTools, see phab:T313165, but AFAIK no one actively develops it any more, so I guess we’ll have to wait till WMF decides to fund it again. stjn 21:40, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- That's Flow. It failed for complicated reasons, has limped along unmaintained since 2016-ish, and is currently in the process of being completely removed now that DiscussionTools was deployed as the outcome of the 2019 talk pages consultation. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- This is also as ugly as homemade sin. Way too much whitespace.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:47, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- I have since learned that this would be a terrible idea. (I still like the look, though, and it would be great to have some way to sort threads by age.) – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 20:14, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
Undesirable (and new?) line wrapping
[edit]I don't know if it's just me noticing something that has been there for a long time, or if something new is happening, or if my CSS or browser is to blame, but I am noticing undesirable line wrapping that I have not seen before. I am seeing references after full stops (periods) that wrap to the next line. I'm seeing the ")" in "f/16)" (in the lead of Exposure value) wrapping to the next line. And I think one other kind of wrapping that should not be happening but that I can't remember at the moment. I don't think this sort of wrapping was happening before; references stayed with the preceding punctuation, and a closing parenthesis would stay with the text that preceded it. I could be wrong or misremembering, of course. My gut feeling is that I just started noticing it in the last month or so.
If it's just me, I'll live with it, but I thought I would post here to see if this prompts anyone else to chime in. I am using Vector 2022 on the latest Firefox for Mac OS. I can link to example pages and even provide screen shots as needed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:01, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
I am seeing references after full stops (periods) that wrap to the next line.
- This has unfortunately always been the case. I found Phab tasks and comments documenting this going back to 2016: T100112#2027495, T125480. There have been cases where line wrapping around references behaved even worse than that (interesting ones I found: T96487, T110057, T132255), and those have been fixed.
I'm seeing the ")" in "f/16)" (in the lead of Exposure value) wrapping to the next line
- I can reproduce this, screenshot for reference: F58028918. This is caused by using
display: inline-block;
in the template {{f/}} (basically the same issue as T110057 mentioned above, actually). It was added not quite a year ago: [1]. I'm not sure what these rules are for, but someone could probably find a way to do this differently and avoid the problem. And I think one other kind of wrapping that should not be happening but that I can't remember at the moment.
- Well, it's a bit tricky to guess from that ;), but my crystal ball shows me you're thinking of T353005, where some error and warning messages now break words with hyphens when wrapping lines, starting also about a year ago. I heard a few people complain about that and I find it a bit unpleasant myself. Did I guess right?
- Matma Rex talk 01:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- Adding a
‍
after the span in {{f/}}, as shown in Special:Diff/1263967231, would at least fix the issue in that template. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:15, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- Adding a
- The problem with NOT wrapping (especially when dictated by templates), is that it works for 90% of the cases. But there is also the 10% of cases where the value is too small to fit in the infobox or on a mobile screen in 1 line. But the templates can't make that distinction, so it's generally a bad idea to put 'no wrap' as a default in a template. Overall it is better to depend on the browser to mostly do things right and not fret too much about the occasional times that it gets it wrong. Because flipping that assumption around tends to create harder to maintain wikitext that gets it wrong about the same or even more often. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for the responses. As I said, I really can't tell if I'm seeing something new, or if I noticed one and now the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is in effect. If I see something really egregious, I'll take a screen shot. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:50, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
contentious topics/aware plus "topic code"
[edit]i want to add the contentious topics/aware template to the top of my talkpage, but the list of topic codes says to substitute the template so i did but the israel/palestine topic code did not display. how do i include the topic code? Daddyelectrolux (talk) 19:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Daddyelectrolux You don't need to subst that template, you would just do
{{Contentious topics/aware|a-i}}
. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC)- the topic codes page states that the template should be substituted. perhaps that should be removed, to avoid new people from make my same mistake? thank you User:Ahecht. :) Daddyelectrolux (talk) 00:23, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Daddyelectrolux: You wanted to use Template:Contentious topics/aware which doesn't say to use subst. Template:Contentious topics/table is used to document other templates and it varies whether they require subst. I have added this to the documentation.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 12:14, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- To be fair, up until yesterday Template:Contentious topics/aware/doc just linked to Template:Contentious topics/table. I updated it so that it properly transcludes the table, which hides the
subst:
syntax. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:27, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- To be fair, up until yesterday Template:Contentious topics/aware/doc just linked to Template:Contentious topics/table. I updated it so that it properly transcludes the table, which hides the
- @Daddyelectrolux: You wanted to use Template:Contentious topics/aware which doesn't say to use subst. Template:Contentious topics/table is used to document other templates and it varies whether they require subst. I have added this to the documentation.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 12:14, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- the topic codes page states that the template should be substituted. perhaps that should be removed, to avoid new people from make my same mistake? thank you User:Ahecht. :) Daddyelectrolux (talk) 00:23, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
Updating broken JavaScript user script for adding a template to RefToolbar 2.0
[edit]Hi! Hopefully this is the right place to put this. Template:Cite RCDB's documentation contains a suggested user script to add the template to RefToolbar 2.0. However, it imports User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar 2.0.js, which hasn't been a think since 2013. On the page is now a note saying "This script is now enabled by default." The existing script, however, does not work out of the box, throwing the error below. If someone who knows JS could help modify the script to work without the linked user script, that would be great!
VM385:2 Uncaught ReferenceError: $j is not defined at <anonymous>:2:913 at globalEval (startup.js:1141:17) at runScript (startup.js:1292:6) at enqueue (startup.js:1179:5) at execute (startup.js:1399:5) at doPropagation (startup.js:748:6)
Plighting Engineerd (talk) 01:38, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- The instructions were VERY VERY outdated. I have updated them and tested the 'new' fragment and it works. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:43, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks so much! Works perfectly now! Plighting Engineerd (talk) 13:23, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
Site is under maintenance
[edit]I was unable to complete an edit a few minutes ago. I got an error message saying the site was under maintenance. Clicking on "back" did get me the edit I was trying to make and a few seconds later I was successful.
I posted just for documentation but I am having difficulty with a site that is very slow and I came here to do an edit to have something to do while waiting for pages on that slow site to come up. The slow site slows everything else down.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:21, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
Blacklisted website not on any blacklist
[edit]I wanted to save an edit containing a link to tradingview.com but it keeps showing a message:
"Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist. [...] The following link has triggered a protection filter: tradingview.com [...]"
So I tried to figure out whether I shouldn't use that website as a source and on what blacklist that website is supposed to be but I couldn't find anything. Is that a bug? Killarnee (talk) 14:18, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- It's on the global blacklist at meta:Spam blacklist. Anomie⚔ 14:29, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah. It was added in October 2017. See the request and link report. – Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) Please do not ping on reply. 14:44, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hm now I found it too, somehow the find tool in Safari wasn't able to find it. Thanks you both. Looks like I have to search for another source. Killarnee (talk) 14:58, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
When I try to view this special page I just get the following error:
[8f6642e6-42f2-4bba-8e7d-01bac9220c2f] 2024-12-21 18:40:02: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\RequestTimeoutException"
Is anyone else getting this error when viewing that page? Thanks. 2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:E9BC:B9ED:405A:596B (talk) 18:42, 21 December 2024 (UTC)
- It works now. Problems come and go. I had to restart my phone half an hour ago to get something to work. Extra: That was a problem with an app on my phone (nothing to do with Wikipedia). Johnuniq (talk) 03:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I see a similar error when I try to check logs for Special:Log/ProcseeBot. [1d666f00-ed84-4e73-928d-04edc6edc844] 2024-12-22 10:33:05: Fatal exception of type 'Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryTimeoutError'. – DreamRimmer (talk) 10:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Likely also worth noting that, above the error, it says
To avoid creating high database load, this query was aborted because the duration exceeded the limit.
Though I suppose that's the definition of a timeout... – Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) Please do not ping on reply. 15:43, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- Likely also worth noting that, above the error, it says
- Tracked at phab:T325062. – DreamRimmer (talk) 18:00, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Colors of images in {{Infobox government agency}} are inverted in the dark mode
[edit]When the {{Infobox government agency}} template is included into some page, SVG images inside it have their colors inverted if the dark mode is on. See, for example, the article United States Department of State, specifically the seal: it should have dark blue outter ring, white inner circle with a brown eagle, but instead you can see the seal with a bluish-white outter ring, black inner circle with an orange eagle. Looked at several other infobox templates, none of them have a simmilar issue. Also, only vector images are affected by this, raster images are not. I wanted to try to debug it, but the template is fully protected. Tohaomg (talk) 17:30, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Tohaomg it's most likely this edit by @Jonesey95: that has introduced the behaviour. Probably best discussed at Template talk:Infobox government agency. Nthep (talk) 18:04, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- See the previous discussion. A more comprehensive fix is welcome. The sandbox is open for anyone to edit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:57, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- This is not an acceptable solution, please revert. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 20:52, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- The reason skin-invert worked for signatures was that white writing paper is common and even though colors in pens is varied, the most commonly used ones are dark.
- Logos are not created on the basis of a palette of colors, unlike signatures. Logos are created to be visible and understandable from far away and close up. As such, they should not be inverted at large.
- I consider the edit request in the template to be unactionable, as it did not ask for any particular solution, not even a hint at one. Snævar (talk) 23:24, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not sure why people are continuing to reply here. This discussion will be lost in the archives of VPT; please post at the template talk page with comments, suggestions, proposed fixes, or requests. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:00, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Jonesey95: I am not buying that argument for one second, also you are refusing to talk about the issue itself. Stop this bureaucratic nonsense. Most issues are solved during discussion not after, it being "lost in the archive" is a non starter as an argument. Clearly neither myself or Sjoerddebruin are going to move this discussion to the template talk page. If you continue attempting to refrain from discussing about the issue itself, consider this your first warning. I would also like to voice my disappointment of how you are handling this, I do expect better than this. Snævar (talk) 09:24, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- Responding like this and bypassing the instructions that are clearly indicated at the top of the template page is really something, especially with an unsure edit summary. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 09:32, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- I wasn't discussing the issue here because of WP:MULTI. See the template's talk page for further discussion. I have reverted the change and continue to welcome a better way to fix the problem that was identified and that is still present. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:55, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- Responding like this and bypassing the instructions that are clearly indicated at the top of the template page is really something, especially with an unsure edit summary. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 09:32, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- @Jonesey95: I am not buying that argument for one second, also you are refusing to talk about the issue itself. Stop this bureaucratic nonsense. Most issues are solved during discussion not after, it being "lost in the archive" is a non starter as an argument. Clearly neither myself or Sjoerddebruin are going to move this discussion to the template talk page. If you continue attempting to refrain from discussing about the issue itself, consider this your first warning. I would also like to voice my disappointment of how you are handling this, I do expect better than this. Snævar (talk) 09:24, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not sure why people are continuing to reply here. This discussion will be lost in the archives of VPT; please post at the template talk page with comments, suggestions, proposed fixes, or requests. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:00, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- See the previous discussion. A more comprehensive fix is welcome. The sandbox is open for anyone to edit. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:57, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
Historical use of File:Wiki.png as the top-left logo
[edit]I wonder if anybody remembers some technical details of the use of File:Wiki.png for the logo in the top-left corner during the 2000s (not limited to enwiki). This discussion led me to asking this. I found some clues on Commons – quoting myself from the aforementioned discussion:
The log for File:Wiki.png shows two interesting entries:
- protection, 11 July 2005:
it's the sitewide logo in the upper left corner. Very bad if it were to get vandalized.- deletion, 7 October 2005:
block upload of local logos for other wikis. Commons now uses Image:Wiki-commons.png as the site-wide logo. See also Template:Deletion_requests#Image:Wiki.png.commons:Commons:Deletion_requests/Archive/2005/09#Image:Wiki.png is also interesting. [...]:
Image:Wiki.png should be moved to a different name (already re-created at Image:Wiki-commons.png) as it currently is aliasing that name on every wiki project and therefore not allowing local logos on those projects. Tim has already changed the logo location, so it shouldn't break the commons logo, but we should wait about a week before moving it to give time for the caches to update. The logo is now hardcoded so there is no need to protect this specific image.
Does anybody remember any further details?
Thanks, Janhrach (talk) 20:59, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't really remember, but we have historical records of the configuration going back to 2012. The current system, where logos of each wiki are stored in the configuration, was introduced in 2015 in change 209616 and other commits around that time. Wikis had the option to use the locally uploaded Wiki.png as a logo until 2017, when it was removed in change 359037. Alas I don't really know the historical context around these changes, I just found them in the history. Matma Rex talk 14:13, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. Janhrach (talk) 14:17, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Log out
[edit]I keep logging out every time I close the browser on my phone. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 22:11, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- Do you have some sort of ad blocker or privacy thing enabled that isn't allowing you to save cookies perhaps ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:15, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- @TheDJ: I have some sort of ad blocker enabled. Achmad Rachmani (talk) 22:22, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Cat-a-lot gadget
[edit]Hi. To follow up a query a user had on my talk page, I wanted to see if there was any way that edits using Cat-a-lot could be marked as minor by default? At present there is now way I am aware of to mark these edits as minor. Alternatively, would there be another way these edits could be filtered out of watchlists? We have a tick box to hide "page categorization", so could they maybe be included in that for example? Thanks. Jevansen (talk) 23:42, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
- commons:Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot#Preferences says there's a preference for that, it also shows this image: commons:File:2013-03-31-Gadget-Cat-A-Lot-prefscreen.png... is that just outdated info? does the interface still look anything like that?
- Edit: erm, right, commons:Help:Gadget-Cat-a-lot#As your user gadget also shows how to set preferences with javascript, which I think is what you might have to do if there is no option (due to it not being a gadget on Wikipedia? You installed it as an user script, at least.) – 2804:F1...57:88CF (::/32) (talk) 02:23, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- Aha! The userscript you imported the gadget from (User:קיפודנחש/cat-a-lot.js, you import them here), manually sets the preference, including a
minor: false
! - I'm pretty sure you can overwrite that by just adding a line setting the preference after you import the script, but you could aso just copy their script into your common.js (replacing the import) and change that part to
minor: true
, that would also do what you want. – 2804:F1...57:88CF (::/32) (talk) 02:36, 24 December 2024 (UTC)- Hi. Thanks for this. I've updated User:Jevansen/common.js, but this doesn't seem to have changes things. Perhaps I've not done it right? Jevansen (talk) 21:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- Then I'm really not sure hm, I had tried looking at how other people did it, like User:Roland_zh/common.js (which seemed to work: diff), but I'm not really seeing much different? I mean it's set after the import, I guess. Well that and they are importing the gadget two different times, in two different ways...
- I did find User:Liz/cat-a-lot.js, but I cannot confirm that it works, since Liz seemingly never used it.
- If those don't work then I don't know, I'm sorry. Can't test it without an account anyways - maybe someone else will know. – 2804:F1...26:F77C (::/32) (talk) 21:27, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- Huh... the script you used was intentionally set to false this year: User talk:קיפודנחש/cat-a-lot.js#Minor: false
- Because Help:Minor edit says adding and removing categories is not a minor edit... – 2804:F1...26:F77C (::/32) (talk) 21:40, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- Good find. I have to admit this isn't a guideline I could recall. Think it's generally an accepted practise to mark as minor any automated cat additions done on mass, as long as they're not in contentious topic areas or especially BLP sensitive etc. It was an admin that made this request to me after all. At any rate, you've definitely solved the cause of the issue here. Appreciate your help. Jevansen (talk) 01:32, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
- Hi. Thanks for this. I've updated User:Jevansen/common.js, but this doesn't seem to have changes things. Perhaps I've not done it right? Jevansen (talk) 21:02, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- Aha! The userscript you imported the gadget from (User:קיפודנחש/cat-a-lot.js, you import them here), manually sets the preference, including a
Is it unproblematic to use `lang=` spans in section headers?
[edit]Of course, I know it's wrong to use templates like {{lang}}
in section headers, but I know anchors work correctly in the transcluded HTML, so is there any reason a header like === <span lang="la">Tu quoque</span> ===
would break something? Remsense ‥ 论 16:59, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
- Considering how {{subst:anchor}} works in section headings, this should be fine. I tested it in the sandbox and nothing went immediately wrong. jlwoodwa (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2024 (UTC)