Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

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Incorrect preview images

The preview image (the image displayed when hovering the mouse over the article link, not sure if that's the correct name) for the articles Escape the room and Interactive film is the same preview image as that of Debridement, although the former two articles have no images and are not related. It may affect other articles with no images, but does not affect all articles with no images. Bug observed while accessing English Wikipedia with the skin Vector 2022 (as well as Vector and Monobook) on Chrome 111.0.5563.111 on Windows 10. PriusGod (talk) 16:29, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

@PriusGod, this is unfortunately not a bug but instead vandalism that takes a bit to clear from the system. You should be able to WP:NULLEDIT affected pages to clear the cache. Izno (talk) 16:34, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I think there is a discussion going on at WP:ERRORS related to this issue on the main page currently. I'm basically worthless on technical matters such as this, but if someone could read the current discussion and see if the problem may be fixed, that'd be great. Thanks! --Jayron32 18:02, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

@Jayron32, yes, that is the same issue as described here. As above, null editing the pages which have the templates that were vandalized will correct the issue. Izno (talk) 18:04, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Which page is the affected one? The main page or the United States page? I'll be glad to pull the trigger on the fix, but I don't know which is the source of the problem. --Jayron32 18:05, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

@Jayron32, the one with the vandalized template. That would be the United States page in your question, I believe. Izno (talk) 18:08, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Main page preview

Hey y'all. A discussion has been taking place at WP:ERRORS regarding the ITN blurb on the baseball world championship. People, including me, have noticed that article previews of the baseball teams of the US (and I guess Japan's too?) show this image, even on the mobile application version of Wikipedia. The image is not featured in both articles. @Jayron32 has stated that this issue isn't present for him and told me as such to go here, so I would like some input regarding what to do about this. - Knightsoftheswords281 i.e Crusader1096 ( Talk Contribs Wikis ) 18:33, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

pssst. Look up. --Jayron32 18:34, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Whoops. - Knightsoftheswords281 i.e Crusader1096 ( Talk Contribs Wikis ) 18:35, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi. I just found that the preview popups of Bopomofo, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and Romanization all show the same thumbnail image (debribement). Zhaowei Wu (talk) 02:19, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, same issue. Caused by a different vandal. Izno (talk) 02:23, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

The preview image for Egyptiotes currently shows a fly on a piece of feces. I do not know how to fix the issue. Pearse16 (talk) 04:20, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Template:Greeks was vandalized a day ago. The vandalism was quickly reverted but the page image uses caching. It's fixed now for that article after I purged it. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:46, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Multiple articles short description in iOS app are showing as "Consumption of feces"(!)

This issues seems to be iOS-only, and it's reeally weird (has the energy of a low quality April Fools' prank gone awry).

The description shows as "consumption of feces" but there are no edits showing the description being edited to this. Editing the description fixes the issue, and then even if it gets reverted back to the old description (which wasn't showing before), it reverts back OK. It was happening on GPT2 (current page is OK as there have been edits as described above) and I noticed it on the Fried dough page (there are two edits there from me, changing short description and then changing it back). I can see it right now on the Hi-Line (Montana) page (on mobile only). The search snippet I found to get me to that page (which included "consumption of feces" showed a search snippet which seemed to come from the Coprophagia article. Strangefeatures (talk) 21:34, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Looks like this was the other side effect of Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Vandalized_Preview_Pop_Ups_for_American_cuisine_and_a_Large_Number_of_Related_Articles - purgeing the page should fix it. Galobtter (pingó mió) 21:39, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The GPT-2 temporary SD appears to have been caused by this edit to a template that is transcluded in that page. I am null-editing all pages that transclude that template and about a dozen other vandalized templates. It appears that somewhere over 1,000 pages were affected. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:30, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

There is one account listed at the ANI thread, another IP linked above, and there is a second account here. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 22:39, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Strange and irrelevant pop-up image. (Trigger warning: gory)

Take for example

• Take back control

Mouse over shows a gory image (WARNING, GORE) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Necrotizing_fasciitis_left_leg_debridement.JPEG that is not in the article and not relevant to it. Looks like a hack, tbh. Any ideas? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:36, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I suspect this is to blame for it appearing in the first place. I gave the article page a null edit and the image no longer appears on mouseover. Aidan9382 _(talk) 12:42, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Rats, I didn't spot that. Maybe I was looking via mobile i/f at the time. TYVM. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:50, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Strange and irrelevant pop-up image. (Trigger warning: poopy)

Take a look at market fundamentalism. When I hover over it with page previews on, I get a cute little picture of a fly on shit. What's going on? --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 02:32, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

We're seeing that as a pattern of vandalism of transcluded sidebar templates (see WP:ANI#Vandalized Preview Pop Ups for American cuisine and a Large Number of Related Articles). Is it still happening? DMacks (talk) 02:43, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

yup --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 03:08, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I managed to reproduce it, but then purged the cache and it was gone (that's one of the tricks mentioned in that previous thread). DMacks (talk) 07:20, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Implementing the consensus to set Vector 2022 to full width by default

Given the WMF has refused to do so, and given that they have ignored my comment that if they don't we will, although we would prefer they do as the solution will be cleaner, I think our only option is for us to do this ourselves.

Alexis Jazz has been kind enough to provide the CSS required for us to do this, which can be seen here.

A demonstration of this code can be seen here; note that the flash of unstyled content only appears for the demo, and putting the code in your own vector-2022.css style sheet or in MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css does not result in it.

I'm putting the code here for review by the broader community; if no one sees any issue with it then in line with the consensus at the Vector 2022 rollback RfC I will make an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Vector-2022.css. BilledMammal (talk) 20:21, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

phab:T332505 and phab:T332426 haven't been "refused" at this point, interested technical editors are welcome to contribute a patch for the first. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:09, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

The WMF has made it clear through comments at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022#Proposal for next steps following the closure of the Vector 2022 RfC that they will not be implementing full width as default; I believe that we made the right choice in the introduction of the limited width and that, for readers, we are continuing to make the right choice in the decision to keep it as the default, emphasis mine.

Given this, and given their failure to reply to this comment, I don't see any reason to believe that this will change, regardless of whether the phab tickets remain technically open, and as such we need to do this ourselves. BilledMammal (talk) 21:13, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

The test would be if there was refusal to promote the patch, doing this server side would be much preferable then client-side hacks, especially for logged out users. As far as DIY, if you have a patch ready submit it and see. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:16, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't have a patch, but I think a comment from the Chief Product and Technical Officer for the Wikimedia Foundation saying that they are continuing to make the right choice in the decision to keep it as the default is sufficient test; I doubt they'll suddenly reverse their opinion because a patch permitting such an option was provided.

I'm also not particularly eager to spend time learning the WikiMedia code base so that I could create such a patch, as I see no reason to believe it would be accepted - I also note Izno's comment about whether a solution for this would be better done in style sheets. BilledMammal (talk) 21:25, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, I tested that code snippet on test2wiki, and it is not ready as-is, many pages got forced in to an even-narrower viewport that could not be recovered from. Anything like this would need very very extensive testing (think of how much went in to the client-side darkmode hack, and there are still errors reported constantly). — xaosflux ^Talk 00:40, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Can you give an idea what sort of pages those appear in? I've also found an issue with preference/contribution/etc pages; I'm working on that one. BilledMammal (talk) 01:48, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Figured out part of the reason there are issues on contribution/category/etc pages; it's disabled by default there. This does mean that there is a bug in that the toggle shows up even on those pages; I've submitted a bug report. BilledMammal (talk) 02:46, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Mostly on every Special: page. Note, it isn't just the icon being there or not, that CSS made the entire page much worse. As I noted, this would need extensive testing across all pages and actions before we would ever consider it for production. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:51, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't clear; the bug with the toggle was unrelated except for the fact that I discovered it while looking into this. The reason it fails there is because by default the width toggle is disabled on pages in namespaces 12 and -1 (with the exception of user preferences); because this wasn't accounted for it resulted in some unexpected behavior.

Alexis Jazz has produced an updated script that fixes most of those issues, although I believe there are a couple still to resolve - I'll look into it further when I have time, and in the meantime hopefully it will become unnecessary because the WMF will agree to implement it on their end. BilledMammal (talk) 22:41, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

It also seems to break the full/limited width toggle for logged out users.. is the idea to prevent unregistered users from selecting a preference? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 01:50, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

My tests suggest that it does work for logged out users, although there is still some work to be done per xaosflux - see the demonstration linked above. It could be that the version I'm currently working on broke something there? I've updated the link in the original post to a static container. BilledMammal (talk) 02:31, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I looked into creating a patch, and believe I have something that would allow TNT's patch to work; see the bottom of phab:T332505. BilledMammal (talk) 07:42, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: I just wanted to note this somewhere; my interactions with Vector 2022 and the resultant RfC/discussions/etc. have been entirely in my capacity as a volunteer (and I include the above-mentioned patch in that). I'm always more than happy to help where I can though, up to and including writing patches and trying to "prod" the right people to take a look — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 08:19, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, it is appreciated. BilledMammal (talk) 09:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

You might have to translate for us mere non-coding mortals. Would that make it the default for English Wikipedia? North8000 (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this CSS would make full width the default on the English wikipedia if added to MediaWiki:Vector-2022.css. BilledMammal (talk) 21:25, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi everyone, thank you for bringing this up. I just wanted to mention that the discussion on next steps is still ongoing on this page and we’re still working on the best way to proceed. We have presented a few different options for how all users can clearly choose which width they prefer, and which the community is currently discussing and weighing the pros and cons of. There is also discussion of how we can respect current existing user preferences on the width. We hope to allow a few more days for discussion and provide a summary and concrete next steps by Tuesday, April 4. @SDeckelmann-WMF is out this week, but will be back next week to continue the conversation. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

@OVasileva (WMF): To clarify, are you saying that things have changed since 25 March and you will now be respecting the consensus to set the default for logged-out users as full width? BilledMammal (talk) 01:05, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Alexis Jazz has produced an updated version of the CSS file, which may have fixed the issues you saw Xaosflux; so far, I'm not noticing any. It can be found here. BilledMammal (talk) 09:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

---

All this is so sad, and I bet most people are tired of it. So there was a well hidden RFC, where someone snuck in a second question somewhere near the bottom of the page. And some people answered what they liked better, and there were some good arguments like why any publication ever published had limited line length. Expectedly, no agreement was reached. But hey, there's consensus, and we'll make the English Wikipedia different from any other Wikipedia in the World, and we're gonna push it just so we can show who's the boss. That RFC was like me standing in the long return line at Costco the other day; guess what, everyone had to say something against Costco, 100% consensus! 300 people is by no means a majority of users. It's not even a majority of this Wikipedia's administrators. But okay, keep pushing your agenda, enjoy your 1.5 foot line lengths. 2604:CA00:16B:990E:0:0:662:4239 (talk) 18:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

You are implying that the majority of arguments either way where WP:ILIKEIT, which is not the case. They presented considerations that involve the implications of the changes on the experience of all users, not just the preferences of the RfC's participants. It is also strange that you are calling one of the most participated-in RfCs of all time "well hidden," and the second question was there almost from the start. small jars tc 09:18, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

well hidden the RfC was listed at WP:CENT, notified at every applicable noticeboard and talk page, even including Donald Trump’s talk page for some reason, and reached WP:300 levels for support, WP:200 for oppose, and over 150 participants in the second question alone. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

English Wikipedia was already different from the rest of the world long before a Vector 2022 was ever considered. Every wiki is unique. Not sure what you were heading at there. Tvx1 21:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

---

I personally would wait to see what WMF does before diving into CSS. It is WP:NOTAVOTE, it is a consensus process. Whatever we do we should take into account practical considerations, like different screen sizes and devices. Maybe set the "limited width" to only take effect as soon as the screen is extended beyond a specific screen resolution (like 1080px)? This is a good compromise between those that want some fixed width and those that want unlimited width. Then we do not have to worry about window resizing or any of that nonsense. It could be an in-between toggle. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 14:30, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Then the contention would be that the width that you need to go to before fixed width takes effect is wider than the scientific optimum. small jars tc 15:41, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

We already have a consensus on the matter. A “compromise” here is unacceptable. Default width needs to be default. Toa Nidhiki05 22:03, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Please also note that a hacky workaround like this can easily break if the skin gets redesigned. Vector 2022 is still a new skin, and there will certainly be changes to make the skin stable. We should certainly give it time to evolve to meet the needs of the community and its readers. I know of many of my tools that have broken because of redesigns. Let's not make this hack be one of them. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 22:32, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

It’s almost like the skin isn’t ready for prime time. But regardless, WMF can resolve this but implementing unlimited width. I hope they do so. Toa Nidhiki05 01:27, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

V22 has been in the works for years and always based on v10, a sudden redesign to the width is very unlikely. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Maybe not right now, but when they fully deploy? This will certainly be something that will need to be considered given the skin is still a WIP. I have a feeling the Vector 2022 that you see in seven or eight months will be a different skin than the Vector 2022 you see right now. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 17:02, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I don’t think they would make such a major change to limited width, a very small (code-wise) feature, after working on this skin for so long Aaron Liu (talk) 11:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

While technically any workaround would be our problem, in practice the WMF will need to be careful not to break it as they have a strong interest in not breaking enwiki. BilledMammal (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Scheduled tools downtime next week

There's two periods of scheduled toolforge downtime next week. This means most tools and bots will be down. Details were sent to the cloud-announce mailing list (see message archive for details). The expected downtime windows include most of the day on Monday, and about an hour on Thursday. Processes which depends on bots (for example, main page updates) should start thinking about what effect this will have on their operations and how to deal with it. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:19, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Reminder: this is happening soon. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:49, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I've already seen a few questions here and there. It might be an idea to have this as a watchlist notice for the duration of today ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:27, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

added. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:49, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, was wondering. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 10:55, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Is there a list somewhere that will show everything that might be affected? I noticed that HBC AIV helperbot is no longer functioning since it runs on Toolforge so AIV and UAA have to be managed manually now. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 14:52, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

There are about 3100 hosted tools on toolforge and 2400 users maintaining them. Anything that relies on being able to write state to disk will not function. That's likely to be quite a lot, but impossible to say which tools specifically (nothing keep track of that). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:59, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Anything that relies on being able to write state to disk will not function. What exactly does this mean...? I understand the "Will not function" part but what does "Being able to write state to disk will not function" mean? ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 15:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf so toolforge is up, if there is a tool that just provides a link for example, it could still work. But if the tool has an internal log, etc (that it would have to write to the disk on toolforge) it will likely fail. Some toolmakers may have put lots of checks in to their tool and present a notice, but that is up to those volunteers. 15:06, 3 April 2023 (UTC) — xaosflux ^Talk 15:06, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Ah ok, that makes sense. Thanks! ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 15:08, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

System issue?

Several bots who issue reports I rely on have gone inactive so I was wondering if there was some system problem. There isn't a replag but I thought maybe someone here would know what's up. I've already informed the bot operators several hours ago. Any ideas? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:42, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

See #Scheduled tools downtime next week * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:43, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, * Pppery *. I'll stop checking hourly for updates then. I appreciate your response. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 05:55, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Crop tool

Helly, anybody hanging around to take a look at the Crop tool? Seems to be down too. Thank you so much for your time. Lotje (talk) 13:42, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Lotje see the edit notice. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

It works again. Thanks Lotje (talk) 15:18, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Should be back up

According to the email on cloud-announce, the migration was complete about an hour ago and jobs were restarted, so everything should in theory be working again. There's another outage on Thursday at 17:00 UTC, but it's only for an hour and affects tools using ToolsDB. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:34, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

User:HBC AIV helperbot5 still appears to be offline and its maintainer probably isn't around anymore since their last edit was 7 months ago. ― Blaze Wolf^Talk_{Blaze Wolf#6545} 19:07, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Blaze Wolf many barely-there bot operators do respond via email, so try that if they don't answer their talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Yeah it might need to be restarted. Galobtter (pingó mió) 22:45, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

The bot's back up and running! Should be all good! Tails Wx 23:17, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Article assessments, including FA and GA, gone missing on WMFlabs tools

See discussion at FAC talk; perhaps related to a recent coding change that broke the article assessments. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

This is now resolved — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

So I've been told, but I've purged my cache (I think) and am still getting the error. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia You're seeing an error? Where?

The discussion talked about recent changes to XTools, and I just wanted to clarify that while it's true we're doing a major refactor, none of those changes have been deployed. So if page assessments are suddenly missing, it's because of something that was done here on the wiki. — MusikAnimal ^talk 16:27, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

MusikAnimal see also the discussion (linked above) at WT:FAC, particularly the info from Nikkimaria. At my top edited pages, some of the FAs are marked with a question mark icon YFA, while others are marked with the FA icon. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Similarly, Wiki Education Dashboard's tests against the pageassessements API started failing a few days ago, and I'm still getting results that often include unexpected characters, such as an `Y` or a trailing carriage return. Looks like it's fixed but the cached results are still broken, so a null edit on an individual talk page fixes it for that page. ragesoss (talk) 16:59, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @MSGJ. People are going to keep seeing this for a few days until the job queue finishes updating the pages; in the meantime a null edit to the talk page should update it immediately. Legoktm (talk) 16:57, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Didn't work for me, but I'm dumber than I look. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

That would work too, but note that is not a WP:NULLEDIT. To make a null edit, just hit edit and then save without any changes. Plugging that article into Special:PageAssements (the source of truth) correctly shows FA. If you're still seeing the wrong values anywhere else (like XTools), then that must be another caching layer. For XTools, queries are usually cached for 10 minutes. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:54, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Did I miss the memo?

See also: § Article assessments, including FA and GA, gone missing on WMFlabs tools

Hi! I was recently look at my list of articles created and I noticed that some of them now have a category of "YStub", "YStart", "YC" , and "XStart". These categories have a blue question mark as if it is "unknown". This is a very recent change and it seems to be random throughout my list, not just new articles or recently edited articles. Anyone know what's going on? Thanks in advance. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 00:52, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

That does look odd. Something is going wrong, as I looked at my own list and it shows that I've only created Main space articles ... which is completely incorrect; and I also see the odd categories. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Wow! you have a "Y¬"! Alas, I have NEVER seen anything but mainspace articles in the "Pages Created" list using that tool. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 01:18, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

@Ceyockey @WomenArtistUpdates The default behaviour is to show only mainspace pages, as that's chiefly what this tool is used for, and querying for just one namespace is much faster. See https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wikipedia.org/ceyockey/all as an example for all namespaces. On all XTools result pages there is a "Back" button at the top-left that brings you back to form where you can change the namespace and/or other options. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:23, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I believe this was caused by ongoing changes to the classification system and Template:WPBannerMeta. MSGJ might know more about this. And you can change what namespace you're looking at by adjusting the settings at https://xtools.wmflabs.org/pages/en.wikipedia.org.Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:42, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip about adjusting the settings to get more than the main space articles, Thebiguglyalien. You lost me at "ongoing changes to the classification system". Appreciate the quick responses and await further info. Best. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 01:51, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

You "real" list of articles created is here. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:00, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

This is definitely due to something that MSGJ (talk · contribs) has been working on recently (see Template talk:WikiProject banner shell, all threads), although I can't trace which module or template it might be. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:54, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to Template talk. It explains the changes that affected the article listing. I assume that since MSGJ has been pinged twice on this thread they are now aware of the issue. And I assume it was an unexpected consequence of the bot. I can't find any obvious clues after a random review of the talk pages on the articles I have created, with and without the new "designations". WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 15:48, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I can confirm there was an error (made by me) which was fixed 2 days ago, but due to caching some people are still seeing the effects — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:05, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks MSGJ! Do you mean caching throughout the wikipedia system or my computer caching? I believe I have cleared my cache and am still seeing the same problems I saw several days ago. Best, WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 20:46, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Pages in question will need either a WP:NULLEDIT or just wait and MediaWiki will update them in a few days or so. It's a very heavily used template, so there are a lot of pages that need updating. Legoktm (talk) 21:17, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

OK! I will wait for MediaWiki to update. Thanks to all for your promptness and patience explaining this to me. Best, WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 22:42, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Not fixed

Still not fixed, and I'm not convinced it's a caching issue because a) null edits don't remove it, and b) I'm getting it still on pretty much every editor I check. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:31, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

And there is also a serious problem with redirects as old talk pages are now being posted as unassessed. See for example Women's History assessment. Hope this will be fixed soon as it is difficult to identify articles really requiring assessment.--Ipigott (talk) 05:47, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Are you sure null edits aren't fixing it? I've tried a couple of random articles listed as YStart here and null editing is fixing it in Special:PageAssessments just fine. Just to confirm, the null edit needs to be on the talk page of the article, as that's where the WPBS template is. Aidan9382 _(talk) 06:54, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The null edits worked for me. I did about 20 -30 article talk pages and then waited about 1/2 hour for that cache to clear. My test cases worked. --WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 15:35, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

The problem with redirects is a separate and new problem which as far as I know is not related to the Y stuff. They have only been appearing on Wikiproject assessment lists for the past few days. If, for example, you take Category:Unassessed Women's History articles, you find a huge number of redirects. They can of course be eliminated by adding NA or Redirect manually to each talk page but this should not be necessary. Some accidental change must have been made in connection with the updating tools as this is a completely new phenomenon. It needs separate and urgent attention.--Ipigott (talk) 15:51, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I suspect this issue was actually solved a couple of days ago - here to be specific. Null editing the redirect talk pages seems to properly kick it out of the category. Pages may trickle in and out for a bit due to the job queue, but this should be a solved issue. Are there any specific redirects that are persisting beyond a null edit? Aidan9382 _(talk) 16:05, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, you are quite right that if I null edit one of these talk pages, it disappears but that's quite a job when in this category alone there are over 100. Also a long new list on Women writers resulting from redirects. I'll just wait for them to disappear over the next few days. In the meantime, I can work on those not tagged NA on the daily Xtools lists. Thanks for your help.--Ipigott (talk) 08:31, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

For reference, there's about 1.18 million pages left (quarry), but that number is definitely slowly going down. Legoktm (talk) 23:49, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Subpages not moved when parent moves

Is there a technical reason or at least a Phabricator ticket for why subpages of a parent-page do not get moved, when the parent page gets moved? I can appreciate that name collision/other issues are unique per page. But if a page is moved, the talk page is also automatically moved, even though there could exist a collisions with the talk page, so why not for subpages? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 21:35, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

There is a checkbox for moving subpages. At least, there is for me. Surely that's not admin-only? --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:44, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it's admin and page-mover only. The rest of us have to move them manually. It would be nice to at least get notified when a move leaves a mess behind. (Further information: WP:Moving a page#Talk subpages.) Certes (talk) 22:04, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I do not have those rights, and I do not see the checkbox. I sometimes find myself cleaning up after page moves, including my own, that neglect to move all relevant subpages. It would be nice to get at least a notification that there are subpages that may need to be moved. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:10, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid page moving is littered with tasks that most editors have permission to do badly but not well. The classic example is that I can't cleanly move a page over an existing page but could (if I liked the taste of trout) copy-paste its contents. Certes (talk) 22:16, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there a reason we don't allow everyone to move sub-pages? This is the second time in the past week that I have been involved in a discussion where many or most participants believed that this was a permission available to all editors, so it seems likely that there would be support for it if solely on the basis of "I thought this was a thing already". BilledMammal (talk) 22:36, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Page move vandals would have a field day moving the WP:AN archives :^). Izno (talk) 22:38, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Simply, most pages don't have subpages - and ones that do should be carefully handled. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:26, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I can confirm I got an error and was unable to move a page, when I checked that an associated talk page should also be moved, but the talk page would collide with an existing page. Good to know there are atomic transactions only (all or nothing), but wish the error was more precise. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:30, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

It's determined by the move-subpages right at Special:ListGroupRights. You can move up to 100 subpages with the right. Bureaucrats, administrators and page movers have it. Others can request to become page movers at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions. Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 28#Restrict the "move subpages" feature to admins from 2008 had strong support for restricting the right due to page move vandalism. The page mover group didn't exist at the time. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:48, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the discussion, it seemed to be based on the belief that most editors didn't need it, as most articles didn't have archives. I don't believe that is true anymore - and I believe most pages with significant numbers of subpages, such as WP:AN and WP:WPT, are move protected, so editors can't move them and their subpages.

Perhaps a suitable compromise would be to give the permission to all extended-confirmed editors? BilledMammal (talk) 05:24, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think this permission should be given more widely, to prevent a proliferation of subpages that aren't moved (per Certes below that there are thousands of subpages at the wrong place). Galobtter (pingó mió) 11:05, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Got a statistic? Also this setting isn't about "articles" at all (which don't even support subpages), it would be about "pages" - and most pages don't have subpages. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:58, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, subpages are only enabled in certain namespaces. Article A/B testing is a main page, but Talk:A/B testing is technically a subpage of Talk:A (and might get moved carelessly with it in the extremely unlikely event that the letter is renamed). Certes (talk) 13:10, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Statistics: the four roughly scoped queries below identify 6426 pages which may need renaming. Certes (talk) 13:13, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Orphaned subpages

There may be a cleanup project for a keen page mover here. We seem to have 3201 orphaned talk subpages where the parent is a redirect (and the subpage isn't). For example, Talk:1979_energy_crisis/to_do exists, but Talk:1979_energy_crisis redirects to Talk:1979_oil_crisis to match their articles. Beware that some of the suggested new titles already have a page. For example, we have both Talk:2008–2010 Icelandic financial crisis/Archive 1 and Talk:2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis/Archive 1, despite one parent redirecting to the other. We also have 400 orphaned talk subpages where the parent talk page doesn't exist at all. (In complex cases like Talk:a/b/c/d, neither Talk:a nor Talk:a/b/c exists.) Certes (talk) 10:35, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Recently a whole number of GAs were moved to match parent move articles, which was done by bot for article which did not conflict with a new page and did not raise some other issue, the rest were done manually (both mostly c/o Mike Christie). I have continued to move new ones manually, and have also discovered that Peer Review pages are often not moved with their talkpage. A vexing issue is that some templates (eg Template:Article history) have page paths hardcoded in, so even once moved the subpage redirect should stay in place where possible. CMD (talk) 11:25, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Non-article talk namespaces also have redirected and missing parents. The latter check excludes User_talk: for now. Certes (talk) 12:44, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I am starting to move a bunch, but I notice many are /to_do pages with absolutely no content. For example I requested G6 deletion of Talk:1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade/to do. In the cases where even one link or content instruction is listed, I move the page still, though even there, copying it into the talk page would be more useful. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:53, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I've also made bold decision to move to /Archive # format where possible because they are more flexible and work by default with {{Archives}} and {{Talk header}} without needing to explicitly link. Could you change your bot to exclude pages that have a new move target that match the parent page, but don't necessarily have same subpage anymore? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:13, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Are you asking me to filter out some rows from one or both of the reports? If so, I don't understand exactly which rows to remove: please can you provide an example of a row you don't want to see? Certes (talk) 15:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Certes an example Talk:2 Entertain/Archives/2016 was listed with a redirect suggestion of Talk:BBC Studios Home Entertainment/Archives/2016 and I instead moved it to Talk:BBC Studios Home Entertainment/Archive 2 (in order to make use of conventional Archive names/linking). I see the report does not include this example anymore, do I need to do anything else? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:22, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Any page you move will disappear from the report next time you re-run it, even if you move it to a name different from the suggested title. Making up names such as .../Archive 2 automatically would be awkward and error-prone but might be possible. Certes (talk) 23:33, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Small question; I'm willing to do some move cleanup; should I leave redirects behind for these moves? (please ping on reply) Sennecaster (Chat) 13:16, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

If A is moved to B, and A is a redirect to B, i.e., A is not taken up by some other article, then leave redirects from A's subpages to B's. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 15:42, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Proposed change to the behavior of Wikipedia:New user landing page

As you know, non-autoconfirmed users are not allowed to create new articles in the main namespace, as a result of WP:ACTRIAL. Currently, when a registered but non-autoconfirmed user follows a red link such as This page does not exist, they are redirected to Wikipedia:New user landing page, which offers some advice on other ways to contribute. (You can probably try this by visiting test2wiki:This page does not exist, unless you're autoconfirmed there.)

I'd like to change this slightly, so that instead of redirecting, the landing page message would be shown directly on the non-existent page.

This would allow the page deletion log to be shown above the landing page text, which was a wish that received 38 votes in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey. It would also allow {{PAGENAME}} and similar magic words to work in this text, e.g. to let the user search for similar page titles or to prefill it in the link to article wizard, which was requested a few years ago at T204234.

I've already proposed the necessary code changes in Gerrit change 904865, but before I look for someone to review and approve them, I wanted to make sure that this won't cause any unforeseen problems, e.g. if there's a gadget or something that relies on the current behavior. The only potential problem I can think of is that the red link visits will no longer be counted as page views for Wikipedia:New user landing page.

Matma Rex talk 22:59, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:New_user_landing_page#Potential_improvement_of_this_page for potential improvement of this page.--GZWDer (talk) 08:42, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Question: Will this also be visible to IP users? I think the workflow for IPs should be the same as new users. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 13:04, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Awesome Aasim No, IP users don't see this page now, and I'm not planning to change that. They see Template:No article text instead. Matma Rex talk 13:06, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Matma Rex That is a bit of a disappointment.

I think there are two classes of users that showing this page would be helpful to:

• New users as you mentioned, namely non-autoconfirmed users.
• IP users who have made edits before: When someone comes to save an edit it can put edit cookies on their browser (something simple like [lastEdited=1680527391]). Those edit cookies can then be used to change the experience for these users to show the new user landing page. If the IP user has made edits in the last 30 days, then it can show the "New user landing page".

Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 13:43, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Awesome Aasim I don't disagree, but I'm just trying to make a technical improvement here without annoying anyone. If you want to propose functional changes, that probably should be a discussion elsewhere. Matma Rex talk 13:52, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok I raised the thing on Phabricator: phab:T333846. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 15:19, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

&action=purge does not work on normal desktop layout

1. Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:April_Fools/April_Fools%27_Day_2023?&useskin=vector

• Page is out of date, at the bottom it says "This page was last edited on 31 March 2023, at 23:22 (UTC)."

2. Click on the (refresh) on the top template to go to https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:April_Fools/April_Fools%27_Day_2023&action=purge

3. Click "Yes" to purge the cache

• The page redirects to the default mobile view at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:April_Fools/April_Fools%27_Day_2023
• The page is up to date, bottom of the page says "This page was last edited on 1 April 2023, at 00:17 (UTC)."

4. Go back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:April_Fools/April_Fools%27_Day_2023?&useskin=vector to restore desktop view

• The page is out of date again, bottom of the page says "This page was last edited on 31 March 2023, at 23:22 (UTC)."
  • This is not fixed by Ctrl+F5 or clearing browser cache.

91.129.111.163 (talk) 00:26, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

•  Works for me however, you must have an account to use "purge". — xaosflux ^Talk 22:24, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think that's true, appending ?action=purge to a normal (non-query) URL has been suggested on this page in the past as being fine for IPs to use; indeed, WP:PURGE does not say that it's for logged-in users only. I tried testing it logged-out, but my IP is currently rangeblocked. I need to try it from a different machine, or maybe reboot my router. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:52, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  @Redrose64 notice the (purge) permission is on "Users" not on "*". IP's can do a nulledit though. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:14, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't say anything about a purge tab, I was referring to altering the URL in the address bar. I'm on a different machine now, and before I logged in I went to a page, appended ?action=purge to the URL, and was presented with a box containing "Purge this page", "Clear the cache of this page? (What does this do?)" and the button Yes; below the box was the text "Purging a page clears the cache and forces the most current revision to appear. For pages with random components, it also forces a new random selection.". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:37, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  @Redrose64 welp, yup - and it's been like that for a while - just the documentation is a mess - phab:T291316 also called for a revert of that lack-of-permission thing, but that is probably going to eventually be declined. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:36, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  Further testing shows that whilst the button is clickable, doing so fails silently. So, IPs can't purge pages, although they may not know that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  @Redrose64 yea, seems like something is amiss with all that - perhaps they can "submit" the purge request, but then it fails. How are you sure that it failed? — xaosflux ^Talk 16:29, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

  Go to Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion, pick a subcategory, follow the link to that page. Check the bottom line of the pink box, and if there is an obvious discrepancy (e.g. This page was last edited by ... at 04:59, 1 April 2023 (UTC) (38 seconds ago)), that's one to test with. If it doesn't, try another subcategory.

  Return to Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion, right-click on the same link and select "Open Link in New Private Window" (or your browser's equivalent) which treats you as logged out. Check that the bottom line of the pink box still shows a discrepancy. Append ?action=purge to the URL, and when the box appears, click Yes and see if the bottom line has changed - for me it doesn't.

  Now close that private window, follow the link in the normal way, and again purge the page by appending ?action=purge to the URL and observe that this time, the text "(38 seconds ago)" changes to "(3 days ago)" or similar. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:03, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

• URLs of the format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<title>?useskin=vector are non-canonical and are not updated by MediaWiki when a page is updated or a manual purge is issued. For those curious, the list of URL formats that get purged are mostly listed here. Legoktm (talk) 05:46, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Special:DiscussionToolsDebug

In the spirit of both fake and real software launches on today's special date, some of you may find Special:DiscussionToolsDebug amusing. As an example, have a look at Special:DiscussionToolsDebug/Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Cheers! Matma Rex talk 00:51, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Man, I would love to be able to collapse sub-threads like that in real conversations. If Flow had looked like that, without all the wasted space, I doubt it would've had the opposition that it did. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:43, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Slideshow stutters as it loads next image

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T333832

A slideshow that has been scaled down to 60% will briefly load each image at 100%, causing a glitchy appearance for a split second. When clicking through all the images this hurts to look at.

Example at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Capacity

A similar/same effect can occur even when allowed to take up the whole page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/117th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary

This effect does not occur if the slideshow is scaled way down to less than 363 pixels.

Fix? Alternative? Wizmut (talk) 10:14, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

@Wizmut: I opened phab:T333832 on this. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:21, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Issues installing user script

Hello, I am attempting to install User:Ohconfucius/script/EngvarB.js. I have followed the instructions to install it with User:Enterprisey/script-installer, but it is not showing up in the toolbox. I have successfully installed DYK check and highlight duplinks in the past, and those show in my toolbox, but I'm not sure why this one isn't. I'm using the latest version of Chrome (and after testing, it doesn't show on Safari either) and I'm using the Vector 2022 skin (if it matters). Thanks for the help in advance! MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 13:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

@MyCatIsAChonk, it looks like you've installed it correctly. For me it looks like this (using Vector 2022). — Qwerfjkltalk 10:26, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I was unaware it had to be used in source mode, now I feel silly... thanks for your help. MyCatIsAChonk (talk) 12:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata messing with infoboxes

From time to time I stumble upon some misplaced descriptions which template:infobox seemingly takes from Wikidata, but don't always know how to fix them. E.g. ru:Ганнибал (Hannibal) article has "illustrious son" in the Awards field of its military person infobox, but the the related Wikidata item doesn't appear to mention Hannibal at all. And this doesn't appear to be fixable through local military person infobox... Brandmeister^talk 21:57, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

It comes from the Wikidata item on Hannibal, not the one on the award. See d:Q36456#P166 * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:00, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Meh, never been the fan of including Wikidata into non-English Wikipedias... Brandmeister^talk 09:50, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@Brandmeister: I don't know Russian but looking at the template, you can override the Wikidata value with |награды=. A blank value or no parameter uses Wikidata. A non-blank value forces the field to be shown so something like |награды=  is ugly because the field name is still displayed. You could translate illustrious son to Russian. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:57, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I've put a hyphen in that field, which fortunately made it disappear. Since Wikidata's default language seems to be English, I think that was a bad idea to let non-English Wikipedias borrow info from it. Brandmeister^talk 17:24, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Each Wikipedia language decides their own practices and templates. We can only advice on the technical side here. The Wikidata value is used by |викиданные17 = p166 in ru:Шаблон:Военный деятель. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Ru-wiki community would be happy to advise you here. Ghuron (talk) 10:31, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok, will see... Brandmeister^talk 13:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-14

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

Recent changes

• The system for automatically creating categories for the Babel extension has had several important changes and fixes. One of them allows you to insert templates for automatic category descriptions on creation, allowing you to categorize the new categories. [1][2][3][4][5]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 April. It will be on all wikis from 6 April (calendar).
• Some older Web browsers will stop being able to use JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis from this week. This mainly affects users of Internet Explorer 11. If you have an old web browser on your computer you can try to upgrade to a newer version. [6]
• The deprecated jquery.hoverIntent module has been removed. This module could be used by gadgets and user scripts, to create an artificial delay in how JavaScript responds to a hover event. Gadgets and user scripts should now use jQuery hover() or on() instead. Examples can be found in the migration guide. [7]
• Some of the links in Special:SpecialPages will be re-arranged. There will be a clearer separation between links that relate to all users, and links related to your own user account. [8]
• You will be able to hide the Reply button in archived discussion pages with a new __ARCHIVEDTALK__ magic word. There will also be a new .mw-archivedtalk CSS class for hiding the Reply button in individual sections on a page. [9][10][11]

Future changes

• The Vega software that creates data visualizations in pages, such as graphs, will be upgraded to the newest version in the future. Graphs that still use the very old version 1.5 syntax may stop working properly. Most existing uses have been found and updated, but you can help to check, and to update any local documentation. Examples of how to find and fix these graphs are available.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:37, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Quiddity (WMF) or other WMF staff: are there release notes coming for the new version of MediaWiki? They are a bit overdue. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:56, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Hmm, it should be automated. I'll check/ask what's broken. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

This branch cut initially failed because of some of the deploy services on toolforge being down. I'm assuming that has something to do with it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:17, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I had seen that, but then the deployment proceeded, and according to https://versions.toolforge.org/ it is complete, but still no release notes. Strange. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:01, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

The automated job which normally does this failed — I've manually created it via the make-deploy-notes script. Logged T334211 for reference. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 13:43, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, I've pushed out __ARCHIVEDTALK__ to some of the major talk archive temples, will take a while for transcluded pages to get updated. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:58, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

And I've now done mw-archivedtalk for most of them. {{collapse top}} and {{collapse}} are currently used in mainspace and shouldn't be, so while it wouldn't hurt to add it to those, those do also need to be fixed.... Izno (talk) 21:19, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Ah this explains why my recent changes page no longer has colored highlighting and doesn't have the thing I can press to refresh the page anymore. Dang... Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 00:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@Gatemansgc Do you mean the New filters for edit review? That should still work properly, and works for me in testing it just now. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:17, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

My browsers are old! I didn't think Wikipedia would no longer work for me! Eventually I'll be moving to a new computer but for now I don't get the highlighting or javascript based refresh. Gatemansgc (TɅ̊LK) 00:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

You should be able to run a recent version of Firefox. The latest version (111) is listed as compatible with Windows 7, which was released in 2009, and on Mac OS Sierra (10.12), which can run on any Mac made in 2010 or later. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:56, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Mobile watchlist diff points to wrong project

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T333930

On the desktop, my watchlist includes the latest change to J. R. R. Tolkien, which is a Wikidata change. However, on mobile, my watchlist also notifies me of the Wikidata change, but when I click into it, it shows the latest Wikipedia change, which is incorrect and confusing. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 10:14, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Mobile web, or mobile app (which mobile app)? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:16, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Mobile app. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 10:17, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Which mobile app? Android, or Apple? Are you on the current release? — xaosflux ^Talk 10:18, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia app? How many apps are there? -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 10:19, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I get you. Android. Version 2.7.50433-r-2023-03-13 -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 10:20, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@Verbarson: thank you, this appears to be something in the software of that app, not a setting we can fix here on the English Wikipedia. I've opened phab:T333930 about this, feel free to add more details there - screen shots may help. — xaosflux ^Talk 10:28, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Screenshots added. Thank you. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 10:53, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Too many pages on watchlist?

Lately, I've noticed that on a few occasions, when I've edited a page or posted on a talkpage, which is on my watchlist. It gets bumped off the watchlist. Is there a limit to how many pages, one can have on their watchlist? I've currently 121. GoodDay (talk) 20:39, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

There almost certainly is a limit to how many pages can be on a given watchlist, but it's much higher than 121. Do you have an example of a page which has been recently "bumped off" your watchlist? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 20:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

The most recent, was the Charles III page. GoodDay (talk) 22:18, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Make sure you didn't accidentally hit the "star". I've done that. BTW I have just under 2,000 on mine with no problems. North8000 (talk) 20:58, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Also, after entering the edit summary, don't uncheck "Watch this page" before saving. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:06, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

The range for "maximum" size is usually in the realm of 10-20k pages, but that maximum size is soft, caused by database timeouts and the like. There is no hard limit on how large your watchlist can be. Izno (talk) 22:28, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I've got 27,461 on mine. DuncanHill (talk) 22:37, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I reached about 24,000 before I decided to cut it down. It wasn't that the watchlist itself was failing, but that Special:EditWatchlist always timed out and Special:EditWatchlist/raw took an annoyingly-long time to (i) load; (ii) allow me to edit (even going to the bottom and typing one more row was slow); (iii) save the changes. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:03, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I've been steadily trimming mine since I hit 25,000... DuncanHill (talk) 23:05, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

25,000.... jeez! — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 10:21, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@GoodDay watch that you aren't setting 'temporary' watches when you don't mean to. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:43, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll try to be more careful. It's quite possible that I have been accidently hitting a wrong button. GoodDay (talk) 22:45, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I used to have this problem of mysterious disappearances from my Watchlist, and I'm 98% convinced, via Occam's Razor, that it was human error on my part. I'm a big fan of rapidly hitting Tab-(type edit summary)-Tab-Tab-Tab-Tab-Enter to save an edit, and sometimes, if one of the Tab presses doesn't register, or if I hit a stray key along the way, I end up de-selecting the "Watch this page" checkbox. YMMV. Some people make a habit of saving the entire contents of their raw Watchlist to a user subpage every once in a while, just in case weird stuff like this happens. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:54, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Memory leaks

Am I alone in experiencing severe memory leaks with Wikipedia? I have a few tabs open; they start out using 100-200MB of RAM, but after they've been open for a few hours, each tab take anywhere from 1.7GB to 4.2GB of RAM. This is a consistent pattern I've experienced for months, using V2010, V22, all Betas enabled (i.e. 2017 wikitext), all Betas disabled (i.e. 2010 wikitext), all non-default gadgets turned off, and a clean common.js file. This memory ballooning applies to articles in edit mode, or articles I'm just reading.

It's excruciating, because my SSD is completely being trashed, with consistently 40GB of swap just because of Wikipedia (and that's with only a dozen tabs open, no other app running). My SSD's going to die within less than half its expected lifetime if this isn't fixed. Chrome's "Memory" Dev Tool says the tabs' JS heaps only take 20MB, so I don't know how to diagnose this any further. DFlhb (talk) 11:35, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@DFlhb: You might find this phabricator task helpful (doesn't appear to be any solutions mentioned there, though). It may also be worth adding a comment to that task, iff the symptoms described there match what you're experiencing. Please be sure to include as much information as possible if you do — namely your browser/operating system (and versions) — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 12:29, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Done, thanks. DFlhb (talk) 13:02, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Tool to one click copy to clipboard?

has there been a tool (any userscript or gadget?) to format some text for easy copying? something visually like this:

abcd

Copy to clipboard

i note this has been asked long ago: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_94#Copying_pro-forma_templates Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_110#Link_to_copy_page_content_to_clipboard?. RZuo (talk) 14:28, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@RZuo nothing widespread, problem is that in most cases what this would need is to wrap the text to be copied in some sort of identifier (like a span with a class), then run a script that looks for that, generates the button, and does the copy. So why is this a problem? Because it won't work for anyone not running the script, and it won't work unless the text is marked up (which would also only be useful for people running the script). If it was for a unique case (like a single page of marked up things, the page could be loaded with an onclick script. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:50, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

"why is this a problem? Because it won't work for anyone not running the script..."

that's the same for any gadget not enabled by default.

anyway, i asked just in case i reinvent the wheel. thx for the assurance. i'll go try figuring this out with my limited coding skills. XD --RZuo (talk) 10:35, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

@RZuo, why do you want to do that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:13, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

because i want to easily copy a whole chunk of text? without manually selecting it with my cursor and then pressing ctrl+c? a template that has to be copypasted often? just like what other users that had asked the same question before would want to do? RZuo (talk) 12:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@RZuo: I've created User:Nardog/CopyCodeBlock. It adds a copy button at the top right corner of each code block that is only visible while the mouse is inside the block. Nardog (talk) 12:59, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Issue with Interstate 74 in North Carolina map

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T334187

It seems that something is causing Data:Interstate 74 in North Carolina.map to crash and leave the text "Map" on Interstate 74 in North Carolina and the map on List of Interstate Highways in North Carolina which uses the same data file as well. DiscoA340 (talk) 04:15, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Opening the image directly gives: "Cannot read property '1' of undefined". Checking what I can find. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:18, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

This data has a feature that is of the type GeometryCollection. GeometryCollections are rather rare and behave somewhat different from other features, so I expect that recent work introduced a bug here. I'll file a ticket. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:32, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

@TheDJ Thank you, keep me posted. DiscoA340 (talk) 01:29, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Reconstructing magic TOC

Would anyone be interested in reconstructing magic _ _TOC__ so that level2 headings create new columns?
The output would look like this, done manually just as an example, excuse the greek).
I would like to do it, but I don't know programming. Perhaps, not so useful for encylopaediae, but for dictionaries -with repetitive standard headings-, extremely suitable. Thank you!! from el.wiktionary Sarri.greek (talk) 04:26, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Toolforge database downtime starting soon

ToolsDB is going read-only starting in about a half hour from now (1700Z). The outage is expected to last about an hour. More details here. I don't know exactly what tools use the database, but I would expect to see a lot of tools and bots not working properly during this time. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:31, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

@Xaosflux maybe you could do another watchlist message? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:33, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

@RoySmith I put it back, but reused the last cookie, not bothering with an edit notice here yet either. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:38, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Is that why my watchlist is screwed up? It's not marking changes as seen.Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:04, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T333471

This is completed. The tech folks have requested that if you see any problems, add a comment to T333471 or ask in #wikimedia-cloud. @Rja13ww33 my guess is this wouldn't have affected your watchlist, as it doesn't (as far as I know!) use ToolsDB. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:17, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I figured it was connected because it started today. I will ask around.Rja13ww33 (talk) 18:23, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Disappearing edit taskbars

I recently updated my preferences, and don't recall everything I added. I did an edit and there were no taskbars above or below the edit window. I suspect that I turned on a gadget that is incompatible with the taskbars. I need advice on how to proceed. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Can you report the content of you browser's JavaScript console as described in Wikipedia:Reporting JavaScript errors? Ruslik_Zero 20:27, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

is there any way to move footnote definitions out from inline but still in multiple places throughout an article?

Wiki markup is very difficult to read when the full text of footnotes (explanatory text and especially dense blocks of citation metadata) is included inline in paragraphs of prose. If citation templates are written compactly without line breaks they create a kind of "wall" of dense syntax which adds visual clutter and is hard to read and makes the surrounding paragraph also hard to read, while if the templates are fully expanded with a line for each parameter they take up a ridiculous amount of space, also making the paragraph very difficult to read. So for long articles I sometimes like to move the footnotes down to the <references>...</references> tag or {{reflist |refs=...}} template at the bottom of the page, to help clean up the source markup.

This has the advantage of making the markup much more legible and also separating all of the footnote contents making them easier to compare or modify systematically. However, it also has some downsides: It splits the footnote content (sometimes very) far from the paragraphs where they are referenced, it makes the footnotes not appear when a single section is being edited/previewed, and sometimes requires making an edit to a whole page instead of a single section or splitting one edit into two pieces, one to the body copy and another to the footnote content. Such separation also doesn’t tend to last, as other editors will (perfectly reasonably) afterward go on adding citations/notes defined inline.

Is there any compromise method, a way to define footnotes outside of a paragraph but still within the same section? That is, some way of defining <ref name=foo> elements which defines but does not directly display a numbered superscript link? (Perhaps the ref tags could be wrapped in some other template?) –jacobolus (t) 21:18, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

No. Izno (talk) 21:29, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Is there any way such a feature could ever be implemented using some kind of template magic? (Or barring that, by adding a feature to Mediawiki?) It seems like it would be very helpful. –jacobolus (t) 21:43, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

No, template magic can not be used.

Many things can possibly be added to MediaWiki. This is not the thing I'd want a programmer to spend time on, but it is open source, so if someone wants it and can convince the relevant component's maintainer that it is valuable, then it will get merged and deployed. Izno (talk) 21:57, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

@Jacobolus, I suggest that you try the visual editor (works like Google Docs/Microsoft Office), and if you want to work in wikitext, have you tried the colored syntax highlighting? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:16, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I definitely do not want to use the visual editor. Thanks though. –jacobolus (t) 22:21, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

In that case, you might find that syntax highlighting (look in the toolbar for something that looks like a highlighter marker) helps, because you can more easily see which things are text and which things are formatting. I understand that it's possible to set custom colors, e.g., if you wanted to make something very light colored. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Fancy formatting

So I made this simple template: Template:Registered editors by edit count. The table has since been expanded by others. One of the editorial decisions that we had to make was whether to base the percentages on {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} or on the number of users who have ever successfully saved an edit. I went with the magic word, but now I want to complexify the template by having a sort of magic display/tab/collapse something, so you would normally see these numbers, but if you click on the <magic something>, then it would show you a different table, with the percentages based on the number of successful editors, rather than the number of successful account registers. I'm looking for a magic solution because I don't want the viewer to have to wait for the page to reload.

So you would normally get:

Registered editors by edit count

If you have made...	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
0 edits	–	45,000,000 registered accounts	–
1 edit	top 30% of registered accounts	top 12,000,000 of registered accounts	70% of registered accounts

but when you click the magic something, you would then see something like this instead:

Registered editors by edit count

If you have made...	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
1 edit	–	top 12,000,000 successful editors	–
3 edits	top 50% of editors	top 6,000,000 of all editors	50% of all editors

Can anyone recommend a good way to do that? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

This can either be done with a second template/page or it can be done in JavaScript, and the latter would take work.

Alternatively, I don't really see why you don't just put the successful editors version in the same table in 3 more columns. Izno (talk) 22:44, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

The only way I can think of to do this with CSS and without Javascript requires using an HTML input element, which isn't supported within wikitext, so it would require implementation via an extension. Using Javascript would of course require it to be loaded, either by default or through a special link. I agree that the easiest thing to do is to just add more columns or have both tables, one below the other. isaacl (talk) 22:52, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I suppose that, in the "one below the other" approach, the tables could be wrapped in collapse templates (one defaultly open and the other defaultly closed). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:02, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

PrimeHunter has helpfully pointed out that the requisite Javascript code is already being loaded on English Wikipedia, so the difference is just what type of user interface seems best. isaacl (talk) 04:23, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

{{Switcher}} is based on User:Jackmcbarn/switcher. It can be used on other things than images. It's tricky to pass a table in a template parameter so I didn't use the template below. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Registered editors by edit count

If you have made...	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
0 edits	–	45,000,000 registered accounts	–
1 edit	top 30% of registered accounts	top 12,000,000 of registered accounts	70% of registered accounts

Registered editors by edit count

If you have made...	then you rank in the...	or the...	That's more than...
1 edit	–	top 12,000,000 successful editors	–
3 edits	top 50% of editors	top 6,000,000 of all editors	50% of all editors

A new user-talk page got double-saved when it shouldn't...

...a minor inconvenience for someone who's experienced that problem on-and-off on Miraheze. (Specifically, User talk:Juustila from just a few minutes ago, posted via WP:Twinkle.) Can the second edit be deleted as a duplicate of the first? (Contributing here with Microsoft Edge through laptop.) --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 23:44, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

@Slgrandson, the second edit replaced the first because it was one minute later, so the signature timestamp was slightly different. I don't see the problem with just leaving as it is. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:41, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Diff. If it had been registered in the same minute it would have been a null edit and not be logged anywhere. The revision numbers are 39 apart. There were 87 edits ([12] to [13]) in the minute of the first save. That indicates around 27 seconds between the two saves. I guess there were connection issues or other lag and Twinkle retried the edit but the first one actually saved. I don't see reason to delete the edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:14, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Watchlist.

Starting today my watch list is acting screwy. Normally it has dots next to edits I haven't looked at.....but that is (now) there regardless if I have looked at the edit or not.....it doesn't differentiate between edits you have/haven't looked at. And also normally a option is there saying something like "Mark all changes as seen". But that isn't there anymore. Anyone know what is going on? Thanks.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:20, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@Rja13ww33: you wouldn't happen to be using an old (e.g. Internet Explorer) web browser would you..? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 01:25, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, a older version of Google chrome. (Not to mention the fact I am still on Windows 7.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:28, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

You might be affected by this recent change — support for ES5 has recently been dropped. You may need to update to a supported browser — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 01:35, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I figured it was something like that.Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:37, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Modern Firefox (current version 111) still supports Windows 7, though it needs Microsoft security update KB4474419. Chrome 109, released a few months ago, also supports it, but is the last version to do so. I'd recommend upgrading; I can't see a reason to use an old version of Chrome of all browsers. (Firefox has some cliffs here and there that would make natural cutoffs like Firefox 56.) Izno (talk) 01:47, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I should probably upgrade. I still use a older version of windows based on a (work) program I use....but that shouldn't stop me from getting a newer browser.Rja13ww33 (talk) 02:02, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Coordinates on Barton Broad

I am experiencing difficulties with the coordinates for Barton Broad. If they are placed at the bottom of the article, the "Infobox park" at the top of the article shows a map with a red area indicating the outline of the Barton Broad nature reserve. If I place the coordinates in the infobox, however, the red area disappears. I have tried playing around with the parameters to coord, but with no success. I am aware that placing the coords in the infobox works for some articles (eg Hainault Depot), although that uses an "Infobox Railway Depot" rather than the park variety. Can anyone explain what is going on, please, and is there a way to fix it? For the moment, I have commented out the coords in the infobox. Bob1960evens (talk) 13:26, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Adding |mapframe-wikidata=yes and fixing the coordinates seems to have done the trick. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:34, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Enabling next and previous buttons in overflow-x:auto

Is it feasible to create a table encapsulated in "div style=overflow-x:auto" to have previous and next buttons like in this example? Qwerty284651 (talk) 01:33, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

No. Izno (talk) 01:41, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

@Izno, well, that settles that. 😅 Qwerty284651 (talk) 12:56, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Possible issue with Visual Editor

I know that there are limitations with Visual Editor and templates but I've started to notice it acting weird on a few specifically. If you edit certain templates with Visual Editor, it will most of time, mess up the parameter spacing and hidden comments that may also be in the template. Below are the templates which are effected by this (there may be more but these are the one I've used the most).

Template:Infobox settlement: Removes parameter spacing; messes up hidden comments (Example).

Template:Infobox U.S. county: Same thing as above (likely the same for Template:Infobox U.S. state).

Template:Jct: How the template is viewed in VE mode means the parameter order get reversed (Example).

Template:US Census population: May mess up the parameter spacing (Example).

Other: If imputing bullet points manually, user can create multiple different bullet "charts" which don't merge into a single "chart" (Example).

To my best knowledge, these issues don't hurt the contents of the template if in "Read" mode (expect for the bullet point issue), but it does mess up the template layout which could be a problem for other users. I'm concerned that, due to the nature of the issue and amount of bytes it add/removes, Wikipedia might incorrectly ping newer users edits as vandalism and led to edit reverts or bans (which is unfair since many don't know). I've tried to minimize using VE with templates now but I've seen many others who use VE and unintentionally mess up the template(s). All in all, not an immediate concern, but it might be good to investigate the issue in the future. Thank you for your time; have a good day. DiscoA340 (talk) 23:15, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

VisualEditor is disabled in template space as mentioned at Wikipedia:VisualEditor#Limitations. All your examples were made in userspace which is more used for other things so VisualEditor shouldn't be disabled there. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:36, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter I recreated said issues there so I wouldn't bother editors but I can give examples on regular articles if that's necessary. DiscoA340 (talk) 23:44, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Infobox settlement is due to this recentish edit, and only changes the whitespace. Similarly for an even earlier edit on US census (harder to see, but it does make clear that it is a block-formatted template, which is what causes the whitespace adjustment).

Infobox US county does not have any TemplateData. Do you have an actual diff?

I do not see what you mean about Jct. Additionally, it also does not have TemplateData, so it will mostly default to whatever parameters you put in. Izno (talk) 23:57, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

@Izno My apologies, Template:Infobox U.S. county is fine with spacing but doesn't create a new line for each new parameter added (Example). U.S. State seems to be fine on second thought; Jct is also fine (must've been something with my edits, oh well). DiscoA340 (talk) 00:14, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok, so infobox US county will do that because there is no TemplateData, which means it defaults to inline formatting. Izno (talk) 00:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Home for Podcast RSS Feed of Spoken Articles

I recently wrote a python script that parses Wikipedia:Spoken articles into a podcast RSS feed, currently published at https://wcast.me/sw (paste that into your podcast app and check it out! ) with MIT-licensed source code at https://github.com/xenotropic/spoken-wikipedia-rss (Open an issue if it doesn't work with your app). I created it to use personally, but it also just to fill an apparent hole. Wikipedia has 1600+ recordings of articles in English, and podcast RSS is the main way people look for audio in the world these days, for good reasons (showing the list, download management, keeping track of what one listened to).

My question is: does it make sense for that RSS file to be hosted on Wikipedia somewhere? I don't mind hosting the RSS file, but neither do I really want to. There is an apparent logic that Wikipedia would host an index of its own content; there are various other RSS feeds that Wikipedia publishes. It also would be nice if the RSS feed could not be buried in "external links" at the bottom of whatever pages where it is referred to.

If so, how would I go about this? Is this a sensible thing to make a bot out of? So something that runs on my server but writes a file to wikipedia or commons? (Are there examples of bots that write RSS to Wikipedia? Or even of RSS being hosted/updated like that on Wikipedia? Might be MIME-type issues). Or is there some method by which I could propose that Wikipedia itself "adopt" the code and just run it internally? It's a single python file with 200 lines of code, so not a huge thing to review. The main dependency is on the structure of the Spoken Articles page itself, but that seems fairly stable. morrisjm (talk) 01:03, 9 April 2023 (UTC)