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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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Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical)

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Saving user preferences

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. Longhorncowfish (talk) 20:32, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Try accessing Special:Preferences and saving the preferences with JavaScript off (google how to turn it off, it depends on browser). Nardog (talk) 02:45, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or try another browser or device. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:23, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried on both iPhone and laptop and it doesn’t work :( Longhorncowfish (talk) 01:59, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot do that on my current device, but I will try when possible Longhorncowfish (talk) 02:00, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is supposed to happen at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-personal in desktop:

The Save button is grey
Click once in the box at "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed"
The box changes state between empty white and blue with checkmark.
The Save button is now blue
Click the Save button
The Save button is now grey
"Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" still has the new setting
If you leave preferences and come back then it still has the new setting

If it's different for you then at which step? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:20, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The button never goes gray. If I click it nothing happens Longhorncowfish (talk) 03:35, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not even a page reload? Nardog (talk) 06:16, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@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 Tab ↹ until the Save button is marked and then ↵ Enter? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:25, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Running counter for figures, equations, linguistic examples, and so forth?

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 As shown in <eqn name = "LEM"/> would produce text like As shown in Equation 3. These numbers would automatically update if equations were added or removed from the article.

As noted by Uanfala (talk · contribs) 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? Botterweg14 (talk) 17:58, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also gonna ping @Colin M: and @Biktor627:, who both edit in topic areas where this functionality would be useful. Botterweg14 (talk) 18:03, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Botterweg14: Automatic numbering is not possible. See Help:Displaying a formula#Equation numbering for a system with manual numbering. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:55, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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? Botterweg14 (talk) 14:53, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@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. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:15, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, and there's no way this could be floated on top of the pre-existing architecture used by <ref>? Botterweg14 (talk) 20:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Johnuniq (talk) 02:14, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Module redirects and {{R from move}}

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 {{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 {{R from move}} is added to the module redirect (or, more accurately, to an WP:includeonly block in its doc page) after a move. Nickps (talk) 22:24, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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 {{R from move}}. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:48, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You make some good points. Especially the technical feasibility was the reason why I wasn't really hoping that my proposal would be accepted.

I'll note however that I personally don't agree that creating a separate page just to add rcats is an unnecessary waste. Per WP:RCAT: Normal ("hard") redirects should be placed in one of several 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. Nickps (talk) 01:00, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing. Consider 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 added

{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|Module:Adjacent stations/HSL|{{Rcat shell|{{R from subpage}}{{R to subpage}}{{R from short name}}}}}}

to Module:Adjacent stations/Helsinki commuter rail/doc. ~~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~~. Nickps (talk) 16:37, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lua error

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. Johnj1995 (talk) 15:31, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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? * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:35, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I currently get 240 hits on "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. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:12, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:18, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't seen a live example of the error but the above search shows it at this in Serom (state constituency):

{{cite news
| title             = Johor 14th General Election Malaysia (GE14 / PRU14)
| work              = [[The Star (Malaysia)|The Star]]
| publication-place = [[Petaling Jaya]]
| date              = 23 March 2019
| url               = https://election.thestar.com.my/johor.html
| archive-url       = https://web.archive.org/web/20180511081855/https://election.thestar.com.my/johor.html
| archive-date      = 11 May 2018
| url-status          = live
| access-date       = 16 April 2019
}}

It currently produces:

"Johor 14th General Election Malaysia (GE14 / PRU14)". The Star. Petaling Jaya. 23 March 2019. Archived from the original on 11 May 2018. Retrieved 16 April 2019.

None of the used modules and templates have been edited recently so the cause was something else this time. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:54, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Might it be possible to make the edits in such a way that this doesn't happen? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 22:38, 5 July 2024 (UTC).[reply]

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. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:57, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MW Dark Mode bug when Software notices shown on page

Light mode footer appears when a software notice is shown above. [logged out]

Dark mode footer (normal behaviour) appears when software notice is dismissed and page refreshed (or notice not shown at all). [logged out]

Dark mode footer appears even when software notice is shown on Commons Main Page. [logged in]

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.

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! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 17:47, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@CX Zoom Hi, looks like it was just an issue with that Bangla Wiktionary centralnotice banner. I've 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. Peter Coombe (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 5 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 15:25, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article preview showing completely different article

The page preview, which for some reason links to a different article

The article itself, which shows that the page previewer is jacked up

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 :) Sir MemeGod ._. (talk - contribs - created articles) 03:32, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I failed to reproduce the problem. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:17, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It just fixed itself. That is the weirdest thing. Sir MemeGod ._. (talk - contribs - created articles) 05:20, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sir MemeGod ._. (talk - contribs - created articles) 05:23, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:03, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Home Lander (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

absent section links & popups

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, This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, moved or renamed. [sic] 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? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 04:49, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

mw:Extension:DiscussionTools. Just curious, why "[sic]"? Nardog (talk) 04:56, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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 {{sic}} to denote that the missing serial comma was original to the popup, and not a mistake on my part.) — Fourthords | =Λ= | 10:28, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's a MediaWiki feature that has existed for several weeks. The HTML is

<div class="mw-notification-area-overlay">
  <div class="mw-notification-area mw-notification-area-layout" id="mw-notification-area" style="">
    <div role="status" class="mw-notification mw-notification-noautohide mw-notification-type-warn mw-notification-visible">
      <div class="mw-notification-content">This topic could not be found. It might have been deleted, moved or renamed.</div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

and it's right at the end of the HTML source that is served to your browser. The same <div class="mw-notification-area-overlay">...</div> is used to contain the "Your edit was published." message that you get when you save an edit, also some other messages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how to remove only this message. This in your CSS removes all mw-notification-area-overlay:

.mw-notification-area-overlay {display:none;}

This in your common JavaScript only works if it runs after the popup has appeared but it normally runs before:

$('.mw-notification-area-overlay:contains("This topic could not be found")').hide()

PrimeHunter (talk) 14:21, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. @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:

#mw-notification-area:has(div.mw-notification-noautohide.mw-notification-type-warn) {
  display: none;
}

which goes in your CSS. The selector might be overspecific. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:12, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 18:09, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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). Nardog (talk) 04:09, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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 <p>. We can use this to hide both and then unhide the wanted:

#mw-notification-area:has(div.mw-notification-noautohide.mw-notification-type-warn) {
  display: none;
}
#mw-notification-area:has(div.mw-notification-noautohide.mw-notification-type-warn p) {
  display: inline;
}

PrimeHunter (talk) 09:32, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@PrimeHunter: Which two messages have the same classes and id's? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:26, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The "This topic could not be found..." popups on WP:ANI#Pizza and WP:VPT#Heading markup changes. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:05, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unseen search box

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.) Kdammers (talk) 03:48, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If I zoom in 175% it turns into a magnifying glass symbol, which I can then click to display the searchbox. – 2804:F1...04:60E (talk) 04:06, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kdammers: See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#Search box and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#Bugs persisting after last week. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:23, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

POTY (Picture of the Year) competition needs help!

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.

Check out the Discussions here commons:Commons_talk:Picture_of_the_Year and here User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Wikimedia_Commons_POTY. @Tacsipacsi has helped out with fixing some issues with code.

Volunteers familiar with Rust, JavaScript, wikitext and SQL are needed. Links to scripts: [1] and [2]. Please help out if you can.•Shawnqual• 📚 • 💭 23:22, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fixing the random article buttons on each level in vital articles

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. Interstellarity (talk) 13:40, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like that uses the RandomInCategory tool, which is maintained by Ahecht. --rchard2scout (talk) 15:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Interstellarity, Rchard2scout: Thanks for the ping. I'll look into that later when I have access to my home computer. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:06, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Interstellarity, 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. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:03, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ahecht: Thank you for fixing it. Interstellarity (talk) 00:43, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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MediaWiki message delivery 21:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How are repeated references numbered?

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? RoySmith (talk) 15:49, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@RoySmith See Bijective numeration#The bijective base-26 system. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:57, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here is some quick python code to do the conversion:

def bijectiveHexavigesimal(n):
  outStr = ''
  while n != 0:
    outStr = chr((n - 1) % 26 + 97) + outStr
    n = (n - 1) / 26
  return outStr

--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(for the archives: this takes 1-based numbers, and the "/" should be "//" for Python-3) — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoySmith (talk • contribs) 17:36, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm curious, why do you want to generate reference numbers? Legoktm (talk) 16:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Ahecht Cool, thanks!

@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 the current version of Oceanic whitetip shark), it might tell you that 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 <sup id="cite_ref-FAO_6-10"> but I don't want to show that gibberish to the user.

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. RoySmith (talk) 16:33, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:19, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Matma Rex talk 19:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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? -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 19:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This edit from 2010: [3] refers to List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War, which is today mercifully a list of lists, but the 2010 version: [4] re-used a reference a cool 1037 times. Matma Rex talk 19:25, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, my RoySmith (talk) 20:39, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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 the previous record holder. Graham87 (talk) 03:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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 list-defined references. I'd 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. Graham87 (talk) 03:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What actually happens when someone adds more repeated refs than the list provides for? -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 07:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See the end of User:Graham87/sandbox30, which apparently answers your question; in this case it says "[[#cite_ref-test_1-2054|]]" 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 powers of two. Graham87 (talk) 09:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I need help!

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? Huldra (talk) 21:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's an unclosed . Indagate (talk) 21:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Indagate; thanks! It worked! Huldra (talk) 21:20, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Huldra: How did you make the original post? You were supposed to write {{subst:alert/first|a-i}} per Template:Contentious topics/alert/first#Usage, but that should automatically include the closing --> with no way to delete it in the same post. Did you instead try to copy-paste the message from another page? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@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), Huldra (talk) 21:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dark mode for logged-in users on desktop coming this week!

Hey, this is a continuation of the topic "Dark mode for logged-out users coming soon", specifically about desktop (the Vector 2022 skin).

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!

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! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): What do you mean by "We are going to"? I thought it was enabled for logged-in users already? Nardog (talk) 06:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It was only Logged in users with the beta option enabled before. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. Does it mean "Accessibility for Reading" will no longer be a beta feature, or just the dark mode? Nardog (talk) 07:38, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, exactly. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 11:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Yes, what? That was not a polar question. Nardog (talk) 11:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry, I wanted to give a quick answer and misread :D Dark mode will no longer be a beta feature. ~~Font size control will continue to be a beta feature.~~ SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What happens to people (like me) who don't use Vector? Will dark mode still be available in MonoBook? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nigel Ish (talk • contribs)

Dark mode is supported only in Minerva and Vector 2022. Izno (talk) 21:30, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So the existing dark mode (that does work in MonoBook) will stop working. Wonderful.Nigel Ish (talk) 21:43, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If by "existing dark mode that does work in Monobook" you mean the gadget? No, that will continue to function. Izno (talk) 21:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. — Amakuru (talk) 21:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Victoria (tk) 21:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Viriditas (talk) 22:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Victoria (tk) 22:37, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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." Viriditas (talk) 22:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is true which is exactly why I'm unable to upload the screenshots. This is very very bad. Victoria (tk) 22:53, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Makes me wonder why nobody else is reporting it or is the least bit concerned. I've got a brand new computer as well. Viriditas (talk) 22:57, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I switched to Vector legacy in preferences as a workaround. Viriditas (talk) 23:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey there! I've added this to our 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).

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. Jon (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi 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. Victoria (tk) 23:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Viriditas (talk) 23:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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)

A few questions which will help us get to the bottom of this:

In legacy Vector are you seeing the dark mode gadget toggle in the top right?
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?

Jon (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In legacy Vector are you seeing the dark mode gadget toggle in the top right?

No.

If you enable Vector 2022, do you see the message "You're using a dark mode gadget".

No, unless I'm missing it. How do I fix dark-mode-toggle-pagestyles, if that is the problem? Viriditas (talk) 23:26, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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, Jon (WMF), I sent an email with screenshots, but it's now irrelevant. Victoria (tk) 23:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. Viriditas (talk) 00:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, Victoria is right, that worked. I had to change appearance > color to "light". Problem solved. Viriditas (talk) 00:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Did footnote popup CSS just change?

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).

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.

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.)

–jacobolus (t) 05:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's MediaWiki talk:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js#Update request 9 July 2024, and ‎JWBTH is on it. Nardog (talk) 06:27, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! –jacobolus (t) 06:52, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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 #mw-teleport-target as the wrapper for the tooltip. Jack who built the house (talk) 07:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Problematic page previews

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. — Jts1882 | talk 09:19, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They look fine in mw:Page Previews. The problems are in Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:43, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Examining old revisions of E. O. Wilson, Popups failed on [5] which inserted  in January 2023 and made Popups only display }}. 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 }} instead of empty when the brackets were correctly balanced. Anyway, I removed the obsolete comment [6] 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 window.popupMaxPreviewCharacters = 6000; in your common JavaScript. It still only gives "Fiji ( , ; " with 5000 so the default 600 is far from reaching a good result here. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:59, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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. — Jts1882 | talk 12:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Custom formats of TemplateData

I have a question concerning the custom formatting options of TemplateData, specifically for {{Episode table}}.

I noticed that when editors edit this particular template in Visual Editor, VE would remove all the spacing between the parameters. To fix this, I 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 removal of just the spacing after the last parameter, which I then need to restore manually.

In these examples linked, every other parameter declaration and value for {{Episode table}} can be displayed inline; however, |episodes= spans multiple lines, and its value should begin on the line after the parameter declaration.

My question is: how can I add spacing to the custom formatting for just the last parameter, to prevent this sort of removal? -- Alex_21_TALK 10:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is not possible. Izno (talk) 21:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Category/template redirect problems

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. Timrollpickering (talk) 10:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@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. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2022 FIBA U18 Women's Asian Championship

Please create the following redirect:

2022 FIBA U18 Women's Asian Championship → 2022 FIBA Under-18 Women's Asian Championship

I was going to do it myself, but this redirect page is fully protected. Thanks, Maiō T. (talk) 14:12, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Different kind of redlinked category problem

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features a redlinked Category: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".

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. Bearcat (talk) 14:52, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This came from Wikidata not being properly updated after the move, which I've now fixed. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:59, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, OK. Great, thanks much! Bearcat (talk) 15:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does dark mode give you the Willys 77

Thanks for giving Wikipedia a dark mode option! The settings page says Experimental version, high likelihood of experiencing issues--am i being helpful if i say i think i've found one?

^{Do we have (or should we have) a central thread where all of the discussions about the launch of dark mode should be in one place?}

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:

reload the page,
close and reopen the tab,
open a new tab and type the URL into the address bar,
create a new link to that page (as in this post) and use that to open the page,
change settings back and forth a few times,
or retry the methods listed here, but in a different order.

Additionally, Wikipedia:Help desk is mostly dark. i'm not sure if it's the same issue mentioned here, but this part:

^{Welcome...
(Am I in the right place?)...
For other types of questions...
Do not provide your email...
New editors may prefer the Teahouse...
[Ask a question]
show/hide Wikipedia help pages}

this part stays white.

Wishing everyone safe, happy, productive editing.

--173.67.42.107 (talk) 22:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Willys 77 turned black. --173.67.42.107 (talk) 23:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, thank you for reaching out here! I'm glad to see that the article turned black. It always takes a few days for new changes to be propagated across all pages because of caching. When we started running banners inviting logged-out users to switch to dark mode, the cache of just a few percent of the articles wasn't refreshed.

When it comes to the Help desk, I'm sure English Wikipedians will soon fix it. It is challenging, though. There are so many pages formatted with the assumption that the only mode is light, and there's a lot of special formatting on non-article pages. But reports like yours help technical editors prioritize their work.

Thanks again, for pointing at these issues, for your patience (so many steps to solve the problem of the persisting light mode), and kind words! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 400: / Line 400: @@
 :''[[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)
+::Hello, thank you for reaching out here! I'm glad to see that the article turned black. It always takes a few days for new changes to be propagated across all pages because of caching. When we started running banners inviting logged-out users to switch to dark mode, the cache of just a few percent of the articles wasn't refreshed.
+::When it comes to the Help desk, I'm sure English Wikipedians will soon fix it. It is challenging, though. There are so many pages formatted with the assumption that the only mode is light, and there's a lot of special formatting on non-article pages. But reports like yours help technical editors prioritize their work.
+::Thanks again, for pointing at these issues, for your patience (so many steps to solve the problem of the persisting light mode), and kind words! [[User:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|SGrabarczuk (WMF)]] ([[User talk:SGrabarczuk (WMF)|talk]]) 00:32, 11 July 2024 (UTC)