:{{replyto|Akld guy}} Anyone can [[WP:PURGE]] a page, it doesn't need any rights, even for protected pages. Logged-out users merely get an extra confirmation step. --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 11:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
:{{replyto|Akld guy}} Anyone can [[WP:PURGE]] a page, it doesn't need any rights, even for protected pages. Logged-out users merely get an extra confirmation step. --[[User:Redrose64|<span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>rose64]] ([[User talk:Redrose64|talk]]) 11:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
::{{replyto|Redrose64}} The script error is rampant on the page for LOUIS FERREIRA. I checked out the fixes you suggested and unfortunately I don't understand how to do ANY of them. I'm not a technical person and have only recently begun to contribute to Wikipedia. It took me 3 hours just to find this post (and I'm so glad I did!) Is there a way to explain the purging to a simpleton like me? I need to fix the page ASAP since I have just obtained legal permission to upload a copyrighted photo and I need the page to work properly. Please help. I'd be forever grateful. Thank you so much for your time to read this![[User:Bczogalla|Bczogalla]] ([[User talk:Bczogalla|talk]]) 02:22, 28 August 2015 (UTC)Bczogalla
::{{replyto|Redrose64}} The script error is rampant on the page for LOUIS FERREIRA. I checked out the fixes you suggested and unfortunately I don't understand how to do ANY of them. I'm not a technical person and have only recently begun to contribute to Wikipedia. It took me 3 hours just to find this post (and I'm so glad I did!) Is there a way to explain the purging to a simpleton like me? I need to fix the page ASAP since I have just obtained legal permission to upload a copyrighted photo and I need the page to work properly. Please help. I'd be forever grateful. Thank you so much for your time to read this![[User:Bczogalla|Bczogalla]] ([[User talk:Bczogalla|talk]]) 02:22, 28 August 2015 (UTC)Bczogalla
::{{replyto|Redrose64}} Hi, I was just told to do this: Purge cache by adding ?action=purge to the URL of the page and hit enter. It totally worked!! [[User:Bczogalla|Bczogalla]] ([[User talk:Bczogalla|talk]]) 02:33, 28 August 2015 (UTC)Bczogalla
:::{{ping|Redrose64}} Thank you. I hadn't realised that Purging was open to all. [[User:Akld guy|Akld guy]] ([[User talk:Akld guy|talk]]) 11:42, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
:::{{ping|Redrose64}} Thank you. I hadn't realised that Purging was open to all. [[User:Akld guy|Akld guy]] ([[User talk:Akld guy|talk]]) 11:42, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.
No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.
No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.
If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.
If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.
If I leave a message for an anonymous editor, by creating a new section on the talk page for the IP that edited an article, how will they see the message that I write? When I'm not logged in, I don't have links in the upper right for a user page, notification count, or talk page, so how will the not-signed-in editor know that someone is talking to them, and how will they get to their talk page? — Mudwater (Talk)17:54, 15 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Quiddity (WMF): Good morning. A post was made to an IP editor's talk page and removed by someone else two minutes later. When the IP editor switches on his machine and visits this website will he see the orange message bar - i.e. is its appearance contingent on the message being visible when he visits or does the bar remain activated until he visits regardless of what happens to the message in the meantime?
I was surprised recently when I turned on my computer and clicked on the orange bar to find that it was telling me about a message posted on the IP's talkpage in 2009. In fact that IP had never edited although somebody created a talk page with the 2009 post referring to a previous edit.
My second question is, I believe that if you type ping|12.34.56.78 with double curly brackets at either end (or whatever the IP number is) it will not register an alert - i.e. the only way to get the attention of an IP is to post on their talk page. Am I right? 86.143.23.178 (talk) 12:01, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. 1) Yes, the orange bar is technically simple, and appears whenever an edit is made to the talkpage. Reverting the edit (or otherwise removing the message) does not (afaik) nullify the orange bar. To remove the orange bar, someone using that IP has to visit the talkpage. 2) Correct, the Mentions feature does not work for IPs. Many IPs change owners frequently (Dynamic IP), also many IPs are shared (Shared IP address), so it's difficult to assume that anyone using that IP will consistently be the same individual. Hence, all messages need to be sent to a public location. Hope that helps (and was technically accurate!). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Seems 100% correct from my experience. I believe that, even if someone posts a usertalk message to the talkpage of 12.34.56.78 , and then a few minutes later another person reverts that post, the orange bar still appears (and likely says "messages from two users"). Not sure what happens if somebody posts a message, and then self-reverts. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 00:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is a different matter, but I've noticed that some talk pages in mainspace have a table of contents and some don't. How can a table of contents be generated if the talk page doesn't have one? Does the phrase _TOC_ which appears in the source of some talk pages have any significance? 81.157.95.160 (talk) 12:17, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The table out of the 8.0.2 part is completely whacked but I can't tell how to fix it because that particular table is extremely complex, and I'm in way over my head with this. hbdragon88 (talk) 01:15, 22 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I recently moved some pages, and I noticed that the moves are automatically marked by the software as minor edits. Specifically, the edit of the old page name is marked as "new" and the edit of the new page name is marked as minor. Both of these descriptions seem to me to be wrong. I think that the changing of the name of a page should, in the default, be considered something that editors might not consider automatically noncontroversial, and therefore should not be a minor edit. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:18, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On second thought, I do realize how marking the old page as "new" can make sense, in that it becomes a new redirect. However, I think the main point, about it not usually being a minor edit, remains a valid concern. --Tryptofish (talk) 02:11, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Every Wikipedia page has two unique identifiers: its name, and its Page ID (visible by clicking "Page information" in the left margin, it's in the fourth row). When you move a page, its name is altered but the Page ID is unchanged; a redirect is created (this action may be suppressed if an admin moves the page), and this redirect gets the old name of the moved page, but it can't be given the old Page ID as well, because those must be unique, and it stayed with the moved page. So it's given a fresh Page ID, and so the redir counts as a new page, hence the N marker. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:41, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
When an administrator protects a page or imports edits, a minor edit is also formed. These, like moves, are not counted in the server count. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 13:36, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Replying to a couple of editors in one comment, I agree with what Redrose64 just explained about N. I'm also not concerned here with page protection or other administrative tools. I continue to believe that it is a mistake to mark page name changes as minor. Help:Minor edit explains minor edits as those where the editor making the edit reasonably expects that no other editor would question or disagree with that edit. An edit that changes a pagename to a new pagename may occasionally fit this description (as when a spelling error is corrected), but usually such a move means that our readers will find the content under a new title, and the title change can potentially cause quite a large change in meaning. Thus I strongly disagree with Edokter, in that a move does indeed change content, and potentially in quite a conspicuous way. Some editors do not watchlist minor edits, and would miss such changes, even though they might very likely want to discuss it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:42, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good point about the log entry still being watchlist-visible. I think the idea of having it as a regular edit, but with a minor edit checkbox is an excellent idea. But it still disturbs me that, currently, someone can rename a WP:BLP to something that violates BLP, and yet have it shown as a minor edit. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Let's say hypothetically that there were to be a consensus to change Special:MovePage to default to a regular edit, and offer a checkbox if an editor wants to mark the move as a minor edit. How would the change be carried out? In other words, can it be done locally (at the English Wikipedia), or would it have to be requested at Wikimedia? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:02, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Anchors have been very unreliable lately when using redirects to article sections. For example: Grand Theft Auto V (re-release), Singles match, WP:NATURAL. They are mostly leaving me at the top of their targeted articles, instead of sending me down to the intended sections. It does work as expected after a few tries, but it's been a real inconvenience. Is anyone else experiencing this? Prefall05:59, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I can confirm this misbehavior on Firefox, but I usually see pages scrolled down too much and positioned past the actual anchor or section. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:00, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All those three redirects sent me to the right section in the first time, maybe I'm just lucky :) It could stay at the top of the page, if section name in target article is renamed and a) redirects aren't updated or b) {{anchor}} isn't used in target article. For usually see pages scrolled down too much - it happens if there is something in the page, that collapses. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 07:17, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm aware of the positioning issues with pages containing collapsible parts that are collapsed by default, but I've seen the misbehavior only recently on a few redirects I've never seen incorrectly positioned before. Can't recall the exact examples, unfortunately. — Dsimic (talk | contribs) 07:29, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Beta Features link works as intended for me, but the "WP:NATURAL" link up top leaves me at the top of its page. OS X, Chrome (only when logged in). Fine in Firefox. – czar14:29, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Has the use of shortcuts specifically linked to certain sections of policy/guideline pages been deprecated recently? I've noticed that some shortcuts that used to always work before are now redirecting to the main article. For example, WP:NOPIPE redirects to WP:PIPE, WP:RSCONTEXT redirects to WP:RS, etc. for me. I am just curious if this is a known bug or the problem is on my end, or if shortcuts like this are no longer to be used. - Marchjuly (talk) 01:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've been getting this too for the last several days. It isn't just projectspace shortcuts, it's section shortcuts on article pages. It doesn't scroll to the target area on pageload, but it works if I reload the page or execute the URL again. Chrome, OS X – czar01:34, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Reported in Phabricator now. Not likely a bug in Webkit, but possibly more visible due to different execution/timing paths of the scripts in both browsers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:10, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This has been an issue in Safari for years: when you go through a redirect, it "forgets" the #Section. (Thus my question to User:Prefall about Special:Preferences; that link takes you to the wrong page in Safari.) But I believe that the problem is new and somewhat different for Chrome.
I'm trying to edit the article "Bongaigaon". I want to correct a spelling error in the infobox - there is a reference to "Chilarai Indor Games Stadium" and I want to correct it to "Chilarai Indoor Games Stadium". When I preview, the following message appears at the top:
Warning:Bongaigaon is calling Template:Infobox settlement with more than one value for the "blank5_name_sec2" parameter. Only the last value provided will be used.
Warning:Bongaigaon is calling Template:Infobox settlement with more than one value for the "blank5_info_sec2" parameter. Only the last value provided will be used.
Is it possible to control this in the [[File:example.gif|thumb|foo]] markup? If not, is it technically possible to add the necessary code? Or is the only option to edit the source file? Do we have a template to tag files needing this modification? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits13:46, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In order: No. Presumably. Presently. Not that I know of.
Larger comment: The rationale for "keeping them short" is the "decorative" piece? That's obnoxious and quite out of line with how WP uses AGIFs. As for control functions, those might be valuable, but certainly need developer time. I would strongly advise against any mass editing of source files (or quite frankly, any editing in such a fashion); at least one AGIF I know of is a featured image both here and at Commons. --Izno (talk) 14:48, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Browser GIF controls were theoretical when it was written. There's a library that parses and renders with Canvas (a hack). Since the images are served from another domain the script won't work. Also, there's an extension to start and stop GIFs since Firefox dropped halting animation with ESC. That browser's progressing into irrelevance. A Chromium extension intercepts traffic to freeze GIF, with a reload to animate them again.
Additionally, I wrote a database report of GIF problems 2 years ago after finding a GIF with exploit code (then got banned for looking for warez in images). It lists non-looping animations, animations over 2 minutes, weird slowdowns, and frozen thumbnails. — Dispenser 00:19, 24 August 2015 (UTC) — Dispenser02:22, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What does duration have to do with something being "purely decorative" ? P.S. I recently wrote a proof of concept of a GIF 'player' https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/216538/ It's one of those things that's simple, but also much more work than you'd expect. There are so many ways in which you can add controls, and so many ways in which gifs are used on Wikipedia... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:37, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ah now I see. Please don't take w3 guidelines as holy grails. Our usages often go so much further then anyone ever thought of in a steering committee. Starting point should always be: "Does my usage match the usage that wcag designed this criteria for", not "how do I shove my usage into something that matches the criteria". —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:29, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
'working group' then. Same thing. And yes I'm intentionally trying to trivialize their importance, because often people take such standards and body's as a reason to stop thinking for themselves. However much like Wikipedia, they are a starting point, not the end station. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:34, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, if it were a video, then it would have a pause or stop control. But if it were a video, then it would also work on fewer computers. "Not working for people with older computers or the 'wrong' browsers" is also an accessibility issue.
Space between the lines in punctated lists is different in case of using * or :*. See s:sl:Glosa for example. I think the style (the view of the list) is "corrupted" because of that. --Janezdrilc (talk) 18:28, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You are mxing different types of lists, unordered and difinition lists. As each new list has some top margin, nesting a different type of list will show that top margin. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}}17:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed it for you. This is probably also a good time to remind people that when you reply to comments in talk-page discussions, that you should match the style of the comment above yours. The correct reply to "* Comment" is "** Reply", not "::Reply". WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Or more accurately, copy the existing combination of asterisks, colons and hashes, then add one symbol to the right of those. Thus, a *Comment may be replied to using either ** or *: but not :* or :: --Redrose64 (talk) 20:49, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Incorrect email notification - "A page you created was linked on Wikipedia"
User:MusikAnimal made a history merge of College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (with s in Unions) and College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. History merges can be complicated and it involved deleting and restoring revisions. It can be tricky to figure out which revisions were deleted and restored but [2] says "18 revisions restored", and there are currently 15 live edits before BattyBot. I guess there was a time during the process where BattyBot made the oldest visible edit in the page history, and that caused a notification. It's not perfect but it doesn't seem worth spending developer time on it. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yep! Special:MergeHistory couldn't do what I needed, so I ended up having to delete the target page, move the original to the new location, and selectively restore revisions. Sorry for the confusion, admittedly if I had done it correctly the first time around this wouldn't have happened — MusikAnimaltalk21:47, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Although a workaround was implemented 4 days ago, the problem is arising once again. I understand that this is an ongoing issue that will a have a proper fix delivered soon, but what has happened to the workaround? Is it a case of it working for those 8 hours and 8 hours only? On Chrome on Ubuntu 15.04, I am unable to see any images. When clicking on a link to an image file, I receive a 404 error. What is occurring? Thanks, My nameisnotdave (talk/contribs) 12:53, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. The 404 I get is a WMF 404 and not a browser generated one.
The "OCSP Stapling issue" mention above should be unrelated because this is about 404s not showing any OCSP related error messages. Not sure what's going on so I'm curious if other users face the same problem. :-( --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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
Disambiguation pages are now excluded from the random page function. [3]
Problems
There was a problem with CAPTCHAs in VisualEditor. This has now been fixed. [4]
Changes this week
The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 25. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from August 26. It will be on all Wikipedias from August 27 (calendar).
Meetings
You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on August 25 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
YouTube citation template and direction to the right YouTube channel
I have used video from the YouTube channel AfterBuzz TV in three articles, and I have used the Error:No page id specified on YouTube citation template in my ref tag to cite my source fully. Recently, I checked the citation to see if it directed me to the right YouTube channel. Instead of directing me to AfterBuzz TV's channel, the template directs me to AfterBuzz's channel. How can I correct the issue? SciGal (talk) 14:22, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, since a few days, I've noticed that in my Safari browser, many articles are suddenly displayed in a way which leaves references orphan (not the correct typographical term, "widow" would be more accurate, but still incorrect). Here is a typical display:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. [0]
I believe that so far, the reference could not go to the next line alone. This seems not to be happening only on en.wikipedia.org, but on other wikipedias, and it can be even more shocking on others. For instance, on fr.wikipedia.org, not only the reference can be displayed as orphan, but the final period too. In French typography, the reference comes before final period, so suddenly displays like these are happening:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet [0].
Or much worse, with the final period being displayed as orphan:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet[0]
.
Did something change which allowed display to break the association between reference and final period, and also between reference and last word? It seems so.
@Vincent Lextrait: Please give examples of pages where this is occurring. Also, does it occur on all refs, or only those that are close to the right-hand edge?
Examples will not work, it depends on the geometry of your screen. Just select randomly a few articles, and scroll to see references pushed alone to the next line. After 4/5 articles and a couple of minutes, you should see examples by yourself. The break directive I am using is completely unrelated to the problem. I am just using it to show you the rendering on the screen of bogus display of references. The cases I see are always on the right-hand edge, if they weren't, the reference would not be alone on the next line... Vincent Lextrait (talk) 22:31, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously, the reason Redrose64 asks is because they are not experiencing any problems with the elements you are referring to. Some CSS could conceivably have changed, but I don't find it surprising that characters close to the end of a line on the screen would be wrapped to the next line.--Anders Feder (talk) 23:00, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it. I believe anybody trying to look for it will find it quickly. I am not the only one reporting this, and there is no answer so far. Pushing references alone to the next line is not correct. Pushing a solitary period on the next line is not either. There is a (new) bug somewhere, probably due to some ill tested code, either at CSS level or at html generation level. I do not know where to reach the folks in charge. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 23:05, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
For periods, I agree that the preceding word should normally be wrapped as well. But it may prove difficult to debug as long as we can't reproduce it.--Anders Feder (talk) 23:17, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just for periods, the entire sequence word-period-reference is unbreakable (or on French wikipedia word-reference-period). It used to be like that, it's just recently that something broke it. I can try to find an article where you see it, but it's the person fixing it who needs to see it. Try, without any warranty British_Raj#Geographical_extent, second paragraph, first reference. Unlikely that you see it too, I guess, as the layout is screen-dependent. In any case, it takes just a few minutes browsing through articles and looking for the anomaly to find it. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 23:25, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Very interesting, thanks. I tried to force CSS reload, it didn't change anything. An example on fr.wikipedia.org: fr:Indonésie#Cinéma, I see the period after the first reference pushed as a widow on the next line (Safari Version 8.0.8 (10600.8.9) on Yosemite, new window, with default size. Same problem with Chrome Version 44.0.2403.155 (64-bit), Yosemite again, the period is pushed alone). Again, no warranty that you see the same. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 23:41, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
An example with Internet Explorer 10.28614.1072077, Windows 8.1 (not even the same Operating System): fr:Indonésie#Politique étrangère, third reference pushed alone on the next line. I see it all over the place, en.wikipedia.org, or fr.wikipedia.org, any browser, any operating system, in a few clicks. Am amazed that you do not see it. Try very large pages, random pages are very very small on average. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 23:52, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I happen to be using Safari browser/iPad 1 and do not see the problem anywhere, let alone on the British Raj page cited. Can I determine one thing? Is this problem appearing in main articles, or in their edit screens? Akld guy (talk) 00:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Any type of "main" article (you have to try a few large ones, 4 or 5 and scroll to the bottom), all browsers that I tried (3 of them), all operating systems I tried (OS X Yosemite, Windows 8). I never tried the edit screens. Just on the article France, it is happening 4 times for me. 3 times on the article electron. 5 times on United States. 6 times on homeopathy. 7 times on acupuncture. 11 times on China. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 00:32, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. The significance of my pointing out which browser & OS I'm using is that since 2012 there have been no updates of any kind to either, so a bug at Wikipedia might be ruled out on that basis. Akld guy (talk) 00:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I see on my iPad running iOS 8.4.1 and Safari a reference separated from the previous word and thrown on the next line 11 times on China. 2 times it is alone on its line. And on fr.wikipedia.org fr:Los Angeles#Évolution politique, you can see on the same version of iOS (no screen geometry issue in the middle, so everybody can reproduce it), that the last period is thrown alone on the next line. All this is new, it didn't happen in the past, something changed in the rendering process which broke references rendering. I am utterly surprised nobody is able to see what I see... Vincent Lextrait (talk) 01:16, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Aaaaah, very good, I was starting to believe I was delusional, I saw the issue everywhere, and nobody saw it anywhere... ;-) On en.wikipedia, it is slightly different. The source of the issue is that a reference can suddenly now be separated from a word next to it or from a period next to it. So on en.wikipedia, the consequence is that references can be isolated from the preceding period (and its preceding word), and thrown on the following line. Occurrences of this are everywhere, and very ugly. Understanding what broke references rendering for fr.wikipedia will give the explanation for en.wikipedia. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 02:42, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not positive, but I think that this might always have been how references have wrapped on enwiki. I also suspect that the exact behaviour may depend on your browser. (For the record, my screenshot was taken using Chrome on Windows 7.) Perhaps others here can give a better explanation of why the reference wraps the way it does in that example. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪05:30, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, as far as I know it has always been this way. On en.wp, the period will always be connecting to the word, browsers enforce this in their line breaking algorithms, but the ref counts as a 'new word' and is allowed to be put on the next line (and this is what is different on fr.wp btw, because there they put the period behind the ref, creating two line break candidates instead of one). The Word joiner character could perhaps help here, but it would also not allow for any break in a row of references, which might also look weird, and lead to unexpected results when people try to copy paste parts of articles for usage outside of Wikipedia. It seems to be rare enough that not too many people complain about it however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You might be right, but I have a hard time believing it. This implementation causes final periods to be ejected as solitary on the final line of a paragraph on fr.wikipedia.org. I've been on that wikipedia almost 9 years, I would have noticed it. It is not very frequent, but easily noticeable (cf. Anders Feder's post above. He could find instances of the issue fairly easily). Ejecting a solitary period is not just weird, it is incorrect. Reports like mine started to arise only recently. Also, separating references from the preceding word on en.wikipedia.org is not rare at all, as explained above, I see it 11 times on China for instance. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 14:54, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It has always been like this. I remember such a discussion years ago. Browsers may occasionally change their behaviour, which may spark another discussion. One thing we tried (and which is still active) is the CSS rule sup.reference a { white-space: nowrap; }. But that does not affect any preceding content, so it is still allowed to wrap. (But it will group multiple references and not break between them.) We have simply no control here because in CSS, there is no way to select preceding content. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}}17:18, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I trust you, I am stunned! I understand the difficulty to manage this at CSS level, but why not at html generation level? It seems quite doable. Putting a nobr directive around the last word, the period and the reference prevents the reference to be thrown on the next line. So technically there does not seem to be any hurdle, only if the update is kept at mere CSS level. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 17:42, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Vincent Lextrait: The <nobr>...</nobr> element (HTML doesn't have "directives") is a non-starter. It was never a formal part of the W3C Recommendations for HTML, and its first mention in those docs came in HTML5 where it was marked as obsolete, with no indication of what it did or how to achieve the same effect by legit means. The W3C Wiki says "No, really. don't use it." It was probably only provided by a small number of browser vendors and so like <marquee>...</marquee> or <blink>...</blink> never became universal. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:35, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I was not referring to html nobr, but to the wiki nobr template, which allows to prevent throwing the reference on a separate line. It works fine, so it shows it is technically possible to avoid the issues I reported, with proper html rendering (just like nobr is able to). Anyway, the bug is now confirmed, and the code fallen back. As it turns out, "it has always been like this" and "code did not change" were both wrong. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 01:48, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at a 2013 html-level archive page for the China article: [7], it is obvious there is not a single solitary reference. It really seems something has changed... Vincent Lextrait (talk) 17:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's always been this way. I can't reproduce it from your examples today, but I've seen it in the past. User:Gadget850 (who retired a month ago, and whom I miss) had looked into it a few years ago, to determine whether a non-breaking thin space could be used to keep the ref element associated with the previous word. I don't recall the outcome, but it will probably be in the archives of WT:CITE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize, I was mistaken. There has been a change, and the change has already been undone, it undo just hasn't reached wikipedia yet. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:07, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, very strange. I never at any time saw the problem and I'm using the original iPad of 2010 with iOS 5.1.1 and Safari 5 browser. Note that it has been impossible to update the OS and browser for this original iPad since 2012. This implies that whatever problem was seen was not due to a Wikipedia bug but was due to some update pushed out to users, perhaps as part of the Windows 10 upgrade process. Akld guy (talk) 00:46, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure how you reach that conclusion. It could have been due to some change on Wikipedia that only affected some browsers, but not the one you are using.--Anders Feder (talk) 00:54, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this problem, as described, is such a basic formatting issue that I thought it would be sure to show up in my iPad. Secondly, nobody initially saw the problem except the user who reported it, and then subsequently users did begin to see it, implying that an update was being progressively pushed out to more and more users. Akld guy (talk) 01:12, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And to emphasize the point, note that the OP said in his very first words that he had been seeing the problem for days, quote, 'since a few days'. Akld guy (talk) 01:37, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody initially saw the problem because 1) they were using an unaffected browser or 2) they had not previously noticed a problem themselves.--Anders Feder (talk) 01:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. And I believe all this is due to 2), as I tried most browsers available on the market (the only one I did not try is Firefox), on different machines, different operating systems and different accounts. I was able to see the issue everywhere fairly easily. You just needed to look hard enough. I do not buy at all the idea of the update progressively pushed to users. Several users have seen this for weeks, it is not a transitory thing at all, it has been there for a long time for everybody to see. Vincent Lextrait (talk) 01:53, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Most users have not reported any problem, and I had to go to frwiki to encounter it, so it was almost certainly limited to some particular "Bermuda triangle" combination of browser and browser version, CSS, and formatting of the wikitext.--Anders Feder (talk) 02:01, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Search box
When searching in the search box, sometimes deleted pages are shown, for example, when searching for categories whose names begin with "Proposed deletion as of". GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:24, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Since May this year, edits to pages under pending-changes protection are appearing in an editor's Patrol log as well as in Review log (example: all the entries with "automatically marked"). As I understand it there is an error here, as the top of that same page states Only newly created pages can be marked as patrolled. Can this be fixed, so that the two different types of contribution can be distinguished in the logs?: Noyster (talk),17:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The first paragraph of Punto Fijo (album) is displayed without spaces that are present in the source. The sentence without <ref> is
'''''Punto Fijo''''' (from [[Spanish language|Spanish]]: ''Fixed Point''; also transcribed as "[[Axis mundi]]") is the second [[studio album]] by [[Slovakia|Slovak]] [[vocalist]] [[Szidi Tobias]] released on [[Bertelsmann Music Group|BMG]] [[Ariola Records|Ariola]] in 2003.
The {{Extra album cover}} template is only for use inside tables (infoboxes are tables) - if used outside, you get some bare <tr>...</tr> elements, and I have found that even a single bare <tr>...</tr>, with nothing inside, it will cause the effect described above. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:19, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Charinsert gadget changes
What's happened to the charinsert gadget? Everything's more spaced out, and with "Wiki markup" selected, it occupies four lines instead of three; and the mouse move from <code>...</code> to <nowiki>...</nowiki> (often used in combination) is now half the screen width where previously it was two inches. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like h-padding was increased Diff. I agree, some menus are now "too wide" for my taste while some others appear a bit more "organized" compared to before the change.
I'm still hoping for booklet/loading improvements to [at least] WikiEditor so each project can easily customize their own default character sets site-wide in conjunction with the ability for individual Users to add or remove to that site-wide default as needed -- eliminating the need for such a gadget once and for all in the process. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:06, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've had Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering > Advanced options > Underline links > Always set for some time now. At first I thought it was normal behavior when colored links tags would not apply to the link's underline, so I went through the ordeal of using separate <u> tags within span tags as a hack to make the underline match (e.g., [[example|<span style='color:green'><u>example</u></span>]]). But the hack also forces underlines on links when some users do not have the aforementioned preference set. Still, I'll see templates like {{UK Labour Party}} with a link in its navbox header—underlined, by my preference—but its underline shows in blue instead of white, so not matching the text. Is there some way to format that navbox header such that it will display correctly in my browser (with matching color underline) without forcing the underline on those who turned the preference off? (OS X, Chrome/Firefox) – czar22:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I turned the Preference off, added the css, purged browser and WP cache and I'm still getting the non-matching underline in {{UK Labour Party}}'s navbox header. Apart from myself, my question is also how to make color links work as intended with the aforementioned Preference. I'm sure I'm not the only one getting an unexpected result from the Preference. – czar23:59, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's handling the same across Chrome/Firefox/Safari for me (OS X). Even when the "Always/Never" Preference is set, the underline doesn't match the link color (it shows as blue underline on hover when set to "Never"). Are you able to style intra-wikilinks such that the underline color matches the set link color? I haven't seen that in action apart from, say, the show/hide link on {{UK Labour Party}}. But in that case, I don't know why show/hide can be styled for both link/underline in white but not the title. I asked on its talk page. – czar01:04, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There seems to be a serious script error going on right now. I initially thought it was my own error; then I thought it was a problem at WP:ANI, but it appears to be all over the encyclopedia (look at the very top line on any page one tries to edit). Erpertblah, blah, blah...00:26, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Having the same problem; I just created a new article (Leon Dubinsky) and this error is sitting on top of anywhere in the entire article that I used curlicue brackets to transclude a template. It's also worth noting that, oddly enough, the imdb name template still functions correctly, linking to the correct offsite EL, if you click on that text — it just doesn't display properly. Bearcat (talk) 00:29, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Like this? Script error: The module returned a value. It is supposed to return an export table. Something obviously blew up real good. Dl2000 (talk) 00:33, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Many pages need a purge to fix it. The search "The module returned a value" currently gives 386 mainspace results where a significant part still needs purging, and there are thousands of hits in other namespaces. I wonder whether there are many others not found by the search. Can somebody flick together a tool to at least purge those in the search? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There was a small side conversation about this at Wikipedia:Help desk that you might want to peek at too but now that has a link poining over to continue the convo. here. Over at the help desk convo, I posted this screenshot of the bug. ScreenshotofbugTortle (talk) 01:07, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yup Sitic. I checked a few random pages from the category and they all seem to need purging. This would be ridiculously painstaking to undertake by hand. Do they automatixally purge after time or can a bot be created or allocated for the purpose of purging? Tortle (talk) 01:10, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the best way to handle this is teamwork. Its only about 2000 pages which if divided well will be manageable. Each letter of Category:Pages with script errors has 100-200 pages. I suggest that we all take a chunk to purge. Please write your username underneath next to a letter to handle that chunk of pages. Ill take A which is probably a large chunk of the 2,000+ pages. So for those of yoh who want to help, you can learn how to purge a page here and just go to the category above, and go to all the pages of the letter that you choose and purge each one. Thanks
UPDATE- It seems that all of the pages were automatically purged at once and are now all fixed. So now there is no need for manually purging them and the problem is solved. Tortle (talk) 01:55, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I see it in Stephen Hawking, where it's particulatly bad. I happened to visit the article because he's the subject of a mainstream news item here. Akld guy (talk) 06:01, 26 August 2015 (UTC) He has just announced a new theory and the article is likely to be getting a lot of views. Akld guy (talk) 06:19, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There are large, red error messages appearing on this page. I'm unsure as to what is creating this problem. Should be easily fixed by somebody more experienced in syntax. Thanks. 108.206.185.180 (talk) 03:07, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Redrose64: The script error is rampant on the page for LOUIS FERREIRA. I checked out the fixes you suggested and unfortunately I don't understand how to do ANY of them. I'm not a technical person and have only recently begun to contribute to Wikipedia. It took me 3 hours just to find this post (and I'm so glad I did!) Is there a way to explain the purging to a simpleton like me? I need to fix the page ASAP since I have just obtained legal permission to upload a copyrighted photo and I need the page to work properly. Please help. I'd be forever grateful. Thank you so much for your time to read this!Bczogalla (talk) 02:22, 28 August 2015 (UTC)Bczogalla[reply]
@George100 Hi, the LOUIS FERREIRA page is virtually covered with this error message. I am in desperate need of help as I can't figure out the instructions for the purge. It's probably really simple but to someone who's never done it there is just no way to figure it out... If you could help me out here I'd be so grateful - and thanks for reading this! Bczogalla (talk) 02:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)Bczogalla[reply]
How to use a web font via common.css?
Edit: See below for solution
I'm trying to use custom CSS in my common.css page to make Wikipedia use the Dotsies font. As the font is non-standard, I'm trying to use it as a web font by adapting the site's dotsies.css file for common.css use.
The relevant parts of my common.css are as follows.
I ran a search for "font" in the "Village pump (technical)" archives and only found issues relating to setting standard fonts or asking about Wikipedia's default fonts. Can someone please help me figure out setting a web font as default for Wikipedia articles via custom user styles? Or is this impossible? I only want Dotsies as my font for Wikipedia and not every site because having Dotsies everywhere would be overwhelming with my current level of experience reading it.
I don't think it's too relevant, but I'm running Firefox 40.0.2 on fully updated Chakra Linux.
I have practically no experience with CSS, so I could have easily missed something. Also, should modifying the Print view tweaks example CSS (i.e., changing "@media print" to "html, body" and adjusting font sizes) work for changing general font sizes? Dotsies looks a lot better at specific sizes where the component dots have integer pixel dimensions.Edit: I think I got font sizes adjusted fine, so it's just an issue with setting Dotsies as my font everywhere.
I found the answer by searching for general web font CSS help online. I found out that I can import CSS files by using @import url(URL_OF_CSS_FILE);, and then font-family: "NAME_OF_FONT"; works as expected. I'm still wondering if I can import the font directly instead of importing 3rd-party CSS over an insecure connection. I think it would be less of a potential security issue to import/reference only the font and not some CSS file that might be maliciously changed in a man-in-the-middle attack. MarkGyver (talk) 03:25, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Aero Slicer: Is there an error message when it does not load? Also, the site might not be "down" but some parts might not be loading in your browser (e.g. user scripts that try to access unreachable servers). If this happens more often, your web browser's developer tools should offer a "Network" tab to investigate. --Malyacko (talk) 08:14, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a better way to illustrate a " --> '' change in the diff view?
Confusing subject heading, eh? Hi there, when we look at diffs, (for instance here) it's really difficult to see whether someone changed a quotation to italics, or what. Even with the improved diff tool, it's still difficult to tell what happened unless you drag your cursor over the change to see if you highlight one or two things. Is there any way to easily improve this? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:34, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Some time ago I changed the diff font to monospace in my CSS for the same reason, but have changed it back since. I just wrote this user JS to add some slight padding around apostrophes in diffs, which should help distinguish pairs of apostrophes from double primes without having to change the font. SiBr4 (talk) 18:57, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On mobile, why do people sometimes confuse the content and the edit summary fields?
If you look at the pages created by new accounts on mobile ([10]), you'll see that a fairly large number create the page with just a little bit of content, with a whole lot of content in the edit summary. It appears to me that they are confusing the edit summary field for the page content, and vice versa. This only appears to happen on mobile, not on web. Can someone investigate? Gparyani (talk) 17:45, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Content missing in mobile view
The "Electoral history" section of Harold Stassen is missing in mobile view. I expect it is a problem with the electoral history template being hidden; could someone comfortable with template coding take a look? 28bytes (talk) 21:35, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that this is more of an editorial problem. Any time you need to collapse content in order to keep a page readable, sounds like a authoring problem to me. Navboxes is one thing, but to use collapsible inside the actual content is just... bad form —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:14, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Please explain what exactly you mean by "unable to edit". For example that you don't have an "Edit" tab, or you get an error message when you click "Edit", or after clicking "Edit" you see an empty box where the code should have been, or that you see the code in the edit box but you cannot change it, or you can change it but not save your changes. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:34, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, PrimeHunter. I'm now able to edit with the query "?action=edit" added to the URL. Without the query added, I don't see an "Edit" tab. The link I'm using to navigate to the page ("Preferences" > "Appearance" > "Shared CSS/JavaScript for all skins: Custom CSS") doesn't seem to add the query. Perhaps there's another way to access this page which adds the necessary query?
Chexni (talk) 19:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The "read", "edit" and "history" links and the "watch" star are contained in a <div> with ID "p-views" in Vector. In your CSS you've set the element with that ID to not display, together with the "mw-panel" and "left-navigation" elements. The links should be visible again if you remove the #p-views, row. SiBr4 (talk) 19:39, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Overstriking/superposing characters
I was told how to rotate (and flip) characters at the Teahouse, but not getting an answer to this one.
I see there's {{transform}} which allows translation of glyphs, but there's not enough documentation for me to figure it out. Can I translate one character on top another, say, overstrike an "x" with a "~"? (That is, a ~ superimposed on x, like x̴, not ~ on top of x like x̃.)
Interesting. That centers them both horizontally and vertically. I'll play around with the code.
There are several esoteric phonetic symbols in old documents that aren't supported by Unicode. Some of them might be approximated with transformations like these, though I'm aware that they wouldn't be copy&paste friendly and so should be used sparingly.
I am interested in the fact if it is possible to link a Matlab/Simulink
GUI (graphical user interface) in Wikipedia something similar like a
small calculation programm on java basis.
Something where the user can interactively change the Matlab/Simulink
programme and get the results on a wiki webpage?
Maybe it is possible to link Matlab/Simulink with Java and put it than on a wiki site? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.6.76.40 (talk) 08:08, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We cannot do this for security reasons. In that case someone would have to write an open source implementation of something like that and it needs to be hosted on our web services. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:03, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Bubble tea page looks normal when logged in, but shows a youtube link repeated hundreds of times when logged out or in incognito mode. Perhaps the page could be purged but I want to make sure someone with a technical background can look at it... --George100 (talk) 16:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone having problems accessing article histories? A user reported at Talk:Jurassic World that he couldn't access the view history at Jurassic World. I tried and couldn't either--the page didn't load after a minute or so. Also had a problem accessing history at this talk page. Thoughts? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 00:54, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved
Thank you this edit restores previous appearance. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:24, 25 August 2015 (UTC)
