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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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VE avoided by 85% of new usernames

I want to note how, in the final days on the top menu, the VisualEditor was avoided by 85% of the new usernames being tracked for choice of text editor. See: wp:VEDASH for the VE dashboard graph which showed the average low 15% usage among new usernames, who mainly preferred to use the wikitext source editor for 85% of edits, even though VE was still on the edit-tabs at that time. Also see below: "#VE opt-in usage near 0%". -Wikid77 15:57, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

VE opt-in usage near 0%

After VE was removed from WP's top menu on 24 September 2013, to become an easy opt-in feature in Special:Preferences, then the VisualEditor was avoided by 99.7% of users being tracked for choice of text editor. See: wp:VEDASH for the VE dashboard graph which showed the average usage (after 25 September 2013) remained well below 1% of all edits, often ranking as 1⁄5% (0.002, or 2 edits per thousand). As many experienced software developers have emphasized: WYSIWYG interfaces can be very tedious to use, and many power users quickly switch to text-based editing of pages, as faster to perform the work at hand. That is why we computer scientists developed hypertext markup languages, as copy/paste text languages, to allow diff-links between revisions, with new features by a macro scripting language (for templates), and to also allow multi-word search in markup keywords (although most browsers still "find string" rather than "hunt words" in multiple spots). It can be much faster to keep wp:checklists of intended text changes, to focus on each step to edit, and then re-proofread the final page to checkmark each step as successfully done. By comparison, point-and-click steps are not obvious in a diff listing. Also see above: "#VE avoided by 85% of new usernames". The actual usage levels of VE needed to be emphasized, for future consideration. -Wikid77 15:57, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Most of those 99.7% of users still don't know that they have to manually go to their preferences and re-enable VisualEditor. It's not a "choice" if you don't know that the option exists. From the users' perspective (not counting the <1% of people involved in Kww's default-state RFC), VisualEditor just silently disappeared two weeks ago, with no indication that they are even allowed to opt-in if they wanted to. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm forced to agree that this isn't a very telling statistic, and describing it as people "avoiding" VE is a gross misinterpretation. Although on the flip side, if VE had been remotely popular, we would still be seeing more opt-ins as people went looking for preferences, and we'd also be seeing some comments from people wondering where it went. Unless I'm not looking in the right places, I've seen no mention of it thus far. equazcion� 17:50, 10 Oct 2013 (UTC)
We've seen a handful of comments like this one, which appeared within hours at the Mediawiki feedback page. Not everyone asks their technical questions here, and of course if your question has just been asked and answered on the same page, then most people won't ask it again. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, I didn't only look here (as in this page), but on help desk and teahouse as well, but thanks for pointing out the VE feedback forum at MediaWiki. Although I'm not sure who would know to look there if they merely noticed VE had disappeared and weren't previously involved in testing/feedback in some way. People who just liked using it would probably be asking where it went in some Wikipedia venue, I would think. equazcion� 19:07, 10 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Whatamidoing, is it going to be WMF's official policy to portray the RFC and the subsequent change in VE's status as something that did not represent community consensus? I really am beginning to find these efforts to portray our RFC process as a problem tedious. If the WMF can come up with a more accurate way to sample consensus, I'm eager to listen.—Kww(talk) 00:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I was planning to ignore this (both because I'm tired of complaining about Whatamidoing's communications, and because I wanted to try and keep this discussion above the level to which Whatamidoing would like to bring it down), but since you mention it, I find the little backhanded snipe here ("not counting the <1% of people involved in Kww's default-state RFC") childish and disgusting. VE must be very close to her heart for her to feel hurt enough to lash out as she's been doing, and I try to sympathize, but I think everyone feverish about this at the WMF could stand to take half a chill before they say more of the wrong things to more people here. equazcion� 02:13, 11 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Whether the RFC process' oversampling of experienced editors and metapedians (i.e., people like you and me) is a "problem" depends on the question you're asking. I can't think of a better system for figuring out how a complex policy should be applied to an article: someone on the WP:TOP5000 list is much more likely to be able to deal with a NOR or NPOV issue than someone who has only made one tiny edit.
However, the RFC process is pretty obviously not an effective method of getting responses from brand-new editors or from prospective editors. So I think the answer to your question is, who's in your community? The RFC process is an excellent method of determining the views of the highly active editors (the three or four thousand people like you and me who make more than a hundred edits each month). If that's "the community", then you very likely have community consensus represented on that page. If your idea of "the community" includes the tens of thousands of editors who made just five or ten edits in a month, then that RFC does not seem to include their views (which might or might not agree with the RFC's outcome; nobody really knows).
Equazcion, I'm not sniping about the RFC for being too small; it seems to be about the third largest ever. I'm only assuming that everyone who participated in the RFC, and later noticed that VisualEditor disappeared, is smart enough to make the connection between the two. So 99.7% of users haven't opted in, and since the number of people opting in (~0.3%) is smaller than the number of people who participated in the RFC (~0.9%), we can assume that at least some of those 99.7% know exactly what happened (and also any others who missed the RFC but saw the VPT and AN discussions). But that's still a vast majority of editors, including tens of thousands of new editors, who just don't know, and therefore can't be "choosing" in either direction. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps those "tens of thousands of new editors" were never given a link to WP:How to edit a page? Which in its very first sentence mentions VE, and in its second sentence describes how to chose VE. That any number of new editors opt-in shows that they can choose; that they don't opt-in suggests that they have chosen. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:53, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Something suddenly wrong with ref numbering/lettering -- and more (on IE10, at least)

The referencing machinery is so complex I don't know how to begin investigating what's wrong. Suddenly (within the last 12-24 hours?), well... here's an example:

Article text.<ref group=upper-alpha>Ref text</ref>
{{reflist|group=upper-alpha}}

should produce

Article text.[A]
A. ^ Ref text

Instead, it's producing

Article text.[A]
1. ^ Ref text

Here's actual, live code so you can see what's happening for you.

Article text.[A]

  1. ^ Ref text

If the first thing on the immediately previous line is A then things are OK for you; if it's 1 then you're getting the malfunction I'm getting. If it's anything else then the universe has gone mad.

The code's set up in User:EEng/sandbox if you want to try it yourself. EEng (talk) 23:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Looks fine for me. Werieth (talk) 23:11, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
Yeah looks good to me too. A, a, and 1 are displaying in your sandbox page, respectively. equazcion� | 23:12, 5 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Wait, wait, let me guess... You're using some browser other than IE. 'Cause I'm on IE10.9.9200.16686 (for the avoidance of doubt). Just tried it on Chrome and it works correctly. So, any fellow IE sufferers getting the same problem? (Please, no gloating from Chrome/Mozilla/Safari types.) EEng (talk) 23:35, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
But, but, but Internet Exploder© is the best browser ever invented! Werieth (talk) 23:45, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
I said NO GLOATING! EEng (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:49, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
I wasnt gloating IE6 is the best browser ever created, and I still use it. Werieth (talk) 23:50, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
It displays correctly for me in IE10, but I'm using an older version (10.0.9200.16540). equazcion� | 23:40, 5 Oct 2013 (UTC)
I don't suppose that for the greater good you'd like to upgrade to .16686 just to see? Why does IE need 16000 versions anyway???? OK, someone out there knows what's going on with this, I'm sure. We await your wise counsel. EEng (talk) 23:47, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
It's called Agile software development. You know, like VisualEditor.... Risker (talk) 03:24, 6 October 2013 (UTC) Not gloating, I use IE all the time, just not this version.
I would but they tell me it may require a reboot, and I've got a hot streak of 78 days of uninterrupted uptime going on my computer. That and I never use IE except to check the problems other people report with it, which I don't experience because I use browsers that work and don't require reboots to update =] equazcion� | 23:50, 5 Oct 2013 (UTC)
I said NO GLOATING! But where exactly are you looking for this upgrade? And is the newest version offered beyond 16686, by any chance? EEng (talk) 23:55, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
Wait. Just answered my own question. "You've got the latest Internet Explorer for Windows 7, but you can be one of the first to try Internet Explorer 11 Release Preview." Well, gang, what do you think? Shall I stay in the frying pan, or jump into the fire? It says, "Be the first to try Internet Explorer 11 Release Preview." Who can resist that? I'd be the first! How proudly my friends and loved ones will be as they accept the Bold Self-Sacrifice Medal, on my behalf, from Mr. Gates himself! EEng (talk) 23:57, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
If I'm not mistaken, you can only install 11 if you have Windows 8, but (seems I'm mistaken, a preview release for 7 is out) yeah if you can I would. PS. this seems to be saying the latest version is a lower number than the one I have installed. I dunno. Anyway you should really invest in a real browser, they don't cost that much more :) </end gloat (for now)> equazcion� | 00:02, 6 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, well, your mother wears army boots. Anyone else seeing this? See test example I've inserted at the end of my original post. EEng (talk) 00:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Wait, there's more going on than that! There's also extra vertical whitespace between each article title and the horiz line below it, and other formatting oddities -- all look good in Chrome. I've rebooted, cleared IE cache, the works. Here's what's weird -- when first reloading a page, the spacing between title and horiz line is correct, then at the last moment more space opens up between them -- it's about the same timing as when, on watchlist, all the little dropdown gadgets and stuff appear at the last moment. Hmmm. Now really -- is it just me? EEng (talk) 02:56, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

See this other bug which has a similar-sounding delay. Related? EEng (talk) 13:24, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

C'mon, really? Am I the only one? Anyone??? EEng (talk) 00:54, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I installed the IE11 preview and I'm still not seeing your malfunction there, FYI. equazcion� | 04:44, 9 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Looks fine in a seldom-used 10.0.9200.16721. Of course, if you really have a version 10.9.9200.xxxxx it may have all sorts of top-secret features. NebY (talk) 16:35, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Getting rid of "thank"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57497

How do I get rid of the "(thank)" option that has suddenly shown up when displaying diffs? Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:42, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Notifications/Thanks#How to turn off this feature. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:18, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, but the advice there was to check the "exclude from future experiements" button, which I already have checked - so something must have changed. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:44, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
You're right. It worked last time I tried but not now. I guess WMF has decided it's no longer a feature experiment and shouldn't be disabled by "Exclude me from feature experiments". This in Special:MyPage/common.css should remove the link but not the surrounding parentheses:
.mw-thanks-thank-link {display: none;}
PrimeHunter (talk) 00:00, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thank you, that worked. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, it seemed to work perfectly at first, but now it's leaving behind a pair of parentheses "()" and a "|" on history pages where "Thanks" used to be. I can live with that, but I do wish WMF would stop fucking around with this stuff and leave the interface alone, or at least provide opt-outs for any shiny new toys that old farts like me don't want to deal with. (The old interface was good enough for 120,000 edits, I don't need new bells and whistles, thank you.) Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Weird. That should work. Try clearing your cache etc.? On the backend, this preference is dependent on the extension which includes some odds-and-ends related to Vector. That extension is getting phased out, though the preference will almost certainly stay as far as I know. I'll try to check if it's being futzed with currently. In any case, I think you can also use personal CSS to hide the feature, though so far I have only been able to do what PrimeHunter did. Ping: Okeyes (WMF) and Kaldari Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:10, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure why the preference would not work any more, but it's possible it was changed. Probably best to file a bug on this. Kaldari (talk) 00:26, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I think the whole Thank thing is kinda hokey but really, are you such a curmudgeon that just being confronted by the opportunity to send a thank-you is too much to bear? I mean, there are starving children in China browsing via dialup and they would give anything to have a nice Thank button they could click, and here you are just throwing buttons away like garbage. Count your blessings. EEng (talk) 00:50, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
"Undo" was the outside option on that line, now "Thanks" is, so when I go to undo an edit, I hit thanks instead.

Please forward email addresses of unthanked Asian children and I will thank them for... something or other. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:03, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

No, no, it's that they lack buttons they can click to do the thanking. They get 1/10 cent per click, you know. EEng (talk) 02:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Maybe we should send them some of those cricket toys that click when you press them? You know, the ones they used for recognition signals in the D-Day invasion? Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. I was going to send you a thanks for posting this, but I didn't want you to think I meant to undo your post. :) --Onorem (talk) 01:15, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
One of the options (I think it's Rollback -- can't remember for sure) doesn't even say "Are you sure?" -- just goes ahead and does whatever it does, so now I'm afraid to click any of them. EEng (talk) 02:30, 9 October 2013 (UTC) P.S. BTW, what does the "Unlink" item on the Twinkle menu do -- I'm really afraid to try that one!
I never understood the unlink feature. The Twinkle documentation basically makes it sound like it's supposed to remove all incoming links to the current page. You can click it and see a list of links it's supposed to remove before actually confirming the operation. What's puzzling is that you'd think the link list would match What Links Here, but it usually doesn't. There's not much explanation around on how the two differ and I gave up trying to find out a while ago. Maybe Ill take a look through the code sometime for kicks. equazcion� | 02:44, 9 Oct 2013 (UTC)
I just tested it randomly a couple of times and it does now seem to match What Links Here (for the namespaces defined in Twinkle preferences). Maybe when I last checked there was a problem with the code, or I was just mistaken. Anyway there's your answer, it seems. equazcion� | 03:03, 9 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Way above my pay grade for sure. Thanks for investigating. Now can someone please tell me if I'm the only one with the mysterious IE malfunction? I can stand it a while, I guess, but it must be very confusing for people reading these articles. EEng (talk) 03:20, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Yep, it's back: " | bedanken)" at the end of every line in a history. Thanking people must no longer be an experiment, and they didn't see fit to provide us with a preference to turn it off.—Kww(talk) 05:17, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
Please assume good faith. I just said above that, as far as I know, no one intended to turn off the preference to hide the thank button. It might have happened as part of a backend housecleaning, and if it did, it should be undone. We may someday ask that people use personal CSS or a userscript to hide the button, once some time has passed and it's clear how widely it's been adopted. We have not done such an analysis, and the opt-out preference should still be respected. If it isn't, it's a bug. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:22, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I actually wasn't assuming bad faith, Steven. I assumed that features eventually stop being experimental. For some, I expect you to produce a preference to turn them off, and others, I expect you to just incorporate as a permanent part of the interface. While I think the "thank" feature is the silliest thing I've ever encountered, I don't expect to have a preference for every line item in a history display. I object to the idea that a 500 line history has to have 500 individual thank-you buttons, but I that seems to be a done deal.—Kww(talk) 05:48, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
That's entirely reasonable. Thanks for the explanation. BTW: I think you're not the only one who finds the button in History to make less sense. We should maybe reconsider that placement. Diffs make perfect sense, and maybe the watchlist too (since most changes there are unique). But a history page takes more inspection usually. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
If distinguishing the undo link from the thank link is an issue (it was for me), the alternative is to make them visually distinct. I set some loud colors on .mw-history-undo since it's an important function. — Scott • talk 09:47, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to Reduce the API limits to 1 edit/30 sec. for logged out users

Closing per request at WP:ANRFC. Editors supporting the measure argued that if there is a way to mitigate potential abuse of spambots, we should go for it, and that tightening the limits on API edits would be a way to do so. Many editors also stated that there wasn't any good reason for use of the API for anons to edit. However, several such uses were advanced by those opposing the proposal: Scripts at the Teahouse use the API (where anonymous editors are common), the Article Feedback Tool, and the Visual Editor. Given that those supporting did not make a case as to why these concerns should be discounted, I'm apt to conclude that consensus was against reducing API limits for logged out users. I, JethroBT drop me a line 13:01, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

We seem to be getting attacked by SpamBots a lot recently, or bots inadvertently get logged out during it's runs. Or we have incidents like User:RotlinkBot editing from IP farms, that can't be range blocked. Either way, legitimate bots shouldn't be editing from IPs and the SpamBots tend to come from IPs. I propose the API limits for editing while logged out should be set to 1 edit/30 sec. That way, the potential damage is manageable. Please note that the API is different from editing Wikipedia directly. It will not effect the IP editors on Wikipedia. It will only effect automated tasks, aka bots, that are using an IP instead of a username. Any input on this?—cyberpower ChatOnline 21:20, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes... if an RfC is to be held here, I shall unwatch this page. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:41, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

One per minute seems a little too strict; maybe one per thirty seconds? -- Ypnypn (talk) 21:43, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Ok. I have changed it to 30 seconds.—cyberpower ChatOnline 23:36, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support one per thirty seconds, which is about as fast as a human could reasonably edit. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment only a bot could reasonably edit faster than that, and a bot that isn't logged in is a bot that is malfunctioning. The User:RotlinkBot issue is a special case that may involve malice or malware. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:00, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Question Tools such as WP:TW use mw:API for editing pages. For example, if you wish to nominate a file for deletion, WP:TW makes three API edits within a short period of time. Are IP editors able to use these tools somehow? --Stefan2 (talk) 22:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
    No. IP editors can't use Twinkle. Twinkle will not be phased by this change.—cyberpower ChatOnline 23:34, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
    An IP editor could use Twinkle by using it with something such as Greasemonkey. I don't know if any of our long-term IP editors do so, but it's certainly possible. Anomie⚔ 01:31, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Thinking about Stefan2's question, we probably want to extend the notice to Twinkle users, WP:AFCH users and more to give them a heads up that this is coming Hasteur (talk) 23:59, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose Way too short. It's easy to see that last spelling error just as you hit Save page ... to make IPs wait 30 seconds is inappropriate. What's the current limit? NE Ent 00:05, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    The API is different from editing Wikipedia directly. The API is used for bots and external programs. They can edit normally on Wikipedia itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberpower678 (talk • contribs) 00:10, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Oh, that's very different... never mind (see Emily Litella if you're too young to understand) (of course getting a contributor who don't know what they're talking about is what you get for forum shopping to WP:AN) NE Ent 01:13, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    If it's true this affect VE editing, as stated below, my original opposition was correct. NE Ent 18:35, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment Can anyone provide me examples of why we allow anonymous writes via the API at all?—Kww(talk) 00:22, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    I can't. Hence this proposal, but their may be external editing programs that might use the API, so that would be one example, but other than that, IP edits shouldn't be happening through the API.—cyberpower ChatOnline 00:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    WP:Teahouse's scripts are usable by anons and use the API to make edits. Anomie⚔ 01:35, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Why do we let anonymous users edit at all? Oh yeah, its a foundation principle. Whether people edit via the API or HTML interface, it should make no difference. What matters is the substance of the edit. Legoktm (talk) 02:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support disabling entire write API for anons unless someone can think of a good reason why they need it. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 00:35, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Note that things such as submitting AFTv5 feedback or using the VisualEditor are included in the write API. Anomie⚔ 01:39, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Hm. Would an IP need to make multiple VisualEditor edits within a short period of time? --Stefan2 (talk) 12:01, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support Yeah, with King on that. I can't see any reason to allow anonymous API edits at all. I had no idea that was currently allowed. Spammers will probably still find ways, but there's no reason to make it this easy for them. But short of disallowing anon API edits altogether, yes, a rate limit should be imposed. equazcion� | 00:52, 3 Oct 2013 (UTC)
  • Support If I understand mw:API:Main page correctly, this shouldn't affect real people in any way (I don't understand how you would even be able to make an API edit at all as a human), but it should be able to slow down botspam, so it's seemingly a good first step. I'd suggest that we investigate Equazcion's ban-API-edits-entirely proposal. Nyttend (talk) 01:14, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    I wouldn't recommend that. There may be legitimate reasons to have to IP edit through the API, but since it's almost never going to happen, limiting it to 1 sounds like the reasonable first step.—cyberpower ChatOnline 01:21, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    You can use Special:ApiSandbox, make a POST request through your browser, etc. Legoktm (talk) 02:29, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment So far, this proposal is long on rhetoric and low on facts. There is an assertion that spam bots are using the API while logged out. Links? What's to stop the spambot from screen-scraping the UI edit form, which many probably already do? There is talk of User:RotlinkBot, but that's a registered account and if it continued its unapproved actions after being blocked I don't see any links showing that either. And if it really had an "IP farm", couldn't it cycle through the farm to make N edits every 30 seconds (one per IP)? And what's to stop a spambot from spamming from various registered accounts until the checkusers block its IP? Anomie⚔ 01:31, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    • As I said, spam bots would probably manage to continue making spam edits, but currently we're almost encouraging it by making it remarkably easy. I don't see much if any legitimate reason to allow anonymous API edits whatsoever. For the RotlinkBot history, see Wikipedia:Archive.is RFC. equazcion� | 01:44, 3 Oct 2013 (UTC)
    • I just noticed your mention above that the article feedback tool uses the API. If disallowing anonymous API edits would disable article feedback for anonymous users, that would indeed be a problem. A 30-second rate limit shouldn't interfere with that though. equazcion� | 01:55, 3 Oct 2013 (UTC)
  • @Cyberpower678: It appears there are a number of people who are not familiar with the API. Perhaps you could add a statement at the top of the RfC similar to this in order to help people understand the proposal better.

The API (or Application Programming Interface) is the way software interacts with Wikipedia. The API is for bots and automated tools, not for humans. Click here to see the API.

Briefly explaining the API at the top of the RfC might save a lot of time for those who are not familiar with it. FWIW, I think 1 edit per minute would be fine for IP editors. Best. 64.40.54.196 (talk) 02:20, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • No. Ratelimiting API edits is not the right way to fight spam. If you do that, they'll just screenscrape. Bots logging out is a failure of the bot to use assert=edit properly. Legoktm (talk) 02:23, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Screenscraping is more difficult than the API. It's at least one step to fight spambots.—cyberpower ChatOnline 02:29, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Not really. It would take about 5 minutes to write an edit function that screenscrapes. Really it would take no time at all, Pywikibot-compat ships with one. Legoktm (talk) 03:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Yeah I'm not really getting Lego's logic there. The API is built for automated edits, so that legit automated tools don't need to screen scrape. Why provide the same ease to likely illegitimate ones? Better to make it harder for them, at least. If they do resort to screen scraping, that'll still end up being slower than API edits, and will be far less reliable at making successful edits. equazcion� | 02:36, 3 Oct 2013 (UTC)
    You just said that any anonymous edit is an illegitimate edit. Are you sure you meant that? Legoktm (talk) 03:26, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Are you sure I said that? equazcion� | 03:47, 3 Oct 2013 (UTC)
    Gr, I read too fast, sorry. Regardless, do you have any evidence that proves that anonymous edits via the API are likely to be bad? Legoktm (talk) 18:54, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment: I don't think this is the right way to go about this, but if it does happen, I think a limit of 10 per 5 minutes (or some other multiple of 1 per 30 seconds) should be used instead, to allow an occasional short burst. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:31, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose while there are many Wikimedia sites overrun by spambots, this is not one of them. --Rschen7754 03:34, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support – I see nothing wrong with this. Legitimate API users (e.g. bots, or users of tools like Twinkle) should be using a registered account anyways for editing. —mc10 (t/c) 04:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Question Why is this here instead of at WP:VPR? RudolfRed (talk) 04:47, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. I don't see a good reason why anons should have unthrottled access to the write API. The use of cookies should also be investigated. MER-C 06:17, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support At least 30 seconds IMO, I'd go for 1 minute. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 06:20, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Question Let me see if I understand this, you're hoping that setting a ratelimit on api edits by anonymous IP addresses is going to slow down bots that are using an IP farm with hundreds or thousands of IP addresses at their disposal? With even a small CIDR range (/24) they have 254 IP addresses at their disposal, that is still 2.12 edits per second with a 30 second cooldown in between... So, my questions are: "What does this solve?" and "Why should IP editors have to be restricted from using tools that use the API like Twinkle or AFCH or Snuggle or any of the other dozens of scripts that use the API to make multiple requests in a short amount of time?" Technical 13 (talk) 12:58, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Question I don't see how regular IP users will be distinguished from the "logged out" users this proposal targets. Can someone explain? Liz Read! Talk! 13:43, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Answer The software (mediawiki) can rate limit based of user rights (nonregisted users, users, and other groups ) See Special:ListGroupRights. Basically we can set the edit rate to 1/30 for "all" but at the same time override that setting in the "User" group. That basically means all registered users (users, bots, admins, ect) would have the higher rate. Werieth (talk) 14:09, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    • Actual Answer Though Werieth is correct in what he is saying, the answer you're likely looking for is how are the regular IPs going to be affected. The answer to that is not at all. Regular IPs can edit as they normally do, but will be restricted if they try to do it through the API and not the Wikipedia editor.—cyberpower ChatOnline 14:16, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Werieth and cyberpower. This what I was asking about since before I registered this account, I edited for years as an unregistered IP account. I guess my follow-up question would be what does it mean to edit through the API and not the regular Wikipedia editor...but I have the feeling that will be a technical answer and I'm guessing the bottom line is that regular editors don't edit through the API. I guess you can confirm or deny this? Thanks again! Liz Read! Talk! 17:01, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
@Liz: It means using anything else than the default edit form for editing, be it Twinkle, VisualEditor, Popups, or any other from the dozens of tools which can edit pages on your behalf. The only notable exception I can think of is wikEd, which merely enhances the default form. Matma Rex talk 17:17, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, Matma Rex, I think you need to have a registered account to use Twinkle but not for VisualEditor. Since VE was intended to make Wikipedia more "user-friendly" for casual users who might use an IP account, this sounds like it could negatively affect them. I know that, unfortunately, sometimes I make an edit and immediately notice a typo and need to correct it. Thirty seconds doesn't sound long but when you think of it as two edits per minute, it does slow you down when you're making small edits.
I wish there was a way to distinguish unregistered accounts from spambots. How about only 1 edit every 5 seconds? Liz Read! Talk! 17:47, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • So the fact that this will effectively block all IP editors (who are forced to use VE which edits via the API on their behalf according to the core developer above) emphasizes that this proposal is a request to require all IP editors to create an account to edit on Wikipedia against the spirit of pillar 3. Technical 13 (talk) 18:02, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • comment: This would be ineffective (except possibly for the very short term). Its really easy to write a screen scrapping program that can edit. Bawolff (talk) 14:44, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Yes, but why make it easy for the spammers?—cyberpower ChatOnline 14:55, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Removing access to the API doesn't make it any harder. It's the exact same amount of work either way. Legoktm (talk) 18:52, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose as this still poses the problem of requiring IPs to register if they want to edit pages, which is against 5P#3 "WP:Wikipedia is free content" which extends to edits via the API:. It's also been mentioned a few times that this would be ineffective by core developers and my scenario mentioned above. Technical 13 (talk) 14:56, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    Although I agree that this is not needed, neither WP:5P#2 nor "Wikipedia is free content" apply. The latter refers to the right of external sources to use our content under CC-BY-SA 3.0, GFDL, or a compatible license, not to edit it directly. Otherwise, blocking users would violate that rule as well. Besides, we won't be taking away the right to edit -- just the right to write using the API. The proposal isn't even to do that, but to throttle API edits. πr2 (t • c) 15:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    I don't see how WP:5P#2 (NPOV) applies here either. πr2 (t • c) 15:19, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I meant 5P#3 and have corrected it above. Technical 13 (talk) 15:51, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    The same argument as in my first reply about "Wikipedia is free content" still applies. The "free" in free content refers to the reader's right to modify, redistribute, sell our content under various conditions (e.g., you need to give attribution, at least an URL). It does not refer to everyone's right to edit the actual content on Wikimedia sites, but if they disagree they can fork. Using that logic, you could also say that blocking users goes against our principles, as they can no longer edit, or that open proxies should be able to edit. Besides, (and this is the main point) they are not proposing to completely eliminate IP edits, but to throttle anonymous edits through the API, which bots and scripts (notably VE) use. I hope you can understand the different between distributing modified or original copies with attribution and actually editing and submitting the changes to the original source. If you want to argue the case for your opinion using basic Wikimedia principles, I would personally go with founding principle #2. Maybe I'm wrong though, in which case I would love to know the original meaning of editing in "Wikipedia is free content". πr2 (t • c) 18:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • WP:5P#3 specifically says, "Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute". Setting this ratelimit would prevent IPs from editing Wikipedia (except to use it as a social networking site because they will only be able to freely edit talk spaces). Technical 13 (talk) 19:00, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    • T13, don't you think that's just a little too much hyperbole? This doesn't prevent IP addresses from editing articles (and in fact, I'm not sure where you're seeing a connection to talk pages at all), except for a few edge cases. I think those edge cases, combined with the very small benefit, makes this proposal not worth it, but let's not go around saying things like outright preventing IPs from editing Wikipedia. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:22, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Writ Keeper, if IPs edit with VisualEditor, and VE edits via the API, and the API is ratelimited to only allow 1 edit every 30-60 seconds, then that prevents IP editors from editing in a convenient manner being able to catch and quickly fix their typos or whatnots as is exampled below. If IPs can't edit conveniently, then they are forced to register and account or not edit. As an example use case, there are 0 Category:G13 eligible AfC submissions waiting to be assessed. The way that I personally review these is to open 5-10-20 of them in separate tabs and let them load. As soon as the first one is loaded, I zip though all of them and click "review" to open the AFCH script. Once I get to the end of the list doing that, I zip though all of them again clicking "tag for G13" for all of the ones that are blank or obviously nothing. Doing this takes about 5 seconds to tag 10-15 pages as G13. If I wasn't logged in, I wouldn't be able to review G13 eligible drafts because I would be locked out by this proposal. Now, I admit this is an edge case, but there are lots of various edge cases like this. Technical 13 (talk) 19:35, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
    • No you wouldn't, because IPs don't currently use VE. They might in the future, in which case this proposal would be much more significant (though it still wouldn't *absolutely* deny them, which is what you said), and there are other things that IPs would use the API for legitimately, but right now, *any* use of the API by a logged-out editor remains an edge case, not a main case. This proposal is not unreasonable. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:43, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. This is highly unlikely to stifle any good edits, but more than likely to stifle many bad ones. bd2412 T 16:06, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Not a bad idea on paper, but the possibility of limiting good edits through things like VE, the Teahouse scripts, etc. is not worth making things very slightly less easy for spambots. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:03, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose if VE edits through the API, as stated above. I do not use VE, but I often make multiple edits per minute, manually, not using any bots or tools. Here is an example of 11 edits in 5 minutes from my contribution history, which contains many such examples:
    • 22:46, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+8)‎ . . m WRGC (AM) ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:46, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+6)‎ . . m WPVM-LP ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:45, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+10)‎ . . m WPHY-CD ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:45, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+10)‎ . . m WPGC-FM ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:44, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+6)‎ . . m WLBT ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:44, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+5)‎ . . m WLAB ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:44, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (-2)‎ . . m WKND (album) ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:43, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (-35)‎ . . m WET Web Tester ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:43, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+6)‎ . . m WDBD ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:42, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (+8)‎ . . m WCQS ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
    • 22:42, 2013 September 27 (diff | hist) . . (-4)‎ . . m WBAL-TV ‎ (Fixing "Pages with citations using unnamed parameters" error.) (current)
I'm fixing small errors with legitimate edits. If these edits were blocked just because I used VE, I would not be able to fix these errors as efficiently. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:37, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: It doesn't apply to registered editors, aka you.—cyberpower ChatOnline 14:18, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support - IP editors wanting to work faster can............. register. They should............... register. Why we still do not insist that everyone ................. register is beyond me. Carrite (talk) 06:00, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose After seeing more discussion, particularly from those who support this proposal, I see absolutely no reason to do this. The stated goal is to "stop" spambots, but this is only an extremely minor and temporary inconvenience for the spambots, if the assumption that these spambots actually use the API is even correct. This is far from justifying the furthering of the treatment of IP editors as second-class editors. And I'm very disappointed that there are editors who support this because it makes things worse for IP editors.
    Also, Speedy Close because there is no way this proposal will have any of the positive benefits it claims but will certainly give us the drawbacks that have been identified (e.g. breaking WP:Teahouse for IP editors). There's no need to continue to waste everyone's time with it or to continue with the anti-IP sentiments some are raising. Anomie⚔ 11:31, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose It should be obvious that anonymous users shouldn't run bots. However, anonymous users need to be able to use tools such as mw:VE. Also, it is trivial for spambots to edit using the standard edit form. Download the standard edit form, extract some information from it and post your spam to the server. Disabling the API wouldn't really make things more difficult for spambots. --Stefan2 (talk) 20:35, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment To confirm, yes, VisualEditor does indeed use the API, as do many other tools (and long-term I imagine the wikitext editor will too; it's an insane architecture right now). This means this would negatively impact anonymous users of VisualEditor and similar tools, like the suggested longer-term set of curatorial bits and bobs around categorisation (a "souped-up" HotCat gadget, possibly), language links (extending Wikidata's current gadget), etc.. I would strongly advise against wanting this configuration change. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
    • I'd hope the wikitext editor would not exclusively use the API, or you'd be locking out non-JavaScript-supporting clients from editing at all. Degraded experience is fine, "go away" isn't. Anomie⚔ 11:19, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment This is pointless. I do a lot of spambot blocking, and occasional reverting. But what I see is edits spaced out over minutes, so I do not think this wll help stop spambots. I would suggest putting in an edit filter first to try to catch this abnormal behaviour before a permanent code change. For bots out of control that can happen when logged in, so I see the gain is small in that respect. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:14, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the above. Humans, whether directly or indirectly, do edit Wikipedia through the API, and many people make more than two edits per minute at times.  Hazard SJ  03:27, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't see any indication that spambots actually use the API, and it's reasonable to assume that most probably don't. I took a look at Wikipedia:Archive.is RFC, as Equazcion suggested, and it appears that in most cases the edits were spaced out by minutes or hours. It's difficult to see what defense this proposal would provide against its intended target. —Emufarmers(T/C) 05:37, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. When doing an operation such as moving content from one article to another, I have both articles open in two separate browser tabs. I perform the operation, then save the edits near-simultaneously. If this change would prevent an IP editor doing useful work such as this (for instance if they were using the VE) it would be a bad idea. Perhaps a different threshold that would clearly identify a bot (6 edits in 2 minutes maybe?). --LukeSurl t c 12:47, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose. API usage is legitimate when editing via some external tool, browser or script, including VE and some toolserver/labs stuff. Wikipedia website is just one most popular interface, but that doesn't mean there aren't or shouldn't be others. Yes, spambots most likely use API, but so do legitimate IPs. And this wouldn't solve the issue, just inconvenience spammers to edit slower or use website POSTs. Saying IPs should register because they use some external editor instead of the website is counter to our philosophy. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 10:31, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. Actually, I don't see any reason why we should allow anonymous API edits at all. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:15, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose, per Anomie and Legoktm. This does absolutely nothing to stop spambots, and has potential negative side effects. If you really think 'anonymous spam bots are creating problems', then just limiting the API makes no sense, since you'll also have to then throttle effects via action=edit - and that essentially throttles all IP users. Proposal seems to have no positive effects, and some negative ones. YuviPanda (talk) 12:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

randomly ordering Special lists

On some pages in the Special namespace, usernames should appear in random order, re-randomized with each refreshing, rather than alphabetically. I thought of this for Special:ListUsers/checkuser, because I shouldn't select as if I was canvassing for a friend and the person at the top of the alphabet shouldn't get overburdened with contacts for the kinds of contacts that should be distributed more evenly. Perhaps randomness should even be the default, with alphabetical being the optional alternative. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:54, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

It is possible to write Lua script modules which can read any content page (but not wp:Special_pages) and then redisplay the data, such as in randomized order, so that the same entries/usernames do not get "top billing" at the start of a list every time. It is also possible to write a Lua-based template for edit-preview, which could accept a block of text as copy/paste from a page, and then re-display the data in any format, almost instantly. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:32, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
@Wikid77: You should really check your facts before you say whether technical things are possible or not. I just checked, and it is impossible to access the content of Special:ListUsers/checkuser from a Lua module on Wikipedia. It is possible to get some data about the title, such as the title text and the namespace name, but any attempts to get the page content just return nil. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 04:33, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying (which I added into my message above), as why I had mentioned to focus on reformatting of "copy/paste" text from a Special page. Indeed, this is not UNIX, where users could merely save output from stdout into any file or application ("grep > myfile") for further processing. If the developers need something valuable to do, perhaps they could provide a Scribunto interface to allow a Lua script to read from the Special pages. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:19, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
I think its very unlikely for that to happen to non-transcludable special pages. Bawolff (talk) 12:00, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

spam

How is gods name does wikipedia stop spam? I have installed blacklists, captchas, etc on my own wikis and I am still besieged with spam.

Its disheartening that smaller but substantial hosting sites, which are similar to wikia, such as http://www.shoutwiki.com have no effective way to fight spam and to continue to allow anonymous editing, they must manually block spam bots.

This spam scourge indirectly effects wikipedia editing, because any smaller mediawiki site blocks anonymous editors. These potential editors never are introduced to the ease and wonder of editing a wiki.

Is there any working extension which can rid our sites of the relentless spam bots?

Does wikipedia have hosting, which allows me to get the umbrella protection from spam bots, but the freedom to modify the wiki the way I want? (unlike wikia), with root access?

Has the foundation ever considered hosting wikis?

These spam bots are relentless. Igottheconch (talk) 06:31, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Have you seen mw:Manual:Combating spam? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:41, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
The short answer to How does Wikipedia stop spam? is: with difficulty, and only by continuous, dedicated, tedious work by an army of new page patrollers, recent changes patrollers and administrators flagging, deleting and blocking. They are helped by edit filters and increasingly intelligent bots, but basically it comes down to a lot of volunteer effort. JohnCD (talk) 10:32, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Meanwhile, Bill Gates promised spam would be a "thing of the past" within five years, at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in 2004, many years after predicting, "The Internet is a passing fad" in 1995. Should have been a comedian, because who would think he was serious. Anyway, we need to plan better tools to help our volunteers resist spam attacks. However, it might require creating wp:Micropages, as articles which are limited in size by edit-filters, with little room to add spam links. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:35, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
The question of whether there should be an officially supported MediaWiki hosting service was recently raised on the wikitech-l mailing list, see here and replies. That was just a kite-flying exercise, and IMHO there is no chance of such a service being introduced any time soon. Many spambots can be defeated with the Abuse Filter extension (searching Special:Version here for "abuse filter" shows that it is installed here; try that on your wiki). The polite name used here is "edit filter", but the extension is called the "abuse filter". Setting up filters is easy after you have done a few. You would probably need help to get started. Johnuniq (talk) 09:38, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist? - Yahoo! groups

I am trying to add an external link (uservoice.com/forums/209451) to the Yahoo! Groups article. But I get a error message saying that the site is registered on Wikipedia's blacklist. The website in question is an official feedback forum used by Yahoo! which contains thousands of entries. Just wondering why it is on a black list here? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 15:54, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

It was added to the global blacklist. You may be interested in previous discussions about this site. πr2 (t • c) 17:56, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
@Ottawahitech: You should probably request it on MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. :-) πr2 (t • c) 00:18, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
@PiRSquared17:: Not the friendliest place on Wikipedia, but I managed to post a request. Fingers crossed. XOttawahitech (talk) 02:19, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Help formatting web refs

I made this edit but just now realized it looks hideous. I tried to cite different individual sections of the same web-page, which meant I couldn't bundle them all under one ref name, but now it just looks like a bunch of separate refs to the same thing. Any advice on how to deal with this? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:53, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Use author-name cites or paragraph superscripts: A common technique is to abbreviate the extra cites to just have author name, page or paragraph, as literal text in a reftag, or add the year of publication if the author had multiple sources:

<ref>Smith. p. 23. para. 4</ref>
<ref>Smith 1998. p. 23. para. 4</ref>

However, another method is to have only one reftag cite for the source, but then add a paragraph superscript at each point where the reftag is used "[13] :¶4" by appending "<sup>:&para;4</sup>" as the superscript:

<ref name=Smith/><sup>:&para;4</sup>

The code "&para;" is the HTML entity to show the standard paragraph symbol "¶" which many readers will immediately realize means "paragraph number". Or for section, put ":sect.4" etc. There are templates which can show a paragraph superscript or just Template:Sup, but are easy to forget, and to make matters worse Template:Para is for "parameters" (should be "param") as hijacking the common abbreviation for paragraph "para" when "parm" is more common for "parameter", and so just remember "&para;" to show the paragraph symbol as a common-sense way to indicate one of several paragraphs on a webpage. -Wikid77 09:41, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Show all types of Units

I really would appreciate if I can see units in all the system. For weight I would not like to use Google to convert it from KG to Lb. It would be great if you can work it out. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.250.95.86 (talk) 04:01, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Template:Convert handles most conversions: Use the common Template:Convert to convert kg to pounds:
{{convert|23|kg|lb}}           → 23 kilograms (51 lb)
{{convert|23|kg|lb|abbr=on}} → 23 kg (51 lb)
For all units, see: Template:Convert/list_of_units, as a table which shows each unit-code to specify for each unit name in the list. Template {convert} is reasonably fast, about 50 conversions per second, and so it will not slow down the edit-preview or reformatting of most articles. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:38, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Diff two pages

It is possible to manually construct a link that compares one page with another: [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=111111111&oldid=222222222]. Is there a way to automate that? What I want is to have a link that shows the difference between the current version of a module and the current version of the module's sandbox. I don't see a way for a module to get the required oldid values to generate the diff link—or is there? Johnuniq (talk) 09:53, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

You can use Special:ComparePages for this. Example -- John of Reading (talk) 10:19, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Format: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ComparePages?page1=Xxxx&rev1=&page2=Zzzz&rev2=&action=&diffonly=
    However, ComparePages does not yet recognize revisions as "prev" or "-1" and so a tool (or Lua function) is needed to get the revision ID numbers to compare various revisions. With the regular diff, then just "&diff=" will compare the latest revision with prev, but ComparePages will say, "The revision you specified does not exist" about rev1=prev. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Just use standard diff links. For example, this will show the differences between the articles United Kingdom and United States. --Stefan2 (talk) 18:53, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks John of Reading, that's perfect as it diffs the current versions of the pages without requiring knowledge of the oldid values. Johnuniq (talk) 00:49, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Image size and ratio for portraits in lists

Is there a preferred or mandated image size and ratio for portraits in lists? For example the list of field marshals at Field marshal (United Kingdom) are all of differing ratios and some are whole body images while other are head and shoulders images and yet others are pretty much focused on the head. I would suggest that an image size and ratio (possibly the golden ratio?) be mandated while a head and shoulders portrait should be preferred. This would of course require portrait versions, cropped from available images, to be created but that would not be an insurmountable difficulty. Greenshed (talk) 10:13, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:RefToolbar 1.0 does not autofill from ISBN, DOI, URL, etc.

It used to and now it doesn't. It's been a month or more since it worked for me.-- Brainy J ~✿~ (talk) 17:25, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

It's because an admin needs to change var defaultRefTagURL = 'http://reftag.appspot.com/'; to var defaultRefTagURL = '//reftag.appspot.com/'; – long story short, there's a URL protocol difference (more info). Theopolisme (talk) 18:12, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for bringing this up! Based on the lack of complaints, I thought it just stopped working for me. --NeilN talk to me 18:19, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Wait a sec, even if that fix is implemented, I don't think ISBN lookup will work. It appears that at least the relevant script is no longer available on the server (although the others -- DOI, URL, etc. -- appear to be there). Theopolisme (talk) 18:22, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Requested a fix at MediaWiki_talk:RefToolbarLegacy.js#Protocol_relative_link. Theopolisme (talk) 15:14, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Done --Redrose64 (talk) 19:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Template question

This includes some line breaks that would show up in transclusions, and are shown here just for ease of reading

In my sandbox, I passed parameter value "foo" to parameter "team, and it produces "foo women's basketball"

However, if I enter "foo Lady", it generates "foo Lady basketball" i.e dropping "women". This is desirable, but I don't understand how it happens. Clearly, something detects the word Lady" and suppresses "women" but I looked at the code and do not see it.

The goal is to make it work for 2013–14 Southern Utah T–Birds basketball team, where the team name indicates the gender (but the word "Lady" is not present), and the infobox link should be:

not

Update: I asked here, because Technical 13 claimed to be studying, but gave an answer here:

It's because of the the code on Template:Infobox NCAA team season/team that uses a module to ReGex replace (.*)Lady blah blah (and it is case sensitive).

So that I can learn something about templates, can someone point me to this? I don't see it.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 02:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

{{Infobox NCAA team season/team}} :
|(.* Lady)(.*) women's|%1%2|plain=false}}
--- and right after that ---
|(.* Cowgirl)(.*) women's|%1%2|plain=false}}
It's around the 18th line down (line 22 in the image) just before the documentation starts. These two code segments are groups of parameters for the first and second "#invoke:String" statements at the beginning of the template (#invoke:String refers to running Module:String). For simplicity's sake, it looks something like this:
{{#Invoke:String|replace| {{#Invoke:String|replace| -- One replacement occurs, and then a second replacement is run on its result.
---- the bulk of the template code, which once done, its result put through the replacements: ----
|(.* Cowgirl)(.*) women's|%1%2|plain=false}} ---- Parameters for the "inner" #invoke:String replacement that occurs first
|(.* Lady)(.*) women's|%1%2|plain=false ---- Parameters for the very top #invoke:String replacement, that occurs second
I hope this is somewhat clear but feel free to ask things. See the screenshot to the right of the code formatted and syntax-colored, hopefully for a bit more clarity. equazcion� 02:33, 13 Oct 2013 (UTC)
You might also find the syntax highlighter gadget useful. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. The odd thing is, I thought I did a search for the word "Lady" but I must be wrong, as it is right there.I see, this is a subtemplate--SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:47, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Equal hight divs

Consider this.

The main eyesore is the inequal height of the 'columns'. I have now spent weeks trying to find a solution to equalize the heights in CSS. I have explored flexboxes and table-like display porperties. My final conclusion: It can not be done.

What's in the way are the headers; I want them outside the divs, but that breaks any box model I've tried. Is there any brilliant web designer who has a simple solution that does not involve inordinate ammounts of CSS, hacks, tables, javascript and still be compatible with all browsers? — Edokter (talk) — 12:00, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Equal columns are the bane of all designers' existence, and as far as I'm aware, there's no non-javascript cross-browser solution in existence that wouldn't be considered a hack. If I were doing this I'd do it with javascript, and have the non-equal columns to fall back on for browsers without javascript. It's not really too big of an eyesore, and the vast majority of people will see the javascript version. equazcion� 12:39, 13 Oct 2013 (UTC)
And the HTML purists are still wondering why we use tables for presentation... I know it's trivial to do in jQuery, but it really should not need to be that way. — Edokter (talk) — 15:15, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I say just go with a table, since it's easy, clean, and works everywhere. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:23, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I would lose the flexibility of the entire framework; the sole reason I wanted to move away from tables. — Edokter (talk) — 19:37, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
What if you used a new table for every row? Then the layout is still just as flexible (and it's still no more complex). Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:40, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
The current style is not possible using pure tables either. — Edokter (talk) — 20:53, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
What about the way I have it now (for "In the news" and "On this day")? Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:23, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
It works for display, but it breaks the flow of the headers with regard to the content in screen readers, so it is not really a solution. — Edokter (talk) — 22:50, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm out of ideas then. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Just doing some cursory googling searching: is Equal Height Columns with Cross-Browser CSS and No Hacks (demo) of use? Theopolisme (talk) 20:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I saw that, but I don't think it'll work for our purposes. I'd furthermore still consider that method a hack, even though the author doesn't think it is, and it uses some copious amounts of CSS that Edokter doesn't want. It involves layering several different colored containers on top of each other and shifting their positions so they cascade with each other and look like columns. I don't think that'll work for the individual "cell"-like elements currently being considered in our main-page mockup, at least not without many more containers and CSS, and the curved corners would further complicate that method (I'm not sure if it would even really be possible to maintain that appearance in the end using this method). I'm also not sure of the footer links in the mockup could be forced down that way, as the method in that article seems to just extend color down behind content divs that are still smaller, rather than allowing placement of elements based on their bottom positions. equazcion� 21:08, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Maybe it is a good idea to ask on mail:wikitech-l? Helder 21:54, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

MLA style citation - inconsistent with the example in Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia

I just noticed that if I use the "Cite this page" tool, the MLA citation looks like this (citing Sokoban):

Wikipedia contributors. "Sokoban." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 21 Sep. 2013. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.

Comparing with the example given in Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia, there are two obvious deviations:

  • According to Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia, the publisher is "Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.". According to the citing tool, the publisher is "Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia", an exact reduplication of the name of the website.

I'm totally confused. Which should I follow? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiaq (talk • contribs) 16:12, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Request deletion of user Javascript page

What's the proper way to request the deletion of a user Javascript page, such as User:GoingBatty/script/Sources.js? {{db-u1}} doesn't seem to work in this case. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 23:10, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Don't know what the right place is since templates won't work here, but I've deleted it for you. ^demon[omg plz] 23:17, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
For the future, you can just ask an admin to do it, or, you could put this at the top of the page: //[[Category:Candidates for speedy deletion by user]] - Please delete this page because ... . That should add the page to the proper csd list and provide the readable message for the reviewing admin. equazcion� 23:21, 13 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you! GoingBatty (talk) 23:58, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
This question comes up a lot. {{db-u1}} and the like all work just fine in javascript; they just don't give any indication of doing so. Is there anywhere good that we could clarify this? Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:41, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I added it to the template documentation. equazcion� 01:08, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)
There has to be a way to force the template to visibly work on said JavaScript pages on top of just adding the page to the category. I'm thinking that it would require a little snippet of code in MediaWiki:Common.js that would detect that it is the only thing on the page and display the proper Db box for people to see. If I worked up something like this, is there any administrators that would be willing to implement it or do we need to have a big RfC to get something like that added to the site common.js? Technical 13 (talk) 02:33, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Template use in Javascript and CSS files is scary. If you type in {{db-f1}} or {{delete}}, then the page correctly appears in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, but you don't see this, so the page might end up being deleted even if you just want to add some Javascript code which contains the text {{delete}} for some other reason. I often see user scripts in various maintenance categories because of this. Would it be possible to show the categories somehow? --Stefan2 (talk) 21:25, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The categories do show up, although I think the CSD categories are "hidden", so you'd need to have hidden category display enabled in preferences. It should be fairly obvious to the reviewing admin whether the template transclusion was activated by accident from within code, versus being placed at the top of the page on its own line (CSD-tagged pages don't just disappear -- an admin has to go look at them and make a determination). equazcion� 21:32, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source includes several JS and CSS pages. Go to any of those pages and you will find no list of categories at the bottom. --Stefan2 (talk) 21:42, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

That's interesting. I had tested {{db-u1}} in my own javascript page and saw the categories during preview, so I assumed they'd show up after saving -- but it seems they don't (I just tested previewing again, along with saving this time). This will probably be a problem at least sporadically. equazcion� 21:52, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)

"See TfD"

I don't (much) mind the nomination for deletion of templates that I've used, or the labeling of these templates as possibly ripe for deletion. However, the way that <See TfD> is mass-autosplattered seems a bit problematic. When I look at my (yes, yes) article Rob Hornstra, I see that it now has chunks autoconverted into bold italic. Is there a known bug in the implementation of the mass-autosplattering, or was my own previous formatting of the article, uh, sub-optimal, thereby inviting this or a similar disaster?

(In order to make this more comprehensible and to avoid further fuck-ups and compound confusion, I'm resisting the temptation to fiddle with the article for now. I'll let the TfD run its course. Though if somebody here who knows what they're doing wishes to jump in, go ahead. Incidentally, I do realize that a number of the external links need attention.)

Apologies if this is a matter that has already come up somewhere. -- Hoary (talk) 01:46, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I've fixed the bold-italic bug with this edit to the TfD template. The problem was that the apostrophes in the article were interacting with the apostrophes in the template, making the bolding and italics appear in the wrong place. As for whether the tagging itself is a good idea, that's probably better discussed at WT:TFD. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:32, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Aha, neat fix! Well done. And thank you. -- Hoary (talk) 09:48, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

defaultsummaries.js edit request

Could someone who knows JavaScript review the edit request at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-defaultsummaries.js? This needs to be reviewed by someone who knows what they're doing before it goes live. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 02:07, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

And could someone take a look at the request on MediaWiki talk:RefToolbar.js and have a look over the code please? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:04, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Why do people keep disabling the editprotected tags? It makes it harder for people who actually know some JS to approve the requests since they can't find them Legoktm (talk) 17:01, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Toolserver problem accessing Autoblock checker

Basically, it won't. I get a 403 telling me something's expired. I don't even know if this is the right place to ask... Peridon (talk) 16:43, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Toolserver user accounts expire if the user does not renew them every 6 months. The autoblock checker (FYI, it helps to provide a link to the problem) is run by User:Nakon. They seem to be only intermittently active, their last edit was 2 weeks ago. Mr.Z-man 16:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Ta. I've left a message. Peridon (talk) 17:06, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Removing "thanks", part II

Since bugzilla:55648 seems to not be happening -- and, it seems, more "thank" links may show up on more pages in the near future -- I wrote this script as a working mockup (fully functional, you can install it now to alter thank link behavior accordingly), and would like to propose that it or something similar become the way thank links are handled by default in the future. There is no need to constantly display a "thank" link on every list item on all pages where they could apply. Let's just dynamically show them via Javascript when an editor wants to use them (where javascript is available; the non-javascript default would be to show them all).

Note: I personally rather like the thank feature and use it with some frequency, but merely think we could be smarter about its implementation. Plastering constant thank links everywhere seems haphazard. equazcion� 20:48, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)

I like this suggestion. The alternatives would be to make the link-text smaller, eg. ( undo | thank ), or a different color. –Quiddity (talk) 21:20, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Unable to view logs

Been having a problem the last two days with being able to view logs--when I click the "logs" link on my contribs page, I end up getting a gateway timeout. What's going on? HangingCurveSwing for the fence 22:17, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

They seem to be working for me, but we recently did have timeout issues on log pages: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_118#timeouts. Do you have a specific page that gives the timeout for you? equazcion� 22:25, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Yep, my own log page. HangingCurveSwing for the fence 22:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Confirmed, got 504 timeout on that page (after a pretty long delay). I've tried several other pages that were fine though, including Special:Logs/Equazcion, Special:Logs/Kww, Special:Logs/Drmies, Special:Logs/Technical 13. equazcion� 22:49, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Timing out issue on California State Route 1

Could someone check out the California State Route 1 page? It frequently seems to either time out, or take a very long time to save the page -- even if you try to save from the wiki source code instead of the visualeditor. I suspect it is the sheer amount of template use on the page, especially the use of templates to generate the table on the major intersections section. Thanks. Zzyzx11 (talk) 07:28, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Update on this: a discussion has started on the article's talk page, and there are plans to convert these templates to the more efficient Lua based system. Thanks. Zzyzx11 (talk) 07:42, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
I get the same issue with Highway 401, where I get a "server down for maintenance" error when I try to save an edit. The edit is saved, but the screen still shows and it takes a mighty long time. The nesting of hundreds of templates surely plays a role in this. - Floydian τ ¢ 09:01, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Faster road-junction templates: I have analyzed speed problems in the slow Template:CAint and Template:Jct, which shows road signs+names in each table of road intersections/exits. Both templates are slow, where {Jct} formats only about 5 junctions per second, and a table of 60 would burn over 12 seconds, plus 10 seconds for {CAint}. For {Jct}, there are 44 major types of roads in the U.S. plus over 1,730 subtemplates for the custom-road signs and abbreviation names, such as "FM" for Texas Farm to Market roads. I think the fastest improvement would be to separate the 50 U.S. states as 50 rapid templates, such as "Template:JctTX" to format over 100 Texas road signs/names per second and streamline that to use the name "Texas" for "TX" without lookup of TX (4 times) among the 55 U.S. states and territory abbreviations, to put "Texas" in the road-sign image, road-name wikilink, city1 or city2 wikilinked town names for Texas. Then, the template for each U.S. state could list the state's 50 or 80 current road-type abbreviations, such as Texas "FM" or "US-Alt" or "Spur" or "SR" (State Route, State Road) or "KTA" (Kansas Turnpike), etc. It is too confusing to treat the whole group of 1,730 custom-road signs (Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Infobox_road/) as a giant pool of road types. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:59, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Polish Wikipedia irregularity

When I visited pl:Bombka, the page was shaking.—Wavelength (talk) 21:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

What does shaking mean? Which browser and which screen resolution is this about? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
The characters were moving back and forth on the page, too fast for me to ascertain the directions, but the distances were probably less than the width of an average character. The browser is Safari. The screen resolution is 1680 by 1050. When I resized the window, the problem disappeared, and I was unable to bring it back by resizing the window again.
—Wavelength (talk) 00:18, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Was your house also shaking? It may have been an earthquake or something. equazcion� 00:07, 15 Oct 2013 (UTC)
It sounds like something that I encountered a while ago. It was a bug in older versions of Safari, where it is continuously adding and removing the scrollbar, due to some element being on the edge of the requirement for requiring the window to have scrollbars. It only happens within one specific pixel size and with one version of Safari if I remember correctly. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
This sometimes happens to me when viewing Bing Maps (guess who owns that site?) in Firefox. It's always a left-right shake of about 1em and only when the mouse cursor is over the map. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Glitch allowing IP to create talk pages for deleted articles

An IP has found a way to exploit a glitch in the system that is allowing them to repeatedly recreate this talk page Talk:Moorti Persaud even though the article page (and the associated talk pages) have been deleted. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 01:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

IPs can create any talk pages they want, by design. I don't see a glitch here. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:09, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Yep, it's always been this way. If it's becoming a problem in this particular case, though, you can always ask for the page to be salted at WP:RFPP. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 07:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
GBfan's protected it. Peridon (talk) 10:02, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I can see why they would be allowed to create talk pages for existing pages, but for non existing articles - why would that be by design? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 20:18, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:AFC wouldn't work unless anons could create talk pages w/o subject page. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Isn't that only in specific namespace(s), though? -— Isarra ༆ 16:17, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Template editor user right needs to be closed

This proposal for a new user right ended a few days ago and needs to be closed by some uninvolved administrator, if one would kindly take it on. Please use {{closing}} if/when you do decide to, so other admins know it's being taken care of. Thanks :) equazcion� 11:21, 15 Oct 2013 (UTC)

The proper place to make such requests is at WP:AN/RFC... and I see that it's already listed in the queue of about two dozen others waiting for closure. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Redirect disables back button, continued

Further to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 117#Redirect disables back button - I've had this happen on a regular link. It happens when I have bookmarked a http: page - let's say VPT - and on going to that bookmark, Wikipedia initially takes me to the bookmarked page but within a fraction of a second, it automatically takes me to the https: equivalent. I know that I'm on a https: because there's a little black padlock at the left of the address bar. No amount of back-buttoning will take me back to where I started because as soon as I get back to the http: page it instantly forwards me to the https: page. Fortunately, in Firefox, it is possible to right-click the back button in order to select from a list and so skip back to a point before the bookmark was visited. IE 9 has a down-arrow link to the right of the back-button which does the same job, but equivalent features are not available in all browsers. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:12, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I've tried to reproduce this both during the original discussion and now, but can't seem to. I've made bookmarks to the HTTP address of VPT in Firefox 24, Chrome 30, Opera 17, and IE 11, and attempting to go to them while both logged in and out does not cause any problem single-clicking the back button to get to the preceding page. equazcion� 12:22, 15 Oct 2013 (UTC)
After this happened, I looked in my cookie box and found a whole bunch of "forceHTTPS" cookies, fifteen or more from different WMF domains. I zapped them, tried again - and the problem recurred - I then found that ten or so of the "forceHTTPS" cookies had been recreated. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that's what it is supposed to do. Unless you uncheck the option to browse securely from your preferences, you WILL be redirected. And if you don't go back more than one step, then yes your back button will do this. This is explainable and 'normal' behavior I would say. Are there really browsers that don't give you an option to go back 'further' than the directly previous page ? I'd be surprised by that. Anyways. this is not uncommon, it happens to me quite often on other websites with redirects as well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
When I was first starting in HTML - back in the days of 3.2 - I was cautioned against using client-side redirects of the form <META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT="0;http://www.example.com/"> because "that will break the back button on most browsers". It's the same problem - there is no useful time delay before the redirect kicks in.
The five major desktop browsers have the facility for selecting from a list of pages in the tab's history, but the means to access it varies, so it might not be well-known. A right-click on the back button works in Chrome and Firefox; a held-down left-click on the back button works in Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. Neither technique works in IE, but that has a separate down-arrow icon to the right of the forward button. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:54, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Interwikis

Wikimedia UK recently migrated their website to a new address, from uk.wikimedia.org to wikimedia.org.uk. As a result the details at Special:Interwiki are now out of date. I can't change this myself, so is there anyone who can updates the details, or point me in the direction of someone who can help? Is the list exclusive to Wikipedia or is there a central list which needs updating? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I raised this at the WMUK Water Cooler, but it got archived - this is the final version of the thread. Please note that wikimedia.org.uk redirects to wiki.wikimedia.org.uk --Redrose64 (talk) 12:55, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for clearing that up Redrose. I archived the thread because it looked closed but I'd forgotten it had been discussed. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 13:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

New Page Patrol script not working?

Hi all.
TheJosh's "New Page Patroller" script stopped working for me three-four days ago. No particular reason I can find. The script hasn't been updated in a while. (And yes, I have tried turning my computer off then on again, de-installing and re-installing the script, etc.) WinXP, latest Firefox. Not working for me in Chrome or IE either. Anyone else having this problem?
Peter "I am now aware that REGEX is not a domestic cleaning product, that would be AJAX, yeah?" in Australia aka --Shirt58 (talk) 12:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

@Shirt58:, should be fixed now. Legoktm (talk) 21:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Tricky captchas

Please see Wikipedia:Help desk#Captcha insanity for a problem that an IP has been having with the captcha system. It's easy for those of us who never see them to not realize that people having trouble with the system are the ones who can't report it. —Anne Delong (talk) 14:27, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Reminds me of a challenge I had recently; I wanted to post something to a discussion site, which was information interesting to the audience, so I was not looking for help, I was looking to help. I couldn't post without registering. I tried registering, and got an error. The message with the error said in the case of errors, contact the sysadmin. But you had to login to contact the sysadmin. Oh well, their loss. We should make sure we don't fall into the same trap.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 20:06, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Switch of mbox templates and category handler to Lua

I've started a thread over at Template talk:Mbox about my implementation of all of the {{mbox}} family templates, plus the {{category handler}} template, as Lua modules. These templates have millions of transclusions, so I would appreciate comments and some more eyes on the code. Please let me know what you think over at the discussion page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 15:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Infobox image uses no longer listed at image pages

I randomly clicked File:ThrustSSC front.jpg on the Main Page to see what the hell it was. There was no article link at the image description, so I checked the "File usage" list, and surprisingly saw nothing from en-wiki there, despite having later found it in ThrustSSC's infobox. Checking a couple of other examples, like America the Beautiful and its infobox image, I found the same issue. My mistake, looks like that image does list the article usage correctly.

I was thinking this had to do with {{infobox}}'s recent move to use a Lua module rather than traditional wikicode, but seeing as this doesn't happen with all infoboxes, I'm not sure what caused this. equazcion� 16:51, 15 Oct 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the file uses is reported from caching, and updating the page(s) that use the image should update that list. It has been one-off cases in the past that the file use list is not always correct but after some time it fixes itself (hence caching issues come to mind). --MASEM (t) 16:59, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
The article has contained the image for at least some months now, and has had a number of edits today. I just tried a null edit as well anyway and that doesn't seem to update the list. equazcion� 17:03, 15 Oct 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I made a null edit to ThrustSSC just in case, but that doesn't fix it. At File:ThrustSSC front.jpg#mw-imagepage-section-linkstoimage there is the usual list of pages, including Main Page, but not including ThrustSSC. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:14, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
I think the issue might be that the infobox has File:Cmglee Thrust SSC front.jpg, which redirects to File:ThrustSSC front.jpg. Chris857 (talk) 17:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Question about pending changes

On Amanda Bynes (page history), a new editor added a non-free image that I think fails our non-free image criteria so I reverted it (I've got the reviewer user right). I just noticed they've "reverted" my reversion 3 times in a row - without me reverting or anyone else editing between their "reversions". The last was their 10th edit so it autoconfirmed them and the image went live.

Can a 4-day-old account just keep hitting "undo" on a PC-protected page until they exceed 10 "edits" and autoconfirm? Anthonyhcole (talk • contribs) 00:44, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes. If they're causing disruption, treat them like you would any other disruptive user editing a non-PC protected page. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Cheers. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:25, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Video files not working

I'm using internet explorer 9 and when ever a Wikipedia article has animation in the article itself, it works totally fine but when ever an article has a video file and I click on it, it won't load the video and I'm unable to watch the video file. That happens every single time for any video file at all on Wikipedia on the laptop I got from future shop 2 years ago. Is it possible for Wikipedia to adapt to fix that problem? Maybe, Wikipedia can do so by changing the method of showing video files. On the other hand, image files display properly with no problem and I can view them at full resolution. Blackbombchu (talk) 03:09, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Internet Explorer needs Java to play the files hosted on Wikipedia. Most other browsers have native support built in. — Edokter (talk) — 15:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Commons-only file acting strangely

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57776

Can someone have a look at File:Svengalideck.png? It's also on Commons, and so far as I can tell it doesn't exist locally, having been deleted in May, but it's not showing up properly for me. I just get a file history and a dead link to the full resolution (no thumbnails, no "this file is on Commons," no description, just the dead link and the file history). Is anyone else seeing the same thing? --NYKevin 06:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I am seeing exactly the same thing. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that a file transferred in May would not show up correctly. I've posted something over at commons:Commons:Help desk#en:File:Svengalideck.png in case this is a commons problem and not an en.wiki issue. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 06:42, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
It's also not displaying properly at the Trick deck article. This sounds like a database glitch to me - bugzilla would probably be a better place to report this than Commons. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 07:29, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Filed in bugzilla —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
It seems that the file still exists locally, although our copy is broken. If an administrator can delete the local copy, then the Commons copy would probably display properly on Wikipedia. If the file can't be deleted for some reason, then a temporary solution could be to upload a new copy of the file locally under a different name until it becomes possible to delete our local copy of the file. --Stefan2 (talk) 08:21, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
It's probably best to let someone who knows the database system take a look before we mess around with it. This might be a symptom of a larger problem, and if that's the case then it will be easier to find out what went wrong if we leave things as they are. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 08:57, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I see nothing strange; the local page shows the description page from Commons, and all images display properly for me. — Edokter (talk) — 16:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed, I am no longer seeing the problem. I believe [1] may have fixed it. --NYKevin 16:18, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

In API, action=opensearch returns only 15 items instead of 100 result asked for

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57696

In the API sandbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=opensearch&format=json&search=R&limit=100&namespace=0) I am querying for search results for "R" as follows; '/w/api.php?action=opensearch&format=json&search=R&limit=100&namespace=0' but it returns only the following 15 results. 

  "R",
  [
      "Race and ethnicity in the United States Census",
      "Russia",
      "Romanization",
      "Rock music",
      "Romania",
      "Republican Party (United States)",
      "Roman Catholic Church",
      "Rome",
      "Record producer",
      "Republic of Ireland",
      "Royal Navy",
      "Radio broadcasting",
      "Rolling Stone",
      "Rugby union",
      "Rhythm and blues"
  ]

I am querying for 100 search results but it is still only returning 15 results always. Can anyone please tell as to what I am doing wrong or the search results are limited to 15 results only. I am sure for a letter R there should be many articles. - Harin4wiki (talk • contribs) 09:38, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Searching (including using the API) is resource intensive and hence far more limited than other API queries (15 could well be the non-bot limit). What are you trying to do? Could it be done a different way? For example, do you just want to search article titles or whole articles? - Jarry1250 [Vacation needed] 10:26, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
I've actually been having the same problem for a while. I figured I must've be doing something wrong, since I'm not so familiar with the API's search actions. An actual error gets returned with the results when you set the search limit to a number over 100, but if the limit is between 15 and 100, it simply cuts off at 15 with no error. Kinda strange. equazcion� 10:33, 14 Oct 2013 (UTC)
That does sound like a bug. - Jarry1250 [Vacation needed] 10:59, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Note the bug would be in the search backend, not the API module. I just checked the code for the API module and all it does is pass the limit to PrefixSearch which passes it to the search backend. Anomie⚔ 13:24, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I am only searching for the articles that are starting from the characters which the user keys in. So I want a list of articles which start from the characters the user has keyed in and then I can get the entire article once the user clicks on a specific article. But getting only 15 search results is too limited. I need to get atleast 50 to 100 search results. - Harin4wiki talk —Preceding undated comment added 10:39, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay, in which case you should use https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&apprefix=R&aplimit=100 or similar. Search is way more powerful than you require. - Jarry1250 [Vacation needed] 10:59, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks a lot all of you for all the help. Jarry1250, the API call you have suggested makes sense and I may go ahead and use that to get the desired functionality. Ofcourse I will tweak it for getting only the Main Page + various other combinations. I just checked on the API sandbox and that call has various parameters and it makes sense for me to use that. Once again, Thanks to all of you. - Harin4wiki talk —Preceding undated comment added 17:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

titles containing colons

I'd like a redirect from the name Bi:gwurrung, analogous to Sto:lo. However, the colon is a problem, and {{colon}} or &#58; do not help. Is this because the initial bi- is a language code? This is the spelling used in a public linguistic database we're working from, so it's a good idea to have a rd. Any workaround? — kwami (talk) 04:38, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's because "bi" is a language prefix, and unfortunately no, there is no way to have a redirect at that title. You'd have to put it at a similar, allowed, title instead. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Colons for the details. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 07:52, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. I do have similar titles as rd's, but since I'm only looking for rd support, I don't need to mess w the article. It shouldn't be much of a problem.
Too bad &#58; won't work the way &#47; will for /Gwi. — kwami (talk) 07:56, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
The difference is that the page /Gwi language can actually exist locally and the problem is just in the linking syntax, while for Bi:gwurrung the title itself is not locally possible. This is the same issue as how it's not possible for a page such as "Book: A Novel" to exist in the article namespace. Anomie⚔ 11:40, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
As an aside both bi∶gwurrung, bi꞉gwurrung and bi։gwurrung are valid titles. (I'm not sure how wikipedia feels about such unicode hacks). Bawolff (talk) 14:51, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
While those are neat hacks, they're impossible for most users to type so we should probably avoid them. Anomie⚔ 13:06, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Poor peer-reviewing

Take a look at this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bogus-science-paper-reveals-peer-review-s-flaws-1.2054004

For Wikipedia, with its reliance on citations of apparently-reliable material, this should be worrying.

DOwenWilliams (talk) 19:23, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Science-topic editors using multiple older sources: There has been talk among the science-topic editors to require multiple, independent sources to avoid problems of unusual studies, which perhaps report fringe cases as not adequately representing the theories being presented. That technique, to be more conservative and read multiple sources before posting text into Wikipedia, would deter the posting of false data from a few rigged publications. However, it is interesting to see science journalist John Bohannon (re-)entering the realm of gonzo journalism to be the culprit who submitted the falsified document to so many science journals. Anyway, perhaps we need an essay to recommend and explain techniques for using multiple, independent sources along with wp:RS. Essay "wp:Find sources" is aimed at locating even one source to back the text. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Flow Office Hours - updated

Hi. The Flow team will be holding an IRC office hours session in #wikimedia-office at 18:00 UTC on 17 November to talk about Flow as a whole. (with more office hours, in the future). The most up-to-date documentation pages are currently WP:Flow/MVP and WP:Flow/Design FAQ. Looking through those (if you haven't already) before the office hours, would be ideal. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Due to multiple-human-error (the best kind of error!) the Office Hours meeting was announced with the wrong month. The logs for today's (quiet) meeting, can be seen at m:IRC office hours#Office hour logs.
The updated time and date of our next office hours meeting is: 18:00 UTC on 24 October. Thanks, and sorry about the mixup. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistency between WIkipedia API, action=raw and html view

I discovered inconsistency between the Wikipedia API, the action=raw view and the regular HTML view. e.g. the village Oberalm in:

  1. regular HTML-view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberalm has a population_total of 4247 people
  2. Wikipedia API: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&format=xmlfm&titles=Oberalm&rvsection=0 -> Einwohner (which stands for population)=3989
  3. action=raw view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberalm?action=raw Einwohner=3989

I learned that the regular HTML-view uses a template and overwrites the raw-source of the entry. I think this prevent people to update the real number in the source. But in case we do not need a up to date source, shouldn't the template be used whichever way the content is requested?

Interesting sidefact: The German Wikipedia page about Oberalm http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberalm does nor list Einwohner neither population. Einwohner seams only to be shown on the English Wikipedia.

Pedak (talk) 14:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

So diving down the rabbit hole I discovered that {{Metadata population AT-5}} is the source of the number that is being displayed in the article. Werieth (talk) 15:10, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
PS dewiki does show the population Einwohner: 4.247 (1. Jän. 2013) Werieth (talk) 15:12, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Yeah the 4247 number is actually displayed in the German article, just not in its infobox. It's in the article content, via the template de:Vorlage:EWD. I'm not sure where the number is actually coming from though, because it's not listed at wikidata:Q387186. equazcion� 15:15, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)
I see it in the infobox, its about the 8th item down. Werieth (talk) 15:15, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
de:Vorlage:Metadaten Einwohnerzahl AT-5 is the German version of our template which has the value. Both the article content and template invoke it. Werieth (talk) 15:19, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)The article uses Template:Infobox Ort in Österreich, which redirects to Template:Infobox Town AT. But that template discards the "Einwohner" setting provided in the article if Template:Get Austria population has a value for the code from Template:Get Austria location code:
{{Get Austria location code|Oberalm}} gives {{Get Austria location code|Oberalm}} and {{Get Austria population|key=50208}} gets the population from {{Metadata population AT-5|50208}}, which finally gives {{Metadata population AT-5|50208}}, the number in the article.
That template was most recently updated in July 2013, while the number in the infobox is from 2007 and should probably just be removed since it's filled in automatically as of 2011. Mr.Z-man 15:25, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I see now, the population numbers are listed statically in the code of {{Metadata population AT-5}}. Yes the template population parameters should probably be removed from all documentation, and maybe articles via a bot to avoid confusion? equazcion� 15:30, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)
PS. I feel bad for anyone who comes across an article where this is implemented and wants to correct a population number. I get that this is probably somewhat of a good way to make population numbers consistent among all wikis and their articles, but as far as ease of editing goes, it's rather idiotic. equazcion� 15:34, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)

So it occurs to me that all population numbers should probably be migrated over to wikidata, rather than being listed in some buried template. Any thoughts on the feasibility of that? equazcion� 15:43, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Well, it is not "some buried template" but rather a whole set of population-data templates which have been kept in sync with German Wikipedia for 3 years, covering 7 nations. However, when I wrote those templates in 2011, I was in hurry to update 2,500 population counts (in 25 edits) and expected others to manage them, but it did not happen, so let's discuss briefly, below, at: "#Managing population-data templates". -Wikid77 05:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you a lot for the explanation where the numbers come from. Is there any way to get the actual numbers or to get the template also to work in raw-mode, via the API or any other structured way? My problem is: If i read the data in a structured way, people try to validate and see different information in the standard html view, they will complain about it. Any suggestions or workarounds for that? Pedak (talk) 19:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&format=jsonfm&titles=Oberalm&rvsection=0&rvparse Werieth (talk) 19:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Managing population-data templates

Okay, I admit I did it. I am wondering if the infobox template should be coded with "population=auto-set" (or similar) to remove the outdated population counts "Einwohner=4247" and hint how the current count is "auto-set" by the template. Back in September 2011, when I wrote those 9 Austria population-data templates, {Metadata population AT-1} to {Metadata population AT-9}, I just wanted the 2,400 town populations to be rapidly updated, which I did with just 27 "simple" edits in a few hours of spare time, with full documentation. I was thinking no one else wanted to edit those 2,400 pages and reset the population counts (ya think?). However, to my surprise, another editor actually soon edited all 2,400 Austria town articles to set the town-code numbers but did not blank the population count nor set it to "Einwohner=auto-set" (or such). It would be an easy Bot task to edit all WhatLinksHere to insert "population=auto-set". On the other hand, the prior hard-coded population counts are fairly accurate (within 10%), and so a tool which extracts the population data would at least show a "ballpark estimate" of thousands of inhabitants with the actual year (2007) of the cited data. In retrospect, it was an awesome feat to quickly show current populations (now year 2013, as updating 7,200 counts), while the internal template parameters reported the prior population as of the stated year (and all with just 27 edits in my spare time!). Now there are town infoboxes of 6 nations (more on dewiki) which auto-set town counts from the related population-data templates. Perhaps if a Bot could reset the old counts to the current counts and set year "2013" then tools which extract population counts from the infobox would be more current for the next few years (as long as a Bot would be run to edit the 2,500 towns anyway). As for conversion to Wikidata, show me where Wikidata has accurately updated 30,000 town populations for 3 years, and then we might consider switching from population-data templates. Perhaps we should move this to a Bot-discussion page, to see what would be agreeable as a Bot task. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

(note - tldr. only read the last sentence): this does not make any sense as "bot task". this is a classic wikidata item. surely, population numbers will be added to wikidata - hopefully soon. once they are, all these templates should simply be removed, and normal wikidata references should replace them. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

After OK edit saving, the return page is an error (504 or ec)

  • Last days or weeks, sometimes when I save an edit it is saved all right, but then it returns an error message page: 504 gateway timeout nginx/1.1.19 (no more). For example this edit just now.
  • At other times, I get an error conflict page while, again, the edit is saved as expected with no conflict in sight. Example: this edit was saved OK (is seen on the fresh page), returns an edit conflict message pag. Remarkable to me: the ec message diff shows a split parsing (right word? split edit saving?): my entered -~~~~ was saved separately into the textual sign, after parsing my content text. That is, the two diffs (from page history and ec page) do not show the same. screenprint). -DePiep (talk) 09:08, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
    @DePiep: The 504 "gateway timeout" you're seeing is because the page is simply way too large. It's currently 200k bytes which is way above the recommended limit. I've lowered the archive time to 30 days instead of 45, hopefully that will reduce the size of the page to make it more manageable. Legoktm (talk) 05:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
OK, thx. Consider resolved here then. And unrelated to the second issue, false edit conflict (below). -DePiep (talk) 14:38, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Self edit-conflict of "~~~~" against saved signature: I took time to read those diff sections which rejected your use of tildes "~~~~" as conflicting with your saved timestamp-signature, where you had immediately saved those changes as the latest revision (shown in screenprint). That result is so twisted, that it took me a few minutes to understand, and it does seem like an attempt to re-save the same edit twice. I need to re-read and re-think, but I thank you for posting the screenprint, and I will watch for similar future false edit-conflicts of tildes "~~" clashing with the saved signatures. I get so many edit-conflicts, per week, that I had stopped reading them and just re-ran the edit with copy/paste text. It also doesn't help that the developers think edit-conflicts are ok, and not a massive, high-priority problem to be solved (this month) by changing diff3.c and setting read-lock semaphores in the system. Even in a distributed system, with mirrored databases, there will be write-lock and read-lock operations which limit access to the latest stored revision of a page. The whole concept of test-and-set access to resources has been known to software developers for decades. Most conflicts are easy to auto-merge, and computer scientists have known for years how to recover from edit-conflicts. It is merely a case of comparing 3 revisions of a page, while a read-lock prevents another user from trying to perform an edit-save against the same prior revision, during the intervening few seconds. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:02, 17 October; shortened text) 19:03, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
So, perhaps the large size of the page sometimes triggered a timeout-exit which caused the self edit-conflict against the just-saved revision. In remembering past false edit-conflicts, I think many occurred in large pages, or smaller pages with many large templates as might reach a timeout limit. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:32, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Back button disabled when I sign in (on Firefox)

Referring back to this question, I'm now experiencing the same behavior as when I created a redirect (this was not happening until very recently). When I try to go back to what I was doing before I went to Wikipedia, I am not allowed to and I keep going forward to the article I was looking at when I signed in. I was told by someone who doesn't know how to find it that it is Firefox 24.0.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:53, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I see that you also posted this problem at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing#Back button disabled when I sign in (on Firefox). Per WP:MULTI, I've replied there. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:17, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Template parameters don't work in ref tags

Resolved

I'd like to be able to output ref tags from a template, which use given parameters for their content. After much finagling, it seems like that might not be possible. Does anyone know of a way? equazcion� 17:52, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Yes, use {{#tag:ref| {{{1}}} }}. Matma Rex talk 18:04, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Awwwesome, thanks! equazcion� 18:07, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)
  • The #tag also allows parameters inside math-tags: Beyond allowing wp:Subst'ing of templates inside of reftag footnotes, the #tag also allows templates to use parameters in a mathematical formula formatted inside math-tags. Compare the following:
  • <math>f(x) + {{{nam|g}}}(x)</math> →
  • {{#tag:math |f(x) + {{{nam|g}}}(x)}} →
Note how the use of #tag:math allowed the parameter "{{{nam}}}" to be evaluated with "g" as the 2nd function inside the math-tag formula. We can write clever templates which generate complete equations or footnote reftags where the contents of the footnote are specified by parameters. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:27, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
  • This allowed me to successfully add refs to the {{userscript}} template that contain specific installation instructions for each script at WP:US, in case anyone cared what this was for. Thanks again Matma Rex. equazcion� 19:48, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Wikipdia font change?

Hi, fonts throughout Wikipedia have got noticeably smaller for me (Win7/IE10). No noticeable changes to any other websites, no changes to browser zoom level or other settings, no changes to any other system settings. Has something changed at Wikipedia? 86.160.86.177 (talk) 21:07, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

This has also happened to me I use Firefox - not sure about any changes made but... Pressing Ctrl++ will increase the size of the text..the size of all. There is also a setting to be had in your windows setting as seen at ... Make the text on your screen larger or smaller - from http://windows.microsoft.com. - Moxy (talk) 23:54, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Ctrl+ just changes the browser zoom level, which the poster says they haven't changed. I'm not seeing this font change though. I checked Firefox and IE, and I'm not seeing it in either one -- though I'm using IE11, not 10. Does the smaller font still remain after restarting the browser and restarting your computer? equazcion� 00:00, 17 Oct 2013 (UTC)
And just to clarify, are you both currently seeing this change (Moxy and 86.160.86.177)? Anyone else seeing this? equazcion� 00:01, 17 Oct 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm not seeing any change in FireFox. I have IE7 available, but not 10 (although they might at university, and I'd be happy to check). Technical 13 (talk) 00:18, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I have deleted all local cached files and rebooted, and the problem has gone away. Sorry, I should have tried that earlier. Unfortunately, since I did both operations together, I do not know which one fixed it. Strange. 86.160.86.177 (talk) 00:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Of note, I had the same problem periodically over the weekend; at one point, I had three different font sizes in three different tabs. (FF24/Win7) I just closed the wrong-sized tabs and decided to blame it on atmospheric conditions, since it made no sense. Risker (talk) 00:47, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
  • You can usually hit Ctrl+0 and it will go back to "default" size. Most of the time zoom levels happen by accident. Some browsers will change zoom level if you are holding down a control key and move the mouse, for instance.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:49, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
As far as my problems were concerned, they had nothing to do with broswer zoom level. I understand how browser zooming works, and the zoom level, at least as far as it was displayed by IE, assuming IE wasn't lying, had not changed. Also, any combination of restarting the broswer, closing and opening tabs for Wikipedia and other sites, etc., always resulted in Wikipedia being shown in a smaller-than-usual font but no change to any other website. 86.160.86.177 (talk) 01:11, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Special Pages and Guided Tours

Hey folks, any idea why...

The goal is to load one's contributions and then have it load the Guided tour step as listed in the url. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 03:03, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I think it's due to T47219 Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:42, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Steven (WMF). Do you know if I can use a should skip/isPage instead, and if so what isPage is the correct landing? Ocaasi t | c 16:22, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Proposal to unprotect Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items

Now that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Template editor user right has passed, we will very soon have a new user right to allow editors to edit protected templates, plus a new protection level that will only be available for use in the template and module namespaces. However, editors with the new user right will not be able to edit cascade-protected pages. Because of this, I have made a proposal that Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items and other similar lockboxes be unprotected and the new protection level be used instead. If you're interested, please leave a comment on this proposal on the discussion page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:46, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Backlog status Category:Pages with broken reference names

Category:Pages with broken reference names the status of backlog should be more than 50 or better 75 items, because there are always 20 templates in this category. See [2].

Please change: 

This page has a backlog that requires the attention of willing editors.
This notice will hide when this category has fewer than 75 items. (recount)

Thanks --Frze > talk 08:10, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

At Category:Pages with broken reference names you will find {{backlog|25}}. All you need do is alter that figure. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:24, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks  Done --Frze > talk 08:34, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Submissions

Dear tech people: On the above page is says that there have been, since 2008, 2714 declined submissions. The truth is that there have been well over 120,000, and while a goodly portion of these have been deleted (several months ago it was about 40,000 deleted, but since the new db-g13, many more have bitten the dust), there are still about 45,000 in existence. Is there any way to make this statistic more accurate? There have been more than 2714 declined articles this month.—Anne Delong (talk) 12:57, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

  • Updated AfC/Submissions to reflect count of declined: I have made an initial update to that page, as more realistic, to also mention at least the online 57,000 AfC pages (which currently say "declined"), to begin a proper reporting of the counts. That page has received about 30 pageviews per day, so "over 57,000 declined" gives those readers a better ballpark estimate than 2700 declined. A long-term count of 120,000 declined, or 135,000, will require more analysis of the records. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:26, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Can userspace additions affect Wikipedia?

Can addition of what I presume is Java code or something in user space be "extended" to affect Wikipedia outside of user space? Notice top of page. Student7 (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

And what's on top of page for you? Screenshot might help, a bit too vague so far to help... --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, if it's only Java, probably not; if JavaScript, maybe, but I would need to know what I'm looking for since I don't see anything. Chris857 (talk) 19:10, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
If you're talking about the topicons on DS's talk page (the question mark icons, etc.), that's not actually either Java or Javascript; that's just standard wikimarkup, and it is benign. As to the general question, no, it's not possible for Java source code to be run from a Wikipedia page; Java code needs to be compiled before it's run, and can only run inside what's called a virtual machine, so that's not really possible through Wikipedia. Javascript is a different story (and an entirely different language), but it should still be impossible in most cases for Javascript in userspace to affect things outside userspace; you have to explicitly give permission for Javascript contained in the wikitext of a page to be executed, and it's not something that you can easily do accidentally. And, as with AKlapper and Chris, I don't see either kind of coding on DS's page, so I wouldn't worry about it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:31, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

New REFBot

Thanks - Vielen Dank!

DPL bot and BracketBot are the best inventions of Wikipedia. It's time for a new Bot. We need the

If a user contributes a broken reference name, an incorrect ref formating (or a missing reflist), please inform the user who caused this error. It is so outrageously hard work to correct all these errors afterwards, from someone who is not holding the factual knowledge. For example: it took me a week to work up the backlog of Category:Pages with broken reference names - more than 1500 items, some disregarded more than two years. Search with WikiBlame for first entry of ref, making the changes, inform the users... annoying. Thank you very much. --Frze > talk 12:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I ask for little consideration please. It takes several minutes of work - only because of a lack of character. Ten times and more per day. For example see Cite error: The named reference Media2 was invoked but never defined What' wrong? > Compare selected versions > Fix broken reference name. Why doesn't a Bot send a message to the polluter of the error? Why must other users rid of the mess? With BrackBot and DPLBot it is so easy --Frze > talk 06:44, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I suggest you bring this up at WP:Bot requests. Ryan Vesey 07:05, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Done. Thanks. --Frze > talk 07:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Collapsible sidebox template

Hi,

I hope this is the correct place to ask this. I am looking to create a collapse sidebox akin to the campaign box template belowalongside. I have conducted several searches, but have been unable to find any blank templates that describe how to do something similar to this. I am looking to create a similar box for a series of related diplomatic articles. Regards.EnigmaMcmxc (talk) 03:15, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

The {{Campaignbox Normandy}} template is an invocation of {{Campaignbox}} which is itself a specialised form of {{military navigation}}. If your intended use is not military, these won't be suitable for you, and the next level inward is {{navbox}} which is truly general-purpose. Apart from {{Campaignbox Normandy}} itself, all of these have documentation where the various parameters are described. There is more information on navboxes - both the narrow type used in sidebars and the full-width type used at the bottom of articles - at WP:NAVBOX. --Redrose64 (talk) 06:31, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Adventure, alpha-testers needed

Hi folks, I've been working for the past 7 months on an interactive guided tour for new editors called The Wikipedia Adventure, as part of a WMF Individual Engagement Grant. The game is an experiment in teaching our aspiring future editors in an educational but playful way.

  • This week I need some alpha-testers to kick the tires and basically try to break it. I'm interested in general impressions and suggestions of course, but I'm really looking for gnarly, unexpected browser issues, layout problems, workflow bugs, and other sundry errors that would prevent people from playing through and having a positive experience.
  • If you're able to spend 1-3 hours doing some quality assurance work this week, you would have: a) my sincere gratitude b), a sparkly TWA barnstar, c) special thanks in the game credits, and d) left your mark on Wikipedia's outreach puzzle and new editor engagement efforts
  • Please note that the game automatically sends edits to your own userspace and it lets you know when that will happen. If you want, you can register a new testing account just for the game, but it won't work properly unless you're logged-in by step 8 of mission 1 when it lets you register on the fly.

If you're interested, please add your name below and have at it. You can post feedback to WP:TWA/Feedback. Thanks and cheers! Ocaasi t | c 20:51, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Try out The Wikipedia Adventure

I'm interested and on the bug-hunt. Will report back this week

  1. Add your name here
  2. Or here
  3. Or here...
Questions
sendMessage = function( targetPage, msgPage, linkTo ) {
	var api = new mw.Api();
 
	api.get( {
		'action' : 'query',
		'titles' : msgPage,
		'prop'   : 'revisions|info',
		'intoken' : 'edit',
		'rvprop' : 'content',
		'indexpageids' : 1
	}, {
		'ok' : function(result) {
			result = result.query;
			var page = result.pages[result.pageids[0]];
			var text = page.revisions[0]['*'];
			api.post(
				{
					'action' : 'edit',
					'title' : targetPage,
					'appendtext' : "\n" + text,
					'summary' : 'New Message (simulated automatically as part of [[WP:The Wikipedia Adventure|The Wikipedia Adventure]])',
					'token' : page.edittoken
				},
				{
					'ok'  : function() { window.location.href = linkTo;}
				}
			);
		}
	}	);
}

Ocaasi t | c 21:23, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

@Ocaasi: Did you ever get my messages in -helpers? πr2 (t • c) 22:17, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
@PiRSquared17:, ah sorry I haven't been on irc for a few days. I'll check now. Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 22:22, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor weekly update - 2013-10-17 (MW 1.22wmf22)

Hey all,

Here is a copy of the weekly update for the VisualEditor project. This is to make sure you you all have as much opportunity to know what is happening, tell us when we're wrong, and help guide the priorities for development and improvement:

VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.22wmf22 branch deployment on Thursday 17 October. In the week since 1.22wmf21, the team worked on some feature changes, infrastructure improvements, and fixing bugs.

We improved media item resizing in a few ways. Firstly, inline media items can now be resized in the same way that has been possible with block ones (like thumbnails) before. When resizing a media item, you can see a live preview of how it will look as you drag it (bug 54298). Whilst you are dragging an image to resize it, we now show a label with the current dimensions (bug 54297). Once you have resized it, we fetch a new higher-resolution image for the media item if necessary (bug 55697). Manual setting of media item sizes in their dialog is nearly complete and should be available next week.

Beyond this work, there was a lot of preparatory work done to make it possible to re-use elements of VisualEditor outside of the full VE surface (such as in other extensions or gadgets), which should be completed soon, and adding support for switching extra parts of VisualEditor on in the forthcoming mw:Beta Features extension.

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.22/wmf22 changelog, and all Bugzilla bugs closed in this period are on Bugzilla's list.

Following the regular MediaWiki deployment roadmap, this should be deployed here (for opted-in users) on Thursday 24 October.

Hope this is helpful! As always, feedback on what we're doing is gratefully received, either here or on the enwiki-specific feedback page. Please ping me using {{ping|Jdforrester (WMF)}} to make sure I see it promptly if you have any thoughts or corrections.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

We need a watch list for categorization

It would be very helpful to have some way to "watch" categories... something that would alert us whenever an article gets either added or removed from a specific category. Is this possible? Blueboar (talk) 15:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Until we have that, there's the Catwatch userscript, see Wikipedia:User scripts#Watchlist. equazcion� 15:47, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Special:RecentChangesLinked does that. Matma Rex talk 16:26, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, this is a very good idea - one the community has repeatedly asked for. bd2412 T 16:52, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
I appreciate that there are external programs that serve a similar function... but they are not quite what I was asking for. what I am seeking is a "watch this category" function on our menu bar. Blueboar (talk) 18:45, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
Although not listed at WP:PEREN, I'm pretty sure that this has come up several times before; many of us would like it (myself included), so that fact that it's not been done suggests that it's difficult. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:20, 16 October 2013 (UTC)
It is difficult, because category listings aren't actual pages that change when things are added or removed from them. I don't think there's any bona fide "thing" that really changes when a category tag is placed or removed from a page, other than a cached database query, and even that only occurs when someone checks a category listing (I think). It might be worth having a log attached to each category that actually changes when category tags are added to or removed from pages, and then the watchlist could easily be tweaked to show those log changes for watched categories, the same way we can now see deletion/protection/move log changes for pages we watch. equazcion� 23:47, 16 Oct 2013 (UTC)
the fact that category lists are not "real" does not mean this request has to be very difficult. (the following represent my understanding, and though i believe it's pretty much correct, i may be wrong): basically, wathlist entries and categories are calculated on page saves. the requested functionality would require to calculate "category diff" on page save (not that difficult - the old cats are listed in the DB, and the new cats are freshly calculated), and for any category in the "diff", add watchlist item to all the watchers of this category. now, without changing the DB, what the user will see is "foreign" pages on their watchlist (i.e., pages they do not actually watch), and in order to realize that this is a category addition or removal, they will need to check the actual diff. (it's possible to include the cat instead of the page in the watchlist, but this will not be very useful, because there will be no indication of what actually changed in the cat). there is another interesing hitch, which is change in category that came from a template edit: if the category in the template is inside an "includeonly" tag, editing the template can add or remove tons of pages from the cat, and the mechanism i described above will totally miss it (we have similar issue with watchlist and templates: when a template changes, people who watch pages that transclude this template do not get indication in their watchlist, even though the page they are watching was, in reality, changed). so what i described is not a perfect solution, but it solves 78.12% of the problem. i think that perfect solution will require some changes to the DB - it won't be enough to change the code.
some disclosure: some time ago the foundation solicited for "google summer of code" ideas, and i tried to pitch this one. nobody took it...
peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
You could have a bot running that updates a listpage that lists the contents of the category, and then watchlist the listpage. The bot could examine every edit to see if a category was added or removed, and update the listpage associated with the category. Or the bot could periodically check the content of every category and update the listpage associated with the category when they change. -- 76.65.131.217 (talk) 06:40, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Notification glitch

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52082

I just got a notification about this edit 'Jeremyb mentioned you on Kudpung talk page in "Spacing in your edits"', even though I'm not mentioned at all. Has anyone got any idea why a notification was triggered, or is this a bug? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:02, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I was also pinged and upon responding I did see an error message regarding a template loop, suspecting that triggered the ping. Cheers.—John Cline (talk) 04:48, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Why is this tracked as a bug? I see it as more of a feature. Ginsuloft (talk) 18:20, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
It is a feature that can become a bug :P I just saw it in the search results when working on something else and decided to link it here in case people did have comments/suggestions. Legoktm (talk) 20:28, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Automatic taxoboxes

I'm almost certain I'm not asking this at the right place, but I still hope you can help me. I noticed that certain taxoboxes are severely flawed (example: Gaviiformes - Gaviomorphae is invalid and should be replaced with Aequornithes). However, most articles on biological species or clades use "automatic taxoboxes" - so I can't edit them. Are these automatic taxoboxes new? I'm certain I didn't encountered them last year. So, how the hell can I edit automatic taxoboxes?

DaMatriX (talk) 14:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

They've been around for about three years, I think. You're probably best off asking at Template talk:Automatic taxobox. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:09, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I second the above, and here is a clue: Template:Automatic_taxobox/doc/new#Parameter_.7Ctaxon.3D explains that the taxonomy box in question can be edited at Template:Taxonomy/Gaviiformes (or, in general, Template:Taxonomy/taxon, where "taxon" is the species or clade name.
Once you get there, you may end up down the rabbit hole trying to create a new Template:Taxonomy/Aequornithes and trying to get that linked up with the Gaviiformes template. Before you do all of that, you might want to check on the Talk page for Gaviiformes or for Automatic taxobox to see if there is consensus (scientific or otherwise) for making this change. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, you helped me a lot :) - alle changes I intend to implement on bird phylogeny are based on: Ericson, P. G. (2012) "Evolution of terrestrial birds in three continents: biogeography and parallel radiations." Journal of Biogeography - several new and relatively well-supported clades are suggested and the evolutionairy relationships of Neoaves is finally more or less resoved (with the exception of Metaves). I already created Afroaves on Wikpedia DaMatriX (talk) 15:59, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Done! Template:Taxonomy/Aequornithes and Template:Taxonomy/Afroaves are created DaMatriX (talk) 16:23, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Pages created by....on Toolserver

Please see Pages created by on Toolserver. Has this gone over to Labs? Currently, this only gives the top 100 pages. At the bottom "To see all results, please go to this link. Unfortunately, that just seems to hang and go nowhere. Is there a new tool for this at Labs? — Maile (talk) 16:43, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I saw a similar tool on labs Here Werieth (talk) 17:25, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Close. Except that it says I created 1295 articles. I figure an accurate count to be somewhere between 550 and 600, counting new articles, redirects, dabs and categories. I hope Labs perfects it a little. This tool lists every talk page I ever created, whether that was to accompany my newly created article, a vandalism warning on an IP page, manually created archive pages to existing talk pages, or any talk page I created to assess an article that I otherwise had nothing to do with. And it also seems to be counting my skins where I set up .js or .css. — Maile (talk) 18:04, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
It is exactly what you asked for, every page that you ever created. Werieth (talk) 18:07, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Technically, true. But what was over at Toolserver that TParis had set up, when it worked a couple of months ago came up with 521 articles. It didn't count the talk pages and what I had created for skins. Is this one still being developed? Maybe there could be a filter of some sort on what we want to see and what we don't. — Maile (talk) 18:24, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
The TParis thing at Toolserver was actually one of X!'s tools. What happened is that X! (talk · contribs) departed and the associated Toolserver account (named soxred93) expired six months later. TParis (talk · contribs) then took most (possibly all) of X!'s tools and gave them a new home, but I don't think that much development was subsequently carried out. The tool used in the first example above could be filtered by namespace - it's the namespace=0 parameter in the query string. This didn't filter out talk pages - it ensured that only pages in main article space were listed. You could get it to list (for example) just File talk: pages, by using namespace=7 instead. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:01, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
@Maile66: try toollabs:/xtools/pages/. It should be what you're looking for. Clicking the link at the bottom of that page says you've created 525 articles, but takes a minute or two. 64.40.54.174 (talk) 05:24, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 17:09, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist cleanup check box

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T2424

Currently here's what I have: "You have 8,545 pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages)."

I know it's possible to edit the raw watchlist, but I'd like the option to purge it as I look through the currently active list. Can a box be added beside each line so that I can check all those I want to get rid of and thus clear the list as I go along each day? -- Brangifer (talk) 05:59, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Isn't Special:EditWatchlist what you need (that's the link for "View and edit watchlist")? If doing bulk changes (like deleting all items that match a particular search), you would use Special:EditWatchlist/raw, copy the text into an editor, get it how you want, paste it back into the edit box, and click Update. However, I don't think there's anything realistic you can do once you have a few thousand items, apart from severely pruning almost everything. Johnuniq (talk) 06:12, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I think Brangifer is looking for something that can be used directly from the "view relevant changes" screen, i.e. the regular watchlist. I use popups for this - you can mouse over the article link and then click the "un" link from "un|watch" in the "actions" menu. However, maybe someone's written a user script that makes an actual button/checkbox/link on the watchlist page itself. Is anyone aware of such a thing? — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 06:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I'm looking for. I already know about the Special:EditWatchlist, but I'm only interested in pruning the no longer relevant ones which actually keep popping up on my watchlist when I'm looking at recent changes. A box would be nice so everyone has access to it on their own watchlist, without having to install a script. -- Brangifer (talk) 14:25, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
This may be more work than you want to do, but here's what I do (this on on a Mac, in Firefox, so the keyboard commands may be different for you). Hold down the Command key and click on each of the pages that I want to unwatch. This opens a bunch of tabs in the background. Close the watchlist and position your mouse arrow over the blue star that indicates that the article is watched. Click it, then use Command-W to close the tab (without moving the mouse). Click the star on the next article, Command-W, click, Command-W, etc. You can unwatch 50 articles in a couple of minutes if you get into a rhythm. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:04, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm familiar with that method and have used it, but I want something easier. I already use Firefox most of the time and often have over 20 tabs open. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:32, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
Also user:js/watchlist offers a one-click unwatch. ~HueSatLum 02:15, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
It's a very old request. bugzilla:424 has details. –Quiddity (talk) 18:45, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

geoiplookup.wikimedia.org

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57907
See also Wikipedia talk:Geonotice#Shut it off?? --Redrose64 (talk) 13:39, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what https://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/ is but what is wrong with it? My browsers wait ages for it till they time out. I get the impression it is happening on every WP page. Nurg (talk) 21:53, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm getting the exact same thing. Basically every page, or when I click preview. Jevansen (talk) 22:11, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm getting this too, and I'm seeing a pattern in our locations. --Closedmouth (talk) 05:28, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
I've never used bugzilla before and I'm not sure if that's the right forum, but I'll see if we can get someone's attention there - https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55907. Nurg (talk) 07:57, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
You might want to add yourself to the CC list to receive updates via email. --Closedmouth (talk) 08:32, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm on the other side of the planet and its affecting me..--Stemoc (talk) 14:59, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
As mentioned on Wikipedia talk:Geonotice#Shut it off?? this was due to a misconfiguration in our new caching datacenter (ulsfo). I've fixed the issue, but it'll take an hour to propagate through DNS. For the time being I've moved traffic for oceania back to eqiad. When DNS is finished propagating, I'll move the traffic back to ulsfo.--Ryan lane (talk) 01:27, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you Ryan. Nurg (talk) 01:31, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Could someone help me with {{Gallery sequence}}? It's largely a direct copy from fr:Template:Animation... Having a bit of difficulty in making it work here... Sandbox is here. Rehman 04:25, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Could someone help me, please? Cant seem to figure out the issue(s) in this template... Rehman 12:06, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Rehman If you disable javascript in your browser, the French version stops working, and comes out as a vertical strip of images like your sandbox currently does -- so there's likely some default javascript at French Wikipedia that's handling that effect, and likely something we don't currently have here. In that case you wouldn't be able to get your template working here no matter how errorless the template code is :) I'll attempt to find the JS code for theirs, and maybe we can get it added here -- cause that does look like an interesting and useful template. equazcion → 12:26, 22 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! :) Rehman 12:49, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
No problem :) It looks like the French common.js has the following (copied it to my userspace): User:Equazcion/DiaporamaFrench.js, which seems to be what's handling those slideshows. I was hoping this was a MediaWiki extension but it rather seems to be something custom they cooked up there (at least from what I could ascertain), so we'd need to translate the code and add it here ourselves.
I'd like to find out if this would actually happen (adding this to the site's default JS) before going ahead with any effort to make it work. Anyone have any thoughts? equazcion → 13:29, 22 Oct 2013 (UTC)
This sort of thing has come up before, it might be worth looking in the archives for past discussion. One question that comes to mind is whether the printed output is sensible. Anomie⚔ 01:18, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

How to improve scaleable vector graphics

There are so many internet images that are meant to contain 60° angles whose angles are a lot less perfect than they could have been. For example, the image in the Wikipedia article Eisenstein prime is vertically stretched as shown in the first image with the blue line having an exact 60° angle from horizontal. This is how to contruct a line with an exact 30° angle from horizontal as shown in the second image. You will see the imperfections in the image better if you view them at full resolution. I don't know if it's possible for scalable vector graphics to add a feature of automatically generating a line with an exact 30° angle from horizontal or vertical using a fractal like piecing together of that line. Furthermore, any image with a line with an exact 30° or 60° from horizontal should automatically scale up to a larger image with a larger line with an exact 30° or 60° from horizontal as well as a line slightly clockwise of that orientation always scaling up to another line slightly clockwise of that orientation and a line slightly counter clockwise of that orientation always scaling up to another line slightly counterclockwise of that orientation. Due to the quantization of possible line orientations for each size, it's possible for a line to be constucted in the first place at an orientation such that there exists no possible smaller line that can be scaled up to a line that size with that orientation. Blackbombchu (talk) 02:52, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Your examples are both PNG files, which are not vector graphics, nor are they truly scalable. In true Scalable Vector Graphics, drawing a line at 30° - or any other angle - is very easy:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1" width="500" height="500">
  <line x1="-1000" y1="250" x2="1000" y2="250" stroke="black" stroke-width="1" transform="rotate(-30, 250, 250)" />
</svg>
Notice the first parameter to rotate() - that's the angle. More in Coordinate Systems, Transformations and Units at Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition). --Redrose64 (talk) 10:46, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Problems in {{Template:India Districts}}

When I edit page Kanpur District, I found a problem in this template. In the |Density section I write 1449 but it shows 1,500/km2. I unable to fix this problem. please fix!--Prateek MalviyaTalk 06:25, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The density is calculated from population and area values -- the Density parameter is ignored. I've updated the documentation of the template. NE Ent 11:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the population and area are fed into the subtemplate {{infobox settlement/densdisp}}, which determines the degree of rounding by calculation, which involves the {{Order of magnitude}} template. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:15, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh I know, but calculation is still wrong. It is calculate in round figure. If you divide 4,572,951 (district population) from 3029 (district area) then it will be around 1510.--Prateek MalviyaTalk 05:05, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it rounds it, but not to the nearest integer - or even the nearest ten. It first does the exact calculation:
{{#expr:4572951/3029}} → 1509.7230108947
Then it puts that figure through {{Order of magnitude}} and subtracts the result from 1:
{{#expr:1-{{Order of magnitude|1509.7230108947}}}} → -2
This is then used as the second argument to {{rnd}}:
{{rnd|1509.7230108947|-2}} → 1,500
Rounding to the nearest hundred is quite sufficient for everyday purposes. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:58, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Maximum length of url when using API?

I posted this to the Wikimedia Commons pump and was advised to ask here. I'm trying to use the API to get info on many files, but in some cases, the filenames are long, as they are mostly in unicode and thus need urlescaping. For example, this url requests info for fewer than 50 pages, but as you'll see from the link, it returns the blanket error page. The same error seems to happen if I use cURL to stick the query string in the data part of a "POST" request. But both POST and GET methods start working if I reduce the URL to fewer than 8188 chars (oddly, this limit seems to apply to the urlencoded string, so that what counts is the string length of the urlencoded (%) characters, even if the request is made with non-encoded characters). This hints to me that it is a limitation in the MediaWIki software, rather than Apache etc. I can't find any reference to a maximum url length in the API docs. Can anyone point me in the direction of some API documentation about this? HYanWong (talk) 09:15, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

This query works for me when using a POST request (it doesn't with GET). Matma Rex talk 09:55, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
There are many places that such a limit could be applied. The limit could be in the caching layer (squid or varnish), or it could be in apache (possibly squid/varnish is re-encoding the URL when forwarding, or possibly it's a rewrite rule re-encoding it), or it could be in various places in PHP, or it could be in MediaWiki. Considering the error received from that particular URL, I'd guess the operative limit is in squid. As noted, doing it as a POST rather than a GET will work fine. Anomie⚔ 11:29, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Odd that I couldn't get POST working on my end, but I probably messed up something in cURL. I'll probably just stick to GET (as requested on the API page, to allow caching), but check on the title lengths and make multiple GET requests. It looks like there aren't any obvious bits of documentation I can point when commenting my code. Oh well. Thanks again for the help. HYanWong (talk) 13:23, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
+1 For getting these limits documented somewhere. Helder 13:44, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Via the Commons pump, Bawolff kindly stuck a note on mw:API:FAQ. But as I've also asked there, I'm still getting problems (of a slightly different type) with long titles and urlescaped POST data. The query I posted above works fine for me if proper unicode characters are used in the POST data, but try, for instance, using curl http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php --data @filewithURLescapedPOSTDATA.txt to send the following string as POST data to the API: action=query&format=json&prop=imageinfo%7Ccategories&iiprop=url%7Cmime%7Cmediatype&clprop=hidden&cllimit=500&redirects&titles=File%3A2010.+%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0+%D1%86%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%B2+%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA%D0%B5+%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8C+%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0+01.jpg%7CFile%3A2010.+%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0+%D1%86%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%B2+%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA%D0%B5+%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8C+%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0+06.jpg%7CFile%3A2010.+%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0+%D1%86%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%B2+%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA%D0%B5+%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8C+%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0+08.jpg%7CFile%3A2010.+%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0+%D1%86%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2+%D0%B2+%D0%94%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%BA%D0%B5+%D0%BD%D0%B0+%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%8C+%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0+09.jpg It works if you remove any one of the titles from the list (doesn't matter which), so I don't think it's to do with a weird character in the unicode escape sequences. What am I doing wrong? HYanWong (talk) 13:14, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Works fine for me (Directly copying and pasting what you had there). What's the error message/code that you are getting? Bawolff (talk) 17:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
How odd. I'm getting the same html formatted page as the GET error: "Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem", with

Request: POST http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php, from 81.155.213.67 via amssq41.esams.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to ()
Error: ERR_INVALID_REQ, errno [No Error] at Mon, 21 Oct 2013 18:09:26 GMT

using curl 7.19.7 (universal-apple-darwin10.0) libcurl/7.19.7 OpenSSL/0.9.8y zlib/1.2.3. I've just tried pasting into a different text editor in case, but get the same. And since it's a POST request, I assume it shouldn't be cached anywhere. But if it's just my setup, I guess it's not worth documenting. HYanWong (talk) 18:14, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Update, I've just tried it on a completely different system (curl 7.20.1 (amd64-portbld-freebsd8.0)), based in a different city (so no caching), and it fails with the same error. So it's not just my home setup. HYanWong (talk) 18:27, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
There seems to be a limit on the size of the post body. If you start randomly deleting characters from the end, at some point you start getting a reply. Since it is squid that is throwing the error, I suspect the limit is somewhere in squid actually. That would mean that if you are logged in you would bypass the problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:51, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
While there is a limit on the size of the post body, that limit (as far as I can tell) is 100M so that's not the problem with this 1K post. The problem is that curl sends an Expect: 100-continue header by default which the squids can't handle. If you give curl an option --header 'Expect:' to suppress this header, the post works fine. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
The --header 'Expect:' does the trick. Thanks a lot. I still don't understand why it works for a smaller POST body without that option to curl, but I'm happy to go with this fix. Thanks for all the help. HYanWong (talk) 22:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Probably curl doesn't bother with 100-continue when the post body us under 1024 bytes or so. Anomie⚔ 00:56, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Category handler and mbox templates moved to Lua

I have just updated Template:Category handler to use Module:Category handler. You can see the details of the change here. Please keep an eye out for any strange problems with template categorisation that may be due to the switch. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:04, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

And now I have converted {{mbox}}, {{ambox}}, {{cmbox}}, {{fmbox}}, {{imbox}}, {{ombox}}, and {{tmbox}} to use Module:Message box. Please keep an eye out for any strange behaviour you notice from any of these templates as well. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:52, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Regex newline matching doesn't seem to work on MediaWiki page content

In a userscript attempt, I'm hitting a wall when I need to retrieve a multi-line regex match: 

var request = {action:"query", titles: wgPageName, prop: "revisions|info", intoken: "edit", rvprop: "content",	indexpageids: 1, dataType: "xml", format: "xml" };
$.get(mw.config.get("wgScriptPath")+"/api.php", request, function(response){
   var content = $(response).find('rev').text();
   var regexObject = new RegExp( '== Sample title ==[\s\S]*' );
   var match = regexObject.exec(content);
});

[\s\S]* is usually supposed to match everything including new lines, but here it's only returning the title line: == Sample title ==. The "match" variable should basically be retrieving the entire page. I'm running this on User:Equazcion/sandbox2, which contains some pasted content from WP:VPP. Does anybody have any idea what I'm missing here? equazcion → 17:27, 20 Oct 2013 (UTC)

When using a constructor (as opposed to a regexp literal), you have to double escape, [\\s\\S], since otherwise the single slash is "sucked up" by the built-in string handling ('\s' => 's'). Theopolisme (talk) 17:53, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Ahh, that works! You rock, thanks Theopolisme :) equazcion → 18:09, 20 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Div col problem

It looks like neither of the two templates for listing in columns is working in IE10. Wahrmund (talk) 18:01, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

ie10 supports columns. my guess is that you activated inadvertently the "Compatibility mode", which cause ie10 to emulate ie7. if this is what really happened, you can notice that the "broken page" icon in the address line turns blue. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:09, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
You are right. I took Compatibility View off, and it now works OK. Many thanks! Wahrmund (talk) 19:12, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

http://toolserver.org/~tparis/pages/

Good Evening, This page does not work: http://toolserver.org/~tparis/pages/ What is the problem, can it be resolved. Thank you alot,--عراقي1 (talk) 19:17, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that it's on Toolserver, which has been increasingly unreliable for over a year. Some of TParis's tools are now available on WMF Labs, see for example #Pages created by....on Toolserver above. There is more in the archives for this page. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:25, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-42

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

New features

VisualEditor news

  • You can now create and edit references inside media captions. [4]
  • You now need to press the "delete" key twice to delete a template, reference or image; the first time, they only become selected, to avoid accidental deletion of infoboxes and similar content. [5]
  • When you resize images, you will now still see them, and their size will also be seen in the center. [6] [7]

Future

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:17, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

EXIF Metadata in file description pages

There's a discussion going on at File talk:Torre dei Becci, June 2013.jpg#Metadata concerning the linking of the values shown against "Software used"; specifically, how can we sensibly link the ambiguous value "6.0" to the page iOS 6 when the camera is an Apple, and nothing else. Please contribute to that discussion. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:22, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

BOT Error Messages

Good Morning,

What are the meanings of these ERROR MESSAGES: 

  1. Please add sysopnames[’wikipedia’][’ar’]=’name’ to your user-config.py
  2. No handlers could be found for logger "pywiki"
  3. Token not found on wikipedia:ar. You will not be able to edit any page. Recieved incomplete XML data.

Thank you alot, --Iraqi talk 06:10, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Please see mw:Manual:Pywikibot/Gerrit and update your pywikibot version to the latest one out of git. You'll want to use "pywikibot/compat". Legoktm (talk) 06:33, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
(Aside) I have subst'd your signature (see WP:SIG#NT) and fixed the unbalanced "span" and "big" tags. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:05, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Also عراقي1, it's strongly suggested in WP:Appearance and color that "big" tags be avoided in signatures. Regards, —  dainomite   15:43, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Help update pp-template

We could use template coder eyes at Template talk:Pp-template#Update for template protection, so we can finally get that new pink lock to show up and differentiate template-protected pages. Check over the current sandbox2 version and share your thoughts on whether or not it's ready and what else might need to be done. From what I can tell, this is pretty much the final step in implementing template-protect.

This template is called by {{documentation}} when protection is present on a template, so these changes could potentially affect many pages. Though assuming we do it right, visible changes would only show up for previously indef'd templates that have been downgraded to template-protect. equazcion → 14:09, 22 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Template links duplicated in article namespace

Within the past 24 hours, I've noted that Special:Whatlinkshere is showing spurious links to pages in the article namespace whose titles are identical to those of a template. For example, the article Bone transcludes {{Cleanup}}. Special:Whatlinkshere/Cleanup now includes Bone as the first linking article, even though Bone does not include a link to the mainspace page Cleanup, and also includes several hundred other articles that do not contain links to the mainspace page but do transclude the template. Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Cleanup also (correctly) includes Bone. Neither Bone nor Template:Cleanup has been edited recently, so this seems like it has to be caused by a software change.

Using the API, I can find that there are entries in the pagelinks table showing links from Bone to both Cleanup and Template:Cleanup. Nonetheless, examining the wikitext of Bone with all templates expanded shows that no such link should exist. Also, although many pages that transclude the template now show such spurious links to mainspace pages, not all of them do.

The same thing can be found in backlinks to pages whose titles correspond to many other commonly-used templates, including Update, Tone, and POV.

Can anyone figure out what is causing this? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:43, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Probably related to #Category handler and mbox templates moved to Lua. Does a null edit fix it? Werieth (talk) 10:46, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, this does sound very much like a bug in Module:Message box. I'll take a look into it. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 11:19, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
This is a tough one. I couldn't see any unusual html output, and I couldn't see any links to mainspace articles like Cleanup in the expanded template wikicode. I've reverted back to the old version of Template:Ambox for now until I can find exactly what went wrong. I did see a discrepancy in the talk page link code between the old template and the Lua version, so it might have something to do with that. At any rate, the spurious links should now disappear after a null edit. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 12:06, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
In Module:Message box at line 209, it appears that you're creating a mw.title object for "self.name", which is likely to be something like "Cleanup" rather than "Template:Cleanup". Anomie⚔ 12:45, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Yep, that looks like the one. I'll fix this tomorrow when I have some more time. Thanks for finding the problem, and also thanks to WOSlinker who found it independently. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 13:28, 21 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:32, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Gadget or Extension?

Hello Brothers,Whats this in eng wiki? Search options More info box on selection Muhammad Shuaib (talk) 10:39, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that's a gadget or anything else related to Wikipedia. It looks more like a browser add-on that lets you search by clicking words on any page. This is an example, but there are many of these things in existence. equazcion → 16:52, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)

When decades actually begin and end. Or: counting, and what zero means.

I discovered on the 1976 article that all year articles contain incorrect mathematics: The article incorrectly states that 1976 is the 7th year of the 1970's decade. But we all know that counting begins at the number 1. So, even though it looks wrong, the 70's began on January 1st 1971. Therefore ... 1,2,3,4,5,6 ... that means 1976 is the 6th year of the seventies decade. Simple stuff really. There is no "year zero," but there is the 10th year in a series. And that 10th year belongs to the original series, not the next. Meaning 1970 is the final year of the 60's, etc. This incorrect math is seen elsewhere on Wikipedia:

"... the 1000th and last year of the 2nd millennium , 100th and last year of the 20th century, and 1st year of the 2000s decade."

Well, that contradicts itself quite obviously. Because by normal counting rules inherent to the fabric of space-time, the last of a series can't also be the first part of a series. Or: zero can't be 1, and 1 can't be zero. The year 2000 is the last year of the 1990's. The decade begins on January 1st, 2001.

So, I couldn't find where to edit 1976 to correct the math. And when I started looking around for this flaw, I noticed that it's everywhere. If there is any kind of absurd objections to my intention to correct basic math mistakes, perhaps a professional mathematician can step in and provide basic counting lessons. Then perhaps a script could be generated to automatically correct the errors, rather than having to manually edit each one.

I'm surprised this has escaped detection for this long. But obviously, basic math should be correct on an information project that calls itself an "encyclopedia."

Good luck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.136.29.18 (talk) 16:41, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I think that would be a prefect example of pedanticism, and would really not serve the encyclopedia well in practice. Although your math may be technically correct, common usage of decades doesn't follow strict math. If we made the correction you suggest, Wikipedia would likely conflict with information in the vast majority of sources. Which would be bad. equazcion → 17:01, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It is inconsistent, but long-standing convention on Wikipedia is that when speaking of decades, we ignore the last digit of the year. So the 1970s runs from 1970 to 1979. But with centuries, the 20th century runs from 1901 to 2000. More at WP:CENTURY. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:01, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Actual encyclopedias encode math correctly, there is no reason why Wikipedia would invent byzantine math rules on it's own. And yes, the math is technically correct, and that is what an information source like Wikipedia should be: accurate. Wikipedia should be brave enough to conflict with sources that are plainly wrong. Real encyclopedias (as Wikipedia is trying to be) are the source of information and do not have to follow incorrect math just to be in harmony with "the vast majority of sources."

And: now that it's proven that the "long-standing convention on Wikipedia" is technically incorrect, it's time to fix it. In reality, we don't "ignore the last digit of the year." As I described in my lesson how to count above, the 1970's run from 1971 to the end of 1980. The 20th century runs from 1901 to 2001 (because centuries by definition have 100 years). No words or grammatical inventions will change how basic math works in reality.

So, we are in agreement then about how to count. Numbers begin at 1, and the first unit of the next series of 10 begins with 11. All Wikipedia dates need to be corrected to represent the reality of how numbers actually work, not how the common mind misunderstands them. Common minds will gradually begin to understand how numbers work when this flaw is corrected. An online information source such as Wikipedia is highly degraded when compliance with fuzzy common misunderstandings is held to a higher standard than basic facts.

But this issue is so simple, perhaps it seems complex. Perhaps at this point a professor of mathematics should explain how counting works. Thank you for reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.136.29.18 (talk) 17:29, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

So we must count our ages from 1 as well then, since that's where numbers begin with? I guess 7 billion people got it wrong. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 18:07, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
And tell all the people who celebrated the start of the millennium on 1 January 2000. The maths isn't wrong but society has decided it want to count 0-9. NtheP (talk) 18:53, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
This is more of a language convention issue than a mathematical one. The "courage" argument could be made for many things here, and the reason Wikipedia doesn't take such initiative is that its very principle is not to. "Common misunderstandings", when it comes to such conventions, are rather common here for that reason. We have WP:COMMONNAME, for example, which describes our practice of using names commonly associated with topics rather than names that could be said to be the most technically accurate. I'm sure many scientists and professors cringe at some of our article names, since they represent misconceptions that have worked their way into common use, and that they've been trying to dig out of their students' heads for years. Nevertheless, verifiability, not truth is the standard here (more or less). We follow the sources for a given topic, rather than seek to correct them based on our own research. equazcion → 18:53, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)

This discussion doesn't belong on VP(T). --Trovatore (talk) 18:56, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

It was originally a technical question (even though it became a policy one). equazcion → 19:02, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)
It was? It seems to be about content, not functionality. --Trovatore (talk) 19:41, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
He was asking if something technical could be done to correct a problem that he already presumed was present. At least that's how I see it. equazcion → 19:57, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)

This is a matter of words and their definitions, not of math. And the current articles have it right. The "first year" means the the first one year time period. Counting years counts the end of those time periods, and age is the amount of time span from the zero point. North8000 (talk) 19:19, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Please if you will post the link(s) to the original discussions regarding this technical question. I don't want to waste anybody's time here. I'll just read what's there and not make a fuss. I would talk from an account, but I don't like to argue. Really, this one just seemed like a huge over-ripe piece of low-hanging Wikipedia logic-flaw fruit ready to be cut up and shared with a laugh. Enjoy, and thanks ! 50.136.29.18 (talk) 19:35, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't think anyone understands what you mean about posting links. I was referring to your original question above, when I said it was originally a technical matter (in case you thought I meant this was referring to a past discussion). equazcion → 19:48, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)
This discussion started on a false premise. In fact, we do not"all know that counting begins at the number 1." Sometimes we do start from zero. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:42, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Actually, you are factually wrong. 1976 is the seventh year of the 1970s. It is, however, the sixth year of the 198th decade. Just like 2013 is the 14th year of the 2000s, but the 13th of the third millennium. When you are dealing with ordinals vs. cardinals, the rules are different. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 23:25, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Byte size limit of transclusions

I've learnt recently that when templates are too big, pages that transclude it display a link instead of the template. What is the byte size "border"? (If that makes sense.) -- t numbermaniac c 20:59, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

It's not necessarily that they're too big - too many can cause it too. See Wikipedia:Template limits. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:39, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Refer to article Saengerfest. A couple of days ago, there were a small list of backlinks under "What Links Here". Right now, there are thousands and thousands of backlinks there, the majority of which seem to be article talk pages. Does anybody know what causes this phenomenon? It's listed at GA since last week, but that listing had not caused this proliferation of backlinks as of a couple of days ago.— Maile (talk) 23:37, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

It would be this edit that did it. --- WOSlinker (talk) 23:44, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Picking a few random talk pages I expanded all the templates and did a ctrl-f search for "Saengerfest", and WikiProject Texas' GAN list is the only place it showed up (I would've posted that but WOSlinker beat me to it, and had a diff to boot -- how he did that so quickly is beyond me ). Pretty sure that's all that would be needed to produce all those backlinks, no error required. equazcion → 23:52, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Thank, you all. — Maile (talk) 23:56, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

action=info defintions

Where are the terms used in the output of the page?action=info defined? NE Ent 21:04, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Er, what do you mean? Which "terms"? Legoktm (talk) 22:00, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Are you looking for this? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&action=info&uselang=qqx Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:09, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and maybe mw:Extension:PageInfo NE Ent 11:24, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
No, not that. action=info is core MediaWiki functionality. ^demon[omg plz] 16:49, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, specifically was wondering what "recent" meant (recent edits, recent authors). Apparently 30, from Whatamidoing's link. NE Ent 11:24, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
"recent" is whatever is stored in the recentchanges table, which for most Wikimedia wikis is 30 days. Legoktm (talk) 15:59, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Rollback button on Contributions special page

I was curious if there's a way to disable the rollback button or hide it from view when on a user's contributions page. I know there is an option in preferences to disable it for the watchlist, just curious if there is a way for the contribs page too. I often view WP on my phone and I've miss-clicked on the RB button on the watchlist in the past and would like to prevent that from possibly happening in the future, albeit on the contribs page. I can't see myself rolling back an edit without viewing it first anyway. Thanks, —  dainomite   15:36, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

You could add this to your common.js:
if (wgCanonicalSpecialPageName == "Contributions") $('.mw-rollback-link').remove();
equazcion → 15:56, 22 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Another option would be add:
body.mw-special-Contributions .mw-rollback-link {display:none}
to your common.css; this way has the minor advantage of avoiding the slight loading delay to which Javascript is prone. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:25, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh, Equazcion and Writ Keeper. I implemented the css change first, cleared my cache and nothing changed, the rollback button was still there. Then I implemented the jss change and still nothing. After that I started to think some more and went through my twinkle settings at Wikipedia:Twinkle/Preferences. I saw that under the "Show rollback links on these pages:" section the box marked "Contributions pages of other users" was checked. I unchecked it and saved my preferences and the rollback buttons were still there and went back to my twinkle preferences and noticed the box stayed checked no matter if I unchecked and saved. So I raised the question at WT:TWINKLE to see if that was a bug or something. Any input or comments would be much appreciated. —  dainomite   02:16, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Do you know if you're seeing the Twinkle rollback link or the "real" rollback links? The Twinkle ones are bold and light-blue colored, while the real ones look like ordinary links. You could try going into User:Dainomite/twinkleoptions.js and removing this line: "showRollbackLinks": [], then go back to the twinkle preferences page and try unchecking the box again. equazcion → 02:26, 26 Oct 2013 (UTC)
@Equazcion:, it's the twinkle buttons but I didn't realize it at the time when I made this thread. I removed that tidbit in this diff. And I unchecked the box and saved my twinkle preferences which resulted in this diff. —  dainomite   02:41, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
That looks about right now. Are you still seeing rollback in the contribs lists? Remember to bypass your cache. equazcion → 02:51, 26 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder. —  dainomite   03:07, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

What has happened to Commons?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T58006

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page should show the WikiMedia Commons home page. Instead I am seeing it redirect to https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home, the Wikimedia Foundation home page. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:19, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Anyone know what's going on over there? Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:21, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Seems to work again. A minute ago, some URLs directed to wmf: while other URLs returned a 404 error message. --Stefan2 (talk) 17:25, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Same with https://meta.wikimedia.org. A glitch? GregorB (talk) 17:28, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
No, still not working for me. All calls to Commons are going to WMF instead. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:32, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Whoops, had Commons for a second, but the next call went to WMF. Someone's tinkering? Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:33, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, Commons redirects to the Wikimediafoundation. When I tried to log in, I got the error message: "Login error. There is no user by the name "Maile66". Check your spelling." Maybe I don't have an account with the foundation.— Maile (talk) 17:48, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
I am also seeing this problem. Sometimes the URL takes you to Commons, sometimes it takes you to Wikimedia foundation. Some sort of load balanced server error?  — Amakuru (talk) 17:57, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Interestingly, when I click on the Commons icon at the bottom of the Wikipedia Main Page, I'm asked if I want to download an application. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:01, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I get that error if I go to [10]. Another problem: if I try to go to a page in the project namespace, Commons sometimes removes the namespace from the page title, so I end up at "Village pump" instead of "Commons:Village pump". Is anyone else having this problem? --Stefan2 (talk) 18:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Me too. I was trying to go to the description page of File:Alder Dam.JPG and for a while it would only go to a WMF page only, one that I'm not a member of. Now it seems fixed though, and the description link goes to the Commons. Soranoch (talk) 18:17, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Now it's screwed up again the the description page goes to a WMT page. But now again it goes to the Commons. Seems to which back and forth. Soranoch (talk) 18:24, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Now it's back to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Alder_Dam.JPG What's going on? And clicking the description banner there still goes to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Alder_Dam.JPG. Am I hallucinating? Soranoch (talk) 18:27, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

On the WP:HD help desk a user reports that changing http to https fixes th issue for him. DES (talk) 18:40, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Server/Software problems, started about 93 minutes ago. Try to open your Watchlist..... Was completely broken when it started (no activity on Commons for 20 minutes). --Denniss (talk) 18:41, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I had to clear my browser's cache to stop it being redirected to Wikimediafoundation when visiting links I visited when it was broken. Colin°Talk 18:59, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Clearing the cache worked for me too (meta.wikimedia.org). GregorB (talk) 19:56, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Working for the moment but I wouldn't call them stable. Multiple timeout/reload errors while deleting or moving files. --Denniss (talk) 20:03, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
Looked OK to me right now. Served the main page properly, and random image returned [11] - no complaints here :) Wnt (talk) 04:54, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
For those who like technical details, see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-October/072599.html for an explanation. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:33, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Right now, I have the most trouble going to my contributions in the commons and going to the commons category "Chevrolet vehicles." I'm kind of afraid to clean my cache though, because if I did, it would remove my ability to enter a lot of sites, and some of them have passwords I can't keep track of. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 17:16, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

About gadget "CharInsert"

Hi, here, on en.wiki, you have the gadget (extension) CharInsert. It's nice. I also want this extension on my home wiki - on romanian wikipedia, but we don't have there this gadget.
I want to ask: can somebody develope an userscript, so i can use this thing on ro.wiki to? :) Thanks. // XXN (talk) 10:16, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

The edit tools are done in a very weird way here on en.wp… personally I'd suggest creating MediaWiki:Edittools page on ro.wp based on pl:MediaWiki:Edittools (with <charinsert> tags) and importing this gadget: pl:MediaWiki:Gadget-edittools-enhanced.js) which magically converts those to pretty dropdown lists (similar to the one here, but slightly different (it will need minor adjustments for other wikis, I can help with that if you're interested. Good luck :) Matma Rex talk 10:32, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
Related question: Is it possible to add another group of characters in your own common.js so that it shows up with the rest? VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 11:25, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
yes. this can be achieved by defining "window.charinsertCustom" in your common.js. you can see how it's done, e.g., in User:Ilmari Karonen/monobook.js (i just searched for this variable in user's scripts - i did not test that it actually works). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 14:41, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried enabling and disabling all the edit toolbar preferences, and no combination seems to make it work. I think there's another custom variable somewhere that creates the new group which you would then be able to insert characters to. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 22:40, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
again, i did not test it, but the code in your user space is just wrong. you have
charinsertCustom : { "Hiragana" : "ぁ あ ぃ い ぅ う ぇ え..." }
which is incorrect JS syntax. it should be 
charinsertCustom = { "Hiragana" : "ぁ あ ぃ い ぅ う ぇ え..." }
i.e., "=" instead of ":". it would be even nicer if you use "window.charinsertCustom", though in most cases this is not mandatory. it seems that in at least one of your tries you actually had it right - i think that if you return to this version and do deep refresh several times, the magic will happen. peace, קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:22, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Look in the history. I've tried every permutation of equals and colon. I saw the colon syntax on a user page when I searched for "charinsertCustom", and that's where I couldn't figure out anywhere else to go. VanIsaacWS Vexcontribs 01:04, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
please note that i actually linked to one of your good edits. if you go back to this one and refresh enough times, you'll see it's working. since my previous message i tested it, and i can verify it does. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 03:20, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I solved my problem, by creating page ro:Utilizator:XXN/common.js :) XXN (talk) 01:11, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Error

I have been trying to make an edit to this page, List of auxiliary Interstate Highways, and have received several timeouts that resulted in the standard Wikimedia Error page that reads...

Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes.

You may be able to get further information in the #wikipedia channel on the Freenode IRC network.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organisation which hosts some of the most popular sites on the Internet, including Wikipedia. It has a constant need to purchase new hardware. If you would like to help, please donate.

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.


Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_auxiliary_Interstate_Highways&action=submit, from 97.96.192.146 via cp1001.eqiad.wmnet (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to 10.64.0.129 (10.64.0.129)

Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:23:51 GMT

I isolated it to this section of that page, List of auxiliary Interstate Highways#Auxiliary Interstates, by copying and pasting that section to my sandbox. I tried to make a dummy edit, but timed out to the Wikimedia Error page. This happens when I try to preview the edit. After timing out twice, I tried to edit a different page and had no problem on preview. Then I tried again to edit this page and once again timed out. I used IE10 and WIN8 for the initial edit attempts. Then I switched to Firefox24. This time I tried to save the page after edits, but again received the Wikimedia Error page. This time the bottom section read...

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_auxiliary_Interstate_Highways&action=submit, from 97.96.192.146 via cp1009.eqiad.wmnet (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to 10.64.0.129 (10.64.0.129)

Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Wed, 23 Oct 2013 19:10:24 GMT

Is there something wrong with the code in that section of that page? Is the main table too big and long? It's a very long page, but has it grown too long to edit? – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 19:20, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
PS. I found that I also time out when I try to compare some recent edits from the history page. PS added by – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 19:24, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Seems the edits are getting saved even though an error gets returned, FYI. I made a successful dummy edit, and see one from User:Paine Ellsworth just before mine in the history. equazcion → 19:44, 23 Oct 2013 (UTC)
I had a similar error when editing WP:FRS (i think). The extreme number of templates kept returning a timeout even though my edits got through. -- t numbermaniac c 21:05, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
The "fix" is probably to convert numerous templates to Lua. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The delays are primarily caused by the {{Jct}} template. I believe there is ongoing work to reduce the delays by converting this template to use Lua. See also Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 119#Timing out issue on California State Route 1 and Talk:California State Route 1#Timing out issue. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:24, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Fast subtemplate {JctI} for Interstates

I am working on a faster subtemplate, to be Template:JctI, which can show road junctions in the format of {Jct|state=xx|I|nnn}, but 4x-5x times faster. For example, it can reduce the reformat time, by 14-24 seconds faster, in page section:

The related templates in that section noted by Paine, including Template:Roadlink and Template:Convert, use 35 seconds and 3 seconds, towards the timeout limit of 60 seconds, which left only 22 seconds to format the {Jct} entries in the road table. In rare cases, all templates could reformat in 57 seconds, but a slight delay in the servers would exceed the 60-second timeout and hit the "504 Gateway" error during edit-preview. The draft version of {JctI} is in page User:Wikid77/Template:JctI, and seems to properly format all the {Jct} entries in that page, allowing the whole section to reformat within 40 seconds. More later. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:21, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

To editor Wikid77: That sounds much better! I also wonder if the entire section, Auxiliary Interstates could be reorganized into two or three subsections, so that subsection PREVIEW would reformat and render even faster? – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 02:10, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
  • @Paine: Subsections are a good idea, and I tried to edit the huge page and split the table of roads into 2 parts, but it cratered 8 times with "wp:Wikimedia Foundation error" during several hours of attempts. Instead, I am using new streamlined templates {roadlink/USA} and {JctI} to format the 700 road-junction signs or names, 45 seconds faster. When the fast Lua versions of {roadlink} and {Jct} are tested in a few months, then those can be restored if needed. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:07, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
    To editor Wikid77: Actually, I was hoping for a two step process: (1) streamline the existing templates so they don't have to be replaced in the article and will begin working properly right after the streamlining process is implemented, and (2) then split out the sections when the list is faster and easier to edit. Is it too late for that? – Paine Ellsworth CLIMAX! 01:09, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
    Replacing the existing Roadlink* templates got it down under 8 seconds. –Fredddie™ 03:11, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Use simple wikilinks or reduce hoarding: Using simple wikilinks is indeed quicker, or remove when wp:Overlinking is a problem (just tell user to type "US 101" to get "U.S. Route 101"). Meanwhile, streamlining {Jct} is complicated, with international roads using over 1,730 road types, and the U.S. roads run {Jct/abbrev/USA} with 190(!) other types. Splitting the list has been opposed, and overlinking still exists, but perhaps wp:Data_hoarding is the main problem, to link 472 cross-roads when each of 228 Interstate-highway links has a full article with sublists for whichever of 472 cross-roads. Large pages (and navboxes) are simply hoarding, when other articles or categories are better to handle hundreds of links (essay: wp:Overlink crisis). We need a rule to limit most pages to 400 wikilinks or such, depending on page type. -Wikid77 11:29, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Going the wrong way

Recently, I've come across an unusually large number of internal links that lead to the wrong articles....most commonly, a name that leads to the wrong person. (and for some strange reason, the wrong person often turns out to be an athlete or ballplayer!) We have a bot that tells you when your link leads to a disambiguation page. Would it be possible to design a bot that searches for wrong links...maybe by comparing key words in the two articles? Obviously, you couldn't make the results definitive...just provide a suggestion to double-check...but it would be helpful (and prevent a lot of ballplayers from getting undeserved credit). WQUlrich (talk) 19:28, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

@WQUlrich: I'm guessing that the consensus here is that this is "not a good idea". And, to speculate, I'd guess one reason is a concern over false positives - if the bot decides the link is wrong, and it's not, then the bot is going to have unnecessarily bothered an editor (posting on his/her talk page about a possible error).
Moreover, this is actually a rather hard problem for a bot to understand. First, since articles don't have "key words", the bot will need to be able to create them, for each article. Then, if a link were (say) something like "Smith's father was Joe Whomever Smith", it's not at all clear that one article would have much in common with the other, and thus "key words" wouldn't really help. So you might end up with a bot that was only reasonably confident in its predictions, say 25% of the time, and still had a 10 or 20 percent error rate. And a bot that takes a LOT of time doing its processing.
But if none of that is persuasive, then you should post at WP:BOTREQ, and see if anyone there is interested. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:50, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
@John Broughton: That's really what I expected, but I don't know very much about programming so I thought there might be some technique I was unaware of. I guess, practically speaking, if an article gets a lot of use it shouldn't take long for someone to discover the error. If it doesn't get much use (or any) then it's hardly a burning issue. WQUlrich (talk) 19:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

oldid interwiki

Is there an interwiki prefix that rewrites oldids to permanent links? --Kiyokoakiyama (talk) 02:04, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Not that I know of, but Special:PermaLink/578426186 (or PermanentLink) works, and can be used in almost any case you would use an interwiki link. See also Special:ComparePages. πr2 (t • c) 02:10, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Not sure if there's something especially for that, but you can use fullurl:
Ah, that probably answers the question better. You could also use ru:Special:PermaLink/59064415. πr2 (t • c) 23:48, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Is there a way to opt out of the mobile site?

I sometimes edit Wikipedia on my phone, using the desktop version, with no trouble. However sometimes it redirects me to the mobile site and I don't like it, I prefer the capabilities of the full version. Is there a way to turn redirecting off or a button to "switch to desktop version" within the mobile site?KonveyorBelt 04:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

  • If you dig through the archives you'll find this question has come up about every three or four months and the TL;DR answer is, unfortunately, no. Perhaps someone could add a note about this on the help page for the mobile site (or create such a help page if one does not already exist)? Technical 13 (talk) 04:08, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
    Well, there's a "desktop" link at the bottom of every mobile page that will get you to the desktop site. I'm not sure about other methods. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 04:11, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello, this is Surya - admin in Tamil Wikipedia. In Tamil Wikipedia's main page the "Categories" link & category addition option is always shown. How to remove that from main page. I searched for it in en.wiki's main page code, but, can't find though. Need help, kindly respond with any markup or CSS changes. Thanks a lot. -- SuryaPrakash  Talk... 13:15, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't see any category stuff at the bottom of w:ta:Main Page. I was going to suggest this was caused by the Hotcat gadget, but it looks like you don't have that at ta.wikipedia. It looks like w:ta:User:Surya_Prakash.S.A./vector.js (your vector.js) does have w:ta:User:Jayarathina/iwt.js, which seems like it might have something to do with categories (not really sure). I would try removing that and seeing if it makes that stuff disappear from the main page, but this is just a guess. equazcion → 13:49, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
I don't know the language but ta:Special:Gadgets shows they have HotCat. It's opt-in and can be enabled at "விரைவுப்பகுப்பி" at ta:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. When I enable it I don't see it on the main page ta: but do see it on other pages. I guess Surya's account has something which prevents HotCat from being removed from the main page. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:51, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
That's odd. When I checked their gadgets just prior to my reply above, hotcat wasn't there... or at least, I could've sworn it wasn't, and I did the ctrl-f thing and everything. Wondering if I missed it somehow or they added it because of my reply referencing it here. equazcion → 17:14, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Nevermind. I'm using Chrome to auto-translate, and it apparently removes those .js filenames from the gadget list. So all I saw was "Viraivuppakuppi", which apparently means "Hotcat". equazcion → 17:17, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
So, it's problem with my vector page? Thanks, I'll check it. Thanks for your efforts people :)  SuryaPrakash  Talk... 02:47, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Unable to delete file

I'm trying to delete File:Minigun System.gif but I'm not able to. I'm getting an error when I try to do so: "Error deleting file: The file "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-deleted/o/l/c/olcm49xeacsh8myzkuz294lv1d0n3xv.gif" is in an inconsistent state within the internal storage backends". Anyone know what the problem is? Mark Arsten (talk) 15:30, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I've just got the same error message. GiantSnowman 15:37, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Same. I've asked in #wikimedia-tech. Legoktm (talk) 16:02, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

For the second time today, I attempted to undelete a file and received the following message (or one similar):

Error undeleting file: The file "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/1/16/Emeritus_Professor_Norman_Maclean.jpg" is in an inconsistent state within the internal storage backends

In the other instance, I had access to the file, so ignored it and re-uploaded it. In this case I do not.

Any thoughts on what to do?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:20, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

You mean this? That's weird, I can seem to access it just fine. Maybe it was a transient thing; can you try it again? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 22:22, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Did you try to see it? I tried again and it failed. I also ran into a similar problem with:
Error undeleting file: The file "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/3/33/Jackson_Laboratory_President_and_CEO_Edison_T._Liu,_M.D.jpg" is in an inconsistent state within the internal storage backends
If you can restore it, would you? I'll add the OTRS template.have to run--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:28, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I note that if I click on the file history, I can see the image. But restore fails.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 22:30, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I think that the error message means that the file has wrong file access permissions set on the server. User:Fastily mentioned some similar problem at Commons:COM:UR#File:Federico díaz sembion 2003, 2004.jpg. Try bugzilla:. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:47, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
If it's still a problem, please file a ticke tin https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_report_a_bug under "Wikimedia > Media storage". --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:43, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
I undeleted a file successfully earlier today. If I hit a problem again, I'll file the bug. Thanks.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:18, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Password reset

In case anyone was wondering, we recently updated Special:PasswordReset's basic design to match login and account creation on all wikis. This was noted above in Tech News, but I thought I'd give it a bit more visibility with a separate thread. Password reset is linked directly from login, and it's one of the most common ways to get there. Having login and password reset look a bit more alike will make it easier on everyone, and especially new people. What we've settled on so far isn't perfect, and ideas for further improvements are being discussed on MediaWiki.org, since this is a part of MediaWiki core. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:57, 24 October 2013 (UTC)


?action=edit vs. &action=edit

I'm having a problem with url's in The Wikipedia Adventure.


This code comes up in Guided Tours as a way to send the user back to the editing page if they save without making an edit (which fails to advance the tour) 

var postEditButtons = [];
if ( mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'view' && !gt.isPostEdit() ) {
        postEditButtons.push( {
                name: 'Go back and make an edit',
                onclick: function() {
                        window.location.href = window.location.href +
"?action=edit";
                }
        } );
}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Guidedtour-tour-twa1.js

As you can see, I can either append ?action=edit or &action=edit, either works for only some of the urls I'm dealing with. Any ideas for a fix? Cheers, Ocaasi t | c 20:28, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

A URL may be thought of as several portions. The ? separates the main part from the "query string"; and an ampersand & is used to split the query string into two or more parameters. It follows that there can only be one question mark; that an ampersand cannot be used unless a question mark is also present; and that the first ampersand (if present) must be after the question mark. So, at this exact moment, my browser has in the address bar http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit&section=39 - here, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php is the base URL, ? separates that from the query string, which is title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit&section=39 - that in turn has two ampersands, therefore three parameters: title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29 action=edit section=39 --Redrose64 (talk) 20:36, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) URL format is generally that there's one (and only one) question mark for the first URL parameter, and if there are multiple parameters, the others get ampersands. Post-EC -- Basically what RedRose64 said, only simpler :) equazcion → 20:37, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
In other words: Include the "index.php" portion as "/w/index.php?title=Xxx&action=edit" rather than use a "/wiki" portion. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) You could try this:
if (window.location.href.indexOf('?') > -1) {
window.location.href = window.location.href + "&action=edit";
} else {
window.location.href = window.location.href + "?action=edit";
}
equazcion → 20:45, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
You can do it with mediawiki.Uri (this is already loaded by several modules, so you probably will not be causing anything extra to be downloaded). You should use mw.loader.using to depend on it like this:
mw.loader.using( 'mediawiki.Uri', function () {
// Put the whole tour in here. ...
        onclick: function() {
                window.location.href = new mw.Uri().extend( { action: 'edit' } ).toString();
        }
// ...
} );
The nice part is that this works for any number of URL parameters (you just comma separate them), and it handles all the ? and & business for you. It will also override existing parameters with the same name . Superm401 - Talk 20:52, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Need invisible space in Wikipedia mixed numbers

In July 2013, there was a discussion to put an &nbsp in all mixed numbers, to separate the integer portion from the fraction during a copy/paste, {{frac|21|3|4}} gives 21+3⁄4 and paste-copies as "21 3/4". The archived discussion:

Unfortunately, the extra space in the fraction is excessive (appearing as if "21 .75"), and we need a hidden space. Recall that in other cases, we put hidden text in a span-tag "position absolute" off-screen, but the copy/paste included the off-screen text when copied in any browser. So, I think:

21<span style="position:absolute; top: -9999px"> </span><sup>3</sup>...

Any thoughts? -Wikid77 (talk) 20:33/20:56, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

:Can you use &thinsp;? It looks like you already have the whole thing wrapped in a "nowrap" class, so you shouldn't necessarily need the "non-breaking" feature of &nbsp;. It looks like you're using &#32; to create a space, but I don't see that on any HTML entities lists (my Google-fu is failing me). What does it do? – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:39, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Even a thin-space &thinsp is likely too wide, and might fail on some older browsers. In a decimal numeral, &thinsp does: "21 .75" whereas there should be no spaces inside numerals. Instead, the hidden space would be: 21<span style="position:absolute; top: -9999px">&nbsp;</span><sup>3</sup>⁄<sub>4</sub> and appear as "21 3⁄4" (←try copy/paste with that fraction). -Wikid77 (talk) 22:51, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
(e/c) Now that I've gone and read the thread linked above, which anyone should do before responding here, it looks like people have tried thinsp and other tricks, only to run into copy-paste problems when trying to copy the thinsp version of 21+3⁄4 into a text editor called "Notebook++" on Windows. I tried copying and pasting the output of the thinsp version of the fraction on my Mac, from Firefox 24 into TextWrangler 2.2.1, Outlook 2011, Notes (Mac OS 10.8), Excel 2011, and Word 2011, and it pasted just fine in all of them. With respect, I think the person with Notebook++ is basing the "it's working" test of copy and paste on an less-than-adequate text editor.
Are we forking the discussion here? Should I be responding over on the other thread? – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:55, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Responding to myself again to point out that the existence of the space itself is a WP:MOSNUM issue that appears to be under discussion, both at the thread above and at Template_talk:Frac#Spacing.
Your example of "21 .75" does not make sense to me as relevant to the discussion of fractions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:05, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
If by "the thread above", you mean WT:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 140#Non-breaking spaces in mixed numbers, there should be no ongoing discussion there, it's an archive. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:21, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I don't know how relevant this is but regarding Notepad++, its default encoding is ANSI, and a LOT of characters common in Wikipedia articles don't render that way. You can switch the encoding easily to UTF-8 (what Wikipedia uses, I think, so anything that shows up here should come out correctly there), and even change the default to that, but some people might not realize. Someone should post a thinsp example fraction here for testing. equazcion → 01:37, 25 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Copying and pasting is never going to work across the board. Personally, I see no benefit in trying to make it work. The templates are there for formatting only. Consider ⁠1+2/3⁠ and ; you wil notice when copying that <math>...</math> rendered output cannot be copied at all. So why are we trying to make it possible with templates? — Edokter (talk) — 10:01, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

"User contributions" has disappeared from my Toolbox on my user page and all other user pages

Magog the Ogre suggested I ask here. See

User contributions has disappeared from my Toolbox in left margin of user pages.

How can I get it back?

Also I now have "Message names" there in the toolbox. I have no use for that and can't even figure out what it does.

How can I get the toolbox to be like it was before (with "User contributions" and no "Message names".

Thanks, Soranoch (talk) 20:01, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, I still have "User contributions", also "Logs" which should be just below it but is absent from your screen shot.
"Message names" was introduced some months ago, and was announced on this page. It's useful for technically-minded people, since it reveals which of the hundreds of MediaWiki: files contains text like "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". It's not really an everyday thing. You can hide it with some CSS:
li#t-messagenames { display: none; }
just put that into Special:MyPage/common.css. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:20, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
How can I get "User contributions" back? (I don't care one way or another about "Message names" but I resent it was just put there with no explanation.) I don't follow Village Pump (technical) and I expect most users don't. It's bad that I have to do something to "hide" "Message names".
How can I get "Users contributions" back? Soranoch (talk) 20:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I will start a new thread since this doesn't answer my basic concern. Soranoch (talk) 20:50, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Please don't fragment the discussion. It makes the discussion harder to follow (and you'll probably get a reply along the lines of "see previous discussion"). People can see your comments here and would tell you if they knew what was wrong. You can help by trying a few things to narrow the problem down:
Ach, I posted too late, after you had already started a new thread. I see equazcion has already merged the threads back together. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:19, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

"Users contributions" has disappeared from Toolbox on my user page and those of other users when I go to their user pages. See

Magog the Ogre suggested I ask here. See

User contributions has disappeared from my Toolbox in left margin of user pages.

How can I get it back? Thanks, Soranoch (talk) 20:54, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks probable that you have chosen the preference under gadgets/appearance which says "Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar." If so, you can turn that option off which will return the links to the toolbox drop-down menu or get used to seeking those options under the new user drop-down menu.—John Cline (talk) 21:02, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Thank you! Thank you, John Cline! That was the problem. All fixed now! Sorry I got frustrated trying all that other stuff, but thank you! Soranoch (talk) 21:41, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it looks like you have been changing preferences at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. "User contributions" changes location when you enable "Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar", and "Message names" appears when you enable "Add a toolbox link to display the current page with MediaWiki message names replacing their text". PrimeHunter (talk) 21:23, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
I could be wrong but I don't think that's the problem. Pretty sure this is the same issue as is being reported in the section below. As well as in #Drop-down option for saved edit summaries/subject headers reported by User:GiantSnowman. equazcion → 21:28, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
User:Haza-w/Drop-down menus#cite note-user-replace-1 says: 'This replaces the link in the "toolbox" portlet on user/user talk base pages. The toolbox links are removed unless tbusr is set to true.' Soranoch has confimed this was it. The linked page shows how to keep the toolbox links when the gadget is enabled. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:28, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

collapsible groups in navigation sidebar gone.

Can't think of anything I changed that would have affected this. Just today, the little triangle widgets in the navigation sidebar that allowed me to expand or collapse the groups have disappeared. Curiously, this only affects Chrome while I'm logged in. When I log out in Chrome, the widgets are there and they are there in IE whether logged in or not. Any ideas on what might be causing this? older ≠ wiser 20:48, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm getting this in Firefox on and off. I can generally hard-refresh to get them back, but it still recurs. equazcion → 20:51, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Looks like I only have to hard-refresh once per unique page. I guess the styles server is/was having trouble today, again. equazcion → 20:53, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)
Heh, it had been bugging me most of the day, but I figured it might be one of those things that just comes and goes of its own accord, and so I didn't bother asking. Of course, almost immediately after posting here, the widgets are back. Go figure. older ≠ wiser 21:01, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Looks like the two users above (User:Bkonrad, and User:Soranoch in the section above) are/were experiencing the same issue. The server that provides certain javascript and css is likely having intermittent trouble. bypassing your cache will fix this some of the time (during times when the server is back up but your browser is still showing its cached page version). I'm experiencing the same issues, FYI. equazcion → 21:12, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Error message when undeleting

Moved to #Unable to delete file
 – merged with an existing discussion about the same problem – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:21, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Mobile Wikipedia overwriting Firefox's desktop request

When using Firefox for Android on my phone, I've sometimes wanted the desktop edition of a page instead of the mobile edition. Tapping "Request desktop site" isn't working. It's being overriden. I know you can click desktop at the bottom of the page, but it takes forever to scroll on pages like Template:AFC statistics. :( -- t numbermaniac c 04:42, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

The problem you are reporting sounds like a potential issue in the code of the MediaWiki software or the server configuration (and bugzilla:56139 is maybe related, maybe not). If the problem is reproducible, it would be nice if somebody who has this issue could send the software bug to the 'Bugzilla' bug tracker by following the instructions How to report a bug. This is to make developers of the software aware of the issue. If you have done so, please paste the number of the bug report (or the link) here, so others can also inform themselves about the bug's status. Thanks in advance! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:45, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
I have the same problem in others websites. The server detect that your are using mobile so it redirect you automatically to the mobile version of the site. Rabah201130 (talk) 09:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
It's not quite related; I will create a bug report later. -- t numbermaniac c 22:39, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
I have the same issue Andre, and it does seem to be related to bugzilla:56139 whereas I've only personally had an issue on Special: pages. Technical 13 (talk) 23:30, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Not knowing exactly what the "Request desktop site" in Firefox does, my guess is it only modifies the URL to try and load the desktop version. MediaWiki will then send you back to the mobile version because it does not detect a cookie indicating you prefer the desktop version. That cookie is only set when you click the Desktop link. — Edokter (talk) — 09:49, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I want to know if there is a solution to get the interwiki links using a bot. Before Wikidata, the interwiki links were included in the text of the article. I'm using DotNetWikiBot API. Thanks. Rabah201130 (talk) 09:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Main Page interwiki list. Werieth (talk) 12:36, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Uncategorized pages have stopped updating

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T55227

The special pages that list the uncategorized categories, templates and pages have stopped updating across wikis on September 10. Has this been discussed previously somewhere or is there a bug report filed? --Pxos (talk) 09:27, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

There are previous discussions at Archive 117#Cached special pages not being updated (26 Sep) and Archive 117#Special pages (2 Oct). There is also bug 53227 on Bugzilla. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:47, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Bot Error Message

The Error Message
Error Message When I have "console_encoding = 'utf-8'"

Good Evening,

I tried to substitute a template using this code: 

template.py

But, I always get Error messages. Finally I have deleted: 

console_encoding = 'utf-8'

from «User-config.py» file, & it worked, but the substitute template, which is in Arabic language was unreadable. So, how can it be resolved ?

Thank you alot, --العراقي (talk) 11:53, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

What is the error message when you have console_encoding = 'utf-8' set? Werieth (talk) 12:28, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, As a PWB developer, first read this page and after that I suggest to add: 

transliteration_target = 'ascii'

and check again, p.s. send my best to Abbad!:)Ladsgroupبحث 13:12, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

  • I have added 
    transliteration_target = 'ascii'

& changed fonts to Consolas, but still not working.

Note: Im using «ConEmu.exe» not «cmd.exe». --العراقي (talk) 13:58, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

my output shows It has to work when you set the transliteration as ascii, It's not related to the output device because when you set it as ascii, anything will be translitered to latin (e.g. س-->s) :)Ladsgroupبحث 16:17, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
User-config.py Syntax

Good Evening Everyone,

Here is the photo that show the «syntax» I put in «User-config.py» file of my BOT to work on arabic wikipedia. Can you please tell me about mistakes in it ?

Thank you alot, --العراقي (talk) 13:36, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Page unavailable due to technical error

I've copied the following from Village Pump (Miscellaneous) on the advice of Rivertorch:

Even for a seasoned editor like myself, WP's help pages can seem labyrinthine - I hope this is a reasonable place to post this . . . the page at River Usk has become unavailable though the talk page still functions. Last edit was by Verbcatcher a few hours ago. Can it be fixed please. Geopersona (talk) 07:20, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Works for me. What's the exact error? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
When using Internet Explorer the title of the page appears followed by nothing more then I get locked out of Wikipedia and replaced by this error message: res://ieframe.dll/acr_error.htm#wikipedia.org,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Usk (with Internet Explorer has stopped trying to restore this website. It appears that the website continues to have a problem. on the screen). Another user has reported the same phenomeneon on the WikiProject Wales talkpage where I'd also made mention of it. A third regular editor reported no problem when using Google Chrome. I've just tried Chrome and had no problem but IE still won't open it. I've never had this issue on WP before in several years of editing and browsing the site. thanks Geopersona (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
If you don't mind navigating one more layer in the labyrinth, you may get more and quicker responses at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). I assume you've done all the usual cache- and cookie-clearing procedures, restarted your computer, and so on. Rivertorch (talk) 21:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
And the answer is 'yes' in reply to Rivertorch's recommended actions - it causes the same problems on other computers I've tried when using IE as a browser (it's IE8 on this machine). Hope someone can figure out what's going on and fix it! cheers Geopersona (talk) 16:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
If you look at the [history], do old versions render OK in IE 8? If so, which change results in the article rendering poorly? – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Whilst I have actually made some edits to River Usk whilst using Chrome today, I cannot access either the current or any old version using Internet Explorer. Geopersona (talk) 11:47, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Image overlaps TOC

Resolved

A reader reports that the image File:Logarithmic scale.png overlaps the TOC in Benford's law.

It doesn't on my main monitor. However, if I move it to a smaller monitor maybe 15" I do see the overlap. The reader reports the problem existing on a monitor with dimensions of 17 x 11.

I do not get overlap in Chrome, nor IE even on a laptop. In those cases, when there isn't enough room, it first squeezes the TOC, and eventually slides it down.

However, in Mozilla, the image will overlap the TOC if I view it on a 15" screen or reduce the window size to approximately that size.

I trying throwing in a {{Clear}} but that didn't help.

Is there a simple fix which will work for a modest monitor size under Mozilla?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:11, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, that solved the problem, but I'm worried about the non-standard location of the TOC.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:57, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Searching articles that are in a category

Dear tech experts: I would like to find a way to search articles inside a category for specific text. For example, right now there are about 1400 pages that are the category "Pending AfC submisssions". If I want to find out which of them have the word "football" in the text, is there a search tool that will do this? CatScan is good at searching categories for many things, but it doesn't appear to have a field for text in the body of the article. The standard search engine finds text in an article, but doesn't seems to do categories. I would like to create a link to a preprepared search (maybe in a user box) which could be placed on a WikiProject page or on a user page which would allow users to quickly check from time to time to see if there were any pending Afc submissions in their area of interest. I left a message about this at the help desk, HERE but didn't find an answer there so far so I thought that I would try here. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:26, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know how to do it, but that sounds like a useful idea.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:06, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Followup: in the Help:Searching article, there's a function called "incategory", and after reading the instructions I tried this search: football incategory: Pending_AfC_submissions, but it didn't find any results. Can it be because this is a "hidden" category? —Anne Delong (talk) 13:58, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
I fear you may be right. For example, doing this search:
ammonia incategory: German_chemists
generates a hit, e.g. Eduard Zintl, but searching in the hidden category:
ammonia incategory:Wikipedia_articles_with_VIAF_identifiers
fails, even though Eduard Zintl is clearly in it.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:18, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
This is because the search isn't, strictly speaking, for articles in that category - rather, it's for articles with that category link in the wikitext. As a result, "German chemists" will get a hit, but "Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifers" won't, because this is generated from within a template. The same problem applies to AFC categories - it's not that they're hidden, it's that they're template-generated rather than in the article code. Andrew Gray (talk) 14:33, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, I tried something different, "football -missing -draftnew prefix:Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation", which at least limits mention of the articles in other spaces and eliminates ones with missing templates and unsubmitted drafts, but I haven't found a way to distinguish between current submissions and already declined ones, because they both use the same basic template. If there was some common item that was only on pending submissions... —Anne Delong (talk) 18:16, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
For the record, this all works perfectly in the new search that's coming Real Soon Now. Categories in templates work, as well as multiple incategory: terms. :) ^demon[omg plz] 13:51, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
also, see Bugzilla:18861. currect search does not include template expansion. this is true for plain text - apparently same limitation exists for category also... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 15:54, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Talkpage notification

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T58214

In the last couple of days I've noticed that I'm no longer getting the orange notification when somebody edits my talkpage. Is this a known bug; or a feature; or am I seeing things? bobrayner (talk) 11:53, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

The yellow bar has been appearing fine for me today. The usual behaviour, as far as I'm aware, is to get the yellow bar for all posts made to your talk page apart from minor edits made by bots. So the edits on your talk page by SineBot shouldn't have triggered the orange bar, but all the other edits should have. If the yellow bar hasn't been showing up for you at all then it sounds like a bug. I'll test it by making a post on your talk page now - let me know if you see the yellow bar this time. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ♪ talk ♪ 12:09, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Not all other edits. It doesn't come up for rollbacked edits as well, in my experience. --Glaisher [talk] 12:43, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for triggering it again. I got 99 notifications but an orange bar aint one:
Am using Chrome on W7 with Monobook. Haven't tweaked anything recently. bobrayner (talk) 12:46, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
You can see the text of the "talk" link is "talk: you have new messages" instead. It should be in a yellowish orange – if it's not, then it muse be overridden by some of your custom styles. Matma Rex talk 13:20, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, actually no – it should be orange, but it's not. That's a bug, filed it as T58214 and I'm going to submit a patch soon. Matma Rex talk 13:32, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps deleting
.usermessage {background-color: #d0ffd0; border: 1px solid #225522; }
from your monobook.css is worth a try, because it's not appearing green anymore, either. ~HueSatLum 13:41, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Already done, although my understanding was that it was redundant, as it only controlled the behaviour of {{Usermessage}}; and having been like that since January, it's unlikely to have triggered the recent change in notification behaviour.
Thanks, Matma Rex, for the swift bugfix! bobrayner (talk) 13:48, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Just as a followup, the problem persists after removing that line from my monobook.css. Can recreate in IE10. Cannot recreate in the Modern, Vector, and Cologne Blue skins. Good grief, Cologne Blue looks horrendous in IE10. My eyes are burning. bobrayner (talk) 16:27, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
I have this problem too. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 13:44, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Also here, somebody applied some Orange-B-Gon. - The Bushranger One ping only 16:21, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, yes, it's broken, thanks guys :) I submitted a patch to the bug: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/92181 – it'll hopefully be merged after the weekend. The problem isn't very critical, so deployment to Wikipedia and friends will probably go per the standard timetable (within two weeks of the patch being accepted). Matma Rex talk 17:19, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Special:ValidationStatistics article count

Why is the number of articles shown in the "Pages" column of Special:ValidationStatistics (currently 4,428,211) higher than the one from {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} (4,360,748)? Opraco (talk) 14:40, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

The first one is reported as a count of "number of pages in the main namespace not counting redirects". The second one, per mw:Manual:Using custom namespaces#Content namespaces, counts "not a redirect and has one external link". I suspect this may be where the discrepancy arises, but could be wrong... Andrew Gray (talk) 15:00, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
It's one internal link (wikilink), not external. See mw:Manual:$wgArticleCountMethod for how to choose it. http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php sets it to 'link' for all Wikimedia wikis except four that are not Wikipedias and have apparently requested another setting at Bugzilla, for example bugzilla:40173. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:40, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Apologies, yes - internal! Andrew Gray (talk) 16:10, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Notifications

What's happened to the little yellow bar that lit up the 'talk' button? It used to come up for talk page messages while thanks and such just had the red square. Peridon (talk) 18:12, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

@Peridon: Assuming you're on the Monobook skin (you should always mention that when reporting issues), it got accidentally bonked. See #Talkpage notification above. Matma Rex talk 18:22, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Usually do say, but got boggled by a dispute. That could also be why I didn't see that thread - I did really look at the Contents list. Thanks anyway. Peridon (talk) 18:36, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Ipboptions edit request (2 years, 3 years) to prevent block log weirdness

I just made an edit request; see my explanation there. I posted it here too because the banner at the top said I should consider announcing it here, also because I know someone is going to call this controversial because it makes the dropdown menu longer. Ginsuloft (talk) 23:52, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I've made the change, thank you for the suggestion. --Bongwarrior (talk) 01:02, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-43

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

New features

  • The "Toolbox" section in the site sidebar is now called "Tools" in English. You can do the same in your language by editing the interface text on translatewiki.net. Someone else may have already done it. [12]

VisualEditor news

  • On wikis with VisualEditor, you can now use it on pages in the File, Help and Category spaces. [13]

Problems

  • On October 22 (UTC), an error in the site settings caused *.wikimedia.org sites (like Meta-Wiki and Commons) to redirect to wikimediafoundation.org for a few hours. [14]

Future

  • MediaWiki 1.23wmf1 was added to test wikis on October 24. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on October 28 and all Wikipedia wikis on October 31 (calendar).
  • In the next days, servers in San Francisco will start providing (cached) content to users located in Oceania. If you are in that area and notice problems, please tell us. [15]
  • You will soon be able to test new features easily using the "Beta Features" view. VisualEditor will be in the list on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. Another example is a set of changes in the article text style.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:46, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Dashboard on Good article tools not working

At Template talk:Good article tools I started a discussion about the dashboard on {{Good article tools}} which is not working due to an expired account. I e-mailed the contact about the problem but got no reply. Anybody knowledgeable about the current toolserver situation to know whether this tool can be revived or not? Or have we lost it? Best to respond on article talk page, I think. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:47, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

A–Z index doesn't filter out redirect categories

Portal:Contents/A–Z index has not been filtering out redirect category pages. I didn't see a bugzilla report anywhere. This tool also needs an overhaul but that is aside from the point. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 22:32, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

None of those are real redirects. They are soft redirects made with {{category redirect}}, for example at Category:Theaters in Mississippi. See Help:Category#Moving and redirecting category pages. By the way, Portal:Contents/A–Z index is a wiki page which merely contains links to the automatically generated Special:AllPages. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:35, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
The relevant bugzilla entry is not about filtering redirects but about why we use soft redirects: Bugzilla:3311 - Automatic category redirects. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:52, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
[16] shows that the real category redirect Category:Test for category redirects is correctly filtered out by hideredirects=1. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Informative but I wonder how many of you agree that soft redirects should be treated as hard redirects for Special:AllPages. Is this difficult? As a WP:CFD/S patroller this would an immensely useful enhancement. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 05:58, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Multiple bullet points on a line

Bullet point behavior on Wikipedia is unintuitive, and can become an intricate procedure when used during discussions. Responding well to a bullet point comment means placing your comment on the very next line with no break in-between, and with, at most, one more asterisk than the line above.

  • Hello, how are you?
    • I am fine, thank you.

One must take care not to stray from these rules, lest one look like an idiot.

  • Hello, how are you?
    • I appear to be a moron, thank you. left a blank line!
          • Wikipedia can help you pick out brain medicines, as it has for me. too many asterisks!

I have literally never come across an instance where placement of multiple bullet points on a line before a statement was intended, nor could I fathom when that might be beneficial. Can we fix this behavior and make bullet points easier to use, by doing away with these silly requirements? Let's just have multiple asterisks produce a single bullet with the requisite number of indents before it, in all cases. PS. I realize some might say bullets should just not be used in discussions, but they will be regardless. PPS. I also realize this may be some unintended technical issue, but if so I'm hoping we can agree it might be worth fixing? equazcion → 04:43, 24 Oct 2013 (UTC)

  • I believe this has come up before, and I know there is a workaround to avoid this behavior.
  • Hello, how are you?
  • I appear to be a moron, thank you. left a blank line!
  • Wikipedia can help you pick out brain medicines, as it has for me. too many asterisks!
Replacing all of the leading asterisks with colons avoids the issue. Whether or not this should be fixed in the core, is up to the developers to decide (and I will almost bet there have been tickets submitted on Bugzilla about this behavior), and you may want to ping them or post a ticket on Bugzilla... Technical 13 (talk) 04:54, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Line breaks between list items (especially those involving bullets, like the last two examples) cause problems for screen reader users like myself. Indenting using a mixture of colons and asterisks (especially when the colons come first) also creates some hideous HTML, which is presented literally by screen readers. Graham87 08:38, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Were it up to me, I'd have a character that served the same function as : or * that would be active only in talk pages but that didn't create html lists to implement a discussion. Very often, lengthy discussions become wall-of-text-like when one writer follows immediately after another without a line break. This I think is an encumbrance on understanding.
I don't know how to implement such a mechanism because I haven't given it any more thought than what I've described. If such a mechanism is possible, it would be a solution to both Editor Graham87's and Editor Equazcion's issues. And, it would keep other editors from harping on me for adding line breaks to my contributions to talk pages.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:32, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Quick guide to the "right" way to reply to talk posts: 1. Never put a gap between posts. 2. Copy the asterisks (*), colons (:) and number marks (#) from the post to which you are replying, then add one symbol of your own.
<p style="margin-left: 1.5em">
Indented without list markup
</p>
I agree with Trappist regarding the need for better markup; the way to indent text without abusing list markup (shown right) is too painful for use in discussions. Another wiki I edit uses tildes for this purpose, but MediaWiki already uses tildes for signing posts. The developers are unlikely to add such markup because the upcoming Flow will automatically indent posts.
Regarding the wall-of-text problem, I have the following in my common.css to resolve this:
dd { margin-bottom: 0.5em; }
dd:last-child { margin-bottom: 0; }
This also adds extra space to definition lists in articles, but I like the extra spacing there too.
Part of the problem of multiple bullets is down to MediaWiki not requiring editors to mark the start and end of a list, to simplify markup. MediaWiki tries to figure out where lists start and end by seeing if an asterisk is matched at the same position on the next and previous lines. If there are multiple asterisks not matched on the previous line, MediaWiki takes it to be the start of multiple bulleted lists nested inside each other, hence multiple bullets appear. If the previous line is blank, all of the asterisks start a new list, so all cause a bullet to show. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:28, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Multi-indents and need for relative ":+" indentation: We should have relative-indentation (of the form ":+" as one more tab stop than the above msg), but there is a common case where a message is followed by a double-indented response, when interjecting a 2nd response above a prior (often lengthy) response:
           : This is the original message.
           ::: This is the 2nd, but interjected, response.
           :: This is the first response.
Such cases, of double-indented lines (2 extra colons "::"), are common when someone thinks they have a more-direct response than the immediate reply had stated. In a relative style, it could be ":++" to indent by 2 levels more than the prior msg. For relative indentation as ":+" then the parser would need to be smart about remembering the indentation level of the prior text, and when too complex, just show as relative to the margin (so then ":+++" would be same as ":::"). Of course, if templates had the parser extension for global variables, then we could write a smart template which kept a counter and indented by "{{in+}}" as a template which increments the global variable for indentation in the talk-page. Unfortunately, {:+} will transclude page "+" into a discussion, so that would be even more confusing. At least we have {od}, which pretends to be smart enough to know wherever the last word was displayed, to handle the reverse outdent cases:
So, we have made some progress over the years. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:09, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
{{od}} is not that smart, nor does it pretend to be (what you describe cannot be done in a template). Using it without any parameters produces an outdent marker with a length equivalent to 10 colons of indent. If you want a different length, specify it as a parameter. E.g. {{od|::::}} will make an outdent marker equivalent to 4 colons of indent. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:36, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Any solution to this is going to have to be local; the WMF devs are working on Flow, for talk pages, and that will eliminate this problem. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:37, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
That is probably the case, unfortunately. I do hope Flow is the miracle it's intended to be, but for the assuredly long time before it's actually implemented, we probably won't see any effort put into any development requests regarding talk pages. equazcion → 17:11, 29 Oct 2013 (UTC)

New file tag

Per this discussion, I've created {{esoteric file}}. Realizing full well that we have {{do not move to Commons}}, I feel that one doesn't generally get used for this purpose, and is more for situations where some technical reason exists.

Commons is already so cluttered with completely useless crap that it's difficult to find quality files there. I think we should start making it general practice to use something like this, rather than copy every single copyright-free image to Commons regardless of their conceivable value for the general public. FYI, This refers mostly to our endless library of screesnshots of Wikipedia behavior for use in bug and proposal discussions (or in my case, script documentation), but I worded the template more generally, just in case others are applicable. equazcion → 15:14, 28 Oct 2013 (UTC)

I've made a couple of tweaks. You may want to elaborate a little more in the documentation the purpose. Obviously there is more than 1 Wikipedia. Images used in Wikipedia articles should be moved to Commons if possible even if the article doesn't yet exist in any other languages. Mr.Z-man 15:25, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out. I expanded it a bit. Let me know if anything is still missing. equazcion → 15:34, 28 Oct 2013 (UTC)

Thank button on page histories

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T57648

Is there anyway of getting rid of or hiding this waste of space? Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 14:20, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Only via personal CSS or JS. See Wikipedia talk:Notifications/Thanks#Hide thank from History? and the immediately preceding thread above it about preferences. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:09, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
I made a script for that you might like: User:Equazcion/DynaThank equazcion → 02:54, 31 Oct 2013 (UTC)

WMF notification email marked as spam by Yahoo

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54915

An email to me with the subject "You have a new notification at Wikipedia" (without quotation marks) sent October 23 or 24, 2013 (seen today), from wikipedia.org at IP 208.80.152.133 (involving terbium.eqiad.wmnet and mchenry.wikimedia.org) was treated by Yahoo as spam. (I have omitted sender and intermediate email addresses in here per a WP policy or guideline but can supply them if desired.) That may mean that the sender's mailing list administrator is not deleting bounced addresses after a second bounce, if that's still the current standard, or it may mean something else. It's not a problem for me, but it would be for many other recipients, because Yahoo sends such email into a spam folder instead of the regular inbox, and many users may not check the spam folder. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:03, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to tell if it was an HTML notification, but my Preferences > Notifications > Email format is set to Plain text, not HTML, and I haven't changed it recently.
In the full headers, the string "spam" does not appear but the string of interest is "bulk" (without quotation marks).
The full headers follow, except that in my email address I replaced my username with an ellipsis and a bracketed phrase, I replaced each leading space with the Wikipedia/HTML code for a nonbreaking space (to prevent stripping (that code otherwise did not appear in the headers)), and I replaced each leading tab with eight of the same code for nonbreaking space (there weren't that many leading spaces in any line of the headers). Nick Levinson (talk) 15:43, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
From Wikipedia Wed Oct 23 17:00:04 2013
X-Apparently-To: ...[my username in lower case]@yahoo.com via 98.137.13.238; Wed, 23 Oct 2013 17:00:06 -0700
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 208.80.152.133
Received-SPF: pass (domain of wikimedia.org designates 208.80.152.133 as permitted sender)
X-YMailISG: F47yZzkWLDtlR_AriCvzoE.WTWTPeM5e5YC71mQBjkzJqZ5r
 1FAHJYvs3bo2LXSr2.S_CSmahNgC1b5_Pcb5bWVxUID.meGYITRDR9l7woBc
 DEnm5Hr6zIOKxZ2EvEKHlgEModtMGKKHWrOrKZAHAsGtH7r66OJCyrjERfhl
 jEdPh488czYgJgikgyXuA4lD66fSThMeQpSMgcvavU5fyxAuFnVCCsbFumlU
 1QIjBC30csrKqIooS5i56SMd43tkIzdKHQ6wMD7uGKWG4kdXULB8D66piH_Z
 .7tjyYQ8Zx8_W7tTj27PwzMhWgOqVoLcE0_olyuip4UbUSoC2rem_qOcj7Gx
 usud1_CDQM7dRo7auOaAHhRFj8nJM2p8l_G1KTbYoZUDpHld2Xj58GW4lIMe
 YI8boWZgGzxmrUoaASSyMnF8z1bOoiC4VTRUhC17BCuZYa6KWZ92MrBaq4kV
 YT_iKXL4j1TJa4QNW7PUSZcT_mJ85Yx90_nROe3rKsrQeggFcOmuHotLLyCE
 aoJrHgyy6ODW9Q6b0j3Ap08X4ZfK6FP9JehuX0M0OGbgYSJinLB3NR3ttwux
 sujSCpieV2Ul.l_Px9x5583.2QopXKO8qmFcIW2cGuEr3frPBRY5GPnZIDXl
 Ts24fMozrVqbxiEEkd01qq_q6GPg2vupOlAl.OPE5bZ6vziMDDCyxMNMnuhZ
 rtPA8gJzaAl8XIiSEhfjUiDGzlWNRHVu41VUi6YGwYe2WYxOReNApxUgD_iG
 LVBakKmK05k3STAR_mLpfl1ufrh1zT3xGrQ_zOXJhYNOqd30Lst20J2so_qz
 vm23AetJkXTb9goXUUhzEpwympikO8Ab90NDfzh7Pc_1tjjxQB6TLmMz2Nm3
 cXp8qkJtCHFbdMI0Msrl2ZNGINLgw9g6iw_EgURU6CJ.Zi9Zs0sLAuFqj9Ej
 x6xlB1MrdadEAFJvHtbhei6IzaxOuz1XQBB_9KIZ6nkjlXhrBBvTrlsbsWKp
 07t2u7rCC7oONTKsovBXZiKzusbg_jO8ciFQw5QuHMRRuoszLmMTrryky5kz
 avT7YRpepLTTRyFklmLXml7KWNGL8OVZAzMiM.KN3KUJH8hRwXxl7kuSsXWW
 nZAHLJqZE8op7VCuYbM4s_A_ukKgiYs84tz0OgfGuuyNs15OQTw-
X-Originating-IP: [208.80.152.133]
Authentication-Results: mta1066.mail.gq1.yahoo.com from=wikipedia.org; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=wikipedia.org; dkim=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 127.0.0.1 (EHLO wiki-mail.wikimedia.org) (208.80.152.133)
  by mta1066.mail.gq1.yahoo.com with SMTP; Wed, 23 Oct 2013 17:00:05 -0700
Received: from terbium.eqiad.wmnet ([10.64.32.13]:42340)
        by mchenry.wikimedia.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
        (envelope-from <[email protected]>)
        id 1VZ8LM-0005so-Cw
        for ...[my username in my casing]@yahoo.com; Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:00:04 +0000
Received: from apache by terbium.eqiad.wmnet with local (Exim 4.76)
        id 1VZ8LM-0001QQ-8U
        for ...[my username in my casing]@yahoo.com; Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:00:04 +0000
To: Nick Levinson <...[my username in my casing]@yahoo.com>
Subject: You have a new notification at Wikipedia
From: Wikipedia <[email protected]>
Reply-To: No Reply <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:00:04 +0000
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-Mailer: MediaWiki mailer
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
Content-Length: 464
Thanks! If you don't see HTML, the email is not in HTML. :) "Content-type: text/plain" is what tells you. Your headers give me a couple things to investigate on, I'll add more to the bug linked above. --Nemo 07:36, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Pool queue?

Just got an interesting error while searching from a redlinked link (Pisa): "An error has occurred while searching: Pool queue is full". I've never seen that one before... - The Bushranger One ping only 18:22, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Hehe. Web developers are known to insert jokes into error messages. A famous POP3 error apologized to users saying "Sorry it didn't work out". Mozilla had one on an XUL error page that read "There is no data, there is only XUL!" (Ghostbusters reference, as "XUL" is pronounced "zool"). I'm pretty sure we've seen this particular MediaWiki one before though. equazcion → 18:33, 29 Oct 2013 (UTC)
So the pool queue exists so the Apache servers don't overload backend services like page parsing or searches. When you see this error (which you shouldn't very often), it means the pool counter is working as designed (we could be a bit nicer on the error, though). No need to worry, you can generally just try whatever you're doing again and it should go through. ^demon[omg plz] 20:06, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
At least it didn't say Pool's closed... Wnt (talk) 21:34, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
Yes, we've seen this before. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 113#Pool queue is full (from June this year). – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:25, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
And also at the Help Desk not long ago. When I saw that request for help, it was the first time I could remember encountering this problem. Nyttend (talk) 02:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we should link the error to Pool (computer science) to avoid confusion (or just avoid jargon altogether, but the link lets users learn a new word ;). Bawolff (talk) 22:45, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Technical query

from RF's talk page Script: [17]

is giving timeouts - any idea why? The script url is enough to give me timeouts and wonder if something is fundamentally wrong here. Rich Farmbrough, 21:42, 17 August 2013 (UTC).

The script is 626 kBytes. For a site where 64 kByte of content generates a "long page" warning this seems an unacceptable overhead. Can someone please copy this to VP:T. Rich Farmbrough, 09:42, 30 October 2013 (UTC).
It's a combination of all your gadgets that you have enabled and the Mediawiki core scripts. You can cut down to at least 2/3 the size by disabling all the gadgets that you use. Second, we no longer have a longpage warning, I suspect you are using User:Dr_pda/prosesize. As detailed on Wikipedia:Article_size there is a technical limit on articles of 2048 KB and there are limits on the complexity of pages as detailed here. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. As to why you get timeout, I cannot find an explanation, it works just fine for me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:32, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Current speed skating event .svg file

Hello.

It would be great if it was possible for someone to create a "Speed skating current event" file similar to the ones for other sports? They other ones can be found in {{Current sport}}.

Thanks in advance.

HandsomeFella (talk) 16:25, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I suspect that what is needed is to take a pictogram like File:Speed skating pictogram.svg, superimpose File:Current event template.svg to be like the others in commons:Category:Sport current event, save it as File:Speed skating current event.svg and add a test within the {{#switch:}} of {{current sport}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
I've created the image now - what do you think? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:28, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Great. Thank you very much! Is it ready to use in Template:Current sport? HandsomeFella (talk) 08:29, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
It's now ready for use. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:25, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Brilliant! Many thanks. HandsomeFella (talk) 12:24, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Please take a look at Koji Uehara. The link to ja/日本語 brings you to this template. The correct link is ja:上原浩治. And from the ja page, the link to en brings you to Template:2013 Boston Red Sox. But clicking "Edit links", it looks OK. [18] I just don't know how to correct the links. It would be grateful if someone correct the links. Thank you. Oda Mari (talk) 17:02, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

DigiCert?

Everytime i come to wikimedia, i run a background sniffer, it detected that this site connects to DigiCert on ip (198.35.26.106) which isn't actually a wikimediaIP range (208.80.154.xxx), is this necessary?. It started recently, about a week or 2 back. I'm asking cause it uses around 252kb of data everytime I refresh the Watchlist or go to any page. I don't care about any of my pages being "safe" but I don't like unnecessary usage of Data as i'm on a Limited data plan and on wikipedia, you have to refresh your watchlist a LOT...Is there a way to disable this? Was this set in place after the recent "passwords compromised" debacle a few weeks back?--Stemoc (talk) 00:12, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I notice that Wikipedia's SSL certificate is from DigiCert. Could it be your browser that is making this HTTP request? — This, that and the other (talk) 00:30, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm on Firefox 24. If true, is there a way to disable it? cause when i do a search for the IP, it tells me its owned by Wikimedia Foundation Inc. it does eat a lot of unnecessary data and ignores the cache which means if i go to a page, it will get cached right, so when i close that tab and open it again, it should not eat the same amount of data it used in the first time since its cached but it does, which probably means that now wikipedia is running on https instead of http...--Stemoc (talk) 00:46, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Open Tools -> Options or Edit -> Preferences (depending on your build), then go to Advanced -> Certificates -> Validation. If the first option about OCSP is on, then it's connecting to DigiCert to verify the certificate hasn't been revoked since it was issued. You can disable this if you want, but it will probably reduce your security and barely save any data at all. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:42, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Why do you say it is connecting to "DigiCert"? When I check whois it tells me that the IP range 198.35.26.0/23 is registered to Wikimedia, and doing a PTR lookup for the IP tells me the host name is bits-lb.ulsfo.wikimedia.org; in other words, it's the load balancer for bits.wikimedia.org at the new ulsfo caching datacenter. The 252kb is going to be the CSS and JavaScript, although your browser should be caching it so it isn't re-fetched on every page view. Anomie⚔ 01:38, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Not necessarily connecting, but that IP is new to me and yes its registered to wikimedia, i'm only familiar with the (208.80.154.xxx) and the toolserver Ip ranges. Yes my sniffer tells me its for the 'bits-lb.ulsfo.wikimedia.org' caching datacenter but what i haven't noticed until today is that my url now has a https instead of http, It wasn't https a few days ago..the new server not only makes wikipedia run through a secured server but also prevents the browser from caching it....Is that really necessary? How do i opt-put of the "secured" option?...it is set to cache in my browser so that isn't the problem..--Stemoc (talk) 03:12, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Hi (and welcome back I was under the impression that you left. Sorry.) Cometstyles. I think you can use http by going to Special:Preferences and deselecting "Always use a secure connection while logged in", but I would generally recommend that you use https. If caching is the issue, you should file a report on bugzilla: (I can do so if you don't want to). πr2 (t • c) 04:12, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Why did i not see that option? a slight reduction (from 272 to 140kbs), thanks...I don't know who you are lol, hehe..yeah i didn't completely leave, i created a lot of articles and i had to come around from time to time to update and fix them so i decided to create an account to look after them..thanks for the option..I'm not worried about "security" I only use wikipedia from home from my PC which is hard to hack..no need to file a bug...Thanks though :) ...--Stemoc (talk) 04:53, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
Your computer being hard to hack isn't relevant. HTTPS prevents people on other computers intercepting the login token your browser sends to the Wikimedia servers, by encrypting everything sent on the connection. The login token can be used to impersonate you on Wikimedia wikis until you log out, so it's a bad thing if someone else can discover it.
The risk is particularly high if you use Wikipedia over Wi-Fi. Even without Wi-Fi, you don't know how secure the other systems used to connect to Wikipedia are. (Using traceroute, I see my requests to Wikipedia pass through four computers before reaching Wikimedia. This will probably be different for you, depending on your ISP.) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:39, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
I ran a trace route on mine, went through 21 computers and yet i still feel secured. We were all on an unsecured method till last week or so when they changed the url to a secured server. WiFi is not common in my country and those that are available are protected. My IP hopped between 2 other countries before reaching USA...I think others need to be notified of the new changes, though most in developed countries wouldn't care but those like me in a very much 3rd world country with limited data would..--Stemoc (talk) 01:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC)
Some of us have already been using HTTPS for years. ;) πr2 (t • c) 03:05, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
  • When I download Main Page over HTTPS, Firefox 24 makes two POST requests to http://ocsp.digicert.com/ and receives two 200 OK answers. Both the requests and the answers have Content-Lenght < 500 bytes. When I tested this, I first cleared all browser data (cookies, history, cache et cetera) and then typed in the full address manually. Are you doing something differently, and if so, what are you doing differently? --Stefan2 (talk) 16:37, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Edits from 127.0.0.1

There appears to be something odd going on -- there are a series of edits dated today from Special:Contributions/127.0.0.1, which I would have said was impossible. Anyone have an idea what might be causing it? There's been at least one less-than-constructive edit from this IP, so I'm concerned as to what to do if vandalism edits come through this way. —Darkwind (talk) 23:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it's impossible that it's someone editing from the en.wikipedia server computer. I also don't see any problems with blocking it. Just don't hardblock it (xff problems). Ginsuloft (talk) 23:20, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
There's apparently multiple issues going on right now. I've placed a short block on it since it seems to be inconveniencing a couple of users. Elockid(Boo!) 23:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Oh, so it is a bug after all. Apologies to the Wikimedia sysadmins for assuming bad faith. Did you do a CU on it? Ginsuloft (talk) 23:39, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
No, I monitor the Requests for unblock and there are multiple users who have reported being autoblocked, both logged in and logged out. Elockid(Boo!) 00:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
On a completely unrelated note, can someone trout Elockid for having an overly large signature? KonveyorBelt 18:06, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Roan is looking into this now. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:58, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

tl;dr version: this should be fixed now, although it might take a while for things to settle down completely.

Today (Oct 31) at 14:52 UTC, we started sending page view requests from Oceania to ulsfo, our new caching center in San Francisco. We were already sending other kinds of traffic there (like uploaded images and static assets), but this was the first time the main traffic stream was going through ulsfo. However, there's an issue with the way our servers are set up in ulsfo which meant that if an anonymous edit came in via HTTPS or IPv6, it would be reported by MediaWiki as coming from 127.0.0.1. At 15:34 UTC, two of these edits came in, but other than that there weren't any, presumably because it was the middle of the night in that part of the world at the time. Starting at 19:37 UTC there was a slow trickle of 127.0.0.1 edits, gradually increasing in frequency as the morning started in Oceania, and around 23:00 UTC it started really taking off, going from a couple of edits per hour to dozens of edits per hour. At 00:21 UTC (on Nov 1), User:Master of Puppets reported the issue on IRC, and User:Reedy and I started investigating. After spending some time chasing a red herring, we figured out that these edits were all HTTPS or IPv6 requests from ulsfo with 127.0.0.1 appearing in the XFF header. At 01:25 UTC, User:LeslieCarr (WMF) undid the 14:52 UTC change, sending page view traffic from Oceania back to eqiad (our primary data center in Virginia). As of the time of writing, there have been no 127.0.0.1 edits since 01:28 UTC, but since these traffic switches aren't instant so a few more might get through for a little while.

My apologies for this glitch, and thanks for reporting this and bearing with us while we figured it out. There might be some residual autoblock damage as described above, but other than that everything should be fine now. I put in logging so we can track down issues like these more easily in the future, and we'll be sure to watch out for 127.0.0.1 edits next time we move traffic over to ulsfo. --Catrope (talk) 01:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Update: It turns out I misdiagnosed the issue. The bug wasn't caused by HTTPS/IPv6 termination, but by strange behavior when the backend cache a request was mapped to happened to be on the same box as the frontend cache that received the request. Because there are 6 Varnish boxes in ulsfo, each with one frontend and one backend, this would have happened for about 1/6th of all anonymous edits going through ulsfo, independent of whether HTTPS or IPv6 was used. I was led to believe that HTTPS/IPv6 termination was to blame because almost all edits in the slice of the log I was looking at were HTTPS and the one HTTP edit in that slice was IPv6, but that was mostly a coincidence. Either way, the underlying issue is believed to be fixed now, and our networking people are planning to switch Oceania page view traffic back to ulsfo soon. When they do that, they'll be on the lookout for 127.0.0.1 issues. --Catrope (talk) 17:54, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks; I've added some text referencing this message at the IP's user page and its talk page. Graham87 05:53, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Stop forcing https!

The netbooks at my school are extremely dodgy, and https pages either do not work on come in plain view on them. How can I stop it forcing https? Changing the bar from https to http doesn't work,not even forcing port 80 does. -- t numbermaniac c 02:02, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Go to Preferences and uncheck "Always use a secure connection when logged in". Yes, it'd be nice if this was default unchecked... - The Bushranger One ping only 02:39, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Okay then. Thanks! :) -- t numbermaniac c 05:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Help regarding titles of the articles

Hi, Surya again. Tamil wiki admin. I want to know how the titles of the articles are italicized? Is there any template used for it? I did browse something. But, couldn't get anything. Please tell me how to italicize the title of an article? (ex: The Mary Tyler Moore Show) Thanks -- SuryaPrakash  Talk... 17:03, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

It's usually done with {{Italic title}}, often called from an infobox. The manual method not relying on templates or modules is for example {{DISPLAYTITLE:''The Mary Tyler Moore Show''}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Users not listed as confirmed on Commons

Why is commons:User:Bùi Thụy Đào Nguyên not listed as confirmed? According to commons:Commons:Autoconfirmed users, this user should be automatically confirmed after editing for 4 days. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 18:26, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed status is checked automatically and not shown in logs, but the users themselves can see it at Special:Preferences. Manually confirmed users are shown in logs, for example Special:ListUsers/confirmed. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:37, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T58485

When I make edits like [19], it asks me to do a CAPTCHA, with the explanation you can read at MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-addurl. The explanation "Your edit contains new external links" is false in this case (the links are internal - unless the external link is buried in the template, which they shouldn't expect us to know). Others such as this example have made the same complaint, but no one has fixed or explained it. Shouldn't we at least change the false explanation? 24.22.173.74 (talk) 18:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

"protection log" made by the template is technically an external link. It's even more confusing when the external link is caused by a change to a template used elsewhere on the page and not a template added by the user. Maybe that happened in your other example [20] but it's hard to determine now. Our software cannot say why the saved page contains an external link that wasn't there before, so the best we could do is modify MediaWiki:Fancycaptcha-addurl with a general message explaining the external link is sometimes caused indirectly by the user's edit but they have to enter a CAPTCHA anyway. Such a message would be unnecessary and potentially confusing in cases where the user actually did enter an external link. This is probably the large majority of cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, that protection log link is whitelisted. The problem in that edit was a hidden link to "urn:x-wp-editsemiprotected:Jennifer_Lopez" which is generated in {{edit semi-protected}} so various tools don't have to parse template invocations to find out what pages have edits requested for them.
Normally you could whitelist problematic links at MediaWiki:Captcha-addurl-whitelist, but that only works for http and https protocol links. I've filed T58485 to track the problem. BJorsch (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

crashing

I am using IE and wikipedia keeps crashing on me intermitently, it is the only site that is doing this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.95.145.147 (talk) 01:20, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Can you give more detailed info? Even a guess could help (e.g., "It seems to happen more often when I do XYZ"). What version of IE are you using? Does it provide any error messages? Does this happen on other Wikimedia wikis as well (e.g., try it on Wiktionary or French Wikipedia). πr2 (t • c) 03:09, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Uncommanded unchecking of preferences options...

I just discovered that somehow "Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist" had been unchecked in my preferences without my having done so. Whats up? — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Bushranger (talk • contribs) 23:53, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I can confirm that. In fact, if I go to Preferences → Watchlist, enable "Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist" and save, it immediately disables itself again. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I tested it here and it still works for me. Interestingly, although Add pages I create and files I upload to my watchlist is unchecked, this page I just created was still added to my watchlist. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 13:18, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I have been able to check that option just now and it stayed checked. Matma Rex talk 13:28, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Crappppp, this is probably my fault, I've suggested some cleanup-only changes in the config which I needed for something else (they basically make this option off by default), they were accepted, and we all missed the fact that this was set to true elsewhere… sorry, you'll have to live with this for a few hours/days until somebody with appropriate permissions is around to fix it D: (But you should be able to reenable this for yourself right now perfectly well. It's just the default that was accidentally changed.) Matma Rex talk 13:36, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The preferences should be restored for everyone now. Matma Rex talk 16:41, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Font color of article text

Has the font color of text in the body of Wikipedia pages changed? I think it used to be black, but now all pages appear to have grey text. Is this the case for anyone else? -- Toshio Yamaguchi 19:53, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

To expand a bit, I know that the font color used to be the same as the color of my signature (which is black). Now there is a noticeable contrast (at least for me). -- Toshio Yamaguchi 20:06, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

It's definitely black for me - MonoBook and Vector. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
Still grey for me (vector skin + Safari). -- Toshio Yamaguchi 11:15, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
Seems to be defined as #252525 in the style sheet. The printable versions seems to have changed as well. Not a fan. — Whisternefet (t · c) 20:45, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
I see it too. What is weird is that I can't find it defined anywhere in the source! Where the hell does it come from? — Edokter (talk) — 10:19, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
It comes from Vector's skin styles, and was changed – I presume accidentally – in https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/79948/ . I'll submit a patch to restore the previous value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matma Rex (talk • contribs) 11:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
[edit conflict] It comes from https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=true&modules=skins.vector&only=styles&skin=vector, which is generated by LESS. It seems the new color was introduced by Jon (WMF) in gerrit:79948, but I believe it was supposed to be an opt-in beta feature. Helder 11:04, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/92065/ Matma Rex talk 11:07, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
The color #252525 is present in the image of this document: mw:Wikimedia Foundation Design/Color usage#Color Coding/ What Colors Represent. Helder 11:17, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

The patch has been accepted and will be deployed on November 7 per mw:MediaWiki 1.23/Roadmap. The hack in MediaWiki:Vector.css should be removed then. Matma Rex talk 14:27, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

That is not a hack! That is perfectly valid CSS!! Shame!!! — Edokter (talk) — 11:24, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Okay, okay, the workaround. ;) Matma Rex talk 11:29, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

I've frequently run into the problem of wanting to cite a search (usually on talk pages; I realize of course it isn't typically a valid citation for articles) and failing:

"photo+credit%3A+Wikipedia"+-site%3Awikipedia.org search

The reason for this turns out to be that the standard resolution of a link doesn't handle the quotation mark. Whereas %22 works just fine:

search

One option is to put in a bug report over it - I imagine someone has - but I don't have the patience to chase that squirrel. So I'm thinking to seize the old Template:Link, which currently redirects to Template:Ill. This would involve changing a hundred or so redirects to direct links from the articles that still use it, then repurposing it into a small, simple template with the intended usages:

{{link|1=https://www.google.com/search?q="photo+credit%3A+Wikipedia"+-site%3Awikipedia.org|search}} and/or <nowiki>[{{link|1=https://www.google.com/search?q="photo+credit%3A+Wikipedia"+-site%3Awikipedia.org}} search]

i.e. so that you can use it to produce the plain text to link if a second parameter is omitted, or to produce a functioning link if it is given.

Does this seem like a good idea to you? Wnt (talk) 22:15, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

It does seem like a good idea, but can you make it so that the wikilinking is handled automatically and the text to be displayed is an optional second parameter:
{{link|http://www.google.com/search?q="foobar"}} could return [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22foobar%22]
and
{{link|http://www.google.com/search?q="foobar"|foosearch}} could return [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22foobar%22 foosearch]
I think that would be easier to use... Livit⇑Eh?/What? 20:12, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
I think you're saying what I meant in the first case I listed above: {{link|1=https://www.google.com/search?q="photo+credit%3A+Wikipedia"+-site%3Awikipedia.org|search}} ought to return [https://www.google.com/search?q=%22photo+credit%3A+Wikipedia%22+-site%3Awikipedia.org search] Wnt (talk) 21:28, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
You are starting with a partially encoded string, why not use a fully encoded string ? It's better to use a fully unencoded string, and feed that to the encoder OR use a fully url encoded query string to begin with. {{urlencode:"photo credit: Wikipedia" -site:wikipedia.org|QUERY}} https://www.google.com/search?q=%22photo+credit%3A+Wikipedia%22+-site%3Awikipedia.org ... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:09, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
You're right - better not to reinvent the wheel (I had some notion somehow you could improve readability in some strange situation by not uuencoding everything, but this is almost certainly asking for trouble!). However, it is still nice to have one template with two parameters rather than the more unusual magic word format inside a bracketed section, and "link" seems like a really desirable synonym for "urlencode:" even when only one parameter is used. Wnt (talk) 15:00, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
Well, this wasn't much of a mandate, but I've gone ahead with Phase I and altered all of the incoming links to use Template:ill directly. The only "what links here" entries for Template:Link are user .js modules, and by doing sequential deletions I've determined these are set off by a comment line, as shown at User:Wnt/ArticleTranslator.js. While I don't know for sure that the javascript doesn't rely on the template (I don't know if the what links here is meaningful at all) I don't think {{Template|Link}} ({{Link}}) is meant literally in that usage, and if it is, I'd expect it to simply display a link to the template rather than relying on its results.
I'll hold off a bit before continuing though, to see if there are people still out there actively adding {{Link}} in the course of their editing. Wnt (talk) 00:36, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Ummm, whoops! My link to the what links here wasn't to the first page. Ugh... lots more... Wnt (talk) 19:43, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Search algorithm

A reader tried to search, using "cobalt II chlorate" in the search box.

The reader wondered why it didn't immediately find Cobalt(II) chlorate

I note that it does suggest this in a drop-down box, but it doesn't think it is a good enough match, so it doesn't bring you directly to the article.


I note that the search term differs from the title in three respects:

  1. Case
  2. The parentheses around II
  3. The space after cobalt


The case is not an issue, as the search will find the right term even is the case doesn't match.

One question I am posing is whether we think that the lack of parentheses should be a problem. Is it reasonable to configure the search algorithm to create a match when the search terms and target differ by parentheses?

I'm sure it could be done. One question is whether it is supposed to work, and doesn't because of a bug, versus something that might be nice, but has never been requested. Assuming it isn't handled, the question is whether we think articles with parentheses are common enough to make a request for a change in the algorithm. I'm personally on the fence, and would be supportive if the developer say it was easy, and would not push for it if the developer says it is tricky.

The second is whether the existence of a space should prevent the search from getting a hit. I see that if I search for "hollydolly" it asks if I mean "holly dolly". If I search for "slip stream" I get to Slipstream, but only because someone created a redirect (I think).

I think it would be nice if searching could give you the right article even if the search ans target differed by a space—even if you knew to add the parentheses, I don't think it is obvious that a searcher should know to enter "cobalt(II) chlorate" rather than "cobalt (II) chlorate".--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:27, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Cobalt(II) chlorate is the first hit for me on cobalt II chlorate. Do you mean when the search includes quotation marks as in "cobalt II chlorate"? That doesn't work for me but people should know to try without quotation marks when they are not sure of the exact title. The whole point of using quotation marks is to ask for exact hits only. I wouldn't expect it to match when there are differences in spacing. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I think what Sphilbrick is saying is that typing "cobalt II chlorate" into the search box and hitting enter should immediately take you to Cobalt(II) chlorate, much like how typing "ApPLe" into the search box and hitting enter immediately takes you to Apple (since it's case insensitive, I presume). Theopolisme (talk) 21:35, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
It's not due to case (in)sensitivity, but punctuation and spacing. Cobalt(II) chlorate has a pair of parentheses and one space; "cobalt II chlorate" has no punctuation but two spaces. If I type that into the search box, it suggests "Cobalt(II) chlorate" in the list, but unless I pick that entry before hitting ↵ Enter, it will go to Special:Search. Now, if Cobalt II chlorate were created as a redirect (which is permissible because it's a plausible search term, and so could fall within either or both of "Alternative names" and "Alternative ... punctuation") you would simply need to type that in and ↵ Enter without needing to select from the list. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:55, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I asked the question, and what Redrose64 said is exactly what I meant. If the user is searching for cobalt II chlorate, I think it's obvious the users means Cobalt(II) chlorate, and therefore it seems logical to me he/she should be redirected. Besides that, you don't often use parentheses when typing search-terms, so I assume there are more users than only me searching for cobalt II chlorate instead. Of course, if this 'change in the search algorithm' would be accepted, it would have to affect all chemical formula-searching. IsaiahvH (talk) 13:45, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
It's obvious to a chemist that "cobalt II chlorate" and Cobalt(II) chlorate are one and the same. But computers aren't so intelligent; they need to be given special provision about such matters as IUPAC nomenclature of inorganic chemistry. In this case, section IR-2.8.2 of Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry states "In names they [Roman numerals] indicate the formal oxidation state of an atom, and are enclosed in parentheses immediately following the name of the atom being qualified." At school (early 1980s), we were taught about the parentheses, but not that there should be no space before the opening parenthesis. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:59, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
I googled it, and it seems indeed that parentheses are commonly used (something my teacher does not, but that's because he is lazy). So the actual question seems, is it worth modify the search algorithm to redirect the user when searching for a term without parentheses, (I think) obviously meaning the term with parentheses? What's worth considering is redirects are for redirecting because the user obviously means the official term. Asides that, 1) Some people who have never learned or have forgotten or have never studied Chemistry, do not know about the parentheses, and 2) It is rather uncommon to type parentheses when typing a search-term.
However, on the other side, the user will see the official term in the dropdown or after hitting ↵ Enter in the search-overview-page. So it is not an issue, but, as Chemistry is widely used, I think it would improve Wikipedia if this search algorithm modification would be adopted. But that's just my opinion ;). IsaiahvH (talk) 16:55, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Infobox criminal is turning programmers into murderers

Robert Tappan Morris created the first computer virus, though Template:Infobox criminal seems to be forcibly adding "Killings" to his page. There doesn't appear to be anything on his page's syntax that is causing this. Is this a mistake, or is the template revealing a darker truth? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 23:46, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

In this edit today the template was merged by @Underlying lk: with Template:Infobox murderer.Blethering Scot 23:58, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Fixed; n.b. I've not checked for other parameters that might trigger that header even though they are displayed higher up. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:02, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick fix! ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 03:57, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

importScript execution delayed

I created a Javascript function, addTopLink, to insert an arbitrary convenience link into the horizontal menu at the top right of the page. I had the function inside my common.js, followed by a call to insert one link, and it worked.

I thought I'd make the function generally available, so I moved it to User:Largoplazo/toplinks.js. In my common.js I replaced the function definition with importScript('User:Largoplazo/toplinks.js');, and refreshed the cache. It didn't work: my custom link stopped appearing in the top menu. So I did some troubleshooting, the state of which you can see in the two files. At this moment the bottom three lines of my common.js are commented out, but when they weren't, what happened each time a page loaded is that:

  1. A dialog box reading "undefined" appeared, which I dismissed.
  2. A dialog box reading "Just reached the end of toplinks.js" appeared, which I dismissed.

The first dialog should display the contents of window.teststring, which is set inside toplinks.js. Since it was appearing as "undefined", that means it hadn't been set yet. The second dialog comes from an alert call directly inside toplinks.js. So the calls were coming in the wrong order.

Finally, I opened Firebug and went to the console. I could see that window.teststring had its assigned value and the function addTopLink existed. So toplinks.js was being fully executed, just not in the expected sequence.

What am I missing? —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:07, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Scripts loaded via importScript() are executed asynchronously – that is, the browser sees the importScript, starts loading that script in the background, and continues down to alert(window.teststring) and addTopLink, which don't work like you expect because the script might not be loaded yet.
You could use something like this, but I'm not sure if it's the best practice. It definitely works, though.
importScript('User:Largoplazo/toplinks.js').onload = function() {
  alert(window.teststring);
  addTopLink("pt-newpagesfeed", "NewPagesFeed", "/wiki/Special:NewPagesFeed");
}
Matma Rex talk 13:51, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Oh, also – there's a default function called mw.util.addPortletLink which does pretty much the same thing as your addTopLink and some more: mw:ResourceLoader/Default_modules#addPortletLink. Matma Rex talk 13:56, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Since WP pages are HTML 5, and I see the script element is defined to have an onload event in HTML 5, this is great! Though I'll check out addPortletLink as well. Thanks. —Largo Plazo (talk) 15:34, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Requests to dezoomify an image

I was asked to upload PD [21] (direct link to zoomified image: [22]). image to Commons, but it uses the evil zoomify javascript. I tried to use the tools listed on commons:Help:Zoomable images, but they either require skills I don't have (ex. Python, Ruby + ImageMagick, etc.) or are broken ([23] by User:kolossos gives 404, gee, toolserver tool that is not maintained, what a surprise; [24] was loading an image, then gave me a black screen; upon a second run it froze at 92%). As it appears using those tools requires skills (or luck) I don't have, perhaps someone here will have a better luck. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:46, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

I've managed to get the image successfully. Can you post what I should put on its description page when I upload it? Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:21, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
@User:Jackmcbarn: Description: {{de|Nationalitätenkarte der östlichen Provinzen des Deutschen Reiches nach dem Ergebnissen der amtlichen Volkszählung vom Jahre 1910 entworfen von Ing. Jakob Spett}} (I can't do more with that than a Google Translate myself; but ping User:MyMoloboaccount; he requested it so hopefully he will also translate the description). Author: Spett, Jakob; publisher Gotha Justus Perthes. Year: 1910. Category:Maps in German, Category:Ethnographic maps of Poland (I think). Thanks! --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:00, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
"National map of eastern provinces of German Reich based on official census of 1910" would be ok. As to licence I believe it would be PD, but I am no expert, as to reason, to demonstrate the national census of 1910 in German Empire and its demographics.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 22:08, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
I need a PD reason to upload it, and I still need a filename. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:43, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Jakob Spett died in 1942 according to [25], p. 77. (He was born in 1863 or 1862 according to the same source, pp. 74-75: they state his wife was 93 years old in 1968, and her husband was 12 years older.) The map is a derivative work; it is based on "Vogels Karte des Deutschen Reiches und der Alpenländer", published also by Justus Perthes in Gotha in 1915. That earlier map was created 1891-93 by cartographer Carl Vogel (1828-1897) as "Karte des Deutschen Reiches". It was revised and extended to cover the "Alpenländer" (alpine countries) 1913-15 by cartographer Paul Langhans.[26] Langhans lived 1867-1952 and thus the map is not yet in the public domain in Germany, and neither is Spett's derivative. Therefore not suited for uploading to the Commons. If you want to upload it locally at the English Wikipedia, that would work; it's {{PD-1923-abroad}}. (Spett's map was used in the negotiations at Versailles after WWI, so it must have been published by then.) Lupo 13:04, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
File:National map of eastern provinces of German Reich based on official census of 1910.jpg If you see any improvements that can be made to its description page, please make them. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:39, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. Lupo 20:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I am not signed in

But I am signed in. I never signed out, and I recently had to sign back in, and I assume I checked the box saying to keep me signed in for 30 days. I went to the login screen and was told I was already signed in as vchimpanzee, though I could sign in with a different name. I signed in again. After that, I clicked on "online" at the top of the screen and was told I was not signed in.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:23, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I used the page history and undo to say I was online, and that worked fine.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:57, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
There are quite a lot of related threads in the archives, mostly from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 114 onwards. If the circumstances suggest that Wikipedia doesn't think that I'm logged in, I use Ctrl+F5 and that normally works for me. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:01, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
It didn't work. And I'm wondering if Wikipedia will think I'm not logged in next time. I did check the box. I'm about to leave anyway and change to offline. I may edit tomorrow form a library, but of course I won't already be signed in there.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:28, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
It happened for clicking on "Offline" and CTRL-F5 didn't help.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:38, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
If you do have Javascript enabled and are still seeing no notice of the login, please check for Javascript errors in the browser's error console. Please also try to update your browser cache by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BYPASS. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:25, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not at home but I'll try these steps when I get there. I got a message to update Java, which I am aware is not Javascript, but I'm not sure whether I actually did. I also got a message telling me to update my virus protection but it didn't say how, and I spent time in a live chat with someone connected with the virus protection company. This is when the problems started happening.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:13, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Whoops. Are you sure that the "virus protection company" was legit? I get phone calls 2-3 times a week from somebody claiming to be from Windows support and asking me to visit their website for a free online check. I never do it. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:52, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Does this only happen when clicking the online/offline links? I think there might be a bug in the online/offline script you are using. The code contains hard-coded HTTP URLs, but Wikipedia now uses HTTPS by default for logged-in users. For the links to work on HTTP and HTTPS alike, the URLs should be protocol-relative (i.e. "//en.wikipedia.org/w/...") or server-relative (i.e. "/w/index.php?..."). I suggest contacting the script's author. I've already fixed the same issue in the template associated with the script. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:16, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
Good catch, I'v made the links protocol relative. They probably should be server relative as well, but I leave that up to the author. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks guys. Didn't realise Wikipedia had changed to a secure transmission protocol. Cheers anyway. CJ Drop me a line! • Contribs 15:25, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
To PartTime Gnome: I had the problem only when I first went to the site each day, and when clicking on the online/offline links. I go to the site using HTTP links. I saved them in an email to myself which I update as I work my way through the Help Desk archives.
To Redrose: I clicked on the symbol for the virus protection company (McAfee, actually) that appears on my screen automatically. From there I can go to support. I hardly think a scam artist could reproduce the entire web site or redirect me to him from the legitimate site.
I forgot to click "keep me signed in" so I signed out and signed in again. I also deleted history. I don't have the problem now. Thanks.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Didn't work. I clicked on "back" as many times as necessary to get back to where I started, and the first page still looked like I wasn't signed in. I even changed one number in the URL and got taken to another page that looked like it. I signed in, forgot to say I wanted to stay signed in, signed out, and signed in again. Now all is well. I hope.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
After clicking "back" sufficient times, you may still need to force your browser to reload the page (in Firefox, F5 may be sufficient, otherwise try Ctrl+F5) - otherwise it may display a cached copy, one which still suggests that you're not signed in. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Weird. I used the link with http rather than https and I appeared not to be signed in. Changing the URL to https solved the problem. I'm going to send myself that email with the URLs corrected.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:09, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

By the way, I'm on IE.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Fix needed for Template:Alphanumeric TOC

Hi, when using Template:Alphanumeric TOC, it is adding an unwanted section of ==Contents== to each article wherever it is transcluded. See: 2000s in film and note in the TOC that there are 2 sections labelled "Contents". The usual Template:Compact ToC does not do this. Would someone be able to fix the template for us? Thanks much Funandtrvl (talk) 00:05, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the problem is in Template:TOC top, which inserts the offending H2: <h2>{{{title|{{MediaWiki:Toc}} }}}</h2>. I'd prefer if someone more familiar with TOC templates could look at this though. The templates involved are also all still full-protected. equazcion → 00:25, 1 Nov 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It's caused by the use of <h2>...</h2> in [27] by User:TheDJ. h2 was removed earlier after discussion at Template talk:TOC top#Edit request but it has gone in and out. I think it should be out. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:27, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I doubt this will be all that controversial. Just get rid of it. equazcion → 00:30, 1 Nov 2013 (UTC)
In reading the Talk page referenced above, it looks like the "Content" section link/listing in the TOC of an article is usually undesirable. I vote for taking it out, since when the alphanumeric toc is used multiple times in an article, like 2000s in film, it looks very weird to have multiple Content sections in the TOC. The template is protected, and I don't know enough code to be able to fix it. Do I need to make an edit request on the template's talk page? Funandtrvl (talk) 01:14, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
It seems like User:TheDJ inadvertently re-inserted the H2 tags recently in an unrelated edit. The consensus is to leave them out. If an admin downgrades the protection level to template-protect I can probably do this but I would really rather User:PrimeHunter or User:TheDJ, or someone else who knows TOC templates, to be the one. equazcion → 01:38, 1 Nov 2013 (UTC)
You could make an edit request at that talk page, but if you don't have a specific code replacement to provide I don't think it would happen. equazcion → 01:44, 1 Nov 2013 (UTC)
There was little inadvertent about it. It was quite on purpose, to make it mirror the ACTUAL Table of Contents structure. As the Template:TOC top documentation mentions, use "primary=false" when a TOC is used in addition to a proper TOC. The reason to use h2 is for accessibility reasons. And remember that Template:Alphanumeric TOC is not the only user of Template:TOC top. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The actual TOC does use <h2>...</h2> but it doesn't produce a TOC entry saying "Contents". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
The primary TOC mentioning Contents is a side effect of editors using more than one TOC on a page. Most uses of {{TOC top}} REPLACE a proper TOC and then there is no problem whatsoever in using H2, and you will have consistent and expected behavior for pages. It's when you add a secondary TOC, when you start to create trouble. So make that distinction by using the 'primary=false' option and you won't have a problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:59, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
I think this edit to 2000s in film] illustrates what DJ means. Without the option, the templates cause an extra heading to appear in the template. In my experience it is more common for the template to be use as replacement for the TOC. older ≠ wiser 12:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:TOC top is still full-protected, and that's where the change would need to be made. User:TheDJ, you just told us a bunch of things that were already mentioned -- but didn't mention why you felt your change back to H2 was a benefit. Is there any reason it wouldn't be better to make multiple TOCs not produce this unintended behavior by default, rather than requiring a parameter to fix it? Edit: I see you mentioned accessibility reasons, but I'm not sure what those could be -- and most other TOC templates don't seem to produce an H2, at least not by default. Any reason it particularly belongs in templates that use Template:TOC top? equazcion → 13:48, 1 Nov 2013 (UTC)

Now dropped to TE protection.--User:Salix alba (talk): 14:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Salix :) PS. For the time being I added mention of this "primary" parameter to the documentation at Template:Alphanumeric TOC. I doubt people using this template would've reasonably known to go looking at TOC top to find that information. equazcion → 14:18, 1 Nov 2013 (UTC)
  1. Regarding accessibility reasons, if you don't use h2, a screenreader will not identify the header of the Article ToC in it's own Document ToC (which includes much more than just the article headers) as it does for other pages. The official TOC and most fake ToCs do actually use h2 (I did a rewrite of almost all of them not so long ago).
  2. "multiple TOCs not produce this unintended behavior". That would indeed be nice, but that is unfortunately not possible since we are faking our own ToC here. There is no 'knowledge' that we can use to determine if a table is an additional fake next to a proper TOC, or if it supposed to be replacing the proper TOC.
  3. Again the problem here is not the h2 itself, it's that you use are using two elements that are designed to present a ToC for an article (combined with the fact that the core software only knows about the it's own primary ToC). Another example that shows that this is a somewhat faulty usage for 2000s_in_film: if I put a heading named G in between Events and Highest-grossing films, and then press the G of the Template:Alphanumeric TOC in that article, it will take me to this newly added G instead of the G in the list. It has been visually added to the section of the page, but that doesn't magically make it specific to the section. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:26, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
These are all valid things to consider. I nevertheless have to say it seems haphazard to change the default behavior and add a parameter required to get it back to the currently expected behavior, when that parameter would of course not be in any invocation yet, no one would know about it, the talk page consensus was against it, and without making any documentation changes to the affected parent templates (which are the only places any users would realistically be looking). And yes, regardless of your opinion on whether multiple TOCs should actually be used on a page. I've now changed the documentation for the particular template that brought the issue to VPT, but there are still another 30 or so to go, and adding this parameter to the affected uses is probably a bigger job. equazcion → 14:51, 1 Nov 2013 (UTC)
It's true, there is a lot of cleanup. And it is true that when I made the original changes, I did not think about the fact that about 2-5% of the uses would be 'incorrect' to begin with. But this one problem is not more important than the problems solved. In general we should move forward and become more correct, not keep crap in simply because we have crap that depends on crap.
If you ask me, we should replace every list or section section usage with a "Alphanumeric section TOC" that has primary set to false, and preferably uses prefixes for the header IDs. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:14, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for adding the primary option to {{Alphanumeric TOC}} in [28]. But many editors will fail to set primary=false when it's required. Is there no way to make it accessible in screenreaders without causing the "Contents" entry in cases where the page also has a normal TOC? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
We could add an option into the core software to automatically remove headers from the vanilla ToC, if given a certain paramater. But that would be highly en.wp specific behavior/requirements, I doubt it would be easily accepted. The other option is to create an option for building alternative TOC formats into the core software. I'd give that a higher chance of success, but it would be more complicated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to those above that added the parameter description for "primary=false" to the /doc page. Are there any other templates that would need that description too? I would have never known to look for Template:TOC top, so I appreciate the description for the proper use. :) I agree it might be a good idea to make a Template:Alphanumeric section TOC...maybe that would be a simpler solution that would also be able to keep the main Alphanumeric template as is, for the reasons above. Funandtrvl (talk) 20:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Heading and image overlap

A reader reported, via OTRS, that in Hinduism in Tamil Nadu, the heading "Bhairavar" overlaps the image. I see the problem, in Mozilla Firefox, but not in Chrome. Can anyone see why?--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Depends on screen resolution and default fonts and font sizes on the operating system that you use. More information welcome (I cannot reproduce with 1440px screenwidth on Firefox 24 on a Fedora 19 system). --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:26, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
This is a known CSS issue, caused by the margins that we have on top of images. It's actually the appropriate behavior (according to CSS) in very specific combinations of text and floating blocks (images). It's undesirable, but not really avoidable without reducing the margin on top of the image by at least half, which I think is also not really desirable. It's one of those things that no one really thought about when defining clear behavior in the CSS specification. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:14, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Failed action=purge

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T58487

I see a strange error message at [29]:

Any idea what's going on? --Stefan2 (talk) 00:47, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

I was getting a similar message while trying to perform the following actions:
The problem occurred both in Chrome and Firefox and seems to be resolved now -- Diannaa (talk) 01:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Weird. I got a watchlist notification that File:Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D intertitle.png had been deleted by User:Mark Arsten, but the file was still there, so I tried to purge the page, which failed. I see that you later deleted it. --Stefan2 (talk) 01:24, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I just had a bunch of database query errors myself while trying to delete some images. Very frustrating. Mark Arsten (talk) 01:26, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I deleted it shortly after this bug resolved itself. Things have been kinda sketchy on the deletions for the last day of two, where I get the "Wikimedia Error" page. Then I would go back and see if the file had actually gotten deleted, and sometimes it was and sometimes not :/ -- Diannaa (talk) 01:29, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Right now it seems like I can't delete the last four files in Category:Orphaned non-free use Wikipedia files as of 25 October 2013. Any luck there? Mark Arsten (talk) 01:44, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
It took a lot longer than it should have, but File:Cfnews13.jpg deleted successfully on the first try. - The Bushranger One ping only 09:36, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

jQuery UI CSS may no longer load by default

See http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2013-October/072779.html. As of next week, jQuery UI may not be loaded by default on some wikis. I'm not sure if this is true here - we might have something enabled for all visitors that includes jQuery UI - but if we do lose this CSS, templates like {{clickable button 2}} and {{help pages header}} will suffer. (What's worse, many logged-in users won't notice, since gadgets like Twinkle include jQuery UI.) — This, that and the other (talk) 01:59, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Hmm... {{clickable button 2}} just makes a plain link for me (see my test). {{help pages header}} is just a horizontal list of links with bold formatting. Have the styles already been disabled? Does this depend on skin? (I'm using Monobook.) Does it require some gadget to be enabled? (I've disabled most gadgets, including many of the defaults.)
The e-mail you link to mentions editing common.js to re-enable the styling, not common.css as one would expect for CSS. Is this in fact a JavaScript effect and not CSS? (I have JS disabled.) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 16:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Since jQuery UI is a javascript library, its accompanying CSS is indeed only loaded through javascript. Instead of relying on jQuery UI, we migh consider using MediaWiki.UI for pretty buttons instead, or have all buttons styled pretty by default. — Edokter (talk) — 16:27, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Is 'mediawiki.ui' module loaded by default? Ruslik_Zero 19:19, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
No, but there have been suggestions on making it so (and a patch pending[30]). Hard to say if it will be, in the end, there was some opposition. You can always just make common.js load it here. Matma Rex talk 21:12, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
Might as well just load jquery UI from common.js here then, since we already have templates relying on that. Plus there's the standards thing. equazcion → 21:16, 2 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Looking at the mediawiki.ui JavaScript (or lack thereof), mediawiki.ui is pure CSS. jQuery, on the other hand, does a lot of fancy dancing with its scripts, dynamically changing the styles on a button when various events occur (some of which could be done better with CSS pseudo-classes). I don't think there's any hope of getting the jQuery buttons to work without JavaScript. Mediawiki.ui would definitely be preferable because it can work without JavaScript.
Obviously, loading mediawiki.ui from common.js would be a bit silly (why make pure CSS depend on JavaScript?). An option that would work for everyone would be to make it a dependency of a default-on gadget (the gadget itself wouldn't need to do anything; it's just there to pull in mediawiki.ui). – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:16, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
What about loading https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&modules=mediawiki.ui&only=styles&skin=vector&* from common.css?Helder 10:19, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
FYI: the reason that we stopped loading jquery.ui by default is both for performance reasons (latency improved visibly after doing this), and because the longterm plan is standardizing on mediawiki.ui as the CSS for controls like buttons. There's a lot of work to be done, but there's a biweekly hack day where WMF engineers are working on this now, so good things are on the way. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:46, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
For me, it is still a button. PartTimeGnome, it's probably something specific to your setup. BTW, the Teahouse gadget (which is really just a loader) used to depend on jquery.ui.button. However, this was not necessary since there's a using in MediaWiki:Gadget-teahouse/content.js before it's really needed anyway. Legoktm and I talked about this, and he removed the gadget dependencies just now.
As far as jquery.ui.button, I think loading it from Common.js is simplest (although wikitext only uses the CSS, other modules use the JS too, so we shouldn't load just the CSS somehow). However, I verified a gadget that depends on jquery.ui.button and has a no-op CSS file (just a comment) will also work (there does need to be a file). The downside is this adds to preference bloat with something most users won't understand or care about. Superm401 - Talk 00:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Edokter already identified what causes the problem for me: the jQuery CSS is only loaded from JavaScript (which I have disabled). I took a further look myself, and I'm not sure the jQuery CSS would work on its own anyway (someone please correct me if I'm wrong there). My preference would be to switch to mediawiki.ui for button styling since it is pure CSS. (And Steven indicated MediaWiki is moving that way anyway.) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Persondata-o-matic editing rights

Hi there. I've got a problem using the above, it says that I've not got the right to edit the article in question every time I try to use it on an article and then click 'save'. I've browsed the docs for the gadget and messaged the creator with no response. Anyone know a fix or what I'm doing wrong? --S.G.(GH) ping! 20:14, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

The author of the tool, User:Dcoetzee, last edited six hours before you posted your problem at Wikipedia talk:Persondata-o-matic. Since you also sent him an email, it looks like you'll have to wait until he returns to Wikipedia matters. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:43, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Tylenol

Tylenol (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There's something up on the page. The "Advertisement" header shows up in the TOC, but it's blank in the text itself, and the link it broken. I've examined the Wikimarkup and can't figure out what's wrong. All the ref tags are closed, so what is causing this problem? hbdragon88 (talk) 07:52, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Slight correction: the header was ==Advertisements== (plural). I've confirmed your observation. After I disabled AdBlock Plus for Wikipedia pages, however, the header, and the correct TOC link operation, reappeared. As a workaround, I've changed the header to ==Marketing==. Hbdragon88, did this resolve your issue? You can test your browser/plugin behavior against a prior revision of Tylenol. --Lexein (talk) 08:09, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Revert oversights edit?

There was an edit to Post that was reverted, and it seems that the edit was oversighted out of existance. Help:User contributions doesn't explain what a struck-out edit means, and Help:Reverting doesn't mention that this could happen. User:Eeekster is not a sysop or 'crat; I can't tell if they're an oversighter. If I remember correctly, oversighting actions are logged as such anyways - and there's nothing in the logs for the appropriate time. So what happened? Josh Parris 09:49, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

The suppression log is also private. --Rschen7754 09:55, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
So, suppression is undocumented (in the help pages) and privately logged. Orwellian. Josh Parris 10:14, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Help:User contributions#Deletion says: "In some limited circumstances individual contributions (that is, specific edits) may be removed from public view by administrators using Revision Deletion; such edits remain visible to administrators. In even more limited circumstances edits may be oversighted, remaining visible only to the handful of users with the Oversight permission." The link on "Revision Deletion" shows how it looks. There is no secrecy about the existence of the feature. It's just a question of how much overlap to have between help pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Also, if you think Oversight is being misused, you can raised the matter here. Mark Arsten (talk) 19:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
The only real fix to the problem is to have live updated mirrors that aren't under the same administration. I'd like to tell them not to do it, but you know full well that they may feel they have no choice under governments with a quite imperfect notion of what 'free expression' is about, and once they start doing it at all it is just so enticing to keep going further, gradually growing and expanding their godlike powers. Wnt (talk) 15:53, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't know where oversights might be logged. Example: here are two edits which I WP:REVDELled; so it's my name in the deletion log. I then sent an email to Special:EmailUser/Oversight - the oversight action took place within an hour, and I got an email back from one of the oversighters stating (amongst other info) "We appreciate you bringing this to our attention, and a member of the Oversight team has suppressed the information in question. Thanks for the vigilance, and please let us know of any other edits needing suppression that you see in the future." I presume that it was sent by the person who actually carried out the oversight action. But I have looked at the visible logs of actions carried out by that person, and I do not see an applicable entry. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:48, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Oversight logs are only visible to oversighters. See Wikipedia:Oversight#Logging. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:16, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
FWIW, the log is at Special:Log/suppress, though you need the OS bit to see it. --Rschen7754 10:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Let me start by saying that although I have suppression rights I am not familiar with this specific case and have not investigated who did the suppression. So, for starters, no there is no public log of who did which suppression action. And no, the team will not explain itself to the community. I know, that sounds terrible, but our primary function is to protect privacy and remove libel. In order to accomplish this by necessity we cannot discuss it openly. However, if you wish to challenge a suppression action you may contact the audit subcommittee, whose job it is to review the work of the oversight and checkuser teams and insure they are acting in accordance with the applicable policies and not overstepping their bounds or using their permissions abusively. It is my understanding that that process is also anonymous, only the members of the subcommittee know both the identity of the oversighter or checkuser who took the action and that of the user who made the report. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:09, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
    I could wish for more transparency. While I understand that you cant remove content to avoid privacy violations and then say wht that content was, it surely would be possible to log who did any particular oversight action, and even to indicate a general category of content removed (attack, defamation, personal info, outsourced contentious content that violates BLP, OTRS action, or whatever). None of that would violae anyone's privacy or perpetuate any libel. DES (talk) 01:58, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
    Equally, you could say "removed libellous statement about Ronald Regan" or "suppressed Privacy violating information on Donald Duck" or whatever. Those without suppression rights would have some idea of what happened, but there's also WP:BEANS. Regardless, the software doesn't allow, so: meh. Josh Parris 02:33, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
    However, there are some cases when revealing why an edit was suppressed would be just as bad as revealing the contents of the edit. (For the record, I am not an oversighter here, though I am on Wikidata). --Rschen7754 10:37, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Tech News: 2013-44

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

New features

  • The style and colors for warning boxes, error messages, and success messages in all skins of MediaWiki has been changed. [31]

VisualEditor news

  • You will soon be able to switch from editing in VisualEditor to editing wikitext directly without having to save the page. You can't yet switch from wikitext to VisualEditor but developers hope to make it possible in the future. [32]

Problems

  • There was a problem on October 31 during the activation of MediaWiki 1.22wmf2 on test wikis. mediawiki.org was also broken, and if you had problems logging in, it was probably because of this as well.

Future

  • Because of the problem with MediaWiki 1.22wmf2, the calendar has changed. It will be added to mediawiki.org and non-Wikipedia sites on November 4, and all Wikipedia sites on November 7.

JavaScript / Gadget developers

  • Due to a recent change, gadgets and user scripts that use jQuery UI should explicitly load the appropriate modules, as they may not be loaded by default. [33]
  • Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (in debug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace. [34]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by Global message delivery • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

10:36, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

version MediaWiki 1.22wmf2 is mentioned above in couple places, with future reference. this version was deployes last April, so most probably this is a typo, and meant to be MediaWiki 1.23wmf2. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:19, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Module:Pagetype

I've created Module:Pagetype, a replacement for {{pagetype}}, and I am thinking of updating the template to the Lua version later on this week. The Lua version has some differences from the current template, and {{pagetype}} has around 5 million transclusions, so I would like to get others' comments before making the switch. Please let me know your thoughts over at Template talk:Pagetype#Module:Pagetype. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Adventure: Quick bug-help

Hey folks,

If you're logged in could you go here, then click CONTRIBUTIONS. And tell me if the game advances to the next step ("All your work"). I've had 2 bug reports, both with Firefox 24.0+ that it's causing a loop. Cannot replicate on my end. Multiple tries or different browsers would be much appreciated. Best, Jake Ocaasi t | c 14:54, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Can't seem to reproduce it here. Firefox 25, Chrome 30, Opera 17. equazcion → 15:09, 4 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Although it does seem that every page you go to afterwards shows the adventure message box, until you explicitly 'X' it out. Maybe that's the "loop" they're referring to? equazcion → 15:11, 4 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I can reproduce this on FF24. It is a endless loop as long as you hit "Contributions". If you hit the ← it advances to the next stage. If you open any other page after that it also shows the next stage (for me, but I did it after hitting back which took me forward). I have screenshots if you need, let me know. Technical 13 (talk) 15:39, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Ocaasi, it's only happening for users with spaces in their usernames. In step 14, you're comparing wgUserName with the page address -- one has underscores in place of spaces and the other doesn't, so the script is not detecting that the contributions page has been reached. equazcion → 15:48, 4 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Nice catch, Equazcion! Any idea for a fix? Ocaasi t | c 15:50, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
  • return gt.isPage( 'Special:Contributions/' + mw.config.get( 'wgUserName' ).replace(/ /g, '_') );
I think that might do it. equazcion → 15:53, 4 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Trying that now. Thanks! Ocaasi t | c 16:01, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Equazcion, it works!! Ocaasi TWA (talk) 16:04, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Glad I could help :) equazcion → 16:07, 4 Nov 2013 (UTC)

Idea on meta about LaTeX export. Is it a feature request in bugzilla?

I like the ideas stated in m:Grants talk:IEG/LaTeX Export. Might someone who is experienced with bugzilla track it or say whether or not it is being tracked? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I cannot find a ticket so feel free to file one. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 11:10, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
See bugzilla:37933 and bugzilla:27574. Helder 15:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Mysterious watchlist entries

Every few days, something appears in my watchlist that I don't remember needing to watch. Sometimes, I can explain it after a bit of checking, since I occasionally watch a page that I've never edited because it's the subject of a discussion that I'm involved in - for example, I've watched Template:LUL Platform Layout Metropolitan/island because I've contributed to its TfD. But occasionally, I simply can't explain why a particular page is on my watchlist - one such case that's appeared today is Template:PBB/2492, which I've never edited, and nor do I have any knowledge of (or interest in) this ... er, "Follicle stimulating hormone receptor", something biological I guess. I'm wondering if somebody else has attempted to watch this page but some database error has caused it to be put on my watchlist. Does that seem plausible? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

You deleted its talk page in June. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
OK, thanks; can you explain Robert Tappan Morris? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:37, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Above at #Infobox criminal is turning programmers into murderers you replied to a post about that article and clearly viewed it. I guess you clicked watch on that occasion, maybe by accident. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:58, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I did view it (twice), once to verify that there was an unwanted heading, and once after I'd fixed the infobox template that JohnnyMrNinja had mentioned, in order to verify that the heading had gone. But I didn't need to go for "edit this page" on Robert Tappan Morris because I was certain that the problem was in the infobox template. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Corrupted non-ASCII characters

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T58583

For about an hour today (between 19:45 and 20:40 UTC) a bug in the MediaWiki parsoid caused all non-ASCII characters to be corrupted on page save. So if you see any strange diffs in your watchlist, for example, accented characters changing to garbage characters, please correct or revert them. A full postmortem on the problem will be released shortly. Kaldari (talk) 22:06, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

i believe that this issue pertains to VE edits only. it should not be all that difficult to look for all changes with "visualeditor" tag within the time-window where the problem existed, and make sure all is good. for unrelated reason, VE is off by default on enwiki, so no anon edits should be affected, and it seems that relatively small number of registered uses use it (at least, the number of edits with the tag is not huge). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
followed my own advice. found 3 pages with some corruptions that were not fixed yet, and rolled them back. ignored pages where the history contains summaries with "ooopsie" and/or swearwords towards VE in edits following the corruption window, and pages in userspace. hopefully these were the last 3. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 01:44, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

User Talk page message

When developers got rid of the orange bar across the top of the page showing new messages on user talk pages, new messages were highlighted in orange around the talk link in the user menu. However in the last couple of days even this has disappeared, only appearing a day late in the notifications. Why? Simply south...... cooking letters for just 7 years 22:49, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

There was a bug in which the orange bar didn't show up for monobook/modern skins. This has been fixed, but I'm not sure if it has been deployed yet. Legoktm (talk) 23:24, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
It's been more than a couple of days, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 119#Talkpage notification. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:10, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
If it has been fixed, why did I experience this on Saturday? Difficultly north (talk) - Simply south alt. 12:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Because, as mentioned by Lego above, it has not been deployed yet. It was "fixed", which means code has been written and committed ("saved"); it was not deployed, which means that Wikipedia is not running that code yet. Matma Rex talk 13:04, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
When will it be deployed? Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 13:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
No later than November 14 (per mw:MediaWiki 1.23/Roadmap). Maybe sooner if it is backported, but that's usually reserved for critical patches, and this is at worst annoying :) Matma Rex talk 13:35, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Notification tool not working

For the past couple of days, the notification tool hasn't been working properly for me. I'm seeing the white number in the red box (see diagram right), but I can't click on it to display the actual notifications (when I hover over the number, my pointer stays as an arrow, it doesn't change to a hand). I don't think I've changed any preferences. I'm using IE9 on Windows 7 with the Monobook skin. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 03:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Did you go to Special:Notifications to see if you actually have notifications? ~HueSatLum 03:56, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, and I did. It seems to be exactly the same problem as was reported here (where, unfortunately, there was no resolution). DH85868993 (talk) 03:57, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Pinging User:Quiddity who's usually knowledgeable about this stuff :) --Elitre (talk) 10:55, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Andre, I'm wondering if this has anything to do with the enhanced recent changes bug I've been experiencing the last few weeks where the arrows aren't expanding. Refreshing the page (sometimes multiple times is required) fixes the issue. I am using FF24 and have seen many quirks like this with it on this site and other sites (which indicates to me that it's likely not a MediaWiki bug). If I can track down the cause (or come up with a plausible explanation) and a solid set of steps to reproduce, I'll file an appropriate report on Bugzilla, of course. (I accidentally posted this on the archive as well, but thought better of it and am putting a copy here. I'm leaving the post on the archive for now because I pinged Andre there as well and don't want confusion. Not a biggie to leave it there as well.) Technical 13 (talk) 12:53, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
The notifications figure is supposed to be clickable even if it's a greyed-out zero. As such, it's working for me in Firefox 24 under Windows XP - I don't know if I have "enhanced recent changes" or not because I can't find it in Preferences. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:38, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I think Technical 13 is referring to the "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" preference. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
OK, I tried that both enabled and disabled - the greyed out zero is clickable in both cases. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:50, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Some further info. I tried logging out and back in. Immediately after I log in, my toolbar shows "DH85868993 [0] talk preferences watchlist contributions log out" and the notification tool ("[0]") is clickable. A few seconds later, "sandbox" appears between "talk" and "preferences" and a "person" icon is displayed to the left of my username, and then the notification tool is no longer clickable. (I tried this with the "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" preference both enabled and disabled and it was the same in both cases). DH85868993 (talk) 01:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
In fact, I can reproduce similar behaviour by refreshing any page using my browser's refresh; when I initiate the refresh, "sandbox" and the "person icon" disappear from my toolbar and the notification tool is briefly clickable; when the refresh completes, "sandbox" and the "person icon" reappear and the notification tool is no longer clickable. DH85868993 (talk) 01:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Problem with Brazilian wandering spider

The Brazilian wandering spider page has something weird which I can't fix.

The references and citations are not showing on the page but if you look at the source code they are all there. Can someone else have a look as I couldn't fix it. filceolaire (talk) 14:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. The trick in cases like this is to find the last visible text, and look hard at the markup that follows it, as that's probably where the error is. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Is there something I can add to my js or css that makes it so raw URLs to other Wikipedia pages (like to diff pages or whatever) do not direct me to the HTTPS version?—Ryulong (琉竜) 14:05, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so. If the Javascript implementation within MediaWiki permitted URLs to be modified, we'd be open to all sorts of problems. If I'm replying to a thread which contains hardcoded https://en.wikipedia.org/ links, I often remove the https: part and if it was a bare URL, I also enclose in single square brackets, because the protocol-relative form doesn't work outside square brackets - compare //en.wikipedia.org/ with [35]. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
@Ryulong: User:PiRSquared17/nosecure.js. πr2 (t • c) 17:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you.—Ryulong (琉竜) 17:14, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia mobile page have a bug for sister project links

I found Wikipedia mobile page cannot show sister project links (which is formed of {{Sister}}) when I read some articles, I hope you can solve the problem, thanks.--Great Brightstar (talk) 14:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

This is a known issue with anything constructed using {{side box}} and it's because of the metadata class (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 116#'Listen' template not rendering in mobile view and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 116#CfDs in mobile view). We can fix {{sister}} by adding |metadata=no within {{side box}} - but this should not be done without discussion. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:58, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Search failure on "news"

Any search involving "news" outside mainspace gives me the red error message: "An error has occurred while searching: The search backend returned an error:". Some examples: talk:news, category:news today, user:no news, wikipedia:good news. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:12, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Funky. Happens for me too. Chris857 (talk) 01:31, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
The old search engine makes me cry :( ^demon[omg plz] 02:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
What's even weirder is that it's not any search with the word "news" (User:news paperclip works); only apparently common expressions (like User:news paper) with the word return the error. ~HueSatLum 02:38, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
That's pretty frikkin' weird brah. equazcion → 02:45, 6 Nov 2013 (UTC)

Page move

How to move all the sub-pages of any page? Admins can only move up to 100. — Bill william comptonTalk 13:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I think (haven't tried it) that admins can move 100 at a time, and could do n×100 in n batches if needed. Is there really a problem with that? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:06, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
What's the procedure of n×100 move? — Bill william comptonTalk 15:13, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
The best way to do that is probably to enlist a bot to execute the action. It can also be done manually trough the API, but it is rather cumbersome. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:29, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Problem solved. Thanks PH and TheDJ. — Bill william comptonTalk 19:02, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Autoblock checker down

I'm getting a "403: User account expired" but no indication of whose account it is. Peridon (talk) 17:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I dont know if its related, but I get random "You are currently unable to edit pages on Wikipedia due to an autoblock affecting your IP address" Christian75 (talk) 17:07, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Numerous users are caught up in that. See User_talk:Jimfbleak#Block? where a correct block of one editor seems to have had unintended knock on effects for many others. Valenciano (talk) 17:14, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Err, no - I'm not suffering from autoblock. I was trying to check if a blocked editor was autoblocked. This is a Toolserver account problem - if you don't go into an account there for six months they cut you off. Damn nuisance on some of the main things hosted there. Peridon (talk) 17:18, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Just found it - it's User:Nakon. Peridon (talk) 17:28, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
There's a temp replacement here courtesy of TParis.--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 17:30, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
ec - I've mailed Nakon anyway. Peridon (talk) 17:33, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
TParis emailed Nakon a couple weeks ago, and I left a notification on their talk page. A bit more context.--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 17:41, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I did email Nakon at the time and he was fine with my copy of the tool and said he'd get his account sorted soon.--v/r - TP 18:45, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The drop-down option for saved edit summaries/subject headers etc. has vanished for the second time (previously fixed by unclicking 'Always use a secure connection when logged in' on 'Preferences'), and I can't seem to fix it. Any help welcome. GiantSnowman 11:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Anyone? GiantSnowman 11:22, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
GiantSnowman Seems you're referring to the gadget (first one in the "Editing" section). I tried enabling it and it works for me. You may want to try disabling it, saving your preference, re-enabling it, and saving your preferences again. Also bypass your cache. equazcion → 07:01, 3 Nov 2013 (UTC)
No, it's not that - I'm referring to manually typed edit summaries which were saved, the option you have suggested refers to 'default' edut summaries as defined by Wikipedia. GiantSnowman 18:38, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
  • The drop-down edit summaries - or anything else in a form field - are saved by your browser, not by Wikipedia. Have you cleared your local saved settings, switched web browser, upgraded it, etc? Andrew Gray (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I guess you're talking about autocomplete. I don't generally advise relying on that, as it's somewhat tenuous and there are about a million different things that can make it disappear. You may be interested in User:Equazcion/CustomSummaryPresets though. equazcion → 04:57, 5 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Note the option on one of my browsers has come back. GiantSnowman 12:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Help needed tracking recent changes to medical content

User:Femto Bot used to populate Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Recent changes (Warning: page is 700k now -DePiep) which in turn updated Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Recent changes. I think that's how it worked. It reported all changes to pages with {{WPMED}} on their talk page. Anyway, it was an awesome tool for patrolling some of Wikipedia's most sensitive content. But since Rich Farmborough was banned from bot work it's stopped working - it only reports recent changes to pages beginning with "A". Does anyone feel like volunteering to fix it, or is there someone at WMF who I could ask to arrange it?

This tool aims to do the same thing but it's slow and often times out, and when it works it's running a couple of days behind.

Anybody? If no one wants to volunteer, can someone please tell me who at WMF to approach? We need this feature. Without it, anything could be happening to our medical content. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:53, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

There was also Tim1357's tool, but his account has expired from the Toolserver. This does look like a fairly urgently needed feature - perhaps ask over at Wikipedia:Bot requests to see if a willing bot operator wants to take it on? Not all of our bot operators are regular readers of this page. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:23, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, Mr S. I've left them a note. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
I also think this should be a core service WMF provides to the community. I perceive a large disconnect between community needs and what the WMF does. Why is that? We shouldn't have to do think we have to become project managers with m:IEG proposals just to get some WikiProject support... Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:52, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Let's see what happens at Bot requests. But if there's no response there we should take it to the WMF. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
No response yet. I've asked Rich if he can help. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 06:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I see from the talk page of the bot that seems to drive this (User_talk:Femto_Bot) that the bot has been blocked. If that block were lifted, would Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Recent changes start working again? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:16, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Over at WP:ELEMENTS we have a different the same solution. We have a project page with all article pages (maintained manually). Then we have a link on the project page that opens special page Related changes (not RC). The page is Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Articles/List of articles, the link is RELC.
Technical notes: WP:RELC has useful features like showing editors, edits per day, and more. Maybe the base list page could be updated by some bot, adding the project pages (list of WP:ELEMENT pages is not that volatile, medicine more I guess). We have added the talkpages too, as a choice. We have the same for templates, see here. -DePiep (talk) 08:09, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
oops lol. I now see that the page has the same intention. That leaves the question: needs a bot that puts all pages in Category:WikiProject Medicine articles and cats below on a page (undouble, with/wout talkpage). Is there no other bot? -DePiep (talk) 08:19, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I asked if it could be done by a module (Lua) in-site: Wikipedia:Lua_requests#Filling_the_RELC_page_using_Lua. -DePiep (talk) 08:59, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
The block on Femto Bot (talk · contribs) cannot be lifted under the terms of Rich Farmbrough (talk · contribs)'s ban. One possibility (which I may be entirely wrong about) would be for ownership of Femto Bot to be transferred away from Rich Farmbrough, with somebody else (perhaps an established bot operator) taking it on. This would mean (under the terms of the ban) that provisions would be needed to ensure that Rich Farmbrough never use Femto Bot again. More feasible is that Rich Farmbrough could disclose the whole of the source codes for Femto Bot, which would then be used to create an entirely new bot - and that would of course require a WP:BRFA, similar to the situation here. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:14, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
You have got to be kidding me (and that is only in reply to your first sentence). We're going to shoot a WikiProject in the face because somebody/some people got pissed off at an individual? WTF is going on in this place? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
No. We will not shoot the WP:MED. Already multiple initiatives are under way to help the project out. And no, the block is not there because "some people got pissed off". -DePiep (talk) 12:26, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I send my thanks to the God(s) above, as they may be, DePiep. Would you like to pick out a WP:MED barnstar for yourself? Thank you so much. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:55, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
When I nail a barnstar on my own barn, I always hammer myself on my thumb, and then it falls on my toe. I could look up one for you though, for returning to kindness. -DePiep (talk) 13:04, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I use a slightly modified version of Ganeshbot for generating the project lists. Keith D (talk) 14:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Even more calm everyone. I made the list manually (28000 MED articles) and prepared the RELC link. WARNING: this new RELC list page is 700k. I also moved the page to Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/List of pages/Articles because this name is more automatable (other namespaces, other projects) and also because the old name was incorrect (it did not show what it said).
Now it is up, recent, and running for WP:MED: WP:MED Articles - Related changes. I'll go to their talkpage for details.
Bot actions (I cannot do) are welcome, and my question to the masters is to work into the generic setup I made (task name: "RELC list"). -DePiep (talk) 15:18, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • There is an up to date solution available for WP:MED (presented to them at WT:MED). So no time pressure. Then at the bot request page there is follow up on this (for future updates). We may pilot this one into a generic solution for projects. Looks like this thread can be closed. -DePiep (talk) 17:24, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

A bit late, but there is a replacement available for Tim1357's tool mentioned above. Dispenser's transcluded changes tool shows all recent changes for pages that have a particular template on their talk page. (Though right now it's suffering from a few days of toolserver DB lag). Toohool (talk) 17:56, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. At WP:BOTREQ a future bot solution was initiated, expanding into a more generic solution proposal (could it work for all wikiprojects?). That requires the bot to more interact with a request from a project (think, like the archiving bot).
I should note that the original bot, mentioned on top here, listed only 5% of the pages (1500/30000) [36]! The letter A was not even complete. -DePiep (talk) 06:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Potential bug

I made a good-faith revert using STiki to Drake (rapper) (pp-pc1), and it did not automatically accept my change, but I have the reviewer right. So... I accepted it myself? See the review log. Should I report this as a bug? — MusikAnimal talk 21:12, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's an issue with STiki. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Skipping Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard when I click a redlinked file

Some time ago the decision was made that if you clicked on a redlinked file, (for example, if you clicked File:Example Nonexistant Image.png), it would take you to the upload wizard, rather than to the file namespace page (so you would get this instead of this). While I'm sure that this was done to be a convenience for new editors unfamiliar with uploading, it is a tremendous inconvenience for people who work with files, like myself. People that work with files want to be able to click on a redlink and get to the file namespace page, because that allows them to see whether the file is redlinked because it has been deleted, or because it has been mistyped (which obviously require two different fixes). I could have sworn that at one time someone wrote a fix for me to stick in my custom .js or custom .css that would allow me to click on a redlinked file and get the file namespace page instead of the upload wizard, but that fix either stopped working or is a figment of my imagination that never existed in the first place, as I am getting redirected to the upload wizard (again?).

TLDR: Can someone please tell me how to skip the upload wizard and go straight to the file namespace page when clicking redlinked files? Sven Manguard Wha? 20:17, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a pretty easy script to write, I'd be happy to do so, for my own benefit as well. I'll look into it later tonight :) — MusikAnimal talk 22:23, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
@Sven, this User:Gary King/show upload deletion logs.js might have been the script you were thinking of. NtheP (talk) 22:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I just created User:Equazcion/SkipFileWizard, in case that's what you wanted. It should change all file redlinks to take you to the filespace page as you wanted. Not sure if Gary King's script does something similar... (and pinging MusikAnimal in case he was going to create it). equazcion → 23:00, 5 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! — MusikAnimal talk 00:27, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the assistance everyone. Turns out I did have another script doing that, but for some reason it stopped working. Hopefully Equazcion's will work for a while. Sven Manguard Wha? 00:47, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Wonderful script! Thank you! --Stefan2 (talk) 21:29, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Diff and other problems (probably IE8)

Hi. I've been having various problems which I suspect may be to do with IE8 (on Win XP Home SP3 fully patched). They don't occur on Chrome. I use Vector skin.

  1. When opening a diff linked via https (like this one]), the first screenful looks fine, but: no text cursor appears when over text; double clicking a word of text fails to select it; clicking links on the top row, like Preferences and Watchlist, doesn't open the linked page; scrolling doesn't move the scroll bar but scolls garbage into the main area; and page-down key just puts nonsense on the page. The same diff linked via ordinary http (like this one) doesn't exhibit these problems. This issue has existed since late last week.
  2. Clicking the triangle to obtain enhanced diff view (wikEdDiff preference) has not worked for months. It just gives a shaded box with three dots inside.
  3. For about a month, the line of tabs to functions "Article, Talk, Read, Edit, ..." in some cases gets broken up and some of the tabs overwrite the page title. For example, as I type this, I see the "Project page" and "Talk" links are in the right place, but "Read, Edit, ..." are over the page title. (Clicking the displaced ones has the correct effect, though.) I have text size set to largest in my browser.

Thanks in advance for your help. --Stfg (talk) 13:15, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Seems related to #Unable to do anything through IE8.equazcion → 13:38, 6 Nov 2013 (UTC)
  1. I don't have IE8 unfortunately, but I can't replicate it on IE7. It does indeed sound related to what Equizcion is pointing at. The description appears to indicate that there might be some sort of 'overlay', which makes me fear you might have some spyware of advertisement toolbar or other type of browser extension installed that could be causing this. Could you check if you have any unexpected toolbars installed ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
  2. This is broken for me as well it seems. The script is maintained by User:Cacycle, and his feedback page for the script is User_talk:Cacycle/wikEdDiff
  3. When the tabs don't fit the screen anymore, they will indeed jump to the next line and partially overlap the title. This is expected behavior. It is also expected that dimensions at times change. If you use the largest text setting, then effects like these are to be expected, though less than ideal, the site is generally not optimized for 'extreme' situations. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

(←) @TheDJ: thanks for looking at them.

  1. I've checked browser add-ons and installed programs, and nothing seems amiss. I've run a registry cleaner. No change. Will run a full scan overnight, but this only happens on Wikipedia and only with htpps.
Scan done, nothing found. --Stfg (talk) 09:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  1. OK, I've posted there.
  2. Well, until a few weeks ago, they didn't do that. When the window was too narrow for all of them, the ones that wouldn't fit fell into the drop-down. I wonder if someone has fixed something, because if I expand the widow to screen width and then restore it to normal size, they do fall into the drop-down. Clicking show preview munges it again, but the same procedure puts it right once more. None of that was the case a few hours ago. The expand/contract procedure works slowly -- I see the munged screen and then watch it fall slowly into place -- so I wonder if there's a timing quirk.

--Stfg (talk) 17:28, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation IP addresses causing autoblocks

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T58727

On User talk:Jimfbleak#Block.3F several users have reported autoblocks on IPs including 2620:0:862:1:A6BA:DBFF:FE38:FC71, which belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation[37], this is not the users' IP address. Another is 2620:0:862:1:A6BA:DBFF:FE38:D75F - there have also been several edits from the range today. Peter James (talk) 17:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I remember last week (ish) we were having similar issues with vandalism from IPv4 addresses on the Wikimedia server range.--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 17:44, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes. This was again a problem caused by missing MediaWiki configuration for new Varnish cache servers that we deployed in Europe today. In some cases our cache servers use IPv6 to communicate with eachother, and MediaWiki wasn't yet configured to recognize their IPv6 IPs, causing these misattributed edits. This should have been fixed now. Our apologies! -- Mark Bergsma (talk) 17:49, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
There have been more edits from 2620:0:862:1:91:198:174:67 and 2620:0:862:1:91:198:174:70 today. Peter James (talk) 21:38, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

This is not my IP address

Special:Mytalk is taking me to User talk:2620:0:862:1:91:198:174:67. That's a Wikimedia IP6 address. 149.241.39.156 (talk) 17:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

This and the issue below are likely related to Wikimedia Foundation IP addresses causing autoblocks above. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:11, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

User talk:2620:0:862:1:91:198:174:70

It looks like a big lot of random IPs (including mine) get a "You have new messages" for everything that happens in this page. Do something, please--176.58.248.185 (talk) 17:57, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Search box problem with back button

In the last day, I've noticed a problem with the search box (Monobook, Firefox 25, Windows XP). I click in the search box in the left margin, type in the first few letters of the page name, and when it appears in the suggestions, I arrow down to it and press Enter; this takes me to the appropriate page as it always has done. The problem arises when I then use either backspace (or alt+left-arrow) - it goes back, but then re-processes the search and moves forward again. I need to use backspace (or alt+left-arrow) twice quickly in order to go back and stay back. Is this a result of a MediaWiki change, or a bug introduced with Firefox 25 (to which I was upgraded recently)? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:29, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit window collapsing when editing common.js

If this is just me, never mind, there are easy workrounds. With Windows 7, Firefox and WikEd, when I try editing common.js (or vector.css) the edit window displays and shrinks to nothing before I can get there. Preview showing OK. Disabling WikEd solves the problem. I wonder if this is FF 25 but I don't often edit custom.js. Editing other pages OK. Both Monobook and Vector. With WikEd running, same problem with IE8 but Chrome 30 is OK. Thincat (talk) 11:30, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I believe it's a known conflict between WikEd and the new default editor that attempts to show up for all .js pages. equazcion → 12:51, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
That's OK then. Thincat (talk) 13:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Horrible slowdown

I can barely edit at the moment. It appears to be the usual recurring problem with bits.wikimedia.org (at least that seems to be what my browser says is the hang-up). It took several minutes just to get this page to display. I use the latest version of Firefox, if that matters.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:46, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

By "latest", have you upgraded from FF 24 to FF 25 in the last couple of days? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:50, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm on v.25, but I can't remember how many days ago I upgraded. In any event, the slowdown just occurred late this afternoon, and it acts like all previous slowdowns I've seen.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:02, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm having similar problems attempting to access or edit articles and article histories in article space. I also use FF 25, but I also tried in Chrome (logged out) and it doesn't work any better. Not much trouble on this page, however. --Arxiloxos (talk) 01:22, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Just to chime in, all is well on my end. This could be an "availability zone" issue, maybe. I'm in the NYC area. The current WikiMedia performance status appears to be okay as well. I'm on Chrome 30 OSX. — MusikAnimal talk 01:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Fine here too, also NYC. For the record though I seem to have consistently experienced the slowdowns on queue with the reports here previously -- just none showing right now. equazcion → 01:48, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I'm getting the same slowness. Pinging and tracerting bits.wikimedia.org doesn't seem to show any problems. --Closedmouth (talk) 02:01, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
All seems fine on FF25 for me. Thinking it's a caching issue for Bbb... Try WP:BYPASSing. Technical 13 (talk) 03:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Whole site has been very slow for me (IE9 on Win7 in Australia) for the last 12 hours at least. DH85868993 (talk) 04:21, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Also very slow for me in Japan. I'm on Firefox 25/WinXP at the moment. — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 05:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Working fine for me on Firefox 25/Windows 8 in Ohio. Based on locations provided here and listed on user pages, it seems that Americans are not having problems, but Australia and Japan are. Not sure how large the problem area is. Bbb23 and Arxiloxos, where are you at? I can't get a location off of either of your user pages. Knowing a location could help the devs track down the issue. jcgoble3 (talk) 07:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like there could be some trouble in the new ulsfo Oceania caching center. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:27, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Performance is much improved for me (in Australia) now. DH85868993 (talk) 09:41, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
We had network issues (congestion in one of our links) in our new ulsfo (San Francisco) datacenter that resulted in significant slowdowns during peak hours. We route traffic to datacenter based on users' geolocation and hence this issue affected only traffic coming from US & Canada West, Oceania and a minority of Asian countries. We've redirected North American traffic back to Ashburn, Virginia to free up the link and this seems to have alleviated the issues for now. We're still monitoring the situation and working on it so that we can have the issue permanently fixed and traffic rerouted back to San Francisco within the next days. Thanks to everyone here and on IRC for the report, this helped a lot. Faidon Liambotis (WMF) (talk) 11:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Sorry I was off-wiki and unable to answer the question about my location, but Faidon Liambotis (WMF)'s comment makes total sense as I'm in Southern California. I just got back on-wiki, and things seem to be okay. Thank you for looking into it and fixing it.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:58, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Edit window: automated inserting bug

I'm using Firefox 25.0 with Java 1.7.0_45-b18, and I'm currently not able to use the automated text insertion tool below the edit window. It doesn't matter whether I select "Insert", "Wiki markup" or anything else from the dropdown menu, everytime I click on any of the templated options shown there, my browser automatically scrolls up to the top without putting anything into the edit window. The funny thing is also that the "Wiki markup" view is still showing the options from "Insert" in the first line. Is anybody else experiencing these problems? De728631 (talk) 19:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'm having the same problem with Firefox 25.0 as you are. Funandtrvl (talk) 20:28, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Ditto (tritto?) on Chrome, Version 30.0.1599.116. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 20:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I just tried Chrome and IE10 too, and the insert wiki markup toolbar at the bottom does not work with any of the 3 browsers. 107.209.7.41 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Twas the "Developers have started to remove long-deprecated methods. You should check the JavaScript console (in debug=true mode) and look for deprecation warnings and their stack trace. [38]" thing mentioned above in #Tech News: 2013-44. That should do it. Bypass your cache, if necessary. Anomie⚔ 20:36, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Following up on a hunch... For those of you who are also seeing this, could you please go to d:WD:RFD and tell me if the [show] buttons in the collapsed-text templates work for you? — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 20:39, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
No, they don't work either, when I click on them it scrolls the page up but doesn't open the "show" part. Funandtrvl (talk) 20:43, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
It seems to be improving. I can now add stuff to the edit window but the scrolling issue is persisting. I've also run a JS console check of the edit window: I don't get any deprecation warnings but there seem to be lots of unknown and unfinished declarations. Btw, Funandtrvl, I can't use the [show] buttons either. De728631 (talk) 21:02, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
The 'Show' buttons, they do nothing. (FF22) - The Bushranger One ping only 21:55, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
And Wikidata's version of CollapseButtons did indeed use one of the removed methods that Anomie mentioned. Should be fixed now. Thanks, folks! — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 22:34, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Indeed it is, and thanks for the quick fix! - The Bushranger One ping only 22:56, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Something strange has happened to MediaWiki:Edittools - when I open a fresh edit window, all the links like – — ° ″ ′ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § are blue, just as they used to be. But if I click any one of them, they all turn to the visited link colour (purple for most people). They didn't do that before today. I don't know enough about Javascript to know if this edit by Anomie (talk · contribs) would have caused it directly, or if it was an unintended side-effect. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:00, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Also, when using Wikimarkup:Insert, now the item is inserted, but there is a "top of page" action happening after the insert that didn't happen before, on FF25.0. Funandtrvl (talk) 19:05, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
More: the first click to an edittools link doesn't just change the colour, it also adds a trailing # to the URL in the address bar, which in turn adds an entry to the browser's tab history. This means that the next time that you use the "back" button, nothing seems to happen - except that a trailing # disappears from the URL in the address bar. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Try it now (bypass your cache if necessary). Anomie⚔ 20:52, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
It works, it doesn't jump to top of page now, thanks! Funandtrvl (talk) 21:21, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you --Redrose64 (talk) 23:18, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Category request

Can someone add a category to Category:BLP articles lacking sources and the associated templates in order to have an "All BLP articles lacking sources" category? Thanks. Werieth (talk) 00:34, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

All that is needed on the template side is to add |all=All BLP articles lacking sources to the {{ambox}} within {{BLP sources}}, along the lines of the |all=All articles needing additional references that's in {{refimprove}}, and then for Category:All BLP articles lacking sources to be created. But has this been proposed at Template talk:BLP sources? See WP:EDITREQ. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I havent filed an edit request because I was unsure of what needed modified and where to file it because I think it involves multiple templates. Werieth (talk) 01:01, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Sorry. I worded it wrongly above. Have modified.
Besides {{BLP sources}}, which templates populate the existing subcats of Category:BLP articles lacking sources? --Redrose64 (talk) 01:04, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
{{BLP sources}} and {{BLP unsourced section}} where what was listed on the category. Werieth (talk) 13:27, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Contribution to Administrators' noticeboard

Hi, my edit made at 01:53 has been shaded and crossed out here [39]. So along with 16 other edits, it can't be displayed in history mode, although its available at 03:36 in Reaper Eternal's edit of "A matter of trust". I guess its a mistake, as the actual edit is still up on the noticeboard. Can the link to my 01:53 edit be fixed? --Rskp (talk) 06:56, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Looks like those edits were oversighted. It's probably not a mistake, but an intended hiding of history revisions that contained something bad, like someone's personal information. There's apparently no other way to make information hidden from public view, other than hiding entire history revisions. I don't think there's anything to be done about it -- but as long as your edit shows up in the latest revision, it shouldn't matter too much. equazcion → 07:26, 8 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Yes, the edits were WP:OVERSIGHTed, which means that not only can regular users not see them, but admins can't either. If somebody posts something (hereinafter referred to as "the offending text") that falls within either WP:REVDEL or WP:OVERSIGHT, what normally happens first is that the offending text is removed: either the whole edit can be reverted, or if it was a substantially good edit with just part being the offending text, just that portion of the text can be removed (possibly being replaced with the {{redacted}} template). Whichever method was chosen, what happens next is that the original edit containing the offending text gets hidden. If there were edits after this but before the one where the offending text was removed, they will still contain the offending text (albeit not in the "diff" part at the top), so those must be hidden as well. You can still use the two columns of radio buttons in the history page to select the last edit before the hidden edits together with the first edit after them, and so compare them. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Yes, I see how my edit was included in the removal of the other and how to link to it. Much appreciated. --Rskp (talk) 23:27, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Easing use of an existing template & a request for help about creating a template

Could someone with more knowledge about editing templates than me please add an empty version of Template:Auto images there so that people can copy and paste it easily for the purposes of filling it out? Also, I am looking to create my first template soon, so if anyone is interested in helping me on this project, could they please say so on my talk page? I would want for the template to query an external website daily—so this might require a bot—in order to update a short amount of text on Wikipedia talk pages for medical topics. I'm hoping to get a proposal going that might get Wikipedia incoming links from an external website in return for links on our talk pages to theirs per this. Best regards. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 09:55, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I've added a blank for {{auto images}} to the doc page. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Proposed change to MediaWiki:Linkshere

Hi. At (for example) Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox, the MediaWiki message MediaWiki:Linkshere is displayed. I've proposed a small change to its output here: MediaWiki talk:Linkshere#Change "transclusion count" link. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:03, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Make SidebarTranslate into a gadget

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 107#Make SidebarTranslate into a gadget. equazcion → 02:59, 9 Nov 2013 (UTC)

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