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Pratt 2023, p. 169
Morujão, Dimas & Relvas 2021, p. 105
Mitias 2022, p. 3
2.
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Hoad 1993, p. 350
Simpson 2002, Philosophy
Jacobs 2022, p. 23
3.
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...
Is that the intended behavior? As far as I can tell, this affects many high-traffic articles. If there is an automatic warning message, it would make sense to have it only for one instance per page, not for every single instance. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:33, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
@Rchard2scout: Thanks, that's much better. However, I think it's still far from ideal. Some articles have 100 or more references. Do we really need to inform all readers 100 times per page about this discussion?
I'm not even sure that we should inform readers on article pages at all. Especially in the case of this discussion, which is a rather technical matter not of interest to most general readers. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:10, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
I went ahead and disabled the warning function by setting |type=disabled, which seems to have solved the problem. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:04, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
If hundreds of warning messages appear on high-traffic articles, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of readers see them within a very short time and have no idea what they are supposed to mean. This type of issue concerns a specific group of editors, so there is no need to warn all readers repeatedly. Phlsph7 (talk) 17:25, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
The reason these tags display is because editors want them to display. We can remove that from Template:Tfd, but the price is that people may not know a template is about to be deleted. It is not about "a specific group of editors", it is about any editor who thinks they may have a reason to support or oppose that template's deletion. Izno (talk) 17:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to warning editors. I'm just opposed to presenting hundreds of warnings to a high volume of readers who are not affected and don't understand them. What about posting a message on the talk page of each affected article instead? Phlsph7 (talk) 17:52, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Do you read every article's talk page before you edit it? I don't. I'd be very surprised if more than a mere handful of editors (if any) actually do.
I'm a little surprised that I'm the only one concerned about presenting hundreds of warnings per article page to a high volume of readers who don't understand them. Is there no better alternative? Phlsph7 (talk) 18:17, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Hundreds of messages may not be optimum, but neither is potentially deleting a popular template because no one was notified in advance. At least the message won't be displayed any longer than the discussion that is taking place (usually not more than a week). And how many readers do you think actually scroll through reference sections. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 19:51, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Some high-volume articles with this template have around 100000 views per month. That makes about 25000 views for one week, and this is just for one of those articles. For each of those visits, over 100 warning messages are displayed. According to https://linkcount.toolforge.org/ , the templates Multiref, Multiref2, and Unbulleted list citebundle are directly transcluded to 816, 1292, and 507 articles, respectively. Not all of them are as high-volume, but you still get a feeling for how many readers you would reach with those warning messages–they are easily in the hundreds of thousands. And we do this only to reach a handful of editors who will participate in the template discussion. I think we do a lot more damage than good here. Having about 2500 talk page messages instead would be the lesser evil. If that's not acceptable, the alternative suggestion of displaying the warning message only once per article for the first occurrence would at least do less damage. Phlsph7 (talk) 20:37, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Which is not possible.
Having about 2500 talk page messages instead would be the lesser evil. The community is likely to disagree, and clearly today that is not how it works. Similar was done when IA bot first rolled out when it added archives. It did not take long for the community to come to the conclusion that talk page messages were clear and obvious and totally unnecessary noise. Izno (talk) 00:34, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
@Izno It is possible using CSS tricks, but undesirable because it can't distinguish between multiple messages for one template or one message each for multiple templates. As a compromise, the CSS does prevent more that one tag from appearing within the same parent element (usually a paragraph or list entry). --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)18:48, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
During a recent case of a disruptive RFD notice, an editor at Template talk:Redirect for discussion suggested that RFD notice be made visible only to those wish to see it, similar to CS1 errors. For some classes of TFD nominations, those which don't directly impact the average reader, it may be a potential solution. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})19:24, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
This has been suggested before, several times, and rejected each time. We want to increase participation in XfDs, not reduce it. Too many of them get relisted for lack of !votes. Also, if it were opt-in, it would effectively debar logged-out users from participating in XfDs - something we have almost never done. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:34, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
For RfDs on widely-used template redirects, and TfMs on widely-used templates that would not result in any meaningful change to the template being merged-to, making the notices only show up for autoconfirmed users would make sense, though. The confusion caused to tens of thousands of readers is going to outweigh any benefit from increased participation. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:25, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
During the disruptive RFD notice that I am referencing, 3 of the votes were from people annoyed at the RFD notice. 2 opposed because they though their oppose votes will get rid of the RFD notice, and 1 thought that their support vote will get rid of the RFD notice. They didn't vote on the (de-)merits of the nomination at all. It only makes the discussion more messy. This is on top of thousands of readers who have no idea what RfD or TfM is, but have to see plenty of <<See Rfd>> notices all around. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})18:05, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Performance issues loading talk page sections
I'm going to preface this by saying that this is an issue I've only noticed on particularly underpowered hardware but I think it's still relevant to bring here. Loading a specific section of a talk page is often significantly slower than simply loading the talk page itself - for a random example, loading Talk:Foo might take five seconds, whereas loading Talk:Foo#Bar would take closer to twenty. I usually come about these link highlights via the inbox / notification bar - my skin is Vector Legacy 2010. On larger pages I participate in talk discussions in, this performance latency, often at least three times longer to load than just the talk page itself, becomes a major issue that often results in the "page is not responding" message in Google Chrome. I've noticed this on a few talk pages, including WP:ITNC and WP:ANI, but it appears to be common across other large talk pages, especially those in excess of 100k bytes source. My connection isn't the best, and, as stated before, my hardware isn't too good either, but the principle is that the mechanism for finding and highlighting specific sections on talk pages should be improved. I'm unsure as to the specific importance of browser version etc, but if asked I can find it. I have been unable to replicate this bug on a fake test talk page.
Using WP:ANI as an example, in a benchmark taken just now, it took about three seconds to load the noticeboard itself - but when loading a specific section (from the page history), it took a full forty seconds. During this time, the highlighted section appeared, but was not itself highlighted - i.e. the browser only loaded the specific section. The "Page unresponsive" Chrome error also appeared when the page was interacted with. Departure– (talk) 16:33, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
I don't think that's the same issue, this is specifically concerning talk page sections taking ten times as long to load as the talk pages themselves. Departure– (talk) 18:07, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Ah. On my chromebook my Watchlist and every other Wikipedia-related tab will freeze on reload every morning, it lasts for 10-30 minutes and is incredibly annoying. — EF518:08, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Have you observed the size of the scrollbar when accessing the talk page directly? The browser only scrolls to the section once the page has loaded all the way to the section anchor, which for me is noticeable by the scrollbar getting smaller and smaller and is a similar amount of seconds as the time it takes to jump to the last section. – 2804:F1...7F:79A0 (::/32) (talk) 18:14, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
No, the scrollbar is the same size the entire time the page is loading - it always appears to cover the whole page. Scrolling while loading a section when the page is hanging reveals only the section in question and a few around it - scrolling up or down shows everything else is just white. Departure– (talk) 19:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Something weird about this file seems to cause my browser to go dark whenever I view a page containing the file. Does anyone else have this problem, and does anyone know what's causing it? Try looking at the image on MagSafe#MagSafe_3.
Weird, I see it too on my MacBook screen and not on my external monitor. It looks a lot like an HDR image, although I thought that thumbnails on Wikimedia sites didn't have that capability and were always reduced to standard dynamic range. @Rorschach: did you do anything unusual when editing/uploading this image? The bright reflections don't really add to the understanding of the connector so they could always just be cropped out. the wub"?!"22:30, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
In many infoboxes on en.m.wikipedia.org the left column is centered instead of being left-aligned, which leads to weird placement of normally indented/bulleted labels. Why is that? Compare m.wiki vs. desktop.
What is overriding the common.css setting of .infobox-label {text-align: left}, can that be fixed? (previously asked here) Ponor (talk) 11:56, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Common.css is not loaded on the mobile site, so the .infobox-label {text-align: left} is not there in the first place. There's a separate mobile.css for MobileFrontend, although these days people tend to prefer moving styles for specific templates to TemplateStyles. Anomie⚔12:09, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
This would be fixed by MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#Infobox getting done (it's slow going) or by MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do#Turn mobile.css/js totally off getting done, which is just waiting on phab:T375538. I can probably upload a patch to resolve that one but I will need to bug the developer I was working with on it and he said something a couple days ago that made me twitch on the point so I'm not hopping fast right now. (And haven't hopped fast in general just because I got distracted with other things and I wanted to give him time to figure out what exactly he was intending to do. He hasn't hopped fast either....) Izno (talk) 22:26, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
I’m having trouble editing existing Wikipedia pages. When I try to edit, I only see the "Edit source" option and not the regular "Edit" button. This issue affects all pages I’ve tried, and I can’t make any changes to existing articles.
I have 29 edits on my account, and I haven’t edited for about 7 months, but I was previously able to edit normally
You could just download it yourself, passing the human verification and then upload it to the text portion of archive.org. Snævar (talk) 19:20, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
Could be an offending div somewhere and maybe a solution is conversion to using {{page tabs}}.
When the problem is found it would be interesting to do a search to find other markup breaking the phone experience across Wikipedia. Commander Keane (talk) 00:59, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
In fact as both categories were deleted last year, so I've removed them. I'm not sure why they were still listed, isn't there a bot to clean these up? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°20:31, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Pagemove semiprotection
Administrators can semiprotect pages from moves, i.e. you can't move the page unless you're confirmed or autoconfirmed. What's the point? HELP:MOVE notes that you have to be autoconfirmed to move a page in the first place, so functionally, all pages have this level of protection already. Nyttend (talk) 04:03, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
@Nyttend: The move right is a MediaWiki configuration setting where the default is all registered users. We have set it to autoconfirmed/confirmed. MediaWiki could be coded to detect this and remove the option on the protect form but I don't think there is a good reason this complication. And a wiki could change the setting later. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:31, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Even if someone were to code that, I don't think it'd take effect here because the page movers group can grant move without editsemiprotected, so it's possible that the protection would have an effect in the case of someone who's not autoconfirmed or confirmed but is a page mover. It's the same reason why semiprotection is an option in the MediaWiki namespace despite code existing since 2013 to filter out protection levels that namespace-level protection filters out, because the interface-admin group could (at a technical level) be given to an account not already confirmed or autoconfirmed. Anomie⚔13:51, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't mean to ask what you thought I was asking. I understand why this level is available, since the site might be configured otherwise, and MediaWiki developers shouldn't prevent it from being available. I meant — since en:wp is configured to prevent pagemoves unless you're autoconfirmed, why would anyone apply this level of protection? I see it comparatively frequently, and I can't imagine any reason to use it. Nyttend (talk) 19:27, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
If you're talking about protections like this one that apply both 'edit' and 'move' protection, most likely it's because it's easier to leave the "Unlock further protect options" checkbox unchecked when semiprotecting (and not expecting pagemove vandalism) rather than checking it and adjusting the 'move' part of the form. Anomie⚔21:41, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Photo preview cropping and positioning on Wikipedia app
In the Wikipedia app (iOS 18.3.1), the “preview” photo at the top of the page is often cropped, resulting the main content of image being hidden. Is there a guideline for how to set the origin point or cropping behaviour?
I would like to propose adding the Citation Watchlist script as a new gadget. The purpose of Citation Watchlist is to add visual indicators in recent changes feeds, watchlists, page histories, and user contributions pages when links to certain domain names are added. These domain names are often considered unreliable sources or otherwise require closer examination; this script makes it easier to identify when and where such links are added. New lists can be added to Wikipedia:Citation Watchlist/Lists and existing lists can be updated there. If you can edit a wiki page, you can create and update a domain list.
Citation Watchlist is under active development by the nonprofit Hacks/Hackers, with support from Wikimedia Switzerland. New versions are initially tested on test.wikipedia.org, then staged on English Wikipedia for additional tests before being released, to ensure that the script does not randomly break. To run through the requirements for gadgets:
Gadgets must work if just included with no further configuration. They can be configurable via personal common.js, but must work unconfigured.
Citation Watchlist works out of the box with no further configuration required.
Gadgets must be compatible with all major browsers, i.e., they must not terminate with errors.
Citation Watchlist has been tested and confirmed to work on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari.
Gadgets should be functional in most major browsers (cross-browser compatibility). Exceptions must be clearly stated.
As stated above, Citation Watchlist works in all major browsers. Note that on mobile devices, you can't hover over indicators to get additional information, as mobile devices lack a hover action.
Duplication of gadgets should only be made if it is reasonable.
Citation Watchlist provides functionality not available in other gadgets. While there are other gadgets that deal with references and source reliability, they do not operate in the same parts of the interface as Citation Watchlist, which focuses on revision log pages: page histories, watchlists, recent changes, and user contributions.
Collections of scripts should be split if they have disparate functions.
Citation Watchlist is not a collection of disparate scripts.
Gadgets requiring permissions must be marked and must fail gracefully if the permissions aren't present.
Citation Watchlist requires no special permissions.
Gadgets only working in some skins must be marked as such if that data is available.
Citation Watchlist has been tested and confirmed to work in Vector 2022, Vector 2010, Monobook, Minerva, and Timeless.
I am happy to answer any questions you have. If you would like to make changes to the code, I recommend doing so on Test Wikipedia so changes can be properly tested before altering the experience for existing users. Harej (talk) 18:50, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
Meh seems fine to me. More wondering why the url is hardcoded, when we have wgScriptPath and wgArticlePath config variables available. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
If I understand the implementation correctly, it fetches the actual diff of every page in the displayed list every time such a list is displayed. So if I go to a page-history (default is most recent 50 changes), it fetches 50 diffs. If I then change to 500, it fetches 500. And 250 fetches when I look at my watchlist whose pref I set to 250. If I'm understanding that correctly, it seems like a pretty big resource use (I don't want to slam WMF's server and I also don't want to bog down my own browser every time). When I went to the "Deprecated sources recent changes filter" example at Wikipedia:Citation Watchlist, which is only 50 entries, it took an extra 5 seconds to finish loading and I could watch as the original display gradually had the flags added. In addition to simple resource usage, if I'm seeing an entry in a long list that doesn't have a flag, it might be that the flagging process simply hadn't finished. How about an alternative implementation that is triggerable by a toolbox link rather than automatically applied every time? DMacks (talk) 10:51, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
It appears, for me at least, that now each Wikipedia in another language ignores the skin preference of a logged-in user in English Wikipedia, requiring its own setting (in my case I have to set preferred old Vector 2010 skin in Russian and Azeri Wikipedia I'm logged in). Is it sort of a bug or was it a taken decision? Brandmeistertalk20:11, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
None of your preferences set on English Wikipedia affect any other wiki. However, you can set your skin (and other settings) in global preferences: Special:GlobalPreferences#mw-prefsection-rendering and that will affect all wikis. (You can find this page again the future under the "Set your global preferences" button on the normal preferences page.) Matma Rextalk20:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking your feedback on the drafts of the objectives and key results that will shape the Foundation's Product and Technology priorities for the next fiscal year (starting in July). The objectives are broad high-level areas, and the key-results are measurable ways to track the success of their objectives. Please share your feedback on the talkpage, in any language, ideally before the end of April.
Updates for editors
The CampaignEvents extension will be released to multiple wikis (see deployment plan for details) in April 2025, and the team has begun the process of engaging communities on the identified wikis. The extension provides tools to organize, manage, and promote collaborative activities (like events, edit-a-thons, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. The extension has three tools: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation Lists. It is currently on 13 Wikipedias, including English Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, and Spanish Wikipedia, as well as Wikidata. Questions or requests can be directed to the extension talk page or in Phabricator (with #campaigns-product-team tag).
Starting the week of March 31st, wikis will be able to set which user groups can view private registrants in Event Registration, as part of the CampaignEvents extension. By default, event organizers and the local wiki admins will be able to see private registrants. This is a change from the current behavior, in which only event organizers can see private registrants. Wikis can change the default setup by requesting a configuration change in Phabricator (and adding the #campaigns-product-team tag). Participants of past events can cancel their registration at any time.
Administrators at wikis that have a customized MediaWiki:Sidebar should check that it contains an entry for the Special pages listing. If it does not, they should add it using * specialpages-url|specialpages. Wikis with a default sidebar will see the link moved from the page toolbox into the sidebar menu in April. [2]
The Minerva skin (mobile web) combines both Notice and Alert notifications within the bell icon (). There was a long-standing bug where an indication for new notifications was only shown if you had unseen Alerts. This bug is now fixed. In the future, Minerva users will notice a counter atop the bell icon when you have 1 or more unseen Notices and/or Alerts. [3]
VisualEditor has introduced a new client-side hook for developers to use when integrating with the VisualEditor target lifecycle. This hook should replace the existing lifecycle-related hooks, and be more consistent between different platforms. In addition, the new hook will apply to uses of VisualEditor outside of just full article editing, allowing gadgets to interact with the editor in DiscussionTools as well. The Editing Team intends to deprecate and eventually remove the old lifecycle hooks, so any use cases that this new hook does not cover would be of interest to them and can be shared in the task.
Developers who use the mw.Api JavaScript library, can now identify the tool using it with the userAgent parameter: var api = new mw.Api( { userAgent: 'GadgetNameHere/1.0.1' } );. If you maintain a gadget or user script, please set a user agent, because it helps with library and server maintenance and with differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate traffic. [4][5]
Do archived adminship templates need to be substituted?
These are {{rfap}}, {{rfaf}}, and {{rfab}}. I'm sure that since {{subst:finaltally}} automatically fills the tally when substituted, it makes sense for that to be substituted when closing an RfA. But do the archive top and bottom templates need to be? 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 11:17, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Well they all have {{subst only}} on them ... I'd argue yes, because the RFA almost always doesn't change after it's closed and neither should what's on its page change due to modifications of the templates. We substitute {{Afd top}}, {{Mfd top}}, etc. Graham87 (talk) 06:06, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Navigation
Hi,
A reader of the Oberon book asked me to add at the top and bottom of each page, navigation buttons similar to the "← previous" "↑ top" "next →" links of some Web based documents. A reasonable request and I've put two mock-ups in my sandbox. In Wikipedia the button templates work except for the style attribute. According to the table at the bottom of the button document style is available. Seems my syntax is wrong. Furthermore, the template is unavailable in Wikibooks?
In the div box mock-up, the text is linked; not the whole box. The person asking for navigation insisted the box be clickable. He noted "... really frustrating to click a box, only to find out that you have to click the link." I agree but couldn't make the markup work. Help to fix either of these arrangements appreciated. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (talk) 18:31, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
Hello Jonesey95, appears we're at crossed purposes. The skip templates are for navigation within a page; correct? I'm interested in navigating between pages. Thx, ... 22:12, 23 March 2025 (UTC) PeterEasthope (talk) 22:12, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
@PeterEasthopeAccording to the table at the bottom of the button document style is available. Seems my syntax is wrong - you need to remove the quotation marks from the values, and "BG" is not a valid CSS selector - it needs to be "background-color". I've fixed the ones in your sandbox.
Furthermore, the template is unavailable in Wikibooks? - you would need to ask an admin on wikibooks to import it, along with all it's prerequisite templates.
In the div box mock-up, the text is linked; not the whole box. You need to replace the divs with spans, add the class "mw-ui-button" to the span elements, and move the spans inside the link markup.
Category:American jockeys - how did Frank O’Neill get in the D’s section?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_jockeys
D
Hilton Dabson
Dan Davis (writer)
Robbie Davis
Wantha Davis
Pat Day
Eddie Delahoussaye
Alberto Delgado (jockey)
Anthony DeSpirito
Frank O'Neill (jockey)
Earl Dew
Douglas Dodson
Samuel Doggett
Ramon Domínguez
Edward Donnally
William Donohue (jockey)
Ruperto Donoso
René R. Douglas
Eddie Dugan
Dylan Davis Xavier Newcombe (talk) 13:33, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Not entirely sure what the technical question is, but in general.. don't wrap text, as it severely limits the flexibility of presentation on multiple devices. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:28, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Whenever I press Add topic on a semi-protected talk page(the talk page itself is protected, not the origin page) the browser crashes with error code Aw Snap SIGSEGV. This implies that the page was trying to edit a part of restricted memory. This does not happen on non-protected pages. I am using a Chromebook model name CR1104CGA updated to the latest version, and with browser version 126.0.6478.265 It seems that the computer that you are doing this on matters a lot as other computers, and even other Chromebooks do not give the same outcome. Caleb's World11 (talk) 19:39, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
I am properly connected to the internet and have no issues on other web pages.
Unable to do so, however the issue persists across multiple computers.
when the only app open is wikipedia, the crash still happens. note that I am unable to remove extensions and that this is most likely not a crash due to running out of memory.
Issue persists across restarts
Chrome is on the latest version
Unable to remove all extensions because I am using a managed computer.
Issue with editing any protected pages on Chromebook.
Hello, I have been having issues with editing any protected articles on my Barla chromebook. Whenever I attempt to edit it, it gives the "oh snap" error screen, with the "SIGSEGV" error code. I have tried shutting off my Chromebook, changing Wi-Fi, signing in and then out, clearing my cache/cookies, making sure my Chromebook version is up to date, and switching from visual to source editor. None of it worked. Some options are unavailable as this chromebook is run by an administration, so some features are not available.
I tried freeing up space, didn't work. I'm gonna procrastinate on the second one since it will be a major hassle to deal with getting everything back to order once I reset the Chromebook, since, like I said, it is administration ran. Gaismagorm(talk)18:02, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Just for documentation, in case it is a bigger problem:
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [c946df9e-af42-4d60-87c9-0136bcf9d82d] 2025-03-19 20:28:25: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
Xaosflux According to my contributions, leaving a talk page message for someone who asked a Teahouse question. Even though it was an old question, it looked like something the person might still want the answer to.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 14:35, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Original exception: [c2b93251-f505-4c5f-9026-64c87b61f28c] 2025-03-20 11:03:13: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
I have no idea how significant this is. Went to the history of a page I'd just edited (Ming Xia), and got this error message:
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [0fce64a5-248a-4907-aaa2-f2546651ae9c] 2025-03-20 22:32:02: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
Moments later I was able to view the page history as normal. Posting here for the eyes of those who understand this sort of thing. DuncanHill (talk) 22:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
I had this message about 30 minutes ago. At first I wondered if it was because the editors edit had remained on my screen (I went to make a cuppa) but I've done that before, and for longer and never had that notice. It has only happened once, so far. Knitsey (talk) 20:04, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Just happened again. Loggingthe message here. Clocked on an edit to view it and it came up with this...
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [694e5180-5ffd-47ba-8b0e-ff44245737e2] 2025-03-21 21:13:21: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information. Knitsey (talk) 21:17, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Me too.
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [e769a451-ba7d-44c9-a141-3d95e8d86266] 2025-03-22 03:10:59: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
I got the error when going to an editor's contributions page. I did a hard refresh of the page and got the error three or four times. I went to another browser, where I am logged out, and the page worked. When I went back to my main browser, a hard refresh of the page worked fine, showing the contributions. – Jonesey95 (talk) 12:58, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
Original exception: [fd2a3012-a533-4401-9fc2-e2cc86e2f104] 2025-03-23 00:50:33: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
In case it helps, I just hit:Original exception: [cdbe9231-712e-4418-86b1-50cd13482f3c] 2025-03-24 03:20:31: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"The rest of the message was the same as the others above. It persisted for perhaps half a minuteish. CMD (talk) 03:27, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
I got this error ([89a1c80c-8a68-426a-a142-c6d17893edd3] 2025-03-24 17:41:41) at [7]. I don't get how there is a "RequestTimeout" because it appeared immediately after I clicked "View history". 216.58.25.209 (talk) 17:44, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
Like others above, encountered the following when visiting my contributions page:
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [3343407a-0463-4fe2-97c7-8026a81ccac7] 2025-03-24 23:13:07: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
I just had this error again when I tried loading 500 revisions of an IP range, again more or less just a second after clicking, it is just a blank page with just the error message: [imgur.com]
The bottom of the main content of pages is now overflowing into the footer so they are rendered over categories. As I create this new talk section right now, the "Welcome to the village pump" instructions banner is rendered mostly behind the section above mine (the "i" icon is on top though). I am using Monobook theme with Chrome 135.0.7049.17. Disabling the code in my common.css did not help. I had enabled some gadgets but I can't figure out what would cause this (it's not HotCat). yutsi (talk) 22:47, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
If it's not happening in safe mode, and you've already tried disabling your own common.css, the next step is probably to start turning off gadgets and seeing when it stops happening. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 01:33, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
Anyone else having issues today with randomly finding themselves logged out? Just had that happen a couple of times when opening pages in new tabs, and had it happen earlier once on Commons while uploading. - The BushrangerOne ping only00:37, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
I've been having the same issue for several hours. I'm guessing it's either a Firefox thing or something related to the SUL work. Jay8g [V•T•E] 03:42, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
This is probably the same issue that has been reported at T389159 (and maybe the same as #I need help with my Ip address? though that's a bit vague). It's probably caused by the SUL3 changes in some way or another (sorry!). Some information that would help:
your browser (and whether you use non-standard privacy/security settings, like incognito mode, an ad filter, third-party cookie blocking in Chrome)
if you have an idea exactly when this started happening
whether you are browsing multiple wikis at the same time and the behavior seems related to that (e.g. when you visit a page on wiki 1, you get logged out on wiki 2)
whether getting logged out seems to correspond with inactivity (specifically, not doing anything on a specific wiki for 5 or 10 minutes)
whether fully logging out and logging back in helps
Have Firefox (136.0.2), NoScript and uBlock Origin. There have been occasional, very very rare, instances of this for awhile but it happened "regularly" yesterday. Was happening mid-editing on single pages on Wikis - for instance opening a page from my Watchlist on en. in a new tab logged it out once. Another time I was logged out on Wikidata in between entering parameters on the same page back to back. Another time on Commons I was uploading an image, hit upload, sat uploading for a bit and then said "cannot upload because you're logged out". Seemed to get better later on though? Note that the first one described there I was logged out completely until I clicked "log in" - where I did not have to enter any data, it just logged me right back in - but all the other times simply refreshing the page saw me recognized as loggedin. - The BushrangerOne ping only22:19, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
This happened to me yesterday afternoon/evening. I also have Firefox. Scared the dickens out of me, but seems OK now. It was very strange. I thought I had been hijacked or something. It happened right in the middle of my reading/scrolling Articles for deletion/Log/2025 March 20— Maile (talk) 20:06, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Exactly the same, although with GoogleChrome, yesterday and today, seemingly random. Sometimes saying I was logged out, but accepting edits, sometimes not. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:31, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Are you still having problems? I can't find any bugs in the login code (which is not saying much, it's a very complex system), and the person who first reported T389159 isn't experiencing it anymore.
If you are still being affected, do you feel we could set up a debug session with a developer where you look at things on your browser's developer toolbar (such as what cookies are set, or what requests are made) and describe them via chat or in a video meeting or similar realtime communication? It's very hard to diagnose login problems without seeing what actually happens in the browser. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
After waiting a bit the error I got was "Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical issue", though after refreshing it went back to being "Too Many Requests" again. – 2804:F1...96:5BD7 (::/32) (talk) 00:57, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
It occurs on my Windows desktop. In both Firefox and Google Chrome. My MacOS laptop sitting right next to it loads the page correctly. I am getting "Error Too Many Requests - Request served via cp5026 cp5026, Varnish XID 574968787 Upstream caches: cp5026 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Mon, 24 Mar 2025 04:49:34 GMT" from thumb. (Although the Mac loads the page correctly, it gets the same error from the thumb link.) Hawkeye7(discuss)04:48, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
The HTML on desktop is: <img src="/media/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png/270px-NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png" decoding="async" width="270" height="334" class="mw-file-element" srcset="/media/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png/405px-NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png 1.5x, /media/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png 2x" data-file-width="480" data-file-height="593">. That means MediaWiki offers three sizes to the browser which picks one depending on circumstances. This is normal. The first two are 270px and 405px resizings which don't work for me. The last is the original upload which works for me. MediaWiki is unable to make any resizing I have tested. I guess it just varies which size people are getting. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:04, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
I've looked at them from production side. It's triggering 500 so it's very very likely an issue with thumbor. Please create a ticket against thumbor in phabricator. It can be also an issue with original file not being available in the local datacenter that thumbor is trying to access (mediawiki's implementation of swift API is known to have issues like this). Let me check that. Ladsgroupoverleg17:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
This image has now been repaired. Phabricator closed as a duplicate of a declined ticket. Looks like failures will have to be reported as they are encountered. Hawkeye7(discuss)04:51, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Is there a way of getting overall page views per day of every article a user has contributed to?
Hi all
I've seen the pageview counter on the new HomePage feature but this only seems to be showing statistics for the past 60 days. Is there a way of seeing pageviews of all articles a user has contributed to since their account was created? For someone who has been around for a while, this could be 1000s of articles.
Hi @John Cummings, I'm the Product Manager for the Growth team, which developed the Homepage and Impact Module that displays these statistics. As far as I know, there isn't currently an easy way to view the pageviews of all articles a user has contributed to since their account was created. The Impact Module was originally designed with new editors in mind, which is why it’s limited to 60 days and only reflects a user's most recent 1,000 edits.
That said, we’ve been actively exploring ways to make the Impact Module more valuable for experienced editors, as outlined in T341599 and T388558. This includes the possibility of increasing the upper limit of the underlying query and adding additional statistics. While we can likely adjust the time period and the number of edits tracked, we'll still need a reasonable upper limit to ensure these improvements are balanced with system performance considerations.
I’d love to hear your thoughts—do you have any specific feedback on the Impact Module? Are there particular types of data that would be especially useful to you? Also, if you haven't already, you can access your Impact data directly here: Special:Impact.
I apologize if this isn't exactly what you were hoping for, but I hope it's at least nice to know that a WMF team is thinking of improvements that might help (at least partially) address this question. :) Best, -- KStoller-WMF (talk) 23:05, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
My bot just started getting an error "invalid returnUrlToken" when it tries to edit. Anybody know what this is related to? Presumably there's been a recent change to Mediawiki, because this only started happening a few days ago. —scs (talk) 03:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
@Tgr (WMF): What, not scrape the web interface? Oh, don't I know it. (Over the years I've made several desultory attempts to use the API, like a regular botherd. Pretty sure now's the time to do that for real.)
Anyway, yes, checking the actual URLs is my next step, when I have time to dig into it. (My bot uses a crufty old framework that I can barely remember the details of.)
Keep in mind, oauth/bot passwords are certainly a good idea, but the main change would be to use the api vs screenscraping the webui. — xaosfluxTalk12:46, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
FWIW returnUrlToken is used for top-level autologin, a chain of redirects when you visit Special:Userlogin. It's not SUL3 related per se but there have been some small changes to its behavior recently. As a quick workaround, you can avoid autologin by setting the CentralAuthAnonTopLevel=1 cookie or the centralAuthAutologinTried=1 URL parameter when visiting Special:Userlogin. The login UI and workflow is changing in other ways, though, and will probably break your bot soon anyway if it uses web scraping. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 12:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
@Tgr (WMF): Thanks. For what it's worth, I tried adding ¢ralAuthAutologinTried=1 to the URL when fetching Special:Userlogin, and it successfully worked around the "invalid returnUrlToken" issue, but it left the bot not logged in at all. (Perhaps that's what you meant by "avoid autologin".) —scs (talk) 03:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
@Tgr (WMF):Mirabile dictu, that seems to have worked. Thank you again.
The bot is working again, for now, although I realize full well that it is living on borrowed time. If I'm lucky, I'll manage to get it rewritten to use the API before the next domino falls. —scs (talk) 00:35, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
This URL is managed by the afdstats tool, maintained by 0xDeadbeef, Ahecht, APerson, Legoktm, Scottywong, Σ.
Perhaps its files are on vacation, or the link you've followed doesn't actually lead somewhere useful?
You might want to look at the list of tools to find what you were looking for. If you're pretty sure this shouldn't be an error, you may wish to notify the tool's maintainers (they are listed above) about the error and how you ended up here."
@DreamRimmer, @Maile66: For the first one, the logs show that the redis service on Toolforge went down, which brought the randomincategory webservice down as well. Randomincategory can take some time to load on larger categories (the one in the example has 22,000+ pages), but category contents are cached for 10 minutes so subsequent requests should be faster.
The logs for afdstats show that it was shut down and restarted twice recently, probably due to the same Toolforge server issues. It can be slow as it has to retrieve each AfD page and process it so it can take a while for someone with almost 1,000 AfDs. Somewhere on my to-do list is a future project to do some caching with that tool as well to speed it up. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)19:21, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
Can somebody ELIF why the action API has a choice of formatversion=1 or formatversion=2? As far as I can tell from trying both (version 1, version 2), v2 gives you the same information but in a data structure which is more complicated and more difficult to navigate. What am I missing here? RoySmith(talk)00:49, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Following a couple of links from that page, I found mw:API:JSON version 2#Changes to JSON output format, which I think more directly answers the question, although maybe we could document the reasons for the changes in more detail. I've always felt that version 2 is the easier one to use, can you say more about what makes you feel the opposite way? Matma Rextalk09:22, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
While that link has a good summary of what the differences are, the "why" is that we wanted to clean up a bunch of odd quirks in the API output but didn't want to just break most things using the API. Thus the new formatversion parameter, so old clients aren't broken but new clients can opt-in to the new format. I'm also curious as to what you see as more complex in the version 2. Anomie⚔12:59, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
The most confusing change is adding an extra array level (see this result). After (to use python notation) result['query']['pages'], I'm left with an array of one value, so I need to do [0]. What's the point of that? If I got back multiple pages, there's no indexed way to find the one I want, so I'd have to do a linear search of all the array elements to find the one with the right pageid value. RoySmith(talk)13:11, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
There's no extra level. With formatversion=1 you'd have to do result['query']['pages']['79457898'] rather than result['query']['pages'][0]. The point of it is to have the same result structure whether you happened to receive one page or multiple pages in the response (note it's not really possible for the server generating the response to know whether the client doing titles=Foo really intended to query exactly one page or if it happened to have just one page in its array of pages to request). Regarding If I got back multiple pages, there's no indexed way to find the one I want, that's true but most queries are by title rather than pageid so clients would still have to iterate to find the one they want, and for the single-page case it allows for doing direct access by [0] instead of having to iterate or run it through some sort of values() function first. Anomie⚔13:37, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Regarding "most queries are by title rather than pageid so clients would still have to iterate to find the one they want", I assume what comes back in the "title" slot is the canonicalized title, so I'd need to canonicalize my original search key to do that comparison? RoySmith(talk)14:51, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Yes, but the API does give you an explanation of the normalization it did. There's a normalized field under query that you could use to translate your inputs for said iteration, without having to manually do any canonicalization via mw.Title or whatever.
CharInsert missing on Vector Legacy (2010) edit page
Hi, this seems to be a problem only affecting Firefox as when I tried it on a different computer using Chrome or Microsoft Edge it showed up, but for some reason on my home computer whenever I try editing pages, the CharInsert bar no longer shows up. I looked it up on here but the most recent thing I could find was from 2012 so I'm not sure if that would still apply. Has anyone else using Firefox experienced this problem or is my best option right now while doing edits that need that bar, to use another browser? VampireKilla (talk) 21:53, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Hi. This happened once before and as I recall the answer was check back later. I am trying to reach the Wikipedia Library for a couple days. The Wkimedia log in page gives me the error: Incorrect username or password entered. Please try again. -SusanLesch (talk) 18:23, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
@SusanLesch If you use a password manager, and you have several accounts in Wikimedia-adjacent projects (e.g. something like Phabricator), double-check that it's filling in the password for the correct account. Recent changes to logins (see recent Tech News entry) have made it easier to mix them up. Matma Rextalk18:55, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
@SusanLesch Hi, we've reviewed the system logs related to logins to your account to try to get to the bottom of this. They indicate that your password was changed earlier this year. I may be able to share more details with you, but I don't think I should share them on this public page, so please feel free to contact me by email if that would help you (I have the address on my WMF user page, or you can use Special:EmailUser). As far as we can tell, this is not caused by any problem with the Wikipedia Library or with the new login system. --Matma Rex / Bartosz Dziewoński (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
Resolved. Truly bizarre. I was able to sign in but cannot account for the failures of a well-respected password manager. Thank you for your help, Matma Rex. -SusanLesch (talk) 22:31, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Username in template paths
I have several templates in userspace that I'd like to start using for real. However, they're not ready for general use, so need to stay where they are. This means that in order to use one of them, I have to type {{subst:user:Musiconeologist/ }} before I even get to the name of the template. Using a relative path won't help outside of my own user space, since it's relative to the page calling the template.
So, is there some variable, parser function, shortcut or similar that replaces the User:Musiconeologist part of that? So far I've not been able to find anything. Basically something that acts as a path prefix. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs14:18, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
You should not use templates in your userspace outside of your own userspace. Move them to template namespace if they are being used elsewhere. You can always edit them as and when required. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})14:25, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Is this correct? My understanding is that you shouldn't transclude them outside of your userspace (for pretty obvious reasons), but that substituting is fine. I'll check the guidelines again, but I'm pretty sure it's something like "if you use them outside your own userspace, always substitute them". Musiconeologist • talk • contribs14:34, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
It's fine if you're substing them and the substed output is clean. User:CX Zoom apparently overlooked that part of your question. As for the original question, I don't think there's any magic to replace having to type out subst:User:Musiconeologist; the best you might do is add a user script to add your templates to the CharInsert gadget, assuming you don't have that gadget disabled and don't use VE. Anomie⚔14:39, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! The first part of that is a relief, and the second part is as I feared. I hoped there might be a {{#me:}} parser function or something. My solution will probably be a shortcut in SwiftKey, then, but I'll investigate that gadget too. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs14:55, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
I believe {{subst:User:{{subst:REVISIONUSER}}/the_template}} answers the question, though I don't guarantee you'll find it useful. -- zzuuzz(talk)15:00, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Seems worth a try. Maybe if I wrap it in something shorter . . . Oh but then that's in my userspace itself, with a long name. I'll play around with that, though. Thanks! Musiconeologist • talk • contribs15:21, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter Ah now this looks excellent. I'm often editing in desktop view on a phone, so getting the cursor where I want it can be a bit of a pain which this solves. Plus it's nice and compact in the JavaScript, making it helpful in ten years' time when I've forgotten what's in there and why. Musiconeologist • talk • contribs01:32, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Residential IPs in San Francisco getting banned for "botting"
Hi there, it has come to my attention that a block of residential IPs in San Francisco are getting banned for botting when no such thing has happened - it would seem that a bunch of Pokemon Go players wrecked things by spoofing these IPs for years and now the new residents are quite confused. Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks! Signingup1234 (talk) 02:23, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
edit api with oauth javascript (not nodejs) (not mediawiki js) example
Hello, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Edit#JavaScript actually is nodejs. Could you please share with me an example, that allows to auth using OAuth and create a page with content I have in my variable in JavaScript, for client-side in-browser JavaScript without involving nodejs? It will be outside of wiki page, so I won't have access to mw.utils and the like. Could you please share a few examples? (I've asked here also hoping for faster replies here.) Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 04:27, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
It looks too complicated for me, as I am not familiar with the corresponding libraries used nor with npm. I have code like this: (there actually is more, as user generated page content from a few other variables in my app, but this is the part I am having trouble with)
varpageName='Gryllida Test 2';varurl='http://test.wikipedia.org';varcontent='Hello world';
What is the code to insert afterwards to get this content added to the page with this pageName on that wiki?
Is the `oauthToken = "OAUTHAccessToken"` unique to my account? What if I would like multiple different users to use this app? Like flickr2commons app. (cc Ahecht) Regards, -- Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 03:33, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
It worked, the token is for my user account only. I was following this guide.
I've added another request for another token that allows multiple accounts, if I understand correctly it will auth users separately and prompt them to agree. I'd like it to be for multiple accounts, like flickr2commons. This is currently still unsolved question for me. I will see how it works after my oauth thingy request is approved.
I'm concerned the 'token' is published in JavaScript app and there is no way to hide it from users as all JavaScript is visible on client side. Is this correct? This is unsafe, right?
For the second point, I got it approved, however, it only provides "application key" and "application secret". There is no "OAuth token" provided. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 10:22, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
If you want to let different users make requests, you will have to go through the full OAuth authorization flow, as demonstrated in the example mentioned above. (There's also a note there now about the visibility of the OAuth credentials.) Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 12:39, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
I'm seeing last paragraph at this repo you linked includes reference to the m3api server side example. The main issue is that I have experience with Perl and with PHP, but not with npm nor with m3api, and for the task I need the provided example is too big. Ideally, I'd've liked someone to guide me from a 1-line hello world example and help me to gradually grow it to do specifically my task. Is that something that you would like to do over an audio call, or do you know someone else who can? Or perhaps you (or someone you know) can write such a tutorial incrementally? Many thanks. (Please note I am on live chat, IRC, with nick 'gry'.) Regards, -- Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 21:47, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
This is weird. I'm logged in here on another browser, but it won't let me edit at all -- "Invalid CSRF token". It also won't let me log out. And it won't let me log in on this browser. Clues, anyone? -- a confused User:Jpgordon. 173.17.120.108 (talk) 03:22, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Hello everyone. I'm User:Miminity and currently using incognito mode to ask for help, I cannot save my edit on my account despite I'm not blocked or anything. When I try to save it it shows Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try saving your changes again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in. and when I tried to log out it shows Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try saving your changes again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in. and when I tried to log in, it says There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please resubmit the form. You may receive this message if you are blocking cookies., I was trying to log in using another browser. I tried doing the same with my phone and still same result. 143.44.132.208 (talk) 03:31, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
I was editing and had to leave my laptop for a few minutes. When I came back I was logged out. When I tried to log back in I got the following message; "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please resubmit the form. You may receive this message if you are blocking cookies." But I specifically allowed cookies from auth.wikipedia.org. What should I do? 2601:207:701:3E30:F9FC:455F:4CD6:86F5 (talk) 03:46, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Something strange since the above happened. My home page and talk page seem all rearranged. Affected all browsers - Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge. — Maile (talk) 12:02, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Can you be more descriptive about how it is different? Have you changed skins, if using Vector-2022 collapsed elements or toggled the wide-view setting? — xaosfluxTalk13:15, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
I took care of this. It wasn't skins or anything like that. Just some kind of fluke, so I got everything back as it was. — Maile (talk) 17:23, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-14
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
The Editing team is working on a new Edit check: Peacock check. This check's goal is to identify non-neutral terms while a user is editing a wikipage, so that they can be informed that their edit should perhaps be changed before they publish it. This project is at the early stages, and the team is looking for communities' input: in this Phabricator task, they are gathering on-wiki policies, templates used to tag non-neutral articles, and the terms (jargon and keywords) used in edit summaries for the languages they are currently researching. You can participate by editing the table on Phabricator, commenting on the task, or directly messaging Trizek (WMF).
Single User Login has now been updated on all wikis to move login and account creation to a central domain. This makes user login compatible with browser restrictions on cross-domain cookies, which have prevented users of some browsers from staying logged in.
Starting on March 31st, the MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin a limited release of generated OpenAPI specs and a SwaggerUI-based sandbox experience for MediaWiki REST APIs. They invite developers from a limited group of non-English Wikipedia communities (Arabic, German, French, Hebrew, Interlingua, Dutch, Chinese) to review the documentation and experiment with the sandbox in their preferred language. In addition to these specific Wikipedia projects, the sandbox and OpenAPI spec will be available on the on the test wiki REST Sandbox special page for developers with English as their preferred language. During the preview period, the MediaWiki Interfaces Team also invites developers to share feedback about your experience. The preview will last for approximately 2 weeks, after which the sandbox and OpenAPI specs will be made available across all wiki projects.
Sometimes a small, one line code change can have great significance: in this case, it means that for the first time in years we're able to run all of the stack serving maps.wikimedia.org - a host dedicated to serving our wikis and their multi-lingual maps needs - from a single core datacenter, something we test every time we perform a datacenter switchover. This is important because it means that in case one of our datacenters is affected by a catastrophe, we'll still be able to serve the site. This change is the result of extensive work by two developers on porting the last component of the maps stack over to kubernetes, where we can allocate resources more efficiently than before, thus we're able to withstand more traffic in a single datacenter. This work involved a lot of complicated steps because this software, and the software libraries it uses, required many long overdue upgrades. This type of work makes the Wikimedia infrastructure more sustainable.
Meetings and events
MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025 is happening in Sandusky, USA, and online, from 14–16 May 2025. The workshop will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users. Registration and presentation signup is now available at the workshop's website.
When you say search, what do you mean? My understanding is that all of our searches whether of the Special:Search or the "auto displayed results" do take into account character folding (which is the special phrase for "it looks like a U so it should be a U" in search). Maybe you mean something somewhere else? Particularly, links are not red or blue based on search, they're red or blue based on whether they exist in the database, and that doesn't (and shouldn't, for a few reasons) do character folding by itself (e.g. WP:BLP concerns that we already have with people red linking names that turn blue later but it's a completely different person). Izno (talk) 20:04, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
In this case I typed into the article (in English alphabet, so u instead of ú in La República (Costa Rica) and Magon Prize instead of Magón Prize) what I assumed would be an existing redirect and placed brackets around it, and the link was red. It was very weird. I've done a bit of work in other alphabets because I work a lot on foods that are rendered in several alphabets, and I haven't had this happen before. Always, if there's an existing article, using the English alphabet finds it. But this happened twice in a few minutes. Valereee (talk) 20:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
So yes, your case is the second case: article text ("red link") is a check against the database and not the search system. You just found names that didn't have a redirect is all. Izno (talk) 21:22, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
@Izno, but why wouldn't La Republica (Costa Rica) automatically redirect to La República (Costa Rica) without me having to create that redirect? I apologize if I'm being obtuse, not intentional. Valereee (talk) 21:29, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
As above, they're red or blue based on whether they exist in the database, and that doesn't (and shouldn't, for a few reasons) do character folding by itself (e.g. WP:BLP concerns that we already have with people red linking names that turn blue later but it's a completely different person).
There are no automatic redirects for page titles. There are automatic redirects for namespaces - this is why we can use WP:Village pump (technical) interchangeably with Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), this is something built into the MediaWiki software and configured on a per-site basis. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
MediaWiki allows separate pages for a title with and without diacritics, e.g. José and Jose. Then I think it makes sense that the latter link would be red if the page doesn't exist. Imagine it was an automatic redirect to José. Then somebody creates a new page at Jose and the existing links suddenly get a new target. That would be confusing. And what if there is more than one potential target by changing diacritics? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:36, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Again sorry for being dense, just trying to understand things like why Germknodel, which redirects to Germknödel, was created by a bot in 2008. La República (Costa Rica) was only created in February. Is it just that the bot hasn't gotten around to it? Hm...but Magón Prize was created manually in 2008. Maybe the bot ignores redirects? Or deals with an umlaut but not with these accented vowels? And whichever it is, the learning for me is when I end up with a red link that I'm sure should be blue while in article text, check the search box and manually create the redirect? Valereee (talk) 12:23, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) User:AnomieBOT creates redirects for titles with en-dashes. If we have a current consensus I can point to that a bot should create these redirects, and a clear definition of how to determine the corresponding "only standard keyboard characters" title (maybe map all these characters and strip any Combining Diacritical Marks, then see if the result is ASCII?), I could have AnomieBOT do these in much the same way. Anomie⚔16:17, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Sounds like there are concerns that would need to be dealt with before we could get consensus, but it's something I'd definitely at least want to see a discussion on. Valereee (talk) 19:38, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
If you know you aren't using the correct spelling of the name, you really shouldn't link with the redirect. La Republica is not La República. Gonnym (talk) 18:04, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Not sure I understand, Gonnym. La Republica (Costa Rica) seems like it should redirect to La República (Costa Rica)? Valereee (talk) 18:24, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
I was referring to you saying what I assumed would be an existing redirect and placed brackets around it, if you know you are using an incorrect name, there is no reason to use that redirect. I'll also be opposed to any bot mass creating these redirects unless they also convert each usage when they are used in articles. Gonnym (talk) 18:28, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
Well, I mean, to save time when writing would be a reason. You might not think it's a good reason, but I have an extremely short attention span and generally need to write as fast as I can before my brain goes "Squirrel!" Valereee (talk) 19:25, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
To back all the way up to the beginning: Foo is a wikilink to a page in the Main or "article" namespace. If you link to A page like this one that doesn't exist, you get a redlink, which if you follow the link allows you to create the new page. No page in "main" exists "automatically". If a page exists it means someone or something went and created it at some point in the past. If Jose and José both exist, that's because someone/thing came along and created them both. For the policies regulating titles of articles, see WP:Article titles. --Slowking Man (talk) 18:52, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Redlinked dated maintenance category problem of the week
I've had to edit 2024–25 Olympiacos F.C. season three times this month alone, because a table in it keeps regenerating redlinked "Articles with unsourced statements from DD March 2025" categories that don't and can't exist — the maintenance queue for unsourced statements problems only categorizes articles by month, not by month-and-day, so any category transcluded by the table has to be month only.
The issue is a table in the page that was most recently coded as
{{#invoke:sports rbr table|table|legendpos=b|header=Matchday
|label1= Ground
| res1=H/A/H/A/H/A
|label2= Result
| res2=W/////
|label3= Position
| res3=1/1/1/1//
<!-- -->
|text_H=Home|text_A=Away
|color_W=green2|text_W=Win
|color_D=yellow2|text_D=Draw
|color_L=red2|text_L=Loss
|color_10-=green1|color_20-=red1
|source=
|updated=
|date=30 March 2025
}}
, where to make the bad category go away I had to take the 30 out of the date; the two prior times it was 2 March and 12 March. And because it's an extremely long page which had four other instances of "30 March 2025" in the text besides the one that was actually causing the problem, it took me an unreasonably extended amount of spelunking time to even figure out which one I had to modify.
Since this appears to be a module I don't know how to edit, could somebody with module editing skills edit this module to ensure that it ignores any DD in the date field and only generates the month-year category from now on? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:49, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
I made a test-and-preview edit invoking that sandbox instead of the original module, but it turned the problematic section into the text of the template coding instead of an actual table. Bearcat (talk) 15:18, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Better questions may be "why is that module being used directly instead of via a template?" and "who keeps screwing up the date parameter, and can they be told how to not do that?". Anomie⚔22:39, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
They aren't screwing up, I believe the date is also used for an access date which needs to be a full date and not the partial.
As for direct module use, WP:TLIMIT on a number of pages which has either spread directly or indirectly without consideration for necessity, if even a template was created as a 'frontend'. Izno (talk) 23:01, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
Running Quarry query
Is there a Java example somewhere for running a Quarry query and doing something with the output? If not in Java then perhaps in JS? Ideally without hosting code on Toolforge. I have Java code that can log in and do the oAuth stuff; but I am not sure how to proceed from there. Polygnotus (talk) 22:31, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
@Polygnotus, You can query the database using PAWS with a Python script and manipulate the results in any format. Please let me know if you need any help with the Python script. – DreamRimmer (talk) 15:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Hey, long time ago — I think it was one or two years back — a new interface design was proposed and tested here. If I remember correctly, it used white blocks with gray colors on the left and right sides. Is there any way to test it again? Any gadget to activate or CSS code I could use? Regards Riad Salih (talk) 23:21, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
I think you might be thinking of "Zebra". Search the archives of this page for "Zebra" to find discussions like this one (Archive 206) or this one (also Archive 206) and this one (Archive 207). If you dig into links from there, you might find what you are looking for. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:38, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Zebra
I'm interested in testing the Zebra skin again on my account. It might be possible to do this through the common.css page according to SGrabarczuk from the WMF. Are there any experienced or experimental Wikimedians who could help me set it up? Regards Riad Salih (talk) 00:17, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Is there a script to move template-defined refs back to the article?
Resolved
So that it would be friendly for VE? I refer to "This reference is defined in a template or other generated block, and for now can only be edited in source mode." like what can be seen in Florian Znaniecki. For additional context, I have my students translate content from en wiki to others, and since they are not masochists, they generally prefer VE, which means they struggle with articles that rely on VE-incompatible cites. Znaniecki is an older GA of mine anyway, and I'd be happy to make it VE friendly, but doing so manually for that many footnotes, well, I am also not a masochist :P (These days I just use one ref for a book and then {{rp}}, much less code and hassle). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here06:26, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
I think {{sfn}} is superior. You have a ton of references to Zygmunt Dulczewski (1984) and to other authors only differing by pages. For these cases, I like using {{sfn}} template; just define the citation the first time, even in-text (but you can leave the citation in the references, it's all right), and then use sfn to create a shortened ref, which will show the full ref once you hover over or (on mobile) click on it. It will show as Dulczewski 1984, pp. 41-42 This will greatly reduce the wikitext size and it is neater to read in source code, I think even neater than just copy-pasting refs to create <ref name="Dulczewski1984-5253"/> and then appending {{rp}}. IMHO the ref name is hideous, but that's just me.
Piotrus, I recall a previous discussion we had in which I wrote a script to do something like this. I can't locate it at the moment but if you can remind me of the discussion I can probably find it and see if it works on your article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:37, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
@Piotrus It should be enough to change the {{reflist|refs=…}} template to use the <references>…</references> syntax instead. You don't need to move reference definitions into the article text. VE will not add new references in this format, but it can understand it. I edited this article as an example: [9]. Matma Rextalk13:07, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
In general, you should always use <references>...</references> or <references />, as {{reflist}} is not visual editor friendly and can lead to issues if the page approaches the WP:PEIS limit. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)13:53, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Since I am not a masochist I still use the source editor. I am sure that VE will eventually be ready for prime time, but it's not there yet. It's nice for really simple things, but it still has limitations I'm not willing to deal with, although I admit to trying it from time to time.
If the target wiki has WP:Citoid working in VE, you can just copy-and-paste in a URL, DOI, etc. from a ref and VE generates a citation template and inserts it into the article being edited for you. Magic! Also User:Kaniivel/Reference Organizer is an excellent little script that scoops up all the refs from an article and puts them into their own "window" separated out of the article body, and also does various tweaks to them for you. --Slowking Man (talk) 19:35, 1 April 2025 (UTC)
Is toolforge down? There is a tool that I use to search for empty categories and I'm just getting an error message (see here). Thanks for any help or information you can provide. LizRead!Talk!23:10, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
It seems that something in MediaWiki 1.44.0-wmf.23 deployed today broke the appearance of <math display="block">: now they are shown inline (but with an indent!) instead of taking its own line. See MOS:MATH#Using LaTeX markup ("as well as on their own line") for an obvious example (and Hermite polynomials for the real-world mess). Seems that .mwe-math-mathml-display {display: block !important;} is ignored within span.mwe-math-element {display: inline-block;}. Please investigate, and perhaps revert the update until the cause/solution is found (because this bug makes math articles hardly readable). — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 00:52, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Infobox templates seem to push images down the page.
In Beryllium the long infobox on the right size seems to prevent any images on the left side. The result is that all the images in the page are pushed to start at the end of the infobox, far away from the content they are related to. I've seen this in other articles as well. Any hints?
Thanks! Johnjbarton (talk) 03:20, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
You can left-align images against an infobox (although probably best not to have such a long infobox). What does push images down is a right-aligned image above them. However, I'm not seeing any pushing in Beryllium, the first left-aligned image is after the infobox. CMD (talk) 05:37, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
That recommendation is needed because infoboxes do not push left-aligned images down the page. CMD (talk) 11:53, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
Johnjbarton identifies a long-standing annoyance about layout, which becomes increasingly problematic as one's window gets wider. Chipmunkdavis, I think you are mis-understanding the terms "left" and "right" in this context. A "left-aligned" image is one that is on the left of the screen, not adjacent to the left edge of another floating item. The Beryllium article is a great example of that: where do you see the "Solar Activity Proxies" graph? It's not displayed in the Isotopes and nucleosynthesis section where the source actually has it. Adjusting screen-width maintains the incorrect vertical placement vs that section; editing that section itself confirms that it's not a bug in that section itself.
But it does appear to relate to image-stacking on the right, in a subtle way. If there is no image in the article that is right-aligned (other than the infobox object) prior to the left-aligned image, then the left-aligned image does display in the correct section. Does this revision display correctly for everyone? The situation seems to be that objects cannot display in inverted order compared to the source: if an File:A is after File:B in the source, layout cannot place File:A earlier than File:B. Because the metal-lump image on the right is stacked and pushed down by the infobox, the graph-image on the left that is after the metal-lump image in the source can't display any earlier than the metal-lump image. DMacks (talk) 13:58, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
Yes, the version of DMacks solves the problem with "Solar Activity Proxies", thanks!
Is it possible to not stack the right-align images? So the metal-lump image would be right of the text and left of the infobox?
I checked the Beryllium page and the sandwich is not a serious problem.
See Template:Stack for the normal fix. It requires the right-aligned elements to be stacked are consecutive in the code so you would have to move image code up to the infobox code. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:29, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
The exact words: "5. The outer top of a floating box may not be higher than the outer top of any block or floated box generated by an element earlier in the source document." If the source order is Infobox, File:B, File:A, then Template:Stack can make Infobox and File:B part of the same floating box. This enables File:A to be displayed above File:B (but not above Infobox). PrimeHunter (talk) 12:58, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
At least in the case of the Elements pages, using {{Stack}} would not be a good choice. We want the images to be next to the content, whether are left or right align to the text.
The design we want is for the combo of images and text to flow around the infobox anchor which is anchored to the right. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:02, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
That's exactly what {{Stack}} achieves for left-floating images which can otherwise be pushed below the infobox. We don't allow your wanted layout with both a left-floated image, text, and a "right-floated" image to the left of an infobox. That would give poor results on too many screens without enough room. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:54, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Well I'm confused. If I use "left" then things work, I don't need {{Stack}}. If I use "right" things "fail" -- meaning the images are out of position -- with or without Stack. Why do I need Stack? (I get that we don't want |Left Image| Text |Right Image| |Infobox|, but that is not what we are looking for). Johnjbarton (talk) 21:10, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
You came here for help because left did not work in [10] where the code for the plot image is in the "Isotopes and nucleosynthesis" section but the image is pushed down below the infobox. I'm saying {{Stack}} could have fixed that. You made a different fix [11] where the code for another image was moved below the plot image code. After that change {{Stack}} was no longer needed. Here is the fix with {{stack}}. I'm not judging which fix is best in this case but just demonstrating how stack works. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:37, 28 March 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! Your result is what I expected based on your explanation. It is not what we want: putting images below the infobox means they won't be with the text they are related to. It would be ok if the images where just extra stuff related to the infobox.
I think the best compromise is to Left all images that fall before the end of the infobox. Sadly this will be a continual maintenance issue and require guessing the common page width to start default/right images. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:37, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
Yes. If it helps, don't think of images and infoboxes as distinct concepts - think of both of them as boxes, or even as objects. Objects that are aligned to the left margin or to the right margin. The order in which these objects are displayed is the same as the order in which they occur in the page source. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:38, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
In my experiments the rendering results depend upon the screen width and perhaps the device. With a narrow width, more text will fall after the infobox and the Isotopes section will be lower on the page with the Proxies graph in the correct place. With wider width, the Proxies graph will be in the wrong place even in the old version. Perhaps you can try a wide width screen to verify. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:31, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Is there a way to efficiently find articles without an infobox image or missing in a specific language within a large category, instead of manually searching?–𝐎𝐰𝐚𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐥 𝐐𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢ʕʘ̅͜ʘ̅ʔ15:54, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
URL status language change request
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.
This section contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously.
I find the use of |url-status=dead to describe link rot overly morbid. Wikipedia citations depend on countless sadly defunct links, and we owe it to these dearly departed URLs to describe them in a more dignified manner. Personally, if I were an expired website, being called "dead" wouldn't exactly make me eager to come back. Frankly, our current terminology is an insult to the memory of every formerly living thing in history.
So if the parameter language must be changed, that begs the question, to what? |url-status=resting in peace might not accurately describe links that have met more violent fates, and the phrasing of |url-status=pushing up the daisies is starting to get a little too flowery. After much thought, I've decided that |url-status=dodoesque is the way to go.
Of course, this change will involve modifying a few million articles, which can be achieved easily via bot. Some might object that such edits would be cosmetic, to which I'd respond that bestowing dignity on links that have rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible sometimes requires cosmetic treatment. Also, it presents us with an opportunity to beautify watchlists via visually pleasing edit summaries, such as those containing bird emojis to embody the dodo spirit.
I'm eager to get started, and given the lack of visible change to readers the potential for disruption seems minimal, so I'm contemplating bold implementation. But I figured I'd offer a 24-hour opportunity for you wizened souls to comment, just in case any of you has an idea for even better wording. Sdkbtalk02:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[April Fools!]
Can we please not encourage this april fools nonsense? Wikipedia is a serious encyclopedia, and this page is a serious helpdesk, not for frivolity. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:52, 1 April 2025 (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.
I was adviced to go here with my question. I attach the conversation from the Wikipedia Helpdesk.
I have been teaching PhD students in how to edit Wikipedia as a part of their science outreach for about ten years. What is happening now, I have never seen before with 1500 PhD students editing. Therefore, I first add the previous discussions and then the revision histories where this has happened to several different PhD students and ask for a revisit of the problem.
@Olle Terenius (UU): It is easy to click the wrong button, particularly when new. Nearly everyone here has reverted themselves or someone else accidentally. It is extremely unlikely that anything went wrong other than that Daliepremidze accidentally clicked something. There is no automatic reverting. Johnuniq (talk) 09:22, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
@Olle Terenius (UU) and Daliepremidze: It looks like she misunderstood something in the interface. Maybe she looked at a diff like [1] and clicked edit on the left side instead of the right side. If you click on the left side then you start a new edit with the content of the former revision. If you save without changing anything (except the edit summary) then it becomes a revert to that revision. If she wants to change the new revision when looking at a diff then she has to click edit on the right side or click the edit tab at top of the page. It's not possible to change an old edit summary if that's what she was trying. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:55, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
"Manual reverts" the same minute as the edits were saved have now happened in the following articles:
The advice given there was sound. Have you given your students information about what they should (not) do? Maybe there's some additional feedback your students have given to you while editing? Szmenderowiecki (talk) 21:08, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
The last date format option at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering also displays seconds. Number of seconds between the original edit and the revert: 46, 26, 39, 95, 43. 6. This still looks like user error to me. If a bug caused an automatic revert then it would probably have been much faster. Did they actually all say the revert was unintended? Maybe some of them deliberately reverted their own edit. If they were all accidents then maybe they all got the same wrong idea about the interface from somebody. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:46, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
When I tried to reject a pending changes edit, I believe it stated "Cannot reject these changes because someone already accepted some (or all) of the edits.". However, the changes were rejected by someone else. I suggest a message change to "some or all of the edits have already received a review" or something along that line. Wildfireupdateman :) (talk) 23:24, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
This seems to be the message 'MediaWiki:Review cannot reject'. The documentation for it agrees with you: 'Used when using the "reject" feature on a (set) of revisions where someone else has already accepted or rejected some of them.' File a bug at phab:, tagging it with FlaggedRevisions, although that might not be acted on since no-one is responsible for it. Can also ask an admin to fix it locally. Snævar (talk) 01:39, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I've filed a bug report at phab although it may not be formatted correctly since I've never used it before. WFUM🔥🌪️ (talk) 03:34, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
@Wildfireupdateman: If you file a report on Phabricator regarding an issue being discussed on this page, you should always tell us what the ticket number is, so that others can follow its progress and comment if they so wish. I presume that it's phab:T391160; please amend if not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:56, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Talk page browser moves to nonexistent draft replies
When I was commenting on a thread at WP:ANI, I was writing a reply, when the topic was put under an archive header. Now, when I go back to ANI, the site attempts to reload the comment I was writing, jumping to the comment and pre-loading my partially written reply (a feature that is usually very helpful), but since the topic is archived and the reply button is gone it can't do so and just moves me to that thread with no further action when I load the page. This is moreso annoying than anything else. Is this a known issue? I'm on Chrome on desktop, on the Vector Legacy 2010 skin. Departure– (talk) 13:18, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
I would say if it can be fixed it should be as it's a little more than annoying, there isn't an obvious way to access/delete the partially-written reply (at least, the last time this happened to me). CMD (talk) 13:34, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
It has been previously reported at T345986. The annoyance will go away once the comment you were replying to is archived for good (as in: removed from the page, not just wrapped in a template). Matma Rextalk14:06, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
You can also just temporarily reopen the thread, discard the reply, and then revert your reopening. I've had to do this a couple of times, and just stated what I was doing in my edit summary. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°11:18, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
We have been getting concerns about visual aspect loading delays. Not sure if anyone's filed a ticket yet..... right below this section someone seems to have the same problem. Moxy🍁22:28, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Not the same problem. This one is about slowdowns for a number of users at one ATP, that one is about a couple of images failing to load for one user that we know of so far. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 22:42, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Problem seems to be related to how long it takes to re-render the page. As noted in that discussion, the page is at its largest ever, at ~620K of wikitext, with the second largest being ~480K in Feb 2017. Still, we're getting times in the ballpark of four times what we're used to on that page. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 23:28, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Ah, I did mean Phabricator and I'm only now realizing the comment I left did not include a link. I'm sorry about that, @Mandruss! I've since updated the comment to include a link.
With regard to reproduction steps, are you noticing this across platforms (mobile / desktop) and operating systems (e.g. Android / iOS)? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
@PPelberg (WMF): I'm using Firefox 136.0.4 64 bit on Windows 10 and have the same problem. I was able to reproduce it on my talk sandbox by copying the page even with the headers removed [12]. I didn't test further but assume it's either pure page size, or the number of replies causing it. Also at least for me, the main problem is the time it takes for the reply to successfully submit after hitting the reply button. The time it takes for the initial reply edit window to load can take a time too but it's complicated enough that I expect it'll cause confusion in diagnosing the main problem. I'll give some more details on that but I'm not sure if it matters since I think it's just how the reply tool works and caches stuff which whoever dealing with this likely knows much more than me so probably isn't surprised. Nil Einne (talk) 11:32, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
At least for me from my testing mostly in my sandbox, it seems that it is only the first time you try to reply after a new reply that it takes a while to load, for me about 10 seconds or so. After that the reply edit window loads fast until there's actually a reply. Note any replies you try to submit still takes ages regardless. Also that even leaving it 10 minutes after replying, the reply edit window still takes a while to load. I think it's not just local, that once someone has hit reply in the same version of the page, it's fast. For clarity, I didn't test with someone else. Instead I tried one window was my main browser and another was a different browser incognito mode so it wasn't logged in but on the same computer/connection/etc. So if I reply from my account, open the page in an incognito window where I'm not logged in and hit reply, wait for the reply edit window to load and then go back to the earlier window where I'm logged in and try to reply from there it's also fast for the reply edit window to load there too now. (It still takes ages to submit any reply.) There was one or two times when the reply edit window loaded unexpectedly fast which I didn't quite expect. Also there was some minor inconsistency whether the reply edit window opened almost instantly or took 1-2 seconds which I didn't count. I didn't check that carefully what happens once someone submitting a new reply if you still have an old version of the page loaded. But I think if you've already hit reply on your local version of the page, even if you've cancelled it, hitting reply again is generally fast even if there's another reply in a different tab. However I think if you never hit reply, then it will be slow again once someone actually submits a reply even if you don't reload the page for the new reply. I'm assuming this is local caching whereas the other situation where once someone has hit reply (but before they submit) it's fast for you too, is some sort of server side caching. Nil Einne (talk) 11:32, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Okay just wanted to note that a quick test suggests it's not purely a matter of page size. This [13] is still relatively fast despite being over 2x the page size of the Trump talk page I used earlier. So it must be number of replies or other things like templates, wikiformatting etc. (While this has primarily concentrated on the reply tool, the normal source edit also seems slow and I'm fairly sure that the Trump talk sandbox is slower than the repeated US constitution sandbox. I suspect this is because the greater use of wikisyntax etc noting I'm using the new edit window which highlights wiki syntax etc.) Nil Einne (talk) 12:17, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Occurred to me testing a page with a lot of duplicative content might not be the best test so I tried something else [14]. This time 1.6MB. The reply tool is a little slow but still way faster than the Trump talk test for me. (As I noted above I didn't pay much attention to edit source but edit source seems significantly worse on this 1.6MB page than even Trump talk test, but I think the 1.3MB US constitution duplicates was faster than Trump talk test.) The 1.6MB had a lot of stuff which might be poorly formatted for Wikipedia which could have been a factor. Nil Einne (talk) 13:07, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
The slowest part of the page is probably the references in all of the quoted article fragments. The talk page apparently has over 500 references on it, which is almost as much as the article itself, and the citation templates are notoriously slow. Moving those fragments to some kind of sandbox subpages or something would probably make the talk page much more responsive. Matma Rextalk15:53, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
This happens elsewhere without excessive templates and such. It appears related to the reply tool. Does the quantity of replies have a negative effect on the reply tool code after a certain limit is reached? Someone with a bit of scripting skills should be able to setup test pages with ever increasing numbers of replies to test it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°22:14, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
The quantity of replies has some impact on the reply tool loading speed, but the complexity of the templates etc. has much more impact. The mechanism of this is: when you click "Reply" to open the tool, it checks (among other things) that the comment you want to respond to hasn't been removed from the page. In order to check that, it has to parse the page using Parsoid, which takes ~14 seconds for that talk page, then find all of the comments in the parse results, which takes ~0.7 seconds. The parse result can be cached, speeding up that part to ~0 seconds, but since Parsoid is not the default parser for page views, it often won't be (unless someone who has enabled Parsoid visited the page since the last edit, or someone else clicked the "Reply" button since the last edit). Matma Rextalk22:51, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
(For testing, you can purge the page in the usual manner to purge that Parsoid parse cache too. Also, if you want to replicate these numbers yourself, note that the 14-ish second API request starts as soon as you hover your mouse over the "Reply" button, not when you click it. This is a cheeky optimization that makes it feel about half a second or so faster, depending on how agile you're at clicking, but it can't mask a 14 second delay – it can befuddle when you're trying to spot the slow request in developer tools, though.) Matma Rextalk22:57, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Hovering explains some of the unusual results I noted above. (Did occur to me at one stage then forgot.) However what you're describing seems to only really relate to the edit window opening after hitting reply. This can be a problem but given the complexity (e.g. if someone has hit reply or even accidentally hovered over reply and caused it to be cached without purging). I still feel the bigger problem is the time taken to submit after click reply in the edit window since this seems to be consistency slow whatever has happened and also takes longer. Is this also related to Parsoid but if so, why does it take longer? Nil Einne (talk) 00:34, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
For testing, you can purge the page in the usual manner - So I did. FWIW, here are the times to perform purge for five consecutive purges at Talk:Donald Trump. 9s 9s 10s 9s 10s. No doubt variable depending on time of day. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 12:50, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello! So, I know there is way to purge a page by setting the value of the action query to purge, via ?action=purge. And I wondered, is there a way to auto-purge a page (something like ?action=purge&auto=true, or ?action=autopurge)? By auto-purge, I mean it automatically purges the page when you visit that link. Thanks! SeaDragon1 (talk) 21:51, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
Do you mean that you want the purge to just go through, instead of giving you a confirmation?
I found out that since some day, when I tap any image, it turns black and need refresh to show up. Also the close button and the information box on the bottom will remain on the page until refresh.
I was shocked to discover File:Cory Booker's 25-hour speech.webm, which has a length of 90,358 seconds. I just assumed that videos had a much shorter time limit, so if you attempted to upload a video anywhere close to this in length, it would get rejected. Does MediaWiki impose a limit on the length of a video, or from a technical perspective, can you upload any video you want, regardless of length? Also, what about non-video files, like OGG recordings? Nyttend (talk) 21:53, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
@Nyttend a file can be up to 5 GB large, which this file is just under at 4.5 GB. That does not mean you can directly upload 5 GB. Some high quality NASA images are massive, and having the full file is great. For other stuff, less so. See c:Commons:Maximum file size and more broadly the setting in MediaWiki software. mw:Manual:$wgMaxUploadSize ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 22:15, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
So there's no time limit, per se, for uploads? I'm left imagining someone uploading a ridiculously long MIDI file. Nyttend (talk) 00:09, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Interesting. The Foundation has plenty[dubious – discuss] of server resources and capital[citation needed]. Why do we have a limit in the first place?
I suppose it is very rarely an issue (only, I dunno, for moderately high-resolution full-length films, but Commons totally doesn't host too many of those). JayCubby13:20, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm the guy who uploaded this video. Here are some comments for you.
Indeed, there is no limit on recording length, but only on file size. It is actually at least theoretically possible to make a video file that is much longer in playback time than this (and at a much smaller file size, too). The simplest way to do this would be by creating a long video with a (very low) frame rate. Such a video would be useless, but definitely possible to create.
@Redrose64 I think you would be surprised to find that this video is, relatively speaking, not lossily compressed to the max, although it is fairly compressed. I used AV1 to compress this video. The source (C-SPAN) is a 576p H264 video, which itself is fairly lossily compressed. The portion of the video in question was already over 6 GB using H264 in the original C-SPAN encode. AV1 is a lot more modern than H264 (or, for that matter, VP9), so it is capable of producing a pretty decent result. The ffmpeg command I used to encode this video was:
This yielded the 4.5 GB AV1 file that you see here. Actually, AV1 is pretty good for hosting high-res feature films, @JayCubby. You can see some AV1 encodes I made of feature films on Commons: The Jazz Singer, Glorifying the American Girl, Zaza, Cyrano de Bergerac, Night of the Living Dead. 5 GB is still limiting as a file size cap, but you can squeeze a fairly decent 1080p encode into that file size using AV1, which you really can't do with other codecs supported on Commons.
The only downside of AV1 is that AV1-WebM, while working perfectly in Firefox and Chrome, is not supported in Safari. (Newer versions of Safari support AV1-WebRTC on new Mac/iOS chips with hardware AV1 decoders, but apparently AV1 in WebM isn't supported.) Normally, this isn't a huge issue, because Commons automatically transcodes to VP9 (which is the process to which @snaevar was alluding). For the feature films I linked above, you can see a transcoded VP9 copy (actually, that's the default unless you switch to the original source file in the Commons streaming player). On Safari, the original is not shown as an option, only the VP9 streams.
This is a slight problem for the Cory Booker video, because the system refuses to transcode the file to VP9 at all. This is because the estimated size of the transcoded file is too big. The smallest option, which is the 240P VP9 encode, gives the following error:
estimated file size 3397249 KiB over hard limit 3145728 KiB
Now, this 3 GB limit is actually below the 5 GB limit for original files, but it's still fairly large. This is because the system, I believe, just uses a fixed bitrate to estimate file size, and, well, this video is over 25 hours long, so any video of this length will, even at a fairly low bitrate, end up pretty large. There are definitely ways to get a VP9 encode to be under 3 GB (and definitely under 5 GB, too).
Ideally — and I don't know that this is possible within Commons' infrastructure — a sysadmin would be able to run a custom transcode for this file (using a custom ffmpeg command — or I could provide a transcoded file myself) which would produce an appropriately transcoded file (using a lower bitrate, slower encode speed or perhaps a higher file size limit) — just so Safari users would see something. Alternatively, I could replace my AV1 encode with a VP9 WebM encode of my own creation; this would be definitely worse in quality (I've tested it out, and it is noticeable, but maybe I can make it closer to the AV1 quality), but would be supported in Safari. Eventually, I figure Safari will join the party and support AV1 in WebM like the other browsers, at which point this will cease to be a problem.
(Side note: I am using a very powerful CPU — an Apple M4 Max — and libvpx-vp9 is slower for me than libsvtav1!)
Yes, I have the means to extract them, but you must understand that they're represented in this "scrolling CC" format, where lines are spelled out and re-spelled out in the next caption. I also think that the captions may be too long to put in the Commons TimedText. I'll look into it when I have the time. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 23:40, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
An regex could remove every other line. You need a program that does Regex replacements, like Notepad++. For example "([^\n]+)\r\n\r\n[^\n]+\r\n" with the replacement "$1\r\n" will remove line 2 and 4 in this text:
\r is needed to match newlines on Windows, because they decided to emulate typewriters and have both a return and a newline at the end of a line. Izno (talk) 16:42, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
There isn't a single character named "newline". Different operating systems use various characters or char combinations to signify a new line. Unix (Xenix, Linux etc.) use the line feed (U+000A) for the newline; Apple Mac uses the carriage return (U+000D). Windows uses carriage return directly followed by line feed, which it inherited from MS-DOS, which in turn got it from CP/M.
I have used a Creed teletype to input programs via five-bit punched paper tape for an Elliot 803, and that teletype had carriage return and line feed on separate keys. You needed to press both in turn because if you forgot to include line feeds in your data stream, each line would be overtyped on the last, like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
if you forgot the carriage returns, you got an effect something like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit,
sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
A manual typewriter (like this Olympia, similar to the one that my mother owned) has a large lever on the left which, when pulled to the right, first advances the paper (effectively, the line feed) and then moves the carriage to the start of the (new) line. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:38, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I know how to use regex, but this is a lot more complex than that. The captions are scrolled in word by word (if you know how CC works on live television, this is similar). Anyway, I'll work on it and get a synced set of captions. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 20:50, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
After doing some minor correction (much more needed), it still won't work:
The text you have submitted is 2,347.347 kilobytes long, which is more than the maximum of 2,048 kilobytes.
The most obvious thing I can think of is abbreviate common and long words (e.g. government --> gvt), which could cut it down by a few kb. JayCubby02:33, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
This feels like a problem that should be directed at people who care about big Commons things and possibly the WMF. Izno (talk) 03:42, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
I didn't say it was a mystery. I said it was a problem and suggested you talk to people who might actually know the answer. I doubt anyone at en.wp VPT is aware of how Commons works with Big Things. Izno (talk) 16:24, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
For WP:The core contest, I'd like to get an overview of the most-read vital articles. On {{Core topics}}, there is a dead link to wikistics that supposed to do this, but I can't figure out how to replicate this with massviews, given that VIT3+ are not separate categories. Instead, they are classified in subtopics such as Category:Wikipedia level-3 vital articles in Geography, so that Massviews shows only the most-read articles in that subcategory.
The box that says "Category" in Massviews is a dropdown. There are other sources implemented there, at least one of which should work. I think either page pile or wikilinks will do the trick. Izno (talk) 16:26, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
So recently I wanted to search through the dump and:
Ignore all articles that are not in a category whose name contains the word "India".
Of the remaining articles, check all references and output only those that contain .pdf to a textfile with the article title
I now have a tool that can do that (and all kinds of similar tasks) but I wondered if there is something already out there. I know about the Database scanner in AWB but it can't do something like this. I can't be the first person on earth who needed something like that, right? Polygnotus (talk) 22:55, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Those also parse Wikipedia dumps, but what I mean is downloadable programs that endusers can use that can search through the dump and filter. So for example the program I have can filter articles (based on criteria like does/does not match regex, does/does not contain matching string), and can then filter external links or references in those filtered articles (with the same criteria), and output the article titles or the article titles + reference or the article titles + external links. Polygnotus (talk) 05:32, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
In AWB, in the database scanner combine your two search queries. The category is going to appear later than the ref. Also, I do not like your double negitive. As for your boolean does it contain it or not, search for one of the criterions at a time and use the 'list comparer' to compare it against the combined run. Snævar (talk) 09:04, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
6'
In the search bar for desktop, why does entering 6' lead to the redirect 6˚? I can't reproduce this with any other string ending with ' (an apostrophe). –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 10:09, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Special:Search/6' also demonstrates it. It also happens for Special:Search/361' and Special:Search/36'30'N. In the latter example, the first ' matches ˚ in 36˚30'N while the second ' matches itself. I guess ' will always match ˚ in searches when there exists a page with ˚ but not with '. It may be something about character folding in Elasticsearch, similar to letter case where Special:Search/EXAMPLE matches Example. The wikilink 6' is red like EXAMPLE. ˚ can mean degree (angle) and ' can mean arcminute (1/60 of a degree) so the symbols are related in that context without meaning the same. There may be languages where they are often interchanged. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:31, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-15
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
The Design System Team is preparing to release the next major version of Codex (v2.0.0) on April 29. Editors and developers who use CSS from Codex should see the 2.0 overview documentation, which includes guidance related to a few of the breaking changes such as font-size, line-height, and size-icon.
The results of the Developer Satisfaction Survey (2025) are now available. Thank you to all participants. These results help the Foundation decide what to work on next and to review what they recently worked on.
The 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, between 2–4 May. Registration for attending the in-person event will close on 13 April. Before registering, please note the potential need for a visa or e-visa to enter the country.
Yeah that is annoying, thanks for reporting. The good news is that the people who deal with the servers also see those errors so they will be working on a fix. Polygnotus (talk) 22:51, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
I tested this on my clone account and verified that the pblock prevents the blocked editor from doing (1) and (2). Abecedare (talk) 17:44, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Both are technically creations. A Draft, is just a place (a namespace), a redirect is a special type of content of a page. Both situations require the technical creation of a page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:55, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
The hovering lead-image
You know that thing when you hover the cursor on a wikilink and get to see a bit of text and possibly the WP:LEADIMAGE? When the lead-image is a bit tall, like at current Jesus, Eve and Women in the Bible, you get a cropping. I'm guessing this falls under MediaWiki, but I'm not sure. Would it be worth the effort to ask "them" to look into this, maybe there's some simple improvement to be done? I don't think this should be an issue for choice of lead-image, so I'd prefer a technical solution. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:13, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
Hi, I've recently noticed while browsing Wikipedia and sister projects (Commons) that images are occasionally failing to load. Some will render without issue while others will either appear on the page as a placeholder broken image symbol or still be visible but when clicked and maximised, they fail to load with a "sorry, the file cannot be displayed." error message. Looking at the commons page for an effected image shows that some of the resolutions work fine whilst others still throw errors.
It's been a few days and I haven't seen any comments on here on this specific issue yet so I am saying it now. Hopefully the team are working on fixing whatever is causing this behaviour? Slender (talk) 19:17, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
I had that problem with a single image awhile back. Tried everything, including clearing my browser cache, purging the article containing the image, and restarting my computer. So I gave up, and the problem disappeared after a few days. Patience is a virtue, sometimes. ―Mandruss☎ IMO. 19:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
@Slenderman7676 Hi, this might be related to the work I'm doing with image thumbnails (phab:T360589). There are multiple ways that this can happen due to that work. 1- The size of image will be different than size of the element (the thumbnail is 250px, the image is shown at 220px) and your browser might not support it. All browsers I have tested so far have worked with no issues. If you're using an uncommon browser or it's not updated for a while, this might be the reason but I need to know what browser is that to check it immediately. I checked all three are broken are using the steps but also two of the ones that are shown too which is weird. So another question I have is also that whether the working images are also now broken too? 2- rate limit: Since we are using steps and also working to bump the default size to 250px (phab:T355914), these are triggering a lot of thumbnail regeneration (combine that AI scrapers), you might be hitting the rate limits of thumbnail generation (I'd have to see the network response for the browser, is it giving 429 when trying to load the image?) specially if you're unlucky with a GCNAT or bad ranges. The 1 is unlikely but would be quite scary as it would block the further roll out and 2 is more likely and less terrible, you just have to wait a couple of days. Please let me know how it is. Thank you and sorry for the issue. Ladsgroupoverleg23:38, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
To follow on from that: people might not be aware of the mechanics. In the past, your browser was served a HTML page woth the various image positions specified for an image width of 220px, and was also served the images pre-scaled to 220px wide, so your browser merely had to fit the images into the appropriate boxes without further manipulation. Recently, however, for the same HTML page (still with 220px image boxes) your browser is served images that are 250px wide, and must scale them down itself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:00, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Yeah but also noting that such scaling won't happen that often once we reach 100% since once the steps are fully rolled out, we will bump the default thumbnail size to 250px which means for majority of cases (when they don't define a thumbnail size), they will be both served as 250px and shown at 250px. Ladsgroupoverleg13:57, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Finally back on my PC so I can reply, I did a refresh with cache clear. The images at the top of the article which originally failed to load now load. But now a bunch of other images near the bottom of the article have broken. I do think this is some sort of API thumbnail issue. Looking up my current IP on here shows no blocks. It's only a Dynamic UK Residential IP by Virgin Media. Unless VM are also using their residential IPs for scraping?
As for browser. I'm currently rocking Chrome ver 124.0.6367.61 on Windows 10 build 22H2, I know Chrome is a tad out of date but I need it in order to keep my MV2 extensions working properly.
FYI, my replies may be slow because my mobile devices (iPhone and iPad) are global IP blocked even when logged in and it's a bit of a hassle to have to disable and then re-enable Private Relay in order to make edits, but I digress. Slender (talk) 20:58, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Chrome 124 is not that old to be the culprit. Given that the ones that load and the broken ones are changing, this is quite likely just rate limit issues. It's not really about VPN. Some ISPs do IP assignment really terribly (some are called CGNAT) and you might be hitting the rate limits because of that. It all should go away soon. Ladsgroupoverleg10:46, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
I had the same problem, also with a Chromium 124 based browser. Installing a user agent modifying extension and changing the 124 to 125 or even 123, or to Firefox or some other browser fixes it.
Going back to 124 makes it start happening again, but images that had already loaded properly remain visible, even after clearing cache, and even if the working request was from a different browser, suggesting it could be thumbnail generation related. When it isn't working, no amount of refreshing makes it work, and the images appear as soon as I change the user agent, so not likely to be rate limiting, unless there's some very specific and easily-reached limit against certain browser versions.
Going to a bad image directly, ("upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/...") shows "Error Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical issue" but also "Error: 403, Too many requests.", so some kind of block/limit that affects direct images and thumbnail generation from certain browsers, but not already-generated thumbnails? ThisNewSkinIsAwful (talk) 17:13, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Thumbnails have never regenerated by refreshing a page a thumbnail of them is on. In order to get new thumbnails, go to the image page of the images in question and purge those. Give the images at least one minute to regenerate.
Error 403 is from the thumbnailer, it is a rate limiter. You will hit it consistantly if you ask to regenerate 50+ images. Snævar (talk) 17:29, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
Then it may not be thumbnail generation related after all, as purging a "broken" image didn't make it appear, and just refreshing an article with broken images after changing user agent makes them appear. And the error was seen on the full image too. ThisNewSkinIsAwful (talk) 19:37, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
It could be a broken file yes. I think it is time to file a bug at phab:. On phab, "thumbor" is the thumbnailer and "sre-swift-storage" is the server thumbnail cache. Mark it as you see fit.
What is generally happening here is that the server has a cache of thumbnails that is now being regenerated. In some cases the thumbails are several years old. So these pictures get new thumbnails that are being created by newer versions of mostly the same thumbnailing software, which produces in some cases different results or even broken files. All requests from you go to the server cache, and if it does not have it, to the thumbnailer. Snævar (talk) 23:28, 6 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm with the SRE team at the Foundation, and I'm responsible for your issues, most likely.
We were blocking requests from a very specific version of Google Chrome because of some crawler that was very aggressively downloading large TIF and JPG files from our infrastructure, to the point of causing an outage over the last weekend of March, and persisted for days afterwards.
At the time the false positive traffic was low enough, and the crawler spread enough across different IP spaces, that I made the call to block requests unconditionally. I apologize for the inconvenience - I've verified that currently the crawler has ceased to operate and lifted the ban.
I apologize again for your inconvenience: while at the time it was our only option, and I stand by the decision I made to ban the requests, I dropped the ball on disabling the rule after the crawler had ceased to be around.
Please use the rationale parameter to explain why this user talk page should be deleted. (E.g., {{db-g7|rationale= }}.) Thanks!
Per the User page guidelines, user talk pages are generally not deleted, barring legal threats or other grievous violations that have to be removed for legal reasons; however, exceptions to this can be and are made on occasion for good reason (see right to vanish). In addition, nonpublic personal information and potentially libellous information posted to your talk page may be removed by making a request for oversight.
Good point, but that is fixable. User:Polygnotus/Templates/Subpage2. Also I'd assume it is pretty rare that people actually nominate their talkpage archives, and the vast majority of talkpages in someone's userspace that get nominated for deletion are only edited by the !owner of the userspace. Polygnotus (talk) 17:47, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
I imagine it's rare that people nominate any of their user talk pages for deletion, so perhaps an easier approach is to clarify the intent of the message. On a side note regarding the logic on your subpage, archive pages don't have to follow any specific naming convention. isaacl (talk) 02:41, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Came across this referencing style
I recently came across a referencing nomenclature that I am unfamiliar with and was wondering if it's in use in any other article around here.
It actually works great, links to the cited reference in the WP article with the effect being the same as the sfn/harv styles. I just had never seen it before and thought maybe there's a informational page or a section on some page around here that I have missed but that describes the style. Has anyone else seen this style? Is there something that describes it and how to implement it? Thanks for any info. - Shearonink (talk) 14:28, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
Not really a 'technical' issue. This particular 'style' is a maintenance headache. For example, in the article United States (permalink), ref 52 is written as:
<ref>[[United States#Ripper2008|Ripper, 2008]], p. 6.</ref>
<ref>[[#Calloway1998|Calloway, 1998]], p. 55</ref>
and is supposed to link to:
{{cite book|first=Colin G. |last=Calloway |title=New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=edYbAZ7ECEoC |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press|JHU Press]]|ref=Calloway 1998 |page=229 |isbn=978-0-8018-5959-5 |year=1998}}
but doesn't because the manually created |ref=Calloway 1998 does not match the link created in ref 57.
Further, floating your mouse pointer over the short refs 52, 56, or 57 does not cause MediaWiki to popup the contents of the linked long-form references as it should. For comparison, float your mouse pointer over ref 54, to see the popup created from:
I think we should get consensus to convert them to the correct style (if that is even necessary, which I doubt), and then replace them with sfn because creating your own personal style of using references is a terrible idea. Polygnotus (talk) 15:14, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
This search finds about 9250 articles that use this 'style'.
@Trappist the monk Thank you. If the number is that large it may be better to post a WP:BOTREQ. Do you think we need to get consensus to officially deprecate this 'style', and if so where would be an appropriate place? Polygnotus (talk) 16:06, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
I suspect that there are editors out there who would oppose a bot that changes:
<ref>[[#Ripper2008|Ripper, 2008]] p. 5</ref>
to:
{{sfn|Ripper|2008|p=5}}
and then deletes |ref=Ripper2008 from the matching long-form cs1|2 template. Such a bot might be considered to run afoul of WP:COSMETICBOT. I also suspect that there are editors who will object because they would view the deprecation of this 'style' as unnecessary regulation creep. A widely publicized RFC would seem to be required.
Imposition-of-consistent-style might be a WP:CITEVAR argument for some articles that use both this manual 'style' along with a templated style. These are variants of the above search where articles that use the manual style also use one (or more) of these templated forms:
That's about 1750 articles that use a mixed style of short-form referencing leaving about 7500 others.
There is also {{wikicite}} which gives examples that use this 'style'. Searching for this style in articles that also use {{wikicite}} finds 176 results.
As for where? I don't know. Where was the parenthetical reference deprecation RFC held? Might be a good choice to hold an RFC about this 'style' at the same place.
This search times out. Interestingly, quite a few of the articles it finds use <ref>...</ref> tags with this 'style' to link to other articles. Seems a rather poor editorial choice to me.
The search is the {{sfn}} search from above modified in the same way.
Thanks I can never quite get complex regex to work. It's shows what I expected, references that use the contents of other articles as references (a doubly broken way of doing things). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°14:01, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
For the historical point of view, my understanding is that this reference style mostly more or less predates the development of Module:Footnotes. I'm sure there's a few people who have added it post-development because they generally prefer template-less citations. Using {{sfn}} and friends is just categorically superior for a lot of different reasons.
That said, yes, replacing these en-masse would likely require an RFC at WT:CITE deprecating the style along WP:CITEVAR concerns, because stopping a switch from manual citations to templates is one of the few more or less explicit protections CITEVAR provides. I've nudged a few manually before without "getting permission" and not be shouted at, but it's something you probably should generally avoid. Izno (talk) 17:21, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
@Izno Apologies if this is a stupid question but why would anyone prefer template-less citations? That doesn't make sense to me. Polygnotus (talk) 17:25, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
They're easier to type just what you want or need and aren't "finicky" about the metadata piece of it associated with making sure everything gets put in the right parameters and rightly named parameters. Templates are much noisier in the wikitext. There was probably originally some concern that they would cause article rendering or the database to tip over (c. 20 years ago).
I don't hold these views myself, especially for something as easily-used as {{sfn}} when you want a link on the page and inevitably write something longer than the template, but it does and has existed for a very long time. Izno (talk) 17:30, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
@CaptainEek: You started the RFC to deprecate parenthetical citations and it was a great success, what do you think about the idea to deprecate these "fake sfn" citations? Polygnotus (talk) 17:33, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
@Polygnotus My concern with the parenthetical refs was that they were affecting the reader experience. This is more of an editor side issue, so I'm not really pressed about it. I can't say I'd use this fake sfn style personally, it seems like a pain, but not sure that alone is a reason to deprecate given our desire to allow a range of citation styles. I don't feel strongly about it though and frankly wouldn't stand in the way of greater citation conformity. CaptainEekEdits Ho Cap'n!⚓17:39, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
The range of citation styles I desire allowing consists of CS1 and CS2. Two whole options! Am I a citation extremist?
Allowing too much creativity with citations makes life very difficult for newbies, and these fake sfn citations do not have the many advantages that proper citation templates have (e.g. automatic detection of problems, automatic categorization, a GUI, popups, being usable in VE (allegedly)). Polygnotus (talk) 17:51, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for all the responses. Every day I learn more about this place. If anyone is interested in where I came across this issue take a look at Benjamin Franklin. (I am trying to fix/adjust Harv warnings & errors when I come across them and this article was chock-full when I started with 43, it's now down to 22 "Harv warnings".) The parenthetical refs of [[# etc popped up and I could not figure out why some cites were linking within the article to the named sources and mine weren't working... The mix of cites in this article are personally problematic for me and I'm somewhat experienced. I can't even imagine what it's like if a newbie tries to use the parentheticals, the sfns & harvs are thorny enough to deal with.
I didn't realize that so many - 9000+ articles use this style. I would hesitate to change allll these refs in Wikipedia en-masse... In the Franklin article itself there are only 4 refs that use this style - a single Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 4 Nash, a single Franklin Institute, and 24 for Isaacson. If I can wrap my head around the technicalities of converting these 4 refs to sfn, I'll do that and see if my possible changes are according to editorial consensus at this particular article. - Shearonink (talk) 19:50, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
The style referred to at the top of this section by Shearoninkdefinitely predates modules, and was certainly established at the time that I wrote Abingdon Road Halt railway station way back on 22 September 2009. Within eight hours of writing it, I wrote the very similar Hinksey Halt railway station, which used {{sfn}} from the start. I did this in order to compare the two styles, which I had heard about independently, to see which one was more satisfactory. My decision was firmly for future articles to use {{sfn}}, but I have deliberately refrained from harmonising Abingdon Road Halt railway station, so that a comparison is still available. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:34, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, back then this may've been a reasonable choice, but back then there weren't all these far superior alternatives. Lua in templates has been supported since 2013. The fact that mistakes have been made in the past does not mean we gotta keep repeating them. And I'm all for variety; but against making the life of Wikipedians harder for no advantage. The reason why it was used in the past is no longer valid. Polygnotus (talk) 22:19, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
My least favoured style of referencing, as they generate no errors if they're broken (and they are often broken). At least with plain text you don't get a comforting blue link. But CITEVAR does apply and there are editor who prefer them, if anyone looks to get consensus to do something about them please ping me. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°10:49, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, that worked (0.06 seconds). It's weird that not quoting it allowed the query to run and return the right result, but not hit the index. RoySmith(talk)15:22, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
It's weird, but true… Confirmed by EXPLAIN query result:
mysql:research@dbstore1008.eqiad.wmnet [enwiki]> explain select * from revision where rev_timestamp = 20250409001450;
+------+-------------+----------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------------+-------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+------+-------------+----------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------------+-------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | revision | ALL | rev_timestamp | NULL | NULL | NULL | 1153964976 | Using where |
+------+-------------+----------+------+---------------+------+---------+------+------------+-------------+
1 row in set, 4 warnings (0.001 sec)
mysql:research@dbstore1008.eqiad.wmnet [enwiki]> explain select * from revision where rev_timestamp = '20250409001450';
+------+-------------+----------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------+------+-----------------------+
| id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
+------+-------------+----------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------+------+-----------------------+
| 1 | SIMPLE | revision | ref | rev_timestamp | rev_timestamp | 14 | const | 1 | Using index condition |
+------+-------------+----------+------+---------------+---------------+---------+-------+------+-----------------------+
1 row in set (0.001 sec)
Thanks for the pointers. I especially like where use-the-index-luke.com says "Although it is a very bad practice, it does not automatically render an index useless" :-) RoySmith(talk)22:13, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Why does the DiscussionTools/Reply Tool store keystrokes in localstorage? For undoing? If you look in localStorage where the key starts with mw-ext-DiscussionTools-reply you see for example:
{"start":6,"transactions":[[1,["","W"],3],"h","a","t"," "]} in ve-changes
This appears to be a security risk, especially for non-public wikis.
It is for edit recovery, for accidentally closed browsers. It was a very popular requested featured. Not sure why a "non-public" wiki would be a security risk, your browser can already see everything you do. Perhaps if you were using a shared computer, in which case you could use a private browser session. — xaosfluxTalk15:13, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
@Xaosflux Yeah that is what I thought originally, but weirdly it contains both keystroke information and what I actually wrote (at the end of ve-changes). I understand that it needs to store the draft, but that does not require keystroke information. And if the information is stored as keystrokes then it doesn't need the draft message; or at least that is what I would think. See User:Polygnotus/Scripts/DTreplies.js, then scroll to the bottom of User:Polygnotus/sandbox to see it in action.
Not sure why a "non-public" wiki would be a security risk because, if Bob logs out from his account on a non-public wiki that uses DiscussionTools, he does not expect that Alice can read his drafts without ever logging in to the non-public wiki.
I don't think Bob should expect that in general when Alice uses Bob's computer, Bob's browser, and Bob's browser profile - that there would be much secrecy from things done within the browser.
Agreed, but you know Bob. He loves football, he can't dance, and he knows little about computers. He won't expect that the browser remembers stuff like this. Polygnotus (talk) 15:39, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, this data is stored as part of the undo stack. It doesn't exactly record keystrokes, it's the same "granularity" of changes that you can see when you perform undo/redo in the tool (the text is separated into 1-character strings for technical reasons – see [18] – but this does not reflect how it was typed). This happens just incidentally in DiscussionTools, because the draft autosave mechanism is shared with VisualEditor's autosave mechanism. FYI, if you switch between Visual and Source modes, all of the details are discarded. Matma Rextalk21:01, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
I am trying to use Sparql in Wikidata to list all national parties that are members of a European party and whose country is a member of the European Union. That much I have. However, I also want to display their number of seats in the European Parliament (but it should not be a requirement to have such an entry).
So far, I have:
SELECT ?item ?itemLabel ?countryLabel ?seats
WHERE {
?item wdt:P463 [wdt:P31 wd:Q24649]; #member of an instance of European party
wdt:P17 [wdt:P463 wd:Q458]; #from a country that is a member of the European Union
wdt:P17 ?country;
OPTIONAL { ?item p:P1410 [ps:P1410 ?seats; pq:P1410 wdt:Q8889]. }
SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en-gb". } }
ORDER BY ?countryLabel ?itemLabel
Is it possible to change my username posted in warn templates?
Typically I use Twinkle to perform warns, but it starts all of my messages with "Hello, I'm Guninvalid". I prefer my name to be written lowercase, "Hello, I'm guninvalid". How could I change this in my preferences? guninvalid (talk) 05:41, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
I've tried to login to both of my accounts but I am being asked to provide an email code. I have never had this requirement before and the only change I can notice is that I am logging at auth.wikimedia.org instead of en.wikipedia.org
Hi, a small percentage of logins now require that the account owner input a one time password emailed to their account. This will occur for example when the device and IP are both new. This is currently in initial testing, for security reasons related to the recent problem. Wider announcements will come soon. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:06, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm regularly changing both user agent and IP, is there no option to disable this in settings (I cannot look right now for obvious reasons)? All my passwords are uniquely generated. 206.83.102.24 (talk) 23:34, 4 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't want to have to enter a code at all. The only way to avoid this it appears is to simply disable/remove an email, which would only worsen account security. 206.83.102.24 (talk) 00:38, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Please could you write (perhaps privately to me, contact details on my userpage) some details about why your user agent and IP are regularly changing? Then I can bring that info to the devs in case it's something they can help you workaround, or can consider for the system as a whole. Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I believe you are correct, and the three technical options for you are: (1) use 2FA which will allow you to remain logged-in for a year (assuming you allow cookies) per device, (2) encounter these EmailAuth verification code requests, but (again assuming you allow cookies for Wikimedia domains) you should only need to go through the EmailAuth workflow once per year per browser, (3) remove your email from the account (which as you note has significant drawbacks). Overall, I would encourage option 1, and if you have additional concerns about using 2FA that aren't addressed in the Help page, please let me know (or comment on the talkpage there). I hope that info helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@Lado85: The thing about <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> is that everything between the tags is transcluded, including any whitespace (spaces, tabs and newlines), so if you don't want those occurring in the page that it's transcluded to, you need to ensure that they don't occur either between the opening <onlyinclude> tag and the "real" content that you want to include, nor between the "real" content and the closing </onlyinclude> tag. See WP:ONLYINCLUDE. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:14, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I know this. The empty row is spontaneously added sometimes, when somebody edits article (not omly this, everywhere). I am tired to delete it every time it appears. Lado85 (talk) 12:34, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I did two test edits which added a space (now reverted). The first in the standard editor just added the space.1 The second in the Visual Editor added the extra line after the onlyinclude tag.2 I only added the space after the "Pool A". So it looks like a VE issue. — Jts1882 | talk12:59, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
VE is known to be buggy, that's why it's still in beta. I never use it because I want to know exactly what I'm altering before I go for "Publish", I don't want hidden extras. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:19, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
I found a bug report for this problem in the visual editor: T283353.
Lado85, one issue I have frequently seen, especially with folks with technical chops, is a design-based question, rather than a function-based nne. (I have been guilty of this.) This tends to hamstring the responders, who, rather than responding to your underlying issue, are trying to repair your solution. That sometimes works, sometimes not. Your question is semi-design-based, because you are asking how to make '<onlyinclude>' jump the hoops you want it to jump. But what about restating it functionally, to open up the range of possible solutions? Would it be accurate to restate your question as follows?
How do I selectively include or exclude certain rows from a table without introducing unwanted rows or white space in the rendered page?
If so, there are solutions, but they do not necessarily involve <onlyinclude> tags. I am of course trying to mind-read your intent by reverse-engineering your design solution, and maybe I got your intent wrong. But I bet if you restate your question functionally, you will arrive at a solution more quickly, and maybe more easily. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 00:39, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
i have a code in my User:Gryllida/common.js that adds a button to the wikitext2017 editor. i would like to add a button to visual editor instead though. could you please suggest an example? it needs to alert('hi') or something similar as i will add a custom function. i checked mw:VisualEditor/Gadgets and it is not particularly enlightening. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 19:56, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
Your common.js is adding a button to WikiEditor, not to the 2017 wikitext editor. If it was adding it to the latter, it'd also be added to VE unless you had actively avoided doing so. (E.g. this script that I wrote the other day does that.)
@Polygnotus and @Qwerfjkl and @DLynch (WMF) i see it works, how do I implement adding text at cursor position? For example, add 'hi' at cursor position when the button is clicked. Cannot use some simpler methods because the 'hi' will be determined after running a custom javascript subroutine, so it will not always be the same content to add. So it has to be a javascript function to add the text, not an 'encapsulate' type of button or the like. Thank you in advance for your help!!! Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 12:06, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks! I will make use of this and then go back to the API documentation to form a more systematic understanding; appreciate your prompt assistance. :-) Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 12:40, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@DLynch_(WMF) @Gryllida On the English Wikipedia you can use WP:REFVISUAL, specifically this thing (I think that that is the VisualEditor citation tool). Gryllida here is trying to reinvent that wheel, but that would only fix the problem for whoever installs their script so I think the real question is: "Can you please install/enable the VisualEditor citation tool on wikinews.org?".
Looking at User:Diegodlh/Web2Cit/script it looks like this thing uses Citoid, because that script adds web2cit to it, so there is probably a reason the WMF decided to go with Citoid over Web2cit.
It looks like both enwiki and wikinews are using the same version of the Visual Editor enwikiwikinews.
If installing/enabling the VisualEditor citation tool is not an option for some reason then the question is: When you have a button on the VisualEditor in Visual mode, how can you make it actually insert wikicode at the cursor position so that you get to see the parsed result? Polygnotus (talk) 19:34, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
@User:Gryllida It seems likely that a Phabricator ticket is required. Do you want to make one or should I? This says: It is currently deployed in all VisualEditor-enabled WMF-Wikis [1], though the extension is only configured on some of them.Polygnotus (talk) 19:57, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
I just briefly encountered this error when I tried to preview an edit I was making, but thankfully things have quickly gone back to normal. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 15:11, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
I've just tried performing 12 different types of edit. 5 of them came back with the error message. I realise this has been going on for quite a while, but it is becoming increasing impossible to edit Wikipedia. It seems to be getting worse, not better.
The edit I tried to perform include, edits to article talk page, preview edit, edits to an article and so on. Knitsey (talk) 14:25, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
I noticed on wikipediastatus.net that there have been 2 other large error spikes since the one I originally noticed. Something interesting is that they all seem to correlate with temporary drops in successful edits. I'm not necessarily implying causation but this appears to be having at least some impact on people trying to edit. The one at 10:15 today seemingly temporarily halved the number of successful edits from around 20 to around 10. User:Chorchapu (talk|edits|commons|wiktionary|simple english) 17:23, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
As I understand it, the root cause is a bug in a low-level library (glibc) which is used by pretty much everything in the universe. The particular path that most commonly tickles the bug is in some Lua code, so the workaround is to disable that bit of Lua. The real fix has to happen in the glibc code, but that will take a while because it has external dependencies (i.e. somebody else manages glibc). In a case like that, you do what you can quickly to make the immediate problem go away. It's kind of like the old joke where you tell the doctor, "It hurts when I do this" and the doctor says "So, don't do that".
It also sounds like the Lua problem is only one of several manifestations of this bug, so the Lua workaround only reduced how often this happens but didn't eliminate it completely. I'm sure the dev folk are working hard on this so best to just give them some space to do what they need to do. RoySmith(talk)14:45, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Thought I was the only person having issues, that is interesting. And for the record, I did encounter internal errors of the same type, while reading articles, and whilst attempting to go to other articles. Codename ADtalk14:32, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
Source of request spike has been identified: it was a Growth Experiments script aggressively scanning way too many rows of the database. See phab:T391695. It's been disabled until it gets fixed, so normally this shouldn't happen again. — Alien 3 3 315:49, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't think that's entirely fair. These are big complicated systems. Stuff happens. Take a look at the example I gave just below. I made a trivial mistake in my query which caused a 20,000x performance hit. Fortunately, the quarry database is sufficiently isolated from production that I assume I only caused a problem to other quarry users. RoySmith(talk)17:26, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Difficulty reading some user pages in Dark Mode
Hello, I use Dark Mode on Wikipedia, and I have noticed that when I try to read certain User Pages, the text on the User Pages does not change color, and so if I want to read the user pages, I have to highlight all of the text to be able to see it. A good example of this is User:Valjean for the majority of text on their User Page. I have experienced the problem on other user pages, but I do not remember which one. Could this please be fixed? If there is somewhere else I should bring this up, please let me know, so I can bring it up in that place. Thank you very much. Fun Chaos (talk) 15:28, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Users have a lot of flexibility in how they manage and layout their own user pages. You should be able to just toggle dark mode off on the page, that should be much easier than trying to highlight text. — xaosfluxTalk15:45, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
How do I change that or a single page, I see how to change that for all pages, but that is process that involves me going to my preferences and changing it, and then changing it back after I have finished reading the user page. Is there a more efficient process? Fun Chaos (talk) 15:54, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
You can't, but you can toggle it on or off whenever you want, which should be a simpler thing to do than trying to highlight text. There should be a dark mode selector on the appearance menu on the page, if you collapsed that menu look for the symbol that looks like eyeglasses at the top of the screen. — xaosfluxTalk17:50, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Generally speaking, anything is permitted on user pages, unless explicitly prohibited by WP:UP#NOT. That section does not mention accessibility, colour, contrast or dark mode. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:31, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Have you tried using a different web browser? Or loading in a private window? You could also try disabling any browser extensions that might be interfering. --Chris06:57, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
Alright, it works on Chrome. I think it's broken for FireFox. Disabling browser extensions, or editing in private mode did not help. I hope it will work again someday.
Hello, does anyone know how to access the article at [24]? The first snapshot, specifically June 21, 2011, is cited on an article, but if it loaded once it doesn't now. Thanks, CMD (talk) 06:48, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
That source is as good as dead, because WebArchive seems to have changed its syntax so that the source doesn't show and archive.today redirects to the main page. You can try contacting the WebArchive but I'd simply consider some other sources Szmenderowiecki (talk) 15:00, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
One would think that the article in question ought to be listed in the Express archive for the date claimed in the article, but I don't see an obvious title in that list although in theory, it has to be there, so perhaps it's buried in an article about something else? Sufficient sleuthing through that list might turn it up, but that's a lot of effort for an uncertain result about one citation. Mathglot (talk) 01:04, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
I agree with both of you! As of now, I was evaluating predatory journals by visiting their website and seeing how they advertised themselves. A journal that promises turn around of less than a week, is definitely predatory. It can also be determined by looking at the quality of the papers published in itself. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 03:32, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
How I can see users from language category that been active in current month? For example, most users at Category:User gsw-4 was active 2-3 or 10 years ago, which is kinda useless information. Eurohunter (talk) 10:46, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
True, but I have a database query for users who have done edits in the last three months here. Doesn't notice whether have performed logged actions such as issue thanks or blocking. William Avery (talk) 14:10, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
@William Avery I think that usually people want to know "who should I contact" which means that a user with 1 edit who edited 1 second ago is a worse option than a user with 180.000 edits who edited 3 days ago. Polygnotus (talk) 15:49, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
Hey everyone,
I was wondering if there are any tools available that could help identify citations that link to PDFs, as many predatory journals often use direct PDF links instead of proper journal indexing. While manually checking for predatory sources is possible, a tool to automate or streamline this process would be really useful. This is a consistent problem in wikipedia, as many articles are out there with almost all predatory sources. For instance, do look at Mizo names. After I removed all the predatory sources, there is only one citation left.
I understand that Special:Linksearch can be used to find citations linking to specific domains, which is helpful for flagging known predatory journals. However, I don’t think there’s currently a way to search for all citations that link to PDFs in general.
Would it be possible to implement such a search function, or has anyone come across a method to filter citations by file type? If not, I’d like to discuss whether this is something that could be proposed at WP:VPT or WP:RSN.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
— Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 01:29, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Really cool to say the least. Just downloaded it. There are many predatory journals out there, and as someone working in academia I can for sure say that 99% of times, the citations that leads to pdf of a Journal, is most definitely predatory. This is why I was hoping to search for a tool, that can search the database of wikipedia, to find all citations that link to a pdf. Yes, there are many other predatory journals like http://www.ijst.co.in/https://tlhjournal.com/https://ijssrr.com/journal and https://www.mkscienceset.com/. There are many more besides these, and many more that I might not be aware of. This is partly the reason I am interested in this. I did a few clean up of ijnrd.org
@Flyingphoenixchips I don't know how nerdy you are, but AutoWikiBrowser includes a database scanner and I don't think you even need AWB permission to use it. I also have a tool that can search through the dump. Polygnotus (talk) 02:09, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@Flyingphoenixchips I was too lazy to download a new dump so I used one that I had laying around. A text file containing just the articlename and then the PDF URL is 373MB. There are 3.257.740 URLs that end in .pdf, if you only search articles and only inside ref tags. Polygnotus (talk) 04:27, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
Hm, I restricted it to only articles that contain "India" and only references that contain ".pdf" and I get 96.847 results (roughly a 10mb file) most of which are fine. Polygnotus (talk) 14:17, 3 April 2025 (UTC)
@Flyingphoenixchips No. You can have a look. This list excludes all articles that do not have a category whose name contains the word "India" and of those it takes the references that contain ".pdf"
@Mathglot I searched through the dump for them and my conclusion is that that is not an efficient way of finding predatory journals (even in articles related to India). So we should continue with our approach of searching for the name or domain of the journals.
This is valid too. Honestly we can do this, but the problem is- there are so many predatory journals out there, that it will be hard keeping track of all the domains. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:26, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
What I meant by this, was 100% of the times, predatory journals do not have a doi index, and thus whenever they are cited in Wikipedia, they are cited in the form of a pdf. Does it mean all pdfs are unreliable? Of course no! I was trying to find patterns in order to identify predatory journals, and this was one thing that I had noticed. This is why I brought it up, as a possible method to search for predatory journals Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:24, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
you should be able to access their list, after making an account here. Also not sure if this would help as well, since UGC has been used by predatory publishers to get legitimacy most of the times. Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:35, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
I am not sure if users outside India can access it. I am currently not in the country as well, but since I had made an account here, maybe thats why I still have he access. Well good point. Let me see if I can work on building such a site. Would you be willing to help? Lemme try posting this in Wikiproject:India Flyingphoenixchips (talk) 02:41, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
I am willing to help, but not able, because I know nothing about predatory publishers in India. Posting in Wikiproject:India is a good idea, there may be more people who know about these things. Polygnotus (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
It can depend on the subject area, but as someone who has been in the academic publishing business for decades as author, editor, and technical manager, I strongly disagree that the absence of a doi is an indicator of being predatory. Getting doi coverage for a journal involves no quality-related test at all. It is just for the asking plus a small fee. The total cost for a whole year of articles is about 1/10 of the typical page charge for one article. It is actually journals which have no cash flow at all which are most likely to not have dois, and they are the least likely to be predatory. Conversely, dois are one cheap way that predatory journals use to make themselves look legit. Zerotalk10:05, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
@Flyingphoenixchips: As another person who has been involved in academic publishing for decades (as an author and peer reviewer), I agree with Zero's statement above. There are lots of older or smaller independent journals that are completely legitimate and peer reviewed but do not have DOIs or similar registrations. This is especially true of niche zoological and botanical journals. I'm curious how you are distinguishing between those and predatory journals. Nosferattus (talk) 00:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
I agree with both of you! As of now, I was evaluating predatory journals by visiting their website and seeing how they advertised themselves. A journal that promises turn around of less than a week, is definitely predatory. It can also be determined by looking at the quality of the papers published in itself. @NosferattusFlyingphoenixchips (talk) 18:10, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
As someone that's dealt with predatory journals, the best way to find them used on Wikipedia is probably WP:CITEWATCH (pages 2+ especially, page 1 has a lot of corner cases). I also maintain the WP:UPSD script. That said
Lack of DOI, especially for new journals published after 2000, is a fairly strong sign that a journal might be predatory. Older journals without DOIs just might not have been online and stopped publishing. Of course plenty of exceptions exist.
Plenty of predatory journals have DOIs. When that's the case, it's often with a DOI prefix over 10.10000+/.... Of course plenty of exceptions exist. OMICS for example, has a DOI prefix of 10.4172/...
It can live in an atmosphere of 80% CO
2 and 20% oxygen.
That's a bit annoying and surely avoidable, as the {{chem2}} template does not have the same quirk. Could someone who knows what they're doing take a look? Cheers!
Thanks, both! I looked at the code for both templates, and the difference stems from these two approaches to stacking super- and subscripts, AFAI can tell:
@ESanders (WMF) This is not the worst problem ever™, but it can be quite annoying when messing about with JavaScript because JSHint keeps warning you of errors that do not exist. Is there maybe an alternative to ESLint that is easier to implement? Polygnotus (talk) 18:07, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
It may be (?) related to the fact that what's here signaled are private identifiers, which are added in ECMA2026. — Alien 3 3 319:46, 13 April 2025 (UTC)
If by errors you mean when you go to edit the page, which no one else can, that is strictly identified by the syntax highlighter, which in this case is Ace AFAIK. It simply has not been updated for newer syntaxes yet. (Such issues are relevant when editing CSS as well, e.g. phab:T263852.) The final says on whether a script is valid is the ResourceLoader checker + minifier, for when a script is loaded as a gadget, and your browser.
My understanding, based on conversation with a relevant volunteer dev, is that phab:T250315 is particularly difficult, and that Ace does not provide the necessary APIs so it would be a lot of developer overhead to support something like that.
I used to use this tool to calculate IP ranges for potential blocks, but now I'm getting a 'not found' error. Has it moved, or been replaced with something else, or just died a dignified natural death, does anybody know? Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:46, 14 April 2025 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Weekly highlight
Later this week, the default thumbnail size will be increased from 220px to 250px. This changes how pages are shown in all wikis and has been requested by some communities for many years, but wasn't previously possible due to technical limitations. [25]
File thumbnails are now stored in discrete sizes. If a page specifies a thumbnail size that's not among the standard sizes (20, 40, 60, 120, 250, 330, 500, 960), then MediaWiki will pick the closest larger thumbnail size but will tell the browser to downscale it to the requested size. In these cases, nothing will change visually but users might load slightly larger images. If it doesn't matter which thumbnail size is used in a page, please pick one of the standard sizes to avoid the extra in-browser down-scaling step. [26][27]
Updates for editors
The Wikimedia Foundation are working on a system called Edge Uniques which will enable A/B testing, help protect against Distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks), and make it easier to understand how many visitors the Wikimedia sites have. This is so that they can more efficiently build tools which help readers, and make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for.
To improve security for users, a small percentage of logins will now require that the account owner input a one-time password emailed to their account. It is recommended that you check that the email address on your account is set correctly, and that it has been confirmed, and that you have an email set for this purpose. [28]
"Are you interested in taking a short survey to improve tools used for reviewing or reverting edits on your Wiki?" This question will be asked at 7 wikis starting next week, on Recent Changes and Watchlist pages. The Moderator Tools team wants to know more about activities that involve looking at new edits made to your Wikimedia project, and determining whether they adhere to your project's policies.
The latest quarterly Technical Community Newsletter is now available. This edition includes: an invitation for tool maintainers to attend the Toolforge UI Community Feedback Session on April 15th; recent community metrics; and recent technical blog posts.
Prosesize has stopped working for me, all articles reading as 0b. Have cleared cache and tried through another browser, and in incognito mood. Still all articles showing as 0b. Thanks Hildreth gazzard (talk) 19:54, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
@Hildreth gazzard It works fine for me. I installed it with Preferences → Gadgets → Browsing → Prosesize and then I went to a random article and clicked the "Page size" option in the tools menu and it says:
HTML document size: 143 kB
Prose size (including all HTML code): 5956 B
References (including all HTML code): 9977 B
Wiki text: 23 kB
Prose size (text only): 3312 B (575 words) "readable prose size"
References (text only): 912 B
Yes, I did that, installed it with Preferences → Gadgets → Browsing → Prosesize on an
iphone and it was working fine. It just stopped the last few hours. No error message. It shows HTML document size and Wikitext size, but all other values are blank Hildreth gazzard (talk) 20:16, 9 April 2025 (UTC)
For example: this is what it shows for the Mandarin duck
Hi, I was having the same issue with prosesize (although in my case it's been down for over a year and displays no output at all after freezing). I tried your script and it worked, but would it be possible for the output to be displayed with greater accuracy i.e. the number of bytes instead of just 2 kB or 3 kB? AryKun (talk) 11:47, 15 April 2025 (UTC)
Hi, when I try to run my queries on https://quarry.wmcloud.org/, I get a pop-up message that is very long (which for some reason I can't copy) and eventually a message that states
Error
This web service cannot be reached. Please contact a maintainer of this project.
Maintainers can find troubleshooting instructions from our documentation on Wikitech.
Technical concern about wikis using Wikipedia content.
Where can we report suspicious activity in terms of site using Wikipedia content? There is one site that may be a cybersecurity risk for unsuspecting users. Starlighsky (talk) 22:38, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
@Starlighsky Use of Wikipedia trademarks to mislead should be reported to the WMF legal team at legal-tm-viowikimedia.org. Security issues relating to MediaWiki or Wikimedia Foundation infrastructure should be reported to securitywikimedia.org or by using this Phabricator form. General threats to the safety of contributors can be reported to the WMF Trust and Safety team at cawikimedia.org. If you're unsure, feel free to email me and I can help route your concerns. AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 23:59, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
The site is in another language, and I don't know if they are or are not. I want to avoid the site due to the cybersecurity issues that I suspect are on the site. I emailed the issue and the language that the site was written in. Ideally, there is a cybersecurity professional who can look at the site. I discovered the site after a search for a specific topic. I recognized the content as a Wikipedia article, which I can explain later if needed. The site does see it is not affiliated with Wikimedia. That is all I know. Starlighsky (talk) 13:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
A technical issue
I’d like to mention an issue I’ve just recently noticed. Not serious, nonetheless inaccurate.
Something seems to be amiss with the algorithm that displays the longest stretch of consecutive days of Wiki editing that we’ve done. For a long time, my count used to be 27. Now it’s 18. This means others’ counts could similarly be affected.
Oh, then sorry I didn’t notice. But I’m surprised. Not that I really care about this, but it does seem a little odd that the clock is started every X number of days.
I have one more clock-related technical issue to report: there’s a place where the number of years we’ve been Wikipedians is shown, and my count has appeared as 3 years for several months now — even though that won’t actually be till the 2nd or 3rd week of June. Augnablik (talk) 10:40, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
I don't think the number that's shown in regard to my 2nd question has anything to do with performance but just time as a Wiki editor. To answer your question about where I've seen 3 years, I don't recall now exactly where that was ... all that I recall is that it's fairly often. The next time I see it, I can return here and say. Or perhaps another editor will come along and say where that is. Augnablik (talk) 11:39, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
But PrimeHunter, my account did consistently show me as being 3 years with Wikipedia when it was only 2.5 years — last fall. And now that there are discrepancies between what several different editors see, this makes it more likely that there are bugs in the calculation.
At any rate, I don't think rounding is a good idea for reporting our "Wiki age." Aside from simple accuracy, another reason is that those of you senior editors who help newer editors might at times want to get a clearer idea of the time we've been involved with Wikipedia, irrespective of # of our contributions. Augnablik (talk) 04:25, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
@Augnablik: Your account became 2.5 years old on 15 December 2024. I doubt it rounded to 3 before that. Rounding#Rounding to the nearest integer is a very common rounding method. It's rarely used when we say how old a person is but "Joined 3 years ago" doesn't say "old" or "age", and it doesn't describe a person but an event. I think rounding to nearest integer is OK there. Initially your mobile user page [30] actually says "Joined 15 June 2022" but it's changed by JavaScript after page load. I guess the script makes its own calculation and doesn't look up the number somewhere. It also runs in safemode [31] and at other wikis so a requested change should be at phab: (see WP:PHAB). It could point out that Special:CentralAuth/Augnablik rounds down to 2. I'm OK with either rounding method but they should probably use the same method although I wouldn't call it a bug. The mobile message is made with MediaWiki:Mobile-frontend-joined-years but it's called with 3 for you [32] and not a date or decimal age so we cannot change it locally. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:05, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for that fix, PrimeHunter. I guess I can go on living without the other fix that I was hoping for, as there are other things in the world in greater need of fixing.
As for my recollection of what was shown as my account age some months ago, I can only say that’s what I recall. Memory can, of course, play tricks on us, and I can’t claim infallibility. Now that I’m aware that after 6 months that number will be rounded up 😢, I’ll re-check. Augnablik (talk) 13:10, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Automating argument between template and module, and finding out template name
Hi everyone,
Two questions into one today. Here is my situation.
I have a module that I can call with {{#invoke:module_name|main|arg1|arg2}} with arg1 being either foo or bar; and
I want to have two templates calling this module, where:
{{template foo|arg}} calls {{#invoke:module_name|main|foo|arg}}, and
If I understand what it is that you want to do, you can hard-code foo and bar in the template wikitext as named parameters: |foo=<value> etc – this is probably the simplest. No doubt there are more complex ways to do what I think you want to do.
To get the name of the invoking module: frame:getTitle(); and similarly, to get the name of the calling template: frame:getParent():getTitle().
I am not familiar with the module itself. But if there are named params, I'd assume you need to add translations like namedOne={{{namedOne|}}} to the template's code, for all the named ones you need. Make a test case and I'll show you, if needed. Ponor (talk) 08:16, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Just saw your second test case. The module seems smart enough (by calling another module) to get the named params without any mapping. You're good to go! Ponor (talk) 08:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Normally, {{AfC submission}}'s |ts= takes the form |ts=YYYYMMDDhhmmss. But I've been coming across some drafts that have the ts param in the format generated by ~~~~~ (e.g. "00:00, 1 January 1970 (UTC)"). This shouldn't be happening, and breaks the template.
You can include cases with AFC by making the regex case insensitive with i at the end.[33] I haven't worked out how it might happen. We could ask somebody who did it. @Domagoj Klarić: Do you remember how you made this edit? You may have copied code with subst from somewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:34, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: What I'm noticing is that we have two forms of this "incorrect timestamp" template: One is {{AfC submission|||ts=...}}, which renders a "submitted for review" template, but there's also {{AfC submission|d|ts=...}}, rendering a "submission declined" without a reason. ~ Rustymeow ~ 14:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I thought it was for all images. We were having trouble with some images loading because of issues with the thumbnails. The image has to be resized to fit in the infobox. Hawkeye7(discuss)02:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
For Vargas Llosa, if I am reading the template code at {{infobox writer}} correctly, the image is being assigned the default size of frameless, which renders the image at the default thumbnail size width. That width was just increased from 220px to 250px, per the tech note above, after that change had been requested for many years. I see the image rendering at 250px, which means that things are working as designed. (Here are archive.org snapshots of the pages yesterday, 220px image and today, 250px image.) If you are seeing something that does not appear to be working as designed, please describe it here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Also, the RFC from January 2024, linked to above, says This bifurcated discussion finds a strong consensus to increase the default thumbnail size on English Wikipedia to 250px. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:59, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
@Neveselbert: They're not independent settings, and AFAIK, never have been. A configuration change for |thumb has been carried out (on 17 April), as a consequence of which the with for |frameless necessarily had to follow suit. If you want them to be divorced, you need to file a ticket at phab:. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:47, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
It is even less of an improvement in the case of non-free images like film posters, which are compressed and consequently lack the clarity and detail necessary for comfortable viewing at this higher resolution. Οἶδα (talk) 09:55, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Please link to an example article. Maybe we need to adjust our maximum acceptable size for non-free images. That would be a discussion for a different page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
Honestly, most of them. Though many are worse than others. I realise this is an issue with the files themself but it remains that this change renders these posters looking worse. Comparing png files like the ones at Boyhood (2014 film), Drugstore Cowboy or Good Will Hunting, which are far crisper, or high-res Commons photos like the ones appearing at M*A*S*H (film) or Seven Samurai, to the jpg at Short Cuts, you should see what I mean. Viewing that thumbnail at the original resolution looks better to my eyes. To a lesser extent, the one at Pulp Fiction. Must it be expanded to fill the infobox? Of course this is my opinion and I am not suggesting any actions. But 250px looks worse to my eyes for most posters. Οἶδα (talk) 22:04, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
The Short Cuts poster is 19KB and looks like it has been over-compressed. The previous infobox default was reducing it from 255px to 220px wide, and now it is being reduced to 250px, which highlights the over-compression. Someone needs to upload a better-quality image. The Good Will Hunting image is the same pixel size but is 231KB. That's probably why it looks better. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
@Jonesey95 Film posters should be resized to 0.1 megapixels, which, for a standard 3:2 poster, means 258x387 (although they generally range from 254x393 to 260x384). We don't need to update the maximum size, but rather set the resizing bot to prefer a width of 250px if the final image is going to be close to that value to avoid unnecessary rescaling. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)20:38, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
It depends upon the infobox. Some are coded to use a specific size; others are coded for the frameless type, which should read the user's preferences. No infobox should be coded to use the thumb type, because of the extra borders that produces. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)
I see the time, it’s in the upper right corner. But it is in UTC, amd should be one hour forward for Daylight Saving Time. It shows 17:16 instead of 18:16 Doug Wellertalk17:17, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
@Doug Weller: If it's the clock then add window.LiveClockTimeZone = 'Europe/London'; //LiveClock timezone settings to your common.js page. That should make it display BST for you now and it will autocorrect when the clocks go back. Nthep (talk) 18:33, 19 April 2025 (UTC)
If you go to the "View history" page, you can see a list of the edits. Click on the previous version in the left column of dots and the latest version in the right column of dots, then click "Compare selected versions". From that screen, you can see the changes that you made and click the "undo" link to restore the previous version. I did it for you this time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:35, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
As you see on this page, I've reported that I've lost access to Newspapers.com in the Wikipedia Library. As reported there, I originally lost access early last year when Newspapers.com made some sort of change and I was granted access that was to expire November 17 of this year. I've reapplied anyway, but I've heard nothing in about a week. What should I do to regain access? Oona Wikiwalker (talk) 20:55, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
The title for Eileen Kelly appears to be automatically italicised for me on my mobile device; this seems to have happened when the podcast infobox was added to the article. Can anyone help? GnocchiFan (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
The problem was that the podcast infobox ({{Infobox podcast}}) automatically italicizes the article’s title (since it assumes it’s on the article of a podcast). I’ve fixed this by adding | italic title = no to the template.Hope this helps! — Daℤyzzos (✉️ • 📤) Please do not ping on reply.13:45, 20 April 2025 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Wikifunctions is now integrated with Dagbani Wikipedia since April 15. It is the first project that will be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them in articles. A function is something that takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, such as adding up two numbers, converting miles into metres, calculating how much time has passed since an event, or declining a word into a case. Wikifunctions will allow users to do that through a simple call of a stable and global function, rather than via a local template. [35]
A new type of lint error has been created: Empty headings (documentation). The Linter extension's purpose is to identify wikitext patterns that must or can be fixed in pages and provide some guidance about what the problems are with those patterns and how to fix them. [36]
Following its publication on HuggingFace, the "Structured Contents" dataset, developed by Wikimedia Enterprise, is now also available on Kaggle. This Beta initiative is focused on making Wikimedia data more machine-readable for high-volume reusers. They are releasing this beta version in a location that open dataset communities already use, in order to seek feedback, to help improve the product for a future wider release. You can read more about the overall Structured Contents project, and about the first release that's freely usable.
There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
Meetings and events
The Editing and Machine Learning Teams invite interested volunteers to a video meeting to discuss Peacock check, which is the latest Edit check that will detect "peacock" or "overly-promotional" or "non-neutral" language whilst an editor is typing. Editors who work with newcomers, or help to fix this kind of writing, or are interested in how we use artificial intelligence in our projects are encouraged to attend. The meeting will be on April 28, 2025 at 18:00–19:00 UTC and hosted on Zoom.
At List of Vikings episodes, I have <section begin=Amazon6B />{{efn|The second half of the sixth season concluded on December 30, 2020, when it was released in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video in select countries, ahead of its standard broadcast on History in Canada from January 1 to March 3, 2021.}}<section end=Amazon6B />. At Vikings (TV series) (and other articles), I'm trying to use {{#lst:List of Vikings episodes|Amazon6B}} to use the same note without duplicating it through transclusion, but it is returning empty (see the source code for this post, I'm using that same code after the colon: [a]). What appears to be the issue? -- Alex_21TALK23:46, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
@Alex 21:List of Vikings episodes#Series overview uses <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> to control transclusion at Vikings (TV series)#Broadcast. It means {{#lst:List of Vikings episodes|Amazon6B}} also only sees the part inside <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>. onlyinclude is the standard method used to transclude such a series overview from an episode list to the main article about the TV series. Article content is rarely transcluded so it doesn't usually cause a conflict. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:12, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
^The second half of the sixth season concluded on December 30, 2020, when it was released in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video in select countries, ahead of its standard broadcast on History in Canada from January 1 to March 3, 2021.
Well. mine is working. I was initially referring to the edit stats for individual articles as well as the overall stats for individual editors. — Maile (talk) 18:29, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
@Maile66: It gave me this message: Your access to XTools has been blocked due to apparent abuse or disruptive automation. I find this to be very weird, since I edited last week with no trouble. And I have no need to edit XTools, so I do not understand why I am being blocked. Also the village pump over their did not even talk about me. Catfurball (talk) 19:01, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Update from the relevant task (phab:T384711): as the other times XTools went down, it was the fault of bot(s) making way too many queries and making the service run out of disk space.
The issue is that this bot is IP-hopping, so blocking only it was not straightforward.
I have removed the block as the disruptive bots seem to have stopped for now. @Catfurball You shouldn't be seeing that message anymore. Sorry about that.
I'm not sure what to do long-term. A permanent solution is to always require login, then bad botz go bye-bye once and for all. But then everyone has to login, which I know is annoying, especially with known issues such as phab:T224382.
Alternatively, could require login just when you need to deflect the bad bots, or require login just when it appears someone is a bad bot (like what WMF is doing now I guess for login). Izno (talk) 19:39, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, sorry. The flood of bot(s) came back again and I had to do the quick fix. I'm afraid even adding an OAuth login wall won't fix the problem. The sheer volume of automated traffic coming in necessitates blocking traffic at the server level. I will work with some folks to get this sorted out as soon as possible. In the meantime, using a different browser might help. — MusikAnimaltalk04:20, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
I put a proof-of-work CAPTCHA on my tools. Chances are the bot cannot execute JavaScript, and if it can you can slow them down quite a bit. MER-C19:04, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
Despite what I said above, it appears the main issue is the volume of requests (up to 300+ a second). XTools was actually doing its job of preventing the bots from running any queries, for those few requests that actually managed to make it to the application layer.
so I've been trying to use { {Userbox |border-c=#006666 |border-s=2 |id-c=#008080 |id-s=10 |id-fc=#99FFFF |info-c=#008080 |info-fc=#99FFFF |id=Teal |info=This user's favourite colour is teal}}. I've been trying to add a white line between the box and the text but I cant find the part on the wikicode that lets me do that. possible (talk page stalker)Willbill6272 (talk) 19:23, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
I have seen this format on User talk pages, from other users asking questions about Wikipedia. Is this coming from a mentorship program, or from the Talk page owner having signed up somewhere as a volunteer newbie-helper, or where exactly? There are many such queries at this User talk page, with ten appearing this month and destined never to be answered, most likely, as this user last contributed in March.
For the sake of other users needing answers to their questions, I would like to sever whatever connection this user has to some question-answering service, at least until the user comes back. But where is the connection? Just paging Sage (Wiki Ed) in case this is something from the Wikipedia Education program, but I don't think so. If not, then who? Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:49, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for helping with this, @Pppery! I agree—it would be great if the Mentorship system automatically removed inactive Mentors. While the WMF Growth team has been focused on other priorities, I’m hoping to make time soon to work on some of the top mentorship-related tasks. Here are a few that come to mind:
Feel free to chime in if you have any thoughts on the top priorities for improving Mentorship. And thanks again for assisting with so much of the essential work behind the scenes! KStoller-WMF (talk) 21:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
The particular editor you pointed out here is still around and about, incidentally.
There may be an extension feature request to reassign mentees automatically after some arbitrary activity date, and/or mark as inactive, or whatever else you can do in the panel (as measured by things in Special:Contribs). I guess we could spin up an admin bot for it. Izno (talk) 20:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
@Cyberwolf First problem is that the API address should end with "urls", not "url". Beyond that, you may run into CORS errors since VirusTotal doesn't send CORS headers, so you may have to run the API calls through a CORS proxy hosted somewhere like toolforge. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)18:06, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
@Cyberwolf I'd start by reading the toolforge documentation. There are many possible implementations, but a quick google search shows that cors-anywhere is popular. You'd need to follow the instructions at wikitech:Help:Toolforge/Node.js to set up a Node.js webservice and then install cors-anywhere. There are third-party CORS proxies available, but it's a security risk to use them because they could theoretically rewrite any of the returned data, steal your API key, etc. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)19:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
I tried 3rd party stuff (security isn’t really a focus cause an api key is free, data isn’t really valuable yet or ever will be) but it either needs the POST format which none support or its simply not possible to send information via the proxy ie api key, application, url etc. I have contacted VirusTotal and I’m hoping to get a response tomorrow as I believe the best approach is to not focus on client/middleman solutions but solve it on server side so no one has to do this •Cyberwolf•. talk?03:28, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Collaboration or task tracker utility
In a wiki project, I need to ping many users to work on a new draft. One of them takes it. Others need to be unpinged somehow. (like in phabricator: tag a task with "foobar", all members of foobar group get a notofication, one of them marks it as assigned to themselves, and others know that it already taken. There is a board showing list of untaken tasks.) Is there some such mechanism on-wiki? Thanks. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 10:44, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
1) The main issue with just using article talk pages: no way for a group of users to subscribe to a new article. Is this fixable? I would like to subscribe to all articles created at my wiki, or perhaps to all articles created at my wiki which belong to a certain category.
2) Is there a way to automate transclusion/inclusion of multiple pages? Say, include all pages which belong to a certain category. Or something, IDK. Usually an article is discussed at its talk page, but if nobody looks there (if 1 is not solved), need a way to post from article talk to a 'Mega All Discussions Village Pump'. May work for a small wiki. Hm.
How it happened: so when I replied to that thread, it automatically subscribed me, but the [subscribe] link suggested that I wasn't subscribed to the conversation.
DiscussionTools subscriptions use a section's first comment username+timestamp as the key, rather than something like the section title. When subscribing to this section, did you hit subscribe, edit your comment's timestamp, then hit subscribe again? Or cut and paste it from somewhere? I think something like that is more likely than a bug. Anyway, you can click "Unsubscribe" on the row that has the wrong timestamp to get rid of it. Hope this helps. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:29, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
Bulk page metadata tool
Is anyone aware of a Toolforge or WMCS tool that, given a list of pages (in my case especially templates), displays a table key metadata about each page (e.g. number of edits, date of creation, number of pages that transclude the page, etc)?
There are tools that can do this for one page at a time, but I'm not aware of any tools that can do it in bulk.
OSM has a separate license for satellite data for the sole purpose of mapping locations. We do not have such a free license (nor would bing give it to us) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:36, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
Why? I asked a question from Google here. Their answer was that the license is "from 3rd party providers". Why can't Wikipedia provide such license from "3rd party providers"?
Because, I think "satellite map" is not a highly modern technology nowadays. We use them very commonly for our everyday life.
Providing some satellite image is very vital, because it improves Wikipedia articles significantly.
Finally, I propose that Wikipedia pursue granting license from "3rd party providers". The same as Google, I think they grant permission to Wikipedia. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 08:32, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
How much funding do you think the Wikimedia Foundation should allocate towards this? It would be very expensive, and potentially disruptive to the satellite mapping industry. CMD (talk) 08:39, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
"How much funding" is a very good question. Please ask a third party map provider that how much Wikipedia should pay for satellite maps. If it is reasonable, I think it worth paying.
Wikipedia would not just be paying for satellite maps, it would be paying to relicence said maps into one of our applicable licences. That is a vastly different proposition. CMD (talk) 09:14, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
Notifications slow to load when new alert comes in
For several weeks (months, always, intermittently, I'm not sure), when a I get a new alert and click on the notifications bell it takes a really long time to load. I get the moving zebra stripes loading pattern for ages. Everything else on Wikimedia sites is snappy.
It takes so long that I open a new tab and guess which project/discussion caused the alert and visit it instead. When I come back, the notifications are loaded. Maybe visiting a new page resets the serving of the notifications?
If I click the bell with no new alerts, it loads fine. I can't really diagnose further as I don't get many alerts. I understand that notices and alerts now get displayed on minerva (I still call them alerts regardless), but this problem predates that.
I suspect it was a disambiguation link added to a template: the links table for the article was up to date with a previous state of the article; then Special:Diff/1287207784 changed a link from Sarajevo Clock Tower to the dab page Clock Tower; and then, before the job queue had a chance to update the links table for the article, you made your edit, which caused the page to be reparsed and the links table to be updated, and so that update reflected not only your edit but also the changes to links due to the changed template. Anomie⚔11:42, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
[No action needed, just FYI] MediaWiki internal error
Was using source editor on desktop (Firefox 137.0.2 (64-bit) on Windows 11) and encountered the below. Clicked the back button and didn't lose any progress, but thought I'd leave a copy of the error message anyway.
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [33d5e4d1-f222-4c11-93c4-41e9057a40e4] 2025-04-25 18:08:10: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
Now that Module:European and national party data and its templates (EUPP data, Political party data, and EU institution seats) are working and starting to be deployed, I am interested in translating them across wikis. I have already created the relevant modules, config files and templates, but results differ widely from one wiki to the other (see the test pages listed on the roadmap).
For now, PT alone works, NL works except composition bars, and for all others Wikidata qIDs are returned instead of values and composition bars don't work (ES is entirely broken). I assume this is because the wikidata/wd and composition bar modules are called differently from one wiki to the next.
What is the best way to move forward with this? Should a function take arguments and give out the right wikidata/wd/composition_bar calls with an IF based on the language used? Should we use the config file? Any ideas? Julius Schwarz (talk) 12:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)
After testing on Portuguese Wikipedia, where the calls to wikidata/wd and composition bar are the same as in English Wikipedia, I already made a few changes to base some checks on European parties' or member states' qID instead of on their name, which is now translation-proof.
However, there are a number of elements that are hard-coded into the module and that we should translate for users' input, but not in the module. For instance, the number of seats of the EPP in the European Parliament will be {{EUPP data|seats|EPP|EP}} in English Wikipedia (using the template as the structure is simpler), but {{EUPP data|seats|PPE|PE}}. The EPP -> PPE translation is now working. However, even we change EP -> PE in the config file, we still have checks on "EP" in the module's code. The same goes for other institutions, for special parameters ("none", "all", "thisparty", etc.), and for data_type ("seats", "seat share", "seat composition bar", "color", "individual members", etc.).
Hmm, I am not sure this applies. The issue at hand is not the recognition of countries' official languages but the languages used by Wikipedia. For instance, I am not trying to get this to work "for Spain", but on Spanish Wikipedia (Castillan) and not on Catalan Wikipedia -- at least at this point. Julius Schwarz (talk) 14:16, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
You can build language-specific translation tables. You can fetch the current wiki's content language tag with:
Use this_project_language as an index into a table of translations.
Assume that the party/institution-maps-to-qid tables are the default and are associated with language tag en. For your EP → PE example, your language specific translation table for language tag xx might look like:
localxlate_institutions_t={xx={-- translations for <language name> (xx)PE='EP',-- European Parliament; translated from xx language to default (en)},}
In main() you set institution from args_t[4]. Create a function that takes the current value of institution as an input. The function gets this_project_language and then looks in the appropriate translation table for a match. If found, replaces institution with the value from xlate_institutions_t[this_project_language][institution]. If not found, returns institution unchanged.
Thanks @Trappist the monk, this will be useful indeed, I will work on that. What about the calls to Wikidata/wd and to the composition bar template, any idea how to translate them from the module itself with ending up with one version per wiki language? Julius Schwarz (talk) 19:10, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
This template appears to cause problems in the Visual Editor. After inserting the template, typing any new text after the template causes the text to not render, but section headers on the next line remain. Needlesballoon (talk) 23:00, 24 April 2025 (UTC)
To reproduce use Visual editor. Type any text, then insert {{nbnd}}, then type some more text. As soon as you type the second digit following the template, every text since {{nbnd}} disappears from the editor. But if you publish the edit or review before publish, the text is actually there. Don't know what's causing this. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})18:27, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
The template does not have a TemplateData section in its documentation. Adding one is a good first step toward making it more compatible with VE. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:26, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
When I edit Counter (digital)#External links and — without making any changes — click on Show preview, I see the following below the expanded {{Commons category-inline}}:
Preview warning: Commons link does not match Wikidata
In stalinka, the relevant Russian interwiki is сталинка (as also shown in Wikidata), but when I hover over the Languages panel on the left in enwiki's article stalinka, it shows Башня Вулыха for Russian wiki. Yet Башня Вулыха doesn't seemingly appear in Wikidata which correctly shows Russian сталинка for Stalinka. What's happening? Brandmeistertalk16:10, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
I did some digging into the edit history. It appears that AWB's general fixes may have moved an intended interwiki link to the bottom of the page. I have asked for AWB to stop doing that, and I have restored the interwiki link into the prose. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:47, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
My eye was drawn a couple of days ago to vandalism by this IP. As seen at that contributions list, they made 3 vandalism/test edits, two to one article and then one to a third. All these edits were reverted immediately, however, only the third edit is marked as such in the contributions list. What causes this difference? Should the unmarked one also have the tag, in theory? Thanks, CMD (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
The software has a job that automatically runs on each edit comparing it to a chunk of the recent edits on each page, trying to see if there are any that match the hash of the page. False negatives are routine. Izno (talk) 17:53, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
Ah thanks, I guess that chunk didn't include the pre-vandalised version as it took place over two edits. CMD (talk) 01:04, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
I frequently mess up user pings, most commonly by forgetting to add my signature. The reason I so often forget to sign is that so many places (such as the edit box I'm typing into right now) add your signature automatically, so I've gotten out of the habit. And of course, the most obvious fix for that, adding your signature in a follow-up edit, doesn't work because the mention and the signature have to be in the same edit. This is an terrible UX. What can we do to fix it?
It seems to me that the requirement to do two different things at the same time, i.e. mention the username and sign, is the fundamental flaw. Why does the signature need to be there? Why couldn't this be done with something like a WP:MAGICWORD or a Lua module which stands on its own. The user-visible interface ({{ping}}, etc) would hide the implementation details. RoySmith(talk)11:08, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
Any method would need to avoid repinging if conversations are vandalised and restored, copied to another page, archived, etc. CMD (talk) 13:55, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
That doesn't seem too hard. There is already a list of old notifications stored in the database somewhere. Generate a unique id for each ping and before you deliver it, check to see if it has already been delivered. You could use a uuid, or hash some combination of (pageid, userid, timestamp, etc). RoySmith(talk)14:16, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
A magic word has been considered since a while ago. phab:T128535.
The reason the signature is required is because that's one of the surest ways to know the ping was intentional, without some magic word. If you do want to "follow up" because you forgot or elsewise, you can ping via edit summary these days. Izno (talk) 15:40, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
the signature is required is because that's one of the surest ways to know the ping was intentional That may have once been true, but in today's world of most signatures being auto-generated (like the one on this reply will be), that's silly. RoySmith(talk)18:54, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm not sure how the reply tool is particularly relevant to the points in your original comment, where you forgot to sign....
The reason that pinging requires the signature is in fact when you add a user link on arbitrary other pages, say, on your user page when you are adding a barnstar that someone else gave you. That's not fixed by checking a unique ID for each ping as in your suggestion just above.
Either way, your requested magic word task has been linked and I'd suggest you subscribe to it since you appear to feel strongly that there should be another way to mess pinging up. :D Izno (talk) 03:24, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
@RoySmith: adding your signature in a follow-up edit, doesn't work because the mention and the signature have to be in the same edit. If you link to the user in the edit summary of the follow-up edit (as I did in this edit), they will be pinged successfully. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)03:07, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Query about a suspicous-looking link
Earlier today I got this diff on my talk page, from a brand-new account that has it as its first and only edit. Now, nothing wrong with that...except the I recommend checking out this Wikipedia page link is to wikiped1a.org (and just that, no page listed). I think I smell a phishing scam? - The BushrangerOne ping only03:46, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
That site was registered four days ago. It is very suspicious.
As scanners found no immediate viruses, and anyhow web pages are heavily limited by browsers on what they have the right to do on their own, I took a peek, and indeed, it's literally just a mimic enwp login form. So phishing indeed.
(That sort of stuff exists on the internet. Google "url checker" or something like that. Of course, there's a question of trust, but the top results are usually not scams or hoaxes.) — Alien 3 3 306:37, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Hi all, never seen this before: at Mamluk Sultanate, all the templates seem to fail to display correctly about half-way down the page (roughly around the "Agriculture" section and below), with nearly all the inline citations, hatnotes, language templates, etc appearing as wikilinks to the template page instead (e.g. citations in the reference list literally appear as "Template:Cite book", even though the templates are filled out in the source code).
The only significant thing that's happened to the page recently is semi-protection ([37]), but I can't imagine how that would matter. It doesn't seem to be an issue with the code/content (that I can see); when I look at older versions of the article that were definitely displaying properly at the time (e.g. Feb 2025), the problem still shows up. The issue also shows up when I use another browser and another device, including in mobile view, and I don't see it on other pages so far. I tried purging the page, in case that made any difference, but no luck.
Looks like it's exceeding a server limit on parsing: Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes. See WP:PEIS for some information and possible solutions. DMacks (talk) 17:28, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
That's been there since March 13th, though I guess it could be job queue lag. Sidenote: could someone please close that discussion already? It's long stale and overdue for closure. * Pppery *it has begun...17:42, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
Thank you to everyone. So if I understood correctly, all {{transl}} instances should be replaced by {{transliteration}}, which will solve the problem and will need to happen in any case? R Prazeres (talk) 18:34, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
Your understanding is correct. It will probably take a day or three to get some automated help on making those changes. I'm waiting for the dust to settle (seeing if anyone complains), so it doesn't look like I'm requesting a third party to make a controversial edits on my behalf. DMacks (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminders...I handled some by hand completely but didn't realize how many places some were used when I started. There doesn't seem to be a clean way of marking for simple replacement...not a merge or subst. Easy enough to list in the holding cell. But given the existing transclusion mess (what started this thread), I'm loathe to add even more things into the template pages themselves:( DMacks (talk) 23:42, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
Understandable. The deletion of redirects, but not the actual templates, probably doesn't concern the average reader anyway, so a notice may not be necessary. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})10:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
MediaWiki internal error
Editing Japanese Communist Party, I got a "media wiki internal error", so I tried to post here about it, and instead of arriving here I got a similar error
MediaWiki internal error.
Original exception: [0d3da270-7b6e-4ed2-a2a8-66bef6751ae3] 2025-04-27 19:42:18: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"
Exception caught inside exception handler.
Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.
A few moments pass, and I see that my edit to the JCP page went through, and I can now access this page. Posting here for information. DuncanHill (talk) 19:47, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, this has been going on for a bit. See for example "[No action needed, just FYI] MediaWiki internal error" from yesterday. The WMF folks know about it and are working on it (but I can't find the right phab ticket at the moment). RoySmith(talk)23:11, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with the codebase, but just based on the exception messages, my guess is that it probably is. Theres's a bunch of threads in Archive 219 that touch on this and reference several related phab tickets. I'll just add that this is an intermittent problem in a large complex system. Such things are usually difficult to debug. RoySmith(talk)13:46, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
That's odd
I'm using Chrome on my laptop, and I just noticed that when I try to type double square brackets, [[, on en-WP like in this comment or the edit summary section or the search box, it turns into this signː ʽ
I don't know why, but the character ʽ is U+02BD "Modifier Letter Reversed Comma". Are you saying it only happens when typing directly into an edit window (or edit summary or search box) at enwiki? What if you visit some other website where you can enter text: what happens there? You might see what extensions are installed. Johnuniq (talk) 05:57, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
@Johnuniq Apart from sv-WP, I've tested Commons and searchboxes on google and CNN, and they all behave normally. I also noticed that there are more signs that turn into other stuff, (single) curly bracket { becomes ̪ Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:22, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Ok, this window (the Reply-window) has a discreet dropdown in the lower right corner (icon seems to be a keyboard). I set that to "Use native keyboard" and that seems to have done the trick. [[ {{ @ is back to normal. Maybe I clicked it without noticing. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
You can also switch between the native keyboard and the other input methods by pressing Ctrl+M, which is much easier to do accidentally than clicking the icon, and it's probably what happened. I feel like this happens to someone at least every few months. Matma Rextalk15:10, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Converting Commons image to fair use
I've sadly had to nominate some images for deletion on Commons, as they are still in copyright until 2030. One could be used here as fair use here in the meantime. Do we have tool that will handle that, before deletion takes place, to save me from having to download it to my machine, and then re-upload it here, copying and pasting all the metadata? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits13:55, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features a cluster of redlinked wikiproject class and importance rating categories that can't be created at the names they're appearing at, as they contain internal redundancies such as "Draft-Class Draft-Class" or "pages articles" or "X importance of X importance". These all relate specifically to Wikiproject Dungeons & Dragons, but as far as I can tell they're not being caused by that Wikiproject's banner itself, because their contents aren't pages but bluelinked class-rating subcategories that aren't similarly malformed, and those subcategories only have {{Quality and importance category}} on them rather than any template specific to that Wikiproject. But I can't figure out a plausible reason why that general, widely used template would be causing this nonsense only on Dungeons & Dragons-specific categories, as I can't see any code in that template that would specifically cause this on Dungeons & Dragons pages without breaking anything else — and that template, further, is even breaking the name of the Wikiproject to something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Mid-importance in its explicatory text.
So I need to ask if somebody can look into finding out where this error is coming from and how to fix it so that the redlinks go away. The implicated categories are:
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
Event organizers who host collaborative activities on multiple wikis, including Bengali, Japanese, and Korean Wikipedias, will have access to the CampaignEvents extension this week. Also, admins in the Wikipedia where the extension is enabled will automatically be granted the event organizer right soon. They won't have to manually grant themselves the right before they can manage events as requested by a community.
The release of the next major version of Codex, the design system for Wikimedia, is scheduled for 29 April 2025. Technical editors will have access to the release by the week of 5 May 2025. This update will include a number of breaking changes and minor visual changes. Instructions on handling the breaking and visual changes are documented on this page. Pre-release testing is reported in T386298, with post-release issues tracked in T392379 and T392390.
Users of Wiki Replicas will notice that the database views of ipblocks, ipblocks_ipindex, and ipblocks_compat are now deprecated. Users can query the block and block_target new views that mirror the new tables in the production database instead. The deprecated views will be removed entirely from Wiki Replicas in June, 2025.
The 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which brings the global technical community together to connect, brainstorm, and hack existing projects, will take place from May 2 to 4th, 2025, at Istanbul, Turkey.
And while I am here, how is it possible that Special:TopicSubscriptions keeps showing that I am subscribed to a topic when I already unsubscribed via the section header? Looking at the unsubscribe link on Special:TopicSubscriptions and comparing that with the unsubscribe link in the section header reveals the one on Special:TopicSubscriptions is:
So it looks like I somehow got subscribed to a comment and not a section, How and why?
It means I can't just open a bunch of links from Special:TopicSubscriptions and then unsubscribe via the section header but have to check the page and then go back to Special:TopicSubscriptions to unsubscribe.
Does that mean there are actually 2 subscriptions, one to the section and one to the comment? That seems unlikely because when I unsubscribe from the comment via Special:TopicSubscriptions then I am no longer subscribed to the section when visiting the page (it shows [subscribe] not [unsubscribe]).
Shouldn't unsubscribing via a section header also unsubscribe from all comments within that section?
And ideally unwatching a page should unsubscribe from all sections (and therefore comments) on that talkpage (and perhaps watching a page should do the same because if you watch the entire page there is no need to also watch a specific section on that page).
action=dtunsubscribe actually ignores the section parameter, I think we just overlooked the fact that we're passing it unnecessarily in one case. I sent a quick patch for that: [38].
So, the only difference is different commentname parameters. You can input them into Special:FindComment to find out more about what happened to these sections:
So it seems to me that these were actually two different discussions with the same section title (although you commented in both of them and subscribed to both). Matma Rextalk02:27, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
Watching and subscribing are completely independent. From what I remember, we made them that way because we were being very cautious not to mess up anyone's established workflows with the watchlist when adding the new subscriptions feature, but alas this ends up being a bit awkward when you're using both features. Matma Rextalk02:27, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
Reference 52 in Vince Gill has a template error in the archive-url section. This seems to be because of the original url having an asterisk in it. I can't for the life of me find a work around. Anyone got a suggestion? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?)18:56, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
@The ed17 Of course it is possible from a technical perspective. However, I would certainly anticipate some talk page annoyance given the breadth with which this template is apparently used without a wider consensus gathering effort. Izno (talk) 21:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
@Izno: I'd considered that, but it's transcluded into 2800 pages. That's more than a few but far less than e.g. Template:Sidebar. If you can give me a blueprint for removing the fields myself, I'd be happy to take on the BRD burden. Ed[talk][OMT]22:16, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
How can we help get the Score extension's vastly superior SVG output deployed?
Hi, does anyone else actually
(care) about the Score extension? Sometimes it seems like I am operating in a vacuum. Progress on features has ground to a halt, and sadly it is being left to rot on the vine. There is a ticket for making it output vastly improved SVG instead of poor resolution raster PNG images T49578, which has been open for twelve years; I merged code for it two years ago, and it's ready to deploy. If you care about music notation on Mediawiki projects (WikiSource uses it a fair bit too), we need to get the "deploy new version into production" ticket T385404 progressed. What are we to do? How can we get this done? I don't want anyone to pile onto tickets and harass the engineers because they're busy and it's nobody's fault, but perhaps a show of hands as a few upvotes, polite words of encouragement or offers to help on the ticket? It's so frustrating to have it ready to go to just languish in limbo for years. — Jon (talk) 22:54, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
I mean, a lot of that is the typical state of development. I'd suggest getting on wikitech IRC and asking the same or similar questions, and someone can maybe answer. Being a greasy wheel in the right places (and Phab is rarely the right place IMO) is the way to get things done, as in most of open source. Izno (talk) 23:00, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello! I am interested in changing the editor font to IBM Plex Mono but when I set it as the global font with * in common.css it doesn’t apply to the editor. Is it possible to change the font there? Macaw*18:01, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Ok, that didn't work it also dosn't change the font in areas like the preferences page; can you look at User:Macaw*/common.css and tell me if there is any issues or if it is just not possible. Thanks for all your help so far. Macaw*02:26, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
Is there an edit summary search tool that allows searching of all edits, not only those of a specific editor? Nikkimaria (talk) 23:44, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
Nope, there isn't. And unfortunately, due to the way the Wikipedia database is,creating such a tool would be impossible for performance reasons. See my discussion with Cryptic about this sort of thing at Wikipedia:Request a query/Archive 2 § Searching for edit summary text over the revision table. The discussion is from 2021 and I'm by know means an expert here, but I'm pretty certain nothing has significantly changed since then ... (a) I can't find any evidence from places like the MediaWiki.org manual on the comment database table and (b) database schema changes are complicated and widely announced. The only reason the edit summary search tool works at all is that it searches by the contributor's name. Edit summarry searches on edits made within a particular time period up to a year (or in changes made in the last thirty days, that are in the recentchanges table) could be possible (if there aren't too many results) but may be very slow. Graham87 (talk) 02:21, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
Help with image placement on article
I am having difficulty with the placement of an image at Grand Prix de France (figure skating). When shown in preview mode, the image of the magazine cover is in the right place, but when published, the image appears at the bottom of the History section. What am I doing wrong, or can anyone help me out, please? Thank you so much for any assistance. Bgsu98(Talk)07:14, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
Personally, I would question the need for four photos of gold, silver, and bronze medallists in the lead section - I would have used just one; either the most recent medallists, or those of the inaugural competition. I would then have put that photo into the infobox: {{Infobox recurring event}} provides |image= and |caption= parameters which may be used for this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
I have arranged them into a gallery, which seems to solve the immediate problem, although I would prefer to have them down the right hand side of the article. (BTW, the reason for four photos is the four different events held at the competition.) I do appreciate your assistance. Bgsu98(Talk)13:18, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
OK then, if you want all four images in the lead, what I would do is: go back to the version as it was when you raised this thread. Then add {{stack begin}} immediately before the infobox, and add {{stack end}} immediately after the fourth image, before the start of the text. I have demonstrated this at the sandbox. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:10, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
Without url-status live cite template defaults to archive first
If you don't stick a |url-status= in a cite template then it defaults to the archive url; why? Shouldn't that be the other way around? Polygnotus (talk) 17:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
[e58f25ca-7f21-4e6f-b057-1f2eda683533] 2025-05-03 15:21:42: Fatal exception of type "MediaWiki\Revision\RevisionAccessException"
at the moment, check if the page is transcluding Template:Purple. Other than editing the page to no longer transclude the template, I don't know of any fix for this until WMF people get a chance to look at it. I tried editing or deleting the template, but everything failed with the same exception. If Special:EditPage/Template:Purple starts working, that probably means they've fixed the problem. Anomie⚔15:50, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
@Anomie Hm, that is weird, Nihiltres removes {{pp-template|small=yes}} and instead of storing the <text> properly it uses a selfclosing <text> with a hash that can't be found elsewhere in the export? Is there an oversighted revision or something? Polygnotus (talk) 17:41, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
@Redrose64 If you do an export you can get the revision after that one too. But the weird thing is that it has a self-closing <text> and the SHA1 hash is not used previously as far as I can see (but I am not an oversighter/admin). Usually when it is a "new" revision that hasn't been stored before it stores the entire revision in <text> and if it is the same as an existing revision it uses the SHA1 hash to refer to it. Polygnotus (talk) 18:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
The phab ticket appears to show that database rows have been deleted, some of which where still in use. That might explain why the history no longer makes any sense. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°18:43, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
You can still run 'What links here'[41], most articles just display the error message. Any article that doesn't display the message will if you purge it, so it's only a matter of time before all those articles are broken. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°18:46, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
I'm guessing it was transcluded into American English by a template of another article, as that article is fixed now and I can't see any related edit in the articles history. I would say to wait for the WMF to fix the issue, but that doesn't appear to be taking it's time. For some articles, Diego de Almagro for example, it requires a minor change and I'm not sure it's even truly necessary, others like Chinese classifier it's usage is complex and should probably be left for the fix. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°20:34, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
Patched, rather than fixed. It appears that Zabe (talk·contribs) has gone back to the most recent viewable revision, edited that to remove an undesirable blank line at the top, also the redundant {{pp-template}}, and saved that. The intervening versions remain corrupt. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:22, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
An ideal answer might sound something like "As of 2025, we estimate that 3% of the 7,003,385 mainspace articles are disambiguation pages, 1% are unsourced, 5% contain only general references or inline citations not using footnotes, 75% contain at least one ref tag with a detectable citation template, and 16% contain refs but no detectable citation template".
I've tried an estimate with hastemplate:cite_book in Special:Search and come up with about 5.3 million articles for the four basic citation templates (cite web/news/book/journal). This is probably a good enough estimate, but if there are better ways to find this, I'd be happy to have better numbers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Since all of the cs1|2 templates use Module:Citation/CS1, this link should give a close approximation of how may article use that module – at this writing 6.1 million-ish.
That's close enough. Does anyone remember offhand whether dab pages are included in the 6.98 million articles? (If not, then that's a bit more than 78% of articles; if so, then it's closer to 81%. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, disambiguation pages with references would be considered as an error. Editors unfamiliar with WP:DDD may occasionally add references. older ≠ wiser19:53, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
Don't know why it's taken me this long to ask, but I can't copy and paste links when using the reply tool, it turns the link https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315698014/world-monarchies-dynasties-john-middleton into "World Monarchies and Dynasties | John Middleton | Taylor & Francis eBo". To get round this I've been copying the link into notes.io and then copy-pasting part of the link, ie. "ttps://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315698014/world-monarchies-dynasties-john-middleton". Does anyone else have this problem?
Sidenote, an improvement to the reply tool could be that using {{od}} removes all indents? At the moment the indents stay the same as when you don't use it. Kowal2701 (talk) 14:37, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Kowal2701, do you happen to be using the Edge browser? To disable this behavior: go to Settings → section "Share, copy, and paste" → select "Plain text". Hope this helps. —andrybak (talk) 14:41, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Without changing the settings, you can also try using Ctrl-Shift-V to paste plain text, or right mouse click -> Paste as -> Plain text. isaacl (talk) 15:13, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
This problem happens because when you copy "https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315698014/world-monarchies-dynasties-john-middleton" from the Edge address bar, Edge actually copies it as "World Monarchies and Dynasties | John Middleton | Taylor & Francis eBo" (HTML text with a link), which confuses our tools. It actually works in reply tool's visual mode; but in source mode, the formatting is removed, and that leaves just "World Monarchies and Dynasties | John Middleton | Taylor & Francis eBo". VisualEditor also has problems with it, because it is configured on Wikipedia to remove external links from pasted text (this is reported as T341281). Matma Rextalk17:49, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-19
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Admins can now choose which namespaces are permitted for Event Registration via Community Configuration (documentation). The default setup is for event registration to be permitted in the Event namespace, but other namespaces (such as the project namespace or WikiProject namespace) can now be added. With this change, communities like WikiProjects can now more easily use Event Registration for their collaborative activities.
Editors can now transclude the Collaboration List on a wiki page (documentation). The Collaboration List is an automated list of events and WikiProjects on the wikis, accessed via Special:AllEvents (example). Now, the Collaboration List can be added to all sorts of wiki pages, such as: a wiki mainpage, a WikiProject page, an affiliate page, an event page, or even a user page.
Developers who use the moment library in gadgets and user scripts should revise their code to use alternatives like the Intl library or the new mediawiki.DateFormatter library. The moment library has been deprecated and will begin to log messages in the developer console. You can see a global search for current uses, and ask related questions in this Phabricator task.
Developers who maintain a tool that queries the Wikidata term store tables (wbt_*) need to update their code to connect to a separate database cluster. These tables are being split into a separate database cluster. Tools that query those tables via the wiki replicas must be adapted to connect to the new cluster instead. Documentation and related links are available. [42]
The latest Chart Project newsletter is available. It includes updates on preparing to expand the deployment to additional wikis as soon as this week (starting May 6) and scaling up over the following weeks, plus exploring filtering and transforming source data.
Hi. I've lost the ability to delete. It was fine yesterday but today the option has disappeared from the "Page" drop-down. This isn't the first time it's happened. Last time this happened, all the suggested solutions failed but the option was restored without explanation. Deb (talk) 08:14, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
If it happens again then try Special:DeletePage or add ?safemode=1 to the url of a wiki page. It doesn't fix the original problem but you can probably delete while the problem persists. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:10, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
One odd thing is it looks like you are 2x or even 3x loading a related userscript in (via your global.js, commons.js, and monobook.js). May want to review that. — xaosfluxTalk10:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
@Svartner I tried testing the special characters menus in Vector-2022, Vector-Legacy, and Monobook, and they all (both top and bottom menus, on Enwiki) seem to work: Screenshot. (I also tested them in the visual editor, with the same results). I wonder if it might be related to other settings that you use. If you're still experiencing this problem, please (1) clarify if you're talking about the top or bottom special characters menu in the source editor, or the top-menu in the visual editor, (2) try testing with all your gadgets/user-scripts disabled via safemode=1 (e.g. this link), (3) perhaps link to a screenshot of the problem, if it's more complex to describe in words. -- I hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
When I do so, Works for me in all skins, including Vector legacy. Sometimes, there's a slight delay before the box appears, but that often happens with JavaScript. There might be some collision between the charinsert gadget and some other gadget that you have enabled. Other than that, it's going to be something at your end - a browser setting, most likely. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
I'd like to make a userbox for my collection that generates a "This editor has been thanked ____ times", and which auto-populates the blank with the number of thanks received in the "Thanks log" (it would be a real pain to maintain manually for me). Is this feasible? BD2412T18:54, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Not a full solution, but monitor WP:QUARRY#Number of thanks received for possible help in that direction. I suspect a module could be written to run it and return the value, and then either wrap it in a template or invoke it from your userbox, but you would still need to write the module. Anyway, this is a starting point. Mathglot (talk) 20:13, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks. This is not just for me, by the way, I have seen another editor keeping a manual count of their thanks received, and it struck me that this was a good metric to post. BD2412T20:24, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Indeed. I am interested in a subset of this, involving being thanked for a revert. Sometimes when I revert an edit, depending on some combination of the user's level of good-faith editing, amount of effort they expended on their edit, and their newcomer status, I will leave a very detailed edit summary, both to let them down gently about why I reverted their edit, and to try to link relevant P&G and explain how to avoid the issue in the future. Some of those editors then come back and thank me for reverting them (or, more likely, for the long explanation). In any case, that is a particularly gratifying kind of thanks to receive. If your user box works out, it would be nice to have it be extensible in various directions, such that it would, as an option, provide the "thanks for reverting me" count, and link it to the Quarry query so you could execute it and see the list. I can imagine other thanks-interested users might have other subsets of thanks they might want to examine, and your user box solution, if it works out, could, I hope, be the baseline for several flavors of thanks queries. Good luck, and I am very interested to see how this develops. (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
At worst, one could very easily create a userbox template that says, "See how many times this user has been thanked", and link 'how many times' to the Quarry query, and 'been thanked' to the first 50 in the log. Find an existing userbox with colors and styles that you like, and some new text for it, or create one, and I can update it to provide the links. Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, that is something. Is there a way another editor could personalize it to themselves? Or would they just need to request a new query? BD2412T23:50, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
I think Cryptic's suggestion @23:14 above is the way to go. I think we probably have what we need to get you something closer or even exactly what you want, and we should probably adjourn here and move to your Talk page to deal with the details of implementing a new {{database report}} for you that other VPT readers won't be interested in. That said, keep monitoring this page in case someone comes up with an even better idea, but failing that, I think we are done here. Rendezvous at your Talk page. Mathglot (talk) 01:12, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
To make this into a service for everyone: editors sign up with their username listed on a page. This page is read by a bot running on Toolforge or anywhere. For each name the bot retrieves the Quarry results once a day, and posts the results to a Commons .tab page (JSON object). The JSON is retrieved by a Module on Enwiki using mw.ext.data.get(), which displays the results in the userbox, via a template that invokes the Module. Since the JSON is hosted on Commons, it would be accessible to all 300+ wikis, and so the list of usernames in step 1 could be hosted on metawiki to make into a multi-site service. -- GreenC01:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi! On Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (video game)#Reception, all the review scores made by custom reviewers are blank. I have 11 reviewers that aren't named by the template, so they get custom names. The template docs says it only supports 10 but it's the same if I delete the 11th one. If I insert a dummy score like "rev1score = Test Score 123" it's still blank. I don't know what else to do! Is it possible to show these scores, and to show 11 reviewers? See also my minor citation errors and tell me if there's a better location for those URLs. Thanks! — Smuckola(talk)21:01, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
For some reason, the template requires the "S" in |rev1Score= to be upper-cased, unlike nearly all templates. I fixed the parameter names for you. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:34, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
Dual right-float interaction: 'Pinned' box showing up in wrong Teahouse discussion
If you go to the WP:Teahouse, the top discussion, § Assistance for new editors unable to post here is pinned with the {{Pinned}} template, which displays a small, right-floated box identifying the archive suppression. However, the 'Pinned' box appears down the page, currently near the bottom of the second discussion. This is also where the long, right-floated Table of Contents ends. It seems clear that there is some kind of unintended interaction of two right-floated elements, which I would have expected to see with the inner one right-floated within the outer one, not after it.
Anyway, I tried various adjustments usings breaks and clears and other things, and was not able to get the 'Pinned' box back to the top discussion where it belongs. CSS hero needed. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 09:21, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Matma Rex, many thanks for that, and especially for the BFC link, which kind of unlocked a door for me. My knowledge of the box model was pretty good, but I was sadly lacking in BFC and its effects, and have been reading up. I came up with an alternate solution of defining that div as a flow-root which feels like attacking it top-down, so to speak, instead of using overflow:hidden which feels like mopping up after, sort of. This works, too (at least on V2010). Can you have a quick look and see if this seems like a decent approach, or should we go back to yours? I am still reading (and found several other good sources, including this one, which works for me) but your link to MDN is what got me started. And thanks for the phab links, that's my next stop.
Qwerfjkl, I am on Vector legacy, in fact. Can you have a quick look at the Teahouse again, to make sure that my recent change in approach did not break it for V22? I am a neophyte in BFC, but I need to get on board, and this is helping me a lot. Mathglot (talk) 18:34, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Just noticed your caniuse link: what a great resource for looking at browser compatibility issues. Only, they don't have a column for the best browser (ahem) which is Vivaldi! Also, that took me to something called the clearfix hack; I presume that was what your original fix was, right? Mathglot (talk) 20:00, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
There are two varieties of clear fix. One just adds a thing that clears like {{clear}} to the end of the container, which is employed here and there for floating things but can make downstream behavior kind of hard to predict for a template user (and may add undesirable padding). The second is to add some CSS :after the element you're trying to ensure clears the entirety of the internal elements, but that requires TemplateStyles. Generally, flow-root is probably the right approach today if you don't want to add a clear fix, and has been in use in a few widely used templates for a bit now. (At worst, there is some non-optimal display in browsers that are presently old enough soon to be in the MediaWiki Basic support level, but nothing that would prevent a user from reading the text.) And using flow-root directly makes the natural upgrade to flow root at a much later date easy to know and perform trivially. That said, I'm pretty sure I've bumped into some pecularities here and there with flow-root, or at least have felt tweaked by it. Izno (talk) 20:29, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
As for Vivaldi, it it obviously a Chromium browser and as such does not need separate tracking from the multiple other Chromium browsers. ;) One thing to look for besides MDN for quality of support is the statements at the top of MDN and elsewhere that call specific properties out as "baseline", for example MDN for display has "Baseline Widely available *", which can be more or less trusted to hit a significant chunk of our audience. Izno (talk) 20:31, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Get a sneak peak and help shape the Visual Editor user designs
Help us test the new design prototypes by participating in user sessions – sign up here to receive an invite. We're especially hoping to speak with people from underrepresented and diverse groups. If that's you, please consider signing up! No prior or extensive editing experience is required. User sessions will start May 14th.
We plan to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We’ll reach out to wikis for piloting in time for deployments. Creators and maintainers of reference-related tools and templates will be contacted beforehand as well.
If only you hadn't decided that VE's shortcomings meant you had to change from the straightforward syntax people had hammered out over years of discussion to a previously rejected option that tries to shove wikitext into a tag parameter. Anomie⚔12:41, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
Yes, the previous approach of wrapping a subreference citation in <ref>...</ref> with a parameter identifying the main citation was much cleaner and more flexible. It also allowed for generating metadata. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:36, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
I've commented there already, and you ignored me there too. I read your reasoning there as "VE has shortcomings and we don't want to fix it, so we're choosing a worse solution". Anomie⚔11:20, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Sorry for leaving your comment [45] without a reply, I was on leave until this week [46]. Please note that WMDE Technical Wishes is a small team dedicated to improve certain MediaWiki features. We do not have the resources to take on VisualEditor, that's what the Wikimedia Foundation is doing. We were faced with the option to stop our work on sub-referencing indefinitely – despite having worked on it for years – or continue with a different approach. Based on community feedback from different projects we decided to do the latter. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 12:19, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
I can't speak for Anomie, but personally, I worry with a new feature like this that it will be deployed half-baked, as the Visual Editor and Vector 2022 and dark mode have been, and then the developers will move on to another project, even as volunteer editors dutifully report bugs in Phabricator. If the Wikimedia Foundation has a lot of resources and still lets the Visual Editor and Vector 2022 languish for years with unresolved bugs that make life difficult for editors who need to fix or work around problems, how is the WMDE going to address the inevitable bugs that are reported when editors get their hands on this new feature and start making a mess? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:32, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Will there be a way to make it as user-friendly as {{sfn}} (which creates nice and readable wikitext) by suitable wrapper templates? And how would something like {{sfnm}} work with sub-references? —Kusma (talk) 13:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
sfn and sfnm would need to be provided the parent's name in addition to their current information, and the general references would need to be moved into a <references> or equivalent (at a minimum). At which point it is a serious question whether even to continue using sfn on any specific page. There is no template-use-wide promotion from one system to the other without bot or script or manual effort. Izno (talk) 15:40, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
So there's no way to make an intelligent version of {{sfn}}? The "parent" of {{sfn|Foo|Bar|2019|pp=3–5}} should obviously be CITEREFFooBar2019, which would need to be put somewhere as reference but that should not be necessary to specify again. I don't quite understand how {{sfnm}} could be emulated, though.
I can't personally see how the new system would be generally superior to use of our current sfn (but I can see that it would greatly improve the citation sections of German Wikipedia, where the use of citation templates is much less common than here). It will be just another citation style with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. —Kusma (talk) 16:43, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
There is no way to make an intelligent version of sfn that is guaranteed to work into the arbitrary future, even if it potentially works now, based on statements already made by the parsing team. And based on how strip markers work, I am pretty sure it would not be something that could be used today.
sfnm would need a new additional syntax, 1ap=Parent_Name or similar, just the same as sfn.
I can't personally see how the new system would be generally superior to use of our current sfn There are two primary preferable factors.
It would not rely on templates, making it much more suitable for large pages. Eventually, we may even be able to remove the IDs that the cite modules output, benefiting the largest pages (WP:PEIS would be reduced).
It integrates well with the Cite display. References in the reference list will be listed in the context of their parent, rather than arbitrarily located. And also, there will be integration with reference popups, so that you can see both the child and parent reference at the same time.
I think the second factors are the pretty killer feature that doom sfn, but being able to decrease the output of our citation module would be another win. And would coincidentally fix the issue that a number of Wikipedians think is a non-issue with respect to ouptutting duplicate IDs on many pages. Izno (talk) 16:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
I haven't actually met WP:PEIS in articles yet, so I don't think it is a huge issue. And the code looks a bit messy so I am sure people will use suitable wrapper templates anyway. For the second point, the proposal replaces one arbitrary ordering (by the point where a specific reference including page number is first used in an article) by a different arbitrary ordering (by the point where a specific reference is first used, and these are then sorted by where the specific page number is first used). It is just a new and additional citation style. I don't think the features are "killer" enough to convince the people at FAC to make this the default in less than a decade or two. —Kusma (talk) 18:27, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
@Kusma I monitor this search, and there are usually half a dozen or so articles per day that exceed the limit and need to be fixed. I'd say that the majority of my edits these days are fixing WP:PEIS errors in mainspace. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)19:08, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
@Kusma Sure, there are lots of longer pages where a majority of the post-expand include size is citation templates. In many of these cases this could be fixed by using {{#invoke:cite|web}} in place of {{cite web}} (the former has half the include size of the latter), but that's usually a last resort since it makes the source "ugly". Usually, if an article has so many citations that the citation templates are the problem (and we're often talking close to 1,000 citations), it's time to split the article anyway. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)21:22, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Neither id nor anchor worked properly inside table
Hello. For some reason, the mobile search bar seems to be having issues with some pages, where it refuses to show them as a partial title match. It seems completely random which pages are affected, but try typing Kirby and the Forgotten Land or Georgette Heyer into the search bar and you will see what I mean. This issue affects both desktop and mobile. The weirdest part is that not every page is affected, only some. If anybody knows what is causing this, please let me know. Thanks, QuicoleJR (talk) 17:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
20711499 Big Daddy G: FOUND
23148143 List of Salyut expeditions: FOUND
63868331 Sinicia gens: MISSING
1517496 Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church (Ottawa): FOUND
61762773 Francesco d'Errico: MISSING
40368221 Dasht-e Ahmad: MISSING
1806748 Doumbi Fakoly: FOUND
57248169 Thomas Kavali: MISSING
14070558 Celtic academy: FOUND
63368386 Árpád Érsek: MISSING
27371437 Antliff: FOUND
10393060 Paul Masnick: FOUND
43161650 Squash at the 2014 Commonwealth Games – Women's doubles: MISSING
20474762 Ponca Reservation: FOUND
17987330 Qiu Fazu: FOUND
15262879 Diocese of Killala: FOUND
7246021 Star-Spangled Banner (flag): MISSING
30371379 Amasa Day House: FOUND
9930252 Iosif Chișinevschi: MISSING
2011429 Wafangdian: FOUND
4302235 Lillias Hamilton: MISSING
67844683 Tachidiidae: MISSING
57345495 Ceraticelus bulbosus: MISSING
40275632 Blacksburg Historic District: MISSING
40898555 Djiboutian art: MISSING
A bad actor creates an account with the now available username Example Jr.
That bad actor, now able to edit User:Example Jr/script.js, places whatever code they wish to steal accounts, cause mass vandalism (if the script is widely used), etc.
Can this happen? Or do I not understand? I know that the page would be moved (because of the name change) but they could remove the redirect. loserhead (talk) 16:26, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
@Loserhead for WMF wikis at least, ordinary users should not be able to create new accounts with the now vacated username. A "bad actor" as described in step 4 would be a trusted user in one of the many Foundation wikis (holding the override-antispoof userright). – robertsky (talk) 16:41, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes, it's valid JavaScript. But it's also recognized as a redirect by the software, as illustrated by the fact that you had to use {{-r}} to link directly to it. CSS pages work similarly with a specially marked @import, and Lua modules with return require. Anomie⚔22:51, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
So, I recently found that a new user's talk page: User talk:Epic failure72 is caught in Mediawiki:Titleblacklist due to .*Epic fail.* in it, meaning that they won't be able to create pages in their own userspace and user talk space. I believe that the blacklisted title should also blacklist usernames automatically, or there should be a way to exempt users from titleblacklist within their own userspace. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})12:05, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
Yes, just those in the title blacklist at Meta. Those that are in the local blacklist prevent page creation but do not prevent username creation. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})13:57, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
Since SUL, the local title blacklist can't block account creation, because someone could easily get around it by creating their account on Meta. The only other way for it to possibly work would be for all 800-some active projects' blacklists to apply, which would be challenging to check for every creation. Anomie⚔22:47, 9 May 2025 (UTC)
@NorthernWinds don't worry about the language links in the future. New articles are usually picked up quite fast by bots and editors on wikidata side. If it is still an issue editing on wikidata for you, you might want to apply for WP:IPBE there. – robertsky (talk) 09:16, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
I'm running a bot on Toolforge, but suddenly I can't SSH into login.toolforge.org any longer. The issue persists even after generating a new key and registering it to my developer account.
The server accepts the key, but then immediately closes the connection. Has anyone else experienced this or know what might be going on? Dragoniez (talk)07:15, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
Can the template list be closed by default in the editing window?
Note: Actually, it is just after the edit window, and is labeled "Templates used in this preview".
It is really annoying to have to scroll by a huge list of templates (especially in country list articles) before I can see changes, or see the full preview.
Mediawiki remembers whether the template list was collapsed or not from before. Most of the time though I don't pay attention because I am not on country list pages, and the template list is much shorter. And I may have looked for some template on that short list.
But then I happen to be working on a country list page, and have this problem. I would like some CSS to keep the template list closed by default regardless of my last use of it. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:58, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, the keyboard shortcut isn't sticky. Fwiw, I don't think this is something you can do with CSS, but there might be a javascript solution. Afraid I'm not personally familiar enough with the editor to make any specific suggestions for that, tho. -- Avocado (talk) 18:59, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
The keyboard shortcut is not working for me at all on Firefox on Win 10 Pro.
It works for me in Firefox on Mac -- or at least, the "fold all"/"unfold all" ones do. You do have to click into the edit box first, which sometimes gets me. (And this is in the 2010 source editor, fwiw, with syntax highlighting enabled.) -- Avocado (talk) 23:19, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
I see the problem. We are talking about 2 different things. You are talking about within the edit window.
I am talking about the template dropdown list after the edit window labeled "Templates used in this preview". I added a note at the top of the thread. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:38, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
The "Templates used in this preview" list, and the other collapsible lists below the edit form, should remember their state. If you collapse it, then it should start off collapsed the next time you open the editor. Matma Rextalk00:07, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
Timeshifter knows that. They wrote I would like some CSS to keep the template list closed by default regardless of my last use of it., so what they want is for the collapse state to be forgotten, and re-initialised to collapsed. The related HTML is
which makes the triangles point to the right when the list is collapsed. Collapsing and uncollapsing are done by means of some JavaScript, which:
if the current state is collapsed: removes the mw-editfooter-toggler-collapsed and mw-collapsed classes, and also removes the display: none; declaration
if the current state is uncollapsed: restores the mw-editfooter-toggler-collapsed and mw-collapsed classes, and also restores the display: none; declaration
The presence or absence of the mw-editfooter-toggler-collapsed class determines whether the triangle points right or down.
The presence or absence of the display: none; declaration declaration determines whether the list is hidden or visible.
I can write a CSS rule (or two) which will make the list start off collapsed, but the collapsing would then be permanent; I think that JavaScript is required to then make it uncollapsed on click. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:42, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
If you can get it to always be collapsed when I load, reload, or save a page that would be great. But I want to be able to manually open the list. I'll use whatever works that I can add to my user CSS and user JS. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:18, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
Oh, sorry I misread that. You could do this in your user JS:
Resolved
). There was a long-standing bug where an indication for new notifications was only shown if you had unseen Alerts. This bug is now fixed. In the future, Minerva users will notice a counter atop the bell icon when you have 1 or more unseen Notices and/or Alerts. [3]
View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Works for me Firefox 136.0.4 (64-bit). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:12, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) §a few standards. Thryduulf (talk) 15:07, 12 April 2025 (UTC)
wikimedia.org. Security issues relating to MediaWiki or Wikimedia Foundation infrastructure should be reported to security
at Special:Impact/Augnablik says: "This metric will only reflect editing streaks included in the most recent 1,000 edits." I assume your longer streak became older. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:06, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard § Gadget to hide decorative sticky elements
Fixed following "ugly hack to get around Lua pattters being terrible #125462947". HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 19:17, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
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![[1]](/media/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Wikipedia_app_screenshot_forest_hill_station.png){kind=link}
