Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 219

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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The current "templates for discussion"-warnings make some reference sections close to unreadable

The template:Unbulleted list citebundle is currently for discussion. As a result, there is a warning for every single reference where it or a related template is used, making some reference sections close to unreadable. For example, Philosophy#Citations looks something like the following to me:

1.

‹ The template below (Unbulleted list citebundle) is being considered for merging with Multiref2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

Pratt 2023, p. 169

Morujão, Dimas & Relvas 2021, p. 105

Mitias 2022, p. 3

2.

‹ The template below (Unbulleted list citebundle) is being considered for merging with Multiref2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

Hoad 1993, p. 350

Simpson 2002, Philosophy

Jacobs 2022, p. 23

3.

‹ The template below (Unbulleted list citebundle) is being considered for merging with Multiref2. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. ›

...

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)

I've added |type=tiny to both templates, so it looks a whole lot better than before. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:03, 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)

It was the warning which alerted me to the discussion, which I then joined in. Without the warning, I would never have known.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 16:08, 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.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:00, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

... and which would lead to thousands to millions worth of messages.... that mostly go unread. Izno (talk) 18:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

Chrome has a history of this; it usually takes 15-or-so minutes for my computer to stop freezing on Wikipedia tabs every morning. Not sure why, but this is a known issue. — E_F⁵ 18:05, 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. — E_F⁵ 18:08, 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)

File:Magsafe3 closeup.jpg

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.

Thanks. 2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:C58E:8E53:4854:F5A7 (talk) 18:41, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not having any issues, are you sure it is just this image? Gaismagorm (talk) 19:37, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, it's just this image. No idea what's causing it for me though. 2A0E:1D47:9085:D200:C58E:8E53:4854:F5A7 (talk) 19:45, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

infobox-label text-align:left on mobile

Previously asked at Template talk:Infobox#Labels are centered on m.wikipedia. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:36, 21 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)

Sounds like a job for an interface admin to add

.mw-parser-output .infobox-label {text-align: left;} to MediaWiki:Minerva.css, at least until everything {{infobox}}-related is in its own TS. Thnx. Ponor (talk) 12:24, 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)

Ok, I gently bugged the task on Phab, I will ping him later if necessary. Izno (talk) 22:47, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Can no longer edit articles

Hi,

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

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Vickylizholmes (talk) 11:05, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

@Vickylizholmes Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and set "Editing mode" to "Show me both editor tabs". --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

That worked. Thanks so much! Vickylizholmes (talk) 07:40, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Archiving a source that verifies human before opening

There is schism between the governing bodies in the sport of kabaddi, and this article: https://www.dhakatribune.com/sport/other-sports/371289/a-kabaddi-world-cup-sans-bangladesh does a good job at explaining it. Thus, it's been used at multiple kabaddi-related articles and is vital to understanding the schism. Unfortunately, it does a human-check before you're able to access it, which means that no archiving website is able to make an archive out of it. I previously tried to find a solution at Help desk but it didn't help. So, is there any trick to go around the website's restrictions? —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 16:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

I have no idea how that works. @Snævar: Could you help? —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 09:44, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

1. Get an account. 2. Print as PDF 3. s:Help:Internet_Archive#Adding_files, but ignore the OCR bit. Think of the OCR bit as a troubleshooting step if you can not select text in the pdf, which also makes it non-searchable. Snævar (talk) 13:53, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

That method works, though it depends on nobody taking the file down by the request of the site owner. There are other solutions at https://webrecorder.net/developer-tools/ for technical users. Basically you create a WARC of the page, host it on any web server with some JavaScript files, and there you go it will display and you are in control of it like your own private Wayback Machine. Example setup: https://replayweb.page/docs/embedding/#self-hosting -- GreenC 15:47, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

WikiProject Australia pages too wide on phone

Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia is too wide on a phone screen, requiring horizontal scrolling on both Mobile and Desktop skins.

It may be something to with the transclusion of Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Navigation and Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Tab header.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Help uses those transclusions and does behave well on Desktop, but not Mobile.

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)

Each of the tabs in the tab header is set to a fixed width of 15em, so the tabs force the table to be wide. Someone could modify Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Tab header to display two rows of tabs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:26, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

The issue was caused by the category names in the WP:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Australia#Australia-related Categories for Discussion. Underscores had been used instead of spaces in the wikilinks, which stops the formatter from word wrapping the links correctly. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:25, 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?

screenshot of the behaviour here:

[1]

Davidley (talk) 14:51, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Most images work fine as they have a normal aspect ration. The used image on Forest Hill station (Toronto) is square but there is a lot of empty space. Will propose a crop to it. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 09:58, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Gadget proposal: Citation Watchlist

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Collections of scripts should be split if they have disparate functions.

   Citation Watchlist is not a collection of disparate scripts.

6. Gadgets requiring permissions must be marked and must fail gracefully if the permissions aren't present.

   Citation Watchlist requires no special permissions.

7. 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)

Gadgets usually require a large usage; this one is used by only about 50 people. Izno (talk) 20:28, 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)

Which URL are you referring to? Harej (talk) 16:06, 20 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)

Preferred skin changes in other wikis

Resolved

 – Special:GlobalPreferences should be used for cross-project settings. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:31, 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? Brandmeister^talk 20:11, 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 Rex talk 20:25, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, perhaps I had a false memory of a skin setting affecting other wikis... Brandmeister^talk 20:33, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-13

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]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• 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]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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

MediaWiki message delivery 22:39, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

You might find {{Skip to top and bottom}} useful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:43, 20 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)

Surely this is a matter for b:WB:TECH? The regulars there may know if a template already exists for this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:44, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@PeterEasthope According 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.

I've made these changes to your sandbox for you so you can see what they do. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 23:37, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@86.23.109.101 Many thanks. I was baffled. PeterEasthope (talk) 13:53, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Category misplacement

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)

{{DEFAULTSORT}} was set to "Dettori, Frankie"[6]. An error that was in the article when it was created in 2018. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Special:Homepage

Can Special:Homepage be changed on this wiki, or do we need a Phabricator ticket?

Mine currently tells me:

Your recent activity (last 60 days) - 1,000 Edits - 300 Views on articles you've edited

The latter figure is clearly bogus, and I suspect the boilerplate should say something like "on articles you've edited in that period". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:52, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Special:Impact/Pigsonthewing currently says "163,246 Views on articles edited". Do you really see 300 at Special:Homepage? uselang=qqx shows we can change the text at MediaWiki:Growthexperiments-homepage-impact-edited-articles-trend-chart-count-label. The following text says "Most viewed (since your edit)". It sounds to me like the total is supposed to be views since your edit for all articles you edited in the last 60 days, but the number is only the sum of the top five under "Most viewed" at Special:Impact/Pigsonthewing. It's the same for other users I tried. And your number said something around 198,000 when I first saw it. Did an edit really fall off the 60-day limit in that time? The rule may be more complicated or arbitrary than it sounds. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:22, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I saw 300 before posting here (the text was cut-&-pasted), 163,246 now. I've also made many more than 1000 edits in 60 days, BTW. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:47, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

It appears it only examines the last 1000 edits for efficiency reasons. That would help explain why the view count changes so fast. I now see 96,277 but 300 still sems far too low. I found mw:Help:Growth/Tools/Impact module#On the impact module, why are some of the numbers displayed inaccurate? You are just too busy for the feature.PrimeHunter (talk) 15:47, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

How to wrap text for presentation

At Talk:March 2025 lunar eclipse#Content dispute, I'm trying to wrap a large bit of text in a box for presentation to readers. I've used a "quote" template, but it looks wonky. Is there a better way? Thank you! Magnolia677 (talk) 11:00, 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)

Semi-protected talk pages crash

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T389872

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)

Start with the instructions at Google Support and report back. Izno (talk) 21:56, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Caleb's World11 I'm having the exact same issue, except it's happening pretty much everywhere, including creating pages and protected non-talk pages. Gaismagorm (talk) 12:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

it looks like it doesn't always crash when creating pages, but it does always crash when editing protected articles Gaismagorm (talk) 13:22, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Going in order

1. I am properly connected to the internet and have no issues on other web pages.
2. Unable to do so, however the issue persists across multiple computers.
3. 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.
4. Issue persists across restarts
5. Chrome is on the latest version
6. Unable to remove all extensions because I am using a managed computer.

Caleb's World11 (talk) 14:26, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Bug report has been submitted on phabricator Caleb's World11 (talk) 16:44, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Gaismagorm (talk) 17:11, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

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.

P.S. Yes, I know that @Caleb's World11 posted on this forum with the same issue. It appears that discussion kind of went stale, so I'm relisting this. Gaismagorm (talk) 12:50, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Have you tried freeing up space? And a hardware reset? Polygnotus (talk) 17:41, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

@Polygnotus @Caleb's World11 I found a solution. If you switch from desktop to mobile view, editing works. Gaismagorm (talk) 18:09, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@Polygnotus @Caleb's World11 it seems like the issue has been resolved. My best guess was that the server maitinence fixed it. Gaismagorm (talk) 15:14, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

nevermind, it's not fixed. I don't know why I thought it was. Gaismagorm (talk) 15:15, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Error message

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T389734

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.

— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:33, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

What were you doing when this occurred? — xaosflux ^Talk 22:03, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

@Xaosflux I've been getting the same error, mostly when visiting Special:MyContributions.

The most recent one (approx 5 mins ago).

MediaWiki internal error.

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 think they've just moved dumps generation back to the main database Phab:T368098#10641387, I seem to recall that dumps generation was causing similar disruption in the past? 86.23.109.101 (talk) 11:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I just experienced this exact error by clicking View history on this page... only this one time though.

The error happened almost instantly, not even a second, so I don't understand the "timeout" part. – 2804:F1...7F:79A0 (::/32) (talk) 18:18, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

MediaWiki internal error.

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'm also seeing this error, only intermittently, when clicking on another editor's contributions.-- Ponyo^{bons mots} 20:00, 21 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.

wbm1058 (talk) 03:17, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

Just had it again, this time trying to view history of List of ghost towns in Oklahoma:

MediaWiki internal error.

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.

Again I clicked to reload and it cleared. DuncanHill (talk) 00:53, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I've filed a Phabricator ticket (T389734) given the suspicious increase in the rate of these errors - I'm seeing them reported elsewhere too. Sam Walton (talk) 11:38, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

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.

—Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 23:18, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

What is this error code?

[000d64e7-255a-44aa-87ed-87adb75c67ea] 2025-03-25 08:53:12: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\RequestTimeout\EmergencyTimeoutException"

This error popped up when I opened my contribs, it was not easy to reproduce though, I tried several times and combinations of reloading my user page and it finally showed up again for me to copy it. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 08:56, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Mint Keyphase See the #Error message section above. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 09:25, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

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]

Here is the id and time as text, in case it's useful: [b2a9764b-706e-4b76-9bd2-4cf67a6b740b] 2025-03-25 18:50:08. – 2804:F1...9:7D6E (::/32) (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Bottom of page overflowing into footer

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)

Does it happen to you in safe mode? Does it happen on all pages, or just when editing? (If the latter, which editor are you using?) DLynch (WMF) (talk) 01:00, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

It does not occur in safe mode. It happens on all pages without editing otherwise. yutsi (talk) 01:16, 21 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)

@Yutsi and Enterprisey: It's caused by importing User:Enterprisey/hover-edit-section.js in User:Yutsi/common.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:55, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. It was fixed by removing that script. yutsi (talk) 19:02, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Trouble staying logged in?

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 Bushranger _{One ping only} 00:37, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

And just had it happen again on Wikidata, between adding variables to a page. Quite weird. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:02, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

And again on Commons. Just refreshing makes it "log back in". Maybe it's something with my connection... - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:17, 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)

@The Bushranger If you use cookie / ad blockers, you might have to allowlist the domain auth.wikimedia.org now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:53, 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

Thanks! Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

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 Bushranger _{One ping only} 22:19, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Can you maybe reconstruct from your edit history when exactly it started happening? Tgr (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

This particular time it was "immediately on the first 'hist' I clicked on on my watchlist after logging in ". But it hasn't happened yesterday or today. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:18, 21 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)

I have had this problem in the past as well. Catfurball (talk) 21:11, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I think it might be somehow related to connection stability, as I had a foul connection the other day when it was happening. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 02:18, 21 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)

Attack at Fromelles

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T389860
Duplicate

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T285875
Declined

Does anyone know why the map in the infobox has gone invisible? Thanks Keith-264 (talk) 20:45, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

It's also broken at the other articles that use it. But it does display correctly at File:NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png. DuncanHill (talk) 23:12, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Could this be a skin/browser issue? The image is displaying correctly for me (android, chrome, 2010 skin, desktop site) in all cases. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:17, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

For me:

- /wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/...NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png is a page that says "Error" "Too Many Requests";

- /wikipedia/commons/a/...NYTMapNeuveChapelle1915.png works though.

Seems unlikely to be a skin issue.

I'm reminded of #Broken icon (T383023), though that was a 'unauthorized' error. – 2804:F1...96:5BD7 (::/32) (talk) 00:47, 24 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)

Thanks for the help but it's still playing dead on my laptop (Firefox browser). Regards Keith-264 (talk) 01:14, 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)

This appears to be the same effect as reported at c:COM:VPT#File:DEU Weißeritzkreis COA.png as seen in Weißeritzkreis#Coat of arms. DMacks (talk) 15:40, 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. Ladsgroup^overleg 17:29, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Created phab:T389860 Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:57, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! But I think the VPT diff-link you mentioned in it is to a different server-error section. DMacks (talk) 19:56, 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)

Thanks Hawkeye and everyone. Keith-264 (talk) 12:29, 26 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.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 14:10, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

Hi KStoller-WMF thanks very much for your message, I'll reply by email. John Cummings (talk) 09:45, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

invalid returnUrlToken?

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)

Hmm. Per a question just above, there's a good change it has something to do with SUL3. —scs (talk) 03:43, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Bots should generally use either OAuth or bot passwords, not the web interface for login.

That said, can you check what URLs your bot is hitting (including redirects)? Tgr (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 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.)

Thanks very much for the pointers to OAuth and bot passwords. One of those is probably just what I need. —scs (talk) 11:53, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

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. — xaosflux ^Talk 12:46, 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 &centralAuthAutologinTried=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)

@Scs: you can try adding &usesul3=0 to the URL on top of that. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 19:14, 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)

Archive search

Can someone add one of those archive search boxes to Wikipedia:Requests for page protection/Archive? Thanks! Polygnotus (talk) 04:48, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Done.[8] PrimeHunter (talk) 09:56, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Toolforge problem?

https://randomincategory.toolforge.org/All_articles_with_a_promotional_tone?site=en.wikipedia.org

Gave this error

404 Not found

nginx

—Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 13:17, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Works fine for me. – DreamRimmer (talk) 13:24, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes - Problem exists

• I just got this message.

"Not found

The URL you have requested, https://afdstats.toolforge.org/afdstats.py?name=Maile66&max=&startdate=&altname=, doesn't seem to actually exist.

If you have reached this page by following a link

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."

— Maile (talk) 13:52, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Looks like everything is OK now. — Maile (talk) 14:41, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I just went to that link, and it does exist (however, it took some time to load). SeaDragon1 (talk) 14:51, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

@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)

SeaDragon1 (talk) 14:52, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Works fine for me now as well. However, it does load for longer than usual. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 02:58, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Toolforge problem -the latest, 29 March 2025

Here we go again. "Webservice is unreachable. The tool responsible for the URL you have requested, https://afdstats.toolforge.org/afdstats.py?name=Maile66&max=&startdate=&altname=, is not currently responding." — Maile (talk) 12:16, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

@Maile66: I can access it. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:19, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Works for me now. — Maile (talk) 12:27, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Why formatversion=2?

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)

See mw:API:Data formats#JSON parameters. – DreamRimmer (talk) 01:08, 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 Rex talk 09:22, 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)

PS, I'm totally on board about using an explicit version specifier when making the format change. RoySmith (talk) 13:14, 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)

If I query for multiple pages, are the results guaranteed to come back in the same order as the were in the request? RoySmith (talk) 14:05, 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.

(You'd have to do this in either formatversion, of course, since you wouldn't know the pageid to check in the result.) DLynch (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

No. Probably the results will be reordered. The order likely depends on the database query that is done. Anomie⚔ 20:08, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

OK, this is starting to make a little more sense, thank you everybody. RoySmith (talk) 18:25, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

 Works for me Firefox 136.0.4 (64-bit). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:12, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikimedia log in

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 Rex talk 18:55, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the link to the news. I do use a password manager, and double checked the entry. But no luck. -SusanLesch (talk) 19:40, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm locked out for the second time today. -SusanLesch (talk) 21:24, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

I would like to please access the Wikipedia Library. Can anybody here help? -SusanLesch (talk) 18:04, 25 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 • contribs 14:18, 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 • contribs 14:34, 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 • contribs 14:55, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

@Anomie Actually the gadget looks as though it might be exactly the right solution. Thanks :-) Musiconeologist • talk • contribs 15:12, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

If you are using the 2017 wikitext editor, this userscript would make it so that anytime you typed !SUB it'd fill all that in for you. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry. Yes, substituting outside your userspace is fine. Transcluding is not. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 14:40, 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 • contribs 15:21, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

You could also use Help:CharInsert#Customization to make a button which inserts {{subst:User:Musiconeologist/}} and places the cursor after the slash. You can add this to your common JavaScript:

// Add custom CharInsert entries per [[Help:CharInsert#Customization]]
window.charinsertCustom = {
 "Wiki markup": 'Custom: {\{subst:User:Musiconeologist/+}\}',
};

PrimeHunter (talk) 23:33, 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 • contribs 01:32, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Residential IPs in San Francisco getting banned for "botting"

moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical)

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)

What's the IP range? Remsense ‥ 论 03:01, 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)

@Gryllida You're in luck, because this was just recently made possible thanks to @Lucas Werkmeister's work. See the links in this comment and below, there are code examples: T322944#10590515. Matma Rex talk 16:33, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

I could only find nodejs examples there? Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 09:48, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

This example runs in the browser, you just need Node to either serve or build it (because it was easier to set up this way). Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 10:46, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Lucas

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)

var pageName='Gryllida Test 2';
var url = 'http://test.wikipedia.org';
var content='Hello world';

What is the code to insert afterwards to get this content added to the page with this pageName on that wiki?

Regards, Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 00:44, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@Leaderboard Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 20:05, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with this, sorry. From what I understand, you need to install node.js (https://nodejs.org/en/download) and install the dependencies locally on your system? Looks like the app would run locally as a result. Leaderboard (talk) 04:49, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@Gryllida: This should work, once you have the OAUTH 2.0 access token:

Extended content

var pageName='Gryllida Test 2'; var url = 'http://test.wikipedia.org'; var content='Hello world'; var summary='API test'; const oauthToken = "OAUTHAccessToken"; var apiEndpoint = url + '/w/api.php'; var params = { action: 'query', meta: 'tokens', format: 'json', formatversion: '2', crossorigin: '' }; var queryURL = new URL(apiEndpoint); queryURL.search = new URLSearchParams(params); fetch(queryURL, {method: 'GET', headers: {'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + oauthToken}}) .then(function(response){return response.text()}) .then(function(text){try {const data=JSON.parse(text);return data} catch (e) {return text}}) .then(function(data){ var csrfToken = data?.query?.tokens?.csrftoken; if (csrfToken) { console.log(csrfToken); params = { title: pageName, text: content, summary: summary, format: 'json', formatversion: '2', token: csrfToken }; var body = new URLSearchParams(params); queryURL = new URL(apiEndpoint); queryURL.search = new URLSearchParams( {action: 'edit', crossorigin: ''} ); fetch(queryURL, {method: 'POST', headers: {'Authorization': 'Bearer ' + oauthToken}, body: body}) .then(function(response){return response.text()}) .then(function(text){try {const data=JSON.parse(text);return data} catch (e) {return text}}) .then(function(data){ var result = data?.edit?.result; if (result) { console.log(result); } else { console.error("Error posting edit!"); console.error(data); } }); } else { console.error("Error retrieving CSRF token!"); console.error(data); } });

--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:35, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, I will try it out. Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 22:58, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

nvm, i found oauth infos described on wikidata wiki Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 09:33, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Actually:

• 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?

Regards, -- Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 10:18, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

Sorry, which example? Gryllida (talk, e-mail) 21:07, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

I mainly meant the client-side example (this is the new functionality that @Matma Rex was referring to), though if you want to keep the OAuth client confidential, then you’d need the server-side example instead – or, if you prefer, just write the server-side part in a different language altogether. (Wikitech has a few examples for OAuth-based tools, such as My first Flask OAuth tool, but seemingly not for Perl or PHP – My first PHP tool doesn’t cover the OAuth part.) Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 23:53, 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)

Locked out?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T390512

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)

phab:T390512. 2604:3D09:A67B:8D50:79CB:52F6:43ED:B0EA (talk) 03:24, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

thanks -- hamterous1 24.192.250.185 (talk) 03:28, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I am experiencing the same issue :( -- hamterous1 24.192.250.185 (talk) 03:24, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I think we have the same issue, User:Miminity via 143.44.132.208 (talk) 03:33, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Login appears to be back up and running. Jay8g [V•T•E] 03:38, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I cannot save my edit and log out

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)

The developers are investigating. https://www.wikimediastatus.net/incidents/1w3rq4d2zljj -- 70.67.252.144 (talk) 03:32, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

fixed Justjourney (talk | contribs) 03:38, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Warm Regards, Miminity (Talk?) (me contribs) 03:42, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Can't log in

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)

There was a Wikimedia-wide issue, it appears to be sorted now, see Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Various_ongoing_errors_with_my_account. DuncanHill (talk) 03:49, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Rearranged my home page

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? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:15, 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.
• View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• 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.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• 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.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 00:02, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

redirects

I just had to create a redirect from La Republica (Costa Rica) to La República (Costa Rica), which surprised me, I actually wondered if I'd screwed something up that the link was red. And then minutes later had to do it again, creating a redirect from Magon Prize to Magón National Prize for Culture when there's already a redirect at Magón Prize. I thought our search function could handle this stuff, is there a reason why in these cases it didn't? Thanks for any help! Valereee (talk) 19:43, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

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).

It's just not something the system does. And there are non-0 reasons for it not to do so. Izno (talk) 21:32, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

Eubot, which created the Germknodel redirect, stopped editing in 2008. La República (Costa Rica) was created in 2025, so obviously it never touched it. It's botmaster Eugene stopped editing in 2013. The bot had permission to make redirects for scientific names and abbreviated titles. Bots do not run forever. Snævar (talk) 12:52, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Article titles#Special characters says "provide redirects from versions of the title that use only standard keyboard characters". RjwilmsiBot made many in 2016. I don't know whether any bot has done it since. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:07, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you all very much! Would it maybe be useful to make a stop at WP:Bot requests? It seems like a useful timesaver. Valereee (talk) 14:02, 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)

@Bearcat I added some date formatting code to the sandbox. Give Module:Sports_rbr_table/sandbox a try. If that fixes the issue, I can merge it into the main module. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:36, 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)

@DreamRimmer: Thank you! I am not sure I have enough space in my alleged "brain" to learn new stuff right now, but I may soon. Polygnotus (talk) 22:54, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Can we still try the previous UI experiment?

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 here} 06:26, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Piotrus, I checked the list of user scripts and User:DaxServer/BooksToSfn could have helped you if you had all the refs defined in text and used the {{reflist}} template. It uses {{sfn}} not {{rp}}. So I'd advise to check Wikipedia:User_scripts/List#References_2, maybe there could be something useful for you.

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.

So as far as I can see from a rather superficial search, you will have to do this manually. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 11:15, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

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 Rex talk 13:07, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

This is indeed a workaround. Haven't known about it. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 13:24, 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)

The PEIS limit issue appears to be only confined to pages in userspace and Wikipedia space Szmenderowiecki (talk) 14:15, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

No, PEIS exists everywhere, gnomes simply ensure that all pages on display for the user meet the limits. Izno (talk) 17:11, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Matma Rex That's a great (simple) workaround. Thanks and thanks to all who commented :) _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:29, 2 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.

I find using {{sfn}} and {{rp}} awkward, since they put location data in the running text instead of the references section. What I really want is subreferencing with appropriate inheritance of the metadata. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:36, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

How does it handle, e.g., |pages=, |quote=, |section=, |section-url=? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 21:09, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Chatul: Do you mean Citoid, or Ref Organizer? I suppose one could always try either out in a sandbox to see for themselves. --Slowking Man (talk) 20:13, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

I meant Citoid, but Ref Organizer is more relevant to the original question. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 02:38, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Toolforge?

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. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:10, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Toolforge itself is up. That one specific tool is apparently down. Pinging Legoktm as the listed maintainer. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 23:18, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for checking, Pppery. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:42, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Looks like things are back to normal. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:14, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

math display="block" is broken

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)

I would guess this is phab:T201233. Izno (talk) 01:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Seems so, thanks! Can this change be reverted at least locally for now, since those people apparently don't care much? — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 02:19, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I also really don't understand why they don't have any kind of regression tests set up. –jacobolus (t) 03:03, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Internal error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T391099
Duplicate

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T390510

Database errors similar to the previous one have gone from being on just the page history to affecting the actual pages themselves:

Extended content

Submodular set function [c38a5008-80dc-4a41-a403-2e9456098c76] 2025-04-04 11:55:48: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" Main page [c514c3da-691b-413c-a442-123a5b548ed8] 2025-04-04 11:55:57: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" [bbabb56c-2d27-4400-aa5d-3eed93137086] 2025-04-04 11:55:54: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" It then disappeared after refreshing the main page and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) loaded fine But it came back at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 219 [37491d0e-ab38-4a5e-9133-4d13cac0f254] 2025-04-04 11:57:02: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" Fine for a while, then on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) [f56b4315-d568-4759-be40-06fe7713e284] 2025-04-04 12:14:59: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" [f979d056-1ef1-4add-85a1-c8a453493fbd] 2025-04-04 12:15:19: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"

69.171.140.10 (talk) 12:01, 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)

Having left aligned images opposite an infobox is normally discouraged, per MOS:SANDWICH. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 11:13, 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.

Johnjbarton (talk) 15:09, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

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)

I mean it's a fix to the original problem where a left-aligned image is pushed down. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:35, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

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. That's right. If you want the exact words of the relevant CSS specification, it's item #5 at https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/REC-CSS2-20110607/visuren.html#float-rules. Anomie⚔ 00:19, 28 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)

We cover most of this at WP:MFOP. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:27, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. If I understand correctly, the infobox counts as an 'image' in the discussion at WP:MFOP? Johnjbarton (talk) 15:47, 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)

I understood fine. For the version before your edits, I see the "Solar Activity Proxies" graph exactly where it is in the source code, in the Isotopes and nucleosynthesis section. CMD (talk) 08:17, 4 April 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)

Thanks for all of the help here! Johnjbarton (talk) 19:47, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

April 2025

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 𝐐𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢 ʕʘ̅͜ʘ̅ʔ 15:54, 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.

---

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. Sdkb ^talk 02:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

|url-status=shuffled off its mortal coil

|url-status=pushing up the daisies

|url-status=metabolic processes are now history

-- GreenC 02:57, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Moved from Help talk:Citation Style 1 to avoid any WP:FOOLR #1 issues. Sdkb ^talk 03:11, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I prefer dishonesty to avoid the harsh realities of our collective mortality:

• |url-status=chasing sheep on a farm upstate
• |url-status=just sleeping
• |url-status=at dog college

Regards, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:51, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

What, no |url-status=nailed to the perch??? – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:16, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm concerned that |url-status=dodoesque would be too likely to be confused with |url-status=dadaesque. Anomie⚔ 11:48, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

• 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)

  It is well within WP:R4F, and very clearly a joke, should be easy to distinguish from non-joke discussions. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 08:45, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Oppose: A dead link refers to a link to a page that doesn't exist. We would also have to update EVERY SINGLE PAGE that had it. SeaDragon1 (talk) 19:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

SeaDragon1 (talk) 19:24, 4 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.

Watchlist - temporary unwatch

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T299227

There is functionality to put something temporarily on your watchlist, see Help:Watchlist#Temporarily_watching_pages and mw:Help:Watchlist expiry.

But why doesn't the opposite exist? Maybe you want to unwatchlist a page for, lets say, a week. Polygnotus (talk) 01:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

There is an existing feature request for this at phab:T299227. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:11, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you! Polygnotus (talk) 21:28, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Automatic reverting

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.

Old discussion:

I am teaching a course where one of the students got the edits reverted. The revision history claims that she did it herself, but she says that was not the case, it happened automatically. This is the user contribution page User contributions for Daliepremidze - Wikipedia. Now it seems to be working though. Was something wrong? Olle Terenius (UU) (talk) 09:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@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:

3D cell culture: Revision history - Wikipedia

Conductive metal−organic frameworks: Revision history - Wikipedia

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptor: Revision history - Wikipedia

Chromogranin-A: Revision history - Wikipedia

Lithium-silicon battery: Revision history - Wikipedia

Olle Terenius (UU) (talk) 14:29, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Help_desk#Automatic_reverting,_revisited - the Helpdesk discussion

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)

Change pending changes message?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T391160

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)

created that message locally, although there should probably be a phab for other wikis. charlotte ^👸♥ 02:14, 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

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T345986

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 Rex talk 14:06, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@Departure– In the browser console, run localStorage.clear(); and it will go away. Polygnotus (talk) 03:21, 5 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)

Unusual slowdowns at Talk:Donald Trump

Please see Talk:Donald Trump#Why is this page so slow?, any help appreciated. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 05:37, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mandruss: Maybe ask user Dylsss. Polygnotus (talk) 21:14, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Asking user Dylsss. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 21:19, 2 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)

@Mandruss than you for flagging this issue!

Prompted by @Moxy, I've started a Phabricator ticket that could benefit from additional details in the "Reproduction Steps" section...might you (or anyone else here) be able to help us fill that part in? PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@PPelberg (WMF): - I assume you mean phab. I don't do phab. :) Reproduction steps:

• Go to Talk:Donald Trump.
• Post a comment in any thread.
• Note how long it takes.

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): We don't have that data yet. I'll get started gathering it there. Me: Desktop, Windows 11, current Firefox. ―Mandruss ☎ IMO. 23:43, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

@Mandruss wonderful – thank you!

In parallel, I've updated the ticket to reflect the reproduction steps you shared above. PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:11, 3 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 Rex talk 15:53, 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 Rex talk 22:51, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I guess what I just wrote suggests some workarounds… If you enable Parsoid for yourself in Preferences → Editing → Developer tools → Use the new Parsoid wikitext parser → Always (opt-in), the talk page will load a bit slower when you visit it, but the reply tool will load almost instantly. Matma Rex talk 22:53, 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 Rex talk 22:57, 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)

As I said this occurs elsewhere on talk pages without large amounts of templates. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:23, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Is there a way to auto-purge a page?

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?

Some user groups do not have a confirmation, like admins. Snævar (talk) 00:54, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I put this in my Special:Mypage/common.js before:

/* Override annoying purge dialog */
if ( mw.config.get( 'wgAction' ) === 'purge' ) {
       $('form.mw-htmlform').submit();
}

To auto-click the confirm button for me. — xaosflux ^Talk 09:04, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

The purge option added by the preference "Add a 'Purge' option" doesn't require confirmation. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:25, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I mean, not just for me. I mean, for EVERYONE. SeaDragon1 (talk) 18:32, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

There is old discussion in phab:T143531. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:12, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

View image on iOS Microsoft Edge

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 have tested this on other sites using MediaWiki and it worked well. And this isn't happening on Safari. CreeperKong (talk) 07:40, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Longest possible video

Video of 25 h 5 min 58 s

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)

No, but of course there are humans patrolling the upload log who will (hopefully) cut down on crap like that. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:10, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

That would make the transcode timeout, though.

On an unrelated note, why can't we switch to a service which allows files above 5gb? JayCubby 13:03, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@JayCubby, it's not a technical limitation (which is why it's a setting). Qwerfjkltalk 13:13, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Interesting. The Foundation has plenty of server resources and capital. 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). JayCubby 13:20, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

5GB is still a technical limitation (phab:T191802) just a different one from before. the wub "?!" 14:07, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

The longest audio files on Commons are over 6 days long: File:WV-FrenchCourse-Step001-Exercise01.ogg, File:Es-mx-población.ogg, File:Es-mx-personal.ogg and File:Eo-plezuro.ogg.

The longest audio files on English Wikipedia are around 1 hour long: AlanFreed-WinsNewYork-March231955.ogg and File:Adolf Eichmann trial opening statement.opus. Snævar (talk) 02:16, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I am surprised that someone managed to upload a huge video like this that also has a suitable file size for Commons :D --PantheraLeo1359531 (talk) 08:26, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Low resolution, and lossy-compressed to the max? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:59, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Videos at a different resolution are saved after rendering. It takes longer than saving a text file. Snævar (talk) 11:01, 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:

ffmpeg -i source.mp4 -ss 04:00:14 -to 29:06:12 -c:v libsvtav1 -b:a libopus -b:a 64k -g 400 -preset 4 -crf 41 -pix_fmt yuv420p -svtav1-params tune=0 booker.webm

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!)

D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 16:21, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

D. Benjamin Miller, thanks for the explanation and for putting in the work to get this file. I extracted the audio, available at File:Cory Booker's 25-hour speech audio.opus. Do you have the means to extract the subtitles from C-SPAN? I tried to use OpenAI's Whisper to generate a SRT (in Google Colab), but it got an hour in and crashed for unknown reasons (though you might have better luck). JayCubby 15:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

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:

lorem ipsum1

lorem ipsum2

lorem ipsum3

lorem ipsum4 Snævar (talk) 13:05, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Snævar, just curious, what does the \r do in that regex? I'd use something more like (.+)\n.+ → $1. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:33, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

\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.

So, anyway, if you wanna try to somehow make this small enough to fit (or whatever, after correcting it), see User:D. Benjamin Miller/booker subtitles 1.srt and User:D. Benjamin Miller/booker subtitles 2.srt. D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 01:52, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

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. JayCubby 02:33, 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)

It's not really a mystery; it's just the max text page length setting in MediaWiki D. Benjamin Miller (talk) 14:46, 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)

Commons has its own VPT at, as might be expected, c:COM:VPT. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:10, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Finding pageviews of vital articles

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.

Is it possible to get an overview of the most-read vital articles? Or most-read VIT3 articles? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:13, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

@Femke: [15] – DreamRimmer (talk) 16:30, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks both! —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:02, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

dumpparsers

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)

Polygnotus, you could probably use pywikibot with XMLDumpPageGenerator or xmlreader.XmlDump — Qwerfjkltalk 11:49, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I found meta:Data dumps/Other tools but what I want is to be able to output article titles or references or external links based on one or more selection criteria (e.g. contains string or not, matches regex or not). Polygnotus (talk) 23:02, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

The two I know of are Wikipedia:Typo Team/moss and Wikipedia:WikiProject Check Wikipedia. There's probably a few out in the wide world of academia. Izno (talk) 23:19, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Otherwise, you're probably SOL for arbitrary queries. Izno (talk) 23:19, 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)

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MediaWiki message delivery 18:49, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T390510

Hi! I just got some errors like [be090329-f0a7-45b7-8ad7-17a7fca893e3] 2025-04-06 20:30:10: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError" on multiple pages, including the Main Page (this specific one is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sentence_fragment). 2A00:807:D7:AA94:CD3B:F89A:966C:8FA7 (talk) 20:39, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

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)

Could you add the relevant phabricator ID to this section, if there is one? (I'm guessing it's probably T389734?) 2A00:807:D7:AA94:C06A:461B:F9:6B92 (talk) 23:10, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

This time it was probably the issue tracked at T390510. Matma Rex talk 23:20, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Pblock question

Resolved

Does p-blocking an editor from "Creating new pages" prevent them from:

1. Starting a new article in Draft space?
2. Moving an existing page to a (non-existent) title?

I didn't find the answers at WP:PBLOCK although I assume this is documented somewhere. Thanks. Abecedare (talk) 15:28, 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)

It's part of mw:Extension:Popups, also called Page Previews and previously Hovercards. There is an old declined request at phab:T65162. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:07, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! So, declined in 2014. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:17, 8 April 2025 (UTC)