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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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How can I use different colors in light theme and dark theme?

Some wikis support using different colors in light theme and dark theme. Is this feature currently supported in English Wikipedia, or not yet? Upset New Bird (talk) 12:00, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Generally, to make it easier for different skins to configure appropriate colours, it's best to use a colour from the standard set of colours. See :mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis § Use CSS variables or CSS design tokens with fallback for background and text where possible. That page also provides instructions on how to write style rules to choose different colours based on dark or light mode, but using the standard colours will leverage the work being done by others to ensure that the standard palette is accessible and matches the skin in use. isaacl (talk) 14:28, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
See also: Help:Table/Advanced#Colors in tables. Feel free to update that section, and its subsections. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:06, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
@Isaacl, @Timeshifter: For example, I mean how to show the colors "white", "yellow", "purple", "red", "black" and "gray" in light mode as "black", "blue", "#80FF80", "cyan", "white", and "gray" in dark mode. Upset New Bird (talk) 00:07, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
There's no simple way to shift specific colours to different colours. The link I provided has a link to a page listing the standard set of colours, named by their role in the user interface design. You can redefine the corresponding custom CSS properties to different colour values, but you'll have to be comfortable with writing CSS to do that. isaacl (talk) 02:32, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
@Isaacl: I found the way to do so! See [1]. Upset New Bird (talk) 03:40, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for making me aware of the light-dark() feature, first deployed by browsers in 2024. I'm not sure what your planned usage is, though. If you're using it in text you're writing, for example, then using light-dark() will ignore the user's light/dark mode Wikipedia setting in favour of the user's setting in the browser/OS. It also will only work with newer browsers. The page to which I linked explains how to write CSS rules that will follow the user's light/dark mode Wikipedia settings, including if they configure it to follow the browser/OS setting. isaacl (talk) 04:23, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
@Isaacl: Note that the "light-dark()" feature I used works in light/dark mode in English Wikipedia itself. Upset New Bird (talk) 06:58, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
Clearly there's some subtleties in the dark mode implementation that I don't know about... The other issues I described remain. What is your intended usage? isaacl (talk) 08:41, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
@Isaacl: My purpose is in order to optimize the table both in light mode and dark mode. Is it odd? Upset New Bird (talk) 08:45, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
The light-dark() function is quite new, it was added to CSS Color Module Level 5 with the 29 February 2024 revision. Since this doc is a W3C Working Draft, it should not be relied upon. To those sceptics who have told me in the past that W3C Working Drafts will eventually make it to W3C Recommendation, please note that the color-contrast() function, which was last described in the 28 April 2022 revision, has since been dropped. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:59, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
@Redrose64: It seems that English Wikipedia supports "light-dark()" function, but does not support "color-contrast()" function. This table shows different colors by the user's color mode (light or dark). [2] Upset New Bird (talk) 01:01, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
Support for light-dark() and color-contrast() is nothing to do with Wikipedia, it's entirely in your browser. If your browser doesn't support color-contrast(), that does not surprise me, as it was removed from the CSS Color Module Level 5 spec, which as I already mentioned, is a draft and subject to amendment. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:02, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
Are you referring to a specific table? For tables in general, I think it's better to just use colours from the standard set. The actual colours used in light and dark modes will be centrally maintained, and can be adjusted by skins. isaacl (talk) 14:30, 11 May 2025 (UTC)
@Isaacl: What I mean is to make it easier to view tables in dark mode. Upset New Bird (talk) 01:35, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
I don't understand what is the current problem with tables in dark mode, or why any issues can't be handled by using the standard set of colours. isaacl (talk) 04:35, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Note: The "light-dark()" feature is now available in all three major browser engines, and becomes Baseline Newly available as of 13th May 2024. See [3]. Upset New Bird (talk) 02:48, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

AIUI, light-dark is insufficient to support all display modes on Wikipedia. There is "light mode", "dark mode", and "OS mode" here. light-dark meaningfully supports only the last of the three. Izno (talk) 03:03, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
light-dark() reacts to the color-scheme property that is set by the dark mode toggle, so it should work also for "forced" light and dark mode. hgzh 08:56, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Is incategory searching broken?

When I'm doing WP:DRAFTNOCAT/WP:USERNOCAT cleanup, because Category:Living people is massive (thus impossible to search manually) and collects new draft and user sandbox pages daily instead of once in a blue moon, I do an incategory search on it a few times a day instead of only dealing with it when the weekly reports run. I've noticed that for several weeks now that after getting a draft or user page out of the category there's been a lag before the page would actually drop out on refreshing the search — in the past a page would typically drop out close to instantly in some cases, and within 30 seconds to one minute in others, but for several weeks now it's taken more like 10 to 15 minutes before a page would drop.

Today, however, all of the draft/user pages that were in the category this morning still haven't dropped out more than two hours after being removed. So I wanted to ask, is there something wrong with incategory searching all of a sudden? Bearcat (talk) 15:39, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing, indeed the indexing pipeline got stuck today around 13:30 UTC and no updates were being processed. It failed very early in the bootup process which didn't trigger our typical alerts. New alerts have been added, and that system has been restarted and is now processing edits again. most of the pages in the example have cleared out, the rest of the backlog should finish soon.
As to the update latency, around 5 minutes is the expected minimum latency for edits to make it into search today. Somewhere between 5 and 8 is probably most typical. That was indeed on a 30s cycle previously, but the update pipeline had to change to include asynchronously generated information (such as article topic predictions) which pushed the minimum update time to around 5 minutes.
EBernhardson (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for figuring this out so quickly. No worries on the five to ten minute drop time — it is a minor hassle when I'm doing draft/user nocat cleanup, because I have no way to distinguish "page that just hasn't dropped yet" from "the creator added the categories back again one minute after I removed them" or "I actually missed a category the previous time" without checking the page a second or third time, but all things considered if that's the worst thing that happens to me all day it isn't that big a deal. So if there's a clear reason for it, it's a thing I can continue to live with — but obviously pages not dropping hours later was something weird, so thanks for resolving it. Bearcat (talk) 20:17, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-20

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:34, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

We will be enabling the new Charts extension on your wiki soon!

(Apologies for posting in English)

Hi all! We have good news to share regarding the ongoing problem with graphs and charts affecting all wikis that use them.

As you probably know, the old Graph extension was disabled in 2023 due to security reasons. We’ve worked in these two years to find a solution that could replace the old extension, and provide a safer and better solution to users who wanted to showcase graphs and charts in their articles. We therefore developed the Charts extension, which will be replacing the old Graph extension and potentially also the EasyTimeline extension.

After successfully deploying the extension on Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedia, as well as on MediaWiki.org, as part of a pilot phase, we are now happy to announce that we are moving forward with the next phase of deployment, which will also include your wiki.

The deployment will happen in batches, and will start from May 6. Please, consult our page on MediaWiki.org to discover when the new Charts extension will be deployed on your wiki. You can also consult the documentation about the extension on MediaWiki.org.

If you have questions, need clarifications, or just want to express your opinion about it, please refer to the project’s talk page on Mediawiki.org, or ping me directly under this thread. If you encounter issues using Charts once it gets enabled on your wiki, please report it on the talk page or at Phabricator.

Thank you in advance! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:06, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Saving y'all a click: enwiki is May 20-22, 2025. --PresN 15:25, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
For a quick look at a bar chart as deployed on Italian Wikipedia see w:it:Kirovo-Čepeck. William Avery (talk) 07:17, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Takes awhile to load, but good to see it working. CMD (talk) 07:40, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Except for the fact that it pushes the content down when it's within the length of the infobox. It's also way to high. 12.172.251.103 (talk) 11:47, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
I'm running on the assumption it's configurable enough to not take up the entire page width each use. CMD (talk) 11:50, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Not there yet. See T376845. William Avery (talk) 12:45, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
Sannita (WMF) Does it support horizontal bars? During the outage, I tinkered with a stopgap replacement that is template-based, and uses horizontal bars. For example, on Talk- or other non-mainspace pages, horizontal bars would permit the use of timeline-based charts that grows vertically downward as the timeline period is longer, unlike wit vertical bars which get thinner and thinner until they are squished into lines or become merged if too long a period is specified, unless averaging is introduced, which loses some detail and may hide sudden peaks. Meanwhile, the entire chart can be collapsed so it takes almost no vertical space on the Talk page except for the header. I am thinking in particular of the old, {{pageviews}} template often used among the headers of Talk pages, and disabled during the outage. Is there an option for a horizontal chart in the new extension? For some examples of horizontal pageviews from the temporary {{Xreadership}} template implemented as a stopgap during the outage, see Talk:Houthis, Talk:Same-sex marriage, or Talk:Pokémon. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 21:26, 10 May 2025 (UTC)
@Mathglot Hi, thanks for your question. No, horizontal bars are not implemented yet, also because there would be a challenging time in showing them on mobile, given the reduced space. You can open a task on Phabricator, and then linking it back to me, so that I can put it on the developers' radar. If you have problems with Phabricator, then I can help you opening a ticket. Let me know. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 09:00, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T394066
Sannita (WMF), thanks. Phab task added as requested. I can imagine various reasons why horizontal bars aren't implemented yet, but given that they already work on mobile in other contexts (see demo), I don't understand that reasoning. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 16:17, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Trying to balance the party colours in this template I am creating

Hello, with the 2025 Australian Senate Election results currently being counted I am creating this template to create a new standard for Joint Tickets in the senates results. Currently they are raw modified tables in the results at the New South Wales and Victoria bits (look for the joint tickets involving HEART, People First and Libertarians), and on the pages there the 3 colours are balanced. I am trying to replicate this with the template to replace the need for modifying the table directly but it isn't working properly and I have no idea how to get the 3 colours to balance. The documentation provides an example from the NSW results of that election. Any tips or help on how I can get these colours to be balanced? Thanks in advance! Comfisofa (talk) 11:41, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

 Fixed and added a comment to help future editors understand why the template is written the way that I just did. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 12:59, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
Incredibly thankful for this! Truly a life saver! Comfisofa (talk) 13:33, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
Welcome! —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 22:03, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Seven months ago (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 216#Keep getting logged out), a problem was reported where the login cookie was failing to be recognised on English Wikipedia. This was resolved after about ten days. Something very similar has begun happening today. Steps to reproduce:

  1. Assume that you are starting off as having explicitly logged out earlier in the day (Special:UserLogout)
  2. At any page on English Wikipedia, log in
  3. Follow some links to elsewhere within English Wikipedia, observe that you are still logged in on each page.
  4. Go to any page on meta:. Observe that you are not logged in.
  5. Follow any link to another page on meta:. Observe that you are logged in.
  6. Return to English Wikipedia. Observe that you are no longer logged in.
  7. Follow any link to another page on en.wp. Observe that you are logged in once again.

It's not Thursday, so what has happened since yesterday to cause this? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:02, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

This has been happening to me for much longer than just yesterday, so it sounds like you were getting lucky.
I've seen suggestions that cookie blocking systems (and Firefox has this level of protection on by default particularly, IDK about the other browsers) can block the relevant cookies, so I went in and set exceptions for meta, auth, and en.wp, and it's still happening for me. I need to try fresh login here, but it's not encouraging.... Izno (talk) 22:25, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

New thread subsumed into GA review above it

See Talk:Coronation of Mindon Min. I added a new thread about a contradiction between the article and another. It appears to have been eaten by the "Overall assessment" section of the transcluded GA review above it. I can't work out why. Can anyone fix it? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 10:46, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Fixed, the table was not closed so the new posts were absorbed into it. CMD (talk) 10:58, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 11:00, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Categories being re-processed?

I have a script on my PC that checks for new entries in various categories. For example, the Category:2022 deaths generally reports just a couple of additions on most days. However, starting on Monday, it exploded and reported bulk additions and still is. The articles themselves have not been updated, their histories show no recent changes and I could not find a specific template that has recently been changed. Hunting around implies that this is happening for other birth and death categories, but not for other person-related categories. (FYI, I call the API with a query like this: action=query&list=categorymembers&cmnamespace=0&cmtype=page&cmlimit=50&cmstart=2025-05-11T23:59:59.999&cmend=2025-05-11T00:00:00&cmsort=timestamp&cmdir=descending&formatversion=2&format=json&cmprop=title.) What happened around midday on Monday? Was there a database change? Did I miss a template change that has triggered bulk updates? Why does the API report changes that the articles do not? Answers on a postcard please — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:13, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

EBernhardson (WMF) is this related to the indexing pipeline issue? If so, why just some categories and why is the API seeing it as changes to category membership? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:18, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
I can tell you that the cmstart and cmend parameters work off of the field that's reported with cmprop=timestamp. What may have caused mass updates to that, I have no idea. Anomie⚔ 13:09, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
Probably phab:T385954. * Pppery * it has begun... 13:13, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata list

Hello, I need assistance with generating a list based on Wikidata. I would appreciate any help. Regards. Riad Salih (talk) 12:55, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

d:Wikidata:Request a query is a better place for that query. If you do post there, specify what you are looking for specifically. Snævar (talk) 16:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, but I have already created the page; there is just a problem with the list being repeated. Riad Salih (talk) 16:38, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
@Riad Salih: you forgot to include {{Wikidata list end}}, the bot has no idea when to stop. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 15:55, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
@Sjoerddebruin Thank you, it worked! I really appreciate it. Riad Salih (talk) 16:09, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Discussion Timeline script

When a discussion gets many replies by many people it can get pretty difficult to see in what chronological order the posts were written.

Is there a script that allows you to travel through time through a discussion? I mean other than User:Polygnotus/Scripts/Timeline.js of course. Polygnotus (talk) 04:17, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

While cumbersome, using the page history to select the earliest edit you want to see, than selecting "next edit" on each successive page would do that. Donald Albury 13:19, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
For those using a desktop browser, the "Browse history interactively" dropdown that appears at the top of a diff page lets you hover over a bar graph to see the edit summaries of each edit. isaacl (talk) 15:45, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks both! Hitting "next edit" works indeed, but gets a bit tiresome.
The "Browse history interactively" dropdown only shows up on diff pages and requires you to scroll up, click a diff, scroll down, try to find what changed, et cetera.
With this new script you can just click and hold the slider and drag the mouse to the left and right.
Kinda figured someone must've already made something like that but I guess not. Thanks! Polygnotus (talk) 13:30, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Verification request

Hello guys! I did some changes on "Wi-Fi Protected Setup", and i want them to be verified by someone to make sure they are correct. If you want, and know something about Wi-Fi networks and cybersecurity, i would be grateful if you check them. Thanks in advance!

P.S. i am sorry for adding this request on the technical discussions. --Dimitrie569 (Talk) 19:23, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Discussion about an article's contents takes place on its corresponding talk page (in this case, Talk:Wi-Fi Protected Setup). There's a link to it below the article title. If no one responds, you can look at the list of associated WikiProjects at the top of the talk page, and use their talk pages to post a link to the discussion on the article talk page. isaacl (talk) 15:59, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Hmm ok, i should keep it in mind the next time. --Dimitrie569 (Talk) 18:52, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Toolforge down?

One of my regular tools I use is to check for empty categories which is on Toolforge and I now get this message:

Webservice is unreachable
The tool responsible for the URL you have requested, https://empty-categories.toolforge.org/go, is not currently responding.

I've already informed the tool creator but I don't think it is just a problem with this link. Any idea when this might be fixed? Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 19:25, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@Liz All of my toolforge tools are currently working, so it's likely just a problem with that specific tool. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:28, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
That's interesting. I also work with User:DreamRimmer bot II and that's been out of commission for the past three hours, I'm not sure there is any connection. It's a challenge when the tools you use every day don't function, you learn how much you rely on them. Thanks for the update on your end, Ahecht. Liz Read! Talk! 19:36, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Viewing watchlist by date added?

I'm familiar with the Raw Watchlist view, but that's alphabetical. Is there any way to get a listing of all articles on one's own watchlist, ordered by date added? -- Avocado (talk) 21:35, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

No. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:31, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
Expanding a bit ... If you look at the page about the database table you will see that the date added is not recorded. Maybe it should be, but I don't see such a change happening soon — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 11:20, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. Yes, that would indeed make it impossible. And even if they started recording it in the future, that wouldn't help much with pruning my present watchlist based on prior waves of now-abandoned editing interests, nor with retrieving a list of pages I've edited in a particular period (though the latter could probably be achieved through some grouping of contribution log records, I suppose). -- Avocado (talk) 12:07, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
@Avocado User:Ahecht/Scripts/watchlistcleaner lets you purge items from your watchlist that you haven't edited recently (and lets you specify what window of time you consider "recent"). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:37, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks! That looks potentially useful. Personally, there's some select stuff from ancient history that I'd be sad to have removed. Hence the desire to manage it myself but with date as sorting criterion. -- Avocado (talk) 21:08, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
OTOH, sorting by the wl_id field may give you an equivalent to "ordered by date added" (just not the date itself). But I don't know of any way to do that without direct access to the production databases; existing UIs look like they generally sort by namespace and title, or don't sort at all. Anomie⚔ 13:01, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) phab:T125991 phab:T67187. * Pppery * it has begun... 13:02, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
Oh, sorting by ID is a good idea! Is that data accessible via API? If so, where might one look for docs about that? I could probably produce a quick-and-dirty script to pull that data in an afternoon. Even if the ID isn't in perfect chronological order, it'd be better than nothing for current purposes. -- Avocado (talk) 14:32, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
No way to fetch it that I know of or can see in a quick search. Anomie⚔ 23:07, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
I appreciate your looking into it! I think I'm going to try to pull some of this off by reading the full contribution history from the API, since I have "watch page" on by default. Should be close enough. For read-only access, is one required to apply for bot operation permissions before creating a bot password for authenticated access to the API? -- Avocado (talk) 23:57, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
No, there's no such requirement. Anomie⚔ 00:29, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Template-generated redlinked category on userspace page

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features a weird Category:PagesXXXXXXusingXXXXXXgadgetXXXXXXCalculator, being autogenerated and transcluded by the use of {{calculator}} on a user sandbox page — but if I try to strip out instances of XXXXXX in the page, then it turns into the still-redlinked Category:PagesusinggadgetCalculator instead of the bluelinked Category:Pages using gadget Calculator, meaning that there's another problem on the page besides the XXXXXX thing.

But I can't justify going through the whole page to wrap all 145 invocations of the calculator template in {{suppress categories}} to make the redlink go away (both because that would be an excessive timesink and because it's a tracking category where userspace content isn't considered a problem), and I don't know how to figure out what the other problem is — so could somebody take a look at this and figure out how to fix whatever's causing the template to transclude a nonsense corruption of its tracking category? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 15:33, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Done. It's not the template's fault, it's that it's input was wrapped in a string replace op. I've just fixed that by suppressing categories for the problematic two uses. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:38, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Home / Away formatting in Module:Sports results

I'm curious to know whether this module can be edited to format the team header to use Template:Diagonal_split_header or _2. When adding either template to an individual table using team_header={{diagonal split header 2|Home|Away}} the result only shows the class and style in plain text, presumably because the module creates the table using class="wikitable plainrowheaders"? StatmanIbrahimovic (talk) 18:24, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

@StatmanIbrahimovic:class="wikitable plainrowheaders" is unrelated. Special:ExpandTemplates can show the generated wikitext. It happens because the module adds scope="col" | with a pipe before team_header. {{diagonal split header}} includes cell formatting code which should be before a pipe so it adds its own pipe but everything just becomes cell content when there already is a pipe.
{{#invoke:Sports results|main
|team_header={{diagonal split header 2|Home|Away}}
}}
produces:
class="diagonal-split-header unsortable" style="line-height:1.2;padding:0.1em 0.4em;"|
Away
Home
Updated to match(es) played on unknown. Source: [citation needed]
It works if we remove the unwanted pipe with {{replace}}.
{{replace|
{{#invoke:Sports results|main
|1=team_header={{diagonal split header 2|Home|Away}}
}}
|2={{!}} class="diagonal
|3=      class="diagonal
}}
produces:
Home \ Away
Updated to match(es) played on unknown. Source: [citation needed]
But don't do that. It's a bad hack. I don't know a good solution without modyfying the module to allow cell formatting by the caller. A pipe is needed somewhere after scope="col" so it wouldn't work to always omit the pipe. The normal solution is to add an extra optional parameter with code to insert before the pipe. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:14, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Is that template accessible? Do screen readers read it correct with the entire table? If it doesn't work, then we shouldn't support it. Gonnym (talk) 16:48, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Phab report needed for signature vulnerability

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T394522

A report at ANI (permalink) shows a troll with two external links in their signature. In this case, the links (which have been replaced) are apparently offensive but in general could be an attack on people who click the invisible external link. I can't find a report in Phab on this topic which makes me suspect I don't have the necessary skills so I'm hoping someone more familiar with that process will investigate and, if necessary, open a case. It's a shockingly bad weakness. Come to think of it, I believe this was reported many months ago in relation to how it could evade the black list. Johnuniq (talk) 11:28, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Custom signatures should be part of MediaWiki-Core-Preferences I believe. Nobody (talk) 13:35, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@Johnuniq: I created a phab ticket phab:T394522 for this issue. cyberdog958Talk 15:06, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
How is this different from just copy-pasting an external link in the wikitext while editing? Matma Rex talk 16:58, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@Matma Rex: I don’t think it’s really different per se, but it seems more insidious in this case as a signature link is the easiest way to get to a users user page or talk page, which were both spoofed in this case. It looks like the user intentionally hid the link using {{plainlink}} because the external link icon wasn’t present in his signature. Also, if using this method bypasses the blacklist, it makes the blacklist pointless to would be vandals. I can’t think of any legitimate reason an external URL would need to be in a signature to justify allowing them. cyberdog958Talk 18:09, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
They didn't use {{plainlink}}, but they did use <span class="plainlinks">...</span> which does the same thing but gets around our WP:SIG#NT policy. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:13, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
That makes more sense, thanks. cyberdog958Talk 18:19, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It isn't, really, except that it violates WP:SIG#EL: Do not include links to external websites in your signature, which is both explicit and clear. ELs in sigs - whether to offensive websites or not - are a crime. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:10, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

If there is a See also link in one article that read "[{See also|Radley_College#Rowing}]" and then the Rowing section had a name change to "Rowing Club", the See also link in the previous article breaks. This should be fixed. See also sections should look for name changes and adjust accordingly. NotQualified (talk) 22:00, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Broken anchors aren't fixed automatically and that can't be done because they can break for a variety of reasons. There's nothing magical about see also sections in the Wikipedia database. Graham87 (talk) 07:13, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
can anchors be tracked? NotQualified (talk) 10:56, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
No. (not right now). They are also not unique, which is an additional challenge if you would ever want to do so (Think of repeating sub-sub-section names in an article for instance). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:31, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Indeed. It's occurred to me that we have Cewbot, which reports broken anchors (like WildBot and maybe others did before it), but that's all that can be done. Also sorry about my earlier breakage of this section; I'm not sure how that happened. Graham87 (talk) 12:15, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
could there not be a tagging system in place whenever someone makes something that is anchor-able? NotQualified (talk) 19:01, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
@NotQualified: By something that is anchor-able, do you mean content that could be given an anchor? Anchors are, in essence, the HTML id= attribute; and that attribute may be applied to all HTML elements (without exception). Since an HTML element of one type or another may be placed at any point in the content of a page, it follows that everything is anchorable. Such tagging would occur on every single edit, which would be impractical. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:00, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
i mean things that are usually intended to be NotQualified (talk) 18:11, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Potentially, anything. Before I started to write this post, this section contained ten anchors. After saving, it will have eleven. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:54, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Who Wrote that not working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T394517
Resolved

I removed it from Chrome checking whether any extensions were causing problems (it was bad memory). Replaced it and it no longer shows up in Tools. Windows 11. Than ks. Doug Weller talk 16:03, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

I didn't uninstall anything and it doesn't work for me either. I can see that it throws an error "TypeError: mw.Uri is not a constructor" in browser's (Firefox 138) console and doesn't load further. AstonishingTunesAdmirer ➜ 16:21, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Odd. Doug Weller talk 19:05, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
@AstonishingTunesAdmirer see [4] discussion at Meta. Doug Weller talk 19:11, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Sorry about that! This is fixed in version 0.22.3, which is already live on the Firefox web store, and should go live on Chromium-based web stores soon. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you! It works for me now. AstonishingTunesAdmirer ➜ 23:05, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T395206

Hi! I've been a regular patroller of CAT:MISSFILE for a number of years. In the past week or so, I've consistently noticed pages with missing images showing up in the category that aren't appearing as redlinks. The file names just appear as plain text, despite the image not appearing properly in the article. An example of this would be on this diff of Kladno Formation with Noeggerathia expansa.png. I always check the deletion history on Wikipedia, Commons and Wiki File Helper, but in all cases, no deletion history appears for these non-redlinked files despite that they aren't appearing properly in the article. I've noticed quite a few instances of this in the past week or so, but prior to that, any missing images in articles always appeared as redlinks. Is anyone aware of the technical reason for this change happening in the past week or two? Just asking so myself and the other patrollers of the category can have a better idea of the difference between those types of files and redlinked files. Cheers, Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 19:23, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The wikitext for File:Noeggerathia expansa.png was added by IC1101-Capinatator at 12:37, 16 May 2025. That was fairly recent. I don't know how red links work but it is likely that a server would have got around to updating the rendered page to display the normal red link. At any rate, an edit a few hours later (diff) corrected the image to .jpg instead of .png. That means an image (File:Noeggerathia expansa.jpg) is now shown. Johnuniq (talk) 23:38, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
File:No such file.jpg
It appears that thumbs for missing files no longer display the file name in red. [[File:No such file.jpg]] produces File:No such file.jpg which is red for me. [[File:No such file.jpg|thumb]] produces the box to the right where I see the file name in black. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:16, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Looks like it was probably I3846a15d4. Apparently someone overlooked that the .mw-file-element might be inside an a when doing more styling for dark more. Anomie⚔ 12:18, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks so much for the answers! Looking back at a few examples when I've run across it, it looks like all the images were thumbs, so that explains it! Cheers, Katniss May the odds be ever in your favor ♥ 15:00, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Efn groups

I have added a table to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Alternative names. There is an {{efn}} note, with the |group=Names parameter set.

Immediately after this sentence, I want <references group="Names"/> to be displayed. However, this reference list is empty, and the footnote appears in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Special explanatory note instead of being displayed by itself(←primary goal) inside the table(←secondary goal).

What have I gotten wrong? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:34, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: The {{efn}} family of templates do accept a "group" parameter, but only with the specific values listed in the documentation. An arbitrary choice such as "Names" only gets you the default behaviour. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:42, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Huh, I assumed that efn would emit whatever group name I chose, even though the {{notelist}} wouldn't accept it. Thanks for fixing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Database servers in extension1 are overloaded

I keep getting:

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Cannot access the database: Cannot access the database: Database servers in extension1 are overloaded. In order to protect application servers, the circuit breaking to databases of this section have been activated. Please try again a few seconds.)

Somtimes goes away on reload, sometimes takes a few times. DuncanHill (talk) 21:29, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Just started happening to me too. SilverserenC 21:30, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
See phab:T393513 — Alien  3
3 3 11:56, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

When you attempt to create a double redirect you are shown a warning that includes a suggested fix (i.e. if Foo is a redirect to Bar and you attempt to create a redirect to Foo, MediaWiki shows a warning recommending you change the target of your new redirect to be Bar).

In response to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Double redirect creation I opened phab:T393825 requesting a link or button to automatically implement the suggested fix. Comments on that task by the developer who implemented the warning suggest that this might be complex to implement as part of MediaWiki but that "This could definitely be implemented on-wiki via a JavaScript gadget though." Thryduulf (talk) 11:48, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Pinging Utfor as the original requester at VPPRO. Thryduulf (talk) 11:49, 13 May 2025 (UTC)
This sounds like a useful script - maybe listing it at WP:US/R would help find a developer for it BugGhost 🦗👻 21:40, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
I was directed here by Wikipedia:GADGET#Proposals but I've copied the request to Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests#Request: Button or link to fix double redirects at creation. I have no idea which is the best location, but please pick one and close the other with a pointer. Thryduulf (talk) 22:46, 14 May 2025 (UTC)
#TIL after an embarrassing amount of failing around and messing up syntax, that said warning doesn't apply to userspace. (i.e. creating User:Example/foo that redirects to User:Example/bar that's already a redirect to User:Example triggers no warning.) *sigh* Now I get to request user page deletions. FeRDNYC (talk) 20:41, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Dark-mode navbox styling

For some time now, since the introduction of the dark-mode skin, this is how navboxes like Template:Seinfeld episodes appear in Vector 2022 when using dark mode.

(I've applied various tools and hand-edits to inline all of the styles and remove all CSS classes and element IDs, such that this should appear the same regardless what skin you're using, or what color-mode (if applicable). The only thing I can't control is the link coloring, since there's no way to inline-style a wikilink.)

Current appearance of Template:Seinfeld episodes in Vector 2022 dark mode

Seinfeld_season_1
Seinfeld_season_2
Seinfeld_season_3
Seinfeld_season_4
Seinfeld_season_5
Seinfeld_season_6
Seinfeld_season_7
Seinfeld_season_8
Seinfeld_season_9
† Indicates two-part episode

Note, especially, the top and left borders in the rows for odd-numbered seasons.

What happens, and why

This appears to simply be a mistake in the dark-mode CSS. One of the applicable rules — I'm not sure exactly where it comes from, but it's loaded with the page according to ny browser's development tools — is this one (warning: brain-melting CSS ahead)... 

  html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox td:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox th:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox-above:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox p:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox > div:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox caption:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox--frwiki td:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox--frwiki th:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox--frwiki p:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox--frwiki > div:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox--frwiki caption:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .sinottico th:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .infobox-header:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .skin-nightmode-reset-color:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navigation-box:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .metadata:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .quotebox:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .side-box:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .side-box div:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navbox:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navbox-subgroup:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navbox-group:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navbox-even:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navbox-abovebelow:not(.notheme),html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navbox-title:not(.notheme) {
    background: inherit !important;
    color: inherit !important;
    border-color: var(--border-color-subtle,#c8ccd1) !important
  }

That rule includes (third-from-last) .navbox-even in the list of classes it applies to, but 'not .navbox-odd

Fixed? appearance of Template:Seinfeld episodes

Here's what happens if I use devtools to modify that rule, so that it also applies to html.skin-theme-clientpref-night .navbox-odd:not(.notheme)...

Seinfeld_season_1
Seinfeld_season_2
Seinfeld_season_3
Seinfeld_season_4
Seinfeld_season_5
Seinfeld_season_6
Seinfeld_season_7
Seinfeld_season_8
Seinfeld_season_9
† Indicates two-part episode

Presumably, that's the intended appearance. Seems more likely than what we currently have, anyway.

My question: WHYYYYYYY???

In so many ways.

Yes, of course,

  • Why were odd-numbered navbox rows left out of the dark-mode border styling?

but also, perhaps even more fundamentally,

  • Why is dark-mode implemented like this, as a set of forced (!important, ugh), centralized style overrides?
  • Why were the applicable navbox TemplateStyles (Module:Navbox/styles.css) not updated with dark-mode support, either instead of or in addition to the central changes?
  • Why do we even bother with TemplateStyles when the skin is going to force them to be ignored?

Oh... and, of course, "Can this please be fixed?" FeRDNYC (talk) 21:03, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

To answer the question of where the CSS comes from: https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-WikimediaMessages/blob/master/modules/ext.wikimediamessages.styles/theme-night.less#L79. I'll let others deal with the broader questions. * Pppery * it has begun... 21:29, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Triple batch of questions is probably best answered as "WMF wanted to get things done at 900 wiki scale" and no real other reason. We can take these styles upon ourselves when phab:T365330 is done and then applying mw:Extension:WikimediaMessages#Site admin helper to the corresponding navbox-dark option. (Doing it before that task is done requires you or anyone else to work on the night mode related items at MediaWiki talk:Common.css/to do, though that may or may not be up to date in so far as there may be more to sort out.)
I can't explain why navbox-odd was forgotten. You could submit a patch upstream if you want. I haven't bothered because when the Phab ticket is done we can fix it directly ourselves, and it's not seriously impeding anything. It's a double thickness line of a slightly wrong color, but obscures no text from a contrast perspective, which was the priority. Izno (talk) 22:43, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
NB specifically navbox-odd has been previously commented on at Template talk:Navbox/Archive 24#Dark mode white border.
This discussion could probably have been had at Template talk:Navbox. Izno (talk) 22:55, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

Is the auth domain notice still needed?

Two months ago we added a notice about SUL3 to the login prompt per /Archive 218#MediaWiki:Loginprompt ?. Is this still needed now, or can it be removed? * Pppery * it has begun... 04:22, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

It would be good for new, and dormant but returning editors (two groups) to have the notice as they may not be aware that they have to modify their blocking tools (extensions, firewall, etc) that they may have to allow requests to the auth domain. The first can be easily settled with assuming that new editors are not auto-confirmed editors and use the CSS class to show the text to them, the second group is harder without enabling some form of last login tracking.
At the very least, the wording of the notice can be tweaked or simplified given that the enhancement is no longer 'recent' (2 months or more ago?), i.e. "All logins are processed on auth.wikimedia.org. If you are using blocking software, you will need to allow access to this domain to log in. (technical details)" – robertsky (talk) 05:34, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
This message appears before you log in, so you can't know whether the account they are going to log in to is new. And even if you could CSS classes like "autoconfirmed-show" don't work on the login page. * Pppery * it has begun... 13:46, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Opps. My wires were crossed. Then shortening the text is the alternative. – robertsky (talk) 01:24, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
In theory sessions can last for up to a year if you select the "remember me" option. So it seems likely that there are active editors who're going to log in using the new workflow for the first time in about 10 months' time. taavi (talk!) 15:26, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

I have removed "As part of recent enhancements" from the login notice. * Pppery * it has begun... 02:03, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Language list gone in Vector 2010

The list of languages in the sidebar (I use legacy Vector 2010) seems to have disappeared, and been replaced by a single link to Wikidata. Testing it under the default V2022, it remains under the list of languages at the top. Why has this been changed for V2010? I deal with cross-wiki stuff all the time, and this is a huge productivity hit for me as it requires multiple steps and additional time to get to my destination. Please, how do I get the language list back again in the left sidebar? Mathglot (talk) 19:51, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Could you link to an example where it is not working for you? Perhaps also try to reproduce the problem with this link which properly shows the language list for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?useskin=vector&safemode=1 (Context: using mw:safemode will "deactivate all on-wiki scripts and stylesheets at once"). HTH, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Quiddity, thanks for your reply. Your Example page works with the safe mode url suffix (and shows six languages in the sidebar) but it fails without the suffix. I hit Random article until I found three more pages with language links, they are: Ninzic languages, European turtle dove, and MILGEM project, and they all display [​[Wikidata item]​] under small-font heading, 'In other projects', and none of the individual languages. In each case, if I add ?useskin=vector&safemode=1 to the url, the language links in the sidebar come back again.
My most recent changes to commons.js was 4 April 2025 (and .css = 17 March). It occurred to me that perhaps one of the scripts I load may have changed recently, so I blanked my commons.js, bypassed my cache, and tried the three articles listed again, same thing: no links, but they come back in safemode. The only other thing that occurs to me, is that I believe there is a Preference setting somewhere to list my languages in the sidebar in English, not in the local language (i.e, I normally see: "German, French, Spanish", not "Deutsch, Français, Español"); should I hunt that down and disable that as well to see what happens? My common.js remains blanked for the moment. Mathglot (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
I have some clues: the languages are still there, but they are hidden, as if the list were toggled to 'hide'. It used to be, that when languages were listed, there was a down-pointing triangle and if you clicked it, it turned into a right-pointing triangle with the languages hidden. Now, the triangles act differently depending what browser you are on. Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, Firefox, iOS desktop mode: no triangles at all, but if you click where the triangle ought to be, it toggles the list back and forth; Opera: down triangle is visible, right-pointing is invisible, toggling works if you click where it ought to be. There is also the question of why the language list got hidden in the first place, as I always keep them in 'show' mode. Mathglot (talk) 22:34, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
Is the toggle to hide/show a specific script you have? Mine have never done that, and on Ninzic languages I see the 3 interwikis displayed normally above the "Edit links" wikidata link. CMD (talk) 09:53, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Hi, Chipmunkdavis. No, the behavior is the same even after I have blanked all my scripts, both in my common.js as well as global.js on meta. But the toggle behavior does go away at Ninzic languages in safemode. But are you sure you do not have that behavior? What happens when you click the header 'Language' above the language list, nothing? I'm not sure what it means that the language list toggling doesn't work in safe mode even though it does work in normal mode with all my scripts blanked. (I do not have a vector.js.) Sounds like I will have to try turning off gadgets next. Mathglot (talk) 03:26, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
I don't have an arrow, and there is nothing for me to click, it's just a h3 tag: <h3 id="p-lang-label" class="vector-menu-heading "><span class="vector-menu-heading-label">Languages</span></h3>. CMD (talk) 03:33, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Found the culprit, finally: it is gadget 'Allow navigation menus to be collapsed', which I never would have suspected. Whew, what a pain! Now I can restore my js files. But, I still need to report a problem with that gadget not displaying the toggle triangles anymore, as it used to (see screenshot). Adding Quiddity, who may be curious to discover how it all shook out. (edit conflict) Mathglot (talk) 03:36, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Nobody has an arrow (except Opera users); that is part of the problem, the triangle used to be there as in the image. I have the identical Html for the H3, but it is embedded in some code starting <nav id="p-lang" class="mw-portlet mw-portlet-lang vector-menu-portal portal vector-menu" aria-labelledby="p-lang-label"> which I suspect is the target of some js somewhere that does the show/hide operation. Mathglot (talk) 03:43, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
I have that wrapper too, presumably the arrow is coded within that separately. I also have a cogwheel with a link to Language settings not in the screenshot, so perhaps there were a couple of changes since that 2011 image was made. CMD (talk) 03:50, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
That gadget is basically ancient and based on a prototype version of Vector and so I would hesitate to call it maintained. Ignoring that, the arrow disappearing is due to an upstream skin change which now renders the triangles without loading separate images. I don't know which specific change it was and when I went to hunt I couldn't find it. I couldn't puzzle out a trivial change to fix another script with the same issue, User:Bradv/Scripts/ExpandDiffs.js (cc Bradv in case you're around or want to fix it when you are). (The spans that represent the triangles in question are still rendered in Bradv's script which means that script isn't dead to me, just looks kind of silly to click in white space.) Izno (talk) 05:12, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
Thanks, and that's what I was doing, too, namely clicking in the white space where the triangle isn't but ought to be. I discovered by accident that the whole 'Language' header adjacent to the missing triangle (a nongle? or is that a missing dongle?) is also clickable for hide/show but I don't know if that is an artifact of the missing triangle issue and will go away if that is fixed, or if it was always supposed to be clickable. Anyway, for the time being it is, and offers a bigger target. Will be interested what Bradv might have to say about the topic. Mathglot (talk) 07:41, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
I don't think it's that gadget ("SidebarTranslate"). I turned that gadget on, and set my skin to Vector2010, and the gadget works as expected on a regular pageview of Example. If the problem is not originating in your common.js, then I think it must be either another gadget, or one of the m:User:Mathglot/global.js userscripts. Try turning off various gadgets, or blanking your global.js. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Can't access Gerrit

Suddenly it's started to return a 403 (Forbidden) for me. Can you access it? https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/ Dragoniez (talk) 05:54, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

Works for me. — Alien  3
3 3 06:04, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
@Alien333 Thanks for letting me know you could access it. That helped me figure out the issue. It turns out it was something on my end, not Gerrit's.
Looks like it was a browser compatibility thing. Even after clearing the cache, it still wouldn’t work, but it loaded fine on other browsers like Firefox and Chrome for iOS.
On my desktop I use Chrome, and apparently I was stuck on version 122.0.6261.129 because auto-updates weren’t working. I manually updated to version 136.0.7103.114, and now Gerrit works just fine. Dragoniez (talk) 11:21, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Dragoniez, I find commercial sites like iidrn.com (think: is it down right now) very helpful for figuring out if it is just you, or everybody. Mathglot (talk) 07:54, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Its says there are 0 steward on wikipedia

says 0 here Special:Statistics#:~:text=43-,Stewards,-(list of members but there should be 34 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards#:~:text=There%20are%20currently%2034%20stewards Jhoncena1234 (talk) 19:03, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

That is the list of members in the local "steward" group, which is almost always empty. The global "steward" group is listed elsewhere. * Pppery * it has begun... 19:04, 18 May 2025 (UTC)
More specifically, here at Meta, which is linked from their statistics special page. Graham87 (talk) 08:34, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
To explain a little more, the English Wiipedia is part of a unified login system for around 1000 wikis run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Most user groups are local and only apply to one wiki where they are assigned and listed. The steward group is global and applies to all wikis. It is only assigned and listed at the central Meta wiki. It's admittedly confusing that Special:Statistics says Stewards 0. Maybe it should be explained in MediaWiki:Statistics-footer. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:39, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
If you look at Wikipedia:User access levels and search for "steward", you will find that in the sidebar there is a link to Wikipedia:Stewards, which itself is a soft redirect to meta:Stewards. There is also a section Wikipedia:User access levels#Global rights, which says ... stewards are appointed globally across all public Wikimedia wikis. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:33, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Module-smuggled redlinked categories

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories once again features two redlinks being autogenerated by modules I can't edit, which I can't figure out what to do with:

  • Category:Sweden by county category navigation with 6–15 links, autogenerated by the use of {{Sweden by county category navigation}} on various Swedish "by county" categories. While I can find evidence that this template generates numerous other categories tracking grey links, including the already-existing Category:Sweden by county category navigation with 6–15 grey links, I can't find any evidence of any other categories existing for any other number of just plain "links" without the "grey" modifier — so I can't figure out why this exists for the 6-15 range, but not for any other number, and thus can't create it if it isn't expected and doesn't have any other siblings. So could somebody with module-editing privileges figure out how to make it go away?
  • Category:Pages using old style mw-ui-constructive, autogenerated by the use of {{Clickable button/sandbox}} on various userspace pages. I could probably just wrap the template invocations in {{suppress categories}}, but I note that these invocations aren't new ones — they've all been on the pages for a long time without ever generating this category until now, meaning the category results from a new module edit within the past couple of days, and thus possibly could recur in the future if it isn't addressed some other way. So if this is a tracking category we would want, then could somebody who knows what they're doing create it — and if it isn't desired, then again, I need somebody with module-editing privileges to make it go away.

Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:28, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Never mind on the Sweden one, it turns out I was able to clear that out just by null-editing it, because it was just one of those "category not actually on the pages despite nominally appearing to have pages in it, because it had already been corrected but failed to purge" things. Bearcat (talk) 14:36, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
@Andrybak: * Pppery * it has begun... 14:38, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Ideally, the userspace pages shouldn't use the sandbox of the template. Would Wikipedia:User pages#Ownership and editing of user pages allow switching them to the live template?
Otherwise, feel free to undo the automatic categorization in the sandbox of the module. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:47, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Bearcat, Category:Pages using old style mw-ui-constructive has been cleared. —⁠andrybak (talk) 16:48, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Image placement

I remember seeing a template that let me combine two images into one placement. Anyone remember what that template is named?

Also, I have a bunch of templates on my user page that put images down the left edge of the page. If I want to put them horizontally is there an easy way to do it?

Thank you.

RJFJR (talk) 15:44, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

{{Multiple image}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:35, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. RJFJR (talk) 18:09, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-21

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 Editing Team and the Machine Learning Team are working on a new check for newcomers: Peacock check. Using a prediction model, this check will encourage editors to improve the tone of their edits, using artificial intelligence. We invite volunteers to review the first version of the Peacock language model for the following languages: Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Japanese. Users from these wikis interested in reviewing this model are invited to sign up at MediaWiki.org. The deadline to sign up is on May 23, which will be the start date of the test.

Updates for editors

  • From May 20, 2025, oversighters and checkusers will need to have their accounts secured with two-factor authentication (2FA) to be able to use their advanced rights. All users who belong to these two groups and do not have 2FA enabled have been informed. In the future, this requirement may be extended to other users with advanced rights. Learn more.
  • Wishlist item Multiblocks will begin mass deployment by the end of the month: all non-Wikipedia projects plus Catalan Wikipedia will adopt Multiblocks in the week of May 26, while all other Wikipedias will adopt it in the week of June 2. Please contact the team if you have concerns. Administrators can test the new user interface now on your own wiki by browsing to Special:Block?usecodex=1, and can test the full multiblocks functionality on testwiki. Multiblocks is the feature that makes it possible for administrators to impose different types of blocks on the same user at the same time. See the help page for more information. [5]
  • Later this week, the Special:SpecialPages listing of almost all special pages will be updated with a new design. This page has been redesigned to improve the user experience in a few ways, including: The ability to search for names and aliases of the special pages, sorting, more visible marking of restricted special pages, and a more mobile-friendly look. The new version can be previewed at Beta Cluster now, and feedback shared in the task. [6]
  • The Chart extension is being enabled on more wikis. For a detailed list of when the extension will be enabled on your wiki, please read the deployment timeline.
  • Wikifunctions will be deployed on May 27 on five Wiktionaries: Hausa, Igbo, Bengali, Malayalam, and Dhivehi/Maldivian. This is the second batch of deployment planned for the project. After deployment, the projects will be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them in their pages. A function is something that takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, such as adding up two numbers, converting miles into metres, calculating how much time has passed since an event, or declining a word into a case. Wikifunctions will allow users to do that through a simple call of a stable and global function, rather than via a local template.
  • Later this week, the Wikimedia Foundation will publish a hub for experiments. This is to showcase and get user feedback on product experiments. The experiments help the Wikimedia movement understand new users, how they interact with the internet and how it could affect the Wikimedia movement. Some examples are generated video, the Wikipedia Roblox speedrun game and the Discord bot.
  • Recurrent item View all 29 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, there was a bug with creating an account using the API, which has now been fixed. [7]

Updates for technical contributors

  • Gadgets and user scripts that interact with Special:Block may need to be updated to work with the new manage blocks interface. Please review the developer guide for more information. If you need help or are unable to adapt your script to the new interface, please let the team know on the talk page. [8]
  • The mw.title object allows you to get information about a specific wiki page in the Lua programming language. Starting this week, a new property will be added to the object, named isDisambiguationPage. This property allows you to check if a page is a disambiguation page, without the need to write a custom function. [9]
  • Advanced item User script developers can use a new reverse proxy tool to load javascript and css from gitlab.wikimedia.org with mw.loader.load. The tool's author hopes this will enable collaborative development workflows for user scripts including linting, unit tests, code generation, and code review on gitlab.wikimedia.org without a separate copy-and-paste step to publish scripts to a Wikimedia wiki for integration and acceptance testing. See Tool:Gitlab-content on Wikitech for more information.
  • Recurrent item Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

  • The 12th edition of Wiki Workshop 2025, a forum that brings together researchers that explore all aspects of Wikimedia projects, will be held virtually on 21-22 May. Researchers can register now.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:09, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

List update errors

Hey, can you please ask an admin to fix the internal error with the RTS games list page?

Whenever I try to make a new small edit, this small error message always comes up after clicking to the next preview window in my mobile Wikipedia app on android phone. It says: "{"status":500,"type":"Internal error"}".

What is it? Is it a database upload problem with the page?

I don't use a VPN on phone.

Later on, someone suggested to me to edit and preview the page in a desktop PC browser. I did that and it worked. I haven't tested it in a mobile browser on the phone (but they should work the same way as the desktop PC browsers).

Recently, I'm noticing this different error message on the same page: "{"status":413,"type":"Internal error"}".

I read about that online and it points to the payload data being too big for the server to handle. Can you fix these problems?

I'm also posting this topic here in a mobile browser (not the Wikipedia app) on my phone because the app didn't recognise me as logged in on this page. ObiKKa (talk) 23:31, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

@ObiKKa: The 500 and 413 are presumably HTTP status codes, as defined by RFC 9110 (more specifically, 500 (Internal Server Error) and 413 (Content Too Large)). They are not generated by any Wikitext markup, and I don't see what an admin can do about either of these. Server issues are often transient; if they persist, you may file a ticket at phab: (see WP:BUGS). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 06:43, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Patrol on new user page

Hi, can anyone tell me the link/ discussion thread for the patrol's new user page? As you can see below, there are two editor user pages with the "mark this page as patrol" tag. [10] and [11] . Thank you. Cassiopeia talk 23:46, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The second page was deleted, so I can't comment on that. The first page was patrolled by you.
I can't quite understand what problem you are trying to describe, but this seems like a discussion for Wikipedia talk:New pages patrol/Reviewers. —⁠andrybak (talk) 15:03, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Andrybak} Thank you and I know. The second page I nominated for user name violation and that is the reason it was deleted. Stay safe and thank you. Cassiopeia talk
Pages in any namespace can be patrolled, and the "Mark this page as patrolled" option is not new. You don't see it on mainspace pages because the Page curation toolbar hides it. Patrolling a page with this option is the same as marking it reviewed through the Page curation toolbar. The toolbar is easier to use and offers more features, which is why NPRs prefer that. You can mark userspace pages as patrolled, but we usually review only mainspace pages because patrolling other namespaces isn't necessary and is a waste of time. – DreamRimmer ■ 16:28, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
DreamRimmer I have been patrolling for both NPR for many years and this is the first time I saw the in new user page. To me it doesn't make sense as we can mark patrol if all content added by the new user is adhere to the Wikipedia user page guidelines but we can guarantee the new user add something out the guidelines the next day or in the future. Thank you and stay safe. Cassiopeia talk 23:20, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Patrol marking are about new pages, not about every revision, it is the same as new articles - if they get vandalized later they don't become unpatrolled. — xaosflux Talk 10:53, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

Add alternate 'geolocate' option on Anontools

I'd like to propose adding another alternate 'geolocate' tool on Template:Anontools, mocked up in the sandbox.

For example: https://www.iplocate.io/95.91.214.178 or https://www.iplocate.io/2601:194:300:130:250D::

This site shows geolocation data as well as proxy/VPN detection, whois, ISP/ASN, and abuse contacts all in one. It has no usage restrictions either. disclaimer: I'm the developer of the site in question Tally-IPLocate (talk) 09:57, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

This should be discussed at Template talk:Anontools#Protected edit request on 1 May 2025. — Qwerfjkltalk 10:11, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi everyone! I'm writing on behalf of the Web team. Over the past year, the team has been exploring ways to improve browsing for readers. We want to increase reader retention and create pathways for deepening reader connections with the wikis. We would like readers to use the wikis more frequently and potentially set towards the path of editing.

One of our experiments was to provide suggestions in the empty state of the search bar for logged-out users. The goal was to show suggestions to those who show interest in spending time on Wikipedia (by opening the search bar). We performed two experiments - showing the feature in a browser extension on desktop, and showing some readers the feature via an A/B test on mobile. It turned out that engagement with this feature is high when compared to other suggestion features, and readers who use the feature tend to read more articles overall. For more details, please check out the project page.

The next step is to make this feature available across wikis. We will begin rolling out the feature over the next month and a half. Catalan, Hebrew, and Italian Wikipedias, as well as a number of sister projects will see the change on desktop between May 21 and June 4, and on mobile June 4 and June 15. All other Wikipedias will see the change on desktop between June 4 and June 15, and on mobile – between June 15 and June 30. EBlackorby-WMF (talk) 18:55, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Font change in desktop view on mobile

Did the CSS just change on mobilein desktop view as seen on mobile? Page body text on my phone is a lot denser today. Chrome on a Galaxy phone. Largoplazo (talk) 14:59, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Not on mobile, but on the usual Vector2022 view on a desktop I'm seeing text that appears a lot denser today as well. It's hard to tell because I don't have before and after screenshots, but my suspicion is that the leading (space between consecutive lines of text) has been reduced. I went into my custom css and increased the line-height (mine has a line ".vector-body {font-size: 115%; line-height: 150%;}" but you may not want such extreme values) and it looked a lot better again. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:28, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
I just realized, it isn't mobile view, it's desktop view though on my phone. I've edited my original post. Largoplazo (talk) 19:50, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
On the other hand, I'm not noticing a difference on my desktop monitor! Largoplazo (talk) 22:55, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
On desktop my icons are smaller today too... Sock-the-guy (talk) 19:38, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Not sure if bigger...
MonoBook here, and while I don't see that, I do see the pink box atop the editing window that - for instance - has the this-user-has-been-blocked-by-who-and-why looks to have larger text today. Or maybe it's always been this way and I'm losing my mind, that can't be ruled out? - The Bushranger One ping only 19:27, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
No, you're right, it is bigger. Remember, WP:ITSTHURSDAY. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:13, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
woah I didn't know about that. Thanks! Sock-the-guy (talk) 21:21, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Aha. That would explain the larger text in the block notices. I also noticed the text in the box here looks odd (@Parsecboy: since I'm linking your page for an example!). And I'm going to guess that Wikimedia Commons got rolled out on Wednesday, which might explain the Metadata text looking bigger that I noticed there yesterday... - The Bushranger One ping only 22:48, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
The new CSS rule affecting the pink box is: 
.cdx-message__content,
.cdx-message__content > * {
  font-size: var(--font-size-medium,1rem);
  line-height: var(--line-height-small,1.375rem);
}
and since it seems to be general for pink boxes, it also affects the pink box shown whn you visit the redlink of a deleted page. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:11, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
The same rule is picked up by the brown boxes, which explains Izno's post of 23:15, 15 May 2025 (UTC) below. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:12, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
I've also caught that it impacted the old revision notice, see my user page for example. Izno (talk) 23:15, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Based on the phab chatter, this is phab:T394305 and should be fixed already +- caches +- hard refreshing. Izno (talk) 23:17, 15 May 2025 (UTC)
Really don't want this to get archived yet ... but we may be stuck with these changes. Steel1943 (talk) 19:19, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

Fonts changed in deletion summaries?

Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or ... is the font size in deletion summaries, such as the one posted at Yoshi Falls, bigger and/or has less space between lines than they previously did? And if so, was this intentional? (In case it is relevant, I'm using Vector legacy 2010.) Steel1943 (talk) 22:51, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

This is #Font change in desktop view on mobile above. Despite the section heading, it's not just mobiles. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:54, 16 May 2025 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I am using "desktop on mobile". Steel1943 (talk) 19:06, 17 May 2025 (UTC)
Givent the timing, I suspect this can all be blamed on "changes to suit dark mode". - The Bushranger One ping only 23:53, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

OWID visualization within MediaWiki (Part 2)

We at Wiki Project Med have been working on decreasing bandwidth usage since this was raised as a significant concern during the last discussion. We have succeeded in dropping usage from 36 Mb down to 498KB. See MDWiki:WikiProjectMed:OWID

We would like to request turning on this functionality on EN WP so that it can be tested further. And of course are open to more feedback. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:14, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Notified: WT:GADGET, WP:IANB. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:47, 19 May 2025 (UTC)
The scrolling is honestly is somehow more confusing than before. Scrolling on the image (where my cursor is most likely positioned after clicking the images) moves, not the scrollbar, but a slider off screen, making me wonder what is going on. The initial concerns about unselectable text have also not bee addressed. This still feels a bit half-baked and probably needs more iteration before being considered as a default-on template gadget. Sohom (talk) 04:41, 21 May 2025 (UTC)
Yah the sizing of the image needs more work. Just wanting to begin further testing on EN WP. Realize it is not ready for mainspace use yet. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:27, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Problem with Full party name with color, it outputs the same party name for two different parties.

Problem with {{Full party name with color}}, it outputs the same party name for two different parties.

Hello everyone.

I had raised this exact same issue on the Module talk:Political party. I was informed that this exact issue had been brought up at the Template talk:Party name with color, but no one has fixed this issue yet. User:CX Zoom suggested that I should try to bring this up here so that someone might be able fix this. I have described the exact situation below:

While using {{Full party name with color}}, the output for the party color of the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is different, but the full party name for both these parties is the same as shown below.

style="width: 2px; color:inherit; background-color: #f50222;" data-sort-value="Communist Party of India" | | scope="row" style="text-align: left;" | Communist Party of India

style="width: 2px; color:inherit; background-color: #cc0d0d;" data-sort-value="Communist Party of India (Marxist)" | | scope="row" style="text-align: left;" | Communist Party of India

Please change the full party name for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) when using this template Rohitm2000 (talk) 23:47, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

@Rohitm2000 The problem is that the module is trying to filter out standard disambiguation (such as Christian Social Party (Belgium, defunct)) which is not part of the party name. If you want to include it, you can add |dab=yes to the template, e.g. {{full party name with color|Communist Party of India (Marxist)|dab=yes}}. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:15, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
@Rohitm2000: You don't state which articles this is occurring on. Examples always help. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:19, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
Example taken from talk page, see Ambasamudram Assembly constituency#Tamil Nadu. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 14:26, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
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