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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).
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Proposals: policy | other | Discussions | Ideas |
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Contents
- 1 Unresolved issue is archived - How to "UN-Archive"?
- 2 Wikisky.org down?
- 3 Need expert help to fix: Huge amount of white space (from 2012 edit)
- 4 Strange burst of activity at Special:Log/rights
- 5 Interface editor
- 6 Add articles to watchlist from another user's contrib history?
- 7 Utilizing template: Globalize within template: Multiple issues
- 8 Can someone explain this edit summary
- 9 Cross-wiki login not happening
- 10 RfC: Preferred protocol for external links
- 11 IP addresses and spam blacklist
- 12 Wikilink in note
- 13 Date of the creating of Wikipedia
- 14 Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon
- 15 CSVLoader
- 16 Possible page creation bug
- 17 Where's the new pageview tool
- 18 Page information and robots.txt
- 19 DumbBot is causing problems
- 20 Wikimedia sites intermittently not responding
- 21 adding a row count column to a sortable table
- 22 Changing a user talk page from one archiving method to another
- 23 Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
- 24 Server migration will prevent editing next week
- 25 Tech News: 2016-15
- 26 Infobox query
- 27 CharInsert
- 28 'Compare selected revisions' query
- 29 Talk:Jethro Tull (band)
- 30 "Under Title" issue
- 31 Database error
- 32 Downtime for wikipedia.org
- 33 ProtBot
- 34 Citing sources (or authors) with a Wikidata item, but no article
Unresolved issue is archived - How to "UN-Archive"?
Greetings, A problem awaiting resolution is now archived here and tracked at phabricator:T126553.
If it's not possible to pull back from archive, does it need to be re-posted again?
Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 19:04, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
- @JoeHebda: Just post the new question, with a link back to the archived thread. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:39, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
- If I re-post again here, will it be archived again before the issue is solved? Just wondering... JoeHebda (talk) 02:19, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
- Possibly; archiving bots do not take any notice of whether a thread has been replied to or not. Threads on this page are archived if they've not been posted to for five days. So if nobody responds here before the next bot run that occurs after 10:30, 5 March 2016 (UTC), it will be archived. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
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- Redrose64 – Thanks for the update. Yesterday I did repost the new VPT archive link to Wikipedia talk:User scripts#Fix needed: Gadget only works with Vector skin, script error which was orginally posted on Feb. 15th. Wondering if there might be a better place to post where the issue can be fixed? Without waiting for months for a resolution? If I knew anything about scripts (which I do not) I would attempt to fix myself. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 13:39, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
-
1) ω Awaiting a solution – also see: MediaWiki:Gadget-mobile-sidebar and Wikipedia:Gadget. JoeHebda (talk) 13:45, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
@JoeHebda: You can use {{DNAU}} to prevent archiving. nyuszika7h (talk) 21:26, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
2) ω Awaiting a solution — JoeHebda • (talk) 12:08, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
3) ω Awaiting a solution — JoeHebda • (talk) 18:12, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
-
-
- FWIW, i copied User:Brion VIBBER's script locally, and verified it works with "monobook" and "modern" after minor changes. i had to modify about 5 lines to use
mw.util.$content
instead of$('#content')
, and add a line to incease z-index specifically for monobook: for some reason the left edge of the mobile image was overshadowed by the right edge of the content in monobook (i'm sure there's more . you can try User:קיפודנחש/mobile-sidebarcopy.js to verify it indeed works with other skins (you'll probably want to disable the gadget, or you may get 2 of them...). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:55, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
- FWIW, i copied User:Brion VIBBER's script locally, and verified it works with "monobook" and "modern" after minor changes. i had to modify about 5 lines to use
-
-
-
-
- קיפודנחש – Thanks for helping. I know about testing computer programs in other languages but nothing about js scripts. If you or anther editor could explain the steps to test, I would be willing to try testing. So far, I did un-check existing Gadgets option to disable Mobile sidebar preview option. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 21:36, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
- to test the modified script, add to your personal script file the following line (if you copy from edit screen, *do not* include the "code" tags):
importScript('User:קיפודנחש/mobile-sidebarcopy.js');
- (if the file does not exist yet, create it, add the line, and save. more detailed instructions and explanations about personal scripts can be found in WP:JS). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:15, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
- קיפודנחש – Thanks for helping. I know about testing computer programs in other languages but nothing about js scripts. If you or anther editor could explain the steps to test, I would be willing to try testing. So far, I did un-check existing Gadgets option to disable Mobile sidebar preview option. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 21:36, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
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-
קיפודנחש – Followed the test instructions & same results = Mobile sidebar preview works only with Vector skin & not the other skins. I did the Purge and logout for each; not seeing the little toolbar icon to activate preview. I know it is running the test version because I have the Gadgets one unchecked with Vector & icon shows & works correctly. — JoeHebda • (talk) 22:37, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
-
- you are correct. it turned out to be more elaborate than i thought - the code Brian wrote displayed the phone nicely, but placing the icon for turning it on/off on the menu turned out to be a bitch... anywhoo, i at least made it so that you can use it now, though it's not really pretty when you use a skin other than vector. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:10, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- @JoeHebda: update: could not get the mobile on/off icon to look acceptable on monobook, modern and cologne blue, so on these skins, the on/off switch is text only (top row for mo*, left-menu under "Edit" for cologne). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 16:34, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- @קיפודנחש: – So far, it looks good and okay to me. For Cologn Blue, I am confused because I can not find any "Edit" anywhere on the page; not on top or left sidebar. I do see a "Mobile view" but that is just for switching the entire page between Mobile/Desktop views. Wondering where to look? — JoeHebda • (talk) 16:48, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- @JoeHebda: i practically never use cologne, and not aware of all its idiosyncrasies. for me, using this skin, when i am on a page i am allowed to edit, i see in the left-hand menu column "Edit". i verified that this is so even as anon (you can test any skin by appending to the address line "?useskin=<skinname>". this works for anons too. names are [ vector monobook modern cologneblue ]). i also verified that the script causes "Mobile" to appear there even for anons. there might be something in your prefs that causes it not to show, or maybe it *does* show and for some reason you missed it. HTH, peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:58, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- @קיפודנחש: – So far, it looks good and okay to me. For Cologn Blue, I am confused because I can not find any "Edit" anywhere on the page; not on top or left sidebar. I do see a "Mobile view" but that is just for switching the entire page between Mobile/Desktop views. Wondering where to look? — JoeHebda • (talk) 16:48, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- @JoeHebda: update: could not get the mobile on/off icon to look acceptable on monobook, modern and cologne blue, so on these skins, the on/off switch is text only (top row for mo*, left-menu under "Edit" for cologne). peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 16:34, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- you are correct. it turned out to be more elaborate than i thought - the code Brian wrote displayed the phone nicely, but placing the icon for turning it on/off on the menu turned out to be a bitch... anywhoo, i at least made it so that you can use it now, though it's not really pretty when you use a skin other than vector. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:10, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
קיפודנחש – Yes, I did find it now. I had to set my custom CSS font-size to 155 percent for Cologne Blue skin to help overcome a line-height issue making that skin very hard to read. And the Mobile preview sidebar works okay there as well. Just a FYI, I found a report of User skin preferences at Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences#Skin. Thanks so much for getting Mobile to work correctly with these skins! IMO not seeing the little toolbar icon is a lesser (non-structural) issue.
Now in order to go live with this script, what needs to be done? Once it is out there I will check On in Gadgets. Then, could the Mobile sidebar preview line of Gadgets be moved out of the Testing and development section? Perhaps move into Appearance section? Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 19:13, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
- @JoeHebda: i saw this more as an experiment, to gauge the amount of change needed to make mobile-sidebar work with other skins. ideally, User:Brion VIBBER would patch the script on meta to work with all skins (TBH, Brion needs me to tell him how to do that exactly as much as i need my grandson to teach me to suck eggs). if, for any reason, Brion doesn't do it, enwiki can decide that limiting this gadget to vector is acceptable. the very last resort would be to change the gadget on enwiki to consume Brion's css file from meta, and the modified js file from my userspace (or some copy of it). this last option is both undesirable and unlikely. if none of those options is executed, people who do not use vector can consume my modified script privately, the same way i listed above and you tried. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:31, 4 March 2016 (UTC)
Wikisky.org down?
I knew this site may not be affiliated with Wikipedia. But since it gets used a lot here, I think it's worth to mention. --fireattack (talk) 03:21, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Fireattack: Nothing to do with us: the first clue is that on visiting that site, it does not resemble any of ours (in terms of sidebars, menus, tabs, etc.) and so does not use MediaWiki software. Next clue is that it uses frames, which is a horrible obsolete way of making information inaccessible. Third clue is that none of their pages mention the Wikimedia Foundation anywhere (all of ours do, at the very bottom - whatever your skin). Fourth: if you follow their "contact us" link bottom right, the page you reach also doesn't mention Wikimedia anywhere, and the address is in Ontario.
- There are thousands of wikis, and by no means all are part of the Wikimedia Foundation. I suggest that you try http://server3.wikisky.org/contact_us.jsp --Redrose64 (talk) 08:25, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Redrose64:: Sorry I didn't make it clear. My point is not asking Wikipedia to fix that site. It's about if that site is dead for good, we should use other service for {{Sky}}.--fireattack (talk) 18:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- And I cannot visit that contact us link either. :D --fireattack (talk) 23:50, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- Special:Linksearch only shows eight uses of http://wikisky.org/ but a lot of http://www.wikisky.org. Some of their pages were cached by Google 31 March: Google:cache:http://www.wikisky.org/starview?object=NGC+3109. So it worked four days ago. Maybe it's just a temporary problem. After writing that, a new test shows the site is working again! PrimeHunter (talk) 10:12, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- @PrimeHunter: Yeah it's mainly used by {{Sky}}. And it's still down here :( --fireattack (talk) 18:46, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- It has also gone down for me again. Let's call it currently unstable, and not something to start changing links for. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:17, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yesterday, I tried http://wikisky.org/ twice at twelve-hour intervals, it worked both times. It now throws
Server not found Firefox can't find the server at server7.wikisky.org. Check the address for typing errors such as ww.example.com instead of www.example.com If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection. If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.
- Yesterday, I tried http://wikisky.org/ twice at twelve-hour intervals, it worked both times. It now throws
- It has also gone down for me again. Let's call it currently unstable, and not something to start changing links for. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:17, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- @PrimeHunter: Yeah it's mainly used by {{Sky}}. And it's still down here :( --fireattack (talk) 18:46, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
- This site is still down here. --fireattack (talk) 06:29, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
Need expert help to fix: Huge amount of white space (from 2012 edit)
Greetings, While viewing page Category:Wikipedia articles needing factual verification I noticed a huge amount of white space before the subcategory listings. This is way beyond anything I would be able to fix, so I'm asking for help here. At View history it looks like this revision caused the problem. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:05, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- FWIW, I don't know exactly what's wrong but it is something from {{Parent monthly clean-up category}} that affects all category pages that use it. The white space is generated by the list of monthly entries before it is hidden, but the text doesn't move up to fill in the empty space as one would expect. --MASEM (t) 14:10, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- No idea either. If you preview the category it looks fine — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:18, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- As far as I can tell in my browser (Opera), the {{Parent monthly clean-up category}} starts out expanded, forcing the category listings down; afterwards, the box contracts, butt the listings stay where they were originally. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:22, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- Seems like a WebKit / Blink bug.
-- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}}
18:26, 5 April 2016 (UTC)- Yes, it's a browser inconsistency. The
{{Parent monthly clean up category}}
template encloses many links, one per line, making it very tall, so that in its uncollapsed state it forces page content downwards by a large distance. This template starts out uncollapsed, and collapses soon after all the JavaScript on the page starts to run. The actual problem is that upon collapsing, the content that previously it had forced down isn't moved up into the gap by all browsers. The most satisfactory solution would be to find sources for those unsourced claims - they go back to April 2007. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:41, 5 April 2016 (UTC)- Thanks for the info. I see it renders correctly in IE-11 browser, but not on my "Chromium" browser. Recently I fixed a white-space issue at Wikipedia:Community portal by moving content template up into the base Community bulletin board template. Wonder if something like that might work here? Or is it just too complicate an issue? — JoeHebda • (talk) 16:12, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, it's a browser inconsistency. The
- Seems like a WebKit / Blink bug.
- As far as I can tell in my browser (Opera), the {{Parent monthly clean-up category}} starts out expanded, forcing the category listings down; afterwards, the box contracts, butt the listings stay where they were originally. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:22, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
Redrose64 – After some more investigating, I wonder if that vertical template ({{Parent monthly clean up category}}
) could be replaced with a horizontal template of years. I did find {{Cat topic year}}
and asking if it could be used here? Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 19:58, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- The main problem there is that
{{Parent monthly clean up category}}
doesn't have one link per year, it's one per month. But altering the appearance of that cat will be controversial: the thing is, it's just one category out of a whole series, see Category:Wikipedia maintenance categories sorted by month, which should basically be laid out in the same way. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Guilty - but the place to "fix" this in the way described is mostly at "
{{Progress box}}
". Ideally this moving stuff around post render would be fixed instead. I've lost count of the number of times I have clicked in the edit box, only to have the page render the standard warning, move everything down and click me through to the copyright page.
- All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:00, 12 April 2016 (UTC).
Strange burst of activity at Special:Log/rights
- A large number of suddenly been "promoted" (the term used) with additional tools. Has a bot gone nuts or something? Irondome (talk) 23:29, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- It looks like autoconfirmed has been renamed to extendedconfirmed for some reason, which makes no sense.—cyberpowerChat:Online 23:45, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- Apparently something to do with this and this. fredgandt 23:48, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- This is from phab:T126607, it's entirely expected. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 23:50, 5 April 2016 (UTC)
- For some background on this, see WP:Extendedconfirmed, this updated section of the protection policy, and this village pump thread. In a nutshell, once an editor reaches 500 edits and 30 days tenure, they are automatically promoted into the "extendedconfirmed" user group, which allows them to edit pages protected by the new arbitration 30/500 article protection level. Mz7 (talk) 00:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- We ought to keep this out of the user rights log, it'll be a far too common event. Kharkiv07 (T) 00:12, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Agreed. Mz7 (talk) 00:19, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- It is a new autopromotion rule affecting the most active users, so the initial rate is probably going to be the peak, and over the course of the next week or so it should drop. We might be able to add a filter to the rights log like was done for the deletion log recently (I believe it reached the English Wikipedia last week). If such a feature were coded and merged into MediaWiki core now you might find the rate to be much better by the time it gets deployed. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 00:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Agreed. Mz7 (talk) 00:19, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Not sure what's going on but I've apparently gained "extendedconfirmed" rights..... –Davey2010Talk 00:34, 6 April 2016 (UTC)- Ah probably should've read the above first!, Would've been nice if we were all informed first seeing as I'm assuming most of us had no idea about this new rights thingy.... –Davey2010Talk 00:37, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yes you have been "promoted". Exactly the language that the move was attempting to avoid, in the village pump discussion thread on it. Two issues. It will overload the log, as mentioned above, and such a term as promoted will give some newbies grounds for confusion, and probable behavioural issues based on flawed ideas of "promotion" if they edit in those areas and get into conflict.as this seems to be intimating. Irondome (talk) 00:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Did you raise these issues in that discussion thread? --Krenair (talk • contribs) 00:47, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- How could I when I was not even aware of the discussion? Irondome (talk) 00:51, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Agreed, I too was unaware of this discussion until my watchlist became completely flooded with these promotions. I'm active on Wikipedia's meta parts every day.—cyberpowerChat:Online 00:57, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- A comment and a question:
- Comment: people can check to make sure this new protection level isn't being used in non-ArbCom-approved ways here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AProtectedPages&namespace=&type=edit&level=extendedconfirmed&sizetype=min&size=
- Question: Where is the MediaWiki page used in the admin's page protection form? It's calling it "Established Editors and Administrators" there. Also calls it "established editor protected" in the table in the link above.
- --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- You can almost always add &uselang=qqx to the URL to find that info. In this case you are looking for MediaWiki:Protect-level-extendedconfirmed. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 01:09, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Odd, it isn't in [1]. But thanks, that's what I was looking for. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:18, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Pretty sure only existing local override pages are listed there. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 01:20, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Yeah, it said there was no local page, so I just created it, and now it's there. Thanks. My first MediaWiki-space edit ever, at least that I can recall. And the wiki appears not to have broken. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:23, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Floquenbeam: Special:PrefixIndex only lists pages that exist locally, but Special:AllMessages also shows those that are recognised but not yet created - go to this list and try the "Filter by customization state" radio button. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:48, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yeah, it said there was no local page, so I just created it, and now it's there. Thanks. My first MediaWiki-space edit ever, at least that I can recall. And the wiki appears not to have broken. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:23, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- You might also be interested in MediaWiki:group-extendedconfirmed, MediaWiki:group-extendedconfirmed-member, MediaWiki:grouppage-extendedconfirmed, MediaWiki:right-extendedconfirmed, and MediaWiki:restriction-level-extendedconfirmed. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 01:16, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Eeesh. Well, it would've been better not to light up everyone's watchlists with "automatically promoted" after we deliberately used a nice neutral bland-sounding name for this thing... but it's good that this is moving forward. Does anyone know/can anyone check whether admins can remove the extendedconfirmed usergroup after it's been automatically assigned? I tested it on my sock, but it's short of 500 edits so I had to assign the right first. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:33, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Special:ListGroupRights shows that admins are able to remove the right. Also the autopromote-once system should detect that they've done this and not automatically re-grant it on their next edit. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 01:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Ah, thanks Krenair; I can never remember where to find that stuff. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:50, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- I've asked an editor who just got it and appears active if she minds being a guinea pig. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- OR, I just confirmed that removing the right from someone who got it automatically doesn't get overridden with their next edit. Thanks to Nikkimaria for volunteering to be the guinea pig. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:11, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Good to know, thank you both for testing! Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- OR, I just confirmed that removing the right from someone who got it automatically doesn't get overridden with their next edit. Thanks to Nikkimaria for volunteering to be the guinea pig. --Floquenbeam (talk) 02:11, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Special:ListGroupRights shows that admins are able to remove the right. Also the autopromote-once system should detect that they've done this and not automatically re-grant it on their next edit. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 01:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- We need to change the editnotice when people not meeting the level try to edit. Kharkiv07 (T) 01:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Poco a poco. The page hasn't even been protected with the new right yet. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:44, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yes sysops can manually add or revoke the permission. What hasn't been well tested is that if it stays revoked, the phab ticket suggested it would (as it uses a "promote once" type of scheme). — xaosflux Talk 01:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Can this new level of protection be added to Twinkle? I didn't see it listed right now. That tool is usually how I protect pages. Liz Read! Talk! 15:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Looks like that's possible by an admin editing MediaWiki:Gadget-twinkleprotect.js. Take a look at how the custom templateeditor protection is dealt with there. --Krenair (talk • contribs) 15:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Can this new level of protection be added to Twinkle? I didn't see it listed right now. That tool is usually how I protect pages. Liz Read! Talk! 15:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Moved from #New protection level:
- I don't know if this is the right thread/subthread, but why must every single user on my Watchlist show up with the extendedconfirmed confirmation? Is there a way to keep this off of watchlists? I can't read my watchlist for all of these extendedconfirmed confirmations. Softlavender (talk) 09:49, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- I don't know, but it's a good way of finding out whose talk pages you're still watching after having posted a message three years ago, long since actioned, replied and archived, so no need to watch any more. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- This is mentioned higher up - but the short answer is no this can't be suppressed - it only occurs on edit so expect the rate of it occurring to fall off rapidly. You may want to temporarily use the watchlist filters to check namespaces you are interested in if there are a lot on your list (e.g. article/wikipedia). — xaosflux Talk 11:23, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- I don't know, but it's a good way of finding out whose talk pages you're still watching after having posted a message three years ago, long since actioned, replied and archived, so no need to watch any more. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:55, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Promoted verbiage
I boldly changed the interface message from promoted to updated at MediaWiki:Rightslogentry-autopromote and MediaWiki:Logentry-rights-autopromote. — xaosflux Talk 02:23, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Wise edit! Irondome (talk) 02:25, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks! This should finally dissociate the new user group from fancy styles like "promoted" and "established". Mz7 (talk) 02:33, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Statistics
Might be interesting to keep an eye on Special:Statistics - there are currently ~1650 users in this group - tracking this will be able to provide a real time count of how many registered established seasoned editors are around for a bit. — xaosflux Talk 03:38, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: Is this right only being given when eligible editors make an edit? Sam Walton (talk) 11:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, that is the trigger for processing. FYI we are now at just shy of 3000. — xaosflux Talk 11:12, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Now 11,473. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC).
- Dynamic version: 12,013 thanks MSGJ. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC).
- Dynamic version: 12,013 thanks MSGJ. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 12:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC).
- Now 11,473. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC).
- Yes, that is the trigger for processing. FYI we are now at just shy of 3000. — xaosflux Talk 11:12, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
New protection level
A few things:
- I asked about updating {{pp}} at Template talk:Pp#Extended confirmed protection if anyone is interested. Currently we're using a cheaply written {{pp-30-500}} on pages with editing restrictions enforced by Special:AbuseFilter/698.
- See Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war for an example of a page using this new level of protection. It adds a pink background to the source window, like it does for template and fully-protected pages. Do we really want that? It's true you should "edit with caution" on these controversial topics, but that's more regarding behaviour than some technical aspect like editing interface pages
I'm going to hold off on protecting more of the affected pages until we get this ironed out — MusikAnimal talk 05:02, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- No, we do not want this. Red background basically says "Do not edit!", whereas in this case we have just extended semi, when established editors are perfectly welcome to edit the article.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:40, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Agreed with YMB regarding the pink background. --Izno (talk) 12:50, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Let's get rid of it, then. I see the
mw-textarea-protected
CSS class is being added, which leads me to believe it's a site configuration. I've asked at phab:T126607 — MusikAnimal talk 15:07, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Let's get rid of it, then. I see the
- Agreed with YMB regarding the pink background. --Izno (talk) 12:50, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
A question about the protection message
Is there any reason why the protection banner on the new extended confirmed protected pages say WARNING: This page has been protected so that only users with extended confirmed rights can make edits. See Wikipedia:Protection policy#Arbitration 30/500 protection. This seems offputting, especially with ALL CAPS and the WARNING on it.
Can we have a more friendly message, similar to the semi-protection message? Note: This page has been semi-protected so that only autoconfirmed users can edit it. If you need any help getting started with editing, see the New contributors' help page. Except replace "semi" with "extended", "autoconfirmed" with "extended confirmed", and "New contributors' help page" with "Wikipedia:Protection policy#Arbitration 30/500 protection" (updating the links accordingly).
Right now, the WARNING!!! sign seems a little too scary for normal editing. epicgenius @ 14:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC) (talk) 14:41, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- Extended confirmed uses MediaWiki:Protectedpagewarning like all other protection levels except semi-protected which uses MediaWiki:Semiprotectedpagewarning. MediaWiki:Protectedpagewarning has said "WARNING" most of the time since 2003. It would be possible to write something else depending on the protection level. MediaWiki talk:Protectedpagewarning seems like the place to discuss it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:06, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Ah, I see. Maybe if the wording is changed, MediaWiki:Semiprotectedpagewarning should also cover extended protection. epicgenius @ 15:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC) (talk) 15:31, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
- I created discussion at MediaWiki talk:Protectedpagewarning. epicgenius @ 15:42, 6 April 2016 (UTC) (talk) 15:42, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
Interface editor
Rights not yet. --BasBibi (talk) 15:35, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
- ?—cyberpowerChat:Online 15:36, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
- You requested WP:Confirmed twice during your first four days here; you requested Rollback (on the wrong page) when your account was two days old[2], and you have several made requests about Sukhumi, including having it de-protected so that you could repeatedly add a link to a website that is being considered for the spam blacklist to it (User:Beetstra, do you want to take a look at that?), but I see no evidence that you have requested interface editor.
- Special:CentralAuth/BasBibi shows that your account has only 80 (eighty) edits across all wikis and is blocked as a sockpuppet at the Russian Wikipedia. Even if you had requested this userright, I would expect your request to be immediately rejected. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:41, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
- Also, there's a request for extended-confirmed rights at Meta. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- @WhatamIdoing: The abuse seems to focus on one or two pages, of which at least one is semi-protected. If editors are only here to wait to become confirmed so they can continue the abuse, then that warrants, as happened here I think, an immediate block of the account (and might warrant temporary expansion to full protection). That being said, I get also inclined to add the site to the blacklist, but I am not convinced that that will stop the abuse more than the semi-protection (there is more being edited than only the external link, and the external link (well, nothing) can already not be added by unconfirmed and IP editors). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:03, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- Also, there's a request for extended-confirmed rights at Meta. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:54, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Add articles to watchlist from another user's contrib history?
Hi all, gnome admin here. Was curious if anyone had any clever script-y solution to an idea I have. (I pitched it at the Idea lab, but I think my pitch is causing confusion.)
Scenario:
- Let's say I just discovered a dude who I suspect of being a sock operator. This guy, for example.
- He's edited a bunch of articles recently, and I want to add a bunch of them to my own watchlist, so that after I block him, if he were to come back and re-edit those articles, it would be on my watchlist, and sockpuppetry would be easily caught.
- Currently, I have to go to each article and click the little star, or go into my raw watchlist and copy/paste. That's time consuming.
- I would benefit from a tool that would allow me to see what pages in his contrib history I already have watchlisted, and that would allow me to add articles to my watchlist directly from his contrib history.
Can such madness be done?
I do, of course, see the possibility that this tool could be used for on-site harassment, so I'm thinking that it might best be created as an admin tool for now. Thoughts? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 03:51, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- It could be done by a tool but you could do it with minimal editing, by grabbing a list of the user's contributions, and then editing your raw watchlist using Special:EditWatchlist/raw - there's a link at the top of your watchist page. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:56, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- Hi. I would enjoy making a User script to make this easily possible for you. I can start right away, but might not get it done before I slip off the the land of Nod. I'm loathed to work on it if
- You wouldn't want it
- Someone else is gonna beat me to it
- Shall I go ahead? fredgandt 04:05, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- You could use AWB. Make a list with user contribs as the source, copy the list and paste it into your raw watchlist. Melonkelon (talk) 04:39, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Cyphoidbomb: - I've got most of the way done with watchUserContribs.js, which you can use by adding
mw.loader.load( '//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Fred_Gandt/watchUserContribs.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript' );
or simplyimportScript( 'User:Fred_Gandt/watchUserContribs.js' );
if you're a rebel, to your common JavaScript page. - All that's left to do is marking the listed contribs respectfully depending on if you're watching them, and do some tests, but the basics seem to work okay (use at own risk).
- It may not be a built in tool, but it at least gives an impression of whether such a feature can be useful, and thus is at least a place to start. fredgandt 05:24, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- Fred Gandt, cool man, thanks! I'll install this in a bit and see how it goes! Many thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 07:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- No problem. It'll have some kind of marking for the pages that are currently on your watchlist either later or tomorrow (just got back from walking the dog, need food then sleep). Other than that, I don't have any alterations planned, but if there's anything specific you'd suggest changing (or it fails), message me. fredgandt 09:48, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- Fred Gandt, cool man, thanks! I'll install this in a bit and see how it goes! Many thanks! Cyphoidbomb (talk) 07:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
-
-
- As far as my limited testing reveals, it's good to go. It should be pretty efficient although can be tweaked to utilise sessionStorage if needed. The checkboxes will be outlined in blue if the page is on your watchlist. I didn't add a one click per page option as the extra code and HTML seems kinda pointless to save one click; if you want to un/watch just one page, check its box and click the appropriate option button (top and bottom of the list). The de/select all checkbox (top and bottom) works as expected. API calls are minimised by submitting only unique pages and by omitting talk titles, so don't worry about selecting multiple instances of the same page.
- Due to the great variety of Wikipedia, I wouldn't be surprised if you see things I haven't accounted for; if there are any problems, please let me know so I can fix them. If it fails outright, please check your browser's console ( Ctrl+⇧ Shift+i in Chrome ) for errors before messaging me. fredgandt 11:57, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
-
Utilizing template: Globalize within template: Multiple issues
I'm wondering whether it's possible to add a discussion functionality to the template within a template as I tried to do here. I'm proposing something like this: (Discuss). Is it less useful then because of the possibility of discussion on the talk page already being linked at the top of the main template?
24.52.247.20 (talk) 05:23, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- There is currently an RfC in progress discussing the addition of talk links to child templates of {{Multiple issues}} (talk). I would suggest joining that. fredgandt 06:34, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Can someone explain this edit summary
And, no I did not copy that, no way. --QEDK (T ☕ C) 09:46, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- Browsers can remember old edit summaries and suggest them if your current edit summary is a prefix of an old edit summary. In this edit the day before you had that edit summary. I guess your new edit at some point had a matching prefix (it would only require an initial slash) and you accidentally selected a suggested summary. It only requires a click or pressing enter. In case you don't know, the edit summary gets a linked arrow and grey text whenever it starts with
/* ... */
. Section edits automatically start with that prefilled in the box but it can also be entered manually. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:15, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Cross-wiki login not happening
For the last week or two, I've noticed that, If I log in on this Wikipedia, I'm not logged in on sister projects; and vice versa. I am logged in on other Wikipedias. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:58, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Pigsonthewing: When this happens, it might be because some servers have still got records for old logins that should have been invalidated. There are two things that you could try: (i) use your browser's "remove individual cookies" feature (if it has one) to delete any cookie whose site includes the strings "mediawiki", "wikimedia" or "wikipedia"; (ii) log in as normal, then explicitly log out again using the "log out" link top right - this should force all login cookies to be invalidated. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:37, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
RfC: Preferred protocol for external links
IP addresses and spam blacklist
If I understand the first regex of MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist, \b^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b
, it is supposed to prevent links by IP address. So why are users still able to insert a link like http://74.125.206.100/spam and the blacklist does not prevent it? Dalba 16:19, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- I tested this on a test wiki and after removing the
^
anchor the regex works as I expected. Dalba 16:58, 8 April 2016 (UTC) - This has been the case pretty much since the line was added to the blacklist. I agree: it can surely never match anything, because you can't have a word boundary (
\b
) before the beginning of a string (^
). I think the^
needs removing: indeed, the extension documentation suggests it's useless in every case. I think(?<=//)\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b
is what is actually intended, but I'm by no means an expert. Relentlessly (talk) 17:37, 8 April 2016 (UTC) - Pinging Reaper Eternal and MER-C — JJMC89 (T·C) 17:50, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- The current documentation is from [3] which refers to phab:T66541. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:10, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- Adjusted to (?<=//)\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b. MER-C 06:28, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- @MER-C: I've reverted your change as it is preventing certain users (including me) IP addresses from being saved (see these edits for example [4] [5]). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 10:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- It couldn't be saved because {{IPvandal}} calls {{User-multi}} with a
http
parameter. It causes Module:UserLinks to make a http:// link to the IP address in Module:UserLinks/extra. If we want IP addresses blacklisted then this must be changed. Maybe the module could add a dummy query parameter, and the blacklist regex be designed to allow IP links with such a parameter. I don't know whether IP adresses in external links is a widespread problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:21, 9 April 2016 (UTC)- IP addresses are a problem, as the domain always corresponds with an IP (or sometimes more), and a blacklist on the domain can then be immediately circumvented by using the corresponding IP. There are hardly any cases that I can imagine that we NEED to link to an IP as reasonable webpages always have a normal domainname (and there is always the whitelist).
- Now I think of it .. this might bring down report saving on COIBot .. :-(. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:23, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- It couldn't be saved because {{IPvandal}} calls {{User-multi}} with a
- @MER-C: I've reverted your change as it is preventing certain users (including me) IP addresses from being saved (see these edits for example [4] [5]). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 10:54, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- Adjusted to (?<=//)\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b. MER-C 06:28, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
Wikilink in note
Hi, I am trying to get the link to Gold (Rhodes novel) to work in note [a] in the infobox of my Sandbox, in the same way as it works in article So Long, See You Tomorrow, any ideas ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 18:36, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- I think it's the unused pipe in
[[Gold (Rhodes novel)|]]
. Remove it or add the alternative text and it should work. Nthep (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2016 (UTC)- Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 18:58, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
- Yes, this was a case of Help:Pipe trick#Where it doesn't work. Many things don't work inside ref tags. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:31, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
Date of the creating of Wikipedia
Hi ever1. Where I can find a dates of the creating of Wikipedias? For exempl: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaGrowthSummary.htm - date of the creating of Kurdish Wikipedia is Jun 2002. In return , the Francais Wikipedia (fr:Wikipédia_en_kurde) and otherlang Wikipedias take 7 Jan 2004 (without links). So where is true? — Green Zero обг 15:44, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- They weren't all created the same date. History of Wikipedia has a Timeline section. But if you go to the English wikipedia page of whichever one you have in mind, it should tell you in the infobox. For instance, French Wikipedia says it launched 23 March 2001. Spanish Wikipedia launched May 11, 2001. The first link you provided does not say it's the date the different languages were launched. It says those are the first edits. — Maile (talk) 19:51, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
- I'll add that the "first edit" is not actually the first edits. Many of the early edits were not saved by the software used in the early days of Wikipedia and are likely gone forever. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:24, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon
Hi, I was wondering if somebody here could generate a list of the 100 most visited articles on wikipedia for Wales, the most recent figure? I don't know if wikidata has that ability and you can autogenerate a list, but I need a list of the most visited as I'm considering placing new points on them. I was also wondering if somebody could create a list of articles listed within Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Awaken the Dragon/Core articles which have any tag slopped on them. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:36, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- "Answer" to first question: request it here. The result will be something like this. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:46, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- And to second: Petscan with such settings shows, that there are no clean-up tags in those articles. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 10:58, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
Cheers Edgar.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:41, 10 April 2016 (UTC) @Edgars2007: Had no luck with generating the Welsh list. Can you or somebody do it and post in Wikipedia:WikiProject Wales/Popular pages? Perhaps a list of the 250 most popular ones.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:50, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
CSVLoader
Hi, is there any why to create articles with Wikipedia:CSVLoader if article name contains a comma (,)?--ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 13:58, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- Putting article name in quotes doesn't help? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 14:29, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- Wikipedia:CSVLoader#History states "1.0.0.3 - Added ability to use custom separators (for example, tilde). This will be needed when the CSV data contains "comma" characters." - so somewhere there may be an option to work around this. fredgandt 16:04, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- Most formats of CSV add (double) quotation marks when a comma appears: ABC, "ABC,DEF", and etc. --Izno (talk) 17:25, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- But as ԱշոտՏՆՂ already answered, this doesn't help this time. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:59, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks you ^_^! I didn't notice the Field separator option (File:CSVLoader_20110830.png) it works when we change default comma (,) to other character.--ԱշոտՏՆՂ (talk) 13:23, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- But as ԱշոտՏՆՂ already answered, this doesn't help this time. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:59, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Possible page creation bug
Hi. Using Google Chrome on Windows 7.
In order to test something I created User:Fred Gandt/test "test" test and although the creation was successful, something peculiar happened.
- I navigated to the non existent page.
- I clicked "Create".
- I added some text and a summary.
- I clicked Save page.
- EXPECTED: To see the page I just created.
- OBSERVED: The default "This page doesn't exist, but you can create it..." GUI that showed at step 1 - as if the creation had failed, or never been attempted.
- I opened a new tab showing my contribs, and saw the creation entry.
- I went back to the page creation tab and refreshed.
- OBSERVED: The created page as expected after step 4.
- I tried creating more subpages with quotes.
- OBSERVED: Everything worked as expected.
Was this a temporary glitch, or a bug? Has anyone else seen this? fredgandt 16:52, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- Your browser had probably cached the url before the page was created. If you create a page by clicking a red link then the url has another form and the page url doesn't get cached. I don't know how you created the page but the search box has a special feature for userspace where it goes to the url a page would have if it already existed. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:59, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- I don't think that was the issue, as I've never seen this happen before when following the same procedure(s). fredgandt 18:07, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- When I save an edit to an existing page, I sometimes get the former version until I refresh. I haven't observed a system in when it happens but assume it's just browser caching. Don't expect everything to behave identical every time. You didn't say how you created the page and I haven't found a message that says "This page doesn't exist, but you can create it..." Do you have "en - English" as language at Special:Preferences? Did the message really say that? What did you do before clicking "Create", e.g. edit the url directly, enter the title in the search box, click a red link. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:32, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- "Hume teaches us ... " - Ghost - Enter the Matrix.
- The exact wording of the create page page is "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for [title] in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings." -_-
- I navigated to the page to create by typing the URL directly into Chrome's Omnibar/box.
- I can't recall ever (apart from this anomaly, thus the post) getting the former version of an edited page. Caching here just
doesn'tshouldn'tworkfail that way. I think there may be something wrong with your browser. fredgandt 18:51, 10 April 2016 (UTC)- I assume you are now quoting an example from mainspace and not userspace where you created the reported example. It's rare I get the old version after saving an edit to an existing page but I have seen many others say it happened to them. And people using the the new section tab on discussion pages sometimes double post, presumably because they didn't see it saved the first time. Your method to create the page means you viewed the url before so it becomes possible for your browser to cache the page. I haven't tried it on page creation or heard reports about it but pages are usually created via red links where the possibility doesn't occur due to different url's. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:38, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- Well, I suppose there's a first time for everything. fredgandt 03:02, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- I don't think that was the issue, as I've never seen this happen before when following the same procedure(s). fredgandt 18:07, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
Where's the new pageview tool
Grok.se is down, I remember going onto a new site, can't remember now. --QEDK (T ☕ C) 20:47, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews. Page histories link to it. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:59, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
Page information and robots.txt
When using the "page information" link at the side of the page, it says indexing is allowed on pages where indexing is disallowed according to robots.txt. It looks like robots.txt is working correctly (pages don't appear in search results, or are listed with no description), but page information (action=info) is not reporting this. Has this already been reported? Peter James (talk) 23:13, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- "Page information" is made by MediaWiki and only says whether the page itself has the noindex HTML tag. See Wikipedia:Controlling search engine indexing. Our robots.txt at https://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt is not a MediaWiki file and has no influence on the indexing field at "Page information". PrimeHunter (talk) 23:29, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- uselang=qqx shows the currently blank MediaWiki:Pageinfo-header is displayed at top of "Page information". We could link to Help:Page information but I would prefer a more developed help page before doing that. It doesn't currently mention what "Indexing by robots" means. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:42, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
- The robots.txt page itself is not a MediaWiki page but part of it comes from MediaWiki:Robots.txt. Peter James (talk) 23:52, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
DumbBot is causing problems
User:DumbBOT is malfunctioning and creating a bunch of useless categories like this one. It was speedy deleted, and then DumbBot made it again. There is a old consensus that these categories should no longer be used and shouldn't be created in the first place, mangled or not. Dumbbot's maintainer has been inactive for some time, and now there is another set of categories it needs to stop making.
Big question is:
Do we need to block this bot?Can other bot makers create a replacement if we do?
Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:20, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Strike that, looks like this is already being discussed at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#Incorrect category creations Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:23, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Wikimedia sites intermittently not responding
Over the last hour and 20 mins I have had a lot of trouble getting responses from Wikimedia sites. Is this a global problem or a problem near my end? My ISP is Slingshot in New Zealand. Nurg (talk) 09:36, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- I had a brief problem accessing labs - not sure if it is related, but cleared up now.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:23, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- It came right for a while but starting about 12 mins ago I couldn't access for a while. Have just got back in now. Nurg (talk) 09:42, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- The problem has been confirmed by another editor in New Zealand who has a different ISP from me - see Wikipedia:New Zealand Wikipedians' notice board#Intermittent access problems to WP. I suspect it is some sort of regional access problem, as has happened a few times in the past, otherwise lots of other people would be affected. When it occurs, it stops my access to WP and Wikivoyage. How do we get this addressed by tech staff?
- It came right for a while but starting about 12 mins ago I couldn't access for a while. Have just got back in now. Nurg (talk) 09:42, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
-
-
- Here's my trace route to en.wikipedia.org [198.35.26.96]:
-
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1 2 * * * Request timed out. 3 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms ae-5-10.cpcak3-r2.tranzpeer.net [101.98.3.41] 4 10 ms 11 ms 10 ms ae-4-10.cpcak3-r2.tranzpeer.net [101.98.3.40] 5 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms pts-n.cpcak4-r1.tranzpeer.net [101.98.5.20] 6 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms pts-s.cpcak4-r1.tranzpeer.net [101.98.5.21] 7 * * * Request timed out. 8 * * * Request timed out. 9 * * * Request timed out. 10 * * * Request timed out. 11 * * * Request timed out. 12 * * * Request timed out. 13 * * * Request timed out. 14 146 ms 147 ms 146 ms text-lb.ulsfo.wikimedia.org [198.35.26.96]
-
-
-
- A past regional problem was doc'd at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 119#geoiplookup.wikimedia.org. @Ryan lane: fixed that. Nurg (talk) 10:56, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- I've pinged Ops, who are fabulous about fixing these problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- This does sound like a regional issue -- this does happen from time to time and it's usually some a fault on some regional ISP's end. Once we are made aware of such issues, we can often redirect traffic to go via another route, or at least inform that particular ISP NOC-to-NOC. Unfortunately (or fortunately!), for reasons completely unrelated to this issue which I was just made aware, we've made some routing changes at approximately 16:00 UTC today, April 12th, that would have probably alleviated your issues or at least changed the situation drastically. The change was draining our San Francisco/ulsfo site, and redirecting their traffic to Ashburn/eqiad & Dallas/codfw, which have different routing than the one you were experiencing. It would be helpful for us if you could let us know if you're experiencing issues right now (another traceroute would help). Even if it works now, those issues may reappear once we put San Francisco back in service (this drainage is a temporary situation, due to maintenance), after which we may have to troubleshoot this again. Let us know in any case :) (WMF TechOps) Faidon Liambotis (WMF) (talk) 17:33, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- A past regional problem was doc'd at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 119#geoiplookup.wikimedia.org. @Ryan lane: fixed that. Nurg (talk) 10:56, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
-
-
adding a row count column to a sortable table
In this article:
List of current NCAA Division I women's basketball coaches
there is a table, not a simple table, but a table created by the conjoining of several templates. Despite the fact that it has multiple templates, the overall table is sortable.
I would like to have an additional column at the beginning containing the numbers one through 349. As an example of how this would be useful, if you sort by the “first season”column, (click twice, so that the most recent season is at the top) it is useful to keep track of how many coaches are in their first season. At the moment, I have to manually count the rows or copy into an Excel spreadsheet and create a counting column. It would be much easier if there were an initial column with the row count.
While I am particularly interested in this table, I can also imagine that there are other sortable tables and Wikipedia in which one might be interested in a row count column. I don’t see an easy way to do this.
One possibility is to create a single column table just to the left of this existing table but I don’t quite know how to do that. Any ideas?--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:21, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- I made Template:Wbb coaches/America East Conference/sandbox which uses Template:Coach list header/sandbox and Template:Coach list entry/sandbox.
- Is this in any way useful? fredgandt 17:05, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Do you want the numbers to stay still when the rest of the data is sorted? 'Cause that (above) won't work then. fredgandt 17:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Most probably issue is related to this one. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:58, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- In short - yes, this currently can't be done. - "can't" is a rude word IMO Where there's a will, there's a way. However, until Sphilbrick answers my question, I have no idea if the problem is already solved (and will be asleep soon).
{{Table row counter}} might work if its module expanded the templates (which I'm pretty sure Lua can do).fredgandt 18:11, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Fred Gandt: Thanks for the quick response Fred. Your sandbox is in sortable but it looks to me if you made it sortable that when sorting the index numbers would sort, which defeats the purpose. After sorting, I still want the leftmost column to start with 1.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:38, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Most probably issue is related to this one. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:58, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- CSS counters could do it fredgandt 18:43, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- yes, the discussion at “how do I disable sorting for only one column” is relevant. I do know how to make a column so it’s not sortable but as discussed there, that’s not the point.
- I do see in Help:Table#Non-rectangular_tables an example where it to tables line up side-by-side (ignore the solid/liquid/gas table and look at the three tables below). So I wondered if I could set up a one column table to the left and then the main table to the right but I don’t quite see how to do that. I presume if they are two separate tables sorting the rightmost table won’t sort the leftmost table.
-
- Another possibility but I don’t know how to do it is to accept that the first column gets sorted but instead of containing hardcoded numbers it would contain something like # which would be converted to sequential numbers but of course I tried that and it doesn’t work that simply, but I wondered if there was something along this line that would allow the cells to be sorted and then filled in with numbers one through 349 after the sorting.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:46, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Working solution at User:Fred Gandt/sandbox#Slate but to see it working, you'll need to add the CSS to your browser manually. If someone like Edokter fancied adding it to MediaWiki:Common.css (with a less egotistical name of course), then Bob is officially your uncle. fredgandt 19:09, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Nice concept, but that CSS is very inflexible and only with for the first column. So not very suitable as a generic solution without a lot work. How popular would such a feature be?
-- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}}
19:25, 11 April 2016 (UTC)- I've seen row numbers in a number of places. StackOverflow has some interesting CSS. --Izno (talk) 19:51, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Table width is critical, not only for mobile. The example is still okay, no problem with another column. –Be..anyone (talk) 19:35, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Nice concept, but that CSS is very inflexible and only with for the first column. So not very suitable as a generic solution without a lot work. How popular would such a feature be?
-
-
- Edokter - I have no idea how popular the option would be, but for little extra code, it would seem at least useful on occasions. I wonder if the class could fake the extra column so it didn't have to physically exist?
- Sphilbrick - Editing the table and adding hard coded numbers is cheating! I'm afraid you need to have the CSS to see the magic. If you add that code in my sandbox to your common.css, you'll see the table example how it's supposed to be (as long as you don't edit it again in the interim ;-) fredgandt 19:49, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- I thought maybe you just omitted the numbers, I am now guessing that if I installed the CSS I would see the numbers. But if I understand correctly, no one else would. That kinda defeats the purpose, as I want this so that everyone can see the numbers.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:56, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- That's why I called in Edokter (he's a wizz if ever a wizz there was), since the CSS would need to be a global class for all Wikipedia users by it being added to the site's common.css. You can see the example working if you add that code to your own common.css, and if the code were added to the site's common.css, then everyone would see the numbers. fredgandt 20:06, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- I thought maybe you just omitted the numbers, I am now guessing that if I installed the CSS I would see the numbers. But if I understand correctly, no one else would. That kinda defeats the purpose, as I want this so that everyone can see the numbers.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:56, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- In List of French mountains by prominence, suppose you’re interested in how many of these mountains were in the Alps. Trivial to sort by the range, but then you have to manually count. Suppose you are interested in the number of mountains with the prominence under 1200 m. Again sort by prominence but now you have to count. If the first column were not a sorted rank but a static one through 37, you could see the count trivially.
- In List of museums in Cheshire, suppose you’re interested in knowing how many of these museums were historic houses. Currently you can sort by type and count the rows, but if there were a static count column you could take the difference between the last in the first and quickly see how many qualified.
- In Fishing_industry_by_country#Fish.2C_crustaceans.2C_molluscs.2C_etc suppose you’re interested in how many countries have a capture tonnage of more than 1 million.
- In List of museums in Lincolnshire, suppose you’re interested in how many museums were in each region. You can sort by region but you have to manually count or move to an Excel file. With a static count column it’s relatively easy to do the counting.
- In List of the most populous counties by U.S. state suppose you cared about the number of counties with over or under 1 million population.
I think I could supply a few hundred such examples.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:53, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- There is bug T42618, and solution proposal provided by Matma Rex, which is successfully implemented in plwiki. See for example this table. Paweł Ziemian (talk) 21:01, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Yes, that "bug" (really, feature enhancement request) is exactly what I want, and I do see that it is enabled in plwiki. I read the whole string - but I am unclear as to the stayus in enwicki - it seems to be stalled. Is there anything I can do to push it along?--S Philbrick(Talk) 12:44, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
Changing a user talk page from one archiving method to another
An editor who had ClueBot III archiving their talk page wanted automatic archiving to start up again (since ClueBot III seems to be on the fritz). Their archive-bot was changed over to lowercase sigmabot III. Well, sigmabot worked (yay!) but links to the newly-archived content are not visible on the main talk page (plus the new pages have no "search" box etc). The talk page is User talk:Chicbyaccident, there has been some ancillary discussion at sigmabot's creator's talk page but I would like any further discussion to take place here. I am thinking that unless ClueBot III starts working again that there will be other users/pages that will need to be converted to lowercase sigmabot or other possible archive-bots so this is something I could come across in the future. Anyone know of something that would work? The archiving is fine but there are no visible links to the newly-archived content. Another editor mentioned that a Lua module could be created but I am wondering if there is some answer already within WP's many pages. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 17:53, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- It's because there is nothing to update User:ClueBot III/Indices/User talk:Chicbyaccident. If the editor wants to display the archives of his talk page, he needs to change that page. --Izno (talk) 18:02, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Another way to handle it automatically would be to
{{Special:Prefixindex/User talk:Chicbyaccident/Archives/|stripprefix=1}}
. This will not be so pretty in that it will not be ordered by month (it will be ordered by year then month name) but will not require user maintenance. --Izno (talk) 18:05, 11 April 2016 (UTC)- Many thanks for your reply, but I admit it, I am not a coder, I just try to help out a little bit here and there. When I have placed archive boxes on talk pages in other situations, all that is handled automatically. Is there any way you could demonstrate what you mean? If this type of situation comes up again - if archive-bots stop working and users want to convert to another bot - I would like to know how to fix the situation myself but you would have to go step by step so I can understand. Shearonink (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Thx for posting that code. I tried out "Special:Prefix..." code in Preview, it did place links on the user talk page (and, btw, Year/Month is the way the archiving was originally set up so that's fine). But is there any way to leave ClueBot's Archive box on the user page but then institute a new "active" Archive box for sigmabot? Earlier today lowercase sigmabot III created archive pages [6] for User talk:Chicbyaccident/Archives/2015/December & User talk:Chicbyaccident/Archives/2016/January. It would be nice to be able to search those archived pages by using an archive box/template. I am more familiar with how sigmabot works but have no idea if it is possible to have both an inactive archive box and an active archive box on the same page, or if it is possible to merge the ClueBot & sigmabot content together. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 21:34, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Archive boxes like
{{archivebox}}
don't care which bot does the archiving, or even if it's done manually. What you should be aiming for is that in changing from one bot to the other, the name of the archive pages should follow the same pattern - that is, if one bot archives to pages named Talk:Foo/archive 1, the other bot must do the same - and not use pagenames like Talk:Foo/Archive 1. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:12, 11 April 2016 (UTC)- The previously-established nomenclature for the archived-pages titles has been followed in the changeover from ClueBot III to lowercase sigmabot III. The old pages were called "User talk:Chicbyaccident/Archives/2015/July" etc., the new pages are called "User talk:Chicbyaccident/Archives/2016/January" etc - so that's all good. And the new bot archived the old content here. But, the links to the archived content are not visible on the user talk page. I'm not a coder, I don't understand the *why*. If I understand the why maybe I will then be able to "get" the How. I want to understand what is possible to do if I come across this issue again so I can fix it myself next time.. So, I need all you smart tech-folks to explain to a smart non-coder a few things and maybe explain it step by step.
- So, can someone please explain to me:
- 1) Why links to the newly-archived content are not showing up on the user talk-page and
- 2) How to possibly make links to the newly-archived content be visible.
- I did try the "special:Prefix" method that Izno mentioned above and that does place links on the user page and even through Izno said that there was nothing to update "User:ClueBot III/Indices/User talk:Chicbyaccident" I don't quite understand what that means. I don't understand why the archive box now on the page isn't displaying the new bot's content. I really don't. I know the regular denizens of this Village Pump page are probably saying "How can you NOT see what is wrong with the archiving?!" but you have to remember I am pretty much a techno-illiterate and the last coding course I took was Basic, waaaaay back before the dawn of WP...
- Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 00:21, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Archive boxes like
- Thx for posting that code. I tried out "Special:Prefix..." code in Preview, it did place links on the user talk page (and, btw, Year/Month is the way the archiving was originally set up so that's fine). But is there any way to leave ClueBot's Archive box on the user page but then institute a new "active" Archive box for sigmabot? Earlier today lowercase sigmabot III created archive pages [6] for User talk:Chicbyaccident/Archives/2015/December & User talk:Chicbyaccident/Archives/2016/January. It would be nice to be able to search those archived pages by using an archive box/template. I am more familiar with how sigmabot works but have no idea if it is possible to have both an inactive archive box and an active archive box on the same page, or if it is possible to merge the ClueBot & sigmabot content together. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 21:34, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- Many thanks for your reply, but I admit it, I am not a coder, I just try to help out a little bit here and there. When I have placed archive boxes on talk pages in other situations, all that is handled automatically. Is there any way you could demonstrate what you mean? If this type of situation comes up again - if archive-bots stop working and users want to convert to another bot - I would like to know how to fix the situation myself but you would have to go step by step so I can understand. Shearonink (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- I've just added {{MonthlyArchive}}, which adds all the links, but perhaps the formatting needs improvement ... feel free to tweak it. Graham87 06:59, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Oh, I think *that* is pretty much what I was looking for. I am going to save this on my "page of useful links". Thank you for putting me out of my misery. Shearonink (talk) 08:31, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
Do you want one Edit tab, or two? It's your choice
The editing interface will be changed soon. When that happens, editors who currently see two editing tabs – "Edit" and "Edit source" – will start seeing one edit tab instead. The single edit tab has been popular at other Wikipedias. When this is deployed here, you may be offered the opportunity to choose your preferred appearance and behavior the next time you click the Edit button. You will also be able to change your settings in the Editing section of Special:Preferences.
You can choose one or two edit tabs. If you chose one edit tab, then you can switch between the two editing environments by clicking the buttons in the toolbar (shown in the screenshots). See Help:VisualEditor/User guide#Switching between the visual and wikitext editors for more information and screenshots.
There is more information about this interface change at mw:VisualEditor/Single edit tab. If you have questions, suggestions, or problems to report, then please leave a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.
Whatamidoing (WMF) 19:22, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- This change has already been made, and I don't see the option to bring back the old behavior in Preferences. Where is it? —danhash (talk) 17:10, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Danhash: "Editing mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. --Izno (talk) 17:13, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Izno: Found it. Thanks! —danhash (talk) 17:16, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Remember that you won't see this option if you have disabled the visual editor ("Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta", immediately above where "Editing mode" either is, or would be if you had the visual editor enabled). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Izno: Found it. Thanks! —danhash (talk) 17:16, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- @Danhash: "Editing mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. --Izno (talk) 17:13, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
VE was imposed as primary editor
The project manager assured me that the WMF would not try to deploy a VE default as part of the Single Edit Tab deployment.[7] Furthermore the Project Manage explicitly stated that on English Wikipedia "the first editor that loads will still be the wikitext editor"[8]
Please revert or fix immediately. If fixed, the popup will need a tweak to the "Switch" text to correctly indicate that the switch goes to Visual Editor. Alsee (talk) 02:54, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- I was notified about this at my user talk page, and have just tested it. VE is indeed given as the editor by default, against what was promised. (On a related but less important note, when you switch to wikitext editing you get a popup at the pencil icon stating that you can use this to go to VE editing; but when you switch to VE editing, you don't get a popup at the brackets icon to say that you can use that to go to wikitext editing. All these things, the "oops, error in the rollout", the popups, many other things over the years, only give the very strong impression that the WMF is only interested in pushing VE as hard and as much as they can; by doing this, they have apparently finally reached the 5% of edits done with VE milestone. That's five, not fifty; no idea why the 5% editor would need to be the default editor...). Fram (talk) 07:06, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
-
- Nice catch Fram. I was too focused on the initial default issue to look that far.
I've opened a Phab ticket for the editor-switch-popup bug. Title: Faulty "You have switched editors" popup makes it difficult for new users to return to primary editor. (Under the assumption that it's merely a bug that VE is loading first on a VE-Secondary Wiki.) Hopefully it will catch someone's attention and get fixed soon. No one wants new users getting frustrated because they're stranded in the secondary editor.Alsee (talk) 09:40, 13 April 2016 (UTC) - It turns out that there was already a Phab open for it. Alsee (talk) 12:11, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Nice catch Fram. I was too focused on the initial default issue to look that far.
-
-
- While we wait for someone at the WMF waking up to the above, I found something else I think is new, and which certainly is unwanted behaviour. I have disabled VE completely in my preferences. However, when I edit a page, I get the "pencil" icon to switch to VE in the right upper corner of the edit screen... Stop pushing this thing on us, WMF! Fram (talk) 14:17, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- respectfully disagree with last comment. even when VE is disabled for some reason, i'd still like to have the pencil icon for special cases. specifically, editing tables, which is painful and error-prone with wikicode, and almost fun with VE (did you ever try to transpose the 5th and 8th column of a not-too-small table by editing the wikicode? i did, and i had to abandon this edit - could not get it right). if the icon is such an eye sore for some users, they can add
.oo-ui-icon-edit{ display: none; }
to their personal CSS page, rather than advocate depriving everyone else (who disabled VE) any use of this useful tool. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:38, 13 April 2016 (UTC)- If you need the VE for special cases, you can easily enable it at that time, just change your preferences for a while. That's less hassle than having a personal css, which shouldn't be necessary to get rid of something which is already "disabled" in the preferences. Fram (talk) 19:21, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Have to agree that a little icon doesn't push anything on anybody, and to press for the eradication of even that tiny VE presence seems extreme. I'll probably never use VE but I can easily ignore that icon. A little give and take never hurts. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- At least so far, I agree. The pencil icon seems unobjectionable. I want VE to stay the hell out of my way, I want the WMF to stop aggressively trying to push people into it, I want the WMF to stop trying to redefine and complexify wikitext trying to solve VE's deficiencies, but there's no need for a scorched earth approach if the WMF would just back off the VE crusade and allow it to be a supplementary tool. The WMF's own research shows VE has utterly failed to meet it's original rationale. It doesn't help more new users edit, it doesn't help retain new users, it doesn't help them edit more. The idea that VE brings in new users and helps them edit has become a point of pure religion. The WMF is making VE the tail that wags the dog. Alsee (talk) 22:38, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- respectfully disagree with last comment. even when VE is disabled for some reason, i'd still like to have the pencil icon for special cases. specifically, editing tables, which is painful and error-prone with wikicode, and almost fun with VE (did you ever try to transpose the 5th and 8th column of a not-too-small table by editing the wikicode? i did, and i had to abandon this edit - could not get it right). if the icon is such an eye sore for some users, they can add
- While we wait for someone at the WMF waking up to the above, I found something else I think is new, and which certainly is unwanted behaviour. I have disabled VE completely in my preferences. However, when I edit a page, I get the "pencil" icon to switch to VE in the right upper corner of the edit screen... Stop pushing this thing on us, WMF! Fram (talk) 14:17, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
-
So User:Jdforrester (WMF) has had time to make edits, but (as far as I see) neither he nor anyone else of the WMF has even had the courtesy to acknowledge this problem (which has been noted here, in Phabricator and on his mediawiki talk page: he has edited at the latter two since). Working on better relations with enwiki and restoring mutual trust, one day at a time! What part of "My job is to help make sure the Editing department understand what the community wants and needs, is focussed on the things that matter, and is engaging with and understood by the community."[9] is so hard to understand? This farce has been going on for years... Fram (talk) 19:30, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Server migration will prevent editing next week
Read all about it, in case you didn't see the note at the top of your watchlist. ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Tech News: 2016-15
20:44, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
Infobox query
Hi, Just trying to work out where the 'novel' genre is coming from in the book infobox in article After the Fire, A Still Small Voice as I cannot see it in the code... Any ideas ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 20:51, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- It's being fetched as a default from WikiData. fredgandt 20:59, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
- What will they think of next ! GrahamHardy (talk) 08:33, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
CharInsert
Once again, this has stopped working (ref.: /Archive 104#Charinsert not working). I used it frequently, and this time I do not find it restored by unchecking the "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" in Preferences → Editing, which I would have to agree would be a less-than-satisfactory solution, anyway. Please help! Stick to sources! Paine 03:26, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- I just copied the example
<charinsert>Á á Ć ć É é Í í Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ó ó Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ú ú Ý ý Ź ź</charinsert>
from the extension page, and previewed it here before typing this response, and it worked just as it should. I have done nothing to my preferences recently. Side note, I didn't even know this existed; cool. So, I can only assume, that if it stops working, that must happen in some specific circumstance that needs targeting. fredgandt 03:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC) - P.S. Tried again after saving, and it worked again. fredgandt —Preceding undated comment added 03:45, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Just checked my editing prefs and I have advanced and toolbar checked. And it still works. fredgandt 04:01, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Thank you! When you say that it works, do you get the DEFAULTSORT and other inserts? That's what I am missing. The full CharInsert does not work for me as it did maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago. Paine 07:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- I'm sorry Paine Ellsworth but I don't understand the connection DEFAULTSORT has to the use of charinsert as I'm (not very) familiar with it. Ahh, hang on - you mean the embedded clickable text insertion tool at the bottom of
#wpTextbox1
!? Well that works too, and has everything I remember it having, including DEFAULTSORT etc. - You know there's a selection dropdown at the left and that DEFAULTSORT (for example) is under "Wiki markup", right? Yeah all working as expected. Sorry about the mixup; I didn't understand your initial statement. fredgandt 00:36, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- I'm sorry Paine Ellsworth but I don't understand the connection DEFAULTSORT has to the use of charinsert as I'm (not very) familiar with it. Ahh, hang on - you mean the embedded clickable text insertion tool at the bottom of
- Thank you! When you say that it works, do you get the DEFAULTSORT and other inserts? That's what I am missing. The full CharInsert does not work for me as it did maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago. Paine 07:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- I don't know if this is at all relevant, but User:Paine Ellsworth/common.js needs to be updated. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 145#Breaking change: wikibits for details. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:42, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
'Compare selected revisions' query
Is there a way of comparing two revisions within the history of an article? With each other, not the current one? Apologies if the answer is blindingly obvious! (And, also, if this is ot the correct arena to ask in) Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi 11:24, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Click the left radio button at the old revison and the right at the new revision in the page history. See more at Help:Page history. Wikipedia:Help desk is a better place for help questions. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:33, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- That'll probably do, cheers PrimeHunter Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi 11:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
Talk:Jethro Tull (band)
Talk:Jethro Tull (band) has an error, "Expression error: Missing operand for >." I've looked but haven't found the cause, maybe someone here can have a look. Thanx, Mlpearc (open channel) 15:46, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Its coming from the template {{Archive basics}} but I can't place why it is (no other page that uses that template seems to have a problem). --MASEM (t) 16:00, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Fixed. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:07, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Thanx all. Mlpearc (open channel) 16:29, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- The specific problem was that
|maxsize=
was present but blank.{{archive basics}}
expects a value - if you don't have one, the param needs to be omitted entirely. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:50, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- The specific problem was that
- Thanx all. Mlpearc (open channel) 16:29, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Fixed. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 16:07, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
"Under Title" issue
Hi, I've searched "Cherise Roberts" on Google and under the Wiki title it says "HIDDEN ERROR: Usage of "Instruments" is not recognized" - There's no errors (that I can find on the actual article) so not sure if it's a bug or what, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 22:18, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- The source of Cherise Roberts says
{{Infobox musical artist|...|Instruments = vocals|...}}
The infobox doesn't recognize the parameter name and produces<span class="error" style="display:none">HIDDEN ERROR: Usage of "Instruments" is not recognized</span>
. The codedisplay:none
prevents it from being displayed in browsers but some editors find it helpful. Your example shows Google does display it withoutdisplay:none
. That's bad. The Google search "HIDDEN ERROR" site:en.wikipedia.org gives me "About 13.000 results". Maybe this system should be reconsidered. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:44, 12 April 2016 (UTC)- Sounds like Google are scraping the text stripped of all markup. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:57, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- All Google examples I examined were from
{{Infobox musical artist}}
. The hidden text was added by User:Zyxw in [19]. It also adds Category:Pages using Template:Infobox musical artist with unknown parameters so I don't see much use for hidden text. There may be other templates which add other error messages that don't show up in the above Google search. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:59, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- All Google examples I examined were from
- Ah I did check the infobox the moment I saw the error but obviously didn't think as far as you!, so somehow I've uncovered a big error .... Wow I feel like a genius! , Thanks PrimeHunter & Redrose64 for your help .–Davey2010Talk 23:37, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Sounds like Google are scraping the text stripped of all markup. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:57, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- This is why adding hidden content is still a bad idea.. But it seems we forget this lesson about every three years :) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:24, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- PrimeHunter, the same for Wikipedia search. Yes, the module and hidden text is used also in other infoboxes. I would say, that text is useful, when you're not an expert of the particular infobox (you don't know which params are supported). Hmm, probably a stupid question, but still... Adding a class to that hidden text and defining it with display:none at Mediawiki:Common.css would have the same effect, right? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:01, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- I doubt it would make Google omit the text when they display it now. How about only producing the error message when previewing, and displaying it openly?
{{REVISIONID}}
is blank on preview and non-blank when saving so{{#if:{{REVISIONID}}||error message}}
should work, at least here. I don't know whether it would work in all mirrors which render the wikitext on their own. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:22, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- I doubt it would make Google omit the text when they display it now. How about only producing the error message when previewing, and displaying it openly?
- PrimeHunter, the same for Wikipedia search. Yes, the module and hidden text is used also in other infoboxes. I would say, that text is useful, when you're not an expert of the particular infobox (you don't know which params are supported). Hmm, probably a stupid question, but still... Adding a class to that hidden text and defining it with display:none at Mediawiki:Common.css would have the same effect, right? --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 19:01, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Database error
When attempting to save an edit to Talk:Lea Thompson, I'm getting error messages as follows:
Database error
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A database query error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software.
Function: WikiPage::lockAndGetLatest
Error: 1205 Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (10.64.32.22)
It's happened three times; I know what it means: but I can't fix it, not being a sysadmin. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:31, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
- Works here. I had "our servers are all having a picnic" message today. Perhaps this is another manifestation of that. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:48, 12 April 2016 (UTC).
- I had a similar error when moving over an existing page trying to do a history merge. But no damage seems to have occurred. The software must have rolled back any partially performed functions. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:04, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Downtime for wikipedia.org
I read some message about downtime or read-only during some move etc for wikipedia.org. But I can't find it.. Does anyone have a list of planned disruptions of wikipedia.org and where can one find such list? Bytesock (talk) 01:26, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Tuesday, 19 April and Thursday, 21 April, starting at 14:00 UTC ... [20] --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:29, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- It was advertised on this page at least three times, e.g. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Server migration will prevent editing next week and it's also displayed on the watchlist right now, and has been since 00:58, 11 April 2016 (UTC). I don't think that a main page notice is needed, since it won't affect readers, only editors, and it's going to be significantly less than an hour each time. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:20, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- To whoever makes up these announcements: Please stop stating the day-of-week in conjunction with the UTC time. 14:00 UTC might be Tuesday or Thursday where you live, but it is not necessarily so in other time zones. The only correct way to state a UTC time is with the date and time (eg. 21 April, 14:00 UTC). I have pointed this out before on this very page, and in case it's not understood what I mean, 19 April @ 14:00 UTC will be 2.00 am Wednesday, not Tuesday, where I live. This is not just semantics. It looks damned unprofessional, has the potential to mislead, and can be insulting to those of us who live in time zones that are a long way ahead of or behind UTC. Akld guy (talk) 11:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- For the majority of editors, the "UTC day of the week" aligns with their own. Many people don't know the numeric date off the top of their heads (see: every single person who says "What's the date?" when writing a check at the store), but almost everyone knows whether it's a Monday or Tuesday. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Except that it's NOT a Monday or Tuesday in certain time zones, so it's no justification to say that it suits the majority of editors. To those, like me, whose careers depended on setting schedules with counterparts in other countries, it's not simply bad practice, it's unacceptable. Wikipedia is showing just how foolish its administration is by tolerating this. Akld guy (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- It's also not going to be the 19th or the 21st in exactly those same time zones. It seems strange to complain about only the day of the week, when the date is equally "wrong" in your time zone. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Right, the announcement says "Tuesday, 19 April" and "Thursday, 21 April" in every place I have seen it where the day of the week is included. When the date is stated I don't see the horror in adding the day of the week. It's helpful to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:53, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- It's also not going to be the 19th or the 21st in exactly those same time zones. It seems strange to complain about only the day of the week, when the date is equally "wrong" in your time zone. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Except that it's NOT a Monday or Tuesday in certain time zones, so it's no justification to say that it suits the majority of editors. To those, like me, whose careers depended on setting schedules with counterparts in other countries, it's not simply bad practice, it's unacceptable. Wikipedia is showing just how foolish its administration is by tolerating this. Akld guy (talk) 16:23, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- For the majority of editors, the "UTC day of the week" aligns with their own. Many people don't know the numeric date off the top of their heads (see: every single person who says "What's the date?" when writing a check at the store), but almost everyone knows whether it's a Monday or Tuesday. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
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- @Whatamidoing (WMF): You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Yes, at 14:00 UTC it will be a different date in my country, but since the announcement quotes the date in UTC, that issue doesn't arise. But the Tuesday/Wednesday issue certainly does arise, since the announcement states that the first event will take place on "Tuesday". It will not be Tuesday in my country, nor in eastern Australia, nor in most of the Pacific Islands. If you dismiss this by saying that only a handful of countries are involved, it gets much worse if the time happened to have been something other than 14:00 UTC.
- @PrimeHunter: Look, it's simply incorrect to state the day of week when announcing an event's time in UTC. The UTC time 19 April 2016 14:00 (UTC) enables everyone to work out which day of the week is applicable to his/her time zone. Akld guy (talk) 21:35, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
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- Akld guy, do you have anything other than personal opinion to back up that "it's simply incorrect" claim? BTW, ISO 8601:2004 is the applicable standard, which clearly states "Scope: This International Standard is applicable whenever representation of dates in the Gregorian calendar, times in the 24-hour timekeeping system, time intervals and recurring time intervals or of the formats of these representations are included in information interchange. It includes [...] week dates expressed in terms of calendar year, calendar week number and calendar day of the week..." --Guy Macon (talk) 23:07, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
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ProtBot
I don't know if that bot exists or not, but we used to have a bot that added protection templates to protected articles. Can we have that back, pretty please? I see that Tbhotch and now BethNaught are picking up the slack for lazy bums like me who protect but don't template, and I thank them for it, but surely this can be done in an automated fashion. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 17:29, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- Might see if User:MusikAnimal and User:MusikBot might be able to take the slack, since they're doing some protection template stuff. --Izno (talk) 17:41, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- The bot you are missing is Lowercase sigmabot. I don't know if Σ is willing to boot it back up, but as we discussed in MusikBot's BRFA, both can coexist peacefully. MusikBot doesn't work in the same way, and while I'm interested in implementing addition of prot templates, and not just removing them, it's going to be quite a while before I could get around to it. Sorry! — MusikAnimal talk 17:45, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
- WP:Bots/Status lists Lowercase sigmabot as being active in adding and removing protection templates, though its last edit was in 2014. DumbBOT is active, but only removes them. SiBr4 (talk) 17:43, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Citing sources (or authors) with a Wikidata item, but no article
Where we cite a work, or journal, which has a corresponding Wikipedia article, we can make the title a link; and in templates we can use |authorlink=
if there is an article about the author. What if there is no article, but there is a Wikidata item? How might we include, and display, the "Q" value, and link to the item? Please see discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Sources (or authors) with a Wikidata item, but no article. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:53, 13 April 2016 (UTC)