Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

Space bar resetting the search term was recently fixed at phab:T418172. But now there is a new problem. Now the search suggestions are always one step behind the typed term. For example when searching for Trapdoor. Typing T, nothing shows up. At Trap it shows Transnistria while omitting the p letter.

Confirmed affected sites: en.m.wikipedia.org, en.m.wiktionary.org

Phone model: OnePlus 3, operating system: Android 9 / OxygenOS 9.0.6, browser: Firefox 148.0.1

Aloysius Jr (talk) 23:23, 15 March 2026 (UTC)

This is still happening. I think it's related to the previous fixes because when I write Trap and then press spacebar it acknowledges the letter p. Aloysius Jr (talk) 22:42, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I just tested this on Chrome, no problem there. Now I see why this post isn't getting any traction. Firefox mobile usage share is 0.5-2%! Who will save us? Aloysius Jr (talk) 12:29, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Aloysius Jr, you should file a bug report on phabricator. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:00, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

You're right, thanks. Last time I did this Anne Tomasevich very kindly did the report for me. The Phabricator account requires an email account and since this account isn't connected to an email address I never made an account there. I'm not expecting people to do stuff for me of course it's just that I was excited ideologically when I noticed that this is one of the few places on the web where an account doesn't require an email address. Aloysius Jr (talk) 14:08, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Aloysius Jr, really? I was under the impression Phabricator uses unified login, so your Wikipedia account would work. — Qwerfjkltalk 17:45, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

@Qwerfjkl: It does work, but if you add a comment you automatically get added as a subscriber, and by default will be sent emails for every subsequent post - or even amendment. You can amend your settings for this, at phab:settings/panel/emailpreferences/. It's just like with Wikipedia notifications. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:11, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Redrose64, so how would that work if you don't have an email attached to your Wikipedia account? — Qwerfjkltalk 12:57, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

If I try to connect my account, it says Email is required. Aloysius Jr (talk) 13:49, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Hey, I noticed for a while that some imported webfonts on my CSS page from db.onlinewebfonts.com can't load anymore as they used to. Is Wikimedia blocking it or does the website block Wikimedia now? --Esperfulmo (talk) 21:30, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

We recently blocked loading of external resources from domains that aren't specifically whitelisted in response to a security incident. See phab:T419265. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:34, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

https://www.base64encode.org/ + https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26867893/converting-and-rendering-web-fonts-to-base64-keep-original-look sapphaline (talk) 21:46, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks both for taking the time and attention to answer me. How can we ask to allow the aforementioned website to be able to load some basic fonts for me and anyone? This website has too many essential fonts. Using my phone I can't see them and I can't install fonts on it. --Esperfulmo (talk) 01:40, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Converting to base64 isn't a solution for fonts which have too many characters and for dozens of fonts to load. It's impractical unless we want to just load a font which has a character or two. --Esperfulmo (talk) 01:43, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

You may want to remove the Content-Security-Policy HTTP header/modify it so that it includes your domain, then. There are multiple browser extensions to do so, e.g. "simple-modify-headers" (Firefox, Chrome). sapphaline (talk) 08:45, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Would heavily advise NOT doing that, unless you know what any of those words mean. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:53, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Well, obviously this needs to be restricted to en.wikipedia.org. sapphaline (talk) 11:21, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I tried to use alternative extensions since those are for the desktop version and I need to load the fonts on my phone, not my desktop which has enough fonts and it's easy to download on. I was not very sure how to implement the suggested solution with alternative extensions, so I failed to load any of my imported fonts. I want to load them on arz.wikipedia.org where they are imported from my common CSS on en.wikipedia.org. I believe a simpler exception could be made for db.onlinewebfonts.com for the case of loading fonts, am I right? I read the phabricator, but could understand the relation to my issue. They were talking about java script. I am not trying to load java script. --Esperfulmo (talk) 13:53, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

https://cdnjs.toolforge.org/ is a whitelisted domain, owned by WMF, that has some fonts. The "Fonts-linux" package in particular might help. If not, file a task at phabricator with all of the domains you are using and tag it with ContentSecurityPolicy. Snævar (talk) 17:04, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

https://fontcdn.toolforge.org/ provides proxy access to the fonts available from the Google font server. Note having a proxy doesn't completely eliminate privacy concerns and thus I was told (but can't locate the discussion right now) that the toolforge font server's purpose isn't to be used on Wikipedia. However it is an available resource if you are willing in essence to download the fonts from the Google font server. isaacl (talk) 17:57, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you all. I filed an issue. I hope it gets solved. --Esperfulmo (talk) 22:17, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Update

As of now, I see the fonts load. Thanks everybody! --Esperfulmo (talk) 21:34, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi, I’m Johannes from Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team. We are considering to work on Community Wishlist/W17: Improve VE references' automatic names and reuse. This has been a long-term issue for wikitext editors (see e.g. WP:VisualEditor/Named references) which has been among the top-voted wishes in several Community Wishlist Surveys, e.g. 2017, 2019, 2022 or 2023.

We would like your input on the solutions proposed on our project page. We are considering several options, which can be combined if desired by the community.

• Changing the default pattern for automatically generated reference names (currently ":n", e.g. ":0", ":1"...) to use the reference type instead (e.g. "book_reference-1").
• Providing a simple mechanism for communities to configure a different default name.
• Generating automatic reference names based on the domain name (if it’s a web citation).
• Generating automatic reference names based on template parameters (e.g. "title" or "last"+"first") – defined by the community.

I would like to include an HTML comment with debugging information in the string I return from a Lua module
e.g.
return "<!-- DEBUG comment --><br/>TEST<br/>"
However, it seems that the parser is stripping out HTML comments as I do not see the HTML comment in the page source but I do see TEST in the rendered page. Is there a way to prevent the HTML comments from being stripped out? RedWolf (talk) 19:10, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

If you are expecting the debug comment to 'show' in an html rendering, it won't because by their very nature, html comments are not rendered visibly. I hacked a simple test to illustrate. If I write:

{{#invoke:Sandbox/trappist the monk/html comment|main}}

that returns:

TEST

if I write:

{{code|lang=html|{{#invoke:Sandbox/trappist the monk/html comment|main}}}}

that returns:

<!-- DEBUG comment --><br/>TEST<br/>

I can also write:

{{#invoke:string|find|{{#invoke:Sandbox/trappist the monk/html comment|main}}|DEBUG comment||true}}

that returns: 6 – the 'D' in 'DEBUG' is the sixth character in <!-- DEBUG comment -->

So the html comment is being returned; but you can't see it in an html rendering.

Have you considered mw.log() or mw.logObject()?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:41, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

You can use Special:ExpandTemplates to see html comments. Bawolff (talk) 22:16, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

• If I run ExpandTemplates with {{#invoke:Sandbox/trappist the monk/html comment|main}}, why can't I see <!-- DEBUG comment --> under PREVIEW when I view the Page Source (not the rendered output)? It's not in the RAW HTML output either. I know the HTML comment won't be in the rendered output but why doesn't it show up when I use FF's "Page Source" menu item? RedWolf (talk) 22:59, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

  Html comments are removed before outputting the html. Special:expandtemplates has a checkbox to disable this but you cannot disable on a normal page. Bawolff (talk) 00:23, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

  If I uncheck "Remove Comments" on ExpandTemplates it still strips the HTML comments from Page Source. RedWolf (talk) 17:31, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

  In Special:ExpandTemplates with 'Remove comments' checked, if I write this:

  {{#invoke:Sandbox/trappist the monk/html comment|main<!--p-->}}

  I get the test string 'TEST' with the html comment suppressed or invisible in the html rendering. When I uncheck 'Remove comments' I get this:

  Script error: The function "main<!--p-->" does not exist.

  That suggests that the 'Remove comments' checkbox applies to input only. See the (rather sparse) description at mw:Help:ExpandTemplates § Remove comments. I suspect that Editor Bawolff is correct that html comments are stripped before final page rendering (and others are added – 'NewPP limit report' and the like).

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 17:57, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

  If you want the html comment to appear in wikitext, you can subst your module. I did that for {{cite book/French}} etc in Module:CS1 translator. You can see that with these search results. The code to create that is at lines 654–673.

  —Trappist the monk (talk) 18:16, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

@RedWolf Have you considered using mw.log for debugging? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:34, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I clicked a little too fast and clicked on the blue mark as read button for notifications for some multi-notification item for Commons like the one on the right when on this Wikipedia.

I haven't noticed any loss of notifications so I don't know

• if the marking failed fully or
• if there is some safeguard to prevent multi-items being marked as read when on another project or when it's too many items or
• whether it did successfully mark some notifications as read that I didn't mean to mark as read.

Is there any way to check if I did lose some notifications and see which? I only know of one way:

1. comparing the numbers of a screenshot of Special:Notifications to the current numbers. However, the last screenshot I made of the left panel of that page is too old.

For example, what would be great is a way of seeing 'read' notifications sorted by datetime of them being marked as read, not by the datetime the notification was created. Maybe there is a tool for that or it's possible in principle but one would need to code something for it.

If you think the problem of accidental clicking on mark as read should be solved, see this wish – one can vote on it:

W472: Confirmation dialog to prevent accidental clicks on Mark All As Read for notifications.

Help with retrieving the notifications if some did get marked as read would be very appreciated. Prototyperspective (talk) 23:41, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

And in regards to the wish: whether or not there are confirmation dialogs could be made a preference; eg with these possible values

• Show confirmation dialog for all marking
• Just for multi items (say 20 notifications from one page)
• Just for mark all as read
• Never

I've lost quite a few notification due to accidental clicks on the blue mark as read button and again if you know how to retrieve/see these, please let me know. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:37, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi. We can see all our local notifications (read and unread) on the local wiki they originated from. E.g. That example notification in your screenshot from Commons should be available to you at c:Special:Notifications. Also, coincidentally, next week's edition of Tech News has a related entry about a new notification-archive download tool. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

I accidentally marked them as read here on English Wikipedia. I have many notifications on that other wiki and even if I were the wade through hundreds of notifications to try to find the ones I accidentally marked as read there is no way to see which I marked as read recently to identify the ones I lost. If I were to wade through hundreds of read notifications on that wiki, I can't retrieve them even with that time effort because I can't remember which of all of these I have actually read and which not. Interesting news about the notification archive tool. Hopefully, it will at least allow for backups if nobody is interested in preventing large data losses by the volunteers. Prototyperspective (talk) 19:15, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

A user on the wish page claimed clicking on the blue dot button on notifications like the one in the image (multi-item notifications from another project) would not actually mark these notifications as read (those 16 in the example) but instead just unroll them so they're not bundled anymore in some queue if I understood things correctly.

Does somebody know more – is that the case?

I think if there was no bug or safeguard when users mark lots of notifications as read from another project, then I think I must have lost those that I accidentally clicked and can't do anything about it assuming I don't just have very few notifications in which case I could just go through all read notifications and try to guess which of these I have not yet read (here one thing that would help would be some info on the 'read' items whether the item was clicked or just marked as read). Prototyperspective (talk) 11:12, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

If a usage of Template:Navbox timeline does not fit within the available area, Firefox will not allow users to scroll to see the remainder of the timeline, whereas Chrome will. There are various examples on the testcases page. I am not sure if the issue is specific to this template, or if multiple templates are affected. ~2026-17443-39 (talk) 01:11, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-17443-39: It works for me in Firefox 148.0.2 (64-bit) on Windows 11. The scroll bars are just more narrow and might be overlooked. Are you sure it doesn't work for you? Try hovering your mouse over the bottom of the box. Is there no scroll bar or doesn't it work to click it? Please name a specific example. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:19, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

I can partially reproduce this, if I make my browser-window very narrow. E.g. phab:F73288607 screenshot showing 3 logged-out windows, one with the full contents of {{Boeing 7x7 timeline}} visible, one with a narrower window that is cutting off content but doesn't have scrollbars, and one that is 639px wide that does show scrollbars. I'm not sure if that's what the temp-account user is describing, nor how to resolve it. HTH. Quiddity (talk) 20:02, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

No scrollbars are evident in Firefox 148.0.2 under Windows 10 (normal zoom, 1280px wide), even when hovering near the bottom. In Safari on an iPad almost all of the testcases are sideways scrollable, although the scrollbar only appears once I touch and slide sideways; it vanishes a couple of seconds after I lift my finger. The ones without sideways scrolling are the first pair (Basic) and the tenth pair (|border=child). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:27, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

This is being caused by the two properties table-layout: fixed + width: 100%. Fixed is very particular about how things should be displayed; removing either of those properties at least makes it so you can display the whole space (with their own perhaps-obvious detrimental effects). These are added in {{navbox timeline}}. The reason it works at lower ranges is because the table is assigned display: block due to various responsive treatments upstream which causes the fixed layout to be removed.

Perhaps the best fix is to not put timelines in navboxes. :eyeroll: Izno (talk) 05:40, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't think either table-layout: fixed or width: 100% directly has anything to do with it, other than making it so the table itself doesn't expand outside of its container due to the large content. It seems that Firefox just doesn't currently support overflow: auto on table cells (unless you enable the preference layout.tables.scrollable-cells); apparently they tried to fix it, but then had to put it behind a preference because other stuff broke, and it seems they need to rewrite some table code to make it work. A workaround may be to put the overflow: auto on a <div> inside the table cell instead of putting it on the cell directly. Anomie⚔ 13:52, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Template:Convert has the parameter |sp=us for when en-US is wanted instead of en (generic). Would it be possible to have the template detect Template:Use American English and automatically apply such changes, similar to how the CS templates automatically adapt to Template:Use mdy dates? CMD (talk) 09:57, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

This has been suggested a couple of times. My most recent response is at Template talk:Convert#Spelling (permalink). In brief, my view is that there should be a central method for parsing a page once rather than having multiple modules use their own ideas of how that should be done. Johnuniq (talk) 03:24, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

It would need to be aware of quotes and other uses where the 'other' spelling is the correct one, even if the page uses a different spelling. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:06, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

A {{Not a typo}} template may be utilized to prevent automatic fixing words intentionally written 'wrong', but that would require manual verifying and template-annotating each article prior to automatic processing. --CiaPan (talk) 18:44, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Is the file upload feature broken at the moment? I have tried to upload a file to this Wikipedia project (not Commons), and I get this error each time: Upload failed: Could not create directory "mwstore://local-multiwrite/local-public/1/1b". Simeon (talk) 19:45, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

It worked now: File:Dochters film poster.jpg. Simeon (talk) 20:02, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:40, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Please could somebody familiar with how GrowthExperiments take a look at Wikipedia talk:Mentorship#Who selects people to mentor?, where a number of discrepancies in the GrowthExperiments log are coming to light. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:56, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

• 
  File:MacBook_Neo_(512GB_Blush;_2026).webp
• 
  File:MacBook_Neo_(256GB_Citrus;_2026;_Low_angle).webp
• 
  File:MacBook_Neo_(256GB_Citrus;_2026).webp
• 
  File:MacBook_Neo_(512GB_Blush;_2026)_keyboard_close-up.webp
• 
  File:MacBook_Neo_(256GB_Citrus;_2026)_keyboard_close-up.webp

File:MacBook Neo (256GB Citrus; 2026).webp is one of a series of images I uploaded (see gallery above), and while the other images in the series show metadata correctly, this image does not. I re-downloaded the uploaded file to confirm the presence of the metadata, and it's there according to File Properties in Windows Explorer (Windows 11). Any ideas as to what about this specific image is causing a problem? —Locke Cole • t • c • b 16:03, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Comparing output of exiftool for File:MacBook Neo (256GB Citrus; 2026).webp and File:MacBook Neo (512GB Blush; 2026).webp, the only two things that jump out are: 1) the "bad" one has "Auto Tone Digest" and many "Paint Correction ..." entries, while the "good" one does not; and 2) the "good" one has GPS coordinates, but the "bad" one does not.

I have zero knowledge of how it works, the following is just my educated guess at what could have happened. You can try uploading the photo one more time – it is possible that the metadata extraction during the uploading process got confused/crashed/interrupted/whatever and it simply never finished. I don't remember if MediaWiki allows uploading the exact same file on the exact same filename, so you might need to edit it a bit. If uploading it once more works, you could re-upload the original over the second version. —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:56, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I have a set of about 50 pages (all the currently active WP:FAC nominations) that I want to monitor with a bot. Is there some way to get a push notification when any of them have changes? I could put them on my bot's watchlist, but then I'd have to synchronously poll mw:API:Watchlist every so often which would either be too slow (if I poll infrequently) or too load-intensive (if I poll like a crazed spider monkey). I expect most pages to have an average of a couple of edits per day, so an aggregate of about one notification every 10 minutes. RoySmith (talk) 17:20, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure about notifications, but you could enable "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" in the user preferences of the bot, and make sure that email is received by the bot. I don't know if there's any delay between the edit and the email though. Also, instead of the API, it's also possible to get an RSS feed of your watchlist. --rchard2scout (talk) 01:09, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

No idea about push notifications but polling Special:RecentChangesLinked could be tried as an alternative to polling the watchlist. You would need an enwiki page with links to the 50 current FAC articles. On that page, click "Related changes" under the tools sidebar to see the URL. The Atom feed might be useful. On the other hand, I just tried mw:Special:MyLanguage/API:Watchlist feed. Clicking API watchlist last hour gives a very fast result. Johnuniq (talk) 02:02, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

@Samwilson, are there any plans to add a parameter label=<label id> to Action API action=query/list=watchlist, so you can fetch only the watchlist changes for the labeled lists? IKhitron (talk) 10:27, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

@IKhitron: It's not possible yet, but I've created phab:T420839 to track it. The current priorities are to add the watchstar popup and VE functionality, but after those are done I think sorting out the missing API functions will be next up. Sam Wilson 11:14, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

OK, I think I can get this down to two API calls: one to grab WP:FAC, and a second mw:API:Info call to query for the lastrevid of each of the individual pages and keep a small cache. The only remaining question is that API:Info says "Maximum number of values is 50 (500 for clients that are allowed higher limits)". How do I know if my bot has the higher limit? RoySmith (talk) 13:58, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

RoySmith, I assume it's for users with the apihighlimits permission, so your bot should have it, — Qwerfjkltalk 14:08, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

That's correct, "for clients that are allowed higher limits" refers to apihighlimits. Anomie⚔ 14:38, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

The other day, I noticed that CharInsert has stopped appearing as part of the source editing interface, and it's still absent as of today, so if I want to use an arrow in my edit summary, I now have to open up the special characters menu, look for it, then cut and paste it from the wikitext. In case you want to know, I'm using Firefox and the legacy Vector skin. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 18:24, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Works for me in Firefox under Windows also Safari on an iPad. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:03, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I use Windows 10 on a desktop PC. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 00:02, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Is "CharInsert" enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets? Does it work if you log out? PrimeHunter (talk) 19:08, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

CharInsert is enabled by default, and I've never disabled it when I went into Preferences. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 00:04, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Did you check it still has a checkmark? Try to disable it, save preferences, enable it again and save. Reload an edit page with Ctrl+F5, not just F5 or a reload button. Does CharInsert work if you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:04, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, pressing Ctrl+F5 at an edit page appears to have resolved the issue. Once I tried it here (which I just did a moment ago), CharInsert came back, and so far, I haven't had to repeat the trick (or try logging out) when going to edit other pages. Hopefully CharInsert will stay for good. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 10:47, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

This edit notified me, but judging by WP:MENTION it should not have done because Create a new comment; modifying an earlier comment does not work. Have the rules changed? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:50, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I'd wager that it worked because the comment they were editing was unsigned, and they added a sig in the edit in which they added the ping. Schazjmd (talk) 21:59, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

That didn't work in the past. Let's try it with my next edit. @Schazjmd: did you get a notification for this edit? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:25, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I did. :) Schazjmd (talk) 23:26, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Then they've changed for sure. Wonder what else? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:55, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi all, I was editing Trucial States, and the following appeared in the Preview window: Script warning: TRUCIALSTATES ("Trucial States") is not a recognized country in ISO 3166-1 (Module:ISO 3166). It's now the UAE, (AE/ARE/784). I saw that the list of "Pages included in this preview" includes {{ISO 3166 code}}, so I imagine it's being invoked somewhere. Does it matter? Can it be fixed? MinorProphet (talk) 10:48, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

In the infobox: |iso3166code=omit

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:15, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Great, that seems to have worked. Thanks very much as usual for your timely and helpful reply. MinorProphet (talk) 11:48, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Resolved

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:05, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Is it intentional that when the empty search box is clicked or tapped three suggestions pop up? These three are usually the related articles that are located near the bottom of a webpage on a mobile device. This happens on desktop and mobile. Aloysius Jr (talk) 13:50, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it's a new feature which was added last year. See mw:Reading/Web/Content Discovery Experiments/Search Suggestions for more information. the wub "?!" 14:09, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Much appreciated. Aloysius Jr (talk) 11:44, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

 This section is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Prototyperspective (talk) 11:05, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it's a bug, or if there is some mysterious reason that XTools articleinfo tool sometimes omits the tally of page watchers of an article. Examples:

• Liberation of France – 56 watchers
• Mercury (planet) – 1,085 watchers
• Pornography Act (Austria) – (stat absent)

Is there a pattern? Mathglot (talk) 21:11, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Because the number of watchers is not generally reported when the number of watchers is less than 30. This is the same limitation as in info. Izno (talk) 21:16, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

What Izno said. Compare these two API responses: Liberation of France and Pornography Act (Austria); notice how the latter is missing the watchers prop entirely. XTools uses the same endpoint. — DVRTed (Talk) 21:36, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

mw:Manual:$wgUnwatchedPageThreshold is set to 30 for Wikimedia wikis in https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:26, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Is this intended as some sort of privacy thing, i.e., that it is somehow harder to reverse engineer who is watching, perhaps to avoid pinning a target on users for vandals or something? It took me about two or three minutes to navigate from articleinfo for Pornography Act (Austria) to the authorship tool (21 unique) thence to contribs on the Talk page (no authorship tool on Talk pages) and pick up 4 more uniques for a total of 25. So, now I have 25 possible watchers, and I also have their usernames, which the tool doesn't give you. Sure, we can't be certain they are all watchers, or who the non-contrib watchers are, but it seems like only in that last group is one's privacy being protected. Or is there another reason for the 30 limit? Mathglot (talk) 01:59, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Just to avoid giving easy targets for vandals. Izno (talk) 03:21, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

@Mathglot: See Special:PageInfo/Pornography Act (Austria)#mw-pageinfo-watchers. If you're an admin, you'll see a figure here; if not, you'll see "Fewer than 30 watchers". Compare Special:PageInfo/Mercury (planet)#mw-pageinfo-watchers which presently shows 1,036 for everybody. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:18, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Ooh, that's helpful! It would be great if Articleinfo tool could just emit the same string; that is much better than saying nothing, because you can tell that no bug or oversight is involved. (And would prevent a repeat of this VPT question.) Maybe I should file a Phab enhancement ticket to request it. Mathglot (talk) 18:37, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

To pick up on your post of 01:59, 23 March 2026 (UTC): not all people who edit a page will watch it. There are gnomes who use AWB to zip through hundreds or thousands of pages making small adjustments, I don't imagine that they would necessarily want to add all these pages to their watchlists (I think that's the trap that Rich Farmbrough fell into, he ended up with a watchlist that was so long that the MediaWiki software couldn't handle it). Conversely, there are people who will watch pages that they've never edited, for various reasons (personally, I might watch a page if: it's a page that's being discussed on some board like VPT; it's one of a set of articles that I eventually wish to bring to some sort of consistency; it's a redirect with possibilities, and I have some sources, so I want to see if somebody expands it to an article; a LTA that I've blocked has been targetting that page; etc.). --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:08, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

On this page on my mobile device, the discussions are very hard to follow while on other vital article pages, they have collapsible discussions. Any idea on how to make this mobile friendly? Interstellarity (talk) 21:23, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

@Interstellarity: There are 1138 images. Sections are not collapsible in mobile if there are more than 1000 images. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:18, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter I don’t see any images on the page. Can you point out to me what’s causing the problem? I might be able to do something about it, but I’ll discuss it before I do anything. Interstellarity (talk) 23:21, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

File:Círculos Concéntricos.svg occurs 1084 times from {{VA link}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:22, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there a way to fix the template so that it doesn’t happen again or should I consider splitting the pages for this to work to fix the issue? I will get community consensus before splitting the page if that’s the route you think is best. Interstellarity (talk) 23:32, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Sort of following you here because I reverted one of your edits ...if you want to talk about it we can.... That said drop the file spam talk (why do you need all these little images?). Ideally, a page should have no more than 100 images (regardless of how small). See MediaWiki:Limit number of images in a page. Make your talk pages (or any page) as accessible as possible so you're not deterring readers/editors. Moxy🍁 23:45, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

I’m all for making our talk pages as accessible as possible and that’s exactly what I’m trying to accomplish here. We might have different ideas on how to fix this, but I am 100% willing to talk about with you. This is why I suggested splitting the page: to make the talk pages more accessible without the information overload and figuring out where to scroll, which makes it less accessible. Interstellarity (talk) 23:54, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

All you need to do - it would fix accessibility on every archive page and current page - is drop the icons at {{Vital article link}} for real characters like + or (GA). That said there still is Help:Template limits...but they're much higher. Images like File:Escape suspect.svg are meaningless anyways to those outside the project.Moxy🍁 00:09, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Another way would be using a circle emoji in template:vital article link. Probably a blue circle for vital and red for not vital article. But then again, that page is 430kb, which is on the bigger side. Snævar (talk) 07:43, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I have removed the image from the template sandbox. See {{Vital article link/testcases}} for how it looks. Also, you could probably get the page under the 1,000-image mark by eliminating the improper use of the template in headers, which causes a few different problems. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:35, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 ◎ (<span style="color:#2b1c72">◎</span>) could be used to replace . --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:42, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

It could, though I'm skeptical of the use of an unexplained circle icon with no alt or hover text. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:09, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Tooltip can be provided, and it's no worse than the current image. Current suggestions displayed in table below for comparison — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:57, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

More information Current, Link ...

Current	Water  2
Link	Water (L2)
Emoji	Water 🔵 2
Unicode	Water ◎ 2

Close

These images could be moved into WP:TemplateStyles if there is a specific use needing it. Izno (talk) 18:18, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I thought emoji too, I found 🎯: Unicode Character 'DIRECT HIT' (U+1F3AF). However I can't find one without the dart, or that's monochrome. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:07, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

For monochrome you could possibly do 🎯︎ 🎯︎, but (at least in the font on my browser) that still has the dart. Anomie⚔ 21:59, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

If you want to put in that much effort into replacing this icon, you can draw vector graphics from Lua modules these days: mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual#SVG library. Matma Rex talk 01:19, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Wasn’t this limitation originally because we used JavaScript to lazy load images on mobile ? I think that now uses native lazy load of the browser, so maybe the limitation of a 1000 can simply be removed ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:51, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm stuck. Selenium has a ref with a cite template that I cannot track down. I know it is being introduced by the last clause of a {{MultiReplace}} in the helper template {{Element-symbol-to-oxidation-state-entry}}.

• Testing just the helper template does not show the extra citation, Template:Element-symbol-to-oxidation-state-entry/sandbox (just one Greenwood).
• The extra citation appears in {{Infobox selenium}} and {{Infobox element}}.
• If I use Special:ExpandTemplates with {{Infobox element}} and context page "Selenium" and uncheck all of the boxes, the phantom ref appears. But if I check the Remove comments box, my ref goes away and a different one appears.
• Selenium oxidation data should not trigger the last clause of the MultiReplace. Elements which do trigger the last clause, eg {{Infobox copper}}, do not show the extra Greenwood citation, just the one it should.

I've run out of things to try. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:37, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: All {{MultiReplace}} parameters in {{Element-symbol-to-oxidation-state-entry}} are evaluated whether they are used or not so the ref is always evaluated even if there is no asterisk to replace with the ref. If a ref has been parsed during page evaluation then it's added to the references list even if the code containing the ref is not part of the generated wikitext. That's one of several odd quirks with refs, maybe because they are part of an extension mw:Extension:Cite and its authors just did what seemed practical or easy when integrating refs into MediaWiki. If you want to avoid it then you can do a test to see whether there is an asterisk and only make the replacement then. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:14, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! Your analysis makes sense. But I've not found a way to solve this. I need to MultiReplace the string in both the * and not * cases. I tried #tag but as far as I can tell that fails. The order of evaluation is completely opaque :-(

Maybe a better fix is to emit <ref name=GE2/> when the * is used and tell editors to add a list-defined ref at that name. The ref here is widely used among the Elements so this is not a terrible choice. Johnjbarton (talk) 22:59, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: I meant to make a test before the replacement like . PrimeHunter (talk) 23:48, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Hmm. So I really don't understand the problem. I originally thought all of the templates would be expanded, then the lower level operations would work through the logic: modifying content optionally gives a final stream of content. If the input string does not contain <sup>*</sup> then the ref is not in the final content.

But you said "the ref is always evaluated", which matched the failures I saw. How can the ifexpr alter the outcome? Both branches will be expanded ? so the ref will alway be expanded? If the problem is that both branches of the conditional are evaluated, how can another conditional help? Johnjbarton (talk) 00:12, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter OK Thank you! I put your version in and it works. I don't understand it but it works. Johnjbarton (talk) 00:25, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton: if-expressions generally use lazy evaluation where only one of the then and else parts is evaluated. The template language also uses lazy evaluation for parameters so a parameter is only evaluated if the template asks for the value, but {{MultiReplace}} apparently does ask for the value of all the parameters even if some of them may not affect the output. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:29, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Hah, of course it does. Thanks, that makes a lot more sense. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:03, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

You wrote "Template:Element-symbol-to-oxidation-state-entry/sandbox (just one Greenwood)", but there are two like in {{Infobox selenium}}, just in another order. It's a named ref and the first occurrence comes early so it's reference 1. The ^d at reference 1 is caused by Selenium but doesn't link anywhere since the reference is not actually used for Selenium. Only ^b from iron (Fe) is used and has a working link. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:49, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I should have said that only one comes from the "Se" entry. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:06, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Headers and contents of emails sent using Special:EmailUser are signed with DKIM by the Wikimedia mail servers and can be verified provided that the email is available in raw format including all relevant headers. I developed a tool to do just that. It works completely in the browser using WebAssembly and JavaScript to do the verification in order to address any privacy concerns.

My main motivation for writing this tool was that we have cases in German language Wikipedia where users are harassed using emails sent this way and administrators have to verify that such emails forwarded to them are genuine. I assume there are similar cases in the English language Wikipedia. Count Count (talk) 06:31, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there any bot that can be used to archive specific talk page discussions based on a filter rather than just date? Specifically, I'm hoping to automate archival of KiranBOT notifications regarding threads being archived. Teahouse suggested asking here. ChompyTheGogoat (talk) 08:41, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

ChompyTheGogoat, {{User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis}} with |archivenow= should work. — Qwerfjkltalk 09:49, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

MediaWiki message delivery 16:49, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I tried to visit Special:Log/Materialscientist and ended up getting an error message:

To avoid creating high database load, this query was aborted because the duration exceeded the limit. If you are reading many items at once, try doing multiple smaller operations instead.

[1fbe34c9-0299-4efd-89e3-312f624fd6f9] 2026-03-23 20:11:50: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryTimeoutError"

I understand what it means, and obviously it's a standard server message for "sorry, too much happening right now; I can't help you and everyone else". But (1) any idea what's going on right now? I've never gotten this kind of message when trying to view user logs before, and it's the default size (I assume 50 entries), not something massive like 5000 entries. (2) How could one view a smaller version of a user log page, without accessing it and then clicking the option for 20?

Nothing wrong, and nothing urgent at all; I've just never seen this before and I was curious. Nyttend (talk) 20:16, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

(1) Probably the sheer number of log entries Materialscientist has performed is making the server unhappy. Anyway it worked for me. See also phab:T325062. (2) Manualy specify a limit param in the URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/Materialscientist?limit=20. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:36, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Does the server have to load the entire log before displaying any of it? I just assumed it found the last fifty entries. Nyttend (talk) 07:34, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Recently (past few weeks) a larger than normal percentage of 429 rejections from the WMF API:

HTTP Error: 429 - Your bot is making too many requests. Please reduce your request rate or contact bot-traffic@wikimedia.org

-- GreenC 14:47, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

IABot seems to have had a backend malfunction that has caused it to be effectively down for several days. Is there anyone who can restart it? -- Beland (talk) 02:23, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

I think User:GreenC understands how that works. Johnuniq (talk) 03:06, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Trying WP:IABOT shows that it leads to some info. Johnuniq (talk) 07:42, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Fixed. -- GreenC 14:42, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

I have this error:

Save failed: (blocked): Your username or IP address has been automatically blocked by MediaWiki. The reason given is: You are currently unable to edit Wikipedia. You are still able to view pages, but you are not currently able to edit, move, or create them. Editing without an account from $1 is disabled as it is a private IP range. This is probably a result of a problem with your Internet connection. You may be able to edit if you log in or create an account.

• Start of block: 00:55, 24 March 2026
• Expiration of block: no expiry set
• Intended blockee: 172.16.5.0 Your current IP address is 172.16.5.0. Please include all above details in any queries you make.

This can't be right; 172.16.x.x is the private IP range used for internal local networks. (In this case, probably Kubernetes.) Anybody know what is going on? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:43, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

This seems to be the error you get if you a script running on a Toolforge K8s node is trying to edit Wikipedia while logged out. Most likely your bot got logged out and needs to log in again. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:06, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

I am seeing some excessive vertical spacing when using syntaxhighlight. For example:

‎

{{ABC}}‎

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:40, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

There is an invisible character, left-to-right mark, in your comment before <syntaxhighlight></syntaxhighlight>. You might accidentally copy it from somewhere. Since it is placed after a line break, it creates a separate parahraph. It is visible as a bullet if you enable syntax highlighting in the standard editor. Jack who built the house (talk) 15:49, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:54, 24 March 2026 (UTC)