Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 186

Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups (NavPops) are no longer showing the detail in a citation. Formerly, as recently as the past few days, I could float my cursor over a citation^[1] and read it without scrolling down to the references section. I use this constantly to make sure my citation is formatted properly, but the NavPops behavior has now changed. The Popup now contains only the lead text (e.g. --NEWSECTIONLINK--), but not the citation detail when I move my cursor over a reference number (e.g. This is a sample citation.). Something has changed. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 13:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Here is some additional information. The change must have occurred in the last 8 hours: I have an article in one tab from hours ago, which exhibits the old, expected NavPops behavior (detailed citation in the popup). But the same article, with newer edits now displays the lead text in the popup. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 13:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Amorymeltzer edited MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:32, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Yup! Thanks for the ping PrimeHunter, I've reverted the changes for now Ancheta Wis, I'll take a look at it later to see what went wrong. Sorry about that. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate the ping. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 13:52, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I feel bad — that's one of my favorite features too! I was fixing two bugs, but I think just one was causing this regression, so I've restored just the other one for now. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:57, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Yay!, it's working. Thank you. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:10, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I’ve come across a couple of new editors trying to add spaces around negative signs in LaTeX. The complaint is that the negative signs aren’t rendering without increasing the zoom level on the browser. Sure enough, I’ve had to increase the zoom level on my browser to see some negative signs. LaTeX used to render reliably at 110% (Maybe lower, but I’ve used 110% for years). Now I need to go to 150% in some cases. Has the LaTeX engine made some new assumptions about display resolution. My monitor is 1920 x 1080. Maybe it is time for an upgrade. Constant314 (talk) 11:32, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

This is tracked at phab:T269222. --Izno (talk) 17:20, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Constant314 (talk) 21:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

Anyone know what's causing this? Draft:VizTech

The changeIf by some chance you see something different than I do, I see two sets of texts overlaid on top of one another--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:46, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Svgbutcher copied html code from the rendered version of Financial technology. I don't know why but I have removed the code. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:03, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, Thanks S Philbrick(Talk) 15:48, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Sphilbrick and 'H: I've CSD'd the remaining page and messaged the user at User talk:Svgbutcher#Welcome!. —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 21:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't know how to ask this question in a clear way.

I restored Draft:Cedar Point peninsula (Ohio) under WP:REFUND, but forgot to indicate that in my restoration summary, so now the log indicates that I restored it, but not why. Is there a way for any of you technical types to change this? I'm guess not, but I thought I'd check.

Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 21:57, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Nope. You can always re-delete it and restore it once again with the correct summary. Graham87 05:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

This edit had an unexpected effect on the template title format. The position of the VTE links changed from left to centre. Can anyone see a reason why this would happen? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:35, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The VTE links are on the left side in both revisions in my browser. Is this happening when the template is transcluded in an article? – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:15, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95:, Yes, that is where I noticed it. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood: Likely as a result of the housecleaning I did a few days ago. See Template talk:Navbar#TemplateStyles redux. Most such cases only need a purge or another edit. --Izno (talk) 19:54, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, it appears to be resolved. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I have faced this issue when browsing en.wikipedia on chrome browser Omda4wady (talk) 07:56, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

What version is your Chrome, and what OS? Chrome 87 (latest) doesn't have this problem even on Windows 7. --George Ho (talk) 16:35, 10 December 2020 (UTC); expanded, 16:37, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

A month ago I posted a question at the Help desk, here, but no one could help. If I want to build a table where identical cells appear more than once, can I use a module so as to define the coding of the cell type once and to invoke it as many times as needed? I know next to nothing about modules, and the help pages Help:Lua and Help:Lua for beginners are too general and don't provide that exact information. --Theurgist (talk) 12:45, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

It is possible with a normal template and WP:TemplateStyles (however, not for arbitrary colors). However, it is likely to be deleted if one cannot show use on more than one page. What is your actual use case? --Izno (talk) 13:39, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

My actual use case includes background colour, fond colour, and boldface.

More information Header ...

Header
bolded red on yellow
regular grey on green
regular white on brown

Close

--Theurgist (talk) 22:17, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

@Theurgist: That's... not a use case. That's what you want to do, not why you want to do it. Why do you think this is necessary? In particular, provide the page and the table of interest. --Izno (talk) 22:52, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

@Izno: Sorry for misunderstanding. It's odd that FIFA World Cup qualification doesn't represent the actual performances of the teams, so I wanted to add this table to it, but doing so would more than double the size in bytes of the already large page. I'm aware that the size can be reduced to some extent by merging identical cells into one, but I find this an inelegant solution that doesn't contribute to understanding. --Theurgist (talk) 09:17, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

@Theurgist: This seems suited for Help:Table#Row template. I have made {{FIFA World Cup qualification team}} and used it on your page. This reduces the size by 79%, makes the source more readable, and makes it easier to change the formatting consistently if wanted. I didn't change anything. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:37, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: That's amazing, that type of mechanism is pretty much exactly what I wanted. But is it OK for a template to be intended for use in one article only? --Theurgist (talk) 21:15, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

@Theurgist: It's used 216 times in that page and gives big advantages so hopefully it stays but you never know. I don't think we have a guideline about templates used many times in a single article. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:57, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I'm one of the maintainers of User:WP_1.0_bot. I'm reposting this question which I originally posted on the general help desk. We recently had an issue where the bot's password was leaked to Github and had to be reset. That was completed successfully. However, when I tried to use the new password in the bot's login code, I messed up the login username. I've since fixed that, but now the bot's machine is facing this message when trying to log in:

'reason', 'You have made too many recent login attempts. Please wait 2 days before trying again.'

The bot has already been offline and unable to edit Wikipedia for several days, and I'm posting here for help because: 1) I don't want it to be offline any longer than it has to, since it serves a critical function in the WikiProject community and 2) I want to get on track to receive help in case it doesn't automatically unlock in the 2 day period.

Is there any way to get the account unlocked, perhaps by filing a Phabricator task? Thanks so much in advance! audiodude (talk) 22:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Audiodude, I don't know if you've been following the phab ticket, but should be fixed now. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Yup, RoySmith is right, was just going to comment here :). I reset the throttle for your bot account, hopefully it will work (those requests aren't common :)). Thanks for your bot-service, --Martin Urbanec (talk) 23:44, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Yup it's working now, thanks again both of you for your help! audiodude (talk) 02:05, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I consulted a number of edit histories for pages on the Dutch, German and French Wikipedias, and wrote down some specific edits with their timestamps. Apparently, when I consult the same pages again today, these logged times seem to have shifted by an hour. E.g. an edit that I noted down as happening at '07:00' last summer, would be registered as '06:00' Today. Can anyone explain why this could be the case? I assume it has something to do with timezones/offsets? Willaerttom (talk) 16:00, 10 December 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willaerttom (talk • contribs)

Yes, the edit will have occurred at 06:00 as measured in your current timezone, which is 07:00 in the timezone you had in summer. Certes (talk) 20:18, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Also I see your user account was created yesterday (welcome!), so last summer you will have viewed the edits whilst logged out (or possibly using a different account). Certes (talk) 20:23, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, and yes, I am quite new. When logged in, my timezone is set to the Wiki standard, so perhaps this should not make a difference? In any case, I am just wondering if timestamps are always shown relative to the timezone of the user or not. Could this not be problematic in certain cases? For example, an edit that occurred close to midnight might be shown as occurring on the next day depending on the timezone of who is viewing the edit history? Also, from the point of say historical research, there is no 'fixed' historical version of a given page (accessed through the edit history) as those dates are relative to the perspective of the person who is accessing them? (Apologies for the many questions, but I think this is quite interesting and remarkable).Willaerttom (talk) 20:39, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I find that it is super convenient to tell Wikipedia to always display everything in UTC (this can be set in the preferences). You can also tell Windows and Linux to display both your local time and UTC in the corner of your screen. I imagine Macs have the same feature. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice Guy, that would indeed seem like a good course of action. Also, since I am quite new to editing Wikipedia, I was wondering if other sections of the website are susceptible to the same principle, i.e. are there other renderings of timestamps on the Wiki that can shift depending on the timezone settings of the user? Willaerttom (talk) 07:59, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

@Willaerttom: There's a known bug in the display of localized times in (at least) NavPops (reported at phab:T223002). —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 07:50, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, good to know — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willaerttom (talk • contribs) 08:04, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I've got a work in progress in my sandbox that's producing a CS1 error in the |title field of the Cite news template. It tells me I have a soft hyphen character at position 10, but there are no soft hyphens in the entire template. Position 10 is a non-English character (ä), but even replacing the character with HTML markup (ä) does not resolve the problem. This article has tons of "ä" and "ö" characters in citation fields, but only this one specific instance seems to be a problem. Any suggestions? Armadillopteryx 21:06, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

@Armadillopteryx: I copied the title field into Notepad++, and that program made the two hyphens easy to see. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:13, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Thank you! So soft hyphens can sometimes appear ... invisible? Armadillopteryx 21:42, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

@Armadillopteryx: Yes, I couldn't see any trace of them in the edit window. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:46, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Invisible characters can be tricky. Since the error message gives you the character count, it is usually pretty easy to delete and re-type the characters surrounding that position. If you observe carefully, you may observe that one of your presses of the delete key will not seem to do anything; that is you deleting the invisible character. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:38, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

The point about the soft hyphen is that it is invisible, unless the line happens to wrap at that point, when it becomes visible. One way to make it visible in the markup as well as the rendered page is to use the character entity ­. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:35, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

The soft hyphen was in "i­v" of "Seksuaali­vähemmistöjen". Oddly, Firefox stands still in the visible string when the soft hyphen is deleted with Backspace but not with Delete where it's deleted together with "i". My preferred tool for odd character issues is https://r12a.github.io/app-conversion/. Copy-paste the string to the "Characters" field and click "View in UniView". PrimeHunter (talk) 09:53, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Hey,

are there any scripts that add functionality or function to the Visual Editor console? Juandev (talk) 10:44, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, mw:VisualEditor/Gadgets#Real_examples_for_gadgets/scripts_that_interact_with_VE.--Snaevar (talk) 12:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Thx. Juandev (talk) 14:53, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I discussed Deferred Changes on this page back in June. enwiki passed it in WP:DC2016. It would allow edit filters to queue edits for review, along with bots (like ClueBot) and ORES, a bit of a leg-up in anti-vandalism work. We're still stuck on the technical implementation, though. As a result, perhaps the following Community Wishlist item will be of interest to talk page watchers: m:Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Admins and patrollers/Implement deferred changes. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:46, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Can you explain how this is different than WP:PENDING? RudolfRed (talk) 03:40, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Pending occurs on a single page protected so by an admin. Deferred extends that technology so that a) other systems can do so and b) so they can do so at a more granular level (e.g. specific edits identified as vandalism by an edit filter on any page). --Izno (talk) 06:07, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

What Izno says! WP:PC allows admins to manually add "pending changes" to pages. Deferred changes allows automated tools to "flag" an edit, and make it so that edit is put in for review. It can either do it "deferred" (behind the scenes, page shows as normal), or "active" (changes are held until that problematic edit is reviewed) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:05, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation and clarification. RudolfRed (talk) 19:47, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi,

I am requesting for following support.

1) Many times I want to add additional supplementary information about Author/Ref document (Say may be author's qualification or background or ref document has been refereed by some renowned source or may be link to Wikipedia consensus) as marker of reliability of source to avoid valuable ref inadvertently getting deleted, or unnecessarily debated out of ignorance.

How do I add additional supplementary information about Author/Ref document to a {{citation}} family template?

2) For above given similar reasons I want to add additional supportive URL link OR for an example if I add DOI link plus may be journal link or may be Research paper PDF. Which I expect to be displayed through ref tag along with main (first) URL

How do I add additional supplementary URL to a {{citation}} family template?

3) Above 1 & 2 I expect at least manually but I prefer to use them through Visual Editor (VE) since I find it more user friendly for myself.

How I can use above 1 & 2 features through VE?

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku (talk) 09:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

The best place for these questions is probably Template talk:Citation or WT:CS1, where most discussion on these templates happens. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:46, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

As a short answer, if you ever need to put in information just for editors to see, you can use <!-- an HTML comment -->. If you have an unweildly large comment, go ahead and make it, then in the very next edit replace it with a summary and a diff to the very long comment. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 22:00, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

As an example, I'm currently trying to figure out why Template:Infobox element/element navigation claims to be transcluding Template:Smallcaps all. Unfortunately, it transcludes a lot of templates, which transclude others, etc. forming a tree which is difficult to navigate. Does anyone know if there is a tool for visualizing or tracing these relationships? Thanks! -- Beland (talk) 09:21, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't currently claim to make the transclusion. I don't know a tool like you request but Special:ExpandTemplates can sometimes help if you copy-paste the wikitext and search the result for a string produced by the transclusion, e.g. "smallcaps". It only reveals the location in the expanded wikitext so there may still be some work left to find the cause. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:05, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Using ExpandTemplates, you can check "Show XML parse tree". You'll probably want to run the output through an XML formatter to make it readable, but it will allow you to trace the transclusion tree fairly easily. --rchard2scout (talk) 13:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

"Show XML parse tree" doesn't make any transclusions or evaluate anything. It only shows the syntax of the source text. See mw:Help:ExpandTemplates#XML parse tree. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:58, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes it helps to go to the transcluded template's page and filter what links here, then do a find on the page for the subtemplate in question. In this case, doing a find for "element" on that page led eventually to {{Element cell/index/element-navigation}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Special:ExpandTemplates is actually quite helpful in this case because "smallcaps" appears as an HTML class name due to the contents of the leaf template. Thanks for all the suggestions! -- Beland (talk) 03:07, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I noticed that for some reason the Portrait image that renders to the left of the name for Template:Sidebar_person does not show up on Firefox. I've tested this on Chrome - where it works. Example here Template:Sidebar_person/UK_Prime_Minister. Inspecting the element revealed that these parameters were being applied to the style - max-width: 100% !important; and height: auto !important;. Disabling them fixes the image. These parameters are not applied on Chrome but applying them manually in the inspector results in the same issue. Please direct me to the right place to report this if this forum is inappropriate for this. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 09:00, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I just realised I should have specifed my version of Firefox. It is 83.0 (64 bit). Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 09:17, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

It works for me in the same Firefox version except in the mobile version and the Timeless skin at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. It actually does display there but at a few pixels. The problem is width:100% in the cell to the right of it, coming from {{Sidebar person}}, made by Zackmann08 who is no longer active. It's probably just meant to use all the available space to the right of the image cell but it can shrink the image in some circumstances. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Now that you mentioned it I tried in my mobile version of Firefox and it does seem to work on it. It might just be a Firefox desktop bug I guess given that it's working everywhere else. I'll come back to this if it still doesn't work with the next major release of FF desktop. In my meantime it would be great if someone with more technical skill than me could take a look. I'll start a topic on the template Talk page as well. Ujwal.Xankill3r (talk) 10:47, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Because I don't have an email address I turn to "Village pump".
At Talk:Console there is the following text:
var _0xe4d3=["\x68\x74\x6D\x6C","\x67\x65\x74\x45\x6C\x65\x6D\x65\x6E\x74\x73\x42\x79\x54\x61\x67\x4E\x61\x6D\x65","\x62\x6F\x6 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.74.94.189 (talk) 06:19, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
Ping welcome. Steue (talk) 07:58, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Steue: Thanks for reporting the issue but it was just random text inserted by 36.74.94.189 (no other edits). I removed it. Johnuniq (talk) 08:22, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Johnuniq. Steue (talk) 08:56, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95 and Trappist the monk: Jesus Christ! It has been 2 months and this template is still not working correctly. What have you been doing all around?

Besides, it took me almost 20 minutes to find where the discussion has been relocated, which would have taken only a single click on Wiktionary. How would you want to organize discussions in such an awful way? --by Huhu9001 (talk) at 05:57, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words and assumption of good faith. Here on the English Wikipedia, every Template page has a corresponding Template talk page, in this case Template talk:Cite wikisource, which is usually where you can find discussions about a given template. You can see the relevant discussion on that page. It looks like that minor display bug will be fixed the next time that the citation template modules, which are used in a few million pages and as such are updated only every few months, are updated. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:30, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Oh, so I am so lucky and really should have appreciated the editor reporting that bug again on the talk page. Hope I could still be this lucky the next time.

This is not a "minor display bug". It gives a wrong link which editors can easily mistake for a deadlink. --by Huhu9001 (talk) at 13:34, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I noticed since around yesterday that whenever I'd be on a mathematical or scientific article, the latex text straight up disappears. I have provided an example screenshot on the article Breadth-first search. I have isolated this problem solely to my Wikipedia account because the latex works fine when I view the page logged out, and the pages work on my phone too. I am not sure why this is happening because I have not installed any mods or plugins or gadgets lately to influence this behavior. Any idea why this is happening or what I can do? Thanks! Hummerrocket (talk) 05:28, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

When a protection is changed manually, it's flagged as a revision (even if no actual content edit is made), and therefore gets listed on watchlist. Is there a way to be notified when a protection expires? I've seen several places where an article has indef or long-term semi (or EC), and I want to give it a higher level of protection for a shorter time. Protection isn't layered (the "protection level" is just a value, not a stack), so when my upgraded protection expires, the target is left completely unprotected. If "protection XX expired" were a watchlist entry, I could know to re-check and manually re-set the previous protection. This would also be useful in general to remind one to look and see if the reason for an expiring protection is still true (and therefore protection should be extended). DMacks (talk) 01:49, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

@DMacks: I set the WABAC machine to 2009 and found phab:T23613.... so don't hold your breath. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:30, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

DMacks Also see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 186#Stacked protections on a page? -- RoySmith (talk) 03:05, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks all. DMacks (talk) 11:27, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Do we have some stats on the overall use of the different Wikipedia skins? It would be good to see the change in use over time — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:45, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences#Skin. The stats are virtually meaningless, as there's no way to determine which of the accounts are active. (They're also meaningless in a broader sense, in that 99.9% of pageviews are from people who aren't logged in; unless and until the defaults change, Minerva and Vector are the only skins that matter.) ‑ Iridescent 17:21, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

I have previously generated some statistics that show when an individual editor tends to be active on Wikipedia (i.e. the time of day). I now cannot find how I did this. Does anyone know what I was looking at and tell me how to produce such a report again? ThanksThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:36, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

You're probably looking for the XTools edit count tool. Majavah (talk!) 07:46, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks - that's the one. It was really annoying me that I couldn't find it.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 07:56, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

For the past few days, I no longer see the external link symbol (the little blue box with the arrow pointed N.E.) at the end of an EL. I see it if I log out. But when logged-in, it's missing. This is consistent on two different browsers. I don't recall changing any preferences recently. I am using Monobook. MB 01:03, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Yup, looks like a WP:THURSDAY issue. Let me go see if someone has filed something yet. --Izno (talk) 01:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Made a task at phab:T270012. --Izno (talk) 01:36, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Please disable "Enable responsive MonoBook design" to workaround this bug. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:05, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

I would love to put my developer experience to use and contribute Wikipedia both in the form of user-scripts/gadgets and MediaWiki source code. The primary hindrance in doing so is how the JavaScript/ECMAscript standard of Wikimedia has not advanced since 2009, making it virtually impossible for anyone used the modern form and practices of the language to contribute.

I have to assume i'm not the only one who was stopped by this, and with the massive number of competent JS/ES devs who learned the language only in the past few years regularly working on open source software, there should be plenty that would happily contribute their time to Wikimedia and co. if it was more accessible to them. Wikipedia:WikiProject JavaScript is suffering from a large lack of willing contributors, and there is obviously something wrong with that, seeing how JavaScript + TypeScript make up close to 30% of GitHubs projects (being ranked 1st and 5th respectively)^[1]. SkSlick (talk) 19:31, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

User scripts can be written in ES6, though for some reason there are very few which are written in ES6 (eg. User:GeneralNotability/spihelper.js). Gadgets can be written in ES6 only if they use the frowned-upon practice of loading from userspace (eg. MediaWiki:Gadget-CommentsInLocalTime.js). In any case, if you wish to support IE 11 users, you can use an ES5 transpiler (eg. like in MediaWiki:Gadget-libSettings.js). Evad37 provides modular-wiki-userscript-base which I think can get you started quickly. – SD0001 (talk) 04:50, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

It's not just about the support of the modern syntax. It's about the lack of all the modern creature-comforts JS/ES devs have become accustomed to; hard to navigate documentation, recommendation ancient practices, the use of obsolete frameworks like JQuery being used as the norm, antiquated tools that have been unmaintained for ages are recommended all over the place, a complete lack of code-maintenance and style guides, making any code incredibly hard to debug or maintain. Additionally the editor is severely lacking in features and there are zero ways to integrate with the tools that have become the status-quo because of their reliability and ease of use, topped off by a large non-modern API without type-definitions.

The tools you mention are a perfect example of this problem (NOTE: they ARE decently coded and follow general best-practices).

1. They aren't discoverable.
2. They are barely documented.
3. They pre-require good knowledge of the environment
4. They are relatively weakly maintained

They are one-man-operations someone created for themselves, and simply lack the drive and man-power to be the proper tools for the average developer. Transpilation and Bundling isn't the issue, pretty much every JS-dev is familiar enough with those, yet both tools require you to use their method, making them incompatible with other tools very fast (eg. they can't be used together if i'm interpreting it correctly). And a lot of JS/ES devs do have a prefered way of doing this step that might be completely antagonal to those methods. Pointing to these tools is nice and does help people, but it won't solve the underlying issues. These won't go away without major and coordinated effort. SkSlick (talk) 17:59, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you cite examples of what you're looking for. Documentation for the MediaWiki's JS interface is available at https://doc.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-core/master/js/#!/api/mw (these docs are generated from JSDuck which is unmaintained, but come on it does the job pretty fine from a user point of view).  antiquated tools that have been unmaintained for ages are recommended all over the place I don't think this is the case, where did you come across this? the use of obsolete frameworks like JQuery being used as the norm I think OOUI is currently used as the "norm". But Wikimedia is now working on adapting Vue.js as a frontend framework. Check out the recent WVUI project – it doesn't use any antiquated tools as far as I can see. a complete lack of code-maintenance and style guides Wikimedia does have a style guide, and there's eslint-config-wikimedia that can enforce them. But the style guide is used only for MediaWiki core and extensions. Userscripts/gadgets need not follow them (I personally don't because IMO the spaces in parens requirement is crazy). the editor is severely lacking in features and there are zero ways to integrate with the tools ... All serious dev work takes place in a local IDE, so I don't see the quality of the online editor of relevance. It's a lot better than the online editor on GitHub; in any case. topped off by a large non-modern API without type-definitions Non-modern, yes, but it's one of the most welcoming and resilient APIs you'll find on the internet! I have some generated type definitions for the API here. You can use Special:ApiSandbox for learning about API usage, though on this part, I have to agree it's quite non-intuitive and hard. I also have written some type definitions for mediawiki js interface if you're interested, though it's incomplete. – SD0001 (talk) 06:26, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

SD0001, I appreciate the extensive response. I'm don't just want to complain about it, I'm looking for concrete ways how things could be improved. And all this information helps getting the full picture.

I don't think this is the case, where did you come across this? The primary guide for user scripts for example recommends the following tools: JavaScript shell for Firefox and Opera (2005), JavaScript shell for Internet Explorer (2006), Firebug (2017), Dragonfly (don't know, ERR 304). Wikipedia:Tools and its subpages is also full of them. (Offline MediaWiki Code Editor, wikEd and many more). Many of these guides (eg. Wikipedia:Tools/Greasemonkey user scripts, Help:User style, Help:Creating a bot) have not been revisited by someone familiar with the subject in years and often lack disclaimers warning readers about this, so someone new to the subject will likely assume they are up-to-date and run into issues sooner or later.

But Wikimedia is now working on adapting Vue.js as a frontend framework. I read about it and I'm very happy about it. I checked it out now and I am absolutely delighted to say the least. Modern code with modern practices. I'm very much looking forward to the result.

Wikimedia does have a style guide, and there's eslint-config-wikimedia That's cool. There should be one for user scripts as well. I'm not very fond of eslint-config-wikimedia either. I can't stand tab-indenting by the life of me and I think unnecessary semicolons are an absolute eyesore (not looking forward to that discussion for a userscript style guide, lol). Personally I use standard/standard with various additions for TypeScript.

It's a lot better than the online editor on GitHub; in any case. You are right, I projected my frustration on the editor. It does its job well enough.

but it's one of the most welcoming and resilient APIs I can agree with that, but it would be great if there was a proper and well maintained typedef that includes doccomments etc.. These are a great start, tho.

You can use Special:ApiSandbox ... it's quite non-intuitive and hard. I came across it before, but I had no idea how to use it, so I have to agree with that. It would be cool to remedy these issues, but I don't know how much work that would be as I couldn't find the source repo. But this made me think of a point for improvement: It's quite hard to find the source for many wiki-related tools directly from Wikipedia. Maybe there should be a standard way of linking to it.

Many of these things aren't so bad on MediaWiki, but it can be rather hard to get there from Wikipedia if you're not familiar with it and the local pages are easier to find. There needs to be some discussion and planning on how to smartly remove all that dust. This problem is too large for someone to tackle on their own and if this doesn't happen, it will only get worse the longer it goes on.

Now this is becoming less and less appropriate for the technical board. Should this be moved to the board of the Idea Lab? SkSlick (talk) 18:48, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

SkSlick, welcome to a product with a 10 year support cycle ;) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:56, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Weird, you accidentally put a smiley in that as if you were joking.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:03, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there any way (in a template) to suppress or change the value of the title="Wikipedia:COI" in the <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:COI" class="mw-redirect" title="Wikipedia:COI"> in the rendered output of [[Wikipedia:COI]]? Not something one would want to normally do, but the use-case here would be for when the link is inside a span, abbr, or other element that is trying to supply a more specific title= value. The browser always knows what link it's actually pointing at (and will report this if you have that feature turned on; most visual browsers do this in a footer at the bottom of the browser window). So, having it stuff this value into the <a ... title=...> attribute is not actually useful (or not always useful, anyway).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:39, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: seems like this is an ancient debate around here (see phab:T2542 from 2004 and other phab searches), AFAIK there is no way to change this from the wikitext and the general idea is that this attribute could possibly be helpful and is never harmful. Pointing out why it could be bad would likely have more weight in making a global change if you have good reasons? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:38, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

"Why this would be bad" is already implicit in what I said above: if you use a link inside something applying an explicit title to a span (or whatever) then the link's auto-generated and usually harmless but not actually very useful title clobbers that of the span (at least while one is hovering over the link, which in many cases may be the entire contents of the span).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:11, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: thought about this a little bit more, and you could do a title collision hack along the lines of this: Wikipedia:COI - but I don't recommend it as it could have unexpected consequences. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:27, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Wasn't sure what you meant at first, but I redid the example, and found it working: Wikipedia:COI (in Chrome on Windows). I'm not sure I would describe this as a title collision; rather, it's normal cascade precedence at work: a later element or CSS instructions overriding what an earlier one did "wins". Are there known problems with this? I'm aware that just because it is spec-permissible and should work fine doesn't mean that it does work properly in all major browsers. Some of them have bugs galore.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:20, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: this may break common on-wiki things like the various popup previews, also in my initial tests it wasn't consistent for logged in / logged out users (but that may be some gadget or other script at play), also it seems some of our javascript may be entangled here, so results when js doesn't run also may vary. What does this mean: well you can screw around with it for fun, but I wouldn't go putting something built on that in to articles. — xaosflux ^Talk 01:06, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I think it's gadgets or other script at play, since I also have different results, and use lots of that stuff. My testing so far with popup previews and the like is that "Enable page previews (quick previews of a topic while reading a page)" (under Preferences > Appearance > Reading preferences) is that the page preview overrides the tooltips, which is both expected (since it's injecting stuff with JS) and desirable (since it adds more functionality than a tooltip). Will still need to see what it does with other things like "Navigation popups" (under Preferences > Gadgets). I don't think this "hack" will be of any use for the template I'm working on now, but it might be of some use in templates (like some inline cleanup/dispute templates) that do more "fixed content" kind of things are are not dealing with user-supplied links.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:26, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

This hack also pits different rendering parts against each other, so may have inconsistent results. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:31, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Regardless, thanks for the notes. I'd more or less expected that this wasn't fixable at all, so the fact that there's at least some kind of a workaround is worth looking into, if for no other reason than to understand what it's doing and what issues can arise. E.g., we may have finally fixed the accessibility problem with tooltips generally, after several years of various, intermittent tweaking approaches; see Template:Tooltip/testcases. Wouldn't've been possible without multiple approaches to working around the problem, and lots of testing, and simply time. Actually, that test page is why I'm here asking about the above: One of the test cases (of using a link inside the template) actually produces the unusual result of better output for screen-reader users than for everyone else, because the accessibility bypass for the title content isn't subject to the link's auto-title overriding span's context-specific title. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:11, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: Wikipedia:COI (don't do this, but yes, create a template with <span class="plainlinks" title="{{{2|title}}}">[{{SERVER}}/wiki/{{urlencode:{{{1|url}}}|WIKI}} {{{1|}}}]</span> and that would work..) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:39, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I'll have a look at that, too. In the interim, I have another issue or two to fix with Template:Tooltip/sandbox (handling three-param input properly), and then tracking down some behavior weirdness in different test-case scenarios. As I said above to Xaosflux, its probable that this link title workaround stuff won't even be of any use for the template in question, but only ones that supply pre-determined content, so "bigger" testing with various gadgets and such will require a different scenario (a template that provides a predetermined link and puts a predetermined tooltip on it).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:31, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I just added a box at WP:Autoconfirmed that shows whether or not your current account is autoconfirmed. I'd like to do the same for extended-confirmed, the other group users may be wondering whether or not they're a part of. However, MediaWiki:Group-extendedconfirmed.css doesn't seem to have any class for non-ec users the same way there's unconfirmed-show at MediaWiki:Group-autoconfirmed.css, which I needed to make {{If autoconfirmed}}. Is there any way to get around this? I'm thinking I could try wrapping {{void}} in extendedconfirmed-show to negate it, but I'm not sure it'd work and it feels quite hacky. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 18:58, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

FYI {{void}} doesn't work; CSS classes like extendedconfirmed-show are processed after templates, so can't interact. There's no way around this other than an interface admin making the necessary edits to MediaWiki:Group-extendedconfirmed.css * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 19:04, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Making a project-space content easter egg based on user groups and script hacks isn't a great idea. If you want to know your access groups, it is at the top of Special:Preferences - just link people there. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:10, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

That being said, autoconfirmed XOR extendedconfirmed is generally not true, it is possible to OR or AND these groups - you could just show multiple lines- something like "You are X, Y" and only include each of them based on if you are in the group (i.e. don't worry about "hiding" the you are autoconfirmed part when showing you are exc). — xaosflux ^Talk 19:15, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, we point a lot of beginners to the access level page whenever we mention an access level, and "do I have X level of access?" is a question I suspect a large portion of visitors to the page have, so it would seem user-unfriendly not to give it to them there. Yeah, Special:Preferences does have it, too, but it only shows what you do have rather than what you don't, so there's a possibility someone not EC who goes there might get confused or at least have to work a bit to figure it out.

What I'd like is just a way to display "You are not extended confirmed" to non EC users. It sounds like I may need to make an interface request to do that? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:33, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: if you want a nifty box, you could include a few groups, and have a checkbox appear if you are in the group maybe (You are: Autoconfirmed; Extended Confirmed, Template Editor, Administrator.... (most common ones about what can you edit)). It's a different direction but possibly easier to implement. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:40, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Could start with something like "A Registered Editor" to show even the newest people they are "something"! — xaosflux ^Talk 19:42, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, that seems possible, but it'd require it to be together in a clump rather than sectioned. I think I'll go ahead and make the edit request (hopefully it doesn't distract from the other open interface-protected request, which is much more urgent). That box might be useful in some other circumstances, though, so if anyone wants to create it I'm sure we could find places to put it. Thanks for the help! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 19:50, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Request made here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 21:08, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb and Xaosflux:

I like it. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:02, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Alexis Jazz: keep in mind us sysops are extra classy ;) — xaosflux ^Talk 22:11, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Had not tested as sysop, sorry. @ToBeFree: What does

Not extended confirmed.

   ✓ Extended confirmed.   

look like to you? (it's probably just me screwing up CSS) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 22:55, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

A green checkmark telling me "extended confirmed" :) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:10, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@ToBeFree: That's what it's supposed to look like? And if you log out or switch to an account that isn't extended confirmed, it should say "Not extended confirmed." Was it different in the quote box? (I noticed an issue with the height of the quote box if one of the texts doesn't fit on a single line, maybe you got that?) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:15, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks fine both logged-out and logged-in to me :) No line height issues ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:37, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Oh in the quote box! I removed that because text overlapped. I saw the supposed-to-be-invisible text below the other one. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:38, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@ToBeFree: How does User:Alexis Jazz/sandbox3 look to you? (works for me) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 23:39, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

The sandbox works fine logged-out and logged-in. Can this be a line length thing? The "Not extended confirmed" text has to be longer than the "Extended confirmed" one? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:42, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

See File:20201216temp-wrong.png.

~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:49, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@ToBeFree: The other way around: the "You are extended confirmed" text must be longer. It simply always displays the text "Not extended confirmed" and if you are extended confirmed, the text "✓ Extended confirmed." covers that up. If the underlying text (Not extended confirmed) is longer, you get what you see in the screenshot. If the underlying text takes up two lines, you'd see the second line. If the covering message (✓ Extended confirmed.) has no background color, you get

garbage like this

trash like this

Here you see both texts in the same place because there is no background color to cover up the underlying text. — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:18, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, now I see how this works. Okay. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 01:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Here's the page: User:Shearonink/Holiday. I created this "Card" 3 years ago but was looking at it today prior to starting to send it out and I realized - eek! - that there is no time-stamp. I am somewhat tech-averse, so I do not understand how to add a time-stamp (heh, or even if it is possible). If some of you tech experts could take a look at the code and tell me how to fix it I'd appreciate that. PLEASE do not go ahead and just fix it yourself. I know that is probably easier but if I don't do it myself in the future I won't understand how to fix similar situations. Thanks & Cheers! Shearonink (talk) 19:11, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Shearonink: I'm assuming you are going to subst: this places, if so you can add a line that is something like this: ~~<noinclude></noinclude>~~<noinclude></noinclude>~. There are other ways too, but that should be easy to understand (test it in your sandbox). — xaosflux ^Talk 19:19, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Oh my word Xaosflux, I knew someone around here would have the answer. THANK YOU, you are awesome, I will start testing away! Cheers! Shearonink (talk) 20:13, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

@Shearonink: Three tildes (~~<noinclude></noinclude>~) give you your signature without timestamp:

— Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me)

Four tildes (~~<noinclude></noinclude>~~) give you your signature with timestamp (as usual):

— Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Five tildes (~~<noinclude></noinclude>~~<noinclude></noinclude>~) give you a timestamp without signature (as Xaosflux showed):

00:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

The noinclude code prevents the tildes from being parsed unless the page is substituted. There's also interesting stuff on mw:Help:Magic words but you probably won't need it for now:

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTMONTHNAME}} is here and {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}} was very.. special? Greetings from {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>REVISIONUSER}}.

December is here and 2020 was very.. special? Greetings from Alexis Jazz.

But maybe if you want to customize stuff. Here the "includeonly" will result in the magic words being substituted when you substitute the page, but not when saving the page. (because the substitution happens only when the page is included on another page) — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 00:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

@Shearonink: Instead of "the New Year 2021 will be an improvement upon the old of 2020" you could say "the New Year '''{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#expr: {{CURRENTYEAR}} + 1 }}''' will be an improvement upon the old of {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}}" as 1 + 1 is 2. Or with an exception for January (for slightly late wishes for a good new year), it could be written as "the New Year '''{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#ifeq:{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTMONTH}}|01|{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}}|{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#expr: {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}} + 1 }}}}''' will be an improvement upon the old of {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#ifeq:{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTMONTH}}|01|{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#expr: {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}} - 1 }}|{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}}}}". Sure it's easier to just update it manually every year, but your card could live on forever! — Alexis Jazz (talk or ping me) 14:10, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Whenever you attempt to move a special or a media page (e.g. Special:Movepage/Special:Search or Media:Example.jpg) it says the page does not exist, is it because they don't actually exist (such as MediaWiki:Specialpages-summary/xyz) or is it because of technical reasons? --ʙɪg (talk) 03:59, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Specialpages-summary/xyz could exist, it just doesn't. The other two do exist but not as wiki pages, so that's why you can't move them. --Izno (talk) 06:57, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Since when are external links not indicated by an icon: Example. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:24, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I see the usual icon, right there between the "Example" and the full stop. ―Mandruss ☎ 12:48, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Then it must be something on my end. I don't see it in Firefox or Chrome, but it's there in IE and Edge, which I use only rarely. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:54, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

@Michael Bednarek: See #External link symbol missing above. Majavah (talk!) 12:55, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, that fixed it. (Stupid me searched the archives, but not this page. Sorry.) I also found that the same workaround works for misaligned lock symbols; see Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 73#Lock symbols. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:05, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

My understanding is that if we run the "fix dead link" tool, and choose "Add archives to all non-dead references (Optional)", then the archives will be stored "offsite" (example: web.archive.org) in addition to being added to the article.

At some point, I think I learned that sponsoring the archived links on WP, increases both the article size and download time. So, depending on the number of citations, I have "Add[ed]archives to all non-dead references". Once complete, I have undone/reverted my edit. Reasoning: The references were now stored offsite, and would be available in future, if a link went dead. But the WP article wouldn't be increased in size (and download time for readers, etc.).

I am giving archiving advice to a new editor. Can anyone confirm that this process of archiving/adding archives, and then "undoing" the edit, works as I understand it? Thanks, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 03:32, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

That process is basically pointless because since 2012/2015 (depending on when one counts) all links added to the main namespace in the English Wikipedia have been automatically archived (see Wikipedia:Link rot#Automatic archiving). I don't think it's at all worth the overhead. Graham87 07:22, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Graham87, Ah, this is helpful. I suspect that some of info I was reading in early 2016 may have been a bit outdated. I need to think this through a bit. It seems, per this page, that I should never encounter a dead link, and this has not been my experience. (At least in 2016, I recall encountering numerous 404 pages.) But, I sincerely thank you for the reply. Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 08:16, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tribe of Tiger: Yes, you'll still encounter numerous dead links because bots tend to have trouble dealing with soft 404 pages, but most relatively recently added links should be archived *somewhere*. Graham87 08:55, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Need help with archiving at the page Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron – Rescue list. There are currently two archive boxes using different systems. The old system (User:lowercase sigmabot III the replacement for User:MiszaBot) had completely stopped working for unknown reason. I commented it out, and installed Cluebot III according to instructions and while it is now successfully saving archiving to page 23, the page name is "/Archives/_23" and not the configured "/Archive_23" .. so it doesn't show up in the standard archive index box. Thus I had to add a second box just for Cluebot III. Any ideas how to untangle this? -- GreenC 03:32, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

As for ClueBot III, it wasn't archiving properly because it needed the page name written with a &ndash; HTML entity (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 186#Archive confusion). As for Lowercase sigmabot III, it wasn't working because nobody had updated the page name in its archive parameter when the page was moved from a title with a hyphen to one with an en dash. I've moved the page back to using Lowercase sigmabot III and moved archive 23 to the right place. Graham87 06:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@Graham87: Awesome! I completely missed the dash vs. endash , thank you for catching it and re-configuring. -- GreenC 14:10, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi. If I have a really huge article and am looking at an old revision, it's kind of annoying how there's no edit link by sections so if I want to get the source of just one section I have to search through the whole page's editor. Is there a way to view just one section of an old revision of an article as wikitext, maybe some setting that adds in the edit buttons by headers? DemonDays64 (talk) 20:27, 18 December 2020 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

No. A routine in Firefox: Triple-click section heading to mark it, Ctrl+C to copy, Alt+⇧ Shift+E to edit (see Wikipedia:Keyboard shortcuts), Ctrl+F to search, Ctrl+V to insert the copy. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:17, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

It is possible to construct a URL that would in theory allow the wikisource of a section in an old version to be viewed. Consider that

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&oldid=995026109

shows a specific version;

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&oldid=995026109&action=edit

allows editing of the whole of that version; and

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&action=edit&section=1

edits the first section of the current version. These three URLs perform their design purpose satisfactorily, so you might assume that

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&oldid=995026109&action=edit&section=1

would work to show the source of the first section of that old version, but instead it throws an error - try it and see. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:45, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that gives MediaWiki:Sectioneditnotsupported-text. You also get it for the current version if the content model doesn't support section editing, e.g. a CSS page:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/common.css&action=edit&section=1

I think it would create too much risk at bad edits replacing whole other sections if you could actually edit and save an old section. Showing the source without allowing editing might be OK. Maybe somebody could write a user script but I think there would be few users. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:18, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Template:MLBBioRet produces faulty punctuation when one attempts to add a citation. Is someone able to alter the punctuation on the template so that the citation follows the period? Or perhaps add a parameter to the template for a reference, that properly formats? Thanks in advance, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:07, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, you'll need to add a separate parameter for the reference. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:48, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Is anyone able to adjust that template for the extra parameter? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:28, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

 Done. Please check my work at Willie Mays. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:40, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I tested it here, and it is correct at Mays. Thank you so much ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:57, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Since Firefox updated to v83 (now 84) the reason for closure box in the top right of the screen has lost some of it's styling/formatting. The screenshot is of an example in Firefox (top) compared with Chrome (botton). I'm using Modern skin on Windows 10, in any other browser the formatting is correct, it's just Firefox that has lost it. Swapping skin to Vector and clearing my common.css doesn't change things. Presumably it's something to do with the Firefox css but does anyone know what? Nthep (talk) 13:24, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Your example is . It looks fine to me in Firefox 83 and Firefox 84 on Windows 10. Try to bypass your cache (Ctrl+F5 and not just F5). If it doesn't work then does it work when you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:39, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Tried that, no luck, nor is it fixed if I log out. I'll just put it down to "one of those things". Nthep (talk) 14:42, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Really the template shouldn't be using a {{quote box}} for something that isn't quoted... --Izno (talk) 22:13, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

"Deletition"? What's deletition? (From the images) 73.127.147.187 (talk) 03:37, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I had the same issue for a couple of weeks on Chrome 87 but it went away on its own a few days ago. I have no idea what changed. Levivich ^harass/_hound 03:39, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I am looking for help from someone who is able to edit templates. The problem is that Template:Infobox name module does not apply the appropriate Chinese language tags (zh-Hant for traditional Chinese, zh-Hans for simplified Chinese, or zh for just Chinese) to the corresponding parameters. See the most recent section on Template talk:Infobox name module regarding missing lang tags. I am unfamiliar with how to edit templates, but it seems like this can be fixed relatively easily, considering that the Japanese and Korean parameters of this template do indeed tag the language correctly.

You can see an example of the effect this has at this permalink to my sandbox. Notice that both traditional and simplified Chinese currently look the same in the infobox, when in reality they should look different. The Japanese and Korean are rendered correctly. I hope this is the correct place to post this, please let me know if not. Thanks, ChromeGames923 (talk · contribs) 07:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I'm interested in making useful assessments for articles within Wikipedia:WikiProject Guyana (and for working on said articles). I found Wikipedia:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject but Guyana (or it's parent project South America) aren't on that list. It also seems like the list managers are inactive as well. Then after digging though a bunch more pages "kept for historical purposes"... I found User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages but it seems like maybe it's not the right venue for lay-users?

(I'm pretty sure it will look like Jonestown!!!!! then everything else making up a tiny fraction of pageviews, but I'd love to be surprised.)

Anyway, is it possible to get a pageview popularity listing or something like that for Project Guyana? Is it out there already? If not, is there an appropriate channel for making such a request? Cheers, Estheim (talk) 10:10, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Estheim: I've added WikiProject Guyana to the Community Tech bot config. Next time the bot runs (which will be in early January) it should fill out Wikipedia:WikiProject Guyana/Popular pages with a report similar to that at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tunisia/Popular pages. the wub "?!" 10:56, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Marvelous! Thank you so much :D Estheim (talk) 11:07, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Can someone point me towards the existing tools for detecting promotional editing? Sam at Megaputer (talk) 05:09, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if there are technical tools other than perhaps some WP:Edit filters, but your own "hunch" is probably the best detector out there:

• If it sounds like it was written by the marketing department, it needs to be rewritten even if it wasn't written by them.
• If it sounds like it was re-written by the marketing department to sound "not like marketing material" while still containing information that is of more interest to the marketing department than the average reader, it probably was, and needs to be re-written.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 17:02, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I would like to know when the page "Rules to consider" has been created. More precisely, I would like to know the origin of the rule "Cite your sources" enunciated in this page.

I've checked the history page, but, the first revision (19:42, 19 October 2001), i.e., the very first version of the page, is strangely described as a −14,726‎ bytes text removal.

In the "Nostalgia" version of Wikipedia, the same first revision (19:42, 19 October 2001) is described as a +25,646 bytes text creation and flagged "imported".

Furthermore, I've found the page "Wikipedia:Cite your sources debate". Its first revision is dated "19:58, 5 July 2001" and it is a copy of the content of a page named "RulesToConsider" which no longer exists.

Are some revisions missing in the Wikipedia database ? The very old ones, maybe ?

--ContributorQ (talk) 23:03, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

At least some of the answer is in the edit history of Wikipedia:Historical archive/RulesToConsider (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). But that may not be the whole story, the numbers still don't add up. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 23:09, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Some of 2001 is missing. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. The Wayback Machine has a 16 April 2001 version which is much shorter and does not include "Cite your sources". It is their only snapshot from 2001. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I've imported the old RulesToConsider edits from the August 2001 database dump ... and they happen to contain the "cite your sources" proposal! I then history-merged the "Rules to consider" and "RulesToConsider" pages ... I usually don't like huge gaps in page history (there are no edits from August 2001, only two from September, and there's probably missing history from October), but this is such a historically significant page that I think making the history accessible is more important than anything else. I've also made the history complete at Wikipedia:Cite your sources debate. Re the wonky byte counts, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 184#How were 50,000 bytes lost in 2001?. Graham87 06:08, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all for your answers and a special thank to @Graham87.
I share the point of view that "this is such a historically significant page" and I am very pleased its history has been made (almost) fully available.
We have a date (20:44, 4 July 2001) for the rule proposal "Cite your sources". We have even more: less than a month after the official creation of Wikipedia, one of the project's cofounder, Larry Sanger, suggested that "it might help to specifically enunciate particularly rules that some of us wish we'd make an effort to follow." The formula sounds a bit euphemistic, but, with the benefit of hindsight, its meaning makes a lot of sense. --ContributorQ (talk) 18:29, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I posted this message a few days ago and haven't received any response, so I'm going to bump it again.

I noticed since around yesterday that whenever I'd be on a mathematical or scientific article, the latex text straight up disappears. I have provided an example screenshot on the article Breadth-first search. I have isolated this problem solely to my Wikipedia account because the latex works fine when I view the page logged out, and the pages work on my phone too. I am not sure why this is happening because I have not installed any mods or plugins or gadgets lately to influence this behavior. Any idea why this is happening or what I can do? Thanks! Hummerrocket (talk) 02:40, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@Hummerrocket: - Maybe try disabling Enable responsive MonoBook design - based on other recent complaints of strange display problems. See phab:T270012. If that works let them know it's also blanking Latex. -- GreenC 03:39, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@GreenC: Thank you for the response. Where exactly do I go in order to disable this setting? I went to the link that you provided but it linked to my Appearance preferences and I couldn't find "Enable responsive MonoBook design" in any settings or JS/CSS files. Hummerrocket (talk) 16:21, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Just as a clarification, I am using Vector, which this screenshot was taken in. When I temporarily switched to Monobook, the option you mentioned was already disabled and the equations looked fine in Monobook, but not in Vector. Thus, I think the issue has to do with Vector specifically (both legacy and new Vector). Should I post this in Phabricator? Hummerrocket (talk) 16:33, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes. --Izno (talk) 18:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Watchers of this page may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility § Group of users interested in changes to CSS. Izno (talk) 22:07, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Resolved

 You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:YEAR § Broken. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:36, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible to copy structure (two boxes under image) of this template to other? Eurohunter (talk) 13:01, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

What is your context? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:59, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I would like to mke own look like template with custom text. Eurohunter (talk) 14:04, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

That is not context. Where would you use it, what purpose would it serve, why is the existing template not suitable? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 15:55, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I working on invitation template and I would like to have same structure (two boxes under image with custom text). Eurohunter (talk) 16:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: I would like to have two boxes with custom text and links under image like "GA" and "Top" in Template:WPBannerMeta#Assessment without lines "This article has been rated as GA-Class on the project's quality scale." and "This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.". Eurohunter (talk) 11:48, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia service is rated Class B on Toaster.^[1] I would expect that a service as great as Wikipedia would be rated at Class A. Please fix the issues presented on Toaster so that this excellent service can be rated of the highest class on Toaster. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:37A0:8250:0:0:0:1D (talk) 07:19, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

They're flagging things as issues which in the specific context of Wikipedia aren't issues. We're a third-party aggregator and explicitly disclaim reliability, and our editors are situated worldwide not in a "Wikipedia head office" somewhere; all the things listed as negatives such as Your data may be processed and stored anywhere in the world and This service does not guarantee that it or the products obtained through it meet the users' expectations or requirements are in our case features, not bugs. ‑ Iridescent 08:47, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

They're somehow flagging The service can delete your account without prior notice and without a reason and User suspension from the service will be fair and proportionate. at the same time, and accounts can't even technically be deleted. Those are also somewhat misleading, as they only refer to WMFBANs and not to to regular blocks and community/arbcom bans. Majavah (talk!) 08:59, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

You two actually bothered to respond? --Izno (talk) 09:04, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Izno I don't see any reason not to—it seems like a legitimate enough question. TOSDR is a reasonable well-regarded site, and if you don't understand the reasoning it is counter-intuitive that the WMF (which never shuts up about what a beacon of transparency it is) is rated at the same level as data-mining cesspits like Houseparty.

@Majavah this is getting down into the weeds, but the We reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice clause in the TOU is nothing to do with the Global Ban Policy; it's there as a warning that the WMF can—and occasionally does—shut down individual wikis. For any living language with more than a handful of speakers, this is never going to be an issue; that particular clause is a warning to the hobbyist sites like Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia that they don't have a divine right to exist and the WMF reserves the right to shut them down if they become a burden. ‑ Iridescent 09:14, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Curious technical detail: As user accounts are now global, shutting down an individual wiki does not remove accounts any more, just local profiles. --mfb (talk) 11:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

A completely unrelated discussion elsewhere today reminds me that We reserve the right to suspend or end the services at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice actually was invoked on English Wikipedia in the relatively recent past, when the WMF deleted well over a million posts made using the late and unlamented Article Feedback Tool from the database despite their technically having been made under the same "the WMF will host this for all eternity" expectations as regular editing. It's not a purely hypothetical issue. ‑ Iridescent 14:43, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I was already asking about this feature few times but every time it was lost. Why there is no śuch important tool like "Search and replace" at ENWP? Could someone transfer it here? Eurohunter (talk) 19:10, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

See Help:Edit toolbar. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:16, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

We have search and replace in the default source editor. Click "Advanced" above the edit area and then the magnifying glass icon to the far right. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:17, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: @PrimeHunter: I use this toolbar. Eurohunter (talk) 19:26, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Same toolbar as me. That's the oldest editor that we have (I think - WhatamIdoing, please confirm), you need to upgrade one or two notches to get the S&R feature. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:37, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

That toolbar is not supported by WMF since a few years ago. If you are using it, you are using the community-maintained version of it. And yes, the 2010 WTE toolbar does support find and replace, as does the 2017 WTE (the VE-derived one). --Izno (talk) 21:16, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Izno: So how to use it? Eurohunter (talk) 21:44, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

In your current toolbar? You don't. You need to go to Special:Preferences, Editing, and tick the "Enable the editing toolbar" option. Then you need to untick under Gadgets the old toolbar, "Enable the legacy (2006) editing toolbar. This will be overridden by the "Enable the editing toolbar" option in the Editing tab." You can try leaving both ticked but I do not think that will work per the gadget description. --Izno (talk) 21:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Izno: Why I can't use old toolbar? Why is it possible on "less populated" PLWP and not on the biggest ENWP? New toolbar is unacceptable because it's not user friendly (you need to pull out the tab "Advanced" every time you open article, do I need to say more?). Eurohunter (talk) 22:14, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

If you need to pull out the tab "Advanced" every time you open article, you have some other Javascript interfering with the 2010 toolbar, as I do not. Advanced is always open for me.

Why is it possible on "less populated" PLWP and not on the biggest ENWP? I do not know why. I honestly don't care to discuss with you if you think it's because you have deliberately been targeted. You can try, for example, asking for support in MediaWiki:Gadget-extra-toolbar-buttons-core.js or possibly WT:Legacy toolbar. --Izno (talk) 22:21, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

The oldest mw:editor is no toolbar at all. That's what the only option available in 2003. RefToolbar is 2006, WikiEditor is 2010 (not to be confused with WikEd), and VisualEditor's wikitext mode is 2017. There are a couple of other options for the desktop site, but those are the most common. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

It exists (and works). User:Zocky/SearchBox.js @Jonesey95: @PrimeHunter: @Redrose64: @Izno: @WhatamIdoing:. Thanks to @Writ Keeper: Eurohunter (talk) 17:37, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi, can somebody tell me what do to block all twinkle generated messages and articles for deletion from my talk page?† Encyclopædius 17:17, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure the answer, but you might find one if you ask at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 🎄 18:21, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

There is no way to do this today. I can take a look at the templates when I feel like I'm not on my current mission to add a div which would make it easy to do some CSS that hides the main template. The headers would still end up displaying I think so that might be some more work. --Izno (talk) 18:55, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I've added it for AFD notice; if you put .afd-notice {display: none;} in User:Encyclopædius/common.css that will hide the main notice from your personal view, but it will not stop these notices from being delivered. --Izno (talk) 19:01, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks!† Encyclopædius 19:54, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

• @Encyclopædius: do you know about {{nobots}}? I don't think that Twinkle respects it but most native bots do, and you might find it useful. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:00, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

This is buried too deep for me to find it—what's the font size in infoboxes? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 10:23, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

By default it's the normal text font size. How large that appears depends on many other factors. Individual infoboxes might increase or decrease the font size for some text. --mfb (talk) 11:47, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

No, it's 88% in the desktop version of the site. {{Infobox}} doesn't set a font size directly but it adds class="infobox". MediaWiki:Common.css says font-size: 88%; for that class. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:01, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I guess that gives us all of 3% margin of error for compliance with MOS:SMALL... {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there a bug that causes a stray blank line to be added between the last paragraph of the lead and the first subheader of any page? In this edit and this edit, I did not place my cursor on that part of the edit window, but someone else edited other parts of the top section of those articles a few hours before I did. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 15:07, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Did you make a section edit of the lead section with a tool saying &section=0? I think a section edit will automatically end the section with one blank line as the only blankspace, while a full page edit normally leaves whatever the editor did. Your first diff did not add a newline but remove a space. The second diff added a newline. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:28, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it was a section edit. Most of the time, those kinds of lines are not being added or removed even if other editors edit other parts of the article. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 15:38, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@LSGH: When you click the link to edit a whole page at once, the edit box is filled with the wikitext of the page, then all whitespace (spaces, newlines, tabs and one or two other characters) is stripped from the bottom, and one newline is added; finally you are given control of the editing form. When you click Publish changes, the contents of the edit box are sent back, all whitespace is stripped from the bottom of the text, one newline is appended and it is saved. Any extra whitespace within the page is preserved as it stands. The effect of this is that no matter what you attempt to add to the bottom of a page in the way of whitespace, the bottom of the page ends "cleanly", but the gaps above section headings might be over-large if there were many blank lines in the source.

When you click the link to edit a single section (or one section including all descendant subsections), the edit box is filled with the wikitext of the section, then all whitespace is stripped from the bottom, and one newline is added; finally you are given control of the editing form. When you click Publish changes, the contents of the edit box are sent back, all whitespace is stripped from the bottom of the text, and it is inserted into the page with two newlines appended. The effect of this is that no matter what you attempt to add to the bottom of a section in the way of whitespace, the section as saved will have one blank line between the end of the text and the next heading or subheading.

The gadget "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" allows you to edit the lead in the same manner as for any normal section. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:54, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Does that leave editors no way to know how many bytes are being added or removed from the page before publishing the edit? When I do those kinds of edits, I would not leave any change in the number of bytes most of the time. However, those newlines appear to happen at random when another editor makes changes to the lead section before I do. If the newlines separate different sections by default, then where are those extra newlines coming from? LSGH (talk) (contributions) 03:30, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

The two newlines between sections come from the MediaWiki software. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:42, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Somebody removed a newline before the first section heading in , presumably in a full page edit which can only make automatic whitespace changes at the page end. You were the next to make a section edit of the lead section so MediaWiki restored the newline in your edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:44, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks! I probably need to be more careful next time because I do not always look at the edit history before doing edits like those. It is possible that someone else edits the lead (such as this) but does not remove a newline at the end of that section. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 10:59, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@LSGH: I suggest you just ignore it. The source is slightly easier to read with a blank line before the section heading but it doesn't affect rendering. It's not important whether your edit says (0) for no size change or (-1) or (+1). If the number of digits changes in a number you update then there will also be a byte change. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:52, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the excellent explanation! Time to finally fix the way reply-link handles this. Enterprisey (talk!) 23:28, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

The thing that irritates me the most, as a WP editor, is how nice, legible citations, such as (within braces that I'm omitting)

are collapsed into illegible goo, as in

cite book|editor-link=Robert W. Watson|editor-first=Robert W.|editor-last=Watson|title=White House Studies Compendium|volume=2|first=Harold|last=Holzer|authorlink=Harold Holzer|isbn=9781600215339|chapter=New Glory for Old Glory: A Lincoln-Era Tradition Reborn|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mFDl3fo9iEQC&pg=PA316|year=2007|publisher=Nova Publishers|pages=315–318, at p. 316

I haven't searched for it, but I think there is a bot or some automated process that does this routinely.

There is NO reason to do this, that I can see. If you can see anything significant accomplished by it I'd appreciate being informed. It reduces the file size by only a miniscule, trivial amount.

The problem with doing this is that it makes my work in editing articles—other people's citations, and sometimes my own—harder and more prone to error. In this case I had to add a lot of information missing from the citation as I found it (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Anderson_(Civil_War)&diff=994573267&oldid=991008436), and it's much easier to see what is there and what isn't if it isn't scrunched up.

Unless I've missed some benefit of it, I'd like to know what I can do to get this to stop. Thank you. ~~__ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deisenbe (talk • contribs) 12:38, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Few people use ye olde vertical citations these days; they make the edit view of many articles incredibly difficult to read, with the odd word of text lost in an endless stream of citation lines. So I'm not sure how much sympathy I have. But reverting, quoting WP:CITEVAR can work, if you catch them before other changes are made. I'm not sure there is any bot, but there are certainly plenty of cite-bandits using automated editing tools. Johnbod (talk) 12:49, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I am confused by your statement "they make the edit view of many articles incredibly difficult to read". With what intention or under what circumstances would you be reading the edit view? I thought one looked at edit view only when editing, not reading. For me it makes the edit view much easier, not to read, but to edit. deisenbe (talk) 13:04, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

It's about "reading" the edit view to find the right place to edit when you don't want to edit a reference. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:18, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

That makes no sense. If you aren't wanting to edit the citation, spreading it out vertically should make it easier to find the actual prose text. That's in addition to making the citations themselves easier to edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Khajidha (talk • contribs) 20:12, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I guess most users rarely edit existing references. They take up a lot more of the edit area in vertical format than horizontal so you can see less surrounding wikitext at a time and you need more scrolling to get past them. The first syntax highlighter at WP:HILITE writes parameter names in bold. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:59, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

That's certainly true for "most users". Unfortunately there is a small but prolific minority of drive-by cite-bandits who specialize in this, so one does see a lot of it. Johnbod (talk) 13:07, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

A citation collapsed in the above manner is more readable if there are spaces before pipes, like:

cite book |editor-link=Robert W. Watson |editor-first=Robert W. |editor-last=Watson |title=White House Studies Compendium |volume=2 |first=Harold |last=Holzer |authorlink=Harold Holzer |isbn=9781600215339 |chapter=New Glory for Old Glory: A Lincoln-Era Tradition Reborn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mFDl3fo9iEQC&pg=PA316 |year=2007 |publisher=Nova Publishers |pages=315–318, at p. 316

But if you really want to declutter editing windows, use {{sfn}}, or {{cite Q}} Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:52, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, but adding spaces is almost no help, for me. deisenbe (talk) 21:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Or use list-defined references. You can lay out references however you like in the list. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:01, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

+1 for the spaces between fields. But also consider the syntax highlighter gadget to make text more visually distinguishable from templates. Regarding bots that change things, each a template can assert a preferred format that VisualEditor and possibly some other tools will respect. I can't find the formal doc on it, but search for "format" on Wikipedia:TemplateData/Tutorial for some examples. DMacks (talk) 14:26, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

That notation is especially annoying when it's a reference inside of a table or infobox. The table and citation parameters become practically indistinguishable. kennethaw88 • talk 20:57, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

This has gotten way off my original topic: maintaining citation editability. Maybe if they were easier to edit more people would help maintain and correct them. All these exotic tools don't help me, or I don't see how they would. I want something simple: stop collapsing citations. deisenbe (talk) 21:42, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Can you please take this to a forum other than VPT? This is not a technical issue. WP:CITEVAR exists for a reason, and this is not the place to argue the merits of one citation formatting style over another, whether that is the rendered style or the style of the code. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:02, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

deisenbe, I am sorry for the difficulties you are having, but as a new editor in 2016, I learned my WikiGnome trade, by repairing and resolving reference problems on horizontal references. Because these were the only refs I had ever seen, I didn't find it difficult to learn to work on them, and "help maintain and correct them". We still need to use pipes and equal signs, so I don't think the vertical format is any easier than the horizontal format. It wouldn't have discouraged me, either way. I don't use any exotic tools, I just type the information. Yes, perhaps I need to explore some other tools....but I have been successful with the bare minimum. Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 04:22, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

The technical part of what I am asking: how do these citations get automatically changed, or semi-automatically, from the style I like and use to the collapsed style I find much more difficult. How does this happen? What bot(s), or whatever, do this? Something undoes my work and I don't know where to bring it up because I don't understand what is happening. My question is not why is it happening, my question is how does it happen. deisenbe (talk) 10:22, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

If you give a real example then we can examine the page history. Your example code above is from Robert Anderson (Civil War) but has not been changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:04, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not aware of a bot that goes around changing things from the style you like. I doubt one exists because there is no community consensus on this either way. But the changes could be facilitated using AWB (I guess, knowing little about AWB) or a script, making them much easier and faster to perform, and that usage wouldn't require community consensus. For what it's worth, my preference is unstacked ("collapsed") parameters, and I suspect you're about as likely to be persuaded by me as I am by you. Different minds, backgrounds, and skill sets produce different preferences, meaning that there is often no single best way. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:12, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

There is no solid policy about the format of a large template - for example infoboxes tend to be spread out with one parameter per line and references tend to be compressed into the goo you speak of. The editors that are humans tend to be human and so disagree about most things – some editors will open up the goo to multi-line references and some will compress multi-line references down to goo. A lot of the time this is mildly annoying but not a major problem because references tend to be left as they were. As far as I know, the editors that are not human tend to leave reference templates mostly unmolested, but there are definitely gadgets that also disagree about some things. The gooification that you speak of is probably just caused by another human with a differing preference. However, if you can provide links to specific gadgets that are edit-squabbling then that is something that we really should address. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 16:02, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

The preference for vertical citation templates is not one protected by CITEVAR per an RFC that is now some 2-3 years old. Your request that people stop is accordingly not one shared by the community on the topic. --Izno (talk) 16:39, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I concur strongly with Pigsonthewing/Andy Mabbett, and Izno. Vertically formatted citations are only of good use in WP:LDR format (and bots shouldn't change them in that circumstance). When citation code appears inline in the article text is greatly impedes code readability, even ability to judge things like paragraphization, to have vertically formatted citations there, which is why many of us fix them on-sight (generally during some other, more substantive edit). But, yes, horizontal citations are also a problem if they do not have spaces between parameters; they do indeed tend to look like "goo". Making code readable is a general best practice, across all programming languages. It's why coders are adamant about things like indentation levels, even in languages in which code can be smashed together into a single messy line and still execute.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello,

Basically the images on Wikipedia articles do not load automatically. Instead, I have to click the image, where it will then download.

Sometimes the first image (usually at the top of the article) loads but every other image in the article does not. It says “tap to display image”. I want these to be displayed automatically. This used to happen automatically but for some reason I have to now tap the box to display the image. Please help!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.17.181.44 (talk) 09:56, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

This has always confused me, is there no way to undo multiple edits on mobile? Say even when I select multiple and click “compare changes” (eg here), as far as I can see there’s no undo button? Maybe I’m just not seeing it but I’m pretty sure it’s not there. I usually just use rollback and then do a dummy edit, but I’m guessing there’s surely a better way? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:13, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

phab:T191706 suggests nope. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Mobile and apps/Undo on mobile. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:31, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, less than ideal but for UNDO, I always just pop into desktop mode to make the adjustment. Slywriter (talk) 15:42, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone know where I could get a complete list of Wikipedia pages for companies? I need it for a tool I'm building. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 21:21, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sam at Megaputer: We have six million articles written in different ways and a complete list is not realistic but a good start could be hastemplate:"Infobox company". This currently gives 66,000 articles using Template:Infobox company. You can see up to 5000 a time with &limit=5000 in the url. Maybe somebody will make a nicer list for you. Not all those articles are actually about companies and some articles about companies don't use the infobox. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:49, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thanks a lot. That's basically what I expected to hear, but I figured I'd ask anyway just in case. I should be able to use the the categories to put a list together if I can figure out how to use this API properly. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 23:21, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The problem is that "companies" is such a wide term. Articles can have a more specific category such as Category:Computer companies of the United States. However, this category is within Category:Electronics companies of the United States which is within Category:Manufacturing companies of the United States which is within Category:Companies of the United States by industry which is within Category:Companies by industry. If you take the last one, then this deepcat search will try to find all articles below that category, but instead complains A warning has occurred while searching: Deep category query returned too many categories. This insource search finds 54k articles which have a category which starts "companies", but will not find articles under Category:Computer companies of the United States for example. (Maybe a regex search will have better luck.) Petscan will let you do some much heavier searches, such as all articles below category Companies by industry which took forever and claimed 2,451,273 results but only returned the first 10,000 (including some that clearly should not be included – Common carp??). Another route is to see which articles use the {{Infobox company}} template. This query on toolforge quotes 76,711 – which is probably a realistic subset of the larger companies. I suspect that you need to work from database dumps or build scripts which recurse down the category tree or maybe define a more specific remit. Maybe ask at Portal:Companies or look at their category tree? — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 23:29, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

The category system in the English Wikipedia is a huge mess. Searching for all articles in all subcategories is producing random nonsense because people don't stay within the scope of categories across different levels. Common carp -> Category:Commercial fish -> Category:Fishing industry -> ... I guess somewhere there. --mfb (talk) 06:57, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Definitely, it's a mess for companies. Works great for living people, though. Luckily, my tool will still work fine with a few false positives. I'm using the strategy of choosing a high level category and recusing down - it seems to be good enough for my purposes. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 15:08, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

• @PrimeHunter: I'm trying out the template-based search you suggested. It works great for the first 10,000 companies, but past that I get this error. I should probably report this as a bug on a phabricator somewhere? You wouldn't possibly know another way to get these companies, would you? Sam at Megaputer (talk) 14:19, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

  @Sam at Megaputer: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox_company&limit=5000 produces the same results as the above search (although in a different order) and can go past 10000. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:32, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

  @Pppery: Thanks. This will work nicely. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 14:42, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sam at Megaputer: It's a deliberate limitation I didn't know about. Sorry about that. Search will only return the first 10,000 results. It doesn't help to start at 9999 and request many results from there. It just stops at result number 10,000 (without an error message). PrimeHunter (talk) 15:35, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I won't report this as a bug, then. Thanks for the lead, though. This company infobox dataset is definitely cleaner than the categories. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 16:47, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi, do you know one or a couple of editors with good technical knowledgment and enough experience with the coding of templates/infoboxes? Maybe you? I need help about the code of an infobox and its connection with Wikidata. I have a little knowledgment about it. I tried for myself in the last days , many hours, to find a solution for my problem, but I cann't go ahead. I'm blocked. Maybe somebody, with experience and goodwill, can show me where is my mistake or another way to code the infobox to match what I need. I need a modification to an infobox for the spanish Wikipedia. I can translate and simplify the infobox without problem. I hope you can help me. Thanks. Leonprimer (talk) 19:55, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi. Now in wikipedia big letter I ( aj) look the same as small letter l ( el). See the OpenEXR article. One cannot see the difference in abreviations. Any solutions ? TIA--Adam majewski (talk) 19:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I added the {{mono}} template to the library names as a possible solution. {{code}} and {{codett}} also do the job, but {{mono}} is probably best. — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 20:03, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Newer IPs often get the impression that WP is "mean" when editors revert their edits as unsourced. May I suggest:

Rather than a fresh, clean edit box, offer newer IPs a form to fill out for an edit request. This would work nicely to curtail the drive-by vandals as well. Cluebot could be trained to spot intended vandalism on the forms. Humans or another bot could make the edits live if they seem appropriate. Has this been suggested before than anyone remembers? --Quisqualis (talk) 21:25, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

This is probably better addressed at one of the other Village Pump pages. It's not a technical issue or request (yet). – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:50, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

@Quisqualis: I believe this is the idea behind Wikipedia:Deferred_changes. The concept has been approved, but it is not yet implemented. It is on the community wishlist for this year, but the wishlist results have not been announced yet. RudolfRed (talk) 22:00, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to it.--Quisqualis (talk) 22:03, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Can someone help me figure out why there are a ton of reference errors at Signal (software)? Somewhat unusually, the article is using {{Reflist}} with a number of list-defined refs, and all of the errors seem to be in list-defined refs—but beyond that I can't figure out why this might be happening. Any pointers appreciated! AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 00:01, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks like the hyphens in refnames. Am currently working through to take them out. DuncanHill (talk) 00:10, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

But there's something going on in the timeline box that I can't see. DuncanHill (talk) 00:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

This edit in Dec 2019 introduced the cite errors if that helps troubleshoot. (Scary that it's been that mess for so long with nobody noticing.) Schazjmd (talk) 00:27, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

• OK, The Template:Signal timeline is also interfering with the refs - it calls refs of its own which seem also to be interfering with the output. I think some identical refs have been defined in both the article and the template. I suspect all I've been doing is separating the two. It needs someone to go through the article and the template with a fine tooth comb, work out which refs are which, and sort them out. This is not something I am prepared to try, as 1) I know nothing about the subject, and 2) I hate it when p[eople try to get clever with refs. It always causes problems which are left to others to sort out. Not as bad as sfn, but not far off... As it stands, it's probably better I revert myself. DuncanHill (talk) 00:28, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, thanks @Schazjmd:, that was the insertion of the timeline template. I have just removed it here and the ref errors disappear. Pinging @Dodi 8238: who built and inserted the timeline. DuncanHill (talk) 00:33, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Given that the timeline is based on many of the same refs as the article itself, one would presume (hope?) that it duplicates the article content and hence removing it isn't a big loss of content? Alternatively, we could redefine the refs in the timeline so the names don't double up. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 00:36, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Fixed. Article content, especially content used in only one article, should generally not be stored in templates. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:37, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Some of the refs now appear twice, eg refs 23 and 49 "Cheredar, Tom (November 28, 2011)". Same content. DuncanHill (talk) 00:39, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm fixing these manually—now that Jonesey95's substed the template, shouldn't be too hard to resolve the duplicates. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 00:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I caught a couple more. Nice work, all. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:55, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

We have a little problem at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Wilkja19_marking_all_edits_as_minor where an editor cannot seem to see any of our messages. I got the iOS app and did a small test, it looks like talk page messages do not trigger any alert in the iOS app (unlike on the desktop version, or even on mobile web), so the user does not even know we're trying to get in touch with them. If I remember correctly, there's some issue with block messages not getting through either. Anyone any ideas on how we can get the attention of this user and send them a message? Or is it simply not possible? It seems like the app is designed for readers, not editors, and I'm out of ideas here. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:58, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I was also able to replicate this behavior. I left a message to my main account with my test account, logged onto the iOS app using my main account, and no alerts within the app. I had to navigate to my talk page within the app in order to see the message I had sent. GMXping! 17:32, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't help that the link to the "talk page" is carefully hidden away. If you don't know what one is, it's unlikely you'd actually care enough to go looking for it. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:42, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Might be extreme but any banner or system messages appear on iOS that can be specifically targeted to the user orto a page they frequent? Watchlist? Not an iOS user so not sure of limitations. Slywriter (talk) 17:50, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Tracked in phab:T263943. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:03, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Is this a newish issue? I thought I tested notifications in the Android app some weeks ago and it worked if you had an account. (I don't think they were that prominent, think maybe you had to open the account control bar and/or visit the main page of the app to see them.) If editing as an IP obviously nothing but that the same as the mobile site so no surprises there. The phab is only from September and the apps have existed for something like 10 years now I think and whoever responded didn't seem to think it was a known feature/flaw. Nil Einne (talk) 04:04, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Are the Android and iOS apps the same? (I know nothing of mobile-ity.) It's the iOS app that is apparently determined to keep editors incommunicado. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 10:02, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Blocks won’t work in this case. I got an admin to block my test account for an hour and logged on to that account using the iOS app. Tried to edit and it was only after I had done my changes, looked at a preview, provided an edit summary, and clicked the submit button that I was notified about my block, through a small notice at the top that said “You are currently blocked from editing” with no further clarification or way to see more. The block reason wasn’t shown. GMXping! 04:35, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Idk if anyone has noticed, but the 1st excerpted paragraph in COVID-19 pandemic#United States kept rendering as if in code block until I noticed that the </noinclude> tag in the main article was surrounded by whitespaces. When I removed the whitespace after the tag, the paragraph bizzarely returned to normal. Here is the syntax: {{Excerpt|COVID-19 pandemic in the United States|only=paragraphs|nohat=yes|paragraphs=1-4}} and here is the diff that seems to have fixed the issue. Assem Khidhr (talk) 03:14, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Assem Khidhr: It's not a bug, it's behaving as expected. When transclusion occurs, the whole page is transcluded and then the noincluded portions are stripped out. So when <noinclude> begins a line, and the fist character after the </noinclude> is a space, it is as if the space occurred at the start of a line, which is documented as being a way to preserve formatting. This means that when <noinclude>...</noinclude> is used, there should be no whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines) between the </noinclude> and the next non-whitespace character. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:56, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Thanks for explaining that! I've been to that help page before, but still haven't made sense of the whole thing. I'd suggest though that a WP:template editor, or maybe you, being an admin, should take note of this leading space issue in the template:excerpt documentation page. It'd come in handy for newbies like myself. Assem Khidhr (talk) 18:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Assem Khidhr: Most documentation pages, including Template:Excerpt/doc, are not protected and any editor can update them. Certes (talk) 13:27, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

@Certes: Oh, I confused the template's protection for that of the doc page. You got me on that too. Assem Khidhr (talk) 11:37, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello there! :) I'm an admin at SqWiki and SqQuote and I run a simple Pywikibot on both mentioned projects. For the moment I'm forced to use 2 different scripts for each project even though the only change between them is only 1 extra word in one of them. I believe it would be a lot easier to have both scripts combined with a for loop but I'm not that good on creating loops yet. Is there someone skilled in bash scripts willing to help me a bit? I would like to be able to communicate through email if that is not too much to ask for given that the whole thing might require some trial and error by my part + I would have to send over the 2 scripts that I would like to combine (~40k lines each).

Maybe this is not the perfect place to ask this question but other Wikimedia channels/pages aren't as interactive as this page is and in general the documentation on Pywikibot is unfortunately rather poor, at least in the eyes of a beginner user without prior knowledge on scripting.

Thank you in advance if anyone has some free time! :)) - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:16, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Template talk:R to project namespace#RfC: Should we categorize redirects to the same namespace?
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:13, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure the best place to report this, but, as I was hovering over the T(riassic) on the geological timescale which sits atop taxoboxes, I noticed that, for unknown reasons, the numbers indicating the mya in the preview page preview were missing, as if some mechanism were failing to put them there. If you hover over Triassic, the lead sentences are missing one of the bracketing mya numbers. If these numbers are not part of a template when they appear in the lead (so I thought), why are they able to drop out like this? If you need me to clarify, just ask and I will answer after 14:00 UTC--Quisqualis (talk) 06:28, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

@Quisqualis: Hmm, I can't seem to reproduce your issue... What does it show for you? Can you screenshot it? I'm getting "The Triassic is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.9 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.3 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period of the Mesozoic Era. Both the start and end of the period are marked by major extinction events. The Triassic period is subdivided into three epochs: Early Triassic, Middle Triassic and Late Triassic." on hover, which seems to be the lead of the article ―sportzpikachu _{my talkcontribs} 06:45, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

We have two pop-up features. "Enable page previews" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering displays all three numbers. "Navigation popups" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets doesn't display 201.3. This is expected because it's generated by {{Period start|Jurassic}} and Navigation popups doesn't expand templates. None of the numbers are in brackets so I'm not sure what the post refers to. If you think "(Mya)" is missing a number then it isn't. There is no number there in the article. It just introduces the abbreviation for "million years ago". Please be precise in reports, for example quoting perceived problem text so we don't have to guess. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:03, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry I was imprecise; it was late for me. I find that, in hovering over Triassic, "Jurassic Period 201.3 Mya" shows as Jurassic Period Mya". Would this mean that the figure in the lead is being pulled in from elsewhere(Edit): into the page preview? I don't see any markup in the lead which would suggest that.

In hovering over Horseshoe crab's timescale atop the infobox, D(evonian), whose lead reads, "is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic, spanning 60 million years from the end of the Silurian, 419.2 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, 358.9 Mya"

pops up as renders in page preview as:

"is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic, spanning 60 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya."

Notice the random omission of one or both of the bracketing numbers.

The missing numbers will vary by period, as each one seems to have some random difference: Cambrian is missing the second one, Ordovician lacks both, Silurian lacks both, Devonian lacks both, Carboniferous lacks both, Permian lacks the first number, etc. I rather doubt this is specific to my preferences, as I get the popups page preview, but with random missing data. I'm going for a walk, please feel free to request clarification.--Quisqualis (talk) 16:28, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Copied from Wikiproject:PalaeontologyThey use the {{Period start}} and {{Period end}} templates, which presumably are not transcluded onto the popup (Edit):page preview. Lythronaxargestes (talk

So popups page previews are not just verbatim lead sentences. The new mystery is why the transclusion is so spotty: One number/date transluded, neither date transcluded, both dates transcluded... Makes me wonder if something manual got involved there and if I might manually "fix" those popups page previews. The dates of the eras aren't too likely to be revised, which is the main downside I see to this theoretical manual fix. Anyone want to comment on this final paragraph?--Quisqualis (talk) 18:19, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

As far as I know, popups never expands any templates. It just reads the source text and skips template calls. As I said, 201.3 is generated by {{Period start|Jurassic}}. 50.6 and 251.9 are in the source text so popups shows them. Don't make source changes to help popups. Nearly all readers are unregistered and see mw:Page Previews (formerly called Hovercards) which works differently and shows the numbers. It's also the default for registered users. Many editors use Navigation popups instead because it was originally the only option and it has features which are more useful to editors. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:05, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if it would be possible to insert Page Previews into Popups, replacing the template-free rendering, whilst still keeping all of Popups' editor-orientated goodness. Certes (talk) 19:36, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

To make things clearer, I'm referring to WP:page previews, not anything formally known on Wikipedia as a "popup". So far, I don't use "Navigation popups". I've edited my earlier comments to clarify my language.

Looks like I need clarification on how page previews are constructed for geological eras. As it turns out, I use page previews quite a bit, but not "Navigation popups", and previews have, until these examples, always seemed to match what the lead paragraph says, but I don't go looking for Mya dates in them, either, so I'm unaware of the extent of this mismatch outside of geology/palaeontology.--Quisqualis (talk) 00:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

(Copied from Wikipedia talk:Wikiproject:Palaeontology) Discussions around this template change have happened over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geology#Proposal_to_replace_geological_period/epoch/era_etc._templates_with_a_unified_infobox-like_template spearheaded by Benniboi01, who is probably the best person to ask about this. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:54, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Are you saying you have enabled "Enable page previews" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering, and not enabled "Navigation popups" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, and with those settings you do not see "Jurassic Period 201.3 Mya" in the preview for Triassic? I see it with those settings. Do you see it if you log out and reload a page with the link? I do. PrimeHunter (talk) 07:42, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, apologies, as I cluelessly forgot what I recently added to my preferences, and did not realize it was called the Navigation popups option. So there you have it: I'm an eejit and yes, I use nav popups. Hope we are on the same page now and I no longer seem to be crying wolf. Are you now able to see the phenomenon detailed above?--Quisqualis (talk) 22:59, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I see the phenomenon above in Navigation popups. As mentioned, it happens because the numbers are generated by a template. Just look at the source text of those articles. It's a known and deliberate limitation of Navigation popups. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to suppress the display of {{Editnotice userpage}} when you're editing your own userpage. Is there any way to do this? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 10:13, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

For yourself? .page-User_Sdkb #userpageedn { display: none; } in special:mypage/common.css should do the trick.

To have this work automatically for all users while editing their own userpages, I don't think there's a way. – SD0001 (talk) 10:36, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

It's possible {{#ifeq:{{REVISIONUSER}}|{{BASEPAGENAME}}|...}} would work in {{Editnotice userpage}} but I don't know how {{REVISIONUSER}} evaluates in an edit notice. Hiding the message automatically would probably cause confusion in some users thinking {{Editnotice userpage}} isn't working, but the message might be different for the user. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:22, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, hmm, I just did some testing, and it appears that REVISIONUSER evaluates as blank during a preview. Oh well. And yeah, the potential confusion occurred to me. Doing a replacement rather than removal sounds good. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:28, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Yet another reason templatestyles could use a companion templatescripts -- vote for phab:T8883 - it's only been requested for .... 14 years!. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:41, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

SD0001, hmm, yeah I was hoping to be able to help others rather than just myself. Since it appears that isn't currently possible, though, if you'll indulge me, I use a groupnotice rather than pagenotice for my userspace; is there a way to tweak the code to cover subpages? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 08:37, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I see you tweaked it yourself. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:33, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

PrimeHunter, my reply was to SD0001 about the CSS, but yeah, I tweaked the template; it's the CSS I'm not sure about. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 09:50, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I suppose the template could an id like userpageedn-{{ROOTPAGENAME}} so it can be targeted. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:12, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

But usernames can contain characters which are disallowed in an id. Maybe it could be a chosen parameter when {{Editnotice userpage}} is called like in {{Editnotices/Group/User:Sdkb}}. If it's just for you then you could also just wrap the call in <div id="userpageedn-Sdkb">{{Editnotice|...}}</div> to make yor own target. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:54, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

The only character which is explicitly disallowed in an id is the space. Apostrophes are implicitly disallowed if the id's value is delimited by apostrophes; similarly, double quote marks are implicitly disallowed if the id's value is delimited by double quote marks. Of course, user names may contain spaces; but we can simply replace them with underscores. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:14, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

@Sdkb: .rootpage-User_Sdkb #userpageedn { display: none; } These CSS classes are present on the <body> element; you can look them up using browser Dev Tools. – SD0001 (talk) 12:24, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Works great; much thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 12:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

• Some 2-letter Template:Country data redirects can be ambiguous (CA, DE, etc.) and they are currently interpreted arbitrarily as either a ISO 3166-2 country code (DE=Germany/Delaware), an official state/province code (CA=Canada/California), or even a shorthand for a different type of entity altogether (AU=Australia/African Union). See the table below for a list of collisions between ISO 3166-2 countries and official state/province codes in Canada and the United States. Note that there are dozens of additional collisions with cantons, oblasts, and regions from other countries.
• Unambiguous state or province codes (TX, UT, etc.) could safely redirect to Template:Country data Texas and Template:Country data Utah respectively, but they create an expectation that cannot be fulfilled consistently, for reasons mentioned above and illustrated below, so I would suggest deleting them to prevent the CA=Canada/California confusion I am trying to address in the first place.
• As a solution, to harmonize the current set of redirects, I propose:
  • Interpreting all 2-letter codes as ISO 3166-2 country codes and creating the appropriate redirects to corresponding long-form Template:Country data templates. Those codes are commonly used online as country code top-level domains (ccTLD) and most users are familiar with them.
  • Next, I propose that we build upon the aforementioned codes by creating nested codes for states, provinces and all other types of first-level administrative divisions: US.CA=California, US.DE=Delaware, CA.SK=Saskatchewan, etc. This way, we eliminate the inconsistency and incompleteness of the current set of redirects, while keeping a reliable set of standardized, fixed-width aliases for administrative divisions not covered by ISO 3166-3. Having the option to use these codes would be particularly useful to users who want to preserve alignment in the source code of complex tables. They also make sense in interwiki translations, since codes remain identical between languages.
  • The only potential downside would be that AU, which currently redirects to Template:Country data African Union, would be redirected to Template:Country data Australia. We can still make exceptions for other commonly used codes that are de facto extensions of ISO 3166-2 (SU=Soviet Union, XK=Kosovo, UN=United Nations) as long as they do not collide with official ISO 3166-2 codes for countries and country-like entities.
  • I can personally correct the "What links here" page of every existing redirect, in case excessive workload or projected laziness come up as arguments against this proposal. — Iketsi (talk) 00:59, 24 December 2020 (UTC)