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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for five days.

Strange short description - how to fix it?

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I started typing "Space-Men" in the search bar and it suggested the Space-Men article with the strange short description of 1960 Italy?'"`UNIQ--ref-00000004-QINU`"'? film. It shows up in the page information page that way too, but not in the article's source/wikitext, so I'm not sure how to fix it. Any ideas? 28bytes (talk) 17:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've fixed it? DonIago (talk) 17:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
it does, but it doesn't explain how it got there. Nthep (talk) 17:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like a bug, something to do with strip markers. Nthep (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{Infobox_film}} builds a shortdescription from the country. The country ends with a reference. A reference gets replaced by a strip marker, for technical reasons. But a short description doesn't have wikitext support, so the stripmarker is not automatically replaced/removed. The template that adds the automatic short description should be updated to strip the strip markers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:27, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@TheDJ: is that something you could adjust? Template in question would be Template:Infobox film/short description. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 20:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Doniago it's almost never a good idea to "fix" something like you as you didn't actually fix the issue and it's probably on other articles. Instead you just have posted it at Template talk:Infobox film/short description so it can be fixed at the source. Gonnym (talk) 20:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While my effort to fix it evidently didn't address the underlying issue, if you're going to slap my hand you could at least acknowledge that I made a good-faith effort to fix the most immediate problem that was presented in the OP, and that I made it clear in my own message that I wasn't sure that I'd really fixed it at all. I'm not sure what you're talking about with the second part of what you've said, unless you meant to say that I could have posted it there. Except that I couldn't have posted it there because I didn't know that the underlying issue was with the template, nor did the OP indicate that the issue lay with the template. DonIago (talk) 20:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure what this was supposed to accomplish. lets be glad some people try to make things better before complaining about their work. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After thinking more on it, I agree. Fixing the broken case as a temporary measure seems fine, not different from CSS fixes people make. I do think VPT should try to find the root cause of problems, but I don't think DonIago's change should have been reverted while the problem is not fixed.
Fixing it like that would be bad if it was done in mass as that would create future work, but it wasn't. – 2804:F1...00:86B7 (::/32) (talk) 00:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm unclear if the strip markers not being detected is a larger issue, or something that needs to be coded into Template:Infobox film/short description. Nthep and DJ's comments made it seem like an easy fix, so I restored Space-Men to using the auto-generated SD so it will be as it was prior to the issue and utilize that auto SD. But if it is not an easy fix, then yes, we can implement the workaround that Doniago did. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:10, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is fairly common where the infobox generates a short description from values found in the infobox. Often a country is expected, but the country name turns out to be a list of countries. Often (like here) a field is expected to be a simple piece of text, but has a reference appended or includes an extra formatting template. In this case, the reference should be moved into the article text – the infobox should be only a summary of details that are present in full in the article. Otherwise, just add a manual SD like DonIago did. The sandbox is well out of date, so I assume that nobody has signed up to fix the template? If not, can we please just fix the Space-Men article? It hurts — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems easy enough to fix, just wrap the parameter in {{KillMarkers}}. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. I would have first tried {{Strip tags}}. Is that too aggressive? However, us mortals make such changes. We need somebody with superpowers to fix the infobox template for us. So, for now, I just fix individual articles as I find them — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 21:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
{{KillMarkers}} added. Should solve the Space-Men issue. Please note here or on the talk of the template in question if more issues arise because of this change. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 22:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Favre1fan93 I just came here after running into the same issue at Faya Dayi, which uses a {{Plainlist}} for the countries and shows up as "2021 ?'"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000002-QINU`"'? film". I'm not sure if there's a tag that's not being caught by {{KillMarkers}} or if it's just stale data from before the fix to {{Infobox film/short description}}. hinnk (talk) 11:05, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was stale data; you can fix it yourself by clicking Edit and then Publish. This is called a null edit. It's quite useful for situations like this one. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:13, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! Glad the fix is working, I'll try that if I run into any other cases. hinnk (talk) 20:14, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

New gadget for doing user entered calculations

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We at Wiki Project Med are working to build mediawiki based calculators. One can be seen here on MDWiki mdwiki:Body_mass_index.

Within medicine there are hundreds of such calculators.[1]

Wondering about getting this functional here as a trial? More development is going to be required before this is extensively used of course.

We would need an interface admin to copy this over for it to work. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:33, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any calculator on mdwiki:Body_mass_index? – SD0001 (talk) 14:36, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you see it on mdwiki:Template:Calculator#Example ? Bawolff (talk) 15:10, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On that remote wiki I see it labeled as "BMI calculator". — xaosflux Talk 15:17, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ah never mind, for some reason I had JS disabled on the site. – SD0001 (talk) 15:58, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Baring any actual objections to testing I'm not seeing any showstoppers to forking over as an opt-in/?withgadget test. — xaosflux Talk 17:12, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Xaosflux. Have built another example here mdwiki:CHA2DS2–VASc score. Once we have a testable version on EN WP will be easier to discuss with others who may be interested. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like specifying formulas inline could be susceptible to subtle vandalism which would be undesirable. I'm also seeing mentions of eval, can you comment on how this calculations are being done ? (I'll note evaling user-generated content on Wikimedia sites should probably be a no-go from a security POV). Sohom (talk) 16:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Everything on Wikipedia is susceptible to vandalism; it doesn't mean we stop mentioning people's birth dates and other details which can be subtly fabricated. The calculators could be made templates which can be protected if necessary. Evalling is fine if inputs are sanitised. – SD0001 (talk) 17:10, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SD0001 Wrt to the first point, my thought process was that manipulating birthdays would be a lesser issue than manipulating a BMI calculator that could be potentially be used by people to self-diagnose metabolism disorders. Regarding the rest, on looking further at the code, I agree that security shouldn't be a issue for it's current version, however, it would be nice to document the method the script uses anyway (as a comment) to make sure future editors of the script are aware of this consideration. Sohom (talk) 19:33, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The tl;dr is that the formulas are parsed using a simple Recursive descent parser into an AST type structure. The AST is evaluated by walking through the tree. In the tree there are OP nodes that represent an operation from a fixed set of valid operations implemented in javascript. A dependency graph structure is also created in order to refresh any widgets that depend on a value that was changed with loop detection. Bawolff (talk) 19:41, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I added a code comment to the script. Bawolff (talk) 19:53, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Sohom Datta this would serve the user some javascript, execution is client-side via browser. The script code itself could only be modified by interface admins. The current script would always be viewable by anyone, and is currently available to see at this link. — xaosflux Talk 19:30, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The script does not use eval() as a security precaution. It is designed with security in mind. Bawolff (talk) 19:31, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See my comment just above regarding this, I agree that is probably safe, but it would make sense to document the security considerations in the code for future interface admins/script editors. Sohom (talk) 19:36, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have made some enhancements to User:SDZeroBot/Gadget sync so that it also supports wikis with a non-local interwiki mapping (like mdwiki). Could be used for this. – SD0001 (talk) 08:24, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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Figured this would be the place to see if anyone knows what's going on. Historically, Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion has been a rather expensive page, processing-wise, But what is currently going on has not happened at any point recently. The bottom-most sections are appearing as links instead of sections. This was not the case a few weeks ago. Does anyone know what's going on? Steel1943 (talk) 22:29, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:PEIS. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:13, 4 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's been categorized as >2,000,000 PEIS since 01:00, 2 September 2024 [2] and as >500 expensive parser calls since 02:28, 2 September 2024 [3]. Anything happen just over 3 days ago? SilverLocust 💬 02:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Though the reason why the expensive parser function limit was hit is simple enough. There are >500 redirects currently nominated, and therefore >500 instances of
* {{no redirect|...}} → [[...]]
And {{no redirect}} uses an expensive parser function. SilverLocust 💬 04:41, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This happened to us a few years ago at TFD when we embarked on a project to delete a few thousand unused and redundant templates. We had to slow down our nominations and list some of them on subpages. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:02, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Listing redirects at RfD should have a simpler template which just generates the link without checking anything. Johnuniq (talk) 06:03, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The inexpensive alternatives are (1) a non-redirecting link that doesn't turn red after the RfD is closed as "delete" (or it's otherwise deleted), or (2) a normal wikilink that doesn't prevent redirection once the RfD is closed as "keep" (or the RfD banner is removed). SilverLocust 💬 07:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option (3) would be to just have both links, i.e. "Terrorblade (no redirect)". It's a low-tech solution but it may be good enough? Matma Rex talk 13:26, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One could hide the second link if the first doesn't have the mw-redirect class in TemplateStyles. Nardog (talk) 13:28, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unless {{No redirect}} gets updated in a way that prevents expensive parser calls, I think either Option 2 or weak Option 3 is the winner there. The redirection should be prevented when the discussion is in progress due to the substitution of {{Redirect for discussion}} on the nominated redirect(s), and the option also allows the link to be red on the RfD if the redirect ends up being deleted. I can see a reason to have both links though, so my "weak option 3", but I don't see that option incredibly user-friendly as option 2. Steel1943 (talk) 19:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, this discussion may need to be moved to Template talk:Rfd2 at some point if this discussion gets large. Steel1943 (talk) 19:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Adding extra language

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How do you add extra language links to an article these days? The link now says "No languages yet." (untrue) and gives options to "Translate this page" (not what I want) and "Open language settings" (not what I want). I used to just give an option to add another link. I can do this on the other languages but not on the English Wikipedia. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 09:57, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which article? I can see "Add languages" then "Edit interlanguage links" which goes to wikidata where can enter names of articles in other languages. If the article isn't linked to Wikidata yet can do it manually or wait for it to be linked. Indagate (talk) 10:15, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article I was working on is Catharina Weiss. There are companion articles it:Catharina Weiss and de:Catharina Weiß. And there is no "Edit interlanguage links". I tried going to Wikidata [4] and adding the English, German and Italian links there but I should never have to go there. It should work from the English Wikipedia. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:38, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Article only created yesterday and it can take time for Wikidata to be updated, just need to give it time or do it manually. Indagate (talk) 11:42, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have never added languages in Vector 2022 so I don't know how it's supposed to work but I cannot find a way to do it if there are no languages or Wikidata item. I picked Mayank Vahia at Special:NewPages. The top right says "Add languages" but it only gives a search box which does nothing no matter what I try, and the options "Translate this page" and "Open language settings". They don't appear to have a way to add a language. Are you saying it's meant to not work for new pages? It would be awful design to give users an "Add languages" link which cannot add languages. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is an awful design. It doesn't offer an option if there is no Wikidata item or it cannot find it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 12:07, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I tried going to Wikidata ... but I should never have to go there. When you use the "Edit links" feature, you are always taken to Wikidata: that is the way that interlanguage links are always added, ever since Wikidata was launched in early 2013. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:39, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I meant instead of having to log on to Wikidata on a another screen rather than being taken there. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:03, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Although your English Wikipedia account was created in June 2005, almost three years before WP:SUL came in, nowadays you should be automatically logged in on all other WMF wikis, including Wikidata. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:26, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That stopped working a while ago. What I meant though, was that I opened a new tab, put in the URL of Wikidata, and logged in there to look at what was going on. I don't normally touch Wikidata because I lack expertise. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:07, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at other new articles, they have the same poor drop down box, but with a third option "Edit interlanguage links". Unfortunately, this takes you to Wikidata, which we don't want. In my case, it could not find the Wikidata item (although it existed), so (incorrectly) did not offer the option at all. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 11:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The functionality appears to still work in V2010, if you want to go back. This seems to be the topic of Phab:T329570. CMD (talk) 12:05, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The link is somewhat hidden, but you can find "Add interlanguage links" (or "Edit interlanguage links") in the sidebar, under "Tools". Matma Rex talk 13:29, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mouseovers in navigation templates

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I have recently noticed that, in navigation templates (both navboxes and sidebars), on an article, that article's entry appears clickable. The entry is correctly bold black (ie not a blue link) but when hovered over it displays as a clickable black link, ie, the I-cursor becomes a pointer, though no action occurs.

For example, on Sockeye salmon, see the horizontal Salmon nav box at bottom. The entry for Sockeye salmon is correctly appearing black but seems clickable. Similarly, on Battle of Elands River (1900), see the Transvaal Front vertical side campaign box. The article's entry rightly appears black but seems clickable.

Am I misremembering that only an I-cursor would appear when hovering until very recently? JennyOz (talk) 11:59, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It only happens in Vector 2022. I don't know whether it always happened in that skin. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:23, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It can be avoided with a.mw-selflink.selflink {cursor:text;} in your CSS. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dark mode when logged out of Wikipedia

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When logged out, in dark mode, at {{Soulfly}}, the actual link for Soulfly is an extremely dark grey that is difficult to see on a black background. It was not this way before. Does anyone know how to fix this? --Jax 0677 (talk) 15:47, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See the notes and linked pages from when you recently asked about this: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_214#Dark_Mode_Text. — xaosflux Talk 15:56, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I assume that we will have to wait our turn.
The issue is fixed when I am actually LOGGED IN, but not fixed when I am logged OUT. --Jax 0677 (talk) 16:11, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I made this edit yesterday to improve display of self links in navboxes. I will try to fix this fully today since this specific navbox keeps coming up. Izno (talk) 16:10, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This should be fixed for this template. Izno (talk) 17:37, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

74,841 + 168 = 75,008 ?

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I have a script that runs whenever I start up or shut down my laptop. I created the script quite a while back to experiment with the Wikipedia API, and have generally ignored it since.

The script records in a log file, my Wikipedia edit count and the number of edits so far today. It also checks the running total — does the edit count at the end of yesterday + the edits today = the edit count for the end of today?

When the total fails to match, it indicates that some edits have been "lost" because a page that I edited today was deleted during the day. Fair enough, if I am motivated, I can look up the page for which the edits were lost — even if I now cannot see my own edit summaries.

Today, however, the script alerted me to a mismatch in the other direction.

  • At the end of 3 September, my edit count was 74,841
  • During 4 September I made 168 edits
  • My edit count at the end of 4 September was reported as 75,008

Now, call me picky, but I think the total should be 75,009. Replag is zero, and edits today are being correctly counted (although the grand total is still out by one).

While inexact edit counts is not a cosmic catastrophe, I am offended when maths seems to break.

So, please, can anybody think of a reason for my overall edit count to be reduced? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 20:20, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Increasing the edit count is a separate step after saving the edit, and occasionally it can fail. I had a look for related issues in Phabricator, and apparently there's an issue known as T369461 that occurs about 30 times per day, preventing some edits from being counted. Maybe one of your edits was among the unlucky ones.
There are also some actions that create edits, but don't increase an edit count. Moving a page with a redirect creates two revisions (one on each title), but only counts as one edit. Protecting a page creates a revision, but doesn't count as an edit. It doesn't seem like you moved any pages yesterday though: Special:Log/move/GhostInTheMachine (but you did today, so you might see a new discrepancy).
Also, revisions imported from another wiki will show up in your contributions, but won't be counted. Did you know that on German Wikipedia, you have 10 edits, but your edit count is 1? They usually import the history of pages when translating them. That's not what happened here, given Special:Log/import, just mentioning it as a curiosity.
Matma Rex talk 23:24, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the info. So it is possible that anybody's overall edit count could be short by a small number of edits. I suspect that I could conjure a query to derive a "better" version of my count from the revision table (and the archive table?). Maybe a project for a rainy day ...
I am surprised by even a single counted edit on the German WP. My German was schoolboy level about 50 years ago and I would never dream of editing there — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 11:16, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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Using Firefox and Dark Reader with Light Mode on, the icons are the same hue as the background and are not visible.

Fix by using Wikipedia's new Dark Mode? Not so fast. The background is too dark and the text is too bright. My eyes hurt when looking at it, and they don't hurt when using Dark Reader. This issue has already been raised by multiple users,[5] and will no doubt be solved in a timely fashion. But until then it would be nice to hit the undo button on whatever happened this week to the icons.

Here is some color data:

Wikipedia dark mode - harsh contrast

icons 234 236 240 Luminosity: 93%

back 16 20 24 Luminosity: 8%


Dark reader - easy on the eyes

text 232 230 227 Luminosity: 90%

back 24 26 27 Luminosity: 10%

This broke only a few days ago. Before, the icons were mostly correct except for the drop-down arrows. Wizmut (talk) 02:56, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly phab:T374180 which is now fixed. 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 00:31, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Still broken. Is there a better place to report this issue? Wizmut (talk) 00:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Technical Powers to "Block"

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As my account has now been "blocked" - I began to ponder, peacefully - if Wikipedia has a forum of experts who deliberate as a technical team to "block or not" or is it an individual who decides and activates a "block" on a fellow wikipedian? I will patiently await a response or redirect to an article addressing my concerns. ZAWADI NPC (talk) 07:57, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:BLOCK for more information about the blocking process. 331dot (talk) 08:26, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your account is not blocked, ZAWADI NPC (as evidenced by your ability to post here). Why do you think it is? It has never been blocked. Bishonen | tålk 08:31, 6 September 2024 (UTC).[reply]
Their user page was deleted, maybe they think that is a block? 331dot (talk) 08:34, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You were advertising on your page. Advertising is not allowed on Wikipedia, not even on your page. You don't own that page – it is only there to show people what kind of Wikipedia editor you are, not anything about your business. You may say something about hobbies or interests that you don't get money from, for example if you take great photographs and put them on Wikipedia (for free of course), then you can say so. TooManyFingers (talk) 19:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Advanced Mode issues

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I have been having this issue for a while now and would like some help solving it. I use Advanced Mode as a mobile user. Occasionally, going to some pages in the Wikipedia or User namespaces will show me the non-Advanced Mode UI. Going to another page typically fixes this, and going into Settings shows that Advanced Mode is still turned on. This seems to happen most often when clicking a link from one Wikipedia namespace page to another page in that namespace, but will sometimes also happen in other circumstances. There is no visible pattern to when it happens. Does anyone know why this happens or how it can be fixed? Thanks, QuicoleJR (talk) 14:42, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which mobile client type (Apple, Android) and Version are you using? — xaosflux Talk 14:46, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Using the mobile browser version on an iPhone. I'm not sure what you mean by version. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:51, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@QuicoleJR thank you, was clarifying if you were using the browser or the Wikipedia App. For your browser, assuming you are using Safari? Are you using the current version of Safari? — xaosflux Talk 14:55, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, no, I do not use Safari. I use the Google app (not Google Chrome, Google itself). I am using the current version of Google AFAICT. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:01, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Map labels unreadable in dark mode

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Given the number of transclusions on Template:Infobox settlement, it looks like the problem reported at Template talk:Infobox settlement#Location labels unreadable in dark mode is affecting over half a million articles for anyone reading in dark mode. Does anyone feel competent enough to poke around the CSS? -- Beland (talk) 06:44, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

templatedata not showing up

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i have added templatedata to Template:Infobox card game. why isn't it showing up when editing, say, whist? ltbdl☃ (talk) 08:58, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's weird. Izno (talk) 16:23, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me. I null-edited the Infobox template. Editing the /doc template should, in a perfect world, immediately provide a null edit to the single page that transcludes it, but it rarely does so. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was able to reproduce earlier in Firefox up to date, but no longer. Maybe indeed it was a question of needing a null edit. Izno (talk) 22:39, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No search box for default skin

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The search box at the top of the main page en.wikipedia.org is absent on the default skin, at least on certain browsers. There is an empty area where it would belong, but there's nothing visible or clickable there. This happens at least on some versions of Chrome. The default skin on mobile is still working fine. On desktop, switching skins fixes the problem. Could this be dark mode related? TooManyFingers (talk) 16:39, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found my problem.
1. Clicking the magnifying glass icon is now required, to use the search box.
2. My magnifying glass is not visible in dark mode. But it's there and I can click on it. TooManyFingers (talk) 17:19, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clicking the icon should be required only at smaller resolutions. But it should still be visible, so something there is weird. Izno (talk) 18:39, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another user who's not on dark mode says the magnifying glass is invisible or barely visible for them too. So it's not just dark mode. TooManyFingers (talk) 19:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Several similar complaints at WP:Help desk recently. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:30, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An example: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 213#Search box. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:36, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Current date templates break after entering source editor

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The default template for dating tags Template:Currentyear and Template:Currentmonth turn into a nowiki format after entering and exiting source. Roasted (talk) 00:52, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't they supposed to do that? They mean "today as I am writing", not "today as someone is reading 30 years later" ... TooManyFingers (talk) 06:19, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Roastedbeanz1: Your post could refer to different situations. Describe what you did from the start, what you expected and what happened instead. Save and link an edit where it happened. If you tried to add templates using source code like {{...}}} in VisualEditor then it's not supposed to work. VisualEditor has its own way of adding templates. See Help:VisualEditor#Editing templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:20, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[edit]
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T374311

I noticed that my userpage was in Category:Pages with image sizes containing extra px. As it turned out, this was because I had specified |widths=80px. Removing the px solved it. This appears to be a WP:PXPX issue. Checking a random sample of a dozen pages of the currently 8k+ in the category, I found that, in all cases, the member pages had the exact same issue with |widths= and/or |heights= specifications. Paradoctor (talk) 10:25, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is phab:T374311. I think it has always been suggested to include px in gallery sizes but now it adds the new tracking category. I think the gallery tag or tracking code should be modifed to allow one px in gallery wikitext without triggering the category, rather than mass-removing old px from all wikis to avoid the category. The suggestion to include px was removed from mw:Gallery examples yesterday and today.[6] PrimeHunter (talk) 12:49, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This category appears to be broken at this time (false positives on properly configured gallery tags, per long-standing documentation at mediawiki.org), and possibly not needed at all, since Linter started detecting pxpx errors in 2023. I have commented at two related Phab tasks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:48, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Gallery within mediawiki core itself does add an "px", so there definatly is an "pxpx" when the user gives one too. See for example https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/core/+/4d588557172511e7931bcdb63a87e9a6281c8cb3/includes/gallery/TraditionalImageGallery.php#65. That hardcoded px in code should go away, this is usually a bad practice anyway. It could also open the possibility of other units in galleries, but given that this has been hardcoded for years, it is most likely not tested at all. Snævar (talk) 14:13, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Auto-expand "Learn more about this page" on navigation to anchor

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This is with reference to the trouble a user reported at Talk:Turkey#Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 12 August 2024 and similar reports I've seen elsewhere. In mobile view, the tags at the top of a talk page are hidden under an expandable link reading "Learn more about this page". These tags may include, among other things, a FAQ tag. When, in a discussion on the page, we want to route an inquiring editor to the FAQ (such as to Talk:Turkey#FAQ), we can't do so for a mobile user because the link doesn't work and the user, even if they scroll to the top (which is now the second thing they've tried in their attempt to see the referenced material), don't see the FAQ and don't see the third thing, clicking "Learn more about this page" that they'd have to do to get there, or perhaps at that point they've already given up.

Is it possible through some feat of CSS and/or Javascript wizardry to cause the top material to expand automatically upon navigation to an anchor that's within it? Largoplazo (talk) 17:31, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why isn't this valid CSS?

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The problem I'm having is actually on wikiconference.org, not here, but I'm asking this here because this is where all the really smart people hang out :-)

I'm trying to generate some custom CSS for https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Schedule which will let me highlight the talks I want to go to. this works, but only highlights the talk title. this one highlights every table cell (as expected). this one does exactly what I want (i.e. highlights the table cell containing the desired title), but when I go to save it, I get an error message "The document contains errors. Are you sure you want to save?" and "Error: Expected RPAREN at line 1, col 9". Ignoring the error message and clicking "OK" seems to work fine.

Is this really invalid CSS, or is the editor just giving me a bogus warning? RoySmith (talk) 14:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The editor is older than the CSS you're employing. Izno (talk) 15:54, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. As far as I can tell, :has() was introduced in 2018, but I guess that's not a long time by wiki standards. RoySmith (talk) 16:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
:has() was first-implemented in 2022 by Safari, then Chromium, then late 2023 by Firefox (implementing it was non-trivial for performance reasons), and I think went through a few name changes between 2018 and 2022. I am not surprised that the editor doesn't know it. Izno (talk) 16:41, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@RoySmith: The W3C doc that you link is a Working Draft, which is a long way from being a Recommendation. The :has() pseudo-class is not part of the Selectors Level 3 spec, which is a W3C Recommendation. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:00, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. RoySmith (talk) 19:43, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Special:Preferences sticky table header hides first data row

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Originally reported in Phabricator but closed as "invalid" because "this is a local gadget". https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T374327

Basically, enabling "Make headers of tables display as long as the table is in view" in Special:Preferences Gadgets results in the first table data row in templated tables being hidden by the table header rows shifted down. See Phabricator ticket for example and screenshots. ~Anachronist (talk) 14:19, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, it displays properly in Chrome if my window is about half the width of the screen, or if I turn on Developer Tools so that the display area is about half the width of the screen. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:28, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your Phabricator example is Template:Series overview/doc. That template has code which works poorly with the gadget. See MediaWiki talk:Gadget-StickyTableHeaders.css#Not working at The Economist Democracy Index#List by region. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:03, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had noticed it in other places, but I got bothered enough yesterday to report it after my most recent occurrence, which happened to be the series overview template. It also happens to every table in Historical rankings of presidents of the United States, for example. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:21, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-37

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Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Feature news

  • Starting this week, the standard syntax highlighter will receive new colors that make them compatible in dark mode. This is the first of many changes to come as part of a major upgrade to syntax highlighting. You can learn more about what's to come on the help page. [7][8]
  • Editors of wikis using Wikidata will now be notified of only relevant Wikidata changes in their watchlist. This is because the Lua functions entity:getSitelink() and mw.wikibase.getSitelink(qid) will have their logic unified for tracking different aspects of sitelinks to reduce junk notifications from inconsistent sitelinks tracking. [9]

Project updates

  • Users of all Wikis will have access to Wikimedia sites as read-only for a few minutes on September 25, starting at 15:00 UTC. This is a planned datacenter switchover for maintenance purposes. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [10]
  • Contributors of 11 Wikipedias, including English will have a new MOS namespace added to their Wikipedias. This improvement ensures that links beginning with MOS: (usually shortcuts to the Manual of Style) are not broken by Mooré Wikipedia (language code mos). [11]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 18:48, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Enhanced editnotice loader

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I worked on a module that would serve as an enhanced editnotice loader for Wikipedia. See testwiki:Module:Editnotice_load and Module:Editnotice load (which is an exact copy). Features include category editnotices, better group notices, and editnotices by page ID (which would reduce the need to move pages around).

I want to get further feedback on this loader before it inevitably gets implemented. Please check out the testwiki. It should be backwards compatible with the way we do things, but I would like checks for this first.

If this is to be implemented, there will need to be a couple of changes made, including to:

This would make the editnotice loader much more robust.

Immediately, in preparation for this, I would consider adding the following category editnotices templates:

{{BLP editintro}}

{{Disambig editintro}}

Anything else? Awesome Aasim 19:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some documentation on how it works from a user's perspective would be helpful, in order to understand the context and how it would be used in practice, including how security restrictions are enforced. On a side note, I'm not sure that its deployment is "inevitable". isaacl (talk) 22:03, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have some testcases on testwiki. For best results, view when logged out and inspect the HTML when logged in.
testwiki:Taylor Swift should be a good example of me getting category editnotices working. testwiki:Protected title and testwiki:Protected title2 show the protection editnotice on both the create screen and on the "does not exist" screen when a title is protected from creation for other reasons.
testwiki:Special:EditPage/A should show the page notice from testwiki:Template:Editnotices/PageID/54370 (which is for A). You can also see I renamed previous "page notice"s to "title notice"s because the way page notices are bound to currently are actually to titles, not pages. The new "page notice" will remain bound to a specific page because it uses PageID. There will be no need to update the title notices for pages that exist. On the other hand, for pages that don't exist, the title notice will need to be kept up to date. Awesome Aasim 04:01, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't tell from the article page how to use the feature: where the edit notice lives, how will access be limited, and so forth. Thus it's hard to evaluate the feature without knowing the maintenance cost. isaacl (talk) 09:58, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The editnotices live in the same pseudo-space: Template:Editnotices/. See testwiki:Module:Editnotice load/config.
I also moved the editnotice links to a collapsible box because the number of creatable editnotices has gotten relatively high after adding category notices. Awesome Aasim 13:16, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest to phase the rollout into stages, and creating a test plan to ensure nothing regressed. Editing this many interface pages and fully protected templates at once sounds like too much work for an admin to volunteer to. For instance, the specific category editnotices you mention can be left for later as we already have a decent system to handle those categories.
Immediately, in preparation for this, I would consider adding the following category editnotices templates this cannot be done immediately as they also need to be removed from Module:Mainspace editnotice, else they would show up twice when the rest of the changes are deployed. – SD0001 (talk) 08:01, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Font size change in Vector 2010

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367643

Can anyone have a look at phab:T367643, please? I submitted this task almost four months ago. Thanks, ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 22:02, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are running into Apple's browser's inflation algorithm which is adjusting your font size to what it thinks is the preferred minimum font size because they consider the current font-size too small for the current page and your preferences. It's best to set your preferred font size locally on your device so it doesn't change again.
You can alter this by changing your font size on your device or if you have an account applying text-size-adjust in your user CSS.
html {
  --webkit-text-size-adjust: none !important;
  text-size-adjust: none !important;
}
🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 00:42, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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I noticed some recent gallery's in articles that have this heading: <gallery mode=packed heights=250px>. The result is such a gallery having very big images, not the specified 250px but 469px high. I found the 469px by making a screenshot of the page (using Edge as browser, with zoom 100%), followed by cropping is to contain one image only. For an example see Wat Ket Karam. FredTC (talk) 11:14, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Missing in" added to language selector with delay, disrupting the UI

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T344028

Hi,

Whenever I click on the language selector, it shows not only languages in which the article is available, but also suggestions of new languages to translate it in. (Which are never useful to me, but that is beside the point.)

The problem is that this suggestion appears with a delay of a second or so. See screencast:

Typically, I move my mouse cursor to the language name that I want to select, then just before I have the time to click, this suggestion appears and moves the target, so I end up clicking on the wrong languages.

Firefox 129.0 on Fedora 40. EDIT: Also reproduced with Google Chrome. Jean Abou Samra (talk) 13:02, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This appears to be an issue with the mw:Content translation beta feature, we can not fix this directly here on the English Wikipedia. You could bring this up at the feature talk here: mw:Talk:Content translation and/or open a bug on that feature. If you open a bug, please let us know your bug id so if others come upon this discussion they can follow up on it. — xaosflux Talk 13:26, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done, thanks. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T374449 Jean Abou Samra (talk) 13:49, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Jean Abou Samra: If you never use the Content Translation tool then you can disable it at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. If you still want the tool enabled but never want the "Missing in [languages]" message then you can add this to your CSS:
.cx-uls-relevant-languages-banner {display:none !important;}
PrimeHunter (talk) 15:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How to mark Minor Edit on Source Editor of Mobile website

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T123694

I want to mark some of my edit as Minor Edit, but unable to do so with source editor. only Visual Editor provide interface to do that but i mostly work with source editor. how to mark any edit as minor edit on source editor of mobile website.

  • Browser: Google Chrome 128.0.6613.127

-- kemel49(connect)(contri) 15:19, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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