Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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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). Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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Should hospital articles contain lists of notable people who died there? 2015 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections. Voting will close on 6 December. Whether bidirectional linking of navboxes with linked articles should be enforced Proposal for a bot to remove Persondata from 1.2 million articles Security review Note: inactive discussions, closed or not, should be archived.
archive talk edit history watch

2 articles with the same name ?

I've just come across List of deceased hip hop artists and List оf dесеаsеd hiр hор аrtists - They have the same title yet the content's somewhat different (The talkpages for both are completely different) so are the names somehow different as I can't spot any differences between the 2... Thanks, –Davey2010^Talk 04:31, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

The second version has many Cyrillic letters instead of Latin letters. You can for example copy-paste the name to the "Characters" field at http://r12a.github.io/apps/conversion. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:52, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I marked the second one for speedy deletion using a rationale that seemed reasonable to me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:03, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

PrimeHunter - Bloody hell how on earth did you know that!?, I spent about 5 minutes clicking between the tabs like an idiot trying to figure what on earth I was missing! ,

Jonesey95 - Ah thanks I was gonna tag it after but wanted to find out the issue first,

Well least it's not a bug! :), Thanks for both of your helps, –Davey2010^Talk 05:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

If you look at the source of this discussion, you may see a difference in how the characters render. Some fonts will show them as the same, and some will show them as different. Mine uses a monospace font of some sort, which shows the Cyrillic letters as smaller and "thinner", as if they are underfed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:17, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes the other one has all letters & stuff - I had never even gave it a thought about the Latin stuff, I'm still using the prev 'pedia font so that could be why there wasn't a noticable difference, Ah well thanks for your help :), –Davey2010^Talk 06:05, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

There were also pages in the main namespace that had the same title as a non-main namespace page due to T87645. All such pages were already deleted by Topbanana. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:02, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Not the same issue at all. T87645 concerned pages in mainspace which should have been in another namespace, but where the namespace value had been set to zero and instead the namespace name formed part of the page name. This thread concerns pagenames that are in the correct namespace, whose page names are composed of characters which resemble each other but are different. In the redlink above, the page name is "List оf dесеаsеd hiр hор аrtists"; and the characters that I've underlined are the Cyrillic letters а (U+0430), е (U+0435), о (U+043E), р (U+0440), с (U+0441). --Redrose64 (talk) 12:49, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Peer review bot down - please help!

Hi technically aware Wikipedia village pump (Technical) denizens, I'm one of the regular peer review mop (non administrator) handlers. We have a crisis brewing... the bot that closes old reviews (PeerReviewBot) has stopped working, last edit June 19. This is a very time-consuming and labourious task to be done manually that was previously easily automated. The bot is owned by CBM who is mostly retired.

Is it possible to either get the bot started again, or create a similar bot that does the same thing? Yours very gratefully, --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:09, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

It might be worth asking at WP:BOTREQ. I notice that the bot's userpage says the code is available on Toolserver SVN, which no longer exists - I wonder if it was backed up somewhere. — This, that and the other (talk) 23:11, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I am retired from running bots. The bot's source code is available on wikimedia tool labs from anyone who has access to the VeblenBot project, i.e. Ruhrfisch and possibly me. Unfortunately, although I have made several public requests for someone to take over the bot, nobody stepped up to take over. If anyone is interested, I can see if I can still log in to email them the bot code. It is not a difficult project to code from scratch, in any case. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:22, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Fhocutt (WMF): I know you got Citation bot up and running--is there scope for you to poke at this bot also? --Izno (talk) 05:47, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

If there's no one to take over CBM's code, I'll have a go at this. I don't use Perl, so I won't re-use that code, but it's a fairly simple set of tasks. Relentlessly (talk) 17:20, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks very much Relentlessly, this is much appreciated by me and the many other users who use peer review. --Tom (LT) (talk) 06:12, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Notification look change

I'm not sure if this is good or other, at this point. But mentioning it. I have Modern skin. That you-can't-miss-it red notifications now just very subtly changes from a white 0 to white numbers when there are notifications. It's so subtle you don't notice it unless you are looking for it. Maybe that's not all bad. It might have something to do with the latest Tech News mention, "Echo notification icons in MonoBook will look more like other icons in the theme." — Maile (talk) 23:52, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

It needs to be a lot brighter. I'm sure there's an WP:ACCESS issue having it so pale. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 13:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I also use Modern skin. I actually acquired five new notifications yesteday at different times without noticing any of them. To me this is bad. I consider my notifications a vital part of my day, since some require response or action, or retaliation. (sigh...this constant tinkering..). Fylbecatulous talk 16:56, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

See WT:Echo#Notification icon colours. The techniques there are only tested in MonoBook, but may work in Modern. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:11, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Yep, that works. Thanks. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 20:51, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you all. Yes this works for me with the Modern skin. Excellent. ツ Fylbecatulous talk 12:39, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The Modern skin is only supported by volunteers. But since there are no volunteers that actually maintain it, in reality, especially when it comes to integrating with other extensions, it's simply not supported. I therefor wouldn't advise anyone to use it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:19, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Widescreen, default text size, picture madness

I think we can all agree that the wild west days of Wikipedia happened from 2001 to 2006. That's when they shot out the skeletal which became the core then we starting asking questions about quality and format and exactly what Wikipedia should be. Well, most of that was before 16:9 widescreen became the standard. I'm guessing Wikipedia renders at a specified pixel size per text that works well with an old 4:3 VGA monitor (50< pixels per inch (PPI) ), but this is way too small for your standard 16:9 1080p widescreen monitor, and I'm sure is even worse on smaller WQHD (~100ppi) and 4K monitors (28" = 150ppi). Before anyone says that the fault is on monitors have such high resolutions without being scalably larger screen sizes, understand that the pixel density is much too low on primitive tech, not too high on new tech (In fact even 300+ppi "Retina displays" do not even meet visual limits, a field that is plagued by non-science marketing misconceptions and doesn't seem to understand the distinction between being able to "count pixels" and be able to perceive a difference). I have had my browser set for Wikipedia to display at 175% for over a year and do not even think about it anymore. It just looks right. I picked it because at smaller sizes there seem to be scaling issues and any larger pictures look bad and it would be too much anyway. Sometimes, when there are lots of pictures in articles especially when they are pushing sections down, I reduce to 100% just to check it out, and it's often awful. Not only do the pictures push way beyond their sections, but the text is not comfortable to read.

Here is a screenshot at 100% and 175%, notice how the pictures are in the section they should be in, in fact that left picture that looked all by itself in the 100% view majically popped down to the section it was supposed to be in, and that leads to the collapsed garage photo actually being in the collapsed section

480px for closest scaling, but best to view full size

At the very least I am requesting an ability to be able to change your own default text size in your Preferences, though this only benefits users that know about it, much less the general public. Thank you. B137 (talk) 07:11, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@B137: While waiting for an official fix, you can workaround it by adding some custom styling to your common.css:

#content {
    max-width: 800px;
    font-size: larger;
}

This will limit the width to 800px and make the text slightly larger. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 08:47, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Zhaofeng Li: Thank you. Wow that's even more obscure than going to Preferences. It helps but is a little clunky, I made it a little wider than that but is there any other keyword than "larger" for the text, perhaps something where you specify the px for vertical text resolution, or maybe just another word? larger1, larger2, largest..etc? B137 (talk) 09:02, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@B137: For font-size you can specify px directly, or use small, medium, large, x-large, xx-large, etc. See MDN for details. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 09:08, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Or, even better, use percentages, say, 125% or 140%. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:15, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. That once again addresses the issue somewhat for me, but not for the general viewer. B137 (talk) 09:25, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

The 'general viewer' has no account and therefor has no preferences. And the idea of a cookie-based fontsize widget has been explored but not found feasable. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 11:58, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

You say that like they don't matter. And this issue is not something I'm making up. It's already a talking point for HD and ultra HD monitors, and many sites and operating systems are responding. Also, what I meant by "more obscure than preferences" was that even the average wiki user wouldn't be able to utilize that unless it was so pressing that they researched it. You can lead a horse to water and it might not drink, but it's more likely than if you left it altogether. B137 (talk) 12:06, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Actual hardware viewing dimensions for the "general", anonymous or logged-in User: do not seem to be polled or tracked in an formal manner so setting the display/viewport [skin] "defaults" also do not seem to be based in any rational or statistical based formulations either (more like subjective 'beliefs' instead).

In other terms: If all you ever work on is a 17 inch laptop display panel; you're positive your optimal "display" settings are the norm. But if all you ever work on is a 26 inch desktop monitor; you're positive your optimal "display" setting are the norm. And if all you ever work on is done via a Miracast to your 55 inch smart TV; you're positive your "display" setting are the norm too. To round out the illustration, the "higher-ups" setting the current defaults in question seem to fall mainly into one of the three groups rather than be spread across all three groups; thus the "slanted" or "jaded" take frequently voiced regarding this issue.

Lacking the hard data needed to quell such bias, things are not likely to change I'm afraid but good luck if you make the effort. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Actually, the ideal solution would be to adopt responsive web design strategies, with the layout adapting to different screen sizes/resolutions automatically. Zhaofeng Li [talk ♦ contribs] 08:14, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Agreed (though that developmental front is also currently "stalled"). Can't do much about that while the 'content area' is constantly encroached upon by the typical site-logo and side-bar designs. And I don't know why the Winter prototype approach was dropped either - it seemed to be the logical next step after the Vector "refresh". I so hope they didn't drop it just because of a few .css "mistakes" :( ---- — Preceding unsigned comment added by George Orwell III (talk • contribs) 10:31, 22 November 2015

Making a site responsive, especially user authored and edited content with 15 years of history to it, is not simple. Many of these problems are on the radar of multiple teams inside the WMF and of individual volunteer developers. We talk about it all the time. But they are difficult problems to solve correctly. Especially the infrastructure challenge for responsive images is rather daunting, as is the fact that our content allows free usage of CSS to every single editor.

And Winter is not totally scrapped. Winter was a prototype, an experiment and many of its ideas and strategies are used in current development. More of it will trickle down eventually. More of the mobile Minerva skin will merge into Vector and core, more of OOjs UI will become visible in the general interface. And one day, all will be the same, yet totally different... Do keep asking for those improvements however. It's important to make your voice heard. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:11, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes I use old wiki please don't ever make the new mobile style mandatory

I was slightly facetious when I said the css change solved it "good enough for me at least." When I had it set to just "large", the alignment wasn't bad enough to worry about, but that is still much smaller than when I zoom to 175%, and without scrunching the width (which means I am not getting full use of my screen) the images still push down too much. So I changed it to "x-large" and now the alignment is pretty significant: B137 (talk) 03:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

image tidy-up

I got into a pickle with File:Men of Men - bookcover.jpg, can someone remove the last two updates ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 17:03, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Which is the correct version, GrahamHardy?Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:06, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

the 2nd one up, 3rd one down, can the last two updates just be removed ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 17:09, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I've requested the removal. I assume that the current image is the correct one.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:54, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Done. Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Unexpected background color around thumb images due to LIGHT BLUE in Monobook

User:Liangent/lightblue and Special:Permalink/691743758 contain a demo: view it in Vector and it shows Wiki.png on pink background; view it in Monobook and some unexpected white/blue area is shown.

We copied those styles to zhwiki and this issue was reported on zhwiki VPT by some other user today; upstreaming it here. Make sure to test both pages (article and non-article) because different styles are used. Liangent (talk) 22:30, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Here is a simplified example:

Vector versus MonoBook shows the difference in rendering. Something apparently happens when Wikipedia:Extended image syntax#none is used in a div with padding. Can you just avoid doing that? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:46, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Monobook.css mistakenly thinks all instances concerning the div.thumb class are always part of a gallery-type of image display when of course that is not always the case. It seems the universally {common] defined background-color: transparent; is being overridden to 'sky-blue' by

div#content, div#p-cactions li a:hover, div#p-cactions li.selected a, div#content div.thumb {
    background-color: #f8fcff;
}

... by design but never gets around to "reverting" back to the "default" for some reason. Basically, the gallery-type instances need more specific selectors in order to differentiate it from the NoN gallery type of image display cases. User:Edokter? -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:58, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Fwiw... I think the above needs to be split into...

div#content, div#p-cactions li a:hover, div#p-cactions li.selected a {
    background-color: #f8fcff;
}
div#content div.thumb {
    background-color: inherit;
}

... but that entire 'sky-blue' section in the .css has caveats defined for certain namespaces/selections/etc. so it would need some vetting first to be sure the changes aren't making things worse elsewhere. -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:18, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Are there any real cases where this is a problem, or is this a glitch you stumbled upon? As PrimeHunter said: do you need to use padding? I'm not inclined to fix non-existing problems. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 12:29, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

It was found in {{Location map|caption=x|border=none}} used in some infoboxes with background. I noticed that it was due to class="thumb" in Location map and Location map was just trying to mimic thumb images, so I used thumb image to reproduce the issue here because it looks simpler. Liangent (talk) 22:03, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

X!'s tools for Neelix

On [1], many numbers are wrong. They display zero when they should actually be nonzero. For example, it says that Neelix

• does not have any deleted edits
• has not moved any pages
• has not deleted any pages
• has not protected any pages
• has not blocked any users
• has not uploaded any files
• did not thank any users
• did not review any pending changes
• did not patrol any edits

when in fact, none of the listed statements are true. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 04:08, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Just taken a look at the link and it currently says 12,904 deleted edits, 8,428 pages moved, 1,153 deleted pages, 73 protected pages, 9 users blocked, 914 files uploaded, 197 thanked users, 33,534 patrolled edits.Blethering Scot 20:54, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I can confirm it said no deleted edits earlier but now I also see 12,904 so I guess the issue is fixed. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

CSS broken on en Watchlist ?

Is anybody else seeing this ?

Formatting for Special:Watchlist recently seems to have broken, at least using the monobook skin.

Has the CSS recently been changed or something? It seems, at least with monobook, that no CSS at all is being applied? Jheald (talk) 12:30, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Nothing has changed. How is it broken? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 13:35, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm seeing my watchlist page simply as 1990s-style vanilla HTML, with no CSS applied. It seems only to be the watchlist page, no other pages affected. Jheald (talk) 15:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

... and now it's fixed. So I don't know what that was about. Jheald (talk) 16:01, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Misleading expiry time for protection

Follow-up to Category talk:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates#Bot automation on it's way

This does not affect users who have set their local time zone to UTC.

If you protect a page, and instead of selecting a duration you select "other time" and enter a date and time, that is taken as UTC. But if you revisit the "change protection" for that page, and look at the "Expires" item, it says "Existing expiry time" with a date and time that are in your local time zone. If you wish to extend a current protection by, say, 24 hours, you need to be careful how you do it.

Assume a user in New York (UTC-5), they might see "Existing expiry time: 16:00, November 22, 2015". If in the "Other time" box, they enter "16:00, November 23, 2015" and Confirm it, then they revisit the "change protection" for that page, it says "Existing expiry time: 11:00, November 23, 2015" so they actually extended it by 19 hours, not 24. To get a 24-hour extension on the original expiry, they actually need to set "Other time" to "21:00, November 23, 2015". --Redrose64 (talk) 14:55, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64:This should be reported at Phabricator - see Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests. I see no reason to discuss this here. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I know that it's ultimately a phab: thing, but searching phab for existing tickets is a pain. Many people post here initially even when it's a MedaiWiki software issue, since they know that at some point one of the phab regulars will come along and say "ah, that's ticket T987654 which has been open for three years". Saves filing a redundant ticket only to get it closed as "resolved, duplicate" which doesn't help much. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

More details, Redrose64. I've always had my time set to UTC, but just now I changed it to a random Australian time zone (how did Currie, Tasmania, population 746, end up as the reference point for a time zone area?) and protected a userspace page until 2015-12-15, 23:12. I then unprotected it, changed my time to America/Denver, and added the same protection, and the expiry time was the same. However, the protection log appears differently on the protection page — when I was in Tasmania, the latest log entry was

(change visibility) 07:44, 24 November 2015 Nyttend (talk | contribs | block) protected User:Nyttend/ZIP [Edit=Allow only administrators] (expires 10:12, 16 December 2015) [Move=Allow only administrators] (expires 10:12, 16 December 2015) (Protecting until 2015-12-15, 23:12 with time zone set as America/Denver) (hist | change)

Now that I'm in Colorado, the same line reads

(change visibility) 13:44, 23 November 2015 Nyttend (talk | contribs | block) protected User:Nyttend/ZIP [Edit=Allow only administrators] (expires 16:12, 15 December 2015) [Move=Allow only administrators] (expires 16:12, 15 December 2015) (Protecting until 2015-12-15, 23:12 with time zone set as America/Denver) (hist | change)

If you view the section of my contributions that includes those entries, you'll see the same dates and times regardless of whether your time zone is Dar es Salaam or Yap (I just checked), but the protection log changes with your time zone. This shouldn't be the case, especially given its effect on protection time changes: all the logs should be in UTC, so that everyone sees the same thing in all cases, and so that protection times aren't accidentally changed. Nyttend (talk) 20:54, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

TOC right

Resolved

{{TOC right}} doesn't seem to be working for me. @Funandtrvl: looks like they have tried to fix it recently? I'm on Chrome in case it's a browser issue. GiantSnowman 20:41, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

On which article(s)? In what way is it not working? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:51, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Well it's not displaying. GiantSnowman 12:44, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

E1

It works for me, for example on Alien, both logged in and out, Vector skin, Chrome 46.0.2490.86 on Windows Vista. Please provide the same details. I see a box to the right of this section with E1 above the box and E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 inside the box. Which of this do you see? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:16, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

It's working for me now, but I'm on a different computer/browser. I'll check again when I'm back at home. GiantSnowman 13:22, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm back home and it's displaying fine. Whatever bug it was has been fixed. GiantSnowman 17:56, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Dusty articles

The dusty articles list has not been updated since June. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

It's transcluded from Wikipedia:Dusty articles/List which according to its history is built by SvickBOT (talk · contribs). Have you informed the bot operator, Svick (talk · contribs)? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:02, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

User sandbox appears in google search

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T104797

Got a bit of a surprise just now. When I searched Michael Katovich "Studies in Symbolic Interaction" Volume 33 in google, the seventh of 185 results was the sandbox I'm working in, User:JG66/sandbox White Album reception (where Katovich's article appears as a source). I'm all for transparency on Wikipedia, but – boy, I just didn't expect a sandbox to come up! Is it quite normal, for these to appear in a google search? JG66 (talk) 04:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

This isn't new, back in the old days if a page could not stand deletionists I would keep working on the subpage version ha-ha. It takes more for non-main space stuff to show up though. B137 (talk) 05:01, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

There is an outstanding request to change this in the configuration. In the mean time. {{userspace draft}}, that's one of the reasons we have that template. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

JG66, it's quite normal, and you can meet the nicest people that way The {{NOINDEX}} and {{NOINDEX|visible=yes}} templates work nicely too. The visible parameter lets other editors know the page is probably not going to be indexed. These templates are not guaranteed to be effective. PS: Pinging TheDJ too. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 06:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to you all for the replies, especially those options, TheDJ and Checkingfax. Still can't get over the shock I got seeing "User:JG66/sandbox …" come up in google – scared the bloomin' life out of me! JG66 (talk) 07:15, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I use {{user sandbox}}, which sets __NOINDEX__ as default; if you want the sandbox page to be indexed, you can override that with |noindex=no --Redrose64 (talk) 10:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Redrose64. {{userspace draft}} seems to work, actually. Fingers crossed. JG66 (talk) 11:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The configuration change was finally deployed as well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:59, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Could we NOINDEX File: namespace pages that have non-free images?

Previous discussion from 2008 (no consensus): Template talk:Non-free media#Adding NOINDEX

In light of the above discussion about NOINDEX, I'd like to present an idea I've had. Currently, Google Images and other image searches search all images hosted on Wikipedia and create thumbnails for them. This is not always the desired behavior on our part, because we host non-free files as non-free precisely not to make them reusable. Our non-free license templates warn the user that: "Any other uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement" (emphasis added). While the end user has the ultimate responsibility if they chose to reuse these images outside Wikipedia, we should not promote reuse by letting search engines index our non-free files. It serves neither the copyright holder nor Wikipedia's purposes.

The technical aspect of it is to add the NOINDEX switch to all non-free license templates (similarly to how it's used in sandbox templates; see above discussion). I'm not technical minded enough to understand what the (dis)advantages would be from that point of view, so I'd like the Village pump to consider those first, before we start thinking about if this is a good candidate for a new policy. Some questions that come to my mind are:

1. There are legitimate reasons for accessing the file page through an external search engine (finding information about why a file is used on Wikipedia; as a principle Wikipedia is mostly open; etc.) and this would be blocked. Then again, some pages are deliberately NOINDEX because of concerns about illegitimate outside use (eg. BLP talk pages)
2. I don't know how image thumbnails on search engines are indexed. Are they derived from the article pages where the images are displayed or from the image description pages, or both? (From both, according to the previous discussion. Opinions as to whether the user should be pointed to image description page that displays the license, or to the article it's used in (which is the result of NOINDEXING) differed. Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 12:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC))
3. None of us know how search engines' algorithms work, so it's not easy to come up with 'negative' search engine optimization (SEO) to hide our images to the best of our ability. If I google "site:en.wikipedia.org/ +bigcompanyname +logo", I'll find the image I want for my hypothetical illegitimate reuse, but I don't know why it was returned in search results.

My understanding is that this is not implemented already simply because no one ever thought of it, not because it would be a bad idea (policy-wise, usability-wise, technically). Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 11:32, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Seems to be totally unnecessary. Google will index any image, presumably under fair use. What they do is up to them. Wikipedia does not have to attempt to control reuse of material, apart from stating that it is not free. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Graeme Bartlett. To emphasize: I'm not worried about reuse by Google per se (there are court cases that say Google's reuse of images as thumbnails is okay), but of reuse by people who find our hosted non-free images with Google search. "Wikipedia does not have to attempt to control reuse of material", yet for text materials we do. BLP talk pages, drafts and sandboxes are hidden from search engines, even though our license allows the reuse of those materials. As for non-free files, our license does not allow reuse, so I am confused as to why should we make it technically easy. This could also be a legal protection (out of our fair-use claims many are admittedly invalid); compare this with the obvious protection against legal threats concerning libel material that our noindexing of BLP talk pages offers. Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 11:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

You're overthinking this. People constantly improperly fork and reuse the actual article content here repeatedly and without a thought as to the copyright violation. Images are just another example and not something that requires extra work to protect. Google books has entire "ebooks" that are literally nothing more than improper Wikipedia quoting which makes it a mess to figure out whether a fact is true or not when people go into circular sourcing. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:57, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The difference is that non-free content we host is not "our content" whereas Wikipedia articles are. If someone illegitimately reuses non-free content they got off Wikipedia they are violating the copyright holder's right and we are 'complicit' in that. If someone reuses Wikipedia article text without proper attributing they are breaching the terms of our CC BY-SA 3.0 license, which is not quite the same thing. It's misguided to think that images are not different; they are and that's why we have the non-free content criteria for files that are different from the non-free content criteria in general (text quotations are fair-use, but we deliberately treat them with less scrutiny, see WP:NFC#Text). Finnusertop (talk | guestbook | contribs) 12:21, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

If we take the whole site out of Google, we probably don't have a vandalism problem anymore either ! Google indexing is NOT the way to solve problems. If we are so concerned about Fair use images, we should just totally remove them. It's the only way to actually solve the problem of secondary reuse of non-free content. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:09, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

We NOINDEX pages not to prevent their reuse, but to make them less visible. We don't need people being attracted from the outside to "legal threats concerning libel material" (the reason for NOINDEXing the BLP talk pages). If some fair use claim is incorrect, we want the issue noticed and brought to our attention. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:29, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't see the problem here. Wikipedia/WMF doesn't pick up liability for copyright infringement by a 3rd party, and has no obligation to take any steps to prevent or limit 3rd parties from infringing copyright, beyond making sure that the copyright status is correctly reflected when the image is viewed on WP itself (i.e. on the image's own page). NOINDEX makes perfect sense for sandbox pages and BLP talk pages, but I strongly oppose any use of it for primary content as being wildly inappropriate and overall harmful. The idea of a non-searchable or less than fully searchable encyclopaedia is frankly laughable, and that includes all images now that the world has image searching technology. --Murph9000 (talk) 10:47, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Not seeing a problem here either. I also wonder whether the NOINDEXing would also work; policy demands that non-free images be used in articles, so the file would be indexed anyway by way of the article it's posted on. I also fail to see why the lack of reusability is a problem that needs removal from Google's indexes. Google indexes a lot of images that are non-free. And non-free status does not prevent always reuse, too.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:59, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Excluding bot edits from watchlist

Help! I am desperately trying to exclude bot edits from my watchlist, which is being flooded with notifications of delivery of a mass message about the Arbcom election. I check the "hide bots" box and click "Go" on the next line, but next time I look the box is unchecked again, and the flood of mass-message notifications continues. It isn't a caching issue, I have tried purging the page. JohnCD (talk) 17:53, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

You can permanently remove bot edits from your watchlist by going into your Preferences, then the Watchlist tab. Look under "Advanced Options". Resolute 18:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! It seems that checking the boxes in the "Watchlist options" box on the watch-list only affects the search you immediately do by clicking "Go". I found that confusing: perhaps there should be a note there to say "To permanently change these options, see Watchlist under Preferences". JohnCD (talk) 18:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps off-subject here, but I don't think Search is effected in any way by Special:EditWatchlist. — CpiralCpiral 20:37, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-48

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

Recent changes

• A new Pageview API has been announced. Feedback is requested to help decide which data to add to it next.

Changes this week

• There are no MediaWiki deployments this week (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Language Engineering team. The topic is: Content Translation updates and Questions & Answers. The meeting will be on 25 November at 13:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 24 November at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is "RfC: Raise MediaWiki's PHP version requirement and update coding standards". The meeting will be on 25 November at 21:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• From 1 December, the MediaWiki API will no longer support the dbg, txt, and yaml output formats. [2]

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

20:26, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Usage of template parameters (Tracking)

Is there a (simple) way to track articles by number of used parameters in a transcluded template? For example I have a template like this:

{{Template Alpha
|parameter1 = 
|parameter2 = 
|parameter3 =
|parameter4 = 
|parameter5 = 
...
|parameter20 = 
}}

How to track articles in categories, by number of used parameters of this template (how many parameters of this template have some values)? --XXN, 22:11, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

@XXN: Probably the easiest way would be to use a tracking category and change the sort key depending on the number of parameters. Some sample code:

[[Category:My tracking category|{{#expr: {{#if:{{{parameter1|}}}|1|0}} + {{#if:{{{parameter2|}}}|1|0}} + ... + {{#if:{{{parameter20|}}}|1|0}} }}]]

I haven't tested the above yet, but I've seen other code like it in various templates. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually, ignore that - after testing, it doesn't seem to work. The following will, but you need to create as many different categories as there are template parameters.

[[Category:My template transclusions with {{#expr: {{#if:{{{parameter1|}}}|1|0}} + {{#if:{{{parameter2|}}}|1|0}} + ... + {{#if:{{{parameter20|}}}|1|0}} }} parameters]]

Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:49, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Your test code does work when it's actually used.[3] PrimeHunter (talk) 01:44, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Aha, that explains it - thanks for the fix. :) — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:29, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for idea, Mr. Stradivarius. I also thought about this, but it's a bit tiresome to write such a function for a template with 20-30 different parameteres +with the same number of aliases for main parameteres names. --XXN, 01:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

@XXN: In that case, how about doing it in Lua? There are three ways that I can think of using Lua to do this. The first would be to count the number of all the parameters specified, including ones that the template doesn't recognise. The second would be to make a list of all the valid parameters and count how many of those are specified. And the third would be to use Lua patterns to specify groups of parameters - for example, if you specified the pattern ^parameter%d+$, you would count all the parameters that were specified that consist of the word "parameter" followed by one or more digits. Something similar is already done in Module:Check for unknown parameters. I'll try and write a module that does all three of these so you can choose which one is the most appropriate. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:29, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

@XXN: I've now written Module:ParameterCount which should make this process easier. Take a look at the documentation and see what you think. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much Mr. Stradivarius! Nice job!:) This module works very well. --XXN, 12:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Browsing

I wonder if the developers of wikipedia would consider a turn book page option for articles instead of just the standard one page scrolling downwards. Like this at archive.org I actually find it easier to read and browse with a simple click between pages horizontally without having to keep scrolling downwards, especially for big articles. If we had a "Reader" function on wikipedia which converts articles to a book format, perhaps with two columns on each page I think I'd find it much more reader friendly and usable.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

If you browse through the magazines on archive.org you'll notice that browsing content puts much less strain on your fingers with a simple click and is actually a more convenient way of reading for the reader. You don't have to keep moving it down, but you work across and it's all in one place, page by page. I also think that as it is an encyclopedia, customizing it to resemble an old encyclopedia with pages would be a more attractive way to read content and consolidate knowledge. I think even for mobiles and iPads it would be a far easier way to browse to simply tap between pages. To allow room for the double page book format there could be the option to have a hidden sidebar which only appears when you hover over it to maximize reading space and appearance. Another feature I think, the option to browse articles by subject. Like you could browse a category alphabetically in a book format, going from article to article, or click on a letter at the bottom to find surnames or articles with that letter in a given category or section of the project.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:04, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

That archive.org page is a collection of scans of old magazines, rather than html, so doesn't have the formatting issues one would have trying to display Wikitext articles in that format across multiple devices of varying shapes and sizes. I agree with what you're saying about reading ease on mobile devices, but it won't be a simple matter. If you've ever tried to read a heavily-footnoted and illustrated book on the Kindle, iBooks or Google Play Books apps (which use the turn-the-page format) you'll know how hard it is to handle embedded images and internal footnoting and section links in this format, even with the full might of the world's three leading content-delivery companies working on it, and the markup of some Wikipedia articles is far more complicated than that of most books; I imagine it would lead to illustrations and tables regularly becoming separated from their accompanying text. That's not to say it's a bad idea, but if Apple can't handle it I'm not sure WMF Ops would be up to the task. ‑ iridescent 12:22, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Stray </noinclude>

Just noticed that at Talk:Destruction_of_cultural_heritage_by_ISIL there's a stray standalone </noinclude> tag in a white row between WikiProject Africa and WikiProject Arab world. Editing wikisyntax doesn't reveal anything, looks like something went wrong elsewhere. Could someone check? Brandmeister^talk 22:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

{{WikiProject Libya}} had an incorrect edit yesterday. I think it has the intended content now. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:54, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

"maintenance" in the upper left corner of this page

Just curious. I'm starting to notice the unbolded and unlinked lowercase word "maintenance" in the upper left hand corner of new articles. And I just noticed it at the top of this VPump page. Is this new? And what does it mean? — Maile (talk) 22:47, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't see it here or in any of the examined new articles. Please post an example article. Do you see it when you are logged out? What is your skin? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:58, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

OK, this was strange. I use Modern skin. "maintenance" appeared, besides on this VPump page, in the upper left hand corner of any new article I looked at on Newpages. I changed to Monobook, and that went away. So, I came back to Modern skin, and the phenomenon is completely gone from all articles I'd seen it on. Just one of those momentary flukes, I guess. — Maile (talk) 23:21, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

When following a section link I am invariably taken well below the target

I've been experiencing this for a few months now. Anytime I follow a link to a section I am taken a ways below it. For example, the third link on this page (currently) is Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 142#Image purge. If I navigate to that link I end up so that the top of my screen is just above the next section header. As far as I know, other than keeping my browser up to date, I have made no changes. No deal breaker but a bit annoying. I use Firefox on a Mac and Monobook. Is it on my end and any ideas?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:12, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

P.S. I thought maybe it was a cache issue, so I dumped everything just now, then logged in and tried the same link – same result. However, I then logged off, dumped everything and tried it without logging in. The issue went away. So I'm guessing it does have something to do with my settings, or my use of Monobook, or some combination of those, plus some change to the software here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:20, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Known issue with collapsed content and some browsers (Firefox at least). Too lazy to look up the phab ticket. --Izno (talk) 00:59, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_141#Firefox_and_anchors --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:54, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Uw-voablock

When editing Template:Uw-voablock, "No matching items in log." is shown in the top area. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:36, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

uselang=qqx shows it displays MediaWiki:Logempty. I don't know why. translatewiki:MediaWiki:Logempty/qqq says: "Used as warning when there are no items to show." The message is displayed in the actual log page [4] as expected. A random template with no logs Template:Uw-ublock-double also displays it in the actual log [5] but not in the edit page. The page history of Template:Uw-voablock shows a 2007 move [6] over a redirect at that title. Could MediaWiki be expecting a log entry for that and try to retrieve it but report that it didn't find anything? PrimeHunter (talk) 03:07, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Since this page is protected the edit page will show the protection log entry. This page was protected under its old name {{vandalblock}}, which it was renamed from in 2007. I believe that at that time log entries, including the protection log, were not moved with pages. However, protection status was. The page is protected, but there is no log entry to be found, thus the message. Nothing to worry about – I do not recommend trying to 'fix' it. Prodego ^talk 04:16, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

The "missing" protection log is here. It's still the case that log entries are not moved when a page is moved. But if a page under a protection at the time of its move, an entry is added to the log for the new page name, see WP:MOVE#How to move a page item 4. This entry is of the form "moved protection settings from Foo to Bar (Foo moved to Bar)". Apparently that additional entry was not generated when the page was last moved, 21:24, 2 December 2007, and is probably a newer feature. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:06, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I should have been more clear that this "moved protection settings" log was the "moved with pages" feature I was referring too. The log isn't simply moved – a new, different entry is added to the destination page, and the originals never move. "Logs don't move" generally holds for all logs. Prodego ^talk 13:02, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I fixed this specific page; note, however, that this only fixed the one page - you would need to do it separately for each page which has this problem. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 15:48, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I have mentioned the issue at MediaWiki talk:Logempty, with the message quoted to help find it in searches. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Is Labs down?

Doesn't matter which browser I use. The tabs are missing things. Under what would normally be Page/History (and other selections), we only get History. You can't find your Userspace at the moment via User/Userspace. — Maile (talk) 16:48, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

toollabs: has lots of tools and many of them are working. Please be more specific if you have problems with one of the tools. The XTools (those starting with tools.wmflabs.org/xtools) have been down a lot the last year and are currently down for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, how about this error message that just came up when on Loyal Valley, Texas, from Page/History, I chose Revision history statistics:

Four hundred and four!

The URI you have requested, /xtools/wikihistory/wh.php?page_title=Loyal_Valley,_Texas, doesn't seem to actually exist. If you have reached this page from somewhere else...

This URI is managed by the xtools tool, maintained by MusikAnimal, APPER, Tparis, Cyberpower678, Tools.xtools-articleinfo, Elee, Technical 13, Lixxx235, Tools.xtools-ec, and Nakon.

Perhaps its files are on vacation, or the link you've followed doesn't actually lead somewhere useful?

You might want to looks at the list of tools to find what you were looking for, or one of the links on the sidebar to the left. If you're pretty sure this shouldn't be an error, you may wish to notify the tool's maintainers (above) about the error and how you ended up here.

Also, I had tried just the usual Page views options earlier, and sometimes it says "connecting" forever without ever doing anything. And once, it actually provided the stats. I think Labs might be working on something. — Maile (talk) 17:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

As shown by your quoted text, that is one of the XTools. This page has had lots of discussions about down XTools in the last year. It doesn't imply a general problem at Labs. As mentioned, lots of other tools at Labs are working. Labs is a host for a large number of independent tools, often made by volunteer editors. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:02, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Maile66, MusikAnimal may have fixed the issue: User_talk:MusikAnimal#Please_kick_the_Xtools_server. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 03:38, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

This looks like a good excuse to let people know about Labs labs labs and Beta beta beta. There are a lot of things that are called "Labs" or "Beta". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:59, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Your input requested on the proposed #FreeBassel banner campaign

This is a message regarding the proposed 2015 Free Bassel banner. Translations are available.

Hi everyone,

This is to inform all Wikimedia contributors that a straw poll seeking your involvement has just been started on Meta-Wiki.

As some of your might be aware, a small group of Wikimedia volunteers have proposed a banner campaign informing Wikipedia readers about the urgent situation of our fellow Wikipedian, open source software developer and Creative Commons activist, Bassel Khartabil. An exemplary banner and an explanatory page have now been prepared, and translated into about half a dozen languages by volunteer translators.

We are seeking your involvement to decide if the global Wikimedia community approves starting a banner campaign asking Wikipedia readers to call on the Syrian government to release Bassel from prison. We understand that a campaign like this would be unprecedented in Wikipedia's history, which is why we're seeking the widest possible consensus among the community.

Given Bassel's urgent situation and the resulting tight schedule, we ask everyone to get involved with the poll and the discussion to the widest possible extent, and to promote it among your communities as soon as possible.

(Apologies for writing in English; please kindly translate this message into your own language.)

Thank you for your participation!

Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 21:47, 25 November 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help

Autoconfirmed checker?

Is there anything that makes it quick and easy to check whether a user is autoconfirmed, or how close they are to becoming autoconfirmed? Thanks. Samsara 22:22, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

@Samsara: User:PleaseStand/User info 106.0.176.61 (talk) 22:45, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. :) Samsara 23:04, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

You can also get info about a user if you have WP:POPUPS enabled and hover over a link to their user or talk pages. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:46, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Page information

On some pages such as Barbershop 3, the page information shows the wrong number of edits. For that page, it says that there are 146 edits when there are actually only 7. The remaining 139 edits were merged into Barbershop: The Next Cut. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 03:28, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

The page had not been edited since the revisions were merged. A null edit updated the counts at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barbershop_3&action=info. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:45, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

File reuploading

When uploading a new version of a file, the edit is not marked as a minor edit, as it is when protecting or moving pages. For example, this edit to File:Saule - Dusty Men (feat. Charlie Winston) official cover.jpg is not marked as a minor edit. Note that this is the opposite of Tryptofish's problem at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 139#Page moves marked as minor edits. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 05:53, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Sounds about right to me; uploading a new version of a file is a pretty major edit to that file. Why page moves, in particular, are marked as minor is not at all clear to me. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

GeoffreyT2000, thank you for reminding me of that. I agree that it would be good for the community to reevaluate how certain actions are or are not labeled as minor. I've been busy with other things lately, but I do agree that this ought to be pursued further. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:29, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Section-specific notifications

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T2738

Does a tool exist that will ping me only when content is added to a particular section of a page? - Dank (push to talk) 13:50, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not aware of one, but I'd love to be able to do that with some talk pages and noticeboards. The last time I followed it, however, my understanding is that Flow will have this capability built in. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:31, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Not yet, see phab:T2738. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Unwatch from watchlist?

Hey folks, is there a way to "un-watch" pages from the watchlist? Seems to me like that would be an exceptionally handy feature, so much so that I'm sure it's been proposed before, but I can't find it. Cheers! Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 15:43, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Special:EditWatchlist Reedy (talk) 15:44, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I use WP:POPUPS to do this. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:08, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: mw:Snippets/Unwatch from watchlist 106.0.176.61 (talk) 16:32, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks! I just recommended popups in a thread above, I don't think I knew it could be used that way. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 16:39, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: I use User:Anomie/unwatch.js for this. It gives you a handy "unw" link on the watchlist itself, next to the "diff" and "hist" links. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 21:55, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Another Festivus miracle! Thanks, that's perfect. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 22:27, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Arbcom elections

On vote.wikimedia.org, I am attempting to submit different votes, discarding my earlier votes, and being told I need to log in to vote, when this wiki states on the main page that registration is not required and it is only meant for a limited number of accounts. When I go to vote, it says "Welcome, Rubbish computer", so I have no idea whether or not I am logged in. Please advise. Thanks, --Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 23:19, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

If it welcomes you by name, you're logged in. The rules say:

An editor is eligible to vote who:

1. (i) has registered an account before Wednesday 00:00, 28 October 2015

   (ii) has made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday 00:00, 1 November 2015 and,

   (iii) is not blocked from the English Wikipedia at the time of their vote.

I'm not sure where you are when it's greeting you by name, but if you're on the voting site for "2015 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election", you're on the Wikimedia server. I've never tried changing my vote, so don't know how that works.— Maile (talk) 23:28, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@Maile66: Okay, thanks. I knew I was eligible when I recieved the Wikimedia message, and my vote is registered from earlier, but I don't know hoe to change it: it says to just fill it out again, which it won't let me do. Thanks, --Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 23:33, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

You cannot log in at vote.wikimedia.org but if you are logged in at the English Wikipedia and click a vote button such as the one at Special:SecurePoll/vote/398 then you should be taken to vote.wikimedia.org without being logged in there but in a way where the software knows who you are and lets you vote. Is this not working for you? If so, please be more specific about which page you are on when something goes wrong, and exactly how it goes wrong. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:45, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Rubbish computer, are you running NoScript or other browser extensions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I'm not sure, but I use AWB, if that affects it. I voted on mobile earlier, and tried to revote on my computer. Thanks, Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 01:20, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Please try to describe what actually goes wrong, especially at what point you are told you need to log in. For example: "I reach https://vote.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll/vote/560 which says 'Welcome, Rubbish computer'. I can select radio buttons to vote but when I click 'Submit vote', I'm told I have to be logged in." PrimeHunter (talk) 02:02, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: After I've picked my votes and pressed the "Vote" button: sorry if I was unclear about any of this. Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 10:57, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Someone else has answered this elsewhere, but thanks anyway. Rubbish computer (HALP!: I dropped the bass?) 11:02, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Editing comment text accompanying uploaded image files

I've been a Wikipedia editor for nearly 12 years and can get around pretty comfortably. Yet aspects of image uploads still have me stymied. I accidentally pasted some raw Wiki markup into the Comment field when uploading a new image. When I saw the result, I realized I had made a mistake. The markup was still markup, and had not, in that place, been rendered properly. Thinking that, as with most other Wikipedia edits, I could just go in and fix my mistake, I attempted that, and found out I was wrong! What I had intended to place in that Comment field was what an uploader of a similar image had put there, "fair use reduce". So how does this get fixed? The image page is: File:City-of-bothell-new-logo.photograph2.jpg I want to do the right thing, yet here I find my hands are tied. Any help appreciated. --Alan W (talk) 04:24, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

The "fair use reduce" is a template that tags an image for a bot or admin to reduce the image size to make it meet non-free image use requirements. As it is a template, it has to be enclosed in double curly braces like: {{ }} . I have got ahead and done this for you on that image. --MASEM (t) 05:16, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I guess the user who uploaded the previous version of this logo image didn't know about the curly braces, and I assumed, when I should not have, that it was done correctly and I could just follow that example. I was not aware that the image size needed to be reduced further, either. (I knew it would automatically be reduced when fitted into the infobox where it is being used, but I guess that is considered not enough.) As others have no doubt said, uploading images to Wikipedia is still much too convoluted and confusing a process for most Wikipedians. I have something of a technical background, and my head is still spinning from all this. Anyhow, this situation is not your fault, and I appreciate the help. --Alan W (talk) 06:39, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

@Alan W: When you don't use the File Upload Wizard, and you are the first person to upload an image under a particular name, as you were with File:City-of-bothell-new-logo.photograph2.jpg, the comment in the upload log and the edit summary in the page history are both set to the first 255 bytes of the wikitext for the file description page. In those entries, only Wikilinks are expanded, the rest appears as raw markup - this has been the case for many years, and it can't be altered. If you try to "fix" it by altering the wikitext, as you did here, all you do is alter the appearance of the file description page - log entries cannot be amended. But if your intention was to upload an image and immediately add {{non-free reduce}} to it, why not simply reduce the resolution yourself before uploading? There are several programs/applications/packages which will do this. Reduce it on your computer to whatever size is necessary, then upload that in the normal way. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:10, 27 November 2015 (UTC)