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. 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.

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Centralized discussion

Proposals:policy•otherDiscussions:tech•ideas•misc

• Expand CSD G5 to include undisclosed paid editing?
• Proposed CSD criterion X3 for many portals created by one editor
• Removing WP:PORNBIO from notability guideline
• Consultation on brand strategy (WMF)
• Use TFD as a clearinghouse for template discussions?
• Talk pages consultation 2019 (WMF)
• Naming conventions for Macedonia

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Boxes

Talk:List_of_common_misconceptions#Boxes

Could we perhaps move all the nifty little boxes at the top to a subpage?

They make the page load noticeably slower on older browsers.

Is it really necessary to have the to do lists of all those wikiprojects?

A lot of people in poor countries don't have the fast computers that are so ubiquitous here in the developed world, and we should be mindful of that.

Benjamin (talk) 02:10, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for this comment, Benjamin. Would you please post it at mw:Talk:Talk pages consultation 2019?

User:Jdforrester (WMF), is this part of phab:T132072, or is there a more specific Phab ticket for it? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Maybe. Though it'd be conceivable to use whatever underlying system would be built for T132072 to represent a great deal of the boxes at the top of that talk page into metadata about the page itself, I hadn't proposed it for general free-form content notices like the "Inclusion Criteria" box. That'd be prone to serious ab- and mis-use which could be yet another impediment to users in the best case, and more likely, would render the entire system into Yet Another Banner Blindness issue where careful editors' notices are effectively invisible to the very readers at whom they'd be targeted. Something to ponder. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Should this edit have happened?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T218473

I'm unsure why this edit was possible. The article should have been fully protected. Is it server synchronisation lag, or a bug? Interference with PC1?

Samsara 11:16, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

You fully protected and your next edit was to change that to pending changes. Doesn't that "overwrite" the full protection? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 11:49, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

@CambridgeBayWeather: Both forms of protection were configured in one step, I did not enter the menu twice. In my experience up to this point, PC can run concurrently with hard protections, it simply has no effect and kicks in again eventually if its duration is longer than that of the hard protection. This is also the only way to avoid having this other bug (untriaged for a year now!) Samsara 18:43, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a bug, Pending Changes should not affect page protection, which allows it to be used to extend protection, or a page with PC to have its protection level increased temporarily. Danski454 (talk) 17:02, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Is it a bug, really? Pending changes should only be configured on an article that is allowing edits by editors below the level of administrator, and if PC is being configured, then it would logically drop the full protection. There is no value to PC if the article is fully protected. Perhaps the bigger question is why anyone would enable PC when fully protecting an article. Risker (talk) 18:51, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Using pending changes and another level of protection (usually semi-protection) allows having some level of protection after the full/semi protection expires, as it basically allows setting multiple protections of different durations. Galobtter (pingó mió) 18:54, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

In any case, the full protection was immediately lifted within the same minute after application, and dropped to Extended Confirmed protection; the user who made the edit is at the EC level, and edited several minutes after the EC protection was applied. The article was fully protected for less than a minute, and there is an edit summary when dropping to EC that indicates it was an intentional decision. Nothing here indicates that there's a bug. Risker (talk) 18:58, 9 March 2019 (UTC) Sorry, I misread the protection log and saw 11:40 as 11:04. Mea culpa. Risker (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

• A page with both FP and PC1 should not be editable (see Wikipedia:Sandbox2 for an example) - but it could be buggy under just the wrong timing or conditions - does not appear to be happening now, and this is hard to replicate. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:03, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Timeline:

• 110431 - Edit Protection Set to admin
• 110431 - Pending changes set to autoconfirmed
• 110809 - The suspect edit took place, appears to violoate the edit protection

@Risker: I'm not seeing the "full protection was immediately lifted within the same minute" - what am I missing? — xaosflux ^Talk 19:03, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Mea culpa, I misread the protection log. The change from full protection to EC protection was at 11:40, not 11:04. Risker (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

• Possibly related: this RFPP thread from back in August. Muboshgu semi-protected Dick's Sporting Goods, but only a log entry was generated, and the page remained unprotected according to &action=info. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 19:11, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  Possibly, seems like the protection wasn't actually applied at all (again). — xaosflux ^Talk 19:31, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

So the answer seems to be, nobody really knows, it just occasionally happens, is not reproducible, and will in all likelihood never get fixed. Samsara 00:04, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Samsara: Well, issues that are not reproducible are not easy to fix. It'll get fixed eventually when it's more fully understood, possibly when investigating other issues, as currently the details are hazy and the issue relatively harmless. I can see this old issue from phab T4737 where something like that was reported but couldn't be reproduced, so had to be closed as invalid. If this is reported (as is), it's similar scenario that would play out. FWIW, when you first posted this message I visited the page and it was quite fully protected and so it was in ?action=info. – Ammarpad (talk) 06:39, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

It just happened again: Googol. Unprotection is in the log, but not taking effect. IP reporting to not be able to edit, action=info also reports it as protected. I'm not going to fix it now so that people can poke at it in its current state if they wish. I'm starting to think that this is a recent bug and probably reproducible. Specifically, I suspect that simultaneous configuration of pending changes and page protection no longer works reliably. When pending changes is changed, any changes to page protection done at the same time seem to generate a log entry and do nothing else.

Reporting this and will add link here shortly. Samsara 10:45, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Fabricator link: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T218473

Samsara 10:49, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Archive/Index page not moved to new page

The page Talk:African-American civil rights movement (1954–1968)/Archive index was not moved when article was moved to Civil rights movement. Also, how do I display "Index" with the numbered links to archived pages on the talk page? Mitchumch (talk) 11:13, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

I have moved the index to Talk:Civil rights movement/Archive index. This automatically displays a link in the archives list at Talk:Civil rights movement. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:27, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that. There appear to be more issues with the archive list as follows:

• There are five links within the list that don't seem to work. They are all at the bottom of the list as follows:

• External links modified - Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968)#External links modified
• Quick grammar edit - Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968)#Quick grammar edit
• External links modified - Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968)#External links modified
• How to describe the Emmett Till case in the lead sentence of the Emmett Till article - Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968)#How to describe the Emmett Till case in the lead sentence of the Emmett Till article
• Semi-protected edit request on 1 June 2017 - Talk:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–1968)#Semi-protected edit request on 1 June 2017

They appear to be "Archive 11" entries.

• Portions of "Archive 11" entries are missing entirely from the archive index list. Those missing portions are the first three and last three entries in that archive.
• Archives 12, 13, and 14 aren't listed at all in the archive index list.
• The first entry in "Archive 1" is missing and is titled "First message".Mitchumch (talk) 00:11, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Give it time. Talk:Civil rights movement/Archive index has not been updated since June 2017 where Archive 11 was created. The index was moved to the current title yesterday. User:HBC Archive Indexerbot/OptIn says you must create the index page. It exists now at the right title so it will hopefully be updated in a coming bot run. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:47, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll keep you posted. Mitchumch (talk) 02:02, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

User:HBC Archive Indexerbot/OptIn states on its user page "DEACTIVATED". Am I missing something? Mitchumch (talk) 02:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Right below there is a box saying: "HBC Archive Indexerbot has been replaced but these instructions are still correct. The archive indexing function is being performed by Legobot." Legobot has updated the index for years while the page said this. The mobile version may display the text without a box. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:57, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Legobot updated 292 article index pages in 11 minutes on 26 April 2018. Since then it has only updated one or two indexes at a time. It's mostly a few pages starting with "A" which keep being updated. There are many reports of missing indexing in the archives at User talk:Legobot and User talk:Legoktm. Legoktm has not replied. No user talk index has been updated since 20 June 2017. Legobot does other tasks but I guess the indexing task should be marked as inactive. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:44, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────┘ This "make archive indices" task sounds much more suited to a Lua module than a bot to me. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 19:35, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

I've coded a rough draft of said lua module at Module:Archive index. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 21:46, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

At this rate, it won't be long before my edit count starts going down because of the number of bot edits I've caused to not happen. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Everything looks good now. Thanks. Mitchumch (talk) 07:58, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Regex character sequence for line breaks/newlines in searching

Is there a regex character sequence for line breaks/newlines in Wikipedia's search engine? I want to make a regex search for these in the template search space:

}}

<noinclude>

that excludes these hits from the results:

}}<noinclude>

So, to achieve the result described above, what should I place between insource:/\}\} and \<noinclude/i in this regex search:

insource:/\}\}\<noinclude/i

85.76.133.225 (talk) 18:25, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately there is not a metacharacter for newlines. That's phab:T135280 (and there might be another hanging around--pretty sure I've seen more extensive documentation of the problem). --Izno (talk) 19:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

(Oh, I know what I was thinking of--VisualEditor/WTE17 can't handle newlines either in their F+R. --Izno (talk) 19:28, 11 March 2019 (UTC))

It's a documented problem; insource searches seem like something that is going to be really wonderful, but they are only pretty good. See mw:Help:CirrusSearch (do a find on the page for "newline"). You could try this though: insource:/[^\}]\}\}[^\} \|]\<noinclude/i which says "not a curly brace, then two curly braces, then any character except a curly brace, space, or pipe, then a noinclude opening tag". – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:33, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I tweaked that a little bit by adding one more [^\} \|] into it (like this: insource:/[^\}]\}\}[^\} \|][^\} \|]\<noinclude/i), and now ~90% of the search results seem to be what I was looking for. Surely with a little more tweaking the results could be sharpened even more, but this does it for me for now. If someone's curious, this regex search helps finding templates that, when transcluded, add redundant blank space into articles. So nothing critical, just minor aesthetic blemishes in most cases. 85.76.141.233 (talk) 21:42, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Could someone please copy that search code to some appropriate documentation page? Otherwise, there will be needless wheel-re-inventing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

I have copied it to the mw:Help:CirrusSearch, for lack of a better repository. It sure would be nice if \n worked in insource searches, though. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:14, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

asterisk (*) or numbered (#) list

If there is a picture

Roses in the Sydney Botanical Gardens

together with an asterisk list

• Both the Australian Heritage Register, Australian States (e.g. NSW, VIC) and the National Trust of Australia protect heritage gardens and trees, but Local Authorities normally only list and protect built properties rather than their heritage-listed gardens alone.
• Tasmanian Heritage Protection is uniquely troubling for ensuring Australian heritage protection:

1. Because the National Trust of Tasmania has no list of registered properties available publicly, these garden listings will be news for many Tasmanian heritage enthusiasts (The Tas. National Trust even has no Wikipedia page). The Register of the Tasmanian National Trust is being built by volunteer(s) here.
2. Similarly, the Tasmanian Heritage Register is constructed just of addresses, rather than with the discernible reason why a property is heritage listed (An enquirer must apply directly to the THR office for the heritage document for each address).
3. The Tasmanian Heritage Register is being deliberately reduced in size, and currently over 500 Hobart locations are due for heritage removal

• Similar heritage lists on Wikipedia include the List of historic homesteads in Australia, the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, and The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty in the UK.

why can't the list not miss the photo? (Note that only bull / number are hidden – actually text is right.)

Roses in the Sydney Botanical Gardens

• Both the Australian Heritage Register, Australian States (e.g. NSW, VIC) and the National Trust of Australia protect heritage gardens and trees, but Local Authorities normally only list and protect built properties rather than their heritage-listed gardens alone.
• Tasmanian Heritage Protection is uniquely troubling for ensuring Australian heritage protection:

1. Because the National Trust of Tasmania has no list of registered properties available publicly, these garden listings will be news for many Tasmanian heritage enthusiasts (The Tas. National Trust even has no Wikipedia page). The Register of the Tasmanian National Trust is being built by volunteer(s) here.
2. Similarly, the Tasmanian Heritage Register is constructed just of addresses, rather than with the discernible reason why a property is heritage listed (An enquirer must apply directly to the THR office for the heritage document for each address).
3. The Tasmanian Heritage Register is being deliberately reduced in size, and currently over 500 Hobart locations are due for heritage removal

• Similar heritage lists on Wikipedia include the List of historic homesteads in Australia, the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, and The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty in the UK.

Is there an easy way for doing? – Talk about confusing (talk) 08:14, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Talk about confusing, this is the {{flowlist}} problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:16, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Naked man appearing on mouseover on certain in India/Pakistan-related articles

Over at WP:TH we have just received this report from a helpful IP editor about a naked man image appearing on mouseover on certain conflict articles about India and Pakistan. We've checked and mouseover-ed every single linked article at {{Kashmir conflict}}, {{Indo-Pakistani relations}}, {{Military of India}} and {{Military of Pakistan}}, and have identified just the following six articles. We cannot find any inserted images, no common editing pattern nor any other obvious cause of the wrong image displaying:

• Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts
• Simla Agreement
• 2011 India–Pakistan border skirmish
• Operation Gibraltar
• Operation Grand Slam
• 2011 India–Pakistan border skirmish

This was also found and reverted, but the problem seems more subtle, and is still present. Thoughts and actions please? Nick Moyes (talk) 00:11, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

• I have been unable to reproduce this. It would be helpful if somebody who can reproduce it would report what browser, operating system and skin (monobook, vector, etc) they're using. I can't think of any reason those would be important, but that's the standard list of information to gather when trying to diagnose hard-to-reproduce display problems. With enough reports, a pattern may emerge. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:26, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Also, if you're using a browser which supports incognito mode, try viewing the page in an incognito window. See if that makes any difference. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
• TonyBallioni, did you find anything exciting? Drmies (talk) 00:40, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Not particularly. It's one of the porn vandals. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:42, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Sorry @RoySmith and TonyBallioni: - I didn't even think that might be relevant. I am viewing using Vector skin, Chrome browser (Version 72.0.3626.119 (Official Build) (64-bit)). And since I posted (purged and retested) these six links, now, only Operation Gibraltar and Operation Grand Slam are showing the naked man on mouseover. The other four show nothing. But in Incognito mode, the naked man appears on mouseover only on Operation Grand Slam - not the other five. Nick Moyes (talk) 00:44, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: for me (without incognito) its now only grand slam - maybe try purging chrome's image cache? Ctrl-f5 works for me. --DannyS712 (talk) 00:48, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@DannyS712: And in Firefox 65.0.1 (64-bit) - which I've not used for many, many months, only Operation Grand Slam now shows the naked man in non-private mode.) Nick Moyes (talk) 00:54, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

I can "see" it using wget https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Operation_Grand_Slam right now. So it's not a browser caching issue at least. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:48, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Is the image seen the lede image at Nudity? Abecedare (talk) 00:49, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Abecedare: yes --DannyS712 (talk) 00:50, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, probably that image, but there is another one extremely similar to it on Commons, too. I'm not very good at recognising naked men, I'm afraid! Nick Moyes (talk) 00:52, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict)x3 It's "thumbnail":{"source":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Anterior_view_of_human_male%2C_retouched.jpg/213px-Anterior_view_of_human_male%2C_retouched.jpg","width":213,"height":320},"originalimage":{"source":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Anterior_view_of_human_male%2C_retouched.jpg","width":3216,"height":4824} Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 00:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

So it could be persisting effects of this edit. ISP-level caching issues? Abecedare (talk) 00:52, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

• Operation Grand Slam looks good now to me, any more pages? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:54, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: Operation Grand Slam is now clear, but I'm now re-seeing more "rocks" than I would have expected at Operation Gibraltar, though it was previously not showing. Have purged both this and the article page before reporting back.! Nick Moyes (talk) 01:01, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: Do you also see the image listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Operation_Gibraltar? I don't. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:04, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow: Following that link just gives me one massively long text string, I'm afraid. (Just for clarity, I'm not seeing these naked man images in any of the articles themselves, nor any odd image files, nor mischievous templates. At this time, only Operation Gibraltar is still revealing the naked man image on my PC) Nick Moyes (talk) 01:11, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: can you try a different browser? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:34, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: I have just upgraded to Firefox 65.0.2 (64-bit), from 65.0.01, and there are no inappropriate images now showing in Firefox, nor in my old Google Chrome browser now, either. Nick Moyes (talk) 01:43, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

FWIW earlier I made WP:NULLEDITs to some, but not all, of those pages a few minutes before the problem disappeared for me. It's possible other users were doing the same. It certainly didn't have an immediate effect, so it may be coincidence, but it should be worth trying if this happens again. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:46, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

@Suffusion of Yellow: just FYI on Operation Grand Slam I top-added another image and removed it to try to regen the thumbnail cache as well (also made some null edits around). — xaosflux ^Talk 01:54, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Current season in Template:Infobox handball league

Can someone change so that the current season text and image is shown in the downmost part of the infobox, such as in Template:Infobox football league. It looks really weird at for example Handbollsligan otherwise.Jonteemil (talk) 09:10, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

User:IM-yb was the user that changed it from the bottom to the top, why?Jonteemil (talk) 09:18, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Failed page move

Talk:African-American civil rights movement (1896–1954)/Archive 1 was not moved when article title changed to Talk:Civil rights movement (1896–1954). Mitchumch (talk) 22:45, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

 Done {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 22:50, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Secondary ToC template

How do I create a secondary Template:Toc in the article Betty Boop? I'm trying to place this template in the "Filmography" section. I want the years to appear within this secondary Toc, but not appear in the primary Toc shown at the top of the page. Mitchumch (talk) 22:53, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Please ignore request. I've split the article. Mitchumch (talk) 04:26, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Fixing an edit in mobile

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T200969

I have a question about the mobile view because some things just seem so strange ... The scenario could hardly be more basic: I check my watchlist, I notice that somebody has made an edit (or left a comment) and I want to fix a mistake in that edit (or respond to the comment). Perhaps I'm missing something but as best as I can tell there's no way to do that without doing a separate search for the page. Current workflow:

1. Click on the edit. This gets me to the diff view. So far, so good: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/887387231
2. There's no link to jump in and edit directly. But now it gets tricky. If I click on the title of the page that was edited, this doesn't take me to the page. Instead, it leads me to the current version (?oldid=...). E.g., in my example, to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Martyazo&oldid=887387231.
3. This oldid view has an edit button (i.e., that pen icon), and all of the sections have edit buttons (unlike in desktop view). So I thought I'd give these a try.
4. However, if you click on any of these icons, you just get to the source view, prompting you to leave the edit interface again.
5. You're now back to the ?oldid=... view. But there's simply no link anywhere that lets you navigate to a live version of the page where you could edit.

How are you supposed to edit the page without having to manually search for it? Am I missing something? Best, — Pajz (talk) 23:39, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Pajz, I have been able to reproduce the issue and I agree that it is problematic. If you'd like, you can create a task on Phabricator by following the instructions at mw:How to report a bug. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 01:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

It's complicated and not logical but after step 1 and 2 you can click "Previous revision" and then "Latest revision". PrimeHunter (talk) 02:15, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer to the Phabricator tasks, and thanks for the helpul work-around, PrimeHunter, I'll do that (if, for whatever reason, I feel a desire to make further edits using the mobile interface ...). — Pajz (talk) 19:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC) (Not sure what the process is on this page but as far as I'm concerned this thread can be archived.)

Ephemeral spurious CAPTCHA on Alice Eagly

Hi, just want to report that when I edited Alice Eagly diff here the article was in some kind of ephemeral state where any edit, no matter how trivial, would cause the "You have added external links" CAPTCHA to come up. The CAPTCHA would come up even if I edited the whole article and not just a section. Another piece of information which may be significant is that I often block Javascript. After making that edit, the problem disappeared. 192.118.27.253 (talk) 08:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

If on base page template?

Howdy all. So I have a template that is being called in multiple template's documnetations. I would like to use it to add the parent template to a tracking category. So for example if I add the template to {{foo/doc}} it would place {{foo}} in the category but NOT {{foo/doc}}. I'm looking for a function/template that does this. Isn't there some sort of "if on base page" function? Any help is greatly appreciated! Please {{ping|zackmann08}}. --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:10, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

@Zackmann08: Please see WP:Magic. You can use {{BASEPAGENAME}} to get the result you would like. 2405:204:130C:AF29:C8F:A00F:42DA:D56B (talk) 22:35, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

No that isn't what I'm looking for... I don't need the base page's name... I need to know whether or not I am on the basepage... --Zackmann (^{Talk to me}/_{What I been doing}) 22:38, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

{{Sandbox other}} or maybe {{When on basepage}}.--Gonnym (talk) 22:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Have a look at a template /doc page that was created recently by using the [create] link upper right of the green doc box. For example, the last one that I created is Template:WikiProject Sanitation/doc which includes:

<includeonly>{{sandbox other||
<!-- Categories below this line, please; interwikis at Wikidata -->

}}</includeonly>

This came from Template:Documentation/preload. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:45, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Redrose64 & Gonnym thanks!!!

Green watchlist bullets do not turn blue

Today is Thursday. And now when I visit a link from my watchlist, and then go back to the watchlist, the green bullet stays green instead of turning blue. This problem occurs even for deleted redlinked pages. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Wow, you just beat me here by like 3 minutes. I've noticed this a couple times today, but in both cases, my watchlist had green bullets for articles in which I had made the most recent edit. If I actually go back to the article, the bullet will go back to blue. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 23:40, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

(Well, now that I say that, a couple of them are now insisting on staying green, even though some have gone back to blue, so I dunno). –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 23:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

They change to greyish cyan (specifically,      #638c9c) for me. But then I use MonoBook skin. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:56, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

I've been having this problem on other wikis too, including en.wiktionary and en.wikivoyage. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:54, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

They look OK to me in monobook and in vector. Do you have "Use non-JavaScript interface" set in your prefs? — xaosflux ^Talk 01:24, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

(e/c) GeoffreyT2000, there have been some changes in the watchlist logic this week. Can it be that they work, but are not updated as quickly as you are used to ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:48, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm a monobook user and have "unseen changes" set as a filter and "expand watchlist to show all changes" set in preferences. Until recently, if I viewed a change and returned to the watchlist, that change would no longer be showing. Now the item remains stuck in the watchlist. This would seem to be the same problem as above. I think they might clear on browser restart, but I'm not sure on that point – I'll try that in a moment and report.SpinningSpark 13:13, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm finding that on all the WMF wikis where I'm active, pages are only inconsistently marked as read after I look at the changes. I'm pretty sure this problem started less than 48 hours ago. It's really frustrating and makes my watchlist hard to use. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:22, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@TheDJ: If this is a timing issue, then it is persistent for an extraordinarily long time. Yesterday, I had items in my watchlist that hadn't cleared after several hours. I eventually dealt with it by "mark all pages visited" nuclear option. There does seem to be some inconsistency - I was looking at the possibility that it was connected with the number of unseen edits on an individual page or whether one viewed the page or the diff, but for the last couple of hours it been somewhat better behaved and I didn't get anywhere with that. SpinningSpark 14:41, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I now think the way it works is this: if there are multiple unseen edits on a page and the one you look at is not the first one made, then that edit will get stuck on your watchlist, even if you then go back and view the first one, which will also stay stuck. Those who don't have their watchlist expanded to show all edits don't have a choice; they are going to view the last edit and it will stick on the watchlist unless it was the only one made. If you actually make an edit to the page it's taken off the watchlist. SpinningSpark 19:13, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

To me it seems much more random and inconsistent than that. Sometimes editing the page doesn't even solve the problem—I just edited wikivoyage:Wikivoyage:Travellers' pub, and my own edit (along with the other recent edits to the page) is still displaying on my watchlist as if I haven't yet visited it. —Granger (talk · contribs) 00:04, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm seeing my own edits that I've just made show up on my watchlist too, whereas previously they hadn't. I often can't clear those pages from the watchlist, even if I visit the current incarnation of the page or view the last diff. Has been happening since 10am Pacific for me. —Joeyconnick (talk) 03:26, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Can anything be done about this? Who can I contact to fix this problem? It is still extremely frustrating. —Granger (talk · contribs) 14:10, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Mx. Granger: see mw:How_to_report_a_bug. Please share the bug number here for other's benefit after creating. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:14, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I suspect this might be fixed with this change. It is a followup change that is part of phab:T188801. Hopefully it can be deployed asap. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:36, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem. If I visit a page any way other than by clicking on it on my watchlist, it's not marked as read. TheDJ, Neither of those links are working for me. Is that broken too? Natureium (talk) 18:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

There's an issue at the moment with, among other things, phabricator. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 19:09, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Also an issue: if there's a long list of unseen changes, and I compare the oldest unseen and the subsequent, say, 3 changes (but there are more than 3 changes unseen after that), then return to the article History, it lists all revisions as seen. Definitely not what should be happening, because I haven't seen those other revisions. —Joeyconnick (talk) 02:41, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I've noticed this issue too. It doesn't interfere with my workflow, so I haven't brought it up, but I can imagine it might bother other editors. —Granger (talk · contribs) 13:53, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Failed page move

Talk:African-American civil rights movement (disambiguation) was not moved when article title changed to Talk:Civil rights movement (disambiguation). Mitchumch (talk) 09:14, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Done. {{db-move}} can be used to request moves where the target can only be overwritten by an administrator. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:11, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Spaces changed to NBSPs are breaking templates

Copied to here from WP:Village pump (miscellaneous)#NBSPs in inappropriate places:

What happened here? Some spaces seem to be replaced by spaces of a different kind. After this edit, the items type and fatalities are no longer displayed in the infobox. --FredTC (talk) 07:54, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Those were "raw" (meaning not text-encoded like  ) non-breaking spaces (NBSP), and those don't work as separators like regular spaces do in template parameter assignments, hence the disappearing items – same thing happens if you replace a space with  . --Pipetricker (talk) 10:22, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

But how did such spaces get there? I have no way to detect that they are there. When I edit the version I mentioned, and select/copy (ctrl-C) the code for the infobox, then paste it to a notepad.exe file, I cannot see a difference. Can I produce it by accident? How? --FredTC (talk) 11:13, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Per the tag of the edit you linked to, in this case the culprit was the official Wikipedia iOS app.

If you want to report this as a bug in the iOS app, go to mw:Wikimedia Apps/Team/Bug reporting.

Some text editors (for example LibreOffice Writer) can highlight NBSPs. There are feature requests for MediaWiki:

Phabricator: T96666: Make non-breaking spaces (nbsp) visible in VisualEditor

Phabricator: T181677: Implement syntax highlight for U+00A0 (no-break space, nbsp)

--Pipetricker (talk) 15:10, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I put a note at the misc village pump directing further technical discussion to here. --Pipetricker (talk) 15:33, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

New template: WikiProject link

Hi all! I have created a new template that you can use to link to WikiProject pages at {{WikiProject link}} (or {{proj}} for short), analogous to {{User link}}. For example, to link to WikiProject Biography, you can type {{proj|Biography}}, which produces WikiProject Biography. Please use this template and leave feedback on the template talk page. Also, feel free to modify or extend the template as long as you keep the basic interface the same. Thanks! Cross-posted to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council. Qzekrom 💬 ^they_them 03:34, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I have commented at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#New template that we already have {{wplink}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:38, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Purge cache

How do I purge the cache for the small portal links that appear in the Template:Portal or Template:Portal bar? Mitchumch (talk) 07:26, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. If a page transcludes a template and something changes in the template then the whole page will automatically be rendered again but it can take time before the job queue gets to it. You can purge a specific page with immediate effect but you still have to purge the whole page. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

PrimeHunter This does not appear to be the case for article pages that used to be linked to File:AmericaAfrica.svg (see here for full list). The image was part of the small portal links for Portal:African American. Article pages with those small links don't seem to purge the old image file. I was using null edits, but I should not have to do that. The article page Jenn Shaw is one example of this problem. Mitchumch (talk) 23:10, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

I examined Jenn Shaw and 20 other pages at your link. They had all been updated to display File:Kleed- Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen - RV-5899-18 (cropped).jpg. It can take much longer to update link tables than to render the articles. A purge of an article will update the article page but not the link tables associated with the article. The latter requires a null edit to do right away. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

That "much longer" can be months, sometimes forever. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 23:28, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I'll null edit the remaining articles. Mitchumch (talk) 00:29, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

I see no reason to use server resources on that. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:49, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Tool

Do we have a tool that helps to easily import pages? (Aside from special:import)--▸ ‎épine _talk♬ 14:04, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

piped links in templates?

Could somebody look at the {{distinguish}} hatnote on Draft:Hernan Larrain Matte. It's rendering badly. I suspect it has to do with the piped link in the template arguments, but my template-fu isn't strong enough to fix it myself. -- RoySmith (talk) 22:50, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

@RoySmith:  fixed --DannyS712 (talk) 22:54, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Infobox map tooltips

I noticed something in the infobox on the England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland articles (tho it might be on more). When you hover hover the the biggest "zoomed in" part of the map, the tooltips have some css in them (eg, Scotland's is Location of  .mw-parser-output .nobold{font-weight:normal}Scotland  (dark green) – in Europe  (green & dark grey) – in the United Kingdom  (green)). I tried poking around the wikitext used in the templates, but I can't seem to find the cause (might be due to how templatestyles injects Template:Nobold/styles.css, but that would probably require a phab ticket). --Terra ^(talk) 06:57, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

It's due to the usage of {{nobold}} in {{Infobox_country_UK}}. I'm not a fan of adding templatestyles to inline and 'style only' templates like that. It makes no sense, because the CSS belongs with the template USING nobold, and the nobold template should be removed from a template that is using it really. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:35, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree that in another template it makes sense for the surrounding template to take the entirety of the styling. That said, no one seems to have been interested when I tried to discuss how we should deal with CSS for metatemplates. So... --Izno (talk) 01:11, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

File:Lee Dixon.jpg

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T30299

There's something strange happening with this image that might be related to a file name change on Commonswikidata/meta data or something. When you click on this file, you're basically seeing the Commons image c:File:Lee Dixon 2015-02-10 1.jpg which was recently moved from c:File:Lee Dixon.jpg. It appears that the Commons file was moved becoming it was being shadowed by the local non-free file of the same name. However, something strange happened as a result of the move and it's almost if the non-free file has been overwritten by the Commons file. The local non-free file is "File:Lee Dixon.jpg" and should be infobox image used in Lee Dixon (actor) I'm not sure why this is happening, but it needs to be sorted out before the non-free file get mistakenly deleted per WP:F5 or WP:NFCC#1. -- Marchjuly (talk) 07:12, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps one better asks this on Commons (links back to here) Klaas `Z4␟` V 22:08, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

This appears to be a bug, I'm opening a phab ticket. In the meantime, I've broken the redirect at commons and it appears to have restored our local behavior. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:24, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@Marchjuly and KlaasZ4usV: this appears to be phab:T30299, opened about 5 years ago and noone is working on. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:27, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks KlaasZ4usV and Xaosflux for taking a look at this. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:43, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Any time, Marchjuly, you're more than welcome  Klaas `Z4␟` V 11:05, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Poorly interacting templates

It seems like a few articles are suddenly (without any changes to the articles themselves) showing a lot of "$NaN" where {{Inflation}} is piped in to {{Formatprice}}. Check out e.g. Macy's, Inc. ("2010 retail sales revenue of $25 billion (equivalent to $NaN in 2019)."). Even one of the examples on the documentation for {{Inflation}} is broken. I don't see any changes to the templates themselves either. I suspect something changed to make {{Inflation}} start outputting scientific notation like "2.032×10⁹" instead of "2.032E+9" and {{Formatprice}} can't handle that, but I don't know what that change could be. —BorgHunter (talk) 13:03, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

The format change in {{Inflation}} happens for numbers above 10⁹. It was caused by [1] where Pppery changed {{Decimals}} from Module:Decimals to {{Rnd}} due to Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 December 14#Template:Rnd. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:59, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Oh, isn't always annoying when you implement a template merge and some unexpected issue crops up. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 19:16, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

WikiProject Yorkshire clean up list

Hello all, sorry about this but I am a complete novice when it comes to this stuff, hence why I am asking for help..... The clean-up list for WP Yorkshire has been going to a blank page with 502 Bad Gateway error for about five days now; anybody any ideas how to resolve this? Is it as simple as repointing the link? Help! *Clean up list is here. Thank you and regards. The joy of all things (talk) 19:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-12

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

Changes later this week

• When you use rollback you will be able to get a confirmation prompt on most wikis. It asks you if you wanted to do the rollback. This is to avoid misclicks. You will have to opt in to get it. On German Wikipedia it will be an opt-out feature from 28 March. [2][3]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 March. It will be on all wikis from 21 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 20 March at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Admins will be able to block someone from editing a page or a namespace. This already works on a few Wikimedia wikis. You can read more. If your wiki wants to be an early tester of this, you can tell the developers. [4]
• Toolforge will shut down the Ubuntu Trusty job grid. This will happen the week of 25 March. Tools that use this grid needs to be moved to the new Debian Stretch job grid. If they haven't, they will be taken offline. Maintainers can restart the tools later. Users may not be able to use them in the meanwhile. You can see a list of affected tools.

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

19:43, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Blue Publish Button on Upper Right

I noticed there is a slightly different interface when I go to publish. There's a blue Publish button on the upper right and on clicking it you have the option of comparing against previous version, preview, resume editing, or publishing. Is this a new interface that was rolled out for everyone or am I seeing it because I checked all the Beta options in preferences, including Wikitext mode? Thanks. Lore E. Mariano (talk) 13:16, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

LoreMariano, "I checked all the Beta options in preferences, including Wikitext mode" <-- this —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:51, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! TheDJ (talk • contribs Lore E. Mariano (talk) 14:40, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

List of pages using multiple infoboxes

Is there any list of pages using multiple infoboxes? What does the Wikipedia policy say about that? Capankajsmilyo^{(Talk | Infobox assistance)} 15:33, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: I don't know of such a list. Normal wikitext searches won't work for this because most child infoboxes also have names beginning with "infobox".

I don't think there are any policies that would directly affect infoboxes in this way. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes does not have any guidance on this, and the language implies (but does not explicitly say) that one infobox is the default. Regardless, as you've probably noticed, in practice there are a number of pages which include more than one infobox, often to describe multiple topics or entities covered in the same article (e.g. Great Belt Fixed Link), or to separate information into groups (e.g. Georgetown University). Jc86035 (talk) 14:35, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

This search which times out (for probably obvious reasons) is a short list of some multi-infobox pages. --Izno (talk) 01:16, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Internet Archive link

The Internet Achive link at Martin Luther#External links returns 18 271 results. Adding |birth=1483|death=1546|sopt=t only reduces them to 18 265. Is there a way to reduce the results returned?

A direct link to the IA page with relevant filters  didn't work, maybe because the brackets in the link messed it up:

• Works by or about Martin Luther

Jonund (talk) 16:22, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

(I fixed the broken link by copying the URL (and link label) from Martin Luther#External links. --Pipetricker 18:40, 19 March (UTC))

Why do you want fewer results? --Pipetricker (talk) 19:09, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

I wanted to exclude results like Martin Luther King, but now, as I scroll down the results, these do not apppear to turn up. Books in foreign languages do, however, turn up, and I think they should be excluded. Jonund (talk) 15:48, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jonund: As indicated in the sidebar, it is possible to filter the results by language. Jc86035 (talk) 15:55, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jonund:, cases like this are difficult because it is a common 2-word name who is popular. About the only way is to build a custom search that filters other known Martin Luthers. Because Internet Archive now uses an infinite scroll it's impractical to scroll to the end to see what might be there. The site Internet Archive Classic Search allows paged viewing to get deeper into the results. Looks like filtering out "luther king" helps a lot: 6,012. BTW I don't think we should filter English language because end-users can easily do that through the side bar. I've added this custom search to the template. -- GreenC 16:49, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Template merger discussion notice

There is a discussion about merging {{Yesno}}, {{If declined}}, and {{If affirmed}}. As this template group affects a very large number of pages, additional input is requested. Please join in the conversation at the TFD. Thank you. Primefac (talk) 19:49, 19 March 2019 (UTC) (please ping on reply)

Template:Sec link/secure url

anyone know what is generating transclusions in Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Sec link/secure url? it would be helpful to clear this from the database report if possible. thank you. Frietjes (talk) 23:43, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Whoa, something really weird was going on there that I don't exactly understand myself. I think I've fixed the problem, though. {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 00:20, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Ref toolbar

Since yesterday, the autofill function in the Help:Referencing_for_beginners#Using_refToolbar doesn't work for me at all. You know, the little magnifying glass. Any help? I use Chrome on a laptop. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:30, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Also reported at Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar#Autofill of citations with pings to maintainers. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:54, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:28, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

CSD categories

Hi! Can anyone explain (or even fix?) this: {{CSD-categories}} shows 7 candidates for speedy deletion as "Abandoned drafts/AfC submissions"; Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as abandoned drafts or AfC submissions is empty. It's been this way for several days at least. Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:56, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

phab:T200402, phab:T202833, phab:T18036 - take your pick @Justlettersandnumbers: - category counts aren't reliable. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:14, 20 March 2019 (UTC)