Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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

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

« Archives, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214

Adding transparency to make templates more dark-mode friendly

As someone who has witnessed the transition to Fandom Desktop which had a dark mode included, I want to suggest something that might actually be good for templates, and that is adding transparency to backgrounds (not to the font, just to backgrounds using rgba or hex codes) This could be done automatically but it might be better to do so in wikitext and may be a good addition to the manual of style. This would allow the text to be colored white (or whatever) and we would not have to auto-color stuff with backgrounds black. I wonder what level of transparency would be good for this. I was thinking 0.1 but there isn't a good way to check. Maybe this could be done as a bot task for inline styles and by interface admins for CSS sheets. Awesome Aasim 19:34, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe that is useful for the night mode gadget (I would not know), but for the vector-2022/minerva night mode using 'background:transparent' where the light mode color is white is frowned upon per Mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis#Avoid using background: none or background: transparent. Snævar (talk) 21:58, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

No I do not think background: transparent; should be used. I think there should be partial transparency. Something like this:

Red

Yellow

Green

Try viewing like this and you should see that the colors should appear fine on both light and dark without any adjustments. Awesome Aasim 22:45, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Wait that is so weird. Why is the text color being changed to this black color when background tags are used? I am just testing with safe mode and it is happening. Thoughts? Awesome Aasim 22:48, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

@Awesome Aasim: The text color is changed to black because a CSS rule was put into MediaWiki that automatically sets the text color to #202122 in dark mode if no text color is specified locally. If you don't want this to happen, you can simply add color:inherit; like this: Green. Andumé (talk) 01:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

For more information see phab:T358797. Andumé (talk) 01:16, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I am still confused why was that task implemented? They probably should have just consulted with communities first as to how they would like templates and whatnot to be implemented. Using a light/dark mode switch would be ideal but having partial transparency would be easier to implement for template designers. Especially for the number of templates that use a combination of inline styles and TemplateStyles. I think there should probably be a task for adding transparency to inline elements. Awesome Aasim 16:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

@Awesome Aasim: I believe this fix was implemented because smaller wiki would likely not have enough technical contributors to fix the affected templates locally in a reasonable amount of time. Once all of the templates affected by the global rule are fixed, it can be disabled using MediaWiki:Wikimedia-styles-exclude. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikimediaMessages#Disabling_styles for more infomation. Hope this helps! Andumé (talk) 22:48, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding 'display:transparent' is a later stage thing and too soon to do now. Since you are mentioning templates and templatestyles, pages in the template namespace that are not redirects or subpages are 3047 and number of "styles.css" pages in the template namespace are 570. Disabling night mode styles from Wikimedia Messages needs to be done with other changes that make the whole stylesheet unnecessary. Snævar (talk) 02:27, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

That CSS does not work. There is the opacity property but that is not what we should use. We should be adding transparency to just the background colors, like I showed above, not to the entire elements. Awesome Aasim 18:52, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

"Remember me" not working as intended for me

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T372702

Exactly as title. The checkbox states that it would last a year, yet sometimes I would find myself not logged in even though I am using the same device, same browser, etc. It is just a mild annoyance, but can someone give me pointers on how to fix this? Thanks in advance. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 01:26, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Could happen if you log out on another device in the meantime. hgzh 10:51, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

But I am only using this one device logged in, and I'm quite sure my account wasn't hacked (hopefully(?)). —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 11:23, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Anything that clears or blocks your local storage (cookies) can invalidate your saved logon. Some browser or browser extension updates can cause this. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

FWIW I was logged out unexpectedly under similar circumstances on the day this was posted as well. I use Windows primarily with Chrome; if you also have a similar configuration, that *could* be an explanation. Graham87 (talk) 04:26, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Well I am using windows and chrome, but this combination is probably so widespread that I would assume it is not where the problem is, or a lot more people would have reported this already. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

@Mint Keyphase: Do you use uBlock Origin like me? That's the only thing I think we could have in common. But even that would be a pretty common combination .... it could've just been bad luck. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't report being unexpectedly logged out, because it's a relatively minor inconvenience; I certainly didn't think to. Graham87 (talk) 12:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Nope —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:13, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Using Linux + Chrome: I was logged out today, after a Chrome s/w update. -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 15:38, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

How often does this happen? Every time you close the browser? Shut down the computer? Can you log in to other websites with the same browser and they persist just fine? Nardog (talk) 15:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Well, other websites like Fandom don't seem to be affected. But a similar thing happens on Edge for the website of a tutoring service, which may or may not be related(?) —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 10:46, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

And the first question? Nardog (talk) 23:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Kinda random, to be honest, at first it was like twice a week, now it is once every two weeks or so. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 02:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Does your device have any kind of storage problem; if there is cookies are likely to be auto-deleted. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 04:48, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think so. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 03:25, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I’ve been noticing a similar thing. Most of the time I get auto logged back in the moment I hit log in, but sometimes I get fully logged out. I use WIN11+Brave and IOS+Safari. Lordseriouspig 04:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

If it's as infrequent as once every couple of weeks (and I'm guessing you use Wikipedia considerably more frequently than that), then I'm going with you either logged out on another device or you logged out from some other Wikimedia website. For most web services, your session is tied to your browser or browser instance, but on Wikimedia, when you logout from any Wikimedia session on any browser instance or any computer, you will be logged out on all instances. Fabrickator (talk) 04:52, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

The one where I only have to click login once happens daily. Lordseriouspig 05:03, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm having the same issue; Sometimes I am logged out and a message comes up saying "You're Centrally Logged In" and I'm logged in automatically; Sometimes I am logged out and logged back in when I press the log in button; Sometimes I have to re-enter my log in credentials again to log in. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 06:24, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

As I recall, I was seeing that business of being logged out and a message came up saying "You're Centrally logged in" and then I would be logged in automatically a few weeks ago, but not lately. Editing only from a chromebook. Donald Albury 15:43, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

What's with the look of Special:PendingChanges?

I'm begging whoever is in charge of this to revert to the previous look. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 00:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Do you mean the the changes described in T191156, which were deployed around the end of June/early July? --rchard2scout (talk) 07:13, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, specifically this. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 16:29, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Remove redirects and redlinks from my watchlist

Is there an easy way to remove redirects and redlinks from my (long) watchlist? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 06:01, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Do you mean when viewing Special:Watchlist? Here's a CSS rule that hides both:

/* hide edits to redirects and redlinked pages from watchlist */
li.mw-changeslist-line:has(a.mw-redirect),
li.mw-changeslist-line:has(a.mw-changeslist-title.new) {
  display: none;
}

It goes in your CSS. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:23, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

You can also use Special:EditWatchlist to check all the titles you no longer want, and remove them entirely. — xaosflux ^Talk 08:49, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

If you install User:BrandonXLF/GreenRedirects then redirects will be green at Special:EditWatchlist and elsewhere. Redlinks are already red there. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

• I want to remove them entirely. My list is so long that I don't want to go through them looking for ones in italiacs. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

If you are willing to copy-paste Special:EditWatchlist/raw to a public wiki page like User:Bubba73/Watchlist then I can look at trimming it with some regex, ifexist and Module:Redirect#IsRedirect, probably 500 or 250 pages at a time due to a MediaWiki limit. Then you can copy it back. I may not have time today. If there are pages you watch with a time limit then I don't know whether the limit will be remembered. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:28, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@Bubba73 My User:Ahecht/Scripts/watchlistcleaner script does exactly that. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:46, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, that sounds like what I'm looking for..

Resolved

Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:04, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I did that and it removed 34 pages for me. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:55, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

TOC not displayed for non-logged in users

I know this must be an extremely dumb question, but please bear with me.

I have just finished drafting a long article (7,000 words readable prose) in my User space. I asked a friend for comments and was told there is no Table of Contents (TOC). This seems to be the case: unless you are logged in (which my friend wasn't), an article displays with no TOC. This seems to hold for any article, in mainspace or otherwise.

Can this really be true? It makes long articles very difficult to read for readers who are not logged in (i.e. most of them). I have tried forcing a Table of Contents with but it makes no difference.

It seems kind of difficult to believe that the average, casual reader of Wikipedia articles doesn't see a Table of Contents (unless he/she knows to force the display).

Am I missing something obvious, or is there a way of fixing this problem? Ttocserp 23:27, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@Ttocserp I'm guessing the page is User:Ttocserp/Slave-owning slaves? The TOC works on that page. The person viewing it may have a narrow screen, and in the default vector-2022 skin the TOC will collapse in to the icon to the left of the page title. Have them check there. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:30, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

If they are on mobile, the contents may be between the lead paragraph and the first section. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:31, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I believe you are right that it has to do with the default vector-2022 skiin. That said, it doesn't fix the basic problem i.e. the Average Joe doesn't get to see a TOC. My friend has a big, wide laptop. Ttocserp 23:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

The TOC does appear in Vector 2022. Nardog (talk) 23:42, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Then I am totally bewildered. Is there any kind of technical fix? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ttocserp (talk • contribs) 00:00, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

For what? Nardog (talk) 00:02, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

The non-display of the TOC in what must be quite common circumstances.Ttocserp 00:07, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Can you provide a screenshot of the page with no TOC appearing? Anomie⚔ 00:10, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Does this help? The TOC is viewed by clicking the symbol made up of three dots and three lines, to the left of the page name.

To show the Table of Contents in the Vector 2022 closed state (not logged in)

NebY (talk) 00:32, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I now see that the problem is not what I thought it was. A TOC does display down the left-hand side, but only a rudimentary one (only level 2 headings). So I guess to fix that I have some learning to do.Ttocserp 00:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Some of the headings, for example the one for Add A Fact experimental tool from Future Audiences on this page, should have > symbols beside them. Clicking the symbol opens the further levels. NebY (talk) 00:47, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

The lower-level headings are there too, just collapsed. Nardog (talk) 00:48, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

The TOC is collapsed on that page because there are more than the number of headings that allow for an automatically expanded TOC (I think 19). See T333801, T317818, T333017, and probably more tasks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:08, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I have reduced the number of headings, and it works. Ttocserp 00:33, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Message About Unfamiliar Device

About 24 hours ago, I accessed Wikipedia on my cell phone from a car for hire, but was logged out. I went through the process of entering my password for my mobile account, and was logged back on. I then received an email saying that I had accessed Wikipedia from a device that I had not used recently. That wasn't accurate; it was the same cell phone as I have been using for about six months. My question is whether that message really means that I logged on to Wikipedia from an IP address in an unfamiliar IP address range, because I was using a satellite connection. Or was my device unfamiliar because I hadn't logged on in a few months because I had stayed logged on?

I do not have a security issue. I am just wondering whether it really means that I accessed Wikipedia from an unfamiliar IP address range, or whether it means that my device is unfamiliar because I haven't logged on from it for months because I have been continuously logged on. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:29, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

These notices are based on the IP address but the message is less technical written for accessibility reasons. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 18:24, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Okay. A retired IT engineer can figure out that it really means the IP address range. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:20, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

My Wikiscan stats stopped updating in 2023

Hi, I have noticed that my contributions stats on English Wikipedia haven't updated on Wikiscan since November 2023. [1] However, they still update for my contributions on other projects, like French Wikipedia. [2] Is there anything I can do to fix this? Thanks! – Odjob16 Talk 17:40, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

That is a project that is completely a third party. We cannot help you. Izno (talk) 18:17, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Interface change

Is this possible to hide "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" description at the very top of each article? Also is this possible to hide description "This page was last edited on 10 August 2024, at 23:16." at the very bottom of the each page? #f-list #lastmod {display: none;} doesn't works. Eurohunter (talk) 18:25, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Put this in your common.css:

#siteSub {
  display: none;
}

#footer-info-lastmod {
  display: none;
}

It works for me, anyway. The first one is the "From Wikipedia..." and the second one is the footer. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:44, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: Looks like footer-info-lastmod also doesn't works. Eurohunter (talk) 21:04, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

The first selector (#siteSub) is correct. The second selector should be #lastmod --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:47, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Not in Vector 2022. If you ask interface questions then please always reveal if you use another skin. Try this if it's MonoBook:

#lastmod {display:none !important;}

PrimeHunter (talk) 21:52, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Can a Lua script on wikipedia contain Javascript and run it?

Can a Lua script on wikipedia contain Javascript and run it? If so, how? Polygnotus (talk) 01:32, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

No. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:35, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

But we could potentially extract the JavaScript into a template gadget if there's a really good reason you need to run custom JavaScript. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 01:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Pppery: Thank you. My idea is:

We have {{verify spelling}} which allows you to mark a potential typo you are unsure about (if it is a typo and if so, how to fix it).

In javascript its not too hard to turn

{{verify spelling|tyop|suggestion=typo}}

which currently renders as:

into, for example: tyop [replace with: typo ✓ x]

Clicking the cross would remove the template and clicking the checkmark would implement the change and remove the template and then reload the page.

But the downside of a javascript is having to convince everyone to put it in their common.js. If I write the javascript, do you think it could be turned into a gadget? How does that procedure (if any) work? Polygnotus (talk) 01:47, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Pppery: Script is here: User:Polygnotus/verify.js (I am abusing the |reason= because there is no suggestion parameter yet). I've tested it on my userpage with

{{verify spelling|reason=typo=>typo}}

Polygnotus (talk) 02:20, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

This seems silly - when would one ever use that template if one knew the typo fix, rather than fixing the typo themselves. If the template adder wasn't sure enough to fix the typo then driveby JavaScript users won't be either. Yes, this is close to an argument to delete {{verify spelling}}. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Pppery: Au contraire mon frère:

1. Take the most frequently used words
2. generate possible misspellings. The result looks like this:

   description,deescription

   description,desscription

   description,desccription

3. check if those misspellings occur in the latest dump and delete all lines that occur 0 or more than 50 times.
4. check them against the Action API to see if they still exist and which articles they are on.

   category|catgeory|David F. Walker

   category|cateogry|Natasha Bedingfield

   category|cateogry|Giovanni Falcone

5. I then use a seriously unhealthy amount of regex to see if they should be fixed or not (e.g. they are not in a comment, certain templates, certain parameters and the article does not use stuff like {{nobots}} or [sic] et cetera.

I end up with an insane amount of possible typos.

I can fix em myself with my AWB module or turn them into wikilinks and solve em with my javascript (see User:Polygnotus/typos) or I can use my homebrew AWB-like thing based on Selenium and ducttape. But there are simply too many for me myself and I to fix.

In some cases I have no clue if something is a typo and if so, how to fix it. Figuring that out can take a decent amount of time. No problem for one or two, but if you have tens of thousands it becomes a bit much, you know? Polygnotus (talk) 04:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

And we have things like WP:Correct typos in one click which do that much better than the implied maintenance tag bot you are suggesting. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:56, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Pppery: Possible typo detected. Arming missile launchers. Polygnotus (talk) 04:58, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

LOL. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:59, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Pppery: Aaah you fixed it. Anyway, while Correct typos in one click is super cool, I can still find tens of thousands of typos. So the problem hasn't been solved yet by its existence.

This is a different approach; Correct typos in one click hinges on luring people to an external website to do a pretty boring task. You could improve that model by offering them barnstars at certain levels of achievement and gamifying it and the like. But attracting people to an external website without an advertising budget is always gonna be hard. And typofixing is not sexy. There will be some hardcore users who return, but who is gonna make a calender event to return monthly when the new dump has been parsed?

External tools will always have a huge discoverability and user retention problem. People adopt bots when their owners disappear so that would also increase the bus factor. Polygnotus (talk) 05:01, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Smileys

These smileys look fine in light mode, but they look weird and vaguely racist in dark mode. Does someone know how to fix that?

😀😀😀🤠

I am using Vector legacy and Wikipedia:Dark mode (gadget) and FF and Pop OS.

Thanks, Polygnotus (talk) 12:01, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I doubt the gadget has any easy way to recognise emoji and exclude them from being inverted. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 12:04, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Hm, good point. Polygnotus (talk) 12:06, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the appearance (including the colouring) is browser-specific. What I mean is, if I view this page in Firefox and also in Edge, those emojis look different in colour and also in other ways, such as the shape of the teeth. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

This is exactly the reason why the foundation didn't end up using tha method of the Gadget to provide dark mode, and it is listed in Wikipedia:Dark_mode_(gadget)#Limitations. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@TheDJ: Does the official dark mode only work on Vector2022? Can I use it on Vector2010? I was pretty confused by that. Polygnotus (talk) 20:30, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Official dark mode is supported on Vector 2022 and on Minerva. It is not supported/provided elsewhere today, but like all the software deployed, the skins are open source. Izno (talk) 20:44, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I hope official dark mode support comes to Vector2010 soon but that appears to be unlikely (if I understand Phabricator correctly, haven't done much digging). Polygnotus (talk) 21:12, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Conditional expressions bolding?

{{#ifeq: and {{#if: bolding text after having added a param to a template. What am I doing wrong? Qwerty284651 (talk) 14:10, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The leading semicolon? See MOS:DEFLIST.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Qwerty284651: Look at the workaround right after if:slam in the code. That's probably what you want. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:30, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks. Qwerty284651 (talk) 14:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The general problem and some workarounds are described at "If the first character of a template expansion is one of four wiki markup characters" at Help:Template#Problems and workarounds. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Can't save edit due to blacklisted link, but edit doesn't contain blacklisted link

I'm unable to save an edit due to the error "Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist."

"The following link has triggered a protection filter: about.com"

I haven't added any external links. I can't share the text that's triggering the apparently erroneous alert, since that text is triggering the blacklist filter. If there is in fact a link to about.com, I can only think it would be due to a typo or some kind of technical issue with a template transclusion, but I have exhausted my own ability to troubleshoot the issue.

How can I get assistance in troubleshooting this? Thanks! —danhash (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Danhash: It's about User:Danhash/Film project and not a live article so you can wrap the whole page in <nowiki>...</nowiki> before saving. Then we can see your code and track down the cause. I suspect you are transcluding blacklisted links from 3D film and Hearing loss. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:45, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: I have been working with the {{get short description}} template to pull Short Descriptions of pages in my project into a table for easy reference. I removed the transclusion of the Short Descriptions of those two articles, and the page saved. I don't know why either of those Short Descriptions would trigger the blacklist for "about.com" though, as the transcluded text is "Film that gives an illusion of three-dimensional depth" and "Partial or total inability to hear" respectively. Is there a technical issue with those descriptions or with the template itself?

Also, when in Edit Source mode, I'm getting the message "Warning: Post-expand include size is too large. Some templates will not be included." How do I resolve this?

Thanks! —danhash (talk)

In Edit Source mode I'm also getting multiple messages about {{Cite Web}}, {{Cite Journal}}, and {{Citation}} templates, which are not present in the page I'm editing. I'm assuming that the {{get short description}} template is transcluding them somehow, though they aren't showing up when viewing the page. —danhash (talk) 18:15, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

The cs1|2 messaging is likely because of this. The code fetches the article wikitext and then calls frame:preprocess() on it which renders the wikitext into html (same as happens when you click the publish button). Converting to html causes all cs1|2 templates in whatever article is being preprocessed to be rendered. If there is anything in the cs1|2 templates that creates an error or maintenance message, those messages will show up in the preview message box.

Once converted to html, Module:get short description looks for the <div>...</div> tags that wrap the short description. Not at all obvious that such a complicated mechanism is required. Pinging the author who can perhaps explain.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

This peculiar mechanism may also explain the inability to publish. The preprocessed page that holds the blacklisted item triggers the filter.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:40, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: That seems awfully complex as well as resource-intensive for what seems like could be a simple database call. Is there an easier way to query for Short Descriptions (such as querying Wikidata)? —danhash (talk) 18:50, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I expect that there is. Wikidata is possible, but I think that I've seen editors overriding the wikidata short description so, if they are doing that, wikidata won't be very reliable (if it ever was). Let us see what the module author has to say.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:07, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe the confusingly named Module:GetShortDescription (not the same as Module:Get short description) would work better for this purpose. You might also look at {{Annotated link}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:52, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Apparently not reliable for 3,959,819 articles. CMD (talk) 20:00, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

{{get short description}} is very expensive on the 2 MB limit for Help:Template limits#Post-expand include size. For example, {{get short description|Sign language}} uses 485K (23%) of the limit even though the whole wikitext of Sign language is only 124K. It doesn't help to invoke the used module directly with {{#invoke:Get short description|main|Sign language}}. But {{annotated link|Sign language}} only uses 0.2K. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:42, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I have hacked a lightweight version of Module:Get short description in its sandbox. This version recognizes all to the {{Short description}} redirects in addition to its canonical name.

To test it, copy the ~/sandbox to your clipboard, and then edit Module:Get short description. Replace its contents with the contents of your clipboard. Put User:Danhash/Film project in the Preview page with this template textbox and then click the attached Show preview button. And yeah, do not click Publish changes.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:47, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

This would be a fine addition to Module:Template redirect regex, if you choose to use it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  10:16, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Danhash, I made a quick test on your subpage and undid it back to your version. Please see revision 1240520247 of 20:35, 15 August 2024, and see if that does what you want. Mathglot (talk) 20:39, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Mathglot, your test worked! And I reverted back to your version. Thank you!

Jonesey95/PrimeHunter/Trappist the monk, how does one invoke a Module; is it through a template? I also noticed that Module:GetShortDescription returns the Wikipedia Short Description by default, but if one doesn't exist, it returns the Wikidata Short Description. You can, however, specify to use *only* the Wikipedia description and return a blank string if it's empty, which would be the needed functionality for my purposes since the Wikidata description isn't always suitable for Wikipedia (see WP:Short description#Why not simply re-use Wikidata's item descriptions?). Does the edited version by Mathglot use the correct module parameter for this? —danhash (talk) 19:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Implementing category editnotices

Just today, it became possible for Lua to read out the categories used on a specific page. See phab:T50175. You can see how this works in this sandbox module and in testwiki:Module:Editnotice load and [3].

I want to see if we can implement category editnotices here. Other improvements I have made to this module include page ID-specific editnotices, useful because it allows the page to move around without having to move the editnotice around to match the title. There is probably some cleanup that can be done with this module, for example using Lua functions instead of preprocessing {{replace}}, but I think it is a good start. Awesome Aasim 20:19, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I wish this existed two months ago when I wrote Module:Engvar/detect. Would've been so much easier to grab categories rather than trying to capture the name of every redirect to every template. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 22:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Actually, never mind, looks like it's expensive (unlike getContent(), which grabs the entire contents of the page). --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 00:09, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

How is grabbing the entire contents of the page not expensive? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:19, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Because it doesn't require much compute, and because it stays with tables of the database, that we are already accessing while parsing anyways. Things are only marked as expensive if they cause potential exponential increases of load. Crossing from parsing one article to parsing many articles or dependencies of the article is such a case, as this creates a spiderweb of parsing dependencies that have to be accessed. Accessing a blob of text we already have in memory is much less expensive. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:29, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

More specifically, my thinking back when I was working on Scribunto was that getContent() is the same thing from a data-loading perspective as transcluding a page (and, IIRC, it uses the same underlying data-fetching functions), and since transcluding a page isn't considered an expensive operation so getContent() shouldn't be either. On the other hand, most other parser functions that have to make a separate database query to load some data are considered expensive, and so Scribunto functions that make database queries are marked as expensive for that reason. Whoever implemented the new feature likely followed the same reasoning. Anomie⚔ 19:05, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

editing in the dark

The site recently began darkening its countenance at night. I don't have a personal preference one way or another, but it benefits those around me, so I don't want to use hacky methods to undo it. The editing window's colouration has fluctuated several times (see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 214#Dark mode issues), but has settled recently. Unfortunately, mine is still showing dark-grey text against a black editing-window-background; I'm typing this in a separate program and will copy/paste it when done, hoping it'll save properly. I assume this isn't widespread, else there'd be a rapid fix, but I'd really like to find a solution soon. Anybody know what and why I'm experiencing? Much obliged, — Fourthords | =Λ= | 01:47, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

@Fourthords If you are seeing normal text in dark-grey but wiki-syntax like double-square-brackets in colors (e.g. like this screenshot), then this is a bug related to the extension which powers that syntax-highlight feature, phab:T365311. That bug is being worked on and should be fixed soon (next week or two I'd guess, from the latest comments there), but for now you can toggle off the syntaxhighlight with the 7th button in the toolbar (a marker-pen shape). I hope that helps. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Note that the above behaviour only happens in the "automatic" color mode, light and dark are unaffected. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 18:56, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm seeing! I thought the colour-coding behaviour had been the default for... I don't know, a decade or more? Is this not affecting an outsized amount of the editing community? Regardless, at least that'll let me edit within the browser again (and it's not like I have those color-indicating features in the word processor I've been using during the nighttime hours, anyway!). I'll test it in the next couple of days. Thanks for the heads-up! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 19:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Deleted contributions invisible

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T372444

I'm having a weird admin problem and that is that Deleted Contributions don't show up when I know that an editor has them. For example, I deleted Draft:Peter Bianca as a hoax article by User:Borris Lana but nothing shows up on Special:DeletedContributions/Borris Lana (sorry only visible to admins). I thought it was just a weird glitch, I just moved on. But I was investigating an edit by User:Abdullah Hill Mahin and in the blocking rationale on Special:Contributions/Abdullah_Hill_Mahin it states Spam / advertising-only account; see also deleted contribs. But when I look at Special:DeletedContributions/Abdullah Hill Mahin, the page is blank, no deleted contributions appear. Luckily, looking at these pages is a small part of what I do as an admin but I do check Deleted Contributions while I'm editing and if there is a problem, I'd like it to get fixed.

Any admins facing similar problems or have an idea what might be going on? Thanks. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:28, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

This is phab:T372444 as mentioned at WP:AN#DeletedContributions broken. Workaround in the meantime: Go to Special:DeletedContributions and put the user's name in the form; you'll get something like this. —Cryptic 02:36, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

User:PrimeHunter/Deleted contribs.js adds a working "Deleted contribs" link under "Tools" in userspace. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:26, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

These work:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:DeletedContributions&target=Borris%20Lana
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:DeletedContributions&target=Borris+Lana

but replacing that plus sign with an underscore breaks it, as does replacing the &target= with a slash. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the advice, folks. I didn't return to this noticeboard until now to see it because the problem looked like it was fixed but it returned today. A sockpuppet account that had reportedly made 100 edits has 0 contributions and 0 deleted contributions (it's User:Santana Montana (Muse)), so I'll try some of your work-arounds. I just want to see if this sock farms keep recreating the same draft or main space article over and over again. Thanks again. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:27, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

"Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary)" preference did not work for me just now

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T372643

I have had the "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary)" option selected in my Preferences for years. Until just now, it has always prompted me when the edit summary (a) was blank, (b) consisted of only a section header because I was editing a section, or (c) consisted of the default undo summary. Just now, I responded to a talk page section and clicked Publish, forgetting to add custom text to the summary. I was not prompted to add an edit summary. Can anyone reproduce this problem?

I am using Vector 2022 and the old wikitext editor (I don't know what it's called anymore, but in my Editing Preferences, the "editing toolbar", "Visual Editor, and "wikitext mode" checkboxes are empty). – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:29, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

• Replicated, bug phab:T372643 opened. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:52, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
• Seems to only be in namespace 2. Samples in other namespaces welcome. — xaosflux ^Talk 13:58, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

  @Jonesey95: do you recall the last time this worked as you expected, in "User talk:" space? — xaosflux ^Talk — xaosflux ^Talk 14:11, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

  No, I don't remember, as the tool has conditioned me to put in a comment nearly every time (18 misses in 30,000 edits in 2024; thanks, clever tool!). I probably get prompted by the tool once every few weeks when I click Publish accidentally, so I wouldn't remember what namespace I was in. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

  @Jonesey95: there is a very old special case on that preference, it does not apply to your own user or usertalk page. The documentation has been updated. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

  Fascinating; the description of the Preferences option does not indicate this strange exception. I was surprised to encounter it after 300,000+ edits, including many to my own User Talk page. Thanks for the info. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:28, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

  How odd. I tested just now and did get prompted Reminder: You have not provided an edit summary.... on my user page and my talk page - which is fine. NebY (talk) 03:22, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

  Which editor are you using? I think the exception check is only for the wikitext editor. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:48, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

  I'm using the wikitext editor, but now I've tried editing my user page with visual and source editor, with various combinations of preferences ("Enable the editing toolbar

  This is sometimes called the '2010 wikitext editor'." on and off; "Use the wikitext mode inside the visual editor, instead of a different wikitext editor. This is sometimes called the '2017 wikitext editor'." on and off). Reminder: You have not provided an edit summary.... came up every time. Switching skins didn't defeat it either; would've been odd if it had, but I never knew this behaviour was odd either. I'm still fine with it, but if it's an anomaly you want to pursue then I'm happy to give feedback. Firefox on Windows 10, if it matters. NebY (talk) 10:55, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

interface message 'Vector-toc-beginning'

At en.wiki I can write:

local title_obj = mw.title.new ("MediaWiki:Vector-toc-beginning");
local content = title_obj:getContent();

and it returns the content of MediaWiki:Vector-toc-beginning: '(top)'

If I write the same thing at fr.wiki, it does not work. The page appears to be there: fr:MediaWiki:Vector-toc-beginning. My code should set content to 'Début'. I'm guessing that the content of the fr.wiki page comes from translatewiki. I can also write:

content = mw.getCurrentFrame():callParserFunction('int', {'Vector-toc-beginning'})

That, at least, returns a value: 'Beginning'. Yay, but not what I want. Changing my interface language at fr.wiki from English to French gets me the result that I want: 'Début'.

Is there any way to get the French interface message without it gets translated to the reader's interface language? There is a move afoot to internationalize Module:Section sizes. The content of MediaWiki:Vector-toc-beginning (at en.wiki) is used to name the unnamed lede section in the module's output table. That lede section name should always render in the same language as the local wiki regardless of the user's interface language setting.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:45, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Try mw.message.new( 'vector-toc-beginning' ):inLanguage( mw.language.getContentLanguage() ):plain(). The title_obj:getContent() method only works when the message has been locally customized; if it's using the MediaWiki default, it doesn't work because the page doesn't exist. P.S. Doing just mw.message.new( 'vector-toc-beginning' ):plain() is much like the int method, using the user's interface language. Anomie⚔ 17:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I believe that does it, thank you.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:46, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Preloading text

It is possible to preload a template, but how can I preload specific text? Preloading a template is useful, but sometimes you don't know the text you want to preload in advance.

mw:Manual:Creating pages with preloaded text

I want something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Polygnotus?action=edit&section=new&preload=This%20is%20just%20some%20text

Polygnotus (talk) 02:28, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

You can use preloadparams[]= while preloading a suitable page. User:PrimeHunter/$1 (not protected) only contains $1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Polygnotus?action=edit&section=new&preload=User:PrimeHunter/$1&preloadparams%5b%5d=This+is+just+some+text. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:48, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Thank you, that is way better than my workaround! Polygnotus (talk) 02:53, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

No favicon on Google

I know this is probably out of our remit, but does anyone have any idea why Google currently shows a placeholder instead of the "W" as the favicon for en.wikpiedia.org (example)? It seems to be occurring only for some subdomains (en, fr, la, nn, no). Is there anything WMF can do about it? Nardog (talk) 05:27, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

This is related to the issues that are described in phab:T348203, has been happening for a while. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 09:16, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

How do you know it's related? Nardog (talk) 10:21, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

There are various comments saying that the favicon is missing. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 12:40, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

None of them identify the cause or its relation to the issue described in the task. Nardog (talk) 00:12, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Is this still happening? I see the expected W in the example link you provided. – 2804:F1...D1:BB5D (talk) 17:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Seems like its fixed now. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 17:25, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

DISPLAYTITLE refuses to lowercase surname on Iris Menas

DISPLAYTITLE complains about a disallowed modification when trying to lowercase the "M" on Iris Menas. Could someone knowledgeable please investigate? Paradoctor (talk) 21:41, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

@Paradoctor It's because the title would need to be Iris menas, and there was an RFM away from that title last year. Theknightwho (talk) 21:47, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Ugh, should've noticed the RFC. And I just found out that I misread WP:DISPLAYTITLE. Paradoctor (talk) 22:00, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Section link scripts

They (User:SoledadKabocha/copySectionLink.js and User:Bility/copySectionLink.js) don't seem to be working even though they're enabled in my common.js page. What is wrong? Kailash29792 (talk) 10:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Many scripts related to section headers broke due to changes in HTML layout. You can try using forks of such scripts with fixes for that, like User:Andrybak/Scripts/copy-section-link. The scripts you've linked and their forks are listed at Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Sections. —⁠andrybak (talk) 10:47, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

List of articles for clean-up by wikiproject

Hi! I'm wondering if it is possible to create a clean-up list of articles by Wikiprojects that are assessed as a stub, but don't have a stub template in the bottom of the article? In such cases either wikiproject assessment is outdated, or a proper stub template is missing. My main interest in this matter is WP:Estonia. (And are there any other tools that can help to find higher than stub quality articles that are still assessed as a stub? My guess is Wikipedia has 5-10% more quality than the statistics show) Pelmeen10 (talk) 13:01, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

quarry:query/85598. (Spoiler: there are, as usual, lots.) WP:Request a query/Archive 4#Stub-class articles not tagged with a stub template has the more general case, now somewhat out-of-date and not sorted by the talk page cat name, but that wouldn't be difficult to add.

#Stubs by Article Size higher up that same archive has one method for your second question, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. —Cryptic 13:33, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Notelist template

I'm not sure what happened, but the {{Notelist}} template has been displaying additional bullets and after a dummy edit instead displays error messages. I noticed it at this page: Top Cooku Dupe Cooku season 1. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Can you please make a screenshot? Which error messages? Cite error: A list-defined reference with the name "ep11t" has been invoked, but is not defined in the <references> tag (see the help page). <= that one? Polygnotus (talk) 03:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one. But, the ref is defined in the {{Reflist}} Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:40, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

The error message links to Help:Cite errors/Cite error empty references define, which explains the problem: Note: It is possible to get this error message when nesting footnotes in list-defined references, unfortunately the only fix in this situation is to not use list-defined references for entries that are nested. —⁠andrybak (talk) 06:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Another thing is when using the new "Parsoid"; the error message doesn't appear but instead a couple of more letters are displayed. Error message appears afeter a dummy edit. Screenshot: [4] Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 07:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Offtopic but you seem to have installed User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist.js twice in your common.js. Polygnotus (talk) 03:16, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I've removed the duplicate one, Thanks! Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:39, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You can't use list defined notes that contain references, it's a limitation of the MediaWiki software and is mentioned in the template documentation (see Template:Efn). If you define the notes outside of the notelist the error messages will go away. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!

Hello. For many years, community members have requested an easy way to re-use references with different details. Now, a MediaWiki solution is coming: The new sub-referencing feature will work for wikitext and Visual Editor and will enhance the existing reference system. You can continue to use different ways of referencing, but you will probably encounter sub-references in articles written by other users. More information on the project page.

We want your feedback to make sure this feature works well for you:

• Please try the current state of development on beta wiki and let us know what you think.
• Sign up here to get updates and/or invites to participate in user research activities.

We are aware that enwiki and other projects already use workarounds like {{sfn}} for referencing a source multiple times with different details. The new sub-referencing feature doesn’t change anything about existing approaches to referencing, so you can still use sfn. We have created sub-referencing, because existing workarounds don’t work well with Visual Editor and ReferencePreviews. We are looking forward to your feedback on how our solution compares to your existing methods of re-using references with different details.

Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We will reach out to creators/maintainers of tools and templates related to references beforehand.

Please help us spread the message. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 11:11, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a very important task to work on, but I am not sure how this proposal is an improvement for those of us who do not use the VisualEditor.

Compare:

<ref name="Samer M. Ali">Samer M. Ali, 'Medieval Court Poetry', in ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women'', ed. by Natana J. Delong-Bas, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), I 651-54.</ref>

{{r|Samer M. Ali|p=653}}

or:

<ref name="Samer M. Ali"/>{{rp|653}}

with:

<ref name="Samer M. Ali">Samer M. Ali, 'Medieval Court Poetry', in ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women'', ed. by Natana J. Delong-Bas, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), I 651-54.</ref>

<ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="Samer M. Ali, p. 653">p. 653</ref>

existing workarounds don’t work well with Visual Editor and ReferencePreviews OK, then VE and ReferencePreviews need to be fixed so that they work well with the existing ways of referencing.

Adding another competing standard (obligatory XKCD) is not very useful unless you want to disallow the others which will probably make people very mad (see WP:CITEVAR) and is not necessarily an improvement.

There is no reason why VE or RP would require a new standard, they could just as easily support one of the existing ones (and ideally all of em).

Am I missing something?

Polygnotus (talk) 15:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Sfn is routinely out of sync with its parent and requires the use of third party scripts to detect that it is so. Extended references do not i.e. the Cite extension will issue a warning when you have an extension without a parent.

And Rp is objectively subjectively ugly. Presenting it as a potential option is offensive. :)

In <ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="Samer M. Ali, p. 653">p. 653</ref>, a name for the subreference is not required (<ref extends="Samer M. Ali">p. 653</ref> will be typical I suppose), and even when it is you can abbreviate since you know what the parent is (e.g. <ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="SMA653">p. 653</ref>).

Some other benefits:

• Reference extensions work with reference previews to display the extension directly with the primary citation.
• The extensions are grouped with the primary citation in the reference lists.

And the third, which you brushed aside: VE works well with reference extensions.

None of which can be said of the other two items. Izno (talk) 16:01, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

And as for OK, then VE and ReferencePreviews need to be fixed so that they work well with the existing ways of referencing., MediaWiki systems try to be agnostic about the specific things that wikis do around X or Y or Z. As a general design principle this helps to avoid maintaining systems that only some wikis use, and leaves the burden of localization and each wiki's design preferences to those wikis. Rp additionally has nothing to work with in regard to VE and ref previews. Izno (talk) 16:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@Izno: Thank you. Gotta sell these things a bit, you know?

Is this style of referencing intended to replace all others? If its better, then lets just abandon all other variants.

The extends keyword is familiar to codemonkeys but perhaps not the most userfriendly for others. I am not sure why it would be harder to show an error when someone writes <ref name="nonexistant" />{{rp|653}} than when someone writes <ref extends="nonexistant">p. 653</ref> but in theory this new system could auto-repair references (has that been considered?) Category:Pages_with_broken_reference_names contains 1300+ pages.

Also I am curious what your opinion Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2024_August_15#Template:R here would be. Polygnotus (talk) 16:17, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Izno—I'd rather have a syntax that integrates with the <ref>...</ref> syntax, rather than relying on templates, which mixes in a different syntax, and are wiki-specific. isaacl (talk) 16:28, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

If you control the parser you can make any string do anything you want so the currently chosen syntax is, in itself, no advantage or disadvantage. Polygnotus (talk) 16:31, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You provided the wikitext for two examples and asked if one seemed to be an improvement, so I responded that in my opinion, the syntax of the sub-referencing feature under development is conceptually more cohesive to an editor than one where wikitext surrounded in braces follows the <ref ... /> code, or uses solely wikitext surrounded by braces. Sure, any strings can be turned into any other strings, but there are still advantages of some input strings over others. I also prefer the resulting output of the reference list. isaacl (talk) 16:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, but I assume that things are not set in stone yet. I don't mind the difference between [1]:635 and [1.1] or what exact wikicode is used. So I am trying to think about functionality (e.g. automatically repairing broken refs/automatically merging refs instead of how things get displayed/which wikicode is used). Polygnotus (talk) 16:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I apologize as your first post seemed to be concerned about the wikitext markup being used by users of the wikitext editor. From a functionality perspective, I think as Izno alludes to, it will be easier to implement features such as detecting hanging references and merging them together with a syntax that is within the <ref> element, rather than relying on detecting templates and associating them with <ref> elements. That would require the MediaWiki software to treat some wikitext in double braces specially. (It would be easier if the extended information were flagged using triple braces, since it would avoid clashing with the extensible template system, but I don't see any advantages to that over extending the <ref> syntax.) isaacl (talk) 17:09, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Please don't apologize to me (even if there would be a reason to do so, which there isn't), I am a very confused and confusing person and I understand myself roughly 4% of the time (and the world around me far less often than that). Polygnotus (talk) 17:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Good to see this moving forward. My main interest was how it would look on the hover, rather than in the References section. I thought the ref extends might 'fill in' variable fields into the general ref, but it seems instead that it just created a new line below. How flexible is this below line, will it display any wikitext? Could we for example add chapters and quotes? (Which will need manual formatting I assume.) CMD (talk) 16:53, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

URI fragment support might also be useful. One sub-reference could link to, for example, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mexico/#government and another to https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mexico/#economy Polygnotus (talk) 16:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

As noted here meta:Talk:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing#Unintended_consequences .. unleashing this complexity into the mainstream without guidance is a huge mistake that is going to cause years of cleanup work, if ever. There are two main issues I can think of:

• What parameters should be sub-referenced? It should be limited to page numbers, and quotes. Not, for example, multiple works, authors, volumes, issues, IDs, dates of publication, ISBN numbers, etc..
• How is data in a sub-ref added? If it's free-form text, it's a step backwards from CS1|2's uniform |page=42 to a free-form text like "Page 42" or "(p) 42" or whatever free-form text people choose. Bots and tools need to be able to parse the page number(s). Free form text is not semantic. Templated text is semantic. Anything that moves from semantic to non-semnatic is bad design.

Before this is set loose, there must be consensus about how it should be used. It opens an entirely new dimension to citations that is going to impact every user, citation template, bot, bot library (PyWikiBot etc), tool, etc.. -- GreenC 17:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah its also a bit weird to ask for feedback and then already have a proof of concept and say is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. You must ask for feedback before code is written and before any timeline exists. Polygnotus (talk) 17:05, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

At a minimum, it should not be added until there are clear guidelines for usage. More specifically, it should have a feature that issues a red error message if the sub-ref does not contain a special template for displaying page numbers and/or quotes ie. anything else in the sub-ref is disallowed. Then new parameters can be added once consensus is determined. We should have the ability to opt-in parameters, instead of retroactively playing cleanup removing disallowed parameters. -- GreenC 17:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@GreenC: So then you would get something like this, right?

<ref extends="Samer M. Ali" page="" chapter="" quote="" anchor="">
<ref extends="Samer M. Ali">{{subref|page=""|chapter=""|quote=""|anchor=""}}</ref>

And then a form in VE where people can fill it in.

Polygnotus (talk) 17:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

The former was deliberately not chosen during design work as being too inflexible for all the things one might want to make an extending reference. Izno (talk) 19:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

"All the things", which below you said was only page numbers, chapters and quotes. What else do you have in mind? -- GreenC 20:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

There have been previous requests for support in CS1 for subsections of chapters of works. But that's beside the point: we don't need to lock this down out of some misbegotten idea of chaos. YAGNI. Izno (talk) 20:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

@GreenC We don't do that with regular references. There's nothing in the software that produces a red error message if I do <ref>My cousin's roommate's friend told me</ref>, so why should subrefs be enforcing that? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

I actually totally disagree and think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. My anticipation is that most people will use it for the obvious (page numbers). In some cases they may use chapters (a single long text with a single author or even for anthologies). Rarely do I anticipate them using anything else, but I think they should have the luxury of putting whatever they want in the reference.

As regards mandating some use like templates, that's not how it works, though I can imagine some sort of {{Cs1 subref}}... which is probably basically {{harvnb}} and some others.

One thing however that is sure not to occur is to have subreferences of subreferences. This should prevent the vast majority of pathological cases. Izno (talk) 19:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

You think it's a mountain to have a guideline for usage before it's turned on? -- GreenC 20:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Uh, yeah. People have successfully used our current mechanisms for extending a parent reference in many many ways which notably don't fit what you want. Izno (talk) 20:44, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Page continually crashes on mobile

When I view large milkweed bug on my iphone without logging in (just default skin for anon users) using Safari browser, the page repeatedly crashes with the message "A problem repeatedly occured on [the url]." The page partially loads and then crashes. The page loads just fine on my laptop.

I have a hunch that it might be related to the multiple videos embedded on the page. 1) Is there anything to fix this on the page? and/or 2) Is there anything I can do when this happens on my phone? I suppose I could try logging in, but I almost never edit with my phone and only use it to look things up, so would prefer to use anonymously to avoid distractions and overhead related to logging in (e.g., notifications and other stuff). older ≠ wiser 17:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

What version of iOS is your iPhone? Izno (talk) 19:21, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

iOS 17.5.1. older ≠ wiser 19:27, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Eyeballing Phabricator, it looks like videos don't work on versions of Safari much older than that but there are no issues otherwise with Safari + video. This may possibly be phab:T242895 instead, but you're having the issue logged out, and CentralNotice doesn't show up as often for logged out users I think. So maybe a new bug? Izno (talk) 19:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)