Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
Policy | Technical | Proposals | Idea lab | WMF | Miscellaneous |
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 5 days.
Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical) Click "[show]" next to each point to see more details.
|
Glitch on mobile browser display, default settings
[edit]Apologies as I've never reported a bug like this before, so let me know if more details are needed. About a day ago a weird glitch started occurring on mobile browser WP. If I tap on the "Latest comment" detail, in any collapsed or uncollapsed subheader, it jumps me up to the search icon. It selects it but doesn't open the search bar. I haven't checked Phabricator yet to see if this is happening to others. Sarsenet•he/they•(talk) 04:49, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- The same is happening to me. Also, if I scroll back down to the section header and click the "X hours ago" link again, it does scroll down to the highlighted comment. (Chrome on Android, mobile interface). --rchard2scout (talk) 07:18, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- I can see it, but only on Chrome-on-Android. This is a bit unusual, just because normally desktop Chrome viewing the mobile site will share the same behaviors.
- The new mobile search experience was deployed on Tuesday (T380515), which is a suspiciously search-related change in the right timeframe. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Mobile, Chrome-on-Android here and this bug applies to citation "^"s (and numbers) in References sections on first click too.
- Eg, go to Channel Tunnel#References, click the "^" next to citation #1 and it jumps to the search icon. Scroll down and click again and it works as intended; taking you to the usage in the article. Commander Keane (talk) 22:56, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Commander Keane Just tried and was able to repeat this. Also on Chrome on Android for all of this. Sarsenet•he/they•(talk) 23:15, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Would like to get the old mobile search back, one of the main reasons I used the mobile version in the first place (the desktop search is also unsrollable, cuts short descriptions and can't even wait for me to type like the new changes that have been rolled out). The last comment issue is one I noticed as well.
- Terrible, very bad changes. Gotitbro (talk) 04:29, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- To update: I have worked out what is causing this, and have a patch up on T401090 for it. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- This has been deployed, so the jumping-around should no longer be happening. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 21:40, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- This began happening to me too. Firefox on Android. TurboSuperA+[talk] 04:10, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- Confirmed also on Firefox-Android. Commander Keane (talk) 07:10, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Sarsenet, I got the same issue with my phone, i thought it was device issue but now i knew why it's happening.––KEmel49(📝,📤) 02:53, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
- Looks like the updates were pushed without much beta-testing or community feedback. @JDrewniak (WMF) and Jdlrobson: please address this. Gotitbro (talk) 03:49, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
New search bar issues
[edit]Hello, If anyone is aware of any new updates about searchbar on mobile web version. Almost two weeks ago it was all good, the search bar or the functioning everything was smooth. Now? After clicking search bar will load with a delay of 1 second or 2, While clicking on any references from reference section, it should lead me to that inline citation. But it would lead me to search bar. Same with section editing, after clicking edit button it would lead me to search bar. After two or three try i can do section editing. Why is that headache? please remove such updates.––KEmel49(📝,📤) 02:48, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
Should "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" show up when editing a section?
[edit]Special:Edit/Earth shows a big list of transclusion under the editor, starting with Planet Earth and ending with Module:Yesno, but doesn't show the list at all. Was this always the case for editing a section of a page, or did something break recently? I don't look at this list often enough to remember if it was there or not when editing a section.
Both whole-article edit and section-edit show the other two lists: "Wikidata entities used in this page" and "This page is a member of 27 hidden categories" though. —andrybak (talk) 16:26, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- I see a list called "Templates used in this preview (help):" starting and ending as you describe above in both cases. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:40, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Ahh, the templates are shown only in preview, thank you. When exactly the preview gets shown depends on user's settings in Preferences → Editing → Preview. —andrybak (talk) 16:49, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- I think it has always been preview-only for sections, and then it says "Templates used in this preview". MediaWiki doesn't know which templates are transcluded by the section until you preview it. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:42, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Now that I read the replies, I think I always knew it. Maybe I wasn't pressing "Show preview" or something. Accesskeys can be wonky sometimes... Or just had a brain fart. —andrybak (talk) 19:58, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
- I think it has always been preview-only for sections, and then it says "Templates used in this preview". MediaWiki doesn't know which templates are transcluded by the section until you preview it. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:42, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Ahh, the templates are shown only in preview, thank you. When exactly the preview gets shown depends on user's settings in Preferences → Editing → Preview. —andrybak (talk) 16:49, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)
- Searching for templates in the wikitext editor now (annoyingly) opens the collapsed lists below the main edit window. Searching for other text will also open those lists if the text being sought can be found in them. Is that what you're seeing? I asked if there were some way to disable that and got no response; see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 222 § Tech News: 2025-27.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:51, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Hmm. In the HTML source code on the edit pages, I see HTML attribute
hidden=hidden
in Firefox, buthidden=until-found
in Chromium (at least when logged out). - It might be that MediaWiki thinks that Firefox doesn't support it. There are tickets in Mozilla's bugtracker about
hidden=until-found
, but I can't figure out if Firefox actually supposed to support it or not, because I don't know how to search well on Bugzilla among the tickets about the "Find Toolbar". —andrybak (talk) 17:33, 1 August 2025 (UTC)- Firefox added support for
hidden=until-found
very recently, in version 139 [1]. You might not have it yet. Matma Rex talk 18:20, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
- Firefox added support for
- @Trappist the monk: An extremely crude workaround to not display the "Templates used in this preview" list (which is super annoying now that it expands of its own volition, making it difficult to go directly to the editing box after previewing - because the edit box is no longer at the bottom, it's often several pages up from the bottom) is to add the following line to your common.css:
.templatesUsed {display: none;}
- This kludge is okay for me because I never want to see that list. Someone who works with css regularly can no doubt suggest a more elegant solution. --Worldbruce (talk) 23:40, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Yep, that is a kludge. But, it does prevent searches of the templates list and for that I am grateful; thank you. A variant can also prevent searches of the wikidata entities list, hidden categories list, and parser profile data:
.wikibase-entity-usage, .templatesUsed, .hiddencats, .limitreport { display: none }
- I've elected to hide wikidata, templates, and categories. If I need them, I can open the page in an incognito browser window. It would be nice if these lists would just stay collapsed until actually uncollapsed with a mouse click.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 20:08, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- It looks like the lists are supposed to remember whether they were last opened or closed, and try to stay that way. However, this may interact with the feature (recently enabled for Firefox, maybe around a bit longer for Chrome-based browsers) that opens a collapsed section if an in-browser search would find a match inside it to unexpectedly change the saved state to "open". Anomie⚔ 20:23, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- So is this a Firefox feature, or a MediaWiki feature? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:46, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- It's mostly a browser feature, but MediaWiki was changed to use the attributes to make use of the feature. You can read more about the browser feature at MDN, and T327893 for the request to enable it. Anomie⚔ 13:26, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- So is this a Firefox feature, or a MediaWiki feature? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:46, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- It looks like the lists are supposed to remember whether they were last opened or closed, and try to stay that way. However, this may interact with the feature (recently enabled for Firefox, maybe around a bit longer for Chrome-based browsers) that opens a collapsed section if an in-browser search would find a match inside it to unexpectedly change the saved state to "open". Anomie⚔ 20:23, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- Yep, that is a kludge. But, it does prevent searches of the templates list and for that I am grateful; thank you. A variant can also prevent searches of the wikidata entities list, hidden categories list, and parser profile data:
- Hmm. In the HTML source code on the edit pages, I see HTML attribute
Wikipedia Mobile search
[edit]Has the search for Wikipedia Mobile been updated? Boxy, unscrollable, non-user friendly. Would like to the get the old one back. Gotitbro (talk) 04:10, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- It has, yeah. I think it rolled out around the same time as the mobile browser glitch I described above. Sarsenet•he/they•(talk) 04:18, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Gotitbro, I am facing the same problem.––KEmel49(📝,📤) 02:50, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
- @KEmel49 @Gotitbro I suggest filing a ticket. This is just a discussion forum, in order to change something, someone will have to file a ticket at some point, or nothing will happen. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:16, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Yes. However, it is scrollable on my end. —CX Zoom[he/him] (let's talk • {C•X}) 15:25, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- @CX Zoom, Probably they fixed it in some extent.––KEmel49(📝,📤) 16:43, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Logging in with Firefox
[edit]I've noticed that logging in has changed. When I log in on Wikipedia or Wikisource on my computer with Firefox, I'm only logged in to Wikipedia or Wikisource. Before when I logged in, as recently as April, I was logged in to all wiki projects when I logged in with Firefox on my computer (Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, etc). But when I log in with Microsoft Edge, I'm logged in on all wiki projects at the same time. Do you understand what I mean and what has happened and why and how to solve it? Has this been brought up already on this or another language edition? I've already asked about it on Swedish Wikipedia, but maybe I'll get more helpful results here, I was directed to this section specifically. I don't know where else to ask to get a solution. Grey ghost (talk) 15:20, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Grey ghost: If "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" is enabled in Firefox then disable it. See [2] for how to do it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:31, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- I'm the kind of guy who uses more than one device, sometimes I borrow a library computer or someone else's computer I asked for. Then this is still annoying. And I don't think I'm the only Wikipedia user who does this. Many users edit the site in Internet cafés. Can't the technical team do something so that it's like how it was earlier this year? Can I contact them somehow somewhere? Or are they already working on a solution? Grey ghost (talk) 16:00, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Grey ghost: Something did change this year, probably to improve security, but it usually works for me in Firefox. If I'm logged out when I change site then I usually only have to reload the page or click login without filling any login form. Libraries and Internet cafes may have the type of security setting I mentioned so the next user cannot use a login from the previous user. Did you examine the mentioned setting? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:11, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- I looked at the settings but having to do all that seems convoluted. Also, I very often use an incognito setting and I don't know how that affects the situation, checking to see how it does affect it makes things more convoluted. If this is something other Firefox Wikipedia users have to go through, then I think something behind the scenes should change. Is there a way to contact one or more members of the technical team or are they unreachable? Grey ghost (talk) 21:36, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Grey ghost: Something did change this year, probably to improve security, but it usually works for me in Firefox. If I'm logged out when I change site then I usually only have to reload the page or click login without filling any login form. Libraries and Internet cafes may have the type of security setting I mentioned so the next user cannot use a login from the previous user. Did you examine the mentioned setting? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:11, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- I'm the kind of guy who uses more than one device, sometimes I borrow a library computer or someone else's computer I asked for. Then this is still annoying. And I don't think I'm the only Wikipedia user who does this. Many users edit the site in Internet cafés. Can't the technical team do something so that it's like how it was earlier this year? Can I contact them somehow somewhere? Or are they already working on a solution? Grey ghost (talk) 16:00, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- If you have Enhanced Tracking Protection enabled, disable it on Wikimedia websites as it may block or partition third-party cookies, such as the ones used by SUL. OutsideNormality (talk) 16:18, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- Sounds like a side effect of the SUL3 work (which is not great; its goal was exactly to prevent this kind of problem). Are you willing to do some debugging? Either by installing the WikimediaDebug extension, and enabling verbose mode, or (if you know how) logging your network traffic via the developer toolbar)? Then try to log out and log back in again.
- ("Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" will log you out when you close Firefox, but shouldn't be relevant for whether login works across domains. Disabling Enhanced Tracking Protection probably helps, but we'd like the login to work even when it is enabled.) Tgr (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I tried verbose mode on the extension, but it didn't help. Grey ghost (talk) 17:15, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
Can multiref2 get a "ref name"?
[edit]Editing Even Better, fixing harv cite issues and created a new one... Take a look at my edit. I tried creating a ref name= for a multiref2 but that created a new Harv error. So, it didn't work. Why. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 04:31, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- The "Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREF" message is generated by the script your using to show harv errors. It means that the cite is not targeted by any harv references. You don't need to fix it but it can be dismissed by adding
|ref=none
like this. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:16, 4 August 2025 (UTC)- Thanks, I love ref=none! (and use it often). *But*... I still want to know if there's anything technically wrong with ref-naming a multiref2. Also. Why was the system interpreting the multiref2 I used to be a "Harv warning"? It's not a harv/sfn ref is it? - Shearonink (talk) 14:30, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- The message is about the cite not a reference, it's there to let you know the cite has no corresponding references. It's useful if you're working on a large article, and end up with lots of unused cites you no longer need. It's created by the script you have installed for harv error messages, but it's not an error message in and of itself.
- There's no issue with using refnames and {{multiref2}}, the reference tags will handle it as they do any other template. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:39, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the ref name info.
- In the case of a multiref2, do the scripts I have installed read the multiref2 template & basically say "ok, this 1st cite is fine. but anything that comes after it is somehow a harv/sfn problem?". - Shearonink (talk) 15:52, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- You would have to ask the script creator to be certain but I believe it tries to ignore cites that are in reference tags. I'm guessing that when you put the cites inside another template and then put that template inside reference tags the script gets a bit confused. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:59, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- No.
{{multiref2}}
is just a wrapper template around{{unbulleted list}}
. The HarvErrors user script ignores it but does not ignore the individual citation templates that it wraps. In your initial example:{{multiref2|1={{cite magazine|url=https://www.billboard.com/artist/brenda-lee/chart-history/csi/|title=Brenda Lee Chart History (Hot Country Songs)|magazine=Billboard|access-date=December 15, 2021}}|2={{cite book|last=Whitburn|first=Joel|title=Hot Country Songs 1944 to 2008|publisher=Record Research, Inc.|year=2008|isbn=978-0-89820-177-2}}
- the
{{cite magazine}}
template does not name any authors/editors/contributors so Module:Citation/CS1 does not create aCITEREF
anchor ID for that template. The{{cite book}}
template does name an author so Module:Citation/CS1 creates aCITEREF
anchor ID:<cite id="CITEREFWhitburn2008">
. The HarvErrors user script sees that anchor ID but can't match it to a<a href="#CITEREFWhitburn2008">
link, so the script emits the warning message. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 16:23, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Ah, ok... Thanks Trappist the Monk, one of these days you'll make me a coder yet. All the info you & ActivelyDisinterested have given me in this thread has ben awesome. Greatly appreciate getting responses (and such detailed ones too!) so quickly. Cheers, Shearonink (talk) 18:04, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks, I love ref=none! (and use it often). *But*... I still want to know if there's anything technically wrong with ref-naming a multiref2. Also. Why was the system interpreting the multiref2 I used to be a "Harv warning"? It's not a harv/sfn ref is it? - Shearonink (talk) 14:30, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
Consideration for gadgetification of User:Awesome Aasim/noeditredlinks.js (or a similar script)
[edit]
I wrote this script several years ago to disable editing for almost all red links by removing all the action parameters accompanied by them. This script may or may not need further refinement but I think it would be useful to submit as a gadget as the following:
- Name could be the same
- Description should be "Do not immediately open the editor upon navigating to a red link"
I am not sure about usage on Wikipedia but it seems that at least 38 editors use it. But I do see how it can be beneficial, including for editors who do not want to immediately see the edit form for pages that don't exist. Aasim (話す) 04:37, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- 38 users is extremely low usage for a user script. Why does this need to be a gadget? This feels like yet another instance of the sort of frivolous technical proposal you have been wont to make in the past. * Pppery * it has begun... 04:40, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- It is a chicken and egg problem.
- A script that does a very simple cosmetic appearance task might not be popular, but when promoted to a gadget more users may begin using that script. Especially new users who may have no familiarity whatsoever with how to import a script to their common.js page, but can easily tick a box in preferences. Aasim (話す) 04:56, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Pass, in general we want editors to contribute content, red links opening in the editor is a way to encourage that - and especially outside of ns:0 there has been a lot of work with discussion tools to make that process easier. Also echo above, this isn't a popular script. — xaosflux Talk 10:34, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- As Writ Keeper said,
I wouldn't support adding a gadget that runs a javascript function ten times a second on every page on the wiki, especially for such a minor change.
Nardog (talk) 12:16, 4 August 2025 (UTC)- Indeed; my reaction when we had this same exact discussion almost a year ago was "absolutely not", and it has not changed. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 12:27, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I think I may have forgot if or whether I discussed something similar in the past?
- If indeed I brought this up in the past I'd be happy to withdraw this discussion. My brain has been in dozens of different areas on Wikipedia so I might have forgotten. Aasim (話す) 16:19, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Awesome Aasim: Yep, it's in the VPT archives: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_215#Making_this_script_a_gadget_on_enwiki Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:40, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- This is strange. Why does it need to run every 100 milliseconds? Why is the content update hook not enough? I assume it's quite resource-intensive to be running on a large page, especially considering the same
<a>
tags are processed multiple times when they could just be skipped with some attribute. — DVRTed (Talk) 15:45, 4 August 2025 (UTC)- I knew that there is probably a way to do it better rather than a timeout running constantly.
- Do you know if there are DOM events that fire every time an element changes? I can't seem to find any. Aasim (話す) 16:21, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Awesome Aasim would something like this work: https://doc.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-core/REL1_44/js/Hooks.html? — DVRTed (Talk) 16:27, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I don't know. It might work for stuff like edit forms but if content were appended by user scripts outside of the content field it may not hook to those links.
- There has got to be a more primitive way that is inherent to the JS language itself. I myself am frustrated with this timeout method of doing it. Aasim (話す) 16:56, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I mean, the solution I gave in that thread a year ago still works AFAIK. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:09, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Oh that. I kind of remember but kind of not. Thanks. Aasim (話す) 17:25, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I mean, the solution I gave in that thread a year ago still works AFAIK. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:09, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Awesome Aasim would something like this work: https://doc.wikimedia.org/mediawiki-core/REL1_44/js/Hooks.html? — DVRTed (Talk) 16:27, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Indeed; my reaction when we had this same exact discussion almost a year ago was "absolutely not", and it has not changed. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 12:27, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
Request to add changetags for Cat-a-lot and HotCat
[edit]It would be useful if a change tag for Cat-a-lot was added to enwiki so edits using it can be filtered in watchlists. As far as I can tell from its code it already tries to use the tag Cat-a-lot
but that doesn't exist on this wiki (not in Special:Tags). If I'm wrong, it's possible that it might need a minor code change. My motivation for this suggestion is filtering out the rapid bulk edits it makes from Recent Changes.
Likewise, I think the HotCat
tag should be added for HotCat. Both CAL and HC have had these tags on Commons since early 2018 according to c:Special:Tags. There is precedent for tagging tools on enwiki: AWB has a tag, as do Twinkle, RW/UV, and various other tools.
If there's a better place to request this, let me know. Thanks. Seercat3160 (talk) 08:05, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- The cat-a-lot gadget isn't installed here. I added the change tag for HotCat. — xaosflux Talk 13:07, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- No hotcat hits yet (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&tagfilter=HotCat) - let me know if this needs adjusting. — xaosflux Talk 15:59, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux You'd need to also add
HotCat.changeTag = "HotCat"
to MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js/local defaults --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:30, 4 August 2025 (UTC)- Added. — xaosflux Talk 21:18, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- hits coming in now — xaosflux Talk 21:26, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I see just one hit with this tag. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:26, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- @StefenTower How many new changes do you expect? Can you provide a diff of one that isn't tagged since this change was made? — xaosflux Talk 22:33, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- More than one after all this time. This is a highly utilized tool, so I'm guessing you're joking. Ha ha. Anyway, in case you're not, after the tag supposedly went into effect, I used HotCat on a likely soon-to-be-deleted article to reduce its category pollution. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:58, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I've seen quite a few HC diffs not tagged, the only tagged one I can see is a test edit by Ahecht. Here's one I just made. Note that I haven't used HotCat myself before, if that's relevant (I enabled the gadget just before making that edit). Seercat3160 (talk) 00:58, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- That one edit that got tagged was after I manually put
HotCat.changeTag = "HotCat"
into the console before adding the category. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:27, 5 August 2025 (UTC) - Please take that up with the maintainers for that gadget (possibly at Wikipedia talk:HotCat). The tag has been created, it seems that your assumption that this software was ready and we just needed the tags was wrong. If you know a fix locally, feel free to open an edit request. — xaosflux Talk 17:41, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- The specific code that is overriding the change tag is
if ( conf.wgDBname !== 'commonswiki' ) HC.changeTag = config.HotCatChangeTag || '';
. That said, I'm inclined to bail and revert all of the local changes here as more trouble than they're worth. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:45, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- The specific code that is overriding the change tag is
- That one edit that got tagged was after I manually put
- @StefenTower How many new changes do you expect? Can you provide a diff of one that isn't tagged since this change was made? — xaosflux Talk 22:33, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- I see just one hit with this tag. Stefen 𝕋owers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 22:26, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Pinging @Lucas Werkmeister, @MusikAnimal. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how it's supposed to work, but even after the change to local_defaults,
HotCat.changeTag
still returns''
. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:26, 5 August 2025 (UTC)- @Ahecht: As far as I can tell, you need to set
window.JSconfig = { keys: { 'HotCatChangeTag': 'HotCat' } }
(e.g. in the local defaults file). Don’t ask me why, I didn’t write the code… Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 19:29, 5 August 2025 (UTC)- (Well, perhaps something slightly more sophisticated to not completely overwrite
JSconfig
if it should happen to be set already – a few user scripts appear to set it already. But at the end you’ll wantJSconfig.keys.HotCatChangeTag
to contain the change tag.) Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 19:37, 5 August 2025 (UTC)- So, short of fully implementing JSconfig on enwiki, we'd have to do something like
(window.JSconfig ??= {}).keys ??= {}, window.JSconfig.keys.HotCatChangeTag = 'HotCat';
--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:57, 5 August 2025 (UTC)- This looks like something that
if ( conf.wgDBname !== 'commonswiki' ) HC.changeTag = config.HotCatChangeTag || HC.changeTag || '';
could fix at c:MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js. Ponor (talk) 20:23, 5 August 2025 (UTC) - Pretty much, though I don’t think
??=
is supported in all MediaWiki-supported browsers yet.||=
is probably okay in this case, given that we’re expecting it to be either unset or an object and objects are always truthy. (And @Ponor, in principle yes, but I’m hesitant to change that code without knowing why it was written this way. It’s unfortunate thatJSconfig
is seemingly not documented beyondsome feature used at Wikimedia Commons
.) Lucas Werkmeister (talk) 21:15, 5 August 2025 (UTC)- @Lucas Werkmeister Without looking at the code, I'd say they probably did that to make sure HC.changeTag is not empty somewhere further down where they're actually adding/saving the tag. On wikis where the tag is disabled or does not exist, the whole script will fail, i.e. nothing will get saved, and their ordinary users will not know why. Ponor (talk) 21:25, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Lucas Werkmeister There's some documentation of JSconfig in the comments at commons:MediaWiki:Common.js. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 17:57, 6 August 2025 (UTC) - I'm testing the minimal addition I proposed above using my copy of the gadget (https://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/668902) with the current local configuration in MediaWiki:Gadget-HotCat.js/local_defaults. That seems to be working on enwiki [3] and commonswiki [4]. Feel free to test it yourself. Ponor (talk) 21:42, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- This looks like something that
- So, short of fully implementing JSconfig on enwiki, we'd have to do something like
- (Well, perhaps something slightly more sophisticated to not completely overwrite
- @Ahecht: As far as I can tell, you need to set
- hits coming in now — xaosflux Talk 21:26, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Added. — xaosflux Talk 21:18, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux You'd need to also add
- Cat-a-lot isn't installed here as a gadget, but can be used as a user script.
I added https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&tagfilter=Cat-a-lotIt looks like the script is hard-coded to only use the tag on commonswiki and rowiki, so we'd need buy-in from the developers before creating a tag here. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:02, 4 August 2025 (UTC) - Thanks for looking into it. Seercat3160 (talk) 20:50, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- No hotcat hits yet (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&tagfilter=HotCat) - let me know if this needs adjusting. — xaosflux Talk 15:59, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
Module-smuggled redlinked category
[edit]The latest run of Special:WantedCategories featured a redlinked Category:Wikipedia page with obscure subdivision with 2,544 pages in it, resulting from the usual speedy-move of a template tracking category without updating the underlying code that was generating and transcluding it — but it's one of those cases where the category isn't directly declared in the infobox templates itself, but is being smuggled in via a module that I can't edit.
Obviously this is related to my question of a few days ago, where there was a weird redlink for the same category in all-caps instead of normal category-name case, so it's obviously the same module.
For the moment I've recreated the old category as a redirect to the new name, Category:Wikipedia articles with obscure subdivision, to get it out of the reds — but could somebody with module editing privileges update the relevant module code to get the content moved properly? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 12:43, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Fixed in Module:ISO 3166. * Pppery * it has begun... 12:47, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Muchas gracias Bearcat (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Bearcat Just a heads up that a similar situation will likely come up in a couple of days with Category:Wikipedia page with obscure country moving to Category:Wikipedia articles with obscure country. I modified Module:ISO 3166 so you just need to edit Line 15 to update the category name once the category is moved, and as a admin you should have module editing privileges unless there are some community sanctions in place that I'm not aware of. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:42, 4 August 2025 (UTC)Done --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 18:38, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Bearcat Just a heads up that a similar situation will likely come up in a couple of days with Category:Wikipedia page with obscure country moving to Category:Wikipedia articles with obscure country. I modified Module:ISO 3166 so you just need to edit Line 15 to update the category name once the category is moved, and as a admin you should have module editing privileges unless there are some community sanctions in place that I'm not aware of. --Ahecht (TALK
- Muchas gracias Bearcat (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
nbsp capability in "convert"
[edit]Is there syntax to force "convert" to put a nonbreaking space between numeral and units displayed in the article text, so that some expansion of cvt|7|miles|km|sigfig=2 reliably generates "7 miles (11 km)"? A single good example would suffice. — HelpMyUnbelief (talk) 22:13, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Template talk:Convert is probably the best place to ask about that template's output. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:49, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
- Will do. Thanks! — HelpMyUnbelief (talk) 23:59, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
How to make |upright=0.75 work without |thumb?
[edit]I'm having trouble at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images § Blue (i). I need to remove |thumb
to restore The blue (i)
. However, another editor wants the image size
to stay the same. |upright=0.75
doesn't seem to work without |thumb
, as the image below is larger than the width of the page:
How can I remove |thumb
without changing the image size? 174.138.218.72 (talk) 00:43, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
It appears that the imagemap tag does not support "upright" as an option. The documentation is lacking, but it also appears that a fixed px size is required to get usable output.– Jonesey95 (talk) 03:25, 5 August 2025 (UTC)- See WP:PICSIZE:
The
Demo withupright
option only works with thethumb
orframeless
parameter (see Type).frameless
below. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:33, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

- Good catch. I have added an example to the help page for imagemap. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:27, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thank you. I have updated MOS:ALT with this solution. 174.138.218.72 (talk) 01:03, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Tech News: 2025-32
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Updates for editors
- Editors can now enable the User Info card. This feature adds an icon next to usernames on history pages and similar user-contribution log pages. When you tap or click on the icon, it displays data related to that user account such as the number of edits, reverted edits, blocks, and more. It's part of a broader project to make it easier for moderators to evaluate account trustworthiness. The feature can be enabled in your global preferences, and later this week it will be available in local preferences. [5]
- Everybody is invited to share comments on Collaborative Contributions, a project recently launched by the Connection team. The project aims to create a new way to display the impact of collaborative editing activities (such as edit-a-thons, backlog drives, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. Post your comments on the project talk page. [6]
- Administrators can now define the default block duration for temporary accounts. To do that, they need to create a page named
MediaWiki:Ipb-default-expiry-temporary-account
and use a value defined inMediaWiki:Ipboptions
. This allows administrators to easily block temporary accounts for 90 days, which is functionally equivalent to an indefinite block. The advantage of this solution is that it does not clutter Special:BlockList. More documentation is available. [7] View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Updates for technical contributors
- Gadgets can now include
.vue
files. This makes it easier to develop modern user interfaces using Vue.js, in particular using Codex, the official design system of Wikimedia. Codex icons can be loaded through the gadget definition. The documentation has examples. For user scripts that use Vue.js, an API module now exists to load Codex icons. [8][9] - Module developers can now use a Lua interface to simplify the preparation of Lua modules for translation on Meta-Wiki. This improvement makes it easier for translators to find and edit module strings without dealing with raw Lua code. It helps prevent mistakes that could break the module during translation. Module developers and translators are invited to watch the demo video, read more about translatable modules to understand how it works, refer to Meta-Wiki's Module:User Wikimedia project for example usage, and share their feedback on how well it addresses the challenges in their workflow. The interface still has some performance issues, so it should not be used in widely used modules yet. [10]
- Developers of external tools that connect to Wikimedia pages must set a user-agent that complies with the user-agent policy. This policy will start to be more strongly enforced in August because of external crawlers that are overusing Wikimedia's resources. Tools that are hosted on Wikimedia's Toolforge or Cloud VPS will not be affected by this for now, but should still set a user-agent. More technical details are available, and related questions are welcome in that task.
- Parsoid Read Views is going to be rolling out to some smaller Wikipedias over the next few weeks, following the successful transition of Wikivoyages and Wiktionaries to Parsoid Read Views. For more information, see the Parsoid/Parser Unification project page. [11]
Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki
Meetings and events
- Wikimania 2025 will run from August 6–9. The program is available for you to plan which sessions you want to attend. Most sessions will be live-streamed, with exceptions for those that show the "no camera" icon. If you are joining online to watch live-streams and use the interactive features, please register for a free virtual ticket. For example, you may be interested in technical sessions such as:
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
MediaWiki message delivery 03:36, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- FYI, if you enable the User Info card but want the icon to be more subtle, I've found that
.ext-checkuser-userinfocard-button.cdx-button .ext-checkuser-userinfocard-button__icon.cdx-button__icon {opacity: 0.2;}
in your custom.css or global.css workds pretty well. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:41, 5 August 2025 (UTC) - This is the first I've heard of "Parsoid Read Views". Are there other Parsoid Views? And other Read Views? I assume it just refers to Parsoid's HTML output, but it's confusing. Nardog (talk) 23:05, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Nardog Core Parser Read/Edit Views - Parsoid Read/Edit Views, I suppose. The first paragraph of mw:Parsoid/Parser Unification. Ponor (talk) 10:43, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- What are the Edit Views? I thought the whole point of Parsoid was that the same HTML could be used for editing in VisualEditor and reading. Nardog (talk) 11:47, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- By default most wikis still use the old parser to render html for the html that is used for article pages. This is a notification that more wikis will start using the parsoid parser to render html for the article pages (read views). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:06, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- I figured. What I'm trying to figure out is why this confusing (to me at least) terminology was chosen in Tech News of all places. I guess it's because Parsoid is already used in VisualEditor? Nardog (talk) 03:17, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- because giving simple explanations of highly complex things is hard. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:21, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- I figured. What I'm trying to figure out is why this confusing (to me at least) terminology was chosen in Tech News of all places. I guess it's because Parsoid is already used in VisualEditor? Nardog (talk) 03:17, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- By default most wikis still use the old parser to render html for the html that is used for article pages. This is a notification that more wikis will start using the parsoid parser to render html for the article pages (read views). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:06, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- What are the Edit Views? I thought the whole point of Parsoid was that the same HTML could be used for editing in VisualEditor and reading. Nardog (talk) 11:47, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Nardog Core Parser Read/Edit Views - Parsoid Read/Edit Views, I suppose. The first paragraph of mw:Parsoid/Parser Unification. Ponor (talk) 10:43, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
Democratic backsliding + content from Democratic backsliding in the United States = some odd cite issues
[edit]So. Democratic backsliding has an excerpt template section, with content taken from Democratic backsliding in the United States - see Democratic backsliding#United States. This is causing 2 Harv errors because 2 Sfn cites - Ref 118/Jardina & Mickey 2022 + Ref 119/Rowland 2021 - do not have a complete citation to target within the Democratic backsliding article itself. Great! you say, just fix it! Welllll, therein lies the problem. The only content sitting in that United States section is that excerpt template. SO, I can't add the 2 complete citations to Democratic backsliding because the cites don't actually exist there, they're at the other article. *And*, when I went to the United States article and tried to substitute the complete citations for the 2 Sfns there, that action caused 9 new Harv errors to pop up at Democratic backsliding in the United States. There were some back&forth edits/reverts in 2022 when the excerpt template was added, removed, restored, and then the editors involved arrived at a consensus. But this status quo engenders those two phantom Harv errors, so here I am, asking how best to solve these 2 refs that are in sort of a limbo - they exist and yet...they don't. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 13:53, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- This sort of thing happens most often when editors copy a paragraph from one article to another, including the {{sfn}} templates, but forget to copy the full citations from the bottom of the article. The solution in that case and in this one is to copy over the full citations. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:38, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
- So. Even though the sfn cites don't actually exist in Democratic backsliding, the full citations can be added there?...how mysterious the simple solution was. I just thought that wouldn't work, since the sfn cites were headquartered in a completely different article, the United States article... Lol I guess I sort of had the right idea just the wrong place to put the complete references. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 15:49, 5 August 2025 (UTC)
Activating an interactive OWID experience (Part 3)
[edit]Am wanting to reapply to activate the OWID gadget following addressing the issues in the prior discussions:
- 5 months ago concerns were raised regarding bandwidth usage and these were decreased down to 400 KB from 36 MB, a number of bugs raised have also been fixed
- 2 months ago issues were raised regarding scrolling which have been addressed
The gadget is currently running on Basque Wikipedia. As we have developed multilingual / translation workflows.
Steps to install include
[edit]- copy MDWIKI:MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider.js to MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider.js
- copy MDWiki:MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider.css to MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider.css
- copy MDWiki:Template:Owidslider to Template:Owidslider
- copy MDWiki:Module:Owidslider to Module:Owidslider
- create tracking category Category:Pages using gadget owidslider
- add
owidslider [ResourceLoader|default|categories=Pages using gadget owidslider]|owidslider.js|owidslider.css
to MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition, which will create a mw:Template gadget - ImageStackPopup was already imported previously, no action needed
Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:17, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Support. Thank you for implementing my deduplication proposal. I confirm that I see "56 requests 541 kB transferred 2.1 MB resources," and no new requests when changing years, which is good. I was originally aiming for a 100% SVG 0% JS version, but this gadget would potentially handle web accessibility miles better than my idea; the only bug here is that I can't press tab to select countries. Overall, nice work! VectorWorld (talk) 00:10, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks VectorWorld. Can you clarify what you hope the gadget would do when tab is pressed? Not sure what you mean by "select countries"? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- Us normal users with mice, after opening mdwiki:Template:Owidslider#Example_3, are able to click a country and see a line chart. How can users without mice (like blind people using screen readers) open that chart?
- Currently, when I press tab, it cycles through "Select region", "Death rate from indoor air pollution, 2020", "Media credits", then the year slider. Instead, it should be "Select region", "Death rate from indoor air pollution, 2020", Country 1, Country 2, Country 3, ..., Country N, "Media credits", then the year slider.
- After selecting a country such as Australia by repeatedly pressing tab, there should be alt text (
actuallyalt="..."
<title>Between 0 and 25 deaths</title>
or the actual number) that a screen reader will read out loud to blind people who can't see the colors or anything at all. After pressing enter, the alt text of the opened line chart should say something like "0.3 in 1990 and 0.01 in 2021" or more granular. - On the other hand, I should not hear "No data, 0, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 175, 200" before "Media credits" when using the Google TalkBack screen reader. The proposed alt text would play the same role for blind users, so the numbers on the scale should be muted with
aria-hidden="true"
. - Tab is actually just cycling through "focusable" elements (so try wrapping each
<path d="..."/>
like<a xlink:href="#"><title>Alt text here</title><path d="..."/></a>
and moving theonclick
onto the<a>
). TalkBack uses swiping right instead of a tab key. VectorWorld (talk) 05:18, 7 August 2025 (UTC)- Thanks for that feedback. We can add it to our development efforts Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:53, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks VectorWorld. Can you clarify what you hope the gadget would do when tab is pressed? Not sure what you mean by "select countries"? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:37, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Doc James Say I want to import the following graph https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/birth-rate-vs-death-rate. What workflow would you recommend? What settings should I keep or change in the importer? When it comes to translation, it seems that every imported svg needs to be translated, even though almost all the text in them is the same - it's hard to believe that people will do that. How will everything work in 2-3 years when new data comes in, will a new set of images be created, will old images be overwritten and new ones added (what if there are design changes)? I like the idea, but I would like us to not have to do the import, i.e. WMF (and ourworldindata.org) should find a way to enable option 2 for the benefit of both. Ponor (talk) 11:23, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- Only the first image in the world set needs to be translated and then the tool will apply it to the rest of them. It is not working 100% (only 50%) but we are working on it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:22, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- The tool is for heatmaps not line graphs so would go here https://ourworldindata.org/data and look for the world maps for uploads.
- If we go with https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index we start getting https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human-development-index,World,1990.svg Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:36, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
@Xaosflux, Sohom Datta, and Dylsss: those previously involved Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:37, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- The interface work has been done. The template/module can be looked in to by others. The category/gadget definition may need better descriptions. — xaosflux Talk 16:28, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- The gadgets page is giving the error "owidslider: Description MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider for use in Special:Preferences does not exist" at the top. Might need to double check the gadget definition. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:37, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Where are you seeing that? I'm not seeing it at Special:Gadgets. The description needs MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider created by any admin. It should point to the description page for this gadget onwiki. — xaosflux Talk 16:44, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- (Which someone should write at Wikipedia:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) — xaosflux Talk 17:02, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
Where are you seeing that?
MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition, at the top. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:13, 10 August 2025 (UTC)- Oh ok, that's not an error per se, it's just a custom template that notices it. The definition description isn't actually needed for a gadget to work. It should be done though - directions above along with all the other things that have to be done still. — xaosflux Talk 00:18, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
- (Which someone should write at Wikipedia:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) — xaosflux Talk 17:02, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- Where are you seeing that? I'm not seeing it at Special:Gadgets. The description needs MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider created by any admin. It should point to the description page for this gadget onwiki. — xaosflux Talk 16:44, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- The gadgets page is giving the error "owidslider: Description MediaWiki:Gadget-owidslider for use in Special:Preferences does not exist" at the top. Might need to double check the gadget definition. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:37, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
PTAC proposals for feedback
[edit]The Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) is a one-year pilot of a group of Wikimedia Foundation staff and community members that advise the Wikimedia Foundation on its technical direction and provide input on the long-term product and technical priorities for the Wikimedia movement.
Following recent community reactions surrounding two initiatives, the trial of AI-generated article summaries, which subsequently led to the RFC surrounding AI features by the WMF and the concerns surrounding Tone Check, members of the Product and Technology Advisory Council came together to form two working groups to brainstorm ways to improve how the Foundation conducts and communicates experiments and product development and how it engages with the community surrounding updates regarding its product development.
As a result of the brainstorming, we came up with a set of proposals of experiments the Wikimedia Foundation can conduct to increase transparency, trust, and lead to more constructive engagement between the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia communities. We would like to community provide feedback on the proposals at the talk page. This feedback phase will last until August 22, following which (provided there are no objections) we will forward the proposals to the Wikimedia Foundation Product and Technology Department who will subsequently look into ways of implementing and incorporating these recommended experiments. Sohom (talk) 17:49, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
API for my watchlist
[edit]I have hunted around, but cannot find anything. Is there an API call that can access the timestamp for my last view of a page in my watchlist? i.e. wl_notificationtimestamp
in the watchlist table.
I can reset the timestamp via action=setnotificationtimestamp
, but what I really want is get
notificationtimestamp
.
The overall plan is to have a userscript highlight the content that has been added since I last viewed a talk page — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 17:56, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- mw:API:Info. Nardog (talk) 18:08, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Awesome! Many thanks. That is my weekend now fully booked — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:35, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- On the off-chance you haven't tried it, have you used the visual diffs feature to see the changed content? You can choose between a wikitext or visual diff on any diff page. (If you have tried it and found it lacking, carry on...) isaacl (talk) 22:56, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
- Awesome! Many thanks. That is my weekend now fully booked — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:35, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Logging of articles you read?
[edit] You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) § Logging of articles you read?. Looks like they might have sorted it out, but some editors had some questions about what was stored/saved as it related to the terms of use. —Locke Cole • t • c 23:35, 6 August 2025 (UTC)
Artificial intelligence of things should be rewritten because it is a mess. Polygnotus (talk) 05:03, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- It is appropriately tagged. This page is a forum for discussing technical issues and problems, not content problems. If you want someone to improve that article, it would help to list specific problems and suggestions on the article's talk page, as suggested by the cleanup template. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:26, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Jonesey95 Yeah I tagged it. I know the purpose of the village pump, to pump water and spread gossip. I have to go feed the chickens (not a metaphor) so I figured I leave a note here. Polygnotus (talk) 05:30, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- No, this is the technical village pump. Please read the text in the banner at the top of the page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:31, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, this is the technical village pump. We wouldn't want the chickens to go hungry. Polygnotus (talk) 05:33, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- No, this is the technical village pump. Please read the text in the banner at the top of the page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:31, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Jonesey95 Yeah I tagged it. I know the purpose of the village pump, to pump water and spread gossip. I have to go feed the chickens (not a metaphor) so I figured I leave a note here. Polygnotus (talk) 05:30, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
New "Cannot find section" error at Template:Tire
[edit]The first time this happened to me today, I wrote it off as a page change that happened while I was reading. The second time, I can't explain it. Here's how to replicate it:
- Go to Template:Tire
- Next to the section header "Usage", click the "edit" link.
- I see an error page with the heading "Cannot find section".
The URL it is looking for is: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Documentation&action=edit§ion=T-1
This URL is wrong. Notice that it is trying to edit {{Documentation}}, not {{Tire/doc}}. When I am logged out, the above steps work correctly, showing me an edit window for the Usage section at this URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Tire/doc&action=edit§ion=T-1
When I view the page in safe mode, I get the same error.
I use the original source editor, if it makes a difference, and Vector 2022. FWIW, my "edit" link is on the right, due to some preference, I think. I have tons of css and js customizations, but see the above note about safe mode. Can anyone replicate this problem? – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:21, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- I cannot replicate this, with either of my accounts. The URL it points to for me is correct (screenshot of mouseover). HTH. (My setup: latest Firefox, Mint Linux, Vector-2022, tons of scripts and gadgets). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- I can reproduce this when using Parsoid for page views: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Tire&useparsoid=1 Matma Rex talk 02:18, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- I submitted a bug report to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Feedback#enwiki:Template:Tire using the "Report visual bug" button in the sidebar. Matma Rex talk 02:20, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- That's it. I just switched over to Parsoid views today, since the Tech News (above) said that it was coming. Hooray, I found a bug! – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:03, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the reports. Just for visibility, phabricator:T391624 tracks the broad set of issues we are working through around section edit links and Parsoid. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- That's it. I just switched over to Parsoid views today, since the Tech News (above) said that it was coming. Hooray, I found a bug! – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:03, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- I submitted a bug report to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/Feedback#enwiki:Template:Tire using the "Report visual bug" button in the sidebar. Matma Rex talk 02:20, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
Fixing archives numbering
[edit]Hi, there is an issue with the numbering on my talk page archives; they're not appearing in the correct sequence in one line from 110 onward. Does anyone know how to fix this? If so, could you please fix it for me? Thank you. Cassiopeia talk 23:23, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- DreamRimmer Thank you very much for fixing it for me. Stay safe and best. Cassiopeia talk 01:57, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- This is likely because archive numbers from 1 to 99 are short enough to fit inline, but once they reach triple digits (100 to 132) the links become longer and do not display properly in the small box size. – DreamRimmer ■ 02:07, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- DreamRimmer Thank you for taking the time to fix it for me. Appreciate that! Cassiopeia talk 02:16, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- This is likely because archive numbers from 1 to 99 are short enough to fit inline, but once they reach triple digits (100 to 132) the links become longer and do not display properly in the small box size. – DreamRimmer ■ 02:07, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
Random article - keyboard shortcut
[edit]The link for random article has a tooltip showing the keyboard shortcut as Alt-Shift-X. This seems to be correct in Firefox and various FF based browsers I've tried, but if I use Edge it appears that Shift-X is the keyboard shortcut instead. Is this just a feature (or oddity) of Edge or does it apply to all Chromium based browsers - I don't have any others installed to test. Nthep (talk) 08:20, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Nthep: See Help:Keyboard shortcuts#Using access keys. I don't know whether MediaWiki tries to read the browser and adjust the displayed shortcut.
Most people use browsers where Alt+⇧ Shift works. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:34, 8 August 2025 (UTC)- Actually, I tried Chrome which has a majority browser share on desktop and it only worked with Alt but still said Alt+⇧ Shift. Maybe it's best to mention both keys. It's easier to guess you might omit one of them than you have to add an unmentioned key. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:44, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- Looks like Chromium-based browsers have changed their behavior sometime since we set up the tool that generates our labels. They used to, on Windows, always work if you did Alt+⇧ Shift, and only-sometimes work if you did just Alt because of conflicts with other shortcuts (e.g. Alt+d focuses the location bar). Thus we just generated everything as Alt+⇧ Shift and called it a day.
- It looks like now the most-comprehensive thing to do would be to encode knowledge of all the built-in shortcuts that are based on Alt and selectively display the modifiers based on that list.
- Alternatively, and what I'm going to submit a patch to do on T401503 😛, is changing it to just show Alt, and hope that Chromium will someday actually implement the accessKeyLabel property that everyone else provides that would just let it tell us what the label is supposed to be. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 00:02, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
Speical pages
[edit]Why am I seeing a single list of special pages that takes a ton of scrolling and needs a search function of it's own? Did I foolishly set some option or gadget? Or is this an "upgrade"? In either case can I reverse it? All the best: Rich Farmbrough 16:01, 9 August 2025 (UTC).
- Always provide a link when reporting a problem. Are you talking about the list at Help:Special page or something else? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:01, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- phab:T219543 is the cause. Snævar (talk) 18:02, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- That would be Special:SpecialPages. I can't say I see it as an improvement either. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:09, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- -1 from me, too. It's a little less offensively space-wasting with the vertical padding removed (
body.page-Special_SpecialPages .cdx-table__table td { padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; }
), but only a little. —Cryptic 18:59, 9 August 2025 (UTC)
- -1 from me, too. It's a little less offensively space-wasting with the vertical padding removed (
- That would be Special:SpecialPages. I can't say I see it as an improvement either. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:09, 9 August 2025 (UTC)