Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs). Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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Proposals: policy	other	Discussions	Ideas
An RfC to permit trusted non-admins to close TFD discussions with uncontroversial delete outcomes A proposal to forbid IPs from participating in the RfA process. A proposal to elevate WP:BRD to guideline status An RfC on "edit in Wikidata" links, for templates using Wikidata A proposal to add an edit restriction function to Wikipedia. Note: inactive discussions, closed or not, should be archived.
archive talk edit history watch

Table cell contents spilling over.

Tracked in Phabricator (?)
Task T99361

When viewing the following table in the mobile version of the site, some text from the first column spills over into the adjacent cell of the second column.

Team	Constructor	Chassis	Power unit	Tyre	No.	Drivers
Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari	SF15-T	Ferrari	P	5 7	Sebastian Vettel Kimi Räikkönen
Sahara Force India F1 Team	Force India-Mercedes	VJM08	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	11 27	Sergio Pérez Nico Hülkenberg
Lotus F1 Team	Lotus-Mercedes	E23 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	8 13	Romain Grosjean Pastor Maldonado
Manor Marussia F1 Team	Marussia-Ferrari	TBA	Ferrari 059/3	P	TBA TBA	Will Stevens TBA
McLaren Honda	McLaren-Honda	MP4-30	Honda RA615H Hybrid	P	14 22	Fernando Alonso Jenson Button
Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team	Mercedes	F1 W06 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	6 44	Nico Rosberg Lewis Hamilton
Infiniti Red Bull Racing	Red Bull-Renault	RB11	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	3 26	Daniel Ricciardo Daniil Kvyat
Sauber F1 Team	Sauber-Ferrari	C34	Ferrari	P	9 12	Marcus Ericsson Felipe Nasr
Scuderia Toro Rosso	Toro Rosso-Renault	STR10	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	33 55	Max Verstappen Carlos Sainz Jr.
Williams Martini Racing	Williams-Mercedes	FW37	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	19 77	Felipe Massa Valtteri Bottas
Source:

Anyone got an idea what's causing this and/or how to solve this. Tvx1 22:24, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a mobile device and it looks right for me in both desktop and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile. The table has a coding error in {{nowrap|{{nowrap|Mercedes PU106B Hybrid}} which should only have one {{nowrap}}. Does it help to remove that:

Team	Constructor	Chassis	Power unit	Tyre	No.	Drivers
Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari	SF15-T	Ferrari	P	5 7	Sebastian Vettel Kimi Räikkönen
Sahara Force India F1 Team	Force India-Mercedes	VJM08	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	11 27	Sergio Pérez Nico Hülkenberg
Lotus F1 Team	Lotus-Mercedes	E23 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	8 13	Romain Grosjean Pastor Maldonado
Manor Marussia F1 Team	Marussia-Ferrari	TBA	Ferrari 059/3	P	TBA TBA	Will Stevens TBA
McLaren Honda	McLaren-Honda	MP4-30	Honda RA615H Hybrid	P	14 22	Fernando Alonso Jenson Button
Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team	Mercedes	F1 W06 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	6 44	Nico Rosberg Lewis Hamilton
Infiniti Red Bull Racing	Red Bull-Renault	RB11	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	3 26	Daniel Ricciardo Daniil Kvyat
Sauber F1 Team	Sauber-Ferrari	C34	Ferrari	P	9 12	Marcus Ericsson Felipe Nasr
Scuderia Toro Rosso	Toro Rosso-Renault	STR10	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	33 55	Max Verstappen Carlos Sainz Jr.
Williams Martini Racing	Williams-Mercedes	FW37	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	19 77	Felipe Massa Valtteri Bottas
Source:

Does it help to remove all nowrap (may be controversial in an article), or for simplicity replace them by {{identity}} as here:

Team	Constructor	Chassis	Power unit	Tyre	No.	Drivers
Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari	SF15-T	Ferrari	P	5 7	Sebastian Vettel Kimi Räikkönen
Sahara Force India F1 Team	Force India-Mercedes	VJM08	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	11 27	Sergio Pérez Nico Hülkenberg
Lotus F1 Team	Lotus-Mercedes	E23 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	8 13	Romain Grosjean Pastor Maldonado
Manor Marussia F1 Team	Marussia-Ferrari	TBA	Ferrari 059/3	P	TBA TBA	Will Stevens TBA
McLaren Honda	McLaren-Honda	MP4-30	Honda RA615H Hybrid	P	14 22	Fernando Alonso Jenson Button
Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team	Mercedes	F1 W06 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	6 44	Nico Rosberg Lewis Hamilton
Infiniti Red Bull Racing	Red Bull-Renault	RB11	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	3 26	Daniel Ricciardo Daniil Kvyat
Sauber F1 Team	Sauber-Ferrari	C34	Ferrari	P	9 12	Marcus Ericsson Felipe Nasr
Scuderia Toro Rosso	Toro Rosso-Renault	STR10	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	33 55	Max Verstappen Carlos Sainz Jr.
Williams Martini Racing	Williams-Mercedes	FW37	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	19 77	Felipe Massa Valtteri Bottas
Source:

PrimeHunter (talk) 04:56, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning that coding error. That didn't cause the problem however. Actually it did not do any harm at all. If you click on the link to the mobile view and then reduce the width of your browser screen to the minimum you will see the text from the first column spilling over. Using the identity template doesn't solve it. Tvx1 05:38, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I already tried the minimum width on mobile and it works for me. I get a horizontal scroll bar and no overlap. I will stop guessing. It's too hard when I don't have the problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:51, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Since I'm not able to explain the issue with text, I have made a screenshot:

As you can see, content from the first column is spilling over into the second. Tvx1 21:20, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't spill over for me. Based on the amount of spillover in your screenshot, maybe your browser doesn't reserve space for the flag icon when the column width is calculated. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:05, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Multiple user have reported this to me though, regardless of which browser they use. Tvx1 06:54, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you're spot on there. Either the flag icon isn't taken into account, either it's just counted as a 1px character. Is there a way to solve this? Tvx1 19:07, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Does it change anything if the size of the image is increased, or removed altogether? Googol30 (talk) 04:06, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Well, cells without flagicons don't spill over into other, no matter how wide they are. But we want to have them in that table. Tvx1 10:13, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

And does making the icons larger make the problem worse? What I'm trying to determine is how the browser is interpreting what it's given and why it isn't making the cells large enough. If the browser isn't making sufficient space for all of the elements the cell contains, should we worry about that, since it's then the fault of the browser, or find a workaround and try to fix the problem on our end, even if the mobile browser isn't working as expected? I didn't seem to catch what your mobile browser even is. If I could replicate the problem on my end, I could attempt to fix it, but the desktop version of Chrome I'm running handles element widths as expected. Let me add a table with the changes I'm thinking of for illustration:

Team	Constructor	Chassis	Power unit	Tyre	No.	Drivers
Scuderia Ferrari	Ferrari	SF15-T	Ferrari	P	5 7	Sebastian Vettel Kimi Räikkönen
Sahara Force India F1 Team	Force India-Mercedes	VJM08	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	11 27	Sergio Pérez Nico Hülkenberg
Lotus F1 Team	Lotus-Mercedes	E23 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	8 13	Romain Grosjean Pastor Maldonado
Manor Marussia F1 Team	Marussia-Ferrari	TBA	Ferrari 059/3	P	TBA TBA	Will Stevens TBA
McLaren Honda	McLaren-Honda	MP4-30	Honda RA615H Hybrid	P	14 22	Fernando Alonso Jenson Button
Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team	Mercedes	F1 W06 Hybrid	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	6 44	Nico Rosberg Lewis Hamilton
Infiniti Red Bull Racing	Red Bull-Renault	RB11	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	3 26	Daniel Ricciardo Daniil Kvyat
Sauber F1 Team	Sauber-Ferrari	C34	Ferrari	P	9 12	Marcus Ericsson Felipe Nasr
Scuderia Toro Rosso	Toro Rosso-Renault	STR10	Renault Energy F1-2015	P	33 55	Max Verstappen Carlos Sainz Jr.
Williams Martini Racing	Williams-Mercedes	FW37	Mercedes PU106B Hybrid	P	19 77	Felipe Massa Valtteri Bottas
Source:

Of course, this is an extreme size change, but it's to troubleshoot things here. Does this make the problem worse, fix it, or make no difference whatsoever? Googol30 (talk) 23:42, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Googol30, that makes the problem much worse. Here is a screenshot:

In case I hadn't made it clear yet, this is an issue that only occurs on the mobile version of the site. The only mobile browser I have thus far identified not to be affected by this issue is Firefox. All other mobile browser have this problem. I mostly use mobile Safari, but as said other mobile browsers are affected as well. Tvx1 00:37, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Googol30, does my above reply hold any value for you regarding this issue? Tvx1 13:25, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

@Tvx1: yes, and I've done some research into the problem, finding that this is actually intended behavior of the nowrap attribute. Sadly, I do not have enough technical knowledge of its use within MediaWiki or on Wikipedia to properly fix this issue, so I regret to inform you that although (I think) I know what is causing the problem, I cannot properly fix it without potentially causing more problems elsewhere. Googol30 (talk) 11:04, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

And do you know anyone who could be able to fix it, or do you think it would be better to file a bug report over on Phabricator? Tvx1 15:55, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd say, if you haven't already, to file a report on Phabricator, possibly linking to there from here to give anyone looking for the problem here a place to continue searching.Googol30 (talk) 20:09, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Done Tvx1 13:08, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Post not showing up immediately

Tracked in Phabricator (?)
Task T101224

Has anyone else noticed in the last couple weeks that they occasionally have to refresh a web page to get the post they just made to show up? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:18, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Been happening to me all day today. Yunshui ^雲_水 15:20, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I saw that for the first time today, and I've been on every day the past couple of weeks. It was confusing and disorienting at first! ―Mandruss ☎ 15:21, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Also happened to me today for the first time I remember. Something must have changed when so many say it. I use the current Firefox version 38.0.5 if it matters. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:32, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

It just happened again when I saved the above post. It's only the second or third time today out of several more posts. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:34, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I've had that today - the post shows when you preview but when you hit save it isn't there until page is refreshed. I'm using FireFox too. SagaciousPhil - Chat 15:35, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Firefox 38.0.1. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:53, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I have noticed this since at least yesterday. Its intermittent though. I sort of suspect there may be some lag somewhere in the system. (Firefox as well) Monty₈₄₅ 15:56, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Happening alot now. Using IE at work and Firefox at home, and it's doing it on both browsers. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 18:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

It has happened to me a couple times on Chrome today. Did not notice it before. Resolute 18:52, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Been happening to me all day. Firefox. — Maile (talk) 18:57, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I saw it last week at least once. Firefox here. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:00, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Several times, over at least the last week, poss ten days. Firefox 38.0.5 and whichever it was upgraded from a day or two back. F5 reloads the proper version. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:39, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I have seen the same problem and filed a ticket about it yesterday. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:18, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I've been noticing the same thing for the past 24-hours or so. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:19, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• I'm also noticing it. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 21:12, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Yup really annoying. On Chrome on a Windows 7 machine. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:06, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Editing problems

I have recently found that my edits sometimes just don't go through when I press the "Save page" button. This problem only seems to have started affecting me recently. It will reload the Wikipedia page I was editing, but then I'll see that nothing has changed. Luckily, I can just use the "go to previous page" arrow on my web browser to recover the change and I can just press "Save page" again to get my edit to go through, but this problem concerns me. Dustin (talk) 17:14, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@Dustin V. S.: See the reports slightly above —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:08, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess making an edit that is exactly the same as the previous revision just refreshes the page? If so, then that is likely the same problem. Dustin (talk) 19:17, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

It makes a null edit so it looks like your save was registered but only the first save of that version was registered. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:00, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Still happening as of this post. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:32, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Yup same here Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:06, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

No doubt about it. I "save" and the edit does not show up. I have Firefox 38.0.5. Bus stop (talk) 01:58, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Revision history statistics problem

"revision history statistics" seems to be having some problem,any help would be appreciated, thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:56, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

It's working ok for me on three random articles, so it's either a transient problem that has passed or a local problem. Check again, and if it persists perhaps you could be more specific. ―Mandruss ☎ 11:33, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

[1]] Mandruss ☎ the revision history statistics for this link are the ones I cant see--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:06, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@Ozzie10aaaa: I'm seeing that fine, here's the link to the stats page. ―Mandruss ☎ 14:13, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

its working now it "may have" been my PC temp memory or something, thanks--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:41, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

I've been having problems with this, too (see Wikipedia talk:XTools), but it's working for me at the moment. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:45, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Changing background color or something similar

Hi all, I've made a few mistakes recently by using this usernames when I mean to be editing with new WMF account, which I'm using to edit their blog posts and similar things (I will only rarely have to use it here). Then today I moved a page with the WMF account, which is potentially much worse. Is there a way with javascript or CSS that I can use to tell the two apart, say with a background color or something similar? Thanks! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:21, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Add something like body { background-color: pink !important; } to User:The ed17/common.css. —Cryptic 02:29, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Much appreciated—I've made the change. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:55, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Two comments:

• If you put that on your global css page at Meta, it will turn up everywhere.
• I reduce this risk by using different browsers. Firefox = personal account (where I've edited for years), Safari = staff account. It mostly works for me. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:53, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Toolserver complaint #68973: sorting by article class & importance no longer works

First encountered this last night, in the middle of sifting thru articles needing to be rated. One minute, the links to tools.wmflabs.org worked as expected, the next I encountered an error page. I thought it was some manifestation of transient weirdness, so I let it slide until this morning only to verify it's no longer working.

Steps to reproduce

• Go to an article assessment overview table, where statistics for article class & importance are displayed.
• Click on any of the numbers in the grid (say Importance "???", & Quality "Unaccessed")
• Expected result: be directed to a page with a list of articles matching those features

screenshot of Tool server error page

• Actual results: Tool server error page with the heading "No web service". See image file to right.

(Adding a screen shot for a bug report is an effing pain. It would be much easier if there was a licensing rationale "bug report" instead of having to go thru several tedious steps explain why I want to upload a file at en.wikipedia & not to commons, & IDGAF what license it appears under. As if anyone else would want to use the file.)

• User environment: Firefox 24.1.0, KDE, Slackware Linux 14.1 (Although I doubt this has any effect on the server end.)
• Further information: this happens on every box in the grid. First encountered on Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome/Assessment, verified on Wikipedia:WikiProject Olympics.

So is there a software defect here, or is some database borked? -- llywrch (talk) 04:58, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

No idea on your substantive problem, but Special:Upload still lets you upload images without 95% of the red tape. —Cryptic 05:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

You don't have to choose a license for your file on phabricator. Adding the direct link to the failing tool, would have been simpler than a treasure hunt through wikipedia to find the link. And that error page tells you that the people owning this tool are Theopolism and Hedonil.. Have you considered contacting them ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Llywrch: For uploading Wikipedia/etc. screenshots for use in a Wikipedia discussion, see WP:WPSHOT - there are only two license templates that you need to consider - they differ only in whether or not the puzzleball logo (or equivalent) is included in the screenshot. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:38, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Much thanks for the tips on uploading screenshots, but anyone else seen this malfunction, or have a clue what's going on? Having these links work helps to speed up clearing up the backlog of unassessed & ungraded articles. -- llywrch (talk) 15:35, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for this note. I've e-mailed User:Coren, who usually knows what's going on with Tool Labs, but I don't know how soon you might expect a response/if he's around this weekend. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:57, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

• As far as I can tell, at this time, the enwp10 tool is functionning properly. If the issue is still live, could someone provide me with a link to the broken page? — Coren ^(talk) 15:40, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem seems to have fixed itself; no sign of the issue when I followed the links earlier today. Apparently someone was doing something in the Wikimedia labs (not the toolserver, my confusion), decided the change wasn't what they wanted, & stopped doing that something -- thus the enwp10 tool is now working properly. (This is one of the drawbacks of abstraction in software: change something on one level, & it can cause failures in an interface on a higher level you didn't think was related.) -- llywrch (talk) 07:16, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Confirmation for rollback on touch devices

As discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 121#Default-enabled confirmation for rollback on touch devices and other discussions, I have taken upon myself to add default-enabled gadget that requires confirmation when performing rollback on touch devices. The script is User:MusikAnimal/confirmationRollback-mobile which is very tiny, uses a simple pop-up stating how many edits you are about to rollback and who made them.

The reason for making this default-enabled is because not requiring confirmation isn't a preference, it's a problem. Accidental rollback happens quite a lot, often with the user unaware they even did it. If users still feel they do not want confirmation (maybe they're using a mouse on their tablet, for instance, or they prefer to use another similar script), the gadget can be turned off in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. I hope and am confident this is a good move, but if not we can easily remove the gadget or make it opt-in. Thanks! — MusikAnimal ^talk 14:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Instead of making this an ugly confirm popup, how about using OOjs UI? The code is a little more involved, but I already have a working example at the bottom of User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/ConfirmRollback.js that you're welcome to steal from. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:08, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: I am guessing the library is not optimized for mobile? I tried this on my Nexus 5 and the dialog appeared very tiny. Zooming in I can get to the dialog but we may end up running into the same issue where we accidentally click on the wrong button. — MusikAnimal ^talk 23:47, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I guess it isn't. I thought OOjs UI was optimised to work across all browsers, but it looks the devs haven't been concentrating on making it work with mobile. in that case, I'd say that visible should be preferred over beautiful. :) — Mr. Stradivarius on tour ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:12, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #3—2015

Did you know?

When you click on a link to an article, you now see more information:

The link tool has been re-designed:

There are separate tabs for linking to internal and external pages.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has created new interfaces for the link and citation tools, as well as fixing many bugs and changing some elements of the design. Some of these bugs affected users of VisualEditor on mobile devices. Status reports are posted on Mediawiki.org. The worklist for April through June is available in Phabricator.

A test of VisualEditor's effect on new editors at the English Wikipedia has just completed the first phase. During this test, half of newly registered editors had VisualEditor automatically enabled, and half did not. The main goal of the study is to learn which group was more likely to save an edit and to make productive, unreverted edits. Initial results will be posted at Meta later this month.

Recent improvements

Auto-fill features for citations are available at a few Wikipedias through the citoid service. Citoid takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. If Citoid is enabled on your wiki, then the design of the citation workflow changed during May. All citations are now created inside a single tool. Inside that tool, choose the tab you want (Automatic, Manual, or Re-use). The cite button is now labeled with the word "Cite" rather than a book icon, and the autofill citation dialog now has a more meaningful label, "Generate", for the submit button.

The link tool has been redesigned based on feedback from Wikipedia editors and user testing. It now has two separate sections: one for links to articles and one for external links. When you select a link, its pop-up context menu shows the name of the linked page, a thumbnail image from the linked page, Wikidata's description, and/or appropriate icons for disambiguation pages, redirect pages and empty pages. Search results have been reduced to the first five pages. Several bugs were fixed, including a dark highlight that appeared over the first match in the link inspector (T98085).  

The special character inserter in VisualEditor now uses the same special character list as the wikitext editor. Admins at each wiki can also create a custom section for frequently used characters at the top of the list. Please read the instructions for customizing the list at mediawiki.org. Also, there is now a tooltip to describing each character in the special character inserter (T70425).

Several improvements have been made to templates. When you search for a template to insert, the list of results now contains descriptions of the templates. The parameter list inside the template dialog now remains open after inserting a parameter from the list, so that users don’t need to click on "Add more information" each time they want to add another parameter (T95696). The team added a new property for TemplateData, "Example", for template parameters. This optional, translatable property will show up when there is text describing how to use that parameter (T53049).

The design of the main toolbar and several other elements have changed slightly, to be consistent with the MediaWiki theme. In the Vector skin, individual items in the menu are separated visually by pale gray bars. Buttons and menus on the toolbar can now contain both an icon and a text label, rather than just one or the other. This new design feature is being used for the cite button on wikis where the Citoid service is enabled.

The team has released a long-desired improvement to the handling of non-existent images. If a non-existent image is linked in an article, then it is now visible in VisualEditor and can be selected, edited, replaced, or removed.

Let's work together

• Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
• The weekly task triage meetings continue to be open to volunteers, each Wednesday at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). Learn how to join the meetings and how to nominate bugs at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. You do not need to attend the meeting to nominate a bug for consideration as a Q4 blocker. Instead, go to Phabricator and "associate" the Editing team's Q4 blocker project with the bug.
• If your Wikivoyage, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, or other community wants to have VisualEditor made available by default to contributors, then please contact James Forrester.
• If you would like to request the Citoid automatic reference feature for your wiki, please post a request in the Citoid project on Phabricator. Include links to the TemplateData for the most important citation templates on your wiki.

Subscribe, unsubscribe or change the page where this newsletter is delivered at Meta. If you aren't reading this in your favorite language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Quick update: The weekly bug triage meeting has moved to Tuesday, 9 June 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). I don't know if that's permanent or just for this next week. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:01, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Pywikibot compat will no longer be supported - Please migrate to pywikibot core

Sorry for English, I hope someone translates this.
Pywikibot (then "Pywikipediabot") was started back in 2002. In 2007 a new branch (formerly known as "rewrite", now called "core") was started from scratch using the MediaWiki API. The developers of Pywikibot have decided to stop supporting the compat version of Pywikibot due to bad performance and architectural errors that make it hard to update, compared to core. If you are using pywikibot compat it is likely your code will break due to upcoming MediaWiki API changes (e.g. T101524). It is highly recommended you migrate to the core framework. There is a migration guide, and please contact us if you have any problem.

There is an upcoming MediaWiki API breaking change that compat will not be updated for. If your bot's name is in this list, your bot will most likely break.

Thank you,
The Pywikibot development team, 19:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

When is ContentTranslation coming to enwiki?

During my ventures on the French Wikipedia, I have noticed a new tool for translation that has been introduced. It is more or less in a state of uselessness, as it can't even translate French yet, but I am interested, what plans are there to introduce this tool onto enwiki? ^{My name is}not^dave (talk/contribs) 20:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The correct link is fr:Special:ContentTranslation. You have to enable "Traduction du contenu" ("Content Translation") at the bottom of fr:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to use it. It's made by mw:Extension:ContentTranslation which is installed at the French Wikipedia but not the English. I don't know the functionality or plans. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:32, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Yo, a ContentTranslation developer here.

My name is not dave, thanks for your interest. As a matter of fact, ContentTranslation (a.k.a. CX) was used to create more than 500 articles in the French Wikipedia, so while my opinion about ContentTranslation is certainly biased, I'm pretty sure it's not useless :)

It currently works for translation from English. There's a plan to enable it as a beta feature in the English Wikipedia in June. There will be a proper announcement about this very soon.

In the meantime, you are welcome to peek at the FAQ.

Cheers! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:43, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Very small visual error

Tracked in Phabricator (?)
Task T99989

Recently (not sure when it started, maybe about 3-6 days ago), whenever somebody posts on my talk page, the notifications says "...posted on your talk page in "footer"...". I don't have a section called "footer" on my talk page. Weird. —DangerousJXD (talk) 02:35, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is known problem. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:30, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

phab:T99989 reports a patch in the works. They're shifting the deployment schedule right now, so I'm not sure when to expect it. Assuming that it isn't considered urgent enough for a special deployment, then this might reach us as early as Thursday of this week, or as late as next Wednesday. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Phantom citations

Tracked in Phabricator (?)
Task T101390

Continued from Template talk:Gallery#Reference bug

This and that.

Currently, we have a phantom reference appearing twice in the reference list, but not visible in the article. Can we have the backend software fix this problem? Frietjes (talk) 14:50, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I think the parser adds it once as the caption (which won't display, but it doesn't know that at this step yet, and once as the alt attributes (from which it will get sanitized, but it doesn't know about that either at this stage. I'm not sure if that is fixable... You should probably file a bug report in phabricator however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:08, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

User:TheDJ, I have added hacks to template:wide image, template:image array, and template:gallery to use the 'unstrip' lua function. not sure how to file the bug or how many articles/templates/modules are impacted. per the discussion at template talk:gallery this may be recently introduced bug/feature. Frietjes (talk) 16:16, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

It's another symptom of phab:T101390 I suspect. This seems to be NEW behavior. (grah, i see in the discussion that Jack was already on this.. (and the cause of it)) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:24, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

The changes causing this will be rolled back for now. Another attempt might follow at a later time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:31, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

"Loss of session data" error on Save page

Tracked in Phabricator (?)
Task T102199

Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. Please try again. If it still does not work, try logging out and logging back in.

For months, I guess, I've been getting this on about one in ten saves. The second attempt always works, so it's not a serious hindrance, but it's definitely annoying, distracting, and a bit nerve-rattling, especially in addition to the other weird editing glitches we've seen lately.

A look at this page's archives shows other users having the problem, going back years, but I don't see a clear resolution there.

I have Firefox 38.0.1 on Windows 7. I'm using the NoScript 2.6.9.26 Firefox extension, but these WP-related sites are whitelisted: wikipedia.org, wikimedia.org, wmflabs.org, wmfusercontent.org. I also have the Adblock Plus 2.6.9.1 extension.

A resolution would be worth a demonstration of WikiLove, if you're into that sort of thing. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:02, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't get them nearly as often as you but this happened to me twice today. Firefox. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 06:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A few times today already, I'll get the loss of session data error after taking a mere five seconds to make a correction to an article when I used to have to wait at least a few minutes with the edit window open before saving for that to happen. Luckily, I just need to press save again to fix the problem. Dustin (talk) 06:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Also, this is on Google Chrome. Dustin (talk) 06:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

If someone could say that they have the problem without one or both of the Firefox extensions (or the Chrome version), that would rule them out as the culprit. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:23, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

This happens to me, and I have both of these extensions installed (but disabled for these domains). However, it doesn't happen to me nearly as often. Usually, I have to have an editing window open for ≥15 minutes to get this error. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:28, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

It's possible it's far less than one in ten for me. I of course notice when the error happens, but I'm not aware of how many saves have worked since the previous error; I'm not paying attention to that. I could start keeping a record, but I don't know that a more accurate number would help identify the problem. ―Mandruss ☎ 08:55, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't have either of these extensions. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 06:32, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I think I see it more for edits that have been open for awhile, but I'm certain it happens sometimes after a ~30-second edit session. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:59, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘"Please try again" suggests that the developers anticipated the possibility of "loss of session data", and were unable to come up with a way to prevent that possibility. The career software developers among us can attest that such situations are possible, although rare. Some aspects of the software environment are beyond our control, and the rare nut is uncrackable. But it would be nice to have the developers look at the problem and say whether that is the case here. If it is, that would be a good thing to know going forward. ―Mandruss ☎ 07:52, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Firefox 38.0.5 and some earlier versions. I don't have eother NoScript or AdBlock. I've not counted the rate at which the "Loss of session data" error occurs, but it's more likely for a longer interval between "edit" and "save page". But it has happened for a simple sub-10-second typo fix on more than one occasion. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:14, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

It suddenly became far more frequent about 10 days ago - and most of my edits are just typos (Windows 7, IE11, Vector & no fancy add-ons) - Arjayay (talk) 09:04, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

This edit took no more than ten seconds from clicking "[edit]" to Save page, during which time I did not navigate off the page, switch windows or do anything other than type - yet it still threw "Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data." Ridiculous. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:48, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I have strong suspicions that this is related to #Post_not_showing_up_immediately. I suspect the same change that is causing that problem (still not tracked down btw), is also causing this problem. Possibly because outdated tokens or timestamps are included in edit pages or something. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:58, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

For me, the "session data" issue pre-dated the other by at least months — maybe many months, I can't recall. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:59, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

• Is this related? When these errors start happening, I typically also get "token" errors when I use the Upload Wizard. (If my memory is correct, the message is "token not recognized".) In this case, all my work is completely lost, and I have to restart the upload from scratch. Browser back buttons work just fine with loss of session data, but not with these token failures. I presume this is simply because Uploading doesn't come with a Preview button, so my browser when I upload never has a record of what I just did. I also presume I could avoid problems if I got in the habit of right-clicking the Upload button. I also presume that the simplest temporary fix would be that when the Upload button is activated, the page as it is also added to the browser history. Choor monster (talk) 13:08, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

• It happened again. Error message was "Invalid token". I was left looking at File:John Cromwell Bell, portrait by Julian Russell Story.jpg, with the statement "No file by this name exists, but you can upload it." and a Create tab at the top. Choor monster (talk) 17:25, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Loss of Session Data

About once a day, I try to make an edit, and get the error message that my edit could not be made due to a loss of session data. It tells me to try again, and says that if that does not work, I should log out and log back in. I press the Save button again, and it works. (I don't have to log out and log in.) Should I just ignore it, or can I do something to minimize the frequency of these glitches? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:23, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I am using Google Chrome 43.0.2357.124 and Windows 7. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:25, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm occasionally getting these too. It seems that this message is most likely to occur when I start editing an article and keep it open in the edit mode for a long time (over an hour). For me, too, the message goes away after pressing Save. I'd also be interested in knowing the cause of this message and whether it can be prevented. (I'm using Firefox 22.0 on Win7).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 10, 2015; 15:29 (UTC)

It happens for me when I haven't been editing very long. Since we are using different web browsers, they might be different issues. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:53, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

It happens for a variety of browsers. It also happens for very short editing sessions. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:34, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Have the exact same issue and configuration as Robert McClenon.--Wolbo (talk) 17:04, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

• I was coming here to complain myself. I'm getting this 70% of the time now. It's becoming more than just an annoyance. Also some pages when edited load out of date and need to be refreshed. There are some weird glitches going on right now.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 18:25, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Code tag broken?

Why are the chunks of code I put inside of code tags broken on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Orphanage#Orphan_template_behavior? I thought that code was suppose to be an inline element? 3gg5amp1e (talk) 13:09, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Never mind, I read the documentation for the quote template and figured out that I needed nowiki(?) tags and also that quote isn't an inline template so I needed to use Tq instead. 3gg5amp1e (talk) 13:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

@3gg5amp1e: It wasn't a problem with either the <code>...</code> tags or the {{quote}} template, it was the bare pipes - you can't use these in the parameter of any template, since it terminates the parameter and starts another. You could have fixed it by using either of these methods:

the {{para|att}} parameter

or

the <code>{{!}}att=</code> parameter

Personally I favour the first. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:20, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh, so like

the |att= parameter

or

? 3gg5amp1e (talk) 14:22, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

First one yes; second one, you also need to explicitly number the parameter because of that equals:

the |att= parameter

--Redrose64 (talk) 14:30, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

What do you mean explicitly number? If the = is a problem, can't I just do something like

the |att= parameter

? 3gg5amp1e (talk) 14:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

You could use {{=}} but you'd need to do it for each instance. By "explicitly number" I mean to put 1= right at the start - and you only need that once per {{quote}}. Without that, everything up to the first bare equals is taken to be a parameter name, and everything after that as the value for that strangely-named parameter. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

New Twinkle block module for admins

Please see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#New Twinkle block module! for the official announcement and where to give feedback. Thank you! — MusikAnimal ^talk 17:44, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-24

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

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [2] [3]
• If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [4]
• When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [5]
• The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [6]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on June 10 at 14:30 (UTC). [7]

Future changes

• If you have a bot, you may need to fix it. The default continuation mode of the API for action=query will change at the end of June. [8]

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

18:18, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

There are a number of user scripts and gadgets that might fixing when the continuation mode is changing. See a search for query-continue. When people are doing that, they might also want to add formatversion=2 to the api requests. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:37, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Minor clarification for another item: "The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons" refers specifically to VisualEditor. (Also, that problem doesn't seem to appear if your account is set to display in English.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Old versions (moved from Policy Pump)

It should be possible to transclude or substitute an old version of a template, as well as to redirect to an old version of a page and to display old versions of images. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 04:31, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

• @GeoffreyT2000: It might be, but I would ask what are you trying to achieve by doing this? I think you might have a specific example in mind. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:10, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Impending bot armageddon

Hidden in the link at the end of today's Tech News is a bit of a bombshell. For people who didn't notice, most of our bots are going to stop working on 2 July if their code isn't updated.

According to the announcement, the following bots need to be fixed. (I've restricted the list to bots active on this wiki.)

• User:AAlertBot
• User:Acebot
• User:ClueBot III
• User:ClueBot NG
• User:CorenSearchBot
• User:Cyberbot I
• User:Cyberbot II
• User:DeltaQuadBot
• User:Dexbot
• User:ErfgoedBot
• User:HasteurBot
• User:Invadibot
• User:Legobot
• User:Lowercase sigmabot III
• User:Merge bot
• User:RMCD bot
• User:SineBot
• User:SvickBOT
• User:Theo's Little Bot
• User:Xqbot

We are reliant on quite a few of those bots for the smooth functioning of our wiki, so it's very important that they are fixed. Also, as TheDJ says above, there are also a number of user scripts that need fixing as well.

I've started a list of users to notify about this at User:Mr. Stradivarius/API continuation/users to notify, and a message to send to them at User:Mr. Stradivarius/API continuation/message. It would be very helpful if people could help me to expand the list to include user scripts, and to help copy edit the message. Once that's done, we can send it out using Special:MassMessage. Hopefully that will prevent wiki-meltdown on 2 July. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:53, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

This was also announced at WP:BOTN, with the complete list of bots that are known to be at risk. If you have know bot owners who don't frequent BOTN here (especially people at other projects), then please reach out to them. (Also, someday we need to create a template for major issues like this—maybe something like {{warning|All your bots are going to break}}. This only seems to happen once or twice a year, but I worry that people won't notice these messages in time.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:29, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Is there a full list of affected bots? The announcement only names those with over 10,000 deprecation warnings over the course of a week. Some bots operate at a lower frequency but are equally as important — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:49, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

CBNG and CBIII have had a source code change that Damian will push to live soon - Rich^T|C|E-Mail 08:51, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Anomie is checking with Legal if they can release all the account names: "I already have the list of *accounts* affected: there are 510 with between 1000 and 10000 hits. Of those, 454 do not contain "bot" (case insensitively)" https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-June/081953.html --Sitic (talk) 19:24, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm guessing that the non-bot users will mostly be people using Huggle, Twinkle, AWB, STiki, and other similar tools. I'm not sure which of the tools is affected, though. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 22:08, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: there is now a list for all the bots which where not mentioned in the original mail: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2015-June/082037.html --Sitic (talk) 16:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

• Mine and everyone else using Peachy have been fixed.—^cyberpower_Chat:Online 08:55, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
• Does anyone know whether there is a fix planned/available for Pywikibot? That would cover about half the bots in the list. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:40, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

You can find some info here: Wikisource:Scriptorium#Pywikibot_compat_will_no_longer_be_supported_-_Please_migrate_to_pywikibot_core. --Mpaa (talk) 12:19, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Mobile editor does not work

I don't know if it's just my cellphone (an iPhone 5), but I cannot edit on the Mobile setting. I can press "Edit" and get the markup language screen to appear, but whenever I try to edit text, the cursor zips back up to the top of the paragraph. Is anyone else having trouble with Mobile editing?OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 02:07, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

The mobile version has always been crappy for me, iPhone 5 as well. I've been using the desktop version on my phone for years now.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 20:23, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

User:Melamrawy (WMF) might know whether this has been reported before. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:32, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Reporting error: Navbox template, title not updating

Greetings, Sorry if I'm doing something wrong but even after doing the purge option, the updated title refuses to change. Help please... The template is at Template:Vatican City topics. Note: I had to go back to the template's creation to find the Title line as it disappeared at the next update. Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 20:30, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

That's because {{Country topics}} doesn't take a |title= argument. You can't change the wording. Alakzi (talk) 20:37, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I missed that. Just wondering how or where is the linkage that connects the word topics with the correct article? I looked thru the docs & can't find anything that shows. JoeHebda (talk) 20:51, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

{{Country topics}} simply places the country name (which is provided by |country=) inside "[[List of <country name here>-related topics|topics]]" to generate the link. This is called string interpolation, if you're interested. Alakzi (talk) 21:20, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Yikes, sort of like stuffing a variable into a string of characters (as in good-old BASIC programming). Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately there is now a Redirect from the List of xxxx -related topics to another article name instead. Is there any way of overriding this? Or maybe a different template? JoeHebda (talk) 22:58, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it; redirects are not a big deal. So long as the link takes you to the right place... Alakzi (talk) 23:17, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

The redirect goes to an Outline article (Outline of Vatican City) instead of the previous List article, so it is on topic, just a different format. Guess that's okay. Thanks for your help. JoeHebda (talk) 00:56, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

How do I edit a reflist?

I am trying to edit a list of references, but I can not figure it out. I was trying to remove an unneeded reference, and I was using VisualEditor. I tried editing the source, but I saw a reflist template. Help? ThatKongregateGuy (talk) 20:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThatKongregateGuy (talk • contribs) 20:39, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@ThatKongregateGuy: Unless list-defined references are used in the article (which is rare), the References section does not actually contain the references. They are in the body, and the software collects them and displays them where the {{reflist}} template is located. So, to remove a reference from the reflist, you locate it in the body and remove it there. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:44, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, I removed it from the article so I must have already done it, Thanks.ThatKongregateGuy (talk) 20:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@ThatKongregateGuy: You might find WP:CITEBEGIN useful. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:47, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@ThatKongregateGuy: For future reference (no pun), this page is for suspected Wikipedia-related technical problems. Use the Teahouse or the Help Desk for how-to questions. ―Mandruss ☎ 20:54, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@Mandruss: OK, sorry about that. ThatKongregateGuy (talk) 17:21, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

This might be a massive problem

See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#False_information_about_Larry_Silverstein. Have a look at the Wikipedia App screenshot. Wikidata is not well patrolled. I'll say no more. Black Kite (talk) 20:42, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. An edit from a while ago sitting for that long.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 20:50, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

An edit which would have been completely invisible were it not for the App ... Black Kite (talk) 20:57, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't realise how long that had been there. Sam Walton (talk) 21:02, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps time to make Wikidata changes visible as a default on our watchlists? Alakzi (talk) 21:13, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

No. I don't want to watch Wikidata. My suggestion is since the term "any can edit" doesn't apply to Wikidata, that only registered users should be allowed to touch Wikidata, and only then when they are autoconfirmed. Before that they can only submit changes through talk page requests. The potential for damage is extraordinary in this case.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 21:19, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Even that's not good enough. There are hundreds of thousands of BLPs out there. The App needs to stop picking up Wikidata information. Black Kite (talk) 21:24, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

So do the search engines. :/—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 21:25, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

If you watch Wikidata - which I did for about two days - your watchlist fills up with crud like some bot adding or removing a property that is only of relevance to the French/German/Hindi/Italian/Japanese-language Wikipedias. I mean, how is this of relevance to me here on En.wp? That's what happens if Template:S-start is watchlisted and you go for Show Wikidata. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:20, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Which is why I suggested that Wikidata should only be touchable by auto-confirmed users. Wikidata is not Wikipedia, and shouldn't be treated as such. It's a data platform for managing interwiki connections, and vandalizing it can have global consequences, as evidenced here.—^cyberpower_{Chat:Limited Access} 05:56, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

IIRC, the devs are working on making the watchlist be able to filter out the less relevant edits. --Yair rand (talk) 12:29, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Category question

I've come across an empty category, Category:LGBT politicians from the Maldives, which was formerly not empty (among other proofs, it's existed since 2011 and was created by a user who knows very well not to create empty categories) — so what I need to do is to locate who used to be in the category, so that I can properly determine whether its emptying was appropriate or out-of-process.

I know there's a way to run this check, as I previously encountered a similar situation earlier this year (see this discussion) which was successfully resolved. The solution involved scanning for the category in an older database dump; as was true the last time, I've already tried Wayback Machine with no luck. So I wanted to ask if anybody could help out with this matter as well.

At the same time, I also need to run a check on Category:LGBT people from the Maldives, which currently contains only the first empty subcategory — that might have always been the case even before the first category was emptied, but I can't let it go without verifying that.

Thanks for any help that anybody can provide. Bearcat (talk) 21:25, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

If I wonder about the context of an edit then I often examine other edits at the time by the same editor. In this case [9] shows the categories were created after [10]. The article history shows what happened to the LGBT claim and category which was sourced to [11]. I haven't investigated beyond that. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:49, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

@Bearcat: Another data point: I scanned the 20141208 dump for articles containing "LGBT politicians from the Maldives" and found only Abdulla Hameed, and for articles containing "LGBT people from the Maldives" and found none. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:40, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Going back to look at the history on that article, it looks like the category was created and added on the basis of an allegation about Hameed's sexuality by a person who may have had a POV agenda — and not, as required by WP:BLP, any indication that he had ever actually come out in his own words. So I'm not going to repopulate it, as it looks like the removal was actually proper and correct. Bearcat (talk) 16:29, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Tools alias (tools:)

We have an alias called [[tools:]] (tools:) and it goes to a dead site. toolserver.org has moved to tools.wmflabs.org .. is it possible to update the alias? It won't break anything since the alias is currently broken. -- GreenC 00:39, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Not sure where to post so also posted at Wikipedia_talk:Namespace#Tools_alias_.28tools:.29 -- GreenC 00:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

There's a new prefix, toollabs:. Presumably, the reason it's not just "tools" is that they were both used during the migration from Toolserver to Labs; you might want to suggest that the "tools" prefix is retargeted on meta. See meta:Interwiki map for the full list of prefixes. Alakzi (talk) 00:43, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

@Green Cardamom: First, commenting on your post to Wikipedia talk:Namespace#Tools alias (tools:), "tools:" isn't a namespace, it's an Interwikimedia link (or if you prefer, an interwiki prefix, although this term is also used for interlanguage links). Second, toolserver.org didn't move to tools.wmflabs.org - they are two totally separate systems operated and funded by different organisations. If toolserver.org had been moved somewhere (anywhere) it would have made a lot of things so much easier, but it wasn't - it simply had the funding cut and the plug was finally pulled at the start of July 2014. Tool operators were given something like two years notice that this would happen.

To return to the problem. Interwikimedia links are not maintained locally, there's a central table, it's done that way to ensure that each prefix has exactly the same meaning regardless of which wiki it's being used on. I doubt if they will be willing to repurpose the tools: prefix, for several reasons: it's less than a year since toolserver.org went down; the paths (and hence the URLs) on tools.wmflabs.org are all different from toolserver.org (there isn't a one-to-one mapping either); not all of the toolserver.org tools were migrated to tools.wmflabs.org (and some will never be). --Redrose64 (talk) 09:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Changing tools: wouldn't fix links but break them. If a tool on the old toolserver has a replacement somewhere then there is often a redirect so old links still work. The url structures are different so if tools: pointed to https://tools.wmflabs.org/ then those links wouldn't work. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:50, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Alakzi (talk) 23:13, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Side by side 'Live' preview of wikicode

The Actual Live Preview gadget at work.

I have a new user script to share...: Actual Live Preview. With this script, if your window is wider then 1200px, it will split it in half and show you your edit surface on the left and a 'update while you type' content preview on the right. The only requirement is that you enable "Live preview" in your preferences. Enjoy. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:55, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Like--ukexpat (talk) 15:38, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Very nice. :-) Alakzi (talk) 23:14, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Like Jc86035 (talk • contribs) Use {{re|Jc86035}} to reply to me 13:11, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Nexus 5 wikipedia app

I think the wikipedia app is not working properly: the capitalism, history, business and economics portals are not updating at all. I checked someone's Iphone, it seems to be working ok there. Lbertolotti (talk) 19:12, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

If this is about the official Wikipedia App, see mw:Wikimedia mobile engineering#Contact us. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 08:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

@AKlapper (WMF) The IRC channel is empty.Lbertolotti (talk) 17:24, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

For the sake of posterity, I'm noting here that this appears to be Phab:T101845. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 15:07, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation Yeah well, with "pull to refresh" you can update portal pages, but I still think this should happen automatically. Lbertolotti (talk) 16:04, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it should happen automatically. That is why I filed that task, to make sure that the app is changed to do so. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:13, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata arrogance

See Drugbox:#IUPHAR_ligand_links_update.

It appears that wikidata people actually write: We need ..., We have to ..., You can do that manually [for 7500 facts?]. While really the (institutional) editor offers to add facts to wikipedia. Sic transit whatever gloria wikidata. -DePiep (talk) 01:20, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

If you are looking for meaning in words, you will find it. WP:AGF —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:27, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata issue

I created two articles: 1st Missile Squadron and 2nd Missile Squadron. The German Wikipedia has one article that covers both units: de:Flugkörpergeschwader. The languages editor allowed me to link the first article, but when I try to link the second I get a message that I can only link one article. How do I fix this? --21lima (talk) 11:52, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Merge the two articles? Bazj (talk) 11:58, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

This is pretty much the issue discussed at Help talk:Interlanguage links#The New System Is Flawed. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, this is called the "Bonnie and Clyde problem" on Wikidata. Since, at the moment, the German Wikipedia doesn't have articles (or even redirects) that correspond directly to either of the English articles, manual interwikis are the way to go for now. --Yair rand (talk) 12:19, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. That is the way it was done the last time I was active here, but I was trying to use this new-fangled way. I don't know why the German Wikipedia has one article on two separate units— I will have to contact one of my German Air Force friends. --21lima (talk) 12:24, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Edit conflict bug?

This morning, I was edit conflicted while making an edit to this section. I'd edited just that section by clicking on the 'edit' link to the right of the section title. When I attempted to save, I was edit conflicted. Yet, in the new edit window given to me, there was no additional comment in that section. So, I re-wrote what I said and saved it. This inadvertently removed a comment from the person with whom I edit conflicted...IN A DIFFERENT SECTION [12]. Thankfully someone else picked up on it and restored it [13]. I never noticed. Anyone want to opine as to what is happening here? --Hammersoft (talk) 14:20, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there was something really sluggish about the wiki this morning. User talk:Vanjagenije#Ertanguven, Bazj (talk) 14:44, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

number of contributions by a user

How can I find out how many contributions I have made to Wikipedia? Bevo (talk) 20:38, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The simplest way is via your own Special:Preferences, it will show your number of edits as well as other account information on the User Profile tab. There are also links at the bottom of everyone's user contribution page (yours is at Special:Contributions/Bevo) linking to various tools to see Edit Count and Global contributions and associated statistics. Nanonic (talk) 20:44, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I have found User:PleaseStand/User info useful for this. If you go to someone's user page, it shows their edit count, gender, user rights, and block status, along with handy links to further information. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:33, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Black bar on mobile site search

Tracked in Phabricator (?)
Task T98498

For about a month now, I've been unable to perform searches on the mobile site's search box from my Blackberry Bold 9900, due to a big, black bar that covers the entire thing. What gives? lavender|^{(formerly HMSSolent)}|lambast 23:54, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Ugly bug. It should be fixed now (as of ~90 minutes ago). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:28, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Just tested it with this page - it's working now. lavender|^{(formerly HMSSolent)}|lambast 03:13, 12 June 2015 (UTC)