Misplaced Pages

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view · edit Frequently asked questions (see also: Misplaced Pages:Technical FAQ) Click "" next to each point to see more details. If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache. This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown. No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box. This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an accesskey property on it (default to accesskey="f" in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences. No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot. You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker. If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature. If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link. Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem. If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page. If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Misplaced Pages services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

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Watchlist on Misplaced Pages for Android mobile phones is no longer under the top right left pull down menu

I noticed that today, the watchlist on Misplaced Pages for Android mobile phones is no longer under the top right left pull down menu. Does anyone know what happened? --Jax 0677 (talk) 03:13, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Deskana (WMF) probably knows what's going on. Did you make sure that you're still logged in? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

@Jax 0677: Are you accessing Misplaced Pages through your phone's browser, or on the app? For the former, I've tested it on my Android device and verified that the watchlist is accessible, so I'll need more details in order to reproduce the issue, such as the kind of phone you're using, such as the model, Android version, and browser. For the latter, the watchlist feature has never actually existed on the Android app, and we're presently not working on adding it in as our current work focuses around readership rather than editorship. Hopefully that helps! Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 00:27, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Reply - @Deskana (WMF):,@Whatamidoing (WMF): I am using a web browser to access the mobile phone Misplaced Pages site on my Samsung Galaxy S3 telephone that I bought in 2012. I am not sure how to determine the browser and android version, but the browser does allow me to utilize multiple windows. --Jax 0677 (talk) 14:57, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Jax 0677, what is your userAgent string on that device? — {{U|Technical 13}} 15:04, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Reply -@Technical 13:, are you sure that https://whatsmyuseragent.com/ is the correct URL? --Jax 0677 (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Jax 0677}, it was //whatsmyuseragent.com/ in the template and that works for me. I have forced secure turned off though.. I've forced it insecure in the template and all links should now work. — {{U|Technical 13}} 17:27, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Reply - @Technical 13:, my user agent string is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.4.2; en-us; SCH-I535 Build/KOT49H) Apple Webkit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30 --Jax 0677 (talk) 18:19, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

@Jax 0677: Can you take a screenshot of what the left menu looks like? That may help us diagnose the problem. This screenshot shows what it looks like on my device (Nexus 5, Android 5.0, Chrome). Thanks! --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:56, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Reply - @Deskana (WMF):, I do not know how to take a screen shot of my phone. However, my screen looks similar to that one, except there are no icons left of "Home", "Random" and "Settings". "Jax 0677" replaces "Login" (there is no icon left of it either). There are no rows for "Nearby" and "Watchlist". --Jax 0677 (talk) 22:55, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Jax 0677, by any chance, do you have Preferences → Gadgets → Testing and development → Mobile sidebar preview - Show page in mobile view while browsing the desktop site.? — {{U|Technical 13}} 23:40, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

• Reply - @Technical 13:, I had that unchecked to start. I have tried both settings, and this does not address the issue. --Jax 0677 (talk) 23:55, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
  • @Jax 0677: You can take a screenshot by pressing the volume-down and the power buttons at the same time. Is your username displayed at the top of bottom of the sidebar? If it's at the top, you are using the native Android app which does not support watchlist. Zhaofeng Li 00:04, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Reply - @Zhaofeng Li:, per my message at 22:55 on 05JAN, '"Jax 0677" replaces "Login", which puts it at the bottom. --Jax 0677 (talk) 00:23, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
      • @Jax 0677: The behavior you're describing is what happens when the browser doesn't support Javascript (or the site thinks that your browser doesn't support Javascript). Is there any reason that Javascript might not be working on your phone? Kaldari (talk) 00:07, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
        • Reply -@Kaldari:, without the technical knowhow, I can not think of a reason why Javascript might not be working on my phone. --Jax 0677 (talk) 01:39, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
          • Reply -@Kaldari:, good news though, the Misplaced Pages watchlist is now back on my phone. --Jax 0677 (talk) 03:34, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Titleblacklist not working

I'm not sure what is causing this, but MediaWiki:Titleblacklist is currently not functioning as intended; pages that are on the page can currently be created by any logged-in editor. I tested this theory with my test account earlier with a title that has about 30 consecutive capital letters, and I was given the option to create it. (I cannot use this account to test the blacklist since I have the template editor user right.) Is there a resolution to this issue, or is one in the works? Steel1943 (talk) 19:09, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Could this be related to #Access rights failure above? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:00, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

As I read it, the consecutive caps restriction is applied to page moves only? Zhaofeng Li 13:15, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

By the way, I was also given the option to create this. Zhaofeng Li 13:17, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Titleblacklist includes:

.*{6}.* # Disallows six consecutive characters that are not letters (in any script), numbers, or spaces

My non-admin account could create User:PrimeHunter2/Test.............................. with 30 periods. Should that have been impossible? There were no warnings. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:26, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Looking at it, the two are probably related. Steel1943 (talk) 14:33, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Another example of a blacklisted title I can create right now (with my test account) is here. Steel1943 (talk) 14:31, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The Titleblacklist works now. Your example This shoe will die it not blacklisted as a pagename. It is only blacklisted as a username for account creation with this entry:

.*will die.* <newaccountonly>

Now that the blacklist is working, my non-admin account cannot create User:PrimeHunter2/Test...... with 6 periods. My admin account gets a warning before creating the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:42, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

The titleblacklist is failing again. I can now click User:PrimeHunter2/Test...... without getting a warning in my admin account, and without getting a message that I cannot create it in my non-admin account. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:40, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I misunderstood that entry. Steel1943 (talk) 22:16, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I am getting a message with my admin account about blacklisting for Category:Category:Cats, and I can't get a create page for it with a non-admin account. Note that this comes with a special message (MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-custom-double-category-prefix), don't know if this is relevant. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:12, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, looks like the title blacklist is working again; I get a warning message while trying to create ''''. However, this isn't the first time that I have noticed the title blacklist having issues in the previous couple of months; I'll bring this if I see the issue happening again. Steel1943 (talk) 22:16, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

This is confirmed to be a software issue, which is currently being worked on. There's nothing we can do about it on-wiki. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:49, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

@Jackmcbarn: Is there a bug filed for this, or is that not applicable for this issue? Steel1943 (talk) 21:53, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

@Steel1943: It's phabricator:T85428, the same as #Access rights failure. Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:17, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

• Looks like the title blacklist functionality is down again. All I gotta say is ... the longer this goes on, the longer bypassing the title blacklist can be abused... Steel1943 (talk) 20:21, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

• Per the bug, looks as though a resolution is close to happening. Steel1943 (talk) 20:18, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Sigh... why does WP add extra steps to report a bug ?

I wanted to report a simple bug and WP makes harder than it needs to be by requiring anonymous users to create a user account on Phabricator. I could create a throw-away account there but I don't have one here and I don't feel any driving desire to have one there either. I am sure some might say an IP is not good enough for reporting bugs but to me if it is good enough to create/edit WP content then it is good enough to report WP bugs. JMHO

The bug is in the {{cite journal}} reference listing output.

If you use the fields

"page=99" or "pages=98-100" (any numbers)

in {{cite book}} you get output of

"p. 99" and "pp. 98-100" (respectively)

in the reference listing output.

If you use the same fields in {{cite journal}} all you get is the numbers without a "p. " or "pp. " in the reference listing.

104.32.193.6 (talk) 08:57, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Just a note that this is the right place. Wiki-specific template issues should be reported here, not Phabricator. Zhaofeng Li 09:20, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Zhaofeng Li is correct: Phabricator is for MediaWiki software issues but {{cite journal}} is a template specific to the English Misplaced Pages. If you go to {{cite journal}} and click on Talk, it will take you to Help talk:Citation Style 1 which is a central discussion for the CS1 templates. But if you go to {{cite journal}} and read the documentation, you will find that this behavior is a design choice. --  Gadget850 09:27, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Apart from that specific problem not being something to report or handle in Phabricator, generally speaking, anonymous bug reports in a bugtrcker likely bring more problems than benefits. See related discussion in phab:T972. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:17, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

this seems like a good opportunity to float again the issue of "report an error" gadget/menu item. this was a development of Polish wikipedia, and was adopted since by a dozen wikis, including the Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish (of course), and Hebrew.

this gadget adds a menu item in the left-hand-side menu (this is "right" for rtl wikis) for "Report an error". it's enabled for specific namespaces - typically article and category, but can easily be enabled for template. clicking this opens a "report an error" form, that asks the reader to describe the mistake in the article. pressing "save" sends the report to a special "error report" page. we found that many readers who are reluctant to edit the talk page, are less reluctant to report an error using the form. of course, many reports are junk (some because the reader misconception, and some intentional), but we (i.e., hewiki) found it an invaluable reporting tool that helped us correct huge number of mistakes since it was first activated. i made a proposal to try it on enwiki, which was rejected off-hand. currently there is no user-friendly way to report an error in an article in enwiki: writing in the talk-page is far from easy or intuitive for someone who never edited in wikipedia, and talk-page comment is much more likely to go unnoticed- only the watchers of this specific page are notified. the global "error report" page is watched by dozens or even hundreds of wikipedians (more than 300 on eswiki and ruwiki, ~150 on ptwiki, 75 on hewiki), while typical article is watched by single-digit watchers, and it's not that rare for this digit to be "0". this is the "error reporting" page on eswiki. use interwiki links to see it on other wikis. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 17:52, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

One thing that needs considering is what would the traffic be to the error reporting page when scaled up to en.wiki? If all the newbie traffic on talk pages were redirected to a single error page I suspect it would be unmanagable. Let alone any new traffic generated. SpinningSpark 08:31, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

"Solution" could be several error reporting pages based on some criteria (type of error, type of article topic etc.). But yes, people should think about that. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:00, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Or you can make the error reporting form, which saves information of error to the article's talk page. It would at least be user-friendlier. And then the talk page could go to some tracking category for those wikiprojects, to which article is added. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 11:04, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

MediaWiki core has a feedback tool. You can see it in VisualEditor, under the Help menu (the "(?)" icon towards the right). It's very simple: it posts a new section on the linked talk page, and autosigns it for you. One of the things I'd like to do with this is to make it use a structured feedback model:

Which type of error do you want to report?

about the page's contents

with the software?

Based on which button you press, your message either gets posted to the (article) talk page, or to a central, tech-oriented page (like this Village Pump, not Phabricator). That way the "Report an error" messages about the article content will not fill the central pages. As קיפודנחש says, the comments sent to the talk page might go unnoticed, but this should reduce the "unmanageable" problem of scale that Edgars2007 has correctly identified.

To mitiage the "unnoticed" problem, the first button could lead to a form that not only says "Tell us about the problem", but that also says "Be bold in fixing things". What do you think? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

the form, of course, contains several things, including an offer (or suggestion) for the reported to correct the problem herself, complete with a button to edit the page. if the reader chooses to report instead of correct, it also asks for an (optional) source to the claim that whatever it reported is indeed an error. there are some more goodies on the form - please try it on one of the wikis that have it.

regarding bandwidth: you can look at the bandwidth on eswiki and ruwiki linked in my previous post: enwiki should expect higher bandwidth, but not by orders of magnitude. i doubt this is a real concern, byt either way, enwiki could simply try it for a while, and only if bandwidth indeed turns out to be prohibitive, decide what to do about it (cancel, multiplex the reports to several pages as suggested abouve, or find a more creative solution).

i'd like to mention, also, that hewiki modified the tool a bit, and we use it in a slightly different way from the others: in hewiki, the report itself goes to the talk page of the article being reported, and is enclosed with a "section" tag (using mw:Extension:LabeledSectionTransclusion, and the central page contains the transclusion and the "bug report status" template only. we did not do this for bandwidth reasons - the rationale was to persist it in the article's talk page, because the central page used for reporting is not archived. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:24, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, compared to he.wp, en.wp gets 33 times as many edits each month, so I think that they really could expect the volume to me more than an order of magnitude higher. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:32, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Bug -- moving a page does not create a 'redirect' entry for relevant wikiprojects

All Wikiprojects are wiped from a moved page. They should be retained and the classes set to "redirect". This is frustrating because one has to manually readd the Wikiprojects. The reason for doing this is for completeness on statistics, and inclusion on popular pages & recent changes lists, potential future research, and others. So it would be useful if this bug could be fixed. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:12, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@LT910001: It's not a bug. When a page is moved, the old page name becomes a redirect to the new page name, and the same applies to the talk page of the moved page. Redirection is part of the MediaWiki software; WikiProject banners are not. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:25, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

But... to me as an end user, I think this is a missing feature... why can't the WPs be updated? Can't be that hard. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:41, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The MediaWiki software would need to identify WikiProject banner templates on the talk page (and they're not all consistently named, I sometimes come across {{TWP}} and several others). It would need to copy those (there may be more than one), and nothing else, to the redirect. It would need to determine whether the banner template recognises |class=redir or not - if it doesn't, there is no point in copying it.

But much more significant is that the software is used on several hundred wikis within the purview of the Wikimedia Foundation, plus countless others outside the WMF. All of these create redirects when a page is moved: very few have WikiProject banners. The German and Dutch Wikipedias, for example, have none. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:07, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Redirect-class is pointless, with the possible exception of a redirect with possibilities to an article that isn't in the project. --NE2 22:56, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

That's a sweeping statement. Some users - such as Slambo (talk · contribs) - are actively identifying candidates for setting |class=redir, for example Talk:Goonhavern Halt railway station and Talk:Grampound Road railway station. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:12, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I guess NE2 means a Wikiproject tag with redirect-class versus just a redirect, as in the original question. If we wanted the redirect-class for page moves then it should clearly be done by a Misplaced Pages tool like a bot or script and not by MediaWiki itself, but I don't see a point in making an automatic tool if it includes pages moved due to reasons like typos and capitalization. There might be a little more reason to go through Category:Redirects with possibilities (also when it doesn't originate from page moves), examine WikiProject banners on the talk page of the target, and make relevant redirect-class talk pages in certain cirumstances which may be hard to automate without getting a lot of irrelevant tags. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:39, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Not true. Redirect class is pretty useful for a number of reasons. Redirect includes a page in the scope of a WP:WikiProject, which is a group of like-minded editors who work on a particular topic. That means when a list of recent changes is compiled (or other metrics), redirects are included. Examples include redirects formed as a result of mergers or alternate terminology. Keeping track of these pages means when other users, or random edits are made to these pages or revert the mergers then the changes can be tracked. There are other benefits too, including identifying how many articles actually relate to a project and so on. --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:27, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

While I can see trhat redirect class tagging may be useful, it seems to me that placing these is too much to expect the software to do, per Redrose. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:18, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Right, but it's not too much to expect a bot to update these every now and again. Redirects should not have a non-redirect article assessment (e.g., Start-class). Either all obviously wrong assessments should be blanked by bot, or the obviously correct assessment (which is "redirect") should be added, but they shouldn't be left "wrong". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: The talk page of a redirect gets Start class etc. in the following circumstances AFAIK: (i) somebody turns an article into a redirect, possibly following a merge discussion, but leaves the talk page alone (this is probably the most common way); (ii) somebody moves an article to a new name but unchecks the option "Move associated talk page"; (iii) somebody goes to the talk page of the redirect and adds a new WikiProject banner with |class=start; (iv) somebody goes to the talk page of the redirect and in an existing WikiProject banner, alters |class=redir to |class=start. None of these are a consequence of moving article and talkpage as a pair, which is what I understood LT910001 to be asking about. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:01, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I am indeed talking about redirects, but as WAID states it is also useful to consider incorrectly classed pages. Perhaps I could make a bot request to do this for recent moves and redirects? --Tom (LT) (talk) 21:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

My notification button at the top my screen is frozen at "1"

Even when I go to Special:Notifications, the red background with the white number "1" is still there. Dustin (talk) 16:32, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Double check that all your notifications have actually been deactivated - you may have missed one at some point. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:11, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Dustin, if that doesn't work, then sometimes I've had luck with going to Special:Preferences, unticking ALL of the notifications items, saving the prefs, reloading the page, and then going back to prefs and turning them on again. I haven't needed to do that for months now, but it usually worked. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. For some reason, all I had to do was open the preferences and suddenly the notification count was back to 0 with a gray background. Dustin (talk) 21:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

This happened to me the other day. It was there for about 20 minutes and then vanished on its own. Perhaps a stale cache somewhere. Chillum 21:13, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Double entries in deletion tagging log

Why are speedy deletion tags logged twice in a page log record (example) when looking at all logs, but only once when explicitly looking at the deletion tag log (example) and can anyone do something about it? SpinningSpark 08:43, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I didn't know they were logged. Certainly one that I did this morning doesn't appear to be logged. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:19, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Page Curation was used. The two log entries have respectively class="mw-logline-pagetriage-deletion" and class="mw-logline-pagetriage-curation". The deletion tag log shows the former. The page curation log shows the latter and also "marked as reviewed ". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:31, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

So is this something for Bugzilla (or whatever it is WM uses nowadays, I forget what it's called) or can it be dealt with locally? The Curation project page says it is a WM tool so I would assume it is the former. SpinningSpark 17:35, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

It's Phabricator now. A task against PageCuration with steps to reproduce is welcome! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Phabricator T86631. SpinningSpark 14:25, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

References affecting table sorting

At present references affect table sorting: fields with references are grouped separately from fields with equal values but without references. This is misleading, because (IMHO) ordering is supposed to only take into account content, not metadata. Records may be displayed far from one would expect to find them.

As an example let us consider a table originally sorted by name:

By clicking Sort Ascending in the Gender header, Brenda is relegated near the end of the table, whereas one would expect to still find her between Angela and Carolina. The effect is amplified in tables longer than the user's screen. --Enos D'Andrea (talk) 09:43, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for fielding the email from the user. Simplify your example to one column, gender. The sorting widget is neutral about content in the column (it can't tell text from ref). This dates back to the original wiki implementation in Perl, which originally treated all data types as one type: text, basically. The same kind of disconnect exists between text and multi-media (sound, pictures, etc.). The only defense against this kind of problem (so much data that it overwhelms the screen) is to repeatedly toggle the widget, while keeping your topic (Brenda) in mind. At least the repetition will help your user to remember the specific row with the ref. Sorry. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 10:47, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

You can write | data-sort-value="female"|female<ref>http://www.example.org</ref> for the cell with the reference if you only want it to sort by "female". See Help:Sorting#Specifying a sort key for a cell. I did that above. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:41, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

References

1. http://www.example.org
2. http://www.example.org

Thanks for replying. As a user I believe that by default sorting should not take into account metadata. Specifying custom sort values is handy, but most editors do not know about that possibility and would find it repetitive. Regardless of historical causes and manual fixes, I humbly suggest to discuss whether excluding metadata from the default ordering is right, leaving the whys and hows for later. --Enos D'Andrea (talk) 17:01, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Missed pings

A few times recently, I have been "pinged" on a discussion page to get my specific input, but the ping did not appear in my notifications area and I only found the discussion by chance. Examples : Talk:Noel Lee (executive)/GA2, Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Direct Ferries - in both cases somebody wanted my feedback, but I didn't know about it. Has anyone else had this problem? Ritchie333 11:19, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

This usually happens when the 'pinger' does not link to your user page, and signs his/her port in the same edit. Those are the required conditions to trigger a notification. -- ] {{talk}} 11:24, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay, now the harder question is - how do we educate people about that who think they've pinged me when they actually haven't? Ritchie333 12:44, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Point them to WP:PING. -- ] {{talk}} 12:56, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

There are more requirements at mw:Manual:Echo#Technical details. Did not produce a ping? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:14, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhpas the lower-case "user:" part is to blame here? -- ] {{talk}} 14:30, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd like to mention that there have been many threads at WT:Echo concerning why notifications fail, and some of the questions above may have already been answered there. Using user: shouldn't make any difference. If it does, this post won't notify Edokter. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:03, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

It did notify. Problem is also that only the notifyee can check if a notification is sent. Is there some log that admins can access? -- ] {{talk}} 16:10, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Not that I know of. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:25, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

So if I have this right, the user will only get a ping if the "U" in user is uppercase? Is there a way to fix that? I use lower cause "u"s all the time and never realized users were not actually being pinged. In the interim I'll just start using the big "U"s CorporateM (Talk) 19:44, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

user:CorporateM: That was just a guess by Edokter. I don't think it's right. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:47, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I got your ping just now with a lowercase "u", so I guess that's not it! CorporateM (Talk) 19:51, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Edokter's comment "It did notify" at 16:10, 12 January 2015 confirms that lowercase "user:" does notify. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:01, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Likewise I have missed some pings which the diff suggests should have generated a notification. Adding complexity would be a problem, but it would help if feedback could be given to the notifier to let them know how many pings they sent. Perhaps something like the "your edit has been saved" box could say "1 notification sent", or the edit might be tagged: "tag: 1 notification". Johnuniq (talk) 21:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

i thought that Phabricator:T68078 would be good measure to mitigate those issues, at least partially. if you agree, you can weigh in on this task to help convince the developers of its importance. in a nutshell: this is a suggestion to add to the "your edit was saved" notification some "the following user(s) have been tagged: (1), (2)" content. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:35, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Just to throw in another datapoint, this edit has ] verbatim and what appears to be a valid signature, yet I still didn't get pinged. Ritchie333 15:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Do you have "Mention" enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:17, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I do Ritchie333 15:18, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I think it might be because it is in template space. This shouldn't really matter, but perhaps it does. I wonder if Rich Farmbrough or Redtigerxyz got a notification? Was also thinking about your first two examples, maybe the problem is that they are both subpages? --Mrjulesd (talk) 16:03, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Subpages are not a factor: I was notified by this edit to a subpage. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:08, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Notifications#Events that trigger notification messages for you and others says "Mentions: When your user page is linked to on any talk page or on a page in the Misplaced Pages: namespace by another user." I don't know why template space and other non-talk namespaces are omitted. MediaWiki:Notification-mention says "talk page" even when it's a project page. I still don't know why wouldn't cause a notification. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:53, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

OK I've got a couple of theories about this, which either or both may or may not be correct:

1. Perhaps Manual:Echo does not parse all diffs, but only diffs from pages that it considers to be discussion pages. If this is the case, certain pages might never generate a notification, as they might not be seen as discussion pages, despite discussions taking place on them. It would be interesting, for example, to see if pages in the Template: namespace (not Template talk:) could ever trigger a notification.

2. Perhaps Manual:Echo is buggy, and doesn't always parse page diffs correctly. So all page are checked, but only some posts on a given page generate a notification, despite fulfilling the rules. A good way to check would be to see if any pages give notification only for some messages.

I think perhaps 1. is more likely. This has also happened to me in the past, but I can't remember where the occurrences occurred. --Mrjulesd (talk) 18:14, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

If 1. turns out to be the case, some exceptions from it, most obviously any AfD or DYK nomination (which are, despite the namespaces, discussions), would be useful. Ritchie333 12:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

AfDs are in Misplaced Pages: space, where pings certainly work - just look elsewhere on this page which is also in Misplaced Pages: space.

In case it helps, here's an example of a ping I missed, which was not misspelled or unproperly signed. The signature was separated from the mention, and was also reformatted soon after. (Also, pings that are removed and readded properly in the same edit don't seem to work.) I heard that some fixes have been applied, or something, and I hope I am not missing many pings, now, but I would like a way to confirm that I am sending them. —PC-XT+ 05:30, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

OK I've been testing things out a bit with an alternate account, User:Mrjulesd(alt). Now I've made the following diffs, , and and generated no alerts! Something is broken, and I'm starting to suspect the CSS in my signature may be to blame... --Mrjulesd (talk) 19:15, 14 January 2015 (UTC) Correction: the diff on this page has just caused a notification. But the other two diffs have failed so far --Mrjulesd (talk) 19:18, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Mrjulesd(alt) this is a test edit, and is fine to ignore. See this thread for an explanation. --Mrjulesd (talk) 19:04, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Question: would anyone like to help testing? If someone could try to ping me on this account on Template:Did you know nominations/Je suis Charlie or Template talk:Did you know it would be interesting. All my Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo notifications are ticked. These pages do not seem to be generating notifications. I'm especially surprised that Template talk:Did you know didn't work, I thought that a Template talk namespace would work, but it didn't, despite notifications for this being ticked (default settings) on my alt account. --Mrjulesd (talk) 19:39, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd go along with the styled-signature theory, because this edit didn't notify me. However, my sig doesn't seem to cause the problem, as I shall demonstrate to Mrjulesd and Mrjulesd(alt). --Redrose64 (talk) 20:20, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Current view

Thanks Redrose64 both pings received. Yeah I'd already discounted my signature theory as I did receive a ping on this page on my alt acc eventually. But my current view is my earlier view 1.

It does NOT seem that notifications (a.k.a. pings) are working on the following pages:

1. Template talk:Did you know (User:Mrjulesd(alt))
2. Template:Did you know nominations/Je suis Charlie (Mrjulesd(alt) and Ritchie333)
3. Talk:Noel Lee (executive)/GA2 (Mrjulesd(alt) and Ritchie333)
4. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Direct Ferries (Mrjulesd(alt) and Ritchie333)
5. Talk:Man (Redrose64)
6. Others, I've experienced it earlier, but I can't remember which.

List updated 15 Jan 15 11.32

What links all these pages? This is unclear. We've established subpages can ping. But I'm not sure about “Template:” and “Template talk:” namespaces yet. But it seems that even article “Talk:” pages don't work on occasions.

So at the moment it all seems a bit random really. Annoying!

I think the thing to do would be to compile a list of pages (these and any others), and open a bug at mediawiki.

If anyone wants to test this, please try pinging my accs from the pages listed, and I'll report back. You can leave a message on my talk page to make things clearer if you like. Also, any other pages would be interesting if reported. --Mrjulesd (talk) 21:29, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I would expect notifications to fail in Template: namespace, since the only non-talk namespace where they are documented as enabled is Misplaced Pages: - see mw:Echo (Notifications)/Feature requirements#User Mention → Notes: → second bullet. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:17, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

The restriction by namespace seems odd to me. If someone tried to ping me from an article/category/whatever, I'd want to know ASAP so that I could fix the page. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:46, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Well I'm not sure if there are any restrictions in place. I've been talking to Mandarax and he thinks that Template: space didn't ping at first, but that was changed at a latter date. So possibly the namespaces allowing pings was updated, but the documentation at mw:Echo (Notifications)/Feature requirements#User Mention wasn't. --Mrjulesd (talk) 11:49, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• Another data point: I didn't receive a notification from this message. Manul ~ talk 13:19, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• This edit to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Direct Ferries did generate a notification for me. MANdARAX • XAЯAbИAM 20:47, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

• OK so it doesn't look like these pages are never generating pings. But at the same time I feel maybe that some pages are worse than others. I say that as at the village pump I don't seem to ever missed a ping, while this has not been the case on other pages.

So it seems apparent that some sort of software bug is causing this. But beyond this perhaps not much more can be said. I think the next step is maybe to report this to mediawiki so they can look into it if possible. --Mrjulesd (talk) 01:06, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Mrjulesd,User:Mandarax, User:Ritchie333... etc... It seems to me that a signing "event" is the interpretation of ~~~~, ~~~ or maybe even~~~~~. I agree with User:John of Reading that all pages (namespaces) should generate pings - perhaps we should request this? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 09:29, 17 January 2015 (UTC).

Rich Farmbrough thanks for the ping, didn't get it! Wondering if the others received theirs...

As far as I understand you must leave 4 tildes to create a ping, as this generates a signature and timestamp. 3 tildes only gives a timestamp which is not enough. Not sure what 5 tildes do.

Not sure what namespaces work with pings. It seems that initially it was only talk: and Misplaced Pages: namespaces included, but I have been told that this was expanded to include Template: namespace too, and possibly others. It seems the problem is that all namespaces seem to be unreliable, and I'm not sure any pattern has emerged. --Mrjulesd (talk) 13:53, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Hm, well I sign with 3 tildes - which is a sig. without timestamp, though in my case the timestamp is built in. Five is just the timestamp. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:00, 19 January 2015 (UTC).

Quoted quotes of quotes

I try to include pithy quotes in my articles, like "the situation is really unbelievable". For the longer ones I use block quote. That led to some confusing comments in a recent FAC, a mini-debate about whether or not there should be quotes in the source text. While looking at the article on my iPhone I noticed that the problem - block quote is rendered with nice fancy quotes around the block when seen on the iPhone, and I assume other places too. That made the quotes in the source text redundant. However, when I view it on my Mac, I don't see these quotes, so if I remove them I lose all quotes around the quotation. What's the story, and the solution? Maury Markowitz (talk) 12:17, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Per MOS:Blockquote: "Do not enclose block quotations in quotation marks..." For some reason the mobile view (which you can select at the bottom of any page) has CSS adding big quotes to blockquotes. --  Gadget850 12:36, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Either way, the content of <blockquote>...</blockquote> is a quote; imagine that the tag is a type of quotation mark. So <blockquote>"..."</blockquote> is redundant. By default, the quoted text is indented (see the MDN page on <blockquote>), but some sites use CSS to apply decorative(!) quotation marks, like WP’s mobile CSS. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 06:32, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Do links to deleted revisions still work for admins?

Suppose there is a link to an old revision of a page, say to my user page like this. Afterwards, the page is deleted. Does the original link continue to work, unmodified, for admins? (The alternative being that they must go to Special:DeletedContributions and find the revision, or something.) Does the same apply to diffs? Manul ~ talk 20:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

We do not. In my User:GB fan/Sandbox is a link to a deleted revision of my sandbox. When I click it I see:

The revision #640396545 of the page named "User:GB fan/Sandbox" does not exist.

This is usually caused by following an outdated history link to a page that has been deleted. Details can be found in the deletion log.

I do not actually see the revision. -- GB fan 20:17, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I have also added a diff to a deleted version and I do not see that either. -- GB fan 20:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@GB fan: Thanks. Does either one of these links give the old revision of your sandbox? Manul ~ talk 20:44, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Both give me "Invalid or missing revision. You may have a bad link, or the revision may have been restored or removed from the archive." --Redrose64 (talk) 20:47, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)No I just see an error message that says I clicked on an outdated link. To actually see the revision or diff, I need to go into the deleted revisions and pull them up. -- GB fan 20:49, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks to both of you. Well I tried. Presumably an algorithm exists for converting a deleted link to a working one, but it may require an exact timestamp of the deleted revision. I'm just trying to make it easier for admins to review evidence. Manul ~ talk 20:53, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

See my post here. That's got a link to a deleted diff, which works for another admin. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:04, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Right, I used a similar example to craft the two unworking links above. I deduced the approximate timestamp by looking at one revision number less. I don't see why timestamps should have to be exact, so it seems the strategy should work in principle. Anyway, no need to dwell on it. Thanks again. Manul ~ talk 21:50, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

This is a known issue; see T20104 on Phabricator. Graham87 11:25, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Design Research

I wake to find that "Wikimedia Design Research" (address noreply@qemailserver.com) tells me in two messages (which appear to be identical other than in their subject lines):

You are invited to participate in the future of Misplaced Pages, and MediaWiki software development.

OK, why not? But the questionnaire turns out to be ... not quite ready for prime time, telling me "<u><strong>", etc.

"Have any questions?" the messages cheerily ask me. "Feel free to reply to this email." Somehow I doubt that a reply to an address starting "noreply" will have much effect. Hmm. -- Hoary (talk) 01:00, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I've already told them about the duplicate messages, and Dispenser reported the visible-HTML problem (in his case it was related to Qualtrics being in one of the browser-extension Ghostery's blacklists). I'll send this additional problem, too. Thanks. --Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 02:32, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Not receiving emails when watched pages are changed

Haven't changed the settings in my preferences. Sometimes I get an email. Sometimes I don't. I'm forced to visit pages I've edited to check their history for any recent changes. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 04:58, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Have you tried the "Mark all pages visited" button on your watchlist? You only get one email to alert that the page has been changed since your last visit. If you don't look at it, or click that button, while logged in, you get no further emails for that page. I also don't get an email for my talk page, even though I have it watched, but have my Notification preferences set to email me, instead. —PC-XT+ 07:52, 15 January 2015 (UTC) 07:54, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

It says: "Email notification is enabled. Pages that have been changed since you last visited them are shown in bold." It's not doing what it says. The point of requesting email notifications is so that I don't need to keep going to Watchlist to see what pages are marked in bold. Since posting my comment here some hours ago and adding this page to my watchlist, there have been five dozen page changes added to it that are ALL related to this Talk page. What a waste of my time. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 16:04, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Those 2 sentences in the watchlist interface are unrelated to each other. If you turn off the userpreference "Email me when a page or file on my watchlist is changed", then the Interface sentence "Email notification is enabled." will vanish, but the second sentence (about bolding) will remain.

As PC-XT wrote, the enotifwatchlistpages function ("Email me ..." userpreference) is ancient, and fairly simple but logical. Once it has sent us an email about page "foo", it will only send another email about that same page, after we have visited that page. I.e. it works on the logic that once you've gotten one email, it doesn't need to bother you again, until you've seen and clicked on the link in that first email (and hence visited the page and reset the marker). Possibly we should clarify that sentence in the preferences menu? HTH. Quiddity (talk) 06:53, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Technical input requested on template issue

Please comment at Template talk:interlanguage link#A significant flaw on how a possible problem with this template should be addressed. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 15:35, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Harvard refs

I usually just use the cite web, cite book etc when I am referencing articles and am unfamiliar with Harvard referencing. Boston Corbett was recently converted from various ref styles to Harvard citations and I noticed something. When I go to the bottom of the article, under the Notes heading, there are blue links with the name of the refs in them. Are these blue links supposed to *go* anywhere? Are they supposed to link to or show the full book citation? They seem to go nowhere... but it seems like they should link to something useful. If someone could explain that to me I'd appreciate it. I did look on the various help|pages for links to example articles so I could see if these blue linked refs are a normal phenomenon and found none. Maybe it would be useful for there to be links to articles with Harvard refs at Misplaced Pages:Harvard citation template examples, WP:HARV etc. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 17:46, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Shearonink: Make sure that each {{cite book}}, etc. has a |ref=harv. See NBR 224 and 420 Classes#Notes for a working example. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:54, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Installing User:Ucucha/HarvErrors will help identify these issues. --  Gadget850 19:44, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate the responses (especially the working example!) but when I look at the Harvard refs and how they are set up it just looks like gobbledygook to me. I don't understand how it works and I didn't do the changeover to Harvard referencing. I've learned what I know of Wikicode by finding examples of what I want my overlying text to do and then lifting the underlying code from the example...so anyway I am now trying to understand this Harvard referencing. If someone could just change one of the refs so I can see the difference I'll be glad to do the rest. I like to understand the why & the how before I edit. So if I look at one that was changed to the way it's supposed to be then I can fix the rest of them. And when I run into this issue in the future I'll be able to fix it myself. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 20:15, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Shearonink: As requested, I've done one of them. That has fixed all the Jameson 2013 refs: numbers 1, 11 and 17. More information at Shortened footnotes. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:13, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Well, I've been trying to fix them all for ages but some of the linking isn't working. So I finally gave up and just put the code |ref=harv at the end of all the cites. Would appreciate it if someone could tease out what is wrong with the following refs: Walker 1998, Swanson 2007, Sparks 1889, Chamlee 1989. I'm giving up for now. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 04:46, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Note: Ok, I think I've figured out what one possible issue might be. When a cite has multiple authors with last1/first1 & last2/first2 for the co-authors' names, the linkage doesn't work. When I removed the second author's name from "Walker 1998" and also deleted the numbers from "last" & "first" for the remaining author then the linkage to the full cite worked. I have no idea if there is additional code that I am missing from the Harvard cites or if this if a bug of some kind. Any help on this issue would be wonderful. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 07:56, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@Shearonink: It appears that John of Reading fixed it. When the parameters |last2= |last3= etc. are used, you need to supply matching names to the {{harv}}, to a maximum of four. All of the issues above should be covered at Shortened footnotes; they're certainly covered in the documentation for {{harv}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:56, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@Redrose64:Thanks Redrose64 & John of Reading for all their fixes. I appreciate everyone's patience on this. Heh, I know it is all covered in documentation and notes, but I'm not a coder and most of the time the explanations are more confusing to me than the actual code. But when I can see the actual code along with what the underlying code does to the text skin in front of me as an example, it all becomes crystal-clear. Before I came here I really did try to do my own research but couldn't understand the explanations. (I also asked the editor who converted the refs to Harvard why the bluelinks didn't go anywhere...they said they didn't know either.) Shearonink (talk) 16:23, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Redundancy in TemplateData

We have many templates which use TemplateData, and alongside it have duplicate prose descriptions, in a variety of formats, of the same parameters. I raised the issue of this redundancy and duplication of effort at Extending use; removing redundancy, a while ago, but there has been little response. Please review and comment as you see fit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Navbox templates with ndash (or mdash) Missing bold in article

Greetings, Noticed some Navbox templates that I've been adding & updating with a dash in the title/name do not show as 'Bold' on the article page when the RC Ecclesiastical Prov Navbox is opened. Wondering how to fix?

BTW this is my first question here at VP and editor since March, 2014 (somewhat new). I have previously asked at Teahouse but I think this is a more technical question, so asking here...

Part 1: NOT CORRECT

Navbox example:

Article example: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston–Houston

Part 2: IS CORRECT

Navbox example

Article example Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston

Note: for the "Not correct example" above, it has an article Redirect. Is there something going on with "Mdash" vs. "Ndash"?

Regards, JoeHebda (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@JoeHebda: In navboxes, bolding of the links only happens if the link is direct, not via a redirect. I've made this edit: changing a hyphen-minus to an en-dash, to match the article title and so bypass the redirect. This is one of those cases where WP:NOTBROKEN does not apply. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Redrose64 for your help. In the edit display window the hyphen-minus & en-dash look the same. There are a few more navboxes with this same issue, so I'll go forward & "Be bold"! :-) Best wishes, JoeHebda (talk) 21:36, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Database error

Just tried to view my contributions, filtered for "file" namespace, and got:

A database query error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software.

Function: IndexPager::buildQueryInfo (contributions page filtered for namespace or RevisionDeleted edits)

Error: 2013 Lost connection to MySQL server during query (10.64.32.25)

Note the lack of any guidance as to where a user may report this. Repeating the query returned the expected results. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:18, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

This sounds like a recurrence of a problem that we had in December 2013 - January 2014, see bugzilla:58157 / phab:T60157. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:45, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

userscript dependencies

I'm starting to try and work with userscripts a little, and, probably due to my inexperience with both javascript and with mediawiki, I'm running in to a couple of questions. This is moderately off-topic here, so let me know if I should bugger off to the MediaWiki wiki. The questions all have to do with loading and dependencies.

• I would like to use some functions/objects in multiple scripts. What is the suggested way to inject the dependencies into the executing script? There are the functions importScript, mw.loader.load and mw.loader.using(). I can't figure out how to inject the dependencies in to the executing script however, other than injecting them into the global namespace and picking them up from there, which can't be the intention. mw.loader.using takes a callback as an argument, but that callback doesn't have parameters for the dependencies. It returns a promise, but I can't find what the promise contains (it looks like nothing).

• Scripts that actually do something other than providing functions tend to depend on the DOM, which may be built asynchronously. The mediawiki guidelines advice to use the mw.hook events rather than document.ready, which seems reasonable, but the three listed events there seem to be rather sparse. My specific usecase for now is adding a portlet link. On which event should I add that? Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 11:16, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Seconded (your questions ;-) –Be..anyone (talk) 13:20, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Diff incorrectly highlights the entire line

• https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Acupuncture&diff=642701128&oldid=642700956

I have verified that the only change is the addition of "|title=Acupuncture for Bell's palsy", yet the entire line is highlighted in both revisions. Is it possibly this bug? Anyone know what triggers it? Manul ~ talk 12:27, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

The technical term for the behaviour of our diff engine, I believe, is that it "sucks balls". You could add this diff to the bug; I'm not sure is anyone is working on it, plans to work on it, or actually knows what triggers it. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:41, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

In that particular case, it's probably because that line is over whatever limit (10000 bytes, I'd guess) the diff engine uses to avoid spending too much time trying to find the individual characters that changed in a line. Anomie⚔ 13:21, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

WikEdDiff (available under Preferences->Gadgets->Editing) handles this example just fine.-gadfium 01:39, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

CharInsert

Since this has come up a few times over the last month, I created Help:CharInsert. --  Gadget850 18:34, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks rate limit

Is there a rate limit for "thanks"? This log shows abuse. Johnuniq (talk) 08:24, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

A ten-per-minute restriction is mentioned at mw:Extension:Thanks#Usage. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:11, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I can't overstate how useful this feature would be to me

I've been dwelling on this for years, and I can't be the only one it's occurred to; why no tickable option in the user contributions interface to "show only my most recent edit for each page"? It would make navigating between the various articles and discussion spaces I might be editing at a given time (and, especially, making sure nothing gets lost the mix), such a more streamlined process. Am I missing something? Is there an obvious workaround to get the same effect that I'm missing? The utility seems so obvious. Snow talk 09:43, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

This idea strikes me as being obviously sensible and practical and as being useful to many people, including me.

It was proposed two years ago, and User:Bawolff said then that it might have performance issues.

I don't know if some sort hack could be devised as a workaround (e.g., something CCS-based to hide any line that didn't contain the "top" label?), but if someone figures it out, then please let me know, too.

(As for its "Only show edits that are latest revisions" item, I often want "Only show edits that are not latest revisions", i.e., talk pages that aren't on my watchlist but that someone might have replied to.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

• Snow Rise: your contributions that are most recent only
• Whatamidoing (WMF): your contributions that are not latest revisions
  • The API can return these results, shouldn't be too hard to get the Special page too as well or create a script that will allow users to add that functionality. — {{U|Technical 13}} 22:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks T-13; even the rough API readout is useful for reference and I'll follow the ticket with hopes of a more integrated approach eventually. Cheers! Snow talk 22:38, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Can you combine those two? I want a list of pages that I have edited, that I was not the last person to edit, and only the most recent instance of each of those page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:19, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

• That is two separate queries. It could be done through the API with a script that builds an array of pages from the first request and then runs that list to get the most recent contributors to all the pages, but playing in the Special:ApiSandbox I can't get it to return your request in one shot (not even with generators). :) — {{U|Technical 13}} 15:50, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Waldorf–Astoria (New York, 1893)

Hi, can somebody please modify Template:Multiple image to allow the option for clumps of four and six images etc with two on each line. If you can do that please replace the separate ones with singular templates in the Waldorf and Astoria sections to reduce the gaps between the images.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:03, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Trappist the monk?♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:24, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: Have you tried posting this request on Template talk:Multiple image? GoingBatty (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

One byte added - but where?

According to my watchlist, the contribs of Peridon (talk · contribs), and the page history, this edit added one byte. So why does it show as "(No difference)" in the diff? --Redrose64 (talk) 19:23, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. What I did was change ##: to #:: to get rid of a subsidiary numbering set that had started. It ought to be zero size change unless a : is bigger than a # . Peridon (talk) 20:02, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Hang on - it's code. Does that count in a diff, or it it only content? Peridon (talk) 20:05, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

The hash character (Unicode U+0023) and the colon (U+003A) are both single-byte characters. It should make no difference whether the change is to Wiki markup or to plain text: for example, the edit immediately prior to yours, which changed one hash to a colon (specifically, ##:I do a to #::I do a) is clearly present in the diff, and shows in history etc. as a zero-byte change in size. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:09, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

• Based on the timestamps, I'm guessing it is showing no diff because both of the edits where identical and came in at the same time despite being from different users. As to where the +1 byte difference came from, I'm going to speculate (that's all I can really do here) that one of the lines ended with just a CR or LF character and Peridon's edit made it a CRLF which wouldn't show up as a diff in a comparison but would explain a one byte increase in size. — {{U|Technical 13}} 02:39, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Manage Template Data bug

When I define a "type" on the new Template Data editor, the type remains undefined - even when I set it as a string.

Regards

NetworkOP (talk) 21:24, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for this note, NetworkOP. I'd like two pieces of information from you:

• Which browser/computer OS are you using?
• What steps are you following to add this information? (For example, are you using the GUI tool or editing the JSON manually? And what is the exact sequence of buttons you're clicking on?)

The dev who mostly deals with this is offline at the moment, but I'll send her e-mail so she knows that a problem has been reported. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:51, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

• Browser: IE explorer and Chrome (Bug exists in both)
• OS:Windows
• Steps:Clicking on Manage Template Data and trying to add a type (for example: string)
• Note:The Manage Template Data function was recently updated so that it is similar to VisualEditor, prior to this update it was working fine

NetworkOP (talk) 00:14, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. The bug exists in Safari and Firefox on my Mac, too, so it's everywhere. It seems to be contained to the 'Type', if you follow the process, which is (once you're in the GUI tool):

1. Open the parameter.
2. Make your changes.
3. Click 'Back' to get back to the main window. (Your changes to the just-edited parameter will be silently kept.)
4. Click 'Apply' to move all your changes into the wikitext window.
5. Save the page.

But it seems to be dropping the 'Type' (a bug), and the dev's description of the process involved the word "nonintuitive". Design changes will be forthcoming, and if you have ideas about how you want them to work or what labels the buttons should have, then please share! Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, it seems to completely ignoring the 'type' input (which is in a drop down menu), so this suggests the drop down menu is either not configured properly or it's just failing to do anything with the input from the drop down menu. I would appreciate it if I could have a look at the code myself. Regards.NetworkOP (talk) 12:31, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Or another suggestion, revert back to the old "manage template data" and add the new version under beta (so that it's opt-in), as it clearly contains a major bug. Regards.NetworkOP (talk) 12:33, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Of course you can look at the code yourself. All the links you need should be at mw:Extension:TemplateData. The patch has already been written: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/185693/

By the time they could roll it back (which is no earlier than Tuesday morning; the windows are very limited for the rest of the month), they can just fix it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Problem with "redirect images ...." gadget

File:Trent House, 15 Market Street, Trenton.jpg
With "Media viewer" off and "Redirect image links to Commons for files that are hosted there" on in user preferences (gadgets) clicking this image leads me to a wrong Commons page with a corrupted filename. Parentheses in the original filename (OK, the name's essay-like length is sub-optimal) are removed somewhere during the search processing. Anyone know this problem or a possible fix? GermanJoe (talk) 22:21, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

PS - the same problem appears, when I show the en-Wiki page first and then click on the "View on Wikimedia Commons" tab. GermanJoe (talk) 23:01, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I seem to recall this sort of thing from a few months ago, but IIRC it was the presence of commas that caused the problem. Your image has both commas and parentheses: please try an image with just commas, and one with just parentheses, to see which one is causing it. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:16, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

The normal pipe trick always strips bar in foo, bar as well as foo (bar). The oddity here is apparently at least consistent. –Be..anyone (talk) 00:38, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Whatever is wrong, it appears to be at Commons and not here. I haven't found a way to make a working link to the Commons page but you can get there by copy-pasting "File:Trent House, 15 Market Street, Trenton.jpg" to the search box at commons:. If I do that and copy-paste the url in Firefox then it says https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:Trent_House,_15_Market_Street_%28changed_from_539_South_Warren_Street%29,_Trenton_%28Mercer_County,_New_Jersey%29.jpg. It doesn't work as a link here but it also fails if I paste the url into the browser address bar I just copied it from. I don't have that problem at https://en.wikipedia.org/File:Trent_House,_15_Market_Street_%28changed_from_539_South_Warren_Street%29,_Trenton_%28Mercer_County,_New_Jersey%29.jpg. The only difference between the two url's is the domain. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I have done a few tests at User:GermanJoe/sandbox#image_tests, but with no conclusive results: commas and parentheses are OK in other files. GermanJoe (talk) 00:10, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Here is a shorter example with a non-existing file: https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:(B() versus https://en.wikipedia.org/File:(B(). The file doesn't exist but the effect of removing parentheses at Commons and not at Misplaced Pages can still be seen. If any of the four characters in the file name are removed from the Commons link then it works in the sense that all characters are preserved:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:(B() fails by removing all parentheses
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:B() works
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:(() works
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:(B) works
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/File:(B( works

PrimeHunter (talk) 00:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem is unrelated to files. The same happens for Commons mainspace:

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/(B() fails by removing all parentheses but happens to hit an existing page at https://commons.wikimedia.org/B
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/B() works
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/(() works
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/(B) works
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/(B( works

PrimeHunter (talk) 00:45, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Any idea, who would be responsible for testing (fixing) such a bug? Testing with the long "Trent House" string is even weirder, removal of all commas OR removal of the 2nd "(" character would result in a working link. GermanJoe (talk) 01:02, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

• I'm unable to reproduce this bug. It's working fine for me. — {{U|Technical 13}} 02:24, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

• Hmm, Firefox 34.05 and Windows XP here and "Always use a secure connection when logged in" activated in preferences. Just fyi. GermanJoe (talk) 02:36, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

For me it's apparently caused by NoScript#Anti-XSS protection in Firefox. The problem goes away if NoScript's Anti-XSS protection is disabled as described at https://noscript.net/faq#qa4_5. I don't have the problem in other browsers. I don't think MediaWiki should try to work around this if it only happens for NoScript users on certain rare url's which may look like code. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: When you make file links (as opposed to displaying the image), you should never need to use a full URL - just put a colon before the File: part - File:Trent House, 15 Market Street, Trenton.jpg. If you need to force a link to the commons file description page, instead of the local one, put a c before that colon: c:File:Trent House, 15 Market Street, Trenton.jpg. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:35, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I know how to make file wikilinks but this was an odd url problem and I wanted to eliminate the possibility of the cause being MediaWiki's processing of wikilinks. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Good call on the Anti-XSS setting, disabling it solved the problem. But I have turned it back on, as you said, it's a rare bug. I'll just ask for a rename (or add a redirect) on Commons for this file, that should solve it as well in this case (fixed with rename) GermanJoe (talk) 12:10, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Section headers in collapse boxes

So, I've noticed an issue recently, I'm not sure if it's worth fixing. If a section header is in collapse boxes (like {{collapse top}}), it still appears in the table of contents, but clicking on the link in the TOC doesn't work. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:41, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

It's a known issue. I'm not sure what a fix would be. I certainly don't think the TOC should change when a hide/show link is clicked elsewhere. The TOC link might go to the start of the collapsed content or automatically expand it but I don't know how well-defined such behaviour would be or whether it's technically possible. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:52, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

The TOC is prepared by the MediaWiki parser. The links in it point to anchors (in the form of id="..." attributes) on the section header tags (like <h2> etc.). So far, so good. The mechanism for producing a collapsible section has two main components: first, there are the templates {{collapse top}}/{{collapse bottom}} which make a two-row single-column table. The first row of this table is the green stripe bearing the box title and the show/hide link; the second row is the actual content. The second component of this mechanism is some javascript, which essentially adds (hide) or removes (show) the CSS declaration display:none; in the style="" attribute of that second table row. If a browser has been designed to be fully compliant with CSS 2, any element which has display:none; is not just hidden, it is not physically present, therefore, any id="..." attributes on section header tags within that collapsible section are also absent, which means that the link in the TOC has no anchor to jump to. There's no easy way of making it jump to the next element out from the one that is absent. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:17, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Am I correct to assume that "no easy way of making it jump to the next element" also implies "no easy way of making it stop at the previous element"? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:12, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Template access to Preferences:Appearance:Offset (or local time generated from it)?

I'm doing a template that will show today in both the Western Calendar and the Hebrew Calendar. What I would like to have access to is the Preferences Appearances:Offset value (or something related) in order for the template to change what day it displays for the Western Calendar at Midnight based on the user preferences for offset (and the Hebrew date to change at 6PM). Is the information as to what the user has as their Offset value available to templates? (Asked on Help Desk, the suggestion was to post here)Naraht (talk) 13:53, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

That is not possible, as it would either show a version of the page cached with someone else's timezone preference or would fragment the caches. To do something like this, you'd have to have some sort of JavaScript (in common.js or a gadget) that would add in the user-specific date on the client side. Anomie⚔ 17:32, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

hi

ive left a message on "cyberpowers" talk page about the "revision history statistics" link like ive been told to do here in the past, however ive gotten no response or rather the xtool thing is down, now what do I do?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:49, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

There are now replies User talk:cyberpower678#x tool. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:11, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Single column pdf?

A reader tried to create a pdf of some articles, (example Exterior_algebra) but noted the pdf creator automatically creates two-column output. In some cases, formals are cutoff. The reader wondered if there was a way to generate output in a single column. I did not see a way to do this directly. I thought I would be clever and create a one article book, noting that the Book creator has an option to choose one or two column output. However, while the Main page rendered as a single column the Exterior_algebra article rendered as two columns.

Is there a way to get the output as a single column?--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:21, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Vandal edits tagged as bot

Hey all, Jackmcbarn recently blocked long-term abuser. What is odd to me, is that in my watchlist, several of the vandal's edits were tagged with "b", indicating a bot made the edits. Does anyone know why this would be the case? I also don't know how to show you what I mean, since I don't see the b in their edit history, and the user's edits have moved out of my busy watchlist. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 02:46, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Confirming this. These three two edits were all labeled with "b" or "mb" when I checked on my watchlist just now. I'm not sure what could cause this, however. — Mr. Stradivarius 02:54, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Also, the bot flag doesn't appear in contributions lists, so that's unrelated to this issue. See, for example, Special:Contributions/AnomieBOT. — Mr. Stradivarius 02:59, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Right. The bot flag appears in recentchanges and nowhere else. Here's a dump of all of the recentchanges entries from that user:

I'm not sure how this could have happened at this point. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:08, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• Could it have been through the API with bot=yes? MW:API:Edit#Parameters implies it can be done. — {{U|Technical 13}} 03:17, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

  Doesn't look like it. I just tried that and it didn't work. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:24, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• This would happen if Jackmcbarn used the &bot=1 option when doing the rollbacks (or used a script that did it). Mr.Z-man 04:48, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

  That'll be it, then. It's a bit strange that you can flag edits by other users as being bot edits, but that explanation fits the facts. (Maybe the "b" could also be hidden from the watchlist, as it is obviously confusing people.) All of the reverts in question were made by Jackmcbarn; Jack, was there any special script-fu that you used? — Mr. Stradivarius 06:54, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

  Also, looking at the watchlist output more closely, the edits marked with "b" were by Unorginal 2015, and the edits marked with "mb" were actually by Jackmcbarn. — Mr. Stradivarius 06:58, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Redirect gone wrong

Hi. I moved the page Rachel Sassoon Beer to Rachel Beer over a redirect. The result was a circular redirect which I can't fix. I tried to undo the supposed "second" redirect but got a message that it had already been undone. I now cannot see the history of the Rachel Beer page. Please can you help me sort it out? Deb (talk) 03:50, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

One of your moves deleted the target to make way for the move. I have restored Rachel Beer. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:07, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I still can't figure out how I did that - or why I couldn't find the history. Deb (talk) 04:52, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

You probably accidentally hit the "Delete and move" button twice quickly. It's happened to me, too. Graham87 07:55, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages village pump
• Pages automatically checked for accidental language links