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).

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Purge API broken?

I noticed that sub categories in Category:AfC pending submissions by age were not being updated by the bot that normally periodically updates by purging. I could not remember which bot it was so just assumed it was down. I run a program I wrote to do a purge on drafts in the wrong cats as a temp fix but that also failed to make any difference. I then tried a manual purge from the More > Purge menu and again no update to the categories. note that doing an Edit+Publish does get the categories to update.

This appears to have happed in the last few days so I assume it was possibly broken by the mw:MediaWiki 1.41/wmf.30 update - possibly Git 964563. I havn't had time to dig deeper, but thought I would report. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 11:24, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@KylieTastic: Purge only updates the purged page itself, not category pages and link tables. That requires a null edit (Edit+Publish). They would automatically be updated at some point but it can take a really long time. The time varies. I don't know whether it has generally been slower lately. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter I was not sure if the menu purge was working before, I agree from the text in Help:Purge it looks like it never did. However the bot used to work and I know my own program worked but I do a purge setting forcelinkupdate as well that I found was required to fix these category issues. That was working a week ago when I used it to clear Category:Automatic taxobox cleanup that was showing hundreds of issues that were no longer valid. I'll investigate more when I have time. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 11:50, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Pretty sure the purge API updates categories with forcelinkupdate=1. Nardog (talk) 14:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Out of interest, which bot normally does those purges? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 11:52, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime it used to be HasteurBot for a long time, then after Hasteur passed someone else did take up the task but I can't remember who or what the bot was called, and I've failed to find the past discussion at WT:AFC. KylieTastic (talk) 12:32, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@TheresNoTime doh I remembered that is was Joe's Null Bot for a while which led me to this discussion - so I think the answer is ProcBot run by ProcrastinatingReader. KylieTastic (talk) 12:38, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it's ProcBot. Category:AfC pending submissions by age is on the list located at User:ProcBot/PurgeList. I am not sure if the bot is still running though. Proc went inactive for awhile and the bot went down at least for awhile. The last time the AFC category stopped getting purged, I almost ended up writing a replacement bot. I forget what we did to fix it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:49, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

• Note for completeness that this appears to have been fixed again with the next release mw:MediaWiki 1.42/wmf.1 I believe with this. Cheers KylieTastic (talk) 08:32, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
• Possibly related: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SDZeroBot 12 –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
• Pywikibot-based bots hitting pywikibot.exceptions.UserRightsError: User "DYKUpdateBot" does not have required user right "purge" will be interested in phab:T349348 for the Pywikibot fix. Shubinator (talk) 05:40, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
• My refresh-links bots Bot1058 task 8 quit working about a month ago, only about a month after SD0001 approved them after a lengthy trial/development process. Nobody bothered to alert me of any breaking change, and up till now I haven't made this a priority for investigation. I've shut down this bot's task because it stopped working; once I'm aware of a fix, I can restart it. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:28, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
• Note for completer completeness, mw:MediaWiki 1.42/wmf.1 also includes a related patch "PurgeAction: Properly report rate limiting – So far, PurgeAction would fail silently when the rate limit is exceeded. That's confusing and inconsistent with ApiPurge." I certainly would appreciate being informed if/when I exceed a rate limit, so that my bots don't needlessly spin their wheels doing nothing while appearing to still be doing something. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

  fwiw, the English Wikipedia is currently using MediaWiki 1.42.0-wmf.1, so you will get rate limit errors. — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 14:57, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

  Right, I just checked Special:Version#mw-version-software myself and saw that. I guess my next step is to review my code for how it handles rate limit errors and make any necessary adjustments, then restart that task. My objective is to push the system as hard as it can handle, but not harder than that, to ensure all links are refreshed as often as possible. My bot picks up the ones that the other bots missed. – wbm1058 (talk) 15:11, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

  Rate limits are not applicable for bot-flagged accounts. (Also, the patch is for PurgeAction which is the UI equivalent. The bot would be using ApiPurge instead.) – SD0001 (talk) 16:02, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

  OK then, I've just restarted my refresh-links bots using the same configuration that they were using when running successfully in September. Will monitor them for their progress in catching up to where they were when they quit working. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:10, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Quick clarification on how this should work now, from the person who wrote the patches in question:

1. ActionPurge and ApiPurge should both enforce the rate limits for purge and linkpurge, which are both set to 30 purges per minute for each user (and each IP). But as far as I can tell this limit does not apply to bots, since the bot group has the noratelimit right set per default.
2. purge is now an "implicite right" (like linkpurge already was). This means that the right cannot be denied, just rate-limited. A message like User does not have required user right "purge" should be impossible.

If this is not the case, please file a ticket on Phabricator and assign it to me. -- DKinzler (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately this is not the case for #2, Pywikibot-based bots are still seeing that error message (phab:T349348). Shubinator (talk) 01:42, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

My bot is still spinning its wheels, repeatedly purging the same pages. I'm seeing no indication from the system reporting back to the bot that the pages were not successfully purged, and yet the page_links_updated value for these pages has not been updated, so my bots keep trying to update it... As I said, this behavior began around the end of September or the beginning of October, so you might look into what changed around that time. – wbm1058 (talk) 10:57, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I see "Use Authority to check rate limits in the API." was submitted on September 28, that matches the time frame when my purge bots stopped working, so that code change is my suspect: "Rate limit checks are now performed implicitly by UserAuthority, see T310476." Even though my bots are not rate limited(?). – wbm1058 (talk) 11:13, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

That went in the the mw:MediaWiki 1.41/wmf.29 update, the update before the one reported at the top of this thread. – wbm1058 (talk) 11:24, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:1CA "undefined"

I stumbled across a page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Articles for creation/undefined 2 obviously created in error. A quick search found that there are actually a few (maybe 30 or so) "undefined" pages created by 1CA. See archive intitle:undefined - Search results - Wikipedia. I bet the issue might be stale as the bug might have been fixed, but I wanted to raise the issue in case it has been noticed by other 1CA users. I am pretty sure all of these would be G6 eligible because these pages were created as a result of a malfunction of a user script. Awesome Aasim 23:15, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Awesome Aasim. Looks like that page was created by User:Technical 13/Scripts/OneClickArchiver.js. I found out the hard way how buggy that script is, and I recommend that everyone upgrade to User:Evad37/OneClickArchiver.js, which is a forked version with lots of bug fixes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 22:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae Can you consider G6'ing the pages accidentally created by that script? Of course, after moving the text from the "undefined" archives. Also would consider commenting out the last part of the Technical 13 1CA. Awesome Aasim 13:33, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I think we should 1) prevent this problem from happening in the future by doing something to Technical13's script. I started a discussion on that at Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard#OneClickArchiver old version is creating a mess. 2) After #1, make a post at WP:AWBREQ to get some help cleaning up the 30 pages in your list. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

#1 is now done. They ended up blanking the user script. I kicked off #2 by creating Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#Cleanup of 30 talk page archives with "undefined" in title. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:04, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

#2 is now also complete.

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 09:54, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

updated since your last visit

The "updated since your last visit" I usually see when checking the history of a page I have watchlisted has changed to a migraine inducing vivid green, any idea how I can stop that so I can look at the page again? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:48, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Might be different rendering but its rather pleasant on my screen. In the short term if its causing a medical issue you could grayscale your display. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:55, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be a move to the use of vivid colours, unfortunately not everyone finds them easy on the eye. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:59, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I will say that when I turn my blue filter off it is a much less pleasant shade of green. I too would prefer something closer to a pastel (something which compliments our soft blues). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

@ActivelyDisinterested You could try

.updatedmarker{color:somthing more appealing; background-color:white};

in your common.css. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 20:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks I'll give it a try. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:43, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, NightWolf1223. It would be helpful if devs added a prefs setting when they made changes like this, rather than our having to deal with CSS. This looks very like the watchlist preference Subtle update marker: Tone down the "Changed since last visit" indicator on history pages. (By default it renders as a green-filled bar, enabling this gadget changes it to green text.) BlackcurrantTea (talk) 06:22, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Well, @BlackcurrantTea, I have that on, but it looks like they borked it. It renders as a a lime box rather than green text. I honestly have zero clue what is going on. Especially considering that my code is the exact same as the gadget. If anyone knows what is going on, please let me know. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 06:32, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It's the fault of this change to the gadget definition -- looks like some gadgets got limited to the Special namespace. I think it'd be reasonable to remove that change for this specific gadget, since it really is supposed to apply outside of that namespace. DLynch (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

The issue seems to have been resolved by this edit[1]. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:58, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 21:45, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

History bullet points not working as they did

The History section bullet points no longer show as clear for unread versions, which was helpful, as they are near the "Compare selected revisions" radio buttons on the left side of my wide screen. The new messaging is off to the right, which makes it harder to determine which buttons to set. Why was that changed and can it be changed back? Dhtwiki (talk) 03:23, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

What "new messaging"? Nardog (talk) 07:45, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

I have seen the same thing as Dhtwiki, I think. The article history no longer shows different colored bullet points for unread versions (yesterday, it did). The new messaging is a text box which displays "updated since your last visit" in green at the end of the revision line. I saw this starting yesterday (I don't recall changing any preferences for this), but it is gone now. My watchlist does indicate which articles have changes I have not seen; it's just the article history that doesn't. --Spiffy sperry (talk) 17:49, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Izno: Remove |namespaces=-1 from WatchlistGreenIndicators and WatchlistGreenIndicatorsMono as well (or replace it with |actions=view,history). Nardog (talk) 18:00, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Probably should consider splitting the gadget (at least the one loading on V22) if that makes sense since every line but one selector for one of those is specific to watchlist, and that's a lot of imagery loading. Izno (talk) 18:10, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

(And setting actions=view doesn't help in any great sense without also splitting.) Izno (talk) 18:12, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

in this diff, I think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:47, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

It's back to the way it was for me (and the bullet points show as green, not clear, which is what I put before). Thank you. Dhtwiki (talk) 01:00, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Firstly sorry for the unexpected breakage. I was investigating a small performance blip (increase in CSS bytes shipped on page) on Enwiki and that seemed liked an obvious optimization.

@Izno we could add

namespaces=-1,actions=history

if this is being used on the history page as well as watchlist. What do you think? Jdlrobson (talk) 15:00, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Wait, namespaces=-1,actions=history means "in the special namespace or on history pages"? If so the documentation needs updating, as that is contradictory to "only on the specified page actions"/"only on the specified namespaces". Nardog (talk) 17:01, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, separate RL parameters demarcate logical AND, not OR. I made this comment at phab:T63007#9192636 also, which gifted us the namespaces parameter. There has been some chatter about more complex loading functions which might allow logical OR. That's phab:T342567. I don't see an existing open task which specifically requests logical OR, but given Krinkle's general stewardship of the Phabricator project, someone might be able to find such in the declined pile. (Or not.) (Logical OR would also be difficult to shoehorn into the current gadget definitions. It might be something that could be done on its own if/when Gadget definition namespace is used.)

I will take a look at splitting this like I suggested above. The other thing I'm thinking about is turning this off as a default. We had so few responses here when it disappeared for the few days it did. Izno (talk) 17:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson I was investigating a small performance blip (increase in CSS bytes shipped on page) on Enwiki
That must be due to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/964878 - purge is now an implicit right available to IPs as well. This means cached page views now ship geonotice, watchlist-notice and other gadgets that were previously restricted to registered users (using the rights=purge hack). We can update the condition to rights=createpage. – SD0001 (talk) 13:04, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I had been wondering about that patch and gadgets-definition. Probably worth saying something on task for that... Izno (talk) 16:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Nice catch User:SD0001 - that would explain the increase in gadget bundle we were seeing!

on subject of logical OR I created phab:T349654. Jdlrobson (talk) 17:36, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

De & Fr WP articles to En

Two specimen print screens of the tool "tofawiki!"

I'm looking for a tool on the De & Fr WPs for the ease and reducing the time-consuming mechanical work in order to creating non-existent EnWP articles via translating articles, e.g., from the two mentioned WPs.
As far as I'm aware, there's a special tool in FaWP (named "tofawiki") that helps users to create a specific En article on the FaWiki. This tool, especially, helps transferring accordant references, categories, etc automatically in this regard. Is there any tool especially on the De and/or Fr Wiki(s) alike? Thanks in advance. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 04:44, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

There is Wikipedia:Requests for page importation which imports the markup and history. Then you can translate manually. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:40, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Importation can be done but isn't required here (I do most of the work on that page). I think you were looking for the Content translation tool. Graham87 (talk) 09:23, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

@Graham87: The WP page you mentioned is the nearest one to what I was seeking. Thank you indeed. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 05:37, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Adding a "death toll" in infobox of car models.

Hello, in United States, (and likely in other countries), there are statistics for death per million/miles, per 10 000 vehicules, or simply plain number aggregate numbers.

Once a vehicule reaches 20 accidents, official stats are made, on a vehicule.

I have tried to set up a parameter infobox [in the text editor] (in the sandbox), then to edit infoboxes, but it does not seem to change anything. I am very unsure, and the template tutorial didn't really feel so helpful. I tried as well editing by the graphical editor

The US road safety organisation has stats for several models.

I wanted to explore infobox options and death tolls in infoboxes, likely should not be limited to conflicts.

May anyone, please provide any guidance? Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 10:39, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Template:Infobox automobile/doc is the documentation, not the actual template. The edit would have to happen at Template:Infobox automobile ... and I think folks will ask whether this number is indeed important enough to be highlighted in the infobox. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:59, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I think it is because we have articles about road security, that security is major component of a car's design, and so. Yes, I do not think most would oppose so. Here is where I failed: Template:Infobox automobile/sandbox.

This number is indeed important, and there are yearly statistics made for car accidents and some vehicules are famous for their death toll. (F150 for example).

I try to set up a sandbox thing. But parameters when added stay as "Unknown" and do not change the display of the (sandbox) infobox. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 11:22, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@Kamil Hasenfeller "Vehicule." Would that be a microscopically small car? You know, "vehiCLE" and "moleCULE"? Uporządnicki (talk) 11:14, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

My bad, here is a misspelling, I used too often. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 11:23, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Consensus would need to be obtained for the proposed change - probably at Template talk:Infobox automobile. Good luck with that.Nigel Ish (talk) 11:25, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Is consensus needed for attempting to edit the sandbox? I do not mean to change the template, just to try figure see HOW it is done. Later if included yes, it would need a policy consensus. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 11:30, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Anyone can edit the sandbox. It's a good idea to check that a change is technically feasible before proposing it, and to have an example to illustrate what's being suggested. My view is that this change would be very easy technically but might not attract consensus, both because the figure is not a core property of the car and because it may be specific to the U.S. when most cars are used in other countries. Certes (talk) 13:15, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

How about models mostly found in the US? It actually might be hard I found the figures for only 4 models. Is not safety a core property? Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:20, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

In my my own sandbox how must I proceed to add a new parameter?? (I have opened a sandbox). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kamil_Hasenfeller/sandbox — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamil Hasenfeller (talk • contribs) 11:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

--Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 12:59, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

{{Infobox automobile}} has no such parameter and it cannot be added in the call alone. It has to be supported by the template. For testing you could call your modified version at {{Infobox automobile/sandbox}}. This does not happen automatically just because the call is in a sandbox page. You have to include /sandbox when you make the call. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:56, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I would like to make the template support a new parameter. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

In the sandbox. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I told you to include /sandbox when you call {{Infobox automobile/sandbox}}. I have now done it for you [2] but if you cannot follow such a simple instruction then I suggest you don't try to edit infobox templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

There is more information at WP:TESTCASES. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:34, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

This page very few information about how to make a template. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 13:28, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:TESTCASES is about testing templates, not making them. See Help:Template for general help on making templates, and Template:Infobox for help on making infobox templates. WP:TESTCASES gives an efficient test method for users who know how it works but it may be too complicated for you and it isn't required. Instead you can just manually make test calls of a template. Make sure you are really calling the wanted template by its precise name. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:57, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

It's also about creating and updating /sandbox pages. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:50, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

That's a pretty loaded number (implies deaths caused by the vehicle and who decides that?) and would probably need clarification / explanation and sourcing....i.e. (only) in the body because info boxes are bad at clarification / explanation and sourcing North8000 (talk) 19:45, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, both the weapon and the shooter are guilty. Well then it could be a list. Kamil Hasenfeller (talk) 16:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

En-dashes and em-dashes looking the same in the editor?

Let me know if this is just a me thing — but the en dash (–) and the em dash (—) look exactly the same to me in the edit window. They look obviously different in the preview, and they look different when I save the page, but the monospace font in the edit window (and the monospace font used with <code> tags) shows literally exactly the same glyph.

• – (en)
• — (em)

And I do mean exactly the same glyph. To the pixel. I'm using Firefox on Linux; is this just an implementation detail for me, or is this the case for everyone? If the latter, I would like to establish a petition, social movement, referendum, et cetera to slightly alter the monospace font we use to make them look slightly different. jp×g 00:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

What skin are you using? Are you using visual editor or wikitext editor? They look different to me on vector 2010, wikitext editor, Google Chrome for Windows. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:30, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Try different fonts.

There is no "monospace font we use". The CSS is just .mw-editfont-monospace { font-family: monospace, monospace; } (without the second monospace it becomes smaller) and it shows in whatever monospace font set in your browser. Nardog (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

They look different for me; I'm using the Consolas font. I tried a few other common fonts, and in DejaVu Sans Mono they look indistinguishable, so perhaps that's the one you're using. You can choose your preferred monospace font in Firefox settings: Fonts → Advanced… → Monospace. Matma Rex talk 16:36, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG: As per Matma Rex; plus, when I installed Firefox on my present machine, the default monospace font was unsatisfactory - I'm now using Courier New 13pt but don't recall what I altered it from. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

• Update: I updated a large number of softwares and the burning vulpine browser in question now uses a quite beautiful monospace font making the dashes easy and fun to distinguish. Canceling the plans for a protest march now... jp×g 20:49, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

  Resolved

  –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:56, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Undo button not showing auto text

I am not able to replicate it, but recently, I was able to "undo"/revert someone's edit without the typical Undid revision X by X showing up in the edit summary. It was this edit, where it marked it as a "minor edit" (Button was not clicked to be a minor edit). I tried to replicate it briefly in my sandbox to no luck. I also checked and this was not a redwarn style revert, as the edit summary wouldn't have been blank if, which it was. I doubt there is a instant "You did this" or "I can fix that" solution to this, but on the 0.1% chance there was, I wanted to alert y'all here. I was on Edge Browser, so if others report some similar problem, y'all got a report from me on it. Cheers. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 00:56, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

What is your point? It's always been possible to revert edits with no summary. Nardog (talk) 04:39, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The default undo summary has never shown up when undoing multiple revisions, like that edit did. —Cryptic 04:49, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Has it always been possible to undo multiple edits, or is that a new thing? Came here to report the blank edit summary and realized I was undoing two edits. Feels like it's a new feature, but I could be wrong. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@WeatherWriter and Novem Linguae: It has always (or at last since May 2009, when I started editing) been possible to revert multiple edits as a single revert, and where two or more edits are reverted as a single action, the default edit summary is always blank, but Twinkle does supply one.

Assuming that you're not using Twinkle, such single reverts of multiple edits are normally done from the page history, either (i) when you have used the "cur" link on the third row or below and then used the "undo" link at upper right; or (ii) when you have selected radiobuttons on non-consecutive rows, then used the Compare selected revisions feature and then used the "undo" link as above.

In this case, the edit under discussion reverted these six edits all at once, and since the very next edit was the one under discussion, I suspect that the "undo" was preceded by using the "cur" link on the row directly beneath the ones that I have listed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:21, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Undoing multiple edits was added to Help:Reverting in November 2009.[3] PrimeHunter (talk) 21:44, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

That's when the help page was updated; I'm certain that the feature existed long before. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Global user page not showing in mobile app ( Android)

Hi,

I am using the global user page on all other languages except the English Wikipedia. When I view my user profile in another language via a browser, it correctly fetches the page from https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Anoopspeaks. However, if I try the same from the mobile app (Android), I end up on the non-existing local user page link, causing a 404 error. Is there a way to fix this? Anoop Bhatia (talk) 17:22, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

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Blurry SVG render with "frame"

It seems that [[File:...|frame|...]] doesn't work properly on high-density screens (often misnamed "HiDPI") by not including srcset in the output HTML, so that at least for SVG files, the rendered PNG size is based on "logical pixels" instead of device pixels. For an example, see the image in Uncanny#Related theories. Removing |frame makes it properly sharp (and I do see srcset with higher-resolution 1.5x and 2x in the HTML). I don't know whether it's a general MediaWiki or a local problem... — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 23:53, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T133489

Well, apparently nobody cares, but I've found this error already reported (T133489) in 2016, so in fact nobody really cared about it for 7 years... I did some investigation and described my findings in that task, so if anybody having access to the code base can test the proposed solution, please do. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 02:23, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Citation clean up with bot

I recently started working with CSSP (Common_Symbiotic_Signaling_Pathway) but it requires referencing some references several times. I could not learn the "named reference" feature due to being obsessively focused on reading the journal articles (I am Autistic and immensely monotropic that makes it difficult for me to switch in between tasks). in this situation I have introduced several references with the citation button, and later on I am failing to visually scan the wall of text where I have introduced the duplicate/ redundant references. I apologise for this mistake. But is there any available wikipedia bot which can find duplicate references and can replace with appropriate named reference?

please help me out! RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 09:27, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved with wikimedia reFill tool https://refill.toolforge.org/ RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 11:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Admin afdstats down?

I refer to: https://afdstats.toolforge.org/afdstats.py?name=Maile66&max=&startdate=&altname= When I try to open that today, it just goes on an endless loop, and nothing ever happens. I don't readily see any other issues elsewhere. — Maile (talk) 11:34, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

@Maile66, it doesn't open for me. It appears that problems with that external tool may be reported here. — xaosflux ^Talk 14:33, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the input and info. — Maile (talk) 14:51, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Just saw this in passing and restarted the webservice — could you try again now Maile66? — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 15:11, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Ta! Da! It works now. Thanks. — Maile (talk) 15:12, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Resolved

–Novem Linguae (talk) 05:47, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Kerem Shalom border crossing

Hello all - the Kerem Shalom border crossing is showing the correct geolocation, but as it stands the map only shows the city of Rafah, which has led some to confuse it with the Rafah Border Crossing (see talk page).

Not sure if anything can be done to remedy this or if this is the appropriate venue for this, but bringing this to editor attention. GnocchiFan (talk) 12:38, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

This is a point, and it's a bit hard sometimes to automatically determine an appropriate zoom level. I have set a different zoom level now. Map options could have been found in the template's documentation. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:30, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much! That's much better now GnocchiFan (talk) 14:54, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Pageviews from search query

What are the most-viewed articles with "born" in their titles (e.g. Oscar (footballer, born 1991))? (or generally, how can one turn search results into pageview analysis?) Hameltion (talk | contribs) 16:28, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Someone could probably build a script that pulls interesting info.

The other alternative might be to see if pageviews can have another option titled "searchviews" or something. Or it could more gracefully integrate with e.g. Petscan or another one of our "big data comb" tools. Izno (talk) 16:55, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org already has a "Search" option under "Source". It may have problems for searches with a huge number of results. intitle:born includes articles which only match on a redirect like George Bush (born 1946) to George W. Bush. I don't know whether such redirects can be excluded. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:25, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

> Me totally missing I could change the source of massviews. Izno (talk) 21:37, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

100% me too. Thanks PrimeHunter. Redirects aren't too much of an issue for this (can just Ctrl+F on the results) but massviews definitely tends to clunk out when processing big batches.

So of (partial) results, most viewed this year: Paul Mullin (footballer, born 1994), Rodri (footballer, born 1996), Jorginho (footballer, born December 1991). Of non-footballers: Princess Charlotte of Wales (born 2015), Peyton List (actress, born 1998), Samyuktha (actress, born 1995), Jung Kyung-ho (actor, born 1983), Jason Williams (basketball, born 1975). Others of note: Sophia Smith (soccer, born 2000), Alex Scott (footballer, born 1984), Chris Jones (defensive tackle, born 1994), Barbara Bush (born 1981). Hameltion (talk | contribs) 21:49, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

@Hameltion@PrimeHunter I was curious to see if I could do it offline, bypassing massviews, so took a different approach which might be of interest - processing the main pageviews file.

The top 10 for May 2023 (the file I had handy):

• Princess Charlotte of Wales (born 2015) - 346029
• Rob Edwards (footballer, born 1982) - 194983
• Samyuktha (actress, born 1995) - 193229
• Phil Jones (footballer, born 1992) - 185277
• Julio Enciso (footballer, born 2004) - 121867
• Rodri (footballer, born 1996) - 120566
• Paul Mullin (footballer, born 1994) - 115044
• Jason Williams (basketball, born 1975) - 111845
• Jack Hughes (ice hockey, born 2001) - 105469
• Prince Ernst August of Hanover (born 1954) - 98698

For a single month it took about a few minutes to process. It can't identify namespaces (other than by manually parsing the label) but in practice that's not much of an issue. In case it's useful, this is the bash commands to process the dump

• $ grep "^en.wikipedia" pageviews-202305-user > pageviews-enwikionly-2023
• $ grep "_(born_" pageviews-enwikionly-2023 | cut -d " " -f 2,5 > sample
• $ grep ",_born_" pageviews-enwikionly-2023 | cut -d " " -f 2,5 >> sample
• $ awk '{count[$1]+=$2} END {for (i in count) print count[i],"\t",i}' sample | sort -gr > report

Replace the red bits and add new copies of the third line as appropriate. Andrew Gray (talk) 17:48, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Izno as well, sorry! (since they were the one who suggested a script...) Andrew Gray (talk) 17:51, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Andrew Gray: Wow, thanks for looking into this. If it's not too much trouble would you mind copying the top (200 or 300) results into my userspace for posterity? At User:Hameltion/the born identity works. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 18:08, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Hameltion Sure - I've pulled down the August and September files so will generate it with the last two months data. Are there any other strings you think it should look for? (Eg I'm not sure if (athlete born 1950), no comma, is a widely used format). Andrew Gray (talk) 18:17, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Andrew Gray: Thanks in advance then. Nothing comes to mind; no comma isn't common, especially not in high-traffic pages. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 18:21, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

@Hameltion and done! Top 300 almost exactly comes out at 15000 over two months, just under 250/day, which seems like a nice round threshold anyway.

There's definitely some traffic-spike anomalies there and running over a few more months might help smooth it out, but it'll hopefully be good enough to be going on with. If you'd like a full year for comparison I can see about arranging it. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks again, no need to run more unless you feel so inclined. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 19:56, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Template for discussion invitation

I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but since I didn't where else to ask it, I am asking it here.

Instead of writing manual invitations at project's talk pages asking other project members for comments and feedback on XYZ subjects, is there a template, I am not aware of, that would automatically formulate an invitation by substituting it? Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:58, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I personally make my notifications a one-liner. It just saves me time and dodges concerns of potential non-neutrality. I also use User:Newslinger/Notifier.js when I need to notify en masse. Izno (talk) 01:17, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@Izno, would you say my invitation was non-neutral? Qwerty284651 (talk) 16:42, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I personally. It was not a comment about notifications you may have made before. Izno (talk) 17:09, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I know you were talking about in general. I was asking for feedback for my notification in the WT:TEN, whether it was worded as non-neutral. Qwerty284651 (talk) 22:05, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

It tends away from neutrality with to enable visitors and readers of tennis articles be given the best version of BLP's statistics that we possibly can. which is a common argument axis in many discussions. Izno (talk) 22:32, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

How do you propose I should reword it so it best fits the WP:NEUTRAL policy? Qwerty284651 (talk) 23:12, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

I use {{subst:Please see|WP:TFD#Section}} or similar. Leaves a neutral notification without much typing. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:46, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Grammarly issues

On several occasions, I have experienced issues when using the pop-up box editor with Grammarly. The corrections are made but with errors. For example, a comma is inserted in the middle of a word instead of the end of the word, or a correction is placed randomly in the sentence or in the middle of the word I was attempting to replace. The problem is that you cannot see how the edits are inserted from the editor box, so it is something that I have to catch in a final visual check. This issue happened one day, but everything worked as expected the next day. Only to have the problem show up again several weeks later. Unfortunately, I did not document every time I experienced this. But we know for sure it happened in August when I saved this colossal mess by mistake on the Lamar University article. It is so bizarre that am I having a hard time figuring out what was supposed to change. Rublamb (talk) 00:00, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

WP:Grammarly is a known issue. Izno (talk) 01:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing that link. Funny thing is, I came across it as a recommended tool for copyediting, as in Wikipedia:Spellchecking and Wikipedia:Basic copyediting. Rublamb (talk) 01:37, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

@Rublamb: Both of those pages say to use the tools carefully because they can introduce errors. RudolfRed (talk) 01:22, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@RudolfRed, That was added today after I brought this up to GOCE. Wikipedia:Basic copyediting is not a GOCE page, but GOCE links to it as part of their instruction for new members. The general decision was that the warning was needed, after @Izno shared the essay on Grammarly. Hopefully this will reduce unintentional errors. Rublamb (talk) 03:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit conflicts with myself

Something annoying has started happening lately; this has happened to me multiple times in the last several days.

I click undo to undo another editor's edit, and check the diff, then when I click save I see:

"Someone else has changed this page since you started editing it, resulting in an edit conflict."

That someone else was me, and my edit was successfully saved, despite this message popping up telling me otherwise! wbm1058 (talk) 15:44, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Do you have a cheap mouse that sometimes gives you two clicks when one would have been enough?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:20, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I was on my desktop using a wireless Microsoft mouse; my biggest issue with it is that it burns through batteries too quickly. I suppose I could try intentionally double-clicking to see whether that duplicates the issue. But I've been using the same mouse for years and don't recall having the problem until recently. Is there such a thing as an expensive mouse? Could also be an issue with too many tabs open and bots running using up memory or something. I'd suggest that before claiming "someone else" that the software could do a quick checkuser to confirm that it really was someone else though. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:17, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, I confirmed the cause. My intentional double-click saving the above post duplicated the problem. Wikimedia software should check the user ID or IP address and just ignore the second click when they're the same. – wbm1058 (talk) 13:21, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Adding a screenshot. The software is obviously confused. The "Stored revision" is exactly the revision before I clicked Publish changes. "Your text" is exactly the change I published. It did publish this change before putting up the Edit conflict: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) page on my PC. If this is coming from my second click, then why isn't the "Stored revision" what my first click saved, and why wasn't my second click treated as a null edit? wbm1058 (talk) 14:19, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@Wbm1058: What browser are you using, and on what OS? And are you using the WP:WikEd gadget? This is possibly related to Wikipedia:Edit filter noticeboard/Archive 12#Filter 1253: False positive ratio. I've never been been able to reproduce this (long-standing) self-conflict bug, or the filter bug, in Firefox on Linux. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:01, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I haven't used WikEd in years. I still have some WikEd stuff in my common.css from back when I did some work for another user. Heh, I'm still running Windows 7 and the last version of Google Chrome that runs on 7. I like and still use the Windows Media Center even though it's lost its program directory. And I'm proud that the PC I built from parts (BYOPC) thirteen years ago is still cooking. I don't really know what I'm missing by not having a Windows 11 machine, and I had a machine that ran Ubuntu, which I never came to like as much as Windows, until it died on me. I think I'm gonna get a new rechargeable mouse now that I see that's an option. – wbm1058 (talk) 22:40, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Export reference lists from Wikipedia pages

I have a large page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Smooth_Island_(Tasmania) which I want to rewrite via Microsoft Word. I'll need to use a reference manager like EndNote or Zotero. How can I export the page, and it's reference list, to ensure the numbered inline citations don't become a complete mess once I start moving sections around in Microsoft Word?

I'd really love to be able to cleanly export the reflist from a wiki page into a RIS or BibTeX format.

Even better still, I'd love to be able to export a wikipedia page to a Word document, in such a way that the in-line citations hyperlinks are preserved and so that EndNote/Zotero etc can recognise them as true citations.

I'd be very grateful for any tools or solutions you could provide

Vitreology (talk) 03:04, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Most of the citations there appear to be using the citation templates in which case you can apply this Zotero KB article. Izno (talk) 03:14, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not following. How can I made Zotero extract the references from within the Wikipedia page? Vitreology (talk) 04:03, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Heads-up: Update to ICU Unicode library

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T345561

Hi everyone,

Starting on November 2, 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation Operations team will migrate the servers running the MediaWiki application servers to a new release of the ICU Unicode library (to version 67). This unblocks some future work on upgrading the servers to a new Operating System release and will also allow the use of improved internationalisation in the future (as wikis will then be able to use features introduced by the new ICU release such as new collation definitions; this will also allow us to use a more recent version of Unicode in MediaWiki).

This migration will cause some unavoidable temporary user-visible impact: The sorting of some category pages will be distorted – all pages which have been updated with the new software version will use the new sorting while untouched pages still use the old sorting. As such, Ops need to run a maintenance script to update the sorting for old entries.

The distortions may last from a few hours (on medium-sized wikis), up to a day (on the largest wikis), and a few days on English Wikipedia. The start-time will depend upon when the migration script reaches each wiki.

The detailed list and the task for the technical implementation is at T345561. If this message seems familiar before, it's because we've done similar updates in the past, the latest one three years ago.

Potential updates will be posted following this message.

This operation will be announced in Tech News. Other impacted wikis will also have a similar message. Please share this message where it needs to be posted! Johan (WMF) (talk) 11:11, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I see no one has updated Scribunto's pure-lua ustring library for changes like this since 2018. That doesn't really surprise me, I couldn't get people to review my attempts back in 2019 when I still worked there. Looks like the UtfNormal library hasn't been updated since 2018 either. Anomie⚔ 12:25, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@Johan (WMF) ^ Izno (talk) 18:15, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Anomie and Izno. I've passed this on to make sure more people see it. Johan (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Problems with links on Special:NewPagesFeed

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T349850

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T347732

I have since a few days (last Thursday perhaps?) some issues with links on Special:NewPagesFeed, I'll try to describe the most obvious ones. I don't have these issues on other pages (e.g. the watchlist), so it seems to be page-specific and not some general browser issue. I use Windows, Firefox, desktop.

The issues happen especially when the entry on the feed only takes up 2 or three lines (so with only one line of text, or no text at all), not when you get more lines of text. I use "old" vector, widescreen, so this may not happen on "new" Vector which is smaller and thus will probably show more lines of text in most cases.

• Links are very "fussy", I don't get the link-indicator (the link getting underlined and clickable, arrow becomes a hand) across the whole height of the text, but only near the top of the words, across only a few pixels really, when there is only one line of text.
• When there is no text, e.g. with a redirect which is nominated for deletion (in the current feed, the entry for "14:28, 26 October 2023" and below), I get no link at all for the username, talk and contribs links, and a very limited one for the page title. I also get, on the far right, the "Review" button obscuring most of the date.

Fram (talk) 15:34, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed it as well. Haven't bothered to write out the problem yet as a Phabricator ticket. It's the new Vue.js-based page triage interface. See Wikipedia:Page_Curation/2023_Moderator_Tools_project#October_20,_2023:_Final_update! for discussion/links. You can use the old one, for now, at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPagesFeed?pagetriage_ui=old>. Skynxnex (talk) 16:44, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@Novem Linguae ^ Izno (talk) 18:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting. Special:NewPagesFeed is in the middle of a rewrite and it probably created some bugs. This sounds like it might be T349852: Links for page titles are offset high when a page has no autgenerated summary and T349850 Review button overlapping creation time to me. If so, feel free to add some detail to the tickets. If not, let's try to gather enough info to start a new ticket. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:50, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you (all). I don't edit phabricator, too much passive-agressive behaviour from some of the people ruling over there, rules which only get imposed when it suits them and so on. Fram (talk) 07:49, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Adjusting margins between images in galleries

See this discussion: is it possible to display images in galleries without empty spaces between them? Jarble (talk) 18:30, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I was hoping to reply with some custom CSS to put in your User:Jarble/common.css file or in a <div style=""> tag. But whatever is creating that spacing isn't obvious to me on quick inspection. Turning margin off, changing to flex, etc. did not compact them. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Possible to just get a list of changes to a page?

It'd be really great if there was a way to just get a simple list of changes to a page. Right now you have to weed through 'compare versions', but if there was a way to get an ordered list of additions and subtractions - without all the surrounding text (user, timestamp, changed text) - I believe that would be quite useful. Yes, it won't always make perfect sense, but over all I believe it would, especially for current / ongoing event type pages. Note the summaries on the history page are rarely useful or informative. Wikiqrdl (talk) 18:58, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

You could try a comparison (diff) that includes multiple revisions instead of just one revision at a time. WP:POPUPS is also a good tool for viewing diffs in one's watchlist without clicking on them, saving a couple clicks. Setting one's watchlist to show every diff, grouped together by page, is also a good trick. Then you can uncollapse a page and it will show every individual edit, and you can read edit summaries and use popups to view the ones of interest. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes-not-loading javascript

My common.js.

Hello, I have been trying to set up AutoEd with custom user scripts, such that I am defining my own autoEdFunctions. The issue is that sometimes AutoEd works, and sometimes it does not work, and I get a console message about autoEdHeadlines not having been defined(/loaded). Is importScript lazy or async, such that my defining of autoEdFunctions may not have those imported functions in scope yet? Or am I missing something else? Thanks, Kimen8 (talk) 01:16, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Is importScript lazy or async Yes. Izno (talk) 02:59, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

So then, how am I to define autoEdFunctions such that it has the functions from the imported scripts in scope when it gets defined? Kimen8 (talk) 12:07, 28 October 2023 (UTC)