text:
edit between :31:28 and :31:53, which re-created the page? o_O -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 13:50, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Implementing bots for page movers
Just wondering if page movers could have bots helping out with updating pages that have their categories, templates, or info boxes moved, so page movers don't have to re-add them in every single article accordingly. — JudeccaXIII (talk) 18:40, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Predictive edit summaries
Predictive edit summaries have stopped appearing when I start typing in the edit box; I've had this happen before but I don't remember how to fix it. I haven't changed preferences or added a java blocker to the best of my knowledge. As far as I can see, Twinkle and scripts like easyblock all seem to be fine Jimfbleak - talk to me?  05:57, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this is done by your browser, in a similar way to how it autocompletes other things, like when logging in to many sites. All wp does is give the input box a name, so when you use it then re-use it it knows what you have typed there previously, which it can use for autocomplete. Maybe you cleared your browser’s cache, or something else deleted the data it uses for this.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 06:34, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It varies between browsers. Opera looks for an exact match for the start of the line; Firefox looks for matching text anywhere in the line, but seems to have a maximum line length - it won't consider older edit summaries that are longer than (I think) 128 bytes. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 11:32, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * JohnBlackburne, Red rose64, thanks. I use Firefox, and the summary doesn't appear to be appearing even for summaries used after the problem started. Is this problem fixable? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimfbleak (talk • contribs) 12:16, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe Firefox has changed - I've not "upgraded" recently from FF 51.something, so can't test the current version. Many alleged improvements are not what they claim to be. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 13:03, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * For no apparent reason, all is well again, thanks anyway Jimfbleak - talk to me?  15:41, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * You may want to switch to Pale Moon (web browser), an diverging fork of old Firefox with security fixes and features (MSE for YouTube). Coming up for firefox is Firefox 57 "Quantum" (Nov. 14) is the add-ons apocalypse version.  They're slowing replacing the single-threaded Gecko engine with components from Servo, a multi-threaded GPU accelerated engine.  — Dispenser 16:52, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

AfD log glitch...
Any idea how this entry (which was closed over 2 years back) is present at today's AfD log? One may view User talk:Northamerica1000 for the origins of my query. Winged Blades of Godric On leave 16:26, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It was added by attempting to start an AfD. See the history of  on 20–21 September 2017. — JJMC89  (T·C) 17:12, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

# working oddly
Number sign to create ordered lists seemingly works erratically. Here, for example, it's ok. But here, after reaching 8, it resets to 1, counting onwards from 1. After 8, it once again resets to 1, although wikisyntax looks ok. Cache purging didn't help. A bug? Brandmeistertalk  13:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This is because the ordered list was not continued when those comments by two people were added, which changed the list type from ordered list to definition list. Fixed. --Izno (talk) 13:41, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Brandmeistertalk  14:02, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * A general rule could be:
 * When replying to a post that is in a list (whether constructed using asterisks, colons or hashes), copy all of the symbols from the start of the post that you are replying to, add one symbol (of any of those three types) to the right-hand end, followed by your reply and signature.
 * It's a subtle form of the WP:LISTGAP problem: a list is terminated early and another one started immediately afterwards. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 14:14, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * We really should have some page with that general rule, because I've had to explain it multiple times at this point (including at least one user who thinks he knows what he's doing on the matter). --Izno (talk) 15:22, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I tried to suggest it at WT:TPG (search for "copy the markup") but other people were getting angry, which made me angry, so I backed off. One of them started posting near-as-dammit "cease and desist" notices on my talk page, and I think those of other people too. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 15:45, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * An essay or a SHORTCUT inclusion at WP:Accessibility would work, even if we skip inclusion at TPG (because I can make this change with WP:TPO regardless). --Izno (talk) 16:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It already exists. Look at WP:LISTGAP, which has color-coded examples of how to indent in talk page discussions.  The problem is that WP:Nobody reads the directions.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Tool to count AfD closes
Is there a tool that counts how many AFD closes someone has done. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 18:27, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * might have asked about this one at some point. --Izno (talk) 18:50, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I created AFDCloses, a tool that displays closes by outcome. As a sideeffect, it also shows the number of AFDs closed. Regards  So Why  19:56, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Update to UTC clock gadget
Hello all. Inspired by MusikAnimal's changes to the Twinkle menu, I've made an updated version of the UTC clock gadget that doesn't make the personal toolbar jump to the left when the page is loaded. I'd be grateful if people could have a look at my proposal on mediawiki.org and perhaps give my code a review. Best — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 14:42, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes! Thank you! I was going to look into doing this myself but hadn't gotten around to it. Here on enwiki, I think you are safe to implement this. I'm not sure anyone prefers their personal toolbar jumping around :) The CSS code looks good to me, but I have not tested it. — MusikAnimal  talk  15:17, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Bah, I see now the script sources the MediaWiki version. I will comment there :) — MusikAnimal  talk  15:19, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * (c.f. possible problem caused Village_pump_(technical)). — xaosflux  Talk 20:37, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Twinkle menu not showing up
Recently, whenever I'm trying to revert vandalism or warn a user of doing said vandalism on Google Chrome, the Twinkle tab just does not show, nor does the option to do a pageswap. After refreshing the page a few times, however, it suddenly shows. Actually using it is fine, just getting it to show up in the first place is the issue. I'm not sure what's causing this. This appears to only be the case when using Chrome, however, because I haven't had an issue when editing with Microsoft Edge. Sky Warrior  02:01, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This is typical when another piece of JavaScript you are loading is not correctly declaring its dependencies. Cc user:TheDJ --Izno (talk) 02:54, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Reading and following mw:Help:Locating broken scripts might scale better than pinging TheDJ. :) --Malyacko (talk) 09:21, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I usually ping him because he's really good at finding and fixing these issues. --Izno (talk) 13:15, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Pinging me is fine, but I indeed do not scale :). Made these changes. Seems that User:Fox Wilson/delsort.js by Fox Wilson is not up to date to the current code conventions. I'm considering redirecting it to User:Enterprisey/delsort.js, which is being maintained by Enterprisey. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:40, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oooh, that's a much-nicer version. I think a simple redirect may surprise initially but I doubt anyone will have any issue with it after The First Time (AUTO COMPLETE!). --Izno (talk) 13:57, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * On an aside, maybe it should be a gadget at this point.... --Izno (talk) 13:58, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks . It seems to have been fixed. Sky  Warrior  00:29, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Script for stripping down search results to bare list of page names
It's called StripSearch.

I've included a detailed walk-through of the code on its talk page, to help editors take the plunge to learn how to program in JavaScript.

I'd appreciate any comments you might have on this approach and how it could be improved. Or about enhancing the script itself.

I hope you find the script useful. The Transhumanist 09:55, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Thank you, that is a very good idea. I'll take a look. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 11:02, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Seems like you could hide each entire search result and then unhide the element of interest, which is the pagename. --Izno (talk) 13:17, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Unhide using ? How would I match the pagename? The Transhumanist 21:27, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I see this is actually less trivial than expected. Never mind. --Izno (talk) 14:10, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Invisibility of Talk and User page icons
Just became an Autopatroller here 2 days ago, and now my talkpage and userpage have no icons. Also, whenever I edit a page and mark it as minor or add to watchlist the box turns blue when its marked or white when unmarked. From as far as I remember there used to be checkmark which is invisible now. And, I don't see the pages that I suppose to patrol. :( Wondering, do anyone else have those issues?--Biografer (talk) 18:59, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * PS: I just read this discussion. So I guess it have nothing to do with being auto patroller?--Biografer (talk) 18:59, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It should not have anything to do with that, I removed you from the group just so you can verify. Please let me know with a ping here, your talk page, or my talk page when you would like it turned back on. — xaosflux  Talk 20:41, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * You are right. Please turn it back on, although I probably wont be able see the pages that I need to patrol due to technical issue. The reason why I assumed it had to do with me becoming auto patroller, it was because the technical issue happened on the day I became one. But, so far, I see that nothing changed for the better. I'm wondering if changing to Google Chrome will do a difference? As of today, at least the icons are visible during recent changes list and the checkmark thing is visible too. However, once you put that greeting or warning the icons become invisible again. I hope that tomorrow they will finally fix it. :)--Biografer (talk) 00:34, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ — xaosflux  Talk 00:35, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Microscopic fonts at p-personal bar
The fonts in my "id=p-personal bar" at the top of each page (links to userpage, notifications, talk, sandbox, etc.) have just been reduced to 75% of their previous size. In Monobook that reduction takes them from 95% of 95% of base font size (11.46px or 90%) to 75% of 95% of 95% of base font size (8.596px or 68%) That's a long way from the minimum acceptable font size for pages (85% or 11px). It's because of the application of "font-size:0.75em;" from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.gadget.HideFundraisingNotice%2CTwinkle-pagestyles%2CUTCLiveClock-pagestyles%2CWatchlistBase%2CWatchlistChangesBold%2CWatchlistGreenIndicatorsMono%2Ccharinsert-styles&only=styles&skin=monobook.

Whatever went wrong, can somebody fix it please? --RexxS (talk) 20:21, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * who worked on possibly related MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock.css. — xaosflux  Talk 20:32, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * (c.f. Village_pump_(technical)) — xaosflux  Talk 20:37, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * just recreated problem, when adding that clock gadget. — xaosflux  Talk 20:34, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * so there's something in that gadget. I'll take a look. Interestingly the actual clock display is 120% of the rest of the text in the p-personal bar list elements - I can almost read that! --RexxS (talk) 20:38, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * [Further:] Disabling the clock gadget restores the normal font size; re-enabling it makes the text miniscule again. --RexxS (talk) 20:44, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Found it I think: MediaWiki:Gadget-UTCLiveClock-pagestyles.css 16:19, 29 September 2017 (new peer gadget for UTCLiveClock - adds space before the clock loads so that the p-personal menu does not jump) by . Duplicating the definition in that css adds another reduction by 75% to the text. Hopefully Mr.S. will see this and figure out another way to get what he wants. FWIW the the elements in the p-personal bar are actually at 95% of 95% of base font size = 90.25%. HTH --RexxS (talk) 20:55, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I reverted Mr. S's css inclusion on the gadget, please try purging your caches and see if it is better now. Mr. S, feel free to try again when you have a chance to review. —  xaosflux  Talk 00:03, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . It's back to normal now. That's always a problem with relative font sizes and cascading style sheets: each one can compound with the previous ones. --RexxS (talk) 01:01, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the revert. I'll have a look into what went wrong when I get back home. Could someone revert at mediawiki.org too? Mr. Stradivarius on tour (talk) 02:19, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've now fixed the code for Monobook and restored the new version of the UTCLiveClock gadget. Please let me know if you spot anything amiss. — Mr. Stradivarius  ♪ talk ♪ 07:47, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Users and categories
There is a feature whereby a user page on Meta can be copied here. How can one such a page to a category? Hawkeye7  (discuss)  23:39, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * You cannot, so far as I am aware. --Izno (talk) 02:22, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Such transcluded userpages respect the <includeonly ></includeonly>, <noinclude ></noinclude>, and <onlyinclude ></onlyinclude> tag pairs. I used these on meta:User:Redrose64. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 22:15, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata-related watchlist notifications misplaced
My watchlist here en.Wikipedia currently includes an entry that reads:

 * m D 13:25 	User:RexxS (Q1396889) (diff | hist) . . MaksOttoVonStirlitz (talk | contribs) (Created claim: Property:P1705: Animal Farm: A Fairy Story)

I saw something similar yesterday but didn't note the details.

Note that the QID, "diff" and "hist" links have nothing to do with RexxS or his user page.

Other Wikidata related edits in my watchlist appear correctly.

In case it's significant, I have the "Add direct unwatch/watch links to watchlist entries (JavaScript required for toggle functionality) " preference checked.

Is anyone else seeing this type of error? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Probably one of phab:T103676 or phab:T125768. If neither seems like the relevant error, then go ahead and file the task; I saw the same change on RexxS's page. --Izno (talk) 13:48, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's because the Animal Farm Wikidata entry is used in his page, see the infobox at User:RexxS. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:49, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * If you want to see what the P- and Q-numbers actually are, you can install this user-script. - Evad37 [talk] 00:42, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * And if you choose editsource on a page, at the bottom, you can find "Wikidata entities used in this page" which can also be helpful. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:27, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Problem logging into Wikidata and Commons
This isn't a Wikipedia question but I don't know where to start. I've just flown across country to visit grandchildren and got an email message stating "Someone (probably you) recently logged in to your account from a new device." What new device? I'd been using this computer all summer. And now I can no longer login to Wikidata or Commons. Once logged into Wikipedia I used to be globally logged into the other sites. Now I'm not and a login attempt returns "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Go back to the previous page, reload that page and then try again." when I try to login there. I've changed my Wikipedia password, but that doesn't seem to help. Any suggestions? StarryGrandma (talk) 20:16, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * OK the first warning is just that you have logged in from a new computer/ip range - it is only informative. For your other issue, try to log out, clear your cache AND cookies.  Then login again - sometimes it helps to pick a project you have never used, for example the Spanish Wikibooks site. —  xaosflux  Talk 20:38, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, clearing cookies did it. All cookies, WP has endless cookies, so all was easier. Now I have to reset my preferences. I think I will leave login notifications turned off for a while. I it supposed to work this way? StarryGrandma (talk) 21:15, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * glad to hear you are back up and working! "Login from an unfamiliar device" is a fairly new option - if you use different computers and areas often it may not be very helpful for you. —  xaosflux  Talk 23:19, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Apparently there's a bug with this new functionality, where sometimes these messages are sent unnecessarily. It's being investigated, but is rather rare it seems. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:54, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

MoreMenu is now using peer gadget to prevent jumpiness
Similar to what was recently done for Twinkle and for the UTC clock gadget, I have updated MoreMenu to use peer gadgets which should prevent the menus from jumping around while the page is loading. This should only affect Vector users. Let me know if there are any problems! Best — MusikAnimal  talk  15:10, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

archive CSS for Firefox Mobile doubles the vertical space
FF for Android 4.4 Android 7.0 Samsung Galaxy S7

When viewing sections inside blocks, the vertical space is "doubled" that is for the full height of text, there is a preceding equal vertical space without text (but is still purple). Looks like some CSS bug either in FF mobile or in the WP CSS.

Any Android users available to try and reproduce? WP:ITN/C is a good place to test.

--CosmicAdventure (talk) 22:10, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Known problem; this is because of the "The following discussion is closed" text being squashed by the adjacent quotebox. In mobile, the  class is given 100% width. This should probably be fixed in MediaWiki:Mobile.css since archive top might be substituted in some places (not sure though). Jc86035 (talk) 15:13, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-40

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

Recent changes
 * You can now use preload features in the visual editor. This means you can create links to create new pages and some text will already be in the edit window when someone clicks on it.

Changes later this week
 * If you have turned on "" you will now get the 2017 wikitext editor. Before this you had to turn it on manually even though it is a beta feature.
 * Special:Block and Special:Unblock will get the OOUI look.
 * Octicons-tools.svg The jQuery library will be upgraded to version 3 on all Wiktionary wikis from 2 October. It will be on all non-Wikipedia wikis from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 October. It will be on all wikis from 5 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 3 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 4 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes
 * A new feature called Reading Lists are coming to the Wikipedia mobile apps. First it will be in the Android version. Reading Lists are a private user preference where you can see lists of articles on multiple devices. You can give feedback on this feature.
 * The search function has used fallback languages for language analysis. This means a language could be analysed with the grammar of a completely unrelated language to find related words. This will be removed from most wikis the week starting with 9 October. You can read more and give feedback.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
 23:25, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Range contributions has arrived!
Almost 13 years after it was first requested, MediaWiki now allows you to query for IP ranges, and right at Special:Contributions where you'd expect it to work. This supports IPv4 and IPv6. For example, see Special:Contributions/2601:401:503:62b0::/64. It does not support wildcards (e.g. 192.168.0.*), but the gadget many of you use will continue to function. The native contributions list will simply be shown below the gadget's results.

There is also a new interface message shown when you are viewing an IP range: MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon-range (which is empty at the time of writing), as opposed to the normal MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon message you see when viewing a single IP. One more important note is that Special:DeletedContributions and Special:Log do not support IP ranges -- yet!

If you are a fan of the XTools range contributions tool, which gives you various WHOIS information and sorting by IPs, you may be interested to know there are plans to introduce something similar in MediaWiki. That's probably many moons away from completion, but feel free to follow that task for updates. We also have plans to add a IP range calculator to core. If you have any ideas regarding that (should it be shown at Special:Contribs, or as it's own Special page?) please share your thoughts.

If you notice anything is off with the data, things are slow, other weirdness, don't hesitate to comment at T163562, create a new ticket, or ping someone at Community Tech.

Cheers! — MusikAnimal  talk  18:46, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Neat. I took a look at your example and it doesn't seem to respect my preference to only display 300 contributions results (at Special:Preferences). I see just about 400 results when I look at that query. Can you verify? --Izno (talk) 18:54, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm no it appears to work as expected for me. Could you try viewing it in safemode (which removes script and gadgets, but should retain your preference)? Is anyone else experiencing this issue? — MusikAnimal  talk  19:03, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I can't repro either; it was just an eyeball. I'll go back to my corner now. --Izno (talk) 19:20, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

 * That's awesome! Thanks for working on this! − Pintoch (talk) 13:32, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Adding omitted wikilinks automatically?
Hi,

WP:BTW states that "as a rule of thumb editors should only link the term's first occurrence in the text of the article." Is anybody aware of a tool that would take Wikitext and add wikilinks that have been omitted because of this policy? Example:

Input text: This book was written by Adams and was originally a radio comedy. The BBC had commissioned the radio comedy from Adams.

Output text: This book was written by Adams and was originally a radio comedy. The BBC had commissioned the radio comedy from Adams.

Of course the goal is not to perform such edits on Wikipedia (as it goes against the policy) but rather to use these links for entity extraction from wikitext. I am also aware that such a tool could potentially insert wrong wikilinks, and would need to be used with care.

Thanks, − Pintoch (talk) 13:37, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * in your example above, what other discriminators are you looking for, for example your output added a wikiklink to radio comedy, but not to book for example. — xaosflux  Talk 17:24, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * yes, because "book" has not been wikilinked before… I would expect the tool to only add links to phrases that have been wikilinked before. (I am not looking for a generic Entity Linking solution that would take bare text and add wikilinks based on some machine learning algorithm). This is the reason why I quoted WP:BTW. So, the tool would only propagate existing wikilinks to later mentions. I hope that is clearer? − Pintoch (talk) 17:35, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, thank you..I expect if you tried to do this over the course or entire articles you would run in to issues executing as above, when trying to match the piped label instead of the exact term (as in assuming the second "Adams" is the same target as "Douglas Adams" piped to it above; for more common phrases and unusual linkings the output may not match the intent. — xaosflux  Talk 17:41, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Watch list
My watch list comes up. empty. It says "Below are the last 0 changes in the last 0 hours" If I switch the display period it works. Any idea what is going on? Hawkeye7  (discuss)  23:12, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This is Part 2 of Village pump (technical)/Archive 158. Commons got it yesterday. You now need to set a positive non-zero value, up to 30 (fractional values are permitted). -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 23:27, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  01:17, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Just once I'd like the Tech Report to give me a heads up about these sort of changes.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  20:15, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Error converting HTML to wikitext: docserver-http: HTTP 400
Hi. I wonder if I could get some advice on this problem

https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ContentTranslation?title=Special:ContentTranslation&campaign=contributionsmenu&to=eo&page=Taiping+Rebellion&from=en&targettitle=Uzanto%3ADuomillia%2FTaiping+Rebellion&revision=802820900

I am in the middle of translating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion fron EN to EO. But, when I try to publish I get this mysterious error: Error converting HTML to wikitext: docserver-http: HTTP 400

I would have guessed that this is caused by something in the template at the top of the article, but when I removed in from the translated article I got the same problem.

Any thoughts anyone?

(I'm on Firefox 52.4, Windows Vista)

Duomillia (talk) 20:01, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

 * please see T154116. — xaosflux  Talk 00:21, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

printable version
Activating printable version from the side toolbar only opens the browser's print dialog. This happens for both Chrome and Firefox, logged in or not. All I know is that a genuine, MediaWiki Printable version surprised me by popping up a few days ago at Beilin District, Suihua. Hadn't seen it before or since. — Cp i r al § Cpiral  22:44, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * this is a fairly recent change across all projects (see T24256) - and has some pushback - see T167956. So for right now, this is expected behavior.  —  xaosflux  Talk 00:17, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Note, in most cases if you want to display the printable version a workaround is to use the printable version to open in new tab. — xaosflux  Talk 00:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * In Firefox that only works after right-clicking the link and selecting a menu item. The normal method Ctrl+click opens the print dialog. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:37, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Google Ngrams analysis?
Anyone know of a good analysis of Google "Ngrams" (n-grams) corpora? I'm noting frequent discrepancies between the default "English" corpus's results and the "American English" and "British English" ones; I have not been using the "English One Million" corpus (one million what? words? books? pairs of words?).

For example, you can do a search comparing two spellings of a word, with a showing in "English" that one is dominant, then repeat the same search on "British English" and "American English" and find the other spelling dominant in. This casts serious doubt on the utility of this tool, e.g. in WP:RM discussions, unless it can be identified which corpus is more likely to be statistically valid.

My suspicion is that the British and American corpora are comparatively small subsets, and thus have statistical weaknesses; i.e. that they are not the total English corpus divided into American versus British, with remainders tossed out. There is no "other" English that uses spellings or grammar widely divergent, in written form, from both US or British/Commonwealth English. (The major outlier is Canada, which uses a mixture of US and UK style, not a unique third orthography.) I've also seen British editors say that their search results in the British corpora have brought back results that don't agree with [their perception of] mainstream British usage.

But the opposite assessment be correct: that the American and British corpora are rich, while the "English" one is just a mish-mash of partial sample data.

The corpora themselves can be downloaded here (and we care about the 2009 corpora, which are the ones the Google Ngram Viewer uses; it has not been updated to use the 2012 corpora). I could use a spreadsheet app or something to do my own analysis of the "total counts" files, but am hoping someone's already been through this work, either here or in a journal or other publication.

This actually has some WP:RS implications. E.g., the changes-in-usage additions in the new (4th, 2016) edition of Garner's Modern English Usage are primarily based on piles of Google Ngram Viewer results, according to the author, which casts doubt on the reliability of his assessments of various usage matters, about which we have articles that may cite this book. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  03:33, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The one paper I know about the ngram viewer is Characterizing the Google Books Corpus: Strong Limits to Inferences of Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Evolution. The section Google Ngram Viewer also has some interesting refs. --Mark viking (talk) 05:05, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Uneditable sections
About once every two weeks or so, I run across a page the sections of which are not directly editable (in Chrome, under MacOS X). Example: Requests for comment. Anyone else getting this? I thought maybe it was the protection template at the top, but it's not. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:44, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * There is probably a  in one of the templates on that page. --Izno (talk) 00:06, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, in RFC list footer. See WP:NOEDITSECTION. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah so. I remove it from that template since it serves no legit purpose and is an impediment to regular editing.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  06:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you, this was the original reason for the special directive: Special:Permalink/308263020 and the template dramatically changed since, not containing any such sections. — Paleo  Neonate  – 07:19, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

No ping
A fault, in my view, of the noping algorithm is that it does not create a proper wikilink. Eg. generates. This link is blue when it should be red and Special:WhatLinksHere/User:PDOldenburger does not point to this page. — RHaworth (talk · contribs) 11:35, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I documented [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Noping/doc&diff=629563585&oldid=595143423] this at Template:Noping. It looks impossible to avoid these consequences with the current software.  avoids a ping by generating code with an external link:   A wikilink would cause the ping the template is trying to avoid. The automatic red or blue coloring only happens for wikilinks. mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions could be used to determine whether the userpage exists but ifexist causes a ping so that doesn't help. I suppose we could make sitewide JavaScript to color the link red after loading if the page doesn't exist but I don't think it's worth the complication and performance cost. If you want to make a real wikilink without pinging then you have to prevent the ping with one of the conditions at mw:Manual:Echo, e.g. by not signing in the same edit. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Lint errors: Paragraph wrapping bug workaround: completely mis-localized
I have been fixing Lint errors: Paragraph wrapping bug workaround. The last several errors have been completely mis-diagnosed and mis-localized. For my last several fixes, the true error was an unclosed HTML tag above the region that the linter claimed for the Paragraph wrapping bug workaround error. In the case of User:Jimbo Wales/guestbook, the linter claimed the error was near the bottom of the article, when the error was actually a missing  in Guestbook Signature 42 out of 398, in other words it was about 11% from the top of the article when the linter claimed it was near the end. If nothing else can be done about this, the help page at MW:Help:Extension:Linter/pwrap-bug-workaround should inform users that in many cases this error is the result of an unclosed HTML tag not in the region highlighted by the linter. This is especially likely to be true when the highlighted region ends with the end of the article, i.e., the highlighting, once it starts, goes to the end. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:20, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * User:SSastry (WMF), is this related to the work done last week? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:20, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, when there are multiple errors on a page, unfortunately, it is hard to precisely identify the source of the error right now, i.e. one error causes some fixups to be done in the parser which then interacts with another error. As you noted when there is a formatting tag (like <small> or <strike>, etc.) that is left unclosed to the end of the article, the behavior is quite different in Tidy and HTML5. This can then throw off other error detection. So, we cannot completely eliminate false positives. This is one of the reasons, why we cannot auto-fix the errors on our own. While we continue to make improvements to our lint error detection code, but we still cannot guarantee complete precision here. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Not sure if this is related somehow, but for the last month or so I've been experiencing a problem (in Chrome, on MacOS X), where if I enter a space character at the end of a displayed "line" (i.e. right before a soft-wrap) in the editing window, a hard linebreak ends up being inserted when I save, often resulting in crap like this: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. where the second line, which should not be a real line at all, is treated as

 text. What's happened is a hard line break was inserted after "magna", causing the "[space]aliqua" to start a new hardcoded line. This most often happens when the displayed "line" in the editing box soft-wraps at something not alphabetical, such as  or the like. Driving me nuts. Generally the only way to fix it is to save the broken version and go back in and re-edit it. I get hit by this around 1–5 times per day. Never happened before, in 12 years. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:54, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * SmcCandlish: I am sorry for your problem, but I don't think it is related. —Anomalocaris (talk) 06:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, will post it as a separate thread.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  06:45, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Pages with direct links to nonexistent files
Currently pages invoking nonexistent files are automatically aggregated under Category:Pages with missing files, but pages that link directly to the raw files using, usually via a template like Audio, are not. I'm not sure what happens when a file linked by this method is deleted on Commons or locally, but even if it was automatically delinked, there still needs to be a way of keeping track of red links to nonexistent files because they could be instated by mistake.

So, is it a good idea to implement something like  into such templates? Or is there a better way to handle them, like letting a bot automatically figure out or tweaking MediaWiki directly? Or, are they being taken care of already? Nardog (talk) 15:40, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Unicode sans-serif font recommendation?
Anyone have a specific recommendation for a replacement for Lucida Sans Unicode, with about equal (or better) coverage of glyphs? I have to ditch this font because a) boldface is barely distinguishable from regular text in it, and b) it's very difficult to tell the difference in it between -, –, and − (at least on my monitor and in Mac OS X). Lucida Grande doesn't have the dash problem, but does have the bold problem. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  02:04, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * , while far from exhaustive you can compare many of them here: User:Xaosflux/Sandbox35. — xaosflux  Talk 14:56, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I ended up settling on Google's Noto font family. They still don't distinguish visually between en dash and minus (and it's lost the distinction between the primes ′ ″ and the straight quotes ' ", except in monospace), but they resolve all the other issues I was having, and are quite readable.  I'm surprised how many fonts with good glyph support have no boldface.  Kind of weird.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  07:16, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I like Deja-Vu Sans and Bitstream Vera Sans (which are open source fonts) here, but there are symbols which they don't support such as various "emoji" which are starting to be popular as part of user signatures. The Mono type of those fonts are among the good ones for shells and coding (and in my opinion for the edit window).  — Paleo  Neonate  – 07:40, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Right; I use a mono font for the edit window. If anyone isn't, well, I feel sorry for them.  :-) As for  emoji, they can just die.  I was happy with the original Unicode smiley face character, which was simple black and white, but MediaWiki converts it on-the-fly into the colored emoji version, so I retired it from my signature.  A funny cat face is probably enough anyway).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  21:41, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki does no such thing. If ☺ (U+263A) and ☻ (U+263B) don't show up as black and white for you, blame your browser and/or OS font subsystem. Anomie⚔ 16:31, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

InternetArchiveBot notices about nothing but archive-url additions
Please see: WP:Bots/Noticeboard

Summary: Proposal to have InternetArchiveBot stop posting one specific kind of notice on article talk pages – namely that it's just added an archive-url to a citation template. The reasoning is that it's a triple-notice (watchlist hit, notice post, and watchlist hit of the notice post) of trivia that doesn't need any human intervention, and clutters talk pages. An opposing view is that all bot notices are useful.

Will affect InternetArchiveBot notices that may need editor examination, such as problem reports or notices of attempts to repair broken URLs. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  22:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Pages jumping around while loading
I know that this has been discussed before, but it seems to be getting worse, leading to lots of misclicks. I inadvertently hit rollback twice recently, at least one of which was a page I hadn't even looked at, and today I hit the block button for Purplebackpack89 when I had intended to click on the diff above Purple's post on my watchlist. What needs to happen to get this fixed? SarahSV (talk) 15:23, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The watchlist at Commons is bad for that: there's a box at the top which starts off zero height, then the JavaScript expands it to about two lines high; then it collapses to zero again, all in the space of a second or two. Whilst this box is visible, most of it is blank except for a link "Provide a translation or suggest a new notice" at upper right. But I have made lots of misclicks as a result. This is with Opera 36 in MonoBook skin. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 15:27, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Pages jumping, happens when we add or hide content. The higher up the page, the more annoying it i. So sitenotices, watchlist notices, geonotices, etc etc. are super high impact for that. To counter it, we either need to start floating them OVER the page (historically disliked by people), or find a completely different spot for them all together. Or we can 10 fold or more our investment in technology, so that we can just serve every single person a page tailored just for them. Specifically for the watchlist however, it is currently rather bad if you are enrolled in the the beta for filters. This is being worked at, but in the mean time, you can disable the beta of course. If you have more specific idea of what content is being hidden, that is causing you grievance, then maybe it can be looked at, sometimes it can be made less terrible, though often not. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:49, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information. I've now disabled the beta for everything except preview, which is very helpful. I'll see whether that makes a difference. SarahSV (talk) 16:09, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Another workround, thoough I expect you've thought of this, would be to use an alternate account without admin or rollback, etc, status. I disabled WikEd, which was such a pest, mainly because of a single icon it slid in and so shifted everything else. Thincat (talk) 18:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea, Thincat. I've never been clear about what causes it. So the admin tools do, WikiEd, I've already disabled Twinkle. Is there anything else obvious? Alternatively, if the ultimate cause is the addition or hiding of sitenotices, etc, would it not make sense to deal with those instead? SarahSV (talk) 21:37, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Twinkle was fixed two weeks ago btw. Or well.. the dropdown TW menu i should say. Not where it adds all kinds of links to the diff or history page views. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:16, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I started a brief thread about this on wikimedia-l earlier this month, see - there were some useful replies, particularly from   and  . I couldn't think of a useful way to follow up on them, though. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:52, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, ., can the WMF do anything about this? When checking my watchlist recently, I twice misclicked rollback on pages I hadn't even looked at, and didn't realize I had done it. See the bewildered response from one editor. I also misclicked the block button. It didn't lead to a block because that needed another step, but even so it's annoying, SarahSV (talk) 00:00, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I surrendered the rollback right for that reason. Net negative. Of course that particular situation could be fixed by requiring a confirmation click per common software design principles, but that hasn't happened to my knowledge. ― Mandruss  ☎  04:19, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It has. See User:Zvn/confirmwatchlistrollback.js which you can copy into your own Special:MyPage/common.js. --RexxS (talk) 13:48, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I consider that a hack, not a fix. I try to avoid unsupported JS. This needs to be in the core, the same place as the rollback link itself. ― Mandruss  ☎  00:12, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was wondering whether the banner issue could be fixed, not rollback, i.e. address the cause., if you're the wrong WMF person to speak to about this, can you direct us to the right one, please? SarahSV (talk) 04:18, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * , I've filed T176656 which proposes that CentralNotice not be shown on the pages that contain rollback links. I think that would potentially solve most of the problems, if any/all of it is technically feasible. However some users might object to this as it would reduce their chances of seeing any particular banner (e.g. an editor that does most of their browsing via watchlist and diffs, would become unlikely to see a WLM banner).
 * , update: It seems that CentralNotice banners are not shown on Special pages, as of a year ago. Therefor it must be a different type of thing that is appearing. Could you specify which exact thing is appearing? (if you're not sure where it originates, please at least give us some example text to search for). E.g. perhaps you meant MediaWiki:Watchlist-details? Thanks. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The task T126798 is asking for the rollback-link to have a confirmation step, but some users do object to that proposed change because it makes multi-rollback more complicated. IIUC, there are 3 options: (1) Users who want a confirmation have to use a userscript. (current). (2) Users who don't want a confirmation have to use a userscript. (3) A new mediawiki preference is added, and all users have to deal with a slight delay increase for page-load (every preference adds to the delay) plus all developers have another new variable to maintain and test-against and etc forevermore (see my essay about the pros/cons of preferences for more). There's sadly no easy solution. HTH. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, the issue is this. All pages on Wikipedia jump around when I try to load them, including the watchlist. First, they jump horizontally (a slight movement), then they jump vertically (a larger movement). It means that I click on links I didn't intend to click on, including rollback and the block button. It means that when I link to a page subsection, the link ends up going to some other section of the page. This has been going on for years (for example, see 2016 discussion), with different browsers, computers, and operating systems, and it seems to be getting worse. Various things have been blamed, including gadgets, preferences, and banners. My question is: can the WMF work on identifying the cause(s) and fix it or them? SarahSV (talk) 21:45, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The simple answer is yes, all devs and most editors are aware of the problems and most of us also suffer from them; the cause in all cases is "all things that load in our browsers after the plain text content arrives" (that can include everything from images appearing, to sections collapsing, to gadget-based links appearing, to advanced-menu-option rows appearing, and more, depending on the variables in each instance); fixing them is not easy and in many cases not possible (because we always want the plain text to be readable as soon as possible, and all the complexity on top of that plain text is never going to be instantaneous), but is always in mind.
 * If there is a specific thing that you want to workaround or better understand, then we can only help if you give specific details, i.e. 1) what exact page is the problem on (an example page, if it's on many.), 2) what exact content is appearing/disappearing (i.e. causing the individual elements of the page to re-shuffle themselves to fit within the browser window) - we need specific text strings or descriptions that will allow exact understanding of what has appeared/disappeared, 3) what browser/OS combination you are using. We might (depending upon the above) also need to ask (and help you find out) about which gadgets/preferences might be involved. Feel free to continue that tangent at my talkpage, if you'd prefer. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

> Of course that particular situation could be fixed by requiring a confirmation click per common software design principles

Such a thing was implemented and reverted per common human irrationality : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_147#Rollback_function_has_been_changed

Generally, it is an accurate statement of mediawiki software as a whole. Too many decisions are based on emotions rather than usability or quantifiable research, e.g. wanted pages contains a lot of unwanted pages due to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T43155 (allegedly a feature not a bug).

For this particular issue the solution is pretty dead simple: disable custom user scripts and css on critical maintenance pages. Recent changes is a page to see "recent changes" and watch list a page to looked at selected pages (not random page that someone may be interested in).

Unfortunately, such a simple solution will bump against human irrationality every time.<IP_ADDRESS> (talk) 17:08, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Disappearing icons
Good day, it seems that the watchlist star, the notification icons between the user name and "Talk" are all disappearing. Is this another one of the best bad solutions that are spoken of? --Jax 0677 (talk) 21:19, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * And so are those little markers that indicate you're seeing an external link. NewYorkActuary (talk) 22:07, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've got them all, except the watchlist star. But then I use MonoBook in Opera 36. Maybe it's thursday? -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 22:24, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * They all still display fine in my case for now, fortunately. — Paleo  Neonate  – 00:38, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this might be a problem with Internet Explorer 11. With IE11 I see it both on Wikipedia and on another site, while I don't see it with Google Chrome. Strawberry4Ever (talk) 00:51, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * After a reboot the icons are back on the other website but still missing on Wikipedia. Strawberry4Ever (talk) 01:19, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep, gone in IE, but there in Firefox.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 06:40, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Currently, the Phabricator guys are working on it. --George Ho (talk) 09:14, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Facing the same problems in Edge.And trying to work on the mobile site in a Win-10 phone from Edge is just brilliant.All the icons on the hamberger menu has disappeared and.... Winged Blades of Godric On leave 09:38, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was seeing the problem when I was using Internet Explorer 11. But it went away when I switched to Mozilla Firefox.  NewYorkActuary (talk) 11:49, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

The icons are back. Yay! Strawberry4Ever (talk) 12:39, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually, they seem to come and go. Strawberry4Ever (talk) 12:44, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I have Microsoft Edge and I don't see arrows with External links.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  16:28, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Still not showing in IE.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 06:50, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Sometimes I see them, sometimes I don't. Strawberry4Ever (talk) 12:52, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

 *  Reply - Tell me about it. I see the Watchlist Star" icons here, but not at my own user pages.  Does anyone know when this issue will be resolved for Internet Explorer 11.0? --Jax 0677 (talk) 13:37, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Mine had disappeared, too. I was worried that there was a problem with my computer. Thankfully things seem to be back to normal now, as of today, although it took seven days. Johnsmith2116 (talk) 04:41, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Seven days? In which case it definitely was Thursday. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 07:41, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

User talk:愛耶穌
The user is not blocked but says they can not edit anything except for the talk page because they gen an open proxy block notice. Could someone skilled please have a look (I am sure they would be happy to provide more details). Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:50, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The next steps for this (also in Template:Autoblock) have already been provided on that user talk page. — xaosflux  Talk 03:17, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Tnx.--Ymblanter (talk) 07:53, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

edit links in strike-through style for blocked users?
I noticed that the section edit links for a blocked user's talk page are in strike-through style. Chrome shows the link as having:

a.user-blocked-temp { opacity: 0.7; text-decoration: line-through; }

is this intentional? I know we strike-through their user name, but why the edit links on their talk page? -- RoySmith (talk) 13:16, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * You appear to be using a gadget, because I do not see the same. --Izno (talk) 13:27, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed he is. Special:Preferences: Under Appearance – Strike out usernames that have been blocked. Also, it strikes anything that links to their pages, edit links and contributions included. Nihlus 13:29, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * You can post a suggestion at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-markblocked.js but it looks OK to me. You can still click the edit links but just get an advance warning that the user is blocked. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Reference "Jump up" accessibility labels (for "^" links) are half-found by browser Find
For example, on list of generic and genericized trademarks, if I use Chrome's Find feature ( / ), and type in, it says it finds 173 instances of the word on the page (the same number as the number of references), but if I press   repeatedly or hold it down, or repeatedly press the next/previous arrows on the Find box, I can cycle through all 173 without anything appearing on the page (no highlights and no scrolling). This confused me for a while. Actually, while I was writing my post here to ask what was going on, I decided to try Firefox in addition to Chrome, and it turns out Firefox shows the link target URL of things Find finds, which gave me the clue I needed.

They seem to be  tags with class , with 1×1 px size and overflow hidden, positioned above the top of the viewport, containing the text "Jump up", inside the   tag for each "^" link. If I view the source (not in the inspector, but ) and do the same thing with Find, it only finds 7 instances (which are all visible there, obviously), so I guess these "Jump up" accessibility labels are being added by a script after page load? I don't actually know what piece of software is providing them (MediaWiki or something else), but would there be a way to keep Find from finding them, which confuses people who don't use them or expect them to exist?

– PointyOintment (talk · contribs) 02:23, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The related patchsets are discussed in this archived thread from 2013. The alternative at the time was "using WAI-ARIA labels, but that behaves inconsistently with screen readers and doesn't work with NVDA." I'm not sure if anything has changed since then. :/ Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it may well have, actually ... screen reader support for ARIA has improved significantly since then, and NVDA itself has improved to the point that it's now a serious competitor to JAWS. I'd be happy to do some more testing if need be. Graham 87 15:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * And lemme ping the right account. :-) Graham 87 15:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Hey, any chance you could take another look into this, or ping someone more appropriate? (cf. https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/79472/ and the archived thread link above, for reminders on context). Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Error in marking watchlist as visited
Getting this error multiple times today when clicking "Mark all pages as vistited": -- ☾Loriendrew☽  ☏(ring-ring)  00:09, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * A database query error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software.[WdbJLgpAMEsAAGVgAZEAAABV] 2017-10-06 00:07:10: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBQueryError"
 * I think this is related to T171027. If so, they're working on it. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Another Watchlist error
I tried to update my watchlist to not show bot edits, and 30 seconds or so later this cropped up:

Is this a me problem or a Meta problem or not a problem at all? I assume it is related to the one above. Thanks, L3X1 (distænt write)  01:48, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * L3X1, do you use the New filters for edit review Beta feature? Trizek (WMF) (talk) 08:13, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Not at this time. L3X1 (distænt write)  12:49, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you using ORES predictions?  Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes. I have them turned up to max. L3X1 (distænt write)  13:09, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * There is apparently some significant Watchlist slowdowns due to ORES filters. We are investigating the case and some developments will happen next week.
 * In the meantime, I encourage you to lower ORES predictions or don't use them. Thank you for the report L3X1, and apologies for that issue. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I will, thanks for helping me, Trizek. L3X1 (distænt write)  13:46, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist hanging in Firefox 56 with beta filters
FYI, I just filed phab:T177572 because some change made for the beta filters (the problems filters) is causing Firefox 56 to have a conniption. --Izno (talk) 04:15, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Argggh! Firefox on Mac issues
Not sure what's causing the slow-down or conflict, but the error message states: ''A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.'' Script: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/loa…ts&skin=vector&version=0v61to4:106 I am not code savvy so if anyone can help decipher the message and advise as to what I should do, please don't hesitate. Atsme 📞📧 20:33, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * What page is that occurring on? If it is the watchlist, it might be above. --Izno (talk) 20:40, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, Izno, but will check to see. Atsme 📞📧 20:45, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, Watchlist. Atsme 📞📧 20:46, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

That was it, - I unchecked some of the beta filters, and voila!! Speedy Gonzales, here! Much appreciated! Atsme 📞📧 21:04, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Floating tooltips near right margin activate hor scroll
References tooltip gadget in the latest desktop Chrome on PC goes to the right when reference number (e.g. ) is near right webpage margin, thus activating horizontal scroll, instead of being displayed on the left. Screenshot.

Also, same thing happens with floating keyboard-settings tooltip window which sometimes (when typing Edit summary) gets displayed in the bottom right corner of standard wikisource editor, thus activating horizontal scroll same as in example above (except that here is until it disappears by itself, and with reference tooltip it is like that until one moves cursor of reference number). --Obsuser (talk) 21:33, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Scrolling boxes adjacent to each other
I greet you again, with this much greeting. Look, on my user page I got a couple of article puffery boxes, one below the other (created, expanded)- I wondered if they could go next to each other instead? If so- how? Apologies if this isn't the right place for such a Q- I equally considered the Help Desk. Thanks in advance clever people! Cheers, — fortuna  velut luna  19:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This might work:  Some of the styling (such as the  ) is superfluous, I copied it from your page. Adjust the two   and the two  as you see fit. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 20:36, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much- apologies, I didn't get your ping- I'll try this tommorow and let you know. Cheers! — fortuna  velut luna  21:13, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I forgot that headings-that-aren't will put the kibosh on a notification. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 22:27, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * headings-that-aren't?! -anyway- if you check my u/p you'll see you plan works- many thakns! Although- it could perhaps do with just a slight tweak- if you've any ideas? Thanks again! — fortuna  velut luna  15:47, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, headings-that-aren't. In my code blob above there are two lines that begin with a double equals, this is of course the Wikimarkup for a section heading. They are inside <source ></source> tags, so are displayed literally and not as headings; but the thing that sends notifications doesn't know this, it assumes that they are real headings, and one of the quirks of the notification system is that the username that you are notifying must be in the same section as your signature. So it thought that my original was in a different section, so excluded you from the notification. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 22:43, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Should we ask for mapframe to be turned on?
Mapframe is an extension that is being developed by the WMF to show small OpenStreetMap maps in articles. Background information is at mw:Help:Extension:Kartographer. It is currently enabled on some Wikipedias that have opted in, and I think it would be useful here as well. Personally, I'm interested in using this in Wikidata-driven infoboxes such as the one at Lovell Telescope to replace Location map with OSM data, but it also has wider applications. I don't think that it interferes with existing coding here, so it just adds functionality that we can use. I can't spot any previous discussions about this, so I'm starting this discussion here to try to determine consensus. Also see T138057 and T175102 Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 00:29, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it would be a major benefit to have proper interactive maps in all Wikipedias, not just the ones that opted in. <mapframe> functionality has not caused any technical issues on any other wikis. Map code is already deployed to all Wikipedias as <maplink>, so enabling it would be as simple as flipping a switch. --Yurik (talk) 00:41, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support This should've been done waaay sooner. Ladsgroupoverleg 10:58, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. Also support converting Earth coordinates in Coord to use  as well. Jc86035 (talk) 11:27, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support, would be especially useful to have mapframe maps in the infoboxes of road articles. See commons:User:Evad37/sandbox/maps for some examples - Evad37 [talk] 23:48, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Note from the Wikimedia Foundation product team: This is a totally reasonable thing to request as better maps on Wikipedia could improve the user experience and would make a lot of people happy.  Previously, we had internally decided on a process to enable mapframe for new Wikipedia projects by request on a batch basis every 6 months.  However, the future of maps support from the Wikimedia Foundation is uncertain and at this point I think all new communities considering adding maps should be made aware of it.
 * The Reading product team has been working to try to figure out how to support the existing maps implementation, and our initial analysis is that maps requires significantly more resources than were assigned to the project at inception. We are currently working on establishing if we can prioritize resources to get maps into a stable, healthy state and will update folks on a plan as soon as we have a draft for comment. It has taken longer than we would have liked to get more clarity, due to organizational changes, but I think we are making progress and should have a clearer answer by the end of September, 2017.
 * The current situation is that over the last several months the maps project has relied on the goodwill of individual engineers at the Wikimedia Foundation to keep it up and running in addition to individual volunteers contributing support. We also have a contractor, working on a cartographic re-skin as well as dealing with some other maps issues like disputed borders.
 * I am personally very nervous about having maps on English Wikipedia because we don’t know what kind of support we will be able to offer in the future and I want to minimize the amount of editor effort going into a feature that is at risk. We are frankly concerned that the resources required to maintain and make necessary upgrades to the map service are more than we can commit to.
 * We’d like to propose that we revisit this question in October when we have more clarity over the path forward for maps. Thoughts? Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the background information on the development work. I think that there are two different issues here that can be handled in two separate stages. First, do we want to have this functionality available on enwp? That is what this discussion will hopefully decide. Second, is WMF ready to support the deployment? That is something that the WMF has to decide, and if the answer to the first question is 'yes' then the timing of the deployment is up to the WMF; if it is 'no' then the WMF is off the hook. ;-) I think that delaying this until next month doesn't help with either question, so it's still worth asking & answering the first question now. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 01:06, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that is a totally reasonable approach. Am I correctly interpreting your intent when you say "if it is 'no' then the WMF is off the hook." to mean that if the Wikimedia Foundation is not ready to support the deployment, we will have a discussion and that you wouldn't deploy until we were? This interpretation seems like a great way to break down and approach this problem (thank you!).  If, instead you mean you would deploy without our support, it makes me very uncomfortable, as it would mean deploying map infrastructure we are responsible for supporting and maintaining at a time when we are suggesting we might not be able to support and maintain it.  Can you confirm that I am reading your intent correctly?  Thanks. Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 03:18, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * My understanding was that someone at the WMF would have to flip the switch to deploy this. Even if that's not the case, I don't think it makes sense to deploy it until the WMF is ready to support and maintain it. So let's answer the first question here (do we want it here), and then we can move over to phabricator and the WMF/devs can determine when to deploy it. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:15, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Makes perfect sense. Thanks for clarifying!  I'll probably add my note with our concerns to the phab ticket too, just so it's in the relevant places. Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi all, quick update - Jkatz (WMF) is on family leave for a bit and we plan to provide an update next week. --ABaso (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello. We’ve been discussing this over the past weeks and are sharing an update as promised last week. Post edit - just wanted to make it clear! First of all, thank you for this RFC - we appreciate it. We acknowledge the decision and are working on a plan to enable map support on English Wikipedia.
 * As mentioned above, we thought we would have an answer about long-term maintenance by now, but it turns out we can only provide a partial answer at this time.
 * First, we’re committed to maintenance of the map service consumption experience as is.
 * Currently, our work continues to be on a best-effort basis—a maintenance effort from a handful of employees and volunteers.
 * We understand the desire to add functionality on English Wikipedia, and are encouraged by the support here - thank you for expressing the desired direction.  seems like an opportunity to make the encyclopedia experience better. However, we believe a deployment in the near term would entail resourcing risks, potentially compounding the risk associated with the holiday deployment freeze and major online fundraising efforts. Consequently, we aren't activating this right now.
 * However, we are exploring alternatives concerning both the maps consumption experience and maps contributions (editing) to identify a more sustainable path forward. More specifically, we are looking to see if there are other organizations or efforts with whom a maps partnership would make sense and would align with our tightly held values around open source, open knowledge, privacy, and neutrality.
 * It will take some time to explore these alternatives, and we plan to provide monthly updates along the way. We know this has been a very long process with more uncertainty than anyone would like.  We are really trying to do our due diligence before making further resourcing or product decisions that will have multi-year consequences. --ABaso (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll support.. I've been playing a bit with maps, and it could really use and benefit from some more exposure and feedback by a bigger audience. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:00, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Is anyone else interested in commenting on this? 6 supports (including mine) and no opposers gives an answer, but a weak consensus, so more opinions would be good. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:38, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Support. Interactive maps are such an ubiquitous feature all over the web that it's surprising that we still don't have it, especially given that a really large number of articles are about places. I imagine that such maps can  be turned on across the board (without the need for editor input in individual articles) for all articles that have explicitly set coordinates. – Uanfala 11:48, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. Maps are a traditional feature of encyclopedias, and these days, we should provide the best maps we can within our articles. Better interactivity / better integration with what the editing community needs (e.g. for data display) sounds like a useful feature to put WMF developer time into. —Kusma (t·c) 13:48, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support per the above. See also WP:VPTECH – hard-coded interactive maps can cause serious problems.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  16:54, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm amazed by growing number of "support" votes here. Right now, the feature is used by less than 200 users (but slowly growing). --George Ho (talk) 00:44, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's currently used by 0 users, since the functionality isn't turned on here. ;-) Not sure where you're seeing less than 200 users? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 14:00, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh... I was just reading that stats about gadget preferences, Mike Peel. George Ho (talk) 17:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that's about MediaWiki:Gadget-MobileMaps, which is not related to this. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:15, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment: Some food for thought: if this requires client-side loading resources from off-Wikimedia sites without user consent, this can have privacy implications (not an issue if done server-side). If pins come from WikiData, this may be less controversial than for article descriptions, but there is also an ongoing debate about WikiData integration on en-Wikipedia.  If the feature requires scripts, it will not work for everyone (the current maps, although suboptimally implemented, work for everyone, without outsourcing information except from commons for images).  — Paleo  Neonate  – 20:34, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The OSM data that is displayed is stored on Wikimedia servers as far as I am aware, so there is no loading of content from non-WMF-operated sites (hence no privacy concerns). It is built into the Mediawiki software, see the documentation, so no scripts are required. Pins from Wikidata may be a concern (as info from Wikidata generally seems to be a concern to some community members), but they are working fairly well in the cases I've been working with so far (see Wikidata location map and transclusions), and they are not required by this extension (it's an extra layer on top that we can code by using templates here, if we want). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:01, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support - and thanks to Mike Peel for the information. Location pins are rarely controversial, the detection of WikiData items changes and vandalism from en-Wikipedia remains an ongoing challenge that is likely to continue to be addressed at a more general scale.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 23:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * PaleoNeonate, I don't think the RFC or the response you got provided an accurate picture. The Wikidata integration goes waaaay beyond location pins. The page explaining the extension shows an example map built from a Wikidata database query pulling in an arbitrary batch of Wikidata items. This appears to ramp up the wikidata controversy to a whole new level. Alsee (talk) 21:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Support This would be a great step forwards.  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:53, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support, that would be great! − Pintoch (talk) 13:26, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong Support -- waiting for this feature. User:Naveenpf/sandbox -- few usages with maplink. -- naveenpf (talk) 10:47, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Why was this proposal on VillagePumpTechnical rather than posted on VillagePumpProposals? And is that related to the unrepresentatively high percentage of participants with financial or explicit-advocacy connection to Wikidata? I'm sure I'm not the only the only Proposal-watcher who would be surprised that we didn't get to review this before closure. I'm still trying to get more complete understanding of Kartographer, but the major wikidata integration is clearly neglected or misrepresented in the discussion above. Mapframe integrates what appears to be wikidata database query language for building map from arbitrary batches of wikidata results. If wikidata is vandalized, approximately zero-point-zero-zero percent of editors would be able to decipher the example at Kartographer#GeoShapes_via_Wikidata_Query to find the wikidata edit(s) to revert. Alsee (talk) 21:26, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This is a technical request, so this page seemed to be the obvious place to ask this question. Looking at the VP proposal page, it says "Proposed software changes should be filed at Phabricator (configuration changes should have gained a consensus)." Just filing this on Phabricator (as also suggested above on this page) didn't seem to be sufficient in this case, and the linked page at m:Requesting wiki configuration changes doesn't specify where that consensus needs to happen. The time to say that this is the wrong page to seek that consensus was a month ago. This does not have anything to do with Wikidata directly - you can use the extension without any Wikidata connection (although as I said at the start, I am interested in using this in conjuction with Wikidata information). With "financial or explicit-advocacy connection to Wikidata" - you need to back up that accusation with references, as I can't see this connection. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:22, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Expanding on what Mike said above on the other uses of mapframe, it (and also maplink) can be used with
 * a Data: page from Commons e.g. c:Data:Neighbourhoods/New York City.map
 * GeoJSON embedded on the page within <mapframe ></mapframe> tags
 * Specific OpenStreetMap features which have been tagged with a Wikidata ID e.g. Relation: Great Eastern Highway Bypass eastbound (6889698) on OSM
 * And it should be possible to make templates like Coord display a, using the embedded GeoJSON method. - Evad37 [talk] 02:15, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Small grey rectangle in Template:Infobox river
Hi. Can anyone help identify what is causing that grey rectangle to appear (on the top-right) in the above template page please? Thanks in advance. Reh man  10:42, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

 * I am currently looking into the issue but it is probably a formatting issue. I have cleaned it up with autoFormatter and that didn't work. I am going to perform some tests on this template. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:53, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

 * The same problem is going on in Template:Infobox Film but I don't know what it could be. Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:56, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

 * That's just an empty infobox generated by the code of the template not being wrapped in  tags. Nihlus 10:57, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Thanks and . It makes sense, but any idea why this is starting to show only now? I can confirm this wasn't there before, as I have been working on this template for a while...  Reh  man  11:02, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Update: It's probably due to some MediaWiki update. Noticed that it is now showing in other templates too (example: Infobox power station). Reh  man  11:03, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:03, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Nice spotting! I did change my browser from Firefox to Chrome. That explains the recent appearance of this horrifying grey thing. Cheers! Reh  man  11:05, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It only happens with  so I guess it adds some styling which forces some browsers to display an empty box. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:14, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

VE and preloaded content
The AFC draft templates have a "submit your draft for a review" or "resubmit" button that adds a section with a preloaded {{subst:submit}}. This works fine in the source editor, but in VE there's no new section with preloaded content. This has led to several questions from new editors who wondered why the instructions don't work. Is there a way to preload content when using VE? As an alternative, adding  to the URL forces the source editor even against the editor's preferences, but that seems a less preferable workaround. Huon (talk) 14:01, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Preload is soon to work. :) --Izno (talk) 14:26, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

How to propose change in general statistics page
The page https://xtools.wmflabs.org/ec/en.wikipedia.org has just changed its content. It now seems to confuse deletion of sandbox with reverted edits (29% of my edits were not deleted!). Where do I propose a change in this statistic (or alternately learn how they arrive at this very misleading statistic)? Maybe reversions should be carried as a separate statistic. Jzsj (talk) 12:24, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if this completely answers your question, but if I remember deleted edits are not reverted edits but the ones which exist(ed) on now-deleted pages (also explaining why non-administrators get a permission denied error when trying to see their details). — Paleo  Neonate  – 12:35, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, the tool is correct. Deleted edits are edits to deleted pages (or rarely individual edits deleted from public view by administrators). User:Jzsj/sandbox was deleted in August [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3AJzsj%2Fsandbox] and has 6,099 deleted edits, nearly all of them by you. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:24, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Glad we figured it out, and that it was correct! I guess the old one wasn't ;) For future reference, you can use the "Report an issue" link in the footer to create a ticket on Phabricator, using your Wikimedia account. If you are not comfortable with Phabricator, you can write here at VPT and ping one of the maintainers, or comment at mw:Talk:XTools. — MusikAnimal  talk  00:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I should also mention that having a high number of deleted edits is not by itself a bad thing. For instance, this is often the case for new page patrollers because they tag pages for speedy deletion. — MusikAnimal  talk  00:10, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-41

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

Recent changes
 * The number of active users listed by  and on Special:Statistics will now only include Wikidata edits as activity on Wikidata and not on other wikis too.
 * Previously you could create wiki links starting with two colons. Now you need to use one colon. :File:X.jpg now has to be File:X.jpg . There is now a new Linter category. You can see a list on Special:Linterrors/multi-colon-escape. The Linter extension helps you find technical errors in articles. You can read more about using Linter.

Problems
 * You will not be able to edit or upload files to Commons for around 30 minutes on 11 October. This will start at 06:00 UTC. This is because of work to let Commons show 3D models.

Changes later this week
 * The font in the edit window is monospace by default. Today you can change preferences to another font family or use "the browser default" instead of monospace. Switching to the browser default has only changed the font on Macs. The option to use browser default will be removed this week.
 * If you want to print a page or make a PDF of a page you can do so in the side menu. The way the pages look when you do this will change. You can read more on mediawiki.org.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 October. It will be on all wikis from 12 October (calendar).

Meetings
 * Octicons-sync.svg You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 10 October at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
 * Octicons-tools.svg You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 11 October at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
 14:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Obscene image inexplicably appearing in William III of England
In the William III of England's family tree section I found a nasty pornographic image (this image from Commons, be careful if you want click, it is super NSFW). When I edit the page, I just found innocent-looking templates (such as centre and familytree none of these should cause the image to be there). In fact, the image disappear when I click "preview" on the editor without editing anything, or when I log out of my account. I can see it in Chrome and Firefox, even when using another computer. Do others see it to, and wondering what prank is this caused by? HaEr48 (talk) 06:20, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Probably related to this. The offending template has been fixed and I have purged that article's page to eliminate the grotesque. ― Mandruss  ☎  06:30, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Ah thanks . Looking at "related changes" link on William III of England, I think this edit on centre is responsible (redirect-multi reported in that incident isn't used in this article. centre template is used by 1397 pages. Is there an automated way to purge all of them? HaEr48 (talk) 06:42, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

 * If there is, I'm not aware of it. It sure would come in handy in the rare cases like this. ― Mandruss  ☎  06:51, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I have started a purge of all pages using centre. It should be done in under an hour from this time stamp. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:42, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Warning: Leaving Wikimedia
I just got this when I clicked on the dabsolver tools link:

Leaving Wikimedia

Wikimedia requires notification of when leaving the Foundation's sphere of influence.

Huh? Doug Weller talk 11:18, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This is either a Toolforge thing or something that setup. — JJMC89  (T·C) 15:49, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * [17:11:13] <Coren>	 Dispenser: Dude, you can't just redirect from to Tool Labs tool to a server you own without an intersitial explaining that by proceeding forward users are giving you their IP and browser info.
 * Its a stupid requirement since IP addresses can be from the MediaWiki's API (and formerly geoiplookup.wikimedia.org) and detailed browser information can be obtained via .  Shop.wikimedia.org doesn't use an interstitial, but WMF specifically exempted it.
 * For the record, I didn't even have logging turned on for the first two years until I noticed ~15 gigabytes transferred out (5-15x normal). — Dispenser 18:46, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * "Huh?" is a pretty vague question but I suspect you are not looking for the above discussion. Dispenser lost access to his old domain http://dispenser.homenet.org . See User talk:Dispenser (he may want to update some pages at ). For some time his website only had an IP Address and I don't know whether the current https://dispenser.info.tm is permanent. Many links to his tools were modified to point to redirects under https://tools.wmflabs.org/dispenser, e.g. https://tools.wmflabs.org/dispenser/view/Dab_solver, so there would be a central place to update links later if his site gets a permanent domain. Wikimedia policy requires a warning to users before they are redirected to websites not controlled by the Wikimedia Foundation. The wording "Wikimedia requires notification of when leaving the Foundation's sphere of influence" is odd though. It could sound like it's asking users to notify the Wikimedia Foundation. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * sorry, that was vague, but it was literally my reaction when I saw that. I don’t remember seeing it before, and I certainly didn’t think it meant Wikimedia needed to notify me, I thought it was notifying Wikipedia, which made no sense. It really should be changed. Doug Weller  talk 20:05, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Nowrap template not working
I have noticed that Template:Nowrap has stopped working in the past hour or so. A lot of articles that I edit use this, particularly in complex tables, to aid mobile and tablet users. Is there a reason for this? Prisonermonkeys (talk) 08:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Can you provide examples? And is it not working on mobile or at all? Mobile is discussed above. Nihlus 13:23, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * , is this related to your recent edits to MediaWiki:Mobile.css? Jc86035 (talk) 13:56, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh sorry yeah, i had a mistake in there for a bit. Should have been fixed a couple of hours ago though. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:43, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * @ — it has been fixed. I didn't realise that someone else had already posted the issue above. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 02:32, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Creating an introduction and guide for using Wikidata data in other Wikimedia projects
Hi all

I've started a first draft of an document on Wikidata explaining how and why Wikidata data can be used on other Wikimedia projects e.g as a way to organise work on a subject, or in infoboxes. Please can you take a look and add any thoughts to the talk page. I very much want to get the perspectives of both Wikidata contributors and people who are unfamiliar with Wikidata.

Many thanks

John Cummings (talk) 09:02, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

 * Bad timing. According to a WMF database admin, because of the use of Wikidata in infoboxes " we are close of running out of space on several main database servers, breaking all of Wikipedia" (emphasis mine), and already caused huge problems in projects which used such infoboxes much more than enwiki (e.g. Commons, rowiki, itwiki, dawiki). Especially watchlists and recent changes suffered badly, insofar that Wikidata changes have been excluded from the watchlist in some of the most urgent projects already and are set to be excluded on all projects very soon, until the problems are eventually sorted out (not expected to be very soon). See my comments on this page, where two other editors linked the two relevant phabricator tickets and I added some quotes from them. The linked page is a place where people are trying to write an enwiki RfC on the use of Wikidata in infoboxes.
 * Oh, and you may not be aware that an example you give on that page, infobox world heritage site, seems poised to become non-Wikidata based again based on an ongoing RfC there.
 * In any case, the page as written is very optimistic. Fram (talk) 09:17, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

 * , can you point to where the WMF database admin said this? I've never heard this before. When you say "set to be excluded on all projects very soon", what do you mean? I know there are several language Wikipedias that use Wikidata extensively including article placeholders and in infoxboxes. Thanks, John Cummings (talk) 09:23, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The Wikidata changes will be excluded from watchlists and recent changes (and are already excluded on some of the projects which use Wikidata infoboxes most extensivley). Please don't get me started on Article PLaceholders, which should be abolished in general and will never be accepted on enwiki in any case. Fram (talk) 09:27, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Message in that ticket from yesterday: "Notification for users: We are going to disable wikidata recentchanges (meaning, changes on pages on other wikis coming from changes done on wikidata; the recentchanges at wikidata is not a problem) due to performance concerns. Once those have been fixed, the functionality could be enabled again.". I thought this also meant Watchlists, but perhaps I misread that part. Fram (talk) 09:28, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * A link to the "running out of space" post by the database admin is T171027 ( hover the mouse over the date in the first row of a post to see the section link ). Johnuniq (talk) 10:09, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes there are problems, yes they are serious, no this isn't an easy fix, no this doesn't happen often, yes this is not the first time we have issues as serious as these. Engineering will take care of what needs to be taken care of and will do so with as minimal impact as possible. When the impact is determined, you will hear what it will be (though it might be short notice). No point in speculation / FUD here. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:55, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Any point to this post, apart from the gratuitous "FUD" insertion? You may have missed the part which were actual quotes, not my comments. "Notification for users: We are going to disable wikidata recentchanges" is not FUD, but is the actual short notice notification presented by engineering. Where is the problems the most serious? At projects which have enabled the most Wikidata)driven infoboxes. That you don't like this message doesn't mean that you should pretend that repeating it is FUD or speculation. Not that your reply comes as a surprise. Fram (talk) 10:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not denying the problem, I'm just saying that there is no reason for you to speculate on the impact, the people in the ticket are perfectly capable of determining actual impact and the communicating this impact when and where needed. But you feel the need to pile on to that and use it as another weapon in your arsenal to further your personal agenda. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:32, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * What speculation on the impact? Where have I indicated that the "people in the ticket" are not capable of determining the impact? The only one to have raised that issue (before you did so here) was apparently the dba who was surprised not to be informed about some changes that had been made earlier and which seriously impacted his (our) database and caused the current problems. So it seems as if there was a serious problem with people in that ticket not able to determine the actual impact, and not internally communicating the impact; and it seems as if most people on enwiki and Wikidata were not aware of these issues either.I guess that's more FUD as well? My "need to pile on": all I did was reply to sections about infoboxes and Wikidata started by others, with information not yet shared by others. Or do you believe that this is not relevant for the post by John Cummings? So, no piling on, just news you don't like. Anyway, let's leave personal agenda's out of this, shall we? If I post factual errors, feel free to point them out. Otherwise, don't bother pointing out that my posts include my opinion, never mind framing my opinion or my apparently correct reporting of the facts is FUD just because you don't like problems with the WMF and/or Wikidata being pointed out. Fram (talk) 12:46, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

 * that document should more clear that it is technical/how-to. The question of whether and how Wikidata should be used in other projects is dependent on the policies and guidelines of those other projects.  I have started a draft for that in WP here: WP:Use of Wikidata in Wikipedia (again that is just a start and still just an essay)Jytdog (talk) 11:39, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata Primary Sources gadget
By the way, what's wrong with Wikidata? When you scroll down a page, you get in the left hand column an annoying "Browse Primary Sources ▲ back to top ▲" which follows you down. What the? This happens on every page, and the "Browse Primary Sources" can't be clicked anywhere. Rather intrusive for such a useless feature. Fram (talk) 12:54, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Fram, It's this gadget. --Pipetricker (talk) 13:06, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but that's a) not working and b) enabled by default anyway. Something that doesn't work shouldn't be enabled by default (and probably shouldn't be included in gadgets full stop. Fram (talk) 13:12, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's not default (no "default" at d:MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition) and it wasn't enabled for me. It does seem to work but only some items have relevant content. When the gadget is enabled, click "Random Primary Sources item" to see examples, e.g. . PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Weird, I can't remember having enabled this (I never edit Wikidata and have thus no use for such preferences). On that page it indeed works (though it still is an annoying eyesore), on other pages it is just a piece of useless nothing. Now disabled again. Fram (talk) 14:36, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Navbox templates / hlist issue?
I'm seeing in both Chrome and Edge on my PC, as well as Chrome on my Android device, that navbox templates with lists using second level bullet items are displaying odd. First noticed it on Diablo which was edited today. Then while trying to figure out what was happening, I noticed other navbox templates doing the same. I don't see any changes to Navbox, but I'm not sure what else to check, stylesheet?. What I see is that the second level items of the list start their grouping correctly with a (, but there is no closing ) and instead there is an extra bullet. -- ferret (talk) 19:26, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * by seems to be the culprit. Nihlus 19:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Undone for now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:02, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Back to normal now. -- ferret (talk) 20:04, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

broken on mobile

 * About the above topic heading: Please don't use templates (such as, or any other) in topic headings. It breaks the handy section link at the edit summary, because templates are never interpreted in that link. I fixed this heading so it doesn't use a template, but I suggest just writing Template:Template instead of template if you need to mention and link to a template in a heading. --Pipetricker (talk) 09:16, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

As I have tried and apparently failed to explain several times on its talk page, this template does literally nothing on mobile. As far as I can tell, the  class doesn't exist on the mobile stylesheet. I've been resorting to to fix wrapping problems. Hairy Dude (talk) 21:26, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think the reasoning is that since mobile devices might be very narrow, using nowrap may cause a phrase to become longer than the available space. So using nowrap is not necessarily useful. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 21:51, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, but especially the overuse inside infoboxes (and even some wrapping of entire sentences!!) of this class was breaking the mobile view left and right. I therefor decided to disable it there. But I've now partially re enabled it, and it is now only ignored when used inside tables. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 07:55, 9 October 2017 (UTC)�
 * The problem is that some table need nowraps—especially those with sortable functions—because nowraps keep everything on one line. Without them, cells become out of alignment, making them almost impossible to read. For example this table now incorrectly lists Swedish racing driver Marcus Ericsson as British, British driver Will Stevens as Japanese, and Japanese driver Kamui Kobayashi as German. It's also incorrectly listing which rounds they contested. How many table are experiencing similar problems?
 * I seem to recall you making this very same change about a year ago, but it had to be undone because it was creating these very same issues. Prisonermonkeys (talk) 08:34, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

It would be nice if there was a way not to apply it on mobile, though. Look at the IPA notation at Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis on mobile, for example. Nardog (talk) 04:49, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Maintenance banner linking to example page
I'm probably not the first to report this, but there's a banner currently showing that says "Technical maintenance will be performed soon", with a "Read More" button, which links to an example page on Meta with no further information (and a magnet for vandalism, apparently). I'm using the latest version of Firefox (macOS) and in San Francisco if it makes a difference. Funcrunch (talk) 05:17, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it has been fixed already (clear the cache), as the example link has been commented out (see m:Genericmaintenancenotice). Alex ShihTalk 05:26, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep, the link in the banner was removed about a minute after I posted here. Vandals are still having fun with that meta page though; someone might want to protect it... Funcrunch (talk) 05:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Now I see the correct target for the link, but if it affects Commons, why am I getting the banner notice on en:wp? (no longer seeing the banner here, nevermind) Funcrunch (talk) 05:36, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Unable to lift autoblocks
From this discussion over on WP:ANI. is asking that an autoblock be lifted. In this particular case, it appears appropriate to lift the autoblock. Only... I can't. DoRD notes they are unable to lift the autoblock, too, stating, "the error is that the autoblock number isn't a valid username or IP address. This sounds like a bug related to the recent conversion of the block and unblock interfaces to OOUI." Xaosflux asks if the autoblock number, which is 7892601, appears on Special:AutoblockList. It does. --Yamla (talk) 13:29, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This has been traced to a recent software update. A bug report has been filed and is being worked on. —DoRD (talk) 15:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Pagecounts-ez hasn't generated since OCT-06
The analytics files here seem to have hit a processing snag. This happened once in the last couple of months and I think it was tied to the decommissioning of a stats server or the following rsync process. I use these to generate the WP:5000 from which the popular WP:Top25Report is derived. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 03:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- And now it has! Whether someone did something or by magic, thank you! West.andrew.g (talk) 13:38, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did. Scripts have been adapted to new stats server with different layout. Sorry I forgot to report it here. Erik Zachte (talk) 15:52, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Discussion notifications
Many editors use Twinkle for notifications about content issues. With the current system of notification, that means an editor could get multiple copies of the exact same template for a blanket issue with all the files - see for a recent example.

With new users, it's easy to see how they could be overwhelmed by receiving a large number of notifications that their content is going to be deleted. An hour ago, this user received for an issue that could have been grouped into one template. Here's another example of a user who received around 80 individual notifications with content issues. Redundant notifications is really only alienating our users from participating in the project.

For experienced users, being "templated" is found to be really impersonal and does not get conversations started on the right foot. Currently, there isn't balance between respectful, courteous notification and the use of tools such as Twinkle. I see a few options for improving editor interaction regarding content issues :

Option A: Import VisualFileChange from Commons
 * This has an easy-to-use user interface that allows editors to "group" notifications for an issue covering multiple files.
 * Producing notifications like this would be possible with this tool.
 * Could also be modified to provide a custom message instead of a template.

Option B : Modify Twinkle "Hey RandomUser123, I noticed that a few of your file are missing X - would you mind adding the missing information to them? Thanks"
 * Add a feature to Twinkle to add a personalized note in place of a template. Chances are editors will respond better to a note such as:

A drawback from using only Twinkle is that it would probably would take a major rewrite to be able to tag batches of files. VisualFileChange can already do this, and modifying it to fit the English Wikipedia's needs may be easier. Implementing both of these would provide for the most flexibility and most exposure to the tools that are out there.

Notifications bots could also be modified to group notifications given in a short period of time. If a particular user is set to receive 6 notifications for the file issue on a given day, it's probably best to have one singular notification encompassing all files instead of six redundant ones. Jon Kolbert (talk) 18:34, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Revdel for delete and redirect?
I recently closed Articles for deletion/Integrated fluorometer as delete and redirect, which I implemented by redirecting, then changing the visibility of all the previous verions, using WP:REVDEL. I've never actually done that before, so posting here to make sure I used the right process. -- RoySmith (talk) 04:51, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This isn't really a VPT matter - have you asked at WP:AN, or perhaps WT:AFD? -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 07:53, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The normal way of doing this is to delete the article then recreate it as a redirect. JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 08:41, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Failing to enrol in course
I have been getting an error when I try to enroll a student in a course.

I am trying to add user:Tamjwh to Education Program:University of Hong Kong/Regional Geology (Fall Semester 2017) using the "Add students to this course" buttons.

However I get this error:
 * While adding students, the following error occurred: $1.internal_api_error_DBQueryError

Can any one add Tamjwh into this course? What has gone wrong? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:54, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Looks like T156502. There was an old bug that would cause issues when editor gender was not set in preferences with this extension - have the student try setting that in Special:Preferences . —  xaosflux  Talk 12:07, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Or T166109, the log actually shows this was done:

2017-09-13T04:50:24 Tamjwh (talk | contribs | block) enrolled in course Regional Geology (Fall Semester 2017).
 * — xaosflux  Talk 12:10, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Linked in from Education_noticeboard. — xaosflux  Talk 12:13, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

 * While I don't have an explanation for why this is happening, as an aside: have you played much with the Programs & Events Dashboard? I believe development and official support of the course page extension ended a while ago (which is not to say it shouldn't be used if it's useful). The Dashboard is still actively developed and what, I think, most are using for education projects now (see, for example, the training modules built in). —  Rhododendrites talk  \\ 13:03, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

TemplateData update
If you're interested in how templates get placed on a page, then please see mw:Help:TemplateData. It's now possible to tell Parsoid that unref and similar tags belong on separate lines. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Something weird's happening in Ningxia
When I try to load the article, I get the page title and no further text, and it appears that the page is repeatedly attempting to load and not capable of doing so. I don't have the technical language to describe this any more precisely. I suspect some kind of shenanigans with the markup by a vandal, but I can't get enough of the page to load to be able to open an editing screen.

This is the first time I've reported anything here (after 3 years!) and so if I did this incorrectly, my apologies. Thanks for the help! -  Julietdeltalima   (talk)  21:10, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not experiencing any issues with that page. I've purged the cache, so let me know if you can see it now. Nihlus 21:18, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That did the trick—thanks much! -  Julietdeltalima   (talk)  21:29, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

get_all_pages_in_category
Trying to do a get_all_pages_in_category call but it is only returning 500 entries. Any ideas how to set it up to something more reasonable? Hawkeye7  (discuss)  07:17, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * If it suits what you're doing you could try using PetScan. Jc86035 (talk) 08:21, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. That might work. One disturbing thing: Petscan says that Category:FA-Class military history articles has 1,007 members, but the category says that it has only 1,002.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  08:52, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Bug. It erroneously reported subcategories. Still three erroneous elements.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  09:51, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Damn! It doesn't work. It just gives me back a lot of HTML.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  09:21, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I can't help for the general case but I have a script I can run to get the pages in a category. It found 1005 pages, see my sandbox (permalink). I think WP:AWB also has a mechanism to make a list of pages from a category. The numbers shown such as "out of approximately 1,002 total" at the category page are estimates. I think the only way to know for sure is to generate a list and even that is subject to peculiarities because, for example, one bad edit to a template or module can create an error that adds (or removes) hundreds of pages to a category, and even if the bad edit is immediately reverted the system may take weeks to clean itself because that is done at a low priority. Johnuniq (talk) 22:16, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I got the same result; the category page says 1,002, while PetScan says 1,005. I will run a script over the output and check them all. I really prefer an API I can call from a script; I don't going through tools like PetScan.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  23:59, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
 * mw:API:Query —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:00, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That might work. I'll give it a try.  Hawkeye7   (discuss)  03:04, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Category page counts on category pages themselves are notoriously inaccurate and have been for a long time. That's why we added "out of approximately" before the count. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:38, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That's not so good.   Hawkeye7   (discuss)  03:04, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The situation is that if there's a bug where some page addition/removal doesn't update the count or if the job to update things somehow gets lost, there's no way to know that the count has become inaccurate and needs updating. It'll get updated if the stored count goes negative (since that's obviously wrong), or if the total number of pages is less than 200 (i.e. no paging on the Category page), or if a slow maintenance script is run on the server to recalculate all the counts from scratch. Anomie⚔ 17:58, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I believe that this is tracked as, but I am wrong nearly every day. This could be one of those days. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:31, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Editing through protection

 * Background info: WP:AN

Is it technically possible for a system to be set in place that would allow an editor to edit a protected page (template/navbox/whatever) when said editor would normally be prohibited from editing that page by the protection in place?

A specific scenario is to allow to edit In the news and other templates that make up the Main Page. These are protected at Admin level and also cascade protected. Apparently it is not possible to downgrade these templates to allow template editors to edit them due to the cascading protection. What I have in mind is a system which would permit admins to name editors who would be allowed to edit. This could either be done through the system in place to protect the page or by adding a template to the protected page which would allow named people to bypass the protection.

Conversely, if the above is possible, might it also be possible to disallow named editors from editing certain pages where they would normally be allowed to edit. This could be a useful alternative to locking a page in the case of an edit war, stopping the fighters from editing whilst allowing other editors to carry on editing. Mjroots (talk) 18:13, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * has proposed a "block from specific page" function, for the record. Also, given how cascade protection works being able to edit cascade protected pages will always by default entail the ability to lift and impose cascade protection. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Theoretically, possible. Realistically, very difficult and unlikely to gain support. Blocking or exempting from a specific page would be technically difficult and result in a lot of administrative overhead. Instead, we have edit requests. ~ Rob 13 Talk 18:22, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Good to hear that it might be theoretically possible. What I had in mind was that adding a template to a protected article would probably be best. It could be called and would work by piping allowed editors names after the template (e.g. ) . The one with the opposite effect could be called "disalloweditor". Obviously there would need to be a safeguard to stop editors not at admin level or higher from adding and removing these templates. This could be done by similar software to that which prevents adding links to blacklisted urls, i.e. it would check on saving that the editor has administrative privileges or higher before allowing the edit to save. Mjroots (talk) 18:41, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This implementation would not be possible without substantially reworking the software. Templates aren't connected to user rights/blocks in any way, nor can they easily be made to be. The closest thing to your implementation would be a magic word, but even that would have serious issues because we have no infrastructure in place to connect a magic word with user rights nor for user rights to block from only certain pages. Not to mention we'd need an expensive (bordering on impossibly expensive) edit filter to prevent non-admins from adding the template or magic word to an article to bypass protection for another editor. This is technically possible in the sense that rewriting Wikipedia from scratch is technically possible; it would be a massive undertaking bordering on a complete rewrite of the code handling blocks. ~ Rob 13 Talk 20:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Agree here - this is not something that exist - yes anything could be made in theory but a use case of making individual user<->page access lists is unlikely to attract much development time, or WMF adoption. — xaosflux  Talk 04:11, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * No, this isn't possible without major reworking of how the protection system currently works. I think the easiest solution here is to have the editor in question apply to be an administrator. FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY  [u+1F602]  04:34, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That is not an option. Mjroots (talk) 05:11, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

The "block from page" proposal is a different idea to this, it's to stop having to deal a complete block to users who are only disrupting one page (eg: from edit-warring) and should keep the drama at ANI down (eg: "The Brilliant Content Contributor was blocked for going over 1RR on an article with Discretionary sanctions! He was in the middle of my FAC review! The blocking admin is an idiot - desysop him!") Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  18:36, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * - see my comments above. I think we're both aiming at the same target. Mjroots (talk) 18:44, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

An admin-bot could always copy a page-version by approved-user from unprotected-page-A to fully-protected-page-B. In this instance page-A could even be template protected, as a convenient redundant layer. It seems like such a bot might have other uses as well, assuming it doesn't already exist. Alsee (talk) 19:05, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * - that would work in the specific case I mentioned, "Main Page/TE" (or the relevant templates subpaged /TE)for those with template editor privileges, and an admin level bot to check every x minutes and make the necessary changes. Mjroots (talk) 19:13, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This would need a full RfC, probably listed at CENT. It's essentially allowing non-admins to edit through full protection via bot. That has the potential to be controversial. Keep in mind that if we do this, it would not be only for one editor; many editors (who may know nothing about DYK or the main page) will gain access. ~ Rob 13 Talk 13:36, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Technically speaking, it wouldn't be difficult to set it up so that the bot looks at a (full-protected) page listing users and the pages they have access to. —DoRD (talk) 09:56, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Of course it will need a full RFC. The purpose of my original post was to work out whether or not there was a technical solution to the problem, which it looks like there may be. Also appreciate that it will allow a number of editors access to editing the Main Page which they do not now have. Mjroots (talk) 16:37, 12 October 2017 (UTC)
 * would WP:VPP be the most suitable venue to propose the /TE idea? Mjroots (talk) 09:35, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * It's at least the venue we previously discussed it at (without any outcome though). I had also made the same proposal Alsee mentions above back then without traction. Possibly this might be more successful as an RfC with CENT. Regards  So Why  09:43, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
 * RFC posted at WP:VPP and listed on CENT. Mjroots (talk) 13:08, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

A gadget for categorizing the items in a list or in a gallery
I have a list of images that I would like to add in a certain category. The list also exists in a form of a gallery. I noticed that the gadget Cat-a-lot can't categorize the items from a gallery - it only works for the images in a category or for those returned by a search. I can categorize those items in the list using AWB (if I get the bot flag) but is there any gadget capable to do that? Fructibus (talk) 00:42, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This isn't easy. What makes this so difficult is that categories are still intermingled with the rest of the wikitext, and MediaWiki allows for a lot of flexibility in how categories are entered. To begin with, categories are usually entered like this:

[[Category:A]] [[Category:B]]
 * However, this works just as well:

 * so the basic assumption that each category starts on its own line goes right out the window. To make things worse, both  and   are allowed on eswiki, but on enwiki, only   is allowed. And as if that wasn't bad enough, categories do not have to be specified in the page at all. They can be transcluded. Via templates. There are plans to move things like categoies out of the wikitext, which would make writing scripts like these trivial. You can read about this at Requests for comment/Multi-Content Revisions or at T107595. Nirmos (talk) 14:44, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
 * - I understand it's not easy, but in the same time, all those problems also exist for the images displayed