text:
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Commons category not working - links to main page
I have added a commons category template in Sveti Đurađ monastery. Hovering over the created link with my mouse pointer, it links to which seems OK and works fine, when i copypaste the link and use it directly in my browser (in the URL edit field in Firefox). However, when I click the link in the article itself, it leads to. Maybe some kind of conversion problem with the special character in the name or a problem within the template? GermanJoe (talk) 12:47, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It works for me. The Firefox addon NoScript has done things like this as part of a defense against cross-site scripting in url's. I haven't seen reports for a long time but see Village pump (technical)/Archive 140 if you have NoScript. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:18, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip. Yes, it seems to be the same NoScript problem with parentheses and/or coded characters - disabling NoScript (for a second only) "fixed" the issue (for a second). Oh well, just have to remember it the next time not to bug you again :). GermanJoe (talk) 15:00, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Mysterious random popup
I was at MOS:NBSP and switched to another tab, then switched back; and this popup appeared. I know what a half adder is (have done for 40 years) - my question is, how is it relevant, and where has this come from? -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 20:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oho, it's Thursday! Wacky new features time! -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 20:29, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I just opened Copenhagen and got 'Would this be useful to someone searching for "List of hospitals in Andorra. I'd love to know just who sold the WMF whatever algorithm they're using. ‑ Iridescent 20:33, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, we don't even have a list of hospitals in Andorra :-) Nyttend (talk) 22:29, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * But we do have a red link to it in List of hospitals in Europe. Clicking the link gives an option to search for it. I guess that's how a search got registered and placed in the test, but I have no idea why Copenhagen is suggested. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:42, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

You know what they say about incorrect proclamations. This has nothing to do with Thursday. This wiki is currently still running the prior version of mediawiki. This is likely an A/b test / survey probably to help improve the cirruSearch search engine. 20:38, 7 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by <IP_ADDRESS> (talk)
 * You say "A/b test / survey probably to help improve the cirruSearch search engine", I say "yet more fucking about with the interface without consultation or notification". It's probably one of those tricky irregular verbs. ‑ Iridescent 20:45, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The screenshot includes the string "would they want to read this article". I searched it at Phabricator and got three results: T171740, T171741, T174106. It's an A/B test for Search Relevance. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:15, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, we're currently running a test for Search Relevance (graded by humans); more information can be found in this ticket: T171740 and the most recent test is detailed here: T174106. DTankersley (WMF) (talk) 22:48, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was reading the Adder (electronics) page when one of these appeared. My thoughts were " — there's a pop-up — how did that get here — it seems to be from Wikiepdia itself — it's asking me a question, I'll try to be helpful — it says 'Would you click on this page ...' — would I ever click on a page? — why might I click on a page? —" and before I could come up with a sensible answer, it vanished again. If this is intended as a way of getting useful feedback from users, it's doomed to failure. Maproom (talk) 17:35, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This reminds me of the Article Feedback Tool. Yuck. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:49, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

The pop-up box is missing an important element - the checkbox or button that says "do not show me this again (ever, on any article)". Mitch Ames (talk) 00:21, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Personally I don't mind cooperating with it. But if it's going to ask tricky qurestions like "Would you click on this page", it ought to be polite enough to hang around until I've figured out what they mean. Maproom (talk) 19:16, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Unexpected popup
While viewing Agarose, a box suddenly appeared in the article, asking "if someone searched for 'red seaweed' would they want to read this article?" I have been unable to find any documentation for this "feature" in Wikipedia, Wikimedia, or Google. The closest I came was an entry in phabricator. Where is the rest of the documentation? What is the extent of this project, in terms of timespan or articles. Comfr (talk) 05:25, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * There is some information at and T174106. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:33, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was just scrolling down the page of History of Chinese Americans, and a pop up appeared in the upper right hand side, looking exactly like the screen shot above, except it asked a different question. Obliterated my view of the image of the man with the queue.  My first thought was "malware", and then I remembered this thread. Computer users pay for security software that blocks pop ups, and Wikipedia overrides it and makes us look at popups anyway.  — Maile  (talk) 13:30, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The wording can vary. I got this on Film producer: "If you searched for 'focal reducer', would this article be relevant?" PrimeHunter (talk) 13:47, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I got one of these popups, I don't recall where, but as I recall the search term it asked about was exactly the title of the article. I also don't recall what I clicked, there was no button for "whuh?" Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:40, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Keep getting asked about search results
Every time I visit the H2S radar page, a pop-up repeatedly appears in the upper right corner of the browser window asking me if this is a suitable article if one is searching for "Lancaster operators". I answer No, trying to be helpful. Then it asks me again. And again. And again. Is this something en.wiki is doing, or is this perhaps a 3rd party plugin? Anyone know what this is? Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:22, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's the enwiki test at . Does it repeat if you reload the page? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:29, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll check. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:01, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It does come back after a refresh. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:11, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * there was a bug, where there was a unit conversion problem, causing the popup to think it had been 2 days since the last time it asked you, while actually it had been no more than 172 seconds.. A fix will follow. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:28, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok, but why does it ask more than once after I answered? And why only in that article and no others? Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:07, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've written a post for the Wikimedia Blog that expands a bit on the reasoning behind the test. As TheDJ pointed out, a bug means you got asked every three minutes instead of every two days. However, I don't think we have anything in place to keep it from asking you on the same article. This is an initial test of the process, so I'll add that to the possible feature list for future versions. Though you are less likely to be on the same article two days later (as opposed to 172 seconds later). As for why that article and no others, the surveys are only on a handful of articles right now, but won't ever be on every article. TJones (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Edit view slow to load
Can anything be done about how slowly the edit view loads and, worst of all, the accompanying jumps as various elements load in succession? It happens too frequently that when I go to click something as edit view is coming up, the page shifts down slightly and I end up clicking on something else. The worst culprits seem to be the bar directly above and below the edit window: "B I ..." and "Insert – — ° ′ ″ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § ...". Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 01:21, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think they can do much about the speed of how it loads, since it's dependent on how fast your computer and network connection are, but you can turn them off in the Gadgets section of preferences. Jc86035 (talk) 03:26, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * @Jc86035: I don't think it's my network connection as I can load what should be more resource-intensive pages more quickly. It started, I think, after the edit window acquired its more "modern" look—e.g. the blue "Save changes" button instead of the previous grey version. I'll tinker with my preferences to see if I can improve it. Thanks! -- Black Falcon (talk) 04:34, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Some time ago, I made my edit page loads significantly faster by going to and turning off both "" and "". I also turned on "" (I never use VE apart from trying it in the very early days), just in case the VE javascript is still being sent through when you click "Edit source" - it certainly was at one time. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 08:06, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Which of the many toolbars ? there is a long list. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:18, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I didn't realize there were so many... WikiEditor is the one. It and CharInsert are always the last elements to load. -- Black Falcon (talk) 14:29, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Can you check your preferences for me ? I suspect you have "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)" disabled... It sounds weird (and it's a bug), but if you enable that, the reflow of at least the toolbar will be less. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 05:22, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * @TheDJ: It's enabled; and as far as I recall, it has been. Incidentally, the lag is about 4–5 seconds from when the edit window appears (and I can start typing) to when the WikiEditor toolbar and CharInsert finish loading. Thanks, -- Black Falcon (talk) 04:39, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Redrose64, I'll try those tips. -- Black Falcon (talk) 14:29, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

My Sandbox changed by other editors
Are other editors normally permitted to make changes and deletions in my Sandbox? (cf: User:Dthomsen8/sandbox/Streets/Cherry: Revision history)--Dthomsen8 (talk) 12:49, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Depends on what the changes are really. Sandbox pages shouldn't appear in categories (unless for short term testing purposes), or contain BLP violations or personal attacks. If the sandbox is intended as a draft/collaborative space, they could also do some copy-editing. I don't consider the redirect as something productive. If the sandbox was derelict (or forbidden per WP:WEBHOST or something), blanking would be more appropriate. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:09, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Or copyright violations, these aren't allowed anywhere. Doug Weller  talk 13:16, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like you copied from the sandbox to the article and not the opposite way but see User pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:26, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * True, I did, but my concern was that I created the Cherry Street (Philadelphia) article in April, 2015, and liked to have that availabe. In that case, I see that there is a complete history, unlike some other Philadelphhia streets, which were deleted, and returned to me by an Administrator in my Sandbox.--Dthomsen8 (talk) 23:11, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * As you can see, my first edit to that sandbox was to update a category link, before I deleted the old category page. In other cases I have blanked stale user versions of live articles during such cleanup exercises. In this case I could see that the draft had been made live, so I thought a redirect would be marginally more useful, being the same result as if the draft had been moved to article space. WP:STALEDRAFT says Redirects from userspace subpages to mainspace are common and acceptable. However, I apologise if this came across as impolite. I'll change my practice and blank such pages rather than redirecting if people find that preferable. – Fayenatic  L ondon 07:33, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia error
Just for documentation, I've gotten this several times today. However, it may not be Wikimedia. my computer is really slow and making a lot of noise. Usually after a few minutes have gone by after I turn it on all of this starting up activity ends. Something else is going on.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  16:24, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Are you sure its a Wikimedia error? My Computer is running alright without making a lot of noise its virtually quiet. What system are you using? Have you checked for any viruses if using MS Windows?  S. Little  talk  16:58, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've had a few messages as well. Aiken D 17:08, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I absolutely saw the words "Wikimedia error".— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  17:09, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It could be a glitch on Wikimedia's-side, though since I haven't experienced this problem have you filed a bug report with a detailed report about this? It could be related to them using a newer version of MediaWiki though I'm not sure.  S. Little  talk  17:51, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's just a "high server load" message. They'll know about it, no need for bug report. When you get this message, just use your browser's refresh feature ( in Firefox and Opera). You might need to do it two or three times, but don't do it too quickly. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 20:32, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * And in fact it doesn't necessarily mean the edit failed -- I had this happen earlier today and tried the edit a couple more times, getting the same error each time; I later found out I'd posted three copies of the same new talk page section. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:15, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Might be T175803 but hard to say without a full error message. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:01, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I sometimes get random errors but these are different than in this ticket. Something like the servers are too busy, please refresh.  When it occurs it doesn't last long.  An unrelated but more serious problem I lately get is when attempting to fix someone's broken signature, where the server worker thread appears to hang until the browser eventually reponds with a broken https connection (I get no error message from the server then, only from the browser).  There might be some buggy edit filter involved...  In this latter case, retrying the edit consistently reproduced the bug.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 14:38, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I have gotten the error message starting "Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem" many times in the last days. The message is shown at Wikimedia Foundation error but I also get it in other circumstances. Reloading usually works. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:49, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Full text is:  plus one image. As I noted above, the browser's refresh feature ( in Firefox and Opera) clears this and shows the desired page. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 09:12, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

X-Tools not working?
Is X-Tools not working for anyone else? It's not for me, and it wasn't working for me at the beginning of August, either, when I was going to update my edit stats with July on my user page. It's sitting there loading forever this time—the loading circle in the tab isn't even turning blue to indicate the page is about to display, it's just sitting in the state before that forever—but last time I think it threw an error:. Amaury ( talk | contribs ) 17:32, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I suggest using the new version (in beta). — JJMC89  (T·C) 17:38, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * We've restarted the xtools web server process. It should be working now.

 * However, JJMC89 is correct in that we will be using the new version. The new version is significantly more stable. ~  Matthewrbowker  Say something ·  What I've done 22:16, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I already added it as a bookmark and removed the other one after 's reply. Thank you both! Amaury ( talk | contribs ) 22:24, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Good to hear. ~ Matthewrbowker  Say something ·  What I've done 00:16, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I hope that the new one will still be improved before replacing the old one officially, as it only shows me the edit summaries at top (all other details currently require scripts and dynamic loading)... — Paleo  Neonate  – 22:50, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
 * "Scripts and dynamic loading" are our solution to handling very heavy database queries (it's a large part of what brought the old one down so often). Work is ongoing, see our workboard on Phabricator ~  Matthewrbowker  Say something ·  What I've done 00:16, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

 * I can understand if someone doesn't trust JavaScript on the web in general, but I can assure you that XTools is safe :) Please consider whitelisting if you are having trouble. You should be seeing more than just edit summaries, though? All the data except the year/month counts, timecard and global edits are served as raw HTML. While I can't promise we can show you charts, we can make some improvements to show the underlying data to users without JavaScript support. For this I've created . Best — MusikAnimal  talk  00:33, 12 September 2017 (UTC)
 * For more information on why scripts are currently completely disabled in the browser instance used with Wikipedia: User:PaleoNeonate. — Paleo  Neonate  – 10:49, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Wikimedia Errors
Is anyone else getting a lot of these? Seems every page I click/edit on gives this at the moment. Text states:

Error

Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem. Please try again in a few minutes.

See the error message at the bottom of this page for more information.

Also, I'm unable to compare diffs in the edit history - the pages don't load. I've tried this in several browsers this morning. Thanks.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 07:56, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Please paste the "error message at the bottom of this page". I think that message includes your IP address (not sure). If it does, change it to x.x.x.x before pasting. Do you mean every page? Apparently WP:VPT worked, how about some short articles? Any particular page giving trouble? Johnuniq (talk) 08:03, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I am getting errors too: "Request from xx.xx.xx.xx via cp3043 cp3043, Varnish XID 782598746 Error: 503, Backend fetch failed at Wed, 20 Sep 2017 08:06:28 GM" William Avery (talk) 08:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * - About 30 minutes ago it was every page, although it's calmed down a bit now. I did have the extra text at the bottom of the error, but it had my IP address, so I didn't post it. It's the same format as William's, above (thanks William). It took about five attempts to post this initial thread too.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 08:26, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Known issue at, which will be intermittent. You should soon be routed to a different datacenter -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 08:08, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've been seeing the "Our servers are currently under maintenance" error message more than usual as well. I assumed it was a rate-limit issue. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 08:09, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I too am finding that approximately every third page I access returns a 503. Looking at the Phabricator ticket it seems this has been going on for a week now. Is there any sign of progress towards a permanent fix? Yunshui 雲 水 08:14, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Fixes have been attempted, and some have definitely improved the situation - today has been especially bad, so the operations team have depooled the misbehaving server, and we hopefully won't see any more errors. This is only temporary, but a resolution is in the works  -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 08:19, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Anyone interested should definitely have a look at the linked task (its the most recent related task), and keep an eye on this dashboard - the spikes which cause these errors are "HTTP 500/503 Responses". On a brighter note, a moment of appreciation for the guys and gals in the operations team, who keep Wikipedia ticking along with over 7 million requests per minute - impressive! -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 08:37, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Without tempting fate, it's been back to normal for the last 10 minutes. Thanks to everyone who looked into it.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 08:32, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's happening less often - but I'm still getting those same 503 errors fairly regularly. Yunshui 雲 水 10:22, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Still getting these fairly regularly at the moment? -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 10:53, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Haven't had one since I posted the above message, actually. Boy, is my face red... Yunshui 雲 水 10:57, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No drama, we should be 503-free for at least a little while  -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 11:00, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Watchlist: slow load times
Is there a temporary fix for this? Can I somehow disable Javascript only for the watchlist page rather than the entire domain? Thanks.—Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 10:19, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Just disable the Beta feature. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:21, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Also see above. —DoRD (talk) 11:39, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. For anyone else wondering, this can be done within the Beta features tab in Preferences. You'll first want to uncheck Automatically enable all new beta features and then uncheck New filters for edit review.—Cpt.a.haddock (talk) (please ping when replying) 13:10, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Deletions not showing in watchlist
And I have logged actions selected as a feature. I'm just trying to see if there is anything I'm missing or if there is already a phabricator task open on this before I create a new one. This is a major issue for me since I'm pretty active in NPP and seeing the status of articles in my watchlist helps me when I go back through to see if speedy templates/PRODs have been removed, etc. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:41, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The "latest revision" filter seems to remove log entries. I hope that is a bug. —Kusma (t·c) 15:13, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm pinging on this because I believe she worked on this project and might be able to answer the questions as to whether this is intentional or just a bug. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:41, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * do you have the 'New filters for edit review' beta feature enabled? If so you can you verify the watchlist is working properly if you turn this off? — xaosflux  Talk 15:52, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * (ping fix) — xaosflux  Talk 15:52, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi TonyBallioni
 * Daisy has worked on design research but I'm the point of contact for the new filters system.
 * Can you share the filter combination you use with me? I'll investigate on this bug.
 * Thanks, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, turning the beta off fixes the problem. I'd had it enabled a while ago and like the changes other than this small issue. The filters I currently have on are: changes by others, latest revision, page edits, page creations, logged actions. Unfortunately I'll be turning the beta off until there's an easy way for it to only show the latest revision but also show logged actions. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:59, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * TonyBallioni, can you add a recently deleted page to your watchlist and check if it is on your watchlist using the filters? It works for me if I only display logged entries, or when I remove "lastest revisions" filter. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:16, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * , yes, using only that one filter it shows up or removing "latest revisions". The problem is that the current non-beta version of the watchlist allows you to see the logged actions combined with only the latest revisions. If I want to see deletions combined with edits like I'm currently able to do in my watchlist, I should be able to have that as a setting without having to change the filters every time. This is a major step backwards for the watchlist. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:24, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks TonyBallioni. I've reported it and I'll keep you posted. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

My watchlist changed: Can't tell which pages are unread
So none of my pages that have changed since I last visited it are being bolded anymore. I highly rely on that. What happened to it?— CYBERPOWER  ( Chat ) 17:11, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

 * +1 - As stated at Help Talk:Watchlist the new watchlist takes a good 10 seconds to load after every refresh (The previous took a second if that),
 * The other issue I have is that if I go to refresh the watchlist and then go on another tab - the watchlist won't load in the background - I have to physically be on the page for it to load,
 * IMHO this should be reverted back until the issues can be fixed, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 18:07, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you have the "New Filters for Edit Review" beta feature enabled? We changed that beta feature today so that it now puts the new filters on the watchlist as well. If you have the beta feature enabled, please try if disabling it fixes your issues. The styling of unread pages on the watchlist has a number of gadgets and other user/community-maintained things interfering with it. I updated the ones that we know about (e.g.), but maybe you're using something that we didn't know about and didn't update. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * you're a life saver! - I disabled that and it's gone back to the old watchlist, I had no idea New Filters was even enabled but yeah that seems to have been the cause for me, Thanks, – Davey 2010 Talk 19:11, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, we should still fix it :) . I think I found the culprit: your user CSS has a line (the last one, with ) that unbolds changed lines. With the new Watchlist UI disabled, the gadget to bold such lines (which you've probably also enabled) wins out over that, but with the new UI enabled it doesn't. Since you seem to want to have bolding, you may want to remove the line in your user CSS that disables bolding.  has something similar in their global CSS on meta . --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * - I've blanked the CSS and re-enabled New Filters - It took 8 seconds to load so still not overly quick, Also it's now bolded my watchlist which I disliked - Doesn't ever bother me at Commons or at Simple but does here, Anyway the loading time for me is 2 seconds quicker so not really a great improvement, Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davey2010 (talk • contribs) 19:33, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Sorry, but I have all beta features disabled. Something else must have changed.  I'd really like to get this function back.— CYBERPOWER  (Around ) 22:43, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The performance on this feature is intolerable. I, too, lost my bolding (which was added in my vector.css file).  I just want the bolding back.  I don't want the giant widgets, nor do I want the insane load time.Jorm (talk) 00:14, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Fixed it: .mw-changeslist-line-watched .mw-changeslist-line-inner span.mw-title { font-weight:bold !important; }
 * You have to put "!important" on it now, I guess. Ugh.--Jorm (talk) 00:22, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Bolding should work in the beta feature without doing anything special; if it doesn't, that's a bug, or you have user CSS somewhere that overrides it. If you do not have the beta feature, English Wikipedia's confusing stack of gadgets means you have to explicitly enable a gadget to get the bolding, but it was like that before the release too.
 * The load time issue is known and tracked at T176250, we've got some patches in review for it already. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 02:06, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was confused about what was going on in your case, but my teammate figured it out. You have CSS in your global CSS on meta that puts the bold in (I was confused because it looks like it removes it, which it does, but then it puts it back a few lines later). That CSS doesn't work any more because of a change in enwiki's WatchlistBase gadget (the gadget that removes the bolding for everyone except people who choose to have it). There are two ways to fix this:
 * Enable the WatchlistChangesBold gadget (Preferences -> Gadgets -> "Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold"); or
 * Change your global CSS from  to
 * , you may have the same problem (and the same solutions) if you were using user CSS to put the bold in, rather than the gadget that English Wikipedia provides for that purpose. --Roan Kattouw (WMF) (talk) 02:19, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. But it does concern me that someone just unilaterally decided to have a gadget override my global CSS.— CYBERPOWER  ( Chat ) 13:26, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The goal was not to override user CSS like yours. That was an unintended side effect due to increased CSS specificity. Mattflaschen-WMF (talk) 01:12, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * +1 on the loading. It's more like five or six seconds for me—not 10—but if that can be fixed to load like the old design, I'd be just fine with that. I have no other issues with this change. Amaury ( talk | contribs ) 04:53, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I can confirm the bolding of unread results is working fine for me without me having to change anything. I tested the performance a little bit, I found that for me the old version loads in around 2.7 seconds whereas the new version loads in around 4.2 seconds. That's not too bad for a beta version of this feature, especially since there's more performance improvements planned. I find the shifting of the watchlist items after the page is fully quite annoying, but to be fair this already happened to a lesser degree with the old watchlist due to watchlist notices. --Deskana (talk) 09:04, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I created a ticket for that shifting T176300. Note that watchlist notices only do this, if you don't dismiss them. They are hidden by default and then revealed when not yet dismissed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 09:32, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Email confirmation never arrives "Hotmail"
I asked on the admin boards, they mentioned someone here might help as this has happened in the past with certain email providers. Yes I've checked my spam folder, and requested it be sent several times from here. No luck. Double checked there is no misspelling of the email address and revisited my email preferences. Anything else I should be doing to verify my email address? TIA Peniole (talk) 13:50, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Is it related to Outlook's other current problems? BBC News - Microsoft confirms Outlook issues ? Cabayi (talk) 13:55, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * See Help:Email confirmation for general help. You can try another mail provider or just live without Wikipedia mail. It isn't required and most users rarely or never use it (but be sure not to forget your password). PrimeHunter (talk) 14:13, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Actually signed up last year, no email confirmation then. Tried again this year, same problem. So unrelated to their recent outage. Thanks for the tip. Will see if I can get it sent to a secondary email address since Hotmail servers seem to block incoming from wiki.Peniole (talk) 08:10, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Feature request: filter history by blocked accounts
I would find it useful if someone were to develop a gadget so that a page history could be filtered to show only edits by users who are currently blocked (mostly useful at SPI). There is already User:Ale_jrb/Scripts User History to filter history by one user's contribs, and MediaWiki:Gadget-markblocked.js for highlighting blocked users. Would someone more proficient than me be able to put those two together? Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:30, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I just created User:The Voidwalker/histFilter.js. It still needs some work (for example, it only checks the most recent 500 revisions and does things a bit sloppy), but it should work. (only tested in vector) -- The Voidwalker  Whispers 22:44, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll try it out! (I'm using vector anyway) Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:01, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Okay so it works great, the only thing is it adds the "show blocked users only" button three times, and only one of them does anything; may have something to do with admin buttons. Can't post a screenshot at the moment, but I'm getting a working button beside "compare selected revisions" on the left, then two that don't work beside "change visibility of selected revisions" and "edit tags of selected revisions" on the right (these are both admin-only buttons AFAIK). But it's not really interfering with anything. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 20:09, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I should have realized that was a possibility. I'll play with the selection statement for adding the button on a testwiki where I have those admin buttons. -- The Voidwalker  Whispers 20:14, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Template help
Can someone add a "next" and "previous" tag (as in elections and sports templates) to the templates at General Debate of the seventy-second session of the United Nations General Assembly and Seventy-first session of the United Nations General Assembly.Lihaas (talk) 19:48, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * If you mean in the infoboxes then they currently (via redirects) use Infobox organization and Infobox summit meeting. The latter has the documented parameters  and  . See 30th G8 summit for an example use. Do you mean you want an option to display it more like "← 2008" and "2016 →" at United States presidential election, 2012? Infobox organization has no next/previous parameters and they would rarely make sense so I don't think the infobox should be complicated with them. It does have predecessor/successor which make more sense for organizations but would sound wrong for General Debate of the seventy-second session of the United Nations General Assembly. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep I meant like the election article.Lihaas (talk) 00:30, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I have added (not yet documented) a  option to make compact navigation in Infobox summit meeting. The examples here show how Seventy-first session of the United Nations General Assembly could look with and without   if the existing parameters   and   are used. With compactnav I placed the date of the current event between the links like in elections. The image is commented out in the examples. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:20, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Cool stuff; I can think of another use or two for that sort thing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Is content font size too small?
For years I have felt that content size is too small. The font size is set at the Vector skin repo. It cannot be changed without a community consensus, so I started this poll:
 * https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7ZzgS46IrkeVEuwsQQeElPH-PddONfE2e4_9pKhApr-fQgQ/viewform (google form).

Golopotw (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:45, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that an on-Wikipedia RFC may be better. Also, browser features (i.e.  on most), browser preferences, or custom CSS (User:Golopotw/common.css) could be used to have text as large as you would like.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 07:28, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Please don't make us go outside the Wikimedia Foundation to discuss Wikipedia matters. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 10:43, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It is a polling tool unavailable in WMF softwares. It does not take away discussions from this thread because it does not have a discussing feature.Golopotw (talk) 11:07, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * , are we not discussing something here? Do you really think that nothing has been discussed or decided on Wikipedia in all the years its been running? How will you verify whether contributors to the google doc are wikipedians? not blocked? not sockpuppets? Wikipedia guarantees the anonymity of wiki-users - how will you preserve that anonymity on google docs? Frankly, I don't see any way that the results of an off-site discussion would be acceptable on Wikipedia. Cabayi (talk) 11:20, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It is not google doc, it is a polling app and what is did is complementary to what happens here. You click Yes or No and submit, and get the count, that all it does, no discussion happens there. The people who participate are all Wikipedians seeing this thread. It is possible someone do corrupt things to bend the data, though. Seeing so much discussion diverting from the original question makes me want to remove it now.Golopotw (talk) 11:44, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Any result from an off-wiki poll outside Wikimedia control will almost certainly be ignored when a decision is made so I don't see much reason to keep it open. Users who do participate will just be wasting their time. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:23, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

 * , If you're concerned about vote counting you ought to (re-)read Consensus. Cabayi (talk) 17:33, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Without wanting to be rude, if you are finding that the font size on Wikipedia is too small for you to read comfortably, then you need to either use a physically larger monitor, use reading glasses, or increase the zoom of your browser until the size is comfortable. Wikipedia is by no means the only popular website to use fonts at around 14px size (12.7px for Monobook), so there must be lot of readers for whom the current size is an acceptable compromise between legibility and the amount of text that is in view without scrolling. I doubt you'll be able to disturb the current (silent) consensus just to please folks like me who need glasses to read Wikipedia. --RexxS (talk) 17:07, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

New account creates a new account while logged in
Please see these log entries in UTC time: How can that happen? Dr.  K.  03:36, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * (User creation log); 03:02 . . User account Yutaui123 (talk | contribs) was created by Yutaui (talk | contribs) (it won't let me)
 * (User creation log); 03:00 . . User account Yutaui (talk | contribs) was created
 * This is normal. Special:CreateAccount can be used by already logged in users to create another account. I deliberate did it myself when creating alternative accounts.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=newusers&user=PrimeHunter&page=&year=&month=-1&tagfilter=&hide_thanks_log=1&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_tag_log=1&hide_review_log=1] PrimeHunter (talk) 09:33, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you PrimeHunter. I didn't know about that. The thing is, how can a brand-new account know the existence of that link. Dr.   K.  11:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe they didn't realize that they were logged in already and tried to register again, were told that it is already registered and then registered an alternative name? Just guessing of course. Have you asked them before labeling them a sockmaster? Regards  So Why  11:57, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, after creating the first account and being logged in they may just have used the browser back button to get back to Special:CreateAccount. That is the page logged out users get on "Create account" at the top of any page. Both the accounts edited the same article against Sock puppetry but attempted deception is unlikely when the usernames are so similar. It looks like a good faith mistake. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:54, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * They could also be familiar with MediaWiki generally, even if new to enwiki :) FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY  [u+1F602]  17:49, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. I had not considered these possibilities. :) Dr.   K.  18:25, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Rogue Bot
The Internet Archive Bot has been tagging HathiTrust links as dead links. See Equipollence (geometry) for example. The Talk of the Bot does not recognize a logged in editor, so the "tool" offered is in fact not available. Comments on the Talk are discouraged. — Rgdboer (talk) 20:51, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I reported the false positives using the interface. — JJMC89  (T·C) 21:30, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Nesting collapsible tables without spaces
I am working on User:Ergo Sum/sandbox/Template:Ordination/color chart and am trying to make each religion section collapsible and collapsed by default. I think the way to do this is to nest consecutive collapsible tables, but when I do so, there are large spaces between each table and each table is an irregular size depending on the length of the title. Does anyone know how to nest collapsible tables without having vertical gaps in between the tables?  Ergo Sum  22:12, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

A bot able to alert many WikiProjects to an RfC about a policy or guideline matter?
I wasn't sure if I should post this here or at WP:Village pump (idea lab), but it's a query about what Wikipedia might already be able to do. Recently, Newyorkbrad expressed a concern on my talk page about me notifying a number of guideline, policy and WikiProject talk pages to an RfC that affects the Wikipedia community as a whole. I'd rather continue that discussion here or at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment than on my talk page. He wondered if some of the notifications were relevant or appropriate. I noted that, in the case of RfCs that affect the community as a whole, I have been notifying a lot of pages (mainly WikiProjects) for years without incident and that it has helped pull in a lot more participants. I've done this ever since this RfC in 2014, where I contacted WikiProjects based on WP:RfC's "Issues by topic area" categorization format. Requests for comment mentions that it is okay to alert the talk pages of policies and guidelines that are closely related, and WikiProjects that are relevant, but I asked Newyorkbrad: "How can we define 'closely related' in this case when the discussion at hand affects all of Wikipedia?" I told Tryptofish the following, "How can we judge which WikiProjects are more relevant to the discussion at hand? We cannot. And the same goes for our policies and guidelines, with the exception of WP:Manual of Style, which I also alerted. None of the WikiProjects are any more deserving of receiving a notification [...] that affects all Wikipedia editors, and I don't see the 'WikiProjects that are involved in setting policies or guidelines [...]. I am aware of WP:CENT. [...] I left a notification at WP:Village pump (policy), but I have found that this is not enough for cases such as these. Such limited notification usually only ends up notifying those who watch that page or are heavily involved in our policy and guideline issues. It leaves out the general Wikipedians. I've seen this complaint -- that there are a limited number of editors shaping our policy and guidelines and not enough general Wikipedians being alerted to the issues -- many times."

So other than WP:CENT, is there a way to alert editors to an RfC that affects the whole community, similar to the MediaWiki message delivery bot? If not, is such an implement worth it? Pinging WhatamIdoing since she commonly has insights into Wikipedia's technical endeavors. Also pinging editors from the latest RfC I advertised in case any of them came to that RfC via one of my alerts: Fyddlestix, Mandruss, Stickee, Johnuniq, Guy Macon, Andrewa, Redrose64, Diego Moya, Bkonrad (older ≠ wiser), NewsAndEventsGuy, North8000, PBS, Masem, Alanscottwalker, RexxS, Kudpung (Kudpung กุดผึ้ง), Moxy, Jytdog, JRSpriggs, Lawrencekhoo (LK), DIYeditor, BrightR (Bright☀), SlimVirgin (SarahSV), Piotrus, Ivanvector, Sizeofint, and  Bondegezou. I already know that Doc James and a few others did. And, for the record, if there consensus that I shouldn't be alerting this way, I will abide by it. With the exception of WP:Manual of Style, SMcCandlish (who also took part in the RfC) reverted my notifications to the policy or guideline pages; so I know that he objects, at least on that front. And I know that I went a bit overboard on alerting the policy pages. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:23, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I have used massmessenger on meta. Centralized discussion does a fairly good job. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 00:27, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * In the RfC that produced this issue, you correctly listed the RfC at Requests for comment/Wikipedia policies and guidelines. You also advertised at WP:VPP. Between the two, you would've reached most editors who care much about changes to the p&g area, certainly enough people to reach a healthy level of participation and the point of diminishing returns (i.e. 150 editors are likely to produce the same conclusion as 50). Me, I don't watch VPP much these days, and I never watch the RfC listing pages. I trust that the editors who do will do things that I can live with. If not, that's on me. ― Mandruss  ☎  00:45, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * What about editors who are not heavily involved in building and/or editing our policies and guidelines, or the ones not involved at all? They care about some of these issues too. Over the years, I've gotten appreciative comments or thank yous via WP:Echo from such editors for my notifications because they would not have known about the issue(s) otherwise. Above, Doc James is one such editor. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:02, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think there's an uncorroborated assumption there. Is it true that 50 random editors are likely to produce the same result as 150 random editors? Sure - the Central Limit Theorem helps smooth it out. But is it true that 50 editors "who care much about changes to the p&g area" will produce the same result as 150 random Wikipedians? I suspect not. I applaud efforts to involve as many editors as possible as that tends to produce a more unbiased cross-section of opinion. Of course, there's no way of guaranteeing that, but the solution to anyone feeling that some notifications are biased is generally to notify more editors, not try to notify fewer by reversion. --RexxS (talk) 01:05, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Flyer22: Well I think I addressed that in my previous comment. If one doesn't watch the two main pages having to do with p&g changes, they can't reasonably complain about the resulting p&g changes. I don't, and I don't. You might as well propose that we advertise all p&g RfCs to all these different pages. ― Mandruss  ☎  01:11, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * But, Mandruss, not all RfCs will affect the whole community. I'm talking about the big ones, like the aforementioned WP:TALK one. As for your point that editors should watch the two big pages, it's a sound point; I just don't think that many do. It seems that only a limited number do -- the ones heavily involved in policy and guideline matters. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:20, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:RFC lists four other topic areas under "Project-wide" topics: Wikipedia style and naming (style), WikiProjects and collaborations (proj), Wikipedia technical issues and templates (tech), and Wikipedia proposals (prop). All of these areas affect the whole community, per "project-wide". So we need to indiscriminately scatter-broadcast those, too, with the same rationale, correct? ― Mandruss  ☎  01:24, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Not sure I get your latest argument. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:44, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * You said, quite correctly, not all RfCs will affect the whole community. But certainly the topic areas listed under "project-wide" do, by definition? As SMcC's comments have implied below, it would be unwise to let the RfC's opener decide how much of the community is affected by it, since that will often be a matter of opinion and perspective. Scatter-broadcasting has to be all or none, and I submit that none is far better than all. ― Mandruss  ☎  01:53, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * "All or none" is obviously not my motto. I subscribe to RexxS's viewpoint above. I would state "many or none." The goal is not to manually alert every WikiProject there is; not only is that a huge task without a bot and some WikiProjects are likely to be overlooked, not every WikiProject needs to be notified. Like I told Newyorkbrad, what is important when alerting a number of WikiProjects to an RfC that affects the whole community is trying to get a wide range of views, the WikiProjects that cover topic areas such as science, medicine, math, culture, sports, women's issues and so on. Aiming for the big WikiProjects is key. The current way things are set up already decides how much of the community is affected by whatever RfC (and by "affected by" in this instance, I mean "alerted to"). If this were not the case, the many people who thank me for being alerted to the RfCs would already know about them without my involvement. All I am doing is pulling in more people. As far as the WikiProjects portion of Requests for comment goes, it's useless for policy and guideline issues such as this since there is no way to state "this and this WikiProject is relevant, but not these." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:09, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * If WikiProject Neuroscience needed to be notified about an RfC about a relatively minor aspect of talk page behavior in all talk spaces, and other projects did not, I'm interested to know how you arrived at that decision. Are there projects that don't involve discussion in a talk space? Anyway, a major and controversial change like you are suggesting will not be made without an RfC consensus, so I'll try to watch for that RfC, which should be placed at WP:VPR. ― Mandruss  ☎  02:24, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I stated above that ever since this RfC in 2014, where I compiled a list of WikiProjects based on WP:RfC's "Issues by topic area" categorization format, I've been following that list. A few of those WikiProjects are semi-active, but I contacted them anyway. One is inactive, and I did't contact that one this time. Over the years, I've been contacting other WikiProjects in addition to that list. I should have left WP:Neuroscience off the list since WP:Med covers it well enough (editors watching that WikiProject are usually WP:Med editors). As for a bot, you're right, but I do think further discussion about the Requests for comment wording should perhaps take place at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment. I mean, in cases like these, does one alert any WikiProjects or not? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:35, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed with Mandruss. I actually reverted many of those notices myself (after the outcome was already WP:SNOW) to discourage anyone else from thinking that hitting every highly watchlisted Wikipedia-namespace talk page was an RfC notification norm. Our P&G talk pages would become unusable if people started doing this, even in small numbers. And that RfC didn't and won't "affect the whole community"; it was noise about a rare, almost imaginary minor problem; I think I saw a total of 4 cases anyone could point to, all them either noobs who hadn't learned our talk page etiquette yet, or generally disruptive parties headed for long-term blocks for multiple reasons. The comments are an interesting read, a thick pile-on of "don't you dare touch my posts!" WP:OWN chest-beating. That kind of RfC doesn't attract commentary from anyone but people with a weird bone to pick.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:29, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * We disagree on the RfC; I think the comments from others there have shown a convincing concern about the issue its tackling. I've had non-newbie editors break up my comments, and my objections were never a WP:OWN violation. I always made it clear that the "breaking up" had confused things or was likely to confuse things. And, for the most part, we do own our comments, which is why others are generally not allowed to touch them. The exceptions are clear at WP:TALK. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:44, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

 * On a side note: Just to reiterate, with the exception of WP:Manual of Style, SMcCandlish reverted my notifications to the policy or guideline pages, not to the WikiProjects. I wouldn't call my notifications to the rule pages "many." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

 * I'm reiterating some of the above, but this is what I do rather methodically:
 * Make important policy discussions be WP:RFCs with policy; this will ensure that WP:FRS subscribers who subscribe to the policy RfC feed will get drawn in. (This does not happen instantly; I'm not sure what the algorithm is, but there's some kind of randomization, and not everyone immediately gets a note about every RfC in the categories they're watching, even if they're set to get all of them. They get doled out over time.)
 * Post a pointer at WP:VPPOL (or even host the RfC there). The whole point of VP is that it's where the community members who don't just WP:DGAF come and look for site-wide issues to resolve.  If it's of the nature of a proposal for some major change, not just a tweak, it can also be cross-listed on WP:VPPRO.
 * If I'm sure it's going to be of wide-spread interest, list it on WP:CENT. Once in a while someone may revert a listing if they think the entry is trivial or of too micro-topical interest; most sensible entries seem to stick.
 * I wouldn't mind a notification system more quick and sure than FRS, or just a change to FRS so that I can tell it "notify me of every policy-categorized RfC, immediately". A lot of editors would rather eat their own feet than subscribe to that, but some of us are keenly interested in long-term policy stability and continuity, yet also flexibility, as WP grudgingly matures into another stage of the organizational life-cycle.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:29, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * PS: "there are a limited number of editors shaping our policy and guidelines" – Yes, of course. This is true – and necessarily true – of all human endeavors. WP:Writing policy is hard, and policy analysis is a professional-level skill that is difficult to learn much less excel at. When people who suck at it and/or don't care end up getting affected by policy in ways they don't like they make a lot of noise, and the people who are competent and interested enough to re-balance the policy make some adjustments.  This is how our species operates.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:33, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

For what is worth, I concluded in a peer review paper that Wikipedia's anti-canvassing / don't spam people POV means that 99% of the community is kept in the dark about important issues, while crucial decisions are being shaped by a small number of people - not intentionally, but just the lucky ones who saw the right notice or were more active in a specific time period. We need a better way to inform people about important stuff everywhere. This is doable, we just need to want to do it. You may find the article interesting (, OA mirror). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:29, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Piotrus, thanks for weighing in. WP:Canvassing is a different issue than notifying a number of WikiProjects to a policy or guideline issue. We see that it lists the following as an appropriate form of notification: "The talk page or noticeboard of one or more WikiProjects or other Wikipedia collaborations which may have interest in the topic under discussion." It doesn't give an exact number. And like I noted above, I feel that the issue at hand is not of interest to any one WikiProject, but to all of them. As for contacting all of them, see what I stated above. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:41, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

I can see why Flyer22 wanted to notify many projects about the interleaving RfC. Most editors would correctly think they should work on articles rather than pay attention to esoteric guidelines. Yet those editors may want to know about an RfC that could affect behavior on the talk pages they use. I can also see why some others do not want widespread notifications—if that became the norm, projects would be overrun with spam. I would not want to see an automated system to spread notifications because that would be overused and would lead to wholesale reverts and/or banner blindness. If considered appropriate, WP:centralized discussion or even WP:watchlist notices could be used—if others felt the issue warranted wide dissemination. Johnuniq (talk) 03:53, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Good point about the overrunning. If we did have a bot for this, I guess we wouldn't always be able to decide which cases it should be used for. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:01, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

 * But then again, Johnuniq, we don't have a lot of policy and guideline RfCs. It's more so occasional. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:06, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but as you know, there are many people with unusual views at Wikipedia and they would be sure to want to maximize publicity for whatever they thought was important. Re policy/guideline RfCs being rare, that might be a good reason to list the RfC at the central or watchlist links I mentioned. Johnuniq (talk) 05:18, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

 * I'll bring WP:AALERTS as a possibility for smaller RFC topical to a small number of projects, or for project to be notified or certain discussions happening on specific venues. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Headbomb. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * In this recent case, I found {{u|Flyer22 Reborn]]'s approach helpful and only came to the RfC because of the note on WikiProject Medicine. Bondegezou (talk) 09:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I was pinged above. Flyer, for discussions about policies or guidelines, you could reasonably ping WP:WPMOS and WP:WPPG.  You could also list them at related policies and guidelines.  For example, some editors watch WP:V and some watch WP:RS and others watch WP:NOR, and if there's an RFC at one, it's reasonable to post links at the other two.
 * We don't have a way to notify a representative set of active editors. I doubt that the core community truly wants such a thing, since it would mean a greater voice for people with less experience, and therefore mathematically less voice for people like us.
 * As for the instant case, an interesting thing to do would be to find several recent examples of interleaved comments that did not involve you personally, and ask those editors (the person who wrote the original comment and the person who inserted something) to comment. They are far more likely to have a useful, practical view of the question than editors who've never seen it, and they're the ones whose comments you're proposing to protect (for the original editor) or ban (for the interjecting editor).  I recommend posting those examples in the discussion at the RFC (or a note saying that you couldn't find any, because that would also be relevant information in a WP:CREEP-prevention kind of way).  WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Thank you for the ping, and thank you for seeking community views about the issue. I agree with Mandruss and SMcCandlish, as well as with what Newyorkbrad originally said at Flyer22's talk page. What drew my attention to the matter was seeing a note at WT:WikiProject Neuroscience – why is talk page interleaving of any special interest to editors who work on neuroscience content, aside from the subjective opinion that the issue is supposedly an important one to everyone at Wikipedia? – after having seen the same note at WT:Conflict of interest – I doubt that editors with COIs interleave their comments more or less than other editors do. Now, that said, I don't see what Flyer22 did as being anything really awful (had it been, it would have been a matter for WP:ANI, and it clearly was not that), but rather, as a matter of subjective judgment. Myself, I would have considered listing at RfC and CENT, along with a VPP note, as being entirely sufficient and appropriate. I do not see any reason to believe that any user felt badly disrupted by the notices, but I think some editors found them a waste of time while others found them helpful. So I think that it comes down to a subjective judgment about the degree to which the benefit of more editors finding out about the RfC balances out the feeling of wasted time experienced by editors who felt that there were too many notices. Don't overestimate the benefit of such wide publication in this case. There is nothing that stops editors from watchlisting RfC notices and checking CENT and VPP from time to time if they want to. And frankly, although the RfC was about talk page guidelines, it really wasn't something that rose to the level of something that required community-wide alerts. It pretty much became a consensus of "yeah, please avoid interleaving, but if you do interleave, it's not the end of the world". Hardly groundshaking, hardly controversial. There's a more subtle issue here as well: should every RfC where the posting editor wants wide participation be so widely announced? If not, is there a problem with some discussions being more widely evaluated than others, whereas if so, how much potential spam will this lead to if everyone does it? Do we really want to make this standard practice? And please don't underestimate the inconvenience of editors who didn't need to see the notices in so many places. Editor time is a valuable commodity. Of course, editors who are not interested can just ignore the notices, but nonetheless that happens after having spent a few moments reading the notice and then deciding not to respond. And the community has something of a consensus against spam – just see what WP:Canvassing says about it. Most interested editors would have found the RfC without so many notices, and even though some editors responded after seeing the WikiProject notices, most editors who watch WikiProjects did not. So, bottom line, it was marginally a net negative. It was bad judgment and probably not a good precedent, but not a high crime or misdemeanor. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:13, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Tryptofish, like I stated above, we can see that Canvassing lists the following as an appropriate form of notification: "The talk page or noticeboard of one or more WikiProjects or other Wikipedia collaborations which may have interest in the topic under discussion." It doesn't give an exact number. So who is to judge how many WikiProjects should be alerted in a case like this? The same goes for Requests for comment. You stated, "Don't overestimate the benefit of such wide publication in this case." But, from experience, I've had reason to "overestimate" in cases such as these. You stated, "Most interested editors would have found the RfC without so many notices." But, like Johnuniq stated above, "Most editors would correctly think they should work on articles rather than pay attention to esoteric guidelines. Yet those editors may want to know about an RfC that could affect behavior on the talk pages they use." That has been my experience. I'm trying to involve more than just the same limited number of editors. You've called my mass notifications in this case bad judgment, but I've been doing it for years, without incident (until now), and it has helped bring in many participants. If someone could show that I've actually been disruptive and unhelpful, then I would take the "you were wrong to do this" criticism seriously. That stated, given the recent criticism, I will cease my mass notifications. I will still alert several WikiProjects in the case where it's clear that the RfC is specific to those WikiProjects, but I won't continue with the mass thing. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for "That stated, given the recent criticism, I will cease my mass notifications." I appreciate that very much, and it is all that I would ever have asked for. For whatever it may be worth (and there is no need for you to rebut this), where you quoted "one or more WikiProjects... which may have interest in the topic under discussion", I think it's important to interpret "one or more" as not meaning "many", and to understand "interest" as being something that is specific to that project, beyond just being of interest to editors in general. And as I've said all along, when I referred to bad judgment, that is far from rising to the level of disruptive or unhelpful – more like a good-faith mistake, and we all (me included!) make those from time to time. Happy editing! --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I never interpreted it as meaning "many." I was simply pointing out that it lists no exact number. If it so happens that an RfC is likely to be of interest to many WikiProjects, then many it is. I still disagree with you on this matter per what I and those who have agreed with me have stated. I don't view the notifications as bad judgment or a good-faith mistake. And I believe that my ceasing the mass notification will be a loss, not a gain. As for a lot of people from the WikiProjects I contacted not weighing in this time, it is not surprising that editors would feel no need to comment in a WP:SNOW case. If I see many "yes" votes and a few "no" votes, I am unlikely to think that my "yes" is needed or that my "no" will help. In fact, I have not voted in the RfC in question; I knew that I wouldn't need to. The fact that my notifications drew in more people than would have been involved is the point of those notifications. This was never about understanding "interest" to mean something that is specific to whatever project, just like certain bot notifications WikiProjects have gotten are not about that. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:05, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Flyer, thanks for the ping and the only thing that matters to me when there are pings is whether I was pinged as part of a POV based canvassing campaign, which this isn't. Go for it.  I have no opinion on the existing or proposed tools other to say thanks to those eds interested in the subject. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 22:05, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, NewsAndEventsGuy. Given a few criticisms for this particular case, though, it seems that I should probably stop mass alerting in the way that I have been. And so I will. Maybe one day we will have a bot. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Possible conversion problem?
Discovered with the newly created article "Hereford Arizona Observatory" => (esp the altitude unit ).

Seems that there may be two different results for basic conversions: one result via     => 1420 m (4670 ft);  and another result, via WikiData ( at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q40787894 ), which is significantly different => 1420 m (4660 ft) instead.

AFAIK ATM - both can't be right; but both could be wrong.

Possible explanations - or solutions - Welcome - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 00:42, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The problem is that Q40787894 shows that Hereford Arizona Observatory has "elevation above sea level 1,420 metre", whereas the article has "at an altitude of 4670 ft ".
 * 1,420 m is 4,658.8 ft which convert rounds to 4,660 ft.
 * 4,670 ft is 1,423.4 m which convert rounds to 1,420 m.
 * The reference should be consulted to see exactly what it says, and the value in the article and the value at Wikidata should be changed to be the same.
 * By the way, please use  instead of the deprecated  . Also, the convert in the OP ( 1420 ft ) is not used in the article and does not give the result shown in the OP. Johnuniq (talk) 01:23, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, first of all:  ? 1420 ft so you've slipped up in the transcription somewhere.
 * Did you intend to write:  ? 1420 m
 * That's what you'd expect since 1420 m is equal to 4659 ft to the nearest foot.
 * You can find cases where convert seems to give a peculiar result because of having to estimate how many significant figures are appropriate.
 * One seeming discepancy actually arises if you observe:
 * ? 4650 ft
 * ? 4660 ft
 * ? 4670 ft
 * so 4660 ft, 4660 ft and 4670 ft all convert to 1420 m. But that's not surprising if the display is being rounded to 3 sig fig (as it is by default because the input has only 3 sig fig).
 * However:
 * ? 4650 ft
 * ? 4660 ft
 * ? 4670 ft
 * Does that explain it for you? --RexxS (talk) 01:29, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Does that explain it for you? --RexxS (talk) 01:29, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the *very good* comments - seems the problem may be resolved by carefully considering sig-figures and rounding-off nos - a closer look at the original ref may be indicated - Thanks again for the comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 01:47, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Template:For nowiki in the Visual Editor
Articles making use of Template:For nowiki (for example via Template:Post-nominals, as in Émile Antoine Verpilleux) don't render properly when edited via the Visual Editor (there's a lot of code displayed). Articles making use of Template:For loop don't show the same issue. I'm not sure whether it's the difference in the use of within the templates themselves or something in the corresponding Lua modules (Module:For nowiki and Module:ForLoop respectively); could someone more tech- and Lua-savvy than me please take a look and fix it? Huon (talk) 15:49, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Pinging creator:  P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 15:26, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The simpler shows the same problem. Seems like a bug that should be reported on Phabricator and not something that can be fixed here.  P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 15:35, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Or maybe not, because this whole system is a total hack ... P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 15:36, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

It is quite normal for hacks to behave like hacks. The problem is probably that VE parser internally uses Special:Expandtemplates which has similar output. Expandtemplates is meant to expand ALL wikitext and yet that hack blocks it from doing so. Expandtemplates also doesn't do some cleanup that the default parser does, and that may be the reason it works in the default preview / actual page. Fixing it is probably simple, avoid using that nowiki stuff.

Until there is only one parser (parsoid perhaps), this will remain a game of wack a mole. Lua and the frame.preprocess hack allows users to create an unending number of hacks. This is just one of many. 17:13, 24 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by <IP_ADDRESS> (talk • contribs)
 * Avoid using that nowiki stuff. And thereby have templates that contain the same text tens of times. How is that better. P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 17:45, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Templates are not programming languages. Attempting to mix wikitext and lua in that strange manner is like attempting to mix french and mandarin. Sure some people may understand what the output means, but it also leaves several people dumbfounded like this whenever it fails.
 * The concrete solution depends on the problem. All this template does is replace all instances of one string with another, e.g. . Simply changing the parameters into a list and running a template or lua function that replaces it would do that easily:

local input = "buu baa" output = input:gsub("%S+", {["buu"] = "buu2", ["baa"] = "baa2"})

print(output)

 * It could also be extracted from template subpage or data module or one of hundreds of ways, and such a tool could be reused by a lot of templates, without even thinking about the notion of "loop" or "nowiki". Or a bit of repetition could be added with the switch parser function within a wrapper template and without any lua. Although that parser function tends to be problematic.  18:21, 24 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by <IP_ADDRESS> (talk • contribs)
 * Templates are not programming languages. Untrue. If  isn't code, then what is it? As for the rest of that comment, I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say. Module:For nowiki does more than just replace one string with another (that's what Module:String is for). It effectively repeats the same string multiple times with minor variations. If you are trying to say that these templates should be written entirely in lua, then that could be done, but is unnecessary when you can just use one module to abstract out the duplication.  P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 19:55, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, please sign your posts (with four tildes rather than five). P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 19:55, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * > isn't code, then what is it?
 * Simply markup. Many tools provide constructs like "isdefined" without being programming languages (e.g. spreadsheet software, word processors, etc). You might want to see the definition of programming language (hint, at a minimum it needs a grammar).
 * > I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say
 * Passing wikitext along with parserfunctions to lua, and then back, isn't the proper way to use it, and causes issues like these, it sometimes also adds error tracking categories despite not outputting any visible errors. There is a wikitext parsing order that the module interferes with, in a similar way to the hacky parser function. The bugs related to it in the bug tracker will give you plenty of reasons why it has been a bad idea from the day it was created.
 * If it only repeated text without parsing it, then it would cause no problems. As far as the exact solution, there are several ways to fix it, as discussed above. It is up to the editors of that template to decide which is best. <IP_ADDRESS> (talk) 21:04, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Fine, maybe that wasn't a good example. If  (copied from National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an article, not a template) isn't code, then what is it? How many tools that aren't programming languages have for loops or a sum function? Even if you somehow claim that that isn't code, one can move arbitrary Lua (clearly a programming language) into Wikitext via Module:LuaCall. Passing wikitext along with parserfunctions to lua, and then back, isn't the proper way to use it. Do you have any evidence of that, especially since this bug, if my suspicions are correct, actually has nothing to do with the Wikitext-Lua-Wikitext dance. The beauty of Wikitext is that it can do anything anywhere; you can have wikitext pages that aren't really code, like this discussion, or pages that are code, like I mentioned above, or a mixture of the two.  P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 21:30, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Is this the same bug as T48115? P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 21:24, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Seems to be a pathological case of that. seems to work.  P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 21:47, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Template:For nowiki and the andriod app
Just posting a pointer to Template talk:Post-nominals. Does anyone understand why my prune code duplication edit would have broken the app, but worked fine in standard preview? P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 14:21, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, I seem to have figured out the problem. for nowiki is broken in Parsoid for some reason I can't understand. P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 14:57, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think this is related to Village pump (technical) above. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 15:14, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I should totally have checked for duplicate posts before posting. P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 15:20, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Improvements coming soon to Recent Changes
Hello

In short: starting on 26 September, New Filters for Edit Review (now in Beta) will become standard on Recent Changes. They provide an array of new tools and an improved interface. If you prefer the current page you will be able to opt out. Learn more about the New Filters.

What is this feature again?

This feature improves Special:RecentChanges and Special:RecentChangesLinked (and soon, Special:Watchlist – see below).

Based on a new design, it adds new features that ease vandalism tracking and support of newcomers: You can know more about this project by visiting the quick tour help page.
 * Filtering - filter recent changes with easy-to-use and powerful filters combinations, including filtering by namespace or tagged edits.
 * Highlighting - add a colored background to the different changes you are monitoring. It helps quick identification of changes that matter to you.
 * Bookmarking to keep your favorite configurations of filters ready to be used.
 * Quality and Intent Filters - those filters use ORES predictions. They identify real vandalism or good faith intent contributions that need help. They are not available on all wikis.

Concerning RecentChanges

Starting on 26 September, New Filters for Edit Review will become standard on Recent Changes. We have decided to do this release because of a long and successful Beta test phase, positive feedback from various users and positive user testing.

Some features will remain as Beta features and will be added later. Learn more about those different features.

If your community has specific concerns about this deployment or internal discussion, it can request to have the deployment to their wikis delayed to October 1, if they have sensible, consistent with the project, actionable, realistic feedback to oppose (at the development team's appreciation).

You will also be able to opt-out this change in your preferences.

Concerning Watchlists

Starting on September 19, the Beta feature will have a new option. Watchlists will have all filters available now on the Beta Recent Changes improvements.

If you have already activated the Beta feature "", you have no action to take. If you haven't activated the Beta feature "" and you want to try the filters on Watchlists, please go to your Beta preferences on September 19.

How to be ready

Please share this announcement!

Do you use Gadgets that change things on your RecentChanges or Watchlist pages, or have you customized them with scripts or CSS? You may have to make some changes to your configuration. Despite the fact that we have tried to take most cases into consideration, some configurations may break. The Beta phase is a great opportunity to have a look at local scripts and gadgets: some of them may be replaced by native features from the Beta feature.

Please ping me if you have questions.

On behalf of the Global Collaboration team, Trizek (WMF) 15:26, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

 * I suggest we launch the RC change as opt-in for existing users and as opt-out for new users... Otherwise I don't see this ending well. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:41, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yep, I'm sure there will be some drama if this is opt-out for existing users. Stryn (talk) 17:02, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion. I'll report it to the team and we will take a decision. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Trizek, I have at the moment no opposition to this release, I just have serious misgivings about your statement "If your community has specific concerns about this deployment or internal discussion, it can request to have the deployment to their wikis delayed to October 1, if they have sensible, consistent with the project, actionable, realistic feedback to oppose (at the development team's appreciation)." Why?
 * Why only a delay until 1 October?
 * Why does it matter if the opposition is sensible, consistent with the project, actionable, realistic feedback to oppose?
 * If a community (not some individuals, but e.g. a speedy RfC) decides that they don't want to have this enabled, for whatever reason, why can't you just say "fine, we'll leave it as it is for your wiki"? Considering that everyone will be able to opt-out anyway (meaning that there isn't a technical reason that after 1 October, the current system can't remain in place), it shouldn't be too hard to set this to "automatic fixed opt-out for everyone" on that wiki. I totally understand that you do not have to cater to every wish or whim of the communities, and that your team has its say in what comments, wishes, blockers are actionable and realistic and which aren't. I have in principle no problem if you would check the comments and come back with a "no can do, take it or leave it". What I don't get is why you instead say "no can do, you have to take it". This really doesn't send a "we are here for you, we want to work together" message but again the typical "we know better so leave us alone" some of us have come to expect. Fram (talk) 08:35, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Fram (talk) 07:59, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay Fram, I was sick these days.
 * The work on those filters has been done based on user research and user testing, and we have actively took care of all feedback received (which has been overall very positive so far). For us, this justifies a release by default for all users on all wikis, to help people taking care of Recent Changes.
 * We have set a deadline to move on new improvements (like filter by user or by category) and new projects. Set a different configuration for several wikis is not comfortable for future maintenance work, improvements and operations and requires time to take care of those communities.
 * Concerning the delay itself, some communities may have issues using the Beta feature we are not aware of (the filters are breaking something completely for instance). That's why we ask those communities to tell us if they need a delay, if necessary and realistic. If the bug is our responsibility, we have until October 1st to fix it, if it matches the project goals. If the bug is the community responsibility (because of a compatibility issue with a local script/gadget for instance), they can ask for a delay to fix it (and we provide assistance if possible) until October 1st. We will of course be working together on those requests. But blockers like "We don't think this tool is useful" or "We don't like the colors" are not eligible for the delay.
 * We are not forcing everyone with no exception to use the filters. We are providing a way to opt-out for all users who don't want to have them and we think it is a reasonable way to satisfy everyone. We don't say "you have to take it" but "your wiki will have it but you can choose if you want it on your personal interface or not". Maybe the wording for my message was not optimal?
 * Best, Trizek (WMF) (talk) 15:33, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Update: the deployment of the filters as default on Recent Changes is delayed until October 3. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 08:51, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

readapidenied error when attempting to login via PyWikiBot
I am new to PyWikiBot. Wikipedia's docs say, "a bot can make read requests without logging in", so why is the error below occurring?

Please WP:PING me in your reply. Thanks in advance, zazpot (talk) 04:12, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * On closer inspection, it seems that although logging in is failing as above, reading Wikipedia via PyWikiBot actually works fine. Still unsure why attempting to log in produces the error above, though. zazpot (talk) 11:38, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

The "Hodge diamond" template interferes with formats
This section is a bulleted list. Because each paragraph as a whole is indented, "displayed" TeX needs to be indented twice rather than only once, and lines after "displayed" TeX need to be indented by a colon. However, this "Hodge diamond" diagram is not indented, so I put a couple of colons in front of it. But then all sections below it – separate sections – got indented.

Can this be fixed? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:19, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I have tracked it down to Module:Hodge diamond making a newline in some of the table cells. This works:

 * Above

But if a newline is added in the source right after "Indented table" then "Below" and later text becomes indented when previewing. I didn't save an example because I don't know how to stop the indentation. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:16, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Below
 * The module is just outputting what it is given, and some of the parameters have a newline. Probably the module should trim each parameter to remove any extraneous spaces or newlines. Frietjes might like to do that. Meanwhile, the following works:
 * Johnuniq (talk) 00:54, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hodge_structure&type=revision&diff=802179263&oldid=802090089 made the suggested change] in the text until I can figure out why adding trim in the module didn't work. Frietjes (talk) 14:01, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Use  when extracting the args. There are two occurrences of   and only one of them was trimmed. Johnuniq (talk) 22:23, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * thank you, I thought that I [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Module%3AHodge_diamond&type=revision&diff=802177833&oldid=605350561 tried that], but there must have been another problem since that is working now. Frietjes (talk) 14:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * thank you, I thought that I [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Module%3AHodge_diamond&type=revision&diff=802177833&oldid=605350561 tried that], but there must have been another problem since that is working now. Frietjes (talk) 14:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Any way to view only 'unvisited' pages in the watchlist?
There doesn't seem to be. Would love to know if there's any I've missed rather than having to scroll through maybe catching the green icon. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:08, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * if you want it to always work like that you can add the following to your personal css page:
 * — xaosflux  Talk 13:21, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Naw, I'd just like it to be an option to check now and again. I suppose I could add the CSS thing and keep it commented out normally... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:57, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Someone can probably turn that in to a userspace gadget/button/etc for you, mw-changeslist-watchedseen is the line id to act on. Randomly poking  to see if this is already made possibly? —  xaosflux  Talk 15:32, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I would guess the beta version of the new watch list can either do this by default or could pretty easily be extended to do so. --Izno (talk) 01:19, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I would guess the beta version of the new watch list can either do this by default or could pretty easily be extended to do so. --Izno (talk) 01:19, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Melodia: You can add to Special:MyPage/common.js. You can then optionally style or position the button any way you want on Special:MyPage/common.css. Example: Nirmos (talk) 03:56, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The new filters beta for watch lists has an "Unseen changes" filter which allows you to do this. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Tech News: 2017-39

 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
 * Wikitext syntax highlighting is a beta feature on Wikimedia wikis with text written from left to right. This beta feature is based on CodeMirror. You can now search through the entire article with +  or  +  when you edit. Before it just searched through a part of the article. The developers are also fixing a couple of other bugs.
 * Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions as a beta feature or by default can now create and move Structured Discussions boards. Structured Discussions was previously called Flow.

Changes later this week
 * You now get a notification when someone tries to log in to your account and fails. If they try from a device or IP address that have logged in to your account before you will be notified after five failed attempts. For security reasons you will soon get an email by default when someone tries to log in to your account and when someone logs in to your account from a new device or IP address. This can be turned off in your preferences.
 * Users with extremely old browsers (for example Netscape 2–4, released from 1995–1997) which do not support Unicode will no longer be able to edit. They should try to install a new browser.
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 September. It will be on all wikis from 28 September. (calendar).

Meetings Future changes
 * 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 27 September at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

 * The Wikimedia Foundation Readers department has proposed changing the mobile website. You can read more on mediawiki.org. This would be a big change.
 * You can't use OCG to create PDFs after 1 October. This is because of technical problems. You can still create PDFs. Tech News 2017/37 said the function to create PDFs from books would still work. It is now clear it will not work for the next few months. The developers are working on fixing this. You can read more on mediawiki.org.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
 15:59, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Mapping Hiragana and Katakana?
We recently got a suggestion via Phabricator to automatically map between hiragana and katakana when searching on English Wikipedia and other wiki projects. As an always-on feature, this isn't difficult to implement, but major commercial search engines (Google.jp, Bing, Yahoo Japan, DuckDuckGo, Goo) don't do that. They give different results when searching for hiragana/katakana forms (for example, オオカミ / おおかみ "wolf"). They also give different *numbers* of results, seeming to indicate that it's not just re-ordering the same results (say, so that results in the same script are ranked higher). (You can see more details of my tests on Phabricator.)

I want to know what they know that I don't! Does anyone have any thoughts on whether this would be useful (seems that it would) and whether it would cause any problems (it must, or otherwise all the other search engines would do it, right?).

Any idea why it might be different between a Japanese-language wiki and a non-Japanese-language wiki? We often are more aggressive in matching between characters that are not native to a given language--for example, accents on Latin characters are generally ignored on English-language wikis. So it might make sense to merge hiragana and katakana on English-language wikis but not Japanese-language wikis.

Thanks very much for any suggestions or information! TJones (WMF) (talk) 14:04, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I have summoned WT:JP and WT:LANG here in case they may have feedback. --Izno (talk) 14:37, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I am not an expert on this subject, but there are differences in special cases. An example is the case of Naruto (鳴門). Naruto-shi (鳴門市) is a city in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan, and it's Hiragana form (なると) may mean a type of food which is known as Narutomaki (鳴門巻き). In Katakana, it more strictly refers to the anime Naruto (ナルト). A image or regular search will show the slight difference in meaning. Naruto なると (Image search) shows both the anime and the food Narutomaki (fish slice with spiral pattern), but mainly the food. Naruto ナルト (Image search) strictly shows the anime only. <IP_ADDRESS> (talk) 12:32, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the extra examples! It seems this is another example of the difficulty of balancing false positives and false negatives. There are specific cases in both directions. The best approach is probably to try it in the lab and see what happens. For non-Japanese wikis, it seems that the mapping may do more good than not, since there are many fewer articles overall to be affected. On the Japanese Village Pump, the response is more mixed about whether it's a good idea or not. TJones (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Category:Pages with script errors being flooded with errors
For the last few days Category:Pages with script errors has been populated by hundreds of entries that make no sense. They are all the same: redirects after a page move. They contain a few templates but none of the templates are generating errors, that I can see. Nor are there any recent changes to any of the templates, as that sometimes causes problems if templates are temporarily broken. But such problems, even if they affect hundreds of pages, are temporary, stop when the problem is fixed, and quickly go away.

This though is ongoing and if anything seems to be getting worse, as the rate they are being reported has suddenly accelerated. It now accounts for most of the pages in the category, and still seems to be growing. For the first time today there was an article that needed fixing, but it did not appear in the 'Article namespace' list, presumably as there were too many items for the query. I had to find it in the 'By date' list. -- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 13:42, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Whatever it was seems transitory because a null edit of a listed page removes the page from the category.
 * —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:51, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, they are normal in that way. The problem is they are being continually generated, for no apparent reason. Even if someone had the patience to null edit them all the category would refill quickly with more.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 13:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * If anybody wants to use the category with fewer false positives, there is a script that purges each page in a category, so less patience is required. I came across the script recently but can't remember where. For anyone who's interested it's installed at the end of User:RexxS/common.js lines 139 onwards, titled "Refresh Category". When installed it adds an extra tab/button called "refresh" to category pages, which processes the pages one every two seconds. Admins may be able to safely increase the rate. HTH --RexxS (talk) 17:45, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Purging isn’t enough. It helps when a page contains visible errors, due to e.g. a broken template which is now fixed. But these have no visible errors. The only thing that works is a null edit.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 17:52, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Not so. I ran the script on Category:Pages with script errors and it reduced the list from ~900 to ~400 entries. You really ought to try things before you leap to judgement. --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Ah, no I had not tried it, apart from manually purging a few and seeing no change. Thanks for doing that, I noticed they were disappearing alphabetically from the category, though it also highlights how rapidly they are being reported now: the category has been repopulated with another 30 or so since, in about an hour and a half.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 20:05, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that the "action: 'purge'" coupled with "forcelinkupdate: 1" is sufficient to give the same effect as a null edit, so the script does its work reasonably well. It does barf on some very large pages because of timeouts, so it's not perfect, but it does seem to be a help in keeping the category pruned. I can just set it off in a different tab and come back to it later. --RexxS (talk) 17:08, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's recently moved pages containing a redirect and R from move, e.g. [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Clazziquai&action=edit Talk:Clazziquai]. If it's previewed unchanged then the category isn't added but if it's previewed without the redirect then R from move generates both Category:Pages with script errors and Category:Unsynchronized talk page redirects. R from move causes the page to transclude itself and the associated non-talk page to test their code for redirects. This test can apparently produce a script error if no redirect is found. I guess there is a period during a move where the transclusions don't register the redirect created by the move. That would explain why the category is filling up but null edits solve it. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:59, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I should have noted it’s only recent moves, and so newly created redirects. I am still unclear why it’s happening though. The page move, the creation of the redirect(s), in my experience all happen at the same time. There’s virtually no time that they exist in a state which can generate errors. I don’t see how it can be through previewing as I can’t recall there being a preview option for page moves. The redirects are created automatically so with no editor intervention or preview. It’s also been happening at a low level for a while but has only become a problem in the last few days. It seems to have gone from a few a day to a few an hour/hundreds a day. But there’s no pattern to it, just normal page moves by editors.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 17:27, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The reason for this is that the move of the non-talk page gets executed first, and the contents of the new redirect at the non-talk-page title are parsed, detecting the desync. Then the talk-page move is executed, which fixes the desync, meaning a purge resolves the problem. Why R from move is causing script errors, though, I have no idea. P p p e<big style="position:relative;top:10px">r y 23:20, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Natib Qadish - deleted twice by AfD, recreated but I can't find its history
I'm probably missing something simple. I can see the history of the talk page. Shouldn't I be able to see earier versions here? I want to see if there have been substantial changes or if this is still the twice deleted article. Thanks Doug Weller  talk 16:48, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The history is at User:Bridgeplayer/Natib Qadish. ~ GB fan 16:50, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Can you do a history merge? I don't think I've ever had to do one. I see I nominated that draft for deletion. Some of the text is identical which is interesting as the editor who recreated it started editing in 2016 and the draft was deleted in 2013. Doug Weller  talk 17:56, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This could be a copyright violation. It seems to be identical to a document on scribd. And either the earlier version was also copyvio from that or vice versa. Doug Weller  talk 18:07, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * They are merged together, and all the history is available in the live article. ~ GB fan 18:20, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll look more at the copyvio issue tomorrow. Doug Weller  talk 18:24, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Mobile mode
As an iPad user, I just wanted to ask: is there a reason why the mobile version is the default version of Wikipedia for iPad users? Considering how large the iPad screen is, I personally don't see a reason (I'm not a fan of the mobile version, so maybe I'm a little biased) why mobile mode should be preferred to the desktop mode.--Nevé–selbert 15:16, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It is probably because they generally lack a keyboard and have a touch screen? Ruslik_ Zero 20:38, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Although once you've selected desktop view from the bottom of the page, you will continue to see desktop as you follow links. See also Enable mobile version. --RexxS (talk) 21:45, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Fixing abuse of list markup (talk page accessibility, etc.)
Our use of wikimarkup  "indentation" for the purposes of threaded discussions is a gross misuse of the underlying

 HTML markup, which is for (and only for) the definition or explanation of a term or other entry previously given with

 (  in wikimarkup). Worse yet, any time there's a blank line inserted, it breaks the surrounding

 list into a separate list after the line break.

The solution to this is technical and should have been proposed and implemented years ago: convert any  indent into a CSS-indented  when it is not immediately preceded by a   (or explicit

). Our talk pages should not be using

 structures at all, other than for creation of actual description lists we intentionally want to be formatted as such.

While we're at it, we should also do a similar conversion on any line starting with  (a  entry), and turn it into a boldfaced div, if it is not immediately followed by   producing a  entry.

Both of these should also suppress the parser's creation of surrounding

 markup, without any actual or  items to wrap.

These fixes would also clean up a lot of misused of description list (a.k.a. definition list, association list) markup in articles, where it's being abused for boldface and indentation of non-list material.

Similarly, a line starting with  in absence of any other contiguous line of the same sort should be converted on the fly into an indented line with a bullet, not a "list" with one item. In cases where it's actually desired to use a one-item real list (e.g. to match the formatting of longer lists in the same material), explicit

 and

 markup can be used.

I'm not sure I care whether it's fixed by the devs in the MediaWiki parser, or fixed on-site by JavaScript. The former would be better in the long run, since it would apply the fix to all installations, but the approaches aren't mutually exclusive; the latter could be used in the interim. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:13, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Javascript would not be a good solution for this for many reasons; it sounds indeed that you want to have the mediawiki parser changed, so should bring this up at www.mediawiki.org or on phab, since it would not be only for the English Wikipedia. — xaosflux  Talk 02:20, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * see requests such as T6521 that appear similar. — xaosflux  Talk 02:22, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Will look into that, and see if that's the right pressure point.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:02, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Is this not on WP:PEREN? It should be.... FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY  [u+1F602]  03:26, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * No, it shouldn't be, because it's not a subjective idea the community keeps rejecting, it's a technical glitch that needs to be fixed because it's causing problems.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  06:02, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * "The community/communities is/are right because they misuse wikitext"? I see. That's definitely a technical glitch. (<- yes, sarcasm). This comes up every once in a while. As I've argued before, the WMF has a replacement for the predominant use case where these elements are misused that the community has rejected. The community should lie in their mess that doesn't so-affect accessibility that Graham pitches a fit (and you know we all rely on Graham--he has previously said that he gets the gist of talk pages from context). For other uses, the correct solution, as with many other things, is to fix the wikitext. (We might reasonably create a lint error when e.g. ; is not followed by a : or another ; in a content space; I would certainly support such a solution.) -Izno (talk) 11:57, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Glad we agree on that much. I think you misunderstood my comment about PEREN, though; "the community is right because they misuse wikitext" is close to the opposite of what I'm saying. We need to either stop misusing wikitext for things it's not intended for (fat chance) or account for misuse in the software so that the output isn't garbage.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:37, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * We've mostly fixed this problem socially though, outside of talk space; our guidelines on accessibility already account for it, and when someone is found to be "screwing up" (who is not a newbie), we quickly set that person straight and subsequently clean up the errors we know about (just like with every other guideline or policy). --Izno (talk) 22:38, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I note that HTML5 defines the contents of as "Zero or more groups each consisting of one or more dt elements followed by one or more dd elements, optionally intermixed with script-supporting elements." So the suggestion here that every ';' must be immediately followed by a ':' and every ':' must be immediately preceded by a ';' is overly restrictive. Anomie⚔ 14:19, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, technically you can have two or more DTs followed by two or more DDs (e.g. British and American spellings of a term, with multiple definitions from different fields). What's required is that each group have both a DT and a DD.  So, what I've suggested works if you extrapolate a little: the parser shouldn't treat a ;-starting line as a DT unless followed by a DD or another DT, nor treat a :-line as a DD unless preceded by a DT or another DD.  We don't appear to have any use case for "optionally intermixed with script-supporting elements", and even if we did, there's no reason for markup so advanced it strains the limits of what MW can handle to be something that has to be supported in ;-and-: basic markup mode, rather that requiring dropping into full-on HTML mode with actual   markup.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere has link to expired domain
The "External tools: Show redirects only" link on Special:WhatLinksHere takes one to a url in the http://dispenser.homenet.org/ domain, which is a holding page for the namebright.com domain registration service. William Avery (talk) 22:34, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It works fine for me. Are you sure your computer hasn't picked up some malware somewhere that is making it redirect? ‑ Iridescent 22:37, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I guess you have en-gb British English as language at Special:Preferences. That's a frequent cause of confusion and problems. I recommend changing to the default en English. MediaWiki:Linkshere is shown for en and has changed the domain per Special:Diff/792761333.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Linkshere&diff=793308563&oldid=637473383] MediaWiki:Linkshere/en-gb and MediaWiki:Linkshere/en-ca (Canadian English) still link the broken domain. With en-gb you currently get this warning at Special:Preferences: 'Your language setting of "British English" means that you may miss some local customisations.' I wanted a stronger warning but there was disagreement (see page history [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Preferences-summary/en-gb&action=history]). PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes. This would seem to be my problem. Thank you. William Avery (talk) 23:57, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've synced those other messages to the main content. — xaosflux  Talk 00:09, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Edit window size, not "remembered"
Greetings, I am using Vector skin & recall that a few years back, when I enlarged the edit window (pull-down arrow box in lower right corner) it was "remembered" at least for each login session. Now the window remains small & I have to enlarge each time. Is there a way to make Edit window size "permanent"? Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 01:15, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Try this in :

textarea {height: 40em;}
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 09:38, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ - Thank you so much - That is a great solution & works perfectly, I could not have ever figured that out in a million years. Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 11:35, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

How to play audio links on ios?
I realize I'm a little late to this party, but I'm trying to understand how to play wikipedia's audio links on an iphone. I understand wikipedia's audio is in ogg vorbis format, and I've read that it uses javascript to present it(?). I've read the media help page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media_help), which suggests using the separate browser wikipanion (or the $4.99 wikilinks), but given the large market of ios devices, it seems strange that wikipedia has settled on a format that can't be used by so much of the real world. (I understand wikipedia's motivation of free and open source is the motivation). Is there really nothing that enables wikipedia's own ios browser or the mainstream browsers (safari, firefox, chrome, opera) to play them on ios?

P.S. The wikipedia page i'm using as a test is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton-Eyed_Joe ; interestingly, only the first of the two audio links works in wikipanion... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peterrislin (talk • contribs) 16:18, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

 * I've had some success playing audio and video files with the VLC media player for iOS. The JavaScript shim ogv.js is disabled on the mobile skin.
 * MP3 patents expired in April and I've been pushing for the last year for support (see T120288). In hopefully a few months, you'll have no trouble with audio playback on iOS.  For video, while MPEG-2 video patents expires in 2018, iOS doesn't support it.  — Dispenser 18:21, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Good news, support for MP3 playback on iOS devices (among others) is coming soon. Commons will share an MP3 version of a audio file for devices that don't support other formats. CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Article with 201 unverifiable references due to exceeding the 2 MB template include size
If you load Cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War (which is under community sanctions) you are immediately confronted huge and extremely detailed map, a Lua module found at Module:Syrian Civil War detailed map. Unless your experience is very different from mine, you will only see part of it. It's a thing of beauty which can be expanded to show extraordinary detail. Hold the mouse over a place to see its name pop up, and click a link for details. It is a magnificent achievement and is a great resource for those who want that detail. Warning though, it doesn't exactly load quickly.

Once you get the article fully loaded, if you look at the references section you find that there are 348 references, but Chrome's find function shows that 201 of them show no sources but only " Template:Cite web", " Template:Cite news" etc. The technical problem which causes the broken templates is that the 2 MB template include size is exceeded.

I've got several issues with this. The first of course is that all sources must be verifiable, and we have over 200 that can't even be identified in an article under sanctions.

I don't think that the map itself is appropriate for an encyclopedia and in practice can be almost unusable depending on your browser, number of tabs open, bandwidth, etc.

This makes the article almost not fit for purpose if anyone who has ordinary or low bandwidth, which probably includes most of the people who actually are physically in the area of the map.

Any suggestions as to how this can be fixed? Thanks. Doug Weller talk 07:51, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I've made a BOLD suggestion. power~enwiki ( π, ν ) 08:06, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I remember that article and previously commented about it on its talk page. There are so many templates that the expansion exceed the allowed server-side processing time limit...  The reflist would not show too, until replaced by a tag instead of the template.  — Paleo  Neonate  – 09:22, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. We'll see if having a link to the map template sticks. That's really the only choice I think given that the map gives an include size of 1900092/2097152 bytes leaving no room for most of the other templates. Now that's done, you can see the citations. Doug Weller  talk 09:28, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Other choices are harder to implement. The used module produces a huge number of consecutive entries similar to this:
 * The code could be shortened (I don't want to work on it). PrimeHunter (talk) 09:43, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * thanks for the current solution, — Paleo  Neonate  – 09:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * For people or configurations that prefer/need a less detailed map (smaller size) there is the overview map. You find it on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Syrian_Civil_War_overview_map.
 * For all the people for wich the high detailed level is a necessity, there is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Syrian_Civil_War_detailed_map
 * So just use the overview map instead if the detailed is to extended for you're preference or for this specific wikipage/articla.
 * The article is about cities and towns, so including the overview-map with only towns, cities and strategic places is more fit than including the detailed map in to this article.--Niele~enwiki (talk) 11:48, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Does this solve the loading problem? I've got very fast internet so I can't tell. Doug Weller  talk 12:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, it seems some people are confusing Wikipedia with an OpenStreetMap layer... Our technology is not optimized to scale for usecases like these. I suggest choosing a different approach. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It is, however, a pretty awesome map, and as maps are commonly found in encyclopedias, it is strange that we have so few customised clickable maps in Wikipedia. Can we improve our technology for cases like this? —Kusma (t·c) 12:54, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Possibly that a lazy ad-hoc effort would be a bot regularly updating/generating a screenshot of maps designed for it (or placed in a category for it), so the article could use the generated svg or png image instead... I'm not sure if a MediaWiki module doing the equivalent more transparently already exists (if so, enabling it on en-Wikipedia might be another challenge)... — Paleo  Neonate  – 13:05, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * ON THAT NOTE, let's advertise the better alternative. --Izno (talk) 13:19, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The detailed map is incredibly important as registers and sources all the developments of the biggest conflict of the 21-century.
 * It helps wikipedia's goal of providing free independent information and a lot of people around the world rely on it's level of detail to understand what is happening in Syria.
 * By reducing the fog of war, it also demotivates human right abuses and warcrimes in the conflict.
 * By splitting the detailed map (large data size, large detail) and the overview map (small data size, low detail) the problem addressed here was already solved. Both templates working fine with me and I'm using a normal computer. People that don't need the level of detail of the detailed map (619,677 + 160,437 bytes) can use the overview map that is only 160,437 bytes. --Niele~enwiki (talk) 21:01, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * By splitting the detailed map (large data size, large detail) and the overview map (small data size, low detail) the problem addressed here was already solved. Both templates working fine with me and I'm using a normal computer. People that don't need the level of detail of the detailed map (619,677 + 160,437 bytes) can use the overview map that is only 160,437 bytes. --Niele~enwiki (talk) 21:01, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

A related issue: Template:Middle East conflicts detailed map
Allow me to ping everyone who has commented in this section ( Doug Weller, power~enwiki, Paleo , PrimeHunter, Niele~enwiki, Th e DJ, Kusma, Izno) to raise a related issue in this sub-section. Please take a look at Template:Middle East conflicts detailed map. If you thought Template:Syrian Civil War detailed map was huge, well this one is even bigger! However, unlike the Syria map, this one is messed-up. It is so huge that for the last 9 months it was not even showing up. A desperate attempt to revive it about a month ago made it show up again. However, as you can see from looking at it, it does not render correctly. It is so huge that the dots end up being shifted. To see what I mean, look at how towns in north Turkey end up in the sea. Look at how towns in south Yemen end up in the sea. Look at how towns in north Syria end up in Turkey. Look at how towns in north Egypt end up in the sea, etc...Also, the map looks mangled and unprofessional (for example see the area of Syria and how the labels are a complete mess).

In addition to the technical issues, the map is flawed on a conceptual level. Why do we need a template for all of the middle-east? The conflicts are not geographically related except for Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. For this we already have Template:Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese insurgencies detailed map. The Yemen conflict is not geographically related to the other conflicts mentioned before, so there is no need to look at them at the same time. Also, the map contains contries like Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia… However, there are no civil wars or even insurgencies in these countries. This map is pushing the envelope too far. It is simply unrealistic to have a template for the whole of the middle-east.

If we can get a consensus that this map is a bad idea, then it would be good for someone to nominate the template (and the associated module) for deletion. Lets put this template out of its misery, especially that many people keep spending time and effort to keep it alive. Tradedia talk 16:19, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

 * It's unnecessary and as you say conceptually flawed. And technically as you say it's a mess. Doug Weller  talk 18:03, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. — Paleo  Neonate  – 20:14, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * To be very clear - I think these maps, and having maps are a GOOD THING - and we can do a lot of good my making great maps, however placing them directly in to articles in such as way that readers can't read the article is a disservice. — xaosflux  Talk 22:33, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Archive bot help
Having a little problem with the archive bot on my talk page... it isn't working. It has worked before but has not stopped. Would someone be able to drop in and help? As I have stated before archive functions really should be provided by this website instead of 5,000,000 pages requiring individual edits to establish automatic archiving. --Tom (LT) (talk) 08:27, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Fixed; the user talk page in the archiving code didn't match the page name, thanks to your username change. I've taken the liberty of updating your username in all the places it appeared in your user and talk page, as well as removing an out-dated template. Hope you don't mind. Graham 87 09:08, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, what a silly mistake. --Tom (LT) (talk) 10:16, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * It's a common problem. At User talk:Lowercase sigmabot III/Archive HowTo I made a suggestion to alert users about it. The bot operator User:Σ has low activity and hasn't replied. Should we just implement it and see what happens? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:30, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Duplicated deletion in page log
Hi all, out of curiosity how could this happen?

14:31, 27 September 2017 There'sNoTime (talk | contribs | block) deleted page Draft:Guillaume Sutre [...] 14:31, 27 September 2017 There'sNoTime (talk | contribs | block) deleted page Draft:Guillaume Sutre [...]

Doesn't seem to cause any problems, and I haven't seen it before - just seems rather odd -- There'sNoTime (to explain) 13:40, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

(change visibility) 2017-09-27T16:31:53 There'sNoTime (talk | contribs | block) deleted page Draft:Guillaume Sutre [...] (change visibility) 2017-09-27T16:31:28 There'sNoTime (talk | contribs | block) deleted page Draft:Guillaume Sutre [...] You removed page, then it was created again, and you removed it second time. Stryn (talk) 13:42, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

 * Ah, so someone saved an

source: wikimedia

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 159