Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
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"Remember me" not working as intended for me
[edit]Exactly as title. The checkbox states that it would last a year, yet sometimes I would find myself not logged in even though I am using the same device, same browser, etc. It is just a mild annoyance, but can someone give me pointers on how to fix this? Thanks in advance. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 01:26, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- Could happen if you log out on another device in the meantime. hgzh 10:51, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- But I am only using this one device logged in, and I'm quite sure my account wasn't hacked (hopefully(?)). —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 11:23, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- Anything that clears or blocks your local storage (cookies) can invalidate your saved logon. Some browser or browser extension updates can cause this. — xaosflux Talk 15:10, 8 August 2024 (UTC)
- FWIW I was logged out unexpectedly under similar circumstances on the day this was posted as well. I use Windows primarily with Chrome; if you also have a similar configuration, that *could* be an explanation. Graham87 (talk) 04:26, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well I am using windows and chrome, but this combination is probably so widespread that I would assume it is not where the problem is, or a lot more people would have reported this already. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Mint Keyphase: Do you use uBlock Origin like me? That's the only thing I think we could have in common. But even that would be a pretty common combination .... it could've just been bad luck. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't report being unexpectedly logged out, because it's a relatively minor inconvenience; I certainly didn't think to. Graham87 (talk) 12:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
- Nope —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:13, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
- Using Linux + Chrome: I was logged out today, after a Chrome s/w update. -- Verbarson talkedits 15:38, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
- Nope —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:13, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Mint Keyphase: Do you use uBlock Origin like me? That's the only thing I think we could have in common. But even that would be a pretty common combination .... it could've just been bad luck. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't report being unexpectedly logged out, because it's a relatively minor inconvenience; I certainly didn't think to. Graham87 (talk) 12:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well I am using windows and chrome, but this combination is probably so widespread that I would assume it is not where the problem is, or a lot more people would have reported this already. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 04:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
- FWIW I was logged out unexpectedly under similar circumstances on the day this was posted as well. I use Windows primarily with Chrome; if you also have a similar configuration, that *could* be an explanation. Graham87 (talk) 04:26, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
- How often does this happen? Every time you close the browser? Shut down the computer? Can you log in to other websites with the same browser and they persist just fine? Nardog (talk) 15:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well, other websites like Fandom don't seem to be affected. But a similar thing happens on Edge for the website of a tutoring service, which may or may not be related(?) —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 10:46, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
- And the first question? Nardog (talk) 23:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
- Kinda random, to be honest, at first it was like twice a week, now it is once every two weeks or so. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 02:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
- Does your device have any kind of storage problem; if there is cookies are likely to be auto-deleted. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 04:48, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think so. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 03:25, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- Does your device have any kind of storage problem; if there is cookies are likely to be auto-deleted. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 04:48, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
- Kinda random, to be honest, at first it was like twice a week, now it is once every two weeks or so. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 02:18, 16 August 2024 (UTC)
- And the first question? Nardog (talk) 23:36, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well, other websites like Fandom don't seem to be affected. But a similar thing happens on Edge for the website of a tutoring service, which may or may not be related(?) —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 10:46, 15 August 2024 (UTC)
- I’ve been noticing a similar thing. Most of the time I get auto logged back in the moment I hit log in, but sometimes I get fully logged out. I use WIN11+Brave and IOS+Safari. Lordseriouspig 04:32, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- If it's as infrequent as once every couple of weeks (and I'm guessing you use Wikipedia considerably more frequently than that), then I'm going with you either logged out on another device or you logged out from some other Wikimedia website. For most web services, your session is tied to your browser or browser instance, but on Wikimedia, when you logout from any Wikimedia session on any browser instance or any computer, you will be logged out on all instances. Fabrickator (talk) 04:52, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- The one where I only have to click login once happens daily. Lordseriouspig 05:03, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm having the same issue; Sometimes I am logged out and a message comes up saying "You're Centrally Logged In" and I'm logged in automatically; Sometimes I am logged out and logged back in when I press the log in button; Sometimes I have to re-enter my log in credentials again to log in. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 06:24, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- As I recall, I was seeing that business of being logged out and a message came up saying "You're Centrally logged in" and then I would be logged in automatically a few weeks ago, but not lately. Editing only from a chromebook. Donald Albury 15:43, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm having the same issue; Sometimes I am logged out and a message comes up saying "You're Centrally Logged In" and I'm logged in automatically; Sometimes I am logged out and logged back in when I press the log in button; Sometimes I have to re-enter my log in credentials again to log in. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 06:24, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- The one where I only have to click login once happens daily. Lordseriouspig 05:03, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
- Being logged out when you visit a new wiki but becoming logged in when you reload the page, or when you click login (but without actually having to submit a login form) is sort of normal on Safari and Brave, as these browsers limit cross-domain state transfer for privacy reasons. AIUI it shouldn't happen on Chrome though, at least not with default settings. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- I was opening pages on other language wikis around that time, but I don't remember if the message was tied to that. Definitely using Chrome browser on the chromebook. I do have Grammarly, Acrobat Extension, Malwarebytes, Wayback Machine, Who Wrote That and RSS Feed Reader loaded, all with access to the WP tabs. Donald Albury 01:50, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- But, it's not only happening while visiting a new wiki; it's happening on en-wiki recurrently. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 03:31, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- That sounds like maybe your browser has trouble saving cookies for enwiki (
en.wikipedia.org
and.wikipedia.org
)? You could try deleting the existing cookies and see if it helps. (In theory MediaWiki automatically deletes invalid cookies to prevent such issues, but maybe that doesn't work for some reason.) Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 21 August 2024 (UTC)- It happend on MediaWiki site also. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 01:17, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- That sounds like maybe your browser has trouble saving cookies for enwiki (
- If it's as infrequent as once every couple of weeks (and I'm guessing you use Wikipedia considerably more frequently than that), then I'm going with you either logged out on another device or you logged out from some other Wikimedia website. For most web services, your session is tied to your browser or browser instance, but on Wikimedia, when you logout from any Wikimedia session on any browser instance or any computer, you will be logged out on all instances. Fabrickator (talk) 04:52, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
As the issue does not seem easily reproducible, I left some questions at phab:T372702#10075955 - if you have been experiencing it and can answer some of them, that would be very helpful. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Tgr (WMF): I encountered the problem again on en-wiki a while ago; and used the DevTools to figure out what went wrong, and I got this message,
One or more websites are allowed to bypass user settings to set third-party cookies on this page. Microsoft Edge no longer supports third-party cookies and web developers should take steps to remove these sets without disrupting user experience.
Also this page on Google for Developers site says that Third-party cookies are being deprecated in chromium browsers. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 12:19, 23 August 2024 (UTC)- See T345249 about that. But third-party cookies are only involved in automatic login, not when you enter your username and password in a login form. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- I thought it was just a small problem on my end that wouldn't be too hard to fix, but seeing how this is going, I am fairly certain that this isn't the case... Guess I'll have to watch that upper right corner carefully before I edit. —Mint Keyphase (Did I mess up? What have I done?) 11:19, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- See T345249 about that. But third-party cookies are only involved in automatic login, not when you enter your username and password in a login form. Tgr (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Coming soon: A new sub-referencing feature – try it!
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Sub-referencing_reuse_visual.png/400px-Sub-referencing_reuse_visual.png)
This section is pinned and will not be automatically archived. |
Hello. For many years, community members have requested an easy way to re-use references with different details. Now, a MediaWiki solution is coming: The new sub-referencing feature will work for wikitext and Visual Editor and will enhance the existing reference system. You can continue to use different ways of referencing, but you will probably encounter sub-references in articles written by other users. More information on the project page.
We want your feedback to make sure this feature works well for you:
- Please try the current state of development on beta wiki and let us know what you think.
- Sign up here to get updates and/or invites to participate in user research activities.
We are aware that enwiki and other projects already use workarounds like {{sfn}} for referencing a source multiple times with different details. The new sub-referencing feature doesn’t change anything about existing approaches to referencing, so you can still use sfn. We have created sub-referencing, because existing workarounds don’t work well with Visual Editor and ReferencePreviews. We are looking forward to your feedback on how our solution compares to your existing methods of re-using references with different details.
Wikimedia Deutschland’s Technical Wishes team is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We will reach out to creators/maintainers of tools and templates related to references beforehand.
Please help us spread the message. --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 11:11, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- This is a very important task to work on, but I am not sure how this proposal is an improvement for those of us who do not use the VisualEditor.
- Compare:
<ref name="Samer M. Ali">Samer M. Ali, 'Medieval Court Poetry', in ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women'', ed. by Natana J. Delong-Bas, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), I 651-54.</ref> {{r|Samer M. Ali|p=653}}
- or:
<ref name="Samer M. Ali"/>{{rp|653}}
- with:
<ref name="Samer M. Ali">Samer M. Ali, 'Medieval Court Poetry', in ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women'', ed. by Natana J. Delong-Bas, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), I 651-54.</ref> <ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="Samer M. Ali, p. 653">p. 653</ref>
existing workarounds don’t work well with Visual Editor and ReferencePreviews
OK, then VE and ReferencePreviews need to be fixed so that they work well with the existing ways of referencing.- Adding another competing standard (obligatory XKCD) is not very useful unless you want to disallow the others which will probably make people very mad (see WP:CITEVAR) and is not necessarily an improvement.
- There is no reason why VE or RP would require a new standard, they could just as easily support one of the existing ones (and ideally all of em).
- Am I missing something?
- Polygnotus (talk) 15:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- Sfn is routinely out of sync with its parent and requires the use of third party scripts to detect that it is so. Extended references do not i.e. the Cite extension will issue a warning when you have an extension without a parent.
- And Rp is
objectivelysubjectively ugly. Presenting it as a potential option is offensive. :) - In
<ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="Samer M. Ali, p. 653">p. 653</ref>
, a name for the subreference is not required (<ref extends="Samer M. Ali">p. 653</ref>
will be typical I suppose), and even when it is you can abbreviate since you know what the parent is (e.g.<ref extends="Samer M. Ali" name="SMA653">p. 653</ref>
). - Some other benefits:
- Reference extensions work with reference previews to display the extension directly with the primary citation.
- The extensions are grouped with the primary citation in the reference lists.
- And the third, which you brushed aside: VE works well with reference extensions.
- None of which can be said of the other two items. Izno (talk) 16:01, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- And as for
OK, then VE and ReferencePreviews need to be fixed so that they work well with the existing ways of referencing.
, MediaWiki systems try to be agnostic about the specific things that wikis do around X or Y or Z. As a general design principle this helps to avoid maintaining systems that only some wikis use, and leaves the burden of localization and each wiki's design preferences to those wikis. Rp additionally has nothing to work with in regard to VE and ref previews. Izno (talk) 16:06, 19 August 2024 (UTC)- @Izno: Thank you. Gotta sell these things a bit, you know?
- Is this style of referencing intended to replace all others? If its better, then lets just abandon all other variants.
- The extends keyword is familiar to codemonkeys but perhaps not the most userfriendly for others. I am not sure why it would be harder to show an error when someone writes
<ref name="nonexistant" />{{rp|653}}
than when someone writes<ref extends="nonexistant">p. 653</ref>
but in theory this new system could auto-repair references (has that been considered?) Category:Pages_with_broken_reference_names contains 1300+ pages. - Also I am curious what your opinion Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2024_August_15#Template:R here would be. Polygnotus (talk) 16:17, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- I agree with Izno—I'd rather have a syntax that integrates with the
<ref>...</ref>
syntax, rather than relying on templates, which mixes in a different syntax, and are wiki-specific. isaacl (talk) 16:28, 19 August 2024 (UTC)- If you control the parser you can make any string do anything you want so the currently chosen syntax is, in itself, no advantage or disadvantage. Polygnotus (talk) 16:31, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- You provided the wikitext for two examples and asked if one seemed to be an improvement, so I responded that in my opinion, the syntax of the sub-referencing feature under development is conceptually more cohesive to an editor than one where wikitext surrounded in braces follows the
<ref ... />
code, or uses solely wikitext surrounded by braces. Sure, any strings can be turned into any other strings, but there are still advantages of some input strings over others. I also prefer the resulting output of the reference list. isaacl (talk) 16:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)- Agreed, but I assume that things are not set in stone yet. I don't mind the difference between [1]:635 and [1.1] or what exact wikicode is used. So I am trying to think about functionality (e.g. automatically repairing broken refs/automatically merging refs instead of how things get displayed/which wikicode is used). Polygnotus (talk) 16:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- I apologize as your first post seemed to be concerned about the wikitext markup being used by users of the wikitext editor. From a functionality perspective, I think as Izno alludes to, it will be easier to implement features such as detecting hanging references and merging them together with a syntax that is within the
<ref>
element, rather than relying on detecting templates and associating them with<ref>
elements. That would require the MediaWiki software to treat some wikitext in double braces specially. (It would be easier if the extended information were flagged using triple braces, since it would avoid clashing with the extensible template system, but I don't see any advantages to that over extending the<ref>
syntax.) isaacl (talk) 17:09, 19 August 2024 (UTC)- Please don't apologize to me (even if there would be a reason to do so, which there isn't), I am a very confused and confusing person and I understand myself roughly 4% of the time (and the world around me far less often than that). Polygnotus (talk) 17:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- I apologize as your first post seemed to be concerned about the wikitext markup being used by users of the wikitext editor. From a functionality perspective, I think as Izno alludes to, it will be easier to implement features such as detecting hanging references and merging them together with a syntax that is within the
- Agreed, but I assume that things are not set in stone yet. I don't mind the difference between [1]:635 and [1.1] or what exact wikicode is used. So I am trying to think about functionality (e.g. automatically repairing broken refs/automatically merging refs instead of how things get displayed/which wikicode is used). Polygnotus (talk) 16:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- You provided the wikitext for two examples and asked if one seemed to be an improvement, so I responded that in my opinion, the syntax of the sub-referencing feature under development is conceptually more cohesive to an editor than one where wikitext surrounded in braces follows the
- If you control the parser you can make any string do anything you want so the currently chosen syntax is, in itself, no advantage or disadvantage. Polygnotus (talk) 16:31, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- Good to see this moving forward. My main interest was how it would look on the hover, rather than in the References section. I thought the ref extends might 'fill in' variable fields into the general ref, but it seems instead that it just created a new line below. How flexible is this below line, will it display any wikitext? Could we for example add chapters and quotes? (Which will need manual formatting I assume.) CMD (talk) 16:53, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- URI fragment support might also be useful. One sub-reference could link to, for example, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mexico/#government and another to https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/mexico/#economy Polygnotus (talk) 16:56, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- As noted here meta:Talk:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing#Unintended_consequences .. unleashing this complexity into the mainstream without guidance is a huge mistake that is going to cause years of cleanup work, if ever. There are two main issues I can think of:
- What parameters should be sub-referenced? It should be limited to page numbers, and quotes. Not, for example, multiple works, authors, volumes, issues, IDs, dates of publication, ISBN numbers, etc..
- How is data in a sub-ref added? If it's free-form text, it's a step backwards from CS1|2's uniform
|page=42
to a free-form text like "Page 42" or "(p) 42" or whatever free-form text people choose. Bots and tools need to be able to parse the page number(s). Free form text is not semantic. Templated text is semantic. Anything that moves from semantic to non-semnatic is bad design.
- Before this is set loose, there must be consensus about how it should be used. It opens an entirely new dimension to citations that is going to impact every user, citation template, bot, bot library (PyWikiBot etc), tool, etc.. -- GreenC 17:00, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah its also a bit weird to ask for feedback and then already have a proof of concept and say
is planning to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year
. You must ask for feedback before code is written and before any timeline exists. Polygnotus (talk) 17:05, 19 August 2024 (UTC)- At a minimum, it should not be added until there are clear guidelines for usage. More specifically, it should have a feature that issues a red error message if the sub-ref does not contain a special template for displaying page numbers and/or quotes ie. anything else in the sub-ref is disallowed. Then new parameters can be added once consensus is determined. We should have the ability to opt-in parameters, instead of retroactively playing cleanup removing disallowed parameters. -- GreenC 17:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- @GreenC: So then you would get something like this, right?
<ref extends="Samer M. Ali" page="" chapter="" quote="" anchor=""> <ref extends="Samer M. Ali">{{subref|page=""|chapter=""|quote=""|anchor=""}}</ref>
- And then a form in VE where people can fill it in.
- Polygnotus (talk) 17:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- The former was deliberately not chosen during design work as being too inflexible for all the things one might want to make an extending reference. Izno (talk) 19:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- "All the things", which below you said was only page numbers, chapters and quotes. What else do you have in mind? -- GreenC 20:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- There have been previous requests for support in CS1 for subsections of chapters of works. But that's beside the point: we don't need to lock this down out of some misbegotten idea of chaos. YAGNI. Izno (talk) 20:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- It will be chaos as currently proposed, though I never said "lock this down". Johannes asked for feedback. The two main issues I raised, Johannes already said, these are known issues. He said, make a guideline. So I suggested at a minimum, let's make a guideline. You and Johannes don't seem to be on the same page about that. You hinted that were part of the development team, is that correct? -- GreenC 23:09, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- No, I am a volunteer interested in this work since when it was first discussed at WMDE Tech Wishes and/or the community wishlist and have been following it accordingly, working on a decade ago now.
- Guidelines are descriptive also. "We usually use it for this, but there may be exceptions." is reasonable guideline text. "You are required to use it only for this." is another reason it's not going to fly. Izno (talk) 16:06, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- It will be chaos as currently proposed, though I never said "lock this down". Johannes asked for feedback. The two main issues I raised, Johannes already said, these are known issues. He said, make a guideline. So I suggested at a minimum, let's make a guideline. You and Johannes don't seem to be on the same page about that. You hinted that were part of the development team, is that correct? -- GreenC 23:09, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- There have been previous requests for support in CS1 for subsections of chapters of works. But that's beside the point: we don't need to lock this down out of some misbegotten idea of chaos. YAGNI. Izno (talk) 20:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- That's a shame, the former was precisely what I imagined and was excited for when I first read about the idea. CMD (talk) 02:36, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- "All the things", which below you said was only page numbers, chapters and quotes. What else do you have in mind? -- GreenC 20:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- The former was deliberately not chosen during design work as being too inflexible for all the things one might want to make an extending reference. Izno (talk) 19:33, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- @GreenC We don't do that with regular references. There's nothing in the software that produces a red error message if I do
<ref>My cousin's roommate's friend told me</ref>
, so why should subrefs be enforcing that? --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Polygnotus: This has been being discussed for many years now. m:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing was created in 2018, and even then the idea had already been being discussed for a while. phab:T15127 was created in 2008. It's not odd that they're finally at the stage of having an implementation (or if it is, it's that it took so long to get here). Anomie⚔ 21:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Anomie: Ah, thank you, I didn't know this was a "plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit"-type situation.
Polygnotus (talk) 22:19, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- You should probably assume that's the situation for any MediaWiki change. A few years back, some user script authors were mad because a code change had been throwing error messages at them for "only" seven years(!), which was obviously too short a time frame for them to notice that anything needed to be adjusted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Anomie: Ah, thank you, I didn't know this was a "plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit"-type situation.
- At a minimum, it should not be added until there are clear guidelines for usage. More specifically, it should have a feature that issues a red error message if the sub-ref does not contain a special template for displaying page numbers and/or quotes ie. anything else in the sub-ref is disallowed. Then new parameters can be added once consensus is determined. We should have the ability to opt-in parameters, instead of retroactively playing cleanup removing disallowed parameters. -- GreenC 17:18, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- I actually totally disagree and think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. My anticipation is that most people will use it for the obvious (page numbers). In some cases they may use chapters (a single long text with a single author or even for anthologies). Rarely do I anticipate them using anything else, but I think they should have the luxury of putting whatever they want in the reference.
- As regards mandating some use like templates, that's not how it works, though I can imagine some sort of {{Cs1 subref}}... which is probably basically {{harvnb}} and some others.
- One thing however that is sure not to occur is to have subreferences of subreferences. This should prevent the vast majority of pathological cases. Izno (talk) 19:32, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- You think it's a mountain to have a guideline for usage before it's turned on? -- GreenC 20:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- Uh, yeah. People have successfully used our current mechanisms for extending a parent reference in many many ways which notably don't fit what you want. Izno (talk) 20:44, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- /me looks back 20+ years… sure is a good thing we wrote all those guidelines before making a wiki that was to become the most popular encyclopedia……. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- No one's stopping you from writing some guidelines. There might not even be any opposition if you put sensible things in it. But as Izno says, the guidelines would be advisory rather than prescriptive. – SD0001 (talk) 14:03, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- See WP:PROPOSAL if you really want to bother with this. I personally wouldn't recommend it, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- When a document has a nested structure, e.g., chapters within sections, it is natural for an editor to want citations that match that structure. I would expect nested citations to include arbitrary combinations of author, editor, page, quote, title and URL, depending on the type of document. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 22:15, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- You think it's a mountain to have a guideline for usage before it's turned on? -- GreenC 20:37, 19 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah its also a bit weird to ask for feedback and then already have a proof of concept and say
Does "will work for wikitext and Visual Editor
" cover the list-defined references examples on the demo page? I'm testing right now and the Visual Editor still seems to have the same problems with list-defined references that have existed for some time.[1] Will this update fix any of those issues? Rjjiii (talk) 02:28, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your feedback, questions and interest in sub-referencing! Given the large number of comments, I’ll try to provide answers to all of them at once:
- replacing other referencing styles: We don’t intend to replace other citation styles. We are fulfilling an old community wish, creating a MediaWiki solution for citing a source multiple times with different details. Citation styles are a community matter and per WP:CITEVAR you can continue to use your preferred way of referencing. If the community wants certain referencing templates to be replaced by sub-referencing, they are of course free to do so, but that’s up to you.
- reference pop-up:
- Reference Previews are going to display both main- and sub-reference in one reference pop-up, showing the sub-reference’s details below the main information (example). There are still a couple of details going to be fixed in the next couple of months.
- ReferenceTooltips (the gadget enabled by default at enwiki) will need an update. It currently only displays the sub-reference’s information (example), similar to the behavior with sfn (example). But different to sfn (example) it currently doesn’t show a pop-up on top of the first pop-up for the main information. Given that gadgets are community-owned, we won’t interfere with that, but we’ll try to assist communities in updating the gadget.
- Yes it will be possible to display any wikitext in sub-references, just like it is possible to do so using normal references (without any templates). We’ve intentionally allowed this, because local communities prefer different citation styles (and even within communities users have different preferences), therefore our solution shouldn’t limit any of those. Citing sources with different book pages will probably be the main reason to use sub-referencing, but it’s also possible to use it for chapters, quotes or other details.
- You’ll need to do the formatting (e.g. writing details in italic) yourself, except if the community creates a template for sub-references
- URI fragments: Those can be used for sub-references as well (example)
- List-defined references in VE: We are aware of the issues mentioned in phab:T356471, many of those also affect sub-references. As we are still defining some VE workflows (currently we’ve mostly worked on the citation dialog) we haven’t found a solution yet, but we might be able to resolve at least some of those issues while continuing our work on sub-referencing in Visual Editor.
- What parameters should be sub–referenced?
- As already mentioned on meta this should be up to local communities, given the many different referencing styles. It should also be up to them to decide if they want to use templates for sub-referencing or not. We’ve reached out to communities much in advance, so you should have enough time working out some guidelines if your community wants that.
- But as Ahecht said: Users can already use references for all kinds of unintended stuff, sub-referencing is not different to that. It’s necessary to technically allow all kinds of details in sub-references, due to the many different citation styles within one community and across different communities.
- From our user research we expect most people using sub-referencing for book pages. There will be a tracking category (example) which could be used to check if there is unintended usage of sub-referencing
- Nested citations: Should be possible with sub-referencing (example), if you’re talking about WP:NFN?. Feel free to test other referencing styles on betawiki and give feedback if anything doesn't work which should be working.
- VE and RefPreviews should be fixed to work with all existing referencing styles: Just like Izno said it’s unlikely to achieve that, because local communities are using many different types of referencing and could come up with new local referencing templates every day. That’s why we’ve chosen to add a new attribute to the existing and globally available MediaWiki cite extension.
- Adding another referencing style isn’t really useful: We are fulfilling a wish which is more than 15 years old and has been requested many times in the past years. Existing template-based solutions for citing references with different details only work on those wikis who maintain such local templates – and most of those have issues with Visual Editor. That’s why a global MediaWiki solution was necessary. You can always continue to use your preferred citation style per WP:CITEVAR.
- Doesn’t look like an improvement for Wikitext: If you compare it with template-based solutions like {{rp}} you are correct that those allow for simpler wikitext. But if you’re editing in multiple Wikimedia projects, your preferred template from one project might not exist on the other one. That’s why a MediaWiki solution will be beneficial to all users. And most current template-based solutions have the already mentioned disadvantages for Visual Editor users. Also readers will benefit from a more organized reference list by having all sub-references grouped below the main reference.
- The attribute “extends” doesn’t seem user friendly for non-technical users: We’ve done several consultations with the global community and a lot of user testing in past years where we asked for feedback and ideas on the attribute name. One takeaway is that the name is less important for many users than we initially thought, as long as they can remember it. And our user tests showed a surprisingly large number of Wikitext users switching to VE in order to use the citation dialog (for referencing in general, not just for sub-referencing) – if you do that, you don’t need to deal with the attribute name at all. We didn’t see any major issues with “extends” for people exclusively using Wikitext in our user tests. But so far there is no final decision on the attribute name, so if you have any ideas let us know (we’ll make a final decision soon).
- You should have asked for feedback earlier: We’ve been working on this feature (on and off) for almost 8 years and had a lot of community consultations (e.g. at Wikimania, WikiCite, discussions on metawiki where we invited communities via Mass Message) and many rounds of user testings – always with the involvement of enwiki users. And we are doing this big announcement now in order to make sure that really everyone knows in advance and can provide further feedback while we are finalizing our feature.
Thanks for all of your feedback, it's well appreciated! --Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 16:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- Perhaps it would be wise, in future, to make a list of predictable reactions/questions and incorporate the responses to those in the announcement. Highlighting the advantages of a change/addition, USPs if any, why decisions were made and perhaps even a short timeline can make the reception much warmer. Some people here (e.g. Polygnotus) don't know the 15 years worth of background information. The good news is that I think that it is an improvement (although it could be a bigger improvement). I assume others have also mentioned things like ensuring refs don't break and automatically merging refs (but I do not want to dig through 15 years of history to figure out why it wasn't implemented) and this is/was an opportunity to make something superior to the existing methods that could replace them. The OrphanReferenceFixer of AnomieBOT will need to be updated. Polygnotus (talk) 17:04, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- It's always difficult to write such announcements in a way that they answer the most important questions while also being short an concise so that people actually read the them ;) Some of the questions raised in this section have already been answered in meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#FAQ and we'll continue to add more frequently asked questions there, if we notice (e.g. in this village pump discussion) that certain questions come up again and again. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 17:16, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed, it is super difficult to strike the right balance. And even if you do, some will still be grumpy. But its also very important. Polygnotus (talk) 17:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- If the announcement is too long, then nobody reads it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, the {{collapse}} is super useful. Polygnotus (talk) 01:35, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- If the announcement is too long, then nobody reads it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Agreed, it is super difficult to strike the right balance. And even if you do, some will still be grumpy. But its also very important. Polygnotus (talk) 17:20, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- It's always difficult to write such announcements in a way that they answer the most important questions while also being short an concise so that people actually read the them ;) Some of the questions raised in this section have already been answered in meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#FAQ and we'll continue to add more frequently asked questions there, if we notice (e.g. in this village pump discussion) that certain questions come up again and again. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 17:16, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks for the detailed response and the included screenshots. I was a bit glum following my comment above but I think I have a better grasp of the underlying concept now. If we are able to use citation templates in the sub-reference field, that may provide a way to fix at least some of the potential issues raised above. Is there a place to track changes to the reference pop-up (File:Sub-referencing refpreview.png)? My first impression is that's perhaps not a necessary large white space but I'm curious to read more discussion on the matter. CMD (talk) 17:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
- @CMD depends on what you mean by "place to track changes"? There are several phabricator tags which might serve this purpose (although we've collected a lot of user feedback which is still under discussion and therefore not filed as a task yet). We want to use meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Recent changes and next steps to document important changes on the current prototype and can certainly document further changes to Reference Previews for sub-referencing in this section as well, if that's what you imagined? Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, reference previews are one of the great benefits of the Wikipedia reference system. I'll follow on meta. CMD (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- @CMD depends on what you mean by "place to track changes"? There are several phabricator tags which might serve this purpose (although we've collected a lot of user feedback which is still under discussion and therefore not filed as a task yet). We want to use meta:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Recent changes and next steps to document important changes on the current prototype and can certainly document further changes to Reference Previews for sub-referencing in this section as well, if that's what you imagined? Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:43, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the lengthy reply! Can a template tell if it's being used in an extended reference?
If there is any probability of this all working in the Visual Editor, we should also aim to make templates that work in the Visual Editor. That would mean a template that slots inside of an extended reference, rather than a template that invokes one (the way that {{r}} or {{sfn}} work). There is already some discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1 about building a template for consistency between the main named reference and the extended sub-references. I considered making a proof of concept template that would only handle pages, quotations, and so on, but folks have already mentioned citing named sections in a larger work and other broader ideas.
For a template to plug into this, I've checked the parameters currently available in major templates that cite locations within a longer work. If I've missed anything feel free to update this table:
Element | {{Cite book}} | {{rp}} | {{Sfn}} | other CS1 |
---|---|---|---|---|
Page |
|
|
|
|
Quote |
|
|
(within loc) | |
No pp |
|
|
(not available) | |
|
|
Also, regarding formatting, CS1 and sfn are based (to an extent) on APA and Harvard citation styles.
Also(B), regarding LDR, one of the issues with list-defined references in the Visual Editor is that removing all usage of a reference from an article's body text makes the reference become invisible in the VE and emits this error message on the rendered page, "Cite error: A list-defined reference named "Bloggs-1974" is not used in the content (see the help page)." To have an un-called reference isn't exactly an error, though. Editors move citations from the bibliography and standard references down to other sections (Further reading, External links, and so on); some articles still have general references at the bottom. Is there a way to push un-called references down to the bottom of the list and treat them as a maintenance issue rather than an outright error, like the below example with citations borrowed from Template:Cite book/doc(11-02-2024)
References
- ^ Mysterious Book. 1901.
- ^ Bloggs, Joe (1974). Book of Bloggs.
- * Bloggs, Joe; Bloggs, Fred (1974). Book of Bloggs.
- * Notes with an asterisk (*) are not cited inline.
Also(C), regarding guidelines and guidance, we could create Help:Sub-referencing before the feature goes live, Rjjiii (talk) 02:53, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
Can a template tell if it's being used in an extended reference?
No, not currently. Lua experts feel free to correct me if I am wrong. Polygnotus (talk) 02:57, 21 August 2024 (UTC)push un-called references down to the bottom of the list and treat them as a maintenance issue
it isn't even a maintenance issue; it is useful if people name refs so that those names can be used later to refer to those refs. But if no one refers to em that is fine. Polygnotus (talk) 03:01, 21 August 2024 (UTC)- I have adjusted the table;
|postscript=
is for terminal punctuation only, not for in-text locations. As for LDRs that are named but not cited, those are most definitely errors. They are generated by the MediaWiki software, hence the name of the help page (Help:Cite errors/Cite error references missing key) and the use of the word "error" on the Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting page, and the name of the MediaWiki page that holds the error message, MediaWiki:Cite error references missing key. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:08, 21 August 2024 (UTC)- @Jonesey95: But why would it be considered an error if a ref has a name but nothing that refers to it? Polygnotus (talk) 08:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- Indeed to best of our knowledge templates currently cannot tell if they are being used in a sub-reference. But it should be possible to make such changes. As templates are community-owned, we cannot do that ourselves, but we'll try to assist communities (e.g. by providing documentation or some examples) with the necessary changes to citation tools and templates. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:47, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, additional parameters might be needed on
<ref>...</ref>
and on citation templates to designate main and sub-references. - LDRs that are named but not cited are most definitley treated as errors; that doesn't mean that they should be treated as errors. There are other markup languages where uncited references are treated as legitimate. Admiitedly {{Refideas}} is a workaround, but it would be nice if {{Reflist}} could include incited references and if the LDRs were listed first. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Jonesey95: But why would it be considered an error if a ref has a name but nothing that refers to it? Polygnotus (talk) 08:56, 21 August 2024 (UTC)
- I have adjusted the table;
AFD Stats down
[edit]Any chance getting AFD Stats back up? Below is the message that comes up. — Maile (talk) 11:12, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
Traceback (most recent call last): File "/data/project/afdstats/pyvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pymysql/connections.py", line 644, in connect sock = socket.create_connection( File "/usr/lib/python3.9/socket.py", line 822, in create_connection for res in getaddrinfo(host, port, 0, SOCK_STREAM): File "/usr/lib/python3.9/socket.py", line 953, in getaddrinfo for res in _socket.getaddrinfo(host, port, family, type, proto, flags): socket.gaierror: [Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/data/project/afdstats/public_html/afdstats.py", line 112, in main db = pymysql.connect( File "/data/project/afdstats/pyvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pymysql/connections.py", line 358, in __init__ self.connect() File "/data/project/afdstats/pyvenv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pymysql/connections.py", line 711, in connect raise exc pymysql.err.OperationalError: (2003, "Can't connect to MySQL server on 'enwiki.web.db.svc.wikimedia.cloud' ([Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution)") None Fatal error.
- I asked over at User_talk:0xDeadbeef#AfD_stats but I have no idea if that is the correct place to ask. Polygnotus (talk) 11:15, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Polygnotus if you are referring to afdstats, this is an external tool; the maintainers are listed at that bottom of that page, with links to where bugs can be reported. Those are the only people that can help with this. — xaosflux Talk 12:42, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: I have no experience with this kinda stuff but I figured that since Enterprisey and Σ are inactive, and Enterprisey listed 0xDeadbeef on their talkpage as a maintainer of apersonbot, which also runs on Toolforge, that 0xDeadbeef may have the required access to fix the tool as well. Can you explain a bit more? It would be bad if each tool had a bus factor of 1. Enterprisey's talkpage contains
Time to finally touch some grass. May be back someday. You can consider my projects "unmaintained"; I would be happy to help anyone looking to take on maintenance of any of them. In particular, Legoktm and 0xDeadbeef are the two other maintainers of apersonbot on Toolforge and should thus be your first point of contact for any of those projects.
People seem to inherit or adopt Toolforge tools from others when someone becomes inactive. Polygnotus (talk) 12:52, 23 August 2024 (UTC)- @Polygnotus "AFD stats" isn't part of the English Wikipedia; so our volunteers can't do anything about it. Most anyone can run tools on toolforge, each tool is managed only by the specific owners of that tool. If all the owners of a tool quit, there is a process where the toolforge admins can let someone else become the maintainer. "apersonbot" and "AFD stats" have nothing to do with eachother. "AFD stats" has a maintainer, Σ who is still around - so their talk page is where to bring up problems with their tool. Note, they have a notice on their talk page that if you want them to look at something, you should also email them. — xaosflux Talk 13:03, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you! I wasn't sure if the accounts were tied to a person (or persons) or to a specific tool. I will send Σ an email. Polygnotus (talk) 13:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- It looks like it has several maintainers; pinging Ahecht, Legoktm. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:35, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Would be nice if the maintainers would maintain a consistent list of maintainers! — xaosflux Talk 18:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- You'd have to talk to one of these folks about updating the source code to list the current maintainers. I have server access but not source access.--Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:58, 23 August 2024 (UTC)- @Ahecht: sorry, that was an oversight. I've added you to the GitLab repository as an owner. Let me know if there's any other access you're missing. Legoktm (talk) 06:50, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- You'd have to talk to one of these folks about updating the source code to list the current maintainers. I have server access but not source access.--Ahecht (TALK
- Would be nice if the maintainers would maintain a consistent list of maintainers! — xaosflux Talk 18:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- It looks like it has several maintainers; pinging Ahecht, Legoktm. — Qwerfjkltalk 15:35, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you! I wasn't sure if the accounts were tied to a person (or persons) or to a specific tool. I will send Σ an email. Polygnotus (talk) 13:06, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Polygnotus "AFD stats" isn't part of the English Wikipedia; so our volunteers can't do anything about it. Most anyone can run tools on toolforge, each tool is managed only by the specific owners of that tool. If all the owners of a tool quit, there is a process where the toolforge admins can let someone else become the maintainer. "apersonbot" and "AFD stats" have nothing to do with eachother. "AFD stats" has a maintainer, Σ who is still around - so their talk page is where to bring up problems with their tool. Note, they have a notice on their talk page that if you want them to look at something, you should also email them. — xaosflux Talk 13:03, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: I have no experience with this kinda stuff but I figured that since Enterprisey and Σ are inactive, and Enterprisey listed 0xDeadbeef on their talkpage as a maintainer of apersonbot, which also runs on Toolforge, that 0xDeadbeef may have the required access to fix the tool as well. Can you explain a bit more? It would be bad if each tool had a bus factor of 1. Enterprisey's talkpage contains
- @Maile66 et al: I have no idea what the problem was, but restarting the webservice seems to have fixed it. Feel free to ping me if you're seeing other errors. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:54, 23 August 2024 (UTC)- @Ahecht, Thanks. — Maile (talk) 21:04, 23 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks, I've added (in theory) automatic restarts if it gets stuck in the future so this hopefully doesn't happen again. Legoktm (talk) 07:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Legoktm Not sure it would help in this case, as the webserver was serving pages correctly but afdstats.py couldn't communicate with the SQL server, but still a good idea. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 13:32, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Legoktm Not sure it would help in this case, as the webserver was serving pages correctly but afdstats.py couldn't communicate with the SQL server, but still a good idea. --Ahecht (TALK
How can I convert Google Books urls to neutral format?
[edit]Object: For a citation, I want to include the url for the Google Books page. (It's in Preview mode.)
Problem: I live outside the U.S., so the url I get here is country-specific. Furthermore, the url I get includes irrelevant data, like the search term I used to find it in the first place.
Question: How do I convert the url to the country-neutral, approved short form?
And a suggestion: It would be helpful if this knowhow were included in WP:Help? Ttocserp 10:32, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ttocserp, can you link using the ISBN (e.g. https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0863163165)? — Qwerfjkltalk 10:41, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you, although that will give me the book, but not the page. Also, it won't work for older books since there was no ISBN then, Ttocserp 11:44, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yeah someone should file a WP:BOTREQ to remove unnecessary parameters and use the correct language version of Google Books. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:LinkSearch?target=books.google.de for example. If possible it would be even better to convert them all to {{cite book}} or {{Google Books URL}}. We already have a bot removing tracking parameters from URLs (although I can't remember the name) so it might be a good feature request for them. Polygnotus (talk) 11:47, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- User:Citation bot normalizes Google Book URLs. Polygnotus (talk) 12:34, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you; problem solved. Ttocserp 12:46, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Well, not yet. @Ttocserp: nothing on this planet is easy. There are currently 198 articles with one or more links to the German version of Google Books. And there are many languages other than German and English. Working on it. Polygnotus (talk) 12:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you; problem solved. Ttocserp 12:46, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you, although that will give me the book, but not the page. Also, it won't work for older books since there was no ISBN then, Ttocserp 11:44, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
So, this simple request led to a lot of todoes:
- MediaWiki doesn't appear to have a way to filter Special:LinkSearch by namespace. many Phabricator tickets, T37758 dates back to 2012... But the functionality already exists in NewPagesPager.php so it shouldn't be too hard to make something similar.
- I couldn't find a userscript that allows the user to filter Special:LinkSearch by namespace. User:Polygnotus/namespace.js does it, exceptionally poorly (it does not make API requests it just filters whatever is displayed on the page).
- If there are no other scripts that do this task better then something like this should be improved and added to the list.
- Help:Linksearch#Toolforge claims there is a toolforge tool that can filter external links by namespace but it is dead. Can it be resurrected? Can it also be used for the other Special: pages?
In progress I asked over at User_talk:Giftpflanze#toolforge:Linksearch
- Have to check if there are more Special: pages that also don't have filter capabilities but should have.
- AWB also appears to be unable to use External link search as a list generator. Should that be added as a feature request?
In progress T373261
- According to this there are 187 language versions of Google. Someone should probably scan the latest dump to see which appear in it.
- We need either a feature request for User:Citation bot or a WP:BOTREQ for whoever wants to deal with this.
In progress I asked over at User_talk:Citation_bot#Feature_request:_Google_Books
To get an idea of the scale of the problem, here we got: de, nl, es, fr. 620 combined articles that contain one or more of these links. Polygnotus (talk) 13:16, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- You might find this and variant searches useful:
insource:"books.google" insource:/\/\/books\.google\.(de|fr|es|nl|pt|it)/
. That search finds about 1480 articles. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Trappist the monk: Thank you! I do not understand why Special:LinkSearch returns a different number than the same languages in that regex via the searchbox. Polygnotus (talk) 14:12, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- The search looks for that pattern in the wikitext of pages. Linksearch looks for links in its rendered output. Consider templates like {{geoSource}}, which can produce links to google books from wikitext like {{geoSource|DE|AHL|42}}. (Or even the Template:GeoSource page itself, which has many links to google books despite that url not appearing in its wikitext at all, through its transclusion of Template:GeoSource/doc.) —Cryptic 14:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, that was a stupid question. Thanks! Polygnotus (talk) 15:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Since a bot can only edit URLs that literally exist in the wikitext, insource is more accurate for that purpose. Unless the bot is programmed for those special templates, which most are not since there are thousands, each with their own syntax that can change on a whim. -- GreenC 13:14, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ok, that was a stupid question. Thanks! Polygnotus (talk) 15:30, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- And because it is only looking for six of the who-knows-how-many languages google books supports. And because the search is constrained to mainspace.
- —Trappist the monk (talk) 15:35, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- I managed to avoid those pitfalls ;-) Polygnotus (talk) 16:06, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- The search looks for that pattern in the wikitext of pages. Linksearch looks for links in its rendered output. Consider templates like {{geoSource}}, which can produce links to google books from wikitext like {{geoSource|DE|AHL|42}}. (Or even the Template:GeoSource page itself, which has many links to google books despite that url not appearing in its wikitext at all, through its transclusion of Template:GeoSource/doc.) —Cryptic 14:54, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Trappist the monk: Thank you! I do not understand why Special:LinkSearch returns a different number than the same languages in that regex via the searchbox. Polygnotus (talk) 14:12, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Probably the best task to look at is phab:T12593, which is specifically about Special:LinkSearch. It's not as simple as you seem to think, the SQL query would be too inefficient. NewPagesPager and some others have different enough table structure that efficient queries can be written. Anomie⚔ 16:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)
- Very interesting, thank you! I will have to do a bit more research. Polygnotus (talk) 09:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Polygnotus, you can use the API for this, e.g.:See User:Qwerfjkl/sandbox/Language-specific Google Books links. — Qwerfjkltalk 09:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
async function fetchGoogleBooksLinks(languageTLD) { const api = new mw.Api(); let params = { action: 'query', format: 'json', list: 'exturlusage', euquery: `books.google.${languageTLD}`, eunamespace: 0, eulimit: 'max' }; let titles = []; let continueToken; do { if (continueToken) { params eucontinue = continueToken; } console.log(`Fetching for ${languageTLD}`) const data = await api.get(params); const exturls = data.query.exturlusage; exturls.forEach((exturl) => { titles.push(exturl.title); }); continueToken = data continue ? data.continue.eucontinue : null; } while (continueToken); return titles; } async function fetchAllGoogleBooksLinks() { const tlds = ['de', 'fr', 'es', 'nl', 'pt', 'it']; let allTitles = []; for (const tld of tlds) { const titles = await fetchGoogleBooksLinks(tld); allTitles = allTitles.concat(titles); } console.log("* [["+allTitles.join("]]\n* [[")+"]]") } fetchAllGoogleBooksLinks();
- Thank you! I know this cool little trick where I can take any piece of code and double it in size... by converting it to Java. Let me tell you, bigger is not always better. Polygnotus (talk) 12:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Polygnotus, you can use the API for this, e.g.:
- Very interesting, thank you! I will have to do a bit more research. Polygnotus (talk) 09:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- In case it helps, I keep statistics, Enwiki has 2,122,411 Google Books links as of last month. If all you found was about 1,500 malformed links, about 0.0007 percent, is pretty good. We do have a much bigger problem with the corpus of GB links, which BTW is one of the largest corpuses<sp?> comparable to nytimes.com and web.archive.org .. the problem is that many of them have stopped working, directly (hard-404), or indirectly (soft-404 and crunchy-404 - see WP:LINKROT#Glossary). It could be 10% or more (200,000+). Nobody is really maintaining the 2 million corpus other than the URL normalization work of Citation bot. IABot typically skips them since archives usually don't work. Dead-ish GB links sit there, unresolved, often providing nothing more than an "About the book" page confirming the author and title, with a "Buy this book" button. At one time the link had content, but GB changes things around, removing content leaving little behind. All 2 million are at risk of becoming hard, soft and crunchy 404s. -- GreenC 13:44, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Template:"AllMovie name" broken links
[edit]Can anyone attempt to fix this template, please? Some of the links it produces have been broken for at least a month, see Template talk:AllMovie name#broken. 2001:999:788:EEA1:A8A4:9F63:5C5C:2051 (talk) 15:54, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- it seems to me that allmovie broke their url schema (again) without providing redirects. Not sure if there is a way to fix this. couldn't find anything. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:39, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- More like they can't figure out how to classify animals in their own system, see for example d:Q6192329#P2019 for the history. Sjoerd de Bruin (talk) 08:23, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Transcluded links
[edit]Sometimes it is useful to see what other articles link to an article directly, as opposed to from templates. For example, this would help when considering the impact of a page move, or considering changing links to the page title into links to a redirect to a section in the page.
When I click on "What links here" I get a list that by default shows all links. It lets me check a box "Hide transclusions", which removes transclusions from the article itself and its talk page, but leaves links from all the pages that transclude a template containing the link. Is there any way to remove links from the transcluded templates? Aymatth2 (talk) 15:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Not with WhatLinksHere, but you can search pages' wikitext with insource:. User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js automates it. —Cryptic 16:23, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. That works and solves my problem. Would it be worth asking it to be added to WhatLinksHere? Aymatth2 (talk) 17:12, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- We've been asking for decades. —Cryptic 17:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- One more for the list. On a more serious note, @Cryptic:, shouldn't the WMF be fixing all these phabricator tickets? And if they aren't, why not riot or strike until they are forced to? Volunteers waste a lot of time working around imperfections that should just get fixed. Polygnotus (talk) 17:44, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Normally you'd be preaching to the choir - why pay people to fix decades-old bugs when we could have them redesign the default skin again? - but this one is legitimately difficult. Like, if someone writes {{tl|uw-vandalism1}} → {{uw-vandalism1}} on a page, should that count as a link to Template:uw-vandalism1? If so - and in my opinion it should - then how do you distinguish it from uses of {{Multi notice links}}? —Cryptic 17:56, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I am not smart enough to even pretend to be smart enough to be able to fix many of these problems. But I am (barely) smart enough to run in to them. We should riot and strike until they hire enough brains to make a serious dent in these old phabricator tickets. If we don't succeed then at least we had fun. Polygnotus (talk) 18:08, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Perhaps the early request was ignored because it seemed debatable. Templated links are real links, and it could be useful to see how many of these links lead to a given article. I would phrase it as adding a new option to WhatLinksHere, maybe called "Source links only", that would display results from an insource: search for the current page name. If someone on this side could write the search in a convenient format (not me!) that would make it easy for them. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:08, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Aymatth2: Is this what you mean? Polygnotus (talk) 07:03, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js does the job, and I thought it could be useful as an option in WhatLinksHere. But see the discussion below on {{main}}, {{for}} etc. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:38, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Aymatth2: Is this what you mean? Polygnotus (talk) 07:03, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Or, how about a moratorium on new phab tickets until all of the existing ones are cleared? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:43, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- So no more phab tickets ever? DuncanHill (talk) 20:45, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- 🙄 Izno (talk) 21:00, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Sounds like a recipe for a bot run to triage everything as
Won't fix, followed by devs manually reactivating assigned tickets they actually plan to work on. Folly Mox (talk) 11:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Perhaps the early request was ignored because it seemed debatable. Templated links are real links, and it could be useful to see how many of these links lead to a given article. I would phrase it as adding a new option to WhatLinksHere, maybe called "Source links only", that would display results from an insource: search for the current page name. If someone on this side could write the search in a convenient format (not me!) that would make it easy for them. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:08, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- I am not smart enough to even pretend to be smart enough to be able to fix many of these problems. But I am (barely) smart enough to run in to them. We should riot and strike until they hire enough brains to make a serious dent in these old phabricator tickets. If we don't succeed then at least we had fun. Polygnotus (talk) 18:08, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Normally you'd be preaching to the choir - why pay people to fix decades-old bugs when we could have them redesign the default skin again? - but this one is legitimately difficult. Like, if someone writes {{tl|uw-vandalism1}} → {{uw-vandalism1}} on a page, should that count as a link to Template:uw-vandalism1? If so - and in my opinion it should - then how do you distinguish it from uses of {{Multi notice links}}? —Cryptic 17:56, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- One more for the list. On a more serious note, @Cryptic:, shouldn't the WMF be fixing all these phabricator tickets? And if they aren't, why not riot or strike until they are forced to? Volunteers waste a lot of time working around imperfections that should just get fixed. Polygnotus (talk) 17:44, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- We've been asking for decades. —Cryptic 17:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. That works and solves my problem. Would it be worth asking it to be added to WhatLinksHere? Aymatth2 (talk) 17:12, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- The English Wikipedia could add a version of {{source links}} to MediaWiki:Linkshere which is displayed at WhatLinksHere. For example, Special:WhatLinksHere/971 (number) would say "Source links" without all the articles which are just transcluding {{Integers}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:36, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I’d support this! I wish it would show {{tl|Main}} as an example of “source link” though because that’s not meant to be transcluded a hundred times the way a link in a Navigation box template might. If it’s integrated in MediaWiki:Linkshere it would be worthwhile examining some edge cases ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I agree with the point on {{main}}, and would add disambiguation and redirection hatnote templates such as {{for}}. I suspect there are other cases like this, where a template is used to format a link to a related page, as opposed to linking to all the pages in a group that have something in common. Perhaps the tool could optionally look for template instances that have the page name as an argument: {{foo|bah|searchterm|abc}}.This may be getting far too elaborate. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I’d support this! I wish it would show {{tl|Main}} as an example of “source link” though because that’s not meant to be transcluded a hundred times the way a link in a Navigation box template might. If it’s integrated in MediaWiki:Linkshere it would be worthwhile examining some edge cases ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:28, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Wait, are we disappearing people now? Do we have the user class "Unperson"?
[edit]I'm bringing this here because it seems to be something coded into the software.
When I write [[User:BrownHairedGirl|BrownHairedGirl]]
It displays as BrownHairedGirl
This is done by the software. I gather that the slash obliterates her name because she is blocked with a term of "indefinite" (altho that is subject to appeal of course).
If it's a policy to now put a scarlet "A" on editors who have met the displeasure of the authorities, where was this discussed and enacted, and by whom, and why? I don't believe that this was done in former times (but even if it was that doesn't make it right). The editor in question is #2 on the list of most prolific editors by edit count. I don't know what she did, and it shouldn't matter. Maybe it was something indescribably horrible, or maybe it was insulting the wrong person or accidentally referring to someone by "xe" instead of "they". Who knows? Even assuming that she absolutely should have been permablocked, so. It doesn't uncreate her contributions. I mean even Benedict Arnold has a monument at Saratoga.
Since this is done automatically, it must be in the code and it looks like I can't override it per WP:IAR or the principle of "Don't be a jerk". That's why I'm bringing it here. If it's per some rule that was enacted, OK we can start there, and my first question would be "what is the purpose of this code"? If it's to inform the reader that the linked-to editor is no longer active, that'd have some use, but then you'd use it for all inactive editors and not call out just the ones that the authorities are mad at. If it's just to shame the editor, is this what we have become now.
If we're going to have a special mark automatically applied to user signatures, I can think of more important things to tell the reader if we must tell just one thing. "This user is an admin" would be quite useful for instance, or there are other things.
I'm hoping that this done by mistake and can be quickly fixed. Please let this be so. Herostratus (talk) 17:46, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Sounds like you installed a script. To me, there is no difference between that name and yours and mine (except the different letters of course). Polygnotus (talk) 17:48, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Or enabled the "Strike out usernames that have been blocked" gadget in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. —Cryptic 17:49, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Huh. You're correct. Seems odd because it's only started happening recently, and I didn't enable it at least not intentionally, and it's not the sort of thing I would enable. But my hand must have slipped or something. Nevermind, sorry, and thanks. Herostratus (talk) 18:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Or enabled the "Strike out usernames that have been blocked" gadget in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. —Cryptic 17:49, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Also, there are various scripts to mark Admins as such, see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Gadget_to_display_a_user's_rights. Polygnotus (talk) 17:58, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ah, yes I see, thank you. Well, the world is so full of a number of things, I think that we all should be happy as kings. Well, sorry about going off half-cocked, but that's me all over. Thanks again. Herostratus (talk) 18:29, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
How to fix strat Footnote?
[edit]Inside the Vizhinjam International Seaport Thiruvananthapuram § Further reading is a {{Efn}} but because it's after Vizhinjam International Seaport Thiruvananthapuram § Notes section it causes an error. Any ideas? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 23:52, 25 August 2024 (UTC)
- Don't put an efn after the notes section. Don't put something that isn't further reading in the further reading section.
- Either will fix the issue. Izno (talk) 00:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- As the Efn contained only a citation, I removed the Efn container, leaving the <ref>citation</ref>. I also fixed the Sfn error. Sfn does not work properly with a long citation in the Further reading section. Moved long citation to a new Sources section. Donald Albury 02:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Just because User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js emits an error message does not mean that
Sfn does not work properly with a long citation in the Further reading section
.{{sfn}}
can and does link to long-form citations in §Further reading so{{sfn}}
works correctly. The Harv error: linked from CITEREFAECOM2013 error message means that the long form citation is in the wrong section. Do not assign blame to{{sfn}}
when the real blame belongs to the editor who placed (or left) the long-form citation in the wrong section. - —Trappist the monk (talk) 03:02, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Shushugah: The fundamental problem here is that the Further reading section contains something that isn't "further reading". At the time of your post it was this: which has since been simplified to this:
*According to the Master Plan, Vizhinjam Port has a natural depth that minimizes or eliminates the need for dredging.{{efn|<ref>{{Cite web |title= |url=https://vizhinjamport.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Addendum-to-Final-MPR_23052013-FINAL-REPORT.pdf|title=Addendum to Final MPR, Vizhinjam International Seaport|year=2023}}</ref>}}
but that is prose text, it belongs somewhere before the See also section, most probably in the Infrastructure and characteristics section. I suggest moving the problem text to there, but with duplication removed. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:36, 26 August 2024 (UTC)*According to the Master Plan, Vizhinjam Port has a natural depth that minimizes or eliminates the need for dredging.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://vizhinjamport.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Addendum-to-Final-MPR_23052013-FINAL-REPORT.pdf|title=Addendum to Final MPR, Vizhinjam International Seaport|year=2023}}</ref>
- @Shushugah: The fundamental problem here is that the Further reading section contains something that isn't "further reading". At the time of your post it was this:
- Just because User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js emits an error message does not mean that
geohack is down
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/fb/Yes_check.svg/20px-Yes_check.svg.png)
Looking in to reports that geohack (where article coordinates go) is down. Getting 504 timeouts when following links such as [2]. — xaosflux Talk 13:37, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Reported at mw:Talk:GeoHack#Geohack seems to be down. — xaosflux Talk 13:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Appears to be back up, no idea who fixed it. — xaosflux Talk 15:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Zombies in the search index
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Wikipedia_search_screenshot_2024-08-26_151452.png/220px-Wikipedia_search_screenshot_2024-08-26_151452.png)
This search – -hastemplate:"short description" prefix:"List of" – returns just two results and they are the same page – List of Coastal Carolina Chanticleers head baseball coaches. One copy (2024-06-09T16:09:55) is a version of the article just before it was moved to draftspace (2024-06-09T16:49:44). The other version is the article that was re-created under the original article name. Any clues as to how we expunge the undead version from the search index? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 14:08, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- copied from WP talk:Short description — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 14:13, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- phab:T331127 maybe, which should have been fixed a while ago. Izno (talk) 14:59, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. Looks like it, but the ticket was closed a few weeks back. Should it be re-opened? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I nudged it, we'll see what the response is. Izno (talk) 15:52, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Thanks. Looks like it, but the ticket was closed a few weeks back. Should it be re-opened? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 15:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
Strange short description - how to fix it?
[edit]I started typing "Space-Men" in the search bar and it suggested the Space-Men article with the strange short description of 1960 Italy?'"`UNIQ--ref-00000004-QINU`"'? film. It shows up in the page information page that way too, but not in the article's source/wikitext, so I'm not sure how to fix it. Any ideas? 28bytes (talk) 17:34, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think I've fixed it? DonIago (talk) 17:43, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
it does, but it doesn't explain how it got there.Nthep (talk) 17:47, 26 August 2024 (UTC)- Looks like a bug, something to do with strip markers. Nthep (talk) 17:56, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- {{Infobox_film}} builds a shortdescription from the country. The country ends with a reference. A reference gets replaced by a strip marker, for technical reasons. But a short description doesn't have wikitext support, so the stripmarker is not automatically replaced/removed. The template that adds the automatic short description should be updated to strip the strip markers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:27, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- @TheDJ: is that something you could adjust? Template in question would be Template:Infobox film/short description. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 20:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Doniago it's almost never a good idea to "fix" something like you as you didn't actually fix the issue and it's probably on other articles. Instead you just have posted it at Template talk:Infobox film/short description so it can be fixed at the source. Gonnym (talk) 20:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- While my effort to fix it evidently didn't address the underlying issue, if you're going to slap my hand you could at least acknowledge that I made a good-faith effort to fix the most immediate problem that was presented in the OP, and that I made it clear in my own message that I wasn't sure that I'd really fixed it at all. I'm not sure what you're talking about with the second part of what you've said, unless you meant to say that I could have posted it there. Except that I couldn't have posted it there because I didn't know that the underlying issue was with the template, nor did the OP indicate that the issue lay with the template. DonIago (talk) 20:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- Not sure what this was supposed to accomplish. lets be glad some people try to make things better before complaining about their work. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:00, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
- After thinking more on it, I agree. Fixing the broken case as a temporary measure seems fine, not different from CSS fixes people make. I do think VPT should try to find the root cause of problems, but I don't think DonIago's change should have been reverted while the problem is not fixed.
- Fixing it like that would be bad if it was done in mass as that would create future work, but it wasn't. – 2804:F1...00:86B7 (::/32) (talk) 00:03, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- I'm unclear if the strip markers not being detected is a larger issue, or something that needs to be coded into Template:Infobox film/short description. Nthep and DJ's comments made it seem like an easy fix, so I restored Space-Men to using the auto-generated SD so it will be as it was prior to the issue and utilize that auto SD. But if it is not an easy fix, then yes, we can implement the workaround that Doniago did. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 16:10, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- The problem is fairly common where the infobox generates a short description from values found in the infobox. Often a country is expected, but the country name turns out to be a list of countries. Often (like here) a field is expected to be a simple piece of text, but has a reference appended or includes an extra formatting template. In this case, the reference should be moved into the article text – the infobox should be only a summary of details that are present in full in the article. Otherwise, just add a manual SD like DonIago did. The sandbox is well out of date, so I assume that nobody has signed up to fix the template? If not, can we please just fix the Space-Men article? It hurts — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 18:16, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- It seems easy enough to fix, just wrap the parameter in {{KillMarkers}}. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ah. I would have first tried {{Strip tags}}. Is that too aggressive? However, us mortals make such changes. We need somebody with superpowers to fix the infobox template for us. So, for now, I just fix individual articles as I find them — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 21:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- {{KillMarkers}} added. Should solve the Space-Men issue. Please note here or on the talk of the template in question if more issues arise because of this change. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 22:05, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ah. I would have first tried {{Strip tags}}. Is that too aggressive? However, us mortals make such changes. We need somebody with superpowers to fix the infobox template for us. So, for now, I just fix individual articles as I find them — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 21:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- It seems easy enough to fix, just wrap the parameter in {{KillMarkers}}. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:28, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Tech News: 2024-35
[edit]Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Feature news
Administrators can now test the temporary accounts feature on test2wiki. This was done to allow cross-wiki testing of temporary accounts, for when temporary accounts switch between projects. The feature was enabled on testwiki a few weeks ago. No further temporary account deployments are scheduled yet. Temporary Accounts is a project to create a new type of user account that replaces IP addresses of unregistered editors which are no longer made public. Please share your opinions and questions on the project talk page.
- Later this week, editors at wikis that use FlaggedRevs (also known as "Pending Changes") may notice that the indicators at the top of articles have changed. This change makes the system more consistent with the rest of the MediaWiki interface. [3]
Bugs status
- Editors who use the 2010 wikitext editor, and use the Character Insert buttons, will no longer experience problems with the buttons adding content into the edit-summary instead of the edit-window. You can read more about that, and 26 other community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.
Project updates
Please review and vote on Focus Areas, which are groups of wishes that share a problem. Focus Areas were created for the newly reopened Community Wishlist, which is now open year-round for submissions. The first batch of focus areas are specific to moderator workflows, around welcoming newcomers, minimizing repetitive tasks, and prioritizing tasks. Once volunteers have reviewed and voted on focus areas, the Foundation will then review and select focus areas for prioritization.
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Learn more
- If you're curious about the product and technology improvements made by the Wikimedia Foundation last year, read this recent highlights summary on Diff.
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- Community Configuration - Shaping On-Wiki Functionality Together (55 mins) - about the Community Configuration project.
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MediaWiki message delivery 20:29, 26 August 2024 (UTC)
List of contributions as plain text
[edit]If I filter my recent contributions, for example to show only page creations and exclude the User: namespace, I am returned a list of edits.
If I only want the names of the pages concerned, as plain text, can I extract that, using some too or other? If so, how? Or can I get the results as, say, a CSV file? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:09, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Not via the WEBUI, you may get close with the API - but a quarry report is likely going to give you what you want assuming your filters are supported cheaply. — xaosflux Talk 18:26, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- WP:RAQ. Izno (talk) 21:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)
- Another possibility is old-school screen scraping. Just go to your contributions page in a browser and save the page as HTML (in Chrome, it's File/Save Page As..., and I'm sure similar in most other browsers). Then hack at the HTML with standard command-line tools. This did a pretty good job for me:
% grep "mw-contributions-title" User\ contributions\ for\ RoySmith\ -\ Wikipedia.html | sed -e 's/<\/a>//' -e 's/.*>//' | sort | uniq
- It's ugly and hackish, but for a one-off job where you can accept occasional errors, it's often the best way. If you're not into the command-line, google for "HTML to CSV conversion" and you'll find lots of other tools that do this. RoySmith (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- I use Notepad++ + regex. I copy the list into Np++, use Alt to column-select all the text to the left of the page names & remove it, then Ctrl+H to remove
diffhist [^\r\n]+
, leaving only the page names. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:23, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, Tom.Reding (and all) that's an interesting approach. But the recent results for my contribution include:
12:02, 26 August 2024 diff hist +32 N De Cotiis #REDIRECT Vincenzo de Cotiis current Tags: New redirect Uncategorized redirect
18 August 2024
18:59, 18 August 2024 diff hist +32 N Taxa inquirenda Species inquirenda current Tags: New redirect Uncategorized redirect
7 August 2024
22:04, 7 August 2024 diff hist +31 N Jablochkoff electric candle #REDIRECT Yablochkov candle current Tags: New redirect Uncategorized
and not only does your regex not work for that (it removes the page titles as well as other stuff), but the "diff hist" columns do not align, as the dates are of differing lengths. Are we at cross purposes? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:14, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- Replacing:
(\r?\n)[^\r\n]+? diff hist [\+\-][\d\.,]+[ ]+(?:N[ ]+)?([^\r\n]+?)(?: )[^\r\n]+
- with:
$1$2
- worked for me for the sample text.
- A couple caveats:
- The 2 apparently empty brackets
[ ]
actually contain 2 whitespace characters each, present in sample text, 1 of which is 0-width, so be careful when copy-pasting, since misplacing and/or losing the 0-width character is never good. - There are 3 whitespace characters in
(?: )
, which are also required. - The position & formatting of
diff hist
/diffhist
probably differs based on skin, but the idea is to use some string that appears at the same relative position on each line. - Make sure there is a blank line before the first line, to match
(\r?\n)
, which are the CRLF characters, or else the regex won't evaluate the first line.
What Izno said. Or, to save you the trip, here's a list going back to late June 2018 (when the create log began). I've removed creations in user talk, too, since I assumed that's what you meant; there were 585 in that namespace, compared to just 21 in User:. CSV available in the cyan "Download data" box. —Cryptic 14:46, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Onlyinclude allows for transclusion of hidden comments?
[edit]I was wondering, has it always been the case that <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude>
tags, if placed inside of a hidden HTML comment, will still transclude its contents when called from another page? (For example, see here and here in my sandbox.) This seems strange to me, if the code is hidden it seems like it should not be transcluded elsewhere. This doesn't seem to apply to includeonly though.
I'm aware of the issue with onlyinclude+nowiki tags mentioned here, but found nothing about hidden comments. Thanks, S.A. Julio (talk) 06:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- I assume it has always been like that and it seems logical to me. Comments
<!-- ... -->
are saved as part of the page and not stored somewhere else. If the page has onlyinclude tags inside then all other parts of the page are ignored on transclusion so the comment start and end tags are not seen. includeonly works different. A page with includeonly but no onlyinclude is processed from the beginning on transclusion so the comment tags are seen there. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:10, 28 August 2024 (UTC)- Okay, thanks for the clarification. S.A. Julio (talk) 19:11, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Partially blocked user still able to edit page?
[edit]Any idea how DN27ND is still able to edit the page Nori Bunasawa? They appear to have been partially blocked from editing it on July 31, but were able to make dozens of edits to it on August 27. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:34, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- The most likely explanation is that, because of an AfD debate, the article was deleted and the pageblock then ended. And then the article was recreated, and the editor was then able to contribute to it. The current incarnation of the article was deleted by another administrator a few minutes ago, just as I was about to click the delete button. My explanation is an informed hunch and those with deeper understanding of the software may have a better explanation. Cullen328 (talk) 07:44, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- On 28 August 2024, Special:Contributions/DN27ND moved User:DN27ND/sandbox3 to Nori Bunasawa. I guess a partial block from editing does not prevent moving a page to the deleted and unsalted target. The edits occurred in the sandbox, before moving. Johnuniq (talk) 07:46, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- There's some edits after the page was moved. I think Cullen328 above might be on the right track. Maybe partial blocks are by page_id rather than page_title. Thank you both for the ideas. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- Just a brief update here...
- The previously blocked user is already arguing for undeletion at Requests for Undeletion, here [4].
- Given that the article coudl as easily have been deleted under G5 as G4, would it not be possible for an admin to just site block the user, rather than for others to have their time wasted by his continual bad faith actions? Axad12 (talk) 08:29, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- That's off-topic for the technical discussion. Nardog (talk) 08:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- You can post future updates about user behavior in Wikipedia:Teahouse#Speedy deletion criteria, which I'm subscribed to. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:54, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- No problem, I will open a thread at ANI and copy you in. (I will say for now however that I feel that the user's behaviour at Requests for Undeletion was quite unacceptable). Axad12 (talk) 08:57, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Novem Linguae Partial blocks apply to a specific incarnation of a page, not the page title (as you say, it works by page id). If you move a page to a new title the partial block should move with it.
- You also cannot use a partial block to stop an editor creating a page.
- See the manual on mediawiki: MW:Manual:Block and unblock#Partial blocks
- See Phab:T271253 for a request to make this clearer. 86.23.109.101 (talk) 10:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- There's some edits after the page was moved. I think Cullen328 above might be on the right track. Maybe partial blocks are by page_id rather than page_title. Thank you both for the ideas. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:48, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Namespace naming inconsistently
[edit]Perhaps changed recently or I did not pay attention but Special:Watchlist has filter for namespace and refers to Article/Mainspace as "Content", the first I've seen it named as such anywhere. I like content but find it confusing when elsewhere e.g in Special:MovePage it's called (Article). I don't have a strong opinion on the correct name, but think we should minimize confusion. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 10:55, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- Are you perhaps confusing the "All contents" entry with the "Article" entry in the drop down ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- If you really see "Content" and not "All contents" then what is your language at Special:Preferences? "All contents" in the watchlist means all non-talk pages. There is also a MediaWiki concept of "content namespaces" which can be set by a wiki with mw:Manual:$wgContentNamespaces. I think it's only mainspace for all Wikimedia wikis (no mention in InitialiseSettings or CommonSettings). I haven't seen it used in any watchlist settings. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:52, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- {{trout}} me 🎏 You are right! I did not read closely enough, despite bothering to report it here, because I would have expected it to select all content/talk pages then. Thank you for the informative links down MediaWiki rabbit hole! ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 12:36, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
- If you really see "Content" and not "All contents" then what is your language at Special:Preferences? "All contents" in the watchlist means all non-talk pages. There is also a MediaWiki concept of "content namespaces" which can be set by a wiki with mw:Manual:$wgContentNamespaces. I think it's only mainspace for all Wikimedia wikis (no mention in InitialiseSettings or CommonSettings). I haven't seen it used in any watchlist settings. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:52, 28 August 2024 (UTC)
Invisible text on pending changes page histories with green on black gadget.
[edit]I use the green on black gadget available through preferences. When I go to the history of a page which has pending changes, the bytes and the user-entered edit summary for the top two entries are in black text on black. I struggle to read this. If I click-and-highlight then I can read it. I'm not sure how long ago it started. For example here. Can it be fixed? Thanks, DuncanHill (talk) 16:07, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- Which skin are you using? Are you also in dark mode? (If so, which dark mode?) — xaosflux Talk 17:36, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Xaosflux: Monobook. No, I'm not using dark mode. DuncanHill (talk) 17:45, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Old notifications reappearing
[edit]The other day, I had a notification I had already seen reappear a month later. Apparently this is something which is seen on occasion, but nobody knows how to reproduce it. If this happens to you, please leave comments on T373443 with whatever details you can figure out, or just email me if you don't have phab access and I can do it for you. RoySmith (talk) 17:57, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Missing history
[edit]The redirect Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans seems to have once been an article. Its history shows DRosenbach making an edit that converted it to a redirect and reduced the pagesize by 2037 bytes – but it doesn't show any revisions before that! What might have caused this? (I checked nost:Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, but it didn't exist.) jlwoodwa (talk) 19:52, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- @Jlwoodwa: It's probably something to do with the histmerge that Dreamy Jazz (talk · contribs) carried out at 21:25, 22 May 2024 - the other page involved was Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- Special:Redirect/logid/162249345 is the log entry with slightly more details. — xaosflux Talk 21:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yes this because I history merged the page. The tool doesn't update the "diff count" on the revision that is left behind. The same thing occurs on the history page for Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, but that incorrect count has a revision before it. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 15:44, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- Special:Redirect/logid/162249345 is the log entry with slightly more details. — xaosflux Talk 21:22, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Template code validation
[edit]Hi, can someone with a good knowledge of template code have a look at my request over at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) § Template:Permanent dead link? Thanks! — AP 499D25 (talk) 02:00, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
Dark mode new talk message
[edit]I have been experimenting with dark mode (&withgadget=dark-mode
). While doing that, I received a "You have a new Talk page message" notification. In dark mode, I had no idea that the notification was there. The text is black on a dark brown background that visually disappears in the black window. I did not even see the light red badge on the bell. Looking at it now, the pink badge is kind of obvious but I only noticed it while looking for it after seeing the normal notification in another window with the original white background. It is essential that new editors receive an in-your-face talk notification because we block people who do not respond but continue with problematic editing. I know this should be requested elsewhere but there is not much point adding the opinion of one person so I'm looking for thoughts. Johnuniq (talk) 05:07, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- Which skin ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:02, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
- Good point, monobook. Johnuniq (talk) 08:47, 30 August 2024 (UTC)