Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs).

If you want to report a JavaScript error, please follow this guideline. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk. Discussions are automatically archived after remaining inactive for five days.

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Frequently asked questions (see also: Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical)

Click "[show]" next to each point to see more details.

If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.

No, we will not use JavaScript to set focus on the search box.
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See task 3864. There is an `accesskey` property on it (default to `accesskey="f"` in English). Logged-in users can enable the "Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page" gadget in their preferences.

No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
You can use a web browser such as Firefox, which has a spell checker.

If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Help:How to fix your signature.

If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.

If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.
If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear.

For server or network status, please see Wikimedia Status. If you cannot reach Wikipedia services, see Reporting a connectivity issue.

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RevDel Error Message

I'm noticing a very unusual error, when I compare diffs between a deleted revision LTA and a live revision, it won't show, obviously, because I'm not an admin, but then it also pops up the following in a red box:

User doesn't have access to the requested revision (The revision #1259514017 belongs to a deleted page. You can [//en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Wikipedia:Help_desk×tamp=20241125161251&diff=prev view it]; details can be found in the [//en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Wikipedia:Help_desk deletion log].).

(I've nowikied the above, because the error box literally shows that).

MediaWiki:Rest-permission-denied-revision would be the closest match to the error, I think. Myrealnamm's Alternate Account (talk) 16:40, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For reference, this is the diff: [1]

I can reproduce the problem, it seems to be caused by trying to display a visual diff, which neither you nor I can view. I found a similar bug report at T337817, although the error message has apparently changed since 2023. Matma Rex talk 16:57, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Huh. I remember clearly that days ago, perhaps weeks, the error message was still "Invalid response from server", like desribed at phab.

If you go to a random diff, like this one: Special:Diff/1259521939, and you select Visual Editor, then go to [2], the error will show. If you go back to Special:Diff/1259521939, and select source editor, then if you return to [3] and reload the page, the error will not show. Myrealnamm's Alternate Account (talk) 17:05, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Drafts dashboard

I saw a discussion about a useful-sounding Drafts dashboard . The link is a 404: https://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/dashboards/enwiki-metrics#pages-graphs-tab . Does anyone know what happened to it? Cheers and thanks, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:47, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The wikitech:EE Dashboard seems to have been closed about 10 year ago. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:41, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I checked a few URLs on the Wayback Machine and can't find anything archived either. Whatamidoing (WMF) do you know any way to get this resurrected? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:22, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You could try asking over at mw:Talk:Editing team. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:37, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tech News: 2024-48

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

Updates for editors

A new version of the standard wikitext editor-mode syntax highlighter will be available as a beta feature later this week. This brings many new features and bug fixes, including right-to-left support, template folding, autocompletion, and an improved search panel. You can learn more on the help page.
The 2010 wikitext editor now supports common keyboard shortcuts such Ctrl+B for bold and Ctrl+I for italics. A full list of all six shortcuts is available. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. [3]
Starting November 28, Flow/Structured Discussions pages will be automatically archived and set to read-only at the following wikis: bswiki, elwiki, euwiki, fawiki, fiwiki, frwikiquote, frwikisource, frwikiversity, frwikivoyage, idwiki, lvwiki, plwiki, ptwiki, urwiki, viwikisource, zhwikisource. This is done as part of StructuredDiscussions deprecation work. If you need any assistance to archive your page in advance, please contact Trizek (WMF).
View all 25 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, a user creating a new AbuseFilter can now only set the filter to "protected" if it includes a protected variable.

Updates for technical contributors

The CodeEditor, which can be used in JavaScript, CSS, JSON, and Lua pages, now offers live autocompletion. Thanks to SD0001 for this improvement. The feature can be temporarily disabled on a page by pressing Ctrl+, and un-selecting "Live Autocompletion".
Tool-maintainers who use the Graphite system for tracking metrics, need to migrate to the newer Prometheus system. They can check this dashboard and the list in the Description of the task T350592 to see if their tools are listed, and they should claim metrics and dashboards connected to their tools. They can then disable or migrate all existing metrics by following the instructions in the task. The Graphite service will become read-only in April. [4]
The New PreProcessor parser performance report has been fixed to give an accurate count for the number of Wikibase entities accessed. It had previously been resetting after 400 entities. [5]

Meetings and events

A Language community meeting will take place November 29 at 16:00 UTC. There will be presentations on topics like developing language keyboards, the creation of the Mooré Wikipedia, the language support track at Wiki Indaba, and a report from the Wayuunaiki community on their experiences with the Incubator and as a new community over the last 3 years. This meeting will be in English and will also have Spanish interpretation.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 22:39, 25 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extra letter "R" between C and D in category listing

See Category:All portals. The list first shows portals starting with 0-9, then starting with A, B, C (including things not starting with C, but with a sortkey starting with a C), then continues through the alphabet with R, D, E, ..., P, Q, R, S, ... What is this extra letter "R" between C and D?

The issue was reported by User:JoeNMLC at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Portals#Curious_about_"Portal_category_list" but this looks like it could use some wider attention. —Kusma (talk) 11:00, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed with forcing update of the category member by removing/readding to the category. — xaosflux ^Talk 11:33, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! So it was some kind of database hiccup? —Kusma (talk) 11:58, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like a hiccup or MediaWiki bug I haven't seen before. The Internet Archive shows [6] the issue 19 September with an R heading between the C and D headings. Special:ExpandTemplates shows Portal:Reformed Christianity just adds a normal [[Category:All portals]] with no sortkey and no DEFAULTSORT. It's added by a template but even if the template had different code at the time, it should not be possible to create an R heading between C and D on a category page. The Internet Archive shows a normal Latin letter R and not some special Unicode character. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:11, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here is HTML source from the Internet Archive:

<li><a href="/web/20240919122212/http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Portal:Czech_Republic" title="Portal:Czech Republic">Portal:Czech Republic</a></li></ul></div><div class="mw-category-group"><h3>R</h3>
<ul><li><a href="/web/20240919122212/http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Portal:Reformed_Christianity" title="Portal:Reformed Christianity">Portal:Reformed Christianity</a></li></ul></div><div class="mw-category-group"><h3>D</h3>
<ul><li><a href="/web/20240919122212/http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Portal:Delaware" title="Portal:Delaware">Portal:Delaware</a></li>

It looks as you would expect if R was actually a letter betwen C and D and there was only one portal starting with R. The category collation system determining how to sort characters is sometimes changed and can be set differently for different wikis. Maybe this page was cached in the middle of a change or accidental setting. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:23, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done - Thank you! JoeNMLC (talk) 17:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Standard parameter name for Wikidata IDs

I now find that we have a number of parameter names for a Wikidata item about a subject, for example:

{{Authority control}} - |qid=
{{Interlanguage link}} - |WD=
{{Taxonbar}} - |from=

This causes confusion for editors who use more than one of these templates, on a regular or occasional basis.

I propose that we standardise these to |qid=, while keeping existing names as aliases for backwards compatibility. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:44, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We also standardized on |coordinates= in infoboxes a few years ago, which was a nice improvement. |qid= makes the most sense to me for this purpose. I get 227 hits in template space for {qid|, only 10 hits for {WD|, and 66 hits for {from| (most of which are not Wikidata-related). – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:08, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support alias |qid=. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:40, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Batch reversion of edits by a single user

(Note: Sorry, if this is a FAQ. Just provide the link and I'll be on my way.)

Does Wikipedia provide some means of reverting several edits by a single user in one go? As a concrete example, I cite the instance of the following user:

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:Contributions/Estradadarwin15

The user appears to have made several edits within the span of a few days designed to assert or to falsely establish as fact that a number of large multinational drug companies are subsidiaries of a small privately held Philippine drug company.

Here's one particular instance:

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Hisamitsu_Pharmaceutical&oldid=1259299932

One of his edits (URL below) appear to have been reverted but there are at least three more.

http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Pfizer&oldid=1259300235 MeshLearning (talk) 17:19, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

MeshLearning, try User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/massRollback or Wikipedia:Kill-It-With-Fire. — Qwerfjkl talk 17:26, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Most common language tags and TemplateData suggested values capacity

I'm wondering if there is a way to produce a list of the most frequently used IETF BCP 47 language tags in use on English Wikipedia. By "in use", I mean values for the HTML lang attribute in current published articles. Such a list would be useful so that we could populate the TemplateData suggested values of the many templates that have a language parameter with the values that editors are most likely to use. To be clear, I mean the full language tags with subtags, and not just the language code.

I'd also welcome guidance on how many suggested values is advisable for usability purposes. Instead of using most common values, I could include the 183 ISO 639-1 codes. Is that too many? Daask (talk) 23:00, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was expecting the answer would be to do a search on the HTML output of English Wikipedia, but I see that the subcategories of Category:Articles containing non-English-language text are fairly detailed and include at least some subtags. I suppose an answer could be produced by finding the largest of these subcategories and then converting them from names back to language tags (probably with the same Module:Lang that populates them). I'm not sure how to do that. Daask (talk) 23:17, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Watchlist

Resolved

Today I've been getting many articles regarding Uganda popping up on my watchlist, I have no idea how these articles got on my list, is there something (like compromising whatchlist) going on. I keep a copy of my list in notepad++, I just copied my backup to my list, and the first thing to po up was a Ugandan article. I guess I just asking if there a know issue. - FlightTime (open channel) 01:02, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are they articles you have edited? — xaosflux ^Talk 02:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If so, check your settings in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist to see if "add pages I ...." are set where you don't want it to be. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could it be that you edited a template they use? Johnbod (talk) 02:55, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've already checked those, thanx for your responses, I'll just weed them out as they come up. Cheers, - FlightTime (open channel) 06:41, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Non-free image uploaded to Wikipedia claims to be hosted on commons

This is kind of a strange issue. I uploaded File:Katana Engine Material Editor.png using Wikipedia:File upload wizard's non-free image form and gave a rationale and now the rationale is gone. I used the software screenshot template. And when I click on "Create source" I get a dialog saying

"This media file is on Wikimedia Commons—not on the English Wikipedia. Descriptions should be placed there. This page should rarely be used except to indicate featured pictures. Please see the description page on Commons for file information, a list of pages that use this file, or the direct link to this file."

Yet commons:File:Katana Engine Material Editor.png does not show anything at all and says "No file by this name exists." I gave the basic points of rationale in File talk:Katana Engine Material Editor.png. I'm wondering what happened here and how to fix it. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 02:09, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@J2UDY7r00CRjH that edit notice is in error, we will need to look in to that. In the meantime, just ignore it and update your file description directly. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like that edit message comes if the local description page doesn't exist, even if the file is local. I created a blank page for that file for now, please be sure to update it with licensing information. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:28, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for letting me know. Worth noting there may be two errors: one that causes the rationale to not be added to the page and another that gives that notice pointing to a commons page that does not exist. Although more likely is that there is a single root cause. J2UDY7r00CRjH (talk) 02:28, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why solidpixels.com is blocked?

If adding references to websites, which were created by solidpixels.com, Citoid adds to the reference also solidpixels URL and ends up with the following message "This site is blocked". Why that website is blocked, and is it at Wikimedia blacklist or Zotero black list? The reference links to try are:

https://www.dox.cz/program/daniel-pesta-determination
https://www.resite.org/speakers/mirik-milan
https://www.visitbanat.com/srbsko

Note:

If I tried to add here an external url as an example, there was this error message: "People at this wiki decided to block links to this site. Please try another link"
If I add here the above links as plain links I got the following error: "Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist." But nor dox.cz neither solidpixels.cz are listed on those black lists

Juandev (talk) 14:54, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Juandev: Links to dox.cz are blocked by \bdox\.\w{2,5}\ at meta:Spam blacklist. The other links are allowed. The HTML source of https://www.dox.cz/program/daniel-pesta-determination says <meta name="author" content="solidpixels., https://www.solidpixels.com" />. That's why Citoid places https://www.solidpixels.com in an author parameter. It's not the cause of the block. https://www.solidpixels.com is allowed. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:08, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

thx. Juandev (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Questions about dark mode

I have two questions about dark mode:

I seem to remember that when dark mode was initially made generally available to logged-in users, there was a link to give feedback and report problematic visuals. Is that link still alive somewhere?
Some pages have images that are inverted when using dark mode. For instance, the infobox image on Canadian Aboriginal syllabics is inverted. Other images on that page are not. What causes the infobox image to be inverted and not the others? I couldn’t find a tag in the template arguments or the Commons page.

Anselm Schüler (talk) 23:57, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anselm Schüler. I see one problem with the infobox on this version of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. From Help:Table: Avoid using background: none or background: transparent. See:

mw:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis#Avoid using background: none or background: transparent

There is more info at Help:Table#Colors in tables and the subsections that follow.

I only know a little about this stuff. I don't know what is going on with the PNG image in the infobox. Transparency?

I see background: transparent in several places in the infobox. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:12, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Images that are inverted use the "skin-invert" class and that does apply to your example. They are typically only used if we know that the image will work inverted. Inverting all diagrams, for example, would be a bad idea. Most monochrome diagrams, like signatures, will work inverted. Snævar (talk) 10:28, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the skin-invert class applied? In the template invocation? The template definition? The image page? Anselm Schüler (talk) 10:49, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Skin-invert is in the template Template:Infobox_writing_system, line 33. That also explains why the other images do not have one, since it is less work to addd it to a template than image syntax on one page. Snævar (talk) 13:42, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect diff description when edits in between are suppressed or revision deleted

I know I should just make an account to report stuff, but instead I just want to ask, is this bug something anyone would even care about fixing?:

On Special:Diff/1258722312/1258757481 it says the obviously wrong message One intermediate revision by 22 users not shown
If I don't include the one revision that is not suppressed in between, then it just says nothing, even though there are 37 (I think?) revisions in between.

I chose a suppressed one as the example, but it happens with revdels too, though maybe not if you are an admin. – 2804:F1...6D:D079 (::/32) (talk) 00:53, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt any devs are going to get to work on that one right away, but sure go file a WP:BUG if you'd like. Problem statement seems to be that when there are deleted versions, inaccurate counts are passed to diff-multi-otherusers. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:32, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting bug. If you look at this range of edits in the page history: [7] you can see more clearly that only the content of the revisions has been hidden, but not their authors. We might be querying the data for this message slightly incorrectly. As a dev, I'd be curious enough to look into why this happens, even if it turns out to be too complicated for a quick fix. Also, I found a Phabricator report that sounds quite similar to this problem: T277920. Matma Rex talk 08:09, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I figured out why it happens: T277920#10368811 but it is indeed a bit tricky to fix, and it will probably stay unfixed for now, unless someone volunteers to implement it. Matma Rex talk 22:55, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources § Amendments needed to the transclusion splitting plan

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources § Amendments needed to the transclusion splitting plan. Not sure who to notify, but I'm not confident in putting another merge banner onto the page, and this does involve technical. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:15, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Max lag on Enwiki API requests

This is happening again ("13926.578336 seconds lagged"). Previously reported Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_216#Server_lag responded by User:Taavi. Same problem with a broken replica? -- GreenC 05:11, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:34, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Still an issue? Taavi (talk!) 06:27, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to happen intermittently almost every week nowadays. – SD0001 (talk) 13:43, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Menu for new topic missing

For me it's normally a + sign. Doug Weller talk 14:00, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is working fine for me atleast The AP (talk) 15:53, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

After Login, goes to WP home page

Greetings, Recently I noticed that after 1. Log out; 2. Log In; 3. Browser now goes to Wikipedia home page instead of previously "remembered" page. Usually it was my Watchlist. Not a major concern, just curious of this change. Regards, JoeNMLC (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines

Can anyone work out why Wikipedia:Contents/Outlines has so much white text on a light green background, to the extent that the text is virtually invisible. Nthep (talk) 15:05, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @TheDJ:, is this in any way related to your changes to Wikipedia:Contents/styles.css and dark mode? Nthep (talk) 15:10, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]