Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests
 | This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus. |
Bug reports and feature requests (collectively called tasks) relating to the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia, should be filed on Wikimedia's Phabricator. Phabricator is a software suite that includes tools for bug reporting and project management. The bug report management tool of Phabricator is called Maniphest.
Bug reports and feature requests that are not directly related to the MediaWiki software should be discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). When in doubt, discuss issues at the Village pump before filing a task on Wikimedia's Phabricator.
Reporting a bug or filing a feature request
- See also "How to report a bug" on MediaWiki.
You've got a bug or feature request, and you're itching to report it. The first thing you should do is search for an existing report by using the search field in the upper corner. Someone may have already reported the bug or requested the feature. Searching first helps to prevent duplicates. To be effective, try multiple synonyms and rephrasings of what the bug or feature might have been called.
Create account
The next step is to create an account in Phabricator. Thanks to Wikimedia's Single User Login (SUL), you can use your account on mediawiki.org for login and don't have to remember another separate password. Please follow the instructions how to create an account on MediaWiki.org. In contrast to the previous bug tracking system (Bugzilla), your email address will not be displayed in Phabricator. If you had a Bugzilla account prior to the launch of Phabricator, this process will join the Phabricator and Bugzilla accounts.
Details
Create your bug or feature request! To understand what the fields mean and how to write a useful task, it is recommended to read "How to report a bug" on MediaWiki. A few details are highlighted below.
Selecting projects
In order to relate a task with a project (tag) that uses Phabricator, you just need to start typing its name in the Tags field and select the project from the list of matching projects (the list will only show five matching projects). You can search for projects and read short project descriptions by clicking the magnifier icon in the Tags field. You can add one or more projects to the Tags field. If you are unsure, you can also leave it empty — triagers will take care of tasks that have no project set. There is a (long) list of projects available. Press Edit Query to search for projects. (This list is also available at Phabricator/Projects.)
Setting task priority
Priority should normally only be set by product managers, maintainers, or developers who plan to work on the task, or by the staff bugwrangler, or by technically experienced community members, not by the reporter filing the bug report or by outside observers. See Phabricator project management for details.
Updates on your task
- See also "Receiving updates and notifications" on MediaWiki.
By default you will be emailed with updates on the status of your task. Sometimes developers may reject or misunderstand a bug report or feature request and close a report that you think is still valid. If you believe there's still an issue, you can add a comment and try to make a better explanation, or you can take it to the mailing list. If you do not want to get updates on your bug, you can state this in your email preferences.
Finding tasks you have joined the CC/Subscribers list for
Go to the list of open tasks that you have subscribed to. You can also edit the search query (e.g. to also include closed tasks) to alter the results.
Tokens
Tokens in Phabricator allow you to show which bugs you care about. You can add a token to a report by clicking "Award Token" in the side bar at the top of a report.
Note that developers are not obligated to implement a request just because it has a large number of tokens.
Etiquette
Phabricator is a place to notify developers of bugs and contribute information that would be useful in the fixing of the bugs. It is not a place for advocacy viz. "I REALLY WANT THIS BUG FIXED!" With that in mind, please keep the following rules in mind when using Phabricator:
- Contribute useful comments; useless comments (i.e. advocacy) decrease the signal-to-noise ratio
- The developers are under no obligation to fix your bug or add a feature you want.
- No personal abuse: do not make threats like "I will not edit Wikipedia until this bug is fixed"
- Don't mess around with fields unless you are the bug's assignee or you know what you are doing, instead, comment on the suggested change
- Don't whine about "declined" decisions
- Applicability varies, but when in doubt, follow the rules
If you see someone not following these rules, politely mention it to them via their talk page or private email: do not bugspam some more by chastising the user for their conduct publicly.
Linking to bugs from Wikipedia
- See "Template:Tracked" on MediaWiki for more information about that template.
{{tracked|T1000}} creates the first right-floating box -->>
If you would like to note the fact that the task has been resolved, you can note its status via {{tracked|T1234|resolved}}. See the second right-floating box -->
If you enable the "Enable tracking bugs on Phabricator using the {{tracked}} template" gadget in your preferences, you will always see up to date statuses for Phabricator references that use the {{tracked}} template (even if the template call omits the status or has not been manually updated).
You can link to bugs using the phab: interwiki prefix. For example, type [[phab:T1000]] for phab:T1000. The phab: prefix can be used for linking to any static page in Wikimedia's Phabricator. For example, type [[phab:project/query/all/]] for phab:project/query/all/.
Note that [[bug:T1000]] links to the Buginese Wikipedia, not to Phabricator or its predecessor Bugzilla.
Links from within Phabricator
- Please see "Writing comments and descriptions" on MediaWiki for general information on available linking options.
Standard bracketed MediaWiki-style internal links or section links are not supported. Interwiki links such as language prefixes, and other interwiki links, are not supported.
It is highly recommended to use full web addresses instead which can be copied and pasted from the web browser's location bar. Full URLs are automatically made into working links. Brackets are not needed.
Software deployment schedule
New software on Wikimedia is deployed regularly, usually weekly. Group 0 wikis have their software deployed on Tuesdays (test websites and MediaWiki.org), group 1 on Wednesdays (Catalan and Hebrew Wikipedias and all non-Wikipedia sites), and group 2 (the rest) on Thursdays. English Wikipedia is in group 2, meaning it receives deployments on Thursdays. The current MediaWiki version is shown at Special:Version: 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3).
If you are experiencing a technical problem with editing or reading on Thursday or Friday which was not present earlier, it is highly likely that the cause of that technical problem is the recent deployment of software. You can report problems using the guidance on this page or on WP:VPT. If you decide to report the problem on VPT, consider looking for similar issues (usually separate sections toward the bottom of the table of contents/page); you may not be the first person to encounter the issue, and it is good to keep issue discussion in one place. Sometimes the "problem" is the result of a deliberate action to change how the software behaves, so while you can provide a report, there is no guarantee it will be fixed the way you expect, if it needs fixing at all.
Glossaries
- Category:Glossaries of computers
- Glossary of computer terms
- Manual:Glossary – MediaWiki
- Wikipedia:Glossary
- List of computer term etymologies
See also
- Category:Wikipedia feature requests
- How to create a good first Bug Report by Valerie Juarez (though referring to Bugzilla instead of Phabricator)
External links
- Wikimedia Phabricator, used for Wikimedia and MediaWiki bug reports and feature requests
- MediaWiki page about Phabricator, including user help
- The bug report life cycle
- Phabricator home page – where bugs in Phabricator itself are worked on