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Article preview showing completely different article[edit]
The page preview, which for some reason links to a different article
The article itself, which shows that the page previewer is jacked up
I was working on an article, Downtown One (which is not a redirect), when I realized that the article preview links to a completely different article, which is List of tallest buildings in Albania. A redirect from the former to the latter did exist at one point in time, but was deleted in 2023. The bug should be visible to others, if it's not just let me know, I can post an image up. This is a relatively serious bug aswell, because it basically removes the ability to visit that page, effectively eliminating the purpose of Wikipedia. I've never seen this before, so I thought I'd let yall know. (Also I attempted to report it over at Phabricator, but for some reason the ver. email link never sent). At least one person over at WP:TEAHOUSE is completely clueless as to why that happens, and honestly so am I. Thanks :) Sir MemeGod ._. (talk - contribs - created articles) 03:32, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The redirect existed for 15 hours on 7 August 2023. Page Previews uses caching. I guess the cache was never updated after the deletion. I don't know whether this is normal for deleted redirects or pages. Page Previews doesn't activate on red links so it wouldn't normally affect users but it did when you recreated the page with other content. The cache was apparently updated between your first and second post, meaning between one and three hours after page creation. There are reasons for caching but 11 months is too much so I would call this a bug. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:33, 6 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Page previews don't get actively purged on delete/revert/move/etc, only on edit. And then they still are cached for 24 hours (not sure what the exact value is). This is a known issue (or rather two of them). So what happened is that when you recreated the article, it used the OLD information (as it was still somewhere in the database), that got cached, edits were made causing references to update in the databases, and then 24 hours later the cache expired and it used the new information from the edits. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:03, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, say someone creates a vandalistic page containing an objectionable image. The page gets deleted as G3. Later, someone creates a legitimate page at - or moves an existing page to - the same title. Is the preview going to show whatever picture that was previously on the vandalistic page? That could cause some surprises. Home Lander (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When you use the same reference more than once, the individual instances get assigned tags a, b, c, etc. Once you get past 26, it wraps around to aa, ab, ac and so on up to az, then picks up with ba, bb, and so on. As part of a tool I'm writing, I need to be able to generate these. My first thought was "its just base 26 using "a" through "z" to represent 0 through 25 in each column". But its not (he says after beating his head against the wall writing some python code to do base 26 conversion). If it were, then after "z" would come "ba" for "1 in the 26's column plus 0 in the 1's column". So what is this sequence? Is there some standard name for it? RoySmith(talk)15:49, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Legoktm I'm not sure exactly where this is going, but I'm working on something to make it easier to do reference spot-checks for GA and FA reviews. So you'd be able to say something like "pick 10% of the statements in the article and show me what they're sourced to" Using the current version of Oceanic whitetip shark), it might tell you that It is eaten fresh, smoked, dried, and salted and its skin made into leather is cited to reference 6-k. I can dig out of the generated HTML <sup id="cite_ref-FAO_6-10"> but I don't want to show that gibberish to the user.
This has been a frustrating project so far. It's been a series of, "Oh, all I need to do is..." false starts, foiled by the reality of just how perverse everything related to wiki text is. Not to mention how we don't have one uniform referencing style I can target. RoySmith(talk)16:33, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And which article was it that required more than 702 repeated uses of a reference, and pushed MediaWiki to use three-character ids? Or was it just paranoia? -- Verbarson talkedits19:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Which was right on the limit. Via search/replace all I thought it was one less than the limit (because there were 1,379 instances of the ref name), but the other one turns out to be because of list-defined references. I'd added more ref labels to the MediaWiki page before realising this; if someone really wants to revert my edit there, be my guest, but I can't think of a good reason to do so at this point. Graham87 (talk) 03:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See the end of User:Graham87/sandbox30, which apparently answers your question; in this case it says "[[#cite_ref-test_1-2054|]]" before the ref text, which is "Test ref". I created this file by adding the first line with the ref declared, then writing the next line with a named ref, copying it to the clipboard and pasting it, copying and pasting the resulting two lines, then the resulting four, eight, sixteen, etc. ... lines, all the powers of two. Graham87 (talk) 09:00, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Firefangledfeathers I've got a POC running at https://wikirefs.toolforge.org/. It's really raw, with almost no error checking at this point, but you're welcome to play with it and give me feedback. If you've got a github account, feel free to file bug reports. FWIW, it turns out there's no need to generate bijectivehexawhatevers; all the strings I need are right there in the HTML and I just have to dig them out. Screen-scraping FTW!
In that previous message, we announced that dark mode on desktop would be rolled out in one step, for both logged-in and logged-out users, in the week of July 15 (that is, next week). However, we'd be more comfortable to enable it for logged-in users first. Articles here on English Wikipedia look very good in dark mode, and again, thanks to everyone who is contributing to it!
We are going to enable dark mode on desktop just for logged-in users this week. If everything goes well (it has been going very well so far!) we will enable it on desktop for logged-out users next week as we previously announced. It's gonna be exciting :D Thanks! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:35, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, sorry, I wanted to give a quick answer and misread :D Dark mode will no longer be a beta feature. Font size control will continue to be a beta feature.SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Correction: The font size control is already available by default. The beta feature will disappear from the list because after this rollout, all options will be available for everyone. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 18:31, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If by "existing dark mode that does work in Monobook" you mean the gadget? No, that will continue to function. Izno (talk) 21:45, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Eww, this one caught me by surprise... The contrast doesn't seem quite right at the moment. I don't think "dark mode" should be black, it should be off black for the best ease on the eyes. Hopefully the WMF will get these things right in due course. — Amakuru (talk) 21:36, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's flicking black/white off-and-on for me. Page loads in dark & then seconds later turns white. The next page loads in white & seconds later flicks to black. Plus the diffs aren't visible in black. Instant migraine for me. Safari 16.6. Victoria (tk) 21:49, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Same. On my end, it was enabled by default and I had to go into preferences to enable the toggle just to turn it off in the interface. Now it flickers every time the page loads. Viriditas (talk) 22:10, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I turned off the toggle in preferences, emptied my cached, restarted the machine. Still happening. Now the white pages render with the dark colors before turning completely black after about 5 seconds. I took screen shots. It seems to take 3 to 5 seconds to flick from white to black & then back again. Victoria (tk) 22:37, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, one wonders if this is causing seizures. "For 3% of people with epilepsy, exposure to flashing lights at certain intensities or to certain visual patterns can trigger seizures." Viriditas (talk) 22:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey there! I've added this to our FAQ. If you are seeing a flick from white to black, you have enabled the gadget AND have attempted to try out the new feature (possibly via preferences when it was in beta or via the new preference that now appears in the preferences page).
The number of people using the gadget is quite low compared to the number of viewers so I am not concerned that this is impacting a large amount of people. Jon (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Jon (WMF), please re-read my message. I disabled the gadget, doublechecked that it's gone, emptied my cache, restarted my machine. It's still happening. I will have to log out to override this. If you would like to see screen shots taken with the gadget disabled I'm happy to send them on, but you'll have to contact me. Victoria (tk) 23:21, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's what I initially thought, but the gadgets were all unchecked when it went live. Now, I get dark mode by default unless I check the preferences. I'm in Vector legacy to avoid all of it, because I can't fix it. Viriditas (talk) 23:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note, the dark-mode-toggle-pagestyles gadget is hidden on user preferences so it is possible you still have that enabled (it doesn't show up in preferences)
A few questions which will help us get to the bottom of this:
In legacy Vector are you seeing the dark mode gadget toggle in the top right?
If you enable Vector 2022, do you see the message "You're using a dark mode gadget". If yes, what happens when you click it and the page reloads?
Okay, I found it. There are two toggles for dark mode in preferences >> gadgets. One under "appearance" and then another one all the way under "utility". Both have to be turned off. Mine was still turned on under utility. The flickering only stops when they are both turned off. To find the control for dark/light mode now, one has to go to preferences >> appearance >> color. Color?? Seriously? In the meantime, Jon (WMF), I sent an email with screenshots, but it's now irrelevant. Victoria (tk) 23:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's in "gadgets", and doesn't work for me. I have both off, and I'm still in dark mode. If I switch them on, and then turn off dark mode, I get the flickering. If I switch them off, I'm in permanent dark mode. Viriditas (talk) 00:12, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm really not a fan of this new default setting. Has this even been tested by a broad group of people including casual users (not just people heavily involved in Wikipedia?
The "dark mode" is ironically way too bright because this is a text-heavy site. So, what you get now is a mass of white text, not a dark page. It almost seems *more* white. The drastic differences between the colors make it difficult to skim. (I don't mind it so much when I'm reading closely, but skimming is important, too.)
Also - this is a little pet peeve, but important for research. The color of already-clicked links doesn't change in info boxes (sorry I don't know the exact term but in a bio page, it would be the box on the top right with basic info like DOB, city, parents, etc.). This isn't a browser issue because it works in Vector legacy. Jim0101 (talk) 04:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
K well it switched to dark mode without me choosing that option. So that's naturally why I assumed it was the default setting when it did in fact default to that for me. Jim0101 (talk) 12:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey @Jim0101 - apologies for this! We had switched some users whose devices were requesting dark mode automatically to follow the device preference (this is what the "automatic" toggle in the menu does). After hearing the reports here, we've not switched this back. Currently, the only way to see dark mode would be to explicitly opt-in. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 15:18, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am using a script which highlights different type of pages in different colors (sorry do not remember the name), this gives me as default blue on black, and this is not readable. I generally like the dark background, but here I had to switch back (using the appearance tab in the preferences). I can not switch off the script because I work a lot with category deletion, and categories need to be tagged.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, re contrast and readability I concur. I used it for a bit last night and my eyes were hurting by the end with some of the text impossible to read. Per Ymblanter above, I think this needs to go out to a proper group of test readers and full feedback taken on board before we roll it out as a default. — Amakuru (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The linkclassifier script's colors are easy to customize if you know CSS. The default User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css isn't even required to be used. If someone wants to suggest a full set of colors for dark mode, that could be useful to incorporate in the default. Anomie⚔11:40, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Has anyone raised an issue with new notifications background going from white to dark background upon read? The text is unreadable. – robertsky (talk) 06:37, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your report @Robertsky! I'm wondering if you could give a bit more detail on where you're seeing this? Are you talking about notifications on the Special:Notifications page? Or within the menu in the top right? If possible, a screenshot would be really helpful as well so we can identify where the issues is. Thanks again. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 11:25, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed that If you open "Notices" and then have new messages "from other wikis", that block in your notices shows a baby blue highlight color for 2 to 3 seconds or something, which is not yet dark mode compatible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:09, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for giving Wikipedia a dark mode option! The settings page saysExperimental version, high likelihood of experiencing issues--am i being helpful if i say i think i've found one?
Do we have (or should we have) a central thread where all of the discussions about the launch of dark mode should be in one place?
i've visited maybe a half dozen pages where dark mode seems to work, but the Willys 77 page still won't turn to the dark side, even after i:
reload the page,
close and reopen the tab,
open a new tab and type the URL into the address bar,
create a new link to that page (as in this post) and use that to open the page,
or retry the methods listed here, but in a different order.
Additionally, Wikipedia:Help desk is mostly dark. i'm not sure if it's the same issue mentioned here, but this part:
Welcome... (Am I in the right place?)... For other types of questions... Do not provide your email... New editors may prefer the Teahouse... [Ask a question] show/hide Wikipedia help pages
this part stays white.
Hello, thank you for reaching out here! I'm glad to see that the article turned black. It always takes a few days for new changes to be propagated across all pages because of caching. When we started running banners inviting logged-out users to switch to dark mode, the cache of just a few percent of the articles wasn't refreshed.
When it comes to the Help desk, I'm sure English Wikipedians will soon fix it. It is challenging, though. There are so many pages formatted with the assumption that the only mode is light, and there's a lot of special formatting on non-article pages. But reports like yours help technical editors prioritize their work.
The default foreground color for text is way too bright/white and more than a few page elements on certain pages are as bright as light mode. Overall, it does not seem like an improvement on the old beta dark mode. I'd simply disable it and stick with the old beta dark mode for now, but if I do that, there's a white flash at the start of every page load and page refresh, which defeats the purpose of using a dark mode.
Not having used the beta, the new version looks superior. A wp:village shrine should be erected to mark the occasion of implementation.
Though, the contrast issue may be a thing. Fiddling around with my monitor-settings, it feels like the default could be reduced quite significantly without other issues. JackTheSecond (talk) 09:10, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just about what looks good, it's about reducing eyestrain and improving legibility. The new white text is simply far too bright at #EAECF0 rather than the previous text color in the beta, which was #DFDEDD. If you refer to Material Design's recommendations for dark theme, you'll see they recommend 87% opacity on #FFFFFF for "high emphasis" text (their term for the main text), which equates to #DEDEDE, essentially the same as the beta. The new experimental dark mode seems to overlook decades of user design research. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 21:17, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Dark mode turned on for me yesterday evening, and I found it very difficult to read, especially the watchlist page, where I had great difficulty seeing which changed pages I had already looked at. I managed to turn dark mode off, except that each page loads in dark mode, and I have to wait several seconds until it switches to light mode. At least dark mode is not popping up this morning. Donald Albury12:07, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
templates that automatically change text colors from default settings?[edit]
i tried to make this clear, then i accidentally erased part of it and had to rewrite it. i hope it's (still) clear (again).
In dark mode, some sections of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style have dark text that's nearly invisible on the dark background. i can just barely read it when i zoom in, but i can read it, so it's not exactly the same color... but it's much too easy not to see it at all if you don't know to look for it. It's darker than gray or dark grey text, but the blackground is slightly darker (and apparently black black text is even darker than that). Some of the red and green text can be hard to read on the dark background, too; they might actually use dark red and dark green instead of red and green. These non-default colors seem to be products of templates; i am not very "fluent" in the use of templates. (For instance, in the examples transcribed below, are "Correct" and "Incorrect" two different templates, one green and one red? Are "Correct", "Accepted", "Acceptable", "Better", and "Clear" all versions of the same green template?)
Her albums Foo and Bar reached numbers one and three...
An exception is issue numbers of comic books, which unlike for other periodicals are conventionally given in general text in the form #1, unless a volume is also given, in which case write volume two, number seven or Vol. 2, No. 7. Another exception are periodical publications carrying both, issue and number designations (typically one being a year-relative and the other an absolute value); they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss. 2, No. 143 in text. When using the abbreviations, write {{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}, {{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}, {{abbr|No.|Number}}, or {{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}, at first occurrence.
Slovak returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985 after growing tired of What Is This?.
Acceptable:
Slovak returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985 after growing tired of What Is This?
Better:
Slovak, having grown tired of What Is This?, returned to the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1985.
Incorrect:
He made several films with Sammy Davis Jr..
Correct:
He made several films with Sammy Davis Jr.
aside: Would He and Sammy Davis Jr. made several films together. be better?
Honorable mention for dark mode (light text on dark background) including phrases of dark text on light background, as seen in MOS:AFFIXDASH (EDIT: i just realized this particular issue must be with the ‹template Cat is being considered for merging› bit, not the Manual of Style itself):
Honorable mention also for viewing a Difference between revisions, where the revised portion of the article appears in light text on a dark background, but the editor's name/IP address appear with select stats as dark text (well, blue links, mostly) on a light background. For example, the diff for the most recent edit to this page shows mostly in dark mode, but shows
Lowercase sigmabot III
BOTS, TEMPLATE EDITORS
2,189,332
EDITS
on a light background... and i didn't realize until i did that copy-paste that EDITS is there in text almost as light as the background.
Thanks to the people working on this.
aside: For my own amusement and future reference, i have been using my talk page (Learn more about this page) to test what names of colorsworkwiththisWikipediacode(andwhichdonot). Maybe that could help someone see which colors work best for light mode, dark mode, or both?
I have fixed all of the Linter dark mode issues at Wikipedia:Manual of Style, so it may display better now. However, the green text generated by {{xt}} appears to be #006400, which, when placed on the #202122 "black" background of dark mode, results in a contrast ratio of 2.16:1, a failing score. The red text generated by {{!xt}} appears to be #8B0000, which, when placed on the same black background, results in a contrast ratio of 1.61:1, another failing score. I'm not sure what to do about that. Either someone needs to find a green that works with both, or a style sheet could be created to deliver different greens and reds in light and dark mode, or something else. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:21, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Jonesey.
If i'm going to keep reporting these issues, maybe i should learn how to fix them myself, but i don't even know what questions to ask or if i'd understand the answers. For example, what's Linter?
they should be given in the form 2 #143 in citations, or be spelt out as Iss. 2, No. 143 in text. When using the abbreviations, write {{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}, {{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}, {{abbr|No.|Number}}, or {{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}, at first occurrence.
"2 #143" and "Iss. 2, No. 143" seem to be dark green in both light mode and dark mode, but "{{abbr|Vol.|Volume}}", "{{abbr|Iss.|Issue}}", "{{abbr|No.|Number}}", and "{{abbr|Nos.|Numbers}}" are dark green in dark mode and black in light mode? --173.67.42.107 (talk) 09:37, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i'm still figuring out how Wikipedia tables work and Web colors#Hex triplets go right over my head, but i think Template:Episode_table lets you override some default colors, which still leaves the problem of picking colors that suit both light mode and dark mode, or altering the template so it switches colors when the user toggles between light mode and dark mode.
--173.67.42.107 (talk) 09:19, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Jonesey95: I brought up this issue at {{Episode list}} with this discussion. Have not gotten any response there so maybe you can chime in. The IP is correct that the cell backgrounds are not adjusting properly in dark mode. Taking Nashville season 5 as an example, the "No. overall" column is rendering as I would expect in dark mode, while all the others are not. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 14:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[...] In that previous message, we announced that dark mode on desktop would be rolled out in one step, for both logged-in and logged-out users, in the week of July 15 (that is, next week). However, we'd be more comfortable to enable it for logged-in users first. [...]
We are going to enable dark mode on desktop just for logged-in users this week. If everything goes well (it has been going very well so far!) we will enable it on desktop for logged-out users next week as we previously announced.
Is "next week" on WP:THURSDAY? Could you please give dates for these? There are at least three relevant places on mediawiki.org:
I noticed that when editors edit this particular template in Visual Editor, VE would remove all the spacing between the parameters. To fix this, I added custom formatting of the paramaters into the TemplateData to keep the spacing. It worked! However, with this fix, the new issue is now the removal of just the spacing after the last parameter, which I then need to restore manually.
In these examples linked, every other parameter declaration and value for {{Episode table}} can be displayed inline; however, |episodes= spans multiple lines, and its value should begin on the line after the parameter declaration.
That's unfortunate; I did think that might be the case. Does that mean the sort of edit in that last link is not something that can be automatically fixed? -- Alex_21TALK01:39, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Chrome just killed all customization on Wikipedia for me?[edit]
Resolved
Weird - I just installed Chrome on a new computer, and it is ignoring all my preferences - scripts, etc. No scripts show up (Twinkle, etc.), heck, it even does not allow me to enable visual editor. Heck, even clicking 'add topic' in Chrome on this very page here doesn't work. Microsoft Edge which I used on that computer for few days works fine (all tools/etc. show up and work), and obviously I can post here. Seems like some Chrome issue (not Wiki preferences issue) - any idea what settings to play with? No, clearing cache etc. doesn't work. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here12:08, 11 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- in the first tab, Categories, I put Wikipedia policies and guidelines in the categories field;
- in the Page properties tab, I unchecked mainspace (the blank one) and checked Wikipedia;
- in the Other sources tab, I typed "unchecked" in the search field and enwiki in the field to the right of the search (and clicked "from categories" in Use wiki);
Searching that shows differing amounts of results depending on the depth value in the first tab (Categories), but doesn't error.
When I have the CharInsert gadget enabled on the English Wikipedia (which is on by default), the buttons for individual characters are still white when I also have dark mode enabled (which it is for me because of my operating system settings). First reported on mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading, but Jon (WMF) said to report it to the "gadget author". The user preference links here for troubleshooting, so here I am. -- Beland (talk) 06:44, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Editing with Windows 11 and Firefox, if I right click the "About Wikipedia" in this page's navigation panel, then select "copy link" I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About in my clipboard.
It would be useful to have an option to "copy link in Wiki format", and get Wikipedia:About instead.
Ideally it would substitute spaces for underscores where apllicable. It would be good if it could also handle section links.
I looked up the error code: [5] The error was: "Database servers in extension1 are overloaded. In order to protect application servers, the circuit breaking to databases of this section have been activated. Please try again a few seconds." and occurred while the software was trying to mark one of your notifications as read. ("extension1" is a database storing information that is shared across all wikis, such as notifications.)
It seems that there was a small spike of these errors between 08:26 and 08:28 today, but I can't find any Phabricator task or incident report about it, so I would guess it wasn't too serious of a problem. Matma Rextalk14:13, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
DannyS712 bot, a bot which is supposed to look after various daily or weekly maintenance tasks, hasn't made any edits since July 1, including failing to update Wikipedia:Database reports/Polluted categories (2) in eleven days despite that being a thing that's supposed to happen weekly, but the bot's maintainer says on their own userpage that they're not around much lately, and they haven't made any Wikipedia edits at all since July 3, so there's no way to know when they'll be back in order to look into it if I approach them personally (especially in July, when any editor could very well be on vacation for a couple of weeks). So could somebody take a quick gander into whether there's a problem with the bot, and maybe jumpstart it again if there is? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 15:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I saw the ping, and have been meaning to get to this, but am aware of the issue - hopefully I'll have time this weekend, and sorry for the delays --DannyS712 (talk) 21:07, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What are notifications of "A link was made from X to Y"?[edit]
I made a new list article (Scientology properties) and now am getting "notifications" with a message like "A link was made from Dianazene to Scientology properties." Here are screenshots of 3 I received. What are these? I cannot find any wikilinks within the source of these articles pointing to my new article, and none of these 3 articles should wikilink to this article. How is this happening? What does it mean? How do I research these... and remove such links? Or are they related to Template:Scientology and some bot just hasn't gotten around to telling me the other hundred articles which are now linked together? But what kind of "link" is this? ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 23:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Grorp: It's wikilinks like [[Scientology properties]] whether they are in the source or made by a template like {{Scientology}} and {{Scientology properties}}. The three examples in your screenshot transclude {{Scientology}} and were recently edited.[6][7][8] I don't know whether such notifications will always be delayed until the next edit. You can mute further notifications with a click in the notification or by using the box at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo. You cannot say that you only want notifictions of source links and not transcluded links from templates. User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js gives a way to search for source links to a page. It doesn't currently find any in articles.[9]PrimeHunter (talk) 00:32, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PrimeHunter: Thanks! I think you're right that the next edit to an article using {{Scientology}} will generate another one of these notices... except when I make the edit. I guess I get the notices because I'm the page creator. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 02:04, 13 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, I am having an issue with Twinkle. It was working fine a few days ago but now the only option I see is 'config'. Could anyone help me fix this? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by SparrowQ (talk • contribs) 07:21, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I would like to have a script that highlights whether an edit is the current version of a page in the recent changes page and the watchlist, the same way that "m" is displayed if an edit is minor or "N" is displayed if it's a new page. "current" should be displayed if an edit is current. I mainly edit via the mobile website so it should work on mobile as well. Thank you for answering. Uricoh (talk) 07:37, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the watchlist, unless you have checked "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent", then the item on the watchlist will be the most recent change, with the rare exception of someone saving an edit to the page after the watchlist was displayed. Sorry, I don't use the recent changes page, so I don't have an answer for that. Donald Albury14:12, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is stopping AWB from fixing those? General fixes are enabled and AWB is not skipping the article. If they are not the exact same, can AWB merge them?
Should we add a parameter to the {{duplicated references}} template that can be used to provide more information?
Unless a bot can recognise if it generates cite errors and roll back this would be a bad idea. All of the automated tools generate issues at one point or another that need review. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t°16:35, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I assume that since loads of stuff has stopped working with every skin except Vector (2022), this is a deliberate way of forcing editors to switch to it even though no one wanted it in the first place. Nice call! ——Serial Number 5412909:58, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course PrimeHunter, and apologies to WMF for the hyperbole. but it's blooming odd. I haven't touched my scripts for over a month—I know there's probably too many!—but over the last week (not sure absolutely since when), One-Click ArchiverandDiscussion Closer have disappeared from where they used to be. I noticed the latter's absence earlier when I tried to close a discussion. Tried all the available skins in preferences, the two scripts were missing in all of them except Vector 2022. Coincidence? Hence my outraged squawks of sabotage :) I'm using Vector 2010 btw. ——Serial Number 5412911:01, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Both scripts should have been updated for changes that have been communicated multiple times in the Tech News newsletter, scripts without active maintainers aren't the responsibility of the Foundation. Sjoerd de Bruin(talk)12:09, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Serial Number 54129 The good news is that all this stuff will break for Vector 2022 in the near future as well. The markup changes that broke those scripts was implemented on older skins first, but will be implemented on Vector 2022 in MediaWiki 1.44. --Ahecht (TALK PAGE)14:39, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The title of this thread is rather hyperbolic, but there is something to be said about how this breakage came to be. Wikipedia depends on hundreds (if not thousands) of add-on front-end scripts (and other back-end tools) to do essential work. I don't think it's hyperbolic at all to say that if all these tools were to suddenly stop working, it would be very difficult to keep things going. These tools depend on navigating (and in many cases, modifying) the structure of a rendered page. As such, the structure of the HTML is an essential API, just as much as any of the other documented APIs. The problem is, it's not documented. And as we've seen here, it's subject to change with little or no notice, breaking stuff willy-nilly. That needs to change. RoySmith(talk)14:29, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All changes like this are clearly communicated wide ahead. That users keep using outdated scripts (or fork a existing script and never process the upstream changes) and we as the community have no way to force them to switch to a maintained version (or gadget) is a huge problem in the longer term. Sjoerd de Bruin(talk)14:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) The issue here isn't little to no notice. The notice was given in Tech news updates and I had seen in the passing some repeated pings and conversations (or attempts to do so) on the various talk pages with the maintainers. Some of these userscripts as noted by some above were abandoned or maintainers not being active.
If anything, we should look at how the userscript system is being set up (by limitations of the software) to be dependent on bus factor of 1 editor, the maintainer to have the userscript updated. Are INTADMINS empowered to update these userscripts? If so, is having 9 INTADMINs (at the current count) sufficient to update and maintain the userscripts or even redirect these outdated userscripts to the updated ones when asked? – robertsky (talk) 14:56, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a centralised place that lists all the common userscripts and who runs them? I think such a list might be helpful to track this sort of thing. Especially if you add maybe a "Last updated" + "How many editors use it" column. If a script is not updated and it falls behind, it's much easier to follow along or maybe notify editors. Soni (talk) 15:06, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's a pretty common problem with volunteer-written software. People often aren't great at succession planning, particularly when there is no financial incentive. Having the software be open source and thus available is probably good enough for small scripts. Once the tools become more elaborate, possibly with off-wiki build systems using languages other than Javascript, something more definite would be better. But it's a tradeoff: in the spirit of empowering anyone to build their own personal tools that can also be used by others, the community doesn't require any approvals that might be contingent on a long-term sustainable setup for maintenance (after all, the vast majority of scripts like the ones I wrote aren't ever going to need that). Human nature being what it is, it's hard to get backup developers ready unless they actually start taking over some of the development. But working in a team means some slowdown in development to co-ordinate and collaborate, though with the eventual benefit that there will be more redundancy in developers able to make fixes and enhancements. isaacl (talk) 16:25, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is seldom a backlog (see User:AnomieBOT/IPERTable) of ready-to-go bug fixes on abandoned user script pages. It is not up to intadmins to maintain the programming of everyone's personal scripts, but we will process bugfixes if the script owner has abandoned the project. In general, editors should never assume that another editor will make a future edit and could abandon or change their own personal scripts at anytime. — xaosfluxTalk18:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeap. I was just going to drop a link to the phab ticket you linked, thanks for linking it. The ideal workflow would have been to create this API first, THEN start deploying mw:Heading HTML changes. And anything that broke could be converted to the new API. But unfortunately that didn't happen. So now I have just been waiting for them to finish the staggered rollout, which will finally complete this Thursday July 18. At that point we can fix any remaining broken scripts. These scripts could have been fixed during the staggered rollout, but patching it to support 2 types of selectors is more complicated than just waiting for the rollout to finish, so the ideal time to fix all these is when the rollout is finished on Thursday. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:47, 15 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sir MemeGod ._. (talk - contribs - created articles) 05:23, 6 July 2024 (UTC)
Resolved