Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Highlight of "updated since my last visit"

Hi everyone,

Now that Module:European and national party data and its templates (EUPP data, Political party data, and EU institution seats) are working and starting to be deployed, I am interested in translating them across wikis. I have already created the relevant modules, config files and templates, but results differ widely from one wiki to the other (see the test pages listed on the roadmap).

For now, PT alone works, NL works except composition bars, and for all others Wikidata qIDs are returned instead of values and composition bars don't work (ES is entirely broken). I assume this is because the wikidata/wd and composition bar modules are called differently from one wiki to the next.

What is the best way to move forward with this? Should a function take arguments and give out the right wikidata/wd/composition_bar calls with an IF based on the language used? Should we use the config file? Any ideas? Julius Schwarz (talk) 12:28, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

:After testing on Portuguese Wikipedia, where the calls to wikidata/wd and composition bar are the same as in English Wikipedia, I already made a few changes to base some checks on European parties' or member states' qID instead of on their name, which is now translation-proof.

:However, there are a number of elements that are hard-coded into the module and that we should translate for users' input, but not in the module. For instance, the number of seats of the EPP in the European Parliament will be {{EUPP data|seats|EPP|EP}} in English Wikipedia (using the template as the structure is simpler), but {{EUPP data|seats|PPE|PE}}. The EPP -> PPE translation is now working. However, even we change EP -> PE in the config file, we still have checks on "EP" in the module's code. The same goes for other institutions, for special parameters ("none", "all", "thisparty", etc.), and for data_type ("seats", "seat share", "seat composition bar", "color", "individual members", etc.).

:Any ideas? Taking the liberty to tag @Trappist the monk, @Ponor and @Ahecht who had been helpful in the past. Julius Schwarz (talk) 13:23, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:How do you handle countries with multiple official languages? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

::Hmm, I am not sure this applies. The issue at hand is not the recognition of countries' official languages but the languages used by Wikipedia. For instance, I am not trying to get this to work "for Spain", but on Spanish Wikipedia (Castillan) and not on Catalan Wikipedia -- at least at this point. Julius Schwarz (talk) 14:16, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

::

::You can build language-specific translation tables. You can fetch the current wiki's content language tag with:

:::local this_project_language = mw.language.getContentLanguage():getCode();

::Use this_project_language as an index into a table of translations.

::

::Assume that the party/institution-maps-to-qid tables are the default and are associated with language tag en. For your EP → PE example, your language specific translation table for language tag xx might look like:

:::local xlate_institutions_t = {

xx = { -- translations for (xx)

PE = 'EP', -- European Parliament; translated from xx language to default (en)

},

}

::In main() you set institution from args_t[4]. Create a function that takes the current value of institution as an input. The function gets this_project_language and then looks in the appropriate translation table for a match. If found, replaces institution with the value from xlate_institutions_t[this_project_language][institution]. If not found, returns institution unchanged.

::—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:08, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Thanks @Trappist the monk, this will be useful indeed, I will work on that. What about the calls to Wikidata/wd and to the composition bar template, any idea how to translate them from the module itself with ending up with one version per wiki language? Julius Schwarz (talk) 19:10, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:::I think I am close, but I must have designed the table wrong, as return cfg.xlate_t['pt']['PE']; gives me attempt to index field 'xlate_t' (a nil value). (see table in Module:European and national party data/config) Julius Schwarz (talk) 11:04, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

::::@Trappist the monk, any idea? I find myself a bit stuck on this one :S Julius Schwarz (talk) 18:50, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::You have to export it.

:::::—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:00, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::What an idiot. Thank you. Julius Schwarz (talk) 21:01, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:Section moved from Template talk:Non breaking en dash

This template appears to cause problems in the Visual Editor. After inserting the template, typing any new text after the template causes the text to not render, but section headers on the next line remain. Needlesballoon (talk) 23:00, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

:To reproduce use Visual editor. Type any text, then insert {{tl|nbnd}}, then type some more text. As soon as you type the second digit following the template, every text since {{tl|nbnd}} disappears from the editor. But if you publish the edit or review before publish, the text is actually there. Don't know what's causing this. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 18:27, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

::The template does not have a TemplateData section in its documentation. Adding one is a good first step toward making it more compatible with VE. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:26, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Thank you. But the previous issue appears to remain unresolved. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 22:49, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Was using source editor on desktop (Firefox 137.0.2 (64-bit) on Windows 11) and encountered the below. Clicked the back button and didn't lose any progress, but thought I'd leave a copy of the error message anyway.

MediaWiki internal error.

Original exception: [33d5e4d1-f222-4c11-93c4-41e9057a40e4] 2025-04-25 18:08:10: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"

Exception caught inside exception handler.

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.

Only saw that last line upon rereading the error message after I'd clicked back, so I don't have any more info. Cheers, Rotideypoc41352public (talk) 01:09, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:I hit this too, but happily it nonetheless did save my edit. CMD (talk) 01:34, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

My eye was drawn a couple of days ago to vandalism by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/70.57.6.42 this IP]. As seen at that contributions list, they made 3 vandalism/test edits, two to one article and then one to a third. All these edits were reverted immediately, however, only the third edit is marked as such in the contributions list. What causes this difference? Should the unmarked one also have the tag, in theory? Thanks, CMD (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:The software has a job that automatically runs on each edit comparing it to a chunk of the recent edits on each page, trying to see if there are any that match the hash of the page. False negatives are routine. Izno (talk) 17:53, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

::Ah thanks, I guess that chunk didn't include the pre-vandalised version as it took place over two edits. CMD (talk) 01:04, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::{{replyto|Chipmunkdavis}} nope, an edit can be tagged as reverted if the revert is up to 15 revisions back (see the relevant manual entry on MediaWiki.org (and the links from there). Izno's message here is absolutely correct and there's no other explanation than "The software didn't get around to tagging the edit on time". Graham87 (talk) 04:35, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Thanks for the link. Could it similarly miss a single-edit revert sometimes then? CMD (talk) 04:39, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::Yep, absolutely. I've encountered that a few times. Graham87 (talk) 06:49, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

In stalinka, the relevant Russian interwiki is сталинка (as also [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60668773#sitelinks-wikipedia shown in Wikidata]), but when I hover over the Languages panel on the left in enwiki's article stalinka, it shows Башня Вулыха for Russian wiki. Yet Башня Вулыха doesn't seemingly appear in Wikidata which correctly shows Russian сталинка for Stalinka. What's happening? Brandmeister^talk 16:10, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:There was an obsolete interwiki link at the bottom of the article. I have removed it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:42, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

::I did some digging into the edit history. It appears that AWB's general fixes may have moved an intended interwiki link to the bottom of the page. I have asked for AWB to stop doing that, and I have restored the interwiki link into the prose. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:47, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Thanks. Brandmeister^talk 18:21, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

:::I've changed the article to use {{tl|Interlanguage link}}, thus avoiding this issue (and also providing other benefits, like better handling if the English article is ever created. Graham87 (talk) 04:15, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

When I edit Counter (digital)#External links and — without making any changes — click on Show preview, I see the following below the expanded {{Commons category-inline}}:

{{font color|red|Preview warning: Commons link does not match Wikidata}}

Help would be appreciated to figure out what's going on here and how to resolve this. Thanks! Lambtron talk 01:49, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:The software is upset because Counter (digital) is associated with wikidata:Q247299, whereas Commons:Category:Counter circuits is associated with wikidata:Q123909796. You can just ignore it. CMD (talk) 02:48, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Earlier today I got [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:The_Bushranger&diff=prev&oldid=1287536539 this diff] on my talk page, from a brand-new account that has it as its first and only edit. Now, nothing wrong with that...except the {{tqq|I recommend checking out this Wikipedia page}} link is to {{tqq|wikiped1a.org}} (and just that, no page listed). I think I smell a phishing scam? - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 03:46, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

: That site was registered four days ago. It is very suspicious.

: As scanners found no immediate viruses, and anyhow web pages are heavily limited by browsers on what they have the right to do on their own, I took a peek, and indeed, it's literally just a mimic enwp login form. So phishing indeed.

: That user probably ought to get blocked. — Alien  3
3 3 07:22, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:: Thanks for taking a peek. I wanted to AGF but given that sneaky "1" I had a hunch. Alas! I'll hand out a block. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 07:47, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::Literally have been trying to write a script to scan these •Cyberwolf•. talk? 22:31, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::: {{small|(That sort of stuff exists on the internet. Google "url checker" or something like that. Of course, there's a question of trust, but the top results are usually not scams or hoaxes.)}} — Alien  3
3 3 06:37, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:Should that scam site be added to the global black list? Johnuniq (talk) 08:04, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:: Probably. May also be worth reporting to WMF for trademark misuse. Anomie⚔ 11:58, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Email sent. Also listed at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist. RoySmith (talk) 12:36, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::::And just for fun, also sent an email to abuse@spaceship.com per https://www.whois.com/whois/wikiped1a.org. Not that I really think that'll do anything. RoySmith (talk) 13:42, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

• Added to global blacklist. — xaosflux ^Talk 22:59, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
• :I added another variant this evening by Special:Contributions/Professor Lukas8. Izno (talk) 06:07, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I frequently mess up user pings, most commonly by forgetting to add my signature. The reason I so often forget to sign is that so many places (such as the edit box I'm typing into right now) add your signature automatically, so I've gotten out of the habit. And of course, the most obvious fix for that, adding your signature in a follow-up edit, doesn't work because the mention and the signature have to be in the same edit. This is an terrible UX. What can we do to fix it?

It seems to me that the requirement to do two different things at the same time, i.e. mention the username and sign, is the fundamental flaw. Why does the signature need to be there? Why couldn't this be done with something like a WP:MAGICWORD or a Lua module which stands on its own. The user-visible interface ({{t|ping}}, etc) would hide the implementation details. RoySmith (talk) 11:08, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:Any method would need to avoid repinging if conversations are vandalised and restored, copied to another page, archived, etc. CMD (talk) 13:55, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::That doesn't seem too hard. There is already a list of old notifications stored in the database somewhere. Generate a unique id for each ping and before you deliver it, check to see if it has already been delivered. You could use a uuid, or hash some combination of (pageid, userid, timestamp, etc). RoySmith (talk) 14:16, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:A magic word has been considered since a while ago. phab:T128535.

:The reason the signature is required is because that's one of the surest ways to know the ping was intentional, without some magic word. If you do want to "follow up" because you forgot or elsewise, you can ping via edit summary these days. Izno (talk) 15:40, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::{{tq|the signature is required is because that's one of the surest ways to know the ping was intentional}} That may have once been true, but in today's world of most signatures being auto-generated (like the one on this reply will be), that's silly. RoySmith (talk) 18:54, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::I'm not sure how the reply tool is particularly relevant to the points in your original comment, where you forgot to sign....

:::The reason that pinging requires the signature is in fact when you add a user link on arbitrary other pages, say, on your user page when you are adding a barnstar that someone else gave you. That's not fixed by checking a unique ID for each ping as in your suggestion just above.

:::Either way, your requested magic word task has been linked and I'd suggest you subscribe to it since you appear to feel strongly that there should be another way to mess pinging up. :D Izno (talk) 03:24, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:@RoySmith: {{tq|adding your signature in a follow-up edit, doesn't work because the mention and the signature have to be in the same edit.}} If you link to the user in the edit summary of the follow-up edit (as I did in this edit), they will be pinged successfully. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 03:07, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi all, never seen this before: at Mamluk Sultanate, all the templates seem to fail to display correctly about half-way down the page (roughly around the "Agriculture" section and below), with nearly all the inline citations, hatnotes, language templates, etc appearing as wikilinks to the template page instead (e.g. citations in the reference list literally appear as "Template:Cite book", even though the templates are filled out in the source code).

The only significant thing that's happened to the page recently is semi-protection ([https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mamluk_Sultanate&diff=prev&oldid=1287647890]), but I can't imagine how that would matter. It doesn't seem to be an issue with the code/content (that I can see); when I look at older versions of the article that were definitely displaying properly at the time (e.g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mamluk_Sultanate&oldid=1275748652 Feb 2025]), the problem still shows up. The issue also shows up when I use another browser and another device, including in mobile view, and I don't see it on other pages so far. I tried purging the page, in case that made any difference, but no luck.

Any ideas? I assume this is the best place to ask (please direct me if not). Thanks, R Prazeres (talk) 17:05, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:{{Re|R Prazeres}} (Partial answer) The page has dropped into :Category:Pages where post-expand include size is exceeded and :Category:Pages with script errors. Some relevant template must have changed quite recently, since Archive.org has a snapshot of [https://web.archive.org/web/20250426001245/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk_Sultanate a good version from 26 April]. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:24, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::The timestamp for the PEIS category addition is 2025-04-27T16:50:19Z, so quite recent. CMD (talk) 17:38, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:Looks like it's exceeding a server limit on parsing: Post‐expand include size: 2097152/2097152 bytes. See WP:PEIS for some information and possible solutions. DMacks (talk) 17:28, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::Nice job resolving the edit-conflict, Mediawiki! DMacks (talk) 17:29, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::With all the calls to {{tl|transl}} replaced by calls to {{tl|transliteration}}, the problem goes away. Perhaps there's a problem with the RFD notice on {{tl|transl}}? -- John of Reading (talk) 17:41, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::: That's been there since March 13th, though I guess it could be job queue lag. Sidenote: could someone please close that discussion already? It's long stale and overdue for closure. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:42, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::: Closed as delete all. If you find use-cases, feel free to replace them. DMacks (talk) 18:28, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::Thank you to everyone. So if I understood correctly, all {{transl}} instances should be replaced by {{transliteration}}, which will solve the problem and will need to happen in any case? R Prazeres (talk) 18:34, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::Your understanding is correct. It will probably take a day or three to get some automated help on making those changes. I'm waiting for the dust to settle (seeing if anyone complains), so it doesn't look like I'm requesting a third party to make a controversial edits on my behalf. DMacks (talk) 18:49, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::If feasible, {{tl|Being deleted}} should probably be modified and applied on the affected redirects yet to be deleted. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 21:47, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::The templates should be added to WP:TFD/H. Gonnym (talk) 22:08, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::Thanks for the reminders...I handled some by hand completely but didn't realize how many places some were used when I started. There doesn't seem to be a clean way of marking for simple replacement...not a merge or subst. Easy enough to list in the holding cell. But given the existing transclusion mess (what started this thread), I'm loathe to add even more things into the template pages themselves:( DMacks (talk) 23:42, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::::Understandable. The deletion of redirects, but not the actual templates, probably doesn't concern the average reader anyway, so a notice may not be necessary. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 10:30, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Editing Japanese Communist Party, I got a "media wiki internal error", so I tried to post here about it, and instead of arriving here I got a similar error

MediaWiki internal error.

Original exception: [0d3da270-7b6e-4ed2-a2a8-66bef6751ae3] 2025-04-27 19:42:18: Fatal exception of type "Wikimedia\Rdbms\DBUnexpectedError"

Exception caught inside exception handler.

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.

A few moments pass, and I see that my edit to the JCP page went through, and I can now access this page. Posting here for information. DuncanHill (talk) 19:47, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:Yeah, this has been going on for a bit. See for example "[No action needed, just FYI] MediaWiki internal error" from yesterday. The WMF folks know about it and are working on it (but I can't find the right phab ticket at the moment). RoySmith (talk) 23:11, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

::{{re|RoySmith}} I was wondering if it was related to Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_219#Error_message from about a month ago. DuncanHill (talk) 13:32, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:::I'm not familiar with the codebase, but just based on the exception messages, my guess is that it probably is. Theres's a bunch of threads in Archive 219 that touch on this and reference several related phab tickets. I'll just add that this is an intermittent problem in a large complex system. Such things are usually difficult to debug. RoySmith (talk) 13:46, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm using Chrome on my laptop, and I just noticed that when I try to type double square brackets, [[, on en-WP like in this comment or the edit summary section or the search box, it turns into this signː ʽ

Anyone else see this? It doesn't seem to happen on Swedish WP. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:36, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:I don't know why, but the character ʽ is [https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+02BD U+02BD] "Modifier Letter Reversed Comma". Are you saying it only happens when typing directly into an edit window (or edit summary or search box) at enwiki? What if you visit some other website where you can enter text: what happens there? You might see what extensions are installed. Johnuniq (talk) 05:57, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::@Johnuniq Apart from sv-WP, I've tested Commons and searchboxes on google and CNN, and they all behave normally. I also noticed that there are more signs that turn into other stuff, (single) curly bracket { becomes ̪ Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:22, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::Ok, this window (the Reply-window) has a discreet dropdown in the lower right corner (icon seems to be a keyboard). I set that to "Use native keyboard" and that seems to have done the trick. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:::You can also switch between the native keyboard and the other input methods by pressing Ctrl+M, which is much easier to do accidentally than clicking the icon, and it's probably what happened. I feel like this happens to someone at least every few months. Matma Rex talk 15:10, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I've sadly had to nominate some images for deletion on Commons, as they are still in copyright until 2030. One could be used here as fair use here in the meantime. Do we have tool that will handle that, before deletion takes place, to save me from having to download it to my machine, and then re-upload it here, copying and pasting all the metadata? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:55, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:Try https://wikifile-transfer.toolforge.org/ – DreamRimmer (talk) 14:48, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::Thank you. That looks promising, but just gave me "An error occurred during upload.: AxiosError: Request failed with status code 500". I shall try again later. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:10, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

The latest run of Special:WantedCategories features a cluster of redlinked wikiproject class and importance rating categories that can't be created at the names they're appearing at, as they contain internal redundancies such as "Draft-Class Draft-Class" or "pages articles" or "X importance of X importance". These all relate specifically to Wikiproject Dungeons & Dragons, but as far as I can tell they're not being caused by that Wikiproject's banner itself, because their contents aren't pages but bluelinked class-rating subcategories that aren't similarly malformed, and those subcategories only have {{tl|Quality and importance category}} on them rather than any template specific to that Wikiproject. But I can't figure out a plausible reason why that general, widely used template would be causing this nonsense only on Dungeons & Dragons-specific categories, as I can't see any code in that template that would specifically cause this on Dungeons & Dragons pages without breaking anything else — and that template, further, is even breaking the name of the Wikiproject to something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Mid-importance in its explicatory text.

So I need to ask if somebody can look into finding out where this error is coming from and how to fix it so that the redlinks go away. The implicated categories are:

• {{cl|Draft-Class Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of High-importance pages}}
• {{cl|Draft-Class Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Low-importance pages}}
• {{cl|Draft-Class Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Mid-importance pages}}
• {{cl|Draft-Class Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of NA-importance pages}}
• {{cl|Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of High-importance articles by quality and importance}}
• {{cl|Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Low-importance articles by quality and importance}}
• {{cl|Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Mid-importance articles by quality and importance}}
• {{cl|Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of NA-importance articles by quality and importance}}
• {{cl|High-importance Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of High-importance articles}}
• {{cl|Low-importance Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Low-importance articles}}
• {{cl|Mid-importance Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of Mid-importance articles}}
• {{cl|NA-importance Draft-Class Dungeons & Dragons pages of NA-importance pages}}

Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:Please ask future questions pertaining to assessment at Template talk:WikiProject banner. That is where the users who understand what is being done to banners know are. Izno (talk) 17:02, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

: This is caused by Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 April 19#Category:Redirect-Class 20th Century Studios articles of Low-importance. Cc {{u|HouseBlaster}} who closed it. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 17:20, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:Yes, :Template:Quality and importance category definitely needs an update after the categories were moved. It seems that template is mainly used by the dungeons and dragons project. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:22, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:Should be {{fixed}} following "ugly hack to get around Lua pattters being terrible #125462947". HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 19:17, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

File:Sub-referencing reuse visual.png

Hi I’m Johannes from Wikimedia Deutschland's Technical Wishes team. We are making great strides with the new sub-referencing feature and we’d love to invite you to take part in two activities to help us move this work further:

1. Try it out and share your feedback
2. :Please try the updated wikitext feature [https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Sub-referencing on the beta wiki] and let us know what you think, either on our talk page or by [https://greatquestion.co/wikimediadeutschland/talktotechwish booking a call] with our UX researcher.
3. Get a sneak peak and help shape the Visual Editor user designs
4. :Help us test the new design prototypes by participating in user sessions – [https://greatquestion.co/wikimediadeutschland/gxk0taud/apply sign up here to receive an invite]. We're especially hoping to speak with people from underrepresented and diverse groups. If that's you, please consider signing up! No prior or extensive editing experience is required. User sessions will start May 14th.

We plan to bring this feature to Wikimedia wikis later this year. We’ll reach out to wikis for piloting in time for deployments. Creators and maintainers of reference-related tools and templates will be contacted beforehand as well.

Thank you very much for your support and encouragement so far in helping bring this feature to life! Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 15:06, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

: If only you hadn't decided that VE's shortcomings meant you had to change from the straightforward syntax people had hammered out over years of discussion to a previously rejected option that tries to shove wikitext into a tag parameter. Anomie⚔ 12:41, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

::Yes, the previous approach of wrapping a subreference citation in {{tag|ref}} with a parameter identifying the main citation was much cleaner and more flexible. It also allowed for generating metadata. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:36, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Thanks for your feedback! See :meta:Talk:WMDE Technical Wishes/Sub-referencing#Moving forward with sub-referencing for a detailed explanation why we chose the new syntax approach. In short: One of the main goals of sub-referencing was providing a MediaWiki solution for re-using references with different details which works for all users, no matter which editing interface they use. That's why we reached out to communities for feedback last year and decided to go with the new syntax. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 08:01, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:::: I've commented there already, and you ignored me there too. I read your reasoning there as "VE has shortcomings and we don't want to fix it, so we're choosing a worse solution". Anomie⚔ 11:20, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::Sorry for leaving your comment [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WMDE_Technical_Wishes/Sub-referencing#c-Anomie-20250302003800-Johannes_Richter_(WMDE)-20250131115700] without a reply, I was on leave until this week [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Richter_(WMDE)?diff=prev&oldid=1287795180]. Please note that WMDE Technical Wishes is a small team dedicated to improve certain MediaWiki features. We do not have the resources to take on VisualEditor, that's what the Wikimedia Foundation is doing. We were faced with the option to stop our work on sub-referencing indefinitely – despite having worked on it for years – or continue with a different approach. Based on community feedback from different projects we decided to do the latter. Johannes Richter (WMDE) (talk) 12:19, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::I can't speak for {{U|Anomie}}, but personally, I worry with a new feature like this that it will be deployed half-baked, as the Visual Editor and Vector 2022 and dark mode have been, and then the developers will move on to another project, even as volunteer editors dutifully report bugs in Phabricator. If the Wikimedia Foundation has a lot of resources and still lets the Visual Editor and Vector 2022 languish for years with unresolved bugs that make life difficult for editors who need to fix or work around problems, how is the WMDE going to address the inevitable bugs that are reported when editors get their hands on this new feature and start making a mess? – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:32, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:Will there be a way to make it as user-friendly as {{tlx|sfn}} (which creates nice and readable wikitext) by suitable wrapper templates? And how would something like {{tlx|sfnm}} work with sub-references? —Kusma (talk) 13:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

::sfn and sfnm would need to be provided the parent's name in addition to their current information, and the general references would need to be moved into a <references> or equivalent (at a minimum). At which point it is a serious question whether even to continue using sfn on any specific page. There is no template-use-wide promotion from one system to the other without bot or script or manual effort. Izno (talk) 15:40, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Per this discussion, is it possible to remove the signature and seal fields from Template:Sidebar person without causing errors in articles where it is transcluded? Thanks. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 19:24, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:@The ed17 Of course it is possible from a technical perspective. However, I would certainly anticipate some talk page annoyance given the breadth with which this template is apparently used without a wider consensus gathering effort. Izno (talk) 21:38, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::{{ping|Izno}} I'd considered that, but it's transcluded into 2800 pages. That's more than a few but far less than e.g. Template:Sidebar. If you can give me a blueprint for removing the fields myself, I'd be happy to take on the BRD burden. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 22:16, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:::The sandbox should be functional for this request. Izno (talk) 22:25, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Thanks, {{u|Izno}}. Appreciate the work there! Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 14:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, does anyone else actually {\relative {g' a es}} (care) about the [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Score Score extension]? Sometimes it seems like I am operating in a vacuum. Progress on features has ground to a halt, and sadly it is being left to rot on the vine. There is a ticket for making it output vastly improved SVG instead of poor resolution raster PNG images [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T49578 T49578], which has been open for twelve years; I merged code for it two years ago, and it's ready to deploy. If you care about music notation on Mediawiki projects (WikiSource uses it a fair bit too), we need to get the "deploy new version into production" ticket [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T385404 T385404] progressed. What are we to do? How can we get this done? I don't want anyone to pile onto tickets and harass the engineers because they're busy and it's nobody's fault, but perhaps a show of hands as a few upvotes, polite words of encouragement or offers to help on the ticket? It's so frustrating to have it ready to go to just languish in limbo for years. — Jon (talk) 22:54, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:I mean, a lot of that is the typical state of development. I'd suggest getting on wikitech IRC and asking the same or similar questions, and someone can maybe answer. Being a greasy wheel in the right places (and Phab is rarely the right place IMO) is the way to get things done, as in most of open source. Izno (talk) 23:00, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

::You know what they say: "The greasy wheel gets the squeak!" – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:26, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Looking at Special:TopicSubscriptions, if a section gets removed or archived the topicsubscription is not removed.

Is there a script that checks if these topics still exist, and unsubscribes if they do not?

Shouldn't that functionality be built in? I got like 600 topicsubscriptions. Polygnotus (talk) 23:55, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:There isn't, but that's not really a problem. There's no limit, the system should handle hundreds of thousands. Matma Rex talk 02:27, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

And while I am here, how is it possible that Special:TopicSubscriptions keeps showing that I am subscribed to a topic when I already unsubscribed via the section header? Looking at the unsubscribe link on Special:TopicSubscriptions and comparing that with the unsubscribe link in the section header reveals the one on Special:TopicSubscriptions is:

/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&action=dtsubscribe&commentname=h-Srbernadette-20250428025800&section=Middleton+family

and the other is

/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&action=dtunsubscribe&commentname=h-Perception312-20250427143200

So it looks like I somehow got subscribed to a comment and not a section, How and why?

It means I can't just open a bunch of links from Special:TopicSubscriptions and then unsubscribe via the section header but have to check the page and then go back to Special:TopicSubscriptions to unsubscribe.

Does that mean there are actually 2 subscriptions, one to the section and one to the comment? That seems unlikely because when I unsubscribe from the comment via Special:TopicSubscriptions then I am no longer subscribed to the section when visiting the page (it shows [subscribe] not [unsubscribe]).

Shouldn't unsubscribing via a section header also unsubscribe from all comments within that section?

And ideally unwatching a page should unsubscribe from all sections (and therefore comments) on that talkpage (and perhaps watching a page should do the same because if you watch the entire page there is no need to also watch a specific section on that page).

Polygnotus (talk) 00:00, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

:action=dtunsubscribe actually ignores the section parameter, I think we just overlooked the fact that we're passing it unnecessarily in one case. I sent a quick patch for that: [https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/DiscussionTools/+/1139581].

:So, the only difference is different commentname parameters. You can input them into Special:FindComment to find out more about what happened to these sections:

:* Special:FindComment/h-Perception312-20250427143200 gives a link to [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Help_desk&oldid=1287745335#h-Middleton_family-20250427143200] and "not in current revision"

:* Special:FindComment/h-Srbernadette-20250428025800 gives a link to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#h-Middleton_family-20250428025800]

:So it seems to me that these were actually two different discussions with the same section title (although you commented in both of them and subscribed to both). Matma Rex talk 02:27, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

:Watching and subscribing are completely independent. From what I remember, we made them that way because we were being very cautious not to mess up anyone's established workflows with the watchlist when adding the new subscriptions feature, but alas this ends up being a bit awkward when you're using both features. Matma Rex talk 02:27, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

{{ping|Matma Rex}} pinging Matma Rex who is a certified genius. Polygnotus (talk) 00:54, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

:When it comes to my DiscussionTools work, let's go with mad genius… I tried to answer your questions inline. Matma Rex talk 02:27, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

::@Matma Rex Thank you! I have to think about this for a bit. I did notice there was no equivalent of Special:EditRecovery for DiscussionTools so now we have User:Polygnotus/Scripts/DiscussionToolsDrafts. Polygnotus (talk) 06:33, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

File:Symbol watching blue lashes high contrast.svg You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Navbox §Improved readability. Whatback11 (talk) 15:40, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Reference 52 in Vince Gill has a template error in the archive-url section. This seems to be because of the original url having an asterisk in it. I can't for the life of me find a work around. Anyone got a suggestion? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:56, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

:I'd suggest using [https://web.archive.org/web/20240419000231/https://www.soundslikenashville.com/news/years-later-vince-gill-pocket-full-gold/ this] for the archive-url. It matches the archive-date and goes directly to the archived site. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:01, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

:The asterixed url is to an index page rather than an archived copy of the article. As @Firefangledfeathers says using one of the links listed on the page fixes the issue. Nthep (talk) 19:05, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

William Carter (bishop) is in Category:Articles needing additional references from April 2015 :Category:Articles needing additional references from April 2015, but I can't find any refimprove or more citations, or one source or any other templates used on the page. How did it get in that category? Newystats (talk) 04:18, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:{{tl|Carter family tree}} Izno (talk) 04:26, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

::{{ping|Newystats}} You could have used Special:ExpandTemplates and searched for the category name. User:PrimeHunter/ExpandTemplates.js loads the current page in ExpandTemplates with a click. PrimeHunter (talk) 08:36, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Thanks! Newystats (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2025 (UTC)