Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 188#Reply tool
{{Wikipedia:Village pump/Archive header}}
Source has no page number on crucial page
I want to use a reference in a source that has page numbers for virtually all the text - but not for the "Authors note" at the beginning, which has some useful information. If I were referring to any other page in the book, the ref would look like{{cite book |last1=Greenhill |first1=Basil |title=The Merchant Schooners |date=1951 |publisher=Conway Maritime Press |location=London |isbn=0 85177 475 X |edition=1988}}{{rp|99}} (for page 99). I am sure that there must be a way of stating "author's note" instead of a page number, but cannot find it. Any ideas? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:12, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
:You can use Template:Cite book#In-source locations and say |at=Authors note. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:56, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
::Thanks, that would seem to work, but has a problem if the same source is needed elsewhere in the article (which is highly likely). That means I would have to use the full reference a second time (giving it a slightly different refname) and use the
::I have just tried again with {{cite book |last1=Greenhill |first1=Basil |title=The Merchant Schooners |date=1951 |publisher=Conway Maritime Press |location=London |isbn=0 85177 475 X |edition=1988}}{{rp|Author's note}} and it seems to give exactly what I want. I have no idea why it didn't work the first time I tried it.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:45, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{ping|ThoughtIdRetired}} This is one of the typical reasons for the use of shortened footnotes. Rp is sometimes the other mechanism used, but I find it ugly. --Izno (talk) 06:23, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{ping|Izno}}I feel that shortened footnotes make it more tedious to work out where the text of an article comes from. You might find the reference more easily, but it is difficult to get a view of how much of the article relies on that work, and it is slower to get back to the point you had read to in the article. I have done quite a bit of trying to work out where some articles are sourced and therefore this is the voice of experience. It's a particular issue if several authors have written more than one work on the subject - I have to make written notes in complex cases. So, the citation method I have chosen may not be pretty, but it scores better on functionality. Obviously, just a point of view.... ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:10, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|ThoughtIdRetired}} Typing
{{Reflist-talk}}
:::{{re|Izno|ThoughtIdRetired|DuncanHill}} Just to point out the opposite point of view and what I consider to be the advantages of {{tl|sfn}}s. Using
:::I agree that screwed-up {sfn}s are annoying: often that's because the editor didn't include |ref=harv in {{tl|cite book}} etc. The few examples I have come across have mostly been of this type. However, you now don't need it any more: CS1/2 copes with it automatically, and a bot has been removing |ref=harv from {cites} for a while.{{sfn|Greenhill|1988|p=49}} Since I use {sfn}s all the time I find fixing them only takes a few moments, and I haven't come across a bad one for some time. I also agree that {sfn}s and {cite book} can take longer to learn than
:::In order to use sfns properly, I believe the {cite book} params have to be correct as well: the actual edition cited should be in (parentheses), and the original edition in [square brackets]. I would tend to use {{para|year}} and {{para|orig-year}} which displays slightly differently:
{{reflist-talk}}
::;Bibliography
::*{{cite book |last1=Greenhill |first1=Basil |title=The Merchant Schooners |year=1988 |orig-year=1951 |publisher=Conway Maritime Press |location=London |isbn=0 85177 475 X }}
::*{{cite book |last1=Greenhill |first1=Basil |title=Pleasure Schooners |ref={{harvid|Greenhill|1988a}} |year=1988 |publisher=Conway Maritime Press |location=London}} {{color|blue|ISBN 0 85188 478 X}}
::::As a note, you do not need to {{tq|1=use CITEREFGreenhill1988a. --Izno (talk) 07:40, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::Thanks, learn something every day. >MinorProphet (talk) 10:01, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::{{replyto|MinorProphet}} When building a {{tlx|cite book}} (or similar) with a view to using {{tlx|sfn}}, the only parameters that matter for the {{tlx|cite book}} are: {{para|last1}} (or {{para|last}} if there is only one author), {{para|last2}}, {{para|last3}}, {{para|last4}} (as many as are applicable) and {{para|date}}; other parameters such as {{para|edition}} and {{para|orig-date}} do not contribute to the sfn anchor. As regards suffix letters for years, see refs 25, 50, 51, 55 at Reading Southern railway station. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:50, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::{{re|Redrose64}} Hi, I think I was aware that {{tlx|sfn}} only needs {{para|last}}etc. and {{para|date}}, but my wording was clumsily expressed. What I was trying to say was that since you can use {{tlx|cite}} params in various ways not necessarily envisaged by their authors, are {{para|edition}}1988 and {{para|year}}1988 equally valid methods for displaying what amounts to the same concept? In other words, is there (or should there be) one and only one way to use eg {{tlx|cite book}}? There will probably be both purists and hackers. Also, it's very much a personal choice since everyone seems to have developed their own favourite style of cite, regardless of the many very specific Chicago/Harvard/Oxford/CS1|2 styles. Thanks also for the helpful pointers to Reading SR station - coincidentally I was at school there in the 1970s, and remember well the old GWR station with the original entrance building. >MinorProphet (talk) 13:06, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::At present, if you are not specifying the day and month you can use Template:Cite book#csdoc_year as an alternative to Template:Cite book#csdoc_date; but {{para|year}} is not guaranteed to work forever - there are those who would seek to eradicate all parameter alternatives for the cite templates. If you don't stick to what's in the documentation, it may not work and you will probably get a bot trampling all over your edit. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 13:31, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
{{de-indent}}
I seem to remember a very long time ago that I encountered some difficulty with using {{para|date}} with only a year. It would have been when I first started trying to understand {{tlx|cite book}} coupled with {{tlx|sfn}} etc.; perhaps merely an initial misunderstanding. Anyway I've used {{para|year}} ever since with books, and {{para|date}} with {{tlx|cite journal}} and {{tlx|cite news}} but I really don't care what the param is, even |go-forth-and-multiply=...(lol?) If {{para|date}} takes any combination of DDMMYYYY etc., I'm quite happy to use it.
{{re|ThoughtIdRetired|DuncanHill}} I have been slow to understand your preference for a {{tlx|cite book}} in the reflist, with perhaps no bibliography. As was pointed out it, is indeed much easier to locate every reference to a book etc. by using
So, why might someone want to locate every cite of a particular source in the whole of an article? As a general reader, when coming across an article that interests me, I might well attempt to hunt down the source, but I wouldn't necessarily want to pinpoint every ref in a specific book, even as an editor or creator of an article. Thoughts? MinorProphet (talk) 15:31, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
:Most of the sfn errors I come across (and I have fixed hundreds) are undefined works, or multiple undifferentiated works, or not matching the name in the sfn brackets with the names in the defined citation. Sometimes they are because of editors copying lumps of text from other articles and not bothering to check the refs afterwards, or editors "cleaning up" bibliographies and further reading sections without realising that some of the works are being called by refs. I've also seen them broken because someone has, cleverly and helpfully, defined refs in a template which happen to have the same name as other refs used on the page calling the template. As a reader I want to be able to check a citation quickly and easily, and for me short citations make that harder. They don't break up the flow of the text because if I just want to read the text I can choose not to look at the refs. When it comes to "literary style" in article space I'm with Beckett, who tried to write without it, and Q, who told us to kill our darlings. "Just the facts, ma'am", as Joe Friday didn't quite say. DuncanHill (talk) 15:58, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
::I am caught by surprise by the volume of comments here - I will have to study them in more detail later as a bit rushed right now.
An immediate answer to {{tq|So, why might someone want to locate every cite of a particular source in the whole of an article? As a general reader,....}} - in 2 parts. (1) General reader: when I first started using wikipedia - before doing any editing - if I wanted to find out more on a subject it seemed sensible to pick the major sources for an article and read them. Rightly or wrongly, I feel my preferred method of referencing allows you to quickly identify where the bulk of the article is sourced. (I note that "further reading" sections are an unreliable source of helpful reading material - if the books are not used as references in the article, why are they important?) (2) As an editor, more by accident than design, I seem to spend a lot of my rather limited editing time on articles that I feel are something of a disaster (in terms of content). The first job is to work out where the article is sourced. (That often answers the question: why is this so bad?) So often there is an impressive list of references, but when you get into it, you realise that most of the meat of an article is sourced to something one would struggle to define as an RS. The weirdest that I have found is a ref that appeared to be based on Fast Sailing Ships by David MacGregor - it's a pivotal work and cited in Clipper - where you would expect it to be used often. It then turned out to be an on-line link to just the index of this book, was used once, and supporting text that suggested the editor had never actually read the source. (Fixing this is a work in progress.) So - working out the overall reference base for an article seems key to sorting out any content problems.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 17:20, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Thanks all for your carefully and generously-expressed views. I feel that the original thread has shifted far enough to be restarted in the following sub-section. MinorProphet (talk) 21:40, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
::::{{U|DuncanHill}}, if you're looking to fix sfn templates without matching full references in articles, have a crack at {{cl|Harv and Sfn no-target errors}}, current population 26,000 articles. A limited fraction of them are false positives, but most need fixing. {{cl|Harv and Sfn multiple-target errors}} also has about 3,600 articles at the moment. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:52, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::{{re|Jonesey95}} - I'm not looking to fix sfn errors, I just keep finding them! I've got a script that highlights them on the page. DuncanHill (talk) 00:20, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
=Further thoughts on refs=
It has been increasingly obvious to me for some time that there are a number of deep-seated problems with "WP" and its overall attitude to sourcing and referencing. The comments here exemplify what I have began to call WP's psychosis in regard to reffing. Maybe my impending essay could be titled "Why is this so bad?"™
:1) {{re|DuncanHill}} I sympathise completely with your distress about failed {{tlx|sfn}} refs. I haven't experienced a tenth of your discomfort. I regularly click on 'Random article' to get a feel of what's around, but it's mostly Ukrainian 3rd-division footballers, Iranian villages pop. 270 in 2004, Japanese railway stations and species of minute sea snails in Patagonia with approx. 1 ref per article, or 2 if you're lucky. I get the feeling that you are a fan of {{tlx|sfn}}, Duncan, but the attempts of ill-informed editors have left you in a state of disrepair. Why do they get it so wrong? I refer to my previous post, which points towards a complete lack of comprehensive and authoritative help in this specific area. The choices of reffing presented to a noob editor are mind-bendingly multifarious. The possibilities presented in the various reffing "Help" pages are utterly contradictory and are displayed as a smorgasbord of equal-valued options, none of which can possibly be "better" than any other, since "consent" is apparently the prime factor.
: Why is it so bad? Because although sfns and cite books are one of the best ways to approach referencing (imo), they are also the hardest possible way on WP, and quite frankly the "Help" is derisory. It's no accident that there are so many sfn fails: you might as well ask "Why do so many people die on Mt. Everest?" PS Why do you refer to William Faulkner, 'darling killer' as Q?
:2) {{re|ThoughtIdRetired}} Thanks for your early reactions: I look forward to some further thoughts. I feel that you perhaps approach almost the same problem from almost 180°: the ability to pinpoint the significant sources (RS) of any article (if any) seems indeed crucial to working out whether it's even worth fixing (WP:Blow it up and start over), or could could just do with a little smartening up around the edges. If you would like some assistance with 'Clipper' I'd be happy to have a look at least. Slocum, Alain Gerbault, Dana, my seafaring literary heroes. I seem to remember having bought a copy of The Log of the Cutty Sark or something similar, a few years ago. I'll be getting the opportunity to dig out some boxes soon.
We all know when we come across a well-written, welcoming, intelligent and cogently-argued article, with enlightening, well-chosen sources and an over-arching sense of style and purpose, understandable by experts and newcomers alike: but these are, alas, most rare. Even the best-contrived, illuminating text in an encyclopedia article must fail unless it is backed up by solid references. Surely the quality of the refs underpin and define the entire edifice of our amazing enterprise: yet the reffing here is an utterly contradictory, gloomy and psychotically destructive enterprise as long as any editor can do what they damn well choose. There are far too many reffing options, and none can be be allowed a priority under the current system. The best reffing takes time and effort to learn, and the Help is pitiful: you can do this, or that, or the other, you can achieve it in 47 other ways which we will mix up and intersperse with other pointless and dead-end options, or you can devise your own insane system: but if you create an article with reffing system X, that's how it will be for the rest of time unless some sort of "consensus" is reached, which usually consists of two equally intellectually unattractive argumentative saddos engaging in an edit war before subjecting themselves to Arbitration presided over by sleeper fifth columnists and QAnon New Page Patrollers who by their billion edits have wormed their way into Adminship. Hmm, perhaps David Foster Wallace might have begun his career with a similar sentence. Sleep beckons. MinorProphet (talk) 21:40, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|MinorProphet}} No, I'm not a fan of sfn, even when done perfectly. DuncanHill (talk) 00:20, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|MinorProphet}} Like Faulkner, I was misremembering Q - [https://www.bartleby.com/190/12.html "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings"]. DuncanHill (talk) 15:36, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::Seem to be 3 headings for issues here.
Getting citation information into an article accurately and efficiently. My preference for this is the {cite book} template. I have used {sfn} but find the technical requirements tedious and/or difficult to learn (i.e. I have missed the easy way to use it). The multiple problems with short references in Wikipedia suggest I am not alone in this. One problem with {cite book} is that you then have to use an extra template to put a page number in the first time. The second problem with {cite book} is that on the second use of a reference, you have to remember the name you gave the ref. Solutions of this include having a second copy of the whole article open and using "edit find" to get the right one. This is relevant if there is a prolific author on the article subject who has written several useful refs. References I use a lot are stored on my user page (so that gives consistency between articles on similar subjects.)
::Then there are problems getting citation information out of an article. Short citations require some adept handling of the mouse to show the full reference details (you already have the page number at this point) - but it works. However, you cannot go to the reference section and make a quick assessment of the number of times a source is cited. (Unless I am missing something.) {cite book} has the problem of "ugly" inclusion of the page number in the text of the article. It is pretty pointless to show that then, because the reader does not know which ref it applies to without hovering the cursor over the reference's number. Playing (amateur) systems analyst for a moment, it is surely possible to improve the display of {cite book} references by only displaying the page number on user request (either by cursor hover, as part of seeing the whole reference, or an on/off preference switch for the page).
::The last problem with references is source selection. This is the first and major fundamental role of an editor - decide which sources are important and authoritative, providing the basis for the article. (The second fundamental role is putting all that material into an intelligible and readable form.) To put this trivially, I am sure I could find a source that said the moon was made of cheese (in the children's book section), but not appropriate for Moon.
More seriously, I don't know if all subject areas have this problem, but I have been editing in areas where there are a huge number of books that are totally inadequate. For Highland Clearances there are many books written for the "tourist bookshop" that simply pander to the misconceptions of the people who buy them. This is even addressed by academic historians (Tom Devine covers it quite extensively: The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600–1900. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0241304105 pgs 9-11).
In maritime history, particularly on subjects like Clippers, there are many "coffee table" books (similar criticism to the Scottish tourist bookshop fare), but also authors who appear authoritative, but have big failings. Eric Kentley (16 years as a curator at the National Maritime Museum) wrote Cutty Sark, the Last of the Tea Clippers, published by Conway Maritime (a very good quality publisher for this subject) (2014). His lack of grasp of the subject is shown by some of the reviews of this book on Google (not the reviews that say "present for...." etc.) (Not sure I want to risk anything legal for Wikipedia by listing all the stuff Kentley got wrong.) Interestingly the worst of these were edited out in the second edition. (I note Cutty Sark does not use this work.) Basil Lubbock is a fantastically prolific writer - and often the only source on some sectors of the subject - but even his Wikipedia page warns that he get things muddled up a lot.
In short, you need an understanding of the subject to choose the sources.
Another danger is the book that is readily available online. If google books let you see all the text of a book that is not totally ancient, that surely tells you that there is no value left in that work for the publisher. The book of a similar age that you cannot see on google books, but would have to buy or find in the library, is almost certainly more authoritative. The partial views that you can get on google books means that an editor is seeing things out of context - and can misunderstand. Some authors are a real risk for this - Eric Richards (Scottish historian) often lays out the argument he wants to demolish in some detail, then says what he thinks. The snapshot views offered by google books would completely misrepresent his output.
Then we have the source that is authoritative on some aspects, but not others. For instance [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II&diff=1006374491&oldid=1006374250], where a philosopher (appropriate in discussing the morality/legality of the bombing of Dresden) was cited for the death toll of the bombing of Hamburg. He simply had the wrong number - and any editor on top of the subject should have spotted this, or if they didn't know, checked it. My thinking here possibly goes further than WP:CONTEXTMATTERS warning about "Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source".
Overall, Wikipedia editors need higher standards on source selection. A bit more time reading and a bit less time editing.
I should add - I have, at times, made some real howlers on Wikipedia - but am fortunate that other editors have politely corrected them. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::I've found a few howlers caused by poor source selection. A couple of favourites - [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=H._H._Asquith&diff=948161670&oldid=946808757 a misattribution of a famous quote] to the wrong speech, because one historian blindly copied another's error, another a totally spurious quotation [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_war_to_end_war&diff=937503984&oldid=937499827 ultimately sourced] to a satirical work. Both of these would (or should) be obvious to anyone familiar with the subject. I'm sure I must have made a few too. Hopefully someone picks them up! DuncanHill (talk) 15:50, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::Perhaps we need a how-to-write-an-article guide that starts with references, as in "First, gather your sources and make sure they are acceptable, reliable and properly referenced." Then it becomes easier to build an article with a well-stocked reference section, on which every subsequently written section and paragraph will depend. I am only a newby in Wikipedia, but this is based on my experience writing other essays in an academic context, where the first thing I did with a new book was to write its reference down (in the locally relevant style) before starting to make notes from it. It saved me from thrashing around later trying to build a ref for a book that I had handed back long before. This might even
{{ec}} {{de-indent}}
{{re|ThoughtIdRetired}}, thanks for your comprehensive comments. 1) Getting cite info into an article. I am a firm believer in {cite book} because it always displays the information in a completely consistent way. It's orientated towards scientific journals with volume, issue and page number as simple numbers, rather than the literary "Oxford" style with 'vol. III' and date at the end. This can be worked around with {{para|others}} and {{para|series}}. Although you are correct in saying that only
You correctly identify the many problems of using
As I see it, there are various ways of making a ref.
- The very easiest for the editor:
Greenhill, p. 36 "Greenhill 1988" - The get-around is very time-consuming for the editor, which involves creating a separate ref for every page used:
"Greenhill 1988 p36" - You can make an inline {harv} eg
{{harv|Greenhill|1988|p=36}} - In my opinion, {sfn} completely overcomes all these difficulties. {cite book} automatically creates a {harv} which an {sfn} can link to via a CITEREF. {sfn} is actually just a {harv} wrapped in a
2) Getting cite info out of the article. I agree with all your points. As to the hovering the mouse, there may well be adjustments in Control Panel → Mouse which might improve things. I agree that the output of {cite book} could be tweaked quite easily, but I think only a very few people have the knowledge and ability to do it, and it would need a concerted effort to bring about any change.
3) Source selection. This is obviously a separate issue to the reffing systems discussed above. It would be somewhat unfeasible to compile a list of "approved" reliable sources, and since anyone can edit WP, you are going to get a wide range of sources chosen for various reasons which you discuss. "Anyone can edit" is both one of the great strengths and weaknesses of WP. Very often editors are not specialists or experts: many of us are merely informed readers with an interest in one or many subjects. But as long as coffee-table books (or worse) are used as sources, Wikipedia will remain a "coffee-table encyclopaedia". I agree with everything you say about Google books. Google search seems to deliberately omit archive.org from its results, and almost everything out of copyright is there in full with pdfs and plain OCR text. Even some contemporary books are there in full for short-term loan online like a proper library.
{{re|DuncanHill}} Just to recap on your reasons why {sfn}s get broken:
- The {sfn} will appear to be good, but there's nothing it can link to because {cite book} is completely missing
- Copying lumps of text from other articles and not copying the associated {cite book}, and not bothering to check the refs afterwards.
- Removing works from Bibliographies without checking that there is a corresponding sfn in the text.
- Duplicate CITEREF: (I think?) Editor has defined refs in a template (eg sfn, harv) which happen to have the same name as other refs used on the page calling the template.
Other common reasons:
- Mismatch between params of {sfn} and {cite book} where both exist:
- In {cite book}, any or all of {{para|last1}} (etc.), {{para|date}} or {{para|year}} is either missing or incorrectly defined. Even if the {sfn} is completely correct, the link will fail.
- As I pointed out earlier, you must definitely use the correct date of publication using {{para|date}}, and {{para|orig-date}} and NOT eg
|edition=1988, since CITEREF cannot extract information from {{para|edition}}. - In the {sfn}, any of the first two params may be incorrect, eg {sfn|Greenwood|1998|p=36} instead of {sfn|Greenhill|1988|p=36}
- In the {sfn} if there is more than one authors (etc.) one or more may be missing or incorrectly spelled, even if the {cite book} is completely correct.
- An extraneous pipe sign {sfn|Greenwood||1998|p=36} will result in an empty ampersand {{harv|Greenwood||1998|p=36}}
- If you define two {sfn}s with different pagination schemes eg {sfn|Greenwood|1998|p=36} and {sfn|Greenwood|1998|pp=36}, you will get an error when previewing.
{{re|Jonesey95}} I installed {{u|Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js}} and fixed Koornwinder polynomials as a test - seems to have worked a treat. Btw, there seemed to be no 'Install' button as suggested in the installation instructions. It also pointed out in James Douglas (English Army officer) the problem of using |edition=1988 in {cite book} as pointed out in the list above, giving {{color|orange|Harv error: link from CITEREFKenyon1993 doesn't point to any citation.}} and {{color|orange|Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFKenyon1986.}} (Haven't fixed it yet.) This is exactly what {{U|ThoughtIdRetired}} is using in his OP in the section above, and I'm afraid it is simply wrong and leads into error. It may be why you're not a fan of {sfn} since they would never work if you use {cite book} in this way.
Here's what you posted in your OP:
{sfn} can only ever work with this if you use
Compare with
So, TIR, that may be one of the reasons why you don't get along with {sfn}. MinorProphet (talk) 17:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:Thanks, User:MinorProphet. I may be working from an insufficient knowledge base, but here are some additional thoughts.
(i) The refname I have given: {{tq|"Greenhill 1988"}} is intended for the {citebook} template. I have found that it can be confused by some editors to be a Harvard reference, but I could have instead given the refname "strawberry jam" - but then I would have had to remember which one was which.
(ii) In some cases it is absolutely crucial to identify which edition a reference is from. Over and above the risk that page numbers do not align, some editions have substantially different content - sometimes even contradicting what was said in an earlier version. I see that I am using year, orig-year and edition differently from you. It would help enormously if {citebook} had a direct link to an easy to read brief set of instructions on what should be in each field - hover over a field to see what information should go there? I have just revisited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Cite_book#Date and even knowing the usage preferred by MinorProphet, it is a little challenging to find that interpretation in the guidance as written. Perhaps I am getting a little impatient with instructions that require a bit of work, but can't some of the CE enthusiasts on Wikipedia make this less impenetrable? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:46, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
::...and WP:CITE seems to be a little light on "so how do I actually do that?" (though better than the help text given above). Writing instructions is a special skill - there must be someone in the Wikipedia community who can cover this fundamental part of editing. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:21, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
::: {{re|ThoughtIdRetired}}Thanks for your reply. I also had a look at the Date section you referred to. Many things have changed or been updated since I last looked at it, and I would agree that what I said earlier isn't reflected in the Help page. In my opinion, the parameters for {cite book} should be filled out by copying the info on the physical title page and the next page (eg edition, isbn etc.) This means, I feel, that {{para|date}} should be the date of publication (whatever edition it is) and not the date of the original edition. You have also highlighted the grim state of actual practical help available in the documentation pages, including Template:Cite book. I absolutely agree that there should be one and only one style of reffing. WP:CITESTYLE says that "A number of citation styles exist" but doesn't tell you that none of these are available through {cite book}, a subset of CS1|2 which is a hodge-podge of Chicago and APA invented by WP:en coding editors and tweaked as they saw fit over the years. You are quite right about writing instructions, it's a particularly specific skill, but the documentation is usually written by the guys who write the templates, and unfortunately the two capabilities are almost never present in the one head. Just to check, {{para|date}} can take an {sfn} style disambig for two books from the same year, although the documentation at Date says that {{para|year}} fulfils this function.
::*{{cite book |last=Smith |first=John |title=John Smith's Big Book of Fun |date=1988a |orig-date=1903|publisher=Big Books Corp. |edition=42nd}} MinorProphet (talk) 03:15, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
{{reflist-talk}}
::...and on source selection - it's largely a matter of self-discipline by editors - "do I understand this enough to chip in?" That does not require you to be a total expert, and the co-operative nature of Wikipedia is the safety device for an editor getting it all wrong. But conversely, editors who go for high edit counts worry me - how on earth do they ever find time to research all those edits? More rules, I guess, would be a problem. Better compliance with the rules we have would help.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
{{re|Verbarson}} Such things do exist, such as Your First Article and Help:Referencing for beginners, and Wikipedia:Reliable sources (RS), plus all the associated 'See also's at the end of the articles. On the other hand, because WP allows almost any referencing style, it is left up to the individual to make a choice with no advice given (or even allowed) as to what is "The Best Way"™. It really does take a fair amount of reading/researching experience to be able to recognise an RS, and as shown above there are very many ways in which any reffing method can go wrong. I've been on WP for around 12 years, but I continue to make basic slips such as missing off the / in a closing [ref]. I remember the confusion when it happened the first time, and how long it took to find the solution. Now I can recognize it instantly, but sometimes I can make multiple mistakes, and it takes five or more 'Previews' to get a single extended {ref} or {efn} right. Many intelligent people have never had the opportunity to write anything at university level (essentially, I feel, the general standard of writing, sources and reffing which WP is aiming for), and I also don't think that the sort of all-in-one guide you suggest exists. Maybe it would be far too long.
- Notability, COI, Self-Promotion, WP:An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing, Advertising, etc.
- Sources - Bibliography, {cite book} etc.
- Reffing types - {ref}...{/ref} and the rest, discussed above, vs. templates ({sfn}, {harv} etc.
- Planning - General layout - Bullet-point outline of sections
- Content - style - WP:MOS which I call Ministry of Style, guidelines for GAs and FAs as ideals.
I agree that far too many people have no appreciation of these things, perhaps they just have to learn the hard way which takes time and effort, with no short cuts I'm afraid. MinorProphet (talk) 18:48, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|DuncanHill}} - I wonder if you could say why you don't like {sfn}s at all, even when properly used? I am genuinely interested, and would like to hear your thoughts. I realise that they are quite lot of extra trouble - much of the effort is having to get {cite book} right - and easy to get screw up as 26,000 articles show: instead a manual bibliography and a ref - /ref of some sort achieves much the same thing, if perhaps slightly less elegantly imo but with much less margin for error. MinorProphet (talk) 19:09, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{re|MinorProphet}} It's not just sfn, it's the whole Harvard style. It seems totally unsuited to Wikipedia. Look at David Lloyd George. Look at refs 1 & 3. Ref 1 I can point my mouse at the little 1 and see the book and author in preview. I click on the 1 and go straight to the details. Click "back" and I'm back where I was in the text. Ref 3 I point my mouse at and it just says "Harnden 2011". I click on the 3 and go to where it says "Harnden 2011", then I click on that and end up at the details. I then have to click "back" twice to return to my point in the text. Yes, I do know I can click on the preview, but that's far less intuitive than clicking on the number. As a reader who looks refs up it's a pain. As an editor who checks refs it's a pain. We should make it as easy as possible for people - readers and editors to look up refs. DuncanHill (talk) 20:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Thanks User:DuncanHill - I am puzzled why a computer-based encyclopedia needs to use a referencing system developed for the paper-based world. One single referencing system, with all the problems sorted out, will surely achieve the highest level of reader-understanding and editor-usability. My vote would be {citebook} with better help text (hover over for help on what should go in each field - click for fullest detail?) and the page numbers of refs only showing on hovering over the ref number, to help the flow of readability of the article (with option to make all ref page numbers visible in the article?). Of course, there would be an absolutely mountainous barrier to consensus forming on such a proposal, but I don't think that should kill a reasonable aspiration.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:55, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
{{de-indent}}
{{re|DuncanHill}} Thanks very much for your views. The term "Harvard style" has been badly abused on WP, since it's generally mixed up with {sfn} and {harv} via CS1|2, and in fact Parenthetical referencing or Harvard-style inline Author-date referencing eg {Greenbrook 1988, p.46) which {harv} implements is now officially discouraged since October 2020. If I understand you correctly, are you disagreeing with the whole system of using {sfn} and {harv}, coupled to {cite book} in a separate bibliography? It seems to me that some editors/readers are quite happy with a References section populated with full cites, created by {cite book} using {ref name=""}, although {cite book} now creates its own CITEREF based on author and date anyway, ready to be linked to by [sfn}.
It's interesting that you picked David Lloyd George, which is an appalling mish-mash of reffing styles with many tens of editors in the last year. Having installed the {{u|Trappist the monk/HarvErrors.js}} as recommended by {{u|Jonesey95}} as above, I can now see all the {cite book}s in the Bibliography with no ref pointing to them (ie roughly 50%).
Ref [1] uses the {ref name=""} style, but the whole {cite book} which appears in the Bibliography section is ignored and duplicated in the ref itself, ie briefly {ref name=""}(cite book |last= etc.}}{/ref}{rp|13} This, in my opinion, is completely wrong in this particular article, since the {cite book} entry in the reflist cancels out the one in the bibliography. You are right that hovering over the {{color|blue|[1]}} shows the complete source, but that's because the entire {cite book} is included in the ref and every subsequent {ref name ="" /}. This is {{u|ThoughtIdRetired}}'s favoured approach, I think, and it does indeed allow you to see every link to any source in the reflist. It is also true that you cannot link directly with this this reffing style to a {cite book} in the Biblio. I think may be possible in some other way using {ref}s, but I have never bothered to find out since {sfn} does it for you. As far as I know (and I may well be wrong) the only other widely-used way is a plain {ref name=""}Greenhill, p.37{/ref}, which means that editor and reader alike have to scroll down to the Biblio to find out. In other words, {cite book} should be either exclusively in the notes OR the bibliography, but not both.
Ref [3] uses {sfn} in the completely correct way. As you say, if you just click on the [3] that takes you to the reflist, and and clicking on that takes you to the Biblio, and you have to click back twice. But are you aware that when you point (hover) your mouse over the {{color|blue[3]}} so that it shows "Harnden 2011, p. 11", and then move the mouse slightly so it points to the blue link {{color|blue|Harnden 2011}}, that it then shows the {cite book} entry in the Biblio? You can go there directly by clicking on it. The whole chain is displayed by two very slight movements of the mouse (admittedly two rather than one). If the cite book contains a url, you can even click on that and be taken there direct with an even smaller movement of the mouse.
Not every article needs a Bibliography section, especially short-ish ones, but a major article like this one most certainly does, and it has been seriously abused. In fact, one of the more concerned editors (see Talk:David Lloyd George#More problems with refs - Grigg 2002 vol3.) has been making just these changes, combining {ref name} with {cite book}, for this very reason that {sfn} "takes more clicks" which I feel is simply untrue. Has no-one ever tried hovering their mouse? You don't have to actually click on anything with {sfn}! Looking at the whole hodge-podge has made me feel slightly nauseous.
I imagine that an article in this appalling state would take an entire week to fix, since 50% of the refs would have to be changed into either {ref}s or {sfn}s, including getting "consensus" (lol).
At some point this thread is going to get archived (five days of inactivity), so might I suggest if that happens we could carry on this most interesting and fruitful discussion we could do so on my talk page under User talk:MinorProphet#Further thoughts on referencing. Thanks anyway for all your most generous comments so far, it has been really stimulating. >MinorProphet (talk) 03:15, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:Quick reply. "But are you aware that when you point (hover) your mouse over the {{color|blue[3]}} so that it shows "Harnden 2011, p. 11", and then move the mouse slightly so it points to the blue link {{color|blue|Harnden 2011}}, that it then shows the {cite book} entry in the Biblio? " - no, it doesn't - do you have some kind of script which makes it do that? Even if it did, it's still more moves than necessary. The bibliography on Lloyd George is a mess I agree, it has been used to list just about every book or article that a particular editor has found. I've tried trimming it occasionally, and it needs re-ordering. I am the "more concerned" editor in the talk page thread you linked to. I found a mass of duff refs (wrong book) and turned them into correct ones. It is infinitely more important to have accurate refs than ones which please your aesthetic sensibilities. I do not see any reason not to list all books cited after their appearance in the refs section. A "works cited" followed by a "further reading" section is what DLlG needs. The errors which matter are the no pages, no works, wrong authors, wrong dates, which are, in my experience, far more common using sfn or harv. Having a citebook not called by a reference isn't, to my mind, an error at all, just an artefact of the gadget. DuncanHill (talk) 03:47, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{re|DuncanHill}} Hi, thanks for your swift reply. I'm really sorry not to have recognised your name. I did look through the article history to check if anyone here was involved, but I haven't had had much sleep recently (although not under the influence) and I simply didn't make the connection. I hope you aren't too offended. As far as I know I have no script installed which allows this hovering effect. I'm using an ancient version of Firefox (v. 47) on XP SP3, which can sometimes give strange effects. As far as I remember it just happened one day and it has continued consistently for at least five years. By your description of the {sfn}, you have no other choice except to click directly on the [3] or the {{color|blue|Harnden 2011}} when you point at /hover over it: either of which takes you to the reflist, from where another click takes you to the {cite book} in the Bibliography section. Can you not point to/hover over the {{color|blue|Harnden 2011}} link even in the reflist to see the complete cite? What browser/OS are you using? I can certainly see that it would make using {sfn}s a completely and frustratingly tedious bore, which is the exact opposite of my experience and why I'm a fan. I wonder whether {{re|ThoughtIdRetired}} has the same experience as you. I think will start a new thread to enquire.
::On the subject of DLlG, skipping through the talk page I became aware of the mass of screwed-up refs of what ever type. You are quite right that "Having a citebook not called by a reference" isn't a real error, I was only made aware of it having installed the HarvError script I mentioned. I think this has only come about relatively recently, since changes to CS1|2 meant that |ref=harv was no longer needed in {{tl|cite book}} to allow {sfn} to link to it (a major source of sfn fails), but was able to generate its own CITEREF automatically. Thus the 26,000 articles that use {cite book}, {citation} etc. with no associated ref. In the old days plenty of articles used {cite book} without |ref=harv, simply as a consistent way of formatting the cite, but it has turned into something else, perhaps an error-generating beast whose 'errors' are not necessarily errors at all. I might have a look at some of my own articles...
::As I have said, and your experience shows, {sfn} etc. is essentially more complex than almost any {ref}...{/ref} or {ref name=""}, coupled or not with {cite book}, perhaps even by an order of magnitude: but I still maintain that the unless the params of {cite book} are used consistently and 'correctly' (whatever that means), there will still be room for errors even if {sfn} is not being used.
My personal approach is: since {cite book} generates its own CITEREF, almost exactly the same as an intelligently-chosen {ref name=""} why not use it? Again it's personal.
::It seems there are two approaches to the appearance of the reflist. One is to have everything in it in long format, regardless. The other is for it to contain only short footnotes, generated either by a very simple {ref}Greenbridge, p. 204{/ref} [or (Greenbridge 1998, p. 204) if needed for disambig], or {sfn}s. This keeps the reflist very compact, with only {cite web}s making a difference. Plain {ref}s require everyone to scroll down to the Bibliography, {sfn}s with their hoverability (for me at least) don't. Again, I find {rp|204} intrusive as it breaks up the flow of the text, although this is obviously not a difficulty for everyone. Sorry, I've been rather long-winded. I appreciate your taking the time to reply. Cheers, >MinorProphet (talk) 05:17, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Well, well, well (three holes in the ground). Check out #Displayed output of sfn below. {{u|Izno}} kindly pinpointed the source of the behaviour. It's to do with Preferences → Gadgets → Browsing and a combination of Navigation popups and Reference Tooltips. For me, when Nav. popups is disabled and Ref. Tooltips is checked, all I have been describing bursts into life. MinorProphet (talk) 08:41, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
WikiProjects
Is there a way to see WikiProjects by article count similar to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 13:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
: BamBots has a [https://bambots.brucemyers.com/drb/WikiProjectList.html list of 1998 WikiProjects] with an indication of activity. Projects generally state a count of different classes of "their" articles — for example WikiProject Books/Assessment statistics. These are created by User:WP 1.0 bot. The bot page tracks 2560 WikiProjects, but I could not find a full list — just this — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 13:39, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
::Here's a [https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/51671 query] that will show all the Template:WikiProject* usage on the article talk pages. -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Awesome! Is that query persistent? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 14:00, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
::::If you want to run it yourself, just use the Fork button to create your own copy. And then you can run whenever you want. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
::::: Thanks {{u|WOSlinker}}. Did that and linked to it in the WikiProject Directory. {{u|CAPTAIN MEDUSA}} That directory seems to be the main location for this sort of report — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 10:49, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Best way to intra wiki link multi language edit-a-thon?
I hosted in the past, an edit-a-thon at Wikipedia:WikiProject Organized Labour/Online edit-a-thon Tech February 2021, however there are no corresponding Labor WikiProjects in German or Italian Wikipedia, so I hosted the pages in my personal username space, e.g. see :de:Benutzer:Shushugah/Tech-Arbeiter*innen_Edit-a-thon, and manually inter wiki linked them, since they're ineligible for a WikiData item due to being in username space. Another option would be to...boldly create a WikiProject in German wikipedia, but Italian and other language wikipedias don't have such option.
I considered hosting on Meta Wikimedia, however that complicates linking to Wikipedia articles, which is a deal breaker for welcoming new editors. Shushugah (talk) 13:47, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|Shushugah}} what is preventing you from linking to articles from meta-wiki? Here is an example: meta:Special:PermaLink/21143516. — xaosflux Talk 15:17, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::I regularly link across Wikipedia languages and Wikipedia projects, but requiring new users to prefix every article with the Language AND Project is a high technical burden. Having a Meta place holder to encourage new Wiki platforms does make sense though. Shushugah (talk) 15:45, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Image resolution on mobile
What is the highest resolution image that will display on mobile? I have noticed that if I go to Commons and click on a high resolution version in some cases it will not load. Is this the operating system or Mediawiki or something else limiting download size? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:38, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{u|Pbsouthwood}}, Could you be looking at what I described in {{phab|T270209}}? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:49, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{u|RoySmith}}, My experience has only been with .png files, Android OS, Samsung tablet and a few phones. I haven't done much experimentation because why bother if it is a known limitation. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 04:33, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
I have had a few friends test. iPhone 11 and 12 seem to manage, but Android phones tested so far fail on the original of :File:Dive_sites_of_the_Whittle_Rock_Reef_high_resolution.png (14,040 × 9,930 pixels, file size: 8.71 MB, MIME type: image/png) The next highest resolution available by default is not legible for the small print. Is it likely to be OS, browser, or timeout for some reason? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 08:50, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
Maybe memory? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 10:48, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{u|Pbsouthwood}}, definitely memory. That’s a gigantic image. It either runs out of memory, or isn’t even able to address images of such a size in some level of graphics libraries it uses. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:32, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::Fair enough {{u|TheDJ}}, the problem is then that the highest resolution available from the default set of pngs is too low to read the text. Is there a way to work around this? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 12:19, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Perhaps something more than 1240 and less than 14K? Can confirm Android does not like this file. Slywriter (talk) 12:24, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::{{u|Pbsouthwood}}, with default pngs, do you mean the links in the file page with preset sizes ? In that case, open any of them and modify the url to retrieve a width that is somewhere in between (hmm, just tried that, seems that the thumbnail server is having trouble even scaling something to those in between sizes...It just throws errors) In general I would say.. this is not a suitable file format to store that amount of information... SVG or something might be better. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:35, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::{{u|TheDJ}}, That is what I meant by default pngs. I uploaded a svg of the same map. It is a little better in that it loads on my tablet, but crashes when I try to zoom in to read the text. See :File:Map of Whittle Rock dive sites 2021.svg. The svg is also large, and the map will get more detail as it becomes available. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 16:56, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::Correction: The 6,771 × 4,789 pixels version crashes in zoom, but the original svg seems to zoom in just fine. However tapping the image from the article does not load the svg, it loads a bitmap rendering, presumably a png. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 17:07, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::{{u|Pbsouthwood}}, That's a VINO (Vector In Name Only). Sure, it's packaged in an SVG format, but it's mostly just a bunch of encoded PNG bitmaps. That doesn't solve the problem that you're dragging a huge amount of data around.
:::::
:::::I know what I'm suggesting is a lot of work, but I think the only way to make this work is to actually trace the contour intervals so you can generate a real vector version of this. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:48, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::{{u|RoySmith}}, That is the original Inkscape svg from which the png was rendered, so the work has already been done. It is probably possible to trim it down a bit, but not sure how much. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:02, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::{{u|Pbsouthwood}}, I'm not an expert either Inkscape or SVG, but when I look at the data in the file, I see 70 lines that start with
:::::::
::::::: xlink:href="data:image/png;base64
:::::::
:::::::I assume each of those is a bitmap image that you imported into Inkscape. Pulling those lines out, they add up to 78% of the bulk of the original file:
:::::::
::::::: $ du -h x Map_of_Whittle_Rock_dive_sites_2021.svg
::::::: 7.8M x
::::::: 10M Map_of_Whittle_Rock_dive_sites_2021.svg
:::::::
:::::::so that's clearly the place to start. Maybe you could down-convert the individual images to something much lower resolution and re-import? PNG uses lossless compression. My hunch is that JPG's algorithms would do a much better job of compression than PNG's on these kinds of images. I would start by converting the original png files to jpg, and experiment with how low you can crank jpg's quality parameter and still get a reasonable rendition.
:::::::
:::::::I'd also guess that you'll find people at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab who are much more clueful about this stuff than I am. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:22, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::[ec]It turns out I could clean it up a lot. Will upload cleaned version and see how it goes. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:25, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::{{u|RoySmith}}, I found the same thing by deleting all the construction files I used. I did not think they would be such a large part of the file. Live and learn! Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:30, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::The svg file is now down to 2.48MB, now how do I persuade the mobile unit to upload the svg not a low res rendering of it? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:58, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::{{u|Pbsouthwood}}, I don't know the answer to that one, sorry. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:15, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::::No problem {{u|RoySmith}}, You have been very helpful, and I appreciate your help. Maybe {{u|TheDJ}} has some ideas? · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 19:24, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Emptying a category
Is there an easier way to empty a deleted category than manually removing the category from each article? Fences&Windows 23:40, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:That sounds like a bot-like task. Could a bot be written to remove the deleted categories from the articles after the categories are deleted? That isn't easier for the bot coder, but it sounds as though it would make it easier for the closer of the CFD. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:54, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:I know little about the details of categories. If my comment above is completely off the mark, then I know even little less than I thought I do. Robert McClenon (talk) 23:54, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:: There's already a bot to implement discussions at CfD, which reads its instructions from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working. * Pppery * it has begun... 23:57, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:::{{replyto|Fences and windows}} Quite so; if a category is deleted legitimately, i.e. via a WP:CFD, the normal procedures of that forum will pass the actual empty-and-delete task to an adminbot. On occasion, a category is populated by a template - for these, an amendment to the template code should be sufficient. There is normally no need to empty a category manually. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:43, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::Aha, thanks Pppery and Redrose64; I haven't done CfD for a long time. The context is categories created by a banned user, which have been tagged for speedy deletion - should those then go via CfD? Specific example: :Category:Native American superheroes tagged by MarnetteD. Fences&Windows 11:41, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::If the category page has not been deleted, file a WP:CFD pointing out that WP:CSD#G5 applies. If it's already deleted, it's probably best to start a thread at WT:CFD/W asking for assistance. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:47, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Displayed output of <nowiki>{{tl|sfn}}</nowiki>
Hi all, I've just learned in another lengthy discussion above, (latest posts in #Further thoughts on refs), that my experience of {{tl|sfn}} is somewhat different to at least one other editor. When I hover over a ref generated by an {{tl|sfn}}, it shows me the blue-linked short footnote found in the {{tl|reflist}}, eg {{color|blue|Harnden 2011}}, p. 206. Remaining in the main body of text, If I move my mouse a fraction and hover over {{color|blue|Harnden 2011}}, it displays a second box (not sure of the exact name) which contains the usual output of {{tl|cite book}} which generated the CITEREF in the first place. Clicking on that takes me straight to the Bibliography (or wherever the {{tlx|cite book}} is located}. Is this the default behaviour, or is it just me? I'm using ancient FF v47 and XP SP3, which shows certain quirks (eg recently all lists have one column only, whatever the width eg
:When I hover over a shortref, it shows me no additional pop-up/second box. I have to click on that reference to see the whole citation. The whole citation then of course doesn't have a link back to either its use in the text or its shortref. The lack of immediate information in the pop-up, and the lack of the ability to right click a source link from that pop-up without darting around other areas of the page, makes me prefer longform citations. CMD (talk) 06:57, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:: {{re|Chipmunkdavis}} Hi, I'm not surprised you prefer longform, I'm sorry that your experience seems so poor compared to mine. What browser and OS are you using, to help narrow down where exactly this behaviour occurs? (Could be just me, only 1% of users worldwide use XP, max. possible version of FF is 52.9, and is now at v.85...) MinorProphet (talk) 07:28, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:(I'm to blame for your reduced viewing experience of columns, but you're now one of the <2% using a browser that can't handle them with standard CSS, and most who can't are in fact stuck on Chrome mobile from the same time period... The use case for which will almost always be a single column. I judged that it would be reasonable to stop sending 3x the CSS just for that 2%.)
:Out of curiosity, what color is the second box? Secondly, when you go to Gadgets in your preferences, do you have Popups enabled? Third, what options are checked on the Beta page in your preferences? --Izno (talk) 07:35, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::Aha. I didn't even know a second pop-up was possible before this post. Following this tip, I disabled pop-ups in the Wikipedia gadgets, and now I get a second pop-up. How counterintuitive. CMD (talk) 07:44, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::The two kinds of pop ups not playong each other nicely is a known issue, largely caused by the fact that the nav popups gadget was first written some 15 years ago and received little in the way of updates. The other is more modern... --Izno (talk) 09:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{ec}} Hey, Izno, I really can't complain if I use software invented before they burnt down the Great Library of Alexandria.
::# All the popups are b/g plain white, f/g black text, links in blue.
::# If you mean {{color|green|Navigation popups: article previews and editing functions pop up when hovering over links}}, then no, it's not checked. On the other hand, I do get article previews.
::# No Beta features enabled at all.
::# Aha! How about Browsing → Reference Tooltips, which is checked. Just disabled it, and all the incredibly useful info disappears and a vast sadness rolls over me. Restored Tooltips, and all is light and joy. Why on earth is this not default behaviour? All the stunning usefulness of sfn and cite book is otherwise completely negated. >MinorProphet (talk) 08:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Obviously respect and thanks for pinpointing the source of the behaviour so quickly. MinorProphet (talk) 08:43, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::My memory says it is the default behavior for accounts registered after a certain date, and I think there was some discussion about making it the default viewing experience also for unregistered editors. But I am unsure. That all said, I've been watching the discussion above and would like to point out the books referencing project, which, whenever WMDE gets off its butt to finish it, will allow one to get both the lesser and fuller citation in one popup (or at least that is in the current backlog), at least for articles which convert to that style. --Izno (talk) 09:06, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::Reference tooltips works for me when logged out and on other browsers, so it might be the default in newer browsers. CMD (talk) 09:03, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::The browser should have nothing to do with it. Whether you get ReferenceTooltips or one of the others is down to your Wikipedia user settings. ReferenceTooltips first became available as a gadget on 4 April 2012, and was initially opt-in for all logged-in users. At 00:26, 17 July 2012 (UTC) it became a default gadget, which means that it was enabled for logged-out users, and was also enabled (on an opt-out basis) for logged-in users registered after that time. Logged in users who registered before 17 July 2012 did not have their setting altered, so unless they had already enabled the gadget, it remained switched off for those users. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 23:25, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:If I turn off popups then the ref tooltips thing seems to work, but I don't get page previews. Even if I did I understand that page previews lack the edit/history/talk etc links that popups have and which make them so invaluable. DuncanHill (talk) 10:11, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::There are at least three different kinds of popups, which are not compatible - if you turn one of them on, you also need to turn off all of the others. At {{myprefs|Gadgets}} we find:
::*{{int:Gadget-Navigation_popups}}
::*{{int:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips}}
::and at {{myprefs|Beta features}} there is {{int:popups-refpreview-beta-feature-message}} which shows
::*Show a preview of a reference by hovering over its footnote marker.
Please note: If you’re using the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups Navigation popups] gadget or the Reference Tooltips gadget, you won’t see Reference Previews.
::The default is that Reference Tooltips is enabled, the other two disabled. Perhaps the compatibility warnings can be strengthened. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:56, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Would it be technically possible to unbundle the reference tooltips from the rest of Navigation_popups, if that is the only redundant aspect to ReferenceTooltips? Seems odd there are two gadgets doing the same job with one being worse at it. CMD (talk) 11:07, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::Do you mean stop nav popups displaying the ref when you point at it? That would just make things worse. DuncanHill (talk) 11:23, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::Ber-limey, what an utter and seemingly irreconcilable mess! Welcome to It_Wasn't_Me_Miss.com, aka the daily refuge of maintenance coders the world over. Although I laud everyone's technical and/or coding ability; also people's apparent understanding of the technical depth of what is going on; and our exceptionally refined ability to discuss both technical and emotional issues in the same breath, it appears we may have arrived at a pretty pass. There seem to be a number of previous issues which have caught up with us, and a number of current issues which seem unresolvable unless certain decisions are taken. And I suggest that the responsibility rests with us, here, now. "What, then (sang Plato's ghost), what then?"[http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/poetryprescription/what-then.html] >MinorProphet (talk) 12:37, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
Visual editor copies ref to top of page
{{tracked|T275650}}
Hi all, does anyone know why visual editor seems to do this from time to time? I didn't click anywhere near the top of the article and just was expanding the ref. I don't have any other examples off hand, but I have noticed this happening every now and then. Rather odd. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:36, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{u|TheSandDoctor}}, Wow, that's weird. I've never seen it do that myself. Do you have some other examples? -- RoySmith (talk) 17:04, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{re|RoySmith}} Definitely a weird one. Unfortunately not off hand or that I could find in around a 30 minute search. I know that I have seen it before (typically IPs notice and correct lol), but it seems to happen every few hundred to few thousand edits. Special:Diff/1002506672 is the closest I could find, where it inputted random text at the start of the article. --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:24, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
:::{{u|TheSandDoctor}}, You've got [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=&limit=500&target=TheSandDoctor&namespace=all&tagfilter=mw-reverted&start=&end= under 500 edits that have been reverted]. Maybe look over that list and see if any ring a bell? -- RoySmith (talk) 18:37, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
::::{{re|RoySmith}} Good idea. Found one on Taylor Swift Special:Diff/988510759 --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:52, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::{{u|TheSandDoctor}}, Thanks. Were these both instances of you having copied the completed cite template from somewhere and pasted it into the article? The next time this happens, could you please set your time machine to t minus 5 minutes and video record your earlier editing session? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:02, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
:@TheSandDoctor: What's your web browser/operating system, and do you find that you "lose focus" after some things? (Like you know where the cursor is supposed to be, and then you click on something, and the cursor seems to be nowhere)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{re|Whatamidoing (WMF)}} I was using Google Chrome on Windows 10. In the Twitter article case, all I did was update the ref and then click apply & then save the edit. As for the Swift article, it was too long ago for me to remember. --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:42, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::@TheSandDoctor, thanks for your quick response. I realize this is a tiny detail, but do you happen to remember if you needed to click the button twice to get the ref, or to generate it twice? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
::::{{re|Whatamidoing (WMF)}} Could you please clarify the question? Do you mean whether it took two clicks to have the "edit" button show up? If so, that sometimes happens but do not know if it happened in this case, unfortunately. If not, please elaborate and I will answer as best I can. --TheSandDoctor Talk 18:14, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::No, I was wondering if you needed to click one of the "Cite" buttons twice. But I think it will be a wild goose chase. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
:Potential example from my watchlist. CMD (talk) 06:11, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
::It [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coronavirus_disease_2019&diff=1008604216&oldid=1008594705&diffmode=source#cite_note-:7-341 happened to me] last night in Firefox, and an editor fortunately undid the whole thing instead of correcting it, which meant that I saw it. (It's not a page that I routinely check the history for). The key detail in both my and @Chipmunkdavis's diff is that it's replacing the first template at the top of the wikitext with the citation template.
::I think we have enough information to file a bug report. I'll post the bug number here when I've got it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
servers crashing
An error occurred while attempting to preview your changes.The server did not respond within the expected time.
:: 11 times...... 0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 08:56, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Global user page
As I understand it, it is possible to configure one's preferences at meta to create a global user page that will be transcluded from meta to all wikis, [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage MediaWiki:Help:Extension:GlobalUserPage]. When a user does that, a user page is no longer editable on en-wiki and its history log is not viewable here either. Most of the time this is fine, but I can see some potential problems, e.g. if somebody starts putting some inapprorpriate material (spam, using the userpage as a webhost, personal attacks etc) on their global user page, and we are not able to address the issue here. Another situation concerns users who are banned or blocked (e.g. for sockpuppetry) on en-wiki. Often in such cases we tag their userpages accordingly but it would seem that for a user with a globally transcluded user page we don't have this capability. Or do we? I saw a user who got indef blocked at ANI yesterday and they seemed to have implemented a global user page option via meta today. Is there anything that can be done in such situations? Nsk92 (talk) 13:36, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:The easiest way is to create a user page locally. All local user pages override global ones. Note that meta has also policies against inappropriate material like spam, webhosting, attacking others, so for some pages requesting deletion there is an option too. Majavah (talk!) 13:43, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::If there is blatant inappropriate material on a meta-wiki user page, you may tag it for speedy deletion on Meta, if you aren't sure you can ask at :meta:Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat. You should not put project-local scarlet letters on someone else's meta-wiki page though. — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{U|Nsk92}}: the local user page can still be created if there is a transcluded meta page. Try it on your example. If someone is using their meta global page for abuse, a global lock is probably in order also. –xenotalk 13:46, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::The blocked user in question, User:Tisquesusa, did have a local user page before. Then it suddenly disappeared and got replaced by a global user page transcluded from meta. The globally transcluded page does not contain any abusive or improper material at the moment (there was a G11 user subpage that I CSD tagged today and it got deleted). But the situation still somewhat concerns me. In fact I don't understand how I can try to create/edit a local user page for this user now (assuming I wanted to do that). I can't create a red link. I can't access the history log for the user page. The global user page just sits there. Nsk92 (talk) 13:59, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::The user page was deleted as WP:CSD#U5 by {{U|Deb}} today. I don't see how it qualifies as U5, mind you. An admin can recreate it if necessary. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:18, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::I can restore it if you think it's worth the effort - it looks pretty awful, mind you. Let me know. Deb (talk) 14:26, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::The page that was deleted (as both G11 and U5) was a subpage User:Tisquesusa/Más Muisca, not the parent user page. I don't remember what the user page itself contained, but the subpage was an advertisement page for a guided tour/adventure operation run by the user. That's U5 in my book. Nsk92 (talk) 14:30, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::{{ping|Deb|Nsk92}} U5 only applies when {{tq|the owner has made few or no edits outside of user pages}}. Tisquesusa has made lots of non-userspace edits, so the criterion cannot possible apply. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:03, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::Ah, yes, I see you are right. I should have only tagged it as G11. Nsk92 (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::{{u|Nsk92}}: what do you mean "I can’t create a red link"? Unless there was a change I didn’t hear a about, any user can create another user’s user page. –xenotalk 14:34, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::Only if it doesn't exist already. When I type 'User:Tisquesusa' in the search window and press 'Go', I am taken to the global user page, User:Tisquesusa. If I press 'Search' instead, I get a line 'There is a page named "User:Tisquesusa" on Wikipedia.' Nsk92 (talk) 14:43, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::When visited locally, it can be edited locally, despite the global presence. Generally if there is abusive content it would simply be turned into a redirect to the user talk page. –xenotalk 14:46, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::But how, exactly? How can it be turned into a redirect or edited locally, if necessary? I can't access the local history log for this user page now. And the edit button for it is not available either. Nsk92 (talk) 14:49, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::Hmm, try clicking [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tisquesusa&action=edit here]. Maybe it is limited to administrators? –xenotalk 14:57, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::: Works for me, even though I'm not an admin. * Pppery * it has begun... 15:03, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::Your link works, and it allows me to create a local user page (it does look like it has been deleted or displaced somehow, presumably by the global user page being activated). But I have no idea how you created this link. Did you just manually type an entire http address? Interesting and strange ... Nsk92 (talk) 15:08, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::::I’m using the desktop monobook responsive view; I have some custom scripts but I don’t think they are what’s adding the edit button for me. –xenotalk 15:09, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::::::Weird. I am also using the desktop monobook view, but I don't have an edit button for that page. Nsk92 (talk) 15:17, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::::::{{u|Nsk92}}, the link you are probably looking for is "Add local description" which takes you to the edit page. It is confusingly named, but I think it is because it uses the same system as images on commons use (i.e. random file :File:Rueda de prensa sobre la sentencia del tribunal europeo acerca de los desahucios en España (8558751810).jpg when viewed on enwiki has the "Add local description" link instead of "Edit"). The "Add local description" link makes more sense for images, as you are adding a local description of the image. However, it doesn't make as much sense for global userpages. Perhaps this should be renamed for global userpages to something like "Create local userpage"? Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 15:29, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::::::(edit conflict) Depending on preferences there may be one or more of the tabs "Add local description", "Create", "Create source", "Edit", "Edit source", or MonoBook variants. Don't you have any of them? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:31, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::::::::You are right, there is an "Add local description" button. I didn't realize that it acts as a local edit button (which would presumably override a global user page?) Nsk92 (talk) 15:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:← Yes it would {{u|Nsk92}}. {{u|Dreamy Jazz}}, good suggestion for the interface change. The responsive view was giving me an intuitive pencil but in landscape, it is indeed Add local description. –xenotalk 16:07, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{u|Xeno}}, if I'm not wrong, would that be achieved by placing the text needed in MediaWiki:Create-local? I also presume that mediawiki pages can contain parser functions and magic words which will work per page (so that the page knows where it is being used and then can modify the wording based on the namespace). It could, if I assume correctly for those both, use a parser function to check if the namespace number is 2 (i.e. userspace) and then output "Create local userpage" instead. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 18:38, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::I've created a sandbox for this and when adding "?uselang=sandbox" to the URL it seems to work as intended. So my assumptions were correct. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 18:50, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
::::I think this change is pretty minor, so I'm inclined to sync the sandbox (what is currently in MediaWiki:Create-local/sandbox) to MediaWiki:Create-local. However, I'll wait for a bit in case there are objections. Interestingly this page had no history until I edited it. That seems to be the same with MediaWiki:Create-local. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 19:00, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::There are around 26,000 MediaWiki messages and only around 2,000 pages in the namespace. The rest display a MediaWiki default. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:21, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::I've gone and merged the sandbox to the main page so that it shows for everyone with their language set to en. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 13:52, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Technical help needed on the helpdesk.
Technical minded people may want to take a look at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Series_of_failed_pings. I can't figure out what's going wrong with this person's pings. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:19, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Edit filter to prevent http: //%5B(and cousins) making good links bad
So while playing on toolforge and running a search on %.%[https://linksearch.toolforge.org/linksearch.fcgi?limit=500&offset=0&target=http%3A%2F%2F%25.%25&namespace=0&associated=0&submit=1&lang=en&wiki=en.wikipedia ](which terrified me that I would blow up a server), I stumbled onto the fact that potentially hundreds of links/refs are broken because http://%5b (as well as %5b%20 , %5E and a few others) are appended to the beginning of the url.
Working my way through cleaning up what I can but wondering if an edit filter would be viable to that warns an editor adding a double http:// in an edit summary (I say warn because possible their are valid reasons - Interner archive comes to mind)
Slywriter (talk) 02:31, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:Here is an [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mustafa_Kemal_Kurda%C5%9F&type=revision&diff=454943590&oldid=454941921 example] one added. No apparent cause. 10 years ago. Unclear why it's happening. %5B = open square-bracket. Old MediaWiki bug? -- GreenC 02:53, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::Wow, sorry, totally forgot to add examples. I've already cleaned up a bunch but let me go back through them and see if there is any similarity in when the edits were added. Slywriter (talk) 03:05, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:: 2012 Special:Diff/472050129
:: 2018 Special:Diff/822925977
:: For it to be a bug, it would be a long standing one. Not seeing any commonality in tags either (web, mobile, iOS, visual)Slywriter (talk) 03:26, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::: Yeah hard to say. BTW notice some of the URLs have trailing %5D that also should be removed. It may be pretty difficult to automate a fix given how many forms it takes. -- GreenC 04:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Like this URL
::::5B & 5D there. Cut and Paste of a wiki link gone wrong?
:::: Tested what happens when you manually type/cut and paste
::::Doubt I'll have much luck figuring out the how they do it but the brackets showing up give me the idea to search against other special wiki characters (<>{}~) unicode equivalents. Might be some other unicode characters that will cause obvious problems at beginning or end of a url.
::::If the double html remains constant, may be able to at least automate the generation of a list that can be manually checked. Slywriter (talk) 05:31, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
With some sleep and a new look at the data, assuming I am correct in my assumption that my search string is returning an alphanumeric sorted list of ALL websites links found in article space, then the problem is less than a 100 links. Only reason I question my assumption is the surprisingly low number of IP only web addresses that are used for links. Slywriter (talk) 14:49, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:It can happen if you try to use the toolbar link feature on code which already has external link syntax. An article may say
:Thanks for that explanation. The sequence also explains why it's mostly, though not exclusively, low quality pages that its occurring. Situations where it seems the editor was determined to get the link in.
:I've found a few other bad link styles like web addresses starting with a period
Latest version of Firefox appears to break Wikimedia single sign-on
Firefox 86.0 comes with "total cookie protection" (see https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/02/23/total-cookie-protection/ ) that sandboxes cookie storage to prevent cross-site tracking by third party cookies. Unfortunately, it also seems to break the Wikimedia single-sign-on mechanism. See https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/02/introducing-state-partitioning/ for a description of how it works.
This clearly either needs WMF liason with Mozilla to whitelist the single sign on mechansim, or to use the [https://privacycg.github.io/storage-access/ Storage Access API] to request it be permitted on a site-by-site basis. Where is the best place to report this? -- The Anome (talk) 09:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{u|The Anome}}, welcome to the club. My Safari ticket is here phab:T226797 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:42, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::This clearly needs to be fixed ASAP -- how do we get the WMF's attention on this? -- The Anome (talk) 10:03, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:::But does it need to be fixed if it isn't broken? Using firefox as always, version 86, has continued to give great service, and hasn't broken yet. just an observation. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 11:03, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|The Anome}} to be clear, simply having FF v86 doesn't appear to be breaking logon, does it? Is this an opt-in feature that users have to select? (I think the option is labeled {{tq|All third party cookies (may cause websites to break)}}). — xaosflux Talk 12:06, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::Logon is fine, cross-site logon between sites ending in "wikipedia.org" is also fine. What doesn't work is SSO between top-level domains, such as Commons or Wikidata, if you log in from a wikipedia.org site. -- The Anome (talk) 12:13, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:::{{re|The Anome}} is this only in "strict mode" ? — xaosflux Talk 12:23, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::::I believe so. But the system sould support strict mode, as this is what any privacy-conscious user should be using already. -- The Anome (talk) 13:46, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::In the mean time, can anyone verify if someone enables this strict mode (that warns it may be breaking) if they can still exempt site-by-site as talked about [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop?as=u&utm_source=inproduct#w_what-to-do-if-a-site-seems-broken in this article]? — xaosflux Talk 14:06, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:::The mozilla blog says {{tq|Total Cookie Protection makes a limited exception for cross-site cookies when they are needed for non-tracking purposes, such as those used by popular third-party login providers.}} – SD0001 (talk) 07:47, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
= Ugly workaround =
I threw together a hacky little user script at :meta:User:Suffusion of Yellow/central.js. Works for me with FF86/Linux with all third party cookies blocked. Install in your global.js, then click "Central login" under "tools" on any site you are currently logged in to, and follow the directions. You will be logged in to all the other wikis, too. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:26, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
How do we disable magic links?
{{Tracked|T275951}}
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=&oldid=772133164#Future_of_magic_links This 2017 en.WP RFC] determined that once bots and scripts have replaced magic links (ISBN et al.), magic links should be disabled. As far as I know, bots and scripts have done this work (except for new untemplated and nowiki-wrapped ISBNs that are added continually by manual editing and buggy VE copy-paste editing), and the ability to disable magic linking locally has been provided.
This MW page appears to explain how to disable magic linking on a per-wiki basis. It is past time to do it here, if we have this local control and if there are no show-stopping feature requests that depend on magic links. There are a bunch of magic-link-related bugs and feature requests linked at {{phab|T145589}}, but I am unable to determine whether any of them will be affected if we disable magic linking locally.
Is there anyone here with the sysadmin-level knowledge to figure out whether we can finally disable magic linking here at en.WP? – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:18, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
: I don't disagree that these should be disabled at some point, but there are more than 11,000 ISBN magic links in use and a few thousand of the rest combined. If the magic links are disabled how will they be replaced? Perhaps we could start with an edit filter that does not allow any more magic links to be added, and then hopefully the fixer bot can get rid of those remaining? RudolfRed (talk) 00:57, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::I'm pretty sure the bots don't mess with User-space or Talk-space pages, for good reason, and there is no need to "fix" old AFD or other discussion pages. There should be no problem disabling magic links in those spaces.
::
::That leaves only about 1,000 article-space pages with ISBN magic links, down from an initial population of about 500,000 in 2017, and with many tens or hundreds of thousands of pages fixed up by bots over the years. That's 99.8+% done, which is good enough. Those stragglers presumably exist only because the bots are taking care not to mess with edge cases [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agency_%28sociology%29&type=revision&diff=1009000772&oldid=1006996064 like this one] or [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Gordon_Hines&type=revision&diff=1009001127&oldid=1008081751 this one]. I'm fine with keeping the maintenance categories or WPCleaner reports around if we think they are useful, but the RFC said we should disable these magic links. It's time. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:57, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:I say go for it. The effects of T162291 are the same (I assume they will stop doing that once the change goes through), T179769 is stalled because it has not been requested to disable magic links yet and T145589 is just about autolinking new magic links in a new way. It is possible to make an specific tool to make VE link those links the new way, once T179769 is fixed, see mw:VisualEditor/Gadgets. At the most, just warn VE users that adding magic links the new way is not going to work until T179769 gets fixed. Tidy was repaced with linter errors outside of mainspace still remaining, so that should be fine (seemingly not on enwiki, but elsewhere, see phab:T192821).--Snaevar (talk) 14:29, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:Also support disabling these. It's long overdue, and we can easily clean up anything that breaks. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 15:21, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
Search history on Wikipedia app on iPhone
I am using the Wikipedia app to browse through Wikipedia. It really annoys me that it saves your search history. I know how to clear my search history in the app, but I would like to how to prevent the app from storing my search history so I don’t have to keep clearing it. Same goes with the article viewing history. Thanks, Interstellarity (talk) 00:06, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
[[User:Dotcodegh]]
This user has only a single edit, made one hour after registering the account, which created an article, George Takyi. How could an account which is not autoconfirmed create an article? Cullen328 Let's discuss it 22:55, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
:{{ping|Cullen328}} The page was created in Draftspace and then [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Takyi&diff=1009273113&oldid=1009273077 moved] by User:Kinvidia into mainspace. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 23:12, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
::Thank you, {{u|Firefly}}. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 23:19, 27 February 2021 (UTC)
:::No problem! :) ƒirefly ( t · c ) 12:40, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Watchlist parameter
{{tracked|T11790}}
Hi all,
my question is when I enable the HIDE->bots parameter - in order to reduce the size of my watchlist - the problem is the hidden articles may contain as well non-bot new edits before the latest/recent bot edit, that have been made earlier (but was not present in my earlier listing, since those edits did not have been made then, but between my two listings). With other words, in case the last=(recent) edit has been made by a bot, then that article will not displayed on the actual listing of the watchlist, and it will remain until a non-bot edit will be performed, however, if again a bot edit would follow (and meanhile I would not make a fresh listing by any purpose), again it would be/remain hidden, and I would not know anything about any intermediary non-bot edits, like that. This is the problem. I would like just to hide those articles in my actual listing, which had just and only both edits from a given time, but not the non-bot edits have been done after the given time, but before the recent/latest bot edit. I hope I formulated my problem in a way to be correctly understood. Thank You.(KIENGIR (talk) 22:34, 24 February 2021 (UTC))
:{{ping|KIENGIR}} this is known issue phab:T11790, not something we can fix directly here on the English Wikipedia. You can follow that ticket for more details. — xaosflux Talk 00:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::Thank, I looked through the thread, but as I see the outcome tended the opposite direction I wish to achieve...or I would be wrong?(KIENGIR (talk) 00:55, 25 February 2021 (UTC))
:::That problem is still "open" meaning that no one has implemented a fix for it, yet. — xaosflux Talk 01:11, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
:I have not tried this but elsewhere, others have suggested this:
:*at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist:
:**check Advanced options → Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent
:**check Changes shown → Hide bot edits from the watchlist
:*at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rc:
:**check Advanced options → Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist
:—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:41, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{ping|Trappist the monk}},
::thank you, I am very afraid to make tryout changes, since in the past a village pump discussion was needed to fix another issue with the watchlist, and I had luck with the tweak that was proposed, however, the whole system did not work as should be, so my current result is a test&tweak alltogether, far from perfect (not listing back to the set days, in a way number of diffs limited, etc.). Explanding watchlist to show all changes - even with after hiding bot edits - is out of qustion, since I wish to reduce, it would dramatically enlarge it (I assumed the directive you put as a sequential step and not separate). The group changes I don't understand what would exactly means, can someone explain it?(KIENGIR (talk) 22:47, 25 February 2021 (UTC))
:::No need to be afraid; if you don't like the results of this, uncheck those options. You want to see all edits except bot edits. Until {{phab|T11790}} is fixed, this is the only way I know of to accomplish that. 'Group changes by page' groups the changes into collapsed lists so that grouped entries on your watchlist watchlist look something like this (except a lot of it will be wikilinked):
::::
:::When you click on the ►, it changes to ▼ and shows the changes for the page sort of like this:
::::
22:47 (cur | prev)..(+828)..KIENGIR (talk contribs) (→Watchlist parameter rollback)
22:08 (cur | prev)..(+1)..Slywriter (talk contribs) (→Edit filter to prevent http: //%5B(and cousins) making good links bad: Indent (Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit)
22:08 (cur | prev)..(+793)..Slywriter (talk contribs) (→Edit filter to prevent http: //%5B(and cousins) making good links bad: Thanks PrimeHunter and question on long term Maintenance (Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit)
etc
:::Click ▼ to collapse the list. Line wrapping in the real watchlist is prettier. Try it. If you don't like, undo it.
:::—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:44, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::::Thank you very much for the demonstration...well maybe once I will try, but as I see I have to really wait for the fix...(KIENGIR (talk) 19:32, 27 February 2021 (UTC))
::As far as I know, "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" is irrelevant in this equation. Older edits to pages whose latest edits are hidden show up as long as "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" is checked. Nardog (talk) 15:20, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Optional Class Parameter
Someone recently pointed out to me that the class parameter for a Wikiproject banner is better left blank for Drafts and Redirects because those articles are likely to change in the future and the class is auto-populated simply by virtue of the article being in Draft or Redirect space. I was curious what the standard conventions for WikiProject banners in general, but I'm specifically interested in whether it would be better to have a shortened WikiProject banner for Categories and Files because they are unlikely to change, but would be auto-populated. Would a short banner without a class parameter be best or should the class be included? Or if it doesn't matter, what would you suggest? I would assume that it's best to keep a standard convention across a large number of articles so if I'm making sure it's one specific way for an entire WikiProject what would be ideal?
I've never used the Village Pump so let me know if this is the wrong place. I figured it was a technical question because I want if there is a benefit to adding optional parameters. TipsyElephant (talk) 02:18, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
:I think most WikiProjects also auto-assess class on categories and files. So I think the answer to {{tq|Would a short banner without a class parameter be best?}} is yes? {{ping|Redrose64}} --Izno (talk) 18:45, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
::Not just categories and files - rather than listing the namespaces explicitly, it's easier to say "all talk namespaces except for Talk: itself". More specifically, if the {{para|class}} parameter is omitted or left blank, all WikiProject banners that have class ratings (with the exception of {{tlx|WikiProject Military history}}) will automatically set the class if either (i) the subject page is a redirect; or (ii) the subject page is not in main (article) space - if both apply, it's classified as a redirect. In the case of {{tlx|WikiProject Military history}}, which doesn't autodetect redirects, it will automatically set the class if the subject page is not in main (article) space. So, generally speaking, the {{para|class}} parameter should only be filled in if the subject page is an article or disambiguation page. Remember that pages in Draft: space are not articles (although they may become articles when developed sufficiently) so WikiProject banners in Draft talk: space should not have the {{para|class}} filled in. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:18, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Space at start of external link
I've been noticing lately that [https://wikipedia.org this works fine], but if I [ https://wikipedia.org mistakenly put a space in before the URL], the link breaks. Is there a reason for allowing the space there? Possibly (talk) 04:54, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|Possibly}} it isn't "allowed there" it is just ignored - when you put in whitespace you don't trigger the link generator - the only reason you are then seeing the link is that a separate link generator is formatting your bare link. — xaosflux Talk 10:47, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
finding a MW page in search
I thought of looking for a phrase "[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22Proton+will+be+proxied%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns0=1&ns1=1&ns2=1&ns3=1&ns4=1&ns5=1&ns6=1&ns7=1&ns8=1&ns9=1&ns10=1&ns11=1&ns12=1&ns13=1&ns14=1&ns15=1&ns100=1&ns101=1&ns108=1&ns109=1&ns118=1&ns119=1&ns446=1&ns447=1&ns710=1&ns711=1&ns828=1&ns829=1&ns2300=1&ns2301=1&ns2302=1&ns2303=1 Proton will be proxied]" in this page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Proton in order to find it on Search. although the page does not seem to be appearing..please advise..Gfigs (talk) 06:36, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:as per "[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Chromium&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns8=1&ns9=1 Chromium]" ,and suspected "[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Puppeteer&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns8=1&ns9=1 Puppeteer]"..Gfigs (talk) 06:58, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
::{{ping|Gfigs}} Selecting "MediaWiki" in searches means the MediaWiki namespace in the English Wikipedia. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Proton is not a page in the MediaWiki namespace but a mainspace page at the MediaWiki wiki. You have to make searches at https://www.mediawiki.org to find pages there. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:10, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:::{{ping|PrimeHunter}}, ah, ok..thank you Gfigs (talk) 11:20, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Range block
My ignorance of technical matters is complete. My IP address is currently subject to a range block.
(1) The instructions given to IPs are confusing and misleading, and I think they ought to be changed. Is this the right place to raise this issue?
(2) Up until today, this has not been a problem for me, since I can simply log in to my account. Today, the system kept telling me that I was not allowed to edit Wikipedia because my account had been blocked – it was logging me out in the middle of a simple edit. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:40, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
If this is not the correct place to raise my query, I would be grateful if someone would tell me where I should do so. Sweet6970 (talk) 10:42, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
:Depends on whether it’s a global block on Meta or a local one on English Wikipedia. Can you share part of the message you receive, Sweet6970? (No need to divulge the IP address if you’re not comfortable with that.) — Pelagic ( messages ) – (08:15 Fri 26, AEDT) 21:15, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{yo|Pelagic}} Thank you for your reply.
It’s a local one on English Wikipedia.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Drmies&diff=prev&oldid=999556256]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ADrmies&type=revision&diff=999576727&oldid=999556256]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2A02:C7D:0:0:0:0:0:0/33
The wording I receive as an IP is
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""
View source for Melvyn Bragg
← Melvyn Bragg
Jump to navigationJump to search
You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason:
Your account has been blocked from editing Wikipedia.
This does not affect your ability to read Wikipedia pages.
Editing from 2A02:C7D:0:0:0:0:0:0/33 has been blocked (disabled) by Drmies for the following reason(s):
Persistent addition of unsourced content: Persistent addition of incorrect content: change to site-wide
This block has been set to expire: 13:15, 29 June 2021.
Even when blocked, you will usually still be able to edit your user talk page and email other editors and administrators.
For information on how to proceed, first see the FAQ for blocked users and the guideline on block appeals. The guide to appealing blocks may also be helpful.
Other useful links: Blocking policy · Help:I have been blocked
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This wording is incorrect for me, since my account is not blocked, it is my IP address which is blocked. More importantly, it is incorrect for the IPs, because there is no point in appealing, they have to create an account if they want to edit.
I am no longer having trouble being logged out, but I am still concerned about the wording, which does not make it clear to IPs that if they want to edit, they have to create an account. You can see that 8 people have created a Talk page in order to appeal, which is not what the intention is. I have checked some of the IP addresses, and found various parts of London, Middlesbrough, and Glasgow, and I am wondering if everyone in Britain who uses my ISP is blocked from editing as an IP, and not being told that they have to create an account if they want to edit.
Sweet6970 (talk) 11:42, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:Generally IP blocks extend to accounts created using that IP or the IPs cannot create new accounts. Otherwise they would be too easy to avoid, and telling the users how to circumvent a ban wouldn't be a good idea either even if it would be possible. Things can cascade from there, see Wikipedia:Autoblock. --mfb (talk) 12:18, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::{{yo|mfb}} In this case, the intention is that any IP affected should create an account. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:2A02:C7D:4AD2:6400:D54B:3877:F2EF:4604] The range of this block is absolutely enormous, and as I said, it looks like the range block covers anyone in Britain who uses the same ISP as I do. But the problem is that the instructions received by the IPs do not tell them that they should create an account. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:32, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:::{{re|Sweet6970}} Typically, any significant range block should use the {{tl|rangeblock}} or {{tl|anonblock}} (or {{tl|schoolblock}} or similar) templates, which I believe are relatively clear. Most admins are quite good about doing this. I don't enjoy taking over such large range blocks, which is what would happen if I were to change the message; what we can do is ping the blocking admin User:Drmies, or you can head over to his talk page, and ask him simply and nicely to please add a template. -- zzuuzz (talk) 12:45, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::::{{yo|zzuuzz}} Thank you for your comment. It looks like the {{tl|anonblock}} would be the most suitable, but it still does not actually say ‘You are allowed to create an account, and this is what you should do’. (Under this particular block, there is no need to make a special request to create an account.) I did raise the question of this range block with {{u|Drmies}} in January. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Drmies&diff=prev&oldid=999556256] The reply I received [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ADrmies&type=revision&diff=999576727&oldid=999556256 ] felt like a brush-off, and I felt that it implied that I was on the side of vandals. I expect that if I raise this matter again I will be told that this is none of my business, so there is no point. Sweet6970 (talk) 13:41, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::I believe your previous note to Drmies didn't clearly identify the problem, or the solution (which you probably weren't to know about). But no worries, hopefully my ping from here will clarify the issue and result in a positive outcome. If not, ping me again, and I'll begrudgingly take over Drmies' block with a suitable message. Generally, the anonblock template is tried and tested, and I think it should be good enough, but suggestions to improve the wording are always welcome. -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:50, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::I have to admit I don't quite get the problem. If it's that the block notice isn't inclusive enough, sure, someone higher up on the technical food chain can fix that, I suppose. But still, {{U|Sweet6970}}'s note on my talk page was odd: "It looked like it would have been possible for me to create an account (I didn’t go through with it)"--well, they already had an account. The template's second sentence is "you are still able to edit if you sign in with an account", and that links Wikipedia:Why create an account?, where as-yet unregistered users can create an account. Many if not all as-yet unexperienced editors are able to "work this out", to use Sweet6970's phrasing, so why not here? And "If the idea is that anyone who is affected by the block should create an account, then the instructions need to be improved to give a clear route to this option"--well, the instruction is right there, and it's clickable. So no, I'm not saying this is none of their business, and I appreciate advocacy, and if someone thinks the template should be improved, go for it. Drmies (talk) 15:59, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::{{yo|Drmies}} (1) Regarding my note being ‘odd’: Yes, of course I have an account. Now. But I am looking at this from the point of view of someone who does not have an account, and remembering the bafflement, frustration, and annoyance which I felt when I was subject to a range block before I created my account.
:::::::(2) I don’t understand what you mean when you say {{tq| The template's second sentence is "you are still able to edit if you sign in with an account"}}. That’s not what I get when I go to edit logged out. I have already copied the wording in my previous post above:
“”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
Jump to navigationJump to search
You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason:
Your account has been blocked from editing Wikipedia.
This does not affect your ability to read Wikipedia pages.
Editing from 2A02:C7D:0:0:0:0:0:0/33 has been blocked (disabled) by Drmies for the following reason(s):
Persistent addition of unsourced content: Persistent addition of incorrect content: change to site-wide
This block has been set to expire: 13:15, 29 June 2021.
Even when blocked, you will usually still be able to edit your user talk page and email other editors and administrators.
For information on how to proceed, first see the FAQ for blocked users and the guideline on block appeals. The guide to appealing blocks may also be helpful.
Other useful links: Blocking policy · Help:I have been blocked
“””””””””””””””””””
:::::::There is nothing here about creating an account. The instructions lead you to appeal the block (as several IPs have done) which is pointless.
:::::::(3) Your block prevents people from all over Britain from editing as IPs, and does not notify them that they have the option to create an account. Sweet6970 (talk) 16:44, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::Sorry, I was pointing at the block notice that Zzuuzz linked. Let's change that then, if we can (I can't). Drmies (talk) 17:37, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::::Would it not be possible to cancel the existing block and immediately replace it with a block using the anonblock template? Alternatively, the template which is currently in place includes your own wording for the reason for the block. Presumably, you could add something here like ‘If you wish to make constructive edits to Wikipedia, please create an account in order to do so’? This would be clearer for IPs subject to the block. Is it possible to cancel the existing block, and immediately replace it with another block with the same template, but with the additional wording? Sweet6970 (talk) 18:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
- Hi, just trying to reconcile eveything above. Is the technical problem that we are trying to resolve mostly: Logged in users that are using an IP address range that is hard blocked are getting the wrong text from MediaWiki:Blockedtext's headline. ? — xaosflux Talk 19:20, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::Sorry, no. The problem is that IPs who are blocked under a very large range block are not getting the message that they should create an account if they want to edit. (I know very little about these things, but I think this is what is called a 'soft block', because my IP address is covered by the block, but I usually have no problem editing if I log in.) Sweet6970 (talk) 20:01, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:::Indeed. The issue is that the default (interface) block message is not helpful, compared to having the
::::{{re|zzuuzz}} MediaWiki:Blockedtext should be showing a different message if a non-logged in user is blocked, along the lines of: {{tq|You are currently unable to edit Wikipedia due to a block affecting your IP address...}}. If there are improvements to that message suggested, anyone can place an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Blockedtext. — xaosflux Talk 20:24, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::Indeed it should, and that I can't readily explain. On another IPv4 range, I've only been able to confirm that MediaWiki:Blockedtext-composite is working correctly, but I'm not in a position to check this situation. However, I think my point remains, this block - any block of this size - needs a block log template. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:49, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::{{replyto|zzuuzz}} You first mentioned the {{tl|rangeblock}} and {{tl|anonblock}} templates in your post of 12:45, 26 February 2021 (UTC). If I block a range of IPs (something I've never done, but recently I have had cause to), where should these templates be placed? I normally put templates like {{tlxs|uw-vblock}} on the user talk page - but an IP range may have hundreds (if not thousands) of talk pages. Am I expected to put the template on all of them? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
:::::::Any template placed in the block reason is transcluded to the user. So, if you pick one of the templates in the dropdown list (the bottom half of this list), the full template will be displayed when the blocked user tries to edit. Every IP in the range will see the transcluded template when they try to edit. You can also just place the template in the 'custom reason' field, or mix it up as I recently did [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3ABigDick69420BigDaddy69420 here]. That user will get the full username block template, plus the custom message I added. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:46, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
::::::::{{yo|zzuuzz}} I’m sorry to trouble you. The message I get when I go to edit logged-out is still the same. You have said that all we need is for someone to copy-paste anonblock into the current block reason. Presumably only an admin could do this. Could you fix this, please? Sweet6970 (talk) 16:45, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:::::::::{{re|Sweet6970}} Done. If there's still issues, or you want to let me know how you're getting on with the message, drop a note on my talk page. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:13, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
::::::::::{{yo|Zzuuzz}} Thank you very much for your help with this matter. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:37, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
[[m:Special:MyLanguage/Tech/News/2021/09|Tech News: 2021-09]]
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Recent changes
- Wikis using the Growth team tools can now show the name of a newcomer's mentor anywhere through a magic word. This can be used for welcome messages or userboxes.
- A new version of the VideoCutTool is now available. It enables cropping, trimming, audio disabling, and rotating video content. It is being created as part of the developer outreach programs.
Problems
- There was a problem with the job queue. This meant some functions did not save changes and mass messages were delayed. This did not affect wiki edits. [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T275437]
- Some editors may not be logged in to their accounts automatically in the latest versions of Firefox and Safari. [https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T226797]
Changes later this week
- File:Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from {{#time:j xg|2021-03-02|en}}. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from {{#time:j xg|2021-03-03|en}}. It will be on all wikis from {{#time:j xg|2021-03-04|en}} (calendar).
Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.
----
19:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
'Publish changes' should ask for confirmation but doesn't
When finished editing a Wikipedia article and clicking 'Publish changes', your changes go live, immediately and irrevocably. That is arguably reckless and wrong.
When editing, I will click 'Show preview' incrementally, many times, to make sure each change I make is correct. But it is very easy to click the adjacent 'Publish changes' button by mistake. Especially because 'Publish changes' is hi-lited in blue but 'Show preview' is white, visually tempting you in a moment of inattention to click the former when you didn't mean it.
Allowing all comers to commit, with a single click, a permanent write action on a Web site used by untold millions egregiously fails to err on the side of caution. A good user interface, let alone publishing to a world-wide audience, demands that on clicking 'Publish changes', you put up a box asking 'Are you sure you want your changes to go live? Yes / No,' with 'No' the default, hi-lited in blue.
It should obtain for all editing on Wikipedia—articles, Talk pages, this Village Pump page, all contexts.
I, for one, desperately want a safeguard against my own inattention.
Jimlue (talk) 03:53, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:{{ping|Jimlue}} An extra step sounds annoying but I searched Wikipedia:User scripts/List and found "SafetyEdit for all pages" at Wikipedia:User scripts/List#Previewing and summary: "adds a check box for all pages during editing, which must be clicked before saving is enabled." PrimeHunter (talk) 10:24, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
: Some thoughts:
:# This is unlikely ever to occur for the 2010 wikitext editor. There are simply too many people who want to be able to edit now, and most of them are the power editors who care.
:# {{tq|Allowing all comers to commit, with a single click, a permanent write action on a Web site used by untold millions egregiously fails to err on the side of caution.}} is overblown. Bad actions are readily reversed. Good actions - well, why are you complaining? :)
:# You should generally review WP:Be bold.
:# Good news perhaps for you. The current 2017 wikitext editor requires you to go through preview at this time. Have a try.
:--Izno (talk) 17:25, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
::The power users probably wouldn't bring out the torches if it was an opt-out feature. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
Page changes
I have a list of ~80,000 pages that I am fetching daily. Is there a way to find out which pages in my list have been edited in the last day, so that I can fetch only those? Sam at Megaputer (talk) 19:53, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:{{ping|Sam at Megaputer}} how/why are you fetching these? There’s a way to do that with database queries - e.g. on Toolforge or Quarry. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 20:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:: {{ping|Firefly}}: I'm fetching the pages through the API so that they can be evaluated for promotional content as part of an anti-promo tool I've built. Right now the major limitation I am facing is the computing resources, so the more efficient I can make this thing the more pages we can defend. Can you link me to the documentation on those database queries? Sam at Megaputer (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
::: {{ping|Sam at Megaputer}} so as a quick example [https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/52904 this query] pulls in all pages that have been touched in the past 24h (touched means edited, had protection level changed, had included templates changed, etc.). I’ve limited it to return only 1000 results for now, but obviously you could tweak it for your own use. Some documentation [https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Toolforge/Database here] about querying the replicas on Toolforge if it helps. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 21:25, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:::: Thanks! This should solve the problem. Sam at Megaputer (talk) 21:35, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:::::No worries - happy to help. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 21:38, 1 March 2021 (UTC)
:{{re|Sam at Megaputer}} do you mean the same set of 80000 pages daily? If so, you could put all those pages on the watchlist of your bot account, and then [https://www.mediawiki.org/w/api.php?action=help&modules=query%2Bwatchlist query the watchlist]. – SD0001 (talk) 15:17, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
::Assuming it is the same set of 80k, SD0001's idea is far better than mine. I had no idea you could use the watchlist via the API. ƒirefly ( t · c ) 15:32, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
:::You can also fetch the watchlist using RSS format with a secret token, may be even easier since it is basic authentication. — xaosflux Talk 15:40, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
::::Wikipedia:Syndication#Watchlist_feed_with_token for info. — xaosflux Talk 15:41, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
::::: Yes, I think this new idea will work even better. Thanks a lot for your help! Sam at Megaputer (talk) 15:49, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
Bordered image
Is it possible for an image to have a coloured border around it?--Launchballer 11:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
:I'm assuming you mean purely when displayed somewhere, as opposed to being part of the image itself? Where is this needed & why? Thanks! ƒirefly ( t · c ) 11:40, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
| style="border: 1px solid red; float:right" |
| 50px |
::I don't know whether image syntax can do it but you can display an image without a border and surround it with a border made in other ways. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:06, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
:::I'm trying to get [https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Template:MenuSprite Fantendo's Template:MenuSprite] to have an optional border round it, which it now does; I was missing the word 'solid'. Using div forces the sprites on to several lines, so I've used span instead. However this does mean the boxes are running on to each other, but I can play around from here.--Launchballer 12:21, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
::::Wikipedia is not affiliated with Fandom. Please say when your post is about another wiki. Your code [https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Template:MenuSprite?type=revision&diff=3354284&oldid=3352728] has mismatched
:::::File:Wikipedia's W.svgFile:Wikipedia's W.svg See WP:EIS#Border: images not having either {{para||thumb}} or {{para||frame}} may be given a {{para||border}} option, it's styling is due to the {{tag|img|s}} tag being given the attribute class="thumbborder" for which our style sheets have this rule:
border: 1px solid #eaecf0;
} That colour is a bluish grey {{colorbox|#eaecf0}} so is not obvious in my examples. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:55, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
.svg){kind=link}
